Song sung by Elvis in "Blue Hawaii" / THU 12-27-18 / Brooklyn attraction / Rival of Cassio / Former Yankees manager Joe

Constructor:Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty:Challenging (feels like it shouldn't have been this tough, but it took 5:30 over my fairly bloated Thursday average) (17:24)
THEME: THEME— Contrails— Grid has the shape of a jet flying from the SW to the NE, with contrails behind it. The letters CON are rebused in five squares, leaving a trail behind the plane. The black squares may also be a part of the contrail?
Theme answers:

• AERIAL RE(CON) - (30A: Drone's job)
• (CON)ES - (35A: Rods' partners)
• EMOTI(CON) - (38A: One might have a wink or a smile)
• (CON)TAINER - (44A: Tin or glass)
• TELE(CON) - (46A: Business meeting that participants dial into, informally)
• STYLE I(CON) - (20D: One frequently pictured in GQ or Vogue)
• DE(CON) - (28D: Radiation cleanup, briefly)
• (CON)EY ISLAND - (32D: Brooklyn attraction)
• (CON)TRAIL - (40D: Follower of a plane ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme)
• (CON)TROL - (47D: Dominate)

These two are also theme-ish, so I'm counting them:

• SKY WRITER - (17A: Flier with a message)
• JET STREAM - (10D: It's indicated by arrows on a map)

Word of the Day:ALAIN (50D: Author Locke of the Harlem Renaissance, the first African-American Rhodes Scholar (1907))
Hey-o, puzzlers. It's Morgan here, filling in again for Rex (third time's a charm). This is a *fabulous* way for me to kill an evening while visiting my husband's family in East Texas, so thanks for the opportunity. (UPDATE: because it's Texas, of course there was crazy weather (in this case a tornado warning) shortly after this post went live.)

As a general rule, I love a rebus. And I usually think I have a good eye for spotting them. Not this time! This one was *brutal* for me - clocking in substantially over my average time. The theme took me forever to get, but more than that I just never got any momentum at any point in the entire solving process. I slogged my way from the NE down the east coast, then finally grokked the theme with CONTRAIL (which, honestly, was the first thing I thought when I saw the grid, so I'm not sure what my problem was).

I wouldn't say there was anything I especially liked about this puzzle, but neither did I hate it. I think the grid strained a bit under the heavy theme density (10-12 themers, depending how you count), so there was more crosswordese and/or junk than I would usually prefer (e.g., NOWI, ARA, BASSI, TOALL, ITALO, EYED). And there really wasn't anything exciting in the whole puzzle - maybe SKYWRITER crossing JET STREAM, but honestly aside from this there wasn't anything very new.

A couple of the themers strike me as questionable. As a professor, I'm on a LOT of teleconferences/conference call/Webexes/video conferences, and I can't recall having heard someone call it a TELECON. I also don't love DECON for decontaminate. I do at least appreciate that the CON is short for something different in each answer (UPDATE: a commenter points out EMOTICON and STYLE ICON are of the same root, but I think they're different enough (one refers to computer ICON and one to the more celebrity-style ICON)).

Bullets:

• ETNA— (5A: Mount whose name means, literally, "I burn"). Nice to have a new clue for a VERY old crossword standby.
• WATCH TV — (21A: View remotely?). This is what I have been doing, without break, for approaching 72 hours. Because Mount Pleasant, Texas, y'all. 
• NAILS IT— (62A: Does something to a T). Have you watched Nailed It on Netflix yet? It's really a delightful and hilarious way to kill a half hour. Highly recommended.  
• CATAWBA— (1D: Carolina tribe that allied with the colonists in the American Revolution). I imagine a LOT of people struggled up here - the NW took me forever to break into.
• MONTY — (51D: Hall of fame). This is probably my favorite clue in the puzzle. Shrug.  

Signed, Morgan Polikoff, a Jew in Texas at Christmastime

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