The Wellington Files

  • The Making of Girona Martyrology

    Might the flatulence have played a role? The NYT says it might have: not actual flatulence in this case. It certainly didn’t help. The question is what led to the controversial firing of Sasha Suda from the Directorship of Philly’s Art Museum? First, let’s have a look at her. Seeing what she looks like might help us form a shallow, uninformed opinion on the matter.

    Sash (as Phil calls her), is 44 and was born in Toronto to parents who immigrated from what was then Czechoslovakia, one of the most difficult countries in the world to spell. (Would it have killed them to immigrate from Poland?) Her detractors are claiming they passed a bad Czech. Unable to get into good schools, Suda earned her degrees at Princeton (BA), Williams (MA), and NYU (PhD). No doubt you are familiar with her doctoral dissertation, “The Making of Girona Martyrology and the Cult of Saints in Late Medieval Bohemia,” published in 2016. Before assuming the position in Philly, she was the Director of Canada’s National Gallery, the youngest individual to obtain that post in a century.

    The flatulence issue arose from a rebranding campaign that she undertook without final approval from the trustees. It seemed harmless: she changed the museum’s name from The Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Philadelphia Art Museum. But it started getting called “PhArt!” Oops! (I’m not kidding about this.) It’s a little bit like when McDonalds called its new wrap the McWrap. “I’ll have some of that McCrap please.” I think the boys in marketing may have dropped the ball on that one.

    More serious complaints focused on charges that Suda misused Museum funds, her emphasis on DEI (horrors!), and clashes she had with Board members. She was a good fund-raiser, though, and often that’s all that matters.

    Suda is suing over her firing in state (PA) court. The suit claims the “final straw” was a dispute over a lobbyist (Heller) whom the Board chair (Caplan) wanted to recruit as a trustee, but who Suda claimed was abrasive. Caplan accused Suda of being the abrasive one. Owl Chatter has obtained an exclusive copy of the transcript of the decisive confrontation:

    Suda: Heller is abrasive. She can’t be on the Board.

    Caplan: No. You’re the abrasive one.

    Suda: You are.

    Caplan: No, you are.

    Suda: It’s you.

    Caplan: No. You.

    Suda: You’re being abrasive right now!

    Caplan: Am not.

    Suda: You are.

    Caplan. Am not.

    Suda: Yes you are.

    Caplan: Shut up.

    Suda: You shut up.

    Meanwhile, this little sweetie had a blast visiting the PhArt!

    Notice anything unusual about yesterday’s puzzle?

    Sure you do! By connecting the circled squares (in alphabetical order, btw) you form the outline of a duck, which is the answer at 38D. Or, wait a minute, is it a rabbit (the answer at 66A)? Hmmmmm.

    Apparently (pun intended), there is a famous duck/rabbit illusion. Take a look at this better version of it. Facing right it’s a rabbit. Facing left, it’s a duck. (Can you see it?) Either way, pass the ketchup!

    In the puzzle, two more theme answers hint at the “drabbit:” At 17A the answer that spanned the grid is OPTICAL ILLUSION, and at 59A, it’s AMBIGUOUS FIGURE. It’s a very ambitious feat of puzzle construction. Bravo, Brad and Nicole Wiegmann. You may have also noticed the “EYE” in the square contained in both 30D and 37A, as a rebus (when more than one letter is smushed into a single square). M[EYE]RS crossing [EYE]MASK.

    The rabbit-duck illusion goes all the way back to 1892, when it appeared in a German humor magazine. (Hysterical!) It became famous in the hands of Ludwig Wittgenstein who used it to distinguish between perception and interpretation. I’m far too stupid to go any deeper than that. With apologies to the Wiegmanns, it’s better described as an ambiguous image than an optical illusion. Or maybe we can call it an “optional illusion.”

    At 32D yesterday, the clue was “Excuse me,” and the answer was SORRY. This song is by Caitlin Cary. I was glad Son Volt shared it with us. Beautiful voice.

    Here’s Caitlin.

    I majored in Economics a hundred years ago but had no idea this was the case: At 10D today the clue was “Nobel Prize category, for short,” and the answer was ECON. No big deal, right? But Commenter Trinch posted the following: “Not to nitpick, but there is no such thing as a Nobel prize in economics. There is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Despite incorrectly being called a Nobel Prize, it is not. Ok fine. Definitely nitpicking. But I stand by my facts.” [OC Note: Sveriges Riksbank is not a person. It’s Sweden’s central bank.]

    Back when Nixon’s presidency was unravelling, the Comedian David Steinberg observed: “The word CROOK could suddenly materialize emblazoned on Nixon’s forehead, and you’d still get some of his supporters going ‘Well, not necessarily . . . . ‘” Let’s keep an eye on Trump’s sexy press sec’y Karoline Leavitt as the delicious Epstein situation unfolds. Yesterday she explained that the emails showing Trump knew about the girls being abused proved his innocence. Okey dokey.

    From the Dull Men’s Club (UK). Jane Sutherland posts: So here’s a dilemma – is it ‘which’ or ‘what’?  ‘What’ seems to get much more use than ‘which’ nowadays but to me, it’s very often used in the wrong context.

    For example, we have to watch Mastermind, which personally I find extremely dull 🥱 and I’ve noticed Clive the host often starts his question with ‘what’, as in – ‘what book, what film, what actor’ etc… Surely this should be which not what? It sounds grammatically wrong to me! 🤷‍♀️Thoughts anyone, or am I just being pedantic?

    Tony Ross: They burned so many at Salem, there’s a surfeit of whats about these days.

    Ken Irvine: “What” is an open question while “which” would be asking one to choose from a defined group of choices.

    Stuart Parr: Which is a selection from a defined list of options, what is a selection from broad criteria.

    Andy Spragg: Thank you! Every day is a school day.

    Jennifer Brand: Do I get a gold star from Miss Susan if I know the answer?

    Stuart: You can have glitter too.

    Brad Smith: Here’s another thing. I think this is the most commonly misspelled word in English. Most people incorrectly spell it Dilemna. Never understood why? Is it the 2 ms look like mn?

    Mik Shaw: American import.

    Avi Liveson: American here. I’ve never seen dilemna. Seems an easy word to spell to me.

    Murray Atkinson: Language evolves because people are lazy and poorly educated. The ‘grammar and spelling police’ get laughed at because if the meaning is clear what does it matter? Apparently. Keep fighting!

    Avi Liveson: I’m lazy and well-educated.

    Jem Giles: Which genre of film does this programme most likely occur? And then, what director would place the actors on set..?

    Avi Liveson: What??

    At 19D today, the clue was “Things caddies carry,” and the answer was TEAS. (Get it?)

    Anony Mouse asked: When do caddies carry teas? I feel like I’m missing something.

    SJ responded: A TEA caddy is a box (or other receptacle) to store tea in.

    Another Anony Mouse wrote: A “tea caddy” holds teas.

    And I posted: Serious golfers often like to take a break during play and enjoy a small muffin or scone with some tea. So their caddies carry a selection of teas and pastries with them.

    Just back away slowly, Phil. You must have said something.

    See you tomorrow Chatterheads! Thanks for popping in.

  • Earth To Eartha

    When I joined the law firm in Norristown PA as my first job out of law school one of the partners ducked into my office one morning and said he needed me to cover an appointment for him because a family crisis was calling him away. One of the firm’s clients was facing criminal charges and was being evaluated psychologically. A lawyer from the firm had to be present but would just have to sit there. I said, “Sure.”

    So I met the client at the doctor’s office and she explained she would be asking him a series of questions and recording his responses. The questioning lasted about an hour and a half. At that point, the psychologist left, saying she’d return in about fifteen minutes. When she returned, she said the client’s responses revealed a deep-seated psychosis and that he posed a danger to himself and others. He was being remanded to a psychiatric facility for further evaluation and would be held until it was determined it was safe to release him. She gave us five minutes to confer and left the room.

    At that point, the client turned to me, terrified, and said “They’re taking me to the fucking nuthouse — why didn’t you say anything??!!” And I said “I’m not opening my mouth — my answers were all the same as yours!”

    I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be Trump. Well, maybe I can see one piece of it – the pardons. He must flip through magazines and stuff going — yeah, “pardoning him would be nice,” or “no pardon for that schmuck!” And so I see in today’s NYT that, out of the blue, great ex-Met, ex-Dodger, and ex-Yankee Darryl Strawberry was pardoned! What was the crime — striking out with men on second and third? Dropping a pop-up in the ninth against Boston? Nope: tax fraud and drugs. Boring. Here’s how Straw tells it:

    “Half asleep, I glanced over and saw a call from Washington DC. Curious, I answered, and to my amazement, the lady on the line said, ‘Darryl Strawberry, you have a call from the President of the United States, Donald Trump.’ I put it on speakerphone with my wife nearby, and President Trump spoke warmly about my baseball days in NYC, praising me as one the greatest player of the ’80s and celebrating the Mets. Then, he told me he was granting me a full pardon from my past.”

    Maybe it wasn’t entirely out of the blue. Darryl appeared on Trump’s idiotic Apprentice show back in 2010. Must have made a good impression.

    Love you, Straw!

    Answers in today’s puzzle included SNOW and HAIL CAESAR. The following dreadful/wonderful explosion of puns, courtesy of egs made me wonder if he might be a distant relative of Owl Chatter friend Brookline Carl.

    Julius: Hey Cleo! What is that stuff coming down? SNOW?
    Cleopatra: HAIL CAESAR
    Julius: Thanks, but I was hoping for a report on weather conditions.
    Cleopatra: Can’t help you there. You hungry?
    Julius: Yeah, I think I’ll get a Gallic pizza. It gives me bad breath, but I can eat a whole pie and still want more. Brutus claimed to have had doubles the other day! I didn’t believe him. I said “Ate two, Brute?”
    Cleopatra: He has lot of Gaul! What’d he say?
    Julius: Something about me joining his friends, the Idesofs, for a walk. I think he said “Be where the Idesofs march.”
    Cleopatra: Sounds weird but you might take a stab at it.

    De ball has been taken out of Daboll’s hands. In a move that can only be called Kafka-esque, the Jints fired their head coach Brian Daboll after blowing another fourth quarter lead on the way to their 2-8 record, an incredible half game worse than the Jets! Why “Kafka-esque?” Because Daboll will be replaced by assistant coach Mike Kafka.

    Remember Eartha Kitt, old timers? She popped by for a visit today, even though she’s been dead since 2008. She was at 20A: KITT, and her clue was “‘Santa Baby’ singer, Eartha.”

    An activist for peace and civil and gay rights, she is famously remembered for taking the Johnsons to task during a White House visit in 1968 over the Vietnam War. She said: “The children of America are not rebelling for no reason. . . . They are rebelling against something. There are so many things burning the people of this country, particularly mothers. They feel they are going to raise sons – and I know what it’s like, and you have children of your own, Mrs. Johnson – we raise children and send them to war.” Kitt’s remarks reportedly caused Mrs. Johnson to burst into tears. It ended Kitt’s career in the U.S. but she continued to perform in Europe and Asia. The CIA branded her a “sadistic nymphomaniac.” Ouch! She returned to the White House in 1978, accepting an invitation from President Carter who, apparently, was not averse to sadistic nymphomaniacs.

    Kitt married John Macdonald and they had a daughter they named Kitt. John was white and Kitt came out white too. Here’s a shot of Kitt (Eartha) and Kitt together.

    They lived near each other in Connecticut and had a very strong bond. Kitt said this about her mom’s death: It was just the two of us hanging out [during the last days] and she was very funny. We didn’t have to [talk] because I always knew how she felt about me. I was the love of her life, so the last part of her life we didn’t have to have these heart to heart talks. She started to see people that weren’t there. She thought I could see them too, but, of course, I couldn’t. I would make fun of her like, “I’m going to go in the other room and you stay here and talk to your friends.”

    She was 81 when she died. In her youth she was, well, here, take a look.

    Story of Local Interest from The Onion:

    Area Dad Needs More Time With Museum Plaque

    NEW YORK—Leaning in close to the paragraph of text as his family continued on to the museum’s other exhibits, area dad and Frick Collection visitor Phillip Schermeier, 58, reportedly needed more time with the plaque beside Rembrandt’s 1626 painting Palamedes In Front Of Agamemnon Thursday. “We were already heading over to the Goya stuff, but then we looked back and saw Dad still standing next to the first Rembrandt painting, staring pretty hard at the description on the wall,” said Schermeier’s daughter Laura, noting how her father at several points glanced back and forth between the plaque and the painting as he took in facts about the scene depicting the mythological warrior Palamedes, who helped lead the Greek forces in the Trojan War, genuflecting at the feet of the legendary king of Argos. “His face couldn’t have been much more than a foot away from the plaque, and I think he may have even started nodding a little as he read. I honestly don’t even know how long he was there, because by the time he finished up, we had already moved on to another room.”

    If you watched the World Series, you may have noticed a small number 51 added to the sides of some players’ baseball caps. It’s not unusual for someone in an organization or an organization’s past to pass away and be honored in that fashion by the players, more often with a number on a shirtsleeve. I hadn’t heard what it was about and thought nothing of it. But today I learned #51 is the number worn by Dodger relief pitcher Alex Vesia. Before Game 1 of the Series, the Dodgers announced Vesia would be away to attend to a “deeply personal family matter.” As a show of support, the other Dodger pitchers played the Series with Vesia’s number inscribed on their caps.

    Sadly, Vesia and his wife Kayla announced that their baby daughter Sterling Sol Vesia passed away on October 26. They offered their deepest thanks to the doctors, nurses, and countless well-wishers. They said there were no words to describe the pain of their loss.

    Dodger outfielder Kiki Hernandez was walking back to the dugout after striking out in the ninth inning of Friday night’s Game 6, and when he glanced up at the big scoreboard screen he noticed a little “51” on the side of Toronto pitcher Chris Bassitt’s cap. He wasn’t aware that the Blue Jay relief pitchers had also inscribed their caps with Vesia’s number. “For those guys to do that [with all the pressure they were under from the Series], it’s incredible,” Hernandez said.

    The Vesias included this photo of Sterling’s little hand in their announcement. May her memory be a blessing.

  • Green Peppers

    Princeton Women’s Ice Hockey. What an intense game! These ladies really go at each other – in a good way. Only two penalties called the entire game and the action was fierce throughout. Princeton took 44 shots on goal, but only, let’s see — zero got through! Yikes! St. Lawrence won 1-0 on a breakaway in the second period.

    OK, fellas — ease up now. I know how sexy those unis are. Try to maintain composure.

    Alexa Davis scored the lone goal for SLU, a grad student from Philly who went to Cornell undergrad. Hey, Lexy — great shot!

    Goalie Emma-Sofie Nordström was a goddamn boulder in goal. It felt like they could have played for another hour without beating her.

    George noticed proudly that a banner draped over the boards listed our Sarah (Fillier) as an alum who was an “Olympic champion (2022).” Brava, SF!

    The puzzle today took an interesting (for me) little turn in the clue for the word DOT at 31A: It engaged in a little Hebrew School lesson. The clue was “What distinguishes ‘bet’ from ‘vet’ in Hebrew.” When reading Hebrew, if the script contains “dots” it guides your pronunciation. If not, you just better know it. The dot is called a “dagesh.” Anony Mouse helped with this comment:

    Here’s some pedantry: “bet” and “vet” are not two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. They are the same letter, one with the dagesh and the other without, and there to tell you how to pronounce the letter (sort of like an e or i after a g tells you how to pronounce it). With the dot: hard b, without: soft (or v). The diacritical does not appear in the Torah scrolls. Only the undotted version shows up there; in fact, it’s the first letter in the Bible–beresheet (in the beginning), not veresheet. The way the rabbi explained this to me when I was a wiseass bar mitzvah boy was that when Hebrew made the transition from oral to written, everyone knew what the word was so they could infer the hard or the soft version of bet. But in later years, as knowledge of ancient Hebrew receded, the diacritical were added to assist readers. And evidently, crossword constructors.

    Oy. Stay away from the herring.

    The answer at 41A reminded me of a joke Dan Reynolds told me, alav hashalom. This 97-year-old man goes to a lawyer and says he wants to divorce his 94-year-old wife after 70 years of marriage. The lawyer asks “Why now?” and the man says, “Enough is enough.” (The clue was “I’ve had it!”)

    Ashley Punter, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posts: I just ate a green pepper that tasted like an orange pepper.

    Nick Renouf: That’s the problem with society today.

    Paula Adams: They taste different?

    Ruth Hunt: It’s a cross-dressing orange pepper which “identified ” as a green pepper?

    Avi Liveson: You’re giving new meaning to the concept of “salad dressing.”

    Lewis Ewan Jones: Finally – Armageddon!

    Avi Liveson: It’s like that riddle: What’s blue and smells like red paint? Answer: Blue paint.

    Phil Goodchild: Funnily enough I had a similar but amazing experience with my dinner last night. In the past, one of my favourite vegetables, that being Brussel Sprouts have over the time seemed sweet and some have tasted like Tangerine. I can only presume they have been altered in the crossing of varieties to be less Brusselly. At a local farm shop where I now get my veg, the recent Brussels have that traditional Brussell Sprout bite and they are not sweet like they have been sugared or taste like Tangerine. Last night’s dinner of beef steak pie I made with spuds and Brussells was superb due to the traditional proper Brusselly Brussells.

    Avi Liveson: Not sure how that’s similar. In your case, the item in question tasted as it was supposed to taste. Happy for you, though.

    Phil Goodchild: Ah yes but my point was a lot of Brussel Sprouts in recent years do not taste like real Brussel Sprouts should so it was a pleasure to find a farm shop that had some proper traditional tasting ones.

    Avi: Well put. I withdraw my point.

    Jason Andreoli: Pepper varieties are weird, while the red ones start off green, some green peppers never go red, yellow and orange can start green and ripen but others are brightly coloured all along. Been growing them from seed for 20 years and every years crop is different.

    Phil Rogers: Are you sure it wasn’t a toilet pepper?

    Avi Liveson: I saw no mention of that in the newspepper.

    Break up the Jets!! New York 27, Cleveland 20. Two in a row. Woohoo!

    Baby steps. We’ll take it.

    See you tomorrow!

  • This Is Fine

    The following was posted by Jose Rodgers of the Dull Men’s Club (UK), for obvious reasons:

    But Robert Haggar threw us all in a tizzy:

    As someone who uses and orders a lot of fixings and fittings, they’re not called those names at all.

    Jonathan Page: Go on then!

    Robert: [Examples provided.]

    [Arrrrgh! The post was removed before I could mine it for more dull matter. This happens sometimes. It’s very upsetting. I had posted the following comment: A friend went on an all-nuts diet. Now he’s a shell of his former self.]

    Happy Birthday to the Indian-American novelist Raja Rao who was born in India on this date in 1908 and passed away in Austin Texas at the age of 97. Wikipedia notes that his works are deeply rooted in metaphysics. I am too stupid to know what that means, and, of course, I have not heard of him. But the Writer’s Almanac shares this opening of his first novel Kanthapura written when he was just 21:

    Our village — I don’t think you have ever heard about it — Kanthapura is its name, and it is in the province of Kara. High on the Ghats is it, high up the steep mountains that face the cool Arabian seas, up the Malabar coast is it, up Mangalore and Puttur and many a center of cardamom and coffee, rice and sugar cane. Roads, narrow, dusty, rut-covered roads, wind through the forest of teak and of jack, of sandal and of sal, and hanging over bellowing gorges and leaping over elephant-haunted valleys, they turn now to the left and now to the right and bring you through the Alambè and Champa and Mena and Kola passes into the great granaries of trade.

    It’s the prettiest time of the year here at Owl Chatter headquarters in Chatham NJ. I wrote this haiku:

    Red and yellow leaves
    Against the blue of the sky
    Good to take a walk

    Today at 3pm the Princeton Women’s Ice Hockey team will face off against St. Lawrence, and we’ll be there to cover it. I checked the roster and found a defensewoman for Princeton from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, with the great name of Brooklyn Nimegeers. Don’t let the sweet smile fool you — you’ll be picking up your teeth with broken fingers if you look at her funny.

    The puzzle today was slammed as way too easy for a Saturday, and I agree. But 58A was an outlier, and then some. “Mali Empire ruler who single-handedly made the value of gold almost worthless by giving away so much of it.” Answer: MANSA MUSA. Makes you wonder: If he was a little tight, would Mansa Musa take Metamucil? (Asking for a friend.)

    Right above that the clue for ROOT CANAL was “Job for a driller?”

    At a ROOT CANAL I had years ago, before the doc started drilling, the assistant placed a tissue in my left hand and explained that they called it the “white flag.” I was supposed to wave it if I felt “discomfort,” and the doc would pause. I asked: Won’t the shrieking tip him off?

    A couple of Big Ten states crossed right at the start. Caitlin Clark’s college was tapped for IOWA right at 1A. And I missed the baseball reference in the clue “Red state?” The answer was OHIO and the “Red” was a Cincinnati Red, the consensus was: not politics.

    Hi Caity — good to see you again! Put those million dollar legs up and relax with a Diet Coke. George is back so we’re well stocked. You’re looking great! Folks okay?

    Another guest today was Liz Olsen, clued via her role in Wandavision. Gorgeous. Grab a cold one, Babe. Cait — shove over. You know each other? Loved Wind River, Liz.

    Liz, 36 now, is sister to the Olsen twins, of course, Mary-Kate and Ashley, and has an older brother Trent, who apparently can go f*ck himself for all anyone cares. She’s from California, but went to school at NYU, and has been married to the musician Robbie Arnett since 2019. They live in LA.

    11D was interesting. The clue was “Phrase spoken by a dog in a burning room, in a 2010s meme,” and the answer was THIS IS FINE. Apparently, there was a cartoon in which a dog is having coffee while the room is in flames and he’s saying “This is fine.” It became a popular meme for obliviousness, I guess, or the phrase was used to mean its opposite.

    At 26A, the clue was “John Coltrane album whose title suggests making major progress,” and the answer was GIANT STEPS. I’m not a big jazz fan, so I’m going to opt for this Taj Mahal tune Rex shared along with the Coltrane.

    Good luck getting your food stamps. See you tomorrow, Chatterheads!

  • Mr. Mojo Risin’

    From The Onion, for our Society department:

    Alarmed Taylor Swift Watches As Travis Kelce Prints Out Buffalo Wild Wings Catering Menu

    LEAWOOD, KS—Her eyes widening at the sight of the piece of paper moving inch by inch out of the machine, an alarmed Taylor Swift reportedly looked on Tuesday as her fiancé, Travis Kelce, printed out the Buffalo Wild Wings catering menu. “Babe, what’s that?” said the 35-year-old billionaire recording artist, taking a step closer to where the Kansas City Chiefs tight end sat in front of his laptop, and nearly dropping a mug after she noticed he was zoomed in on a picture of pretzel knots. “So, is this for your bachelor party? Because I thought we already agreed we were using that French chef for the wedding. ‘Chicken dipper?’ I don’t even know what that is. Yes, Travis, I’m sure they have salads too, but I don’t why you’re telling me that.”

    [Ease up, Babe. We’ll have Phil and Ana talk to him.]

    Do you know anyone named Vanessa? Caity had a close friend growing up by that name. She accompanied Caity to the dentist once (for fun, I guess) and when I brought her back, I told Vanessa’s mom that he filled a small cavity in Vanessa’s mouth. She was aghast and I had to convince her that I was kidding, which wasn’t easy since it’s hard to see what’s funny about it. Vanessa’s dad was Italian and a little scary. We were having dinner out with them once and the mom reminded the dad that he had to pick up a small table they ordered. The dad said, “I’m not sure it will fit in the trunk” and I almost said “Just push the bodies to the side.” Glad I didn’t.

    Anyway, at 63A today, the clue was “Woman’s name invented by Jonathan Swift,” and the answer was VANESSA. After extensive research (you know, a minute or two online), I was able to add that it’s from the Greek root for butterfly. The young woman subbing for Rex on his XW blog today went off on a tangent, noting that on the puzzles she constructs she tries to clue women without reference to a man, i.e., in their own right. Here’s what she said:

    “I have heard people comment that the NYT puzzle will rarely clue an entry that is a woman’s name by simply mentioning a real, famous woman. (Alternatives would include using a noun (like ‘dawn’ as a noun rather than a person), using wordplay (‘Name that anagrams to xyz’), or describing the woman via her relationship to a man.) This is not a trend that has stood out to me while broadly solving (which is not to say it does or doesn’t exist, just that I haven’t noticed!), but I did notice it with this clue, and it’s feedback that I think about when I write my own puzzles.”

    ********

    I suggested the clue today could have been “Woman’s name associated with butterflies.”

    Anony Mouse commented that I would be the only one who’d get it right, and I replied: “I’d probably forget.”

    And then Commenter Anoa Bob wrote: “Per xwordinfo.com, VANESSA has appeared in the NYTXW 31 times over the years. It has been clued as a specific woman 19 times. In its first appearance, Sun Feb 7, 1943, it was clued ‘Butterfly genus.’” [So there.]

    Here’s a pretty VANESSA. How pretty? Well, she divorced that clown on the left and hangs with Tiger Woods now.

    Hey, did you know this? Trump Jr. proposed to her with a $100,000 ring ($161,000 in 2024 dollars) that he received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler’s store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey! Not a bad deal. How’s that for romantic?

    Their daughter Kai is a knockout too. Careful with those hands, Grandpa. You’re in enough hot water already with that Epstein business.

    I like anagrams. Did you know the lyric from The Doors’ song L.A. Woman “Mr. Mojo Risin’” is an anagram of “Jim Morrison?” (Morrison only told the band about it after the song was recorded. Blew them away.) Anyway, in today’s theme answers, the constructor takes the name of a language and anagrams it into a word in that language. E.g., CROATIAN anagrams to RAINCOAT. (Also FLEMISH to HIMSELF, and LATVIAN to VALIANT.)

    Egs, who never fails to impress, wrote: “I once knew a VALIANT LATVIAN who was FLEMISH HIMSELF but wore a CROATIAN RAINCOAT, so this puzzle really brought back some great memories.”

    There was a bit of a hoo-hah over whether Flemish is actually a language or merely a dialect. I added my two cents with: “I hope no one phlips me the phinger over this, but I’m phlegmatic over whether Flemish is a language for these purposes. Seems close enough for crosswords.”

    From The Onion sports pages:

    Self-Conscious Sumo Wrestler Wears T-Shirt Into Ring

    This poem by Martín Espada is today’s poem of the day from The Poetry Foundation. It rings a faint bell for me, so I might have shared it before. But so what? It’s called “The Monster in the Lake.”

    A city boy, I always wanted to go fishing. The DiFilippo brothers brought me
    to a secret lake where we cast our lines into the dark, the barbed lures
    spinning. I snagged a monster in the lake. I fought the monster and my reel
    jammed. One of the DiFilippo brothers said: That’s not a fish. We waded
    into the water and dragged a rusty box spring onshore, festooned with
    the lures of failed fishermen. We plucked them off the coils and dragged it
    back. Whenever we went fishing, we would have more treasures to collect.

    Late that night, I felt the monster swimming beneath my feet. I walked
    down to the basement and saw my father hunched over a table in his white
    T-shirt and boxers. He flinched as if I’d caught him whispering on the phone
    to a woman who was not my mother. What are you doing? I asked. I saw
    the pages of a Spanish dictionary and a legal pad where he had copied down
    the meaning of the words in longhand. I’m learning Spanish, he confessed.

    My father the rabble-rouser with the bullhorn, my father the Puerto Rican
    who spoke for other Puerto Ricans in the papers, my father who left his island
    at age eleven and kissed the runway when he flew home at age thirty-eight,
    my father who had the Spanish slapped from his mouth like a dangling
    cigarette by teachers and coaches in the city where I grew up, could feel
    his Puerto Rican tongue shriveling, coated with gravel, drained of words.

    I left him in the basement, riddled with the hooks no one else could see.

    It has happened more than once that a baseball fan became torn between watching a key at-bat and rushing off to the bathroom to take care of business. Such a fan will appreciate Classic Auto Group Park in Eastlake OH, just 18 miles from Progressive Field (where the Guardians (nee Indians) play). The High-A Lake County Captains (the “Caps”) play in Classic Park. And in Classic Park you can watch a game from Toilet Row:

    Only in America!

    See you tomorrow Chatterheads! Thanks for popping by.

  • Hold The Sauce

    Election Day went well in Jersey for us lunatic Communist radicals bent on destroying America. All hail Mikie Sherrill, our congresswoman, now our Governess. Her ads all tarred her opponent as a tax raiser: how many Repubs face that charge? But everyone knew it was a case of her representing all that is good in the world and him representing all that is evil.

    Here’s Mikie (on the right) hangin’ with the cool Deputy Mayor of Asbury Park, Amy Quinn, in her Stone Pony tee.

    Is Bill Maher being snippy for dissing Kimmel for not thanking him? “Look, Jimmy apparently doesn’t like me too much anymore because he thanked everybody but me. And I was adamant, adamant, about supporting him that week and the next week,” Maher said.

    How does Maher know “he thanked everybody but me?” Anyone else who wasn’t thanked wouldn’t have been thanked, no?

    Kimmel was Sarah Silverman’s partner from ’02 to ’09. She was entering a pool in a fancy resort once and noticed a sign that said: “Do not enter if you have diarrhea or have had diarrhea within the last 14 days.” She said, “Why don’t they just come out and say it: No Jews allowed. She found a Jewish woman in the audience who claimed not to have had diarrhea for two weeks and likened it to the miracle of Chanukah. “She only had a three-day supply of Immodium . . . “

    Does she look sweet here? Don’t tangle with this woman — you will not come out alive.

    The Jets traded two of their best defensive men for draft picks yesterday. I’m too numb from all the years of torture to care anymore. May be a good move, what do I know? They certainly weren’t winning with them. Sauce Gardner has the best ever nickname, though. I’ll miss that.

    Dig in, Buddy. Good luck in Indy.

    Do you know who Anna Lee Fisher is? I didn’t either until she showed up in the puzzle today. She’s a doctor and chemist but gained fame as an astronaut who was, as the clue states, “the first mother to fly into space.” She was married to fellow astronaut Bill Fisher and had two kids with him, but they divorced in 2000. They are the only couple ever to have had sex with each other while in their space suits. If you think those ice hockey uniforms are sexy, get a load of Annie Lee in this hot get-up. No wonder Fisher couldn’t hold back.

    At 38D, the clue was “Dinner order request on a first date, perhaps.” Answer: NO ONIONS. Here’s Rex on it:

    Calling “NO ONIONS” an “order” is a stretch, and a big one. It’s an order specification—a part of an order, but not the order itself. And anyway, do people really avoid onions on “dates?” I never really understood the whole onions/bad breath connection. Bad breath is a very specific thing that has much more to do with mouth hygiene than anything you ate. If you’re gonna make out with someone right after dinner, you’re gonna have the meal on your breath to some extent. Who cares!? You want the damn onions, eat the damned onions! Life’s too short to be gaming the situation much.

    Turn it up!

    At 37D, the clue was “Prop in a comedy club,” and the answer was STOOL. Here’s egs: “I quit my traveling salesman job selling furniture to bars. Just so unpleasant having to drag STOOL samples from town to town.”

    Here is a Green Bee-Eater, showing how it got its name.

    And here’s a poem with the same name, by Pascale Petit from The Poetry Foundation.

    More precious than all
    the gems of  Jaipur—

    the green bee-eater.

    If  you see one singing
    tree-tree-tree

    with his space-black bill
    and rufous cap,

    his robes
    all shades of emerald

    like treetops glimpsed
    from a plane,

    his blue cheeks,
    black eye-mask

    and the delicate tail streamer
    like a plume of smoke—

    you might dream
    of the forests

    that once clothed
    our flying planet.

    And perhaps his singing
    is a spell

    to call our forests back—

    tree
    by tree
    by tree.

    OMG, this visit to the Dull Men’s Club (UK) got me laughing out loud. I mean it: I was sitting at the keyboard roaring. See if you can tell what set me off.

    Matt Hale posted: Just picked up the TV remote in an attempt to answer a phone call. Stared at it for a good 10 seconds trying to find the answer button. Going to bed now.

    Timothy Franklin: I took a remote to work instead of my phone.

    Tracy Lightfoot: I have tried to change a tv channel with my cordless phone.

    Alan Hunt: Over 60 by any chance? If ‘yes’ you are normal, if ‘no,’ what was the question? 

    Leon Cowan: I tried to open my front door with a Greggs sausage roll this morning. You’re not alone.

    Diane Reed: Can you let me know if you see my specs please?

    [OC note: It was Leon Cowan’s note, with the sausage roll. Too funny.]

    No way to top that. Might as well shut the store. See you tomorrow Chatterheads!

  • Janis Joplin Tattoo

    I popped by the Dull Men’s Club (UK) this morning and found this post by Dave Walsh with the photo:

    Coffee

    On way to recycling centre picked up my afternoon hit by drive thru. At the window the server informed me “just a wee second.” Now I’m well aware this is not meant to be taken literally and just means there will be a short delay.

    But is this not the worst idiom? 46 seconds later I got my drink. Surely a “wee minute” would be more literally right. The delay was apparently because they had to get a carrier for my single cup (double no less) Despite me not needing a carrier as I use the built-in holder in car. They said legally they had to pass it over in a carrier. This is no doubt mitigating legal risks from hot drink spills. At least I was able to dump the cardboard carrier at the recycling centre.

    And I commented: “I’m impressed your car knows your name. Unless it thinks everyone is named Dave.”

    That’s what my life is like now. That’s what I do.

    At 52D in the puzzle today, the clue was “Metaphor for a bad goalie,” and the answer was SIEVE. Pretty good.

    My comment: That SIEVE at 52D reminded me of the poor minor league hockey goalie who gave up eleven goals as his team lost an important playoff game. He was so despondent that on his way home from the arena he threw himself in front of a bus. Luckily, it went through his legs.

    That’s my favorite hockey joke. I told it in class several times and it never got a laugh.

    While we’re on the topic, did you know that a woman goalie signed a professional ice hockey contract to play with an NHL team (Tampa Bay)? She appeared in exhibition games back in ’92-’93 and played minor league hockey in men’s leagues? It was Manon Rhéaume. Her first husband was a minor league hockey player. She had a son with him who was a goalie for Michigan State. She has a son from her second husband too who plays now for UMich! Go Blue! Playboy invited her to pose for them. She said “No thanks.” I don’t see why they asked her to pose — there’s nothing sexier than those hockey uniforms.

    From The Onion:

    Man Hopes Nicely Dug Grave Will Get Him Back In Captors’ Good Graces

    Here’s something for our Math Dept (Hi Judy!), I think. The clue at 15A was “Like the number ‘i’” and the answer was NONREAL.

    Commenter SJ posted: I enjoyed the way they clued “i” as a NONREAL number. I always get a kick out of the nomenclature there as “i” is no more or less REAL than any other number. To further complicate matters, “i” is also referred to as an “imaginary” number when, again, it is no more or less “imaginary” than any other number.

    And tht came back with:

    “Hey, proud of you for saying that about the number i! Of course those are technical terms, real and NONREAL, and they are terms used by mathematicians, but I think you’d be very hard-pressed to find a mathematician who assigned a higher ontological priority to real numbers than to (nonreal) complex numbers.”

    “A more subtle sort of misconception can arise when people speak of ‘the’ square root of -1. There are two square roots of -1, notated as i and -i, but it would be a severe error to think that one is the ‘positive’ square root of -1 and the other the ‘negative’ square root. There is no property or characteristic of i that cannot be equally asserted of -i. (This recognition is a point of entry for what is known as Galois theory.) So you could say that i and -i are distinct but indiscernible. Metaphorically, if one of them walked into a room, you would never be able to identify which one of them it was by the way they look or act.”

    OK, thanks, but now my brain hurts. Not about a number walking into a room. That part’s okay.

    The puzzle’s theme today was COLORTV. The four theme answers were INDIGO GIRLS, GREENHOUSE, BLACK SUITS, and WHITE CASTLE. Each has a color followed by the name of a TV show. A little blah if you ask me. Word of the Indigo Girls reached me under my rock, but I am not familiar with their work. This song’s nice.

    Rex said when he saw them perform back in 1990, he was dating the sister of one of them. They are Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, both in their early 60s now. They met in elementary school in Atlanta and have been performing together since high school. Hey, don’t look at me in that tone of voice!!

    Caity asked us to take Robin to urgent care a while back, I think for strep throat. Robin is pretty wild in terms of how she dresses and on that day part of her outfit was a pair of gloves from which her fingers protruded and which showed (skeletal) bones on the nonprotrudive parts. (You may have to read that twice for coherence. Sorry.) The doc or RN who was doing the examination took a swab of her throat and asked her a bunch of questions. Then I asked: “Is it normal for us to be able to see the bones of her hands like that?” And she said: “No, it is not,” pretty emphatically.

    I spoke with someone from Verizon today, who was very helpful with a problem on my phone. Then he found me a new $15 a month discount I qualified for! Two for two. Then he tried to sell me on some security package for $10 a month. He went over the benefits it offered, like if my TVs or devices go bad, they will fix them for me, or help me install certain things in the house. I thanked him and said I’ll pass it up. He seemed incredulous and asked me “Why?” I said because it costs $120 a year, why else would it be? In fact, he really didn’t know me. I’d have turned it down if it just cost $1 a year. A dollar is a dollar. Damn right it is.

    Hard to imagine a song more well-known than “When A Man Loves A Woman,” by Percy Sledge, amirite? Well, Donna Jean Godchaux sang backup on it, as she did on a #1 hit by Elvis, “Suspicious Minds.” That was before she was introduced to the Grateful Dead and sang with them from 1972 to 1979. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll HOF with them in 1994.

    Sadly, Donna passed away Sunday, at the age of 78.

    Let’s hear it again.

    So if Percy Sledge married MC Hammer, would he be Percy Sledge Hammer? Asking for a friend.

    Rest in peace, Donna.

    I watch the news less than I used to because I’m not an idiot. And besides sports I often watch a food show. To show you how low I have sunk, I recently watched an episode of Man vs. Food that I had seen before. (It’s the one where he eats an enormous slice of pizza with thick levels of increasing hotness.) Anyway, I had it on some “best food ever” show and was surprised to learn from the discussion that a pork “butt” comes from the pig’s shoulder, not the rear! Did you know that? How can that be? Looks like the rear is the “ham.”

    Okay, Barbra Streisand, Paris Hilton, and . . . Tom Brady??? What in the world could be the connection? Woof, woof! TB just revealed that his beloved dog Junie was cloned from his former dog Lua who died two years ago. Creeped out? Streisand and Hilton also had their dogs cloned. Colossal Biosciences is the company Brady used and he’s also an investor in it, not just a customer. It’s a noninvasive procedure: A blood sample from Lua was used to “produce” Junie. The company gained some fame for “de-extinction” efforts, i.e., it brought back “dire wolves” via cloning.

    Now the Patriots, Brady’s old team, are suddenly winning again with a new QB who seems to have emerged from nowhere. Could it be Brady himself was . . . ? Nah.

    Here’s Paris. Phil — how many phones does she use?

    Let’s close today with this poem by Avia Tadmor, called “Nothing Promised.” It was the poem of the day from poets.org last Friday.

    You drag the boat across the tallgrass, shake out 
    the black snakes that made a provisional home under the bow 
    through the length of winter. The rope undone 
    for the first time in months, it slews behind you 
    through dirt, then shallow water, a thin trail 
    that follows you deeper into the afternoon, submits to the pull 
    of you, or perhaps the pull of the other shore. So sure you are 
    in your solitude, and I am startled to sit here, witness it. 
    How smooth is your sailing away, this measured 
    but steady drifting under pink, penumbral light. When we first met
    you portioned your stories, or they came brash, a light tower’s 
    unpredictable beam. Resolving to muteness the year your father 
    could no longer hear you, then woodwork, then a decade
    of travel. Tulum. The Mont Blanc where the five-foot two French guide 
    hauled you out of a crevasse. The Norwegian girl you met at a bar 
    in Cambodia who followed you back, wanting 
    to show you the ring on her labia. Her Janis Joplin tattoo. I follow you now 
    with my late summer eyes. Why do I love watching you like that, 
    cruising away from me? As if you are teaching me something 
    about love and distance. Two red-tailed hawks surrender 
    their shadows to the thicket of spruces. You stare up, 
    then past your left shoulder. I think, at me. The wind tugs at every 
    boat in our world. A hushed push and pull, a measure of faith 
    travels the distance between us. Buoyant as day, thin as light.

    See you tomorrow!

  • Southern Kisses

    All hail the conquering Dodgers. Very painful loss for Toronto. A classic lesson not to leave the door open for the enemy even an inch even with that chain thingie on, for they will kick it down. In 2019, when the Gnats went up 3-2 in the seventh inning of their Game 7 against the hated Astros, they knew better than to try to bring the baby home in the shaky stroller through the rain and bad neighborhood. They got another run in the 8th, and two more in the 9th. Case closed. Toronto had so many chances to add on, but came out empty-handed. You need to drive a stake through the heart with a team as deep and good as LA. Loved Dave Roberts’ reaction to Rojas’s improbable game-tying dinger with one down in the ninth. He threw his head back and grabbed it with both hands: “Is this really happening?”

    Here is a picture of joyfulness Phil caught for us.

    So, yup, LA dropped a PEOPLE’S ELBOW on the Jays Saturday night. I learned what that is from Saturday’s puzzle. It’s a wrestling term. The clue was “The Rock’s signature W.W.E. move.” This is from the Urban Dictionary: The people’s elbow was one of the signature moves of The Rock (Dwayne Johnson). First he would look at the crowd, then pull off his elbow pad in slow motion and throw it into the crowd. Then he would run left, bounce off the ropes then over the guy on the ground, bounce off the ropes again. Then he would kick his right leg up and drop his elbow on to the man’s heart. Ouch. By then, the crowd would have judged the poor slob to be evil, so DJ was administering the people’s justice in that fashion.

    At 17A, the clue was “Controversial Richard Serra sculpture once seen in N.Y.C.’s Foley Square.” I don’t recall seeing it, but Riverdale Joe did. It’s the TILTED ARC. Foley Square is south of Chinatown and east of Tribeca. It was on display from 1981 through 1989. It was a 120-foot-long, 12-foot-high solid, unfinished plate of rust-covered steel. Critics called it ugly and saw it as ruining the site. Following an acrimonious public debate, it was removed in 1989 as the result of a federal lawsuit and has never been publicly displayed since, in accordance with the artist’s wishes. And get off my lawn! Hrummmmph.

    At 15A, the clue was “Gift of Athena to Athenians,” and the answer was OLIVE TREE. Her original idea was a blender.

    Like a peanut, a puzzle can either be fresh or stale. If it’s fresh that means there are neat words, phrases, and concepts in it, as opposed to a pile of CAT, TABLE, OREO, etc. Saturday’s was beyond fresh, all the way to wonderful. It was by Michael Lieberman. In addition to the items discussed above, which you’ve already forgotten, it included MAYBE PILE, MOM FRIEND, and BEYOND PARODY, clued respectively with “‘I’ll think about this and decide later’ grouping,” “Acquaintance made at day care drop-off, perhaps,” and “Superlatively absurd.”

    Last — did you know that “the one mammal that can crack a Brazil nut with its teeth” is the AGOUTI? (What about us humans?) It’s a rodent, but so what? Who among us is perfect? (Well, maybe Armas, but even there — her choice in men?)

    Speaking of puzzles, here’s a Halloween costume photo Cody P. sent to Rex who posted it for us. Note the OREO on the front, and the scary face grid on the back. Regarding the crosswordese on the front, Cody wrote: “From left to right / top to bottom, the decorations are: ELM/ASH/TREE, EEL, EWE, OGRE, OREO, EAR, ALE/IPA, TEA, ALOE, APE, TEE, AXE, ANT, EYE/ISEE, EMU, and LEO” (represented by her friend’s dog, Leo). And get this — The grids are NYT crosswords from previous Halloweens.

    Per egs: People often say my blood classification is a mistake, but it’s just a TYPEO.

    Ever get the wrong thing in the mail? Here’s a true Halloween story from a woman in Hopkinsville, KY. “We were expecting a delivery of urgent medication that was flown in on like a Nashville airport thing, and they delivered two boxes,” she said. BTW, those “airport things” are called “planes.” But go on. “We opened one box and it turned out to be human body parts.” Yikes! Two arms and four fingers, if you must know. She called 911 and turned the items over to the county coroner, except for one “because I always wanted to give my mother-in-law the finger,” she explained (no she didn’t). As a good illustration of TMI, the coroner stated the items came from four different bodies. They were supposed to be delivered to a school or hospital for surgical training.

    Hard to imagine that anyone noticed, but Owl Chatter went into radio silence for two days. This is because our headquarters were invaded by around ten of the most fearsome folks known to mankind: teenage girls. We turned our house over to Robin (the artist formerly known as Lianna) and her buddies for a birthday (Sweet 16, kinahora) sleepover party. Mom Caitlin was in charge (like anyone could be). All went well!!

    We fled down to a dingy motel in Bordentown (see room, below), and took in a nice concert in Princeton on Sunday, as well as Saturday dinner at one of our favorite spots, Destination Dogs in New Brunswick; breakfast at one of our favorite spots, Chesterfield Bagels (their tobacco bagel is to die for) near Bordentown, and lunch at a great new (to us) pizza place in Skillman NJ, with Owl Chatter friend Jersey Mary, Beniamino’s (wow – out of this world).

    We watched Toronto fall on this TV.

    And here’s Beniamino, our new best friend!

    If you’re looking to hear two cute girls sing a great old Steve Forbert tune, you’ve come to the right place. (Happy Birthday Peyton, whoever you are. To 120!) See you tomorrow, Chatterheads! Thanks for stopping by!

  • Odi Et Amo

    “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever” had become unattached from its writer, at least for me, if ever it was attached. But we can stick it back on now. Today’s Writer’s Almanac tells us it’s the birthday of John Keats (1795, in Finsbury Pavement, near London) and that it was he who wrote it. It’s the first line of his poem “Endymion.” Not only that, but we know what the “thing” was, or, more accurately, who. JK fell in love with the girl next door: Fanny Brawne, and most of his love poems were written for her. She was his muse and fiancee. I can see it: she is quite pretty. And she was portrayed by the Australian actress Abbie Cornish, no slouch either.

    Ha! We received a note from Owl Chatter friend Chris about Fawlty Towers. He says he needs subtitles for it, and asks “What language is it in?” A reasonable inquiry. We recommend the Yiddish version, of course, with subtitles in Serbo-Croatian. Enjoy!

    Anything else?

    On another front, I can’t tell you how many notes we received here at the Owl Chatter Fine Arts Dept., concerned about whether Gauguin’s last self-portrait is authentic or (gasp!) a fraud. Well, you’ve come to the right place — we assigned the issue to our fraud expert Georgie Santos, who tells us the painting is authentic. “Are you sure?” we asked him, wanting to make sure that he was sure. “Well, a few thingies here and there on the face were probably touched up by his buddy Ky Dong. But essentially it’s PG’s work.”

    Whew. That’s a relief. Thanks Georgie! And thanks to Astoria Bob for help with the research. The painting supports the view that Gauguin was in decline in his later years, compared to his earlier vibrant self-portraits.

    For the second day in a row, the Writer’s Almanac featured a poem by Jo McDougall. Fine by us. This one is called “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

    World War II is slipping away, I can feel it.
    Its officers are gray.
    Their wives who danced at the USO
    are gray, too.
    Veterans forget their stories. Some lands they fought in
    have new names, and Linda Venetti
    who deserted the husband who raised cows
    to run off with an officer
    has come home to look after her mother
    and work the McDonald’s morning shift.
    William Holden is dead,
    and my mother, who knew all the words
    to “When the Lights Go On Again All over the World.”

    TIL (today I learned) from the puzzle that CRETE is the “island home of what may be the world’s oldest living olive tree (2,000+ years).” And egs noted: What do you call that leftover chili you left in the back of the fridge for 2 months? Chili con CRETE.

    Also happy to see actress HAILEE Steinfeld in the puzzle today, QB Josh Allen’s wife. Hope you saw her in Sinners. Pretty intense. She’s Jewish on her dad’s side. Yup, the quarterbacks get all the pretty girls (and the tax professors, darling).

    For our Dirty Old Man Dept, the clue at 53A was “Cone ___ (iconic Jean Paul Gaultier undergarment).” BRA of course. Ridiculous.

    At 30A, the clue was “Earth goddess in “Das Rheingold” and the answer was ERDA. WTF? It really rankled Rex, who did a little digging and learned that ERDA hasn’t appeared in a NYTXW in twelve years. “ERDA?” he wrote. “Never ERDA her.” He loved the puzzle otherwise and so remarked: “The puzzle ends up like a fridge full of delicious food and then one small can of half-eaten cat food that you opened a month ago and forgot about (why would it be behind the mayonnaise?! who put it there?).” And Commenter Tom H opined: The mayonnaise is supposed to go on the refrigerator door not the shelf! [Hrrrrrrumph!] And get off my lawn!

    You know that moment in a movie when something crucial is about to happen and the music starts up to set the scene? It’s called a NEEDLE DROP, like on an old record player. Had no idea.

    At 39A, Opposite of the Latin “odi” is AMO. The former is hate and the latter is love.

    An anonymous commenter shared this, so let’s class the joint up a little (you speak Yiddish?):

    Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
    Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
    (Catullus, Poems, 85)

    I hate and I love. Why I do this perhaps you ask.
    I do not know, but I sense that it happens and I am
    tormented.

    Headline from The Onion:

    ICE Agent, 7-Year-Old Both Wearing Same ‘Military Commando’ Halloween Costume

    Hope you’re up for a rant. Have you noticed that whenever Trump commits some horrendous outrage his apologists go marching back into history for some absurd precedent? He tells the press his ballroom won’t touch the East Wing of the White House and then he demolishes it. And his defenders are, like, well, President Polk had the carpets cleaned back in 1887, so why is this any different?

    Historian and author Jill Lepore put it like this in the New Yorker of 11/3:

    “Historians will need to account for Trump when, as Gerald Ford said when he succeeded Nixon, ‘our long national nightmare is over.’ Analogies won’t help them. Because nothing in American history anticipates or explains the way Trump speaks to his supporters at his rallies, or his use of Truth Social. He riffs; he cusses; he dodges; he weaves; he raises money; he spreads lies. He is lurid and profane. He targets his political opponents, threatening them with prosecution, prison, and execution. He is the world’s most outspoken troll, and its most dangerous. He posts day and night, about everything from taco bowls to possible ceasefires. He is getting worse. In his second term, he has posted three times as often as he did during his first. Tonally, nearly everything he posts is unhinged, even when it’s a simple endorsement or amplification of a policy. Most of the rest is pure nonsense. A sizable percentage consists of outright lies and, especially, false or unsubstantiated accusations.

    “Any analogy to this Presidency can be found only in the history of other countries, in the whims and cruelties and fantasies and insanities of the tyrants of antiquity, tin-pot dictators, Latin American caudillos, and modern strongmen. Nero, Stalin, Kim Jong Il. Call the historians who write about those guys, please.”

    God Bless America.

    Happy Halloween, Chatterheads. See you tomorrow!

  • Soybeans

    It’s a gloomy, rainy day today. But that’s down here in our part of the U.S. Up North, Canada is glowing. It ain’t over (thank you, Yogi), but the Jays have been shining. Their rookie pitcher Trey Yesavage made toothpicks of the LA bats last night. Every time we turned our heads it seemed like Ohtani, Betts, or Freddie was flailing at a third strike. Trey K’d an even dozen, a World Series record for a rookie. Made the best hitters in the game look like me swinging.

    Have you ever gone somewhere, against your better judgment, and the moment you walk through the door you get that sinking feeling that you’re in for a dreadful time? A lot, if you’re me. That’s how the LA pitcher Snell must have felt when his very first pitch was pounded over the fence by Davis Schneider (a backup outfielder subbing for Springer), who wears goofy glasses and looks like he cuts his own hair (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The second batter homered too: Vladdy, he of the Hall of Fame dad who must be qvelling big time. Snell settled down, but the message got across: The Jays were going ham.

    Here’s Schneider, a South Jersey boy. See what I mean about the hair?

    This poem is called “On Catalpa Street.” It’s by Jo McDougall and was in today’s Writer’s Almanac.

    At dusk, when kitchen-window light
    settles on the grass like a picnic cloth,
    he thinks of the town he lived in
    when he was twelve,
    the year his father died.
    He remembers an evening after his father’s funeral,
    crossing the yards wide with dogs and mowers
    toward the yellow light of the living room,
    toward a baseball game on the radio,
    a back porch that smelled like sour mops.
    He remembers a man he had never seen before
    sitting with his mother at the kitchen table,
    his mother looking, turning toward him
    as though he might have been the Perkins boy
    come to paint the shed.

    Here’s Jo:

    Need proof that I live under a rock? I just got an email advertising a performer who is expected to fill Michigan Stadium two nights running: the largest arena in the world. And I never heard of the guy: Morgan Wallen? He any good?

    On the other hand, I’ve heard of (and loved) Prunella Scales. She played Sybil Fawlty, Basil Fawlty’s (John Cleese’s) wife on the hysterical show Fawlty Towers. Sadly, she passed away on Monday at the age of 93 at her home in London. Get this: her sons said she was watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died.

    These two paragraphs about the show are from Ms. Scales’s obit in the NYT by Natasha King:

    She was often found smoking in a back room while on the telephone with a friend, her gossiping frequently punctuated with a drawling “Oh, I know!” Confronted with her husband’s shenanigans, she cut him down to size with a withering look or a short, sharp “BASIL!” — no mean feat for the petite 5-foot-3 Ms. Scales facing the 6-foot-5 Mr. Cleese.

    Some of Basil’s favorite epithets for his wife included “my little piranha fish” and “my little nest of vipers,” and he likened her braying laugh to “someone machine-gunning a seal.” She often responded in kind: “Do you really imagine, even in your wildest dreams, that a girl like this could possibly be interested in an aging, brilliantined stick insect like you?” she admonished when she caught him in the closet of an attractive guest’s room.

    OMG. Too funny.

    Fawlty Towers has been hailed as the best British TV show ever by the British Film Institute and other organizations. Prunella was a Shakespearian actress earlier in life, and, in general, had a very successful career.

    She was happily married to fellow-actor Timothy West who passed away last year. “I am famous for playing unfortunate wives,” she said, “but I have been a very lucky wife.” She is survived by three children, seven grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, for all of whom reservations are being held at The Towers.

    Headline from The Onion:

    China Agrees To Purchase Eleven U.S. Soybeans

    Well, it looks like he’s just like the rest of us run-of-the-mill pedophiles now. Owl Chatter has learned that LeBron James has stripped former Prince Andrew of his titles and kicked him out of the castle because of his “activities” linked to Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s dead BFF sex monster. Wait, no, the other king did it — Charles, who can’t even dribble without losing the ball off of his foot.

    Henceforth, the dude is no longer to be known as “Prince” or “His Royal Highness,” but only as Andrew. Ouch. Andrew’s children, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, retain their titles. Whew, close one. And you thought you were embarrassed by your dad. My Zoey is still a princess too. Here are Bea and Eu. Linda has pajamas like the one on the left.

    The last time a member of the British royal family was formally stripped of a title was Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, after he swore allegiance to Germany during World War I, viewed at the time as “not a good move.”

    You hear this? Sorry for the earworm. See you tomorrow.