The Wellington Files

  • Happy Birthday, TK!

    The theme of yesterday’s puzzle was revealed at 61A with the clue “Slangy question of greeting.” The answer was WHAT’S POPPIN’? and the puzzle had four theme answers that were things that “popped.” CORN KERNALS, PIMPLES, CHAMPAGNE BOTTLE, and WHEELIE (as in to “pop a wheelie”).

    LMS proposed these additional theme answers, KNUCKLES and BALLOONS, and went on:

    “Mom hates it when I pop my knuckles, so I try to do it just one at a time, stealing glances her way between each pop, as we sit in our matching recliners watching whatever. She probably hears but is too nice to let on that she does.

    “Speaking of Mom, we have ESTEE [in the puzzle] today. Sigh. Mom’s go-to church perfume is Estee Lauder’s Private Collection, and I don’t think I’ve hated any perfume more than that one. She adores it, feels beautiful and sophisticated when wearing it. I think it smells like it went bad back in the Reagan administration, but I’ve never let on how I feel. So maybe we’re even.

    “Mom’s church had this big meeting about whether to split from the main group, and the issue involved their stance on gay marriage. I put my toe in that water, asking what the current stance was, like, were they voting to leave because they wanted to allow it or not allow it? She said she wasn’t sure. Hmm. I dropped it, afraid of my rage bubbling to the surface. But I popped a couple of my knuckles a little louder.”

    As careful readers of Owl Chatter will recall, the Monday puzzle is so easy that Rex, to increase the challenge, solves it by using the down clues only. Several others have chimed in with other methods to increase the challenge.

    Last week, Joseph Michael posted:

    My Monday blindfold is at the dry cleaners, so I tried solving this in a pitch black closet and found it to be extremely challenging. Not only did I have trouble knowing what the clues were. I also ended up with a DNF because I didn’t realize that my pen had run out of ink.

    Here’s what I posted yesterday:

    “I did today’s puzzle while suspended head down by bungee cords from the Williamsburg Bridge. JM: How’d it go with your blindfold?”

    He came back with:

    Even though I solved this blindfolded and left handed, I was able to complete the puzzle in under two minutes, so it did seem awfully easy, even for a Monday. I do acknowledge that the letters I entered into the grid don’t form any actual words, but that’s mainly because I couldn’t see the clues. I wish I had bungee cords and a bridge to work with, but all I’ve got right now is the blindfold. 

    To which I replied:

    JM: I’m impressed you got answers onto the grid. I was writing with my right hand, and once the winds kicked up much of my writing went onto the clues area or onto my left hand. And yes, you should get a bridge, for sure.

    Four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers has been traded to the Jets. Look for a giant foot to drop out of the sky and squash him fairly soon. The curse is immutable. Some of you may recall the story connected to my prostate surgery of ten years ago. The doc could tell I was a little nervous, so he said “Look – I’ve done thousands of these. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’ll walk into the room, and the doctor you just met will put you under. You’ll wake up later this morning feeling like you got hit by a bus, but you’ll get stronger soon and live a long and happy life.”

    I said, “Doc, will I live long enough to see the Jets win another Super Bowl?” and he said “No.”

    How’s this for gracious? Rodgers’ uniform number with Green Bay was 12, but that’s the number Joe Namath wore, and the Jets have retired it so it’s no longer available. But Namath said Rodgers could use 12 — he was okay with that. Equally gracious, Rodgers said he’ll use 8, the number he used in college. He went to UC Berkeley, btw. Here’s a stat you can amuse your friends with — his SAT score was 1310. (He was an A- student in high school.)

    Here’s Joe, as a grown-up, with the only Super Bowl trophy the Jets ever won (Jan. 12, 1969, 16-7 vs. Baltimore, in Miami).

    As for Rodgers, here’s a shot of his current babe, model Mallory Edens, a photo of whom I’m including instead of him for obvious reasons.

    We must have told Owl Chatter photographer Phil a dozen times to let the subjects finish dressing and get out of bed before shooting, but it’s beyond him to hold back. You’re incorrigible Philly!

    It’s the day for knockouts in Owl Chatter (hi Chris!) because two more appear in today’s puzzle, actresses Keira Knightly and Parker Posey, boringly clued as Actress Knightly and Actress Parker, respectively.

    Knightly has been married for ten years to British musician James Righton (Right On!), and they have two daughters. She was supposed to be named Kiera (i before e), the anglicized form of “Kira,” after the Soviet figure skater Kira Ivanova, whom her father admired, but Keira’s mom screwed up the spelling on the birth certificate. Keira herself was diagnosed as dyslexic when she was six, but improved enough by eleven that it did not impede her development. She is still a slow reader and cannot read out loud. [She also has trouble pronouncing Popocatépetl, the active volcano located in Mexico, but, really, who doesn’t? Plus, how often does it come up?]

    Keira was intent on acting from the get-go and told her parents she wanted an agent at age 3. (I’m not kidding.) Her parents were both actors. She had an agent at age 6 and started appearing in children’s roles. She turned 38 last month.

    Parker Posey is 54 (ouch!), but Phil worked his usual magic with the lenses, and she looks pretty spry in this shot, no?

    Posey was born in Baltimore, but got her BFA at SUNY Purchase. Let’s hear it for public colleges! Go Panthers! She’s had a very successful career, including a guest spot on The Simpsons. Here she is as Becky, Otto the school bus driver’s fiancee.

    In the episode, it doesn’t work out for them. On the wedding day, Becky privately confesses to Marge that she doesn’t like heavy metal music, and is worried this will cause tension in her marriage. Marge brushes it off, until she sees that Otto has hired a loud Poison tribute band named Cyanide to play her down the isle. Taking Marge’s advice, Becky gives Otto an ultimatum; either herself or heavy metal. The wedding is immediately called off, the guests get their wedding gifts back, and Otto departs with the band in the school bus. 

    In today’s puzzle, the only reason I knew 1D is from previous puzzles. The clue was “Headwear for a chef,” and the answer is TOQUE. Here’s a note from LMS on it:

    I misread the clue for TOQUE as “headwear for a chief.” My daughter uses my Amazon Prime account and then pays me via Venmo for her various purchases. I realized that I could kinda stay abreast of what’s what with her by taking note of the stuff she puts in the cart. Dog enrichment toys, bathroom organizer, face creams, etc . So then it occurred to me that she could likewise keep tabs on me. I immediately added some items to the cart that would get her attention: an expensive male nude bronze statue, a Squatty Potty, bed bug spray, head lice kit, and an elaborate Native American headdress. It didn’t take her long to call. Mom? Um. Well. That headdress? You can’t wear that. It would be beyond racist.

    OMG, I just saw that it’s Ted Kooser’s birthday today. He’s 84, kinahora. Happy Birthday, Buddy!

    This is from his Winter Morning Walks.

    My wife and I walk the cold road
    in silence, asking for thirty more years.

    There’s a pink and blue sunrise
    with an accent of red:
    a hunter’s cap burns like a coal
    in the yellow-gray eye of the woods.

    See you tomorrow (or Thursday), everybody. Thanks for “popping” by.

  • Dame Edna

    I’ve never laughed as much reading an obituary as I did today reading Dame Edna Everage’s, the character created and inhabited by Australian actor/comedian Barry Humphries. He was 89 and died yesterday in Sydney. He was born in Melbourne in 1934.

    Margalit Fox wrote the obit for The Times and described Dame Edna as a “stiletto-heeled, stiletto-tongued persona.” Fox described her as “bewigged, bejeweled, and bejowled,” and said she “might well have been the spawn of a menage a quatre involving Oscar Wilde, Salvador Dali, Auntie Mame, and Miss Piggy.”

    The obit noted the first three marriages of Mr. Humphries ended in divorce, with the second and third each yielding two children. He was survived by his fourth wife of 33 years, Elizabeth Spender, the daughter of British poet Stephen Spender, four children, and ten grandchildren. And it went on to note that Dame Edna’s survivors included “an adored son, Kenny, who designed all her gowns; a less-adored son, Bruce; and a despised daughter, the wayward Valmai. (‘She steals things. Puts them in her pantyhose. Particularly frozen chickens when she’s in a supermarket.’)”

    Another daughter, Lois, was abducted as an infant by a “rogue koala,” a subject Dame Edna could bring herself to discuss with interviewers only rarely. Though the child was never seen again, to the end of her life Dame Edna never gave up hope she would be found.

    “I’m looking,” she told NPR in 2015. “Every time I pass a eucalyptus tree I look up.”

    Too funny, amirite?

    Dame Edna’s husband Norm passed away years ago. He was a chronic invalid “whose prostate,” she often lamented, “has been hanging over me for years.”

    Humphries originally wrote a part for Edna in 1955 to be performed in a revue by actress Zoe Caldwell, but when Caldwell was too busy to use it, Humphries took it for himself. He was drowning in alcoholism until he woke up in a Melbourne gutter one day to find himself under arrest in 1970. A doctor helped him recover and he stayed sober the rest of his life. According to Fox, “he dusted off Dame Edna and, little by little, de-dowdified her,” and he ran with her very successfully thereafter, attaining “international renown and unremitting employment.” Not everyone was a fan. In 1977, Richard Eder of The Times called Dame Edna’s first NY stage show “abysmal.”

    And she often got into very hot water.

    In 2003, writing an advice column in Vanity Fair, Dame Edna replied to a reader’s query about whether to learn Spanish. “Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to?” Dame Edna’s characteristically caustic response read. “The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or, if you’re American, try English.”

    A public furor ensued, led by the Mexican-born actress Salma Hayek, and Vanity Fair discontinued Dame Edna’s column not long afterward. In an interview with The Times in 2004, Mr. Humphries was unrepentant. “The people I offended were minorities with no sense of humor, I fear,” he said. “When you have to explain the nature of satire to somebody, you’re fighting a losing battle.”

    Owl Chatter might not agree that it was always a “losing” battle. In Britain, where Humphries lived most of his life, Dame Edna was considered a national treasure. Dame Edna said she had to change her phone number several times because the Queen and her family called so often for advice. Owl Chatter imagines they’ll be having tea together shortly.

    As for Humphries and Everage — rest in peace, you two.

    It’s Shakespeare’s birthday today (born in 1564), noted in Crossworld by a Hamlet-related clue/answer in today’s puzzle, a reference to the “play within a play” that Hamlet staged to “catch the conscience of the king.” It led a commenter who named him or herself Gildencranz to share this with us:

    “The [puzzle] reminds me of an extraordinary production of Hamlet at the Wisdom Bridge Theater in Chicago about 30 years ago directed by Robert Falls and starring Aidan Quinn. When the king’s conscience has been caught, lights bounced all over while Talking Heads’ ‘Burning Down the House’ boomed.”

    Today’s Writer’s Almanac noted that WS was only 18 when he married Anne Hathaway, who was 26 and pregnant with their daughter Susanna. Two years later they had twins, Hamnet and Judith. Sadly, Hamnet died at age 11 from unknown causes. (WS himself lived until age 52.) Susanna married a doctor, which, WS and Anne not being Jewish, it’s not clear how much naches they took from that. Judith married a vintner. Sadly, WS never finished his play about his son-in-law which was to be called A Vintner’s Tale. WS had four grandchildren from his daughters, but none of them had children, so his line ended.

    Good night folks! Thanks for stopping by.

  • Goodnight, All You Moonlight Ladies

    In today’s puzzle, the answer at 1 down was IS THIS IT? and I guess it isn’t it because 2 down was OH HELL NO! 6A was JACKASSES, and 57A was I’M A JERK. 14D was STEAMY (R-rated), and 23A was RIBALD (Salty and spicy).

    At 37A, “Genre for ‘Fun Home’ and ‘Stone Butch Blues’” was QUEER LIT, and at 39D “One with an ‘If You Choose the Lesser of Two Evils — You Are Still Choosing Evil’ bumper sticker, perhaps,” was NADERITE.

    The puzzle was by Byron Walden and it was just right — hard enough to be satisfying to solve with bright and original fill, like above. At 49A, “Alternative to ‘Blah,’” as in Blah, blah, blah, was YADA, as in Yada, yada, yada. There was a JUJUBE in it — remember those? (“Fruit-flavored gumdrop.”)

    “Babbitt, inventor of the circular saw,” turned out to be TABITHA. She was born in Hardwick, MA, on Dec. 9, 1779 and became a member of the Harvard Shaker community in 1793. She died at only age 74 in Harvard MA.

    According to Shaker lore, Babbitt watched two men struggling with the two-man whipsaw and saw that half of their motion was wasted. As an improvement, she developed the circular saw. When she first presented it in a lumber mill, several of the men jeered at her “little girl’s toy” and questioned whether it could actually work. She had one particularly boorish lout place his head down on a table, and she lopped it off cleanly with her saw. As it rolled across the saw-dusty floor, eyes still open in shock, she said — “What do you think of it now, you f*cking moron?”

    I made that last part up – it’s a slow news day here at Owl Chatter.

    The first circular saw she made is in Albany, NY. She never patented it, so there is some question about who actually invented it, but the Shakers claim it was she and she is generally given credit for it (thus, the puzzle clue). She also invented a process for manufacturing false teeth. But she had nothing to do with the development of the wind-up chattering false teeth toy. Too bad — it pretty much always get a laugh.

    Here’s Ms. B with her saw.

    This poem is by Kristina Mahr. It’s called Two Months.

    I keep running around
    the kitchen island, and you
    keep chasing me, and we
    are laughing, and
    I never let you catch me, I
    never let you catch me because
    if I do, two months will pass and
    you won’t love me anymore.

    She’s young.

    Back in the puzzle, 62A was “Surreal,” and the answer was DREAMLIKE. It moved commenter Son Volt to take the opportunity to share this classic with us. Here’s a nice version with some chatter by JT.

    This note was posted below it four months ago, on the You Tube thread:

    I don’t know why… but this song always brings tears to my eyes. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I listen to this song in hopes it’ll make me sleepy. Instead, my husband finds me in the living room an hour later crying and dancing in the dark.

    Loren Cameron died last November at age 63 in his home in Berkeley CA. He took his own life. His sister Susan noted he had been suffering from congestive heart failure. His photographs of trans people in his book “Body Alchemy” were hailed as groundbreaking since they depicted trans people as people and not freaks, and it was the first such work by someone who was trans himself. The NYT obit states:

    “In ‘Body Alchemy,’ for perhaps the first time, transgender men could see representations of themselves outside of the pages of medical texts.

    “There was Jeffrey, a Jewish man who had yearned to be a bar mitzvah, affirming his heritage, and was able to do so. Mr. Cameron photographed him in a prayer shawl and yarmulke.

    “Brynne, a rangy surfer, was shown in the back of his van pulling on his wet suit, short board at the ready. Stephan, a police sergeant honored for his valor who transitioned while on the job, was framed against his squad car.

    “There were nudes, too, the most potent of which was a photo of Mr. Cameron in a classic bodybuilder pose, back arched, muscles rippling, his body emblazoned with flame-shaped tattoos, injecting his buttock with a syringe of testosterone.”

    He donated his papers to Cornell. Among them is his high school yearbook, showing a young woman as class president. “I was cute, huh?” Mr. Cameron wrote in the margin.

    Cameron said he was influenced by the photography books his parents had at home, work by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange that made vivid the stories his father told of growing up poor during the Depression. His work ethic was inspired by his father, who taught him to mend fences and bale hay — to honor manual labor.

    “The last time I saw him, he told me that I had a lot of guts to move to California with only a duffel bag and a hundred bucks in my pocket,” Cameron wrote. “I think if he could see me now, he would be proud to call me his son.”

    He is survived by three sisters, a step sister, and thousands of trans folks, many of whom face a very tough road ahead, but one made significantly better by Loren Cameron’s work.

    Rest in peace, Loren.

    Good night, everybody. Thanks for popping by.

  • Ghosted

    Murkowski’s in a huff.

    Federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who recently tried to unwind the approval by the FDA of mifepristone, misled senators during his confirmation process. He did not disclose that he removed his name from a law journal article criticizing protections for abortion and transgender people, and he did not disclose that he gave at least two interviews with Christian talk radio about his right-wing opinions about abortion, gay rights, divorce, and the sexual revolution, although he was required to. 

    Kacsmaryk said he did not recall the recordings. Owl Chatter pauses to reflect on that. OK, we’re done. I’d put hard-earned money on “He lied.” OK, OK, it’s not “hard-earned,” not even close, but still. . .

    Senator Lisa Murkowski said: “You want to talk about the ultimate bait and switch? I feel like I got duped. I feel like I voted for somebody based on what had been presented to me. And you do this? That is totally, totally wrong.”

    Murkowski should have listened to Susan Collins, the lone GOP no vote on the judge. I keep telling Lianna to do her homework. I don’t think Murkowski did hers. (Or else she’s just pretending to be upset.)

    From today’s NYT, I gained a new appreciation of Japanese superstar Ohev Shalom — no, wait — that’s Shohei Ohtani, sorry. Mark Gubicza, who pitched for the Royals decades ago and was a teammate of Bo Jackson’s, noted that Ohtani’s brilliance in two separate sports categories (albeit both in baseball), hitting and pitching, were sort of like Bo’s brilliance in baseball and football. Gubicza is a TV analyst for the Angels now, Ohtani’s team, and he’d like to get the two together for a pre-game show. In any event, here’s what caught my eye [“Coney” is a former teammate of Gubicza’s, David Cone]:

    “I talk to Coney all the time, ‘We couldn’t even walk after we pitched. Our shoulders, elbows, ribs, back, butt, everything was sore. And the next day he’s [Ohtani’s] facing a guy throwing 98 [mph] and hitting a home run!’ It’s impossible to have that kind of discipline — for us mortals.”

    Good point. Here he is, out of uniform.

    He’s single, btw, and has only been linked to the unfortunately named Hawaiian professional softball player Kamalani Dung, but there is no evidence that they are dating. She says she’s just a fan. Here they are.

    Turning back to Tennessee for a moment, the vice-chair of the Republican caucus in the Tennessee House of Representatives resigned yesterday, “effective immediately,” after a TV news investigation confronted him with the story that a secret ethics subcommittee had found him guilty of sexually harassing at least one intern, and likely two. Thirty-nine-year-old Scotty Campbell recently voted to expel Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson for protesting the body’s refusal to take up gun safety legislation. Noting that Tennessee is the “Volunteer” state, Campbell “volunteered” to get his ass out of the legislature.

    Owl Chatter fave Ana de Armas is in a new film, Ghosted. Did you ever read a movie review and come out of it not being able to tell if the reviewer liked it or not? This is not one of those. Here’s what Calum Marsh wrote in today’s NYT:

    “Ghosted is one of the least convincing movies I have ever seen. I don’t just mean that the dialogue is trite and phony, or that the characters feel inauthentic, or that the action is badly choreographed, or even that the plot is paper-thin and contrived, although all of this is regrettably true. I mean it barely seems like a real movie. This tedious, unfunny, screamingly unoriginal romantic adventure film is so flimsy and so insubstantial that it’s practically vaporous. [Also] . . . the action set pieces suffer from unimaginative staging and some of the cheapest-looking visual effects in recent memory.”

    The film’s unworthy of you Ana! Don’t let that NY Times meanie get you down.

    I don’t know — from this shot, it seems sorta compelling to me.

    Here’a Ana with co-star Chris Evans:

    Ana’s character’s name is Sadie and she’s a CIA agent with the code name The Taxman. (Not kidding.) Enough — I don’t want to spoil it for you.

    What do you if your dad wrote one of the greatest songs of all time and you’re also in the music biz? You sing it. Often. Here’s Otis Redding III singing, . . . well, you know what he’s singing.

    Redding III was only three years old in 1967 when his dad died in a plane crash. He later formed the funk band The Reddings with his brother and a cousin. They recorded six albums and had some success, but not nearly as much as Otis Redding, Jr. had.

    Otis, Jr., would have been proud to learn that his son was a mensch. He worked with his family’s foundation to organize summer camps that teach children to play music. He also served as board president of the local chapter of Meals on Wheels. Redding III died on Tuesday in Macon, GA. He was 59. He is survived by two sisters and a brother, and the rest of us – all sitting for a good long time you-know-where.

    Rest in peace, Otis III.

    Thanks for wasting some time with us! See you tomorrow!

  • Magician Disappears!

    Gloria Dea (pronounced Day), the first magician ever to perform on the Las Vegas strip, back in 1941, died last month in Las Vegas, at the age of 100. When her dad returned from fighting in WWI, he worked as a paint salesman, and was a magician on the side. Gloria joined him in his act and soon grew good enough to take the spotlight herself — at age 7, amazingly. In addition to her magic act, she later worked as a model and dancer, and had roles in a few movies, including the famously bad film, “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” I’m sure it didn’t hurt that she was quite attractive.

    She had to work harder to find a good man than she did on her magic tricks. After three failed marriages, she hit the jackpot with her marriage to Sam Anzalone in 1975; they remained together until his death just last year.

    In September 1944, she was working on the musical “Delightfully Dangerous” when the producer paused production long enough for her to marry Jack Statham, the orchestra leader. A judge performed the ceremony during a brief interval between shooting scenes in which Gloria danced in a clown number.

    It was good that she wore a clown suit and not an expensive gown, because the marriage only lasted a few months. Dea, who was 22 at the time, complained that Statham kept finding excuses to avoid kissing her.  “Either he was smoking a cigarette or his pants were just pressed,” she told the press. [You tell ’em, Glo — you deserve better!]

    So she made him disappear (via divorce).

    She was living a quiet life in an assisted living facility when two things happened. Lance Rich, a “magic historian” who was doing research for a talk on the history of magic in Vegas, came across her name and learned that she was still living. At the same time, AnnaRose Einarsen, a hypnotist and magician, was browsing at a vintage clothing store in Las Vegas when she came across one of Dea’s old outfits and assorted mementos that were being sold on consignment. She also learned that Gloria was still among us.

    Word began to spread in the magicians’ community about the “history-making centenarian.” By the time of her 100th birthday last August, David Copperfield had proclaimed a Gloria Dea Day, a Clark County commissioner had given her a “Key to the Las Vegas Strip,” and magicians of all stripes turned up for her birthday party.

    “Magic should be about taking audiences on journeys,” Mr. Copperfield said. “This whole journey of discovering Gloria, this hidden treasure, has been wondrous, thrilling, and very gratifying.”

    Dea was tickled at being “found.” “I don’t deserve the attention, but I’ll take it,” she said. She loved being surrounded by new magicians, young magicians. She enjoyed seeing magic too.

    For her 100th birthday party, she said, “Don’t bring gifts, but if any magicians want to bring magic, that would be great.”

    No relatives outside of her magicians family survive her. Rest in peace, Gloria.

    Sometimes you just can’t help but go after the low-hanging fruit. How else to explain Frank Bruni dwelling on the fruity Marjorie Taylor Greene in his newsletter this week? Here’s Frank:

    “I don’t keep up with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s tweets, having decided long ago that there were more pleasant and constructive uses of time, like lighting fire to my eyelashes. But she tweeted a doozy the other day. Actually, she routinely tweets doozies, which I realized when I caught up with her Twitter account, bingeing on it the way I would an overlooked HBO Max series, if the series were an endless sequence of garish sights and ghastly sounds that robbed me of my will to live.”

    What set Frank off was Greene’s defense of Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old idiot who leaked defense secrets to show off to his friends: “Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar,” she tweeted, capitalizing on her professed faith without properly capitalizing it. “Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine?”

    Ask yourself.

    April is Poetry month. In a comment yesterday, Carola shared this poem by Ada Limon, the current U.S. Poet Laureate.

    The Raincoat

    When the doctor suggested surgery
    and a brace for all my youngest years,
    my parents scrambled to take me
    to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
    osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
    unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
    and move more in a body unclouded
    by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
    songs to her the whole forty-five minute
    drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
    five minutes back from physical therapy.
    She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
    by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
    because I thought she liked it. I never
    asked her what she gave up to drive me,
    or how her day was before this chore. Today,
    at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
    another spine appointment, singing along
    to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
    and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
    and give it to her young daughter when
    a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
    I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
    raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
    that I never got wet.

    Didja know this about SUDAFED (39A)? It used to be an over-the-counter decongestant that many Scuba divers used to open up the eustachian tube to make it easier to equalize inner and outer ear pressure while diving. Then people started using the active ingredient, pseudoephedrine, to make methamphetamine, so in 2005 the FDA banned OTC sales and a prescription was required.

    [Warning to Owl Chatter readers: It is a violation of Federal and state law to print the photo of the medication pictured above and ingest it.]

    “Antique tools for pressing clothes” was SAD IRONS, at 39D. New to me. It means “solid” or “heavy” iron. We sent Owl Chatter photographer Phil out to Gochsheim Castle, near Karlsruhe, Germany, which contains the world’s largest collection of irons: 1,300 from all over. Unfortunately, Philly forget to pack his camera! No problem, Buddy — it happens! We still love you! Fortunately, I was able to snare a nice photo of one online.

    Another neat word today was SCUDS, at 1D, clued as “moves quickly, as a cloud.” The dictionary also defines it as a noun: “clouds driven swiftly by the wind,” and here’s one of the images that pops up for it.

    But we’re way overdue for a picture of a starlet, no? I think we can squeeze one out of Blair Tindall’s obit. The oboist? Yes. She’s the musician/journalist who blew the lid off the world of classical music with her sex- and drug-filled expose, Mozart in the Jungle, which Amazon turned into a series that ran for four seasons.

    “I got hired for most of my gigs in bed,” she wrote. “People always seem shocked that musicians would have sex,” she said. “I mean, where do little musicians come from?”

    Her story is not a very happy one. She married the science guy Bill Nye on Feb. 3, 2006, with Yo-Yo Ma providing the music. But seven weeks later, the State of California declared the marriage invalid for reasons that have never been revealed. Then, in 2007, Tindall broke into Nye’s house and stole several items including his laptop, which she used to send defamatory emails impersonating him, and damaged his garden with herbicide. In response, Nye obtained a restraining order against her. After violating the order in 2009, Tindall was ordered to pay $57,000 of Nye’s legal expenses. In 2012, Nye sued Tindall for the money, saying she had still not paid.

    Blair Tindall was 63 when she died last week from arteriosclerosis, with chronic alcohol consumption a contributing factor. The actress who played the oboist in the series was Lola Kirke. Here’s Tindall and then Lola.

    Gotta grade those papers. See you tomorrow!

  • Helga Estby

    It’s a big day in my law class: the midterm exam. It’s worth 50% of the grade, so it’s bigger than the final, which is not cumulative and is only worth 40%. (The other 10% comes from a quiz.) I’ll let you know how the kids do.

    On much more important matters (i.e., our usual nonsense), comments on Burns’s poem “To a Mouse” got ugly today. It came up because the puzzle focused on poets and Burns (Robert, not George, Gracie’s husband) was one of them.

    Commenter Aerulus started it off with:

    Especially liked seeing Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse,” written in November 1785 when Burns felt a kinship with a mouse for ruined “best laid schemes of mice and men” after his plow (that is, plough) scattered her comfy nest and left her homeless, and in winter!

    Here’s the stanza and its translation:

    But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
    In proving foresight may be vain:
    The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
    Gang aft agley,
    An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
    For promis’d joy!

    But little Mouse, you are not alone,
    In proving foresight may be vain:
    The best laid schemes of mice and men
    Go often awry,
    And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
    For promised joy!

    [OK, fine, right? Not by a mile, says commenter Nancy:]

    Aerulus,

    When I see a clunky translation like the one you cite for one of BURNS’s “To a Mouse” stanzas, I shudder. If one is translating a poet blessed with one of the greatest poetic “ears” ever, you don’t take a sledgehammer to his gorgeous meter. You reproduce that meter perfectly: it’s part of your bleeping job. And if the task proves beyond you, then give the task to someone else.

    Here’s a beautiful translation of that particular stanza:

    But little mouse, you’re not alone,
    In proving foresight may be vain:
    The best laid plans of mice and men
    Go oft awry,
    And leave us only grief and pain,
    For promised joy!

    [And, I would add — hrrrumph!]

    The puzzle was pretty clever, IMHO. The central answer was POET’S CORNER, clued with “Westminster Abbey section hinted at by this puzzle’s architecture.” And each corner of the grid featured two poets meeting at the corner, so there were 8 in total in the four corners. And each of the 8 poets had a name that was also a plain word, that the clue aimed at, along with giving an example of the poet’s work. So, e.g., the clue at 51D was “Incinerates (‘To a Mouse’)” for BURNS. Get it? And the S from BURNS was also the S in STEIN (Gertrude), clued with “Drinking vessel that may have a lid (‘Sacred Emily’).” If I lost you there, to hell with it — it’s just a puzzle.

    Poet’s Corner, of course, is the section of Westminster Abbey where poets are buried as a great honor. So, get this, — according to Aerulus — Thomas HARDY is buried there. Or, according to interestingliterature.com, at least most of him. The website says Hardy wished to be buried in Dorset, his birthplace, but those in charge said someone so important to the literature of the land must be in Westminster Abbey. The compromise: His heart was buried in his local parish church in Dorset and the rest of him received “full honours” in the Poets’ Corner.

    Just a tad gruesome, amirite? When Lenny Bruce got a tattoo on his arm when he was in the Navy, his parents were very upset. It violated Jewish law and they were concerned it would prevent his being buried in a Jewish cemetery. He suggested that when the time comes they just lop the arm off, bury it with the gentiles, and the rest can go with the Jews. It seems reasonable.

    The puzzle beat me up good today. Couldn’t finish a Wednesday — oh, the shame of it! Here’s what did me in:

    30D: “Ikea founder Ingvar _____” was KAMPRAD.

    34A: “_____ Estby, Norwegian-born U.S. suffragist,” was HELGA

    62D: “Customizable Nintendo avatar” was MII

    66A: “SNL alum Pedrad,” was NASIM.

    Ridiculous, right?

    Helga Estby’s story is something. I hadn’t heard of her before doing this puzzle. Desperate to save her family from financial ruin after the Panic of 1893, she entered into a bet that she could walk across the country from Washington State in 6 months. She’d get $10,000 (in 1896 dollars). She set off with her 17-year old daughter Clara, and was offered shelter and aid along the way by kind strangers, but missed the deadline by a few weeks, so she didn’t get a penny and lost the family home. When she got back to Washington, she learned that two of her children died from diphtheria in her absence. And she was shunned by her (Norwegian) community for abandoning her family.

    Don’t you hate when that happens? Her husband started a construction business and Helga became a suffragist. She died in 1942. Here she is with her daughter Clara.

    My favorite comment today was by egsforbreakfast. It was on 64A. The clue was “Prokaryotic model organism,” and the answer was ECOLI. Egs wrote: “I don’t consider ECOLI to be a ‘model organism’ whether Prokaryotic or not. Gigi Hadid is a model organism.”

    In case you forgot (hard to imagine), here’s the lovely Ms. Hadid again.

    Thanks for popping by. See you tomorrow.

  • The Spill of Years

    In the You-Can’t-Make-This-Stuff-Up Department, Federal District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan denied Trump’s request for a one-month delay in his rape trial. Trump based his request on “a deluge of prejudicial media coverage.” But the judge noted the news coverage was largely “invited or provoked by Mr. Trump’s own actions.”

    “Oh yeah, there’s that,” Trump’s lawyers said.

    According to the story in the NYT (I’m not kidding), Trump says he could not have raped the accuser because she was “not his type.”

    I can see that. When I go out to rape someone, I’m pretty choosy too. It’s the “choosy” defense. That should sit well with the women on the jury, no?

    There was a cartoon in The New Yorker years ago in which the lawyer is pointing to his client and saying to the jury, “Ladies and Gentlemen. Does this look like the face of an embezzler?” And the client is covering up his face with his hands.

    Speaking of cartoons, Owl Chatter’s art-friend Bob shared these thoughts about Ed Koren:

    I remember that Ed Koren was always very friendly and engaged with the Brown Art Department office staff and they clearly enjoyed bantering with him. I was fortunate to be at a small dinner party hosted by several Brown grad students that he attended. He came down from New York and stayed in Providence the days he was teaching. I recall that at the dinner party a delicious paella was served – my first experience of that very special dish! It’s nice to recall this memorable evening from 50 years ago.

    Here’s another sample of his work:

    [In case you can’t read the caption, it says “A wonderful cat is coming into your life.”]

    Here’s a poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac by Catherine Abbey Hodges from her collection Instead of Sadness. The poem’s title is “Dark and Late.” I’m sharing it because I like the phrase “the spill of years.”

    This dark porch
    has brimmed
    with light
    like a bowl with water
    like a throat with laughter

    afternoons of light
    years of afternoons
    scintillating dawns
    flagrant noons
    underwater-green dusks

    and nights
    dark and late
    lit by candles, hands,
    eyes with the leap
    that’s the life
    we’ve come for,
    what we carry
    nonchalant
    white-knuckled
    down the spill of years,
    what carries us, what
    meets us in the end
    and on the way
    in each other.

    It’s the birthday of “Beat” poet Bob Kaufman today. He was born in New Orleans in 1925, the tenth of thirteen children. He died at age 60 in 1986. His mom was Black and his dad was Jewish. Herb Caen, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, said he had Kaufman in mind when he coined the term “beatnik.” Kaufman’s circle included Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, et al.

    In an interview in 2000, Ken Kesey recounted:

    “I can remember driving down to North Beach with my folks and seeing Bob Kaufman out there on the street. I didn’t know he was Bob Kaufman at the time. He had little pieces of Band-Aid tape all over his face, about two inches wide, and little smaller ones like two inches long — and all of them made into crosses. He came up to the cars, and he was babbling poetry into these cars. He came up to the car I was riding in, and my folks, and started jabbering this stuff into the car. I knew that this was exceptional use of the human voice and the human mind.”

    Kaufman spent 20 years in the Merchant Marines, but also spent time at Riker’s Island. In 1961, he was nominated for England’s Guinness Poetry Award, but lost out to T. S. Eliot. When JFK was shot, Kaufman took a vow of silence and didn’t speak for over ten years. Then he walked into a coffee shop and recited his poem, “All Those Ships that Never Sailed.” He said:

    All those ships that never sailed
    The ones with their seacocks open
    That were scuttled in their stalls
    Today I bring them back
    Huge and transitory
    And let them sail
    Forever.

    He had a daughter, Antionette Victoria Marie, with his first wife, and a son, Parker, named after Charlie Parker, with his second wife. The daughter passed away in 2008 at age 63. Here he is, a bit scraggly.

    In the puzzle today, the clue at 1A was “The earth before God separated light from darkness, according to the Bible,” and the answer was CHAOS. But several folks said the word “chaos” does not appear in the Bible and thought “void” would be a better answer. I shared the following:

    “In the beginning there was a void. Then there was another void. And one void led to the next.”

    If I’m lucky, there won’t be any responses.

    At 28D, “Artist Albrecht of the German Renaissance” was DURER. Check out the curls — here’s what he looked like in a self-portrait at age 28.

    Durer ran with all the big dogs of his day, as the saying goes. He was in contact with Raphael and Leonardo da V, among others.

    Here’s his portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher (1526), which, you’ll have to admit, is a spitting image of the fellow, no?

    Öèôðîâàÿ ðåïðîäóêöèÿ íàõîäèòñÿ â èíòåðíåò-ìóçåå Gallerix.ru

    Durer’s marriage to Agnes Frey was not a happy one. It was arranged for him, and he often referred to her disparagingly, i.e., calling her an “old crow.” He and the old crow did not have any children, and the Durer name died out.

    KRAMER VS KRAMER was in the puzzle. I remembered Dustin Hoffman played Kramer, but forgot that Kramer was played by Jersey Girl Meryl Streep. Remember her in Sophie’s Choice? Devastating.

    The clue at 48D was “Singer Perry” (4 letters), and the answer was KATY. Several old timers confessed they filled in COMO first. I’m not that far gone, thankfully. Or maybe I just forgot him. In any event, here are the two Perrys — Katy and Como. He was quite the heart throb back in my mom’s day. Pat Boone too.

    We’re going to let the young Cat Stevens play us off tonight, continuing a small theme. Last night it was “Catch the Wind.” Tonight, “The Wind.”

    I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul. . . .

    Good night, folks. See you tomorrow.

  • Coagula

    Today’s poem in The Writer’s Almanac is by Louis Simpson and is called “Tall Girl Running.” No doubt it’s a nod to the Boston Marathon that is being run today.

    The poem starts with a quote by Richard Dawkins: “There is no gene which single-handedly builds a leg, long or short. Building a leg is a multi-gene cooperative enterprise.“

    She went running by.
    I never saw a girl

    with such long legs.
    She ran by again.

    I shouted to her,
    “You run like an angel.”

    She smiled and said,
    “Thank you.”

    She did some knee bends.
    I said, “Where did you

    get those legs?”
    “My father,” she said,

    and went her way smiling.

    As I noted earlier, Rex solves the Monday puzzles using the down clues only because they are otherwise too easy. This has led to some very funny comments on other ways to increase the challenge. Michael Joseph wrote this today:

    My Monday blindfold is at the dry cleaners, so I tried solving this in a pitch black closet and found it to be extremely challenging. Not only did I have trouble knowing what the clues were. I also ended up with a DNF [did not finish] because I didn’t realize that my pen had run out of ink.

    With SAP in the puzzle today at 10A, LMS confessed: I prefer the crappy chemical-laden fake maple syrup to the real stuff from real maple sap. I’m thinking I like all the added sodium, I dunno. Waffles with the “good” syrup eat too sweet and one-notedly.

    [Owl Chatter could not disagree more.]

    It elicited this response from Wanderlust:

    LMS, I don’t agree with you on syrup, but I’m not a snob, I swear. I’d actually like to do a blind taste test to see if my purism will hold. I remember when Cook’s Illustrated magazine did a blind taste test with serious foodies on real vanilla extract vs. artificial, and artificial won. It rocked the cooking world. I think they did it again, and this time the real stuff won, and everyone settled down. My sibs and I grew up eating Little Debbies Swiss Rolls in our lunch boxes, while our cousins had Ho-Hos. Each of us insisted our product was superior, so we did a blind taste test with the chocolate logs cut into slices so we wouldn’t know the size (Ho-Hos are bigger). We sheepishly had to admit Ho-Hos were better. Oh, and I should say that we did this taste test as adults in our 50’s. OK, have I proven I am not a snob yet?

    Meir Shalev, an Israeli writer known for his sense of humor, died last Tuesday at his home in the village of Alonei Abba in northern Israel’s Jezreel Valley. He was only 74. He wrote mostly about the years before Israel became a state.

    On the Bible, he observed:

    The Tenth Commandment, unlike the other nine, is a prohibition against coveting — that is, against feeling, not action.

    “Everyone covets,” he wrote. “Everyone fails the last commandment. Thus, the biblical lawgiver made sure that no Jew would ever get a perfect 10 in the test of the commandments. Nine is the highest score on the Jewish report card.”

    Rachel Pollack also died recently at her home in Rhinebeck at the age of only 77. She was a transgender activist and writer who created the first trans super-heroine for DC Comics.

    Pollack said she came out as transgender and lesbian in 1971 and underwent transition surgery in 1976. She noted a difference between when she underwent her transition 47 years ago and today. “The big thing that’s changed, an astonishing change, is that transgender people are now visible,” she said. “Society recognizes that this is something people can be. Obviously, there is a strong reactionary element fighting change, as always, but the difference is remarkable.”

    She developed a fascination for tarot cards in her youth, and used them in her writing. Her guide “Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom,” established her as an authority.

    The trans superhero she developed for DC Comics was Kate Godwin, aka Coagula. She had an unusual superpower — she could dissolve objects with one hand, and solidify them with the other.

    Tired. See you tomorrow.

  • Dime Novels

    At 101D today, the clue was “Manatee,” and the answer was SEA COW. The always sunny Lewis noted: For Manatee I threw in “dugong” immediately, which, of course didn’t work. But it got me wondering about dugongs, and during a quick investigation, I learned that they are related to manatees, with the main difference being the tail. The dugong’s is forked (bifurcated), while the manatee’s is paddle-like. Amazingly, dugongs and manatees are more related to elephants than they are to other marine mammals!

    Here’s a manatee with its paddle-like tail:

    And here’s a dugong:

    Does the name Buddy Sorrell ring a bell? Dig down — it was Morey Amsterdam’s character’s name on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He visited the puzzle today! Remember the classic theme song at the opening of the show with DVD falling over the ottoman (or, later, skirting it)? Check it out:

    In an interview on NPR in 2010, Van Dyke revealed that Amsterdam wrote lyrics for the tune which were never used. He sang them. Here they are:

    So you think that you’ve got trouble?
    Well, trouble’s a bubble
    So tell old Mr. Trouble to get lost!

    Why not hold your head up high and
    Stop cryin’, start tryin’
    And don’t forget to keep your fingers crossed.

    When you find the joy of livin’
    Is lovin’ and givin’
    You’ll be there when the winning dice are tossed.

    A smile is just a frown that’s turned upside down
    So smile, and that frown will defrost.

    And don’t forget to keep your fingers crossed

    Amsterdam was his real last name. His first name was Moritz. He was so quick at churning out jokes that he became known as the “human joke machine.” He sometimes performed with a mock machine on his chest, hanging by a strap. He turned a crank and paper rolled out; he would then pretend to read the machine’s joke, although actually the paper was blank. He was also an accomplished cellist, and very knowledgeable on the Bible.

    He was born in Chicago on 12/14/1908, and died in LA at age 87 on 10/28/1996. He said his neighborhood in Beverly Hills was so exclusive that even the police had an unlisted number. He was married for twelve years (’33 – ’45) to actress Mabel Todd, and was married to Kay Patrick from 1949 until his death did them part. He had two kids with Kay, a son Gregory and a daughter Cathy.

    His character on the DVD show was one of the few openly Jewish TV characters of the era. One episode centered on his adult Bar-Mitzvah. I remember it and it was wonderful. Carl Reiner, who created the show, said Amsterdam’s character was based on Mel Brooks.

    Here’s one of his lines: According to statistics, a man eats a prune every twenty seconds. I don’t know who this fellow is, but I know where to find him.

    This is the first time I recall him appearing in a puzzle. Please pop by again soon, Buddy — We love you!

    If you’re at all like me, you leaped out of your seat while watching the horrific events of Jan. 6 and shouted, “OMG, I think that’s Logan James Barnhart, 41, of Holt, Michigan, participating in the mayhem (or, more accurately, the januaryhem)!”

    Barnhart, of course, is the male model who has been on the cover of numerous romance novels, including Owl Chatter fave: Stepbrother UnSEALed: A Bad Boy Military Romance. Barnhart was sentenced to 36 months in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers with a dangerous weapon.

    Et tu, Barnhart?  

    “The way I was acting seems so foreign to me,” Barnhart told the U.S. district judge, Rudolph Contreras, in what seems like a pretty dopey exculpatory statement. But the feeling here is that Barnhart was not put on this planet for his brains.

    And, speaking of a lack of brains, the NYT reported today that thieves broke into a truck parked at a Walmart in Philadelphia and made off with $200,000 in cash. The only problem is it was made up entirely of dimes. The truck was transporting the dimes from the U.S. Mint in Philly to Florida. There were ten thieves, and they made off with roughly two million dimes, weighing five tons.

    Officer Miguel Torres, a spokescop for the Philly police wondered how the robbers would be able to spend the money. That’s a damn good question Torres. You’ve got a bright future ahead of you.

    Aaron J. Chalfin, a professor of criminology at U. Penn, intent on revealing himself to be an idiot, said: “Millions of dimes is a lot of money, so it doesn’t seem so silly.” It doesn’t? What the f**k planet are you living on?

    Cops arriving on the scene found thousands of dimes scattered on the parking lot ground. Owl Chatter photographers, of course, were on the spot as well. Here’s a close-up shot they managed to capture before the cops sealed off the area.

    The article in today’s NYT ended with (and I’m not kidding):

    As the department continues its investigation, Officer Torres offered some advice to those possibly harboring stuffed piggy banks. “If for some reason you have a lot of dimes at home,” he said, “this is probably not the time to cash them in.”

    Yup. Right on target again, Torres.

    Looking back: Did you ever catch the wind? Not everyone does. You have to be very lucky. Very very lucky. And if you manage it — don’t let go.

    When sundown pales the sky
    I want to hide a while behind your smile
    And everywhere I’d look, your eyes I’d find.

    Here’s Donovan’s song. It’s held up over the years, for sure. The owls are sending it out tonight to friends Hank and Judy, who are in our thoughts, and who got very very lucky, many years ago, and held on.

    See you tomorrow.

  • Jeez Louise

    If you have moments of doubt about the value you’ve contributed to the world, take comfort in the fact that Leonardo da Vinci once wrote “I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.”

    It’s his birthday today. He was born out of wedlock in Tuscany to a peasant woman in 1452. His dad was a notary. Here’s something I didn’t know about him — he wrote in mirror-image script, i.e., backwards. This may have been easier because he was a lefty, but still. . . He never married and had few close relationships with women. He was very close with several of his male students and was likely gay. Whatever. Happy Birthday Leo!

    It’s also the birthday of Henry James, born in NYC in 1843. I’ve read some of his stuff, but I must say I found it a little stiff. I’m not alone. Oscar Wilde was so bored by James’s writing, he said that James “wrote fiction as if it were a painful duty.” T.S. Eliot quipped, “James has a mind so fine that no idea could violate it.” And Ginny Wolff once wrote to a friend,  “Please tell me what you find in Henry James. We have his works here, and I read, and I can’t find anything but faintly tinged rose water, urbane and sleek, but vulgar and pale. Is there really any sense in it?”

    A professor of mine once told a story in which a reader complained to James that he could spend a whole paragraph on a woman touching a handkerchief to her forehead. And James replied, “My good woman — a woman touching a handkerchief to her forehead is an entire novel.”

    Nevertheless, Happy Birthday HJ!

    Rather than dig up a photo of the stodgy old fellow, here’s Cybill Shepherd, who played James’s Daisy Miller in the film version.

    And speaking of the droolingly beautiful, LMS treated us to a discussion of the difference between drool and slobber. It came about because the clue at 3D today was “[I am so-o-o hungry]” and the answer was DROOL. Here’s LMS:

    “Then I sat, yet again, pondering the difference between DROOL and slobber. Slobber feels much more active and exuberant, like the slobberer is fully engaged and aware. But DROOL feels quieter and sneakier. Like maybe the DROOLer isn’t even aware of their offense. Also, DROOL is a naptime event. If I happen upon a napper who is slobbering, I’ma back myself out of the room on tippy toe and rethink my relationship with this person.”

    On the answer GOING RATES, she noted:  “reminded me of all the pay toilets in Europe.”

    In my eyes, though, for laughs, nothing can top her comments on “Mom.” Here’s today’s, triggered by the answer THEME, which was clued by “Word with party or park.”

    Mom and I have a THEME party coming up – a Derby Day at the clubhouse of our little community. She was so excited about it, about having me participate with her, that I didn’t have the heart to say no. There will be food! And games! And we have to dress up and wear hats! And this year no one will be admitted without a ticket, so we have to get ours fast! (Apparently last year, there were sneakers-in who crashed the event, so the food ran out pretty quickly. People are still talking about it.) Look. I’m no spring chicken, but I can tell you that an afternoon spent being charming to Mom’s friends, pretending to enjoy the cloying punch (ladled out from the actual punch bowl into the matching little punch glasses), nibbling on the nuts and after-dinner mints. . . jeez Louise as I type this, I hate myself for being such a jerk. But now I’m caught up in finding the perfect white hat to go with my outfit. And I’m borrowing some white gloves from my sister. Mom got her hat from a nearby Goodwill-type store for only $3. I’m looking on Amazon for mine. Go big, or go home.

    Ed Koren died yesterday in Brookfield, VT, at age 87. Starting in May of 1962, thousands of his cartoons appeared in The New Yorker, many with his large, cheerful, furry animal characters, or, below, not so cheerful. (Note the crossed arms and legs.)

    In case you can’t read the caption, it says: Rufus here is the center of our life.

    Koren was on the art faculty at Brown until 1977, which, happily, overlapped with our friend Bob’s time up there. I sent Bob the sad news and he replied saying Koren was an amazing guy.

    One of my favorites of his graced the cover of one of his collections. A little girl is standing with a look of utter despair on her face. She is holding a cone out of which fell the scoop of ice cream it previously contained. The splat of ice cream is on the ground at her feet. Her mom is bending over her sympathetically and says: “Do you want to talk about it?”

    Many years ago, I had an idea for a Koren cartoon. There’s a car with a bumper sticker on it that says, “We Brake for Animals.” It’s stopped on the road, and in front of it is a giant furry Koren creature, smiling down on it benevolently. I sent the suggestion to Koren, care of The New Yorker. He wrote back that they are not permitted to take suggestions, but then he drew it, wonderfully, on the paper I wrote my letter on. I still have it somewhere in the house — if I can find it, I’ll show it to you.

    “I’m the kind of American middle-class folk I like to draw,” Koren said in 1982. He found subjects everywhere. Walking in the woods, he was passed by a jogger, who called out: “Working on my quads!”

    “There’s a cartoon,” he said.

    The NYT obit included these:

    A bearded snob on his grand portico greets a grimy plumber: “Ah, Hopkins! Finalmente!”

    A bathroom mirror speaks a dreaded morning message: “Time has not been kind to you.”

    As two bearlike creatures look hungrily up a tree trunk at a hiking couple cowering in the branches, the man says to his wife, “Tell them how hard we’ve worked to protect their habitat.

    He moved to Vermont in 1982. He joined the volunteer fire department and was its captain for 30 years. He never retired from drawing. For The New Yorker’s April 17 issue, he drew Moses on a mount overlooking his people and holding up a stone tablet of the Ten Commandments while proclaiming, “Time for an update!”

    He is survived by his wife, three children, two grandchildren, and this guy:

    Rest in peace, Koren.

    In today’s puzzle, some were flummoxed by the clue “Many a unicorn,” the answer for which was TECH STARTUP. So Rocketman explained:

    “A unicorn is a start-up/private company that has a valuation of more than one billion dollars. A NYT article today about the rising trend of criminal prosecutions of start-up executives (The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley) noted that there are currently around 1200 such companies. I worked for one of the ones mentioned in the article and my former boss reports for prison on April 27th. I have a nice bottle of champagne reserved for the occasion.”

    And then there was “Papal topper,” the answer for which was TIARA. Really? He wears a tiara? Get outta here! Sailor explained:

    “The Papal TIARA (a three-tiered crown, actually) was retired by Paul VI in a gesture of support for the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. No pope has worn it since 1963. So a bishop’s mitre has been the actual “Papal topper” for the last 60 years.”

    And here’s Southside Johnny on the matter: I’ll admit to being confused by the clue for TIARA. I know that the Catholic Church has been struggling with the whole gender-bending and age of consent quagmire for like centuries now, but still the thought of the Pope in a Miss Universe contest still seemed like a stretch to me. Then I saw that a TIARA is also a diadem “worn by a Pope” – so today I learned that diadem is a synonym for a funny hat.

    27A was “Smoking,” and the answer was RED HOT. Here’s Billy Lee Riley letting you know that his gal is RED HOT and your gal ain’t doodley-squat. Hrrrrumph!

    Dinner at Bell’s Tavern tonight in Lambertville with Dan and Mary. Happy Birthday (yesterday) Mary! I ordered their “Signature Burger,” but had to send it back — there was ink all over it!

    Ba da boom!

    See you tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by.