Veteran puzzle constructor/solver and Rex blog commenter Nancy is beloved by all. She posted this hysterical tale of woe yesterday.
“My bank, HSBC, closed permanently a few months ago. My accounts were switched to a new bank. For the last three years, the NYT has been wiring payments for the puzzles I’ve constructed directly to my account. I forgot to inform them of the change and got a notice that the payment for my last puzzle hadn’t gone through and that I needed to send them instructions by filling out an online form. It could not be handled any other way and ‘Action’ was ‘Required! Within two business days!’
“The little horror they sent me via email is called the ‘Coupa Supplier Portal’ (no I don’t know what it means either). And yesterday I manfully –or rather womanfully — tried. Really I did. Cross my heart.
I filled in the usual easy stuff. Then I came to the box that asked for ‘address purpose.’ What on earth did that mean????? Whose address? I assume mine, or was it the bank’s? No reference to an address had come in any of the previous lines. And what’s an address’s ‘purpose?’ I tried to type in ‘Receive a check’ and was told ‘Not valid answer!’ I tried ‘to live in’ and was told ‘Not valid answer!’ I typed in ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re asking me’ and was told ‘Not valid answer!’
“I skipped over the question and then tried to press ‘Enter,’ but the cyberbot stopped me in my tracks. It just wouldn’t let me proceed without that piece of info inserted.
“I pressed the ‘Chat with a staff member’ key, but nobody came. I pressed the ‘Help!’ key, but nobody came. I found an empty space to type in my phone number, but nobody called.
“I cried ‘Uncle,’ left the computer and hit the wine bottle. Hard. Well, it could have been worse; it could have been vodka. I made a somewhat drunken phone call. I then sent a drunken email to ‘Accounts Payable.’ I then found the phone numbers of two more people and made two more drunken phone calls. I may have said ‘so then don’t bleeping pay me, but I cannot possibly use your ridiculous online form, I simply can’t!’ (We’re not talking pin money here. We’re talking $375.)”
[Nancy eventually had a friend come over who did something to get the form submitted. It took him 40 minutes. He may have just filled in “other” for address purpose. She still does not know if she’ll get the payment.]
Joe Dipinto followed up with this:
@Nancy – For “Address Purpose” did you try filling in:
That these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth?
I responded by sharing the following with the community:
I loved Nancy’s story about her battle with the form yesterday. Here’s one I waged about ten years ago. My daughter fell off of my insurance when she turned 26, so we signed her up with her own coverage but it came through with an incorrect date of birth on it — May 7 instead of May 17. There was an email address on the papers, so (pretending I was Caity) I wrote a note thanking them for their excellent service but asking them to correct my date of birth to May 17th. They emailed back that they “checked their records and there was no error.”
I had to read their note several times to believe what I was seeing. They were telling me that I didn’t know my own birthday. Apparently, I had been using the wrong birth date since birth — actually since ten days before birth!
I wrote back and said: I am holding in my left hand my birth certificate issued by Essex County, NJ, my driver’s license issued by the State of NJ, and my passport issued by the U.S. State Department, all of which have May 17th as my date of birth. What records did you check?
It took around six months for us to get the correction made and when it came through we went out to celebrate at a nice restaurant. God Bless America!
This is how Anthony Lane’s review of “Cocaine Bear” starts in The New Yorker of 3/6/23.
“Darkness falls. Out in the woods, under the pelting of a pitiless storm, a middle-aged American male, stripped to the waist, fights a furious bear. This elemental sequence comes from a 1977 film, scarily titled ‘Day of the Animals,’ and the joy of it is that the battling man is played by Leslie Nielsen, and that the movie is not — repeat, not — intended as a comedy. What, you may ask, could top that?
“One answer is ‘Cocaine Bear,’ a new film written by Jimmy Warden and directed by Elizabeth Banks. Allegedly, it’s based on true events, in much the same way that ‘Pinocchio’ is based on string theory.”
He goes on to say later:
“From what I saw, she has simply made a film about a bear that does coke. It’s as if Quentin Tarantino kicked off his career with a tale of some dogs who visit an actual reservoir.”
[Shit – now I’ve gotta see it.]
Get this — Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, describing it as a “wildly entertaining and darkly hilarious B-movie blood-fest” and “genuinely well-crafted horror.” In a same-star review, ReelViews reviewer James Berardinelli concluded that the film was “silly but not stupid.” Likewise, Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com criticized the characters but her review was also overall positive. She noted that the film was “not that profound.” Ya think?
The director is the very popular and beautiful actress Elizabeth Banks, born on February 10, 1974 in Pittsfield MA, home of the Pittsfield Suns of the Futures League. (So she’s 49.)
Banks met her husband, Max Handelman, a sportswriter and producer from Portland, Oregon, on her first day of college at the University of Pennsylvania on September 7, 1992. They were married in 2003 and have two sons, born via surrogacy.
Banks went through parts of conversion to Judaism, her husband’s faith (duh), and studied with rabbis. [I’m betting the rabbis are still talking about it. I’m betting the rabbis remember that particular student for quite some time.]
In 2013, speaking of her religion, she stated that she practices Judaism, though “I did not have my mikveh [ritual bath], so, technically, I’m not converted,” but that she has “been essentially a Jew for like 15 years,” adding “Frankly, because I’m already doing everything [practicing religious rituals], I feel like I’m as Jewish as I’m ever going to be.”
I think that goes for a lot of us. I’m certainly as Jewish as I’ll ever be. How about you, readers –as Jewish as you’ll ever be?
Today’s puzzle plopped its ASS right down at 82 down, clued as “Wild donkey.” It also had ANATOMY at 113A, clued as “Gray matter?” It prompted egs to note: “Any puzzle that features ASS and ANATOMY will likely be banned in Florida.”
There were some clever clues:
“Star close to Venus” was SERENA. (Get it? Think tennis.)
“They may be long and shocking.” EELS
“Ear piece?” KERNEL
“They can be passed but not failed.” LAWS
(Mount) ETNA is a very common puzzle answer, so it’s hard to clue it creatively. Today’s was good: “Virgil described its ‘cloud of pitch black whirling smoke.’”
Same for AHAB, clued today with “Literary character who cries, ‘I am madness maddened!’”
And ART, clued as “‘Coming face to face with yourself,’ per Jackson Pollock.” You concur with that, Bob?
Our friend Vermont Lizzie called our attention to a beautiful young actress who is a close friend of her daughter’s (and hers), and is performing this month in a production of AIRNESS in Burlington VT, “A rock n roll air guitar comedy.” She is from Vermont and goes by the unusual name of Grace Experience. The Boston Globe has stated: “Grace Experience is simply hilarious.” How great is that?
Rex opened a bit of a hornet’s nest today. Here’s what happened. The puzzle had “Pulitzer-winning columnist Stephens” at 60D, for BRET Stephens, a conservative OP-ED columnist for the NYT. He gives the page “balance.” Among other things, he jousts weekly with liberal Gail Collins, good naturedly. Anyway, Rex, as is often the case, lambasted the puzzle. His attack included: “Add to all this the puzzle’s bizarre, perverse commitment to gratuitously inserting some of the very worst human beings into the grid (BRET Stephens!?!? SAM Bankman-Fried!?!? Whyyyyyyyy? What are you doing? Who is that for?), and you’ve got … well, I don’t know what, but nothing I would care to re-experience, that’s for sure.”
So, many commenters thought Rex went too far on Stephens (“very worst human beings”). They noted he’s a strong anti-Trumper and you can disagree with his positions without such a personal attack.
Rex replied to the requests that he expand on his position — not just take the swipe:
“Since you asked in good faith I will answer in good faith and say that it is not politics but good faith, or complete lack thereof, that has shaped my feelings about the writer in question [Stephens]. There is an intellectual dishonesty there, a dehumanizing, supercilious, ultimately power-serving POV dressed up as if it were the product of erudition and reason. The NYT’s opinion page is a wasteland because they just want “engagement,” which means making liberals mad, which is like shooting fish in a barrel. (Liberals: please stop sharing stupid takes from famously stupid people—you aren’t fighting the system, only making the system stronger). Meanwhile, Black people poor people queer people all people outside a comfy white media elite are treated w/ dehumanizing disdain, w/ zero genuine concern or even curiosity.
“Marginal groups become mere thought experiments for people who have mistaken expensive formal education for wisdom. Dude [Stephens] is a cog in a shitty clickbait system, and I’m unwilling to give “conservatives” any credit for simply being Not Trump. Not good enough. That’s the kind of weak mindedness that gets us the Florida governor as our next president. See, I’ve thought through this shit a lot, actually. I think BS’s position of power confers great responsibility on him and he repeatedly abuses it, In Bad Faith, for clicks.
“I know and love (and am related to) conservatives of one kind or another. Hell, in some quarters, in some contexts, I am the conservative. And I don’t mind people disagreeing with me, or being merely wrong. But bad faith … that’s 8th ring stuff—9th if you’ve been entrusted w/ a position of public prominence. I hope I have answered your question. Thank you for asking w/o the snide, derisive tone I’m used to from defenders of Rowling, Stephens, et al.
“If you enjoy reading in order to stay well informed, particularly on the issue of open-mindedness, I suggest this: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/06/the-maddening-dishonesty-of-the-new-york-times-op-ed-editor
[The article in the link centers on the crap the NYT took for including an OP-ED piece by troglodytic Senator Tom Cotton recently.]
Getting back to lighter terrain, 91D was “Robin Hood’s love,” which, of course was Maid MARIAN. The role has been played by over 20 women, including Olivia de Havilland, Cate Blanchett, Audrey Hepburn, and Uma Thurman. Here’s a shot of Kate Moss, who also played Marian. It left our OC photographers stuttering for a few hours, but when they regained the power of speech, they said she was very sweet.
BTW, I’ve been terribly remiss in failing to give credit where it is due, viz., to our wonderful Owl Chatter photographers who travel the world over to bring us so many wonderful shots of celebs, owls, nature scenes, flora, you name it. They have even braved war zones, if you recall our coverage of the Great Emu War in Australia. So let me introduce you to them, one at a time, over the coming weeks. Here’s Phil Peppard. Phil’s been with Owl Chatter the longest. Hey Philly! — thanks for all the good work!
See you tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by!
The Wellington Files 