The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, January 22, 2019 — 6A

I think I was in third grade 
when my mom received a call 
from the mother of one of my 
friends. This particular mom 
sounded 
nervous. 
“Do 
you 
think there’s any chance Joey 
might have, um, introduced 
Nick to ‘YouTube?’” 
Well, that was certainly 
possible, my mom replied. Joey 
laughed a lot at those online 
videos, after all, and had even 
showed his sister some of his 
favorites. No issues there.
There 
were 
issues. 
Nick 
came from a Mormon family. 
Forget about even uttering 
a curse word; these folks 
(among the kindest and most 
compassionate I’ve ever met) 
were intensely devoted to their 
religion, which meant they 
were altogether prohibitive of 
anything that might corrupt 
their children.
Well, maybe it worked. Nick 
definitely didn’t turn out as 
poorly as the rest of us. In 2019, 
however, I think I’ve begun to 
scratch the surface about why 
my entire generation ended 
up in our collective medley 
of 
fuckedupness: 
YouTube. 
Could it be? You’re probably 
wondering how you got here, 
too, so do join me on this 
journey 
of 
spirituality. 
In 
order to figure out what you’ve 
become, you need to rediscover 
your origins. Here’s what your 
first YouTube video says about 
you. 

Evolution of Dance

On the surface, you form 
your strongest relationships 
didactically, 
dominating 
hangouts with news of the 
latest Twitter beef (and having 
fun hyping it all up). But look 
deeper. There are layers to 
you. Under your Twists and 
technical perfection of the 

Thriller 
dance 
exists 
your 
sensitive 
being, 
one 
who 
dances not for some soul-
fulfilling form of expression 
but for instant gratification 
from others. You understand 
that, while you’re only as good 
as your best Milly rock, your 
true worth is founded in who 
you share those Milly rocks 
with. So Milly rock all you 
want; just make sure there’s an 
audience.

Numa Numa

You’re incredibly ready for 
the real world. In fact, you are 
the real world. So much of life, 
it turns out, depends on your 
mastery of the clout chase, and 
Numa Numa makes up the very 
foundation of Clout. It’s true: 
just exercising your ability to 
bring this dance staple to life 
equals relevance in university 
and professional circles. At 
the very least, being able to 
keep these moves in the back 
pocket 
most 
definitely 
led 
to a total domination of Bar/
Bat Mitzvah or school dance 
circuits, and that charisma 
counts for something.

Nyan Cat 10 hours (original)

You’re a sadistic dirtbag. No 
one forgot about all the bad 
jokes you made just as everyone 
was about to fall asleep at 
sleepovers in 2009, no, we most 
certainly don’t care about your 
Fushigi, and yes, of course 
we’ve seen your super dope 
mix-every-fountain-drink-
in-one-cup move. Find a new 
slant, Mendeleev.

Boom Goes the Dynamite

Testosterone. Testosterone? 
Testosterone. 
That’s 
you. 
Testosterone! Testy Testy. Test, 
Test, 1 2 3. Testosteroneous 
Rex. 

Liam Kyle Sullivan

I think I heard cuts from 
“Shoes” at more than one club 
in Berlin during my four-
month stay there, which, if it 
doesn’t say enough in itself, 
should signify how freaky this 
stuff really is. First, I guess, I 
commend you for your bravery. 
More importantly, I laud you for 
your elevated consciousness. 
If something like “Muffins” 
launched you into the world 
of online entertainment, that 
means you probably learned 
what postmodernism was in, 
like, sixth grade. Big stuff.

Daft Hands – Harder, Better, 
Faster, Stronger

My first thought upon first 
seeing this video: who could 
possibly have had the gall to 
steal a Kanye West sample? 
My second thought: I’m a 
dummy. My third thought: oh 
shit, mom made pizza rolls 
again. 
Everyone 
else 
who 
was introduced to YouTube 
through this video: hold my 
fanny pack, time to Festival 
Shuffle for no one in particular.

Leeroy Jenkins HD 1080p

I’m entirely positive that 
this video is the sole reason for 
Twitch-streaming 
celebrity 
Ninja’s existence. Shame on 
you, 
then, 
for 
watching— 
and 
thus 
cultivating—this 
country’s 
most 
dangerous 
cultural 
sensation 
since 
Smosh. Speaking of-

Smosh

I’m sorry for you.

*We didn’t forget about you, 
Potter Puppet Pals, Grape Lady 
falls, Charlie Bit My Finger 
or (sigh) Charlie the Unicorn. 
Maybe you ended up best of the 
bunch. Maybe you didn’t. 

An origin story for any 
millennial online

DAILY HEALTH & WELLNESS COLUMN

There are shows we turn to for 
unswerving excellence, there are 
shows we love because they never 
make any discernible attempts 
at quality and somewhere in the 
murky middle, there is NBC’s 
“This Is Us,” which shuffles across 
the spectrum like a chameleon on 
roller skates. “Oh, you thought we 
were good?” the show sneers at its 
audience each Tuesday night. “No, 
how silly of you, we’re actually 
quite bad.”
But then, at the precise moment 
you make your peace with the 
show as a weepy melodramatic 
trainwreck with no hope in 
sight, the ghost of “This Is Us” 
will re-emerge and cry in faux 
disbelief, “What are you talking 
about? We’re inventive and layered 
and structurally brilliant with 
knockout performances!” I think 
this is what people these days call 
‘gaslighting.’
This 
surely 
is 
the 
most 
frustrating fandom, the uniquely 
painful kind that shaves years 
off one’s life. It requires both a 
boatload of faith and an equal 
amount 
of 
distrust. 
It’s 
the 
equivalent of that year Sandra 
Bullock won the Razzie for 
Worst Actress and the Oscar for 
Best Actress in the span of one 
weekend. It’s like watching Russell 
Westbrook chuck brick after brick 
every night and finally tucking 
your Thunder jersey away in the 
attic only to head back downstairs 
in time to see him drain the clutch 
game-winner. How can something 
so good be so bad? How can 

something so bad be so good?
The drama’s third season has 
served up some lovely, pitch-
perfect episodes and some blah 
misses. After a midseason hiatus, 
“This Is Us” made its return last 
week in the most “This Is Us” way 
possible: The mediocre acting 
was 
frequently 
groan-worthy, 
occasionally moving, and all in all, 
perfectly average.
A year ago, it seemed impossible 
that the weakest storyline on 
“This Is Us” could be Randall’s 
(Sterling K. Brown, “American 

Crime Story”). He and Susan 
Kelechi Watson’s Beth (“Louie”) 
have frequently saved the show 
from descending into Sad Sack 
City, anchoring it with charisma 
and chemistry and a rare, totally 
functional onscreen partnership. 
But Randall’s campaign for a city 
council seat in Philadelphia, which 
once seemed like the show’s way of 
teaching him a tough lesson about 
his excessive righteousness, has 
now swallowed him whole while 
indulging the character’s worst 
tendencies.
Fortunately for him, Randall 
lives in a bizarro universe where the 
electorate is won over by spirited 
oratory. (Aaron Sorkin called. He 
wants his naïve worldview back. 

Also, he made some Gilbert and 
Sullivan reference I didn’t quite 
understand.) Never mind that 
Randall is a Philly resident by 
technicality, and actually lives in 
Alpine, NJ., which is about as far 
away from Philadelphia as you can 
get while still being in NJ.
It’s equally surprising that 
Kevin Pearson (Justin Hartley, 
“Revenge”) has emerged as the 
third season’s strongest character, 
deciding to learn more about his 
father’s experiences in Vietnam 
while pursuing a relationship 
with the sometimes closed-off, 
“complicated” 
documentarian, 
Zoe 
(Melanie 
Liburd, 
“Dark 
Matter”). His portion of “The 
Last Seven Weeks” works nicely 
as a link between both of these 
processes, 
culminating 
in 
an 
earned, 
moving 
moment 
of 
character-growth. Kate (Chrissy 
Metz, “American Horror Story”), 
finally pregnant this season after 
struggling to conceive, is sidelined 
with a C-plot this episode, a zany 
quest to retrieve her husband’s 
Star Wars action figures after 
accidentally donating them, but 
Metz makes the most of it.
So where does “This Is Us” go 
from here? Who knows. There 
are still several loose ends to tie 
up, a flash-forward mystery yet 
to be resolved and, from Kevin’s 
Vietnam 
digging, 
a 
potential 
long-lost family member waiting 
in the wings for his story to be 
told. All that’s certain is that the 
remaining episodes of this season 
will be a little excellent and also 
a bit terrible. So let’s buckle in: 
After all, this is a show that killed 
a character via Crock Pot, and did 
so beautifully.

‘This is Us’ is uneven and 
convoluted, as it usually is

MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN
Daily Arts Writer

NBC

TV REVIEW

In the week leading up 
to 
my 
seeing 
“The 
Great 
Tamer,” conceived, visualized 
and 
directed 
by 
Dimitris 
Papaioannou, the only thing I 
knew was that it contained full 
frontal nudity. So, naturally, 
I asked my dad to accompany 
me 
for 
a 
unique 
father-
daughter bonding experience. 
Unfortunately, he was unable 
(or unwilling) to join me on 
what promised to be “a visually 
stunning production of ten 
dancers that grapples with the 
meaning of life and the mystery 
of death.” So on Friday night, I 
shuffled into my seat, dad-less 
and defenseless, not even close 
to ready for the self-proclaimed 
“surrealist nightmare” and the 
experience of a lifetime.
When I took my seat, there 
was already an actor on stage. 
I checked my phone. I wasn’t 
late, still five minutes to show 
time, but he was just hanging 
out 
center 
stage, 
looking 
around at the audience. Then, 
the play began. The house lights 
remained on while the man on 
stage slowly began undressing 
himself. There was no music, 
no sound, just the occasional 
uncomfortable cough from the 
audience. Once he was fully 
undressed, he laid down on a 
white sheet of what I assumed 
to be plywood. Another man 
appeared to cover him in a 

sheet. As soon as that man left 
another man uncovered the 
naked man. While I was still 
trying to wrap my head around 
how 
he 
was 
comfortable 
enough to be fully nude in front 
of an audience of 500 people, 
there were murmured chuckles 
from the audience as the cycle 
started over. And over. And 
over. By the 13th or 14th time, 
the chuckles subsided in place 
of a fatigued anticipation for a 
new bout of action.
And action it was. Soon 
enough, the stage was alive with 
movement. If I diverted my gaze 
to one person, two more people 
would appear onstage, usually 
naked, always in the midst of a 
new interpretive scene. These 
scenes built upon one another, 
fluidly moving from one to 
the next and often recurring 
throughout the show. Even the 
covering tarp came back once 
or twice. With so much going 
on, not every scene’s meaning 
was apparent. In fact, very 
few scene’s meanings were 
apparent. I genuinely wish I 
could say what the play was 
concretely about, but to be 
honest, I’m not exactly sure 
myself.
Even calling it a play is a 
stretch; there were no words 
and only limited music. The 
performance featured twelve 
dancers who spent the hour and 
forty-five minutes contorting 
their 
bodies 
into 
visually 
stunning 
and 
unimaginable 
shapes, depicting puzzling yet 

fascinating — sometimes even 
grotesque — interpretations of 
human existence. Each dancer 
was 
barely 
distinguishable 
from 
one 
another, 
always 
dressed in black and thrown 
together in various formations, 
often being used as singular 
body parts making up one 
whole human. While many 
parts of this performance were 
confusing 
and 
disturbing, 
some parts were relatable and 
beautiful.
There 
was 
a 
man 
who 
entered in a full body ceramic 
cast. He could barely move, 
needing a crutch just to walk. 
When the other man onstage 
realized his problem, he began 
breaking the ceramic shell 
off his body by hugging him. 
Though they had just met, the 
man in the cast had to learn to 
trust his new friend quickly, at 
least enough for him to put his 
hands around his neck. With 
this deep sense of trust, the 
ceramic man allowed his friend 
to break through his tough 
outer shell to see the person 
he was beneath. With one final 
heart 
and 
ceramic-breaking 
hug, the man was free from his 
binding cast. He patted himself 
down, in awe of his new body, 
shook hands with his friend 
and left. The friend was left 
with nothing but a handshake 
and a pile of broken, ceramic 
hopes. 

‘The Great Tamer’ shows 
humanity through nudity

DANA PIERANGELI
For the Daily

‘This is Us’

Season 3 Midseason 
Premiere

NBC

Tuesdays 9 p.m.

Read more at MichiganDaily.
com

EVENT REVIEW

JOEY SCHUMAN
Daily Health & Wellness Columnist

