PoYB Crossword Puzzle
July 31, 2023
ACROSS
1. Randall wanted to go to one of these. You remember. You saw This Is Us. Except that he didn't end up going. Something about him needing to take care of his mother, after his father and her husband, Jack, died in a crockpot fire? Seemed like thin reasoning to me. Either that, or I just can't imagine the level of co-dependency the Pearsons had for each other. Like, I love my mom, and I would absolutely be there for her if my dad tragically died because he just had to run back into the burning house to rescue the goddamn pet dog (ugh), but I think there's a better balance to be found between looking out for family and looking out for your own future. Then again, if I had the chance to live with Mandy Moore for four years, I'd probably skip college to do it too.
5. Remember when Harry talked to the one of these at the beginning of Sorcerer's Stone? Didn't he have like a Spanish accent or something? Why would a snake have Spanish accent? I know it was supposed to be humorous, and it definitely was... but I just hate how J.K. Rowling's heel turn has made me question everything I ever enjoyed about Harry Potter. It's like, wait, she wasn't being racist when she had that animal talk in that accent, right? Even though it's weird that a snake in England who can speak in parseltongue speaks with an accent? I don't know. The shittiness of J.K. Rowling adds an extra layer of complexity to the whole endeavor, and I don't have the emotional energy for it right now. The answer for the crossword is the plural word, by the way. Sorry. I'm not good at making crossword clues.
9. The second word of the book we're reading in the year-long book club that I've probably mentioned too many times already on this blog, even though all six members of that book club are PoYB contributors. But, like, would that mean that they are the only ones who are going to complete this clue? Or have I been annoying enough about it that EVERYONE knows what book we have been reading?
13. Fuck, I can never remember if this short phrase is supposed to have a period at the end of it. My research professor was the nicest person in the world and even he was getting pissed at me by the end of the semester, because he would mark the research papers up in red, and then the next paper would have the same mistakes. He wasn't a dick about it, but the frustration was palpable by the third assignment. All the comments would be like "As I said last time..." and that kinda thing. No way I got away with using this phrase incorrectly, whenever there were like ten authors for the source that I was cherrypicking to place randomly in my research paper, and you only had to use the first author's last name before dropping the shortcut in there. You know what I'm talking about. You're better at writing research papers than I am.
14. Parents are the worst texters, right? I particularly hate it, because Boomer humor is always like "Man, kids are so dumb online!" and literally the only people I know who use one-letter abbreviations in their texts are people above the age of 50. Like 40% of the texts I get from my mom consist of "ok." My dad busted my balls one time for using a medium-sized word in a text. I forget the word. Something like "discombobulated" or whatever. What, I'm supposed to feel bad about being competent at texting enough to be able to type exactly what I want to say? And that I'm not too lazy to type out the words "are" and "you"? (Wait, did I give enough of a clue here? How's this: an answer to this textspeak question would be, "fine, and you?")
15. I love getting these cookies at Aldi. But I only get the Aldi brand, since they are like $1.50 vs. the name brand, which are $5. And I only get the double-stuffed. Then, when I get home, I take two of them, and I split each in half, long ways, so that the cream is only on one side. Then I'll take the two halves with the cream, and combine them, making a quadruple-stuffed. If I'm feeling particularly saucy, I'll try to scrape off as much cream as I can from multiple cookies. The possibilities are endless. Have you ever had one that's dectuple-stuffed?
16. Not sure I can improve on the original clue, which was "Denomination of most of the world's Muslims." Maybe I shouldn't try to improve some of these clues, especially the ones I know nothing about. I did have a spark in my brain that maybe I knew of a rock band that practiced this kind of religion. After a couple minutes sitting in silence with my eyes closed, I was able to bring it to the surface—mewithoutYou. I ran to their Wikipedia page. But no, I was mistaken. They didn't practice this type of religion. It was instead Sufism, which is close spelling-wise. Whether it's close religion-wise, I don't know. The Wikipedia pages made my head hurt. I'm so ignorant about the world sometimes. I'll get better, I promise.
18. At work last week, I was reading the book that I just hinted at in 9-across, and I was hunched over, taking some notes so that I could then translate those notes into a write-up for the BookClubs.com message board, and my coworker saw me, and saw the huge tome in front of me, and the tiny print, and saw me reading it very carefully, and he assumed that I was reading the Bible. Which, okay, reading this other book in public is not necessarily the coolest thing to do, but the Bible?! I wouldn't say I'm close friends with any of my coworkers but I also don't want them to get the wrong impression. Assuming I'm reading the fucking Bible is absolutely getting the wrong impression of me. Like, so what if I know the name of Jacob's twin brother in the first few chapters of that thing, and immediately knew the answer to this clue when I read it in the original LA Times crossword? I was raised in Catholic grade school! Some weird trivia sticks with you! Doesn't mean I want to read about Jacob's twin brother ever again! Especially while I'm at work!
19. This is slang for sex, right? I feel like it's slang for sex. Even though it's actually powdered astronaut juice. But I feel like in grade school we would try to come up with the most ridiculous ways to describe sex. "Poot" was another one. I realize now that "Poot" and the clue's answer are both in the title of that 2001 Chris Rock comedy written by the comedian whose name I won't use here. I don't know what that movie is about. Probably sex, right?
20. Wait, why is the place that we drink called this? And the thing that the drinks are placed on while we drink there too? Did we ever establish that? Is it too late to find out, now that I'm... ya know?
22. I feel like whenever you see these three letters written in paint on glass at a daycare, they are usually accompanied by pictures of Big Bird and Elmo. I'm just realizing this now, that you rarely see Mickey or Donald on there. It's usually Sesame Street characters. Why is that? Not why you don't see Disney characters—I hear that Disney lawyers are particularly cutthroat, and I get that a small Philly daycare isn't trying to get sued. I'm asking why those same daycares feel like they are safe using Oscar and Grover. Are the Sesame Street lawyers a bit less rapacious? Or are those characters more readily available for public use, since their origins are in public television? Am I thinking too much about this?
23. The acronym for the incurable disorder that I have that affects my right ear. It's like, ya know when you're on an airplane, and you try to open up your ears to relieve that pressure that's in there from the altitude change? For a brief moment, the ear feels sort of echo-y, right? Well, this disorder is when my ear stays like that for periods of time. It just randomly gets echo-y sometimes, and there is literally nothing I can do to get rid of it except wait. It's not painful, but it's really annoying. Anyway, the three-letter acronym for whatever the fuck that is will fill the blank.
25. I'ma break it down into parts for you. WORD ONE: it's like what you wear around your neck for an interview but a homonym for that, like, ya know, a person from a country; WORD TWO: what they are fucking DESTROYING at the very beginning of Frozen, except that word as a verb in the past tense; WORD THREE: the thing that gen z kids drink when they are gossiping, a phrase that I would never have known if I didn't go back to school even though I was the oldest dude in every class.
29. The type of cereal with "raisims" in it, if we're in the parallel universe in which the person who originally created them couldn't pronounce the letter "N."
31. Apparently Billie Eilish has a song with this three-letter acronym as the title. I don't know. I didn't even bother with Happier Than Ever. The title of the album is a joke, and it's a good one, and I get it, but c'mon, no music has to be this sad and slow and boring, does it? Am I an old man for thinking so?
32. Tom Welling came cheap. So did Hilary Duff. The other ten? Even cheaper. I don't recognize a single other name out of any of the cheap kids. I guess the one chick was in the Step Up series? Sounds cheap to me. But cheap or not, all you gotta do is count them.
33. Martha is like "Daddy what is this?" and I'm like "it's spicy sriracha" and she's like "Daddy what's in it?" and I'm like "it's made with pepper" which was stupid to say because I had just explained what the tiny black specks of spice next to the salt were and that's also "pepper" and now we're all just confused and what I should've said was what kind of pepper is in here.
36. BUTT P—
41. Pokémon that ends in "wpoke" and if it took you eight months to figure out the answer you might see a meme with his picture and a caption that reads "hey guys I figured out the answer to #41-across on the stupid PoYB crossword puzzle"
42. Picture it like a Lionshead puzzle on the cap. Okay, so there's a picture of a hat, but then a minus sign and the letter T. Then a plus sign. Then there's a beehive but a minus sign and a picture of a tall building with an arrow pointing at the very top and an X mark near the very bottom. That's the first word. The second word is a picture of a big shaggy dog that you see before you die, but a minus sign and then a bunch of dudes. Then a plus sign. Then there's a picture of David Portner from Animal Collective, with quotations marks around him, and then a minus sign and an A, and a minus sign and a Y, and a minus sign and a TARE. C'mon, close your eyes. Picture it. Taste the sweet Lionshead on your tongue as your scrutinize a bottle cap.
44. The southern part is home to boy bands such as 8Turn, JBJ, M.O.N.T, Snuper, Xeno-T, VIXX, Ghost9, and JtL. Sigh... yes, and also BTS, but that gives it away, doesn't it? Fuck.
47. We never really played this game as kids. The big one was Capture (otherwise known as "Freedom" depending on what neighborhood you lived in). The variation was that, if you got caught, you went to jail (a designated holding area, which in our neighborhood was a swing set in Tommy's backyard). And if you weren't caught yet, you could sneak up to the jail and "free" everyone, thus extending the game.
48. My favorite review ever left on this website was one that Pam made on the Lyft ride home from Westy's, a one-star review exclusively about how the karaoke DJ tried to fight us. Fuck, I gotta have a copy of that around here somewhere...
49. "[Word 1] [Word 3] the asshole?" on Reddit. Word 2 is an eater of cats. Word 4 is the country that was too busy being fascist and homophobic to invent pizza.
53. My least favorite example of internet-speak is when food consumption is accompanied by this word said three times in a row.
54. Hit this button as soon as "Aaron's Party (Come Get It)" comes on the radio so that you can transfer "Aaron's Party (Come Get It)" to a cassette and listen to "Aaron's Party (Come Get It)" whenever you want!!!!
55. We actually use an I instead of a D in this acronym now. I learned that from Degrassi. Sorry, I know that gives away one-third of the clue. But I needed to mention Degrassi at least somewhere in this Puke on Your Birthday crossword puzzle.
56. The reaction I'd have if I accidentally dropped a pint glass in a crowded restaurant, or if I applied a bit too much sunscreen to my face, or if I did a bad job parallel parking and accidentally put one wheel on the curb, or if I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, or if I caused 9/11.
58. If you'll recall from the tedious year-long 2020 beer project, these are different from lagers. It's been too long for me to remember what that difference is, but I do remember that there's a difference! It's like, one is made in a warm environment and one is made in a cold environment? Something like that. Don't quote me. You can always use the Puke on Your Birthday search bar to sift through the archives if you'd like.
60. What does a bird make when it flies into the sphere that aids in vision? I know, I know, this is a stupid one. But I feel like sometimes clues in crossword puzzles try to be cutesy and clever like this, and so I thought I'd try it on for size. Doesn't feel like it fits. Maybe because it's not half as clever as I hoped it would be. I saw one in another crossword that I was going to use that was like "things Gene Simmons is known for" and the answer was "KISSANDMAKEUP," which is just a great fucking pun. I don't think I'm smart or savvy enough for that kind of shit, especially as I'm working in reverse here.
65. Okay, some of these clues I don't even fucking know what they mean. This four letter word is apparently a shortened nickname for the athletes of the University of Maryland? The actual mascot name is way more than four letters (and it's one half of a title of a Grateful Dead album), but this four-letter word is the short way of saying it. I guess? I don't know, man. I really don't give a shit about college athletics. Sorry I can't be more of a help to you.
66. The "you" in "I'll make make a man out of you," if "I" in question is not me but rather Li Shang, with help from an Eddie Murphy pocket dragon.
67. so it's jack nicholson right and he's sitting on the witness stand right and he yells out something really loudly at the climax of the film and i forget what he yells but it's like "i love the smell of napalm in the morning!!!!!!!!!!" or something like that who cares all i cares about is the answer to this clue and the answer is the first two words of the movie title
68. I had an idea a while ago for this website, an idea to sell something while using it. So you know how every Broad Street Line subway platform has its own unique color palette? I was going to put swaths of paper with those color shades in a frame, and sell them. The idea being that people spend 20 minutes of their day, every single fucking day, surrounded by these colors, and over time form a perverse bond with those colors, and so they might find it comforting to have those colors hanging up in their home. But I waited too long. COVID made it so that no one is spending enough time waiting for the subway anymore. Also, I'm terrible at art. Maybe this idea was truly a nonstarter. Oh well.
69. See him run. Run, run. That's what comes to my mind when I see this four-letter word. Why is that? Was that a children's book or nursery rhyme or something? Why do all children have certain things implanted in their brain at an early age? Also: it's truly a shame that we're down here at #69 talking about children's stories. We should be talking about sex! We should be making 69 puns! C'mon LA Times crossword puzzle maker, get your head out of your ass!!!!!!!
70. The original clue for this one says that it's the first name of an actress that I've never heard of, nor have I seen anything she's ever been in (except Westworld, but for one episode, and probably after the point that I bailed). So let's just give clues for each individual letter, okay? The first letter is the sound a snake makes when it lays an egg. The second letter is salty because no professors give it out as a grade even though that would totally make sense. The third letter is the letter I would make with my index finger and thumb to figure out which hand was which, back in like preschool or kindergarten. The fourth letter is Easy.
DOWN
1. Alright so you know those toys that come out every Christmas, and they are like a different type of vehicle every year, like a helicopter or a flatbed truck that has a motorcycle on it, that kind of shit? Well, imagine that Sid from Toy Story got those toys every year. And you can just imagine what he'd do with
'em. In my mind, he's chopping them all in half. All of them. The oil tanker. The rescue boat. The handicap-accessible school bus. And he's chopping them in a way that you can only see the first three letters of the brand name. And you're like, Sid, why? Why are you doing this? Why don't you want us to see the fourth letter of the brand name on all of these cool vehicles? And he's like, it's simple. I'm trying to help you with your crossword puzzle.
2. "Approximately the energy needed to heat one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit." Who says you need the metric system?! Though I will admit, being able to say that my dick is 16.51 cm long makes it sound a lot more impressive.
3. I stole this one from TV Tropes: what Thing, Margaret McPoyle, and Hector Salamanca all have in common. Need more examples? How about: Norma from Orange Is the New Black, or Magic Carpet from Aladdin, or Arielle during the middle half of The Little Mermaid. I think that's enough. You got it. C'mon. This one is easy.
4. I'm not a crossword guy, but I do appreciate the hobby, and the ability to get better at it over time. I just don't have the patience to start learning the rhythms and patterns. Like, I'm told that there are certain words that show up all the time in different crosswords because they are easy to slot in anywhere, since they are short and at least half vowels. 15-across is the classic example of this. If you know that word, then you'll know at least one answer on every crossword ever. Now for this current clue's answer: I had no idea what it was before this. Apparently it's a bone in your forearm? Never heard of it. But just looking at the word, I can fucking guess that this goddamn word is in most crosswords, just based on its structure and composition and otherwise obscurity. And I'm saying that, in order to be good at crosswords, you have to recognize this clue and know right away what the name of the bone in your forearm is. Once you get all the usual suspects memorized, then you're just a couple unique challenging words away from completing the crossword puzzle every day.
5. Synonym for cry, but backward. The original clue mentioned something about a baseball team that I hate, so we're going in a different direction with this one. Oh, you don't like it? TOUGH SHIT.
6. This is the 21st summer in a row that my parents opened their pool. And it's been about 20 years since a bird has shit on the deck. All my parents had to do was put a fake one of these on the corner of the pool area, and I guess it scares all the birds away? Pretty wild how effective it's been these past two decades. FUCK YOU, BIRDS!!!!
7. Lawrence is of this place. (It was a long and difficult movie, so it deserves a short and easy crossword clue.)
8. One of the negative aspects to spending my youth drinking the woods and occasionally having to run through those woods to get away from authority figures is that I spent many weeks of my summer dealing with red bumps and rashes caused from accidentally touching this shit. Though I'm weirdly disciplined when it comes to not scratching itches when I shouldn't. It's probably the only arena in my life where I am disciplined. Probably because I just dealt with so many weird skin issues growing up. The red bumps from touching this thing were the least of it. One time my entire face blew up with seeping pus-filled boils, and I had to miss like a week of school because I was living in bed with warm compresses over my head. Hopefully that proclivity for skin diseases is not genetic. Sorry, girls.
9. No fucking idea what to put for this one. Hmm... how about the early-'00s R$B singer who reached #1 with "Stutter"? That song is okay I guess.
10. Oh man, this is a great word. I'm excited for you to write it down and remember it. It's a word that, when describing a product, means "substitute good," and was used a lot during wartime. For example, this type of sausage was made out of "water, plant fibres, animal scraps, and blood," and apparently tasted like "a mouthful of sawdust."
11. Another war clue. The LA Times crossword puzzle maker must've watched Saving Private Ryan last night or something. Anyways, I actually would've known this one if I was doing the actual LA Times crossword puzzle. This branch of the military had the motto "We build, we fight." I know this because my paternal grandfather was one of them, back in WWII. I'm imagining that somewhere out there, there is a crossword puzzle that I'd know every single answer based on personal memories and anecdotes and experiences. A Slumdog Millionaire-style crossword puzzle, just for me.
12. We have a Guinness poster somewhere in the house (is it still in the dining room? is it weird that I can't remember if it's in the dining room when I'm not in the dining room?) that features this animal balancing a Guinness beer on its extremity. Does that make me an alcoholic, that this is what I think about, instead of hearing the name of this animal and thinking of, say, the cereal mascot instead? Well, perhaps it's not the only reason that I'm an alcoholic.
14. Things that are this: a restaurant in the Comcast building; a character in a Cheech and Chong movie; school for four years; a gear on a car, I assume, I know nothing about cars.
17. FL not like the state of FL but as the first two letters of a city in MI, as in the first song on the MI album by Sufjan Stevens. I'm asking you to fill in the other three letters, in case that was unclear. Sorry. I'm not good at this.
21. I talk a big game about how my first real album ever was the Vines' Highly Evolved and that my first ever album period was the soundtrack to Banjo-Kazooie, but there is a very real possibility that I'm wrong on that second count, since I can't recall the timeline all that well all these years later, and it's at least 50% likely that my first album was actually a compilation of songs from a bunch of different Nicktoons. This was pre-SpongeBob, by the way, just to give you an idea of what was featured on there. I recall songs from Rugrats, Doug (the Beets, obviously), that kind of thing. There were also a few songs from Rocko's Modern Life. One of them asked you to R-E-C-Y-C-L-E recycle. Good shit, and ahead of its time. This is a synonym for "recycle," kind of. It has the same prefix, at least. That was a totally roundabout way to get to the clue, sorry about that. I'm just over here, lost in my thoughts about Rocko's Modern Life. I can't imagine that show holds up, right?
23. Kinda weird that the mid-'00s indie rock singers of "Young Folks" never really acknowledge that their individual names make the same acronym as the sandwich, right????
24. I'm going to be fucking crucified by crazy people on the internet if I don't make the clue to this answer the following: Taylor Swift's recent tour. There. Are you happy, you fucking weirdos?!
26. Multiple Lennoxes. Multiple Coulters. Multiple Betty Fordses, apparently. Man, there are not many famous people with this name, is there? I'm being told that Cyndi Lauper's birth name is this as well. So mutliple Cyndi Laupers. Weird.
27. Stephan Urquelle emerges from the DNA transformation chamber. He starts to speak: "Did—" but he's cut off. The director yells "Cut!" and has a little chat with Jaleel White. "Now Jaleel, c'mon, I know we've talked about this. You're not playing Urkel anymore. You're playing Urquelle. And this new character, he would never say Steve Urkel's famous catchphrase. He's too cool for that." And Jaleel White is like, "Gee, I'm sure glad you stopped me from completing the phrase. Especially because the final three words of that phrase might be the answer to a crossword clue on some asshole's blog in like 2023."
28. I was at work, but the family was home with the puppy that we were watching a few weeks ago while his owner was out of town, and when I was at work, everyone got a Tornado Warning on our phones, and so the girls went downstairs with the mongrel. And while they were down there, the girls were tasked with taking one of their stuffed animals and allowing the little beast to turn it into one of these.
30. Apparently she's going to be the new Lois Lane? I'd rather watch another season of when she was a professional comedian in the early 1960s. Superhero movies suuuuuuuuuuuuck.
34. Just a fancy word for rice. But you're not fucking fooling anyone, you retirement home line cook! It's just fucking rice! Cue the complaints from the residents at A7 during the 6:00 PM seating: "rice again?" and I'm their waiter and I'm like "no ma'am, see, it has a fancy word for rice right there, it's different, you see." I want to also say something like "Your life definitely has meaning!" but I'm afraid it'll come off as sarcastic, which was not my intention.
35. MGMT really wants to be this guy. I know that song is on Congratulations, but hey, has anyone listened to the self-titled third MGMT album lately? I remembering hating that fucking thing when it came out, but apparently it has a growing number of advocates these days? I don't consider myself enough of a sucker to give it another go, but maybe I'd feel differently if someone I knew and at least occasionally trusted with music told me otherwise.
36. I don't want to write the word that this three-letter answer is a misspelling of, because that would be too easy. So let's copy and paste the description of a 2012 movie with this answer as its title: "An 11-year-old boy gets a crash course in what it means to be a man when he spends a day with the ex-convict uncle he idolizes." Common might play the ex-convict? I can't tell on IMDB. Oh, and there was a 1967 film with the same name, this one starring Jack Lemmon. Doesn't look like the 2012 film is a remake or anything, because the 1967 film has this plot description: "Milt, who's having difficulties with his wife, runs into his friend Harry who's about to kill himself. Milt asks Harry to stay with his wife, Ellen, while he goes off with his girlfriend. Harry and Ellen hit it off immediately but Milton strikes out." Look, if we've gotten to the point in this blog post where I'm copying and pasting plot descriptions from Jack Lemmon movies, then perhaps we should admit that I'm running out of steam here.
38. The answer to this clue is "RAGA." Is that okay with you? Can we just skip this one by giving you a freebie? What do you say? Well, I guess it doesn't matter what you say. I already gave you the answer. It's too late to protest.
39. Okay, here's another Lionshead-style clue, but this is a 2009 Lionshead puzzle. Remember, when they finally changed all the puzzles, and the new ones ended up being like really fucking easy? Too easy, in fact? The worst example I can think of was the one that was a picture of a Friday on a calendar, plus the number 13. Alright, alright, so here's the 2009 Lionshead-style clue for 39-down on this crossword puzzle: a picture of an appliance that you slowly bake food in, and a plus sign, and a picture of a big metal box in which you hide your precious belongings with a combination key. Easy? Yes. But accurate in terms of what Lionshead was doing in the late '00s.
40. I hate how crosswords, out of necessity, assume that we abbreviate words that are never actually abbreviated in the real world. If I said "work-related move," then you might correctly think of an eight-letter word. But the answer to this clue is four letters. And so, in order to justify its inclusion, the makers of the crossword say "for short," as if anyone actually says this word as a short version of the actual word. They don't. But these are the rules, and I'm not in charge.
43. da wheelie go round, and round, and ya count its going rounds every min
44. The dude at the parade was legit carrying around martial arts kicking pad, and says to my three-year-old daughter "c'mon, kick it!" and she's looking at him like he's fucking nuts. The irony being that she kicks people all the time and would be really good at learning how to do so for sport.
45. The cooks at Treetops Café made it look so easy to make these, but for some reason I always have some difficulty. I think it has to do with the equipment. They were using a circular pan, which means everything kinda naturally moves toward the middle, and you can fold it over. I'm at home using a flat square pan, which is non-stick and works great with other breakfast styles, but the eggs spread out too far when I pour 'em on. And then it ends up being huge and impossible to fold. The classic well-worn joke that totally applies to my attempts at it is: this has become scrambled eggs.
46. Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Yoshi, Wario, Bowser, Donkey Kong, at least in the Nintendo 64 version. Okay, fine, I'm talking about Mario Kart 64. That's not the answer. The answer is what the characters are doing in the game. Wait, no, that's not the answer either. Sorry. Okay, it's what they are when they are doing the thing that they are doing. Ugh, that's too confusing. Sorry. Sorry. Let's just say "___ start your engines" and be done with it.
47. Sounds like: "[Word 1 in 25-across]" plus "[giant bird in It's Always Sunny]" plus "[Word 2 in this week's RC AotW]"
50. What they might call multiple guns in Infinite Jest. Wait, did I promise anywhere above that I would stop mentioning Infinite Jest? If I did, I'm sorry. This blog post is taking a long time, and is tedious. I'd rather be reading Infinite Jest. Anyway, if you yourself don't feel like reading the book, you can always just google "word for gun in infinite jest." I don't mind. I'm giving you permission to do that, even though it's technically against crossword etiquette. (I am curious as to how much of this Boston-area slang is real and how much is made up by David Foster Wallace. But I won't speculate here, since I know you need me to move away from this book as soon as possible. That's cool. I respect your needs.)
51. Are these birds actually "crazy"? Or is that just something people say? I don't have the energy to look it up right now. Also, I definitely prefer the phrase "crazy as a shithouse rat," which I stole from Stand by Me, which is a great movie, don't listen to anyone say anything otherwise.
52. We're back in the alternate universe that we inhabited briefly for 29-across. Yes, the company that invented that cereal in this alternate universe is named "Skimmer Mamufacturimg Compamy." But also: Bob Dylan is here. He's singing the theme song to the hit NBC show Parenthood (in this universe, you see, Parenthood was a monster hit and ran for ten seasons). Except that this alternate-universe Dylan, let's call him Dylan-B, he hates the letters U and G. Just totally fucking despises them for no reason. It's just one of those mysterious Bob Dylan things you chalk up to the fact that Bob Dylan is a fucking weirdo. Anyways, he's still doing the theme song to Parenthood, but it has a different name in this universe, due to Dylan hating U and G. The answer to this clue is the second word in that song.
57. Oh, and I should also mention one more thing about that alternate universe. The director of Licorice Pizza cloned himself. The clones use the same name, and thus the same acronym for their name, but you gotta slap an S on that acronym now, since there are two of them. Meanwhile, the Joe from that alternate universe comes to this universe and strangles me, this universe's Joe, to death, for using the "alternate universe" shtick as a pathetic crutch. My dying wishes were for the alternate universe Joe to finish these last five crossword puzzle clues. Then I left this mortal coil.
59. Hi. Alternate Universe Joe here. Well, that's "Alternate Universe Joe" to you. I'm just "Joe" in my own universe. I'm gonna hang out for a little bit here, making these final five clues, out of respect of the dying wishes of the dude I just murdered. Thankfully, it looks like the rest of these crossword answers would be the same in either universe, so we don't have to worry about any convoluted explanations. Okay, so for 59-down, you have the clue of "undercover agent." Simple enough, right? Great. Keep going. You're doing so well. And in the meantime, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna stop breaking the fourth wall for the rest of my time here. You won't even know that it's a different Joe writing your crossword clues from here on out. Cool? Cool.
61. A band that's been featured in Summer Song Challenge twice now, for the same exact song, which is also the same song that ends the new Super Mario Bros. Movie, which is a shitty movie, and is beneath the great song featured at the end of it. And look, it's a really good song, and I'm glad I get to hear it every time I'm subjected to this trash kids' film, but I don't really understand why a Mario movie has all these radio-friendly rock and pop hits in it. What the fuck is a-ha doing in there (oh shit, I'm just realizing now that "a-ha" is three letters too, but I'll tell you now that's now the answer to the clue)? AC/DC? The fucking Beastie Boys?! Get out of here with that shit, Illumination. There are like 1000 awesome songs in the Mario video game soundtracks. Couldn't you have used them in the actual movie instead of the fucking credits?
62. This is what Mario turns into to defeat Donkey Kong in Super Mario Bros. Movie. And that's another thing. Why only give us like five seconds of "DK Rap"? A truly great movie would've featured the entire thing. It's a good song. To all the movie producers who decided that they needed to shorten it by 98% so that they could instead feature "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler, I say: FUCK YOU.
63. Alright, that took a lot out of me. Sorry. This is a "cartoon frame." Which has a different spelling then its homonym, which is the room that you spend 23 hours in while you're in prison. I never knew they were spelled differently until today. Maybe I would learn a lot more if I wasn't spending 80% of my brain power to fuel my hatred of certain children's films.
64. Oh shit! It's the last clue! We made it! Listen, anyone who actually read all this bullshit deserves a little treat. Here ya go: the answer is "TWA." I don't care that it is a defunct airline, and neither do you. All we care about is finishing this blog post and getting the fuck out of here. Click the link for the answers below and have a little chuckle over the obtuse clues that you couldn't figure out. Then we can forget about this blog post forever. Agreed?
SOLUTION: CLICK HERE
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