It’s hard to imagine Texans any dumber than they are now, but you can’t fault the state for not trying. The Texas Board of Ed just mandated Bible studies for their schools. You know, the same schools that are required to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Rachel Laser, the head of Americans United for Separation of ​Church and State, ​said the decision sought to “misuse public schools to impose one narrow set ​of religious beliefs ‌and indoctrinate a new generation of Americans in the lie ​that America is a Christian country.” Blah, blah, blah. Complain, complain, complain.

Here’s Rachel discussing Constitutional rights with Owl Chatter’s Phil before he fell over on the couch, asleep.

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Speaking of rights, what the hell’s going on with the airlines these days? Half-naked women turned away at the gates? WTF!! Edda Pilz, 25, was heeding weather advisories regarding the deadly heatwave coursing through Europe when she dressed for her transatlantic flight. But she was prevented from boarding by Lufthansa at the gate. Which side of this are you on? (Note: much of this report, below, is in Yiddish.)

Edda posted her story online expecting an outpouring of support. But she was surprised to find many folks took the airline’s side. “Save it for the beach,” one commenter wrote. Or for Owl Chatter! If you’ve seen our George, below, you know we have no dress codes here. Stop by when you’re back in the states, Babe.

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Upon finishing the first half of the season above .500 (at 41-40), the Gnats haven’t exactly hit the ground running. It’s more like they hit the ground after the parachute failed to open. Three late blown leads to the red-hot Philadelphians, followed by a less painful loss to the O’s. Ouch! We are sorely in need of bullpen help. Let’s see what happens. We’ll be catching the Yanks down there right before the All-Star break. Blake Butera, 33, was hailed as one of the youngest managers in the history of the game when he took the reins. Poor guy is aging pretty quickly.

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Who doesn’t like LEGOS? Oops, I mean LEGO blocks. The company discourages the use of LEGOS, as the plural form for some legal reason or other. So yesterday, for the verboten answer LEGOS, the clue was “Popular toys, in a plural form officially discouraged by their maker.” Today, the product popped up again in the form of LEGO BATMAN: “Toy adorned with a tiny rubber cape.”

It led guest poster Rafa to share this photo of the largest LEGO set ever produced: the Sagrada Familia, comprised of 12,060 pieces. (I just counted mine and it came to 12,059. Better check again.)

Available November 1, for $800 (or, if you mention Owl Chatter, $850).

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Guess who popped into the grid today at 28A: RINGO STARR! “He’s credited as the director of photography for the 1967 film ‘Magical Mystery Tour.’” Thanks to Son Volt for this sweet tune you can play for your special someone (Hi Linda!).

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Commenter to Rex Parker’s blog, Whatsername, shared the following with us yesterday:

NOTE TO COMMENTARIAT

“Yesterday I learned the very sad news that a long-time member of our crossword community has passed away. @GILL (Jill McMahon) lost her battle with throat cancer earlier this month. She had been absent from the blog for some time due to her illness, but she had continued to keep tabs on all of us. She had told me in an email earlier this year that she was still working the puzzles and reading the blog when she was able.

“Jill’s trademark sense of humor and off-the-wall comments were usually spot-on and always entertaining. Although I never met her, she struck me as a woman of strong character and charisma who genuinely cared about others. She was devoted to her husband, Paul, and her children and grandchildren who survive. Godspeed Jill. You will be missed.”

I remember Jill for the stories she weaved using as many entries from the puzzle as she could plausibly connect into a narrative. The announcement elicited many responses. One of them led us to a movie poster she appeared in. That’s her puffing, bottom right, in the green dress.

The review states: “House of 1000 Dolls is a not-great, not-totally-awful suspense movie from 1967 that only rarely works as a straight-faced thriller and even more rarely works as salacious exploitation.” I’m guessing she loved the “not-totally-awful” tag. (It’s what we shoot for here at OC.)

Commenter Nancy wrote:

I, too, knew she had been batting throat cancer since at least last October. Her last email to me was brave and cheerful and determined — not an ounce of either pessimism or self-pity. She was going to beat this thing — no doubt about it. But then when she failed to reappear on the blog and her off-blog communications with me also went dark, I feared the worst.

I never met her — although we talked about getting together in NYC all the time. We discussed where we would go for dinner and what we would order. We had similar tastes in food. And we were both pretty good at bending the elbow as they like to say in the drinking biz. We would have had great fun.

I considered her a cherished friend and I will miss her terribly.

The usually caustic Gary wrote:

Omigosh … I am SO SAD to hear about this. She was a towering figure here and one of my favorite people ever. So funny and smart. Obviously I never met her, but she was as real in my mind as my next door neighbor. Her Monday silly stories will always be my favorite example of how you can take ideas from a puzzle and put them to use for something artistic and fun. Safe voyages @Gill I.

Kitshef:

Jill lived an amazing life and had she written an autobiography, it would have been a hoot and a half. Among other things, she grew up in Cuba in the early Castro/Che Guevara years, was in The Valley of Gwangi as an extra, worked as a nightclub cage dancer, and acted with (and absolutely adored) Vincent Price. In a world where it often seems everything is taken too seriously, she was a high-grade injection of vivacity and levity.

Commenter “A” included a link to the website containing her artwork: https://1-jill-mcmahon.pixels.com/#sectionDivAbout. It’s substantial and very impressive. Here’s one of her prints:

It warms me to think some of the nonsense I throw onto Rex’s blog may have coaxed a smile out of her. Rest in peace, friend.

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I haven’t been keeping a close eye on the White Sox — sorry Pope! — other than to note their place atop the standings. But they deserve closer attention. They pounded the Royals last night 22-1. That’s going to happen now and then — massive drubbings. But one play betrayed (in a good sense) the team’s character. It was the seventh inning. There were runners on first and third with one out. Miguel Vargas was batting and the Sox already had a 20-run lead. Vargas hit a grounder and ran his ass off to first like it was tie game. He was called out as the second out of a double play to end the inning without the run scoring. But Vargas and Manager Will Venable thought he beat the throw. They challenged the call and it was overturned. Safe at first, runner scores from third. It didn’t matter that the lead increased to 21. It mattered that the game was played right, regardless of the circumstances.

Here’s Vargas.

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Elena Kagan (Hunter College HS, ’77) let loose this week on the corrupt and dishonest Supreme Court majority. There are two ways the Court bends over to kiss Trump’s ass and f*ck the country. They can simply make ridiculous new law, like when they granted him king-like immunity. That’s the “honest” way. Or they can reach dishonest decisions. That’s what happened in the Haitian immigrants case this week. For the Court to hold in Trump’s favor it had to find that he was not racially motivated, an utterly absurd position.

Kagan blew the whistle in her acerbic dissent. She noted Trump’s language on the issue was so vile, the majority steered clear of it in its opinion. “The evidence they have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print,” Kagan wrote.

So she did it for them, recounting how Trump repeated nonsense about Haitians eating household pets, and saying they “probably have AIDS,” and are “poisoning the blood” of America. She quoted him saying “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries” like “Haiti and Somalia” and “Why can’t we have some people from Norway and Sweden?”

Ridiculous.

November can’t come soon enough. See you tomorrow.

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