UMICH is in the news, and not in a good way. Head football coach Sharonne Moore was fired yesterday for shtupping someone on his staff. The ridiculous way he spells Sharonne was not a factor but couldn’t have helped.
Owl Chatter’s Director of Diet Soda Acquisitions George Santos summed it up well: The schmuck’s making $5.5 million a year to coach college football, has a gorgeous wife and three sweet daughters, and he can’t keep it in his pants? Sheeesh. And people sh*t on me?
Here are Sharonne and wife Kelli in happier times, about 30 seconds before their dog lunged at Phil. Run Buddy!! Forget the cameras!!
The ‘Rines have turned to assistant coach Biff Poggi to step in, like, immediately. They have a tough bowl assignment against Texas on NYE. Biff’s a real no-nonsense type, respected and admired by all, and clearly way too fat and ugly to be having any affairs. Born in Baltimore, Biff is 65 and played college ball himself at Pitt. His one previous head coaching stint at the college level was for UNC-Charlotte where he went 6-16 and was fired with two games remaining in his second season. D’oh! We won’t dwell on that.
Go Blue!
That cartoon, and many other very good ones, is from XKCD, a webcomic created by Randall Munroe, described as “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” It was the answer at 57D in today’s puzzle, clued with “Popular stick-figure webcomic.” Completely new to me. Hasn’t appeared in the NYTXW since April 2017.
The brilliance of the clue at 47D eluded me. See how you do: The clue was “Pan in the butt?” And the answer was GOAT.
Ready? Pan is a “goat/man” and the part of him that is goat is his hindquarters, or “butt.”
Apparently lives on Long Island now.
38A: “Landing area in a long jump” — SANDPIT. Kathleen Edwards, 47, is a Canadian folksinger. She studied classical violin from age 5 to 17. Her dad was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and she lived abroad as a teenager listening to a lot of Neil Young and Dylan via her brother’s records. After high school she blew off college and started playing in local clubs. Good move.
At 62D the clue for KEA was “New Zealand parrot whose name sounds like a Korean automaker.” Did you know this? Kea are known for their intelligence. They can solve logical puzzles, such as pushing and pulling things in a certain order to get to food, and will work together to achieve a certain objective. They have been filmed preparing and using tools.
In case you thought Rubio might have retained even a scintilla of decency in his craven Trump tuchas licking, a story in today’s NYT should disabuse you. Back in 2023, then-Sec’y of State Blinken shifted the typeface used by the State Department on its communications from Times New Roman to Calibri, see below. The shift was recommended by the department’s office of diversity and inclusion on the grounds that Calibri is easier to read for people with poor vision or dyslexia, and for people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers. Clearly (pun intended), a laudable gesture towards a segment of the populace with special needs.
Proving there is no depth of indecency to which he will not descend, Rubio shifted back, calling Blinken’s action a “wasteful sop to diversity.” He blamed “radical” DEI and accessibility programs for the misguided shift. That should earn him a nice pat on the head from you-know-whom. Good boy, Marco. Here’s a biscuit.
The juxtaposition of words in a puzzle sometimes leads to amusing images or connections. Today, smack next to each other were POPEMOBILE and I GOT A WOMAN (the Ray Charles song). Rex called it a stunning pairing. “Two great answers that create a deeply pleasing mental picture—the pope cruising along blasting Ray Charles out his windows.”
If, like me, you haven’t heard Ray in a while, you owe me one.
We’ll let Bianca close for us today. This exquisite little girl was in the first batch of pet pix Rex shared today. Hi, Sweetie. George!! — Anything in the fridge we can give her?
See you tomorrow Chatterheads! Thanks for popping in.
The Wellington Files 