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DEAR READER When Dan McCarthy and I took over the helm at DigBoston two years ago this month, we decided that, unlike in years past, the weekly letter to readers would always be written by the same person. Not just to advertise the authoritarian way that things run around here, with Dan laid up eating gigantic turkey legs while the rest of us toil in mud, but rather because we found ourselves repeating one another. In any case, we all agreed, albeit at lancepoint, to have a central voice that people hear from every Wednesday.

Naturally I’m kidding about Dan’s kingly behavior. The truth is that he, like the rest of us on staff and in the freelance wings, work tirelessly to bring you the absolute best of alternative Boston each week, whether that means music and arts or protests and insanity. Unlike me at least, however, Dan has yet to take more than two personal days off in a row since we arrived in our editorial roles shortly after the bombing of the Boston Marathon.

That’s an awful marker to recall our coming to the Dig, but it’s also impossible to forget, especially as the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev draws to a close. That was a quick two years.

With that said, we’re all happy to see that Jizz isn’t the only person who is finally getting the long vacation they deserve, And I promise, as soon as Dan gets back from his trip to parts unknown, we’ll return to the usual order of operations. Until then, read on …

BY CHRIS FARAONE, NEWS + FEATURES EDITOR

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Marc Shepard OPERATIONS 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

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noun puhn-ish-muhnt-al-a-dee 1. When a significant number of confused and dishonored citizens applaud the eye-for-an-eye mentality, resulting in severe emotional unrest among the masses. Or, as Gandhi put it, ‘That shitty attitude which makes the whole damn world go blind.’

OH, CRUEL WORLD Dear First Time Allston Summer Dude, Yes, I said “dude.”

Because most ladies don’t sit around on their porches touching their balls, drinking shitty beer, and catcalling women as they walk by. Maybe we do the shitty beer part, but in general you guys who are new to town need the annual hot weather lesson about how to behave when it gets sticky around here. The street and sidewalk aren’t your trash cans, the park isn’t for your dog to spray diarrhea everywhere, and most importantly, there are families that live around here. Don’t take my word for it though; as you may have heard, there’s a loosely organized roving gang of masked thugs with spiked bats and enormous studded dildos who pulverize pathetic postpubescent shits who harass passing women. Cat-call at your own risk, fuckers.

FEATURE

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NEWS US

FOSSIL FOUL NEWS TO US

At Jesuit BC, you have to protest for your right to protest

BY SAMANTHA COSTANZO, DECLAN DUGGAN, DANIEL MUNDO, + KRISTINA REX

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At a table tucked away in a corner of a busy Boston College dining hall, Erin Sutton lowers her voice as she talks about her school’s refusal to recognize a club that promotes the divestment of BC’s holdings in fossil fuel companies.

“I’m at the point right now where I’m getting so afraid, I may stop participating in the on-campus movement and focus on my off-campus work,” says Sutton, whose group, Climate Justice, was expressly forbidden (by university administrators) from posting fliers, schedule events, solicit funding, recruit members, or hold meetings on campus.

“The grounds for getting in trouble have changed, and we don’t want to be in trouble,” says Sutton, who was threatened with disciplinary action for co-organizing a rally in December, and who fears a stain on her record as she pursues a PhD in physics. “It’s really frightening that they can do this.”

It’s well known beyond campus that BC is a Jesuit Catholic institution with a social justice mission. The school’s slogan is, “Men and women for others,” and students have a longstanding tradition of community involvement. This year, however, many Eagles have found themselves fighting what they view as harsh restrictions on expressing opinions related to issues ranging from fossil-fuel divestment to racial inequality and gay rights.

“There’s too many limits, too many loopholes to jump through,” says Dan DeLeon, a student who was threatened with disciplinary action after participating in a die-in on campus. He was there to protest the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, who were both killed by police.

School authorities cited DeLeon’s lack of the required paperwork to protest.

The limits appear to be tighter than in years past. Though Climate Justice BC was permitted to hold a rally calling for divestment in December, they were denied a subsequent request in February. When the group went ahead anyway, four members were given disciplinary sanctions. Two are appealing the decision.

According to Thomas Mogan, dean of students, the university was concerned about safety on the day of the wintertime prayer rally. At the time, trucks were hauling snow away from massive banks, and people in the area had been injured by plows. Letting an unregistered student group hold an event, Mogan says, opens up the university to liability.

As for the aforementioned die-in, Mogan says the action interfered with campus workers who were moving some of the resident Jesuit priests who live at BC back into their newly renovated building. Nevertheless, students blame financial and political reasons, not tall snow banks or moving trucks, for the clampdowns.

“We’re not asking the university to take a stance [on issues like gay marriage],” says Martin Casiano, vice president of diversity and inclusion for the Undergraduate Government of Boston College. “We’re asking that they support and validate LGBTQ students here rather than just remaining silent.”

Other minority groups also feel unfairly muted. The die-in over Ferguson and Staten Island “was part of showing the outrage a lot of students were feeling,” says DeLeon—“feeling like, well I’m at a predominantly white institution and the fact that black kids are being killed and my university … doesn’t even want to address the issue.”

The tension on campus bubbled over earlier this year when students from other area universities and colleges, including MIT and Brandeis, held a rally at BC in support of free speech and fossil-fuel divestment. “The crazy part of this at BC is the news that students are getting in trouble for talking about this stuff,” environmentalist Bill McKibben, who attended the protest, told the BC student newspaper, the Heights.

BC’s rules for what students can say, and how, are complex. For starters, even Mogan says the event-permitting policy is “ambiguous.” Students aren’t supposed to distribute leaflets or hold signs without permission from the Office of Student Involvement. Likewise, as per the university’s Student Organization Manual, they’re not allowed to assemble without approval from the dean of students. Under these rules, large events have to be proposed 45 days in advance, while protests must be announced 48 hours ahead of time. All this while administrators can shut events down, dissolve campus organizations, and limit what outside speakers can say, including phrases such as “gay marriage.”

The manual also bans groups whose positions “are not consistent with the mission of Boston College.” For that apparent reason, the fossil-fuel divestment group has been rejected at least six times in its efforts to become a registered student organization. Meanwhile, the university has said that it will not, in fact, divest. On another front, while graduate students were recently able to invite a gay rights advocate to speak at BC, Casiano says that undergraduates were denied that freedom.

FOSSIL FOUL continued on pg. 6

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FOSSIL FOUL continued from pg. 4 “Whether we are a Catholic, Jesuit university or not, our LGBTQ people are people, and they are students here who deserve to be respected and celebrated and made to feel like they are a part of this community,” Casiano says. He adds, “I don’t understand how anything I just said is not in line with Jesuit, Catholic ideals.”

Gus Burkett, director of the Office of Student Involvement, responds: “Nothing is necessarily black and white, but you can’t go exactly against Catholic teachings.”

Nonetheless, some other Catholic universities are less restrictive. Notre Dame also bans activities that contradict Catholic teachings, but has a “Gender Relations Center” for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning students. Georgetown calls free speech “central to the life of the university.”

The student government appears to be on the case. Tensions rose high enough last year for the student government to issue a report suggesting reforms, including the establishment of a committee on free expression, the right to post fliers and hang banners without censorship, and the designation of specific areas for demonstrations without prior approval.

Some students who have clashed with BC’s administration say things are slowly improving. “Every year since I’ve been here,” says Casiano, “our relationship with the administration has gotten a little bit better.” Sutton says the fossil-fuel group is moving closer to getting formal recognition as a registered student organization.

“They’ve been very responsive to us right now,” she says. “It’s not all bad. People do work with us.”

Of course, more help is always appreciated. Campus activists say their ongoing crusade aligns with BC ideals, and that members of the faculty should join them next time they cross paths during a protest.

“The Jesuits,” DeLeon says, “should have been laying down with us.”

This story was produced by students in the Advanced Journalism course at Boston College.

BLUNT TRUTH

DARE TO BE STUPID

On the pwning of the notorious anti-drug program

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Parents wishing to protect their kids from drugs should shield them from DARE. For those who don’t know, DARE is the zero tolerance drug education program that recently embarrassingly posted a satirical article to their website entitled, “Edible Marijuana Candies Kill 9 in Colorado, 12 at Coachella.” One of the funnier bits of fiction from that story: “For every one joint of marijuana, four teenagers become burdened with pregnancy.” Of course, none of it is true. Nevertheless, the piece was published on the DARE website and left there for over a month, with no retraction or explanation given after it was scrubbed from the domain.

Upon discovery of the screw up, I spoke to a DARE Regional Director Ron Brogan, who stated that it was a “simple error of a story that got picked up through a filter.”

Brogan refused comment on follow-up questions, like how the story remained on the DARE site for the entire month of April. He also had no comment when asked if parents should trust DARE to educate their kids when the program can’t even differentiate real news from the fake stuff.

A little background for those not familiar with the organization: DARE recruits cops without teaching credentials to come into schools and indoctrinate students.

As such, their drug prevention curriculum foolishly fails to make a clear distinction between cannabis and heroin. They also encourage children to snitch on their parents for drug use, though they’re not so quick to help those kids when the feds take mommy and daddy away.

Not surprisingly, DARE has a long history of humiliating itself. In 1992, researchers at Indiana University discovered that graduates of the program there had higher rates of hallucinogenic drug use than did those who never enrolled in DARE. In 2001, US Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher added them to the government’s blacklist of “Ineffective Primary Prevention Programs.” Piling on, in 2003 the US Government Accountability Office found that DARE had no statistically significant long-term effect on preventing youth illicit drug use, and that some populations of students were actually more likely to use illicit drugs after being exposed to the program.

In 2009, DARE admitted their previous 15 years had been a dismal failure, and launched a laughable “Keepin’ it Real” curriculum re-write that touts their new appreciation of science-based evidence. Nevertheless, there’s little indication that anything has really changed beyond the way that they deliver hyperbole.

Why is this important? Two months ago, Shona Banda, a medical marijuana mom with Crohn’s disease, had her home raided in Kansas after her 11-year-old son mentioned his mom’s marijuana use to his local DARE program. The kid was subsequently removed from his mother’s custody, the resulting lesson of that class being that cops aren’t your friends.

Still, despite their online fails and failures of practice, this dysfunctional program continues to receive federal and corporate funding. Another lesson: don’t trust everything you read on the internet, especially if it’s on the DARE site.

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MEDIA FARM

SHELL GAMES

These Olympic emails show who really runs Boston

BY MEDIA FARM @MEDIAFARM We no longer claim that the Boston media is asleep on the job in terms of holding these 2024 Olympics fabulists accountable. From the Boston Herald to the Dorchester Reporter, there has been laudable deep reporting, as well as some of the most brutal condemnations of Mass politics as usual since our last Speaker of the House got sentenced and shackled. All this week, we’re excited to run with Boston’s hard-questioning press, as public hearings heat up along with editorial pages (at least we assume the latter). Still, as the old saying goes, if you have nothing nasty to say, then there’s no point in writing Media Farm. On that note …

Earlier this month, Boston attorney Joel Fleming released a trove of emails he obtained from UMass Boston through the Freedom of Information Act. Along with the group No Boston 2024, Fleming trumpeted his discovery of the inside correspondence, which details seemingly insidious discussions between city officials, UMass researchers, Olympic organizers, and The Boston Foundation. The latter is New England’s towering philanthropic behemoth, with board members ranging from partners at the city’s leading law firms, to private equity and banking executives, to nonprofit, media, and university honchos. But even though the foundation is guided by influential business interests, the media barely reacted to the Fleming documents, many of which outlined the nauseatingly sleazy process by which TBF manufactured the production and dissemination of a laughably boosterish Boston 2024 study and press release.

Other than some Twitter murmurings and a couple of pokes from Boston Magazine, no one seemed to really care or notice that a front for potential Olympic investors is pulling so many strings. It’s anybody’s guess why there’s been such a lack of public outcry, though one email dated March 16 of this year, from TBF VP for Communications Mary Jo Meisner to the UMass researchers with whom her foundation was collaborating, contains information that may explain why the Boston Globe hasn’t plastered herein revelations across page one: I have talked to Brian McGrory and then Jen Peter, the Metro Editor, at the Globe. Jen will get back to me shortly about who she is assigning to write the story (either Mark Arsenault or Michael Levenson apparently) and then I will send them the electronic version of the report and the final press release. Not sure right now whether they’d be trying to interviews today or tomorrow or both. We are embargoing it for their exclusive use first on Wednesday morning. How I handle the rest of the media is still being finalized. So I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear back from her. Thanks.

It’s silly to read too much into this stuff, as all reportorial types must finagle with leviathans from time to time, but it’s still worth highlighting. Public shaming serves as a good advertisement for the Dig, as none of us consult Meisner or any other outsiders about editorial decisions.

In all fairness, the emails also include an intense exchange over op-eds and reports in the Globe, suggesting that while there are definitely hints of bondage, the foundation doesn’t have the grey lady in handcuffs just yet. In any case, while this publication has decisively condemned the Olympics, we’re still far less compromised than the pathetic sellout researchers at UMass. Take, for example, this email from Daniel Hodge, the Director of Economic and Public Policy Research at the UMass Donahue Institute, to TBF about a radio interview in which he shilled for them (bold ours).

Furthermore, while this publication has decisively condemned the Olympics, we’re still far less compromised than the pathetic sellout researchers at UMass. Take, for example, this email from Daniel Hodge, the Director of Economic and Public Policy Research at the UMass Donahue Institute, to TBF about a radio interview in which he shilled for them.

I did find a time to mention the Boston Foundation but hard to know what they’ll use from the interview … The first question started with the premise that this is a positive story of economic impacts, which after the incredibly balanced Globe article was sort of interesting. I tried to pivot to the quote we used in the press release that based on current plans there are positive economic impacts.

You can almost hear the smack of the professor’s lips on Meisner’s bottom. You have to feel for the guy, as he gets absolutely reamed by the demanding communications

maestro in other emails, like one in which she chastises edits he made to a press release (“I am not sure why you substituted that for the language that was in there”), and urges the foundation’s UMass monkeys to get in line. It’s hard to imagine how somebody like Hodge can live with himself, vicariously kissing the keister of millionaires through their tactless flack, and padding a study while calling yourself a professional. Behold another love note from Hodge to Meisner, in which he looks to shamelessly cherry pick studies that show how the Olympics benefit existing businesses: Hi Mary Jo - upon further reflection, I think it might be helpful to follow-up with this professor to see if [he] has any published research (or similar) in this area. He references a “small but persuasive body of literature supporting the B2B value …” and I think it would be instructive to learn more about this.

As seen in the emails, this prostituting of the public interest ran unabated though said so-called research process, as it most likely has in the time since. Then again, if the memos reveal anything, it’s that what they say is true about a fart having no nose. While Olympic planners have implied that their detractors are motivated by something other than goodwill toward the community, they’ve spent whole entire threads concocting ways to deride haters. Yet somehow they appear to really believe the TBF study was “independent,” even as their mutual cooperation negates everything that word stands for.

It will be interesting to see how TBF “handle[s] the rest of the media.” All things considered though, it should be clear by now how we see fit to handle them.

LETTERS FROM MY ALMA MATER

BU’s disgraceful handling of the Saida Grundy situation

BY EMILY HOPKINS @GENDERPIZZA

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Last week, Boston University President Robert Brown wrote a letter in regard to the recent controversy around tweets by incoming professor Saida Grundy, a black woman, feminist and sociologist set to start teaching African American studies in July. Brown said he supported Grundy’s right to free speech, but added that her comments could be classified as racist.

As of the end of April, the BU African Presidential Center was set to close in June for lack of funding. Also, the school’s undergraduate student body is only about 5 percent black.

In 2012, BU reported having “an extremely low percentage of African American/Black faculty”

compared to other comparable institutions; approximately of 2 percent of 2,000 full-timers self-identified as Black or African American.

My alma mater also sent out another kind of letter this past week: solicitations for donations.

One version of the letter said that gifts help make the university more valuable, which in turn makes me more valuable as a graduate. Meanwhile, the other letter claimed, “Boston University has a rich history of supporting women.” But my friend, who received the latter version, and I know better; we both attended BU through its 2012 sexual assault controversies, and as students fought for the right to have

adequate resources for those who need them.

BU still struggles with how it deals with sexual assault, but it’s no surprise that they claim otherwise. Just consider their record on diversity, and how administrators nonetheless claim pride in the school’s relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr., who earned his doctorate of philosophy at BU’s Division of Religious and Theological Studies. It makes you wonder: Assuming no one makes the huge mistake of firing Grundy, after she leaves her mark on BU, will her legacy be used as another selling point?

Or will we forget about Brown’s letter altogether?

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A LOVE OF THE GAME SUMMER READING EXCERPT

BY BIJAN C. BAYNE

One thing black children enjoyed about vacationing on the Vineyard was the opportunity to be themselves. There, young black children didn’t have to prove themselves to whites (as some felt they did in prep school or Boston’s suburbs), nor did they have to prove they were “black enough” for blacks. Even for kids at The Courts from inner cities, being brown-skinned with a ’fro was evidence of their ethnicity.

They didn’t have to resort to broken English or fighting or proficiency at disparaging someone’s mom to prove their worth. On the Island, whether among black kids, both natives and vacationers, their value as friends and companions was not based on whether they were game enough to smoke herb or what kind of clothes they had on.

Kids didn’t exclude one another for things they might in other cultural situations, such as “sounding white” when one spoke. On Martha’s Vineyard, they were accepted as they were. As for white people, most figured if you were black and had a summer home, who were they to look down on you? This attitude was shared by both year-’round residents and summer folk. Class and values decisions often trumped complexion in U.S. racial relations. No matter who played basketball together in Oak Bluffs, in terms of class, all were afforded the benefit of the doubt. One cannot understate the significance of that at an age when achieving the approval of one’s peers is everything.

Fans and participants of the summer leagues fondly recall the Martha’s Vineyard versus New Bedford Shootouts on Sundays, which Coach Schofield organized with New Bedford counterpart Peter Britto. Schofield said, “The New Bedford shoot-out was a once-a-season, gala Sunday event with all of the all-star members of both the ABA and the NBA leagues in Oak Bluffs. There was never a parking space to be had. I picked the New Bedford players at the corner service station in Vineyard Haven as they came in on the Scamanchie. Boston Globe All-Scholastic player Steve Gomes of New Bedford Holy Family came over for those highly contested games.”

During the summer of 1974, kids who played or watched basketball at The Courts were listening to music such as the Jackson 5 hit “Dancing Machine.” President Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, with his televised speech sandwiched between morning league games at The Courts and afternoon pickup play. That summer of 1974, a family from Delaware, Ohio (not far from Columbus), named the Coles, rented a cottage in Oak Bluffs. There was a fourteenyear-old daughter named Andrea, her twelve-year-old sister Kristen, and their ten-year-old brother Kenneth. Their dad worked for Pittsburgh Paint and Glass. The Coles went down to The Courts to watch a night game. Most of the players were older than they were, but there was a willowy boy from New Jersey about fifteen named “Thorny” who was playing.

He would take the ball easily from one end of the court to another, weaving around defenders, to make layups. Thorny was staying with several other kids from Newark, New Jersey.

They stayed in a house across the street from the Dancy place, where future Vineyard hoops whiz Marc Rivers grew up. They sat in the bleachers and rooted for Thorny, and they

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The above is excerpted from Martha’s Vineyard Basketball: How a Resort League Defied Notions of Race and Class. It is reprinted by permission of the author (Bijan C. Bayne) and Rowman & Littlefield. Born in Boston, Bijan is an award-winning Washington-based freelance columnist and critic, a founding member of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, and author of Sky Kings: Black Pioneers of Professional Basketball, which was named to the Suggested Reading List of the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2004. Check bijanc. wordpress.com for information on Vineyard readings this summer and more.

used a lot of slang. When a player missed a layup, they would derisively say, “He jocked,” meaning the guy choked. Or if someone missed an easy shot they would scoff, “He sold out!”

Thorny’s clique was mean spirited, probably because he was the only player at The Courts to whom they had ties.

In those days, when kids from the Island, and their summer friends, rode their bikes through West Chop in the direction of Vineyard Haven, the Island kids would point out that an old actress named Gloria Swanson lived in one of the stately homes there. Vineyarder Ehud Noor says that one summer, Boston Celtics star guard Jo Jo White rented a home in West Chop.

There were always prominent basketball figures on the Cape and Islands. NBA general manager Wayne Embry had a home on the Vineyard, and former Vineyard high school basketball player and summer leaguer Randall Fauteux’s father did some work on that house. Veteran NBA coach and general manager Bernie Bickerstaff has a summer home in East Chop and was often seen at The Courts in the 1990s.

NBA All-Star Alonzo Mourning played basketball at The Courts, and has relaxed on the small beach some people in Oak Bluffs call “The Inkwell.” In the 1990s, Gary Payton

and some of his Seattle Supersonics teammates worked out in Katama, near South Beach. One summer during that same decade, Boston Celtics star Dana Barros spent time with youngsters at former Celtic Ernie DiGregorio’s annual basketball camp on the Island. On January 9, 1993, longtime Boston Celtics play-by-play sportscaster Johnny Most died in Hyannis. In 1969, Most was the guest speaker at the first awards banquet for the Vineyard’s church basketball league.

The level of interest in The Courts in the 1990s was nothing like it was during the 1970s. Small kids and teenagers didn’t gravitate toward The Courts as they had two decades earlier. Personal video games, game rooms and arcades in downtown Oak Bluffs, and sports camps on the mainland competed for their attention. Other things did not change. Those who did play, or attended the night games, still brought their music along. In the late 1990s, one could hear teenagers at The Courts listening to recording artists Brandi and Monica. In the night club The Atlantic Connection, hours after the games, longtime friends who met during the summers of the 1970s, partied to LL Cool J’s “Doin’ It,” Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It,” and Biggie Smalls’ “Players’ Anthem.”

In the summer of 1995, the actor Jaleel White, known for his role as “Steve Urkel” on the popular sitcom Family Matters, played pickup ball at The Courts. The quality of pickup basketball at The Courts was great that summer. One summer league basketball star was Heath Estrella. Heath stood a shade over 6’2” and had played high school ball for the Vineyard before going on to play at Westfield State in Massachusetts. Heath was distinguished by his smooth movements and league scoring leadership at the “NBA” level. Physically, he looked a little like NFL quarterback Vinny Testaverde and NBA center Rony Seikaly. That summer the Island hired a new school superintendent. Kriner Cash, who had played college basketball with future NBAer Armond Hill at Princeton, moved his family from Washington, D.C., where he had served as dean of the school of education at Howard University. Cash, a Cincinnatian, had two high school–age sons, Kofi and Asil, and a middle school son, Jade. They all played and loved basketball. Kofi had been enrolled at DeMatha, the Washington, D.C., area’s premier prep basketball program, where he was a varsity player just as Amaury Bannister had been when his family moved in 1968. Asil played for Paint Branch High in the Silver Spring, Maryland, area. Of his son Asil’s game, Dr. Cash said, “But they haven’t seen the killer cross” (meaning crossover dribble).

Little did Cash know, “they” had, specifically in the person of a summer league star and Vineyard Regional High School player about Asil’s age named Blair Araujo.

11

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

SECRETS OF THE SUN SUMMER READING EXCERPT

BY MAKO YOSHIKAWA

12

but-nonexistent relationship with his daughters—seemed to disturb him little, if at all.

By the day of the memorial I knew that the fog I was in could not be grief. Pity, more like, along with confusion and probably guilt. My father was someone I had loved and feared as a child, hated as a teen, and foresworn as a young adult. In my early thirties, when my first novel had finally been accepted for publication and I was brimming over with good will to all, I contacted him and we reconnected, eventually falling into the schedule—cards at birthdays and Christmas, and lunch or dinner every three to four years—we maintained until his death. He was over 60 by then, with most of the arrogance and fight beaten out of him, and as we built up a small store of stilted conversations about science fiction, his latest travails with women, and the quality of the Japanese food we were eating, I began to see him as more broken than monstrous.

Now, in my mid-forties, I was close to my mother, secure in my friendships, fulfilled by my writing and teaching career and, after a number of failed relationships and many years of being single, finally happily married. I would not miss my father, I told myself at the memorial, nor would I wish him back. And I was right about that—but it was grief, even though it was months before I could recognize it, even though I reach for the subjunctive now to name its source: the man he could have been, a relationship he and I might have had.

Seven of my father’s colleagues had asked to eulogize him, and eager to fill seats, my sisters and I had said yes to all of them. At the service they stood up one by one, aging men in crumpled suits, and spoke with almost palpable nostalgia of the same heady time: the nineteen-sixties and ’seventies, when their lab, a top center for fusion research, overflowed with bright young men fired by the conviction

“Secrets of the Sun” first appeared in Southern Indiana Review. It is reprinted by permission of the author (copyright (c) 2012 by Mako Yoshikawa) and McPherson & Company from the anthology Every Father’s Daughter: Twenty-four Women Writers Remember Their Fathers. Mako is the author of the novels One Hundred and One Ways and Once Removed, and is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College in Boston. She will be at Brookline Booksmith at 4pm on May 23 to read simultaneously with women writers across America whose essays appear in Every Father’s Daughter.

that the discovery of a limitless, non-polluting energy source lay within their grasp. And in that company, they said, Shoichi Yoshikawa stood out—the best, most daring and dazzling thinker of them all, and the most idealistic, too. One speaker said that while they had all cared about the hope that fusion offered, my father’s commitment and passion had put them to shame. According to another, in the early sixties Shoichi had turned down a career in the budding field of computers, despite his certainty that it was the wave of the future, because he’d been equally sure he could create a clean energy source and had deemed that the more vital step for mankind.

I felt a pang—I had never thought to ask my father why he had chosen fusion or, for that matter, physics—and I wondered, too, if the speakers felt bitter as well as wistful about the years they had devoted to their cause. But sitting in the front row in a good black jacket with my hair pinned up, my mother’s mother’s locket at my throat and my own carefully crafted eulogy clenched tight in my hands, I could pay little heed to their words. I knew few specifics about my father’s work. If I had visited the lab in its heyday, I could not recall it. I did poorly in high school algebra, a failing for which he punished me with two pale blue knots along my jawline and a bump the size of a sand dollar on the back of my head; and I grew up to be a novelist with a ham-fisted grasp of numbers: when I asked about his research, he greeted my questions with impatience laced with contempt. What I did know was that my father had hungered for glory, and that the Nobel Prize was the goal around which he built his life. His colleagues were taking advantage of the eulogist’s license to exaggerate and, even, manufacture positive attributes, as I, the last speaker, was about to do.

I had been with my mother and sisters through the weekend of the memorial. Afterward we dispersed: my mother back to England, where she lives with my stepfather, and my sisters to California, where they work—one as a yoga teacher with a thriving practice, the other as a director in a high-powered internet company—and raise families.

I stayed on the East Coast, where I live with my husband, a filmmaker, and teach and write.

Through the winter I could not sleep, relax, or think well.

It was well into spring before I understood there might be a way out. Part of what was bothering me was that my father had never cared about my sisters and me, not in comparison to his work. But what if his colleagues had been telling the truth? If I could believe that my father’s devotion to physics and fusion had been born out of hope and idealism rather than a desire for the Nobel Prize, the memory of his indifference, I thought, might trouble me less. Surely it was one thing to be thrown over for the possibility of personal glory, and quite another to be sacrificed for the world and all its future generations.

BOOK ART COURTESY MCPHERSON & COMPANY | YOSHIKAWA PHOTO COURTESY MAKO YOSHIKAWA

DIGBOSTON.C0M

05 20 15 – 05 27 15

My father’s memorial service was held in December of 2010, in a Hyatt hotel on the strip mall–lined highway that connects the prettiest and most idyllic of all college towns, Princeton, to the rest of the world. Outside, where a parking lot went on almost as far as the eye could see, a cold fitful rain fell. Inside, the air was musty and stagnant, and despite valiant stabs at elegance—a red carpet, an oversized chandelier, and a mirror covering one wall—the gathering place looked all too clearly like what it was, an overcrowded multi-purpose conference room. My father, Shoichi Yoshikawa, had been an eminent physicist and an international leader in fusion energy research in America and his native Japan, and he had worked at his Princeton University lab for more than forty years before being pushed into early retirement in 2000. But he was arrogant and disagreeable, famously bad at working with others, and my sisters and I considered ourselves lucky that as many as fifty-odd mourners—neighbors, friends, and colleagues, as well as our mother, who had flown in from England for the weekend—had turned out for the event.

On the center table, alongside a few flower arrangements, we had placed two framed photos. Shoichi had died at seventy-six, and in his last decade he had been skinny in all the wrong places and bloated everywhere else.

His gaze was unfocused and his hands shook; although he had inherited a fortune as well as a parking lot in Tokyo from his father in Japan, he hated to spend money, and tended to dress in clothes he had bought by the boxful from the flea markets he loved to frequent—illfitting, cheaply made shirts and slacks from a wide assortment of eras and styles.

In the first photo, which was taken about a year before his death, the unhealthy color and puffiness of his face has been magically transformed into the rosy glow and plumpness of prosperity. He wears a beautiful navy suit jacket, a crisp white shirt, and a red power tie, and his white hair is glossy and full; he gazes up and to his right, serenely, a small smile on his lips.

In the second photo—unearthed by us from the chaos of his home, the same cramped, University-owned ranch house we had grown up in—he is maybe three years old. Dressed in a kimono, he stands on a chair, clutching its back for support.

His hair is cut in a bowl shape; his ears stick almost straight out; his eyes are wide-set and alert.

You can see the quality of his kimono in the fineness of its design, which is abstract and swirling; the seat cushion he stands on is covered in rich brocade and would do an emperor’s posterior proud.

He had had a long-term heart condition, but his death, a month earlier, was unexpected, and I had been taken aback at the thickness of the fog I found myself in afterward— indeed, at the fact I was in a fog at all. In his younger days my father had been capable of charm and even sweetness, but even back then he had a vicious streak that could catch you out, and over the years he became increasingly violent and abusive at home. In 1982, when I was 15, my mother finally left him, moving my sisters and me out during one of his long trips to Japan, and after that I saw him rarely.

He was a manic depressive, but unhappy beyond his depressive spells. Despite some professional success, during his last three decades he had been deeply, poisonously aware that what he had done was a fraction of what he, a man of singular gifts, could have achieved. By contrast, the failures of his personal life—his turbulent first marriage to my mother; his second, marginally less dysfunctional marriage to a woman who had died; the long string of short-term girlfriends, lovers, and flings that had followed, and his all-

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

DEPT. COMMERCE DRINKS

MILK-Y WAY

Finish your steak with a bourbon milk

EATS

IN THE MOODY’S

Everyone loves Josh Smith’s meat. And there’s good reason for that.

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

DIGBOSTON.C0M

05 20 15 – 05 27 15

14

Being in the presence of Josh Smith, owner of Moody’s Delicatessen in Waltham and its gastropub conjoined twin restaurant next door—Moody’s Backroom, which opened in early April—is being the presence of a true meat-centric bon vivant.

“It’s just the best thing in the world getting to start your day lighting a big fire,” he says while loading and igniting wood in his hulking custom copper-top oven. “Fucking primal. Look at that. That’s how we got to start today.”

To wised-up foodies in the city, Smith’s penchant for meat is well known. His New England Charcuterie project started about four years ago, when Smith was tinkering with recipes and running the early stages of his operation out of Blue Ribbon BBQ in Arlington. After the restaurant would shut down, Smith would head into a rented space in the walk-in cooler and hand-mix spices he’d haul over from his garage, grind and stuff his meat, and generally use his passion for the trade to fill the hours (and his meat casings) six days a week. And then … he’d give all the meat away to local chefs and friends as he continued to tinker with his recipes.

“What you’re seeing is 15 years of obsession,” he says. “We have 89 products, and every day I try to do the best I can to just make everything as perfect as possible.”

The obsession has paid off. Smith has created a destination gastropub-deli hybrid with Moody’s Backroom that anyone who has sampled his wares knows is worthy of the praise it has garnered to date, and moreover, the quick jaunt to Waltham from Boston. The svelte dining area and bar is lined with limestone reclaimed from a French abbey and capped by high ceilings held up by walls adorned with country-style jar work, with hanging legs of aging prosciutto made from pigs that Smith and his team actually raise themselves at a small family farm in Auburn. He works with an agricultural program out of Tufts University for which every year Smith and his team get 10-15 heritage breed piglets to be hand-raised and fed produce and veggies grown right on the farm.

“Once a month we bring in four whole animals, take the legs, and process them as prosciutto,” he says. “We age them for two years, and we’ve been doing it for three years at this point, so now we’re pulling and using the two-year-old stuff that’s been curing all this time.”

Which isn’t to say that it’s all process and no passion for Smith. Trained in classic French methods, Smith got the jones to open the spot two and a half years ago, after he had already traveled all over the country, getting into processing facilities and asking questions wherever possible. From there, he got the necessary certifications to turn the subterranean space (dubbed “the food lab”) at Moody’s into a fully certified meat-curing cleanroom that’s monitored and tested for purity at every level.

In addition to all of the outstanding meat variants (not to mention the knockout Cuban sandwich), Moody’s Backroom also house-ferments all its own sauerkraut and vegetables, spice kits, and sea salts from Italy and France (“both of my loves,” says Smith). In the end, it’s the attention to every minute detail as well as the creative takes on classic charcuterie that have won Smith fans and accolades both from those within the industry and the hungry denizens of the Hub. “I just figured it out,” he says. “A lot of this stuff I’m really passionate about, and it comes natural to me. I understand the process, therefore I can create the process.” >> THE BACKROOM AT MOODY’S DELICATESSEN AND PROVISIONS. NOW OPEN TUES-SAT 4PM-10PM. 468 MOODY ST., WALTHAM. MOODYSWALTHAM.COM

Strip by Strega, the opulent throwback steakhouse with Art Deco touches, deep leather booths, and a hotel-adjacent bar (the back door opens into the lobby at the Park Plaza hotel) is now open. But considering it’s owned by Nick Varano, he of many Italian restaurants throughout the North End, the waterfront, and north of Boston, you probably know that already. The man likes to throw a party.

But he also wants to make you comfortable while you spend the night here celebrating whatever needs celebrating, eventually taking down one of their 16-ounce prime dry-aged rib eye steaks. Or just popping in for a side of their insane handrolled potato gnocchi mac and cheese. Or both. It is graduation season, after all.

The Strega variation on the Bourbon Milk Punch has been rising in the collective drinking consciousness over the past few years. This drink got a cherry New York Times trend piece last year celebrating its revival, and there are a couple places in town that have a pretty solid program on the matter (see: Eastern Standard). But beverage director Kevin Kelly makes his using a method learned from Strega’s sister restaurant in Woburn, which, according to him, comes down to two things.

“Time and acid,” he says.

The two week process starts with a few raw ingredients: Jim Beam bourbon (“that might change if we have support,” says Kelly with a laugh), white sugar, dark chocolate, vanilla bean, lemon, and milk. The lemon, milk, bourbon, and sugar are mixed and the milk curdles.

“It’s a lot like making cheese,” says Kelly, which makes sense considering that when done the mixture is strained through actual cheesecloth to sort out the curdled particles, as well as the dark chocolate and vanilla beans that sit at the bottom. The mixture is slowly drained over and through the cloth, and the spirit is bottled and used as a happy exclamation point to the end of any meal here, courtesy of the house.

“I’ve been making this specific recipe for about four years,” says Kelly. “It’s a slow, arduous process, but Nick wanted to do something unique, and I don’t know of any other steakhouses in town doing it.” >> BOURBON MILK AT STRIP BY STREGA. NOW OPEN. 64 ARLINGTON ST., BOSTON. 617-456-5300.

STRIPBYSTREGABOSTON.COM

ALL PHOTOS BY DAN MCCARTHY

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

STREET DATE: JUNE 10TH AD DEADLINE: JUNE 5TH

digboston arts + entertainment | news | lifestyle

NEWS TO US FEATURE DEPT. OF COMMERCE ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

SUMMER PREVIEW IS COMING

15

BURGERS GONE

HONEST PINT SPONSORED BY SUNSET GRILL & TAP

RIVERWALK BREWING CO.

WILD

Stroll on through simple, solid beer

BY JEFF LAWRENCE @29THOUSAND

Wednesday’s May 6th – 27th 5-11pm PLATES BISON BITES 12 Char-grilled bison sliders / LTO / potato rolls / bubbly hot cheddar cheese dip BIG KAHUNA 15 Ahi tuna poke / kimchi / avocado / pickled ginger mayo / taro chips SHRIMP BAHN MI 15 Ground shrimp patty / long beans / papaya slaw / Thai curry mayo spicy cucumber salad / French baguette VINDALOO 15 Lamb rubbed with Indian spices / Vindaloo sauce / paneer cheese grilled naan bread / Manchurian cauliflower SWEET SWINE O’ MINE 14 Mix of slab bacon / smoked pork / ground pork / fried green tomato bacon mayo / smoked Gouda / Texas toast / salt & vinegar fries JAMAICAN DEATH 14 Ground turkey / jerk seasoning / pepper jack cheese / habanero sauce / papaya slaw / sweet roll / plantain chips CHIMICHANGA 14 Flash fried tortilla stuffed with Angus beef / jack cheese / ranchero sauce / roasted poblano peppers / tomatillo jicama slaw BEER BELLY BURGER 14 Angus beef steamed in Jacks Abby smoke & dagger / onions fontina cheese / pretzel roll / beer battered onion rings BOURBON VANILLA BEAN MILK SHAKE & COOKIES 9

MAGOUNSSALOON OLDEMAGOUNSSALOON

DIGBOSTON.C0M

05 20 15 – 05 27 15

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518 Medford St. Somerville magounssaloon.com 617-776-2600

130 Brighton Avenue Allston, MA

When Steve Sanderson started RiverWalk Brewing Co. in 2012 with his wife, it was more of a calling than a business opportunity. Like many homebrewers inspired by their palates and passions, Steve quit his full time job, dove head first into brewing and planning, and never looked back.

By now Sanderson has been an avid homebrewer for over a decade, and his styles and offerings are still inspired by his time in the Czech Republic and traveling abroad.

“I was really fascinated with where beer came from,” he says. “How it was made and how it related to the history and culture of an area. This fascination led to a lot of travel to some of the great beer-producing areas of the world.”

“My first beer experiences involved drinking Pilsner in the Czech Republic at the age of 15, so I acquired a taste for more “full-flavored” beer pretty early on,” he added.

And thankfully, he’s now sharing that experience with all of us.

Prior to this column, I had never tried any of his offerings, so I was intrigued and excited to have five different growlers in my possession. From the Tripper’s Tripel Belgian Style Ale (8.5 percent ABV) to the Uncle Bob’s Bitter English-Style Ale (4.5 percent ABV), they didn’t disappoint. I started off with the RiverWalk IPA (6.75 percent ABV) and found it to be hoppy but subtle and very easy to drink. It didn’t overpower me, which I liked. Not prone to wax poetic about the style of hops or East Coast/West Coast flavor battle, I’m mostly concerned with whether or not I’d drink it again, and this is definitely a keeper. My next pour was the Rustic Pils (5.6 percent ABV) and considering that I’m a huge session beer fan, I was hoping for a lower ABV here. But, the crisp, clean flavor was rewarding and not at all too big for my expectations. If you like a classic Pils, this is for you.

When asked to describe the history behind RiverWalk Brewing Co., Steve expanded on the storyline: “I really believe that experiencing local beer in the area and environment that it is produced helps to build a greater understanding and appreciation for what goes into that beer.”

More than any of his other brews, the Tripper’s Tripel and the Gnomad Farmhouse Ale (7.5 percent ABV) seemed to drive home this idea. The Tripel was easily one of the best I’ve had in some time, and it seemed heavily influenced by, oddly, New England. I can’t quite explain it, but I found myself wanting crisp, deep-fried clam strips and onion rings as I sipped, thoughts and taste turning to the ocean.

Located in Amesbury, Mass, the brewery is not exactly resting on a spit of sand, but maybe Steve’s allusion still made sense. The Farmhouse Ale had a completely different impact on me, but nonetheless, it tasted local and familiar. I like farmhouse ales in general but tend to find them too big and meaty for anything beyond one glass. This ale, on the other hand, I could drink all night.

I wrapped up my tasting with Uncle Bob’s Bitter. Definitely not my preferred taste but completely enjoyable and malty in a subtle, likable way. I do wish someone would brew a bitter that would wow me, and this wasn’t it, but it was so much better than most of what I’ve tried. That’s a huge plus and makes it a must-try for the bitterinclined as well as the bitter, well, in general.

With plans to expand and install a new bottling line that will bring 500ml bottles to the masses (a much better choice than just the 32oz growlers) Steve has his sights on expanding distribution beyond the Boston and North Shore market. We can only hope this comes to fruition, but in the end, he’s not driven by cashing in on the craft beer gold rush. Instead he’s influenced by his own life experiences and love of suds.

After all, beer is a lot more than just what’s inside the bottle or glass.

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

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

REAL FOOD

17

ARTS ENTERTAINMENT

LOOKS MORE LIKE A WINE AND SAUSAGE PARTY. CHECK OUT SOMM AT THE COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE, THURSDAY 5.21.

DIGBOSTON.C0M

05 20 15 – 05 27 15

18

THURS 5.21

THURS 5.21

FRI 5.22

SAT 5.23

MON 5.25

WED 5.27

Wine and Film: Somm

Metals and Wearables of Artisan’s Asylum

Girl, Incarcerated

Jesse Aron Green: Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik

Story Club Boston Presents: Oh No, I Forgot!

Original Gravity Concert Series

The creative geniuses at Coolidge Corner have teamed up with vino lifestyle company Wine Enthusiast to present a four-part special event that glorifies your favorite Sunday night activity: pairing a fun, classic movie with a glass (or several) of red or white. The series kicks off with Somm, the irreverent and fascinating 2012 documentary that affords viewers an inside look in the surprisingly secretive world of sommeliers.

The juxtaposition of art and technology is not as wildly incoherent as people might think. Artisan’s Asylum, a non-profit community craft center based in Somerville, seeks to explore the magic that can be created when old artistic traditions are brought into contact with recent innovations. This event will feature the work of local artists, engineers, and designers living and working in the greater Boston “makerspace,” including metal sculpture and jewelry.

Chances are, if you’re one of the millions of people who spend all year waiting for that fateful summer day when “Orange is the New Black” returns in all of its binge-watchable glory, you’ll be a fan of this show. But its creators promise this project is more than that—it’s a unique dramedy performance all its own, packed with a diverse female cast of Boston’s sharpest emerging comedians. Fully improvised stories of power struggles to dirty secrets—what more could you ask for?

German for “Medicalized Indoor Gymnastics,” this exhibit draws inspiration from a popular 1858 book of the same name that advertised physical exercises for “the maintenance of health and vigor of body and mind.” Collected in one exhibit for the first time, Green’s works playfully and provocatively reimagine prevalent tropes about mind, body, and fitness through a video installation, sculpture, and other media including drawing and photography. If anything, come for the 80-minute film of 16 male gymnasts acting out all 45 of the book’s exercises in 3-D splendor.

Story Club Boston was founded to satisfy the simplest of human pleasures by telling horrible, funny, embarrassing, even amazing stories. Each event showcases planned performers, curated by the Story Club team, as well as an open mic for which members of the public can vie for time on via raffle.

In honor of Memorial Day, this week’s theme takes the titular holiday literally—it’s the day of remembrance, so bring your best story of something forgotten.

Especially if it involves your dignity.

Speaking of activities made better with booze (is that becoming a theme for this week?), Aeronaut Brewing Company presents Original Gravity, an annual series of special performances that features the music of local New England composers, paired with beer created by favorite Boston-area breweries.

Each show is supplied with an exclusive type of beer, crafted specially to pair with that evening’s music. This week’s featured performer is Butch Rovan, a multimedia artist who utilizes altered instruments to construct his experimental sound.

Coolidge Corner Theatre.

290 Harvard St., Brookline. All ages (unless participating in tasting)/7pm/$15. To purchase tickets, visit coolidge.org

Artisan’s Asylum.

10 Tyler St., Somerville.

All ages/6pm/Free. For more information, visit snagmetalsmith.org

ImprovBoston.

40 Prospect St., Cambridge.

All ages/10pm/$18. To purchase tickets, visit improvboston.com

Harvard Art Museums.

32 Quincy St., Cambridge.

All ages/Free. For museum hours and more information, visit harvardartmuseums.org

Milky Way Lounge.

284 Amory St., Jamaica Plain. All ages/6:30pm/$5.

For more information, visit storyclubboston.com

Aeronaut. 14 Tyler St., Somerville. 21+/5pm/$15 suggested donation. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit aeronautbrewing.com

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

MUSIC

MUSIC

BOSTON KRILLING

NOISEMAKERS

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

Melt-Banana do America better than Americans

Festival openers dream of Jack Black

I’M SORRY, I ORDERED THE KRILL WITH PEPPERONI When an email lands in your inbox asking if you want to play Boston Calling, it’s seemingly sensible to at least take a minute to think the decision through. But when saying “Yes” means that you get to share the bill with Tenacious D, you accept the invitation right away.

“If we could join Tenacious D onstage and sing backup—we know the songs!—and be involved, we would love to do that,” says Krill frontman Jonah Furman. “Seeing the Pixies is like seeing Stonehenge, but seeing Tenacious D is like seeing Foamhenge.”

Indie rock trio Krill have long been one of our favorite local acts. That said, while their being given the opening spot at this coming weekend’s Boston Calling is undoubtedly deserved, the news was nonetheless a bit surprising. “It’s funny seeing emails [listing] the bands at Boston Calling like Beck, Tenacious D, the Pixies … and then Krill,” says drummer Ian Becker. “It seems like a joke.”

Openers are typically poppy or cheerful. Krill’s no bummer band or anything, but their songs, many of which are riddled with anxiety, sarcasm, and overarching metaphors, do tend to travel along weirder routes. “I envision the people throwing things at us,” jokes Furman. “Isn’t that what happened to Pavement at Lollapalooza in the early days?” says guitarist Aaron Ratoff, referring to the infamous incident where rocks thrown onstage caused Scott Kannberg to moon the crowd. “People hated it on that tour, which is weird to think about because … it’s Pavement. Maybe ‘weird’ music like theirs would be more accepted than the crazier bands on that tour.”

Adds Becker: “In general, festivals have grown to become weirdly cartoonish events … It’s a sea of people, you can’t see anything, and it’s expensive. Some festivals aren’t like that, and Boston Calling seems to have solved a lot of those problems.”

When they say they’re dying to play with Tenacious D, I think they’re kind of fooling at first. But they aren’t. “That’s my number one want, more than the Pixies, more than Beck,” says Ratoff. “Run the Jewels are cool, but Tenacious D are far and away it. We need to play with the D.” As star struck as they’d be next to the D, Krill explain that their admiration isn’t necessarily for Jack Black or Kyle Gass as individual celebrities, but rather for the comic duo as a whole.

“We would love to meet them,” Ratoff says. He pauses for a breath. “We would love to engage with them in any way. I want to see them perform. That would be enough. It’s a big deal for us.”

>> MELT-BANANA + PARTICULARS. GREAT SCOTT, 1222 COMMONWEALTH AVE., ALLSTON. THU 5.21.

9PM/18+/$20. GREATSCOTTBOSTON.COM

>> BOSTON CALLING W/ KRILL. FRI-SUN 5.22-24. CITY HALL PLAZA, 1 CITY HALL SQ., BOSTON. 12PM/$75+. BOSTONCALLING.COM

DIGBOSTON.C0M

05 20 15 – 05 27 15

20

MUSIC EVENTS THU 5.21

THU 5.21

FRI 5.22 - SUN 5.24

SAT 5.23

SAT 5.23

MON 5.25

[Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass Ave., Cambridge.

8pm/18+/$10. mideastclub. com]

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

8pm/18+/$17. mideastclub.com]

[City Hall Plaza, 1 City Hall Sq., Boston. 12pm/$75+. bostoncalling.com]

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge, 10pm/21+/$25. sinclaircambridge.com]

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

6pm/all ages/$15. crossroadspresents.com]

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm.

Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/$10. greatscottboston.com]

GIRLS TO THE FRONT IAN + PALEHOUND + HARMOOS + THE CRATERS

MINI WEEZER ROCK THE RENTALS + REY PILA + RADIATION CITY

LOCAL SMORGASBORD BOSTON CALLING FESTIVAL

RAP AGAINST BILL O’REILLY RUN THE JEWELS + DJ. ABD

INDIE ELECTRONIC ON POP ROCKS DAN DEACON + DJ CARBO

SPLATTER PAINT NOISE ROCK GUERILLA TOSS + GIANT CLAW + CROSSS

LIGHTNING BOLT PHOTO BY NATALJA KENT | COURTNEY BARNETT PHOTO BY MIA MALA MCDONALD

Japanese noise rock duo Melt-Banana belong to a niche scene that’s awfully small but super devoted—especially in America. They rarely cross the pond, so when vocalist Yasuko “Yako” and guitarist Onuki Ichirou Agata stop at an intimate venue like Great Scott, things get kind of crazy in terms of enthusiasm and diversity.

“Mainstream music and underground music are separated in Japan very much compared to USA,” Yako tells the Dig. Indeed, around these parts, it’s popular to like underground music, as any self-respecting hipster can tell you (if they’re not too busy feigning disinterest). “It is very nice to see a varied audience come out,” says Yako. “At our last show, I talked with a guy who is going to be 70 years old in September.”

It’s easy to write songs using chords, but most of Melt-Banana’s records stray from that baseline methodology. Instead, the duo tends to keep things out of tune. “We haven’t learned music theory, so maybe that’s the reason,” says Agata. Even if they were Berklee grads though, their sound would still sound twisted from the computer and pedal effects through which their guitars and such are funneled.

At this point, Melt-Banana have been screeching melodies for in excess of two decades. In that time their sound, style, and attitude have shifted some, but neither member sees it. “I feel we haven’t changed much,” says Agata. “I guess it’s the world that has changed.”

Whatever the case, their operation’s lasted this long, and in discussing Boston plans, they already have things planned out to a T. “Our friend we’re staying with has many computers, synthesizers, video games, and good pancakes,” Yako says excitedly. It seems they know their way around America’s complex lifestyle, or at least around the complexities of life in general. In order to stay relevant enough to make intercontinental trips in a microgenre that requires endless intensity, you kind of have to.

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05 20 15 – 05 27 15

22

FILM

BEAUTIFUL DECAY ‘Max’ is mad but also fiery and gorgeous

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

STEAMED PUNKS You realize something around the 30-minute mark of Mad Max: Fury Road—this movie is not going to stop. Max is stowing away on an oil tanker driven by Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who is absconding with the five slave brides of her keeper, Immortan Joe. Joe—who looks like the military dictator of a steampunk colony— gives chase with three “war parties” of weaponized vehicles. We make pit stops, for talk and for gas. But the rest of the movie is a perpetual death race.

George Miller, whose directed all four Max movies, isn’t seeking pleasure in speed.

Instead he’s looking for art in destruction. The worlds he creates for these films— sand-covered dystopias ruled by burly men rocking repurposed BDSM gear—border on the the nightmarish. Then the brutal physicality of the car crashes push us right over that border.

Great attention is paid to gravitational details: The arrhythmic toppling of vehicles, or the inelegant crumpling of a weak body under moving wheels. What emerges from this wreckage is an orgiastic opera—a movie defined not by narrative, but by flame-seared images of asphyxiating landscape, and by the thundering sounds of shook metal.

The sheer bravado of these action sequences bring to mind many past masters of visual art. In the way Max is mythologized—walking out of the dust, as if from nowhere, with no name attached—there is Sergio Leone. In the strange objects rising in and flopping out of sand dunes, we detect Dali. And in the acrobatic audacity of the stunts—Miller attaches poles to cars, and then men to the top of those poles, leaving them stranded to swing like cats on a tree branch—there’s even a bit of Buster Keaton.

All that leaves little room for smalltalk. Hardy speaks a small handful of sentences, and his performance is almost entirely gestural—you learn about him only in the rare moments when his mood makes itself known through smirks and grimaces hidden in his sand-caked face. That coalesces with the constant action nicely: This is a film you can follow entirely with your eyes. Its as purely visual as a work of silent cinema, and as entrancing as a great work of art. Your intellect shutters, your subconscious submits to sensory assault.

There is one verbal motif: The cry of Who killed the world? is shouted loudly by the film’s six heroines. The answer goes unacknowledged, but it’s obvious—men did.

And so Max plays sidekick to those six while they work to undo the patriarchal values that drove humanity into environmental ruin. It’s fair to scoff at progressive politics when they’re buried within a film this unashamedly and unpretentiously violent. But by the end, everything clicks together. We see a world in need of tearing down. Miller finds great beauty doing exactly that. >> MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. NOW PLAYING EVERYWHERE. RATED R.

FILM EVENTS FRI. 5.22

DIRECTED BY HAL ASHBY HAROLD AND MAUDE

[Coolidge Corner.

290 Harvard St., Brookline.

Fri 5.22 and Sat 5.23, midnight/PG/$11.25. coolidge.org]

SAT 5.23

50TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING THE KNACK… AND HOW TO GET IT

For more deals go to: digboston.com/deals digboston arts + entertainment | news | lifestyle

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

3:15, 7:30pm/NR/$9-11. brattlefilm.org]

A GUN, A GIRL, AND ALEC BALDWIN MIAMI BLUES

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

9:30pm/R/$9-11. brattlefilm.org]

PRESENTED BY BEN RIVERS RE-ANIMATOR

[Harvard Film Archive.

24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 10pm/NR/ $7-9.]

MON 5.25

THE MASTER SLEEPS AKIRA KUROSAWA’S DREAMS

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

4:30, 7:30pm/NR/$9-11. brattlefilm.org] TUE 5.26

MAN VS. LIONS (LIONS WIN) ROAR

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

Tue 5.26—Thu 5.28. $9-11. brattlefilm.org for showtimes.]

23

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

FILM

DESERT PORN

Guys get snuffed out in ‘Faster Pussycat’

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

GET TO ZE WOOD CHOPPER! FILM SHORTS BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

“THAT ‘SUGAR TITS’ SHIT AIN’T GONNA FLY AROUND HERE” For the perfect precursor to Max’s madcap feminism, look to Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!— another desert-set action-classic about violent women, and the men who’re unlucky enough to meet them.

Tura Satana stars as the leader of a gang of go-go girls. They dance away during the film’s opening credits, as an audience of men bark orders—and then they never acquiesce to another male again. The trio rolls into the wasteland for drag races, and ends up killing the first guy they see. (Satana snaps his spine like a chicken bone, just for fun.)

The crew then kidnaps the girlfriend left behind, and sets off in search of a satchel of cash to steal. There’s an unabashedly pulpy vibe at work here, and it’s accentuated by the actress’ ice-cold delivery of the script’s quips—each of them as sharp as razor-wire. The young naif offers one of the dancers a soft drink. “We don’t like nothin’ soft,” she snorts back. “Everything we touch is hard.”

The director is Russ Meyer, who earned his reputation directing high-energy “sexploitation”—movies that existed to flaunt the large chests of his leading ladies.

Pussycat ostensibly belongs to that genre, as the camera is often angled to stare down their shirts. But the leering evolves into something else. Meyer uses the legs of his actresses to fill up the whole frame, like Greek gods looming over the lost souls of the background. His camera stares up at Satana as though she were Wonder Woman. It’s not fetishization—it’s awe. >> FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! BRATTLE THEATRE. 40 BRATTLE ST., CAMBRIDGE. FRI. 5.22, 9:30PM. $9-11.

DON’T SLEEP

The geography of classicism in Ceylan’s latest

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

DIGBOSTON.C0M

05 20 15 – 05 27 15

24

Winter Sleep often invites us to peer through windows toward the lives outside. Aydin, who owns a hotel carved into an Anatolian mountainside—and all the surrounding land—provides the perspective, his authority having provided a life of delusional selfsatisfaction. At least until Aydin is driving past his tenant’s house one day—they’re late on rent, and have had the repo man sicced on them—when a boy hurls a stone at the car and cracks one of the windows.

Writer/director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has long harbored an interest in links between people and the places they inhabit. In this case, he’s considering how men like Aydin would rather stack cash than act humanely. That shattered window is a challenged perspective, and from there the film follows conversations that sort everything out: Aydin condescendingly speaking to the family about reparations, or to his wife about the act’s ethical implications. Naturally, power dynamics quickly become apparent: the poorer characters don’t speak to superiors unless without prefacing their comments with ingratiating compliments, while an apparent social hierarchy emerges from the verbal duels. Through it all, Aydin is perpetually on top—less a friend than a feudal leader.

During Winter’s 196 minutes, we become intimate with the geography of the film: paths leading to Aydin’s dwellings; roads to the homes he owns; barren fields that circle his hotel. That last building is up on high—looming above the rest as if on holy ground. In Ceylan’s world, even the land avoids paying attention to the lower classes. >>WINTER SLEEP. FRI 5.22—WED 6.3. MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS. $9-11. NOT RATED.

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

IRIS

Joss Whedon returns to write and direct the second team-up film in Marvel’s neverending cinematic serial, so the threats of bad-robot Ultron are met with puns as often as they are with punches.

Sad to say that his eye for action isn’t nearly as sharp as his ear for gags: The fights are a jumble of colors and cuts, with the camera perpetually placed so close-up that you can never enjoy the motion of the combat. Marvel’s best, like Guardians of the Galaxy, are as classically constructed as something like Jaws—they’re secondhand Spielberg. But this is b-grade Michael Bay.

This documentary portrait of 94-yearold fashion icon Iris Apfel—directed by the late Albert Maysles—is hardly an all-encompassing one. Health scares and major events occur entirely offscreen, while we watch Iris playfully palling around with her director, her husband, and a number of well-known admirers.

(Yeezy’s a fan.) If there’s a constant here, it’s the subject’s beautiful bluster.

She may not show much vulnerability, but she, and this film have no need for things like “truth.” They’ve got charm.

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

MAGGIE

Juliette Binoche plays an actress modeled after Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart plays the punkish assistant who helps her rehearse, and Chloe Grace Moretz plays an actress modeled after Kristen Stewart. Young and old clash verbally by day and by night, debating everything from the politics of Millennial privacy standards to the potential artistry of young-adult fiction.

The metatextual reflections quickly overwhelm us, providing an experience both pleasurable and impenetrable.

We’re not in a lecture hall, but a houseof-mirrors—the movie even ends in one.

When you hear the phrase “Arnold Schwarzenegger zombie movie,” you get an image in your head: Exploding skulls followed by killer one-liners.

So give Maggie credit for subverting expectations, if nothing else: It’s a straight-faced drama. Arnold’s daughter gets a virus—she’s got six weeks before she joins the ranks of the undead. A vaguely sketched allegory emerges, considering euthanasia on one level, and the need to process trauma on another. But the only thing holding this jumble of moody scenes together is Schwarzenegger’s stone-carved face. He’s always worth looking at.

EX MACHINA

PITCH PERFECT 2

Frankenstein refashioned as a technothriller. Oscar Isaac plays the doctor’s equivalent; an unscrupulous tech developer illegally mining search engines and cell phones to create AVA, an anthropomorphic AI. And Domhall Gleeson plays the trusting naif in thrall to the unnatural beast’s affections—a lowly coder called in to decide if AVA’s “brain” passes human muster. We know how this story ends: We’re headed inexorably toward a showdown between man and the monsters he creates.

Modern concerns dominate the text, but this one runs from an antique framework.

The first Pitch Perfect played in the sandbox with Mean Girls—it was another teen comedy about an outsider being indoctrinated into a bitchy subculture. But the sequel sacrifices those story beats, instead stringing along a series of underdeveloped subplots. (It’s more like Spice World.) The humor has taken a hit, too. New director Elizabeth Banks instills a hatefully stereotypical tone: The gay girl is mean, the fat girl is sloppy, the Germans are stern, and so on ad infinitum. If that doesn’t offend you, the general artlessness probably will.

FURIOUS SEVEN Paul Walker’s final performance is shamelessly sentimentalized amidst crashing cars and crassly cool violence— sad to say that the long-running series’ ingrained earnestness has been upshifted, by new-to-the-series filmmaker James Wan, into something far more tricked-out. (Check out the opening sequence, in which he turns the deaths of dozens into the type of amoral joke these films never used to indulge in.)

It’s machismo porn with a dash of melancholy—a party at a funeral.

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG Nobody makes comedies as cruel as Noah Baumbach. But his latest starts as a gentle generational farce—Millennials teach Gen-Xers about fedoras and artisanal ice cream. Also lamentably lost is the kinetic playfulness of his Frances Ha, replaced by photography as functional as your dad’s wardrobe. But an Allenesque morality play emerges from the laid-back longueurs, about friends manipulating each other for the sake of success—another Baumbach “comedy” about people who’d rather use each other than relate. He’s getting older and wiser, but no kinder.

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THEATER

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE Thursday May 21st

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05 20 15 – 05 27 15

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HI, I’M ZACH. WELCOME TO MY BOOK CRIB. “It’s challenging. It’s really strange,” says film and television actor Zachary Booth, over the phone on break from rehearsal at the Huntington. For him, being part of a stage play is both a welcome respite from filming, and a lot of work.

Booth will star in the New England premiere of after all the terrible things i do, a drama by A. Rey Pamatmat. His character, Daniel, is a young, gay, aspiring writer, and Booth says that he finds himself identifying with the character a lot—though not in ways that he initially expected.

“In the past I’ve always—even when I’ve played darker roles, or characters with dangerous pasts who are in the middle of horrible experiences—I’ve always tried to justify their history, or justify the choices they make, for them,” Booth says. “It’s that idea that the villain doesn’t, unless it’s a superhero movie, the villain doesn’t always know that they’re the villain. They wouldn’t even call themselves that.

But I get personally connected to these people. I found myself having discussions [outside of rehearsal] about sexuality, about bullying, about love—and taking points of view that I thought I’d never take. I’m doing it in defense of this character, but also finding that I very much believe what I’m saying.”

On the surface, the work centers on two people who meet in a bookstore and discover that they connect in a way that goes beyond their shared interest in literature. Below that surface plot, however, the heart of the play beats in a much more complicated fashion.

“I think that really, it’s about two people who think they know, or have an idea of what they need, to move on in their lives—and think they find it in each other … and what that does to a relationship, or what that creates in a relationship,” Booth says. “The expectation that you have for another person that’s not based on who they are, but on where you’ve been or what you’ve been through. Thematically, the play is about forgiveness, and imperfection, and acceptance. Which are sort of big broad ideas, but they’re told through a very specific and very intimate relationship between two people.”

The work also is unique in the core crux of its narrative—bullying—a subject with which almost everyone has had some kind of experience, but which remains an issue that is largely ignored or misunderstood throughout society.

“I think that by ‘bullying’ becoming a phrase that we use in our everyday language the way that we use it now, it’s empowered a lot of people to bring to light a lot of things that they thought that they had to hide before. On the other side of it, it allows people who have been on the bully side of the experience to really open up that door for themselves and look at who they were, and why they made the choices that they made,” Booth says.

“I don’t think that’s something that wasn’t happening in the past, but I grew up in a time where you left school and you couldn’t affect your classmates anymore.

You had no avenue to reach them. It was a more clearly or easily defined thing,” he continues. “It opens up the discussion too: How much of it is kids being kids? Yes, we want to teach kids not to treat each other this way, but as much as we want to do the right thing, we harm children all the time—and they learn to harm each other.”

Above all, Booth believes that after all the terrible things i do will give audiences pause to consider other perspectives on some age old but nevertheless important adolescent issues.

“I hope that they all are inspired to have conversations that they weren’t having before,” he says. “Change happens one person at a time.” >> HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS: AFTER ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS I DO. BCA CALDERWOOD PAVILION, 527 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. THROUGH JUNE 21. $25-83.

FOR SHOWTIMES AND TO PURCHASE TICKETS, VISIT HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG.

PHOTO BY PAUL MAROTTA

Friday MAY 22 9:30pm

PAUL OSCHER (FORMER MEMBER OF THE MUDDY WATERS BLUES BAND) AND HIS TRIO

27

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

ARTS

BLACK DIALOGUE

Intelligent Mischief kicks off a summer of radical imagination

BY SPENCER SHANNON @SUSPENCEY

DIGBOSTON.C0M

05 20 15 – 05 27 15

28

Intelligent Mischief is a creative design lab, though not in the traditional way that one might think. Their goal is to serve as a civic tool for social justice. To achieve that end, they help individuals and groups incorporate culture and arts in their organizing, all in building on a bedrock of experience in youth activism and the various backgrounds from which IM members come.

Terry Marshall and Chrislene DeJean, chief organizers of IM, are both dancers, and find that their artistic chops help them immensely in imagining new teaching methods and the future of “the movement,” as in the call to action to end the senseless killing of black people. Although IM is based in Boston, this summer the selfproclaimed “mischief-makers” will be travelling to areas like Ferguson, Detroit, and Oakland to help organizers on the ground think creatively about civil disobedience.

“The kinds of killings and shootings that have happened post-Trayvon [Martin], they’ve occurred in such a short timespan,” Marshall says. He continues, “We took the idea that well, you know, the reason all of these shootings keep happening is that there’s just some new rules in place and black people don’t know about them yet. We just keep fucking up, we just keep breeding and walking down the street, we need some new rules to figure out how to survive.”

That idea laid the groundwork for Intelligent Mischief’s first project, the Black Body Survival Guide—a multimedia effort addressing prevalent issues regarding race relations in America, and resulting in a list of critical rules and tips for those with dark skin. While the Survival Guide moves into its next phase of planning (including the launch of an IndieGogo campaign), IM’s focus has shifted to a wider network of events that kick off this month. Inspired by the work of science fiction writer Octavia Butler, the series is called New Sun Summer after Butler’s famous quote: “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”

“What does it mean to insert ourselves in the future in a time when we’re being murdered by the state? How do we look at our lives and and think strategically about building a movement that’s built off of people being killed, and how do we survive?”

DeJean says, explaining the core goal of New Sun Summer. “[Butler’s] Parable of the Sower series is about survival. You just kind of figure it out along the way. You don’t have to know right now. That’s really powerful now. We don’t know what to do next, but we’ll figure it out.”

The summer series launches with Black to the Future, a multi-part evening of black radical imagination. The event will kick off with a curated panel of black organizers, writers, and visionaries whose discussion will center around “surviving in the future,” an increasing concern considering the current state of American society. The panel will be followed by a reading and book signing with the writers of Octavia’s Brood, a collection of radical sci-fi shorts by activists and organizers. Finally, there’ll be a dance party—because why not? “[At the panel] we’re asking them questions like, ‘How do you see all these different movements’ circles building together around black life in the future?’”

DeJean says. “All of Octavia’s work is really about imagining, but really, putting black women in the future, and what does it mean that a black woman is in leadership in this world. How do we build here, in the city, and what are your ideas around that?”

DeJean continues: “I think what I really want people to get out of these events is that we’re building with each other, and it’s the beginning of a new sun. Let’s think about how can we build our lives knowing that the state is attacking us, and murdering us, and what does that mean for governance in our communities. I really hope that folks can think like, this is really the beginning of long haul organizing.

This is not the end, and IM is just one group that can really support you.” >> INTELLIGENT MISCHIEF PRESENTS: BLACK TO THE FUTURE. SEIU 615 LOCAL, 26 WEST ST., BOSTON. ALL AGES/6PM/FREE. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT FACEBOOK.COM/INTELLIGENTMISCHIEF.

PHOTO BY CHRISLENE DEJEAN

THE MONEY FOR THE GREAT WALL ART CAME OUT OF THE FLOORING BUDGET

NEWS TO US FEATURE DEPT. OF COMMERCE ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

29

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Yesterday, I found my 5-year-old son putting things up his butt in the bath. This isn’t the first time … The little dude was rocking quite the stiffy while he did it. I’m well aware of how sexual kids can be (I freaking was!), although I wasn’t quite expecting to be catching him exploring anal at this young age. I want to avoid a trip to the emergency room to extract a toy car or whatever else from his rear end, and I don’t want to see him damage himself.

Do you have any suggestions of what I can give him as a butt toy? Yes, I am serious, and no, I’m not molesting him. I know he’s going to do this on his own with or without my knowing, and I want him to be safe! Just today, he proudly showed me a toy car that he stuck up his butt. I told him that it wasn’t a good idea due to the sharp bits on it, and while he may have gotten this one out, one could get stuck and then we would have to go to the hospital. Help!

-Helping Ingenious Son Make Other Moves “HISMOM has handled this really well so far, and I am impressed with her clarity and calm about this situation,” said Amy Lang, a childhood sexuality expert and educator, a public speaker, and the author of Birds + Bees + Your Kids (birdsandbeesandkids.com). “But NO BUTT TOYS for 5-year-olds! This is insane and will cause a host of problems—can you imagine if he says to his teacher, ‘Yesterday, I

played with my butt plug!’ Instant CPS call!”

“This clearly isn’t a safe way for her boy to explore his body for a variety of reasons,” said Lang. “His butthole is tiny, it’s an adultlike behavior, and it’s germy.”

And while adults who are into butt play are (or should be) proactive and conscientious about hygiene, grubby little 5-yearolds aren’t particularly proactive or conscientious about hygiene— or anything else. You don’t want his hands and toys smeared with more fecal matter than is typical for the hands and toys of most 5-year-olds.

“It’s also on the outer edges of ‘typical’ sexual behavior in a young kid,” said Lang. “He may very well have discovered this sort of outlier behavior on his own, but there is a chance that someone showed him how to do this. HISMOM needs to calmly ask her son, ‘I’m curious—how did you figure out that it feels good to put things in your bum?’ Listen to what he has to say. Depending on his response, she may need to get him a professional evaluation to make sure that he’s okay and safe. She can find someone through rainn.org in her area to help. While it doesn’t sound like he’s traumatized by this—he’s so open and lighthearted about it—you never know.”

Regardless of where he picked this trick up, HISMOM, you gotta tell him that it’s not okay to put stuff up his butt because he could seriously hurt himself.

Check out the Savage Lovecast every week at savagelovecast.com.

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