We have a good turn of events to report on a story covered by Owl Chatter a short while ago. Max Hightower, the young trans gentleman who was stripped of his role in his high school’s production of Oklahoma! will be performing in it after all! Yay Max!

Things had gotten ugly in conservative Sherman TX. Not only was Max denied his role, any girl in a man’s role, or boy in a woman’s role, was bumped, and then the entire production was scrapped. A theater teacher who objected was personally escorted out of the school by the principal. A stage set that students took two months to build was demolished. (Crash!)

But Max’s family, led by his dad Phillip, fought the decision as did other cast families. And the cause was picked up by good people in the community. A hearing was held by the school district, and every seat in the room was filled. Sixty-five people signed up to speak, almost all of them on the side of Max and his castmates. It was an extraordinary showing by the community that shocked even Max’s supporters. The board took three hours to consider the matter and decided unanimously to reinstate the production with the original cast intact.

Not everybody was pleased, of course. One local shopper said she believed that God made people either male or female and that the issue was as simple as that. I wish I knew as clearly as she did what God thinks on every issue, including the casting of high school productions. We could certainly use her on the Owl Chatter staff – we are so often at sea. But the article in The Times did not include her name or contact information.

A gay married couple recalled how their daughter brought them the good news. “She just said “We won.’ She was beaming, smiling ear to ear.” They hung a Pride Flag in their window for the first time. They felt a little better about their neighbors.

“We want to apologize to our students, parents, our community regarding the circumstances that they’ve had to go through,” the board president, Brad Morgan, said afterward.

That’s okay, Morgan. You did good.

Pictured below, before the song, are the protesters and Max’s dad.

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We go from the sublime to, well, feet.

Ziwe Fumudoh, a comedian who goes by Ziwe, wrote a funny article in The New Yorker of 9/25/23. It’s called “Best Foot Forward” and is about her feet. But she writes about her hair and other parts too:

“I am very self-conscious about the way that I look, in part because I am a woman who happens to be conscious.”

“I had body odor. As an adult, I am known for smelling as fresh as a tropical beach after a rainstorm, because I surround myself with candles and fragrances. However, when I was a child, I was unfamiliar with the concept of deodorant. For some reason, it had never been explained to me. Not to point any fingers, but my mother refused to buy me products that acknowledged that I had hit puberty, and instead told me to scrub my armpits harder.

One issue for a stinky middle schooler is that people will actually remark on your scent. The most memorable conversation about my stinkiness was when my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. [REDACTED], pulled me aside during gym class to ask me if my parents were dead. Confused, but ever cheery, I informed him that they were not. He replied, ‘Well, then, tell your mother to buy you deodorant.’

I guess that, in Mr. [REDACTED]’s reality, the only logical explanation for my body odor was that I was an orphan whose parents’ death in some freak accident had led to my subsequent neglect.”

But the story is about her feet. It turns out there is a website called wikiFeet that contains photos of celebrities’ feet, with ratings of same. Ziwe had no idea it existed or that a photo of her feet made its way onto it. A friend of hers sent her rating to her.

“To my horror, I learned that I had a wikiFeet rating of two stars [out of five], categorized as ‘okay feet.’ While ‘okay’ is technically not an insult, it is not a compliment, either. I hate my feet. Also, I hate everyone else’s feet. In my humble opinion, feet are just ugly hands, and hands are not that cute to begin with. But, though it’s fine for me to have disdain for my extremities, for strangers to rate my ten toes as anything other than ‘perfect,’ ‘beautiful,’ or possibly ‘dainty’ is a hate crime that should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. This may seem like an irrational reaction, but you are wrong and stupid, and also, shut up!”

She took comfort in the one comment her feet elicited. On 6/27/2020, at 12:22 PM, someone posted “Nice feet girl!”

But her two-star (“okay”) rating definitely eats at her.

“As such, I am demanding a call to action. Please go to wikifeet.com, create a user account on this collaborative, celebrity-foot database, and vote for me like my self-confidence depends on it.”

Okay, girl. We hear you.

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Today’s puzzle by the brilliant Paolo Pasco is one for the ages. Quite a “feat” of construction. The theme is Evel Knievel, the insane stunt guy who, miraculously, died of natural causes back in 2007 at age 69. The puzzle spells out his name in circles that rise up a ramp, soar over a group of buses, and land safely on the other side. The letter/circles are part of crossing answers, and the buses are the ends of the answers COLUMBUS, REBUS, and SYLLABUS. (See the bottom section of the completed grid below.) Also, 23A is LIVING ON THE EDGE, and 9D is DAREDEVIL. Last, the clue at 3D is “Punny advice for this puzzle’s subject,” and the answer is GET OVER IT. Whew — exhausting — the man knows how to construct a puzzle. Even Rex was impressed. Oh, I almost forgot to mention (!), if you complete the puzzle online, the software actually shows a little motorcycle in motion — riding up the ramp, soaring, and coming down the ramp. (I’m not kidding.)

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In the Owl Chatter “Oops” Department, the new “indoor simulator” golf league backed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy slated to start in January suffered a setback when the roof collapsed due to a power failure. The arena is a giant dome in part supported by air. When the power went out, the air support shut off, and the dome collapsed, suffering substantial damage. No one was hurt. I’m no engineer (Hi Sam!), and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s some flaw in that plan somewhere, it seems to me, by crackie.

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That seems like a good enough dose of nonsense for us today. Thanks for popping in — see you tomorrow!