Locale in Belmar NJ that lent its name to a noted rock-'n'-roll band / FRI 8-11-23 / Names of three czars of Bulgaria / Music genre for Lorde and Lana Del Rey / Hyperbole from someone who's dreaming big / Turner once big in the music industry

Constructor: John-Clark Levin

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: OAKS Park (5A: London's ___ Park, near Epsom Downs) —

Oaks Park is a public park in Carshalton in the London Borough of Sutton. It is bounded on the south by Croydon Lane (A2022), and on the east by Woodmansterne Road; smaller roads lie to west and north. [...] The estate lent its name to the Oaks horserace which was inaugurated by the Earl in 1779 and is run annually during the Derby meeting at Epsom Downs Racecourse, about 4 miles to the west. The original Oaks Race ran from Barrow Hedges, north of The Oaks and through Oaks Park before heading west to approximately the site of the current Epsom Downs Racecourse. Part of the off-road route still exists. (wikipedia)

• • •

Two good answers ("THE SKY'S THE LIMIT!" / "YOU WON'T REGRET IT!") with a lot of Yawn in between. Not enough marquee punch to really get off the ground. And it opens so badly—with a faux-chummy corporate slogan for a company whose dystopian "smart devices" essentially have much of the world voluntarily treating a powerful surveillance company like a friendly household assistant—that the puzzle would've needed a whole lot of oomph to recover. Whereas it only has, like, two oomphs. Nothing really wrong with this puzzle (besides the repulsive 1-Across). It's just not that interesting. It tries to do a little pasta dance there in the NE, but for me all that does is detract from from the only really interesting Down in the whole puzzle. Loved seeing POMODORO, but OLIVEOIL is the equivalent of EPEE where eight-letter answers are concerned, so I don't know that the corner is really elevated by pretending that you meant for those two answers to be thematically complementary. I mean, it's a cute coincidence, but that's all it is. And as for OREOCONE, I have no idea what that even is. All I know is that once again, as with 1-Across, the puzzle is back to trying to get its "relevance" and "currency" from corporations—in this case, by just mining every damn product in the OREO line. You're welcome, Nabisco. Is the cone made of Oreo? Is there an entire frozen dessert product called the OREOCONE? The more you look at it, the more it looks like a steroid ... something you'd put on a LESION. Have I not seen a pharmaceutical ad for an eczema treatment called OREOCONE? Seems plausible. If you think OREOCONE is a silly name for a prescription drug, brother, you haven't been anywhere near the pharmaceutical ad universe. Here's part of a subreddit entitled "Worst Drug Brand Name" (which I lifted from this article on weird prescription drug names in Philadelphia magazine):

 — Migranal. You’d think it was a rectal suppository for migraines.
          — For when your migraines are a pain in the ass.
— Bloxiverz. It’s like they let a 13-year-old create the name.
— Acyclovir. I once pronounced it “assy-clover” … will never live that one down in the pharmacy.
— Phosex. Pfizer really missed out on that one when branding Viagra.
— All these brand names people are saying here sound like Pokémon.

After working out the Google ad answer (after determining it wasn't a Siri ad answer or an Alexa ad answer),  the puzzle got very easy, and I just kinda followed the path of gravity, down, down, down, like water following the path of least resistance:

[Wish something could've caused this grid to sizzle]

I had no idea about OAKS Park, up front, and no idea about BORIS at all, but only the former caused any trouble (coming early, when I had nothing in the grid to help me out). Falling down the grid as I did, I had the BO- before I saw the clue at 50A: Name of three czars of Bulgaria (BORIS), and thought "Hmm, what are five-letter BO-names?" and, well, it turns out there aren't that many. Figured BOBBY was probably not likely, and went with the only other five-letter BO-name I could think of. This is crossword solving! Whenever anyone mistakenly thinks you have to be "smart" to solve these things, just remember that most of the time all you're doing is trying to come up with a five-letter BO-name (or the equivalent). It's a skill that can be developed, but it ain't rocket science.

I have heard the music of Lana Del Rey and Lorde a lot but have never heard anyone refer to it as ALT-POP (9A: Music genre for Lorde and Lana Del Rey). ALT-names, like OREO-names, all feel to me as if they're being artificially sustained by crosswords. You're much (much much) more likely to hear the music of the aforementioned artists referred to as "INDIE POP." I've never heard the 2 Chainz song in question but I do eagerly await the day the puzzle has the courage to put CHAINZ in the grid. Or go full 2 CHAINZ and use numerals in your grid somehow. This has almost certainly been done in an alt- I mean indie crossword, somewhere. But at the NYTXW ...

Today we learn that HOES have "handles" (fascinating!) (24A: Handled things outside?) and that CD PLAYERs are "Turner"s, of a sort (36D: Turner once big in the music industry). The latter clue is using the time-honored trick of using the capitalization of the first letter in a clue to create the false appearance of a proper noun, in this case a non-Ike, non-Tina "Turner." KATHLEEN fits, but ... like BOBBY, seemed unlikely. Plus, I had the "C" to start with, so the CD part was pretty obvious. So hurray for two answers in this puzzle! And ho-hum to the rest. Hopefully tomorrow will bring more sizzle, and more punch.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Google owns Blogger, I think, so I should probably apologize to my corporate overlords for disrespecting the brand. OK, GOOGLE, you win, I'm sorry.

P.P.S. This is an OREOCONE (I think):

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