ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Thursday, September 14, 2017
Ann Arbor, Michigan
michigandaily.com
AA LOL
Daily Arts writers profile both Ann Arbor comedy clubs and clubs devoted to comedy on campus.
» B-side
GOVERNMENT
Clinton, Bush Obama EPA lawyers look to the future DESIGN BY AVA WEINER
Japanese-Americans show support for American Muslims in Michigan
Exploring the similarities between internment camps and post 9/11 discrimination COLIN BERESFORD Daily Staff Reporter
In February 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, relocating all people of Japanese ancestry in the United States, documented and undocumented,
into internment camps. Fastforward 75 years, and Arab and Muslim Americans are facing discrimination in ways that resonate with the memories of Japanese-Americans. The internment of JapaneseAmericans followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. Nearly
120,000 Japanese-Americans were sent to the internment camps, roughly two-thirds of whom were native-born citizens in the United States. Japanese-Americans spent, on average, three years in the camps, living in cramped barracks, often with only a single working light bulb.
Anti-Japanese sentiment was high before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and even higher afterward. The Japanese relocation to internment camps was met with nearly no opposition by the non-JapaneseAmerican population. In November of 2016, shortly See SUPPORT, Page 3A
Cannon says Trump can’t implement new changes due to valid research ANDREW HIYAMA Daily Staff Reporter
More than 100 people showed up Wednesday afternoon at South Hall for a panel with three former general counsels for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, hosted by the University of Michigan Law School’s Environmental Law and Policy Program. The panel, comprising the EPA’s top lawyers during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, intended to review the major environmental challenges during each of their tenures as well as discuss the future of environmental policy in the Trump administration.
Stephanie Campbell, a graduate student in the School for Environment and Sustainability, said worries about the Trump administration drove her to come to the panel. “When all this was coming down last fall, when we heard who won the election, there was a lot of worry and concern inside the environmental school especially regarding what this would mean,” she said. “This seemed like a good opportunity to get more of a practitioner’s perspective.” Current law and rules promulgated by the EPA obligate it to regulate greenhouse gases, as the EPA See EPA, Page 3A
University hosts third symposium for Program Professor addresses interdiscplinary research in Parkinson’s examines
CAMPUS LIFE
RESEARCH
language barriers
Experts hope to challenge traditional prespectives of medical procedures
LingoMatch to connect multilingual volunteers to immigrants, refugees
With close to 60,000 Americans diagnosed annually, Parkinson’s disease is the secondmost-common neurodegenerative disease in the United States following Alzheimer’s disease. With an elderly population, experts are predicting there will be an increasing prevalence of Parkinson’s disease with greater economic burdens on patients due to treatment and lifestyle changes. At a Wednesday morning symposium held at the Biomedical Science Research Building, seven research experts discussed current Parkinson’s disease research and its clinical implications. Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder resulting in loss of motor skills due to the progressive loss of dopamine in the brain, particularly the basal ganglia. The symptoms of the disease are often characterized by a tremor, rigidity, difficulty initiating movement and changes in balance. With the progressive death of brain cells, quality of life is also diminished. The event was hosted by the University’s Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson’s Disease Research, one of nine such centers across the country, to promote understanding of advanced scientific research and, ultimately, its translation into cures for the disease.
REMI MURREY
Daily Staff Reporter
LSA senior Natalie Andrasko has worked hard to help University of Michigan students apply their unique language skills to a good cause in Washtenaw County. That “good cause” would be LingoMatch, a program created by three students to connect bilingual and multilingual students with an immigrant or refugee in Washtenaw County struggling to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits due to a language barrier. Andrasko, one of the project’s team members, alongside LSA junior Jamie Yeung and LSA junior Syeda Zaynab Mahmood, wrote in an email interview she believes the program is significant because it allows students to put their language skills to work in a meaningful way, helping immigrants or refugees get their food stamps. “It provides bilingual and multilingual students at the University of Michigan with the opportunity to volunteer in a See PROGRAM, Page 3A
GOT A NEWS TIP? Call 734-418-4115 or e-mail news@michigandaily.com and let us know.
YOSHIKO IWAI
Daily Staff Reporter
The Udall group, supported by NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, was founded in 1997 after former Congressman Morris K. Udall, who worked in Congress despite a long battle with Parkinson’s disease until 1991. He died from the disease in 1998. Neurologist and researcher William Dauer directs the University’s Udall Center. “My personal interest is in
understanding fundamental mechanisms of disease as a necessary first step to devise new ways to treat them, at a minimum to reduce the impact of neurological disease on people by making the symptoms better,” Dauer said. “The long-term goal would be to devise ways to halt the progress of disease so many of these symptoms don’t develop at all.” Dauer spoke about the
University’s Udall Center focusing in particular on gait difficulties that emerge later in the progression of Parkinson’s disease. Augmenting cholinergic signals related to gait problems are being tested to delay symptoms associated with walking. “It would mean a huge amount to patients if the problems in walking either didn’t happen or was delayed. The difficulty is a See SYMPOSIUM, Page 3A
JOHN YAEGER/Daily
Dr. Cynthia Chestek presents about the nervous system at the 3rd Annual Udall Center for Parkinson’s Disease Research Symposium at Taubman Biomedical Science Research Building on Wednesday.
For more stories and coverage, visit
michigandaily.com
INDEX
Vol. CXXVII, No. 89 ©2016 The Michigan Daily
food justice in Detroit
Taylor takes on diversity in environmental studies with pipeline programs KATERINA SOURINE Daily Staff Reporter
To many, the issues we face today seem unsolvable and overwhelming: inequality, injustice, political unrest and the increasingly relevant battle to protect our environment. Yet, how these issues insect is what has allowed Dorceta Taylor, University of Michigan professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability, to shape a unique approach toward researching and examining the root of these problems. Taylor holds a Ph.D. from Yale University in environmental sociology, and specifically focuses on the environment, food security and urban agriculture, as well as establishing diversity within these fields. For as long as she can remember, Taylor has been interested in how things grow, how certain aspects of the environment interact and how humans collaborate with their surroundings. This has shaped her interest in environmental history, justice and food security. Though she has always been See RESEARCH, Page 3A
NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 ARTS......................6
SUDOKU.....................2 CLASSIFIEDS...............6 SPORTS....................7
News
2A — Thursday, September 14, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ON THE DAILY: RANK AND FILE The University of Michigan’s place in multiple rankings this year remained unchanged, with a few individual programs making advances. As in 2016, University placed as the fourth-best public university in this year’s U.S. News & World Report rankings released Tuesday, and 28th in the country overall, down one spot from last year. The ratings use quantitative and qualitative factors to generate scores, compiling 15 d ifferent elements such as alumni giving rates, faculty resources and admissions selectivity. U.S. News also ranked the University’s business and engineering schools within the top 10 of undergraduate programs. The Ross School of Business’s undergraduate program moved into a tie for third in the nation, up one point from last year. Ross is also among the top five schools in accounting, finance, management,
marketing and production/ operation management. The College of Engineering, meanwhile, tied for sixth in undergraduate programs, also up one position from last year. Its aerospace, environmental, industrial/manufacturing, materials, electrical and mechanical programs are ranked in the top five national programs. Earlier this year, the University placed as the number one public university in the nation, and ranked 21st overall in the QS World Rankings, moving up two spots from 23rd last year. QS considers university performance in areas including employability, research and teaching. The rankings are determined by six major factors: employer reputation, academic reputation, research citations per faculty, international faculty rating, international student ratio and student-to-faculty ratio. - RHEA CHEETI
S AY C H E E S E
Follow @michigandaily
Tweets
Michigan Football @UMichFootball NEWS: Amazon Prime series will showcase the 2017 Michigan Football season. #GoBlue
Han @hpbc13 College is all fun and games until you have to do laundry
JOHN YAEGER/Daily Stamps sophomore Mackenzie King, member of SHEI Magazine, takes photos to promote their upcoming mass meeting on the Diag on Wednesday.
CAMPUS EVENTS & NOTES Oath (formerly Yahoo!) Company Day
LGBTQ+ Graduate Student Welcome Mixer
WHAT: Meet with representatives from Oath and learn about summer internships and full-time positions for computer science and computer engineering majors. WHO: Engineering Career Resource Center WHEN: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. WHERE: Duderstadt Center, Connector
WHAT: Meet fellow LGBTQ+ graduate students, colleagues and Spectrum Center staff members and learn about resources at the center and within Rackham. Appetizers will be served. WHO: Spectrum Center WHEN: 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. WHERE: Rackham Assembly Hall
From Propaganda to “Fake News”
Dutch Lunch WHAT: Bring your lunch to the MLB and meet with Dutch immigrants and other Dutch speakers to develop your skills. Dutch treats will be passed around. WHO: Germanic Languages and Literatures WHEN: Noon to 1 p.m. WHERE: Modern Languages Building, Room 3308
WHAT: Professor of journalism Will Potter will discuss the rise of “fake news” and strategies on how to recognize it. WHO: University of Michigan Retirees Association WHEN: 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. WHERE: Wyndham Gardens Hotel, 2900 Jackson Road
Behavioral Finance Symposium
M Farmers Market Day on Ingalls Mall
WHAT: Nobel Laureate Robert J. Shiller and JPMorgan Chase CEO Diana Farrell will speak at this two-day symposium on finance and public policy. WHO: Center on Finance Law and Policy WHEN: 8:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. WHERE: Ross School of Business, Robertson Auditorium
WHAT: Fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables will be sold at the seventh annual M Farmers Market Day, a collaboration between Michigan Dining, CSG, Mhealthy and Planet Blue. WHO: Michigan Dining WHEN: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. WHERE: Ingalls Mall
When Courts Call Out Political Actors
Strategies for Career Fair Success
WHAT: In commemoration of Constitution Day, Pulitzer Prize winner Linda Greenhouse will discuss the Supreme Court’s role in U.S. government. WHO: University of Michigan Law School WHEN: 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. WHERE: South Hall, Room 1225
WHAT: Come to Pierpont Commons to hone your career fair skills, learn techniques and gain other tips for preparation. WHO: Engineering Career Resource Center WHEN: 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. WHERE: Pierpont Commons, East Rooms
University joins efforts to attract Amazon headquarters to Detroit Daily Staff Reporter
Last Thursday, Amazon announced its plan to build a second headquarters somewhere in North America, and released a request for proposal for interested cities to complete. Many have suggested Detroit as a potential location, and University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel added his support to the bid this week. “We’re a research machine with an enormous array of faculty doing work of relevance to the types of businesses that Amazon is in,” he said Monday in an interview with The Detroit News. “We’re a source of Loading educated talent for whom “Sudoku Syndication” Amazon here in Michigan
might be an employer of choice.” The current Amazon campus in Seattle, Wash., employs more than 40,000
We’re a source of educated talent for whom Amazon here in Michigan might be an employer of choice people, comprises 33 buildings with more than 8.1 million square feet and has injected about $38 billion into the local economy. Amazon founder
and CEO Jeff Bezos expects the second headquarters “to be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters.” John Roach, spokesperson for the Detroit Mayor’s office, released a statement that “as to Amazon’s request for proposals for a second headquarters, we will be evaluating carefully.” Gov. Rick Snyder touted the state as an ideal destination as well. “Not only is Michigan a top10 state for doing business and attracting 25- to 34-year-olds, our workforce is growing at a higher rate than the national average and we lead the region in inbound migration for those with bachelor’s degrees or higher,” he said in a statement. The RFP is open until Oct. 19, 2017, and Amazon expects to make a decision in 2018.
HARD
9 3
8 6
7 9 4
2
5 4
9 2
4
7
SUDOK-ING ME CRAZY.
5 6 1 3
4
1
4
8 2 1
5
9 1
Bella @BellaYardley wow I love being back at school and feeling stupid all the time
EMMA KINERY
Editor in Chief 734-418-4115 ext. 1251 kineryem@michigandaily.com
NEWS TIPS
MASS MEETINGS 9/18 & 9/19 AT 7 P.M.
© sudokusolver.com. For personal use only. puzzle by sudokusyndication.com
Generate and solve Sudoku, Super Sudoku and Godoku puzzles at sudokusyndication.com!
Business Manager 734-418-4115 ext. 1241 nathankg@michigandaily.com
ARTS SECTION
arts@michigandaily.com
photo@michigandaily.com
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
NEWSROOM
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
EDITORIAL PAGE
734-418-4115 opt. 3
SPORTS SECTION
sports@michigandaily.com
CORRECTIONS
opinion@michigandaily.com
corrections@michigandaily.com
ADVERTISING
dailydisplay@gmail.com
Editorial Staff
AMELIA CACCHIONE and EMMA RICHTER
REBECCA LERNER
Senior Photo Editors: Zoey Holmstrom, Evan Aaron, Alexis Rankin Assistant Photo Editors: Claire Meingast, Katelyn Mulcahy, Aaron Baker, Sam Mousigian, Kevin Zheng
Managing Editor
Managing Photo Editors rebler@michigandaily.com
ALEXA ST.JOHN
Managing News Editor alexastj@michigandaily.com Senior News Editors: Riyah Basha, Tim Cohn, Lydia Murray, Nisa Khan, Sophie Sherry Assistant News Editors: Jordyn Baker, Colin Beresford, Rhea Cheeti, Maya Goldman, Matt Harmon, Andrew Hiyama, Jen Meer, 1/29/09 1:40Ishi PM Mori, Carly Ryan, Kaela Theut
ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY and REBECCA TARNOPOL opinioneditors@michigandaily.com
Senior Opinion Editors: Anu Roy-Chaudhury, Ashley Zhang, Max Lubell, Madeline Nowicki, Stephanie Trierweiler
JOIN THE MICHIGAN DAILY NEWS DESK.
NATHAN GUPTA
PHOTOGRAPHY SECTION
news@michigandaily.com
Editorial Page Editors
SUDOKU
Ask Siri who owns Ohio Stadium #LOL
420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com
Schlissel one of many public officials publicly courting tech giant in state RACHEL LEVY
Michigan Football @UMGoBlog
BETELHEM ASHAME and KEVIN SANTO
Managing Sports Editors sportseditors@michigandaily.com Senior Sports Editors: Laney Byler, Mike Persak, Orion Sang, Max Marcovich, Ethan Wolfe, Chris Crowder Assistant Sports Editors: Rob Hefter, Avi Sholkoff, Matthew Kennedy, Paige Voeffray, Mark Calcagno, Jacob Shames
ANAY KATYAL and NATALIE ZAK
Managing Arts Editors arts@michigandaily.com Senior Arts Editors: Dayton Hare, Nabeel Chollanpat, Madeline Gaudin, Carly Snider Arts Beat Editors: Caroline Filips, Danielle Yacobson, Danny Hensel, Erika Shevchek, Matt Gallatin
MICHELLE PHILLIPS and AVA WEINER
photo@michigandaily.com
LARA MOEHLMAN
Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com Deputy Statement Editor: Brian Kuang, Yoshiko Iwai
ELIZABETH DOKAS and TAYLOR GRANDINETTI Managing Copy Editors
copydesk@michigandaily.com
Senior Copy Editors: Marisa Frey, Ibrahim Rasheed
DYLAN LAWTON and BOB LESSER
Managing Online Editor lesserrc@michigandaily.com Senior Web Developers: Erik Forkin, Jordan Wolff
ABE LOFY
Managing Video Editor video@michigandaily.com Senior Video Editors: Gilly Yerrington, Matt Nolan, Aarthi Janakiraman, Emily Wolfe
JASON ROWLAND and ASHLEY TJHUNG
Michigan in Color Editors michiganincolor@michigandaily.com Senior Michigan in Color Editors: Christian Paneda, Tanya Madhani, Neel Swamy, Adam Brodnax, Areeba Haider, Halimat Olaniyan, Sivanthy Visanthan
ELLIE HOMANT
Managing Social Media Editor Senior Social Media Editors: Carolyn Watson, Molly Force
Managing Design Editors design@michigandaily.com Senior Design Editors: Alex Leav, Carly Berger, Christine Lee
Business Staff
CAYLIN WATERS Brand Manager
EMILY RICHNER
CLAIRE BUTZ
JUEUI HONG
JULIA SELSKY
CAROLINE GOLD
SANJANA PANDIT
Sales Manager
Special Projects Manager Media Consulting Manager
Business Development Manager Local Accounts Manager Production Manager
The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University OF Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. Subscriptions for September-April are $225 and year long subscriptions are $250. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid. The Michigan Daily is a member of The Associated Press and The Associated Collegiate Press.
News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
EPA From Page 1A has determined climate change poses a threat to the health and well-being of the citizens it serves. That decision was made in 2007 in a Supreme Court case, Massachusetts v. EPA, in which the court decided, 5-4, that if the EPA made such a finding of endangerment, it was obligated to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. One of the panelists, Roger Martella, was serving as EPA general counsel under former President George Bush when the decision was handed down. The decision came as a complete surprise to Martella: Rather than trying to act on climate change with existing laws, Martella said, the general expectation was that Congress would first have to pass new ones. “This is all probably totally understood, second nature to everybody today — 2007 doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, but it was 10 years ago,” he said. “This kind of shocked everyone’s universe. Environmental lawyers will say they were thinking about it, but the regulatory community
RESEARCH From Page 1A interested in sciences, she recalls preferring a hands-on research approach to learning about said interests. “I realized more and more what I wanted to do was work at the nexus of human-environment interactions … be the person thinking about what actions we take, how do we do things, how we make policies,” Taylor said. “The field of environmental sociology focuses on the social aspect of how humans interact with the environment.” Taylor’s research has concentrated on social factors such as race, gender and class, and their subsequent relation to environmental issues. She noted these components play into how various demographics are affected
PROGRAM From Page 1A setting that requires the practical application of their valuable language skills to work with organizations in Washtenaw County committed to a social cause,” Andrasko wrote. In the initial planning stages, the team created a proposal to develop an app to provide its users an easier way to find nutritious foods in Washtenaw County. However, since they lacked the coding knowledge to design an app, they instead explored other options. Around the same time, the team started making trips to the Bryant Community Center, one of their community center partners. Here, they saw firsthand a need for something like LingoMatch. “It has been especially rewarding to see firsthand how excited Bryant Community
SYMPOSIUM From Page 1A major milestone in Parkinson’s disease where quality of life goes down, mortality goes up, injuries go up — hip fractures, skull fractures, things like that,” he said. “(The symposium) is one of many concrete mechanisms by which we can get people in the common space to begin talking about these different ideas,” Dauer said. He said the center’s goal is “to foster dialogue so people with different perspectives can challenge each other so that we can come up with ideas that are not obvious to one discipline by itself. It’s sort of analogous to the idea of neurochemicals — how do they interact to create unique things?” Speakers for the event included researchers from various departments at the University, like the Department of Biomedical Engineering, as well as researchers from Michigan State University. Presentations included molecular
Thursday, September 14, 2017 — 3A
in the federal government didn’t have any preparation for the fact that we might actually be addressing climate change based on existing laws as opposed to waiting for Congress to do something.” Following the decision, he said, Bush favored making a big push to begin regulation, but concerns quickly arose about the viability of passing such complicated regulations in the short period of time Bush had left in his second term. The Clean Air Act, passed by Congress in 1963, was designed to regulate specific and localized air pollutants like lead, ozone and particulate matter. Greenhouse gases — which are emitted by every gasoline- and diesel-fueled vehicle on the road –– were not in the initial picture.x When Avi Garbow — one of the panelists — arrived at the EPA as the Obama administration’s deputy general counsel, though he was later promoted to general counsel. His first task, after verifying the integrity of the science behind the endangerment finding, was promulgating regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA’s first target was
mobile source emissions, or emissions from vehicles, which Garbow said were relatively easy, as they were predicated near fuel-efficiency standards, which allow people to save money on gas. Garbow added that states also carried some of the burden of regulation. “The statute allowed the state of California, given some factors that were ostensibly peculiar to it — its size — to issue its own regulations and standards,” he said. “The world’s automakers want to be able to sell cars not just in California, but elsewhere, so it really brought parties together to try to make sure that there were uniform standards. You can’t put out a Nissan Sentra that’s compliant in California and a totally different one that’s compliant in Virginia.” Once the EPA began to shift toward regulating stationary sources of greenhouse gases, like forcing power companies to implement more renewable energy, though, the public wasn’t as supportive. But the concept of the EPA regulating greenhouse gases began long before that. After a tense encounter during a House appropriations hearing, Jonathan
Cannon, a panelist and general counsel to the EPA during the Clinton administration, became the lawyer in charge of providing the initial legal argument that the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. “My boss, Carol Browner, who was an administrator, was there testifying on the agency budget,” Cannon said. “Tom DeLay, who was the majority whip at that time, came blustering into the hearing with some EPA document that he’d gotten and he accosted the administrator with his document in a question saying, ‘Do you take the position that the EPA has the authority to address climate change under the CAA?’ And she said, ‘Yes, I believe it does.’ And he said, ‘Well I would like a legal opinion on that issue.’ And she turned to me and said, ‘Yes, a legal opinion will be forthcoming.’ She had not talked to me before that. I didn’t have an opinion at that point.” Though there is widespread concern over the intentions of the Trump administration and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt regarding climate action, Cannon said that as long as the endangerment finding remains valid, the current administration
can’t institute any dramatic change. “So far — and I could be wrong — but my best information is that so far, the administration has not moved to withdraw the endangerment finding,” he said. “EPA Administrator Pruitt has talked about some sort of science review process that presumably could lead up to that, but right now they’re not disturbing that, which means they have a set of legal issues related to the existence of that endangerment finding on the books, upheld by the D.C. circuit, creating certain obligations under the clean air act or arguably so.” The other panelists agreed that while there is cause for concern, there are procedural roadblocks in the administration’s way that would slow any drastic actions, and actions outside the federal government could still outweigh those. Despite President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Paris climate accord, Garbow pointed out, due to provisions within the accord, the earliest the United States could withdraw is Nov. 4, 2020 –– one day after the next presidential election. And Martella — currently the general
counsel for General Electric’s Environment, Health and Safety division — said “business is doing what it needs to do” on climate change. Cannon agreed, stating he was hopeful for the future. “The hopeful thing is that as the current administration abdicates this place and begins to withdraw these regulations there are a lot of things happening outside the federal regulatory sphere,” he said. “So, although regulation will remain an important component, these are hopeful signs, and I think we all ought to think about ways we can support, foster and extend these trends in a way that may make what Washington does, at least for the moment, less crucial.” Campbell said she came away from the panel having had her faith in the legal system restored. “I thought what was really interesting was ... that we can’t just depend on our political system to solve all of our problems and put all of our eggs in that one basket, but that it is also about community action at the local and regional levels that really can drive climate change action forward, so there’s a lot of hope there,” she said.
by the environmental obstacles we face today, exemplifying the recent hurricanes as one of many instances in which the consequences are exponentially higher for poorer, minority communities. “You do get to see some of the invisible institutional structures or barriers, especially when you look at these things historically,” she said. Taylor has authored both research reports and books, “Food Availability and the Food Desert Frame in Detroit: An Overview of the City’s Food System” (2015) and “The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection” (2016) and various similar works that explore social issues and their relation to the environment. In addition to her work as a professor, author and researcher,
Taylor is the University director of the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program, a twoyear internship and research program for undergraduate students, including those of other universities, who are otherwise inadequately represented in the environmental and conservation field. This past year, the secondyear students were taken to the U.S. Virgin Islands to learn about different ecosystems in a hands-on learning experience that combined the hard science of survey data and actual interaction with communities there. So far, 60 students have gone through the program, and Taylor emphasized the myriad opportunities made known to these students following this experience, including recruitments to the University. Additionally, Taylor
is the principal investigator of the Environmental Fellows Program, which helps fund the expenses of graduate school and prepares students to be financially secure at their completion of school, with experience in the job market and networking. “These fellowship programs are a direct result of the research that we have done on diversity, with the 2014 report (most commonly referenced as Green 2.0 report), a group of graduate students helped me collect the data and we put out the national report. It’s been a game changer, with the garnered publicity we have been able to have organizations open up positions to hire students,” Taylor said. Taylor is also the director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program for the School of Environment, where her tasks range from incorporating more
inclusive teaching techniques in classrooms to helping recruit a more diverse base of students. “At an elite university like Michigan, we have to ask ourselves: Are we only a university for the rich? Or are we going to take the mandate of public education seriously? If we do, then it behooves all of us to think about ways of broadening the audience we reach, the students that get an opportunity to come to schools like ours,” she said. Taylor noted the growing popularity of her undergraduate courses on food justice and insecurity, claiming that close to 500 undergraduates have gone out to participate in and do their own research. “It’s been really quite amazing, both in terms of being able to teach and having students get really excited about this topic,”
Taylor said. An example of such students includes University alum and current Ypsilanti Mayor Amanda Edmonds, who took the course on food systems and later moved on to create the nonprofit Growing Hope, a program that helps communities cultivate consistent access to healthy food. Taylor’s food project has additionally funded community gardens in Ypsilanti, Flint, Grand Rapids and Lake Superior State. For the past five years, they have supported community gardens that provide plots for low income residents, and each year has yielded food for at least 20 families. “There are a lot of very practical ways in which these research papers translate in a way that it positively impacts the lives of students and the lives of the community folks,” Taylor said.
majority-Muslim countries. “The Japanese and the Arab community specifically and the Japanese and the Muslim community more broadly has had an affinity not just since the announcement of the Muslim ban in January, but going back a lot further,” Stiffler said. “So the first case that I found of cooperation was in 1991. That was the run up to the first Gulf War in Iraq.” Stiffler added the support for the Arab and Muslim American communities started with a Japanese-American congressman. “And during that time, the FBI was going around and interviewing Arab American community leaders about the run-up to the war in Iraq and a Japanese-American, he was a Congressman at the time, former Secretary Norman Mineta, spoke out very publicly against this, as a JapaneseAmerican himself, whose family was incarcerated during World War II,” Stiffler said. “He said we’re not going to go down that road again.” Aqel said alliances between minority groups have more power than one group standing on its own. “This alliance and connections and solidarity networks between groups have been formed specifically since I think a lot of people of color have noticed that this discrimination against them is so high that sometimes we … think that doing things by ourselves won’t go anywhere but forming alliances will allow both of our movements, both our voices, our people to expand for others to hear our struggle,” Aqel said. LSA junior Maureen O’Bryan, the co-event chair for the Japanese Student Association, wrote in an email interview that connecting Japanese discrimination to the discrimination of Arab and Muslim Americans today puts their reality in context. “It’s powerful because Japanese-Americans have (experienced) this and we say
never again should this happen,” O’Bryan wrote. “I think if the Trump administration really wants to use Japanese incarceration as precedent for his Muslim ban, he’s going to see a strengthening alliance between these two groups because we’re not going to let what happened to us be used against another minority group that is a supposed ‘threat’ to national security because it was found that Japanese-Americans did not pose any threat to the U.S. during WWII.” Stiffler has personally seen the alliance through his work at the Arab American National Museum. The museum has close ties with the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, which helped train some of the employees at the Arab American National Museum when it opened in 2005. “We’ve shared exhibits, we’ve hosted their staff here for workshops, we’ve shared ideas. So we feel that we’re very closely aligned with them,” Stiffler said. “We call them our sister museum, just because there is that shared history both what it’s like to be an ethnic group in the U.S. today but also an ethnic group that has been targeted for civil rights violations by the federal government.” There has been coordination between the two groups on campus, according to O’Bryan. She said she saw the alliance strengthen last year following the election and the announcement of the immigration ban. “Just recently the Lebanese Student Association reached out to collaborate with the Japan Student Association, and as the external chair for JSA I plan on pursuing this relationship,” O’Bryan wrote. “I am hoping that this friendship between these two groups will continue to grow on our campus and all around the country. Even if it is the Muslim ban that brought us together, I hope even after it is hopefully defeated we can maintain a stronger alliance.”
Center clients are to be able to speak their native language with volunteers, which shows how meaningful language can be in connecting people and promoting an environment of inclusivity,” Andrasko wrote. Since its launch, the program has already hosted several projects, including the most recent, which involved volunteers translating a booklet on how undocumented immigrants can best protect their families during immigration raids. Another project was assisting those who do not speak English as their first language during food distribution days at food banks. Furthermore, the program plans to provide students with valuable volunteering and crosscultural language experience in addition to providing clients with a safe and confidential space where they can ask any individual questions about the application process while getting personalized assistance in their
native language. Though LingoMatch is still in its initial phases, the team members are very optimistic for its potential growth. “At the end of the day, making and seeing an actual impact is the true goal,” Andrasko wrote. LSA junior Timberlee Whiteus believes the program is beneficial since it focuses on marginalized citizens. “It is imperative to make refugees feel comfortable as many have come from troubled areas,” Whiteus said. Andrasko agreed, noting the social signifiance of volunteering with the program as well. “We provide interpretation services for community centers that have a clear commitment to a social cause, such as working with food banks, immigration law firms or resettlement agencies,” Andrasko wrote. “We act as a bridge between the organization and the potential student volunteers at U of M.”
research to optimize animal models, as well as imaging techniques to better understand the structures and mechanisms involved in Parkinson’s disease. In addition to inviting leading researchers to the University from local and national institutions, Dauer emphasized the importance of educating the future generation in research. The symposium series provides a place for younger researchers to present research findings, engaging in the larger research community. “We saw this line drawn between these presentations, which was really interesting, but of course we all use different techniques and strategies to get at these questions,” said Matthew Gaidica, a neuroscience Ph.D candidate, in his presentation. “Bringing those people together — the ones that think about molecules and chemicals and the ones that think about circuits and motor behavior — is really important because we’re attacking this disease on multiple fronts.” Samuel Pappas, research
investigator and post-doctorate in the Dauer Lab, echoed Gaidica’s sentiments on the importance of diversity in research. “There was everything from molecular work in new animal models to (positron emission tomography) imaging in humans and really modern electrophysiology and new techniques,” Pappas said. “I thought it was a great depth and breadth of research and gave a nice cross-section of the different types of research that are done.” Dauer emphasized the relevance of interdisciplinary work in tackling complex diseases like Parkinson’s. “We want people to interact so they can come up with ideas that are not obvious to either one alone,” he said. “This is a long-term problem — we hope we can make a dent in it, but we ain’t going to solve the whole thing. We need absolutely to educate people.”
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
SUPPORT From Page 1A after he was elected, Trump suggested the possibility of a Muslim registry and in January of this year, Trump pushed for a ban on travel from seven majority-Muslim countries. LSA senior Haleemah Aqel, Islamophobia Working Group student coordinator, has experienced forms of discrimination she likened to that of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Despite that, she did note “the severity of our discriminations are on different levels.” “You sometimes feel as if you don’t belong because of certain policies, certain wars and especially this year with the Muslim registry. I have definitely felt as if I’ve questioned, ‘Am I really American?’” Aqel said. “We kind of all just feel sometimes as if we don’t belong.” “The Japanese race is an enemy race,” wrote Lieutenant General John DeWitt in 1942 in the Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast. “While many second and third generation Japanese born on American soil, possessed of American citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted.” Roosevelt justified the internment of JapaneseAmericans by deeming them a threat to national security and labeled them “enemy aliens.” Japanese-Americans have recognized similarities between the oppression they and generations before them faced during World War II and the oppression Arab and Muslim Americans face. The similarities in oppression have pushed Japanese-Americans to stand up for the rights of Arab and Muslim Americans. Matthew Stiffler, a researcher at the Arab American National Museum and lecturer at the University of Michigan, noticed the alliance form in the early ’90s, long before the announcement of the immigration ban from the
Opinion
4A— Thursday, September 14, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
LUCAS MAIMAN | COLUMN
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com
EMMA KINERY Editor in Chief
ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY
and REBECCA TARNOPOL Editorial Page Editors
REBECCA LERNER Managing Editor
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Carolyn Ayaub Megan Burns Samantha Goldstein Caitlin Heenan Jeremy Kaplan Sarah Khan Anurima Kumar
Max Lubell Lucas Maiman Alexis Megdanoff Madeline Nowicki Anna Polumbo-Levy Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury Ali Safawi Sarah Salman Kevin Sweitzer Rebecca Tarnopol Stephanie Trierweiler Ashley Zhang
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
FROM THE DAILY
Protect DACA recipients
A
nti-Latinx, pro-Trump graffiti was found on the Rock at the corner of Hill and Washtenaw on Sept. 1, defacing what Assisting Latinos to Maximize Achievement, a Latinx student organization, had recently painted. Three days later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the current administration would terminate former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The decision would retract the immigration status of some 800,000 DACA recipients — 90 percent of whom identify as Hispanic or Latinx. That night, University President Mark Schlissel and Provost Martin Philbert sent an email expressing disappointment with the White House’s decision, emphasizing this decision’s weight on our campus. The Michigan Daily Editorial Board believes that President Donald Trump’s handling of DACA is unacceptable, and we call on Congress to pass legislation to stop DACA recipients from being deported, and work toward a structurally better solution for DACA recipients. Detractors of DACA, which gave work permits and some protections against deportation to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, view it as executive overreach and see a termination of the program as a return to rule of law. Additionally, Trump’s decision was spurred in part because 10 states had threatened to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration if it didn’t repeal the program. However, the context of the decision implies that the president’s stance on the issue was fueled purely by political considerations, rather than a firm resolve to provide a long-term solution for DACA recipients. Many defenders of the immigration policy have made strong cases on the potential economic downfalls of deporting DACA recipients — arguing they contribute much to the nation’s economy and many are either pursuing degrees in higher education or serving in the armed forces. However, the humanitarian implications of Trump’s repeal are even more pressing. DACA recipients were children when they immigrated to the United States and didn’t have a choice in the matter. They grew up in this country and are American in every sense if not by law. As such, they do not have connections in their parents’ homeland. Deporting DACA recipients would result in sending them to foreign lands they have never known. Many would be sent
back to countries where they have no homes or jobs; it would completely uproot them from their American lifestyles. University of Michigan students would be naive to believe rescinding DACA would not have an impact on their community. There are about 6,430 people who receive DACA protections in Michigan, some of whom are Ann Arbor residents, University students or both, and their deportation would be cruel. The University has vocalized its commitment to protecting undocumented students through policies like not inquiring about students’ citizenship status. Still, Trump’s decision would directly endanger the immigration status of students on our campus. DACA was never meant to be a permanent fix for undocumented children. Enacted in 2012 by executive order, DACA was supposed to be a bandage solution until Congress could provide a permanent, legislative solution. DACA recipients were still required to reapply for the program every two years, with no clear path outlined regarding the transition to citizenship. Furthermore, as it was an executive order, the program was always vulnerable to easy repeal by future administrations. Following the president’s decision to terminate DACA, Congress now has six months to provide a solution for DACA recipients. Now, Congress has the opportunity to create a more sustainable pathway to
EMILY WOLFE | CONTACT EMILY AT ELWOLFE@UMICH.EDU
citizenship, something it has not been able to do in the five years since the program began. There are currently three proposed pieces of legislation put forward in Congress that could be potential solutions. The Bar Removal of Individuals Who Dream and Grow Our Economy Act, the Recognizing America’s Children Act and a 2017 version of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act. Any of these bills would provide some sort of legislative protections from deportation to DACA recipients. We call on Congress to pass one of these bills, or something similar, to defend DACA recipients. The decision to repeal DACA has the potential to affect the lives of nearly a million Americans and must not be taken lightly. The decision shakes a foundational pillar of the nation’s future, and the actions to follow in the next few months will play a huge role in determining the fate of DACA recipients. We must remember that we are dealing with human lives — not numbers or statistics. Resources for DACA students may be found on the FAQs page of the University’s Public Affairs and Internal Communications website. Central Student Government has also posted information on social media relevant to certain DACA students able to renew their benefits. Independent law offices have also promised to aid in the financial and logistical difficulties with renewing their current status.
Baseball: The sport for millennials
N
ot long ago, when iPods could effortlessly moonlight as bricks with buttons and the term “millennial” had not yet been spoken into existence, baseball was all the rage. Before I had turned 11, I had spent four birthdays at Yankee Stadium and collected a rosters’ worth of ice cream-holding mini-helmets to boot. From kindergarten to sixth grade, highlights from the night before would interrupt my breakfast. The school day brought arguments about the pennant race and card trading. In the evening, there was wiffleball, which graduated to T-ball, then Little League, travel baseball and so forth. None of these experiences in my childhood would be too out of the ordinary for any young fan hungry for sports. But something irksome happened as I entered my teen years. Baseball became less of a presence in my life and in the lives of almost everyone around me. My meals slowly won the morning competition with the highlight reel, my previously heated arguments about Cy Young and the designated hitter cooled and, one by one, my friends stepped away from the diamond. I myself stopped playing at the end of junior high, and my interest in baseball soon waned as well. Growing up seemed to me to be the leading factor in baseball’s steady decline. The junior high and high school years are times for kids to meet new friends and explore a world gradually opening itself up. Yet in my corner of New Jersey suburbia, an interest in baseball became not just an afterthought, but a relic of the past. Sure, the thought went, the years of card-collecting and backyard wiffleball always have a spot in our hearts, but they were nothing more than any plain old interest of our younger years. The days of being a fervent disciple of all things baseball may as well be known as “the baseball
days,” and binders brimming with Topps and Upper Deck cards took up a new residence next to a box of Silly Bandz and snapback hats. Baseball and baseball culture, though, is making a resurgence. The kids who fondly remember Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout game or Aaron Boone’s walk-off homerun in the ALCS to send the Yankees to the World Series have begun to resurface in the baseball world. Nearly 8.7 million people tuned into the 2017 Home Run Derby, MLB revenues are approaching a record $10 billion and viewership for playoff-bound teams is on the rise. On a more grassroots level, I have noticed that many of my own friends will mirthfully make their way to the stadium and share their time at the game on social media. Baseball games after work, on the weekends or as a way to spend a night out are slowly creeping out from a lull and into the nostalgia-fueled interest of young people. The lynchpin preventing more encouraging figures of millennial engagement or game attendance is a common one for a generation that feels “significantly less financially secure than baby boomer parents:” the price. Most obviously, teams can improve by reducing ticket prices. The New York Yankees, who have an average ticket price of $106.05, second only to the reigning champion Chicago Cubs, have seen a per-game decline of 3,793 people through May 25 of this year, the third-sharpest in baseball. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Dodgers, with tickets averaging $44.99, the fourthlowest in the MLB, have had a league-leading average game attendance of 46,302. The St. Louis Cardinals boast the secondhighest attendance at 42,584. The other expense to trim is the glaringly overpriced concessions. One team model to consider after this year may wind up being the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League.
MICHAEL MORDARSKI | COLUMN
S
Last month, the Falcons unveiled their new “fan-friendly” concession prices, which include $2 water bottles, $2 hot dogs and $5 beer. If a complete overhaul of the concession stands is not in Major League Baseball’s best interests, frequent promos for similar “fan-friendly” concession prices could entice new fans to come to the ballpark. Finally, continuing to advertise through social media will help connect a younger audience to baseball and its rising stars. Teams have found recent success in using Twitter to engage fans with highlights and entertaining moments. Likewise, promotions, like the Tampa Bay Rays’ “DJ Kitty Onesie” night have used culture to their advantage in piquing more youthful interest. Marketing young league stars is another area where the MLB ought to improve if they want to win over the 18-to-35-yearold demographic. Promisingly, teams seem to have begun to take notice of the need to promote its young stars, like the Yankees’ Aaron Judge, in popular media and culture. Still, much popular media and culture today would have one believe that millennials have fallen victim to the information and technology age and are thereby crippling long-standing industries like baseball. But in the millennial generation, Major League Baseball has a unique, golden opportunity. The millennial appetite — an appetite that is predominantly anecdotal, but also backed by research — that values experience and nostalgia intersects perfectly with the best of what baseball offers. Moving into the 21st century and offering a more fan-oriented experience with modern and creative advertising will help the MLB tap into a trove of a generation’s love for baseball — the same love that thankfully has recently been rekindled in me. Lucas Maiman can be reached at lmaiman@umich.edu.
Scotchka
cotch and vodka. Two all the more divisive because different types of alcohol the emotional stakes are far that, when consumed greater. Your view of a loved one individually, are becomes muddled tolerable and even when their ideology enjoyable. does not match your Yet, “scotchka,” own. There arises the mixture of these a conflict in which two drinks, is not you struggle with enjoyable or even understanding how tolerable. Scotchka you can love someone is disgusting, you see as undeniably because combining wrong on a clear equal parts scotch moral issue. MICHAEL and vodka does not Politics become create a “beverage.” MORDARSKI amplified within the It creates a liquid tragedy — a family when these ideologies cloudy iced tea look-alike with do not match, and it becomes the aroma of paint thinner that, extremely difficult to hold if consumed, is guaranteed to civil conversations on issues induce panic to your liver. that are even slightly political. Therefore, no sensible The squeamishness and hot person with even a beginner’s tempers that are so often tied knowledge of alcohol would to politics have only further ever think to make a glass increased in intensity due of scotchka. They know that to the chaotic nature of our certain things just do not mix. current political environment. Which makes it amusing Because, surprisingly, the that, despite nearly decades result of the 2016 election of prior knowledge of the did not mend the nation back countless family fights due together. Our TV-realityto the topic of politics, one star-turned-president has of my family members will only further led the country eventually inquire to the group, into the divisive politics that “Hey guys, how ‘bout that plague the United States’ (extremely divisive political progression. Each side of the topic that is guaranteed to political spectrum is becoming start a screaming match)?” more and more filled as the Mixing family with politics moderate middle evaporates. is painful. From the single- And with the average news family unit to the mass week filled with so many gatherings of relatives, the divisive and chaotic stories, multiple viewpoints and it’s as if Aaron Sorkin teamed positions of your loved ones up with methamphetamine to often mutate into harsh write a twisted “precedent to accusations and arguments the apocalypse” season of “The that never end well. I have been West Wing.” to quite a few graduations, It is truly disturbing that baptisms, weddings, birthdays I can no longer use facts and and just casual dinners that truths in discussions with have descended into battles family members who have full of vulgar insults, Alex ultimately decided that they Jones-ian rants and far too refuse to believe anything many examples that use some that does not adhere to their iteration of “back in my day.” ideologies, and that I now have There are several reasons to have discussions where why political dialogue within the facts don’t matter, where the family is so difficult. From everything is entirely based generational gaps to different on opinions, where personal lifestyles and experiences, the feelings supersede truth. political ideologies held by This combination of divisive our family members become times, rejection of facts and
constant news has degraded the political communication of this country to the point that simple family discussions on a particular issue can erupt into emotional arguments. The 2016 election and its results have almost permanently divided families. And although politics and family never mixed well before, the loaded anger on both sides seems always ready to bubble over; the consistent amount of chaotic news allows for ample opportunities to start a screaming melee at the next family outing. Political discussions should be hard — they are complex and involve emotional issues. And speaking about these topics with loved ones should be harder to do than with strangers. But it is a testament to the times of how divisive the U.S. has become when politics are near impossible to discuss at the dinner table. Yet as much as it pains me, family and politics may be where the change occurs. That somewhere on the other end of these screaming matches and slammed doors, love and family bonds will overcome the divisive hate plag uing our country. That we can somehow, with calm, cool, collected manners, find a way to communicate again and reverse the polarization, at least on the family level. If not, I am more than likely going to be downing scotchkas to get through the next family party.
Michael Mordarski can be reached at mmordars@umich.edu.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Thursday, September 14, 2017 — 5A
Bush, defense preparing for Air Force’s unique offense Zordich also praised the scout team, as emulating Air Force’s running game is no easy task. “Hats off to all our (graduate assistants) and analysts,” Zordich said. “… Every week they study the film of the opponent for the scout team, but there’s a bigger emphasis on it this week because it is such a different offense.” The hardest challenge for Michigan, as Zordich discussed, will be all of the misdirection and deception. In the Wolverines’ offense — which the defense faces every day in practice — there might a trick play here and there. But Michigan’s offense isn’t based around trick plays. Air Force is the opposite. “Now,” Zordich said, “(We) have to be ready for it just about on every down.”
TED JANES
Daily Sports Writer
The No. 7 Michigan football team (2-0) won’t see an offense like Air Force’s every week. For the most part, it’s an opportunity for the Wolverines to face an out-of-the-box scheme. Michigan’s upcoming opponent presents a unique challenge. The Falcons (1-0) run a triple-option style offense that is full of deceit, trick plays and an ever-changing run game. Air Force had the thirdranked rushing offense last season, averaging 317 rushing yards per game. In the Falcons’ season-opening win against Virginia Military Institute, they rushed for 473. “It’s a well-run offense,” said sophomore linebacker Devin Bush Jr. “They’ve been running it for (11) years. … They know it down to the T, and they’re going to run it to their best ability.” The Wolverines are 24-point favorites over Air Force, but in order to pick up a third straight win, they’ll need to stop an Air Force attack that is one of the best in the nation on the ground. Bush and other members of the defense mentioned that staying disciplined was the most important factor. With so many different looks, the Falcons’ offense can lead defensive players into trying to make plays they shouldn’t. The Wolverines can’t afford to jump at the quarterback when he could toss a quick lateral pass to the trailing running back, who
BY THE NUMBERS Michigan vs Air Force outlook
could beat them as well. “It’s hard,” Bush said. “That’s one of the biggest things we’re gonna have to focus on — not doing too much. Not trying to always make that play. You have to trust your teammates. “Do your job. Don’t try to do the next man’s job.” Added sophomore safety Josh Metellus: “The triple-option offense is a lot. There’s a lot of deceiving plays; people going one way, and the ball going completely the other way.” Playing in the secondary, the
“Do your job. Don’t try to do the next man’s job.”
safeties aren’t as concerned with the triple option as some of the linebackers are, but Metellus noted that they have seen Air Force run a slew of playaction passes. If the safeties and defensive backs get caught sleeping, the Falcons are well positioned to attack through the air as well. Nonetheless, amidst all the triple-option talk, the Wolverines’ defense is still exceedingly confident. “They’re not going to pass the ball too many times,” Bush said. “If they do, we got something
for ‘em.” So far, Michigan’s defense has scored more points than it has allowed. The young guns like Bush and Metellus, as well as sophomores Lavert Hill and Khaleke Hudson, are breaking down opponents. And ‘veterans’ like junior safety Tyree Kinnel and senior cornerback Brandon Watson are making the transition from last year’s star-studded defense practically seamless. No matter how well the defense fared against Florida
“(We) have to be ready for it just about on every down.”
Big Ten Breakdown: Week Two
The Daily provides a brief overview of the Big Ten landscape KEVIN SANTO
Managing Sports Editor
No. 5 Penn State Previous result: W, 33-14 vs. Pittsburgh Top performer: Quarterback Trace McSorley — 15-of-28, 164 yards, three touchdowns, one interception Upcoming matchup: vs. Georgia State No. 8 Ohio State Previous result: L, 31-16 vs. Oklahoma Top performer: Running back J.K. Dobbins — 13 carries, 72 yards, one touchdown Upcoming matchup: vs. Army No. 10 Wisconsin Previous result: W, 31-14 vs. Florida Atlantic Top performer: Running back Jonathan Taylor — 26 carries, 223 yards, three touchdowns Upcoming matchup: at Brigham Young
24
SAM MOUSIGIAN/Daily
Sophomore linebacker Devin Bush Jr. and the Wolverines’ defense has been heavily tested by the scout team in anticipation of the challenge Air Force will present.
Illinois Previous result: W, 20-7 vs. Western Kentucky Top performer: Running back Mike Epstein — 21 carries, 111 yards Upcoming matchup: vs. No. 22 South Florida Indiana Previous result: W, 34-17 at Virginia Top performer: Quarterback Peyton Ramsey — 16-of-20, 173 yards, two touchdowns Upcoming matchup: vs. Georgia Southern Iowa Previous result: W, 44-41 at Iowa State Top performer: Quarterback Nathan Stanley — 27-of-41, 333 yards, five touchdowns Upcoming matchup: vs. North Texas Maryland Previous result: W, 51-41 vs. Towson
Top performer: Running back Ty Johnson — five carries, 124 yards, two touchdowns Upcoming matchup: vs. Central Florida Michigan State Previous result: W, 28-14 vs. Western Michigan Top performer: Quarterback Brian Lewerke — 13-of-21, 161 yards, one passing touchdown, two rushing touchdowns, one interception Upcoming matchup: vs. Notre Dame Minnesota Previous result: W, 48-14 at Oregon State Top performer: Running back Shannon Brooks – 17 carries, 91 yards, three touchdowns Upcoming matchup: vs. MTSU Nebraska Previous result: L, 42-35 at Oregon Top performer: Wide
receiver Stanley Morgan Jr. – seven receptions, 103 yards, two touchdowns Upcoming matchup: vs. NIU Northwestern Previous result: L, 41-17 at Duke Top performer: Linebacker Paddy Fisher – 18 tackles Upcoming matchup: vs. Bowling Green Purdue Previous result: W, 44-21 vs. Ohio Top performer: Quarterback David Blough – 11-of-13, 235 yards, three touchdowns Upcoming matchup: at Missouri Rutgers Previous result: L, 16-13 vs. Eastern Michigan Top performer – Janarion Grant, eight receptions, 91 yards Upcoming matchup: vs. Morgan State
and Cincinnati, though, they admit that preparing for Air Force presents an entirely new challenge. Defensive coordinator Don Brown has been preparing for this game since last April. The coaches talked about this game with players all offseason to make sure that they knew what to expect when this week arrived. Preparing for almost any other opponent wouldn’t call for a change in the game plan, and that’s why the Falcons are so dangerous. “(Air Force) is just a different deal,” said Michigan secondary coach Mike Zordich. “What we have worked on from April through now, you just put that all aside, and you’re doing something totally different.”
Point favorites the Wolverines are over the Falcons
11
Years Air Force has been running its triple-option offense
317
Rushing yards Air Force averaged per game last season
21
Points scored by Michigan’s defense in two games this year
Want to watch Jim Harbaugh throw his clipboard in real time?
Then join the Daily’s sports section! Contact kmsanto@umich.edu and ashabete@umich.edu OR come to either of our remaining mass meetings at 420 Maynard St.: Monday, September 18 Tuesday, September 19 Both are at 7 p.m.
SAM MOUSIGIAN/Daily
Coach Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan football team are one of the four Big Ten teams ranked in the top ten of the AP Top 25 two weeks into the 2017 season.
Sports
6A — Thursday, September 14, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Drevno emphasizing correctable details ahead of Air Force contest Michigan’s offensive coordinator has pushed his developing linemen toward a steady pattern of growth over time KEVIN SANTO
Managing Sports Editor
Tim Drevno gets a rush out of the light-bulb moments. Luckily for him, with this inexperienced Wolverine squad, there’s plenty of opportunity for those. “They’re young, which is great, and they’re very talented,” Drevno said. “But every day is a new day. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fifth-year guy, a fourth-year guy or a first-year guy. You’ve got to teach it to them like they’ve never heard it before and be dynamic the way you’re teaching it so they do understand it. “And then have them ask questions back to you and then you ask them questions to make sure they fully understand. That excites me, as a coach, is being able to teach and then getting it and then
understanding it, executing it.” That dialogue may be more rampant than ever right now. Wednesday afternoon, when Michigan’s offensive coordinator addressed the media, he was quick to emphasize that practice has been focused on the easily correctable details that plagued the Wolverines against Cincinnati. The two fumbles against the Bearcats may be the most obvious of those details, but the issues stretch beyond that. “The f ly sweeps, the motions, not fumbling the ball, not giving up a sack — I mean those are all correctable things,”
Drevno said. “... Just being really detailed orientated. Those are the things we’re really focused on and we focus on them every week. When it happens in a game, it magnifies like everything magnifies, and you put your eyes on it like, ‘Hey, how can we do it better as coaches so they understand it?’ ” Drevno emphasized that players have to be comfortable with making adjustments, adding that he is doing his part by “crossing every T and dotting every I” to ensure the game plan is sound. One adjustment came against Cincinnati when two defensive linemen twisted
“You’ve got to teach it to them like they’ve never heard it before.”
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Michigan offensive coordinator Tim Drevno teaches the Wolverines to clean up their mistakes as soon as possible.
on Nolan Ulizio and Michael Onwenu twice. Both times, Michigan’s inexperienced offensive line duo were beat, and redshirt junior quarterback Wilton Speight faced pressure. The third time, though, the Bearcats weren’t so successful. Ulizio and Onwenu each picked up on it, and Speight had the pocket to himself. Call it a light-bulb moment. “That’s exciting,” Drevno said of the in-game adjustment. “When a guy fixes a problem that you’ve talked to him about — they fix it and they do it — and it’s like ‘Hey, right on, we’re getting
one step closer to ( being) really good.’ ” Onwenu and Ulizio’s correction was only one example of a larger trend that Drevno has followed with this developing group. As he put it, Michigan’s offense is one with every player’s fingerprints on it. According to Drevno, a process such as that happens almost universally — in practice, games and the meeting rooms alike. And while that strateg y is already working well, there is a certain sense of urgency to correcting the mistakes. After all, Air Force is the only team
“ ‘Hey, right on, we’re getting one step closer to (being) really good.’ ”
SAM MOUSIGIAN/Daily
Redshirt sophomore right tackle Nolan Ulizio provided a good example of what Drevno considers a light-bulb moment.
‘M’ impresses in draw at No. 1 Indiana ETHAN SEARS For the Daily
Robbie Mertz lept, whipped his head toward the ball, and scored one of the biggest goals the Michigan men’s soccer team has had this decade. The Wolverines went to Bloomington and played No. 1 Indiana to a 1-1 stalemate on Wednesday night. After a 4-0-1 start to the season – its best since 2008 – this game was No. 18 Michigan’s chance to prove itself a contender. Consider it done. Mertz’s goal came 50 minutes into the game. Freshman midfielder Umar Farouk Osman set it up with a run down the right wing and a well-placed cross. Trey Muse, Indiana’s freshman goalkeeper, had a chance to punch it out. Mertz got there first. The Hoosiers scored the game’s opening goal just 11 minutes into play. A Wolverine turnover in their own half gave Indiana a 3-on-2 chance. For a f leeting second it looked like sophomore goalkeeper Andrew Verdi might play the hero, as he saved two consecutive shots from two different Hoosier players. On the third – from junior defender Andrew Gutman – Verdi was helpless. For the rest of the first half, Indiana put on a defensive clinic. Michigan didn’t record its first shot on goal until the 40th minute. Osman found himself on the right side of the box with space – a rarity against a team with the Hoosiers’ defensive caliber – but his shot was easily stopped by Muse. When the whistle blew signaling the end of the first half, it looked like an impending beatdown. “I think we were fortunate to only concede one (in the first half ),” said Michigan head coach Chaka Daley after the game. “You could tell by the shots and stats that (in)
the first 15 minutes, they kind of had us on the ropes.” After halftime, everything changed. “We just asked them to step up slightly and focus more on some minor details defensively,” Daley said. “And it certainly proved fruitful.” Indiana freshman forward Griffin Dorsey forced a diving save out of Verdi in the 58th minute. His shot was directed at the far post, but not far enough. That ended up being the best chance the Hoosiers had for the rest of regulation. The closest the Wolverines came to taking a lead was in the 73rd minute. After Muse saved senior midfielder Tristan Jacob’s shot, the
ensuing rebound looked like a goal-in-waiting. Michigan had a numbers advantage in Indiana’s box, but couldn’t take the upper hand. “I think guys were trying to find out who could get to it first and who could get a toe poke to it,” Daley said. “I think guys were kind of in the way and someone just needed to kind of knock it or toe poke it.” Pouring rain over Bloomington went on as long as the game. In college soccer, a tie game goes to two 10-minute overtimes before it gets called. For the Wolverines, those 20 minutes were as stressful as you might expect. The first overtime was largely devoid of scoring
“We just continue to keep our head up.”
chances for both teams. Verdi’s only save came off a Hoosier free kick, and that didn’t come until the 99th minute. Redshirt junior defender Timmy Mehl’s header was on goal, but Verdi swallowed it up easily. Indiana was able to lay claim to the best chance of the second overtime as well. In the 107th minute, a cross found its way into Michigan’s box and looked dangerous, but redshirt junior midfielder Cory Thomas couldn’t put it away. When the game finally ended, the Wolverines came away with perhaps their most important result in years. But Daley isn’t celebrating just yet. “Two games in, people are going to put rankings on people. They’re number one, we’re eighteen – it’s not relevant,” Daley said. “We just continue to keep our head up and keep things in perspective.”
standing between Michigan and its Big Ten opener. The Falcons aren’t a cakewalk, either. As Drevno explained, Michigan will face a fast and welldisciplined defense with an unconventional scheme that isn’t afraid to blitz. They are technically sound — capable of making the tackles they need to and reading routes in the secondary. Against that defense, Drevno could use a few more light-bulb moments. “A mistake happens — bam, you put it down and it’s done,” Drevno said. “You don’t want to ever see it again. Is it gonna happen again? It might. You don’t want (it) to, but at least you’ve addressed it, you’ve coached it and they understand the adjustments off that mistake and what needs to happen.”
Notable Quotable “I thought he had some spectacular plays. Avoiding the tackle for a loss, free runner on the edge, that was significant. His long run on the sweep on a corner who was unblocked, thought that was outstanding. He had one called back due to a penalty and missed assignment. He had two or three opportunities called back or taken away because of execution. So, he’s taking his opportunity this year. It’s very important for him.” -Coach Jim Harbaugh on Running back Ty Isaac
KATELYN MULCAHY /Daily
Junior midfielder Robbie Mertz scored the game-tying goal in the 50th minute in Bloomington to earn a draw.
B
The Michigan Daily | michigandaily.com | Thursday, September 14, 2017
Arts
2B —Thursday, September 14, 2017
B-SIDE LEAD B-SIDE LEAD
ANN ARBOR COMEDY SHOWCASE
After 40 years, the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase continues to thrive, shine DANNY HENSEL Daily Film Editor
The phrase “hole in the wall” is thrown around a lot, but the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase might have the best claim to the ubiquitous descriptor. It’s a hole in scaffolding. That’s because the Showcase’s home — a short, anonymous building on Fourth Avenue between Liberty and Washington — is under renovation, and all signs of the Showcase’s very existence are reserved to the covered sidewalk that runs next to the construction: a folded sign on the street, large blue letters on the door and the brief sight of an attended ticket office through the glass. But once inside the doors, and down the hallway and down the stairs and across from the bar, the Comedy Showcase is inviting. Excited 20-somethings are mingling, drink orders are being taken; there’s a giddy air of anticipation before a show. At the center of the Comedy Showcase’s operations sits the soft-spoken yet deliberate Roger Feeny (“I honestly don’t like to do interviews”), a smallish man with graying wiry hair and focused eyes behind large, tortoiseshell glasses. One would hardly think of the 60-something Feeny, who was dressed in a hoodie and polo and quietly sipping tea as we spoke,
as the sort of entertainment genius who could keep a club af loat for 33 years in one of Michigan’s most competitive real estate markets. And yet there we were. Feeny founded the club in 1984 when he was 29. He had been a dockworker and teamster for 10 years, hardly a recognizable career path from this vantage point. His brother-
His key to success is bringing in a wide variety of comics and comedic styles: slapstick and storytellers, men and women, catering to old and young.
in-law, Kirkland Teeple, had established himself as a standup comic on the road before
RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES AND OUR
COMMON FUTURE
CREATIVE CAPABILITIES AT SCALE
JASON OWEN-SMITH
Barger Leadership Institute Professor & Director Executive Director, Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS) Professor of Sociology Research Professor, Institute for Social Research
4:10 p.m. Thursday,
September 14, 2017
Michigan League Hussey Room
A public lecture and reception. For more information call 734.615.6667
coming to Ann Arbor with the hopes of starting a comedy club. Starting up a club in a big town from scratch requires more than just a sense of humor (though that certainly helps), but Teeple and Feeny created a perfect match: Teeple knew the comics, and Feeny had a business sense, and so the pair opened up a comedy club above the Heidelberg Restaurant on Main Street in Ann Arbor. The Mainstreet Comedy Showcase remained on its titular street for a few years before moving in 1987 to the VFW Hall on Liberty Street, where Jerusalem Garden sits now. The Showcase relocated to its current location on Fourth Avenue in 2014. In between, the club has sponsored softball teams in town, hosted benefits for the community and put on golf outings for the staff. Ann Arbor, it turned out, is a great location for the club. “The school and the curriculum spits out doctors and lawyers and Ann Arbor’s a smart town,” Feeny said. “So we’ve got smart people that come here.” That intelligence puts pressure on comedians; here, even slapstick comedy, which is based in embarrassment and errors, can make you think. While the club has moved a number of times, the structure of its shows has remained consistent. At a typical standup show, an emcee, and perhaps another comedian, will play the role of warm-up act, each telling jokes for about five minutes. The opener is followed by the featured act, a more established comedian, who entertains the crowd for about 15 minutes. The headliner, with a set of about 50 minutes, closes out the show. Feeny acknowledges that there’s a business strategy to the timing — 90 minutes, he notes, is the typical length of a film before an audience starts to shift in its seats — but when the shows are good, it’s a winwin situation. “It’s taken from the restaurant philosophy: Feed ‘em, don’t stuff ‘em, so they’ll want to come back for more,” he said. Saturday nights are the most popular shows, and winter is the busy season. His key to success is bringing in a wide variety of comics and comedic styles: slapstick and storytellers, men and women, catering to old and young. Over time, Feeny has incidentally become a sort of comedy guru, continually providing a forum for young, budding comics to perform at open mics. “We like to develop talent,” Feeny said. “I’ve been known to give guys their first headline gig and bring in guys you don’t really hear of, but
they’re very funny.” The Showcase hosts weekly open mics, which can help young comics try out the medium. “You can come and work on your material,” said Erich Laux, a recent University of Michigan graduate and budding stand-up who often performs at the Showcase. “And through that he’s in the local scene because he sees all the younger and newer comics come through. So he can see when somebody is ready to start hosting.” Feeny’s quick to give out advice to young comics, too. “You have to keep writing,” he said. “That’s what I keep telling them: Keep writing clean material. That’s the only way you’re going to learn how to write jokes.” Undoubtedly a result of Feeny’s efforts at creating a supportive training ground for rising comedians, the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase has become a go-to destination for comics looking to find friendly audiences. While most performers are from southeastern Michigan, “guys come to the open mic night from over 100 miles away,” Feeny said. “They’ll drive in to do five minutes on stage.” One hundred miles is no easy drive for anyone, let alone a young comics who may be just feeling out the industry and looking for available open mic nights, but their willingness to drive all the way for five minutes in an Ann Arbor basement is indicative of the support system Feeny provides. “If you’ve got a good stage to perform on, they’ll come a long
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com should try his hand at a solo act. He made his way to Ann Arbor, where he started at the open mics. “The open mic really gave you training wheels that nowhere else could because the audience was always more diverse and a
Those clubs lack the sort of personal touch and quality that has become the hallmark of the Showcase, where comedians have to impress Feeny in order to move up
little more heady,” said Landau in a roundtable of comics, including Majdali, Daniels and Nate Armbruster, who also performs regularly at the club, in the green room after the 8:00 show. “They expected more out of the comic and I loved that about it.” The Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase was the first place both Daniels and Armbruster
Chris Daniels performing standup at the showcase on S Forth
way,” he added. Laux, the budding comic, started performing stand-up through a student organization at the University called LOL ROFL — “It was started when that was still relevant,” he said — and would go to the Showcase to see comics and perform at the open mic nights. Now, he spends time in a community of rising standups who stay at the Showcase to watch and learn from the performers. They carpool to different shows around the state and share notes and horror stories with one another. Laux readily acknowledges the help that Feeny and the Showcase provide. “Roger is the owner and he runs (the Showcase),” Laux said, “so he has say in all the shows and everyone he books.” Feeny’s style is in sharp contrast to more corporate-run comedy clubs elsewhere. Those clubs lack the sort of personal touch and quality that has become the hallmark of the Showcase, where comedians have to impress Feeny in order to move up to performing at shows other than open mics. Laux was the emcee this past Saturday at 8 p.m., and he was followed by Nicole Majdali, a Livonia-based comedian with a more confessional style. Chris Daniels, originally from Michigan and now living in New York, served as the featured comic. The headliner featured the show’s biggest name: Dave Landau, a comedian from Detroit who was featured on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing.” Before he was a touring standup comic, Landau was based at Second City in Chicago, when a friend there suggested he
had performed comedy. Armbruster was in high school in Dearborn when he first came to a class offered at the club. Soon after, he began to perform at open mics. He was so young that Roger had to call his mother to make sure she approved of him performing stand-up. That was nine years ago. Now, bearded and leaning back on the green room couch, he’s a regular. Daniels was 17 when, unbeknownst to him, his friends signed him up for an open mic at the venue after he had boasted of his comedic talents. Suddenly, Daniels was thrust into a five-minute set — a rarity in his current milieu — which he remembers going well, joking about partying with friends and Britney Spears’s attempted comeback. “I had easy targets at the time,” he said. Majdali is the newest to the club in the room. She caught wind of the open mic and continued to return. “I did not come to Ann Arbor until I got hooked on coming here,” Majdali said, enamored with the support system at the club, including the comics sitting in the back and the bartenders that serve and laugh along with the audience. “Now I go to Ann Arbor a couple times a week.” Even the space itself is crafted for optimal performances. Behind the comedian looms a white backdrop with the club logo, cropped by glass blocks lit an electric blue. The stage is rather small, the ceilings are low and the first row of the audience is huddled around the stage. The result is a large-capacity space that feels intimate, even from the back
row. “A room with 20 people can feel like a 100,” Armbruster said. “It encourages participation,” Daniels added. “It feels like a nightclub in the basement of a place,” Landau said, which he explained makes the Showcase something of an oasis in the Midwest, where that ambience is more of a rarity. But even in such a tight space, no comedian is guaranteed success. Bombing in Ann Arbor is something all the comedians have experienced, and it especially stings. “It’s a great place to grow as a comic because you get good audiences,” Landau said. “They kind of expect more from you and when you bomb here you really fucking bomb.” Daniels attributes the low lows to the spirit of the crowd. “They just seem to enjoy it a lot more than in a lot of other places,” he said. “They just kind of create an atmosphere, and that helps, so that’s why for me doing bad here feels like you kamikaze’d yourself. You had a win and you blew it.” But even when the comedian is down, Feeny is there to help. As long as the comedian in question is trying new material and working hard, “they’re not judging you and kicking you out and saying don’t come back,” Landau said. Instead, the comedian is encouraged to try again. Armbruster recalls that occasionally, if he tries something that falls f lat before an audience, he’ll hear Feeny cackling quietly in the
ANN ARBOR COMEDY SHOWCASE
background — it’s “one of the worst and best feelings,” he said. “You just know that he’s enjoying it because he knows exactly what’s going through your head.” The others nodded in agreement. Landau added that when a comedian totally offends the crowd, “you’ll also hear that laugh sometimes and it’s so encouraging, because you think, ‘Oh, the guy who really gets comedy got it so I don’t care what anyone else thinks.’” That’s in sharp contrast to other clubs in the area where the owners are often divorced from the comedians, to say nothing of the corporate-run clubs to which Laux contrasted the Showcase. At some of those other clubs, “somebody could walk here and punch me in the face and nobody would have my back,” Armbruster said. But it’s different at the Showcase — Feeny provides a wealth of resources to his comedians. “He has a speech at every open mic: ‘Don’t go over the time,’” Majdali said. “He’s trying to teach you to be a professional and a good comic, and sometimes people don’t get that. And it’s very important. They’re teaching you business skills.” And even better for comics: “They just understand comedy,” Armbruster added. “Don’t take it for granted,” warned Daniels, the Michigan transplant in New York. “If you leave here and hit the road or if you move to a bigger comedy scene, they’re not as forgiving and you won’t be able to hone your skills in the same way.” “But every time I come here,” Daniels said, “I’m like, ‘This feels good. It feels like home.’”
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, September 14, 2017 — 3B
B-SIDE SECONDARY
COURTESY OF MBC The members of MBC just chillin
The members of Comco improv-ing
COURTESY OF COMCO
Joke’s on you: A look at three U-M comedy groups Every Three Weekly, Comco, Midnight Book Club — three groups that have staked claims in comedy on the U-M campus WILL STEWART Daily Arts Writer
The origins of the Every Three Weekly, the University of Michigan’s satirical publication, aren’t exactly sexy. “I think a group of people who were not very good with girls started this thing: That’s how it came to be,” explained Business and LSA senior Suzy Weiss, co-editor of the Every Three Weekly. Its eyecatching slogan — “Better than sex, twice as often” — and biting headlines attract thousands of readers, from curious freshmen to seasoned seniors. Founded in 1997 and funded by the University Activities Center, the paper has been triweekly — the name is a clever spoof of The Michigan Daily — since 1999. Its creative influence is undeniably The Onion, but its ultimate source of inspiration comes from AP style news headlines rather than satire. “Real newspapers are probably of a more inspiration than comedy websites because the big thing that dictates the Every Three Weekly is form,” Weiss said. “So, we’re really married to AP style in a print paper.” Its headlines take a mundane, often inconsequential campus event or phenomenon and bend it to reveal unseen hilarity. For example, “President Schlissel sends email urging student body to ‘check out all the sweet dinosaurs’ at Natural History Museum.” The Ever Three Weekly also includes sections beyond campus life, such as opinion, national, world and sports news satire. There is a systematic approach to the Every Three Weekly’s publishing process. “You try and find a trope that most people can relate to. It could be anything from not eating vegetables to a girl ignoring you, and you didn’t want to be her boyfriend anyway — things that are sort of in the zeitgeist of campus,” Weiss said. “Then we come up with eight to 10 headlines that we pitch to the room before each cycle begins, and based on the amount of laughs it gets is what gets written.” The Every Three Weekly avoids writing about hypothetical situations that would be funny if they happened
— or as it calls them, WIBFIs (wouldn’t it be funny if…). “When something is overly goofy or funny, like, ‘Schlissel elbows freshman in the face to get first in line Meatless Mondays’ … that’s a WIBFI, which is something we shy away from,” Weiss explained. Though eager to poke fun at almost everything, the paper has a moral code that dictates what gets published. “I think a guiding principle of the Every Three Weekly is that we’re always siding with the victim,” Weiss said. “We never want to kick someone while they’re down.” It avoids topics that could never be funny, regardless of the direction it takes. Still, the Every Three Weekly isn’t afraid to raise eyebrows. Weiss made it clear that there are “some things we think it’s our duty to lampoon, things that people are being overly sensitive about or having a reaction that’s a little too self-serious.” She is well aware that the paper’s style may not be for the faint of heart: “You can’t please everyone, and we certainly don’t want to. We want to offend to a tasteful level.” As expected, its content occasionally stirs up controversy. In 2010, Briarwood Mall wrote a cease-and-desist to the paper for defamation after an article titled “Mall Santa tells child exactly what he wants for Christmas” explicitly mentioned the mall’s name. Weiss explained that today they’re able to laugh about the incident. “We have this really serious letter that was written by their lawyer … and I just love the idea of him having to write that cease-anddesist letter.” In such a contentious political climate, Weiss explained: “It’s as important as ever to stay grounded in our moral compass and not to let that get shifted by the tides of so-called progressivism, so-called conservatism. I think if the joke’s funny, it’ll run, and that is our guiding principle.” The Every Three Weekly is an entirely anonymous publication, though a list of its staff can be found on each issue. Weiss noted that compared to other comedy groups on campus, particularly improv groups, there is a crucial difference: “They’re about immediate gratification; we’re about never being gratified.
The E3W is an entirely anonymous publication, though a list of their staff can be found on each issue
It’s an anonymous paper, no one knows our name.” Most students have had a class with an Every Three Weekly writer and probably never knew it. “It’s a lot of kids who would giggle to themselves about something and think that everyone else would enjoy it, not people who are screaming out to get the big laugh,” she said. “There are very funny people on the paper, but I think a misconception is, actually, that if you join the E3W, you’re going to get … good-looking, very funny group,” and Weiss assured me that this is, indeed, not the case. “We’re not like an improv group. We have none of the good personality and barely any charisma. When you’re around ComCo and Midnight Book Club, two groups that I really love … they’re charmers.” For what it may lack in charm, the Every Three Weekly makes up for in wit, possessing a creative lens that can make any trivial event hilarious. ComCo, short for Comedy Company, was founded in the late ’70s, making it the oldest improv troupe on campus. Jon Glaser, famous for his role as Councilman Jeremy Jamm on “Parks and Recreation,” is among many of the successful alumni who performed in ComCo during college. Structurally, ComCo specializes in short form, a style distinguished by short scenes dictated by a theme randomly assigned by the audience. Since improv is entirely on-thespot and does not follow a predetermined script, the rehearsal process focuses on building skills. LSA junior Ellis Hyman, an improv veteran, wisely compared this to the way a sports team practices before a game. “Think of (improv rehearsals as) analogous to a sports team. As a sports team, you do similar things you would do in a real game,” Hyman said. “You do practices, exercises, even real scrimmages of the full game. But then, what you do in practice is 100 percent different than what happens on the field.” Past improv experience is not necessary for ComCo. “One of our former alumni, Guy, who graduated last winter, joined ComCo as a sophomore, literally never had done improv in his entire life before, and now he’s pursuing it professionally in
Chicago. So, we have people with no experience at all — never even been on a stage before — to people like myself who have done improv,” Hyman said. Anyone can, and does, join Comco. “It’s really varied. People from every major, every walk of life: just a random amalgamation of random people,” Hyman explained. And this enhances the quality of their performances. “You don’t want to have people of the exact same senses of humor because it’s going to be a one-man show almost,” Hyman said. “We’re of course looking for people who we like and enjoy, but also have a little bit of diversity in styles of improv, comedy and personalities.” Differences in comedic style complement one another, making for a well-rounded scene. “For me personally, I find the easiest humor to do is really energetic, movement improv,” Hyman said. “But someone who would be a little more reserved, maybe have more of a cynical sense of humor, would really balance well to that. I think we all pull different aspects of comedians that we like because there’s not one style of improviser in ComCo, so I feel like we all get inspirations from different styles of comedy. And honestly, life is so beautiful: You can find comedy in anything and everything.” ComCo, like other short-form troupes, plays games with its audience during performances. During rehearsals, it practices these games to improve its quickwittedness and wordplay. “We practice a game, it’ll be totally different in a performance than in practice, but it’ll be the same structure as what we do,” Hyman added. Though ComCo’s improvisers are also hilarious off stage, it’s not all about being the funniest person on stage. “Improv isn’t necessarily about being funny. It’s about scene work, being a good team player … and being able to think on your feet,” Hyman said. “If I went on stage and started cracking jokes and wasn’t thinking about anyone else, it would be the worst scene ever.” The first ComCo show is free, and the troupe assuredly will continue its 38-year-long tradition of bringing quality improv to students in this year’s performances. Midnight Book Club, another improv troupe at the University, has become one of the most influential and popular troupes on campus. MBC’s president, Kevin Corbett, a Music, Theatre & Dance and LSA senior, explained the troupe’s origins: “A group of similarly-minded individuals that loved comedy decided to create a group, and since then, they started performing in rooms in the Michigan League.” MBC hasn’t been around as long as ComCo, and was founded within the
“It’s really varied. People from every major, every walk of life: Just a random amalgamation of random people.”
decade. “The first (audition), they had five to 10 people come on for the troupe. Now, we’re having around 100 people audition and having big crowds come to our shows in Angell Hall,” he said. Corbett agreed with Hyman about the different experience levels, which make “college improv so rich … you have these varying levels of experience. It’s a culmination of ideas and talents, and I think it shows in the results.” MBC’s sole focus is long-form improv, with sketches often spanning more than 30 minutes. “If you have one idea going into a scene, it can easily change; it’s very malleable because it’s a longer set of time that you’re working with,” Corbett said. Corbett described an abstract concept called group mind: “It’s the ultimate form of consciousness that you want to have as an improviser, where you know exactly what an improviser is thinking. And, you kind of get the general sense of where a scene is going to go.” For long form, considering the sketch can take unexpected turns, this is especially important. “I think that because we’re such good friends and because we have a really great sense of camaraderie, our group mind is
heightened,” he said. MBC competes against other colleges, and wherever it goes, it’s constantly performing both on and off stage. “We do love our bits and we do love performing both in rehearsal and out of rehearsal — performing in the sense of making each other laugh,” Corbett said. “That’s what I love about MBC, is everyone just loves making each other laugh, whether it’s in rehearsal, on stage or getting dinner.” It’s that environment which makes MBC so great. “It’s students that fucking love each other and fucking love comedy,” Corbett said. “Going into rehearsal is … my favorite part of every week. It’s so much fun even if you’re having a shitty day … you’re able to improvise with (your friends), make these hilarious jokes and just feel good.” MBC is funded through grants and donations, and its shows are free of charge. Though consistently well-received by audiences, the troupe prioritizes its own enjoyment. “We always say in MBC, let’s play for us,” Corbett said. “Let’s improvise for us. At the end of the day, we’re happiest when we’re making each other laugh; I think that’s what makes our group pretty special.”
Although ComCo’s improvisers are also hilarious off stage, it’s not all about being the funniest person on stage
DISCOVER A GENEROUS SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM.
The U.S. Army’s Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP) offers qualified medical, dental and veterinary students full tuition for a graduatelevel degree at the school of your choice. You’ll receive a monthly stipend and payment for books, equipment and academic fees, as well as the potential to grow as a leader.
To learn more, visit healthcare.goarmy.com/ix39, or visit your local U.S. Army Recruiting Office
©2014. Paid for by the United States Army. All rights reserved.
Arts
4B —Thursday, September 14, 2017
MUSIC
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
COMMUNITY CULTURE
NETFLIX Comedy icon Dave Chappelle
Seeing Dave Chappelle: Hip-hop’s favorite comedian hits the road SALVATORE DIGIOIA Daily Arts Writer
Dave Chappelle — the boldfaced funny man who emerged in the early-2000s as an Afrocentric satirist, unafraid to squeeze risqué racial commentary into his nowlegendary sketch comedy show — has long been an important figure in hip-hop. The first season of Chappelle’s Show (which briefly aired on Comedy Central) featured musical guests such as Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Busta Rhymes and The Roots, while its second included DMX, Erykah Badu and Kanye West (to name a few). Yet, unlike so many artists who haunt the primetime late-night sets of Jimmys (Fallon and Kimmel) — often seeming so out-of-context during their promotional performances that one wonders if the hosts even knew who they had invited — artists’s arrivals at Chappelle’s Show felt like pointed recommendations. Their performances served as punctuation marks for each episode. So, a true Chappelle fan should not have been overwhelmingly surprised when hip-hop legends Ms. Lauryn Hill and Nas announced — just days before the launching of their joint PowerNomics Tour — that the notoriously-reclusive comedian would be joining them on the road. In fact, the closer that one has been paying attention, the less surprised they ought to be: Since June, Chappelle has performed aside Ms. Hill, Chance the Rapper, Childish Gambino and more during a residency at Radio City Music Hall; he has questioned Kendrick Lamar for Interview Magazine, an already-historic conversation in its own right; and he has continuously owned up to his role as a musical gatekeeper, like when he labeled Lil Wayne “one of the most clever motherfuckers ever” during an appearance on Sway In The Morning. Much like modern rappers, who can earn enough clout through their craft to eventually expand into other ventures (think fashion, film and Diddy’s Ciroc vodka), Chappelle became so deeply embedded into hip-hop through humor that his position aside two historic emcees just feels natural. For anyone who’s ever nostalgically wondered how
Chappelle’s Show accomplished its near-perfect roster of conscious Black musicians, or has hoped for a similarly prolific blending of hip-hop and comedy to occur today, the PowerNomics Tour — which touched down at the Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill in Sterling Heights on Fri., Sept. 8th — represents a perhaps oncein-a-lifetime opportunity to travel back in time and become a witness to history. Both Nas — whose debut LP, Illmatic, is commonly considered the best rap album of all time — and Lauryn Hill — whose only solo LP, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, was the first hiphop project to win Album of the Year at the Grammy’s — are like walking relics from a former version of hip-hop, hardly
This tour is not simply a parade of nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, and it’s also not an attempt by old artists to collect new cash
recognizable against modern standards. But performing after Chappelle, who is himself also representative of a longgone era, one in which impolite humor and cable television ruled supreme, the pair truly succeeded in establishing a sense of then. Throughout his forty-five minute set, Chappelle appeared in full-form, talking through even the touchiest of subjects in his classically casual tone and unflinching against today’s heightened expectations for correctness. Skewering the famous sexual assault allegations against Michael Jackson, he minimized the late, great pop star into the “Jay-Z” of hanging with kids, drawing parallels between MJ’s odd indulgence in children’s fantasies (he owned a monkey, an amusement park and beds dedicated exclusively to
jumping on) and the veteran Brooklyn rapper’s similar obsession with luxury goods (references to cars, yachts and watches decorate his every album). Traversing through race-relations, Chappelle laughed off the time that a pregnant Asian women (who is married to a Black man) became so offended by his commentary on interracial marriages that she went home to write a complaint to his promoter. And, finally, sweating through a bit that he swore he wouldn’t have told if attendees’s phones had not been locked into inaccessible pouches upon their arrival, Chappelle cringed at memories from a night of clubbing in Hollywood during which he danced (initially unbeknownst) with a transsexual woman. Clearly, Dave Chappelle was simply being Dave Chappelle, but in 2017 that’s a major accomplishment in its own right. Throughout the next month, the PowerNomics Tour will bring him — along with two equally historic and fabled musicians — into fifteen more cities, fifteen more jam-packed theaters filled with thousands of people, old and young, who could’ve probably never predicted such an opportunity would arise. But more importantly, it will also generate millions of dollars worth of proceeds, a major portion of which its team has pledged to donate towards further enfranchisement of AfricanAmerican communities. This tour is not simply a parade of nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, and it’s also not an attempt by old artists to collect new cash. Rather, it’s a strong-handed effort by a legendary team of Black entertainers to merge their platforms and heighten their impacts — both on the crowds they entertain and the communities that they will assist. This point was hinted at by a briefly serious Chappelle in the final moments of his set. Addressing Detroit, he professed how proud he is to be among residents of the largest Black community in American history, then reminded attendees that Motown — which was launched right here in our own backyard — is still the most quintessential example of a Black cultural enterprise, period. “Detroit, I’m gon’ fuck with you until the wheels fall off!” Just like that, it was time for Nas and Lauryn.
Second City performing at their various venues
COURTESY OF THE SECOND CITY
The Second City brings laughs, love to The Ark The legendary improvisation group that has birthed comedians like Tina Fey and Amy Poeher came to Ann Arbor last weekend FALLON GATES Daily Arts Writer
I’m second row and center for The Second City. It’s really the best seat in the house, because sitting front row risks getting heckled at by the troupe. Before the show starts, the crowd is already pulsing with noise and laughter, eagerly awaiting the comedy stars of tomorrow. I held expectations of seeing something similar to “Saturday Night Live,” a favorite show of mine. Since this performance
I feel no remorse in saying that The Second City blew present-day SNL out of the water
was actually live for me, I feel no remorse in saying that The Second City blew present-day SNL out of the water. Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Bill Murray, Keegan-Michael Key: These are just a few of the hilarious stars born out of The Second City. Based in Chicago, this comedy troupe has produced original, satirical and comedic pieces for nearly sixty years. This past Friday, the national tour “The Best of The Second City” made a stop here at Ann Arbor’s The Ark, which was recently renovated. Amidst the typical musicians and theatrical plays, we finally had a notable comedy revue in A2, bringing diversity to the entertainment scene. Improv is what makes The Second City legendary. The actors can instantly come up
with a catchy song in relation to whatever an audience member shouts out, like a dog eating your boyfriend’s plant and having a fight about it (true story). The actors can flip between two separate scenes, from a horror porn movie with a boob-sucking dracula to two astronauts trying to contact Houston while it’s underwater. Both scenes are given to the actors on the spot and they immediately make it uniquely hilarious. Not many actors are comfortable with calling an audience member a bastard or having an elderly audience member (deemed the baddest boy) spank them on stage. Both were achieved during the performance, and both had me laughing until my mouth hurt from smiling. This troupe of comedians are able to connect personally with the audience, making local references, shaking hands, asking questions and being real. It’s this connection that lights the audience on fire, creating moments of high energy and fun that you wish would never end. With three girls and three guys, the faces of comedy’s new generation are memorable. Each has such likable charisma, the kind I want to see more of in the film industry. Alison Gates, Adam Archer, Danny Catlow, Eve Krueger, Greg Ott, and Lauren Walker are all experienced comedians; many participate in iO Chicago and The Annoyance. The director, Tyler Samples, teaches and performs at The Second City and hosts the Rabbit Hole podcast with other Second City guests. “The Best of The Second City” features classic skits that helped launch the careers of comedy’s best and brightest, along with skits distinct to this tour. The style of the
show was very similar to that of “Saturday Night Live”; both have an arrangement of different comedy sketches that usually reflect on current political, social and economic happenings in America. Many of the actors currently performing with SNL made their start with The Second City. I not sure how anyone else feels, but to me, SNL has been lacking in delivery in recent years, dwindling down to repetitive skits and jokes that
With three girls and three guys, the faces of comedy’s new generation are memorable
just aren’t that funny. After seeing The Second City, I have hope again for a better comedic future. A hope of SNL returning to the hype of Will Ferrell, Eddie Murphy, Amy Poehler and Chris Farley. I think we all miss those days. With classes not quite in full swing, now is the time to explore all the amazing venues that Ann Arbor. While comedy may not be as common as other shows, nothing will bring you into good spirits better than laughter. People love The Second City not just for its humor, but for its creativity. It’s different every time, and it’s different from the comedy you see on TV. You may have to reach into the deep corners of A2 to find comedy, but I assure you, the search is worth it.
HEY GUYS! CALEB HERE. I KNOW IT’S BEEN A WHILE, BUT YOU’VE GUYS HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR THIS VIDEO IN THE COMMENTS FOR A WHILE. SO HERE IT GOES! REMEMBER TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE BELOW! E-mail join.arts@michigandaily.com for information on applying.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
BICENTENNIAL
Gilda Radner, a brief University of Michigan student and original member of SNL
Arts “I mention it a lot because I value that experience,” she says. “Coming to where I am now, I’ve sat in a costume room… and sewed a rolled hem on a chiffon skirt. You know, the most boring thing… Which means I can now remember to appreciate the people who are doing it for me. “It’s those years that make me feel like I kind of paid my dues.” Radner was so busy with children’s theater, in fact, that she missed out on many of the campus activities which epitomized the ‘60s. *** “Most of my friends were in journalism and political science,” she says, pausing to sip from her can of Tab. “And when I’d be going off to do a children’s show, they’d be going off to protest at some radical political meeting. I was always feeling guilty about not going their way.” But that guilt has disappeared now that Radner is on a show which, through parodies and NBC satire, is politically vocal. “I find it interesting now,” she says. “But as guilty as I felt then about not being politically active when so many of my friends were… I’m able to reach more people now than was ever done back in college.” Radner didn’t stick out her stay at the University. (She never finished Hebrew school, either.) With one semester to go, she left for Canada because, she says with a dreamy smile, “I fell in love.” There, she landed a part in the Toronto Company’s production of Godspell, and tried to earn her diploma — first through a correspondence course with the University set, delighting to the antics of of Wisconsin, and then night Lucille Ball, Steve Allen, Pinky classes at the University of Lee and the folks on “Your Toronto. Michigan, however, Show of Shows.” didn’t accept her credits. “I “I’m a child of television,” have all the education,” she she says. “I ate all my meals beams, “but no diploma.” in front of the television. As a Meantime, Radner did some kid I’d pack a lunch in a brown National Lampoon shows and paper bag from the kitchen and latched up with a Chicagogo eat it in front of the TV.” based improvisational group That probably didn’t help her called Second City, where many weight problem any, but Radner of the Prime Time Players says those early television honed their comedy skills. The shows inf luenced the course of producer of “Saturday Night her comedy. Live,” who knew her work, *** asked her to join the show. She When she wasn’t watching never auditioned. television, Radner spent her *** time tagging along So here’s with Mrs. Gillies, Gilda today, a nursemaid who sitting in her carved for Gilda dressing room during most of her with her Tab, childhood. her crackers “I grew up with and a wellher, spent every deserved minute with her. respite from It was me and the insanity somebody fifty years which reigns older, and we had outside tea parties together the door. and I’d go with her Thursdays, on her day off and Fridays and visit her spinster Saturdays are cousins.” ridiculous “And that was my on the set of whole growing up,” “Saturday she adds. “More Night Live” — than having friends people work my own age, she was late into the my best friend.” evening — and In fact, Mrs. performers Gillies, now 84, like Radner eventually became must savior Emily Letella, the those misconstrued dodo moments who rebuts editorials and has when they can cloister become one of Radner’s most themselves from stage popular characters. directions, script changes and Radner broadened her cue cards. horizons after coming to In this sense, it’s just a job the University. Spurned by as far as Radner’s concerned — Northwestern because of low analogous, she says, to working board scores, she majored in in a deli. Sure she gets sick of theater, landed her first job as it, Radner says, but just like the WCBN’s weathergirl and moved guy who slices pastrami, she’s into an Alice Lloyd triple with got a job to do: she’s a working Alice and Barbara. (“I hated actress on a top rated and that’s it.”) She was even picked up that. for disorderly conduct one day *** for singing and dancing on the It’s late afternoon and bank of the Huron River. Radner is called back into the One of her greatest studio to rehearse the Looking disappointments, she recalled, For Mr. Goodbar skit. Under the was not being cast for a glare of lights and the scrutiny production of Troilus and of about a dozen people, she Cressida in Mendelssohn sheds her 31 years and becomes Theater. the little girl with the confused, Realizing that her destiny angelic grin. For more than 30 did not encompass the minutes, she rehearses her Shakespearean stage, Radner lines, switches props, suggests veered off into children’s changes in the script, is told to theater. move over, or repeat something, “I used to have the loudest or cut such and such from her voice, so I was always the witch monologue. Afterwards, she in the play,” she says. departs to fetch a tray of food She was busy with other from the NBC cafeteria. Gilda’s productions, too — plays like going to eat dinner and rest “Camelot,” “Lysistrata” and now, we’re told. She’ll see you “She Stoops to Conquer.” again later. Just be patient.
A hometown girl named Gilda finds time’s prime to make people laugh
Originally published in March 26th, 1978, the Daily revisits a candid interview with late comedian and Michigan alum Gilda Radner JAY LEVIN
Daily Arts Writer, 1978
On this particular Friday, little Gilda has plopped herself on a pink shag rug; stuffed toys and dollhouses at her fingertips. She is playing with her Looking For Mr. Goodbar Sleepytime Playset, and an impish grin of delight crosses her face as she dances her Diane Keaton doll around an imaginary singles bar with a plastic businessman. But little Gilda misses the point of this game. Rather than have her dollies boogie the night away, Gilda is told that the object is for Dian Keaton to pick up as many strange men as possible before being killed. So after a few Tequila Sunrises, Gilda guides Diane Keaton and the plastic businessman to Diane’s singles apartment. There, pony-tailed Gilda has a real neato night in store for her friends. They’ll make cookies and toast and have lots and lots of fun. Little Gilda, however, is informed that the night’s agenda is much too mild to merit Judith Rossner’s raunchy novel. So with a momentary glimmer in her eye, Gilda picks up her plastic businessman and wrecks havoc on the defenseless body of Diane Keaton. “I’m big and I’m strong and I’m gonna kiss you all over with my big fat slimy slips.” Then, with an angelic look, she inquires, “Did I win yet?” No, Gilda is told, you did not win. You don’t win ‘til Diane Keaton loses. “Now take Diane back to the singles bar and pick up your psychotic blonde homosexual.” Gilda obliges and grasps her psychotic blonde homosexual. But once again, a confused look clouds her face and, ever so innocently, she asks: “What’s a psychotic blonde homosexual?” This is a rehearsal on the set of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” and little Gilda is Gilda Radner — a once obscure weathergirl for Ann Arbor’s WCBN who is now a somewhat obscure TV crack-up. Unless you watch “Saturday Night Live,” you probably haven’t the foggiest idea who Gilda Radner is. If that’s the case, then you’ve probably never heard of Emily Letella, Rhonda Weiss, Roseanne Rosannadana, Lisa Leubner and Baba Wawa. Gilda Radner is all those people. But, more than anything else, Gilda Radner is your little sister, or the nerdy girl down the aisle in Hebrew School or the funny kid with the big mouth. She’s well past her adolescence but, like a child
waiting impatiently for her next birthday, she measures her age in fractions — “thirty-oneand-a-half.” “I never grew up,” she explains. If that’s true, then you can reckon Gilda Radner is the first person to ever make her career by not growing up. *** It’s a madhouse this Friday on the eighth f loor of New York’s towering NBC Building. Performers and stagehands and producers are running around with props and scripts and directions in preparation for the next day’s show. Inside the studio, its stage and sets bathed in light, workmen are hammering away at makeshift wooden scenery and performers are practicing their skits with help from big white cue cards. Somewhere in the his mélange is Gilda Radner, and a lot of people want to know where she is. A small, fraillooking woman with a smooth, porcelain complexion and brown hair tied back in a pony tail, she looks more like a Campfire Girl than a member of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, the troupe of young comics without whom there’d be no “Saturday Night Live.” She has just returned from London, where she taped a guest spot on the “Muppets Show,” and she looks worn and jet-lagged. Be brief, we’re told, and concise. Gilda’s busy and tired. Inside the small, Spartan dressing room that she shares with fellow Prime Timers Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman, Radner curls up on a sofa and reaches for a tray of cheese and crackers. She lights up a Virginia Slim. She offers her guests Tabs. And she commences to tell how a pudgy Detroit girl — a University of Michigan drop-out, no less — has managed to establish herself as a cult heroine among late-night TV addicts. Much of what she does, Radner says, is drawn from her youth. “What I do in comedy I call bedroom comedy,” she says. “It’s like the stuff you did in your bedroom with your girlfriends during a slumber party. I also used to shut myself in the brother’s room and pantomime to records and do stuff in the mirror.” By her own accounts, Radner has an exceptional childhood. Born in 1946 for a Rita Hayworth movie that year, she lived in the Palmer Park section of Detroit. A plump, ungainly girl, Radner recalls spending many an hour glued to the TV
So here’s Gilda today, sitting in her dressing room with her Tab, her crackers and a well-deserved respite from the insanity which reigns outside the door
Thursday, September 14, 2017 — 5B Everything Radner does during the week is in preparation for the 90 minute show broadcast live Saturday nights at 11:30. “I think of it as an opening night,” she says of the actual show, one of the only live programs left on network TV. “Each show is like the opening night of an underrehearsed Off-Broadway show… and we’re never getting to do it again.” She credits her stage experience with preparing her for the rigors of “Saturday Night Live.” And she credits “Saturday Night Live” with preparing her for what lies ahead in her performing future. “Before I did this show I never performed alone, I always performed in groups,” she says. “Now I have monologues and character that work alone. I cannot believe it, but I have enough material now that I do by myself that I can now go (somewhere else) and do it.” What will you be doing at age 41, Gilda? Stage? Perhaps. Movies? Maybe. Like a preoccupied child, she has no idea where she’ll be ten years from now But, she says, she’ll always be in show business. “I have no fears of being unemployed,” she says confidently. Even back in her college days, Radner thought she’d enter the business — either as atheater teacher or at the civic theater level. Her mom, however, had charted Radner a different course. “She wanted three things out of me — to get my teaching certificate, to get married and to give her grandchildren.” Did you do any of that, Gilda? *** “I didn’t do ANYTHING!” But Mom is learning to accept her daughter’s career. “She just last week gave me some credibility,” says Radner. “She sent me a letter telling me a bunch of friends were requesting autographed pictures, and she wrote, ‘Well I guess you’ve reached stardom.’” Though Radner says she dared never fantasize about stardom, she admits having f leeting premonitions of celebrity. “I never thought this would happen,” she says. “Yet I remember coming down the stairs of my house one day and saying to my boyfriend at the time ‘Someday I’ll know kinds and princesses.’ I didn’t know why I said it.” And kings and princesses she has known. Despite the sweat, Gilda enjoys a good measure of glamor. TV guest shots. Rubbing elbows with a different “Saturday Night Live” guest host each week. An occasional evening at Studio 54. “I even met a Beatle,” she chirps with all the enthusiasm of a teenager crashing the backstage of a concert. “It was George — and he knew who I was!” Undoubtedly. Gilda’s gotten a lot of press recently — in good places like New York Times and People (cover story), and not-so-good places like the National Enquirer. Such exposure is threatening to blow her cover as a well-kept secret. Because of the show’s appeal to a predominantly young viewership, Radner is a little-known entity among the older set and the early-tobed generation. That means she can roam her adopted New York unmolested, but such splashy magazine coverage — people called her the “Darling of ‘Saturday Night Live’” — worries her. For one thing, Radner says she’s been unfairly compared with Chevy Chase. Chevy Chase, you might remember, is the comedian who struck professional gold on “Saturday Night Live,” enjoyed media hype and, eventually, left the show. “The media divided him from us, called him a star and made him leave too soon,” she says. “People use that comparison, but the thing is, I refuse to believe it or live by it or let (the press) divide me from the group.” Radner says she worked with her fellow Prime Timers too long to let the media single her out. “I can never feel like a star around here.”
*** Gilda Radner has a theory about her acting technique: She hasn’t any. “The best thing I do,” she says, “is pretend, and that’s what acting is to me — pretending. Like we did the Video Vixens, a punk rock group, so I was really pretending that I was Patti Smith and I was pretending that I could sing and that I’m hot and dirty and a rock star. And then I see the tapeback, and it’s me! … But if people like what I do, it may be because they know they’re seeing me pretend.” So today, Gilda Radner is going to do a little impromptu pretending for her guests from Ann Arbor. But it’s hard to believe that everything she does is strictly pretend. Take her popular juvenile roles for instance. How much does Radner have to pretend when she herself frequently talks like a kid and putters around NBC with black and white Oxfords and a little green piece of yarn keeping her pony tail in place? “I find them ( juvenile roles) closer now to the child in me than anytime else in my life,” she says. “I think there’s a time when you can get back to it … and have no inhibitions about it. *** “I don’t know whether it has something to do with the work ethic or about being secure of myself as a woman, but I can take a child role. Maybe since I’m having a career and making a success it’s all right for me to be a kid. I don’t know. I love it. I can sit … and play all day.” Her Roseanne Rosannadana can’t be strictly pretend, either. Roseanne (the name is a takeoff on a New York newswoman) is a raucous, befuddled, frizzyhaired consumer reporter who appears on the show’s Weekend Update spoof and does gross things like pick imaginary food particles from her teeth and talks about everything except consumer affairs. Just like Roseanne, Radner claims she “has her filthy side.” She proved it by attributing her low college board scored to her ill-timed menstrual cramps — a funny tidbit, but gross nonetheless. Radner’s most recent character is Lisa Luebner, who, like her creator in earlier days, is a nerd. Unlike her creator, Lisa suffers from chronic asthmas and other respiratory disorders. “I’m a little bit like her today,” says Radner, muff ling her voice, looking off into space and snorting back imaginary mucus, “Cranky.” “You know when you have a cold, your world gets so insulated?” Radner/Leubner asks, sounding sick. “Well, she always has a cold and asthma, and she says things like, ‘Salutations from the United Nations.’” Lisa Leubner recently appeared on an interview show spoof to discuss her new book, “The Class of ’77,” an account of what her high school classmates did during summer vacation. Then there’s Rhonda Weiss, the JAP. Despite Radner’s Jewish upbringing, she says she avoided becoming the typical Jewish American Princess, probably because she attended a non-Jewish high school in Detroit. But Radner becomes a pretty believable Princess when she lays on her Borscht-Belt brogue. Using hand motions and sounding catty, “New Yawkish,” and nasal, Gilda gives a sampling of Rhonda: “You’re talking cramps? I get them two weeks before, one week during and three days after. We’re talking an entire month of cramps.” *** Her character set aside, the woman who says, “I am that girl who was funny in school” has got to leave now and be funny at rehearsals. The next day, she’ll have to be funny before a studio audience and several million others watching at home. Being genuinely funny under those conditions sounds like the tallest of orders, but for Gilda Radner it’s a snap. That’s because Gilda Radner — loud, obnocious, childish, gross, nerdy Gilda Radner — is all the people we’ve known and laughed at over the years. She’s us in sillier times.
6B — Thursday, September 14, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NEW MEDIA
TV
Comedy for a Twitter age ANAY KATYAL
Managing Arts Editor
COURTESY OF MEGAN GANZ
It’s Always Sunny in AA: Alum Megan Ganz talks comedy and the art of TV NABEEL CHOLLAMPAT Senior Arts Editor
As a current student in SAC 311 (Screenwriting for TV), I’m always wondering how, exactly, people break into the industry. TV writing would be, in this writer’s opinion, the best job ever. But someone’s done it — and from Michigan, no less! Megan Ganz is an alumnus who writes for “The Last Man on Earth” and is a producer on “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.” I reached out to her to figure out how, exactly, she pulled it off, and to learn more about a day in her life. Where are you from, and when did you graduate from the University of Michigan? I am from Kalamazoo, but I was born in Ann Arbor while my father was finishing up dental school at the University. I graduated in 2006. What activities did you take part in at Michigan that helped to start your career in comedy? Have you always been interested in working in comedy? I wrote for the Michigan Every Three Weekly which was a huge help to the start of my comedy career. Both Mad Magazine and The Onion contacted the E3W about internship opportunities, and I applied for both and those were my first two jobs in comedy. The internship at The Onion eventually lead to my first full-time writing job as a staff writer. I have been interested in comedy for as long as I can remember — since my father first showed me Marx brothers movies when I was six years old. When I was a teenager, my mother bought me a collection of Onion articles, and from that day forward I wanted to specifically write for The Onion. But writing for TV wasn’t a goal of mine until much later in life. What was your first job in the industry? How did you end up where you are now? My first internship was at Mad Magazine during the summer between my junior and senior years. They were the first ones to pay me for a joke. It was an idea for a foldin drawn by Al Jaffee, and I framed the check (after I cashed it, of course). After I graduated, I moved to New York for an internship at The Onion. Eventually I was hired to the writing staff and then became an editor. During my time on staff, we wrote a story about “This American Life,” which resulted in Ira Glass doing a piece on The Onion. Some agents in L.A. heard me on that “TAL” episode, and they called me, and that’s how I got agents. They convinced me to start writing packets to try to get hired to a TV show. After three years with The Onion, I left for a job
at Demetri Martin’s sketch show, “Important Things With Demetri Martin.” That moved me out to L.A. and into TV writing. At that time I was a huge fan of “Community,” which was still in its first season. I knew Donald Glover in New York, and I started watching the show because he was on it. My agents submitted me for season two, and that lead to my first job on a sitcom. After “Community,” I went to “Modern Family” for a few years, then “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and now I write for “The Last Man on Earth,” which is what I’m supposed to be doing instead of responding to these questions. (Shhh... don’t tell my boss.) Which shows do you currently work on? Right now I am writing for “The Last Man on Earth” until February, at which point I’m planning on returning to “Sunny” for their thirteenth season. What’s your favorite part of the job? Just writing jokes. It’s not a big enough part of the job. I spend most of my time sitting around a table talking, trying to come up with storylines or conf licts between characters. Very little time is spent pitching actual jokes, because you can’t put icing on a cake before you bake it. TV writing/producing is often described as a dream job. Have you always found that to be the case, or are there any drawbacks? It is a dream job. That aside, whoever said, “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life” was a liar. I work plenty of long, hard days. And I spent years writing comedy and not being paid for it. But I
love what I do, so it’s worth the struggle. When you truly care about what it is you’re doing, the lows are pretty low. But the highs are spectacular. And at this point I’m not qualified to do anything else. Why do you think TV (and, specifically, scripted comedy) is seeing such a creative surge? Well, the easy answer is because there used to be three channels and now there are hundreds. You don’t even have to sell a show anymore, you can just post it online and people will find it. But the more complicated answer might have something to do with the current political climate and how much people want and need to escape from reality. What do you see as the future of comedy on TV? The future of comedy won’t be on TV. It will be on the internet. Gone are the days when people rush home to see their favorite show when it airs. People don’t want to wait, they want to binge, so I think shows will have fewer episodes per season and probably end after three seasons instead of nine. But what do I know? What are your favorite shows to watch right now? Oh boy. I watch way, way too much TV, even for someone who works in TV. A very short list would include “Veep,” “Kimmy Schmidt,” “Game of Thrones,” “Atlanta,” “Bob’s Burgers,” “Episodes,” “Rick and Morty,” “Last Week Tonight,” “Law and Order: SVU,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and “Friday Night Dinner,” which is a great British show I love. That’s not even counting how many times I’ve rewatched “30 Rock,” which is probably too many.
The founders of LinkedIn certainly never envisioned “Being funny on the internet” as an acceptable headline for a profile on their social media platform — but here we are. People tweet two-bit one-liners, people get paid for tweeting two-bit oneliners, people consider tweeting two-bit one-liners their day job — and nowadays for good reason. Amateur Twitter comedienne Kelly Oxford turned a few years of tweets into TV pilots bought by CBS and NBC, as one example. The paradigm shift in modern humor that has come thanks to the advent of social media remains hard to wrap one’s head around, but trying to chronicle the ways in which the art and form of comedy have adapted is an earnest place where we can start to understand it all. With a genesis in countless hours of caffeine-fueled brainstorming, Twitter was birthed as an alternative, shortform communication tool for podcasting startup Odeo. But what started as a meager sketch of ideas became significant enough for employees of Odeo to ditch their initial aspirations and turn Twitter into their bonafide dayjob. And despite the founders’ audacity in making Twitter their everyday focus, pinning down the actual purpose of the service was still a task at hand for them — co-founder Evan Williams was interviewed in 2009 saying “[with] Twitter, it wasn’t clear what it was. They called it a social network, they called it microblogging, but it was hard to define, because it didn’t replace anything. There was this path of discovery with something like that, where over time you figure out what it is.” Considering Evan’s words, it starts to get easier to understand why Twitter has assumed such a significant space in the realm of
modern entertainment. There’s some beauty to find in the notion that the Twitter we know is fundamental to the culture we live in, and that the Twitter we knew is significant to a culture that has come and gone — all at the hands of the general populace. Twitter’s democratization of culture has forced the service into wearing many hats in regards to how it serves the public sphere — from breaking news, to proselytization, to citizen advocacy, to (most importantly) being a fertile breeding ground for anything and everything our generation finds humorous and entertaining nowadays — and thus, it serves as the all-encompassing anchor of the millennial zeitgeist. Thanks to the character limit of tweets, messages and jokes had to be poetically succinct to gain any traction — and leveling those constraints on creatives gave birth to a completely new approach to joke structure and humor. In came fleeting phases of memes and one-liners, all with shelf lives of no more than a few weeks. Andy Warhol’s notion of everyone having their 15 minutes of fame became an undeniable reality as people’s eyeballs shifted from HBO standup specials to their timeline as a source for their laughs — and in that process, unconventional stars were born too. When a standup comedian is funny on Twitter, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise (people we conventionally find funny remaining funny on other mediums isn’t a terribly novel thought). But what has come as a surprise are the many amateur personalities that have used Twitter as an exclusive medium to cultivate their craft and comedic brand (despite their audiences only knowing them for crass usernames and crudely drawn cartoon profile pictures, among other things) — and those personalities are changing what it means to be a mainstream comedian nowadays.
Take Brandon Wardell. If you don’t know him for his semiunintelligible tweets or how he looks as if someone brought an anime stock character to real life, you might (directly or indirectly) know him for the many memes he has created or popularized (does “Dicks out for Harambe” ring a bell to you?). His rise as a comedian couldn’t be more different than the veterans who came before him, either. Thanks to a small PR bump after being featured as an opener on a Bob Odenkirk stand up tour, Wardell amassed a following on Twitter for regularly publishing absurdist humor that touched at the (pretentious, vapid, materialistic, etc.) fundamentals of being a millennial. He performs on occasion in his current home of L.A., but his online presence still remains his bread and butter. Wardell told Rolling Stone in 2016 “Twitter is ... the purest form of expression that I have. There’s something super-visceral about Twitter. It’s just a lot of like brain vomit.” And it’s that reason why Twitter comedy resonates so well with today’s population. Comedy used to be constrained by a set of concrete conventions regarding structure, content, delivery and the like — and to some extent, the legacy of those constraints still linger. But the Twitter age has deconstructed what it means to be “funny” — and with that, the craft of being a comedian as well. Comedy as an art form is still going through its early stages of transition thanks to the age of social media, and how we see personalities like Wardell (and others) flourish is yet to be clearly determined, but if there’s one thing that can be concretely drawn from these observations, it’s that humor acts as a common plane for a culture to find commonality in.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
THE DEPARTMENT OF ASTRONOMY ORREN C. MOHLER PRIZE LECTURE
piece piece by
Michigan Union Pendleton Room, 2nd Floor 530 S. State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Dr. Julianne Dalcanton Professor, University of Washington Department of Astronomy
Friday, Sept. 15, 2017 Reception 2 pm Lecture 2:30 – 4 pm
Should you require any reasonable accommodations please contact Stacy Tiburzi at 734-764-3440, or stibu@umich.edu.