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By C.C. Burnikel
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
03/11/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
03/11/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Monday, March 11, 2019
ACROSS
1 Jet trail
6 Torino ta-ta
10 Lima or soya
14 Conductor Seiji
15 Poker hand
buy-in
16 Rifle range
supply
17 Movie buff’s
collectible
19 Like spider webs
20 Trees devastated
by a “Dutch”
disease
21 Go kaput
22 Manually clutch
23 Late July zodiac
sign
24 Warm winter
wear
27 Popeye, for one
29 Ramen : Japan ::
__ : Vietnam
30 Med. care group
31 Croat or Serb
32 Capri or Wight
34 All in favor
35 Tool for
whacking
unwanted
grasses
38 Puppies’ bites
41 Friend in battle
42 Damon of “True
Grit” (2010)
45 “__, please”: box
office request
from a single
patron
46 Orlando-to-Miami
dir.
47 Some October
babies
49 Looked after
53 High dudgeon
54 “Aw, shucks!”
55 No-winner
situation
56 Start of a play
57 Betting group
58 Time for a drink
at the gym... or
what can literally
be seen in 17-,
24-, 35- and
49-Across
61 Airline with an
all-kosher menu
62 “Close one!”
63 Copy, briefly
64 Driving range
barriers
65 Ironically, some
are “civil”
66 Caravan stops
DOWN
1 The word
“America” has
four of them
2 Rhododendron
shrubs
3 Saturated
vegetable fat
4 Big-eyed birds
5 Drake genre
6 Electronic
calculator
pioneer
7 Pentium
processor maker
8 Gobbled up
9 “__ the
ramparts ... ”
10 Port in
southeastern
Iraq
11 Capacity to relate
12 “Say something
funny!”
13 Amateurs
18 Smell
22 Nat __ Wild:
cable channel
24 Worked on a
loom
25 Spread out, as
fingers
26 Stimulate
28 Felons violate
them
32 Ran in neutral
33 Poivre partner
34 Graceful horse
36 Lack of difficulty
37 Kuwait potentate
38 Sign on a new
store
39 Losing big at the
casino, say
40 Bleating
companion
43 “Three-headed”
arm muscle
44 Raw steak style
46 Ship’s pronoun
47 Creepy look
48 Japanese
watches
50 Rooms behind
bars?
51 Playful marine
animal
52 Vantage points
56 Office space
calculation
58 Letters in a URL
59 ‘’Now I get it!’’
60 Dude
HELP WANTED
FOR RENT
Welcome
back
to
school
While
I
have
written
previously about music from
the
Anglosphere
for
this
column, I try to reserve my
attention
towards
foreign-
language
music.
Exceptions
occur when even something
from
the
Anglosphere
is
distinctly
inseparable
from
a time and place outside of
the United States. Grime, for
example. Mike Skinner’s (going
by the name The Streets) 2002
album Original Pirate Material,
an album that has gripped me
and intrigued me from my very
first listen, is one of those.
An album more readers will
likely be familiar with that
closely resembles the anecdotal,
slice-of-life stories of nights
out and spurned romance is
The Arctic Monkeys’s 2006
debut
Whatever
People
Say
I Am, That’s What I’m Not.
Though the album lacks Alex
Turner’s unmatched wit and
the
creativity
of
American
hip-hop’s greatest storytellers,
Skinner, a Birmingham native,
managed to make a thoroughly
engaging, unique album that
influenced music in the U.K. for
years to come.
I
personally
wouldn’t
characterize what Skinner does
on this album as “rapping” per
se, at least not in the sense that
we’re used to. Sure, there’s
rhyming and wordplay, but
frankly, Skinner’s lines are
awkwardly wordy at several
points and purely clumsy at
others. He sounds more like
an
overzealous
beat
poet
than a rapper. And it fits. The
instrumentals are metallic and
precise — think the opposite
of the unquantized drums J
Dilla made a specialty. There’s
definitely more two-step and
garage influence rather than
jazz and soul, which makes
complete sense, as those were
the
genres
that
ruled
the
dancefloors of the U.K. at the
time.
Skinner
tells
stories
of
the mundane and the mind-
numbingly boring and somehow
makes them seem grand all
at once. “Cause this is our
zone, videos, televisions, 64s,
playstations, weigh up Henry
with precision, few herbs and
a bit of Benson,” he raps on one
of the album’s standouts, “Has
It Come To This?” He later
mentions,
“My
underground
trains run from Mile End
to Ealing, From Brixton to
Boundsgreen”
and
“Deep
seated urban decay, deep seated
urban decay, Rip down posters I
like from last week’s big garage
night.” Skinner describes and
references areas of the young
and working class, far from the
glamorous locales Americans
often associate with the U.K.
These garage nights serve as
the respite from the urban
blight caused by the repressive
austerity policies of politicians
past and present.
“Weak Become Heroes” is
Skinner’s personal reflection
on raving culture, but serves
as
a
surprisingly
poignant
reflection on youth in general,
easily divorceable from the
context of the album and just
as prescient today. Describing a
drug-fueled night out, he raps,
“Same piano loops over, arms
wave, eyes roll back, And jaws
fall open, see in soft focus…
Yo, they could settle wars with
this.” He later reflects, “Then
the girl in the café taps me
on the shoulder, I realize five
years went by and I’m older/
Memories
smolder,
winter’s
colder/ But that same piano
loops over and over,” himself
rapping over a looped piano.
It’s an ode to those magical
moments
of
eternal
youth,
freedom from the drudgeries
and pain and stresses modern
capitalism inflicts. It’s an ode to
feeling, truly feeling. Ironically,
I myself shudder at the prospect
of realizing five years went by
and memories smoldering, but
Skinner’s assertion that the
same looped piano remains
somewhat comforting.
Despite
being
heavily
influenced by the American art
form of hip-hop, Original Pirate
Material
is
unapologetically
English.
Skinner’s
regional
accent shines through, and he
makes a point to mention he’s
talking about “geezers” and
“birds.” The influence it has
to this day is remarkable. A
short while later, Dizzee Rascal
released arguably the Illmatic
of the young genre of grime,
Boy in da Corner. Nobody could
deny how much it, and all the
music that followed, owed to
Mike Skinner’s masterpiece.
Original Pirate Material is
an album about being young
and bored. However, youth is
not admired; age is not feared.
Skinner just describes being
alive, being stupid, being aware
that the present-day routine
will one day become nostalgia
fodder.
At
the
beginning,
his words, and the album
in general, actually kind of
depressed me. But now, having
listened to it more times than
I can count, I understand the
comfort underlining it all.
Another dive into grime:
‘Original Pirate Material’
DAILY WORLD MUSIC COLUMN
SAYAN GHOSH
Daily World Music Columnist
Original Pirate
Material is an
album about
being young and
bored. However,
youth is not
admired; age is
not feared.
If “Capernaum” had a thesis, it
would be the reason 12-year-old
protagonist Zain El Hajj (Zain al
Rafeea, debut) gives for taking his
parents to civil court: “Because I
was born.”
Out of context, Zain’s request
may register as absurd. How could
giving life to someone ever be seen
as a crime? Why would a child
criminalize his own existence?
And what court of law would hear
such a claim? But in the context
of Nadine Labaki’s (“Where Do
We Go Now?”) unabashed film
depicting life on the bottom
socioeconomic tier in Lebanon,
she unveils the traumatic blows
Zain has sustained from every
angle by age 12, so that by the
end, it is hardly Zain’s testament
that seems absurd. Instead, it is
the life his family and his society
have left him with, as well as the
so-called justice system intended
to protect the wounded like him,
that we are called to interrogate.
Labaki
skillfully
navigates
these
commentaries
with
the
episodic
construction
of
“Capernaum.” She punctuates
the chaos of her protagonist’s life
with scenes from the court case
in which Zain sues his parents,
making almost loyal returns
from Zain’s turbulent existence
to that space of alleged law and
order. This juxtaposition creates
a tension in the middle of which
Zain
suffers
immensely
but
shines resiliently.
In the episodes of the chaos,
we encounter a triad of parental
figures:
Zain’s
impoverished,
downtrodden
parents
who
neglect their many children;
Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), an
undocumented migrant worker
from Ethiopia and single mother
of
infant
Yonas
(Boluwatife
Treasure Bankole); and, although
he is only 12 years old, Zain. This
trio is structured around the
parental neglect and absence —
the kind that stems from adverse
social conditions and selfishness
— from putting one’s own survival
in front of that of your children. In
moments of self-sacrifice, these
parental figures move to the apex
of the trio; Labaki represents
selflessness as the cornerstone of
love rather than the antithesis of
survival.
But when we ask that sacrifice
of a child, when we ask someone
who needs nurturing of their
own to be a self-reliant nurturer,
we see how a boy begins to see
lifegiving as a crime. Zain is
unguarded. He has an extensive
repertoire of obscenities. He
knows what could happen to a
young girl like his sister once she
starts menstruating and is seen
as a woman. Zain knows what
could happen to a child like Yonas
if he is not fiercely cared for. He
shouldn’t, but he does, and he uses
that knowledge to care for the
vulnerable when no one else will.
In the commission of this tall
order of care and protection, Zain
breaks the law. We learn that the
courtroom scene is not Zain’s
first appearance in court, that
he is serving a five-year sentence
for stabbing his sister’s husband,
roughly triple her age. The same
way Labaki complexifies Zain’s
explanation for the suing his
parents, she does the same with
Zain’s carceral status. It sounds
acceptable, if not prudent, that
Zain do time for his violence.
Taken with the episodes of
trauma, however, it is the legal
system that begins to seem
absurd. The prospect of removing
crime from its circumstances and
deciding what individual gets
to atone for societal ills and of
looking at a child offender with
the same removed contempt
as one would look at an adult
offender
are
absurdities
in
Labaki’s
book.
Children
like
Zain stand and flinch in their
crosshairs.
Zain is the heart and the
heartbreak
of
“Capernaum.”
Through
the
mature,
foulmouthed,
brave,
selfless,
strong character of twelve-year-
old Zain, Labaki unabashedly
shows us how what we expect
from
children
measures
up
to what we give. At the same
time, we entrust children with
the
cross-generational
hope
for change, we expect them to
fend for that without laying the
groundwork for that change. We
repeat our parents’ mistakes,
we resign to flawed institutions,
and yet somehow still expect
change. That is why we need to
see Labaki’s Zain. We learn from
his stories and his crimes, his
unlikely triumphs and his naïve
failures. We need the painful
reckoning of “Capernaum.”
‘Capernaum’ indicts the
institutions that fail kids
JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer
SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
FILM REVIEW
Everyone has a routine. For
me, it’s listening to an episode
of “The Daily” podcast while
I eat a slice of banana bread
and drink my Ceylon black tea
every morning.
For the narrator of Samantha
Downing’s “My Lovely Wife,”
it’s stopping at the the EZ-Go
gas station two miles from
his home to get a cup of
coffee. It’s having a movie
night with his family every
week. It’s cheering at the
sidelines for each one of his
daughter’s soccer game.
The
narrator
sounds
pretty
much
like
your
everyday man. A loving
father. A doting husband.
He’s the kind of guy that
would have a nice word for
everyone.
He also kills with his wife.
Their routine is like this: He
would meet his women at bars,
acting as a non-threatening
deaf man. They’d chat. They
might share some more drinks.
By the end of the hour, he’s
invited to spend the night. The
next day, he lets his wife know
if the woman is “right.” If she
is, the events progress rapidly.
His wife would capture the
aforementioned woman, then
murder her. It’s a delicious,
sexy secret between them.
Who would suspect a duo?
But when one of the victims is
discovered, something doesn’t
add up. She was supposed to be
dead for over a year. Instead,
the autopsy reports that she’s
been dead for only a few
weeks. The narrator realizes
that his wife has been keeping
secrets from him. Gradually,
the picturesque suburban life
that this couple has built up is
starting to crumble.
Written
in
first-person,
“My Lovely Wife” makes it
difficult not to get attached to
the narrator. Despite his role
as an accomplice, it’s tempting
to absolve him. Some men buy
chocolate and roses to please
their partner. He kills for her.
You almost want to cheer him
on and you certainly don’t want
him to get caught. Think of the
children! Due to the limitations
of first person, the tensions
are higher. The wife who had
once seemed like an alluring
woman shifts into the role of
a
cold-hearted
psychopath.
It’s hard to pinpoint if the
reason is due to Downing’s
masterful revelations as the
novel switches from past to
present, uncovering more and
more details that had seemed
benign at first glance, or if the
reason is more sinister. Has
the
unreliable
narrator
clouded our perception?
Has he weaved a persona
of a wife that doesn’t exist?
The readers can only rely
on the husband to get each
answer. By the last quarter
of the book, the mound
of questions start getting
answered. Somehow each
reveal is more shocking
than
the
last.
With
mounting, almost morbid
horror, the novel is impossible
to put down.
“My
Lovely
Wife”
is
marketed as your “Mr. and
Mrs. Smith” meets “Gone Girl,”
but it’s more than that. It’s a
twisty, psychological thriller
that has your blood pumping,
your sympathy awry and an
ending so satisfying that I’m
already looking forward to
Samantha
Downing’s
next
book.
Domestic mystery ‘My
Lovely Wife’ is shocking
SARAH SALMAN
Daily Arts Writer
BOOK REVIEW
‘My Lovely
Wife’
Samantha Downing
Berkley
Mar. 29, 2019
‘Capernaum’
Michigan Theater
Sony Pictures Classics
6A — Monday, March 11, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com