The term "La-La Land," which dates from 1983 and originally referred to "a fanciful state or dreamworld; the mental state of someone who is not aware of what is really happening," supposedly came from the "la la la" nonsense syllables found in many songs. More recently, the name has come to refer to the lifestyles and attitudes of people living in Hollywood, which is part of L.A. (Los Angeles). Today's crossword by Ed Sessa includes five "La-La" phrases:
*Superboy's girlfriend: LANALANG
*Deep blue gemstone: LAPISLAZULI
*Satisfaction after setbacks: LASTLAUGH
*Cowboy star with a bullwhip: LASHLARUE
*Teaching aid for learning foreign tongues: LANGUAGELAB
"2016 Best Picture (no, wait; it wasn't!) and a fitting place for the answers to starred clues?" is LALALAND. The clue refers to an embarrassing mistake made in February 2017 by Faye Dunaway at the 89th annual Academy Awards ceremony. Warren Beatty was still holding the card naming
La La Land's Emma Stone as winner of the Best Actress award and Dunaway mistakenly assumed the card bore the name of the winner for Best Picture. She announced
La La Land as Best Picture and more than two minutes elapsed before the name of the
real winner was announced:
Moonlight.Alfred "Lash" LaRue (1917-1996) was a 1940s-50s Western movie actor who used an 18-foot-long bullwhip to subdue the bad guys. LaRue taught Harrison Ford how to use a bullwhip for the
Indiana Jones movies. In 1984, NBC late-night host David Letterman showed several clips of Lash LaRue films and then LaRue showed Letterman how to crack a bullwhip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wjEP9IWqwcThe crossword includes the much-overused words SPA, ACRE and OREO but there are no foreign words and no Roman numerals. See? It really
is possible to create such a puzzle!
