Dig Boston Mar. 4th, 2015

DIGBOSTON.COM 3.4.15 - 3.11.15

EATS

SANTOUKA

RAMEN A CHAIN YOU CAN ACTUALLY GET BEHIND

FREE RADICAL

BOSTON 2024’S

SEX TRAFFICKING

PROBLEM

ARTS

CABINET of WONDERS

VAUDEVILLE VARIETY ACT HITS SOMERVILLE FEATURE

MUSIC

THE LONGWALLS RECORD RELEASE AT THE BRIDGE STUDIO

NINA

MacLAUGHLIN

BOSTON WRITER DITCHES NEWSPAPERS FOR CARPENTRY IN NEW BOOK

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NEWS TO US FEATURE DEPT. OF COMMERCE

VOL 17 + ISSUE 9

MARCH 4, 2015 - MARCH 11, 2015

NEWS, FEATURES + MEDIA FARM EDITOR Chris Faraone ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Martín Caballero ASSOCIATE A+E EDITOR Spencer Shannon CONTRIBUTORS Lizzie Havoc, Boston Bastard, Nina Corcoran, Emily Hopkins, Micaela Kimball, Tony McMillen, Jake Mulligan, Scott Murry, Jonathan Riley, Cady Vishniac, Dave Wedge INTERNS Paige Chaplin, Jasmine Ferrell

DESIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tak Toyoshima DESIGNER Brittany Grabowski INTERNS Elise Cameron, Alek Glasrud, Michael Zaia COMICS Tim Chamberlain Brian Connolly Pat Falco Patt Kelley

ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Nate Andrews Jesse Weiss FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digpublishing.com

BUSINESS PUBLISHER Jeff Lawrence ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Marc Shepard OFFICE MANAGER John Loftus ADVISOR Joseph B. Darby III DigBoston, 242 East Berkeley St. 5th Floor Boston, MA 02118 Fax 617.849.5990 Phone 617.426.8942 digboston.com

ON THE COVER

The lovely and talented Nina MacLaughlin graces our cover this week. Be sure to check out an excerpt from her new book Hammer Head on page 8.

Photo by Beowulf Sheehan.

©2015 DIGBOSTON IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG PUBLISHING LLC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG PUBLISHING LLC CANNOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. ONE COPY OF DIGBOSTON IS AVAILABLE FREE TO MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS AND VISITORS EACH WEEK. ANYONE REMOVING PAPERS IN BULK WILL BE PROSECUTED ON THEFT CHARGES TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.

DEAR READER End of an era at DigBoston headquarters.

As of this writing, our beloved stretch of antique warehouse-style office space on East Berkeley Street, tucked directly across the street from The Pine Street Inn, is no more. Some 15 years were spent in the floors hovering above Medieval Manor, and somehow I don’t think anyone, even among those with the longest tenure here, has ever stepped foot in that place. It was always one of those “Oh, we’ll get there, it’s just downstairs,” but nobody that I can recall ever decided the best way to spend a night after putting in a long day working on an issue of our bright little sheet was to just mosey on downstairs for … whatever it is that goes on down there.

The move is refreshing, in that “spring renewal” sense. Rebooting and slimming, your friends at DigBoston have moved to a remote office environment, which, as anyone who has ever stopped by to try to write at the office can attest, is likely to result in a lot more of the cutting-edge arts, entertainment, food, music, news, and politics coverage of the Hub you’ve come to know and love.

We’re a tight unit, svelte on manpower and general resources, and the team will be maintaining all the above like a multi-headed Hydra, ready to slither in and get you the stories you rely on, replete with the particular pip and vigor that the Dig is notorious for. That said, don’t expect the crew to be showering as much. Or wearing pants.

The boons of working from home …

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

EDITOR Dan McCarthy

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BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

DIGTIONARY

REMOTIONS

noun rəˈmōSH(ə)ns 1. The sensation cube dwellers feel when plans to go to a remote-office work environment, rumored for months, are finally set in motion. Heightened by the labor involved with moving an entire company office out of a building with only one day to go before you’re technically trespassing on the new tenant’s turf.

OH, CRUEL WORLD Dear Those Profiting Off My Misery, I have lived in my home for the past 18 years and I NEVER had been ticketed for snow removal. I would not want to end up in court over a situation involving a slip and fall. Most homeowners don’t.

But there it was in a bright green envelope tied to the bannister to my house. The strange part is my home is on the intersection of Ashcroft and Moraine street and I was shoveling on the Ashcroft side when it must have been placed there on the Moraine side/front of my home. I immediately sent the ticket in with copies of receipts for ice and 2 new shovels since mine were stolen a day before.

I intend to appeal this. I have a sense the ticketing was to help pay those who are clearing the snow off the train tracks.

ILLUSTRATION BY ELISE CAMERON

EDITORIAL

NEWS US

THIS USED TO BE OUR PLAYGROUND

MOVING DAY NEWS TO US

John Fish, the Olympics, and Troy from ‘The Goonies’

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I wrote most of this screed at seven o’clock in the morning last Thursday at Dig headquarters, in the building we’ve inhabited for more than a decade on East Berkeley Street in Boston’s South End. Forty-eight hours later, along with all my co-workers, I helped move the newsroom out of that same industrial loft, as we closed one chapter in this paper’s 17year history and moved on to another in new digs.

The change is fairly innocuous; we will still maintain a smaller office in our legacy building, the red brick castle off the highway with Medieval Manor in the basement, for staff meetings and sales, and we will also have access to more modern workspaces downtown and in Cambridge. What’s difficult to swallow though is the heightening challenge for alternative news outlets in Boston. With one of the tightest office markets anywhere, the Hub is fast-becoming a metropolis fit for sharks and few others. The rest of us can swim around, sneak in here and there, but property is unattainable for most, rentals even, and that goes doubly for entities—media, nonprofit, or otherwise—that rail

against the predators who gobble up real estate. That’s always been the case to some extent, but there at least used to be crevices in which minnows could create comfortable existences. Those days are apparently over, along with any hope of renting an apartment in the Greater Boston region on a handshake.

Given the circumstances, it’s impossible to come off sounding anything but sour about leaving the South End. So be it. But having covered gentrification from the vantage point of East Berkeley Street, on and off for 11 years, I’d be derelict in my duty to wage class war if I ignored the pressure that development exerts on the media. In case you haven’t noticed, most broadcast radio and television stations decamped for suburban outskirts years ago; now, even operations without the need for acreage enough to accommodate satellite dishes may have to follow their lead.

What’s made change especially painful at the Dig might be our immediate surroundings; for the past year we have shared an office with employees of Suffolk Construction,

which is developing a sprawling mixed use oasis on the corner next to us, right where Broadway and East Berkeley Street meet the I-93 overpass. Our bedfellowship was strange from the beginning; for one, the newsroom spends between half and three-quarters of any given day blasting the Boston 2024 Olympics, which of course is the brainchild of Suffolk CEO John Fish. If that’s not awkward enough with his employees within earshot, the construction giant named the flashy new complex Troy. Yep, Troy, as in the antagonist from The Goonies whose villainous dad evicts families in order to build golf courses.

Even before the Troy banner was hoisted, some aspects of life at the Dig already felt like the Goondox. Men in tailored suits and hard hats roamed the premises, some even in trench coats, as if they were plotting our ouster. In reality most of the Suffolk guys are friendly; we were awful and obnoxious neighbors despite admiring their work and skill sets, and yet they answered all our questions about building MOVING DAY continued on pg. 6

PHOTO BY CHRIS FARAONE

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

MOVING DAY continued from pg. 4 stuff. Still the remarkable speed with which they executed the Troy project only fed my concerns about Fish and the Olympics, namely that their combined hand is strong enough to play god, affect outcomes for others.

To be fair, Suffolk is no more directly responsible for the displacement of the Dig editorial team than the glistening new Whole Foods in the nearby Ink Block complex can be blamed for booting the Boston Herald from the South End. Generally speaking though, it’s safe to bet that in a city where virtually every politician and business leader stands solidly behind an idea like the Olympics, there will be less and less ground for those who dissent to stand on, and in all likelihood less affordable apartments to occupy.

My earliest fear, that Troy was just a decoy for an Olympic Village, was off by a mile; a literal mile that is, as it turns out the Newmarket and JFK-UMass areas will ultimately be more impacted in that regard if Boston winds up hosting. But watching Fish finesse the crowd at a community meeting in Southie last week, I realized that it doesn’t matter where the Suffolk hammer lands, whether it’s next door to the Dig, on the waterfront in Eastie, or all the way out west in Allston. It doesn’t even matter if it’s Suffolk’s hammer, as the company has pledged to abstain from profiting, at least directly, on Summer Games construction contracts. It seems that when the Big Fish moves in, the only thing that matters is that destiny is manifested; like he said in Southie, it wasn’t his choice to invite the Olympics, but rather the decision was made for him by some powerful divine force.

I think I’ll call it Troy.

BLUNT TRUTH

THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW!

THURSDAY MARCH 5TH 7PM BILL BLUMENREICH PRESENTS

NASHVILLE NIGHTS W/ SCOTT REEVES of General Hospital

Thursday March 5th 10PM

THE LOS FLETCHEROS TUFTS Fletcher School Cover Band Friday March 6th 7:30PM

Friday March 6th 10PM We Dig Free Fridays presents

SIRSY PLUS LIVE NUDE GIRLS Indie Rock

Friday March 27th 10PM We Dig Free Friday presents

SEGUE PLUS ROLLING NECTAR Rock / Jam-Funk

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Friday April 3rd 10PM We Dig Free Fridays presents

THE LYNGUISTIC CIVILIANS PLUS FUNK WAGON Hip-Hop / Funk

17 Holland St., Davis Sq. Somerville (617) 776-2004 Directly on T Red Line at Davis

JOAN OSBORNE ACOUSTIC DUO FEAT KEITH COTTON plus DEREK HULTQUIST / RUBY ROSE FOX Friday March 6th 10PM WE DIG FREE FRIDAYS PRESENTS

SIRSY PLUS LIVE NUDE GIRLS Indie Rock

Saturday March 7th 7PM

PAUL SPEIDEL BAND “20TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW” Blues Saturday March 7th 10PM

PLAYIN’ DEAD Grateful Dead Tribute Tuesday March 10th

ANDY MCKEE PLUS TREVOR GORDON HALL Acoustic Guitar Phenom

17 Holland St., Davis Sq. Somerville (617) 776-2004 Directly on T Red Line at Davis

You almost feel like a proud parent watching the Massachusetts legislature take a few uncertain, toddling steps toward marijuana law reform, even if it won’t get far before falling on its dear little bottom. A bill to repeal cannabis prohibition has been filed— that’s happened before—but this time it’s expected to be brought to the floor instead of being bottled up in committee. And it has co-sponsors in both the House and Senate.

It seems the legislators have awakened to the likelihood that voters will legalize marijuana by ballot initiative in 2016 if the legislature doesn’t act first. Senate President Stan Rosenberg of Amherst has said as much in remarks to the press: “We’ve had two successful ballot questions in separate elections, and we’re looking at the likelihood of another ballot question in 2016. So this debate is going to happen one way or another.”

The bill, filed as HD 3436 by Dave Rogers (D-Cambridge) in the House and Pat Jehlen (D-Somerville) in the Senate, “For legislation to legalize marijuana and establish a tax on the cannabis industry,” has some good provisions. It allows you to grow as much as you like at home as long as none of it is for sale, so the police could not bust down the door because they smell pot or see plants (or use that as an excuse to harass people).

The bill also provides for hemp farming, though the current price of Massachusetts real estate makes it unlikely that much new land will be set aside for waving fields of hemp.

And the bill envisions “cannabis cafes” where no alcohol would be served. Who knows what alternative music scenes might blossom in venues like those?

On the downside, the bill would create a new Cannabis Commission to regulate the industry, as if the commonwealth needs more bureaucracy. A saner solution would be to assign licensing authority to the Department of Revenue, or possibly the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission.

Another problem: The bill calls for taxes to be phased in gradually, to give the legal market a chance to establish itself and compete with the black market. But the taxes, once phased in, are too heavy. As a result, the black market might have a bad first year but would be back in force a few years later.

Of course, the bill isn’t likely to pass the legislature, and certainly not over Charlie Baker’s inevitable veto. However, seeing how the debate goes and how the media covers it may offer useful information about what provisions would be acceptable to Massachusetts, and portions of this bill may end up being incorporated into the initiative that ends up on the 2016 ballot.

In short, the legislature is mostly playing exhibition baseball (in contrast to the Vermont legislature, which may well pass a legalization bill this year or next and see it signed by Governor Shumlin). It’s diverting to watch while you, the citizens, wait ’til next year to step up to the plate.

ILLUSTRATION BY ALEK GLASRUD

BY ANDY GAUS

NEWS TO US

MEDIA FARM

FEATURE

THE SUPER

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

The coverage was inadequate, so we went and did our own

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

BY MEDIA FARM @MEDIAFARM

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Repeat after us: Very few Boston media outlets care about children. Not urban kids at least. They say they do, may haul cameras down to an occasional elementary school band practice to show five o’clock news viewers the success of token programs. But while some crews even make it out for utter tragedies, like when students at Madison Park High School started fall semester without schedules, they ultimately don’t care.

Got that?

If editors did care, they would have covered last week’s final stretch of the Boston Public Schools superintendent selection process like they track the Red Sox. Or the snow. Or any number of other stories that are irrelevant to BPS leadership.

Instead, coverage was limited to roundups (“Learn more about Boston Public Schools superintendent finalists,” via Wicked Local), and takedowns zooming in on dirt staining the candidates’ backgrounds.

Predicting a general lack of interest, we thought ahead of time to take advantage of the hour that reporters were allotted with each candidate. Our findings and recommendations for the position are posted online at DigBoston.com, though by the time you read this we’ll already have a new superintendent, whether you saw it in the news or not.

FREE RADICAL

IS BOSTON 2024 TAKING SEX TRAFFICKING SERIOUSLY ENOUGH? At a community meeting hosted by the City of Boston last week, dozens of South Boston residents packed into the cafeteria in the Condon School on D Street to ask questions and raise concerns about the 2024 Olympic bid. After nearly an hour of presentations by co-hosts from Boston 2024, including words from “Miracle on Ice” gold medalist Dave Silk on the transformative power of sports, the panel finally opened to questions from the audience.

It was clear that the crowd slanted in favor of the Olympics; Silk’s brandishing of his gold medal even incited chants of “USA! USA!”—essentially a war cry at this point.

But between questions about property legacy and full-on gushing over Olympic greatness, Dr. Edmund Schluessel of the National Union of Students stepped up to the microphone and raised a topic that few have addressed since the bid was announced: sex trafficking.

Schluessel rattled off a laundry list of news reports of spikes in trafficking and prostitution around big sporting events: In Athens, for example, sex trafficking almost doubled during the 2004 Olympics. Leading up to the 2012 Games, police in London secured £600,000 to pay for a specialized unit to “tackle the expected surge in sex trafficking.”

The facts elicited laughs and jeers; with the lunchroom surroundings, it felt like a high school sex education class. Some people even booed. The panel’s response: This, sir, is the United States of America, not hedonistic Europe. When confronted with the fact that a scandal involving IOC members accepting prostitutes as bribes took place in Salt Lake City, the answer was revised: That kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Boston. Which is patently untrue.

“Indeed, just months ago in Boston there were some prominent human trafficking arrests,” Schluessel wrote me in an email. “The assertion from the panel that human trafficking wouldn’t be a problem because the Games would be in the USA was simply bizarre.”

There is a large body of evidence showing that events like the Olympics and even the Super Bowl fuel the skin trade. Boston 2024, however, is either unwilling to address the point, or is simply too caught up in land grabbing and its media relations spin campaign to realize the potential problem. Either way, it’s obvious that they have not taken the issue seriously, or considered the violence against women that they are inviting into Boston’s most vulnerable neighborhoods.

Not like anyone expected much more from a cabal of rich white men.

PHOTO BY MICHAEL ZAIA

BY EMILY HOPKINS @GENDERPIZZA

TAPE MEASURE FEATURE

On the distance between here and there. From the new book Hammer Head (Norton)

From the sidewalk on Memorial Drive

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where the Mass Ave Bridge begins on the Cambridge side of the Charles River, the view across extends a little less than half a mile. To the south, the Boston skyline rises above Storrow Drive. Closer to the water, and lower to the ground, brick predominates; glass and steel rise behind. To the west, moving upstream against the current, the Citgo sign lights up over Kenmore Square, and if it’s a home game during Red Sox season, the floodlights over Fenway make it daytime in the park. The river bends and snakes its way out of the city, through twenty-three towns, sidewalks and river paths giving way to shoreline with pine and maples. Great blue herons stand in shallows on stalky legs and box turtles with warm shells sun themselves on rocks and logs. For eighty miles, the river wends through eastern Massachusetts from its start at Echo Lake in a town called Hopkinton. To the east of the Mass Ave Bridge, back near the city, sailboats dip and swerve. Oars on the eightperson sculls thunk in the oarlocks as crew teams run their practice and glide underneath the bridge. The Red Line train crosses over the Longfellow Bridge about a mile downstream. Beyond, the new Zakim Bridge rises above the river, suspended by white strands that look like the skeletons of wings. The river meets the harbor, freshwater merges with salt, and the Charles River is altered and absorbed into the Atlantic.

For seven years, I crossed the bridge on foot, once in the morning, sun at my left shoulder, and once in the evening, when sunsets sometimes blushed the sky. It was part of the three-mile path I made from my apartment in Cambridge to the newspaper offices where I worked in Boston. On the way home, depending on weather and time of year and if it was a deadline day, bands of pink spread across the sky upstream, or else it was cold and city dark, and lights became the thing, streetlamps, headlights, taillights like embers, all blinking and sparkling up the road ahead. The river glittered with Cambridge above it, squatter than Boston, lower to the ground. Sometimes, the moon. Sometimes, a few stars. The wind blew stronger on the bridge. Tourists handed me their cameras and asked me to take photographs with the river and the skyline. I dodged joggers and cyclists on the sidewalk afraid of the bike lane. I was usually alone when I walked the bridge, occasionally drunk, a few times crying, one time kissed by someone I didn’t like too much. The walk across the river was a ferrying for my brain—toward a desk and noise and tip-tapping of keys, clicking and interviews and story ideas, and away from my desk in the evenings, toward quiet and home, toward a bar, toward not having to talk or think or be clever or click. Oh I am fond of that bridge, the whole stretch of it. It’s the longest one to span the Charles at 2,164.8 feet. That’s 659.82 meters, or 364.4 smoots.

Oliver Smoot was the shortest pledge of MIT’s Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity in 1958. Late one night that year, he was tipped head over heels, over and over, across the length of the bridge, Boston to Cambridge, by his fraternity brothers.

They made an official tally of 364.4 smoots, plus or minus one ear. Ever since that fabled measurement, twice each year the boys of Lambda Chi Alpha have repainted the markers on the sidewalk across the bridge that delineate every ten smoots. (An exception has been made for smoot-mark sixtynine, which as of this year, had the addition of “heaven” painted underneath.) When the bridge was reconstructed in the 1980s, the sidewalk slabs were made in smoot-lengths, as opposed to the six-foot standard. Oliver Smoot’s contribution to measurement continued well after his fraternity days. A plaque at the base of the bridge commemorates the 50th anniversary of the smoot, and notes that Ollie went on to head both the American National Standards Institute and the International Organization for Standardization.

I trotted across the bridge, face reddened by wind in winter, sweat soaking the back of my shirt in summer, and I went to my desk at a newspaper where I’d landed a job

out of college. First I did listings, which meant inputting the city’s every concert, contra dance, art exhibit, comedy show, poetry slam, and movie time into a massive database weekin, week-out. I wrote about cheap Salvadoran restaurants, interviewed David Copperfield, profiled an art-porn collective, reviewed documentary films, covered a conference on virginity, and wrote about books and authors and the literary scene in Boston. Eventually I got bumped up to managing editor of the website, which meant I was tasked with making sure every story showed up in the right place at the right time. It meant a lot of clicking.

For a long time, I loved it. I loved the rhythm of the thing, the peaks and lulls, the energy of a room of people, mostly men, on deadline. All the furious typing, all the opinions and shit-talk, listening to writers on the phone with sources, the concentration and filing and release—the newsroom possessed a charge. And I was proud to be part of it. What good fortune, to be able to go to a place every day and be surrounded by all these smart maniacs telling stories, all working to produce this thing that had a history, that was part of the fabric of the city, that was committed to longform, investigative, issue-based journalism and had the strongest set of arts critics in Boston.

What a set of weirdos sat at these desks with me, what a collection of brains. There was the sharp-witted, chainsmoker with untucked shirts and rogue charm who had worked moving houses before becoming a journalist. There was the practitioner of make-the-world-better journalism and expose-injustice journalism, who sat at her desk and worked with the focus and fire of someone possessed until you got her out to the bar, where she’d talk about how she’d followed the Grateful Dead. The managing editor was a first-rate grump, a big-hearted cynic who had helped start the paper, and still believed in its power and necessity. The arts editor with the encyclopedic memory threw cursing fits, slamming books on the floor of his cube, his standards unmeetably high. And the features writer, from hard-knocks Brockton, wrote a weekly column about the city’s strangest characters, which struck me as maybe the coolest job in the world. In my head, she towered tall above me; I saw her not long ago, and realizing that she and I were the same height came as an immense shock and had me questioning, for a moment, if perhaps she’d contracted some shrinking disease.

Such is how these people loomed.

I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. Every time I got to answer the question what do you do?, I felt proud to answer.

This was exactly what I wanted. Until it wasn’t.

Talk of readers turned to talk of users. Print was sputtering, and it was the responsibility of the web operation to inject “youth” and “relevance” into the operation to keep advertising dollars coming in, and keep the paper in business. It’s a familiar story now.

The clicking started to get me down. There is a dullness in all forms of work, a “violence—to the spirit as well as to the body,” as Studs Terkel put it in Working. There are repeated tasks and empty time and moments you wish you were swimming. These are unavoidable, even in jobs we love and feel proud to have; these are natural, even if you’ve found your calling. It’s when those meaningless moments pile and mount, the meaningless moments that chew at your soul, that creep into the crevices of your brain and holler at you until ignoring them is not an option. Deadening moments that lead to the hard questions, the ones that swirl, in the broadest sense, around time and dying.

After years in which most of my waking hours were spent in front of a computer screen clicking buttons, I realized I’d

become a lump in a chair, present only in the physical fact of my flesh at the desk, soul staling like a Saltine. It got worse by the day, like a shirt that had once felt so comfortable, so flattering and familiar, but had started to tighten, constrict at the neck, pull across the shoulders. The grooves of my brain seemed to be getting smoothed out, a slow dulling, gradual and slothing. It was harder and harder to find pleasure in the atmosphere or meaning in the endeavor. The people I liked most were starting to move on to other jobs at other places.

The screen exerts an oppressive power, and I am as seduced as anyone by the clips and pics, the news and noise of the Internet. I would rather e-mail than talk on the phone.

I have pals I know only online and am grateful for those connections. But there is no other place I can think of where one can consume so much and absorb so little. The Internet has no equal in that regard. I am leery of its siren song, the way it beckons, and of my own inability to ignore its call. It’s a rabbit-hole exit, a tumbling in space with Wonderland ever always one click away.

My brain went bad. Hangovers hounded me three out of five workdays a week. Mouse in my limp, damp hand, my head raw and frayed, I spent months thinking, I’ve got to get out of here. But I had a familiar routine to cling to, and health insurance, and despite it all, I felt an allegiance to the institution. And so I stayed, kept scrolling, kept clicking. Plus, what would I do next? What could I do? Inertia and fear and laziness, the three-headed dog that keeps us from leaving situations that have passed their expiration date, growled around me for months, the way Cerberus allowed souls to enter the realm of the dead, but allowed none of them to leave.

The tipping point came in the form of an online list.

As a sardonic response to Maxim’s list of sexy women, we published a list of the 100 Unsexiest Men. A place on the list was granted not for physical repugnancy, but for poor character, bad deeds, and general unpopularity. Scandalous politicians, misogynist athletes, racist pundits, public-figure villains of all kinds. The first time around, the list was so popular it crashed the site, and thus became a must-repeat feature. Devising and executing it the first time was stupid fun—nothing to be proud of, but no big deal. When the third annual list rolled around, I found myself dispirited. More than that: sitting at my desk making sure the number on the list matched the number on the blurb about the man, I felt desperate. It was more than stupid and my brain hollered: You will die and this is an empty way to spend the days.

Slumped at my computer during those unsexiest days, all I could think about was leaving. I craved something away from the screen, away from the echo chamber of the Internet. I wanted something that had a little more to do with reality. But what did that mean? Our lives online are as bound in reality as making pancakes, driving to the dump, spilling a glass of wine. At my desk, though, I felt far away TAPE MEASURE continued on pg. 10

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH MCVETTY

BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN @THE_CARPENTRIX

9

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

TAPE MEASURE continued from pg. 8 from an anchor, a grounding agent, satisfaction. In a vague way, I wanted to put my brain where my hands were. These impulses were question marks, shadow urges, pipe dreams.

I wanted to be an Olympic speed skater, too, but that wasn’t about to happen.

I had worked at the paper for nearly the whole of my twenties. Closing in on thirty, it wasn’t just disenchantment with my web job. My brain stirred with change, with the idea of a wholesale altering of life as I’d been living it. I spent months in this mode, fed up, deeply bored, trying to corral enough courage to leap.

On my way to work on a bright and mild September morning, I crossed the Mass Ave B ridge. The smoot marks, paint faded, blurred below my feet, counting out the distance. I looked at the river as I rehearsed what I would say to my boss that day. I reached the Boston side of the river with resolve but mostly fear and some hands-in-the-air hope. When I got to the office, I quit.

It wasn’t just the job that ended. I moved out of my apartment, broke up with a boyfriend, and left the city for a little while. Sledgehammer, slam, dust, done.

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My days were blank, every day an emptiness. The fear—that I’d never find work again, that I’d made a very bad decision, that I’d derailed myself with no chance of finding another train—morphed into regret, that sick feeling of knowing that time only moves one way with no chance to change what’s been done. Small efforts and loose routines were weak antidotes. One teary morning in early spring, doing my daily click around the Craigslist jobs section, reviewing, once again, the same few posts in the Writing/Editing and Art/ Media/Design sections, I clicked on the Etc. category. Amid postings looking for dog walkers, surrogate mothers (up to $40k; tempting), and catheter users ($25 for your opinion; less so), I came across a line of text that registered itself in my chest with a quick extra thump of my heart.

Carpenter’s Assistant: Women strongly encouraged to apply.

This simple post seemed to glow, holding in it the promise of exactly what I’d been craving. My fingers fluttered above the keyboard, ready to write the note that would convince this person that I was the right woman for the job.

I tried to explain my experience. None. None at all. I tried to think what might qualify me. I didn’t know the difference between a Phillips and a flathead screwdriver. Should I admit that? No, don’t admit that. I explained that my professional background had more to do with putting together sentences than working with hammers and nails and wood, but that I was curious and hardworking, and that I longed to work with my hands. “What I lack in experience,” I wrote to this anonymous poster, “I would definitely make up for in curiosity and enthusiasm.”

I pressed SEND and the initial excitement and blast of optimism was extinguished by a wave of despondency and pessimism. What a joke, I scolded myself. What a ridiculous long shot. You don’t get carpentry jobs based on claims of curiosity and capacity for hard work, I admonished myself.

Putting together sentences? I sounded like an asshole. I imagined the person reading my email and laughing—oh, perfect, curious is exactly the quality I need to help build a safe set of stairs—and then discarding my note to continue the search for someone who actually knew something. I regretted how I’d approached the opportunity, and tried to put the whole missed chance out of my head.

That same morning, I applied for a fiction-editor position at an online literary operation (unpaid), and a gig writing product descriptions of adult novelties ($20 per description, seven descriptions per week). The adult novelty place got right back to me and asked if I’d please choose one product from the list they provided and write a sample description, no more than a paragraph, demonstrating an understanding of keywords.

I scrolled through the options. Smartballs silicone kegel balls. The Liberator ramp. Bound To Please nipple clamps. The Luxe Adonis G Spot and Clit Vibe. I heard the words of my high-school Latin teacher: when your eyes are open, you’ll see classical references everywhere. Caveat emptor. So I put

my Classics degree to work. Adonis, his beauty unsurpassed, born out of the trunk of the Myrrha tree, was so lovely that Venus herself, goddess of love, couldn’t resist him. So began my blurb. I did not mention that lovely Adonis was the offspring of an incestuous pair, that his mother was also his sister, that his father was his grandfather. I did make mention of plunging in, the way the wild boar plunges his tusk into Adonis’s groin, killing him, until Venus who loved him, changes him into a flower that blooms deep blood-red, “the very color of pomegranates when that fruit is ripe and hides sweet seeds beneath its pliant rind,” as Ovid tells it in his Metamorphoses. Seeds and pliant rinds, plunging tusks and a beauty that bewitches the goddess of love. The petals fall fast off the flower that Adonis is transformed into, unlike the great and lasting bloom that the G Spot and Clit Vibe brings.

I sent that off, closed my computer, and took a walk in the rain.

Four days after applying for the carpentry job, four days after sweeping the thought of it out of my head, I got an e-mail back from an anonymous Craigslistgenerated number. It was a woman named Mary writing to say that she was contacting forty of us who’d applied for the job, out of more than three hundred responses she’d gotten in the first eighteen hours of posting her ad. (“Sign of the times,” she wrote.) This was hopeful. I’d made the short list. I let that settle for a moment before I realized that forty people was still a lot of people, and I still only had enthusiasm and a work ethic as quasi-qualifications. I kept reading.

She explained a bit more about herself, about the job, and what she was looking for, straightforward as a two-by-four to the side of the head. “I’m a 43-year-old married lesbian with a 10-year-old daughter,” she wrote. She’d worked for herself for a few years and before that had worked for another contractor. “I like to think of myself as a journeyman-level carpenter and a slightly better tiler.” I didn’t know what this meant, but I liked the sound of journeyman. It brought to mind a wandering carpenter, tools slung over her shoulder, traveling place to place, building and fixing, humming away in worn-in workpants, a smile on her face.

It got better. She described the traits she was looking for: “Common sense is the most important thing. Next is lugging crap, you must be able to!” I gripped my left bicep and felt the muscle swell as I flexed. I can lug crap, I thought. I can absolutely lug crap. I thought of moving couches and tables out of various apartments, hauling boxes and boxes of books up and down flights of stairs. “Tools, supplies, whatever,” she wrote of what we’d lug. And common sense: sure, my judgment was sound enough in practical matters. I’m not the most practical-minded, but I’m a good parallel parker, I can follow a recipe, sometimes I know what I’m going to wear the day before I wear it. Skills used will vary from job to job, she explained, and jobs range from a day to several months, usually averaging about two weeks. And then came a list of the sorts of work that the jobs entailed in a language mostly unfamiliar. “Go in patch walls and paint.”

(Clear enough, I could paint, but who knew what patching meant?) “Put in a wood or tile floor. Add trim.” (Sounded doable.) “Larger jobs: kitchen and bathroom renovations, structural work.” (This sounded serious and intimidating.)

“Demo, framing, insulating, fire stopping, boarding, mudding, installing windows, finish trim work, install cabs, porch rebuilds. Pretty much everything except additions and roofs.” What did these words mean? Demo? I thought first of demonstrations. Framing? Framing pictures, I imagined, and that’d be cool to learn. Boarding? I pictured boarding houses and torture techniques, and figured it was neither. Mudding.

Mudding? All of it sounded mysterious and appealing.

She asked that we explain a little more about ourselves and why we wanted the job. In my response, I tried to be as direct and honest as she’d been. I’m thirty years old, I wrote.

I spent the past bunch of years working at a newspaper.

In terms of carpentry, I wrote: “I’ll be honest: I don’t have much experience. That said, I’m strong (lugging crap is no problem at all).” I claimed a good sensible head on my shoulders and emphasized again how curious I was to learn this stuff. I wrote about the satisfaction of putting together

a good sentence, but that something more immediate, more physical, more practical and tangible appealed to me, and had for some time.

“This is work I want to learn and do,” I wrote. “You would have to teach me, but I would learn fast and don’t mind doing hard work. I can start immediately.”

How acute is your internal clock? If someone were to ask you to mark a minute without counting out the second ticks, how close would you come? And if someone asked you to mark three and seven-sixteenths inches without a rule, how close would you be? A quarter inch off? Three-quarters? How well does your brain know space?

The earliest systems of measurement were based on the body. A cubit was the distance from the crook of the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. A half-cubit, or a span, equaled the spread between thumb and pinky tip. What we now call an inch was the width of a man’s thumb, or the distance from the tip of the forefinger to the first knuckle. A foot: the foot. In ancient Egypt, monuments were built based on the Sacred Cubit, the standard cubit plus an extra span. Two strides equaled a pace, or five feet in the Roman standard. A thousand paces made a mile. The line between King Henry I’s thumb and nose measured a yard. Two yards made a fathom, or the distance of both arms outstretched. In the thirteenth century, King Edward I’s Iron Ulna, named after the long bone in the forearm, set the measure for the standard yardstick.

A foot was a third of the yard, and an inch was one thirtysixth of it. Edward I’s flamboyant son Edward II decreed it otherwise in 1324. Three round, dry barleycorns made an inch in his book. But nature is fickle, and the size of seeds, like fingers and feet, can’t be counted on. (What power kings wielded, when the length of their bones—or fondness for barleycorns—could become the basis of standard measure.)

Forearms and pace lengths in the west, it was otherwise in ancient India, though the scale of measure there still found its distances in the natural world. A yojana measured the distance an oxcart could cover in one day. A length, we can suppose, that depended on how energetic your ox felt, how arthritic its joints were, how muddy the road it trod upon was, or even how greased were the wheels of the cart. A krosa measured the distance at which the lowing of a cow could be heard, a distance that depends on which way the wind blows.

A finger was divided into barleycorns, barleycorns into lice, lice into nits, nits into cow’s hair, into sheep’s hair, into rabbit fuzz, down, down, to the grain of dust kicked up by a chariot that cannot be divided. And though a cow’s low isn’t fixed, a distance emerges in our minds, inexact but imaginable—that melancholy bellow over pastures, gentle, warm-eyed beasts over there on the hill.

Things changed in Napoleonic France when the meter was adopted. It turned away from the human skeleton to a different sort of scale. A meter measured one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the North Pole following a straight line through Paris. This proves a trickier distance to contend with. What does one ten-millionth of that distance look like? I see ice floes and rain forests, a stick that shrinks to that tiny fraction of that big distance. I see a globe on a shelf and a small hand spinning it around.

It’s changed again since then. No longer a fraction of the earth’s surface, the meter is the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,588 of a second. I can’t conjure a rain forest, or spread my fingers out in front of my face to gauge a span, or look at my forearm to know a cubit, or hear the sound of that cow in the distance, or tip Oliver Smoot end over end. My mind can’t make sense of light and vacuums and that sliver span of time. A day’s worth of oxcart travel is one thing.

For my feeble brain, light speed and second fragments are impossible to conceive.

In the thirteenth century, the word journey meant the distance traveled in one day, and later came to mean a day’s work. The base of the word is jour, the French word for day. A journeyman is someone at a stage in between apprentice and master, someone competent to do a day’s work. Distance traveled, work done, this was something I could comprehend.

>> NINA WILL BE READING FROM HAMMER HEAD AT HARVARD BOOK STORE ON MARCH 16 AT 7PM, AND AT NEWTONVILLE BOOKS ON MARCH 24 AT 7PM. FULL SCHEDULE AND MORE INFO AT NINAMACLAUGHLIN.COM.

NEWS TO US FEATURE DEPT. OF COMMERCE

every night TILL ' CLOSE 9 2 H A MP S HIR E S T, CA MB R ID G E , M A | 6 1 7-2 5 0 - 8 4 5 4 | L O R D H O B O.C O M

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

REAL FOOD

11

DEPT. COMMERCE DRINKS

SHINE BOX

Moonshine 152 brings the ’shine and more to DOT Ave

THE ONLY THING THAT WOULD MAKE THIS BETTER IS IF IT WERE THE SIZE OF A BATHTUB

EATS

RAMEN HEAVEN

A new Harvard Square chain restaurant you can actually get behind

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

DIGBOSTON.C0M

03 04 15 – 03 11 15

12

Finding yourself championing the success of an international chain, what with the days of Great Variety upon us, led by a new generation of local culinary gods and gods-tobe, is not a common experience as of late.

However, that’s precisely what happens after the first slurp from a steaming bowl of ramen from the first Boston location of Harvard Square newcomer Santouka Ramen. And if it’s not a ready cure-all for the winter blues, it should be, given that the company’s founder, Hitoshi Hatanaka, cites the bitter cold of his roots in Shinagawa, Japan, as the inspiration behind getting the original Shinagawa Santouka off the ground back in 1988. That, and the urge to see smiles across the faces of the people eating it.

“I started this company simply because I wanted to see my own family have a hot bowl of delicious ramen. One of the happiest moment for me was to watch my own family taste the ramen that I made with a big smile on their face,” he tells us over email. “This concept of ‘making people smile with our food’ still stands till this day.”

And it all starts with the “tonkotsu” base broth, which is made from scratch and simmered on site with pork bones for 20 hours. Then, the ingredients of whichever style of ramen you’re going with (shio, shoyu, miso) are bathed and dressed, with noodles and toppings (fish cake, dry seaweed, bamboo shoots, mushrooms), carefully designed with everything placed in specific locations in the bowl. Timers on the cauldrons ensure that each batch is pulled at the right time after properly simmering, so that the bowl you’ve ordered has the freshest stuff they can ladle out. The steel of the cauldrons is visible through a glass window as you enter the communal seating dining space, the way a small brewery displays the places where its particular magic happens. Only instead of suds, it’s the delicious soup the pork belly sits in when you get the spicy and savory kara miso ramen (all praise its name).

The space itself is industrial and minimal, with a lot of gray and black tones, as well as dramatic overhead “spider” lighting, a custom job that’s meant to turn a string of collapsible desk lamps into a hovering good luck charm of arachnid illumination (spiderwebs are thought to be good luck because they “capture” good things and bring them into your life).

Already there have been droves of new fans flocking here, and even the staff is enthusiastic about the offerings. In the case of one of their hostesses, Jasmine, the arrival of Santouka has not only meant an exciting new job in the bustling Harvard Square dining scene, it’s even woken up her son’s tastebuds to the glory of ramen. “My four-year-old son loves the food and learning some Japanese,” she says with a laugh. “He even brings chopsticks everywhere, and now I have to give him sushi [and ramen] for lunch.”

Luckily she won’t have to travel far for the good stuff. >> SANTOUKA RAMEN. NOW OPEN. 1 BOW ST., CAMBRIDGE. 617-945-1460. SANTOUKA.CO.JP/EN

The harsh winter that has befallen us has taken much. It’s taken our patience from us, our warmth, and our ability to stay sane in the hands of the MBTA. And if there’s anything it’s given us, it’s an appreciation for the times when a solid new neighborhood joint rises up to sate the thirst of the weary commuter, cocktail enthusiast, and restaurant industry toiler alike.

Enter: Moonshine 152, the new incarnation of the former Franklin Southie location. As bar manager Jesse Dupuis puts it, its arrival (along with its “industry brunch” for restaurant workers) is well timed.

“We wanted to give Southie a solid, reliable spot for well-crafted cocktails in a relaxed setting,” he says.

“And we also wanted to bring in a roster of drinks crafted by bartender friends of ours from great spots across town, made by people that don’t always get written about.”

That roster can be found on the “here in spirits” portion of the drinks menu, featuring novel creations like the “Channel Boston” by Mike Rose of Tavern Road in Ft. Point, using rye, Montenegro, and Campari, or the gin-, lime- and bitters-fueled “Southie Yacht Club”

by Moira Horan of Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar, the latter of which features Dupuis’ housemade orgeat.

But naturally, given the name, you’d expect there to be some ’shine love on the menu. And there is, in the form of the seasonal moonshine offerings. The winterthemed version Dupuis created for the opening uses Tennessee 100-proof moonshine that he “washes” for 72 hours with heaps of fresh Grand Gala apples (“the sugar in the fruit takes a bit of the alcohol bite out, but keeps the ’shine noticeable,” he says), finished with house-made cinnamon syrup, lemon, and a touch of cider.

“When [I heard] the name I knew I was going to have to put a little thought into how we were going to do [moonshine],” says Dupuis. “It’s not the most approachable spirit, so I wanted to do a seasonal drink, let the apples mellow it out a bit.”

If you’ve ever had a bender on white lightning, you’ll appreciate someone attempting to add some mellow to a moonshine mixer.

Even if it just makes you drink twice as much. >> MOONSHINE 152. NOW OPEN. 152 DORCHESTER AVE, BOSTON. 617-945-1460. MOONSHINE152.COM

SANTOUKA RAMEN PHOTO BY COURTESY SANTOUKA RAMEN | MOONSHINE 152 PHOTOS BY DAN MCCARTHY

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

BY KAREN CINPINSKI @CATSINPJS

WEDNESDAYS MARCH 4TH- 25TH 5-11pm SMALL PLATES JAMAICAN PEPPER SHRIMP: Spicy shrimp crusty bread

NEWS TO US FEATURE

Trillium Brewing Company expanding = more beer for you

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

TRILLIUM SQUARED

CARIBBEAN DREAMING

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

HONEST PINT SPONSORED BY SUNSET GRILL & TAP

13

BAHAMIAN CONCH FRITTERS: Spiced citrus aioli dipping sauce

EMPANADA:

Pastry stuffed with seasoned pork / mango habanero dipping sauce

PHOTOS COURTESY TRILLIUM BREWING COMPANY

Since opening in 2013, Trillium Brewing Company has built a reputation for creating some of the most respected and coveted beers in New England, and now that frothy goodness will be even more accessible to the masses.

Husband and wife team JC and Esther Tetreault recently announced that they’re expanding the Fort Point-based brewery, adding a second location in Canton, Mass.

This means more beer for you.

“We spent over a year searching for a location that was the right size and price, with proper specs and zoning for production of alcohol, and accessible enough for our supporters. It’s hard to find,” says Esther.

Trillium’s second facility, located near the University Station development, will be much larger than the Fort Point brewery. The current brewery is less than 2,300 square feet with a 600-square-foot retail space. The new space will be about 16,000 square feet, with a 4,000-square-foot retail area and a mezzanine that’ll house barrels for aging brews. Added bonus: onsite parking.

“We worked really hard to build Trillium into a stable business and we’re completely maxed out in our current space,” says Esther, “JC and I are really excited to start with a blank slate to design a beautiful new brewery that allows us to operate with more breathing room.”

The couple has stressed that they won’t be moving from Fort Point, but will “loosen the reins on production volume” at the small Boston location and will “operate more like a pilot brewery” for smaller projects and new styles. Just as with the original Fort Point location, beer loyalists will be able to procure bottles and growlers, but Tetreault says they’re also working with the city to secure a license for on-premises swilling.

The Canton spot will also allow Trillium to significantly increase production with the capacity to churn out up to 10,000 barrels of beer annually between the two locations. As a frame of reference: Within Trillium’s first full year of production in 2014, they brewed 1,000 barrels of beer, and this year they’re on pace for about 1,500 barrels.

With ramped-up production, they’ll be able to continue self-distributing to current accounts more consistently while building relationships with new restaurants, bars and shops. “We can’t wait to get Trillium to more people,” she says.

According to Tetreault, the design and permitting process has already begun, with the new brewhouse equipment ordered and expected to be delivered by end of summer. The official opening date is still TBD, but Tetreault is optimistic that they’ll be making suds in the new digs by late 2015.

FRESH SEAFOOD CEVICHE:

Marinated in citrus / onion / red pepper / Fresh cilantro

BBQ JERK CHICKEN:

Wood smoked split chicken with traditional jerk seasonings

SPICY GOAT STEW:

Vegetable coconut curry broth

CARIBBEAN TILAPIA:

Wrapped in banana leaf / roasted mango butter

SIDES

Rice & beans / Mac & cheese / Grilled avocado / Rum glazed plantains

PAIN KILLER COCKTAIL:

Pusser’s Rum / fresh squeezed OJ /cream of coconut / pineapple juice / nutmeg

@MAGOUNSSALOON OLDEMAGOUNSSALOON

130 Brighton Avenue Allston, MA

518 Medford St Somerville

magounssaloon.com|617 - 7 76 - 2 6 0 0

ARTS ENTERTAINMENT

DIGBOSTON.C0M

03 04 15 – 03 11 15

14

THURS 3.5

FRI 3.6 - SAT 3.7 FRI 3.6

FRI 3.6

SAT 3.7

MON 3.9

Our Lives Matter: Art as Protest

ArtsEmerson Concerts Presents: A downtown music extravaganza

ICA First Fridays: Southern Exposure

Pat Lipsky at ACME Fine Art

SexyFunTime: A Party for Your Inner Kid

Arts on Our Avenues

power of the people don’t stop

can’t stop the beat

head south, minus the guns and bigotry

get lost in color

leave the whip-its at home

takin’ it to the streets

Are civil rights important to you? Cool. How about art?

Nice! The good folks over at Somerville Community Access Television plan to bring the two together for an evening of creative expression and cathartic conversation. Come hang out with local artists, poets, and performers, and prepare to leave inspired.

What if we told you that you could find killer local music in downtown Boston?

Huh?! Come be a part of history as ArtsEmerson presents its second concert series dedicated to showcasing artists who are usually excluded from Boston’s so-called entertainment district, put together by Dig contributor and the Hills’ own singer/ songwriter Ryan Walsh.

If you haven’t yet braved the frozen tundra and made it out to the ICA for the new exhibit When the Stars Begin to Fall, maybe some food and alcohol will convince you. The museum invites all to celebrate a lil’ Southern hospitality with art, music, cuisine, and cocktails.

This is totally one of those things that would be awesome to attend high … just saying. Get your highbrow culture fix and check out the work of this geometric abstraction master at ACME’s opening reception. The collection is the gallery’s first solo exhibit of Lipsky’s work, and covers her career since 1995.

Ever wish you could go back to the days of slumber parties and spin-thebottle, minus the crippling awkwardness? SexyFunTime takes partying to the next level with comedy, interactive performance, dancing, games, storytelling, snacks … shall we go on? Plus, it’s all inspired by scientific studies, so maybe you’ll learn a little something too.

Braving the Green Line is worth it for this one-nightonly pop-up gallery. Public art! Local performers!

Food! Keynote speaker Julie Burros, Arts Czar, will also be making an appearance!

It’s for a great cause, too: proceeds will go to Allston Village Main Streets, a neighborhood nonprofit that keeps Allston weird (and a better place to live).

SCATV. 90 Union Sq., Somerville. 7pm/FREE. scatvsomerville.org

Paramount Center.

559 Washington St., Boston.

9pm/$10 advance + $12 door. artsemerson.org

Institute of Contemporary Art. 100 Northern Ave., Boston. 5pm/$15 (free for members)/21+. icaboston.org

ACME Fine Art. 450 Harrison Ave., Suite 305, Boston. 6pm/FREE. acmefineart.com

Arts at the Armory.

191 Highland Ave., Somerville. 7pm/$23/21+.

AFHI.us

Brighton Music Hall.

158 Brighton Ave., Allston.

6:30pm/$1+ donation, suggested $20.15. allstonvillage.com

PHOTO BY HENRY DANE

MORE SNOW? WELL, IN THE WORDS OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST, “ME!”

15

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

MUSIC

MUSIC

GOLDEN AGE

LADY LAMB JAMBS Accessibly sticking to her guns

The Longwalls rise again

BY PAIGE CHAPLIN @PAIGECHAPLIN

BY MARTÍN CABALLERO @_EL_CABALLERO

Today’s mainstream pop typically consists of a dozen co-writers for predictable songwriting and unnaturally overproduced crap music, but Lady Lamb (real name Aly Spaltro) is proving to be an exception to that rotten rule, and emerging as a powerhouse solo artist who writes and arranges 100 percent of her material.

Consider picking up her new album—After, released yesterday—as a well-deserved gift for you ears to get you through these last few weeks of winter. The songs included are by no means the pop dreck you’d hear on the radio, and are noticeably more concise than her older material.

Speaking from her new Brooklyn abode, Spaltro says that the new record is somewhat a progressive departure from her first album.

“I had one foot in [the first record] Ripely Pine, and one foot in the new album,” she says. “I’m generally not into form, which is why I wanted to try it out this time. I wasn’t overly formulaic, but I wanted to see what I could do differently.”

Still, Lady Lamb remains a solo project.

“We live in a great time when it comes to being self-reliant. [With a computer] you can write a whole orchestra if you want,” she says nonchalantly, as if writing and arranging a 12song album is an easy feat. “I just call on my friends to come help bring those arrangements to life on tour.”

She’s gearing up for her first full headlining tour with Cuddle Magic, Henri Jamison, and Rathborne opening and joining her on select dates. “It’s my most special tour to date,” she says. “All my hard work and hustling all these years has finally paid off.”

As for the record, it touches upon the anxiety of getting along in the world without getting sanctimonious. “Billions of Eyes” sings of little moments, like sharing looks with strangers on the subway, or the everything-is-going-to-bealright feeling produced by falling into a pile of warm laundry. Conversely, she also rants about a saintly ancestor’s dead body being moved to the Vatican. Whether or not it’s factual or true doesn’t matter, really. What’s important is that each track is an unpredictable journey, bringing you back to that unfailing Lady Lamb-ness that is already evident in her work, and will likely be for the foreseeable future.

BEST EPISODE OF PIMP MY RIDE EVER It’s been a while since Boston has seen alt-indie rockers The Longwalls performing live; since their last release, 2012’s Kowloon EP, they’ve played about two shows, according to singer/instrumentalist Brandon Comstock. Between recording their new album The Gold Standard, busy nine-tofive schedules, and the fact that, as bassist Dan London says, “When you are 35, your friends will now tell you that the club smells like piss,” the gigs haven’t exactly been coming fast and thick, making The Longwalls’ album release show this Saturday all the more special.

“The thing about Boston is,” explains Comstock, at the band’s rehearsal space in Arlington, “if you go underground for 18 months and practice and have kids and get married and make an album, you come out and all the bands you used to play with are gone. And the people you knew that could help you get shows have moved away.”

That’s part of the reason, Comstock says, the band chose The Bridge Sound & Stage, a studio and performance space in Cambridge where they recorded The Gold Standard, to host their (free) return performance this Saturday. After releasing three EPs—Dark Academy, Careers in Science, and Kowloon—between 2010 and 2012, the group, which includes singer/guitarist and lead songwriter Alan Wuorinen and percussionist Kurt von Stetten, scrapped their usual two-day marathon recording process at Q Division Studios for a year spent crafting their second full-length album. Comstock alludes to “leaving some things on the table” on their previous efforts, and the band was keen to take advantage of the slower pace this time around.

“I’m happy with everything on the record,” says Comstock.

“That’s the most fun I’ve had recording guitars ever. With every other album, it was just DIY trying to get it done. But being able to be in the room and having the amp up so loud, to be able to record feeling the amp hitting your face and hitting your chest, was really cool.”

After the darker edge of Kowloon, Gold Standard finds the band exploring richer sonic territory while keeping the lyrics simple but expressive.

“The ‘gold standard’ refers to the idea that you are 38 and therefore you should be married and own a home and have two children by now,” says Comstock with a wry smile.

“That’s a theme that I don’t have to try very hard to write about. Whatever the standards are, I don’t know very much about that.”

Adds Wuorinen, “It refers to something that’s not attainable or realistic and probably never was. It’s more of a reflection on those kind of ideas and ideals in America.”

Underneath its gentle sing-a-long refrain (“Put your money in gold,” Wuorinen soothes), “Gold Standard” bristles with modern angst, but the title track doesn’t define the album’s tone. The band eases fluidly between emotions and influences; “Simple Thoughts” has a slow-burning country flavor, while the vocals echo coldly through the beginning of “Rukia,” before the layers of reverb, piano, and percussion are brought to a boiling climax.

Best of all, they have an album’s worth of new songs to play live.

“It’s like golf,” says London. “All you need is one good swing and you’ll come back again. One good show gets you through your life. For the next three months, I’m ok.”

>> LADY LAMB W/ CUDDLE MAGIC. SAT 3.7. THE SINCLAIR, 52 CHURCH ST., CAMBRIDGE. 617.547.5200. 8PM/18+/$13.

LADYLAMBJAMS.COM

>> THE LONGWALLS GOLD STANDARD ALBUM RELEASE. SAT 3/7, THE BRIDGE SOUND & STAGE, 1 EDMUNDS ST., CAMBRIDGE. 8PM/FREE/21+. FACEBOOK.COM/THELONGWALLS

MUSIC EVENTS

DIGBOSTON.C0M

03 04 15 – 03 11 15

16

THU 3.5

PIANO POP FEST JUKEBOX THE GHOST + LITTLE DAYLIGHT + SECRET SOMEONES

[Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm Ave., Boston.

7pm/all ages/$26. crossroadspresents.com]

FRI 3.6

PROG BLUEGRASS PUNCH BROTHERS

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

7pm/all ages/$40. houseofblues.com]

ARCADE FIRE SIDE PROJECT WILL BUTLER + TEEN

[Middle East Downstairs, 480 Mass Ave., Cambridge.

9pm/18+/$16. mideastclub.com]

MON 3.9

TUE 3.10

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/ $8. greatscottboston.com]

[Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm Ave., Boston. 7pm/18+/$20. crossroadspresents.com]

POP-PUNK + SHOEGAZE GOODNESS YEEHAW! + BURGLARY YEARS + JOHN GALM + SHAMPOO

MUSIC FOR CRAZY PEOPLE OF MONTREAL + DEERHOOF + YONATAN GAT

WED 3.11

CINEMATIC POP MILO GREENE + WARDELL

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$16. sinclaircambridge.com]

NEWS TO US

mideastclub.com | zuzubar.com (617) 864-EAST | ticketweb.com

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

CENTRAL SQ. CAMBRIDGE, MA

512 Mass. Ave. Central Sq. Cambridge, MA 617-576-6260 phoenixlandingbar.com

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

Boston’s Best Irish Pub

17

-DOWNSTAIRSFRI 3/6 - CROSSROADS PRESENTS:

WILLTEEN BUTLER

SAT 3/7 - LEEDZ PRESENTS: PETE ROCK & SLUM VILLAGE FRI 3/8

SUN 3/9 - POST PAX PARTY FREEZEPOP FRI 3/10 - LEEDZ PRESENTS:

FASHAWN - UPSTAIRS -

WED 3/4 - BOWERY PRESENTS: THURS 3/5 (EP RELEASE) + BLINDERS

FRI 3/6 - 7PM

TWINSMITH (SADDLECREEK) FRI 3/6 - 10:30PM

KENNY LARKIN (ART OF DANSE/DETROIT)

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FILM

IRON GIANT

Experimental doc that doubles as observational diary

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

COOL! THEY MAKE A SEQUEL TO SNOWPIERCER! No one disputes that commercial documentaries provide a necessary venue for activists. Unfortunately for us aesthetes, they’re also unbearably boring. We’ve already memorized the genre hallmarks: infographics, talking heads pleading cases and plugging books, inspirational stories of perseverance, and a URL at the end directing you to a website where you can learn more about doing your part. These films do good in a pedestrian way, like the lone activist outside Wal-Mart distributing slickly produced pamphlets.

Then there are the movies made by residents of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, which sends filmmakers to distant lands or remote locations for full immersion in the local cultures there. Only after that do they shoot and edit, aiming for an effect more anthropological than informational, using sights and sounds in lieu of statistics. Call it the antidote to the average documentary disease.

And SEL alum J.P. Sniadecki utilized his time spent absorbing train life in China to create The Iron Ministry, his latest work being shown this weekend at Harvard. The images were shot entirely on trains and span innumerable rails, all while the camera never touches solid ground. The film’s structure mirrors a stranger’s experience in a foreign land. First are the images and noises (overture), then impressions (observation), indirect engagement (conversations), and finally conversation (interviews); this is an experimental documentary doubling as an observational diary.

It’s not hard to identify with some of the depicted commonalitiesed of train life; Sniadecki has probably spent more time on the rails than Bostonians on the MBTA this winter. First come the sounds of screeching brakes and rattling wheels on a black screen, then visuals tracking the wires and contours of a cabin car, birthing us into the location. We observe riders from afar, from the meticulous organization of market vendors loading their meats to the jarring violence found when they slice them up. Ministry emphasizes the sensual pleasures of observing the unknown.

What am I seeing? Where are we going? What food is that?

One scene captures a boy improvising an astonishing routine based on a conductor’s announcements instructing passengers to bring flammable objects on board (as required by population control ordinances). Another watches strangers discuss the role of Islamic citizens in Chinese life with awkward trepidation. Cops roam throughout, casting eyes over potentially subversive comments. Sniadecki eventually interviews riders directly; when a conductor speaks critically about the economic realities of the system, he shifts his eyes and speaks in starts and stops, as if waiting for someone to shut him up. Sniadecki’s camera bounces between them, eagerly eavesdropping, searching for fault lines and common connections.

We wouldn’t watch the MBTA equivalent of The Iron Ministry (it would be far too traumatizing). Is that to say that Ministry relies on an Other’s perspective? Are the sensations entertaining only because we’re ignorant to them culturally? Perhaps.

But Sniadecki’s eye on daily rituals—and his willingness to listen to comments and conversations without pushing toward any specific conclusion—provides the film with humanist value that transcends theoretical double-talk. He doesn’t polemicize because he doesn’t have to. He lets us look and listen. >> THE IRON MINISTRY AT THE HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE. 3/6. 7PM/UNRATED/$12. 82 MINS. POST-SCREENING Q&A W/ DIRECTOR J.P. SNIADECKI.

FILM EVENTS THU 3.5

LYNCH’S LAST WHATSIT INLAND EMPIRE

[Brattle Theatre.

40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 4pm, 7:30pm/ unrated/$9-11. brattlefilm.org]

DIGBOSTON.C0M

03 04 15 – 03 11 15

18

DIRECT FROM PARK CITY SUNDANCE ANIMATED SHORTS 2014

[The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.

100 Northern Ave., Boston.

7pm/unrated/$5-10. icaboston.org]

SUN 3.8

W.C. FIELDS TIMES TWO SALLY OF THE SAWDUST AND RUNNING WILD

[Somerville Theatre.

55 Davis Sq., Somerville.

2pm/Unrated/$12-15. feitheatres.com/somervilletheatre] MON 3.9

PRESENTED BY THE DOCYARD UNDERGROUND

[Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge.

7pm/Unrated/$9-11. brattlefilm.org]

TUE 3.10

A WESTERN OUT EAST A TOUCH OF SIN

[MIT Lecture Series.

77 Mass Ave. Room 26-100, Cambridge. 7:30pm/ unrated/$4. lsc.mit.edu]

WED 3.11

LIKE A BOSS HARD TO BE A GOD

[Brattle Theatre.

40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 4pm, 7:30pm/ unrated/$9-11. brattlefilm.org]

NEWS TO US

THEATER

FEATURE

NO ONE IS AN ISLAND

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

‘Greenland’ navigates the troubled waters of family friction

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

BY SPENCER SHANNON @SUSPENCEY

19

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PHOTO BY DANIELLE FAUTEUX JACQUES

In 2005, an American explorer named Dennis Schmitt stumbled upon an island called Uunartoq Qeqertaq (Greenlandic for “The Warming Island”) more than 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Disturbingly, as recently as 2002, it wasn’t an island at all, but was attached to the mainland by glacial ice. In less than three years, the ice shelves had rapidly retreated more than six miles, unmooring The Warming Island and providing many members of the scientific community with concrete evidence of the impending consequences of climate change.

For Nicolas Billon, this dramatic ecological event also served as the inspiration for Greenland, one of three plays in his thematically linked trilogy, “Fault Lines,” which explores the many metaphoric parallels between our personal tragedies and our planet’s. The titles—Greenland, Iceland, and Faroe Islands—evoke ideas of what it means to be an “island” and hint at the central concerns of each play.

“I’d seen one of Nicholas’ plays in Halifax and I just fell in love with it,” says director Meg Taintor. “It was one of those things where I supposed to go see another show the next night and I cancelled it and bought another ticket to see his show again.”

Taintor soon got her hands on a copy of the “Fault Lines” trilogy and eagerly read the whole thing in one night while staying at a hostel in Toronto—the same city in which Greenland takes place.

“It’s not really the type of work I really do or that I’m normally drawn to. It’s really spare, it’s really elegant, and it’s really—it’s not underwritten, but it’s written in such a way that shows he just trusts his actors and his directors so much,” Taintor explains. “Because you can get in the way of this play really easily. And so for us the challenge was to do less.”

Greenland is unique in its sparseness. The play consists of just three monologues from its principal characters: Jonathan, a prominent glaciologist, Judith, a working actor who lives with Jonathan in Toronto, and Tanya, their fourteen-year-old niece. At a runtime of just one hour, the play manages to deal an incredible blow of emotional weight as the spotlight moves from one person to the next.

“Fault lines are the place where two things are rubbing up against each other and causing friction. Greenland takes its root story from a geological event revealed by climate change, but it’s actually about the cracks between a family and how those are revealed during tragedy,” Taintor says. “Greenland means different things to the characters—freedom; the thing destroying a marriage; the idea of connection.”

She was also attracted to the play by its candid treatment of climate change, as the scientific community is one that is not often focused on in contemporary theater.

It’s also not taken particularly seriously in our social conscience, but as our current winter continues to make clear, climate change is not a problem with any odds of disappearing soon.

“It’s not an activism play,” Taintor clarifies. “But what it does do—and I think this is a bit of a political statement—is treat climate change as a fact. No one in this play questions it. Small acts, or small refusals to act, compounded over time, lead to huge catastrophic problems, which is not unlike what is happening to this family. And just like climate change, they are aware that the way they are behaving is destructive on some level, but they still do it, and they end up in this barren relationship that we see them in. As the receding glaciers pull back, they reveal that what we once thought was a complete whole is actually made up of smaller parts.”

Informal talkbacks will take place after each performance, and Taintor hopes audiences will stay and help create the most important product of any theatre experience—conversation.

ARTS

WONDERS-FUL

Vaudeville variety show works magic on Somerville stage

BY SPENCER SHANNON @SUSPENCEY

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DIGBOSTON.C0M

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Organizing a variety show full of engaging performers is no easy feat. Even after convincing each artist to join the lineup, you’ll find conflicting schedules and sudden cancellations are thrown into the mix, along with travel accommodations to plan and other minutiae that pile up in the pre-planning of a concert—and that’s just for a one-night engagement. Musician Wesley Stace (stage name John Wesley Harding) knows all about it, as he has curated and produced Cabinet of Wonders, his monthly series of variety shows based in New York City, since 2009.

“Why would you stop?” he replies when asked what keeps him going. “If you think about it the other way, it’s really fun. Who wouldn’t want to put on a show of everything that they like?”

He speaks excitedly and amicably over the phone, taking a break from the poetry he’s writing, which will be read at the beginning of his upcoming show in Somerville, which was scheduled exclusively for WBUR. While none of the shows follow a specific theme, Cabinet of Wonders is driven by three intersecting tenants: music, literature, and comedy.

“What I realized was that all novelists want to be musicians really, deep down.

All musicians want to be listened to, and have their lyrics taken seriously. And in the middle of all that, a comedian can have an audience respond to them and what they’re doing and sort of punctuate the whole thing with laughter,” Stace says. “So the idea was to bring it all together. I don’t want to constrain—I like people doing what they want to do.”

And Stace is doing something right. Cabinet of Wonders has enjoyed a long history of often sold-out shows, and used to appear regularly as a special podcast on NPR. Past performers include Andrew Bird and MGMT frontman Andrew VanWyngarden, as well as writers Rick Moody and Stephen Elliot. Comedian Eugene Mirman is a regular, and appears in almost every show.

“The thing about variety is that you know there’ll be something that you like, something you had no idea you would like and possibly had never heard of, and if there’s something you perhaps didn’t like, things are moving quickly, so the great news is it’ll be over soon,” Stace says. “What I try to foster is as much collaboration between the acts as possible. That’s the magic stuff.” >> WBUR’S SERIOUS FUN PRESENTS: CABINET OF WONDERS. SOMERVILLE THEATRE, 55 DAVIS SQ., SOMERVILLE. MARCH 5/8PM/$25-35. FEITHEATRES.COM

PHOTO BY EBET ROBERTS

617-776-2600

NEWS TO US FEATURE DEPT. OF COMMERCE ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE DEFINITELY SLOWER THAN THEY APPEAR.

SECRET ASIAN MAN

BY TAK TOYOSHIMA @TAKTOYOSHIMA

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY WHATS4BREAKFAST.COM

Wednesday MARCH 4 8:30 pm

SHOW‘N SELL ART GALLERY

Leah V (DJ) Ryan Adams and Spenser MacLeod (Artists) No Cover 18+ Thursday MARCH 5 10 pm

RHOAMING PRESENTS

NEAUX MERCI Crvftsmen, DJ Papadon Hip-hop, Reggae, Party Jams 10 pm Downstairs $10 Friday MARCH 6 10 pm

SHAKE! Aden, Will Martin, Ali Berger, Techno, House, Bass, Acid downstairs $10 before 11pm, $15 after 21+

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GAME NIGHT (video games, card games & board games) FREE 18+ $10 for Magic The Gathering Booster Draft

DIGBOSTON.C0M

03 04 15 – 03 11 15

22

SAVAGE LOVE

BRIEF OF HEARTS

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE Wife issues. Lack of intimacy. Cuckold, etc.

Need Help While I typically encourage people to keep their questions brief, it is possible to be too brief, NH. But I’ve gotten so many questions from wannabe cuckolds with wife issues over the years that I’m going to hazard a series of guesses and take a shot at advising you…

I’m guessing you’re a straight guy and you’re interested in cuckolding—the kink where the wife sleeps with other men, and either she tells the husband about her adventures or she “forces” him to watch her with other men. Cuckolding can involve elements of humiliation and/or degradation, and in some cases includes “forced bi” interactions between the cuckolded husband and the men his wife “cheats” on him with. And I’m also guessing you told the wife about your interest in cuckolding and she wasn’t interested and you wound up arguing about it, NH, and now your sex life is in the toilet, aka “lack of intimacy.”

So what do you do now? You drop it, NH, as cuckolding—which is a big ask for the wife (the sexual and emotional risks fall on her)—is a kink that both partners have to be equally excited about

exploring. If she doesn’t want to go there, NH, then you’re not going there. Not getting to explore cuckolding—and dropping the subject—is the price of admission you’ll have to pay to revive your sex life.

And if restoring your sex life isn’t incentive enough to drop the subject, NH, this Savage Love reader’s experience might inspire you to drop it: “My husband, almost exactly 10 years older than me, confessed a cuckold fetish to me shortly before our fifth anniversary,” a happily married straight lady wrote (her letter appeared in “Meet the Monogamish,” January 4, 2012). “I said no, but a seed was planted: Whenever I would develop a crush on another man, it would occur to me that I could sleep with him if I wanted to.” She eventually met someone she wanted to sleep with and went back to her husband—five years later—to ask if he was still interested in cuckolding. He was—and guess what?

He’s a cuckold now. I had to run an edited version of her letter, so this bit didn’t make it into the column, but the only reason this woman wound up exploring cuckolding was because her husband respected her initial “no” and wasn’t pressuring her to reconsider.

Because she didn’t feel like he was miserably unhappy with the status quo—a strictly monogamous status quo—and because she didn’t feel like he would blow up if she got cold feet, she felt secure enough to go there.

So shut the fuck up, NH, and you may eventually get what you want.

23

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US