DigBoston 5.10.18

DIGBOSTON.COM 05.10.18 - 05.17.18

INTERVIEW

DIABLO CODY ON JAGGED LITTLE PILL ENTERTAINMENT

SIMPSONS TRIVIA POP QUIZ INCLUDED

NEWS

BEACON HILL

GOVERNOR’S RACE CONTINUES DESPITE LACK OF INTEREST

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BOWERY BOSTON WWW.BOWERYBOSTON.COM VOL 20 + ISSUE19

MAY 10, 2018 - MAY 17, 2018 BUSINESS PUBLISHER Marc Sneider ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone John Loftus Jason Pramas SALES MANAGER Marc Sneider FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digboston.com BUSINESS MANAGER John Loftus

EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Chris Faraone EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jason Pramas MANAGING EDITOR Mitchell Dewar MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan THEATER EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COMEDY EDITOR Dennis Maler STAFF WRITER Haley Hamilton CONTRIBUTORS G. Valentino Ball, Sarah Betancourt, Tim Bugbee, Patrick Cochran, Mike Crawford, Britni de la Cretaz, Kori Feener, Eoin Higgins, Zack Huffman, Marc Hurwitz, Marcus JohnsonSmith, C. Shardae Jobson, Heather Kapplow, Derek Kouyoumjian, Dan McCarthy, Peter Roberge, Maya Shaffer, Citizen Strain, M.J. Tidwell, Miriam Wasser, Dave Wedge, Baynard Woods INTERNS Kuresse Bolds, Victoria Botana, Rob Katz, Murray, Brynne Quinlan

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ON THE COVER DIABLO CODY IS KNOWN FOR MANY THINGS, THE MOST RECENT BEING HER ADAPTATION OF ALANIS MORISSETTE’S ‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’ FOR THE STAGE AT A.R.T. (SEE DAN PECCI’S INTERVIEW IN THIS WEEK’S FEATURE SECTION). BUT WE ALSO MUST NOTE THAT CODY IS AN ALUMN OF CITY PAGES, OUR ALT-WEEKLY COUSIN IN MINNEAPOLIS. PROPS. ©2018 DIGBOSTON IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. 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.

TOOTHLESS PEOPLE

The little bastard came out of nowhere.

It was roughly 17 years ago, and I had just moved to Manhattan after college. I was standing on the southwest corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 124th Street, firing full bottles of beer at a group of punks jumping my friend, when one of their guys—I swear the dude was four-foot-nothing—seemingly soared across the asphalt like a super villain with his fist extended straight out, crashing through my jaw and shattering plus impacting multiple molars.

I’m pretty sure that was the last of several violent youthful episodes—skateboarding and bicycle crashes, general dumbshit behavior—that left me with a mouth full of popcorn, as my two-year-old characterizes my chompers (I really have no idea where she came up with the insult, but it burns).

With more bonding, chips, crowns, and extractions than I can count, the past couple of decades have been dentally disastrous. Forget regular checkups and maintenance; without the insurance or savings to cover such serious expenses, my visits to the oral surgeon have been limited to last-minute emergencies, most of which have wound up with a pulled tooth.

It didn’t have to be this way for me. My mother was a New York City public school teacher, and I had proper and affordable care growing up. Braces, the works. But that all ended in the early aughts, right around the time that I was pummeled on that corner.

Since then I have worked for either myself or small businesses; dental insurance was a fantasy. Heck, I have gone for years without medical coverage, which at one point, due to injuries sustained in another unprovoked attack in New York City by police while I was covering a protest, ruined me financially at a time when I should have been starting to save.

Though I consider myself lucky in every last sense and have never faced hunger or homelessness like many truly less fortunate folks I have spent my career covering, the yellowed razor blades stabbing my tongue have served as regular reminders of the sacrifice I’ve made to be a journalist, and of the caste and limitations that come with that. Same for my perpetual ass breath, which I concede is partly due to all the weed I smoke, but still. My chipped-tooth smile may have been somewhat cool and edgy back when I was but a rogue reporter on the beat; now that I’m an editor and fundraiser for a nonprofit, and a nowand-then professor who occasionally has to mix with the upper crust, I tend to feel embarrassed. And I don’t embarrass easily.

I’m hardly breaking new ground here. Everyone with shitty teeth has felt the pain and shame I speak of in some way or another, while academics and reporters alike have explored the topic at length. I just had to write something to get my mind off of the throbbing while I waited in the oral surgeon’s waiting room last week before they pulled my molar, and I couldn’t think of anything besides the rotting nugget in my upper jaw.

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MONEYBALL NEWS TO US

Can Mass have a governor’s race about issues when cash is the only thing that matters?

BY PATRICK COCHRAN Setti Warren’s decision to drop his bid for Mass governor last month shocked those who closely follow Bay State politics. More than the announcement itself, however, what’s alarming for some is the context of the former Newton mayor’s departure and the light it shines on major issues facing Commonwealth progressives in 2018.

In extinguishing his candidacy, Warren, after all, cited the lack of campaign funds to compete with popular Republican Gov. Charlie Baker.

“Even though we raised a lot of money from smalldollar donations, raising the kind of money we need to build a grassroots campaign that can take on Charlie Baker has been our biggest challenge from day one,” Warren said in a statement. “I have come to the difficult realization that this challenge is insurmountable. The money just isn’t there to run the kind of campaign I want to run.”

In the end, Warren had just $51,644.43 in the bank, and only once was his campaign able to get over the $100,000 marker. For reference, Baker spent $111,776.59 in campaign funds over the first two weeks of April alone. (The governor’s total campaign balance is nearly $8 million as of his filing on April 15.)

The financial situation isn’t much better for the two remaining candidates for the Democratic nomination— Bob Massie and Jay Gonzalez. At the time of this writing, Massie, an environmental activist and former candidate for lieutenant governor, is sitting on less than $20,000, while Gonzalez, the former secretary of administration and finance in the Deval Patrick administration, is hanging in a bit stronger at about $144,000.

Regarding Warren’s dropping out, it’s not unusual for certain campaigns to flounder due to inadequate funding. But it’s nonetheless a bit strange (or unsettling, depending on whom you ask) in a blue state, especially 4

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for a locally popular Dem from a wealthy suburb of Boston like him to flame out so long before the September primary.

“I think it is certainly discouraging,” Rep. Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge, Somerville) told DigBoston.

While Baker’s opponents have fought hard to make this election about issues, the underlying predicament of the governor’s race has been the campaign finance disparity between the governor and his challengers. Connolly continued, “We have plenty to criticize Charlie Baker for.”

Issues drive political campaigns, but the influence of big spending tips the scales. In 2014, former popular Mass Attorney General Martha Coakley led Baker in an average of polls until the final week of the campaign, but Baker’s campaign outspent hers by more than $7 million, and in the end, the current gov beat Coakley by 2 percent of the overall vote.

“Up until [the 2014] election, Massachusetts has mostly held the line against massive infusions of outside spending in its politics,” Renée Loth wrote for WBUR. “But the 2014 campaign signaled an end to this distinction, as the US Supreme Court struck down donor limits and the People’s Pledge was thrown to the winds.”

---///--Big-time campaign spending is an inherent foil to progressive politics. The left wing of the American political spectrum does not share anything close the same donor class as the right, for obvious reasons like taxation and antitrust legislation.

But the squeezing of the gubernatorial challengers isn’t just a symptom of right-wing moneyed interests.

In an election season oozing with Democratic enthusiasm and the general liberal desire to unseat every

conservative on the map, the party itself has shown little interest in engaging with the Bay State’s Republican governor.

“Charlie, I think, is very popular and is doing a good job,” Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, vice chairwoman of Democratic Governors Association, said at a national governors meeting in February. “I’ve enjoyed working with him, and we have a good bipartisan, collaborative relationship.”

Democratic support for Baker isn’t exclusive to Commonwealth outsiders either. Influential Massachusetts liberals have backed Baker too, while Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who hasn’t officially backed the gov, has a well-known working bromance with Baker. Since July of 2015, former Democratic House Representative and current UMass President Marty Meehan even donated $3,750 to Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito.

In April, Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera endorsed the governor’s reelection bid, citing their good relationship, as well as Baker’s refutation of the claims from President Trump and the governors of New Hampshire and Maine that the Merrimack Valley city has been the primary source of the region’s opioid epidemic. In 2014, Lawrence went heavily for Baker’s opponent, Martha Coakley, with the Democrat grabbing about 70 percent of the vote in the gubernatorial race. Driving out blue voters in cities like Lawrence will be integral to any hopes the party has at retaking the corner office, so endorsements like Rivera’s could be particularly damning. Never mind Baker’s reluctance to see Mass become a sanctuary state, a position that’s come under the fire of immigrant advocates recently. The support of Rivera and other seemingly unlikely Dems remains.

“It’s more than just money,” Rep. Connolly said. “It’s an

overall failure by the Democratic Party to find themselves in this position.”

---///--Despite the hindrance of big money and the Democratic establishment, progressives, some of whom have historically worked outside of the major party folds, have made strident gains over the past few election cycles, galvanized by the Occupy movement and Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. The 2017 elections marked a high point for left-wing politics in Massachusetts. In the Greater Boston area, eight of the 10 candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won their races for local office.

“In my communities, we’ve witnessed nothing short of a revolution,” said Connolly, who represents parts of Cambridge and Somerville and was initially driven to electoral politics by the influence of money on campaigns. “Short term, I think we can look and we can see that some very exciting things are happening.”

Connolly said that he is optimistic about the Sanders method of raising money for large-scale political campaigns from a plethora of small donations. But that strategy is unlikely to reap the same success for a relatively unknown candidate who lacks the legacy and record of someone like Sanders. As a result, there is a widely held belief that more so than their conservative counterparts, progressives need to continue to build that political infrastructure at the lower levels to eventually cultivate the organization to run candidates for higher office.

“Overall, I’d say there are a lot of hopeful things happening,” Connolly said, “but that needs to be sustained and percolate to the top.”

In the longer term, many progressives advocate for legislation overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, publicly financing elections, and employing ranked-choice voting.

“I think the Democratic Party itself needs to rethink many of its procedures in order to bring younger people and people with new ideas,” Massie said at a recent candidates forum. “The system itself is broken. I fought for clean elections and public financed [elections] not recently, in 2000. And that was gutted by a Democratic legislature.”

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---///--With Setti Warren out of the picture, it’s a two-horse race for the Democratic nomination.

Jay Gonzalez and Bob Massie will first head to the state Democratic Convention in June, where they will both likely coast to the 15 percent delegate threshold for ballot access and will also vie for the party’s official endorsement. (Whichever candidate picks up a majority of the delegate vote earns the endorsement, which counts for relatively little. Coakley, for example, lost the delegate battle to former Mass Treasurer Steve Grossman in 2014 before winning the September primary.)

Both candidates are pushing platforms to the left of the mainstream Democratic Party, emphasizing the need for single-payer healthcare, environmental sustainability, fixing the T and expanding the commuter rail, and addressing income inequality.

So far, Gonzalez has garnered strong support in Democratic caucuses. While a majority of delegates elected to the state convention in June remain uncommitted, according to Politico, Gonzalez leads the field when it comes to those who have made up their minds, closely followed by Massie and Warren.

And Gonzalez’s proximity to a mainstream Democratic governor like Patrick hasn’t done any damage to his progressive bona fides. State Sen. Jamie Eldridge, part of the backbone of the party’s left wing in the Commonwealth, endorsed Gonzalez early on in the primary. Eldridge referred to Gonzalez as a “bold progressive Democrat who has laid out a vision of investing in our communities, including in education; making progress on social justice, including reforming our criminal justice system; dramatically improving our state’s entire transportation system; and making healthcare a right in Massachusetts” in his endorsement. “[This election] is about whether we want to continue to have a status quo governor, who basically accepts the world the way it is and tries to manage it better,” Gonzalez said, “versus a governor who wants to aim higher and make a meaningful difference in people’s lives, and make real progress on issues which are holding people back. And that’s what I’m offering.”

Massie, to this point, has run the insurgent anti-establishment campaign of this election.

“I’m the only candidate here who voted for Bernie Sanders,” Massie said at the Suffolk University candidates forum to some whistles and claps from the crowd. “I’m part of the [Sanders-inspired political organization] Our Revolution.”

Massie cleaned house in the ultra-progressive Somerville caucus, picking up 51 of the 62 delegates up for grabs in a room jam-packed with his supporters. “[Massie] is a lifetime progressive activist, executive leader and systems thinker, not just another politician,” Somerville Alderman Wilfred Mbah said in his endorsement of the candidate. “He’s led campaigns for racial and gender justice going back to the anti-apartheid movement, he’s founded and run environmental and economic efforts nationally and globally, and he’s pioneered efforts on corporate responsibility and accountability. I feel personally connected to him and see him as our next governor.”

Is any of that enough to beat Baker? Only time, and perhaps campaign finances, will tell.

The convention will take place at the DCU Center in Worcester on June 2 before the lastin-the-nation primary on Sept 4.

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URBAN MISSION APPARENT HORIZON

The solution to UMass Boston’s woes could start with a city-run college

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS There was an interesting conversation recently between two people who I often criticize for being… um... insufficiently public spirited. The Boston Globe’s Shirley Leung asked Boston mayor Marty Walsh a great question: “What if the city took over the University of Massachusetts Boston?”

Walsh, to his credit, replied: “Am I looking to take on a potentially new school? No. … Do I think Boston potentially could be positioned well enough to handle it? Absolutely.”

UMass Boston has been struggling to make ends meet for many years. According to the Dorchester Reporter, union activists at the school say that student tuition and fees are actually sufficient to cover its operating costs. But UMB labors under more than $30 million in structural deficit from the cost of belatedly rebuilding a campus that was thrown together with substandard materials by corrupt contractors on top of a landfill back in the 1970s. And a lot of other debt besides.

Successive legislatures and governors have been unwilling to fork over the money to cover the long-needed repairs—sticking a school with an “urban mission” to serve working-class Boston students with a mountain of debt that it can’t clear on its own. Even after controversial longtime chancellor J. Keith Motley was ousted last year and replaced with interim chancellor and state government hatchet man Barry Mills. Who presided over the layoff of dozens of critical faculty and staff in the interest of “balancing the school budget” even though the UMB community is not to blame for its plight.

As the state prepares to bring in a new “permanent” chancellor, it is not prepared to do the right thing. So, it’s definitely worth pushing Walsh to at least produce a serious study on whether a city that struggles to properly fund K-12 education could really do a better job running a mediumsized research university that the Commonwealth can.

It remains to be seen if UMass Boston is too heavy a fiscal burden for the city of Boston to take on. But there is a way that Mayor Walsh could dip his toe into the murky waters of administering a four-year public college without taking over UMB in its entirety. That would be to consider a plan for a separate city college that I had a hand in developing between 2005 and 2007 while I was a student, and then a graduate teaching assistant, at UMB’s College of Public and Community Service (CPCS). It was originally conceived as a possible response to the university’s destruction of that innovative and popular division.

In brief, CPCS was the most diverse college within the most diverse university in the entire Northeast. Not only did it focus on recruiting workingclass Boston students from nontraditional backgrounds— like single mothers—it also put a lot of effort into recruiting older working students like me who had never finished college.

It was founded in 1972 and 1973 by professors and politicians who believed so strongly in UMB’s urban mission that they developed a college purposebuilt to take students from poor city neighborhoods with few opportunities and turn them into stellar university graduates. Which it did with aplomb for over 30 years.

The following section of the CPCS Mission Statement shows how seriously the school took its mandate:

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The college works toward overcoming the attitudes, beliefs, and structures in our society which prevent access to the resources that exist and discourage full participation in economic, civic, cultural and political life. As an alternative educational institution, CPCS endeavors to function as an inclusive, democratic, and participatory learning community which promotes diversity, equality, and social justice.

Unfortunately, the administration of a decade ago—led

by Motley—decided that the few bucks more it cost per year to educate a CPCS student compared to a “regular” UMB student was too much to spend. And it had deep ideological differences with CPCS pedagogy. Especially the rejection of letter grades as a metric for success. So it killed the college in all but name by 2008. Despite strong protests by its students, staff, and faculty.

Given the current crisis at UMass Boston, Mayor Walsh could revive the plan for a new City College of Boston that myself and other campus activists first suggested… as a successor to CPCS. The goal would be to provide a place for a few hundred working-class native Bostonians at a time. Students who can handle a four-year degree program academically, but are being driven out of UMB by its everrising sticker price—and its shift to attempting to compete with local private universities for white suburban middleclass students and full-freight paying foreign students by building dorms. Which is being done, in part, to allow its latest cowardly administration to get rid of its debt load without direct state aid.

The City College could hold classes in existing municipal facilities and start with a few dozen faculty and staff. It would be run by the city of Boston. And ideally, it would strive to charge students no more than the Hub’s two-year community colleges, Bunker Hill and Roxbury… which it should work with closely.

If the new college does decently well for a few years, then maybe the city could take over UMass Boston in its entirety, merge the two, and move on to strengthen its urban mission university-wide. Returning the school to its urban-focused roots… with local sources of funding that are somewhat more receptive to community needs than state funding sources… and a new sense of purpose.

Even such a bold move would not absolve the legislature and the governor of their responsibility to properly fund

City Colle ge of

BOSTON

Mass public higher education as completely as the state budget will allow—rather than doing things like dumping $1.5 billion on the biotech industry—and to lobby the federal government ferociously for more funding as well. But it could at least ameliorate an increasingly dire situation for Bostonians seeking to improve their lot by obtaining a bachelor’s degree. And get the city back in the business of expanding public services rather than privatizing them.

This column was originally written for the Beyond Boston regional news digest show — co-produced by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and several area public access television stations.

Note of Appreciation Big thanks to Bill Marx of Arts Fuse and Greg Cook of Wonderland (and sometimes DigBoston) for inviting me to participate in a great forum “For the Love of Arts Criticism II: Small Magazines and Bloggers” held on Monday at Rob Chalfen’s fabulous music and arts space, Outpost 186, in Inman Square. Props to fellow speakers Chanel Thervil of Big Red & Shiny; Pat Williams of the Word Boston; Heather Kapplow of, like, everywhere, including DigBoston; Franklin Einspruch of Delicious Line (and DigBoston); Marc Levy of Cambridge Day; Oscar Goff and Chloé DuBois of Boston Hassle; Dave Ortega of the Somerville Media Center; Jameson Johnson of Boston Art Review; Lucas Spivey of Culture Hustlers podcast; Rick Fahey of On Boston Stages; Suzanne Schultz of Canvas Fine Arts; Olivia Deng of several publications, including DigBoston; noted events producer Mary Curtin; Aliza Shapiro of Truth Serum Productions; former Boston Phoenix, Improper Bostonian, and Boston Magazine writer Jacqueline Houton; and a number of other folks. Read Greg Cook’s fine article on the proceedings for all the details at gregcookland.com/wonderland.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2018 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

LATE REGISTRATION... AT TRUMP U “Free Thinker” Kanye West could learn a thing or three from Cardi B

BY BRANDON SODERBERG

When Kanye West took to Twitter to post a photo of himself in one of those dogerection-red “Make America Great Again” hats, that was kind of the end right right there.

Or the end of the end. The rapper, who for more than a decade had merged a kind of political, underground rap sensibility with David Bowie-like art pop, first veered right in 2016 when he dyed his hair blond and met with Trump. Over the past few weeks, however, his resurrected Twitter account became a kind of red-pilled hot mess of bad faith arguments culled from 4chan and the dank armpits of Reddit threads and YouTube channels, and presented under this loose, critique-proof construct of “free thought.”

Ideas such as how slavery “looked like a choice” to him and “Hey, black Breitbart hatemonger Candace Owens makes a lot of sense we should listen to her ideas” are just West riffing, wondering—where’s the harm in siding with racist alt-lighters adjacent to fascism and and allowing them use your celebrity and platform to spread their terrible ideas?

Rich people are all crazy; making lots of money is a sickness, and it isolates you, curdles your thinking, and makes you very, very cold. West’s heel turn is only a shocker because while sure, he has been a rich, obsequious contrarian for a while now, his music is also a grandiose testament to confusion and, occasionally, strong truth-to-power talk.

The son of a college professor and a former Black Panther, West resisted his parents’ legacies and struggled to live up to that legacy too, sometimes on the same song and always through a baroque version of boom bap, the sound of empowered, conscious, aware hip-hop since its early ’90s golden era.

When Cardi B stomped through her video for “Bodak Yellow,” at one point with an Anarchy symbol appended to her dress, nobody really cared.

That’s because unlike Kanye West right now, there were so many other more interesting things about Cardi to talk about: “Got a bag and fixed my teeth,” she boasted on the scintillating “Bodak Yellow,” making fakeness real; the cover of her 2016 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 featured Cardi with her legs up and a muscular, dude-babe with a big back tattoo going down on her while she casually sips a Corona. The Anarchy symbol she wore was an accoutrement clearly, a fashionable pose that framed the stripper-turned-Instagram star-turned-reality show star who it turns out is one of the most entertaining, best, and empathetic rappers around, as an anarchic disruption, a fist to the face of popular rap.

Around the same time that West went Trumpie, Cardi went on a rant in an interview with GQ about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “This man was suffering from polio at the time of his presidency, and yet all he was worried about was trying to make America great—make America great again for real,” she said. “He’s the real ‘Make America Great Again,’ because if it wasn’t for him, old people wouldn’t even get Social Security.”

It was one of many tossed-off, on-point political observations Cardi B has delivered amid her ascent over the past year or so. At the MTV Video Music Awards in the fall, Cardi declared, “Colin Kaepernick, as long as you kneel with us, we’re gonna be standing for you, baby! That’s right, I said it!”; she’s taken to Instagram to tell her fans not to bully, and after Hurricane Maria, posted to Twitter a video of a room full of supplies and commented, “Look what the strip club I used to work at collected for Puerto Rico.”

Cardi wasn’t trying to make a big deal out of any of them, though her FDR love was quickly picked up by progressives. Bernie Sanders retweeted the account Social Security Works, who turned Cardi’s observation into a shareable image and declared, in a tweet and then a short video, “Cardi B is right. If we are really going to make America great we need to strengthen Social Security so that seniors are able to retire with the dignity they deserve.”

Unlike West, who is willing to bend over backward for some Trump love, Cardi hasn’t done much to cosign Sanders. And there is the profound Sanders hypocrisy in voting for the SESTA/FOSTA bills, which punishes websites promoting sex work ads and will push sex work further underground, while glomming onto a former stripper’s statements on Social Security, but hey, what else is new.

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TALKING JOINTS MEMO

KNOW THE REGS: OPERATING VEHICLES Gearing up for the war over stoned driving

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 Here is a prediction, albeit one that I will not expect more than a cookie for foreseeing if I am correct. It’s pretty obvious to those paying attention, but here it goes anyway: As you may have sensed in recent coverage of cannabis, in Massachusetts and across the country, a quagmire, perhaps even a smallish war, is looming over the fate of those who drive high.

There have already been some battles, sure. And we heard countless lines about the dangers of stoned driving from plenty of prohibitionists while our state’s recreational cannabis law was in limbo. But that has been a minor fender bender compared to the crash between reality and ideology that lies ahead.

Even though I mostly ride the train or sit in shotgun, I do have thoughts and ideas of my own about driving while stoned.

I’ve written on this critically important safety concern before, and take it seriously, all while ringing the unpopular reminder bell that no matter how many people drive high on cannabis, there is a much worse danger of prescription painkiller abusers and recidivist drunks on the road. My personal takes on the topic don’t matter, though, much like how the whims that some officials still harbor about the devil’s lettuce are completely worthless. What is important is that people scan the landscape to see how the enforcers are posturing and to see what facts and research they are using to defend their positions.

First and most important when it comes to the legality of driving while stoned in the Bay State is that “Nothing in [the Mass Adult Use of Marijuana regulations] allows the operation of a motor vehicle, boat, or aircraft while under the influence of marijuana.” There’s no official way for a police officer to tell if you are stoned unless they catch you in the act of getting high—we’ll get to that in a second—but if they can somehow prove it in court, or if the motorist conceded for some reason, you face the same penalties as a drunk driver. For more on that, we recommend the helpful crib sheet by NORML on the topic.

As for the new law…

Mass adult use regs cover vehicular specifics in several areas, mostly pertaining to the rules governing product delivery. Otherwise, the only mentions come in the marketing, consumer education, and labeling sections in the form of: “advertising and branding produced by or on behalf of a Marijuana Establishment shall include the following warning: ‘... It is against the law to drive or operate machinery when under the influence of this product.’”

Those are the general rules of the road. But the prevailing question is, How will they be enforced? So far, we’ve seen Massachusetts law enforcement agencies increase the number of so-called drug recognition experts, in the state police force as well as in local departments, who are trained to determine if substances have been used. In defense of such measures, authorities have pointed to research that suggests those who drive while impaired on cannabis face increased risk of accident. Studies like those oft-cited by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which offered some cherry-picked tidbits last week. To its credit, the institute also included the following information, which in a sense walks back its overall claims: The role played by marijuana in crashes is often unclear because it can be detected in body fluids for days or even weeks after intoxication and because people frequently combine it with alcohol.

Which is where we often end up on this issue—with cannabis opponents, lawmakers, and cops who are so anxious to get something done that they will embrace premature technology, and virtually everybody else afraid to call them out on it in fear of being viewed as tolerating impaired driving. That’s nonsense, of course, and so it is promising to see regulators in Colorado address such polarization and the reality that lots of people drive high. Earlier this year, they began hosting regular public discussions “to talk to Coloradans about [their] opinions, behaviors and habits related to marijuana and driving.”

Meanwhile, here in New England, it’s worth watching Vermont, where a bill that would have allowed for the roadside testing of saliva samples died in the state legislature this month. As was reported by the alternative weekly Seven Days: Committee chair Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington) said there are uncertainties surrounding saliva testing, which is still in its infancy and needs more work.

“My reason [for opposing the bill] was basically that the science isn’t there yet, and that I believe in a few years they will have a standardized test, particularly for marijuana, that would give us the amount that somebody would be impaired by,” Sears said.

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Until then…

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

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9

GHOST RIDERS SPECIAL FEATURE

An illustrated tribute to cyclists killed through the years ILLUSTRATIONS BY MURRAY

You have probably seen ghost bikes around Greater Boston.

Memorials to friends and family members who have been killed while riding on two wheels, they are infinitely sad to pass, yet serve as critical reminders about the life and death issue that cycling is for many people.

Tragically, there is not a ghost bike for every person we’ve lost. Some never got such a tribute in the first place, while others have been removed or fallen apart through the years.

When our esteemed illustrator Murray expressed interest in sketching the remembrances, we chose three that we felt represented some of the most hideous stretches and thoroughfares around. Our hope is that they honor all those who have been impacted by these awful crashes, including those who will not ever get to ride again. -Dig Staff

Joe Lavins (Porter Square)

In October 2016, Joe Lavins was struck and killed by an 18-wheeler while riding from his home in Lexington to the Cambridge biotechnology company where he worked. A week after Lavins was killed, people gathered at the scene not only to mourn him but also to demand safer streets for cyclists. Lavins’ is not the first ghost bike to mark where a life was lost on a Cambridge street, but the well-known danger of this particular square seemed to strike a sharp nerve. -Kylie Obermeier

Owen McGrory (Sullivan Square)

Owen McGrory, a 34-year-old newlywed at the time, was struck and killed by a garbage truck while riding near Sullivan Square in April 2014. The driver, who dragged his victim down the street before stopping, said he thought he hit a pothole. The Suffolk County DA pursued charges but was unable to convict in the case. -Dig Staff

Dr. Anita Kurmann (Beacon Street @ Mass Ave)

Dr. Anita Kurmann was a well-respected endocrinologist who, on the morning of Aug 7, 2015, was crushed by an 18-wheel truck at what is statistically one of Greater Boston’s most dangerous intersections. According to cycle advocates at MassBike, despite the doctor “doing everything right [and] legally,” no charges were filed against the driver, while “despite repeated requests to the Boston Police Department to review the investigation no progress has been made.” -Dig Staff

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11

YOU LIVE, YOU LEARN, AND THEN YOU WRITE A MUSICAL FEATURE INTERVIEW

On motherhood and mavenhood with writer Diablo Cody

BY DAN PECCI @DANPECCI Winning the Academy Award for her debut script Juno about an expectant teenage mom prematurely thrust into the throes and expectations of adulthood, now-mother in her own right Diablo Cody was similarly ushered into an expected connoisseurship of sorts becoming a go-to screen and television writer for Hollywood. With follow-up films like Young Adult, Ricki and the Flash, and Tully (now playing in theaters) along with Showtime’s United States of Tara, Cody continued to explore, untangle, and depict themes of womanhood, parenting, and feeling like you’re supposed to have all the answers when you’re still just trying to figure out yourself.

I got the chance to chat with Cody by phone about her latest undertaking as book writer for the hotly anticipated new musical Jagged Little Pill inspired by Alanis Morissette’s iconic 1990s album of the same name at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge.

I’m going to go out on a limb and just presume you were a total theater geek in high school?

In fact, I was not in the least.

You’re kidding, right?

No, I was not a joiner; I was such a slacker. I was earnest and passionate but being a “theater kid” just wasn’t my vibe. I was much more interested in being rebellious at that age than anything. Looking back now and especially from undergoing this process, I totally should have been a theater kid. It’s super cool. But yeah. No. Have you felt the need to play catch up, as it were, in preparing for this then?

So while I wasn’t a drama geek in high school, I have loved watching musicals my whole life. My favorite, I think, is Little Shop of Horrors, and then there’s Annie, West Side Story, Hamilton, so for this I knew there was a certain way to approach it but I also didn’t want to make it just a paintby-numbers exercise. Especially because Alanis’ music is so unusual yet also so inherently theatrical and emotional.

Above all I hope this isn’t your typical jukebox musical. I mean, some are great, but with a lot of them there’s also this sense that the author is trying to shoehorn songs into the narrative. For this piece we’ve been trying to genuinely follow where these amazing songs take us and really feel it all out with truth and honesty.

How does this process contrast with writing for film or television?

I’ve been enjoying a tremendous amount of freedom with this and it’s amazing. I keep waiting for eight pages of notes on something like in TV but that doesn’t happen here; I’m not beholden to any advertisers and very few suits are involved. This is such a luxuriously long process, too: I’ve been working on this for a year and a half, maybe longer, and we get to run it over and over and over again. When you’re shooting something, once it’s shot, it’s very hard to change it: Reshoots are costly and controversial. Here, we get to reshoot, so to speak, as much as we’d like, and that’s just really awesome.

bailing me out with her genius.

What can you tell fans about working with Alanis Morissette? What’s she like as a person?

If you’re familiar with her music or podcast then you know her. She is incredibly honest and unfiltered, and that’s just so great. Really, she is everything I hoped for and wanted her to be. She also has this strong interest in therapy and self-help. And this is a show about a dysfunctional family learning how to heal, so her perspective on the matter has been super helpful. It should go without saying, but she’s a brilliant musician so she hears things in the music that’s just on another level; even the simplest change in phrasing is profound to her and that’s just so effing rad to witness.

I’ve noticed there’s a strong vein of Catholicism running through your work so am wondering if that, too, somehow found its way into this project?

One of my favorite songs in the show is “Forgiven” which is in part about the experience of growing up Catholic. When you grow up with that mindset you do prize and value suffering because we’re taught that it is the road to enlightenment and forgiveness. The concept of penance is definitely there, too, and is something that presently translates to my own life, as well. It’s a show about brutal honesty and one of the lessons, I think, to be gleaned is that the things which are most difficult to achieve often prove to be the most valuable. So there’s merit in the struggle. Which also relates to the title of the show: Jagged Little Pill, “swallow it down,” even though it’s hard or painful, doing so will ultimately be good for you.

Can you reveal to us anything more specific about the plot or more about the kinds of characters who populate this piece?

So more specifically it’s about a flawed and affluent family in Connecticut: a struggling married couple and their children who are very different from each other. One is more of an outcast and the other is more of a hero, and they are faced with a situation where they can either tell the truth and do the right thing and risk damaging their reputation in the community or keep it to themselves and sort of maintain a facade. It’s been very interesting for me as someone who grew up in a very proper and decent household with a family very much all about maintaining the status quo within our community. The question on our minds has been: If it came down to brass tacks, would any of us swallow our fears and dare to show our real faces?

Have you found yourself being more prescriptive or collaborative in the rehearsal hall?

Oh, I feel like I don’t even have the authority to be prescriptive; [director] Diane Paulus knows what she’s doing, and I’m very respectful of that. I want her opinion of everything I write on the page. And at the risk of sounding incredibly lazy, the music is so great it relieves a lot of my burden as the writer. It’s like, “Oh, well, that scene’s not quite there yet, but this next song just totally saves it.”

So, yeah, it’s nice to have someone like Alanis constantly CREATIVE TEAM PHOTO COURTESY OF ALANIS MORISSETTE >> JAGGED LITTLE PILL. 5.5–7.15. LOEB DRAMA CENTER, 64 BRATTLE ST., CAMBRIDGE. AMREP.ORG 12

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I imagine that’s a frightening question for many.

Relatedly, is it safe to presume that you enjoy horror movies?

Oh, I love horror.

This is one of my favorite questions then to ask: What scares you?

Um… Perhaps more appropriately: What scared you before having kids and what scares you now?

Oh, this is such a dark question.

I know, but let’s swallow it down.

Ha! All right, so before it was like the fear of someone hiding behind a shower curtain when I came home from work. Which is like still scary now. But at this point in my life and as a mom it’s like mundane horrors. Like disease.

Anxieties about my children: who they are, what they’ll become, what may or may not happen to them when they go off to school. Those sorts of things.

Do you find it helpful to write about what you fear?

Yeah, I was writing about motherhood and babies before having any, and it’s just a subject that fascinates me.

Being a mom now has definitely changed my perspective and has made me more interested in the responsibility of being a parent, asking what makes a good parent, am I a good parent? All of my anxiety about being a mom is just laid bare in these last few projects I’ve done. And yeah, it’s been scary. Right now, being separated from my family for so long, I’ve been suffering from “mommy guilt,” so to speak, as obnoxious as that phrase is. And yet I want to continue stepping outside of my comfort zone. Which is also scary. But I know I have to remind myself to keep pushing myself; I can’t just keep doing the same thing over and over again. You should always aim to grow.

On that note, what would you tell other writers out there to always keep in mind? What does it all come down to?

As a writer, the most valuable thing you have to offer is your individual self; that’s the one thing nobody else in the world can provide. I feel like sometimes some writers are trying so hard to adopt the voice of someone they admire. You must remember that your own voice is your calling card. That’s what you have that is truly unique. You might not have it all figured out just yet, but therein that uniqueness lies your expertise.

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EATS

FIRST LOOK: MAGNOLIA BAKERY A rare great hidden eat inside of Faneuil Hall

BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON

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Downtown Boston has a lot of great options for eating and drinking, but ask a local about the Quincy Market Food Colonnade at Faneuil Hall and there’s a good chance you’ll get an eyeroll, a headshake, or, in some cases, a “fuggedaboutit”— and we’re not talking any of the many different positive definitions of that term.

But don’t shrug off the food hall completely, as some decent options can be found there if you look hard enough, and now with the recent opening of Magnolia Bakery (a legendary bakeshop with roots in New York), the colonnade has suddenly become a bit of a destination spot for those who like sweet treats while making their way through the heart of the city.

Magnolia Bakery got its start in the West Village of Manhattan back in the mid-1990s and pretty much launched the cupcake craze, thanks in part to references to the place on both Sex and the City and Saturday Night Live. The business has since expanded a bit and now has six locations in New York and one each in Chicago, Los Angeles, and now Boston, along with a handful scattered through the Middle East, Korea, and Mexico as well. The original is still a special spot, residing on a quiet corner along a tree-shaded section of the far end of Bleecker Street in one of the most charming parts of Manhattan. Neither the space nor the location of the Boston outlet of Magnolia matches the feel of the original, but remember that the colonnade is basically a strip of stalls so not much can be done about the atmosphere, and the friendly service and little seating area—and its location right at the start of the food hall—do give it a better overall vibe than some of the other dining spots found there.

To many, Magnolia Bakery is all about the cupcakes, and the ones tried recently at the Faneuil Hall location seem to have the same great quality as those found in the West Village shop. The key here is the use of buttercream, a rich-tasting icing made with powdered sugar and butter that is often used in cakes and that Magnolia swirls on top of its cupcakes. The flavors offered at the Boston location include (depending on when you go) vanilla, chocolate, lemon, marble cake, black forest, s’mores, coconut, caramel, and more, as well as some additional flavors that can be found as specials. Magnolia also sells such items as brownies, cookies, muffins, and mini cheesecakes, and one of its signature items—banana pudding—has a decidedly local flavor at this shop in the form of a Boston cream pie banana pudding, though this may be one of those “get them while they last” items since it seemed to be an opening special here and may or may not be around in the future.

It may seem easy to brush off the opening of Magnolia Bakery in part because the cupcake craze seems to have died off and also because it may seem like just another chain in a boring food hall in a touristy section of Boston. But based on initial impressions, you might not want to write it off without giving it a try because the place—much like the one in the West Village—does seem to bring the boring old cupcake up to another level.

>> MAGNOLIA BAKERY. 200-299 FANEUIL HALL MARKETPLACE, BOSTON.

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POWER TRIP WHEEL OF TUNES

Dallas thrashers talk video games and mortgaging loans during the housing crisis

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Last year moved pretty fast, and thankfully Power Trip stopped to look around once in a while. After releasing its sophomore album, Nightmare Logic, in the spring, the Dallas thrash metal band saw its music spread farther than ever before. Now it seems as if vocalist Riley Gale, bassist Chris Whetzel, drummer Chris Ulsh, and guitarists Blake Ibanez and Nicky Stewart are standing on top of the metal world—or at least beside fellow giants like Obituary, Body Count, and Municipal Waste.

Though the album garnered them positive attention from publications and fans alike, it was their win for Metal Song of the Year at the 2017 Loudwire Music Awards— nominees included the aforementioned bands—that made their rise to fame sink in. Surrounded by their family and other music celebrities, the band members felt both flattered and surprised, especially since the award was determined based on streams instead of votes. Now, Power Trip are doing their best to share the spotlight by bringing a diverse lineup on tour of acts like hard rock band Sheer Mag and thrash crossover act Red Death.

“A small part of us was tired of—no knock to Obituary or Cannibal Corpse, who asked us out—doing straight metal tours. There’s a whole swatch of people into us who I don’t think want to see an all-metal show,” says Gale.

“Sheer Mag is a band we started running into about two years ago at the same festivals and became friends. We thought it would be cool to bring them on tour because they blur the line between rock and punk the way we do with metal and punk. It’s a kindred spirit sort of thing because we all came up the same kind of way in the same generation.”

To understand what they’re like offstage, we interviewed Riley Gale for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask musicians questions inspired by their song titles. With Nightmare Logic as the prompt, his answers are detailed and full of good intention—qualities that can get lost in the sheer volume of their music when headlining the Paradise Rock Club this Friday.

1. “Soul Sacrifice” What’s the biggest sacrifice you’ve had to make with the band going full time?

A normal romantic relationship. That’s probably the No. 1. That’s the hardest, being away for so long. When I date people, they tend to lighten up a bit more when I say, “Okay, I know this sounds stupid, but this is like dating a guy who’s at sea or fighting in the military, but way shittier and poorer.” There’s going to be a time where I’m gone for a month, home for a month, and then gone for three months.

That’s kind of a drop in the bucket of the big picture. I don’t want to be on tour for six months each year for the rest of my life. The idea is to get to a point where we don’t have to tour as much as we do.

You grow to miss a lot of things. Like I have a dog, and when I got my dog I never thought this band would become this big. So touring has a lot of difficulties mixed in and it gets hard after a while. That’s the biggest sacrifice,

having that moment of, “Oh shit, I had a bad day but I’m seven hours ahead in Europe so I can’t call someone to chat.” That gets difficult.

2. “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)” Since you’re a gamer as well, what are three video games you’d recommend to people who don’t play video games much?

Man, that’s so tough. I want them to be really good games that would get someone into gaming. Man, that’s a really fucking good question. I don’t know. This is so difficult. Okay, I do have one. We’ve been playing this on the bus. I got this game off Playstation and I’d forgotten about it for a while. It’s a marketplace game called Mother Russia Bleeds. It’s an old-school, side-scroller, beat-’em-up game but it’s got this cool little kick to it where the fighters in the game are addicted to a drug called nekro and you extract it out of people. So you beat people up like Streets of Rage-style to get health or different abilities. You pull the drug out of the needle and then shoot yourself up. It’s pixelated art, it’s all Russian themed, it’s pretty mindless, the soundtrack is this deep techno, and it’s a cool game. You can just button mash basically.

Another is Breath of the Wild, the new Zelda game, because that’s just a perfect video game. That’s something I feel like someone who has never played a video game before can pick that up and get a universal experience of what a game can do. There’s action and shooting, there’s crafting and RPG elements, you’ve got puzzles, and the Switch has those temples where there are physical puzzles where you have to make the right movements to get a ball in a hole. That’s a game where you can be like, “No, no, no, if you don’t like video games, this is what a video game should be.” Maybe it’s too complicated?

It has a steep learning curve, but once you get there it really opens up what you can do with games.

For my third answer, I’ve been playing this game called Arms a lot. I wish more people did. It’s a boxing game for Switch. You can play it with a regular controller or other ways, but the best way is obviously standing up and using the motion controls. It’s a boxing game that’s cartoonish and all the people have spring-loaded arms. Each glove has

different abilities. You basically box it out. The game has cool mechanics and a cool art style. Once you pick it up, next thing you know you’re throwing fake punches at your screen and dodging. I try to challenge people to it but most people won’t play it with me because they can’t handle it.

They can’t handle the skill I’ve got.

3. “Firing Squad” Have you ever been fired from a job before?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I got fired from Bank of America.

Actually, should I say that? Maybe if I want to get a job somewhere then it’s a bad look to have that in print. No, it’s fine. I got fired from Bank of America while working in their corporate home refinancing department. I processed loans for home mortgages during the whole housing crisis.

It’s funny if you go back and rewatch The Big Short. That’s whatwe were doing every day of our lives and kind of knew something was fucked up. This has nothing to do with why I was fired, but it was so strange. They were telling us to approve loans all the time to people who could not afford them. We would see their basic income and say, “These people can not afford this. Why are we doing this?” and our bosses were like, “It doesn’t matter; push it forward.” This was back in my early 20s. All of that happened, they made a movie about it, the government got bailed out, and we knew about all of this shit. But I ended up getting fired after working there for about three years when touring started to get in the way. The reason they used was pretty sad. They said I was using the internet too much and accused me of gambling. Of course everybody uses the internet though. I think they just had to cut staff down. It was a pop-up for a casino website, and I told them you could tell by the URL that it was a pop-up.

They were pretty candid with me, though: “Look, everybody uses the internet, but this is the reason we’ve decided to fire you.” Once I asked if I got unemployment and they said yes, then I was fine with it. I didn’t care as long as they didn’t tell my future employers I was a shitty employee, because I wasn’t.

FIND THE REST OF THE TRACKS FROM NINA'S PIECE AT DIGBOSTON.COM

>>POWER TRIP, SHEER MAG, FURY, RED DEATH. FRI 5.11. PARADISE ROCK CLUB, 967 COMM. AVE., ALLSTON. 6PM/ALL AGES/$16. CROSSROADSPRESENTS.COM

MUSIC EVENTS THU 05.10

POST-ROCK PERFORMANCES OF S/T AND YOUNG MOUNTAIN THIS WILL DESTROY YOU + ALEX ROLDAN

[Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 8pm/18+/$18. crossroadspresents.com]

16

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FRI 05.11

MELBOURNE PUNK FOR BEACH GETAWAYS ROLLING COASTAL BLACKOUT FEVER + BEEEF

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm.

Ave., Allston. 10pm/21+/$10. greatscottboston.com]

DIGBOSTON.COM

SUN 05.13

INDIE ROCK PERSISTENCE PAYS OFF WYE OAK + PALM

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$20. sinclaircambridge.com]

SUN 05.13

STONER ROCK THAT WILL ROCK YOUR LOWER END MELVINS + ALL SOULS [Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Allston. 7pm/18+/$22. crossroadspresents.com]

TUE 05.15

STILL ROCKIN’ THESE DAYS JACKSON BROWNE

[Blue Hills Bank Pavilion, 290 Northern Ave., Boston.

7:30pm/all ages/$72. bostonpavilion.com]

TUE 05.15

LIVING THE BEST POST-CRYSTAL CASTLES LIFE ALICE GLASS + PICTUREPLANE

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$20. sinclaircambridge.com]

MUSIC

DARKLANDS

Providence’s emo punk act transforms a breakup into a build-up | RESTAURANT | INTIMATE CONCERT VENUE | | URBAN WINERY | PRIVATE EVENT SPACE |

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Breaking up isn’t fun. If it were, more pre-collapse couples would bite the bullet the moment it was loaded. But sometimes, the pain of a breakup comes with extra baggage. If you’re in a particularly rough spot, or thrust into one after the relationship ends, then don’t be surprised if the resulting sting traces back to a less obvious and arguably more painful reason.

That was the case for Sam Patrick, the singer and guitarist of Providence emo shoegaze band Darklands. In the turbulent end of a breakup, he started feeling lost in addition to the built-in depression it often comes with. That loneliness transformed into something worse: isolation. So he, drummer Jeff Novak, and bassist David Marcotte set to work on putting the feeling—being trapped in the recurring nature of feeling lost without a home—to sound on their debut full-length Hate It Here, out May 18 via Atomic Action. Sometimes, you end up building homes in other people. Other times, those man-made structures collapse. The album captures what it’s like to watch everything crumble and how to muster the strength to try to build something new.

“I’ve moved around a little bit in life, within Providence and Boston,” explains Patrick. “I’ve lived in a bunch of different homes, held a bunch of different jobs, and lived with different people, but nowhere ever felt right. Even touring regularly, I never felt at home in any city we visited either. The last place I identified as a home was my parents’ house, and now that’s sort of unrecognizable, too. When you meet someone you’ve known on and off again for years and you gel in every possible way, someone who understands everything you’re about, including your worst parts, then your life picture becomes clearer. When things go horribly awry, all of that dissipates. You’re stuck with where you were before. This [breakup] in particular brought a moment of realization that sometimes things won’t work out between you two and you can’t do anything about it. You just have to learn how to deal with it. With all of that comes a lesson: You can’t expect other people to be your home.”

At once slick and grimy, Darklands create a coarse landscape of racing drums and waves of guitar on Hate It Here, like a combination of early Built to Spill (“Kennsington”) and crunchy Sonic Youth B-sides (“Northern Ignorance”). That’s due in part to the nonverbal communication the band’s members have created. Patrick and Novak in particular have developed a system to express how to flesh out songs without understanding the first step of how to play one another’s instruments. The two expand one another’s skeletal songs with surprising comfort.

Lyrically, Hate It Here plays like the low point of realizing your mistakes, including self-assured choices that reveal themselves to be naive moves only in retrospect.

Through reverb-filtered hollars and guttural mantras, Patrick finds a way to morph a wrong turn of events into an album of miniature, relatable attainments. That’s present on “Freemont,” which was the hardest song for the band to write. On it, Patrick found himself facing newly vivid lyrics, where a previous topic shed its ambiguous indifference to reveal an undeniably specific and personal lyrical core. He had to come to terms with himself through honesty. It was only then that he could feel more comfortable reflecting on the past, even if little progress had come from it at that point. Elsewhere, those lyrical reflections are masked in thick fuzz. The aptly titled “The Hill I Choose to Die on” is a wholly self-aware romp through indifference and obstinance. Like Darklands’ disinterest in letting others dictate how the band sounds, operates, or evolves, the song hurls itself into high production and full-volume instrumentation.

While Patrick, and to some extent the band, is still pretty down on himself, at the very least, funneling his energy into music has been beneficial. The insular nature of Providence’s music scene has helped breed a familiarity and consistency necessary for the band’s growth. Back in 2013, Darklands formed after a failed attempt on Patrick’s part to play music in a different band. It wasn’t until he learned to believe in himself that Darklands came into existence.

“A higher-profile project was going to start between a few people I knew in Providence,” he explains. “They were from hardcore bands but wanted to do something in the ’90s alternative sound. Immediately, I thought, ‘This is going to be it. If I’m ever going to be in a band, this is the one.’ The audition went abysmally. At that point, I hadn’t been playing guitar too much and was very unprepared. It was discouraging. I wanted to throw out all of my stuff. But Sean Murphy from Verse told me it takes a lot of work and encouraged me to stick with it, so I did. Here we are after all of that work.”

That hard work will be in full flex at Darklands’ album release show at Great Scott this Monday. With musical friends Sneeze, Twin Foxes, and Saccharine performing as well, Darklands are guaranteed a night worth relishing in, no matter how tempting it is to put themselves down. The post-breakup world has been one with ample time to establish new hobbies and strengthen Darklands’ sound. At the very least, it’s proven there’s plenty of land to find a new home ground, too, and Hate It Here is part of the long process of building oneself back up.

“Without sounding too pathetic, I can be very hard on myself,” says Patrick. “Even now, I have a hard time separating myself from the record and listening objectively. All I hear are faults or things that could have been changed. I’m like that with pretty much everything in life. Being kind to yourself is hard. That said, I’m proud of how the album personifies us as a band, possible flaws included.”

LIVE MUSIC • PRIVATE EVENTS

Beverage Events

5/10

The Slum Raisins, Elsewhere, & Greg Allen’s Fringe Religion Progressive punk, rock & funk

5.10

5/11

Tour de France Wine Dinner

Beantown Underground With P. Goods, Treva Holmes, Jay Boston, Stu Lee & 4th Quarter

5.11 Oregon Wine Month

Walnut City Wine Dinner

Hip hop extravaganza 5/12

Berndsen w/Hermigervill, & Citrusphere New wave, pop from Iceland

5.13

5.12 City Winery & Improv Asylum Present

Whose Wine Is It Anyway?

mothers day brunch blooms and bubbles

5/12

Kanga, CMB, HAEX, & The Blood of Others

5.16

Experimental electronic

5.17

ChardonnYAY!

w/ Wente Family Estates

5/13

Them Evils. Murcielago

Rosé Fête

A Rosé Tasting Party

California Rock 5/13

Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, Trabant

6.9

5.22

Scout Cookies & Wine Pairing Party

Early rock and roll, & blues

City Winery & Improv Asylum Present

Whose Wine Is It Anyway?

156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA 617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com a @oncesomerville b/ONCEsomerville

6.13

8.8

passport to wine (monthly class series)

passport to wine (monthly class series)

Austria

greece

upcoming shows

5.11-12 | art garfunkel

5.20 | Jamie Kent w/ opener Hayley Reardon

5.23 |Twisted Pine & Upstate Rubdown

6.1 | kevin nealon BOOK YOUR NEXT EVENT WITH US

email eventsboston@citywinery.com for more info

80 beverly st. Boston Ma 02114 (617) 933-8047 |www.citywinery.com/boston

>>DARKLANDS, SNEEZE, TWIN FOXES, SACCHARINE. MON 5.14. GREAT SCOTT, 1222 COMM. AVE., ALLSTON. 8:30PM/18+/$10. GREATSCOTTBOSTON.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

THEATER REVIEWS PERFORMING ARTS

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

JARED REINFELDT. PHOTO BY NILE SCOTT SHOTS.

JUST A LITTLE TOUCH OF STAR QUALITY: JARED REINFELDT SHINES IN GEORGIA MCBRIDE

If the idea of a play filled with snarky references to Gypsy, the Von Trapp family, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof sounds like something right up your alley, then there’s a hell of a good time waiting for you at Stoneham’s Greater Boston Stage Company. But if the name Frances Gumm doesn’t mean anything to you, all such references might leave you feeling a little left out.

The Legend of Georgia McBride, Matthew Lopez’s legitimately funny 2015 play, is the story of a down-on-hisluck Elvis impersonator who, by some Peggy Sawyer/Gypsy Rose Lee-like twist of backstage fate, finds himself thrust on stage as a last-minute replacement for a drag queen too drunk to go on.

The play shines brightest when it isn’t trying too hard to be serious, which luckily is most of the time. But for all of the play’s hilarity, this production is most memorable for the enigmatic starring performance at its core.

In what appears to be his first leading role on a Boston professional stage, Jared Reinfeldt has that unlearnable ya-either-got-it-or-ya-ain’t special something that gives his performance a spark (and, in this case, a sparkle) that shines with near-blinding intensity.

Reinfeldt plays Casey, a good ol’ Southern boy who is no longer able to make ends meet doing his Elvis impression at Cleo’s, a godforsaken Panama City Beach bar that, as one character says, even Anne Frank would have passed on.

(Cleo’s is run by the crusty Eddie, played by Ed Peed.) Casey’s been spending more on gas than he makes, and his rent check just bounced because he ordered a pizza.

Oh, and his girlfriend is pregnant.

Backstage at Cleo’s on the night of Casey’s final performance, he crosses paths with a pair of drag queens, Miss Tracy Mills (a sensational Rick Park) and the toughas-nails Rexy, short for Anorexia Nervosa, played by Alex Pollock. (Pollock also doubles as Jason, Casey’s dopey landlord who can’t pay his mortgage if Casey doesn’t pay his rent.)

But Rexy passes out drunk before she can take the stage that night, quite a feat given that she “once gave a flawless performance of Barbra Streisand’s ‘Jingle Bells’ after three Oxys and a Zima.”

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Casey is quickly thrown in drag and shoved on stage to perform an Edith Piaf number. The crowd eats it up, and Casey becomes a regular drag performer with Miss Tracy, calling himself Georgia McBride and earning more money than he ever made as an Elvis impersonator.

They’ve got a good thing going until Casey’s girlfriend, Jo (Jade Guerra), finds out that he’s been performing in drag and Rexy returns from rehab with a vengeance, eager to get rid of Casey and get

back into the show.

The play’s more serious tones emerge in these later scenes, particularly as questions of gender and sexuality swirl around Jo and Casey (her first question when she finds out that her boyfriend has been doing drag is if that means he’s gay). And although the play only glances in this general direction, it brings some heft to the evening.

It also touches on the potentially problematic way that Casey—a straight, white man—mindlessly profits from drag, something that people like Rexy consider anything but a hobby. Drag is who Rexy is. “Drag is a raised fist in a sequined glove,” she tells him.

Lopez only flirts with such seriousness, never quite engaging fully with the very interesting ways that his play blurs the lines of gender. (Would Georgia McBride be stronger if he had? I’m not sure.) His gift for bitchy, campy humor, though, is uncanny. “I just took an Ambien,” Miss Tracy warns Casey at one point. “I’m gonna turn into Jessica Lange at any second, so you’d better make it quick.”

The impact of the play is somewhat degraded by Alex Pollock’s off-the-mark performance as Rexy, who is given some of the play’s absolute best jokes. He’s appropriately standoffish, but he does not navigate the bitchy zingers with ease. His poor comic timing is a problem throughout, and as a result this Rexy is a missed opportunity.

Director Russell Garrett’s production is largely irresistible, but I found myself cringing at the tasteless way that he staged Rexy’s performance to Amy Winehouse’s Rehab, writhing around on the floor with a bottle of alcohol and pretending to pass out. Rexy is better than that, and while most drag queens engage with larger-than-life depictions of their treasured divas, seldom do they devolve into cruelty and disrespect the way that Garrett does here.

The other drag numbers, which Garrett also staged, are merely adequate. (Monica Giordano’s sound design doesn’t help matters.)

Reinfeldt may be this production’s irresistible star, but Rick Park is the beating heart of this Georgia McBride. As Miss Tracy Mills, a queen who has had her fair share of ups and downs, Park’s performance is both deeply felt and wildly funny.

But at the end of the day, it is Reinfeldt’s impossible charm and organic talent that make this Legend of Georgia McBride something worth celebrating.

THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE. THROUGH 5.20 AT GREATER BOSTON STAGE COMPANY, 395 MAIN ST., STONEHAM. GREATERBOSTONSTAGE.ORG

DAYS OF THEIR LIVES: A SOPHOMORIC, SOAP-OPERATIC ALLEGIANCE AT SPEAKEASY STAGE

It’s hard not to at least try to root for Allegiance, the awfully bad but well-intentioned musical that is currently limping through its East Coast regional premiere at SpeakEasy Stage.

The musical, which opened on Broadway in 2015 after a 2012 world premiere in San Diego, received mixed reviews and shuttered after only three months of regular performances. It also failed to be nominated for a single Tony Award, if you’re the kind of person that uses awards as a barometer of quality.

In short, it shouldn’t be news to anyone that Allegiance is—and it does pain me to say it—a terrible musical.

The draw of Allegiance was George Takei, who starred in the original production and whose childhood memories in an internment camp are the true story that is said to have inspired the musical.

The inherent flaws of the musical aside, SpeakEasy’s production, directed by Paul Daigneault, doesn’t do the material any favors. Marred by unconvincing performances and devoid of any type of finesse usually found in a professional production, this Allegiance is as unconvincing as it gets.

While the general framework is grounded in history and in turn feels frequently like a history lesson, the story surrounding the family at its core—and all of its several subplots—is as melodramatic as a soap opera and as emotionally manipulative as a Lifetime movie. The tearful epilogue, which seemed to elicit instant tears from those around me, had me rolling my eyes so hard that for a moment, one of my contacts got stuck somewhere in the far recesses of my eye socket.

The cliche-ridden and dramatically challenged book, by Marc Acito, Jay Kuo, and Lorenzo Thione (Did it really take three people to come up with this?), is an ideal fit for the forgettable score, also by Jay Kuo. (One of the lyrical gems?

“It will be all right, there’s a way through this night.”) I will say that the small orchestra sounds great, but with Matthew Stern in charge, that isn’t a surprise.

I suppose that Paul Daigneault did what he could with the staging, but I am shocked by how amateur the performances are. Sam Tanabe, who appeared in Allegiance on Broadway, has a paper-thin voice and struggles with the basic demands of the role. The ensemble, in general, leaves much to be desired.

Faring best are Melissa Geerlof as the white nurse who pays the ultimate price for her feelings for Sammy (Tanabe), and Michael Hisamoto—one of my favorite local actors—who plays the national secretary of the Japanese American Citizens League who successfully lobbied the government to allow Japanese-Americans to enlist. The ever-charming Tyler Simahk is as reliable as he always is, and Grace Yoo is just lovely as Kei, Sammy’s sister. Gary Thomas Ng, in two roles, brings a sweetness and some much-needed heart to the proceedings.

Well intentioned as it may be, this is an Allegiance better left unpledged.

ALLEGIANCE. THROUGH 6.2 AT SPEAKEASY STAGE COMPANY, 527 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. SPEAKEASYSTAGE.COM

GALLERY REVIEWS VISUAL ARTS

Pilgrims, Feeling of a Feeling, and Art in the Age of the Internet

BY FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH AND JOHN PYPER

Chuck Webster: Pilgrims: Drawings 2017-2018—Steven Zevitas Gallery The naivete in Chuck Webster’s work is misleading. What looks like pan watercolors and marker doodles on sheets of bond is shellac-based inks on vintage paper. The noodly line work comes from the hand of a National Academy affiliated fellow who went from a residency at the MacDowell Colony to another at the American Academy in Rome. Hilton Kramer’s remark about Philip Guston as a mandarin pretending to be a stumblebum comes to mind.

That said, Guston was on to something and so is Webster. Seussian landscapes featuring bizarre hill towns and citadels have newly emerged in his images. Mallets walk about them, their shafts bending and slanting to regard the ground, the sky, and each other.

These are studied attempts to deal with the figure-in-a-landscape aspect of historical Italian painting, even though the palette barely deviates from the color wheel. They would succeed better as oils, and larger. But their necessary component, serious unseriousness, is in place.

Show runs until 5.26. Steven Zevitas Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave., #47, Boston. stevenzevitasgallery.com —Franklin Einspruch

Suara Welitoff: The Feeling of a Feeling—Anthony Greaney Suara Welitoff has been capturing still movement throughout her career.

Looking out the window during a train ride, flowers moving gently in the wind, the parallax view of word on page, but still more. Her lens cares about awareness. It captures a sumptuous moment and makes it slow enough and last long enough that we can finally see it for what it is.

Welitoff doesn’t slow time down and petrify it into a fearful monument.

These moments are not thickened to sludge by their slowing. The images are a light and airy lo-fi album captured in one take and released on cassette only. There is a glitch or streak here and there created by the limits of technology, but they’re surprisingly readable considering their technical source. We drink in the hues of these images, bumping up only against time, the endlessness of the loop. Like ambient music, it is a mixture of sensations and formal ratios. With only four pieces in the show, it is intimate and invites focus and admiration.

Show runs until 6.23. Anthony Greaney, 438 Somerville Ave., Somerville. anthonygreaney.com

—John Pyper

Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today—Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston This sprawling exhibition may be the most ambitious show that the ICA has ever attempted at its waterfront location. It also feels original in a way that the ICA does not often achieve, with less emphasis on oversold contemporary staples and more on fresher figures like Juliana Huxtable, Amalia Ulman, and aaajiao.

Enormous credit goes to curator Eva Respini for the fact that the show is orderly and not like, well, the internet. A thematic organization, with sections like “Hybrid Bodies” and “States of Surveillance,” coheres rooms of disparate art sensibly.

At the physical and philosophical heart of the show is Safe Conduct (2016) by Ed Atkins, a CGI animation on multiple screens in which a distressingly surreal and unflinchingly bloody choreography plays out at an airport security checkpoint. Like the logger atop the exhibition’s dedicated site that posts your physical location, it prompts surprise at what is possible and dread about what we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Show runs until 5.20. Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston. icaboston.org —Franklin Einspruch These shorts are being simultaneously published at Delicious Line, deliciousline.org.

Franklin Einspruch is the editor-in-chief of Delicious Line. John Pyper is a curator and writer who lives in Cambridge.

A SEXY SLOW-BURN”

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

KRABAPPEL APOSTLES COMEDY

Five questions with Somerville’s Simpsons trivia masters

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

Jacklyn Boyland: Like Daniel San in Karate Kid with waxon/wax-off, I had been unknowingly training to be a Simpsons quiz mistress my whole life. For me, high school was at a time when there would be at least four rerun episodes of the Simpsons and Seinfeld. It was the prototype Netflix binge. I monopolized the landline every night downloading Simpsons audio snippets via 128k modem.

As a teenager, Simpsons quotes got metabolized into everyday life. Monday lunch table talk would quote from last night’s Simpsons, and Saturday Night Live, and if you had no clue … you were SOL. There was no DVR or YouTube.

I had been unknowingly training to be a Simpsons quiz mistress my whole life.

Are there different levels of Simpsons nerds who showed up to the first one? How might they be categorized?

DV: There are many levels of Simpsons fandom, and part of the challenge is coming up with questions that are easy enough to make newcomers and casual fans feel welcome, while still coming up with challenging questions to keep the higher-scoring teams from running away with it early. We’ve gotten to know quite a few of the regulars, whose backgrounds range from teachers to musicians to blue-collar workers to… uh… scientician.

JB: There’s a range of clientele. There’s some people who’d definitely be hanging around with Otto and smelling like his jacket, some of Comic Book Guy’s peers if he had any, a handful of Professor Frinks with honestto-God PhDs in things other than late-20th-century animation. It’s not a total sausage fest; there’s a lot of Lisa Simpsons and even some Lindsay Nagles. A handful of times our youngest players have been 10 years old, just like Bart Simpson himself.

Are questions from later seasons the real stumpers?

Since nobody has seen that shit?

DV: We tend to avoid doing too many questions from beyond season 12 or 13. When a newer episode question does appear, it’s often met with a roomful of groans and the occasional “Boo-Urns.” The hard questions are usually just more obscure pieces of knowledge, like what is Springfield’s zip code (58008), which read upside down on a calculator would be “BOOBS,” or naming all of Apu and Manjula’s children.

JB: We hold firmly to the idea that only seasons 1-13 are truly canon, and it really starts to flatline after season 17. … That being said, I can’t in my heart of hearts shit on the Simpsons. It’s like the elderly family dog who’s just lazing around the house, but you remember the spunky days.

Are there any other general areas that you see being an Achilles’ heel almost across the board? What kind of stuff do even the real Simpsons geniuses tend to miss?

DV: The toughest questions we’ve had? There’s no limit to how obscure we can make the questions, or requiring teams to think of multiple answers across many seasons (i.e., naming everyone who has voiced Maggie at some point). But in terms of less-difficult questions that stump a lot of people, I’d say we get a lot of “good guess but no” when we have a books-andliterature-themed round, as well as presidential trivia (when in doubt, go with Nixon).

JB: I’d say the stumpiest questions are the ones you can’t quote because it’s more of a visual element.

For instance: “Draw Dignity.” Or, “What are some of the animals/objects shown on the ‘food chain’ in the educational film Meat and You: Partners in Freedom?”

We have to ask you a question about Apu by law, so please, say anything not too ignorant about that controversy, and how it might play into the evening?

DV: Attendees’ opinions on the matter haven’t really affected any of the trivia or the outcomes, whatever their opinions may be. I’m generally content to let others on Facebook duke it out on the history and future of Apu. Does the character need to be put to bed? No more than the show itself at this point, I’d argue. However, one of my favorite episodes is from season 7, titled “Much Apu About Nothing.” It’s surprisingly relevant for being 20 years old and how it addresses casual racism, perception of stereotypes, and scapegoating immigrants for something completely unrelated (in this case the tax increase pertaining to the Bear Patrol). Still, you’re not going to hear me say, “Thank you come again” at the end of the night, either.

JB: It doesn’t play into the evening. We love Apu as one of the original characters who’s occasionally had a heartwarming moment of three dimensionality. We live in a world where The Problem with Apu made perfect sense to me, but we still love classic Simpsons episodes.

Comedy changes with time to reflect society. … Today people cringe at Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. A show that’s been on for 30 years like the Simpsons should update its humor and characters for the time it reflects.

Whenever that happens, I’ll catch the rerun.

Check out Simpsons Trivia at ONCE in Somerville on Tue 5.15 and approximately every four to six weeks.

ONCEsomerville.com for more info.

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SIMPSONS SAMPLE TRIVIA 1) What does Miss Hoover’s class eat after watching the film Meat and You: Partners in Freedom?

2) What politician was once issued an honorary degree by Sir Oinks A Lot, the mascot of Springfield A&M? 3) When Homer tries to buy a gun in the episode “Cartridge Family,” what song plays while he endures the mandatory background check?

4) What invention does Comic Book Guy destroy by calling it useful?

5) According to Ned, if it’s tangy and brown, you’ve entered what municipality?

6) What store does Otto accuse of engaging in false advertising?

7) What two US presidents have lived across the street from the Simpsons?

8) Who is actually buried in the grave that Homer believes his mother is in?

9) According to Homer, what is the name of the mother possum that lives on board the Springfield Monorail?

10) Name the three members of the Springfield Nuclear Plant softball team who are also in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

ANSWERS: 1) tripe. 2) Richard Nixon. 3) “The Waiting” by Tom Petty. 4) sarcasm detector. 5) Cider Town. 6) Stoner’s Pot Palace. 7) George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford. 8) Walt Whitman. 9) Bitey. 10) Ozzie Smith, Ken Griffey Jr., Wade Boggs.

Why you and your team? Why and how the fuck are you qualified to host and write Qs for Simpsons trivia?

David Virr: It was an idea I’d had for years, and I was seeing on Simpsons Facebook groups that people were having success doing it in other cities. I pitched the idea to JJ Gonson at ONCE, who gave it a shot, so therefore it became us! Like most of the attendees, who are generally aged early 20s through late 40s, I grew up with the show.

Being a shy, generally stay-out-of-trouble teenager gave me plenty of time to stay in and watch, and rewatch, and rewatch, the classic ’90s/early 2000s episodes.

This product contains zero THC

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

SAVAGE LOVE

IN NEED OF DICK TRICKS

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

I’m a 37-year-old male. I’ve been with my wife for 15 years. I know that passion transitions in a long-term relationship, but I’m having a hard time finishing lately. Yes, I’m on SSRIs—antidepressants—but that has only exacerbated the issue. We all know that a lot of people who own a vagina enjoy foreplay to help the orgasms along. Will foreplay help people who own a penis get to the moment faster? I’m pretty sure I know the answer, and I figured you’re the one to ask what the best foreplay options are because your sexual knowledge is vast and you regularly deal with two penises at a time. As someone who pleasures a penis and who has a penis that is pleasured, what is the best preparation to get guys off before the insertion happens?

Seeking Weapons Of Male Penile Satisfaction Foreplay isn’t just for vagina-havers, SWOMPS! Penis-havers have nerve endings all over their bodies—inside ’em, too—and while many younger men don’t require much in the way of foreplay, older men and/or men taking SSRIs often benefit from additional forms of stimulation both prior to intercourse and during intercourse. Like tit play. I know some men can’t go there because that tit-play shit—like feelings, musicals, sit-ups, and voting for women—could turn you gay. But if you’re up for it, SWOMPS, have the wife play with or even clamp your tits, and then shove a plug in your ass that stimulates your prostate while also remembering to engage what’s often called “the largest sex organ”: your brainz. Talk dirty to each other! If you’re already proficient at JV dirty talk—telling ’em what you’re about to do (“I’m going to fuck the shit out of you”), telling ’em what you’re doing (“I’m fucking the shit out of you”), telling ’em what you did (“I fucked the shit out of you”)—move on to varsity dirty talk: Talk about your fantasies, awesome experiences you’ve had in the past, things you’d like to try or try again with your partner. To get your dick there—to push past those SSRIs—fire on all cylinders (tits, hole, brain, mouth, and cock) before and during insertion.

I’m a 32-year-old English guy, and this morning I was diagnosed as HIV-positive. I’m in a bit of a state. I haven’t told anyone, and I needed to get it out. I’m in a long-term, mostly monogamous relationship, but my boyfriend is overseas for work at the moment, so I can’t really talk to him about it. So I’m talking to you.

Diagnosed And Dazed And Confused I’m so sorry, DADAC. I hope you have a friend you can confide in, because you need a shoulder to cry on and I can’t provide that for you here.

What I can provide is some perspective. I’m just a little older than you—okay, I’m a whole lot older than you. I came out in the summer of 1981—and two years later, healthy, young gay men started to sicken and die. During the 1980s and most of the 1990s, learning you were HIV-positive meant you had a year or two to live. Today, a person with HIV is expected to live a normal life span—so long as they have access to treatment and they’re taking their meds. And once you’re on meds, DADAC, your viral load will fall to undetectable levels and you won’t be able to pass HIV on to anyone else (undetectable = uninfectious). Arguably, your boyfriend and your other sex partners are safer now that you know than they were before you were diagnosed. Because it’s not HIV-positive men on meds who are infecting people, it’s men who aren’t on meds because they don’t know they’re HIV-positive.

I don’t mean to minimize your distress, DADAC. The news you just received is distressing and life changing. But it’s not as distressing as it was three decades ago, and it doesn’t mean your life is over. I remember holding a boyfriend on the day he was diagnosed as HIVpositive more than 25 years ago, both of us weeping uncontrollably.

His diagnosis meant he was going to die soon. Yours doesn’t. You have a lot of time left, and if you get into treatment and take your meds, DADAC, you will live a long and healthy life, a life filled with love, connection, and intimacy. Spend some time feeling sorry for yourself, feel the fuck out of those feelings, and then go live your life—live it for all the guys who didn’t get to celebrate their 33rd birthdays.

P.S. Don’t wait until your boyfriend returns to tell him. He needs to get tested right away.

On the Lovecast, Dr. Lori Brotto on asexuals: savagelovecast.com.

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COMEDY EVENTS THU 05.10

THE BREWERY COMEDY TOUR @ DORCHESTER BREWING COMPANY

An environment they truly can feel at home in.

Featuring: Lance Weiss, James Myers, Gianmarco Soresi, Josh Accardo, Chris Griggs, Joseph Vecsey, Kelsey Claire Hagen, Madelein Smith, John Saponaro, Zack Hammond, Antonio Aguilar, Mike Earley, Tyler Fischer, Justin Watts, & Cody Woods.

1250 MASS AVE., DORCHESTER | 7PM | $15 THU 05.10

HEADLINERS IN THE SQUARE @ JOHN HARVARD’S

Featuring: Mike Dorval, AJ Hapenny, Tom Kelly, Shyam Subramanian, Andrew Della Volpe, Josh Filipowski & more.

33 DUNSTER ST., CAMBRIDGE | 9PM | FREE FRI 05.11

SCIENCE COMEDY NIGHT @ GREAT SCOTT IN ALLSTON

Science Comedy night comes to Boston! Based in DC, Science Comedy night is a show where only science jokes are allowed. The show has been featured on BBC World News and in The Washington Post.

This show features comedienne Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, who was once a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and a two-time MIT graduate. Dhaya changed careers to pursue a life in stand-up comedy that has taken her all over the country. She is the 2016 winner of the Liz Carpenter Political Humor Award (previously awarded to Samantha Bee and Wanda Sykes) and was named “The Bay Area’s 11 Best Standup Comedians”, and “Women to Watch” by media stations in San Francisco where she currently lives. Comedy Central Asia crowned Dhaya the Grand Prize Winner of “The Ultimate Comedy Challenge” filmed in Singapore. She’s been a frequent storyteller on NPR’s Snap Judgment and hosts San Francisco’s monthly Moth StorySLAM. She hosted the premier year of the Emmy award-winning series High School Quiz Show on PBS’s WGBH. The show also features Kasha Patel, who is the producer of Science Comedy shows in Washington D.C. She works as a science journalist in the daytime and moonlights as a stand-up comedian. She hosted a mini-series on NASA TV and has been featured on the Travel Channel.

1222 COMM AVE., ALLSTON | 7PM | $10 SAT 05.12

DON’T TELL BOSTON

Secret locations. Secret comedians. BYOB. Comedy’s Worst Kept Secret.

Don’t Tell Comedy is a secret comedy show that hosts some of the best and brightest comedians in the United States. This time around we will be in Boston, MA in the Allston neighborhood. Purchase a ticket and the exact location will be emailed to you by our event coordinator the day of the show. donttellcomedy.com

ALLSTON | 7:30PM | $20-$30 SUN 05.13

EAST BOSTON COMEDY @ MAVERICK MARKETPLACE

Featuring: Jere Pilapil, Srilatha Rajamani, Kenny Capozzi, Troy Burditt, Michelle Sui, Emily Ruskowski, John Paul Rivera, & Katie Que. Hosted by Ethan Andre

154 MAVERICK ST., BOSTON | 8PM | FREE WED 05.16

THE COMEDY STUDIO PRESENTS @ REMNANT BREWING CO.

Featuring: Paul Landwehr, Stephen Mc Connon, Liam McGurk, Al Park, Gloria Rose, & Pamela Ross.

2 BOW MARKET WAY SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5

Lineup & shows to change without notice. For more shows & info visit BostonComedyShows.com

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