In, literally, a bombshell report exclusive to Owl Chatter, sources reveal that the boat blown up by the military on Sept. 2 did not contain cocaine at all, but was instead carrying boxes full of Epstein files. Details to follow as they emerge (and dry out). This photo of the ship before it was hit was provided by the Defense Department.
It was anybody’s game, the Big Ten title game, when I crashed at halftime Saturday night. Ohio State was up 10-6, but hardly dominant. And Indiana’s best receiver was on the fritz; we could do without that. But I woke up to the happy news that the hated Buckeyes lost 13-10. The juggernaut was de-jugged. Bravo Hoosiers!
After several weeks of pretending to be a football team, the Jets reverted to being a mop and the Dolphs wiped the floor with us, 34-10, ouch. But the score doesn’t really convey what a drubbing it was: the only Jets TD was on a punt return. It was 21-0 and essentially over after just 12 minutes. An unusual statistic: The Jets do not have a single interception all season. Remarkable. The lowest amount for real teams is five.
Rounding out the OC sports report, our Sirens fell badly (4-0) out west to the same Vancouver team (the Goldeneyes) we watched them beat last week in Newark. We are 2-3 now and off until the 17th, when we face the Boston Fleet, with Linda and me in attendance, kinehora. It’s Enema night!
Here’s Paetyn Levis of the Sirens, frequent winner of the league’s Most-Difficult-First-Name-To-Spell Trophy. She’s from Minny and played college hockey at Ohio State. Men’s heads have been known to explode when she and teammate Sarah Fillier have been in the same room with them.
Here’s a snippet of conversation from yesterday.
Me: I didn’t sleep well last night.
Linda: That’s too bad.
Me: I was up from around 1 to 3.
Linda: Were you anxious about something?
Me: I wouldn’t say anxious.
Linda: What would you say?
Me: I would say unctuous.
We then had to look up what unctuous means. It means smarmy.
Here’s Frank Bruni on that recent Cabinet meeting that Trump slept through: “Just how run-down must a raging narcissist be to snooze through tributes to his own greatness?”
Having slept through 38 years of department meetings at Hunter, I sympathize with the poor guy. One nice memory I have of my colleague John Kim, who passed away way way way too young, was from a department meeting. He was sitting next to me and, as things droned on, he jotted something down on his note pad and showed it to me. It said “Going to men’s room.” I nodded, and he got up and left. He came back after a while and sat back down in his seat. He jotted another note on his pad and showed it to me. “Feel better now,” it said.
Except for one deranged a**hole (and I chose those words carefully), every single one of my mates in the accounting program over the years was wonderful. I had the reputation of getting along with everybody. But, really, it was easy.
Humorist James Thurber was born on this day in Columbus OH in 1894. Flipping through a sampling of his cartoons reminds me of how funny cartoons used to be. It may have been he who introduced the absurd into New Yorker humor. I’m not enough of an expert on the topic to know. Here are just two.
Can you dig it? If you can, you probably did well on today’s puzzle where the revealer was “Finger or toe … or, when read as two words, what you can do to the ends of the theme answers.” DIGIT or DIG IT. Then the theme answers all ended with things you dig: Jackson HOLE, last DITCH, cherry PIT, and work out WELL.
Everyone’s favorite commenter, Lewis, often takes little outings the puzzle leads him on. Today he shared the following with us:
“Maybe digging is in our genes, like it’s in dogs’ genes. I remember that when I was a kid, the first thing I’d do after getting to the beach is dig the deepest hole I could.
“I did some more digging post-puzzle to determine the origin of ‘Hole’ in ‘Jackson Hole.” Turns out the area is named after fur trapper David Jackson, who worked the area in the 1820s, and ‘Hole’ was a trapper’s term for a large mountain valley. Huh!
“I did notice that the theme nouns – HOLE, DITCH, PIT, and WELL – can also be verbs. Then I saw words that can be both nouns and verbs all over the grid. A partial list: STREAK, SCAT, SCAN, RAIL, SLAM, TANK, GROWL, YOYO.
“A little more digging revealed that 30-50% of high-frequency vocabulary in English can be both noun and verb, but only about 10% of all the words in the dictionary can. You’re welcome.”
[OC note: At first, I didn’t see how “well” could be a verb. But then I remembered tears can well up in your eyes. And “hole” is certainly a verb in golf, e.g., he holed the ball with his third putt.]
The puzzle was fine, if a bit (44A) HO HUM. At 30A, “‘Enola Holmes’ actress [MILLIE] Bobby Brown” livened things up a bit. Hi Mill! Grab a Diet Coke and shoot the breeze with us a bit. What was it like growing up in Spain and England? Are the in-laws cool (see below)?
Some of you may know her as Eleven from “Stranger Things.”
Phil!! Quit freaking her out!! It’s not funny!! What the hell is wrong with you??
Millie is married to Jake Bongiovi, an actor and model, whose dad is Jersey’s own Jon Bon Jovi! They adopted a baby girl last August.
Does this license plate raise your hackles? Do you even have hackles? FYI, in mammals, the hackles are the hairs of the neck and back which become erect when the animal is fearful, as part of the fight-or-flight response, or to show dominance over subordinate animals. In birds, the hackle is the group of feathers found along the back and side of the neck. Anyway, never mind that, here’s the plate:
It’s a vanity plate issued by Tennessee to Leah Gilliam but then revoked eleven years later when it generated complaints. Gilliam said pwndu means “owned you” in gamer language. [In fact, PWN does mean OWN: it comes up a lot in crosswords.] She first said the 69 was part of her phone number but later said it was a reference to the year of the moon landing. The complaints claimed the plate was a reference to sexual domination.
Having nothing better to do (which we can certainly relate to), Gilliam appealed the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, back in 2015 the Supremes heard a case from Texas which did not allow confederate flags on a vanity plate. Amazingly, Clarence Thomas joined the then-four liberals on the Court to find in favor of Texas (and against the Confederacy). The plates were held to be governmental speech which the State can control, and not personal speech, which it can’t.
Fast forward to 2025. On Gilliam, the Court said, “Don’t bother us with nonsense that’s more appropriate for blogs like Owl Chatter.” It refused to take up the case, so Gilliam was out of luck, or, legally, pwned.
Here’s Leah, in one of the few shots of her we could find in which she’s not wearing leather and holding a whip.
I was in the offices over at CNN recently, digging up some dirt for an important feature we’re working on at Owl Chatter on plastic turtles. And I accidentally opened a door to a private meeting room where I found CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reaching for a nearby box of tissues and weeping her searing brown eyes out. “Kaity, Babe,” I said, “What’s wrong, girl?”
“I am not stupid. And I am not nasty,” she wailed.
“Of course you’re not,” I reassured her. “Who said these things?”
“The President,” she bawled. “He wrote that I was stupid and nasty because I asked why the ballroom is costing so much. He even used a capital S on stupid and a capital N on nasty.”
“Well, those words should not be capitalized,” I said. “And he’s just being a big meanie,” I told her. “If anybody is stupid and nasty, it’s him. Or he.”
“Really? You really think so?,” she asked, calming down a little.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Absolutely, Sweetheart.”
Gotta go — the salad’s ready! See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 