6 — Friday, October 11, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By Jeffrey Wechsler
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/11/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

10/11/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Friday, October 11, 2019

ACROSS
1 Long-term 
astronaut’s home: 
Abbr.
4 Old TWA 
competitor
9 FBI figure
12 Mauna __
13 Sister of 
Terpsichore
14 “But, as he was 
ambitious, I __ 
him” : Brutus
15 Vermont alma 
mater of Alan 
Arkin and Peter 
Dinklage
18 Provides with 
an alarm code, 
perhaps
19 Timeworn phrase
20 Judicial 
prohibition
24 Party nudge
25 “Bambi” doe
26 Andy is her 
nephew
28 Boomer?
29 Coin of the realm
31 Disco era 
adjective
32 Robert of “The 
Sopranos”
33 “Got it”
36 Infant’s place in 
Hyde Park
39 “MythBusters” 
target
44 Gloaming, in 
verse
45 NAPA store item
47 Green span
48 Bothers, as one’s 
conscience
50 Ali, per Ali
52 Perch in a lullaby
54 Fuming
55 ’50s-’70s carrier 
with a Pittsburgh 
hub
59 Genre with hard-
boiled characters
60 Greet the day
61 Encumber, with 
“down”
62 Letters replacing 
a list
63 Assistance, with 
“a” ... and literal 
assistance in 
solving the four 
longest answers
64 Small amount of 
work

DOWN
1 Floral art
2 French-speaking 
African country
3 __ Domingo
4 Author
5 Braz. neighbor
6 D.C. athlete
7 Small step
8 Louisiana 
Purchase 
negotiator who 
later became 
president
9 Utterly enrapt 
with
10 Castrated 
equine
11 Send a short 
message
14 Vague quantity
15 Torus-shaped 
food
16 Nation since 
1948
17 Deal
21 Sci-fi classic set 
on an arid world
22 Gridiron 
maneuver
23 GPS datum
27 Hush money 
payer
30 Cratchit kid

31 Salon supply
34 Large word on a 
mall sign
35 Involve
36 Compound 
with five carbon 
atoms
37 Parking in back
38 Like a sleeping 
baby
40 “Notorious” court 
initials
41 Franklin’s wife

42 Financial 
planning target
43 Teen gossip 
fodder
45 It’s inevitable
46 Without a key
49 Very, in Vienna
51 Erie or Huron, but 
not Superior
53 Ritual heap
56 2008 bailout co.
57 Ames sch.
58 House fig.

Whenever I bring up “Grey’s Anatomy” in conversation, the 
response is always cynical: “That show is still on?” But if people stopped 
dismissing the show simply because it’s in its 16th season, they would see 
the impressive and creative work that has emerged and persisted since 
Shonda Rhimes created the show in 2005. 
Although Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo, “Station 19”), Alex Karev 
(Justin Chambers, “Someone You Know”), Miranda Bailey (Chandra 
Wilson, “General Hospital”) and Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr., 
“The Conners”) are the only four characters from the pilot that are still 
on the show today, considering the current state of network television 
where 13 episode seasons are now the norm, “Grey’s” is still going strong. 
It boasts 25 episodes in its past season and is already renewed for a 17th 
season. 
Beginning in 2005, “Grey’s” aired as a mid-season replacement and 
was an immediate hit with the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographics 
and led its closest competition by over seven million. Although ratings 
have been up and down throughout its run, there was a resurgence 
entering Season 12 — the show’s first without fan favorite, Derek Shepard 
(Patrick Dempsey, “Hudson & Rex”). This resurgence proved that 
faithful viewers, mostly women under 35, were not done with “Grey’s” 
yet.
“Grey’s” is a case study in how younger audiences’s discovery of a 
show through streaming platforms can ultimately revive its popularity. 
My experience was no different — I was far too young to watch the show 
when it first came out. An initial look at same-day ratings from Season 
12 show a decrease from prior years, but a quick examination of multi-
platform numbers which include DVR and streaming services show 
an increase in viewership. In Season 13, “Grey’s” was the highest-rated 
drama on television. 
For some people, this show has been apart of their routine for over a 
decade. There is familiarity that cannot be replicated. People may not 
be watching live television like they used to but they are still watching 
the programming, just at their convenience rather than the networks’s. I 
began watching “Grey’s” week-to-week in its 11th season when I was in 
high school and found it to be one of the only shows that can get me to do 
my laundry. I don’t need to give it my undivided attention, but I can still 
understand what is happening. 

From “Will & Grace,” “Roseanne” and “Norman Lear’s Live in 
Front of a Studio Audience,” revivals happen because people still want 
this familiarity. In the same way, “Grey’s” has that same sort of feeling 
without the leaving-and-coming-back part. So stop dismissing it as 
garbage — there is a reason, perhaps even more than a singular one, why 
ABC hasn’t hung up its scrubs quite yet.
With each new season, “Grey’s” has continually reinvented itself. The 
Season 15 finale found Chief Bailey firing Grey, Karev and Webber — the 
four remaining original cast members — and consequently opened up a 
whole new world of stories to tell in Season 16 and beyond. Karev has 
been hired to be Chief of Pac-North to turn around the worst hospital in 
Seattle, and takes Webber with him. 
So to those that question why “Grey’s” is still on the air, my best guess 
is that you haven’t taken the time to see the kind of show that it truly 
is. Not only has “Grey’s” broken the record for longest running medical 
drama, but it has outlived one spin-off and has a second one in its third 
season. In total, there is a universe that consists of 472 episodes worth 
of “Grey’s Anatomy.” Let that sink in. Committing to any new show is a 
daunting task, and that’s without taking into account the 20,768 minutes 
it would take for someone to watch every episode in the Grey’s Anatomy 
Universe. “Grey’s Anatomy” has survived a Writer’s Strike, casting 
changes and technological evolution. 344 episodes later, it is still only the 
beginning.

‘Grey’s Anatomy’ will never die

JUSTIN POLLACK
For The Daily

FILM NOTEBOOK

I hummed to Mitski long before I knew who 
she was. Puberty 2 fit my experience better than 
most clothes did following my personal Puberty 
1, but the album evaded my attention until I was 
19. I would’ve been brilliantly exposed had I still 
watched Cartoon Network’s “Adventure Time” 
as a high school junior — what an introduction 
it would’ve been, watching none other than 
Marceline the Vampire Queen serenade me with 
“Francis Forever.” Yet, “Your Best American Girl” 
somehow didn’t approach me until two years later, 
laying on my dorm room bed, fixated on the ceiling 
two feet above me and on my fleeting teenhood’s 
boundless spell of unrequited love. How fitting the 
timing was, the music soundtracking an era just as 
awkward. 
This wasn’t the case with Be the Cowboy. At the 
tail end of summer 2018, I felt my world rev up with 
potential as I sunk into a sense of comfort I hadn’t 
felt before, the fear and trepidation of not belonging 
slipping from my anxieties. I’d be a sophomore 
and an adjusted 20-year-old in a matter of time (or 
at least I convinced myself of the latter). I found 
my niche on campus and my passion. And Be the 
Cowboy explored love the way neither Mitski nor 
I had ever before. It’s personal but distant, builds 
over itself in manifold ways but slips away like 
a gasp. It coats over our existence in a seamless 
ether we reduce to experiences. And Be the Cowboy 
explores this in gestures both grand and minute.
This is felt from the introduction, with “Geyser” 
buzzing like a subdued cathedral organ. This 
continues into the first verse, scattered with 
twinkling piano keys that hum as Mitski croons 
“You’re my number one / You’re the one I want / And 
I’ve turned down / Every hand that has beckoned me 
to come.” She sings in abstracts, reducing love to an 
essence that simmers in the chorus as she proclaims 
“Though I’m a geyser / Feel it bubbling from below.” 
It aches and crescendos in an undeniable desire to 
an undisclosed love, one only conveyed by Mitski in 
interviews. “I will be whatever it needs me to be. I 
will do whatever it needs me to do in order for me to 
continue to be able to make music,” Mitski revealed 
in an interview with NPR. But that’s not obvious, 
it’s not even subtly present within the album. 
This is the magic of Be the Cowboy, where 
every subject is navigated through raw emotion 
and feeling. The lyrics are jumbled up in heady 
metaphors and abstractions that play over sheer, 
meticulous instruments that sparkle, crescendo and 
buzz at the very tinge of emotional intensity. It’s this 
vague potency that makes the songs applicable to 
any situation yet direct enough to pinpoint specific, 

unique ones for every individual. 
I tune in to this album frequently, but especially 
when I lose track of my motivation. For me at 
least, passion and a willingness to explore are 
reflections of what we love and how we uncover 
them. Be the Cowboy evokes these feelings in 
unwavering confidence and insight. It blurs out 
universal experiences under a wistful, omniscient 
lens that envelop feelings from a particular place 
of significance. “Pink in the Night” renders 
unrequited love as a person staring at someone 
else’s back, unraveling into the turmoil of longing 
for a past relationship one of the other parties has 
already moved on from. “Two Slow Dancers,” on the 
other hand, finds two lovers intertwined, revisiting 
the scent of a school gymnasium and their fleeting 
youth under the guide of elegant, plinking synths. 
There’s an insecurity to these feelings most artists 
fail to capture in their work, and rightfully so — 
it’s easy to come off as self-loathing and pathetic. 
However, it never feels this way with Mitski. Her 
loneliness, the companion to her overarching 
subject of love, pleads for company and latches 
onto interests that have long evaded Mitski’s life. 
But they never run trite, nor strive for sympathy. 
Rather, these songs connect with people to foster 
a sense of companionship, reassuring listeners of 
whatever plight they may experience. 
At 20, I can confidently say I’m no longer 
enraptured by the insecurities that defined my 
adolescence; my body feels comfortable to me and 
I no longer chase after interests that don’t “beckon 
me” the way music does for Mitski. Rather, I find 
my entanglements in the way I connect with 
what I love and what it means to me. I experience 
burnout often when I write, find it hard to strike up 
a conversation with the people I love on occasion 
or lose track of why I’m going into teaching. These 
predicaments cast the spell of loneliness I now 
know in these early moments of adulthood; it’s easy 
to allow them to cast you off as other or incapable 
of achieving what you desire. This is the thread 
that weaves Be the Cowboy as it dog-ears landmark 
experiences and feelings like moments in a worn-
out novel. Every statement, feeling and confession 
pours out seamlessly but under the guise of a sonic 
precision throughout this labyrinthine narrative of 
love. 
This is why Mitski’s Be the Cowboy succeeds; it 
encapsulates Mitski’s relationship with music in 
not only its progression from her previous effort 
but the capacity to communicate the tribulations 
Mitski endured to produce it. She highlights this in 
the absurdity of diffidence and the fruitless clinging 
to the past, how they fester into unsatisfactory 
stagnation. This album assures me of the transience 
of my problems, the capacity to love and survive in 
the never-ending desire to pursue the things I love.

I’m tryna ‘Be the Cowboy’

DIANA YASSIN
Daily Arts Writer

Vince Carter is 42 years old and has been in the 
NBA mainstay since 1998. (For those of you keeping 
track at home, that’s 21 going on 22 seasons, an all-
time league record.) He’s an old man still making 
waves in a young man’s game. Carter has perfectly 
transitioned from his high-flying acrobatic style of 
play, defined by insane slam dunks, to a mentor and 
a sharpshooter. He’s 20th on the all-time scoring 
list, sixth on the all-time three-point field goals 
made list and fifth on the all-time games played list 
(1,477 games and still 
going!).
Here’s another fun 
fact: Danny Brown is 38 
years old and has only 
been in the rap scene 
since 2010, when he 
released his first solo 
album The Hybrid (for 
those of you keeping 
track at home, that’s a 
mere nine years. As a 
reference, 
Schoolboy 
Q, age 32 and Danny’s friend and collaborator, has 
been signed to TDE since 2009). He’s an old man 
who has only recently started making serious waves 
in today’s rap game. However, in that brief time, he’s 
released a critically-lauded and fan-adored mixtape 
XXX, a commercially and critically successful 
album Old and a critical darling and experimental 
strung-out rap masterpiece Atrocity Exhibition.
Somehow, Danny Brown continues to make some 
of the most inventive music of any mainstream artist 
today. He’s constantly changing aspects of his sound 
and selecting beats that would make other rappers 
wince. Yet, for some reason, he decided to go back 
to basics with his latest release uknowhatimsayin¿. 
That is, he’s going back to his basics.
On uknowhatimsayin¿, Danny Brown finds 
himself doing what he does best: rapping. Gone 
(mostly) is the yelp of a voice that he’s known for, 
and in its place is a new, low register growl. Gone 
too are the challenging, abstract Paul White beats 
that have defined Brown’s music for the past few 
years. Paul White is still around as Danny’s main 
producer, but he gets some help from the likes 
of Flying Lotus, Standing on the Corner and the 
legendary Q-Tip, who also serves as the album’s 
executive producer. He’s rapping for the sake of 

rapping, and that’s a beautiful thing because he’s 
damn good at it.
Danny comes out the gates swinging with 
“Change Up,” a murky track highlighted by pulsing 
drum breaks and multiple guitar licks. It would be 
a subdued song for a lot of rappers, but for him, it’s 
really subdued. It doesn’t matter though, because he 
still raps his ass off, spitting ominous, jarring things 
like, “They thought I was gone, back from the grave 
/ Mind of a master, blood of a slave” and “Lord, have 
mercy, pray for me / Need to calm down, so pass me 
weed / Got me stressed out, situation looking bleak 
/ Time’s runnin out, how’d my days turn to weeks?”

Despite 
the 
bleak 
opener, 

uknowhatimsayin¿ 
might be Danny Brown’s 
most vibrant sounding 
album yet. The beats are 
absolutely wild, the most 
prominent 
example 
being the JPEGMAFIA-
produced “3 Tearz.” The 
track is a modern take 
on boom-bap, defined by 
organ blasts, fat drums 
and strange bursts of abstract noise. The production 
throughout is a blast, to say the least.
Most importantly, Danny is having fun on this 
album, making it a joy to listen to, and at 33 minutes 
in length, it begs for repeat listens. His rapping is 
loose, but he’s always in control, never straying 
far from each beat’s pocket. uknowhatimsayin¿ is 
filled with little tidbits, including a quick shout out 
to Pat Benatar and a reference to Elvis Presley’s 
supposed death on the toilet. It’s the first album in 
his discography in which listeners don’t have to be 
worried about Danny’s well-being; he just sounds 
like he’s in good health and good spirits.
Despite his turn away from experimentalism, 
uknowhatimsayin¿ has cemented Danny Brown’s 
status as a legendary figure in hip hop. He’s 
making the music he wants to make, and he’s not 
compromising his artistic vision for the sake of 
commercial success. This album marks a new era 
in Danny’s life. He’s making music that accurately 
represents who he is, and he should. As he says in 
“Best Life,” “‘Cause ain’t no next life, so now I’m 
tryna live my best life / I’m livin’ my best life,” and 
uknowhatimsayin¿ is a good representation of that.

The true Danny Brown 
in ‘uknowwhatimsayin¿’

JIM WILSON
Daily Arts Writer

MUSIC REVIEW

FACEBOOK

DEAD OCEANS

uknowwhatimsayin¿

Danny Brown

Warp Records

GETTY IMAGES / ABC

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

