Lower leg woe, slangily / FRI-7-31-15 / Turn awkward, as a relationship / "reading room"

Constructors: James Mulhern and Ashton Anderson

Relative difficulty: Easy, I bet, but I was getting up and making martinis and drinking them so it took me an hour


Word of the Day: KATY (45A: "___ Bell" (Stephen Foster song)) —

             From http://www.3goodcats.com/katybell.htm:

   Stephen Foster wrote many of the popular songs* in 19th-century America.  I didn't know it when we named our cat, but Stephen Foster wrote the music for an 1863 song called "Katy Bell."  You can listen to it, and if you're as interested as I was, even find the lyrics as well.

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* - The most famous:  Oh! Susanna; Camptown Races; Old Folks at Home [Swanee River]; My Old Kentucky Home; Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair; Beautiful Dreamer.

It's like someone rubbed deodorant all over my printer paper because this puzzle is so fresh. AUTOTUNE, GET WEIRD, ONLINE AD and... CANKLES. Look, I know everyone says something like this in their lifetime but I coined the term "cankles." In college. 2005. It was me; I was the first. I am both proud and ashamed because it's really not a nice thing to say at all, but apparently the term has made its way into one of our most prestigious publications. See, there was this girl who was pretty mean and I didn't like her and she had calves that just wouldn't quit in the downward direction. It was before we started Googling everything we think to make sure it's an original thought so I was almost certainly the first person to portmanteau that shit.

Hi, by the way. I'm Lena: the girl who coined cankles. OH HEY LOOK OVER THERE
 
It's a Hawk! It's a Pelican! No, it's a CAGER. Womp womp. Sports terms, especially ones like that, are not readily within my KEN, as you can see here at the point where both my glass and mental wellspring went dry:
HULA SKIRT was my first entry, leading to DRAG SHOW and all those goodies in the NW. Then onto the NE, where everything made a pleasing KERPLOP when dropped in-- except STAY DRY. Why? Because my brain parsed it as a noun, like a "lean-to" and I thought WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? SOME BRITISH THING? "Let us all have a huddle under the stay-dry and sip Pimm's until this thundershower passes." I was still rankled by the time I got to 28A(a tyre may rub against one) and can only think of one word when it comes to Brits and rubbing and it's not KERB, it's "frot." Look it up, as my mother used to say to me. Still does.

Moving right along, I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed this puzzle. Even the little things, like STAB for (5D: Whack). Not that we served KETEL ONE at the fancypants bar (it was that fancy) I worked at a few years ago, but I should have known that way sooner than I did. It would have prevented me from putting in SEASONAL instead of the correct IN SEASON... wow I am getting boring or what?

 Bad fill that peppers you like... bullets!

• KEPI(35A: Gendarme's topper) — Nrrrgh
• TKTS (30A: Times Sq. bargain booth) — Nrrrrrrrrrgh
• OONA ( 27A: Donald Duck cartoon princess) -- Nrgh

But that's it in terms of what I consider nrrghable fill! A very good puzzle to ring in the weekend.


BONUS: if there's a SNO BALL that has a strong chance in hell...

Signed, Lena Webb, Court Jester of CrossWorld