Fit to Be Dyed

On my trip to Philadelphia last week (or whenever it was), I read the Stieg Larsson "phenomenon" The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It's funny; I would say that literally two-thirds of the people on the train were reading either it or the sequel (The Girl Who Played With Fire). It really is one of those collective unconscious things; I found myself trying to hide the cover, as I felt embarrassingly conformist!

(By the way, the author is not to be confused with Gary Larson, who would probably write a book called The Dragon With the Girl Tattoo.)

Actually, I rather liked the book, although I'm not entirely certain why it's become the phenomenon it has. Possibly the real-life saga of the author has something to do with it (Larsson died abruptly at age 50 after delivering three completed manuscripts--the story goes that an elevator was out of order, he took the stairs and, being a heavy smoker, he had a massive heart attack as a result...make of that what you will). He's not a bad writer (although his books are translated from Swedish, which may explain some of the odd phrasing here and there), and spent most of his career writing for the financial press, so he has a very unadorned but functional style. His translator is British, so characters ride in lifts and hide things in the boot of their cars, etc., which I have no problem with.

I have to admit, compelling as it was (and, yes, it did keep me up late one or two nights), it's not a particularly complex story. I was expecting all sorts of twists and turns, and plots within plots, but it's all rather straightforward. (Actually, the things I was expecting may make for a more compelling thriller!) I was also expecting the two parallel plot threads--the corporate malfeasance and the family murder--to turn out to be linked in some way, and--spoiler alert-- they are not. And Mr. Evil--Wennerström--doesn't even make an actual appearance in the book. One would have liked some kind of confrontation between Mikael Blomkvist (the co-protagonist of the book) and his nemesis, but nothing doing, although Wennerström gets a great comeuppance; would that all the financial scumbags and Bernie Madoffs of the world got the same.

And the opening scene--elderly Henrik Vanger gets a mysterious flower on his birthday, as he has for 40-odd years--is a bit of a grabber, but at the end, I couldn't can't help but wonder, "He couldn't have figured that out ages ago?"

The other protagonist--she with the titular tattoo--Lisbeth Salander, is a well-drawn character, although the speed with which she bonds with Blomkvist seems a bit too facile, given her fundamental antisociability (I'm being vague to avoid spoilers). They don't meet until halfway through the book, so maybe a bit more set up would have made the relationship a little more realistic. Still, she's a great character, and you root for her even when she's doing something unspeakably horrible, because the people she's doing it to are the scum of the Earth. (The original Swedish title is Män som hatar kvinnor which means "Men Who Hate Women," which is apt, but probably a bit less commercial and cryptic.)

And with all the Swedish names and places, it's very easy to get umlaut fatigue. I am still seeing dots before my eyes. Or above them, actually.

I wonder, if the author had survived, and the book had been properly edited and perhaps bits of it rewritten, if it would have been a lot better. But even if it doesn't quite live up to its hype (but then what does?), it's at least a million times better than anything Dan Brown ever wrote, so it has that going for it.

So, it's ta ta to the tattoo; I just started the second book, so we shall see.

The Saratoga Film Forum showed the Swedish film adaptation last month, so maybe when it comes out on DVD I shall rent it. I can only imagine what Hollywood will do to it.

But then, maybe I like the Fountains of Wayne song better.

Books Without Conversations

I am deeply deeply ashamed that, when co-authoring Disrupting the Future or doing the various debates and presentations on the subject of print vs. new media...I am ashamed that I had completely forgotten about the opening paragraph of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?'

A fine English major I was! I hang my head in shame...

Unfriendly's Restaurant

Good grief. From the "that which doesn't kill you just makes you huge" file, via Ken A., the "successor" to the appalling KFC Double Down is the Friendly's (and one uses that brand name advisedly) Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt. What is it? Well, gird your ventricles:

First, there's a Friendly's Big Beef burger, but instead of a bun, there are two (count 'em, two!) grilled cheese sandwiches.

Ill yet? You will be:

1500 calories (870 of those from fat); 79g of saturated fat; and a whopping 2090mg of sodium (trouncing the Double Down, which weighs in at a paltry 1380mg of salt)

Here's my question: does it come with a defibrillator?

I'm beginning to get the feeling that Dagwood Bumstead was the paragon of healthy eating.

Censory Overload

Channeling both George Orwell and James Joyce...

Remember back in 1984, when Apple's famous Superbowl commercial introducing the Macintosh played on how Apple was going to destroy Big Brother (which was supposed to be IBM)? Well, to coin a phrase, "meet the new Big Brother, same as the old Big Brother." But, then again, at least they reversed their tyrannical decisions:

Once again, following bad publicity, Apple has reversed a decision involving content for the iPad. Just in time for Bloomsday--today!--the annual celebration of James Joyce and his modernist masterpiece "Ulysses," Apple announced that it was a mistake to demand changes in "Ulysses 'Seen,'" an adaptation of the book for the iPad that began life as a web comic. To win approval from Apple, the creators had altered several panels that included nudity.

And:

Apple this week also overturned a decision involving a graphic-novel adaptation of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest that introduced gay themes (or extrapolated from gay subtexts). To get the okay from Cupertino, the creators of that app placed opaque black boxes over images of two partly disrobed male characters kissing and fondling. After bloggers complained, Apple called that move, too, a mistake.

Speaking of Ulysses, last night, during my annual re-reading of it, the "Cyclops" episode kind of reminded me of the Teabaggers.

Tales of Brave Ulysses

It's June 16--a happy Bloomsday to everyone!

Among the Madding Crowds

New Pornographers Friday night at the House of Blues in Boston!

Spanning the Globe

Once again, The Onion tells it like it is.


Boston Globe Tailors Print Edition For Three Remaining Subscribers

Flower Power

While in London a couple of weeks ago, Amy M. and I went to the Chelsea Flower Show, which was a lot more fun that I was expecting it to be. It really is quite the event; the BBC devoted an hour of prime time coverage to it each night all week.

It was also quite mobbed:
I was promised giant mutant vegetables, and I was not disappointed:
Some of the display gardens were quite elaborate:
I like the idea of this; would that all roads could be devoid of cars and covered with flowers:

And, of course, carnivorous plants are not without their appeal:
And here's a motto I think we could all live by:
After downing rather voluminous Pimms and lemonades, we went in search of food, and followed the signs that read "Seafood and Champagne." We were not disappointed.

I got bit by (among other things) the gardening bug, and picked up a bunch of seeds (mostly herbs) which, after only less than two weeks, are growing insanely.

It Was 30 Years Ago Today...

Well, last Sunday, actually. On May 30, 1980, Peter Gabriel’s third album was released, the one widely believed to be his masterpiece, if not in terms of sales, than certainly of artistic vision.

1980’s Peter Gabriel was third album to be titled Peter Gabriel, even using the same typeface, his idea at the time being to have each album seem like subsequent issues of a magazine. As a result, the third album is unofficially called “Melt,” as the cover features what appears to be Gabriel’s face melting (courtesy of Hipgnosis). (He would have kept this going but his record company decided, with album four, that he should start naming them properly; so 1982’s Peter Gabriel ended up with the more or less official title of Security, likely because the cover picture appears to be a still from a bank security camera. Minimalist titles like So, Us, and Up followed. In fact, those are the only proper studio albums he has released since 1982; not the most prolific of artists, is he?) Five years into his solo career (Gabriel left Genesis in 1975, following The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour), his first two albums, Peter Gabriel (aka “Car”) and Peter Gabriel (aka “Scratch”) careened from style to style, sometimes successfully (“Solsbury Hill,” “Here Comes the Flood,” “D.I.Y.”), sometimes less so (most of “Scratch”). However, by album three, he had found a sound, a vision, and the songs that made them work. It could be called “world music,” although at this stage I’m not sure what world it would be; certainly not Earth. I first heard “Games Without Frontiers” on the radio circa 1980 or 1981 or so and thought it was one of the strangest—and coolest—songs I had ever heard. The rest of the album is only modestly less strange, but still very cool, and more than a little haunting.

“Melt” was produced by Steve Lillywhite, early in his production career, and the record boasts the sound—of which Lillywhite was a chief architect—of the “gated” drum sound; that is, a noise gate is applied to a conventional drum to change—or eliminate—the decay of the impact. Coupled with a lack of cymbals, it tended to add a unique, punchy, and at times almost electronic sound to acoustic drums. This became a popular sound in the early 1980s, and it is argued that this was the first album to use this effect. It is highlighted on the opening song “Intruder” (drums played by Genesis mate Phil Collins—the effect is also featured on Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”), a creepy creepy song about, well, an intruder. “I know something about opening windows and doors/I know how to move quietly—to creep across creaky wooden floors.” The obsession with obsessive personalities continues on “No Self Control” (“I don’t know how to stop!”). “Start” is a brief sax/synth instrumental that leads into the radio favorite (well, played on the radio once or twice) “I Don’t Remember,” featuring Tony Levin’s “Stick” (a type of mutant bass).

More deranged characters appear in “Family Snapshot,” an attempt to get into the mind of a Lee Harvey Oswald-like political assassin (“‘I don’t really hate you/I don’t care what you do/We were made for each other—me and you/I want to be somebody/You were like that, too’” After the heavy drama of “Family Snapshot,” side one (in the old vinyl days) ends with the light-ish “And Through the Wire” featuring guitarists Paul Weller (The Jam, whose classic Sound Affects came out in 1980) and Dave Gregory (XTC, whose extremely classic Black Sea also came out in 1980). Side two opens with the big hit (well, it occasionally got played—it rose to #48 in the U.S.) “Games Without Frontiers”—and, yes, that’s Kate Bush chanting “Jeux sans frontières” in the background), leading into “Not One of Us” (“You may look like we do/Talk like we do—But you know how it is...”). “Lead a Normal Life” is set in a mental institution. The album ends on a political note; “Biko,” about South African anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko, who was killed in police custody in 1977. The song begins and ends with a chant of the South African song “Senzeni Na?” (“What have we done?”) which was sung at Biko’s funeral. “Biko” was often played at the end of Gabriel concerts, and the audience were encouraged to chant along.

Speaking of which, several SU-ians and I journeyed to Rochester in 1986 to see Gabriel live on the So tour. Although he didn’t play “Solsbury Hill” (my favorite Peter Gabriel track), and I was not a big fan of So (it was his big mega-platinum albums with “Sledgehammer,” “In Your Eyes,” and “Big Time”), it was still a phenomenal show.

So, let’s put on the great Peter Gabriel, melt a bit, and get so strange across the border...

The official pre-MTV video for “Games Without Frontiers”—ah, the state of video technology in 1980!

It Was 25 Years Ago...

25 years ago yesterday, on May 13, 1985, Dire Straits’ fifth studio album Brothers in Arms was released. It has the distinction of being the first compact disc I ever bought; I had got my first CD player as a high school graduation present (which I suppose suggests that that was 25 years ago, as well...oh, joy) and Brothers in Arms had just come out, so...

I was pretty much a Dire Straits fan from day one—I had their debut 45 “Sultans of Swing” back in 1978, and I pretty much kept up with them throughout much of the early 1980s. Mark Knopfler is a guitar god.

Having formed in Britain as part of the pub rock movement in the mid-1970s that preceded punk, Dire Straits were certainly out of step in their homeland, although they were a hit in the States (“Sultans of Swing” was a top 40 single). They began as a four-piece—Mark Knopfler on lead guitar and vocals, brother David on rhythm guitar, John Illsley on bass, and Pick Withers on drums. Only Illsley would still be in the band by Brothers in Arms.

Their first, eponymously titled record (1978) remains one of the great debuts, with scarcely a bad song on it (“Sultans of Swing” was in it), although their quickly recorded follow-up Communique (1979) had that “difficult second album” feel to it, and the scrabbling guitar solo in “Lady Writer’ was obviously supposed to be the next “Sultans of Swing.” It wasn’t.

David Knopfler had left by the third album Making Movies (1980), which was a great leap forward in style and complexity, and 1982’s Love Over Gold—boasting the compelling 14:25 “Telegraph Road” and one of the greatest, most intense guitar solos ever—went even further. (It remains my favorite of their six studio albums.) A retreat to simpler material resulted in the 1983 EP Twisting by the Pool, by which time Pick Withers had been replaced by ex-Rockpile drummer Terry Williams, albeit temporarily. (It was also in 1983 that Mark Knopfler recorded his first movie soundtrack, to the great Bill Forsyth film Local Hero, and started his career as a producer, producing Bob Dylan’s comeback Infidels.)

By 1985, Dire Straits was little more than Knopfler, Illsley, and a collection of other musicians and less of a proper band. (Session man and ex-King Crimsonsite Tony Levin plays his “stick”—a weird sort of bass—on “One World,” actually my favorite track on the record.) Odd, then, that Brothers in Arms became such a mammoth hit record. The first three tracks are still mainstays of FM radio—“So Far Away,” “Walk of Life,” and of course “Money for Nothing,” the anti-MTV song that ironically became an MTV hit (the computer animation—a novelty in 1985—helped). Actually, it wasn’t really an anti-MTV song; Knopfler often wrote from the perspective of characters, and in this case it’s blue-collar appliance schleppers who think that there’s nothing to being a musician.

I confess to not having been all that impressed with Brothers in Arms at the time; sure I liked it, but it was actually my least favorite of their records at the time. It’s hard to explain why; listening again to it 25 years later, it’s not especially dated like a lot of albums from the 1980s—perhaps the atmospheric pop jazziness of many of the tracks didn’t suit me at the time, but I appreciate it a lot more now. I remember using the new features of my first CD player to skip slower tracks like “Your Latest Trick” and “Why Worry” but with hindsight they’re actually quite nice. Perhaps I’ve mellowed in my old age. “Ride Across the River” always seemed a tad Peter Gabriel-esque, and the title track remains a haunting, beautiful classic.

I think part of the difficulty was that it was the first record I remember hearing that was released at CD length (actually, it’s only 54 minutes and change, although I remember it being longer, for some reason); as someone brought up in the vinyl era, you get used to the rhythm of two ~21:30 sides; song sequencing used to be a bit of an art, and even today albums that go on much longer than 45 minutes can’t always keep my attention. It’s hard to explain.

Following the tremendous success of Brothers in Arms, Knopfler was never particularly comfortable as the rock star, so he retreated into soundtracks and production and didn’t reconvene Dire Straits until 1991 and the so-so On Every Street. And then he called it a day and began a solo career. He remains a guitar god.

So let’s put on Brothers in Arms, celebrate the leaving forever of high school, and recall a time when this kind of computer animation was impressive.


Then we can check out the Weird Al version.

Talk Talk

Via The Onion, of course:

I confess I don't have cable, and avoid cable news channels at all costs, so I don't really know, but from what I've read...you mean, this isn't Glenn Beck?

Heaven is Whenever We're Together

Two new albums have been receiving non-stop rotation on my CD player/iPod.

Together, the new one by The New Pornographers, is an improvement over 2007's Challengers, and the extensive use of cellos makes it sound a bit like mutant ELO at times. The refrain in the opening song "Moves" I assume is "These things get louder" but I swear it sounds like "Bee stings get louder," the kind of elliptical lyrics that wouldn't be beyond A.C. Newman. There are the usual complement of looney Dan Bejar songs, although they're less looney than, say, "Jackie, Dressed in Cobras" from Twin Cinema, or anything on the last Destroyer album (Bejar's own band, whose last album featured songs titled "Foam Hands," "Leopard of Honor," "Shooting Rockets (From The Desk Of Night's Ape)", for example). But then with tracks called "Valkyrie in the Roller Disco" and "A Bite Out of My Bed" ("Someone took a bite out of my bed"), Newman can be pretty odd, as well. This is one of those records where, after a play or two, you feel like you have known these songs for years. (And with lines like "Honey child, you're not safe here..." someone's been listening to The Smiths.) And only Neko Case's harmonies can make lines like "I wear my Sunday suit to walk the streets/That would feel Byzantine" sound sensible. "Up in the Dark" ("What's love but what turns up in the dark?") is classic NP. Great record; I highly recommend it.


On Tuesday, Heaven is Whenever, the new one by The Hold Steady, came out. They may never make a record as good as 2006's Boys and Girls in America again, but this one is far superior to 2008's Stay Positive. You have to like a song ("The Weekenders") that begins with the line "There was that whole weird thing with the horses." (Actually, it's the return of the characters from the song "Chips Ahoy!" about a girl who can psychically pick winning horses. Hmm...anyone got her number?) "She said the theme of this party is the industrial age/You came in dressed as a train wreck." THS's keyboard player quit, so there is more guitar on this one, which is fine by me. It's not hard to imagine "Rock Problems" being sung by Ray Davies on a Misfits/Low Budget-era Kinks record. The opening song, "The Sweet Part of the City" ("the parts with the bars and restaurants"--indeed) begins with a little riff that is unfortunately vaguely reminiscent of Jefferson Starship's "Find Your Way Back," which I hope was unintentional. In the title track, "She said Hüsker Dü got huge/But they started in St. Paul/Do you remember 'Makes No Sense at All.'" (I do, actually--it was on Flip Your Wig, as well as a 1985 EP which also included Hüsker Dü performing a cover of not only The Byrds' "8 Miles High" but also "Love is All Around"--yes, the theme to The Mary Tyler Moore Show--which has to be heard to be believed.) The song continues, "Heaven is the whole of the heart/Paradise by the dashboard light/Utopia is a band/They sang 'Love is the Answer.'" And that pretty much sums up the bulk of THS's influences. Great record; I highly recommend it.

There's no video up for any of the songs yet, but who needs video when you have audio anyway?

iShow

Jon Stewart, as usual, is right on the money vis-a-vis the brouhaha over Gizmodo, the purloined iPhone prototype, and Apple's complete freakout.

If you're unfamiliar with the story, background is here. Shorter version: if you're an Apple engineer and you're field-testing a new iPhone protoitype, don't get drunk in a Redwood City bar.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Appholes
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Apple—you guys were the rebels, man, the underdogs. People believed in you. But now, are you becoming the man? Remember back in 1984, you had those awesome ads about overthrowing Big Brother? Look in the mirror, man! …It wasn't supposed to be this way - Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one! But you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes! What the f--k is going on?!

…I know that it is slightly agitating that a blog dedicated to technology published all that stuff about your new phone. And you didn't order the police to bust down the doors, right? I'd be pissed too, but you didn't have to go all Minority Report on his ass! I mean, if you wanna break down someone's door, why don't you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone! I mean, seriously! How do you drop four calls in a one-mile stretch of the West Side Highway! There're no buildings around! What, does the open space confuse AT&T's signal?!

More Fun with Reptiles

Rock on.

Union of the Snake

Via Boing Boing, snake used as a weapon by noisy hotel guests. I bet they were playing Whitesnake. Hmmm...Snakes in a Hotel. I think we've found the sequel to Snakes on a Plane. If the series catches on, they can do Snakes in a Cab, Snakes at Baggage Retrieval, and Snakes on the 1:20 to Birmingham.

Disrupting "Disrupting the Future"

I only steal from the best.

Agog at Evil Oxen

In the tradition of “Diary of a Crossword Fiend” and other crossword puzzle blogs I heard about at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament back in February (as well as the official NYT Crossword blog), I am finally getting around to starting to blog sporadically about my own crossword puzzling. This may or may not be a daily thing; as with most things, we’ll see.

By the way, if you routinely do any of these puzzles and have not done them yet, be forewarned—there be spoilers here! I should do a “below the fold/read more” kind of thing, but I’m lazy.

There are generally three puzzles I do each day. Today, my times were:

New York Times: 8:40
L.A. Times: 7:14
CrosSynergy (Washington Post): 5:59

I don’t really try for speed.

Today is a Wednesday (I think...yes, it is), which means a mildly difficult New York Times puzzle. It is by veteran Richard Silvestri, who usually injects a fair amount of humor into his puzzles. It took me a while to glom onto the theme; the first theme entry was clued “One who plunders boatloads of jack o’lanterns?” and the answer was PUMPKIN PIRATE. Okay... The second theme entry was clued “First-rate chastisement?” and the answer was SUPREME BERATING. Still didn’t get it; I’m fairly dim today. The third and final theme entry was clued “Nickname for an unpredictable Communist?” ERRATIC THE RED. Aha! ERIC THE RED with RAT inserted. Ah, then theme entry #1 was PUMPKIN PIE with RAT in it (I’ll have the pumpkin pie without so much rat in it...wasn’t that a Monty Python sketch?) and #2 was SUPREME BEING with a RAT in it. An odd theology, that. Anyway, 58 Down explains what’s going on: “Chinese calendar animal...or the key to this puzzle’s theme.” Ah...and 59 Down is RAT. Curiously, this isn’t actually the Year of the Rat (except in Ft. Lauderdale, I am led to understand...); it’s the Year of the Tiger, which is better than “The Eye of the Tiger.” The last Year of the Rat was 2008. Al Stewart’s “The Year of the Cat” was released in 1976.

Elsewhere in the Times puzzle, the ALOU baseball family appears again, but there aren’t too many of the “old regular” entries one comes across all the time today. Some witty clues: “Fall preceder” (PRIDE), “It’s game” (TAG), “Ship of fuels” (TANKER), and something I did not know: “What ‘........’ means to a typesetter” (STET). Or, as we used to say in magazine publishing, “never let them see you stet.” And what did Cervantes call “The tongue of the mind”? PEN.

The theme answers of Donna S. Levin’s Los Angeles Times puzzle were 16 Across “Extremely defensive state of mind” (BUNKER MENTALITY); 30 Across “Physical play” (ROUGH HOUSE); 39 Across “Abstinent one” (TEETOTALLER); 54 Across “Sam-I-Am’s story” (GREEN EGGS AND HAM). The theme? As 60 Across explains, “This puzzle’s theme—according to Twain, it’s ‘a good walk spoiled’” (GOLF). Yes, that line is just too too Twain.

Interesting thing about the word “teetotaler.” For many many years, I thought (despite the spelling) that it derived etymologically from preferring tea over booze—that is, non-alcoholic beverages. However, I learned in a Toastmasters meeting that it has an etymology not unlike D-Day. Says the Online Etymology Dictionary:

1834, possibly formed from total with a reduplication of the initial T- for emphasis (T-totally "totally," not in an abstinence sense, is recorded in Kentucky dialect from 1832 and is possibly older in Irish-Eng.). The use in temperance jargon was first noted Sept. 1833 in a speech advocating total abstinence (from beer as well as wine and liquor) by Richard "Dicky" Turner, a working-man from Preston, England.

Elsewhere in the L.A. Times puzzle, Giant Mel OTT makes one of his ubiquitous appearances (he would be, with the ALOUs, part of any crossword puzzler’s baseball all-star team, methinks). We can lower our cholesterol with 57 Across (OLEO), another “regular.” Once, BUTTER was an answer in a puzzle and I exclaimed “I can’t believe it’s not oleo!” “Drug in Shatner novels” is of course TEK.

Finally, Lynn Lempel’s WaPo puzzle is titled “Coat of Many Colors” and is rather a clever theme that works nice and symmetrically: “Like plumbing or carpentry jobs” (BLUE COLLAR), “Sign of hope amid the gloom” (SILVER LINING), “Still popular Elizabethan ballad” (GREENSLEEVES), and “Best Actor winner for ‘Sayonara’” (RED BUTTONS). It sounds like something they would have worn in the 1970s.

It has been long believed (even repeated by Rebecca Fraser in her excellent recent book The Story of Britain) that “Greensleeves” was originally written by Henry VIII as an attempt to woo Ann Boelyn. Others dispute the story (Alison Weir points out in her 2002 book Henry VIII: The King and His Court, that “Greensleeves” was written in an Italian style of composition that didn’t reach England until after Henry’s time, and of course it seems highly unlikely that Henry VIII would have written anything Elizabethan). Wikipedia tells us that

One possible interpretation of the lyrics is that Lady Green Sleeves was a promiscuous young woman and perhaps a prostitute. At the time, the word "green" had sexual connotations, most notably in the phrase "a green gown", a reference to the way that grass stains might be seen on a lady's dress if she had made love outside.

On her sleeves? Curious.

Anyway, elsewhere in the puzzle, we have two entries clued “The whole kit and caboodle,” 32 Across (ALL) and 40 Down (EVERY BIT). “Kit and caboodle”...there’s a phrase that sends me to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

kit
"round wooden tub," 1275, probably from M.Du. kitte "jug, tankard, wooden container," of unknown origin. Meaning "collection of personal effects," especially for traveling (originally in ref. to a soldier), is from 1785; that of "outfit of tools for a workman" is from 1851. Kit and caboodle is 1861, from boodle "lot, collection," perhaps from Du. boedel "property."

That answers that. The crossword puzzle mecca of ENID is clued today as “Present-day Oklahoma city on the old Chisholm Trail.” RHEA is clued as “Actress Perlman with an ostrich-like namesake.” I guess it depends on whether you are a Cheers fan or an ostrich fancier. Or perhaps both, of you’re that much of a Renaissance man/woman.

It’s always interesting (and I use a hitherto unknown definition of “interesting,” it would seem) when the same word appears in more than one puzzle on the same day. Today, we had OXEN in both the NY Times and the LA Times, and AGOG and EVIL in both the LA Times and WaPo. I'm often agog at evil oxen.

Here's the Mutiny I Promised You

All right, one more for the road. NP from their last record. This may be how I'm getting to Vancouver next week which, coincidentally, is where the NP's hail from.

The Song That's Shaking Me

One for the road.

New New Pornographers album due May 4! And they are touring; mi hermano and I have tix to see them in Boston June 18.

From their first record. That Neko Case--she could go places...

Propeller Time

Rock on.