The Wellington Files

  • Fiddleheads

    Did you know that the white inner part of the orange rind is called PITH. Learned that from the puzzle, though I vaguely recall learning it before. Anyway, I posted the following for the gang: I keep a bowl nearby when I’m peeling an orange so I have a pot to PITH in.

    Naomi Watts was in the puzzle too, leading egs to comment: When I see NAOMI from the rear, I moan. (Get it? “Naomi” backwards spells IMOAN.) It led me to share how Ed Norton described his mother-in-law to Ralph: From the front, she looks like you from the back.

    We’ve been moaning over Naomi for a long time. Mulholland Drive: very weird film, can’t recommend. Saw it with Caity a long time ago. We were hanging on by our fingernails until tiny people came on the screen. It was hopeless after that. (David Lynch.)

    When I go beer shopping, one of my favorite past-times, I’m often discombobulated (oysgefumphed is the Yiddish word I made up) because (1) I want to try everything, (2) I’m too cheap to buy the expensive stuff, and (3) I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. So I wander around in a daze waving off attendants offering to help. But at the Bottle King in Chatham, I had a good, decisive experience. I was looking for something a little on the dark side (sounds scary!), but not porter or stout, to counter what I’m usually having these days, a cheap light beer (Busch Light) good for my diet. And I found Brooklyn Amber Lager right away in a nice twelve pack of bottles. Perfect! Then I saw my favorite Vermont ale: Fiddlehead. Key to it all is freshness: they have to be stamped with a packaged on date that is fairly recent, or a best buy date that is well ahead, or I’ll just walk out. And both of these were right off the truck (relatively)! Decided just to get the Lager but was happy to see both. Had one with dinner just now. Nice! (Burp!) (George! — keep Phil away from it. I mean it — I’ll kill him. Or at least I’ll have Sarah F. kill him — she could do it one-handed without her pulse rate rising. And there’s not a jury in the world that would convict us.)

    That’s not the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. It’s the Manhattan. And here are some fiddleheads. They’re ferns.

    My practice for the daily NYTXW is to complete the puzzle the night before (i.e., I do the “Thursday” puzzle Wednesday night). It pops onto my phone at precisely 10pm. That way, at 6am the following morning, when Rex Parker’s assessment and discussion of it appears, I have either completed it or given up, which is rare (he says, giving himself a pat on the back and nearly pulling a muscle).

    I can rarely predict Rex’s take, since he sees so much more in it than I do. Today, e.g., what I thought might have been seen as a gimmick, he loved. The theme was BREAKDANCING and in three squares there were little drawings of figures performing dance moves. In each one, the figure appeared to be forming the shape of a letter, and that letter was used in the answer that ran across it. But that’s not all. Each long answer crossing it had the name of a dance embedded in it and the figure “broke” it. (What the hell am I talking about?) For example, for the answer VINCENT VAN GOGH the second V was a dancer with her body shaped into a V. And that figure “breaks into” the letters that spell T[V]ANGO (tango) that are embedded in VNCEN[T VAN GO]GH.

    Egs said that at his age he doesn’t bend well anymore so any dance is a BREAKDANCE for him. [Yup. I hear ya.] On the topic of aging, Commenter Gary noted in a different context that he took his wife to the oncologist yesterday who was a woman (the doc) so young he would have guessed she was a Starbucks barista. (I wished him good luck. That’s what we do in the Commentariat. We care about each other.)

    At 11A, the clue was “[blank] hair (edgy 2000s trend)” (3 letters), and I had no idea. (The crosses didn’t help, so I crashed on a Wednesday to my great disgrace.) The answer was EMO hair. Srsly? Commenter Nancy S. had the E and filled in EAR hair. Hysterical. EMO is long, side-swept bangs, layered lengths, and a side-swept look.

    In a headline no doubt written by the American Society of Cardiologists, it was pronounced “Taylor Goes Bare.” Sadly, the story was about her not wearing makeup. Puh-leeze don’t do that.

    I should inform our readership (both of you) that broadcasting may be spotty for a while. A (big) falling branch knocked out the internet/cable service at Owl Chatter’s NJ headquarters. Verizon came to do the repair yesterday, but we didn’t know we had to clear the whole driveway from the street to the house from snow for them. So they left. Arggh. We are faring ok so far without it. I’m actually thinking of suspending it for a bit. I get what I need on my phone and we don’t watch much TV. But for the blog, I’ll be using the wonderful Chatham Library and I may not get there every day.

    We’re very sad to note the death by suicide of Katherine Hartley Short, Martin Short’s beautiful daughter, at the ridiculous age of 42. Katherine was a social worker with degrees from NYU and USC. Short and his wife Nancy (who passed away from cancer in 2010) also had two sons, who survive Katherine. All three kids were adopted.

    Martin is a favorite of Owl Chatter’s with a devotion to nonsense at the highest level and a remarkable quickness. He does a physical impersonation of a bagpipe, for Pete’s sake. We fondly recall his appearance on Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” At one point, Jerry says to Short, “none of this is scripted,” and Short says “No kidding.”

    Rest in peace, Katherine.

    Thanks for dropping in.

  • The Measure of My Dreams

    Well, we’re up to our pupiks in snow today, Chatterheads. Lost a branch out front, but otherwise we’re okay, kinehora. Just lost power for an instant (so far). Hope you’re all okay too.

    Here’s the woman I hired, I mean married, to take care of the shoveling. I’m not sure we’ll be able to find our other shovel. (I hid it pretty well.)

    It’s been a while since we’ve heard from our style and culture consultant Ana but she weighed in today to, well, excoriate one of her favorite actresses, Barbie, for a serious style faux pas. (BTW, the plural of faux pas is also faux pas when it’s written, but when spoken, it’s pronounced foe pah (singular), and foe pahz (plural.)) Ana says this outfit of Margot Robbie’s at Tropfest is ridiculous, even considering the gothic Wuthering Heights connection. “Did someone tell her to throw on some underwear and a shower curtain?”

    Simpler is always better, advises our Oscar nominee for Best Actress for Blonde and for Worst Actress (Razzle Awards) for Ghosted. Thanks Ana. We agree!

    Since we’re trapped inside today, we might as well take a look at the NYTXW.

    We’ve never featured The Band before. I don’t believe it’s true. But at 11A today, for “Final use for an old T-shirt” we got RAG. Hello boys! You like tuba solos, folks? Resin up the bow!

    At 48D, the “London theater district,” was, of course, SOHO. Shane MacGowan wrote this song, below. He was a founding member and vocalist of The Pogues, a Celtic punk band we have featured in Owl Chatter before.

    MacGowan passed away in Dublin in late 2023 at the age of 65. His coffin was borne through Dublin on a horse-drawn carriage as fans lined the streets. Hundreds gathered inside and outside Saint Mary of the Rosary Church in Nenagh, County Tipperary, including celebrities Nick Cave, Johnny Depp, BP Fallon, Bob Geldof, Aidan Gillen, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins and former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams. There was dancing inside the church as “Fairytale of New York” was performed by the Pogues with Glen Hansard, Lisa O’Neill and John Sheahan from the Dubliners.

    “Fairytale of New York” went to No. 1 in Ireland on the weekend of MacGowan’s funeral. The Pogues reissued the song as a charity seven-inch single in tribute to MacGowan and to benefit the Dublin Simon Community, an anti-homelessness organisation he supported.

    Oh, no! Just lost the internet till tomw. Will finish up on my phone. Here’s MacGowan’s great song. See you tomorrow, snowbunnies!

    You took my dreams from me when I first found you.
    I kept them with me, babe, I put them with my own.
    Can’t make it all alone, I’ve built my dreams around you.

    Rest in peace, MacGowan.

  • The Rain Is Full Of Ghosts Tonight

    Welcome to Owl Chatter Post #990. (Not kidding.) I should probably think of something special to do when/if we hit 1,000. Nah. Still have time. Better put a call in to Armas, though. George!! Give Ana a head’s up.

    Edna St. Vincent Millay was a redhead, slim and beautiful, according to her description in the Writer’s Almanac today, her birthday. Eddie was born in Rockland, Maine, in 1892, and her time with us overlapped mine: I was ten months old when she died of heart failure in October 1950. Yup, very pretty.

    This heart-wrenching poem of hers is called “What lips my lips have kissed….”

    What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
    I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
    Under my head till morning; but the rain
    Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
    Upon the glass and listen for reply,
    And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
    For unremembered lads that not again
    Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
    Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
    Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
    Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
    I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
    I only know that summer sang in me
    A little while, that in me sings no more.

    I’m jelly at a tearjerker, and my brother was worse. We’d be at a movie together and I’d glance over and find him weeping like a baby over, like, nothing. I guess my sister was the toughest of us, but Bon was pretty soft too, tbh. It was my mom’s doing, genetically; my dad was the closest any of us came to gruff. Alehem hashalom.

    Anyway, so I wasn’t surprised when I found myself choking up, repeatedly, while reading Will McGrath’s beautiful essay on Minneapolis, in particular, his role in the resistance. It was in the Opinion section of today’s Times, on the back page, called (in the print version) “In the Resistance, We Drive Minivans.” He drove kids to school whose parents were afraid to leave their homes. Here’s a piece of it.

    “Today I’m driving a girl who never speaks other than to say thank you. She’s out of the car now and trying to clamber ungracefully over a dirty ice bank that walls off the roadway from her house. There is no entry point — she’d have to walk down to the corner to gain access — and I’m cursing myself for where I’ve dropped her off. The skies are an unsympathetic oatmeal. It is very cold, the dark dead of winter.

    “Out on the stoop of her building, the girl’s mom and little sister are waiting. The mother looks on nervously, wishing to minimize this vulnerable transition point between car and home. The little sister is probably 3 years old. She is in pigtails and wearing footie pajamas and she is radiant, leaping up and down, clapping, ecstatic to see her big sister come home. The quiet girl is stone-faced and stumbling, and eventually she makes it across the wall of gray ice to her stoop, where her little sister grabs her by the leg.

    “I’ll admit: This was the only time I cried, throughout this whole disgusting affair, as I sat in my car watching the girl in the footie pajamas clapping for big sister’s safe return. For a half-second I had the instinct to punch the steering wheel as hard as I could. But I’m not quite so melodramatic, and I was worried I’d just beep the horn awkwardly and look like a fool.”

    Earlier in the article he writes that he was worried the cold would keep the protesters home, the prediction said minus nine. But 50,000 showed up. And McGrath wrote the following, which I’m sending to Frank Bruni (Hi Pam!):

    “I was not surprised, had not forgotten that people in the North have been practicing for this their entire lives. Mention a negative temperature and the Minnesotan eye is liable to glaze over in reverie — it is a near-erotic sensation, the act of considering which fleece to pair with which shell, which anorak has the thickest fur-lined hood, whether it’s time to bring down the warmest warm coat from the attic, whether the heated vest is still charged.”

    I couldn’t watch the UMich men’s basketball game last night against Duke. I started, but it was too tense. (We lost.) So I switched to a Gnats spring training game and caught a few innings. Loved it! Got to see a whole raft of new players, including a big outfielder named Andrew Pinckney, who gunned down a runner at third from right field with a laser beam of a throw. Wow.

    And we had to alert our Dirty Old Man Dept when the broadcast team introduced their new on-the-field reporter, Alexa Datt. Yup, Datt’s her name. Hubba Hubba.

    Darn it — she turned, Phil. Try again.

    That’s better. She’s a Marylander. Hard to believe she’s 40. Worked in STL for the Cards before coming home. Hi Alexa!

    Today’s puzzle was a little blah and everyone complained that it was too easy. Bible scenes were clues for book titles. Yawn. So, e.g., “Sodom and Gomorrah” was the clue for TALE OF TWO CITIES, and “Moses parting the Red Sea” was the clue for PRINCE OF TIDES.

    Here’s Bruce’s great song, appropriate for obvious reasons. (“Samson and Delilah,” DANGEROUS LIAISONS.) Brace yourselves, ladies.

    At 109A, the clue was “Rush uncontrolledly,” and the answer was CAREER. Here’s Commenter Gary: I did not know CAREER can mean to rush forward. For me it’s a synonym for “What happened to me? I showed so much promise, and yet, look.”

    Did someone say “Bruce?” See you tomorrow, Shoveleers.

  • Latkes and Lox

    Well, that was a tariffic decision from The Supremes yesterday. Only Brett “I like beer” Kavanaugh joined the two automatics: Trump’s Black & White cookie.

    I was today years old when I learned I have a distant tie to Justice Elena Kagan. And I’m not referring to the fact that she attended Hunter College HS, where her mom taught. (BTW, her brother Marc taught Mayor Mamdani at Bronx HS of Science.) My connection to EK is more distant, or distanter, if you prefer. As the story goes, she clashed with her family’s (orthodox) rabbi over her bat mitzvah. She insisted on it being more traditional, like bar mitzvahs. A compromise was eventually reached (with Clarence Thomas dissenting). Anyway, that rabbi was Shlomo Riskin, who, earlier in life, was my counselor in summer camp one year (Camp Massad, Poconos). He was a good guy. I once hurled a rock intending it to land in a puddle near him (so he’d get splashed), but it hit him right in the nuts. Ouch! He was very forgiving as my intent was clear. How’s that for a 65-year-old memory?

    Elena is 65, kinehora, and never married. Consensus is she’s not gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that. We scoured the interweb for swimsuit pix, but came up empty. Here she is anyway — what a beautiful woman.

    The puzzle today kicked up quite the controversy. The clue at 42A was “Savory latke topping.” Answer: LOX.

    JLG: I have been eating latkes at Hanukkah for 30+ years and have not once put lox on them. Apple sauce or sour cream, yes. But lox? Am I alone here?

    Andy F: Apple sauce? Yes. Sour cream? Yes, please. Lox? Whaaaa?

    Jennypf: Nope, never encountered lox served with latkes. Not in my home, nor any friends/family gatherings, not at Chanukah parties at my shul. Not a thing in my world.

    David B: Never have I ever in my 69 years put lox on a latke! I’ll take mine with apple sauce!

    Puzzlehoarder: JLG, it definitely isn’t just you. When the answer LOX appeared from the crosses I had to reread the clue to make sure I hadn’t read the word bagel and somehow turned it into latke.

    Anony Mouse 1: No Jew on earth has ever put lox on latkes. [Will] Shortz has to know this.

    Anony Mouse 2: I often serve small bite-sized latkes with lox, garnished with a dollop of sour cream, a sprig of fresh dill, a few capers, or a little caviar. They are always a hit at parties.

    OC note: I’ve never had it, but I wouldn’t be averse to it. I googled “lox + latke” and it seems to be a direction fancy-pants Jewish chefs are headed in. (BTW, I googled “latke vs latka” and AI told me “latke” is correct, and “latka” a misspelling of latke.)

    The puzzle defeated me today, in the great northwest. I didn’t know that the “Film subgenre exemplified by ‘The Thing’ or ‘The Fly’” is BODY HORROR. Also couldn’t see how “Merely hinted at” could be TACIT.

    Ever hear of a MYSTERY BOX? Apparently it’s a thing. The clue was “Item for purchase with a question mark on its side.” A mystery box is a package sold to consumers without revealing its contents beforehand. The idea is simple: you purchase a box, and the items inside remain a surprise until you open it.

    Commenter Gary: I thought the question mark itself was on its side on the side of a MYSTERY BOX. It is not.

    At 36A, the clue was “A cow can produce about 200 pounds of it a year.” Answer: METHANE.

    Southside Johnny: How does one goes about weighing the amount of METHANE produced by a cow in a year. Do you collect it in a giant balloon, then freeze it and weigh it? Am I confusing mass with weight ? Any physical chemists in the crowd?

    Anony Mouse: To calculate the weight of methane produced you determine how much food a cow consumes, how many moles of methane are produced by that food, and then its mass and weight from that. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that’s a contributing factor to climate change (although not nearly as important as the carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels) so scientists are keen to understand it. Does that help?

    (It did.)

    Here are a couple of methane analysts our Phil spent a great deal of time with.

    “It gets folded and pressed.” If you’re thinking about dry cleaning, think again. It was the clue for QUESADILLA.

    Gotta close early today: Big UMich basketball game vs Duke coming up soon. I’m a little late to the party (rooting the boys on), but better late than never.

    Let’s close with this piece from tomorrow’s Met Diary. It’s called “Special Delivery.”

    Dear Diary:

    For the love of pizza and my wife, I traveled to Brooklyn Heights to pick up two gluten-free pies. I then wrapped the boxes together with blue painter’s tape to hold them steady for horizontal travel.

    I was surprised by how crowded the Manhattan-bound 2 train was when I stepped onto it that early Sunday evening, but I managed to find a spot in the corner where I could protect my precious cargo.

    When we got to 14th Street, the car got even more crowded as three young men headed to a Knicks game got on. I had nowhere to go when one of them nearly stepped so close as to jeopardize the entire point of my journey.

    As the doors began to close I considered turning the boxes vertically — a sin — when one of the three pulled his friend away from me.

    “Hey, man,” he said with a gesture my way. “Respect the pizza!”

    Good advice in general — see you tomorrow!

  • Fish Windows

    It’s just one blow after another. First, Canada drops a heartbreaker in OT to the US in Olympic women’s hockey. Next, our Sarah (Fillier)’s bobblehead doll comes out completely failing to capture how beautiful she is. I ask you — is this

    even in the same rink as this?

    Gimme a break. It’s a real shonda. In any event, if you wish to show support, the dolls are available at the PWHL shop for $25 (plus $9 shipping). If you mention Owl Chatter, the price goes up to $30.

    We’re proud to introduce the official lumber company of Owl Chatter, see below. Please look to them for all your lumber needs. Again, mention Owl Chatter at checkout for a 10% price increase.

    File that in the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up dept. We are planning on attending a minor ballgame in York, PA in April and when I went on their webpage to look into tickets, I found it in a list of the team’s “business partners.” This one wasn’t bad either, below. Your windows get clean but may smell funny. I don’t think we even have any fish windows. Linda, amirite?

    The following exchange took place in bed last night.

    Me: I’m miserable.

    Linda: What?

    Me: I can’t get comfortable.

    Linda: Turn onto your side.

    Me: I don’t have sides. I’m round.

    Linda: So rotate your circumference.

    Sometimes when I can’t sleep I listen to all-night sports-talk radio in bed. I have grudgingly come to feel WFAN’s Tommy Lugauer is okay. But his stock went up the other night when he described some blunder he made by saying: “I flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami.”

    In the puzzle today, at 47D STAIN was boringly clued with “Wood finish.” But it inspired me to share this tale:

    During my daughter’s (and therefore my) dollhouse years, I enjoyed putting together miniature furniture from kits. You’d get the tiny pieces of wood, handles for drawers, etc., and you would delicately glue it all together and STAIN or paint it, as you wish.

    I noticed small bottles of various stains in the miniature store we liked to visit, but I had larger containers of stain from other nondollhouse projects. So I asked my friend Jon, who I knew put together a dollhouse for his daughter, if I had to buy the special miniature stain or could use what I had left over from regular projects. We were in my work area at the time, and the tiny chair I put together was in front of us on my table. To let me know I didn’t need a special stain, Jon leaned over and whispered: “The wood doesn’t know it’s little.”

    [One of my favorite commenters (Gary) replied with a heart emoji! How neat is that?]

    Here’s a great clue: “Crispy flaps of crust on sourdough loaves.” Did you know they’re called EARS? Can you see it?

    If you were a fan of Better Call Saul like we were, you will know that “Actress Seehorn of ‘Pluribus’” is RHEA. Very likable character.

    Here’s a super-clever Friday-level clue: “Break down while studying?” The answer: REVERSE ENGINEER. Get it?

    Both Lewis and egs suggested this alternate clue for it: “Reenigne?”

    Had enough of winter? The puzzle is looking forward to SWEATER WEATHER, clued with “Pleasant chill in the air, say.” This young lady has the right idea.

    And we’ll let her pretty face close the shop today. See you tomorrow, Chatterheads! Thanks for popping by.

  • O Canada

    Need a little kick-start today? Who doesn’t? This is grand niece Maeven Beatrice.

    “I said to the almond tree, ‘Sister, speak to me of God.’ And the almond tree blossomed.” ― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco. Happy Birthday Nicki! Born in Greece (duh) in 1883.

    Here’s a young Irene Pappas asking her dermatologist about a troubling mole on her shoulder. She played “the widow” in the film version of NK’s Zorba the Greek.

    Nikos Kazantzakis should not be confused with Nikos Catsantzakis, aka Nicky the Cat. No! No! He shouldn’t!

    What a surprise and delight to see this excellent letter in the NYT this morning by a member of Rex Parker’s Commentariat! Nancy is a respected curmudgeon famous for her “wall.” Sometimes she is so disgusted by a puzzle that she hurls her paper at the wall. It’s become a standard of disgust for some others (“not so bad that it had to be thrown at Nancy’s wall, but . . . “).

    Anyway, in case you haven’t read it yet, here it is:

    To the Editor:

    Re “D.H.S. Expanding Push to Identify Opponents of ICE” (front page, Feb. 14):

    No need for the Department of Homeland Security to skulk around social media sites, issuing subpoenas to large tech companies for personal information about anonymous people opposed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    Go no further than right here, D.H.S.! I’m implacably opposed to ICE and the chilling totalitarian police state that it’s trying so hard to create. Nor am I anonymous.

    I’m prepared to stand up to you in broad daylight, on perhaps the most important media platform that we have in this country right now. So too, apparently, are all the other self-identified people in today’s Letters column standing proudly and defiantly beside me.

    Nancy Stark
    New York

    I learned two useless things from the puzzle today and am thrilled to share them with you. The clue for SSN (Social Security Number) was: “You can request a new one on religious grounds if it contains “666.”

    (Commenter Gary wrote: I think you should be able to rescue the orphaned 666 SSNS and request one with it in it.)

    The second one was about leeches. I knew they were used in the past as an attempted cure for stuff. In fact, here’s some info from Wikipedia:

    It was believed that the “humors” had to be kept in balance to maintain good health. (The four humors were blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile (not to be confused with Simone Bile).) Any sickness that caused one’s skin to become red (e.g. fever and inflammation), so the theory went, must have arisen from too much blood in the body. Similarly, any person whose behavior was strident was thought to be suffering from an excess of blood. Leeches, by removing blood, were thought to help with these kinds of conditions — a wide range which included illnesses like polio and laryngitis. [OC note: That’s also where the expression “The Good Humor Man” comes from, see below.]

    Anyway, we let go of that nonsense a long time ago, but get this — leeches are still used for certain medical procedures. According to Wikipedia, medicinal leech therapy made an international comeback in the 1970s in microsurgery, where it was used to stimulate circulation in tissues threatened by postoperative venous congestion, particularly in reconstructive surgery of the ear, nose, lip, and eyelid, and in finger reattachments. No leeches are used in the following finger reattachment, however.

    Other clinical applications of medicinal leech therapy include varicose veins, muscle cramps, thrombophlebitis, and osteoarthritis, among many varied conditions. Leech therapy was classified by the FDA as a medical device in 2004.

    Charlie Dickens was in the puzzle today. Rex has been reading Dombey & Son (900 pages) for so long that this is what his book looks like:

    It led me to post the following true story:

    The duct-taped Dickens reminded me of the time I left a paperback copy of I-don’t-remember-what on the floor of my car and it got waterlogged from melting snow. I thought a little time in the oven at a low setting might help it dry out. When I checked it after about a minute it seemed to be working. I’m a genius! It was about half-way to dry. I left it in for a very short while longer after which it looked very dry!! So I turned off the oven, took the book out carefully, and set it on my table where it burst into flames. D’oh! At least I put a whole new spin on “book burning.”

    We’ve sent Phil and George out to Milan to make sure Sarah’s okay. Canada’s loss to the U.S. in Olympic women’s hockey was devastating. Our Sarah (Fillier) skated her heart out in the 2-1 overtime loss. Canada had the game in hand with just 2:04 left! Argggggh. It was then that Knight tied it, and Keller stuck the dagger in just four minutes into OT.

    Here’s Sarah, at a happier moment.

    Too upset to go on. See you tomorrow.

  • All Around My Hat

    Close to 1,000 people have gotten measles in South Carolina since October. Governor Henry McMaster, who is anti-gay, anti-union, and a moron of the highest order, proudly announced the state is part of the largest surge in measles cases in the U.S. in three decades. Over 90% of the stricken were unvaccinated. How unusual is this? I think it’s the first time I’ve ever used the word “stricken.”

    Last ​week, U.S. FDA Commissioner Martin ​Makary urged Americans ‌to get vaccinated for ​measles. “I think everyone ​in this administration has been pretty clear that the best way to prevent measles ​is to ‌get your kid vaccinated against measles,” he ​said.

    Everyone? Pretty clear? Ya think?

    I wrote the above yesterday, Tuesday, 2/17, before seeing the Times today. The headline on the lead story is: Vaccine Makers Curtail Research and Cut Jobs. “There will be less invention, investment and innovation in vaccines generally, across all the companies,” Dr. Stephen Hoge, the president of Moderna, said.

    “The Trump administration said it was not discouraging innovation.” That’s the tell. The lie tells you the administration is acting in bad faith and against the public interest. They are idiots, but not idiots enough not to know they need to lie about it.

    Robert Duvall, dead at 95. One of our favorite actors. Did you see The Apostle? In one scene he is just walking up the street, but he’s full of anticipation about getting his own church, and you can feel it in his walk.

    Above, he is with his wife of 21 years, Luciana, 41 years his junior, to the day. (They shared Jan. 5 as their birthdays. Saved on cake.)

    Rest in peace, Consigliere.

    In yesterday’s puzzle, two crossing answers were ALBINO RAT (“White rodent often used in lab research”) and ALBANIANS (“Residents of Tirana”). So the obvious question that arises is Are there albino Albanians? Will have to get back to you.

    Here’s a little fatty. Awwww. . . .

    The puzzle was based on the old (and bad) pun playing on baroque and broke. You know, if it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it. BAROQUE was the central answer, and there were four embedded musical theme answers that were split (broken) by a black square. For example, reading across the third line you get ALBINORAT ORION, and there’s a black square after the T, “breaking” the oratorio. That happened with FUGUE, CHORALE, and SONATA.

    Sam’s wonderful viola teacher, Mr. Stewart, would come by the house for his lessons, and I noticed once that he had a new car, a Hyundai Sonata. So I remarked on how appropriate that was for him. (He’s been a member of the NJ Symphony forever.) He gave me a blank look that said “What?” So I said, “You know . . . Sonata . . . music?” And he lit up and said he hadn’t realized that.

    That’s him, below (without much hair). We still see him when we go to concerts and sometimes catch him up on how Sam’s doing. To make him feel good, we lied to him that Sam’s a member of the Detroit Philharmonic. What are the chances of him checking?

    At 1D, for “Distance from end to end” the answer was SPAN. Here’s a fun song called “All Around My Hat,” by the appropriate band, courtesy of Son Volt.

    With a name like Mac Forehand, how can this guy not be playing tennis? Also, how can this jump, below, only net him the silver medal (in the aptly named Big Air event)? Norway’s Tormod Frostad copped the gold. And that’s a good name for what he does.

    At 27D today, the clue was “Pips.” What? The answer turned out to be HUMDINGERS. SRSLY? Had no idea. I guess if you say to someone “You’re a real pip,” it’s like saying “You’re a humdinger.”

    Whatever. Here’s a song by Kevn Kinney. (Yeah, you heard me — there’s no I in Kevn. Like team.)

    We have begun paying attention to the UMich men’s basketball team. They are ranked #1 nationally (!), and beat a tough Purdue squad last night. They face a major test against Duke (#3) on Saturday. Two of their starters are orthodox Jews (no they’re not). Center Aday Mara is turning heads. He’s 7’3″ and from Spain. They seem to have a legit crack at the national title, kinehora. Go Blue!

    Enough. See you tomorrow.

  • Big Air

    I’m proud of myself for a note I just posted on Rex’s blog. It was about today’s puzzle. Rex thought it was blah (meh, actually), and some others agreed that there wasn’t much to it. Personally, I thought it was okay. The theme was the letters ID, in particular the different ways they can be used: 1) as the contraction for “I would;” 2) the state of Idaho; 3) Freud’s id; and 4) as an I.D. like your driver’s license. (Lewis said they should have waited a few weeks and it would have been the IDs of March.)

    Anyway, so it received the usual negative and positive reviews. But the constructor, Ian Livengood, is a member of the NYT puzzle staff, and two comments surmised that it was only accepted because he was an insider. Here’s the one from Anony Mouse: Very weak puzzle but Ian (the constructor) is a NY Times puzzle editor so it was published. Seems like it would be an automatic rejection if it were a blind submission. The second one said: I agree with a previous poster, I suspect that this one would have been rejected if it weren’t submitted by a CoW (Colleague of Will).

    Those accusations rubbed me the wrong way. So I wrote:

    I’ve only personally met one member of the NYT puzzle staff and it was only briefly at a tournament when we were seated at the same table. She seemed wonderful though, and I’d be surprised if I learned she engaged in unethical behavior such as improperly favoring someone’s work because she knew him or her personally. It’s one thing to criticize a puzzle for perceived flaws, but quite another to charge that it was only accepted because of favoritism. Such a charge, it seems to me, should be based on hard evidence and not simply surmise.

    I love being retired. I have so much time to waste, I mean spend, on stuff like that. Not only can I not imagine going back to work, I’m amazed I was able to do it for so long. (Of course, as a professor, I really should put “work” in quotation marks. I once remarked to my doc that my summer course met four times a week and I noted that it was closest I came to real work.)

    How could you not like a poem called “Hey Fella Would You Mind Holding This Piano a Moment.” It’s by William J. Harris and was the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day today. It’s dedicated “For Reg and Susie.”

    As you are walking
    down the street
    this guy asks you
    to hold his violin.
    It’s a Stradivarius.
    Soon as it falls
    into your hands
    you start playing like crazy.
    The violin
    almost plays itself.
    Your powerful hands
    nearly break the instrument
    but the music is gentle and sweet.
    You sweep your long artistic hair
    out of your face.
    Everybody
    in the room,
    in the bull ring, in the
    audience, in the Coliseum
    starts clapping
    and shouting “Encore & Wow.”
    Everybody whoever
    thot you were
    dumb & untalented
    goes apeshit
    over your hidden genius.
    “Gee, I never knew you
    played,” says your astonished high school
    principal.

    We were delighted to have ANNA Kendrick stop by today, at 57A, boringly clued as “Actress Kendrick.” Anna is 40, kinehora, and from Portland ME. Lives in LA now. No kids, and has said motherhood is not for her. We first saw Anna in 50-50, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. Phil enjoyed working with her for us. He said she can be pretty in a glamorous way, or in a non-glamorous way. He prefers the latter and sent in two examples for us.

    Would you trust this man with your cat? Retired vet and OC friend Chris B was unimpressed with the song Ex’s and Oh’s by Elle King we shared recently. “I was playing simple riffs like that in 1968!!!,” he scoffed, and shared the following with us, so we could see how far he’s come. Chris is the handsome one in the middle with the baseball cap and the guitar.

    The NYT editorial board really ripped into Bondi today, as well they should, excoriating her for failing to protect the Epstein survivors in DOJ’s recent release of files. Did you read it? I thought the DOJ just carelessly released the names of some victims who had chosen to remain anonymous. It was much much worse than that. They released nude photos of the victims. SRSLY, Bondi? Let’s (grudgingly) grant her the benefit of the doubt and say it was unintentional and not done out of malice. Then wouldn’t it be only natural to apologize? Wouldn’t that be the minimal response? But she refused. Can someone please explain to me, like I’m a three-year-old (Hi Denzel!), what the hell is going on over there?

    I’m not going to subject you (or me) to the sight of her today. Here’s Denzel instead, as attorney Joe Miller in Philadelphia. I showed the film in my law class a bunch of times. Just to get the kids into a courtroom and to foster its positive messages on discrimination. It got to me every time.

    Here’s a cartoon we might call “NYC Snow Globe.”

    I took an afternoon nap, overslept, and missed the first half of Canada’s women’s hockey team win. It turns out it wasn’t televised here anyway. Boo. Canada slipped past the Swiss Cheese, 2-1. Yikes! We outshot them like crazy, but that’s scary close. We’ll be playing the USA on Thursday for the gold, as heavy underdoggies.

    With the game not on, we watched some figure skaters instead, gorgeous. And some ski tumbling, aka the “big air” event. You hear of Eileen Gu before? Wow. She skis for China but was born in SF and is also American. Eileen is English for Ailing, which is Chinese for “Love Ling,” in honor of her sister Ling who was killed in a car crash before Eileen was born.

    She won the silver medal today — very impressive. But she also earns millions as a supermodel. Like at the Victoria-Secret, Sports-Illustrated-Swimsuit level. She is currently the fourth highest paid female athlete in the world. Add to that 1580 (out of 1600) on her SATs (not kidding): she majored in International Relations at Stanford. As a victim of anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, she speaks out against racism, and supports the Black Lives Matter movement and abortion rights.

    Believe me, fellas, we’re taking it easy on you with this photo.

    We ain’t gonna top that. See you tomorrow!

  • Q Train to Brooklyn

    Ever wonder what the world looks like through Trump’s eyes? Me neither. But the NY Times took a stab at it. Here’s one of his impressions: “People don’t realize Canada is very nasty.” Yup. He nailed those bastards.

    You know those countries like North Korea or Russia where every corner of your life is infested with the government, so, e.g., if you do anything to criticize Putin, like in a text or a post, you’ll get hauled in to some dank prison? How did things develop to that degree? How did it come to be that the entire population is under the boot like that?

    Well, here’s the lead paragraph from the lead story in the NY Times yesterday:

    “The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.”

    Yup. That’s how.

    Owl Chatter’s response: You’ll never take us alive!!!

    You won’t see the F word in a NY Times XW. But they came damn close yesterday. The answer at 6D was SHAG. Now, it could have been clued in a way that related to the carpet or the haircut. But they went overseas instead and the clue was “Screw or nail, to a Brit.” So it’s f*ck, as clued, right?

    I posted the following comment: My British friend got a shag haircut and shagged his partner on a shag carpet. That’s meshaga.

    There seems to be a blurring of lines between the shag or shaggy haircut and a bedhead. I guess they are not mutually exclusive. Phil liked how it all worked for this young woman, but he’s a sucker for those big glasses.

    Patrick Prior shared this story with Metropolitan Diary today, which I can certainly relate to:

    Dear Diary:

    I was visiting my uncle for the first time in 15 years. I took the Q to Brooklyn, and we went to lunch at a diner on Kings Highway.

    He ordered a hamburger. I had a turkey club. We discussed our relatives and the complications of getting older. He had stopped riding his bicycle only six months before, at 79.

    There was a small commotion at the back of the restaurant. A steady drip of water was leaking from the ceiling. Two customers changed tables. The drip soon became a stream.

    We watched for a few minutes as we ate and speculated as to the cause. Then the sprinkler came to full life. The kitchen staff tried vainly to capture the flow with a five-gallon bucket.

    We rose from our table and left the room. Before long, the floor was covered with two inches of water.

    My uncle asked the manager whether he could retrieve the rest of his lunch, but we were told to stay out of the flooded room.

    He dashed in anyway to save his half-eaten burger.

    [OC note: Half-eaten burger is how the pessimist sees it. To the optimist it’s a half-uneaten burger. There’s no indication in the story whether the uncle’s beer glass was half-full or half-empty.]

    Today’s puzzle was one column wider than usual: 22 instead of 21, for a Sunday. (Sundays are normally 21×21 and weekdays 15×15.) It had to be that wide to accommodate the “revealer” running across the center: IT’S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE. Then, for seven theme answers, the last four across letters were HERE and the answers dropped down to be completed. What?? For example, the clue at 24A was “Completely destroy with a blast,” and the answer was BLOW TO SMITHEREENS. But the final three letters (the ones after HERE), had to be filled in going down. Get it? — Downhill from “here.” And the puzzle title was “Good to the Last Drop.”

    As I was completing it, I picked up fairly quickly the dropping down business, but I never saw that every theme answer had the letters HERE in it immediately preceding the drop. That was neat.

    I posted the following for the gang: In Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint a young man commits suicide. His mother finds him with a note pinned to his shirt that says: “Mrs. Goldberg called. She wants you to bring [something] to the mah jongg game tonight.” And Roth wrote: How’s that for good to the last drop?

    Yesterday, at 28A the clue was “Tree of life, in Norse mythology,” and the answer was ASH. Several erudite commenters noted that the tree is called Yggdrasill. I added (loosely defined) the following to the discussion: Never mind Norse mythology. In Yiddish mythology it’s the “Tree of Oy, You Call This Living?”

    Most depictions of it (the Norse one, not the Yiddish one) are pretty creepy. This one’s not bad.

    Bud Cort passed away on Wednesday at the age of 77. He’s the actor who played Harold in “Harold and Maude.” The character was depressed and staged fake suicides, and he falls in love with Ruth Gordon’s Maude, who was life-affirming. In one scene, a therapist asks Harold if he stages the fake suicides for his mother’s benefit. Harold replies “I would not say ‘benefit.’”

    Harold was 19 and Maude 60 years his senior at 79 (see below). It’s off-beat, a dark comedy, but it was serious at its heart IMO, which you may learn from a shot near the end of the film showing a concentration camp number tattooed on Maude’s arm. It never comes up otherwise.

    Cort was born Walter Edward Cox, and he took the name Bud Cort to avoid confusion with the actor Wally Cox, whom some of you may recall as a great character named “Mr. Peepers.” Cort also starred in “Brewster McCloud” with Shelley Duvall, below, but his career otherwise floundered. He earned a reputation for fighting with directors. Rest in peace, Harold.

    Shelley, you’re gonna have to put that cigarette out here: we canceled our fire insurance. You like Diet Pepsi? [Shelley Duvall also passed away, back in 2024, a few days after turning 75.]

    As baseball begins to emerge from hibernation, it was nice to see a little discussion arise today among the Commentariat. For the answer RBI, the clue said, “It must result from a sac fly.” Some folks thought the sac fly operates like a sac bunt, i.e., that the batter will get credit for a sac fly simply for advancing a runner, without regard to whether he scores, e.g., from second to third. But this is not true; a run must score for a sac fly to be awarded. And I learned (and shared with the gang) that if the fielder drops the ball, the batter can still be awarded a sac fly by the official scorer if, in his opinion, the runner would have scored had the catch been made.

    Let’s close today with this important post by Harry Finan of the Dull Men’s Club (UK):

    I noticed that the wife stirs her cup anti clockwise, whereas I stir clockwise just using wrist action, when she stirs all her lower arm moves, we are both right handed, I wondered if in general right handers stir clockwise and left handers anti clockwise although as I said she’s right handed, I’ll wager that proportion in this group is about 50-50, with left handers in the minority, the proportion of left handers in the uk is only about 10%

    Tim Robinson: Left hander here. I stir from the wrist but always both ways, alternating so as to create the maximum turbulence.

    Roger Collier: I have no idea which hand or direction I use. I’ll have to look next time I have a hot drink.

    Roger (again, a follow-up): Can’t do it left handed. Right hand and it seems to be random whether I go clockwise or anticlockwise, much like a microwave turntable.

    Debbie Vogel: I am right handed, but my mother was left handed. I remember her telling me as I was beating eggs with a fork that I was doing it backwards. She went anti-clockwise, I went clockwise. I still do. As long as the eggs get beaten, what difference does it make?

    Chris Bater: Shaken, not stirred.

    Tim Bucknall: She’s a witch. Burn her.

    Gina Zeelie: Regardless of direction, I was taught that it is improper for a lady to “whisk” her tea with a wrist action. The stir should be gentle, from the elbow, locked wrist, and not create a vortex in the cup. Did your wife have a very well-mannered mother/grandmother?

    Kirsty Redhead: I don’t stir tea or coffee because I don’t put sugar in them, but when stirring other things, I use either hand (I’m ambidextrous) and invariably stir anti-clockwise. It’s mostly involuntary – that’s just how I do it, without thinking – but if I think about it consciously I definitely do it anti-clockwise just because it annoyed my mother so much (she said it was “the sign of the devil”, but apparently many things were, I couldn’t win that war).

    Brian Morrison: When I was a kid, I knew this guy, who I thought was really cool, well he had to be cool, he was a pilot. He stirred his coffee backwards and forwards across the cup, in a straight line, at high frequency. I practised for ages and, seventy years later, I still do it and I still think it’s cool.

    Avi Liveson: Are you comma-tose? Does your keyboard not contain a period?

    See you tomorrow! Thanks for popping by.

  • Minnesota Nice

    Owl Chatter has just learned that the glove recovered by the side of the road in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping is the same glove OJ Simpson could not get to fit in his famous trial. And, as we all know, “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit!”

    Joe Klecko, 72, was a great defensive lineman for the Jets from 1977-1987. But don’t believe me. Hall of Fame center Dwight Stephenson considered him one of the two best interior linemen he ever faced. And Hall of Fame tackle Anthony Muñoz said: “In my 13 seasons, Joe is right there at the top of the defensive ends I had to block, up there with Fred Dean, Lee Roy Selmon and Bruce Smith. Joe was the strongest guy I ever faced. He had perfect technique — hands in tight, great leverage.” In 2023, Klecko was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he’s an Owl! (Played his college ball at Temple.)

    As long-time Jet fans lovingly recall, when Klecko and Abdul Salaam were joined by Mark Gastineau and Marty Lyons in the early 1980s, they formed one of the top defensive lines in the NFL, known as the “New York Sack Exchange.” Get this — in November of 1981 the four of them were invited to ring the opening bell of the NY Stock Exchange. How cool is that!

    Anyway, we’re not mentioning Joe K today because he died. Happily, he’s 72, kinehora, and lives in Jersey with wife Debbie with whom he has five kids, including Dan, who played in the NFL for a few years and won three more Super Bowl rings than his dad did, i.e., he won three. Nor is it Joe’s birthday, which is in October. He’s in the news because he joins the thousands of convicted criminals pardoned by Trump. Ouch! Yes, in 1993, Klecko was sentenced to three months in prison and penalized fifteen yards for perjury in an insurance fraud case. That stain is now gone. Whatever. Thanks for providing a bright spot in Jets history, Joe. But, you know, you were pardoned long ago by all of us fans.

    Before we take a look at today’s puzzle, here’s a steamy song shared by commenter tea73 on yesterday’s X and O theme.

    Whoa! Quite a load of sexy guys in that video. I wouldn’t skip it if I were you, ladies. Anyway, as some of you may know, I’ve lost a bit of weight since I started taking those fat shots you see advertized on TV (Zepbound) a few months ago: 18 pounds. Dropped a size too: from double extra fat down to just extra fat. So I asked Phil to take a nice shot of the new me. Here it is:

    Alright, so that’s not me. It’s William Powell who starred in “The Thin Man.” I’ve still got a long way to go.

    Lots of good stuff in today’s puzzle today, including a friendly nod to the state we’ve all been talkin’ about. At 34A the clue was “Polite, friendly stereotype from the Midwest,” and the answer was MINNESOTA NICE. The constructor was Even Mulvihill and he popped in with a comment. His concern was that Minnesota nice could be parsed as Minnesotan ICE, and it was not his intent to go there. Here’s what he said: “MINNESOTA NICE was a thing long before ICE was doing horrible things, and I made the puzzle way before the recent issues in MN. I also never had the intention to touch upon ICE and it’s just an unfortunate mirroring in the word NICE. Just to be clear, MINNESOTAN ICE is just a misguided parsing of it. I am sorry that the entry was a buzzkill but that’s more to do with our government than me or the NYT.”

    JB noted: As a transplant to Minnesota, many of us view the term Minnesota nice as Minnesotans being cold, judgmental and unfriendly, but believing that they are nice.

    Ouch!

    Another commenter asked: Isn’t saying someone is MINNESOTANICE sort of a diss? I always think it implies fake niceness.

    Beezer replied: I really don’t think so. I am from the Midwest and I think it’s probably the exemplar of the idea that people in the Midwest are generally nicer. Not sayin’ it’s as true as it used to be generally in Midwest but I think it is a compliment.

    [Me too.]

    Other neat clues:

    At 41A: “Someone singing ‘Something.’” Answer: BEATLE. [“Something in the way she walks . . . “]

    At 15A: “A red plastic one might be worn on Halloween.” Answer: FIREHAT. OMG, my Leon had one when he was three or four. Too cute.

    13A: “Abso-freaking-lutely!” Answer: HELL YEAH.

    How about this one, a day after his birthday: 11D: “Poem so beloved by Abraham Lincoln that he carried it in his pocket and memorized it.” Answer: THE RAVEN. Can’t believe it wasn’t one of Kooser’s.

    But I think my favorite was at 32D: “Ones offering cheap shots?” Answer: DIVE BARS. Burp!

    Let’s close tonight with these pretty lasses doing Bruce’s great song justice. See you tomorrow. Thanks for dropping in!