The Monday Sun

Wouldn't you know, the first day of my fulltime New York Sun crossword blogging and the puzzle's late, didn't show up until after 9:00 a.m. (EDT). I suppose it's churlish to complain, since I'm not paying for it, but I might be willing to if I could get it the night before as with the NY Times.

Then my wonky computer at work would let me go everywhere except Blogger.

Oh well, here's hoping that late really is better than never.

This was a pretty cool Monday puzzle, a little botany, a little literature, some geography, some golf. Lots of X's and Z's and J's for those of you who are jaded by the more popular letters and looking for something a little more exotic. One thing that the New York Sun does with its weekday puzzle is give them a name that hints (albeit obliquely) at the puzzle's theme. The name of this puzzle (by John Calvin Williams) is Group Hugs, which didn't help me much until I got the first long entry 17A: Rush hour comment (ITSAZOOOUTTHERE). When I looked at the answer those three O's in a row kinda jumped out at me, and a couple seconds later I made a leap of my own: "Oh yeah, O's are a symbol for hugs as XXOO. Maybe all the long across entries have three O's together like." And they do:

39A: Tropical flowers with reedy stems (BAMBOOORCHIDS) I had never heard of this kind of flower before, but looking it up I learned some flower anatomy. According to Wikipedia: "These flowers, 5 – 8 cm in diameter, are a rosy lilac and white disk with a purple lip." I didn't know flowers had lips -- well, except for those bulbs favored by the Dutch, which of course have two lips. (Hey, I told you I like my jokes corny.)

58A: Senior's complaint (IMTOOOLDFORTHIS) and even an extra triplicate clinch at 26D: Frighten away (SHOOOFF).

Other clues that struck my fancy:

40D: Island that's home to orangutans (BORNEO) Whatever happened to the Wild Man of Borneo? Why has he been exiled from crosswords? (I tried to find a picture of said wild man but came up empty, which is not to say there aren't some goings-on in Borneo.)

23D: Woodcutter who said "Open sesame!" (ALIBABA) When I was a kid I thought Ali was shouting "Open says me!" which makes as much if not more sense than invoking the name of a plant known mostly its seeds. This Ali Baba painting is by the great Maxfield Parrish, who made a guest appearance in last Thursday's Sun puzzle.

13D: Last word of the first verse of "Amazing Grace." (SEE) This kind of clue where you have to mentally sing the whole song as quickly as you can is kind of a pain when you're timing yourself

41D: Driving options: (ONEIRONS) this probably took me longer to get than any other entry, just couldn't stop thinking about leather seats, sun roofs, that kind of "driving" option.

27A: Portugal's capital, to the Portugese (LISBOA) I did not know that, and I do not know why we change other country's names around. If the Portugese call it Lisboa, why do we call it Lisbon. Why do we call Nippon Japan and Helas Greece? That's the kind of stuff I wonder about. That and whether gorilla glands can bring back passionate youth.

All right, see y'all tomorrow.

A couple of passings that should be noted

When I picture Batman, I usually picture him the way Marshall Rogers drew him -- with that impossible cape that just went on for miles. Rogers and Steve Englehart did my absolute favorite run on the Darknight Detective. (This was before Frank Miller got hold of Batman and turned him into a raving psychopath.) Their Batman was driven, of course, but he had heart and a sense of humor. And Rogers' Gotham City was beautiful -- as was his Silver St. Cloud, my favorite of Mr. Wayne's many girlfriends. Marshall Rogers passed away on March 25th at the age of 57.











I spent a lot of my youth reading detective novels, and sad to say, that I find most of the authors I loved as a young man to be just about unreadable. I enjoyed
all 9,000 of Carter Brown's books, but when I try to read him today the adverbs come at a rate of about 4.5 a page (yes, I did the math) and I just want to slowly dig him out the ground and ruthlessly strangle him till he helplessly agrees to stop using those useless parts of speech so relentlessly and so callously. The Shell Scott books by Richard S. Prather, however, are as fun today as they were when I first discovered them back in the days before my literary tastes solidified. Prather's Shell Scott was a man who didn't take himself too seriously and his adventures have none of the misogony that mars so many works of the same time period. A few years before Mr. Prather passed away on February 14th I wrote to him and told him how much I appreciated his work and got him to sign a couple books for me. This is what he wrote in one of them:
And I did enjoy reading it again, and I know I'll enjoy it again the next time I read it. Mister Prather sold over 40 million copies of his books and it's easy to see why.

Now appearing for two nights only!

Today and tomorrow I will be guest blogging at the world famous Rex Parker Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, which means I get to wrestle with the Friday and Saturday puzzles (the hardest of the week.) Come check it out.

Thursday Crossword stuff

Usually on Thursday I take just the NY Times and the NY Sun puzzle with me to the park, cuz getting though those two -- along with one of Amy's Spinach and Feta Pocket Sandwiches and a Diet Pepsi -- will take up my whole lunch hour. But either today's puzzles were easier than usual or those ginkgo biloba tablets are finally starting to kick in, cuz I finished the Times in 6:57 and the Sun in 10:51 and had plenty of time to watch Yankee tourists photograph themselves by the fountain and wish I'd brought another puzzle.

The Times puzzle was one of those punny ones that cracked me up, but my friend Rex Parker can tell you about the Times puzzles better than I can, so I'll concentrate on the Sun.
I had to take a minute before I started solving to appreciate this lovely grid, where all the black squares make up a pair of plus and minus symbols. Evidently there is some controversy in some crossword circles about whether or not crosswords actually have to always be symmetrical, and I actually lean toward relaxing that restriction when necessary, but there's something to be said for a nice symmetrical grid like this, purely aesthetic, yeah, but crossword puzzles are an art, aren't they?

This puzzle was still pretty tricky even after I got 1A: "One of two signs in this puzzle" POSITIVE, and consequently, as a yin-yangy freebie, 61A NEGATIVE.

Some of my favorite clues:
31D: Mad worker, at times: LAMPOONER I actually figured they meant Mad magazine, not disgruntled co-worker, but I was thinking CARTOONER and I'm pretty sure that's not a word.
20A: Lame duck helper: VET You get so used to hearing this as a political phrase, you forget that a maimed mallard might need medical attention.
39A: Like some unwed fathers: PRIESTLY
59A: O. Henry and others IRONISTS. I love this one although it took me forever to figure out, mainly because I had PIG at 56D instead of HOG as was looking for something to fill out I_I_ISTS, once I turned that second I into an O, I got it right away. I loved O. Henry when I was a kid, and even though that style of twist-ending short story is not held in high regard these days, I still love his stuff.
43A: Old Testament book before Esther NEHEMIAH. It was refreshing -- and helpful -- to have this spelled out. It poops up a lot but is usually abbreviated NEH.

Here's some stuff I did not know: I don't think I've ever seen the word Girasols (clue for 2D) before. It's a type of opal but the word looks like it should be an umbrella for a giraffe.
And 37D: Oilman Halliburton is ERLE? Are you kidding me? There's another guy with that first name? Does that mean Perry Mason's creator can finally take a few puzzles off?

EOS, the Greek dawn goddess shows up in both the Times and the Sun puzzles today.
And any puzzle that has both the brilliant American artist Maxfield PARRISH and the world's worst Wacky Racer Dick DASTARDLY is a good one.

Something tells me they don't get much rain

Tomorrow is -- in addition to Good Friday and Merle Haggard's birthday -- "A Drop of Water is a Grain of Gold" Holiday in Turkmenistan.
I'll drink (Dasani) to that!

Final thoughts on the Stamford final

So the letter that cost Al Sanders the ACPT championship was an L that should have been a B, right? The correct crossing was BEVEL ("carpenter's tool") intersecting with REB ("secesh") (an obscure term for secessionist) and Al had LEVEL (which is certainly a carpenter's tool) and REL, which was not what constructor Stanley Newman had in mind and thus marked wrong. But the famous CLINTON - BOBDOLE puzzle proved that sometimes two different answers are equally valid. Couldn't REL be the initials of Robert E. Lee, the most famous secech in American history? Isn't that equally valid?
Just a thought.

Awesome with awesome sauce

Watch Adam Hughes, the King of Boobs do a complete Supergirl sketch, and listen as he tellls you exactly how he weaves his magic.
Amazing.

Monday Crossword Stuff

Great New York Sun puzzle honoring baseball's opening day. Got it done in 5:04, and might could have shaved a few seconds off that time if I hadn't stopped to admire the entries SINGLEUSECAMERA, DOUPLEDIP, TRIPLESEC and HOMERJAYSIMPSON all intersecting with HITFORTHECYCLE. Wow, further proof that a fairly easy Monday puzzle can still be clever and satisfying.
4:23 on the NY Times puzzle today, nothing special, the theme was three latin phrases everyone should be familiar with.
I did the Saturday NY Times puzzle today too -- in 19:21, which made me feel a whole lot better about the fact that Sunday's puzzle took me 51 minutes and Friday's, well, Friday's I don't even want to talk about.

Wedding stuff

Hey, I'm a romantic guy, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why women like weddings so much -- or think they're going to like them. They always turn into a stressfest. This weekend I saw the bride, the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom all cry. Not tears of joy at the ceremony, you understand, but tears of frustration and exhaustion and anger.
Even on those rare occasions when everything goes perfectly, the bride always says the whole thing went by in a blur, with no time to notice the music and all the details that took months to create like how the bridesmaid's toenail polish matches the candles on the wedding cake, et cetera.
Weddings are created by and for the fairer sex. Remember that the next time you think the world would be better off if women were in charge.

Books I've read in 2007,part 13

I'm about to add Runaways to the list of comics I read every month because Joss Whedon is going to be writing it, and I'll read anything he writes. After all, Whedon (along with the great John Cassaday) is the first guy to get to read the X-Men. So anyway, I figured it might be a good idea to have some idea who these characters were and what their deal is. Six kids find out their parents are super-villains, and they run away and start their own super group. The most interesting thing to me was the adults, who are in league with some monsters who are out to wipe out (almost) all life on earth, and they manage to convince themselves that they're doing a good thing.

Friday Crossword Stuff

Today's New York Sun puzzle is Wacky Weekend Warrior by Trip Payne and it took me 30:42 to complete it with no errors. I really enjoyed this themeless puzzle and it gives me a chance to show you what I was talking about when I said crossword puzzles make me laugh, cuz this one cracked me up.
19 Across: Prequel to a Spike Lee Movie? MALCOLMIX (Love those Roman numeral jokes!)
4 Down: Techno version of a Patsy Cline song? IFALLTO PCS
6 Down: Solver's dilemma when faced with the clue "Telecom letters" ITTORATT (if you're a crossworder that is hilariously true.) (If you're not a crossworder, then what it means is "I've got the TT part, but is it ITT or ATT that goes there?")
I'm still chuckling over 23 Down The philosophy behind colatherapy SODASHEAL, cuz I didn't figure out it was "Sodas heal" and not "soda sheal" till after I finished the puzzle and looked up the word "sheal" which means "To take the husks or pods off from; to shell; to empty of its contents, as a husk or a pod. [Obs. or Prov. Eng. & Scot.]" and I knew that couldn't be right. So yeah, I LOLed when I finally figured it out.
I did a lot of erasing here -- I kept wanting Doc Marten to be Doc Scholl (well, the clue does reference "air-cushioned soles" which sounds more Scholly than Marteny to me); I had TWADDLEFREE instead of the correct TWADDLELESS at 44 across for the longest time. My Pushee took me forever to figure out (ONEISHOVE): I had CADRE instead of CORPS for a while and kept trying to make ATEASE fit where only ONLEAVE would work.
I don't know that I've ever solved a Trip Payne puzzle but I'm definitely looking forward to the next one. He's got some entries in here that look pretty incomprehensible but he makes it work with great clues (ISTOOATS is Part of a grain analogy; KENSCD is "Songs of Barbie and me")

I'm not sure I'll have time to do the NY Times puzzle today before I leave for Marion, South Carolina for my brother-in-law's wedding. We're not actually going for a couple of hours, but I probably better have something other a couple Friday puzzles done -- like packing maybe -- before Kim gets back. I don't think I'll have internet access in Marion either, so it'll probably be Sunday night before I get back.

Movies I've seen in 2007, part 1

I don't watch a lot of movies. There's just usually something else I'd rather be doing with what little spare time I have -- reading, writing, crosswording, organizing my comic book collection, tweaking my fantasy baseball teams' lineups, drawing, eBaying, walking in the sunshine -- lots of things seem more appealing than sitting and passively soaking up entertainment through the eyeballs. But I watched "Mrs. Henderson Presents" on the train from Connecticut and I loved it. It's based on the true story of the Windmill Theatre in London, which stayed open during the blitz of World War II, to entertain the troops and keep up morale on the homefront. This theatre was very popular because they exploited a legal loophole and were just about the only place in England that offered nudity -- although the nudes were never allowed to move but had to stand as still as paintings or scultures.
This is definitely the wholesomest movie I've ever seen with full frontal male and female nudity. Beautiful, life-affirming and with a message about war as unfortunately relevant now as it was in 1940.

Thursday Crossword stuff

I guess I might as well start posting my times on daily crossword puzzles, although compared to Amy the Crossword Fiend and Rex Parker, my times are not going to be too impressive. Also, since I never see them listing any mistakes I have to assume they bat 1000, but I don't and I'll tell you what I missed and why.
Today's NY Times puzzle took me eleven minutes and 55 seconds, which is pretty good for a Thursday for me. (My best so far his year on a NYT Thursday is 10:16.) And I missed one letter, where I had 35 across: Trombonist Winding KA_ intersecting 25 down: Music radio station data: SP_NS. I don't know any trombonists and I had a hard time making the down clue make any sense. It looks pretty obvious now that SPINS is the correct answer, but I put down SPANS, as in the span a radio station covers on the dial -- I guess that's what I was thinking -- and because I thought KAA was a better name for a trombonist than KAI. I also wasted some time on 50 down: "Fear Street" series author. I knew the answer right away, but first had it spelled "Stien" then "Stein" than finally (correctly) "Stine."
On the New York Sun puzzle I finished in 6:36, which is definitely a record for 2007 Sun Thursdays. Everything just kinda fell into place. I didn't miss any letters either. The theme was DEF Jam, which means there were a lot of D's, E's and F's in the puzzle -- three of my favorite crossword letters. I didn't miss any letters on this puzzle, even though I had to guess on one: 39 across was Unit of length used for measuring nuclear distances FER_I and 29 down was Minstrel troupe figure END_AN. I have never been to a minstrel show or had a need to measure anything nuclear, but I guessed the correct letter: M.
I did the Jonesin' puzzle too. I really like this puzzle, although my batting average is lower on this than any other, just because there are so many references you have to be young and hip to get, and I am neither. I did it in 10:55, with one wrong letter, couldn't get the middle letter in 1 Across: Masi of "Heroes (O_A) cuz I don't watch that show, and didn't get the crossing 2 Down: Rivera's wife _AHLO, even though I knew it and I should have got it, but I was looking for a hip, happening Rivera, not the Mexican artist who died in 1957

More Stamford pictures

This is me freaking out about seeing snow -- there was a lot of it actually, not like a lovely blanket of white, frosty goodness, more like a big pile of brownish, rusty crap that wouldn't melt even though the temperature was in the 50's.









This is me at the banquet, that's Tyler Hinman, the King of crosswords visible at the table behind me.


My beautiful wife Kim and I enjoying dinner Friday night.

Robert Loy and Robert Moy

I first ran into Robert Moy at the water cooler between rounds and then I kept running into him all weekend long. He was very nice, and very good at crosswords -- I think he came in like 80th. I guess next year if we can find a Robert Joy and a Robert Koy, we could have our own Friday night team.

Random Stamford Stuff

I'm not going to attempt to put all of the Crossword Puzzle Tournament weekend into anything resembling chronological order. I think Amtrak jostled my brain so bad that a lot of the memories are starting to run together, all the sweet green icing flowing down. So I'll tell you about it as it comes to me.

I met Will Shortz Friday night, got his autograph, told him how much I appreciate his work. He recognized my name -- maybe from all the years I've done the solve-by-mail ACPT option -- and he was the first of many people to tell me that there is a Robert Moy who also competes at the tournament (more about Moy later.) I told him how excited I was to be there and that I would have come before before I hate going North at the end of Spring. And he said, "Well, I've got good news for you. We're moving South next year." (South to Brooklyn, where the 2008 tournament wil be held.) Will Shortz is a visionary. He was at the forefront of the movement that revolutionized crossword puzzles in the late 1970s. There hadn't been any real crossword competitions since the crossword fad of the 1920's, and nobody thought it was a good idea, and now there are lots of people just like me, already looking forward to next year.

I met Merl Reagle too, and he told me about Robert Moy as well. I got to spend a couple of minutes with Peter Gordon, the crossword editor of the New York Sun. I told him I much I enjoyed the Sun's puzzles, but I was still a little irked about one clue from a month or so ago. The clue was "bug midsection" (6 letters). The answer was "SHORTU" as in a short U vowel sound in the middle of the word "bug." I'm fine with the clue, I just thought it should have a question mark to show that it involved some wordplay or misdirection. Anyway, Peter said it wasn't his, it must have been the Times. So that was embarrassing. Although I could still swear it was the Sun. Oh well.

On the the seventh and final puzzle I sat by Scott Weiss, the guy who engineered the first and only three-way tie on Jeopardy. I told him that I saw him do the tie, but I didn't catch the next episode so I didn't know what happened after that. He said he lost, and I asked him if he was still glad that he went for the tie. And he laughed. "No, of course not!"

My goal for my first tournament was to finish in the top 50 per cent. Since there were 700 people there, that meant I was shooting for 349. I got a couple lucky breaks in that the two times I had to guess at a letter (one was for COHO salmon, which I'd never heard of, and one involved a three-letter abbreviation for lawyer, and I couldn't tell if it was "ATT" or "ATY") I guessed right. When the standings were posted on Sunday morning, I was in 158th place. And after the last puzzle I moved up ten spaces to finish at 148. That's top 20 per cent. So that was exciting. (Well, thrilling, actually, but I don't want to sound like too much of a crossword nerd.)

I've heard songs about it, but never seen it

I picked this up at the Starbucks gift shoppy place at the Stamford Marriott -- a very popular place, by the way, althought probably more for the coffee and the Cokes than gopher guts.
More about Stamford soon.

Getting to Connecticut

Crossword puzzles frequently make me laugh. The humor therein is usually pretty corny and often its based on wordplay. And there's nothing I love more than corny puns. (Here's an example from the NY Sun: "Incapable of littering?" NEUTERED. Ha-ha-ha-ha.) Sometimes I laugh out loud -- I think I laughed out loud at least once at the tournament this weekend -- if I remember what it was that prompted that reaction I'll tell you about it.
Today's New York Puzzle made me laugh -- not because it was funny, it wasn't. The theme was pretty straightforward, four signs you don't want to see on the highway: ROAD WORK ONE MILE, LEFT LANE CLOSED, REDUCE SPEED NOW (which, now that I think about it is not a sign I've ever seen before -- I've seen "Reduced Speed Ahead" in lots of podunk speedtrap southern towns, but never one that demanded you reduce your speed immediately; And I hope said podunk traffic enforcers never realize they could give you a ticket for not reducing your speed as soon as they think you've had time to read the sign they hid behind a shrub) and FINES ARE DOUBLED.
I know, not exactly knee-slapping. And my laughter was of the rueful variety. Because the very last word I filled in was 66 Across and the clue was about how to avoid these traffic signs and resultant headaches. And the answer was "TRAIN."
And the reason that gave me a mirthless laugh was because I took the train to Connecticut and I can tell you that you're not avoiding headaches, you're just exchanging one set of headaches for another.
So I want to tell you all about the tournament and how I did, and all the highlights and lowlights of my first (but hopefully not last) crossword puzzle tournament.
But first let's talk about tracks, baby:

One of the the reasons I have not attended the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament before even though I've wanted to for years is because I am a sun-worshipping, winter-hating, Southern boy. By the time I have sneezed and sniffed my way through South Carolina's admittedly pretty mild winter, it just goes against my instincts to go north. In past years, even after planning to attend and once actually paying to go, I usually end up going to Florida to see some Spring Training baseball games instead.
Another problem was how to get through the 800.86 miles between my humble abode and the Stamford Marriott. I hate to fly. It scares me and I usually lose my hearing for 24 hours after I land. It seemed like it would be a big disadvantage to not be able to hear, "Ready, set, solve!" And I have the world's worst sense of direction, a bad relationship with Mapquest (he's lied to me too many times) and a bad habit of slowing down to about 10 mph and looking as stupid as humanly possible when I am confused (as I am always on unfamiliar roads in big cities) which past experience has shown me Yankees don't have much patience with.
So a train seemed like a great solution. I could actually do crossword puzzles all the way to the tournament and be in real fighting trim by the time I got there instead of getting screamed at by irate Northerners or copiously wetting myself and wondering if I'll ever hear again.
And it actually was pretty good on the way up. I could solve crosswords even though I couldn't really read what I wrote because my pencil kept getting derailed by all the bumps, thumps and jostles. You can drink on the train too, but you can't drink much unless you're wealthy cuz beer is $5.00 a bottle, and you might not want to drink much even if you can afford it, cuz train restrooms are only maybe a step above Port-a-potties. Trains in the South are nicer than trains in the North. They're cleaner for one thing -- although one Southern train has a big oniony red stain on its carpet where my chips and salsa flew from my hand and onto the floor. And they have more leg room and nicer footrests -- and better scenery out the window. In the South there are rivers and houses and people and dogwood trees to look at. Up north all you got is garbage, rust and graffiti. Admittedly, trains don't run through the best parts of town. I'm sure there are some lovely rivers and trees up north. (I am equally sure that those rivers and trees are covered in grafitti.)
But anyway we slept most of the way up, left Charleston around 9:00, got into Stamford about 1:00 on Friday afternoon, after having lunch at Penn Station in New York.
It was the ride home that was the problem. There were only two trains leaving Stamford after the tournament heading South. One left at 1:00 in the afternoon on Sunday and I was worried about missing the big play-off and the banquet, so I bought tickets on the other train which left at 1:00 in the morning. I thought it might be all right to and around Stamford, see a few sights, have a leisurely dinner at a nice restaurant. What I didn't know was that right after the tournament the adrenalin I'd been running on would leave my body and all I would want to do was sleep -- and I still had 10 hours before I could board the train and a nineteen hour ride after that. It was a long night and a looong next day. Our train was delayed by a freight train derailment on the tracks ahead of us and we were three hours later getting back to the Promised Land. A tad the worse for wear, as you might imagine.
Next year I'll fly. To Brooklyn. In February.
Wow.

Books I've read in 2007, part 12

Tomorrow night I will get on a train and head to Connecticut for the 30th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. It's my first time competing -- and my first time riding a train since I was a kid. My beautiful wife is coming along with me, so that means motel sex.
So yeah, I am excited.
I bought this book to try and learn more about the tournament and maybe get a glimpse at how crossword constructors think -- Matt Gaffney is one of only a handful of people who make a living making crosswords, and I enjoyed this book a whole lot more than Crossworld. I did get some insight into how crossword puzzles are constructed -- whether that will help me at Stamford remains to be seen -- I got to meet Henry Hook, one of my all-time favorite constructors, and was pleasantly surprised when someone I knew made an appearance in the book -- Stephanie Barna, the editor of the Charleston City Paper, and for whom I did a few articles a few years ago.


I also read this book -- well, "read" might be overstating it, since it's mostly pictures of old 45 record sleeves. But I did think it was interesting that 45 art reached its peak in the 1990s when you couldn't find any of them anywhere.

Hallalujah! Our long nightmare is over!

It must be Summer -- or Spring at the very least. I saw my first Italian Ice girl in the park today, a sure harbinger that that frigid groundhog-worshipping season is over. There might have been a robin or two over there as well. No baseballs though, that other indispitable sign of better days, just a couple of leftover Winter people tossing around a football.
I came up with a theory when I was about six that there were Winter people and Summer people, and although there are a few loose ends I can't quite wrap up, I think I was dead on. I mean, the beautiful, bronzed, healthy people I see in the Summer just cannot be the same people as the withered, pale, sniffly people I see all Winter long. One of the loose ends I can't quite wrap up is how I get stuck with the snifflers every GD groundhog season.

So, hey Summer People! When October comes and y'all go to Hawaii or into hibernation or wherever it is y'all go, take me with you!!!

The Sunday 3-11 New York Times Crossword Puzzle

Unlike some other crossword bloggers, I don't usually post the times it took me to do the puzzle, probably because I'm not that proud of them. But I did today's puzzle in 25 minutes and 55 seconds, which is not a record for me, but it's pretty close. I did have four letters wrong, two of which I feel bad about. For me, there are three types of errata (there's a good crossword word for you) I make in puzzles: the first is just a careless mess-up, the second is one where I guessed too soon and I would have gotten the correct answer if I'd just spent a few more seconds on it. Both of these I berate myself for. But the third type is where two words I just don't know and will never dredge up from my brain no matter how long I sit there chewing on my pencil intersect. Today it was ten-across: "Concord Hymn" writer's inits and 11 down: Early Chinese dynasty -- sorry, never heard of the "Concord Hymn" and as for Chinese dynasties, I can do Han and Ming (a merciless time in Chinese history) and that's about it. I guessed RHE and HEI, trying to use logic ("It's not RTE or they'd've clued it as "route" and it's not PEI, he's an architect.") The correct answer is RWE (for Ralph Waldo Emerson) and the WEI dynasty.
I also missed Kathryn ERBE of some TV show cuz I have never heard of her and it intersected with RONDO, a "Repetitive musical piece" another term I am unfamiliar with. So without some hella luck guessing I was destined to miss two letters. The other two mistakes, however, were entirely my fault, and I don't want to talk about them.

Captain America

Everybody at work knows I'm a comic book reader -- I guess it's the Wonder Woman poster and the Superman toys on my desk that gave me away -- so they've been coming up to me this week and asking me if I'm upset about Captain America's death. I tell no because he isn't dead or won't be for long, not with a big movie deal in the works, don't forget Superman died a few years ago and he got better. (I don't add that with those hacks at Marvel these days he might be better off dead.)
One thing that I think must be confusing to non-comic-readers is that every newspaper article I've seen about this event says that Captain America has been around since 1941 and was killed in the 25th issue of his comic. So, if you didn't know about all the reboots and reborns and "First Issue Collector's Items" you might think (if my math is correct) that the good captain's mag is only published once every 2.64 years.

Things I learned from reading today's NY Times

In an article about George the Second's trip to Brazil and the opposition he has met with, it says "A group of Mayan priests in Guatemala said Friday they would "purify" a sacred site of "bad spirits" after Mr. Bush visits it early next week."
Mayans? I didn't know there were any Mayans left. I thought they were gone like the Incas and the Aztecs. Maybe we can get a couple of them to come to America in January 2009 and purify America of the bad spirits Bush Junior has unleashed.

What I learned from doing today's NY Times Crossword Puzzle

I learned a bunch of stuff -- Gene SARAZEN won the US and British Opens in 1932, a PONIARD is a narrow bladed weapon, Tesla was a SERB -- that I'm sure will stay in my mind for such a brief time it's probably inaccurate to say that I actually learned them.
I did learn one thing I'd like to remember, however. MAENAD, which means (stealing from Wikipedia) "In Greek mythology, Maenads were female worshippers of Dionysus, the Greek god of mystery, wine and intoxication, and the Roman god Bacchus. The word literally translates as "raving ones". They were known as wild, insane women who could not be reasoned with." Although I don't think I've ever come across that word before, I have definitely run across some maenads in my time, and it would be good to know what to call them.

Things I Learned From Today's Crossword Puzzle

This is something I've learned a thousand times from a thousand crossword puzzles, but it never seems to sink in -- "Amah" which means "A housemaid, especially a wet nurse, in India and the Far East." It comes up all the time in crossword puzzles and nowhere else. I am determined to remember it, so I'm thinking mnemonics-- about Asian Mother's Assistant Housekeeper?

"Rhine Tributary" AAR -- Aargh! I hate all rivers and geographic terms.

Maginot -- the clue was "Frenchman with a famous line" and I'm thinking fashion designer, but it turns out to be, according to Dictionary.com "French politician who as minister of war (1922-1924 and 1929-1932) proposed a line of fortification, called the Maginot Line, along France's border with Germany. Thought to be impregnable, the line was bypassed and later captured by the Germans" Unlike Amah, I give myself permission to forget this one as I don't imagine I'll ever see it again.

Katzenjammer. All I know about katzenjammers is from the Katzenjammer Kids comic strip, so I figured katzenjammer must have something to do with bratty kids, but katzenjammer is (again from Dictionary.com): "the discomfort and illness experienced as the aftereffects of excessive drinking; hangover," which I guess pretty well describes parenthood.

Things I learned from doing today's crossword puzzle

A skein is not just a bunch of wound-up yarn. It can also be a flock of geese or ducks in flight.

Usually a three-letter answer to a clue about a Wall Street abbreviation is either MBA or IPO, but today it was ARB, which is short for arbitrager --someone who engages in arbitrage, who purchases securities in one market for immediate resale in another in the hope of profiting from the price differential. As Johnny Carson used to say, "I did not know that."

Jean-Luc Picard would be so proud of me

I've finally learned to enjoy Earl Grey Tea.
It always sounded so cool when he got a cup of it from that atomic synthesizer thing on the Enterprise (but then everything Captain Picard said sounded cool,) and I wanted to like it too, but I just didn't like the bitterness that had to come from bergamot, since Earl Grey is just black tea and bergamot. I always assumed bergamot was some herby, planty thing put in British tea for some reason, maybe cuz Henry VIII drank his that way or something. But bergamot is actually an orange -- well, actually it's a cross between a pear lemon and the Seville orange . The essential oil from the peel that is used to flavor Earl Grey tea is also used in candy, perfumes and in aromatherapy to treat depression. It's definitely an acquired taste, but now that I've acquired it, I really like it. Now if I'm ever on the Enterprise having a spot of tea with Captain Picard, I won't have to wimp out and whisper to the computer: "Lipton, please."

Books I've read in 2007, part 11

When I was 12 years old, I bought every single Marvel comic that came out every week -- not just the big ones like Spider-Man, Avengers and Captain America, but also Millie the Model, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandoes, Two-Gun Kid, hell, I even bought Iron Man.
I was able to do this with an allowance of one dollar a week.
I make a little more than that now, but I don't think I could afford to buy every Marvel comic book even if I wanted to. Fortunately, I don't want to. Nowadays, I don't follow any character (primarily because Marvel has just about succeeded in ruining all those characters I loved so much) but I still love going to the comic shop on Wednesday and becoming a carefree kid again for a few
minutes, looking at all the cool comics on the shelves. But I only buy Marvel or DC comics when there's a great artist and writer combination on a title (as with Joss Whedon and John Cassaday on "Astonishing X-Men") or a writer who is good enough to make me overlook the artist's shortcomings (like the great Dan Slott's "She-Hulk", where Marvel consistently sticks him with absolute bottom-of-the-barrel artists and he rises above it). (And by the way, there is no artist goood enough to make me overlook crappy writing.) I've been reading "Black Panther" because of the first reason. Reginald Hudlin and Scot Eaton made a great writer-artist team and together they've made me care about this character for the first time in a long time. But I'm afraid I might have to give it up soon, because Eaton is gone, the new artist sucks, and Hudlin is good, but he's not quite Slott-Whedon good.
Too bad cuz this book is top-notch. They bring in just about every 1970's ethnic character Marvel had, including Luke Cage, (the hero for hire that inspired Nicolas Cage to change his name) Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung-Fu, the Falcon, Blade the vampire hunter and even Brother Voodoo, and throws them up against ninjas, Fu Manchu (although they can't use his name anymore since Marvel has lost the rights to that character and it's amusing to see how they get around it) cajun vampires and Hurricane Katrina reconstruction.

Books I've read in 2007, part 10

I've talked about this book before. Everyone who enjoys the combination of words and pictures to tell a story talks about this book. Even though it says "A Graphic Novel" right there on the cover, it's actually a collection of short stories all set in the same tenement during the 1930's. I guess people called it a novel cuz Will Eisner does things here that no one had ever considered doing before in such a vulgar artform as comics, and nobody knew what to call it. Instead of musclemen in garish costumes beating each other up, talking ducks and mice, or teenagers chasing girls to get a kiss, Eisner dealt with real people trying to make their way in a harsh world.
And I do mean harsh, in these pages, a rabbi's beloved daughter dies, a wife-beating street singer misses his one chance to make it, there's rape, adultery, dog-poisoning, pedophilia, alcoholism and lies and despair. Quite a ways from Captain Marvel and the guys.
The reason this book is still read, besides its historical significance, is that Eisner doesn't offer any easy answers, the reader has to try and figure out whether God honors his contract with man or whether we're missing a loophole somewhere.
And also because nobody, but nobody, drew rain half as wet or half as well as Will Eisner.

Books I've read in 2007, part 9

Catsby is unemployed, his girlfriend left him and married a rich guy, all he wants to do is drink and lay around on his friend's kitchen floor.
Sounds like a lot of fun, right? But it isn't. I don't know whether the translation was crappy or if somebody who shouldn't have was trying to be poetic, but a lot of this stuff sounds clunky and you have to go back and try to figure out what was meant.
By the way, this isn't manga, this is "manhwa" which is Korean for manga. Manga of course is Japanese for "whimsical pictures," which is probably why comics are so much more popular in Japan than in the US. It's probably a lot more respectable to read and enjoy Whimsical Pictures than it is to enjoy what my grandmother always called "Funny Books."

Books I've read in 2007, part 8

There are a lot of manga series about a nerdy insecure guy with a monster-sized crush on a girl who is clearly light years out of his league. In a way that's what my two favorite manga series -- "Maison Ikkoku" and "Oh My Goddess" -- are about.
"I's" is a little different, it's about a nerdy insecure guy pursuing two girls way out of his league.

Right-wingers do not get it, part 80,000

I don't know if you're familiar with the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics, but basically it states that the only reason to pull out of Iraq is because we lack willpower -- supposedly, like Green Lantern, we can do anything is we just have the will and the resolve.
That is so many different kinds of stupid, I don't even know how to comment on it, so I'll let Denny O'Neil do it. Denny O'Neil wrote most of the classic early 70's Green Lantern Green Arrow stories.

Books I've read in 2007, part 7

Wasn't much reading involved here, as this is a book of photos of people kissing. I got it because Tom Robbins wrote the introduction, and he does not disappoint as he makes a strong case for the kiss being mankind's greatest invention.

Books I've read in 2007, part 6

This book did what I wanted it to do. I wanted to learn more about the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament that I will be attending next month. And I do feel like I have a better idea about what to expect, and I did pick up a few pointers about tournament strategy. So I guess I liked the book -- but I didn't like the author -- mainly because he kept making excuses for his (relatively) poor showing in the tournament. If he said that he should have trained with paper and pencil not on the computer once he said it a thousand times -- and he definitely said it once.

Boobs --- in bras and bars

Okay, I need some help here. I cannot figure this out. Thee Southern Belle has an amateur strip contest and the grand prize is a boob job.
Does that make any sense to you?
If you win the contest, doesn't that mean your boobs are pretty impressive and don't need to be surgically altered? Shouldn't the boob job should go to whoever comes in last? then it would be a real booby prize.

Books I've read in 2007, part 5

Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training next week.
Hallelujah!!
So it's time to throw out your Parka and your TheraFlu and your Ricola cough drops, and get ready for apple pies, hot dogs, blessed sunshine and baseball. And of course one of the cherished rituals of all real baseball fans (i.e. not bullies and cheaters) is despising the accursed New York Yankees. If for some reason you're having a little trouble working a full hate-on for the Bronx Bummers -- after all the Evil Empire is not what it once was, they haven't won a World Series this century (let's keep it that way) -- then this book will get you fired up all over again.

Thoughts as Spring training (finally) nears

I have way too many calendars -- I have a Simpsons calendar, a Get Fuzzy calendar, a Gustav Klimt calendar, a New York Times Crossword Puzzle Page-a-day-thingie, a Gil Elvgren pin-ups calendar and a baseball hall of fame calendar. I have this many cuz when they go on sale for a dollar I stock up. It's true I don't have enough walls to hang all of them, but they're all different. I just noticed looking at the baseball one, that yesterday (Feb 6th) was Babe Ruth's birthday. He would have been a hundred and 12 if he had just taken better care of himself. And the day before that was Hammering Hank Aaron's birthday -- he turned 71. I just thought it was odd that this two men who are linked together forever in baseball lore both have birthdays right in the middle of my previous sun sign, Aquarius.

Books I've read in 2007, part 4

Bill Bryson is one of my favorite writers. He's a linguist and a travel writer; I guess his most famous book is "A Walk in the Wooods" which is an account of his attempt to walk the entire 2,174 mile-long Appalachian Trail, but all of his books are good. Here he talks about growing up in Iowa in the 50s. Nothing much happens, he has a paper route, he loves to read comic books, and every year at the state fair he tries to get into the strip show -- but Bryson is such a great stylist that it's always fun to read, no matter what he's writing about.
Here he talks about candy:
"Perhaps nothing says more about the modest range of pleasures of the age than that the most popular candies of my childhoood were made of wax. You could choose among wax teeth, wax pop bottles, wax barrels, and wax skulls, each filled with a small amount of colored liquid that tasted very like a small dose of cough syrup. You swallowed this with interest if not exactly gratification, then chewed the wax for the next ten or eleven hours. Now you might think there is something wrong with your concept of pleasure when you find yourself paying real money to chew colorless wax, and you would be right of course. But we did it and enjoyed it because we knew no better. And there was, it must be said, something good, something healthily restrained, about eating a product that had neither flavor nor nutritive value."

P.S. to the Previous Post

Gail Parent (the author of "Sheila Levine is etc., etc.") also wrote a couple of books -- "David Meyer is a Mother" and "The Best-Laid Plans" -- that I have very fond memories of. But now I'm not sure I want to seek them out and reread because I'm afraid that time may have hurt them the same way it hurt Sheila Levine. They may have somehow gotten less sexy and less funny than they were back in the 70's and 80's.
On the other hand, Gail Parent was also the head writer for "The Golden Girls," one of the great sitcoms ever. And she also helped create "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and wrote for the "Mary Tyler Moore Show".
I'll give her another chance.

Books I've read in 2007, part 3

This was one of my favorite books when I was in the 9th or 10th grade. I thought it hilarious and very sexy -- so sexy that I took it to school and had classmates read some of the "goood parts." I've been looking for this book for years, and I finally found it a couple months ago at a book store in Myrtle Beach.
But in rereading it, I found it hard to remember just what those "good parts" were. It doesn't seem sexy nor particularly funny -- a young woman nearing thirty decides to kill herself because she is unmarried and nobody really notices that the poor girl is depressed. Now part of the reason that I didn't find this book-length suicide note as uproariously funny in 2007 as I did in 1974 is because I used to be in the second category of Jean de la Brevure's famous quote ""Life is a tragedy for those who feel, a comedy for those who think" - and now I find myself more and more of a feeler rather than a thinker -- which sounds like I grope women on the bus or something, but I just couldn't laugh at this. It seemed too tragic. I kept thinking she needed to quit worrying about getting married and get on with her life.
Maybe another part of the problem is the cover of the new edition which shows a Twiggy-like model nothing at all like the zaftig Ms. Levine.
One other thing I remember about this book was how excited I was when the movie based on the book came out -- and how disappointed and angry I was after watching the piece of celluloid crap that had nothing to do with the book other than the title. I have never trusted that any movie based on a book will be any good from that day on. And in fact now when I find a book I love, I just hope and pray that they won't make a movie of it.

Books I've read in 2007, part 2

This one required a pretty substantial suspension-of-disbelief quotient, as I really don't believe killers who take pictures of their victims and sometimes of the murder itself would take those pictures to be developed at a public photo lab -- but if they did and if the proprietress were an amateur sleuth then the rest of it makes sense, and it becomes a pretty exciting story

Talk about an oxymoron!

There's no such thing as Conservative Rock and Roll because rock and roll is about sex and drugs and change, and conservatism is about abstinence, sobriety and the status quo. But that didn't stop the morons at the National Review from listing what they consider the top "conservative rock tunes" You really need to read this:
http://scottpeterson.typepad.com/leftofthedial/2006/05/rockin_the_righ.html
Are they joking? I mean, the top, number 1 conservative rock and roll song (according to these idjits) is The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again", the one that starts out "We'll be fighting in the streets / With our children at our feet / And the morals that they worship will be gone." That is so far left it's anarchic. The Beatles' "Revolution"? Revolution is a conservative concept? I don't think so, repression, yeah, revolution no. And even the ones that don't directly contradict conservative principles, I think they read too much into. "Janie's Got a Gun" is not an advertisement for the NRA. In "Wouldn't it Be Nice" the Beach Boys are lamenting that they cannot get funky until after they get married, not praising the institution.
Oh, and "Stand By Your Man"? Not by any stretch of the imagination a rock song.
They really don't get it, do they. They never have -- that's why their great God Reagan co-opted The Boss's "Born in the USA" as his theme song. The crepuscular old fart thought it was a flag-waving my-country-right-or-wrong anthem.
Morons.

Books I've read in 2007, part 1

I've had to cut down a lot on my reading now that my job actually requires my attention. When I was in the Port Police I did most of my reading at work. (And if that makes you nervous about maritime security, good, it should.) But I haven't given it up entirely, I just read more discriminately.
"Tuxedo Gin" is certainly no "War and Peace". It's not even "Maison Ikkoku" or "Oh My Goddess" (my two favorite mangas). But it is consistently funny. As soon as I hit one volume that doesn't make me laugh, I'll move it off the docket for something else.
"Tuxedo Gin" is the story of a young man in love with a beautiful girl, he's a boxer about to turn pro. Everything is going his way. Then he dies in a bicycle accident. But that's not the end -- some odd old Buddhist spirit-angel-monk dude descends and tells the guy he can have his body back if he lives out a normal lifespan as an animal. I guess he should have picked a fruit fly or something else that only lived a few days, but he is so besotted with the girl that he chooses to be reincarnated as her favorite animal --which is a penguin. Eventually he comes to be adopted by the girl and -- as they say -- wacky high jinks ensue. The fact that the boy still thinks he's a boxer and tries to fight everyone who menaces Minako (which happens with alarming frequency) is a running gag. And maybe it's just me, but seeing a penguin fighting a man is always funny. So are his attempts to stave off the attentions of lady penguins. Great stuff, highly recommended, especially if you're a fan of offbeat romantic comedies.

Happy Birthday, Julie!

On this date back in 1929, one of my favorite artists, Jules Feiffer, was born. Feiffer had a long-running and, as you can see in the above example, often timeless and prescient strip in the Village Voice called, appropriately enough, Feiffer. It ran for 42 years and won him a Pulitzer prize (then the ageist bastards at the Voice fired him cuz they thought he was too old, but we'll avoid discussing anything unpleasant on his birthday. )

In addition to his cartooning -- which was good enough to get him into the comic book hall of fame, he's also a screenwriter (Carnal Knowledge) playwright (Little Murders) illustrator (The Phantom Tollbooth) and he also has an Oscar to go next to that Pulitzer. And even though Will Eisner usually gets credit for the first graphic novel, I think you can make the case that that distinction belongs to Feiffer for his excellent book Tantrum. (Even though Eisner's A Contract With God was published in 1978 and Tantrum in 1979, A Contract With God is not a novel, I don't care the comic historians say, it's a collection of inter-related short stories.)
Tantrum is about a man who's tired of being a husband, tired of being a father, tired of being a man, who wills himself through a terrific tantrum to regress back to a two-year-old, and what happens after that, which is hilarious and heartbreaking and always thought-provoking.
Since the Voice silenced him, Feiffer has been busy doing childrens' books like The Man in the Ceiling and A Room With a Zoo, all of which I also highly recommend.
Happy 78th, Jules Feiffer, and many more!

G and R Lies

According to VH1, "November Rain" is one of the 20 best music videos ever.
http://www.vh1.com/vspot/index.jhtml?id=1547027
(And in fact Guns and Roses are the only act to have more one video on the list and they have three.) Me, I think it's one of the worst. I've mentioned before how much I love this song, but as with a lot of songs I like, when I watch the video I wonder if the artists have ever read the lyrics. I mean, "November Rain" is about Spring and hope and renewal. The video is about death and loss. What the hell?

Wow, I am fantastic

You know the Bible 98%!

 

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

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Pictures from the Polar Plunge