Chris

Not my favorite. Yes, it's Saturday, but, really, ENSILE? AMNESIC (usually "amnesiac")? Pretty obscure, and the cluing awfully vague even for Saturday. But also - how is FRESHSALAD not akin to GREENPAINT? Really?

Meh. Way too full of "either you know it or you don't." Maybe I'm complaining because mostly I didn't, but still. I actually got all the long ones and failed on the trivia. Thumbs down - not well balanced at all.

Overall I liked it, but I'm bugged by the lack of parallelism in the theme entries. FEEL should really be FEELING, or else HEARING should be HEAR and SIGHT should be SEE.

I suggest possibly that for 8D, "retirement" doesn't actually mean sleep (though that was also my first thought), but rather replacing all the tires, something commonly done at a literal pit stop...

Nice one overall! I did feel like SAGE TEA had a somewhat "green paint" feel to it though.

A proper name I hadn't heard of at 29A crossed with two other names I hadn't heard of either. Nice.

Sounds like a fun puzzle, but I will be taking a hiatus until the NY Times tech guild strike is over...

The clue for 3D should be "jamb" not "jam", no? Threw me a bit...

37D - "Carrot on a stick"? I'm familiar with carrot AND a stick referring to the combination of reward and punishment, but I don't recall the carrot ever being on a stick itself...