Syzygy b'twixt Zeus, Ares

Beck and I watched the pretty fluffy but highly entertaining "Word Play" the other night. No review necessary - it's a behind the scene look at how the New York Times Crossword gets created / edited and a mini-documentary of some SERIOUS word-nerds who participate every year in the NYT Xword Puzzle Championship. I mean, yes, there are several levels of dork, and I firmly occupy floor 173, but there is a certain nerd-transcendence achieved when a film shows two crossworders talking about individual words and clues between rounds. Egad. Anyways, good flick, recommend it, if for no other reason because you get to see Jon Stewart talking smack to Shortz and Bill Clinton reveal what he really did with his time in the White House.

Being slaves to all things we see on the magic box in our living room, Beck and I have gotten into crosswords over the past couple of days. In an extraordinarily dangerous trend, we stayed up until 11:45 last night (after watching a reasonably good ep of Lost) trying to cram in the last words to Thursday's puzzle. And egad, man, it turns out you can put MULTIPLE LETTERS in single blanks. This would have been a great thing to know at the start; without it, we kept trying to make "out in the boonies" be the "Styx." What the hey. So now, I too join the masses demanding Will Shortz's head on a stick. I draw the line at obsessing over Sunday morning radio shows, though.

Some news from the Ballad: April broke the record for posts in a month with 36! That brings us to more than 400 posts combined between here and the old blog (on the site which will be getting some new material in the next few days). And since Ben can't read more than two lines of text, the current trend for multiple posts in a day might even continue. And as soon as a couple of people (cough, cough, Aaron, mike NTPB) get their acts together, you'll even get some interesting posts. If you know either of them, harass them over e-mail!

Speaking of the Grin - I left out a nice anecdote from the vacay. When we were lost in the woods, I kept bumping into palm fronds that were overhanging the trail. At some pause in the conversation, I coldly stated, "You know, I've had just about enough of these friggin' fronds!" So Ben picked up a palm frond and says, "oh yeah, buddy, what are you gonna do?" and playfully swung the frond at me. Only the front was full of sand, so I got showered. Ben was highly apologetic. Hilarious. Christophe decided that this was vengeance from some sort of Frond god (who apparently has strong ties to the "Wander after lighthouses" god). I agreed, and pledged never to make fun of fronds again. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the Grin must be a disciple of Fronds. So if you're ever hiking with that guy, man, do not taunt the fronds. He will sand your ass!

And here are two great pics that Christophe snapped, the first of a sunset on the first evening and the second of the dolphin in the bay that I mentioned. Enjoy:

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Now playing: The New Pornographers - The End Of Medicine