By Roland Huget
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/02/18

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

10/02/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Tuesday, October 2, 2018

ACROSS
1 Gulf States 
prince
5 Macy’s 
competitor
10 Eucharist 
celebration
14 See 62-Across
15 Boise’s state
16 Israeli airline
17 Tool for cutting 
stone and 
concrete
19 River of Cairo
20 Playing surface 
surrounded by 
boards
21 Access charge
23 Chinese menu 
promise
25 Garden digging, 
e.g.
26 Abandoned 
building, say
28 Jules who 
created the 
Nautilus
29 Form a union
30 Passé reception 
aid
34 Love personified
35 Richly 
upholstered seat
37 Nobel Peace 
Prize city
40 Toxic substance
41 Snapshot, 
briefly
44 “SNL” alum 
Cheri
46 Dancer Duncan
48 Prilosec target
52 Caught with a 
lasso
53 Old-fashioned 
printing machine
54 Champagne 
brand
55 Got on in years
56 Carry on the 
same way ... 
and what the 
ends of 17-, 
25-, 35- and 
48-Across do
60 __ majesty: high 
treason
61 Diarist Nin
62 With 50-Down 
and 14-Across, 
fairy tale opening
63 Newspaper 
section with 
many reviews
64 Horizontal graph 
lines
65 Enthusiastic

DOWN
1 Takeoff approx.
2 1002, to Caesar
3 Gun carrier’s 
warning
4 Careless
5 Garden hose 
obstruction
6 Unmatched
7 Welcomes to the 
treehouse
8 __ apso: little 
dog
9 Scattered, as 
seed
10 Department 
store section
11 Wing-shaped
12 Port near Naples
13 More 
streamlined
18 Like an accurate 
soccer shot
22 Gun, as an 
engine
23 Just out
24 Santana’s “__ 
Como Va”
25 __-Croatian: 
Slavic language
27 Do another stint
31 Here, in Haiti
32 Twain/Harte 
play
33 Vientiane’s 
country

35 Becomes rusted
36 Lined up
37 “C’est 
magnifique!”
38 “The 
Pawnbroker” 
actor Rod
39 Least fatty, as 
corned beef
41 Many a Top 40 
song
42 Cork’s country: 
Abbr.
43 Heel

45 Hairy Addams 
cousin
47 Is moderately 
successful
49 How some 
documents are 
sent
50 See 62-Across
51 Kick back
54 Forest floor plant
57 Golf ball position
58 Cocktail cooler
59 Down-for-the-
count count

Are you ready for a review 
of this weekend’s most hyped 
project? That’s right, today we’re 
going to dive deep into The Rick 
and Morty Soundtrack. I woke up 

this morning, set my Spotify to 
“Private Session,” and hit play, 
fully expecting to wince through 
the entire record.
The first track was the main 
theme, a boilerplate sci-fi intro, 
a pastiche of the “Doctor Who” 
main title theme. The next song, 
however, took me by surprise 
— “Jerry’s Rick” is an elegant if 
simple instrumental track that 
was, somehow, quite good. I 
began to take this soundtrack a 
little more seriously after that, 
having come in expecting to sit 
through 40 minutes of shit like 
“Get Schwifty.”
I came to find that there are 
three broad categories of songs on 
the soundtrack: The first consists 
of vocal tracks with lyrics that 
only function to advance the 
plot within the show (these are 
by-and-large pastiches of certain 
specific genres or artists), the 
second are instrumental tracks 
that deserve to be taken seriously 
on their own merits and the 
third are original songs done by 
outside artists — Chaos Chaos, 
clipping. and Chad VanGaalen all 
contribute songs inspired by the 
show.
Most of the first category are 
simply unlistenable outside of 
novelty value. “Flu Hatin’ Rap” 

comes to mind which, while 
being a competent work done in 
the style of the Sugarhill Gang, 
carries no comedic value of its 
own accord and is too dumb to 
be taken seriously. Of course, a 
lot of these songs are designed to 
be bad as a part of a joke, but just 
because they are intentionally 
bad doesn’t make them any more 
pleasant to listen to when the 
music is isolated from the plot. 
The one exception is “Goodbye 
Moonmen,” 
consisting 
of 
a 
tasteful and restrained acoustic 
chord progression and vocals 
which straddle the line between 
being an imitation or an excellent 
parody of David Bowie. It’s 
a shame that the lyrics make 
most of these songs borderline-
unlistenable 
outside 
of 
the 
context of the show.
The second category is by-and-
large filled with impressive and 
thoughtful works. The best song 
on the record is “African Dream 
Pop,” a genre of music invented 
for the purpose of the show. It is 
shockingly innovative, groovy 
and atmospheric; it’s really the 
only song worth returning to 
in the future. “Jerry’s Rick” 
and “Unity Says Goodbye” are 
balanced, cinematic works of 
composition that, while I don’t 
think necessarily merit repeated 
listens, certainly deserve to be 
viewed as more than songs from 
that one show with the alcoholic 
pickle guy. 
The third category is hit-or-
miss: “Stab Him in the Throat” is 
the most memorable of the pack, 
the experimental hip-hop group 
clipping. laying down bars over a 
reworking of the main title theme. 
The instrumental is a great remix 
apart from the overtaxed sample 
of Rick burping. Daveed Diggs 
comes with a hard flow, but 
whatever momentum he manages 
to build is sent crashing down 
by lines such as “He looking 
schwifty, man you shouldn’t 
trust him,” “hopped up out the 
whip, same color Pickle Rick” and 
“that habanero have him leakin’ 

Szechuan right there on the 
floor.” “Memories” is pretty but a 
bore. The vocalist of Chaos Chaos 
has a vulnerable, shoegaze-esque 
voice that almost saves the track, 
but it doesn’t quite do enough. 
The inoffensive song also has 
the advantage of never invoking 
“Pickle Rick.”

To be honest, if you aren’t 
a massive “Rick and Morty” 
fanboy, the only track worth 
listening to off this soundtrack 
is “African Dream Pop” (maybe 
“Goodbye 
Moonmen” 
if 
you 
have strong feelings about David 
Bowie). If you are a massive 
“Rick and Morty” fanboy (more 
power to you), you’ll probably 
love the whole album. The show 
has received a lot of probably 
undeserved backlash over the 
past year due to a particularly 
toxic fanbase, so I came into the 
soundtrack with certain off-
putting expectations. However, 
much like the show itself, the 
negative stereotypes surrounding 
the work are based in reality but 
largely exaggerated.

Defying expectations: ‘The Rick and Morty Sountrack’ 
doesn’t quite make you want to set yourself on fire

ALBUM REVIEW

JONAH MENDELSON
Daily Arts Writer

SUB POP RECORDS

Outside the theater where I 
saw “Night School,” there was a 
cardboard standee that depicted 
star 
Kevin 
Hart 
(“Jumanji: 
Welcome to the Jungle”) trying 
to climb out of a locker he has 

presumably been shoved into 
while an unimpressed Tiffany 
Haddish (“Uncle Drew”) stands 
outside with her arms crossed. 
 
Walking in, I took it as a piece 
of marketing and nothing more. 
Walking out after two hours of 
the sort of banal anti-comedy that 
has come to define Hart’s movie 
career, I’m not gonna lie, the image 
of his character being shoved in a 
locker took on a sort of cathartic 
quality. I’m used to saying that a 
movie wastes its cast, but this feels 
like a different cast, one which, 
especially the star and co-writer, 
wastes the movie.
In order to give you an idea of 
the sort of jokes “Night School” 
has up its sleeve, let’s look at the 
first scene that Hart and Haddish 
share together. Hart rolls up to a 
stoplight in his Porsche. Haddish 
stops next to him. She’s yelling 
about something raunchy over 
the phone, because raunchiness is 
innately funny. Hart tells her he 
can hear her, and she starts yelling 
because people yelling is innately 
funny. He psshes her, she psshes 
him back, and then they just start 
making weird noises at each other.
This goes on for quite some 
time.
This 
should 
probably 
go 
without saying, but taking a gag 

that isn’t funny to begin with and 
extending it to mind-numbing 
lengths isn’t the very essence of 
comedy, it’s the very essence of 
sadism. For all Hart’s experience 
as a comedian, this sort of scene is 
alarmingly commonplace. It gets 
to the point where these extended 
riff sessions start to infringe on 
the story. The godawful editing 
is annoying on its own, but it also 
clearly signals multiple important 
plot points, subplots or character 
arcs that are either montaged over 
or cut entirely, presumably to make 
room for the scene where Kevin 
Hart makes baby noises. With the 
theatrical cut already running an 
overindulgent two hours, one can 
only imagine the ego-stroking 
excess of the original.
That’s the biggest problem 
with the film. Comedies still have 
to tell stories, but “Night School” 
isn’t interested in all that. It’s just 
interested in making things as 
easy on Kevin Hart as possible. So 
his character has flaws, but most 
of his problems come from the 
overblown villains in his life — like 
his father (Keith David, “The Nice 
Guys”), or his high school rival 
turned principal (Taran Killam, 
“Single Parents”). He’s a serial liar 
who needs to change, but other 
people are the real problem. This 
keeps Hart from having to actually, 
you know, act.
Even when the script touches 
on something real, it can’t resist 
going for the easy way out. There 
are moments where it broaches 
the subject of learning disabilities 
and the shame that can come with 
that, but it doesn’t actually engage 
with these topics. It pays empty lip 
service to the idea of Hart learning 
differently, then cuts to a scene of 
Tiffany Haddish’s stunt double 
kicking the shit out of him in a 
hexagon to teach him math. Get 
it? Because it’s different. It’s short-
selling the message of the film for a 
bad joke, but it’s different.
What’s most disappointing is 
that we do see flashes of another 

version of “Night School.” Take 
a scene where we see Haddish 
working with a child with a 
learning disability and teaching 
him math by playing cards with 
him, for example. All I could think 
during this scene was that a similar 
scene between Hart and Haddish, 
done right, would have given them 
room to riff off each other in a 

believable setting, developed their 
characters and their chemistry 
and actually confronted the reality 
of people who learn differently. 
Yes, this scene would have been 
harder to write than, “Then she 
suplexes him and farts on his face.” 
Yes, the jokes would have been 
less broad. And yes, it would have 
been harder for Hart to sleepwalk 
through this version, but it would 
have been undoubtedly better than 
settling for weird noises and a fart 
joke.

‘Night School’ should be 
shoved in a locker for good

“Night School”

Ann Arbor 20 + IMAX, 
Goodrich Quality 16

Universal Pictures

JEREMIAH VANDERHELM
Daily Arts Writer

FILM REVIEW

The Rick and 
Morty Soundtrack

Rick and Morty

Sub Pop Records

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

I woke up this 

morning, set 

my Spotify to 

“Private Session,” 

and hit play, fully 

expecting to 

wince through 

the entire record

Taking a gag 

that isn’t funny 

to begin with and 

extending it to 

mind-numbing 

lengths isn’t the 

very essence of 

comedy, it’s the 

very essence of 

sadism

6 — Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

