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. 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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.