The clue at 17A today is “Any facial feature of the man in the moon, in reality” and the answer for the puzzle was CRATER, but that’s not a good answer! Those blotches you see when you look up there are actually called MARIA (with the first syllable accented), the plural of MARE (pronounced MAR-ay). They got that name because it’s Latin for seas, and the early astronomers mistook them for actual seas. Only ignorant slobs who don’t read Owl Chatter would make such a blunder. Not worth getting into a BAR FIGHT over it (19D: “Pub brawl”), but good to know.
Remember this sweet punim?
It’s OLGA Korbut — 4-time Olympic gold-medal-winning gymnast. She was in the grid today even though her heydays were back in 1972 and 1976 for the USSR. She’s from Belarus. She retired in 1977 at age 22 and was the inaugural inductee to the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1988. She’s 68 now.
Olga married Leonid Bortkevich and they had a son. Fearing the effects of Chernobyl, they emigrated to the U.S. and settled in New Jersey, ironically the only state the toxicity of which rivals that of Chernobyl. She lives in Arizona now and teaches gymnastics.
Hubby Leonid was a member of the popular Belarusian folk band Pesniary, among whose influences was early Frank Zappa.
Pesniary was one of the few (and maybe the first) Soviet band to tour the US. This was in 1976 and they toured with the New Christy Minstrels. After joining them for dinner at Wendy’s (and too many drinks back at their home), Phil was able to tease this rare video out of Leonid. It’s the 1972 video from the band’s song “Alicia.” It’s a romance, sort of, with a handsome couple cavorting in the woods. Owl Chatter fans should be warned, however, — it will be the longest 4 minutes of your life.
Olga’s legacy includes her incredible “Korbut flip,” which entails, in part, her standing on top of the bars. It has since been banned, in part for safety reasons. This video of her performance speaks for itself. Unfortunately, it speaks for itself in German, but it’s still worth a look.
After our long drive back from Brookville, PA (stopping point on the journey back from MI), I still have exams to grade, so I gotta go. Will return when I can. Thanks for popping in!
Do you believe in hell? I don’t mean the hell you just went through spending the holiday with your creepy relatives. I mean the “real” one, with the fires and demons. It’s a pretty ridiculous notion, isn’t it? That’s what Bishop Carlton D. Pearson realized while watching the news one day back in the 1990s. It was a report on children starving during the Rwandan genocide. Supposedly, they were consigned to hell because they hadn’t accepted Christ as their savior before dying. The idea struck Pearson as abhorrent — it had to be that God loves all mankind so everyone is already saved. And from that day on, he no longer believed in hell.
He subscribed to the doctrine of universal salvation, which covered Muslims and gays too. He lobbied Congress to pass protections for gays. Well, none of this sat well with the higher ups at his church, which declared him a heretic and said anyone following him “put at risk the eternal destiny of their souls.” Yikes! We don’t need that sh*t!
His congregation dwindled from thousands to bupkis. He went from being a big macher to small potatoes. He died last Sunday in Tulsa at age 70. His agent often asked him if he regretted taking the positions that cost him so much. “Don’t you think you should have just shut up?” But Pearson never looked back. Bullshit is bullshit.
He is survived by his mom, five siblings, and a daughter, none of whom is at all worried about going to hell.
Rest in peace, Bishop.
I loved 11D in the puzzle today. The clue was “Get ready in a hurry,” and the answer was SCRAMBLE THE JETS. It inspired me to make up these riddles:
What do eggs and jets have in common?
A. They can both be scrambled.
B. They are both NFL teams, except for the eggs.
What can be scrambled but never with onions?
Ans: Jets
The MILLION MOM MARCH was in the puzzle clued as an anti-gun group, but it triggered a rant by egs about different “moms,” Moms for Liberty. You heard of these folks? Who could be against liberty? Here’s what Wikipedia says:
Moms for Liberty advocates against school curricula that mention LGBT rights, race and ethnicity, critical race theory, and discrimination. They have also campaigned to ban books that address gender and sexuality from school libraries. Founded in January 2021, the group began by campaigning against COVID-19 protections in schools, including mask and vaccine mandates. Moms for Liberty is influential within the Republican Party.
A newsletter of theirs from an Indiana chapter highlighted a quote by Hitler which they at first tried to “explain” but then apologized for. (Don’t you hate it when you get caught and have to pretend to be decent?) And one of their pastors in the Philly chapter in charge of outreach was revealed to be a registered sex offender. He spent 3 years in prison for sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy, sort of a special form of outreach. Yeah, let’s put these folks in charge of the library books.
It has 285 chapters in 45 states and over 115,000 members. God Bless America.
43A is “Japanese zither,” and the answer is KOTO. Ever hear one?
Hey, CHER popped by too, at 54D: “Singer whose likeness was the highest-selling doll of 1976, surpassing Barbie.” Anybody remember those dolls? They were only available for a few years and are collectors’ items now. You can snare one of these for about $200.
This poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac is by Jon Loomis and is called “At the Lake House.”
Wind and the sound of wind— across the bay a chainsaw revs and stalls. I’ve come here to write,
but instead I’ve been thinking about my father, who, in his last year, after his surgery, told my mother
he wasn’t sorry—that he’d cried when the other woman left him, that his time with her
had made him happier than anything he’d ever done. And my mother, who cooked and cleaned for him
all those years, cared for him after his heart attack, could not understand why he liked the other
woman more than her, but he did. And she told me that after he died she never went
to visit his grave—not once. You think you know them, these creatures robed
in your parents’ skins. Well, you don’t. Any more than you know what the pines want from the wind,
if the lake’s content with this pale smear of sunset, if the loon calls for its mate, or for another.
Happy Holiday, readers! I’m not sure if we’ll be able to post much of anything later from the road. Phil is off drunk somewhere, for one thing. But here are a few small items.
As a nod to the day, the puzzle at 1D had “Site of what many regard as the first Thanksgiving,” and the answer was PLYMOUTH. Several folks noted what a dud Plymouth Rock is, as a site to visit. It’s just a rock (duh) not very well maintained. An anonymous poster wrote: “I grew up in MA and Plymouth Rock is literally just a rock. My sister dropped a flip flop down there which was the highlight of my visit.”
But it did inspire Son Volt to share this tune with us, called “Plymouth,” by Strand of Oaks. “Sometimes I move like shadows. Sometimes I move like wind.”
This beautiful note was posted on Rex’s site by Lewis:
Just a silly little diversion, crosswords.
Or so some say. I for one love silliness, so give me silly in any form. Give me play. Give me inventiveness. Give me riddles to crack. Give me laugh-out-loud moments. Give me a diversion that takes me to a place that I deep down enjoy. Give me the work of people who earnestly strive to entertain, strive to give the brain the opportunity to figure things out and feel exercised and happy.
Thrust me into a community of those who are like minded, and who pile on more silliness, inventiveness, and edifying insight, and who feel like family – as this place is.
Have the puzzles be honed and scrubbed by skilled and talented craftspeople who set a high bar.
And what a gift! What a ball of beauty! What a piece of magic, spark, and brightness to adorn the path we travel. It never had to come about, and yet here it is, this towering gift. I give thanks for it always.
Amen, Lewis.
I also received this email from CUNY Chancellor Matos Rodriguez:
I had the privilege to participate yesterday in Kingsborough Community College’s “Thanks for Giving” festivities, a yearly tradition where administrators, faculty and staff serve students a Thanksgiving meal. From start to finish, I was able to do my part in giving back — in the form of a delicious potato station — to excited students.
The experience reminded me of what an honor it is to serve the CUNY community. It’s days like this that reaffirm our school’s motto, “the education of free people is the hope of humanity.” Each day, we strive to work together to ensure that all 25 campuses are thriving and that we continue to provide a life-changing education to New Yorkers.
Our campuses are centers of knowledge and places of acceptance. We understand that our many differences are special qualities to be celebrated and embraced. It’s what gives me hope in good times and bad.
Last, a big thank you, readers, from Wilma and Welly, the owls behind Owl Chatter, from our crazy photographer Phil, and the entire OC staff. Now dig in!
I was on the phone with a friend a few days ago, and he asked me how many tries I needed for Wordle that day and what the word was. So I said “Four Queue” and he hung up on me!!
Here’s some important news from The Onion:
Dad Spends Most of Phone Call Praising New Bucket
AUSTIN, TX—Describing the plastic 5-gallon container as “a real stunner,” local father Edward Nielsen reportedly spent most of a phone call with his son Andrew on Monday praising a newly acquired bucket. “It’s a quality bucket, and comfortable to grip too,” said the retiree, refusing to let his son get a word in as he raved over the bucket, which he noted also came with its own high-quality lid. “The best of both worlds. You remember the bucket I had last year, don’t you? That one wasn’t as good. It didn’t have the same capacity. This one’s much better. I wonder if I should have bought a second one. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to go back to the store tomorrow and get another one for myself and one for you, too.” At press time, sources confirmed Nielsen was ignoring questions about how Mom’s surgery went to tout the bucket’s durability.
Another headline was:
Biden’s Lungs Fly Out Of Mouth In Attempt To Blow Out Birthday Candles
Charles de Gaulle was born on this date in 1890. Happy Birthday, Monsieur le President! He ate very quickly. At state banquets plates were often taken away while still full. He didn’t eat fruit, thinking it took too long to peel. And it was he who had this great line: “How can you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese?”
He said this about Churchill: “When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time.”
He was married to his wife, Yvonne, for close to 50 years, until her death did them part. They had three kids. Here he is with his youngest — his daughter Anne. Anne was born with Down Syndrome and lived with the family until passing away at age 20 from pneumonia. De Gaulle loved Anne dearly and took long walks with her, hand-in-hand, talking quietly of things she could understand. She was able to say only one word clearly: “Papa.” At her death, de Gaulle said, “Maintenant, elle est comme les autres.” (“Now, she is like the others.”) Heartbreaking. When de Gaulle died 22 years later, he was buried next to Anne.
Yvonne was a conservative Catholic and fought against prostitution and pornography. She tried to convince de Gaulle to outlaw miniskirts, but he refused. [OMG, too painful to contemplate. Let’s not go there.]
After Anne’s death, the de Gaulles created the “Fondation Anne de Gaulle“, to assist young women who were mentally handicapped. Yvonne worked for the foundation for the rest of her life.
De Gaulle’s son Philippe is a retired French admiral and senator. He is still living, in Paris, at age 101. He has three children, the oldest of whom is named Charles. Charles, however, disappointed the family by moving into right-wing politics. Probably was a slow eater too.
The NYT had a feature yesterday in which they invited readers to share tips on how to survive the holiday with one’s relatives. Maureen, of Palm Desert CA, wrote: “When spending time with family over the holidays, I bring a few mementos — my business cards, photos with friends, and my house keys — all to remind me that I have a fulfilling life elsewhere.”
17A in the puzzle today is “Actress Fisher of ‘Wedding Crashers,’” and the answer was ISLA. Pabloinnh said that it was new to him “as I had previously thought that no woman is an ISLA.”
29D: “Team with a sausage race at every home game,” is THE BREWERS. R Duke noted: I’ve been to a few Brewers games over the years and always enjoyed the sausage race. It doesn’t matter who comes in first, everyone’s a wiener.
Owl Chatter will be broadcasting our usual nonsense from Bloomfield Hills. MI, over the holiday, just a quick ten-hour drive west. We’ll be schnorring off of Sarah, Sam, Worthington the Owl, and the amazing two-year-old Morris, below. Got cake? Happy Holiday everybody! And, of course, Go Blue!
We’re going to let Owl Chatter’s Poet Laureate Ted Kooser have the last word tonight. This poem is from Winter Morning Walks. We’ve shared it before, and I’m sure we’ll share it again.
I saw the season’s first bluebird this morning, one month ahead of its scheduled arrival. Lucky I am to go off to my cancer appointment having been given a bluebird, and, for a lifetime, having been given this world.
It’s the writer Don DeLillo’s birthday today. He’s 86. (Ouch.) He was born in NYC and his alma mater is Fordham. His eighth novel, White Noise, published in 1985, won the National Book Award. George Will didn’t like his ninth novel, Libra, on the JFK assassination. Writing in WaPo, Will declared the book “an act of literary vandalism and bad citizenship.” DeLillo said “being called a ‘bad citizen’ is a compliment to a novelist. We ought to be bad citizens. We ought to, in the sense that we’re writing against what power represents, and often what government represents, and what the corporation dictates, and what consumer consciousness has come to mean. In that sense, if we’re bad citizens, we’re doing our job.” DeLillo rejected Will’s claim that he blames America for Lee Harvey Oswald, countering that he instead blamed America for George Will.
The rock band “The Airborne Toxic Event” took its name from a section of White Noise. I recall that event, even though I read the book decades ago. There was an emergency response team that took its drills very seriously. So seriously that they responded to the actual disaster from the standpoint of using it to see how they could improve their drills.
Here’s the band. You like strings?
Some of you know the singer Shakira, — you know, with the hips? She’s 46 now, from Colombia, and has two kids. Well, she couldn’t use those hips to wriggle out of her tax bill in Spain, and nearly wound up in jail. The question was how much time did she spend in Spain during the years at issue. She danced her way into court last Monday in a pink outfit, just a few days after winning two Latin Grammy awards in Seville. A last-minute settlement has her paying around 22.5 million euros to close the books on the matter. Owl Chatter asks — does this look like a tax cheat to you? Don’t pay any attention to those nasty tax people, darling.
Today’s poem is by Charles Simic, from The Writer’s Almanac. It’s called “Rural Delivery.”
I never thought we’d end up Living this far north, love. Cold blue heaven over our heads, Quarter moon like chalk on a slate.
This week it’s the art of subtraction And further erasure that we study. O the many blanks to ponder Before the night overtakes us once more On this lonely stretch of road Unplowed since this morning; Mittens raised against the sudden Blinding gust of wind and snow, But the mailbox empty. I had to stick My bare hand all the way in To make sure this is where we live.
The wonder of it! We retraced our steps Homeward lit by the same fuel As the snow glinting in the gloom Of the early nightfall.
In the puzzle today, the clue at 25A was “Exasperated cry you might make when being turned over to voice mail.” The answer was PICK UP THE PHONE! It elicited this back and forth between Rex and Pete.
Rex: Why are you shouting “PICK UP THE PHONE!” when it’s already gone to voice? Shouldn’t you be shouting it earlier? I mean, you shouldn’t be shouting it at all, no one can hear you, but for your inherently ineffectual shouting to make any kind of sense, you gotta be doing it earlier.
Pete: You yell PICK UP THE PHONE when you know that the person has a home voice mail system and no caller ID and is screening calls to see who it is and you know that the person they’re screening out is you but you feel obligated to try and make them pick up the phone anyway. (Not that this ever happened to me.)
This song is 45 years old. It’s from the same album (Parallel Lines) that had “Heart of Glass” on it with the lyric:
Once I had a love and it was a gas Soon turned out to be a pain in the ass
Yesterday’s Michigan win over Maryland, was much more difficult than expected. It was a real Yogi game — it wasn’t over till it was over. The final score was 31-24. Four of our points came off of safeties, which is unusual. One from an intentional grounding call against the Terps from their own end zone, and the other on a blocked punt. On the punt, the ball rolled into their end zone and would have been a TD for us had we recovered it, but a Terp alertly kicked it out of bounds for a less disastrous (for them) safety. Neither our running game nor our defense was dominant. We did enough to win, but as a Maryland fan tauntingly said to some Michigan folk as we were walking out — “You almost lost to an unranked opponent.” The guy behind me replied: “Almost.”
Linda, Phil, and I were seated in a section that was almost entirely Michigan fans. Overall, the Maize and Blue was well-represented – maybe 25-30% of the crowd? I’m not sure you can tell from this shot Phil took.
I love looking at all the different Michigan hats and shirts. My favorite new one that I saw was a sweatshirt in Michigan blue that just said “OF” in maize (yellow) lettering. Nothing else front or back. It must be the OF of University of Michigan, no?
It was a good little outing. We stopped at our favorite place in Baltimore for dinner (incredible pizza) — Joe Squared, and stayed at a very comfortable Best Western in North East, MD, a bit up Route 95 from Cal Ripken Stadium where the Aberdeen Ironbirds play. “North East” is the name of the town, not a region in Maryland. It’s sort of a silly name, because it will only be north east of you if you are standing south west of it. If you are north east of North East and someone asks you, how do I get to North East?, you’ll have to say, “Head south west to get to North East. Don’t head north east because you are already north east of North East so heading north east will not get you to North East.”
Todays’ poem from The Writer’s Almanac is by Sharon Olds. It’s her birthday today — she’s 81, kinahora. I guess it’s especially for you moms out there, but I think the rest of us can relate to it too. It rewards re-readings.
First Formal
She rises up above the strapless, her dewy flesh like a soul half out of a body. It makes me remember her one week old, soft, elegant, startled, alone. She stands still, as if, if she moved, her body might pour up out of the bodice, she keeps her steady gaze raised when she walks, she looks exactly forward, led by some radar of the strapless, or with a cup runneth over held perfectly level, her almost sea-sick beauty shimmering a little. She looks brave, shoulders made of some extra-visible element, or as if some of her cells, tonight, were faceted like a fly’s eye, and her skin was seeing us see it. She looks hatched this moment, and yet weary—she would lie in her crib, so slight, looking worn out from her journey, and gaze at the world and at us in dubious willingness.
In 2005, during W’s presidency, Laura Bush invited Olds to The White House. She declined, and wrote an open letter published in The Nation. It concluded with: “So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.”
Her collection Stag’s Leap, published in 2013, won the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. She was the first American woman to win it. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Today’s Modern Love column in the NYT by Rick Newman starts out with the following:
She offered to bring fancy cheese, the kind that costs $35 per pound. I said a couple of supermarket slabs would be fine, for one-fourth the price.
Four days later, she dumped me.
Was it the cheese? Did the cheese represent something bigger? Or was the cheese just an innocent bystander? I had been through too many breakups to let it go. I had to parse the cheese.
[I’m not going to give away how it ends, but here’s the artwork that accompanies it.]
Today’s puzzle was a pun-fest centered on Thanksgiving Dinner. E.g., “Pro tip about seasoning stuffing?” was SAGE ADVICE. And “Selects green bean casserole, candied yams and mashed potatoes?” was CHOOSES SIDES.
Pabloinnh noted: This was my kind of puzzle, with cool mellow puns, which is to say, no hot cross puns.
The clue at 108A was “Make cranberry sauce from scratch?” and the answer was KICK THE CAN.
Rex poster Gary shared this tale: Here’s my cranberry story: Like many, we grew up with cranberry from the can and it was served in the shape of the can. Nobody thought this was weird. When I brought my future wife to her first Thanksgiving with us, she was helping with meal prep and took a fork to the cranberry cylinder, ya know, to make it look not like it came out of a can, and mom flipped out. We got through the incident, I got married to her, she’s by far the best cook I’ve ever met, and we have homemade cranberries with orange in it these days.
Beezer responded: Gary, I laughed out loud at your wife’s cranberry faux pas! The first Thanksgiving I hosted for my husband’s family I made real cranberries AND giblet gravy. Neither were touched. I got the message and just decided there were two less things I had to worry about for future Thanksgivings.
Teedmn has the last word on the topic, and a neat piece of advice:
My family also served the cranberry sauce in the can shape, with a couple of slices pre-sliced before bringing it to the table. I’ve shown a couple of people the cool hack of how to get the sauce out in one piece by putting a hole in one end before opening the other end. Works like a charm.
58A was “Features of a vacant stare:” DEAD EYES. Creepy.
And 35A sends us off tonight: “Time to head out:” LET’S GO. Remember The Feelies? Me neither.
According to a House Ethics subcommittee, GOP Congressman George Santos defrauded campaign donors, falsified financial records, and used campaign money on beauty products, rent, luxury items from Hermes and Ferragamo, and purchases at the website OnlyFans. It recommended Santos be referred to the DOJ. It also suggested Santos try to get his money back for those beauty products.
BTW, according to wikipedia, OnlyFans is an internet content subscription service used primarily by sex workers who produce pornography, but it also hosts the work of other content creators, such as physical fitness experts, musicians, and tax professors.
Content on the platform is user-generated and monetized via subscriptions, tips, and pay-per-view. As of May, OnlyFans had more than 3 million registered creators and 220 million registered users. Bella Thorne broke OnlyFans earnings records when she joined the platform in 2020, generating $2 million in a week. Thorne promised subscribers nude photos, but instead provided only photos in lingerie, leading to a large number of chargebacks. [In defense of OnlyFans, Owl Chatter notes that we got our refund pretty quickly.] Here’s Bella.
Lobsterman Rescues Man From Submerged Car. That was the headline. I thought a new superhero had risen among us – half man, half lobster. But it was just a lobster fisherman in Maine jumping off of his boat to help a guy who drove a stolen car into the water.
Here’s our hero — Manny Kourinos — let’s just take a look at his hands closely before giving up the dream. Nope, they’re human. Good job Kourinos!
True story: Many years ago a distant cousin of mine, Murray Lubitsch, was working a part-time job down in Florida as a parking attendant near a shallow canal, and he saw a car swerve off the road and into the water. An elderly woman had lost control of the car. The water wasn’t very deep, but the woman was pretty shaken up and was having trouble getting out. My cousin waded into the canal, and helped the poor dear out.
Somehow, word of the incident reached the local paper and it wrote a story about the “rescue.” Then, since these towns in Florida don’t have much going on, my cousin got a call saying the mayor was going to issue a certificate of valor to him in a special ceremony. My very funny Uncle Morris (alav hashalom) went. We called him Maish. After the certificate was presented and some words were spoken, people were milling around, and the local reporter who was covering the event went up to Maish and asked him what his connection to Murray was. Maish said he was Murray’s swimming instructor.
It happened again during my law exam today. A student came up and said he was confused about Question 16. The question described a contract and asked whether one of the parties, Bob, could assign his contract right to Ellen. Okay, I said, what’s confusing you? (He was whispering, of course.) So he whispered: Can Bob assign his contract right to Ellen? I looked at him for a few seconds and then I whispered back: That’s what I’m asking you — that’s the question.
God, I love these students – I would teach for free.
This poem by Ted Kooser is from Winter Morning Walks. I’m going to let it usher us out tonight. Thanks for stopping in.
A rag rug of a landscape this morning — remnants of dirty snow, torn strips of muddy stubble field. Behind the yellow windowshade of dawn, in an enormous, sunny room, my grandfather’s older brother Lou, wearing a woman’s apron, blue and white, bends stiffly away from the loom upon which he’s weaving the day and rummages through his bag of scraps. He needs one with a spot of green to show me down here on the gravel road stepping along in my winter coat.
Owl Chatter is heading down to College Park, MD, early tomorrow for the Michigan/Maryland game at noon. Go Blue!
We have a good turn of events to report on a story covered by Owl Chatter a short while ago. Max Hightower, the young trans gentleman who was stripped of his role in his high school’s production of Oklahoma! will be performing in it after all! Yay Max!
Things had gotten ugly in conservative Sherman TX. Not only was Max denied his role, any girl in a man’s role, or boy in a woman’s role, was bumped, and then the entire production was scrapped. A theater teacher who objected was personally escorted out of the school by the principal. A stage set that students took two months to build was demolished. (Crash!)
But Max’s family, led by his dad Phillip, fought the decision as did other cast families. And the cause was picked up by good people in the community. A hearing was held by the school district, and every seat in the room was filled. Sixty-five people signed up to speak, almost all of them on the side of Max and his castmates. It was an extraordinary showing by the community that shocked even Max’s supporters. The board took three hours to consider the matter and decided unanimously to reinstate the production with the original cast intact.
Not everybody was pleased, of course. One local shopper said she believed that God made people either male or female and that the issue was as simple as that. I wish I knew as clearly as she did what God thinks on every issue, including the casting of high school productions. We could certainly use her on the Owl Chatter staff – we are so often at sea. But the article in The Times did not include her name or contact information.
A gay married couple recalled how their daughter brought them the good news. “She just said “We won.’ She was beaming, smiling ear to ear.” They hung a Pride Flag in their window for the first time. They felt a little better about their neighbors.
“We want to apologize to our students, parents, our community regarding the circumstances that they’ve had to go through,” the board president, Brad Morgan, said afterward.
That’s okay, Morgan. You did good.
Pictured below, before the song, are the protesters and Max’s dad.
We go from the sublime to, well, feet.
Ziwe Fumudoh, a comedian who goes by Ziwe, wrote a funny article in The New Yorker of 9/25/23. It’s called “Best Foot Forward” and is about her feet. But she writes about her hair and other parts too:
“I am very self-conscious about the way that I look, in part because I am a woman who happens to be conscious.”
“I had body odor. As an adult, I am known for smelling as fresh as a tropical beach after a rainstorm, because I surround myself with candles and fragrances. However, when I was a child, I was unfamiliar with the concept of deodorant. For some reason, it had never been explained to me. Not to point any fingers, but my mother refused to buy me products that acknowledged that I had hit puberty, and instead told me to scrub my armpits harder.
One issue for a stinky middle schooler is that people will actually remark on your scent. The most memorable conversation about my stinkiness was when my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. [REDACTED], pulled me aside during gym class to ask me if my parents were dead. Confused, but ever cheery, I informed him that they were not. He replied, ‘Well, then, tell your mother to buy you deodorant.’
I guess that, in Mr. [REDACTED]’s reality, the only logical explanation for my body odor was that I was an orphan whose parents’ death in some freak accident had led to my subsequent neglect.”
But the story is about her feet. It turns out there is a website called wikiFeet that contains photos of celebrities’ feet, with ratings of same. Ziwe had no idea it existed or that a photo of her feet made its way onto it. A friend of hers sent her rating to her.
“To my horror, I learned that I had a wikiFeet rating of two stars [out of five], categorized as ‘okay feet.’ While ‘okay’ is technically not an insult, it is not a compliment, either. I hate my feet. Also, I hate everyone else’s feet. In my humble opinion, feet are just ugly hands, and hands are not that cute to begin with. But, though it’s fine for me to have disdain for my extremities, for strangers to rate my ten toes as anything other than ‘perfect,’ ‘beautiful,’ or possibly ‘dainty’ is a hate crime that should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. This may seem like an irrational reaction, but you are wrong and stupid, and also, shut up!”
She took comfort in the one comment her feet elicited. On 6/27/2020, at 12:22 PM, someone posted “Nice feet girl!”
But her two-star (“okay”) rating definitely eats at her.
“As such, I am demanding a call to action. Please go to wikifeet.com, create a user account on this collaborative, celebrity-foot database, and vote for me like my self-confidence depends on it.”
Okay, girl. We hear you.
Today’s puzzle by the brilliant Paolo Pasco is one for the ages. Quite a “feat” of construction. The theme is Evel Knievel, the insane stunt guy who, miraculously, died of natural causes back in 2007 at age 69. The puzzle spells out his name in circles that rise up a ramp, soar over a group of buses, and land safely on the other side. The letter/circles are part of crossing answers, and the buses are the ends of the answers COLUMBUS, REBUS, and SYLLABUS. (See the bottom section of the completed grid below.) Also, 23A is LIVING ON THE EDGE, and 9D is DAREDEVIL. Last, the clue at 3D is “Punny advice for this puzzle’s subject,” and the answer is GET OVER IT. Whew — exhausting — the man knows how to construct a puzzle. Even Rex was impressed. Oh, I almost forgot to mention (!), if you complete the puzzle online, the software actually shows a little motorcycle in motion — riding up the ramp, soaring, and coming down the ramp. (I’m not kidding.)
In the Owl Chatter “Oops” Department, the new “indoor simulator” golf league backed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy slated to start in January suffered a setback when the roof collapsed due to a power failure. The arena is a giant dome in part supported by air. When the power went out, the air support shut off, and the dome collapsed, suffering substantial damage. No one was hurt. I’m no engineer (Hi Sam!), and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s some flaw in that plan somewhere, it seems to me, by crackie.
That seems like a good enough dose of nonsense for us today. Thanks for popping in — see you tomorrow!
Oh, we’re in for a treat today, courtesy of Rex. He regularly posts musical selections related to the puzzle and today they were over-the-top wonderful. For the clue “Handle that goes up and down?” the answer was OTIS (handle: name, then think elevator), so we got an Otis Redding tune that is not Dock of the Bay, and for some reason I can’t fathom, we got a Joan Armatrading song: Down To Zero. Let’s enjoy them right off the bat to set the tone for today’s chatter.
One commenter asked about that song: Is it possible to shiver while you’re melting?
And here’s Otis:
Miriam Webster’s word of the day today is CHIMERA, and here’s the entry:
In Greek mythology, Chimera is a fire-breathing monster that has a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a snake’s tail. [Quite the combo plate, see below.] In general contexts, chimera can refer to something (such as an aspiration) that exists only in the imagination and is not possible in reality.
I think I sorta knew what it means, except for the monster part, but I was mispronouncing it. It’s not shim-era with the accent on shim. It’s ke-merra, with the accent on merra. Thanks, Miriam! I won’t be making that mistake again (maybe).
Today’s puzzle by Gary Larson (not the cartoonist) was a “zee-fest” with the letter Z added to phrases to obtain wackiness. E.g., at 53A “Cap worn at a Shriners Christmas party?” was SANTA FEZ. My fave was at 16A: “Obnoxious houseguest?” was STAYING PUTZ. In case you don’t know, a putz is a stupid or worthless person, but it also has an off-color meaning, which I wonder if the NYT considered.
I was flummoxed right off the bat at 1A, where the clue was “Half of an orange?” It turned out to be RED. WTF? Rex explained it refers to the color orange which is a combination of red and yellow. Ouch! Got me!
A PELICAN flew into the grid today, clued as the state bird of Louisiana. There was a myth that a pelican mom would stab herself in the chest with her beak to draw blood to feed her young with when food was otherwise unavailable, but that’s not true. Your basic pelican mom is, like, “I’ll dig something up for those kids. Don’t worry about it.”
Nevertheless, a pelican with a bloodstained chest became a symbol for some Christian artists who were drawn to the “sacrifice” element in the myth. In a portrait most likely painted by (or under the direction of) Nicolas Hilliard, of Queen Elizabeth I, she’s wearing a pelican pendant. It’s called The Pelican Portrait (duh). You can see the blood in the pelican detail, below.
And here’s a real pelican (no it’s not: Scuttle’s a gull). (Sorry about all this pelican chatter, owls.)
Here you go.
In a follow-up to yesterday’s elbow incident, not to be confused with the Ox Bow Incident, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy shot a rubber band across the House floor at Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee today. It fell wide of its target. It’s very hard to aim those things. McCarthy denied shooting at Burchett, but our staff photographer Phil provided us with this photo he caught of McCarthy’s right hand taken seconds before Burchett dove to the House floor.
Headline in The Onion today: Girlfriend Signs Couple Up For Med School.
A statue of the Virgin Mary in Mexico has been captured “crying” tears, prompting hundreds to travel to witness a “miracle.” The statue, in a church in the town of El Canal, Colima, was recorded showing what looks like tears seeping out of the Virgin Mary’s eyes.
Some witnesses believe the Virgin Mary’s tears are real, as the redness around her eyes indicates she has been crying. Yup, they’re real alright.
“Similarly, when we cry, and our eyes become red, the same happens to the image,” Victor Ramos, a local idiot, said. Of course. Makes sense.
“We can associate it with the rising violence rates here in the state of Colima, also here in the community,” he said. Yeah. That explains it.
Colima has been labelled the most dangerous city in Mexico and has held that ranking for six years. “You’d cry too,” Ramos reasoned.
What do you have to do to get fired by the Pope? Right-wing Texas Bishop Joe Strickland turned the trick. Besides generally dissing his royal Popeship, Bishop maintained a fairly consistent level of assholery. He was behind the controversy over the Dodgers disinviting (and then re-inviting) the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to their Pride Night this year. And, get this. According to Rachel Maddow:
“You might remember that just before the January 6th attack on Congress, like three weeks before that, in mid-Dec. 2020, there was another day of crazy right-wing pro-Trump violence in the streets of Washington, D.C. Dec. 12, 2020. A number of people were stabbed. There were brawls in the streets of Washington, running, fistfights and battles. A Black Lives Matter banner was stolen and burned from a D.C. church. The largest event pro-Trump forces had organized was the Jericho March. This was a Mike Flynn thing, where Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, called for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military in American streets to keep Trump in power.
“And that event included an address from Bishop Strickland. A serving bishop speaking at an event that was calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government, including by the use of the Army.”
A petition signed by 10,000 people thanked the Pope for removing Strickland. It stated: Strickland “is a notoriously election-denying, QAnon-spreading, Francis-bashing, vaccine-rejecting, LGBTQ-hating, division-sowing, fire-breathing darling of right-wing Twitter. His agenda went beyond far-right culture wars to full-blown Christian nationalism, even appearing at a ‘Stop the Steal’ MAGA event.”
You can keep that stick thing and the costume. Just get out.
Do you believe? In particular, do you believe in wishes? If you do, you may pick up some tips from today’s puzzle. The theme answer is MAKE A WISH, and it has five things you are supposed to make a wish on, several of which are new to me. SHOOTING STAR and LADYBUG are the ones I know. Did you know there are male ladybugs? They are a little smaller than the female, and, I would guess, are pretty insecure. This one’s not male.
Then there is DANDELION – that stuff you blow off, right? But they also included ELEVEN ELEVEN — when you see it on a clock — and EYE LASH. If you see that an eyelash has fallen onto a face, or somewhere, you are supposed to wish upon it too.
The superstition that compels us to wish on otherwise random objects dates back at least a couple of centuries. Several versions of eyelash wishing existed in 18th century Britain and Ireland. For example, folklore recorded in Shropshire, England, instructs that if “an eyelash comes out, put it on the back of the hand, wish, and throw it over the shoulder. If it leaves the hand, the wish will come true.”
Fans of the TV show “24” know all about ELISHA Cuthbert (who was in the puzzle today at 44A) as no less than Jack Bauer’s daughter. She was born in Calgary and will turn 41 later this month. She’s a big ice hockey fan which is good because she married Dion Phaneuf, a former captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs. They have two children, a daughter born in 2017 and a son in 2022.
Maxim named her the sexiest woman in television in 2013 and she generally does very well in “sexiest women” lists. She must have been especially sexy in 2013, because GQ also named her one of the hottest women of the 21st century that year.
Here she is, as bright as the sun, with all of her eyelashes in place.
Happy Birthday to writer/humorist P.J. O’Rourke, who was born on this date in 1947 in Toledo, Ohio, and passed away on Feb. 15, 2022, in Sharon, NH.
Here’s one of his quotes: “Drugs have taught an entire generation of kids the metric system.”
And this paragraph which he wrote was shared today in The Writer’s Almanac. As far as I’m concerned, it’s perfect.
“The source of the word ‘humorist’ is one who regards human beings in terms of their humors — you know, whether they’re sanguine or full of yellow bile, or whatever the four classical humors are. You stand back from people and regard them as types. And one finds, especially by the time one reaches one’s fifties, that there are a limited number of types of people in the world, and you went to high school with every single one of them. You can visit the Eskimos, you can visit the Bushmen in the Kalahari, you can go to Israel, you can go to Egypt, but everybody you meet is going to be somebody you went to high school with.”
You get the last word today, PJ. See you tomorrow everybody. Thanks for popping by.
The Wellington Files 