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October 12, 2015 - Image 5

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, October 12, 2015 — 5A

Classifieds

Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

Have you
purchased
the
Football
Book
yet?

Do the
crossword,
then order
one.

ACROSS
1 Frozen treat
shown on its
package with
syrup
5 Computer
storage media
10 Sunscreen letters
13 Maxwell House
decaf brand
15 From Taiwan,
say
16 On the __ vive:
alert
17 *Strapless
handbag
19 www address
20 “Whoops!”
21 “Get this away
from me”
23 Former great
26 Carolyn who
created Nancy
Drew
27 “Aha!”
28 Home __: Lowe’s
rival
32 Old Russian
autocrat
33 Neglect, as duty
35 “Ten-hut!”
reversal
37 “Oh yeah? __
who?”
38 *Party favors
holder
41 Physique, briefly
44 __ Field:
Brooklyn
Dodgers’ home
46 Piano practice
piece
48 Sagan’s sci.
50 Wined and dined
53 Frosty flakes
54 Physical therapy,
briefly
56 “Better luck next
time!”
58 Pizza seasoning
61 Like much fall
weather
62 Very angry
63 Warning in a
roller coaster,
and a hint to the
first words of the
answers to
starred clues
68 Org. for shrinks
69 Fur fortune-
maker
70 “Everything all
right?”
71 Introverted
72 Start of a wish
73 Texter’s goof

DOWN
1 PC undo key
2 65-Down’s lass
3 Bearded antelope
4 Bavarian “fest”
month
5 Novelist du
Maurier
6 Ames sch.
7 “What can I help
you with?”
iPhone app
8 __ cow: big
income producer
9 Go furtively
10 *Runner-on-third
play
11 Dog Chow maker
12 Coffeemaker
insert
14 Workout woe
18 Cleared weeds,
say
22 Nero Wolfe and
Sam Spade,
briefly
23 Snake’s sound
24 “Off the Court”
author Arthur
25 *Carpe diem
29 Blue Ribbon
brewer
30 Horseplayer’s
letters
31 Herbal brew
34 CIA Cold War foe

36 Mellow, as wine
39 NFL official
40 Consumed
42 Smell
43 Damp at dawn
45 Blow one’s own
horn
47 “The Waste
Land” poet
48 Kitchen allures
49 High-ranking
angel
51 “Play another
song!”

52 Singer Celine
55 Persian faith that
promotes spiritual
unity
57 Perfume giant
59 Poet Ogden
60 Not fooled by
64 George Bush’s
org.
65 2-Down’s fellow
66 Dance for teens
in socks
67 Fight ender,
briefly

By Ron Toth and C.C. Burnikel
(c)2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/12/15

10/12/15

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Monday, October 12, 2015

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

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TV COLUMN

‘You’re the Worst’ and
my quarter-life crisis
I

feel old. I realize that’s
a ridiculous thing to say
— objectively, I’m a very

young person. I’m 21, my skin
is smooth (and still as oily as a
teenager’s);
I know what
Yik Yak is;
I can guilt-
lessly indulge
in late-night
pizzas with-
out worrying
about my
jeans fit-
ting the next
day. I watch
young-person
TV comedies that my dad
would never really understand,
like “Broad City” and “You’re
the Worst.”

But I won’t be 21 for much

longer. On the morning of Oct.
12, the day this column will be
published, the clock will strike
10:38 and I’ll become a 22-year-
old crone. I’ll officially be older
than the majority of my friends
(many of them can’t get into
bars yet), and I’ll officially be
older than my father was when
he got married. Twenty-two
is a magical age, when many
people get their first real job
and move to a real city and
meet real-adult-friends who
drink real cocktails instead of
cheap vodka with vanilla coke.
I won’t reach any of these mile-
stones in my 22nd year — I’m
planning on going to graduate
school, so I’m looking forward
to another six years in a col-
lege town, waiting to have suf-
ficient degrees for my life to
actually start.

In the midst of my quarter-

life crisis, I’ve gotten really
into FXX’s “You’re the Worst.”
I was a fan when it first aired
in 2014, but something always
kept me from connecting emo-
tionally with the show. Objec-
tively, I was not “the worst.” I
was a 20-year-old Midwestern
girl who had never done drugs
or thrown herself into a crazy,
toxic relationship. None of
this has changed a year later,
but “You’re the Worst” has, an
almost imperceptible bit. The
show has the same biting wit
and fearlessness and flawed
characters that it always has,
but with every week and every
new episode, “You’re the
Worst” pushes its characters
further out of their immature
idiot bubbles and into the real,
grown-up world.

In the second episode of the

season, “Crevasses,” Gretchen
decides she’s sick of picking
her outfits out of a black plastic
garbage bag in Jimmy’s apart-
ment; she would like a drawer
in Jimmy’s dresser and for him
to acknowledge the fact that
they are actually living togeth-
er and sharing that space. She
boldly states that she’s going to
“Towels & Things” to buy some
stuff that she didn’t steal or
scam her way into possessing.
She is going to be a real human
who buys towels at a store, god-
damn it.

Except she can’t do it. When

Gretchen arrives at the store,
she freezes a few feet from
the door. She makes several
attempts to walk inside, but
immediately reroutes to the
same spot she stood in a few
minutes ago — it’s like she’s on

the high dive at the town swim-
ming pool, and she suddenly
remembered that some kid
named Andrew did a belly flop
off the high dive once, and he
said it really hurt. Gretchen’s
eyes show the familiar terror of
a little kid who is realizing that
this thing that is supposedly
fun is actually scary as hell.
She has to decide whether it’s
worth it to just jump off and get
it over with or to descend the
ladder, rung by awkward rung.

I’ve never had trouble buying

things at a home goods store,
but this scene was painfully
relatable to me. Every time I
open up the website for a mas-
ter’s program application or the
Word document for my thesis
proposal, I snap my computer
shut and leave it in my room
for a few hours. Maybe if I
ignore the problem and just
leave things undone, I’ll never
have to step up and actually do
them. Being an adult is scary,
because you have to make that
conscious effort to start, and
then somehow find the motiva-
tion and fearlessness to com-
plete the task. Gretchen wasn’t
ready yet, and I’m not quite
there either.

In another episode, Gretch-

en decides to throw a house
party at Jimmy’s, and invites
the crew of girlfriends she
knows are always down for
a crazy night. But when they
arrive at the parties with
babies and AA chips in tow,
she realizes how much has
changed in the three years
since she’d last hung out with
them. They’re real adults with
responsibilities and real lives
to go home to; their days of
wild nights and cocaine are
behind them. Meanwhile,
Gretchen is stuck in the twi-
light zone of her early 20s.
While she desperately search-
es for an age peer who still has
the same priorities she does,
she realizes that Jimmy, her
live-in boyfriend, might be the
only one who’s still there with
her. And that’s fucking ter-
rifying.

The past few installments

of “You’re the Worst” have
ended with Gretchen sneaking
out of Jimmy’s house in the
middle of night, carrying only
her jacket and a burner phone.
I can’t guess what Gretchen is
up to, but I know her behavior
has something to do with the
way she feels trapped by where
she is in life.

Sometimes, I want to do

the same. My friends who are
already 22 have jobs and plans;
I feel like there’s some thresh-
old to adulthood that people
cross on their 22nd birthday,
and as I get closer and closer
to it, I realize there’s no way
I’ll make it over in time. I
don’t write my own checks. I
never learned how to drive.
I still haven’t learned any
marketable skills aside from
being good at turning essays
in on time. But when I watch
“You’re the Worst,” I feel a lit-
tle better about my situation,
because I can see that other
people are right here with me.
There’s something valuable
about having company in your

misery, even if that company is
fictional.

My dad, a fellow TV fanatic,

has been recommending “Mar-
ried” and “Togetherness” to
me for the better part of a year.
For him, these are comedies
imbued with pathos and a real
sense of truth, a humor born
out of middle-aged malaise
that hits him in just the right
place. They are also “the fun-
niest shows on TV,” according
to someone who has never seen
“Broad City.”

I tried watching

“Togetherness” because I trust
my dad’s good taste, but I just
couldn’t relate in the same
way. It was funny, but it relied
on an emotional connection I
just couldn’t make, because I
haven’t been 40 years old yet.
I haven’t felt the same kind
of nostalgic ache for youth
or mourned the decades I’ve
already spent, and I’ve never
suffered a nagging spouse.
And that’s OK. One of the best
things about living in this
time of “peak TV” and having
hundreds of quality shows to
pick from is that there’s always
somebody on a parallel track
to you, someone you can follow
and laugh at and think about
after the show ends. There’s a
point of connection for nearly
everybody; TV offers points
of view from a broader variety
of races, cultures, sexualities
and socioeconomic statuses all
over the spectrum.

The show I’m connecting

with at the moment is
called “You’re the Worst.”
Should I be concerned about
what this says about my
personality? Probably. But a
Hulu subscription is cheaper
than therapy, and I’m really
enjoying this season. This
show is made for lazy old
babies like me, so shut up and
let me have this.

Gilke is on her third cheap

vodka with vanilla coke.

To encourage her, e-mail

chloeliz@umich.edu.

CHLOE

GILKE

FILM REVIEW
New doc explores the
history of Lampoon

By BRIAN BURLAGE

Daily Arts Writer

“So we all know why we came

here,” John Belushi starts to
say at the first meeting of The
Lemmings
in the 1970s,
“A million of
us. We came
here
to
off

ourselves.”

One of the

first
hugely

popular


and
majorly

controversial

National

Lampoon-
sponsored
gags
was
a

show
called

“The Lemmings.” John Belushi
stood in front of a live audience
and essentially talked about all
the reasons why it makes sense
for certain people in certain
situations to kill themselves.
The character was “manically
agreeable,” noted one of the
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead
interviewees,
and
in
many

ways he’s right: As we all sit
and watch this absurd, slightly
overweight, comic numbskull
make fun of our collective
tendency to overreact to things,
we can’t help but laugh a little
bit.

“The
Lemmings”
show

featured
many
Lampoon

writers and other guest stars,
one of which was Chevy Chase.
In part of his interview for the
documentary, Chase recalls a
bit between him and Belushi
where they pretended to be
two teenage friends standing
at a urinal talking. Chase
remembers
some
confusion

he had about the audience’s
incessant laughter at Belushi,
and about a week into the
routine, he realized what they
were laughing at. As Chase
pretended to hold his junk with
his thumb and index finger,
Belushi was using his whole
hand.

This scene, among others,

captures the National Lampoon

magazine in its essence: It
was the Internet before the
Internet. Irreverent penis jokes
were somehow thrown into a
mix of self-deprecation, social
commentary,
theatricality,

and it all seemed wonderfully
strange and familiar, funny
and appalling. Think about any
YouTube
comment
section,

4chan forum or Reddit thread
— what do you see? A bunch
of twisted goofball weirdos
making
overly
insightful

remarks about things of no
consequence.
The
people

behind National Lampoon did
it first.

In fact, they did a lot of things

first, and they did a lot of things
really, really well. In the mid-
1970s, some of the early Lampoon
writers like Belushi, Chase and
Bill Murray entered conversations
with a young man named Lorne
Michaels about creating a live
TV show that would offer new
sketches every Saturday. That
show was “Saturday Night Live.”

That same group of writers

decided also to make a movie about
the silliness and awkwardness of
teenage romance and sex, a germ
of an idea that ballooned into
one of the most beloved comedy
films of all time: “Animal House.”


They also turned out a series of
“Vacation” movies that still run
constantly during the holidays.

Other writers like Al Jean

and Mike Reiss knew they
had screenwriting talent and
wanted to try scripting for
television. They found a job
working for a quirky cartoonist
named Matt Groening, who’d
been running his cartoon about
a dysfunctional family on the
“Tracy Ullman Show” for several
months. Reiss and Jean would
become members of the original
writing team that created “The
Simpsons.”

Director Douglas Tirola does

a good job of making these
enormously important National
Lampoon spin-offs subservient
to the magazine that bore them.
Tirola takes us in front of such
varied talent as Kevin Bacon,
Billy Bob Thornton and Meat
Loaf to give us a sense of how
National
Lampoon’s
humor

infiltrated nearly every part
of the entertainment industry.
Comedy
heavyweight
and

so-called genius Judd Apatow
said it best: the people behind
National Lampoon magazine
became all of modern comedy.

Is “Drunk Stoned Brilliant

Dead” a well-done, articulate
and
endearing
documentary

about
one
of
the
greatest

magazines ever? Yes it is. Can
a documentary ever do such a
magazine and its people justice?
Of course not. But it’s enough
for this film to exist and satisfy
viewers. Go and be entertained.

4TH ROW FILMS

5 minutes before start time of the Republican Presidential debate.

B+

Drunk
Stoned
Brilliant
Dead

4th Row Films

State Theater

DO YOU WANT TO GO TO
SHONDA RHIMES-THEMED

PREGAMES?

JOIN DAILY ARTS.

For information on applying, e-mail

ADEPOLLO@UMICH.EDU
CHLOELIZ@UMICH.EDU

TV has a point
of connection

for nearly
everybody.

Gretchen is
stuck in the
twilight zone.

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