DIGBOSTON.COM 04.04.19 - 04.11.19
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OUR EXCLUSIVE WITH
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DAVID SEDARIS
NEWS: RENAMING YAWKEY - IT’S ABOUT TIME DEPT.
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APR 04, 2019 - APR 11, 2019 BUSINESS PUBLISHER John Loftus ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone Jason Pramas SALES EXECUTIVES Victoria Botana Derick Freire Nate Homan Nicole Howe FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digboston.com
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ROYALE BEATS ANTIQUE
HATE SPORTS, LOVE BOSTON
This is not the first thing I have written about my contempt for professional sports. Not even close. As far as I know, and please correct me if you know of someone else, I am a lone voice in the Massachusetts media who’s not afraid to say that I think extreme athlete worship is the pinnacle of small-minded stupidity, as well as one of the reasons people don’t pay much attention to things that actually matter. That’s not to say there aren’t brilliant people who for some odd reason enjoy watching men in tights run up and down fields; however, as one of the few people on earth who absolutely will not entertain a conversation about sports under any circumstances—not about the game you went to, or your friend who made it to the big leagues—I have some tips for the silent minority out there who, like me, won’t be able to name any players on the Patriots after Tom Brady retires. • Take the loss. In other words, don’t try to win. You’re in a losing battle, so just keep your skepticism to yourself. For example, it might seem crazy to a sports hater that football or college hoops would be able to override “60 Minutes,” which provides Americans with critical long-form investigative reporting on things like war and technology (as well as propaganda on occasion, but that’s another column for another day). Try arguing that news is more important than a big game, however, and you’ll quickly see that it’s like fighting with a Trump supporter, which is to say insanely futile. • Play sports. That’s right, participate. The number one thing people say when they find out how much I detest spectator sports is that I must be a horrible athlete. They’re not completely wrong, though I do have my athletic moments and can outswim most; nevertheless, that logic is flawed, since the inverse suggests that people who worship jocks are inherently gifted gladiators themselves, and we know that isn’t true. In any case, since Boston is so damn jocktacular, largely thanks to its attractions as a pro sports super city, there are lots of awesome resources to take advantage of, from public parks to beer leagues, all of which are solid mutual turf for fans and non-fans alike. • Recognize the beast. You may not like the Celtics and the Bruins, but you can’t (and shouldn’t) ignore them, so don’t bother trying. If you consider it your civic duty to stay in tune with issues that impact this city and the people who live and work in it, then you have to keep up on the Sox and such. Starting with Britni de la Cretaz’s article in this week’s news section about racism in Boston sports fan culture. • Find the good. I know that this can seem impossible, but work with me for a second. For example, I know I’ve said this before, but I really do go food shopping during major sporting events. Markets are empty. On a grander scale, last week our team here at the Dig scheduled our first-ever Comedians in Bars Hosting Trivia, a new series we are sponsoring, during the Red Sox season opener. It was an accident, and seemed like a dumb move when we figured it out, but the program wound up selling out. Lesson learned: there may not always be enough interesting dinner-time events on game nights, and while I may be an outlier around here, there are at least enough other people who feel the way I do to staff a roomful of trivia teams. CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Need more Dig? Sign up for the Daily Dig @ tiny.cc/DailyDig
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NEWS US
AND HE’S OUT! NEWS+OPINION
Even with Yawkey banished, there’s work to do in ridding Boston sports of racism BY BRITNI DE LA CRETAZ @BRITNIDLC Tom Yawkey’s legacy has finally been nearly erased from Fenway Park and its surroundings. Last year, the street outside the ballpark was renamed from Yawkey Way to its original name, Jersey Street. And last week, the MBTA announced that Yawkey Station would also be getting a new name, Lansdowne Station. Racism in Red Sox Nation still persists amid the progress, but there’s no question that the name—Yawkey—had long been a point of contention. Under Yawkey’s ownership, the Red Sox were the last team in Major League Baseball to integrate. He was accused of making racist comments about Jackie Robinson. To many, the fact that the franchise continued to honor the name of a man who represented everything wrong with the way Black Americans have historically been treated meant that the team was never able to fully move past it. The decision to finally remove the name was the result of community activism, pressure from fans, and reporters continuing to raise the issue. Red Sox owner John Henry finally requested the street be renamed in 2017, telling the Boston Herald that the team was “still haunted by what went on here a long time before we arrived.” A city commission formally voted for the change in April of 2018, while the Red Sox said in a statement that the change was “an important step in our ongoing effort to make Fenway Park a place where everyone feels welcome.” When the MBTA announced the change of its commuter rail station last week, the agency cited its naming policy, which “includes guidance to prioritize local geography such as nearby streets, squares, or neighborhoods.” What the press release didn’t mention was that a bill was filed in 2017 by state Reps. Ruth B. Balser of Newton and Byron Rushing of Boston, explicitly noting that “a state overseen railway station should be 4
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named for someone more reflective of Massachusetts’ values,” as Rep. Balser told DigBoston at the time. Both these changes are important. They make visible and explicit the Red Sox’s stated commitment to antiracism work and ensuring that all fans feel welcome at Fenway. There are far too many examples of monuments to problematic—if not downright violent—people that are kept in place with hollow arguments about history. It’s why many Southern states have Confederate monuments still standing, why highways and schools are still named for Jefferson Davis, why Columbus Day is still a US holiday despite the fact that the man colonized, raped, and committed genocide of indigenous people. People can—and should—take a page from the Red Sox and the City of Boston when it comes to moving past a name and an honor that serves no positive function. There has been momentum in the fight against bigotry in Boston sports since around 2017, after an incident in which then-Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones was the target of racial slurs while playing at Fenway. That prompted DigBoston’s reporting on the racism of Boston sports fandom, which was likely a catalyst for the team requesting the Yawkey Way renaming. Around that time, Boston’s pro sports teams also debuted their Take the Lead initiative, with the Red Sox spearheading a commendable anti-racism and discrimination PSA that is played before every game at Fenway Park, Gillette Stadium, and TD Garden. Nevertheless, recent progress comes as the Boston sports world is marred by yet another incident in which a fan engaged in racist harassment of an opposing player. Suggesting that beyond the Take the Lead video promotion, the initiative has been fairly toothless. Last week it came to light that a Celtics fan was ejected from a January 26 game and banned for two years for directing
a racial slur at Golden State Warriors player DeMarcus Cousins (the Red Sox banned a fan for life for using the same slur). The Celtics failed to publicly address the incident at the time, and a two-year suspension is a tepid punishment for an inexcusable offense. Meanwhile, the sports talk radio station (and Red Sox broadcast partner) WEEI has followed the same disappointing pattern that it usually does. While the network has added the much-needed nuance of Evan Drellich, who last weekend noted that if someone has an issue with Boston being labeled a racist city, they are the problem, WEEI also debuted San Diego-based host Dan Sileo in his new Saturday afternoon spot. On-air last Saturday, Sileo said, “Sometimes people drop the N-bomb. That doesn’t necessarily make you a racist.” He also argued with a Black caller about their experience of racism, and accused Black broadcasters like Jason Whitlock and Stephen A. Smith of “race-baiting.” In 2013, Sileo was fired from a Miami radio station for tweeting out a bounty on a Florida State University football player. For a network that recently reworked its morning show, losing longtime controversial host Kirk Minihane and committing to focusing more on sports and less on controversy since recently losing some major sponsors and signing off the air for a whole day to host a mandatory staff sensitivity training, it’s a baffling addition to their lineup. It’s important to recognize the progress being made, and to keep pushing for change. But there’s still farther to go. If Boston sports enthusiasts are angry that the city continues to be tarnished by a bad reputation for bigoted fans, perhaps their anger’s misdirected. Instead, they should be mad at fans and residents who continue to perpetuate that image, confirming that there is still more work to be done here.
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FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
5
STOP THE ELECTRIC SCOOTER SCAM APPARENT HORIZON
Mass needs expanded public transportation, not hazardous rental toys BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS It’s not like I didn’t warn everyone. Last summer I wrote a column on the illegal rollouts of dockless electric scooters by Bird Rides in Cambridge and Somerville that was extremely critical of the company’s move on two grounds: safety, and the problem of governments focusing on private transit options instead of improving public ones. While the sketchy conveyances were prohibited temporarily in a number of area communities— including Boston—thanks to a lack of proper state regulation, the scooter industry is putting a full court press on area politicians to help them open the muchcoveted local market. And it’s definitely working. Starting with Brookline’s seven-month pilot program allowing rival electric scooter pushers Bird and Lime to each deploy 100 of their infernal machines on public thoroughfares. So, it’s clearly time to double down on my first critique and expand the second. Safety Yesterday’s launch of the trial Brookline scooter fleet went so incredibly wrong that I felt compelled to write a poem about it: April Fools’ Haiku in old Brookline town... rolling death trap on cow path... a calamity! Yes, unbelievably, a 62-year-old woman was injured 15 minutes after getting on a Lime scooter and had to be hospitalized, according to WBUR. At what was 6
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supposed to be a carefully staged press junket aimed at sidestepping public safety concerns. Oh, and the Bird launch director led a scooter “safety” training session without wearing a helmet. That last snafu was particularly ironic. Bird corporate certainly didn’t show much concern about safety last year when it dumped scooters on Camberville streets without saying a word to local or state government. Other than the declaration (matched by competitors) that users could send for a free helmet after signing up for the service on the company’s app. But Bird had no way to provide helmets at the point of sale. And besides, what difference do helmets make when the contrivance in question is, as I put it, “a motorized skateboard with handlebars”—that offers no protection of any kind to riders on busy city streets? Not to mention busy sidewalks. Observers in other cities that had the scooters pressed upon them earlier than Greater Boston did have pointed out that many users not only clutter sidewalks with the machines when they’re done using them, dropping them where they lay, but also drive on the pedestrian paths. Turning them into auxiliary roadways, and making foot traffic into the hapless targets of barely-trained human cannonballs. Also, Bird, Lime et al don’t include insurance for either riders or anyone/thing they might hit, and make users sign waivers absolving the companies from any responsibility for accidents. And there had already been accidents aplenty nationwide when I first wrote about electric scooters. Since that time there have been many more.
For example, Bird and Lime set up shop in St. Louis last August—a month after my initial piece was published. By January, St. Louis Public Radio reported that Washington University School of Medicine doctors at one emergency department, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, “recorded an average of six or seven scooter-related injuries a week starting in August, up from just one or two per week in previous months. During a 10-week period between August and October, at least 67 patients came to the emergency department after electric-scooter crashes. Only one was wearing a helmet. Three people had brain hemorrhages, and 17 broke bones in their arms or legs.” That was just one hospital in one major city dealing with the sudden appearance of the weaponized children’s toys. The several companies entering the electric scooter business have now begun talking about safety in the margins of their marketing pitches, but it still seems like a distant second consideration to fattening their bottom lines. In February, Citylab reported on a Bay Area “Micromobility Conference” attended by the entire nascent industry for atypical personal transportation. The article pointed out that the very real gold rush represented by the fast spread of electric scooters (and similar vehicles) globally “will only pay off if certain issues are resolved, including the critical one of rider safety. That topic didn’t seem to get much airtime at the conference, short of some collapsible helmets on display and one 20-minute presentation focused on threats posed by cars to pedestrians and cyclists. The
Private transit vs. the public good Which relates to the second thing I previously criticized about Bird’s antics (and about the electric scooter industry in general): it’s another form of privatized transit at a time when we need to defend and expand our public transportation systems. A couple of issues to unpack there. To continue the insurance discussion, Bird and the other e-scooter entrants are passing all the risks of their fundamentally anti-social product onto the public. Both in terms of causing the injury of users and bystanders alike, and forcing them all to personally pick up the health and liability costs of accidents. And in terms of harming governments by handing them a variety of new messes to clean up after. From increased emergency service calls following the growing number of smashups to public works costs for appropriate signage and specialized traffic lanes where possible to sanitation costs. Sure, cities are starting to charge companies like Bird and Lime various administrative fees and forcing them to add surcharges to each ride in their municipalities. In Brookline’s case, a single $1,000 license fee is being required during the pilot period plus $1 on top of the initial $1 the companies charge to start each ride, according to MassLive. But Bird has already griped about the Brookline fees. And according to the Raleigh News & Observer, both Bird and Lime just announced that they were leaving Raleigh, NC when that city charged them an impressive $300 fee for each scooter the companies deployed within its borders. So the industry leaders’ current game plan is clearly to try to ensconce themselves in new markets with promises to be good corporate citizens, and then shake off any such public fees—threatening to leave if their deregulatory demands aren’t met. The other privatization issue raised by the role of this so-called “micromobility movement” is the biggest question of all: Why are Massachusetts cities and towns screwing around with figuring out how to help Silicon Valley jerktech purveyors get rich by suckering hipsters into using dangerous unprotected motorized vehicles capable of doing 15 mph on already-packed streets that often started as the narrow meandering cowpaths 400 years ago? When what we desperately need politicians to focus on is fixing our existing public transit systems statewide. The problems of the Bay State’s largest public transportation network, the MBTA, are already much discussed—in this column as much as anywhere else—but, as I’ve written before, there are 15 other regional transit authorities (RTAs) in Massachusetts. And most of them are in truly dire straits. Completely starved for funds by state government, and deficit spending to try to survive year to year. As the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported this past weekend, the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA)—a system that covers over 24 member communities—serves more than 600,000 people every year. But it was basically level-funded in this current state budget, and hasn’t seen a genuine increase in funding in years. Which has meant serious, ongoing, and accelerating budget cuts. Yet many of its users are the poorest of the poor in rural areas with few jobs and fewer public services. Among them are many elderly people who can easily find themselves completely isolated without regular assisted transit options. Given the magnitude of the crisis faced by the MBTA and the RTAs, and the massive environmental and political crises created by continuing government support for that worst and most irrational of all transportation modalities, the personal carbon-burning automobile, I fail to understand why local governments and the State House (which has a bill from Gov. Charlie Baker and several bills from legislators aimed at making it easier for e-scooters to legally operate in the Commonwealth) are wasting time courting a new for-profit transportation industry that drapes itself in the cloth of environmentalism (because its two-wheeled terminators are “green”) but cares not a whit for the serious public policy problems it is creating. Or the desperate transportation crisis it’s making worse by diverting attention and resources into its venture capitalist-backed maw. The best way out of this situation is to initiate very democratic and very public planning processes to redesign our municipalities for a future with a vastly expanded multi-modal and above-all safe public transportation system. A future without cars, it must be said. And then enjoin government at all levels to fund the resulting initiatives properly. As with most policy responses I call for, this is a tall order. But it is also what we need. What we don’t need are rent-seeking private transit initiatives that socialize unnecessary risks and privatize profits. Like electric scooters. A bad bet for cities and towns, and certainly riders and pedestrians, if ever there was one.
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R CHA O F K NG L A E
relatively light attention to scooter safety was notable, considering the media attention and regulatory concern that scooter-related injuries have generated. Fun, easy, and cheap to ride, scooters have also proven prone to breaking, crashing, and bucking off riders, which is partly why cities like San Francisco and Denver banned them last year as they attempted to establish rules of the road.” The Israeli company RideWatch, however, did announce plans to offer a la carte insurance to users. But there are obstacles to making that happen. Citylab continued, “While health insurance plans will often pay out for injuries suffered on a ride gone wrong, liability is another matter: Most auto and motorcycle insurance plans won’t cover such accidents, and bike insurance is generally an annual purchase. E-scooter trips are often made on a whim, and riders generally don’t own the vehicles.”
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Apparent Horizon—winner of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s 2018 Best Political Column award—is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s executive director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2019 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network. NEWS TO US
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DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
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HIGH GOT FIVE ON IT TALKING JOINTS MEMO
How inevitable is the black market for cannabis drinks in the Commonwealth? BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1
Unless something else out of the ordinary happens between my writing this and DigBoston going to print, it’s pretty clear that the most notable weed-related arrest of the past week goes to Derek Sheehan of Whitman. Here’s WBZ on the matter: Whitman police said the arrest followed a joint investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies after the suspect … allegedly sold THC-infused drinks to an undercover detective on three occasions earlier this month. … Police said [the drinks] contained 100-150 milligrams of THC. The drinks were selling for $10-$15 each. … they found 138 bottles of THC-infused drinks, THC-infused cookies, a bag containing mushrooms, THC vape cartridges, marijuana and $5,000 cash in Sheehan’s home. Police allegedly found 25 of the beverages and a pound of marijuana in Sheehan’s car, as well. That’s not all. According to police: The drinks were being sold on Facebook and Snapchat and were aimed at young adults, police said. “He was making his own stuff. He certainly wasn’t a pharmacist; he didn’t go to medical school. He was just eye-balling it, making his own stuff, packaging it.” While it’s clearly a bad look to market toward children (unless you are a liquor brand, in which case you will receive uniformly positive press for selling boozy popsicles at family amusement parks), it seems Sheehan’s big offense here is slinging outside of the regulated cannabis marketplace. That’s fair enough, and anyone of fair mind should be able to sympathize with regulators 8
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and recreational investors who oppose all and any gray or black market activity. At the same time, when it comes to the kinds of potent THC drinks that Sheehan was selling, there’s another aspect to consider as well—namely, because of the current state law, such beverages can’t be sold at rec dispensaries, and won’t be available any time soon. For more insight, here are some relevant sections from the Commonwealth’s Adult Use of Marijuana specifications: • “Serving size shall be determined by the processor but in no instance shall an individual serving size of any marijuana product contain more than five milligrams of delta-nine-tetrahydrocannabinol.” • “Packaging for marijuana products in solid form sold or displayed for consumers in multiple servings shall allow a consumer to easily perform the division into single servings.” • “A Marijuana Product Manufacturer must ensure that each single serving of an edible marijuana product is physically demarked in a way that enables a reasonable person to intuitively determine how much of the product constitutes a single serving of active THC.” • “Each serving of an edible marijuana product within a multi-serving package of edible marijuana products must be easily separable in order to allow an average person 21 years of age or older to physically separate, with minimal effort, individual servings of the product.” • “Each single serving of an edible marijuana product contained in a packaged unit of multiple edible marijuana product shall be marked, stamped, or otherwise imprinted with a symbol or easily recognizable mark issued by the Commission that indicates the package contains marijuana product.”
Do you see where I’m going with this? Basically, since liquids can’t be “demarked,” made “easily separable,” “stamped,” or “imprinted with a symbol or easily recognizable mark,” the most THC that any unit can contain under the current law is 5%. Which, depending on one’s tolerance, may be nowhere close to enough to get high. Making it so that a heavy cannabis consumer could have to chug half-a-dozen drinks before feeling a buzz. “It’s simple,” says Graham Wilson, executive director of CannaBiz of Mass, a trade association for the industry. Wilson, who worked in the marketing department at DigBoston once upon a time, is currently working with beverage manufacturers to tweak the rules. He continues: “If you get a chocolate bar with 100 mg [of THC], that has to be divided into 5mg dosages, it has to be able to be split into 5mg pieces. But when it comes to liquids, you can’t divide it up. These are the laws of nature we’re working with.” As a likely result, so long as the current regulations are in place, chances are we’ll see a lot more cases in which basement drink producers catch hard cases over cases of fruit punch. As well more pics on the Instagram accounts of Mass police departments showing off their tables full of colorfully labeled confiscated lemonade. “It’s not just beverages,” Wilson says. “You can’t break up effectively some other types of edibles that people desire either. This is putting the brakes on edibles right now. “There’s not going to be innovation in product. In regards to [cannabis-infused] beverages, the industry has hit a wall already. We understand how wine works—stick it in a bottle and cork it up. We just don’t have a history of how we go about producing, distributing, and serving this [THC] product.”
HEADLINING THIS WEEK!
RANSACK THE UNIVERSE
Godfrey
BOSTON BETTER BEER BUREAU
From experimental hop remixes to creative cans, it’s great to have Collective Arts in Boston BY CITIZEN STRAIN
Welcome to the Boston Better Beer Bureau, our latest incarnation of the trusty suds reporting we’ve done at DigBoston ever since people referred to beer as suds. Really, we remember the days when we’d spend half our checks on fancy German bottles just so that we could review them, whereas these days breweries from all around New England kindly send us samplers and stay in touch. The BBBB is a new attempt to return that love, all while sharing more news about the innumerable microbreweries and pubs among us.
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Holy crap Collective Arts, that’s one seriously hot set of cans. I’ve seen them on the shelf over the years, ogled the unique decor, and even sipped some of this sunshine (on occasions when I wasn’t in the mood to jot down notes and crank out a review), but I am mighty glad that we are finally making this formal. For they are truly among the standouts of late. Specifically, I’m talking about Ransack the Universe India Pale Ale by Collective Arts. I’ve also enjoyed the Ontario brewery’s Life In The Clouds New England-style IPA, which floats perfectly somewhere between the better bitter brews and those that abut the beefier borderline, and it’s phenomenal, a rare demonstration of balance in this world of hop overdoses. As is the brewery’s IPA No. 7, which is tropical without being too fruity, and hazy sans the sandy. Of the lot, however, Ransack is the winner. With Galaxy and bright Mosaic hops for taste and sniff-worthiness, these yellow-canned West Coast-style IPAs hit multiple high notes. It’s wholly satisfying without the unnecessary thickness that sticks in your throat with comparable selections, and light enough to slug through an entire four-pack at the same speed that your uncle chugs a Silver Bullet sixer. Fresh product that it is, Collective Arts selections may sip slightly different from season to season and city to city, but the cans we sampled were as smooth and sublime as the illustrated snake painted by Sarah Shook that’s wrapped around some cans. (Each artistic specimen has a suggested soundtrack as well, which in our case was the song “Years” by one Sarah Shook and her North Carolina band the Disarmers). So, why am I sucking up to this particular Canadian export? Simple, Collective Arts is that superb. And we’re seeing it show up in more and more cold cases, even in average stores that don’t often skew higher end. Compared to Atlanta’s SweetWater Brewing and some other brands making a splash around here, the Ransack brewers are in a class all their own. And they give a damn about New England as well; as Brewbound reported in 2016:
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Chris Distefano MTV, Comedy Central Presents Apr 26 + 27
Christine Hurley
Collective Arts expansion into New England is a big and exciting step for these craft brewers from north of the 49th parallel. They are hiring a local team and have partnered with the Craft Brewers Guild across New England … Also, they have recently launched a Call for Art with a focus on artists and urban art from the North East. Collective Arts will be launching with a portfolio of eight beers, with a series of launch events that are listed on Collective Arts website.
Queen of Boston Comedy Special Engagement: Thurs, May 2
While the aforementioned excerpt sounds like the sort of sentiment that looks good in a press release but ultimately amounts to empty promises to artists, Collective Arts has followed through, pumping resources (and great beer) into Greater Boston’s ecosystem; some of the illustrations found on Ransack cans actually came from an open call for artwork at the 2018 Boston Tattoo Convention. So while we may typically limit our coverage to New England beers, if these Canadians keep showing that they care about the Commonwealth and its creatives, we’re thrilled to swallow anything they’re pouring.
617.72.LAUGH | laughboston.com 425 Summer Street at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District NEWS TO US
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REBEL WILSON IN ISN’T IT ROMANTIC
FAT PEOPLE FUCK TOO OPINION
It’s time to see us as fully realized beings—on the screen, and in real life too BY SAVANNAH WEINSTOCK Fat people fuck too. If you frequently consume TV and movies and you yourself are not a fat person, you might not believe this. The stories regularly told to us in pop culture are those of skinny people finding skinny love with other skinny hotties. We celebrate these stories for giving us narratives of different flavors of skinniness: maybe they are a prostitute (Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman), maybe they are a tween trapped in a grown woman’s body (Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30), or maybe they are a whitewashed hottie of (not really) color (Emma Stone in Aloha, Scarlett Johansson in, um, anything). This much is clear: fat people are nowhere to be seen, especially in romantic roles. Rebel Wilson’s recent film, Isn’t It Romantic, seems to flip that script, as does the Netflix original Dumplin’. In both films, our leading lady gets with skinny, conventionally attractive men. God forbid a fat woman be anything other than a cis-het straight person, right? Although both do a good job creating fat characters with depth and nuance, neither seems to get the memo that fat people do more than smooch, even within the constraints of a PG-13 rating. Considering Willowdean, the lead character in Dumplin’, is supposed to be in high school, I’ll let it slide, but it’s not like the American public rejects the sexuality of underage women—anyone remember Thirteen? Or Oscar winner American Beauty? Maybe we lack fat representation and sexuality because many people believe being fat is a personal, moral, and social failing, and that those who are failures do not deserve love and sex. This belief, however untrue, permeates our culture. When fat people display confidence, voice, and sexuality, they are lauded for being “brave”—even though the CDC categorizes more 10
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than 70% of Americans as overweight and nearly 40% as obese. When the vast majority of the people in our lives are fat, why are we calling them brave simply for existing? Fat people who don’t openly show insecurity about their bodies are considered a social anomaly, so much so that when celebration of fat bodies occurs, social media blows up. For instance, when model and blogger Tess Holliday appeared on the October 2018 cover of Cosmopolitan UK in tasteful lingerie, the internet lost its collective mind. Conservative talking head Piers Morgan feigned concern for Holliday in an op-ed for the Daily Mail after harassing her on Twitter for weeks, demanding that she lose weight for her children, stop promoting her dangerous obesity, and get better friends who would fatshame her into weight loss. Not only was Morgan’s piece condescending, rude, and fake, it was also a trap: agree with him that being obese is unhealthy and you condemn Holliday, defend Holliday and you are a promoter of carefree purposeful obesity. This sort of binary narrative is one that permeates our society, but it ignores countless environmental, social, and genetic conditions that are inextricably tied to the way people are shaped— physically and mentally. Although there continues to be research published illuminating the complex reasons behind body shapes and steering us away from individual blame, society and pop culture at large continue to point. This narrative is toxic and unhelpful, leading to a host of negative physical and psychological effects on fat people. Blame and public shaming of fat people doesn’t work as a public health strategy, nor does it work on a socio-cultural and personal level. Once we stop thinking of fat people as a problem and begin to see them as fully realized humans,
we can engage in the validation and celebration of their humanity—sexy time included. Tess Holliday in lingerie on the cover of Cosmo is a perfect example of how the sexuality of fat people is valid, present, and obvious. Ya’ll, she looks good. Those who would rail against the validity of fat people as sexual beings might point out that shame can be an important tactic for change. After all, haven’t we shamed smokers into lower and lower numbers since the ’90s? In short: no. The decline of cigarette smoking in the past few decades is due to a complex web of factors such as sales tax hikes, anti-smoking bans, and the regulation of flavored tobacco products. Shame played no real part in this trend. Numerous studies prove that once again, shame is not a potent agent of change. If the public, Piers Morgan included, really cared about the health of fat people, they would leave them alone because they would acknowledge the negative effect of body-shaming on people’s bodies and minds. That’s true consideration. The sterilization of fat people in pop culture is coming to an end. Fabulously fat singer Lizzo was on the Ellen Show, the Tonight Show, the cover of the fashion magazine the Cut, and featured in Playboy all within the last month, each time wearing an equally scandalous yet stylish outfit. Meanwhile, despite not including any sex scenes, Isn’t It Romantic played an important role in lifting fat girls into the romantic lead. While Seattle writer Lindy West’s autobiographical book Shrill is now a TV show with the same name starring Aidy Bryant, a reallife fat lady. It’s about time, because I’m here, I’m fat, and I’m waiting for representation of fat people as fully sexual and sexy beings—because I certainly am.
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11
DAVID SEDARIS DOESN’T DO IT FOR THE STORY FEATURE INTERVIEW
‘I suppose it helps me make sense of the world, but it’s not cathartic. BY JUAN A. RAMIREZ @ITSNUMBERJUAN Calypso, humorist David Sedaris’ tenth book, was released last May to rave reviews. A (reliably) hilarious collection of essays, it’s notable for its darker outlook – still funny, but not blind to the realities of growing old in the Trump era. I caught up with Sedaris as he prepares to take his stories on a reading tour, which stops at Symphony Hall next week. He apologized for calling a few minutes late, explaining he’s been busy moving into his new apartment in Manhattan. How is everything? I was just out looking for an ironing board. It has to be the absolute perfect ironing board or I can’t have it. Why’s that? Well, I don’t want a shitty ironing board. I know the exact one I want; I saw it in England but I haven’t found it here. [Sedaris goes into great detail about why this particular ironing board is the perfect one for him, the jokes from which I’ll keep to myself.] Some would call it a pressing problem, ha ha. I just finished reading Calypso, which is somewhat different from your other books in the way grief influences its tone. I saw you say in an interview that you need “sorrow to give laughter a little weight.” Are you laughing more than ever now? My sister Amy used to be in Second City and I’d go to her shows and laugh but, afterwards, I wouldn’t remember anything. I don’t want to add sorrow all the time, though. Right now I’m writing an essay about how people spoil everything for you. You know, like, you’ll be wearing an article of clothing and someone will say, “Oh, you look like Pee-wee Herman,” and then you never want to wear it again? There’s no point, at the end of the essay, to have someone say, “Oh, you look like your sister Tiffany,” and go into the details of her suicide and all 12
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that. I don’t apply sadness everywhere but it helps to dig a little deeper sometimes.
there’s always an editor who wants to go in and cut some of the pauses and ruin my timing. But I’m a professional.
Are you finding more catharsis through your writing, then? I never thought of writing as cathartic. Not for me, anyway.
In high school, I had to give a 25-minute presentation on the use of punctuation in one of your stories, so I’m deeply attuned to your pauses. Oh god, I’m sorry. Which one?
Really? So writing is just a thing you do? Yeah, I suppose it helps me make sense of the world, but it’s not cathartic. Can I say those two things at the same time? It doesn’t make me feel any better, but it does help make sense of things.
“Remembering My Childhood on the Continent of Africa”. Mmm, okay. Well, you want to write something that anyone can read out loud. So that they can read the page and know when to pause, but… oh, I don’t know. Like at the end of that “Jesus Shaves” story: “A bell, though, [perfectly timed pause] that’s fucked up.” You don’t want to recreate that on the page and have five double-spaces because that just looks amateurish.
You tour with your stories a lot; do you reprocess these things when you tell them live? I have a couple of new essays on this tour, but sometimes I’ll read something out loud and go back and rewrite but if it doesn’t ever perform well, it’s not fair to subject an audience to it. Do you play around with the delivery? Yeah, I usually do. It usually has to do with having a good microphone. I like when there’s a good monitor and you can really hear your voice. Because, after a while, you go into automatic and stop thinking about it, and I don’t ever want to go into automatic. So are you the type of person who rewatches your interviews and performances? Oh god, no. Like, whatever you write from this interview? Rest assured, I will never read it. You don’t ever have to worry about me calling you up and going [baby noises]. Sometimes, though… So I listened to my last audiobook and it was pretty helpful. But with those,
Something I was thinking about – You wouldn’t believe how nice my new apartment is. I got here at 3 o’clock on a Wednesday, and at 11 that night, I found a bathroom I hadn’t even seen before. Isn’t that amazing? We have all this furniture on the way but it’s not being delivered as quickly as I want it to be. But I’m pacing through my apartment right now, and it’s fantastic. I’m sorry I interrupted you. By all means, interrupt me. You mention shopping, though, and that’s something you praise often throughout Calypso. Should we expect to see you in some Comme des Garçons when you come to Boston? God, yes. I got a jacket especially made for this tour. Two, actually. One looks like I had two sports coats on at the same time before stepping on a landmine. The other looks like I’m a Hasidic man who got clawed by a tiger.
So you really are into some tragic looks, huh? They’re clownish! I realize, though, the audience… they don’t know what Comme des Garçons is. I mean, my audience knows a lot of stuff and usually has gone to college, but they have no idea who Rei Kawakubo is. It’s not like they’re looking at me and thinking, “Ugh, that’s from last fall.” They’re looking at me and thinking, “What happened?” In Boston, you’ll stand out as long as you’re not wearing a Patagonia vest, so feel free to wear whatever you like. [Laughs] How do you pick which jacket you’ll wear at each city? Now that I have my New York apartment I’ll be able to swap them out more often since they’ll be closer. The Hasidic-tiger one is kind of long so it’s hard to travel with. The man-wearing-two-sports-coats-who-stepped-on-a-landmine is more summery, I think. But then I have an extra summer backup that looks like I was wearing a dinner jacket on the Titanic before they discovered my body. So, moldy? Exactly. You might not read things about you, but I was looking at a Washington Post review of Calypso which, sort of rudely, claimed you do things just for the story. I had to laugh because I thought, “Is that a bad thing?” [Laughs] Well, that’s completely wrong: I don’t do things just for the story. Sometimes you’ll think, “Hmm, what would happen if I walked out in my underpants?” And I’m sure you could get an essay out of it, but then what are you going to say about it? It’s a stunt. I don’t do stunts. For example, when I mention the woman at the book signing who said she would cut my tumor out of me… I did think, “Well, I can write about it and I do need my tumor taken out,” but it was more than that. I think people are so cowardly. I know people who wouldn’t have surgery performed on them, like, in France. So when I tell them I let a random woman from a book signing cut a tumor out of me, they think, “Oh, really?” But, I mean, it’s not like she was removing an organ. A few years ago, a veterinarian offered to do it and I would’ve had him do it, but I was on tour. You don’t do stunts, of course, but as a writer – as someone who is so observational – I’d say you’re more susceptible to wanting these sorts of experiences. Do you feel that way? Well, one thing I do is say yes. Most people say no to things and nothing ever happens to them. It’s also a question of control, I guess. Most people have more control over their situation than I do. I never learned how to drive a car. If you know how, you get into your car and have your radio tuned to whatever you like and have your whole little environment programmed and you don’t interact with anybody. But I can’t do that. So I’ll be on the bus, or the subway, or being driven somewhere, and I’ll talk to the driver. If I were more of an independent person, or more in control, I wouldn’t have those encounters. There’s a fun kind of freedom in not having that control. Right. A lot of it comes from my not being independent. At the same time, though, putting yourself in those situations is its own kind of independence, no? I mean, you said most people are cowardly and would never do these things. People are cowardly when they say, “I would never let someone I met at a reading operate on me. How do you know she’s even a doctor?” Well, because she told me she was. Why would I doubt that? I think I’ll let you get back to your apartment now. Did it take you a while to find the place, by the way? Kind of. We actually looked at Judge Judy’s old apartment at one point. Judge Judy’s moving out? She left this one place with a sign that said ‘Judge’s Chambers,’ or something like that, and we said we’d only take the apartment if we could keep the sign. The apartment hunt was maddening, though, and now we’re living somewhere I never thought I’d live – on the Upper East Side…
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Why’d you never see yourself there? Well, when I was young, it just seemed kind of dead to me. But now I’m old and I don’t want somebody setting up a drum kit outside my window. Like, that shit gets shut down on the Upper East Side. Or if your neighbor’s dog barks non-stop, it’s, like, taken out and shot. Well, good luck with your apartment and your ironing board hunt. Thanks so much, Juan. Bye.
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>> CELEBRITY SERIES: DAVID SEDARIS. 4.10 AT SYMPHONY HALL. 301 MASSACHUSETTS AVE., BOSTON. CELEBRITYSERIES.ORG NEWS TO US
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DESTINY FEATURE
Boston’s ‘Radical Black Girl’ builds artistic platforms where they didn’t exist BY SYDNEY B. WERTHEIM
PORTRAIT BY K. SULTAN The young women from Youth Options Unlimited had never performed, let alone danced, in front of a crowd before. Yet they found themselves at Hibernian Hall in Roxbury, set to perform a number built on their experiences living in Boston. For the previous five days the young women, who are either court-involved, gang-affiliated, or seeking refuge from poverty or violence, had practiced their performance in collaboration with a traveling research residency called “My City, My Body: or if Concrete Could Talk, or for those that might be traumatized.” With the guidance of Destiny Polk, founder of the artactivist platform Radical Black Girl, the participants wrote poems, discussed their stories, and vented about problems impacting both Boston and themselves. “Destiny’s project … gives young females opportunity to explore, and address their experiences as black and brown girls in Boston while developing their muscle of communication and self-advocacy in a deep and protracted way,” D. Farai Williams, the artistic director of Madison Park Development Corporation, told DigBoston. 14
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Sherley Austin, a case manager at YOU who helped form the group, said that at the start of the program, the girls were skeptical of Polk and the residency. But as the week progressed, they warmed up to the idea. “They weren’t exposed [to performance] so they don’t know, they’d never been exposed to arts and culture and dance,” Austin said. “They grew on [Polk], and [Polk] grew on them. And the love [has] been made, and they asked, ‘Can we work with Destiny again?’” A dance teacher, Polk tries to push young people to express themselves unapologetically through movement. “I teach with the intention of helping other people enjoy being in their bodies,” she said. Through Radical Black Girl, now going on its third year, Polk curates events, creates performances and short films, and sponsors young and developing talent in the Boston community. “Destiny’s work is forever evolving and [aiming] to tell a story through her body,” Dzidzor Azaglo, an artist and activist in Dorchester, said. “She doesn’t speak unless [she has] fully explored within herself, [and] that is something
that I truly admire about her presence. Destiny is amazing. We don’t deserve her, but we are honored that she has chosen to represent herself through art and also be a vessel to this community.” Raised in Dorchester, Polk said that from a young age she recognized that she was often one of the few black girls on stage, performing for audiences she felt didn’t reflect her experience. “The more that I grew into my career as a performer, the more I realized there was this separation between myself and my peers,” Polk said. “Why is it that I’m getting invited into these spaces and on these stages, but my peers who are from Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan are not being invited into these spaces, or their voices are not being heard? “I decided I wanted to address that.” Ellie Nguyen, founder of the art and wellness platform 3arly July, has collaborated with Polk, and said, “Through radical representation, I hope that folks can see themselves somewhere within our stories and know that they are seen, celebrated, and supported.” Radical Black Girl’s mission began during Polk’s college years at Wesleyan University. It was a difficult, depressive period. “I describe it as going through an ego death,” Polk recalled. “Everything I thought I knew about myself just felt like it was stripped away. I lost 15 pounds, was really sick, I fell out of love with dance. I had no desire to show up to my dance classes. I had spent my whole life waiting to get to college to study dance and then I got there and was like, What am I even doing? Who am I?” In a time of loss, she started journaling, sketching, and eventually getting back up. “The beautiful thing that came out of this depression was, OK, I’m empty and what can I rebuild?’ I felt like I had opportunity to recreate myself,” she said. The summer after her first year of college, Polk started a blog, the Grapevine, where she shared poetry and wrote about African-American history and politics. She ended each post with the signature, “A radical black girl that can read and write.” Eventually, this idea of a Radical Black Girl stuck with her. “The most radical and dangerous thing a black person can do is read and write and think for themselves,” she said. Eventually, Polk hopes to transition Radical Black Girl into a national platform. Last month, she attended the influential South by Southwest conference in Texas, where she hosted a meetup for people to discuss issues they want to address in their communities. “I’ve changed so many aspects of my life through art,” she said. “[Now it’s about] me extending that to other people. That’s really the function of Radical Black Girl … to create impact and to give the tools, creative space, and performance opportunities to artists of color to develop as professional artists.”
PHOTO BY SYDNEY B. WERTHEIM
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15
SAUCY LADY MUSIC
A Boston artist at the intersection of vintage Barbie and the funk and disco ethos BY OLIVIA MASTROSIMONE
If you run into Noe Carmichael between nine in the morning and five at night, you’ll see a businesswoman. Perhaps you’ll notice her long and colorful nails, but in quick passing you will likely chalk such highlights up to the quirks of an edgy young corporate professional. Beneath that daytime facade, though, quirky doesn’t even start to cover what is happening. After business hours, it’s a different tune and story for Carmichael. Step into her realm, and you’ll be squarely in the intergalactic presence of Saucy Lady, a seasoned Boston DJ and self-proclaimed space goddess of funk. For starters, she will probably be wearing a blue wig. Carmichael has performed around the Hub as Saucy Lady for a decade, the whole time building up a reputation as the orchestrator of irresistible disco and funk sets, but also as a figure of outrageous fashion and outspoken personality. Drawing inspiration from the nightclub scenes of yore mixed with her love of disco, jazz, and r&b, she sets the mood with humor, flash, and sky-high platform boots. At the same time, behind the glitz and glamour Carmichael is known for, there are lots of other moving parts. Her background is rooted in stylistic juxtaposition; cross-cultural, multimedia-inclined, campy, and classically trained, Saucy Lady is an exercise in balance. Having come of age in Yokohama, Japan, Carmichael says that she had access to multiple different cultures. Raised on Grace Jones, Sun Ra, and the free jazz that her parents played for her, inspiration came from many corners. After moving to the Hub for college, Carmichael recalls being struck by the physical space of America, and has since made it her mission to fill up as much of it as possible with cosmic grooves. “Boston is a transient city,” she says. “People don’t stick
around. A lot of them don’t appreciate this place.” Carmichael has collaborated with a diverse roster of artists and labels—in the latter category, her tracks have been pressed by the likes of Dopeness Galore, Street Muzik, Kadokawa, Midnight Riot, Soul Clap Records, and her own label, Audio Chemists Recordings. But despite her international roots and overseas performances—her cuts with the Boston hip-hop group Hybrid Thoughts, for one, have caught fire in Asia—as an artist Saucy Lady feels an obligation to develop and grow in and with the Boston scene. Through countless sets, hours spent hunting for
sounds in dollar bins at record stores, and in excess of 60 singles, more than a few of which have come out as limited edition collectible vinyl releases, she’s made this her musical homebase since her 2011 debut, the fittingly titled Diversify. “I just really want people to learn good shit,” she says, noting that her goal behind the decks is to bring attention back to DJs and disco with an inventive sound. She continues, “That’s my job.” Fast-forward eight years and through innumerable shows and tracks, and Carmichael is now back on her full-length grind with a sophomore effort, Supanova, which drops on April 13. Packed with intergalactic synths, jazz, funk, and local artist features, it’s both a concept album and a sensory experience. “It’s not just auditory,” she says. “It should be felt and heard and experienced. It’s all combined for me.” Leveraging everything from ’80s comics to the cosmos, Carmichael cracks open a new groove fit for 2019, but that also pays homage to the concepts that have motivated her up to this point. Visually, she had animator Steven E. Gordon, a past contributor to X-Men, Avengers, and the ’80s cult favorite Jem handle the artwork, making for a stunning multidimensional plot line. “I feel there are so many sensations and sounds from my childhood that have been lost,” she explains. “All the plastic and glitter and over-the-top music production—it was all so new then, and we’ve forgotten them. I want to bring back that feeling.” With confidence, sensuality, and just a touch of silliness, Carmichael aims to keep on fanning funky flames, all for the betterment of Boston. “I’m just tapping into the charisma and fearlessness that’s inside all women,” she says. “Every lady has some sauce in them.”
>> FRIDAY NIGHT FEVER WITH SAUCY LADY PERFORMING SELECTIONS FROM SUPANOVA. FRI 4.5. AT ICA BOSTON. SAUCYLADYMUSIC.COM FOR MORE INFO. 16
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FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
17
FILM REVIEW: “THE BEACH BUM” FILM
On the latest film by Harmony Korine BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN
MOONDOG (MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY) AND LINGERIE (SNOOP DOGG) IN THE BEACH BUM. COURTESY OF NEON AND VICE. A profile of artist Harmony Korine published by Variety in 1997 included a quote that he would go on to more or less repeat in countless other interviews throughout the following decade. “If you look at cinema, if you look at D.W. Griffith and the invention of early commercial narrative,” Korine said, “and then you look at the way films are made now, at least in a commercial context there’s almost no real invention.” And so it was that Korine’s first four theatrically-released features were decidedly non-commercial: There are not many traits shared by all four of them—Gummo (1997), Julien Donkey-Boy (1999), Mister Lonely (2007), and Trash Humpers (2010)—but one is that in terms of structure each is pretty much nonnarrative, and yet another is that each failed to gross more than 100k or so at the U.S. box office. So despite the fact that Korine has done a great deal of “contract work” throughout his career, including music videos (including for Sonic Youth and Rihanna), advertisements (for Supreme and Gucci), and commissioned videos (for outlets like Vice), he nonetheless didn’t really enter the field of “commercial narrative cinema” until he released his fifth theatrical feature, Spring Breakers (2013), which like Trash Humpers depicts a gang of like-minded miscreants wreaking havoc through a landscape of American material detritus, but which unlike Trash Humpers depicts that scenario within a genre-oriented narrative framework and with cinematographic techniques that are multiplexfriendly to say the least. As such the film played on more than 1,000 screens during a couple weeks of its release, and eventually grossed around $14 million in the United States, something like 30 times the take of all Korine’s prior features put together. That success has afforded Korine a second opportunity to apply his artistic tendencies onto an ostensibly comercial film genre, and so we have The Beach Bum (2019), his sixth theatrically-released feature, which places a figure played by Matthew McConaughey at the center of a star-vehicle comedy film, a picaresque odyssey which brings that character into episodic contact with other broad caricatures played by actors including Zac Efron, Isla Fisher, Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Buffett, and Martin Lawrence. In doing so The Beach Bum simultaneously functions as “a true Korine film”—a catalog of absurd or disquieting representations of American pop-cultural standards, in this case including (but hardly limited to) AM radio dad-
rock, apparel found at beachside shops, and comically oversized drug paraphernalia—while also functioning as a relatively traditional wide-release studio-produced narrative comedy, one with even less of an audiencerepelling bite than was found under the surface of Spring Breakers—were it shorn of its rough edges (which populate but don’t overwhelm the film), The Beach Bum would not seem even the slightest bit conspicuous next to, say, Up in Smoke (1978), or Adam Sandler comedies from the 1990s. Its release befits that demeanor, as much like Breakers the new film will play on more than 1,000 screens for at least some of its ongoing release, meaning that Korine, the former enfant terrible who now has monographs written in his name, has once again successfully infiltrated America’s multiplexes, unless of course you think it’s more like the other way around. For this writer the question of whether the artist is pranking or indulging commerciality (or none of the above) seems utterly inconsequential, because either way the resulting object, The Beach Bum, has it both ways at once, fulfilling traditional expectations of film narratives in a broad sense while also undercutting the very same with its generally off-key construction, eventually becoming something like a legitimately postmodern stoner comedy, a film which dares you to remember that Korine named an early work after a John Barth novel, then right afterwards dares you to forget (another quote from that aforementioned Variety profile, which remember is from 1997, actually has Korine claim he’s “been working with Snoop Dogg on adapting Ulysses into a film”, and hell, maybe he has). The narrative structure of this film is on some level a joke itself, a series of occurrences which suggest growth or resolution, but quite decidedly never actually get there. The protagonist of this particular odyssey is Moondog (McConaughey), a Florida Keys-based poet/ novelist facing a series of potentially life-changing crises (marital, professional, and more), absolutely none of which succeed in harshing the movie’s vibe (as the time-to-grow-up montages in films by the likes of Apatow, Sandler, et al. so often do). Korine’s screenplay has Moondog ambling from challenge to challenge, first laboring to make sure he shows up on time at the wedding of his daughter (Stefania Owen), then dealing with the loss of his exuberantly wealthy partner Minnie
(Isla) and the Brewster’s Millions situation her will places him in (he must finish his next book in order to claim his inheritance). His mourning period is, of course, a bender, one which ends up with Moondog in a court-ordered rehab facility from which he quickly escapes with the help of a Christian-rock enthusiast (Efron), putting him on the lam until he’s eventually working a job on the boat of dolphin-tour leader Captain Wack (Lawrence), and then escaping the quickly-approaching authorities with the help of friends including Buffett (himself) and Lingerie (Dogg). Each individual chapter hints towards the kind of generic cause-and-effect character development which is the stock-in-trade of the studioproduced film comedy—will Moondog miss the wedding, and will he learn to respect his family more if so? Will a tragedy in the family provoke him to move past childish behavior? Will his fugitive status and violent crime spree (among those aforementioned “rough edges” are multiple scenes where Moondog assaults people in wheelchairs) end with him taking responsibility for the many people he’s hurt? Will he be able to hang onto his job, and will it give his life the structure it so desperately seems to need? Will he fulfill the last wishes of his late wife, and will that, if nothing else, cause some psychological development on his part?—only to just as quickly dismiss the very idea of development or resolution, instead committing to the amoral behavior which most studio comedies disavow when there’s about 20 or 30 minutes left, Korine’s script instead electing to ride off into the mystic with an entirely unchanged Moondog, a depiction of stasis moreso than catharsis. Working once again with the Spring Breakers team of cinematographer Benoit Debie, production designer Elliott Hostetter, set decorator Adam Willis, and costume designer Heidi Bivens, Korine has with The Beach Bum directed another gonzo tribute to Florida trash culture, utilizing many of the same formal techniques as that prior film (a neon color palette, discontinuous edits which stage individual dialogue exchanges across multiple sets, lots of goofy set dressing), once again producing a movie which takes the form of smooth mass-culture filmmaking while leaning into the veiled transgressions endemic in that form to such an extent that an ugly pall is then cast over the subtext, if not the surface… writing that it occurs to me that this is a film which only could’ve been made by an admirer of Robert Altman’s 1985 feature O.C. & Stiggs, which Korine has indeed cited as a high masterpiece, another film which finds curdled joy in decidedly juvenile behavior, and which is similarly composed with a deliberately garish mise-en-scene of material objects. As in that film, there’s a certain beauty here, in the ingenuity with which all this junk is arranged and composed, but there’s also a formal chintziness, pronounced and emphasized, which seems present specifically to counteract that same beauty. This writer even suspects there’s some intentionally bad instances of filmmaking technique apparent in The Beach Bum, such as a laughably clumsy instance of ADR covering a truly execrable line of dialogue from Snoop Dogg, a moment which is then followed by one of the most oversized cliches a screenwriter could think of (a kiss under fireworks). Last year Korine exhibited a series of paintings at the Gagosian art gallery, a show he called BLOCKBUSTER, which exhibited “a new series of works that use grids of VHS tapes and their boxes as surfaces for painting.” In his artist’s statement, Korine describes the paintings, and in the process articulates what The Beach Bum seems to do to so many of the films it superficially resembles: “I began to mark over the covers myself”, he wrote, “and distort the images”.
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THE TRIAL OF LIZZIE BORDEN BOOKS
Waxed moustaches, hatchets, and a courtroom drama fit for any era BY MAX CHAPNICK
You may know that Lizzie Borden “gave her mother forty full mouth of an orator and the strong nose that usually whacks, and when she saw what she had done, gave her goes with it.’ His coiffure even boasted two perfect little father forty-one” (it was somewhat fewer whacks), but curls.” Spicy. did you know that Lizzie’s defense attorney was George As the book will demonstrate, the perfection of Melvin’s Robinson, a former governor of Massachusetts? Or that little curls are not besides the point, they are integral. The one of the lawyers prosecuting her would be appointed to way we judge one another, fortunately or unfortunately, a seat on the Supreme Court? Did you know that during involves a host of external markers crossed with the trial, attorneys placed the alleged murder weapon, a stereotypes—gender, class, dress, nose shape, mustache handleless three-and-a-half inch hatchet, into a hole in wax—that skilled advocates must use, abuse, or disabuse side of Andrew Borden’s broken skull, and it fit surprisingly to their advantage. well? This tantalizing double murder, known largely for its Consider one relatively small point: the twang in the gruesome details and still-unsolved mystery, also led to accent of the defense’s closing statements. Ex-Governor one of the most dramatic courtroom battles in American Robinson, delivered his remarkably low-key address in a history. “folksy manner” with an intentional shift added to his In Cara Robertson’s new book, The Trial of Lizzie Borden, speech: “he yaw yawed his last two vowels, he said ‘agin’ the mustached counselors at the bar, not the reclusive Bordens, are the real show. Though Robertson’s book contains all the allure and elements of true crime—it’s shadowy cover with the italicized “a true story” announces that sort of tale—Robertson’s version reads less like Serial Season One than The People v. O. J. Simpson. Robertson rarely speculates about motive, except in repeating what 19th-century prosecutors or newspapers offered, and we get no definitive assessment by Robertson on Borden’s guilt. The story is through and through what its title announces: a “trial” narrative. Yes, Robertson implies more abstract definitions—the ordeal of one woman subject to withering public scrutiny, or the inevitable judgements passed on her by that public—but the central question remains the one to be answered by twelve solemn men: guilty or not guilty? Trained as both an academic, with a PhD in English from Oxford, and a lawyer, with a JD from Stanford, Robertson’s qualifications as a close reader of legal history give the twists and turns of this brawl of June 1893 in the New Bedford courthouse the historical and legal detail it deserves. If Robertson fails to the extent that she never satisfies the reader’s desire for a neat determination about whether Lizzie did the deed, the book succeeds in its depiction of courtroom warfare, from the personalities of these legal minds to the nuances of their maneuvers. We even get physical descriptions that blow past the literary to the nearly horny. The defense’s hired help, for example, was “an urbane Boston lawyer,” who sported a “waxed moustache,” and was said to spend “much ‘attention to his looks and they are worth it.’” Robertson continues, gratuitously, IMAGE COURTESY OF SIMON AND SCHUSTER. “In addition to ‘great, handsome brown eyes,’ he had ‘the generous >> THE TRIAL OF LIZZIE BORDEN BY CARA ROBERTSON. PUBLISHED BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER 20
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for against, and ‘warn’t’ for was it not.’” One New York City reporter would “deride” his style as “commonplace”: “it never reached up to eloquence and it never reached into the heart of the hearer.” But Robinson knew what he was doing. What this city-slicker correspondent heard as a low-energy bumpkin “was perfectly attuned to ‘the farmer instinct in the jurymen.’” Robinson, with full knowledge of the farmer’s prejudices, played them. In fact, the entire case hangs on how the lawyers exploit snap judgements, a task that leaves the prosecution with a mostly uphill battle: can a woman who looks so normal and so properly upper-class, have committed such heinous, masculine, and unhinged crime? Not only does the final verdict turn upon these prejudices, but so do the minor skirmishes, such as evidentiary fights over what can be included during the trial. For example, one major point of contention involves whether Lizzie’s “inquest” testimony, that is her statements to a prosecutor as part of standard preliminary procedure, are admissible. The court must determine whether that testimony, without the presence of Lizzie’s lawyer, is “voluntary” or “involuntary.” Lizzie went of her own free will, said the lawyer for the government, and she didn’t plead the fifth. On the other hand, it may look voluntary, the defense argued, but Lizzie was under “constructive,” de facto arrest; one of the police officers “carried an unserved arrest warrant in his pocket” and, in general, the inquest had an “atmosphere of menace.” Ultimately, the defense wins this controversial ruling using arguments that “depended upon—and exploited—particular notions late-nineteenth-century femininity”: if “crowds of men in authority circle a defenseless young woman,” Robertson summarizes the defense as asking, are her words really “voluntary”? In describing courtroom faceoffs like this one, from jury selection to sneaky cross-examinations, Robertson’s book succeeds in masterfully bringing to life the spectacle of this dramatic trial. In its own time, tens of thousands followed along in print; so many newspaper wires criss-crossed the courthouse buildings, Robertson quotes one commenter as saying, that “you could hang all the washings of all Bristol County on them.” In Robertson’s hands, Lizzie Borden’s story, and the story of the attorneys who rose to prosecute and defend her, is no less enthralling now. Robertson’s account conveys this irrestably captivating contest of lawyers (and their mustaches) over stereotypes and statute on the way to some sort of truth.
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PARTS AND PARTING
SAVAGE LOVE
WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM
BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NETE3
I’m an adult man, and I have developed a trans attraction after following a particular Tumblr blog. That blog is now gone, sadly, since all adult content has been purged from Tumblr. It wasn’t just porn; it consisted of all the things I really enjoy— images of oil paintings and antique furniture, scenic landscapes, wild animals, and then pictures/gifs of trans women. Some women appeared to have had top surgery while others didn’t. But all of the women featured on this blog had penises. I had never considered a relationship with a trans woman before, but after browsing the blog for a year, I can honestly say I’d do it in a heartbeat. I would actually like to date a non-op trans woman. I know that many trans women don’t like having their male parts touched or acknowledged, but I didn’t know that a trans woman can only have a functioning penis if she isn’t taking female hormones, and I hadn’t considered the effect that might have on somebody’s gender dysphoria. How can I meet a trans woman who is hopefully comfortable with her male parts and seeking a relationship? I live in a conservative Bible Belt state—Utah—and I am woefully uneducated on this subject. Girl’s Heart, Man’s Parts “My penis and balls aren’t ‘man’s parts,’” said Bailey Jay, the three-time AVN Award– winning transsexual porn star. “They’re mine. I own them. Not some random man.” In fairness, GHMP, you acknowledge being woefully uneducated on trans issues, something your letter demonstrated again and again. But let’s start here: A trans woman doesn’t have boy parts. She has girl parts—unique girl parts, as girl parts go, but girl parts just the same. “I’m on hormones and my cock works great,” said Jay. “Every trans woman is going to be different and have different experiences, and that’s the best first bit of advice I can give GHMP. We can smell it a mile away when we are all being lumped in together as a concept. Treat any trans woman you’re romantically interested in as an individual.” As for places to find trans individuals who might be up for dating cis men, well, you might want to sit down, GHMP, as this is pretty shocking. “I’ve heard OkCupid is inclusive, and I have friends on there whose profiles even help people navigate discussing their bodies in a respectful way,” said Jay. “And finding a trans woman to date who hasn’t undergone bottom surgery is pretty easy. The surgery is expensive and even scary to some. It’s not terribly common that a trans woman has had that particular surgery.” But just because a trans woman hasn’t had bottom surgery doesn’t mean she doesn’t want bottom surgery, so you shouldn’t assume a trans woman with a penis plans to always keep her penis. “The real question is what her relationship is with her current genitals,” said Jay. “Maybe she’s very dysphoric about them. Maybe she doesn’t even want you to see them or touch them. Even if her body is your preference, there’s a chance it isn’t hers. I personally love my penis and even like talking about it. But bringing up genitals right away can make you seem insensitive or like you’re dehumanizing your date.” Jay recommends looking for trans women on mainstream dating apps and then following their lead. “Now, genitals and curt sexual dialogue are kind of my jam,” said Jay, “so I wouldn’t even flinch or blush. But this can be a very charged subject for people.” Look to the profiles of trans women you’re interested in for cues about their approach to personal subjects. One woman might put it all out there and welcome questions about her experiences as a trans woman; another woman might be open about being trans but prefer not to focus on it. “Still, never use genital questions as an icebreaker,” said Jay. “You’ll know when your evening with someone is going well enough that there’s a certain amount of trust,” and at that point, you may be able to bring it up. “And please make sure to talk about both of your bodies,” added Jay. “This isn’t all about if her body is right for you. Make sure your body meets her standards and preferences, too. I always joke that cis men should have to disclose as well. Any expectation you find yourself putting on her, split the responsibility.”
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You can find Bailey Jay at her for-adults-only website TS-BaileyJay.com.
On the Lovecast, Dan chats with sex-workers-rights advocate Kaytlin Bailey: savagelovecast.com.
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