3-News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts & News
Monday, February 9, 2015 — 3A
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
John Misty is an
odd businessman
Freaky folker makes
a statement about
money in music
By RACHEL KERR
Daily Arts Writer
Right now, you were supposed
to be reading a review of his new
album I Love You, Honeybear, set to
release this Tuesday. I was going to
rave about his past efforts, how I’m
still humming “Hollywood Forev-
er Cemetery Sings” from his 2012
album Fear Fun. Then, probably go
into great detail about his growth
as an artist, and maybe even touch
on a few of his weird antics like
that one time he went to a shaman
and started hallucinating about
baguettes and berets. It was going
to be awesome. It’s a shame then,
that Misty likes fucking with us.
Painter, drummer, singer, song-
writer, shroom-taker – Josh Till-
man found and lost God while
growing up in an Evangelical
community. Under the name
J.Tillman, he attempted to cre-
ate a musical career with some
solo projects, though the music
took itself too seriously and was
mostly unsuccessful. In 2007, he
got his big break, of sorts, when he
joined the band Fleet Foxes as the
drummer. With 2012 approaching,
and after leaving Fleet Foxes, he
adopted the moniker Father John
Misty, and the rest, as they say, is
history. He became a swagger-
ing, indie sex symbol by jumping
and jiving on stage, a large devia-
tion from his former projects. And
now, here we are, anxiously await-
ing his sophomore effort.
Most albums leak to the Inter-
net before their actual release
dates. If you know which sketchy
sites to scrounge, you can find
almost anything before it’s sup-
posed to drop. A lot of artists even
stream their stuff in its entirety
beforehand. And, it appeared
Misty had done the same. In fact,
he seemed to have gone above and
beyond, creating his own stream-
ing site, SAP.
Sounds too good to be true?
That’s because it is.
Turns out, SAP exclusively
streams only I Love You, Honey-
bear. But, take a quick exploration
of the site and you’ll realize that it’s
Misty’s way of poking fun at the
current state of superficial music
sharing on the Internet. He’s com-
menting on the misguided belief
that musicians are selfish for want-
ing to make money off their work.
“Did you know that music can
also be expensive to make? Some
artists have discovered that shar-
ing their music for free can be
tough financially,” the site reads.
“Is there a way to prevent anyone
from spending money ever?”
After scrolling for a while,
the site explicitly reveals its true
intentions. Misty calls SAP a “pro-
cess by which popular albums are
‘sapped’ of their performances,
original vocals, atmosphere and
other distracting affections so
the consumer can decide quickly
and efficiently whether they like
a musical composition, based
strictly on its formal attributes,
enough to spend money on it.”
Continue downward and you
find a seemingly regular track
player that streams echoes of
actual songs. Instead of vocals,
we hear auto-tuned keyboard
lines. It reminds me of the tracks
you find in karaoke bars. The
songs sound absolutely terrible.
And that’s the point.
I guess we’ll just have to wait
until Tuesday to hear I Love You,
Honeybear in full. Until then,
you can satisfy yourself with the
album’s released singles, “Bored
In The USA” and “Chateau Lobby
#4 (in C for Two Virgins).”
At the bottom of the page,
there’s a “Contact SAP” option.
I was tempted to write some-
thing like, “Come on, dude, we
just want to hear your music.”
But Misty poses an interesting
question: why are artists the bad
guys because they want to make
money?
Daily Book Review:
‘Girl on the Train’
By CHLOE GILKE
Managing Arts Editor
As “The Girl on the Train” sits
atop the U.S. bestseller list for
the second week in a row, people
are clamoring to figure out how
it got there. The book’s title and
jacket offer no clues; the blockish,
white font and blurred foliage on
the cover are appealingly generic,
but don’t offer any hints at the
breathless ride contained within
the pages. First-time author Paula
Hawkins doesn’t have as recogniz-
able a name as the other tenants of
the week’s bestseller list, including
tenured thriller writers like James
Patterson and David Baldacci. But
the secret to the book’s success
can be found in the plot summary
on the inside cover: told from the
point of view of multiple unreliable
narrators — a seemingly-perfect
wife gone inexplicably missing —
the inscrutable husband is not who
he appears to be — “The Girl on the
Train” is shamelessly riding the
coattails of “Gone Girl” ’s success.
But “The Girl on the Train”
transcends its apparent “Gone
Girl” copycat status. Hawkins
borrows plot and tone from film
noir and classic British thrillers;
her prose is more Hitchcockian
than Flynn-ian. The book centers
around Rachel Watson, an unem-
ployed alcoholic who rides the
train to “work” every morning,
using the train’s stops as an oppor-
tunity to spy on the perfect, min-
iature lives she can see from the
tracks. She’s created a fictional life
in her mind for “Jason” and “Jess,”
a handsome couple whose home is
just a few doors down from where
Rachel and her husband used to
live. As she looks out her window,
Rachel can forget that she’s a sad,
unemployed drunk and play the
anonymous spectator, soaking up
the afterglow of other people’s
happiness to get her through the
hours between gin and tonics on
the train. In an interesting twist
on classic Hitchcock voyeurism,
the woman has the power to look,
and readers see everything from
her point of view. Rachel is flawed,
and seeing through her eyes is all
the more interesting because of
her foggy vision.
Yes, foggy vision. Since Rachel
is an alcoholic, she’s prone to get-
ting blackout drunk at the worst
possible moments, like at the
scene of major crimes and when
she’s hanging out with the sus-
pects of those crimes. Of course,
Rachel can’t remember what hap-
pened when she left the train and
stumbled around Witney the night
“Jess” disappeared. And more
generally, her way of dealing with
the complication and confusion
of leaving her voyeuristic seat on
the train for the action beyond the
tracks is to drink herself into obliv-
ion. When Rachel loses track of
those intoxicated hours, so do we.
Hawkins drops clues and hints,
but obscures them in so much mud
that readers can’t do the detective
work themselves. The only way
to pick up more hints is mediated
through Rachel’s knowledge. Her
poor decisions are infuriating, but
the impenetrability of the mystery
makes the book impossible to put
down.
While Rachel’s sections of the
book are vivid and exciting, the
passages dedicated to Megan (the
Witney woman who disappeared)
and Anna (Rachel’s ex-husband’s
new wife) falter. The sections
detailing Megan’s life before the
disappearance hold a fair num-
ber of clues and false starts, but
Megan is a disappointing wisp of a
character — artistic, pixie-like and
not much else. Anna is even worse.
Her entire personality is based on
her dislike of Rachel, and Anna’s
passages don’t contain anything
interesting, as she spends most of
her days whining to her husband
and complaining about Rachel.
In theory, she’s an effective foil
for Rachel because she’s prim and
put-together and maternal, every-
thing Rachel wishes she could
be. But we don’t gain much from
reading Anna’s point of view, aside
from the dullness of her passages
making Rachel’s feel even more
vibrant.
However, the plot and narra-
tion aren’t what really make a
good thriller a great thriller. The
mystery is the beating heart of
any excellent crime drama, and
“The Girl on the Train” succeeds
in this regard. I won’t dare spoil
any of the breathlessly twisty
plot, but the switch from dark-
ness and impossibility to finally
finding out what happened with
Megan makes for one of the
most visceral, fun reading expe-
riences I’ve had in a long time
(since “Gone Girl,” probably). But
whether or not the novel’s suc-
cess is due to its comparison with
another smash female-driven
mystery, “The Girl on the Train”
deserves all the buzz it’s garner-
ing. It’s a thrilling, intoxicating
ride from its familiar start to its
triumphant finish at the top of
the bestseller list.
SUB POP RECORDS
Longing to be held in those forearms.
BOOK REVIEW
noon. The winners of each of the
three categories received $1,000 in
prize money.
Apollo 257, a toy light that allows
the user to direct colors, won the
Entertainment & Toy category.
MyBot, a wheelchair controlled by
a Myo armband, won in Health &
Wellness. Green Energizer, a solar-
powered backpack that allows
the wearer to charge electrical
devices, carried the Environment
& Energy category.
Engineering
junior
Nick
Naruns, the creator of Green Ener-
gizer, said he got the idea from
being outside for long periods of
time and realizing he had no way
to charge his phone when it ran out
of battery.
Naruns said he would like to add
more features to the backpack and
integrate the solar panel into other
wearable accessories. Eventually,
he plans to sell a finished version of
the product.
“I think there’s still some work
that needs to be sorted out but I
definitely think it’s a marketable
product,” he said.
Wang
said
she
wanted
Makeathon to be a place where
anyone could come, test their
ideas and collaborate with others
regardless of their academic field
or previous experience.
Students could either enter the
competition with their own teams
or receive a team upon arriving
Friday evening. Some came with
specific projects in mind while
others attended to network and
receive hands-on experience with
hardware.
“One of our goals is to bring peo-
ple from all disciplines together to
collaborate,” Wang said. “It’s inter-
esting because Friday we were
scared that people who didn’t have
a team would go home and not
come back. But people have really
bonded and formed new teams just
like that.”
President
Barack
Obama’s
administration has promoted a
“Maker Movement” on a national
scale to encourage people to make
and sell tangible items. Wang said
a White House liaison for the
Maker Movement has been in con-
tact with the Makeathon planning
team.
Engineering
freshman
Pas-
cal Sturmfels, a computer science
major, said he was excited to gain
experience with new hardware
and to “meet people interested in
computer science and hardware
and have that connection, if any-
one wants to work on a project
with me in the future.”
Engineering senior Gabriella
Willis planned to use the event to
build a prototype system aimed
at providing food for low-income
families. She employed aquapon-
ics — a food production strategy
that is fertilized by the excrement
of aquatic creatures, like snails or
prawns.
“The aquaponics idea is some-
thing I’ve had in mind, but I’ve
never tried to build,” Willis said. “I
think this is the perfect opportu-
nity to get my hands dirty and see
what happens.”
Makeathon featured a variety
of “building stations,” including
accessibility to a woodshop, metal
shop and laser cutters. These
were available for use during the
day, but closed at 10 p.m. every
night due to safety concerns about
sleep-deprived students operating
potentially dangerous machines.
Because the deadline for proj-
ect submissions was early Sunday
morning, students began to feel
the time crunch Saturday night as
10 p.m. approached. Some teams
who started out with ambitious
ideas found that they had to scale
down or scrap their plans as the
event neared its end.
Other groups focused on com-
pleting
smaller-scale
projects.
One such project was an adjust-
able grab bar whose height could
be easily adjusted with one hand.
Representatives
from
General
Electric praised the project for
being well designed, functional
and easily operated.
At the event’s expo Sunday
morning, students showed off their
product prototypes. Some were
complete and functioning while
other projects were still works-in-
progress. Teams were enthusiastic
about continuing to develop their
products.
Qi Zhang, a Ph.D. candidate
in the Department of Molecular,
Cellular and Developmental Biol-
ogy, said his team created a small
computer encased in a wooden box
designed for integration into liv-
ing room furniture. The computer
could be used to operate a variety
of home technologies.
“As a business, we want to take
the internal components of your
Xbox or your PS3 and put them
into a minimalistic (compartment)
and design furniture that will
house them… and remove clutter
in the room,” Zhang said. He and
his team hope to eventually bring
their product to the market.
Wang said she ultimately hopes
that large-scale recognition of
maker culture — at the University,
as well as local and national levels
—will help the event grow in the
future.
“People need to know that
entrepreneurship
and
startups
aren’t just about apps. There’s
value in physical products,” she
said. “Making is intuitive to
humans. We need to be able to
touch things to use them.”
MAKEATHON
From Page 1A
iate asked her to review three
cases brought by women about
gender discrimination at work
and in school, part of the first
wave of court cases involving
that issue.
“Women who until then just
accepted the way things were,
and then because the women’s
movement was reviving all over
the world, decided they shouldn’t
simply submit to the way things
were — they should decide the
way things should be,” Ginsburg
said.
Ginsburg said the turning
point for gender equality in the
Supreme Court came after the
unanimous decision on the 1971
case Reed v. Reed, in which the
Court amended the social secu-
rity law to ensure equality for
women as estate holders. Gins-
berg discussed how the court
perfected the law to say sole
surviving parent, whether male
or female.
“If a law is imperfect, some-
times the appropriate cure is not
to strike it down, but to extend
it to the let down people,” Gins-
berg said.
Ginsburg also spoke about
some of her recent dissents
on the court, in particular the
Court’s 2014 decision to over-
turn a portion of the Voting
Rights Act and 2010 decision
to modify campaign contribu-
tions.
Addressing the Voting Rights
Act, she said she viewed the case
primarily as a determination
of who is more suited to decide
electoral issues.
“The legislature had over-
whelmingly said the Voting
Rights Act should be extended,”
she said. “Should nine unelected
judges trump that decision of
the legislature? And my attitude
was no, that the members of the
political branch probably knew
more about voting and elections
then the unelected Supreme
Court Justices do.”
Asked
what
decision
she
would overrule if she could,
Ginsburg pointed to Citizens
United v. Federal Election Com-
mission. She said whenever she
goes abroad she is faced with
questions about why the United
States allows unlimited cam-
paign
contributions,
which
many say allows officeholders
to be influenced by campaign
financiers.
“There will be a time where
people are disgusted with this
and the pendulum will swing
the other way,” Ginsburg said.
When
asked
about
her
approach to reading the Con-
stitution overall, Ginsburg said
she relied primarily on the first
three words of it — “We the peo-
ple” — though she noted that her
interpretation of their meaning
is fluid.
“I think the genius of our
country is that now over two
centuries, this notion of who
counts in ‘we the people’ has
grown,” she said.
Ginsburg may have surprised
the audience by expressing criti-
cism of the Roe v. Wade deci-
sion, and said the ruling created
more of an uphill battle than if
state legislatures had approved
abortion rights on their own.
“If the court had been more
modest, than the change would
continue to move in the direc-
tion it was already moving,” she
said. “Instead, there was one
target for those who opposed a
woman’s free choice, and that
one target was Roe v. Wade.”
Ginsburg also touched briefly
on the Equal Rights Amend-
ment — language first proposed
in 1923 that specifies that states
may not deny “rights under the
law” on the basis of sex — when
asked what amendment she’d
most like added to the Constitu-
tion.
“I would like to take my Con-
stitution out and show it to my
three granddaughters and say
‘This is a value of our society,
just like free speech — the equal-
ity of men and women,’ ” Gins-
burg said.
Toward the end of the discus-
sion, Hershovitz asked if Gins-
burg had any advice for young
people in the audience.
“If you think of yourself of a
professional, well you’re not just
going to get a job so you can turn
over a buck,” Ginsburg said. “If
you do that you’re like a plumb-
er. You’ve got a skill and you can
earn a living from it. But if you
think of yourself as a true pro-
fessional armed with a skill, you
could help someone who is less
fortunate.”
Ginsburg did not touch on
a Michigan case that is slated
to go before the U.S. Supreme
Court in April, DeBoer v. Sny-
der, which concerns the state’s
ban on same-sex marriage.
However, in an interview
after the event, Law Prof. Margo
Schlanger, also a former Gins-
burg clerk from 1993 to 1995,
said she was confident Ginsburg
would vote to strike down the
ban.
“I have no doubt in the world
that she will think that equal-
ity demands nondiscrimination
in marriage,” Schlanger said. “I
don’t know what the court will
do, but I don’t have a minute’s
doubt about what her vote will
be.”
Law student Lauren Dansey
said she was excited to hear
Ginsburg’s speak as she has long
been a fan of the justice, having
read many of her opinions.
“Right now she is my mod-
ern day heroine,” Dansey said.
“After reading her opinions, she
is not only a beautiful writer
and articulate theorist, but
she’s also inspirational.”
Dansey added that she appre-
ciated her comments about the
Voting Rights Act.
“Relative to what she voted
for, I would not have thought
that was not something she was
passionate about,” she said.
LSA senior Victoria Bell, who
noted she dressed up for Hal-
loween as the persona associ-
ated with Ginsburg’s popular
nickname, the Notorious RBG,
said she found hearing the
justice speak in person inspi-
rational. During the session,
Ginsburg also said she finds the
nickname amusing.
“I dressed as notorious RBG
for Halloween, and I think it
was really inspirational to be
here, hearing her speak,” Bell
said. “My favorite part was
probably hearing about what she
had to say on the UVI case and
all the arguments she did before
she appointed a justice, because
that was some really powerful
work that she did.”
RBG
From Page 1A