Want your son, or grandson, to play college football?
Portland State coach Bruce Barnum said one of his players had “his ear ripped off” in the Vikings’ 81-7 loss to Oregon.
“As if the score wasn’t bad enough,” one fan said.
Sports Illustrated noted: Football is certainly a physical game, but it’s safe to say that players generally expect to leave with their ears still attached.
“They sewed it back on, and now they say he has a concussion. So he’s out, but I think he’s fine,” said Coach Barnum, who is clearly an idiot. The coach clarified: “Not the whole ear. Partial ear detachment. I think it was from when he got his helmet knocked off, and I think his ear didn’t come out of his helmet.”
Thanks for clearing that up, Coach! Let’s try to hold ’em under 75 this week.
Here’s a picture of the injured player:
Commentators noted he was a shoo-in for this year’s Vincent Van Gogh Trophy which is awarded annually to the player with the fewest ears.
The puzzle was a bear today — I almost crashed in the southeast. Of course, for Rex it was “easy-medium.” I finished at the cross of “First coed and racially integrated college in the South,” which is BEREA (I know, — WTH?), with “Universal self of Hinduism,” which is ATMAN. (I had ruled out MURRY.) The crosses helped me and then I guessed the A and it was right. Whew.
The clue at 1A was “Many opera villains, traditionally.” The answer was BASSES, and it reminded one poster of this story:
The first three movements of Beethoven’s Ninth are strictly instrumental, but the fourth movement is where a choir sings the famous “Ode to Joy.” At a recent performance by the Minnesota Orchestra and Minnesota Chorale, the basses, always the troublemakers in any vocal group, were bored of waiting around for the last movement, so they decided to skip out and go to a pub across the street from the concert hall for a few drinks.
In a questionable attempt to buy themselves some extra time, one of them tied a string around the score on the last page of the third movement. When they stumbled back in at the last minute, the conductor was fumbling with the string to turn the page to the final movement. He was understandably flustered; after all, it was the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied, and the basses were loaded.
And Pabloinnh posted: Old joke-What do you call BASSES singing in unison? A tone cluster. This is found funny by tenors, if no one else.
4D was “Art form accompanied by a theater organ.” Finger paint fit, but it was SILENT MOVIE. It led Shirley Freitas to post:
Very much liked seeing the SILENT MOVIE reference. My great-grandmother was a silent star for a time, known for her daredevil stunts such as jumping from a racing car or galloping horse onto a speeding locomotive. An episode from her serial “The Hazards of Helen” is titled The Leap from the Water Tower. Hazards of Helen was a feminist and pro-working-class serial and every episode featured her bravery on the job, without the usual romantic subplots. I wrote a brief biography of her for a silent movie festival, then expanded and published it at: https://www.necessarystorms.com/home/the-hazardous-life-of-helen-holmes
The Helen character (as in many serials, the heroine and star shared a first name) was not a damsel in distress. Helen rescued others more often than being rescued herself. She was quick-thinking, risk-taking, and had a deep sense of justice.
Here are two pics from the bio. That’s Helen on the magazine cover.
Gary Wright died on Monday at age 80 in his home in California. He was born and bred in NJ. His mom pushed him into show biz. He made an appearance on the “seminal science fiction TV series” Captain Video and His Video Rangers. He also had the main child role in the 1954 Broadway musical Fanny when he was only 11 years old. But he is best remembered as a singer-songwriter. He was friends with George Harrison and did some work with him and with the Beatles. His biggest hit was “Dream Weaver,” which took the unconventional approach of relying solely on drums and keyboard instruments — no guitars.
If ever there was a story tailor-made for Owl Chatter with its devotion to nonsense, this item from today’s NYT is it. Officials in New Delhi planning for the G20 summit of world leaders are worried that meetings and residences will be invaded by wild monkeys, mainly rhesus macaques.
The monkeys are not shy. They steal food and chase pedestrians. They sometimes ride buses and subway trains. They have attacked patients inside hospitals, invaded the Defense Ministry and the prime minister’s office, and romped in the Indian Parliament building. A deputy mayor died in 2007 after falling from his balcony while trying to scare away monkeys by using a stick. No monkeys were charged with any crimes.
“The monkeys are naughty and they can arrive at your dinner table, in any house in Delhi,” said Abdul Khan. “It doesn’t matter how many security guards you have outside the gate.” The monkeys often evade guards by swinging through tree canopies.
Wait, folks — that’s not even the ridiculous part.
Here’s the plan they came up with as a solution. It turns out the monkeys are scared of gray langurs, which are larger monkeys. So 40 people are being trained to imitate guttural grunts and shrieks of gray langurs and will be deployed to scare away monkeys. Abdul Khan, whom I quoted above, is a freelance monkey noise imitator. His uncle once used live monkeys to shoo away smaller ones. You know, so this line of work is in his blood.
You may be wondering — why use monkey imitators? Why not engage actual gray langurs for the job? Because in 2012 the government of India banned the use of live langurs to scare smaller monkeys on the grounds that it constituted animal cruelty (cruelty to the larger monkeys — no one seems very sympathetic to the smaller ones).
Complicating the picture is the fact that in Hinduism, India’s dominant religion, monkeys are viewed as representations of a deity. I think we can all agree that the last thing we need is to anger the monkey gods.
So, the question then arises as to whether it works. Get this —
Emily Bethell, an expert on primate behavior and social cognition at Liverpool John Moores University in Britain, said that she found no peer-reviewed studies on langur voice mimicry being an effective strategy for containing a macaque population. Still, she said, the practice appears to be based on a sound understanding of macaque behavior.
“Whether they can mimic those calls so closely that a macaque would interpret them as coming from a langur we cannot know without rigorous scientific testing,” Dr. Bethell said. “However, the macaques may be familiar with humans making these calls and associate them with threat, which could be enough.”
So, according to the doc, it could be that the monkeys can tell that the imitators are humans and not real langurs, but it freaks them out anyway because humans who would undertake such a ridiculous activity have to be viewed as a threat. Thanks, Doc — makes sense.
Satish Upadhyay, vice chairman of the New Delhi Municipal Council, declined a request to interview some of the impersonators. [Darnit!] He said their work was part of continuing research by forestry officials to find new ways of scaring off monkeys.
He expressed confidence in the impersonators’ chances of success at the G20 summit. “Will it be 100 percent effective?” he said. “It doesn’t work that way.”
Deion’s Colorado Buffaloes had their way with Nebraska today and are 2-0. Shedeur Sanders had another excellent day at QB (31 for 42, for 393 yds). Michigan romped too, but the big games are ahead.
Good night everybody! Thanks for popping in.
The Wellington Files 