By Kevin C. Christian
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/10/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
10/10/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Thursday, October 10, 2019
ACROSS
1 Gold rush
storyteller Bret
6 Saints’ org.
9 Word
pronounced like
its middle letter
12 “The Lion in
Winter” co-star
14 Senator Lisa
Murkowski,
notably
16 Participated in a
pub crawl
18 Cleanse (of)
19 Afore
20 Video game
pioneer
22 Sch. playing
home games in
the Sun Bowl
24 “Shadows of the
Night” Grammy
winner
28 Numbs, as
senses
30 Bilingual TV
explorer
31 File menu
command
32 Seiko Group
printers
34 Mountain myth
36 Flower location
37 Placating
words before a
confession
40 The Eiger, for one
43 Scott who played
Chachi
44 Supplement
48 Snowblower
brand
50 Schedule
52 “Borat” star __
Baron Cohen
53 New and
improved
56 Vegetable with
Golden and
Chioggia varieties
57 San __, California
58 “Fool (If You
Think It’s Over)”
singer Chris
60 __-di-dah
61 Upset ... and
what can be
found in the four
other longest
answers?
66 Nonworking time
67 Twain of country
68 Bigger copy:
Abbr.
69 Place to retire
70 Over
DOWN
1 Indignant
reaction
2 Savored the
flattery
3 Short poems
4 Playdate
participant
5 Hamburg’s river
6 “I don’t wanna”
7 Woman in
Progressive ads
8 One of 12 on a
sitting jury?
9 Tough dogs
10 Deferred
payment at the
pub
11 Impress deeply?
13 1994 Costner
role
15 Go over
17 Get lost in a book
21 Ticked off
23 Lumber (along)
25 Bath time
plaything
26 “Grimm” actress
Turner
27 Wonderland cake
words
29 Elitist sort
33 Harry Potter’s
potions teacher
35 Fleming and Holm
38 Incline
39 Hardly lively
40 “Lemme __!”
41 Precious
42 Many a middle
schooler
45 Most sparsely
populated
European
country
46 Inexpensive
knockoff
47 Consequence of
wearing a cap
too long
49 Low soccer
score
51 Sleuth Wolfe
54 Some
spammers
55 Two-legged
zebras
59 1975 Wimbledon
winner
62 Non’s opposite
63 Coffee server
64 Phil Rizzuto’s
retired number
65 Chewie’s pal
Netflix’s new superhero series “Raising Dion”
sits in the middle of a bizarre spectrum with
Nickelodeon on one end and “Luke Cage” on the
other. While it has some strengths, the overall
production quality makes it an overall less-
than-satisfying watch, which is a shame since
a more talented director could have extracted a
lot more out of the promising premise.
“Raising Dion” centers around the titular
seven year old (Ja’Siah Young, debut role)
and his mother Nicole (Alisha Wainwright,
“Shadowhunter”), recently widowed after the
death of her scientist husband Mark (Michael B.
Jordan, “Creed II”). Dion, a bright and energetic
child, discovers he has a range of superpowers
that he has trouble controlling, much to the
disbelief of his mother. The pair have to discover
how to manage these newfound and dangerous
skills, as well as navigate the immediate
aftermath of tragedy, the insidious presence
of casual racism and other harmful social
dynamics in Dion’s school and beyond.
To their credit, the two leads provide as much
as they can from the substandard script they’re
given. Their dynamic is tender and believable.
While shared grief over Mark’s death is one
of the backbones of their relationship, Dion is
understandably presented as not quite being
able to fully understand the ramifications of
the tragedy. Wainwright’s portrayal of Nicole’s
constant struggle between carrying on with her
life and being a supportive mother while not
being able to let go of the memories of her late
husband is by far the best acting on the show.
However, these bright spots are let down by
the fact that the production makes the show
feel like a Lifetime
soap.
From
the
subpar
soundtrack
to
the
cheesy
flashbacks (with the
Michael B. Jordan
cameos),
there’s
never a sense of true
emotional
weight,
which
cheapens
and
practically
neutralizes the supposed impact of Mark’s
death. It is true that not every superhero series
needs to be “dark” and “gritty” as so many are
today, but writers should also strive for tonal
consistency.
There’s just nothing really new here. Even
for someone who is by no means a superhero/
comic book series aficionado, the core elements
of this plot are too
familiar. There’s no
risk, no innovation
in
any
aspect
of
the production and
no
real
grappling
with
the
social
issues
it
presents
beyond a superficial
presentation of them.
Recently, I’ve come
to expect mediocrity from Netflix originals,
but I still can’t pin down why. Are these shows
really contributing enough to their bottom line
that they can abandon any sort of creativity?
“Raising Dion” suggests yes. It’s the most
frustrating type of work, and the sheer “bleh”
reaction it warrants makes you truly regret the
valuable time you spent watching it.
Jordan can’t save ‘Raising Dion’
SAYAN GHOSH
Daily New Media Editor
TV REVIEW
Ghouls and goblins, it’s Halloween. I’m going
to go ahead and assume that a good half of the
people reading this column also happen to have
at the very least been sent a gays on Halloween
meme from @best_of_grindr on Instagram (we
share a demographic or two), but Halloween
is historically and stereotypically a fairly
big stink in the gay community. The last two
weeks of October are really the only time of the
year where you can get away with throwing a
costume party. For many, they also offer up a
few rare opportunities to “feel the fantasy,” so
to speak — cosplaying, referencing, realizing
whatever vision you have for yourself, doing
the absolute most while wearing the absolute
least — whether that means getting into full
drag or slapping on a harness with a pair of
booty shorts and calling it a night.
In his 2018 essay collection “How to Write
an Autobiographical Novel,” Alexander Chee
recounts getting into drag for the first time
on Halloween sometime in his early 20s. He
realized during the process that not only could
he “pass” as a woman, but that he felt beautiful
and at home in his skin in a way that he hadn’t
before. As with all of the essays in that book,
Chee seems to effortlessly communicate all of
the factors that work into its general narrative,
so any brief recapitulation of his work is
reductive at best (the chapter was about what
it means to “pass” in respect to both race and
gender, as well as the simultaneous feelings of
power and peril that come with being a target
of the male gaze), but it’s only fitting that a
cultural free-for-all like Halloween gave Chee
and his then-boyfriend the keys to experience
themselves through a different lens.
Communities
that
are
subject
to
discrimination have a tendency to turn on
themselves in ways that run parallel to their
oppressors, but that’s not news. In Paulo
Friere’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” he
argues that “the behavior of the oppressed
is a prescribed behavior, following as it does
the guidelines of the oppressor.” Infighting
in the gay community over what’s considered
attractive and what expressions are acceptable
is rampant, even if it doesn’t always feel that
way. Nobody hates gay people more than gay
people, and you can’t hate a person with the
same level of efficacy and ruinousness as they
can themselves.
What you end up seeing are segmented
groups within the larger community of men
who all look the same and act the same. You
get tiny little bleach blonde microcosms that
cling to any shred of normative masculinity
they see in themselves, using it as a leverage
point over anyone who dares to venture outside
of the agreed-upon vernacular. And that can
take on any shape — jockiness, fashion but
not that kind of fashion, drag but not weird
drag, leftist intellectualism that’s too evolved
to listen to Ariana Grande unironically or
without drafting up a verbal think piece about
how formulaic expressions of femininity are
rainbow capitalism. You get rich white gays
that use their primordial, Luciferian fall
from the privilege they feel entitled to as an
excuse for abject bigotry. It’s a mess out there;
I should know. Consciously or not, we cling
to the privileges that we have as a means of
protection against the straight, rich, white and
cis-gendered, and in doing so wind up doing the
dirty work for them.
This is precisely why Halloween has the
power that it does. Not to say that normalizing
functions cease entirely, or that everybody
ceases to exist in a sociopolitical shit smoothie
that strongly encourages the self-censorship
and queer sectarianism that I so roughly
outlined, but in it lies a hope for something
else. It’s an idea, a chance to escape oneself
or better yet, delve a little deeper into what it
is that we really want. No, I’m not referring
to going sexy carrot full-time, but a space in
which we can be a sexy carrot and have it not
invoke a debilitating sense of fear. We could
all be the person that gets to screech along to
“God is a woman,” or be the weird drag queen
or just be able to live without feeling the call
to answer for it. Self-discovery doesn’t happen
outside of spaces where you’re given the license
to do so. That might be Oct. 31, that might be on
drag night at a local bar, that might be in your
bedroom. But if we can walk around a public
setting in a cropped sweater set and miniskirt
as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then we can only
hope to take a little bit of that energy to our day
to day lives.
Velveteen Dreams: living
every day like Halloween
SAM KREMKE
Daily Style Columnist
DAILY STYLE COLUMN
TURN OFF THE
LIGHT
Kim Petras
BunHeads
Kim Petras’s TURN OFF THE LIGHT is
the answer to all your spooky season playlist
anxieties — that’s right, you don’t need to listen
to “Monster Mash” on repeat all October. An
expansion of her 2018 Halloween-themed EP,
Turn off the Light, Vol. 1, listening to these
17 tracks feels like a heart-racing stumble
through a haunted house. Complete with creaky
doors, whispers, autotune and heavy dance
beats, TURN OFF THE LIGHT plays like the
soundtrack to the glossiest of nightmares.
The
album’s
instrumental
opener,
“Purgatory,” ushers listeners in past ominous
iron gates and gray skies, with piano notes that
fade into EDM. The feeling that something
very strange is about to happen is confirmed on
“There Will Be Blood,” where Petras lays out
the album’s thematic landscape — blood, death
and twisted relationships. It’s blatantly clear
that it’s about to get gory, but it’s so fun to sing
“You’re gonna die” along with Petras that you
don’t really mind.
The brooding track “Massacre,” borrows the
Christmasy melody of “Carol of the Bells” and
twists its iconic cheery trills into something
sinister. Following the lyrics, “I’ll take you there
/ Just you and me / Can’t even breathe / Can’t
hear you scream,” the “la la las” taunt, covering
up her captive’s pain. And the transition from
the song’s outro — the sound of knives being
sharpened — into the next song, “Knives,” is
eerily seamless. The listener isn’t given time to
relax at any point in this album, and it replicates
the feeling of being chased further into a haunted
house. The sounds of other rooms linger, but the
house keeps pushing you in deeper.
Still, Petras does allow for some palate-
cleansing with songs like “Death by Sex.”
With not-so-foreboding instrumentation and
the smirking repetition of “sex, sex, sex,” her
warning that “you’re never gonna make it out
alive” isn’t quite so menacing. The opener to
Turn Off the Light, Vol. 1 called “o m e n” follows,
functioning as an interlude that sucks you back
in. “Death by Sex” may have killed you, but this
listening experience doesn’t end when you’re
dead.
The title track, “Turn Off the Light (feat.
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark),” calls back to
Vincent Price’s iconic spoken role in “Thriller.”
But instead of describing “the funk of 40
thousand years,” Elvira, Mistress of the Dark,
gives advice. “Only in the darkness will you find
your true self,” she whispers, highlighting the
queer perspective Petras brings to Halloween.
This standpoint is most explicit in the song
“TRANSylvania,” which is both a clever pun
and club-ready dance number.
“Tell Me It’s a Nightmare” is a refreshingly
real take on fear in which Petras worries about
her lover’s commitment. She still kills them in
the end, but it’s easy to mistake her insistence
that she, “tried to save ya, warn ya, keep you
alive,” as a not so intense conversation about
saving their relationship instead.
The album closer, “Everybody Dies,” is the
song for the end of the haunted house, when
you’ve pushed open the exit into the cool night
air and fall back into reality. It’s haunting in
its sincerity. “Not everybody lives,” warns
Petras, “but everybody dies.” Contextualizing
all the twists and turns that came before it,
Petras knows that the scariest thing isn’t blood,
demons or dying, but not fully living.
The album gets repetitive. Blood splatters
seem to stain every verse and death lurks in
every chorus. But it’s absolutely dance-party-
ready. There’s something so satisfying about
Petras’s sugary voice narrating a demon haunt
— it’s like Halloween candy.
Kim Petras is demanding
we turn off the light, again
KATIE BEEKMAN
For The Daily
6A — Thursday, October 10, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
LATINAUTOR
MUSIC REVIEW
WMG
Raising Dion
Series Premiere
Netflix
Now Streaming
You get tiny little
bleach blonde
microcosms that
cling to any shred of
normative masculinity
they see in themselves,
using it as a leverage
point over anyone
who dares to venture
outside of the agreed-
upon vernacular
I’m not referring to
going sexy carrot
full-time, but a space
in which we can be
a sexy carrot and
not have it invoke a
debilitating sense of
fear