6 — Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By Roland Huget
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/12/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

02/12/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Tuesday, February 12, 2019

ACROSS
1 Enjoys 
Breckenridge, say
5 Cries out loud
9 “If I Had a 
Hammer” singer 
Lopez
14 In the past
15 Geometry 
calculation
16 Pay by mail
17 Metered work, 
usually
18 Duck that lends 
its name to a 
color
19 Word from the 
wise
20 100-mile-an-hour 
fastball, often
23 Vent opening?
24 Stein filler
25 Classy neckwear
33 Total confusion
34 Made public
35 Summer Games 
org.
36 Admission of fault
37 Less clumsy
38 Back up a step, 
as in an app
39 “__ is me!”
40 For all to hear
41 Good feature
42 Bike storage 
bags, e.g.
45 Partner of to
46 22.5 deg.
47 What a plus 
sign indicates 
on a golf match 
scoreboard
55 Pick up gradually
56 Crafted, as a tale
57 Keep for later
58 Wonderland cake 
message
59 Morales of 
“NYPD Blue”
60 Express line unit
61 Jacket material
62 Bakery product
63 Fiddling emperor

DOWN
1 Soaks (up)
2 Wood 
imperfection
3 Cake finisher

4 Part-time players
5 Glossy fabric
6 Layered Nabisco 
treat
7 Belle’s 
counterpart
8 Basic food 
preservative
9 Was behind in 
the match
10 Herbal brew
11 Apple since 1998
12 Soon to happen
13 Suffix with urban
21 Songwriter 
Kristofferson
22 School research 
assignment
25 Slap the puck 
toward the goal
26 Get to the point?
27 Cameroon 
neighbor
28 Prepare for a 
bodybuilding 
competition
29 Middle Corleone 
brother
30 Salon procedure
31 Rich ore deposits
32 Many a clan 
member

33 Farm moms
37 “Take __ at this!”
38 Signals the 
arrival of, as a 
new era
40 Dressed like a 
chef
41 Embarrassing 
spots
43 Typical chalet
44 Launch, as a 
new product

47 Side with a 
sandwich
48 Head of Haiti
49 Vessel with a 
spout
50 Ho-hum
51 Avocado shape
52 Canapé spread
53 Say with certainty
54 San __, Italy
55 “__ it?”: 
“Comprende?”

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GO BLUE

When I was 10 years old, my 
dad threw out our toaster. To 
replace it, he cleared about 80 
percent of our counter space for 
a large, steel industrial panini 
press. Suddenly, our kitchen 
felt less like our homey space 
and more like the industrial 
kitchens of restaurants. Growing 
up, my friends came over and 
ogled over the machine: the 
centerpiece of our kitchen, the 
shining star of our counter space, 
the replacement for the rusted, 
old toaster. From that day on, 
everything from toaster waffles 
to grilled cheese was made in 
the press, and thus began my 
training as a panini connoisseur. 
Initially, I was a bit intimidated. 
What could this panini press do 
that my old toaster or a skillet 
with some butter 
couldn’t have done? 
How would I use 
it? When would I 
approach it? 
A panini, or more 
authentically 
the 
“panino,” is a grilled 
sandwich 
made 
with Italian bread 
such 
as 
ciabatta 
or 
michetta. 
My 
parents 
never 
grocery 
shopped 
for 
snacks 
like 
Oreos and Goldfish, 
but they did always 
make sure we had 
ciabatta bread, an 
array 
of 
artisan 
cheeses and other 
accoutrements 
to 
engineer 
our 
perfect after school 
breakfast, 
lunch 
or dinner paninos. 
Paninos became a 
staple of my every 
day life, a constant 
challenge I looked 
forward to. I took 
to 
popping 
any 
odd 
combination 
or faithful classic 
in 
the 
press 
that 
I 
could 
engineer from the 
ingredients in our 
fridge, from fig jam, 
brie 
and 
turkey 
on 
cinnamon 
bread to braciole, 
parmigiana 
and 
honey 
on 
crispy 
baguette, to peanut 
butter, banana and 
jelly on a baguette 
— 
everything 
and 
anything 
was 
willing 
to 
transform 
magically 
and 
deliciously in the 
panini press. 
The panino dates 
back to 16th century 
Italian cookbooks; 
however, 
the 
sandwiches became 
trendy in Milanese 
bars in the 1960s. 
In the 1980s the 
term 
paninaro 
arose in Italy with 
the rise of youth 
culture represented 

by patrons of sandwich bars 
in Milan. With the addition of 
our panini press, my kitchen 
transformed 
into 
a 
Milano 
panini shop, and my brothers 
and I transformed into the young 
paninaros of suburban New 
Jersey. On any given weekday or 
weekend afternoon, you could 
find us huddled in our kitchen as 
salty cheese melted and spilled 
over the sides of homemade bread 
and hit the searing hot grill. 
When I say “panini,” the first 
thing that comes to your mind 
might be a toasted baguette, a 
thick slab of mozzarella cheese, 
juicy, slightly sweet tomatoes 

and slices of basil, all stacked 
and grilled to perfection and 
served with balsamic reduction 
or grassy pesto. While the typical 
“caprese” panini is for sure a 
fan favorite and always one I’m 
willing to have a bite or two of, it’s 
a bit basic. Ever since my father 
came home and ceremonially 
threw away our dingy toaster, 
I’ve been on the pursuit to the 
more unique, more idiosyncratic 
flavors that trump those of the 
mundane “caprese” sandwich. 
Through my panini journey, 
I hope you’ll feel inspired to 
ransack your fridge, hit the 
grocery store and start on your 
own unique paninis — there is so 
much more to the space between 
two slices of plain bread than we 
expect. A sandwich is typically 
seen as the lazy person’s meal, 
the regular, old lunch or the 
boring, easy snack. But the panini 
changes all of that — it transforms 
a cold, basic sandwich into the 
crispy, crunchy, warm handheld 
queen of all foods, kicking aside 
Wonder Bread, ham and cheese 
for a prosciutto, provolone and 
sweet pear panini on fresh, 
dream-like ciabatta. 
Good Italian bread is where 
it all starts. My father always 
told me that bread is the key to 
success in a panini: The minute 
the bread is soggy, slightly 
stale or just bad in general, the 
sandwich goes down with it. The 
bread is the anchor of the whole 
ship: It ensures that the juice and 
sauce stay soaked into the moist 
space in the puffy bread without 
turning it soggy. You cannot have 
panini success without ciabatta 
success. The key to good ciabatta, 
you ask? It’s actually quite 
simple, despite what one might 
think. It’s made from wheat flour, 

water, salt, olive oil and yeast. 
Paying good attention to how 
long it should rise and bake is 
important, but the rest is rather 
simple. If the bread is perfect, the 
other ingredients can take center 
stage and shine. 
My flavor muse is my uncle 
Bobby. He knows flavor like 
no other and can always pair 
the most unlikely ingredients 
together to make the most 
gastronomically pleasing dishes. 
While pondering the perfect 
sandwich to share with you all, I 
decided to call him. I knew that 
he would have had a homemade 
panini recently, as a fellow 
panini scientist, and I knew he’d 
immediately be able to speak on 
the most distinctive, individual 
sandwich possible. He said he’d 
get back to me, as the call took 
place early in the morning, and 
he hadn’t had lunch yet. 
The anticipation nearly killed 
me. 
When he called me back, the 
first thing he said was, “spicy 
pickled chicken panini,” and I 
was immediately intrigued. He 
told me the process of making the 
simple, spicy sandwich: 
Chicken thighs brined in spicy 
Grillo’s pickle juice. Trust him on 
this one. He is a flavor god. (“Plan 
ahead! A one day brine with dark, 
juicy meat is the best!”)
Bread and then pan fry the 
chicken thighs to a crispy, 
crunchy golden brown. (“Batter 
in 
eggs 
and 
Panko 
bread 
crumbs”)
Use a crusty roll with light, 
chewy insides for the perfect 
happy medium. (“Top secret, it 
holds all the juice in!”)
Top with mayonnaise, red 
wine vinegar, thin slices of red 
onion and Grillo spicy Italian 
pickle chips for added flavor. 
Press for five minutes — here’s 
where the press comes in! (“Half 
crunch, half chew!”)
After 
making 
it 
myself, 
the result certainly does not 
disappoint. This panini is a jack 
of all trades: It’s creamy, spicy, 
crunchy, chewy and salty all at 
once. While the flavors could 
seem distracting, they somehow 
come together in a serendipitous 
moment of crispy perfection. 
Bobby’s review seems to sum it 
up perfectly for me:
“Crunch… yes! Chew… yes! 
Salty… yes! Spicy… yes! Fatty & 
creamy & delicious… yes!”
The special thing about paninis 
is that they are so much more 
than just separate ingredients: in 
one bite you can have the whole 
world on your palate as flavors 
that you never imagined combine 
and blend. No other food in the 
world is at once so simple and so 
complex, so manageable and so 
high maintenance.
Like I said, the caprese is a fan 
favorite, but it is overdone and 
much too basic for the millions 
of possibilities that can nestle 
between two slices of perfect, 
fresh bread. Let that crunchy 
ciabatta try on some different 
dressings. Be creative — with 
a blank canvas of fresh, soft 
bread you are an artist. Once you 
open your fridge and turn that 
panini press on high heat, the 
possibilities are simply endless. 

The pursuit of the 
perfect panini

DAILY FOOD COLUMN

ELI RALLO
Daily Food Columnist

“Velvet Buzzsaw,” a hot mess 
of high art horror-satire from 
Netflix, is the absolute best 
kind of bad movie. Written 
and directed by Dan Gilroy 
(“Nightcrawler”), the film is 
such a nebulous rollercoaster 
of jumbled ideas and characters 
that there is not one dull 
moment throughout. It works 
so unintentionally well because 
it balances a viewer’s reactions 
between “What am I watching?” 
and “This is so ridiculous I can’t 
stop.”
Jake Gyllenhaal (“Wildlife”) 
plays a cynical, cheeky art 
critique with the meticulously 
lazy bangs and thin black wire-
rimmed glasses to match. To 
complete the caricature, 
think of the most over-
the-top art critique name 
you can. Do you have it? 
I have a better one: Morf 
Vandewalt. His character 
faces dark and paranormal 
consequences when an agent, 
Josephina 
(Zawe 
Ashton, 
“Nocturnal Animals”), steals 
the 
paintings 
of 
recently 
deceased artist Ventril Dease 
and begins to sell them. To be 
fair, the plot is hardly the draw 
of “Buzzsaw.” Every single line 
of dialogue in this movie is 
so breathlessly written that I 
actually started making a list of 
Morf’s most memorable verbal 
ruminations. You will discover 
some of them below.
To quote from Vandewalt, 
“A bad review is better than 
sinking into the great glut of 
anonymity.” He’s right. And as a 
staunch advocate for the power 
of bad movies, I cannot let this 
one go unnoticed. Truthfully, 
it would be easy to tear this 
movie apart for what it is. But 
I can’t. The reason is that, 
unlike in so many bad movies, 

the cast and crew of “Buzzsaw” 
seem completely genuine in 
their effort. Nothing is awarely 
awful about the movie, and 
yet everything is laughable. 
It’s a precarious Jenga tower 
of scenes that don’t at all cut 
together, 
two-dimensional, 
inexplicably fickle characters 
and perplexing plotting that 
appears to have even escaped 
the understanding of its author. 
For all these things “Buzzsaw” 
deserves 
far 
more 
than 
a 
rudimentary rant.
I’ll again allow Vandewalt’s 
wisdom to guide me: “Critique 
is so limiting and emotionally 
draining. I’ve always wanted to 
do something long form, dip my 
toes into an exploration of origin 
and essence. A metamorphosis 
of spirit into reality.” Whatever 
that means.

In the name of dipping my 
toes into an exploration of 
origin and essence, here are 
some of my most noteworthy 
observations 
from 
“Velvet 
Buzzsaw”: The most fitting 
metaphor to describe the film is 
that it centers around dumpster 
paintings for which the entire 
art 
community 
immediately 
clamors. 
“They’re 
visionary, 
mesmeric,” Vandewalt admits 
immediately after a once-over. 
While the Dease collection 
becomes 
the 
next 
hottest 
collection in the pretentious 
and stuffy world of art buyers, 
the group that Gilroy fails to sell 
on his own art is the audience of 
the film.
The movie frantically leaps 
around genres to such an extent 
that I’m not sure what was 
intentionally funny and what 
wasn’t. Although the finale 

does play out like the ending of 
a slasher movie and surely was 
not meant to evoke laughter, I 
couldn’t help but crack up at 
the entire sequence. At times, 
art gala owners turn into 
professional investigators on a 
whim and banal love triangles 
appear out of thin air. It’s 
glorious.
The 
denouement 
of 
“Buzzsaw” 
is 
intentionally 
open-ended, 
unwilling 
to 
divulge the specific mechanics 
of 
the 
ghostly 
apparitions 
that haunt its periphery. To 
me, the actual reason for this 
ambiguity was that there was 
no legitimate way to explain 
any of the events in the film to 
begin with. Oh yeah, and John 
Malkovich appears in the end 
credits drawing lines of sand on 
a beach with a wooden stick. He 
was in the movie at some 
point. I think.
Given 
my 
aforementioned 
belief 
in the importance of bad 
movies, I cannot stress 
how important it is to see 
this one. It is as fun to discuss 
with others as it is to watch, a 
hollow interpretation of high 
art that only reaffirms to me 
that bad movies can be art after 
all. But, alas, I cannot do my 
own words justice. There’s only 
one man who can. My favorite 
Morf quote describes both his 
own convictions and mine in 
reviewing this movie: “This 
is my life. How I connect with 
some sort of spirituality. I assess 
out of adoration. I further the 
realm I analyze.”
Say what you will about 
the forgettability of “Velvet 
Buzzsaw” in the vast abyss 
of Netflix misfires, but Morf 
Vandewalt 
is 
an 
inspiring 
idea of a man. His movie may 
have failed, but he did indeed 
convince me to further the 
realm I analyze. So thanks, 
Morf.

‘Velvet Buzzsaw’ is an 
enjoyable camp atrocity

ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer

NETFLIX

FILM REVIEW

‘Velvet Buzzsaw’

Netflix

The minute the 
bread is soggy, 
slightly stale 
or just bad in 
general, the whole 
sandwich goes 
down with it.

