Regular followers of Owl Chatter know that we are fans of the Metropolitan Diary column in the Sunday NYT. It often has pieces where nothing happens. I sent in a parody piece once that was something like this:
In 1984, I had just moved to New York City and I had to travel uptown from my apartment to a doctor’s appointment. I hailed a cab on East 15th Street and Third Avenue, and when one pulled over, I settled comfortably into the back seat.
“Where to?,” the driver asked.
I gave him the address in the West 80’s, and off we sped northward!
To no surprise, it wasn’t accepted. By way of contrast, here’s a piece by Kathy Kumar from tomorrow’s MD that is just about perfect:
Dear Diary: It was a warm sunny afternoon. I was walking on East 4th Street in Manhattan when something fell from above and almost hit me. Looking down, I was surprised to see a denture. Just then, I heard a woman shout from an upper story window. “Is it okay?” she said. I shouted back that it looked fine, and waited until she came down to retrieve it. When she did, she said it had shot out of her mouth when she sneezed while standing at the window.
Today’s puzzle was by a very well-liked constructor, Robyn Weintraub. She lives in Rye Brook, NY, and her first puzzle was a NYT Monday puzzle back in March of 2011. An interviewer once asked her “Why do you do this to yourself?” She said: “Can’t help it. When I’m constructing a puzzle I enter that state of ‘flow’ where time just stops. I can work on a puzzle from morning until night, and only barely register the fact that I haven’t eaten or gone to the bathroom the entire day.”
Her cluing is fresh and creative. For example, today, an answer was CUBA, and this was her clue: Home to the world’s smallest bird, the bee hummingbird, which measures just 2.25″.
The “world’s smallest bird” — how wonderful.
Her long answers are often conversational. Two today were: “Common request at a bar.” Ans: CAN I SEE SOME ID? And “Response to a wild story.” Ans: YOU DID WHAT?
It’s Gloria Steinem’s birthday today, she is 89, kinahora, and was born in Toledo, Ohio. She was married to David Bale from 2000 until his death in 2003. He was the father of actor Christian Bale. The marriage ceremony took place in the home of Steinem’s friend Wilma Mankiller, the first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
She once said: “So whatever you want to do, just do it…Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.” Amen to that, Steinem! Not a day goes by . . . .
It’s also the birthday of Flannery O’Connor, who changed her name from Mary O’Connor which she thought was too plain for a writer trying to sell books. She was born in Savannah, GA, in 1925 and died of lupus when she was just 39.
When she was six, she was filmed by a British news service while a chicken that she’d personally trained walked backward. The newsreel was shown around the world, calling her “Little Mary O’Connor.” She said, “Everything since has been an anticlimax.”
Hurrah for the Iowa women, who dispatched the Colorado Buffaloes last night in a tight, intense battle. Clark scored 31. Couldn’t relax till the last minute or so. It’s on to play Louisville next, and then, God willing, the Final Four.
Lianna and I figured out yesterday that a strategy for a game played with breath mints on a social media platform would be a Tik Tok tic tac toe Tic Tac tactic. I posted that on Rex’s blog today as a comment on the answer TACT. I’ll let you know if I get any grief for it. So far, thankfully, it’s being ignored.
I was about to write, “but enough nonsense,” but there’s never enough nonsense! Owl Chatter is here today to laud the amazing Iowa Hawkeye’s women’s basketball player Caitlin Clark, whom we fell in love with last year during the Big Ten tournament. It’s going to be tough for any team to get by powerhouse South Carolina, but you can be sure Iowa will do its best behind Clark.
The dark-haired Clark excels at every aspect of the game, but her long 3-point shots are garnering the most attention. Against Michigan last year, she scored 46 points (25 in the last quarter), including two three-pointers from the blue M logo at midcourt. Take a look:
When Caitlin was growing up, her dad had to pave over part of their front lawn to create an area large enough for her long shots towards the basket on their driveway. Statistically, she does better from 25 to 30 feet away than from closer in. An analytics firm treats shots from over 30 feet as “heaves.” But Caitlin does so well from that range that the company is considering changing their criteria. She says the most important part of her shot is how she positions her legs and feet. Her dad’s directive was always “feet under your body.” She says when she misses it’s usually because she’s off-balance.
Caitlin is 21 years old, magnetic, and is Iowa-born and raised.
According to The Times today, a lawsuit by some kids has been filed against the state of Montana. It claims the state’s very friendly approach towards fossil fuel industries, and hostility towards climate change concerns violates the state’s constitution that guarantees Montanans “the right to a clean and healthful environment.” The constitution also says the state is responsible for maintaining and improving the environment for present and future generations. The state’s response has been a Ralph Kramdenish hamena hamena hamena, and the state is fighting it tooth and nail.
In connection with the following item, Owl Chatter urges its readers to please refrain from any “dumb southerner” gibes. So what if the Republican Comptroller General of South Carolina, the state’s top CPA, Richard Eckstrom made a small error in the state’s year-end financial report. It was just $3.5 billion. Like you’re all perfect all the time??
At first, Eckstrom refused to resign. Then the State Senate voted to oust him, and the House voted to reduce his salary to $1. When he got all screwed up on how to reflect that dollar on the state’s books, he finally said “F**k it, I’m quitting.” Eckstrom did not major in accounting as an undergrad at U. South Carolina, but earned a Masters in Accounting there after serving in the Navy. Thank God he didn’t go to Hunter. He is 74 years old and has two children from his marriage to his first wife Peggy. Hold on a sec — make that three children. Yeah, he’s pretty sure it’s three.
In the puzzle today, the “city whose welcome sign features Mark Twain” at 2D was ELMIRA. Here’s the sign:
In addition to Twain, there are Elmirans Tommy Hilfiger, Ernie Davis, astronaut Eileen Collins, Hal Roach, John Jones, and Brian Williams. John Jones escaped slavery in Virginia and walked 300 miles to Elmira where he settled and became active helping others to freedom via the Underground Railroad. A museum honoring his life is in Elmira.
Here’s what Twain said about his home in Elmira: “We are perched on a hill-top that overlooks a little world – of green valleys, shining rivers, sumptuous forests and billowy uplands veiled in the haze of distance. We have no neighbors. It is the quietest of all quiet places, and we are hermits that eschew caves and live in the sun.”
Twain married his wife Octavia in Elmira, who said yes on his second try. They are pictured below with their daughters Suzy, Clara, and Jean. Their son Langdon died of diphtheria when he was just 19 months old. [Note the spelling of diphtheria. An extra h is part of the disease.]
Zoe Saldana visited the puzzle today. Hot stuff! Blue’s a good color for you Zo, but, then, what wouldn’t be?
Did you hear about the big flap that arose between her and the Nina Simone people? OMG. First of all, Zoe’s 44 and was born in Passaic, NJ. Her dad was Dominican and her mom Puerto Rican. She appeared in the three highest grossing films of all time: two Avatar films and Avengers: Endgame. She dated Bradley Cooper for over a year, but then married an Italian artist, Marco Perego. They’ve been married for ten years and have three kids (two twins and a plus-one.)
Okay, let’s get to the flap. So Zoe took the role of Nina Simone in the biographical film Nina. Simone’s identity and work was closely linked to the fact that she was a powerful black woman with dark skin and African features. She wrote, “I’m the kind of colored girl who looks like everything white people despise or have been taught to despise.” But she was defiantly proud of her appearance and she fought to change perceptions of what was beautiful.
Simone’s family, estate, and supporters called the casting of Zoe Saldana an insult to Simone’s struggle and an example of Hollywood’s attempt to sideline women with dark skin. They were outraged that Zoe was fitted with a prosthetic nose and her skin tone darkened for the role, almost as if the role had been given to a white woman in blackface. When Zoe started promoting the film, the estate tweeted bitterly: “Cool story but please take Nina’s name out your mouth. For the rest of your life.”
Saldana initially defended the casting, saying: “I made a choice. Do I continue passing on the script and hope that the ‘right’ Black person will do it, or do I say, ‘You know what? Whatever consequences this may bring about, my casting is nothing in comparison to the fact that this story must be told.’” But years later, she admitted it was a mistake, and apologized. As it turned out, the movie was not a critical or financial success.
Owl Chatter is certain she pulled through it okay — Jersey girls are tough stuff.
Here’s a crisp, funny poem by Tony Hoagland from yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac. We’ve all been there, but maybe not exactly. It’s called Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.
On Friday afternoon David said he was divesting his holdings in Stephanie dot org. And Cindy announced she was getting rid of all her Dan-obelia, and did anyone want a tennis racket or a cardigan?
Alice told Michael that she was transplanting herself to another brand of potting soil And Jason composed a 3-chord blues song called “I Can’t Rake Your Leaves Anymore Mama,” then insisted on playing it over his speakerphone to Ellen.
The moon rose up in the western sky with an expression of complete exhaustion, like a 38-year old single mother standing at the edge of the playground. Right at that moment
Betty was extracting coil after coil of Andrew’s emotional intestines through a verbal incision she had made in his heart, and Jane was parachuting into an Ani Difranco concert wearing a banner saying, Get Lost, Mark Resnick.
That’s how you find out: out of the blue. And it hurts, baby, it really hurts, because breaking up is hard to do.
Here’s Ani D. Her biggest hit, 32 Flavors, was used in an ad campaign back in 1999 by the NFL. It featured players who wore the number 32.
We’ll let Ani play us off stage tonight. Thanks for popping by. See you tomorrow!
Those of you who were planning to have gay sex in Uganda anytime soon, it would be better if you don’t. Under a law passed Tuesday, it’s a crime punishable by life in prison. Just trying to have it will get you a seven-year term. I’m not sure what “trying” means — the article in the NYT didn’t explain. In cases of “aggravated homosexuality,” e.g., if children are involved, the law calls for the death penalty.
The lawmaker who introduced the legislation said it was needed because there was a “public outcry” over a plot to recruit schoolchildren into homosexuality — an allegation that rights advocates have said is baseless. Also, last month, a high-ranking Ugandan military officer urged health officials not to treat homosexual people in government health centers. The article noted that the U.S. provides close to $1 billion in aid to Uganda annually.
The national symbol of Uganda is the grey-crowned crane, fabled for its gentle nature. It’s on the flag. Looks a little gay, no?
Moving from the horrific to the ridiculous, where Owl Chatter is much more comfortable, the puzzle today used the clue “apprehension” for the answer DREAD. It caused LMS some discomfiture:
I’m still not happy with any definition I see of the word DREAD. For me, it’s usually neither fear nor apprehension. It’s simply that I’m really, really not looking forward to doing something. I’m not afraid of checking Mom’s air conditioning filter. Not at all. Not apprehensive. I’m just not looking forward to her standing at the foot of the ladder scrutinizing my every move, offering suggestions. Honestly, I’ve started telling her that I’m happy to do whatever task (adjust sprinkler, put freeze guard thingies on outside spickets, change a fluorescent bulb), but I tell her that she’s not allowed to watch. Once she had me fix her Kia side mirrors so that they retracted when the engine was shut off. I told her she had to stay away while I did this. When I finished, I jumped out of my skin ‘cause she was peering around the wall of the vestibule in the carport. Watching. Cue Twilight Zone music.
Today’s constructor was David Kwong, who is not only a cruciverbalist (XW puzzle person), but is a magician. LMS shared this amazing magic trick video in which Kwong combines magic and XW puzzles. Plus, you get to meet Will Shortz.
The clue at 46A was “Crow known to sing,” and the answer, of course, was SHERYL. Here she is:
She turned 61 last month — ouch! — and has sold over 50 million records. She was nominated for Grammys 32 times and won 9. She’s from Kennett, Missouri. She received a degree in music education from the U. of Missouri. Go Tigers! Her mom was a piano teacher, and her dad a lawyer and trumpet player. Once when he was arguing a case in court a little too heatedly, the judge said to him, “Easy does it, Satchmo.” [No he didn’t.]
Sheryl hasn’t been married, but she dated Eric Clapton and Owen Wilson. She was also engaged to Lance Armstrong, but they split after a couple of years when he found out she couldn’t ride a bike. She lives in West Nashville, TN, with two adopted children. She had breast cancer back in 2006 and is being monitored for a benign brain tumor. Owl Chatter hopes she’s okay. Thanks for dropping in Crow!
According to a front page story in the NYT today, DNA evidence has determined that Beethoven was Jewish. Also that he was a woman. No joke! A lock of hair thought to have been clipped from Beethoven’s head during his final illness was tested and is indisputably the hair of an Ashkenazi Jewish woman. According to the Times, the only other possible explanation is that it wasn’t Beethoven’s hair, which seems preposterous. Beethoven died from liver disease at the age of 56, which, since he would have been dead by now anyway, turns out not to have mattered. Here’s her picture. She looks sort of Jewish, no? Jew-ish?
Congrats to the Japanese baseball team who beat us fair and square for the WBC title.
The center fielder for the J-Squad was Lars Nootbaar, an outfielder for St. Louis during the regular season. Lars was born and raised in California. Nootbaar is a Dutch name — his dad was an American of Dutch, German, and English descent. Lars qualified for the team because his mom was Japanese.
Lars is the great-grandson of businessman and philanthropist Herbert Nootbaar, an early benefactor of Honkbal Hoofdklasse. That’s not a person — it’s the highest level of competitive baseball in the Netherlands. There are nine teams in that league, including Quick Amersfoort, Twins Oosterhout, and the Hoofddorp Pioniers.
I’ll just let myself out now — no need to get up. See you tomorrow!
How wonderful — Owl Chatter Vermont-friend Lizzie tells us there was a big Hackberry tree in the front yard where she grew up and she can still picture it. Here’s one from down in Florida.
The hackberry is a deciduous tree, meaning it sheds its leaves in autumn. They are usually medium-sized, growing up to around 80 feet tall.
Small flowers appear in early spring while the leaves are still developing. Male flowers are longer and fuzzy. Female flowers are greenish and more rounded.
The fruit is a small drupe (fleshy with thin skin and a central pit) about a half-inch in diameter, edible in many species, with a dryish but sweet, sugary consistency, reminiscent of a date.
Drupe is a new word for me. It’s an anagram of prude, but with three of the letters retaining their position. On the issue of an anagram with all five letters changing their spot (like DECOR and CREDO, and DOULA and ALOUD), someone noted it shouldn’t be too rare since each five-letter word will have 44 permutations like that. Is that true? How do you get to that?
I asked the guy who wrote that (mathgent) how he got it. Apparently, it’s over my paygrade because he answered: “Permutations of an ordered string where no item is in the same position are called derangements. There’s a complicated formula for calculating it. It’s a summation of factorial expressions.”
Derangements! Cool. Does our official Owl Chatter mathematician have anything to add?
Our friend Joe recommended a book on Jewish Humor by Columbia prof Jeremy Dauber. It got off to a good start:
“You want to hear a joke? I’ll tell you a joke. What’s green, is nailed to the wall, and whistles?
I give up.
A herring.
But a herring’s not green!
Well, you can paint it green.
But it’s not nailed to the wall!
You could nail it to the wall. If you wanted to.
But a herring doesn’t whistle!
All right, fine, so it doesn’t whistle.”
He then asks if that’s a “Jewish” joke, and if so why? The syntax? The smart-ass sensibility? The subversive jab at the very form of a joke? The refusal to provide the closure of a punch line? Or is it just a joke about herring?
We’ll have to leave it there for now. Willis Reed died.
In the puzzle today, 10D was ZIPTIE, “plastic fastener.” Rex conceded there are many uses for them, but it gave him the willies since he associates them now with the Jan 6 insurrection and police action.
It led to this comment from JHC:
“Rex: My kids have a subscription to a monthly science kit. This month one of the projects was to build a homemade air rocket launcher. At one point the parts were secured together with a ZIPTIE. So there’s a much more innocuous image for you to associate with the product.
“With Passover coming up, I’m reminded of a sidebar in our Hagaddah that talks about how wine is used at the Seder as a symbol of freedom when so many have become enslaved to alcohol. The lesson is that no object is inherently good or bad; it’s the choices people make in using it that have moral value.”
OK, fair enough. But has anyone told Zelensky about that rocket launcher kit?
Headline in The Onion: Catholic High School Newsletter Has Updates On Which Alumni Are In Hell Now.
Willis Reed, Hall of Fame ballplayer for the Knicks, died yesterday. He was 80 and had heart disease. By all accounts — 100% — he was a real mensch. His death was confirmed by his teammate and U.S. Senator from NJ, Dollar Bill Bradley. I remember seeing Reed play in one of his first games as a rookie in Madison Square Garden when I was in high school. You could sense a new era beginning for the Knicks (even though they lost that night, d’oh!). They won two championships during Reed’s tenure (1969-70, and 72-73) and have not won any since. He was the league MVP in 69-70, Rookie of the Year in 1965, and an All-Star seven times.
Reed will always be remembered for his gritty, emotional appearance in Game 7 of the first championship run. He had torn a muscle in Game 5, and sat out Game 6. It wasn’t clear if the Knicks could beat the Chamberlain-led Lakers without him. He skipped the pre-game warmups getting treatments. But he limped onto the court to start the game to thunderous applause, and sank his first two shots. His teammates took over from there and carried the night. I remember listening to the game on the car radio as my brother drove us up to Boston.
In 1990, around the 20th anniversary of Game 7, Reed told The Times: “There isn’t a day in my life that people don’t remind me of that game.”
His #19 is the first number retired by the Knicks.
This is a story I hadn’t heard. On Oct. 18, 1966, at Madison Square Garden, Reed was embroiled in a battle with the Lakers’ Rudy LaRusso, a bruising 6-foot-7 forward. Throughout the game, Reed had been complaining to the officials about LaRusso’s tactics, but when his pleas were ignored he acted on his own.
Lined up at the free-throw line late in the third quarter, Reed elbowed LaRusso to the side of the head. On the way up court, LaRusso responded with a chopping punch. Reed, in a sudden fury, shook off Darrall Imhoff’s bear hug from behind and floored the 6-foot-10 Imhoff, cutting him near the eye; he broke the nose of John Block, a 6-foot-9 rookie, who had foolishly stepped into his space; and he finally chased LaRusso into the Lakers’ bench, throwing wild punches and sending several of the players fleeing.
Reed later took his teammates to task for not jumping in to help him. In his defense, Dick Barnett said, “Man, you were winning.”
Off the court, Reed was gentle and very generous, always taking rookies under his wing and lending them whatever they needed until they got established. He had a good heart.
I can understand the desire to recapture one’s youth, but I’m not sure I’d want to go through high school again. So what are we to make of the story in the NYT today of Hyejeong Shin? Shin, who is 29, came to the U.S. from South Korea to attend a boarding school in Massachusetts at age 16. She later graduated from Rutgers with a degree in Poli Sci and Chinese. She was divorced two years ago. In January, she used false documents to enroll in New Brunswick High School. She attended classes, met with counselors, and “wandered the hallways” for several days before the kimchi hit the fan. Harmless? She faces up to five years in prison if convicted of the falsified documents charges brought against her. Setting aside the question of what would be worse — five years in prison, or four years in high school — what the hell is going on?
One of her lawyers conceded it might be hard to understand but she was just trying to recreate the sense of safety she felt at the boarding school when she first arrived in the country. The pain of the divorce and the long separation from her family caused her to act “uncharacteristically.” The police stated there was no evidence she intended to bring harm or violence to anyone in the community. She had fallen behind by roughly $20,000 in her rent — there is that. But her lawyers said that was likely linked to the divorce.
In a personal statement she wrote a while ago she said she practiced meditation and enjoyed singing “when no one is around. I can be very quiet, but I do slowly open up and start talking more as I become more comfortable.” She is in the U.S. legally and hopes to return to her homeland when the case concludes.
What a sad and unusual story. Owl Chatter hopes things start taking good turns for the troubled woman. Here she is with her lawyer, right before running off for an algebra test.
The puzzle today was a delicious pile of nonsensical wordplay. The theme called for phrases that repeated the last part of a word three times. Here are the four theme answers:
1. Injury that’s so embarrassing no one is allowed to mention it?
TABOO BOOBOO
2. Result of forgetting to pack a toothbrush for a Doha vacation?
QATAR TARTAR
3. Cuban dance performed at a Russian villa?
DACHA CHA CHA
(BTW, “dacha” is pronounced with the ch as in cheese, not with a K sound. I took Russian for a few years but don’t remember that. Don’t remember anything, actually.)
4. Indistinct muttering from a ring-tailed primate?
LEMUR MURMUR
Commenters suggested others:
VISCOUS COUSCOUS wasn’t bad.
Same for the colorful bird dance: TOUCAN CAN CAN
And these three:
Malian ballerina’s attire? TIMBUKTU TUTU Nebraskan’s response to a joke? OMAHA HAHA One who fails to pick up on sly hints? INNUENDO DODO
My favorite was:
“Barrier constructed in the style of a city in Washington.”
Answer: WALL ALA WALLA WALLA
Here’s a shot of that DODO:
Wordle came up in the commentary. The word yesterday was CREDO and someone mentioned he guessed DECOR, thus getting all five letters, but all out of position. The two words are anagrams where none of the letters share the same position. He wondered if there was a term for that, but no one came up with one. I’m guessing there isn’t. Someone else noted that a puzzle answer today forms another duo like that. The answer was DOULA, and you can anagram it to ALOUD.
Endlessly fascinating and brain-numbingly boring at the same time — how does that happen?
Rex’s take on the puzzles is often way different from most people’s. It’s part of his charm, or terribly annoying. (Owl Chatter is in the former camp. We are fans.) Anyway, on Sunday, commenter Joaquin put it nicely, thus:
“I almost never agree with @Rex (about anything). But you know what they say: ‘Crosswords make strange bedfellows.’ And here Rex and I are today – fighting over the covers.”
Rex posted the following recently. If you are a puzzle person, you may enjoy following up (by clicking on the link). I did so last year and it was fun.
“The ultra-successful “These Puzzles Fund Abortion” fundraiser is back for another round with “These Puzzl3s Fund Abortion” (This Time, There’s a “3” In The Title). As before, the idea is that you donate at least $15 to one (or more) of the five abortion funds they’re supporting, and you get 16 puzzles from top-flight constructors like Ada Nicolle (who made yesterday’s stellar puzzle) as well as Brooke Husic, Rafael Musa, Natan Last, Rebecca Goldstein, and many more.”
It all comes down to one game tonight — the U.S. vs Japan for the World Baseball Championship. This pretty cheerleader will be rooting for her countrymen, no doubt.
According to UNESCO, it’s World Poetry Day today. Let’s see if Owl Chatter’s poet laureate, Ted Kooser, has something for us.
This is from Winter Morning Walks.
Fifty or sixty small gray birds with crests in a bare hackberry tree this morning early, not one of them making a sound or even the neat black silhouette of a sound against the rising sun. They let me walk up close, then one by one they leapt from their perches and dropped and caught the air and swung away into the north, becoming a ribbon first, and then, in the distance, confetti, as they sprinkled their breathtaking silence into another bare tree.
With Stephanie Gregory “Stormy Daniels” Clifford back in the news, Owl Chatter is taking a look at sides of her that the public hasn’t gotten to see. First, she’s a mom to her beautiful daughter Caiden, who is now 12.
Second, did you know she was a declared candidate for the U.S. Senate from Louisiana back in 2010? That’s a good 8 years before we heard about her for the sordid Trump business. She had been a Democrat for most of her life, but was drawn to the libertarian aspects of the GOP, so she ran as a Republican, seeking David Vitter’s seat. She made several listening tours around Louisiana to focus on the economy, as well as women in business and child protection. She said she’d retire from the adult industry if elected. But she dropped out of the race saying she could not afford to undertake it, and complaining that the media never took her candidacy seriously. Someone must have been taking it seriously — her campaign manager’s car was blown up at one point — Yikes! No one was hurt.
In May of 2018, she appeared on Saturday Night Live, and she appeared as a dancer in the films The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. Hang in there Daniels!
Today’s puzzle’s theme was Dine and Dash, which is what it’s called when you dine at a restaurant and then dash off without paying. It’s more serious than the mere social “crime” Eat and Run. It inspired a few tales:
From egsforbreakfast:
One year during college, my brother worked as a short order cook at the Duck In drive in, as did Steve Prefontaine. For those not in the know, Pre was one of the premier middle distance runners in the country and, eventually, internationally. One day a guy did the DINEANDDASH thing, so Pre took off after him and ran him down. To this day I chuckle when I think of that hard-luck, would-be thief looking back and seeing the hopelessness of outrunning his pursuer.
And from GILL I:
I did it once.
Right after graduating high school from the American School of Madrid, my two girlfriends and I decided we’d go on a southern trip to Gibraltar and a little boat ride HOP to Tangier.
We were dirt poor and relied on some hitchhiking to get us to our destination. Although you didn’t see many “Americanas” standing on “out-of-the-way” roads, trying to hitch a free ride, we always got some sweet farmer to give us a lift. We’d flip a peseta to see who’d get the back of the truck usually filled with a goat or two. Those were the days, my friend.
Anyway, by the time we got to Granada, we were dirty and hungry. We found a cheap little pension in the center of the city that had a shower (shared by about 20 other men) and two small beds. It was clean and it had the view of the town square so we were content. But we were also hungry.
After getting cleaned up we headed to a local tapas bar to nibble on bread and mejillones and maybe a little tortilla. Four (ahem) older men came up to the bar and started flirting with us. They insisted on paying for our tapas and then insisted we have dinner with them in a restaurant near the Alhambra. I guess you could say we were desperate because we accepted. Up, up, and up we went through charming cobblestone paths, passing Gypsy flamingo dances enticing us to enter their caves and watch. Only vente duros they would shout… but we were on another quest.
We got to the restaurant and the ordering began. I even remember what we ate this long time ago. Pheasant!
Our “dates” were becoming drunker and more (shall I say) aggressive. We were young but not yet stupid. The bill arrived and my TWO girlfriends and I told them we needed to use el WC. They politely got up from their seats to let us go. Once alone, we decided to DASH. We actually SPLIT. We left around the back and started running down the cobblestone street. The men decided to run after us shouting much worse than any F WORD you’ve ever heard. I remember laughing so hard that I probably soiled myself. The gypsies were standing outside their caves clapping, dogs were barking. My friend Robyn lost her shoe and a dog bit Erica’s dress and ripped some of her skirt off. The men were still shouting at us but we were younger and spryer. We finally made it to our pension. We just stood there in a daze then began laughing madly. We actually laughed for days after our ne’er do well soiree.
I’ve told this story a thousand times because recalling that night brings me nothing but joy. I have never done another DINE and DASH since; it would never be the same but hot damn it was fun.
J. Caramanica’s review in the NYT today of Taylor Swift’s current Eras tour was serious and engaging. It focused on two songs: “The most meaningful TS recording of the past few years is almost certainly ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version)(Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault),’ as layered and provocative as its title is unwieldy. A revision and expansion of one of her most gutting songs, it dissects a problematic, lopsided and ultimately scarring relationship with forensic detail.” It says this version of the song is enriched by Swift’s understanding of herself today that she couldn’t have seen when she first wrote it over ten years ago. She performed it about halfway through the three-hour show “at the center of the long runway stage, elevated on a platform, holding 70,000 people rapt with this tale of righteous fury and anguish. Plenty were singing along with her, but somehow, the accumulated voices sounded like one huge hush, students in awe of the master class.”
Later in the review, he mentions a series of songs towards the end of the show, and says “But something far more meaningful had come just before. During an acoustic segment, she came out to the very farthest point of the stage, sat at a small piano and played her very first single, ‘Tim McGraw.’ It was the night’s other pillar performance. It’s a song about memory and the ways in which people fail each other, and she sang it heavy with regret and tinged with sweetness.
“But unlike ‘All Too Well,’ which now benefits from the wisdom that time affords, ‘Tim McGraw’ remained as raw as the day it was recorded. No real tweaks, no rejoinder from the new Swift to the old one — just a searing take on the sort of love that makes for a better song than relationship. There are some things Swift simply has understood all along.”
Good night readers! Glad you could pop in today — thanks! Owl Chatter surpassed its 150th post this week. Ridiculous.
Men who have become bald can participate in suction cup tug-of-war. It’s a sport hosted annually by the Japanese town of Tsuruta.
Operating under the motto “The light of baldness is the light of peace, illuminating the dark world brightly,” the Tsuruta Hagemasu Association has been trying to shed a positive light on baldness. Baldness can cause some men to lose self-esteem, go into depression or develop anxiety. And those are the good side effects. But Hagemasu wants its members to know that they can brighten the world with their baldness through positivity. Amen to that, Hagemasu!
In the competition, suction cups connected by a string are attached to the heads of the competitors and the tugging begins. The first to have his cup pop off loses.
A Mr. Ota won this year for the third consecutive time, making him one of the most successful participants in the history of the sport. I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of him. He has a rather flat crown of the head, which may be an advantage. Tricks participants sometimes use include polishing their heads or slightly altering the force with which they pull in order to force the opponent’s mistake.
Suction cup tug-of-war can be played by men with hair, and even women who attach the suction cups to their foreheads, but baldies dominate the sport. The smoother and flatter the surface, the better the suction.
Where else but in Owl Chatter can you find material like this? I ask you.
The puzzle today drew on Romeo and Juliet. At 37A, the clue was “Response to thumb-biting in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’” and the answer was DO YOU QUARREL SIR?
As you should know from high school English, to bite one’s thumb at someone is an act of insolence, akin to giving one the finger today. Here’s the scene:
“I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it.”
“Do to bite your thumb at us, sir?”
“I do bite my thumb, sir.”
“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”
“No, sir. I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.”
“Do you quarrel, sir?”
“Quarrel, sir? No, sir.”
“But if you do, sir, I am for you. I serve as good a man as you.”
“No better?”
“Well, sir. “
Whew. Close one.
Here’s Olivia Hussey, who played J in the Zefferelli film version.
The Israeli national baseball team was overmatched after its exciting win over Nicaragua. They lost to the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, and the competition is over for them. There was a lot of good feelings from the experience though, and they are guaranteed a spot in the next World Baseball Classic in 2026.
In a special ceremony, Israel and the Dominican Republic signed a memorandum of understanding to emphasize the friendship between the two countries. The event was a follow-up to a trip to Israel some DR players took last fall. And later this year, there will be a charity softball game in the DR between Dominican and Jewish-American players.
There is history here. Back in 1938, the Dominican Republic was the only country that took in Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis.
Nelson Cruz, an 18-year MLB veteran with almost 500 career home runs who played for the Nats last year, spoke about the importance of spreading love. “Right now, what’s connecting us is baseball, and a love of baseball,” he said, addressing kids from a Jewish youth group. “God created us all equal, it doesn’t matter what color, what gender you’re coming from. We should all stay together.”
You tell ’em, Nellie.
Speaking of Jews in sports, Owl Chatter just learned that Jon Scheyer, the first-year basketball coach at Duke, replacing legendary Coach K, is Jewish. He’s 35, born in Illinois, and had a bar-mitzvah. He played college ball at Duke and was on the coaching staff since 2013. He’s getting paid $8 million a year. (Yow!)
Scheyer’s wife Marcelle and he have a daughter, Noa, and a son, Jett. No one beats the OC photographers at getting kids to laugh. What did you do this time, Philly, you big nut?
What a nice image to end with tonight! See you tomorrow.
Hard to come up with a better headline than the one AOL News just threw at me: “Family Feud Contestant Charged With Murdering Wife.” I guess the feud got a little out of hand.
And so can sports celebrations: Ouch! The Mets lost their ace reliever Edwin Diaz for the season on Wednesday when he tore a tendon in his right knee celebrating Puerto Rico’s victory over the Dominican Republic. He pitched the ninth inning, hugged his brother who is also on the team, and started bouncing up and down with his teammates in what the NYT described as a fairly tame celebration. But something happened and he crumpled to the ground.
At least no one got killed there, like in Georgia. That’s what happened in January after U. of Georgia won the National Championship (in football). A day after the victory parade, Jalen Carter, a defensive tackle for the Bulldogs competed in a drag race with Chandler LeCroy, a recruiting analyst for the team, who had been drinking. Both cars were going about 100 miles an hour and darted into oncoming traffic. LeCroy’s car left the road and hit a pole, killing him and Devin Willock, a team member.
The Diaz injury is devastating for the Mets. He was pretty much unhittable the past two years, and they had just signed him to a $105 million contract. Yadi Molina, the manager of the Puerto Rican team, said it was God’s will. That makes sense. It’s not clear if that goes for the two dead people in Georgia too, but probably, right?
You know those little Drake’s cakes, with the crumbly stuff on top? They’re delicious. Let’s give one to every member of every winning sports team from now on and that can be enough celebration. You can get them individually wrapped so if there are extras they won’t go to waste. Problem solved.
In its 1943 holding in Barnette, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schools can’t force kids to recite the pledge of allegiance. Justice Reggie Jackson wrote the opinion. [Note: It was Robert Jackson, but I like the thought of Reggie on the Court.] It states: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
In Pamela’s Paul’s Op-Ed piece today in the NYT, she wrote about Marisa Barnwell, a 15-year-old Black honor student in Lexington, South Carolina, who was inspired by Colin Kaepernick, and is refusing to participate in the Pledge. Her parents are suing the school because she was assaulted by a teacher over it. And on Facebook a comment urged her to “go back to her monkey cage in Africa if she doesn’t like to recite the pledge to the country that’s doing her and her retarded family a favor by letting them live among decent humans.”
And, speaking of decent human beings, Simone Segouin died on February 21, at age 97, in Courville-sur-Eure, France. Her nom de guerre was Nicole Minet, and she was a simple, pretty farm girl, 17 years old, who learned how to use a submachine gun, joined the Resistance, and killed Germans.
Nicole was introduced to the Resistance by Roland Boursier, a lieutenant and local Resistance leader, with whom she later had six children. She started out with small jobs, e.g., serving as a messenger, but soon was involved in major operations like blowing up trains. She was one of a trio of partisans who personally killed a pair of German soldiers in an ambush. She was featured in an article in the Sept. 4, 1944 issue of Life magazine.
After the war, she received the Croix de Guerre, a military honor for heroism in combat. She worked as a pediatric nurse. A street in Courville-sur-Eure was named after her.
Rest in peace, pretty farm girl.
Today’s puzzle was a first for constructor Carter Cobb and it was terrific. Everybody’s favorite was at 17A: “Join a boxer rebellion?” It had nothing to do with boxing or dogs. The boxer is underwear, and the answer was GO COMMANDO, which is a term that means to not wear underwear. Joey gave it some notoriety on Friends but it actually derives from the military. Commandos in the field for great lengths of time just couldn’t always take care to have fresh (or even tolerable) underwear so often did without. It applies to both men and women.
At 40A, “Ones calling across the ocean?” was BLUE WHALES, the largest animals ever known to have lived on earth. They can be 100 feet long and weigh 200 tons. They are carnivores and live 80 to 90 years. Our intrepid Owl Chatter photographers really went the extra nautical mile to get this shot:
This was cute too: “Retirement plan whose prospects are looking good?” The answer was BEAUTY REST. Get it? — retirement plan.
And “Staples of horror movies?” was JUMP SCARES. Remember that great one in Wait Until Dark? Audrey Hepburn. Alan Arkin.
“Slangy lunch fare,” was a SAMMICH.
Good puzzle!
Thanks for wasting some time with us! We’re celebrating friend Dan’s birthday tomorrow with dinner in Somerville. Can’t wait!
Special Owl Chatter cheers for Jacob Steinmetz of the Israeli National Baseball Team. Jake is the first ever Orthodox Jew to be drafted by a Major League team — the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was the starting pitcher for Israel against DR on Tuesday (the Dominican Republic) and gave up one run and two hits in an inning and a third while facing the entire DR lineup. He struck out Manny Machado, one of the best hitters in the game, and Jeremy Pena, last year’s World Series MVP. After several pitches got by Juan Soto, he gave Jake a “pretty impressive” face look.
Whatever his mom gave him, he ate. Steinmetz is 6’5″ and weighs 220. He’s 19, was born in Queens, and raised on Long Island. He is willing to play ball on the Sabbath as long as he can walk to and from the stadium. He says he’s only felt warm support so far from teammates and fans. No anti-Semitism.
Cheers as well for Owl Chatter fave Ana de Armas who wowed them at the Oscars last Sunday in her bid to snare the award for Best Actress for her performance in Blonde. She was beaten out by Michelle Yeow, but no hard feelings. Here she is in the gown she wore, followed by a more relaxed, if no less devastating, pose.
Congresswoman Pat Schroeder died in Florida on Monday. She was 82. Oliver North called her one of the nation’s 25 most dangerous politicians. She was a pilot herself, and fought for women to have the right to fly combat missions. She was elected to Congress in 1972 out of Colorado, as an opponent of the Vietnam War. She helped pass the law that bars employers from firing women because they are pregnant and from denying maternity benefits. That reminds me, when I was working for the notoriously cheap Journal of Taxation, I once asked the bookkeeper if the company offered maternity benefits, and she said “Yeah — you get to keep the baby.”
Schroeder was one of only 14 women in the House when she was elected and she confronted extraordinary hostility. She was the first woman to sit on the Armed Services Committee, and at the first committee meeting she was forced to sit in the same chair with Rep. Ron Dellums, a Black committee member. You may have to read that last sentence again — it’s hard to believe. As Schroeder tells it in her book, she and Dellums had to sit “cheek to cheek” because the Chairman “said that women and blacks were worth only half of one regular member.” (The Chairman was F. Edward Hebert, of Louisiana.) The NYT states it is not clear whether he actually uttered those words, but the seating arrangement is not in dispute. Hard to imagine AOC being told to squoosh her tush into half a seat today without it registering on a seismograph.
Schroeder won her seat by ousting a Republican incumbent in the face of the Nixon landslide in 1972. Years later, when she requested her F.B.I. file, Schroeder found out that the bureau had placed her under surveillance during that race, breaking into her home and even recruiting her husband’s barber as an informant. She was re-elected eleven times with little opposition.
She is survived by her son, her brother, four grandchildren, her husband, and her husband’s barber.
I learned something new today, indirectly, from the puzzle. Rex said he felt the spelling of one of the answers seemed “jury-rigged.” I thought he meant “jerry rigged,” and I was going to politely correct him. But I’m glad I checked first. I mistakenly thought jury rigged was a legal thing — when you buy off a member of the jury. But it isn’t — Rex used the term correctly. It’s from the “jury mast” on a ship. The jury mast is used in an emergency to replace a damaged mast – it’s a hasty and temporary repair. And “jerry rigged” just means put together badly. That would have been correct too in this case.
There was some grumbling about MIDGUT as an answer for “intestines place.” Rex didn’t accept the term as real, and felt one’s gut is one’s intestines. But medical people quickly weighed in and all agreed it is a valid anatomical term, e.g., “I am a physician and midgut is sort of a word. It’s usually used in association with the condition ‘Midgut Volvulus.’ It’s more of an embryologic term, in which there is a foregut, midgut and hindgut and they develop into different things. the midgut develops into the intestines and if something goes wrong, you get a twisting called a Volvulus which can be life threatening and needs to be recognized quickly after birth.”
One person shared this story: “My younger son was born on December 20, 1989 and developed life threatening health issues three days later, leading to a helicopter flight from Central Louisiana to New Orleans (without mom or dad) for a tiny baby, and what I have and will always describe as emergency surgery–Sunday afternoon, Christmas Eve!! The life threatening issue was a MIDGUT Volvulus (so I have no problem with MIDGUT as a legit medical term). Thanks to a gracious and skilled pediatric surgeon, we received our son from the pediatric NICU at the Ochsner Clinic on Christmas morning. He’s thirty-three now, and married.” [I assume he means the son, not the surgeon.]
Henny Youngman: “Every time I ask what time it is, I get a different answer.”
Mort SAHL was in the puzzle again. Here’s what he said about Reagan: “Washington couldn’t tell a lie, Nixon couldn’t tell the truth, and Reagan couldn’t tell the difference. Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.”
Here’s a poem by Ted Kooser from Winter Morning Walks.
All through the night, the deeply troubled, sighing furnace has tried to console one whimpering floorboard that wants to return to its tree.
Beyond the walls, milky, translucent snow, brushed into drifts by the long blue fingers of shadow.
The snow has gathered as much of the light as it can from the stars, but that’s not enough warmth to kindle the eyes of even one rabbit, frozen still as a stone at the corner of morning.
Too tired to chatter tonight. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
The Wellington Files 