Among the morons who comprise the Republican GOP Senatorial roster, Ron Johnson stands out. And that’s saying something. You’d think he’d be a son of Alabama, Mississippi, or Arkansas — you know, states with no interest in education, but he’s from a real state: Wisconsin. Go figure. Anyway, Johnson is supporting a discredited doctor’s claims that chlorine dioxide, a chemical used for disinfecting and bleaching (think swimming pools), can help treat autism, COVID, cancer and a host of other ailments. Needless to say, he also parrots RFK Jr. in dissing the measles vaccine. How this buffoon can dress himself in the morning, let alone get elected to the Senate is one of life’s great mysteries.
Here he is, trying to clap his hands, a skill most of us master before turning one. You can do it RJ!! Maybe put your toy down first.
At the other extreme of humanity, Buzz Aldrin is the oldest living astronaut: he’ll turn 96 next month, kinehora. Many people (I would guess) can name Neil Armstrong as the first man to walk on the moon, but can you name the second? It was Buzz. He’s a Jersey boy, born in Glen Ridge. MIT-educated, in addition to his spacework, he was an aeronautical engineer and fighter pilot. If none of that impresses you, he married this babe on his 93rd birthday. Hubba hubba!**
That’s Anca Faur, and she’s not just a pretty face. Buzz met her working: she was a highly accomplished chemical engineer. Sadly, she passed away last year at the age of 66, just three years into their marriage. They met back in 2017 and Buzz described her as the love of his life. On their wedding day, he said they were as excited as eloping teenagers. I can believe it.
**[OC note: Looked up “hubba hubba:” an exclamation used to express approval, excitement, or enthusiasm, especially with regard to a person’s appearance. We like the example they provided: “In walks the willowy Juanita. Hubba hubba!”]
Buzz was in the puzzle yesterday (ALDRIN) with the funny clue: “Interview guest whom Ali G calls ‘my man Buzz Lightyear here.’” Even funnier is this clip Rex shared with us from Aldrin’s guest appearance on The Simpsons. “Careful! They’re ruffled!”
Rex was crankily unimpressed with yesterday’s puzzle. Gave it only two stars (out of five) in his new rating system. Things like OAHUAN bother him. (“Resident of Honolulu, e.g..”) Here’s what he wrote on it: “I’ve had to suffer through UTAHN and UTAHAN and god knows how many other odd demonyms, but OAHUAN feels outerspaceian. Is MAUIAN a thing? MAUWEGIAN? Needless to say, OAHUAN is a debut. My apologies to all the proud OAHUANs out there, but do you really call yourselves that?”
There were nine theme answers, which is a lot. And each of them had embedded within it a state name, but with one letter off. E.g., do you see how DENVER MINT has Vermont in there, but with an I replacing the O? Another one was DRUM LINES, with Maine tucked in there with the A replaced by an L. (The “revealer answer” was ALTERED STATES, clued via the 1980 horror flick.) So that happened nine times AND, as an extra kicker, the misplaced letters spelled (in order) MISPLACED. Pretty neat wordplay overall, IMO. And one of the co-constructors, Zachary Edward-Brown, is a 16-year-old high school junior.
This was neat too: At 42D, for ELISHA, the clue was “Engineer Gray who, arguably, invented the telephone — and battled Alexander Graham Bell over it in court for years.” You hear of this? From Wikipedia: Some recent authors have argued that Elisha Gray should be considered the true inventor of the telephone because Alexander Graham Bell allegedly stole the idea of the liquid transmitter from him. Although Gray had been using liquid transmitters in his telephone experiments for more than two years previously, Bell’s telephone patent was upheld in numerous court decisions.
At 26D, for the clue “Urban safety hazard” the answer was FIRE TRAP. Any word in that clue trouble you? Commenter Gary felt there was no need to make it “urban.” Here’s his comment on that and the DENVER MINT:
“Why isn’t a FIRE TRAP a safety hazard everywhere? You’re in a cardboard box on fire next to the freeway. FIRE TRAP. In a garage in suburbia filled with cans of paint and a gas can on fire. FIRE TRAP. In a corn field with your pants on fire from the lies you tell. FIRE TRAP. Surrounded by tumbleweeds aflame in the badlands. FIRE TRAP. In one of those little shrines in some seacoast village in Greece with a zillion candles on a rack. FIRE TRAP, probably.
“I used to live a few blocks from the DENVER MINT, but I never got any free pennies. When we were kids you could tour the facility, but once you’ve gone as a 7-year-old, you feel like you know all that is knowable about pennies and you never go back. The minute I moved away, they stopped making pennies. Apparently I was the magic.”
For those of you young enough to have never seen a penny, here’s what they looked like. It used to just cost one for your thoughts. Now they go for a nickel. Except for mine, which, as should be obvious to readers by how, are worthless.
Who doesn’t remember and love the song “Rubber Duckie?” It was in the clue for ERNIE: “He had a Billboard Hot 100 hit with “Rubber Duckie.” It reached #16!
Warning: The following clip contains a bathtub scene with nudity.
It led one commenter to this memory:
“Rubber Ducky, huh. I accompanied it once on stage. It was supposed to be a children’s concert, but the music wasn’t mostly all that child-friendly. An opera singer decided that instead of the aria they were expecting him to sing, he would go Sesame Street on them. It was a huge hit. He had been in the auditions for the Met as a young lad, but his dad came home from Korea with no legs, so he had to give up trying for a career to take care of him. He sold shoes for a living in a downtown department store, and in his spare time mostly sang his beloved operatic staples wherever anybody would let him, whether they wanted them or not. But he had gotten old by the date in question and thought he’d try something different. And that’s how I remember him.”
The clue at 5D was “Artist Henri de ___-Lautrec.” The answer (TOULOUSE, of course), set off a torrent of puns. First there was a splash of complaints from (mostly) seniors who couldn’t remember the correct spelling. Then I kicked in with: “Easy to confuse the artist in the puzzle with Tollhouse Lautrec, famous for his Still Life With Cookies series.”
Then commenter Bob M. went a bit nuts with: One day in late-19th century Paris the artist L’ Autrec finds it very cold in his rented apartment. He asks his wife, “Who turned off DEGAS, Anne?” CEZ ANNE in reply, “We didn’t pay the bill. We were short of MONET.” He snarls, “That’s because you’re TOULOUSE with our checkbook. Now we might have problems trying to RENOIR lease.”
To which I noted: There’s no such thing as too MANET puns. But I’m glad you stayed away from PICASSO.
I’ll challenge any of you to get 11D right: “On ____ (looking great, in slang).” FLEEK? SRSLY? “On fleek?” Per Rex: “‘On FLEEK’ was a social media phenomenon for a hot second in the mid ’10s, and then poof, gone—like so many hyper-brief faddish expressions.”
In the summer of 2014, Kayla Newman, also known as “Peaches Monroee,” uploaded a video to Vine to show off her freshly groomed eyebrows. “We in this bitch fittin to get crunk,” she said. “Eyebrows on fleek. Da fuck.” And a new slang term was born.
I’m all in. Expect to see it in OC going forward. Here’s Peaches, eyebrows on fleek and all.
The Jets lost another nail-biter yesterday by, let’s see, close to 30 points: 48-20. The score makes it seems closer than it actually was. The Jets, who haven’t really had a first string quarterback for as a long as we can remember, were playing with their 14th-string QB Brady Cook. He was signed when they saw Brady in his name. It made us question the time-honored adage which holds that the QBs get all the pretty girls. The question is: Does it apply to Jets QBs too? Here’s Cook with his girlfriend Carli. Hubba hubba. Eyebrows on fleek. Case closed.
Have to include two “pet pix” today. Too cute.
Happy Chanukah everybody! Need the candles more than ever in dark times. See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 