The Wellington Files

  • A Brief Crack of Light

    Owl Chatter’s political correspondent Georgie Santos is covering the trial for us. His first report is headlined: Nation Trains Its Eyes On Trump’s Pecker. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to understand much of David Pecker’s testimony so he mostly focused on Trump’s falling asleep and farting.

    According to Georgie, the falling asleep part is for sure, and the farting has been noted by several sources but has not been as well established. “Odor in the Court” was one report. George Conway (anti-Trump hubbie of Kellyanne) put some wind behind the sails, so to speak, saying he heard unconfirmed stories that Trump had become a blasting zone, but the sources remain unnamed.

    Remember this scene from Horsefeathers?

    Connie: Oh, Professor, you’re full of whimsy.

    Prof. Wagstaff (Groucho): Can you notice it from there? I’m always that way after I eat radishes.

    Zach, we hardly knew ye! But the little we did know of ye was enough for us to know ye stink!

    We are referring to the Jets’ hapless QB Zach Wilson whose sentence was commuted yesterday via a trade to Denver. What did the Jets get in return? Well, they swapped a seventh-round draft pick for a sixth-round pick. OK. And? Um, they saved $2.75 million they would have had to pay him. Alright. Fine.

    Remember Zach’s hot mom, below? Looks like she could be the girlfriend, right? (Also below.)

    Oh no! Wait! Make that ex-girlfriend. D’oh! They broke up and she claimed he slept with his mom’s best friend!! Yikes — let’s just tiptoe away from that one.

    We wish him well. Much of his undoing wasn’t his fault. Good luck Zach.

    Ever have a waiter like this? The story is from last Sunday’s Met Diary and is by Ronni Shulman Mallozzi. Of course, we’re only getting one side of the story.

    Dear Diary:

    My husband and I were hosting guests from out of town at an upscale restaurant on the Upper East Side.

    A waiter came to the table and asked in a haughty tone if we were ready to order.

    When it was one of our guests’ turn, she paused.

    “I’m trying to decide between the lamb and the roast chicken,” she said. “What do you suggest?”

    “I suggest you make up your mind,” he said, and then walked off.

    Shakespeare’s birthday is observed on this date (1564), and it’s Vladimir Nabokov’s too (1899). Quite a duo. They were both very much aware of our mortality. WS wrote: “We are such stuff
    as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” And Nabokov, more darkly: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

    Ouch. Thanks. Have some cake, fellas!

    Here’s Vlad on a butterfly excursion, regretting he brought Phil along but, thankfully, unarmed.

    Today’s puzzle is dedicated, sort of, to breaking a hallowed Crossworld rule: No two-letter words! The trick today was that the theme answers, the longer answers, were strings of two-letter words. The best one was clued with: “Yuck! I’ve dated him before. Swipe left!” And the answer was OH NO! EW! HE IS MY EX.

    Also, “Can this be a gift from all of us?” was: OK IF WE GO IN ON IT?

    At 55A, “$5 bill, slangily” was FIN. The notes say it’s related to the Yiddish word for five — finif. And Commenter Diane wrote: It brought back a happy memory. My parents were always prompt regarding dinner. Once we had to wait to get in a restaurant and my mom furtively turned to my husband and said regarding the host at the front, “Just slip him a fin!” How I miss the folks of that generation and their fun expressions, among many other wonderful qualities they possessed!

    At 10D the clue was: “Announces the big reveal in a magic act,” and the answer was, well, let me turn this over to Rex. Rex hated the whole puzzle, but this particular clue/answer really set him off:

    “Usually the long stuff comes to the rescue a bit, but probably the worst thing in the grid is an astonishing 10 letters long: SAYS PRESTO! (10D: Announces the big reveal in a magic act). I think I actually said ‘oh my god, No!’ to my computer as I filled that in. SAYS PRESTO!!? I normally use EAT A SANDWICH as the gold standard of “random verb phrase that absolutely cannot stand on its own” but SAYS PRESTO really wants to be the new representative of that category. You say this … when describing a magic act? How many … times … have you done that? (Answer: none, no times). SAYS PRESTO is about as solid an answer as EATS PESTO or LEAVES MODESTO. A comically preposterous answer.”

    The silver lining: he shared this neat tune by Pedro the Lion, called Modesto:

    Enough. More nonsense tomorrow. See you then.

  • Boom! Roasted!

    Advice from a Maryland billboard: Never trust an electrician who has no eyebrows.

    Eric Hovde is running against U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc) for her seat this November. He’s a shmuck. I’ll spare you having to look at a photo of him, but, rest assured, he looks like a shmuck. He stuck his foot in his mouth but good recently. The bank he heads, Sunwest, was named as a co-defendant in a lawsuit accusing a senior living facility the bank co-owns of elder abuse, negligence, and wrongful death. Brilliantly, he boasted of having expertise in the nursing home industry and, when suggesting the 2020 election was rigged, he drew on that experience and stated that nursing home residents “have a five-, six-month life expectancy,” and that “almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote.”

    In Wisconsin, people 65 or older make up 18% of the population and have a high propensity to vote. Many were offended by his idiotic statements. Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who is popular in the state since he played for a time with the Milwaukee Bucks, issued a statement essentially echoing Owl Chatter’s view that Hovde’s a shmuck. We are expecting that in November all those nursing home seniors with their meager life expectancies who don’t vote consign him to the ash-heap of history where he belongs.

    I hope these two Tiny Love Stories from the NYT take that sour taste out of your mouths. The first is by Susannah Clark Matt and is about her dad.

    “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a Coke today.” The last words my father said to me. I had just brought him a Coke, fulfilling a raspy request from his deathbed. At first, I thought his offer was gibberish spurting from his rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disease. When I told my mom, she immediately understood — he was riffing on Wimpy’s catchphrase from the “Popeye” cartoon. In those final days, the one-liners kept coming: Could I get him anything? A winning lottery ticket. Anyone he wanted to see? Bob Dylan. He didn’t make it to Tuesday, but his debt had been repaid.

    This next one is by Sarah Shebek, one of the beautiful young women pictured below, who met in the unlikely setting of a — well, let’s let Sarah tell the story.

    “Our love story sounds straightforward: Meet at a Bible study in rural Missouri, fall in love on a service trip and marry after college graduation. The plot twist? We’re both women. Before we met, Alison and I had exclusively dated men. Our relationship moved quickly from friendship to love, so many around us thought it was a passing fling. We faced a mountain of skepticism from religious family members, but it melted into understanding over time. Now, 15 years and a child later, we choose each other time and again. To us, that’s the definition of a happy ending.”

    What a beautiful notion: “We choose each other time and again.”

    This poem was the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day yesterday. It’s called “America, America,” and is by Saadi Youssef. I don’t know what the hell he’s saying (duh), but I like how he says it.

    God save America,
    My home, sweet home!

    We are not hostages, America,
    and your soldiers are not God’s soldiers…
    We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods,
    the gods of bulls,
    the gods of fires,
    the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song…
    We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor,
    who emerges out of farmers’ ribs,
    hungry
    and bright,
    and raises heads up high…

    America, we are the dead.
    Let your soldiers come.
    Whoever kills a man, let him resurrect him.
    We are the drowned ones, dear lady.
    We are the drowned.
    Let the water come.

    Damascus, 20/8/1995

    Last Saturday’s puzzle was hard but had some wonderful stuff in it. At 31A: “Someone better call the fire department, because you just got burned!” The answer was an expression that was new to me: BOOM! ROASTED. Apparently, it was used in an episode of The Office, and is out there in the world.

    Right below it in the puzzle, the clue was “Sentimental feelings,” and the answer was WARM FUZZIES. Below that was CRISPY BACON, and then BELCH. Ha!

    13A: “Where you’ll find women out to drink?” The key word there is “out” and the answer was LESBIAN BAR. But before you get too excited, right below it was “Platonic outing:” FRIEND DATE. D’oh!

    Would you know that the answer for “Chew the doors, e.g.” was SPOONERISM?

    JC66 posted this:

    “You won’t believe this,” he says to the bartender. “I was attacked by a leopard!”

    “Really?”

    “Yes! A leopard! In England!” The hiker sits down and orders the strongest liquor they’ve got. “I tried to run, but it was if course much faster than me.”

    The hiker gets his glass, empties it, and asks for another. “It sent me to the ground with a mighty push from its paws, but weirdly enough it then just gave me a really sad look and left.”

    “Ah, you met Father Andrews,” the bartender says, matter-of-factly.

    “What do you mean?” asks the tourist, confused.

    “Father Andrews was our priest. A truly kind-hearted man, loved by all. His only goal in life was to serve his congregation as well as he could. So when he one day found a lamp with a genie, his very first wish was to be a loving shepherd to the community.”

    “That’s nice “

    “Absolutely, if only he hadn’t been so prone to spoonerisms.”

    At 29D, the puzzle got a little political: “National dish of Ukraine” was BORSCHT. It generated a back-and-forth.

    First: To use the clue “National Dish of Ukraine,” and then pick the Russian spelling, really threw and disappointed me. Yeah, BORSCHT is the more common spelling of the word. But, as someone who speaks Ukrainian, I initially entered BORSHCH. Nitpicky, I agree, but a better clue might have been “Slavic Beetroot Soup.”

    Then, this response: “Actually, Borscht is the English name for it, not a transliteration of the Russian (which would be Borsch), so it it seems fair—and identifying it as Ukrainian is a subtle dig at the Russians, which I appreciate.”

    Happy Passover, everybody! See you tomorrow!

  • We the Pizza

    Owl Chatter is broadcasting from Room 203 of the Best Western Hotel in Fairfax VA this fine morning. Here’s the view from the breakfast area:

    `Z

    We’re not all here at the mobile headquarters. Phil and George are down the road at the Third-Best Western Hotel over in Herndon (no photo available).

    At breakfast, I placed two slices of whole-wheat bread in the toaster/grill and watched them slowly move into the toasting area, out of sight. When they emerged and I removed them, I saw that only one side was toasted. So I turned them over and placed them back in the toaster so the second side would get toasted. When I removed them this time, it was clear that I re-toasted the toasted side and the other side remained untoasted. At that point, I had to admire that one untoasted side that was putting up such a brave fight. So I put a little butter on the toasted side and ate them. The rest of breakfast was fine and uneventful. We took two green bananas back to the room for the future.

    We’re in the DC area for today’s Nats-‘Stros game at 4. The Nats managed to put the tying runs on base last night in the ninth, but couldn’t get those cows to come home. Hoping for a better outcome today.

    Speaking of baseball, can you name the winningest Jewish pitcher in baseball history? Has to be Koufax, right? Koufax, whom most Jews place several rungs above God on their most-admired list. But it’s not! Ken Holtzman, who passed away Monday at age 78, had nine more career wins. Koufax in is the HOF, of course, and had the better arm, a golden arm, but his career was cut short by arthritis.

    Holtzman was damn good though. He won 174 games, including two no-hitters, and had a shiny career ERA of 3.49. He won three World Series with Oakland. If you like little baseball oddities like I do, get this: In his first no-hitter, at age 23 vs the Braves on 8/19/69, he did not strike out any batters. That had not happened since 1923. “I didn’t have my good curve,” he explained to the press (see below). Leave it to a Jew to kvetch about a no-hitter.

    After he retired from baseball, Holtzman made his return, sort of, in 2007 — as manager of the Petach Tikvah Pioneers based near Tel Aviv in the Israel Baseball League. But it didn’t go well. The team finished in last place and Holtzman bolted with two weeks to go in the season. He complained that the league was rushed into existence without being ready. It only lasted one season.

    One last note, and then we’ll let the man rest. 1966 was Holtzman’s first full season in the majors. He was with the Cubs. It was also Koufax’s last season. He was on the Dodgers, of course. And on September 25, 1966, the two great Jewish pitchers faced each other for the one and only time. Holtzman was unhittable — almost. He carried a no-hitter into the ninth inning. He lost it and the shutout in the ninth, but the Cubs held on to win 2-1. Koufax gave up only 4 hits but took the loss. “I was satisfied with my performance,” Koufax told The LA Times, “but Ken was too good for us today.”

    Holtzman is survived by his brother, Bob, a former minor league pitcher, his daughters, Robyn, Stacey, and Lauren; four grandchildren; and a sister, Janice. His marriage ended in divorce.

    Rest in peace, Kenny — we’re proud of you.

    Our day started falling apart a little in the middle. The plan was to shoot into DC from Fairfax, have lunch at Comet Pizza, and take the Metro to the Nats game. The nice woman at Comet explained they were closed today for a private function. Hmmmm. We ended up having good deli sandwiches next door at a Jewsih deli called “Call Your Mother.” While we were there I learned that the Metro was only running on a modified schedule due to construction. Gulp. We shifted gears and decided to drive and just fumble around for parking. Not wise. Parking around Nats stadium is a disaster. After about half an hour of fruitless circling, we plotzed into a lot for $30. Thank God. It was about a mile from the stadium. No problem.

    We got to our seats as the Nats were taking the field. Let’s go! Play ball! The ‘Stros strung a few hits together for a run in the first, but CJ Abrams, our brilliant shortstop, popped one into the seats to tie it. We cobbled together another run, squandering several opportunities for more, and Trevor Williams was excellent, protecting the 2-1 lead through six. In the seventh, however, Houston woke up and it was ugly. When the battering was over, the lead was lost. We limped into the bottom of the ninth down 4-2.

    Presciently, I said to Linda, if our first batter gets on, it’s anybody’s game. He was hit by a pitch. Man on first. Abrams again: this time a screaming double to right — and it was suddenly tying runs in scoring position with no outs. It was left to Jeff Winker to single sharply to right and the game was tied. Whew.

    In the tenth, Houston moved a runner to third with one out. The next hitter drove a fly to right that drifted foul and it was deep enough that I wondered if Lane Thomas might let it drop, since catching it seemed to me would let the runner tag up and score. Nope. Lane caught it and fired a laser beam home where catcher Adams made a great sweeping tag for the third out. Wow — high pressure baseball defense at its best. Joey Meneses drove home the winning run for us in the bottom of the tenth. Sweet.

    For dinner, I remembered we had good pizza near the U.S. Capitol a few years ago. I didn’t remember the name of the place, but I remembered it was a clever name that I would recognize if I saw it. So I googled “pizza near the Capitol.” Yup — it’s called “We the Pizza.” Delish.

    We received a message from the DC police that Phil and George are in their custody. That’s a relief. So they’re safe. Ideally, they’ll bumble their way back to Jersey by Pesach.

    See you tomorrow!

  • Grace

    Let’s wake up with a hot song this morning! It’s Bull in the Heather by Sonic Youth. It’s relevant because THE CRETAN BULL (“Bovid of Greek mythology”) was in the puzzle today. Have a listen and then we can chat about it a bit. Hey, careful with that nail polish, girl!

    The song was released exactly 30 years ago tomorrow. The title refers to a racehorse that won the Florida Derby in 1993. Kim Gordon is the singer and bass player. She says the song is about “using passiveness as a form of rebellion—like, I’m not going to participate in your male-dominated culture, so I’m just going to be passive.” Can you tell she was five months pregnant when the video was shot? She gave birth that July to her only child, daughter Coco Hayley Gordon Moore. The dad was Thurston Moore, one of the guitarists. They were married for close to 30 years, divorced in 2013. Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna is dancing around in the video and accidentally gave Moore a bloody lip during it.

    Here are the two of them years later. Jeez, Coco got big.

    Hey Bob — you remember this?

    AYN Rand was in the puzzle today. She was pretty well-known for the book she wrote about that hotel in Florida The Fontainebleau. Anyway, I posted this on Rex’s site:

    “Jeez Louise, you know the clutter in your brain has gotten out of hand when you have an AYN Rand story to share (67A). (Steve Martin said it would be good as you grow old if you could shift some of the detritus from your brain, which is losing capacity, to your stomach, which has grown cavernous.)

    Anyway, on AYN, back in college several of us had read some books of hers and a discussion about her arose one evening. It was the era of ‘free love,’ and the question came up: ‘What does Ayn Rand say about sex?’ And Bob chimed in with ‘Not tonight.’”

    [How I remember that from over 50 years ago is a mystery. Good line Bob!]

    You may be able to find a letter to the editor in the NYT more beautiful than this one, but I wouldn’t bet on it:

    To the Editor:

    The problem is not that we are confusing the male/female binary; the problem is that the human gender story is bigger than a simple binary, and our language does not reflect that, but it should.

    When we adhere to strict binary language, we are asking gender-abundant people to amputate whole parts of themselves. We need to allow people to flourish in the language that fits them.

    As my 9-year-old recently explained to my 6-year-old, “You don’t really know what gender a baby is when it’s born, because you know their parts, but you don’t know their heart.”

    Meghan Lin, St. Paul, MN

    At 7A in the puzzle yesterday, the clue was “Mental [blank]” and the answer was MATH. Mental math. It perplexed Rex who wondered, “Is there such a thing as physical math that I missed in school? But comments explained it probably means math you work out in your head, as opposed to on paper or with a calculator.

    Hey can you tell me what 65 squared is in two seconds in your head? I can — there’s a trick Mathgent taught us. [Judy —- you know about this?] It works for any number ending in 5. For 65, take the six and multiply it by the number right above it (7). So 6 x 7 = 42. Then stick 25 on at the end: 4225. So 65 squared = 4225. Try it!

    And it turns out you can use a similar trick to multiply any pair of numbers with the last digits adding up to ten and the first digits the same. So, e.g., for 83 x 87, take the 8 and multiply it by 9 for 72. Then multiply 3 x 7 to get 21. Put them together to get 7221, which is 83 x 87. (The squaring trick above is just a subset of this.)

    So, there, I’ve changed your life.

    Yesterday’s puzzle was wonderful, IMO. The theme was THE CYCLOPS, aka POLYPHEMUS. His friends called him Polly. He only had one eye, so the puzzle only had one letter “I.” That included the clues — there was only one letter “I” in the grid and none in the clues. That “I” in the grid was encircled and was part of the word MAIM coming down and I CAN’T SEE going across, a reference to the part of the Odyssey in which Odysseus drives a stake through the giant’s eye. You may recall Odysseus had previously told the Cyclops that his name was “Nobody,” so when the Cyclops asks for help and is asked who put out his eye, he says “Nobody.” It’s sort of the original “Who’s on First” routine. “Third base: I don’t know!” BTW, it’s where the expression “I’ll keep an eye out for you” comes from. (No it doesn’t.)

    Amazingly, Phil was on hand when the maiming took place and got this shot for us.

    It looks like Odysseus’s head had fallen off — but so what?

    I posted the following: My incredibly beautiful grandchildren Zoey (8) and Leon (6) team up very nicely when confronting their younger siblings or the world at large. But they do on occasion blow up into a battle between themselves. It starts off nuclear — they go right for the eyes. I yell, “ZOEY — not the eyes!!” How anyone makes it out of childhood in one piece is a miracle.

    Brooklyn lost a giant on Tuesday: Carl “Oisk” Erskine, an Indiana boy who was one of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ best pitchers during their glory years. He was 97. Erskine was with the Dodgers for his entire career: from 1948 through 1959, during which time they won five pennants and the 1955 World Series, the only title won by Brooklyn.

    Erskine was only 5′ 10″ and 165. His success was due to a very effective overhand curveball his dad Matt, who played semipro ball, taught him to throw. His lifetime record was 122-78, with an ERA of 4.00. He pitched two no-hitters. He was 20-6 in 1953. He pitched a complete game 3-2 victory against the Yanks in Game 3 of the 1953 WS, striking out 13, a WS record at the time. In the 1952 WS, also against the Yankees, Erskine pitched an 11-inning complete game, retiring the last 19 batters in the Dodgers’ 6-5 victory. This gorgeous card is from my collection.

    ??

    Carl and his wife Betty had four children. Their son Jimmy was born with Down Syndrome. In those days, many families placed such children in institutions, but Carl and Betty were having none of that. Carl devoted his life after baseball to Jimmy’s care. He and Betty formed a society to raise funds for the Special Olympics and related causes. In 2023, the Baseball Hall of Fame awarded Carl the Buck Owens Lifetime Achievement Award for this work. Betty and he, below, are standing next to a statue of Carl in front of a Medical and Rehab Center named after him. There is also a school named after him in his hometown, and Erskine Street was named in his honor in 2002 in Brooklyn, where he will be remembered and admired by baseball fans forever.

    I was always impressed by Derek Jeter’s ability to use a lot of words in interviews while saying absolutely nothing of substance. Apparently, Canada’s Trudeau has the same gift. The following is from Frank Bruni’s “Sentences” feature this week:

    In The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Shannon Proudfoot wrote: “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was on the first sentence of his first answer at the public inquiry into foreign interference when it became clear that, uh oh, he’d summoned That Guy. You know the guy: Ask him a factual question and the response is a purring, generic values statement so distantly related to the original question they could legally get married.” 

    This poem by OC’s Poet Laureate Ted Kooser is from Delights and Shadows. We may have shared it before; it’s one of our favorites. It’s called “At the Cancer Clinic.”

    She is being helped toward the open door
    that leads to the examining rooms
    by two young women I take to be her sisters.
    Each bends to the weight of an arm
    and steps with the straight, tough bearing
    of courage. At what must seem to be
    a great distance, a nurse holds the door,
    smiling and calling encouragement.
    How patient she is in the crisp white sails
    of her clothes. The sick woman
    peers from under her funny knit cap
    to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
    and take its turn under her weight.
    There is no restlessness or impatience
    or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
    fills the clean mold of this moment
    and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

    Owl Chatter is heading down to DC tomorrow to see how the Nats are looking this year. We’ll catch them taking on the hated ‘Stros on Saturday at 4. Play Ball!

  • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice & Fritz & Mike & Marilyn & Sue

    I’m going to teach you something about Crossworld lore today, i.e., utterly useless, if not ridiculous, information. You know, the stuff we live for.

    Here are four consecutive acrosses in the NYT puzzle of 10/20/2009 that live in infamy. They appear in the same row in the puzzle: (1) “TIC-TAC-TOE loser:” OOX, (2) “Im-ho-[–], Boris Karloff’s role in The Mummy:” TEP, (3) “Celtic sea god:” LER, and (4) “Vote in une législature:” NON. Taking the answers together you get OOXTEPLERNON.

    Based on those answers, OOXTEPLERNON has been dubbed the God of Crosswordese, or the God of Short Bad Fill. When you are stumped for some ridiculous three-word answer the constructor had no business torturing you with, you appeal to OOXTEPLERNON for help. If he smiles on you, the answer somehow pops up. If not, you’re f*cked. Needless to say, OOXTEPLERNON is pretty damn fickle.

    According to Rex, that puzzle of 10/30/2009 was the only time OOXTEPLERNON “showed his fearsome aspect to the solving world.” No need to sacrifice virgins to placate him (which is good, because they are very hard to find) — he prefers offerings of OREOS. (Some claim NILLA wafers are good too, but Rex feels you shouldn’t risk it.)

    This is the only image of “OOX” I could find online. Needless to say, it’s apocryphal.

    The theme of today’s puzzle was revealed at 39A: “Certain immature adult.” The answer was MANBABY. And the four theme answers were all men’s names the second part of which were baby animals. Cute, right? CHARLES LAMB, SAMUEL COLT, RYAN GOSLING, and STEPHEN FRY. It’s possible this puzzle’s appearance was timed to coincide with the start of Trump’s trial, Trump being the biggest manbaby we have.

    Speaking of the trial, Rachel Maddow had an excellent piece on why Trump’s actions in connection with the 2016 election are only being prosecuted today. I.e., what the hell took so long? She showed how Trump corrupted the Justice Department under Bill Barr to shut down the federal investigation after Michael Cohen was convicted. NYS was waiting for the feds to pursue the case, and it took forever for them to abandon it, leaving the door open for Bragg to pursue only now. It’s not a small matter, as some try to portray it. Cohen was sentenced to three years in jail for it. But you don’t need Owl Chatter to prattle about it. Here are some cute goslings instead.

    I can’t find the reference to Henry James I ran across in a recent puzzle, but it reminded me of a story about him that an English prof at U. Rochester shared. James was at a dinner and a woman came up to him and respectfully confessed that she didn’t appreciate his work. She complained, “Mr. James, you can write an entire paragraph on a woman touching a kerchief to her forehead.” And James replied, “Madam, a woman touching a kerchief to her forehead is a novel.”

    [If we have to take sides, I’m with the woman.]

    Here’s Cybill Shepherd who played Daisy Miller in the film version of James’s novel. She’s named after her two grandfathers: Cy and Bill (not kidding). She’s had several marriages, had three kids, and once said novelist Larry McMurtry was the love of her life, but, sadly, she was generally not happy in love. Maybe she shouldn’t have given up on Travis Bickle so quickly in Taxi Driver.

    She is 74, kinahora — exactly 33 days younger than me. In her prime, no one inspired more drooling than she did. It was a deluge. Arks were built.

    Cartoonist Don Wright died at age 90 in Florida. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice. His work was mainly political, e.g, on the Vietnam war, sexual abuse by priests, racial segregation, etc. His first Pulitzer was for a cartoon depicting two men representing antagonists in a nuclear war. They stand amidst devastation and one is saying: “You mean you were bluffing?” The racist Governor George Wallace of Alabama sent him a nasty telegram saying “Sometimes even the meanest cartoonists are unaccountably decorated for their work. If the shoe fits, wear it.” Wright was delighted and kept it framed in his home.

    Wright was baffled by folks who thought cartoons should be funny. “Humor has a lot of relatives — wry, subtle, slapstick and even black — all aimed at the endless Iraq War, inept and corrupt politicians, rising unemployment, recession, Americans losing their homes, and on and on. But think about it for a moment. How funny are those?”

    Wright often said the cartoon of his that generated the strongest response was a sentimental one that depicted Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters in tears when Walt Disney died. Disney’s widow Lillian requested Wright’s original drawing of it, and when she died she bequeathed it to the Library of Congress.  [My cousin Aaron works there, BTW — he’s the Head Shusher.]

    A mensch. Rest in peace, Don.

    It was, far and away, the strangest and most notorious baseball trade that was ever made. Fritz Peterson, one of the central figures, died last week at the age of 82. Fritz was a very good pitcher for the Yankees during their down years,1966 – 1973. They finished in last place in 1966 (tenth), and only finished over .500 four times during that period — unheard of for the Bombers. But Peterson won 20 games in 1970 and averaged over 17 wins from 1969 to 1972. He had the fewest walks-per-nine-innings in the league fives years in a row, and averaged just 1.7 walks per game over his career. His lifetime record was 133-131 with a 3.30 ERA.

    He was an incorrigible prankster, once filling Joe Pepitone’s hair dryer with talcum powder. (Pepitone was insanely protective of his hair.) And get this: He used a fake Hall of Fame letterhead to request that Bill Skowron donate his pacemaker to the Hall of Fame after he dies. (We’re impressed with that one! So methodical.)

    Now, as for that trade. It wasn’t between two teams. Here’s the story. Peterson and Mike Kekich were close friends, and their families were close too. In the summer of 1972 it became clear that Peterson and Mike’s wife Suzanne had fallen in love, as had Mike and Peterson’s wife Marilyn. So they traded families — wives, homes, kids, the whole nine yards. Peterson and Kekich simply traded places in each other’s home. This photo may help you keep score.

    Sadly, Kekich and Marilyn Peterson didn’t last very long. But Peterson and Suzanne Kekich got married in 1974 and remained so. Fifty years! She survives him.

    Kekich made this statement at the time:

    “It wasn’t a wife swap,” Kekich said. “It was a life swap. We’re not saying we’re right and everyone else who thinks we’re wrong are wrong. It’s just the way we felt.”

    Kekich is living and just turned 79. He remarried and lives near Albuquerque NM. Get this — In his first MLB season, he was with the Dodgers and was thrown out of a game for heckling the ump from the bench. Vin Scully pointed out it was the only instance he knew of in which a player was ejected from a game before ever making his major league debut.

    A harbinger of his “ejection” by Marilyn? Nah.

    The trade’s notoriety never waned. In 2013, commenting on it, Peterson said: “It’s a love story. It wasn’t anything dirty. I could not be happier with anybody in the world. We’re still on the honeymoon and it has been a real blessing.”

    Rest in peace, Fritz. Thanks for being a good Yankee through a dark era. We’re glad the trade worked out for you and Suzanne.

    Owl Chatter is posting early today so you can all run out and take advantage of Free Scoop Day at Ben & Jerry’s! This is not a joke — google Ben & Jerry for details and enjoy your freebie. See you tomorrow!

  • Bummer

    Be careful today, folks. Bad things happen on April 14. The Titanic hit the iceberg on this date in 1912. And back in 1865 on this date, Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater by Alec Baldwin, whose famous line echoes through the years: “Who f*cked with this gun?”

    This song is by Lonesome Bob and is called Waltzing on the Titanic.

    This poem was in yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s by W. S. Merwin and is called “Sun and Rain.” It has a smidgeon of Ted Kooser in it, it seems to me.

    Opening the book at a bright window
    above a wide pasture after five years
    I find I am still standing on a stone bridge
    looking down with my mother at dusk into a river
    hearing the current as hers in her lifetime

    now it comes to me that that was the day
    she told me of seeing my father alive for the last time
    and he waved her back from the door as she was leaving
    took her hand for a while and said
    nothing

    at some signal
    in a band of sunlight all the black cows flow down the pasture together
    to turn uphill and stand as the dark rain touches them.

    One of the words I missed in today’s Spelling Bee was muumuu. Ridiculous. You are only supposed to use words that are in common use. Is this even a word? It looks like the answer to: “What does a cow who can’t spell say?”

    Speaking of cows, there was an excellent clue/answer in today’s NYTXW. The clue at 74A was “A bull market it is not!” And the answer was CHINA SHOP.

    21A was good too — “Results of an iron deficiency?” And the answer was CREASES. I agreed with the commenter who thought “wrinkles” would be a better answer. A crease is something you might put in on purpose, using an iron. Like a pleat. So there wouldn’t be an iron “deficiency” in that case. I know, I know — a few more of those and I’ll be joining the American Nitpickers Association & League (ANAL).

    The theme was brilliantly executed, IMHO, not surprising since one of the constructors was Jeff Chen, an old pro and frequent collaborator. The other was John Rippe who works in the Office of Protected Resources at the National Marine Fisheries Service. The puzzle is a paean to the ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT, which appears in it at 112A and 114A, and which John works with on his job.

    There were seven theme “sets” with two clue/answers for each, one depicting the word with the endangered animal in it (labeled BEFORE), and the next after the animal has gone extinct, God forbid (labeled AFTER).

    So, for example, a before clue was “Begin operating effectively,” and the answer was GET IN GEAR. Do you see the TIGER in there? GET IN GEAR. Then, the after clue was “Actress Rowlands.” The answer for that was GENA, which are the letters that are left once the TIGER is removed (goes “extinct”). I hope you can see what’s happening because it’s amazing. That happens six more times in the puzzle,

    Since Earth Day falls on April 22, it’s a fitting puzzle for this month.

    Rex went off, and rightfully so, on 92A. The clue was “Biden’s signature 2022 legislation addressing rising prices, for short.” The answer was IRA.

    Here’s Rex:

    My final comment is “who is responsible for Biden’s branding?” and “can they try harder?” I can’t think of a more confusing, and therefore useless, term for your “signature legislation” than IRA … an initialism that already exists— multiple times over. “Thank god for Biden’s IRA, right?” “Uh … you mean his retirement account?” “No, the IRA! Biden’s signature legislation!” “The Irish Republican Army? He legislated that?” “No, the other IRA! It’s very well known, why don’t you know it!?” I had to look up what it stood for. I wasn’t aware he had any “signature legislation,” but then I have tried very hard not to pay attention to US politics since 2016, so the IRA could’ve been any three letters and I’d’ve bought it. “Oh, of course, the ZWO, I absolutely knew that Biden … did … that.”

    When I was with a small law firm in Rochester NY one of my partners, whom I’ll call Jerry because that was his name, was a liar. He lied to everybody about everything. You had to remind yourself when listening to him not to count on anything he said. He said whatever he needed to say at any moment to advance his cause and he forgot it as soon as the moment passed. Our secretary Sylvia once said she was upset that Jerry promised her something and failed to deliver. I was shocked that she actually counted on it. I said, “Sylvia, don’t you know by now that, to Jerry, the truth is a coincidence?” I got the hell out of there as fast as I could.

    Of course, Trump is from the same school. This was very well expressed by Jamelle Bouie in the NYT today: “You should think of Trump as a purely instrumental speaker. It does not matter to him whether a statement is true or false. It does not matter if one statement contradicts another in the same speech or in the same paragraph or in the same sentence. What matters to Trump is whether the words serve the purpose at hand. His fundamental lack of interest in the truth value of words is the only context that matters.”

    Well put, JB.

    There is craziness throughout the land. Did you see the story in The Times on teen sex by Peggy Orenstein? I mean the story is by Orenstein – not the sex.

    It’s become routine for strangulation — choking — to be part of sex for kids these days. The practice has spilled over into the culture from pornography. In a survey of 5,000 students at a Midwestern university, nearly two thirds of the women said they had been choked during sex by a partner; one-third in their most recent encounter. Forty percent of the women said they were between 12 and 17 the first time it happened. [Hold on a sec — you’re supposed to get sex with the choking? On my dates, I just got choked. D’oh!]

    Jeez Louise — what the hell is going on? If you google the topic you will find articles guiding you on how to choke your partner “safely.” Orenstein notes: there is no safe way to strangle someone. Hello? Shouldn’t everybody know that? Am I missing something? If I ever tried anything like that, I’d wind up with two black eyes and be limping for a month.

    In addition to the possibility of, you know, death, getting the oxygen cut off to your brain (hypoxia) has dangerous effects which may only show up years later. It’s like what’s been discovered is happening to football players. Women who have been choked more than five times are two and half times as likely to be suffering from severe depression compared to women who have not been choked. Every year, the number of women reporting extreme effects from strangulation rises: neck swelling, fainting, loss of control of urinary function.

    But let’s move on — it’s too depressing and horrifying. Bennett Braun is dead. He was 83. You hear of this guy? Me neither. He was a Chicago shrink who worked with his patients to release repressed memories of abuse by devil worshippers. His work gained wide acceptance, so much so that a “satanic panic” exploded in the 1980s and 90s. A unit dedicated to these “dissociative disorders” was opened at the Rush Medical Center in Chicago. In dozens of cases his patients “discovered” memories of being tortured by satanic cults and in some cases having participated in the torture themselves. It fed into elements in pop culture such as heavy metal music and the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. It was all bullshit, it should go without saying, and left a black mark on the psychiatric profession.

    After interviewing a woman from Iowa named Patricia Burgus, Braun claimed not only that she was the victim of satanic ritual abuse, but that she herself was a “high priestess” of a cult that had raped, tortured and cannibalized thousands of children, including her two young sons. She was institutionalized for three years and separated from her kids. Heavily medicated, she had come to believe the doctors — that she recalled torches, live burials, and eating the body parts of up to 2,000 people a year.

    Well, she finally came to her senses and sued Braun and the hospital, claiming they implanted false memories in her head. A settlement was reached for over $10 million. “I began to add a few things up and realized there was no way I could come from a little town in Iowa, be eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anything about it,” Mrs. Burgus told The Chicago Tribune in 1997.

    Yup. Makes sense, Mrs. B. Welcome back to Earth.

    A year later the unit at Rush was shut down and Braun’s license was suspended by Illinois for two years. He moved to Montana which issued him a new license and he opened a private practice there. But in 2019, one of his patients sued him for overprescribing medication that left her with a permanent facial tic. Those can be pretty sexy, but apparently not in her case. She also filed a complaint against the Montana Board of Medical Examiners for granting him a license, despite knowing his past. They took it away in 2020.

    There’s a special place in hell for doctors who betray the trust of their patients. Settle in Braun.

    Let’s tip-toe away from all of that lunacy and share some wonderful news. Puzzleman Will Shortz is recovering well from his stroke and returned to his Sunday morning feature on NPR today. (He’s still in therapy.) Greg Pliska had been standing in for him. Shortz was gracious in thanking Pliska:

    “You know, a few weeks ago, Greg Pliska did a tribute puzzle to me in which every answer was a familiar two word phrase or name with initials W.S. So I wanted to return the favor. Every answer today is a familiar two word phrase or name with the initials G.P.,” Shortz said to the contestant Scott Manas.

    “Here you go. What you step on to make a car go faster,” Shortz asked.

    “Gas pedal,” Manas answered.

    Welcome back Shortz!

    Picked nit of the day: 108D: “Assistant of classic film” was IGOR. It generated this note:

    No, IGOR was not Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant in the “classic” movie; the assistant’s name was Fritz. There was an Ygor [sic], played by Bela Lugosi, in the 1939 sequel “Son of Frankenstein,” but he was not an assistant to the good doctor. It wasn’t until the 1974 Mel Brooks parody “Young Frankenstein” (a fine comedy, but not the “classic” film indicated by this clue) that an actual “Igor” showed up in Doc F.’s lab.

    Hrrrrrrrrrumph!

    Manager: Our starter’s getting rocked. Anyone ready in the bullpen?

    Pitching Coach: Bummer.

    Manager: Look, it happens. He just didn’t have it today. Who’s ready out there?

    Coach: Bummer.

    Manager: Will you please get over it! — it’s not the end of the world. Now, who can give us a solid inning or two?

    Coach: Bummer.

    Manager: What the hell is wrong with you? Are you on something?

    Coach: No — I’m trying to tell you — bring in Bummer — Aaron Bummer, that tall lefty out there. He’s the perfect guy to face these hitters.

    As you may know, Rex is a great cat lover. Today he posted a picture that was sent to him by a reader. It’s a tuxedo cat named Oreo.

    Several readers posted comments on how cute Oreo is. A few said they had tuxedo cats of their own. I had never heard that term before, but it makes sense. I chimed in with a post saying I had a rented tuxedo cat.

    FYI: there is a correct way to spell “Jeez Louise.” That’s it. When I spelled it Jeeze, I was corrected. See you tomorrow everybody!!

  • Maya, Revisited

    Our Pistons won their 14th game of the season last night, trouncing the Mavs 107-89. It’s not often you can say “Pistons” and “trouncing” in that order. Let’s savor it. The Mavs were resting their superstars, but we were resting ours too! (Oh, wait — we don’t have any. D’oh!) It brings our record up to 14-67. Ouch! The season ends tomorrow. We expect good things from the boys next year — 30 wins or bust! Will definitely try to catch another game in B’klyn or Motown. Guess I’ll go back to rooting for the Knicks in the playoffs now.

    Say hi to Riley — Cade Cunningham’s little girl. We sent Philly off on an assignment to get some shots of the Pistons in action. We all agreed this was the best one.

    Ever play PADIDDLE? Like on a car ride? Me neither, but a lot of folks have. It was in the puzzle today, right smack dab at 1D: “Game played on a road trip.” Rex railed about never having heard of it, but many folks chipping in from all over the country have. So it’s hard to say it’s regional. You play by looking for cars while you’re on the ride. If you see one with one headlight out you have to be the first to yell “padiddle.” Then you have the option of kissing or hitting the other players.

    In his tirade, Rex opined that only I SPY and PUNCH BUGGY should count as acceptable road games. I’ve played I SPY. Lianna loved it when she was little. It was our go-to when waiting for the food to arrive at Smashburger. But I hadn’t heard of Punch Buggy, also called Slug Bug. In that game, you are looking for VW Beetles. When you see one, you punch the person next to you while shouting “punch buggy.” That earns you a point. If you are mistaken and it’s not a VW, you lose a point. Keep score to determine who wins.

    Commenter Andrew shared this funny historical note: Fun fact: I Spy was a favorite Hollywood game of the ‘70s. Peter Falk and Sammy Davis, Jr. would spend HOURS riding in a back of a limo declaring “I Spy with my one good eye…”

    The puzzle was by Jess Rucks and he said “Padiddle” was the “seed” for the puzzle. He thought it’s a midwestern thing and his goal was to expand the Midwest’s puzzle presence. He was surprised to find that folks from all over play it.

    Padiddle!

    A highlight of the puzzle for me (and our Dirty Old Man Dept) was at 50A where the clue was “Musician who once joked ‘I’m not offended by all of the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb … and I also know that I’m not blonde.’” DOLLY PARTON

    With Owl Chatter fave Stormy Daniels back in the news (Lock him up!!), we’ve been thinking of Dolly lately. They sorta look a bit alike, don’t they? (No disrespect intended towards either.) Here’s Dolly when she was young, and Stormy five years ago.

    Commenter Anoa Bob shared: In a game of pocket billiards such as Nine Ball, if nothing goes in on the break it’s called a DOLLY PARTON, all bust but no balls.

    He also had a good note on 31D: “Really open up in therapy.” The answer was GO DEEP.

    Here’s Bob: The answer GO DEEP reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from “Cheers.” Woody was telling Frazier about a phobia he had and asked him if there was anything that could be done about it. Frazier (who is a shrink) said yes but it would take many lengthy sessions of in-depth therapy. Woody asked if there wasn’t something faster, and Frazier said “Yes but nothing quite so lucrative.”

    I loved that show. Here’s the later cast, after Diane left and Coach passed away. “How’s it going Normy?” And Norm says: “It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and I’m wearing Milk-Bone underwear.”

    The following was posted on our neighborhood website: “There has been evidence of a bear at our house for a week or more. Last night the neighbor across the street chased off bears that were rummaging in their garbage. When the neighbors yelled etc. the bears were nonplused. Apparently, when they were done there, they wandered into my yard.”

    I couldn’t resist. My comment: Porridge missing?

    These guys seem to like the slide.

    A bit of a brew-ha-ha arose on Rex’s blog and I’m unhappy about how it turned out. It started with long-time irreverent commenter Andrew making some weak padiddle-related joke involving Jerry Sandusky, convicted sex offender. I thought nothing of it, other than to note it wasn’t funny enough to share on OC. Later, an anony-mouse comment took him to task, stating that Sandusky abused many young men and it was not right to make fun of it. Another commenter agreed and requested Andrew’s comment be removed! Andrew replied that he should at least get credit for not making fun of some incest situation and said he was actually surprised he didn’t get heat for his Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Falk joke “from the congenitally humorless.” When I went back to re-read all of the comments for OC, I found that they had in fact all been deleted by Rex’s moderator.

    Owl Chatter’s position — it’s censorship and it sucks. Lighten up folks. It was a fucking joke. Can we not joke about drunks because alcoholism is a serious disease? Half the cartoons in the New Yorker would have to be removed. Geez Louise. I posted a comment in his defense and opposing the censorship in that instance.

    Last, we received some complaints directed at Phil! Highly unusual. Apparently, many of you thought his photo of Maya Hawke that we recently shared was too “artsy” and didn’t show off how pretty she is. We do recall him mentioning that Maya was an unusual subject in that she tended to be less pretty when she smiled. But, to put it mildly, Phil does not handle criticism very well. So, after conferring with George, we decided not to tell him. And we did find this shot in the ones he submitted. Hope it satisfies the complainers.

    See you tomorrow, everybody!

  • Kansas in August

    A good constructor will view small words that might just be “fill” as an opportunity to craft a creative clue. That happened today at 23A. The answer was COB, and the clue was “Bit of detritus from a Thanksgiving meal.”

    It generated a good amount of blather, some of it from me. First, Rex questioned the connection of corn to Thanksgiving:

    “I couldn’t get COB [quickly] because I’ve never had corn on the COB for Thanksgiving in my life. I’ve seen COBs as Thanksgiving decorations, but the only vegetables I’m eating on Thanksgiving are potatoes and green beans. I’m not saying the green beans are traditional. I’m saying that’s what we’ve always eaten and I would spurn your corn as non-canonical.”

    I chimed in with an aside and then my two cents:

    My favorite use of the word “detritus” (from the clue for COB), was by the late Bart Giamatti in his 1977 essay “The Green Fields of the Mind.” He guides us through a half inning in the crucial final game of the season. His Red Sox are behind, of course, but mount a rally. This sentence comes after a ground ball finds its way through the infield for a single.

    “‘The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the detritus of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide. Rice is up.’
    ******
    “Wasn’t corn part of the first Thanksgiving dinner with the Indians and Pilgrims? Maybe that’s where the COB comes from.”

    [Before I go on about corn, I am thrilled to note that one of the Anony-mice said the Giamatti quote was “gorgeous” and thanked me!]

    Commenter Conrad said: “One of the joys of New Jersey is our corn. From midsummer to early fall we get some really wonderful corn at our farm stands. As a result we’ve become jaded and disdain all but July-to-September Jersey corn. At other times, no corn is good enough, so it’s never a Thanksgiving feature.”

    J. Alden pretty much resolved the issue with:

    “Written records from Plymouth colony report that the pilgrims planted 20 acres of ‘Indian Corn’ during their first year. ‘Indian Corn,’ the precursor to our modern corn, was a dry corn – not the sweet corn that we would eat right off the cob today. The practice was to remove the corn from the cob, grind it into cornmeal, boil it, and pound it into a mush – often served with molasses. So unless the pilgrims let the corn go unpicked, that corn mush would most certainly have been served at the harvest festival, and the cobs would have been the detritus.

    “Even today throughout New England (and, perhaps beyond) ‘Indian Pudding’ – the mush with molasses and, in a bow to modernity, some whipped cream on top – is served as a dessert in homes and restaurants – not uncommonly at Thanksgiving Dinner, as well!

    Ingredients

    4 cups whole milk
    1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
    1/2 cup molasses
    1/2 cup light-brown sugar
    2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter, softened
    2 large eggs, beaten
    1 teaspoon salt
    2 teaspoons sugar
    1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
    1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
    1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

    Instructions

    1. Preheat oven to 300°F. Butter a 1½-quart casserole dish.
    2. Bring milk to a simmer in a double boiler over high heat.
    3. Slowly combine cornmeal to the milk. Cook for about 15 minutes, whisking frequently, until the cornmeal is smooth.
    4. Slowly add the molasses, then remove from heat. Add brown sugar, butter, eggs, salt, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then stir until smooth.
    5. Pour the mixture into the greased casserole dish. Bake for 2 hours or until the pudding is firm and the top is browned.

    Whenever I send a recipe to Sam, I add on a final step: “Throw the resulting slop in the trash and go out for pizza.”

    My favorite clue/answer today was at 17A: “Partner who’s deep undercover?” Answer: BLANKET HOG.

    Are you a “lasagna hog?” Do you know why I ask? Because a commenter pointed out that I’M A LASAGNA HOG is a palindrome with GO HANG A SALAMI.

    Down south that’s a phrase you use when you’re upset with someone. You say “Go hang a salami,” and they typically respond “Go f*ck yourself.”

    55A was “Hand-held device discontinued in 2011,” and the answer was PALM PILOT. Egs chimed in with: I never felt the need for one of those PDA devices back in the day. When someone would ask me why, I’d say “God is my PALMPILOT.”

    I also thought at 59A, “Just keep doing what you’re doing” is a great clue for DON’T MIND ME.

    (One more!) And at 11D, “Misidentification in the DC Universe” is a great clue for IT’S A PLANE.

    Good puzzle, Evan Kalish!

    From the “Life in Texas” Department. In Brenham (TX) maybe they should have named the Department of Public Safety something else. Thirteen people were injured there today, and one died, when the driver of a stolen truck intentionally rammed it into the DPS building. The driver backed the truck up and was trying to ram building again, but that effort was thwarted by first responders. He had been denied a Commercial Drivers License there earlier. Officers speculated that he was miffed about that. Ya think?

    The first round in the battle of trans rights vs Nassau County went to the good guys. The County filed a pre-emptive lawsuit seeking to prevent the State from challenging its anti-trans policy. A federal judge held it lacked merit.

    “This decision is a tremendous victory for justice and the rule of law, but our work here is not done,” said Alexis Richards, a spokesperson for NYS AG James. “It’s past time for Nassau County to rescind this order and treat all our communities with the basic respect and dignity they deserve.”

    Dream on, Richards. Good start, though.

    We’ve never seen Phil this upset. He sent in shots of this beautiful young Korean pop star, Park Bo Ram, along with the terrible news that she is dead at age 30. What?!

    So far all we know is she was drinking with two friends and went off to the bathroom. When she didn’t return, they found her leaning over the sink, unconscious, in cardiac arrest. They called for help, but she’s gone. Park was about to release an album celebrating ten years in the profession. Very sad. You can see her appeal in this 30-second clip.

    We’ll let her pretty smile light our way out tonight. See you tomorrow!

  • Quieter Places

    As some of you know, I first met OJ Simpson at a prostate cancer survivor’s group: the LA Leakers, and we became pretty close friends. Of course, technically, he’s no longer a “survivor,” so he’s out of the group. Anyway, his kids asked Owl Chatter to let you know there’ll be a memorial service at Congregation Ohev Shalom, in Paramus, Sunday morning at 9:30, and the family will be sitting shiva at Cousin Bernie’s place in Bloomfield. (Bernie says he’s getting the cold cut platters from the kosher deli in Bergenfield so Aunt Estelle and her people don’t have to worry about going hungry, God forbid.) The family is asking mourners inclined to make donations to consider giving in OJ’s memory to the Hillel at USC. OJ remained active in the organization after college.

    Are you wild? Wind-in-your-hair wild? Never thought of myself in that way, but I can see the appeal. Anxieties of various stripes — mostly ridiculous, of course — hold me back. Today’s poem from The Writer’s Almanac is called “Wild” and it’s by Stephen Dunn.

    The year I owned a motorcycle and split the air
    in southern Spain, and could smell the oranges
    in the orange groves as I passed them
    outside of Seville, I understood
    I’d been riding too long in cars,
    probably even should get a horse,
    become a high-up, flesh-connected thing
    among the bulls and cows.
    My brand-new wife had a spirit
    that worried and excited me, a history
    of moving on. Wine from a spigot for pennies,
    langostinas and angulas, even the language
    felt dangerous in my mouth. Mornings,
    our icebox bereft of ice,
    I’d speed on my motorcycle to the iceman’s house,
    strap a big rectangular block
    to the extended seat where my wife often sat
    hot behind me, arms around my waist.
    In the streets the smell of olive oil,
    the noise of men torn between church
    and sex, their bodies taut, heretical.
    And the women, buttoned-up,
    or careless, full of public joy, a Jesus
    around their necks.
    Our neighbors showed us how to shut down
    in the afternoon,
    the stupidity of not respecting the sun.
    They forgave us who we were.
    Evenings we’d take turns with the Herald Tribune
    killing mosquitoes, our bedroom walls bloody
    in this country known for blood;
    we couldn’t kill enough.
    When the Levante, the big wind, came out of Africa
    with its sand and heat, disturbing things,
    it brought with it a lesson, unlearnable,
    of how far a certain wildness can go.
    Our money ran out. I sold the motorcycle.
    We moved without knowing it
    to take our quieter places in the world.

    Frank Bruni’s letter this week spoke about the Congressmembers who are retiring (fleeing). Some aren’t even waiting for their terms to be up. He writes:

    “Among them is Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican. ‘This place just keeps going downhill,’ he told reporters, ‘and I don’t need to spend my time here.’ You say that kind of thing about a rundown bar where there’s no eradicating the stench of spilled beer. He was talking about a broken-down institution that reeks of abandoned principles.”

    And here are some sentences by others he liked:

    Gary Shteyngart, on his time on the Icon of the Seas, billed as the biggest cruise ship ever, “The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots.”

    Zak Klobucher marveled at one of Bruce Springsteen’s live performances: “He carped so much diem that when he called on the audience, ‘Can you feel the spirit?’ Robin Williams showed up to ask him to take it down a notch.”

    Last, my favorite, James Lileks described his attempt to use a snow blower as a slush blower: “I pushed it into the drift, and it was like trying to eat a thick, wet pillow with your dentures out.”

    When we were in Israel, Jan. 2020, our guide told us that both black and green olives come from the same olive tree. If you leave them on longer they blacken. I was reminded of that, and the trip, by the puzzle today at 18A: “Subjects in a series of van Gogh landscape paintings.” OLIVE TREES.

    Here’s what Rex was reminded of:

    I did not know Van Gogh painted OLIVE TREES. I know he painted CYPRESS TREES because I went to that exhibit at the Met last summer with my daughter, when my wife and I were in NYC for the Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament that we never made it to because we got called home on a bat emergency and then proceeded to have Bat Week at our house. Try waking up to a bat in your house multiple nights in a row, even after you’ve let it fly out of the house each night; finding it flying around your bedroom even though you shut the door, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum ad astra ad nauseam. We got a bat guy who came to put these little one-way bat tunnels somewhere in our house that let the bats get out but not get back in. It was probably just the one bat. We never saw more than one. One was enough. Plenty. No more bats after the bat guy did his thing. Still, didn’t sleep right for weeks. Serious short-term PTSD. Anyway, that’s my Van Gogh story.

    You know those jokes – what do you get when you combine something with something? — chocolate that’s fluent in Yiddish!! or something like that. (If Tuesday Weld married Hal March the Third, she’d be Tuesday March the Third.)

    Well, there’s a real life combination we can check out which I learned about from a piece in the New Yorker on Maya Hawke. What do you get if you combine Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman? — Maya Hawke — they’re her parents. She dropped out of Julliard after a year to take a role in the miniseries Little Women and was wondering if she’s missing out on something by skipping college. So she hung out for a while with her brother Levon, a philosophy major at Brown, popping in on classes, etc. Decided she’s not missing much. Feels better now.

    Nice shot Philly.

    Well, it’s time to dip into the Owl Chatter mailbag and see if we can handle some Reader Requests. Doris M. from Wisconsin asks: “Can Owl Chatter teach me a magic trick I could use on my friends?” Well, Doris, Owl Chatter can’t, but we know a couple of geeky guys who sure can. And they were in the puzzle today at 5D: “Casino that houses the Penn & Teller Theater.” RIO. Pay close attention Doris.

    Last, we bid farewell, sadly, to Jerry Grote, All-Star catcher for the 1969 World Champion Mets: Tom Seaver’s catcher. He was born and died in Texas. He was 81.

    Never an offensive powerhouse, he made the All-Star team in ’68 and ’74 for his defensive prowess. He played for the Mets from 1966 thru 1977, is in the Mets Hall of Fame, and was considered one of the best catchers of his era. Johnny Bench said, “If Grote and I were on the same team, I’d be playing third base.”

    High praise also came from Lou Brock — one of the greatest base stealers of all time. “Grote’s quick out the box, has a powerful arm and always seemed to have a sixth sense about me stealing. He would have the ball waiting for me at second base long before I got there.”

    Although he was a Texan, as a baseball man he appreciated New York. “One of the advantages of playing for New York is that the big crowds at Shea Stadium help you tremendously,” he said. “They make you want to give 115 percent all the time. In Houston, nobody seems to applaud unless the hands on the scoreboard start to clap. Once those hands stop, so do all the others. Real enthusiasm.”

    Grote is survived by his third wife, Cheryl Grote, and her three children; three children with his first wife, Sharon Grote; six grandchildren; and three step-grandchildren, all of whom are standing on the mound, peering in, waiting for the sign.

    Rest in peace, Grote.

    Below, first, is a photo of Grote in the center, Seaver and Koosman to his right, and Yogi and Nolan Ryan to his left. It was 2009, the 40th anniversary of the Mets championship. Next is his autograph from my collection.

    See you tomorrow!

  • Runway 9

    Yesterday, the all-Republican all-the-time Arizona State Supreme Court restored the validity of Arizona’s 1864 anti-abortion law. Arizona did not become a state until 1912, but so what? Under the law, all physicians capable of performing abortions and all women of child-bearing age are to be taken out to the forest and shot.

    There. Finished.

    I was looking over the box score from last night’s Nats’ 5-3 win over the Giants, and noticed that the last two Giant pitchers were both listed as “T. Rogers.” Digging a little, I learned that one was Taylor Rogers and the other was Tyler Rogers. What are the odds? I dug a little deeper and learned they were both born in Littleton, CO. Yikes! Getting creepy. And they have the same birthday: 12/17/1990! It was at that point that I realized they are twins. Duh. Identical, no less.

    Late last season, in an article published on August 10, 2023, it was noted that Taylor had a 2.52 ERA, while Tyler was just two-hundredths of a point higher at 2.54. Taylor had 46 strikeouts compared to Tyler’s 45, and the brothers’ respective WHIPs (walks and hits per inning pitched), were a mere one-thousandth of a point apart — Taylor at 1.093 and Tyler at 1.094. 

    Overall, Taylor has had the stronger career, with 83 saves and a 3.17 ERA, but both are damn good pitchers. Phil took this nice shot of the brothers and assures me that that’s Taylor on the right. Or the left. No, the right, for sure.

    Wait — I didn’t get to the punchline yet. Before joining the Giants, Taylor pitched for the Twins. (Not kidding.)

    In the puzzle today, at 49A the clue was “Container in a kid’s backpack,” and the answer was PENCIL BOX. Here’s Rex:

    “I do have a question about PENCIL BOX, which is “Whose child?” and (follow-up) “What year is it?” Do kids’ backpacks still contain PENCIL BOXes!?!? If so, I couldn’t be more thrilled. I have several pencil boxes in my desk drawer here, I love them. Pencils rule. But I thought “kids” were moving away from writing by hand generally, and even if they are still writing by hand, the PENCIL BOX (as a kids’ school accessory) seems old-fashioned. Maybe it’s an art thing? Are they colored pencils? Anyway, that answer felt slightly dated. Not INK WELL dated, but … about halfway to INKWELL. I’m seeing kid-branded PENCIL BOXes online, so obviously kids still use them. I just wonder about what percentage actually have them in their backpacks on any given day.”

    Here are some responses from commenters:

    I have a third grader and he does, indeed, use pencils, though he carries them in a nylon bag and not a box. Pencils are still around, at least for my kid.

    My middle schooler has a pencil case, but sometimes he’s had a box – it depends on his whim at the start of the year when we’re buying supplies – and yes, he has to bring it every day.

    Yes my grandson also has a pencil box. During the pandemic, when schools reopened, the children were asked to bring in their own supplies so that they didn’t share germs. So I guess there was a pencil box Renaissance in a way. These days they’re back to sharing supplies since we know the more likely mode of transmission is through the air.

    NYC middle school teacher here, currently in year 27. Students absolutely use pencil cases in school. I’ve never heard the term pencil box before this crossword.

    And then I chimed in, with the following:

    I am surprised to see that Rex and several of the comments are completely missing the point on the PENCIL BOX (49A). The true pencil box is a box made out of pencils. Each side of the box is made by placing pencils of equal length one on top of the other until the desired box height is reached. Hold them in place as best as possible with your fingers. You’ll get better at this the more boxes you make.

    Next, slather them with a good, fast-drying liquid glue. When they seem securely glued in place, do your best to remove them from your fingers and try to separate your fingers from each other. Ideally, you will have someone available to drive you to the emergency room if necessary, as it is difficult to control a steering wheel with pencils glued to your fingers.

    Repeat four times, making sure the opposing box sides are equal in length and all four equal in height. When you have all of the sides completed, just use common sense to finish constructing the box.

    “Where runway 9 is always oriented at an airport.” The answer was EAST.

    Seriously? Every airport makes sure that runways 1-8 point elsewhere and they place #9 so it faces east? What about small airports that don’t have 9 runways? In other words, what the f*ck is going on? Did you know this?

    It turns out runway numbers at all airports have significance based on the direction they face, in relation to “magnetic north.” Point your compass straight north and spin around in a 360 degree circle. East would be at the 90 degree point, right? So you drop the zero and the runway facing that direction (East) is Runway 9. It might be a runway that planes can take off from in either direction. In that case, a plane heading West would be at 270 degrees, right? So drop the zero and that’s Runway 27. The same strip of runway would be both Runway 9 and Runway 27, depending on which direction the plane is heading. It could be identified as 9/27 if there’s no reference to a particular flight.

    So each runway at an airport is numbered based on the number of degrees from magnetic north, with the zero dropped.

    Gordon Lightfoot wrote the beautiful song, “Early Mornin’ Rain.” Dylan covers it, below. Listen to the lyrics, third verse:

    Out on runway number nine
    Big 707 set to go

    Here’s a note from the American Nitpickers Association & League (ANAL). At 17A, the clue was “Popular Italian entree, informally,” and the answer was CHICKEN PARM. A commenter going by the name A. Vespucci said…

    Chicken Parm Italian?

    Chicken Parm is an American dish developed in Italian immigrant neighborhoods in cities in northeastern US during the first part of the 20th century. While it certainly has “cousins” in Italian cuisine, it is a big stretch to call it Italian. Better cluing might have been “Popular Italian-American entree, informally.” Or “Popular entree in Italian-American restaurants, informally.”

    Geez Louise — gimme a break Vespucci! Close enough for crosswords.

    We’ll send you off drooling tonight. See you tomorrow!