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First, a content notice: Sexual assault victims may want to sit this one out.

One way to write this column would have been to simply copy PRIESTS RAPE LITTLE KIDS and then paste it over and over for 600 words. I suppose that would have made a point.

But it wouldn’t make the point I think needs to be made, which is that it is time to stop grabbing these collars with kid gloves. The Catholic Church is the most vile institution on the planet, a pedophilic cesspool years beyond potential rehabilitation. Strip back the tradition and the power and the hypocritical accoutrements, and all you’re left with is a circle jerk, some cheap red wine, and generations of believers cursed by physical and mental lacerations.

The emperor has no clothes, and because of the inexplicable complicity that has flown in the face of the most vile rape offenses one could possibly imagine, neither did thousands of the children in the church’s care for god knows how long.

On the heels of horrors that have come to light since a redacted version of a grand jury investigation into Pennsylvania clergy was released last week—a document that features, among other sins, details of plots targeting the most vulnerable kids—it’s time to use these facts about the Catholic Church against them. Sort of like the way President Trump uses lies against immigrants; if conservative voters acknowledged how much more likely men of the cloth are to be sexual savages than are migrants from south of the border, the POTUS would be able to campaign for reelection by pledging to build moats around these crass dens of felonious iniquity.

To think that such an evil bastion has been given any kind of platform to engage in public conversations about sexuality and gender is a disgrace to the outlets that facilitate the bloviation, as well as to anyone who sits around and lets it slide. On Meet the Press on Sunday, one of the talking knuckleheads discussing the news out of Pennsylvania noted how badly they felt about having to hash the news out on a Sunday. With that kind of sentimental nonsense in the air, I doubt that my suggestion—to openly confront and question Catholics any chance you’re given, and to insist that the children in your family are kept far away from churches—will catch on. Still, it’s worth a try.

Finally, I won’t say outright that I feel this strategy should apply to all organized cults and religions, other than to say that Catholics wondering why journalists and prosecutors have turned a blind eye to sexual misconduct in other stables of worship would be on to something.

When it comes to touching children, nobody can touch the Catholic Church; nevertheless, if we checked court records across the United States to examine the lawsuits filed against people of God in every denomination, Halliburton would probably go into the moat-building business.

And those are just the cases we have access to. If we knew about the shit that happens behind closed doors and gets swept under the rug, the feds would have to work around the clock to update local sex offender registries, while law enforcers would have more evictions on their hands than following the subprime lending plummet.

That kind of massive effort may not be manageable, but the Catholic Church is good place to start.

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UNRESPONSIVE NEWS TO US

The Massachusetts public records law fails three out of three times

BY MAYA SHAFFER OF CRITICAL MASS Last month we reported that we’re seeking records related to the deportation of a Boston Public Schools student.

The deportation was notable because an incident report written by an East Boston High School resource officer was used against the student in a deportation hearing, raising questions about how the schools, police, and ICE were sharing information.

In the wake of that scandal, I requested all communications between ICE and BPS, the Boston Police Department-run Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), and the Massachusetts State Police-run Commonwealth Fusion Center.

To date, none of the three agencies have provided an actual response to my requests made on June 26.

After an update to the state’s records law was put in place in 2016, I predicted that the new law’s timeline would allow agencies to spend months stalling and enable them to violate the protocol without consequences. That’s what’s happening with all three agencies in this case, with each one putting their own unique spin on how to circumvent the rules.

BPS simply didn’t bother to respond. BPD is defying an order from the state to respond. The state police response stands out—an MSP attorney wrote that I would need 4

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to waive the legal window they had to respond to my request, or else they’d just claim that the records don’t exist. They then conceded that their new IT system makes it technically impossible for them to meet the deadline for responding to records requests.

STRIKE ONE In late June, I put in a request to the MSP looking for communications, related to immigration, between them and ICE, local schools, and resource officers. On July 11, the day when its full response was due, MSP attorney Alycia DeAngelis replied for the first time, requesting that I narrow the date range for my inquiry. Five minutes later, I did so, after which the scandal-prone MSP, already recognized as one of the least transparent government agencies in the country, employed a hitherto unheard-of tactic: Their lawyer refused to conduct a search for the records I requested unless I agreed to extend her time to respond by a week.

The Mass public records law is unambiguous—a full response is due in 10 business days. As such, I declined, writing, “I’m not going to agree to an extension. Your office has had my request for weeks and is only seeking clarification on the day it’s due. I’m sorry that your office

failed to address this in a timely manner.”

It is the MSP’s legal responsibility to respond, which makes its failure to do so a crime. Furthermore, the fact that DeAngelis waited until the day the response was due to ask for me to narrow my request suggests that the MSP didn’t begin to fill the request until the last day possible.

The law tasks records access officers with providing access to records “without unreasonable delay,” so waiting until the very last day possible to even try to fill a request is a potential violation in and of itself.

The MSP’s response was the most gangsterish legal dodge I have seen in years of seeking public records.

DeAngelis first claimed, “Your request was vague,” but in the following sentence admitted that she already conducted a cursory search based on the info provided.

She went on to note that she had prepared to have a full search done, but doing so would require the agency “to outsource … because the Department’s internal IT office no longer performs this function.” This outsourcing, DeAngelis claims, would take more than the 10 business days allowable by law—an admission by an MSP attorney that they have a new system in place that may prevent them from complying with the public records law.

The email from DeAngelis continued: “If you do not

want the Department to move forward processing your request, please let me know and I will discontinue efforts to locate the information you request with these additional parameters appears to be looking for.” This was an attempt to shift the blame for the delay onto “additional parameters,” which is laughable because the only new information she had was a narrower timeframe. It actually should have been much easier to search.

In the end, I did not agree to allow the MSP to ignore the deadline set by the records law. I also did not ask DeAngelis to discontinue the search. After waiting nearly a month and getting no further response, on Aug 9 I filed an appeal to the supervisor of records in the secretary of the Commonwealth’s office.

STRIKE TWO The best part of the awful records law is that it punishes agencies that fail to respond in a timely manner by not allowing them to assess fees. The BPD is evading the law by returning correspondence that does not meet any of the legal standards—for one, the department sent what appears to be a form letter claiming it would eventually respond and assess fees at that time. Meanwhile, under the public records law, agencies are not allowed to assess their own fees after 10 business days.

A day after sending that form letter, the BPD emailed me again saying it needed clarification about my request and instructed me to call to discuss it. This is improper—the department knew that it was violating the law and would be facing appeal (I have appealed its non-responses in the past) and knew a phone discussion couldn’t be included in my appeal, since there wouldn’t be a record of it. I declined and asked to address the issue on email, to which the department replied, “The request you have submitted is too broad and non-specific, the Boston Police Department will require further clarification in order to process this request.”

I have repeatedly asked what information it is looking for, and the department has not responded. I put in an appeal to the supervisor of records, whose job it is to oversee the state’s transparency law, seeking an order for the BPD to respond. I also requested that the office address the issue of police asking requesters to call them, as well as the form letter that the department used to claim it would attempt to illegally assess fees.

The supervisor’s office, run by Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin, ignored everything but the underlying nonresponse issue, simply ruling that the BPD had 10 more business days to respond. As far as precedents go, its failure to rule on the use of a form letter-like template by default allows BPD attorneys to continue drawing out the process, while its refusal to order the BPD to waive fees sets the stage for unlawful attempts to assess cost. In this case, the state further delayed a request that was already almost two months old.

If the BPD does attempt to assess a fee, I will have to appeal yet again, which means the supervisor will rule on the issue, presenting an opportunity to undermine the only significant upgrade made to the law in the 2016 update. In the meantime, the BPD appears to have lied; in the order, the supervisor noted: “A representative from the Department indicated that while this appeal was pending, the Department and Ms. Shaffer have had further communications regarding this request.” This is false. I repeatedly asked BPD what information it was seeking, and it never responded. At no time since my appeal has anyone from the department contacted me.

The BPD was given 10 more business days to provide a response. Last Friday was day 10. Since it’s now in open violation of the supervisor’s order, I requested that the order be enforced, but that is unlikely to happen. In their history of working together, Mass Attorney General Maura Healey and Secretary Galvin have not once enforced the public records law, which in the BPD’s case here could be punishable by fines and up to a year of incarceration.

STRIKE THREE In Massachusetts, the records law is routinely ignored because it is completely unenforced—so there’s zero penalty for agencies that either actively choose not to comply or simply don’t care enough to respond to requests. Take BPS, which doesn’t even have its records access officer’s contact information on their website as required by law.

I asked BPS for any communications regarding immigration between it and any type of law enforcement. My request eventually drew an email in which the BPS asked me to narrow the timeframe for the records I sought. I did so, but it neglected to respond any further. The matter is now under appeal.

These three failures are all symptoms of the ongoing collapse of public records access in Mass. The problem doesn’t seem to be a concern for Secretary Galvin or Attorney General Healey, and legislators have already failed in their attempt to competently update the law.

The failure of the records law is critical because right now, it’s allowing governmental agencies to assist ICE under the table and beyond public scrutiny.

Boston is a so-called sanctuary city; nevertheless, information is being passed to ICE. We need proper access and transparency to determine how this is all happening.

This article was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. To see more reporting like this, please consider donating at givetobinj. org.

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HERALD READERS RESPOND TO ANTIFA COVERAGE MEDIA HARM

Spoiler alert: anti-nazis are somehow nazis

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS On Saturday, a few hundred left-wing activists showed up to protest a tiny ultra-right wing protest held on City Hall Plaza around the anniversary of last year’s tiny ultra-right wing protest on Boston Common. That earlier action being completely dwarfed by the tens of thousands of people that turned out in opposition to the racist and fascist views of its organizers. This year, many counterprotestors hailed from Black Lives Matter, Stand Against Hate-Boston, and the Boston Democratic Socialists of America. And their mobilization was just as successful as the previous one in putting the wannabe master race to flight (to the suitably distant summit of Breed’s Hill where they briefly screamed at the stone monument patriotically named for an adjacent hill… dogged by some of their antagonists).

There are certainly times when people need to stand up against the ultra right. This demo was one of them. So the counterprotestors are to be commended.

Although I still stand by my column of last year in which I explained why I’d like to see left activists focus more on positive political organizing than reactive street actions.

To my point, however, I have long made a habit of reading comments on online articles. From which I often glean a good deal of useful information. And I naturally expect a certain amount of gonzo earthiness from the often anonymous wags who weigh in on issues of the day. But whenever anti-fascist activists are in the news, I note that the insanity ratchets up by an order of magnitude. And responses to such coverage contain more than the usual share of genuinely disturbing views. Nowhere is this more true in the local press than in the comment sections of Boston Herald articles.

So I thought it would be… um… let’s call it educational to choose the best of the worst online comments made on the Herald’s quite reasonable piece on the weekend’s protest and counterprotest, and dissect them in the public interest. The authors’ names— real or otherwise—have been changed to initials so as not to further embarrass the clueless.

“PC” Clowns? No..Patriots standing against Leftist Anti-Free Speech… Anti-Constitution… Anti-Life… Anti-Freedom…

Anti-Constitutional Republic Useful Idiot Communists.. look at the Soviet Flags in the Photos.....who act like Racist Brown Shirt Nazis crushing free speech… attacking those who disagree with them violently… That is what the Nazi SA (Brown Shirts) did in the 1930s Germany...as they call the oposition Nazis…

So, the ultra-right wingers who are happy to exercise their free speech rights against freedom are for freedom? And the left-wingers who exercise their free speech rights to protest people against freedom are anti-freedom? And left-wingers’ willingness to physically defend communities under threat from the ultra-right makes them the violent ones? As opposed to the ultraright networks that are the only one of the two sides racking up death counts in the US in recent memory?

And the left-wingers are the nazis?! Okely dokely…

“MF” Boston: once young Patriots met under a huge pine tree – to plot a course of Freedom from the tyranny of an English King – and his Parliament,...Saturday young fools with no concept of God, History, or world events think they marched to squash and shut down “Hate Speech”... They are Soros’s expendable cannon fodder, acting EXACTLY like Hitler’s Sturmabteilung!

First, the Liberty Tree that this post is definitely referencing was an elm. Second… what?!

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“RC” Until we redefine the terms ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’, white people will not have free speech in this country. This is obvious from multiple news articles.

Well, it’s obvious from multiple online ravings anyway.

“BD” Awful reporting. Conveniently left out the part where free speech activists averted violence by marching to Bunker Hill Monument where we held a very successsful rally, opposed only by a tiny handful of screechy Black Lives Matter activists.

This is apparently a post from one of the ultra-right protest organizers referencing the out-of-the-way location that said protestors scurried off to after being heavily outnumbered by counterprotestors at their original rally site. And trying to make lemonade out of the lemons of abject failure. Pobrecito…

“SM” Haha so CLEVER Alexi! Poor thing, you’re one of those that paid to be brainwashed by a “professor-former screw the man 60’s hippie” weren’t you? Trumps free speech group. Haha.

That’s liberalism/socialism today. Just like Kristallnacht In Germany circa the1930’s , scream and yell and intimidate those who don’t agree with you. Same as the Nazis, like I said. Look at that red headed idiot all worked up in the photo. Here’s what the hippy professors and mommy never told you; you CAN lose in life. You did in 2016, will this year and so will the former Boston Herald, which is now a pop up ad space barely readable online and the Globe’s “Fredo Corleone” An attack on the Herald reporter. And on college education in general. Conflates liberalism (which in both its original meaning, and in today’s parlance, generally indicates support for capitalism) with socialism (which indicates support for workers owning the means of production). Compares counterprotestors to nazis (sense a theme?). Concludes with amusing shot at the Herald.

C+ for effort.

“FC” The antifa aholes use the same tactics as the pre-war German socialists did. Their brilliant propaganda minister felt they had to “control the streets”. This kind of violence was new then, and effective. Devious manipulation got a certain demented leader in power, but it’s not going to work now. We’ve seen this crappy movie before. Also, next Free Speech Rally, I’m gonna be there.

Assuming this poster means pre-WWII here. He seems to think that the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) had a propaganda minister who wanted to control the streets during the two brief periods when it led the Weimar Republic. Sounds a lot more like a certain nazi propaganda chief of the same period—who only became Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in 1933. Which might explain why he’s blaming “socialists” for the rise of the nazis. Perhaps he means “national socialists.” Whatever. Anyhow, while it is true that SPD members controlled a fighting group catchily dubbed the Black, Red, Gold Banner of the Reich with as many as three million members by the 1930s to combat the Nazi Party’s SA on their right (with two million members by 1933) and the Communist Party’s Red Front Fighters’ League on their left (with 130,000

members at the time of their banning in 1929), neither they nor the communists actually mobilized their troops against the ascension of the nazis to power. Therefore, don’t think we’re watching the same “crappy movie” at all. Also doubt the poster will be at the next sad little “rally” for herp and also derp.

“DO” Wonder how much money Soros spent funding these miscreants None. Arch-capitalist George Soros doesn’t typically give money to anti-capitalists, and doesn’t fund every smallish American rally to the left of Trump in either this or alternate dimensions.

“LA” You forgot “Pravda”, the fake news in this country engages in this Nazi style “reporting” daily.

And they are proud of it. Both sides are allowed by our Constitution to have their say in the public square, one side does so peacefully, the other side wearing masks and weiding weapons taunts them and attacks them. All the violence at these rallies is innitiated by one side and the fake media villifies the peaceful protestors. It’s all “Alice in Wonderland” stuff. Engals would be so proud of them.

This poster starts by comparing the American press of today with the Soviet Union’s main state propaganda organ. Not entirely false equivalence considering the frequently submissive behavior of the top echelons of that press—especially the New York Times and the Washington Post—in the service of the billionaires that effectively control the US government. But not true of all journalists or of independent news outlets like this one. The rest of the post infers that the leftwing counterprotestors are the violent side and that local news media is being unfair to the ultra-right wing protestors in not reporting that imaginary. We’re certainly through the looking glass with this one; so the Alice in Wonderland reference is unintentionally apt. Not sure who this “Engals” person is, though. But I’d like to buy them a vowel.

“AS” The lack of press coverage of the Communists is really horrifying. That a regime that murdered many more people in support of an evil ideology than the Nazis did is openly supported on the streets of Boston, and is treated by the press and the left as the good guys, is outrageous & scary.

This poster is rehashing the roundly refuted figures promulgated by the anti-communist lead author of The Black Book of Communism a couple decades back. A person so desperate to make the total number of deaths supposedly caused by communism between 1917 and the book’s publication in 1997 reach 100 million people— and outnumber the death toll from capitalism (and, not coincidentally, nazism) in the same period—that he made a bunch of highly questionable editorial decisions.

Like including the estimated death tolls of famines in communist nations in his total, but ignoring the much larger estimated death tolls of famines in capitalist nations—notably India, as famed left scholar Noam Chomsky subsequently pointed out using economist Amartya Sen’s numbers as that nation dropped its socialist pretensions. Communist governments certainly killed many innocent people during the period in question, but the thrust of this comment seems to be that nazism isn’t so bad after all. Right? Yikes.

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THE LAST CHAPTER GUEST OPINION

Is the Harvest Co-Op finished?

BY MATTHEW ANDREWS

Following years of decline, the Harvest Co-op may finally close. Despite active members ringing the alarm 18 months ago, little has been done to address the ongoing crisis. Consultants were brought in, offering an array of technical adjustments. But as they began rearranging the shelves, members began to worry they were rearranging the chairs on a sinking ship.

Originally organized in 1971 as the Boston Food Cooperative, Harvest operates two stores: one in Central Square, Cambridge, the other in Roslindale. At its peak, it employed over 70 people. As a consumer cooperative, shoppers could join by making a small investment. This combined investment is the membership equity, which gives the co-op the ability to make new investments.

While anyone can shop at Harvest, its approximately 3,000 members have an equal voice and vote to elect the board of directors.

The board is supposed to represent the interests of the members, set policies, and oversee the management of the co-op. In spring 2017, the board announced that membership equity had been spent and they were still losing tens of thousands of dollars every month.

That’s when I started attending the meetings of an independent group of members called Real Co-op Initiative (RCI). The RCI discussed how to save the business, but also how to make Harvest a thriving cooperative community. Where these goals overlap most was membership involvement. We also agreed that new elections should be held immediately for an entirely new board of directors, since the current board was clearly failing.

On July 30, RCI hosted 30 members at the Spontaneous Celebrations community arts space in Jamaica Plain. We voted to ask for the resignation of the current board. Then we set forward a series of principles that included prioritizing member involvement, transparency for financial information, open meetings, no changes to the bylaws without members’ consent, and respect for employees.

Unfortunately, the board dug in its heels. We didn’t get the special members meeting we were calling for until September, when about 80 people packed the Christ Church in Harvard Square. Even under the best 8

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conditions, it would have been hard to guide everyone through the proposals being made by RCI. But with so many people in the room, a hostile board, and facilitators who seemed to be in over their heads, it was impossible to get much done in the two hours we had in that space. It felt like our final Hail Mary pass to save Harvest came up short.

We ran a slate of candidates for the Harvest board in October, but only half the seats were up for election.

Three RCI candidates were elected. Despite the partial turnover, little changed. Since then, several board members have resigned. Most stunning of all, earlier this month the leading RCI activist, Adam Frost, was expelled from the board less than a year after his election.

Leslie Belay, an RCI activist who resigned from the board a few months earlier, wrote, “This board’s failed effort to hire and pay consultants to raise money from its own members while every single metric screamed bankruptcy was unconscionable. Frost called them out on this and advised an inquiring employee about the likelihood of imminent bankruptcy. This is why he was voted off the board. For speaking truth to ill informed and immature power.”

If you’re just worried about having a place to shop, the stores may be given a second life by the National Co-op Grocers Association (NCG). The NCG is a national cooperative of cooperatives boasting over 150 members, including the Harvest. If you’ve ever shopped there, you may have noticed its logo on coupon books at the store, or on its paper grocery bags.

One of the biggest services provided by NCG is a contract with UNFI, the primary supplier of natural and organic brands to grocery stores. NCG member co-ops get lower prices. In exchange, NCG guarantees debts to UNFI. UNFI is one of Harvest’s largest creditors, and a significant reason why NCG is looking to intervene.

On Aug 6, C.E. Pugh, director of the NCG, spoke at a board-organized meeting in Cambridge. The proposal being developed would close Harvest and re-open a new co-op under a new charter. A new board would be appointed by NCG made up of “retired general managers”—though whether the managers would be Harvest veterans or not was unclear—with the

possibility of one community representative. This new co-op would operate the two stores and invest as much as a million dollars in renovations and retrain staff.

Despite taking questions from the audience, Pugh was tight-lipped about any details. Will Harvest members have to rejoin to be in this new co-op? What rights will members have under the bylaws of the new co-op? Will Harvest’s old debts to small and local vendors be honored? Will there be layoffs? The only guarantee was that the new co-op would be legally required to have elections after 12 to 18 months.

News of this offer to save the Harvest brought many observers to the Aug 13 board meeting. We wanted to hear more details about the proposal. We also wanted to voice our priorities for a good deal.

When we arrived on schedule, a meeting was already running in “executive session.” Once the meeting was opened to observers, a motion was made to remove Adam Frost from the board. They made vague accusations of feeling uncomfortable around Frost and charged him with breaking confidentiality because he told a worker that the store is likely to go into bankruptcy. This was already public information. Frost’s real crime was talking and organizing.

The RCI’s Belay commented, “Board members literally acknowledged they lacked knowledge and experience and categorically refused to recognize that Frost and I, having worked [in community organizations and local small businesses] for 30 years, actually do have knowledge and experience.”

Some may say Harvest failed because it couldn’t compete. This explanation is too simplistic. It relieves the board of responsibility and makes bankruptcy seem inevitable. It’s true that there are more places than ever to buy organic groceries, but what general managers and board members seem to have forgotten is that the co-op movement was built on much more than natural foods and bulk discount pricing.

The consumer co-op is a community first. It’s built with deep member involvement, lots of communication, occasional voting, and shared responsibility for the store.

It means building community solidarity and a sincere commitment to environmental and social justice. A co-op built from a healthy community may not look very “efficient” to the trained eye of your typical grocery manager, but the daunting challenge of competing with Wall Street behemoths like Amazon melt away.

The Harvest Co-op may get bought by NCG, or the deal might fall through, leaving us to face bankruptcy.

Either way, Harvest is no longer the bellwether for the co-op movement that it once was.

Boston, meanwhile, is full of exciting cooperative projects. In downtown Boston, the worker co-op brew pub, Democracy Brewing, opened on July 4. In Dorchester, residents are building a food co-op with extensive participation from the community. The Boston Ujima Project is bringing resources into historically neglected communities to support cooperative businesses.

In that sense, the torch is being passed to a new wave of cooperators.

DigBoston invites Harvest Co-op management to respond to this op-ed.

Matthew Andrews is a former employee of the Harvest Co-op and activist with the Real Co-op Initiative. He is also a co-chair of the Green-Rainbow Party.

TICKETS AT TICKETFLY.COM NEWS TO US

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BETTER BOSTON BEER BUREAU

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

CITY OF PRESIDENTS AMERICAN PALE ALE Widowmaker pours a classic in collaboration with Quincy, Founding Fathers

There are many things that technically distinguish a craft beer from common swill. Not just the label artwork and the ticket price, but quality and cost of hops and other pieces of the puzzle as well.

Beyond those hard tangible factors, there is also something tougher to describe, an aroma that leaps from the mouthpiece of a newly opened can and tickles nostrils. No matter how bitter the beer, the sensation’s always sweet and lures you in like steam emerging from a turkey platter in an old cartoon. Once you sniff it, you gotta have it.

City of Presidents American Pale Ale, a limited edition prize from Widowmaker Brewing that’s available in

Quincy Center bars from now until the debut batch is finished, has that sort of undeniable appeal. It’s basically the best version imaginable of the domestics that dominated through the ’90s—and with packaging that’s patriotic enough to make cans of Bud original look like official Kremlin propaganda. The Braintreebased Widowmaker may have earned its initial rep with remarkable brews sold in hand-labeled growlers, but the illustration of our Founding Fathers rocking shades outside of Quincy City Hall may be an indication that the skins will soon match their impressive product.

In its words, the brewer brands this pale ale as “a complex, easy-drinking all-American craft beer.” On

AIN’T NOTHIN’ NORMAL Night Shift + Destihl = Boysenberry Bliss

We’ll get right to it—this limited exclusive number is so consummately tart that we’ve been cracking cans and sipping water between gulps, trying to preserve as much of a terrific tongue rush as we got on our first tilt.

Before we get to the downright joy this Night ShiftDestihl collabo can bring to your life (at least for as long as it’s available), let’s explore some of the background.

Dig readers already know all about Night Shift—it’s the Everett brewery that innumerable beer drinkers and brewers around here sweat immensely, and the reputation is deserved. From standbys like its Whirlpool APA that we can’t live without (that’s an exaggeration, sure, but really, don’t take the stuff away from us) to one-offs like Ain’t Nothin’ Normal, it is routinely brilliant at producing cans worth writing home about.

As for Destihl, based in Normal, Illinois, the brewery is hot shit itself, having racked up stripes and accolades in its own corner of the country just like Night Shift has in these throes. From the flavor we are feeling in this go-round with its Greater Boston homeys—the product was assisted by Night Shift, but actually brewed out in the Land of Lincoln—its hype also seems to have roots in reality. For this unique matrimony, Destihl brought its notable kettle sours program to the table, while Night 10

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Shift dropped some hoppy knowledge. As they dually explain: “We split this batch in two, brewing half normally and kettle-souring the other half. After both batches were united in one fermenter, we added boysenberry and dryhopped with a bunch of Mosaic and Citra.”

The result: candy. Close your eyes and recall what it felt like to stick your tongue inside of a bag of Lik-M-Aid or Fun Dip as a kid on a break from the schoolyard, and you’ll begin to understand the sort of magic in play here.

While we’re guilty of drinking a lot of beers out of their gorgeous cans instead of pouring them like civilized aficionados and unleashing the most standout and explosive sides of their sweet and tart smorgasbords, for this occasion we went so far as to chill a glass. You’ll want to do the same, as the raspberry iced tea glow of this concoction adds a visual dimension that’s worth an ogle.

Just try not to blink from all the beauty, bitterness, and boysenberry. This stuff’s hard to come by; you don’t want to miss out while it is still around.

one hand, that description sells it short, since there are several nuanced notes to be appreciated; at the same time, it’s accurate, since it really has cleverly twisted some classic ideas.

“This beer celebrates the history of a great American city and pays homage to downtown Quincy’s rapid rise as one of the region’s most dynamic new dining destinations,” said head Widowmaker brewer Ryan Lavery.

Whether you embrace the legacy component or are simply searching for strong beverages, this exclusive number should make your priority beer list. Served cold, it’s a craft piece that can convert friends who claim to not like interesting pours because they are “overly bitter,” or “too hoppy,” or whatever the remaining anti-micro stragglers are saying these days. And this Widowmaker has a warm side too; for flavor spectators, as the ale approaches room temp, it releases extra brilliance in its framework, and in doing so reveals a perfect spiritual blend of newjack IPA varieties and all the mead plus any other syrup signers of the Declaration of Independence were coiffing.

All that considered, this special Quincy pale ale deserves a much longer run, if not permanent retail and restaurant status, on the South Shore and beyond.

BLUE CRACK TALKING JOINTS MEMO

What’s in a strain name (besides insensitivity and perhaps accuracy)?

BY CITIZEN STRAIN Subscribe to our newsletter at talkingjointsmemo.com and get all of your cannabis headlines in one place.

To paraphrase and twist a sentimental nonsense statement we have heard from every prohibitionist who ever opened up their dumbass mouth, If even only one person who reads one of these reviews subsequently gets inspired to go out and cop a certain strain that then makes their life better, then the effort will have totally been worth it.

I truly mean that. Especially when it comes to gems like Blue Crack, the child of Blue Dream, a universally adored fruitopia perfect for afternoons of arts and Kraftwerk, and my beloved Green Crack, a Pacific Northwest favorite with a rep as the Ritalin of reefer. For consumers looking for weed that works well in the workplace and the gym, and that opens up your mind while keeping you awake and focused (to a point), this is worth a treasure hunt. The batch that crossed our path was simultaneously firm and fluffy, making for a smooth ride in a joint as well as in a number of glass pipes we sampled with.

Again, Blue Crack should be a go-to for everyday workers and artists alike.

That’s my primary reason for writing this, though I’m also hoping to spur some discussion about the name—specifically, the crack part. As anyone who actually lived in the ’80s in a major US city knows, there’s nothing funny about crack. An elite cadre of comedians may get a free pass to address the topic on account of having written legendary routines from the eye of the storm; otherwise, hearing everybody from my friends to growers talk about their feverish affection for addictive crystal-covered crack nugs is slowly becoming as unbearable as bros telling their pals adventure stories about the time GPS took them for a ride through “the hood.”

I’m well aware that this is far from the first rumination on the absurd and increasingly predictable names given to weed. My rant’s not to insult tradition, or to repeat all the cliche gripes; rather, I hope to simply put my name down as someone who recognizes that we’ve hit peak stupid. Many of these monikers have real historical and even personal significance for many people, but with countless hybrids and newfangled seed varieties surfacing every year it’s getting harder, dare I say impossible, to keep up. I don’t have serious answers or solutions, but stitching names of strains together like we do for famous couples is getting confusing. Leafly’s periodic table-like system is a great start; Blue Crack is Brc, for example. Blend that with the Dewey Decimal system and… poof… you’ll probably have something infinitely more bewildering. Never mind me. Just passing through…

In any case, to wrap up I just want to note that while we try to only review strains that are available at licensed dispensaries in New England, this time we made a slight exception for a good reason. Blue Crack’s simply something that the planet needs to know about, a key to unlocking your cranium for creativity and kicking into high gear. We hope that it arrives sooner rather than later, if not in our medical facilities then at rec shops when they open at long last.

Until then, I will be puffing on this batch, writing winded diatribes that are both abstract and utilitarian, sort of like the brands blended and bred together to yield Blue Crack.

IF IT’S NOT NECANN IT’S NOT NEW ENGLAND 2018 FALL CONVENTION SCHEDULE

PORTLAND, ME PROVIDENCE, RI

OCT 6-7 OCT 20-21

2019 SPRING CONVENTION SCHEDULE

SPRINGFIELD, MA JAN 12-13 BOSTON, MA MARCH 22-24

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PHOTO BY JOHN DAVID SCARCLIFF

TOOTS HIBBERT FEATURE INTERVIEW

A reggae hero reflects back on half a century of touring

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 There are a few artists who I make the best attempt possible to see when they swing through New England.

Unless there is a reason that I absolutely cannot be there, I’ll be in the cut, sipping on a can of beer with my eyes closed and ears open.

I’m not just talking about singers and MCs I adore.

Hell, I wish that I could have a policy like that, which

PHOTO BY ROYAL VISION

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would keep me in the clubs approximately every evening. But short of having that much time to party, the best that I can do is focus on acts who, as sad as it may be to say, might not be touring for much longer.

Despite his slight appearance, Toots Hibbert is a giant among this elite cadre of icons. The fact that he’s still jamming and flexing his legendary smooth but rugged vocals isn’t merely remarkable because he is 75 years old, but also because five years ago, it looked like he would never sing in public again.

You might say that what happened to Hibbert while on tour in Virginia in 2013 was ironic, since he is, after all, the guy who coined the term reggae, a music known for peace and cannabis.

As can be seen in horrifying video from that day, the singer was performing when a wasted meathead in the crowd hurled a large vodka bottle toward the stage. The projectile hit Hibbert in the head, causing a concussion, surgery, and stress. For three years, Toots and the Maytals disappeared from the road after 45 years. At one point, Hibbert even told an interviewer that he wasn’t sure if he felt safe enough to return to the stage.

Thankfully, his attitude has changed.

Hibbert’s back to his characteristic

casual self, explaining in an interview, “It isn’t anything to think about. … I like to make sure people are happy, you know?”

I do know. That’s why his Grammy-winning band is cemented on my must-see list. For half a century, they’ve serenaded every kind of crowd, and as positive life cycles often go, have even had a pop culture resurgence in the past few years. It’s been decades since he dropped the seminally inspirational track “Do the Reggay”— Hibbert has said the word was “just something that came out of my mouth”—but he continues to emerge atop the genre.

“Both [performing live] and the studio are still important to me,” he says. “In the studio, I create all of the music and play a lot of instruments—the drums, the bass, guitar, keyboard. I create it myself, using my style— everything.”

Most recently, Hibbert and his crew hit the late night talk show circuit with a new song, “Marley,” about a dear old friend.

“We were good friends,” he recalls. “I think about him all the time.”

As for his own longevity…

“When I smoke, I only smoke the real herb,” Hibbert says. “Mostly when I’m writing.”

THE CRANKING & SKANKING FEST WITH TOOTS & THE MAYTALS, THE BOUNCING SOULS, THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES, AND OTHERS. SAT 8.25. THE WORCESTER PALLADIUM (OUTDOORS). THEPALLADIUM.NET FOR MORE INFO AND TICKETS.

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TOMATO TIME GTFO EATS

Seeing red at Wilson Farm in Lexington INTERVIEW BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 I recently asked friends and followers on social media where we should venture for our upcoming analysis of the best apple cider donuts in New England. Dozens of answers rang in, with roughly one in every three respondents recommending that we head to Wilson Farm in Lexington.

Consider it a plan. In the meantime, before cinnamon and gourd season arrives, there are several other natural wonders that are worth picking and plucking, and which farmers at Wilson cultivate prolifically.

While Corn Fest is behind us, this coming weekend (Aug 25-26) Wilson hosts Tomato Fest, which the team in Lexington says is one of their truly outstanding festivities. I reached out to the farm’s promotions manager Jon Latessa to ask about the free event, plus tomato growing, foodie fantasies, and of course, warm sugary donuts.

What’s your best line to lure people to Tomato Fest?

Tomato Fest is one of our favorite events because we are able to highlight the 20 different varieties of tomatoes we grow every year. The festival allows for our shoppers to sample an assortment of our fantastic heirlooms and taste the subtle differences between each of them.

Customers will be able to grab recipe ideas that incorporate tomatoes into many dishes and sample tomato dishes from our kitchen, which is led by Chef Raymond Ost. Finally, we will be featuring over 10 local vendors, including Johnny Macaroni Marinara (Bridgewater), Fiorella’s Marinara (Newton), and Seven Hills Pasta (Melrose). Tomato Fest is 100 percent free and includes face painting.

You call the event “a foodie’s dream come true” and bill Wilson Farm as a business that has “been able to move from just a ‘farm stand’ to a true destination for foodies throughout the state of Massachusetts and beyond.” Please explain, defend yourself.

Wilson Farm takes food very seriously. For 134 years,

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[we have] grown impeccable produce straight from our fields—we have over 30 acres of farmland in Lexington and 400-plus acres in Litchfield, New Hampshire. Wilson Farm is proud to employ team members who share the passion for food and the willingness to share their passion with our shoppers. We love when shoppers come to the farm loaded with questions and the desire to try new, unique foods.

Three years ago, Chef Raymond Ost took over our kitchen. Chef Ost is a master chef of France, one of the most envied titles a chef aspires to have. The mission of a master chef of France is to “preserve, advance and perpetuate the tradition of great French cuisine.” Chef Ost creates outstanding to-go meals using produce that is harvested steps away from our kitchen. On any given day you can find top-notch dishes such as braised lamb stew with apricots and plum, or pan-roasted scallops with risotto waiting to be taken home and devoured.

Beyond our kitchen, Wilson Farm has world-class treats in our bakery. We offer a huge assortment of inhouse-made cookies, muffins, brownies, pies, breads, and more—plus my favorite, our 7-Layer Bar. We have three ridiculously talented cake decorators who have the ability to turn a piece of cake into pretty much any object you can possibly imagine. Our cheese department has 200 varieties of locally made, domestic, and imported cheeses.

Our meat and fish are carefully selected by our butchers and fishmongers. Our grocery items are unique and selected to complement our wonderful fresh produce, meats, and cheeses. You’ll find milk in old-fashioned glass bottles, our own fresh eggs from right in Lexington.

Locally made jams, spreads, and preserves; local honey; nut butters; dried pasta; and a delicious assortment of candies and decadent chocolates.

Since I have your ear, I could use some advice for my tomatoes at home—Roma, beefsteak, and some small sweet ones. They’re all only starting to come in now. Did

I do something wrong?

You most likely didn’t do anything wrong! It’s been a crazy summer with all of this rain. All of this repetitive rainfall hasn’t allowed the soil to dry out and let the plants flourish. Another thing to consider … tomato plants need a decent amount of space between each plant to make sure the sun hits them for at least eight hours, which doesn’t have to be consecutive.

Of all the different types of tomatoes you grow, what are you best known for?

Shoppers really love our heirlooms, especially the Pineapple and Striped German variety. Both of these are large fruits with orangey yellow skin with a sweet and citrusy tang. Outside of the heirlooms, shoppers always love our beefsteaks.

Lastly, we hope to make the rounds to every place that makes apple cider donuts in the region, and Wilson Farm came up a bunch of times in our crowdsource.

Considering that we are going to be ranking these things, would you like to put in a good word for the ones we will chow down on in Lexington?

Yessssssss! It’s almost apple cider donut season. Apple cider donuts are for sale throughout the year at the farm, but every weekend in September and October, we have them made hot, which is, in my opinion, the only way to eat them. The sweets are made on a vintage 1960s donut machine—one of the few left in the world—and are tossed to perfection in a mixture of cinnamon sugar.

What else do people need to know?

Our annual Tomato Fest will feature samples from Wilson Farm’s own resident chef Raymond Ost and tasting stations offering selections from our on-site kitchen and bakery. My favorite part of the event is our heirloom tomato table, where we sample 15 heirloom varieties, all of which are grown in our fields.

FIRST LOOK GTFO EATS

Bates Bar & Grill in Braintree

BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON The Boston dining scene has been on fire over the past several years, with the openings of new spots greatly outpacing the closings, and some of the biggest hotspots for restaurants are no longer even in the city. Indeed, some of the suburbs along Route 128—and especially those near the major highway intersections—are absolutely booming, which is jarring for longtime residents to see, as who would have expected Burlington, Peabody, and Braintree to become such major dining destinations?

Well, all three (and others) are certainly on their way, and this latter community has been seeing all kinds of restaurants pop up of late, including options for Mexican, Vietnamese, Italian, and more. One of the newer spots to open is a restaurant and bar in Weymouth Landing (basically right on the Weymouth/ Braintree line) called Bates Bar & Grill, which moved into a space where the Landing Pub and Ultimate Pizza had been until a 2015 fire resulted in the building being torn down. The family who ran the pizzeria are behind the new place which opened a few months ago, and it shows some real promise and potential based on a recent visit.

The exterior of Bates Bar & Grill has a clean and modern look to it, and it has a relatively big presence compared to many of the small, independent shops and eateries found along Commercial Street and Washington Street in Weymouth Landing. Inside, you’ll find a setup that’s becoming more and more common these days—one large room with a U-shaped bar dominating the center and a number of tables set up to the left and right as well as tables by the front windows.

This setup doesn’t always work well depending on the size and shape of the space, with the acoustics sometimes being awful to the point where customers literally can’t hear each other speak (which may or may not be a good thing depending on the situation, of course), but in the case of Bates, the noise level is relatively tolerable even when the bar is packed and all of the tables are full. Setups such as these also tend to indicate that dining might be taking a backseat to drinking, but this spot does seem to put a little more emphasis on food, so the atmosphere leans just a touch more toward subdued than rowdy.

So many newly opened restaurants and bars these days tend to emphasize inventive or modern takes on bar food and pub grub, but Bates doesn’t seem to do that, perhaps because it positions itself as a family-friendly place or maybe because it’s in the heart of the suburbs where classic American dining spots tend to do well.

Thus, the menu holds few surprises, going with such favorites as wings, chili, clam chowder, a Caesar salad, burgers, fish and chips, and yes, a few less common items such as a delicious plate of souvlaki “sticks” (Greek-style pork skewers); “The Meze,” which includes toasted pita bread, olives, tzatziki, and Greek “salsa”; and something called chowder fries, which is pretty much what it sounds like—fries that are covered in clam chowder and smothered in bacon and cheese.

The comfort food theme at Bates includes a variety of pizza options, and it’s tough to pin down a style to the pies served here, as they have hints of everything from bar-style to gourmet to Neapolitan. Whatever the style is, the pizza is very tasty, with such options as Buffalo chicken and bleu cheese dressing; honey ham and pineapple; and sausage, grilled peppers, and caramelized onions. Another item to consider is the steak tip plate, as the tips are tender, marinated nicely without being overdone, and have just a hint of char—and they come with a large helping of chunky mashed potatoes, which is a good option for this dish. Among the burgers is one that lovers of Greek food may want to try (and yes, the menu does have some Greek influences here and there), with the Saloniki burger coming with feta cheese, onions, tomato, and a tangy tzatziki sauce.

Drink options are pretty impressive at Bates, as the beer list includes some options from such top breweries as Ommegang, Jack’s Abby, Cisco, Newburyport, and Stoneface, while wine options include reds and whites from the West Coast, South America, Italy, and New Zealand, and the cocktail list includes a mix of oldschool and modern drinks. Prices for food items are pretty reasonable overall, with nearly all dishes being around or under $20.

Early impressions of Bates are mostly favorable, especially if you see this place for what it is—a simple, unpretentious dining and drinking spot that’s good for everyone from couples to families to work groups to those who might want to simply hang out and catch a game while sipping a drink at the bar. In a time where too many new restaurants and bars try to make themselves out to be unique and special, it’s nice to see a place such as Bates stick to the basics and do them well. >> BATES BAR & GRILL. 2 COMMERCIAL ST., BRAINTREE (WEYMOUTH LANDING).

BATESBARANDGRILL.COM

Welcome to Boston!

Your local food store!

Dinner made easy and fabulous Staples and special treats Gift baskets and snacks Tastings every weekend

575 Washington St Oak Sq, Brighton

Monday - Saturday 10 am to 8 pm Sunday 10 am to 6 pm

wildflowerpantry.com

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PET FOX MUSIC

Technical musicians learn to lean into pop simplicity

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN If the three guys in Pet Fox look familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen them play before—just not in this combination. There’s three prominent bands between them and even more side projets on top of that. Those who are stumped should refer to one of Pet Fox’s own lyrics for a clue: “Awfully loud for an indie band / but you like their sound.” Seems vague, sure, but it’s applicable across the board considering singer-guitarist Theo Hartlett and bassist Morgan Luzzi are from Ovlov and drummer Jesse Weiss is in Palehound and Grass Is Green.

All three are somewhat regular names in the local scene, but they weren’t always familiar with one another. Hartlett and Luzzi grew up in Newtown, Connecticut, where they began playing music together around age 12.

Weiss, however, didn’t fall into the mix until they both began frequenting the Boston area. After meeting at a house show back in 2012, the two recruited Weiss to play drums in Flat Swamp, Hartlett’s personal music outlet at the time. The rest is history.

“I’ll never forget meeting Theo,” Weiss laughs, throwing his hands up.

“Grass Is Green played a basement show in Allston, and a guy who looked exactly like Steve [Hartlett] came up to me and said, ’What’s up, dude?’ and I said, ’Hey… guy who looks like Steve.’ I knew Steve and John, their older brother, because they both played in the original Ovlov lineup. But not Theo. He just looked like a miniature version of my friends.”

“I had been a fan of Jesse’s for a while with that band, so I had to say hi,” says Hartlett laughs. “Favorite drummer! Like, come on!”

It’s the first of many compliments the members throw at one another, each genuine but with a certain level of spontaneity, as if they haven’t actually told one another what they like about the other’s work directly. They’ve never had to. All three musicians have been jamming together on and off for years, a silent testament to the fact that they enjoy playing together, much less one another’s skills.

That’s how Pet Fox came about. The three began meeting up to jam together, with no end goal in mind other than to spend spare hours burning off energy and melodies. Over the course of the summer in 2017, Hartlett, Luzzi, and Weiss began accidentally writing songs—piecing instrumentals together until they realized they had eight fully realized songs sitting in their lap. All the songs needed were lyrics. Halfway through the process, they started writing with a purpose, realizing they may as well form a band if the music was not only coming naturally, but evolving to a more fully formed point as well.

“It all started because of the voice memos,” says Luzzi. “What’s been great, other than the lyrics, is that it’s just the three of us in a room for 99 percent of the time

creating something from scratch. We will workshop the pieces as we come up with them. But we voice memo it so we don’t forget the ideas. The next time we meet, we build on it. We don’t do much outside of that, no writing on our own or coming in with riffs, which is great because we all have an equal stake. I think I can speak for all of us in saying there’s something in the music of this that is new for all of us. We either haven’t done this before or couldn’t do this before. It’s great that there’s this space for freedom in that sense.”

Though dramatic on paper, Luzzi’s words aren’t hyperbole. In their other bands, like Palehound and Ovlov, the three take the role of backing musicians.

In Pet Fox, there’s no principal songwriter and no need to step back into the shadows. That means Hartlett, Luzzi, and Weiss aren’t discounting melodies or guitar riffs just because they aren’t similar to what they’ve previously written. When one of them comes up with a part, they refuse to throw it out. Instead, they see how it can bend and twist. There’s no obligation to roll with a riff. There’s room to interrupt one another and encourage them to continue honing an idea. In that, Pet Fox is a chance for all three to play around with ideas that they wouldn’t normally bring to the table in other bands.

The relaxed atmosphere between them led to a proper recording session at the start of this year.

The trio’s final product—an eight-song self-titled record—sees them shift from being technically focused musicians to a more simplistic pop sound, picking up on indie rock guitar slides and downtrodden turns into darker territory. Listen closely and you can hear things like strings, tambourine, piano, and even a rainstick in the background of the songs. From the warm tone of opener “Staying In” to the hypnotic slides on “How to Quit” and bummer hook of “Be Alone,” it’s an album stacked with some of the musicians’ best work. It just happens to be in conjunction with one another, each

hitting their stride in time with one another.

What holds the record together like Gorilla Glue is Weiss’ additional role as the band’s producer and mixer.

Weiss talks fastest when explaining the nitty-gritty of his production techniques. Luzzi and Hartlett laugh as he does so, but only with love. “We’re lucky there was no obligation to pay a chunk of money for only a few days in a studio,” says Luzzi. “Really, we’ve been so lucky to have Jesse as a producer. He’s so flexible and has also, on his own time, put so much time and energy towards working on this record. It’s been great to not have the stresses and limitations of having someone else in control of your time and sound.”

Armed with a Tascam tape machine with a mixer on board, Weiss doubles down on compression and saturates the EQ going into the tape. It’s important to saturate the sound going into the preamps to emphasize the sounds you want to embellish to begin with. For nongearheads, the simplest way to understand it is by comparing it to photography. By getting the perfect settings on your camera for shooting—shutter speed, ISO, exposure—then the less editing you will have to do in Lightroom or Photoshop after the fact.

Essentially, he wants it to be as fully realized as possible before hitting the computer, and you can hear that massive, warm tone in the record on each song.

“I’m a big fan of doing it yourself, even without high quality gear, because then you’re happy with it,” says Weiss. “That’s the most important thing: being happy with the way your performance sounds and feels over anything else. That’s what will translate regardless of sound quality.”

Pet Fox may come as a surprise to those who are used to the shoegaze-laden noise of Ovlov, math rock knots of Grass Is Green, or the breathy indie rock of Palehound.

Yet it’s impossible not to fall in love with the sound the trio have built, even when listening to the record for the first time. As a labor of love, Pet Fox runs on passion and ample time. As a labor of talent, it’s incredibly catchy and deceptively intricate. Combined, it’s the sign of three friends finding a new stride, and there’s ample road left for them to explore in the coming years.

>> PET FOX. AVAILABLE NOW ON ALL STREAMING SERVICES AND AT PETFOX.BANDCAMP.COM.

MUSIC EVENTS THU 08.23

STILL THROWING MUSES AROUND IN THE ’90S BELLY

[Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston. 7pm/18+/$32. royaleboston.com]

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FRI 08.24

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF BOSTON AUBREY HADDARD + LATRELL JAMES + MORE [Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 8pm/18+/$12. crossroadspresents.com]

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FRI 08.24

SUN 08.26

SUN 08.26

MON 08.27

[House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston.

7pm/all ages/$35. houseofblues.com]

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston.

8:30pm/18+/$8. greatscottboston.com]

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$15. sinclaircambridge.com]

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston.

8:30pm/18+/$13. greatscottboston.com]

DREAMING OF LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN BEACH HOUSE + PAPERCUTS

LEARNING YOUR HIP-HOP ABC’S CLIFF NOTEZ + BRANDIE BLAZE + CITRUSPHERE

FREEDOM-WHEELING FOLK ROCK ROMANTICISM AMEN DUNES + OKAY KAYA

A FOND FINAL FAREWELL LVL UP + HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE + BEDBUG

THIN LIPS WHEEL OF TUNES

Oujia boards, vaginas, and lavender weed

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN If you want to know the gist of Thin Lips without ever listening to the trio’s music, just look at frontwoman Chrissy Tashjian’s knuckle tattoo: RIFF HARD. She, like the rest of the band—her brother, Mikey Tashjian, on drums and Kyle Pulley on bass—loves the ease and hook of a good riff. That was evident on 2016’s Riff Hard and becomes even more true of Thin Lips’ newest album, PHOTO BY SCOTT TROYAN this year’s impeccably catchy Chosen Family.

Thin Lips’ sophomore album manages to scrape its claws through pop punk without ever laying too hard into either end of the genre. Tashjian’s knack for blissful guitar lines strings you along over the course of the album, like some familiar melody you’ve never heard but are eager to hear again as soon as it ends. Just listen to songs like “A Song For Those Who Miss You All The Time” and “What’s So Bad About Being Lonely,” whose titles are infinitely sadder than the music itself. The album is full of love, gratitude, and uplifting melodies, all things you can see if you look close enough at the cover art of Chosen Family, a hodgepodge collage of portraits.

“Because I was going with this theme of chosen family, I wanted all of my people on the cover. I thought, ‘How could would it be to emulate that ’60s Sgt. Pepper’s look but with my people?’” says Tashjian. “I think it went well, and everyone looks pretty great and gay. I asked my friends if they wanted to be on the cover, told them why I really wanted them to be on it, and then needed them to pick a high-res picture of themselves. So everyone chose their own photo. My best friends Kate and Kate, the two women in the silver jumpsuits in the top, are my two best friends who date each other. And also my friend Joel who is the drag queen on the bottom. Everybody thinks it’s Divine but it’s not. It’s my friend Joel who is becoming a famous drag queen in the San Francisco area.”

To understand the heart of Thin Lips’ personality, we interviewed Chrissy Tashjian for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask musicians questions inspired by their song titles. With Chosen Family as the prompt, her answers are always honest with an underlying levity—what you can expect from the band’s music when they play the Sinclair this Thursday.

1. “Chosen Family” Who were the first two people ever picked for your chosen family?

That’s a great question! Definitely my friend Sarah Kelley, who I call my fetal friend. She was technically my very first friend. Our parents were friends while pregnant so we’ve known each other forever. She’s definitely chosen family and will be forever. We’re very different, as she’s an occupational therapist, but she’s my dude.

I guess right after that would be my friend Marissa who lives in New York. She bought a house in Philly. I live in it and helped renovated it. I have a chicken tattoo on my arm for her. We met in middle school during sixth grade, and my whole life changed because of her, in a good way. Her family was interested in art, and she was in musicals. I tried food I never would have tried, saw things I wouldn’t have. Her dad was in this crazy hippie commune. I was the only friend who was with her when she met her dad for the first time while 16. She’s one of my best friends, and she’s on the cover, too.

2. “Gaslight Anthem (The Song Not The Band)” Have you ever had a “moment,” good or bad, listening to the Gaslight Anthem?

I actually don’t even known that band at all. I wrote the song and wanted to call the song “gaslight anthem” because that’s what it is to me, but I knew it was already a fucking band. Couple ways to skin a cat.

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>> SLAUGHTER BEACH, DOG, THIN LIPS, LILITH. THU 8.23. THE SINCLAIR, 52 CHURCH ST., CAMBRIDGE. 8PM/ALL AGES/$15. SINCLAIRCAMBRIDGE.COM

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NICK WALKER JONES (SKY), MALIA MONK (SOPHIE) AND THE CAST OF MAMMA MIA! PHOTO BY PAUL LYDEN.

THEATER REVIEW PERFORMANCE ARTS

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

SIX PACKS AND DISCO BALLS MAMMA MIA! AT NORTH SHORE MUSIC THEATRE

“Have the time of your life!” say the posters for North Shore Music Theatre’s production of Mamma Mia! It seems like a lofty promise, but there are instances where I can imagine that that might be true. Take someone who is marooned on a deserted island with only insects as company, for example. Or someone who, at birth, was sold to a secret medical experiment lab where, day in and day out, they were forced to endure unthinkable horrors.

Victims of human trafficking or genocide, perhaps, might also fit the bill.

But even then, this Mamma Mia!, directed and choreographed with regrettable hastiness by Kevin P. Hill, is unlikely to be the high point of anyone’s time on earth.

Since premiering in 1999, it is estimated that Mamma Mia! has been seen by over 60 million people and has grossed over $2 billion worldwide. The 2008 film version

has raked in more than $600 million and the sequel, which opened just last month, has already made half that.

It’s a phenomenon that cannot be denied and it’s not hard to see why: ABBA’s music is pure nostalgia for a huge chunk of the world’s ticket-buying population and the women at the core of the story are confident ladies in command of their own sexuality who have gotten by without the help of men. And if any of that fails to draw you in, there’s the tanned, ripped, and half-naked ensemble to make the evening fly by faster than you can say “dot, dot dot.”

Given how this review began, it may come as a surprise to you that I am actually quite fond of Mamma Mia! and that I happily saw the Broadway production a handful of times in its very early days. It wasn’t just that the energy was electric or that the production was tighter than a spandex bodysuit but that it was exactly the breath of fresh air that New York so desperately needed in those first post-9/11 months.

The script hasn’t changed, of course—it’s always been sort of the musical equivalent of a bachelorette party— and it’s still just as cheesy as it ever was. But the show isn’t strong enough to withstand such a leaden production that

>> MAMMA MIA! THROUGH 9.2 AT NORTH SHORE MUSIC THEATRE, 62 DUNHAM RD., BEVERLY. NSMT.ORG 18

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doesn’t gloss over its shortcomings with enough verve to make us eager to forgive its flaws.

Hill’s production is overchoreographed, and the cast frequently appears to struggle to remain in sync. There is an imprecision—vocally, as well as physically—among the ensemble that gives this Mamma Mia! the lacquer of unprofessionalism that is insurmountable. Even the orchestra is inadequate, not doing full justice to every pulsing nuance (yes, nuance) of ABBA’s music. (A lagging electric guitar is a particular nuisance.)

The performances aren’t any better, save for some nice supporting work from Tari Kelly and Tiffani Barbour, who play Donna’s old pals, Tanya and Rosie. But Erica Mansfield doesn’t dig deep enough as Donna and she has a tendency to oversing (it’s ABBA, not Piaf). As Sophie and Sky, the redhot lovers about to take the plunge, neither Malia Monk nor Nick Walker Jones sizzle or charm.

But Mamma Mia! won’t be a total loss for everyone: For North Shore Music Theatre, it’s likely a summertime cash cow. And for Aunt Karen, well, give her a few glasses of pinot grigio and she may come pretty close to having the time of her life.

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LABOR OF LOVE FILM

An interview with writer/director Andrew Bujalski

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN producers, cinematographer Matthias Grunsky, and costume designer Colin Wilkes]. So there is a lot of overlap there.

I think the big takeaway from Results for me was this comical fact … I had made Computer Chess, which in many ways started from a place of me thinking, “What’s the least commercial thing I could possibly do?” and, “How far out there can I go?” Then I did Results, which was in some ways maybe kind of a parody of commercial cinema: It’s very clean and pretty, and the people in it are very clean and pretty. Of course I still did it my way, and I don’t think I did it cynically. That was a movie that I felt passionate about. And it wasn’t just me trying to crack the mainstream, per se—it was me playing with those mainstream elements in a way I found to be fun and exciting. But ultimately, the reception for those two movies was surprisingly similar. I felt they were perceived as being equally bizarre. And I thought, okay, well, I guess that’s what I do. Which is fine. I mean, it’s scary in terms of my finances. But it’s great in terms of my ego. ***

REGINA HALL IN SUPPORT THE GIRLS, A MAGNOLIA PICTURES RELEASE. PHOTO COURTESY OF MAGNOLIA PICTURES.

Andrew Bujalski is an American filmmaker whose movies include Funny Ha Ha [2002], Mutual Appreciation [2005], Beeswax [2009], Computer Chess [2013], and Results [2015].

His latest film is Support the Girls [2018], which follows a cast of characters that all either work at or patronize Double Whammies, a Hooters-adjacent breasts-themed sports bar located somewhere off a highway in Texas. We spoke via phone last week.

Support the Girls takes place at a sports bar, and in recent interviews you’ve said that you spent a lot of time in such establishments as you wrote the screenplay. But to my eyes the movie is very astute about the rhythms of a workday as seen from the perspective of the workers.

Were you also thinking and writing about old jobs you’d worked yourself?

I’ve never worked in a restaurant, so a lot of that was just me doing my best to soak things up. I went to these places as a regular customer a bunch of times while I was writing, which was challenging, because I’m a vegetarian. I ate a lot of mozzarella sticks, french fries, onion rings, drank a bunch of beer. Some of these places offer a salad, but I felt like that’s a red flag—to go in and order a salad. But there was a lot of anonymous, quote-unquote undercover research. A couple of times I did get the opportunity to announce myself and talk to an owner, a manager, or a general manager, where I got shown around a bit, so there was some not-undercover research too.

But what animated this movie was not specifically the restaurant world. To my mind it’s just a movie about working, wherever that may be, whether it’s minimumwage stuff or not. One way or another most people I know recognize the experience of doing something for money that you sure as shit would not be doing if it were not for money. That to keep a roof over your head you’ve got to put on some kind of performance … That felt universal to me.

And yeah, so, sure—all of my resentments about having to earn a living are in there.

Computer Chess, Results, and Support the Girls all revolve around a cast of characters who are brought together by their work in a specific industry. It feels like 20

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this has become a primary concern for you as an artist.

Yeah, but not intentionally. And I’d love to get off of it. I have no idea what I’m going to do next, but certainly that’s one thought crossing my mind: I should write something that does not take place in or around any form of small business. Obviously that’s a place my mind goes to over and over again. A lot of filmmaking is just “small business,” which I’m sure is why it’s always there for me … It’s hard for me to conceive of a character without giving that little bit of thought to what are they doing all day? Some people don’t particularly care about their jobs, or feel defined by them, but it takes up a lot of the hours of the day one way or another, so as a writer it’s hard for me not to go there.

There’s a lot of story in there.

“Filmmaking as small business” is something I found myself thinking about during Support the Girls. When you were giving interviews about Results, you spoke about how you’d calculated the perceived commercial prospects of that movie [“For better or worse, I expected less of my voice to show up in this movie” is what Bujalski said about Results during our last interview three years ago—“I didn’t think this was my ticket to directing studio blockbusters,” he continued, “but I wouldn’t mind having something that plays in that marketplace.”] On a “business” level, Support the Girls is very much in the same mode as Results: same production company, same distributor, same release model. Did the reception to Results lead you to Support the Girls in any direct way?

Well, that’s been the recognition for me: Apparently, I have a mode. And anything I do is going to be in that mode.

Which is a little nerve wracking…

To be clear, for me it’s Support the Girls and Results, specifically, that feel like companion pieces.

Sure. As you say, they’re both made with the same mechanisms of professional film production. And certainly a lot of the same people worked on them in the same roles [people credited on both films include four different

I’m sorry if I’m prying on this, but I want to go back: After Results were you consciously thinking, “I want to work on another script that can be produced in a similar manner”?

Well, this particular idea [that became Support the Girls] began six or seven years ago when people were starting to rush to television. My agent said, “Hey! Everyone’s running to TV. You should run to TV.” So initially I conceived this as a TV story. We pitched it around, and it didn’t go anywhere.

Ultimately I think that was a blessing, because TV is so counterintuitive to me: I have trouble conceiving of a story that I’m not allowed to end. But it stuck with me. So I had versions of these characters, and versions of some of these situations. And yes, I guess sometime around finishing Results, I thought: Maybe I can pick up some of these pieces and build a feature out of it. And I understood the story much better once I had that form. I could make it a little deeper, hopefully, a little darker, a little stranger than whatever it would have been as a TV thing.

Not that I have a great head for exactly what a budget will be … and not that that matters, ultimately … but you do think differently about some film you’d do in your backyard for $20 than you would about something you’d do for $20 million. And that’s true at every level in between. To some degree I do keep that in mind, because it affects everything about how the production is done, and that affects everything on the screen, and how it feels.

An integral part of the process of filmmaking is knowing your tools. Whether it’s painting or sculpture, oil paint or watercolor, that makes a difference. I think people don’t always recognize that.

I’m glad you brought that up, because shooting format is another subject I wanted to ask you about. It seems fair to say that format and technique were foregrounded in discussions about your first four movies—whether it was the use of 16mm in the first three, or the use of period-specific recording equipment for Computer Chess [a modified Sony AVC 3260]. I was wondering if you could talk about your experience shooting digitally on both Results and Support the Girls—what does that change about your work?

It’s hard to articulate because it’s so many things. It’s a nexus of technology and aesthetics and culture, all of which is changing very rapidly. I love film and I may shoot something on film again, before—before I pass away? … I don’t know. I’d like to. But for me some of the heart went

out of that when you could no longer exhibit on film. That changed it a lot for me.

As you sit down to do anything, you need to assess what your tools are. That’s about a feeling as much as anything else—what does it feel like? The way that 16mm projected on 35mm feels, as opposed to the feel of 16mm projected on DCP, as opposed to the feel of 35mm projected on DCP, as opposed to feel of shooting on an Arri Alexa which has been programmed to look like 35mm, as opposed to the feel of an Arri Alexa when it’s been programmed to look like something else … They all feel different. I just do my best to keep that in my head as we shoot, or sometimes as I write. Then you get to edit the movie, and you feel these things out as you go.

I’ve always felt that a movie’s not done until the premiere. Until an audience interacts with it. That’s the last piece of the puzzle. And that’s a piece which you have no particular control over as the director. So much of a movie is people projecting their dreams onto it. And that’s something that’s changing all the time. It’s a fascinating thing about watching movies from the past: You see movies from 100 years ago which are just as powerful today as they were back then, and you see others which don’t work as well because people don’t dream the same way anymore. And that’s also scary, because with the rate the world is changing, this could all go away quickly. It’s plausible to me that in 10 years the whole medium will feel irrelevant.

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Hibernian Hall, 5PM - 10PM

*** I wanted to ask about your treatment of setting in Support the Girls. As viewers we quickly ascertain that we’re in Texas, but the year never seems to be nailed down (it’s clearly the 2010s but not necessarily the present day), nor do we learn the specific city or town or region where this sports bar is located.

This production is a tribute to Nina Simone an American Music Icon!

Ballroom, 3rd Floor, Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley Street, Roxbury

Yeah, you learn as much as this movie needed. And that differs from movie to movie, too. Results was certainly a movie that felt very particularly Austin to me, and I was happy to name it [the setting within the movie]. But I’ve never been that interested in … I’ve don’t think I’ve ever done a movie where it’s, Oh we’re in Austin, I’m going to go get a shot of the bats flying out from Congress Bridge. Or when we shot Mutual Appreciation in New York, I didn’t need to get a shot of the Statue of Liberty. That kind of stuff has never been interesting to me.

We shot Support the Girls in Austin. It does not specifically take place in Austin. In my mind it’s certainly Texas, and there are little hints and cues of Texana in it. But more than that, it’s just highway world. And that is not that different … The highway world of Texas and the highway world of Massachusetts are not terribly dissimilar.

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That’s part of the reason I ask; there’s a vaguely purgatorial aspect to it. The sports bar is nowhere, in a sense—if you ask me where it is, I can’t really say. And when you tie that to the way time is being depicted in this film—one long neverending shift that eventually seems to loop back on itself—it places the characters at something like a literal dead end.

Well, that’s the highway. It isn’t the place, it’s a journey that could maybe take you somewhere—but if you work on the highway, then you’re not located anywhere. You’re just between places.

On the other side of purgatory, I wanted to ask you about “realism.” There’s a Chuck Klosterman essay packed with the new Blu-ray release of Funny Ha Ha. In that essay he rejects the description of your film as being “realistic” and offers “hyperreal” instead—he suggests you construct a series of ostensibly realistic observed moments that taken altogether become more uncanny or unreal. I felt something of that quality in Support the Girls.

It’s a really strange set of elements here, in part because it did develop out of this TV thing. There’s still this weird little strain of sitcom DNA amidst everything else that’s going on in here. But I wasn’t interested in sitcom stakes, or sitcom payoffs.

There are some of those elements, and some of that structure, but I think always pointing towards some place those shows don’t generally go. Whether or not that’s realistic? I don’t know. It’s hard to say. It’s always this weird miasma. If I can get really philosophical in general, I think all of quote-unquote cinema, whatever that thing was that we were excited about for 100 years…

Moving pictures?

Moving pictures, yeah—it’s always lies and truth all mixed up in a way that’s very difficult to untangle. Maybe that’s what’s exciting about it. That’s built into the nature of every part of the process. It’s in the writing, too. You have to be drawing from real life, and it excites me to draw from real life, and to try and connect back to real experiences.

But we’re also putting on a show. Especially in a movie like this, where I’m working with a large and more conventional crew. There’s a lot of excited young people around, and it’s a lot of fun, so it doesn’t feel like we’re working in a factory … But it is labor. You’re trying to make magic out of labor. It’s a strange thing to be doing. But every once in a while you feel that spark and you think, oh, maybe this is working. And that’s very exciting.

9.13.19

Conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. >> SUPPORT THE GIRLS OPENS AT THE KENDALL SQUARE CINEMA FRI 8.24.

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COMEDY EVENTS

PICKLES SAVAGE LOVE

THU 08.23 - SAT 08.25

KATE QUIGLEY @ LAUGH BOSTON

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET I’m in a pickle. All I want is to experience touch, intimacy, and sexual pleasure— but without freaking out. I grew up with a lot of negative messages from men due to developing early, as well as having some other physical/sexual trauma (no rape or abuse), but the combination has me seriously fucked up. Whenever I get close to physical intimacy with someone, I run away. I actually faked an emergency once and physically ran away because I knew sex was a possibility that night. I’m not a virgin—but in those instances, I’ve been really drunk (and experienced no emotional/physical pleasure). This is not what I want for my life. I want a relationship and love, and to be open and comfortable with someone expressing their care for me in a physical way without panicked thoughts flooding my brain. I’ve done lots of therapy, which has helped, but not enough. I recently heard of something called a sexual surrogate. From what I understand, it’s somebody who is trained to therapeutically provide physical touch and intimacy in a controlled and safe environment. Are they legit?

She Can’t Adequately Release Extreme Dread Sexual surrogates are legit, SCARED, but please don’t call them sexual surrogates.

“We’d like to see the language shift back to ‘surrogate partner,’ which was the original term,” said Vena Blanchard, president of the International Professional Surrogates Association (IPSA). “Masters and Johnson originated the concept, and their treatment program was based on the theory that many people had problems that required the help of a cooperative partner, and some people didn’t have partners. So they trained people to work as ‘partner surrogates.’ The media took the term ‘partner surrogate’ and changed it to ‘sexual surrogate’ because it sounded sexier. But ‘sexual surrogate’ implies that the work is all about sex.”

So if surrogate partner therapy is not about sex—or not all about sex—then what is it primarily about?

“Surrogate partner therapy is a therapeutic treatment that combines psychotherapy with experiential learning,” said Blanchard. “It’s a program designed for people like SCARED, for people who struggle with anxiety, panic, and past trauma—things that can distort a person’s experience in the moment.”

Surrogate partner therapy happens in stages, with each progressive stage representing another “teeny, tiny baby step,” as Blanchard put it.

“The client first works with a legitimate therapist until the therapist thinks the client is ready to work with a surrogate partner,” said Blanchard. “You may start by sitting in opposite chairs and just talking. At some point, they might sit and hold hands, practice relaxation techniques, and focus on simple sensations. In the next session, they might touch each other’s faces with their hands.”

Sex can and does sometimes occur in the later stages of surrogate partner therapy, SCARED, but it doesn’t always and it’s not the goal—healing is.

“By having these repeated safe experiences, in a context where there’s no pressure, and consent is emphasized, and the patient is in control,” said Blanchard, “someone liked SCARED can learn to manage her anxiety, and her prior negative experiences are replaced with positive new experiences.”

While I had her on the phone, I asked Blanchard the first question many people have about surrogate partners: Are surrogate partners sex workers?

“A sex worker offers a sexual experience—that is the primary intention of what is a business transaction,” said Blanchard. “What a surrogate partner offers are healing and education. And while healing and education might also take place in a sex-work environment, and while some form of sexual contact might take place in surrogate partner therapy, the primary intention is different. A patient working with a surrogate partner is there to heal old injuries or break out of bad patterns so they can have a relationship in the future. People go to sex workers for an immediate experience—the agenda is sexual and about right now, not therapeutic and about the future.”

Finally, SCARED, the number of trained and qualified surrogate partners is relatively small—IPSA has just 70 members—so you might need to go where most of those trained and qualified surrogates partners are in order to work with one. (The part of California that isn’t on fire is lovely this time of year.)

“Since there aren’t many qualified surrogate partners available,” said Blanchard, “people sometimes need to travel to another location and work intensively. People will come for two weeks and work every single day with a therapist and a surrogate partner.”

On the Lovecast, a sex toy expert’s husband’s favorite sex toy: savagelovecast.com

Kate Quigley is a standup comedian, model, host, and actress. Most notably Kate is currently the host of UNDERCOVER on Playboy TV traveling the world and commenting on the culture (she herself is not nude in the show). Production on season 2 of the show just wrapped. Kate recently shot two non-scripted pilots for Bravo.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8 & 10PM | $25-$29 THU 08.23

8 O’CLOCK AT 730 @ 730 TAVERN, KITCHEN, & PATIO

Empathy On Sale:Nationally Touring Comedian, Krish Mohan is exploring the current divide in today’s political climate. He uses his sharp wit, storytelling and comedy to illustrate how capitalism, identity politics, immigration and misunderstanding progressive ideals has led to unnecessarily splitting us apart. He explores Native American culture, reforming education and western culture’s obsession with extremism, war and violence using satire and comedy to engage dialogue about hot button issues.

Featuring: Krish Mohan, Nick Ortolani, Rob Crean, Liam McGurk & more.

730 MASS AVE., CAMBRIDGE | 8PM | FREE FRI 08.24 - SAT 08.25

DAN LAMORTE @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

Dan LaMorte is a New York City based stand up comedian. Dan is one of the youngest comics on the scene and at only 22 years old has built an impressive resume. He has been seen doing panel on FOX’s Red Eye, showcased on 2016’s Comedy Central’s Comics to Watch, had his stand up featured on NBC Universal’s COZI TV, was featured on the 2017 season of AXS TV’s Gotham Comedy Live, and in January of 2017 he released his first album “Not Enough Pieces”; through On Tour Records. The album got plenty of love on the iTunes comedy charts, it was met with great reviews and a lengthy stay as the number one best selling stand up album.

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 FRI 08.24

THE GAS! @ GREAT SCOTT

Since giving up on his initial dream of being Rhode Island’s finest catch-and-release tournament fisherman, Ryan has been inside the television on a few different occasions. In 2016 he made his late night debut on on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and has since appeared as himself in both seasons of Crashing on HBO. Those are all of the occasions.

Featuring: Ryan Donahue & more.

Hosted by Rob Crean

1222 COMM AVE., ALLSTON | 7PM | $5 SAT 08.25

TRES GATOS LIVE @ BILL’S BAR BOSTON

For the first time ever, Tres Gatos TV is hosting a LIVE show complete with Boston’s best stand-up & comedy videos!

Swing by to see 5 hilarious videos — including the debut of “Justice For Alma” (an official selection at Just for Laughs) — plus stand-up from some of our most frequent collaborators.

Featuring: Orlando Baxter, Will Noonan, Nick Chambers, Laura Severse, Zachary Brazão, Tawanda Gona, Terence Pennington, & Tooky Kavanagh.

Hosted by Luke Jarvis and Robert Pooley

24 CLINTON ST., BOSTON | 9PM | $20 SAT 08.25

AFFIRMATIVE REACTION: ASIAN AMERICAN COMEDY @ IMPROVBOSTON

Featuring: Jiayong Li, Jere Pilapil, Diana Lu, Alex La, Nate Shu, & Srihas Sampath.

Hosted by Isha Patnaik and Brandon Lee

40 PROSPECT ST., CAMBRIDGE | 11PM | $12 SUN 08.26

LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW

Featuring: Ethan Diamond, Janet McNamara, Shea Spillane, Jeff Medoff, Dan Hall, Deadair Dennis Maler, Brett Johnson, Mike Settlow, & Ryan Chani.

Hosted by Stirling Smith

15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 MON 08.27

FREE COMEDY @ CITYSIDE

Featuring: Samantha Ruddy, Sam Ike, Anjan Biswas, & more.

Hosted by Laura Severse

1960 BEACON ST., BRIGHTON | 8:30PM | FREE savagelovecast.com

22

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Lineup & shows to change without notice. For more info on everything Boston Comedy visit BostonComedyShows.com Bios & writeups pulled from various sources, including from the clubs & comics…

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

Kate Quigley

Joey Diaz’s The Church Of What's Happening Now Thursday - Saturday

COMING SOON

Melissa Villaseñor Saturday Night Live, America’s Got Talent Special Engagement: Weds, Aug 30

Rob Little

Comedy Central, The Best Damn Sports Show Period Aug 31-Sept 2

THE WAY WE WEREN’T

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BOS POD FEST

9 days. 12 hilarious podcasts.

ALL recorded live!

Sept 2-10

Robert Kelly Comedy Central, FX, Netflix Sept 7 + 8 OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

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Matteo Lane Girl Code, Guy Code Sept 13-15 617.72.LAUGH | laughboston.com 425 Summer Street at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District NEWS TO US

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