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