The Wellington Files

  • Dress Code

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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).

    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!).

    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.

    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.

    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.

  • An Utterly Illiterate Work

    An emergency session of Owl Chatter’s Dirty Old Man Dept. was convened this morning. How had we not heard of Begoña Gomez, the pulchritudinous first lady of Spain, adored the world over by drooling accordionists?

    Begoña, 55(!), has been married to President Pedro Sanchez of Spain for twenty years. They have two daughters. She comes to our attention via a NYT article on corruption charges she’s facing from her business activities. It may be politically motivated: “a deeply flawed hit job by an obsessed judge,” and President Sanchez is attempting to turn it to his advantage. Who cares? Here she is again. Hubba hubba.

    It was a dreadful loss for the Gnats last night, seeking to rebound from an even dreadfuller one the night before. Oy. Double Oy. In each case they had a lead going into the ninth only to watch in horror as the rival Phils snatched up wins. It put a bit of a damper on the first half of the season that ended with the Gnats just peeking out over the .500 mark at 41-40. We soldier on. Amirite CJ?

    A running gag Sam and I had last year was creatively misspelling “Odyssey” (as in Honda) when texting one another. It came up a lot because we sold our 2015 black one to friends of Sam and Sarah in Chicago. I drove it out to Detroit where they picked it up. Anyway, the New Yorker article I read at our pool today was about the film version of the epic that is coming out soon, and which I doubt I will see. It made me question whether I got my tuition-money’s worth out of Brandeis since I realized I remember almost nothing of it, despite studying it and writing at least one paper on it as a freshman in Allen Grossman’s then-famous Humanities class. What I do remember from that class was his assessment of the first college paper I ever wrote: “An utterly illiterate work.” (Are there degrees of illiterateness? Was that “utterly” really necessary?) He also once caught me napping (with my eyes open) in class and charged me with “sitting there like a bump on a log.” But I don’t remember squat about the poem. E.g., it was only via the article that I was reminded that Telemachus was O’s son.

    The article is by David Denby and here’s a small piece of it I liked. It’s about O’s encounter with Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla, Denby reminds us, was a sea monster that ate men. O lost some of his in this horrifying scene.

    . . . In agony they cried
    to me and called my name—their final words.
    As when a fisherman out on a cliff
    casts his long rod and line set round with oxhorn
    to trick the little fishes with his bait;
    when one is caught, he flings it gasping back
    onto the shore—so those men gasped as Scylla
    lifted them up high to her rocky cave
    and at the entrance ate them up—still screaming,
    still reaching out to me in their death throes.

    “Agony is hard to watch in a movie. As for the simile of the little fishes, the cinema can hardly match it; the medium is mostly wedded to what it shows. An image may resonate with deeper meanings (that’s what great directors can bring about), but the compression and displacement that make the simile devastating on the page have no cinematic equivalent. Sometimes poetry leaves the cinema behind, gasping for breath.”

    Anne Hathaway plays Penelope, the football widow on the Sunday that lasted twenty years. Matt Damon plays the O-Man. Did you know he’s 55? Anne’s 43. We agree with Phil: She’s looked better.

    Speaking of football, Phil just sent in this shot he got for us of Taylor’s engagement ring. The Knicks are a hard act to follow, but Tay and Trav will be tying the knot at The Garden next week. Mazel Tov, kids.

    In the NYTXW today, at 15D, “‘Bye Bye Bye’ boy band” was NSYNC. It reminded me of the time Linda and I had tix for a concert but it was such a nice day out, we had trouble tearing ourselves away from the pool. It was a question of NSYNC or swim?

    The wordplay in the puzzle was impressive. The theme was “insider trading” and in the theme answers, letters “inside” were “traded” to come up with the answer while the post-trade word was also a word, albeit unclued. (I know, WTF, right?)

    Here’s how it worked: For the clue “Advocate of women’s equality” you filled in the squares with FINE MIST. Then, by having the EM and IN “trade” places, you wind up with FEMINIST. (See?) F*cking brilliant, IMO. That happened six times! The sexiest one was BRA PADS clued with “They may result in people being wrongly sent to jail.” Trade the AD with the RAP to get BAD RAPS.

    Bravo, Tarun Krishnamurthy. TK is a sophomore at San Diego State.

    Thanks for dropping in, Chatterheads!

  • Giorgia and Galatea

    Leave it to the Italians to have a hot Prime Minister. That’s Giorgia Meloni, of course.

    She cozied up to Trump for a while, no doubt expecting to play him, but soon found out he’s such a turd it’s useless. When he recently lied saying she begged for a photo with him, she shot back: “There is one thing he should remember. I never beg — and neither does Italy.”

    Per Bret Stephens in the Times:

    “However much we may disdain him, the president has the rest of us on the hook, as the face and voice of a country that ought to know better. Trump’s angry visage draped between the exterior columns of the Department of Justice? That’s us. His gilded, meretricious redecoration of the White House? That’s us. His repeatedly avowed admiration for Vladimir Putin? That’s us. His laughable claim about having achieved regime change in Tehran? That’s us. His Mafia-like threats against NATO allies? That’s us. His indescribably vain (and pathetically fruitless) effort to affix his name to the Kennedy Center? That’s us. His venal family profiting off his presidency in ways both transparent and tacky? That’s us.

    “The same goes for his insult of Meloni, which may be far from the worst of his sins but is also the most emblematic for being at once so utterly unnecessary as well as dementedly self-defeating. That’s us. The same country that freed its slaves, welcomed immigrants, invented airplanes, liberated concentration camps, landed men on the moon and challenged the Soviet Union to tear down this wall now bids to be the global equivalent of the expensively dressed man soiling his pants at a cocktail party.”

    Brava, Giorgia.

    IMHO, I hit the jackpot for my ridiculous wordplay from the NYTXW today. I worked with ASSERTS, ETSY (Big name in e-commerce), TAEBO, TOGA, and PONZU (Citrus-based sauce in Japanese cuisine).

    Also STATUE was clued with “Pygmalion’s Galatea, for one.” If you’re not familiar with the story, Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with Galatea, a statue he created.

    So I came up with the following:

    That was quite a bike ride.
    Yup. Five hours.
    How are you feeling?
    ASSERTS.

    You come dressed for a workout like that?!
    Your message said “bow tie.”
    No, you idiot — I said TAE BO!

    Plot to corner the market on Japanese citrus-based sauces: PONZU scheme.

    Pygmalion (from bedroom, upon hearing the front door open downstairs): Honey, STATUE?
    Galatea: Yes, darling. I’ll be right up.

    Brutus: Julie-babes. That gorgeous new TOGA is to die for! I’d kill for one like it. Let me take a stab at where you got it — Target?
    Caesar: ETSY Brutè.

    Here’s Galatea. Yup, I can see it.

    This entry in Met Diary last Sunday is by Sloane Crosley.

    Dear Diary:

    I was walking past a woman in her 20s who was dressed neatly if blandly in grays and blacks.

    She was headed into an office building on 53rd Street, at 9 a.m., and screaming into her phone: “And I said I don’t know what that thing is, but it’s not going in my body unless you unplug it!”

    I think about it all the time.

    Craig Griffiths innocently posted the following for the Dull Men’s Club (UK) recently:

    “Watching Rhubarb asleep this afternoon, it occurred to me that she has absolutely everything she wants. Food arrives. Walks happen. Comfortable beds are available in several locations. People tell her she’s clever despite there being very little evidence for it. If reincarnation exists, I’d quite like to come back as Rhubarb. Not my actual Rhubarb, obviously. That would create all sorts of complications, given that I’d also be dead.

    “But it did get me thinking about death. Not in a gloomy way, just out of curiosity. What do people genuinely believe happens when we die? Do you think that’s the end of it, or that something comes next?”

    In the comments section, Russell Davies unloaded with this:

    “In my early 40’s, after a long period of celibacy living with an ‘ex’ as a friend, I had the good fortune to come across a reference online to the name of the first real girlfriend I had ever had, who was working as an author in France. I made the decision to contact her, and within a short space of time began a relationship in earnest, of necessity, long distance. I was amazed to have rediscovered her and that we still felt a strong connection. She was in the process of extricating herself from a very unhappy marriage, and was excited to have found her first love again, as was I. Within a month of meeting, however, things took an awful turn. Her husband discovered that he had a rare form of cancer. It was a traumatic experience, as not only had it been a long marriage, but they had had twin boys within the marriage who were at the time seven years old, and it was a huge emotional trauma for the entire family.

    “They separated nonetheless, but, understandably, she did not feel able to invite me over as she and the twins were regularly visiting him both at his new home and later in hospital. She was also from a traditional French family, and was horrified at the thought that she would be judged by family and the wider community if I were to be ensconced in the family home. Towards the end, he moved back into their family home, and spent much of his last six months on earth with the children.

    “When after eighteen months my girlfriend’s husband was dying, I felt a sense of deep trepidation, as I had a sudden premonition that he was not going to cross over easily. I contacted a friend who is a Tibetan Buddhist lay practitioner, and together we decided to request of a local temple that practice be done by local monks to help him cross over when he died. This indeed took place a month later, when I heard the news that he had lost the struggle with cancer.

    “When I eventually moved to France to be with my girlfriend, almost a year later, I walked into an atmosphere heavy with emotion, and I instantly felt a spiritual presence in the building, and what appeared to be a spiritual attachment on everyone in the house. Both my girlfriend and her two children had a very oppressed and negative energy that went well beyond the deep sadness and unprocessed grief which was nevertheless present, and it was a difficult beginning to our living together. However, over the course of the year I spent there, things went from bad to worse.

    “Within six weeks of being there, the children expressed that they felt I had wanted to kill their father. There was a huge resentment at my presence in the house, to the point that my girlfriend would not even sleep with me, but set up a bed for me in the office downstairs next to the garage. I felt a very powerful and tangible feeling that the husband was present, and apart from the feeling of this and of being watched, I felt he was emotionally influencing everyone in the house directly.

    “I did my best to get on with building a life there, set up an ‘association’ or local business, teaching English and guitar, but despite my best efforts, I was not assimilated into the household, and my girlfriend was quick to anger with me at the smallest things, often flying into an uncontrollable rage and even physically attacking me. In more somber moments, she would cry, and would say that we had killed her husband, and no amount of comforting or talking would move this feeling she had. The atmosphere was tense most of the time, and I sensed a brooding angry presence lurking, a hidden consciousness inhabiting the house which I could not communicate with despite my efforts.

    One day, after months of uneasiness, my then girlfriend was roaming the house looking for something with the children, while I was preparing English lessons for my students. Eventually, I decided to ask what she was looking for as she seemed at her wit’s end, and she replied by explaining that the children wished to look at a series of photographs of themselves with their father, taken on their very last trip to a swimming pool. They were on a cd disc. As she finished explaining, I heard a gravelly French voice in my mind, telling me in French that the disc was downstairs. He said that it was on the table, and showed me an image of a spool, and in a way that I cannot explain, showed me where on the spool the disc was. I descended the stairs and sure enough, thirty seconds later, returned clutching the disc. I explained what had happened, and she did not believe me, and repeated several times that she had checked on the table and had looked at every cd, and that the disc had not been there. I assured her that I had indeed heard her husband’s voice, and proceeded to mimic the distinctive voice I had heard, much to her astonishment. She seemed shocked, and admitted that this was exactly what his voice had sounded like, but refused to believe or even consider the idea that I had spoken to him and walked off dismissively.

    “On another occasion, I heard the same gravelly voice telling me that if I were to go into the garage, I would see how much he loved his wife. An image was projected into my mind of the corner of the room, and a pile of old newspapers. I followed the voice’s instructions, and sure enough, found a large pile of old newspapers. Taking them down, inside was revealed a set of five oil paintings he had painted of his wife, and when I took them to show her, she was surprised as she had forgotten all about them and had no idea they were still in the house. She tearfully recounted how disappointed he had been when she did not react with the delight he had expected on showing her his tributes to the beauty he saw in her.

    “The final and most significant experience was when my girlfriend was staying downstairs with me (she always returned to the former marital bed before sunrise), and I heard slow gentle steps coming down the wooden staircase to the basement where we were. The footsteps then stopped, and there was silence for a few moments. I could clearly see the staircase, yet there was nobody there. Then, suddenly, there was a massive flash of light, as an orb the size of a soccer ball appeared and hung in the air for a couple of seconds, illuminating the entire room before disappearing as rapidly as it had manifested. It had the intense appearance of plasma. I rushed up the stairs, wondering if one of the children had used a camera flash to frighten us. Both children were fast asleep, and I stood for minutes listening to their regular rhythmic breathing, before returning downstairs, reflecting on the fact that the downstairs room was not completely dark, and I had not seen anyone walking downstairs, despite being able to clearly see each step, as the room was partially illuminated by the desktop computer in the corner.

    “Only a few minutes passed, and my girlfriend and I were disturbed by loud knocking on the wardrobe next to the bed, which made the wooden chamber of the almost empty internal space resonate loudly. This was followed by even louder, more violent knocking on the thin partition wall next to me, and I knew at that moment that it was the living spirit of the husband who had returned to express his anger at my presence. She said “Russell, I am frightened”, and I proceeded to talk to the spirit, explaining that I was not there to usurp his position as father, and that I had the greatest respect and sympathy for him. The knocks subsided after ten minutes, and my girlfriend went back to sleep, denying that anything at all had taken place the following morning.

    “Within 2 months, I had returned to the UK somewhat traumatized, to pick up where I had left off.”

    Geez Louise.

    Let’s close with this poem by Faith Shearin called “Retired.”

    On the island where I was a child
    nearly everyone was retired, their fortunes

    already made. Death was around them
    the way water was around our streets.

    They taught me how to go fishing
    without catching fish; the tide’s breath

    was marked in notebooks they kept
    beneath their pillows. One old lady

    fed me chocolates from a tin
    until my teeth were stained by greed.

    The old do things slowly so I grew used
    to grocery store lines

    that did not move, cars that stopped
    in the middle of the road. One man spent

    a whole day helping me bury a squirrel;
    we wrote odes and dirges

    to the way it once hurried and planned.

    See you next time!

  • M&Ms!

    An Irishman is teamed up with three rabbis to form a foursome for golf. They enjoy the day and the rabbis all shoot in the 70s and the Irishman comes in at 105. He asks them how they did it and they explain they are all religious Jews who go to synagogue every day and lead moral lives and their good golf scores is how God rewards them.

    The Irishman is determined to improve his score so he converts to Judaism, joins a synagogue, and leads a moral life. After a year, he joins the rabbis again for a round of golf. Again, the rabbis shoot in the 70s and the Irishman comes in at 105.

    He’s stunned and asked the rabbis what went wrong. He told them he converted, joined a synagogue, and lived a moral life. “What synagogue did you join?” they ask. The Irishman says “Beth Jacob.”

    “Beth Jacob?” they exclaim. “Beth Jacob’s for tennis!!”

    We had a great Father’s Day yesterday. Sam called in the morning in honor of the day and to pass on the beautiful message the owl Worthington sent to his dad Welly. And Caity, Danny, and their posse came over for brunch. Caity had M&Ms made up for me as a gift. Some said “Poppop Love you” and the others had a little picture of me on them. Hysterical.

    At the extreme other end of the Father’s Day spectrum, Owl Chatter is taking a moment to honor the memory of 14-year-old Hira Anwar, an eighth-grade student from Yonkers, NY. According to the NYT, at PS 16 in Yonkers, Hira was known as an outgoing teenager who posted TikTok videos featuring the singer Zayn Malik and the Australian band Chase Atlantic. Teachers described her as being eager for greater independence and freedom of expression. Her father viewed her clothing, friendships and online presence as a source of shame. He was particularly troubled by her social media activity and interactions with boys, which he considered inappropriate. So he conspired with relatives in Pakistan to invite her for a family visit during which they killed her in cold blood. A Pakistani court on Saturday sentenced the father, a U.S. citizen, and his Pakistani brother-in-law, to life imprisonment for the murder of this beautiful and innocent girl.

    Rest in peace, Hira. May your memory be a blessing.

    Some of my wordplay today, using ARAB SPRING, RAMPANT, and ETTA (James).

    Popular bar soap in the Middle East: ARABSPRING, marketed in Israel as Yiddish Spring.

    Clothing for a modest male sheep: RAMPANT

    Brutus: Julie — I can’t remember the first name of that great female blues singer James. It’s killing me. Oops, poor choice of words.

    Caesar: ETTA, Brutè.

    Here’s the opening of a poem that did not get past the OC guard puppies:

    In my damp inseam, the weather creases low and smooth.
    Down the back and underneath the levy of legs.

    Yeah. No.

    This guy goes to the doctor and says, “Doc, you’ve got to help me. I heard the song ‘She’s a Lady’ a few days ago and I can’t get it out of my head. It’s ruining my life.”

    The doctor says, “Sounds like a case of Tom Jones Syndrome.”

    “Is that rare?”

    “It’s not unusual.”

    One of the many joys of rooting for the Gnats this year is the play of Jacob Young in center field. Here’s some of his work from last weekend. As a team, you’ve got to do little things right to succeed on the diamond. Note, here, that not only was the incredible catch made by Young, but Daylen Lile had come all the way over from his spot in left field so JY could shovel the ball over to him to keep the speedy Chandler Simpson who was on base from advancing. Young’s okay, btw. Should be back in the lineup soon, kinehora.

    Yesterday was World Giraffe Day. It always falls on June 21, which is the longest day of year, which I don’t get – aren’t they all 24 hours? I posed that question on Rex’s blog and okanaganer replied: “There have been 27 leap seconds since 1972. So I guess during that time we have had 27 days that were 24 hours and one second long! The last one was Dec. 31 2016.”

    I responded: Ha! Now that you mention it, that day did seem to drag a bit.

    Ignoring fathers, the puzzle honored giraffes. I love giraffes. Whenever Leon or Raffi asks about lunch I tell them we’re having giraffe burgers.

    There were a bunch of giraffe-related clues and there were circled letters throughout the grid, which, if you connected in alphabetical order resulted in, well, take a look:

    Did you know a group of giraffes is called a TOWER?

    At 21A, for the clue “Fighting technique used by giraffes,” the answer was NECKING. It led Lewis to note: Giraffe fighting, as the puzzle says, is called “necking”, but family members never engage in it because they don’t want to hurt the necks of kin.

    We hear zebras are reactionary.

    See you tomorrow!

  • Chased By Eels

    Chris Horsley, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted this plea for help: I’m in a hotel in Montenegro, and the symbols in the lift are causing me some trouble. Obviously I get the ‘no smoking’ symbol, but the others are leaving me dumbfounded. Any assistance appreciated.

    The membership leapt to the task.

    John Gale:

    No unaccompanied children

    Children with adults ok

    No child left unattended

    Whispy magical fairy breeze symbol

    No smoking

    Keith Dilworth: No loners or couples of equal height in the Piazza.

    Trudi Johnson: You’re going to be chased by eels.

    Mark Hall: Are they serving pizza in the dungeons?

    Tristan White: I am assuming there are toilets down there. No two adults in the same cubicle (you sometimes get that in London clubs, to prevent insufflation of powders). Children however are allowed, in fact it’s compulsory, to be accompanied into the cubicles by their parent. Next sign is no pissing on the floor, obviously (and perhaps the reason why adults must supervise their children, though in my experience us adults are the most to blame for this mishap).

    John J. O’Malley:  Insufflation indeed.

    The execrable Bill BARR was in the puzzle yesterday, boringly clued as former AG Bill, and it re-opened the issue of whether there are people or things so unpleasant that they should be, ahem, barred from the puzzle? E.g., the NYT does not allow Hitler as an answer, even if appropriately clued with something like “monster of historic proportions.” There was also an ARCH that a military parade might march through, conjuring images of Trump’s idiotic arch plans. It all led egs to write this song parody:

    My Least Favorite Things

    ICE agents kicking down doors of my neighbors
    Oligarchs stealing the fruits of my labors
    People in MAGA hats worshipping kings
    These are a few of my least favorite things

    Not having health care to cure our diseases
    Low IQ grifter who does what he pleases
    Cheesy fake fighting in White House lawn rings
    These are a few of my least favorite things

    When a war’s launched
    Between golf swings
    When the Court’s gone mad
    I simply remember my least favorite things
    And then I sure feel real bad

    My favorite news story this week is nothing to sneeze at. Over 220 recruits at Lackland AFB have fallen ill with the flu. One died, although it’s not yet clear if his death was caused by the flu. This comes just two months after Secretary of Idiocy Hegseth ended the military’s longstanding requirement that service members receive annual flu vaccinations. After the policy change, the vaccination rate dropped from nearly 100% to roughly 40%. The Secretary called the mandate “absurd, not rational.” Hard to imagine reality has changed his tune. It never does with these folks.

    Gesundheit!

    Ever have a beer in the shower? Me neither, but it’s enough of a thing that it made it into the puzzle yesterday, SHOWER BEER, clued with “Cold one enjoyed during a hot wash.” A lot of commenters were familiar with it. Let’s say you’re hot and sweaty from the beach or work. You grab a cold can of Bud Lite and take it into the shower with you. Ideally, it’s a tub shower so there is space for it away from the soap and water and a safe spot on which it can rest. My thought: Are you an alcoholic? You can’t wait three minutes?

    We don’t feature too many punk rock tunes in OC, but, really, this poor fellow just wanted a Pepsi. Would it have killed his mom to give him one? Pepsi was an answer in the puzzle on Thursday so Son Volt shared this song with us. It’s by California punk band Suicidal Tendencies from 1983, and is called “Institutionalized.”

    I was in my room
    And I was just like, staring at the walls thinking about everything
    But then again, I was thinking about nothing
    And then my mom came in, and I didn’t even know she was there
    She called my name and I didn’t hear her
    And then she started screaming, “Mike, Mike”
    And I go, “What? What’s the matter?”
    She goes, “What’s the matter with you?”
    I go, “There’s nothing wrong, mom”
    She goes, “Don’t tell me that, you’re on drugs”
    I go, “No mom, I’m not on drugs, I’m okay, I’m just thinking, you know? Why don’t you get me a Pepsi?”
    She goes, “No, you’re on drugs”
    I go, “Mom, I’m okay, I’m just thinking”
    And she goes, “No, you’re not thinking, you’re on drugs
    Normal people don’t act that way”
    I go, “Mom, just get me a Pepsi, please? All I want’s a Pepsi”
    And she wouldn’t give it to me
    All I wanted was a Pepsi
    Just one Pepsi
    And she wouldn’t give it to me
    Just a Pepsi

    Several answers I played with today were: WEEB. Weeb Ewbank was the coach of the Jets when they won their one ever Super Bowl several hundred years ago. Other answers were NOTMYFINESTWORK, PLOTPOINT, and RENEE (Fleming).

    Here’s what I came up with:

    As a long-suffering Jets fan, it was great to see WEEB Ewbank in the puzzle. Even though he led the Jets to their only Super Bowl win, many fans today don’t remember what his Namath.

    Ironically, the author’s assessment of his lesser novels, which he published under the title NOT MY FINEST WORK, was hailed by critics as his finest work. In one of his novels, he managed to have the plot lines converge at a PLOT POINT so brilliantly, I plotzed.

    Subject line for office memo on the use of maiden names: RENEE

    Enough nonsense. See you tomorrow.

  • Baby’s On Fire

    It is illegal to deface property with graffiti in Baltimore. Except in one alley that is now called Graffiti Alley. We paid a visit yesterday. It’s in the Black Arts District. It’s constantly being re-worked. Here’s part of its June 17, 2026 iteration:

    As outdoor urban art goes, it’s not as big a kick as the Heidelberg Project or the Bead Museum in Detroit, both of which are incredible. But it’s neat and we’re glad we went to see it.

    Following that, we shared a “Wreck” at Potbelly’s Sandwich Shop which has quickly become our favorite sandwich chain, easily outclassing Subway and Jersey Mike’s IMO. We still had an hour before the movie at the historic Charles Theater so we visited Baby’s On Fire, a neighborhood coffee shop.

    What a great place! A big sign on the front door said that trans folks are welcome. How sad that it needs to be said. Inside the scene was terrific. Good music was playing and a whole rack of LPs lined one wall, so customers could make requests. I found a “gratitude journal” on a table in which customers were invited to make notes on what makes them happy. I contributed a small drawing of our owl Welly with a note that he has been my “bestie” for 62 years.

    In one note a young man discussed how happy he was with his wonderful girlfriend before adding that he was looking forward to a good cup of coffee too. Right below, a young woman drew an arrow pointing up to the previous entry and wrote how much she loved her boyfriend, that guy right above, clearly a sweetie. Aww.

    A homeless man wrote it felt good to be welcome somewhere.

    I read a bunch of the other entries and wish I had read more. There were maybe a hundred starting back in Feb. But we’ll be back.

    On the way out, I told the fellow behind the counter that we were visiting from the NY region and thought they had a real nice place.

    “Appreciate it, man. Thanks.”

    The movie was Power Ballad, starring Paul Rudd. Very good!! From the filmmaker who made Once. Remember that one? This also takes place in Dublin and is about music. It’s a feel-good movie and it made us feel good. Rotten Tomatoes score: 87%. Hey, Havana Rose Liu is in it — remember her from Tuner?

    What? Hey, don’t look at me in that tone of voice!

    After the show, we made our way home to Jersey via York, PA, so we could enjoy the half-price tacos and happy hour drafts (burp!) at the Holy Hound Taproom (and save over $20 in tolls). Didn’t disappoint!

    But as nice a day as yesterday was, Tuesday was even better! We arrived at our dump, I mean motel, in Catonsville a little before 2 but our room was ready so we settled in for a bit and then shot down to DC. First stop: McGruders, where I like to shop for local beer. Picked up a 12-pack of Vienna Lager by Devil’s Backbone. Yum. Then we dumped the car in a good spot north of the Zoo (scouted out during our last visit), and took the Metro to the Gnats game.

    And what a game it was! The plan was to get dogs and a beer as dinner– it was “$5 Tuesday” — but we couldn’t leave our seats for the tension! (And we were a bit full from a late lunch.) Foster Griffin was on the mound for the Homies and was brilliant: six innings, one run. But we only managed to leave him with a 3-1 lead and that was squandered by our shaky pen the moment Griff stepped down. Arggggh! It was 3-3 as we rose for the 7th-inning kvetch.

    Nunez started off the bottom of the seventh with a walk. Perfect! Wood then grounded into what looked like an easy double play. However, after he was called out at first, for some reason the speedy Nunez stayed at second. What’s going on? Turns out he beat the second-baseman to the bag and was called safe!! Amazing. Then he stole third and Chaparro walked. Good little things were happening and hope blossomed. (There was only one out.) Then all those little things stopped mattering: Aussie Curtis Mead popped a dinger to deep left center — we were up 6-3! Two innings to go. Schultz got through the 8th and Varland took the mound to finish up. Cardiologists have decided where to set up their practices based on what team he’s on. First batter: home run. Next batter: walk. Oy. Tying run at the plate in, like, two seconds with nobody out.

    Then it all fell into place.

    A sharp grounder to Nunez (that pesky little guy again) that he played brilliantly into a double play!! Last batter flailed at a high heater for strike three and the game. Whew!

    Since Nu-Nu also made a brilliant grab of a soft liner earlier and hit two triples (!), he was Alexa’s post-game guest. Good to see the little guy getting some credit.

    The ticket deal included $44 toward merch, so we picked up this gorgeous cap for Linda and headed back to the Metro along with 25,003 mostly happy fans. (Some KC folks were in the crowd.)

    I was pretty proud of my wordplay on the puzzle today. I worked with COINCIDE (Occur at the same time); ARNIE (Former governor Schwarzenegger, informally); DISCLAIMERS (“Use at your own risk” and “Not professional advice,” for two); HOYT (Big name in archery equipment); RARED (Rose (up), in dialect); and ETCHANT (Chemical agent used to make frosted glass).

    Here’s what I came up with:

    In declaring an end to the penny, has our government committed COINCIDE?

    A fight broke out in Brooklyn between the DISCLAIMERS and the datclaimers. Nobody got HOYT.

    ETCHANT: Phone home! Phone home! Phone home! . . .

    The Alphabet Society was all abuzz at the discovery of a RARED.

    That archery clue made me quiver at first. But I got it using the crosses, so I’m taking a bow.

    Orthopedist: And why are we here today?
    Patient: ARNIE is broken.

    A few days ago, I took a different tack to make a fool of myself with the gang. I “converted” the puzzle to Judaism. That is, I tweaked some of the answers, as follows:

    The OLD MAN AND THE SEA — The old man and the soup.

    PAPAL CROSS — Papal mezuzah

    POP THE CORK — Pop the Maalox

    SENOR — Senior

    BRO — Bubbeleh

    HURDLE — You’re kidding, right? Just go around.

    Linda and me in bed last night after our drive back from York.

    Me: I can’t sleep. I’m overtired.

    Linda: What are you going to do?

    Me: I already took fifteen Benadryls. They’re not helping.

    Linda: Hmmmm.

    Me: I think it’s time for Plan B.

    Linda: What’s that?

    Me: You hit me over the head with a giant mallet.

    Linda: I’m your man!

    Owl Chatter’s Peace In Our Time Department

    Now that the Iran deal has been finalized, we can reveal that our own Georgie Santos was a secret “weapon” on our negotiating team. He tells us his main goal was to keep Trump from giving away Greenland. You know, after all the trouble we went through to get it. Nice job GS!

    See you tomorrow, Chatterheads!

  • The Girl In The Dress

    Forgive me for repeating this joke, but I love it. I was shopping for perfume for Linda for her birthday. One sample seemed nice, so I asked the woman what an ounce would cost. She said $265. I said “$265!! What the hell’s in it — gasoline??”

    Oh, never mind — here’s Ana with some. Thanks, Babe! Nice to see you in the grid again today too, at 46D. Like everyone else, those constructors just can’t get enough of you, Armas.

    Here’s the wordplay I shared with the Commentariat from a recent puzzle. (As always, the words in all caps were answers in the puzzle.)

    The rabbi’s moment of joy is dissipated all too quickly as he is reminded of his troubles: AHOY.

    Parseghian: Knock knock.
    Mrs. Parseghian: Who’s there?
    Parseghian: It’s MEARA. Open up.

    Julius Caesar reporting on his visit with Marie Curie’s daughter: I came. I saw IRENE.

    Thankfully, a few typos were able to calm the frightened horses: STAMPPAD.

    Mrs. Dumpty: Any ideas on what we should get Dad for his birthday?
    Humpty, Jr.: Duct tape? Gorilla Glue? SEATBELT?

    Trump’s concession in a rare moment of candor: AMASS

    OMG, Phil came up with this amazing photo of a young Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller.

    Headline from The Onion:

    EPA Approves Use Of Napalm As Pesticide

    Allan Yashin wrote the following for Met Diary this week:

    Dear Diary:

    In 1965, as a promotion for the film “Fantastic Voyage,” Raquel Welch appeared in a Midtown store window to have her portrait painted by Salvador Dali. I was working in Manhattan and able to scoot over for the event.

    A small group had gathered by the time I arrived, and I was able to stand directly in front of the window, which was empty except for a canvas on an easel.

    Soon, Ms. Welch entered the window in a bathrobe, then threw it off to reveal a skimpy bikini. Dali appeared and glanced at her. He dabbed a brush in yellow paint to match her bikini. Did he carefully draw her face and body?

    No. He hurled the yellow paint at the canvas to create what appeared to be random splotches. There was no discernable resemblance to Ms. Welch or anything else, animate or inanimate.

    When he was finished, he walked off. Ms. Welch appeared to be shocked when she saw her “portrait.” She stood there until her “Fantastic Voyage” co-star, Stephen Boyd, walked into the window, helped her on with her robe and led her away.

    I can see it.

    Wordplay from yesterday’s puzzle:

    How to keep the sesame seeds from falling off your bagel: SESAME PASTE

    Brutus: Love the new toga, Julie! What would you call that color?
    Caesar: ECRU, Brutè.
    Brutus: Well, it’s gorgeous. I hope it doesn’t get all bloody tomorrow. Oops! Forget I said that!!

    Musical Brian’s former spouse: XENO

    The singular opera star Beverly: SILL

    Best thing to do after cerning poorly: DISCERN

    Adam and Eve: GENA

    Of the major sports outside of baseball and football, we have grown more passionate lately of ice hockey, in particular women’s ice hockey via the Sirens of the PWHL (Hi Sarah F.!), and the Princeton babes. In fact, we are on the verge of getting season tix for the Sirens! How exciting is that? (15 games, not prohibitively expensive for seats up close behind a goal.)

    Anyway, I hadn’t realized how far off the map the NBA had fallen for me until I woke up in the middle of the night and learned from my phone that the Knicks won the championship. We were watching soccer and the Gnats and forgot all about them! Happy they won, though. Historic. Bravo, gentlemen.

    And TIL that MVP Jalen Brunson married a “sistah!” No s*it! His wife Ali, a dark-eyed beauty, is Jewish. A doctor even! (Vu den?) They had a big Jewish wedding in Chicago and have a beautiful little girl named Jordyn James Brunson, whose middle name honors the memory of Ali’s late dad. They met in high school and stayed together while he was at ‘Nova, and she in college in Illinois. Got a few minutes? Grab a few tissues and check it out.

    Speaking of hockey, Frank Bruni’s “For the Love of Sentences” includes the following: In The Financial Post, William Watson wondered how Canada, “a country so proud of its woke devotion to peacekeeping, harmony, cooperation and nonaggression,” embraced “brutal and violent” hockey as its national sport. The National Hockey League rulebook “has eight mentions of ‘blood,’ including the stipulation that ‘high-sticking’ merits a four-minute penalty, not two, if injury results, ‘in the manner of drawing blood or otherwise.’ A glossary specifies that ‘blood does not have to be visible to consider it an injury’ and that ‘severe bruising, abrasions, a welt, cutting of the skin or damage to teeth’ also qualify. How many other sports have rule books written partly by pathologists?”

    Diane Marie Hunter shared this “tiny love story” in Sunday’s NYT.

    “I didn’t sleep a wink,” my sister commented over morning coffee after we had shared a hotel bed while traveling. “You toss and turn a lot.” “Really?” I wondered. Her comment provoked me to ask my husband, Bill, what it’s like to sleep beside me. “Well, you move a lot and can be dangerous,” he admitted. “When I sleep facing you, I’m careful to keep my arm in a position to guard my head and my leg in a position to protect my groin.” We’ve shared a bed for 30 uncomplaining years. I marveled at Bill’s silent (and long-suffering) love.

    It reminded me of the special overnight protections Linda and I worked out when her belly was full of Caity or Sam. It fell to our owl Welly “to protect and serve.” He positioned himself between us to catch any stray kicks or flailings that might arise as I slept. When I awoke and found him “in position,” I’d say “Thanks, Welly.” “Just part of the job,” he’d reply. He still feels very protective of them, long after Linda and I have stopped caring in the least. [That was a joke.]

    Taylor became the youngest woman ever to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this week, which is a pretty big deal even if we never heard of it before. (Stevie Wonder went in at an earlier age, if you must know.) Trav broke his ass to get to NYC for it from mandatory training camp in KC and was seen dabbing his eyes with a napkin as Tay grew emotional discussing the sacrifices her family made for her career. But he long ago passed the Teddy Bear test. She was clad for the occasion in a strapless black Givenchy gown embroidered with flowers.

    Phil — what do you have for us?

    The artist Sombr performed a couple of Tay’s songs at the ceremony, including “Dear John.” Here’s how she does it.

    Not gonna try to top that. Heading down to DC tomorrow for one quick overnight at a dump in Catonsville, MD. Gnats taking on KC. Couldn’t resist the promo: $5 beer and dogs, free merch, cheap tix . . . please, I’m only human.

    Thanks for dropping in!

  • The Nurse in Poughkeepsie

    I am in my mid-70’s now and pretty accepting of my failures and limitations. Roger Angell wrote about the moment he realized he would not be a pro ballplayer. It was the interpretation of a dream he had in which he saw his name on one of the monuments at Yankee Stadium. Something like that.

    And I was today years old when I learned the composer Richard Strauss, who was born on this date in 1864, said  “I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.” Who knew the guy had a sense of humor (assuming he was being funny)?

    We are in the Best Western near Poughkeepsie NY for two nights, celebrating our 42 years of wedded bliss. Here’s how the stay began:

    “The total comes to $196.”

    “I think I paid in advance.”

    “No. You held the reservation, but payment is due now.”

    “But I used a $50 gift card.”

    (Woman tinkers with computer.)

    “Okay, the amount due is $146.)

    (We tinker with our phone.)

    “Here’s the email we received. It says ‘Amount due at check-in: $0.00.’”

    (Woman hands us keycards.)

    “You’ll be in Room 103.”

    Upon arriving at Room 103, we find the door propped open and the bed unmade. We retutn to the front desk.

    “Excuse me, 103 is not made up.”

    Woman leaves to check with housekeeping.

    “May I have the keys I gave you?”

    “Sure.”

    Hands us new cards.

    “You’ll be in Room 107.”

    Room 107 is fine. But from painful experience I check to see if the TV works. The remote is like a dead fish in my hands. I press everything on it that I can press but it ain’t gonna swim no mo’. I return with it to the woman at the desk.

    “Hi. Me again. Do you have new batteries for the remote? It’s not working.”

    (Woman installs new batteries.)

    “Thanks!”

    The remote sprang back to life and swam happily upstream. Despite the above, all is well and we had a great first day here, with two brilliant highlights.

    First, a great walk across the Hudson twice: Once on the Walkway eastward, and then back on the pedestrian path on the Mid-Hudson bridge. A total loop of 3.6 miles with a great stop at the train station for a cold drink: water for my bride and Diet Dr. Pepp for yours truly. Both bridges were beautiful to walk over. The Mid-Hudson offers a feature called “Bridge Music.” At various stops you can press a button to select “music” made by the composer banging on, or doing what-not to, parts of the bridge. Very nice!

    “Joseph Bertolozzi’s public art project Bridge Music is a unique sound-art installation featuring the Mid-Hudson Bridge as the instrument itself.”

    So that was the walk back across the HHR. Our adventure started crossing it on the Walkway, a gorgeous 1.25 mile arc over the river.

    The second highlight of our day was dinner at a terrific local dive called Tavern 23. An overflowing dumpster greets you in the parking lot, if you can even find the place, reassuring you that you will not be paying even a penny for atmosphere. Inside it’s loud, and we found an open table in the corner, next to a boisterous group of 60-year-olds celebrating one of them retiring. They were not having dinner. They were enjoying beer after beer and had left two of their giant plate of wings uneaten, prompting me to consider seriously and droolingly asking if I could have one. (I didn’t.)

    I had read good things about the tacos so we ordered three fish tacos and a burger, with a side of red cabbage slaw in lieu of fries. Excellent! Especially the tacos. One sits near me as I write, safely boxed in our room fridge. As is my practice, I asked if I could sample two of their ales, the “Kold One,” a kolsch brewed right in the area – we passed by the brewery on the way; and the “House Ale,” an IPA from nearby East Fishkill. Both were good and I went for the former. Since the “samples” she brought me were so generous I could barely finish the thing itself.

    And get this! — it was “Flippin’ Wednesday.” Before totaling up our check, the waitress explained that she would flip a coin and if we guessed correctly, dinner would be free. Are you shi**ing me!!?? We each went once, for our separate items — but missed each time. D’oh! Great place — Tavern 23, seek it out if you’re nearby. Mention Owl Chatter and they’ll seat you behind the rest rooms.

    Phil snapped this shot of the party-ers before joining them and passing out.

    We walked around downtown Poughkeepsie before dinner and ran into this big statue of a nurse, aptly titled “The Nurse.” I sent a photo of it to Caitlin and we had this exchange, started by Caity:

    “She looks mean.”

    “Yeah, but for your own good.”

    “Yes, of course.”

    You have no doubt heard by now of the Knicks’ incredible comeback from 29 points down to go up 3-1 in games in the NBA Finals. Historic. But as the wise man said, “It ain’t over till it’s over,” so let’s just drape a big kinehora over it and wait for Game 5. What most of you may not be aware of is the other comeback that occurred, viz., the Gnats blew a 9-1 lead (!) and lost to the Jints out in SF 11-10. Are you kidding me? They still took the series 2-1, including their own come-from-behind gem on Monday, but sheesh.

    After a breakfast of plasticky eggs and a rubbery sausage link in the hotel, Thursday kicked off with a beautiful visit to Vassar College. OMG, what an incredible campus. I sent a shot of this tree to Owl Chatter friend Kit, an alum.

    Her reply:

    “I often walked past those beautiful trees on my way to the Library. I think that walk made me a better student.”

    The art museum is world class and blew us away. Works of all the biggies are there, beautifully organized and exhibited. Pabs Picasso, Hank Matisse, Granny Moso, and on and on. This one caught my eye. It’s by Charles Courtney Curran, new to me, which means nothing.

    It was hot, so we shot back to the room for lunch and a brief rest period before catching The Sheep Detectives, which we loved! Hugh Jackman just gets better and better, IMO. You know you’re getting (or, in my case, staying), soft, when a movie starring sheep who can talk and who solve a murder leaves you weeping.

    Here’s Molly Gordon. Was she the killer?

    After a Starbucks break we went over to catch the Hudson Valley Renegades-Jersey Shore Blue Claws game. Quite the seesaw: The Gades took a 4-2 lead on a grand salami, but ended up losing 8-7 with the tying run on base. Ouch! Dinner at the park was good: Sausage with onions and peppers for me and a C-Burger for Linda.

    Takeaways: Loved the 80-year-old (it seemed) “bat boy” for the Gades. Every time he had to bend over to pick up a bat, he grabbed his back. Also couldn’t get over how the seventh-inning stretch went. Nobody got up! We were reminded about it for the bottom of the seventh, and the requisite “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was played, but maybe ten people got off their tuchases for it (out of 2,501 in attendance). What gives, Hudson Valley?

    Only negative: $10 charge for parking. At a minor league park? Puh-leeze.

    Rex created a bit of a hoo-ha in connection with the clue for PORTLANDOREGON in today’s puzzle. It was clued via “Home of the world’s largest independently owned bookstore (spanning an entire city block.” The store is Powell’s, which we visited many years ago when out there for Linda’s nephew’s bar mitzvah. Yeah, it’s big. That nephew, BTW, just became a first-time dad! Mazel tov Jamey and Sivan. Here’s Adina Naomi.

    Anyway, so Rex posted this photo and caption:

    “My Tuesday mug, but maybe I’ll break it out today in honor of the puzzle … oh who am I kidding, I will not do that, the mug schedule is the mug schedule and it changes for no one!”

    It’s a gorgeous mug and the concept of a “mug schedule” hit home for some. I don’t have a schedule, but I do have a group of several from which I choose each day and the choice matters to me. Others noted they also have schedules. I like the idea. Here are some responses:

    JJK: My husband and I are the opposite, we use the same mugs every morning and even pack them for trips (a little extreme perhaps).

    Carola: Rex, I join you in having a mug schedule. I especially look forward to Sundays when I get to use my mug from the Lake Superior Railroad Museum.

    Here are three I have not broken in yet.

    At 5A today, the clue was “Exhibiting a green face, stereotypically.” I got it right away: SEASICK. But Rex and a lot of folks took the green to relate to envy and tried ENVIOUS or JEALOUS first. This led egs to comment aptly:

    “A lot of solvers had trouble getting SEASICK. Seems like an odd complaint.”

    Good to be home with the owls again! Thanks for stopping by. See you tomorrow.

  • Running the Bases

    This is the Congressional oath of office:

    “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

    I think the Dems should propose abolishing it. It no longer has the slightest application. Why continue the charade?

    Can you square it with the Senate’s recent approval of Trump and his older sons (!) receiving immunity from IRS examination of their returns? I’m sure the returns were already oozing tax fraud. Can you imagine what they’ll look like now?

    It makes perfect sense, though. Trump must have been worried about the zillions of dollars he’s raping the country (and other countries) for. That’s how they caught Capone.

    “Are the billions I’m stealing taxable income? Blanche! Fix it!”

    “Yessir. On it Sir.”

    Done!

    This sweet story was in yesterday’s Met Diary. It’s by Kathleen Brady.

    Dear Diary:

    It was a beautiful April day, and I hoped to find tulips in full bloom at Conservatory Garden in Central Park.

    Only the yellow ones obliged, but in front of them and all the green stalks stood a tall young woman in a floor-length, lemon-colored dress. She was posing with a young man who had set up his smartphone on the ground to take a picture of them together.

    I asked if they wanted me to take the photo. I took several and was about to leave when the young man asked me to take one more. He took something from his bag and dropped to one knee.

    As he proposed and gave the young woman the ring, I snapped away with moistening eyes.

    From today’s puzzle:

    POPUP: Alpo’s version of the Po’boy for dogs.

    When you’re as good, and big, and well-respected as Aaron Judge, a pep talk can be pretty terse. “Let’s fucking go, boys,” he said before the third inning against Oakland two Sundays ago (5/31). It worked. The Yanks batted around twice (i.e., sent 18 men to the plate) in the inning, and scored 13 runs. They had not scored more in an inning since scoring 14 in 1920: 106 years ago. And since that happened, they only did in twice before the 31st, oddly, both times in 2005. But the weird thing about this time is they went completely runless and hitless in the eight other innings. Yeah, you heard me. Aside from scoring 13 runs on eleven hits in the third, they did not have a single hit the whole rest of the game.

    Here’s Aaron and his pretty wife Samantha. You can find her in the photo by looking way down: she’s just below his left shoulder. There she is! They met in high school and went to Fresno State together. They have a one-year-old daughter, Nora.

    Sticking with baseball for the moment, in the puzzle today, IRAN at 55A, next to BASIS, at 56A, reminded me of a story about the great Oriole center-fielder, Paul Blair. He hit an inside-the-park home run but some members of the press thought the opposing team’s center-fielder should have caught it. This was mentioned to Blair after the game, and he said: “There’s only one man who could’ve caught that ball, — and he was running the bases.”

    If I’m not mistaken, he may have won a couple of Gold Gloves.

    I was a little bored yesterday so, for fun, I switched around some of the labels on Linda’s spices. She hasn’t noticed anything yet, but, believe me, her thyme is cumin.

    Jan Bee of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted the following: “Knot Nerds! What knot would you recommend using to secure these hanging pots to the upper bar?”

    My helpful reply:

    It’s knot my area of expertise, but you might have more luck hanging it from a knotty pine? That should have the knots already built in. Or perhaps, instead of hanging, go with a firing squad or lethal injection? What was their crime anyway?

    I have a Pushkin joke. I am not going to tell it. I am not going to because I am pretty sure I already told it in these pages. The family name was originally Pushpin but it was changed for obvious reasons. That’s not the joke. That one I just made up. You can tell, right?

    Anyway, it’s Pushpin’s birthday today. He was born in Moscow in 1799. He was only 37 when he died: killed in a duel. I guess people were stupid back then too. When word of his death got out, people all over the country went into mourning. Some even went into afternoon. One man, weeping openly in the street, was asked by a reporter if he had known Pushkin personally. He replied, “No, but I am a Russian.”

    Here are shots (poor choice of words, sorry) of AP and his pretty wife Natalia. They had four children together.

    In yesterday’s puzzle, for the clue “Initially offered lesser charge” the answer was TEASER RATE. It brought to mind the Cat Stevens album “Teaser and the Firecat” for Son Volt. This song is on it:

    Do you listen to the wind of your soul?
    Do you let your music take you where your heart wants to go?
    Have you swum upon the Devil’s lake?
    Would you ever ever ever ever make the same mistake?

    See you next time! Thanks for dropping in.

  • Victorian-Era Ghosts

    Some wordplay yesterday with ASSAILS, ENTICE, LOCALDIVE, NOME, SLIME, and TAGLINE:

    Brat, after spanking: ASSAILS

    How to keep your otolaryngologist chilled: ENTICE

    Bar that serves only light beer: LOCALDIVE

    What my wife’s get-togethers with her five sisters will have, if I play my cards right: NOME

    ‘SLEMON? No, ‘SLIME

    TAGLINE: You’re it.

    Did I put a hex on them? I neglected to pin a kinehora to my recent plaudits. Anyway, the Gnats got swept by the lowly Marlins in DC. Swept!! That’s baseball for you. I cast an All-Star ballot yesterday on which I voted for CJ Abrams, James Wood, and Jacob Young. Love those guys – love ’em all.

    Here’s Wood. Don’t knock him.

    There was a beautiful story on NPR’s Moth Story Hour last night by a trans woman on her return home to Montana for the wake and funeral of her beloved dad after a long time away, and thinking she might never go back. She was stressing over it, so stayed away from the wake, but a good friend from high school said he and the guys wanted to see her: if she didn’t go there, they’d come to her home. She said, “Okay come.” Then she said (to us), “I should mention that I was on the football team.” Audience chuckles. “I should also tell you I was the quarterback.” More chuckles. It turns out the friend who called was an offensive lineman. It was his job to protect the QB. He was still doing it. The get-together was warm and loving and accepting. Beautiful story. The way it should be.

    You talkin’ to me?

    Here’s a poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac by Twyla Hansen called “For No Good Reason.”

    As if you needed one,
    as if you could help it,
    for no good reason
    a tune out of nowhere
    pops into your head
    when you least expect,
    riffs effortlessly in the
    folds of your cerebrum—

    your own private jukebox,
    your personal music device
    on random minus the earbuds—
    drumming itself up to keep
    you company: here, a little
    Janis Joplin while you vacuum
    cat hair; there, a John Denver line
    as you peel potatoes at the sink.

    How can others not hear it,
    this frequent odd gift?
    Sometimes you forget
    and blurt the words to the chorus,
    which, after all, is all you can remember,
    those take me home, country roads,
    that feelin’ good was good enough
    for me    , even conjuring

    the gas station in Colorado
    back where you, wearing
    those bell bottoms and that
    paisley, were about to fill a tank
    of freedom into the blue VW Bug
    when Carole King belted out
    and it’s too late baby, now it’s too late
    though we really did try to make it

    and you couldn’t move, couldn’t
    quit sobbing to the steering wheel
    that would not console those blues
    or say what you had left to lose,
    wouldn’t question why in hell
    you were going down that road
    where for no good reason
    you seemed to be heading.

    Official Owl Chatter munchkin Maeven challenging a strike call:

    BTW, since it came up, I like the new system for challenging bad ump ball/strike calls. My only beef is a batter will often move his hand to the top of his head to adjust his batting helmet, and that motion can be mistakenly taken for a challenge. I suggest to challenge a call, the batter should be required to pat his head with one hand, while rubbing his belly with the other. That way it will always be clear. I’ve asked George to forward the following video to the Commissioner’s Office.

    From historian Heather Cox Richardson:

    Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) played a video of Trump sleeping in two Cabinet meetings as Rubio was talking, and asked Rubio how the president could make good decisions about war if he couldn’t stay awake even during public events. Rubio insisted he had never seen Trump asleep in a meeting, although in the instances Lieu showed, the president was sleeping in a chair directly beside him. Lieu accused Rubio of lying to Congress.

    The administration announced it is dropping tariffs on imported farm and construction equipment to ease prices, after claiming repeatedly that tariffs have no effect on prices.

    Shannon Bream of Fox News asked Kevin Hassett about a WSJ report that delinquent credit card balances are at their highest level in 15 years because people are using their credit cards for necessities. Hassett assured her that, for the most part, there is no financial threat to the credit card companies.

    Whew. Had us worried for a moment.

    Wait, what?

    Shannon was Miss Florida before becoming a hard-hitting reporter. She and her husband Sheldon have no children as she believes she was called by God not to have children and concentrate on her career. We know what you’re thinking: How in the world did she land that job at Fox News?

    We’re with you 100% Georgie!! Don’t let them push you around!

    You may have heard about a little trouble our Georgie (Santos) may have gotten himself into again. Can’t they leave the poor guy alone? There are now betting sites that let you bet on, like, news events. And George learned people could bet on whether he’d attend Trump’s inauguration or not. So he posted on social media that he would attend, and then bet against that, and didn’t attend. Apparently, now some government officials with no sense of humor are investigating him for “insider trading.” Gimme a break!

    Don’t worry big fella. We’re all going to show up in court to protest: Phil, me, Ana, Sarah, Taylor and Trav. We’re not going to let them hurt you!

    In yesterday’s puzzle, at 8D “Deep fissure” was CHASM. I hadn’t heard this beautiful song by The Felice Brothers before Son Volt shared it with us.

    Thanks for popping by! See you tomorrow!