Welcome, readers, to Owl Chatter’s 650th post! Yeah, you heard me — Six hundred and f*cking fifty. Who could have imagined when we started cranking out this nonsense that there’d be so much of it around everywhere? Special thanks, as always, to our loyal staff: Our intrepid photographer Phil; Georgie (Santos), whose sole job is to keep the fridge stocked with diet soda; and our stunning style and culture consultant, Ana. Owl Chatter could not function without their tiresome efforts. Oops — I mean tireless.
Happily, today’s puzzle was one of my favorites, with JAZZ hands up top, and boobies FEET below. And Old Father Knickerbocker favored us with a visit. Wonderful, all of it. According to the puzzle, Father KNICKERBOCKER is the “personification of New York City in old cartoons.” The NBA’s Knicks are named after him. And a beer! Jacob Ruppert’s beer — he owned the Yankees.
The HORSE’S MOUTH was the theme, revealed near the bottom, and the theme answers all played with the sounds a horse makes. So at 51A, the clue was “Bear who sings ‘I’m so rumbly in my tumbly’” for, of course, WINNIE THE POOH. See? — and a horse “whinnies.” At 26A, for “Vocal skeptics” the answer was NAYSAYERS — so we get “neigh.” And, apparently, horses “nicker.” That one’s from KNICKERBOCKER. “Nicker” was new to me so I checked with our buddy Miriam Webster. Yup, she okayed it. It means to neigh or whinny. D’oh!
But aside from the fun theme, some of the fill was a gas. At 69A the clue was “Blue parts of boobies,” but don’t get too excited fellas — the booby is a seabird. And it has incredibly bright blue FEET. Look at this guy (or gal). Hysterical.
My other fave was JAZZ hands, clued with “___ hands (razzle-dazzle display).” C’mon everybody – let’s see those hands flapping!
We noted that yesterday (11/11) was the birthday of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821). I bet you forgot to send a card, amirite? Well, Owl Chatter friend Riverdale Joe asked us whether that was his Old Style or New Style birth date. What on earth is he talking about?
Here’s the deal. At one point, mankind’s calendar committee realized that the correct figure for the number of days in a year is not 365.25 (365 days 6 hours) as assumed by the Julian calendar but just a smidge less (365.242 days). So a correction was made and countries switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar at various different times. The Gregorian calendar was implemented in Russia on February 14, 1918 by dropping the Julian dates of February 1 through 13, 1918 under a decree signed by Lenin. The decree required that the Julian date was to be written in parentheses after the Gregorian date for a while. Thus, Old Style (O.S.) and New Style (N.S.) dates.
So, to answer Joe’s question, November 11 is the man’s birthday in the New Style. The Old Style date was October 30. But don’t worry, Olga — this won’t be on the exam.
Sixty-three years ago this week Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 was published. That was in 1961. The reviews were mixed, but by 1963 it had become the best-selling book in the U.S. Several years before his death, Heller and a friend were attending an event in some hedge fund manager’s penthouse apartment in NY. Heller’s friend said, “You know, Joe. This fellow makes more money in one day than Catch-22 brought in over your lifetime.” Heller said, “Yeah — but I have one thing he’ll never have.” “What’s that?” the friend asked. And Heller said: “Enough.”
He came to speak at Brandeis when I was there. I went to hear him straight from studying a bit at the library, so I had my books with me. At the end, students went up to ask him to autograph Catch-22. Dammit! — I hadn’t even thought of that. And, me — an autograph collector. I got on line anyway and when it was my turn, I said I didn’t have a copy of Catch-22 with me — “but can you sign Plato’s Republic?” He chuckled and said “Sure.” It hasn’t survived my many moves since then, but, for a time, I had what was probably the only autographed copy of Plato’s Republic in the world.
See you tomorrow, Chatterheads.
The Wellington Files 