DigBoston 9.6.18

DIGBOSTON.COM 09.06.18 - 09.13.18

DEAR READER

R.I.P. VILLAGE VOICE

DIG STRONG AND MOURN ON BEER BUREAU

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COMICS IN COLOR EACH ONE TEACH ART COVER STORY

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EDITORIAL

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DEAR READER VOICE OVER

What if someone you know started a GoFundMe campaign to purchase renters insurance? So that in the case of an unfortunate event like a flood or a fire, they would be covered.

This is complete conjecture, but I doubt that they would hit any significant goal. I’m a sweet old liberal softy pants, and even I can see myself asking why I should cough it up for someone else’s bills. What’s next? Paying for their groceries and healthcare before they get sick or hungry?

On the other hand, in any given year I probably spend anywhere from fifty to a hundred bucks on fundraisers for friends or friends of friends whose cribs go up in flames. I guess it is just easier to summon my compassion after shit hits the fan.

I consider the phenomenon described above whenever there is news that yet another legendary and beloved outlet is ceasing to publish. Perhaps this is the bitter alternativenewspaper lifer in me that’s speaking, but I have to say that there’s a lot more crying for us when we flame out than there is caring and preventative support when we’re still in the game.

The awful news this past week came from New York City, my hometown, where the Village Voice was dealt a final blow with the remaining edit staff getting axed. Every publication has its own story, of course, and few have more twists than the Voice; in its 60-plus years of existence, the iconic institution has passed through multiple ownerships, including a short stint by Rupert Murdoch who was skewered by his editors and writers week in and week out until he relented and sold. Their latest owner wasn’t too much better; a wealthy brat who hoped to save the day, he apparently misread the market, industry, and era in which he was operating. No real loss for him, I guess. He’s still rich.

I was asked to write about the passing of the Voice for several outlets. I may entertain one of the offers in some time if those national editors still want my take (I’m sure they don’t and have already forgotten), but right now I can’t help but feel that eulogizing yet another dead friend for a spiffy new media site is like conceding defeat. Plus, while I could really use the couple hundred bucks that it would pay, I don’t really have the time anyway. Here at the Dig, along with our partners from the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, we are busy working on multiple investigations—you know, the kind that critics who don’t know the first thing about independent media in 2018 keep alleging that papers like ours have stopped producing. If the lamenters understood the issue, then they would recognize that in the past year alone BINJ has helped and inspired alt weeklies in more than a half-dozen cities to start their own nonprofits to help lift heavy journalistic loads.

This column isn’t just about the Village Voice. Or Baltimore City Paper, which sadly closed its doors in 2016, or even LA Weekly, which under its current conservative ownership is merely a deceptive shallow shadow of the giant it once was. These days, I’m sad about a lot more than the oft-mourned likes of the Boston Phoenix, where I worked for five years as a staff writer before it shut in 2013.

Journalism experts in Manhattan may not give a fuck, but we’re losing insurgents beyond major metropolitan areas as well—just last month, the Valley Advocate, which serves Western Mass, was folded into the daily that owns it, in a sense silencing a 40-year-old voice in the same cold corporate manner we’ve seen many times before.

As for the Dig, we’re still kicking ass. If you want us to keep at it, make sure that your business and those of your friends place ads with us; or, if you are an individual, please consider becoming a monthly backer of our nonprofit at binjonline.org. You can consider your donation to be like insurance for the local media, because if we have to come and ask you for a handout after our house burns down too, then I’m afraid that it will be too late.

CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Need more Dig? Sign up for the Daily Dig @ tiny.cc/DailyDig

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

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NEWS+OPINION

WELCOME BACK! NEWS TO US

Late buses, fiscal mismanagement, and administrative legal woes as BPS reopens

BY DAN ATKINSON @_DANATKINSON_ As students and teachers return to the classroom this week, Boston Public Schools faces the fallout from an audit showing financial mismanagement at nearly every school, as well as a lawsuit for gender discrimination against former high-ranking administrators.

Oh, and buses have already failed to pick up and drop off students on time. Welcome back, kids.

The litany of woes comes as BPS deals with the aftermath of Superintendent Tommy Chang’s resignation at the start of the summer, three years into his five-year term. Chang, who formerly oversaw the Los Angeles Unified School District, had dealt with numerous blunders during his tenure, including an IRS audit that prompted the most recent review of finances and a disastrous rollout of new start times that outraged parents successfully forced back.

Laura Perille, the former head of educational nonprofit EdVestors, is the interim leader. On that front, with the mishaps piling up at the start of yet another superintendent search, one BPS advocate said the district’s problems shouldn’t scare off potential applicants.

“I think it will actually be a very easy task to find qualified individuals,” said at-large City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George, a former teacher who chairs the council’s education subcommittee. “The biggest problem is to find who is best suited to lead the district. We have a lot of homebred talent, we need to stop looking elsewhere.”

Whoever gets the top job, there are plenty of problems for a new superintendent to address. Following an IRS audit that found problems in the way student activity accounts were used at a dozen schools, a new audit commissioned by the city found comparable poor recordkeeping at nearly every school. The district is now moving those accounts into a master bank account.

Meanwhile, a former BPS employee is suing the department for $105,000, saying Chang’s new hires after he took over BPS discriminated against her for being female and pregnant, subsequently preventing her from getting other jobs.

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A spokesman said BPS would not comment on pending litigation. Asked about the matter, Essaibi-George said she had not seen the lawsuit and would not comment on specifics, but said she was concerned about the allegations.

“We have to stay vigilant, we need to make sure that there is no individual that feels marginalized,” the councilor said. “If there is any indication or indicators suggesting discrimination … we support their right to file a complaint. It’s discouraging and upsetting and saddening to hear that a former city of Boston employee who wants to work with BPS appears to have evidence that they’ve been discriminated against.”

The employee, Thelma DaSilva, had been working in the communications department at BPS since 2011, according to the lawsuit. When Chang took over in 2015, Richard Weir became DaSilva’s supervisor, while Makeeba McCreary became Chang’s chief of staff. Weir left BPS last week, and a department spokesman would not say if his departure was related to the lawsuit, saying BPS does not comment on personnel matters. Calls to the attorneys for McCreary and Weir went unanswered.

The lawsuit charges Weir, McCreary, and Chang with discriminating on the basis of gender and pregnancy and retaliation, as well as interfering with DaSilva’s job offers, and charges McCreary and Chang with aiding and abetting discrimination and retaliation. According to the complaint, Weir questioned whether DaSilva was qualified for her job and said she had a few months to prove herself to him before she left for maternity leave in August.

Although DaSilva had received favorable reviews from her previous supervisor, after supervising her for two months, Weir gave DaSilva a performance evaluation saying she needed improvement in two areas. The review prevented DaSilva from getting a raise.

DaSilva filed a complaint with BPS’ office of equity saying she had been discriminated against because of her race, sex, and status as a pregnant woman. According to the lawsuit, Weir delayed approving DaSilva’s maternity

leave after learning of the complaint.

After returning from maternity leave, DaSilva met with Weir and McCreary and discussed getting a raise and a new job title, according to the lawsuit. But in April 2016, two days after the office of equity determined BPS had indeed violated district policies about discrimination and retaliation, McCreary told DaSilva she would not be getting a raise, according to the lawsuit. Two months later, DaSilva received a positive evaluation from a new supervisor but was soon after told that her position was being eliminated, and she was offered a job at a lower tier in the BPS salary system.

DaSilva then filed complaints with the office of equity and with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination about her termination. A third party hired by BPS to investigate the complaint filed with the office of equity found no evidence school policies had been violated, but the MCAD complaint was referred to the federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, which eventually determined in 2017 that there was “reasonable cause” to believe BPS had discriminated against DaSilva, according to the lawsuit. The EEOC issued a right to sue letter after conciliation failed, though a commission spokesman said the agency is prohibited from commenting any further on complaints.

While issuing her grievances, DaSilva applied for another position in BPS and was offered the job in August.

According to the lawsuit, Chang’s office learned of the offer and said she would not be approved, leading the manager to rescind the offer. The lawsuit also alleges DaSilva was placed on a “do not hire” list after she filed her second complaint to the office of equity and the complaint to MCAD. This article was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. To see more reporting like this please consider making a contribution at givetobinj.org

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

5

APPARENT HORIZON

FROM INJURY TO ACTION: A LABOR DAY REMEMBRANCE (PART I)

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Every once and a while, I move slightly differently than usual. Maybe I shift position too fast. Maybe I pick up something a bit too heavy. Maybe I’m sitting askew for just a bit too long. Whatever the cause, one second I’m fine… and the next, my old spinal injury flares up. It’s that fast. Pain radiates outward from my core to my extremities.

It traces a burning track to the tips of my fingers.

I am aware of exactly where each nerve runs back to damaged vertebrae. And there is nothing much I can do in the way of palliative care but let the latest flareup run its course. I mean, sure, I can do light exercise.

I can do some special stretches learned over years of occasional physical therapy. I can use ice, then heat, then ice again. Then I can rest. And start over again the next day.

With luck, after a week or three, whatever inflammation I caused calms down. The pain comes with decreasing regularity. And then I return to my “normal” state. The state that has made me unable to do manual labor for many many years. And unable to drive in recent years. If my friends or family need help moving, I can’t do it. If anyone needs me to jump in a car and pick them up, they have to ask someone else.

As I type these words on Labor Day, I have just had such a flare-up. Which is, it must be said, kind of ironic.

Yesterday, I sat texting someone in a marginally different posture than usual… and bang, I’m hurt again. So it hurts to type. A lot. But I’m pushing through anyway.

Like I always do. Like I’ve done for decades.

Because I was first injured directly after leaving the last shift of a job in late March 1989. But it was not an actual job. It had neither security, nor benefits, nor decent wages. It was certainly labor, though.

The incident occurred at the conclusion of an eightweek temp assignment for Manpower—then, as now, one of the largest so-called “staffing agencies” in the world. The company I worked for—yet didn’t work for— was Belden Electronics. The plant in question was in Essex Junction, Vermont. I had moved up to the Green Mountain State the previous year and was never able to find a decent “job job” in the two years I lived there. Or in several years before or after my “mountain sojourn.” Like many other members of my generation coming of age in the 1980s, I was discovering that the “good jobs” my parents’ generation and their parents’ generation had enjoyed after WWII were already becoming a thing of the past. The late ’80s recession under the first Bush presidency only made things worse.

Prior to the factory gig, the temp assignments I had gotten were shorter term.

And I wanted something that lasted for longer than a week at a time. The better to pay my rent and keep my car on the road. So when Manpower offered the Belden assignment, I took it. It was swing shift, and I’d be working from 3 pm to midnight, Monday through Friday. I was a night owl, and that allowed me to do other things I was doing in Vermont at that point in my life. I was told I’d be driving a forklift—which I thought sounded interesting.

I was 22 years old.

So one fine afternoon in early February 1988, I coaxed my old car with manual transmission and a busted second gear I couldn’t afford to fix into driving the halfhour from Burlington’s more or less urban sprawl into the deep woods where some genius had thought it was a good idea to drop an industrial park. Snow was piled 10 feet deep on either side of the country 6

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roads as I pulled into a large parking lot outside the commodious Belden facility for the first time.

Inside, I was given a quick tour of the factory floor, break room, and bathrooms. Then I was “trained” to drive two kinds of electric forklifts for a total of three hours. One of which involved watching a video. The other two of which involved a manger running me through my paces on actual equipment at speeds much lower than I was going to be expected to drive in the coming weeks. Then I was sent out onto the floor to start work. I received the rest of my training, such as it was, from the guy whose job I was helping eliminate. After working there eight years, he was to be replaced by temps like me.

He was a devout Mormon. Many folks don’t realize it, but the Mormon church began in Vermont in the 1800s. So there are more of that flock about on the starboard side of Lake Champlain than one might think.

My trainer and his wife were doing their level best to increase that flock, too. So he had several children. And that was why Belden let him stay on after using me to render his job redundant. He was allowed to work on a machine station, after being forced to accept a pay cut.

To make ends meet, he had already started a second job as a janitor at his Mormon temple. Yet despite all this adversity, he never said an unkind word to me—the guy who was to be the first in a series of temps to work his old job—or anyone else in the plant.

He was, in fact, one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met in my life. Toward the end of my brief tenure at Belden, he gave me a Book of Mormon that he and his family had inscribed with their best wishes. I read it, and discussed it with him. Explained that I was still searching for a spiritual home, but was honored and humbled by his gift. Then went back to work.

And what was that work? Well, the factory made wire for electronics companies—including the nearby IBM works. The wire was then spooled. And the spools ranged in size. From little ones that might weigh 10 pounds each. To huge ones that weighed 1000 pounds or more.

I am 5’6”, and at the time I weighed 132 pounds soaking wet. My job was to lift or roll those wire spools onto

the tines of either of my forklifts—the fast one (which I loved) or the slow one. And take them from station to station, machine to machine, where the wire went through the various stages of its processing.

All that lifting and pushing of spools took its toll on me in the brief time I was there, but my body seemed to handle the stress ok. After all, I was young and bouncy.

But I didn’t realize that, in the absence of proper training or safety equipment, I wasn’t doing anything correctly.

Not to say that I wasn’t a good worker. People from management on down were quite decent to me, as far as it went. I was, however, putting a great deal of strain on my spine.

Meanwhile, I was essentially participating in the forced speedup of a nonunion factory by corporate management who were trying to increase profits by cutting labor costs. Driving from station to station, I got to talk to lots of workers—many of whom, like my trainer, had been there for years. They were very stressed out and unhappy. They were working harder and longer for less money with worse benefits. And I began to wonder why they couldn’t unionize.

I didn’t know much about unions. Though I was aware that the only recourse working people have on a bad job is to start one. So I actually tried to get a longerterm contract with Belden in hopes of being able to try to do just that.

But there was no way they were going to hire a temp they were using to keep their longer-term workers offbalance. And at the end of March, I worked that fateful last shift. Shortly after midnight, I said my goodbyes— taking a few minutes to fill out whatever paperwork Belden and Manpower needed me to complete on the way.

By the time I walked out the plant door with the remaining manager, everyone was gone. There was no third shift at that time, so the parking lot was already empty. The manager’s car was parked next to the plant, and he drove off straight away. The door had locked behind me, and there was no one in sight. Except for a lone car in the middle distance that I hadn’t noticed.

Which started up unexpectedly, causing me to snap my head to the right to see whose it was.

And then I heard a sickening crack.

Followed by a massive wave of pain—emanating from my spine—that coursed through my body from head to toe.

And then I realized my left arm wouldn’t move.

I was only halfway to my car. There was no one around. In the middle of a large parking lot. In the middle of the night. In the middle of the woods. On a freezing Vermont night many years before cell phones became common. A light snow was falling.

I was completely alone.

Part II coming soon...

Apparent Horizon—winner of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s 2018 Best Political Column award—is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2018 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

7

OPINION

OH REALLY O’MALLEY? Is the Catholic Church salvageable?

BY REV. IRENE MONROE Catholic Bay Staters highly respect Cardinal Sean O’Malley. He’s viewed by many as a no-holds-barred leader when it comes to addressing clergy sex abuse. In a 2014 interview with the Jesuit magazine America, he spoke out about the problem.

“In many people’s minds it is an American problem, an Irish problem, or a German problem,” O’Malley said. “The church has to face it is everywhere in the world. There is so much denial. The church has to respond to make the church safe for children.”

But now, some Bay Staters are calling for both Cardinal O’Malley and Pope Francis to step down, as reports circulate that O’Malley, too, knew of alleged abuses at the hands of former DC archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Sadly, in 2018 the Catholic Church worldwide is still bedeviled with this problem.

And it begs the question, is the Catholic Church salvageable?

While on his trip to Ireland to win back the confidence of Catholics reeling from their church’s mishandling of predatory priests, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, an ultra-traditionalist and unapologetic homophobe, accused Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, and other top Catholic Church officials of knowing about McCarrick’s sex abuses decades before they became public.

McCarrick, now 88, was a rising star in the Catholic Church in the 1980s while bishop in New Jersey, where he was known to “often place his hand on seminarians while talking with them, or on their thighs while seated near them.” On June 20, McCarrick was removed from public ministry by the Holy See, and on June 27 Pope Francis accepted his resignation from the College of Cardinals.

In a 7,000-word letter published in Italian by the National Catholic Register and in English by LifeSiteNews, both critical of Francis, Viganò called on Francis to resign.

He might be correct in pointing out the Catholic Church’s moral and ecclesiastical fecklessness to stem the problem with its predatory priests, but Viganò is most incensed by the pontiff “giving comfort to a ‘homosexual current’ in the Vatican.”

Just this month, the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania exploded with news exposing its sex abuse scandal citing a grand jury report, with accusations that 300 priests abused at least 1,000 children over a 70-year period. The report shockingly detailed cases of kids manipulated with alcohol who were raped, harassed, fondled, and threatened, while laments for help from their families were either “brushed aside” or hushed with payoffs. These revelations came following McCarrick’s resignation.

O’Malley, meanwhile, met last week with approximately 300 Boston-area priests at Saint Julia Church in Weston to address recent alleged sexual misconduct at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton. To the shock and horror of many Catholic Bay Staters, O’Malley never addressed a letter sent to him about McCarrick—he claims his secretary never gave it to him.

In his mea culpa clean-up statement, O’Malley publicly released the following remarks: “I understand that not everyone will accept this answer given the way the Church has eroded the trust of our people. My hope is that we can repair the trust and faith of all Catholics.”

However, the question not asked by the church’s governing body remains: Why does sexual abuse persist as it does among its clerics?

There are two salient causes: a “no-snitch policy” and an unwavering support of church bishops.

For example, the church has such a policy of silence when it comes to child sexual abuse, as canon law allows for the pontifical secret on all “allegations” as well as proof of predatory priests. As a result, these cover-ups have been occurring under six popes since 1922.

In February 2016, good news came that gave some hope that canon law was about to change.

O’Malley, the president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, stated that bishops have an ethical and moral obligation to report allegations of clergy sexual misconduct and abuse to civil authorities. But in December of that year, the commission published its guidelines for the church’s national conference of bishops. Sadly, O’Malley’s statement was excluded.

In his role, Pope Francis promised to implement a “zero tolerance” policy moving forward to stem the problem—but he appears to be part of the problem, too, because he supports rogue bishops.

During a recent closing ceremony in Dublin, Francis asked forgiveness for sexual abuses committed by clerics of his church. But with no changes in canon law, seminarian training, or his culpability, his church has done nothing to earn the forgiveness he has asked for.

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UNEQUAL EXCHANGE GUEST OPINION

Au pairs deserve the same basic labor protections as other domestic workers

BY THATY OLIVEIRA

More than 1,500 au pairs came to Massachusetts in 2017. Typically young women, au pairs come to the US on J-1 visas as part of a cultural exchange visitor program under the US Department of State. They provide flexible, in-home childcare for up to 45 hours per week and receive weekly stipends of $195.75, equal to $4.35 per hour. Au pair sponsor agencies, like Cambridge-based Cultural Care Au Pair, advertise the program as cheap and convenient childcare to host families; you can find posts in any online parent forum that recommend au pairs as the “cheapest childcare” that is available 24-7.

To au pairs, agencies sell the program as a cultural exchange through which they will have the opportunity to study. Au pairs pay agencies thousands of dollars in program-associated fees to come to the US for this. But once here, they often find that they are underpaid domestic workers.

I know, because I was an au pair. Since my childhood in Brazil, I wanted to study abroad and learn English. I remember the day my best friend came home with a flyer from an au pair agency; it felt like a dream coming true. So I saved up money and eventually came to Boston to be an au pair to a 3-year-old child. After my experience, I remained in childcare.

I confess that I did not know that being a nanny was a career choice, but I am now a professional career nanny. As a nanny, I came to realize that I was doing the same work that I had been doing as an au pair. It is hard work and some of the most important in society. As both an au pair and as a nanny, it has been my responsibility to foster children’s whole development—cognitive, physical, and socio-emotional. I am a private in-home educator. As an au pair, I received subminimum wages for this work. As a nanny, I now earn over $30 per hour.

While au pair agencies advertise other benefits to au pairs, like educational support, these do not offset such poor pay. Despite my low pay, I had to spend my own money to cover the cost of my English studies, because the standard $500 education credit that I received was insufficient.

I am not alone. Indeed I was lucky compared to so many au pairs. A new report by the Matahari Women Workers’ Center and other organizations, titled “Shortchanged: The Big Businesses Behind the Low Wage J-1 Au Pair Program,” documents systematic exploitation of au pairs in Massachusetts and beyond.

Au pairs report working long hours for $4.35 per hour while experiencing things including sexual harassment, insufficient food, and emotional abuse, among other issues. The Department of State leaves most oversight to profit-driven agencies, and while there are both good and bad host families, agencies are financially incentivized to retain even exploitative host families because they pay thousands of dollars to agencies and are often repeat customers.

While this report and the experiences of au pairs highlight the need for greater oversight and protection, au pairs are still under attack. The major agency Cultural Care is suing the Massachusetts Attorney General to remove au pairs from the 2014 Massachusetts Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, which gives several protections. As an industry leader, I work with nanny communities across the country, and in Boston I’m a member-leader with the Matahari Women Workers’ Center. We have organized to keep au pairs protected, as we know that an attack on au pairs here is an attack on domestic workers everywhere.

Claims that au pairs are not workers despite 45 hours of weekly childcare rest on the same assumptions that have long deprived domestic workers of fair pay and protections: that care work is not real work and that immigrants who comprise most of this workforce are undeserving. We will continue to fight for au pairs so that they are paid at least minimum wage and overtime, remain protected by the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, and benefit from proper oversight of the program by a neutral party. Only then will all domestic workers be truly protected.

Thaty Oliveira is a former au pair, professional career nanny, member-leader at Boston-based Matahari Women Workers’ Center, and member of the International Nanny Association Board of Directors.

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SEEDS + STEMS DEPT. TALKING JOINTS MEMO

CCC’s environmental workgroup needs to focus on disposal, compostables

BY CHRISTINE GIRAUD The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) has put together a state-mandated Energy and Environment Workgroup to set environmental regulations for the industry. The group is chaired by Commissioner Kay Doyle and includes representatives from the Department of Energy Resources, Department of Environmental Protection, and Department of Agricultural Resources.

In their research and subsequent action, one area that deserves attention is the disposal of compostables like trims and stalks from the plant, soil, and nutrients.

Why is this important?

Take Washington state, where the cannabis industry has created 1.7 million pounds of waste since 2014 with no real idea of where it will go. According to the Washington Post, composting companies in Washington have collected little or no cannabis waste, which means that hundreds of thousands of pounds are being sent to landfills.

Composting is more environmentally friendly than landfills because the waste quickly breaks down into usable soil. Compost in a landfill decomposes slowly and generates more methane, a strong greenhouse gas.

DigBoston reached out to all the dispensaries in Mass that were approved to sell cannabis before 2018, asking if they have a waste disposal plan in place. None responded to our inquiries about where they are taking their compostables.

Businesses in Mass that create organic waste may not have a choice of whether to compost. Under one scenario, Massachusetts by 2024 could be left with only one operating landfill, in Middleborough, with a yearly capacity

None responded to our inquiries about where they are taking their compostables.

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of 60,000 tons.

Aware of the problem, the MassDEP has taken action to divert waste away from landfills. In 2014 it imposed the Commercial Food Material Disposal Ban. Businesses and institutions that dispose of one or more tons of food waste per week have to send all of it to a compost site. They haven’t faced opposition from businesses either; according to a 2014 article in the Boston Globe, some hospitals and grocery chains were already preparing to buy dehydrators and digesters to reduce their waste.

That kind of upfront investment might not be easy for businesses in the cash-based cannabis industry.

Nonetheless, where is the waste going? Since dispensaries are staying quiet, let’s make some guesses.

Maybe making it ready for compost is too complicated.

Because cannabis is a Schedule I Controlled Substance, pot producers have to grind up their plant waste and mix it 50/50 with non-cannabis waste to make it unusable.

Only then can it be composted. But they have to do that regardless of where they take it, so isn’t it easier to let a compost site cut it up with their own waste?

Maybe it’s tough for them to transport the cannabis to a compost site. If the compost company near them doesn’t pick up, that’s a cost for sure. But they’d have to do the same for a landfill, and landfill scarcity in Mass makes for some of the nation’s highest dumping fees. The fees at compost or biogas facilities are often lower, or even free because rotting plant waste is their bread and butter.

It could be the dispensaries are using unapproved pesticides and don’t want that in reusable compost.

The negative consequences of this are so high that this is unlikely, but let’s say it happens. Whatever. Compost companies accept food waste that’s grown with pesticides all the time.

Perhaps stubborn community agreements make composting impossible. Half of Massachusetts towns have either banned or placed a moratorium on cannabis businesses in their borders and, of the towns that have accepted them, it is often more with caution than enthusiasm. This leaves the cannabis businesses in a

weak bargaining position when working out agreements.

Nature’s Remedy was recently granted a special permit to open a production and retail dispensary in Lakeville Industrial Park, but the community rejected the proposed outdoor composting facility because of worry about odor and security.

So maybe it is the bans and moratoriums. We spoke to eight compost companies and all said they’d be happy to take cannabis waste, but there is a significant crossover between the 190 commonwealth municipalities that have either placed a moratorium on or banned cannabis enterprises, and the locations of the Bay State’s 220 compost sites. They probably couldn’t take cannabis waste even if they wanted to.

John Fischer, chief of commercial waste reduction and waste planning at MassDEP, isn’t worried that the cannabis industry will make much of an impact on landfill space. “When we look at overall waste, Massachusetts produces five and a half million tons a year. We compost hundreds of thousands of tons. As far as the cannabis industry is concerned, the impact would be a small part of that overall waste.”

Maybe he’s right. The 1.7 million pounds of cannabis waste in Washington state are a result of severe overproduction, which is not currently a problem here.

In any case, Commissioner Doyle and her CCC environmental working group are exploring potential solutions for an industry that leaves an extraordinarily heavy carbon footprint.

Says Doyle: “Working with experts from Massachusetts and other states, industry representatives, and members of the public, the Energy and Environment Workgroup will evaluate, on an ongoing basis, ways to reduce energy and water usage in the marijuana industry to mitigate environmental impacts and advance industry best practices.”

Hopefully they’ll also discuss where the excess grown from all that light and water will end up.

DRINKING IN THE RAIN BOSTON BETTER BEER BUREAU

Meet the guy who makes those umbrellas with the beer tap handles

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON We’re not sure how much there’s to say about Benjamin Lewis and his Raintraps beer handle umbrellas that we didn’t cover in the interview, so let’s just get right to it…

Where did this ridiculous idea come from? What was the first one you made?

I had the idea on a rainy day last summer. I had brought an umbrella with me when I left the house, but by the middle of the day the sun came out. I was still carrying the umbrella around, I looked down at my umbrella and thought, “Why can’t you be something cool?” At that point it struck me, it would be really awesome if the handle was a beer tap. The tap that immediately came to mind was Pretty Things [Ed. note: RIP]; it was such a stylish design I thought it would be perfect as an umbrella handle.

I made a couple of prototypes with taps from MGD and Wachusett when I was figuring out the design. The one that I used when I finally had a fully working umbrella design was a tap from Goose Island. I’ve always been a fan of their beer, and the tap is just so natural as an umbrella handle, a lot of people don’t even realize it’s a beer tap.

What’s with the basement in your videos? Have you been kidnapped?

I’m totally staying in my basement on my own free will. I can leave at any time.

There aren’t people standing next to me right now forcing me to stay here. You definitely shouldn’t get help immediately. It’s just that it’s where I do most of my work. I have my hand tools and other equipment set up in the basement, so when I’m doing a quick video it’s just where all my gear is. I’m also just a guy making custom umbrellas, I’m cool with people knowing that I’m not working out of some fancy factory. I should note that I have the most amazing roommates that put up with all the work I do at home.

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Where did you steal all of these tap handles from? Is there a bar somewhere in Boston where they can’t run their kegs?

I hear so many stories about people trying to steal tap handles. It’s like, if you’re draped across the bar yanking on a tap handle, do you think the bartender isn’t going to notice? I actually get most of my taps from other collectors or from auctions when bars go out of business. There are some collectors that have entire rooms where the walls are lined with rows of tap handles. I’ve also been lucky enough to partner up with some breweries; I’ll typically make some umbrellas for them and get some taps that I can offer to my customers. The first brewery I partnered with was Down the Road Brewing, and since that I’ve also worked with Shipyard Brewery in Portland and even made umbrellas for places like Noble Cider in North Carolina. With other breweries like Brooklyn Brewery or Downeast Cider I just buy the taps directly from the brewery when I get an order from a customer.

Are you much of a beer drinker yourself? What’s your favorite local microbrewery?

I’m a bit of a beer drinker. I definitely enjoy kicking back with a craft beer or keeping it simple with a High Life or Narragansett.

It’s hard to pick a single favorite local brewery, so I’ll give you three of the ones I love. Night Shift is great for their consistently fantastic beers, Down the Road keeps surprising me with unusual beers (did you try their pickle beer?), and I rather like the dark beers Lamplighter does and how easy it is to swing by their brewery.

Do you have any plans to make umbrellas out of bongs now that cannabis is legal?

No plans for bong umbrellas just yet. I have been trying to think of ways that I could do an umbrella pipe—just imagine an umbrella transforming into some crazy Gandalf pipe. On that note, I have come across a number of very appropriate tap handles like Terrapin’s Wake-n-Bake.

Where can people find you and your products—both online and around here?

The quickest way to find my umbrellas, and other beer gifts, is on raintaps.com.

Even if you don’t see the umbrella you’re looking for, you can always make a special request. People can also buy my umbrellas at D2 and Arlington Centered, as well as at partner breweries like Down the Road and Shipyard. To chat with me in person it’s best to swing by SOWA Open Market, I try to be there whenever there’s an open spot.

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ROOKIE YEAR FEATURE

An all-girls baseball team bats back adversity from Roxbury to Rockford

BY BRITNI DE LA CRETAZ @BRITNIDLC

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before February, most of the girls from Roxbury had never played baseball before. Or any other organized sport for that matter. Some team members were playing baseball for the very first time in their lives at the national tournament. They were there for the experience, an accomplishment in and of itself.

“We told them, ‘Let’s come here and see what it’s all about. Let’s put this under our belt and next year we’ll be more competitive,’” coach Lori Dipina said. Despite their struggles on the field, the girls never gave up on a single play. They stayed with every ball through bobbles, missed catches, and confusion over where to throw. When a player took her base after getting hit by a pitch, the dugout erupted into a chant, “We love free bases, we love free bases!”

Based in Egleston Square, the BASE provides year-round baseball and softball training to populations that have historically been underserved in the sports community. It’s hard to know how many girls of color, and black girls in particular, play baseball in the United States. In 2013, an estimated 4.5 million kids played US Little League baseball, perhaps the largest youth baseball league in the country. Asked

about demographics, a spokesperson for US Little League said it does not keep relevant information on players.

Meanwhile, statistics show that the African-American talent pool for Major League Baseball is in decline.

As for the gender divide, Baseball For All, a nonprofit that aims to support and grow the future of women’s baseball, estimates that more than 100,000 girls play youth baseball, though that number declines to around 1,000 by the time they reach high school age. At the highest level for that group, as far as diversity goes, on this year’s US women’s national baseball team roster, just two of the players are black (one of those players, Tamara Holmes, was injured before the tournament and pulled out).

The BASE location on the edge of Roxbury, a neighborhood that is approximately 60 percent black and 23 percent Latino, is helping to bridge the gap and bring baseball to communities that have been excluded from the sport. But that’s not all they do.

“It’s baseball, but it’s so much more than that,” says Dipina. “We also do college visits, so we take them to

This encouragement is imperative; the majority of female players with the BASE are entering the sport at an age when most girls are being pushed out.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF BASEBALL FOR ALL

At the Baseball For All nationals in Rockford, Illinois, last month, a team of 14 young girls from Roxbury made their first-ever tournament appearance. The players represented the BASE, a program built to help young athletes “achieve their full potential both on and off the field,” and cheered for their teammates from the dugout.

“Rip, rip, rip! Get a hit, get a hit!”

The BASE lost the game I watched them play against the New York Wonders, as well as other games against the Boston Slammers, the Chicago Pioneers, and the Toronto Cardinals. The losses could have been expected;

the [historically Black colleges and universities] during February vacation. … We have college fairs and career days, and we had the opportunity to take the girls to different businesses for internships or to shadow business leaders in the community.”

The BASE was founded in 2013 by noted community advocate Robert Lewis Jr. and boasts that the organization “builds on 30+ years of learning through the Boston Astros baseball program, which Mr. Lewis began in Boston’s Villa Victoria public housing in the 1970s.”

“The Boston Astros AAU [Amatuer Athletic Union] program … won numerous AAU and national championships in multiple age divisions throughout the years at a time when Black participation in baseball plummeted nationwide and Boston’s inner cities got zero recognition for producing quality baseball talent,” says Dart Adams, a Boston-based journalist and historian.

Speaking of success stories like Manny Delcarmen, who played with the Red Sox, Adams adds, “Waves of youth have earned scholarships and some have even gone pro.”

BASE organizers launched their girls’ softball program in 2016. This is their first year with a girls’ baseball team, which participated in the Roxbury Rookie League this year—as the only all-girls team in the division.

Their introduction to the league was not ideal.

“They were acting like girls, making fun of us that we play baseball,” Katherin “Nicole” Rivera, an 11-year-old from Dorchester, says of the boys on the opposing teams.

Ava Morales, an 11-year-old from Hyde Park, said it was more than just taunts.

“Someone on one team, they tried to stop me from

running,” she says. “He clapped [in my face] while I was running [down the line], but that didn’t distract me. I kept on running.”

One team was so rude, with players skipping to the bases, to the point that the umpire and then the league had to step in and say something.

But the girls have not been deterred by the negativity.

“They actually put pressure on the boys; whenever they score, you can see them stressing,” says Alicia Cacho, mother to players Gwendolyn and Gricelda Castro. “Or they’ll say to each other, ‘These girls are good.’ They don’t expect them to do anything.

They have a long way to go, of course, but they’re already doing so good.”

These girls say they love baseball, especially playing it together. Despite their lack of experience, Dipino says that when she contacted Dr. Justine Siegal, the founder of Baseball For All, to see if the girls could come to the national tournament, Siegal—who among other stripes was the first woman to coach in Major League Baseball— was incredibly encouraging.

This was Baseball For All’s fourth year hosting its national tournament.

Once the opposing teams realized that the girls from the BASE lacked experience, they were supportive. After the game they played against New York, the Wonder’s coach came out onto the field to help BASE pitcher Ericka Dejesus with her throwing mechanics.

This encouragement is imperative; the majority of female players with the BASE are entering the sport at an age when most

girls are being pushed out. The ones who participate past age 13, when they age out of their youth leagues, are usually the most talented—or simply the most determined. This group is the latter and still have time to turn themselves into the former. Having teammates who are girls can help make the decision easier, as their dugout is filled with friends who can relate to their experiences. It’s the same reason that all-girls teams are important in the male-dominated world of baseball.

In its role, the BASE financially sponsored the athletes so they could travel to the tournament and provided equipment and uniforms for all players as well. The support is critical, as reports have shown one of the biggest barriers to access in youth sports is the cost— particularly for Black and Latino families.

The team hopes to play in the Roxbury Rookie League again next season and to return to the Baseball For All tournament, too.

“I think it’s good to meet other girls who play baseball,” Gwendolyn Castro, a 13-year-old from Dorchester, said on her team’s trip to Illinois. “In Boston, we were one of the only girls’ teams that we ever saw who played baseball. It was nice to come here and see other girls from around the country and Canada who play.”

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

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EATS

Welcome to Boston!

FIRST LOOK: ZO GREEK

Speaking of lemon … the latest at Assembly Row in Somerville

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September 13, 2018 | 4 pm - 7 pm (Rain date: September 19) Ruggles Plaza 1155 Tremont Street, Roxbury

A recent phenomenon in the Greater Boston area is the building of standalone mixed-use developments that are typically one part shopping center, one part office park, and one part residential space. These villagelike complexes seem to be popping up out of nowhere all over the place, and unsurprisingly, many of the dining and drinking options within them are either national chains or massive locally owned behemoths that often have lines out the door.

Assembly Row in Somerville is a classic example of such a development, and while yes, it does have its share of chain restaurants and shops, it also has some local independent places that offer very good food. One of the more recent openings there is an eatery that people in Boston may be familiar with called Zo, which has a pair of quick-service/takeout Greek spots by Government Center and Faneuil Hall along with a food truck set up on the Greenway and in the Seaport District. Late last year, a more full-blown restaurant version of the place opened in one of the newer sections of Assembly Row, and if an initial look at this latest location of Zo is any indication, there could indeed be a new top-tier Greek restaurant in the region.

Zo resides in the massive Partners HealthCare building on the eastern edge of Assembly Row, a short walk from the heart of the development and a very short stroll from the Assembly T station. Several other businesses can be found in the ground floor of the structure—which is so big that it can be seen for miles—and considering it is basically a corporate office building, the restaurants, bars, and shops here have done a nice job of adding a bit of atmosphere to their spaces.

Zo is no exception, as it has an almost cozy feel inside while also having a vaguely industrial vibe thanks in part to exposed pipes and copper touches. A bar can be found to the right, with an open kitchen set up in the back, and the two partitioned areas include a full-service dining room on one side and a takeout/ waiting area on the other, which all make this feel like more of a substantial place than the two Boston locations (especially the tiny shop at Center Plaza).

The Greek dining scene in the Boston area continues to be more focused on casual and inexpensive spots, unlike in New York where a lot of high-end Greek establishments can be found, and Zo is no exception. Taking a cue from their other locations, the star of the show here is your classic cheap-eats item—pork and chicken gyros that are both made using housemade flatbreads that are browned just a bit and include diced tomatoes, onions, and a mild tzatziki sauce. Another simple but very impressive option that’s a good starter is the feta and olives plate, with the cheese having a bit of olive oil on it and the olives coming with wedges of lemon.

Speaking of lemon, Zo has an excellent version of avgolemono soup, with chicken and rice mixed in a smooth lemon-based broth, while lovers of Greek salads will find a solid version here complete with mixed greens, grape tomatoes, roasted red peppers, cucumbers, olives, and feta. You might not expect wings to be a can’tmiss item at a Greek restaurant, but the wings at Zo are tremendous, having a good amount of char from the grill and a tangy marinade that has herbs, spices, and olive oil. There isn’t a ton more on the menu here, but a few other options include rice bowls, veggie pitas, stuffed grape leaves, spanakopita, and pastitsio. The Somerville outpost of Zo also has a full bar, including Greek beers and wines along with cocktails. Prices are reasonable for the most part, with nearly all food items being under $10.

First impressions aren’t always accurate when it comes to restaurants (or nearly anything else, for that matter), but it seems that Assembly Row has a real winner here in Zo, which is running on all cylinders with high-quality food, low prices, a pleasant atmosphere, relatively easy parking, and a friendly and attentive staff. In a region full of excellent Greek dining spots, this one has the potential to be at or near the top of the heap if it isn’t there already. >>ZO GREEK. 355 REVOLUTION DRIVE, SOMERVILLE (ASSEMBLY ROW). ZOBOSTON.COM

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PHOTOS BY MARC HURWITZ

BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON

ON SALE NOW AT 1098 Mass Ave & 1092 Mass Ave. Arlington, MA 02476 (781) 648-1300 greaterbostonmotorsports.com NEWS TO US

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THE JESUS LIZARD WHEEL OF TUNES

Noise rock icons talk scars, Craigslist scams, and Southern phrases

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE JESUS LIZARD The Jesus Lizard is your favorite rock band’s biggest inspiration for the same reason it’s someone else’s favorite rock band’s biggest inspiration: They found a way to twist the genre into something darker, crazier, and weirder without making it seem out of reach, an act that’s appealing to one group of rock musicians as much as it is to a very different group of rock musicians. Most times, that happens because the Jesus Lizard’s music sounds reckless. It’s made to be heard at full volume, sure, but it’s also driven with an internal frenzy. You can hear it on Head, the band’s debut album in 1990, and the five studio albums they released since then. Most importantly, you can still hear it today when the band performs live, over 30 years since they formed.

Perhaps the band’s most beloved achievement is Goat, its second studio album, from 1991. Though vocalist David Yow, bassist David Wm. Sims, and guitarist Duane Denison moved the project from Austin to Chicago in 1989 and immediately teamed up with recording engineer Steve Albini then, it wasn’t until Goat that their combined talents felt insurmountable. Recently remastered in 2009, Goat continues to be passed on from one generation of rock musicians to the next.

It acts as a blueprint of sorts for bands who want to subvert their own genre without getting bombastic,

toying with vocal delivery (“Seasick”), letting loose on bass tones (“Then Comes Dudley”), or getting noisy without going full post-industrial grit (“Monkey Trick”).

Even the album’s iconic artwork—a photograph of a nude woman with nails projected on her body, the red hue commonly leading viewers to mistake it for a flame—was created by Sims through inventive but imperfect means.

“Even though I took the photos years ago, and though I think it’s common knowledge in Chicago who she is, I made a promise to never tell who the woman is,” says Sims. “Back in the day before Photoshop was readily available, she posed in front of a white background and I would project slides I’d taken of red guitar cables, a bin of nails with a brass metallic color, and other things I forget now. The exposure was long so that the images would pop. We took a bunch of pictures—many, many, many pictures. I didn’t even have a darkroom, so I got them developed at a commercial lab. It’s funny because I was thinking about this while taking photos of my son and I with my iPhone the other day. It’s great having that convenience, but I’m really glad I learned how to take pictures on a Pentax K1000 35mm camera. I don’t think I ever bought another lens besides the 50mm lens that came with it. It’s a very basic camera with no other bells and whistles. It’s a functional camera, built like a tank. You have to frame everything carefully because you don’t get to tweak it after. You compose as you do it. So anyway, yes, while taking photos with the phone I realized I’m so glad I learned how to take photos under circumstances that are a lot more rigorous and creatively straining. You have to think on your feet and get the frame right because you know it’s a huge a pain in the ass to do later.”

To show the brighter side of the Jesus Lizard’s vibe, we interviewed David Sims for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask musicians questions inspired by their song titles. With Goat as the prompt, his answers are honest and unauthoritative—traits that seem meek when written down but contribute to the band’s surprisingly powerful music, as will be evident when they headline the Royale this Friday.

1. “Then Comes Dudley” If you could steal any friend’s first name or last name for yourself, whose would you take?

You know, my son’s name is Dashiell. I have to say, not to be too self-satisfied with my naming skills, but I really like Dashiell’s name. If my name was also Dashiell, I would think that’s just awesome. I’ve never known any Dashiells personally in my entire life. I know of the author Dashiell Hammot. But I know that even in his case, it wasn’t his real name. He took it as his pen name after his mother’s maiden name or something.

So I thought, “Oh, I’ll have this cool, unique name,” but it’s also not like naming your kid Appleblossom or something. When we took him to his first pediatrician

visit at a week old, the doctor said, “Well, you’re not going to believe it but he’s my second Dashiell today.”

There were multiple Dashiells in his grade. Turns out Dashiell had a moment there and got pretty popular. I blame Cate Blanchett, who had a kid a few years before ours and named hers Dashiell. Part of my ex-wife’s job involves working with census statistics. It went from being a name nobody had heard of to entering the top 100 boys’ names in the United States, but they were almost all in New York. It was a concentrated thing up there. And here I am named David. Being born when I was, in the ’60s, there were so many Davids. In this class of 30 kids, six of them were named David.

2. “Mouth Breather” Who is the worst mouth-breather you know, and are they aware of their habit?

I don’t know if I’m really aware of any mouthbreathers. Even the person the song is about I’ve never actually seen breathing through his mouth. It’s just a term you apply to someone and everyone knows what you mean, but when it’s used, it’s not used literally. You know?

3. “Nub” Do you have any birthmarks or bumps?

Yeah, I have a jagged scar on my forehead that happened when I was four years old. Now, people commonly identify it as my “Harry Potter scar,” but that didn’t mean anything at the time. Like Harry Potter, I have a jagged, slanted scar on my forehead. I got it when I ran into a piece of furniture when I was four years old.

My mom took me to the emergency room because my dad was working. She was a nurse. They were sewing up my head, putting stitches in my head, and she said, “So, do you think we should take some X-rays? See if he hurt his head at all?” And I remember the doctor saying, “Well, no, I’m looking at his skull and, yep, everything seems fine!”

4. “Seasick” When is the last time you traveled overseas?

The last time I traveled overseas was last year. I went to Isla Mujeres. There’s a hotel and a beach that I really like. My girlfriend and I go there. It’s a great place. If you’re ever looking for a relaxed place to go hang out on the beach, go. I remember being in my 20s and 30s, and people in Austin would go. It’s close to Cancun, but you have to get there by a ferry so it’s kind of a pain in the butt to get to. It’s not full of high-rise condos and crap like Cancun is. It’s easy to get to because you fly into the Cancun, but it’s much more relaxed and lowkey than Cancun. If you’re looking that up, you should really look up Isla Holbox. It’s even more of a pain in the ass to get to. You have to drive several hours and then take a

>> THE JESUS LIZARD, ALL SOULS. FRI 9.7. ROYALE, 279 TREMONT ST. 6PM/18+/$32. ROYALEBOSTON.COM

MUSIC EVENTS THU 09.06

SHOEGAZE INTO THE POP WORLD HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE + SPENCER RADCLIFFE & EVERYONE ELSE [Lilypad, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge. 7pm/all ages/$10. lilypadinman. com]

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THU 09.06

HOW TO GET LOST IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF SLUDGE METAL SUMAC + DALEK + INFERNAL COIL

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

8:30pm/18+/$12. greatscottboston.com]

DIGBOSTON.COM

FRI 09.07

SAT 09.08

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm.

Ave., Allston. 10pm/21+/$12. greatscottboston.com]

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

8:30pm/21+/$20. greatscottboston.com]

EMBRACE THE AVANT GARDE AVA LUNA + BAT HOUSE + EDGE PETAL BURN

THE E-ASY TUTORIAL ON SHREDDING EX HEX + EZTV + E

MON 09.10

THE WEIRDEST POP OF THE YEAR LET’S EAT GRANDMA + ODETTA HARTMAN + BONIFACE

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

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

TUE 09.11

72 YEARS OF IRISH DOMINOES VAN MORRISON

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

7pm/all ages/$65. bostonpavilion.net]

SQUARE: 300 X 250 ferry. There’s no cars almost on the island. The streets are just stands. The island is so low-lying that they evacuate it whenever there’s a storm. It’s a very cool place to go to and hang out on the beach reading books. My girlfriend and I are incredibly lazy vacationers. We just want to hang out somewhere and read our books.

5. “Monkey Trick” What’s your favorite animal to see at the zoo?

You know, I don’t like zoos. I haven’t been to a zoo in probably 40 years. The idea bums me out. I know they have ones that are more modern with big habitats for the animals to hang out in, but the whole idea still bums me out. Probably the last zoo I went to was the San Antonio Zoo. My parents took me there once or twice. It’s about 90 miles away, growing up in Austin. I think we did at least one day trip to go to the zoo there. I probably liked the reptiles. As a kid, I was into snakes and lizards and stuff.

Had a few pet turtles. I don’t remember their names and I wish I could. I had a dog named Mike, though. We grew up in Austin, then moved to Atlanta at age 4, and I didn’t want any of the change. I kept saying I didn’t want to leave. So we decided if we moved from an apartment and into a house, then I could get a dog. I said I’d get a dog and name it Mike. They took me to the pound and I picked out the dog I wanted—this was the dog I insisted on having, mind you—which was a little female basset beagle mix … named Mike.

6. “Karpis” What’s the most fascinating true crime story you’ve ever heard?

Maybe this isn’t the best, but it comes to mind right away. During SXSW, the whole world descends on Austin and it’s impossible to get a hotel room. A lot of people I know rent out their houses on Airbnb and Craigslist to make a bunch of money and leave for the week. One friend rents out his house to corporate accounts for a thousand dollars a day. Meanwhile, he goes to Costa Rica for $75 a day while he’s making way more than that. Another friend of mine is a relator, so she knows how to set up a nice presentation of a house for a living, with all the photos and tourist directions and everything. So she rented her house out through Airbnb one year. As the people were leaving that had rented it, she was on the phone with them while driving over to pick the keys up. They said, “Yeah, we’re almost done and the car is on the way to take us to the airport. Oh and by the way, the people who rented the house from you through Craigslist are arriving.” She was like, “What? Craigslist? I didn’t rent the house out through Craigslist…” Somebody had bootlegged her entire Airbnb ad but as a Craigslist ad and then had them wire their rent, for renting her house, to an account and there was no way to get it back. So they were making money by renting her apartment to strangers. I thought it was pretty crazy, too, because that’s pretty bold. The Craigslist people realized they made a terrible mistake, but she was actually nice about it. She got on the phone and used her realtor connections to find another house for them to rent. But yeah. That’s a remarkably imaginative and ballsy crime to pull off. I think it was a foreign bank account or something. The people who did the scam probably weren’t even in the United States.

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7. “South Mouth” Which Southern phrases do you find yourself still using today?

Yeah. Both my parents are from Arkansas. Mom has a saying that goes, “God will go take care of that tomorrow, God willing that the creeks don’t rise.”

Meaning we’ll do it unless something goes wrong. So I like that one a lot. God willing and the creeks don’t rise.

Sometimes if you’re going into a place and it’s hard to get into because there’s so many people inside of it, she would say this funny one. She would say, “Who left the barn door open?” I say that. Dashiell thinks it’s hilarious. I don’t like that as much as “God willing and the creeks don’t rise,” but Dashiell thinks it’s pretty funny, so I say it for his entertainment a lot.

Contributing DIG writer Laura Kiesel is offering an in-depth 10-week workshop starting Thursdays on September 13th for those interested in polishing and perfecting their current personal essay projects before submitting them for publication. Kiesel will offer constructive feedback on your essays in a supportive and inspiring environment. This workshop will also include discussions on the craft of personal essay writing, as well as readings of exemplary works in the genre. Scholarships are available! For more info please visit: https://grubstreet.org/findaclass/class/the-personal-essay-in-progress-6/

8. “Lady Shoes” What’s the weirdest shoe trend you’ve seen become fashionable at any point in time?

That’s a hard one for me. I’m so fashion illiterate. I just don’t care. I’m a pretty inept dresser myself. I subscribe to the and whenever I get one of the one or two fashion issues that come out each year, I just sigh. I don’t get it. There are weird trends, but I don’t think I even mind them. It could be something I wouldn’t wear because it looks impractical or weird or out there, I admire their joie de vivre while wearing it themselves.

READ THE REST OF NINA’S INTERVIEW AT DIGBOSTON.COM

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BEYOND BLACK PANTHER ARTS

Comics in Color exposes young and old heads alike to representative art and creative outlets

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

What’s the Comics in Color origin story?

CL: We know each other through art and through

Roxbury Open Studios. We’re both working artists in the area and run in mutual circles. … We started talking about comics, and how much we love comics, and [Edwards] may be the first person I really connected with on comics in my adult life. Of course I go into comic stores and just shoot the shit with people, but other than that the subject just never really comes up. This was a connection. Basically we’re dudes of color, we love comics, and we live in Roxbury.

Were there any standout inspirations?

CL: We heard about the [Schomburg Center’s annual

Black Comic Book Festival] in Harlem. [Edwards] said, We gotta go, so we hopped on a Greyhound bus and went down there. It was a mind-blowing experience.

BE: It was panels, workshops, films, discussions, vending.

It was a con-plus, plus, plus.

CL: It was a real comic con. A lot of cons have become about marketing, not the books anymore. This was about the books.

What was the idea you had after coming back from that?

CL: We wanted to create a network of people of color

who love comics in Boston. We saw this in New York—this is a thing, it can happen—but there was nothing even close to that in Boston. We said, We can make this happen through our networks. Let’s do it.

BE: I’m a teacher, mostly design and illustration. I get a

lot of kids with that energy who say they’re into comics, and I thought it should be more of an institution.

CL: From that point we started talking about it, and it

took a couple of years of running through ideas until we were finally like, Let’s just set a date, put the word out there, and do it. Let’s see who shows up.

When was that?

CL: February of this year. Black Panther was coming out,

there was a lot of hoopla about comics with people of color in them, and we thought it was the time. … People who weren’t paying attention to comics were all of a sudden starting to pay attention to them.

Has the popularity of Black Panther been a purely positive thing? How has it impacted this whole effort?

CL: I think it’s a good step in the right direction. It’s a

black comic book character created by white Jewish writers, which is what it is for the time, but it’s kind of a half-step.

BE: Besides our love of comics, we have been not only making comics, but also trying to sell comics. For myself, I’ve really been trying to find an audience. I wanted to see where that audience was, and what we could do to pull that audience of comic book lovers together. I could feel they were out there, so we decided to make the group.

How did the first one go, and how did you decide where to take it from there?

CL: It’s been an organic progression. We had gone to

these conventions and had black comics from all over the country, and we put the call out. … It started with us laying our collection on the table and saying, Let’s talk about black comics. People came, it was amazing, and we had a great discussion. Then, for the second one, we did a comicsmaking activity.

What are some of the gems from your collection that you have brought out to these events?

CL: Prince of Cats by Ron Wimberly, which I just found

out got optioned for a movie with Lakeith Stanfield. I always talk about that one because the artwork is amazing, the story is amazing, the use of color is on point. I always bring the Encyclopedia of Black Comics

by Sheena Howard. I bring Black Panthers, I bring Ultimate SpiderMan by Miles Morales.

Who has been coming out to the meetups?

BE: It helps that our partner

is the Grove Hall [branch of the Boston Public Library]. We get people coming with their kids, and grandparents coming with their kids and participating too.

It’s a really broad spectrum, from people our age to high school kids and parents. Over the course of the sessions, that energy has been really interesting to watch, seeing casual observers become more interested in the language of comics.

Do people say things like, “Where have you been all my life?”

BE: What happens is that

a lot of the conversations revolve around identity and how important it is for people to see themselves reflected in comics. And also to see themselves reflected in their own imaginations. Little kids start to have people of color in their comics and designs about their own life. There are also conversations about the industry, and why there is exclusion and the economics of who owns what.

>> COMICS IN COLOR AT GROVE HALL BPL. SAT 9.15. FACEBOOK.COM/COMICSINCOLOR 18

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As an art teacher I get that all the time, questions about whether it’s viable for young people to be artists. And then they see that comics are everywhere, and they realize they can have a career. And we can point to people who just got [their comics] optioned for Netflix.

What’s next?

BE: People come and often have their eyes opened in

a pretty profound way. But we never know what little kid, years from now, will say it was transformative.

CL: There are definitely people who want to connect on projects. I don’t know if it’s happened yet, or where the conversations go from there, but it’s being said.

BE: We get these “ah-ha” moments. We leave the last half-hour for people to chat and to think about if they are seeing comics in a new way that they hadn’t.

CL: There’s a lot more to come. We’re growing and

building as we go. Ultimately, we’d like to do an expo. We’ve talked about doing anthologies and getting artists to do a book together. Just continuing Comics in Color as it is fills a void. We’ve expanded it with speakers and a guided discussion, and even added another hour, and that’s not enough time. Look outside of the library even a half-hour after the event is done, and there are still people out there talking about comics.

PHOTO COURTESY OF COMICS IN COLOR

Around the DigBoston newsroom, we know Cagen Luse as an occasional contributor and the local artist behind LunchTime ComiX, his “story of a life, love, and humor of a racially ambiguous family.” Like many comic heroes, though, he also has an alter ego of sorts, albeit one in which illustration remains front and center.

Starting earlier this year, Luse, a graphic designer by day, began teaming with high school art instructor Barrington Edwards for Comics in Color. The duo’s events are described as safe spaces “where you can come and just nerd out about illustrated stories by and about people of color,” and where anyone from amateurs and fans to experts are welcome to chat, listen to speakers and, if they’re so inclined, put their own pencils to paper.

With the seventh installment of Comics in Color coming up on Saturday, Sept 15, at the Grove Hall branch of the Boston Public Library, I met up with Luse and Edwards over beers at Suya Joint in Dudley Square to find out how they first joined forces.

soleful bliss:

THE YEAR TO MANAGE UP!

ARTS & MUSIC AND TECHNOLOGY SERIES

SAT. SEPT. 15, 2018

Hibernian Hall, 5PM - 10PM This production is a tribute to Nina Simone an American Music Icon!

Ballroom, 3rd Floor, Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley Street, Roxbury purchase tickets online: http://sbamt.eventbrite.com

All age show!

Produced by AfroDesiaCity. Sponsored by The Boston Foundation, with support and partnership from the Barr Foundation.

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TWO VEGETABLES THINK BETTER THAN ONE BOOKS

The Revolutionary Genius of Plants by Stefano Mancuso REVIEW BY MAX L. CHAPNICK @MAXCHAPPY In one of Roald Dahl’s creepier short stories, “The Sound Machine,” an inventor rigs together a listening device that converts the inaudible screams of plants into human frequencies. When the inventor, named Klausner, plucks a daisy, he hears “a faint high-pitched cry, curiously inanimate.” Do flowers feel pain? Probably not, Klausner concludes, with typically Dahl-ian wordplay: “It felt something else which we didn’t know anything about— something called toin or spurl or plinuckment, or anything you like.”

The satire belies an even bigger, and weirder, thought experiment. Even if our linguistic ideas, like pain—itself a wildly subjective experience—do not correspond precisely to the experiences of plants, what if plants not only feel, but think, decide, and react? In Dahl’s speculative landscape the plants’ cries signify not just automatic, knee-jerk noises but calculated expressions. In this world, the trees, flowers, grains, and vegetables all, in some as yet incomprehensible way, think.

In his new book, The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior, Stefano Mancuso, professor in “plant neurobiology” at the University of Florence, argues, in short, that Dahl’s world may not be fantasy, but reality. According to Mancuso, not only should we appreciate plants more—both for the necessity of plants to human existence (food, fuel, shelter, etc.) and for their sheer beauty (in nature, in gardens, as architectural models, etc.)—but also because “plants

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exhibit unmistakable attributes of intelligence.” In the first two-thirds of the book, Mancuso describes, chapter by chapter, plants’ “intelligent” acts: memory retention, deliberate movement, mimetic behavior (copying other plants), manipulation of other organisms, and structural reactions to the environment.

Some of Manusco’s analysis of vegetative actions are, quite simply, startling. In the chapter on mimesis, a vine in the forests of Chile can, like an Iguana, mimic its environment. But this magical Boquila is not limited to color, like its lizard analogue; the plant is a three-dimensional chameleon: mimicking in a “nearsimultaneous” transformation the “shape, size, and color” of the “most diverse” types of leaves. How does this supervine know what shape, size, and color to take? Most likely, Mancuso argues, the vines possess a “visual capacity.” The Boquila perceives the leaves around it and mimics their shapes. Without eyes, the plants see.

In another chapter, Mancuso explains experiments on the plant Mimosa pudica. The Mimosa is notable because the plant quickly closes its leaves when disturbed.

Nineteenth-century scientists were fascinated by the Mimosa’s movements and, after experimentation, showed that its leaves could acclimate to certain disturbances.

Gagliano retested this historical thesis: dropping the plant, repeatedly, in short falls of four inches. After a number of falls the plant got used to the disturbance and stopped curling itself up. The Mimosa “knew” the falls were not dangerous. But the researchers wanted to find out if the plants “retained the memory.” Forty days later, Gagliano dropped the acclimated Mimosa and the plants still did not close their leaves: They “remembered” the drops were not dangerous.

Okay, so plants exhibit behavior that looks like they “mimic” and “remember,” but if these rooted creatures really do analyze these images and store memories, where and how do those thoughts occur? Plants have no brains! In fact, plants have no organs at all. While animals are mobile and centralize processes in organs— the lungs breathe, the kidney filters the blood, the brain thinks—a tree must be able to let some of its leaves be eaten without dying. As Mancuso puts it, “any function that in animals is concentrated … is spread throughout the entire body of plants.”

The answer to the question of brainless intelligence may be found by investigating this fundamental difference between the carbonconsuming and carbon-producing kingdoms—where animals concentrate thought in that one heady organ, plants spread their computational process throughout. In perhaps his most intriguing chapter, “Green Democracies,” Mancuso compares plant intra- and inter-organism networks to the ancient Athenian assembly, bee hives, and Wikipedia.

Consider the decision faced by a new hive about where to settle. Bees that have found good spots perform an excited dance. The largest and most

enthusiastic group of dancing bees wins its choice of location. Such a system of collective, consensus-based decision-making resembles other networked groups, like democracies, the internet, and even the brain itself. “The neurons in our brain,” Mancuso writes, “which produce thoughts and sensations, work the same way as the bees.”

This is key: If plants do think, they do so not with one organ, but with collective and distributed networks of cells and roots.

The final third of Mancuso’s book deals less with plant observations and more with human inventions, largely Mancuso’s own projects, that mirror plant structures: a “Jellyfish Barge” (JB) greenhouse that uses only seawater to grow lettuce, and Martian robot probes designed to act like small plants. Sometimes, plants’ design Mancuso relies on seems less molded by plants’ specific intelligence but by evolution’s; for instance, unlike the shape-changing Boquila, the cactus doesn’t mold itself—that happened over millions of years of natural selection.

Besides this logical objection, the final chapters also fell short stylistically. Mancuso thinks up undeniably cool inventions, and it’s no wonder he was able to secure funding, yet in writing about his own genius, Mancuso often lapses into self-conscious braggadocio: “‘Either projects win prizes or they go on the market.’ And it looks as though JB … is destined only to win awards.” Let’s return to the plants’ genius, please.

In general, and despite the occasional bragging, I appreciated the cultural and first-person contexts.

Mancuso’s chosen historical details were as often as not eclectic gems: quotes by Charles Darwin’s poet grandfather, carriage ride experiments in Paris, or a long section on lily-pad-esque structure of London’s Crystal Palace of 1851. Perhaps Manusco’s greatest stretch of metaphorical language, and likewise what may be the book’s most provoking idea, comes right after the chapter on democratically thinking bees. Mancuso considers the capacity of plants for “manipulation” and, as he says, “I use this word deliberately.” Consider, Mancuso offers the Acacia tree, which not only feeds ants nectar in return for the colony’s services as guards—the ants keep away predators and clear the area of competitor plants—but the tree also feeds ants chemicals that work on the ant’s nervous system, such as caffeine, nicotine, and more. The Acacia literally hooks its servant ants with drugs.

Then, with a narrative sleight of hand, Mancuso shifts to chili peppers, lapsing emotional on his love for this ubiquitous fruit. But, Mancuso suggests, maybe chilis do not serve those millions of human spice enthusiasts by providing its tasty jolt; instead the chili is manipulating us.

The chili is the Acacia, we humans are the ants.

And why would a plant spend extra energy producing a chemical that seems to affect no other animal but humans? Simply, “to secure the most powerful and versatile mammalian carrier,” or in other words, to spread itself via humans all over the world. This is a masterful rhetorical role reversal: Plants no longer seem “at the mercy of animal needs” but are themselves masters of human needs. We don’t cultivate plants, plants cultivate us.

In Dahl’s world, Klausner’s sound machine picks up superhuman frequencies of plant life; their sounds really aren’t meant for us. But in Mancuso’s telling, we humans are the intended recipients for plants’ signals—it’s as if the chili peppers were sending us a letter marked with that powerful capisum chemical. It’s not that we can’t hear their language without help; it’s that we receive the chili’s signals, we respond, and we are manipulated, all without knowing, really, what or why the plants are saying.

FARRIS & FARRIS COMEDY

Meet Boston’s mother-daughter comedy combo

BY DENNIS MALER @DEADAIRDENNIS into an improv class, do you feel like that was a little bit of you living trying to live vicariously through her?

K: As a parent I’ve always

done this thing of, if I’m going to ask you to do something, I’m going to do it. If I’m going to ask you to make your bed, I’m going to make my bed.

It was a little bit of that in it. I think it was more of me talking to myself. Yeah, maybe projecting a little onto her.

How many family members have said to you, Hey, you can use that in a skit? And how many of them have tried pitching to the other after getting shot down by the first?

K: I think there might have been something that Jessica’s boyfriend, Greg, tried to do.

J: He does try to pitch us

Throughout the arts there have always been lots of kids who follow in the footsteps of their parents—except with comedians. There are virtually no second-generation comics. There’s actor and comedian Chris Elliott and his daughter Abby Elliott, who is a comedic actress, improviser, and Saturday Night Live cast member—they’re the only such family of performers to appear on SNL, by the way— and you also have regular Christopher Guest comedianactor Martin Mull, whose daughter, Maggie Mull, is a comedy writer on sitcoms, but that’s about it, since no one would consider what Melissa Rivers does to be comedy.

It’s likely that the reason there aren’t a lot of multigenerational comedians is that nepotism doesn’t matter in humor. Either you’re funny, or you’re not. Which is all the more reason why mother and daughter comedians Kathe and Jessica Farris are such an anomalous pair.

Two performers who clearly have a similar sensibility on what’s funny, but who come at it from different perspectives.

What’s even more odd? Jessica’s a teenager who actually likes her parents.

I sat with Jessica and Kathe recently to find out more about their careers.

For my mom, I have bigger dreams for her. I honestly think she could probably win the Boston Comedy Festival, and if she doesn’t meet them, you’re not my mom anymore.

As the only mother and daughter doing comedy in Boston, have you thought about a duo act?

J: We did that once. Obviously it didn’t go well, because we didn’t continue our partnership.

Other than teaching comedy, do you have day job?

K: No, no, I don’t have full employment with like a 401k

or anything like that. I teach at ImprovBoston, produce shows, do workshops, and I’m basically a stay-at-home mom. With Jessica in school 30 minutes away, and my oldest daughter in Vermont, this is the first year that I am an empty nester, and it’s really awkward when you’re a stay-at-home mom and there’s nobody at home.

Do your friends back at school know you do stand-up?

J: Yeah, like most of them do. I try my best not to bring

it up anymore because I feel like every time I bring it up people are like, “Okay, tell me eight jokes right now and prove yourself. I don’t believe you.” I don’t have a quick wit.

That’s not going to happen.

K: Hold on, let me get my notebook.

What inspired each of you to start stand-up?

J: I didn’t even think it was an option for me. My mom

offered it to me like, “Hey, you want to take a class?” And I was like, “Sure.”

K: I thought this might be a good for her because she’s a shy, introverted person. One day I picked her up from school and said, “You’re going to ImprovBoston tomorrow.” I had taken a class when I first got married at 23; I got married really young. I took a class, and I just never went back to it.

And for 19 and a half years I always said I was going to do it. And then my older daughter, I would want her to try out for this improv group and in this play and she’s like, “I don’t want to do it.”

I heard myself doing the same thing. Like, well, you don’t know unless you try, and I felt kind of like a hypocrite because it was something that I knew I wanted to do, but I had a lot of good excuses not to do it, and it seemed like a good time in my life to do it because I could leave the kids at home, and not have DSS after me. I was scared that there was this terrifying thing for me to do. It took so much just to get in the car and get over to ImprovBoston.

When you were trying to get your first daughter

stuff. Oh my God. All the time.

Like he’s trying to rework my set, but English is his second language, so …

Is there material you don’t want your daughter to hear?

K: No, but we do have a lot of follow-up questions on the way home.

J: Especially when I was 15.

Future aspirations for your future in comedy, and what do you hope for the other one?

J: My own personal goal is just to be able to do comedy

more consistently because it got really hard doublemajoring second semester to be able to get on the scene. So my personal goal is to be able to make a more set schedule so I can really set aside time for comedy.

For my mom, I have bigger dreams for her. I honestly think she could probably win the Boston Comedy Festival, and if she doesn’t meet them, you’re not my mom anymore.

K: Wow. Those are big goals. Putting all the pressure on me. I would love to get a late-night spot. Honestly, my thing with comedy is that I just love doing it and I’m going to be just as happy doing whatever I’m doing right now, and just keep trying to get better at it. Especially this year. This has been really crazy. Trying to figure out how to do 30 minutes.

For Jessica, she’s an incredible writer. She realized that I really think that she could write comedy for anything, but more so just do what you want to do, you know, have fun with it. I think when you’re good at something and you know it, and you get to challenge yourself with it … that’s better than any drug in the world. I just hope that she just continues to do that.

See Kathe Farris Saturday, Sept 8, at the new Comedy Studio in Bow Market, and on Sept 12 at the Boston Comedy Festival. As for Jessica Farris, see her when she gets back from college. Also listen to the full, unedited podcast at deadairdennis.com/podcast, and for a full listing of all the comedy shows in Boston visit bostoncomedyshows.com.

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COOL AS A CUCK HUNGER SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

I’m a cis woman in my mid-40s, and my significant other has a cuckolding fetish. My first response was “Oh, hell no!” But if I’m willing to have a threesome, how much further of a stretch is it, really? He does have some experience with this varsity-level kink, so he knows what to expect. I’ve asked him some questions, but some things I prefer to research on my own. My questions for you: (1) I don’t get cuckolding. I’ve read all about it, but nothing about it resonates with me. My SO really wants me to be into his fetish if I am going to act on it, but what if I’m just into being GGG? Can’t that be enough? (2) How should I go about finding appropriate candidates who would be into sharing this experience with us? I’m not really sure that I’d want someone with experience as a bull, because I don’t feel good about this playing out the way I’ve seen it in porn. (3) We enjoy cross-dressing and chastity play. How do I find someone who will be cool about my SO sitting in the room in a cock lock and lingerie? (4) I kind of have a “type” (don’t we all), and I’m not certain my type plays into this kink. I prefer someone who is very dominant in public but submissive to me in the bedroom. This doesn’t seem to align with your typical bull behavior. However, I do not enjoy being dominated. Do you think this matters?

Can’t Understand Cuckold Kink 1. Cuckolding isn’t that hard to understand: A cuckold gets off on their partner fucking other people and being humiliated or degraded by their partner and/or their partner’s playmates. Seeing as you already enjoy dominating guys and threesomes, CUCK, what’s not to enjoy about a cuckolding scenario?

2. Vanilla PIV intercourse rarely plays out in real life the way it does in porn. So whether you go with an experienced bull or find someone who’s unfamiliar with cuckold play but game, you don’t have to reenact whatever cuckold porn you’ve watched or read. Write your own script!

3. By using your words, CUCK. Tell any guy who’s interested in being your very special guest star (VSGS) that your SO is a cuckold and he’ll be there in lingerie with his cock locked up. If that turns a VSGS candidate off, then he’s not the right VSGS for you.

4. In most cuckold porn, the bull—the man who fucks the cuck’s wife or girlfriend (or boyfriend or husband) in front of him—is the dominant partner. But, again, you get to write your own script, and if you want your bull to be submissive, make that clear to your potential bulls.

I’m a 54-year-old gay guy living in New York City. I’m into bondage, and I have a profile on Recon with plenty of pictures showing what I’m into. A guy visiting from San Francisco cruised me. He asked me to send a face pic, and I did. He invited me to his hotel. He didn’t have any gear with him, so I stopped at a hardware store and picked up $40 worth of rope and duct tape on my way to meet him. But after 30 seconds of small talk, he said he just wasn’t feeling it. I said OK, that happens, and I left. I’m totally confused. I’m a decentlooking guy, and the photo I sent is recent. I was freshly showered, so no hygiene or BO issues. Obviously, you can’t force yourself to be into someone, but could he have handled it better? Should he have followed up with a message apologizing? Should I reach out and ask him what happened, or is that just pathetic?

Bondage Offer Not Delivered After Getting Evicted Typically when this happens—photos exchanged, hookup arranged, mind changed— it’s because the photos were out of date or were not representative. Since we aren’t always the best judge of our own photos, BONDAGE, you should ask a friend who won’t bullshit you to look at your photos and give it to you straight.

If your no-bullshit friend clears your photos, then reach out to Mr. San Francisco. He had to make a snap decision when you arrived with that bag of rope and duct tape: Did he feel comfortable letting this stranger render him helpless? In a vanilla hookup, he could give it a little time and back out after some foreplay—it’s a lot harder to back out when the foreplay involves rope and duct tape. So send him a message via Recon. Open by telling him you aren’t buttsore or angry, and he had every right to change his mind, even at the last minute—which means he has nothing to apologize for, so you aren’t owed an apology and you shouldn’t message him if you’re seeking one.

Then ask if you said or did something that made him feel unsafe. If you did, BONDAGE, accept his feedback graciously—don’t argue with him or attempt to litigate what went down. Just listen. It may not have been your intention to freak him out by making, say, a few serial-killer jokes, but his impression is what matters, not your intention. And who knows? A sincere effort to get a little constructive feedback may leave him feeling better about you and up for savagelovecast.com playing the next time he’s in town.

On the Lovecast, Dan chats with comedian Guy Branum about ass surgery: savagelovecast.com 22

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COMEDY EVENTS THU 09.06

OPENING NIGHT @ THE NEW COMEDY STUDIO

Featuring: DJ Hazard, Kelly MacFarland, Eugene Mirman, Tony V., & Comic in Residence Liam McGurk.

Hosted by Rick Jenkins.

1 BOW MARKET WAY #23, SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $15 THU 09.06

OSAKA KOMEDY @ OSAKA JAPANESE SUSHI & STEAK HOUSE

Featuring: Corey Rodrigues, Emily Ruskowski, Jiayong Li, Kate Procyshyn, Uri Shatil, & Nora Panahi.

Hosted by Alex Giampapa

14 GREEN ST., BROOKLINE | 8PM | FREE FRI 09.07 - SAT 09.08

ROBERT KELLY @ LAUGH BOSTON

Robert Kelly’s comedy is deeply rooted his own life and relationships which makes it honest, abrasively funny, yet refreshingly vulnerable. He has been winning over audiences for years touring clubs, colleges, and theaters. His one hour special “Robert Kelly: Live at the Village Underground” debuted on Comedy Central and is now available on Netflix. Besides being a fixture on Comedy Central, Robert plays Bam Bam in Denis Leary’s FX show Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8 & 10PM | $25-$29 FRI 09.07 - SAT 09.08

CHRIS PENNIE @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

Chris Pennie has been entertaining crowds since 2005. As a lifelong bachelor and full-time single dad Chris relies on his dysfunctional family and offbeat view of the world to find humor in everyday life. If you have kids or were one in the past you’ll be entertained by Chris’ daily battles. In 2012, Chris has been a finalist in CMTs Next Big Comic. In 2011, he was a finalist in the Plymouth Rock Comedy Festival and Dick Doherty’s Beantown Comedy Riots as well as being invited to the Laughing Skull Festival in Atlanta and the Boston Comedy Festival.

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 FRI 09.07

FRIDAY NIGHT @ THE COMEDY STUDIO

Featuring: Mark Gallagher, DJ Hazard, Tooky Kavanagh, Jiayong Li, Peter Martin, & Comic in Residence Liam McGurk.

Hosted by Rick Jenkins

1 BOW MARKET WAY #23, SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $15 FRI 09.07

HASAN MINHAJ @ THE WILBUR

Hasan Minhaj is a comedian, actor, host, and writer. This fall he will become the first Indian-American to host his own weekly comedy show for Netflix that has been picked up for an unprecedented 32-episode order. The series will explore the modern cultural and political landscape with depth and sincerity. Each week, Minhaj will bring his unique comedic voice and storytelling skill to investigate the larger trends shaping our fragmented world.

246 TREMONT ST, BOSTON | 7:30 & 10PM | $35 - $52 SAT 09.08

SATURDAY NIGHT @ THE COMEDY STUDIO

Featuring: Ethan Diamond, Chris Post, Janet McNamara, Austin McCloud, Liam McGurk, Joe Medoff, Tawanda Gona, Mike Settlow, & Alex Giampapa.

Hosted by Ellen Sugarman

15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 SUN 09.09

THE WEIRDO SHOW@ THE COMEDY STUDIO

Featuring: Mark Gallagher, Ethan Marsh, Jimmy Cash, Lindita Taka, Michael Atkinson, Victoria Queen, Kandi Dishe, Charlie Cockpit, Nathan Burke, Andy Ofiesh, Sarah Blodgett, & Comic in Residence Liam McGurk.

Hosted by Niki Luparelli

1 BOW MARKET WAY #23, SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $15 MON 09.10

FREE COMEDY @ CITYSIDE

Featuring: Usama Siddiquee, Leslie Battle, Tina Friml, Sam Ike, & Anjan Biswas.

Hosted by Emily Ruskowski

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

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!

BOS POD FEST 9 days. 12 hilarious podcasts.

ALL recorded live!

Running through Mon, Sept 10

Robert Kelly Comedy Central, FX, Netflix Friday + Saturday

COMING SOON Matteo Lane Girl Code, Guy Code Sept 13-15

THE WAY WE WEREN’T

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

The Naked Magicians Sept 17-23

Tom Arnold VICELAND’s The Hunt for the Trump Tapes Special Engagement: Fri, Sept 21

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

Andrew Schulz The Brilliant Idiots Podcast Special Engagement: Fri, Sept 22 617.72.LAUGH | laughboston.com 425 Summer Street at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

23

SEPTEMBER 30