Hallucinogen from a cactus / THU 12-9-21 / Rob with four Super Bowl rings familiarly / Home to the largest Goya collection in the world / One's parents slangily / Set certain underwater traps / Sleekly designed informally

Constructor: Alexander Liebeskind

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Das Booting — film titles have -ING affixed to the end, creating wacky "adaptations" (clued wackily): 

Theme answers:

• "LA LA LANDING" (18A: "Film adaptation with ... a choir arriving at the airport? (2016)")(this is the only clue with quotation marks around it in my version; I don't know why. Might be a software glitch on my end? No biggie.)
• "JURASSIC PARKING" (39A: ... a triceratops trying to find a sport for its car? (1993))
• "KNIVES OUTING" (52A: ... a quick trip to purchase cutlery? (2019))
• "KILL BILLING" (61A: ... a movement to make invoices illegal? (2003))

Word of the Day: ACC (36D: Louisville is in it, in brief) —

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic conference located in the eastern United States. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, the ACC's fifteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)'s Division I. ACC football teams compete in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. The ACC sponsors competition in twenty-five sports with many of its member institutions held in high regard nationally. Current members of the conference are Boston College, Clemson University, Duke University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Florida State University, North Carolina State University, Syracuse University, the University of Louisville, the University of Miami, the University of North Carolina, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Virginia, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and Wake Forest University.

ACC teams and athletes have claimed dozens of national championships in multiple sports throughout the conference's history. Generally, the ACC's top athletes and teams in any particular sport in a given year are considered to be among the top collegiate competitors in the nation. Additionally, the conference enjoys extensive media coverage. With the advent of the College Football Playoff in 2014, the ACC is one of the "Power Five" conferences with a contractual tie-in to a New Year's Six bowl game in the sport of football. (wikipedia)

• • •

Short write-up today—it's my last day of teaching for the semester and ... well, I don't know why that should make the morning feel particularly crowded, time-wise, but it does. Gotta make a good last impression! I don't really know what's going on with this theme. It's so simple, so basic, so conceptually last-century, that I think I must be missing something. You just add -ING to movie titles, with wacky results. Seems like you could do this forever, with wacky results. The problem is that the wackiness really varies, and most of it doesn't extend nearly as far into the realms of wackiness as it needs to for a theme like this to be successful. Maybe the idea of a driving dinosaur is wacky enough, but the others don't elicit laughter or wonder or much of anything beyond, "oh, ok, I see." The "adaptations" that result from adding -ING to these titles aren't even GROAN-worthy. You're asking me to imagine booking hotels and paying bills, why? These are the parts of my life I come to crosswords to forget. GREEN BOOKING is just plain dull. I like remembering movies as much as the next solver, but that's all this theme made me do. The wordplay just didn't feel up to snuff, especially for a Thursday, where things are supposed to get splashy and saucy and maybe even sexy, gosh darn it! KILL BILLING? You've taken a catchy, evocative, accurately descriptive title and made it about the most boring kinds of financial transactions? You're going the wrong way with your wackiness, man.

The long Downs are a hit today, though. I struggled a little to get the latter part of ANKLE STRAP (3D: High-heel shoe attachment). I think I wanted CHAIN. The "attachment" part threw me, because I'd consider the STRAP part of the shoe; "attachment" sounds like an accessory. I also struggled with DAMP, because that was one of the few places in the puzzle that had truly late-week levels of clue misdirection (4A: Still on the line, perhaps). I was thinking of the phone, not the clothesline, obviously. I forgot that the ACC existed. I used to be a sports junkie as a kid and young adult and somewhat as an adult but now all major college sports seem at least vaguely exploitative and I just can't any more, so my brain isn't oriented toward sports stuff the way it once was. When I finally got ACC I felt like even 40-year-old me would've nailed that. But this me just doesn't care who's in what conference anymore. Can't keep track. I'll just work it out from crosses. 

Had OUTMAN before OUTGUN, choosing the somewhat sexist word over the somewhat violent one (51D: Surpass in strength). I did not know SKA-core was a thing and I am not asking questions, I'm just going to try to forget (68A: ___-core (punk offshoot)). Worst mistake was ITSY for ITTY (23A: Minute, informally), which ... big ugh. Once you start noticing kealoas*, you realize they're everywhere, and this one is one of the worst, in that both seem like cutesy things you'd rarely or ever say unless you were talking to a baby. Maybe ITTY stands alone better than ITSY, but wow that is not a dilemma I wanna spend much brain power on. Between ITTY and ONIT and YADIG (?), that corner could use demolishing. I wonder what the winning answer up there was supposed to be. PEYOTE? (8A: Hallucinogen from a cactus). I guess that might be EDGY enough to warrant YADIGONITITTY, but only just. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*Clues for short fill where two or more answers are viable Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.

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