Kibitzing passenger / WED 6-9-21 / Nobel Prize winner of 1903 and 1911 / 1968 Jane Fonda sci-fi role / Espressos stained with bit of milk / Jazz style that influenced the Beat Generation / I'm just like that in modern lingo

Constructor: Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: sit on it— familiar phrases that start with things you sit on: 

Theme answers:

• BACKSEAT DRIVER (20A: Kibitzing passenger)
• COUCH POTATO (35A: TV addict)
• STOOL PIGEON (41A: Blabbing informant)
• ARMCHAIR EXPERT (51A: Dilettantish know-it-all)

Word of the Day: PEDRO Almodóvar (9D: "Pain and Glory" director Almodóvar) —

Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpeðɾo almoˈðoβaɾ kaβaˈʝeɾo]; born 25 September 1949) is a Spanish filmmaker, director, screenwriter, producer, and former actor. His films are marked by his employment of certain actors including Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz and creative personnel with complex narratives, melodrama, pop culture, popular songs, irreverent humour, strong colours, and glossy décor. Desire, passion, family, and identity are among Almodóvar's most prevalent themes in his films.

He came to prominence as a director and screenwriter during La Movida Madrileña, a cultural renaissance that followed after the end of Francoist Spain. His first few films characterised the sense of sexual and political freedom of the period. In 1986, he established his own film production company, El Deseo, with his younger brother Agustín Almodóvar, who has been responsible for producing all of his films since Law of Desire (1987).

Almodóvar achieved international recognition for his black comedy-drama film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and went on to further success with films such as the dark romantic comedy Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), the melodrama High Heels (1991) and the romantic drama thriller Live Flesh (1997). His subsequent two films, All About My Mother (1999) and Talk to Her (2002), earned him an Academy Award each, for Best Foreign Film and Best Original Screenplay respectively. He followed this with films like the drama Volver (2006), the romantic thriller Broken Embraces (2009), the psychological thriller The Skin I Live In (2011) and the dramas Julieta (2016) and Pain and Glory(2019), all of which were in competition for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Well a backseat is in your car, and the rest of it is indoor furniture, so I guess that one's kind of an outlier, but I honestly didn't care too much because the puzzle was delightful to solve. I had no concept of the theme until very late because the theme answers weren't exactly shouting at you with their themeiness, and also the grid itself had so many little pleasures in it that it was easy to get immersed and not worry too much about broader thematic concerns. It may seem weird to talk about how entertaining a grid is when it's clearly got a lot of what we might normally call "crosswordese" in it (ELIE ULNA OLE HEP LOA RICO ALOE, not to mention the musical A-to-A crosswordese trifecta: ADIA, AIDA, andARIA), but when you have cool longer answers *and* pepper your grid with original (or originally clued) short answers, then the crosswordese tends to fade into the background. And this puzzle GASsed UP on my goodwill right from the jump with MACCHIATOS, and then kept the fun fill coming from there. So happy to see PEDRO Almodóvar, followed by BILBO / BEBOP and the monstrous orange cheeselike product VELVEETA (10D: Kraft product). Once BEBOP took me to BARBARELLA, I was completely smitten (31D: 1968 Jane Fonda sci-fi role). "IT ME" was the cherry on the sundae (54D: "I'm just like that," in modern lingo)—perfect original contemporary short fill (in real life, I now find "IT ME" annoying and cliché, but that just tells me it should've been making appearances in grids for years by now). The theme was almost beside the point for me today. Those theme answers are good answers all on their own; the fact that they have the seating element in common is just an added bonus. 


I thought the phrase "armchair detective" or "armchair quarterback" was the more familiar "armchair" phrase, but as soon as I typed "armch-" into Google, it predictively filled in "ARMCHAIR EXPERT," so the currency of that phrase must be pretty strong. I do want to double-ding this puzzle for doubling up, twice, on subjects that I hate to see in my grid. One is vaping (today we get VAPE and ECIGS) and the other is billionaires (specifically this billionaire, ELON Musk and his TESLA). ELON's effective tax rate is criminally, repulsively low (single digits). Admire his e-car all you want, but take 30% of the billions he made during the pandemic first, please. What a dumb country that not only worships wealth hoarders (just like Jesus did!) but doesn't even see fit to tax them like everyone else. "No, you go ahead, keep it, we're fine [bridge collapses]." But I quickly forgot about the repulsive "I'm-using-my-money-to-go-to-spaaaace!" guy once LIL / NAS X popped into my grid (59D: With 43-Down, rapper with the 2021 #1 hit "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)"). I backed into his name, with NAS- showing up first, and then I tried to guess what the first word of that two-word answer could be. I figured NAS- was going to lead to NASH and so I'd get, well, someone named NASH, but then pow, in went the "X" cross and I was so happy. Instantly knew the first part was LIL and was so happy to run over that SW corner and welcome him, eventually. In summation: LIL NAS X> SpaceX.