Rex Parker in the News Relative difficulty: On the easier side of Mondayness — themers end with NEWS, TRAFFIC, WEATHER and SPORTS, respectively (1A: Molars usually have four of these) — A cusp is a pointed, projecting, or elevated feature. In animals, it is usually used to refer to raised points on the crowns of teeth. This is a perfectly reasonable puzzle ... from 30ish years ago that has somehow found its way to 2016. The NYT is having this problem over and over and over again lately. Problem isn't (only) with the quality of the puzzle, it's with the ambition level. No, "ambition" isn't even the right word, since I don't think a puzzle has to be super-edgy or complicated or avant-garde to be good. A very simple puzzle can be good. But there's no attempt to be current or funny or, for lack of a better word, alive. We're getting a ton of by-the-book puzzles. First words do this. Last words do this. With fill and clues that are less terrible than stale. Nobody expects That much from a Monday, but I think that's actually a cruddy attitude to have towards Mondays and the people who make them well.
A little zing, a little imagination, a little spark. This is all I ask of Mondays. Actually, it's all I ask of most days. I won't list all the tiresome fill here, largely because every puzzle has Some, but just look at the grid and consider how much of this stuff you see over and over and over. Even something like EMOTE or ORATE or SATED—perfectly fine words, but relentless, and today, all in the same section. A puzzle made for people who wear AFTA and watch morning TV fare, i.e. not me. And, increasingly, not a lot of solvers. If it is unreasonable of me to keep asking the NYT to be the best, then maybe they should stop calling themselves the "best." That way no fraud, no unrealistic expectations. Turns out I don't really know what CUSPS means. I finished this puzzle in under my normal Monday time, but I think I might've set a personal Monday best if I'd had some conception of CUSPS. I know the term "bicuspid," but I think of "cusp" as meaning the edge; like ... you're on the *cusp* of something.
Or in astrology, if you're on the *cusp*, you are on the edge or boundary of two different signs. Anyway, the clue [Molars usually have four of these] totally stymied me. Filling in ROT at 4D: Drivel didn't help (it's PAP). Also had lots o' trouble with 5D: One often seen standing just out side a building's entrance (), since all I wanted was some version of "doorman." So maybe it's most accurate to say this puzzle had a Challenging (for a Monday) NW corner, and a hyper-easy everything else. ) — not that I care, but you don't usually see replicated letter strings as long as the one this answer shares with WEATHER (in UNDER THE WEATHER) ) — not sure why I'VE sounds too formal / grammatical to precede "Gotta," but it does. I GOTTA feels more natural. But a title's a title's a title. ) — not to be confused with the theoretical concept AL GORE RHYTHM. P.S. I have a mathematician friend, who is also a constructor friend, who teaches in NEWPORT NEWS. Here's the exciting proof.
"We're going on a tour of places that were in The Wire, all the cool places where they shot that show," he says, as the band heads toward the Baltimore area. "It's my all-time favorite television show." When we inform him that's one series we hadn't had the chance to catch up on, he recommends binge-watching. "Well, you're stoked, because you can watch literally every episode in a row," he says.We try to delve a little into the band's current tour, but Embree isn't finished talking about HBO crime drama, which originally aired for five seasons from 2002 through 2008. "If you're not into the kind of show that's really slow-going and takes its time to build characters, you won't like The Wire, but I implore you to give it a shot. It's like watching a book. There's a ton of dialog and every character is really developed, way more than the average TV drama... Even people you'd consider the bad guy are humanized to the point where you're not really rooting for one person over the other."You could say that RX Bandits' music has evolved into sort of the audio equivalent of The Wire — if you were watching in on hallucinogens.
Not that it has anything to do with crime, but it too is dense and not immediately easily accessible, but if you take your time to get into it, you'll find your just rewards. Over the years, RX Bandits — which also includes guitarist/keyboardist Steve Choi, bassist Joseph Troy, and drummer Chris Tsagakis — have evolved dramatically from their early days as a ska-punk band to their current incarnation of a modern prog-rock outfit. The transition was so dramatic that Adam Lovinus of the O.C. Weekly once wrote it sounded "as though the band spent a year studying the vintage East Coast punk stylings of Television."We ask Embree about that comparison and joke maybe the writer was thinking of Embree's obsession with The Wire on television, which he can appreciate, but he feels no kinship with Tom Verlaine and company. "It's not that I don't respect Television, but I'm not really a fan of the music they created, so I don't know where that comes from at all," he says.While Embree may not be tripping on Marquee Moon, he's OK with the prog-rock connection.
"That's a good description as far as music monikers go," he says. "Music monikers are usually totally annoying, but as far as what that means, which I'm assuming for most people it just means music that has a lot of parts and changes that is also rock 'n' roll. We do have a lot of changes and a lot of different parts in our songs, so I'm alright with that."Released last year, Gemini, Her Majesty, the band's seventh album, undoubtedly has the most musical changes of RX Bandits' career. The band went into the sessions for the album with the thought of making a pure studio creation and would deal with figuring out how to perform the songs live later, which ended up posing a challenge. "There are a few songs that are really hard to pull off live, mainly because of the tons of layers of harmonies," Embree says. "The other guys are also playing intricate parts, so it's hard to be able to pull off those harmonies. We haven't been able to do two or three songs live, but we're getting there." With the use of additional technology, though, the band has been able to tackle some of its more adventurous musical creations.
"Tsagakis has like a sample pad, where you can load different samples on it, but we're not like playing along with tracks. We'd never do that, but he's triggering different sounds that are on the album while he's playing drums, so it adds a whole new element to the live thing."While RX Bandits may be pushing toward the future in their latest recordings and live performances, Embree admits his latest musical inspiration comes from the past and is probably not who you'd think. "The last person I ever studied on guitar — and this is going to sound pretty silly — is Slash," he says with a laugh. "About a year ago I started going on YouTube and watching Slash solo sets over the years and then I started watching Guns N' Roses over the years and learning all the solos."This discussion gets Embree riding a wave of nostalgia. "The first music I ever got into big time was metal," he says. "Then I got into the harder alternative stuff like Faith No More's The Real Thing. I was like 10. I was super pumped on that.
Pearl Jam Ten, Metallica The Black Album, and then I went back and bought To Kill 'Em All and everything before the Black Album and Guns N' Roses, especially since I loved Terminator 2."Embree goes on to enthuse about the "You Could Be Mine" video, which pits Arnold Schwarzenegger's terminator against Axl Rose. "I was like, yeah, Axl, chills with the terminator, dude," he says.The wave of nostalgia continues as Embree recounts how his parents bought him a Fisher Price record player when he was about 4 years old. It only played 45s, so at that time, he was grooving to singles like Stacey Q's "Two of Hearts," The Fixx's "One Thing Leads to Another," Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer," and the Romantics' "Talking in Your Sleep." "I still love all those songs," he admits.At this point, 20 years after the band first emerged as the Pharmaceutical Bandits, and nearly 15 years after the band's current lineup first came together, Embree has no illusions that RX Bandits will ever have a hit single like the ones he grew up with, but he's OK with that.