Simon Mott of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) writes: I have a Spiced Dhal soup container on which I have written ‘COCOA’, but which actually contains crispy fried onions. He described himself as Male, 54, living life on the edge.
Here are some comments:
Dave Blackburn: Never let them know your next move.
Patrick Towers: Had me fooled.
Lou Helms: Why?
Livia Lange: You living on a boat?
Suz Kravitz: Rebel.
Vuyo Hlubi: This is how trust issues develop.
Victoria Ferrer: My mum had a Yorkshire tea tin labelled “fancy biscuits” which contained cutlery.
And my favorite from Martin Smith: I usually don’t bother writing on them what they are, with predictable consequences. Though I do put blue food colouring in the herbicide that I carry around in a tomato sauce container.
[Has this club won you over yet? I can’t get enough of it.]
George Will has a book about baseball called Men at Work. He features several individual players and goes into them in depth. One was Willie Mays. I read it a long time ago but I remember this story about Mays. If he was facing a young pitcher for the first time late in a game that was pretty much over (so the at-bat didn’t matter very much) he would “on purpose” let the pitcher strike him out. And he’d remember the strike-out pitch. Inevitably, years later he’d face the pitcher again in a crucial situation. And he knew the pitcher would remember the pitch he once used to strike out the great Willie Mays. And he’d use it again. Bye bye.
When he came back to NY he lived for years in a big white building in Riverdale in the Bronx. The Whitehall. It was just a block or two from where my brother lived. It’s hard to explain, but knowing that was a small point of warmth in my heart.
I have a few items signed by Willie in my collection. He lived a long time so his autograph is not particularly rare. It may be worth in the low hundreds. But, of course, the emotional value is what we collect for. To have a piece of living history, in a way. Here’s the best one I have.
About his famous catch off of Vic Wertz in the 1954 WS (“The Catch”), he said he had ten catches he thought were better than that. Many people forget the throw that followed the catch. It almost nailed the runner who should have scored easily. When the umpire made the call, he very unusually exclaimed “just safe.”
Rest in peace, 24. Rest in peace, Willie.
Rex began his writeup today with “About as boring a puzzle as I’ve ever done.” He later noted: “It’s not that this puzzle is badly made. It’s not. But like dry toast, it really needs butter, or peanut butter, or (as I prefer) butter and then peanut butter (Me to my wife the first time I saw her do this: ‘Geez, how much fat do you need?’ Boy did I eat (and re-eat) those words).”
It was the opening I needed to share this little personal story with the gang:
I couldn’t eat peanut butter or strawberries when I was growing up, because of my older brother, Jay. I was like a child in Appalachia who has never seen an orange. My mother couldn’t bring peanut butter into the house because Jay loved it too much. He would binge it all up and get sick. He was powerless to resist, even though he had no other addictive tendencies.
Strawberries were another matter. My brother left home for college but had an apartment in NYC while my mom and I lived in Brooklyn. And whenever I found strawberries in the fridge and went to take some, my mother would say — “Don’t touch the strawberries. Jay will be home soon and they’re his favorite.” OK. So I never had strawberries either. Peanut butter
and strawberries.
Years later, with both of us much older and mom gone, my brother was visiting me and it occurred to me that I happened to have some strawberries. So I said to him, Hey – we have some strawberries — your favorite!. And he said, I don’t know why mom thought they were my favorite. One time I ate one and said it was good, but they were never particularly special to me.
And I said, What!! My whole childhood I couldn’t have strawberries because of you!!
My mother was crazy, for sure, but in such a good way.
At 63A today the clue was “Big name in ketchup” and the answer had five letters. It had to be Heinz, no? But it didn’t work. Turned out to be HUNT’S. An angry comment noted that Hunt’s made “catsup,” not “ketchup,” which Heinz made. It was by an angry Pittsburgher, where Heinz is based. But Hunt’s changed the name of its product from catsup to ketchup in 1988. And Heinz originally called it catsup too.
There’s was a nice crossing today: The clue at 53A was “‘Fiddler on the Roof’ setting.” Answer: RUSSIA, although someone noted it was actually set in Ukraine, which was part of the Russian empire at the time. And it was crossed by 9D: “Fixer-uppers, of a sort,” with the answer MATCHMAKERS.
There was a good deal of hrummmmphing about 40D where the clue was “Wounded knee site, for short,” for the answer ACL. Folks thought it was disrespectful of the massacre of Indians that took place at Wounded Knee to treat it sort of jokingly like that.
3D was a cute clue: “Cubs manager?” Answer: LIONESS.
The abolitionist senator Charles SUMNER was in the puzzle. He became a symbol of the anti-slavery cause when he was beaten nearly to death on the Senate floor in 1856 by Preston Brooks, a slaveholding senator from South Carolina. Sumner must have hit a nerve. During the Civil War, Sumner was a critic of Lincoln’s, feeling Abe was too moderate towards the south.
Of course, our Phil was in the Senate gallery at the time of the beating and was able to get this shot for us.
We can’t send you off with such a terrible image. So let’s bid farewell as well to French actress Anouk Aimee, who passed away in Paris at age 92. Many of us remember her for “A Man and a Woman.” Aimee earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for the film, and it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
Reposez en paix, Anouk.
That’s much better. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 