Readers — Owl Chatter is taking to the road for a few days, down to Virginny to hear Gillian Welch perform. Phil is also out, on “assignment,” with whatever floozie he has talked into taking him in. If you need to contact us while we’re away, George will be available at: [address] unknown, or [phone] disconnected. Back Monday!
Have a great weekend, everybody!
So the scuttlebutt is Trump is bailing on our man Hegseth to head the defense department in favor of boring Ron DeSantis. Oh, no! Please, readers, contact your senators immediately and voice your support for Owl Chatter fave Pete. I’ve already reached out to Cory Booker and will call our other one as soon as I find out who it is. (We have two, right?)
Calvin Trillin turned 89 today, kinahora. Happy Birthday CT! He’s one of my favorite writers — one of the few writers who, when I read his stuff I say “That’s it — that’s how I wish I could write.”
The only quote of his The Writer’s Almanac shared on the occasion is: “The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”
I remember most two things from his writings. One was on his late, and very beloved, wife Alice. I forget most of the details, but Alice was working with a group of children, one of whom was severely disabled. The kids were sitting in a circle and playing some game or singing songs, and the mom of the disabled girl asked Alice if she could pass her daughter a note, amidst all the goings on. Unable to resist, Alice stole a glance at it. The note said: “If all the little girls in the world were lined up and I got to choose one to be my own, I would choose you.” On her way to delivering it, Alice handed it to Calvin and said: “Quick. Read this. It’s the key to life.”
The second one was from a long piece he wrote in The New Yorker about his father. (It later came out as a book.) He said when his dad drove Calvin and a friend of his somewhere, he ran a contest of sorts. He said he invented a word that was pronounced yiff-niff, but that wasn’t how he spelled it. Whoever could figure out the “correct” spelling would win a new bicycle. Calvin himself had an inkling, but no one ever got it right. Then Calvin wrote: “And if you are thinking it was a trick on my father’s part and no correct spelling existed, let me just say that my father’s stance on honesty made the Boy Scout position on the matter seem wishy-washy.”
There was an unusual clue in the puzzle today for ALAMO. It was “[Blank] Drafthouse.” You hear of it? Alamo Drafthouse is a movie theater chain that serves meals in your (reclining) seat, and has the following policies:
Guests won’t be admitted to the theater once the movie has started (i.e. after the trailers and Alamo ad reel). Latecomers may exchange tickets for a later time or a ticket voucher for a future show of their choice.
We have a no-tolerance talking or texting policy. After one warning, disruptive guests will be kicked out of the theater without a refund.
Unaccompanied minors are not allowed in showings, except for members of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Victory Vanguard rewards program, which allows 15–17 year-olds to attend showings unattended after their application to the rewards program has been submitted and reviewed. The application involves demonstrating an understanding of the theater’s policies around talking, texting, arriving late, and basic tipping etiquette.
At 24A the clue was “What Monday meals might lack,” and the answer was MEAT. You hear about this? There’s a campaign to reduce meat consumption called Meatless Mondays. The moooooovement was started by a group of rare talking cows in Idaho.
At 16A, the clue for OPERA was “La Forza del Destino,” for one.
According to Wikipedia, La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny) acquired a reputation for being cursed, following some unfortunate incidents. In 1960 at the Met, the noted baritone Leonard Warren collapsed and died during a performance. The “curse” reportedly kept Pavarotti from ever performing the opera, and the tenor Franco Corelli used to follow small rituals during performances to avoid bad luck.
Personally, I make sure to wear my lucky socks whenever I attend a performance. Here’s the leading lady.
Headline in The Onion: Judge Delays Decision After Learning One Menendez Brother Always Lies, One Always Tells The Truth
For the Swifties among us, a reminder that it’s T’s birthday next week (12/13), so you’re going to want to get your cards and gifts in the mail pretty soon. You know T: she wants to hear from every one of you. George is heading out to the Post Office for us as we write.
Wonder what Travis has planned. Phil — he say anything?
Still hot, girl — 35 is nothing to worry about.
In a follow-up to yesterday’s bombshell discovery that the Mona Lisa was painted on a wooden panel, today we learn that Duchamp’s famous painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, was drawn on the side of his cousin Loretta.
Just got Frank Bruni’s newsletter. He says Trump’s cabinet will be “an embarrassment of wretches.”
From his “For the love of sentences” feature, Melissa Clark in the NYT was let down by the chef Thomas Keller’s restaurant Per Se: “Instead of Mr. Keller’s brilliant butter-poached lobster, we got two wee langoustines topped with a damp crust of grated brussels sprouts that promptly, with flawless comic timing, slid off like loose toupees.”
If, like me, you don’t know what a langoustine is, it’s a Norway lobster.
Hold on a sec — who’s this hottie? Alex who? Alex Consani?
Want a closer look? Who wouldn’t? (Phil!! Argggggh! Let her finish with the makeup!)
Consani is in the news because she was just named Model of the Year: the first time since 2016 the award didn’t go to a Toyota (just kidding: not that kind of model). Actually, though, she is a “first.” She’s the first transgender woman to be named Model of the Year. So — have at her, haters.
Hey — don’t look at us in that tone of voice, AC — Owl Chatter’s on your side.
See you tomorrow Chatterheads. Thanks for popping by.
Forgot to share my favorite clue from yesterday’s puzzle. It was at 44D: “Way of getting online that might sound like ‘beep beep beeHAW beeHAW beeeeeep SHRHRHRHRH’” Get it? Answer was DIAL UP.
The theme yesterday was EMPTY CALORIES, but not necessarily junk food. It was phonetic: “Empty” sounds like MT, so the theme answers were all two-word “M-T” foods like MINI TWIX, MOOSE TRACKS (the ice cream flavor); and MAPO TOFU (Yum!).
The last one was clued with: “Fictional burrito on ‘Parks and Recreation’ that ‘literally killed a guy last year.’” I didn’t see it, but the answer was MEAT TORNADO.
Rex hadn’t heard of Mini Twix. Regular Twix are so small I don’t see the point of minimizing them, but they do exist. It’s like travel-size floss. Is the regular size too cumbersome to pack?
Yesterday’s puzzle also had “Attorney General before Garland,” who was, of course, BARR. Yeccchh. Fittingly, he sat in the grid near EGO and ASS.
Here’s Randy Rainbow with a song from the good old days.
This song on the MT theme is by a Canadian singer Kathleen Edwards.
Okay, fasten your seat belts Chatterheads, I am about to blow your minds, except for maybe our art department (Hi Bob!) and a few others: At 26A yesterday the clue was “What the ‘Mona Lisa’ is painted on.” The answer was WOOD. It’s on wood? The Mona f*cking Lisa is on wood? How could I not know that? Solace: Rex didn’t either. It’s on a poplar wood panel. Sheesh.
Maybe if I spent less time searching the Web for Jets cheerleaders and more time on loftier pursuits, stuff like this wouldn’t happen. (Don’t worry, just kidding.)
So this old Jewish guy goes to the doctor. The doc says “Abe, you’re going to have to stop masturbating.” Abe says, “Why?,” and the doc says “So I can examine you.”
In today’s puzzle, the clue at 16A was “Dance with hand gestures that can represent ocean waves.” Pretty easy, right? — HULA.
She’s gone with the hula hula boys
And she don’t care about me
She’s gone with the hula hula boys
And she don’t care about me they’re singing
Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana
Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana
Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana
Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana
I didn’t have to come to Maui
To be treated like a jerk
How do you think I feel
When I see the bellboys smirk?
At 11D the clue was “What self-driving cars and spell check are meant to compensate for,” and the answer was HUMAN ERROR. Eli, Rex’s guest blogger today wrote: “At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, self-driving cars and AI are still human creations and therefore inherently error-prone. I love technology, but leaning into laziness and stupidity will doom us all.” Then he posted this to illustrate “grumpy old man.”
Okanaganer wrote: My great nephew’s fiance’s parents (whew) visited our cabin in September, arriving in a self-driving Tesla. He insists he did not even have to touch the steering wheel in the 2.5 hour drive, even going through multiple construction zones with single lanes marked off by traffic cones. I had thought the self driving idea was a fantasy.
It’s hard to imagine any of you Owl Chatter babes out there not running right out to pick up UConn star Paige “Buckets” Bueckers’ newly released player-exclusive Nike sneaks. A year ago, Paige joined an exclusive roster of college athletes to sign a NIL (“name, image, likeness”) partnership with Nike. And now she has become the first college athlete to design and launch her own player-exclusive colorway.
It retails for $190 at select shops, but under a special arrangement our George negotiated with Nike, if you mention “Owl Chatter” at the time of purchase the price will be adjusted to $225.
Wait, what?
The numbers on the sneaker represent the area codes for UConn and her hometown in Minny. And the colors are her favorite colors (vu den?). Needless to say, they look pretty hot on her, but what wouldn’t? (Phil! Where did you drag her for that shot? Some sort of basement? Don’t try anything stupid — she’ll break your ass in half. Seriously.)
Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana — and so the story is told.
Thanks for dropping in! See you tomorrow.
Today’s poem in The Writer’s Almanac is by our own Ted Kooser. What a treat. It’s called “Applesauce.”
I liked how the starry blue lid
of that saucepan lifted and puffed,
then settled back on a thin
hotpad of steam, and the way
her kitchen filled with the warm,
wet breath of apples, as if all
the apples were talking at once,
as if they’d come cold and sour
from chores in the orchard,
and were trying to shoulder in
close to the fire. She was too busy
to put in her two cents’ worth
talking to apples. Squeezing
her dentures with wrinkly lips,
she had to jingle and stack
the bright brass coins of the lids
and thoughtfully count out
the red rubber rings, then hold
each jar, to see if it was clean,
to a window that looked out
through her back yard into Iowa.
And with every third or fourth jar
she wiped steam from her glasses,
using the hem of her apron,
printed with tiny red sailboats
that dipped along with leaf-green
banners snapping, under puffs
of pale applesauce clouds
scented with cinnamon and cloves,
the only boats under sail
for at least two thousand miles.
I told you the Hegseth appointment is a gift that just keeps on giving. Gaetz looks like Mother Teresa next to this guy. This is from the newsletter of historian Heather Cox Richardson on reporting by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker.
Hegseth was forced to leave leadership positions at the advocacy groups Veterans for Freedom (VF) and Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) because of “financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.” Under his direction, huge debts were incurred by VF for inappropriate expenses; the group’s donors squeezed Hegseth out of his job and then shuttered the organization. He moved to CVA. [Tee hee — Next!]
A whistleblower for CVA reported that Hegseth was repeatedly so drunk at events that he had to be carried out, and that he once tried to join dancers on stage at a strip club to which he brought his work team. Hegseth and other members of his team divided the female staffers into “party girls” and “not party girls” and pursued them, leading to allegations of sexual assault. Another complaint said that at a bar in the early hours of May 29, 2015, Hegseth began to chant drunkenly: “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”
An email from one of the whistleblowers to Hegseth’s successor at CVA said that “[a]mong the staff, the disgust for Pete was pretty high.” The letter detailed Hegseth’s “history of alcohol abuse” and said he had “treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account—for partying, drinking, and using CVA events as little more than opportunities to ‘hook up’ with women on the road.”
By 2016, Hegseth was out at CVA [Next!] and joined Fox News as a contributor. It was during this period that he spoke at the California Federation of Republican Women’s convention, where he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman.
Whew — slow down buddy — it’s hard to keep up. Hey, speak of the devil — here are Pete and (current) wife Jen right now!
Welcome to Owl Chatter kids! Georgie!! Company!! Get Pete a couple of cold Iron City Lights. Jen — what’ll it be? Diet Coke? Ever have Shasta? Clear that crap off the sofa — we were just talking about you. How are the kids?
A gritter in England is a truck that spreads grit or salt when the roads get icy. Martin Goodhew posted the following for the Dull Men’s Club (UK), with the photo:
I can at least console myself that I didn’t spend any time at all over the last 12 months knitting a Christmas sweater for a gritter lorry.
Paul Hare: I was once commissioned to photograph gritting crews and lorries in North London. Their role often required time away from family sleeping on camp beds at the depot overnight on standby.. awaiting weather forecasts, frustration of being stood down, regular verbal abuse from car drivers when on duty. They were all incredibly dedicated to and passionate about their role to keep drivers safe over winter..and as result of spending weeks with them witnessing this.. I totally get the knitted contribution!
Sandra Davies: I love the names of our gritters in Shropshire: Snow Be Gone Kenobi, Gritter Thunberg, Gritty Gritty Bang Bang, Grit the Road Jack, Usain Salt.. There’s also Slush the Magic Wagon, Snow Patrol, Spreddie Flintoff and David Plowie.
[David Plowie! — took me a sec to get that one.]
Alan Davis of the club just wanted to share some good feelings and a nice photo:
I’m enjoying a quiet lovely pint of homebrew. From grain and hops, no tins involved. Happy days.
Too lovely. Can’t top it. See you tomorrow!
Mazel Tov to Ian Kinsler on his appearance for the first time on baseball’s Hall of Fame ballot. He’ll almost certainly fall short, but it’s a very nice honor. He’s Jewish and is listed in Wikipedia as “American-Israeli” because he made aliyah in 2020, i.e., he emigrated to Israel and became an Israeli citizen.
Ian played eight seasons for Texas and four for Detroit, was an all-star four times, and won two Gold Gloves at 2B. He batted .269 and had 1,999 hits (d’oh!). I was surprised to see he hit 257 home runs, for three years hitting 28, 30, and 31. Good power for a little guy. In 2014, his first year with Detroit, he led the majors with 726 plate appearances and 684 at bats. The man showed up for work.
He was a gonif, Hebrew for thief. He is the all-time stolen base leader for Jewish players with 243. Kevin Youkilis and he were friends. Kevin is also Jewish and was an infielder, mostly with Boston. Kinsler said whenever he met him on the bases during a game, Youk would make some Jewish reference, like “Happy Passover.”
Kinsler finished his career with the last-place Padres in 2019. His very last game found him, of all places, on the mound. The Pods were down 10-2 and called on Kinsler to mop up the ninth inning. He hadn’t pitched since Pony League. He hit a batter and gave up a hit, but then got a double play, walked two, and got the last batter to line out. So he is in the record books with an ERA of 0.00. He said his dad made him choose between pitching and being a position player when he was 13 and he chose the latter. “Maybe I missed my calling.” When he came up to bat in the bottom of that inning — his last at-bat — he homered.
Here he is, with the whole mishpocha, at his induction into the Texas Rangers HOF.
Kilroy was here. You know about that from WWII? GIs were finding it and putting it everywhere they went during the war. Here’s what it looks like:
The origin is most often credited to James J. Kilroy, a shipyard inspector during the war. He chalked the words on bulkheads to show that he had been there and inspected the riveting in the newly constructed ship. As a joke, troops began placing the graffiti wherever they (the US forces) landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived. It became a source of comfort when found by troops. It was even planted in Stalin’s private bathroom during the Potsdam Conference (and it freaked the f*cker out).
It was so important a phenomenon that it’s part of the WWII Memorial in Washington DC. You can find it inscribed in two places (if you know where to look). I learned about it from today’s puzzle in the New Yorker. Joe Heller was in it too — clued with the play he wrote, “We Bombed in New Haven.”
The NYT puzzle today had a simple but nicely executed theme: a vowel ladder. The five theme answers all started with P[blank]SS and the blanks were filled in by AEIOU. So they were PASSINGFAD, PESSIMISTIC, PISSEDOFF, POSSIBILITY, and PUSSYFOOTS. The first and last (both ten letters) were placed symmetrically with each other, as were the second and fourth (both eleven letters). PISSED OFF was centered. So graceful. Symmetry is required by the NYT.
The constructor was concerned whether “pissed off” would be acceptable, but they’ve been tossing so many “asses” in lately, it’s clear The Times has been a changin’. A smattering of the Commentariat was miffed.
We turned one clue/answer over to our Dirty Old Man Dept for them to drool over: at 11D, for the clue “Height of fashion” the answer was HEMLINE. We sent Phil out on the assignment with the proviso that he had to keep it tasteful for once. Nothing too hot. Thank God he didn’t listen.
From The Onion: Study: Overuse Of Hair Detangler Giving Rise To Product-Resistant Supertangles
Getting tired. See you next time.
Once every so often, a figure emerges onto the scene who is perfect for Owl Chatter, our blog devoted entirely to nonsense. These days, I wake up each morning, clutch on to both sides of the bed, and thank God for Peter Hegseth.
The NYT released an email from his own mom calling him despicable and abusive in his treatment of women. She accused him of “lying, cheating, sleeping around and using women for his own power and ego.” “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say…get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Pete’s mom wrote.
His second marriage broke down after he got a co-worker pregnant. And there was that silly rape charge brought against him in 2017. Pete said it was consensual. Consensual rape. Charges were not brought.
To their credit, Republicans are outraged. Oh, wait a minute — they are outraged at The Times for publishing it. Never mind.
Pete’s mom told The Times that she wrote the email at a turbulent time in the family’s private life and insisted her son was “a good father and husband.” Insisted!
Now, I ask you, readers — does this look like someone who could abuse women? Yeah, sort of, I guess.
With six minutes left in the third quarter of yesterday’s improbable 13-10 UMich victory over Ohio State, the Buckeyes completed a pass for six yards and a first down. How stifling was Michigan’s defense (on the road and against the #2 ranked team in the nation)? OSU did not get another first down for the remainder of the game. Yeah — you heard me — the last 21 minutes of play — zippo. Among others, Mason Graham had a really good game. Look at that punim! Go Blue!
Yesterday was the birthday of Mark Twain (1835). He said: “A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it.” I thought of that when I read this Tiny Love Story in today’s NYT by Mina Bressler.
My brother and I are sitting on beige pleather chairs in a beige waiting room. Actually, we are not sitting but pacing. Our mother is very sick. The hospital has rooms where people can cry or rage (at God, the doctors), but where we go to giggle. It bubbled up in me first, prompted by the hospital’s Thanksgiving turkey carving contest. “I bet the surgeons are really good at that,” I say. “Is it a contest for surgeons?” he asks. We start writing down everything we find funny on a notepad. Then we come to this room to laugh.
The puzzle was by John Lieb today, a high school math teacher who lives in Boston and whose daughter makes good cookies. It’s a great puzzle. I met John briefly when I entered the XW tournament he conducts annually in the Boston area a few summers ago (my first!). The snack set-up included cookies his daughter baked but he urged us to take only one each, since the supply was limited. Fair enough.
The puzzle featured an ice-skating rink in the center, brilliantly filled in with the answer ICE five times with five different clues, and with the downs clued phonetically, i.e., IIIII was the answer for “Positive votes” (ayes); CCCCC was the answer for “______ the day!” (seize); and EEEEE was the answer for “Comfort” (ease). A ZAMBONI (machine that resurfaces rinks) was sitting in the grid right outside the rink. If you completed the puzzle online, as I did, a little animation feature showed the zamboni entering the rink and resurfacing it. Very cute!
There was also a bunch of theme answers relating to ice rinks, one of which was SMOOTH OPERATOR, the Sade hit from 1984. I had heard the song of course, even under my rock I couldn’t miss it, but I knew nothing about Sade, not even that she is a woman. Her real name is Helen Folasade Adu and she is British, born in Nigeria on, get this — my birthday! She’s nine years younger than me (still pretty old: 65). She has a son, Izaac Theo Adu, and a stepson. Izaac is transgender and just this fall Sade and the Red Hot Organization’s TRANSA project released “Young Lion,” a song dedicated to him.
Another theme answer was FROZEN ASSETS. Egs wrote: What do you call extraterrestrials who sit for too long on an ice rink? FROZEN ASS ETS. He also noted: It’s about time we had a good puzzle based on ice resurfacing!
Did somebody say “Zamboni?” L. Desind shared this story, below, on Rex’s blog. I think it’s worthy of the Dull Men’s Club (UK), no?
In 1993, the “Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, Newly Revised and Updated” was published. My wife gave me one about 30 years ago. I then first opened it to check the spelling of “zamboni.” It was not there.
So, I wrote to the editor and explained that there was no entry for the first word I had looked up in my new 2,500 page Random House Unabridged Dictionary, which was a gift from my wife. I received a reply to the effect that if one looks a gift horse in the mouth there are bound to be a few cavities, which I suppose was clever, but not very responsive.
I wrote back, asking what was the reason for the lapse, pointing out that if it was because Zamboni was a brand name, there were plenty of brand names in the dictionary. He wrote back acknowledging that it was an oversight and that the word “Zamboni” would be appearing in various editions of the Random House dictionary family going forward.
However, I was not finished. It occurred to me that if “Zamboni” was a brand name, then there must be a generic term for a “Zamboni.” I learned that this term was an “ice resurfacer.” I again opened my new, 2,500 page unabridged dictionary and searched for “ice resurfacer.” It was not there.
For the third time, I wrote to this editor at Random House. I guess was a bit impertinent, but it annoyed me that there was this “thing” deployed in skating rinks and arenas all over the world and there was no reference to it in this enormous dictionary I owned. So I scolded him on the apparent failure of his dictionary to fulfill one of its chief functions–a “taxonomy of things.” [OC note: I had to look up “taxonomy” and don’t really understand the definition. Something to do with classification.]
He replied that if there was any evidence that “ice resurfacer” was in general use, then it could be an entry. I found dozens in minutes and sent some to him.
Soon thereafter, he advised that “ice resurfacer” and related terms that I had also pointed out were missing would be included in future editions of various Random House dictionaries. In fact, a few years later, my children bought me a paperback edition and circled “Zamboni” with an arrow pointing to the notation “look what you did.”
There’s more. A couple of years later, I was listening to a local radio station. A commercial came on for some Ford truck. The point of this commercial was that the truck was powerful and reliable, just like the ice resurfacing machines manufactured for years by the Zamboni family. It was truly an odd commercial, but, I realized what was going on.
The appearance of “Zamboni” in the dictionary likely freaked out their attorneys worried about the company losing its trademark to generic usage. So, they convinced Ford to help them out and produced a commercial that had, as its chief purpose, the broadcasting of a rather unsubtle notice to the world that “Zamboni” is not just a word, it is a brand.
BETTY RIZZO was in the puzzle. She’s a character from Grease (leader of the Pink Ladies). Vanessa Hudgens played her in the show.
At 75A, “Diving bird” was LOON. Here’s OC fave John Prine on the topic.
Our hapless Jets fell to 3-9 today, in typical fashion snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. This time they used timely penalties to hand the game over to Seattle. It’s okay. I’m still basking in Michigan’s historic upset win from yesterday. So we’re not going to let his get us down — are we, girls?
See you tomorrow, Chatterheads!
The embarrassment that is the Jets is taking a back seat to that of the Bears, if only briefly. Their flub in front of a national audience at the end of Thursday’s game against Detroit was a work of art. Dictionaries are already preparing their new editions to include a photo from the final play next to the definition of “screw-up.”
The Bears were down by only a field goal and were on the Lions’ 41-yard line with 32 seconds left and one time out. It’s a no brainer at this point: run a pass play to gain 5 yards or so for an easier field goal. Stop the clock by having the receiver run out of bounds or, if needed use the timeout. Then tie the game with a field goal. The only thing they had to do was hurry just a little bit — thirty-two seconds is a lot of “end-of-game-football time.” You hurry now and then, right? We’ve all hurried. But they didn’t. Precious seconds passed while they lined up sloppily at scrimmage, and then, insanely, seven or so more seconds passed before the QB called for the ball to be snapped. The coach could have stopped the clock by using the timeout but didn’t. There were less than ten seconds left when the ball was snapped. The pass sailed into the air helplessly and hit the ground, incomplete, with no time left. And the entire city of Chicago knows what it feels like to be a Jets fan week after week after week. The coach, who shall remain nameless here, is on suicide watch, and has already been fired. Ouch. And this pretty cheerleader’s work was all for naught.
What many of you probably don’t realize is that this loss comes just a few weeks after another last-second improbable Bears loss to a Hail Mary pass by Washington’s impressive rookie QB Jay Daniels. Our Phil was on assignment for that one and captured the reactions of Bears fans. It lasts about two min. Stick around to the very end.
I loved today’s puzzle, and not just because I was able to finish it. It was full of “chattiness.” E.g., at 11A the answer was HERE’S A THOUGHT, and right above it was SO WHAT? At 10D, the clue for a grid-spanner was “Breakup line.” I immediately filled in: “It’s not you, it’s me” but it was one letter short. Turned out to be: THIS ISN’T WORKING.
The clue for another grid-spanner was “Haughty self-important question,” and the answer was DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
Pabloinnh wrote:
“DOYOUKNOWWHOIAM is super obnoxious. My favorite reference to this came during a Red Sox game when announcer Jerry Remy was complaining about an imagined mistreatment by an underling of some sort, and fellow booth member Sean McDonough asked him ‘Don’t they know who you think you are?’”
Egs chimed in with: Haughty amnesiac walks into a bar. The bartender says “the usual?” Amnesiac replies DOYOUKNOWWHOIAM?
The clue at 1A was “Handle for a knife.” It’s HAFT, of course, but I confused it with HASP for a while. Commenter Lewis opined that it would have been a wonderful clue if the answer were MACK. (Think of handle as meaning “name.”)
At 1D, the clue was “At-home distraction,” and the answer was HEY BATTER BATTER. And, for the other meaning of “batter,” right next to it the clue was “End result of a starter,” and the answer was HOMEMADE BREAD (think sourdough starter).
Another nice pairing of long answers came near the bottom where the clue was “Fateful encounter,” for DATE WITH DESTINY. It was right above DELICATESSEN, so in case the date doesn’t go well, you can take solace in some corned beef on rye. Or sourdough.
At 29A the clue was “Cooks up, so to speak,” and the answer was IDEATES. Here’s Rex on it: “The only place I’ve ever seen anyone IDEATE is in crosswords. Seriously, a word that would not exist without the generous support of Big Crossword.” But commenter Anony Mouse shared this old IBM ad:
At 48A the clue was “Nearly every third baseman and shortstop in M.L.B. history.” Got it? The answer was RIGHTY. It’s awkward for a player who throws left-handed to field a grounder at third and have to waste a moment turning around to throw to first. So left-handed throwers just don’t play third base.
In Aug 2017, Anthony Rizzo was shifted to third base from first by the Cubs in the ninth inning of a game when they ran out of position players. It was the first time in over twenty years that a left-handed thrower played 3B anywhere in the major leagues and the first time since 1895 one had played for the Cubs, who were known as the Colts back then. Rizzo was only the seventh left-throwing third baseman in all of MLB since 1913, joining Mario Valdez, Don Mattingly, Terry Francona, Mike Squires, Charlie Grimm, and Hall of Famer George Sisler.
Remember this Cindy Lauper song? I always liked it.
It was a favorite song of Tommy Nasseri’s, Marcella’s brother. Tommy just vanished, like, mysteriously, in Doyle, CA, 25 years ago. Marcella figured he was dead and just hoped to recover his remains somehow someday. But when she saw a story in USA Today asking for help identifying a man found sitting on a curb in LA, it struck a chord. The man was unable to communicate. But the arched eyebrows, rounded nose, and deep-set eyes were Tommy’s, and fingerprints confirmed it. Marcella’s working on getting them reunited and raised $7,000 to help fund a medical transfer and items such as clothing and art supplies for him so he can draw. She also picked up a device that will allow him to listen to music Marcella remembered him liking. It included the Cyndi Lauper song, “Time After Time.”
“If you’re lost you can look and you will find me. Time after time.”
We end tonight with “Hail to the Victors,” the Michigan fight song. They were heavy underdogs against hated rival Ohio State today in Columbus — the spread was more than two TDs. I almost didn’t watch. The ‘Rines struggled all season and were only 6-5 and unranked, compared to the Buckeyes who were 10-1 and ranked #2 in the nation. But they held their own and then some for most of the first half, which ended 10-10. Things stayed tight through the third quarter. We were helped by two missed field goals and then made one of our own, late in the game. The final desperate attempt for OSU fizzled and it was over. Michigan 13, Ohio State 10. Sweet. See you tomorrow!
I’m thankful for my beautiful owls who mean so much to me. Here are Welly and Wilma, the owls behind Owl Chatter, getting a little sun on our front porch. (Special shout out to Jenny their very special friend and creator.)
Some holiday headlines from The Onion:
Man Getting High And Eating Taco Bell Thousands Of Miles Away From Family Having Best Thanksgiving Of Life
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Balloon Floats Away After Handlers Let Go To Check Their Phones
Dave Holmes of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted the following:
Went shopping for onions today. Decided that the 4kg net-bag was the best value, whilst removing said bag from the top shelf several onions fell out of a hole in the netting on to the floor. I picked up the fallen onions and pushed them back through the hole, I then checked the shelf for any other loose onions, which there were 3, I duly put them into my bag and then checked them out.
On my way home I started thinking, maybe I missed some escaped onions, or maybe I had added onions to my bag that had come out of another bag, potentially shop lifting. As soon as I got home I weighed my bag of onions to find it weighed 4053grams. Worried that I had unwittingly stolen an onion by mistake I weighed each onion in the bag individually. None of the single onions weighed 53grams, even the lightest onion weighed in excess of 53g so I concluded that I must have purchased the correct amount of onions and that the generous supplier must have rounded down to 4kg when packing the product. A worthwhile exercise.
Kevin Hitch: That story brought tears to my eyes.
Trevor Syrett: Bravo, peak dullness! Bringing this group back to its roots.
Neil Christie: How many onions do you need?
Rob Upham: 4kg? That’s shallot of onions.
Julia O’Connor: Maybe you picked wrong onions up from the floor and the total with other onions would have come to exactly 4kg.
But I replied to Julia: What’s a “wrong” onion? What “other” onions? By his account, he picked them all up.
OMG, this woman looks like an onion. How does that happen? Was her mom an onion?
Best clue in today’s puzzle: “Pitcher for the reds?” Six letters. No, it’s not gullet (for Don Gullet). The tipoff is the lower case R in reds: It’s CARAFE (reds here are red wines). (And, I know, I know — don’t write in — Don Gullett spelled his name with an extra T so it has seven letters.) Here’s a shot of Gullett, amazingly, pitching with no left hand. It was detachable.
I don’t think this counts as nitpicking — it’s a good point. At 31D, the clue was “Best possible,” and the answer was IDEAL. Here’s the comment:
IDEAL and “Best possible” are not the same thing. “Best possible” is the best you can achieve short of the IDEAL, which, by definition, is an “idea” of perfection that is unachievable.
NYT persists in making this error. And, no, it is not close enough for crosswords.
I made my living on this question, and my reputation depends on it.
[I was puzzled by that last sentence, but then I noticed the name of the poster was P. L. Ato.]
The puzzle theme today was “stacks.” It set up four three-square stacks. For example, three across answers were [smoke] screen; goes up in [smoke]; and bum a [smoke]; and in each the “smoke” was smooshed into a single square (it’s called a rebus), and the three “smokes” were right on top of each other forming a smoke “stack.” There was also a “hay” stack, a “short” stack, and a “sub” stack. Clever.
One of the answers for the “sub” stack was TURKEY [SUB], clued with “Common order at a hoagie shop.” A nod to Thanksgiving. Several nitpickers, however, noted that hoagie shops are limited to the Philly area and one would not order a “sub” there. [I say CEFC (close enough for crosswords).]
Re: stacks, Rex shared this song.
There’s a black crow sitting across from me
His wiry legs are crossed
And he’s dangling my keys, he even fakes a toss
Whatever could it be that has brought me to this loss?
Commenter Son Volt cited the Thanksgiving connection to Arlo’s “Alice’s Restaurant” so I was able to attach a note for the folks in Rexworld mentioning Alice’s passing just last Thursday, as we discussed recently in our post “Alice Doesn’t Live Anymore.”
A visitor to the puzzle was a rap artist I hadn’t heard of (not that I’ve heard of many) known as BIG PUN. He wasn’t a punster: It was short for Big Punisher, and his real name was Christopher Lee Rios. He passed away in 2000 at the age of only 28, from being literally “big.” He weighed close to 700 pounds and his heart could not handle it. I will not share the song of his that Rex shared, but it’s called “Still Not A Player.” I’m generally not a fan of rap (though I’m not a hater), but I enjoyed it. I guess it says something that it still has currency 24 years after his death.
Looks like he might have been a Yankees fan. He was born in the Bronx and is wearing a Yankees’ cap in some of the other pictures I found.
There are people who don’t mind cats. There are people who like cats. There are people who love cats. And then there was Harold W. Sims, Jr., of whom it was said in the headline of his obit in the NYT today, that he “poured his heart” into cats. Sims passed away earlier this month in Sylva, NC, at the age of 89.
Sims, a retired college prof, poured his life savings into his own no-kill animal shelter and founded the American Museum of the House Cat. His love for cats began when he volunteered at an animal shelter after retiring from teaching. His first cat was a Persian named Buzzy.
The shelter, named Catman2, started as a shed in his backyard, and expanded into a 4,000-square-foot house that Sims outfitted, with cat towers, cubbyholes and all the toys his new tenants could swat a paw at — but not a single cage. (They’ve committed no crimes, he said.) Over the course of three decades the shelter found homes for over 5,000 cats.
The cat museum opened in 2017 and was a success. Sims built a new home for it in Sylva, NC, in 2023. Thousands of visitors come by each year to take in wall after wall of cat-themed paintings, rows of display cases full of antique cat toys, and a child-size, cat-themed carousel.
Some of the displays are macabre, including a petrified cat found in a 16th-century English chimney, and a mummified cat from ancient Egypt, which Sims had X-rayed to make sure it contains actual feline remains. (It does.)
His love for cats grew out of his belief that they are a better version of ourselves. “Cats don’t discriminate. They don’t care if you’re white, Black or yellow. Plus, cats don’t care about what other cats have. A cat has what it has, and that’s fine with him.”
Sims is survived by Tortie, Clarissa, and Eskimo. Rest in peace, Dr. Sims.
This poem by Margaret Saiser is called “Thanksgiving for Two.” It’s from The Poetry Foundation.
The adults we call our children will not be arriving
with their children in tow for Thanksgiving.
We must make our feast ourselves,
slice our half-ham, indulge, fill our plates,
potatoes and green beans
carried to our table near the window.
We are the feast, plenty of years,
arguments. I’m thinking the whole bundle of it
rolls out like a white tablecloth. We wanted
to be good company for one another.
Little did we know that first picnic
how this would go. Your hair was thick,
mine long and easy; we climbed a bluff
to look over a storybook plain. We chose
our spot as high as we could, to see
the river and the checkerboard fields.
What we didn’t see was this day, in
our pajamas if we want to,
wrinkled hands strong, wine
in juice glasses, toasting
whatever’s next,
the decades of side-by-side,
our great good luck.
An article in the current New Yorker about “The Golden Girls” reminded me how good the writing was for that show, although I did not watch it very often. It mentioned how the show shattered the taboo against “senior sex.” The character Blanche boasted of having had 143 paramours. The writer Erin Donnelly counted 165 depicted or referred to over the course of the show, “although questions remain about the precise number of Flying Fanelli Brothers.” “Oh, back off, Blanche,” she is told in one episode. “Not all of us have been classified by the Navy as a friendly port.”
“Maureen says I need glasses, but I don’t know. What do you guys think?”
Armas — what gives? Owl Chatter’s style and culture consultant, the beautiful Ana de Armas, has gotten herself into a little hot water for dating Manuel Anido Cuesta, the stepson of Cuba’s repressive president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez. Here they are, below. For the life of me, I can’t figure out where his left hand is.
“It’s truly disheartening when someone, particularly a fellow Cuban, aligns themselves with a regime that has brought so much pain and oppression to our people,” wrote fashion and travel influencer Luis Caballero. “For any Cuban to not only support such a regime but also engage with its inner circle — like dating Díaz-Canel’s stepson and advisor — feels like a betrayal of the shared struggle for liberty and justice.”
Ouch.
Here at Owl Chatter the feeling is everyone should be allowed one dalliance with a repressive regime. We’re sure she’ll dump the creep in due time.
See you tomorrow!
Fearsome Dominican baseball slugger Rico Carty died at the age of 85 last Saturday. He had 15 brothers and sisters. His dad worked in a sugar mill and his mom was a midwife. His first full season was 1964 and he hit .330, second in the majors only to Roberto Clemente. But his career moved forward in spurts with long absences due to a plethora of injuries, and he missed the entire 1968 season with tuberculosis. His only post-season appearance was in 1969 with Atlanta against the Mets who were on their way to their miracle WS win against Baltimore. They disposed of the Braves in three games. Carty went 3 for 10 with four runs scored.
In 1970 he started off hotter than hell and was batting .436 at the end of May. He wasn’t included on the All-Star game ballots since they had been made up too early, but fans mounted a write-in campaign for him which garnered over 500,000 votes, and Carty started in the NL outfield alongside Mays and Aaron. It was his only All-Star game.
His last season was 1979 with Toronto after which he was released at age 40. The last of his many injuries was crazy — he reached into his carry-on bag and stabbed himself with a toothpick. I’m not making that up — it’s from the NYT obit. I guess those little f*ckers can do more harm than you think. He finished with a career BA of .299 and 204 home runs.
Here’s how the obit ended:
In 2019, asked about the faster pitching in the modern game, Carty replied: “You think Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Dick Allen, Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda couldn’t hit this pitching?
“I’d kill it.”
Rest in peace, Rico.
OMG, Leonard COHEN is in the puzzle today. Right up there at 2 Down: “Poet Leonard.” The crossing C was from ACHE, and here’s his lyric from “Tower of Song:” Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in the places where I used to play.
This lyric is from his song “Did I Ever Love You?”
The lemon trees blossom
The almond trees wither
Was I ever someone
Who could love you forever?
This poem is called “Juke” and it’s by Diane Seuss. It was the poem of the day today from the Poetry Foundation. (Anybody else smell gasoline?)
What kind of juke do you prefer?
For me, it’s the kind with three
songs and thirty-seven blank
title strips. Three songs, and two
are “Luckenbach, Texas.”
The third is beautiful and arcane,
but the patrons hate it,
and the record skips.
I prefer the three-song juke
and the three-toothed human
smile. I found the juke of my dreams
in a bar called “Chums,” no clue
the origin or meaning
of the quotation marks. It was a prime
number of a bar, and now it’s dead.
One night, drinking half-and-
halfs, half beer, half tomato juice,
with schnapps chasers, a cheap
source of hallucination.
A soon-to-be-defrocked Catholic
priest, Vic Jr., my mother, and me,
our faces streaked blue with pool
chalk, juke red as a beating heart,
and just a strip of hollyhocks
and a tree line between us
and the northern lights.
I was young. I looked like a Rubens
painting of a woman half-eaten
by moths. What lucky
debauchery, the ride back
on a washboard dirt road,
taking everything for granted,
flipping off the aurora borealis
like it was some three-toothed human
in flashy clothes dancing
to get my attention.
I wasn’t a mean drunk then,
just honest.
Next morning, mom walked in
on the naked priest
in the shack’s garage,
washing himself with a rag
and cold water from the well
in a metal dishpan. I’d later do dishes
in that pan and wash my hair
in that pan. We popped popcorn
on the one-burner wood-burning
stove and ate it out of that pan.
I’m talking about a time and a place.
All I can say of it is that it was real.
The song choices were limited,
so the grooves were dug deep.
Here’s Diane.
At 40D, for “Maori ceremonial dance” the answer was HAKA. Earlier this month, the New Zealand parliament exploded as Maori members protested proposed changes to a treaty by performing a HAKA on the parliament floor. I mean no disrespect in pointing out that part of the dance involves “jazz hands,” a topic that came up recently in Owl Chatter. Take a look:
Have you heard the term BEL ESPRIT? It was new to me. The clue was “Clever person.” I generally like learning things from puzzles, but, tbh, I usually forget whatever it is in short order. Next week a clue will be “bel esprit” and I’ll be certain it has something to do with cheese.
The puzzle’s theme today generated a bit of an uproar. The revealer clue placed across the center of the grid was “Corn, beans and squash, in Mesoamerican tradition,” which, as it turns out, is referred to as THE THREE SISTERS. Then in the top half of the grid, the three Bronte sisters appeared: CHARLOTTE, ANNE, and EMILY, of course, which was fine. But the bottom half was “graced” by the appearance of the three Kardashians: KOURTNEY, KIM, and KHLOE, and the commentariat was outraged!!
Here’s a sampling:
First, equating the Brontes with the Kardashians borders on criminal, and, second, calling the Kardashians “Showbiz” implies they have talent which is just wrong!
Debasing the Brontës by this gratuitous grouping with the Kardashians and causing revulsion in solvers by the very inclusion of the Kardashians does not make for a good puzzle.
Couldn’t get past the Kardashian thing. This puzzle sucked.
Pairing the Brontes with the Kardashians?? An outright insult to women everywhere (spoken as a male with three highly accomplished sisters). For shame Joel Fagliano! [Joel is the current NYT puzzle editor.]
A couple of us didn’t get our panties in a bunch. [First time I’ve used that phrase — it’s great!] Here’s what I posted:
I’m going to try to be charitable (not in the sense of donating money, perish the thought) — perhaps the constructor was going after the humorous effect of juxtaposing the more refined trio of sisters with the far less refined ones. Like the NYer cartoon in the fancy dining room of the ocean liner. Seated at the table are all the diners dressed to the nines and one fellow shirtless, sweaty, and covered in coal dust. He’s saying: “The captain couldn’t make it this evening. I’m the stoker.”
Leonard — Can you send us off tonight?
See you tomorrow everybody. Happy Thanksgiving!
On this date in 1835 Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. Known now mostly for his role in the famous joke: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall? Practice,” he was in fact a well-known industrialist and philanthropist in his day. His dad was a weaver and political radical and instilled in Andrew strong feelings for social justice and equality.
When he was twelve, Andrew worked as a milkhand for $1.20 a week, roughly equivalent to what a CUNY professor makes today. He amassed a fortune in the steel industry, then sold his business and gave it all away, establishing, among many other things, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and 2,811 libraries. He also donated 7,689 organs to churches to, as he put it, “lessen the pain of the sermons,” thus putting a different slant on the term “organ donor.” (OK, OK, I’ll pipe down. (Hi Carl!))
This poem by Max Early is called “Delayza’s Necklace.” It’s today’s “Poem-A-Day” from Poets.org.
We enter to sounds of bells.
The hall’s warmth evokes
an imprint of my small self
standing by my grandparents.
Their presence I sense
in drums and singers’ voices.
Collective breath of all colors
hovers above the leaping herd.
Eagle and hawk feathers adorn
the deer dance’s rhythmic scent—
forest evergreen, damp earth.
Delayza puts her hand in mine.
The seated crowd hinders her view.
I lift her above the masses—
a butterfly beyond reach.
Her irises bloom to the choir
and drumbeats rumbling
nearby snowflakes.
I set her among the gold straw flecks
glistening on the mud plastered floor.
Her body sways back and forth,
she stands on tiptoe
to see over the crowd.
A charcoal faced hunter
in camouflage shirt and jeans
trots towards the small child.
He places a coral bead necklace
over her head as she smiles
at her new delight.
In the puzzle today, “*to wrangle, per an idiom” was LIKE HERDING CATS. I don’t recall seeing this ad on TV, but veteran Rexblog commenter Nancy shared it. (Love the lint roller.)
Here’s some personal material Rex posted today. I’m sharing it because it’s about a dad and his daughter and it’s sweet.
Daughter’s home for Thanksgiving week—we saw Wicked yesterday (starring Cynthia ERIVO of last Sunday’s puzzle fame). I don’t think I’d been out to the movies alone with my kid, just me and her, since … like, Madagascar (2005)? No, Happy Feet (2006)? Something like that. So fun. She’s taller now, and has a bigger vocabulary, so the experience is slightly different, but still a joy. I think the thing I’m proudest of though, is that when I asked her what snacks she wanted from the concession stand, her unhesitating reply was “Popcorn, Junior Mints.” That’s … that’s my movie snack order [single tear rolls down my cheek]. “She’d grown up just like me / My girl was just like me…”
Headline in The Onion: Billionaire Who Bought Banana Duct-Taped To Wall for $6.2 Million Plans To Eat It.
Pardon my crowing, readers, but a post of mine in the Dull Men’s Club (UK) generated 8 “likes,” one “wow,” and 67 comments! There’ll be no talking to me for a while, not that anyone talks to me anyway.
Here’s the post with the photo I attached:
I have this mug that I like. For one thing, it has a bunny on it. But if I’m drinking coffee and it has cooled down, when I go to zap it in the microwave it says on the bottom Do Not Microwave. I saw online that this may be because it has little bits of metal in it and can spark, or is too thick and may heat unevenly. But it hasn’t sparked and seems to heat well enough. Can I ignore the warning or will something horrible happen, like I’ll be poisoned somehow? (Apologies if you deem this insufficiently dull.)
Andy Spragg: Definitely sufficiently dull.
Andy Lucas: The bunny will slide off the mug down the plug hole if using a microwave, maybe put it in the freezer for an hour to confuse it.
My reply: The bunny or the mug?
Murray Atkinson: If it says it on the bottom, how did you read it when full of coffee?
My reply: I was doing arm-lift exercises while holding it, glanced up and noticed it. Good question, though.
Tony Ross: Only the bottom can’t be microwaved. So just use a bottomless mug.
My reply: Some diners in the US offer a “bottomless cup of coffee.” I’ve never taken it literally before.
Igly Mark Harris: It will hold the radiation and release it into your bloodstream causing mutant growths all over your body.
My reply: Is that bad?
Matt McCree: Live life on the edge, ignore all warning labels and tread your own path.
Allister Rushforth: The blue paint contains lead and if you nuke it it softens and may turn the bunny green.
Finally, from Debbie Vogel:
Wear oven mitts when you remove it from the microwave. The cup will be hotter than the contents. Let it sit until the heat transfers out of the pottery and into the liquid. Stirring makes this happen faster. If it is not some type of pottery and is instead a plastic it has the potential to either melt or catch fire. I microwave my stoneware cups all the time. I have found the longer they have had to dry since last washing, the less hot they get. I assume the unglazed area on the bottom rim absorbs moisture when washed. That retained moisture then reacts under microwaving to heat the cup and create a burn hazard.
What?
If you’re like me, you think Arlo Guthrie’s famous song was called “Alice’s Restaurant.” You know — where you can get anything you want. That was the name of the album it was on, his first. But the song was actually “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” I mention it because Alice was Alice Brock, and she passed away last Thursday in Wellfleet MA (Hi Don and Jenny!) at the age of 83. It was a song/story combo plate, of course. Arlo was visiting Alice and her husband Ray for Thanksgiving and went to take some trash out to the city dump with a friend, actually quite a lot of trash. But the dump was closed so they added it to trash they saw was dumped in a ravine. It was traced back to them via some mail it contained, resulting in their arrest. Alice bailed them out, and they were fined $50 the next day in court. Much later, Arlo was able to avoid the draft due to his criminal record. This line in the song, a question Arlo asked at the induction center, sums up those crazy days as well as anything: “You want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, and burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug?”
But this should be about Alice. She helped write the first half of the song. Arlo wrote the draft part. She was born in Brooklyn and attended Sarah Lawrence College but left during her sophomore year “to support unpopular causes.” She married and moved to Stockbridge MA with her husband and worked as a librarian in a private school. She was the shusher. (No she wasn’t.) She opened the restaurant, the “Back Room,” having been nagged into doing so by her mom. It was only open for a few years.
Director Arthur Penn made a film based on the song in 1968. Alice was a consultant and made a cameo appearance. Patricia Quinn played Alice in the movie. In one of those little twists life enjoys throwing at us, on the day the wedding of Alice and her husband was filmed for the movie, the actual couple’s divorce became official. This is Pat Quinn.
Her last years were marked by financial and health problems. A friend set up a GoFundMe site and it was mentioned in a story on NPR. More than $170,000 poured in from fans of the song in just a few days.
Alice is survived by three step-children, two grandchildren, one great-granddaughter, and two great-great-grandchildren, all of whom get anything they want.
Here are Alice and Arlo in 1977.
And here’s what it’s all about. If you’ve never heard it, it’s certainly worth 16 and a half minutes of your time. I’ve heard it a bunch of times, including just a few years ago when I saw Arlo perform in Newark with his beautiful daughter opening for him. Still enjoy it.
Rest in peace, Alice.
Thanks for dropping in.
The Wellington Files 