The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, February 27, 2019 — 5A

We live in a society that 
seems to be facing an issue that 
previous generations probably 
would have never imagined: 
an overwhelming amount of 
information. With the internet 
becoming a central aspect in 
everyone’s life, the way we 
interact with one another has 
become different as well. In 
the School of Music, Theatre 
& 
Dance’s 
production 
of 
Caryl Churchill’s “Love and 
Information,” 
director 
Gillian 
Eaton 
asks 
the 
audience, “Can we 
resist the constant 
distraction? 
Is 
paying 
attention 
the most profound 
expression 
of 
love? 
How 
much 
information do we 
need?” I think the 
production reflects 
favorably 
upon 
these questions.
One of the unique 
aspects 
of 
“Love 
and 
Information” 
was 
the 
lack 
of 
characters 
— 
or, 
I guess one could 
say the abundance of them. 
Each of these short scenes 
compares a different set of 
unnamed characters. For the 
most part, characters were 
given very little exposition, and 
there was very little time to 
explore the characters, as per 
the nature of the play. Each of 
the dozens of characters was 
distinctly different, and each 
was portrayed incredibly well 
by the talented cast.
The performance consisted 
of dozens of different vignettes, 
each about one to two minutes 
long 
with 
varying 
subject 
matters. 
Sometimes, 
these 
scenes were accompanied by 
titles projected above the stage 
which would give the audience 
insight as to the subject of 
the different tableaux. One of 
the first scenes featured two 
teenagers that seemed to be 
smoking some sort of substance 
and filling out their census. If 

I had not known that the scene 
was called “Census” I would 
have just assumed two stoners 
were talking about nothing 
and giggling. But because the 
context was provided by that 
title, the scene became more 
focused, and more lighthearted. 
However, 
sometimes 
these 
titles were vague or just non-
existent.
As the show went on, different 
tones were introduced. There 
were multiple vignettes that 
centered around a character 
lacking the ability to feel some 
sort of emotion, from grief to 

pain and everything in between. 
More than once this was a child 
of some sort not knowing what 
it was like to feel a certain 
way, but also included adults 
watching television and failing 
to feel any empathy. I thought 
this 
element 
of 
emotional 
analysis 
was 
one 
of 
the 
highlights of the performance. 
Each actor had a tough job to 
do in conveying the complex 
emotions of a character that the 
audience knew nothing about, 
but I took a lot away from the 
play’s commentary on human 
emotions, and how although 
some of them may seem to be 
dreadful, they all help shape us 
to be human.
I was not a huge fan of 
the usage of cellphones and 
popular music. Seeing two of 
the actors recite the entirety 
of “Man’s Not Hot” by Big Shaq 
(which 
I 
admittedly 
found 
pretty impressive) ruined the 

immersion for me. It felt out of 
place. Most of these vignettes 
conveyed 
emotions 
and 
experiences that felt timeless 
and relatable. I understand 
that the production was meant 
to analyze the current age of 
information, but having modern 
day songs and phones on stage 
took away this feeling that 
these scenes could be applicable 
to human emotion on a broader 
scale. The phones didn’t really 
emerge as a plot device in many 
of the scenes; they just seemed 
like they were there, and they 
were distracting. They felt like 
a red sock in a load of 
white shirts.
One of the aspects 
of the show I enjoyed 
the most was how 
love 
wasn’t 
always 
treated in a romantic 
sense. Sometimes it 
was a paternal love, 
or a close friendship. 
There was a scene 
where one character 
argued with another 
about the legitimacy of 
an online relationship 
with some sort of 
A.I., 
taking 
heavy 
influence from Spike 
Jonze’s “Her.” This 
to me was one of the 
best 
vignettes 
that 
explored the concept of emotion 
while integrating technology.
“Love and Information” was 
a really weird play — in a good 
way. One of my favorite elements 
about 
theater 
is 
how 
real 
character development can feel 
in a live setting. And despite the 
premise of this play lacking any 
sort of character development, 
I enjoyed it. Even for the two 
minutes that a reunited couple 
returned to the stage, I almost 
felt like I knew every step of 
their relationship. Topics like 
memory loss really hit home 
with me with a family prone 
to dementia, but before I had a 
second for that sentimentality 
to kick in, the next scene would 
have me laughing out loud. 
The Department of Theatre & 
Drama’s production of “Love 
and 
Information” 
wasn’t 
perfect, but I didn’t want it to 
be. It was human, and that’s all 
an audience could have wanted.

‘Love and Information,’ for
our own age of information

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

Vern Smith’s “The Green 
Ghetto” is an urban western 
set in a fictional Detroit 
neighborhood 
where 
the 
protagonist, 
Mitchell 
Hosowich, freely grows and 
sells dope (ganja, weed, you 
name it) out of an abandoned 
drug-slinging 
paradise. 
His 
paradise is short-
lived, as the year 
is 2002, marijuana 
is legal nowhere, 
and 
consequently 
the DEA has come 
to town to take 
Hosowich on the 
cross-border 
drug 
chase of his life. 
Vern Smith, a man 
who grew up with 
a close relationship 
to 
Detroit 
from 
across 
the 
river 
in 
Windsor, 
Ontario, 
will 
be 
visiting 
Literati 
this Thursday to 
do a reading from 
this 
humorously 
unadulterated 
look 
at 
life 
in 
post-9/11, war-on-
drugs America and 
Canada.
Smith’s 
“Green 
Ghetto” 
was 
released 
to 
the 
public two weeks 
ago, and has since started his 
tour cross the the U.S. and 
Canada to publicize the book.
During a phone interview 
with The Daily, Smith spoke 
about 
preparing 
for 
his 
upcoming tour: “So far, so 
good,” he stated, remarking 
that he hadn’t yet left Chicago, 
his current place of residence, 
but was raring to hit bars 
across the country to hear how 
his book was being received.
Smith 
had 
previously 
worked at four newspapers and 
three magazines, as well as at 
CJAM 99.1, Windsor, Ontario’s 
local radio broadcast out of 
the University of Windsor. 
It was here that he became 
“something of an accidental 
musicologist.” Working both 

as a reporter and broadcaster 
had a strong influence on 
Smith as a fiction writer.
“I’m not coming at (the 
book) 
as 
an 
activist, 
but 
more as an old, hard-nosed 
reporter,” Smith said.
Having worked for years in 
the newspaper business (until 
2002), Smith had little patience 
for the kind of hysteria-
provoking 
government 

policy and subsequent mass 
media coverage that came 
about in the years following 
9/11. This kind of hysteria 
only supplemented the real 
everyday problems Smith and 
others experienced.
One uninvited effect of 
this was increased border 
security between the U.S. 
and Canada that would have 
likely rendered Smith’s secret 
trips over to Detroit to see the 
Tigers play when he was 11 
impossible. Once he started 
making these trips, they hardly 
stopped until Smith moved out 
of Windsor for good.
“I found culture there, I had 
relationships there … I can’t 
tell you how many shows I saw 
there,” said Smith on Detroit 

in the late ’80s and early ’90s. 
And now more than ever 
hysteria reigns king.
This is why Smith chose 
to set the book when he did. 
9/11 marked the beginnings 
of much of the illogical policy 
making and press hype that 
plague us today. Although the 
book doesn’t delve into detail 
on the war on terrorism, it’s 
understood that this war goes 
hand in hand with 
the war on drugs 
that 
the 
book 
so 
absurdly 
depicts. 
And, although it may 
seem that in recent 
years certain parties 
have come around 
to 
acknowledging 
this 
war’s 
failure 
with the advent of 
legal marijuana in 
several U.S. states 
and Canada, Smith 
remains 
insistent 
that 
both 
federal 
governments 
are 
irrational 
as 
ever 
about it.
“Everyone’s 
so 
high on access at 
home 
they 
don’t 
notice 
there 
are 
100 new ways to 
get arrested for it,” 
Smith 
said, 
citing 
that a 19-year-old in 
Canada could by law 
see up to 14 years in 
prison for passing a 
joint to a 17-year-old. 
He also noted that 
just today on the front cover 
of the Canadian newspaper 
the National Post, a story 
broke on cannabis being the 
leading cause of road deaths 
in Canada. This was according 
to the CEO of Mothers Against 
Drunk Driving Canada.
Marijuana 
policy 
is 
far 
from the only issue on the 
table here. For Smith, it seems 
more a metaphor for the larger 
picture. Plus, it makes for a 
hell of a story: drug-slinging 
cowboy rides the high of failed 
city policy only to high-tail it 
out of, not just the city, but the 
country for fear of losing his 
life to federal agency cronies 
for growing ganja. How does 
it end? You’ll just have to be 
there on Thursday at 7 p.m.

Vern Smith to visit Literati

COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW

“Yeah, ayy / And her pussy 
tastes like Skittles / What? 
Yeah, ayy / You can really taste 
the rainbow.”
Who could have penned this 
work? Shakespeare? Dickinson? 
Dostoevsky?
Nope. Just a humble guy 
named 
Lil 
Xan, 
spitting 
poetry 
over 
the 
gentle 
caress 
of 
a Bobby Johnson 
instrumental.
I don’t think I’m 
going too far out on 
a limb to request 
for him to at least 
be considered for 
a Nobel Prize in 
Literature. 
The 
only 
musician 
to 
have received this 
high honor to date 
is Bob Dylan, who, 
as far as I can tell, 
has written no lines 
about pussy. Dylan 
has been around for about half a 
century and released 35 albums, 
only like four to five of which 
are actually any good. None 
of them contain any Bobby 
Johnson beats. I checked.
It is hard to think of two 
artists more similar than Lil 
Xan and Bob Dylan, but that is 
not to say that they don’t have 
their differences. For example, 
Bob Dylan has yet to publicly 
condemn Xanax. One point for 
Lil Xan. Lil Xan was also once 
hospitalized because he ate too 
many Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, 
which is more self-destructive 
and interesting than anything 
Bob Dylan has ever done in 
his life (other than releasing 

Knocked Out Loaded). Only one 
of these artists has released any 
terrible, preachy contemporary 
Christian albums in a bizarre 
mid-career pivot so far, every 
conceivable metric is coming up 
in favor of Lil Xan.
Bob Dylan seems to think 
that good storytelling primarily 
consists of having a lot of 
different characters, whereas 
Lil Xan’s literary theory is 

centered around drugs and sex, 
both of which are undeniably 
more interesting than railroad 
men or whatever. Dylan is 
considered 
“counterculture,” 
but all of his fans freaked out 
and called him “Judas” when 
he used an electric guitar. 
He doesn’t even have any 
face tattoos (+1 for Lil Xan) — 
rebellion for Dylan consisted 
of wearing really ugly jackets 
and sunglasses while smoking 
weed and lying about having 
a 
heroin 
addiction. 
He 
is 
also 
a 
notoriously 
terrible 
live performer (to the point 
where 
some 
of 
his 
songs 
are 
unrecognizable) 
who 
deliberately 
antagonizes 
his 

fans. Lil Xan, on the other hand, 
is so accommodating that he 
allows his fans to beat him up 
after his shows.
I will concede that Lil Xan 
does not have the edge on Bob 
Dylan in every category they 
are tied in both their singing 
ability and their primitive and 
strophic song structures. Bob 
Dylan’s voice was, at its best, 
nasally and challenging. At its 
worst, 
especially 
towards 
the 
end 
of his career, it is 
redolent of the howl 
of a dog whose tail 
has been stepped on. 
Lil Xan is not much 
better, but at least 
he has put out less 
music.
Lil Xan has never 
been one for sacred 
cows, and Bob Dylan 
is just the latest of 
the old guard to 
fall at the hands of 
a new challenger. I 
cannot help but be 
reminded of the Percy Bysshe 
Shelley poem “Ozymandias”:
“My name is Ozymandias, 
King of Kings;
Look 
on 
my 
Works, 
ye 
Mighty, and despair!
Nothing 
beside 
remains. 
Round the decay
Of 
that 
colossal 
Wreck, 
boundless and bare
The lone and level sands 
stretch far away.”
Legends 
always 
fade. 
Although it might be difficult 
to imagine now, one day Lil 
Xan will fall from grace. Much 
like how he has rendered Bob 
Dylan irrelevant, Lil Xan’s great 
works will too be swept away by 
the sands of time.

Bob Dylan vs. Lil Xan: A
generational showdown

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

BEN VASSAR
Daily Arts Writer

Fiction at Literati: 
Vern Smith

Literati Bookstore

Feb. 28, 2019 @ 7 p.m.

Free

I talk about improv comedy 
constantly, so much so that people 
will actively tell me to stop talking 
about it. But I can’t help it, I’m 
obsessed. For those of you who don’t 
know, I do improv. I apply improv 
concepts to everyday situations. Yes, I 
“Yes, and” my way through life. Once 
my brother told me I sounded like I 
was talking about psychedelics when 
I was talking solely about improv, and 
thus spawned the birth of this listicle. 
Because honestly, it changed my 
life. So whether you love tripping on 
magic mushrooms or have the hots 
for Jason Mantzoukas, enjoy these 
descriptions.
It’s OK alone, but much better in a 
group setting.
Some people even use it as therapy.
Your mom doesn’t get it.
It’s really popular in Chicago.
Your friend Tyler tried it once and 
won’t shut up about it.
It really taught me to trust myself.
It changed my life.
It’s a gateway drug.
It makes you really confident.
It 
makes 
you 
exceedingly 
annoying to be around.
I heard it feels like flying.
You had to be there.
It’s hard to explain if you weren’t 
there, you know?
Apparently it turns your life 
around.
There are so many books written 
about it.
It’s like an altered state of 
consciousness.
It’s illegal in some countries.
Frankly, 
it 
was 
a 
religious 
experience for me.
It 
does 
something 
to 
your 
serotonin levels.
There are podcasts dedicated to it.

It was really big in the 1970s.
It 
diminishes 
anxiety 
and 
depression.
I couldn’t stop laughing the entire 
time.
It 
helps 
you 

unlock the unused depths of the 
human mind.
The experience itself is hard to 
explain.
Watching someone else do isn’t 
the same as doing it yourself.
The come-down is rough.
Robin Williams said, “sometimes 
it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but 
when it does, it’s like open-field 
running.”
Some would say it’s a sub-culture.
All my favorite celebrities have 
done it.
Most comedians start out by doing 
it.
Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are big 
fans of it.
I heard 80 percent of those who 
have done it said it was one of the top 
five most meaningful experiences of 
their lives.
And 50 percent said it was the 
most meaningful experience, like, 
ever.

The 
risks 
are 
incredibly 
exaggerated.
Nixon was not a fan.
It’s safer than alcohol.
Steve Jobs once said it was, “one of 
the most important things (I did) in 
my life.”
My dad said he tried it once in 
college.
About 1.31 million 18 to 25-year-
olds admitted to trying it in 2017.
A lot of people have turned to it for 
comfort after the 2016 election.
People like that it takes you away 
from your phone for a while.
It’s easier to obtain now more than 
ever thanks to the Internet.
Women are getting more involved 
in it.
It helps you reconnect with people 
and the world.
If politicians did it, we would all be 
better off.
It’s a form of escapism.
It makes the world a bit more 
magical and beautiful.
There are three clubs for it at The 
University of Michigan.
You want to try it, but don’t know 
where to start.
You heard it’s only for people who 
listen to Phish.
It might make you feel a little 
dizzy.
It’s best to fast before your first 
time.
You should watch someone else 
do it before you do it yourself so you 
know what to expect.
You’ve seen posters for it around 
campus but don’t fully get it.
It’s mostly a college kid thing, like 
a Capella.
People don’t really enjoy it; they 
just say they do to make their friends 
who actually do it feel better.

Is it improv comedy, or is 
it simply the psychedelics?

DAILY HUMOR COLUMN

BECKY 
PORTMAN

RYAN COX
Daily Arts Writer

JONAH MENDELSON
Daily Arts Writer

It is hard to think of two artists 
more similar than Lil Xan and 
Bob Dylan, but that is not to 
say that they don’t have their 
differences

Each of the dozens of characters 
was distinctly different, and 
each was portrayed incredibly 
well by the talented cast

