Today’s post will be awash in beautiful young women, all quite willing to break your teeth with a stick if the situation calls for it without the slightest increase in their pulse rates. I am referring of course to the Pro Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) draft which took place last night in the nation’s capital: Ottawa!
Our NY Sirens copped three of the first nine picks, and selected nine players overall. Thanks to the work of our sports consultant, the beautiful Sarah Fillier of the Sirens, we’re able to provide in-depth coverage of the new Sirens, and thanks to Phil, who glued himself to Sarah for the event, we’ve got a whole bunch of droolingly gorgeous shots of the ladies too.
But first — hockey aside — does this look like a cold-blooded killer to you? Maybe around the eyes? If you watched the series Killing Eve, you’ll recognize her as the assassin Villanelle played by the actress Jodie Comer.
The reason she came up today is I just learned what a villanelle is. Poets.org sent me one as their “poem of the day.” It’s a highly structured poem made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain, with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. So then the question is, what’s a tercet? It’s a set of three lines of verse rhyming together or connected by rhyme with an adjacent tercet.
Here are the rules for a villanelle: The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.
Got it? Me neither. No hope.
“Mad Girl’s Love Song,” by Sylvia Plath is an example of a villanelle.
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
The Sirens first pick (and the first overall pick) was Kristýna Kaltounková who is a lock to lead the league in funny little thingies above the letters in her name. KK is from the Czech Republic and skated for Colgate in college. Should provide some of the offensive firepower the Sirens sorely need.
They traded a defensewoman for Toronto’s first pick, third overall, and grabbed Casey O’Brien. Yikes, who wouldn’t want to grab her?
Casey, another forward, is from Milton, MA, and played college hockey at Wisconsin. She received the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, given to the top female college ice hockey player in the U.S. Casey led the Badgers to the NCAA National championship last year. Brace yourselves, fellas, here she is with her teammates and their trophy in those sexy hockey uniforms.
Anne Cherkowski and Makenna Webster were two later-round picks who should provide more firepower. Anne’s Canadian and played for Clarkson in college.
Makenna is from St. Louis and played college hockey at Wisconsin and Ohio State.
Dayle Ross, a defensewoman from Spirit River, Canada, was a later-round pick. She played her college hockey at St. Cloud State. (There was a saint named Cloud?)
And the Sirens dipped into the Ivy League for Eli standout Anna Bargman from Boxford, MA.
Last, Kaley Doyle, a goalie from Livonia MI, played college hockey at Brown and Quinnipiac. Don’t try to put anything past this girl, fellas. She will stop you cold.
We look forward to all of these newcomers taking to the ice in the fall. Gotta get Zoey to a game this year.
Today’s puzzle was perfect for the heatwave we’ve been having. The theme was “central air conditioning.” The letters “AC” were squooshed into four squares in the grid: in the exact center of the 8 words formed around them. For example, at 23A, “‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’ singer of 1968, familiarly” was MAM[AC]ASS, crossing 10D, “Healthful snack brand,” TERR[AC]HIPS.
55D drew on an MLK, Jr., quote: “____ got some difficult days ahead.” Answer: WE’VE. [Ya think?]
Have you heard the expression California SOBER? It means “abstaining from everything but cannabis, say.” New to me. What would New Jersey sober be? Abstaining from everything but meatball subs?
At 32D, the clue for OPI was “Nail polish brand with a MillenniYUM shade.” OPI is known for great shade names, including: Polly Want A Lacquer, Pastel Me You Love Me, It’s In Your Jeans, Blue Them All Away, and Chopstix and Stones.
There’s a scary twist to the old viola joke. First, here’s the joke: After a late night rehearsal, the violist forgets to take his viola out of his car, which is parked on the street overnight. He runs down the next morning to find his worst fears confirmed: someone broke into the car and left him a second viola.
Here’s who’s not laughing: David Lopez Ibanez. Dave is a member of the Philharmonia orchestra based in London. The violin he plays is on loan to him by its owner, a German businessman named Sebastian Kutscha. It was made in 1740 by the master craftsman Lorenzo Carcassi in Florence, and is worth about $200,000. Ibanez has been playing it for eight years. Here they are together.
So after a rehearsal, Dave goes to a pub with a friend, and sets the instrument down right next to him. But you just have to be distracted for an instant, right? He was, and it’s gone. Stolen. It’s insured but Ibanez is devastated. Instead of blaming him, Kutscha, who sounds like a mensch, is worried about how hard Ibanez is taking it. Ibanez worries about how it’s being treated, as if it were a kidnapped child. “Are they putting it next to a radiator?”
They are still hoping it can be recovered. It will be hard for the thief to sell it because it’s a distinctive item: it has a tiny heart-shaped hole on top of its scroll, as David is showing you here.
In case you’re as ignorant as me, this is the scroll of a violin:
Anyway, keep an eye out for it.
While we’re on the topic, our classical music station WQXR in NY surprised me when they played Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony earlier this week. It was beautiful. I was aware of his famous Ninth Symphony (Ode to Joy), of course, but had no idea he had written an Eighth as well.
May have to take tomorrow off. We’re bringing Isaac to the library to hear Guitar Bob — a favorite of Sam’s about 30 years ago! Full report to follow.
Thanks for popping in!
The Wellington Files 