Curling iron's functional opposite / SAT 7-16-22 / World Wide nickname of NBA power broker / Deep-learning tech / God is one in a 2018 Ariana Grande hit / Google search strings useful to linguists and literary historians / Curveball stat for short / Byproduct of kissing a pet, maybe / Supergroup at Woodstock, familiarly

Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (pop culture might get ya)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: The BARNES (28A: Philadelphia art museum, with "the") —

The Barnes Foundation is an art collection and educational institution promoting the appreciation of art and horticulture. Originally in  Merion, the art collection moved in 2012 to a new building on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The arboretum of the Barnes Foundation remains in Merion, where it has been proposed to be maintained under a long-term educational affiliation agreement with Saint Joseph's University.

The Barnes was founded in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes, who made his fortune by co-developing Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound that was used to combat gonorrhea and inflammations of the eye, ear, nose, and throat. He sold his business, the A.C. Barnes Company, just months before the stock market crash of 1929.

Today, the foundation owns more than 4,000 objects, including over 900 paintings, estimated to be worth about $25 billion. These are primarily works by Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modernist masters, but the collection also includes many other paintings by leading European and American artists, as well as African art, antiquities from China, Egypt, and Greece, and Native American art.

In the 1990s, the Foundation's declining finances led its leaders to various controversial moves, including sending artworks on a world tour and proposing to move the collection to Philadelphia. After numerous court challenges, the new Barnes building opened on Benjamin Franklin Parkway on May 19, 2012. The foundation's current president and executive director, Thomas “Thom” Collins, was appointed on January 7, 2015. (wikipedia)

• • •

I enjoyed a lot of this. Definitely a solving adventure, definitely worthy of its Saturday position (difficulty-wise). It's a very musical puzzle, and a culturally wide-ranging puzzle, with as many answers from pop culture (esp. pop music) as there are from what you might call "high culture" or "fancy shmancy culture" (you know, ballet, theater, art, classical music, ART FILMS, NASCAR, that kind of stuff). Pretty funny / fitting to put METHUSELAH over DEAR OLD DAD—I like little touches like that, even if they are accidental. The only answer that really made me shake my head "no" was (ironically?) START A BLOG. That is an answer that is going to and EAT A SANDWICH as soon as the show is over—a Hail-Mary kind of blank-A-blank phrase. Although ... maybe that's just self-hatred coming through. The more I stare at the answer, the more it looks standalone-worthy. GRABABITE, EATAPEACH, STARTABLOG ... nah, still a little on the weak side for me. Actually wrote in START A BAND at one point, which seems stronger. I just couldn't get "post" to mean anything musical, sadly. Bjork had an album called "Post," as did Paul Kelly, but ... well, back to the puzzle. Oh yeah, one other thing about the puzzle I didn't entirely groove on, and that's the clue on SWIM (1D: Get in the ___), and I'm realizing now that it's because I really really want the phrase to be "get in the SWIM of things," and that is because I (I think) am confusing SWIM with SWING. Are they different expressions, those? Different in meaning, I mean? That answer gave me a lot of trouble right up front, and was a big part of why I was a slow starter today. That, and I forgot the Ariana Grande song and had God not as a WOMAN but as a COMIC, which is Elvis Costello, and not even correct on that front, because the Elvis Costello song is "God's Comic," so God has a comic, rather than is one. But I (Truly) Digress.

I had to leave the NW to get any real traction, and finally ended up finding some in the north, after trying SALADS and YAP, I tried MACARONI (only half rings!) before using ALOHA to get CALAMARI (13A: Some rings on a plate) and then I backed my way back to the NW from there.

After this, the puzzle went from being Challenging to being something more like Easy-Medium for me. I knew The BARNES despite never having been there (saw a documentary about it once, maybe?). I knew the "DC" in question at 28D: Emergency device in DC (BATPHONE) was the comics and not the capital. I am reading a (wonderful) new novel ("Mecca," by Susan Straight) where at least one of the characters meditates on the lyrics to "Route 66," so BARSTOW was very fresh in my head (31D: California city in the Mojave Desert). ONE-ACTER felt too informal for the Wilde play, but it worked (47A: Oscar Wilde's "Salome," e.g.). I guessed the COLOR part of TONE COLOR 'cause it seemed ... music-y. No idea who HAYLEY Atwell is*, but I do know THOTH, so I worked it out (38D: God with the head of an ibis). And then I just kind of whooshed through the SE and up to the NE from there. Slight trouble with the SE but Mariah came to the rescue (I may or may not have owned a CD single, or "Ka-dingle" as my friend used to say, of "DREAMLOVER" when I was in grad school) (which means I probably still own it) (25D: "Someone to comfort and hold me," in a #1 Mariah Carey hit). I loved seeing HOT COMB here. There's a wonderful set of short story-comics by Ebony Flowers called HOT COMB, all of them focused on Black women, Black families, and especially Black hair. Can't recommend it enough. And well, what else is there to say? ... HYPERBOLIC DOG SLOBBER! I'm into it. 

A few things left to say:

• 14D: Very, informally (MAD) — I hope at least one person in the blog-reading universe out there remembered that I wanted MAD a few days ago for this very same clue, when the answer was WAY. I actually found myself sitting here trying to Remember My Own Blog so that I could get this answer, LOL.
• 43D: Supergroup at Woodstock, familiarly (CSNY) — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, just in case that was unclear.

• 33A: Blast from the past (A-TEST) — A or N or H work, but only "A" works after the "B" from BARNES, so for once, no trouble with the blank-TEST answer.
• 17A: Name synonymous with longevity (METHUSELAH) — just admitting that I had a spelling uncertainty here at the second "E," but now that I look at the name, "E" is pretty obviously the right option, in that SELAH can stand alone, and so just looks ... more right than SALAH.
• 49A: World Wide ___, nickname of an N.B.A. power broker (WES) — I never actually saw this clue. I thought this was a reference to Russell WEStbrook. It's not. It's to a guy named William Wesley, Executive Vice President and Senior Basketball Adviser to the Knicks who gets name-checked in a lot of rap songs. He is a big deal, but it is ... weird not to have any part of his actual name, or employer's name, in the clue, considering he's not exactly Ariana- or Mariah-famous. Cool nickname, though. Knickname!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*I've actually seen HAYLEY Atwell in a Marvel movie or two. I can't keep any of them straight, so please don't ask me which ones. Anyway, she plays Agent Peggy Carter in the MCU. I probably saw her in the first "Captain America" movie (2011), if I had to guess.

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