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 DOMINICK’S HIRING FOR spring & summer. 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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. Check out more articles online at michigandaily.com/section/arts