The theme of today’s puzzle was political puns. They were pretty bad, which is okay for puns. (Rex called it an exercise in “groanolatry.”) So, e.g., at 62A the clue was “The sound engineer was obsessed with the …” and the answer was SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE. Get it? Another one was at 40A: “The veterinarian specialized in mending …” LAME DUCK BILLS. Rex was pretty much on target labelling it meh.

He closed with a nice photo and note, though. He said: “We got a tree and put lights in our outdoor bushes and everything, for once (we’re usually pretty lazy about such things). Gonna decorate the tree now, I think, if the cats let us. Does this look like the face of someone who will let us?”

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There was a very pretty guest in the grid today: Canst thou guess who? It’s Kirsten DUNST. Didst thou know’st she is a Jersey girl? Yup, born in Point Pleasant back in ’82 (so she’s 41). KD married actor Jesse Plemons last year, and they have two kids. I first grew to like JP when he was on Friday Night Lights. During the first season, the joke was that Plemons was the only member of the cast who actually played HS football but he wasn’t on the team in the show (the Panthers). He joined the team during the show’s second season, and told the director he wanted to do his own stunts. On his first play, he was tackled and his chin split open, requiring eleven stitches. D’oh!

They acted together in The Power of the Dog and were both nominated for Oscars in supporting roles. Anyway, never mind all that, here’s Kirsten. Stop by more often girl — where you been?

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Ukrainian Olympic skating champ OKSANA Baiul was also in the grid today. She’s 46 now. In ’93 she was the World Figure Skating champ, and in ’94, she won Olympic gold in ladies singles. She moved to the U.S. after the ’94 Olympics, living in CT and VA, before settling in Cliffside Park NJ for 14 years. She married her manager in 2015 and they live in Las Vegas with their 8-year-old daughter Sophia.

In ’97, Baiul was arrested for drunk driving after crashing her car into a tree in Connecticut. Judges awarded her 5.6, 5.5, and 5.8, for her glide into the tree. She entered rehab for her drinking, and in a 2004 interview said she had been sober for six years, and that that was more important than Olympic gold. Amen to that, sister.

Oksana was raised as a Russian Orthodox Christian, but upon learning as an adult that her maternal grandmother was Jewish (making her Jewish under Jewish law), she identified as Jewish herself, and says it feels good to her: natural “like a second skin.” I’m not sure what Jewish skin is, but I hope she has a good dermatologist. If not, she’s skating on thin ice. (I knew I’d get there eventually.)

If you can spare a few, here she is winning the gold when she was just a little girl.

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Kudos to Jayden Daniels, LSU quarterback, for winning this year’s Heisman trophy. The team only went 9-3 behind him because its defense was weak. His stats are incredible: 3,812 passing yards and 40 touchdowns against just four interceptions. He added 1,134 yards on the ground and 10 rushing TDs. He had the highest quarterback rating in FBS history. Kudos as well to Blake Corum and J.J. McCarthy, our Wolverine heroes, who finished 9th and 10th in the voting. Go Blue!

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Miriam’s “Word of the Day” today is “foolscap,” and I had no idea that it means a piece of writing paper; in the U.S., specifically, a legal-size sheet, 8 x 13 inchies. When it first appeared in the 1500s it referred to an actual fool’s cap: the hat a jester would wear. But it became associated with sheets of paper due to the use of an image of such a cap as the watermark on paper.

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We attended a very good holiday concert today by an amateur orchestra with which Lianna’s viola teacher is involved. It’s intergenerational and the youngest member was a teeny-tiny 5-year-old cellist (who has been playing since he was 3), and the oldest looked, well, pretty damn old. They performed “The Conquering Hero Comes,” from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus oratorio, and the conductor explained that it was the first time (like, in history) that a Jewish character was portrayed heroically in a work. There were 5,000 Jews living in London at the time and all 5,000 came to the performance (on April 1, 1747). Handel recognized a good scam when he saw one, so his next 7 oratorios did the same Jewish thing with biblical themes. All were hits. The next one didn’t, and flopped.

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Came home to watch the Jets finish pulverizing the Texans. Has Zach Wilson turned some sort of corner? — he was brilliant. Is there cause for hope?

See you tomorrow.