May 27th, 2015

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MUSIC

PATRICK WATSON DOESN’T WANT TO GROW UP

NEWS

TO CATCH A

CREDITOR

HOW TO FIGHT ABUSIVE BILL COLLECTORS

MESTRES FEATURE

of THE

UNIVERSE

THE ART, STRUGGLE, AND ENDURING TRADITION OF CAPOEIRA IN GREATER BOSTON

Deals!

See page 13 for great deals with these restaurants!

BOOKS

JESSE WALKER WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF PARANOIA

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VOL 17 + ISSUE 21

MAY 27, 2015 - JUNE 3, 2015

EDITOR Dan McCarthy NEWS, FEATURES + MEDIA FARM EDITOR Chris Faraone ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran CONTRIBUTORS Boston Bastard, Martín Caballero, Paige Chaplin, Emily Hopkins, Micaela Kimball, Jake Mulligan, Cady Vishniac, Dave Wedge

DESIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tak Toyoshima DESIGNER Brittany Grabowski INTERNS 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 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

ON THE COVER

Michael Zaia catches the perfect moment for this week’s cover spotlighting the growing capoeira community in Boston. Read all about it on page 10. ©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 It’s a funny thing going on vacation.

You make all manner of preparations, frontload work requirements and hit early deadlines to make your life (and the lives of those your work has a direct effect on) easier. Somehow through all the chaos you pop out the other side, and get on your way. Rest. Respite. Big fun.

In my case all last week, it involved a whirling excursion through Colombia, getting away from the Hub for a few days and immersing myself in the northern tip of South America, bouncing around points of interest from the Montserrat mountains of Bogota, to the historic walled city of Cartagena, and even on a mini tropical excursion to the south Caribbean Sea which provided a chance to take a dinghy through the lagoons and ocean pools surrounding the Rosario Islands and past several abandoned former cocaine compounds owned by El Padrino himself, Pablo Escobar.

And then you come back, recharged and ready to see what you missed while gone. Luckily for me (and you for that matter), all the best alternative news that could be covered and presented in our bright little sheet you hold in your hands pushed forth without me.

And returning home to an issue packed with stolen art news (Media Farm, Page 8), profiles on Brazilian Capoeira in Boston (Feature, Page 10), and bittersweet swan songs for legendary obscure vinyl record shops (Music, Page 20) reminds one that it’s OK to step away from your post every now and again, provided you’ve got a crackerjack team keeping an eye on things while you’re gone.

DAN MCCARTHY, EDITOR

DIGTIONARY

MARBLEHEADACHE

noun ˈmärbəlˈhedˌāk 1. The continuous head pain one feels after attending a Memorial Day parade, only to have someone’s drone crash into a building and then smash into your noggin on the way down, just like what happened on Monday during the parade in Marblehead, Mass.

OH, CRUEL WORLD Dear Massachusetts, It’s time we had a talk about your Health Connector and the poor SOBs who have to man the phones for that pathetic operation.

Under Governor Baker, it seems there has been a complete overhaul of the tin can connector put in place by Governor Patrick. But in the meantime, loads of us have lost our coverage, been awfully inconvenienced, and been forced to endure the communicative equivalent of water torture in calling your hotline to sort things out. You are a joke, and it’s time to get your act in order. Do whatever it takes; call Mitt Romney for all I care. Just do something, and do it soon.

ILLUSTRATION BY BRITTANY GRABOWSKI

EDITORIAL

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NEWS US

TO CATCH A CREDITOR NEWS TO US

How I fought abusive bill collectors and you should too

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 It was a Friday night a couple of months ago and I was sitting on my couch, waiting on my weekly Chinese food delivery, when the bell rang. My local dumpling joint is pretty diligent, but this nonetheless seemed too fast, as I had only ordered minutes earlier. Somewhat startled, I walked downstairs and cracked the door enough for a peek, only to find an ominous-looking middle-aged white dude holding something other than fortune cookies.

“Are you Chris Faraone?”

“I am.”

He then handed me an envelope, his mug cold like that of soulless sycophant Doug Stamper on the Netflix thriller “House of Cards.” Now insatiably concerned and curious, I jammed my finger in the corner and tore back the gummy lip, anxious to learn what was so important that it couldn’t wait for Monday.

Now comes Plaintiff … and moves this Honorable Court to attach all wages due Defendant, Christopher C Faraone (“Defendant”), from the Trustee, Dig Boston, that are in excess of the statutory limits of Massachusetts General Laws and the United States Codes … Plaintiff further moves … that successive services be allowed as will be necessary to attach wages up to the full amount of the judgment.

If it sounds like the letter was full of legalize and gibberish, that’s because it was. Basically, this company that bought an old debt I was carrying was attempting 4

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to seize more than double my initial principle—nearly half my annual Dig salary—directly through my place of employment. I didn’t know it at the time, but about a month before those papers were delivered to my doorstep, District Court Chief Justice Paul Dawley enacted a “plain English” summons for the entire system, which requires that such notices are written in clear language.

Mine wasn’t though; it took three phone calls and nearly an hour the following week to find out in which building and courtroom I was due on the assigned date buried in their vague correspondence.

There were other critical things that I was still deep in the dark about on the night when the constable came uninvited to my home. Most important was that, unbeknownst to me, I had been sued for a credit card debt that I accrued nearly a decade ago. It was sold off to a company in New Hampshire, perhaps the same folks who’d harassed and threatened me by phone over this matter in the late aughts. I may not have known about their lawsuit, which I lost on a default judgment in West Roxbury District Court in 2013, but I did know that the debt was out there, and had on multiple occasions asked people attempting to collect for a specific breakdown of initial owed and paid amounts.

Suspecting that something was fishy, after being served, I began to research my rights as a debtor.

According to the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Debt Collection Regulations, among other things, collectors aren’t supposed to “visit your home at times other than

your normal waking hours.” Even if it was acceptable to interrupt my weekly Szechuan tradition, and even if Friday night is adequately “normal” and “waking,” it appears the aforementioned agency additionally engaged in other forbidden practices. Among them: • They called me on my cell phone, which is my home phone, more than twice in a seven-day period, as well as more than twice in a 30-day period at my former place of employment.

• Collectors phoned me after I requested that they not call. Furthermore, I was not able to ask them in writing to stop calling, since I was not made aware of their address.

• On several occasions, they called me without initially identifying the reason for their call.

• Through their actions, these collectors alerted, however inadvertently, everyone from my friends, neighbors, and relatives, to various employers about my debt, and without my written consent.

The list goes on. Creditors are supposed to allow you to inspect documents on which they are relying to prove that you owe the debt being collected, which my tormentors did not. They also appear to have gone out of their way to avoid letting me know that I was being sued; though I have been living in my current apartment TO CATCH A CREDITOR continued on pg. 6

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TO CATCH A CREDITOR continued from pg. 4 since 2013, they have been serving me at a former residence, and even labeled correspondence to that address on the day that the constable came to my home.

None of that’s super important though. Not for anybody other than me at least, and so I’ll focus the remainder of this rant on helping people in a similar situation. After learning about the judgment against me, I went to the district court in West Roxbury and pulled all of the paperwork on my case. Representing myself pro se, I then filed a motion to have the default removed on account of the proceedings happening behind my back, and that’s around the time that I discovered research on this matter exactly by Northeastern University journalism students. Published in the Boston Globe on March 28, their report found that 90 percent of the nearly 2 million debtors sued in Mass between 2004 and 2013 lost by default. Additionally, they reported that “attorneys with the Volunteer Lawyers Project found evidence that some civil claims appear to have been sent to defendants’ old addresses.” You don’t say.

In the interest of paying forward the favor done for me by said writers and researchers, I’m happy to share my experience in this struggle. At this juncture, I’m hoping for a fair arrangement that accounts for the harassment I’ve endured throughout this process, and it looks as if I may prevail. Last week, a judge allowed for my motion to remove the default, which means that my Dig wages are safe for now. And there’s more. Promisingly, while the consumer protections noted above were written for small claims court, and don’t currently apply in the district system in which I was sued, Chief Justice Dawley is now seeking changes to protect Mass residents in that regard.

Considering that more than a million people in the commonwealth, myself included, have already been run over by a process that unfairly favors unscrupulous bill collectors, such decisions, along with any spread of information, could lead to some overdue justice around here.

BLUNT TRUTH

COURT REFORM

Medical cannabis advocates sue for change

BY MIKE CANN @MIKECANNBOSTON In Massachusetts, where two voters support marijuana reform for every single voter who does not, you could almost expect that change might actually come from elected officials at the State House. But you would be wrong. In the Bay State, the ballot initiative process and the court system are where activists have had the most luck in changing laws and law enforcement practices.

Take the case of Cristina Barbuto, a medical marijuana patient who lost her marketing job over a failed drug test for cannabis. Barbuto and her attorneys have now filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination over her unjust firing. Though the 2012 Medical Marijuana Initiative would seem to protect Barbuto from such a fate, it may not be enough.

Nichole Snow, executive director of the Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance, suspected that employment troubles would become an issue. “It was only a matter of time until registered patients were being let go from their work,” she says. “That is why we drafted H.2065 to include employment protections.”

H.2065, currently filed at the State House, would provide additional work and family protections for patients. The proposal currently has 16 co-sponsors with strong community and voter support, yet it’s still a longshot that it will pass.

Why? Because of the law enforcement/Just Say No lobby. Politicians know that cannabis is popular with voters, but campaign contributions from police and phoney “educators” keep most pols on the side of reefer madness.

It’s not all bad news—not since the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled recently that because of the state’s medical marijuana law, police need to introduce evidence that marijuana isn’t registered or being cultivated for medicinal uses before obtaining a search warrant. In other words, authorities are no longer able to say that medical pot doesn’t exist in the commonwealth. If you’ve scanned local news headlines of late, you may have noticed that several growers have been arrested. Now, as a result of the aforementioned ruling, many of those cases may be dismissed. Defense attorney John Seed, who has successfully defended medical marijuana patients in Mass, says, “Whether or not the person growing has a license, the onus is on the police to first establish that they do not in order to proceed with probable cause on a search warrant.

However, even if they do have a recommendation, the case law cites other instances where a search is still lawful, such as undercover buys [or] evidence of growing more than [a] 60 day supply.”

There will likely be many examples to come, but for now a narcotics task force in the Pioneer Valley in Western Mass (and their buddies at the DEA) have already been made aware of these developments. After a recent search warrant of theirs was found to hold no water, it was thrown out, the case dismissed. Adds Seed, the attorney, about the recent changes, they “definitely give more ammo to defend cultivation cases.” Not quite as much ammo as the cops have, of course, but it’s a good start nevertheless.

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MEDIA FARM

HEIST ANXIETY

The myth of mass media outrage over stolen art

BY MEDIA FARM @MEDIAFARM

We’re told that persistence is critical in this business. For that reason and obvious others, we are happy to engage our readers yet again with the ongoing mystery behind the missing bust of 19th Century education reformer Charles Brooks. As we recently reported in a followup to a 2012 Boston Phoenix article, said marble sculpture, the work of American master Thomas Crawford, went missing from the Massachusetts State House several decades ago, and appears to currently be in storage at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Though this shocking information has been public for a number of years, those in a position to reclaim the bust have, for some strange reason or another, chosen to ignore the seeming inconsistency.

All things considered, you can imagine our surprise last week when officials reacted resolutely to reports that two pieces of art vanished from the Boston Public Library—an engraving of Adam and Eve by Albrecht Dürer, and an etching of a Rembrandt self-portrait. According to Boston Police Commissioner William Evans, even the FBI is pitching in to help catch the culprit. That’s promising, but some folks have been hollering for years (ahem!) about the aforementioned Brooks sculpture—as well as about several hundred other historical artifacts that have disappeared from the State House—and no one has seemed to care, neither in the press nor public office. Frankly, it’s maddening.

So as to avoid any beating around bushes, we’ll just come right out and say it: There is an unhealthy divide in the Boston media, from consumers to reporters, in which a handful of mega outlets dominate the narrative, rarely allowing information from the lower rung to penetrate. In this case, everybody from the Boston Globe to WBZ excitedly latched on to the BPL story, forcing the topic into water cooler exchanges and onto Facebook walls. But until NECN, to its credit, invited DigBoston into the broadcast conversation on day three of the news cycle concerning this Rembrandt and Dürer caper, the entire mess of local hacks together still managed to omit revelations about missing commonwealth masterworks—even as they feigned much aggravation about porous library security. The Globe went so far as to note comparable robberies from public institutions in New York, Ohio, and Maryland, but not in Boston. Go figure.

FREE RADICAL

SHIRLEY’S ‘NORMAL’ Columnist completely misses mark … again

BY EMILY HOPKINS @GENDERPIZZA In last Friday’s Boston Globe, on page one no less, business columnist Shirley Leung embarrassingly begged the United States Olympic Committee not to run away from the loud and consistent opposition to hosting the 2024 Summer Games in the Hub. All this complaining, she says, looks normal to us. It’s simply the Bostonian way of life.

It’s true that we’re a vocal bunch, but said behavior isn’t rooted in some cute cultural stereotype. It’s not a Will Hunting impression. Leung points out that residents whined about the Big Dig, a project that, now that it has been completed, we can’t imagine living without. She doesn’t, however, mention that the reason for laments were dramatic cost overruns and long delays. Leung acknowledges the plummeting in polls for Olympic support, but chalks it up to “PTSD” resulting from the brutal winter.

Ask actual Bostonians, though, and they have myriad reasons for rejecting the Games. Ones that Leung never mentions, like the prospect of welcoming untold security and surveillance, for example. Bostonians complain because there is a lot to complain about. This is one of the top metropolitan areas in America for income inequality; while private developers flip houses, raise rents, and evict tenants, venture capital pours in unchecked. Meanwhile, our public transit system is in disrepair because of mismanagement and bureaucratic ineptitude, and we’re being told to believe that many of the same culprits behind our MBTA nightmare will solve that problem with a massive sporting event. Sure they will.

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MESTRES of the

UNIVERSE

The art, struggle, and enduring tradition of capoeira in Greater Boston

BY MICAELA KIMBALL | PHOTOS BY MICHAEL ZAIA

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Though the experience was more than five years ago, I still vividly remember my first brush with capoeira.

It was a Saturday, sometime around 11pm, and I was eating a late dinner among a gaggle of Brazilians, Americans, and internationals of various ages and backgrounds at a hole-in-the-wall Brazilian joint in Winter Hill, one of Somerville’s last Brazilian strongholds.

We were all there to celebrate capoeira (say it: cap-WEARah), the beautiful and physical practice in which fight meets dance, developed by African slaves in Brazil in order to resist oppression, maintain cultural connections, and cultivate community.

The restaurant had taken on the feel of a party rather than a chatty dining room. Forro dancing, a partner arrangement and one of Brazil’s 50-plus native dances, was underway in the background, its apparent mix of salsa and traditional line-dancing blending in like wallpaper. Others seemed to barely notice, but to my unfamiliarized American eyes, the sight was mesmerizing.

As was the smell of barbequed Brazilian steak, beans, and plantains, which found its way inside my pores, allowing me to not only taste but also feel the flavor.

A handful or so of Brazilian capoeira “mestres” (“masters” in Portuguese, they are among the most exalted instructors) sat at long wooden tables, chatting in English with their students and occasionally hurling Portuguese expressions back and forth at one another. A lot of their specific comments whizzed over my head, but I recall the vibe like it was yesterday, because it was when I first came to realize that this remarkable and colorful tradition thrives in these parts. Specifically, the scene in Winter Hill was the first night party for a Batizado.

“Baptism” in Brazilian Portuguese, Batizado is an annual three- to four-day event involving capoeira workshops, classes, meals, parties, and notably “rodas,” which are dance circles full of passionate action and call and response. If you mashed square-dancing with the Electric Slide and water aerobics, Americans still wouldn’t have anything like it.

The Batizado was designed by modern capoeira groups to celebrate the indoctrination of new students and the “graduations” of veteran capoeiristas (traditional Angolan dedicants do not have such routines). Since the first one I attended, I’ve thought a lot about the art and culture involved. I’ve even practiced some capoeira, and for a time considered the topic for my ongoing series on dance movements, which has so far included features on nightlife and yoga. It took some understanding, but in the interest of sharing my unique experience and that of others with readers who are unfamiliar with the practice, I undertook this effort not just to describe the vibrant tradition, but to consider how this region has become a hub for capoeira, and a destination where teachers and students from all over the country and the world come to be baptized.

ONLY THE BOSTON STRONG

In the past 20 years, the capoeira scene in Boston has grown from only a couple of instructors, each with a few students, to an expanding community of roughly a dozen official schools, each staking claim to a different area or neighborhood. Massachusetts boasts one of the largest Brazilian populations in the United States, while the Boston Redevelopment Authority finds that Brazilians are the fastest-growing immigrant community in the commonwealth. All things considered, it’s not surprising that capoeira is so popular, as it has historically touched themes of freedom and oppression, both topics that are front and center in contemporary immigrant Boston.

In order to better comprehend how capoeira helps to foster connection and resistance, and to help preserve

It’s among a number of special dances and musics that have been marginalized and even outlawed around the world, often at least partially because they pose a threat to a powerful status quo.

community, I looked to the roots.It’s among a number of special dances and musics that have been suppressed and even outlawed around the world, often at least partially because they pose a threat to a powerful status quo.

That’s the history of capoeira in Brazil in a nutshell; while it was made illegal during the country’s slavery period, those who practiced were continually persecuted well after the institution was abolished in 1890. Today, capoeira is highly regarded in Brazil, and even holds the title of the country’s “national sport.” This reluctant embrace—but not necessarily the spirit behind it—is not unlike the way Boston politicians praise the Boston Tea Party, but hypocritically condemn those protesting their lack of representation in government today.

There’s also capoeira’s outlaw reputation, largely through affiliation in the post-slavery era with street gangs and violence in Rio de Janeiro. In the northern state of Bahia though—a state considered to be the most “African” in terms of both culture and demographics—capoeira was often seen in popular festivals around the same time.

According to researchers, negative images attached to capoeira in Brazil’s collective consciousness have historically stemmed from a general affiliation with brutal racism and slavery attached to the country’s past.

The outlawing of capoeira was arguably one way for a dominant class to impose their eroding power. One local mestre tells me, “I was arrested many times as a fifteen- and sixteen-year-old doing capoeira.” The reason: “discrimination against black culture.”

Today, there is an ideological tug of war between capoeiristas dedicated to the “liberatory struggle against oppression,” as anthropologist Greg Downey refers to their traditional beliefs, and those whose affiliation is more closely aligned with modern street stylings. Thrown into this mix are the ghosts of slavery, memories of violence then and now, and the settings in which capoeira comes to life. While traditionally practiced in the open and in plain view on the street in its native country, capoeira also occupies studio, education, and community spaces, like it does here in the United States, and has an integral presence in modern forms like breaking and house dancing—all of which have contributed to a seemingly contradictory status from Brazil to Boston.

Likewise, capoeira has gained popularity and respect among Bostonians, even as the debate over appropriation—or “cultural vampirism” as one local mestre puts it—kicks in New England. As modern forms proliferate, and a shift continues from an Afrocentric “liberatory struggle against oppression” to “whitened,” or “bourgeoise” versions, some say capoeira has lost touch with its African roots. As critics who support more traditional Angolan forms are quick to point out, the modernization of capoeira—away from slower, inverted, loose movements and toward faster, aggressive, upright postures often characterized as “regional”—may be happening for the wrong reasons. Namely, such forms are sometimes believed to be in response to the demands of new, white university students from privileged environments, at first in Brazil but now everywhere. That capoeira had to win the hearts of privileged folks in order to gain respected status in Brazil has served as a major source of controversy.

On the Boston front, most practitioners I spoke with claim that capoeira schools are distinctly diverse in terms of class, race, and ethnicity, and that a number of them focus on social justice issues and put youth at the forefront of their mission. To that end, despite claims that modern forms are disconnected, Boston capoeiristas— Brazilian and non-Brazilian alike—communicate and

create with community in mind, and in order to respond to adverse situations peacefully. In the same way that slaves used capoeira to cope and survive, many Brazilian capoeiristas endure in the face of social structures that often deny their existence.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

It’s Monday night at the Dance Complex in Cambridge, and the entire place is shaking from the sound of African and Brazilian instruments echoing from the capoeira class that’s rocking in an upstairs studio. After an hour of vigorous warm-ups and choreography drills, the class has culminated in what is called a “roda.” Translated from Brazilian Portuguese to English as “circle,” the roda is a dance scrum in which two participants “play” a game of capoeira amidst spirited instructors, and in which experienced practitioners lead songs in Portuguese and make music.

It’s essentially a jam session.

Inside the group’s circle, two people perform a chain of flowing movements, each a creative response to the other’s previous display. The result is a beautiful and seamless flow of motion, an expressive “conversation between two bodies,” as capoeira is often called.

This lively energy, the beauty of the free and flowing movements, and the danger of capoeira’s fight create an ecstatic atmosphere packed with emotions. Think teenage love, that first kiss. As old timers tumble through a perfect whirlwind, newcomers stand with their eyes wide open on the outer rung. More than a couple of the young ones look intimidated, at least until someone encourages, or sometimes even pushes them to join the action.

The class is taught by Mestre Chuvisco, one of two beloved “grandfathers” of capoeira in Boston (the other one being Deraldo Ferreira, the founder and artistic director at the Brazilian Cultural Center of New England).

A native of Minas Gerais, Brazil, Chuvisco has been playing capoeira for over 40 years, and teaching for nearly that long on multiple continents. When Chuvisco first arrived in Boston 20 years ago, capoeira was virtually nonexistent in the area. In a translated interview after his Monday night Dance Complex class, the mestre brings me back to basics.

“No one knew what capoeira was,” Chuvisco says. “I used to pass out flyers, and people would glance at it and say, ‘I don’t know what this is—take it back.’” Still, he managed to start a small capoeira group with just two students, and to eventually grow that into a movement that now trains up to as many as six times every week in studios and other spots in Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston. Similar accomplishments also serve as a point of pride for Ferreira, the other “grandfather” of capoeira in Boston, who teaches capoeira Angola in some of the same spaces.

For Ferreira, his effort to professionalize his practice helped him stay in Boston permanently. “Capoeira is what eventually got me citizenship to the US,” he says. “If you were a professional you could get a green card.”

Status is one thing. Family is another, and for Ferreira and other teachers around here, capoeira creates community. Chuvisco learned from his father in Brazil, and trains and teaches alongside his wife and two children (another one of his sons is a professional MMA fighter who incorporates capoeira into his sport). In the case of others, capoeiristas may be the only local kin they have. “I don’t have any family here,” an area mestre once told me. “So my group is my family right now.”

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THE STRUGGLE

◊ Coolidge Corner Clubhouse Boston, MA 5/27

®

In the same way that capoeira once served as a means of supporting slaves in Brazil in the face of structures that sought to divide and conquer them, in modern day Boston, the practice comparably serves as a defense for immigrants who feel marginalized. As such, capoeiristas have placed a heightened importance on the familial and communal aspects of their tradition. Lydia “Cremosa” Edwards, an immigration attorney and capoeira practitioner for more than a decade, says, “You can imagine if a person is, despite being here for many years, treated like a stranger due to immigration. To have a home base, a family, and a roda that doesn’t care about that … is huge. I’ve seen this consistently … The only other place I feel that is probably as open is their church.”

Capoeira nurtures strong community through group dynamics. While some students pop in for a workout like you would at a fitness class, for the most part students and teachers encourage and see lots of committed devotees who come not just for the physical engagement, but also for philosophical and cultural exercise. It’s inevitable, they say, for some to get “bitten by the bug,” as one local student, Gabe “Gigante” of Capoeira Angola Quintal in Somerville, explains the connection.

In Chuvisco’s experience, he has found Bostonians to be “very serious about capoeira.” He adds: “They may not know capoeira [as well as Brazilians], but they value the culture and find it very rich.” For serious participants, Chuvisco says capoeira becomes part of who they are. “You have to find yourself … it’s a philosophy of life. I breath capoeira. It is in my pores, it is there in my sleep, in my family, it’s in a hug with a student, it’s in a handshake … Capoeira involves me 100 percent, and I involve it 100 percent … What feeds me all these years is that the deeper I get into capoeira, I find a new robe bigger than I had imagined earlier.”

Along those same lines, Chuvisco’s student Jason “Compasso” Ri, who also teaches, notes that capoeira tests more than just his physical body: “Capoeira is a way of approaching life,” Ri says. “Not everyone sees it as a journey … some people just see it as a fun class or a workout, but I don’t see it that way.”

Putting aside the differences between castes and social niches, there appear to be a number of underlying values that unite capoeiristas. Whether someone is as dedicated as Ri or less so, there can be a transformation in everyday life, affecting not only how one moves, but how one behaves and interacts. Capoeira allows its people to practice creative resistance: With each movement, practitioners attempt to respond peacefully and creatively through whatever hardships lie ahead. There’s a general opposition to reacting out of fear or violence.

Then there is the cultural connection, especially for expat Brazilians longing for their home turf. Chuvisco says one of his main reasons for leaving Brazil for the US was that he “felt like he wanted to internationalize his work [with capoeira], not only bringing it to other nations but specifically to expat Brazilians so they could relive their roots.” He and others speak of transcending geographical boundaries, and of helping people feel at home.

“I remember we had someone who came in from Brazil,” says Ri. “It was as if we had created ironically in Cambridge, Mass, a bubble of Brazil; for that brief moment in time that man was home … I remember thinking how much a relief that must have felt for him—maybe he doesn’t feel like he always belongs. I think it’s very much a way to reconnect and create a connection to Brazil and to Brazilian culture.”

Adds Chuvisco: “The first year I was here it was very difficult—I missed Brazil, but the energy that came from me to stay here came from capoeira … When I teach, I stop missing Brazil because in the moment I feel I’m always at home whether I’m in the US or in Brazil… I still have contact with everyone [in Brazil] who is is connected with capoeira … Every time I go back, to be in touch with these people, it revives this energy.”

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MESTRES OF THE UNIVERSE continued from pg. 12

THE RESISTANCE

I did the bulk of my research on capoeira, and on related issues of appropriation and trauma, during a surge in national news about police brutality and violence against people of color across America—clear-cut examples of how largely dormant discussions of social ills can reinvent and reincarnate. In speaking with capoeiristas about these developments, it’s easy to see the positive utility of capoeira in contemporary society—to bring light through creative resistance and struggle.

The rise of capoeira is directly tied to its role as a resistance against unsavory circumstances. This goes for individuals as well as at the macro social level in Boston, much like in Brazil. Demerson “Negao,” a native of Brasilia, Brazil, who teaches and trains in the Hub, says, “Capoeira is used to rescue people. I know many people in Brazil that wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without capoeira— some who were street gangsters, homeless.” Negao says the capoeira masters of today are sometimes the abandoned youth of yesterday. He continues: “This is what capoeira is—it brings people together. You have a place where everyone knows you and respects you—that’s number one for someone that lives on the street … It’s a form of therapy.”

Others point to the way capoeira has been used to bring people together on a global scale in times of social conflict. “Capoeira does not just connect people to Brazil, it connects them to the arts,” says Ferreira of the Brazilian Cultural Center of New England. It’s [now] recognized by the United Nations … in Israel and Palestine they have played capoeira without conflict … The only martial arts I can see bringing people together in this way is capoeira.”

Speaking from the standpoint of individual liberation, “Bambu,” who trains and teaches alongside Chuvisco, notes capoeira’s powers of resistance: “If you’re in a situation where someone is trying to oppress you, capoeira still has a lot to offer even in this context—as a tool to fight back oppression … A force doesn’t have to be as blatant as slavery. Being in an underprivileged environment where you have no options or feeling trapped—any situation you feel trapped—having something where you can express yourself and forge ties and feel close with people, those same benefits are just as powerful.”

Another practitioner, Wellington, notes how capoeira has both kept him in contact with Brazilian culture and simultaneously helped him resist internalizing negative stereotypes. “What drove me to do it for so long was resistance to being completely Americanized,” he says. “There’s still a part of me that wants to be Brazilian.”

From the outside looking in, it’s increasingly the case that capoeira helps to validate Brazilian culture in the eyes of Americans, and to serve as a point of resistance against negative ideas about immigrants. In the words of another mestre, “There’s a stereotype that Brazilians are behind Americans and that translates to an institutional level … But there’s a lot of change. People are starting to look at what Brazil has, and one of those things is capoeira.”

According to Lydia “Cremosa” Edwards, the immigration lawyer, capoeira above all signifies intelligence, and as such commands respect. “It’s an intellectually smart art,” she says. “If you’re a kid who never went to school but can sing and play and play instruments—you can’t deny that person’s intelligence … To learn a language, to play music, and play in the roda, you have to be intelligent.”

“This is what capoeira is--it brings people together. You have a place where everyone knows you and respects you-that’s number one for someone that lives on the street ... It’s a form of therapy.”

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NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

DEPT. COMMERCE SHOP

NEW KNEES

Bee’s Knees expands to Allston, brings cafe culture with it

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

UNDERLING

Checking in with the ground-floor revamp to Fire + Ice in the Back Bay

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF A few weeks ago, Fire + Ice in the Back Bay, a longtime culinary attraction for tourists and collegians, was said to be going under the knife.

The idea was to take what was mostly spillover space on the first-floor bar—lined as it is with patrons filing in to get to the second floor, where Fire + Ice’s American take on Mongolian BBQ action can be found— and turn the downstairs into more of its own after-work dining destination for people hoofing it around the Back Bay and Berkeley street. The new sibling spot would be deemed underFire. And it was so.

The current incarnation of underFire is marked by the sexy-cocktails-lounge-for-pedestrians vibe, with a sweeping new cocktail menu heavy on the muddled fruits, vegetables, and leafy herbs and spices (see: strawberry basil margaritas with house-made sour mix), ostensibly aimed at attracting the kind of crowds underFire’s elder sibling Fire + Ice has not been known for, at least for quite some time. Which isn’t a bad thing if you’re looking to get loud and laughing with a bunch of college pals (current or past), especially over double-strained cocktails and rounds of chicken and Gorgonzola quesadillas. A round of drinks and food won’t completely break the bank here, either.

In the coming weeks, provided they sort out the ventilation requirements put forth by those who enforce such things, there will be a bit of added retrofitting going on inside the ground-floor operation. The focus will be on the addition of 600-degree lava-stone cooking consoles for the tables, which will be used to essentially finish cooking the slabs of steak, tuna, and veggies served in various dishes. It will be less Korean BBQ, with dishes of raw meat and veggies coming out, but rather items already given a sort of once-over by the actual culinary staff, and then brought out for diners to finish it off in whatever way they see fit, and consume in the same manner.

Aside from that, the current real draw to the new underFire menu, sans lava stone cooking, is the buildyour-own burger menu, featuring toppings like braised short ribs and pork belly, as well as a shortlist of five food-truck style inventive tacos. Think: Peruvian-style grilled chicken, braised pork belly and cheddar tacos, diced potato and chorizo tacos, and a braised short rib and chimichurri spice-bomb that even for an old taco czar like myself proved tasty and filling. For slow-cooked pulled pork aficionados, as well as those who enjoy wrapping piles of the stuff up with plenty of queso fresco and onion cilantro lime salsa in a corn wheat tortilla, things are on the up and up for you here as well.

But aficionados of searing your own protein and produce at your table atop hot volcanic rocks will have to wait a little longer. Until then there’s still the song of Fire + Ice happening upstairs. >> UNDERFIRE. 205 BERKELEY ST., BOSTON. 617.482.3473. FIRE-ICE.COM 16

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>> BEE’S KNEES SUPPLY CO. OPENING EARLY JUNE. 1316 COMM AVE., ALLSTON. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT BEESKNEESSUPPLY.COM

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL ZAIA

EATS

When the flagship outpost of Bee’s Knees Supply Company, the artisanal market and craft beer and wine store in Fort Point, opened in spring of 2013, a lot changed for downtown and channel denizens.

Suddenly at their fingertips was a truly handsome provisions store set in a renovated mill. Owner Jason Owens and his team gutted and transformed it into a funky and fun variety market (with one hell of a cheesemonger station). And ever since, office workers, local artists, and residents in the area have been stopping by for quick grab-and-go lunches.

So when time came to settle on a new outpost, Owens wanted retain the brand’s penchant for sourcing and selling charcuterie and hard-to-find cheeses (and the obsessively curated beer and wine to pair with them) but also to tweak the original concept.

Besides adding fully prepared take-home meals, the Allston location will be a nod to the lounge-y cafe culture of Owens’ youth in Nashville, TN. “I got into this because I love cheese, beer, and wine,” he says. “But we will have a very elevated cafe concept [in Allston] versus Fort Point. I’d like to say everything is a little different and better. This represents what I’m into now.”

The new location is slated to open in early midJune in the old Joshua Tree space across from the Griggs Street/Long Avenue Green Line T stop. There, Allstonians will be able to take advantage of the openwindows format of the 75-seat cafe, replete with a fireplace lounge and a vinyl record player, which will spin Owens’ record collection via the house system.

In addition to the culinary treasures from producers he has personal relationships with (“I like to know where things are coming from and how they are made”), including direct-from-farm meat and seafood offerings, there will be an “elevated coffee program” involving roasters from all over (see: Four Barrel, Stumptown, etc.) and everything from espresso, to Chemex pour-over, to siphon-style brewing for the purist java experience.

“Allston is a great neighborhood,” he says. “That’s why we wanted to push the cafe concept. This will be somewhere [locals] will want to hang out in.”

DAWG GONE DOGS Wednesday’s June 3rd – 24th 5-11pm

MENU CHILI CHEESE DOG

Wicked good chili cheddar cheese scallions tater tots

HOT DOG SLIDERS

America cheese grilled potato roll fried egg hand cut fries

WINDY CITY

Mustard tomato onions sport peppers neon relish celery salt onion rings

BAHN MI WEENIE

Asian sausage crispy vegetables Red curry mayo cilantro baguette fried wontons

TWO PIGS IN A BLANKET

Bacon wrapped jack cheese diced tomato avocado mayo chicharrones

GERMAN SHEPHERD

Beer steamed knockwurst Swiss sauerkraut mustard pretzel roll potato salad

ROAD DOG

Smoked hot dog pulled pork coleslaw crispy onions fried pickles

CORNDOG

REAL FOOD 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

Battered fried hot dog on a stick honey mustard sauce hand cut fries

MAGOUNSSALOON OLDEMAGOUNSSALOON

518 Medford St. Somerville magounssaloon.com 617-776-2600 NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

ARTS ENTERTAINMENT

ARCHIE’S BETTY SHOWING AT THE ICA ON SUNDAY 5.31. HAMBURGERS NOT INCLUDED.

18

THURS 5.28

THURS 5.28

FRI 5.29

FRI 5.29

SAT 5.30

SUN 5.31

Wine and Film at the Coolidge: Sideways

Burlesque for Beginners

Free Comedy Night at Pavement Coffeehouse

American Craft Beer Fest After Party

Awesome Day Fest

Archie’s Betty

Good news: the Coolidge Corner Theatre has teamed up with oenophile glossy rag Wine Spectator Magazine to begin screening a series of films centered around wine in order to, well, let you watch movies and drink a bunch of wine. The kickoff film is a choice pick: Sideways. This modern buddy road-trip comedy starring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church will be followed by a complimentary tasting.

Expect Pinot Noir. Because obviously.

Burlesque is one of those things that can turn the attempting novice into a punchline, if not a beautiful disaster. Which is why the Boston Academy of Burlesque Education offers monthly sessions to get the uninitiated initiated. Hitting up the class going down on Thursday potentially could lead to a new career, if you’re good. If you’re bad, take comfort in being more of a “watcher” than a “doer” when it comes to shaking one’s ass.

Boston is no slouch when it comes to a bustling comedy scene, especially when you’re talking about the raw, evolving talent peppering our laughter landscape. So it should come as no surprise that when Pavement Coffeehouse launched a free comedy night recently it was a smashing success. Now they’ve brought the event back with six stand-ups, free of charge, with Dan Boulger of Craig Ferguson and Boston Comedy Festival headlining.

The American Craft Beer Fest is a great way to sample suds being produced right here on American soil. But if you’re more of an “I like my American craft beers after the festival” person, then hit the after-party at The Merchant on Friday. There’ll be over 20 excellent brews on tap, including special picks from the likes of Jack’s Abby, Two Roads, Otter Creek, and Wormtown, just for the night. Cheers.

The Allston-ian daylong general craziness festival anchored at O’Briens Pub and spanning venues from Wonder Bar to Great Scott and Model Cafe returns this weekend. Attendance guarantees the following: killer music from the likes of Zip-Tie Handcuffs, Robby Roadsteamer and his band of merry pranksters, Petty Morals, Party Bois, and more, as well as BBQ. So once more that’s BBQ, killer live local music, roving parties, and wild good times. Sold.

If you’ve ever wondered whom Archie, Betty, Veronica, Moose, Jughead, and the rest of the cast of the classic Archie comics were based on, you should head to the ICA on Sunday. Filmmaker Gerald Peary (an admitted Archie junkie) has made a documentary visiting creator Bob Montana’s surviving classmates from 1930s Haverhill, Mass, to find out about the origins of Montana’s characters.

Peary will be present during the screenings, so feel free to ask him if the real-life Betty was as hot as her ’toon doppelganger. We want to know too.

Coolidge Corner Theatre.

290 Harvard St., Brookline..

7pm/21+/$12-15. For more information, visit coolidge. org/content/sideways

Boston Academy of Burlesque Education. 119 Braintree St., Suite 206, Boston. 8-9:30pm/18+/$2530. For more information, visit studyburlesque.com

Pavement Coffee House.

736 Comm Ave., Boston.

6:30-8pm/all ages/FREE. For more information, visit pavementcoffeehouse.com

The Merchant. 60 Franklin St., Boston. 10pm1am/21+/cash bar. For more information, visit themerchantboston.com

Multiple Locations, all day BBQ at O’Briens Pub. 3 Harvard Ave., Allston.

Doors 3pm/21+/$12. For more information, visit awesomedayfest.com

ICA. 100 Northern Ave., Boston. 12pm + 3pm/ all ages/$5. For more information, visit icaboston.org

05.27.15 - 06.03.15

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NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

MUSIC

VOCAL LESSONS

MUSIC

Patrick Watson turns music into adult fairytales

Weirdo records closes its door after nine years

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

LIMITED EDITION

If you could get vocal lessons from anyone, who would it be? The answer, for me anyway, is simple: Patrick Watson.

The Canadian singer-songwriter has five albums under his belt, won the 2007 Polaris Music Prize, and plays a myriad of instruments. But that’s not what makes him special. Watson’s got a voice deeply reminiscent of Jeff Buckley, and on his new album, Love Songs For Robots, his vocals get more direct by staying lower. “It’s like a bizarre sci-fi record for me since I’m not as angelic now,” he says over the phone, laughing.

In all of Patrick Watson’s albums, there’s a lingering feeling that you’re caught in a children’s book. Of course, having song titles like “Where The Wild Things Are” and “Oh The Places We Will Go” certainly helps. He’s making fairytales, only this time they’re for adults.

“When I was reading some books to my kids, they didn’t sound very child-friendly,” he says. “Even in an adult life, having that curiosity and looking at the world like that gives things a magical touch. Plus it’s healthy. I’ve never really lost that way of seeing.”

Watson talks about Walt Disney’s original material, most of which was gruesome stuff. In The Little Mermaid, for example, Ariel tries to stab the prince with a knife, it doesn’t work, and she kills herself by throwing herself off the boat.

“That’s the real story,” he admits. “Everything is crazy and magical and wild, but it isn’t always innocent. They have a depth of field that I really like.”

When he was a child, Watson was busy singing right away. He joined his local church choir at age seven, took lessons in hopes of joining a musical (“What a silly idea,” he laughs, reflecting), and then suddenly stopped singing for five years.

“When I started singing again, I hated my voice,” he admits. “When I’m not inspired, I can’t sing. Singing is mostly about the intention of what you’re doing more than anything. If you concentrate on the story at hand, your voice will do the best job it can.”

After passing along some basic guidelines—don’t stay out too late, don’t drink beer, turn to lemon and ginger when you’re in trouble—he finally figures out his vocal lesson for us: “If I don’t live, I can’t sing. I can’t be too careful, either, because it takes away the beauty of what the instrument is. I like the adventure of touring and then getting to share it live each night. So live. Then let your voice do its thing.” >> PATRICK WATSON W/ THE LOW ANTHEM. SAT 5.30. THE SINCLAIR, 52 CHURCH ST., CAMBRIDGE. 8PM/18+/$20.

MUSIC EVENTS THU 5.28

ORCHESTRAL ART ROCK THE RED PAINTINGS + TRANSDUSK + BIG TIME KILL

[T.T. The Bears, 10 Brookline St., Cambridge. 8:30pm/18+/$10. ttthebears.com]

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FRI 5.29

ALL THE SHOES GAZING SOCCER MOM + INFINITY GIRL + CHANDOS + COACHES

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave., Allston. 10pm/21+/ $10. greatscottboston.com]

DIGBOSTON.COM

SAT 5.30

SUN 5.31

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$20. sinclaircambridge.com]

[Democracy Center, 45 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge. 6pm/all ages/$7-10. democracycenter.org]

WOODLAND SOUNDSCAPES PATRICK WATSON + THE LOW ANTHEM

POST-POP PUNK YOU’LL LIVE + ROBINS + SPORTS.

>> WEIRDO RECORDS. 844 MASSACHUSETTS AVE., CAMBRIDGE. WEIRDORECORDS.COM.

EMO EMO EMO THE EARLY NOVEMBER + LYDIA + RESTORATIONS [The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$17. sinclaircambridge.com]

TUE 6.2

LOUD SWEATY DUDE PUNK, ETC. PRAWN + YEEHAW! + TROPHY LUNGS + DISTRICTS

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

8pm/all ages/$8. mideastclub.com]

PATRICK WATSON PHOTO BY OLIVIER SIROIS

GUYS, I THINK HE SPOTTED OUR HIDDEN CAMCORDER!

Hold the needle drop. On Wednesday of last week, Cambridge’s secret haven of obscure wax, Weirdo Records, announced that it’s closing doors after nine years as a business.

Weirdo Records owner Angela Sawyer took to the Weirdo Records website to write a farewell letter that was more celebratory than sad. “The sale that’s been going on for the last few months also went far, far better than expected. So well, that I decided to take a vacation from selling records,” the 45-yearold wrote. “But I am also very interested to do things that non-record-store-owning people do, like leave town, practice music, eat fruit, get haircuts, and generally do things one-at-a-time instead of ten-at-a-time.”

Weirdo began as a MySpace experiment to see if she could connect with other record collectors looking for more obscure releases.

Sure enough, she found that community, and over the last several years, they came out to shop against their better economic judgment.

The tiny store was hidden away on Mass Ave., a quick walk from Central Square for those looking for something off the beaten path. Unlike Newbury Comics, Weirdo Records allowed customers to test out anything before they bought it. Want to hear what this Taiwanese psych rock band from the ’60s sounds like? Spin it on the record player with a pair of their headphones. Don’t know this local band’s mixtape? Pop it in the cassette player on the back shelf. It was Boston’s premiere store for discovering the unknown. Now, that door won’t swing open again.

Sawyer plans on hosting open mics for comedians and musicians at King’s Bowling Alley on Wednesdays at 9pm, organizing a monthly improvised music night called Shrymprov at Whitehaus, and performing as a musician herself.

Keep your eyes glues on her site, though, and you may see Sawyer return. “Record selling may well be back on my plate after I get bored of having too much money and time and music on my hands,” she writes. “Record stores are a bit like paper airplanes, but thanks to all of you, I’m pretty sure a good one can fly a ways.”

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

FILM

LIBERATING RESULTS Visually representing how people meet

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

CENTRAL SQ. CAMBRIDGE, MA

mideastclub.com | zuzubar.com (617) 864-EAST | ticketweb.com WED 5/27

CELSO PIÑA + PATO MACHETE EN CONCIERTO! THURS 5/28

THE NTH POWER CORY HENRY, THE FUNK APOSTLES FRI 5/29 - BOWERY PRESENTS:

SINNERS & SAINTS DEATH AND TAXES SAT 5/30

JUICE MAD YONDER SUN 5/31

DEATH

(A BAND CALLED DEATH)

UPSTAIRS WED 5/27

THEAMERICAN SYMPTOMS ECHOES THUR 5/28 - BOWERY PRESENTS:

GLOCCA MORRA

FRI 5/29 - DO 617 PRESENTS:

WHEN PARTICLES COLLIDE SAT 5/30 - ALL AGES 1PM

WHO KILLED SPIKEY JACKET?

TENEBRAE, BROKEN STEREO SUN 5/31

DIABOLIC HEDDSHOTTS MON 6/1

THE LOUSY INSTRUMENTS

TUES 6/2 - BOWERY PRESENTS:

PRAWN TROPHY LUNGS, DISTRICTS

The relationship we moviegoers have with romantic comedies is like the relationship we have with a waiter: All we expect is to be served what we ordered, with a minimum of complications. But Results—the latest from Andrew Bujalski—rejects the meet-cute, the lyrical pitter-patter dialogue, and the conspicuously swanky wardrobes that we associate with those movies. Bujalski has the audacity to deviate from the recipe.

Trevor (Guy Pearce) and Kat (Cobie Smulders) are the entangled pair. He owns a new-age-y gym in Austin, and she’s his grumpiest employee—the one who rejects his beliefs. They set off one another’s insecurities, which means they’re incurably attracted to one another. At work they bicker and push each other around with a tender physicality that quietly asks: Are we going to sleep together tonight? But they’re both too guarded to show any vulnerability, so the answer is usually no.

Then Danny (Kevin Corrigan) walks in for some weight training. He just got divorced, and then he got rich. His self-aware schlubbiness charms Kat for a minute or two—they smoke pot and make out—but she breaks it off after a single night. She expects him to cancel his gym membership. Instead he buys a stake in the business. Bujalski’s script leads us through some rather unlikely scenarios (like that one), some of which would fit well in a Katherine Heigl movie.

But the director isn’t after swoons. He’s trying to pin down the ways that people communicate with each other, or—more often—how they fail to.

And with Results he’s managed to visually represent the very act of meeting someone in a way that’s elegant and astute. The early parts of the movie often feature the characters alone in their homes, but they begin to invade each other’s space more often as their affairs pile up. During the first scenes Kat and Danny spend together, they’re on opposite sides of a room, in long shots composed from a distance. The shots inch closer up in each sequence, and with it, their bodies inch closer to each other—as if even the viewers behind the frame were tentative to get acquainted with these damaged souls.

Standard operating procedure dictates that romcoms ingratiate the audience: The photography should be simple, the leads should be underwear models, the humor should be broad. But Bujalski is too honest for that. He sees ugliness too: Danny leering at Kat online, or Kat abusing anyone who doesn’t acquiesce to her alpha-ness. With the deliberate images and the occasionally repellent script, he’s crafting a movie that draws you in naturally—one that you have to accept with its quirks, as these characters do each other.

He’s replaced the hallmarks of the genre with the verbal awkwardness and spiritual messiness of real life. When the two guys first hang out, it’s after an argument. Danny just leaves his door open—he lets Trevor decide whether or not he wants to come in. Results offers us the same choice, and the effect is liberating. >> RESULTS. RATED R. AVAILABLE ON VIDEO-ON-DEMAND PLATFORMS STARTING 5.29.

OPENING AT THE KENDALL SQUARE THEATRE ON 6.5.

FILM EVENTS WED. 5.27

DIRECTED BY WOJCIECH JERZY HAS

IT’S GONNA BLOW!!!

[Harvard Film Archive.

24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/NR/$7-9. http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa]

“SAN DIEGO’S MUSIC UNDERGROUND 1986-1996”

[Somerville Theatre.

55 Davis Sq., Somerville.

7:30pm/NR/$10. feitheatres. com/somerville-theatre] SAT. 5.30

SEARCHING FOR THE CHARACTERS BEHIND THE COMIC ARCHIE’S BETTY

/mideastclub /zuzubar @mideastclub @zuzubar 22

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[ICA Boston. 100 Northern Ave., Boston. 7pm/NR/$5-10.

Also plays 5.31 and 6.14. icaboston.org]

THE FABULOUS JOURNEY OF BALTHAZAR KOBER

PRESENTED BY BEN RIVERS REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE

[Harvard Film Archive.

24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 10pm/NR/$7-9. http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa]

DIRECTED BY CLIVE BARKER

NIGHTBREED

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

11:30pm/$9-11. brattlefilm.org] MON. 6.1

MEET THE BEALES

GREY GARDENS

[Coolidge Corner Theatre.

290 Harvard St., Brookline.

7pm/PG/$11.25. coolidge.org] PHOTO BY

DOWNSTAIRS

Boston’s Best Irish Pub

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

SUNDAYS

MONDAYS

DOUBLE TAP

MAKKA MONDAY

Weekly Gaming Night: The same guys who bring you Game Night every week at Good Life bar are now also running a special Sunday night.

14+yrs every Monday night, Bringing Roots, Reggae & Dancehall Tunes 21+, 10PM - 1AM

21+, NO COVER,

6PM - 11:30PM

TUESDAYS

WEDNESDAYS

THIRSTY TUESDAYS

GEEKS WHO DRINK

Live Resident Band The Night Foxes, Playing everything Old, New & Everything Inbetween 21+, NO COVER, 10PM - 1AM Live Stand Up Comedy from 8:30PM - 10PM with no cover!

“It’s like if Annie Dillard had her own show on HGTV.” —THE MILLIONS

HAMMER HEAD The Making of a Carpenter NINA MACLAUGHLIN

B W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

Independent Publishers Since 1923 • Wherever Books are Sold

Free Trivia Pub Quiz from 7:30PM - 9:30PM

RE:SET WEDNESDAYS

Weekly Dance Party, House, Disco, Techno, Local & International DJ’s 19+, 10PM - 1AM

THURSDAYS

FRIDAYS

SATURDAYS

ELEMENTS

PRETTY YOUNG THING

BOOM BOOM ROOM

15+ Years of Resident Drum & Bass Bringing some of the worlds biggest DnB DJ’s to Cambridge 19+, 10PM - 2AM

80’s Old School & Top 40 Dance hits 21+, 10PM - 2AM

80’s, 90’s, 00’s One Hit Wonders 21+, 10PM - 2AM

THE BEST ENTERTAINMENT IN CAMBRIDGE 7 DAYS A WEEK! 1/2 PRICED APPS DAILY 5 - 7PM RUGBY WORLD CUP SHOWN LIVE, STARTING ON SEPTEMBER 17TH WATCH EVERY SOCCER GAME!

VOTED BOSTON’S BEST SOCCER BAR ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE Saturdays & Sundays Every Game shown live in HD on 12 Massive TVs. We Show All European Soccer including Champions League, Europa League, German, French, Italian & Spanish Leagues.

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP Come watch the Womens World Cup at The Phoenix Starting June 6th CHECK OUT ALL PHOENIX LANDING NIGHTLY EVENTS AT:

WWW.PHOENIXLANDINGBAR.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

23

FILM

LOL CATS

Incomprehensible story line and big cats keeps Roar unclassifiable

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

HAKUNA MATATA MOTHERFUCKERS! Once or twice per year, an older movie is successfully revived on the so-bad-it’s-good circuit.

For a short while, Roar seemed to be one of them. It’s a vanity project courtesy of Tippi Hedren—she stars, as does daughter Melanie Griffith, while husband Noel Marshall co-stars and directs. Acting alongside them is a pack of wild jungle cats. And so the film bounds far beyond badness. Its very existence is downright irresponsible.

The setup is that Marshall’s character lives in the African jungles, coexisting with the cats.

The plot follows Hedren and the rest of her clan as they visit, then find themselves facing off with all these untrained animals. And the punchline—unintentional though it may be—is that there are no stuntmen or special effects included. The actors try to perform around attacks and outbursts. They treat the lions like improvising co-stars. But the cats, always scraping and clawing, treat the actors like prime meat.

The humans end up dripping blood over every scene, irreparably staining the ostensibly lighthearted texture of this would-be romp. The story itself is nearly incomprehensible from the start anyway: Even the simplest scene of dialogue—like Marshall explaining his philosophy about cohabitation—is interrupted and left unfinished thanks to scratch-attacks and the resulting gore. The narrative is nonsense, and the danger is real—and that leaves Roar a rare film that’s damn near unclassifiable. It’s a family comedy that doubles as real-world survival-horror footage. It’s Homeward Bound imbued with the spirit of Werner Herzog. >>ROAR. BRATTLE THEATRE, 40 BRATTLE ST., CAMBRIDGE. WED. 5.27 + THU 5.28. 7PM + 9:15PM/PG/$9-11.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT BRATTLEFILM.ORG

SLOW WEST

Michael Fassbender as Western fairy godmother

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN Michael Fassbender’s voice carries softly over Slow West; he narrates with a tone suitable for bedtime stories. That’s fitting, since we’re being related a fable: Cavendish (Kodi SmitMcPhee) comes to America, circa the 1870s, to find Rose (Caren Pistorius,) his lost love. She and her family escaped Scotland after a slight put them out of an aristocrat’s good graces.

Now they’ve got bounty hunters on their tail. The elements alone would’ve killed Cavendish, but Silas (Fassy) deigns to protect him. The tone, the narrative, the way Fassbender plays fairy godmother—much of this quickly evokes fairy tales. But the rest copies better Westerns.

Silas isn’t even a person—just a jumble of genre clichés. He fulfills whatever is needed to get us to the finale. Sometimes he’s a helpful father figure. Then he’s a brave defender of all that’s righteous. Later we learn that he’s also an unscrupulous bounty hunter. He’s Shane, John Wayne, and Eastwood’s Man with no Name—all at once.

He’s a screenwriter’s Swiss army knife.

You know where we’re headed: The hunters and Cavendish find Rose simultaneously, leaving Silas to choose between the cash on her head and his commitment to the boy.

We also know he’s going to do the right thing once the shooting starts. But oh—what shooting! Gunmen are stationed throughout a farm, and the entire space—from the surrounding plains to the glass breaking indoors—plays a role in the sorting-out. This may be a hollow forgery, but some of it is painted damn well. >>SLOW WEST. BRATTLE THEATRE, 40 BRATTLE ST., CAMBRIDGE. FRI 5.29-THU 6.4.

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FILM SHORTS BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

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.

Max is almost mute. Car chases fill the entire running time. Backstories are illustrated using only the scars and wounds on character’s bodies.

Fury Road speaks to us visually—it’d work entirely without sound. There’s only one verbal motif: Who killed the world? shouted by the film’s six heroines toward the patriarchal figures who scorched their planet.

Scoff at the inclusion of progressive politics in a film this unashamedly violent, but everything eventually clicks together. We see a world in need of tearing down. Fury Road finds great cinematic beauty doing exactly that.

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 naïf 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

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG

Paul Walker’s final performance is shamelessly sentimentalized amidst crashing cars and crassly cool violence—sad to say that the longrunning series’ ingrained earnestness has been up-shifted, by new-to-theseries 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.

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.

IRIS 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.

WILD TALES Six stories survey the separation between rich and poor, with the conceit being that everyone is depicted as being equally amoral.

(It’s a comedy.) None of the stories intersect, but motifs recur: explosions, people trying to bust through shatterproof glass, victims growing so traumatized by vile behavior that they keel over and vomit. One story stages a street fight between two egotists on the side of the road. Blood and spit and viscera— all the ugliness of the human condition—splatters onto the lens.

The movie rubs our faces in it.

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FILM

ALT-MAN

American counterculture filmmaking at its best with the HFA’s Robert Altman retrospective

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

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>> THE FILMS OF ROBERT ALTMAN. HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE, 24 QUINCY STREET, CAMBRIDGE. BEGINS FRI 6.5. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT HCL.HARVARD.EDU/HFA

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This summer, the Harvard Film Archive will unspool the works of Robert Altman, perhaps the premiere American counterculture filmmaker. His recognized classics, like MASH, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and Nashville, play often. So those with limited time should plan to see the films more rarely screened. They’re not covered in textbooks—but they offer a clearer portrait of the man who made them.

That includes the psychedelic gonzo parable Brewster McCloud, which illustrates Altman’s worldview with a nakedness that never recurred. Contained within is his contempt for cops and authority, his conception of social life as absurdist comedy, and his grudging respect for the doomed creatives dumb enough to try and transcend all the bullshit. Bud Cort stars as the dreamer—an orphan boy living in a re-appropriated, semi-dystopian Astrodome—who tries to make his escape literally: He builds himself bird’s wings and plans to soar away.

Altman was already divorcing himself from the rules of narrative filmmaking, so that’s not “the plot.” Instead he does his take on the thesis film: A professor leads off by stating we’re studying the connection between man and bird, which Altman takes as a cue to mock our basest behaviors. He loops in scenes depicting businessmen playfully robbing the poor and elderly, while cops gleefully abuse “undesirables,” paralleling the way flocks settle into hierarchies. The way we flirt and love becomes comically mundane “mating.” And Brewster’s attempts to escape it all can’t help but crash and burn. There’s a self-aware tragedy to Altman’s perspective, hilariously externalized by the Astrodome’s closed room.

If existence itself is a circus—and the candy-colored, stunt-filled, joke-loaded widescreen compositions suggest as much—then there’s no climbing out.

McCloud isn’t a comedy so much as it is a pot-addled daydream. That’s what’s strange about these films—Altman was always taking the piss, but he never conformed to the standard ways of doing so. O.C. and Stiggs, an oft-reviled National Lampoon adaptation that he directed for hire in the mid-’80s, may be the closest he ever came to true satire. The title characters are teenagers perpetually committing pranks against the local bourgeoisie, most notably a family headed by an insurance executive. But Altman paints the rebellious boys as grotesques, too. They’re sexist, racist, and homophobic, as ignorant as their targets—unknowing products of the environment they rebel against. Here’s a satire of American satires.

Brewster has the vibrant palette of a psychedelic comic book. But with Stiggs Altman is considering everything garish about “the real America,” so the set is dressed in repulsive pastels. He even includes cartoon-worthy sight gags to accentuate the childish tone—there are bottles stashed everywhere in the home of the local drunk, even in the chandeliers hanging near the top of the frame. The gags pile onto the relentless frivolity. His vision of suburban life is a compendium of juvenile culture—and an argument that it’s perverted even those who push back against it.

But when a place earned his respect, he could bring it alive like few others.

Altman was born in Kansas City, and he imbues his film of the same name with sense memories: dimly-lit streetlights hanging over undeveloped roads, jazz clubs roaring all night with dancers shaking until they sleep, the low swoops of a hustler’s practiced walk. Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as a street-level gun moll who kidnaps a politician’s wife, hoping to hold her as ransom against her boyfriend— who’s being held captive by a black organized crime syndicate that said politician is in league with. The film starts off with the crime, but that’s just a pretense toward a plot that lets us walk back and forth between the city’s rich and poor districts—its upstairs and its downstairs.

The camera is always moving downward to the speakeasies for extended sweeping takes, to take in the art form resident jazz musicians were helping to create. Then it pans upward again, to the white politicians practicing their own nefarious “craft,” always mindful of the effect that one subculture has on another. Altman’s depictions of American existence are similar in that they’re all-encompassing, utilizing careful aesthetics to consider psychology, social structures, art, and their many intersections. He recorded the nation—mind, body, and soul.

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Q&A: JESSE WALKER Now entering the United States of Paranoia

BY ANDREW QUEMERE

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I recently had the opportunity to speak with journalist Jesse Walker, whose latest book The United States of Paranoia takes an entertaining look at conspiracy theories and throughout history, as well as their effect on pop culture.

Walker’s book is partly a response to theorists like Richard Hofstadter, author of “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” who claim that conspiratorial thinking is limited to a small minority of people, typically those with unusual political views.

“The fear of conspiracies has been a potent force across the political spectrum, from the colonial era to the present, in the establishment as well as at the extremes,” writes Walker. “[Conspiracy theories] have flourished not just in times of great division but in eras of relative comity. They have been popular not just with dissenters and nonconformists but with individuals at the center of power.”

As he further explains …

What got you interested in researching conspiracy theories and political paranoia?

JW: My general interest in conspiracy theories goes back to my teens, when I started reading about the misbehavior of the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies—basically, the stuff the Church and Pike committees had helped expose in the 1970s. I quickly discovered that these well-documented stories often shared a library shelf with books whose claims were not so well-grounded.

When journalists and politicians use the phrase “conspiracy theory,” it’s usually in reference to disreputable beliefs held by people with unpopular political views. Why do you suppose that is?

JW: It’s a good question. There are plenty of widely believed stories about conspiracies, some of them pretty dubious, that are hardly ever called conspiracy theories—speculations about terror networks, urban legends about gang initiations, fearful media reports about cults, and so on. Meanwhile, fringy ideas sometimes get the “conspiracy theory” tag even if they don’t actually involve conspiracies. Some people basically use “conspiracy theory” to mean “fringe theory.” I’m sure there’s several reasons for that, and I wouldn’t want to try to reduce the phenomenon to just one explanation. But it certainly seems to fulfill a need to believe that conspiracy thinking is just something for the far left or far right, not a widespread human trait.

Evidently people find this idea comforting.

Another theme in your writing is that belief in conspiracy theories isn’t limited to modern times, but has been part of American culture for the country’s entire history.

JW: I don’t think the Internet has made conspiratorial thinking more common.

But it certainly has had several effects.

If you had the chance to direct your own conspiracy-themed movie, what would it be about?

JW: It would probably be a story where various characters are falsely convinced that other characters are conspiring against them, and then that becomes a selffulfilling prophecy.

Are there any final thoughts you’d like to leave our readers with?

JW: Just that conspiracy theories are inevitable. We are pattern-seeking, storytelling creatures; if there’s a gap in the data, we’ll try to fill it in a way that makes a coherent picture. Put that human capacity for finding patterns together with the human capacity for fear, and you’re guaranteed to see conspiracy theories emerge. >> READ THE WHOLE INTERVIEW AT DIGBOSTON.COM.

SUMMER PREVIEW IS COMING STREET DATE: JUNE 10TH AD DEADLINE: JUNE 5TH

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SECRET ASIAN MAN

BY TAK TOYOSHIMA @TAKTOYOSHIMA

THE STRANGERER

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

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SAVAGE LOVE

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BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE There’s this guy I stopped dating a few months ago, but we’ve remained friends. When we were still dating, he once wore a thong when we were having sex. He called it his “sexy underwear.” He said he wore it only if he really liked a woman.

He also told me he tried using a vibrator and fingers in his ass and really enjoyed it. I wasn’t bothered, but I am curious to know if straight guys really wear thongs and enjoy having their asses played with. Could he be a gay?

-What’s He Attracted To? That guy could be a gay, WHAT, but any guy could be a gay.

There are, however, lots of straight guys out there who dig sexy underwear—and some mistakenly believe thongs qualify.

There are also lots of straight guys out there who like having their asses played with—and some are secure enough in their heterosexuality to share that fact with the women in their lives.

Not all gay guys wear thongs and not all gay guys like having their asses played with. The boyfriends of these guys never write to ask me if their boyfriend could be a straight. Instead, they take the gay sex they’re having with their gay boyfriends for an answer. I understand why a straight woman might have more cause for concern: Very few gay-identified guys are secretly straight, while a significant percentage of straight30

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identified guys are secretly gay or bi. (Google “antigay pastor Matthew Makela caught on Grindr” for a recent example.)

But at some point, WHAT, a straight woman should relax and take all the straight sex she’s having with her thongwearing, ass-play-digging boyfriend for an answer.

Just because a woman closes her eyes during sex doesn’t mean she’s fantasizing about something. I love to look my husband in the eyes, but sometimes when I’m trying to get off, I just need to close my eyes and concentrate on what I’m feeling. Visual input is too distracting and makes it hard to focus. I get off pretty much every time we make love, but some times require more concentration than others.

-Concentrating On My Euphoria COME is referring to my advice a couple of weeks back for Come As You Are, a man whose wife had to lean back, close her eyes, and rub her clit in order to come. I advised CAYA to ask his wife what she was thinking about when she did that—what scenario she was fantasizing about—and not to panic if she wasn’t thinking about him.

Lots of women wrote in to say that they do—they must do— the same thing CAYA’s wife does in order to come: close their eyes and concentrate. Allowing a partner to play an active role in your wild/unrealizable fantasies—through dirty talk—will make your partner feel like a part of your fantasy world (and your orgasms) and not an exile from it.

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