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By Robert E. Lee Morris
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
03/01/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

03/01/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Friday, March 1, 2019

ACROSS
1 College Park Big 
Ten athlete
5 Smarten (up)
10 Cutlass, e.g.
14 Big name in the 
cookie aisle
15 “Rebel Without a 
Cause” actor
16 Castle
17 Addition at the 
palace?
19 Dot on a globe, 
perhaps
20 Surprising and 
sometimes 
annoying 
success
21 Felicity’s 
“Desperate 
Housewives” role
23 Somme summer
24 Pringles 
alternative
26 Trap fluff
27 “__ about time!”
28 Reason for road 
service
32 Disreputable
35 “All in the Family” 
spinoff
36 Dallas NBAer
37 Church service
38 Zany
39 Ballet move
40 Weapon in some 
action flicks
41 Potsdam 
“please”
42 Social gathering
43 Rip verbally
45 Fall back
46 Acknowledge
47 Woodwind 
musician’s piece
49 CPR pro
52 Gasses up
55 University of 
Wyoming city
57 PC addresses
58 Mole in the cat 
food factory?
60 Down
61 Egbert __, aptly 
named W.C. 
Fields character
62 Countertop 
material
63 Alluring
64 Youngster of an 
awkward age
65 Bullring bravos

DOWN
1 Kitchen topper
2 Release 
violently
3 Shortstop 
alongside 
Robinson
4 Keats or Yeats
5 Brainpower
6 1492 sailer
7 Lodging provider
8 Sense
9 Jimi Hendrix 
classic
10 Point in the right 
direction
11 Missing watch?
12 Nimrod
13 Arcade 
trademark word
18 Vile
22 Nick at __
25 Intangible quality 
responsible 
for four puzzle 
answers
27 Passports, e.g.
29 “Star Wars” hero
30 Velocity, e.g.
31 At any time
32 “Give me __ and 
nothing but”: 
Tom Lehrer lyric

33 Sunset obscurer
34 Change in 
China?
35 Actor LeBlanc
38 It includes reds
39 Lively dance
41 Small meal
42 Sierra __
44 Mixed martial 
artist Ronda
45 Heavy
48 Beethoven 
dedicatee

49 Inbox message
50 Prepare, as 
garlic
51 __ Pete: hot 
sauce brand
52 Massages
53 Creator of Perry 
and Della
54 Winter coat
56 Magazine 
contents
59 Go after, in a 
way

Raise the ruff!
It’s Friday!!!

The 
annual 
Probility 
Marathon returns to Ann 
Arbor on March 24th, and 
organizers are hoping for 
a large turnout. The race’s 
first event, held in 2012, 
attracted runners 
from 44 different 
states and raised 
thousands 
for 
nonprofits 
and 
Ann Arbor Public 
Schools. This year, 
Packard 
Health, 
Cancer 
Support 
Community, Ele’s 
Place and North 
Star 
Reach 
will 
be receiving the 
profits from the 
marathon, 
with 
attendees 
given 
the 
chance 
to 
donate more upon 
registration. 
The 
race 
program 
is 
run 
by 
Epic 
Races, which has 
raised a total of $205,000 for 
charities since 2015, all while 
providing the opportunity for 
new and experienced runners 
alike to join the local events.
This year’s course begins 
at Michigan Stadium and 
passes 
through 
the 
Hill 
neighborhood, 
around 
the 
Forest Hill Cemetery, through 
Gallup Park and the Arb (and 
the feared hill which runs 
through it) before finishing 
back at Michigan Stadium. 
Runners can choose to run 
a 5K, 10K or full marathon. 
The race had also deviated 
from the standard marathon 
policy in proudly overseeing 
a zero waste policy and a 
standardized results system, 

a move which has helped 
to attract the thousands of 
attendees in previous years. 
Hotel 
information, 
route 
maps, registration and race 
results can all be found on 
the 
Epic 
Races 
website, 
linked here.
Epic Races is also adding a 
new event this year: the relay. 
Runners have been invited 
to split the distance of the 

full marathon among teams 
of two-four. That harrowing 
26.2 has been smashed into 
the far more approachable 
numbers of 6.05 and 7.05 (two 
legs of each). And you know, 
when you can run three miles 
you can run four, and when 
you can run four you can 
grossly round up to seven. 
And then, suddenly, you’re 
piecing together a marathon 
team from the largest group 
of 
people 
you 
see 
most 
frequently: Daily Arts.
Although 
Arts 
has 
a 
reputation for not, like, doing 
anything except talk about 
highbrow music and movies, 
running is in our brand. 
Haruki Murakami has run 

one marathon a year from 
the age of 33, and completed 
all 62 miles of the Hokkaido 
ultramarathon 
in 
1996. 
Will Ferrell has three full 
marathons under his belt, and 
P. Diddy finished the New 
York in 2003 “in sunglasses, 
his hair in a closely cropped 
Mohawk and an ‘I Heart New 
York’ breathing strip across 
his nose.”
If P. Diddy can 
do 26.2, we can do 
seven. 
Welcome 
the 
Daily 
Arts 
Runners: 
Emma 
Chang, 
John 
Decker, 
Shima 
Sadaghiyani 
and 
Verity Sturm. As 
a unit, we boast 
a 
spectrum 
of 
relationships with 
running, 
ranging 
from 
“cross 
country in middle 
school” to “5ks on 
treadmills” 
and 
“half 
marathon 
into 
Canada.” 
And to be honest, 
we 
haven’t 
been 
training (have you 
seen the ice?). But hey, the 
internet says we can get the 
deed done in four, three, even 
two weeks. So stop asking me 
about it.
All irony aside, there’s 
something 
alluring 
about 
passing 
the 
baton 
across 
that historic distance across 
the city in which we seem 
to weather a marathon of 
experiences day in and day 
out (and with our coworkers, 
to boot). Register here if you 
want to run alongside us and 
rip on “Green Book,” stay 
tuned for our training video 
dropping the week of 3/18 or 
watch us do the damn thing 
on Sunday, March 24th at 
7:30 a.m.

Lacing up for our debut in
the Ann Arbor Marathon

NEW MEDIA

Probility Ann Arbor Marathon

7:30 a.m.

Mar. 24, 2019

Michigan Stadium

$116

I’ve been thinking a lot 
about mothers lately. Last 
week was a whirlwind of 
sadness and celebration, as 
the sudden death of one of 
my good friends’s mother fell 
within days of my own mom’s 
birthday. I cried, I laughed, I 
talked to my mom for hours 
on the phone. It’s times like 
this that remind me how 
much she means to me, how 
much a mother can mean 
in general. During this era 
of pseudo-adulthood I find 
myself in at college, I realize 
more and more every day how 
much she has prepared me 
for whatever life might throw 
in my way. Sure, it might not 
be easy to get through, but if 
there’s anything I’ve taken 
to heart from her, it’s that 
I’ll get through eventually. I 
love her more than any other 
person ever to walk this earth 
here are some things that I 
have learned from her that I 
think about every single day. 
Thanks, mom.
There 
is 
beauty 
in 
literally everything around 
you.
My friends would vouch 
that I have taken this to heart, 
that I’m one sappy girl when it 
comes to anything beautiful. I 
cry at everything: sad things, 
happy 
things, 
beautiful 
things, funny things. I think 
the key to really capturing 
happiness in your life is to 
understand this fact. It’s not 
something my mom has ever 
said verbatim to me, but I’ve 
learned from watching her 
that there is a kernel of joy 
hidden 
inside 
everything 
we see on the day to day. 
When it snows and looks like 
powdered sugar falling in the 
night here, I think of my mom 
 
she has literally yelled at my 
siblings and I to “LOOK AT 
BEAUTY!” on a regular basis 
for most of my life. Sunsets, 
flowers, fields on the way 
to our cottage up north, it’s 
all beautiful to her. Through 

this, she taught me how to 
find that kernel of beauty 
even in the darker times we 
all go through: There’s always 
something waiting to surprise 
you.
Tell the people you love 
that you love them.
This one is pretty obvious 
to me, but I realize now how 
important it truly is. I tell my 
friends I love them constantly, 
almost 
to 
an 
annoying 
extent. That’s something I’ve 
learned from my mother. In 
her opinion, if you feel it, 
why wouldn’t you share that 
with someone? Knowing the 
amount of love in my life, all 
I can do is share it with those 
around me. It’s three words, 
a short declaration that can 
make all the difference to 
whoever it’s said to. The fear 
of awkwardness or rejection is 
much less daunting when you 
understand that an immediate 
response doesn’t really matter 
in the long run instead, it’s the 
thought behind it that stays 
with those involved.
Don’t be afraid to say 
what you feel.
If there’s anything that 
this week taught me, it’s that 
things can change quicker 
than you think is humanly 
possible. That’s something my 
mom has always embraced, 
telling my siblings and I 
everything she feels for us at 
any given moment. She calls us 
“chickens,” which I’ve always 
found hilarious. Sometimes 
I’ll be sitting at home and hear 
her through the wall: “I’m so 

glad you’re home, chickens!” 
It’s kind of a drastic example, 
but those expressions of love 
and happiness have rubbed 
off on me. What’s the use of 
keeping something great or 
important inside your head? 
Everything’s 
better 
when 
people are on the same page. 
Don’t hide from yourself by 
hiding your thoughts from 
those who are lucky enough to 
hear them. It doesn’t need to 
be dire, maybe just a reminder 
that you care, or that you saw 
something funny on the way 
to work. If something makes 
you happy or sad or possesses 
you to share it at all, you 
never know how much it can 
brighten another person’s day.
The best skill a person 
can have is the ability to 
laugh at life.
My mother is one of the 
funniest 
people 
I 
know, 
and it’s not just because she 
has a wicked wit she really 
knows how to laugh at life, 
whether it’s good, bad, or even 
somewhere in between. At its 
base elements, life is hilarious. 
Understanding that can make 
any moment full of dread or 
sadness just that little bit 
better so it’s easier to handle. 
I have a considerably darker 
sense of humor than she does, 
but I think a lot of it came from 
this lesson that she has taught 
me. It’s a lot less difficult to 
get through hard times when 
you can find the humor in 
your situation, or even in 
yourself. In my opinion, this is 
the most important thing I’ve 
learned from my mom. Being 
a person in this crazy world 
is hard, you might as well be 
able to see how ridiculous it 
is. We’re all just here trying 
to have a good life, but the 
thing that binds us is how 
insane the path may seem to 
get there. Laugh a little more, 
and I promise it will make 
that journey a smoother one. 
It might even rub off on your 
own children one day.

DAILY GENDER & MEDIA COLUMN

CLARA 
SCOTT

For my mom, with love

About 
a 
year 
before 
the 
publication of his first novel, 
“Bangkok 
Wakes 
To 
Rain,” 
Pitchaya Sudbanthad published 
a listicle cataloging a handful of 
“place-based novels.” He writes: 
“When writers get asked how their 
novel came to them, some might 
answer that a character spoke first 
or a sentence sounded to them, 
and for others, like me, we require 
an arrival of a place, or rather, our 
arrival to one.”
“Bangkok” seems to be an 
attempt to stage such an arrival for 
the reader. The novel’s nearly 
400 pages aim to capture the 
titular city in a panorama 
from 19th-century Siam to a 
speculative future of climate 
catastrophe. His approach to 
this dizzying task is like that 
of a collage — Sudbanthad 
writes that he “(let) my mind 
wander in the city where I was 
born and (heard) the city tell 
me stories,” and accordingly, 
“Bangkok” takes the form of 
a collection of stories in and 
around Bangkok. As a possible 
anchor point, we get a recurrent 
Garcia 
Márquez-esque 
house 
somewhere in the city, which most 
of the characters are connected to 
in some way.
Despite this confluence of the 
vast and the specific, Sudbanthad 
generally leaves allegory just out 
of view. His characters do not 
necessarily symbolize anything, 
even if they are representative of 
certain kinds of citizens of the city 
at different times and places. The 
central characters of the story are 
Sammy, who moved away from the 
city when he was young, and later 
returns to sell his parents’ house; 
Nee and Nok, two sisters who grow 
up in Bangkok together before 
Nok leaves for Japan and Nee gets 
involved in the student protests 
of the ’70s; and Mai and Pig, two 
millennials who are around for 
the city’s reclamation by the sea in 
the 2020s. The novel intersperses 
episodes of the main characters 
with one-off anecdotes and wide 
panoramic shots, all intended, 
presumably, to capture another 
aspect of the city — to make the 
image more complete. There’s even 
a section told from the point of 
view of the birds in the marshy area 
surrounding the city.

This is all a lot to take in, and 
despite the elaborate schemes 
Sudbanthad uses to connect the 
disparate threads of the novel, it 
still feels like we are essentially 
dealing 
with 
a 
collection 
of 
unrelated stories. This is fine, but it 
would help if the stories themselves 
had more interest beyond simply 
commenting on each other. The 
individual story arcs have the 
quality of fading in and out without 
accomplishing much: Sammy drifts 
from place to place, Nee and Nok 
argue and eventually make up, 
Pig and Mai drift apart. The plots 
frequently have a backdrop of social 
unrest, but after 1976, nothing 
disastrous really happens, or indeed 

feels like it can happen. Even when 
the rising seas completely swallow 
the old city, we are reassured that 
there’s life after it, and that it’s just 
as boring as before: Mai and Pig live 
suspiciously like Nee and Nok did.
More 
generally, 
what’s 
so 
striking about the idea of a “place-
based novel” is that it is essentially 
founded on a contradiction. If the 
point of a novel (of the kind with 
speaking and thinking characters) 
is a sense of location, of place, the 
characters are mostly important 
for their ability to illuminate the 
place, even as we see them on the 
page as thinking, speaking humans 
rather than symbols.
Accordingly, 
Sudbanthad’s 
characters feel like the novel’s 
weakest link. In Sammy’s case, 
one could be forgiven for being 
unenthusiastic about the Global 
South edition of the Salingerite 
anti-hero, who wanders around 
stewing in his disaffection with 
nearly everything. He is passive-
aggressive toward his family, he 
treats women badly, he feels a guilt 
far vaguer than seems situationally 
appropriate — it’s familiar and a 
little ugly.
Nee and Nok are the novel’s most 
successful characters, but they 
seem a little plain, slotted into roles 

and tasked with playing them out. 
The two sisters are both defined by 
their memories. In Nee’s case, she 
relives her traumatic experiences 
in the student protests as similar 
events happen in 1992, but is 
otherwise mostly just dutiful to 
her job as a manager for the condo 
building and swim instructor. Nok 
starts a Thai restaurant in Japan, 
a balm for the homesickness of 
Thai students. Nee and Nok are 
conduits for memory, which is, for 
Sudbanthad, a force like gravity: 
unidirectional, 
rather 
linear, 
inescapable.
And there are some characters 
who are somewhere in between 
having full roles and just sort 
of being representative of 
a time or a place. A 19th 
century minister gets some 
of Sudbanthad’s best prose, 
but his role in the story is 
never clarified; he just seems 
to be there to inform us that 
Bangkok had a past. The 
strangest of his characters 
(and despite this, definitely 
one of the book’s larger 
catastrophes) is Clyde, the 
jazz pianist copy-pasted from 
New York to Bangkok in the 
mid to late 20th century. Clyde 
feels like the muzak version of a 
jazz musician written by someone 
who engages with the history of 
American popular music out of the 
corner of his eye — there’s no real 
history or engagement with any 
of the musical movements Clyde 
would have known of or lived 
through, an omission that feels 
profoundly wrong in a genre of 
music so heavily focused on lineage 
and influence. (Later in the novel 
Sudbanthad makes up a series of 
absurd jazz musicians that makes 
me think he hasn’t ventured very 
far into the back catalog.)
Clyde also gets some of the 
novel’s 
most 
puckered, 
florid 
writing: “When he had much of the 
crowd swaying and nodding their 
heads at the table, he knew the 
irrepressible moment had arrived. 
He’d call them out to the floor and 
out they’d tumble, tugged from 
their seats by a hand they might 
only hold for that night. Folks sure 
went wild, given the permission 
of a mess.” It’s impossible to know 
what Sudbanthad wants his readers 
to get from this strange man. He is 
just there, much like everything 
else in this novel is just there, left 
for the reader to draw any possible 
conclusions from it.

‘Bangkok Wakes’ is muddy

BOOK REVIEW

‘Bangkok Wakes to Rain’

Pitchaya Sudbanthad

Riverhead Books

Feb. 29, 2019

EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Wrtier

VERITY STURM
Daily Arts Runner

JOHN DECKER
Daily Arts Runner

6 — Friday, March 1, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

