On the brain surgery/rocket science business from yesterday’s puzzle, here’s a short bit shared by commenter Nancy. It will start us off today with a chuckle.

Special thanks to Vermont Lizzie for sharing this shot of godson Mason who was in goal last night for Babson, facing Skidmore in Saratoga Springs, NY. The Beavers were no match for the Thoroughbreds, perhaps the toughest team name to spell in all of college sports. Skidmore skidded to a 5-1 win. But Mason, in his first year, made a career-high 33 saves. 

He’s the handsome one (#30), standing in front of the goal.

Also from Vermont Lizzie — her beautiful daughter Bridgette, in search of the perfect wave in Indonesia. The 12-hour time difference is making it hard for them to share their wordle results, Liz reports.

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The great Willie Mays is 92 years old and lives in Atherton, CA. He’s the oldest living Hall of Famer. The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed (not kidding), declared today Willie Mays Day because Willie’s number was 24 and today is 2/4/2024.

Several SF landmarks — including City Hall, the Ferry Building and Salesforce Tower — will be lit up in orange and black lights. Oracle Park will also be illuminated, with a decorative banner hanging from the 24 palm trees in Willie Mays Plaza.

On June 20, the Giants will play the Cardinals at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., the former home of the Negro Leagues’ Birmingham Black Barons, where Mays played as a teenager. The Giants will also give out 20,000 bobbleheads featuring Mays in his Black Barons uniform in honor of African American Heritage Day at Oracle Park on May 31.

Willie got his nickname “The Say Hey Kid” when he was a rookie because he said “Hey” a lot when greeting people. (Duh.) He is considered among the best to have ever played the game and it’s hard to imagine anyone taking more joy in it than he did. He was an All-Star for 20 years.

Willie’s love of kids is well-known and he did much charitable work for them. His first marriage ended in divorce in 1963, but he has his only child from it — an adopted son Michael. Wilt Chamberlain gave Willie the number of Mae Louise Allen, a child-welfare worker, and they married in 1971. In 1997, she was diagnosed with a cognitive disorder and Mays cared for her devotedly until her death in 2013.

Enjoy your day, Willie — and many more.

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There’s some follow-up material to our discussion of My Sharona from Friday. As discerning OC readers will recall, the song was clued in the puzzle via its stuttered title. And I noted The Who’s My Generation featured stuttering as well. Well, according to The Stuttering Foundation (which is real), there have been numerous songs of the rock era that feature stuttering vocals.  A list on the internet entitled “The Top Ten Stuttering Songs” includes those two as well as Foolin’ by Def Lepard, Changes by David Bowie, Jive Talkin’ by The Bee Gees, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Bad to the Bone by George Thorogood, Benny and the Jets by Elton John, Sussido by Phil Collins and Lola by The Kinks. (Some other tunes are conspicuously absent such as Too Much Time on My Hands by Styx.)

The Foundation singled out BTO’s You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet for special recognition. Here’s the story. The group was led by Randy Bachman, and featured his brothers Robbie and Tim, along with Fred Turner. The band’s first manager was another Bachman brother, Gary.

The song was never intended to be released with stuttering vocals. Randy sang the stuttering vocals to poke (well-intentioned) fun at his brother Gary. The plan was to give it to Gary and no one else. But Mercury Records loved it and insisted it be released. It became the first song with stuttering vocals to hit #1 on the charts. The Foundation also notes it’s unique as the only song with stuttering vocals to be written about a real person who stutters.

Happily, Gary conquered his stuttering through therapy and had a successful real estate career in Winnipeg.

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Today’s grid features Leslie FEIST at 3D: One-named indie singer with the 2007 hit “1234.” Word of her had not reached me under my rock until now. She’s from Canada and is turning 48 next week.

 This pretty song takes off at about the one minute mark.

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Proving there’s nothing that can’t be haggled over, there was a bit of a flap today over whether hell is hot or cold. The clue at 65D was “Hot spot,” and the answer was HELL. Rex (a literature prof) said: HELL isn’t even hot. Read Dante. It’s a damn lake of ice down there! 

Hold on, folks — he had proof!

Burtonkd, replied: Seems hardly worth mentioning that HELL is commonly understood as hot, Dante notwithstanding. 

This is something we should be able to get a definitive answer on, no? Quora’s assessment seems reasonable (defining “reasonable” very loosely here):

“Most of his (Dante’s) Hell is actually hot, but the lowest levels are cold, getting colder as you go down. The final level is actually frozen over. Satan is there, keeping it cold with beats of his six giant wings. He has three heads, in each mouth is an infamous traitor. This is the traitor’s level of Hell.”

Makes perfect sense to me.

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Finally, try to fit this into your conversation today: At 60D: ”Salamander named after an Aztec deity.” It’s AXOLOTL, of course.

They’re adorable.

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See you tomorrow, everybody!