![]() I guess I’m just not a touchy-feely person. I’ve had one massage, and if I never have one again, it’ll be just fine by me. Facials, massages, colonics do nothing for me. Glad Evan clarified which famous Clapton. About once a month I look under my kitchen sink for bad news. (See also 62A – perfectly placed as regards the progression.) It’s remarkable how menacing water is when it shows up where it’s not supposed to be. I saw the progression not as literal bodies of water found on our TERRA but rather the horrifying progression you might experience in your basement or under the kitchen sink: DROPS – TRICKLE – STREAM – RIVER – FLOOD – OCEAN. I love putting my very big feet in a STREAM somewhere near TAHOE and I can't think of anything good about a FLOOD. We always eat at a restaurant by the Sacramento RIVER in the summer. Sometimes I'll lie in the bath tub and let the hot water TRICKLE DOWN. I liked the puzzle and all the water stuff. It looks like some fat little bastard sea gull, who probably stole someone's white cheddar cheese sandwich, shat on my head. Anyway, My hair has grown unruly and has sprouted this big piece of white mass in the front of my hair. I was supposed to see her in March but you know how that goes. She doesn't really dye it but whatever she does it gets rid of the creepy grey that creeps in. I go see my gorgeous hairdresser, who wears a nose stud, about every six months to have my hair trimmed and highlighted. Then I went on to that HAIR LOSS and the reason for Rogaine and all, and of course my mind wandered again. Then I went on to ZOOEY and wondered why anyone would be named after something to do with a zoo. I had VENTE which gave me the four by four answer as SEX TEEN. You'd think after yesterday's coffee discussion I would've spelled VENTI the right way, right? Well, no. Well yeah.I noticed starting with DROPS and ending with OCEAN because I look for these things. But it was all over fast, and solving fast can be fun, so if that was enough for you, fantastic. HEDONISTIC is a nice word ( 11D: Committed to the pursuit of pleasure), but few things express the spirit of hedonism less aptly than this grid. it wasn't just that they were easy to get, it was that their clues seemed like they were pulled out of the "Frequently Used Clue" bin. Well, no, they weren't all that lackluster. Me: "." Her: "IN RE." Me: "the other one." Her: " AS TO." Me: "yup." Repeat 78 times. Mostly she just looked at me deadpan because the clues were so easy it hardly seemed worth her effort to tell me the answers. For most of them, she gave me the answers quickly and easily, without my even having to tell her how many letters were in the answer or what letters I already had in place. The way I knew this was easy and dull was: instead of racing through it, as I usually do, I just sat here at the kitchen table and read clues out to my wife. The theme doesn't quite cohere, and the puzzle overall is dull. But the puzzle is So easy, So plainly clued, So loaded with overfamiliar 4-letter words, that the only real joy people will have today is the setting of personal-best Monday times (do not underestimate how much the rush of a personal speed record colors a solver's estimation of a puzzle). If any of the answers, or *any* of the rest of the grid were interesting, the slight clunkiness of the theme wouldn't really matter. It's trying to do a lot, maybe too much with the DROPS / OCEAN add-ins. Still, the nature of the theme isn't precise. I guess it would be hard / impossible to redirect the meaning of "river" in *any* expression. a "river"? The meaning of the word isn't disguised or redirected in any meaningful way. It's a proper noun, so the "river" there just represents. It's not a regular noun or verb or metaphorical expression. "Trickle" still very much suggests water, even if it is delivered today in an economics metaphor, and then " RIVERDANCE". ![]() The water-ness of the first words in the themers is "disguised"(nicely, as it should be) with STREAMLINE and FLOODLIGHTS. Is FLOOD the static *end* point of the progression? Or is the water still moving to the OCEAN? The ambiguity here makes things messy, and they were slightly messy even before I noticed that DROPS and OCEAN might be involved. In fact, FLOOD is a pretty static concept, generally, where the other long theme answers all suggest water that is specifically moving. Is that the narrative? Still doesn't explain FLOOD, which is not a stage in that progression. I think the puzzle thinks that DROPS and OCEAN have something to do with the theme too-maybe the DROPS of rain amass on a mountainside and flow down, trickling into streams, gathering together with other streams to form a river, and then eventually emptying into the OCEAN.
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