Thank God for the nitpickers. The clue for OWLS today was: “Birds that can twist their heads almost 360 degrees,” and one fellow was aghast. He said owls can only twist their heads 270 degrees, which is 3/4 of 360, and he doesn’t think 3/4 is enough for “almost.” (Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a hoot. Or a whoo (whoom?).)

The answer at 69A was TLDR, an internet-speak initialism that stands for Too Long Didn’t Read. It was oddly clued with “Here’s a brief summary.”

Some nice combos include sound effects THUD and WHAP, along with TIME BOMBS and EXPLODES. Puzzles can be dangerous.

The musical guest in today’s puzzle is Joan JETT, of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Their biggest hit was “I Love Rock and Roll,” which was No. 1 on Billboard for seven weeks in 1982, and is Billboard’s #56 song of all time. She and the band were inducted into the R&R HOF in 2015. Joan got her first guitar when she was 13 and started taking lessons but quit because her instructor kept trying to teach her folk songs (the noive!). On 10/29/2014 Jett sang the National Anthem in NY at a Knicks-Bulls game. The Bulls won 104-80. She’s 64 now, kinehora, and performed in concert as recently as Sept. 2021. This shot is from 2010, when she was 52. Looks good!

For obvious reasons, the Oreo is the favorite cookie of Crossworld: The snack equivalent of Bobby ORR or Mel OTT. Vermont friend Susan (Hi S!), took me to task, albeit gently, for snubbing thin oreos the other day. She says she likes them and shared a neat video in which a young lady and a guy compete on the creation of a “Franken Oreo,” which combines 18 different Oreo flavors (!). The woman is detaching the cookie portion of each from the creme. She is then blending all the creme into a “franken creme,” combining (somehow) the cookie parts into franken cookies, and then rebuilding the parts into her Franken Oreo. The guy is just smashing them all together and mixing them into ice cream. Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k6vpI-2yao

I had no idea there are so many Oreo flavors. A food site, Delish, ranks 30 Oreo flavors. These include unusual ones such as Red Velvet, Gingerbread, Carrot Cake, and Apple Cider Donut. The winner, in their eyes, is the Double Stuf Oreo, which actually has less creme in it than the Mega Oreo or the Most Stuf Oreo. Their explanation of their choice is: “There is nothing better in this goddamn world.” Works for me. The runner up was Lemon Oreo.

My favorite use of that term was in Woody Allen’s Love and Death. The guy he is with points to someone and says: “There’s Berchikov, he’s the village idiot.” And Woody Allen says: “Yeah? And what are you — runner up?”

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BANGOR Maine appeared in Sunday’s puzzle. From Rex comments I learned that Bangorians are very sensitive about the pronunciation of their city. It’s pronounced Ban-gore, not Banger. They produced a very funny musical public service video on the matter. https://youtu.be/K_q9hAAIS-c

Wisdom from Carl: “Someone just honked to get me out of my parking spot faster. So now I have to sit here until both of us are dead.”

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New Yorker cartoonist George Booth died. He was 96. The magazine said goodbye in its 11/14 issue with a “Postscript” written by Emma Allen, the current cartoon editor. She writes: “In the days after 9/11, when a return to normal life felt unimaginably hard, Booth supplied the sole “cartoon” in the issue following the attacks: a drawing of Mrs. Ritterhouse [the cartoon avatar of Booth’s mother], her fiddle on the floor, her eyes closed in prayer, a cat nearby covering its face with its paws.”

On the recommedation of a friend, I started reading a Holocaust survivor’s memoir, Parallel Lines, by Peter Lantos. He said he generally stays away from that darkness, but found this book hard to put down. I got hooked on the first page. Lantos says this about the town in Hungary where he was born (Mako): “Searching the internet for ‘Mako’ yields a surprising result: 108,204 hits spread over 10,821 pages. But before one can get carried away with chauvinistic pride over the extraordinary popularity of one’s hometown, the truth soon hits: the name is not the sole property of a small town in Hungary. Other contestants vying for attention are the short-finned shark, Mako (Isurus Oxyrinchus); full and semi-rigid inflatable boats and rubber ducks bearing the trade name Mako, produced in Cape Town, South Africa; and Compair Mako, a manufacturer of breathing equipment in Texas.”

Rubber ducks! I’m in.