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Monday, September 21, 2015 — 5A
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ACROSS
1 Light fog
5 “No ifs, __ ...”
9 Italian city known
for a shroud
14 __’acte
15 Come in last
16 Have __ in the
hole
17 Make laugh in a
big way
18 *Pickled peppers
picker
20 Deodorant choice
22 Raised one’s
glass to
23 Play lightly, as a
guitar
24 Greek X’s
25 Walked stealthily
28 Bandleader Artie
32 TV network with
an eye logo
35 Reclined
36 1970s New York
mayor Abe
37 *Miss Manners’
concern
41 Classroom
assistants
42 In unison, in music
43 Paranormal
ability, for short
44 MD’s “pronto”
45 Very, very old
48 Mailbox opening
49 Energy
53 Proud member of
a select group
57 Breathe
59 *Clog-clearing
company
61 Some old radios
62 Love to pieces
63 Grandkid spoiler,
often
64 Cookie grain
65 Clearing-in-the-
woods shelters
66 Breaks off
67 Water slide
user’s cry
DOWN
1 Flat-topped lands
2 Coastline recess
3 Fab Four
drummer Ringo
4 *Compete, as for
a role
5 Purina dog food
brand
6 Christmas carol
7 Annual reason to
reset clocks:
Abbr.
8 Do a slow burn
9 Spanish
appetizers
10 Les États-__
11 Hanging on every
word
12 Slurpee
alternative
13 “The Big Bang
Theory” type
19 __ rage: PED
user’s
aggression
21 Expresses
happiness
24 Address book
entry
26 Golf goal
27 Even score
28 Understand
29 Detest
30 Pts. and qts., for
two
31 Cry one’s eyes
out
32 Tax pros
33 London native,
informally
34 Fizz in a gin fizz
36 __ Aires
38 Shelter adoptee
39 Dictator Amin
40 Canadian prov.
bordering Vt.
45 “Just want to
add ...”
46 Nary a soul
47 *Typewriter area,
letterwise, for the
answers to
starred clues
48 Stable studs
50 Biblical prophet
51 Chatter endlessly
52 “Steppenwolf”
author Hermann
53 Part of Q.E.D.
54 Miner’s bonanza
55 “Bring __!”: “Let’s
fight!”
56 Civil suit cause
57 Tear violently
58 Gay Nineties and
Roaring
Twenties
60 Almond-colored
By Scot Ober
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/21/15
09/21/15
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Monday, September 21, 2015
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
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MUSIC COLUMN
Sounds of teen
suburbia
By ADAM THEISEN
Daily Music Columnist
N
inety-nine percent of
the time, when some-
one picks up an acoustic
guitar at a party, you’re about
to be serenaded with “Won-
derwall,”
or maybe
“Wish You
Were Here,”
if everyone’s
stoned. But if
you’re with a
certain sub-
urban scene,
you can be
pleasantly
surprised.
This past summer I was in a
friend’s basement in my home-
town of Livonia, Michigan
when a couple guys I’d known
for years started to play a song
for the small group — one on
acoustic guitar and one sing-
ing. I could tell it was a song
from one of the overwrought
emotional bands that have a
cult following where I’m from.
I didn’t know what it was, but
I liked its pseudo-poetic lyrics,
its stream-of-consciousness
delivery and the way it seemed
to capture the room, enthralling
everyone because the singer is
just spewing his gut feelings to
everyone within earshot while
slowly building toward a gran-
diose tidal-wave climax.
I
listened
extra
intently
during the performance and
then
surreptitiously
Googled
the lyrics that I heard — the
chorus of “I’m sure that we
could find something for you
to do on stage / Maybe shake a
tambourine, or when I sing, you
sing harmonies.” The song they
were playing turned out to be
“Twin Size Mattress” by The
Front Bottoms, this folk-rock
dramatic set piece about the end
of a friendship, or a relationship,
or just the collapse of something
you know has to end even though
you don’t want it to.
“Twin
Size
Mattress”
is
everything I love to hate about
young suburban indie rock.
Where I’m from — and I’m near-
positive this is true for other
medium-sized
Midwestern
cities with homogenous (i.e.
very
white)
populations
—
there’s a huge group of kids
that fall through the cracks of
pop, country or rap and find
themselves
obsessed
with
“emo” or “post-hardcore” or
whatever they want to call this
tricky-to-label subgenre of rock
that prides itself on emotional
honesty and catharsis. If you’re
the right person in the right
frame of mind, listening to these
bands on headphones can be just
like hearing your own internal
monologue. Something about
the hormonal anxiety in the
vocals and stories of losing and
finding love in the most intense
ways possible makes people
memorize all the words and
write them on their notebooks
and scream them with furious
conviction at shows.
After a boom in the ’90s
with bands like Jawbreaker,
American Football, Sunny Day
Real Estate and even records
from bands like Jimmy Eat
World and Weezer, emo has gone
through some ups and downs
in the last couple decades. The
Front Bottoms, who just released
a new record on September 18,
are one of the new rising stars
of this scene, but in general, the
genre feels like it’s experiencing
a resurgence with other bands
like The Menzingers, Into It
Over It and Modern Baseball.
But the Rosetta Stone for all
these
dramatic
artists
and
emotional fans is a band called
Brand New and an album called
Déjà Entendu.
Brian Eno once said, though
The Velvet Underground & Nico
only sold 30,000 copies in 1967,
“everyone who bought one of
those 30,000 copies started
a band.” Well, Déjà Entendu
wasn’t
a
huge
commercial
success either, but everyone
who bought that album started
an artsy, serious Tumblr. After
a debut album that expertly
executed but slavishly followed
all the tropes of emo, Brand New
took their sophomore release as
an opportunity to completely
reinvent the genre. It’s hard to
put into words exactly what it is
that makes Déjà Entendu such a
classic. Maybe you need to listen
to it after you’ve pulled an all-
nighter and the sun is rising on
Sunday morning or after you’ve
made a new connection with
someone special or after you’ve
fallen out of love for the first
time, but something about that
record plunges into the depths
of your feelings, gets you to your
core and stings you in a way
that’s impossible to forget.
But if you become familiar
with enough of these bands (not
necessarily Brand New itself,
but definitely the many acolytes
they spawned), you’ll hear that
practically all of these emo indie
bands are exclusively made up of
straight white men, and most of
them are singing about youthful
crushes and heartbreak. Here’s
where we get to that “love to
hate” part, because while I
absolutely love ambitious rock
music, sometimes you just want
to shake all these heartbroken
narrators and yell at them about
how stupid they are. Whether
they’re idealizing a nameless
pretty girl and whining about
how she doesn’t want to sleep
with them or complaining that
all the jocks are dating the girls
they themselves want to be with
or proclaiming how they’re the
only ones who know how to treat
a girl right, I’m so sick of what
feels like the exact same dude in
every single song dramatically
complaining about how hard his
privileged life is. I’m not saying
the artists aren’t allowed to have
problems, but at its worst, emo
is loudly ignorant white male
entitlement set to generic guitar
music. (Jessica Hopper’s “Where
the Girls Aren’t” is required
reading if you love this genre.)
So that leads to an obvious
question: How come I’ve been
listening to these artists so
much? Why listen to them at
all? First of all, you don’t have
to listen to this genre if you’re
not into it. With the probable
exception
of
Déjà
Entendu,
this scene hasn’t produced any
objective modern classics. Emo
is a genre that’s almost entirely
shaped by the experiences and
worldviews
of
its
listeners,
which means that if you’re not
feeling the emotions or if you
can’t relate to the feelings of
the singer, don’t worry about
appreciating it and just find
something else you’ll enjoy.
But there’s a quote that I love
in an oral history of the ’90s emo
band Jawbreaker — this indie
record label guy who said, “If you
didn’t make out to a Jawbreaker
song or wallow in self-pity after
breaking up with somebody to
a Jawbreaker song, then I don’t
know what you were doing.”
To me, that’s such an amazing
reason to make music (or any
kind of art). We should talk
about all the problems of emo,
because thousands of teenagers
form their philosophies based on
the artists, but when something
about a song just makes you
feel like it’s the center of the
universe, that you want to do
nothing but drive around all
night and sing along until you
lose your voice, that everything
about it reminds you of your
friends and lovers and infinite
nights in your hometown, maybe
that’s one of the greatest things a
song can ever hope to do.
Theisen is buying a Brand
New tour shirt from Hot
Topic. To talk him out of it,
e-mail ajtheis@umich.edu.
ADAM
THEISEN
Emo is shaped
entirely by the
worldviews of
its listeners.
‘Report’ offers cool
gadgets, not much else
By SOPHIA KAUFMAN
Daily Arts Writer
“Minority Report” is the
first series to be adapted from
a Steven Spielberg film, and
the premiere
doesn’t
live
up
to
the
reasonable
expectations,
despite
a
captivating
beginning.
However,
the
episode
manages
to
stay
interesting,
even with the
amateurish
acting and obvious one-liners.
Set in the future of 2026,
the pilot begins with an overly
explanatory
but
intriguing
flashback to three children
who have a unique ability
to “see” any murder in their
vicinity before it happens. This
not-so-pleasant life is made
worse when the government
finds and kidnaps the children,
robbing them of their childhood
years by forcing them to churn
out prediction after prediction
of crimes for years. When this
“pre-crime” program is shut
down, the three children —
twin brothers Dash and Arthur
and their older sister Agatha —
are sent away to be integrated
into mainstream society after
their records are destroyed to
protect their identities.
Flash
forward
to
their
present and Dash (Stark Sands,
“Inside
Llewyn
Davis”)
is
still trying to solve crimes by
himself— but as the weakest
of the three “pre-cogs,” it’s not
working out well. He teams
up with Lara Vega, (Meagan
Good, “Think Like a Man”) a
sharp and emotionally invested
homicide detective who figures
out
his
identity.
The
two
work quickly together, each
compensating for the other’s
slight professional deficiencies,
hoping to return the pre-crime
program to its earlier success
without drawing attention to
what they’re doing (especially
because it’s illegal).
Small,
cute
details
are
occasionally slipped into the
film to remind us that our
present is history to them.
One character sighs for the
simplicity
of
relationships
in the days of Tinder, while
Iggy Azalea is playing in the
background on an old vinyl
record. The whole city of
Washington, D.C. looks like
Times Square on steroids, as
digital advertisements swim
across
the
skies
on
large
billboards, and all of the new
and flashy technology reminds
you of the gadgets in the “Spy
Kids” movies.
Fortunately,
the
cast
is
diverse,
and
so
far
there
haven’t been any major gender
stereotypes in play; Good more
than holds her own even as she
is surrounded by men, taking
up just as much presence as
they. Unfortunately, the acting
is subpar on all sides, which
is surprising — some of the
main actors have impressive
credentials.
Each
brings
the same kind of wide-eyed
overacting usually relegated
for single episode guests on
procedurals like “Law and
Order.”
The
dialogue
can
flow too smoothly to read as
authentic; no one takes the
time to process what the other
has said, or is saying, or even
will
say
(futuristic
shows
can get complicated) before
contributing a witty rejoinder.
“Minority
Report”
does
make
you
think,
weaving
in themes of predestination
versus free will throughout
the episode. Something about
the show holds your attention,
and it may be these existential
questions
brought
up
by
meeting potential murderers
who were locked up and seeing
what kind of life they led after
their convictions.
Or it could just be the cool
gadgets.
Either way, those are really
the only two reasons to keep
watching.
B-
Minority
Report
Series Pre-
miere
Mondays at
9 p.m.
FOX
FOX
“I’m too Good for this show.”
TV REVIEW