I lost my brother Jay shortly before 9/11. He was only 63, so I was pretty much robbed, of what, 20 years or so with him? For a time I was working in an office in midtown and he had an office a bit north of there so we met for lunch every week or two. It was during this time that my wonderful niece Alana was born, and, to be honest, I thought I lost my brother over her. Alana was his first, and to put it mildly he went nuts. She was all he could talk about. There was no point in me being there – he wasn’t listening to anything I said, he just went on and on about how gorgeous she was and smart and sweet and gorgeous — did I mention gorgeous? All of that was true — no question, but enough already.

I came home and said to Linda – “I think I’m losing Jay — there’s just no connecting with him anymore, it’s all Alana — there’s nothing else on the planet. I don’t know why I bother to meet him.” When he wasn’t raving about her, he was pressuring us to schlep up to Riverdale to visit, but that was a tough trip because we didn’t have a car at the time. The same thing happened a few years later when his second was born — my wonderful funny handsome nephew Jared. I remember holding him during his bris (and not watching), which was a great honor that I still very much appreciate. Anyway, the years went by, and I just accepted that Jay had gone totally nuts. Short of not letting the kids play with chain saws, he pretty much gave in to them on everything else. The concept of him ever punishing one of them was too ridiculous even to contemplate.

And then something happened to us in Brooklyn — we had Caitlin. And I held her in the hospital room and it was “Whoa.” Overwhelming. Indescribable. I remember having two immediate thoughts. First — did my mother love me this much? — Yikes, I wished I gave her less grief over the years. And second, I felt, for the first time, that there was something (or someone) I would give my life for without hesitation if necessary. And of course I felt the same way about Sam when he was born, and the feelings only grew stronger over the years, even over difficult years.

I remember at one point being surprised that I was so surprised by all of it. We knew plenty of people who had kids — yet we never got any idea of the overwhelming feelings we’d be having. How come nothing tipped us off to the intensity of the love even in any movies we saw or books we read — even books specifically on the topic of parenting?

And then I remembered Jay. How he fell off the planet when Alana was born. How I complained to Linda how crazy he had become. It turned out he was the only one who conveyed it accurately in his way, who painted the true picture for me, but I couldn’t appreciate it at the time. It was a Catch-22. If he hadn’t gone totally nuts, he wouldn’t have been painting the picture accurately. But I couldn’t take him seriously — the guy was clearly completely nuts.

I spoke briefly at Jay’s funeral and thanked him for all the gifts he gave me — many of which, like that one, I only appreciated after he was gone.

Here’s Caitlin and her quintet, 2.5 years ago. I just noticed Lianna and Leon are holding hands.

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I should never have given the Owl Chatter camera crew the night off. (I took pity on them for schlepping out to Kentucky for that moron convention yesterday.) It meant it was up to me to take a shot of Chris’s wonderful band last night down at The Rail in Whitehouse Station. They tore the roof off the place and the burgers were [insert chef’s kiss]. Wonderful event. But here’s my pathetic effort at photography. Don’t blame me for that blurry guy on the left — he’s actually blurry in real life. Chris is next to him on the gee-tar. (BTW, Chris is a big fan of Owl Chatter — thank you for the kind words, buddy!)

And here’s that chef’s kiss I owe you:

Get this — the band has a new drummer because the old drummer refused to get vaxxed (as was required by their rehearsal space), and got Covid and died. He was 52 and left behind a 12-year old child. They have a new vocalist too because the old one also refused to get vaxxed. She’s still living but is apparently brain dead because she noted about the drummer that “at least he was true to his beliefs.” When Chris pointed out that his beliefs killed him, she said he died because he didn’t take Ivormectin or something and she still refuses to get vaxxed. Chris has cut all social ties to her. BTW, don’t worry, all of the bandmembers photographed above, as well as the chef who is modeling the “chef’s kiss” for us, are vaxxed and boosted. Owl Chatter is a safe space.

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Some holdover issues from yesterday’s puzzle. 35D was “Princess Diana or Diana Ross,” and the answer was GAY ICON. One commenter asserted a little too snippily that Princess Di was absolutely not a gay icon. Hrrrumph. Just for fun, I checked Wikipedia for “Gay Icon,” and found a pretty big entry. It includes the following, which I posted for the snippy guy (who later deleted himself, so to speak). It’s a bit long, but lovely.

“Highly regarded by the LGBT community due to her work with gay men suffering from AIDS, Diana, Princess of Wales, is considered to be a gay icon. The hardships she faced during her life within the British royal family and her struggles with bulimia have been cited as factors to which members of the LGBT community can mostly connect. Writing for Them, David Levesley described Diana as ‘a symbol of the familial oppression many queer people know all too well,’ and added that ‘[queer people] admire her for how long she lasted in the face of a shitty situation. Is there anything more queer than a fabulous woman trapped in a bleak household?’ James Greig from Vice also held a similar viewpoint, stating that “her status as a tragic diva aside, it’s undeniable that Diana made real, material changes to the lives of LGBT people – particularly through the work she did around AIDS.” In an article for Newsweek, Desmond O’Connor wrote that Diana’s work with dying HIV+ gay men was crucial for reminding ‘the people of Great Britain that their ‘untouchable’ sons deserved to be loved.’

“In 2009, a panel including Sir Ian McKellen and Alan Hollinghurst chose Diana’s portrait to be shown in the Gay Icons exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In October 2017, the Attitude magazine honoured Diana with its Legacy Award for her HIV/AIDS work. Prince Harry accepted the award on behalf of his mother.”

Here are two shots of The Lady. First, wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jacket on a magazine cover (no shit!), and then looking quite sexy.

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On that mbira — the thumb piano. I hope you took a few minutes to watch the video I posted yesterday — it’s pretty neat. Anyway, commenter CDilly52 shared this:

“First of all, blessings upon the house of Professor Bruno Nettl, one of the founders of the discipline of ethnomusicology and one of the kindest, most creative and intelligent people I have ever met. I had a double major at Illinois in music performance (flute and voice) and music history. This meant two recitals and a senior thesis. And lots of masters level seminars because the major was newish in the days gone by.

“Anyway, my seminar with Dr. Nettl was in African music. It was one of the best classes I ever took and it was an opportunity for me to work with my new ‘steady’ and eventual husband on my final project. As a percussionist, he was already familiar with every percussion instrument introduced in class and he and Dr. Nettl were well acquainted since the percussion department at Illinois was then and still is known for new music and percussion ensemble work that employs every sound one could imagine and incredibly creative composers-percussionists.

“Throughout the course of the semester, I was starting work on my thesis about J.S and CPE Bach‘s flute music and performance practices/ornamentation. Since I also had to have a final project for ethno, I really threw the spaghetti at the wall to see if it would stick.

I took a movement of the CPE Bach unaccompanied partita with its persistent atomic rhythm and we added African percussion underneath. It included a passage with the mbira trading off portions of a sequence with the flute with African drums underneath syncopating the atomic rhythms of the Bach. And that’s why the TINE of the mbira was a gimme. And to this good day, I wish I had a recording of that piece, but reel to reel tape was all that would have been possible and the line was long to get the department sound guys to help set up to record. Undergrads were at the end of the end of the line.”

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Turning to today’s puzzle. Puzzles definitely have a vibe. I learned that from Rex. Who are the people it features? — if it has a female newsperson, is it Laura Ingraham or Rachel Maddow? If there’s a “Mel” is it Brooks or Gibson or Torme or Ott? Does it have rappers or country-western folks? Gay idioms? Etc. In that light, I enjoyed Rex’s comments about his experience of today’s puzzle:

“Despite the ‘not my vibe’ content, despite the deliberately unfun grid structure, I enjoyed the solve, largely because it felt like the puzzle was really trying to fight me but I was knocking down everything it could throw at me—all the junk I don’t really care for, all the potential traps and dead-ends, and alllll of the ‘look at my tricky clues!’ I felt immortal walking through this one. Like Keanu at the end of ‘The Matrix’—nothing could touch me. I could feel that it was probably a ‘hard’ puzzle—lots of tricky clues, lots (and lots and lots and lots) of names—but there was just no stopping me.

“So this was a rare experience where I thought like the puzzle hated me, like it was saying ‘OH, IT’S ON!’ the way some dumb fake tough guy might, but I managed not only to defeat it, but to make friends with it as well. This puzzle definitely voted for Trump, but we’re still gonna have a beer later. It’s fine.”

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I have to say I agree. There wasn’t much that engaged me. The clue for 2D was cute: “Something that guarantees you’ll come out on top?” And the answer was ROGAINE.

BTW, what do you get when you combine Rogaine and Viagra? — Don King!

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THORA Birch dropped in today — an unusual actress. She is perhaps best known for her role as Kevin Spacey’s daughter in American Beauty (1999), which we loved and won the Oscar for Best Film. (Spacey also won for Best Actor and Sam Mendes for Best Director.) She was also in The Last Black Man in San Francisco in 2019, which I liked, but I don’t remember her in it.

Ever been just a tiny bit embarrassed by your parents? (Me neither.) Well, Thora’s folks were both porn stars who were in Deep Throat. Although her name is an anagram of TORAH, she is only partly Jewish, and the Torah business is a coincidence. Her name derives from the Norse god of thunder and lightning: Thor, which would have been her name if she was born a boy. Her younger brother is named Bolt (not kidding). Given her parents, let’s face it, it could’ve been worse. (They could have gotten away with naming the son Dick, but I’m not going to give that topic any more thought (probably).)

Because of their own experience in movies, Thora’s parents were reluctant to encourage her to act, but were persuaded to show her photograph to agents by a babysitter who noticed her imitating commercials. Thora got her first big break at the age of four, when the babysitter accompanied her to a successful audition for a Quaker Oats commercial.

Sifting through photos of her, I was amazed at how changeable her looks are. I think she’d be pleased with this choice.

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And we’ll let her pretty blue eyes bid you farewell today. See you tomorrow!