An article in the NYT gives a whole new meaning to the term “beer belly.” A man in Oregon must have been driving upstream because when he crashed his truck 11,000 salmon spilled onto the highway. He was charged with drunk driving. Also charged was a brewery worker in Belgium who was pulled over and scored a blood alcohol level four times the legal limit on the breathalyzer test. Yet neither of them had a drop to drink.
They both suffer from a condition known as Auto-Brewery Syndrome (ABS) in which your stomach ferments carbs into ethanol, effectively brewing alcohol inside your body. It can lead to blood alcohol levels that would be lethal if obtained through drinking and can cause the typical behavior of drunkenness. Once you are aware of it, the condition can be managed through diet and medical treatment (antifungals).
Phil — you might try this as a defense the next time you’re pulled over drunk. You know, — tomorrow.
In a puzzle, “dots on a map” are usually isles. Today, I thought of subway stops for some reason. But the (boring) answer was TOWNS. It led Rex to post this wrenching Rufus Wainwright song expressing his disappointment with America during the Geo. W. Bush era: “Going to a Town.” There’s other Christ-y stuff going on too, but I’m too thick to understand it.
At 43A, “Porto-Novo’s country” was BENIN, a country I know only from XW puzzles. Here’s egs:
Ben’s Mom: Ben’s seeing the world, you know.
Friend: What country is Ben in?
Ben’s Mom: BENIN
The puzzle brought us a new visitor today: the beautiful and very smart MINA Kimes. I didn’t remember her name, but I recognize her from sports talk/analysis shows.
Mina is from Omaha. Her mom is Korean. She graduated summa cum laude from Yale with a BA in English and started out as a business journalist before turning to sports. She’s 38 and has been married since 2015 to Harvard man Nick Sylvester, a music producer and musician. They have a one-year-old son. Nice to see you, MK! Don’t be a stranger.
Seymour Weiner is 97 years old, kinahora. He was a Brooklyn Dodger fan and was at the game at Ebbets Field in which Jackie Robinson got his first hit. There were only 12,000 fans in attendance so he may be the only person still living who saw it. He says Robinson was the most exciting player he ever saw, but Willie Mays was the best. He’s a Mets fan now and was honored on Opening Day this year for his service in WWII. Here he is with Mookie Wilson and John Franco. He was thrilled.
His name went up on the giant scoreboard to much appropriate applause, and then people started realizing it’s sort of a special name: Seymour Weiner, as in See More Weiner. It was a short step from that to having the Mets use Seymour in their ad for Dollar Hot Dog Night. He thinks it’s a riot and he’s delighted. Let’s Go Mets!
I remember eating a hot dog at the first ballgame I ever went to. Yankee Stadium, maybe 1960? David Kantorowitz’s dad took a bunch of us. Yogi Berra won the game with a late-inning home run. Sy Weiner would have been in his early thirties.
See you tomorrow, everybody! Happy Puzzling!
The Wellington Files 