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
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uknowwhatimsayin¿
Danny Brown
Warp Records
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MUSIC NOTEBOOK