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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

