ACROSS
1 Egg-shaped
tomato
5 Molecule part
9 Winter 
outerwear
14 Suit on a board
15 Plumber’s piece
16 Playful trick
17 One raising a
hand (TN)
19 Pedro’s “I love
you”
20 Answer (for)
21 More confident
22 Wedge-shaped
arch piece (PA)
26 Byzantine or
Roman (NY)
27 Many California
wines
28 Motel charges
30 Hockey legend
Bobby et al.
31 Milk: Pref.
32 Abbr. for some
Garden State
senators
35 Piled-high hairdo
(UT)
38 Fictional Korean
War surgeon
Pierce (IA)
40 ’60s radical gp.
41 Loved ones
43 Tribulations
44 Coeur d’__,
Idaho
45 One of the
Musketeers
46 At an earlier date
(OK)
49 Word in a fair
forecast (FL)
52 Part of USDA:
Abbr.
53 Top grade
54 Below, poetically
55 What seven
puzzle answers
are with
reference to
abbreviations in
their clues
60 Colorful tropical
fish
61 Genealogy
diagram
62 Course with
ratios
63 “Save me __”
64 Ranch group
65 Seek divine
intervention

DOWN
1 Sermon giver:
Abbr.
2 Tic-tac-toe loser
3 Actor Gibson
4 Puncture prefix
5 Likely will, after “is”
6 Attach with string
7 Tennis period
since 1968
8 Trivial
9 “Bee’s knees”
equivalent
10 Gets the better of
11 Video game
pioneer
12 Microwave beeper
13 Composer’s
creation
18 Washington MLB
team
22 Drawer openers
23 Dog-__: folded at
the corner
24 Belgian city
where the In
Flanders Fields
Museum is
located
25 Window
framework
26 James of jazz
29 German cries
31 Tilt
32 Indian metropolis

33 Paintbrush
bristles material
34 James of the Old
West
36 Small talk
37 Change course
suddenly
39 __ and kin
42 Breathe
44 “Peer Gynt Suite”
dancer
45 Part of NBA:
Abbr.

46 Seasonal gift
giver
47 Curved moldings
48 Deliver a speech
50 Stomach problem
51 Microwaved
53 Lit. collection
56 Band equipment
component
57 Blemish
58 Pilot’s prediction:
Abbr.
59 Bashful

By Mark McClain
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/23/16

02/23/16

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

Classifieds

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

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& summer. Call 734‑834‑5021.

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Most include Heat and Water
Parking where avail is $50/m
Many are Cat Friendly
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www.cappomanagement.com

IDEAL SMALL OFFICES/STUDIOS
2nd Flr UM Campus‑ Short or Long 
Term Leases. Call 860‑355‑9665
campusrentalproperties@yahoo.com

WORK ON MACKINAC Island 
This Summer – Make lifelong friends. 
The Island House Hotel and Ryba’s 
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6 BEDROOM FALL 2016‑17
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SERVICES

FOR RENT

HELP WANTED

SUMMER EMPLOYMENT

6 — Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

I

t was a snowy day in Janu-
ary, and my roommate 
Sophia and I were walking 

home. As usual, our conversa-
tion had turned to books, but 
this time 
we talked 
specifically 
about those 
of our child-
hood. Sophia 
offhandedly 
asked me if I 
would let my 
hypotheti-
cal children 
read these 
same works. 
When I 
joked that I would incinerate 
garbage like “The Clique” or 
“Gossip Girl” before letting it 
into my future home, Sophia 
asked what I would encourage 
my children to read. Without 
hesitation, I said that if I had a 
daughter I would sequentially 
give her all of Phyllis Reynolds 
Naylor’s “Alice” books when 
she started third grade.

There’s a moment in the film 

“The Royal Tenenbaums” when 
a voiceover from narrator Alec 
Baldwin responds to a state-
ment made by the patriarch 
of the family, quietly disclos-
ing that “Immediately after 
making this statement, Royal 
realized that it was true.” The 
exact same line boomed in my 
head after I mentioned “Alice.” 
It’s comforting to think that 
the series critical to my adoles-
cence is always on the tip of my 
tongue and a bit disconcerting 
that Alec Baldwin’s voice lurks 
in the corners of my minds.

The “Alice” series started 

in 1985 with “The Agony of 
Alice.” Alice McKinley is an 
awkward, motherless sixth 
grader being raised by her 
father and her brother, Lester. 
Lacking a maternal figure, 
Alice feels doubly clueless 
heading into adolescence and 
attempts to find a mother in 
teachers, aunts and Lester’s 
teenage girlfriends with their 

extensive knowledge of perms. 
Naylor follows Alice through 
28 books — we see her teenage 
years to her adulthood in the 
last book. Naylor has described 
Alice as the daughter she never 
had, crafting her with love and 
reality.

I read the first book when 

I was in fourth grade. In the 
start of the year, the girl sitting 
across from me — my future 
best friend, Elizabeth — saw 
me reading it. I had just taken 
“The Agony of Alice” out of my 
desk when she leaned across 
the table. Elizabeth has always 
been one to play it cool, but 
this was way too important to 
be nonchalant. “Did you know 
that Phyllis Reynolds Naylor 
lives in our neighborhood?” 
I did not. But it made me feel 
even closer to Alice. Alice, who 
loved words and who got her-
self into awkward situations by 
thinking without speaking just 
like I did, was conceived two 
blocks away from where I was 
growing up.

The proximity of the author 

amplified my intense obses-
sion with the books, but the 
origin of my infatuation with 
Alice was the message, because 
it was different from the sim-
plistic didactic prose of other 
young adult I was reading, 
where themes of “being your-
self” littered every page. But 
Alice doesn’t conform to that 
confining argument, instead 
embracing that change and 
uncertainty are necessary 
for growth. In “My So Called 
Life,” another inspirational 
and important form of teen 
media, the protagonist Angela 
proclaims with angst “People 
always say how you should 
be yourself, like yourself is a 
definitive thing, like a toaster 
or something.” This was a 
problem I encountered as a 
teenager and continue to expe-
rience — is there inauthenticity 
in perpetual change? “Alice” 
helped me mitigate this shame 
of not immediately knowing 
who we are and who we could 
be. My friends and I were 
never not going to be simulacra 
and Naylor knew that — but it 
felt like she loved us anyways. 
We could be whoever we want-
ed for as long as we wanted, 
and that was beautiful.

What truly made the “Alice” 

series different from other 
young adult books like “The 
Song of the Lioness” series or 
“The Babysitter’s Club” was its 
unabashed treatment of sex. 
I have the clearest memory of 
being 10 and reading one of the 
“Alice” books on a car trip with 
my family. Through Naylor’s 
rather graphic descriptions, 
I learned what oral sex was, 
and asked my mother if it was 
true because I genuinely could 
not believe it. After affirming 
that this aspect of sexuality 
was not a joke, she craned her 
head from the front seat with a 
perplexed look. “What? Rebec-
ca, what are you reading?” 
Through the awkward sexual 
misadventures of Alice and her 
friend, Naylor, a self-described 

“enlightened grandmother,” 
the series strives to demystify 
sex and the taboos surround-
ing it. The expression of sexual 
development in “Alice” doesn’t 
follow a typical mold, espe-
cially in its focus on female 
pleasure and masturbation. 
Alice’s undaunted discussion 
of masturbation leads to more 
pleasurable sexual relations 
later in her life. In “Intensely 
Alice,” Alice and her boyfriend 
Patrick mutually masturbate on 
a park bench where she “guided 
his fingers just where I wanted 
them, showing him how hard to 
press and how fast to do it, and 
a few minutes later, in the dark 
of Botany Pond, I came.” Scenes 
like the one can be jarring but 
also informative for a young 
readership just learning about 
sex and relationships. Thank-
fully, my parents were either 
too busy or cool enough to let 
me continue reading the series, 
but its frank discussion of sex 
has made the “Alice” series one 
of the most frequently chal-
lenged series in schools and 
libraries in the United States.

The stories of Alice McKin-

ley emulate the mores of young 
American women in a way that 
no other series has had the 
courage to. The narratives are 
taken from a myriad of sources 
— from emails and letters from 
readers of “Alice” to Naylor’s 
own mother’s experiences in 
the early 20th century. In an 
interview with The New York-
er, Naylor aptly described that 
“What happened to women in 
1914 still resonates in (the 21st 
century).”

When I told Elizabeth, who 

is now a sophomore at Vander-
bilt University, that I was 
writing this column her first 
reaction was “I’M CRYING 
I LOVE YOU.” After calming 
down she said, “I remember 
‘Alice’ because she had these 
really great two best friends. 
Maybe it’s not that different 
from other books but it felt 
very real and honest and they 
went through a lot. Their prob-
lems and experiences weren’t 
trivialized or made to seem 
immature — they felt authentic. 
Also, I think you should men-
tion that Phyllis Reynolds Nay-
lor gave out Almond Joys when 
we went trick or treating at her 
house.”

Through Alice, Naylor 

thoughtfully explores what it 
means to be a girl and a woman 
in public spaces and fearlessly 
lets her young female readers 
know that they have power in 
this world, a revolutionary act 
in any time period. In “The 
Agony of Alice,” Alice’s teacher 
and friend, Mrs. Plotkin, tells 
her that “we grow up whether 
we’re ready or not.” These 
words are terrifying in their 
inescapability but reflective 
of Naylor herself in their very 
nature — unafraid to inspire 
action in simplicity and truth.

Lerner always enjoys it when 

you tell her “I’M CRYING I LOVE 

YOU.” If you’re in tears and in 

love, e-mail rebler@umich.edu.

LITERATURE COLUMN

Revisiting the legacy 

of the ‘Alice’ series

REBECCA 
LERNER

‘Painting With’ is 
bland and lacking

Animal Collective 
returns, but they 
shouldn’t have

By SELENA AGUILERA

Daily Arts Writer

Since the beginning of the cen-

tury, the always abstract Animal 
Collective has been traveling down 
a long road of wonderful creations. 
Unfortunate-
ly, its newest 
release, Paint-
ing With, takes 
them 
down 

a very wrong 
path.

Painting 

With 
begins 

with 
bright 

and fast synths 
paired with vocals repeating “Flo-
flo-flo-rida,” in the song “FloriDa-
da,” and I wish it didn’t. The vocals 
sound like they could be used in a 
toothpaste commercial, and every 
component in the song is repeti-
tive and dry. Previously, Animal 
Collective has used repetition to 
great effect in their music. They 
were the epitome of the ambient 
drone, but the repeated notes in 
past albums seemed to create a 
rhythm that coincided your heart-
beat. “FloriDada” sounds repeti-
tive in an exhausting way and each 

song thereafter imitates the first, 
illuminating this unauthenticity.

The songs just travel through 

one ear and escape out the other 
because they lack personality. 
Each element in every song tries 
too hard to be recognized. They 
all wash each other out, creat-
ing a collective, irrelevant piece 
of almost nothing. None of them 
touch my heart like the 2005 
album Feels, which had every sin-
gle element strategically placed. 
Painting With’s elements felt care-
lessly thrown together.

There’s no evocation of any 

type of feeling until “Burglars” 
begins, and the feelings it does 
evoke aren’t exactly pleasant. 
“Burglars” follows the same strict, 
fast-paced sound as every other 
song off Painting With, but being 
the fifth song, it becomes irritat-
ing. Animal Collective mastered 
the strategy of atonality in their 
previous works, creating a some-
times 
life-altering 
experience 

with each listen. They allowed me 
to be high without getting high, 
which is why they were so rad. But 
“Burglars,” like every other song 
on Painting With, feels uncomfort-
able. The synths are too fast and 
the sound is too atonal. I feel my 
heartbeat increasing when I listen 
to it, and paranoia starts to creep 
over my shoulder.

“Burglars” thankfully ends and 

“Natural Selection” begins, and 

it sounds like Animal Collective 
is desperately trying to reach for 
their old style, but their arms are 
too short. The repetitions remain 
present and it feels played out. Ani-
mal Collective used to pull off this 
psychedelic ambient drone cross 
with originality, but Painting With 
sounds like a broken record.

The 
ninth 
track, 
“Spilling 

Guts,” sounds plastic compared 
to the reality of songs on previ-
ous albums. Most of these griev-
ances can be blamed on the way 
the vocals are structured in Paint-
ing With. Generally, in the older 
albums by Animal Collective, 
the instrumentals were the main 
focus. Even in vocal-heavy albums 
like Strawberry Jam, the vocals 
held one purpose: to be a guide to 
keep you grounded through the 
music’s majestic experience.

Band member Noah Lennox 

once discussed the summer the 
band first tripped on LSD, say-
ing, “everything since has been 
a variation of what we explored 
that summer,” and their experi-
ence became ours through their 
music. Their previous albums 
were personal, and each song was 
beautifully constructed with indi-
viduality. The atonality worked, 
and the vocals followed the tail 
end of each sound to create this 
avant-garde piece of art. Listening 
to them felt like a psychedelic trip, 
and Painting With is burnt-out. 

DOMINO

This is the weirdest version of “Wonderwall” I’ve ever heard.

ALBUM REVIEW

C-

Painting 
With

Animal Collective

Domino

ARE YOU FASCINATED 

YET REPULSED BY 
PRO WRESTLING?

DO YOU HAVE A 

TATTOO OF EVERY 

EZRA KOENIG 

TWEET?

WELCOME HOME.

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