Cryptic Crossword No. 24813
Unlikely to get this one finished, but I thought this clue was quite cute:
- 24 across Mark, Barbie’s friend, toasted so? (5)
To-ken
Notes on Quiptic No. 514
I was having one of those days at work. You know, the ones where you spend the whole day setting up stuff and waiting hours for the bloody enzyme to do its work… All hurry up and wait. And I was reminded by a comment about quiptic crosswords, which are an excellent way to pass the time when one is sick to death of reviewing manuscripts… I’ve not done any cryptic/quiptic crosswords since my subscription to Guardian Unlimited ran out a few years ago. And as a super pleasant surprise, I found that the Grauniad is no longer charging for access to their crosswords. Nice one!
This week’s Quiptic No. 514 was set by Arachne, whose crosswords I have a slightly better chance of completing than many other setters… And since I’ve come back to these after years away, I thought it might help to write wee notes about solving these types of clues… Here are a few that took my fancy in lazy list fashion (highlight below to see answer and brief explanation):
- 9 across: Crimes of those who receive stolen goods (8)
Offences; those who receive stolen goods=fences. add the “of” before it to get… crimes! - 12 across: I practised a complicated branch of medicine (11)
Paediatrics; an anagram (indicated by the use of “complicated”) of “i practised a”. - 1 down: Tending to fall over kid’s misplaced computer accessory (6,4)
Floppy disk; tending to fall over = floppy and an anagram of kid’s = disk. - 6 down: Blushed and wept about male child (9)
Crimsoned; this one really annoyed me for a while… It had to be “son” or “boy” somewhere in the middle, surrounded by a synonym of wept, which I reckoned must be “cried”. Only after I worked out the word by solving intersecting clues did I realise that I also had to add an “m” for male. Duh.
Anythehoo… If you stumbled across this looking for hints on how to solve quiptic crosswords, I hope this helped a little bit. I learnt by a combination of trial and error and discussing the clues with my crossword-loving colleagues in my previous lab. What one of us couldn’t get, another would. I miss that lab…
Torrance
I’ve always thought of Torrance, CA as being a bit of a warehouse town. It’s one of the many cities of Los Angeles County that we zoom through on our way to the coast or the mountains. And on the 4 or 5 occasions we’ve driven through the streets of Torrance, we’ve seen nothing other than strip malls and gigantic office blocks that double as warehouses. The architecture of the malls and warehouses are so similar that I can’t even say if we’ve simply driven on the exact same streets every time.
However, there is another side to Torrance. Like all the satellite cities around LA, it’s home to the thousands of commuters that clog the 405 twice daily1. And having visited a friend’s cottage in the heart of this warehouse town, I can now report that Torrance can be, in fact, quite a pleasant place to live for a lot less $$$ in better accomodations. For the too many $$$ we forsake for a 1 bedroom apt in SaMo, we could easily have an entire 2B2B cottage, with yard for dog. And a garden. With a gazebo. And a firepit (see evidence below).
But even having a firepit can’t convince me that it’s worth the daily journey through hell on the 405.
1 Which can sometimes make a 20 min drive from work to home last for a good 60 min if there’s been an accident on the 405.
Tenacious Sweet Pea
Its fellow sweet pea plants have given up the ghost, but this one is soldiering on. Pretty amazing given that I just threw some seeds in the ground in Spring and hoped some would get enough water to sprout and survive this hellish desert heat.
[Goes off to check seed packet only to realise this is a potentially a perennial plant...] Oh well. Still, well done old girl…
Oh Sweet Pea
Come on and dance with me…
A<3M | P<3M
It’s that time of the year when I realise my garden is overgrown, under-weeded and in need of some pruning. Which is also usually when I realise that there are plants in said garden that I don’t pay any attention to all year. Until they flower. Like this iris, right by our front door:
It was looking pretty this evening too, so I took another shot.
Which led to the Skinnamarink song worming its way into my head…
I love you in the morning
And in the afternoon
I love you in the evening
Underneath the moon
Which led to rediscovering a childhood favourite that I’d forgotten about: The Elephant Show! With an extremely infectious theme song:
Where did June go?
June came and went. I noted its passing briefly on the 1st of July. When I look back in later years, I will find a large hole in my life where Science erased1 June2.
1 Please note segue. Thank you.
2 Would be funny if my name were June.
u-MAY-shu
Steeped some very unripe plums in sugary soju in May. Now to put reminder in calendar that we have to sample our umeshu in September/October1.
1 The pink-tinged plums may look pretty here, but it’s all gone a bit greeny brown and medicinal in the jar now.
Death Cabs, Pornographers and Twins – a normal night out in lalaland
To fill the gaping hole that is the weblog of my soul, I’m re-posting (aka C, V) my tipsy recollections of a pretty awesome Hollywood Bowl concert on the 5th of July, featuring: The New Pornographers, Tegan and Sara, and Death Cab for Cutie with the LA Phil.
As a biased, pretty easy-to-please fan of the 3 bands and the LA Phil, I had a great time at the Hollywood Bowl on the 5th of July.
The opening act, The New Pornographers were an excellent start to the night. With quite a lot of airplay from KCRW in recent weeks, their sound was familiar and the odd moment of recognition from my co-attendees was amusing to watch. @kcirtapu in particular commented on the strong similarity to one of our favourite acts: Belle and Sebastian. A fair description, I would say, as both bands have hints of folk melodies and 60s influences in their songs. As a live band, they were proficient, a good warm-up and mildly chatty, sticking to only a couple of quips (to paraphrase: “comments were made about our name, but come on, death cab? for cutie?”). I only mention chattiness for comparison to the next act: Tegan and Sara, who have (to quote my own tweet) no internal verbal filters.
If not for their fabulous voices and on-the-money lyrical commentary, Tegan and Sara should be chat show hosts of the late-night variety. But fortunately, they appear to really enjoy making music and engaging with their audience. They would have won the “Best Live Act of the Night” if there was one. They are a pair I would love to see again, preferably in a small venue with a longer set. As an aside, another thing I love about Tegan and Sara is the inability to put them in any musical category. To call them indie/alt/experimental/eclectic is like calling toro* food.
The same difficulty in categorising applies to Death Cab For Cutie, who, at various points in their career, have been tagged as grunge, emo, indie (which no longer applies post-Atlantic Records deal), punk and every other variation of rock… No small feat for a 4-person band, but hardly surprising after 12 years of hard work. That history was apparent at the Hollywood Bowl, with a set-list spanning from President of What to the sadly optimistic (or optimistically sad**) I Will Possess Your Heart.
As a live act, DCFC are pretty energetic and absolutely riveting***. They were pretty tight in the first half of their set, with a small tuning problem slightly marring our enjoyment of The Sound of Settling. I was hoping for some Chris Walla magic, but was happy enough with the aforementionedI Will Possess Your Heart multi-axe GWS**. Ben Gibbards all-important lyrics were clearly audible (by and large; there were moments where my memory had to fill the gaps), and despite occasional muddiness, the sound as heard from section M was crisp^. A strong driving bass and really clean drumming made the whole greater than (fill in the rest of this cliche yourself).
The second half of their set with the LA Phil felt like the evening was, like this review, running out of steam. I must admit that I wasn’t sure how much the LA Phil could add to the DCFC sound, save for a few songs. Gladly, they did not disappoint, and chose mostly songs that benefited from massive orchestral backing: I will Follow You Into the Dark, Soul Meets Body being my favourite two DCFC-LA Phil collaborations of the night. There were again a few duff moments, but I’ve already forgotten them, as insignificant as they were on the night. The song that I felt had the most promise, but perhaps suffered from lack of rehearsal or sound checks, was Grapevine Fires, the most operatic and melodic track of their latest album Narrow Stairs. It could, and should, have been the most memorable song of the night, but it’s thunder was stolen by the fireworks-Transatlanticism-heart-stealing combo finale^^.
The fireworks were an appropriate end to a pretty awesome concert. With that last act of showmanship, I could forgive the short setlist^^^ and paltry attempts at audience engagement by DCFC (understandable in the 17k+ seating Bowl). And you can be sure that will be a talking point for a while (so long as someone actually managed to catch it on film/mp4).
In summary, great opening acts, professional and entertaining DCFC, small contribution by the LA Phil, and a great ending. Add it all up, and it’s more than worth the 8 hours that the whole thing took.
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Obligatory footnotes…
*Substitute your favourite “gourmet”-style food, carnivorous or vegan.
**Whichever way it goes, I still think of it as the “Guitar W*nkfest Song”.
***Although I see from the shoutouts from the night that they have been more energetic in previous engagements. But hey, I only went to one concert…
^Which makes me think the sound is optimised for the “super seats” in G/H. Who knows how it sounds in the expensive seats… Not me with my limited budget…
^^I’d link to a youtube video, but have yet to find one sans screaming audience. Yes, they screamed/cheered for every firework…
^^^:
And as a wee bonus for you faithful skimmers of this weblog, on the bus home, @kcirtapu had a startling insight that had escaped all of us DCFC/PSB fans:
Ben Gibbard is none other than Neil Tennant in disguise1.
1 Honestly… How could I have missed that after this collaboration: The Postal Service?
Washington, DC
It’s nearly one year on, and I’ve finally gotten round to uploading a bunch of shots we took of Washington, DC back in May 2008.
Better late than never, eh.
Alaska
We went to Alaska.
We saw some pretty awesome stuff in Alaska.
We had some Bowmore-Dawn on an Alaskan glacier.
We did some funky stuff in Alaska.
We like Alaska. It’s… Interesting.
