Headline from The Onion:

Director Of Census Bureau Calls For Updated Population Report After Realizing He Forgot To Count Himself

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Trump ignited a furor with world-wide implications yesterday. I’m referring of course to his announcement that he is “pardoning” dead baseball great Pete Rose. He stopped short of saying he will bring him back to life. Rose, of course, was banned from baseball and barred from the Hall of Fame for gambling.

“”Over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete pardon of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on his team winning. He never betted (sic) against himself, or the other team. [What?] He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history.”

By Trumpian standards, it’s a pretty good post. The third-grade-level error making “betted” the past tense of bet is to be expected from Trump, who is barely literate. According to grammar-monster.com, “bet” is an irregular verb. (This means that “bet” does not form its simple past tense or its past participle by adding “-ed” or “-d” to the base form.)

When Trump says something that is true, or correct, it is pure coincidence, of course. This occurred when he noted Rose is the all-time MLB hit leader, although I would quibble over the “by far.” Rose had 4,256, just 67 more than Ty Cobb’s 4,189. And Cobb had his in just 13,103 plate appearances, way less than Rose’s 15,890, btw.

Further, when Trump says Rose “won more games than anyone in sports history” that is gibberish. Only pitchers are credited with wins. Cy Young had the most, by far, with 511. Walter Johnson comes next nearly 100 behind at 417. Wins by position players does not even exist as a statistic.

Last, “pardoning” Rose makes no sense since he was never convicted of a crime. It surely has no effect on the MLB ban.

Rose was a notorious philanderer. He was about to be honored with a spot on the Phillies’ Wall of Fame when it emerged in a civil suit that he had had sex with an underage girl. The ceremony was canceled. The age of consent was 16 where it happened and the girl was 14 or 15. Rose explained that he thought she was 16. Oh, okay. It gives a whole new twist to the phrase “spending time in the minors.”

When his first wife divorced him he married a Playboy bunny, Carol Woliung, thus becoming one of the very few of us who lived two of every man’s dreams: major league ballplayer and sex with a Playboy bunny. When Carol and he separated, he dated (and got engaged to) a Playboy model 40 years younger than him, Kiana Kim. Dayenu! Pete and Kiana appear in this ad together that aired during Super Bowl XLVIII, in which Seattle dismantled the Broncos 43-8. (Ouch.)

Here’s Pete with Wife II and their daughter Cara, who seems to be eyeing Phil a little warily and holding on to her bag tightly.

Cara’s an actress and has been on Melrose Place and other soaps, with the stage name Chea Courtney.

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The NYC subway is its own world. Every New Yorker has a love/hate relationship with it. You can get a very accurate, if small, taste of it in this Met Diary story by Josh Schultz.

Dear Diary:

It was June 2016, and I was on my way to my first 9-to-5 job in Midtown. I boarded a crowded #1 train at 135th and Broadway and then gingerly made my way onto an even more crowded express at 96th Street.

It was clear that no one really wanted to be on the train, but everyone was civil about it. People moved in where they could and put their backpacks on the floor to accommodate others.

The air-conditioning was hardly working and we were all packed like sardines in silence. I held my right hand against the ceiling to balance myself on the way to the next stop, 72nd Street.

When the train pulled in, a large crowd was waiting. Very few people got off and only a couple of people managed to get on. A well-dressed woman in a leopard-print dress stared into the car from the platform, looking for somewhere she could fit.

“Guys, really?” she said. “Make room for me. Please.”

No response.

“I can clearly see enough space for three to four people in the car,” she said.

As the doors began to close, a voice came from the other end of the car.

“Yeah,” the rider said, “maybe in your house.”

*************

Yup — if that leopard-print won’t get you on the goddamn train you’re in for a long hard day.

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In the puzzle today “Emulate Arachne” was SPIN A WEB. Pretty classy. Commenter Barbara S. referred us to The Spinners by Velazquez, below, “thought to be a depiction of the weaving contest between Arachne (facing away from the viewer on the right) and the goddess Athena (disguised as an old woman at left). (Yes, this looks like spinning rather than weaving, but I guess the one is preparatory to the other.)”

“Arachne was apparently a little too big for her britches and announced she was the greatest weaver in the world without giving Athena, the inventor of weaving, her due. So, there was a contest between the two, which Arachne won, producing a tapestry masterpiece that you can see in the scene in the background. Athena was so enraged at Arachne’s pride and the excellence of her work that she ripped it to shreds, causing Arachne to hang herself in despair. Athena then turned her into a spider so she and her descendants could spin and weave for all eternity.”

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Crossworld, at least my small part of it, split into two camps today. It all came about because the clue at 30A was ” ______ Aran, protagonist in Nintendo’s Metroid.” What the f*ck? Fortunately, the crosses were merciful and I was able to come up with the answer: SAMUS. Here’s Rex on it: What is that? Just the stupidest name I’ve ever seen in the grid (tapping the “Not All Debuts Are Good” sign, once again). I barely know what Metroid even is, and certainly never seen this “protagonist’s” “name” before. The Nintendification of puzzles has gone way too far. Feels lazy and sad. Is this what you want your generational contribution to crosswords to be? Apparently. It doesn’t even look like a name. I would have to guess at how to pronounce it. Just desperate, ugly fill. SAY-mus? SAM-us? SHAY-mus? … SAW Moose?

I’m in that camp.

But a whole bunch of folks responded with stuff like:

I’m going to politely disagree with you on SAMUS. She is absolutely crossworthy, as she was one of the first big female protagonists in video games. It was a huge moment when you saw it was a woman inside her helmet, because almost all major protagonists before her had been men.

Agree. I very often agree with Rex but I think his take on SAMUS is dead wrong. Character has been around since 1986, appeared in a litany of games and comics, and as you mention, was one of the first-ever female protagonists in a video game. Video games clearly aren’t Rex’s cup of tea and that’s fine, but SAMUS is crossworthy and to say otherwise is just silly.

As a big fan of the Metroid series I won’t stand for this anti-SAMUS vituperation.

As a non-Metroid fan, I still recognized Samus from the many hours of Smash Bros I played with my kids over the years.

As a gamer, it’s insane to think somebody wouldn’t know Samus! It’s up there with Mario and Kirby in names I assume everybody knows.

Same – this strikes me as classic “I don’t know this so I’m going to be angry at it and pretend no one knows it.” The series is almost 40 years old, there have been at least 15 games with this character … it’s fair game.

There’s always a lot of video game hate here, and it’s never made sense to me. Video games can be just as much a medium for storytelling as books, tv, or movies, and their characters can be just as deep and developed. If we’re comfortable having characters from books, TV, and movies in the grid, we should have space for characters from video games too.

Enough? Enough.

Here she is.

Picked nit of the week: The clue at 36A was “High-calorie burger toppings,” and the answer was BACON STRIPS. Kitshef: A bacon strip is 43 calories – is that ‘high’? The bun is typically three times that.

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I’m not going to express myself on what happened when Zelensky was in the Oval Office yesterday. Write your own outrage. This take by Carville is very funny though. And he was not trying to be funny.

See you tomorrow!