Mandrake the Magician's sidekick / FRI 12-10-21 / 2019 rap hit whose title follows the lyric "How much money you got?" / Suffix with acetyl / Period at the beginning of the Stone Age / 1968 Peace Nobelist Cassin / Company that helped launch TMZ / Ensemble purchase that includes sheets and pillowcases / Largest sorority by enrollment (380,000+ members)

Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: CHIRASHI (48A: Japanese dish of raw fish and vegetables over rice) —

Chirashizushi (ちらし寿司, "scattered sushi", also referred to as barazushi) serves the rice in a bowl and tops it with a variety of raw fish and vegetable garnishes. [...] It is eaten annually on Hinamatsuri in March and Kodomonohi in May.

• Edomae chirashizushi (Edo-style scattered sushi) is served with uncooked ingredients in an artful arrangement.
• Gomokuzushi (Kansai-style sushi) consists of cooked or uncooked ingredients mixed in the body of rice.
• Sake-zushi (Kyushu-style sushi) uses rice wine over vinegar in preparing the rice, and is topped with shrimp, sea bream, octopus, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots and shredded omelette. (wikipedia)

• • •

This just wasn't for me. Full of things I either didn't know, didn't care about, or actively don't like. Tone was set by 1-Across, as it often is. I just have no idea what a BED-IN-A-BAG is (1A: Ensemble purchase that includes sheets and pillowcases). I got the "BED" part easy enough, but after that, I just shrugged as I watched letter after letter go in, and even after I saw that it had to be BED-IN-A-BAG, I hesitated to write it in, so dumb a concept did it seem. SOAP-ON-A-ROPE, I know. BED-IN-A-BAG, no. Is it a brand? I don't care enough to look it up. I did care enough to look up CHIRASHI, which sounds delicious (as most food does to me, frankly), but it didn't even have its own wikipedia page. It was buried in the "Sushi" page and even there wasn't referred to as CHIRASHI, but as "Chirashizushi." Not sure how I got to be 52 years old, having eaten in all kinds of restaurants all over the world, following food writers on social media for years, etc., and not heard of CHIRASHI, but here we are! Not the puzzle's fault, happy to learn the term, but like BED-IN-A-BAG, this just wasn't from anywhere in my universe. I also actively dislike gambling (SHOOT CRAPS), have (mostly) negative feelings about (most) fraternities and sororities (CHI OMEGA) and college football (BYU) (29D: One side of a coll. football "Holy War" rivalry) and TMZ (see 45A: Company that helped launch TMZ => AOL), and wouldn't LEAN RIGHT if you paid me. You'd think ANTIFA would make up for LEAN RIGHT, politically, but the only time I ever hear the term "ANTIFA" is in the mouth of some paranoid right-wing dickhead, so ... no, that didn't help. I had one moment of "ah, nice," and that was when I got RUNNER'S HIGH (24D: Rush while racing?). I would never use the term, since the parallel to a drug high is inapt (or just unappealing to me). but I have felt great while running, and I do like the phrase as a puzzle answer. But overwhelmingly, I felt outside of whatever the intended demographic was for this puzzle. 

I kind of resented GO TO THERAPY, both the answer itself and (esp.) the non-clue it gets in today's puzzle (9D: What over 40 million U.S. adults do annually). As a verb phrase, I don't think it has great stand-alone status. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the problem is the clue. There's nothing at all therapy-specific about it. Who the hell cares what arbitrary number of millions of people do a thing. That number (40 million) does absolutely nothing to connect you to the answer. It's not colorful or fun or clever. It's blah. Further, the answer seems intended to get you to think GO TO THE... where "THE" appears to be the definite article. I had GO TO THE MALL written in there before I finally got GO TO THERAPY. So the puzzle gives you nothing on the clue end and the answer itself seems designed to be misdirective. I can tolerate the misdirection if I feel like the clue is good. But the clue is bad. Or dull. Therapy is good, my experience with this answer was not. Had another misparsing adventure in the SE, with INDIA- .... which ended up being IN space DIAPERS (53A: Untrained, perhaps). But I didn't mind that one so much, because at least that answer has a real clue. Give RITA Wilson a real clue too, please (24A: Wilson on the Hollywood Walk of Fame). The Hollywood Walk of Fame is suuuuuuuuch a bummer as clue fodder. Lazy and ultimately meaningless. Give me something *specific*. Make the puzzle vivid and interesting! Respect RITA! Sigh. 

MALAR and SACRAL made me wince, mostly because they have that "niche adjective" quality I find hard to love. Had MOLAR and SACRED in there at first, respectively. Because MOLAR and SACRED are words you might actually use. It's not the greatest feeling to write in a word but then have to scrap it for something that is far less of a word. Is HO HO HO a "cheer"? (42D: Christmas cheer?). He's not leading you in a chant ("Gimme an 'H'!"), he's expressing ... his own cheer, I guess? Is that the meaning? Santa's expression of Christmas cheer? You're torturing your clue there. There are limits to what the "?" can do for you, and you should respect them. I had BOUNCES before POUNCES (27D: Springs), but mostly my struggles in this one involved simple non-familiarity with terms / non-interest in subject matter. But I do want to try CHIRASHI now. So the experience wasn't a total loss. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]