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FOR RENT By Blake Slonecker ©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 02/13/19 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis 02/13/19 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: Release Date: Wednesday, February 13, 2019 ACROSS 1 Lamb bearers 5 Common Vegas hotel room amenities 10 Tea holders 14 Herod sent them to Bethlehem 15 Full of energy 16 __ Day: Bayer vitamin brand 17 Faction 18 Cook’s reply to 37-Across? 20 Nightmarish street of film 21 Gimlet garnish 22 Dr. Reid in “Criminal Minds,” familiarly 23 Librarian’s reply to 37-Across? 26 Double Stuf treats 27 “That’s __ to me” 28 “__ and the Real Girl”: 2007 film 30 Operatic solos 32 Spook 34 Animal house 37 Insomniac’s lament 40 Canadian singer DeMarco 41 Of help 42 Slugger Barry 43 Big fusses 44 Remnant 45 Buffalo NHL player 48 Trainer’s reply to 37-Across? 53 Photographer Alda married to Alan 55 Prefix with pit or pool 56 Classic auto 57 Auditor’s reply to 37-Across? 59 Flamboyant Dame 60 Word spoken con affetto 61 Arroz con __: chicken dish 62 Horseback rider’s control 63 Globes 64 Cake raiser 65 Wilson of Heart et al. DOWN 1 Arson evidence, perhaps 2 Pixar film robot who falls in love with 8-Down 3 Vanity case? 4 [Not my bad] 5 Misters, in old India 6 Texas tourist spot 7 The cops 8 Robot who falls in love with 2-Down 9 Old salts’ haunts 10 Complexion aids 11 Ridiculous 12 Wafer maker 13 Sushi bar brews 19 Some exercise tops 21 Torts enrollee 24 Actor James or singer Jimmy 25 1971 Sutherland title role 29 Chilean year 30 Intent or intend 31 Nipper’s label 32 Bank job 33 NHL’s Thrashers 34 Meditation setting with rocks and gravel 35 Exhaustive ref. 36 Black __ 38 Sporty ’60s Pontiac 39 MGM mogul Marcus 43 Stadiums 44 Totalitarian leader 45 Vanzetti’s partner 46 Like Times Square on New Year’s Eve 47 Book jacket entry 49 Swift Northeast train 50 Ship stabilizers 51 Red Square honoree 52 34-Down teaching aids 54 Athlete’s award 58 Row maker 59 Pitcher’s stat Valentine’s Day is a day invented by the capitalist patriarchy to ensure single girls feel sad and alone one day a year. Well — news flash — we always feel sad and alone. I know it is tempting, but please, for the sake of humanity do not watch the movie “Valentine’s Day” this Valentine’s Day. On the surface it seems apropos, I mean the movie is basically instructing you when and how to watch it. When being on Valentine’s Day and how is by yourself and buried in Hershey Kisses wrappers. But really there is no good time to watch “Valentine’s Day” because it is the worst. It was the first and last time Taylor Swift was ever in a movie because “The Giver” does not count. But it was also how a) Taylor met Taylor (Lautner) and started their Taylor-filled Taylor- multuous relationship and b) gave us the ballad that is “Back to December.” Also, let’s just talk about how everyone is in this movie but no one is good. It’s like if you make pie and fill it with things that individually taste good, then mix them all together in a dough of weak plot and flimsy characters. It will taste like a Nicholas Cage movie. Yeah, I like cookie dough and I like chicken nuggets, but I would never put them in a pie together. Even if Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper become plane friends in your pie or Anne Hathaway plays a phone-sex operator in your pie or Ashton Kutcher lovingly delivers flowers to women who are not Mila Kunis in your pie, it won’t make the pie taste good. And it certainly won’t encourage you to make another pie for another holiday (cough, cough “New Year’s Eve”). So, dear reader, here are some suggestions of things you can do this Valentine’s Day that doesn’t include watching the movie “Valentine’s Day.” Poke your eyes out with a Command hook. Then reapply the Command hook to the wall for its purpose of holding your bathrobe. Watch sports. They’re literally always on. Experiment with Satanism. Create a dating app for dogs. Write the next great American novel. Like it’s hard? Become an ASMR YouTube sensation. Date Noah Centineo and have a very public, very dramatic breakup. Organize your desktop. Text your crush a questionably suggestive meme. Discover a deadly species of spider and name it after your ex. Drink blood. Ask your parents if you were an accident. Start communicating only via carrier pigeon. Find your long lost twin at summer camp and switch places to mess with Dennis Quaid. Look up pictures of Dennis Quaid. He has still got it Watch all 275 episodes of “Cheers.” Contemplate the existence of an afterlife. Create a shrine to Adam Driver in your closet. But you should do this anyways. Pose nude for an art class filled with your crushes. Do stand-up comedy. Replace all the faces in the Vatican with Chrissy Teigen grimacing at the 2016 Oscar’s. Befriend a quirky inventor, witness his murder and then travel back in time to ensure that your parents boink. Fuck it, just watch “Valentine’s Day.” What to do on Valentine’s Day: Don’t watch the film DAILY HUMOR COLUMN BECKY PORTMAN Middle school is the apex of discomfort. It is three years of magnified displeasure and embarrassment, most of which are psychologically repressed and buried deep within our psyche — which makes it all the more baffling that someone would not only suggest to revisit it, but also magnify how uncomfortable it is. Whatever their reasoning, they managed to convince a few other unfortunate souls. The terrifying, disturbing and depressing result is “PEN15.” The show follows two friends, Maya (Maya Erskine, “Betas”) and Anna (Anna Konkle, “Rosewood”), as they start the seventh grade together. The catch? Maya and Anna are played by adults, while the rest of the cast are acutal children (because that won’t make anyone uncomfortable, right?). The premiere, “First Day,” shows their disastrous first day. The school lockers are plastered with “Dustin hearts Maya” and “Brandt hearts Maya” written on notebook paper. While Maya is at first lured into believing these boys “like-like” her, she is duped by the wicked popular kids, who christen her that year’s UGIS — the Ugliest Girl In School. In the end, she challenges Brandt (Jonah Beres, “Strange Nature”) to a trash-talking competition, where she almost stands up for herself. In the end, she claims his uncircumcised penis is the reason why his dad died. Yikes. For a comedy about the struggle of navigating pubescent politics, “PEN15” cannot even muster a chuckle. Most of the jokes operate off of Erskine and Konkle’s air- headed characters. However, their acting is so insufferable — their voices so irritating — that all the jokes land closer to the side of pity than humor. It really is embarrassing to watch these two suspiciously youthful-looking women attempt to imitate middle schoolers. Their classmates — who are all played by children — are just as bad at acting. At least they have an excuse. Which brings me to the dynamic Erskine and Konkle share with their co-stars. One stereotype of middle school the show nails is the flirting and note-passing occuring between children who are beginning to understand their sexualities. “PEN15” does not shy away from incorporating the strange way children attempt to interact with one another. But, adult actors in their 30s flirting with child actors is simply unpleasant. As child-like as Erskine and Konkle might seem, they still visibly look like adults, braces or not. For as much as the show lacks direction or humor, it also lacks conscience. The aforementioned scene wherein Maya says that Brandt’s uncircumcised penis is the reason why his dad died stands out for how uncomfortably shocking it was. Even worse, Maya suffers absolutely zero consequences for this. Brandt cries. Maya runs away. Then the next night, when Maya asks Anna if she was being too harsh, Anna asserts that no, she was not. Instead, Maya gets to erase her name off the UGIS list in the boys bathroom for a triumphant win. If there’s anything “PEN15” does well, it’s capture the atmosphere of middle school. The awkward clothing choices, the uncertainty about bras, passing notes and the strange way tweens and pre-teens talk to each other are all expertly captured here. Even the soundtrack is full of 2000s alt-classics. But “PEN15” also emulates the reason we’d like to forget middle school ever existed. The show is uncomfortable, disturbing and unsettling. The two lead actresses are so almost like middle schoolers — and yet so far — that it errs too close into the territory of the uncanny valley. If it was at least funny, there might be something to spare. But it isn’t. Instead, “PEN15” belongs in the land of psychologically repressed memories, never to resurface. ‘PEN15’ is grossly uncomfy and relatively unwatchable ‘PEN15’ Hulu Series Premiere Now Streaming Not all movies need sequels. Movies whose entire premises are based around huge twists really don’t need sequels. It’s a shame then that 2014’s “The Lego Movie” simply made too much money to condemn it to only child status. “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” attempts to live up to the high bar set by the original, but stumbles mightily along the way. Picking up right where the first film left off, returning writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (“Spider- Man: Into the Spider-Verse”) waste no time at all dropping the audience right back into the world of normal-special guy Emmet and his various LEGO-based friends. The animation is still brisk and colorful. The characters are still funny and charming. The ending is arguably just as emotionally resonant as the first film’s. And yet, despite all of that, something never quite feels right with this second chapter of the brick-based film franchise. Maybe it’s the fact that a huge part of what the first film so successful was the shocking originality of it. When the original “Lego Movie” was first announced it was assumed it would be nothing more than a 90 minute commercial for toys, and while it was that to a degree, it was also a well- told story about creativity, fathers and sons and the pain of growing up. “The Lego Movie 2” goes all-in on the meta fourth-wall-breaking twist that defined the ending of “The Lego Movie.” But, you can’t do the same gag twice, and the film feels half baked and empty because of it. The plot is extraordinarily simple, even for a kids movie. After his friends are captured by the seemingly evil aliens of the “Systar System” Chris Pratt’s dweeby Emmet must team up with a parody of Chris Pratt’s more recent action hero characters (such as Star-Lord of “Guardians of the Galaxy”) in order to rescue them before “Ourmomageddon” is unleashed. The villain of the first film was the father. It’s not hard to see where “The Lego Movie 2” is going. Unlike the first movie, the writers never appear to be exactly keeping their cards close to their chest. The main plot drags on and on, with none of the main characters seeming to have quite enough to do. Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks, “Pitch Perfect 3”), Batman (Will Arnett, “Arrested Development”) and Emmet’s other friends spend most of the movie trapped in the Systar System without anything interesting to do. Emmet himself mostly meanders around the LEGO cosmic universe without much of an urgency to his actions or a clear path to achieving his goal. The gag of Chris Pratt playing different versions of himself is funny at first but wears thin quickly, and like the other third act twists, its denouncement is predictable. Musical numbers abound, much more so than were previously present. While these numbers are all fairly interesting in and of themselves, they stop the narrative completely in its tracks. The film never totally justifies its decision to become a half-musical, and although there is a reason for it in-story, it’s an open question whether this particular LEGO movie might have been better off if they had just gone all the way with it and made “The Lego Movie: The Musical.” As it stands, this second Lego movies that we do have accurately reflects with it is like for children to play with Lego, because the story comes across as though it was completely made up as its writers went along. Thematically it doesn’t tie together nearly as well as the original “Lego Movie” and many characters feel lost in the shuffle. The potential and enormity of the world that existed in “The Lego Movie” is gone. The spark is dead: onto the next one. ‘Lego Movie 2’ was dull ‘The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part’ Warner Bros. Ann Arbor 20+ IMAXw MAXWELL SCHWARZ Daily Arts Wrtier FILM REVIEW WARNER BROS. IAN HARRIS Daily Arts Wrtier TV REVIEW The school lockers are plastered with “Dustin hearts Maya” and “Brandt hearts Maya” written on notebook paper 6A — Wednesday, February 13, 2019 Arts The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com