The Wellington Files

  • Sticky Fingers

    Well, I’m not much of a swimmer, so I’m pretty impressed. Last week, Caroline Kennedy, who is 65, kinahora, (and the U.S. ambassador to Australia), along with her son Jack Schlossberg and Owl Chatter photographer Phil, swam a portion of the route her dad the Prez swam in his heroic rescue of his PT boat crew back in WWII. The President’s swim was 3.5 miles; Caroline, Jack, and Phil covered about a third of it. It took them 30 minutes and it was between two tiny palm-fringed islets in the Solomon Islands.

    Phil was a little winded, but managed to get these nice shots for us. Good work, Buddy — you can go dry off now.

    Good-looking kid. Almost as handsome as the Finkelman boys. (Hi Roy and Pam!)

    At 14D today the clue was “Cloyingly sentimental” and the answer was GOOPY. Not a direct hit, it seems to me, but probably “close enough for crosswords,” as the saying goes. This is what LMS said: If I knew GOOPY could mean “schmaltzy,” I’ve forgotten. For me, GOOPY means gooey. But it feels like they’re slightly different. Picture a big old ice cream sundae: Gooey describes it sitting there; Goopy describes it as a big glob drops off the spoon onto your shirt. Like, goopy connotes some kind of movement going on. I’m overthinking this. (By the way, “schmaltz strengths” has 15 consonants and 2 vowels. I’ll wait while you write this down.)

    At 22D, the clue was “Things tube tops lack” and the answer was STRAPS. LMS again: “I kinda hesitated with the thought that a tube top lacks STRAPS, but I get it. I hate seeing women wearing strapless stuff and constantly tugging and re-adjusting everything lest their HOOTERS. . . ahem. If you’re gonna go the strapless route, make it so that you Wear it, wear it. Use some tape or something so that you don’t have to be constantly messing with it; it kills the effect. Follow me for more fashion advice.”

    Note from the Dirty Old Man Dept: LMS, above, was referring to the fact that the answer right after the tube top STRAPS was HOOTERS, but right above that was OWLS, so get your minds out of the gutter everyone! Here are six members of the parliament.

    On Ron DeSantis’s attempts to shirk responsibility for the Florida lesson plan that laundered the horror of slavery, Kareem Abdul Jabbar wrote: “DeSantis was trying to wrap himself in the Cloak of Invisibility but instead slipped on the Hoodie of Absurdity.”

    It’s hard not to careen down the rabbit hole of Trump’s indictments, but you don’t need Owl Chatter on that topic. Once in a while though, something so wonderful jumps off the page and smacks you on the nose and you just can’t let it go by. It’s too delicious. As reported in The Hill, here is a quote by Alina Habba, one of Trump’s lawyers in the classified papers case:

    “If President Trump didn’t want something turned over, I assure you, that is something that could have been done, but he never would act like that. He is the most ethical American I know.”

    If you are wondering whether a person who could say that looks like an Earthling — here she is. Apparently the people on her planet have only one ear. Otherwise, quite humanoid.

    This poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac is by Laura McKee and is called “Exotic Treats.“

    Especially on long drives through the country,
    you like to tell that story about your old girlfriend
    whose parrot was killed one afternoon
    by a raccoon who stole in through the pet door.
    It was horrible, you say. Feathers everywhere.
    Are you laughing? Stop laughing.
    She really loved that bird.

    The clue at 17A today is “Rickety piano, in old music biz slang” and the answer is TIN PAN, as in “tin pan alley.” But the story behind it is new to me (as shared by commenter Mack). Back in the late 19th/early 20th century, in an effort to capitalize on popular music demand, a bunch of songwriters and publishers set up shop in a particular area of New York . These folks would continuously be churning out songs to sell. It got to the point that if you walked down a particular street in the city [West 28th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Aves], you could hear a multitude of pianos plinking away through the windows. These were salesmen, not concert pianists, so they often used rickety old dime-store pianos. Someone remarked that walking down the street sounded like rain falling on a bunch of tin pans, and it earned the nickname “Tin Pan Alley.” A plaque on the sidewalk on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth commemorates it.

    Lucky Peterson is going to send us off tonight with his version of “Tin Pan Alley.” Watch out for that busted guitar string Lucky!

    See you tomorrow!

  • The Art of Desire

    I had two contributions to make today to the gang at Rex’s blog. The first related to 32D where the clue was “Kind of gas station that’s illegal in New Jersey,” and the answer was SELF SERVE. There was an assumption that both Jersey and Oregon proscribe pumping your own, but Oregon fell by the roadside recently, so it’s just Jersey. Also, at 25A, “Rocket launcher that makes a whimsical buzzing sound?” was KAZOO BAZOOKA, and I had to share this video I found of a kazoo version of “My Heart Will Go On.”

    So this was my post:

    Oregon has fallen. You can pump your own gas there now. Jersey, like the cheese, stands alone.

    I live in Jersey so it’s a real treat for me to be able to pump my own when I’m driving out of state. I love asking my wife “Check the oil, ma’am?”

    In case your life has been lacking a kazoo version of “My Heart Will Go On,” I refer you to the following, for your listening displeasure. I burst out laughing at one point, but that’s me (ymmv). (Ymmv stands for “your mileage may vary.”)

    It’s always nice when a common old XW answer gets a fresh new clue. That’s what happened at 6D today where the answer was I DO. The clue was “Possible response to ‘Who wants ice cream?’” egsforbreakfast said: Next time I get married, I’m going to have the officiant ask, “Egs, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife and do you want ice cream?”

    At 50A, “Activist Abrams” was, of course, STACEY. But did you know that along with her political activity and writing, she also wrote a slew of romance novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery? Neat, eh? Here’s one of hers called The Art of Desire. I’d guess it’s very different from The Art of the Deal. It’s available from Amazon as a mass market paperback for $14.06.

    KAZOO BAZOOKA, see above, was one example of “syllabic palindromes” that were in the puzzle today. There may not be such a thing, but it means the syllables reverse themselves. In kazoo bazooka, “ka-zoo becomes “zoo-ka.” The others were GO FAR IN FARGO, TIC TAC TOE TACTIC, and TORMENTED MENTOR. (In a traditional palindrome, the letters in a word or phrase read the same backwards and forwards. A famous one is Madam, I’m Adam. There’s also: A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.)

    Tina Fey was in the grid today. Hi Tina! Nice to see you again. Here’s part of her prayer for her daughter:

    “First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

    Guide her, protect her–

    When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

    Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance.

    She has two now, and she’s 53 (ouch!).

    Thanks for dropping in – see you tomorrow!

  • Who Let the Owls Out?

    While waiting for my train home today, in Penn Station, I had this exchange with an older man in a t-shirt and jeans. By “older,” I mean about twenty years younger than me. I remember it verbatim because I don’t have too many of these.

    Him: Covid over?

    Me: What?

    Him: Covid over?

    Me: I hope so.

    Him: Seems to be.

    Me: Yes.

    Him: When the President is re-elected it’s going to start again.

    Me: What’s the connection?

    Him: Huh?

    Me: What’s the connection?

    Him: I guess so, yeah.

    Then he walked away, leaving me with a handful of questions, but grateful that he left.

    OK kids, here’s your assignment. Take nine (nine!) different trees and find words or word pairs that contain them backwards. Assemble them all as down answers in a crossword puzzle in such a way that the grid looks like a tree. This is what Kathryn Ladner came up with today, brilliantly, IMO. Can you find the nine? — the letters are circled. And can you see the tree?

    Commenter Smith said he just couldn’t figure out the theme from the circled letters. He said he “spent quite a few post-solve minutes reading the circles forward, backwards, down and even boustrophedon.”

    Wow — have you ever heard that word before? Bocamp did some digging for us:

    Boustrophedon is an ancient style of writing that dates back to the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and Greece. The word itself is of Greek origin and translates to “ox-turning” or “as the ox plows.” This name comes from the pattern of the writing, which resembles the path of an ox plowing a field. In the boustrophedon style, the text is written in alternating directions, right to left and left to right, in successive lines. The lines change direction, much like the back-and-forth motion of an ox plowing a field, hence the name. It was used in early writing systems.

    Here’s a couplet in boustrophedon:

    Roses are red
    .eulb era steloiv

    Who let the oxen out?

    Remember 15A: The BAHA MEN? I didn’t. Their big hit was “Who Let the Dogs Out?” That was back in 2000. I’d have guessed it was longer ago. While the question makes sense in the appropriate context (assigning blame for whoever let the dogs out when they were supposed to stay in), the meaning of the lyrics eludes me. E.g.,

    Well, if I am a dog, the party is on
    I gotta get my groove cause my mind done gone
    Do you see the rays coming from my eye
    Walking through the place
    That Diji man is breakin’ it down?

    It won the 2001 Grammy for Best Dance Recording, and did very well on the charts. The band (The Baha Men) makes for a good crossword answer, but a little hard for Tuesday, it seems to me. I got it from the crosses and by guessing the first “A.” Here they are, chillin’, having forgotten all about those dogs, from the looks of it.

    An ELAND was in the puzzle at 10D: “African antelope that’s the size of a moose.” I was happy to see it because Vermont Lizzie sometimes uses it as a Wordle starter. Hi Liz! Did you know they were moose-sized? Let’s have a look at one — what the hell else do we have to do?

    Yup. Looks pretty damn big. They generally hang out in Southern Africa.

    Exciting news: I picked up a pair of tix for a Buddy Guy concert in Red Bank NJ on Sept 30. Can’t wait.

    I heard Leonard Cohen explain that the “sisters of mercy” were two mini-skirted teeny boppers who had the assignment of picking him up at the airport in Vancouver when he flew in for a concert once. It must have been a very long time ago, since that song is on his first album. I don’t know what my favorite song of his is — so many of them have been important to me over the years, and so many are so beautiful. But I do have a favorite lyric, and it is from Sisters: If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn, they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

    See you tomorrow!

  • Stop! In the Name of Love

    Rex’s friend Rafa covered for him today, and he wrote these nice thoughts:

    “I usually guest blog about late-week puzzles, so writing about a Monday puzzle is a bit new to me. Monday puzzles have a special place in my heart, as they were my gateway drug into the world of crosswords. (The crossworld, as they say…)

    As such, I feel very strongly that Mondays need to be ultra smooth! Every Monday puzzle could be someone’s first puzzle ever, and if they see things like ARETE or SSTS or ASTA or OSES, etc., etc., they might think puzzles aren’t for them. But puzzles are for everyone! So the Monday puzzle has a huge responsibility to be fun and accessible and smooth.”

    I liked the thought of imagining each puzzle’s being someone’s first. It reminded me of the following, which I posted: “That’s a nice notion — to think of every Monday as someone’s first puzzle. Joe DiMaggio said something like he played every game as if there were some kid in the stands who never saw him play before.”

    It prompted this nice response from whatsername: “Loved your baseball story, a very apropos analogy to the concept of a first-time crossword solver and a good theory to apply to most any job. When Covid was raging I went to a Walgreens drive-thru for a swab test. The employee at the window reeled off the instructions so rapidly that I had to ask her to repeat some of it. I could see she was a bit annoyed so when I thanked her, I explained that while it may have been the umpteenth time she spoke those words, it was my first time ever hearing them.”

    We had a very distinguished guest in the grid today — Justice SONIA SOTOMAYOR! Welcome Sonny! Take a load off — I think I have some chips or something around here. I can’t believe we’re coming up on your 14th anniversary with The Supremes next week. Jeez Louise! Here are those chips. The bag’s been open a while — hope they’re okay — how about a beer? You’re a Bronx girl, right? You gotta like beer! Ever knock a few down with Kavanaugh? Ha!

    Back when she was in law school at Yale, Sotomayor had an interesting “run-in.” The DC law firm of Shaw, Pittman, et al suggested during a recruiting dinner that she was only at Yale via affirmative action. She refused to be interviewed by them further and filed a complaint with a faculty–student tribunal, which ruled in her favor. Her action triggered a campus-wide debate, and news of the firm’s subsequent apology made The Washington Post.

    Hailing from the Bronx, it’s no surprise that she’s a Yankee fan.

    My favorite clue/answer today was at 5D: “Comically packed circus vehicle,” CLOWN CAR. The caption for this photo read: “Twenty-nine clowns test positive for Covid after riding in same tiny car.” D’oh!

    Let’s close with the other Supremes tonight. I never appreciated how painful this song is. See you tomorrow!

  • The Vulnerable Hollow

    Here’s a story for those of you who went to rock concerts back in the 60’s and 70’s.

    So this anthropologist scored a real coup and got invited to visit and study a tribe in deep Africa that has had no contact with modern civilization ever. She somehow connected with one member of the tribe who was briefly away from the tribal homeland, learned a bit of English, and got permission from the elders for her to visit.

    So she made the 9-hour flight to the nearest airport, took a rickety bus to the nearest village, and hiked 15 hours through difficult terrain to reach the tribal land. Her contact met her and showed her to a tent which was to be her home for the two-week stay. And he showed her around, including where she would have her meals with tribespeople as a respected guest. She thanked him heartily. He said she should call him Enyi, which means “friend” in the Igbo language.

    As she was getting her bearings she noticed a persistent drumbeat. The next time she was with Enyi she asked him about it, but he just froze and said “Drums good. Drums no stop.” She said, “Is it religious in some way? or cultural?” But he cut her off and just insisted “Drums good” and walked away.

    She had trouble sleeping that night since the drumbeats weighed on her mind, but she knew she couldn’t raise the issue again, and she quickly grew used to them. They became a pleasing background, day and night.

    Her visit was extraordinary: an anthropologist’s dream. The people were wonderful — the children adored her and the women were fascinated with everything modern about her. She brought cosmetics and hair-care items and toys to distribute as gifts. The men were respectful and kind. She brought small tools and sports items for them. The days flew by.

    On her last night there, as she was packing up her things for the trip back to civilization, she suddenly felt something fundamental had changed. It took her a few seconds to realize what it was: the drumming stopped. It had become such a comforting presence, its stopping unnerved her. She went to Enyi’s tent to find out what it meant, if they were in some sort of danger.

    When she entered, she saw him sitting on the floor with a look of dread or terror on his face. She had never seen him like that, even when they faced various minor dangers together. She approached him carefully and said: “Enyi. The drumming stopped. What does it mean? What is the danger? What happens now?”

    In a voice tinged with agony he said: “Guitar solo.”

    And speaking of guitarists, Buddy Guy was born on this date in Lettsworth, LA, back in 1936. He made his first guitar himself when he was 13 out of a two-stringed diddley bow, an instrument consisting of baling wire tensioned between two nails on a board over a glass bottle, which is used both as a bridge and to magnify the sound.

    He learned to play by listening to John Lee Hooker records and other blues artists. His parents were sharecroppers and when he was young he picked cotton for $2.50 per hundred pounds.

    Guy moved to Chicago when he was 21 and Muddy Waters took him under his wing. In the 70’s his career waned, until guitarists like Clapton, Keith Richards, Beck, and Hendrix said they owed their inspiration to Guy and other blues musicians. A resurgence followed. Clapton once called him “the best guitar player alive.” He’s 87 now and still touring. Holy Sh*t! — I can see him in Morristown in October. Here he is in Newport 30 years ago. According to him, he had the blues, — damn right — from his head down to his shoes.

    This poem by Ellen Bass was in The Writer’s Almanac today. Those of you who have daughters (or sons) may relate to it, whether they are married or not. It’s called “After Our Daughter’s Wedding.”

    While the remnants of cake
    and half-empty champagne glasses
    lay on the lawn like sunbathers lingering
    in the slanting light, we left the house guests
    and drove to Antonelli’s pond.
    On a log by the bank I sat in my flowered dress and cried.
    A lone fisherman drifted by, casting his ribbon of light.
    “Do you feel like you’ve given her away?” you asked.
    But no, it was that she made it
    to here, that she didn’t
    drown in a well or die
    of pneumonia or take the pills.
    She wasn’t crushed
    under the mammoth wheels of a semi
    on highway 17, wasn’t found
    lying in the alley
    that night after rehearsal
    when I got the time wrong.
    It’s animal. The egg
    not eaten by a weasel. Turtles
    crossing the beach, exposed
    in the moonlight. And we
    have so few to start with.
    And that long gestation—
    like carrying your soul out in front of you.
    All those years of feeding
    and watching. The vulnerable hollow
    at the back of the neck. Never knowing
    what could pick them off—a seagull
    swooping down for a clam.
    Our most basic imperative:
    for them to survive.
    And there’s never been a moment
    we could count on it.

    Do you like spoonerisms? That’s what today’s puzzle was about, by the wonderfully named John Kugelman. My favorite was 94A. The clue was “Enjoy your stay on our horse farm. Hope it’s not too noisy. You can expect …” And the answer was THREE MARE SQUEALS A DAY. Ha!

    The most controversial was at 38A. The clue was: “I know they’ve had them on all day, but let the kids eat their candy. After all, a Ring Pop is a …” WEARABLE THING TO TASTE. Get it? It’s a play on [A mind is a] “terrible thing to waste.” But the issue is do “wearable” and “terrible” rhyme? If they don’t, it’s an imperfection and heads must roll. The comments came down all over the place on the issue. To my ear, they do not rhyme. It’s wearable as in warehouse, and terrible as in terrier. But in many regions of the country, apparently, they do.

    Oddly, a comment from a Northeasterner said they were a perfect rhyme to his or her ears and noted that Merriam Webster has them identical in pronunciation. Hrrrrumph.

    Another cute one had Hugh Hefner being called MISTER BUNNY MAGS.

    Commenter Nancy, who also constructs puzzles, had her own puzzle using spoonerisms a few years ago. She noted: “Loved it. When comparing this to my Sunday Spoonerism puzzle of 3/15/20, it shows that there’s more than one way to kin a scat.”

    Two three-letter answers were clued as the “counterpart” of each other and started with TI. I quickly put in TIC and TAC, as did many others. But the puzzle gods wanted TIT and TAT (as in “tit for tat”). The commentariat was on fire with complaints. Many thought tic and tac should have been considered correct too. Others thought the key was the word “counterpart” in the clues. Tit and tat are counterparts — one is exchanged “for” the other. And tic and tac have no such relationship, they argue. I’m in that camp and am accepting my DNF (did not finish).

    ANA de Armas was in the puzzle today and was interestingly clued, which caused me to do some research. The clue was (at 46A): “De Armas who name-checked the New York Times crossword on ‘S.N.L.’” It turns out she hosted SNL. She told a neat story — her first movie role was in a film with Robert de Niro, called Hands of Stone. And de Niro was very supportive and welcoming and friendly. When he learned that Ana is from Cuba, he asked her about her family and he said he was going to be down there in a while and he’d be sure to visit them. She forgot all about it. Well, a few months later she got a call from her dad who was sky high and he told her Robert de Niro just dropped by where he worked to say hello.

    Anyway, re the clue, above, she also mentioned in the monologue that she knew she “made it” when she learned she was in the NYT crossword. You got that right, babe! And Owl Chatter!

    Hey, Bob — you talkin’ to me? Are you talkin’ to me?

    So, get this — on this date in 1975, Jimmy Hoffa vanished. He told friends he was going to meet with two “associates” at the Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, MI. When he didn’t return, his wife called the police, who found his car in the parking lot. That’s close to where my son Sam, and his wife Sarah and my grandson Mo live. Keep your eyes out for JH, guys. Could be anywhere.

    Today’s “tiny love story” in the NYT Style section, “God’s Wife,” is by Caren Albers.

    We called Dad “The Answerman.” He seemed to know the answer to every question. Mom accused him of thinking he knew more than God, which was funny since my father was agnostic. “I guess that makes me God’s wife,” she would say. She even went so far as to get a vanity license plate “GDSWF” (“God’s wife”). When she got it, she hadn’t considered any alternative meanings for “GDSWF,” like “Gay, Dominant, Single, White, Female.” When the honks and waves started coming, Mom laughed and waved back, celebrating the diversity of humankind, just as God’s wife would.

    That guitar solo from the joke should be over by now — try to get some sleep. See you tomorrow.

  • My Son, the King

    I went to a funeral service last night for Tony Zhang, the husband of Wei (Vicky), who teaches with me at Hunter. They have a beautiful 9-year-old son, Ryan, who played a song on the piano to open the service. While they were vacationing in Wyoming, a terrible car crash took Tony’s life. He was only 48. Ryan was hurt, and had to be helicoptered to a hospital, but he’s fine now. The first speaker was Tony’s father, who flew in from China and spoke in Chinese. Several friends spoke next. Then Wei spoke at length and ran the gamut of emotions, from grief to laughter, recounting stories. Behind the open casket, there were arrangements of white roses, a Chinese tradition. Tony had both a PhD in Chemistry from RPI, and a law degree from Suffolk Law School. By all accounts, he was a true mensch — look at that sweet punim — and will be deeply missed by his family, friends, and colleagues.

    My colleague Ken was also there. We were chatting before the service began, and I know he has a son who was previously his daughter so I asked him if he saw Barbie yet. I was half-joking. Ken was taken aback for a second and reminded me that his ex-wife was named Barbara and they were sometimes referred to as “Ken and Barbie.” He hasn’t seen the movie.

    When Wei spoke, Ken said he didn’t think it was common for a surviving spouse to speak at a service. Then he remembered a story about an Economics professor at Penn whose wife died and who gave the eulogy at the funeral and was arrested for her murder several days later. “That’s cold,” I said.

    Ken thought he was still in prison, but Google tells me he served the maximum ten years and was released in 2017. His name is Rafael Robb. It wasn’t exactly murder — he pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter. His wife, Ellen, retained a divorce lawyer and was planning to move out. They had a fight while she was wrapping Christmas gifts, always a stressful time, and he bludgeoned her to death.

    I hope it’s not too creepy, but here’s a shot of her hands moments before she was killed. [I’m joking — it’s a random shot I found on the interweb. But I will go pretty low for a laugh from time to time.]

    I may have shared this story before, but it’s good, so if I have it’s worth repeating. (Linda tells me most of my cooking repeats on her.) It’s the poet Stanley Kunitz’s birthday today. He was born in Worcester MA and lived to be 100. He was teaching at Bennington when the college tried to expel a student of his three months before her graduation for alcohol-related violations. Kunitz organized a protest and the president of the college came to his home to tell him to stop. Kunitz was potting a plant at the time. He threw the plant at the president and quit. The student was Miriam Marx, Groucho’s daughter. The protest was not successful.

    Miriam went on to be a writer at Mademoiselle, and later worked on her father’s hysterical quiz show, You Bet Your Life. In her 1992 book, Love, Groucho: Letters from Groucho Marx to His Daughter Miriam, she detailed her battle against addiction, her difficult relationship with Groucho, and their eventual reconciliation. She died in 2017 at age 90.

    Did you know that King David’s father’s name was JESSE? I forgot or never knew that, but that wasn’t what did me in today — it was 33A: “Delivery room offering, informally.” The answer was EPI, for epidural. I know epidural, but I never heard it called EPI. Oh, well.

    Here’s Jessica Chastain who won an Oscar for Best Actress in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. She played one of the eyes, very expressively. Chastain is highly protective of her private life, but I was able to find out (it’s on Wikipedia) that she married Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo [I’m not kidding], an Italian count of the Passi de Preposulo noble family, who is an executive for the fashion brand Moncler, on June 10, 2017 at his family’s estate in Carbonera, Italy, which was Linda’s and my 33rd anniversary. They have two daughters.

    I am aware that the link between the appearance of JESSE in the puzzle, clued as King David’s father, and the actress Jessica Chastain is tenuous. But it’s a slow news day for Chatter, and she has unusually colored eyes.

    The commentariat gave a ton of grief to the constructor, Sam Ezersky, an old hand, for 11A: “Canal implement.” The canal is your ear canal, and the answer was Q-TIP, but many pointed out that you are not supposed to insert a Q-TIP into the canal — it says so right on the package, for Cripe’s sake! But doesn’t everyone?

    A few days ago I vented here about a woman who got on the subway and blocked the way for the rest of us. Well, here’s a story about the commission of the same “crime” with a very happy ending. It’s from this week’s Met Diary, and was told by John Diefendorf.

    On a sweltering Saturday in summer 1995, I was 25, hung over and waiting for the No. 1 train at 116th Street with a friend. We were on our way to Penn Station to pick up another friend.

    When the train arrived, I stepped inside and stopped immediately so that I could lean against the door when it closed. A moment later I felt a sharp jab to my ribs and heard a stern, “Step aside!”

    I apologized sheepishly.

    The elbow jabber turned and looked at me. She was a petite woman about my age, and something happened when our eyes met.

    “You’re not from around here, are you?” she said.

    “No,” I said, feeling myself blush. “I just moved here from upstate.”

    “You apologized,” she said, smiling. “That’s how I knew.”

    “I just finished a parks restoration job upstate,” she continued. “Where did you live?”

    By the time we got to Penn Station, I had her phone number and we had arranged to meet with a group of her friends and mine at an East Village bar that night.

    We talked until 4 a.m., then went for falafels at Mamoun’s on St. Marks until the sun came up. June 27 was our 25th wedding anniversary.

    We cannot let slip by a rave review of a new book on owls: “What an Owl Knows,” by Jennifer Ackerman. It sounds like a long love letter to our favorite bird. Here’s an eggs zerpt from Jennifer Szalai’s review: Each species seems like a marvel, but certain owls are so special that her book is peppered with superlatives. The Eurasian eagle owl is “the most powerful hunter of all owls” (though not to be mistaken for the powerful owl, which will eat as many as 250 to 350 possums a year). The Northern saw-whet is, she says, “arguably the world’s most adorable owl,” with its heart-shaped face and tiny, rounded form. Blakiston’s fish owl is “the world’s biggest owl.” 

    Here’s a trio of Northern saw-whets. Have you ever seen owls like these?

    The title of the review is “Give a Hoot.” We do! See you tomorrow.

  • “I Teach Those Birds”

    The clue at 57A today was “Polyamory portmanteau.” I love portmanteaus. It’s when you squoosh two words together (like squeeze and shmoosh). The answer was THROUPLE. Rex didn’t like it — he said he would have preferred “threedom.” (Let threedom ring!, he wrote.) It gave me the opening to post:

    If a throuple decides to end it and winds up in court over who gets the property, it’s a three-piece suit.

    When my wife asked if I picked up my outfit for the wedding, I told her I had the jacket and pants but the vest was yet to come.

    My buddy “mathgent,” see below. added this:

    I had some fun just now looking up THROUPLE (rhymes with “couple”) and menage a trois, and trying to figure out the difference. I think that a THROUPLE can all be of the same sex, menages are two and one. And in a THROUPLE, each member typically will have sex with the other two, not so in a menage.

    Good to know.

    NEVADA was the answer at 2D, clued with “Home to the U.S. city with the most hotel rooms.” It led Son Volt to share this tune by Deer Tick with us, called “Nevada.”

    From the “You-Can’t-Win” Department:

    On a family trip about 25 years ago, which included Nevada, I learned that I had been mispronouncing it my whole life (till then). I was saying Nevada like Nev-ah-da, but the locals said it with the “a” as in arrow. I immediately started pronouncing it correctly. My teenaged daughter continued to pronounce it Nev-ah-da. I said, “Caity — we just learned that the people who live here pronounce it Nevada.” And she said, “Well, I don’t live here.”

    D’oh!

    The puzzle went somewhere it doesn’t usually go with PAD and TAMPON. And Natasha said: “I loved that this puzzle had PAD and TAMPON cross-referencing each other and a neutral reference to “polyamory.” I didn’t love ENGAGEMENTPARTY as the marquis answer, however. F*** the wedding-industrial complex and amatonormativity.” [Wow.]

    “Amatonormativity” is a neologism coined by Elizabeth Brake, a philosophy prof at Rice University, in 2011. (Long-grained) It’s the assumption that all human beings pursue love or romance, especially by means of a monogamous long-term relationship.

    It’s a two-poem day at Owl Chatter (Hi Jenny!). This first one is from The Writer’s Almanac. It’s called “My Ancestral Home” and is by Louis Jenkins.

    We came to a beautiful little farm. From photos
    I’d seen I knew this was the place. The house
    and barn were painted in the traditional Falu
    red, trimmed with white. It was nearly mid-
    summer, the trees and grass, lush green, when
    we arrived the family was gathered at a table
    on the lawn for coffee and fresh strawberries.
    Introductions were made all around, Grandpa
    Sven, Lars-Olaf and Marie, Eric and Gudren,
    Cousin Inge and her two children… It made me
    think of a Carl Larsson painting. But, of course,
    it was all modern, the Swedes are very up-to-
    date, Lars-Olaf was an engineer for Volvo, and
    they all spoke perfect English, except for
    Grandpa, and there was a great deal of laughter
    over my attempts at Swedish. We stayed for a
    long time laughing and talking. It was late in
    the day, but the sun was still high. I felt a won-
    derful kinship. It seemed to me that I had
    known these people all my life, they even
    looked like family back in the States. But as it
    turned out, we had come to the wrong farm.
    Lars-Olaf said, “I think I know your people, they
    live about three miles from here. If you like I
    could give them a call.” I said that no, it wasn’t
    necessary, this was close enough.

    The clue at 27A today was “Outdoor installation using earth, rocks, vegetation, etc.,” and the answer was LAND ART, something I hadn’t heard of. It started LMS off on quite a paragraph. As you should recall, she teaches disadvantaged kids in NC. She talks about being moved to tears in it, and that’s what happened to me.

    “I kept thinking about that LAND ART. As always, when ART comes up, I feel inferior and intimidated. I just don’t ‘get’ most art. The emotion I’m supposed to experience never happens. I take that back; once at the Louvre, a painting by Georges de la Tour rendered me speechless, stunned. And Maya Angelou’s ‘Caged Bird’ poem makes me cry every time. When that caged bird ‘opens his throat to sing … a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still,’ I’m overcome. I teach those birds, caged by the crappy circumstances they were born into, caged by the failure of our collapsing educational system, caged by the ignorance of the everyman who refuses to see their very real, very vast potential.”

    Here it is, in case it’s been too long since you’ve read it:

    A free bird leaps
    on the back of the wind
    and floats downstream
    till the current ends
    and dips his wing
    in the orange sun rays
    and dares to claim the sky.

    But a bird that stalks
    down his narrow cage
    can seldom see through
    his bars of rage
    his wings are clipped and
    his feet are tied
    so he opens his throat to sing.

    The caged bird sings
    with a fearful trill
    of things unknown
    but longed for still
    and his tune is heard
    on the distant hill
    for the caged bird
    sings of freedom.

    The free bird thinks of another breeze
    and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
    and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
    and he names the sky his own.

    But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
    his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
    his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
    so he opens his throat to sing.

    The caged bird sings
    with a fearful trill
    of things unknown
    but longed for still
    and his tune is heard
    on the distant hill
    for the caged bird
    sings of freedom.

    I got a nice e-note from “mathgent” yesterday, much appreciated. LIMERICK was in the puzzle and several folks shared limericks with us, including one on rabbits. It lead me to post this joke:

    So these two life-long friends, Pete and Louie, make a pact that when the first one of them dies, he’ll come back after a year and tell the other what the afterlife is like. Years go by and Pete slips on a banana peel (badly) and dies. A year later Louie is waiting up, nervously, hoping to hear from Pete. But it’s midnight, then 1 am, and there’s nothing, so he falls asleep.

    A few hours later, it’s pitch dark and he hears “PSST, PSST, Louie.” And he wakes up and says “Pete! You came back!! So what’s it like?” And Pete says, “Well, I get up in the morning, have sex, and then have a little breakfast. Then I have sex again, and then again, and then I have lunch. After lunch, I have sex again, and then again, and then dinner. And then there’s sex one more time and I go to sleep.”

    And Louie says, “Wow, so that’s really what heaven is like?” And Pete says, “Who said anything about heaven? — I’m a rabbit in Colorado.”

    I posted the joke fairly late in the day (4:30PM), so wasn’t expecting much of a response. But around 6:30, I got this email, which made my evening:

    Dear Avi,

    It’s too late to reply on the blog.  Your joke cracked me up.  Then I read it to my wife, who also doubled over.  Great one.

    mathgent

    Quite an EGO BOOST, right? Well, the clue at 34D today was “Spirit-raising?” and the answer was EGO BOOST. It led LMS to post the following from which I learned that “peruse” is a contronym, i.e., a word that means both what it means and its opposite. Like “sanction” means both to allow and to punish. Peruse means both to skim over something and to study it carefully. Here’s what she wrote:

    Loved EGO BOOST. Since BOOST can also mean “steal,” that phrase could *almost* be one of those Janus dealies like sanction and peruse. You can get your ego boosted by a compliment or a put-down. Last year, I called the mom of a student from the Congo because I wanted to tell her how terrific her son was. When she answered with an accented, tentative, Hello, I knew I was in trouble. Vic had told me that they speak Lingala, and my Lingala consists of one word: mbote. But I forged ahead. Parlez-vous francais? … Oui. I proceeded to tell her in French how lovely her son was – nice, smart, respectful. The next day my conversation with Vic went something like this:

    Me: Did your mom tell you I called?
    Vic: Yes
    Me: Did she tell you I spoke to her in French?
    Vic: Yeah. She said your French isn’t that good.

    EGO. BOOSTed. Ouch. Hey – I haven’t really spoken French in almost 40 years. But he assured me that she understood what I was saying.

    On the Barbie front, I suggested to Daughter #1 that she take the girls (Lianna, almost 14, and Zoey, 8) to see it as a nice mother/daughter outing. And she told me Lianna already saw it and hated it. D’oh!

    Here’s MR, out of character:

    That’s a pretty note to end on. See you tomorrow!

  • The Price is Wrong

    There were some good entries in Frank Bruni’s “For the love of sentences” feature. From The Forward (the Yiddish/English paper), on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Rob Eshman noted: “Sometimes the apple falls so far from the tree, you can’t even believe it’s an apple.”

    And in WAPO Ron Charles wrote about censorship from any side of the aisle: “Speech codes and book bans may start in opposing camps, but both warm their hands over freedom’s ashes.”

    Hey, readers!! Are you as upset as I am over this? Are you up in arms? The clue at 49D today was “Showcase guesstimate on a TV game show.” The show, of course, is The Price is Right, and the answer was PRICE. Infuriating, right? Here’s what George F. wrote (and he was not alone in making the point):

    “The clue for 49 Down is flat out wrong. The *Showcase* on The Price Is Right is when you ‘guesstimate’ a Price. The *Showcase Showdown* is the spinning of the Big Wheel to determine which contestant advances to the Showcase round. (Yeah, I’m a TPIR nerd … and a recent contestant!) I’m actually going to write NYT about this one …”

    God Bless the nitpickers!

    “Root in potpourri” was ORRIS, new to me (I think — who can remember this stuff?). It’s also used in perfume. In Japan, the roots and leaves of the plant were hung in the eaves of a house for protection from evil spirits. Other uses include as a love potion, with the root powder in sachets, or sprinkled around the house or sheets of a bedroom.

    Actor ED HARRIS popped by the grid today, clued with “Oscar nominee for ‘Pollock’ and ‘The Truman Show.’” I always liked Harris: “Failure is not an option.” He’s a Jersey boy, born in Englewood and raised in Tenafly. He was a star athlete at Tenafly HS and captain of the football team. He was also on the football team at Columbia U, playing alongside future US AG Eric Holder.

    Harris and actress Amy Madigan have been married for 40 years, and they have a daughter, Lily Dolores. During the 71st Academy Awards, Harris and Madigan openly dissed Elia Kazan by staying in their seats and not applauding when he received an honorary award. This was due to Kazan’s ratting out his friends as communists before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, resulting in their being blacklisted. Kazan never apologized.

    New York magazine once described Harris as “the thinking woman’s sex symbol.” [Not to boast (much), but in high school, I was known as “the pastrami-eating woman’s sex symbol.”]

    I gave my first exam in my summer tax class today. Ten students took it and two of them came up to me before it started and asked if I had an extra pencil. I did, but how does that happen? Where are their heads? Of course, I drove Lianna to her tennis camp this morning and we had to turn around and go back for her racquet. Hmmmmm.

    Women’s World Cup Soccer is heating up. Owl Chatter looks forward to getting into it as matters progress. Break a leg, Ladies!

    See you tomorrow!

  • The Floor Needs Sweeping

    It’s Jean Shepherd’s birthday today, “Shep,” 1921, in Chicago. He died in Florida at age 78, back in 1999. I was just a little too young to be a fan, but my brother and sister loved him. He was on WOR, the radio station, late at night, and he just talked. And talked. And talked. Told wonderful funny stories. No one else did that — he was unique and brilliant. He was a precursor to Spalding Gray and Garrison Keillor. And if you need some proof of how important he was as a figure in American Humor, Jerry Seinfeld said  “He really formed my entire comedic sensibility—I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd.” The first name of Seinfeld’s third child is Shepherd.

    When he was about to be released by WOR in 1956 for lack of sponsors, he did a commercial for Sweetheart Soap, not a sponsor, and was immediately fired. His listeners besieged WOR with complaints, and when Sweetheart offered to sponsor him, he was reinstated. Eventually, he attracted more sponsors than he wanted—the commercials interrupted the flow of his monologues.

    He’d organize stunts with his listeners. The most famous was a hoax he created about a nonexistent book, I, Libertine, by a fake author “Frederick R. Ewing,” in 1956. During a discussion on how easy it was to manipulate the best-seller lists based on demand, as well as sales, Shepherd suggested that his listeners visit bookstores and ask for a copy of I, Libertine, which led to booksellers attempting to order the book from their distributors. Fans of the show planted references to the book and author so widely that demand for the book led to claims of it being on The NYT Best Seller list. Then — the kicker — Shepherd, author Theodore Sturgeon, and Betty Ballantine actually wrote the damn thing, with a cover by illustrator Frank Kelly Freas, and it was published by Ballantine Books.

    The hoax was so successful that I, Libertine became the talk of the town, even earning the unique distinction of being banned by the Archdiocese of Boston, despite the fact that it didn’t yet exist. I, Libertine covers the bawdy misdeeds of Captain Lance Courtenay as he carelessly romps through the royal court and the bedchambers of London’s finest ladies. It is a hilarious, picaresque adventure that Ewing himself would certainly have been proud to call his own, if he had existed. Jean Shepherd makes me sad, because I associate him so strongly with my older brother and sister, Jay and Bonnie, who were my whole world when I was a little boy, and who are gone.

    This poem from Today’s Writer’s Almanac is by David Sanger, and it’s called “My Daughter’s Morning.”

    My daughter’s morning streams
    over me like a gang of butterflies
    as I, sour-mouthed and not ready
    for the accidents I expect

    of my day, greet her early:
    her sparkle is as the edge of new
    ice on leafed pools, while I
    am soggy, tepid; old toast.

    Yet I am the first version
    of later princes; for all my blear
    and bluish jowl I am welcomed
    as though the plastic bottle

    I hold were a torch and
    my robe not balding terry.
    For her I bring the day; warm
    milk, new diaper, escapades;

    she lowers all bridges and
    sings to me most beautifully
    in her own language while
    I fumble with safety pins.

    I am not made young
    by my daughter’s mornings;
    I age relentlessly.

    Yet I am made to marvel
    at the durability of newness
    and the beauty of my new one.

    Vermont Lizzie tells me she’s worried about Robert’s deficient gardening skills affecting the care of Susan’s garden. I won’t alarm you with the deets about the near-disaster involving “hideous red-dyed mulch.” The team had to come down hard on him, but harm was averted. Looks pretty good to me.

    Everyone thought a clue/answer from yesterday’s puzzle was unusually good. The clue was “Two things associated with Gene Simmons?” The answer was KISSANDMAKEUP. It helps if you know who Gene Simmons is, which I didn’t. I confused him with Richard Simmons that little funny gym guy. Gene is the lead singer in the heavily-made up rock band Kiss.

    In the Nitpicking Dept., Weezie had trouble with MACE being clued by “A spice related to nutmeg.” She or he wrote:

    MACE is not a spice “related” to nutmeg; they are the exact same species and different parts of the same plant. Nutmeg is the seed itself while mace is the covering. In my wayward youth, I stayed with a stoner friend at a solar-powered chocolate factory on the island of Grenada, and got to taste fresh mace (as well as cacao fruit while helping restore an overgrown grove, tangy!). That was followed by a few weeks on a moored sailboat off the coast of Carriacou (a small Grenadian island). Nutmeg and mace are major exports of Grenada, so that trip left me with a nostalgic fondness for the spices.

    jberg came back with: Well, the clue says the spices are related, not that they come from related plants. Like my fingernail is related to my finger, or at least that’s how I read it.

    In today’s puzzle, the clue at 35A was “What a guitar gently does in a 1968 Beatles song.” Well, you all know that one, right? — WEEPS. Joaquin shared this brilliant version from the concert honoring George Harrison after his death, featuring Clapton and McCartney, with Ringo on the drums (voo den?). George’s son Dhani is the young man on one of the backup guitars. You could do worse with six minutes than give it a listen.

    Not gonna try to top that. See you tomorrow! Thanks for popping in.

  • Cow Tools

    According to The Writer’s Almanac, yesterday was the anniversary of Brigham Young’s leading his people into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake (1847). They were tired of taking sh*t as Mormons in Illinois and were looking for a new settlement. Young got sick during the journey from eating spoiled herring (we’ve all been there), and was lying prostrate in a wagon when they reached the Valley. Legend has it, he was able to describe the scene below without looking. After he sat up, he said, “This is the right place. Drive on.” No disrespect, but if they’re counting that as a miracle, it’s pretty weak, no? Part some waters or do some stuff with fire and then come back to us. [I made up the detail about the herring to zhuzh it up.]

    Here’s the Valley, with sort of a religious-looking sky. Thanks, Philly!

    Can something be funny and horrific at the same time? As a follow-up to yesterday’s note about DeSantis’s middle school curriculum noting that slaves benefited from picking up skills on the job, Andy Borowitz had the following headline today: “Unskilled Florida Man Regrets Missing Out on Being Enslaved.”

    In a desperate, but hopelessly doomed, effort to stay in touch with the zeitgeist from under my rock, I read the review of the Barbie movie at Ebert.com, just to pick a site I have heard of. It’s by Christy Lemire and is an across-the-board rave. If you’re interested, it’s at https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/barbie-movie-review-2023. Today’s review by Anthony Lane in The New Yorker was favorable but less so. It says “watching the first half hour of this movie is like being water boarded with Pepto-Bismol.” He concedes the movie is fun, though, albeit in fragments.

    According to The Times, Barbie far exceeded ticket-sale expectations. Some theaters ran out of snacks and drinks! The audience was only 65% female. One Warner Bros. hotshot said “for a film this pink” you’d expect 90% female.

    As you may have noted, its clear feminist empowerment theme has the right wing up in arms. Fox News has repeated attacks on the film over everything from “wokeness” to inclusivity. One such segment amplified the call against “Barbie” coming from Movieguide, a Christian movie review site, that read, “Warning: Don’t take your daughter to Barbie.” The segment criticized the film for the inclusion of a transgender performer (actor Hari Nef) and for presenting “LGBTQ stories.”

    Are you troubled by the implication that trans actors should not be given roles? Does anyone else hear an echo of Nazi regulations barring Jews from professions? Hello? Anyone?

    AOC posted: “Love how Republican Congressmen are just now hating on Barbie because she’s ‘too woke’ …like, hello, this was a doll made for little girls who was a DOCTOR and an ASTRONAUT before women in the US were even allowed to have credit cards without their husband’s permission. Of course they’re mad! They want the old days back.”

    They thought they could do damage with a call for a boycott like they did with Bud Light. But beer drinkers tend to skew right, while Barbie-goers are all pinkos. [Owl Chatter is proud of that line.] The boycott call had about as much effect as a burp in a windstorm.

    May Haaf, below, said seeing the movie with her 9-year-old daughter, Arya, was a bonding event and a way to celebrate female empowerment. Both wore matching white and pink “Barbie” T-shirts. “It’s like a new generation of movies where women can be individuals and not be married, and you don’t have to settle for anything,” Haaf said.

    Amen to that. Phil! — OMG, this may be the sweetest shot you’ve ever turned in. You da man!

    Readers, are you familiar with this cartoon? It’s called “Cow Tools.”

    It’s by Gary Larson from The Far Side and was published in October of 1982. Rex’s guest blogger Malaika included it in her write-up yesterday, sans explanation, perhaps because TOOLS was in the puzzle and her first thought about the theme was that it might be bovine-related (it wasn’t). I don’t “get” the cartoon — do you?

    There’s a big difference between finding a cartoon not funny, and not being able to see what it’s getting at. Most New Yorker cartoons these days, IMO, are just not funny. For example, in the issue I just received, there’s one with a husband and wife talking in their sun room, and he’s saying “I wouldn’t say I’m an indoor person or an outdoor person. I’m more of a screened-in-porch person.” Again, IMO, anyone who thinks that’s funny should not be in charge of cartoons, amirite? But at least I understand it. The “cow tools,” above, just eludes me. And I’m not the only one, and it’s gotten kind of famous.

    According to Wikipedia, immediately upon the cartoon’s publication, Chronicle Features, which syndicated The Far Side, was inundated with queries seeking an explanation. “The phone never stopped ringing for two days.” Larson himself received hundreds of letters. In one, a reader from Texas wrote that they had shown the cartoon to “40-odd professionals with doctoral degrees,” and none could understand it.

    In response to the uproar, Larson issued a press release clarifying that the cartoon was “an exercise in silliness,” and its thrust was simply that, if a cow were to make tools, they would “lack something in sophistication.” He had read that one thing that separates man from animals is the use of tools, so it got him thinking of what sort of tools a cow would come up with. I kinda like it. Larson did concede that he erred in making one of the tools resemble a crude saw, which misled many readers into believing that to understand the cartoon’s message, they needed to decipher the identities of the other three tools.

    The cartoon has become a popular internet meme, hence Malaika’s use of it in her discussion.

    But that didn’t get her into hot water. Another comment of hers ruffled some feathers, unreasonably, it seems to me. Here’s the story: As I reported in yesterday’s Owl Chatter, for the clue “‘That’s hilarious!,’ in a text,” the answer was LOL. Malaika wrote: “I get that it’s boring to say ‘Will Shortz (70 yrs old) has a different frame of reference from Malaika (26 yrs old)’ but here I am, beating a dead horse around the bush, or whatever the saying is. That is simply not what LOL means anymore because language changes and evolves etc etc okay I’m done now.”

    First of all, people wanted to know what LOL does mean now, if not “laugh out loud.” And she was charged with being ageist. Here’s a comment by Anonymous:

    “yes, language changes. lol used to mean little old lady. if it doesn’t mean laugh out loud any longer, why didn’t you tell us what it does mean?
    also, why are you dissing on will shortz age when you can’t come up with an adage? your ageism is unbecoming.”

    Ouch!

    Another comment read:

    “Ah, the ever-online youth…
    LOL now is used as an addendum to indicate that a statement should not be taken seriously, which is SO much different that it requires ageism and generational mockery. The main thing that irks me is that our guest blogger seems to think that only the usage by 26 year-olds in year 2023 is legitimate. Enjoy it while it lasts, 16 year-olds are mocking you as you type…

    Ouch 2.0!

    I think those comments are very unfair. It’s not ageist to note that different generations have different frames of reference. There was a long New Yorker article on that about 7 years ago. And it is on point to note that the clue is out of date if LOL is not currently used as it used to be used. The consensus was that Malaika was not saying that LOL has taken on a particular new meaning, just that’s it’s no longer in use as “ha ha.”

    Enough nonsense for today. See you tomorrow!