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
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SERVICES
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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
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