Hi and Lois watch

 
[Hi and Lois, August 20, August 22, 2021. Click either image for a larger guitar.]

Chip’s five-tuning-peg guitar appeared on Friday and again today. It must be a cartooning joke: four fingers on the characters, so five strings on the guitar.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday crossword, by the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman, is another Saturday Stumper. A three-week streak! What doth it portend? More Saturday Stumpers, I trust.

Today’s Stumper begins with a clue that looks off in light of the week’s news: 1-A, six letters, “Afghans, for example.” Perhaps there wasn’t time enough to change it. The puzzle has two good fifteen-letter answers and a few unusual answers. I had immediate assists from 11-D, eight letters, “Ellington partner on a ’63 album” (a great album for all involved), and 37-D, eight letters, “Mad marginalia master.” So I worked in the northeast, then southwest, and then everywhere else.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

6-D, fifteen letters, “‘Believe it or not . . .’” I think I know how grammar would account for the answer.

17-A, six letters, “Stock market sales.” SHARES, right? Wrong.

21-A, five letters, “Elbows on the table.” GAFFE? I can’t believe I fell for this one.

28-A, six letters, “‘Go ahead, it’s an ___!’ (beer slogan).” Here’s an example of what I mean by unusual. I have never heard or seen this slogan. I like that it crosses with 23-D, five letters, “Spirit/spearmint concoction” — which is quite an alternative.

32-A, three letters, and 35-A, twelve letters, “Puh-leeze!” “Puh-leeze!” is more versatile than I thought.

35-D, five letters, “Blow.” I dig.

36-A, fifteen letters, “Redundant-sounding, rather new refreshment.” As my dad would have said, “Never heard of it.”

39-A, twelve letters, “Suite requiring a key.” I don’t think I’ve seen this answer before.

57-D, three letters, “Exclamation not heard (alas) in Hamilton.” The clue adds value to the answer.

59-D, three letters, “Post-retirement acronym.” Sneaky.

No spoilers; the answers (and a bit more about 11-D) are in the comments.

Flares

Psst: the dad in Family Circus appears to wear flares.

John Ashbery and Julia Child

Daniel Kane found an exchange of letters between John Ashbery and Julia Child. Fantastic.

When John Ashbery writes to Julia Child in 1976 trying to figure out why he can't get Child's recipe for "ile flottante" right.... pic.twitter.com/ucvuBF49yd

— Daniel Kane (@DKanePoetry) August 5, 2021

...and Julia Child writes back:
` pic.twitter.com/N2Olr3c9ki

— Daniel Kane (@DKanePoetry) August 5, 2021

Related reading
All OCA John Ashbery posts (Pinboard)

[“He’s a poet who enjoys cooking” sounds to me like an introduction from The Dating Game.]

Free PDF to speed up a Mac

From MacPaw, maker of CleanMyMac X, a free PDF: The great slowdown: How to make your Mac faster & more productive.

Yes, they want an e-mail address, and yes, the PDF is something of a commercial for CleanMyMac X, but it does explain how to do things without that app.

I’m already a happy user of CleanMyMac X. I’m also a sucker for a free PDF.

Idiom of the day: clever clogs

I heard it in an episode of Peppa Pig last night:

Peppa: “That’s the biggest shadow ever.”

Suzy Sheep: “It must be a giant.”

Doctor Elephant, laughing: “It’s not a giant. The shadow is being made by a cloud.”

All the children, together: “Wow!”

Peppa: “What sort of cloud is it?”

Doctor Elephant: “Um, it’s a . . . big cloud.”

Edmund Elephant: “It’s called a stratocumulus.”

Doctor Elephant: “Yes.”

Narrator: “Edmund Elephant is a clever clogs.”

The term showed up at A.Word.A.Day earlier this week: “noun: Someone perceived to be intelligent or knowledgeable in an annoying way.” The Oxford English Dictionary has it as a compliment and a slight: “a clever or smart person, a wiseacre.” Edmund, I fear, is a bit annoying.

You can see the British version of the scene, which I’ve typed from, at YouTube. It’s different from to the American version, in which Edmund says it first: “I’m a clever clogs.”

Mistaken identification

[From Arts & Letters Daily.]

The link goes to an article about Robert Burton. Robert Burton starred in The Anatomy of Melancholy. Richard Burton starred in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and many other movies.

Orange mushroom art

[Click for a larger view.]

We saw them walking through a wooded area. That is, we were walking, not the mushrooms. Elaine thinks they’re jack-o’-lantern mushrooms. If so, they’re poisonous. And they’re reputed to glow in the dark.

*

8:55 p.m.: No glow.

Positive identification

“You know who he is, don’t you?”

“He’s in the Harry Potter movies.”

“He’s Harry Potter.”

“Okay.”

Ron DeSantis, whoops

A revealing slip from Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida:

“It’s airborne, it’s aerosolized, and so we just have to understand that when that’s happening, these waves are something that you have deal with with preventive — with early treatment.”

Whoops! Heaven forbid the thought of preventive measures, which could make early treatment for COVID-19 unnecessary.

You can hear DeSantis slip at the 5:37 mark in yesterday’s installment of Consider This (NPR).

*

Now there’s this news: “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who has been criticized for opposing mask mandates and vaccine passports — is now touting a COVID-19 antibody treatment in which a top donor’s company has invested millions of dollars” (Associated Press).

*

A reader shared the following:

“We know what works to prevent people from contracting this disease in the first place, masking and vaccination. We should be focusing on these preventive measures,” said Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. “It’s totally backwards to say that we should be focused on treatment instead of emphasizing prevention, and the steps that we know work to stop Covid-19 in the first place.”

Thanks, Kirsten.