How deeply has Trump seeped into the culture? We had Chinese takeout with Riverdale Joe on Sunday and this was my fortune cookie:
Pardon my Yiddish, but I don’t know what the f*ck to make out of this story. Donald Trump, Jr., you-know-who’s idiot son, is getting married again, this time to Bettina Anderson. He’s 48 and she’s 39. Anyway, so they held an over-the-top bridal shower at Mar-a-Lago last Sunday and get this: Trump’s wife du jour, Malaria, did not attend, but her predecessor Marla Maples did.
Phil caught up with Bettina and Junior at Dick Cheney’s funeral last year.
Commenter Lewis said that he “uncle-ed” at one point while working on the puzzle today. That is, he “cried uncle.” I noted:
“Accepting uncle as a verb (for which, thank you!), did I uncle when my sister had her first child? Or was she the uncle-er and I the uncle-ee?”
“On the other side, my wife has five sisters. When Kathy became the first of the six to have a baby, can we say she established an aunt farm?”
My own puzzle nonsense played on the following: MANX (“Tail-less cat breed”); KNEE (“Lederhosen typically end just above one”); SEEDER (“Lawn-starting tool”); OTIS (“Soul legend Redding”); and DOHA (“Capital of Qatar”).
MANX must be one of the XMEN, no?
What do lederhosen typically end right before? Divorce.
SEEDER: The traaditional Paassover meal for Jews whose keyboard keys sometimes stick.
Was it Redding who wrote Dock of the Bay? O TIS true.
What you should do to show you enjoyed a funny text: DOHA
One that didn’t make the cut involved SHIV (“Jailhouse weapon”): Can you imagine making one out of ice? Makes me shiver.
Here’s one of my former tax students, Inga, modeling some lederhosen for us. Thanks Babe! Good luck on the CPA exam!
How about telling us how you really feel about it, Rex? Rex started his discussion of the puzzle today with “I rarely say this, but I don’t understand how this puzzle got accepted.” Ouch.
He had a problem with the “uninspired” theme: Four phrases containing the vowels AEIOU in order: WHAT’S NEW WITH YOU?, HASHES IT OUT, APPLE ICLOUD, and WATERING TROUGHS.
Amazingly, IMO, Lewis came up with:
“So, finding words and phrases that use all the vowels just once, is hard enough, but it can be done. I’m thinking of the GENIUS AT WORK in MOZAMBIQUE who AMBIDEXTROUSLY ate CAULIFLOWER, played the TAMBOURINE, and, while thinking of JULIA ROBERTS and the FOUNDING FATHERS, wrote with a FOUNTAIN PEN.
“But, getting the vowels in words and phrases just once in order MAKES IT TOUGH, and I believe it would make for an involving LATE-NIGHT HOUR activity … okay I’m only saying this HALF SERIOUSLY, please don’t TAKE IT OUT on me!”
Phil? Wanna chime in here? Thanks!
In the “falling back to Earth with a thud” department, the Gnats came off their three game win streak with a loss in Pittsburgh last night by the score of 16-5. Ouch. Jackson Rutledge was rushed up from Rochester to pitch 1.1 innings and give up 6 hits, 2 walks, and 7 (!) well-earned runs. Hope he didn’t unpack.
But let’s keep an owl’s eye on defensive whiz Jacob Young who seems to have found his bat this year, hitting .289 and popping his second dinger last night. Normally batting in the nine hole, he was bumped up to the seven spot. I’m a little worried over chills Garcia and House have come down with, batting-wise. But aside from that, scoring runs hasn’t been the problem (yet, kinehora).
Here’s JY. Nice shot, Philly.
This poem is called “Flipping the Bird.” It’s by Ann-Margaret Lim and was the poem of the day today from the Poetry Foundation. It rewards repeated readings, IMHO.
Holding his stare in mine, I flip the bird
at a grown man
on a stool in front of the street bar
on the left shoulder of Red Hills Road
where big aluminum pots with crab, or soup
tell you when it’s Friday, or Wednesday.
He’d just pssst and winked at me—
a 12-year-old in the back seat
of a Buick Skylark
being driven by my Chinese stepmom.
Couldn’t be my hair
—hot-combed for graduation
styled in two limp pigtails
and a too-big bang
my teacher christened a bang-ga-rang
so, of course, me being a kid
I flip the bird at him, telling him
with my eyes, what the finger says.
Don’t think my stepmom—eyes on the road—
sees him, or me, flipping out
and flipping the bird at him.
Don’t think she hears him, flipping out
how a little “black gal” like me
pass mi place, damn renk an’ fiesty.
It’s time to excoriate the New Yorker for its shitty cartoons again. Here’s a sampling from the 4/20/2026 issue that just arrived.
On page 69. All you see is a door with handles, like in a commercial building. There is a sign in it that says: “Try pushing first, then pull.”
Who among us has not found him or herself in the position of having pulled when you should have pushed or pushed when you should have pulled? And who among us can imagine that being the slightest bit humorous when converted into a cartoon? I’ll tell you who — no one on planet Earth, that’s who.
On page 64. Fathers looking through the window into where all the newborn babies are kept. One father refers to it as “this weird glass baby prison.”
Yeah. Hysterical.
On page 59. A little drawing indicates a move from a house in the suburbs to an apartment in NYC. The “hook” is “Helpful vocab for new New Yorkers.” Three terms are then defined:
Park: Like a yard that you share.
Subway: Like a car pool in the basement.
Laundromat: Like an arcade for a laundry.
And you thought they couldn’t get worse than the first two?
On page 54. A little boy, dressed like a horse rider is in a room in which three horses are running in a circle. The mom is saying to a friend: “If he’s going to become an equestrian, I’d rather he did it at home.”
No comment.
On page 50. A doctor is at his desk, staring at a computer screen. The caption says: “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just put it in the chat.”
No comment.
On page 45. A woman is sitting in a comfy chair, holding a cup of tea. Her eyes are closed and she says to her husband “I love listening to the birds in the morning.” In the background, outside the window, you see two small birds seated at a table with headphones on producing a podcast.
No comment.
Those are all, unquestionably, beyond horrible. What the hell is going on over there?
I’m going to close this out with one that I liked. It’s the two guys crawling through the desert dying of thirst genre. They crawl past a cactus and come to a couple dozen golf balls lying haphazardly in the sand. Another ball bounces into the bunch. One of the guys says hopefully: “There’s a driving range around here somewhere.”
Thumbs up, Frank Cotham.
The Onion had a pretty hard-hitting, no-holds-barred interview with the Pope. Here are some egg zerps:
The Onion: It must be boring having to go to church so much.
Pope Leo XIV: Yes.
The Onion: What’s your go-to place for hiding Easter eggs?
Pope Leo XIV: Under stuff. Not many people think to look under stuff.
I hadn’t realized how much the new Pope looks like Joe Torre. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Thanks for popping by, Chatterheads! See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 