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SERVICES Classifieds Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com By James Sajdak ©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 11/16/18 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis 11/16/18 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: Release Date: Friday, November 16, 2018 ACROSS 1 “__ simple, duh!” 6 Gobi container 10 Pollutants targeted in Great Lakes cleanups 14 “Sorry, bro” 15 Brits’ foul-weather gear 16 Devastated sea 17 Novice hiker’s predicament? 19 Taboo 20 DUI-fighting org. 21 Card game shout 22 Dairy prefix 23 Relief pitcher? 27 Spot for a springbok 29 Allay 30 “Cats” source 31 Stopped working 33 Snarky retort 37 Cheshire can 38 Flipped ... and what four puzzle answers are? 41 Where Charlemagne reigned: Abbr. 42 Extended account 44 Sources of some barrels 45 Salty expanse 47 Boone, to his buds 49 Put oil and vinegar on, say 50 Showoff with gags? 56 Swashbuckling Flynn 57 Employ 58 “¿Cómo __?” 61 Digitize, in a way 62 Tenement for one on the lam? 65 Director Gus Van __ 66 Barb 67 “A Fish Called Wanda” Oscar winner 68 Petro-Canada competitor 69 Erelong 70 Worked with osier DOWN 1 Cornerback’s coups, briefly 2 One-third of a WWII film 3 Wrapping tightly 4 Got married 5 Olive __ 6 Acid type 7 Ivanhoe, e.g. 8 Post-OR stop 9 Nile biter 10 Cure-all 11 Bunch of baloney 12 Linguistic group that includes Zulu 13 Single-master 18 Silent 22 __ Palmas: Canary Islands city 24 Western tip of Alaska 25 Closing documents 26 Expressed, as farewell 27 Checks out 28 Oscar-winning director Kazan 31 Gives a hand 32 Press 34 Grad’s award 35 Nest egg choices 36 Bogs 39 Early Atari offering 40 __-Frank: 2010 financial reform bill 43 Enlarge, as a house 46 First name in Disney villains 48 Verizon subsidiary 50 “Siddhartha” author 51 Black-and-white cetaceans 52 Mission opening? 53 Supercharger 54 Steamboat Springs alternative 55 Fresh 59 Piece of music 60 Impersonated 62 Woods gp. 63 Strauss’ “__ Heldenleben” 64 Pedigree-tracking org. 5A — Friday, November 16, 2018 Arts The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Imagine Dragons has, in spite of their remarkable commercial success, become a bit of a joke in recent years. Their first album, Night Visions, was pretty good, but everything they’ve released since has felt like the lifeless results of a machine-learning algorithm designed to appeal to people who drink a lot of Amp. Their previous album, Evolve, was particularly guilty of this syndrome, sounding like a bizarro version of Night Visions where every song sucked. So with Origins, I came in with low expectations. The first half of the album is stronger, as Imagine Dragons floats with ease through pop clichés: a Phillip Phillips-esque folk pop revival on “West Coast,” electropop heavy with reverb on “Boomerang” and “Cool Out” and burning arena rock on “Machine.” By and large, these are well-executed and pleasant, if not remarkable. Dan Reynolds has a knack for catchy melodies, in particular soaring choruses. “Machine” is the best of this specific brand of ascendant commercial rock, a stomping groove inexorably marching towards the Billboard Top 40. “Bad Liar” is also a pretty strong cut, with one of the stickiest melodies on the album. The second half of the album is much less enjoyable than the first. There are some moments of interest, but they fizzle out quickly. There’s “Love,” whose chorus sounds a little too similar to “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz (but without the catchiness). In “Digital,” at one point, Dan starts yelling throatily over a hyperactive breakbeat drum loop, a development that is more surprising than good. At first I thought “Burn Out” would be a solid deep cut, and I kept waiting for the good part to kick in; it was only after the song ended did I realize that, in fact, there was no good part to be found. Despite exceeding my low expectations, Origins is definitely subpar. Most of the songs on here will work well as music in car commercials or soundtracks to Fortnite compilations, but don’t have much musical value outside of that. They suffer from the same lifeless corporate flavor that has been permeating Imagine Dragons’s music since the It’s Time (EP), but at least they seem self-aware at this point. There’s really no reason to go out of your way to listen to Origins outside of a couple of decent cuts (“Machine,” “Bad Liar”) that you’ll probably end up hearing anyway during an ad for Regions Bank or something. Imagine Dragons suffers from the same phenomenon Nickelback did a decade or so back — undeserved commercial success has led to undeserved critical backlash. While the music of these bands isn’t particularly good, the fact that they are the prominent butt of critical derision would make you believe they are much worse than they really are. Origins is commercial and inconsequential, but it is far from unpleasant or incompetent, and I’ve heard much worse music from bands that don’t get a fraction of the hate. The average person who doesn’t pay much attention to music probably really likes Imagine Dragons. To capture that audience range takes talent, and just because it doesn’t resonate with snobbish critics (like me), does not mean that it’s not of worth. Imagine Dragons’s latest is unsurprisingly subpar JONAH MENDELSON Daily Arts Writer INTERSCOPE RECORDS Few shows so eloquently straddle the boundary between musical and operetta as “Candide,” Leonard Bernstein’s famed adaptation of Voltaire’s novel. This enigmatic work of theatre was first presented on Broadway before moving to opera houses, in which it has garnered great acclaim. Initially conceived by Bernstein and Lillian Hellman as a play with incidental music meant to satirize the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the work’s lyrics have since been modified by Stephen Sondheim, John LaTouche, Dorothy Parker and Richard Wilbur. Last weekend, “Candide” was performed by the University Opera Theatre and the University Symphony Orchestra at the Power Center. It was an enthralling journey through the life of Candide on his lengthy quest to marry Cunégonde. It was also a biting satire on the failures of organized religion, philosophy, war, money and socioeconomic class structure. Despite its antiquated setting, the work manages to remain frighteningly relevant. One can hear the echoes of modern political pessimism in the work’s criticism of 17th and 18th century aristocratic power structures, the cries of anti- party rhetoric reflected in the anti-government libretto. After a quick introduction to the optimism that so consumed the philosophers of Voltaire’s day, the operetta oscillates between violence and lucky escape. To those unfamiliar with the book, the dark humor of this unrealistic plot can be hard to laugh at. Candide and his childhood friends travel all over the world, finding each other in the most unexpected of places and avoiding death by the narrowest of means. I found myself struggling to laugh with some members of the audience at the first scene of mass casualty before I, too, understood the unrealistic humor of this perpetual death and violence. In the end, as the pace of the story slowed, the emotional poignancy began to overtake the dark humor. The final scene, in which Candide and Cunégonde agree to marry and to plant a garden together, was beautifully complex and emotionally ambiguous. “Life is neither good nor bad,” the choir sings. “Life is life, and all we know.” After this lengthy journey of faulty belief systems and strikingly immoral systems of cultural morality, the realist, almost nihilist simplicity of this resolution was astounding. The audience sat with rapt attention as Candide and Cunégonde exchanged promises to “do the best” they know in cultivating their garden and living a simple, agrarian life. The simple ingenuity of the set contributed both to the fleeting absurdity of the plot and the poignant simplicity of the resolution. The entire operetta took place in front of a giant blackboard upon which Candide’s journey was illustrated in chalk. Smaller wheelable blackboards and simple wooden tables formed the changing scenery throughout the production while tablet-sized handheld blackboards formed the props. These handheld blackboards frequently contributed to the humor with characters on stage reacting in fright to blackboards with “GUN” written on them. In the end, as Candide and Cunégonde decide to pursue a simple lifestyle, the blackboard in the back of the stage was erased and the tabletops were removed to uncover small, lush gardens. The cast was quite impressive. They demonstrated the ease at which they sing English-language opera, and I found myself particularly impressed with the expressive singing of Candide and the colatura abilities of Cunégonde. With great choreography and significant dialogue, I began to question whether this was not better classified as a musical than an operetta. Bernstein’s career was based on the blending of genres: from the harmonic dissonance and operatic treatment of “West Side Story” to the popular influences in much of his concert music. And this work was no exception, with Bernstein jumping from dissonant incidental music to operatic arias and Broadway- esque slow musical numbers. I am always skeptical of movies and plays based on famous novels. To this end, I will admit that I was incredibly skeptical of Bernstein’s decision to adapt Voltaire’s novel. It would be hard, I thought, for the operetta to not be overshadowed by this incredibly influential novel. And though the overture is a staple of the American- composed concert repertoire, I had assumed that there was a reason I was unfamiliar with the operetta. Yet despite my skepticism, the operetta lived up to the famed book after which it is based. Much like the book, it is a compelling criticism of wealth, power, religion and other constructs of cultural morality. And nothing felt more appropriate than the final words of the play, when Voltaire asks the audience if they have “Any questions?” For what is “Candide” if not a call for the audience to question, a proto- Nietzschean condemnation of current belief systems in favor of a new belief system? Origins Imagine Dragons Interscope Records ALBUM REVIEW Britney Spears will always be an object of fascination for me. Every time I go down a YouTube rabbit hole during slow nights in the comfort of my room, I always end up in the same place, watching early-aughts music videos until the sun comes up. From the fringed crop tops of Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle” to the motorized pianos of Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” the era is truly iconic in the span of starlet culture as a whole. But there’s one video, Spears’s “Lucky,” that has stamped itself permanently in the history of pop music. The first time I watched it, deep into one of these binge video consumptions, I was taken aback. It seems as if Spears had predicted her downfall seven years in the future, a toxic mix of fame and negligence that would result in drastic change. The lyrics of “Lucky” serve as a bizarre look into the future of Spears’s career, and the video echoes this even more. The starlet looks on at a fictionalized version of herself, reaching out to a depressed Lucky as she puts on a smile for the cameras and cries until she falls asleep. Lucky is constantly looking into this tiny mirror throughout the video, trying to primp herself while sadness lurks behind her eyes. Though the song is supposedly a universal story of the dangers of fame, it seems to prophesize about Spears’s own breakdown in 2007, one that would be immortalized in pop culture forever. We’ve all seen the photos of her post- buzzcut, of her walking around looking like a shell of herself as she reeled in the wake of losing custody of her children and an extreme downturn of her career. “If Britney survived 2007, you can survive today” is a sassy quip printed onto stickers and resting at the bottom of Instagram posts. But underneath “Lucky” and Spears’s story at large is the sad reality behind Hollywood’s treatment of young starlets, a history that has affected women in the industry for decades. Though I was slightly too young to understand Britney Spears’s downfall and rebound in its full glory, people like Miley Cyrus and Lindsay Lohan served as examples of starlet culture and its dangers as I grew up. In fact, I wasn’t even allowed to listen to Britney as a kid because of how sexualized she was in the public eye, a pretty and perfect vision of feminine youth that found its way into the realm of Barbies and lunchboxes alike. My mother said that “Hit Me Baby One More Time” was vulgar for a six-year-old to be singing, and though I was angry at the time, I now agree with her in some ways. Our culture of idealism around these young girls forced them into boxes that were unrealistic and dangerous, placing them on a pedestal that was only waiting to crumble. In the past five years, many of the starlets of my childhood faced their own 2007s, trying to shed their sweetheart images with varying levels of success. I can remember when Miley Cyrus was photographed shirtless for Vanity Fair at 15, when she released “Can’t Be Tamed,” a video in which she prowls around a cage in skimpy, feathered clothing, when she danced around at the VMAs in nude spandex. I feel the same way about Cyrus’s reevolution that I do about that of Spears, both of them now seemingly happy and stable despite their struggles with fame. But there are those who weren’t so “Lucky” after all. Amanda Bynes’s battle with mistreatment by the industry and those around her resulted in a complete loss of self for the star. The fame machine sucks in and spits out young girls without giving them a note of how to navigate any of it all, and has since the days of Judy Garland. While money and power can come with the visibility of being a starlet, many of these girls lost themselves in that pursuit, groomed by handlers to remain marketable as they battled to form strong identities. We have no way of knowing if Britney Spears really felt the way that the character in “Lucky” does, but it’s easy to believe that she may have. “If there’s nothing missing in my life / Then why do these tears come at night?” she sings during the chorus, with the kind of bravado that seems true under the surface. At face value, the song and its accompanying video is a formulated example of pop perfection, but underneath it serves as a message of reality to what stardom’s consequences can bring. She might be lucky, but there’s something else there, lurking just under a pearly smile and immaculate makeup. As Hollywood slowly becomes more self aware, there’s a chance for more young girls to grow up famous and not fall apart. But for now, the lessons of Spears’s 2000 song ring true: Even if you have everything, being a starlet is not all it’s chalked up to be. She’s so lucky DAILY GENDER & MEDIA COLUMN CLARA SCOTT University Symphony’s ‘Candide’ scarily timeless CONCERT REVIEW SAMMY SUSSMAN Daily Arts Writer Despite its antiquated setting, the work manages to remain frighteningly relevant