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