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BOSTONIANS DEFEND THE OTHER BIG APPLE PERFORMING ARTS

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ONLY YESTERDAY TAKAHATA IS SO CLOSE

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VOL 18 + ISSUE 9

MARCH 3, 2016 - MARCH 10, 2016 EDITORIAL

DEAR READER

EDITOR + PUBLISHER Jeff lawrence

I had an interesting, if dispiriting, conversation this past weekend with a friend of mine, who is an older African-American woman. Like a lot of other political liberals I know, she intended to support Sen Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary on Tuesday.

Outside of that race, however, her larger concern came from the remarkable number of Greater Bostonians who were expected to support Donald Trump. Without getting into all the typical talking points, she told me how upsetting it was to her that one in four white people have such disregard for people of color that they would openly back such a bigot to a pollster. As this ridiculous race for POTUS rages past Super Tuesday, I feel it’s more important than ever for the other three out of four white people to speak loudly about why our country deserves better.

In other news, the local news we really care about, this week we bring you the regional angle of the hubbub over Apple vs the FBI, more about that leech General Electric, analysis of the horrific reality of dying on a public road in the Commonwealth, and shit news for all about the budget Mass is facing in the coming fiscal year. Trust me, it’s a hell of a lot more depressing than it sounds.

NEWS + FEATURES EDITOR Chris Faraone ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran ASSOCIATE FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan ASSOCIATE ARTS EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COPY EDITOR Mitchell Dewar CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Emily Hopkins, Jason Pramas CONTRIBUTORS Nate Boroyan, Renan Fontes, Bill Hayduke, Emily Hopkins, Micaela Kimball, Jason Pramas, Dave Wedge INTERNS Becca DeGregorio, Anna Marketti

DESIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tak Toyoshima COMICS Tim Chamberlain Pat Falco Patt Kelley

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CHRIS FARAONE - NEWS + FEATURES EDITOR, DigBoston

OH, CRUEL WORLD

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER Jesse Weiss 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 There’s an unwritten rule at the Dig that if anything called “Bootycandy” comes across our desk it automatically gets the cover. Luckily it turns out this is one hell of a production from SpeakEasy Stage too!

Photo by Glenn Perry Photography.

©2016 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 Punxsutawney Pipsqueak, Since I’m not a total schmuck, I don’t even know how the whole groundhog baloney works. Whether it’s that you see your shadow then we get spring early, or if you don’t see shit and we are doomed to eat snow and die. When your ritual went down weeks ago, I was paying close attention to real news.

Because again, fuck you. I’ll tell you what though—if you didn’t predict this clear weather and prove your usefulness, I think it’s time to detonate you once and for all.

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STRANGE WEBFELLOWS NEWS TO US

Bostonians show solidarity with other big Apple in fight for ‘all phones’

BY LUKAS VRBKA The crowd of around 20 people queued outside the Boylston Street Apple store last week weren’t waiting to get their hands on a new gadget. Nor were they protesting Apple’s use of sweatshops as New York activists did in 2014.

Instead, demonstrators held banners shaped like iPhones that read #Don’tBreakOurPhones. They were backing Apple’s refusal of the FBI’s demand that the company unlock the phone of Syed Farook, the gunman responsible for the December attack in San Bernardino, California, that left 14 dead.

In short, Apple pledged to appeal a federal court decision ordering it to help the government bypass the encryption on Farook’s work device. In the time since, as Apple has moved to have the matter settled by Congress, a public coalition has formed behind the company.

Activists are arguing that the government is asking for a “backdoor” into the iPhone—past the function that disables a device following 10 failed password attempts—which could have serious implications for civil liberties in the US and beyond, even crippling commercial encryption systems and potentially setting precedents for comparable cases.

The Boylston Street protest and other rallies like it nationwide were organized by Fight for the Future, a network of technology and free expression advocates.

FFTF won a major victory last year in its work on net neutrality when its campaign for “public utility”-style regulation of the Internet gained traction in Washington, and in that struggle the group found itself at times on the same side as a number of major companies. It’s further evidence of the complicated politics of the anti4

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surveillance movement in which right-wing libertarians, civil rights advocates, anti-capitalists, and even major companies all jostle to enact their own vision of an “open Internet.”

These convoluted politics were all in play in Back Bay. The first protester to arrive described himself as an “Apple fanboy” and quoted Milton Friedman: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” A couple of feet away, a young man with a Bernie Sanders button on his backpack explained that he hopes the Vermont senator remarks on the Apple case; Sanders, he predicts, would be “with us,” as he’s “more with the people than the establishment.”

And then speeches. An activist from the Massachusetts Pirate Party spoke out, announcing an upcoming workshop where folks can learn to secure their online communications. That was followed by Evan Greer, the campaign director at FFTF, who delivered a message that would be echoed over and over again for the next hour: This is a matter of national security and individual privacy, one that puts “all of our critical infrastructure at risk.”

In an interview with DigBoston, Greer reiterated that the Apple case was not about Farook’s phone alone.

Instead, Greer stressed that a “backdoor can be used not just for this phone, but any phone”—a point fast becoming the center of gravity in the unfolding public debate. The FBI has described its request in narrow terms by arguing that its aim is not to “break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land,” as FBI Director James Comey Jr wrote in an open letter.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has framed the

issue as a Fourth Amendment warrant case in which Farook’s iPhone is as subject to search as any other personal effect. Both agencies hold that they are merely seeking justice for the victims of terrorism.

Kade Crockford, director of the Technology and Liberty program at the Massachusetts ACLU, directly countered such claims made by state officials in addressing the Boylston crowd. “Why is the FBI doing this?” Crockford asked. “That is the question. The FBI is doing this because it is cynically exploiting a terrorist attack and Americans’ fears in order to blow open a precedent that will change forever not just how the government engages with technology companies, but how technology companies engage with us.”

In speaking with the Dig, Crockford added that the case at hand “isn’t about whether or not Apple will comply with a search warrant, which is to say, to hand over information in Apple’s possession. It’s already done that. Instead, this case is about the government demanding that a court force Apple to act as a government spy. Apple does not possess the phone.

Nor does Apple possess software that would enable the government to hack into the phone. The government is therefore not demanding that Apple turn anything over to the government, but rather that Apple write new software code to help the government crack open the phone. That’s completely unprecedented and creates an exceptionally dangerous future for cybersecurity.”

As Jenna Mclaughlin at the Intercept points out, state and local law enforcement have been notably less bashful than the feds in justifying the breaking of encryption, and for purposes extending far beyond terrorism to include all manner of crime. According to Crockford, “What the federal government is attempting to do is set a precedent that would allow very low-level officials— local prosecutors, local police—to use the exact same maneuver in investigations about marijuana.”

Take Boston, for example. BPD Commissioner William Evans eagerly backed the FBI in speaking with reporters.

Jake Wark, spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney, told the Wall Street Journal that while the office had not yet brought a case involving an encrypted phone before a judge, the DA “can’t rule that out. It may be a question of finding the right case.”

Though Wark said that his office doesn’t keep a specific tally of cases involving encrypted phones, the spokesman confirmed that the DA has “more than 30 state-level cases” that involved encrypted phones with evidence it could not access (and that it presumably hopes to access).

Wark said eight of those phones are linked to homicide investigations, while the remainder involve sexual assaults, shootings, and “other cases.” Asked if the district attorney has an interest in accessing that encrypted evidence, Wark replied, “Whether it is a car trunk or safety deposit box, when a judge approves access legally that is the end of the story … the evidence within is made available to law enforcement, and we would expect same with the phone.”

The Apple store war was only one theater in an ongoing multilateral battle. For Crockford and others, Massachusetts officials are responsible for innumerable “problematic,” “if not unconstitutional,” technological policies and outright wasteful fails. On the day after the Newbury Street demonstration, the state’s Joint Committee on Transportation held a hearing on the use of drones in Massachusetts, which have thus far been allowed to fly with few restrictions.

As for the fight for the future at hand, Greer and Crockford agreed, “This isn’t about one phone, it’s about all phones.”

PHOTOS BY LUKAS VRBKA

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BROKEN RECORDS

QUINCY LIES

Municipal officials garishly flaunt Mass public records law

BY ANDREW QUEMERE AND MAYA SHAFFER

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For more than a year and a half, the Quincy Police Department has cited dubious and flat-out false reasons to deny a resident access to a police report she made about her neighbor urinating in public. In spite of the police department’s best efforts to block the request, however, we obtained a copy through unofficial means and are publishing it (check DigBoston.com for the document).

It’s impossible to say why Quincy police don’t want the report released, but it’s clear that the QPD brass didn’t want Dianne Kane-McGunigle to have the document. It may have to do with the fact that the public urinator is a local celebrity (who was not charged with a crime), and the police didn’t want to be seen as giving a celebrity special treatment.

Another possibility is sheer vindictiveness: Kane-McGunigle’s husband, former Quincy police officer Joseph McGunigle, was suing the department for wrongful termination at the time the report was made (the lawsuit has since been dismissed). Police Chief Paul Keenan and Captain John Dougan, both of whom were involved in denying the report’s release, were named as defendants in McGunigle’s lawsuit.

A third possibility is that the department was embarrassed by the report, which shows that one of its sergeants has a poor grasp of both the First Amendment and state law. When Kane-McGunigle reported the incident on a public beach across the street from her home on September 16, 2014, she offered to provide the cops with a video that she shot of the incident. According to Kane-McGunigle, Sergeant James McNeil responded to her report by incorrectly telling her that videotaping someone in public is illegal, while also dismissing the behavior by saying, “If you gotta go you gotta go.”

Her account is confirmed by McNeil’s report, which states, “After advising McGunigle of the legality of videotaping taping [sic] an unsuspecting individual I interviewed her more indeptly [sic] … After hearing McGunigle’s version of events [I] again advis[ed] her against videotaping individuals.” The report makes it pretty clear that in addition to being a poor writer, McNeil did not understand state law, which only criminalizes surreptitious audio recording of conversations.

Kane-McGunigle’s video was not made secretively and does not contain audio.

On September 25, 2014, Kane-McGunigle attempted to get a copy of the report she’d filed. Her attempt led to Captain Anthony DiBona leaving her a voicemail the next day, denying her a copy of the document. “I checked into it, and they’re not releasing this report because it’s under investigation technically, and anything that has any sexual innuendos we generally don’t—actually never— release anyway,” he said.

But the report didn’t contain any “sexual innuendos” (which isn’t even a legally valid reason for withholding a public record). And the incident wasn’t under investigation either.

After Kane-McGunigle reached out to us, we tried to get a copy of the report too, but the Quincy police got inventive. They claimed that releasing the report to us would confirm that Kane-McGunigle was the complainant, and that they could not identify any witnesses. They also claimed that the report contained medical information in it. These claims led to some mind-numbingly stupid rulings by Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin’s office, which upheld the department’s decision—twice. Later, the police department cited those rulings to again deny Kane-McGunigle a copy of the report, bizarrely claiming they could not identify her to herself. The Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office inexplicably agreed.

As it turns out, the report shows that Captain DiBona was not accurate about the ongoing investigation, while Captain Dougan at least incorrectly claimed that there was medical information in the report. They repeated these falsehoods to Kane-McGunigle, us, the Boston Globe, and to Galvin’s office. Further, it’s obvious that they have been denying Kane-McGunigle a copy under completely false pretense. Clearly they are not actually worried that providing her with a copy of the report will undermine her willingness to cooperate with them because she expressly told DiBona that it wouldn’t in person, on video.

In a letter to the Boston Globe published late last year, Easton Town Administrator David Colton argued that punishment won’t stop public officials from violating the public records law. “[S]tricter rules and fines won’t solve the problem. The vast majority of public officials want to do the right thing, but a lack of knowledge and resources are barriers,” he wrote. Instead, Colton said the state should provide more training, technical assistance, and other help to municipal officials.

But this incident shows that at least some agencies are willing to use false pretenses and incredibly asinine arguments just to avoid printing out a few pages of a report about a minor spat between two neighbors. “It makes you wonder how many times they deny public records under false reasons,” KaneMcGunigle said.

Indeed. Imagine if there was something they really wanted to cover up.

APPARENT HORIZON

GE BOSTON DEAL: PART 4 General Electric gets away with defrauding municipal governments for untold millions

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

“CDR would drum up business with local politicians around the countr--often bribing them with various kinds of campaign donations and gifts.”

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.

Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

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In May 2012, three former GE executives were imprisoned after being convicted on multiple charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and defraud the United States. Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm had all worked for GE Capital—the financial division that operated as a semi-legal “shadow bank,” and that accounted for about half of its parent corporation’s profits until the global financial collapse it helped precipitate began in 2007. Between 1999 and 2006, the trio conspired to skim millions from municipal bond investment contracts.

With the full approval of their bosses.

According to Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, the scam worked as follows for the company that Marty Walsh, Charlie Baker and cheerleaders like the Boston Globe have welcomed to Boston with open arms: Municipal governments commonly partner with big banks to sell bonds to pay for significant capital costs—like building schools. The banks invite investors to buy the municipal bonds and deposit the resulting funds in tax-exempt accounts from which all necessary project expenses can be paid. However, since all the bond money does not get spent at once, municipal governments typically hire brokers to find major financial institutions to invest it for them through a public auction process. In general, it is legally required that brokers get bids from at least three financial institutions—and the one that offers the highest annual rate of return wins the contract to invest the spare cash from a given bond fund.

But for GE Capital—and a host of other major financial institutions—the process was rigged from top to bottom. In the case of GE’s Carollo et al, the defendants conspired with executives at the brokerage CDR and financial institutions like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley to divvy up investment contracts for municipal bond funds. CDR would drum up business with local politicians around the country—often bribing them with various kinds of campaign donations and gifts. The pols would then reward CDR with contracts to invest unspent funds from municipal bond issues, while CDR would work with the GE Capital—in concert with the other major financial institutions—to illegally decide which corporation would win which auction for such investment contracts in advance.

The “winner” of each auction would collude with the other bidding financial services companies on the bid rate to ensure that the “winning” bid was as low as possible.

The agreed upon rate was usually lower than a fair market rate by just a few tenths of a percent. But that was enough to make a killing.

For example, if a fair bid in an auction might have been that GE Capital would invest a municipal government’s unused bond funds at a 5.04 percent annual rate of return, CDR would coach the company to only offer 5 percent. The other bidders would purposely offer lower rates, losing in exchange for winning future rigged auctions. GE would then pocket the .04 percent windfall. A municipal bond fund that might have $200,000,000 to invest in its first year would return around $80,000 extra to GE in that fashion. Which doesn’t sound like much. But such bond funds would be invested by GE Capital for years until they were spent down fulfilling their original purpose to build schools and the like.

And GE Capital and CDR colluded on huge numbers of such illegal arrangements, pouring vast sums into GE’s coffers. While depriving municipal governments of that same money. GE Capital then kicked back some of its take to CDR as “fees.”

Given the complexity and ubiquity of this practice, no one knows exactly how much was stolen. But since fines paid by large corporations to governments at various levels for such crimes tend to be vanishingly small, it’s possible to get an idea of the scale of the crime. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), GE paid a $70 million coordinated settlement in 2011 to the SEC, Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service, and a coalition of 25 state attorneys general. The SEC alleged that “from August 1999 to October 2004, [GE Capital] illegally generated millions of dollars by fraudulently manipulating at least 328 municipal bond reinvestment transactions in 44 states and Puerto Rico.”

GE committed yet another massive crime against the public interest. And got away with it. In November 2013, Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm were freed on appeal. The reason? The government had taken too long—ten years—to build its case against the former GE executives.

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AUSTERITY BUDGET FEATURE

Baker hits college students, homeless, poor, everybody but the rich with FY17 budget proposal

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

THE BAD

K-12 Education To quote a special MBPC report on the FY 2017 K-12 education funding proposal: “The Commonwealth’s Chapter 70 education funding formula aims to ensure that every child in every district can receive an adequate baseline education. [...] For FY 2017, the Governor proposes increasing Chapter 70 aid by $72.1 million over last year (1.6 percent).” This is the lowest increase since the 2008 recession.

Higher Education The public higher education system in Massachusetts includes the University of Massachusetts system, the state university system, and the community college system—all of which have been woefully underfunded for over two decades. Resulting in huge increases in tuition and fees in that period. The governor’s FY 2017 budget proposal cuts $6.3 million (.5 percent) from current FY 2016 levels.

Environment and Recreation The FY 2017 budget proposal cuts $14.9 million (7 percent) from current FY 2016 levels. This includes a $4.4 million cut (15 percent) from the Department of Environmental Protection, a $2.1 million cut (14.4 percent) from the Hazardous Waste Clean-Up program, and a $9.2 million cut from State Parks and Recreation. In that last case, the budget proposes that the Department of Conservation and Recreation retain $19.2 million that it collects from parking, camping, and entry feels—which lowers the cut to $6 million.

Housing The FY 2017 budget proposal calls for a $20.1 million increase (4.32 percent) from current FY 2016 levels.

But actual FY 2016 is slated to be higher than planned, making it a $6 million cut (1.29 percent). Most of that cut falls upon the Emergency Assistance (EA) shelter program that serves over 4,000 homeless families with a $36.8 million increase over the FY 2016 budget, but $6 million less than the actual amount being spent on the program in this fiscal year.

Juvenile Justice The FY 2017 budget proposal calls for a slight decrease in funding for juvenile justice programs run by the

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Department of Youth Services (DYS) below current FY 2016 levels. Most DYS programs are level-funded or decreased from last year.

Transitional Assistance These programs help low-income individuals and families meet their basic needs and improve their quality of life when faced with an emergency. They used to be called welfare—rather than the current Orwellian appellation “transitional assistance.” The FY 2017 budget proposal calls for a decrease of $18.2 million in funding below current FY 2016 levels.

Transportation To directly quote the MBPC governor’s budget report: “In the Governor’s FY 2017 budget proposal, the most significant change for transportation is a $30.9 million reduction to the Massachusetts Transportation Trust Fund as compared to the current FY 2016 budget. This fund contributes to highways, transit, intercity rail, small airports, the Massachusetts Turnpike, and Motor Vehicle Registry, while also receiving funds from the Commonwealth Transportation Trust Fund, tolls, and federal transportation sources. The proposed FY 2017 amount of $327.7 is 8.6 percent below the current FY 2016 budget of $358.5 million, which itself had been reduced $6.5 million by the Governor’s January 9c cuts.”

THE MIXED

Early Education These programs prepare children for K-12 education.

The governor’s FY 2017 budget proposal calls for a small increase of .8 percent over this year, less than the expected rate of inflation.

Mental Health The governor’s FY 2017 budget proposes an increase of $12.8 million (1.7 percent) over current FY 2016 levels, barely enough to cover inflation. But there is an increase in funding for residential behavioral health treatment for drug addicts.

Public Health The governor’s FY 2017 budget proposal increases this line by $7.9 million (1.35 percent) over current FY2016 levels. The main increase is $9.3 million (7.1 percent) more for funding for substance abuse programs in the

Department of Public Health. This still level-funds most of the state’s substance abuse programs, but increases funding for the Bureau of Substance Abuse by $9.1 million to support an increased level of prevention and treatment. Most other public health programs are level funded or cut.

Child Welfare Given the recent scandals in the Department of Children and Families, the governor’s budget proposes a 5.1 percent increase over the current FY 2016 appropriated total for child welfare services. Mainly for more caseworkers, administration, and oversight.

However, DCF spending estimates for the remainder of FY 2016 are expected to be $16.8 million more than current appropriations; so a supplemental budget appropriation may be needed this fiscal year.

Disability Services These programs provide a range of services for people with disabilities. The governor’s FY 2017 budget proposal calls for a 2.7 increase from current FY 2016 levels. A number of the programs are being level-funded or cut, including services for people aging with developmental disabilities, people with autism spectrum disorders, and young adults with disabilities during their transition year from youth services upon turning 22.

THE COPS

General Local Aid These programs help cities and towns fund vital local services such as police and fire protection, parks, and public works. The FY 2017 budget proposes to increase Unrestricted General Government Aid (UGGA) by $42 million (4.3 percent) over current FY 2016 levels.

Prisons, Probation and Parole The FY 2017 budget proposes to roughly level-fund prisons, probation, and parole services for $1.36 billion. Of special note, the Essex County, Bristol County, Plymouth County, and Norfolk County Sheriffs’ Departments would receive increases of 10 to 20 percent above FY 2016 levels.

COPYRIGHT 2016 JASON PRAMAS. LICENSED FOR USE BY THE BOSTON INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT JOURNALISM AND MEDIA OUTLETS IN ITS NETWORK. THIS ARTICLE ALSO APPEARED AS AN APPARENT HORIZON COLUMN ON DIGBOSTON ONLINE.

If you’re a working person, and you want to understand the annual Massachusetts state budget process, the best resource to consult is the Mass Budget and Policy Center (MBPC). It issues timely reports detailing every major budget proposal and wrapping up each final budget. And it keeps the interests of the Bay State’s working families front and center. All while providing much-needed historical perspective to numbers that are often presented ahistorically by state leadership and much of the press corps. Governor Charlie Baker’s most recent budget proposal was released in late January, with MBPC’s report, “Analyzing the Governor’s FY 2017 Budget,” following soon afterwards. Naturally, I’ll be using it as my source for most of this column.

Baker is said to be a nice guy. But he’s also a neoliberal’s neoliberal—handing out millions to giant multinational corporations like General Electric with one hand while cutting critical social spending with the other. So it’s no surprise that MBPC called his budget proposal—known as “House 2” in this second year of the Commonwealth’s two-year legislative cycle—an “austerity budget.” As has become depressingly typical in the United States of the early 21st century, tax increases on the rich and corporations are so far off the table that you have to go to Sweden to even hear the barest rumor of such an idea. Or at least you did until Raise Up Massachusetts started its constitutional amendment campaign to tax the rich and Bernie Sanders started getting serious airtime. The lack of progressive taxation at the state and federal levels leaves the Mass government continually starved for funds, and the annual budget process turns into an exercise somewhat akin to shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

The resulting budget proposal is therefore too harsh to break up into the kind of “good, bad” typology that may be appropriate for happier times. I’ll instead employ a more realistic categorization of the main budget lines into The Bad, The Mixed, and The Cops. The last category because one can’t help but notice that budget lines that fund police seem to increase with more regularity than other lines. I’m sure the police forces in question still never think they’re getting enough cash. But I respectfully disagree.

Although the list of budget lines below seems long, it is an extremely basic overview of Baker’s proposal—provided here in the public interest. If you have some free time, and you really want to get a handle on the intricacies of the Mass state budget, I highly recommend reading the entire MBPC report. Or going directly to the source and wading through the full proposal.

For the quick and dirty summary, read on ...

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HIGHWAY ROBBERY FEATURE

An attorney gives us another reason to avoid driving in Mass altogether

BY CRAIG ROURKE You could be walking around with a life worth only four grand and not even know it. All your hard work and those good looks, priced to sell by the cold, dark, invisible hand of the uncaring marketplace. Don’t believe it? Check the Massachusetts General Laws. Your elected officials set the price for your existence, at least in the event that your death is caused by a defect in a public roadway.

Consider Caitlin Clavette. On Feb 12, between 7 and 8 o’clock in the morning, a sport utility vehicle changed lanes on its way out of the Tip O’Neill Tunnel onto 93 south, launching a 200-pound manhole cover into the air.

The falling manhole cover shattered the front windshield of the 35-year-old art teacher’s vehicle, killing her in the process.

“The real issue is the enormous randomness of the tragedy,” said Gov Charlie Baker. In part, sure, but there’s another tragedy that compounds the already insane scenario surrounding Clavette’s passing. In Massachusetts, the law severely limits the amount her family can recover from the state to just $4,000.

That was the first thought to run through my sick lawyerly brain when I heard the news about Clavette’s untimely death, because that is the argument the Commonwealth makes when facing a wrongful death claim caused by anything to do with a roadway.

Specifically, Chapter 81 (the Massachusetts Highway Statute), Chapter 258 (the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act), and Chapter 229 (the Massachusetts Wrongful Death Statute) govern claims against the state in such situations.

The Tort Claims Act arises from principles of sovereign immunity, which go all the way back to Old England.

Basically, it means you cannot sue the king. Meanwhile, the Wrongful Death Statute permits the personal representative of a decedent to recover for conscious pain and suffering to the same extent that the decedent could have if she had survived. In this case, had Clavette survived, the Highway Statute would have limited her damages to $4,000.

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The Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s predecessor, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, used this same defense on more than one occasion. In one case, MTA attorneys argued that the family of Milena Del Valle should get a mere $4,000 for her life after four threeton concrete ceiling panels fell from the roof of an I-90 connector tunnel, killing the 38-year-old mother of three in 2006. Del Valle’s children sued the MTA, among others, for the wrongful death of their mother. In response, the MTA filed a motion to kill the case, arguing that Del Valle’s children were limited in their recovery against the MTA to $4,000 because it was a defect in the public way. Luckily, her family was able to bring a lawsuit against 16 other defendants, companies responsible for the bad work that are not protected by sovereign immunity.

In practice, the state is quick to label almost anything a defect in the roadway. Besides falling ceiling tiles, there’s also a case in which Commonwealth attorneys argued that a cow—that’s right, a fucking cow—that breached a fence in Western Mass and walked onto the turnpike, causing the death of a New Jersey truck driver, was a roadway defect.

On appeal, however, the court ruled that the hole in the fence was too remote to justify the argument.

Likewise, in 2007, Pawel Swierczynski had to file suit against companies that were not immunized under Mass Law when a 250-pound waffle-style grate went airborne on Route 128 and slammed through his windshield, causing him serious bodily injury. Swierczynski’s attorneys initially filed suit without even bothering to name the Commonwealth as a defendant.

Unfortunately, the family of Caitlin Clavette may not have that many options. It is unlikely that the driver of the SUV involved breached any duty to Clavette by driving over the manhole cover, while it appears that there has been no work done in connection with the subject manhole cover by private parties or otherwise for almost two years, since it was last inspected in 2014.

For their part, DOT officials have released a statement indicating that they have identified a document

confirming that the subject manhole cover was properly in place in 2014 (and undisturbed since that time) and claiming they inspected 900-1,000 manhole covers around Greater Boston in the 24-hour period following Clavette’s death, and they determined that everything is just fine. Which is highly doubtful, since the department doesn’t even have a manhole cover database, making it impossible for them to have conducted a comprehensive search. Furthermore, inspecting 900-1,000 manhole covers in less than 24 hours would require an effort of epic proportions, in an extreme cold-weather environment, incurring an overtime pay period. These guys did 40 manhole covers an hour?

I have a hard time with “randomness” and “axioms,” those legal hooks that undervalue human lives in situations like these, especially when they involve the death of innocent people like Clavette or Del Valle, the latter of whom was a year older than I am now when panels in the I-90 connector tunnel killed her a decade ago. But at least media coverage of Del Valle was comprehensive (though I don’t recall too many mentions of the $4,000 liability cap).

Attention to the death of Clavette, on the other hand, may be over already. It will be difficult for an attorney to marshal the resources needed to sue the state. The Commonwealth, after all, can just use taxpayer money and public employees to fight her family with its triedand-tested axiomatic “king can do no wrong” argument, limiting their recovery to four grand.

Craig Rourke is an attorney with an office on Broadway in Ball Square, Somerville. Craig and his wife, Clio, support no-kill animal rescue shelters and have three dogs, Brady, Pippa, and Chilly Gil. The information herein is the author’s opinion and does not constitute legal advice. If you are injured by a defect in the roadway, you should consult an attorney to determine your rights.

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

11

HONEST PINT

OLDE MAGOUNʼS SALOON PRESENTS:

Thu 3/3 - (All Vocal Rock/Pop) 8PM

Five O’Clock Shadow

HOPS FOR HOPE

Craft Community Does Some Serious Charity

BY JEFF LAWRENCE @29THOUSAND

Fri 3/4 (Grateful Dead Tribute) 9PM

Playin’ Dead Farewell to Johnny D’s Blow Out Night 1!

Sat 3/5 (Grateful Dead Tribute) 9PM

Playin’ Dead Farewell to Johnny D’s Blow Out Night 2!

Sun 3/6 - 4PM

Chad Hollister + Paper Waves Albion 56 Band Sun 3/6 - (Rock/Pop/Jazz) 7:30PM

Mon 3/8 - (Special Night) 8:30PM

An Intimate Evening with

Rickie Lee Jones Open Mic Night

It’s certainly accurate to say that the craft beer industry puts its money where its mouth feel is when it comes to charitable giving. Unlike the macros—who certainly give, and into the millions—most of the craft community is personal and directly impacts the surrounding neighborhoods. Whether it’s a business development fund or a polar plunge, food assistance or family support, giving back to the local community through grants and service is a big part of the honest pint crowd. Here are four local movers and brewers that you should check out and support.

HARPOON BREWERY

The list is long and quite impressive when it comes to charitable giving and those that benefit from the brewers’ Harpoon Helps program. Currently, the Harpoon Shamrock Splash is on deck; it will benefit the Save the Harbor/Save the Bay Beaches program and kicks off at the M Street Beach, BCYF Curley Community Center in South Boston this Sunday, March 6. Throw on a shamrock speedo and jump in! shamrocksplash.org and harpoonhelps.com

Tue 3/9 - 8PM

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

EAT BOSTON

Don’t be confused by the name; when Aaron Cohen came up with the idea to create the Boston Bacon and Beer Festival, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the impact and success he’d enjoy or that beer was going to be front and center. What many people don’t know is that almost all of the proceeds of his now-national events go to charity. Lovin’ Spoonfuls and Community Servings are just two of many local organizations that have received over $150K in donations thus far. Stay tuned for hopefully more local events and definitely more bacon in 2016. wheretoeat.in

BOSTON BEER COMPANY

Before placing order, please inform your food server if anyone in your party has a food allergy *consuming raw or undercook meat poultry seafood shellfish & eggs my increase risk of foodborne illness

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ONCE Lounge & Ballroom 156 Highland Ave. ONCEsomerville.com 4/3-4/22 The Rock & Roll Rumble is here @ ONCE! Bands to be announced soon Presented by Boston Emissions/WZLX Preliminary package on sale now!

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DIGBOSTON.COM

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Founded in 2008, the Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream program provides funding and mentoring for small businesses in the food and beverage industry. Partnering with ACCION USA, a microloan provider, Boston Beer Company put up an initial $250K to seed the program, but it has also been involved in the mentoring and coaching process since day one, providing access to its employees and mission to small business owners. samueladams.com/community

CAMBRIDGE BREWING COMPANY

In 2014, the CBC hosted the First Annual Best of Show Homebrew Competition, and by all accounts it was a huge success.

It raised $3,000 for the local charity East End House in Cambridge, and the winner, Li’l Hal Peno, got a chance to brew with its team and help the community in the process. While there’s no update yet as to the next Home Brew Competition, CBC has long supported local businesses and communities through its mission and goals as a local brewer and neighborhood partner. cambridgebrewingcompany.com

©2016 Goose Island Beer Co., Goose Four Star Pils Lager Beer, Chicago, IL, Baldwinsville, NY & Fort Collins, CO | Enjoy responsibly.

T:9.5 in

T:12.25 in

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

13

ARTS ENTERTAINMENT

14

THU 3.3

FRI 3.4

SAT 3.5

SUN 3.6

MON 3.7

TUE 3.8

Tauk w/ Wobblesauce and Celebrity Look-Alikes @ Middle East

St. Patrick’s Festival @ Harpoon Brewery

Final Month!

Somerville Winter Farmers Market @ The Armory

Slayer @ House of Blues

Boston Bruins @ Florida Panthers

Volunteer @ Boston Cares

Last night, in the moments my thoughts were adrift And coasting a terrace, approaching a rift Through which I could spy several glimpses beneath Of the darkness the light from above could not reach I spied wings of reason, herself taking flight And upon yonder precipice saw her alight And glared back at me one last look of dismay As if she were the last one she thought I’d betray

If there’s an overriding theme this week, it’s beer and specifically Harpoon, because what better way to celebrate drinking a cold one than with a Harpoon Festival! The first festival of the year for the brewer, the St. Patrick’s Festival, is an early Evacuation Day present, complete with bagpipes and beer goggles.

The event kicks off Friday, but there’s also a Saturday session that starts at 1 pm, so if your boss makes you stay late to process TPS reports, don’t fret, the weekend is not a bust. It’s always best to show up early either day, though, as the line can get long just to get in. Thankfully there’s plenty of taps inside to make sure your glass is always half full.

Tomatoes, leeks, and wine, oh my! Whether you’re a tried-and-true organic junky or just looking to support local businesses, the Somerville Farmers Market is a great place to support both. Complete with live entertainment, it’s an experience, not just a destination. The market offers access to dozens of local vendors providing local and regional agricultural products such as vegetables, meat, dairy, grains, and even wine. You may still need to run to Dunks for an iced coffee on your way to work or hit Stop and Shop on your way home for your beloved Fruity Pebbles, but the rest of your sustenance should be local only.

Last year, Converse Presents brought the Sultans of Satan to the Sinclair in Cambridge, and it was absolutely one of the most destructively mind-fucking shows we’ve seen in pretty much forever. It’s only appropriate that the band’s return trip to Boston has it playing in Boston, and this show will no doubt be just as insane and mandatory for anyone reigning in blood. And that’s it. We got nothing else. It’s fucking Slayer! What else is there to say? In fact, that linguistic bubblewrap to open this blurb was written simply because words were needed in this space. I guess we could have run a picture, but it’s fucking Slayer! Just go. Ignore the rest.

The Bruins are in fourth place in the Eastern Conference right now and playing decent puck, but they need to step up or start cleaning house for next year. Oh wait, that’s already happening. Don’t get me wrong, keeping Eriksson is fine blah blah blah but the amount of activity on the bench and below leads us to believe that a first-round exit in the playoffs is likely and that any depth they’re going to get this year is going to come from the soaking tub. Regardless, these are our bruisers and the Red Cross is doing fine, so give blood at your local pub and watch the boys kick the shit out of Florida.

It’s easy to neglect the important things in our life such as relationships, health, and well-being. You wake up in the morning tired from the night before and slog off to whatever job pays the bills, often without thinking of or thanking those around you that truly matter. Don’t be that person—and don’t forget that charity and giving back are just as important as everything else you’re neglecting.

Boston Cares is a local nonprofit organization that works with individuals and businesses to help carve out the time to give back and make a difference in the lives of others as well as yourself by providing flexible opportunities for volunteerism.

The Middle East. 136 Mass.

Ave., Boston. 8pm/18+/$15. mideastoffers.com

Harpoon Brewery and Beer Hall. 306b Northern Ave., Boston. 5pm/21+/$25. harpoonbrewery.com

The Armory. 191 Highland Ave., Somerville.

9:30am/all ages/FREE. somwintermarket.org

House of Blues.

15 Lansdowne St., Boston. 7pm/18+/$60. houseofblues.com/boston

Any bar. Any St., any town.

7pm/all ages/FREE. bruins. nhl.com

Boston Cares. 90 Canal St., Boston. All day, every day/ all ages/FREE. bostoncares. org

3.3.16 - 3.10.16

|

DIGBOSTON.COM

PHOTO BY MARK SELIGER

BE SURE TO STORE YOUR SLAYER IN A COOL, DARK, AND DRY AREA TO PRESERVE ITS FRESHNESS

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

MUSIC

HAVE YOU IN MY WILDERNESS

Julia Holter on the magic of messy offices and words as sound Julia Holter may live in Los Angeles, but the experimental dream pop musician is easier to catch live in Europe than she is on the East Coast. The last Boston show she played here was in 2013 during a muggy summer day to a couple dozen people in now-defunct venue Church. With last year’s Have You In My Wilderness out, her catalog now runs four albums deep since her debut in 2011. She’s a workhorse, but her music—a collection of fairy-like synth, soft drumline rolls, and twinkling electronics—masks those efforts in an airiness of ease.

“I think I’m just a writer sort of person,” Holter says a bit modestly. “I call my place where I work ‘my office,’ not a ‘studio.’” Fair enough, especially because her office isn’t outfitted like a studio. There’s no fancy sound cushioning.

There are, however, plenty of crumpled manuscript notes and chipped pencils—the latter of which indicates her tendency to edit what’s already been written, the freedom to change minute things, to erase what felt like a good idea days ago but later sounds off. “The erasers are all so old that they don’t work anymore, and there’s pens that don’t work,” she laughs.

“There’s a piano, a harmonium maybe, a cello, and papers. It’s totally messy. That’s kind of how I am.”

Have You In My Wilderness shifts away from a single protagonist to tell the story of multiple characters. It’s a Grimms’ Fairy Tales book—and Holter is clearly the storyteller.

Light research was required to draft their backstories, be it flipping through Greek mythology texts or diving into the black hole that is Wikipedia. “I have to look things up if I’m unsure, if I don’t really understand the way the world is,” she says.

“Sometimes I check myself like: Does this image that just came out of the back of my head make sense? Is this a phrase you would use?”

Despite the verbose nature of her music, for Holter, it’s all about notes: the ways they interact, the ways in which they fall, the ways in which they morph. It’s a belief that words are notes in themselves. “They’re not actually words anymore,” she explains. “They turn into sound, and their meaning is going to be clouded because they’ve turned into something else … I’ve read about how people with strokes don’t remember how to speak, but they can sing. There’s something scientific behind the human perception of words versus sung words and that those are two different things.” She pauses, struggling for the words to describe the sensation. “It doesn’t become language anymore.”

See her live and you’ll understand firsthand.

MUSIC

GET BENT

Local act Bent Shapes opens up

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Boston’s been bent, and the resulting shape is perfect.

Ever since Bent Shapes formed in 2009 under the moniker Girlfriends, principal songwriters Ben Potrykus and Andy Sadoway have been crafting pop punk that soundtracks the streets of our city. Fast forward through a name change, several EPs, and the addition of bassist Jenny Mudarri and guitarist Luke Brandfon, and the band is far bigger than they could have expected. The members are gearing up to celebrate the release of their upcoming sophomore LP, Wolves of Want. To celebrate, we order a long spread of Taiwanese dishes and floral tea at JoJo Taipei where we talk about their new, glossy sound while the collegiate roar of Allston that they have since graduated from is kept at bay outside.

First things first: Wolves of Want will be your go-to summer album. The title comes from a phrase in a leaflet anarchist/activist Lucy Parsons handed out in the 1880s. Her piece, called “To Tramps,” addressed to those on the low end of the socioeconomic ladder and talked about how no matter what you do, you’re never more than a few days ahead of the wolves of want. To Bent Shapes, it read as a visualization of basic needs people lack—it just happened to spruce it up in the process.

Like all good pop, Wolves of Want masks the sad with neon happiness. “For all the shit mainstream pop gets, there’s a lot of stuff that gets snuck in there by songwriters behind the scenes,” says Potrykus.

“I bring in more major chords and stuff, because I don’t like sitting alone with my thoughts playing dissonant or minor key music.” Opener “New Starts In Old Dominion” tracks crippling debt and apartment moving while remaining the happiest soon-to-be song of the summer. Then there’s “Intransitive Verbs,” a heavy song with cello in major key made haunting by the sparseness of the instrumentation. “When you schedule spontaneity, then you get spontaneity,” adds Sadoway. “We kind of were just like, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s get it done.’ And if we want to get better at that, we’ll do more of it. To me that was incredibly liberating.”

That sense of freedom and joy is impossible to miss in each song.

After listening to Spoon and the Walkmen before hitting the studio, the band decided to try adding horns in the studio. For the most part, it worked. “It was very dangerous,” says Sadoway, “once you’re in a studio, especially if a studio has a lot of gear, to be like, ‘What if we put this in every song?! Let’s have a flute solo!’ That’s cool, in that it’s an option, but does it make sense for the song?”

There’s a line in “Realization Hits” about reducing your passions until they become your job, drawing the Americanized occurrence with a frown. Sometimes what you’re aspiring to might not be that fulfilling once it’s actually achieved. Luckily for Bent Shapes, that doesn’t apply to them as musicians. “I have a hard time with the idea of careerism, because it seems like a prison that you lock yourself into,” explains Potrykus. “I’m not 100 percent anti-civilization or anything like that, but I’ve read some theoretical pieces on labor in general and how it has an impact on our sense of self and an impact on what life is to us. I don’t really know what I want out of music, and I don’t know what I want to do for money, but what I’m doing now is fine.”

Read the expanded interview online at digboston.com >> BENT SHAPES, SPORTS, CUFFS. THU 3.10. GREAT SCOTT,1222 COMM. AVE., ALLSTON. 9PM/18+/$10.

GREATSCOTTBOSTON.COM

MUSIC EVENTS THU 3.03

LET’S START A RIOT RA RA RIOT + SUN CLUB + PWR BTTM [Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Boston. 8pm/18+/$20. crossroadspresents.com]

16

3.3.16 - 3.10.16

|

>> JULIA HOLTER, CIRCUIT DES YEUX. SUN 3.6. GREAT SCOTT, 1222 COMM. AVE., ALLSTON. 9PM/18+/$15. GREATSCOTTBOSTON.COM

FRI 3.04

SAT 3.05

SAT 3.05

SUN 3.06

[Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$12. mideastoffers.com]

[ONCE Lounge, 156 Highland Ave., Somerville.

8pm/all ages/$10. cuisineenlocale.com]

[Wang Theatre, Citi Performing Arts Center, 270 Tremont St., Boston.

8pm/all ages/$35. citicenter.org]

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

8pm/all ages/$15. mideastoffers.com]

BLACK BEACH LP RELEASE BLACK BEACH + DENT + STEEP LEANS + THE MARDI KINGS

DIGBOSTON.COM

GOOD EATS, BETTER MUSIC POTTY MOUTH + STOVE + CHARMING DISASTER + PUPPY PROBLEMS

SATURDAY SMOOTHNESS LEON BRIDGES + SON LITTLE

GIRLS ROCK CAMPAIGN BOSTON PRESENTS LADIES ROCK CAMP BOSTON SHOWCASE

WED 3.09

SYNTH CITY TOR MILLER + COVEY + SEAN MCVERRY

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/ all ages/$10. sinclaircambridge.com]

BENT SHAPES PHOTO BY AVI PAUL WEINSTEIN AND MARY LEWEY | JULIA HOLTER PHOTO BY TONJA THILESEN

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

MUSIC

ASKING ALEXANDRIA New Voice, Same Metal

BY DAVE WEDGE @DAVEWEDGE

THU 3/3 - CROSSROADS PRESENTS

TAUK

WOBBLESAUCE FRI 3/4

MUMIY TROLL

SAT 3/5 - ICELAND NATURALLY PRES.

REYKJAVIK CALLING

-FREE SHOWSUN 3/6, 5:30PM - BOWERY PRES.

Maybe it’s YouTube. Or the Mark Wahlberg movie Rock Star.

Whichever it is, it seems more rock bands looking for new singers these days are turning to fans. The latest to do so is British alt-metallers Asking Alexandria.

“The Rock Star movie, where a fan joins the band, was definitely the running joke at the record label for a little bit,” guitarist Ben Bruce tells the Dig. “But there’s no Mark Wahlberg here. I wish there was a Jennifer Aniston, though.”

The band parted ways last year with singer and co-founder Danny Worsnop, who is now focusing on his band We Are Harlot. Worsnop was replaced by Denis Stoff, a longtime fan from the Ukraine who had posted videos of himself singing metal covers, including Asking Alexandria songs. Stoff was also a label mate at Sumerian who formerly fronted the band Make Me Famous.

“It’s actually funny because Denis, when he was young, he had tons of YouTube covers online, so we were aware of him,” Bruce explains. “As soon as Danny departed, it was the obvious choice. He was on the same label. It was quite an easy transition.”

Stoff has breathed new life into the British band and planted his flag with authority on the new album The Black, which comes out March 25. The band headlines House of Blues Thursday with Bullet for My Valentine.

“We’re all enjoying ourselves again, which is nice. He brought back the energy and passion we lost a few years ago. He’s as much in love with this band as we are. He gives his all, 100 percent, every night. It gave us a boot in the ass too. We’re all having fun again.”

Bruce has remained friends with Worsnop, but welcomes the new creative freedom and invigoration brought by Stoff. The result is an album that has moments as heavy as any the electronicore band has delivered, as well as some of its most anthemic, Sirius Octane-ready bangers. Sample the glorious metal carnage of “Circled By The Wolves,” the Avenged Sevenfold-Meets-Linkin Parkesque “I Won’t Give In,” or the impassioned ballad “Gone.” The whole WorsnopStoff drama is addressed in the intense “Sometimes It Ends.”

“We’re ecstatic, man. We put everything into this album,” he said. “The last album [2013’s From Death to Destiny] was a big struggle for us. And it definitely didn’t come out the way we wanted it to. It didn’t work well with Danny. He just went a different way than we did. We weren’t on the same page.”

“We wanted to make sure we were all on the same page and make sure all five of us were doing something we were all in love with. [Danny] didn’t want anything really heavy. But this is just a very honest and passionate album.”

The hard-partying Brits are no strangers to Boston—they’re buds with the dudes from Vanna—so don’t be shocked to find them at the local pub.

“We always go out drinking when we’re in Boston. It’s an awesome place to hang out. I love all the history and the old architecture in Boston. We love Boston.”

And who knows, maybe they’ll run into Wahlberg and pitch a Rock Star sequel.

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MAKE RESERVATIONS AT ZUZUDINING.COM 474 MASSACHUSETTS AVE CENTRAL SQ., CAMBRIDGE 617-864-3278 NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

FILM

SO CLOSE, SO FAR

On Only Yesterday and the resurrection of Isao Takahata’s profile

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN What’s startling about Only Yesterday is that it’s an animated film considering subjects that would more typically be treated with live-action. What’s astonishing, though—what makes it stick in your mind for months and years after you’ve seen it—is the way that Only Yesterday uses the animated form to explore its chosen subject in a way that live-action can’t. The 1991 film, which was directed by Isao Takahata and produced by Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli, unfurls two separate narratives simultaneously, both of them resembling the domestic melodramas of the mid-century Japanese cinema more than they do the fantastical anime works typically created by the Ghibli team. In one, 10-year-old Taeko is challenged by the highly gendered expectations placed on her while growing up in Tokyo circa 1966. In the other, Taeko is 27 years old, still a city girl and apparently still overwhelmed by the prospect of intimate relationships with other people. Takahata uses the aesthetics of the animation itself to separate the two timelines—the past is foggy, while the present is clear—imbuing the structure and subtext of the piece into the visual language itself. When you see a good movie, you often leave thinking about how it could’ve been better. But when you see a movie of emotional complexity and formal audaciousness—and most of Takahata’s feature-length works are both—you usually realize it couldn’t possibly have been made any other way. The man barely draws, but these movies come from a singular pen.

Only Yesterday has played in Boston-area theaters before, but only as part of Ghibli-based programs and retrospectives. Its nationwide theatrical release (which began last month courtesy of distributor GKids) is a long-overdue first. It’ll also represent the culmination of an unofficial cross-company project to make Takahata’s oeuvre widely available in the United States. Since the 2014 release of his The Tale of the Princess Kaguya—which is sure to stand as the 80-year-old filmmaker’s final

feature-length work—we’ve seen revivals for a number of other Takahata films. There was a DVD release for his first picture (Horus, Prince of the Sun, from 1968), Bluray releases for two of his Ghibli-era films (Grave of the Fireflies from 1988 and Pom Poko from 1994), significant theatrical rollouts for both Kaguya and Yesterday, and two full-length nonfiction films that document the nature of his process (while he’s only a side character in the Hayao Miyazaki-focused The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, the director gets the full profile treatment in the aptly titled Isao Takahata and His Tale of the Princess Kaguya).

The Takahata that’s depicted in those two documentaries is a notoriously reticent man, as prickly as a pineapple. In the Kaguya-focused nonfiction film, an interviewer asks him to speak about the meaning of the new work—and Takahata responds by literally turning his back to the camera’s lens. Even when his most revered collaborators (like composer Joe Hisaishi and art director Kazuo Oga) ask the same question, they rarely get more than an oblique sentence in return. But given the attention that Takahata pays to ostensibly smaller details, oblique thematic explanations are probably the only ones he needs to give. We see him dedicate his mind to more detail-oriented film elements: to nuances of language, sound design, gestures, movements, and even the lines and color palettes of individual backgrounds.

He records the voice performances of his actors before the film is animated (“visual ideas grow with the actor’s performance,” at great expense to the studio) and then makes alterations to shot compositions even after they’ve been finished (which comes at an even greater one). One such incident has the director laboring to accurately capture the motion of a knife as it cuts through fruit (a motion he’s convinced he depicted incorrectly in Grave of the Fireflies). Takahata may not suffer fools who offer questions about deeper meanings—but for the sensual and physical details of our shared existence, he has all day.

He stops production and assembles members of the crew around a melon and a blade. Everyone observes as the team cycles through the act over and over again, with everyone making notes on the motions used in the most meticulous manner possible. And it probably isn’t the first time Takahata has organized such an exercise: Only Yesterday has its own knife-and-fruit scene, featuring Taeko’s family and a highly fetishized pineapple. The 10-year-old’s father has brought the fruit into their city home to share with his family (Taeko, her mother, her grandmother, and two older sisters among them). But they don’t even know how to eat the mysterious object, necessitating a waiting period while they research. When they do sit down to eat it, we see the fruits of Takahata’s own labor: Close-up compositions observe as the knife jaggedly separating the pineapple into slices, with liquids realistically leaking from each incision and the quiet sound of the seeping juices filling the otherwise silent kitchen. Unfortunately for this patient family, their care comes much too late: The fruit has gone stale, sending each of them scurrying back to a nearby pile of bananas.

Only Taeko pretends to enjoy the original meal, and only because she’s too heartbroken to admit otherwise.

The scene is mentioned often in considerations of Only Yesterday, perhaps more than any other. The superficial reason for that is because it displays Takahata’s oftquotidian approach to tone and narrative. But there’s a pattern exemplified in the scene much more specific than that: It cultivates and depicts a highly complex emotional spectrum—excitement, anticipation, and the draw of community, followed swiftly by disappointment, distaste, self-deception, and isolation—that’s not only grounded by a specific experience (in this case, eating pineapple) but is also situated within a specific sociocultural context (a still-traditionalist Tokyo in ’66). The animation itself provides yet another angle. Takahata directs every scene in the 1966 passage to have blank unanimated spaces throughout the frame, therefore positioning the moments as untrustworthy memories. That grounds his scenes in yet another context: the psychological.

Those unfinished compositions stand in great contrast to the highly dense backgrounds of Only Yesterday’s “modern-day” sequences, which affect a sort of animated deep focus by animating detail into every corner of each frame. Referring to some of the cityscapes and rural settings depicted in these segments, Oga once opined that it was surely the most intricate animating work he and Takahata had ever done. When 27-year-old Taeko travels to the rural area of Takase in Yamagata Prefecture, you see that work bear out: in the process by which she helps turn safflower into rouge, in the intricately documented preparation of the meals, and in the development of her relationship with Toshio, which evolves from playful misunderstandings toward a characteristically standoffish romantic experience. She is hobbled, of course, by her past—the one that Takahata renders with spilled colors, unfinished lines, and blank spaces, the one that Taeko has animated into her own mind. Whether or not these rereleases will solidify the director’s reputation on our shores probably remains to be seen. But in Only Yesterday he depicts the very textures of human experience by radically emphasizing the textures of hand-drawn animation, and to simply experience his unique sense of rough-hewn formal grace seems more than enough.

>> ONLY YESTERDAY. RATED PG. NOW PLAYING AT KENDALL SQUARE CINEMA.

FILM EVENTS FRI 3.4

A TRIBUTE TO VILMOS ZSIGMOND CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

[Brattle Theatre.

40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 5:30 and 8:30pm/PG/$9-11.

35mm. Also screens 3.5. brattlefilm.org] 18

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COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS MADMAN

[Coolidge Corner Theatre.

290 Harvard St., Brookline.

Midnight/R/$11.25. coolidge.org]

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‘INNOCENCE ABROAD’ CONCLUDES THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN

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JEWISH ARTS COLLABORATIVE AND BOSTON JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL PRESENT MOON OVER ISRAEL

[Somerville Theatre.

55 Davis Sq., Somerville.

7:30pm/NR/$25. 35mm.

Projected w/ live musical accompaniment. somervilletheatre.com]

DIRECTOR NADAV LAPID IN PERSON POLICEMAN

[Harvard Film Archive.

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WED 3.9

MAX OPHULS’ AMERICAN MASTERPIECE THE RECKLESS MOMENT

[Brattle Theatre.

40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 5:30 and 9:30pm/NR/$9-11. 35mm. brattlefilm.org]

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ARTS

BOOTYLICIOUS

SpeakEasy Stage presents the New England premiere of Robert O’Hara’s Bootycandy

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

THU 3/3 10PM

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All right, let’s get this out of the way now: What is Bootycandy?

For starters, it’s the name that playwright Robert O’Hara’s mother and grandmother used for the male genitalia. “It’s the candy to the booty!” says “Young Black Mom” in the play. O’Hara’s mother remembers things a little differently: “My mother claims it was never booty candy,” said O’Hara. “She said it was ‘boo boo candy.’ I was like, ‘Yeah Mom, whatever.’”

But Bootycandy is also the name of a play, a wildly funny, over-the-top, thoughtful take on race, being gay, and being gay and black. It had its world premiere at Washington DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2011 and was presented Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 2014; both productions were also directed by O’Hara.

Directing the production here in Boston is Summer L. Williams, fresh off of her triumphant production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon, which was a joint effort by Arts Emerson and Company One. Bootycandy consists of 11 loosely connected vignettes, most of which are held together by Sutter, a semiautobiographical character based on some of O’Hara’s experiences. Maurice Emmanuel Parent, one of Boston’s best actors, stars as Sutter. We see Sutter through different ages and phases of his life, from a child asking his mother what a period is through visiting his grandmother in a nursing home and sneaking in an order of ribs for her.

In addition to his own experiences, O’Hara has also clearly been influenced

by The Colored Museum, George C. Wolfe’s 1986 groundbreaking satire of African-American culture (which also played out in 11 vignettes, or exhibits.)

In fact, O’Hara was mentored by Wolfe. “I was abundantly aware that I was doing a play that had a lot of different connected scenes, so it was all over the place about The Colored Museum. That word influenced my work, absolutely,” O’Hara said.

Having no concrete through line or fluid narrative, there is an abstractness to Bootycandy that is palpable in a hugely fulfilling way. O’Hara does not shy away from being bold and blunt and sometimes over the top, though he has left enough space in the play so that it can breathe, forcing—or better, allowing—the audience to fill in the blanks. Stylistically, from scene to scene, the tone alternates between riotously absurd and stirringly sober.

“The plays asks the audience not to find a narrative,” said O’Hara. “There isn’t a narrative. There is a theme, but it doesn’t allow you to hang on to the normal linear narrative that you’re used to when you see a play. So that’s where the absurd comes in. Also, you know, I think being gay in America is kind of absurd at times.” >> BOOTYCANDY. RUNS 3.12-4.9 AT SPEAKEASY STAGE COMPANY AT THE BCA, 527 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. SPEAKEASYSTAGE.COM/BOOTYCANDY

20

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

SAVAGE LOVE

MOM DOESN’T KNOW BEST

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY WHATS4BREAKFAST.COM

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET I am a kinkster. I have been since I can remember (I am now 21 years old), and I’ve never told anyone about my deep dark desires until the last year. During my time at university, I made good friends with a guy who I was able to open up to about my preferences, as he had similar desires. We created a beneficial arrangement. I suddenly no longer felt like I needed to suppress my “fucked up” masochistic needs and became extremely happy and more comfortable with them. I keep a journal, and naturally I wrote about this arrangement and a lot of the explicit details. Last summer, my mother read my entire journal and was horrified. After she read it, I received a very nasty text message from her about how our relationship was over, she couldn’t believe what I had done, and she was no longer going to help pay for my postgraduate courses, etc.

She was deeply disturbed to learn that some money she had given me for my 21st birthday was spent on a hotel room where I met up with my kinky friend. (It wasn’t like we could meet in my family home!) I never wanted my mother to know about any of this, and I feel bad for how it upset her, but this was also a huge violation of my privacy. The only way to resolve the situation was for me to pretend that I deeply regretted everything, tell her I can see now how messed up those “weird” sex practices are, and say that I’m cured and will never engage in them again. Months have passed and I’m still angry with her for having read my diary.

I feel sad about the lies I told and having to pretend—still—that I regret what I did. Because the truth is I’ve never felt more like myself than when I am doing BDSM. It’s not my entire world, but it is an important part of who I am. How do you think I should take things from here? She’ll never understand, so telling her isn’t an option, but that means suppressing my deep upset at her as well.

Mother Unfairly Destroyed Daughter’s Libido Entirely Fuck mom; be you, MUDDLE.* On the Lovecast, Dan chats with Seattle journalist Eli Sanders: savagelovecast.com.

THE STRANGERER

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

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BOWERY BOSTON

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PETE Yung YORN Lean 92.5 THE RIVER PRESENTS

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