The Wellington Files

  • Axmen

    Stories You Won’t Hear About in the Press (Because They Are Not True) Dept. In a report exclusive to Owl Chatter, our investigative journalists revealed that a higher percentage of ICE and Border Patrol agents have criminal records than do their detainees. Part of this is due to the high number of children among the detainees, but even accounting for childhood the margin is substantial. When confronted with the data, AG Pam Bondi responded: You idiots are making this up just so you can drool over another sexy photo of me or Leavitt. Ouch! Touché Bondi.

    The NYT XW today by Kareem Ayas was over-the-top brilliant, and perfect for Valentine’s Day week. There were two theme “instructors” that crossed each other: STEAL A KISS, going down, and GIVE A HUG crossing it. (They were clued with “Quickly smooch,” and “Give comfort, in a way.”) Then, you know how XOXOXO works to represent hugs and kisses, right? Well, the X is a kiss and the O is a hug. So in the four down theme answers you need to “steal a kiss” by removing an X. E.g., the clue at 5D was “Behind in payment.” And the answer was LATEX. It only makes sense once you “steal” the X out of it, so you’re left with LATE. And with the across theme answers you had to “give a hug,” i.e., add a O for it to make sense. E.g., at 1A the clue was “Succeed” and the answer was DWELL. It makes no sense unless you add an O to make it DO WELL.

    Also, impressively, all 8 themers were real words pre- and post-adjustment. Here are the six others, besides the two discussed above:

    EXTERNALLY, ETERNALLY

    MAXIM, MAIM

    AXMEN, AMEN

    CLAMSUP, CLAM SOUP

    SHUTOUTS, SHOUTOUTS

    FLAMING, FLAMINGO

    As I was solving the puzzle, I had no idea of what was going on and so had a whole mess of problem areas in my grid. Then, what’s called “the aha moment” came, and it was quite exciting to work it all through. (BTW, that’s a pretty good example of what passes for excitement at my age.)

    For AXMEN, which is slang for guitar players, Rex shared this (hi, Chris!). Watch it take off at the 3:30 mark.

    How did I miss this from yesterday? At 53D, ELLE was the answer, clued boringly with “Actress Fanning.” I think it’s her first visit to Owl Chatter. Thank God George has the fridge stocked. Sit your fanny down, Fanning. You ever hear that before? Be honest.

    Dakota is her older sister. She’s a real southern belle, or elle, I guess, born in Conyers GA. Elle is her middle name; Mary’s her first.

    Elle’s dad was a minor-league ballplayer in the Cardinals system and her grandfather was Rick Arrington, QB for the Eagles for three seasons. For the history buffs among you, one of her ancestors is King Edward III, from way back in the 1300’s.

    She killed it in last year’s film Sentimental Values for which she is up for an Oscar as Supporting Actress. She’s 27 and is almost as pretty as my Zoey. Could you plotz?

    Here’s a treat for us! Today’s poem in the Writer’s Almanac is by Ted Kooser. It’s called “The Red Wing Church,” and it’s from his collection Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems.

    There’s a tractor in the doorway of a church
    in Red Wing, Nebraska, in a coat of mud
    and straw that drags the floor. A broken plow
    sprawls beggarlike behind it on some planks
    that make a sort of roadway up the steps.
    The steeple’s gone. A black tar-paper scar
    that lightning might have made replaces it.
    They’ve taken it down to change the house of God
    to Homer Johnson’s barn, but it’s still a church,
    with clumps of tiger lilies in the grass
    and one of those boxlike, glassed-in signs
    that give the sermon’s topic (reading now
    a bird’s nest and a little broken glass).
    The good works of the Lord are all around:
    the steeple top is standing in a garden
    just up the alley; it’s a hen house now:
    fat leghorns gossip at its crowded door.
    Pews stretch on porches up and down the street,
    the stained-glass windows style the mayor’s house,
    and the bell’s atop the firehouse in the square.
    The cross is only God knows where.

    At 46D today, “Hollywood’s Anderson or Bach” was PAMELA. She’s also in this John Prine tune, with apologies for its political incorrectness.

    We’ll close tonight with two late-breaking stories from The Onion:

    Keys, Spare Change Fly Out Of Luge Athlete’s Pocket On First Turn

    Mom Strong Arms Cashier Into Accepting Expired Coupon

    See you tomorrow Chatterheads!

  • Idaho Blackie

    George!! Don’t order the Epstein Potato Chips anymore. This is what came.

    [Too soon?]

    This song is by Hüsker Dü, courtesy of Son Volt as a nod to DIVIDE in the puzzle yesterday at 9D (“Do the splits?”). Turn it up!!

    Hüsker Dü was an influential punk rock band from St. Paul MN from 1979-1988.  It played a huge role in convincing “the underground” that melody and punk rock weren’t antithetical. (Wikipedia) I think OC featured their song Diane previously. Bob Mould is still active with the alt-rock band Sugar. He started playing guitar when he was 16. He heard the Ramones and figured anyone could play (not kidding).

    While we’re on the topic, and if you’ve still got it turned up. . .

    Sadly, all four of the original Ramones have passed away. Forever sedated. Rest in peace fellas. Thanks for all the fun.

    Oy, our Canadian hockey women got schmeared by the U.S., 5-0, and it was total domination. Looks like it’s the USA’s year. This is Abbey Murphy. She killed us. She’s not even a pro yet: plays hockey at U of Minny. Born in Illinois.

    The puzzle today was a tribute to Jerry Lee Lewis’s great song, “Great Balls of Fire.” Four large squares comprised of four letters each (F, I, R, E) were enclosed in a circle (“ball”). And the lyric GOODNESS GRACIOUS was an answer, along with the title. A nice constructing job by Joseph Gangi.

    I posted the following for the gang:

    Ouch! A puzzle on getting kicked in the nuts!? Puh-leeze!

    The late folksinger and union man Utah Phillips told the following joke when I saw him perform in NYC several hundred years ago. It was about Idaho Blackie whose land abutted that of the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood. Idaho would sit on his porch with his shotgun and shoot at ducks flying overhead. One day he hit a duck and it fell to earth onto the property of the neighbor. When Idaho went to retrieve it, the neighbor said, Hold on — if it falls on my property, it’s my duck. And Idaho said, But it was my shot that brought it down.

    They argued for a while, and finally the neighbor said, Let’s settle this in a way that brings honor to our great White Brotherhood. We’ll take turns kicking each other in the balls, and the last man standing gets the duck. Idaho agreed and the neighbor said, Since your shot brought it down, you can go first. Idaho took a few steps back to get a running start and landed a perfect excruciating blow. The neighbor doubled up in agony and it took him a while to get up, dust himself off, and recover. When he was finally ready he said, Okay, it’s my turn now. Idaho stood there, stroking his beard, looked at the guy and said: You know, I’ve been giving this a great deal of thought. You can have that duck.

    Utah Phillips passed away in 2008. He was a wonderful singer and may have honed his sense of humor in the vaudeville theater his stepfather Syd Cohen ran in Cleveland before moving the family to Utah. Phillips was a great union supporter and a card-carrying member of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), also known as the Wobblies. Which is how you walk after getting kicked in . . . Enough.

    Here’s Rex on the iconic song:

    I wonder how well younger solvers know this song. It’s a classic, but I don’t know if “classics” from the ’50s still factor into younger people’s store of songs. The song is well before my [Rex’s] time (came out 12 years before I was born), but I know it very well—rock music simply hadn’t been around *that* long when I was a kid, and so the store of “oldies” seemed finite and you could still hear them all over the place.  Also, Jerry Lee Lewis was a … let’s say, colorful figure. Frequently in the news (and, after the ’50s, usually not for music—he had many wives, many personal tragedies, many tax problems). “GREAT BALLS OF FIRE” came out in November of 1957, the month before he married his 13-year-old cousin (who eventually left him, stating that she had been “subject to every type of physical and mental abuse imaginable” (Wikipedia)). He lost two children very young in separate accidents (car, pool), At least two of his wives died young (drugs, pool). But as an artist, he is best known for his wild, energetic playing style.

    He was a massive influence on Elton John.

    I noted that Rex’s two parentheticals, above, reminded me of Nabokov’s pretty famous one in Lolita: VN remarks on the accidental death of Lo’s mom (picnic, lightning). I was happy to see commenter upstate george thank me for the “shout out to Nabokov.”

    The following is from historian Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter today:

    Answering allegations that agents had used zip ties on children, spokespersons for both the FBI and Homeland Security flatly denied the allegations. “ICE didn’t zip tie, restrain, or arrest any children. ICE does not zip tie or handcuff children. This is the kind of garbage rhetoric contributing to our officers facing a 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.”

    After the presentation of photographic evidence of zip-tie bruises on a 14-year-old female U.S. citizen as well as personal testimony, the FBI changed their assertion to say no “young” children were zip-tied.

    Okay. Thanks for clearing that up.

    I know, — crazy as a loon, right? At 3D today we learned that the LOON is the state bird of Minnesota. It led Son Volt to reach out to John Prine for us again (not complaining).

    In response to all the sh*t Bad Bunny (and others) received for the all-Spanish Super Bowl halftime show, the band Foreigner posted the Spanish version of its biggest hit on its Facebook page after the game. The woman joining them is Mexican singing star Joy Huerta. (Wow.) Huerta is gay and married to Diana Atri, left, below. They have two kids, who, if they are not gorgeous, should demand a refund.

    We’ll let the song close us out today. Thanks for stopping by!

  • Bolts and Bent Nails

    Three newly married husbands are chatting at a bar on their newlywed cruise. They just met. The wives are elsewhere on the ship. The spa. Whatever. One of the men says he read an article that says you have to let the wife know right away who’s boss and what you expect from her. They agree to lay down the law and to meet up after a year to see how things went.

    A year goes by and they meet. The first one reports. I’m pretty pleased, he said. My wife is from Nebraska, and right when we got back from the cruise, I told her I was the king in the home and I expected her to keep the place spotless and I wanted a home-cooked dinner every night. Well, I didn’t see much progress the first few days but then the place seemed to be cleaner and I started getting pretty good meals and it’s kept up.

    Terrific!, the others said. The second man said, “Well, my wife is from Kansas, and I’m also pretty pleased with how it went. I laid down the law right off the bat. And with us, too, for the first few days I didn’t see much, but as the weeks went by, the meals got better and the house is in pretty good shape. I’d have to say it’s been a success.

    They turned to the third husband for his report. Well, he said, my wife is from the Bronx. So I laid it all out, like we said, you know, the meals, the cleaning. And at first I didn’t see anything. But after a few days, the swelling went down and I could make out shapes. . . .

    I was mostly a city boy, or suburbs. Here’s a poem called “Farm Auction,” by Amy Fleury from today’s Writer’s Almanac.

    Contrails scrawl the sky under which
    sawhorse-and-lumber tables offer up
    the hoard and store of fifty years.
    Neighbors have come to scour house
    and barn and implement shed.
    Yes, we’ve come to haul it all away—
    their nests of pillows and quilts
    and feather ticks, the glazed plates
    and bread crocks, a washtub rimed
    with bluing, the saltcellar and gravy boat,
    her cross-stitch sampler and figurines,
    canning jars, seals, lids. And spools
    of baling wire, seed drills, spades,
    coffee cans of bolts and bent nails,
    a burlap-wrapped schnapps bottle
    he kept back of the barn’s fuse box and all
    his spare fuses. An aerial photo of their farm.
    And even the rusted harrow in the ditch.

    The auctioneer works to disperse
    all their worldly goods, singing hey
    somebody give me twenty now, twenty
    as his wife hands over odd boxes
    of cribbage boards and crucifixes
    to the ladies fanning themselves
    with sale bills by the tilting lilacs.
    From the porch the 4-H club sells
    plates of peach pie and waxy cups of pop.
    Inside, the smell of silage still clings
    to his chambray shirt hung
    on the backdoor peg after choring.
    How, in stocking feet, he loved to step
    on the warm place where the dog had lain,
    where dilapidated hips collapsed her
    in a sleeping, yellow heap.

    Now all is echo where once they sat
    together with the ledger, adding columns
    of crop yields and prices per bushel,
    or thumbing rosaries like they shelled peas—
    dutiful, dutiful to the ceaseless seasons,
    to their tillage and cattle and kin.
    Through the window screen comes little gusts
    and the sound of the gavel coming down.

    Kudos to Owl Chatter’s very special friend Delaware Pam for breaking into Frank Bruni’s “For the Love of Sentences” feature today! Here’s how she did it:

    In The Atlantic, Sophie Gilbert experienced the movie Melania as a costume drama: “Melania shows off her custom-made inauguration gown, stark white with black ribbons overlaying it, a dress that now looks unavoidably like the redacted Epstein files.”

    Ha!

    Brava Pam!

    From The Onion:

    Biden Grateful He’s Not Alive To See What Trump Is Doing To Country

    In the puzzle today, at 8D “Track-and-field event with a 16-pound ball” was SHOTPUT. It reminded me of when I tried out for track & field at Brandeis. The coach said all I qualified for was javelin catcher.

    Okay. I’m ready, babe. Heave it!

    Ouch.

    The consensus on Super Bowl LX was that it was a dud, but I watched every minute and loved it. For any sport, my favorite game is one in which my team takes an early lead and spends the rest of the game trying to hold on to it. That’s what happened here and Seattle was absolutely brilliant on defense drive after drive after drive, so it was a pleasure to watch.

    On offense, Kenneth Walker III at RB was deservedly named the game’s MVP for his 135 rushing yards (161 total). His dad KW Junior was in the stands — how great is that!! QB Sam Darnold was credited with a solid, if not brilliant, effort. Good job!

    Let it not go unremarked that the only offensive TD scored by the ‘Hawks was a pass caught by AJ Barner, a Wolverine. Go Blue! In all, AJ had four passes thrown his way during the game and snared them all. Sweet. AJ’s a big boy, at 6′ 6″, 251. Ohio-born, he played in Ann Arbor the year we won the title, 2023.

    I thought most of the ads were terrible; worse — they insulted one’s intelligence. How dumb is this country? (Don’t answer that.) The funny ones tried way too hard, IMO. I couldn’t even tell what most of the ads were for: weird technological stuff.

    Et tu, Sabrina?

    At 35D, “Luminescence” was GLOW. A band called The Innocence Mission put out an album by that name (Glow), and Son Volt shared this pretty song from it.

    Ken Hargreaves of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted this photo and is wondering if they are safe to use.

    Most of the members suggest he get drops that aren’t infected.

    I replied with: I can’t see using it. My high-brow friend Iris agrees, but no one is cornea than she is.

    Mark Bedford asked the members what “occasional tables” are. Nicholas Whitehead more broadly asked: What is occasional furniture the rest of the time? Then he answered: Periodic tables.

    Jonathan Hill: I only have room for frequent tables.

    Martyn Greenwood: One minute they’re tables and the next they’re not!

    Chris Brooking: They are tables as long as you look at them. Once you look away . . . .

    Gareth Duckett: It’s a table you use occasionally.

    Avi Liveson: We should table this discussion.

    Mark Swingler shared this:

    I’ve got an occasional table
    There it is over there
    You can tell it’s an occasional table
    Today’s its day off, it’s a chair

    I’ve got an occasional table
    I can’t seem to get it to settle
    It’s all been a bit unexpected
    I thought I was buying a kettle

    I took it upstairs on the bus
    I always get the bus back from town
    It was then it turned into a wardrobe
    Took six of us to get it back down

    I’ve got an occasional table
    But some of the time I’ve not
    I always rush my dinner
    I never know how long I’ve got

    I think I might have another
    Excuse the element of doubt
    It’s the kind of occasional table
    That’s only in when you’re out

    I thought if I had two they might breed
    I really quite fancy a set
    But with them both being occasional
    I don’t think they’ve actually met

    I’ve got some occasional tables
    I’m never quite sure where they are
    I’d quite like to have a settee but
    So far they’ve not gone, so far

    I think therefore I am
    All we believe stems from this
    Except my occasional table
    Which only occasionally, is

    Perhaps there’s a parallel universe
    Where they all go to live quite a lot
    Where they’re called usual tables
    And only occasionally, not

    An infinite number of occasional tables
    Well then sure there was always one there
    I’ve got an occasional table
    Look, here it is, it’s a chair

    Forward Emma Maltais, below, and all of the girls are going to have to step it up tomorrow against Team USA, after team captain Marie-Philip Poulin left today’s game (a win over the Czech Republic) with an injury. It’s rough out there, ladies. Buckle up.

    Enough.

  • We Know Enough

    Timothy is a type of grass that is all over the f*ckin place in Europe and the U.S. but not in the Mediterranean region. It’s probably named after Timothy Hansen, the American farmer who introduced it into the southern states from New England.

    And this is Indian Paintbrush:

    This poem by Donald Hall, from yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac, is called “Old Roses.”

    White roses, tiny and old, flare among thorns
    by the barn door.
                                    For a hundred years
    under the June elm, under the gaze
    of seven generations,
                                            they lived briefly
    like this, in the month of roses,
                                                              by the fields
    stout with corn, or with clover and timothy
    making thick hay,
                                      grown over, now,
    with milkweed, sumac, paintbrush.
                                                                   Old
    roses survive
    winter drifts, the melt in April, August
    parch,
                 and men and women
    who sniffed roses in spring and called them pretty
    as we call them now,
                                           walking beside the barn
    on a day that perishes.

    Despite having both legs amputated and being 85 years old, Lindsay Vonn told the press she is all set to go for Olympic gold. We are mostly interested in the Canadian Women’s Ice Hockey team this year (Go Sarah!), but we’ll be rooting for LV too. Lookin good, Babe! [Sorry to learn she crashed early in her run, and was airlifted out. Hope she’s okay.]

    And our heroines on ice bested the Swiss yesterday, 4-0. Our Sarah (10) netted the key second goal (see below), and assisted on the first. We outshot the Cheese by around 50-5 (not exaggerating), but couldn’t really open it up until late. The Swiss goalie Maurer held tough for most of the game. We look forward to taking on the USA Tuesday, whose goalie Aerin Frankel (Hi Nance!) is a brick wall.

    Historian Heather Cox Richardson spent her entire newsletter today (2/7) on the network of concentration camps Stephen Miller is setting up around the country. There’s really no other term for them. Part of it covers the failure of the system to provide medical care to prisoners. But I want to share this piece of it, which is extraordinary.

    ICE bought a building the size of seven football fields in [aptly named] Surprise, Arizona, outside Phoenix, for $70 million. Officials from Surprise stated: “The City was not aware that there were efforts underway to purchase the building, was not notified of the transaction, and has not been contacted by DHS or any federal agency about the intended use of the building. It’s important to note, Federal projects are not subject to local regulations, such as zoning.”

    On Tuesday, February 3, more than a thousand people turned out for the Surprise City Council meeting to oppose the establishment of the concentration camp. One of the speakers reminded the council of Ohrdruf, the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops, on April 4, 1945. He said:

    “The U.S. Army brought the leading citizens of Ohrdruf to tour the facility, which turned out to be part of the Buchenwald network of concentration camps. A U.S. Army colonel told the German civilians who viewed the scenes without muttering a word that they were to blame. One of the Germans replied that what happened in the camp was ‘done by a few people,’ and ‘you cannot blame us all.’ And the American, who could have been any one of our grandfathers, said: ‘This was done by those that the German people chose to lead them, and all are responsible.’

    “The morning after the tour, the mayor of Ohrdruf killed himself. And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don’t know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse. But we know enough. I ask you to consider what the mayor of Ohrdruf might have thought before he died. Maybe he felt like a victim. He might have thought, ‘How is this my fault? I had no jurisdiction over this.’ Maybe he would have said, ‘This site was not subject to local zoning, what could I do?’ But I think, when he reflected on the suffering that occurred at this camp, just outside of town, that those words would have sounded hollow even to him. Because in his heart he knew, as we do, that we are all responsible for what happens in our community.”

    Amen to that, brother.

    Okay, let’s class up the joint a little. In yesterday’s puzzle, 37A posed a challenge that arises often. The clue this time was: “Instrument depicted in paintings by Hals and Caravaggio. So you know it’s an old-timey instrument, four letters. Sometimes you know it starts with an L and/or ends with an E. The problem: is it a LUTE or a LYRE? If you’re lucky, the crosses will resolve it. Yesterday it was a LUTE.

    Today’s puzzle was a little ho-hum. Hidden words for boss in an Undercover Boss theme. Best one was SHOCKING PINK, hiding kingpin. See it?

    At 50D the clue was “Drink from a tub?” and the answer was MOONSHINE.

    At 77A, it was nice to see TIN MEN (“1987 Dreyfuss/DeVito comedy”), a movie I showed in my law class from time to time on the topic of fraud. It’s about aluminum siding salesmen and some of the scenes show their shady sales pitches. A Congressional home improvement commission investigates. Barbara Hershey was the female lead. Remember her?

    Does she look Jewish to you? Half Jewish? Jew-ish, George? Her dad was Jewish. Now that I see her, she’d be well-cast if a movie were ever made about my sister Bonnie, aleha hashalom.

    Barbara just turned 78 this week, kinehora. She was in a movie as recently as 2022 (9 Bullets). She has one child, a son whose dad is David Carradine. They named him Free, but he changed it to Tom when he was nine, for obvious reasons.

    In Tin Men, as Hershey and Dreyfuss are falling in love, a Sinatra song is playing and Dreyfuss tells her that when he was younger he’d ask girls to hear Sinatra with him and he’d take them to the alley near the door to the theater where Sinatra was playing and they’d stand out there and listen. “Not very high-class,” Dreyfuss admitted. And Hershey said: “I’d stand in the alley with you.” [Sigh.]

    Work with leeks at all? I never have, but I learned something about them today. The clue at 8A was “Vegetables that should typically be sliced lengthwise before washing,” and the answer was LEEKS. Had no idea. This comes off Martha Stewart’s website:

    Using a sharp chef’s knife, “cut the leek lengthwise, keeping the base or core intact and then gently opening the leek from the top and kind of fanning them out.” From there, since the leaves are still attached to the core, you are able to wash each layer well, under cold running water.

    From today’s Met Diary, by Janet Nelson.

    Dear Diary:

    I was walking on 77th Street to catch a bus up Amsterdam Avenue. And just before I got to the corner, I saw a bus sail away.

    While I waited for the next one, an older woman joined me.

    “We’ve just missed one,” I said. “Eight minutes to go.”

    She said she was just taking a rest, not catching a bus.

    Her accent was definitely British. Being British myself, I asked what had brought her here, and we began to chat.

    I said I had married a fabulous American and had been happy for 56 years.

    “I married a really dreadful American,” she said.

    My niece Tamar sent me a text yesterday wishing us a Happy Superb Owl Weekend. And that is what we at Owl Chatter wish for all of you! Thanks for dropping in. And Go Hawks! You got this, Sam.

  • Drawing Aces

    I’m sure you’ve heard about it, but it’s too perfect to ignore. On his social media platform overnight, Trump shared a video that includes a racist animation of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama depicted with the bodies of apes.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage.” But, but, but . . . the video only includes imagery of the Obamas.

    I guess Trump and Leavitt were unaware that the video was shared in October by the Hardin County Republican Party of Kentucky, which led the chairman to issue an apology after swift backlash noting the long history of racist tropes depicting Black people as apes or monkeys — a vehicle for slave traders and segregationists to dehumanize them. At least the Kentucky racists apologized, you know, when caught. Can’t imagine that from the White House.

    There was much in the puzzle to love today: an owl sighting (!) and a Taylor Swift lyric, just to name two. It’s going to be a heavy music day, starting with an exquisite Valentines tune. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

    The clue for OWL was classy: “Parliament constituent.” It’s from the term for a group of owls: a parliament.

    Here’s Rex: “Because I studied Middle English literature in grad school, I knew Chaucer’s poem Parlement of Foules (i.e. ‘Parliament of Fowls’) before I ever knew the term ‘parliament’ applied specifically to owls. Fun (and semi-timely) fact: Parlement of Foules is the likely origin of the association of St. Valentine’s Day with lovers.”

    Don’t need no Valentines; don’t need no roses.
    Just take me back in time.

    The Taylor Swift lyric was a mystery to me. The clue was “‘Hearts are ____ for the breakin”” (Taylor Swift lyric).” Answer HERS. It’s from this song, below, but brace yourself: she drops a few F-bombs in it.

    On HERS, Son Volt shared this tune by The Honeydogs, a band that started out in St. Paul MN in 1994. I’m glad word of them finally reached me under my rock.

    The Commentariat was suitably impressed with 49A: “Phenomenon through which luxuries become necessities.” Answer: LIFESTYLE CREEP. Egs gave it a secondary meaning: “In his day, Hugh Hefner might have seemed glamorous, but today he’d be viewed as a LIFESTYLE CREEP.”

    My personal favorite was at 7D: “Derisive term for unattractive public sculptures:” PLOP ART. You know, some horrible giant public art installation that is just plopped down in the middle of somewhere. A play on POP ART. This might qualify. It’s in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

    Mickey Lolich passed away on Wednesday at the age of 85, a brilliant left-handed starter for the Tigers from 1963 to 1975. It’s not too much of a stretch to say he single-handedly won the World Series for Detroit over St. Louis in 1968, pitching three complete game wins. In Game 7, on two days rest, Lolich outpitched Bob Gibson. Yeah, you heard me. Detroit won the game, 4-1. It was the last World Series game in which both starting pitchers pitched complete games (57 years and counting). Fifty years later Lolich said in an interview that he went into that game “slightly tired,” but that made his fastball sink more than usual. The final out was a foul pop out by Tim McCarver.

    In 1971, Lolich pitched 376 innings and struck out 308 batters. He went 25-14 with an ERA of 2.92. He lost out to Vida Blue for the Cy Young award that year. From 1971 thru 1974, he pitched over 300 innings each year and came one win short of averaging 20 per season.

    Post-baseball, Mickey and his wife ran a doughnut and pastry shop in Lake Orion MI. Thus, the photo, below. Rest in peace, Mickey.

    Got to hunker down now. It’s not getting out of the teens for a couple of days. Pancake and soup weather. We’ll stay in bed with the owls and do crosswords. Keep warm, Chatterheads!

  • The Halo of the Last Candle

    The Republicans have put a new spin on “No Child Left Behind.”

    Not really new, though.

    This poem is called “Adage.” It’s by Billy Collins and was in today’s Writer’s Almanac.

    When it’s late at night and branches
    are banging against the windows,
    you might think that love is just a matter

    of leaping out of the frying pan of yourself
    into the fire of someone else,
    but it’s a little more complicated than that.

    It’s more like trading the two birds
    who might be hiding in that bush
    for the one you are not holding in your hand.

    A wise man once said that love
    was like forcing a horse to drink
    but then everyone stopped thinking of him as wise.

    Let us be clear about something.
    Love is not as simple as getting up
    on the wrong side of the bed wearing the emperor’s clothes.

    No, it’s more like the way the pen
    feels after it has defeated the sword.
    It’s a little like the penny saved or the nine dropped stitches.

    You look at me through the halo of the last candle
    and tell me love is an ill wind
    that has no turning, a road that blows no good,

    but I am here to remind you,
    as our shadows tremble on the walls,
    that love is the early bird who is better late than never.

    Did you know this about William S. Burroughs, the writer from the Allen Ginsberg world: One night at a party, he and his wife, Joan, agreed to demonstrate how he could shoot a glass off the top of her head. He missed the glass and killed her. Yikes. He was born on this date in St. Louis in 1914. Actually, Burroughs recanted that version of the incident and maintained that it was purely accidental (didn’t know it was loaded, it went off when he dropped it, blah, blah, blah). He was convicted of manslaughter, which I’m trying to change into man’s laughter right now (and failing).

    Linda! Maybe we should hold off on our glass-shooting act for a bit.

    It puts a whole new spin on the meaning of “shot glass.”

    Ever hear of a SEXER? It was the answer at 31A today, clued with “Chick checker of a sort.” It’s someone who is specially trained to pick up baby chicks and determine their sex so they can be sorted (for future consumption or egg-laying or whatever). Large commercial hatcheries employ sexers to weed out the undesirable male chicks, which are mostly killed because they are “useless” (can’t lay eggs).

    Here’s a joke from my Uncle Morris from sixty years ago. A woman brought a bunch of chickens to the market to sell. She asked the man behind the counter how much he’d pay for them. He said it depends on where they’re from. “Let’s see,” he said. Then he took one, stuck his finger up its tuchas and said, “This one’s from Rhode Island.” He took the next one, stuck his finger up its tuchas and said, “This one’s from Kentucky.” And so on for all of them. He said he’d give her $30 for the lot and she said fine. As he was counting out the bills, he said “I haven’t seen you around here. Where are you from?” At that point, she turned around, pulled up her dress, bent over, and said: “You tell me.”

    [Thanks, Maish!]

    Yesterday’s puzzle’s theme was very inventive, especially for Seinfeld fans. There were three “rites of passage” as theme answers: BAR MITZVAH, VISION QUEST (for Native Americans), and RUMSPRINGA (for the Amish). Then, the revealer, from all the way in left field was ” ‘Seinfeld’ catchphrase… or, when parsed as three words, how a participant of the theme entries might be greeted?” Answer: HELLO NEWMAN. (Get it? Hello new man.)

    BTW, Jerry was asked by an interviewer once why he hated Newman, and he said, there was never any reason given for that on the show. It just seemed funny for that to be the case.

    Women’s Olympic hockey hit the ice running (skating) today, well, only part of it did. The U.S. topped The Czech Republic 5-1 in the opening game, but the much-anticipated Canada-Finland match was postponed because ten of the Finns fell ill.

    Here’s the Canadian team that won gold in 2022. Our Sarah Fillier is fourth from the left. Yay!

    Andy Spragg, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) says there’s an irreconcilable issue within this sentence of a review he wrote: It’s a bit corny, and apparently is an (allegedly much inferior) retread-for-UK of a Belgian TV series, but we’re enjoying it very much.

    I was too stupid to spot the issue, but several other dull members did. It’s an “a/an” issue pertaining to the word (an) immediately preceding the parentheses. “An” certainly sounds right as he wrote it. But there is a rule that says a sentence must make sense grammatically and logically if the parenthetical information is removed. I.e., were a parenthesis to be removed, the surrounding text must still be grammatically sound. And, here, removing the parentheses leaves you with “an retread.”

    As Andy puts it: “a sentence with an embedded fragment in brackets must be equally correct whether that fragment is present or absent, and in this case it’s not possible because the preceding indefinite article should be ‘an’ (if the fragment is present) or ‘a’ (if it is not).

    “SWMBO has suggested writing ‘a(n)’ as a neat trick to resolve the conundrum, which is nice but cheating, really, I think.

    “Allegedly, there is no ambiguity because the indefinite article ‘belongs’ to the noun immediately after the fragment. I’ll be very happy to have learned a new rule of English composition if this is indeed the case. However, several people asserting something to be so does not make it so. I wonder if anyone can point me to an ‘official’ reference that confirms this assertion, please?”

    [OC note: SWMBO stands for “she who must be obeyed,” i.e., his wife.]

    My vote is for “an” here. I think the phonetics trump the grammatical rule.

    Brain hurt now? Follow me to the beer department. Now drink this.

    See you tomorrow! Thanks for (burp!) stopping in.

  • Republican Egret

    I don’t think I ever started my tax class without a reference to Gertrude Stein that I stole from my tax prof at Penn Law, Bernie Wolfman, alav hashalom. I would talk about my friend Richie who found $100 on the street in SOHO. The question we discussed was, does the tax law require him to report it as taxable income? After we bat it around a bit, I tell the class that it is taxable because Gertrude Stein wrote Section 61 of the Internal Revenue Code, which says: Income is income is income.

    Gertrude Stein was born on this date in 1874 in Allegheny, PA. Happy birthday, old girl!

    Poets who don’t take themselves too seriously, and who aren’t phonies, have a much better chance of getting their work past the Owl Chatter guard puppies. X. J. Kennedy was a good example. He passed away at the age of 96 at his home in Peabody MA on Sunday. His “Brats” series for young readers featured humorous cautionary tales in verse.

    Garth, from off the garden wall,
    Ate a rosebush, roots and all.
    Doctors worked on him for hours.
    The family requests, “no flowers.”

    In Rex Parker’s writeups on the NYT puzzles he often makes fun of the wrong paths his brain leads him on. You know, you’ll have a few letters of a word, and assume an answer that turns out to be way off, or that you parse crazily. Today, there was an answer that was REGRET. Rex had the last five letters and thought of the bird (EGRET). And he didn’t let go of it even when the R appeared, momentarily thinking “R-egret? Is there such a thing as a Republican egret?” (He continued down that path:) Sung to the tune of “American Woman” by the Guess Who: “Republican egret / Stay away from me! / Republican egret / Mama let me be!”

    I chimed in to note that Rex may have uncovered an Ogden Nash poem:

    The Republican egret
    Has much to regret

    Whatsername commented that she loved it! I’m shallow enough that it made my day.

    The theme of the puzzle today was INSIDE VOICES, clued with “What children should use at the library.” Then in four long answers, the names of singers were buried. E.g., TUNN[EL VIS]ION concealed ELVIS.

    Re “inside voices,” I shared that I had a cousin who worked for many years in the Brooklyn Public Library system as a shusher.

    Since the clue at 53A was “Beyond well-done” for BURNT, we got a double reference with the following song (ELVIS and BURNT):

    That’s Aimee Mann. ‘Til Tuesday was her band. Phil said he had a really nice visit with her, despite being drunk (him, of course, not her).

    Commenter Lewis had the sweetest response to the puzzle today:

    “My favorite answer is INSIDE VOICES, which threw me back into elementary school, where teachers admonished us to use them as we walked in a line to the library, and if one of us spoke too loudly while there, the teacher would sternly repeat the phrase.

    “Then I fondly flashed on – actually saw in my mind’s eye — the two elementary school teachers I adored.

    “That was followed by vivid elementary school memories, such as in second grade, when my teacher and another teacher were flirting. All the kids tittered about it, and I was proud to be chosen to relay her love notes to him.

    “Crosswords, they wake things up, no?”

    A frequent complaint among the Commentariat cites the “dumbing down” of the NYTXW. The consensus is it has been made easier to increase subscriptions. Commenter Gary had enough of this “it’s too easy” whining, and let loose today. (For the record, I agree with the complainers: the XWs used to be more challenging and, thus. more rewarding to solve.) Here’s Gary:

    It’s the fashion of our blog participants to append an adjective to the word easy prior to launching into a tirade of thinly veiled contempt for the perceived tragic state of affairs at the NYTXW. Today it’s absurdly easy, but my favorite phrase, usually voiced by one of our beloved Anonymoti is insultingly easy.

    These plaintive cries from the barnyard of our fickle flock have been ongoing for years. The weeping juxtaposed next to the inconvenient fact the puzzle is more popular and more profitable than ever leaves me curious why a narrow band of highly experienced solvers keeps showing up, keeps complaining, keeps sharing their apocalyptic adjectives next to “easy.” Occasionally, I wonder aloud, how long will you keep doing over and over the same thing and expecting a different result?

    With the obsessive need to do the Times crossword it appears the insane addiction is permanent, and unlike Cnut, we will be yelling at the tides day after day in our petty way until our candle is snuffed out. Darned you brain for being able to do the puzzle produced by this venue! I can imagine an old man standing in the magazine aisle of the grocery store holding a book of Dell Fun to Solve crosswords above his head and yelling at passers-by, “These are too easy! They’re not fun to solve. Damn you Dell and Albertsons for letting me buy these puzzle books.” I picture a kind-hearted grocery clerk with one of those giant brooms swooshing up to him, patting the maniacal man on the back, gently saying he understands, letting him know everything will be fine, and saying, “Maybe these puzzles aren’t for you anymore.”

    From The Onion:

    Funeral Canceled Due to Runaway Corpse.

    See you tomorrow! Thanks for popping in.

  • The Velvet of Sweet Reasonableness

    I found a beautiful sentence recently that I wanted to send to Frank Bruni for his “For the Love of Sentences” feature. It was from the Ethics column in The Times. There was a husband and wife and the husband consented to the wife’s having an affair. After a bit, the wife broke off the affair, in part feeling bad about it. Of course, I forgot to send it to Frank, but several other readers did. Here it is, below, as presented in Frank’s column:

    In The Times Magazine, Kwame Anthony Appiah parsed a husband’s acquiescence to his wife’s affair, for her sake, and her subsequent abandonment of it, for his: “Beneath the velvet of sweet reasonableness lurked the edged steel of unspoken ultimatums.” 

    We are devoted to our owls here, of course, but when Caity was little her favorite stuffed animals were penguins. Don’t get me wrong, she loved “Uncle Welly,” but when asked about him she’d say, “He’s daddy’s.” Anyway, for those of you who like penguins too, let’s switch briefly to Penguin Chatter, via another clip from Frank’s column:

    In Smithsonian Magazine, Cheryl Katz observed Falkland Islands penguins returning to their colonies after rounding up food for their offspring: “I watch these intrepid mamas ride the churning surf below, porpoising over surging waves to shore, then blasting belly-first onto jagged, seaweed-slicked rocks. Some land, pop up on their feet and make a mad dash out of the way of the next wave. Most, however, wipe out and get swept back to sea. They’ll have to try again and again.”

    In today’s puzzle, many noted the fifth line up from the bottom. It contained only two words: DONALD and STENCH. The former was clued with: “Uncle of Huey, Dewey and Louie.”

    Son Volt steered clear of the politics, instead sharing a John Prine song containing these lyrics:

    But dreaming just comes natural
    Like the first breath from a baby
    Like sunshine feeding daisies
    Like the love hidden deep in your heart

    The puzzle was otherwise a paean to GROUNDHOG DAY, which it is today. Since the movie is all about repetition, it (GROUNDHOG DAY) is repeated four times in the answers, clued differently each time. It made the puzzle super easy, even for a Monday. The best of the clues, IMO, was “Film about which Harold Ramis said ‘He goes from being a prisoner of that time and place to being master of that time and place.’”

    Oh, hi Andie! Haven’t seen you in a while. We’ve got some Diet Grape Soda. George! Company!

    How’s Sarah? Andie’s pretty daughter Sarah Margaret Qualley is an actress too. And she’s married to Jack Antonoff, a big hotshot in the music biz. He’s worked with Taylor and has copped 13 Grammys. Here’s Sarah. Yup, we can see the resemblance.

    Claire Foy dropped by too, at 47A: “Actress Claire of ‘The Crown.’” Another knockout. What’s going on today?

    Claire is English, 41, and separated from her husband with whom she had a daughter. In 2021, Foy was targeted by a stalker who sent her more than 1,000 emails in one month and turned up at her house. It was a great relief to learn it was not our staff photographer Phil, especially for Phil. They caught the guy. Phil was cleared by the investigators when it emerged that he doesn’t know how to send email.

    I read the review of Melania by Lauren Collins in the New Yorker: “a journey into the void.” It is exactly what you would think it is. Here are some snippets:

    “The timing couldn’t be more infelicitous for ‘Melania,’ which showed, at a private White House screening, just hours after federal agents killed Alex Pretti, on a Minneapolis street. A notably patchy crowd, including Amazon bosses, Queen Rania of Jordan, and Mike Tyson enjoyed a spread of dichromatic snacks, such as hurricane lamps filled with white gumballs and macarons that looked as though they were made of toothpaste and coal. 

    “The First Couple’s marriage, never outwardly loving, comes across as particularly arid on the rare occasions when they interact. ‘That’s a good one, congrats,’ Melania says, over the phone on Election Night, as Trump crows about his victory. ‘I will see it on the news.’ Her husband may as well have won a bowling tournament. One wonders whether she’s exacting payback for the time, in 2018, when, in a tweet welcoming her home from the hospital after a minor procedure, he accidentally called her Melanie.”

    Collins reports that two-thirds of the people who worked on it asked to be removed from the credits.

    Many people have noted how often M’s heels are featured in shots. I suppose we have to give them credit for that. She’s got one helluva collection. Imelda is still living, btw, 96, kinehora. These are Louboutins (maybe).

    Oy. See you tomorrow, Chatterheads.

  • Celebrini’s Scruples

    How often is Kazakhstan in the sports news? Maybe we should get used to it. The brilliant and beautiful Elena Rybakina is from there and she just outdueled Aryna Sabalenka to win the Aussie Open. How impressive was Elena’s win? Sabalenka is ranked #1 in the world, and to reach the final Elena had to beat Iga Swiatek, ranked #2. The final went the distance and was as stressful as it gets. Elena was a rock, as Sabalenka suffered a flurry of unforced errors.

    Elena is 26 and not married. Her hair has been tangled up in her racket for several days now, but she is hesitant to cut it. We don’t blame her.

    This tiny love story is from today’s NYT and is by Nicole Hardy.

    Two days after Christmas, Maxwell called. “Might drop dead tomorrow,” he said. A loud-talking, adorable joker from Jersey, he hired me as a deckhand narrating Seattle boat tours in 1996. We fell in love, felt invincible with the Space Needle and Kurt Cobain’s house in the distance. Fast forward to Parkinson’s, heart failure, a D.N.R. “One to ten, how scared are you?” I asked. “Seven,” he replied. My heart dropped. “Do you still believe in God?” I asked. “Tell you tomorrow,” he joked, and we laughed ourselves breathless. “I love you forever,” I said. It’s always been true.

    Annals of good sportsmanship. The ump has just made a call in your favor in a matter that is not reviewable, but he got it wrong. Do you correct him, or silently reap the benefit? Silly question, right? You have the right to remain silent and that is clearly what you do. Unless you are Macklin Celebrini, who plays pro hockey for the San Jose Sharks.

    MC appeared to be the victim of a high stick, and the ref called a penalty on the perpetrator. But he knew the stick never touched him. He went over to the ref and signaled, “No, don’t call it.” The ref called it anyway, but Celebrini’s impressive gesture has been noted. We asked Owl Chatter Sports Consultant Sarah Fillier for her thoughts on the matter. There is no tougher competitor on the ice than Sarah. “Of course, he did the right thing,” Sarah said. Wait, did she just wink?

    Song Sung Blue is a wonderful movie, no matter how well you know Neil Diamond’s hits (which go way beyond Sweet Caroline, it stresses), starring, overwhelmingly, Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, the latter garnering an Oscar nom for her work, and the former, IMHO, deserving one. We saw it down near Princeton with friend Minnesota Mary, who concurred. Favorite scene: in the Thai restaurant. Bring tissues.

    Can a lake be both “great” and “superior?” Sure, why not? Lake Superior is both, and, according to the puzzle yesterday, it’s the “largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area.” Wow. In the world. The Ojibwe called it Gitche Gumee, to use Longfellow’s spelling, which means great lake. Gordon Lightfoot popularized the song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” which memorializes Superior at its fiercest.

    Does anyone know where the love of God goes
    When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

    But here’s Laura Cantrell.

    At 122A today, the clue was “Embarrassing items to have revealed on an airport X-ray,” and the answer was SEX TOYS. Tee hee. I shared this story with the gang:

    On airport security (but not sex toys). Seeking a gift for my daughter in Dublin, I went to a “cheesemonger” and explained my mission. He spun right around, grabbed a giant slab of Irish Cheddar, and scraped me off a taste. That was easy: I had him wrap up a pound for her (and had to have a small chunk right away for me).

    For the trip home I stupidly elected not to pack Caity’s cheese in the bag we checked, but to carry it on. What could be threatening about cheese? (Hijacker to pilot: “I’m taking over this plane: I’ve got a pound of Irish Cheddar in here and I’m not afraid to use it!!”) But, sure enough, after my bag took its little trip through the scanner, it was shunted aside, a guard pulled out the cheese, asked me to wait, and went to some back room with it.

    At this point, I had two fears. I figured there was a 50% chance it would be confiscated because of some cheese security rule I never heard of, and a 5% chance I would be arrested, and spend the rest of my life in some Irish version of Midnight Express.

    Happy ending: After a few minutes the guard returned with the cheese, gave me a big thumbs up and a smile, and placed it back in my bag.

    Caity loved it.

    Josh Boyes, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted the following: Does anyone know what these square white things are at the bottom of my pool in Cabo Verde? It’s causing far too much excitement for a ‘Holiday’. Thanks!

    Robin Smith: It’s a cover for a drain. It stops toes getting sucked into the whirlpool of water leaving the pool.

    Avi Liveson: So where do the toes go?

    Wayne Coxon: I worked as a life guard for a few years, I’ve messed around with plant rooms, drained and refilled pools and dragged hair out of places you wouldn’t expect it so let me tell you that I have absolutely no idea what this thing is.

    AJ Hart: I’m more concerned that the steps are on the right, meaning you have to enter the pool and go left… when in fact written English goes left to right. So the pool is totally wrong. … Is the photo reversed?

    We agree that the pool is totally wrong. See you tomorrow!

  • You Want Fries With That?

    Here’s Marlanda Dekine. Look at that beautiful punim. She’s a South Carolina girl, both a poet and a social worker.

    Marlanda’s poem, “Memory Poem,” was today’s Poem-A-Day from Poets.org.

    I am a child  
    of wonder again and 
    rain tells me to watch 
    for snails and slugs. 

    I gather dirt, sand, and sticks 
    for the terrarium 
    where I make a safe home 
    away from footsteps, fast cars, and ditch water.

    I don’t want them to die  
    so I make them  
    a space for living. 

    I ask my ma to buy lettuce 
    because in the book I got from the library 
    I learned they will eat lettuce.

    I am  
    greedy to learn  
    what keeps everything alive.

    Their spiral shapes leave shiny trails behind. 
    I imagine I am a snail leaving  
    magic everywhere I go.

    President Trump said U.S. forces used a secret weapon called the “Discombobulator” that helped impair Venezuelan equipment during the early January raid that captured Nicolás Maduro.

    “The Discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it,” the president said in an interview with the New York Post published Saturday. (Not kidding.)

    Owl Chatter sent George down to see what he could find out about the Discombobulator. We figured since he’s already discombobulated most of the time, he’d be pretty safe. For reasons of national security, we cannot publish any of the technical material his sources provided to us. But he did manage to sneak this photo out of the Pentagon in Fawn Hall’s bra.

    Yup, it’s in there. Hey babe! You like Fresca?

    Today’s puzzle was by beloved constructor Robyn Weintraub and it did not disappoint. Has the news gotten you down? How could it not, amirite? Feeling a little discombobulated? Well, right next to each other at 46A and 52A are FACE REALITY and REMAIN CALM.

    Tay gives it an anti-gay-hatred tilt here:

    Robyn tips her cap to the gay community at 28D: “Florida setting for ‘The Birdcage.’” Answer: SOUTH BEACH.

    And speaking of THEM, that was the answer at 15A, clued with “Those guys?” It led Son Volt to share this old tune. If you recognize the voice, you may recall that Them was Van Morrison’s band before he went solo.

    At 39A, “Mylar alternative” was LATEX, and at 44D, “Popular brand of weedkiller” was ORTHO. So I posted the following for the gang at Rex’s:

    If I had known my LATEX was going to keel over like that, I wouldn’t have blown all that money on the divorce.

    After several sessions with a speech therapist, my cousin Louie doesn’t lisp anymore. ORTHO he says.

    Not a fashionista here, but it’s hard to imagine why these latex outfits haven’t caught on.

    Our friend ‘Zona Nancy posted this moosage on facebook: “If you choose not to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy, but the same amount of snow.”

    I commented: “Right now, I am choosing to find one of my gloves in the snow.”

    Is that bottle of water who I think it is?

    Owl Chatter sports consultant Sarah Fillier will be reporting on the Winter Olympics for us from the heart of the action. She’s one of three NY Sirens named to Team Canada. Brava, Filly!! The other two are our brilliant goalie Kayle Osborne and forward Kristin O’Neill. Drop the puck, ref!! We’re ready!!

    Canada’s first game will be against Finland, Thursday night, Feb. 5.

    Here’s Kayle. Try to stay calm, fellas. I know the effect those sexy uniforms can have. But she’s got some serious sh*t to attend to.

    See you tomorrow Chatterheads! Thanks for popping by.