Welcome, readers, to Owl Chatter’s 650th post! Yeah, you heard me — Six hundred and f*cking fifty. Who could have imagined when we started cranking out this nonsense that there’d be so much of it around everywhere? Special thanks, as always, to our loyal staff: Our intrepid photographer Phil; Georgie (Santos), whose sole job is to keep the fridge stocked with diet soda; and our stunning style and culture consultant, Ana. Owl Chatter could not function without their tiresome efforts. Oops — I mean tireless.
Happily, today’s puzzle was one of my favorites, with JAZZ hands up top, and boobies FEET below. And Old Father Knickerbocker favored us with a visit. Wonderful, all of it. According to the puzzle, Father KNICKERBOCKER is the “personification of New York City in old cartoons.” The NBA’s Knicks are named after him. And a beer! Jacob Ruppert’s beer — he owned the Yankees.
The HORSE’S MOUTH was the theme, revealed near the bottom, and the theme answers all played with the sounds a horse makes. So at 51A, the clue was “Bear who sings ‘I’m so rumbly in my tumbly’” for, of course, WINNIE THE POOH. See? — and a horse “whinnies.” At 26A, for “Vocal skeptics” the answer was NAYSAYERS — so we get “neigh.” And, apparently, horses “nicker.” That one’s from KNICKERBOCKER. “Nicker” was new to me so I checked with our buddy Miriam Webster. Yup, she okayed it. It means to neigh or whinny. D’oh!
But aside from the fun theme, some of the fill was a gas. At 69A the clue was “Blue parts of boobies,” but don’t get too excited fellas — the booby is a seabird. And it has incredibly bright blue FEET. Look at this guy (or gal). Hysterical.
My other fave was JAZZ hands, clued with “___ hands (razzle-dazzle display).” C’mon everybody – let’s see those hands flapping!
We noted that yesterday (11/11) was the birthday of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821). I bet you forgot to send a card, amirite? Well, Owl Chatter friend Riverdale Joe asked us whether that was his Old Style or New Style birth date. What on earth is he talking about?
Here’s the deal. At one point, mankind’s calendar committee realized that the correct figure for the number of days in a year is not 365.25 (365 days 6 hours) as assumed by the Julian calendar but just a smidge less (365.242 days). So a correction was made and countries switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar at various different times. The Gregorian calendar was implemented in Russia on February 14, 1918 by dropping the Julian dates of February 1 through 13, 1918 under a decree signed by Lenin. The decree required that the Julian date was to be written in parentheses after the Gregorian date for a while. Thus, Old Style (O.S.) and New Style (N.S.) dates.
So, to answer Joe’s question, November 11 is the man’s birthday in the New Style. The Old Style date was October 30. But don’t worry, Olga — this won’t be on the exam.
Sixty-three years ago this week Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 was published. That was in 1961. The reviews were mixed, but by 1963 it had become the best-selling book in the U.S. Several years before his death, Heller and a friend were attending an event in some hedge fund manager’s penthouse apartment in NY. Heller’s friend said, “You know, Joe. This fellow makes more money in one day than Catch-22 brought in over your lifetime.” Heller said, “Yeah — but I have one thing he’ll never have.” “What’s that?” the friend asked. And Heller said: “Enough.”
He came to speak at Brandeis when I was there. I went to hear him straight from studying a bit at the library, so I had my books with me. At the end, students went up to ask him to autograph Catch-22. Dammit! — I hadn’t even thought of that. And, me — an autograph collector. I got on line anyway and when it was my turn, I said I didn’t have a copy of Catch-22 with me — “but can you sign Plato’s Republic?” He chuckled and said “Sure.” It hasn’t survived my many moves since then, but, for a time, I had what was probably the only autographed copy of Plato’s Republic in the world.
Our Vermont friend Robert retired a few years ago after a distinguished legal career up there. He once told me he attended an event honoring a beloved trial attorney who was retiring and who was widely regarded as the best cross-examiner the state had ever seen. And he was going to speak on the art of cross-examination. After going on for about 30 minutes, he told the audience he was going to end by revealing his formula for success. All the lawyers in the audience were poised with pen over paper to jot it down. Then he said: “Keep it short, sit down, you probably fucked up.”
Today’s Gameplay column in the NYT by Sam Corbin was about that: not cross examination, but how a three-item list is often the most effective way of getting a message across. It’s a rhetorical device known as a tricolon. Corbin says she texted her friend Chandler Dean, who writes speeches for media personalities and politicians, to ask him whether he knew about the device. “Know it, love it, overuse it,” he texted back.
Dean explained it’s like a tiny story with a beginning, middle, and end. He noted that the most popular adage about the power of the tricolon was, itself, a tricolon: “Tell ’em what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell ’em what you said.”
Corbin says you need to consider the rhythm too — it should go up-up-down, like a dance in 3/4 time — and its effect is strongest when each item escalates in potency and length. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” wouldn’t be nearly as powerful if liberty had come third.
It all came up because today’s NYTXW was a tricolon of sorts. The theme’s revealer was TOM DICK AND HARRY (“Trio of average guys”). Then the three theme answers were: CARIBBEAN CRUISE (for TOM Cruise); BIG BAD WOLF (for DICK Wolf); and FREESTYLES (for HARRY Styles).
Dick Wolf, you probably know, produced Law and Order and other hit shows. He went to college at UPenn (Class of ’69).
Harry Styles is a popular British singer. He is heavily tattooed, the most prominent of which is a large butterfly. He also has a Green Bay Packers logo tattoo (not kidding).
His sexuality is sort of up in the air, and he has dated a bevy of knockouts, including our Tay for a while. Here’s one of them, actress/model Camille Rowe. Did he fall for those ocean eyes? How could he not?
Linda and I attended a concert yesterday in a church in Plainfield NJ performed by the NJ Intergenerational Orchestra (NJIO). True to its name, orchestra members run in age from elementary school to folks in their 80s. The place was packed and it was great. The soloist for the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto was 15-year-old Elizabeth Poppy Song, and, forgive me, readers, for resorting to technical music terminology, but she f*cking killed the damn thing. Like, in a good way. Phenomenal.
Ah, to be young!
Sometimes a student says “Thank you” after I answer a question. It’s not necessary, I tell them, but I also say I do believe the small courtesies are important. “It doesn’t cost a nickel to say please or thank you, and people will think better of you for it.” I ran into a student of mine years after she was in my class, and she told me that made an impression on her. You never know what will stick. Here’s Tay. (Love the outfit, girl!)
“Children hate me.”
So this carrot and celery stalk are walking down the street and they come to an intersection. The carrot stops at the red light, but the celery keeps going and gets hit by a car. He’s rushed to the hospital and the carrot rides along with him in the ambulance. He’s taken in for surgery and the carrot paces nervously in the waiting room. After what seems like forever, the surgeon comes out and walks up to the carrot. He says: Your friend is going to live, but he’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life.
Last, happy birthday to Jonathan Winters (1925) and Kurt Vonnegut (1922). Oh, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821). If I had to pick one to sit next to on a long train ride, it would be easy. In 1964, Jack Paar gave Winters a stick and told him to do something with it. Winters proceeded to act out a fisherman, violinist, lion tamer, canoeist, diplomat, bullfighter, flutist, psychiatric patient, British headmaster, and Bing Crosby playing golf. He made up characters based on people he knew growing up in Ohio, including Piggy Bladder, the football coach for the State Teachers’ Animal Husbandry Institute for the Blind. If you saw him perform, you’d understand why he was a great influence on Robin Williams and Jim Carrey.
Penultimate, of course, means next to last. A lot of people think it means last, because of that ultimate in there. Maybe they think the pen is a way of emphasizing the last — it’s really last! But, no, it means next to last: ninth in a list of ten. If it’s supposed to be a shortcut, it may not really be a shortcut. Next to last is three syllables and penultimate is four. Next to last is ten letters and penultimate eleven. The Car Talk guys used to be amused that the shortcut for World Wide Web: WWW, when spoken, is nine syllables compared to three. Whatever. I like that there is a special word for “next to last.”
And I was today years old when I learned that there’s a word for “next to next to last,” or third from the end. It’s antepenultimate. Eighth in a list of ten. I learned it from the puzzle today, but I won’t bore you with the details. Instead, I’ll bore you with the eclectic list of the folks who popped into the puzzle today: Kenneth BRANAGH, for his role in Oppenheimer. It held me up a bit because I tried to stick a U in it. TINA Turner, clued as “backed by the Ikettes.” The painter EL GRECO, young disciple of an old Titian. Jacques CHIRAC, former prez of France. PHIL: groundhog of renown. KOWALSKI, Brando’s role in Streetcar. COLMAN Domingo, Best Actor nominee for 2023’s Rustin. LUANN de Lesseps of the “Real Housewives” franchise. EDGAR LEE Masters. The clue for him was good: “Masters of the written word?” Here’s Luann.
At 35D, the clue was “‘Save the ___’ (modern conservation slogan),” and the answer was BEES. I think I’ve played this Laura Cantrell song before for us, but it’s so beautiful, it’s worth a reprise, IMO. I don’t know how you’re doing with your cholesterol levels, but this song is definitely good for your heart. It’s the penultimate song on her album Humming by the Flowered Vine.
My time is short now, I feel it coming I’ll see you darling in the morning light
Whoa, hey — did someone mention Stanley Kowalski? In this scene, Elaine has taken some painkillers for her back.
This poem by Jack Ridl is from today’s Writer’s Almanac and is called “The Heron.”
Whenever we noticed her standing in the stream, still as a branch in dead air, we would grab our binoculars, watch her watching, her eye fixed on the water slowly making its own way around stumps, over a boulder, under some leaves matted against a fallen log. She seemed to appear, stand, peer, then lift one leg, stretch it, let a foot quietly settle into the mud then pull up her other foot, settle it, and stare again, each step tendered, an ideogram at the end of a calligrapher’s brush. Every time she arrived, we watched until, as if she had suddenly heard a call in the sky, she would bend her knees, raise her wide wings, and lift into the welcome grace of the air, her legs extending back behind her, wings rising and falling elegant under the clouds: For more than a week now we have not seen her. We watch the sky, hoping to catch her great feathered cross moving above the trees.
A comment posted late yesterday weighed in on whether the third plague in Egypt was GNATS, as the puzzle posited, or lice. The Hebrew word is kinnim, which yesterday’s comment strongly maintained translates to lice. Here’s what commenter Sailor says:
“Old translations of ancient texts were often made on thin evidence, and current scholarly consensus has trended away from translating kinnim as lice. The English translation gnats is now much more common. Along the way, various translators and faith traditions have also used flies, sand flies, and mosquitos.
“But if this were a Jeopardy clue, the correct answer would definitely be lice because that’s the translation used in the King James Version, which they specify as their standard reference.”
Whatever it is, let’s move on — I’m starting to itch.
You history buffs may have known that the “length of William Henry Harrison’s presidency” was ONE MONTH, but it was news to me. Wha’ hoppin? He got sick and died is wha’ hoppin. He was 68 years old. At least it was a long month: March 4 to April 4 in 1841. Remember “Tippecanoe and Tyler too?” Well, Harrison was Old Tippecanoe (his nickname after his exploits in the Battle of Tippecanoe), and Tyler was his running mate who took office after Harrison died. Harrison was the 9th U.S. President.
Harrison met his wife Anna when he was 22, but when he asked her dad for permission to marry her, he said no. Don’t you hate when that happens? So they eloped when Dad was away on business. They had ten children, and one of their grandchildren was Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the U.S.
Here’s a photo of Harrison’s wife, Anna.
David Dibb asked his fellow members of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) for help. Here’s his post:
My father in law is trying to decipher this note left to him. His night heater in his lorry was not working and the engineer left him this note after working on it. We can’t fully decipher it to make any sense. Can anyone help?
Tony Clark: I read the ending as “no summer fruit.”
Tim Fardell: Davie used to unlock night heater elue to too many iogs OR never twit – covered for luncheon – NO flume & twit.
Sam Bessie Morgan: He fixed it. That’s all you need to know.
Paul Wain: It says “Take two paracetamol twice a day for two weeks. If you don’t feel any better come back and see me”
Larry Greenfield: Davie used to unlucky night neater else 10 too many ivy’s or heavier. Quit checkered der luncheon
Dave Wilmott: The night heater unit failed to start too many times, so the electronic control unit blocked it from working. The engineer used his diagnostic computer to clear the trouble codes and restore heater function. The engineer then tried the heater, which starts and runs correctly and has signed it off as No Fault Found. Heater will almost certainly fail to start after tomorrow’s shift when it’s needed.
The Jets were favored to beat ‘Zona today by 1.5 points. As it happens, they lost a real nail-biter 31-6. Ouch! D’oh!
Here’s the only shot Phil sent us before blacking out.
A buddy from my life drawing class brought me a small jar of fig marmalade made from the bountiful fig tree in his yard. At the end of class I placed the jar in my portfolio and headed to the Museum of Modern Art for back-to-back screenings of the first two Godfather films.
The person checking bags at the entrance asked me what was in the jar.
Figs, I said.
After checking at the desk, he told me that I couldn’t bring the jar inside and that they couldn’t hold it for me.
“It was a gift,” I pleaded. “I can’t throw it away.”
As I stood there trying to figure out what to do, a man behind me in the line spoke up. “You have to find a place to hide it and pick it up later,” he said.
I went outside. Looking across the street, I saw several large planters holding good-sized bushes in front of a hotel entrance. I chose one that was away from any traffic. While pretending to make a call, I placed the jar well out of sight behind the bush.
When the movies were over hours later, I returned to find the jar untouched. I picked it up and headed home.
That story reminded me of the time I stayed in the city after class to attend a lecture at a synagogue in the evening. I treated myself to dinner at Dallas BBQ near Hunter, ordering the pulled-pork burger with cole slaw, a baked potato, and a beer. I only ate half of it and asked the waiter to box up what I didn’t finish, and I placed the box in my backpack.
As I approached the synagogue, I noticed that guards were inspecting bags on the way in. I envisioned the following scene.
Guard: Good evening, Sir. Please open your backpack.
Me: Sure, and good evening to you too.
Guard: What’s in that box?
Me: Half of a pulled-pork burger. It was pretty big and I couldn’t finish it.
Guard: Pork is not kosher, sir.
Me: Yes, I know. My parents kept a kosher home when I was young, but my wife and I don’t. Many Jews don’t keep kosher.
Guard: I am aware of that, but this is a synagogue. Would it have killed you to order the brisket burger?
Me: Sometimes the brisket is a little leathery. I didn’t want to take the chance.
Guard: So you bring pork to a synagogue?
Me: Well, that’s true, but you know what Jews believe about not wasting food. It’s sorta the Eleventh Commandment.
Guard: Of course. Okay, go in, but keep it in your bag, and if anyone asks, I wasn’t the guard who let you in.
Me: Thanks! Will do!
As Owl Chatter readers know, I have a baseball autograph collection that I am proud of, and some baseball cards. My brother, alav hashalom, collected Israeli stamps. He was born in 1937, so he started when Israel first came into existence in 1948, and had some rare and valuable stamps. I don’t collect stamps. But I love how some of them look, or whom they honor, so I buy a sheet or two from time to time just to stick in my desk drawer. A nice one honoring RBG was issued this year, and Yogi. I checked the website yesterday and was very pleased to see this nice stamp design, honoring healthcare professionals, including RNs like my Caitlin.
They also had this neat one for Alex Trebek:
In his comments on the puzzle today, for some reason I can’t divine, commenter Son Volt shared this song (by the band Son Volt!) with us, and it’s so pretty I’m shamelessly stealing it for OC.
At 24A, the clue was “Place for a mind or a ball,” and the answer was GUTTER. It could also have been clued with “Louis Farrakhan adjective for the Jewish religion.” Remember him? LF is still alive at 91, but, thankfully, seems to have stayed out of the news for some time. He has repeatedly claimed he never referred to Judaism as a gutter religion. Yeah, whatever.
Hey Jude (OC math dept) — the puzzle had two serious math clues. First, at 6D, “sin/cos” was TAN, for tangent. All gibberish to me. And, even better, at 41A, the clue was “Like i, say.” I didn’t even realize it was a math clue — that’s how far gone I am. The answer was NONREAL, and it was explained that i is a symbol for an imaginary (i.e., unreal) number representing the square root of -1.
One commenter noted: Somewhat ironically, REAL numbers are no more or less imaginary than any other numbers.
Ouch, my brain is starting to hurt. I’m just going to tiptoe away from this, throw in a sexy math teacher and a separator bar, and move on.
Having a rough day? Maybe you took a ride on the STRUGGLE BUS. That expression was new to me. The clue for it at 10D was “Something the floundering are said to be on.” But you can take it, right? At 14A the clue was “Give me your worst!,” and the answer was I CAN TAKE IT. Sure you can!
At 54A, the clue was “Very short story?” and the answer was CRAWL SPACE. (Get it?) And at 47A, “Accomplish with precision” was DOTOAT. What? DOT OAT? No, silly — it’s DO TO A T.
Two great sports figures visited the grid: Remember Ed “Too Tall” Jones? Best nickname ever. His clue was “Moniker for 6’9″ N.F.L. star Ed Jones.” And ICHIRO, clued with “Mononymous baseball star who played 28 seasons professionally.” That includes his time in Japan, of course.
I was watching a game idly one day, having just flipped on the TV randomly. There was a runner or two on base and the batter laced a single to right. Well, you know baseball — suddenly, from nothing happening, everything was happening — runners running, fielders racing into position, the pitcher running to back up somewhere. And then, like a missile, the ball came tearing in on a low line straight from right field into the third baseman’s mitt. It was from Ichiro out in right. The man had an unbelievable arm.
Here’s his pretty wife Yumiko:
Speaking of mononyms, Anony Mouse shared this with us today:
One fun fact about Pelé is that his mononym is not a component of his legal name. He was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento. Per Wikipedia: “In his autobiography released in 2006, Pelé stated he had no idea what the name means, nor did his old friends, and the word has no meaning in Portuguese.”
BTW, someone who is monogamonymous only sleeps with people who have one name.
The clue at 48D was “Creatures in God’s third plague in Exodus,” and the answer was GNATS. But Commenter BMA tells us that answer is gnot correct! As he or she put it:
Having sat through (and sometimes even enjoyed) dozens of Passover Seders, I know that the third plague was LICE. So many times, I have spilled a drop of wine for “kinim”—the Hebrew word for LICE. There are no GNATS among any of the ten plagues. That basic and so readily verifiable error totally ruined the puzzle for me.
[Yikes — chillax BMA — it’s just a puzzle.]
I posted the following:
In the spirit of Ogden Nash:
Lice Aren’t nice.
Wow. It just occurred to me that would be a great idea for a postage stamp design: The ten plagues, to be issued around Passover. The math works out perfectly for a 20-stamp sheet. I’m going to suggest it to the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee. (Info on how to do it is on the USPS website.)
This poem is called “Greenwich.” It’s by Kirsten Dierking and was in The Writer’s Almanac today.
At the naval museum I look at Nelson’s uniform, the one he was wearing the day he was killed, and the bullet’s damage to the blue coat is surprisingly slight.
Just before he died he said thank God I have done my duty. He must have been a little afraid of not being able to do the heroic work required of him.
It’s a lovely day in late March, the sun and daffodils are out. We walk to the observatory, straddle the prime meridian, try to feel our blood flowing back and forth between hemispheres.
There’s a lot of laughter, young people clowning around, adults striking silly poses for photographs. And why not? One day, won’t we all have to be brave?
On this date 35 years ago (1989), the Berlin Wall came down. Six weeks later, on Xmas morning, Leonard Bernstein conducted a performance in Berlin of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with the words “Ode to Joy” changed to “Ode to Freedom.” His orchestra and choir were made up of citizens from East and West Germany, France, the Soviet Union, England, and the U.S. It was the first Christmas in decades that East and West Berliners could cross freely between the sides of the city. East Berliners enjoyed sausages from street vendors in West Berlin.
Stacey Elverstone, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) asks:
How many men in here write in capitals and why? Was talking to the ex husband about it as he does, the post man and delivery drivers (I do know they r male lol) our 5 yr is learning to read and gets confused with capitals and cant always work out Dad’s writing Never seen women do it, unless u wanna prove me wrong lol
Most of the comments were from men who said they do write in all caps because their handwriting is so bad only caps can be understood.
John Castleford asked: SHOULD IT NOT BE “UPPER CASE”? Capitals are cities. Incidentally, uppercase and lowercase originally referred to the location in the printer’s case said letters were kept.
[Wow. Neat.]
Shaun Gisbey: When I’m working, I cut out capitals from newspapers and magazines and stick them on a card. Sometimes I enclose a finger too. Hope this helps.
Zita Stirbys: I suppose your work is writing threats? Or ransom notes?
Shaun: Damn! I thought I’d covered my tracks better.
Here’s Shaun: Cheers!
I added the following: I write everything upside down. Unless I’m in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s just easier.
More than enough nonsense for today. See you tomorrow, Chatterheads. Thanks for stopping by.
The clue at 1D today was Midwest city known as the “Capital of Route 66” and it’s TULSA. Who knew? Remember The Byrds?
JL Cauvin is my favorite Trump impersonator. Does that give him special insight? Who knows? Here’s his take on you know what.
Jason Kelce, Travis’s brother, was at the Penn State game last Saturday as an analyst for ESPN and was accosted by a homophobic fan. The fan said: “Kelce, how does it feel that your brother is a fa**ot for dating Taylor Swift?”
First, as to the premise, will someone please explain to me — like I’m a three-year old — how sleeping with one of the most beautiful women on the planet makes an NFL superstar gay? What am I missing?
But let’s put that aside. Jason “reasoned” with the young man by grabbing his phone out of his hands, smashing it to the ground, and asking him “Who’s the fa**ot now?” As you may recall, Jason was an offensive lineman for the Eagles for twelve years. In a collision with a truck, I would not put my money on the truck. That fellow is lucky he can still move his limbs.
Jason later apologized for, and feels terrible about, his use of the slur, even in a “flinging it back in your face” context. “Listen, I’m not happy with anything that took place. I’m not proud of it. In a heated moment, I chose to greet hate with hate, and I just don’t think that’s a productive thing. I really don’t. I don’t think it leads to discourse and is the right way to go about things.”
He also explained that he’s always been taught to live life “by the Golden Rule,” adding, “I try to treat people with common decency and respect, and I’m gonna keep doing that moving forward, even though I fell short this week. I’m gonna do that moving forward and continue to do that.”
Taylor and Travis remain firmly entrenched in Jason’s corner, as are we here at OC. The guy’s just a big teddy bear without a hateful bone in his body.
Philly! What do you have on Tay for this story?
Yowch. We can use that. Thanks.
At 69A, the clue was “Shaky start?” and the answer was SEISMO. It’s a prefix like for a seismograph, which measures tremors. Get it? A prefix (start) that is “shaky.” Rex was having none of it:
SEISMO is perhaps the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in the grid. I exaggerate, but not by much. Certainly the stupidest-looking standalone prefix. SEISMO sounds like the name of the mascot at a seismology convention. Imagine someone running around in a furry cartoonish Richter scale costume, trying to get the seismologists hyped about their jobs—that’s SEISMO! “Oh, SEISMO, you lovable scamp! You make my knees shake and my heart tremble!”
At 41D the clue was “One might require a higher prescription,” and the answer was BAD EYE.
Commenter Anony Mouse 1 asked: Can someone please explain to me what “Bad Eye” is? I’m stumped.
Anony Mouse 2 replied: It’s just the one of your two eyes that has worse vision than the other.
I felt compelled to chime in with this clarification: It’s not related to the Evil Eye which must be respected and feared.
Here is a hamsa — a charm that will ward off the evil eye.
As a goodwill gesture towards the incoming administration, Owl Chatter proposes that outgoing Pres. Biden preemptively pardon all of the Jan. 6 patriots that have been wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. We’re also having George look into which local sport stadiums and arenas can best serve as temporary alien deportation centers until permanent concentration camps are up and running. Met Life Stadium, where both the Jets and Giants play, should be available at the close of the regular season (before inauguration). Neither team has a snowball’s chance in Amarillo of making it into the playoffs. (Might wanna get that flag out of there.)
Bitter? Moi?
Russ Morgan posted this photo in the Dull Men’s Club (UK) today with the note: Now I know how it feels to win the lottery.
It made no sense to me until I read the comments. Apparently, it is impossible to open these packages without implements and a struggle.
James Barton: Nope. Not possible.
Nigel Cad: What sorcery is this?
Dave Budd: Don’t overthink it. Just wallow in your glory.
Isabelle Shelley: That is as rare as rocking horse shit.
Russ Morgan later noted: I didn’t eat any, I’m still in shock from being able to open it without a chainsaw.
Here’s Russ:
Godric Wilkie posted a note to the band The Clash that must have been percolating for him for 42 years.
The Clash – and I’m addressing you collectively – in your 1982 hit you delivered, with great gusto, it must be said, the famous interrogative:
“Should I stay, or should I go now?
Should I stay, or should I go now?
If I go, there will be trouble
And if I stay, it will be double
So come on and let me know:
I believe I may have answers to your conundrum:
If it is the intention of all concerned to reduce trouble to a minimum, then by your lights you should go since to remain will double the quantity of trouble, defeating the object of the exercise.
If, on the other hand, one enjoys a bit of trouble, then surely, the recommendation must be that you remain.
Comments:
Michael Clare: This indecision’s bugging me.
Paul Moorhouse: I find that if I go, no one really cares.
Debbie Mackay: See ya.
Martin Lacey: They also sang ‘let fury have the hour, anger can be power’ so I’m guessing they probably would have stuck around.
When Sarah, Sam, and I saw James Taylor at Tanglewood some years ago he told a story about performing in Jamaica after not being there for decades. He was wearing a cap and at one point removed it to reveal his entirely bald head. And a man in the front row gasped and said “Wha hoppin mon?”
Well, it’s time to hunker down, readers, and brace for a long, dark four years. We will need our puzzles and our poets, and our ballgames and our art more than ever now. Here at Owl Chatter, Phil, George, the owls and I are determined not to give in to despair. (Well at least Phil, I, and the owls are determined. George has that prison thing to worry about.) And Ana, our style and culture consultant: It’s impossible to despair whenever she pops by.
Here’s a poem called “The Nuthatch” from today’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s by Kirsten Dierking and strikes just the right tone.
What if a sleek, grey-feathered nuthatch flew from a tree and offered to perch on your left shoulder, accompany you
on all your journeys? Nowhere fancy, just the brief everyday walks, from garage to house, from house to mailbox, from the store to your car in the parking lot.
The slight pressure of small claws clasping your skin, a flutter of wings every so often at the edge of vision.
And what if he never asked you to be anything? Wouldn’t that be so much nicer than being alone? So much easier than trying to think of something to say?
And whoa! — look who dropped by to make sure we’re all okay! We just mentioned you, Armas. Georgie’s back, — hope you can stay a while. Grab something from the fridge, and there’s some Toblerone, below.
Today’s puzzle featured some cool wordplay. The theme was the LONG AND SHORT OF IT. And each theme answer contained two answers — one long, and one short, built in to the long! So, e.g., at 53A for the clue “Bird with a distinctive call,” the answers were meadowlark and owl: meadOWLark. At 29A, “Band in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame” was both Black Sabbath and Abba: BlacksABBAth.
I was flummoxed at 67D: “Midwesterner’s embarrassed interjection.” Ever hear of OPE? For me, nope. Here’s what I found on it from Chicago Magazine: This magical, monosyllabic exclamation applies to a whole slew of circumstances: Accidentally pulling on a push door; trying to flag down a waiter; realizing you were served the wrong dish; hearing a mildly juicy piece of gossip; realizing a car is coming when you’re about to cross the street; thanking someone for opening a door for you; feeling the first drops of rain. “Ope!” works for all of ‘em. It’s a way to announce your presence in the most passive, non-intrusive way possible.
I was also at a loss at 11D: “Actress Tracee ___ Ross of “American Fiction.” Turns out it’s Tracee ELLIS Ross, and, get this — she’s Diana Ross’s daughter. Her last name is actually Silberstein, after her dad, Robert Ellis Silberstein, her mom’s music business manager. Tracee is 45 and proudly unmarried and childless. Does she have her mom’s eyes? I think so.
When the kids were little and I had to scramble to come up with 8 days of gifts for Chanukah (Linda was in charge of Xmas), I would give them large bars of Toblerone to cover one of the days. No complaints.
It’s named in part for Theodore Tobler, part-owner of the chocolate factory that produced it, and it was he who came up with the distinctive triangular shape, believed to have been inspired by the Matterhorn. But maybe not: Tobler’s sons say the shape originates from a pyramid shape that dancers at the Folies Bergere created as the finale of a show that Tobler saw. FWIW, there is a picture of the Matterhorn on the package.
Toblerone was the first patented milk chocolate bar. Albert Einstein was working as a clerk in the patent office when the application was filed and might have processed it. Medical records show that Einstein developed a case of acne at the time. [No they don’t.]
The distinct pyramidal shape of the bar lent its name to the “Toblerone line,” a series of anti-tank emplacements from WWII, prevalent in Switzerland’s border areas.
The interior of the Tobler factory in Switzerland was where the title sequence of Willy Wonka was filmed. I mention all of this because the clue for ALP today was “Inspiration for Toblerone’s shape.”
Oy, I’m tired from sleeping through meetings all day at school. Glad I’m retiring. See you next time!
Joey Jay signed a contract with the Braves (Milwaukee) in June of 1953 for about $250,000 in today’s money plus a $50K bonus. He was only 17. He was the first ever little leaguer to make it to the majors. It’s not clear if he had already grown into his 6′ 4″, 230 lb frame yet, but he was big. His obit in the NYT today says: “Jay quickly won himself a reputation as an eater and sleeper of championship caliber. He seldom was seen awake without a candy bar or a soft drink, often with both. He would eat in the bullpen during ball games.” Gotta love it, no?
He pitched seven shutout innings in his first start when he was just 18. But his early years in the majors with Milwaukee were “pretty dreadful.” “I fitted in nowhere. No one was deliberately unkind to me. I was just ignored and felt like the batboy.” He was traded to Cincy before the ’61 season and blossomed, going 21-10. Cincy won the pennant that year, but lost the WS to the Yankees in five games. But get this — Jay won the only game the Reds won. He won 21 games again in ’62 and finished his career at 99-91 with a 3.77 ERA.
When he retired, he really retired. “I don’t live in the past, like most ballplayers. I don’t wear my World Series rings; my mother has my scrapbooks, and if someone offered me a baseball job, I’d turn it down in a minute. When I made the break, it was clean and forever. It’s infantile to keep thinking about the game. It gets you nowhere. Most ex-ballplayers keep on living in some destructive fantasy world. Not me. I’m happier than ever since I left. And do me a favor. Don’t mention where I live.”
OK, Mr. Grumpy-pants. Jay is survived by his wife Lois, five kids, and a bunch of grandkids and great-grandkids, who are all pretty good eaters too, I’d bet.
Rest in peace, Buddy.
This poem is called “The Book of A.” It’s by Wesley McNair and was in today’s Writer’s Almanac.
Raised during the Depression, my stepfather responded to the economic opportunity of the 1950s by buying more and more cheap, secondhand things meant to transform his life. I got this for a hundred bucks, he said, patting the tractor that listed to one side, or the dump truck that started with a roar and wouldn’t dump. Spreading their parts out on his tarp, he’d make the strange whistle he said he learned from the birds for a whole morning before the silence set in. Who knows where he picked up the complete A-Z encyclopedias embossed in gold and published in 1921? They were going to take these to the dump, he said. Night after night he sat up, determined to understand everything under the sun worth knowing, and falling asleep over the book of A. Meanwhile, as the weeks, then the months passed, the moon went on rising over the junk machines in the tall grass of the only world my stepfather ever knew, and nobody wrote to classify his odd, beautiful whistle, formed, somehow, in the back of his throat when a new thing seemed just about to happen and no words he could say expressed his hope.
If I had to pick one poem to explain why I enjoy including poems in Owl Chatter, I could do worse than pick that one.
Up for picking a nit or two? In the puzzle on Sunday one of the answers was ALASKA PENINSULA. Rex said he thought it oughta be the Alaskan Peninsula (with an N) (as it appears in the NASA website, hrrrrumph). But he conceded the official name lacks the N, and then Commenter Natasha blew our minds with the following: According to the Alaska edition of the Associated Press Stylebook, “Alaskan” should only be used to describe a person who is from Alaska. If using an adjective to describe anything else related to Alaska you should use “Alaska.”
Well, I suppose that settles that!
How about this clue for the word THE: “Word following a comma in an alphabetized list.” Get it? In a list of books or movies in an index, say, if the first word in the title is “the,” e.g., The Bad and the Beautiful, it will be listed as Bad and the Beautiful, The.
It’s election night in the U. S. of A. The sentiment in Crossworld, at least as far as the commentariat in Rex Parker’s blog goes, is fully behind Harris.
Here’s a headline from The Onion: RFK Jr. Demands Secret Service Protection After Finding Cheez-It On Kitchen Floor.
Word is Trump promised to place RFKJ in charge of the nation’s health. Of course, we know what his promises are worth.
Hey, get this: Miriam Webster’s Word of the Day today is psephology. WTF, right? So it means “scientific study of elections.” You’re quite the card, MW.
The puzzle was not election-themed. It did have a nice visit by Aretha though. Let’s hear it girl! (It was supposed to be Carole King’s night.)
Both the Mets and Yankees may lose sluggers to free agency this winter: Pete Alonso and Juan Soto. Gnat fans will be forever grateful to JS for his brilliant 2019 season culminating in the great WS win against the hated Astros. In the regular season that year, Soto both drove in and scored 110 runs, and batted .282 with 34 dingers. In the WS against the ‘Stros, he hit 3 homers and drove in 7 runs, batting .333. That works out to 69.4 homers and 162 RBI over a full season. He has been quite clear that every team has an equal shot at landing him. He was asked if it has sunk in that he will be signing a contract for $500 million or more. He has a nice smile. He said: “It’s been on my mind for a while now.”
As for Alonso, the Mets are pulling out all the stops. They even have the Pope working on it. Hmmmm — I hope he doesn’t become a Cardinal. (Soto was a Padre.) Owl Chatter photographer Phil got this nice shot of Pete’s pretty wife Haley joking with the Pontiff about the Church’s child sex abuse scandal.
This poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac is by C.K. Williams. He was born on this date in 1936 in Newark NJ, and died nine years ago at age 78 in Hopewell NJ. His father introduced him to poetry. He loved to read to him from One Hundred and One Famous Poems. Williams went to HS in Maplewood, NJ, and college at Bucknell and UPenn. He taught creative writing at a bunch of schools, including Princeton University and Brooklyn College. It’s called “Droplets.”
Even when the rain falls relatively hard, only one leaf at a time of the little tree you planted on the balcony last year, then another leaf at its time, and one more, is set trembling by the constant droplets,
but the rain, the clouds flocked over the city, you at the piano inside, your hesitant music mingling with the din of the downpour, the gush of rivulets loosed from the eaves, the iron railings and flowing gutters,
all of it fuses in me with such intensity that I can’t help wondering why my longing to live forever has so abated that it hardly comes to me anymore, and never as it did, as regret for what I might not live to live,
but rather as a layering of instants like this, transient as the mist drawn from the rooftops, yet emphatic as any note of the nocturne you practice, and, the storm faltering, fading into its own radiant passing, you practice again.
Ever since I looked up a recipe for something online, I receive roughly ten recipes by email every day for various dishes. Some I make and are pretty good. I just received one from Recipe Rush and originally read the subject line as Human Chicken. Upon a second look, it says Hunan Chicken.
It’s not an easy life.
If you are going to be a humorist, you could do worse than be born in Oologah OK. That’s where Will Rogers was born on this date in 1879. He was the last of eight children and never graduated from HS. He once said: “There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I don’t even have to exaggerate.”
He had no idea.
One of the Commentariat on Rex’s blog told us he’s turning 60 today. So I posted this in his honor:
Happy 60th GJ. Here’s a joke about old men.
So old Abe Goldstein is 96 and he’s marrying young, curvaceous Cindy Markowitz who is 23. Abe’s at the doc for a checkup and the doc says, Mazel Tov on the marriage, Abe. Cindy seems like a wonderful girl. But, as your doctor, I must warn you that intense sexual activity places a heavy strain on the heart and in some cases can even cause death.
Abe leans back on the examining table, sighs, and says “Doc. I’ve lived a wonderful happy life. If she dies, she dies.”
The front page of the NYT sports section today assures us that women’s college basketball will not skip a beat this year, despite losing Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese to the pros. Paige Bueckers (UConn) and JuJu Watkins (USC) are poised to take their place. Paige is through-the-roof gorgeous and has already dipped her toesies into the fashion world in a front row seat at last year’s New York Fashion Week events. Here she is in her two guises. Case closed.
Paige is from Minnesota. She is a Christian and attributes her confidence and success on the basketball court to God. Yeah, whatever. She has voiced support for the Black Lives Matter movement, in part because her half-brother, Drew, whom she has described as her best friend, is biracial. She devoted her award speech at the ESPYs to highlighting the unfair lack of media attention paid to Black women athletes. So — droolingly gorgeous and a mensch.
TIL that “noggin, in slang” is NOB. Commenter Andy reminds us it appears in the second verse of Jack and Jill.
Up Jack got and off did trot As fast as he could caper To old Dame Dob, who patched his NOB With vinegar and brown paper.
OK, thanks.
Much ADO About Nothing was in the puzzle too. It inspired Rex to share this song with that title with us. It’s by Waxahatchee, Katie Crutchfield’s band.
We’ll let Katie’s pretty voice send us off today. Thanks for popping in!
If you’ve seen the 2003 film Station Agent, with Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Cannavale, and Michelle Williams, you should recall the great scene in which Finn and Joey drive Joey’s food truck alongside a moving train, videotaping it. Finn was a train buff, and train chasing is a thing. It is a joyous scene in a wonderful film, and when Joey exclaims “We’re train chasing baby!” he speaks for us all.
I thought of it when I read Sam O’Brien’s post in the DMC (UK) today:
One of the Mrs and my many trips to Heathrow from Sheffield where we book a hotel room to plane spot. Just bought a new toy and must say I’m very impressed.
[OC note: Plane-spotting is a hobby consisting of observing and tracking aircraft, which is usually accompanied by photography. Besides monitoring aircraft, plane-spotters also record information regarding airports, air traffic control communications, airline routes, and more. Needless to say, these people are utterly insane but harmless.]
Here are some of the (72) comments on Sam’s post.
Mark Daniels: OK, you cannot just post a photo of your new telescope and tripod without sharing the details…
Sam: My apologies. How foolish of me. It’s the Nikon rubber-armoured scope with a Victiv NT70 tripod from Amazon.
Alex Boucher: Can I please ask which hotel that is?
Sam: Renaissance, bud. Bloody fantastic for spotting.
Alex: Awesome. Cheers.
Sam: Get the executive room/suite. Then you get access to the lounge with free food and booze.
Craig Harris: I’ve seen a few hotel set-ups with tripods, but not for this purpose.
Angela Stone: Tell me you watch BigJetTV!
Sam: Sure do. My 1-year-old loves it.
Mark Gerrard: How can anyone watch that idiot? He knows nothing about aircraft.
Mike King: Bit strong. He’s only 1!
Ray Lee: Ahh The Renaissance. Back in the day, when Concorde still flew, it would set all the car alarms off in the hotel carpark as it took off.
Wiki Dave: I remember, when I was a lad, we used to go on the roof of the Queen’s Building and tick them off in our Ian Allen books. Happy days and only cost the bus fare.
Adam Palfrey: This looks great. Amazing to do it as a couple!
Sam: It’s brill mate. Got a 10-year-old who usually comes and a 1-year-old, but they’re both at my mums so we can have some alone time.
Paul Sengupta: Just you two and the aeroplanes. How romantic! On a similar note, I once took a date to the top of Car Park Three to watch the Concorde take off. She was impressed.
Simon Parkes: Sir, I do believe you should be entered for the “lifetime dullness achievement award”.. this is pure dullness, I doff my cap to you.
Sam: Why, thank you good sir!
Dave Woodard: It’s posts like this that make me realise I’m still a long, long way from reaching the upper echelon of DMC posters…I literally bow to you sir.
Another brilliant puzzle today, IMWO. It’s by Sid Sivakumar, whom I think I saw at the tournament I entered last summer in NYC. Seemed like a nice guy. He’s an MD/PhD student at Washington U in St. Louis.
The puzzle theme was “pay raise.” So in the theme answers various terms for money were lodged in the answers with a letter in each one jumping, or “rising,” into the word in the line above it. This happened seven times. Then — as the final kicker — the seven letters that were jumped over, when read in order, spell PAYBUMP. I am so impressed when the wordplay works on different levels at the same time.
So, e.g., at 39A the clue was “Zoë Kravitz, to Marisa Tomei,” and the answer was GOD[DAUGH]TER. The five letters in the brackets spell DOUGH, except the O appeared in the space above the A, and the A was part of PAYBUMP. Have I confused you? Imagine how my students feel. (Chillax, this won’t be on the test.)
Anyway, did somebody say Marisa Tomei? Hey, Girl! — it’s been too long — how ya been? Grab a Diet Shasta — George is back — the fridge is full. You vote yet? Sit, if that dress will let you.
And here’s goddaughter Zozo. Another beauty. We’re here in the back, Zo! Grab a Fresca and join us. Hey, readers, did you know Zoe’s folks are Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz, both of whom are half Jewish. The math is too hard for me (Hi Judy!), but she identifies as Jewish (albeit secular) — so let’s claim her! Shalom, Babe!
It was our first concert of the season and the NJ Symphony was in fine form, as usual. The showpiece was Rimsky-Schmimsky’s Scheherazade, widely regarded as one of the most difficult symphonic pieces to spell. And a piano concerto by Moe Zart was a terrific opener: #17, with Israeli-born Inon Barnatan at the keyboard. Outstanding. The average age of the audience for the Sunday afternoon series is about 95, so I’m sure he would have gotten a standing ovation if the audience had been able to get up. Instead you had the entire concert hall going “Oy, Yetta, help me.”
The applause at the end was so strong that Barnatan sat back down for an encore. I thought he said he had to go work at a car lot after the concert, but Linda said I misheard him — he said he was playing something by Scarlatti.
This is something else, but you’ll get a taste, if you’ve got 2:12.
When Aaron Judge dropped a routine fly ball in the fifth inning of the last game of the World Series, it reminded me of another famous World Series dropped fly from back in 1966. The Dodgers were involved again, but this time on the losing end against Baltimore. A classic pitching duel pitted Koufax against Jim Palmer in Game 2, and it was scoreless in the fifth inning.
Willie Davis was in center field for LA and there were few glovemen better. He won the Gold Glove award in 1971, 72, and 73. And here’s some trivia: Davis was the first NL outfielder who threw left-handed to win it, and only the second in MLB history, the first being Vic Davalillo.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so in the Oriole fifth, Boog Powell led off with a single and Paul Blair lifted a fly to Davis in deep center. He circled under it, but lost it in the sun and it dropped. Merv Rettenmund was up next and lifted another fly to Davis, this time in shallow center. He seemed to have a bead on it. He then either signaled for it or indicated he lost it. It hit his glove and dropped. He then overthrew the third baseman and was charged with another error — a total of three in the inning. He disputed the rulings on the two drops, asking how he could catch something he couldn’t see.
The O’s swept the series in four games, with LA never once having the lead. In fact, they were shut out in Games 2, 3, and 4 (1-0 in Games 3 and 4). Ouch!
God bless the cheerleaders. At Jets games, they are really the only thing worth watching: They catch your eye and that’s pretty much the only thing that gets caught the whole game. They are called the flight crew. Here’s a pretty crew member.
Anyway, it was on this date in 1898 that cheerleading made its debut. It has a NJ heritage. Pep clubs had been around and were especially popular at Princeton where they led the crowd in “unified chanting” to motivate the football team. In 1884, Princeton alum Thomas Peebles moved to Minny and introduced the pep club to the U of Minny, where a “team yell” was even devised. But all of this cheering came from the stands.
Then, in 1898, things grew desperate. The team had lost three in a row and were playing their final game of the season. With the crowd cheering the team on from the stands, one of the “yell leaders,” Johnny Campbell, took the radical step of running out to the playing field with a megaphone. He faced the crowd, whipped them to a frenzy, and got much of the credit for Minny’s victory. Yay!
Absurdly, cheerleading was male-only until 1923, when the first female cheerleaders took the field. And the ladies only took over in the 1940s, when the male student body was depleted by World War II. Our photographer Phil sent in an inordinate number of shots for this assignment. He tells us he plans to marry this young woman as soon as the restraining order lapses. Good luck Philly! Jewish wedding, we hope? Does she know about the drinking and blackouts?
In the puzzle today at 37D, the clue was “Hanes brand once sold in ovoid packaging.” (5 letters) Got it? L’EGGS. Remember those?
Introduced in 1969, they were an immediate success. The egg packaging, the convenience, the celebrity endorsements all combined to make them the largest pantyhose brand in the US through the 1980s. Copycats arose. The Bic company entered the market with Fannyhose (not kidding), but it failed after a few years, costing Bic millions. For one thing, women complained they got ink all over their legs. [No they didn’t.]
But then everything changed. In the 1990s, office workers adopted casual dress styles, and stopped wearing pantyhose, especially the women. Sales declined steadily. The heyday of Leggs is well in the past now, though they remain big enough for an occasional appearance in the NYTXW, apparently.
Today’s award for best clue for a boring word goes to “Certain Thanksgiving dish.” (Four letters.) BOAT (Think gravy boat.) Here’s one that would make a great gift for someone you can do without.
A weird word: DERATS. At 55A “Cleans up like the Pied Piper” was DERATS. Remember this tune from 1966 kids? Crispian St. Peters?
The grid was lovely, with its clean symmetry and a minimal number of black squares. The latter was accomplished in part by having six answers that spanned the grid (15 letters): FEARLESS LEADERS, CLASSROOM ROSTER, INTIMATE DETAILS, ROTATE CLOCKWISE, CLASSICAL GUITAR, and my favorite: SLOTTED SPATULAS.
Commenter Lewis reminded us that this constructor, Blake Slonecker, takes great pains to structure his grids with care and finesse. Here’s a previous one of his in the NYT from 3/24/2023. I noticed he had ELABORATE DETAIL in that older one, foreshadowing today’s INTIMATE DETAILS.
If you wonder what he looks like, wonder no more. (Love the mug, BS.) Blake is a history prof at Heritage U in Washington (the state).
Martin Wreford-Bush of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted: I understand that Double Diamond beer is being re introduced. Why anyone would want to drink such a disgusting tasting brew again when there is a plethora of real ales, craft beers and international lagers available now, I’ve no idea. Do they expect us to drink from dimpled mugs as well?
Andy Spragg: Whaddya mean “as well?” All beer tastes better out of a proper dimpled glass.
Michael Beazley: When I was old enough to be accepted as a customer in my local, most of the locals had a pewter mug hanging behind the bar. I considered myself to be accepted when I was asked to provide my mug and given a hook to hang it on!
Steve Cook: A dimpled, handled mug is one of the best things to drink beer from, not least because the thick glass and handle keeps it at the right temperature – probably more important for craft beer than real ale. I wish they’d make a comeback, and I’ll use one for cans at home.
Jonathan Page: Those mugs… like drinking out of a flower pot.
Adrian Don: There’s only one reason to use them. Potential self defence. No-one gets up again after being cracked by one.
Alastair Warwick: A trendy pub round here (£6+ per pint trendy) serves every beer in dimpled handle glasses. Lager should be in a straight glass imo, while bitters and real ales can be in the mugs, but maybe that’s just me.
Andy Spragg: It isn’t.
Martin Wreford-Bush: let’s face it. There’s only one way to drink from a dimple mug. It has to be held by the handle at upper chest height, with other hand on your hip and your foot up on the bar rail or a stool. You should also be wearing a fine knit polo neck, and check slacks.
Rob Parritt: I hate those glasses, awkward to hold and easy to clang your teeth when you had a few.
Frank Thomas: First pint I ever had, at 16, was a pint of Double D. And while admittedly, it didn’t live up to its slogan of “Working Wonders,” at that age, it was like a prize-winning brew
Andrew Marshfield: As a teenager I loved asking the buxom barmaid if I could sample the DDs
Nicholas Kleemann: If I remember correctly DD does work wonders, but only if you’re constipated.
Andy Spragg: No, I think that was Bass, as in: Is the bottom falling out of your world? Drink Bass, and the world will fall out of your bottom.
Let’s leave it right there mate. [Burp!] See you tomorrow Chatterheads!
Never seen women do it, unless u wanna prove me wrong lol
The Wellington Files 