We’re back in Jersey from our cruise around The Netherlands and I found the perfect New Yorker cartoon to sum it up. Because, let’s face it, the whole trip is just filler for the hours in between meals. Who the f*ck cares about the Dutch and their stupid flowers? It’s a nine-day eating spree. Your best friends are the waitstaff. “How did you enjoy your morning, sir?” “I don’t know — I think we saw another f*cking windmill — is the steak any good today, Raoul?”
“Do you want the last piece of plankton? I’m stuffed.”
The flights forth and back were on time and uneventful. Kudos to United Airlines. We are quick to assail the airlines when they screw up (i.e., pretty much all the time), so let’s give credit when due. We watched that movie where all the actors impersonate folk singers for a few hours, and then a very enjoyable Paul Reiser comedy special. I have been favorably disposed towards PR since reading a book of his about parenthood. In it he described a baby on a plane who was so bad, he was disturbing passengers on other planes. Then I finished up the Chris Rock special I got halfway through on the flight out. No question in my mind — Richard Pryor handed him the torch. He talked about sex a little (duh). How there are two kinds — mostly it becomes routine. But then there are the times when it’s “like a civil rights fire hose. (Pause) Free at last! Free at last!”
We did love Holland, though. So many bikes. The cap I picked up on the last day says “Bike City Amsterdam” on it. The Dutch love their country: it’s palpable. You can feel it in how the local guides talk about it. The people are friendly and happy to help idiots. We were lurking around a woman who was alone and pulling cash out of a sidewalk ATM. (I was waiting to ask her for help on how to use it.) In the U.S. she might have felt threatened, but there not at all. She took a lot of time helping me through the transaction. She was as happy as I was when my PIN worked.
Our usual airport ride is Linda’s sister Ally, but she was away. We decided to try the public transit option from Newark Airport I was curious about for years. You take the airport tram thingie to the last stop. Then you buy a ticket for $14.10 (senior) to Chatham (Owl Chatter headquarters), and you take a NJ Transit train to Secaucus. There you connect with the regular NJT system for the train to Chatham. We had a bit of waiting, but it worked pretty smoothly. We tried bumming a ride from OC friend Norrie (Hi Nor!), but I hadn’t set it up earlier and she was out (d’oh!). So we rolled our bags all the way from the train station home, about 1.5 miles (uphill). We must have looked like immigrants with our bags and heavy coats on a warm day. But it felt great to make it home without needing a defibrillator.
So it’s back to our miserable lives. I said that to our limo driver to the airport in Dublin when we were there in ’23, and he roared and said he was going to use it. It got a different response from a steward (Serbian?) on the cruise ship on our last morning. He said — No, you have to look at it like “all good things come to an end.” Then he shared some wisdom his father passed down to him which I can’t remember.
OMG the puzzle ran me through the wringer this morning — an old-fashioned bruising Saturday by Rafael Musa that had me very close to caving before I broke through. The whole damn top third had me gasping (not that the rest was a gimme). Here are a few ballbusters:
17A: “Old story coming straight from the horse’s mouth?” TROJAN WAR
19A: “Supposed evidence for extraterrestrial life.” CRASH SITES
13A: “Model organization?” AUTOMAKER
Ouch.
On the clue for “trojan war” (above), Rex’s replacement Eli wrote: “I’m not quite sure what it’s saying. I mean, old story – yes. And I know about the Trojan Horse. But what does his mouth have to do with it? Did it vomit out the Greeks inside? Was The Iliad told by Mr. Ed?”
Commenter Gary added: “While I’m old, I’m not wooden-stallion old, and I can’t say my almost-Bachelor’s in music makes me a giant pony engineer, but I’m pretty sure the physics of your basic gift horse filled with villainy requires the warriors to exit from the back or the bottom and not the mouth, and I’m pretty sure the horse didn’t talk, so what are they teaching the kids these days to lead to this TROJAN WAR comedic (?) clue?”
Those three answers were a block sitting on top of each other and I couldn’t crack enough crosses for the longest time. E.g., at 3D “Creature with a white winter coat” was STOAT. What? The only thing I know about stoat is it’s an anagram of toast. That’s on me, though. They’re adorable.
Since the GOP is trying to disappear them, it was nice to see 8A where the clue was “Like some who take testosterone,” and the answer was TRANS.
And 5D was funny. The clue was “‘Hey, dude, enough with the jokes’” and the answer was OK WISEGUY.
Math Dept. (Hi Judy!): Did you know that “Mathematical process used to model unpredictable phenomena” is RANDOM WALK? New to me. Even after I got RANDOM WAL, I had no idea. Wall? Wale? Also, I just learned it’s sometimes called a drunkard’s walk (not kidding).
Clever cluing at 26D also, with a baseball “misdirect:” “Ball two?” AFTER PARTY.
The clue at 4D was “World’s largest maker of backpacks,” and, amazingly, the answer just came to me: JANSPORT. I guess I’ve seen a ton of them on the subway over the years. Eli shared this photo of a drag queen named Jan Sport. Hey Girl! Looking good!
The puzzles have been dumbed down since the old days to the extent that I expect to be able to finish even Saturdays without too much of a battle. Today, though, it was very satisfying to nail it. Rafael Musa is one of the best constructors.
This poem is called “Early Spring in the Field” and is by Tom Hennen. It’s from today’s Writer’s Almanac.
The crow’s voice filtered through the walls of the farmhouse
makes sounds of a rusty car engine turning over. Clouds on a
north wind that whistles softly and cold. Spruce trees planted
in a line on the south side of the house weave and scrape at the
air. I’ve walked to a far field to a fence line of rocks where I am
surprised to see soft mud this raw day. No new tracks in the
mud, only desiccated grass among the rocks, a bare grove of
trees in the distance, a blue sky thin as an eggshell with a crack
of dark geese running through it, their voices faint and almost
troubled as they disappear in a wedge that has opened at last
the cold heart of winter.
From The Onion:
World Chess Championship Forced To Use Salt Shaker After Losing Bishop
Man Already Having Bad Day Deported To Salvadoran Mega-Prison
Speaking of El Salvadoran prisons, in all of the insanity the administration has unleashed, I can’t get over this one. They admit they sent this guy to that prison by mistake. Okay, mistakes are made by humans. But then they make no effort to get him the hell out of there. In fact, they are pissy about it. “Well, fuck him, we have no jurisdiction over El Salvador.” What the f*ck? Look, I don’t know about you, but when I send the wrong guy to a maximum security prison in a benighted foreign country, I at least have the decency to try to get him back. Is there not the slightest modicum of human decency in play for these guys? The slightest? Jeez Louise.
Here’s David Remnick in The New Yorker: “In the initial months of Donald Trump’s second administration, the qualities of malevolence, retribution, and bewildering velocity have obscured somewhat the ineptitude of its principals.” And he wasn’t even talking about the poor guy they sent to that hellhole prison by mistake. (It was about the military secrets blunder.)
Remnick goes on: “The comedy of [the military secrets scandal] resides, at least in part, in the discovery that the Vice-President and the heads of the leading defense and intelligence bureaucracies deploy emojis with the same frequency as middle schoolers.”
So as not to leave you on so sour a note, take a look at what I encountered when I opened The New Yorker website in search of that whale cartoon, above:
It’s our Ana in yet another stunning Louis Vuitton ad! Still got it, babe.
See you tomorrow Chatterheads! Thanks for popping by.
The Wellington Files 