Garment for a vaquero / FRI 7-26-24 / Feat on a beat / Fan associated with a red, white and blue skull logo / Breed once known as the "Tax Collector's Dog" / Radiohead's highest-selling single / Letters of coverage

Constructor: Andy Kravis

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ANGIE THOMAS (59A: Best-selling author of 2017's "The Hate U Give") —

Angie Thomas (born September 20, 1988) is an American young adult author, best known for writing The Hate U Give (2017). Her second young adult novel, On the Come Up, was released on February 25, 2019. [...] Thomas' initial intention was to write fantasy and middle grade novels; however, she was worried that her stories would not matter. While querying her first manuscript, she began another that would soon turn out to be her first novel, The Hate U Give. While she was a college student, one of her professors suggested that her experiences were unique and that her writing could give a voice to those who had been silenced and whose stories had not been told. During this time, Thomas also heard about the shooting of Oscar Grant on the news. This story, compounded by the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland, was a major influence on the novel. [...] The Hate U Give, originally written as a short story, debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for young adult hardcover books within the first week of its release in 2017. The Hate U Give was written, as Thomas says, to bring light to the controversial issue of police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. The book's plot follows a teenage girl, Starr Carter, and how her life is impacted by the death of her friend, Khalil, an unarmed black teen shot by a white police officer. The Hate U Give deals with the effect of police brutality on the communities of those around the victim. (wikipedia)

• • •

I think I'm just tired. I mean, moreso. I ran the second part of the Broome County Parks 5K Series yesterday, and while 5K is a pretty short distance, I am not (I mean *not*) used to running at any time except the morning and this race took place at 6:30PM. That's *PM*. That's basically a night race for me. My body was like "OK what are we doing here? We should be finished with dinner and watching 'Love Boat' right now." It was perfect weather for a run, and I finished somewhere in the middle of the pack (respectable!), so I enjoyed myself, but by the time I finished the race, cooled down, drove the half hour home, and had a celebratory / "cool-down" drink, it was basically my bedtime. But I wasn't tired. So my bedtime was late ... but the alarm, she goes off at 3:45am no matter what. So I'm staggering around this morning, mentally and physically. More than usual. This is the excuse I'm giving myself for blanking on something as easy as BARTLEBY (27A: Melville character with the mantra "I would prefer not to"). I Own A Damned BARTLEBY-themed T-Shirt And I Still Just Stared At BAR- like ????? Sigh. I also had SLAM D-N-- at 36A: Jam session? (SLAM DUNK CONTEST) and could think only of slam-dancing. "SLAM DANCE ... PARTY? No, that's only 14 letters. Uh ... PARTAY?" The brain was not warmed-up to "puzzle-solving" standards. And yet the whole thing still felt pretty easy. When the only hang-ups you have are on things you actually know but that your brain refuses to retrieve or put together, then the problem is you, not the puzzle. 

The puzzle felt a little tepid to me. Plenty of whoosh, but the answers themselves rarely felt that exciting to me. Solid, but plain. If ANGIE THOMAS had meant more to me, I might have felt differently. I saw The Hate U Give on the new/popular YA shelf at the front of my local bookstore every time I went in there for what felt like years. It may still be there. But who wrote it somehow never registered with me. She's the "Word of the Day" today in part so that I can make her name stick. YA is not my thing, but she is a very big deal. I can see how seeing her name in the grid would excite some solvers. So that answer was original / different / interesting. But not enough of the rest of the grid was. For me. But again, I am willing to chalk my less-than-excited response up to night race-induced sleep deprivation brain fog. It's 4:30am and I haven't eaten more than a handful of nuts/raisins since noon yesterday! Basically if anything f's with my routine, I fall apart and forget how to live. I don't even know how to end this paragraph. It's bad. Let's get me to coffee, quickly, OK? OK.

I had several quibbles today. I am really not a fan of the CITY, COUNTRY answer, so LIMA, PERU felt bad to me (5D: Capital city whose main governmental building is known as the "House of Pizarro"). I get that you built yourself a grid where you require an 8-letter "U"-ending word, but the whole CITY, COUNTRY thing always feels so arbitrary. Of course LIMA, PERU. What other LIMA is it gonna be? Seems unlikely that the "House of Pizarro" would be in LIMA, OHIO. I'd be mad at PARIS, FRANCE too, the way I'm mad at ERIEPA every time I see it. Feels contrived, somehow. Also, I've been in English departments ... forever, basically, and I swear I have never heard the term "LIT CRIT" irl (30D: Rhyming subject for an English major). Every time I see CRIT clued this way,  I cringe, and seeing the full LIT CRIT was no better. CRIT is a crossword contrivance. Bah. Plus the whole answer creates a really unpleasant "IT" pile-up in the eastern part of the grid. Call it the LIT CRIT GIT PIT. And hey, are OLIVEs really "divisive" (63A: Divisive pizza topping)? Anchovies, sure, that's canon, but OLIVEs? More than other toppings? Weird. OLIVEs rule, though it's true I rarely have them on pizza. If I found them on my pizza, however, I would not mind. "Divisive"? You folks are weird.

Other things:

• 18A: Departure announcement ("I'M OUTTA HERE") — wrote in "I'M OUT OF HERE" and was mad it wasn't the more properly colloquial "I'M OUTTA HERE" ... but then it was. It was ... that. More evidence of a brain on Power Save mode.
• 55D: Subatomic particle named for a Greek letter (PION) — I went with MUON, which is also a Subatomic particle named for a Greek letter, so I don't feel too bad.
• 33D: Feat on a beat (SCOOP) — another one where my brain just didn't have the processing power. "Beat" made me think "cop" ... or else "music" ... and I had S-OOP before I had any idea what was happening. It's a news beat. You probably knew that by now.
• 10D: "I didn't see you there!" ("OH, HI!") — a fine answer, but it dupes the "OH" in "OH, BEHAVE!" (38D: Catchphrase for Austin Powers). I figure you get one "OH" per puzzle. That seems like plenty.
• 58D: Mother of the Titans (GAEA) — I never know if it's GAEA or GAIA. That's because there's no way to know. Same figure from classical mythology, different spellings ... just 'cause.
• 37D: Fan associated with a red, white and blue skull logo (DEADHEAD) — me: "Wait ... fans of The Punisher have a name!?!?" All I could picture were those awful "Back The Blue"-type stickers that dudes put on their trucks to look tough. I guess they generally lack a red component, but that skull logo is a fav of the flag-wavey types, so ... yeah, this one confused me. The Dead, like YA literature, is really not my thing, though I'm vaguely aware of the skull thing. 

[No]

[Yes]

• 46A: Breed once known as the "Tax Collector's Dog" (DOBERMAN) — this is a grim, grim way to clue the poor pooch. Economic oppression and violence against the underclass: not the image I'm looking for on a breezy Friday. See also the colonialist clue on LIMA, PERU. Lots of ways to clue LIMA without name-checking the guy most closely associated with the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. 

• 45D: Two-piece? (DUET) — I wanted DYAD. Again, as with MUON, I don't feel too bad about the mistake.
• 49D: "... oops, my mistake" ("... OR NOT") — This clue rings wrong to my ear. There's absolutely nothing about "... OR NOT" that suggests apology or acknowledgment of error. Tonally, the clue and answer here are on completely different planets.
• 1A: Letters of coverage (SPF) — first clue I looked at, and immediately there was sputtering. First, IOU. As in "I will cover this bet ... later." No. Wrong. Ooh, OK, how about cell phone coverage? LTE! ... no. Damn. I was so proud of that one. Then, just before I abandoned the answer all together, sunscreen coverage came to me. SPF! I used a 50 SPF sunscreen before the race yesterday. I'm unsunburned, but, as we've seen today, perhaps not entirely undamaged. 

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]