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DEAR READER 20/2018 VISION
I hope that this week’s Dig offers a different kind of year-end roundup than people will find elsewhere. Our reporters and editors have compiled an array of unique lists with highlights from 2018, all meant for those who care about what happens in their New England backyard. Our goonish president gets mentioned a few times in our news roundup, but only in how his destructive bigotry has touched issues like immigration that ring loudly here in Mass. Otherwise, this is your source for salutations and superlatives of the local variety. No outlet can cover everything. It’s not worth trying. But in reading back through several hundred pieces that we published in the past 12 months, I’m more than satisfied to say that we hit hard and often on a range of topics, and did so in a fashion unseen on the five o’clock news. From arcane findings that our journos unearthed for the first time, to more popular subjects that had been covered inadequately (in our opinion, of course), we hit a significantly broad spectrum—the alleged grand bargain agreement between lawmakers, labor, and business; a disastrous scene in Boston Public Schools; the baffling enduring popularity of Gov. Charlie Baker despite his push to privatize as many state duties and services that can possibly be ripped clean from government; and so on, and so on, and so on. I also wanted to leave some space to honor those we lost. From your cousin, former classmate, or grandparent who passed, to Paul Manafort, to celebrities who hopefully had friends and family members who actually loved them, as opposed to morning talk show gossip mongers who don’t care about them for a second longer than their toxicology report will help drive clicks and likes. I know the rapper Mac Miller, for one, was the truth; the kid had heart and worked to earn respect from icons and his peers alike. But while I’m sure that Miller, Stan Lee, Aretha Franklin, and some other major names will have whole wells of ink spilled about their departures, I’ll finish this remembrance with a few names that may not register on mainstream radars. We have to tip a 40 mourning Stephen Mindich, the publisher and mastermind behind the Boston Phoenix and WFNX, among other major feats. Stephen was a bulldog in both business and debate, and by any measure is one of the most pivotal figures in the history of alt Mass media. As was Peter Simon, the gifted photographer who launched his career during the golden era of alternative press and cut his teeth snapping the first pics that were seen Stateside of Jamaican reggae legends like Bob Marley. In other journalism news, the Hub lost hardass Jon Klarfeld, who in his time at Boston University dragged nearly half the hacks in New England through his torturous mock city room boot camp. Lastly, while this was a great year for the Wu-Tang Clan, which celebrated their 25th anniversary in 2018 (though not a Boston story, this one was big for me personally, as I wrote a book with RZA about the group’s debut album leading up to the silver occasion), it wasn’t so great for the underrated Lord Superb, a former Wu affiliate who claimed to secretly pen rhymes for several rappers. At 41, Superb was far too young to become an actual ghost writer, just like it is still a nightmare for a lot of people on the Boston music scene to fathom never again getting to hear DJ On&On crack jokes from behind the turntables at a club or bar downtown. Life may go on, and on, and on, but for the communities that he and countless others whom we lost belonged to, things will never be the same.
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2018 ’18 AND LIFE TO GO NEWS TO US
Our year in alternative Mass media BY DIG STAFF
As you very well know by this juncture in the crumbling of Massachusetts media, we are one of the last outlets around that reports critically on money, power, and influence, and that covers issues others do not touch. It’s anybody’s guess why cheeseball mainstream outlets (and their shitty right-wing foils) tend to ignore topics such as poverty, surveillance, and climate change. Whatever the reason, we don’t spend too much time worrying about them; as you’ll see below, we had our hands full all year covering the stuff that they missed. South Station becomes a homeless shelter with no services While those who often crash around these parts have difficult but long-established relationships with the hired guards and MBTA police who patrol the area, the increasing numbers now relying on the building has led to more tension than usual. Certain measures taken appear to be unnecessary, if not arbitrary acts of cruelty, such as blocking outlets so that people can’t charge phones, barricading off the warmest nooks, and enforcing a strict blanket ban on freezing nights. -Chris Faraone The Seaport floods and Boston drags its feet on climate change Boston city government has initiated an array of
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climate change initiatives, including Greenovate Boston, a section of the Imagine Boston 2030 process, and—most germane to this discussion—Climate Ready Boston. They all produce very nice reports grappling with some of the challenges to humanity presented by global warming in the decades to come. But the reports are written by planners and experts who are clearly pulling their punches for reasons that remain somewhat opaque. And in doing so, any good that might come out of the reports and the policy actions that will result from them is essentially undone. -Jason Pramas
deporting undocumented people on the Cape. -Eoin Higgins
Sheriff sides with Trump and ICE, against constituents and immigrants In an interview with the Dig, Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings confirmed his position to cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to hold alleged criminals past the time or the bail set by the courts. “From where I stand, if I do release them back into the community, they could commit another crime,” Cummings said. The sheriff wasn’t taking the side that inspired communities across the Commonwealth to pass resolutions protecting undocumented people. Rather, Cummings and his department entered into a 287(g) cooperation agreement with ICE, which would operationalize local forces to assist Trump’s regime in
Baker’s Mass Medicaid purge Approximately one million people were impacted by the March 1 changes to MassHealth—the majority of those in the program. Of these, at least 800,000 were assigned into ACOs or Managed Care organizations (MCOs), while many others were assigned to something called the PCC, or Primary Care Clinician plan. In the PCC plan, one’s PCP coordinates all their care, and any providers they see have to be referred and take straight MassHealth. The problem: many health care providers who take insurances that MassHealth has partnered with—such as Neighborhood Health Plan, Tufts, etc.—do not take MassHealth due to its lower rate of compensation and its reputation for being slow in compensating medical claims. -Laura Kiesel
MBTA bus mechanics beat back privatization… at a cost Unionized bus mechanics represented by the International Association of Machinists Local 264 won an important victory in February when they agreed to a fouryear contract with the MBTA—effectively ending a twoyear effort by the transportation authority’s Fiscal and Management Control Board to privatize three bus garages. -Jason Pramas
BPD seeks access to private security cameras The BPD has at least four ways to collect information on Boston’s private security cameras. First, to publicize CAM-Share, community service officers have announced the program to residents at local neighborhood meetings. Second, BPD records show Cullity floated the idea of offering tax credits to “builders and store owners” that install surveillance systems and give BPD access. Third, some officers may in the near future be supplied with a cell phone or iPad to catalog locations. If an officer finds a camera, they’ll hit a button, and the camera’s geolocation will be sent to the BPD’s Regional Intelligence Center. -Daniel DeFraia NRA-affiliated lobbyist walks through Baker’s revolving door Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker appointed Ron Amidon, the then-president of GOAL (Gun Owners’ Action League), the Commonwealth’s NRA affiliate group, to head the state’s Department of Fish and Game. The $27 million office is responsible for maintaining wildlife and fisheries, and issuing hunting licenses. GOAL has lobbied aggressively to change the state’s fish and wildlife laws and has pushed for standard NRA-style legislation, including but not limited to attempting to repeal Massachusetts’ ban on assault weapons. … Amidon’s appointment went through with little fanfare or controversy. -Will Meyer UMass Boston suffers cuts while UMass Amherst buys Mount Ida College UMass Amherst announced in April that it was buying the private Mount Ida College in Newton for $37 million, according to WBUR. It plans to use the campus as a base for Boston-area internships and co-ops for its students. The school will also assume Mount Ida’s debt of up to $70 million. The situation was widely viewed as an unfortunate attack on UMass Boston turf by the more “elite,” better-funded, and melanin-challenged UMass Amherst. -Jason Pramas The toppling of Cullen and McGrory accused of harassment Following an absurd Marathon bombing remembrance column in which longtime Boston Globe gasbag Kevin Cullen claimed, “I can smell Patriots Day, 2013. I can hear it,” the morning crew at WEEI, in a recent piss-soaked pillow of a love note titled “Five years later, we feel the grief like a sixth sense,” revealed that the columnist was not actually downtown when the bombs exploded in 2013. In other news at the newspaper of record, in a series of tweets in May, former boston. com (owned by the Globe) editor Hilary Sargent added a name—Editor Brian McGrory—to her months-long vague excoriation of the company’s misogynistic culture and mishandling of harassment complaints. In response, the Globe threw shade on the accuser, filed a lawsuit against her, and allowed the accused party (whose attorneys also threatened separate action against Sargent) to carry on before conducting its own private investigation and finding that he did nothing wrong. -Chris Faraone “Millionaires’ tax” referendum question blocked by a pro-business SJC The Fair Share Amendment—better known as the “millionaires’ tax”—that would have gone before voters this November as a statewide referendum question was shot down this week by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). So the effort to increase taxes on people making $1 million-plus a year and spend the resulting funds on social needs is over. For the moment. -Jason Pramas The final cries of EMF musicians echo a longstanding Cambridge reality The occupation of the Make Music Harvard Square Festival was just the latest move by those campaigning on behalf of EMF and against gentrification. As it turned
out, the president of the group behind the event, the Harvard Square Business Association, is also the owner of the contested EMF warehouse. John DiGiovanni bought the property in 2016 for $4 million, and this past February, his tenants were notified of their pending eviction from the space. -Olivia Deng Legislature helps, harms workers in “deal” with labor and business In June, the Massachusetts House and Senate brokered of a deal that had been in the works between pro-labor and pro-business forces on those issues for months. Giving each side something it wanted in exchange for encouraging the Raise Up Mass coalition to take its remaining two referendum questions—paid family and medical leave, and the $15 an hour minimum wage—off the table, and the retailers association to do the same with its sales tax cut question. The so-called grand bargain ensured that the state minimum wage will raise to $15 an hour for many workers. But it moves up to that rate from the current $11 an hour over five years, instead of the four years it would take with the referendum version. Plus it betrays tipped employees, whose wage floor will only rise from a pathetic $3.75 an hour now to a still pathetic $6.75 an hour by 2023. Although it’s worth mentioning that even the referendum version of the $15 an hour wage plan would have only raised tipped employees to $9 an hour. When what’s needed is a single minimum wage for all workers. -Jason Pramas Feeble state records law aids ICE in Mass The city of Boston maintains a database called “Boston School Police Department of Safety Services, Incident Report System,” into which resource officers can enter incidents involving students. ICE reportedly obtained such a report and used it at a hearing in a BPS case. It appears that any incidents filed in such a system would be accessible to the BRIC, a BPD information hub designed amidst the war on terror that gathers and passes intelligence between law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, and which also works in partnership with private sector interests. -Maya Shaffer The mass eviction of African-American artists from JP space The African American Master Artists in Residence Program is affiliated with the Northeastern University Department of African American Studies and has provided critical free work space to AAMARP talent for 40 years. But now the artists face an uncertain future since the university’s June letter asking all AAMARP artists to vacate their studios. -Olivia Deng Scooter-sharing company litters Camberville with dangerous vehicles In July, Bird Rides, part of a pack of electric scooter sharing companies that include Spin, Jump Bikes (an Uber-owned company that rents motorized bicycles), and LimeBike, did what it has done in several American cities over the last year, and unceremoniously dumped a bunch of scooters on the streets of Cambridge and Somerville. Without first discussing the precipitous action with the governments of those cities. Which didn’t go so well. -Jason Pramas Dig reveals that Islamophobia campaign won press but had little impact In July 2017, the office of Boston’s outspoken mayor, Marty Walsh, announced that on the suggestion of an ordinary Bostonian, the city would be putting up posters instructing residents on how to intervene if they were to witness a Muslim being harassed. According to correspondence the Dig obtained through FOIA, though, the mayor’s office did indeed print 50 of the posters at a cost of about $3,000. However, the responsibility for carrying out the campaign was de facto in the hands of the advertising company. They provided the space free NEWS TO US
to the city as a service, but only if another customer was not paying them to use it. -Claire Sadar Late buses, fiscal mismanagement, and legal woes as BPS reopens As students and teachers returned to the classroom, Boston Public Schools faced 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. The litany of woes came as BPS was already dealing 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. -Dan Atkinson The Merrimack Valley disaster: not just about old pipes The September events in the Merrimack Valley were unfortunate by any measure. Something bad happened to the natural gas distribution system in parts of Lawrence, North Andover, and Andover that resulted in dozens of homes being damaged or destroyed by explosions and fire, at least 25 people getting injured, and one person (tragically, an 18-year-old) getting killed. The leading theory for the conflagration is that it was triggered by a pressure spike in area gas pipes. But until the National Transportation and Safety Board concludes its investigation—which could take up to two years—we likely won’t know the cause of that spike. The company responsible, Columbia Gas of Massachusetts—a division of NiSource Inc. of Indiana—was so slow to respond to the crisis that Gov. Charlie Baker put Eversource Energy in charge of the cleanup effort. About 8,500 homes were affected, and its occupants were told that it would take months to replace the cast iron gas pipes under city streets and restore service. -Jason Pramas Pizza barons lay off 1,100 Following November’s sudden shutdown of almost 100 Papa Gino’s and D’Angelo fast food restaurants, a former D’Angelo manager told the Dig: “They [are] leaving over 1,000 people without jobs and without notice. No severance pay. No PTO [paid time off] payout. Nothing. People went to work assuming they would have a job and they were turned away. Those who had jobs were given calls throughout the day to tell them to close up shop permanently. They were told they could apply at other corporate locations for consideration for rehire.” -Jason Pramas And of course there was a big election In Boston, the biggest moment arguably came when Rachael Rollins was elected Suffolk district attorney, demolishing the more conservative independent Michael Maloney by more than 60 points. Rollins will be the first black woman to serve as DA in Massachusetts. In the ballot initiatives, Question 1, which would have limited the number of patients assigned to nurses, suffered a thumping defeat with 70 percent of voters opposing the measure. Question 2, which aimed to create a commission to investigate the financing of political campaigns, and Question 3, which reaffirmed transgender rights, both passed easily. Mass will also send two new faces to the US House of Representatives where, after the Democratic Party’s national romp, they will serve in the majority for the first time since 2011. In the 7th District, Ayanna Pressley’s meteoric rise to the House was made official as she ran unopposed to victory after upending longtime Rep. Michael Capuano in the primary. -Patrick Cochran
FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
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2018: THE YEAR IN GLOBAL WARMING APPARENT HORIZON
BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS
CC0 CREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC DOMAIN VIA PXHERE “We are the first generation to fully understand climate change and the last generation to be able to do something about it.” —Petteri Taalas, secretary-general, World Meteorological Organization Given all the developments I could review from the year that’s now drawing to a close—and given that I primarily write for a Greater Boston audience—it might give readers pause that I’m choosing to focus on humaninduced global warming again. But that’s just it. There’s simply no threat to humanity more dire. No matter where we live. Unless we consider the ever-looming specter of nuclear war. Yet we can essentially solve that latter threat through diplomacy… by getting all nations to ban the construction and use of nuclear weapons. The way chemical and biological weapons have previously been banned. A process that is already underway at the United Nations. Although there’s no question that it will be an uphill battle to enact such a ban—with none of the nuclear powers yet willing to support it. It’s also true that such a move won’t ensure that nukes are never used. But it can likely prevent the kind of global conflagration that remains a significant concern. Especially since the kinds of fingers currently hovering perilously close to big red launch buttons in several countries. With the United States getting ready to spend vast sums to “upgrade” our arsenal, and with a president that is continuing our decades-long tradition of nuclear saber rattling. Which is why the “Doomsday Clock” of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is at “two minutes to midnight.” The closest the clock has ever been to “midnight”—nuclear war—and “as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War,” according to the Bulletin’s editors. However, global warming remains the worse of the two existential threats humanity faces because we cannot make it go away with treaties. That is, we can’t merely stop discrete activities with a treaty as we can with nuclear weapons proliferation and basically solve the manifold crises that are climate change. Treaties on a variety of related fronts are certainly needed to mandate climate reforms, don’t get me
Americans seem to finally be getting the message that the warming is real
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wrong. But a massive social, cultural, ethical, and political economic shift will be required to successfully limit the Earth’s average warming by 2030 to the 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels that most climate scientists now believe will allow us to escape the worst depredations to our civilization. Which can only happen if we drastically reduce our still rising carbon emissions. And that shift will have to take place primarily in the advanced industrial nations responsible for burning most of the carbon that has raised the planet’s average temperature in the first place. Especially in the US. A country whose government is trying to pull out of the UN-brokered Paris Agreement on climate change—a largely voluntary accord that will only attempt to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (although it features language enjoining the world’s governments to shoot for a target “well below” that number, down even to the now-necessary 1.5-degree target) and will allow the vast carbon multinationals (the oil, gas, and coal combines) to get off scot-free for their crimes against the planet and its peoples. That’s definitely a depressing recap of our current predicament, but not precisely new information. So what, readers will now wonder, makes 2018 a year in which global warming is worth discussing over all other things? Well, it’s not that this year has been that much different than the recent years before it in regard to the visible manifestations of human-induced global warming. We’ve been having terrible wildfires, major storm-induced coastal and riverine flooding, and longer heat waves and droughts for some time now. Rather, it’s that Americans seem to finally be getting the message that the warming is real, that it’s dangerous both sooner and later, and that it’s not going to stop without human intervention. Meaning there is hope that our nation is coming to its senses. In fact, according to a major November poll by Monmouth University in New Jersey, “An increasing number of Americans believe climate change is occurring, including a majority who now see this issue as a very serious problem. …” The poll authors continue: “Nearly 8-in-10 Americans (78%) believe the world’s climate is undergoing a change that is causing more extreme weather patterns and sea level rise, up from 70% in December 2015. Of note, nearly two-thirds of Republicans (64%) now believe in climate change, a 15 point jump from just under half (49%) three years ago.” Great news to be sure. All the more so because “[t] he poll was conducted before [the] release of the federal
government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment. … ” That report was definitely a blockbuster. Despite hostility from reactionary executive and legislative leadership, experts from 13 federal agencies were able to research and release the detailed and damning FNCA. One of its most useful features was a breakdown of the projected effects of climate change on each region of the US. The Northeast was covered first. And here’s what the report says we can expect in Boston over the decades to come: earlier spring thaw and later fall freeze (with all kinds of worrying implications known and unknown); extreme heat (including warmer nights and winters); negative effects on natural resource-based industries (agriculture, outdoor sports, tourism, etc.); intense precipitation; ocean warming and acidification; sea level rise, storms, and flooding; critical infrastructure service disruption (energy, water, transportation, schools, hospitals, and more); increases in air pollution, aeroallergens (like ragweed), and wildfires; growing risk of vector-borne diseases like West Nile virus and Lyme disease (via fleas, ticks, and mosquitos); gastrointestinal illness from waterborne and foodborne contaminants; and mental health effects from all of the above. Most disturbing from my perspective is the FNCA authors’ admission that human migration in response to global warming’s worst effects is going to be a dilemma in the near future—and one which little thought has been put into remediating thus far: “A growing area of research explores potential migration patterns in response to climate-related coastal impacts, where coastal states such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York are anticipated to see large outflows of migrants, a pattern that would stress regional locations further inland.” I’ve written over and over again that a low-lying coastal metropolis like Boston is not going to be able to hold back the rising ocean indefinitely—or at all, if city and state government preparations continue to be anemic even as federal preparations have been scaled back under the Trump administration—and so it’s critical that we start moving the city’s infrastructure (like the Everett power plant and mass transit hubs) to higher ground. Eventually moving the city proper to surrounding hills and perhaps transferring the seat of state government to a regional inland city like Worcester. Ultimately moving our entire population out of this area as it becomes untenable to stay. But if we let things get that bad, as Bostonians move west and north we’ll run right into legions of other migrants from other parts of the US and world. And where are we going to go then? When nowhere is safe decades hence. When even Canada could face enough climate chaos to become an untenable option for Americans looking for a way out. So it’s good that the FNCA authors also make it clear that too little is being done to try to adapt to some of the early effects of global warming, let alone to really organize our society to stop climate change before it stops us: “In many cases, adaptation has been limited to coping responses that address short-term needs and are feasible within the current institutional context, whereas longer-term, more transformative efforts will likely require complex policy transition planning and frameworks that can address social and economic equality.” The big question for Bostonians and anyone else reading this: How do we go from this grim state of affairs to sparking the biggest social movement in human history to do what is necessary to hold global mean warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels by 2030? Preventing worst-case scenarios from happening to begin with. I’ll address that quandary in next week’s look ahead to 2019.
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A TRANSFORMATIVE YEAR IN MASS CANNABIS TALKING JOINTS MEMO
Searching for the common thread in this year’s sea of political and social coverage BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1
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As one of maybe two or three reporters, including sometime DigBoston contributor Mike Crawford, who has covered grass in Mass from outright prohibition on through decriminalization and more recent recreational milestones, I can confidently argue that this has by far been the most amazingly impactful year for cannabis in our Commonwealth’s history. I also say that as the editor of Talking Joints Memo, the Dig’s companion pro-pot newsletter and soon-to-be standalone site; combing through the several hundred headlines we compile each month to help industry nerds and consumers alike stay on top of news from Western Mass to Cape Cod, it blows my mind how much actually decent coverage there is these days. When we did year-end cannabis reviews in years past, it was rare to find much reporting at all on the topic, let alone thoughtful and informative consideration of tangential issues such as patient rights and home grows. I spent hours this last week reading a lot of articles from 2018, by us as well as others, that could appropriately illustrate the full-throttle trajectory of weed in Massachusetts these past 12 months. There were several interesting and mentionworthy moments, on the business as well as the culture side—from all the dumb ass local politicians and their ignoramus paranoid constituents who eschewed the potential benefits and opportunities of having cannabis in their municipalities, to the blatant disdain that some people in high places have for smaller players angling for their piece of the pie, to the war on hemp, to the latest classist indefensible attack on Freedom Rally-goers by humorless pricks whose houses overlook the Common. That’s a lot of stories covering a lot of ground, to be sure. But I found a common thread among them all, even the shitty ones, in searching for a way to properly look back. As it turns out, cannabis coverage in 2018 wasn’t driven by the press at all, but instead by the demand of readers—for honest information about everything from how to safely consume edibles to when and where dispensaries are opening in certain areas and what hurdles they face. I’m sorry if this comes off sounding corny, like when Time magazine chose “You” as its Person of the Year, but it’s true, and one story that broke out of Western Mass last week serves as a signifier of how far we’ve come since January. When occasional Dig writer Andy Gaus brought it to my attention that the Greater Springfield YMCA had posted a memorandum threatening its members who walk in smelling of herb, I instinctively passed on the story. We spend enough time around here harassing know-nothings and prohibitionists, and especially with Springfield being so far outside of our coverage range, I figured it was just another prejudicial fit of normie rage. Admittedly, the last thing I expected was for there to be a massive public outcry in response to the viral memo, or for the YMCA director who wrote it to be forced to apologize. I should have predicted the backlash, since NETA, one of the state’s first legal operations, starting selling rec weed not too far from Springfield last month and has had a line of people wrapped around its building in Northampton since. But even I tend to forget that we have come a long way from the days when marijuana haters had the final word. Look, the media is still full of prohibitionist frauds—from those who never once opined about prescription drug- and THE WRITER TAKES A 360-DEGREE SELFIE AT THE opioid-impaired driving but JAM-PACKED 2018 BOSTON FREEDOM RALLY proactively echo the frantic police narrative on the scourge of stoned motorists, to imbeciles like Howard Scott of the Patriot Ledger who took edibles for the first time, drove to and from the hardware store in an inebriated state, and then questioned the prudence of legalization. Looking at the bigger picture, though, I’m more excited about where this is all headed than I am disgusted by how things unfolded in the recent past, and that’s not something I can say about anything else that my newspaper covers—from local development, to the environment, to homelessness. There will be snags along the way, as well as an uphill battle for groups that were most devastated by the war on drugs to get as many seats at the table as possible, but overall we’re steering in a positive direction. With all of that considered, looking back doesn’t seem nearly as important as peering ahead into the uncharted abyss that is the East Coast cannabis frontier.
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KILL WHITEY FEATURE
A look back at why government officials may have wanted Bulger dead more than anyone else BY JONATHAN RILEY On Oct 30, the day before Halloween, infamous Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger met a reportedly gruesome end. The brutality of his death, on his first day after transferring to Hazelton federal penitentiary in West Virginia, was comparable to that endured by many of his victims. As his attorney J.W. Carney put it in a blunt press release: I was proud to be appointed by the Federal Court to represent James Bulger. He was sentenced to life in prison, but as a result of decisions by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, that sentence has been changed to the death penalty. I’ll have no further comment. During Bulger’s 2013 trial, Carney audaciously claimed that while Bulger “had an unbelievably lucrative criminal enterprise,” he wasn’t really an FBI informant, but instead “had people on the local police, the state police, and especially federal law enforcement on his payroll.” Carney also claimed that of the 19 murders Bulger was accused of involvement with, he was specifically not guilty of killing two women, Debra Davis and Deborah Hussey. Bulger was eventually convicted in Hussey’s death and 10 others (the court issued a “no finding” on the Davis case). Along with his collaborator Gerard O’Neill, longtime Boston Globe reporter Dick Lehr penned multiple books covering Bulger’s criminal career, and dismissed Whitey’s claim to have never snitched. In an interview I did with Lehr the semester after he taught me in journalism school in 2014, though, he said it was unfortunate Bulger wasn’t allowed to testify that a 10
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deceased federal prosecutor verbally granted him lifetime immunity for his crimes. “It’s hard to imagine, it’s hard to believe, but let him make his case,” Lehr said. “If he could he’d probably give a network interview.” The closest it seems Bulger ever came to getting that kind of exposure was on CNN, which aired clips of the mobster speaking over the phone with his lawyer Carney in 2014. Bulger’s corrupt relationship with FBI agents— before he disappeared for more than a decade, alternating with Osama bin Laden as America’s most wanted man while hiding in plain sight in Santa Monica, California—is well known. Yet other government corruption surrounding his case has received far less attention. For starters, as Lehr wrote in his 2013 book Whitey, a young Bulger was involved with the notorious CIA mind-control program codenamed MK-Ultra. Bulger received his first prison sentence in 1956: 20 years for a string of bank robberies. At 26 years old, he hadn’t yet killed anyone. That would come later, after his participation in Dr. Carl Pfeiffer’s governmentsponsored drug experiments at the federal pen in Atlanta. Along with several other inmates who all scored high on tests for “psychopathic tendencies,” not long after his arrival in Atlanta, Bulger joined an experimental program involving lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and likely other hallucinogens. He eventually tripped on acid more than 50 times in prison before getting kicked out of the program for “being persistently noisy and boisterous to a rather extreme degree.” Bulger would later recount how his “nightmarish” experiences brought him to “the depths
of insanity.” In one trip, turning to another inmate, Bulger saw “the flesh on his face melt and fall off revealing his skull; flesh melt from his hands turning into bare bones; blood spew out of the lightbulbs.” In another, Bulger said he “looked down and saw a cockroach— he exploded into the size of an elephant and I
KILL WHITEY continued on pg. 12
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KILL WHITEY continued from pg. 10
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shrunk to the size of an ant. Fear had me screaming and climbing the wall.” A few years later, then-Harvard professor and soon-to-be professional psychedelic guru Timothy Leary would take psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) with inmates at Concord State Prison. This arguably provided a more humane “set and setting”—referring to mind-“set” and environment— for the trips than Pfeiffer’s. More recent research in the past decade seems to suggest that under the right conditions, LSD has therapeutic potential. But while Leary and his colleagues have been credited with first highlighting the importance of said “set and setting” to the outcome of a trip, the finding may have been born elsewhere. Those truly responsible were also Harvard-affiliated and even more directly tied to CIA powers than Leary, who once attended West Point and himself said, in 1977, that “the LSD movement was started by the CIA.” Dr. Robert Hyde of Harvard-affiliated Boston Psychopathic Hospital, later renamed Massachusetts Mental Health Center, is said to have been the first American to take LSD—in 1949, over a decade before Leary’s experiments. The early experiments by Hyde and his colleagues may have been independent at first, but they received around $40,000 a year from the CIA from at least 1952. “We agreed not to discuss it,” one doctor recalled to an interviewer in 1979. There is little doubt that the CIA was closely involved in the LSD explosion of the 1960s. Another Boston Psychopathic researcher, Max Rinkel, without mentioning the agency specifically, hinted in 1965 “that much of the black market supply” came from Italy. “All of the Harvard students under his care mentioned that LSD is easily obtainable in Harvard Square, a fact confirmed by several students from other colleges,” the Harvard Crimson reported. In 1959, Bulger, still in prison, rejoined Pfeiffer’s LSD experiments. But something went wrong. A week after signing up, “Whitey suffered an overdose of some kind,” Lehr writes. Bulger would later denounce Pfeiffer, accusing him of betraying his oath. “We were recruited by lies and deception,” the gangster wrote. “Encouraged to volunteer to be guinea pigs in a noble humanitarian cause.” The CIA’s mission was far from humanitarian. Instead, it aimed to weaponize “behavior modification” techniques. Following his participation in LSD experiments, Bulger’s behavior seemingly changed—but perhaps not the way his handlers hoped. After taking LSD multiple times in the less-than-ideal “set and setting” of prison, Bulger began participating in escape attempts. So many, in fact, that following one a few weeks after his bad trip, he was finally shipped to the notorious Alcatraz penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, along with several other of his problematic escape artist associates. These others would later famously break out of the supposedly impenetrable island prison. Bulger might’ve escaped with them, but he had another, more political escape planned thanks to his younger brother William. A member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives who would later go on to preside over the state Senate, according to Lehr’s book Whitey, William got US Speaker of the House John McCormack to put in a good word for his sibling. In 1965, after serving less than 9 years, Bulger was back on the street—and soon building a criminal empire. Bulger’s prison LSD experience doesn’t excuse later crimes, but it seems likely that the government contributed to creating a monster. It’s also worth noting that MK-Ultra extended far beyond LSD testing, including in at least one other notorious case stemming from Greater Boston. While Whitey was doing time in Atlanta, a 16-year-old math prodigy named Ted Kaczynski enrolled at Harvard. Soon, he was reluctantly participating in experiments, likely funded by the CIA, that aimed to develop ambitious interrogation techniques. Kaczynski, code-named “Lawful,” was told to write an essay on his “personal philosophy of life,” only to have it carefully studied and then demolished by a lawyer. Kaczynski had deceptively been told the attorney was just “another undergraduate subject like himself,” while the impugnment was done in a brightly lit room, in front of a one-way mirror, with electrodes measuring Kaczynski’s heart and respiratory rates. Even as he continued taking part in Dr. Henry Murray’s experiments, Kaczynski began worrying about “mind control.” Though Kaczynski thought he would be participating in a “debate,” Murray acknowledged that Kaczynski was subjected to “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive” attacks. Over three decades later, Kaczynski still remembered Murray’s experiment as “a highly unpleasant experience.” That was after he embarked on an extended terror campaign overlapping Bulger’s reign, and had become widely known as the “Unabomber.” Kaczynski was finally captured after a manifesto he wrote was published in several major newspapers, and his writing style was identified by his brother. Today, Kaczynski resides at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. Though he’s reportedly “carried on a remarkable correspondence with thousands of people all over the world,” including some published interviews, in 2016 Kaczynski offered to grant a single interview to the right person, presumably in the mainstream media. Unlike Bulger, if he has anything worthwhile to say, it’s possible he’ll actually follow through— before the government makes a similar decision to shorten his sentence and silence him.
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DEVOURING 2018 (PT. 1) EATS
A look back at some dining and drinking faves for 2018 BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON
Chicken Parmigiana Massimo’s, Wakefield - A version that’s a bit more on the parm side than the chicken side, this is a good thing in this case, as the dish is smothered with lots of cheese and a very rich housemade sauce, while, yes, there’s still enough battered chicken in the dish to make everyone happy. Fried Chicken Grumpy White’s, Quincy Boneless fried chicken may be sacrilegious to some, but if you like totally old-school dishes that scream “Boston” (or “Quincy”), the boneless fried chicken plate with mashed potatoes at this oldfashioned family spot is a must in a stick-to-your-ribs comfort food kind of way.
As you may have noticed around this time last year, 2017 had quite a bit of good eating and drinking, but in some ways, 2018 has been even better, with too many great food items, restaurants, and bars to mention in one sitting. Last year, a list of some specific dishes and dining/drinking spots was posted here, and this year is no different, with a random sampling given below. Macaroni and Cheese Silvertone, Boston - A near-legendary version of this old-school comfort-food classic from an industry haunt in the heart of downtown where you might just see your favorite local chefs sipping drinks if you hit it at the right time. Sushi Ocean Sushi, Melrose - Beautifully presented and fresh-tasting options from a suburban spot few have heard of that’s buried within one of those mixed-use developments that seem to be everywhere these days. Pizza (Bar) Lynwood, Randolph - This legendary neighborhood joint has been around since the beginning of time; there’s a reason why you see people walking out of this place with huge stacks of to-go pies in greasy brown paper bags. Pizza (Old-School) Pleasant Cafe, Roslindale - Classic thin-crust pizza is the name of the game at this homey and friendly restaurant that seems stuck in a time warp, and speaking of which, it also features cocktails that your grandparents used to enjoy. Pizza (Gourmet) Brewer’s Fork, Charlestown - A repeat, and for good reason, as the wood-fired pizzas at this bustling neighborhood restaurant rival the best pizzas in the entire region—and you can also get some top local beers to wash down the slices. 14
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Burgers O’Sullivan’s, Somerville - Though not for everyone, the meatball-shaped burgers at this longtime pub near the Cambridge line are the kind you might get off the outdoor grill at a backyard party, though with many more options for toppings, including gouda, ham, and fried eggs. Wings Wendell’s Pub, Norton - People drive for miles to come to this rather forlorn-looking roadhouse a good ways southwest of Boston, as the garlicky, buttery sauce that comes with the wings will probably make your knees weak (and your stomach thrilled, unless you opt for the really hot sauces). Ramen Ganko Ittetsu Ramen, Brookline - Another repeat, this tiny spot buried in an historic arcade in Coolidge Corner will make you quickly forget about the cheap drunken ramen from your younger years, unless you happened to eat sesame ramen with pork and garlic at three in the morning after a few too many beers. Tacos Villa Mexico, Boston - A lot of great tacos can be found in the Greater Boston area, but the chorizo taco from this tiny downtown spot is among the best of the best with its smoky, savory flavors—this dish, in fact, may have been the best of anything tried in 2018. (Its burritos are outstanding as well, by the way.) Steak and Cheese Subs Ashmont Market, Dorchester - To those in the know, heading into the back of this neighborhood market for a classic overstuffed steak and cheese is a special treat, though if you don’t live nearby, you’ll need to plan to eat in your car (or sit on a bench in a nearby park if it’s not 10 below out).
Italian Subs Bricco Salumeria, Boston Hidden in a dead-end alleyway off busy Hanover Street in the North End, this market has a variety of Italian goods, and its Italian subs have something that those from many other spots don’t— freshly made bread that might just be the best part of the sandwich. Steak Tips NewBridge Cafe, Chelsea - Another legendary Bostonarea spot that few outside of the Boston area know about, the Newbridge is often seen as the one and only place to go for steak tips, and with all due respect to such great spots as Floramo’s and Silvertone, it’s hard to disagree with this. Pasta Rino’s, East Boston - What used to be a hidden gem has become a place with endless lines in part because it was featured on the Food Network years ago, but the lines are justified, as the fresh pasta—along with the red sauce—make for a memorable Italian-American meal, and perhaps a good nap afterwards. Dumplings Wang’s, Somerville - Lots of newcomers for dumplings have come to the region of late, but this longtime spot continues to impress, and watching the workers make the dumplings in the back gives a hint as to just how fresh the dumplings are. Ridiculous Sandwich Tasty on the Hill, Medford - Ever hear of a francesinha? That’s ok, because no one else has, either. But this unassuming Portuguese cafe near Tufts has them, and they include (wait for it) steak, ham, linguica, bacon, a hot dog, a fried egg, American cheese, and a tomato/beer-based sauce, all somehow stuffed into two pieces of bread. Read Marc’s whole list at digboston.com
THE BEST LOCAL ALBUMS OF 2018 MUSIC
Sidney Gish, Fiddlehead, Vein, SuperSmashBroz, and more top the list BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN
To help you catch up with all the music Boston-based artists released this year, we outlined our favorite fulllengths released from the bunch below. Whether you’re a diehard metalhead, a Newport Folk Festival regular, a DIY scene creative, a hip-hop champion, or someone just looking for new music to listen to, read everything outlined below (and stay tuned for our EPs of the year next week). The level of talent and quality in your backyard may surprise you.
At the end of each year, it’s hard not to feel overwhelming gratitude for our city. Boston manages to house a sea of talent, especially when it comes to music. Day in and day out, there are artists breaking their backs just so they can create the folk, rock, hip-hop, electronica, metal, R&B, experimental, and soul songs that they love. It’s a city that runs on passion and community. That’s apparent in the music as much as it is in the listeners. It also explains why picking out the 30 “best” local albums of the year is so hard. The easiest way to verify the strength of this list is by looking at the contenders who didn’t make the cut (despite churning out some quality records). Though no longer a Boston band, the Breeders reunited the Last Splash lineup for the sturdy comeback album All Nerve. We Can All Be Sorry polished off their charming indie pop on Grand Design. Ultra Chapelle made a post-twee anthem with WOMP WOMP, squitch found the meeting point between math rock and art rock with Uncle Steve in Spirit, and Daeves channeled his inner Stephen Malkmus for Whatever Before the Storm. Band bedbug took a perfect snapshot of Boston’s bedroom pop scene with i’ll count to heaven in years without seasons. Blues rock duo Mr. Airplane Man released Jacaranda Blue, their first proper album in 14 years. Barrence Whitfield & the Savages revived the vintage rock soul of R&B with Soul Flowers of Titan. The often overlooked trio E—Thalia Zedek, Jason Sanford of Neptune, and Gavin McCarthy of Karate—built off their various alt-rock backgrounds on their sophomore LP, Negative Work. Grindcore act Limbs Bin finally released the heavily anticipated One Happy World. Today Junior gave surf rock a face lift with Single Forever. Folk got a friendly bump thanks to Neon by Sam Moss and The Measured Mile by sundog. Gia Greene overcame emergency surgeries to reveal her debut LP Unexpected Guest. Indie rock act Cosmic Johnny established itself as a must-know name on the Allston scene thanks to Good Grief. Psych rock trio Sundrifter launched listeners to space with Visitations. Former Du Vide frontman Alexander released his barren solo debut Settle Down. Lowell favorites oldsoul played into the emo side of alt-rock with coy. Artists like Animal Flag and Good News played into the performative side of rock with Void Ripper and It Is Time respectively, and wowflower skated through the downtempo electronica scene with lo-fi record feverdream. Lesser Glow gave doom a post-metal spin with Ruined. At some point during all of this, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones released their first album in seven years, because ska refuses to die.
Vundabar Smell Smoke Gawk Records Few Allston basement bands get the chance to crawl their way to fame. Rapid as it may be, Vundabar’s ascent is the product of doing hard work with a carefree saunter. After making its own label, booking its own shows, and sharpening its songwriting process, the surf pop trio has found a comfortable balance between lower-tier national fame and its DIY heart. Set to the band’s cleanest melodies yet, Smell Smoke centers around frontman Brandon Hagen’s four-year grapple with watching a loved one decline in health—reminding listeners that the band didn’t blow up on heedlessness and jubilation alone. SuperSmashBroz Family Cookout Self-Released SuperSmashBroz threw a party for their debut album and everyone was invited. Leave it to the Roxbury DJ duo to make its highly anticipated album feel like the ultimate gathering going down in real time. Though, to be fair, they’ve had a lot of practice: SuperSmashBroz have been tour DJs for Michael Christmas and Cousin Stizz. On Family Cookout, real-life brothers Fre$co and Nomz bring their skills to the hip-hop feast and invite producers like Tee-Watt, Wizz Dakota, and Lil Rich to join in cooking. The whole thing pays off with high energy and guest features from Leano, Vintage Lee, Michael Christmas, Ree Skully, Nick Gray, Izo, Millyz, Jefe Replay, OG Swaggerdick, Alejandro Blanco, and more. There’s “Nice Work” for the Drake fan, “Young Dike” for the Odd Future fan, and “Adjacent” for the Disclosure fan. If they could all turn up, you better do the same. Edge Petal Burn Glass Cannon Self-Released You can’t erase every trace of a scar, but you can reclaim it as it fades. That’s the mentality Olivia West tried to revel in while writing the crux of Glass Cannon, the long-awaited debut album by her band Edge Petal Burn. West confronts her past experiences with relationship abuse, emotional trauma, and long-term brain damage. Along with her band, West sets her darkest moments on fire with heavy bursts of sludge guitar, Korean folk music influences, and multilayered vocal harmonies. Songs like “Five Golden Rings” and “Letters” snake their way through dark corners while bearing the type of emotional vocal delivery that gives you goosebumps. It’s cathartic, to say the least. Lake Street Dive Free Yourself Up Nonesuch Records Lake Street Dive have straddled the line between idolizing retro Motown and pushing jazz pop onto the radio for a long time now. But with Free Yourself Up, the band embraces the slicker side of pop that it used to mask in ’60s girl group tang. While that comes across as a safe move, it’s clear the band, from singer Rachael Price NEWS TO US
on down to upright bass player Bridget Kearney, wanted to inject edge into the lyrics. Want to remind an ex that you were the better kisser? Check. Want to reflect on our darkening regime under this government? Check. In that, Free Yourself Up is a quiet reminder that nothing is ever quite as sweet as well-worded revenge. Pet Fox Pet Fox Self-Released With all the experience Theo Hartlett (Ovlov, Flat Swamp), Jesse Weiss (Palehound, Grass Is Green), and Morgan Luzzi (Ovlov) have racked up in other bands, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the three are treating Pet Fox like the headline-worthy act it could become. Stepping out of the shadows and into the driving seat, Hartlett, Weiss, and Luzzi showcase their skills as underrated songwriters on Pet Fox. With immediately catchy hooks and surprisingly polished production, songs like bummer favorite “How to Quit,” energetic jaunt “You Cry Wolf,” and guitar-heavy “Grown Up” go down easy. Though it’s only their first release, it’s already a staple listen for Boston’s indie rock scene and anyone who listens to songs on repeat for hours (hi there) while getting work done. Sidney Gish No Dogs Allowed Self-Released Where most musically inclined students in Boston attend college during the day and write music at night, Sidney Gish seems to create full albums in her sleep. The 20-year-old singer-songwriter runs on a steady diet of never-ending hooks and self-taught production, using that fodder to create a delightfully surprising blend of anti-folk, pleasing pop, and indie rock licks. No Dogs Allowed arrived on New Year’s Eve of 2017—an arbitrary deadline she gave herself, much like with 2016’s Ed Buys Houses, to dump a year’s worth of song ideas onto the internet—with Gish’s best use of tracklist order yet. From the casual guitar solo in “Sin Triangle” to the self-aware sigh in “Rat of the City,” No Dogs Allowed demonstrates why the innate songwriting skills of Sidney Gish are just as much a breath of fresh air in indie rock as they are a pathway toward a bigger career in music. Mal Devisa Shade and the Little Creature Self-Released If wishes came true, we could all get a masterclass on brilliant songwriting from Deja Carr, the woman behind Mal Devisa. The experimental bassist and songwriter seems to be a natural talent in every way: Her basslines stir something deep within you, her voice seamlessly jumps from soulful questions to confrontational spitting, and her songwriting structures never go where they’re expected to. In what appears to be a big middle finger to whichever record label tried to sign her and capitalize on her talent (presumably XL Recordings imprint Young Turks), Mal Devisa uploaded a string of releases this November, the strongest of which is Shade and the little Creature. Over the course of 15 tracks, she skips between aggressive lo-fi raps, sweet cover songs, and manipulated grooves that feel sinister and warped. It’s immediate, intense, and inventive, the type of standout work that makes the final words in the album’s liner notes all the sweeter: “All the folks who work at Young Turks: fUCK You and hire Mack back.” Wendy Eisenberg Its Shape Is Your Touch VDSQ Records Wendy Eisenberg has tried more filters for her music than you have for your Instagram photos. In high school, the jazz guitarist practiced the straightforward genre. In college at the New England Conservatory, she learned how to fill concert halls with a more traditional sound. Outside of college, she rebelled by bringing that sound BEST LOCAL ALBUMS continued on pg. 16 FEATURE
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BEST LOCAL ALBUMS continued from pg. 15 to experimental punk band Birthing Hips. And now, she finds herself stripping it all back to something more minimal. On her solo album Its Shape Is Your Touch, a nod to a Richard Brautigan poem, Eisenberg improvises on guitar to explore traditional structure, rich instrument histories, and the ways we’re taught language inside and outside of the classroom. It’s an experimental exploration of guitar and the ways in which our touch creates shape while interjecting absence, at once intimate and probing in the way experimental guitar should be. Fiddlehead Springtime and Blind Run For Cover Records Pull any hardcore-loving kid off the street and four times out of five they will tell you straight-edge group Have Heart changed their life. Frontman Patrick Flynn is a musical hero in that sense, as his words became scripture for a generation, and his new post-hardcore band Fiddlehead continues that tradition. As a posthardcore group, Fiddlehead—Basement member Alex Henery on guitar, Casey Nealon on bass, Have Heart member Shawn Costa on drums, Alex Dow on guitar, and Flynn on lead vocals—hurl themselves into heavy riffs and speedy punk payoffs like a combo of Fugazi, Samiam, and Archers of Loaf. But lyrically, Flynn grapples with the death of his father by analyzing, questioning, and empathizing for his mother’s grieving process. Springtime and Blind is abrasive and emotional, and at no point does it let up on either. Anjimile Colors Self-Released Eventually, you have to throw complacency to the side and stop hoping life will go as dreamed. After refining their musical path as a queer and trans artist for the past few years, Anjimile, the chosen moniker of Anji Chithambo, decided to take testosterone to feel more comfortable as a nonbinary transmasculine person. Their upper vocal range thinned and their lower vocal range widened. Anjimile set to work learning the changes of this modified instrument during a three-month artist residency at Industry Lab. The result is an album of selfacceptance and artful indie rock styles that captures where their personality, identity, and body meet. More than anything else, it’s a lesson in how to say “fuck it” with flying colors.
Morne To the Night Unknown Armageddon Label Since forming back in 2005, Morne have gone on to be one of Boston’s best atmospheric metal bands. A combination of doom, crust, and general bleakness, the band’s sound has grown louder over the years. On To the Night Unknown, Morne turn things up once again. Whether it’s the fuzzed-out guitar drone on “Not Our Flame” or the furious rhythm section on “Scorn,” the band meets the high expectations that followed a fiveyear silence by focusing on crisp production and lengthy timestamps, welcoming listeners back into its shadowed brand of doom. Those who ever found themselves wishing Neurosis and Obituary would cross paths will certainly feel seen listening to To the Night Unknown. BAERD Crete Self-Released Listening to BAERD is like watching a forest bloom and grow before you, all sped-up sprouting and seasonchanging beauty. The seven-piece Americana band pulls the best parts of folk, jazz, and classical music into its work. On Crete, that combination swells like a beautiful meeting of Fleet Foxes and Skinny Bones. From the cooling vocals and dreamlike banjo of “Out of The” to the stomping energy and manic drawl of frontman Isaiah Beard’s voice on “Stand,” Crete is an album that uses crisp production to highlight how a dozen different pieces, big and small, can create a massive sound— proving folk doesn’t have to be a quiet genre after all. Marissa Nadler For My Crimes Sacred Bones Records When you’ve got a specific ache in your heart and the only way to handle it is to encourage it to deepen, then it’s time to put on Marissa Nadler. On her newest album, For My Crimes, she questions if love is enough to keep two people together despite differing needs and what to do if the answer is no. Nadler’s usual songwriting style has grown stronger. That means songs like the opening title track sweep through dark drama and acoustic guitar, but also that she turns to southern sideroads on “I Can’t Listen to Gene Clark Anymore” or “Said Goodbye to That Car.” Nadler is the queen of digging a hole and cozying up in its close quarters. Even with cameos from Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten, and Mary Lattimore, For
My Crimes is a trademark Nadler creation: a comfortably cold place to hide away while slowly addressing your sadness head-on. Aubrey Haddard Blue Part Self-Released Aubrey Haddard is the life and soul of the party. On her debut full-length, Blue Part, her voice rockets outward like a beam of light, sounding equally raw and innate. It’s a natural gift that got her into Berklee and it’s the reason she chose to leave Berklee, a voice so eager to shine in the music scene that it couldn’t be weighed down by classes. But beyond her natural gift of a voice, Haddard stands tall as a local luminary on Blue Part because of her music itself. Joined by bassist Charley Ruddell and drummer Josh Strmic, she churns out sunny pop melodies, low-burning ballads, and rock-tipped grooves, showcasing her growing guitar talent along the way. If it weren’t for her steadfast determination to grow as a songwriter, Haddard may still be hidden behind the books at Berklee instead of racking up Boston Music Awards trophies. Nature Shots Foreclosure Self-Released As someone who has spent years performing in indie rock bands, Michi Tassey didn’t expect to start a project like Nature Shots—and yet, and the same time, it was entirely unavoidable. The People Like You member picked up the moniker as a way to reflect on the loss of a dear friend, not as a method of coping with loss, but rather an extension of empathy to someone she still cared deeply about. The resulting album, Foreclosure, hangs Tassey’s voice like light strings around a bare room, her words echoing in an intentionally sparse landscape as fingerplucked guitar and slow piano fade in and out behind her. On first listen, it sounds like a blend of Grouper’s Ruins and the Antlers’ Hospice. The longer Foreclosure plays, though, the clearer it becomes the album is a bright light reflecting on the empty space of someone who passed: a beautiful, haunting, and lasting image that stands on its own. Darlingside Extralife More Doug Records If the lyrics on Darlingside’s new album imply the world has ended bleakly, then the music suggests the
MUSIC EVENTS THU 12.20
BIG IF TRU OVLOV + ANNA ALTMAN + MISTER GOBLIN + ALEXANDER [Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston. 8:30pm/18+/$10. greatscottboston.com]
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THU 12.13
MAKE IT NEW: WEEKLY ELECTRONIC DANCE PARTY AVALON EMERSON + OR:LA
[Middlesex Lounge, 315 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. 9pm/21+/$10. middlesexlounge.us]
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FRI 12.21
GRAYSKULL BOOKING 5-YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY SUFFER ON ACID + FUMING MOUTH + MORE
[O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/21+/$10. obrienspubboston.com]
SAT 12.22
ONLY WAY TO BE ALONE 10-YEAR TOUR GOOD OLD WAR + BETA RADIO + ALLMAN BROWN [The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/all ages/$20. sinclaircambridge.com]
SAT 12.22
REVIVAL OF THE RUBY RED SOUL MACY GRAY
[City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston. 6pm/21+/$45. citywinery.com]
TUE 12.18
HO HO HOLIDAY HIP-HOP THE ROOTS + VICTORY BOYD
[House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston. 7pm/all ages/$63. houseofblues. com]
remaining life is full of beauty. The Americana folk-rock act slows things down on Extralife to explore its sound more through their voices than their instruments. Their harmonies on “Futures” and “Singularity” will have you certain Local Natives joined them in the studio. That’s not to say the record is without its usual gorgeous instrumentation—clarinets and trumpets slowly cascade in the background of “Hold Your Head Up High,” and the band’s string instrument arrangements sound soft and gentle throughout—but that this record showcases what brought the band together in the first place: singing a cappella in college for the fun of it and realizing the beauty they could uncover when joined together. Oh, how sweet the reprise “It’s not ever too late” is. Puppy Problems Sunday Feeling Sleeper Records Puppy Problems’ debut album was a long time coming. Despite playing shows for years and being a regular face on the scene, it took Sami Martasian, the musician behind the moniker, a long time to find the work-life balance needed to finish a record. Over the years, Martasian formed a proper backing band and transformed their sound from barren anti-folk to fleshed-out bummer rock. Sunday Feeling benefits from that long delay-turned-growth spurt. Acoustic guitar gets double tracked and the rhythm section drones in the background, bringing to mind the powerful subtleties of bands like Silkworm, Beat Happening, and Slint. Listening to Sunday Feeling is like lying in bed with a highlight reel of your worst moments and realizing how much you’ve grown. It digs up old wounds, but it treats them with honesty, reminding listeners that you can conquer life one unexpected bruise at a time if only by waiting for it to fade. SUPERTEEN Over Everything Sad Cactus Records SUPERTEEN is the best Salem band you’ve (probably) never heard of. The five-piece indie rock band has been writing punk-tinged songs for six years now, but it was this year’s Over Everything that grabbed our attention. Over the course of 11 songs, SUPERTEEN showcase their deft and noisy songwriting: tuning guitars to sound gruff, overlapping male and female vocals with a manic dizziness, barreling forward with a feverish tempo that feels more anxious than anything else. Whether it’s the crossing guitars on “Sodium Pill” or the intense build up (and payoff) of shouts on closer “First Time Living,” SUPERTEEN have polished a sound that’s criminally underrated no matter who you ask. Prior Panic Finicky Things Self-Released The biggest allure of Prior Panic’s debut album is how comfortable the record is with its imperfections—a way of living few people will accomplish in their lifetime. You can hear finger slides on guitar strings. People chatter in the background of the opening track. The cymbals occasionally flood over one another. But the way in which frontperson Julia Fulbright sings, all while plucking at their cello, makes it clear Finicky Things stands on pride and pride alone. It’s an addicting type of confidence, the kind you wish you had. By the time “Float” kicks in, Fulbright’s ability to weave their instrument through Zachary Ellsworth’s drumming or Otto Klammer’s guitar feels like a hypnotic new dance, the kind you want to learn immediately and obsesses over with repeat viewings, eager to be just like them. Dutch ReBelle BANG BANG Self-Released Dutch ReBelle is tired of reductive hip-hop tropes. For her long-awaited album BANG BANG, a reference to her live show catch phrase “Kiss kiss, bang bang,” she decided to let influences muddle together to reflect her current identity. That means ReBelle drew as much from her Haitian heritage and recent tours in Africa and Europe as she did from an understanding of the music industry and her fellow Boston colleagues (two of which, Latrell James and S Black Winner, make guest appearances on the album). The result is a blend of Afrobeats, dancehall, and downtempo electronic loops that she can lay her verses over. Whether it’s hearing her rap over peaceful harp on “Credit” or the hypnotic buoyant chorus of “Fitted Down,” it’s easy to listen to BANG BANG and see not only how many complex ideas Dutch ReBelle got to flex, but why other artists can and should try breaking from the usual hip-hop structure the way she has. Vein errorzone Closed Casket Activities Vein got the memo about going big or going home. Though it opens with a seemingly random flash of late ’90s touchstones—a burst of DnB drum samples, megaproduced bass drops, overlapping distortion pedals—on “virus://vibrance,” the hardcore band’s debut album, errorzone, is stuffed to the brim. Vein’s brand of hardcore is an erratic fury of rage that gets by on being perfectly synchronized. It’s a lot to take in, for sure, but the band’s blend of math, metalcore, and screamo leaves a strong impression, ultimately leaving you with no choice but to play the mosh pitprimed onslaught again. For Nina’s complete list check out digboston.com NEWS TO US
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BEST OF BOSTON THEATER: 2018 EDITION PERFORMING ARTS
BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS
This 2018 edition of the best of Boston theater is the fourth time I’ve sat down to compile such a list but the first time I haven’t struggled to fill it. Last year, I capped the list at seven because the thought of shoving things in just to get to 10 hurt my soul. But 2018 was different. I didn’t only easily fill the 10 slots, but I actually had to toil over which productions to omit. As such, nine worthy productions that in other years would have found themselves heralded as one of the best of year will be relegated to mere mentions, a sign that the theater scene in Boston is alive, well, and fucking kicking. Praxis Stage’s raw and real All My Sons and ART’s astounding The Black Clown ripped my heart out; Flat Earth’s The Nether and the national tour of the Tony-winning The Humans haunted me; an all-star concert version of On the Town with the Boston Pops and Christopher V. Edwards’ wonderful reimagining of Much Ado About Nothing at Actors’ Shakespeare Project delighted me; Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Richard III on the Common and Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s Equivocation reminded me of why I love the theater; and Olivia D’Ambrosio’s stunning and startling production of Dark Room was the talk of the town this summer. But here are the 10 that rose to the top; the ones I couldn’t stop thinking about, and the ones that made me feel most alive. Thanks for a great year. Between Riverside and Crazy, SpeakEasy Stage This Pulitzer winner by Stephen Adly Guirgis brimmed with humanity in a gripping, beautifully acted production directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene. Ensemble acting at its finest with heart to burn—I felt a little bit better about humanity after the lights came up.
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Cabaret, Moonbox Productions Rachel Bertone’s perfect production was like a punch to the stomach, and it’s the only production this year that I saw more than once. Bertone and her glorious cast dug deep—and thought big—to bring out shades and nuances to this Kander and Ebb classic that I have never seen before. Guards at the Taj, Underground Railway Theater Jacob Athyal and Harsh Gagoomal were a dream team in this unforgettable pitch-black nightmare comedy by Rajiv Joseph about two Imperial guards whose friendship is put to the test when they are tasked with chopping off the hands of 20,000 men who built the Taj Mahal. Bloody, sexy, and brutally human, this sleek and sly production directed by Gabriel Vega Weissman had me on the edge of my seat. Hamilton, Broadway in Boston I’ll keep this one short and sweet: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s masterwork really is a miracle and this firstrate touring production nearly stopped my heart. Hype Man: A Break Beat Play, Company One Theatre Oh, Hype Man, how I love you. Idris Goodwin’s startling and urgent play about personal and professional relationships on the brink of collapse after an unarmed black teenager gets shot by police was everything that modern theater should be. Love! Valour! Compassion!, Zeitgeist Stage Company There’s a reason that this Terrence McNally classic isn’t staged very often, and it’s not because it isn’t any good. Director David Miller managed to make it all happen— even the swimming—on a shoestring budget in a tiny theater. Tender, terrifically acted, and touching, this is one
production I still haven’t been able to shake off all these seven months later. Man in the Ring, Huntington Theatre Company This heartbreaking story of six-time world champion boxer Emile Griffith, who famously killed his opponent in the ring in 1962, was brought to vivid, electric life by playwright Michael Cristofer and director Michael Greif. Cinematic and heartbreaking: It’s not every day that you see grown men crying at the theater. Measure for Measure, Cheek By Jowl/Pushkin Theatre at ArtsEmerson One of Shakespeare’s notorious problem plays was rendered practically perfect in this sleek and stylish production by Declan Donnellan. Breathless, stark, and vividly moving, this production was flat-out electric. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Apollinaire Theatre Company Danielle Fauteux Jacques’ free, outdoor production truly was a miracle under the stars. Chelsea’s waterfront PORT Park was used in astonishing ways and the 20-person cast was a well-oiled comedy machine, turning one of my least favorite Shakespeare plays into one of the best things I’ve ever seen in Boston, let alone in 2018. Moulin Rouge! The Musical There was no better way to christen the newly restored Colonial Theatre than with this shamelessly enjoyable and relentlessly gorgeous new musical, which deservedly opens on Broadway this summer. With its breathless visuals, top-shelf performances, and miraculously arranged pop score, Moulin Rouge! was the best of all possible worlds.
PERFORMING ARTS
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THE BLOW EVAN GREER + MORE
BY JILLIAN KRAVATZ @JILLIAN_KRAVATZ
WILL SOMEONE SHUT THAT MAN UP?: A 1776 FOR 2018 AT THE NEW REP
1776. THROUGH 12.30 AT THE MOSESIAN CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 321 ARSENAL ST, WATERTOWN. NEWREP.ORG
SAT, JANUARY 19. 8PM MILKY WAY / BELLA LUNA TICKETS ON SALE NOW
IMAGE COURTESY OF HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY
A few Tuesdays ago, on Nov 6, these United States put a record 125 women in office. Nearly 42 of them were women of color. In the next Congress, 125 women will serve, occupying more than 10 additional seats than in the current Congress of 535, House and Senate. In the imagined Second Continental Congress of the New Repertory Theatre’s 1776, the number is more like 10 to 11, women to men. Co-directed by Austin Pendleton and Kelli Edwards, the New Rep’s 1776 maintains all the charm and spirit of the beloved original C-SPAN with songs. In its retelling of the months leading up to Congress’s decision to declare independence, Adams is still impassioned, his wife Abigail’s letters are beautiful and teasing, Franklin is ever whip-smart and wise, Jefferson’s a horny and reticent newlywed, and the deep South, a force to reckon with. The men who eventually sign the document at the end of the musical this time simply look a lot more like the people we pass on the streets everyday—racially diverse, in patent leather heels, metallic pleather leggings, ponytails, and braids. “Don’t worry, John,” Franklin (played deftly and impishly by Bobbie Steinbach) tells Adams (a more fiery, exasperated Benjamin Evett) when Adams stands aghast outside of Jefferson’s bedroom, waiting for him to finish bedding his wife so he can begin writing our declaration. “The history books will clean it up.” Since its Broadway opening in 1969, what 1776 has done best is to remind us of the foundational myths of our country by imbuing the men who seemed larger than life in our elementary school textbooks with humanity, dirtying up the record a bit. New Rep’s production is no different. In Cristina Todesco’s scenic design, a collage-like backdrop depicts the traditional, historical paintings we’ve seen of the Second Continental Congress. White, wigged, and buttoned up, the men gather round a desk with long faces, a notable contrast to the colorful, vibrant cast playing them below. 1776 makes much of Congress’s awful discomfort in the humid Philadelphia summer and resulting inability to make any decisions. Indeed, New Rep’s cast splays out comically on chairs, loosening their neck ties, eating from Chinese takeout boxes, playing with a slinkies, shuffling decks of cards, dancing sometimes stilted and corny choreography. Various pointless committees are announced and never attended. Every now and again, however, Adams bursts through the apathy to stir up the delegates, and his provocations bring certain conflicts—most notably Southern slavery—to the floor for open debate. Suddenly things are not so funny or trite anymore. In the production’s most haunting song, “Molasses to Rum,” Shannon Lee Jones presents a scathing, haunting Edward Rutledge as he scoffs at the North’s superiority to the South, arguing that the economic links that make up the triangle slave trade implicate all of America in the sins of slavery. During this number our attention is drawn for the first time to the backdrop mural in an otherwise unremarkable set. The clearly depicted faces of Adams, Jefferson, Hancock, and the rest of Congress darken, seeming at first to blush with shame, then to redden with guilt, as we are forced to consider how the self-evident inalienable rights Jefferson so eloquently defended were not for all men on American soil. We know what eventually happens on July 4, 1776, yet New Rep’s talented cast makes us hold our breath. The agony of Adam’s fight, the power of Abigail’s letters (sung by a powerhouse Carolyn Saxon), the bitterness of the Southern colonies, all make it feel that our country’s pivotal decision really does still hang in the air. When Hancock finally calls for the vote, the audience hushed. Would the South vote “yea”? Would Edward Wilson of Pennsylvania break from his tyrannical co-delegate John Dickinson and stand with Franklin on the side of independence? In more ways than one, 1776 is an easy sell here in Boston. At the Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown, the actors perform just mere miles from the Braintree farm where Abigail Adams toiled to care for her family while John was off piddling, twiddling, and resolving in Philadelphia. Many of the show’s jokes land here. “Not everyone’s from Boston, John,” Franklin reminds Adams to a ring of laughter about the ever-present uptightness of Bostonians. In a quibble over whether “inalienable” or “unalienable” is correct, Adams reminds Jefferson that he is a Harvard graduate to another round of guffaws. In yet another scene, a courier (Steven Martin) from the front lines of General Washington’s struggle against the British army announces that he’s from Watertown. “Where’s that?” the congressional custodian asks him. “Massachusetts,” the young soldier replies proudly. When that same soldier goes on to sing a heart-wrenching lullaby, “Momma Look Sharp,” about his dying comrades, we are reminded just how close to home the Revolutionary conflict really was in these parts. For Massachusetts women like Abigail, it wasn’t just extra work like making saltpeter and bullets. It was also the trial of burying sons and husbands, in graves that we walk past today in Cambridge, Boston, and Quincy. It’s hard not to fall under 1776’s patriotic charm, and the New Rep manages to give our shared history a new face, questioning our nation’s past while also celebrating the invention of its foundational commitment to equality and hope for a sovereign nation of free men.
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THE YEAR IN FILM (PART I) FILM
BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN
he immediately reminds that few do so better. Leave No Trace, cowritten and directed by Debra Granik. Currently available on home video and most VOD outlets. Beginning with landscape shots in the green expanse of a public park in the Pacific Northwest, Granik’s film stays with Will (Ben Foster) and Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), a father/daughter family who are driven out of their encampment by cops and then quickly shuffled into social SCENE FROM TONSLER PARK. COPYRIGHT KEVIN JEROME EVERSON; services and all those COURTESY THE ARTIST; TRILOBITE-ARTS DAC; PICTURE PALACE PICTURES. narrow fluorescentlit offices that come In this issue and the next one I’ll be listing and describing with it. From there it’s my favorite American motion-picture artworks that something of a road movie, occasionally weighted down were first released to general audiences in this country by too-oft-recurring symbols and motifs but for the most during the year 2018, beginning here with the “honorable part gaining real power from the rich specificity of the mentions,” then continuing next week with my top 10 (or spaces it depicts and takes place in, and of course from its maybe even with my top 11, if I see a great movie in the performances as well, which like so much else in Granik’s next four or five days). cinema suggest a high level of authenticity, nonfiction, reality, whatever you might call it. “I’m trying to look for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, written and directed by Joel how long people can actually take in the scene, study it and Ethan Coen. Currently available on Netflix. with the characters, let the characters really function and Six tales of the Old West populate the Coen’s first perform something in the scene, really make something, anthology feature, although the subject isn’t the West or really cut something, or really use the wood to light the itself so much as the media that it inspired, and which fire, whatever it is, even if the fire doesn’t light magically mythologized it in return. Included within are a small on the first take,” Granik told us in an interview published handful of the funniest phrases ever written by these earlier this year. “Let’s just say it takes four tries. In that filmmakers, no small compliment, as well as various other scene, it’s damp, he’s getting frustrated. It’s important to qualities too numerous to detail here. Following Inside let some of that play out.” Llewyn Davis [2013] and Hail, Caesar! [2016], Buster Scruggs is yet another Coen twist on a specific art-historical El Mar La Mar (“The Sea the Sea”), directed by Joshua tradition, once again more influenced by the art than Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki. Not currently available on by the history—the perceived beliefs of the given milieu digital platforms. viewed with a jaundiced eye while its standards are See digboston.com for an interview with director J.P. delivered with an ecstatic tongue. Sniadecki; keep an eye on social media platforms for news If Beale Street Could Talk, written for the screen and directed by Barry Jenkins. Opening in Boston-area theatres (including the Coolidge Corner, the Kendall Square, and AMC Boston) on Dec 25. More on this film after it opens, but as its placement here indicates it comes highly recommended. Isle of Dogs, written and directed by Wes Anderson. Currently available on home video and most video-ondemand outlets. Anderson’s ninth film, and his second made with stopmotion animation techniques, is drawn from one of his weakest scripts to date. The plot has a pack of strays trying to reunite a young boy with his beloved pup in a retrofuturistic Japan where all dogs are outlawed; its recurring central line, a passive-aggressive “I bite” growled by a grumpy antisocial canine, seems more like parody than the genuine Andersonian article. But the film is also, in this writer’s opinion, one of Anderson’s most ravishing pictures to date, using the ultrawidescreen tendencies of postwar Japanese cinema as a base on which to layer the director’s eye for intricate framing and production design. For Anderson Isle of Dogs breaks no fresh ground, but it does grant him a new shape—his first movie filmed entirely in a widescreen format (2.35:1) in more than a decade, and 20
12.20.18 - 12.27.18
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about a potential digital release.
Private Life, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins. Currently available on Netflix. Private Life maintains a rigorous frankness about the human body (rare), which is a subject that it hardly ever considers in terms of sexuality (even rarer). That particular dichotomy is even announced by the very first shot of the movie—a title card fades in on Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) in a state of undress, with Richard (Paul Giamatti) standing right next to her, sliding her clothes lower, until suddenly he injects her with a syringe full of fertility meds. From there Jenkins’ film occasionally feints toward melodrama, but for the most part its expansive two-hour-plus running time is used to document the minuatue and bureaucracy that come with the process of creating a pregnancy in a medical setting as experienced by two working-class New Yorkers—the doctors, the drugs, the behavioral rules that come with them, the waiting rooms, the arguments, the anxieties, and of course the generally medical state of mind, which for Rachel and Richard seems to have totally sapped away whatever sense of eroticism they might have once associated with the concept of intimacy. A messy, humane film about formal, clinical processes.
Pass Over, directed by Spike Lee. Currently available on VOD via Amazon. The latest in a long series of Lee-directed performance films, Pass Over is a record of a play written by Antoinette Nwandu and directed for the stage by Danya Taymor. Nwandu and Taymor’s play makes direct reference to its own audience, and Lee follows that cue to break the fourth wall, beginning and ending his film with sequences depicting the Chicago-based audience of the play traveling to and from the Steppenwolf Theatre, where it was filmed. It’s an example of a tendency that is central to much of the director’s recent work, including his summer hit BlacKkKlansman—both films makes direct aesthetic connections between specific artworks and the communities they’re depicting or engaging with, bringing fiction and nonfiction into the very same frame. Random Acts of Flyness, episode 1.01: “What Are Your Thoughts Raising Free Black Children?” directed by Frances Bodomo, Shaka King, and Terence Nance. Series is currently available on the HBO GO streaming service as well as on most VOD outlets. This first episode is also available for free on Youtube. In my estimation this first episode of Random Acts is the strongest of the series, the one that best showcases the program’s utterly modern sense of form. That probably has something to do with the nature of the initial production—the episode first began as a proof of concept, per Nance, and therefore much of it is culled from lowresource shoots and other sources, including pre-existing short films made by all three of its credited directors. Title cards interrupt the entire 30-minute episode, as if the show is constantly restarting and reshaping itself based on the associations raised in a previous “sketch,” and said “sketches” begin and end without notice, footage sourced from phones and laptops interrupt sometimes even to “comment” on the show itself—film collage stylized as digital-era channel flipping. Tonsler Park, directed by Kevin Jerome Everson. Currently available on VOD via Amazon. Everson’s feature presents a series of black-andwhite 16mm long takes filmed at polling stations in the Charlottesville, Virginia, area on the day of the 2016 presidential election. We’re mostly looking at faces of poll workers as they check IDs, issue paperwork, and hand out ballots. Sometimes we’re looking at one person for 11 minutes straight, sometimes there are one or two cuts to new images in the middle of a “reel,” sometimes the camera drifts from one subject to another in the middle of a shot. But however the take is composed, Everson’s camera is basically always stationed far away from his subjects, so their faces are constantly obscured by the torsos of the voters themselves, who pass by at a pace that’s almost metronomic. As in so many other Everson films, what’s achieved here is something like great portraiture: The images are rigorous in their specificity, utterly rich in incidental detail, and presented for a necessarily expansive duration, essentially demanding the viewer project something back onto them—they are both direct and indirect, same as the manner in which the larger film considers the election itself. Unfriended: Dark Web, written and directed by Stephen Susco. Currently available on home video and most VOD outlets. A “desktop film” truly imbued with the horrors of digital life—the conspiratorial antagonists are basically an army of egg avatars with access to government surveillance technology—Dark Web is that rare slasher film that found something new for the subgenre to do. And it’s as unceasingly cruel as most online spaces, too; if films can be humanist, this one is inhumanist. Hardly perfect, but perfectly of its time.
GUY BRANUM COMEDY
Specialty Games & Puzzles
Peach cobblers with the video game goddess of writing and comedy BY DENNIS MALER @DEADAIRDENNIS There have been mornings when I rolled over in bed, turned on the TV, and sat there for hours watching a video game show called X-Play. I don’t play video games myself, was never much into it, but I would watch the G4 network religiously for multiple reasons: PHOTO BY MINDY TUCKER namely Morgan Webb, and because I am a pig. Looking back on those times, I realize that what I really enjoyed was how it felt like watching early MTV. It was live-to-tape, it felt loose, a little wacky, and every episode was a good time. To that end, I began to notice a familiar name in the credits, Guy Branum, who I knew as a stand-up comedian, not as a video game nerd. Branum is not only a hysterical stand-up, but also a writer for some great talk shows and scripted comedies. As a comic, his boisterous and energetic personality on stage makes for a raucous good time for audiences. As the host of his own talk show, he manages to boil down that personality into small outbursts when necessary, all while not overshadowing his guests.
Since 1974
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How did you originally get involved writing for video game network G4? My friend Laura Swisher, who is actually a producer with the podcast network of the podcast that I now have a podcast at, recommended me for a job, and then I just never stopped working there for four years. I started working there in San Francisco in 2004, and at the end of 2007 I was still working there. It was so much fun because I’m also not a video game person. I do like video games, I just like really boring video games with either gardening or budgets.
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What’s the main difference between writing for a TV show vs writing for standup vs writing for a book? The thing about writing for a TV show is you have a boss who is going to yell at you, or potentially fire you if you don’t do your job. So you end up doing your job. Stand-up is one of those things where if you don’t push yourself, you won’t grow and you will not create new stuff. It’s easy for me as a person who grew up working class to just focus on the job with the boss and not the stuff that is like taking care of myself. The book [My Life as a Goddess] was an interesting place in between because I knew I had to get it done, but my editor was very sort of like, Do it your way, in your process.
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Was it difficult going from writer’s room to hosting? No, because I did Talk Show the Game Show as a live show for such a long time, I really knew the show inside it out. It was really interesting having a show of my own for the first time and really trying to pick up the lessons [from] the good bosses I’ve worked for on how to get good stuff out of people. What do you think makes for a good interview? Alcohol.
Is there ever a question in an interview that you’ve never been asked but always wanted to? It’s funny, my friend Sofie Hagen, that’s what she asks in every one of her podcasts. I forget what my answer was. Right now I’m going to say, Guy, do you have a good peach cobbler recipe? Hey, Guy, do you have a good peach cobbler recipe? Yes. It’s actually in chapter 14 of my book, My Life as a Goddess, available wherever books are sold. Guy Branum’s new book, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir Through (Un)Popular Culture, is out now. You can get your copy signed by and see Guy 12.21–22 at Laugh Boston. Check out the full, unedited conversation by downloading the podcast at deadairdennis.com/podcast.
IMAGE COURTESY OF HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY
And what makes for good interview questions? Asking people something that they don’t expect that gets at who they are, but doesn’t make them feel attacked or challenged.
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COMEDY EVENTS
QUICKIES SAVAGE LOVE
THU 12.20
QUEER QOMEDY @ IMPROVBOSTON
BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET I’m a kinky single woman who keeps attracting the wrong men for me—specifically, submissive guys into face-sitting. I’m submissive myself, and face-sitting is not a turn-on for me. But the vast majority of men who hit on me have this fetish. I think it’s a size-related issue—a my-size-related issue. I’m a full-figured/curvy woman with a big butt. Granted, it’s a fabulous butt, but my butt sends the wrong signals, apparently. I’ve tried several times to word my FetLife and other dating profiles so that I’ll attract dominant men, but the messages from submissive wannabe face-sittees pour in. Dating when you’re not thin is hard enough. Help, please. Baby Got Back
40 PROSPECT ST., CAMBRIDGE | 7PM | $5 FRI 12.21 - SAT 12.22
GUY BRANUM @ LAUGH BOSTON
Guy Branum is the creator and host of truTV’s Talk Show The Game Show, a hilarious mashup of two beloved television formats that pits comedians and celebrities against each other for the title of “Best Guest of the Night.” You may also know him from his recurring segment “No More Mr. Nice Gay” on Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, or serving as “Staff Homosexual” on Chelsea Lately.
425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | VARIOUS | $28
You’ve worded your dating profiles to attract Doms, BGB, but it doesn’t sound like you’ve worded your profiles to repel—and crush the hopes of—submissive wannabe facesittees. Let’s fix that: “I get a lot of messages from submissive guys into face-sitting. I’ve got a great butt, I realize, but I’m a sub, I’m not into face-sitting, and I only want to hear from Dom guys.” Some submissive guys will message you anyway—guys who will be letting you know they have a hard time taking no for an answer, BGB, so not guys you’d ever want to meet up with IRL. Delete their messages and block their profiles.
FRI 12.21 - SAT 12.22
While having sex one night with my girlfriend, I pulled out a vibrator for the first time. She asked whether I (a guy) had used it with a previous partner (another woman). I conceded that I had. She refused to let me use it on her on the grounds that it had already been inside someone else. I pointed out that since I am not a virgin, her objection did not seem principled: My penis has been in someone else and she lets me put that in her. Nevertheless, she remained adamant. Do you think she was being reasonable? Very Interested Boyfriend Enquires
100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20
I do not, VIBE, but since you don’t want to stick your old vibrator in me—presumably— what I think is irrelevant. When it comes to who gets to stick what in our bodies, we’re allowed to be arbitrary, inconsistent, capricious, and even illogical. That’s why “But my dick has been in other women and you let me stick that in you!” isn’t quite the slam-dunk argument you think it is. So toss that old vibrator and get yourself a new one—but save the packaging so you can pass it off as new with your next girlfriend. My cousin was a victim of revenge porn. A bitter ex-boyfriend of his sent several videos they’d made to everyone on my cousin’s contact list, including me. I’m a straight woman who prefers gay male porn, and my cousin and his ex are beautiful men—they’re both dancers—and I couldn’t help myself: I watched the videos, more than once, before deleting them. So how bad a person am I? Sick And Wrong You’re a better person than the asshole ex who sent those videos to everyone your poor cousin knows, SAW, but a worse person than those who deleted the videos without wanking over them first. Your life is a monstrous affront to God, and your life’s work, your ridiculous “advice” column, encourages people to act on their worst impulses. Advice column? Take the “D” away! You write A VICE column! I was involved in the gay life once, Mr. Savage, but the love of Jesus delivered me from homosexual sin. Embrace Christ, and you too can be delivered. I pray for you every day. Someone has to. Christ Even Saves Savages P.S. I have read what you’ve written about your mother, who you claim to have loved. Your mother died relatively young. I’m not suggesting God punished you by cutting your mother’s life short. No, your mother died of shame. You pray for me, CESS, and I’ll gay for you—because all the delicious dick you left behind when Jesus raptured you out of homosexual sin aren’t gonna suck themselves, are they? P.S. “Jesus is love,” my Catholic mother liked to say. If she was right, CESS, he surely finds the things going into my mouth less offensive than the shit coming out of yours.
On the Lovecast: sex-toy expert Erika Moen discusses strap-ons for men: savagelovecast.com.
savagelovecast.com 22
Featuring: Michael Stewart, Danya Trommer, May Keith, Dylan Uscher, Jere Pilapil, Caitlin, Arcand, Sabrina Wu. Hosted by Chloé Cunha
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MIKE WHITMAN @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP
Mike Whitman, chosen by The Boston Globe as the one of the few top rising comedians to watch in 2014. His innovative material and style made him a semifinalist of the Boston Comedy Festival multiple times. He is one of the nation’s most versatile and entertaining comics working today. Mike has performed at colleges and top venues throughout the country, sharing the stage with national headlining acts such as Norm MacDonald,Nick DiPaolo, Jim Gaffigan, Jim Norton, Jim Breuer.
FRI 12.21
ANDERSON COMEDY PRESENTS: THE GAS! @ GREAT SCOTT
Featuring: Annemarie Hereford, Ian Stuart, Trent Wells, Katlin McFee, Dennis Hurley, Richard Bowen, & Tina Frimi. Hosted by Rob Crean
1222 COMM AVE, ALLSTON | 7PM | $5 SAT 12.22
SATURDAY NIGHT @ THE COMEDY STUDIO
Featuring: Katie McCarthy, Nick Ortolani, Al Park, Jon Rineman, & Comic in Residence Tooky Kavanagh. Hosted by Rick Jenkins
1 BOW MARKET WAY #23, SOMERVILLE | 7 & 9:30PM | $15 SUN 12.23
LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW
Featuring: Brett Johnson, Mike Settlow, Kendall Farrell & more. Hosted by Kendra Dawson
15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5
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…
RUTHERFORD BY DON KUSS DONKUSS@DIGBOSTON.COM
WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM
HEADLINING THIS WEEK!
Guy Branum
Friday + Saturday FX, truTV, The Mindy Project
COMING SOON Erica Rhodes
Special Engagement: Weds, Dec 26
Toast to Boston Comedy Legend Tony V
THE WAY WE WEREN’T BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM
Special Engagement: Thurs, Dec 27
Mark Normand
Tuesdays with Stories, Comedy Central Dec 29-31 (NYE SHOWS!)
New Year’s Eve Showcase
Ft. Dan Boulger, Kelly MacFarland + more Dec 31 @ 10 PM
OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET
Helen Hong
Showtime, Inside Amy Schumer Jan 3-5 617.72.LAUGH | laughboston.com 425 Summer Street at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District NEWS TO US
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