Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Daniel Britt

Constructor: Daniel Britt

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: IMDB (i.e. "I'm D.B.") (73A: One place to find 18-, 28-, 49- and 64-Across ... or, parsed differently, how these people might introduce themselves) — people with the initials D.B. who are also in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Theme answers:

DELTA BURKE (18A: "Designing Women" co-star of 1980s-'90s TV)
DANNY BONADUCE (28A: Player of the middle son on TV's "The Partridge Family")
DREW BARRYMORE (49A: "E.T." actress)
DAVID BOWIE (64A: Singer who starred in "Labyrinth" (1986) and "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1976)

Word of the Day: DANNY BONADUCE (28A) —

Dante Daniel Bonaduce (/ˈbɒnəˈduːtʃiː/; born August 13, 1959) is an American retired radio personality, actor, television personality and professional wrestler. Bonaduce is the son of veteran TV writer and producer Joseph Bonaduce (The Dick Van Dyke Show, That Girl, One Day at a Time and others).
Bonaduce became famous as a child actor of the 1970s on the TV sitcom The Partridge Family. He co-starred as Danny Partridge, the wisecracking, redheaded middle son of the singing family band (headed by Shirley Jones) and he portrayed the fictional pop group's bass guitar player. Since then, Bonaduce has starred in several other TV series, including the VH1 reality show Breaking Bonaduce in 2005, has done radio shows in Los Angeles and Philadelphia and hosted a morning talk/music show at Seattle radio station KZOK-FM from 2011 to 2023.

• • •

"Oh ... that makes it so much worse." That was my response when, eventually, I noticed that the constructor's initials were D.B. I wish I could muster up a "that's adorable," but when a theme isn't really working and then you discover *why* the theme exists *at all*, and the reason is so self-indulgent ... it just adds a layer of ... [exasperated SIGH]. See, the thing is that the "M" in IMDB stands for "Movie," and only two of these DBs had any kind of career in the "movies," and even they are much (much much much) better known for other things now (Barrymore for her TV show and lifestyle empire, Bowie (obviously) for music). Barrymore has the best claim to movie stardom. She's solid, no complaints. The rest ... complaints. Of course it's true that IMDB contains TV actors too, so DELTA BURKE and DANNY BONADUCE will be in there, but they are both famous for precisely one show, and neither of those shows has been on television since 1993. Do people under 40 even know who DELTA BURKE and DANNY BONADUCE are? Yeesh. If TV actors are valid, then anyone in the database is technically valid. The writer DAN BROWN, he's in there. Soccer star DAVID BECKHAM is for sure in there. Football Hall-of-Famer DICK BUTKUS was in Gremlins 2: A New Batch—where is he?? My point is that the themer set is loose and weak. Also, the biggest actual movie star in the world right now with the initials D.B. (DAVE BAUTISTA) is nowhere to be seen. A ragtag group of off-the-mark names, all so we could get a vanity puzzle and a really dated term for "gentlemen's club"? Not for me.

As for NUDIE BAR ... well, it's a debut, so there's that. Congratulations? I guess I should be grateful that the far far more popular term for such an establishment wasn't in the grid (TITTY BAR googles roughly 10x better than NUDIE BAR, a term last heard (probably) in a 1992 episode of Married ... With Children). I wouldn't have minded NUDIE SUIT. Those suits are iconic and (bonus!) have nothing to do with the objectification of women. There's something about the cutesiness and datedness of "NUDIE" that rubs me the wrong way. STRIP CLUB wouldn't have been 1/10th as irksome. The only other interesting answer the grid has to offer is WIRE MESH, which is fine, but not exactly exciting (42D: Laticed metal used in construction and fencing). Otherwise, it's just ABU ALMA OVA TSAR LYRA IAGO NOGO EGAD YULES (plural!) ATAD MSN ILE DDAY KWAI ING ECOL E-I-E-I-O all the way home.

[NUDIE SUITS!]

Had real trouble getting started (unusual for a Tuesday!) because of MASS, which feels very very wrong for its clue (1A: Neighbor of Vt. and N.H.). You're using two-letter state codes in the clue for a four-letter non-code that (unlike the examples in the clue) you commonly say out loud, as its own word. I figured that at four letters, the answer would maybe be a Canadian province (?) and I wrote SASK. in there, even as I was thinking "that's ... farther west, isn't it?") (it is) (VT and NH abut QUÉBEC). Worse was the heroine of the Tennessee Williams play that I have literally never heard of (2D: Heroine of Tennessee Williams's "Summer and Smoke"). Summer and Smoke? What is that? Look, it's Tuesday, and ALMA is never gonna be great fill, no matter how you clue it, so just give me [___ mater] and leave it at that, OK? Once I got out of the NW, though, things leveled off and overall the puzzle played pretty normal (i.e. easyish) for a Tuesday. If you didn't know the actor names, then I imagine it played a little differently.

Bullets:

40A: Auto-___, setting for many subscription services (RENEW) — it's convenient ... until you want to unsubscribe. Then it's tyrannical. I have had to go to absurd lengths to cancel actual magazine subscriptions before. My friend Shaun was getting Martha Stewart's magazine until it went digital-only, but instead of stopping the subscription, the company switched her to a different lifestyle mag and she couldn't (easily) figure out how to unsubscribe and so now she just gets Midwest Living or some such photo-heavy sponsored-content-type thing (OK, Midwest Living was actually kinda cool; they had a whole thing on the U.P. (Upper Peninsula, MI) that made us (Great Lakes fans) want to go there immediately). I'm going to spend part of today trying to unsubscribe from at least one magazine that has been auto-RENEWing. Wish me luck!
60A: First basic cable show to win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series (MAD MEN) — I forget how old this show is now (it started 18 years ago this week). "Basic cable" does not include premium cable like HBO–otherwise the answer to this clue would've been The Sopranos (2004). MAD MEN won in '08, '09, '10 and '11.
8D: Capital city on the Rideau River (OTTAWA) — I had no idea. I am woefully under-Canadafied in my geographical education. I know that rideau means "curtain" in French and that's all I know about Rideau (which apparently means "a small ridge of mound of earth" in English).
56D: Competitor of Rao's (RAGU) — I had never heard of RAO (apostrophe "s") before it appeared in a puzzle one day and I said "never heard of it" and the comments exploded with "how could you not blah blah blah" and then yeah the next time I went to the grocery store there was a wall of it and we have it in our house now so sometimes your blind spots are actually right in front of your face. Weird.

Happy to be back home and back on the blog for another 2+ weeks (before I head out for my last vacation of the summer, to see my family in CA). Thanks once again to Christopher and Rafa and Mali for doing such good work while I was gone to MN to visit my daughter at her current place of employment (the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, MN). I got to see an unexpectedly hilarious production of Comedy of Errors (not a play I expected much from, tbh), as well as an innovative production of Romeo & Juliet, at which I had not one but two people come up and introduce themselves and tell me how much they liked the blog (!), so that was a treat (hi Dustin, hi Melissa). More about my trip later. Or not. Who knows? See you next time.