Sitcom joke involving a change in setting / FRI 4-28-23 / Sexy selfie posted on social media, in lingo / Sactown's locale / Literary stand-in for Christ / Buzzkill's response while playing Would You Rather / Gil Scott-Heron poem inspired by 1969 events / Fruit also called a wax gourd

Constructor: Malaika Handa and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TEMA (3D: Ghanaian city that's an anagram of 27-Down (TEAM)) —

Tema is a city on the Bight of Benin and Atlantic coast of Ghana. It is located 25 kilometres (16 mi) east of the capital city; Accra, in the region of Greater Accra, and is the capital of the Tema Metropolitan District. As of 2013, Tema is the eleventh most populous settlement in Ghana, with a population of approximately 161,612 people – a marked decrease from its 2005 figure of 209,000. The Greenwich Meridian (00 Longitude) passes directly through the city. Tema is locally nicknamed the "Harbour City" because of its status as Ghana's largest seaport. It consists of 25 different communities which are numbered accordingly with each of them having easy access to the basic amenities. (wikipedia)

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I know that this won't be everyone's experience, or even a common experience, but when I (finally) got to 38A: Gil Scott-Heron poem inspired by 1969 events ("WHITEY ON THE MOON") I absolutely LIT up and maybe even cackled. Like "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," I think of "WHITEY ON THE MOON" less as a poem and more as a song, since that's the only way I've encountered it (Scott-Heron was a musician as well as a poet). I think about this poem any time there's some dumb new expensive space launch—why is anyone suffering on earth supposed to care, and what the hell good is it going to do to colonize other worlds when you can't even manage this one? Anyway, the poem is defiant and funny as hell, as is "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," and any puzzle that has me thinking about the work of Gil Scott-Heron has a huge advantage over most other puzzles. 

This is all to say that "WHITEY ON THE MOON" earned a Lot of good will from me, though honestly the grid was pretty great even before "WHITEY" showed up. I did have to wade through maybe a few more proper nouns than I would've liked, but most were ultimately familiar and all were ultimately gettable. The joy for me in this puzzle came from having the (considerable) struggle Pay Off. I completely wiped out in the NW corner to start, and then, toward the end, I was a little worried I wasn't even going to be able to force my way in from below (".... ??? ... some kind of MELON? What Kind Of Melon, Lord, Help Me!"). But then I finally broke through and I'll be damned if that corner is not perfectly lovely (TEMA notwithstanding—I should definitely know more African cities, but the *eleventh* largest Ghanaian city? LOL, I dunno, man ...). CUT-AWAY GAG, original answer, real thing, ONE-TIME USE, original answer, real thing, LIMONCELLO, delicious, real thing. I had so many initially wrong answers up there at first that solving that corner felt like clearing my way through jungle with a machete, but when I got there, I felt rewarded. My only real complaint about this one was that it felt very much like a Saturday puzzle in terms of difficulty. I haven't had a breezy Friday in ages. But I haven't had a good Friday in ages either. Until now. So I don't feel much like complaining. Funny how good puzzles will take the Mad right out of you.

The top half of this puzzle was So much harder than the bottom half for me. I have ink All Over my printed-out grid here, marking the struggle points. There's almost no ink on the bottom half, whereas the top half is practically illegible now. This will give you some idea of how it started—I had to get the hell out of the top half of the grid in order get properly started:

I mean, look at that sad, dumb NW corner. GULP, indeed! (8D: [This is looking very bad for me]). The short Downs did Nothing for me up there. I was looking for a poet named "King," not an old "King" with fiddlers three or whatever. Even after I got 1D: King of verse, I thought the answer referred to Nat King COLE, oy. I know that UNIX is an operating "system" but being largely ignorant about such systems, I always associated it with the other PC operating systems, so the "servers" part threw me. Anyway, no UNIX for me. Obviously no TEMA. RKO for AMC; UH-OH for GULP. No idea about the [Literary stand-in for Christ]—was so mad when that turned out to be stupid ASLAN. I was thinking actual literature, and I was also thinking some *common* stand-in, like a lighted candle in some religious paintings, for instance (that's a thing, right? I didn't make that up, did I?). A trope. A symbol. Not a very specific one-work-only fantasy lion. Total train wreck up there. I even had AGATES before GEODES, yeesh (10D: Glam rock pieces?). 

The NE threatened similar disaster. Had -CTIVORE and no idea what that could be (since I was thinking of the eater as human) (I know many humans do eat insects, but they don't really call themselves INSECTIVOREs, do they? I mean, "omni-" would seem to cover it, prefix-wise) (26D: One eating a lot of wings). Without the INSECT- part, getting into the NE corner was a little tough. I had GOB before NUB (44A: Lump), which made both long Downs hard to see. I'm a little annoyed by the "him" in 13D: "I think I can see a future with him"—that gender specificity had me Really looking for a corollary in the answer. Specifically, I wanted the answer to be some version of "HE'S THE ONE," but that wouldn't fit, and "HE IS THE ONE" felt too formal. As for "ANOTHER ONE!?" yeesh, no way. As clued, no hope, not without tons of crosses (12D: "Where do all of these keep coming from?!"). LAIR was hard (11A: Hollow, perhaps). SNEERS was very hard (33A: Bad mouths?). But I got there somehow. Nowhere near as much trouble down below, though as with the clue for "IT'S SERIOUS," I had pronoun issues with 29D: Select words? ("I CHOOSE YOU"). Where the hell is this "YOU" coming from? Nothing in the clue suggests "YOU" or a second party at all. I got the answer easily enough, but *some* kind of context in that clue woulda been nice. But as I said above, good stuff will take the Mad right out of you, and THIRST TRAP, hello, yes, mwah, you're perfect, don't ever change, have you met "WHITEY ON THE MOON"? I think you'd really get along, you look great together ... 

I got pummeled by geography today (three place names had me really looking for my ATLAS...). The names were occasionally tough for me as well, but only SHAY was really out of my sight line (23D: Actress Mitchell of "Pretty Little Liars"). When NADERITE was in the puzzle recently, I made Nader my Word of the Day, which meant I'd recently seen LaDuke's name (Nader/LaDuke 2000) ... but still couldn't remember the WINONA part. But no biggie—the bottom half of this puzzle zipped along the way a Friday should, a breezy counterpart to the brutal north. There's just so much ... joy in this puzzle. So much breadth, so much curiosity about the world and about language. It feels alive. Wish I'd seen it on a Saturday instead of a Friday, but I'm just grateful I got to see it at all. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. AGNÈS Varda! My cinematocruciverbial prayers have finally been answered. Still looking forward to seeing VARDA in the grid, eventually. And then maybe someday we can get around to OZU. He deserves it.

P.P.S. SCAR is a character in The Lion King

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