Online provocateur / WED 3-17-21 / 1967 hit that starts Well my pad is very messy and there's whiskers on my chin / One hanging around a party with swingers

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:50)

THEME:"If you think ..."  — famous people whose last names sound like present participles, clued as puns on said participles:

Theme answers:

• TED DANSON (17A: If you think actors have two left feet, you haven't seen ___) (get it ... dancin' ...?)
• DOLLY PARTON (20A: If you think country singers can't do hair, you haven't seen ___) 
• MICHAEL BOLTON (35A: If you think pop balladeers can't run fast, you haven't seen ___)
• JANET YELLEN (52A: If you think economists don't lose their cool, you haven't seen ___)
• WES CRAVEN (55A: If you think film directors are always satisfied, you haven't seen ___)

Word of the Day: MAN RAY (46D: Salvador Dalí contemporary) —

Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known for his pioneering photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Man Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself. (wikipedia)

This concept doesn't leave you with very satisfying options for execution. You could go this route—which is pretty boring, and a bit weird (in that you're expecting to see present participles and you get instead just the plain old last names of these celebrities). Or you could go the route not taken, where you actually turn their names into present participles (complete with the elided final "g," e.g. TED DANCIN'), but that probably just comes across weird. I don't know. All I know is this was a yawn for me, and I was at least a little annoyed that the themers set up a pattern of -ON names but then break that pattern later on. Really made me question my spelling of JANET YELLEN. Also, the situations imagined by the clues are occasionally preposterous. I mean, I get the idea that you might marvel at someone's dancin(g) or yellin(g) abilities, but no one in the history of hair has ever exclaimed, "Nice partin'!" And ... "you've never seen Wes craving???" That is such a weird thing to imagine anyone saying. What does it look like to see somebody craving? Craving what? Even though the clues are wacky, they should at least evoke a plausible, imaginable situation. You would never say, in any context, "did you see him cravin' the other day ... man, that was some good cravin' ... you really overdid it with the cravin' last Friday, Pete ..." etc. Partin' and cravin' just are Not skills anyone would remark on. So the theme has some issues. If your -ing verb makes no sense in context, maybe find a new one. I bet Patricia Heaton, Neil Gaiman, and Kevin Bacon could make some time.