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THEATER
CASA
VALENTINA MEN IN TIGHTS
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MEAT WAVE CHICAGO THREE WAY
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Bill Blumenreich Presents
BILL BLUMENREICH PRESENTS
DES BISHOP
VOL 17 + ISSUE 41
OCTOBER 14, 2015 - OCTOBER 21, 2015
EDITOR + PUBLISHER Jeff lawrence NEWS + FEATURES EDITOR Chris Faraone ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran ASSOCIATE FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan ASSOCIATE ARTS EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COPY EDITOR Mitchell Dewar CONTRIBUTORS Nate Boroyan, Renan Fontes, Bill Hayduke, Emily Hopkins, Micaela Kimball, Dave Wedge INTERN Oliver Bok
DESIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tak Toyoshima COMICS Tim Chamberlain Brian Connolly Pat Falco Patt Kelley INTERN Chesley Chapman
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ON THE COVER
Thomas Derrah gets all dolled up on this week’s cover for Casa Valentina at SpeakEasy Stage Company. Read all about it on page 21.
©2015 DIGBOSTON IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG PUBLISHING LLC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG PUBLISHING LLC CANNOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. ONE COPY OF DIGBOSTON IS AVAILABLE FREE TO MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS AND VISITORS EACH WEEK. ANYONE REMOVING PAPERS IN BULK WILL BE PROSECUTED ON THEFT CHARGES TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.
DEAR READER I have a lot of friends who write for a living. Mostly journalists, they put fingers to keyboard on an almost daily basis, carving out thoughtful opinions, wonky reviews, and newsy bits of wisdom so you don’t have to. They’re a tortured lot mostly, but they wouldn’t have it any other way. Frankly, most of them couldn’t do anything else. This is exactly why I started DigBoston in 1999; I was surrounded by talented, driven madness and there were limited ways of exercising it. As we barrel forward to the end of our 16th year of publishing, I’m proud to say we’re still finding over-the-top talent and delivering an outlet for it to shine in. This week is no different: With Nina Corcoran’s trippy review of the latest from Ghost Box Orchestra, Jake Mulligan’s twisted but genius breakdown of his favorite film directors gone video-on-demand, or Chris Ehlers’ sexy hat-tip to Casa Valentina at the Speakeasy, the words come alive as you read them. And that’s just the Arts and Entertainment section. Our News and Features section is even more ridiculous.
des bishop
oct 24
MAZ JOBRANI OCT 24
JOEL MCHALE OCT 25
LAST COMIC STANDING OCT 31 SECOND SHOW ADDED
OCT 31
TURNPIKE TROUBADOURS NOV 3
NOV 3 BUDDY GUY
Ed note: Honest Pint will return next week in it’s new and improved look. Now available in a can! JEFF LAWRENCE - PUBLISHER+EDITOR, DIGBOSTON
NOV 5
FRANKIE VALLI
DIGTIONARY
SnopeBox
NOV 6 - 8
noun 1. The proverbial mountain you climb before calling bullshit on your friends claim, but only after you’ve scratched your head in confused wonder and done a quick search online for the fact or fiction being told. Usually found on Facebook, it can also be located at your local pub, sports bar, or political rally. May result in a fistfight or shattered ego.
RAINN WILSON The Basson King Book Tour NOV 11
CRAIG ROBINSON NOVEMBER 6 & 8& THE NASTY DELICIOUS
OH, CRUEL WORLD
NOV 13
Dear Southpaw,
ART GARFUNKEL
I know, I know, I know. In Massachusetts, you are allowed to use your cell phone, do your hair, tune the radio, and masturbate while you are cruising down the street or highway. But just because you are allowed to dial and drive don’t mean you should, and it certainly don’t mean that you should hold your cell in your left hand, right next to the window, so that you have an added blind spot. This should be the most obvious thing ever, but apparently it isn’t, so get a (right-handed) grip, would ya!?!
NOV 15
WHITFORD/ST.HOLMES BAND NOV 17
BILLY GIBBONS AND THE BFG’S NOV 19
ILLUSTRATION BY CHESLEY CHAPMAN
EDITORIAL
OCT 24
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NEWS US
THE (R)EVOLUTION OF BARRY’S CORNER BY RACHEL HOCK @RACHELCRAVES
North Allston, known to many as Lower Allston, is a quiet area that largely goes unnoticed. What few outside that neighborhood know is that 50 years ago, hundreds of residents fought in the streets to save their homes from the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Now, after a series of land swaps, Harvard’s ivy vines are creeping in again. As we look to the future, it’s important to remember the past. This is for those who fought, and who fight, for their homes.
THE BRA TOOK MY BABY AWAY
On any given day in August 1965, Annie Soricelli of North Harvard Street, 76 years old, would wake up early in the morning to pray with her neighbors near the Virgin Mary statue in her front yard. Four years earlier, in 1961, Soricelli and her community—working-class families, mostly Irish and Italian immigrants and their descendents—learned from a nightly news broadcast that Mayor John Collins and BRA Administrator Ed Logue were going to raze their neighborhood and put up a luxury apartment building. The first public hearing wasn’t until a year later, at which time North Allston residents booed and hissed until 4
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Logue walked out, visibly shaken, according to newspaper archives. Those residents went on to form a group called Citizens for Private Property, which picketed at Park Street Station and at the mayor’s home in Jamaica Plain, and held a rally in Faneuil Hall. They also erected a large sign in Annie’s yard, right next to the Virgin Mary, that read “To Hell With Urban Renewal.” Nobody paid them much attention, not the press or the politicians. On Thanksgiving Day in 1964, residents of Barry’s Corner received letters that their homes had been seized by eminent domain. They were to start paying rent to the city. Rather than wait and face eviction, more than half the families left by June of the following year. When the city sent moving vans to evict the remaining residents in August, the situation erupted. “LOOKS LIKE BATTLE” read a headline in the RecordAmerican newspaper on August 8, 1965, and the next day the battle ensued. Joined by victims of urban renewal from elsewhere in the city and activist student groups from Harvard, the residents took to their streets. They picketed and sang songs. They cursed and sat in front of moving vans. They formed a human wall. Under the cover of night they threw eggs at a BRA trailer, and during the day they threw tomatoes at police. Authorities pushed back. In one case, a police officer entered the home of Mr. and Mrs. James Wheelis and took their 8-month-old baby from Mrs. Wheelis’ arms, forcing her to follow the cop outside. Mr. Wheelis, a Harvard student, was among 12 people arrested on charges of trespassing. During the protests, Soricelli brought cold drinks to her neighbors picketing on the sidewalks. “The only way they’ll evict me is when they carry me out in a casket,” she’s quoted telling the Traveler newspaper. She passed away in December 1966, becoming a symbol of resistance. Three years later, a new sign was erected. “TO HELL WITH URBAN RENEWAL,” it read, with amendments: “We Still Won’t Move,” and at the bottom, “In Memoriam: To Annie Soricelli and others who have died in defense of their homes.”
Eventually, Collins caved to the pressure of bad publicity, nixed the luxury apartment plan, and instituted a blue ribbon panel to evaluate the situation. Though the panel recommended letting residents buy back their homes, Collins instead gave the development bid to the Committee for North Harvard, a nonprofit ecumenical group, to erect low-income housing. Bulldozers demolished the homes of the last holdouts of Barry’s Corner in 1969, and in 1971, the doors opened at the Charlesview Apartments, a low- and moderate-income housing complex. In April of this year, those buildings were demolished to make way for new development by Harvard University.
A TALE OF TWO ALLSTONS
“I always am quite offended when I read in the Globe or any other pub that we’re described as ‘gritty,’” says Joyce Radnor, a resident of Hopedale Street for the past 22 years. “This part of Allston is certainly not gritty. Quite the contrary, we’re a little dull. Just people going to work, coming home, kids going to school. Just a regular neighborhood. And whenever I see the word ‘gritty’ I flinch. That’s not where I live.” Radnor describes her neighborhood with the same language the residents of Barry’s Corner used 50 years ago to protest the labeling of the area as blighted. “People care about each other. Nobody ever takes a cab or an Uber to the airport, your neighbor drives you in. You need a cup of sugar, you go next door. It’s that kind of place.” The area of Allston north of the Massachusetts Turnpike, sometimes called Lower Allston due to its lower elevation, is markedly different from the image of a happy college party town with which Allston is often associated. Allston-Brighton overall has one of the lowest rates of homeownership in the city of Boston; according to American Community Survey five-year estimates from between 2006 and 2013, that number drops to lower than BARRY’S CORNER continued on pg. 6
MAP PHOTO COURTESY OF BOSTON REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY.
Morning rush hour, summer 2015. The bus stop at North Harvard Street and Western Avenue in Allston is populated with commuters waiting for the 86 or the 66. Harvard Square is close, yet just far enough to warrant waiting for the bus instead of walking across the Anderson Memorial Bridge. The waiting commuters watch as trucks pull into the construction site across the street. Behind them, there’s a small grove on the corner with benches. It’s supposed to be a park where people gather for leisure, but for now the grove serves mostly as a gathering place for construction workers to eat lunch or take smoke breaks. At night, a public art display of lights, meant to rejuvenate the area after years of neglect, seems like an ambient projection of the blue light of the emergency phone on the corner, a reminder that this is part of Harvard University’s Allston campus. This area, 9.3 acres in all, was once known as Barry’s Corner. Fifty years ago, this strip of North Harvard Street was bustling not with construction workers and commuters, but with protesters and picket signs. Now, its future is being molded by Harvard’s ivied creep further into Allston. But it has a storied past of upheaval, a plot of land that, for decades, lay at the mercy of Harvard and the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
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Western Avenue intersecting North Harvard in 1960
Western Avenue intersecting North Harvard in 2015
The reputational divide between Allston Village and North Allston is historic. Brighton, which Allston used to be a part of, was a center of the cattle industry well into the 20th Century. Local workers settled in Lower Allston, away from the town’s hub of abattoirs, hotels, and bars where traders came to town for the cattle market. In one of his books on the history of the area, author William Marchione quotes an account from an 1872 edition of the Boston Messenger: Brighton, I believe, is considered the refuge of all that is bad, and the den of vice. Go where you may, and a slur is cast upon her fair name. Now it is not Brighton or her towns-people that are so much worse, but it is the people who come into the village, and think when they get here it is no matter, only Brighton, we can do just as we please.
Replace “people who come into the village” with “undergrads,” and this could have been written last week. Parts of Allston have been shitty for a long time. Fifty years ago, when the neighborhood was targeted for urban renewal, Allston had no dedicated representation in City Hall. Nowadays, Allston and Brighton have City Councilor Mark Ciommo, whose support base is predominantly in the latter. Home to some of the lowest voter turnout rates in Boston—in the election that produced Mayor Marty Walsh, the ward stretching between Kenmore Square and Cleveland Circle turned out the least people anywhere, with only 19 percent of possible participants casting ballots—Allston constituents have little political clout. “We get the short end of the stick,” says Alford. “Any infusion of cash or development is going to come through Harvard University.” Property owners like Radnor and Alford aren’t the only ones feeling burned. Although the percentage of homeownership increases north of the Massachusetts Turnpike, renters make up the vast majority of Allston’s population. Renters may not have the same kind of investment in the neighborhood as homeowners—they are less likely to vote in local elections or participate in civic groups—but some residents love the grittiness that Radnor derides. “I always described Allston as a big dirty rock ’n’ roll summer camp with no adult supervision,” says Allie Caporale, 33, a punk musician and seamstress. Currently of Brighton Center and formerly of Allston Village, Caporale laments the ever-increasing cost of rents that are pricing out the rockers and the artists that give Allston Village its flavor. Indeed, in many cases properties in formerly affordable buildings now fetch more than $1,000 per bedroom per month. Caporale continues: “It’s fucking frustrating. I’m mostly dealing with a sense of long-term instability … I feel squeezed out, like I don’t deserve to be here anymore.” In response to such sentiments, Mayor Walsh has suggested that creating more housing stock will bring rents down for everyone, but with so much of that supply comprised of luxury apartments like Continuum, Caporale doesn’t buy it. “I don’t need a granite jacuzzi with a waterfall shower. I just want to live with some sort of dignity.”
SEEING CRIMSON
Although Harvard is Cantabrigian at its heart and by reputation, the university owns more land in Allston than in Cambridge. It’s had property across the Charles since the 1870s, and its relationship with the neighborhood has been fraught since the late 1990s, when it came out that the institution had secretly acquired 52 acres of land in Allston, buying piecemeal over the course of eight years. “It was just around the time that I put my life savings into this house that I found out that Harvard basically owned everything around me,” says Radnor. Harvard eventually presented its Institutional Master Plan (IMP) for the area, but construction was stalled in 2009 by the recession and the land sat vacant for years, a virtual ghost town. Quoting Service Employees International Union organizer Wayne Langley, Harvard historian Shin Eun-jung writes in his book, Verita$:
Western Avenue looking West to North Harvard in 1960
Western Avenue looking West to North Harvard in 2015
Harvard’s Hidden History, that between wages and economic opportunities, the overall losses to the Allston community caused by said halted construction totaled over $100 million. Harvard presented a new IMP in 2013. The 298-page document outlines details of existing conditions, a 10year plan, technical reports, community benefits, and more. It also mentions “activating Barry’s Corner,” with goals including “making Allston a campus anchor,” and “extending Harvard’s iconic character.” The re-institution of the very name “Barry’s Corner” is a Harvard invention— some long-term residents said they were unfamiliar with the label until Harvard started using it. “I never heard of Barry’s Corner before,” says Alford, whose father also lived in Lower Allston. “Harvard doesn’t want this to be called Allston anything.” In a 2007 land swap, Harvard acquired the parcel underneath the Charlesview apartments, which were relocated to updated new digs farther down Western Avenue in 2013. While Continuum goes up across the street, the IMP reserves the land that was formerly occupied by Charlesview, and before then by Annie Soricelli’s neighborhood, for a coming “mixed-use institutional building” called the Gateway Project. There aren’t a lot of details in the IMP about the Gateway. Pressed for details, Brigid O’Rourke, a communications officer with Harvard Public Affairs & Communications, said, “The Gateway building was included in the approved IMP. The details and specific timing of that project is still under review.” BARRY’S CORNER continued on pg. 8
1961
Nov. 1964
Annie Soricelli and her community learn that Mayor John Collins and BRA admin. Ed Logue plan to raze the neighborhood for luxury apartments.
Barry’s Corner residents receive notice that their homes have been seized by eminent domain. Within the following six months, more than half the families leave to avoid eviction.
1962
First public hearing for BRA's plans for Barry's Corner.
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Dec. 1966
Annie Soricelli passes. Her memory is preserved by those still fighting displacement.
Aug. 1965
Barry’s corner residents take to the streets to show their contempt of “urban renewal.” Logue stands his ground.
1971
Low Income housing development, the Charlesview, opens in place of previously planned luxury apartments.
1969
The development bid is given to the Committee for North Harvard to start building low income housing. The remaining houses are demolished.
HISTORICAL PHOTOS COURTESY OF CITY OF BOSTON ARCHIVES. PRESENT DAY PHOTOS BY JASON PRAMAS.
2 percent in certain college-heavy corners. The ownership rate is higher in North Allston though, hovering at close to 25 percent. On those streets, property owners tend to be more invested in their neighborhoods than renters south of the Turnpike, and thus are more interested in having a voice in the development process. “It’s easy to rally the troops” for community meetings, petitions, and barbecues, says Allston resident Paul “Chip” Alford of Windom Street, speaking fondly about the seven contiguous blocks that surround his home. Despite the rapid development underway up North Harvard Street—including the Continuum apartment complex, which is currently advertising studio rentals for around $2,500 a month—Alford emphasizes that his neighborhood, which he says local police call the “Gem of Allston,” is largely unchanged. “It’s almost the way it was 20, 30, 40 years ago.”
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“I don’t need a granite jacuzzi with a waterfall shower. I just want to live with some sort of dignity.”
BARRY AND THE BEAST
Harvard’s efforts to include the community in its planning, whether successful or not, are a refreshing departure from the kinds of tactics the BRA deployed
1997
Harvard reveals that, during the prior eight years, it had been secretly acquiring 52 acres of land in Allston. Not even Mayor Menino was aware of the slow but significant acquisition.
2007
in the 1960s. The BRA’s tenacity was driven by a need to show its power. “If the Authority had been persuaded to drop the project by that kind of demonstration [at the 1962 public hearing], it might as well have gone out of business right then and there,” then-BRA administrator Ed Logue told the Sunday Herald in August 1965. About A sign in protest of urban renewal, featuring a memorial to Annie Soricelli. a week earlier, he told the Morning Globe,“Let them keep their picket lines, I don’t care.” On BRA planning maps from the early ’60s, this triangle of land and its surrounding streets are shaded gray, like a bruise on an otherwise shiny apple. “Blighted or deteriorating area,” the map key reads. The residents scorned this characterization. Their neighborhood was not a blight. They weren’t merely speaking out of pride— they hired an independent architect to evaluate the neighborhood, and the resulting study found that there was no need to come scorch the earth. There were fights on many fronts. When residents asked Harvard to better maintain vacant houses A clipping from the August 10, 1965 edition of Record American. on university-owned properties adjacent to the neighborhood—to avoid a sort of “broken window” Honan-Allston branch of the Boston Public Library on perception—Harvard did not cooperate, and instead shut North Harvard Street. In the place where her sign decrying off utilities and boarded up the empty homes. urban renewal once stood is a bus stop shelter with a In a Herald article from August 6, 1965, a BRA staffer perpetually overflowing trash can. claimed the aforementioned maneuvers were not to Between Harvard’s construction and the Mass renew a blighted neighborhood, but rather to make sure Department of Transportation’s I-90 Interchange Harvard didn’t buy the land for a tax-exempt soccer field. Improvement Project—not to mention the New Balance This was a matter of keeping property taxes in the city’s development in neighboring Brighton—Lower Allston, coffers, but the reasoning did not sit well with residents. indeed all of Allston, is undergoing its most radical James Wheelis, the Harvard student who was arrested change since Harvard first moved in more than a in the 1965 commotion over Barry’s Corner, pointed out century ago. To preserve and honor the memory of the that the BRA had no problem with Tufts University buying residents of Barry’s Corner, Jim Vrabel, author the book A land elsewhere in the city. Harvard denied plans to build a People’s History of the New Boston, suggests establishing soccer field, though today their Ohiri Field, used for soccer a permanent informational marker either at Barry’s among other sports, abuts the former Charlesview site. Corner or at the nearby library branch, as well as a Brian Golden, who has served as director of the BRA Redgate Scholarship/Internship Program at Harvard for since last year, has vowed to undo decades of backdoor local students studying urban planning, government, deals and organizational mismanagement. He says he and public service.” The program would be named after has a personal connection to the BRA’s rather infamous leading Barry’s Corner organizer Marjorie Redgate. history in the area—his family lived in Barry’s Corner, At City Hall, Mayor Walsh calls his Imagine Boston though he was an infant at the time of the demolition— vision the biggest initiative of its kind in 50 years. But but only time will tell whether his sympathies manifest despite politicians’ promises to build thousands of new as positive change. housing units accessible to all types of people, for now the likes of Allston-Brighton-based musician Allie Caporale, THE NORTH REMEMBERS like Annie Soricelli long before her, are being displaced in Annie Soricelli’s death notice ran in the Boston Globe on the name of improvement and renewal. December 15, 1966. She has no obituary. The December “Shit,” says Caporale. “Why does improving an area 20 issue of the Globe lists a Secret Santa donation for $2 necessarily mean removing the original people? It’s such in her name. Soricelli’s name is written on the pentagon capitalism at work, where your value as a person has to representing her former property on an old ward map do with how much you can pay.” that tiles the floor in front of the circulation desk in the
Harvard acquires the land occupied by the Charlesview apartments.
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2008
Oct. 2013
Harvard begins work on the science complex.
Harvard presents a new Institutional Master Plan to the BRA. That document includes language about the “activation of Barry’s Corner.”
2009
Harvard’s development, including work on the science complex, is stalled by the financial crisis and subsequent recession.
2014
Brian Golden is appointed the director of the BRA by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh.
TOP PHOTO COURTESY OF BRIGHTON-ALLSTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
What we do know is that the so-called Gateway will be between six and nine stories tall and have 300,000 square feet of space split between academic/institutional use and service/retail use. According to the IMP, construction of the Gateway is scheduled for the midway phase of the 10-year plan, between 2018 and 2020. In the meantime, the area will be used to stage construction for the neighboring science complex, which university President Drew Faust made the center of Harvard’s capital campaign in 2012. Harvard began work on the massive science complex in 2008, but halted construction in 2009 because of the recession. “They bought the land. They dug a five-acre hole, bigger than the Filene’s Basement hole, a lot bigger, and it’s been there longer,” says Alford. Although construction resumed early this year, no details had been presented at the time I spoke to residents. Floor plans and renderings were finally made public at a recent public meeting on September 30. “This is Harvard,” says Radnor. “Harvard plans out 200 years.” Harvard’s IMP includes a $43 million community benefits package, including street improvements, educational programs, workforce development programs, and other initiatives designed to benefit the neighborhood. In addition to the mitigation package, Harvard seems to at least be making an effort to keep Allston’s community members involved. Alford and Radnor are members of the Construction Mitigation Subcommittee, an offshoot of the AllstonHarvard Task Force charged with addressing residents’ concerns. Their meetings cover heated topics like construction worker parking, environmental concerns and, of course, rats. When asked how it has been to work with Harvard, Radnor responds with an emphatic, “OK.” She remembers a time 20 years ago when Harvard’s only overtures to Allston residents were tickets to Crimson football games—where they had to sit in the visitors’ section. Relations have improved since then, and Radnor acknowledges that progress is needed both on the part of Harvard and on the part of the community. “I’m really quite optimistic about it, but it really requires a different way of looking at each other that heretofore really has been an Us and Them.” Alford is more skeptical. “The community sometimes gets hoodwinked by Harvard University. We certainly got hoodwinked on the 10-year Master Plan. We got hoodwinked on the science complex.”
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BLUNT TRUTH
QUACKS AGAINST POT The Mass Medical Society strikes again BY MIKE CANN @MIKECANNBOSTON
Last week, marijuana patients and advocates had a lot to be thankful for in the way of positive coverage in major Boston media outlets, namely in the Boston Herald and on “Chronicle” on WCVB. In the Herald, reporter Chris Villani wrote two stories, both of which covered news that DigBoston and my WEMF Radio show, “The Young Jurks,” reported last spring, like that legendary sportscaster Bob Lobel is using marijuana to treat his back and knee pain, and that some doctors in Mass are using cannabis to reduce opiate overdoses. Predictably, the Herald gave our stories no credit at all. In this case, however, we are thrilled to be ripped off, and to see “Chronicle” also feature Lobel and other patients and advocates. Among them were Dr. Uma Dhanabalan of Uplifting Health and Wellness in Natick, who told the Herald, “What we are seeing is that, in follow-up visits, patients have decreased and even eliminated their opioids.” All that aside, it hasn’t been all good news for marijuana in the Boston media. On the day after their Lobel and opioid suite, the Herald Staff unearthed yet another one of their ignorant oped tirades against medical cannabis. Meanwhile, over at the Lowell Sun, the rather unlettered Todd Feathers amplified rhetoric that quacks from the Massachusetts Medical Society are pushing. Among his gripes: “Most medical-pot permits [are] issued for undisclosed conditions,” while “90% of Massachusetts recipients don’t have one of the 8 allowable diagnosed diseases.” In the Sun piece, the author (and the two doctors who are quoted in the story) omit the fact that most of the estimated 40 million Americans suffering from daily chronic pain are, like myself, suffering from back pain, a condition that is not listed but that is still allowed under the law. Because of said omission, the writer and his clown docs are suggesting that people like me are faking illnesses to obtain our prescriptions, or at least that’s what they want the average lowly, uneducated reader to believe. You might ask yourself: How do doctors omit medical facts? My guess is it’s because they have agendas. In reality though, other common causes of chronic pain that medical marijuana can help include arthritis and fibromyalgia, neither of which is listed in the Mass classification system. People with those ailments must be faking it as well, and the same goes for those with PTSD, seizures, anorexia, anxiety disorders, ALS, lupus, lyme disease, epilepsy, and cerebral palsy. Since the prohibitionists are hitting on multiple fronts, there’s also last week’s appalling Boston Globe opinion column from Dr. Sushrut Jangi. Titled “Can we please stop pretending marijuana is harmless?”, the piece claims young people are getting “addicted” with an “epidemic level of pot use.” No mention here, either, about the reduction of opiate use in medical states. When I reached out to Jangi on Facebook for a comment, he responded by blocking me. Interestingly, he’s a former editorial fellow at the New England Journal of Medicine, which is published by the Mass Medical Society. If you see your doc reading an issue of this rag, you should probably find yourself a second opinion.
“Because of said omission, the writer and his clown docs are suggesting that people like me are faking illnesses to obtain our prescriptions, or at least that’s what they want the average lowly, uneducated reader to believe.”
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NEW WORLD ODOR BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1
Certified Beer Sniffers
I have an uncomfortable message for my paesans who celebrated Columbus Day: You’re some serious dummies for more reasons than you realize. It’s not just that Christopher Columbus was a homicidal racist, and nothing to be proud of. The only reason that Columbus Day means spit in Boston is because the likes of Honey Fitz, who served six years as mayor between 1906 and 1914, turned the holiday into a blowout in order to—as author Marisa Abrajano describes such pandering phenomena in her book, Campaigning to the New American Electorate—“gain the support of the Italian immigrants.” As years went by, the true and superficial meaning of Columbus Day in these parts was forgotten, while human meatballs like Buddy Cuozzo, grand marshal of the parade back in the 1990s, went on honoring their boy in ignorance. In 1992, Cuozzo told the New York Times, “We’re Italian-Americans, and they’ve taken all our heroes away from us.” Summarizing the position of every embarrassment to prop Columbus since, Cuozzo called Columbus “the last hero we have.” “He discovered America,” claimed Cuozzo. “Why don’t they leave the guy alone?”
APPARENT HORIZON
INTRODUCING #BINJBADBOSS Boss screwing you over? Drop a dime online
9 2 H A MP S HIR E S T, CA MB R ID G E, M A | 6 1 7-2 5 0 - 8 4 5 4 | L O R D H O B O.C O M
Do you have a bad boss? I don’t just mean a boss that you don’t want to hang out with after work. I mean a boss that’s ripping you off or otherwise harming you systematically over time. And doing the same to your co-workers. Think about it. Have you worked overtime repeatedly, but not been paid for it? Are you not allowed to take legal holidays and sick days off? Are you not given time off at all? Is your boss violating health and safety regulations, refusing to provide necessary safety equipment, and forcing you and your co-workers to risk life and limb on the job? Does your boss repeatedly sexually harass you and your co-workers? Or worse? If you’re a tipped employee, does your boss steal your tips? If you’re a temp, part-timer, contractor, independent contractor, day laborer or any other type of contingent worker, should you be? Like is your job really the kind of job that needs to be short-term or “flexible” in some way, or is your boss just misclassifying you to avoid having to give you a decent job? Does your boss refuse to give you and your co-workers raises, no matter how long you’ve worked at your job? Did your boss ever threaten to fire you and your co-workers if you even talk about forming a union at your workplace? Has your boss engaged in outright wage theft? Just taken cash money that’s owed to you in one way or another? Like, as was the case with a restaurant that I heard about last week, not paying employees wages at all — only tips, skimming those too, and threatening to rat out the largely undocumented immigrant waitstaff to ICE if they say boo to anyone who might help them? If this kind of nonsense or anything like it is happening to you and your coworkers on the job, then the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism is here to help. We’re not a replacement for starting a union or talking to the Mass Attorney General’s office or the Department of Labor and Workforce Development. But if you really feel you and your co-workers have a legitimate actionable grievance, we — as journalists working in the public interest — can do that thing that most bosses hate the most: we can shine light on your bad situation. In doing so, we can help government, labor, and nonprofit advocates to find you and fight with you for a better deal on the job. And we can get you support from the general public when it counts. So here’s how this will work: You flag us at #BINJbadboss on Twitter or by email at badboss@binjonline.org. Let us know what’s up. You can be as public or anonymous as you like when you contact us. If we see evidence of systematic abuse at your workplace, we’ll get on the case. We’ll publish columns or news articles that will shed some light on your bad boss. Sound good? Good. My colleagues and I look forward to sharing your stories. Apparent Horizon is the first column syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ network director.
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COPYRIGHT 2015 JASON PRAMAS. LICENSED FOR USE BY THE BOSTON INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT JOURNALISM AND MEDIA OUTLETS IN ITS NETWORK.
BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS
NEWS TO US
FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
13
ARTS ENTERTAINMENT
14
THU 10.15
FRI 10.16
FRI 10.16
SAT 10.17
SAT 10.17
SAT 10.17
Third Thursdays: The Art in Architecture
Drink Craft Beer presents Beer & Cider Fest
Under the Underground #3: A Halloween Spooktacular
New England Music Awards’ Last Band Standing Finals
Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo 2015
Meat Stacks Reception
Have you been feeling architecturally deprived lately? It’s all right—we understand, and we’re here to help. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has assembled art, music, and a wine bar just for you this Thursday. Bring a date and bathe in the atmosphere as natural light beams down on your artistic journey. Try your hand at some sketching with real marble statues right in hugging distance. But don’t actually hug them, unless you want a lifetime ban.
Before you skip over this because you saw the $50 price tag and heard your wallet weep like an infant, consider why you should go to this: unlimited beer and cider for $50. “Wait, what’s that? Unlimited? For only $50?” Yup, that’s right. There will be 25 different New England breweries participating, which means a lot of different craft beers and ciders. You also get a free cup. Isn’t that nice?
Experience true fear this Friday with Under the Underground as it unveils its third set of films by New England filmmakers. Come and see what kind of terror local Boston artists can come up with, and maybe stay for a musical performance or two by Listening Woman and judy chong. With movie titles like Death Beach and It Started Like Any Other Night, you’re guaranteed to get spooked. Bring some clean pants just in case.
As the Sparrow has been chosen as the wild-card pick for the New England Music Awards’ Last Band Standing, and you’ve been given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch the group in this setting. Give it your love and rock out to some folk-influenced rock-swing music. Have a beer or two as well; you’re at the Hard Rock Cafe, live it up.
Come on down to Cambridge’s very own Lesley University and mingle with comic creators and lovers alike. Ask a question at one of the many panels, get hands-on with a workshop, or maybe just admire some comics at one of the many exhibitions. Featured artists include the likes of Gene Luen Yang (Boxers & Saints), Ryan North (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl), Lucy Knisley (Relish), Dustin Harbin (Behold! The Dinosaurs), and Jennifer Hayden (The Story of My Tits).
Gallery 263 is always displaying some great artwork, so if you haven’t been yet, now might be a nice time to get yourself acquainted with it and “meat” some new art lovers. Join the MFA’s Leah Netsky as she presents to you a series of photographs offering you a symbolic look at mass production and processed food—and how their existence allows consumers to avoid the gory reality of preparing and eating an animal.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. 25 Evans Way, Boston. 10:00am-6:00pm/ all ages/$5-15. gardnermuseum.org
Space 57 at the Revere Hotel. 200 Stuart St., Boston. 6:00-9:30pm/21+/$50. drinkcraftbeer.com/editorial/events/boston-beerand-cider.html
Out of the Blue Too Art Gallery & More. 541 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. 8:00pm12:00am/18+/$5-10. facebook.com/undertheundergroundnewengland
Hard Rock Cafe Boston. 22-24 Clinton St., Boston. 9:00pm-12am/21+/$10. hardrock.com/cafes/boston/
University Hall at Lesley University. 1815 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. 10:00am6:00pm/all ages/FREE. micexpo.org
Gallery 263. 263 Pearl St., Cambridge. 7:00-10:00pm/ all ages/$5 donation. gallery263.com/event/meatstacks-reception
10.14.15 - 10.21.15
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DIGBOSTON.COM
ARTWORK BY LEAH NETSKY
LEAH NETSKY’S “THE GRID” WILL BE ON DISPLAY AT GALLERY 263 AS PART OF MEAT STACKS: A CURATORIAL PROPOSAL SERIES EXHIBITION. PERHAPS THEY WILL SERVE ARTWORK FOR SNACKS.
NEWS TO US
FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
15
MUSIC
MUSIC
Chicago’s loudest rock trio will flood your ears
How Ghost Box Orchestra found infinity in immediacy
MEAT WAVE
THE SPECTACULAR NOW
BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN
have their own community, like Pillson or something. The fact that you can meet people from these different communities and genres and maybe form other bands is kinda of nice.” Meat Wave’s three members live in the quickly gentrifying Logan Square, filling in tiny bars next to the pizza places they work at between tours. One bar near their house hosts free shows every weekend with threeband bills. “For the last few years, I feel like I go to any random show and it’s packed,” Sutter says. “People are excited. There’s a lot going on and a lot of people to make it happen.” And though the three are open to playing anywhere, the music they play is fit for the DIY scene. “I think our drummer plays abnormally loud, so we have to match that,” explains Sutter. “A lot of venues get upset and try to make us turn down. We buckle usually, but I think we have to put our foot down. We are only three people. At that point, our sound is being changed. We try to do this loud, powerful sound, and while it has a lot to do with the volume, it really comes down to Ryan’s drumming.” That, and the meaty muscles shredding away on the guitars next to him. If we didn’t know better, Meat Wave would be a nod to the band’s musical strength flooding over everything in sight, not a joke story from a humor website. Actually, yeah. Let’s get that rumor going instead. It may as well be true.
>> MEAT WAVE + THE DIRTY NIL + ANIMAL FLAG. SUN 10.18. GREAT SCOTT, 1222 COMM. AVE., ALLSTON. 9PM/18+/$10. GREATSCOTTBOSTON.COM
MUSIC EVENTS WED 10.14
THU 10.15
[Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 6pm/all ages/$12. crossroadspresents.com]
[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston. 6:30pm/18+/$7. greatscottboston.com]
GLOSSY INDIE DUO IN THE VALLEY BELOW
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THE GOODBYE CRY KRILL
DIGBOSTON.COM
SAT 10.17
’80S PUNK JOKESTERS THE DEAD MILKMEN + WALTER SICKERT AND THE ARMY OF BROKEN TOYS [The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$20. sinclaircambridge.com]
SUN 10.18
SUPER SMOOTH SOUL LEON BRIDGES
[Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston. 7:30pm/18+/$24. royaleboston.com]
Ghost Box Orchestra’s upcoming EP, Sound of (Eternal Now), is only 30 minutes long. If you close your eyes, don’t be surprised if you lose track of time. The four-song psych rock release has a meditative feel to it, from the music all the way through to the artwork, that stretches out into the infinite. All five members—Jeremy Lassetter (guitar, vocals), Christopher Johnson (guitar), Nazli Rex (keys, percussion, vocals), Martin Rex (drums), and Zachary McGowan (bass)—recorded the EP at Boston’s own Converse Rubber Tracks studio where the theme of the release, immediacy, allowed for supersonic results. “They materialized so quickly: the single in one day at Rubber Tracks, two other songs were completely spur of the moment at our rehearsal space, and the last one was made in Chris’s living room,” says Lassetter. “I think we’re expanding as a band to include some more serendipitous moments that we were lucky to have tape rolling— otherwise an improv in the practice space usually disappears right after the last note rings out.” Casual playing during practice saw sparks of melody appear, materialize into a song, and then pour out of them all simultaneously in an unstoppable way. “You’re standing there, totally into it and thinking, ‘This is amazing—and it’s never going to happen this way again,’” says Lassetter. “There’s something sacred about that. The whole unit rises and dips together—and it can be euphoric.” It all comes full circle, starting where the band’s music begins: the name. A ghost box is a paranormal device that records the sound of spirits communicating from beyond. When multiplied into the double digits, it becomes an orchestra of other worlds speaking to one another, their eerie backstories crackling out of lo-fi speakers. “It’s a metaphor for those times where you sit down to play and a whole song comes out of you, and you have no idea where it ‘came from’—it just feels like it passed right through you,” says Lassetter. By the sound of it, Sound of (Eternal Now) was an exercise in exactly that.
>> GHOST BOX ORCHESTRA + MAJOR STARS + SOFT EYES + BOOM SAID THUNDER. FRI 10.16. MIDDLE EAST UPSTAIRS, 472 MASS. AVE., CAMBRIDGE. 8PM/18+/$12. MIDEASTOFFERS.COM.
MON 10.19
TUE 10.20
[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/$12. greatscottboston.com]
[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/all ages/$12. sinclaircambridge.com]
PUNK ROCK DOO WOP SHANNON AND THE CLAMS + SHOPPING
DREAMY DANCE ROCK BØRNS + AVID DANCER
MEAT WAVE PHOTO BY KERRI HACKER | GBO PHOTO BY SAM STAMBAUGH
Get past Meat Wave’s name (it’s taken from an article off the Onion) and the member’s youthful faces (the bassist is 31 years old) to take in what the band’s all about: melting your face off. It takes the heavy rock of Chicago greats before it—The Jesus Lizard, Shellac—and combines it with the succinct echoing riffs of the Wipers, ending up with a tour de force of rock far too loud to come from three people. Yet that’s exactly what it is. Guitarist and singer Chris Sutter, bassist Joe Gac, and drummer Ryan Wizniak have their sound whittled down to a sharp, dangerous object that could puncture your heart on their sophomore LP, Delusion Moon. Live, they let it go crazy—but in Chicago, they’re just one of the bunch. The Windy City’s DIY scene is more bustling than it is hustling. There, no one is clawing their way up the ranks in hopes of making it big. Sure, they’d like to get a wider audience, but it all comes down to having fun and letting these songs fly out of them. Band after band lines up to play house shows throughout the city’s many neighborhoods—ones they have yet to even make it to. “I think you can chalk it up to enjoyment,” says Sutter. “There’s so many creative people in one place, and there’s so many niches—probably more that we aren’t even aware of. We see bands we like that we may not necessarily know at houses, but Chicago is so huge. There’s neighborhoods we don’t even go to that
BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN
ANDRA DAY
5
5
PERFORMING LIVE
CAFÉ 939 S AT U R D AY, O C T O B E R 1 7 T H 939 BOYLSTON ST. BOSTON, MA 02115
“She’s got Amy Winehouse’s effortless grasp of classic jazz and Adele’s range and pop sensibility. ” – NPR “If we have anything to say about it, this gal is going to be a star” – Glamour
THE ALBUM CHEERS TO THE FALL AVAILABLE NOW! Features “RISE UP” & “FOREVER MINE”
NEWS TO US
FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
17
FILM
VOD SQUAD
Two of our favorite directors release their latest films direct to video-on-demand BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN
Too many movies, not enough screens. Our independently operated movie theaters— the Brattle, the Coolidge Corner, the Harvard Film Archive, and the Somerville—do their part “rescuing” movies that wouldn’t play in Boston otherwise. But video-on-demand services like iTunes and Amazon Instant Video are claiming the work of notable films and notable filmmakers at a rate faster than local screening calendars can keep up with. Two of our favorite filmmakers recently saw their latest films bypass local screens to open via streaming instead. We’re offering this inaugural VOD survey as a guide to help you catch up—and if these trends continue, it won’t be the last. YAKUZA APOCALYPSE Directed by Takashi Miike
Takashi Miike has earned his reputation as cinema’s leading madman. Audition and 13 Assassins, masterpieces both, are proof of his exquisitely sober filmmaking talents. But the comically prolific Japanese commercial filmmaker also turns out whatsits like Dead or Alive and Full Metal Yakuza—absurdist riffs on his nation’s crime pictures. Those pushed past “satire” or “parody,” directly into the realm of “what the fuck?” WTF is right where Yakuza Apocalypse starts out. A beaten-down town is watched over by a benevolent yakuza boss, who also happens to be an immortal vampire. In other films, that’d be the punchline. With Miike, it’s the setup. A rival gang executes Boss, and his faithful servant Kageyama is left to bury his master’s severed head. But then that head bites Kageyama on the neck. Then Kageyama starts to bite the town’s innocents. Then Kageyama learns that that’s a faux pas among yakuza vampires—civilians may taste better, but to wipe them all out is to eliminate a necessary revenue stream. Don’t congratulate yourself for reading too deeply into that metaphor. A gangster does it himself: “You could say we’ve been living off their blood,” he deadpans, with the tenor of a sophomoric film critic. Thus, the pleasures this film is offering aren’t interpretive. They’re textural. The spells cast against common sense pile up: Demons of folklore arrive on the scene, followed by a terrorist frog and a kaiju monster. They all involve themselves in fight sequences, which are blocked with the sure hand of a combat-cinema veteran. That’s what elevates even moderately interesting Miike films from “curious” into “art”: He can speak the formal languages he’s subverting, with a tongue more fluent than those of a genre’s most ardent practitioners. If you believe all filmmakers are subconsciously programmed by the markets they make films for—and that’s a persuasive argument—then you must concede that Miike is the result of a glorious malfunction.
YAKUZA APOCALYPSE
JUNUN Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Anderson’s reputation is a more grandiose one. With There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Inherent Vice, he’s become a national historian within the narrative cinema. The string-based scores of those movies, by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, remained tantalizingly detached from the action on screen. They added, instead of accompanying. And so those period pieces were once removed from reality. They’re daydreams—direct from the American subconscious. We know what year those movies are set in. And what states. Other details get as fuzzy as the moods conjured by Greenwood’s unnerving scores. With Junun, Anderson’s 54-minute eighth feature—and his first in
JUNUN
the nonfiction form—we’re offered a more specific set of slugs: We’re in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. It is February, 2015. Greenwood and his producer Nigel Godrich are here to collaborate on an album with a team assembled by Shye Ben Tzur, a musical artist who composes devotional works within the Sufi faith. They’re all recording in the legendary Mehrangarh Fort. And—to be exact—it is 12:52 pm. Anderson’s other films had ideas to share. But the specificity of these subtitles betrays a shift in priorities: what Junun has are experiences. Anderson starts off by spinning his camera—he’s credited not just as director but as one of five camera operators—in circles. Sitting dead center, he catches every participant on the first track performing (on horns, percussion instruments, and dholaks, for starters) as an individual, while the audio provides the image of them together. In later sequences, Anderson often diverts his attention mid-song: to a pigeon fluttering about the workspace, or to streetside travels of a stray band member in need of harmonium repairs. Decades beyond the tothe-beat musical editing of Boogie Nights and Magnolia, he’s once again searching for images that parallel audio without driving in the same lane. The editing rides the rhythms of the band’s compositions—pausing with pigeons, building up to rapturous camera movements, letting off with static shots of spit valves. Junun may look more like a travelogue than a daydream. But all that elusive dissociation confirms the aforementioned reputation. If this is merely a diary, it’s still a grand one.
>> YAKUZA APOCALYPSE. RATED R. AVAILABLE NOW VIA VOD PLATFORMS INCLUDING ITUNES AND AMAZON INSTANT VIDEO. >> JUNUN. NOT RATED. AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY AT MUBI.COM WITH SUBSCRIPTION. ONE-MONTH ACCESS AVAILABLE FOR $4.99.
FILM EVENTS FRI 10.16
COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS
MAD MAX
[Coolidge Corner Theatre. 290 Harvard St., Brookline. Also screens 10.17. Midnight/ PG/$11.25. coolidge.org]
THE START OF A WEEKEND-LONG MAX-ATHON [Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 8pm/ R/$9-11. Also screens 10.18 @ 1 and 10pm. See brattlefilm.org for showtimes of other films in the series.]
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HOCUS POCUS
DIGBOSTON.COM
40TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW
[Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Sq., Somerville. Midnight/R/$15. 35mm. somervilletheatreonline.com/ somerville-theatre]
SAT 10.17
MON 10.19
DIRECTED BY DON HERTZFELDT
THE DOCYARD PRESENTS
[Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 11:30pm/NR/$9-11. brattlefilm.org]
[Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/ NR/$9-11. brattlefilm.org]
IT’S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY
DREAMCATCHER
SCIENCE ON SCREEN PRESENTS STEVEN SODERBERGH’S ERIN BROCKOVICH
[Coolidge Corner Theatre. 290 Harvard St., Brookline. 7pm/R/$11.25. 35mm. coolidge.org]
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THU 10/15 - CRUSH PRESENTS: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20
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DJ CHRIS EWEN SUN 10/18 - SUICIDEGIRLS: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30
BLACKHEART BURLESQUE TOUR MON 10/19
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7
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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13
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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14
MAJOR STARS SUN 10/18 - ILLEGALLY BLIND:
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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20 10/23 10/23 10/27 10/27 11/4 11/4 11/8 11/8 11/19 11/19 11/21 11/21
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All shows, All ages. Tickets available in person at the Palladium Box Office, FYE Music and Video Stores, online at Ticketfly.com or by phone at 877-987-6487.
www.thepalladium.net
DRINKS
(CATE LE BON + TIM PRESLEY OF WHITE FENCE) TUES 10/20
CHEATAHS
FUNERAL ADVANTAGE
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FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
19
THEATER
SUMMER SMOCK
SpeakEasy presents the Boston premiere of Harvey Fierstein’s newest play
DRONES WORLD TOUR
JAN. 25
TD GARDEN TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY, OCT. 23 AT 10AM TICKETS AVAILABLE AT TICKETMASTER.COM, BY PHONE AT 800.745.3000, ALL TICKETMASTER OUTLETS, AND AT THE TD GARDEN BOX OFFICE.
photo credit: Danny Clinch
SPECIAL GUEST
With Harvey Fierstein’s Casa Valentina, SpeakEasy Stage Company continues its mission of gifting theatergoers with Boston premieres. Set in 1962 at a Catskills resort called the Chevalier d’Eon, a real-life summer haven for heterosexual crossdressers, a group of straight men secretly gather to dress and behave like women for a few carefree days away from their wives and their children. This particular gathering isn’t so carefree, though: George, who runs d’Eon with his wife, Rita, finds himself in hot water after he’s summoned by the postal inspector to discuss some inflammatory photos found in an envelope that was addressed to him. (Like SpeakEasy’s last production, appropriate, questionable photos act as one of the play’s major catalysts.) The resort is also on the brink of bankruptcy, and George is hoping that Charlotte, a West Coast transvestite who runs a controversial magazine championing the rights of cross-dressers (and is on parole because of it) can bail him out. Like George and Rita, Charlotte is also based on a real person. When Charlotte challenges her friends to reveal their identities to the world in the name of social and political acceptance, all of their convictions and beliefs are called into question. You see, homosexual attendance has always been frowned upon, and when the attending ladies are asked to make that exclusion official in the form of an affidavit, we are afforded a more precise look into the psychology of heterosexual cross-dressing and the very many different reasons that some feel they must hide themselves away for a weekend of brassieres and blush. In a conversation with Naveen Kumar, playwright Harvey Fierstein said, “There are no two people in the play who dress for the same reason, who are the same sexually.” When reading the play, it shocked and surprised me that these straight men—who were never as happy as when they were dressing and acting like women—would be so condemnatory towards gays. “These men believed— remember we’re talking 1962, before Stonewall, before liberation—that no decent, God-fearing society would ever accept homosexuals as normal. So in the play, Charlotte is speaking politically. The feeling was, we kill two birds with one stone by banning homosexuals: We get our wives to understand that we don’t want to have sex with each other (which, like I said, was not true of everyone), and we tell society there’s no reason to be frightened of us, because we’re not looking at your dicks,” said Fierstein. Casa Valentina received warm notices when it premiered on Broadway last spring at the Manhattan Theatre Club and scored a handful of Tony nominations, including one for Best Play. Director Scott Edmiston is at the helm here, fresh off of his solid gold production of My Fair Lady at the Lyric Stage Company. The cast is made up of some of Boston’s best talent, including the ubiquitous, alwaysreliable Will McGarrahan, who is stepping into Charlotte’s heels. Fierstein is no stranger to men wearing dresses: From his work as a playwright on Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage Aux Folles, and Kinky Boots, as well as his Tonywinning performance as Edna in Hairspray, it’s kind of what put him on the map. Valentina is different, though: “Harvey Fierstein has written some wonderful, complex characters in Casa Valentina. Yes, it also has men wearing dresses and some funny lines, but the similarity really stops there,” said McGarrahan. “It is true that our culture is not familiar with cross-dressing heterosexual men as, say, drag performers,” said McGarrahan. “Cross-dressing is an umbrella term that refers to the act of a person wearing clothes associated with the opposite sex. It is a term that does not address sexual or gender identity.” “We have our own prejudices when it comes to a story like this,” said Fierstein. “There are going to be a lot of people who say, “This couldn’t have been,” or that I don’t know what I’m talking about. The truth is, I’ve worked very hard to make sure I’m expressing it right, and I don’t come to conclusions in the play. Because I think it’s bullshit to come to conclusions when I know the truth isn’t the same for any two people.” As one of the lovely ladies says mid-way through the play: “Some try to make sense of it. Some don’t.” >> CASA VALENTINA. RUNS 10.24-11.28 AT SPEAKEASY STAGE COMPANY AT THE BCA. 527 TREMONT ST., BOSTON.SPEAKEASYSTAGE.COM
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PORNO FOR PAISANO BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE I am a 23-year-old Italian girl and I have been in a long-distance relationship for one year. We love to have sex, and when we are far away, we send each other hot pictures and videos. At least two times per week, we masturbate on Skype. There is something that confuses me about the way I masturbate when I am alone. My boyfriend watches pornos daily when we are far away. This is something I don’t like, but I have not asked him to give up watching pornos. I think there is nothing wrong in pornos by themselves: Sometimes I watch them, and when we are together, it’s me who suggests to watch them together or I let him watch them while I’m giving something to him. However, I’m not a fan of him watching pornos when he is alone. But when I masturbate, I think only about him watching porno alone. What’s wrong with my sexual fantasies? Confused Italian Asking Obviously
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There’s nothing wrong with your sexual fantasies, CIAO, you’re just experiencing a little cognitive dissonance and residual sex-negativity—and that particular tension can both distress and arouse. But seeing as your boyfriend is going to look at porn (and other women) whether you want him to or not (just as you look at porn and other men), and since you enjoy porn together, I would advise you to err on the side of embracing your fantasies. And don’t feel like you have to overcome the cognitive dissonance. The naughtiness of it, the transgression, and the symbolic betrayal—all of that turns you on. So live with it, lean into it, and enjoy it. * For the record, quickly, before Tumblr explodes: Some women have penises! Some women with penises are uncut! A tiny percentage of uncut-penis-having women have poor personal hygiene practices and consequently have smegma under their foreskins! #TheMoreYouKnow On the Lovecast: It’s everyone’s favorite half-mulleted, hilarious lesbian… Cameron Esposito! Listen at savagelovecast.com.
Song of a Convalescent Ayn Rand Giving Thanks to the Godhead (In the Lydian Mode) In 1825, a gravelly ill Ludwig van Beethoven writes a groundbreaking string quartet. In 1982, a pissed Ayn Rand wakes up in the afterlife. In 2011, a very intellectual drag queen gets her fifteen minutes of fame in Peoria, Illinois. In 2015, Michael Yates Crowley andMichael Rau tunnel through time and space to bring all these people (and more) together in a true story about migraines and philosophy, with digressions into song and dance. “Song of a Convalescent,” named after the Beethoven string quartet, is a hilarious, strange, and moving exploration of what it means to suffer for your art.
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