FOR RENT Classifieds Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com BIOCHEM 212 TUTOR WANTED Text Judy (312)‑678‑6736 By Morton J. Mendelson ©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 10/30/19 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis 10/30/19 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: Release Date: Wednesday, October 30, 2019 ACROSS 1 Gets misty, with “up” 5 Salon treatment, briefly 9 Benjamins 15 Curly coif 16 Popular river name from the Welsh for “river” 17 They’re exchanged in Hawaii 18 Nonstick cookware product 19 Religious season 20 “Don’t take the blame” 21 Risked it big-time 24 Cooler filler 25 Chinese zodiac critter 26 Approximate nos. 27 MN and NM 30 Puts (in) tentatively 32 Bad-mouth 33 Word before bug or ant 34 Prov. bordering four Great Lakes 35 Hairpiece 36 Hazardous gas 37 Risked it big-time 42 Parrots geese 43 Fill up on 44 Nero’s 91 45 Exclusive 46 Part of UNLV 47 Wore 51 BB-shaped veggie 52 Coll. Board exams 53 “I’m sorry, Dave” film computer 54 “__ you serious?” 55 Risked it big-time 59 Compensate for 61 Short hoppers? 62 Hall of Fame pitcher Randy “The Big __” Johnson 63 Hairpiece 64 Pennsylvania county 65 5 for B or 6 for C 66 Coffee and wine 67 Lairs 68 One logging on DOWN 1 Fistfight souvenir 2 __ hours 3 Second Commandment adjective 4 Footprint maker 5 Silicon Valley city 6 Pentathlon’s five 7 “That’s a no-no!” 8 Where losers of a race may be left 9 West Point students 10 Gravity-powered vehicles 11 Classic video game 12 Reaffirming rebuttal 13 __ chi 14 Boomer that no longer booms 22 Screwdrivers, e.g. 23 Give approval online, in a way 28 Slacks, briefly 29 Email status 31 Far from self- effacing 33 Mystic on a bed of nails 35 Comforted 36 Soda since 1905 37 Explore OfferUp 38 Hue 39 Prohibited 40 “Awesome!” 41 Wide-open spaces 46 Coffeehouse orders 47 Sure winner 48 Contaminates 49 White-coated weasel 50 One with bills to pay 52 Look of disdain 56 Hockey’s Phil, to fans 57 Sped 58 Waikiki bash 59 Needing no Rx 60 Egg __ yung 6A — Wednesday, October 30, 2019 Arts The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com King Princess’s album promo video for Cheap Queen is pure satire. King Princess is in drag as she goes off into crisp banter with comedian Kate Berlant. The promo masterfully captures the intersection between women being clever and being sexy, the perfect introduction to the focal points of King Princess’s debut album. The album promo, along with cover art that features King Princess in a burlesque- inspired outfit, immerses fans in the wonderful, underrepresented space of women being exceedingly funny without being labeled as annoying or trying to get in your bed. Burlesque, according to Wikipedia, is work “intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works. ” It has always been controversial, especially with its connection to strip clubs. With one quick Google search you can find an article titled, “Is Burlesque empowering or demeaning for women?” King Princess takes any notion of this condescension to those involved with burlesque and reverts it with Cheap Queen. The debut album is literally a vintage-inspired, empowering strip tease that sits at the intersection of comedy, sexiness and class. Among the satire in the album promo, King Princess weaves in small, quotable odes to the energy that guided this break-up album. At one moment she stares stone-cold at Kate Berlant to say, “Do you like my leg hair through the fish nets?” The next moment she acknowledges the liberating space she creates for her fans: “To see that my concerts like provide this space for young queer kids. Especially for dykes, it’s like, there has to be some sort of kind of haven to fucking rage. There’s something church-like about it.” Sexiness through mockery is completely authentic to Mikaela Straus (the real name behind King Princess). Watch any interview and you feel your panties drop while she mocks herself or boring music. In this way, her debut Cheap Queen feels completely authentic. She’s vulnerable in her authenticity and sadness, and that’s at the forefront of this debut. With Cheap Queen, King Princess takes the pressure away from being a hyper-feminine Instagram baddie and instead grasps the sexiness that lies in comedy and humility. It’s a lesbian heart-break album that crushes and empowers its listeners simultaneously. This retro, going-backwards-to-move- forward sort of female empowerment is woven throughout the listening experience of each track. Most notably, the title track “Cheap Queen” incorporates audio from an old-timey female movie, woefully spilling lyrics in the background like: “Smiling for the audience” or “cheap queen.” One of my favorite tracks is “Hit The Back,” a dance track that’s clear and direct about exactly what her lover is missing now that they’re no longer together: “Ain’t I the best you had, and I let you throw it down, hit the back.” The Playboy School of Pop video that’s set to the tune of “Hit The Back” is even better; it displays King Princess dressing as a hot version of every high school trope, from cheerleader to basketball player. She’s anything she wants to be. She liberates her fans to feel the same. King Princess’s journey started when she exploded onto the scene after Harry Styles tweeted about her hit single “1950.” Now only 20 years old, she’s on the rise, making music for “the queer kids in the front,” as she says. In the music video for “1950,” she rocked a small drawn-on mustache. Now, for Cheap Queen, she draws on fully arched eyebrows in full glam. She’s exactly what pop needs — she exists in a space that’s undefined and sexy as hell. King Princess writes catchy love struck tunes to female lovers. She’s always specific, always daring and never holds back. Fall on your knees, the reign of King Princess is here. King Princess has arrived SAMANTHA CANTIE Daily Arts Writer COLUMBIA RECORDS ALBUM REVIEW Cheap Queen King Princess Columbia Records Twenty years ago, Mike Judge created “Office Space,” the perfect distillation of the nine to five ennui that can sometimes veer into the surreal, all borne out of being trapped in a cubicle for most of the day. It was an unglamorous era for the humble programmer, before the excesses of the following decade set in. Years later, Judge returned to a similar theme after the successes of his following projects with the HBO series “Silicon Valley.” The bleak dystopia is (seemingly) flipped on its head in the show’s titular location, with the bleak gray interiors of Initech replaced by the colorful, open office layouts, all-you-can-eat lunches of Hooli. Characters like Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch, “Tag”) are trying to escape their jobs not out of extreme boredom, but rather the possibility of becoming the next iterations of the CEOs of the companies they work at. “Passion” and “energy” become the buzzwords of the day, with the “worthy” deservedly capturing the fruits that capitalism can endow. Reading between the lines, however, one can come to realize that the world portrayed by “Silicon Valley” is its own type of dystopia, with the real-life effects of the real-life equivalents of the personalities of the show becoming a larger part of the national conversation. The brash, uncontainable ego of characters like Hooli CEO Gavin Belson (Matt Ross, “American Horror Story: Hotel”) are some of the best bits of the series, but when we see some of those elements in the Zuckerbergs and Bezoses of the world that Belson is presumably a caricature of, the consequences are a bit more dire. Or when the cartoonish greed of Russ Hanneman (Chris Diamantopoulos) is reflected in the Adam Neumanns of the world (who get billion dollar payouts to leave their companies while their employees lose their jobs), the utopianism that many companies, venture capital firms and other cogs of the tech ecosystem try to spread seems more and more like the front to ever-growing grifts. Yet it is always difficult to not cheer for the protagonists of the series, however flanderized they’ve become. Maybe in their early days, this was itself the attitude towards the now despised Facebooks and Amazons of the world. One of the frustrating parts of the show is that since Pied Piper (the startup in the center of it all) never really passes the startup stage, we never see how the transition into potential global behemoth affects the attitudes and relationships of the characters (a la “The Social Network”). “Silicon Valley” returns for its sixth and final season this week, and despite the relative downturn in quality of the previous two seasons, it is set up with a lot of promise for a final season to match the high bar set by its first few. Even between when it started five years ago and now, perceptions within and without “The Valley” about the societal impact (mostly negative ones) and responsibilities of the behemoths in the Bay Area have changed drastically, and the quirks of the characters that made them so endearing are not as funny anymore. There is a lot of room to explore these ideas as well as analyze the changing landscape in the tech world with the trademark wit and precision which Judge has shown time and time again. Looking back at ‘Silicon’ SAYAN GHOSH Daily Arts Writer TV NOTEBOOK Earlier this week, I was talking to an old friend, and I told her that I had bought tickets to “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” for me and my whole family the instant they went on sale. She wasn’t surprised; I had done the same thing for many movies in the past, like “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Avengers: Endgame.” I am what you would call a little bit obsessed with movie franchises, and my family — especially my sister — shares my love of Disney movies in particular. However, during our conversation, she made an offhand remark asking me if I could remember the last Disney movie that I had seen that wasn’t part of a franchise or a reboot. I told her of course I could name one, and then I sat there in shock realizing that I couldn’t. I have since realized that, as far as I can remember, it was back in 2016 with Disney’s “Moana.” By the end of 2019, Disney will have released 11 movies in theaters (not including those of which are Fox properties, or Disney’s Fox releases): “Captain Marvel,” “Dumbo,” “Penguins” (a Disneynature film), “Avengers: Endgame,” “Aladdin,” “Toy Story 4,” “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” “The Lion King,” “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil,” “Frozen 2” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” The wide variety of movies looks impressive, but with the exception of “Penguins” (a documentary), there is not a single original movie in that list. Every single one of them is either part of a series or a reboot of a classic. I personally love Disney films. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s a reboot or a sequel, if it’s animated or live-action: I love them all. But it is staggering to realize how many box-office hits in this day and age lack originality. All the Disney “Star Wars” movies are part of a larger franchise that began in the ’70s, and all the Disney Marvel movies are based on comic books dating back to 1939. All the live-action, remade classic movies are based on old Disney cartoons. Even Disney, arguably one of the most imaginative and creative film companies, seems to be grasping at straws when it comes to moviemaking. They are sticking to franchises and reboots because they know that those are the kinds of movies that will get them a return on investment. And to be fair, those movies are successful. Disney dominated the box-office in 2019; as of this week, the top six movies in the domestic box- office charts this year are all Disney properties. They know what works to make money, and right now, it’s franchises and reboots. Disney announced a number of upcoming films from 2019 to 2023 at its D23 expo earlier this year, and a majority of them fall under the franchise and reboot category. For instance, from 2020 to 2022, there are at least seven Marvel movies slated to come out, complete with release dates and everything. There are a few original movies sprinkled in, but not many. And with the addition of Disney+ (release date Nov. 12, 2019), even more franchise and reboot movies and television shows are to be released outside of theaters. Disney is really banking on the nostalgia factor and the franchise frenzy with a lot of the Disney+ content: a new “Lizzie McGuire” TV show, a “Star Wars” universe TV show “The Mandalorian,” a live-action “Lady and the Tramp” movie and a number of lower- caliber Marvel heroes’ TV shows are just some of the new content to be added, not to mention the “oldie but goldie” Disney TV shows and movies that haven’t been on air or in theaters for years. Disney is flourishing right now — that much is clear. But what will happen when the era of franchise and reboots finally ends? While they will probably always be a successful company, (how can they not be with entire theme parks based on their films?), they will have to understand their audience’s interests and make hasty adjustments based on what people want to see sooner or later. Eventually, they’ll have to stop churning out sequels and remakes and finally create something new, something never-before seen. They’ve done it before: Back in 1950 when “Cinderella” came out, the scene where her ripped-up dress was transformed into her iconic ballroom dress amazed viewers, who had never seen animation like that. But that was 70 years ago. They’ll have to up their game a little, though I’m pretty sure they’ll catch up when the franchise era dies down. In the meantime, I’ll still happily hop on the franchise train and see “The Rise of Skywalker” the night it comes out. Disney has been very busy, and the future looks bright SABRIYA IMAMI For The Daily FILM NOTEBOOK Disney is flourishing right now — that much is clear. But what will happen when the era of franchise and reboots finally ends? It is always difficult to not cheer for the protagonists of the series, however flanderized they’ve become.