Saturday 19:52 (2 Google)

TW: Devolution into shameless pretension after crossword talk.

That's a pretty good time for a Saturday, at least compared to the last few. Perhaps the stupid pills I've seemed to be on lately are wearing off, or maybe this was super-easy. Google came through pretty big. I hate to cheat on super-long clues, but whenever I see something like "Winner of the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for poetry," I feel screwed. Sure, I know some poets, but Pulitzer winners? The only thing worse is Nobel science winners. There are always a few obvious candidates when they go for a poet, but they are not afraid to go obscure on Saturday and it was too long to guess at (it was the only 14-letter answer in the asymmetrical grid).

Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be Wallace Stevens, a very famous poet who I've studied and know pretty well to the point that he might be counted among my favorites, at least of the 20th Century. That always makes me feel kinda silly for cheating because if I could have thought harder on getting some more crosses, it would have felt more satisfying to find. But what if the answer is someone like Theodore Roethke? (winner in 1954; he has the more crossword-appropriate 15 letters in his name) That name rings a much, much fainter bell, and I would have felt fine about searching for him.

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

—Wallace Stevens, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"

I love the alliteration in the third line, and the uneven rhythm reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins, another favorite. I've never really been the type to sit and read poetry for pleasure. Few are, even among other poets. I will read in order to study (if you found the above stanza confusing, you are not alone – my copy had question marks all over it. This is why school is not a waste.*), but most poetry at its core is meant to be performed, ideally by the author.

More about tonight another night

*While IMing some time ago (the fact that I call it that should give you an idea of how long ago), my friend Dan said he was interested in reading Ulysses, but wasn't sure how to go about it. He was right to ask me for help. See, my class of English majors spent an entire semester in Junior Seminar reading that book. While I had a class senior year that expected us to read a full-length novel a week (I skimmed most of them), we read Ulysses one chapter per class, twice a week. While you can get Spark Notes or whatever, you shouldn't bother. An established reading guide (The New Bloomsday Book, by Harry Blamires.



No Amazon link. Support your local bookstore!), itself 250 pages long, was actually required reading. It helped decipher some of Joyce's symbolism and Irish wit. You can get Ulysses anywhere, it's public domain by now. Any American with a middling high school education can read it. It's in English, and most of the words aren't even all that long. Many people claim to have read Ulysses because of its reputation and they're not all lying. Yet for the most part, the only people who end up studying it in depth are the English majors and because of that pace and focus,  they just get so much more out of it. Without that study, I don't think I could say that I enjoyed it, or that it was even that big of a deal. I'm not sure if he ever did end up tackling the book, but Dan is hyper-intelligent, and if he picks up the reading guide, I'm sure he'll get it as well as any of us did 20 years ago.

Monday 7:24
Tuesday 9:51
Wednesday 12:30
Thursday 17:05 (one error)

This is probably a normal proportional rate in a given week, but these times are slower than my average. Monday is usually in the sixes, Tuesdays, the eights. Thursday was a rebus puzzle, with ME in one box. I picked it up fairly early, when "Show Me State" was one letter too long, but the across clues were a obscure, just a series of one or several years, all but one within the last 11 years. And why ME? (The fact that it was its own word in the first rebus clue I got was also a distraction The first across clue I got mostly from crosses was 2015, 2016, 2018: GA[ME] OF THRONES. That didn't make much sense.

When I got to the reveal clue, What each of the programs in this puzzles has won at least once: PRI[ME] TI[ME] EMMY, I made the connection between year and answer and got the rest without much trouble. Once you know you're looking for award-wining (mostly) recent television, it isn't too hard (MAD [ME]N won four years in a row (2008-11)). They did throw in the first ever winner in 1949, PANTOMI[ME] QUIZ. That one was trickier. It still took me almost till the end to see the reason behind the rebus (ME = Emmy). Not that getting this would have helped much, but just another sign of being a little slow this week. One clue that really tickled me was Chain letters?: S AND M. Perhaps that answer has been in the puzzle before, but that clue is slick. Half of nine?: ENS was less so, but I should have seen it.

Thursday 15:00

Such a clean time

Getting Lost Again

Actor Daniel Dae Kim went to my college (Class of 1990, unbelievable this guy is over 50). He was a nobody when I was there, so no one cared. He's still not exactly A-List, but Haverford doesn't have too many stars on its alumni list, so they put him on the cover of the alumni magazine. So I decided to watch Lost again. This is maybe my fourth time through?

Lost is on Hulu, but I think the previous times I watched, it was on Netflix. I've written before about how I don't mind Hulu ads in principle. On a show like Lost, it's honestly helpful. Lost is so damn compelling and fast-paced, it's a piece of cake with no ads and autoplay to watch three hours and have it all blur together. Even though I'll still watch a few episodes at a time on Hulu, the breaks allow my mind the time to file things appropriately in memory.

I still catch new things at times, which is nice. The guy who plays Miles was also in X-Men: The Last Stand. A few of these guys pop up in Law & Order pre-Lost, too. Season 5 is a lot more interesting when you know what's up with Locke the whole time. Of course, like I said, I've been through this before, but the first few times, you're still in the "what's next?" mindset the show so expertly promotes. Familiarity allows you to take a more complete view. I'm in the final season now, which I enjoy more than most, but the repeated viewings really help understand what's going on. People who came away confused probably don't give it the second chance it needs.

But beyond its mass appeal, Lost is a show for Very Smart People™. The spiritually they throw at you at the end can turn off some VSP but I can dig it. I mean, the main character's father, who is dead but keeps appearing to him, is named Christian Shepherd! What, exactly, did you think was coming? The writers say they had the last episode written at the same time as the first one. There's an interview you can probably find online that also explains exactly what the final season is about in the writers' own words. Perhaps it could have been better as a tightly planned 4-season series or something, but television usually doesn't work that way. You can't order four seasons in advance in case the first one fails, but you want to keep making more than just four if the show is successful. I'll take it. Lost was one of the early shows to really take off in online discussions, the little easter eggs, the numerology, early memes (Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaalt!!!!!). It still feels pretty fresh, 12 years old.