The Wellington Files

  • Diabolo

    Would you buy a cheesesteak from this Pakistani guy? [Is he smiling? Can’t tell.] He’s a chef named Mazar Hussain. I would. Have to go to Pakistan though. D’oh!

    In the Fall of 2021, Hussain met a man from Philly who introduced him to the cheesesteak. He opened a shop and they are selling like, well, cheesesteaks, i.e., very well. They are not exactly like the ones you’d get at Pat’s or Tony Luke’s in Philly — they’re infused with local spices — but they are essentially the same. They are served on paper plates and go for the Pakistani equivalent of about two bucks. This one looks droolingly eatible, and there’s the shop on the left; it’s above a hair saloon.

    Owl Chatter was down in Philly a few weeks ago and we had good ones at Woodrow’s Sandwiches on South Street. I did some research online to find it. They were excellent. Good scene too. BYOB.

    There was much disgruntlement about an answer in today’s puzzle. The clue was “Put on a pedestal,” and the answer was HEROIZE. It does seem like a botched version of LIONIZE, but it’s a legit word in the dictionary. The “OI” just makes it clunky. Here’s a note from LMS:

    I just found out that two of my students – freshman boys with ankle monitors – go home every day and are the primary caregivers for their younger siblings (4 each!) while their mothers work the night shift. The ages of their charges range from 9 months to 4 years. I was stunned. One of them changes diapers, and they both give baths. And they weren’t whining about it – it is what it is. Had this been my lot at age 15, I would have been a big, complaining baby. I asked them if they ever read them books, and Quintrez said once he had read them The Cat in the Hat, but that was it. So I went to a Goodwill-type place yesterday and got some children’s books to give them. I dunno – they may not use them, but who knows…. Whatever the case, I’m officially HEROIZING Ja’Quiontis and Quintrez. I tell ya, I’m humbled every day at that school.

    A term that was new to me was SIN BINS: “Penalty boxes, in hockey lingo.”

    Egsforbreakfast noted: It seems like SINBINS could also be slang for confessional booths. Now that I think about it, they should station a priest in the hockey penalty box to hear the sins of the players. “Forgive me father, for I have cross checked.” “In 2 minutes, you may go take the ice in peace.”

    Also learned about the DIABOLO today — “a string and spool toy.” It’s related to the yo-yo. Here’s a champ at it:

    “Tony winning musical with puppets” was AVENUE Q. Anne Harada played the character Christmas Eve in it, a heavily accented Japanese therapist. She’s the only actress who was in both the original London and Bdwy casts.

    Here’s today’s Tiny Love Story, by Jane Fennell from the NYT:

    The neurological examination was over. Alan had done better than expected, remembering two of the three words (“pencil” and “watch”) and the incumbent president’s name. As the doctor wrote his prescriptions, I stood by my very tired and stressed 88-year-old husband of 40 years. Answering questions puts a strain on him. He knows his memory is failing. Later, I asked if he remembered the three words. He looked at me blankly, then nodded. I said, “What were they?” Quietly, and with such sincerity, he looked into my face and said, “I love you.”

  • The Devil’s Fingers

    Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke, and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

    Jerry Seinfeld, who said that, is happily married with three kids. Happy Birthday Jerry! He’s 69 today.

    Today is the day that, in 1913, a Swedish engineer named Gideon Sundback, living in Hoboken, NJ, patented the modern zipper under the name, “Hookless No. 2.” Preachers called it “the Devil’s fingers” because it eased the process of removing clothing. Now, of course, we’re more worried about the preacher’s fingers.

    Here’s how the zipper figures into the aging process: First you forget names. Next you forget faces. Then you forget to zip up your fly. And, last, you forget to zip down your fly. I’m in stage three. Several years ago, one of my students came up to me after class, and she whispered “You’re fly is down.” I whispered back: “Thank you. Next time tell me before class.”

    When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls
    And the stars begin to twinkle in the night
    In the mist of my memory, you wander on back to me
    Breathing my name with a sigh

    In the still of the night once again I hold you tight
    Though you’ve gone, your love lives on when moonlight beams
    And as long as my heart will beat, sweet lover, we’ll always meet
    Here in my deep purple dreams

    Here’s April Stevens singing Deep Purple with her brother Nick Tempo. It’s worth a listen, both as time-travel and a good very-oldie.

    April’s “talking” the lyrics came about by accident. Nick hadn’t yet learned the words the first time they performed it, so April whispered them to him as he was singing. The effect was terrific and they kept it in. They used the technique in later songs as well.

    Deep Purple hit the top of the charts on Nov. 16, 1963. A week later JFK was shot and the country’s interest in music fell off for a time. But the song sold a million copies, and April and Nick won a Grammy for it. They never reached No. 1 again, as the “British invasion” soon took over.

    Get this: In 1959, she released a song called “Teach Me Tiger” that her NYT obit described as “sultry,” but that’s a whopper of an understatement. It’s over-the-top sexy. (Marilyn Monroe recorded a sexy version too.) The lyrics include lines like “Take my lips, they belong to you, But teach me first, teach me what to do. . . ” Did they have stuff like that in 1959? Hear it for yourself:

    But I haven’t gotten to the “get this” yet. On April 6, 1983, the astronauts aboard space shuttle Challenger requested the song as their wake-up call. NASA obliged the crew, and April was invited to watch their landing.

    April Stevens (born Caroline LoTempio) passed away on the 17th of April, at age 93, leaving behind her husband of 38 years, her brother and duet partner Nick, four step-children, six grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren. As the song says, though she’s gone, her love lives on like moonlight beams.

    The shortstop for the World Champion 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, Dick Groat, passed away at age 92 in a Pittsburgh hospital on Thursday. He was a terrific player who may still get into the Hall of Fame via the Veterans Committee since he compares favorably to a number of players who are in, e.g., Luis Aparicio, Nellie Fox, and teammate Bill Mazeroski. Speaking of Maz, it was his historic homer that won the 1960 WS vs the Yankees, but Pittsburgh was trailing 7-4 in the 7th inning and it was Groat’s base hit that ignited a key 5-run rally. 1960 was a great year for Groat: he won the batting crown with a .325 average, and was named NL MVP.

    Groat again beat the Yanks in the WS in 1964 with the Cardinals, and was an All-Star eight times in his 14-year career. His lifetime average was .286, with 2,138 hits. Just nine days before he died he was notified that he was voted into the Pirates Hall of Fame.

    Groat was a sensational basketball player at Duke, setting the NCAA scoring record in the ’51-’52 season, and he was named UPI Player of the Year. His jersey number (10) was the first to be retired by Duke, and it retired no other number for 28 years. He is in the College Basketball Hall of Fame.

    Groat was planning on a two-sport pro career and played 26 games for the then-Ft. Wayne Pistons of the NBA in 1952 until he enlisted in the army. He was the Pistons’ first-round draft pick. When he was discharged, however, Branch Rickey adamantly insisted he play only baseball, so as not to risk injury.

    When his playing days were over, Groat spent 40 years as the color analyst for the Pitt Panthers basketball broadcasts. He is survived by three daughters, six grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, and millions of appreciative Pirate fans who remember 1960.

    Much of the cluing in the puzzle today was very sharp. At 47D, the clue was “F words?,” and the answer was SEE ME. Wait, what? It’s from when a teacher hands back your failing (F) paper, and writes “See me” on the top. Ouch! Cutely, it was right next to 42D: “Philosophy associated with beaches,” which was NUDISM. Get it? SEE ME next to NUDISM.

    At 1D, “One of three in many baseball fields,” turned out to be a very creative clue for ACRE. I had no idea the area of a typical MLB ballfield is close to 3 acres.

    At 5A, “Target for a certain mallet” was CRAB CLAW. Yum!

    “Cry of amazement” was WOWIE ZOWIE, right atop ALL SMILES (“Outwardly very happy”), and symmetrical with WHAT A TREAT! (“I’m so enjoying this!”). That pretty much sums up how we feel when reading Owl Chatter, amirite? See you tomorrow!

  • Whitey on the Moon

    I was planning to skip discussing Jerry Springer’s passing yesterday at age 79, but he had a few good self-deprecating lines I’d like to share. (FYI, if you’re not familiar with the term “self-deprecating,” it means to deprecate yourself.)

    Springer was born on Feb. 13, 1944 in the Highland station of the London Underground, which was being used as a shelter from German bombing, and set up as a maternity ward for late-term pregnant women. His parents were German Jews who fled Poland to escape the Nazis. Both of his grandmothers and a great uncle were killed by the Nazis. His family moved to Queens when he was four. He attended Forest Hills HS, then Tulane U., and then Northwestern for his law degree.

    Springer’s first taste of broadcasting was at the radio station at Tulane, WTUL, with which he kept in touch over the years. On its 50th anniversary in 2009, he sent them a note observing that he got his start at WTUL, and “it’s been downhill ever since.” He worked briefly in a law firm in Cincinnati, but then entered politics. He was the mayor of Cincy at one point. He was embroiled in a minor scandal when it was discovered that he wrote a check to a massage parlor for prostitution services. He later sought to use that to his advantage in a campaign by saying, “you know my credit is good.” But, of course, he gained his notoriety with his mishegas on his crazy TV show.

    When he was invited to give the commencement address at Northwestern in 2008, some students protested, and in his speech he conceded that he would also have chosen someone else. And he said:

    “I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a comfortable measure of success in my various careers, but let’s be honest, I’ve been virtually everything you can’t respect: a lawyer, a mayor, a major-market news anchor and a talk-show host. Pray for me. If I get to heaven, we’re all going.”

    Rather than dredging up a photo of JS, here’s Miss Universe from 2008. (Jerry hosted the pageant that year.) She is Dayana Mendoza, representing Venezuela about as well as it can be done, IMHO. She’s an orthodox Jew. [No she isn’t.] (Later we’ll see whom she edged out.)

    The puzzle was a real bear today. I couldn’t make headway for the longest time, so I was pleased to only blow a few squares by the time I finished. For “Zesty liqueur” I had LEMONCELLO instead of LIMONCELLO. D’oh! And I didn’t know “Actress Mitchell of “Pretty Little Liars.” I had SHA–, and didn’t know it was SHAY. I took comfort in Rex rating it “challenging.”

    Do you know the “Gil Scott-Heron poem inspired by 1969 events?” It’s WHITEY ON THE MOON,” and it’s pretty hard-hitting. Here are the lyrics, with GSH performing it, below:

    A rat done bit my sister Nell
    With whitey on the moon
    Her face and arms began to swell
    And whitey’s on the moon
    I can’t pay no doctor bills
    But whitey’s on the moon
    Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still
    While whitey’s on the moon
    The man just upped my rent last night
    Cause whitey’s on the moon
    No hot water, no toilets, no lights
    But whitey’s on the moon
    I wonder why he’s upping me?
    Cause whitey’s on the moon?
    Well I was already giving him fifty a week
    With whitey on the moon
    Taxes taking my whole damn check
    Junkies making me a nervous wreck
    The price of food is going up
    And as if all that shit wasn’t enough:
    A rat done bit my sister Nell
    With whitey on the moon
    Her face and arm began to swell
    And whitey’s on the moon
    Was all that money I made last year
    For whitey on the moon?
    How come I ain’t got no money here?
    Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon
    Y’know I just ’bout had my fill
    Of whitey on the moon
    I think I’ll send these doctor bills
    Airmail special
    To whitey on the moon

    It led to this back-and-forth between two Rex commenters:

    First, from “Bob,”

    WHITEYONTHEMOON was a real poem. But the clue refers to 1969 events [i.e., plural]. Was the fact that the astronauts were Caucasians a separate event from the moon landing itself? This struck me as an example of racism in reverse, a little bit like saying, “Darkie on the basketball court.” A really regrettable choice of title for poetry.

    And this response from “Weezie:”

    Bob, I don’t think we’ll change your opinion here, and maybe this is discourse you’ve already engaged with, but I wanted to respond in good faith in case you’re open to it.

    For something to be racist, it needs to exist within a societal pattern of oppression, power, and control in which that systemic power is maintained (intentionally or not) by marginalizing a particular racial identity. Because we white people as a category in America have historically and still do directly and indirectly benefit from the oppression and disenfranchisement of Black people/ Indigenous people/ people of color (BIPOC), we can’t experience racism. Meanwhile, Black folks daily live in fear of police violence, are less likely to be interviewed than white folks if they have a “Black-sounding” name, are more than 2.5 times as likely to die in childbirth than white people, and are criminalized for trying to ensure that their history is taught in schools.

    White people can experience *discrimination*, sure, and I’d agree that the term is *discriminatory* against white people. And, I’d say that’s fair/fine with me, given all that’s been done to BIPOC in this country by white folks – the poem/song was written in 1970, just 16 years after segregation was declared illegal, for context. And, in cases like this poem, I would argue that it’s more about someone who has experienced racism and violence so profound from white institutions and individuals that he’s leveraging the punch of that word to make a cutting point about his country’s priorities.

    Then there were these two “anonymous” comments:

    I saw a cabaret singer with a piano guy sing Whitey on the Moon around 1990. The singer was transvestite and they played it very seriously. For some reason it was one of the most poignant things I’ve ever experienced.

    And:

    I don’t know why everyone is so worked up. The poem is actually about Yankees’ Hall-of-Famer Whitey Ford and that time he went to the moon.

    After that, the discussion was renewed. First, Bob wrote:

    For Weezie; Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Forgive me for extending the argument, but assuming you’re right that the poet had suffered from discrimination personally, why does that constitute permission to delegitimize a remarkable scientific achievement, simply because the astronauts happened to have white skin? Did Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin ever discriminate against African-Americans? I promise to let you have the last word. Thanks again for the dialogue.

    And then Weezie:

    Yes Bob, more than happy to respond. The piece actually doesn’t have much at all to do with the moon landing itself, I think, and in my opinion, it has nothing at all to do with the individual astronauts who landed upon it. “Whitey” in those days was a stand-in for the *institution* of white supremacy as exemplified by the US government at the time, which was hungry to conjure up goodwill with something like the moon landing while distracting from the very real problems at home and abroad here on Earth. (e.g., the Vietnam war, as mentioned by @jberg). The author describes the violence of poverty – a rat biting his sister, inaccessible healthcare, rising rents and taxes – speaking to deep social issues which were being obscured and de-centered by all the hoopla around the moon landing. He isn’t *able* to be excited about the scientific advances in space, because he and his people’s basic human needs and rights aren’t being met right here on earth.

    And to be clear: I like space exploration and I think it’s important for the longevity of humanity (though I wish we’d take trying to save this planet more seriously.) I just don’t blame Scott-Heron for seeing it through the lens that he did at the time.

    The clue/answer at 13D was neat: “I think I can see a future with him” was the clue, and the answer was IT’S SERIOUS.

    “[This is looking very bad for me]” was a good clue for GULP.

    How about this one: The clue: “Deification.” Answer: APOTHEOSIS. [Murder, right?]

    And 30D was completely new to me. The clue was “Sexy selfie posted on social media, in lingo,” and answer was THIRST TRAP.

    The following is from Wikipedia:

    Often, the term “thirst trap” describes an attractive picture of an individual that they post online. It can also describe a digital heartthrob. For instance, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has been described as a political thirst trap.

    “Gatsbying” is a variation, where one puts posts on social media to attract the attention of a particular individual. The term alludes to the novel The Great Gatsby where Gatsby threw extravagant parties to attract Daisy. “Instagrandstanding” is an alternative name for this.

    And then there’s “wholesome trapping,” where one posts pictures of more meaningful aspects of life, such as spending time with friends, doing outdoor activities, or reading Owl Chatter. [I know, — Bore. Ring.]

    Aaron Judge, who signed his gargantuan contract with the Yankees this year, had to leave the game yesterday due to discomfort in his hip. Apparently, the hip is stressed from carrying his wallet in his pocket.

    New Yorker cartoon from a long time ago: Two old guys are sitting at a bar. One of them says: “I’m like a workaholic, but with alcohol.”

    As promised above, in case you were wondering about the first runner up in that 2008 Miss Universe contest, it was Miss Colombia, Taliana Vargas. Tough competition!

    More nonsense tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by.

  • Two Straight Lines

    Ludwig Bemelmans was born on this day in 1898 in what was then Austria-Hungary, but is now Italy. When Lud was five or six, his dad left both his mother and his (Ludwig’s) governess when they were pregnant with his child for another woman. (Jeez Louise!) So Ludwig was raised by his mom for a while, but was a problem child so was sent off to work in his uncle’s hotel in Austria. However, he was beaten regularly there by the headwaiter until he retaliated by shooting him. The headwaiter was seriously wounded and Lud was given the choice of reform school or emigration to America. He chose the latter.

    After bumbling around a bit in the army and the hotel/restaurant business, he started working on children’s books and, of course, gained fame with his Madeline series. Madeline was his wife’s name. They had one daughter and three grandchildren. He died in 1964 of pancreatic cancer and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

    The opening of the first Madeline book is pretty much perfect. Here it is:

    “In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. In two straight lines they broke their bread, and brushed their teeth, and went to bed. They smiled at the good, and frowned at the bad, and sometimes they were very sad. They left the house at half past nine, in two straight lines, in rain or shine. The smallest one was Madeline!”

    And here she is, way on the right, next to the dog and the nun:

    From Owl Chatter’s Chutzpah With a Capital Chutz Department:

    “I wanted to address my senators, Cruz and Cornyn,” Amanda Zurawski told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary at a hearing on reproductive rights. Zurawski’s water broke 18 weeks into her pregnancy, making it impossible for her fetus to survive. Because of the vague and extreme Texas antiabortion law, her health care providers refused to treat her as long as the fetus had a heartbeat. Zurawski developed sepsis and, after giving birth to a stillborn daughter, spent three days in intensive care. 

    Zurawski said she wanted the two Texas Republican senators to know “that what happened to me is a direct result of the policies they support. I nearly died, and I may not be able to have children in the future.” Neither Cruz nor Cornyn showed up to hear her.

    Cornyn later said Zurawski should consider suing her doctors for misinterpreting the law.

    And here are the Zurawskis.

    Fifty bucks says you don’t know what Ulysses S. Grant’s middle name is. Give up? It’s Ulysses. Wait, what? His actual name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. The Congressman who nominated him for admission to West Point got his name wrong on the paperwork and Grant ran with it. Ulysses became his first name. The S stands for nothing. Hiram is gone. Happy Birthday Grant! He was born on this day in Point Pleasant, Ohio, in 1822.

    Anya Silver, the poet whose poem was in Owl Chatter yesterday, chose not to read War and Peace. This was not as easy a decision for her as it generally is. Her dad was a Russian Lit professor at Swarthmore, and wrote a book about Tolstoy. So her refusal was hard on him. He offered her $100 to read it. She held her ground.

    Anya wrote her first poem (“Snowflakes”) when she was in fourth grade, but her teacher upbraided her in front of the class for staring out the window and daydreaming. Later in life, she told an interviewer: “But that’s basically what I do now when I write a poem — stare out my window and contemplate.”

    Here’s another of her poems, called “Return.”

    When he returned home after many years,
    an enormous oak had split his house in two,
    its trunk growing right through the center hall.
    Though there was nobody living in the tilting
    rooms, he recognized some simple objects:
    a milk jug once filled with daisies, a single shoe.
    Where a mirror had hung, a darkened oval
    remained on the wall. No bark, no call, no singing.
    But though he didn’t understand what he saw,
    he knew the tree, broad and green, was a blessing.

    Thanks for dropping in. See you tomorrow!

  • You Can Learn A Lot From Lydia

    At 49A in yesterday’s puzzle, the clue was “To a greater degree,” and the answer was MORESO. Well, I can’t hear the word “moreso” without bringing to mind Lydia. Lydia the tattooed lady, of course. “She had eyes that folks adore so, and a torso, even moreso.” Here are the lyrics — it was written by Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen in 1939, and Groucho sang it in the movie “At the Circus.” After the lyrics, below, there’s a clip of Groucho singing it again (on the Dick Cavett show) thirty years later on June 13, 1969. (He was 78.)

    [Has there ever been a more wonderful rhyme than: Here is Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon; Here’s Godiva, but with her pajamas on. I ask you.]

    Oh Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia?
    Lydia, the Tattooed Lady
    She has eyes that folks adore so
    And a torso even more so

    Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclopydia
    Oh Lydia the Queen of Tattoo
    On her back is the Battle of Waterloo
    Beside it the wreck of the Hesperus, too
    And proudly above waves the red, white, and blue
    You can learn a lot from Lydia

    When her robe is unfurled, she will show you the world
    If you step up and tell her where
    For a dime you can see Kankakee or Paree
    Or Washington crossing the Delaware

    Oh Lydia oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia?
    Oh Lydia the Tattooed Lady
    When her muscles start relaxin’
    Up the hill comes Andrew Jackson

    Lydia oh Lydia, that encyclopydia
    Oh Lydia the queen of them all
    For two bits she will do a mazurka in jazz
    With a view of Niagara that nobody has
    And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz
    You can learn a lot from Lydia

    Come along and see Buff’lo Bill with his lasso
    Just a little classic by Mendel Picasso
    Here is Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon
    Here’s Godiva, but with her pajamas on

    Here is Grover Whalen unveilin’ the Trilon
    Over on the West Coast we have Treasure Island
    Here’s Nijinsky a-doin’ the rhumba
    Here’s her social security numba

    Oh Lydia, oh Lydia that encyclopydia
    Oh Lydia the champ of them all
    She once swept an Admiral clear off his feet
    The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat
    And now the old boy’s in command of the fleet
    For he went and married Lydia!

    Small point: Who is Mendel Picasso? In the song, he’s the artist who drew Buffalo Bill on Lydia — not Pablo Picasso, who would have cost too much. Mendel (Jewish, of course) was perfectly fine.

    Also, why is her Social Security “numba” among her tattoos? SSN’s were fairly new at the time and one theory holds it was a joking reference to Lydia’s “measurements,” i.e., 36-24-36.

    Enough?

    Just one more Groucho quote: Be open minded, but not so open minded that your brains fall out.

    This love poem, courtesy of today’s Writer’s Almanac, is by Anya Krugovoy Silver, and is called “At the Station.”

    When the girl got off the train at the college town,
    she leapt up and wrapped her legs around the waist
    of the boy she’d come to visit, and they spun
    around, embracing and shrieking with joy.
    Their love set off a piccolo’s vibration.
    Those years are gone for us—I see you every day,
    we eat meals together from decades-old plates.
    But when we lie in bed at night, you take my hand,
    and I feel the orb that’s formed around us tighten,
    while you and I, like knitting needles in a ball
    of yarn, lie beside each other, fingers touching.

    Anya Silver passed away in 2018 after a long battle with breast cancer. She wrote poems until the very end, many of them about life and death. She was pregnant with her son Noah when her cancer was diagnosed. She felt guilty about becoming a mother, knowing that her son was likely to lose her at an early age. But, as she told Georgia Public Radio, “I decided that the joy of life and the beauty and connection of life were more important than the chance of suffering.”

    Owl Chatter will have more chatter about her in the coming days.

    How’s this from the Lemons-to-Lemonade Department? In 2011, Chernobyl was officially declared a tourist attraction. You know, like a theme park. Getting in line?

    Today is the anniversary of the nuclear disaster that occurred there in 1986, causing 100,000 people to flee the area. (Three hundred people refused to leave, resisting the “Go or Glow” campaign.) There were 28 deaths from radiation poisoning within a week of the accident, and experts predict a total of 4,000 deaths when all is said and done.

    OMG, we can’t end on such a dark note. Surely, we can find some nonsense to send us off. Will eyeglasses for chickens do?

    On Jan. 16, 1955, Sam Nadler of the National Farm Equipment Company of Brooklyn appeared on CBS’ popular TV show, What’s My Line? His occupation was “sells eyeglasses for chickens” and he stumped the panel. The show’s director said he was the most unusual contestant in the show’s eight years on the air.

    Chicken eyeglasses, also known as chickens specs or chicken goggles, were small eyeglasses made for chickens intended to prevent feather pecking. They were still in use as late as 1973, as evident by a report in Illinois’ The Hawk-Eye newspaper that a farmer had 8,000 chickens fitted with the rose-colored variety.  One inventor of a form of the glasses proposed legislation in Kansas to require all chickens in the state to be fitted with glasses, but his campaign was unsuccessful.

    There, that’s better. Good night, chickens!

  • 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!