The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, September 21, 2018 — 5A

ACROSS
1 Harmonious 
groups
7 Maybelline 
product
14 Role for Miley
15 Sticks
16 Result of too 
many people 
fishing?
18 Customer file 
prompt
19 Lincoln and 
Grant had them 
in common
21 Meet halfway
22 Show of 
support
24 Religious 
music?
27 Buoyant wood
30 On point
31 ’60s protest gp.
32 Well-versed 
about sailing 
ships?
37 Exhilarated 
shout
38 Fencing gear
40 Dispute 
between polite 
fellows?
44 Term.
47 Practical joke
48 Stimulate
49 Problems with 
cellphone 
signals?
54 __ corda: 
played using 
the piano’s soft 
pedal
55 Orly arrival
56 Like little-known 
facts
59 Hungary 
neighbor
62 “Above my pay 
grade” ... and, 
read in four 
parts, a hint to 
16-, 24-, 32-, 40- 
and 49-Across
65 Dodging
66 Pushes back, 
say
67 No
68 Antarctic 
explorer 
Shackleton

DOWN
1 Golden State 
traffic org.
2 “Bali __”
3 Nearly zero
4 About
5 Indian noble
6 Cutting
7 George Strait 
label
8 Munic. official
9 Family ride
10 Shipped stuff
11 Dodges
12 Fix some bare 
spots, say
13 Take stock of
17 Sixteenth-
century year
20 Ivory, for one
22 __ Dhabi
23 Jabber
25 Cut or crust 
opener
26 Seventh in an 
instructional 
39-Down, 
perhaps
28 Obstacle
29 Back to back?
33 Pines
34 Very small 
amounts

35 Volunteer for 
another tour
36 Final Four game
39 Order
41 Eau in Ecuador
42 Sister
43 It may be iced
44 Showed 
leniency toward
45 Villa d’Este city
46 Hostility
50 Cattle drivers

51 Navel 
configuration
52 Shore bird
53 Goal or basket
57 Lenovo 
competitor
58 Bangalore 
bread
60 Lodging spot
61 Sports rep.
63 Sot’s affliction
64 East, in Essen

By Jerry Edelstein
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/21/18

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/21/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Friday, September 21, 2018

Summers at my house are 

soundtracked by the oldies. It’s 
something that I credit most of my 
random music history knowledge 
to, just my family sitting with each 
other around the pool, talking about 
songwriters from the ’60s and ’70s, 
listening to soul and rock and, of 
course, The Beatles. There is a shirt 
my dad occasionally wears to these 
parties, partly as a joke and partly 
for its shock factor. He bought it as 
a gag, I imagine at an airport, or in 
Venice, CA., where jokey t-shirts 
hang from store vendors like 
bananas off a tree. Sometimes, my 
stepmom will steal it from him and 
parade through the house in her 
pajamas, but its slogan isn’t serious 
to them. I always question the 
words, and they laugh and throw 
their heads back, saying, “It doesn’t 
really matter, does it? It was all their 
faults.” On the front, in big white 
letters, the t-shirt says one thing: I 
blame Yoko.

Of course, this is in reference to 

the constant cultural assumption 
that Yoko Ono broke up The Beatles, 
a prevailing theory among both 
self-proclaimed scholars and casual 
fans alike. In reality, the reasoning 
behind their infamous dissolution 
is a little more complicated than 
the work of one relationship, 
a combination of the time and 
personal differences between those 
famous Liverpoolian men. Who 
knows, in addition to these things, 
I’m sure Ono and John Lennon’s 
torrid love affair and his subsequent 
obsession with their art and music 
together probably had something 
to do with it. The Beatles’ breakup 

is, ultimately, a mystery, and the 
obvious 
consequence 
of 
what 

happens when a war, fame, money 
and drugs coincide in one place. 
But the question remains — why 
do we still blame Yoko? Why has 
our culture become so attached to 
scapegoating the women in famous 
men’s lives for anything they do?

In reality, Yoko Ono was an artist 

in her own right, and according to 
her, she did not even know of John 
or The Beatles when they originally 
met: In fact, he was a fan of hers, a 
patron of her art long before their 
romantic relationship began. By 
Lennon and Ono’s meeting in 1966, 
she had been a leading member 
of the Fluxus art movement and 
published an experimental book 
titled “Grapefruit.” She was her 
own person, not just an extension 
of a very famous man. Even if you 
set aside the invasive effects of 
racism in Ono’s case, fans were and 
have always been confused about 
why such a legendary band only 
lasted for a very short time. But the 
thing that has lasted, and will likely 
continue to be a cultural touchstone 
for years to come, is the blame 
which floats around Yoko Ono’s 
name. She is not the only famous 
woman who has been portrayed in 
the media this way, and has become 
a reference point for something 
people call the “Yoko Effect” — a 
phenomenon that influences us 
today more than we may even 
notice.

Earlier this month, in the wake of 

rapper Mac Miller’s sudden death, 
Twitter and other social media 
platforms erupted into outrage. 
Most of this was undeservingly 
pointed directly towards Ariana 
Grande, Miller’s girlfriend of two 
years until earlier this year. In this 

case, the “Yoko Effect” is still very 
much alive, a continuing blame 
game which pins the confusing 
and sometimes tragic choices 
of famous men on their female 
partners. It is still happening in 
every conversation we have about 
The Beatles, about Courtney Love, 
about Ariana Grande and everyone 
in between. With every affair, every 
salacious rumor on Twitter or Page 
Six that places the responsibility 
of toxic relationship on a woman’s 
shoulders, we are still blaming 
Yoko. When I read Rolling Stone 
writer Brittany Spanos’s article 
a week ago on this very topic, all 
I could think about was my dad’s 
shirt. Here, in 2018, a time full of 
feminist movements and supposed 
social enlightenment, our culture 
is still fixed on this dangerous 
pattern of blame and assumption 
that absolves problematic men of 
culpability and bestows it on their 
girlfriends and wives. I have caught 
myself thinking in these ways 
many times — the “Yoko Effect” is 
a product of our society’s fixation 
on accountability — where many 
people and influences are in play, it 
is hard to find a character to blame, 
and in most cases, it doesn’t exist. 
But there are ways to subvert this 
phenomenon, and it is our job as 
consumers of the media to break 
the cycle. Do it in small ways, 
like changing the conversation 
when it turns to conspiracy, 
understanding the realities of fame 
and its influence on choice, and how 
society’s misogynistic tunnel vision 
can often look for evil in a woman’s 
shadows. Beyond all of this, maybe 
take off the shirt. It could be a joke, 
but there is a real person in all of 
these cases, and she deserves to 
speak for herself.

Why do we blame Yoko?

DAILY GENDER & MEDIA COLUMN

Lawrence rides the wave 
of their own versatility

Just as hip hop’s infamous 

boy band seem to multiply on 
stage — feeding off each other’s 
performances 
and 
coalescing 

into a hive of energy that seems 
to either contain 1 or 20 people 
— Lawrence seemed to grow 
stronger the more they played 
through their set at the Blind Pig 
last Mon. night.

Coming from New York City, 

the eight-member band was 
originally formed by siblings 
Clyde and Gracie Lawrence. 
Pulling from a wild mix of 
influences, 
Lawrence 
weaves 

together brass instrumentals, 

tight keyboard-driven rhythms 
and upbeat melodies to create a 
spontaneous fusion of musical 
genres; Aretha Franklin soul 
shakes hands with Carly Rae 
Jepsen pop, and the resulting 
agreement 
that 
Lawrence 

manages to broker is nothing 
short of magical.

All eight band members are 

longtime childhood and college 
friends, 
and 
this 
closeness 

allows them to showcase their 
almost uncategorizable sound in 
the best way possible. Standing 
side by side, the audience could 
see the synergy between the 
members, passing smiles and 
refrains from one person to the 
next like the handwritten notes 
you would send your best friends 

in middle school geometry. The 
music simply flowed. And even 
though the small stage allowed 
little 
extravagant 
movement, 

the dynamic quality of the music 
itself turned the entirety of the 
Blind Pig into a retro dance floor.

The 
jazz 
undertones 
and 

lounge-pop 
bursts 
of 
“The 

Heartburn Song” started off 
the show with layered vocals 
and guitar chords that crooned, 
transforming the worn interior 
of the stage into an underground 
speakeasy: plush velvet booths 
and gilded chandeliers with 
tear-shaped crystals. It’s an 
aesthetic — a vibe, one could 
say — that continued throughout 
their performance. As Lawrence 
played songs from their newest 

SHIMA SADAGHIYANI

Daily Music Editor

WARNER BROS. RECORDS

The Books that Built Us: 
‘The Crying of Lot 49’

I don’t remember reading “The 

Crying of Lot 49” for the first 
time, let alone how it came into my 
life. Those details are eclipsed by 
what I do recall — the process of 
coping with its bewildering form, 
shut in my mint green bedroom at 
1:00 a.m., poring over Wikipedia 
pages on Thomas Pynchon and 
postmodernism. I was about 16, 
and offended by the bizarre little 
book’s refusal to have a plot, to 
develop characters, to … conclude. 
“Why go through the effort of 
writing something that seems to 
mean nothing?” I asked myself. 
“What the fuck?”

“The Crying of Lot 49” is 

composed almost exclusively of 
satirical jabs, distracting details 
and fruitless conversations. It 
chronicles the anti-Odyssey of 
Oedipa Maas as she happens to 
unearth a peculiar network of 
coincidences connected by “a 
symbol she’d never seen before, 
a loop, triangle and trapezoid,” 
meant to represent a muted post 
horn. 
The 
rudimentary 
post 

horn is the sole illustration in the 
slim volume and evolves from a 
point of intrigue to a trigger of 
sorts as Oedipa begins to see it 
everywhere. The physical motif 
is graffitied by polyamorists on a 
bathroom stall, scrawled amid the 
notes of a disillusioned techie and 
embossed on the pin of a member 
of the Inamorati Anonymous 
committed to assisting those who 
have fallen in love (“the worst 
addiction of all”). Oedipa reads 
into the symbols, convinced “she 
will create constellations” out of 
the chaos, but instead finds herself 
“an alien, unfurrowed, assumed 
full circle into some paranoia,” 
struggling to determine whether 
she’s actually stumbled upon a 
massive conspiracy or is simply 
going mad. It ends abruptly, right 
when you think you’ll get some sort 
of answer.

Like Oedipa Maas and her post 

horns, I found myself desperate 
to wring the ridiculousness of 
“Lot 49” into some constellation 
that made sense to me — one that 
looked like clarity, coherence and 
resolution. It was an exercise in 
pure futility, but one that exposed 
a set of rigid expectations for the 
novel I had no idea I was harboring. 
As I slowly came to terms with 
the fact that “Lot 49” isn’t 

conventionally “meaningful,” I felt 
as if I were becoming unstuck, in a 
completely Kurt Vonnegut way. I 
realized I was clinging to structure, 
got embarrassed and loosened my 
grip. The relief was near erotic.

Flash forward two-ish years and 

I’m walking to Name Brand Tattoo 
one Sept. afternoon after Bio 173, or 
some other class I took freshman 
year that has zero relevance in 
what I think I’m doing now. I’m 
half a country away from home, I 
have no friends and I’m trying not 
to be scared as hell. So I’m getting 
a tattoo. When one of the three 
Nicks there asks what I want, I 
open “The Crying of Lot 49” to the 
symbol that haunts Oedipa Maas 
halfway across Cali., and a little 
more than halfway out of (or into?) 
her mind. I get the post horn inked 
in an impulsive, grasping attempt 
to immortalize that little bit of 
un-stuckness I felt in accepting 
“Lot 49,” so subsumed in the angst 
of my moment that I’m oblivious to 
the fact that I’m literally branding 
myself 
with 
a 
quintessential 

emblem of Postmodern Shit.

It was as if I had accidentally 

joined a cult. Since The Tattoo, I’ve 
been approached here and there by 
randos in public who recognize the 
symbol and wish to share a word, 
to rave over Oedipa Maas and the 
Tristero, to recommend a sweet 
new read. If you ink it, they will 
come. One of my professors noticed, 
told me I had a “dope tattoo”— my 
ego orgasmed. Friends who weren’t 
familiar with the novel were 
intrigued by my devotion and read 
it. Some became converts. I visited 
one of them this past summer and 
noticed he had drawn the post 
horn on his wall in Sharpie. When 
I pointed it out, I felt a new sort 
of intimacy establish between us. 
This book gives believers a simple 
way to find each other, and we’re 
here to spread the paranoid love. 
The “Lot 49” subculture, once you 
start to recognize it, is impressively 
prevalent. 
Radiohead 
and 
Yo 

La Tengo have both referenced 
elements of “Lot 49” in their work, 
an insider signal to listeners who 
know it. Oedipa Maas’s signature 
appears in “The Simpsons,” and the 
Google Smartphone App for the 
Treefort Music Fest once featured 
the post horn on its icon. It’s under 
my skin, on a wall in Berkeley 
and scribbled in a bathroom stall 
at SMTD. The magnitude of our 
devotion nearly brings me to tears. 
The realization that I’ve found 
belonging in a ridiculous literary 

subculture does bring me tears.

All these tears have made me 

ironically reluctant to return to 
the text. What if I don’t like it? 
What if it’s actually the squirmy 
sort of Postmodern Shit … and I 
still have this tattoo? I gave it a 
couple years, marinated in the cult, 
continued drawing post horns in 
my notebooks and evangelizing 
nonreaders. In the past year, 
though, 
I’ve 
noticed 
waning 

familiarity with the names and 
references that typically arise in 
“Lot 49” discussions. It was time. 
I tracked down my copy of the 
sacred text (thanks, Dayton) and 
was pleasantly surprised to find 
myself frolicking in the prose. 
There was so much I had missed 
the first time around — the smart 
satire, the raunchy references 
— the book that was once so 
inaccessible had become brilliantly 
hilarious. “Lot 49” round two was 
like reconnecting with a friend, 
and discovering even more virtue 
in them. Encounters like that make 
the relationship so much stronger.

The most impressive discovery 

from my literary homecoming, 
however, is the subtly powerful 
examination of binary thinking 
Pynchon manages to work beneath 
all the absurdity. In the agita of 
her self-doubt, Oedipa is described 
as “walking among matrices of a 
great digital computer, the zeroes 
and ones twinned above, hanging 
like balanced mobiles, right and 
left, ahead, thick, maybe endless.” 
The dark omnipresence of “this 
or that,” the dread of being stuck 
between, indefinitely, with no word 
exactly appropriate for the self in 
the moment. Damn. It is paranoia.

But there’s something to be 

said for how the structureless 
paranoia of “The Crying of Lot 
49” pushes you into a disposition 
that can relieve some of the 
weight of those thick ones and 
zeroes. Once unstuck from my 
rigid expectations, I found myself 
able to notice and appreciate the 
novel’s ridiculousness. Once I made 
peace with the fact that there’s no 
constellation to be drawn, I entered 
an incredible literary community. 
“The Crying of Lot 49,” it seems, is 
an exercise in detaching from the 
anxiety of that tension between 
one and zero. What results is the 
hysterical grace it takes to exist in 
bewildering absurdity — absurdity 
not unlike that of television 
personality presidents and Bird 
scooters. 

VERITY STURM

For the Daily

BOOKS NOTEBOOK

album Living Room — “Friend 
or Enemy,” “Make a Move” and 
“Probably Up,” among others 
— as well as songs from their 
very first full album Breakfast 
— “Do You Want Nothing To Do 
with Me,” “Misty Morning” and 
“Shot” — they never lost touch 
of this transformative spark, 
consistently playing with such 
a level of passion that the crowd 
had no other option but to lose 
their feet in the rhythm and just 

dance. 

The highlight of Lawrence’s 

performance came through a song 
that didn’t originate as one they 
created but still made completely 
their own. Halfway through 
the set, the first few familiar 
notes of “Get Busy” by Sean 
Paul graced our ears. Then the 
next few notes were completely 
drowned out due to the volume of 
the crowd’s scream of approval. 
Enthusiasm 
was 
high, 
and 

Lawrence was grooving, finding 
a way to repurpose the song to 
fit their own specific abilities 
and allowing each band member 
to contribute their own personal 
style. What brought each of 
the various components of the 
performance together, however, 
was the vocal powerhouse duo 
of the Lawrence siblings, turning 
the song kaleidoscopic, cascading 
down onto the crowd like a disco 
ball’s heavenly flash.

CLARA SCOTT

Daily Gender & Media Columnist

CONCERT REVIEW

