Classifieds

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

ACROSS
1 Kind of basin
6 State secrets?
9 Intense dislike
14 Act poorly?
15 Run a tab, say
16 Words between
two “thanks”
17 Chef protector
18 See 8-Down
19 Floorboard
support
20 Many a
Sundance film
22 Rent payer
23 Registered
names: Abbr.
25 Action at the
front
28 H.S. hurdle
29 Adorn
32 Comical
punctuation
marks from the
drummer
34 Marshy 
lowland
35 Chihuahua, por
ejemplo
36 “__ Eyes”:
Eagles hit
37 ’60s campus gp.
38 Hieroglyphics
reptiles
41 “Do __, not ... ”
43 Work on, as a
stubborn 
squeak
45 Tablets’ kin
48 Swingline insert
49 2,170-mi. trail
terminus
50 Walk with style
52 Luau music
provider
53 Wanting too
much
55 Pry
58 Cookie named
for its flavor
59 Aromatic
necklace
61 Stage
performances
64 Words after miss
or skip
65 Resting place
66 Down source
67 Singer Bruni
married to
Nicolas Sarkozy
68 Morning cuppa
69 Amounts to

DOWN
1 Leaves in a bag
2 Prankster
3 “Pillow Talk”
actress
4 Lots
5 Provide with for a
time
6 Montague lad
7 Blow away
8 With 18-Across,
Southwestern
cuisine
9 Museum pieces
10 Lucy and Ethel
and Thelma and
Louise
11 “Indeed!”
12 Oust, in a way
13 Church choral
works
21 “Eww!”
22 Tibetan title
23 “Angie Tribeca”
channel
24 Weak cry
26 Brand of blended
seasonings
27 Itsy-__
30 Inventor Howe
31 Population
information
33 Book after Daniel
35 Ulysses
threesome?

39 Web irritants ...
and what appears
in each set of
puzzle circles?
40 __-screen printing
42 Faulkner’s “As __
Dying”
44 Actor Marvin of
“Cat Ballou”
45 Courvoisier, e.g.
46 Speedy
Gonzales cry
47 Kitchen gadget

48 OED entry
51 Words for the
audience
54 Hebrew for
“skyward”
56 Oil bloc
57 Hodgepodge
59 Pres. sworn in on
Air Force One
60 Job listing ltrs.
62 “Is it soup __?”
63 Fourth-yr.
students

By Matt Skoczen
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
12/07/16

12/07/16

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

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CHILDISH GAMBINO

This is where we put a humorous cutline of our own devising.

Donald Glover, who grabbed 

the rap name Childish Gambino 
from a Wu-Tang 
name generator, is 
a man constantly 
in crisis.

His has been a 

constant struggle 
to decide who — 
or what exactly — 
Childish Gambino 
is. A graduate of 
the NYU Tisch 
dramatic writing program, his 
career is rooted not in music, 
but in TV and comedy, and that’s 
reflected in the lion’s share of 
his best work. His penchant for 
TV especially has far surpassed 
his other ventures (stand-up, 
dramatic roles) and certainly 
his music, at least in quality.

But more than any of his 

other work, his music has been 
intensely 
personal. 
Culdesac, 

the first mixtape he forward-
ly acknowledges in his music 
career, rightfully inspired moni-
kers of “emo-rap,” less in a com-
plimentary breakthrough way, 
like Kanye’s 808s and Heart-
break, and more in a damn-this-
is-cringeworthy way, like Kid 
Cudi’s Speedin Bullet 2 Heaven.

What made his earliest work 

so unsuccessful was that it too 
couldn’t make up its mind. At 
one moment Gambino would 
criticize the state of rap lyri-
cism, while in the next he would 
lay out such gems as “Now these 
fakes say hey like horse shit,” 
and “My verse is pedophiles on 
the playground.” To brush off 
these major missteps, he tried to 
make himself a special category 
that apparently deserved special 
criteria: he was funny, but he 
could be real. What is real, you 
ask? It’s not really clear, and it’s 
not really clear that Gambino 
knew either. Telling your mind 
can be groundbreaking for some; 
it wasn’t in this case.

To be real for Gambino was 

to boast in a cartoonish voice 
as loudly as possible, and then 
bemoan that everyone didn’t 
agree. And even those ostensi-
bly real moments felt like con-
trived punchlines (“my life’s 
gone pecans”), which could be 
fine if you’re into that kind of 
thing — and can overlook bad 
rapping and even worse writ-
ing — but the production was 
so overweight for the generally 
light and, yes, Childish material 
that the entire thing was grat-
ing. The same applies for his 
first major album Camp, which, 
frankly, deserves less than this 
light brush of a mention, except 
to bring up those early high 
school kids who never really 
liked rap became fascinated 
with the idea of a ‘rapper’ who 
militantly advertised himself 
going to Sufjan concerts (while 
absurdly stating that no other 

rapper listens to indie) but, you 
know, still makes easy dick jokes 
you can rap in the car.

So how in the hell did we get to 

Awaken, My Love!, a funk-heavy 
record that is filled with song 

and vocal inflec-
tion, 
reward-

ingly free of rap 
entirely and, most 
astoundingly, 
actually, 
well, 

good?

Two songs — “I. 

Telegraph 
Ave.” 

and “III. Urn.” — 
from 
Gambino’s 

mixed second album Because 
the Internet offered a glimpse 
of this direction. Both find Gam-
bino experimenting with his 
smooth singing voice and trying 
to spread its applicable length. 
Where it once was pushed into 
corners and felt forgotten on 
hooks, it takes the stage here 
and produces what had, until 
now, been by and far some of his 
best work.

His last release found Gam-

bino coming to this divide head-
first, separating his rapping and 
his singing onto to separate, but 
connected mixtapes. The for-
mer, STN MTN, was delegated 
to Atlanta rap covers, while the 
latter, Kauai, was a breezy and 
original take, improving and 
showcasing the natural voice 
talent he seemingly ignored for 
so long.

In retrospect, that double 

mixtape now feels like a state-
ment of intent. The rapping 
takes the sideline, while the 
true work and production value 
is placed on furthering his vocal 
delivery, carving out his own 
space in the R&B realm.

But even with those hints, 

Awaken, My Love! is a radical 
departure. It requires a major 
realignment of what Gambino 
sounds like, what Gambino 
sings about and the place Gam-
bino comes from. This is espe-
cially true vocally — many of 
the songs use vocal distortion 
or never-before-heard inflec-
tions, and it becomes easy to 
forget this is the same man who 
once made cheesy raps. Open-
ing track “Me and Your Mama” 
is a powerful example of this, 
starting with a lower key, spa-
tial introduction and eventually 
exploding into a choir-assisted 
sermon. Gambino’s voice can 
crack at the edges, but it holds 
strong and grips onto the riv-
eting instrumental, and it’s a 
powerful declaration that this 
album is going to be different 
than anything you’ve come to 
expect from him.

The place of influence for this 

work is also a remarkable shift. 
Where previous works and the 
accompanying 
rapping 
once 

sounded like forced emulations 
of Lil Wayne, Kanye, Drake and 
others, this sound is undeni-
ably rooted in George Clinton’s 
vocal delivery, the sound of the 

Funkadelics 
and 
D’Angelo’s 

croon.

As on his rap work, Childish 

can have a tendency to become 
too rooted in those influences, 
verging on derivative. “Zom-
bies,” one of the album’s weak-
est moments, does precisely 
this. He tries to keep so close 
to Clinton’s unique sound that 
he’s forced to rely on auto-tune 
in a way that doesn’t feel so 
much an addition, but a crutch.

But there are times when 

hyper-altered 
vocals 
feel 

fresh and inventive. “Califor-
nia,” which acts as a marriage 
of Kauai and Gambino’s new 
sound, shimmers and shakes 
with a squeezed inflection by 
Gambino. It’s too funky for 
Margaritaville, but too breezy 
and tropical for purely reviv-
alist ’70s funk. It dances on 
its own island. And the single 
“Redbone,” which finds his 
voice at an unrecognizable, arti-
ficial pitch register (reminis-
cent of Frank Ocean’s “Nikes”), 
is an inescapable earworm and 
serves as a grounding center for 
the album.

Lyrically, the shift in focus 

from quick cartoon rap to 
slower, sparser singing, and 
the expansion of the role of the 
instrumental here mean that 
missteps are simply harder to 
come by. The words are more 
abstract and less open to a sin-
gle interpretation, though when 
they are, the story is clear and 
gripping. “Baby Boy,” which 
deals with Gambino’s new-
found fear as a father, is simple, 
yet powerful: “Don’t take my 
baby boy / Don’t take my pride 
and joy / I hope I stay close, I 
hope I stay close.”

Even the wordless pieces are 

more powerful than any instru-
mental on a Gambino album 
before. The penultimate track 
“The Night Me and Your Mama 
Met,” which features guitar 
work from Gary Clark Jr., is nei-
ther overbearing nor overlong, 
but simply drifts and grows 
toward its conclusion as Clark’s 
guitar whines sweetly. Where 
the interludes in Because the 
Internet were often too heavy 
and left the listener tired, this 
one is refreshing.

Coming off his extremely 

well received, polished TV 
work 
on 
“Atlanta” 
earlier 

this year, Awaken, My Love! 
arrives as another reassertion 
of Donald Glover’s purpose as 
an artist, closing out what is 
undeniably his best creative 
year yet. It seems that in criti-
cism, he worked through his 
crises, appearing out the other 
side more refined, more intel-
ligent and simply more likable, 
those teenage-esque periods of 
poorly articulated angst now 
behind him. What we have now 
is a man who truly lives up to 
the term “multitalented,” and 
whose next move is anyone’s 
guess. 

MATT GALLATIN

Daily Arts Writer

‘Awaken, My Love!’ From an artistic 
crisis, Gambino emerges triumphant

Newest album from controversial musician is a funk-heavy hit

B+

Awaken, My Love!

Childish Gambino

Glassnote

PRACTICE SELF-CARE TODAY! 

EAT SOME FRUIT.

COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW

For several years, one of the 

most exciting parts of Ann Arbor’s 
literary culture has been the Uni-
versity of Michigan’s Helen Zell 
Writers 
Series. 

Named after Uni-
versity alum Helen 
Zell, who donated 
$50 million to fund 
the program with 
her family’s founda-
tion, the series con-
sists of numerous 
visiting writers and 
poets from around the world com-
ing to read and discuss their work. 
Throughout the course of this aca-
demic year, the series has already 
hosted the writer and poet Colm 
Tóibín, poet Bob Hicok and writer 
China Miéville, among others. But 
on Thursday, the series will pres-
ent an event with an artist far clos-
er to home — the University’s own 
poet and writer Laura Kasischke.

“I’ve been writing all my life,” 

Kasischke said in an interview. 
“Even when I was a kid, I enjoyed 
writing. When I read things I 
appreciated them, but I also had a 
feeling I don’t think everyone had 
where I would feel jealous of good 
writing, and I wanted to do that 
myself.”

As she grew into young adult-

hood, the desire to write led 
Kasischke — a native of Grand 
Rapids — to study creative writ-
ing at the University of Michigan, 
where she also received her MFA. 
Today, she teaches at the Univer-
sity as the Allan Seager Collegiate 
Professor of English Language 
and Literature in the Residential 
College. Writing, once a dream for 
Kasischke, is now a central ele-
ment of her life.

“After writing long enough, 

now it’s just a habit,” Kasischke 
said. “It’s something that I do 
because it’s just become a practice 
in my life, and I don’t really know 
how else I would process my life 
and do with the spare time I have.”

Kasischke, an author and a poet, 

has achieved fame in both areas. 
She has received recognition for 

her work in the form of numerous 
prizes, grants and fellowships, like 
the National Book Critics Circle 
Award and a Guggenheim Fellow-
ship. Her process when approach-
ing the two sides of her work, 
however, differs.

“With poetry, usually I don’t sit 

down thinking to 
myself ‘I’m going to 
write a poem now.’ 
I have a line in my 
head, or an image, 
or an idea that I 
was thinking about 
for a few days, and I 
will write in a jour-
nal and eventually 

come up with some sort of form for 
it,” Kasischke said. “With novels 
it’s different … I usually start more 
with a setting and an atmosphere, 
and I just start writing and I keep 
writing until I find a plot, I figure 
out who these characters are and 
what their problems are and what 
their conflicts are and I just keep 
writing and writing. There were 
a couple of novels that I’ve written 
where I knew from the beginning 
exactly what the plot was or I had 
sketched out a plot, but usually I’m 
figuring out what the novel’s about 
in the process of writing it.”

Kasischke 
explores 
many 

themes throughout her work. 
Often, her poetry revolves around 
aspects and stages of her life, such 
as her marriage, children and 
aging parents.

“If I had to sum up what my fic-

tion is about it’s often … the con-
cerns of domestic life,” Kasischke 
said. “But then there’s also some 
gruesome aspect, usually a mur-
der. Somebody gets killed, or 
there’s a body hidden somewhere. 
I don’t usually start out thinking 
there will be, but that’s just where 
I go, where I tend to work (in) 
crime and horror. I only have one 
novel with anything supernatural 
in it, but I like that sort of atmo-
sphere. One of my favorite writers 
is Shirley Jackson, and my kind of 
ideal is subdued terror.”

During 
Thursday’s 
event, 

Kasischke will be discussing her 
work with the director of the MFA 
Program, Doug Trevor, in a free-
flowing conversational interview.

“The director of the MFA pro-

gram, Doug Trevor, and the MFA 
program have initiated this idea 
of having him interview writers 
on the faculty,” Kasischke said. “I 
know that this year he’s going to 
interview me in December, and in 
the Spring he’s going to interview 
Michael Byers, who’s a fiction 
writer on the faculty … it’s part 
of the Helen Zell Writers Series, 
which often brings writers from 
far and wide, and his idea was to 
have a discussion with a writer 
from campus. And there are a lot 
of us.”

While the Zell Creative Writ-

ers Series, in general, is a won-
derful opportunity for Ann Arbor 
residents to learn more about 
authors and poets from around 
the world, Kasischke said that 
Thursday’s event specifically is 
special because it brings local 
artists and the community closer 
together.

What she hopes to pass on, 

at least in part, Kasischke said, 
are thoughts on the part a writer 
plays in the world, the role an 
author takes in society.

“I’d like to say that it’s to give a 

voice to the concerns of our time 
and our place, to add to a conver-
sation about the experiences of 
being a human being on Earth, in 
any particular time,” Kasischke 
said. “I like the quote by Jack 
Kerouac; he says that ‘literature is 
the way we dead men talk to each 
other.’ Of course now we’d include 
women with that, but I think he 
meant that, in general. I do think 
that we all only live for a short 
period of time, and whatever one 
does with that time — taking pho-
tographs, writing articles, doing 
journalism, writing poetry — is a 
little bit of a way to hopefully, per-
haps (leave) some sort of message 
to those come after us. It would be 
nice to think that it’s really cen-
tral and important to the daily 
lives of the people who are living 
and reading contemporary writ-
ing, but I’m not sure that the role 
of the writer is as important in 
his or her own time as (the work) 
which hopefully lasts will be after 
we’re gone.”

DAYTON HARE
Daily Arts Writer

Poet, novelist and RC professor will read her work at UMMA Thursday
Zell presents Kasischke

Laura Kasischke

Thurs. 5:30 to 7 p.m.

Helmut Stern 

Auditorium, UMMA

Free

ALBUM REVIEW

6A — Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

