6 — Thursday, March 21, 2019
Arts
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By Ed Sessa
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
03/21/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
03/21/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Thursday, March 21, 2019
ACROSS
1 Mosque leaders
6 Teddy-bearlike
Star Wars figure
10 What many icons
open
14 Prime production
15 Vase-making
dynasty
16 Legal plea, briefly
17 *Hazards for
herpetologists
19 Ring calls
20 Falco of “The
Sopranos”
21 Designer
Schiaparelli
22 Classic mother-
and-son statue
23 Didn’t emulate
Washington?
25 Programming
language with a
coffee icon
26 *Square-shaped
ice cream treat
30 North-of-the-
border gas
33 Not sharp
34 What the fourth
little piggy had
35 Erode
38 Bettor
expectations
40 Brought up
41 Shuttlecock’s
path
43 Dols. and cts.
44 *Novel narrated
by a horse
48 Spelled-out
strikeouts
49 Best Buy buys
54 Sacked out
56 Great Plains tribe
57 Eurasia’s __
Mountains
58 Groups of two
59 Breadcrumb
coating brand ...
or, as two words,
what is found in
the answers to
starred clues
61 Poet St. Vincent
Millay
62 Funny Fey
63 Meant to be
64 Road sign animal
65 Fragrant
arrangement
66 Property claims
DOWN
1 “That’s enough,
thanks”
2 Columbus’
world
3 Be of use to
4 Ready to be
recorded
5 Use one’s eyes
6 Estevez of “The
Breakfast Club”
7 Breaking point
8 Service status
9 Metric wts.
10 Treatment for
17-Across
11 *Pry
12 Novelist’s starting
point
13 Slugger Sammy
18 Tolling place
22 Karachi’s
country: Abbr.
24 “Locked Up”
rapper
25 Iwo __
27 Drop down
28 Lines in the sand,
perhaps
29 Hi-__ image
30 First name in tea
31 *Doggie bag
item
32 Host of the
1950s’ “Your
Show of Shows”
35 Drop off
36 Keep-on
connection
37 Cal. neighbor
39 Sisterhood name
in a 2002 film
42 Mideast tunics
45 “The Spanish
Tragedy”
dramatist
46 “I guess it’s fine”
47 Genealogy chart
50 Largest UAE city
51 Fuming
52 Like some casks
53 Downhill runners
54 Fingered
55 Art class subject
56 Birthplace of
seven presidents
59 Oil additive
brand
60 Org. with Vikings
CHECK OUT OUR COOL
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WEBSITE.
How many Italian words do
you know?
If you’re like me, the total
probably caps out at a stunning
two:
“ciao”
and
“rigatoni.”
But you might know another
without even thinking about it:
“Consigliere.” It’s a term that we
are so intimately familiar with, it
appears in political and financial
headlines with healthy regularity.
Consigliere, of course, refers to
the second highest position in an
organization, a murky backroom
advisor of sorts. And the reason
we are all so familiar with the
term is one film: “The Godfather.”
There
are
several
more
Godfatherisms, pieces of the
film’s narrative language that we
have naturally embedded into the
American lexicon. These lingual
appendages are a testament to the
influence that “The Godfather”
has
on
our
vocabulary,
as
pervasive as they are persistent.
Among
my
favorite
Godfatherisms is “going to the
mattresses,” a tactic of mafia
soldiers to prepare for factional
wars by stuffing dozens of
mattresses in a single apartment
like a military base. The phrase
now refers to a ramping up of
political tensions, the pregnant
stretch just before a cutthroat
conflict. Inarguably though, the
most iconic Godfatherism is the
concept of Fredo. Fredo is the
eldest, weakest and most naive of
the sons of the Corleone family,
but he lives on in the way we
discuss any trio and its weakest
link.
So much has been said about the
sprawling epic of Vito Corleone
and his mafia powerhouse that it
would be pointless to heap more
praise for Francis Ford Coppola’s
masterpiece on the mountain of
it that has accumulated over the
past 47 years. Instead, much like
I did for my first installment of
this series with “The Departed,”
I’ll be taking a thorough look at
several characters in the film
to decipher what they signify
about culture and its intersection
with organized crime. Beyond
the Godfatherisms that have
employed themselves in political
and business dialogue, the key
players in the film have become
avatars for a shared yet conflicted
sense of American identity.
While both “The Departed”
and “The Godfather” anatomize
organized
crime
in
morally
ambiguous ways, the relationship
they have to each other regarding
ethnicity
is
certainly
worth
considering.
“The
Departed”
is
primarily
and
proudly
comprised of Irish characters,
but in “The Godfather,” the few
Irish characters stick out like
sore thumbs among the Sicilians
around them.
Among the most fascinating
aspects of what “The Godfather”
has to say about cultural shift
manifests in Vito’s sons Michael
and Sonny. The story subtly
employs these two characters
as vehicles to tell a far larger
narrative about American values
after World War II, and each time
I return to the film, their arcs
have a renewed weight.
There is something gravely
profound
about
Michael’s
transition from an adorned World
War II veteran to the Don of the
Corleone crime family. When
he first greets his relatives after
returning from the war during
his sister Connie’s wedding, he
is a shining, humble hero. His
smile is bright, his military suit is
decorated lavishly with medals,
and his arrival is a delight
within the ongoing celebration.
Michael’s
reception
largely
mirrors society’s adoration of the
American war hero in the late
‘40s.
The tragedy is that his turn
to the criminal underworld is
catalyzed by the simple act of
protecting his father in a derelict
hospital. After a corrupt Irish
captain,
McCluskey,
strikes
him across the face on the night
of his father’s abandonment,
Michael realizes — much like
the post-war society did — that
the institutions he had clung to
and believed in were corrupt
and unjust. This sudden loss of
faith in the government that he
had once fought for shakes his
entire worldview and disposition.
The film considers this idea in
its very first scene, when Vito
actually reprimands a friend,
Amerigo Bonasera, for seeking
justice in courts rather than the
Corleone family. But McCluskey’s
brutal hook across Michael’s jaw
represents the violent realization
of distrust in the government by
the film’s initially pristine war
hero.
Michael’s descent into a world
of corruption mirrors a broader
shift in proud American stories
about cowboys and soldiers to
a darker acceptance of crime
and moral confusion. Naturally,
this
crumbling
of
moral
superiority parallels the rise of
counterculture in the ’60s, the
uproar of political descent that
rattled American discourse like
nothing else had.
Going undercover: ‘The
Godfather’’s cultural hold
ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
FILM NOTEBOOK
BITCH (takes one to know one)
Lennon Stella
Capitol Records
SINGLE REVIEW:
‘BITCH (TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE)’
It’s a loaded word, and
lots of us have been called it
— in good contexts and bad.
Lennon Stella inverts, twists
and wields it on expert levels
with her new single “BITCH
(takes one to know one).”
Along
with
her
sister
Maisy, Stella is one-half of
the musical duo
Lennon & Maisy,
but
the
past
couple of years
have
seen
her
refocusing on her
own solo projects.
Her
newest
single
opens
with a boyfriend
jokingly
calling
his
girlfriend
the
derogatory
word, forcing her into a
position of weakness: “You
sent me down the river to
see if I would float away.”
But she doesn’t float away:
She speaks the word aloud in
the chorus and turns it on its
heel, proclaiming, “It takes a
bitch to know a bitch.”
It’s a masterful move to
affirm your own position
and put down your horrible
boyfriend in the fell swoop of
a single world, but that’s what
Stella does. It’s a concept she
returns to time and time
again — most notably in the
bridge lyric, “You should
hear the way you talk to me.”
She’s literally making him
hear it. But “BITCH (takes
one to know one)” is a head-
turning song even beyond its
lyrical cleverness, boasting
a catchy hook and a chorus
that sounds jubilant, fun
and just the right amount of
gloating. It’s Ariana Grande-
style pop, too even-handed to
be a rant, vocally melodic in a
way that elevates Stella miles
above the level of the man
she’s addressing.
She’s
in
touch
with the betrayal
and hurt that she
feels,
but
also
with
her
own
authority
and
ability to dictate
the relationship
she’s
in.
The
real triumph in
the song is that
these
emotions
all come through on equal
levels, each one validated
and accounted for.
— Laura Dzubay, Daily
Arts Writer
CAPITOL RECORDS
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
“It sounds like hope is kind of a
risk that you take?” I asked.
“That’s exactly what I said at
the talk,” she answered. I was
seated across from Detroit-based
writer and teacher at the College
for
Creative
Studies
Dorene
O’Brien, speaking with her about
the themes of her latest release, a
collection of fiction called “What
It Might Feel Like to Hope.” She
continued, “I think that a lot
of us suppress hope to defray
disappointment,” adding that “We
have to accept that failure is going
to be a common thing and not let it
destroy any inkling of hope.”
If I had to describe O’Brien in
three words, I’d borrow from one
of the most stunning moments
of “What It Might Feel Like to
Hope.” In it, Jack and Braelynn, a
couple approaching an impasse in
their relationship, take a road trip
to symbolically test whether they
will make it. During a spontaneous
stop at a candy factory, they gaze
upon the conveyor belts of sweets
below. A young boy who is also
touring the factory unthinkingly
reaches up and takes Jack’s hand,
who is caught off guard by the
“easy, unconscious grace” of the
boy’s unquestioning expectation
that his real parent would be there
to catch his hand. Having had
the pleasure of both reading and
meeting O’Brien, I’ve witnessed
her own easy, unconscious grace,
penning stories that hum with
a delicate hope and emitting a
gentle aura that corroborates her
work.
Honoring the influence of
other writers on her current
work, O’Brien mentioned Andrea
Barrett,
explaining,
“(Barrett)
introduced me to the idea of
quietly educating people in my
writing. My favorite stories are
the ones where I learn something
I didn’t expect to learn.”
O’Brien sees something more,
however, in the task of the writer,
something that resides in her
rich, lively dialogue and her
ability to channel distinct voices.
I delighted at this prioritization of
character’s voices in every story,
and when I asked O’Brien about it,
she relayed an anecdote: “Every
creative writing workshop I teach,
the first day of class, I ask students
if they hear voices in their head,
and I joke that half of them raise
their hands, and the other half
drops the class.” Then, answering
her own question, O’Brien added,
“Most of my stories start with my
characters talking to me. I think
of someone and they start talking
… It’s my job,” she continued, “to
write these stories and channel
the voices that come through
me.” When she said that, I could
not help but think of Arundhati
Roy’s meditation on the duties of
a storyteller: “Writers imagine
that they cull stories from the
world. I’m beginning to believe
that vanity makes them think so.
That it’s actually the other way
around. Stories cull writers from
the world … They commission us.
They insist on being told.”
As O’Brien indicates in the
anecdote above, teaching is also
part of her professional endeavors.
And I could tell she’s a teacher
from the way she would answer
my questions, from the way
she would take them seriously,
answer them methodically and
even thank me for them. “I love
talking to people about this,” she
told me, “hearing the things that
you’re saying. You may think I
know all these things, and I don’t
… You’re giving me a lot of insights
that I didn’t consciously set out to
do.”
In her stories, too, she invests
in mutual learning in the form of
intergenerational
relationships,
harvesting them as sites of growth
for both generations involved.
“We don’t live in generational
bubbles. I think it’s so important
that generations feed off one
another — they learn from one
another,” she began. “I’ve been
writing for more than 30 years,
and I’m still learning. I’m still
growing. I think it’s a long, long
apprenticeship. Any writer who
says, ‘… I’m a full-blown writer,’
I think that’s a little arrogant
because it’s an evolving practice …
How can you say I’m a writer and
I learned everything I’ve got to
learn if the field is just constantly
evolving?”
More than anything, it is
impossible
not
to
see
how
carefully O’Brien regards her
position as a writer, how she
does not take any of her power or
talent for granted. In fact, while
speaking with O’Brien, I finally
got the chance to ask a question
that nags me every time an author
kills off a character in what seems
like vain and what feels like
emotional manipulation of the
reader.
I asked for her thoughts on
what a writer, for lack of a better
word, owes not only their readers
but also their characters. In
response, she discussed at length
one of the stories in the collection
called “turn of the wind,” in
which the main character, an
aging
crystallographer,
tries
to make connections and do
meaningful work as Alzheimer’s
seizes his memories. O’Brien
discussed her difficulties with
honoring that character: “Where
I did him a great disservice was,
he had Alzheimer’s, so … very
conveniently, when I needed him
to forget something, he would just
forget. But then, when I needed
him to be lucid, he would be lucid.
And I realized that he is just a
prop in my plot,” she admitted.
O’Brien then relayed how she
redressed this treatment of her
character: “I had to do a lot of
research on Alzheimer’s. That’s
what he deserved. That’s what
my character deserved. And that’s
what my readers deserved as well.
Because I’m the one saying I want
to quietly educate readers, and
I’m misleading them.”
In this instance and virtually
every other one that gave O’Brien
the chance to speak about her
characters, she spoke about them
as though they are her neighbors,
her old friends. People that trust
her, and people whose trust she
would not dare squander. She
treated me in a similar, heartening
way: Like I’m a real person who
wants to talk to her and not just
a journalist with a recording
device. I have a hunch she regards
her students in the same way: Like
they are real people in the desks
before her with valuable stories to
learn to tell.
In her writing but in our
conversation, too, Dorene O’Brien
quietly educated me on what it
means to be a writer and on what
it means to cull stories from the
world. It was a privilege to have
culled hers, here.
Writer Doreen O’Brien’s
‘easy, unconscious grace’
JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer
AUTHOR INTERVIEW