Monkey head mushroom by another name / FRI 9-17-21 / Group whose name means the people of the waters that are never still / Brand whose logo includes a schoolboy with a ball for a head / Animal associated with Egyptian goddess Hathor / Portmanteau for a messenger bag

• • •

Beyond that, there's just no sizzle here besides maybe GLITTER BOMBS (which I think I've seen before, but it's still good fill). The puzzle relies way way too heavily on fill-in-the-blank and "?" clues. PRAGENCY is hard enough to parse without the "?" clue, but at least that clue had wordplay that made sense, unlike REEL, which ... well, yes, you do "wind" a fishing-rod reel and if you are out on a boat when fishing, then you "wind on the water," but [Wind on the water?] when you have REE- in place suggests (or suggested, to me) an entirely different word. Can you guess what that is? [... Tick ... tock]. I sincerely wrote REED in here (since REED is another name for a certain kind of "wind" instrument, and REEDs (the plants) are most definitely found "on the water" (around ponds and such)). This left me with GOADS for 38A: Aspirational hashtag (GOALS), which I knew had to be wrong, but which I still couldn't sort out because REED seemed right. Was I parsing GOADS wrong? Was it ... GO ADS! (the "aspirational hashtag" you use when you ... want more ... ads?). Anyway, the only real difficulty in the puzzle came with "?" clues, and with having no idea who Sebastian STAN is (I saw every MCU movie through "Black Panther" and still have no real idea who was in them, for the most part ... and "Gossip Girl," not exactly age-appropriate for me) (he's a famous actor, he's fine, I'm just saying I didn't know him). 

A MURSE remains not a thing—it's a portmanteau joke that surely died almost as soon as the name became public. The idea of multiple TREACLES is a flat-out absurdity. The clue on EON is ... what is that? (41A: S_c__d (time in time)). I've seen this "I'll be cheeky by removing letters from my clue word" clue at least one other time, and I hope it's not a trend, because it's awful, child's-placemat stuff. Fill-in-the-blanks are bad enough, don't make me do the ****ing Jumble. What does "time in time" even mean? I know that a "second" is a unit of time and an EON is a unit of time, but what is the phrase "time in time" supposed to evoke? It's a non-phrase. "Time After Time," that's a phrase (and a great Cyndi Lauper song). I don't know what "time in time" is. This is the *crossword*. Write a *crossword* clue. 

What else? Oh, you call Pentagon bigwigs BRASS. Just BRASS. The "HAT" part feels real old-fashioned (it's a real phrase, but, you know, more quaint than alive) (21A: Pentagon bigwig). Lastly, I had BOWL for BOAR (21D: Big game). That's nobody's fault but my own. Just a misunderstanding of "game." Maybe intentional on the part of the cluer, maybe not. Anyway, it was effective misdirection, whether intentional or not. I think that's it. If the grid had been much hotter, a lot of its issues would've seemed less important, felt less irksome. The Friday bar is high. Gotta come with more heat than this. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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