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Arts
Monday, February 20, 2017 — 5A
Classifieds
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ACROSS
1 Soothsayer
5 Quick fix for an
elbow hole
10 Underwater
vessel
13 Cuba libre fruit
14 Lorena of LPGA
fame
15 Phony
16 Votes in favor
17 “My mistake”
18 Rice field draft
animals
19 Panama Canal
nickname
22 Robotic maid on
“The Jetsons”
23 Inherently
27 Where to find
Lima and llamas
30 Like farm country
31 Thanksgiving
tuber
34 When baseball
closers usually
shine
38 They’re often big
in showbiz
40 Sparkle
41 “I’m hungry
enough to __
horse!”
42 NYC thoroughfare
that becomes
Amsterdam at
59th Street
45 Vert. counterpart
46 Gandhi’s land
47 Garbage email
49 “Get moving!”
53 Wash or spin
57 When time is
running out
60 Computer image
63 TV signal part
64 “Giant” author
Ferber
65 Four-sided
campus area
66 Extended
families
67 Cincinnati
ballplayers
68 Tennis match
segment
69 Saintly rings
70 “Garfield” pooch
DOWN
1 Not as forthright
2 “Old MacDonald”
letters
3 Webzines
4 Mail again, as a
package
5 Fancy-schmancy
6 Have __: freak
out
7 Pulsate
8 Like grandpa’s
jokes, probably
9 Contemporary of
Mozart
10 Jazz combo horn
11 Don Ho’s
instrument
12 “Gone Girl”
co-star Affleck
15 Mint of money
20 High school
junior, usually
21 Merit
24 Dickens villain
Heep
25 Totaled, as a bill
26 “Pomp and
Circumstance”
composer
28 Capital of Latvia
29 Sch. near the
Strip
31 “Abominable”
critters
32 Insurance rep
33 Paris newspaper
Le __
35 Golfer’s starting
point
36 __ Christian
Andersen
37 “Still sleeping?”
response
39 Regular payment
43 Precipitation
stones
44 A pop
48 Rescued
damsel’s cry
50 Enlighten
51 Throat dangler
52 Bicycle feature
54 Encrypted
55 Monday, in Le
Mans
56 Use the delete
key, e.g.
58 El __: weather
phenomenon
59 Throw away
60 Mensa nos.
61 Billiards stick
62 Breakfast grain
By Mark McClain
©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/20/17
02/20/17
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Monday, February 20, 2017
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
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HELP WANTED
SUMMER EMPLOYMENT
Happy birthday, mom.
Every
morning,
when
choosing my outfit for that day, I
try to imagine Rihanna wearing
whatever I’ve chosen. If I can’t,
back in the closet it goes.
If I can, however, I will wear
those clothes. I will wear them
and I will walk around campus
and I will feel like I matter more
than anyone else because I am
Rihanna, dammit.
She
may
be
turning
29
Monday, but Rihanna has been
making and breaking all of
fashion’s most ubiquitous rules
since her debut on pop’s world
stage in 2005. She could wear
a paper bag and it would be
art. From epitomizing every
clothing trend of the early 2000s
to reminding us that women
have nipples, you, me and Anna
Wintour have badgalriri to
thank for bringing bravery to
the forefront of 21st century
fashion.
She may be the baddest bitch
in the Western Hemisphere
(fact-checked),
but
Rihanna
is proof that anyone with guts
can become a fashion icon in
their respective community.
Long since passed are the days
of “I could never pull that off”
— where would our sexy pop
goddess be if she’d relented to
self-doubt? Not rocking that 15
thousand-dollar Saint Laurent
heart cape, that’s for sure.
The Barbadian beauty queen
carries indisputable clout in
the world of fashion. She is
currently the Creative Director
of
her
own
high-end
line
with Puma alongside Design
Director Melissa Battifarano.
Yet more transcendent than the
frilly athleisure of Fenty x Puma
is Rihanna’s everyday street
style. A Gucci tracksuit here,
a Balenciaga stole there. The
woman can do no wrong; if she
does, the rules will just change
and the fashion industry will be
on its merry way.
Rihanna is my fashion mother.
If she won’t wear it, neither will
I. Here’s to 29, badgalriri. Thank
you for the boundary-breaking,
the beauty and the courage. Be
sure to pour it up tonight.
TESS GARCIA
Senior Arts Editor
Happy Birthday, Rih: An
ode to fashion’s badass
BADGALRIRI
Rihanna, who celebrates her 29th birthday today
Lo Theisen talks The Menzingers, the going and the leaving
MUSIC COLUMN
Where do we go now?
The Menzingers aren’t the
first band to make youthful
music for those who aren’t so
young anymore, but they’re
probably the most up front
about it. The very first chorus
on their new album, After the
Party, asks the question that
looms over all of the next 12
tracks: “Where are we gonna
go now that our twenties are
over?”
Usually, when rock bands
get older, they get softer.
Compare the unhinged-comp-
lit-major bellowings on The
Hold
Steady’s
Separation
Sunday with the tighter, more
traditional and melodic work
of that band’s last two albums.
Look at The Clash recording
“Should I Stay or Should I
Go” only a few years after
“White Riot.” Not only is it
difficult to keep up youthful
fury an entire career, but most
long-standing
punk
bands
also switch up their sounds
because, eventually, loud and
fast becomes too tight a box.
The Menzingers have bucked
this
seeming
inevitability.
After the Party is a clear
turning point for the band, but
it doesn’t feel like anything
was lost in this evolution.
The band plays a show in
Detroit next week, and these
new choruses should get the
crowd jumping and shouting
just as much as older beloved
work. Songs like the title
track, “Midwestern States,”
“Bad Catholics” and “Lookers”
all
feature
immediately
memorable melodies, no-frills
guitar work and unrelenting
drumbeats, just like you would
expect from The Menzingers.
Meanwhile,
the
slight
structural experimentations of
“Charlie’s Army” and “House
on Fire” emerge as standouts
on later listens.
It’s clear, though, that the
bandmembers
have
learned
a thing or two since their
breakthrough album On the
Impossible Past. While the
band has been singing about
the passing of time ever since
they started making music, the
nostalgia on old Menzingers
tracks felt aspirational and
naïve, as though singer Greg
Barnett was crafting future
memories that he anticipated
looking back on. The images
on
classics
like
“Gates”
and “Casey” are almost too
expertly
arranged,
with
cigarette-smoking waitresses
flirting
with
hackey-sack
playing stoners in a beautiful
mural of Midwestern suburbia.
Barnett seems to know exactly
which words he needs to sing
with his unpretty, garage-
band voice to get all his fans
reminiscing on their fondest
moments of adolescence.
After the Party’s details feel
lived in, rougher and truer to
life. The opening track puts
us in a clear age, a fixed point
in time rather than a hazy,
curated nostalgic landscape.
And so an early reference
to
“On
the
Road,”
that
cliché symbol of young male
adventure,
doesn’t
prompt
eyerolls, because it ends up on
an album next to lines about
falling asleep to dumb shows on
Netflix. Lyrics that doubt the
value of a college diploma hit
hard with a whole generation.
A
violent
ex-boyfriend
sparks real menace, because
we know that in real life,
we’re not guaranteed safety
and happy endings. These
aren’t inspiring narratives of
romantic Midwest heroism,
but songs of self-doubt and
earnest reflection.
But what I’ve been trying to
decipher most about After the
Party is how universal it feels
despite being written from the
perspective of one definite age.
Just as The Menzingers have
crafted more specific songs
with precise details, they also
seem to have expanded their
potential fanbase. Sure, it’s
understandable that a youthful
break-up anthem like “Gates”
may
only
inspire
passion
among a crowd that spends its
nights waiting for service at
Steak ’n Shakes and drinking
pitchers in bowling alleys,
but then why would After the
Party reach anyone who hasn’t
just turned 30?
More bluntly, how am I, a
21 year-old senior in college,
identifying with so much of
this album? When I hear the
couplet “Everybody wants to
get famous/But you just wanna
dance in a basement” I see the
most vivid scenes of my friends
at parties singing along to top-
40 pop. “There’s beer left,
so I think I’ll stay” is a line
I’ve definitely heard before.
“Waiting for your life to start
then you die/Was your heart
beating in the first place?”
feels terrifyingly urgent no
matter what your age.
The truth, I think, is that The
Menzingers have managed to
write an evergreen chorus and
then sustained it for a whole
album. In my head, I can easily
hear Bruce Springsteen singing
something like that first song:
“Where am I gonna go now
that my sixties are over?” Ten
years from now, it would be
no surprise if the band’s new
album leads off with: “Where
are we gonna go now that our
thirties are over?” To me,
when I listen, I actually hear:
“Where am I gonna go now that
my college is over?”
What The Menzingers really
get right is that After the Party
isn’t any kind of ending any
more than your thirties and
beyond are a mere epilogue
to your twenties. What one
discovers over the course of
this record is that it’s almost
ridiculous to worry so much
about dividing life into such
distinct decades. In reality, we
slowly and unknowingly evolve
and reinvent ourselves, keeping
the good stuff and gradually
shedding
what
no
longer
feels true. We move from one
thing to the next, but rarely is
anything truly “over” until the
very end. After the party, there
are usually just a few missed
alarms and, if you’re lucky, a
delicious breakfast.
LAUREN THEISEN
Daily Music Columnist
Hayes ponders self-image
in new poetry collection
Terrance Hayes’s most recent
poetry collection “How to be
Drawn” builds upon the idea of the
word “drawn” in a broad sense. In
addition to being a poet, Hayes is a
visual artist, his work pondering
what it means to sit for a figure
drawing. In an interview, he posed
questions such as: “What does it
mean to sit? What does it mean for
someone to let me draw them?”
He also pondered what it is to be
“withdrawn” as well as how to
move about the world, and drawn
as in the sense of a horse-drawn
carriage, wondering what it is to be
seen and be engaged.
Terrance Hayes read in the
apse of the UMMA this past
Tuesday as part of the Zell Visiting
Writers Series. Hayes is a former
MacArthur fellow and recipient of
2010 National Book Award as well
as recently appointed Chancellor
of the American Academy of Poets.
He read from his most recent
collection of work, “How to be
Drawn” and additionally shared a
series of unpublished sonnets, each
bearing the same title: “America’s
Sonnet for my Past and Future
Assassin.”
Hayes opened with a poem
titled “Gentle Measures,” which
alludes to an 1871 text that
instructs parents on strict child
discipline. In the poem, Hayes
transcends time and space to
navigate legacy, abandonment,
God and love as one generation
flows into the next. He ends one
stanza, “Goddamn, I want to be
as hardcore as my daddy,” and two
stanzas later writes, “But I will
not claim to know other people’s
loneliness.” He mentions children
growing up all over the globe, from
Bolivia to Syria, moving seamlessly
into reverence for things as small
and tangible as a tongue painted
inside a doll’s mouth and back
to
high-stakes
statements
of
passion such as: “I have said I am
in love with beauty,/but my heart
is so mangled, it spills blood on
everything.”
With this he suggests a love
that exists within the crossroads
of inexorable pain and hardship,
worthy because it is under such
constant and complicated threat,
something persistent across racial,
geographic and theological lines.
He read “American Sonnet for
Wanda C.” — a sonnet dedicated
to Wanda Coleman, a poet who
acknowledged the sonnet as an
inherently
exclusionary
poetic
form and worked to reclaim it.
Expressing her experience as
a Black woman, she titles her
sonnets “American Sonnets” as a
way of probing previously accepted
notions of American identity.
In a tribute to her, Hayes writes:
“If there is no smoke, there is
no party. I think of you, Miss
Calamity/Every
Sunday.”
He
embraces what can be made wild,
radical or unpredictable within the
confines of conventional form.
As a reading that took place
on Valentine’s Day, it seemed
only fitting for Hayes to read
sonnets, best known as 14-line
poems addressed to a lover, yet his
sonnets are by no means swoony or
adoring, as they dwell in imagined
deaths and deep-rooted fear.
He introduced his series of
unpublished sonnets, each bearing
the title “America’s Sonnet for
my Past and Future Assassin,” a
collection Hayes began the day
after the election. He described
the poems as “weird.”
“They’re
not
like
normal
stories,” Hayes said. “People are
used to thinking of poems and
most things that are written as
narrative.”
He claims that his poems do not
always contain clear narratives,
but are often are driven by tone or
image.
“I
recognize
that
my
imagination is strange but I’m
always trying to put people at
ease,” he said.
The addressees of the sonnets
range from a stinkbug to President
Donald Trump to the color white.
He
revisits
the
omnipresent
tension between light and dark
with a line such as “part sanctuary,
part panic room.” He pulls in
references to music icons such as
Prince and Jimi Hendrix (Hayes
suggested that poetry is indeed
music, the absence of instruments
replaced by breath and voice). In
writing these sonnets he asked
himself: “Can I write a political
poem phrased as a love poem?”
In one poem he repeats the
n-word,
associating
it
with
different
body
parts
—
the
repetition haunts the space and
the poem ends with the line:
“you will never assassinate my
ghost.” Another poem addresses
Sigmund Freud’s grandson Lucien
Freud, an artist who encapsulated
the perverse and strange. The
poem dwells in the corporeal and
contemplates the notion of the
voyeur, using the word “pussy”
liberally, much to the discomfort
of the audience and even eliciting
discomfort in Hayes himself.
However,
this
notion
of
discomfort
or
what
one
audience
member
identified
as “provocative” is central to
Haye’s poetic philosophy. He
said that he likes to surprise and
be surprised by his own work,
exploring uncharted territory as
far as writing poems that make
him squirm a little. Hayes said that
to read a piece of work that might
make him anxious is a reminder.
“It just means that you’re still in
the water, that you’re still working,
that it’s a living breathing thing.
It’s not even about perfection for
me, it’s just about working. I like it
because it makes me more alert,”
Hayes said.
In another sonnet he addresses
Donald Trump, invoking the
color orange with phrases such as
“goldfish pumpkin,” and a line, “I
know your stage.” Another poems
recounts images of whiteness in
the form of a near-alphabetized
list — “Aryans, Betty Crocker,
blowfish,
bullhorns,
carcasses,
etc.”
Hayes’s
adherence
to
the
traditional sonnet form amplifies
his contained restlessness, as his
final sonnet contains the eerily
comprehensive lines, “You just
wanted change is all,” and, “May
your restlessness come to rest.”
This
constant
motion,
a
pursuit of restlessness and slight
discomfort
supports
Hayes’s
philosophy as a teacher of poetry.
“It is a practice. It’s not a
product. It’s a process,” Hayes tells
his students. “I’m trying to say you
should always be thinking about
what you’re making, what the next
thing is, opposed to letting the dust
gather on a handful of really great
poems you’ve written. I don’t think
that’s what it’s about.”
Hayes concluded the reading
by sharing “The Rose Has
Teeth,” a poem resembling a
lyrical ode to the body and the
piano and a lover that contains
moments of music such as “I
was
trying/to
limber
your
shuffle, the muscle wired/to
muscle” and “I wanted to be/a
ghost because the skull is just
a few holes/covered in meat,”
as he ponders bodily motion
as one observes and exists and
lives out the poetic process and
indulges in what Hayes refers to
MARIA
ROBINS-SOMEVILLE
Daily Arts Writer
COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW