Owl Chatter’s first impression of Caitlin Clark’s boyfriend is that he may be worthy of her — they seem like a good pair. His name is Connor McCaffrey and they started dating a year ago April. He’s a U of Iowa grad, like Caitlin, (Class of ’23), and was on their basketball and baseball teams. He currently works as a team assistant for the NBA’s Pacers. He double dribbled, sorry, double majored in Finance and Poli Sci. Needless to say, OC was hoping to see Caitlin wind up with a Yid, but Connor seems like a very decent second best. His pet name for Caitlin is her uniform number: 22. “Love you 22!”
Get this — Connor’s dad is Fran McCaffery, the head coach of Iowa’s men’s basketball team. Fran played college ball at UPenn — Go Quakers! And he coached previously at Siena College, Linda’s alma — Go Saints!
Here’s a shot of Connor and his dad, followed by a slightly sexier shot of the young lovebirds, although it’s not nearly racy enough for our Dirty Old Man Dept. Rats!
This piece from tomorrow’s Met Diary was written by Marla Jacobson.
Dear Diary:
I had just moved to NYC from LA in June 1981 and had a studio on 106th Street and West End Avenue. It came with no furniture, dishes, pots or pans — nothing.
I was to start a teaching job in the fall but unemployed until then. I found a matching comforter-pillow-curtain set at Macy’s that fit my budget.
A few days later, on a weekend trip to the Lower East Side, I found the exact set for half the price. So of course I bought it and returned the other set to Macy’s.
A month went by and the charge was still on my account. I made several calls to arrange the credit. Two months went by and the credit still had not showed up. More calls.
When the third month came, my account was credited twice. I took the bills, the receipt, and everything else I had connected to the purchase to Macy’s in person to try to straighten things out. When I got there, I explained the entire situation to the clerk.
He looked at me like I was from another planet.
“Lady,” he said. “Buy a dress.”
The Four Tops were a leading Motown group back in the day. Reach Out, It’s the Same Old Song, Bernadette, Baby I Need Y our Loving. Classics, all, just to name a few. Anyway, over the years individual members had to be replaced as the group soldiered on. Its only surviving original member is Abdul Fakir. He’s 88.
Back in 2018, Abdul invited Alexander Morris to join the group. They were in Michigan touring with an equally great group, The Temptations, when Morris felt pain in his chest and had difficulty breathing. He was taken to a hospital. This is where the craziness begins, and it wasn’t Morris’s. He mentioned that he was with The Four Tops and the staff took that to mean he was mentally ill. He was placed in restraints and ordered to undergo a psych evaluation. He offered to show his ID to security but was instructed to “sit his Black ass down.” He was denied oxygen and held in restraints for 90 minutes. Finally, he was able to show a nurse a video of him performing and the hospital realized its error.
We are now transferring you to our “you-cannot-make-this-stuff-up” department.
When the hospital realized its blunder, it offered Morris a $25 gift card to a local supermarket as compensation for its actions. (I am not kidding.) “The hospital denied my identity and my basic human dignity and then offered me a gift card,” Morris said through his lawyers. Then he cried out: Bernadette!
Greg Delanty wrote this poem and it appeared in today’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s called “From Woody’s Restaurant, Middlebury.”
Today, noon, a young macho friendly waiter and three diners,
business types—two males, one female—
are in a quandary about the name of the duck paddling
Otter Creek,
the duck being brown, but too large to be a female mallard.
They really
want to know, and I’m the human-watcher behind the nook
of my table,
camouflaged by my stillness and nonchalant plumage.
They really want to know.
This sighting I record in the back of my Field Guide to People.
Here’s a female mallard. The duck in the poem was too big to be that.
OK, readers — here’s the scoop. I entered this week’s New Yorker’s cartoon caption contest. The scene is a lab of some sort and two technicians are standing and looking at a giant toaster in the middle of the lab, plugged in.
And my caption entry is “What do we get if we open an IRA?”
Okay, not exactly a knee-slapper, but here’s what you can do to help. Go to the New Yorker website in a few days and to the caption contest area. They let you review the entries and rate them not funny, somewhat funny, or very funny. The ratings help them select three finalists from which a winner is chosen by voting. (You have to wait a few days until this week’s contest closes.)
We’ll end today with our AIMEE section. The actress AIMEE Lou Wood from “Sex Education” was in the puzzle at 17A: a knockout. She’s 30 years old, and British. And Son Volt took the occasion to share an Aimee Mann song: “Coming Up Close,” by ‘Til Tuesday.
See you tomorrow. Thanks for popping in!
The Wellington Files 