When times are dark, heroes rise up. And so we have former NY prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz, appearing before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday. He said he agreed to appear because he respected the law. He went on:
“What I do not respect is the use of the committee’s subpoena power to compel me to participate in an act of political theater. We are gathered here because Donald Trump’s supporters would like to use these proceedings to attempt to obstruct and undermine the criminal case pending against him, and to harass, intimidate and discredit anyone who investigates or charges him.”
Mr. Pomerantz cited NY law protecting the privacy of active investigations. He also noted that his revealing information about grand jury proceedings would be illegal, so he invoked Fifth Amendment privileges. Thus, he managed to avoid answering many of the committee’s queries, noting “I am glad that the law allows me not to cooperate with this performance of political theater.”
Bravo, Counselor.
There was a lot of neat stuff in the puzzle today: Do you know what a zythophile is? It’s someone who likes beer. It comes on the heels of yesterday’s beeramid. (Burp!)
And have you heard the term HEADDESK? The clue for that was: “Expression of frustration stronger than a facepalm.” It’s when you’re so frustrated you slam your head onto your desk. Or in this case, your table.
Rex’s blog today included this comment by “BK:”
“I drank beer with my friends.
We drank beer, my friends and I, boys and girls.
Sometimes I probably had too many beers. Sometimes other people had too many beers.
I liked beer. I still like beer.
I like beer. I don’t know if you do. Do you like beer? Or not? What do you like to drink?
Hanging out and having beer with friends – which I gladly do and fully embrace.
Proudly a zythophile since 1982!”
It led me to post the following material:
Rex — perhaps you can tell us if BK’s post is the first time a sitting Supreme Court Justice has commented on your blog. (Burp!)
HEADDESK made me think of “dope slap,” which reminded me of a call made to Tom and Ray on Car Talk years ago. A woman called in and described a problem she was having with her car.
Caller: My husband thinks this is the problem: [. . . ], but I think he’s wrong and this is the problem [. . . ]. So what is it, guys? — is my husband wrong, or do I deserve one big dope slap?
Tom and Ray: Brace yourself.
In a gift to dirty old men everywhere, the puzzle contained a POLE DANCE today at 20A, clued by “Do some spinning at a club?” Apparently it’s become a fitness thing as well as a strip club staple. Since Owl Chatter is nothing if not classy, here’s a nice shot of two young gymnasts.
“It might be 70 feet long” was the clue for SONNET. What? Yeah, you know — that kind of feet. A “foot” is a unit of meter in poetry. A sonnet has 14 lines. If it’s in iambic pentameter it has five feet per line. Thus, 70 feet.
Get this! — The clue for RICE was “Texas university whose mascot is Sammy the Owl.” Way back when, Rice used a canvas owl as a sort of mascot for its teams. In 1917, when students from football rival Texas A&M kidnapped the owl, Rice students pooled their resources and hired a private detective to go to College Station, TX to find him. Upon succeeding, the detective sent a coded telegram that read “Sammy is fairly well and would like to see his parents,” giving the mascot a name for the first time. It stuck. The canvas Sammy was replaced by a live owl for a time which flew into the stadium before games. It was eventually replaced by a student in an owl suit.
Sammy has had quite a history. In 1991, his head was stolen. In 1992, the student wearing the owl suit was fired because his performance of the “Owl Shimmy” was deemed too distracting for female fans. In 1993, the student wearing the suit fainted during halftime at the game vs U of Texas. He was attended to by the refs. In 1995 Sammy was elected homecoming queen. In 2004, he was featured in a Playboy story on college mascots.
Here’s Sammy in his original canvas form and in his later incarnation. Yikes — I just noticed he’s armed. Well, it is Texas — even the owls have guns.
The clue at 46D today was: “Titular girl in a 2020 Taylor Swift tune,” and the answer was BETTY. BTW, “titular girl” just means her name’s in the title — get your minds out of the gutter, fellas.
(Pabloinnh commented: “This Taylor Swift person seems to be pretty famous. Have to find out something about her.”)
Here’s what TS said about the song: “So, the song ‘Betty’ is about a 17-year-old named James learning to apologize, because James has lost the love of his life basically and doesn’t understand how to get it back. I think we all have these situations in our lives where we learn to really, really give a heartfelt apology for the first time. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody really messes up sometimes, and this is a song that I wrote from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy. And I always loved that in music you can slip into different identities and sing from other people’s perspectives.”
Swift’s performance of it, below, was at the Grand Ole Opry House at her first appearance there in seven years for the Academy of Country Music awards. She made a point of wearing pants (sorry guys) because of the overwhelming dominance of male artists in country music. She drops the F-word in it, although it has been cleaned up in some versions, including this one. The song also contains a candidate for the Owl Chatter Awkward-Rhyming Award:
Standing in your cardigan
Kissin’ in my car again.
You’ll never guess who was in the puzzle yesterday, ballfans — SHANE Victorino. Remember him? The Flyin’ Hawaiian! He’s still only 42. He mostly played from 2005 thru 2015, and mostly with the Phillies, although he had a few good years with Boston too, and won the WS with them in 2013. He also won with the Phils in 2008. You may recall him only as a right-handed batter, Don, but he was a switch hitter for most of his career. He limited himself to batting righty starting in 2013 with Boston due to a variety of back, knee, and hamstring problems. Victorino is a fan of Bob Marley and used Marley’s songs “Buffalo Soldier” and “Three Little Birds” as at-bat music when he played for the Phils and Red Sox, respectively. The crowd at Fenway would sing along with the chorus of “Three Little Birds” when Victorino came to bat.
Shane was an All Star twice and won Gold Gloves three times. He also received the Lou Gehrig award in 2008 for being a mensch. Only he and Jim Thome hold the distinction of hitting two post-season grand-slam home runs. On June 3, 2007, the Phillies celebrated “Shane Victorino Day.” They gave away Victorino hula figurines, and flew his father in from Maui for the game, although he had to pay his own cab fare from the airport. [No he didn’t.] Victorino capped off the day with a walk-off home run! How’s that for a Hollywood ending?
Shane and his wife Melissa have two kids — one of each flavor.
Marjorie Saiser is a Nebraskan, like Ted Kooser, who’s a fan of hers. Kooser said of her: “no contemporary poet is better at writing about love.”
This beautiful, wrenching poem of hers from today’s Writer’s Almanac is called Bad News Good News.
I was at a camp in the country,
you were home in the city,
and bad news had come to you.
You texted me as I sat
with others around a campfire.
It had been a test you and I
hadn’t taken seriously,
hadn’t worried about.
You texted the bad news word
cancer. I read it in that circle
around the fire. There was
singing and laughter to my right and left
and there was that word on the screen.
I tried to text back but,
as often happened in that county,
my reply would not send, so I went to higher ground.
I stood on a hill above the river and sent you
the most beautiful words I could manage,
put them together, each following each. Under
Ursa Major, Polaris, Cassiopeia, a space station flashing,
I said what had been said
many times, important times, foolish times:
those words soft-bodied humans say when the news is bad.
The I love you we wrap around our
need and hurl at the cosmos: Take this, you heartless
nothing and everything, take this.
I chose words to fling into the dark toward you
while the gray-robed coyote came out of hiding
and the badger wandered the unlit hill
and the lark rested herself in tall grasses;
I sent the most necessary syllables
we have, after all this time the ones we want to hear:
I said Home, I said Love, I said Tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 