The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, September 30, 2019 — 5A

Though most of us would have to agree 
that every quality game day ends in food, 
I’m not sure most of us recognize that some 
of the most important culinary triumphs of 
the day lie in the most unassuming of places: 
the stadium. Perhaps because making it to 
the game is such a feat among students who 
prefer the tailgate to the the actual kick-
off, we don’t often realize that by making 
it into the stadium not only are we there to 
watch football, we’re also there to feast. 
The stadium’s culinary facilities are run by 
Sodexo, a food service business that manages 
University athletics, and they are completely 
rebranding what it means to order any kind of 
food at a sporting event.
Growing up, I remember being taken to 
Metlife Stadium in New Jersey, enticed by 
the idea of a hot dog slathered in mustard and 
salty french fries. Beer scented concrete and 
sticky aluminum countertops were the staples 
of the stadiums of my childhood nightmares. 
If I was lucky and behaved (instead of 
complaining about my distaste for sports) my 
mom would let me have a Carvel ice cream 
cone. Other than that, the food options were 
fairly limited. Being diagnosed with Celiac 
disease when I was 17 basically rid me of the 
ability to eat in sporting stadiums around the 
country.
Sodexo, on the other hand, is changing 
the Big House’s culinary game completely. 
Sodexo’s job through the University is to 
coordinate both non-profit, local eateries to 
set up shop on Ann Arbor autumn Saturday’s 
around the circumference of the Big House 
and additionally to run the Big House’s 
private concessions as well. Last year alone, 
as a collective the stadium made around 
$245,000 in profit on food. This year, they 
have their sights set higher. 
On my culinary food tour around the 
stadium, I started at the Greek Eats stand. 
With options like chicken shawarma and 
loaded gyros, this stand alone revamps drunk 
munchies entirely. The chicken shawarma I 
tasted was loaded with thick garlic sauce that 
complimented the chicken well. Next to the 
Greek Eats stand you can find Ann Arbor’s 
own Bearclaw Coffee — a coffee cart stocked 
with a menu of seasonal lattes and homemade 
pastries. Just down from there the “Street 
Eats” stand specializes in a variety of tacos. 
Most popular on the menu is the “walking 
taco,” a taco bowl with layers of salty fritos 
topped with beans, cheese, salsa and beef. 
This dish is best accompanied by a fork and 
an Oberon to wash it all down. The variety 
of choices does not end there. Between each 
and every local stand are concession booths 
which now sell Impossible Burgers and have 
gluten free and vegan offerings as well. Ray’s 

Red Hots also makes an appearance on the 
perimeter of the stadium, providing your 
favorite East University bites during halftime 
or in between quarters. 
But my favorite stand has to be the “Tot 
Spot,” a concession booth that specializes 
in loaded tater tots. I would recommend the 
“Tot-chos” or the “Classic Tots,” though 
all 
the 
possible 
topping 
combinations 
compliment the golden brown, crispy tater 
tots perfectly. Other standouts include the 
minority female run “Detroit Dough” edible 
cookie dough carts that line the stadium. 
Co-founder and CEO Autumn Kyles is a 
University alum who proudly serves their 
edible cookie dough to fans every game day. 
For other sweet tooth options, RJ’s is a loaded 
milkshake stand and a family-run business. 
The matriarch of the family, Yvette Wilkie, 
started making desserts after her son passed 
away to help combat her depression, and 
now you can find their ice cream sandwich 
and donut embellished cookies & cream 
milkshakes at every game day. 
The efforts by Sodexo to make the Michigan 
football experience more than a game should 
not go unnoticed. Football is a story. You 
have your protagonists and antagonists, your 
climax and your narrative line — and you 
never know if the ending is going to be happy 
or sad. Both good games and bad games, home 
team and away team, everyone attending the 
Big House has one thing in common: We’re all 
hungry. The eats at the Big House can make 
any game, regardless of the score, a good one.

Go to the stadium for the
football, but also the food

ELI RALLO
Daily Food Columnist

FOOD COLUMN
FILM REVIEW

Stories about serial killers tend to involve 
obsession, not only in their examination of 
startlingly meticulous murderers, but of the people 
who investigate their crimes. One needs to look no 
further than the films “Zodiac,” “Se7en” and even 
the Netflix show “Mindhunter,” to experience the 
gradual psychological erosion that comes from 
obsession with the macabre. Of course, all three 
of these are products of David Fincher, who is 
arguably the master of this archetype. He makes 
his characters and his viewers wonder why they 
are so drawn into the grisliest human behavior 
and, in doing so, paints this obsession as a dark and 
poisonous curiosity. 
A movie that misunderstands the trope of 
the in-too-deep murder investigator is “In the 
Shadow of the Moon,” directed by Jim Mickle 
(“Cold in July”). When Philadelphia policeman 
Thomas “Locke” Lockhart (Boyd Holbrook, who 
coincidentally played an investigator in Fincher’s 
“Gone Girl,”) notices a temporal pattern of unsolved 
murders, his obsession wears away at his own 
mental stability and the relationships around him. 
“Moon” struggles to establish enough sympathy 
between the audience and Locke. An important 
aspect of understanding an investigator’s descent 
into darkness is eagerly following along with them. 
Instead of a continuous timeline, the film stitches 

together moments from every nine years of his life 
to depict the various stages of his investigation. As 
a result, the transition is blunt and dry, replacing 
character nuance with increasingly mangier facial 
hair and crazier theories.
A reason that Locke doesn’t connect with the 
audience is that the film makes foolhardy, tactless 
dives into political commentary. Locke’s work 
central to this misstep — early in the film, he marks 
himself as part of a corrupt police system, one that 
operates on racial profiling and a general dismissal 
of due process. As an audience, grappling with 
Locke’s morality for the rest of the film is certainly 
tough, and when the film coerces us to root for him 
by placing tragedy after tragedy along his journey, 
it’s hard not to be incensed at the writing.
The 
movie’s 
admission 
of, 
and 
eventual 
complicity with, the systematic violence of police 
isn’t its only serious misstep. In future vignettes, 
it perplexingly criticizes protests against that 
violence. “Why are they so angry?” Locke’s 
daughter asks him as she gazes out a window at a 
march outside. “Some people aren’t happy unless 
they’re mad. You’ll see what I mean when you 
get older,” he replies smugly. One might think 
that Locke is a villain to the story’s anxieties, 
but “Moon” is simply not that aware. It aches to 
humanize him without understanding the costs of 
doing so. 
“Moon” is truly infuriating because Mickle 
incorporates eye-catching cinematography and 
meaningful camerawork into a story that never 
deserves it. For all its visual flair, the movie is a 
sour pill to swallow. The performances are also 
lacking, making me wonder if a halfway decent cast 
could have at least made the journey worthwhile. 
Perhaps the more fascinating story of obsession 
in “Moon” is that of the filmmakers and their 
curmudgeonly desperation to say something, 
anything about current politics. This trap is one 
that many films of the last few years have fallen 
into, some notably more successful than others. 
These distractions took away from a legitimately 
interesting science fiction subplot that gave the 
story a twist that most detective stories don’t have. 
In many ways, “Moon” is just another Netflix 
movie — a compelling idea executed poorly, and a 
story that can surely be avoided. 

‘Moon’ doesn’t hit potential

ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer

In the Shadow of 
the Moon

Netflix

Streaming Now

NETFLIX

The opening track of The Highwomen’s self-
titled debut album proclaims that they’ll “be back 
again and again and again and again and again.” 
This hook, like much of the song’s instrumentation 
and storytelling, mirrors The Highwaymen’s 
1985 theme song “Highwayman.” But in 2019, 
sung by women, these lyrics sound different. 
Simultaneously a rally cry for women in country 
music and a warning to the male-dominated 
industry, Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile, Natalie 
Hemby and Amanda Shires’s insistence that they 
aren’t going anywhere, and have been important 
all along, is refreshing. 
The Highwomen’s roster doesn’t quite read 
like the country-music-Mount Rushmore that is 
The Highwaymen, and that’s the problem. Any 
four female artists popular in country music 
today have never been given the opportunity to 
reach their stature. By staking their own claim to 
greatness, and delivering an album to back it up, 
The Highwomen pave the way for more visibility, 

more inclusion, and more women-focused themes 
in the genre, something the “bro-country” era of 
the 2010s was overshadowing.
Answering how Morris’s country pop would 
mesh with Carlile’s Americana, the group’s 
first single, “Redesigning Women,” settles The 
Highwomen into a traditional-leaning, acoustic 
country sound that persists throughout the 
album. As all four members sing in unison about 
being women who do it all: “Making bank, shaking 
hands, driving 80 / Tryna get home just to feed the 
baby,” this track is the album’s heartbeat, giving 
life to the more specific tales of empowerment 
that follow. 
“Loose Change” is one of those songs. Simple 
but catchy, Morris sings about knowing her worth. 
“Love is not supposed to be played like Monopoly” 
she cautions. The song plays with the extremes of 
a penny’s (and a person’s) value in another’s eyes, 
from being worthless when it’s “loose change” to 
being priceless when it’s “lucky.” And just like a 
penny, Morris suggests that a woman should “roll 
away” when she isn’t being treated nicely.
“If She Ever Leaves Me” finds Carlile in a bar, 
staring down a cowboy who’s been keeping an eye 
on her wife, and letting him know that even if 
they weren’t together anymore, her wife would 
never be with him. Queer country songs are 
possible, everyone! Carlile sounds as gorgeous 
as always, and it’s exciting to think that in 
a stereotypically homophobic genre, more 
explicitly LGBTQ-friendly songs are coming to 
light.
If you’re still pissed with someone you’ve 
given a few too many chances to (and also 
want to feel like you’re in an old Western film) 
“Don’t Call Me” will take you there. This song 
is the kind of funny you find pacing back and 
forth with your fists clenched. The verses and 
outro string together suggestions for how the 
person who said they “outgrew” Carlile and 
Shires should fix their mess without them. 
“Call your doctor … your lawyer … if you can 
afford one” Shires smirks. “Call your spiritual 
guide or mood enlightener, your tattoo artist.” 
She could go on.
But the absolute stand out of the album 
is “Cocktail and a Song.” Written and sung 
by Shires alone, she captures a conversation 
with her dad about his impending passing. 

It’s heartbreaking. “Don’t you let me see you cry, 
don’t you go grieving / Not before I’m gone” he 
tells her. But it’s also light-hearted. When Shires 
requests his “silver belt buckle and maybe (his) 
black Stetson hat” they both laugh, which makes 
the song sting even more.
Women of any country music era aren’t “around 
and around and around and around and around” 
like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash are today, 
but The Highwomen demonstrate why they 

should be. It’s a shame that four individually strong 
artists had to come together to bring attention to 
women’s contributions to country music, because 
the excellence this supergroup demonstrates is 
nothing new. Still, one can’t help but feel lucky 
that they did decide to take a stand and release 
an album that stands up to their namesake. Now 
all we can do is look forward to when they “come 
back again” and keep rooting for them — and other 
women — in the meantime.

The Highwomen have arrived, and they’re here to stay

KATIE BEEKMAN
For the Daily

The Highwomen

The Highwomen

Elektra Records

ALBUM REVIEW

ELEKTRA RECORDS

Women of any country music era aren’t “around and 
around and around and around and around” like 
Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash are today, but The 
Highwomen demonstrate why they should be

Between each and 
every local stand are 
concession booths 
which now sell 
Impossible Burgers 
and have gluten free 
and vegan offerings 
as well