6 — Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By Debra Hamel
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/08/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

10/08/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2019

ACROSS
1 How headless 
chickens may run
5 Argo and Titanic
10 Email asking for 
money, perhaps
14 Pedi partner
15 “A Confederacy 
of Dunces” author 
John Kennedy __
16 Gyro bread
17 Ocular arch-
shaping cosmetic
19 Like Felix Unger, 
e.g.
20 Forbidden 
regions
21 Mom’s brother
22 __ Lanka
23 1/60 of an hr.
25 “The cow is of 
the bovine __; / 
One end is moo, 
the other, milk”: 
Ogden Nash
26 Robby the Robot, 
e.g.
32 Miss. neighbor
33 High school stat
34 Loewe’s lyricist
37 Dog pack leader
40 One or more
42 Spanish “I love 
you”
43 Get by
45 Article in Die Zeit
47 Up to, briefly
48 Backyard cooker
52 N, E, S or W
54 Golf teacher
55 Portuguese saint
56 UPS driver’s 
assignment
58 Not one to pass 
up a porterhouse
64 King of Siam’s 
Broadway dance 
partner
65 Tentative “It’s 
a date” ... or a 
hint to the starts 
of 17-, 26-, and 
48-Across
66 The Stones’ 
Jagger
67 One-eighty
68 Distort, as rules
69 Throbbing pain
70 Pro bono promise
71 Boats like Noah’s

DOWN
1 Last word before 
digging in?
2 BLT condiment

3 10 C-notes
4 Put the __ on: 
squelch
5 Attic function
6 Sewing machine 
inventor Elias
7 Corn Belt state
8 Outmoded TV 
type
9 __ symbol
10 Wing 
measurement
11 Where Reds play
12 In the least
13 2018 Best Actor 
Rami __
18 Hard to find, to 
Caesar
21 Like some 
expectations
24 Feeling poorly
26 Palindromic 
address
27 “Enchanted” film 
title girl
28 Naval officer on a 
cereal box
29 Beer initialism
30 “I’m on it!”
31 “We __ 
Farmers”: 
insurance slogan
35 Pianist Gilels
36 Winning streak
38 “Yeah, right!”

39 With jaw 
dropped
41 Affirmative vote
44 Do something 
human?
46 Stephen King’s 
kid lit counterpart
49 Awaken
50 Sometimes it’s 
unmitigated
51 Self-moving 
vacuum
52 Certain queen’s 
bailiwick

53 Greek column 
type
57 Word before part 
or heart
59 Sufficient, in texts
60 “Back forty” unit
61 Swerve
62 Kindle technology
63 Gps. of drinks
65 “The lowest form 
of humor—when 
you don’t think 
of it first”: Oscar 
Levant

Wilco has lived under the shadow of Yankee 
Hotel Foxtrot for almost two decades. Some 
of their best work (“Impossible Germany,” 
“One Sunday Morning”) has come after their 
landmark album, but they’ve struggled to 
release a full project that measures up to such a 
lofty expectation. They always will. 
Skeletal and moody, Ode to Joy is the most 
cohesive and consistent Wilco album since Sky 
Blue Sky. However, it lacks the highs that Wilco 
are capable of reaching. Maybe it’s wrong to 
expect Wilco to continue to produce at their 
high-water mark forever, but it’s hard not to 
feel a little disappointed whenever they put 
out another capable but unremarkable project. 
However, if you let go of the expectations Wilco 
has labored under for the majority of their 
existence, Ode to Joy is a successful album, 
always pleasant and often beautiful.

The sonic palette is subtle and tasteful, 
varied enough to avoid monotony but consistent 
enough to lend the project an overarching 
thematic sensation. The songs across the 
album are made cohesive through a few choice 
production qualities — crunchy snares, textural 
guitars, gossamer piano — as well as through 
their simple, plaintive lyrics. Jeff Tweedy’s 
voice has always possessed a charmingly 
wavering, wistful timbre; his aging vocal cords 

only intensify this quality. Unfortunately, it is 
possible to have too much of a good thing, as 
his vocals now evoke frailty and weariness to a 
degree that can grow irksome. 
“Bright Leaves” is a prototypical atmospheric 
Wilco piece: Instruments flit in and out of the 
soundscape accompanied by glitchy electronic 
elements while Jeff Tweedy croons a doleful 
melody about somewhat cryptic relationship 
problems. The singles “Everyone Hides” and 
“Love Is Everywhere (Beware)” are much 
stronger in the context of the album. The latter, 
a folksy waltz, is one of the more successful 
outings on the project, thanks in large part to a 
vivid guitar riff during the chorus. 
Ode to Joy is not perfect. This project is the 
opposite of catchy — as soon as you stop listening, 
the memory of any given song fades immediately. 
While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, the 
album can certainly drift towards tedium, and 
it dips in quality towards the middle. “White 
Wooden Cross” is one of the weaker lyrical 
cuts: Jeff Tweedy, when passing by a roadside 
memorial, imagines that his loved one is the one 
whose demise the cross marks. This makes him 
sad. While such simple moments of imagined 
grief can be relatable and powerful, Tweedy 
doesn’t really go much beyond the surface of 
how those brief flashes of mortality affect us. 
Sometimes concision is insufficient.
The quality of the lyrics throughout is 
inconsistent. Sometimes Wilco succeeds in 
being straightforward and profound: “I’ve 
tried, in my way, to love everyone” is the type 
of thoughtful simplicity Wilco tends to excel at. 
Sometimes they come off as half-baked: “High 
in an old dead tree / That plastic bag is me / 
That’s where I want to be” falls well short of the 
depth and clarity that Jeff Tweedy has shown 
himself to be capable of in the past. 
There is a fine line between pensive and 
soporific that Wilco spends most of Ode to Joy 
flirting with. Ode to Joy is weary, the sound of 
the thoughts that float through your head right 
before a nap after a long day, the sound of a brisk 
fall morning as you slowly wake up. I suspect 
that this album will blossom with reflection and 
repeated listens. Time will tell.

‘Ode to Joy’ lacks... joy

JONAH MENDELSON
Daily Arts Writer

Remember when you were a little kid and 
you would fall asleep on the couch after a 
“Spongebob Squarepants” marathon? You’d 
wake up in the middle of the night, and there 
was always some adult cartoon playing. It 
was always a little weird, a little creepy and 
impossible to figure out what was going on 
or who the show existed for in the first place. 
That show was “Bless the Harts.” It’s about a 
family from the American South, and while it’s 
a slightly different take on yet another white 
American family, there’s nothing particularly 
inspiring or unique about it.
The pilot jumps right into the life of the Hart 
family, who live in a small town somewhere in 
the South. There’s a star-studded cast, with 
Kristen Wiig (“Big Mouth”) playing Jenny Hart, 
Maya Rudolph (“Big Mouth”) playing Betty 
Hart, Ike Barinholtz (“The Twilight Zone”) 
playing Wayne Edwards, and Kumail Nanjiani 
(“Silicon Valley”) playing Jesus, for some 
reason. The bulk of the story is centered around 
the family’s struggles from living paycheck 
to paycheck — in the pilot, the family’s water 
gets shut off. Jenny finds out that her mother, 
Betty, has been hoarding these stuffed animals 
called “Hug N’ Bugs” in a storage unit, in hopes 
of selling them for a fortune in the future. 
Throughout the episode, they try to auction 
these stuffed animals off on the internet, only to 
find out that they don’t hold any value anymore.
The show makes small historical jokes, as the 
Hug N’ Bugs were all inspired by a historical 
figure. At some point, Jenny says, “Good news, 
Nelson Mandela Super Soaker Hug N’ Bug. I’m 
setting you free!” which elicited a nose-exhale 
laugh from me. The rest of the jokes were at this 
caliber or lower, which offers little to nothing 

fresh in the world of comedy, especially in the 
realm of adult animation. The southern small-
town living is also a trope that we’ve seen plenty 
of times before, but the show didn’t put much 
effort into putting a twist on it. There was 
the staple mom’s dumb boyfriend, the staple 
southern religiosity and the staple “this’ll sell 
for a fortune later” hoarder. 
The main issues with the series are its 
lack of originality and unwillingness to push 
boundaries. With the vast collection of adult 
animation out there today, there’s nothing 
about this show that makes it stand out amongst 
the others. But perhaps this is too harsh. It’s 
possible that I, an East-Coaster, was not the 
target audience for this kind of show. After all, 

I’ve never spent more than a week in the South, 
and that’s certainly not enough time to pick 
up on the intricacies of southern small-town 
living. But if they were going to make this show 
targeted toward a niche audience, then it might 
have been set up to fail anyway. Perhaps over the 
course of the season, the writers will learn to dig 
deeper and find relatability in the specificity of 
the circumstances, and the audience can grow 
to larger than that small portion of the country.

‘Bless the Harts’ doesn’t
deliver us anything new

SOPHIA YOON
Daily Arts Writer

TV REVIEW

YOUTUBE

Kevin Barry develops every word of 
his novel “Night Boat to Tangier” with 
contrasting magnetic forces. The reader is 
wholeheartedly repelled by the despicable 
tendencies 
of 
supposed 
protagonists 
Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond. 
Yet somehow, Barry’s captivating style 
re-attracts the reader, familiarizing him 
with the most unfamiliar of lifestyles and 
impulses in a manner akin to that of a 
compelling nature documentary.
Barry’s coverage of these longtime 
partners in crime begins well past their 
prime. They sit in the decrepit port of 
Algeciras and wait for the title boat to 
Tangier in hopes that Maurice’s long 
estranged daughter, Dilly, will arrive or 
depart onboard. Dilly is the primary source 
of empathy throughout the novel and a 
beacon of purity in each flashback Maurice 
and Charlie recall. She represents the 
innocence that Maurice and Charlie have 
long surrendered — the two hope to save 
her from a problematic lifestyle like those 
they had led their entire lives.
Despite 
his 
paternal 
concern 
for 
Dilly, Maurice is expertly depicted as a 
contemptible human being in just about 
every 
flashback 
that 
Barry 
provides. 
Maurice possesses few memories not 
involving mistresses, drug smuggling or 
assault. Despite his constant reflection, 
his most damning personality trait is his 
inability to take responsibility for his 
actions, even in hindsight. He had no choice 
but to perpetually cheat on his former 
partner, Cynthia, since he had a suspicion 
that she herself could have been cheating. 
His prior heroin use was inevitable since it 
was so placating for his anxiety, and the Irish 

are an inherently anxious group of people. 
By all accounts, Maurice is incorrigible. 
This makes Barry’s ability to garner any 
empathy at all for Maurice nothing short 
of a magic trick. He is only able to work his 
miracle through the juxtaposition of the 
regret he feels for his invisibility in Dilly’s 
life and the lack of regret he feels in every 
other facet of his life.

This 
tense 
question 
of 
regret 
is 
exemplified through the generally brief 
back-and-forth 
dialogue 
that 
Maurice 
and Charlie share as they kill time in 
the port of Algeciras. In the very first 
pages of the novel, Barry cements their 
thuggish personas through their concise, 
unemotional responses to one another. 
These segments are so well executed that 
the reader may find themselves questioning 
Barry’s own past — his ability to take on 
a criminal voice comes about a little too 
naturally. The only time his voice partially 
breaks is when Maurice considers his 
shortcomings as a father or whether he will 
find Dilly. In spite of the initial disgust he 
feels toward Maurice’s lifestyle, the reader 
cannot help but hope that Maurice gets his 
second chance.
Unfortunately, 
Barry’s 
creation 
of 

empathy for a wholly detestable character 
does not make for a perfect novel. At times, 
the dialogue and reflection at the port 
feel as though they are done too well. The 
format of these scenes is so unique and rich 
in voice that the flashbacks consequently 
fell short. While Maurice’s backstory is 
crucial to the payoff of the more reflective 
scenes, the more traditional presentation 
of his past tended to create a noticeable 
disconnect 
throughout 
the 
novel. 
Transitioning from a chapter of rapid-fire, 
authentic dialogue to one of more drawn 
out, albeit effective, description tends to 
disrupt the exciting tempo of much of the 
novel and leave the reader waiting for the 
chapter to end. Perhaps Barry did this 
somewhat deliberately, since the effect 
of the imbalance is the reader yearning 
to leave the excerpts of the life of crime 
characterizing Maurice’s younger years in 
exchange for a time period in which there is 
an actual chance for redemption. However, 
this is a very generous stance to take, and 
it’s more likely that these sections were not 
as effectively executed as Barry may have 
hoped. While not as terrible as the character 
they portray, Barry’s scenes set in the past 
simply cannot uphold the precedent of 
captivation achieved in present scenes.
Kevin 
Barry’s 
novel 
is 
one 
that 
thoroughly impresses in its ability to 
both capture a voice so unknown to most 
readers and evoke empathy for characters 
with so few redeeming qualities. While 
the pacing of flashbacks is mismanaged at 
times, patient readers may not mind this 
shortcoming at all, and restless readers 
will still have their hunger for fast-paced 
writing satiated by the scenes in the port 
of Algeciras. Whether looking for a way to 
fill an evening or needing something to do 
until your own boat arrives, “Night Boat to 
Tangier” is a worthy use of your time.

Empathy against all odds in Kevin
Barry’s ‘Night Boat to Tangier’

ANDREW PLUTA
For The Daily

BOOK REVIEW

Bless the Harts

Pilot

Fox

Sundays @ 8:30 p.m.

DBPM RECORDS

Ode to Joy

Wilco

dBpm Records

MUSIC REVIEW

Night Boat to 

Tangier

Kevin Barry

Doubleday

Sep. 17, 2019