Monday Puzzle #35 or "Please Don't Disown Your Lesbian Daughter"

Puzzle #35 was great. Completed it with no errors. I was happy to see the clue, “Fit for drafting.” ONE A. Learned that in Monday Puzzle #20.

The few answers I got, but don’t really know are:

24 across, “Conservative pundit Alan.” KEYES. Got the answer – know the name – but realized I don’t really know who he is. Did some research (a.k.a. read a bit about him on Wikipedia) and stopped after reading about how he disowned his lesbian daughter (she confirms this, he denies it – but does say that he cannot approve that which destroys the soul and must stand for the truth Jesus Christ represents) and protested Obama’s commencement speech at Notre Dame. Not interested in spending any more time learning about him.

42 across, “Stephen of ‘The Crying Game’.” REA. Once again – got the answer, know the name, even saw the movie. But, wouldn’t be able to pick him in a line up. And, now that I’ve Googled him, I totally know who he is. He’s one of those actors that I feel like I’ve seen in a ton of stuff – totally recognizable – but didn’t know his name.

47 across, “Treated a lawn, perhaps.” LIMED. I just haven’t heard that term before as it relates to lawn treatment. Apparently, lime helps keep the pH level of your soil/lawn where it should be (between 6.0 and 7.0).

61 across, “Singer Lopez.” TRINI. Mexican American musician. I absolutely love the biography on his web site - http://www.trinilopez.com/home.htm It includes a lot of very interesting and life path changing moments in his life, e.g. “When he was 11 years old, his father spanked him for ‘hanging around with the wrong kind of kids’...what a wise man he was to lead his talented son from a life of street gangs to a life of sophisticated graciousness. Trinidad Lopez, Sr., felt so bad about the spanking he had given his son, he bought him a $12.00 guitar he really could not afford. Trini says, ‘A spanking literally changed my life.’”

Monday Puzzle #23 or "Battle of the Netflix Queue"

This evening, my husband brought in the mail and said, “Your epic has arrived,” referring to Dr. Zhivago. He has seen it and said it is loooong and may be one of the best movies he’s ever seen. He wants to watch it with me, which means he really must have liked it. My life does not allow me to…OH MY GOD. Oh my god. Omg. Ok, I am in that emotional state where I am deciding whether or not to be pissed. But, I have decided not to be because it was definitely not intended. I was going to say, “My life does not allow me to participate in one activity for (x number of hours),” meaning the length of Dr. Zhivago. So, I opened the Netflix envelope to see how long it is and what popped out? The next Entourage disc. My husband messed with the Netflix queue and bumped Entourage in front of Dr. Zhivago.

This may not seem like a big deal. But, I have been silently suffering my husband’s takeover of the Netflix queue for years. Recently, I have been going in and finding movies I want to watch and bumping them to the top of the queue – but every other movie. So, Dr. Zhivago was 1, Purple Rain is 3, Sunset Boulevard is 5, etc.

So now, we need to get through the three discs he chose before I get Dr. Zhivago. That’s fine. That’s totally fine.

What wasn’t fine was Puzzle #23. I didn’t complete it and I had an error. The error was in 24 across, “With competence,” and 6 down, “Slangy no.” I had “able” and “ixnae.” But, of course, it is ABLY and IXNAY.

The clues I was unable to complete were:

14 across, “1970’s tennis champ Nastase.” Answer is ILIE. He was a Romanian tennis player in the 70’s. My absolute favorite quote from the WikiP page is “Maxim magazine has placed Nastase at number 6 on its top ten ‘Living Sex Legends’ list, as he is reputed to have slept with over 2500 women. After hearing this, his wife said that she was happy to have conquered such a man.”

17 across, “F.D.R.’s dog.” FALA. If Barack Obama had a dog named Fala, do you think he would’ve been elected? Would that have been the straw that broke the Conservative, Paranoid, Right Wingers’ collective backs? I mean, it rhymes with Allah. Actually, it doesn’t. It is pronounced fay-lah. I know this because I heard it come out of FDR’s own mouth. That clip and some interesting information about Fala can be found here. And, the name is Scottish, not Terrorist (although that wouldn’t stop the CPRWers). www.presidentialpetmuseum.com tells me, “At first his name was Big Boy. Franklin renamed him Murray the Outlaw of Falahill after a Scottish ancestor. His nickname became Fala.”

1 down, “Old 45 player.” HIFI. I had the H and the last I.

I was happy to see 64 across, “Top draft level.” Totally got that it is ONEA, thanks to Puzzle #20.

Answers I got but don’t really know are:

66 across, “Noted Art Deco illustrator.” ERTE. If you visit www.erte.com, you will recognize his art.

35 down, “Leave in, as text.” STET. Wikipedia says, “Stet is a Latin word (meaning ‘let it stand’) used by proofreaders to instruct the typesetter or writer to disregard a change the editor or proofreader had previously marked.”

55 down, “College in New Rochelle, N.Y.” IONA.

And that’s it for #23. I’m off to watch…Entourage.