FOR RENT

3 & 4 Bedroom Apartments
$2100‑$2800 plus gas and 
water contribution.
Tenants pay electric to DTE
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3
w/ 24 hour notice required.
1015 Packard
734‑996‑1991

5 & 6 Bedroom Apartments
1014 Vaughn
$3250 ‑ $3900 plus utilities
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3
w/ 24 hour notice required
734‑996‑1991

 ARBOR PROPERTIES 
Award‑Winning Rentals in 
Kerrytown 
Central Campus, Old West 
Side, Burns Park. Now Renting for 
2018. 
734‑649‑8637 | www.arborprops.com 

FALL 2018 HOUSES
# Beds Location Rent
 6 1016 S. Forest $5400
 4 827 Brookwood $3000
 4 852 Brookwood $3000
 4 1210 Cambridge $3400
Tenants pay all utilities.
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3 
w/ 24 hr notice required
734‑996‑1991

Classifieds

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

ACROSS
1 Compass output
5 Gershwin title
color
9 Presidential
daughter Reagan
14 Bird’s-nest, e.g.
15 Ounce
16 Zac of
“Baywatch”
17 Instruction for
dolphin riders?
20 Reader with
reprints
21 Flight attendant’s
indication
22 Flashy genetic
enhancements?
25 Ticket
26 Oscar role for
Forest
27 Piña colada
liquor
28 Like “black
diamond” slopes
29 Hot-dog it?
31 New England
cape
33 __ generis
34 Groaners in a
routine?
38 “I’m such a
moron!”
39 Car nut
40 Campbell of
“House of 
Cards”
43 Filled entirely
46 What bills may
become
48 “Amscray!”
49 Pace often rapid
50 Time capsules?
54 Alternative
medicine
practitioner’s
term for a
mainstream
doctor
56 One might have
tears in it
57 Use second
fiddles in a
pinch?
61 Quick
62 Name of kings in
Denmark,
Norway and
Sweden
63 Light bulb,
metaphorically
64 Pioneer of song
who “crossed the
wide mountains
with her lover Ike”
65 Risqué
66 APB quarry

DOWN
1 Jenny’s offspring
2 Capitol sight
3 Disastrous end
4 Extends over
5 Compete for the
job
6 Online chuckle
7 Female
marsupials have
two
8 Taken back, as
words
9 Equal
10 Love
11 Ed’s wife on “The
Honeymooners”
12 Ad time
13 Shoe part
18 Lots of bucks
19 Is afflicted with
22 Depression
23 Put down
24 “Did you really
think I’d go for
that?”
28 Largest number
in many a column
30 Homes for
creatures of the
not-so-deep
32 Org. in a 1966
merger
agreement
33 Raw, brown or
white stuff

35 Third of a kid’s
poem trio
36 TV streaming
option
37 “Game of
Thrones” evilness
41 Wine label info
42 “Hitchhiker’s
Guide” beings, for
short
43 Many a
hieroglyphic
insect
44 Claim

45 Semihard Swiss
cheese
47 Declaration at a
group wedding
50 Target of budget
trimming
51 Complete
52 Birch of “American
Beauty”
53 Showy bulb
55 Hunted one
58 Ford’s Crown __
59 Like comets
60 Easy mark

By Priscilla Clark and Jeff Chen
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/12/18

01/12/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Friday, January 12, 2018

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

It’s FRIYAY!

6 — Friday, January 12, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

“I’m 
old 
school,” 
Ramona 
Collins said with a laugh when 
describing what’s in store for 
her show this Saturday night at 
Kerrytown Concert House. “I 
know a lot of singers use a set list, 
but I don’t always know what I 
want to sing until I get to the room 
and see what the room is like, 
what the crowd is like, what the 
musicians are like.”
Collins, a jazz singer born and 
based out of Toledo, is a veteran 
of the music scene around the 
state of Michigan. Throughout her 
50-year career, Collins has been a 
regular performer at well-known 
clubs and venues around the area 
— including The Elks, the Dirty 
Dog Jazz Café, Cliff Bells and 
Baker’s Keyboard Lounge. These 
are staples in the greater Detroit 
area.
“Some people think I’m from 
Detroit,” Collins said. “That gives 
you an idea of how much I must 
work there.”
In Ann Arbor, Collins was 
a longtime regular at Bird of 
Paradise Nightclub — Ann Arbor’s 
longest standing jazz club — before 
it closed in 2004.
“That’s how I got to know Ann 
Arbor pretty well and meet a lot 
of people from here,” Collins said, 
noting that it was one of her all-
time favorite venues over the span 
of her career. “I loved the Bird of 
Paradise. I like the way the room 
was laid out, and the way that I 
was very close to the people. I 
like rooms where I’m close to the 

people because I don’t always 
stay on stage — I go out into the 
audience. I like intimate rooms.”
Lucky for Collins, and for her 
Saturday 
night 
audience, 
the 
Kerrytown Concert House is quite 
intimate, holding a maximum of 
110 seats. Even the seats in the back 
row are likely no more than 20 feet 
away from the performers. This 
gives Collins an opportunity to 
connect with the audience in ways 
that may not be as feasible in a 
bigger venue. For example, Collins 
will likely give a “set-up” — a little 
story or monologue that is done 
prior to performing — to introduce 
many of the songs she will sing.
“I remember in 1972, I was 
working 
somewhere 
and 
I 
remember a singer did a set-up 
before she went into the song, and 
I said to myself: ‘Aw man, I gotta 
learn how to do that.’ I was in my 
early 20s back then, maybe late 
teens,” Collins said. “Most people 
who know that story find it hard to 
believe I was ever shy, but I was.”
Collins 
began 
singing 
professionally when she was just 
18 years old, but was exposed to 
the lifestyle of performing long 
before.
“My mother was a musician and 
she used to take me to jam sessions 
in Lansing when I was about 16 
years old because I was very, very 
shy,” said Collins of her childhood. 
Collins never had a formal music 
training and is living proof that it 
takes more than private lessons to 
be a successful musician.
“I was doing this before jazz 
went to college,” Collins said with 
a laugh. “I’m not formally trained; 
I never went to school or anything. 

Over time, I acquired some skills 
and have mentored a lot of young 
people, and it’s nice that they go to 
school to get formal training. But I 
also tell people that you can’t be so 
formal and so technical that you’re 
unable to relate to people. When 
you’re doing a concert, you want 
people to feel something. Music 
has the power to make people 
laugh, cry, sweat; if you’re not able 
to make people feel anything, then 
maybe you need to really analyze 
what’s going on with you. Because 
that’s the thing about music: you 
have the power to use a song as 
a vehicle to reach people. And if 
you can’t do that, there’s definitely 
something missing. And they 
don’t teach that in schools. It’s 
something you either have or don’t 
have.”
This is Collins’s fourth time 
performing at Kerrytown Concert 
House. “I’m looking forward 
to working with the cats,” said 
Collins. “I love these musicians. 
I’ve 
known 
Sean 
(Dobbins, 
Saturday night’s drummer) since 
he was 17 years old. I’d always 
see him at the Bird of Paradise, 
tapping his stick against the table. 
It’s funny, because I’m going to 
do a gig in February, and Sean’s 
son will be playing the drums. It’s 
funny how time flies and things 
change.”
For this Saturday’s concert, 
tickets are 15 dollars for General 
Admission, 20 dollars for assigned 
rows 3-5, 30 dollars for assigned 
rows 1-2 and five dollars for 
students. Collins will also be 
performing with Cliff Monear on 
piano, Kurt Krahnke on bass and 
Dwight Adams on trumpet.

A bookish girl from a techy 
town, I stopped reading sometime 
in the early 2010s. It started 
when the Borders Bookstore in 
downtown Palo Alto was replaced 
by a Blue Bottle and ended when I 
(incorrectly) concluded that I was 
destined to go to medical school. 
This future dermatologist had no 
time for books, let alone fiction.
Unlike the techy tadpoles I’d 
swum with in high school, Ann 
Arbor introduced a new cast of 
characters that said: “Reading is 
cool!” I remembered that I didn’t 
disagree. I started to test the 
waters with the whole “fiction” 
thing again, but soon realized 
that watching an episode of 
“Buffy” before bed was so much 
easier than reading a chapter of 
Jonathan Safran Foer’s latest.
In May of 2016, I picked up Ann 
Patchett’s “Truth and Beauty: 
A Friendship” and proceeded to 
quickly and irreversibly fall back 
in love with reading. A meditation 
on writing, on friendship and 
on what writing can do to a 
friendship, Patchett’s first work 
of non-fiction is gut-wrenching 
and beautiful, even beautifully 
gut-wrenching. This book forced 
me to face a secret that I hid so 
well, I’d forgotten it myself: That, 
above all else, I wanted to be a 
Writer with a capital “W.”
“Truth and Beauty” follows 
the 
decades-long 
friendship 
between 
Patchett 
and 
Lucy 
Grealy, an accomplished poet 
and writer of “Autobiography 
of a Face.” The duo met at Sarah 
Lawrence, their alma mater, and 
roomed together in the following 
years at the prestigious Iowa’s 
Writers Workshop. In writing 
and in life, they understood 
each other perhaps only the 
way writers could. And, while 
the book delineates the rocky 
progression of their respective 
careers, it’s clear that love of the 
craft serves merely as the meet-
cute of their story: Patchett’s 
insightful and hilarious prose 
on Lucy, her character and her 
radiance, reads more like a love 
letter than anything else.
Art has a way of finding us 
when we’re most susceptible. As 

such, I read Patchett’s glorious 
ode to female friendship when I 
was at the tail end of mourning a 
gruesome friend break-up of my 
own. Needless to say, it hit close 
to home.
I 
first 
discovered 
“Truth 
and Beauty” reading Patchett’s 
published collection of essays 
titled, “This Is the Story of a 
Happy 
Marriage.” 
The 
title 
seeped 
with 
sarcasm 
and 
promised anything but a romantic 
fairytale. May relationships crash 
and burn, I say, as President of 
the Infamously Single Club. What 
I got, however, was a series of 
insightful essays on her career, 
the individuals that shaped her 
career (including Lucy) and — 
my favorite — a piece on her 
tumultuous 
relationship 
with 
writing itself. To paraphrase: 
She describes that wonderful 
idea, the kind that dawns on you 
at three o’clock in the morning, 
as a butterfly — free, colorful, 
alive. The author feeds and 
nurtures it in her imagination 
as it flutters above. But, just as 
the author puts pen to paper to 
write that damn great idea down, 
she inadvertently sticks a pin 
right in the belly of the beautiful 
butterfly, 
immortalizing 
the 
ephemeral creature in a glass box. 
That murder, Patchett writes, 
is just like the task of writing. 
Brutal, unforgiving, but hopefully 
still beautiful.
Ann Patchett stuck a needle 
through the heart of the butterfly 
that told the story of her friendship 
with Lucy, and it must have really 
hurt. Lucy lost her jaw to cancer 
at age nine, an operation that left 
her with a facial disfigurement 
that shaped the course of her life. 
In a life-long search for unfound 
identity and untapped happiness, 
Lucy leaned on Ann for the sweet 
affirmations that stick female 
friendships together like honey. 
(Maybe male friends do this too, 
but on this, I cannot comment. 
The lack of information that men 
seem to share with each other 
continues to baffle.) “Tell me I’m 
pretty?” Lucy would ask Ann. She 
told her, and told her everything 
was going to be fine. But the 
beauty that Ann saw in her best 
friend was lost somewhere in the 
exchange of compliments, never 
really reaching its destination. 

For how often do we see the 
vibrancy and resilience in our 
female confidants who can’t 
internalize it themselves?
Following 
the 
Workshop, 
Lucy and Ann wrote letters to 
each other, some of which Ann 
includes in “Truth and Beauty.” 
In their practice of sharing 
writing — one I now understand 
to be incredibly intimate — Ann 
sees Lucy’s train wreck coming, 
even from the other side of the 
world. Waging a continuous 
battle with herself, Lucy soon 
found her career and personal 
life joining the armed troops. In 
one letter, a teardrop stains the 
paper where Lucy writes to Ann, 
her depression deepening and 
loneliness encroaching. Ann, one 
helpless half of the love affair, 
could say nothing to remedy.
In the narrative of Ann and 
Lucy’s love story, I was able to 
delineate elements of my own. 
We — my Lucy and I 
— met in 
high school and became best 
friends the way young girls can. 
We knew everything there was 
to know about each other — 
what the other had for breakfast, 
what homework awaited that 
afternoon, what she’d texted 
that boy yesterday. One night, 
we cried about something now 
insignificant while sitting on 
our respective beds, 3.62 miles 
away from each other, phones to 
our ears. Still, we were together. 
Ours was the kind of friendship 
we believed that, as much as 
anyone can believe anything, 
would last. We would be at each 
other’s weddings, our kids would 
get married, our husbands would 
die before us and we would finally 
be able to live together in our old 
age. And then life got in the way.
I read “Truth and Beauty” 
when it had been almost eight 
months since my Lucy and I 
had last spoken. I’d finished 
my sophomore year of college, 
found new friends, often skipped 
breakfast and texted new boys. 
I suspected that she did, too. In 
Ann Patchett’s detailed, loving 
and painful recollection of her 
friendship with Lucy, I relived my 
own affair all over again.
I inhaled “Truth and Beauty” 
in a single day. Then I read it 
again, and thought about how 
beautiful my long-lost friend is.

Books that built us:
‘Truth and Beauty’

‘Molly’s Game’ fantastic, 
frenetic entertainment

If you like Aaron Sorkin (“The 
Social Network”), you will like 
“Molly’s Game,” his directorial 
debut from a script that he also 
wrote. If you can’t stand the guy, 
this movie is definitely not for you. 
That’s essentially the only question 
any audience members should ask 
themselves when deciding whether 
or not to see this film. Jessica 
Chastain (“Zero Dark Thirty”) 
is incredible. Idris Elba (“Thor: 
Ragnorak”) continues to prove why 
he’s one of the best working actors 
today. Kevin Costner (“McFarland, 
USA”) is kind of annoying. But none 
of this matters because the script 
is so Sorkin-esque, filled to the 
brim with flashbacks, quick cuts, 
voiceovers and fast-talking people 
moving at a rapid-fire pace. If you 
aren’t on board right from the first 
frame, the movie is going to blow 
right by you and never look back. 
Add in a true story component that 
is based on Molly Bloom’s own 
memoirs of her insane life, and 
you have one of the most purely 
entertaining films of the pre-Oscar 
season.
Those who love “The Social 
Network” and “The West Wing” 
will likely find a lot to like here. 
Sorkin keeps the story moving as 
fast as physically possible, flying 
through years of story in what feels 
like a brief (if, at times, exhausting) 
two and a half hours. The story 
follows Molly Bloom, a former 
Olympic level athlete who slowly 
finds herself at the center of the 

biggest and most elaborate poker 
game in Los Angeles. Chastain 
carries the brunt of the film, and if 
she wasn’t as strong of an actress as 
she is, it’s likely the sheer amount 

of voiceover would collapse the 
movie under its own weight. But 
luckily, Chastain is as talented an 
actor as Sorkin is a writer, and the 
movie never feels bogged down 
in exposition, despite its heavy 
presence in most of the scenes. 
Michael Cera (“Sausage Party”) 
is featured prominently in the 
first half of the film as “Player X,” 
an amalgam of various real-life 
celebrities. Cera brings out a side of 
himself that hasn’t been seen before 
onscreen: a menacing, insane, 
evil presence that is legitimately 
frightening. It certainly seems 
possible that after “Molly’s Game,” 
Cera might have a future as a Bond 
villain.
One storyline that not only 
feels inessential but also detracts 
from the film as a whole is the 
relationship between Molly and 
her father, played by Costner. 
Costner and his verbally abusive 
relationship with Molly is a major 
focus of the first third of the 
film before falling away almost 
completely in the second act, only 

to reappear completely out of the 
blue and stop the entire movie in its 
tracks. Molly’s father, as portrayed 
in the film, is a psychologist 
obsessed with Freud and other 
methods 
of 
old-fashioned 
psychology. He reappears when 
Molly is at her lowest point in 
order to psychoanalyze her and 
explain every single action both 
she and he have taken in the film. 
It’s a clear example of something 
Sorkin has been habitually accused 
of: mansplaining. It also feels 
disingenuous to the story being 
told. It recontextualizes the entire 
narrative to being about Molly’s 
father, taking away some of her 
own agency in the process. The 
scene in question leaves a bad taste 
that is quickly washed away when 
Costner leaves the frame, only to 
reappear once more, briefly, at the 
end. However, it still feels like this 
scene, and this entire storyline, 
probably wasn’t necessary to tell 
Molly Bloom’s story. 
“Molly’s 
Game” 
is 
second 
only to the HBO series “The 
Newsroom” in terms of being 
pure Sorkin. It feels similar to 
“The Hateful Eight” in that the 
film is a juiced-up version of the 
director’s style. For those who 
will eat up anything Sorkin writes 
(and now, it appears, directs), this 
movie is a must-see. For those who 
find the man and his work to be 
patronizing and obnoxious, there 
is nothing here that will change 
your mind. For the rest, “Molly’s 
Game” is a thoroughly well-made 
piece of entertainment, one that 
tells a truly fascinating story in 
memorable fashion.

IAN HARRIS
Managing Video Editor

Ramona Collins in blues

ALLIE TAYLOR
Daily Arts Writer

DANIELLE YACOBSON
Managing Arts Editor

STX ENTERTAINMENT

“Molly’s 
Game”

Goodrich Quality 
16, Rave Cinemas 
Ann Arbor

STX Entertainment

