The beautiful, talented, classy, dark-eyed Emma Watson graced our puzzle today, clued by her role as Hermione in the HP films. But in the following clip, she is Belle, from the film adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. It’s a real nice song and Watson does her own singing. [Warning: the scene contains mud-splattering.]
Emma was born on April 15, 1990 in Paris, but she is British, born to parents who are both lawyers. She knew from age 6 she wanted to act. She did no professional acting before landing the Harry Potter role. As a child actress she was tutored privately on the set 5 hours a day and did very well on her exams. She earned her college degree from Brown University in English Lit in 2014.
Watson has been associated with many progressive causes, including Palestinian rights, which has not endeared her to the Israelis. This is from her Wikipedia writeup:
“Watson is an outspoken feminist. She has promoted education for girls, travelling to Bangladesh and Zambia to do so. In July 2014, she was appointed a UN Women Goodwill ambassador. That September, an admittedly nervous Watson delivered an address at UN Headquarters to launch the UN Women campaign HeForShe, which aims to urge men to advocate for gender equality. In that speech she said she began questioning gender-based assumptions at age eight when she was called ‘bossy’ (a trait she has attributed to her being a ‘perfectionist’) while boys were not, and at 14 when she was ‘sexualized by certain elements of the media.’ Further, Watson’s speech described feminism as ‘the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities’ and declared that the perception of it as ‘man-hating has to stop.’ The speech made worldwide headlines; the organization’s website crashed after press coverage of the event. Watson received threats shortly after making the speech, which left her raging. ‘If they were trying to put me off [women’s rights work], it did the opposite.’ Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka [pronounced exactly as it is spelled], the executive director of UN Women, stated, ‘For a time, there was a conversation about whether ‘feminism’ was a good thing or a bad thing. Her speech gave us the word back.’”
The camera is very much her friend. I had a hard time picking out this photo. (Chris — you’ll have to go looking for the bikini shots on your own.)
The clue at 71A was “neat and tidy” for KEMPT. You know, the opposite of unkempt. LMS had a long post using a bunch of “opposite” words like “gruntled, ept, heveled, and sipid.” And then burtonkd dug up this New Yorker piece by Jack Handy, called How I Met My Wife. It rewards careful attention.
It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I’d have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn’t be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do. Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion. So I decided not to rush it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings. Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory character who was up to some good. She told me who she was. “What a perfect nomer,” I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.
The puzzle theme today was GREEN EGGS AND HAM, which ran across the grid in the center. And four theme answers were: ON A BOAT, IN A TREE, IN THE RAIN, and WITH A GOAT.
Now, Owl Chatter is about to blow your f**king mind. It’s what you come here for, amirite? While you’ve been pronouncing it SOOSE all your life, Geisel himself said it should be pronounced SOYCE (or ZOYCE), and he did not like that it was pronounced SOOSE.
Or, to make matters verse:
You’re wrong as the deuce
And you shouldn’t rejoice
If you’re calling him Seuss.
He pronounces it Soice (or Zoice).
And, get this, from Rex’s guest Claire today: “The vocabulary of Green Eggs and Ham consists of just 50 words and was the result of a bet between Seuss and Bennett Cerf, his publisher, that Seuss (after completing The Cat in the Hat using 236 words) could not complete an entire book without exceeding that limit. The 50 words are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you. ‘Anywhere’ is the only word used that has more than one syllable.”
Thanks for all the good work, Doc!
One comment today noted: “I’m disappointed that there is no ASS today, and only one GAM and one TATA, crossing A BRA no less [from abra cadabra].” [Tata is slang for boob, in case you’re not up on these things.]
I’ve heard the term GAM before for leg. It was clued today as “Leg, in old slang” at 57A. But when I googled it, all I found was: 1. a school of whales, porpoises, or dolphins, and 2. a social meeting or informal conversation (originally one among whalers at sea). But those are in the traditional dictionaries. The Urban Dictionary, which must be put together by dirty old men, has “gams” as “a nice long pair of female legs.”
Etymology-wise, there’s this for gam: low slang, probably the same word as gamb “leg of an animal on a coat of arms” (1727) and ultimately from Middle English gamb “leg,” which is from French (see gammon). Now, in American English slang, especially with reference to well-formed legs of pretty women, but this was not the original sense.
The Owl Chatter photographers caught up with one of my tax students after the midterm modeling her gams.
Cary ELWES, of The Princess Bride, was in the puzzle today. Did you know he waged a twitter war with troglodyte Senator Ted Cruz? It turns out Cruz is a major fan of The Princess Bride. And when he tweeted some swipe at Hollywood liberals, Elwes snapped: “How does it feel to know that not only the entire cast and crew of your favorite movie The Princess Bride, but almost the whole entertainment industry, have nothing but rabid contempt for you?” And he called Cruz a “miserable ROUS” ― referencing the Rodents of Unusual Size (which attack The Princess Bride hero Westley and heroine Buttercup as they traverse a dangerous bog called the Fire Swamp, in case you were wondering).
One of Elwes’s relatives was the British miser John Elwes, who was the inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol (1843), having been referenced by Charles Dickens himself in chapter six of his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend.
When Elwes was a teenager he worked as a production assistant on several films, and was assigned to Marlon Brando on Superman. His job was to get Brando out of his trailer every day. When he introduced himself to Brando, Brando insisted on calling him “Rocky,” after Rocky Marciano. Elwes has no idea why.
One scene in The Princess Bride called for Count Rugen to hit Elwes and knock him out. Elwes told Christopher Guest to go ahead and really hit him for the shot. But Guest hit Elwes so hard that he was knocked unconscious, and rushed to hospital. He woke up in the ER, still in costume with stitches being sewn into his head. He’s lucky it wasn’t Alec Baldwin, armed.
It was love at first bite when he met his wife Lisa, a photographer, at a chili contest in Malibu in 1997. They’ve been married since 2000 and have a daughter. He’s a damn good-looking guy, I’ll give him that.
Here’s the view from my kitchen window this morning. Brrr.
See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 