“The Captain,” a song by Kasey Chambers, may be familiar to you. It was played on Episode 8, Season 3, of The Sopranos. Chambers is 48 and Australian. She lives in Copacabana — not the famous nightclub — it’s a suburb in New South Wales, Australia. She has three kids from two different dads: a son, Talon, who is 22, another son, Arlo Ray, who is 17, and a daughter, Poet Poppin, 13. Poet Poppin!
Things are so random in Crossworld. We’re only meeting Kasey because the clue yesterday at 11D was “Iconic landmark in Yosemite Valley.” It’s EL CAPITAN, of course, which naturally led commenter Son Volt to share Kasey’s song with us. Here’s a shot of Kasey Phil got by sneaking into her bedroom, followed by the song.
Jane Kenyon wrote this poem, “The Painters,” and it appeared in yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac.
A hot dry day in early fall….
The men have cut the vines
from the shutters, and scraped
the clapboards clean, and now
their heads appear all day
in all the windows …
their arms or shirtless torsos,
or a rainbow-speckled rag
swinging from a belt.
They work in earnest—
these are the last warm days.
Flies bump and buzz
between the screens and panes,
torpid from last night’s frost:
the brittle months advance …
ruts frozen in the icy drive,
and the deeply black and soundless
nights. But now the painters
lean out from their ladders, squint
against the light, and lay on
the thick white paint.
From the lawn their radio predicts rain,
then cold Canadian air ….
One of them works way up
on the dormer peak,
where a few wasps levitate
near the vestige of a nest.
Should we consider yesterday Mickey Mouse’s birthday? It was on 11/18 in 1928 that the first sound-synchronized cartoon to attract widespread public notice, Walt Disney’s “Steamboat Willie,” premiered in New York. The black and white cartoon featured Mickey, Minnie, and Pegleg Pete and lasted seven minutes. With Walt Disney as the voice of Mickey, the cartoon was a big hit.
I’m picking her first for my team — whatever the sport. Thank you puzzle for introducing us to this incredible athlete: SHA’CARRI Richardson. Word of her exploits hadn’t reached me under my rock. Just look at these pics:
Sha’carri won the Silver Medal in the 2024 Olympics in the 100 meter race and anchored the U.S. relay team which won the Gold in the 4 x 100. She ranked #1 in the world in the 100 meters in 2023. She ran for LSU in college, identifies as bisexual and has a girlfriend. She is known for her colorful hair and long nails and was inspired by the late Flo-Jo (Florence Griffith Joyner). Just one more shot, if you will — she’s spellbinding. Here’s the shot of her Vogue used for one of its covers.
The puzzle was by an excellent constructor, Erik Agard, and was a paean to Black female athletes. Besides Sha’carri, Brittany GRINER and SIMONE Biles were featured. It was African-American in general with VIVECA A. Fox and OCTAVIA Butler tossed in, along with MLK and Carlos Santana. And Whites were excluded — even GAGA wasn’t clued via Lady G, its clue was “Head over heels.” As Rex noted, there are many puzzles with no Blacks, so this may have been intended as sort of a corrective.
At 51D, the clue was “Quintet found in a supervocalic word.” It’s AEIOU. Supervocalics are words that contain all five non-Y vowels. Supervocalic is one itself. In “facetious” and “abstemious” the fivesome appears in order. In others they are rearranged via, [drum roll], a vowel movement.
A supervocalic tree is the SEQUOIA. Personal fave: cauliflower. I was today years old when I learned about EUNOIA — the shortest supervocalic. You know when a comic says, “Wow, this is a great crowd?” Well, eunoia is the good will that speakers cultivate between themselves and their audiences, a condition of receptivity. The one time I saw George Carlin perform, he played with that — he encouraged us all to get together again for reunions, and appointed “row monitors.”
At 20A, the clue was “Like content that causes secondhand embarrassment.” The answer was CRINGE and it set off a flurry of complaints. People didn’t like it used as an adjective: they wanted the answer to be cringey or cringy. Commenter Digital Dan expressed himself in verse.
CRINGE as an adjective: Hate it.
SPEND as a noun. Detest it.
COMPUTE as a noun. Abhor it.
CLICHE as an adjective. No. Just no.
FRAUGHT without an object to be with (preferably PERIL). Perish the thaught.
My bro-in-law Mitch had a brother-in-law via his sister, Arden. His name was Marv. Marv was not well-liked, especially, and most importantly, by Arden. They eventually divorced. My brother Jay famously remarked about him: “Marv you can harve.”
I gave exams in both of my classes today. They went well — no obvious cheating. That’s all I ask. I’ll be grading them for the next few days. There’s an exercise I won’t miss in retirement. One more to go in each class.
At 22D today, “First name in civil rights history,” wasn’t Medgar — it was the big one — MARTIN. Son Volt, who seems to be in charge of musical references for The Commentariat, shared this tune by the Jayhawks with us. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 