Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
EFFICIENCY ‑ 1 & 2 Bdrm Apts
Fall 2019/20
Rents range $875 ‑ $1850 most
include heat and water. Showings
scheduled M‑F 10‑3
734‑996‑1991
By Parikshit S. Bhat
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
03/26/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
03/26/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Tuesday, March 26, 2019
ACROSS
1 Captain Sparrow
portrayer Johnny
5 Exam for jrs.
9 Indy 500 family
name
14 Rio contents
15 Machu Picchu
builder
16 Loud salute
17 Beethoven’s birth
city
18 *Evaluation by
one’s colleagues
20 Colorful carp
22 “Born Free”
lioness
23 Skin woe
24 *1984 Prince
classic
27 Razz
28 Like plagiarized
work, say
29 Focus and Fiesta
30 Office asst.
31 Spectacles on
one’s nose
36 “That isn’t nice”
37 Intensive goodwill
campaign, briefly
... and a hint to
the answers to
starred clues
38 Except for West
Wendover,
Nevada summer
hrs.
41 Sicilian seaport
42 Hard to come by
43 Glossy finish
46 Harsh critic
48 Very fancy
49 *Region
bordering the
world’s largest
ocean
53 USA part: Abbr.
54 Whirl around
55 Drink from leaves
56 *Yellowstone VIP
59 French movie
62 Like much bar
beer
63 Make, as money
64 “In your dreams!”
65 Abodes for birds
66 Liberal or martial
things
67 Tenant’s payment
DOWN
1 Pat softly
2 Locker room
issue
3 *Green Day
genre
4 Impressive
collection
5 Spot on a die
6 Derisive look
7 Amtrak high-
speed train
8 Ankle bones
9 Function
10 Four Corners
natives
11 Sandwich
maker’s aid
12 Smoothed
13 Sculls
competitors
19 Took off in a
hurry
21 Percent suffix
24 Attention-getting
sound
25 Four Corners
natives
26 Some MIT grads
29 Tasseled hat
32 Scale units: Abbr.
33 Baba among
thieves
34 Confession
disclosure
35 Work support
group
37 Cross product
38 *Union demand
39 Eins und zwei
40 Educational
period
41 Mongoose family
member that
uses its tail to
stand erect
42 9-Across vehicle
43 Apply hurriedly
44 Showing
compassion
45 Applies, as
pressure
47 On fire
49 “Don’t text and
drive” ad, briefly
50 Snorer’s disorder,
perhaps
51 Groucho’s
smoke
52 Like noble gases
57 Rotation meas.
58 IV league?
60 Diarist Anaïs
61 Amphibian
youngster
FOR RENT
6 — Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Comedian
Amy
Schumer
(“I
Feel
Pretty”)
returns
to stand-up with a run-of-
the-mill performance in her
latest Netflix comedy special
“Growing,” shot in Chicago.
Unlike the majority of other
comedy specials, the camera
never panned to the reactions
of
any
audience
members,
instead
holding
the
focus
on
Schumer
for
its
entirety.
Similar
to
comedian
Ali
Wong’s
Netflix
comedy
specials,
Schumer performs
this special while
heavily
pregnant
(about
five
months
along),
resulting in more
trite jokes about
pregnancy
than
a non-pregnant person can
handle. She reveals that she
has suffered from hyperemesis
throughout
her
pregnancy,
which
for
her,
manifested
itself in the form of constant
vomiting and nausea.
These vivid jokes that she
makes about her pregnancy and
its symptoms are lackluster at
best and end up sounding more
like sporadic rants rather than
segues into her other bits. Her
typical off-color toilet humor
takes no breaks throughout the
special, especially prevalent
when she talks about her
struggles with pregnancy. To
her credit, she keeps it candid
about the physical hardships
she’s endured with pregnancy,
but this kind of content is
only relatable for someone
who’s experienced a difficult
pregnancy as well.
Although Schumer’s style
of humor has always been
relatable for only a specific
demographic, in “Growing,”
her
humor
is
even
too
fragmented to appeal to her
base in full.
For the first half of the
special,
Schumer
only
made
brief
passes
at
her
political
stances,
but
her
casual demeanor completely
diminished as she talked about
politics at full force toward
the second half of the special.
She begins by sarcastically
referring to her future child:
“I don’t know what I’m having.
I hope it’s a girl. But really
just because it’s such a scary
time for men.” From there, the
progression of her political
commentary only increased.
She mentions the time she got
arrested in Washington, D.C.
for a protest against Brett
Kavanaugh’s appointment to
the Supreme Court, saying,
“Men, you can clap too” when
the audience burst out in
applause.
For the first time, Schumer
discloses information about
her husband Chris Fischer
and his diagnosis with Autism
Spectrum
Disorder.
She
introduces
the
topic
with
sincerity and genuine love
for her husband and their
relationship. Schumer’s open
expression of appreciation for
Fischer is evident
in the tact and care
clearly put into the
jokes, which reflect
on
her
personal
experiences
with
her
husband
rather than offend
those
who
live
with the disorder.
Her stories about
her husband are
refreshing
and
easily
the
most
entertaining
part
of the comedy special. They
display her transition from
a comedian who only makes
empty jokes about sex and
food to a comedian who draws
stories from a more mature
place.
Schumer has always been
very straightforward with her
views, as many comedians are,
which is why people find her
off-putting. But if her comedy
continues to expand from her
constant quips about being
a single woman to what she
gave us a brief sample of in
“Growing,” she might be able
to find a more loyal and niche
audience to support her.
Schumer grows herself, if
only a little, with ‘Growing’
SOPHIA YOON
For The Daily
TV REVIEW
NETFLIX
Growing
Netflix
Now streaming
Let’s get this out of the way:
I’m a poser of a Senior Arts
Editor for the Book Review.
I applied to Daily Arts with
music and film as my top
preferred beats, but I was
sorted into books (the reason
for which was that I was one
of only two people in that fall
semester round of applicants
who had even a mere mention
of books somewhere on their
application). I didn’t know any
upcoming books to request for
review copies, choosing new
books to review at Sunday
meetings made me anxious and
when it came time to submit
blurbs for end-of-the-year lists,
I had nothing because I had
only read two books that were
published in 2017, and they
weren’t that great.
A year passes, and although
my confidence grows slightly,
I still have the same anxieties
about my ability to be a
confident books writer. I found
myself recently hired as the top
books brass and it’s now my
turn to help coordinate end-of-
the-year lists. I still had nothing
to
write
about
for
blurbs
because the few books I read
over the year still weren’t that
great. For the more personal
end-of-the-year retrospective
we published, I sealed my
resolution in ink to attack my
books backlog methodically.
But, surprise surprise, it’s still
as clogged as it was four months
ago, except it’s only partly from
my laziness. There’s a new
obsession stacked ever-high on
that Bed Bath & Beyond cart of
mine: graphic novels.
***
Cut back to mid-December
darkness
—
my
editor-in-
crime, Verity Sturm, wants me
to write a blurb for our Top 10
list, despite my having read
nothing worth blurbing. We
had sent out a Google Form to
all our writers earlier polling
their best books of the year,
and Verity was hard at work
collecting all these responses
and creating a cohesive and
unanimous
ranking.
One
afternoon, as I was piddling my
winter break away, she sends
me a PowerPoint presentation
of the 10 books she wants on
the list, unranked. We start
assigning blurbs based on who’s
read what. We can only assign
so much, and three blurbs go
unclaimed — Verity, the saint
she is, offers to do all of them.
Of course, I won’t let her
take this much work on herself,
so I offer to take any one of the
books off her hands. A lightbulb
must’ve turned on in her head,
because Verity told me to take
“The Pervert,” supplying a
glowing recommendation to go
with it. I look it up on the ol’
information superhighway and
find terse synopses: The back
cover reads, “A surprisingly
honest and touching account of
a trans girl surviving through
sex work in Seattle.” Oh. OH.
I scurry down to the nearest
Barnes & Noble and buy the
damn thing.
At this point in my life I’ve
only come out to a handful of
friends and my mom that I’m
transgender. I make steps like
buying new clothes or changing
my email accounts, but I still
get called my deadname by
people that don’t know better
and even sometimes by people
that do. You would have to pay
a random stranger a million
dollars to refer to me as “she”
or “her,” apparently. It is
suffocating.
***
In
my
Spanish
Gender,
Sexuality and Culture class
the other day we learned
of
a
Peruvian
artist
and
travesti (roughly translated,
it
means
crossdresser,
but
it conveys so much more)
who was once photographed
vested in garb reminiscent
of Latinx depictions of the
Virgin
Mary.
His
costume
bears a jeweled heart pierced
with seven swords. To co-opt
some religious imagery (and
I mean, after being shunned
by most religious members of
my family, I deserve it), that is
how I felt every day, except the
swords piercing my heart were
invisible. Yet they hurt all the
same.
While only understanding,
acceptance and time can pull
those knives from my heart,
sitting down to finally read
“The Pervert” (after it sat
intimidatingly on my desk for
a few days) was a well-needed
reminder that among trans
people, this pain is universal.
We may differ in the number
of swords impaling nuestrxs
corazones, or how deep they are
driven, but we are stabbed all
the same. We transfix others as
we are transfixed ourselves.
My
first
read
through,
I tried to accompany “The
Pervert” with music. It has a
certain grunge vibe to it, being
in Seattle and all, so I put on
Sonic Youth’s sprawling opus
Daydream Nation with hopes
it would match the graphic
novel beat for beat. (And to
those about to complain in the
comments, “B-But Sonic Youth
isn’t grunge,” don’t, I don’t
care.) “The Pervert” oscillates
in moods and content as freely
as Daydream Nation does, but
its stream of consciousness
was
inexplicably
clashing
with the music. The only
song that fit, funnily enough,
was “Providence,” a sparse
interlude with no lyrics, only
a voicemail from a man named
Watt asking frontman Thurston
Moore if “(he) found (his) shit.”
Like
“Providence,”
“The
Pervert”
is
something
surprisingly beautiful, a whole
greater than the sum of its
parts. It’s ghastly, but also
serene and undeniably funny.
It’s
a
raunchy
throwaway
voicemail achieving a loving
melody. It’s the beautiful piano
paired with the ugly sound of
an amplifier frying out.
***
I don’t want to go into plot
details of the graphic novel
because the point of “The
Pervert” isn’t the plot. It’s the
experience it conveys, and the
specificities of that experience
sketched to strike a chord
with people like me. Even
though I am not a sex worker,
the reality undercutting trans
sex work — that of it being an
object filtered through the
heterosexual, cisgender male
gaze — is intimately familiar
to all of us. There are multiple
wordless moments where the
main character is afraid and
ashamed to live in her own
skin: It hit me blindsided, like
a blurry truck driving down a
rainy highway. It’s strangely
personal for me, even ending in
Michigan of all places.
As I mentioned in my Top
10 blurb, the watercolors are
perfect and they are so, so
goddamn real. The illustrations
of
“The
Pervert”
are
not
forcefully tailored for any gaze.
There’s a wonderfully explicit
two-page spread with no words,
only twelve squares displaying
the varying dimensions of trans
sex. I got incredibly defensive
when my mom approached
me about the copy sitting in
my room, as she had flipped
through it earlier in the day
only to tell me I was practically
reading porn. However fuming,
I
quickly
dismissed
the
argument and gave up because
I knew she could never fully
get it. I think this anger came
from me unfairly and suddenly
being forced not only to defend
this “porn,” but to defend the
reality of trans bodies, MY
body, from heteronormative
distortion. We exist and that’s
not wrong.
All
the
characters
are
cartoonish
animals,
so
unfortunately the uncensored
sex scenes might remind you
of frightening furry Rule 34,
but
their
human
qualities
remain the most important.
In a certain way, that’s the
trans experience, appearing
as human but other people
seeing you as a totally different
species.
If you’re not trans, you will
probably find “The Pervert”
confusing
or
not
easily
understandable but that’s okay
because
the
graphic
novel
isn’t exclusionary. It’s not just
“for trans eyes only.” Reading
it does not mean immediate
allyship, but it illustrates a
certain
unseen
dimension
of the trans experience that
cisgender people almost never
know because they will never
feel it. Simply read it, then turn
inward instead of demanding
elaboration
on
the
more
nuanced panels.
For one of my personal essays
for an English class this year, I
wrote about the formation of
my trans experience through
a few specific anecdotes, and
I feel like a plagiarizing hack
that I did this, but I ended
my paper with a scene ripped
straight from “The Pervert,”
because it has happened to me
almost
word-for-word
more
than once. I wrote it like this:
“Is that all, sir?” says the
cashier behind the counter, the
rehearsed response to my order.
Oh God, I hope so.
I felt this a thematic cap
to all the anecdotes in my
essay (which were connected
through the common theme of
pain), but I got a comment back
from my professor saying the
short vignette was unclear and
the reader wouldn’t know what
I was referring to. While I don’t
want to whine that this was
an unjust comment because
it makes sense in the context
of a workshop-heavy class, I
took this one personally, just
like my mom’s comment about
“The Pervert.” Again I felt
this necessity to defend it and
defend myself, asserting that
I don’t have to make sense for
you — fuck making it easy for
the reader. But I let the anger
blow through me, and I let it go.
***
Returning to the Top 10
blurb for the nteenth time,
after I submitted it to Verity
for editing purposes, she was
jazzed about it, but also worried
that
my
explosive
rhetoric
could backfire on myself. I
wasn’t ready to come out to the
wider world, and publishing
this would maybe thrust me
into that process unhealthily.
I took her concerns to heart
and
considered
taking
my
tongue down a notch, but after
some deliberating I told her to
publish it as is. Even if it outed
me, like “The Pervert,” I was
unapologetic in saying what
I wanted to say. Retooling my
short blurb would be violence
to myself, like Remy Boydell
and Michelle Perez trying to
remake “The Pervert” for a PG
audience.
I think deciding to publish
that blurb was one of the
first times where I started to
prioritize my own comfort
rather
than
stress
about
whether
other
people
are
comfortable with me or not.
And fuck you if you aren’t.
“The Pervert” left an indelible
mark on my soul in the form
of a watercolor . It opened the
gates for me to further dive into
the world of graphic novels,
especially
the
challenging,
weird and queer ones. After
fangirling with Verity about
“The Pervert” and my newfound
love for visual literature, we
decided to capitalize on not
only my enthusiasm, but the
found enthusiasm of many
other Daily Arts writers.
Graphic Content, the series
that this piece is launching, is
the product of that enthusiasm.
Credits to the ever-lovely Verity
for the name. It’s a celebration
of going against the grain and
rejecting the literary tradition
for the purpose of innovation,
personal
and
universal.
I
hope it to be as irreverent and
wonderful as the works we
plan to cover. Keep an eye out
for more Graphic Content every
Tuesday for the rest of this
semester. Until then, to thine
own self be true. This, above
all.
Graphic Content: A new
dawn with ‘The Pervert’
CASSANDRA MANSUETTI
Senior Arts Editor
GRAPHIC CONTENT SERIES