Drink akin to a Moscow mule / SAT 3-15-25 / Cozier alternatives to motels / Long, curved bike features / Prez in the '60s / Congolese neighbor to the south / Was eco-conscious with tech waste, in modern parlance / Texter's Wow ... just wow" / Slam-dancing locales

• • •

And that's the other reason I probably am higher on this puzzle than I should be—the movieness of it all. Four solid (and reasonably current) movie references, one after the other. Off of BARRY KEOGHAN, I got not only SICKO but (just below) BIRDMAN, and (just above and to the right) Javier BARDEM! And then BARDEM gave me the "M" that tipped me to the cocktail that we're drinking today—the DARK 'N' STORMY (rum, ginger beer, ice, lime garnish). Movies and cocktails, sign me up! Loved the whole top half of this puzzle ... which is probably why I ended up with net positive vibes despite the load of less-than-enjoyable things I encountered on the way down, starting with ECYCLED (come on, do we need another "E-" word?) crossing RC CAR (another E- thing that is mercifully non-"E"-starting but still very ugly in the grid—the "RC" stands for "remote control"). TAKES A PHOTO had me wanting to EAT A SANDWICH, and further down, well, DATA LOSS and AGEMATE and dull and awkward, to my ears, respectively. It's really just that SW quadrant that I would throw into the sea today. The SE is a little flat, but harmless. And the other two quadrants, as I say, are lovely. I can see how they would *not* be lovely if you are not into movies or cocktails or haven't heard of or could only vaguely remember BARRY KEOGHAN. I still haven't seen Saltburn, but Keoghan left an indelible impression in my brain with his performance in a great Irish film I saw a couple of years back, The Banshees of Inisherin (for which he got an Academy Award nomination). Also in Banshees was Kerry Condon, who did one of my favorite Criterion Closet videos of all time—charming and funny and sincere, full of genuine, unaffected love of movies—a real model of the form.

The puzzle was terribly easy today, largely because there wasn't a name it threw at me that I didn't know, starting with the very easy 1A: British celebrity chef Nigella (LAWSON). I don't give a dang about celebrity chefs, but I feel like her name is just everywhere, for decades, particularly in the cooking section of bookstores, so even though I spelled it LARSON on the first go, no problem there. The weirdest wtf [record scratch sound] "huh?" moment in the puzzle came with DARK [space] STORMY, where I sincerely thought "Are we doing an ampersand rebus today!?" (24A: Drink akin to a Moscow mule). I really wanted to shave a "&" in that square, but then the cross didn't look promising that way, and eventually I remembered "oh right you can spell 'and' with the 'a' and 'd' elided..." and that's what I did. Speaking of ampersands, this puzzle has a fine example of the type of answer called an "ampersandwich," where you have {letter + AND + letter}; today, it's B AND BS (more commonly spelled "B&Bs," i.e. "bed and breakfasts"). You see ampersandwiches less these days than you did 10-20 years ago, mainly because people have generally gotten better at filling grids and don't have to rely on things like BANDB and RANDD and RANDR and the like so much.

Mistakes were few today. LARSON for LAWSON, as I said, and then GAMBIAN (?) for ZAMBIAN (14A: Congolese neighbor to the south), and, probably most significant of all, PEER group before USER group (39A: ___ group). Once the "-ER" was confirmed, I felt pretty confident about PEER ... until I didn't. "What the hell kind of cheese starts 'AE-'? AENEID cheese?" I would've loved to discover that there was an AENEID cheese. But no, it's just plain old ASIAGO (36D: Parmesan alternative).

More stuff:

• 16A: Big name in electric toothbrushes (SONICARE)— needed a few crosses, but I know this name, how do I know this name? I still use an analog toothbrush. And then analog floss. And then these teeny tiny little bottle-brush dealies. And then Listerine. My tooth & gum game is very, very tight. Wish it had been that tight in my 20s, when it mattered much more. Mid-30s to mid-40s were some unpleasant dental years, but turns out rigorous tooth and gum care really pays off, kids, your parents aren't lying to you. I know there's more tooth disaster to come, inevitably, but the last ten years have been Great.
• 42A: Una hija de los abuelos (TIA) — a daughter of the grandparents. My eyes saw Spanish and didn't bother to read closely, so I wrote in DÍA here at first.
• 48D: Where snowboard cross debuted as an Olympic event (2006) (TORINO) — better known to English speakers as Turin. You know, the place with the Shroud. Strange that I can still remember Winter Olympics venues that aren't major cities, like NAGANO and ALBERTVILLE and LILLEHAMMER etc. Though TORINO does have close to a million people, so that's pretty major. Winter Olympics tend to be in smaller, less populated areas than the Summer Olympics. But sometimes major cities are involved. Oslo. Montreal. Salt Lake City in '02 ... and again in '34!

• 1D: Member of the only N.F.C. team never to have made the Super Bowl (LION) — so they're basically the Seattle Mariners of the N.F.C. Except that the Mariners are the only team in all of baseball not to have been to a World Series, whereas the LIONs have some A.F.C. company: namely, the Browns, the Jaguars, and the Texans.
• 18D: Something legally defined in the U.S. as affecting fewer than 200,000 people (RARE DISEASE) — not exactly uplifting Saturday morning fare, yeesh.
• 35A: Long, curved bike features (BANANA SEAT) — the one answer in the bottom half of the grid that I really loved. Reminded me of the bike I had in elementary school, a wheelie bike with ape hanger handlebars and a BANANA SEAT and everything. A blue Schwinn StingRay, I think it was. A real period piece. Wish it were still around.

• 35D: Whiny comeback to a certain parent ("BUT DAD...!") — ooh, I liked this too. Had to wait on crosses to see what parent was being whined to.
• 23D: Prez in the '60s (ABE) — LBJ? lol not those '60s 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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