I’m proud of myself for a note I just posted on Rex’s blog. It was about today’s puzzle. Rex thought it was blah (meh, actually), and some others agreed that there wasn’t much to it. Personally, I thought it was okay. The theme was the letters ID, in particular the different ways they can be used: 1) as the contraction for “I would;” 2) the state of Idaho; 3) Freud’s id; and 4) as an I.D. like your driver’s license. (Lewis said they should have waited a few weeks and it would have been the IDs of March.)

Anyway, so it received the usual negative and positive reviews. But the constructor, Ian Livengood, is a member of the NYT puzzle staff, and two comments surmised that it was only accepted because he was an insider. Here’s the one from Anony Mouse: Very weak puzzle but Ian (the constructor) is a NY Times puzzle editor so it was published. Seems like it would be an automatic rejection if it were a blind submission. The second one said: I agree with a previous poster, I suspect that this one would have been rejected if it weren’t submitted by a CoW (Colleague of Will).

Those accusations rubbed me the wrong way. So I wrote:

I’ve only personally met one member of the NYT puzzle staff and it was only briefly at a tournament when we were seated at the same table. She seemed wonderful though, and I’d be surprised if I learned she engaged in unethical behavior such as improperly favoring someone’s work because she knew him or her personally. It’s one thing to criticize a puzzle for perceived flaws, but quite another to charge that it was only accepted because of favoritism. Such a charge, it seems to me, should be based on hard evidence and not simply surmise.

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I love being retired. I have so much time to waste, I mean spend, on stuff like that. Not only can I not imagine going back to work, I’m amazed I was able to do it for so long. (Of course, as a professor, I really should put “work” in quotation marks. I once remarked to my doc that my summer course met four times a week and I noted that it was closest I came to real work.)

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How could you not like a poem called “Hey Fella Would You Mind Holding This Piano a Moment.” It’s by William J. Harris and was the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day today. It’s dedicated “For Reg and Susie.”

As you are walking
down the street
this guy asks you
to hold his violin.
It’s a Stradivarius.
Soon as it falls
into your hands
you start playing like crazy.
The violin
almost plays itself.
Your powerful hands
nearly break the instrument
but the music is gentle and sweet.
You sweep your long artistic hair
out of your face.
Everybody
in the room,
in the bull ring, in the
audience, in the Coliseum
starts clapping
and shouting “Encore & Wow.”
Everybody whoever
thot you were
dumb & untalented
goes apeshit
over your hidden genius.
“Gee, I never knew you
played,” says your astonished high school
principal.

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We were delighted to have ANNA Kendrick stop by today, at 57A, boringly clued as “Actress Kendrick.” Anna is 40, kinehora, and from Portland ME. Lives in LA now. No kids, and has said motherhood is not for her. We first saw Anna in 50-50, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. Phil enjoyed working with her for us. He said she can be pretty in a glamorous way, or in a non-glamorous way. He prefers the latter and sent in two examples for us.

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Would you trust this man with your cat? Retired vet and OC friend Chris B was unimpressed with the song Ex’s and Oh’s by Elle King we shared recently. “I was playing simple riffs like that in 1968!!!,” he scoffed, and shared the following with us, so we could see how far he’s come. Chris is the handsome one in the middle with the baseball cap and the guitar.

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The NYT editorial board really ripped into Bondi today, as well they should, excoriating her for failing to protect the Epstein survivors in DOJ’s recent release of files. Did you read it? I thought the DOJ just carelessly released the names of some victims who had chosen to remain anonymous. It was much much worse than that. They released nude photos of the victims. SRSLY, Bondi? Let’s (grudgingly) grant her the benefit of the doubt and say it was unintentional and not done out of malice. Then wouldn’t it be only natural to apologize? Wouldn’t that be the minimal response? But she refused. Can someone please explain to me, like I’m a three-year-old (Hi Denzel!), what the hell is going on over there?

I’m not going to subject you (or me) to the sight of her today. Here’s Denzel instead, as attorney Joe Miller in Philadelphia. I showed the film in my law class a bunch of times. Just to get the kids into a courtroom and to foster its positive messages on discrimination. It got to me every time.

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Here’s a cartoon we might call “NYC Snow Globe.”

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I took an afternoon nap, overslept, and missed the first half of Canada’s women’s hockey team win. It turns out it wasn’t televised here anyway. Boo. Canada slipped past the Swiss Cheese, 2-1. Yikes! We outshot them like crazy, but that’s scary close. We’ll be playing the USA on Thursday for the gold, as heavy underdoggies.

With the game not on, we watched some figure skaters instead, gorgeous. And some ski tumbling, aka the “big air” event. You hear of Eileen Gu before? Wow. She skis for China but was born in SF and is also American. Eileen is English for Ailing, which is Chinese for “Love Ling,” in honor of her sister Ling who was killed in a car crash before Eileen was born.

She won the silver medal today — very impressive. But she also earns millions as a supermodel. Like at the Victoria-Secret, Sports-Illustrated-Swimsuit level. She is currently the fourth highest paid female athlete in the world. Add to that 1580 (out of 1600) on her SATs (not kidding): she majored in International Relations at Stanford. As a victim of anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, she speaks out against racism, and supports the Black Lives Matter movement and abortion rights.

Believe me, fellas, we’re taking it easy on you with this photo.

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We ain’t gonna top that. See you tomorrow!