DigBoston 1.25.18

DIGBOSTON.COM 01.25.18 - 02.01.18

SPORTS+CANNABIS

ERIC MARTIN FORMER PATS PLAYER GOES GREEN

NATURE SHOTS COVER: LOCALMUSIC

MICHI TASSEY’S SIDE HUSTLE

NEWS

CAMBRIDGE WOMEN’S MARCH A SMALLER BUT DETERMINED MASS

TICKETMASTER • RESPECTIVE BOX OFFICES* • CHARGE BY PHONE: 800-745-3000

*BMH Box Office open night of show only. All dates, acts and ticket prices subject to change without notice. A service charge may be added to each ticket.

CROSSROADSPRESENTS.COM • FOLLOW US!

2

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

/BRIGHTONMUSICHALL /PARADISEROCKCLUB •

@BRIGHTON_MUSIC @PARADISEROCKCLB

BOWERY BOSTON WWW.BOWERYBOSTON.COM VOL 20 + ISSUE04

JAN 25, 2018 - FEB 01, 2018 BUSINESS PUBLISHER Marc Sneider ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone John Loftus Jason Pramas SALES MANAGER Marc Sneider FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digboston.com BUSINESS MANAGER John Loftus

EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Chris Faraone EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jason Pramas MANAGING EDITOR Mitchell Dewar ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran ASSOCIATE FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan ASSOCIATE ARTS EDITOR Christopher Ehlers STAFF WRITER Haley Hamilton CONTRIBUTORS G. Valentino Ball, Sarah Betancourt, Tim Bugbee, Patrick Cochran, Mike Crawford, Kori Feener, George Hassett, Zack Huffman, Marc Hurwitz, Marcus Johnson-Smith, Micaela Kimball, Derek Kouyoumjian, Dan McCarthy, Adam Sennott, Maya Shaffer, Citizen Strain, M.J. Tidwell, Tre Timbers, Baynard Woods INTERNS Kuresse Bolds, Olivia Falcigno

DESIGN DESIGNER Don Kuss COMICS Tim Chamberlain Pat Falco Patt Kelley DigBoston, 24 Spice St #203 Boston, MA 02129 Phone 617.426.8942 digboston.com

ON THE COVER PHOTO OF NATURE SHOTS BY ELLE DIOGUARDI. READ NINA CORCORAN’S PROFILE IN THIS WEEK’S MUSIC SECTION.

©2018 DIGBOSTON IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. 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.

For show announcements, giveaways, contests, and more, follow us on:

ROYALE

EVERY TRICK ON THE BOOK Dear Reader, I don’t follow Facebook trends, so to speak. If I have a general guiding philosophy for helping articles I write and edit thrive on the mass network, it’s that with small and independent outfits like DigBoston—specifically, those which still have a popular print edition—we definitely benefit by spending minimally every week on Facebook ads, though we could still strive without it. I would probably feel differently if I worked for a bloated media behemoth, the kind that rides or dies according to how much it’s willing to shell out paying to boost posts, but in my view as a small-potatoes editor, we get at least as much out of the site as we put in.

On the other hand, fuck Facebook. With a big, blue middle finger. It’s impossible to know what kind of place the publications that I work with would fill in the overall media ecosystem had such bribable technologies not come into existence, but I do suspect that we’d at least have less pubs that lack proven track records reaching a point of influence that far exceeds the reputations they deserve.

If you have an aunt or uncle who pollutes your feed with articles from Upworthy and other brain drains, then you know what I am talking about.

As any frequent user or consumer of tech media is probably aware, Facebook is a problematic monster. From its discriminatory treatment of cannabis advertisers, to its apparent soft approach to checking hate speech, to privacy concerns and quirks galore, there’s no end to the aggravation we endure to share, promote, and join the public square. I’m not writing about those gripes this week, though; rather, I felt that as an editor I should reach out to loyal readers for help navigating around Facebook’s latest timeline speed bump. As their Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri wrote in a post last week: Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.

As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it.

Some publishers are asking readers to specifically select their outlets, and we sure as heck hope that you find the “News Feed Preferences” tab on your mobile app and “prioritize” DigBoston. At a higher level, we are seeking new and better ways to reach you—from adding dozens of new street boxes to finding feeds and channels to share through that don’t pull the rug out from under your plans every few months.

In the meantime, we’ll still be quarreling with other alt and independent crabs in Facebook’s barrel, hoping articles that we work tirelessly on find readers. When you see us down there scrapping, it would be great if you’d extend a sharing hand.

CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

279 Tremont St. Boston, MA royaleboston.com/concerts

YUNG LEAN & SAD BOYS

J RODDY WALSTON AND THE BUSINESS

W/ THAIBOY DIGITAL

W/ POST ANIMAL

W/ NIGHT BEATS

THIS FRI! JAN. 26

WED. JANUARY 31

TUE. FEBRUARY 6

SAT. FEBRUARY 17 ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

W/ YUNGBLUD

W/ THE COATHANGERS MON. FEBRUARY 26

WED. MARCH 14

WED. MARCH 21

TUE. APRIL 24

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

SUN. MAY 13

TUE. MAY 22

HOP ALONG W/ MAKENESS MON. APRIL 30

THU. MAY 3

52 Church St., Cambridge, MA sinclaircambridge.com

W/ JESSE ROYAL, LEILANI WOLFGRAMM

THIS THU! JAN. 25

FRI & SAT JAN 26 & 27

TUE. JANUARY 30

W/ BROTHERS MCCANN, LYLE BREWER, DJ EASY ED

W/ OPEN MIKE EAGLE

FRI. FEBRUARY 2

SAT. FEBRUARY 3

WED. FEBRUARY 7

THU. FEBRUARY 8

ON SALE NOW!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE NOW!

MON. MAY 7

SUN & MON JUN 3 & 4

TUE. JUNE 26

W/ MO LOWDA & THE HUMBLE

THU. FEBRUARY 1

ROGUE WAVE PERFORMS

ASLEEP AT HEAVEN’S GATE TUE. MARCH 27

CLOUD CASTLE LAKE W / VI TA A N D T HE WO O L F

W/ JAIRA BURNS

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 1PM!

1222 Comm. Ave. Allston, MA greatscottboston.com

FRIDAYS AT 7PM!

‘s THE GAS

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5

W/ DEFUNK

W/ BACKWARDS DANCER, COLD FRONTS, PUSHFLOWERS

W/ MADE VIOLENT, TALK IN TONGUES

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10

THURSDAY, MARCH 23

ON SALE NOW!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 1PM!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

W/ NATURE SHOTS

W/ TIJUANA PANTHERS, COWGIRL SUNDAY, APRIL 15

SATURDAY, APRIL 21

COVEY/AIRPARK THE GARDEN FRIDAY, MARCH 30

≠ 1/26 MIKE RECINE ≠ 1/26 LONG TIME ≠ 1/29 KNOCK OVER CITY ≠ 1/30 MOJO ROT ≠ 2/1 FUNERAL ADVANTAGE ≠ 2/6 CITRUSPHERE ≠ 2/7 BREVIN KIM ≠ 2/9 MYQ KAPLAN ≠ 2/9 DIONYSIA ≠ 2/11 PAPERWHITE ≠ 2/13 STARCRAWLER ≠ 2/14 THE ATLAS MOTH

Need more Dig? Sign up for the Daily Dig @ tiny.cc/DailyDig

ON SALE NOW!

3/7 SINCLAIR SHOW SOLD OUT!

THU. MARCH 8 SANDERS THEATRE

TUE. APRIL 17 SOMERVILLE THEATRE

Tickets for Royale, The Sinclair, and Great Scott can be purchased online at AXS.COM or by phone at 855-482-2090. No fee tickets available at The Sinclair box office Wednesdays - Saturdays 12:00 - 7:00PM FOR MORE INFORMATION AND A COMPLETE LIST OF SHOWS, VISIT BOWERYBOSTON.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

3

NEWS+OPINION

THE PEOPLE PERSIST NEWS TO US

A smaller but determined crowd attends the 2018 Boston Women’s March WORD AND PHOTOS BY MIRIAM WASSER If the theme behind last year’s Boston Women’s March was one of symbolic defiance and solidarity, this year’s message focused on resolve, resilience, and the tactical groundwork of electoral politics.

Though smaller than the city’s 2017 gathering, which drew about 175,000 people, the estimated 10,000 people who showed up on Cambridge Common on Saturday displayed no shortage of enthusiasm or energy. Long before the event began, crowds of pink pussy-hat-wearing women, men, and children poured out of the Harvard Square subway stop and into the soggy and muddy park.

They posed for photographs and selfies, signed petitions, and complimented each other’s posters. (Like last year, the signs were great: DUST SETTLES, GIRLS DON’T; WE ARE THE GRANDDAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHES WHO DIDN’T BURN; WATCH OUT, I CAN VOTE IN SIX YEARS; and, a crowd favorite, 8-year-old Tallula Sullivan’s homemade TRUMP IS A STUPID BUTTHEAD. Prior to the official start of the rally, a choir and a marching band entertained the crowd—there was a giant pink pussy hat on the tuba—while stirring people could be overheard lamenting President Donald Trump’s behavior. They talked about programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), both of which are front and center in the heated debate over the federal government shutdown. They spoke about the importance of winning Democratic majorities in the US Senate and Congress in November, and about the need to address major systemic issues like race, sex, and gender discrimination.

“I’m here because I believe strongly in equality for all people and because I’ve been extremely concerned at a lot of the actions of the current administration,” Medford resident Kassandra Howard told DigBoston. “From the tax bill, attempts to ban immigrants, rolling back rights

4

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

for LGBTQ people, removing protection for transgender youth—just basically everything this administration has done has been an attack on the American people.”

As the rally officially began around 1 pm, the crowd clustered around a podium erected in front of the Civil War memorial.

“This is our movement, this is the movement, and we’re not going to be hopeless because that would strengthen the agenda of the bigots,” state Rep. Marjorie Decker said, vowing to continue fighting for the rights of minorities in Mass. “Government should be for the people, by the people, and not just some of the people.”

People erupted with applause.

Of all the speakers, none riled up the crowd more than Attorney General Maura Healey. Wearing a black shirt that read “The Future is Female,” Healey tore into Trump and highlighted the many federal lawsuits her office has pursued against his administration.

“He’s an embarrassment to this country, and he’s certainly no role model for our young girls,” Healey said. “I’m suing him because what he’s doing is illegal, and you better believe it, it’s un-American.”

With the background noise of people chanting “Times up! Times up!” the AG smiled, paused, and yelled into the microphone: “We’re still here, we’re still marching, and we’re still winning.”

“We came [to the Boston Women’s March] last year and it was a really positive experience for all of us,” Deb Sullivan of Roslindale said. “I think this year’s is just as

significant—it doesn’t have to be an enormous gathering, but it needs to happen every year for as long as it needs to happen.”

Saturday’s rally was organized by the January Coalition, a diverse group of local “justice and peace organizations” opposed to what they see as the Trump administration’s agenda of “systematically eroding the rights of women and other marginalized people, dismantling and destroying our democracy, and putting the entire world at risk.”

“The energy here is good,” said Rosemary Berkeley, a woman standing on a bench and looking out at the entire crowd. “The crowd size last year was a surprise—it was very triumphant. … But this year, I feel resolve. I think we realize what we’re up against and we’ve got to get down to work for November.”

‘WE NEED TO BE RECOGNIZED AND LEAD THE WAY’ NEWS ANALYSIS

How inclusive was this year’s Women’s March?

BY OLIVIA DENG @OLIVIADENG1

PHOTO BY MIRIAM WASSER

On Saturday, an estimated 10,000 people gathered on Cambridge Common for the Cambridge/Boston Women’s March. Organized by the justice- and peace-focused January Coalition and co-sponsoring groups, the event was one of the many such rallies held nationwide to advocate for women’s rights.

In the year since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, a wave of activism spread across the country.

But when it comes to organizing for women’s liberation, the Women’s March has drawn some ire for its brand of white feminism for privileged cis women. That knock is something organizers tried to address at last weekend’s Greater Boston gathering by including speakers who are transgender and women of color, said Zayda Ortiz, an organizer of the march and leader of Indivisible Mystic Valley.

“Obviously one of the big criticisms that were leveled against the groups last year was that [they were] not inclusive of women of color [or] the trans community,” Ortiz said. As for this year, she told DigBoston, “We have a solid program that reflects the diversity that is being a woman.”

During the event, Nichole Mossalam of the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations (CAIR) pointed to the daily terrors the Muslim community faces. “Our sisters are taking off their scarves out of fear for their safety and they’re attacked, criminalized, their clothes are ripped from their body. … Our families are being torn apart by overzealous ICE agents,” Mossalam said. “Everyday I listen to stories of hardship in our communities.”

Laura Rótolo of ACLU Massachusetts highlighted the struggles of the immigrant community. “If we want to talk about gender violence, we have to talk about the little secret every undocumented woman knows in this country—that if you call 911, you or your partner could get deported.”

Cambridge City Councilor Sumbul Siddiqui, who comes from an immigrant family, said she knows the hardship of being a woman of color. “I stand here today because of the incredible women who have walked before me. My mother who moved here with my father and two toddlers from Pakistan had the courage to rebuild her life in a new country so that her children can have more opportunity,” Siddiqui said. She also stressed the importance of women

flexing their voting power.

“I am here because of the women who encouraged me to run for office. … I am here because of the women who raised their voices in the voting booth this past November.

I am so proud to serve with three other incredible women on the Cambridge City Council.”

Ortiz said that she hopes the march fuels activism in a way that is inclusive of marginalized women.

“I think it’s an entry point for a lot of women who have assumptions of what a women’s movement is. If we can get their attention and talk about what direct things they can do, how they can join an organization or how they can become part of an issue that’s important to them … we can get more people involved. … As a Latina, that’s the No. 1 reason that I agreed to join in on this coalition. If I am not representing, or if I don’t try to step up and represent, then how are we ever going to change it? Until we start addressing our most marginalized sisters, we can’t move forward.”

While the speakers featured at the march were diverse, few of the co-sponsors were organizations led by marginalized women. Ortiz acknowledged this problem, citing time constraints as a main reason for the oversight. “[We] just kind of sent out feelers to other groups and organizers we knew to possibly join and help out,” Ortiz said. “The amount of time we had available to us was so limited we couldn’t really build the coalition we had dreamt of or hoped for. … It’s something we’re going to work on, build on for years coming. These are the relationships we really need to build in Boston especially, between the very upper-middle-class white-centric groups and the more diverse. … More organizations like Black Lives Matter, or Cosecha.”

Cata Santiago, an organizer with the immigrant advocacy group Movimiento Cosecha, said that when she attended the Women’s March in Boston last year, she was inspired by the display of solidarity between women, but she still thought the event was missing something important. “I feel that there’s a lot of work we need in terms of having genuine intersectionality,” Santiago said.

“Part of that is being proactive about it. I don’t like to just critique or just be critical of what’s going on. It’s about having those conversations with different people. With white people, for example.”

Santiago said that when she has conversations with NEWS TO US

white women, it’s primarily in the context of them marching against Trump. “They [white women] still have anti-black tendencies,” Santiago said. “I think that it’s not just about going to the march. … It’s not a one-moment thing. That’s why I think we should collectively continue building across communities and identities.”

At Cosecha, organizers are out on the streets and in the communities, Santiago added. She said that organizers shouldn’t simply talk among themselves: “We know we also have a role to show up. The struggles we have are layered. It’s not just ICE destroying our families, it’s patriarchy destroying our families. … We need to go out and meet the communities where they are at.”

Monica Cannon-Grant, a community organizer from Roxbury who led Fight Supremacy, a protest against white supremacists in August 2017, said that oftentimes women of color don’t feel represented at events like the Women’s March.

“I don’t feel like the Women’s March was at all inclusive to trans women and women of color,” CannonGrant said. “A lot of my frustration was with the pink hats they were wearing.”

Cannon-Grant said that women of color need to be given opportunities to lead and be recognized for their leadership. “We need to address the elephant in the room. We need to be recognized and lead the way. Not just ‘We have a black woman, we’re good now.’”

Black women are not given the credit they deserve for leading, but are highlighted in instances like the defeat of Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate election, Cannon-Grant added.

“Are they willing to accept the fact they have strategically excluded women of color but lump them into the movement at their own comfort? We’re demanding you move out of the way to let black women, trans women, women of any color to speak for themselves because they seem to feel like they speak for all of us and that’s not the case.”

Elizabeth Rucker, a racial justice activist, said she did not attend the Women’s March over similar concerns.

“There was no excuse last year [for lack of inclusion of organizations for marginalized women in the organizing process], and there’s even less of an excuse this year,” Rucker said. “Those organizations were not interested in building a platform around the needs of communities of color, so they didn’t reach out to those organizers. …

True collaboration would have been to reach out to the organizations who are on the frontlines of this work [like] Black Lives Matter.”

While there is still a long way to go to build an inclusive women’s movement, Cambridge/Boston Women’s March attendees who spoke with the Dig thought it was a positive event overall that made efforts to highlight diverse voices.

“Looking around today, I think it’s pretty diverse,” said Ashley Lazarre. “I see a lot of women from different cultures. I see a lot of males here. … I came here today for the empowerment of women. I think of all the friends that I have who are immigrants, I think of the friends I have who have a position where they are getting less than what a regular male would get, I came here for trans women.”

Emma Smith, a high school student from Maryland visiting Boston, said that she may not be old enough to vote, but she feels it is important to show up to rallies like the Women’s March.

“I really like that the speakers they have, it’s an inclusive group,” Smith said. “There are trans women, women of color, I think it’s just wonderful. … I wanted to come because I feel very strongly about equal rights for everyone, and I feel like women are seen as minorities. I’m a bisexual woman and I feel like the LGBT community and women and people of color are oppressed by our government.”

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

5

THE PUSH CONTINUES DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

US Attorney dropped charges against 129 defendants, but continues to prosecute journalists and others

BY BAYNARD WOODS @BAYNARDWOODS Last Thursday, federal prosecutors in Washington, DC, 59 individuals, DC’s Fox 5 released “new” footage showing dropped charges against 129 of the 188 people facing some members of the black bloc anti-capitalist protest rioting charges during protests of Donald Trump’s breaking windows. To the defendants still facing charges, inauguration last January. The decision comes after a jury the timing did not seem coincidental. found all six of the defendants in the first round of trials Journalist Aaron Cantú is among those still facing not guilty on all charges on Dec 21. charges. Eight journalists were initially arrested, although “The US Attorney has essentially admitted it never charges against most of them were quickly dropped. had the evidence to charge these innocent people in the Alexei Wood, a photojournalist who was livestreaming the first place, and we’re gratified to see they’ve come to their protest, was one of the six acquitted on all charges. Cantú’s senses,” the ACLU-DC said in a statement. “For a full year, lawyers filed a separate motion to dismiss on Friday, hours the government’s abusive prosecution has upended the after the government announced it would continue with lives of these defendants, who’ve endured the anxiety of its prosecution of him. multiple court hearings and suffered disruptions to their “This case doubly implicates the First Amendment, educations or careers while facing the prospect of more because not only was Mr. Cantú present as a journalist to than 60 years in prison.” gather and disseminate the news, but the newsworthy The government’s notice of intent to proceed lists three event he was covering was a political demonstration,” the reasons for the continued prosecution of the 59 defendants motion reads. named—and in doing so seems to acknowledge that Cantú’s charges are based on the fact that he arrived there was never a strong case against the 129 people, all of where the black bloc was meeting wearing dark clothes whom have spent the last year looking at the possibility of and that he moved with them. His lawyers liken Cantú to a spending the rest of their lives in jail. journalist embedded with the military.

“The government is focusing its efforts on prosecuting “Mr. Cantú’s brand of journalism continues a timethose defendants who: (1) engaged in identifiable acts honored tradition of journalists who have of destruction, violence, or other assaultive conduct; embedded themselves to provide first-hand accounts of (2) participated in the planning of the violence and important events,” the motion reads. “American history is destruction; and/or (3) engaged in conduct that replete with examples of journalists sacrificing their own demonstrates a knowing and intentional use of the blackpersonal comfort or safety for the sake of a worthwhile bloc tactic on January 20, 2017, to perpetrate, aid or abet story.” violence and destruction.”

The decision to continue prosecuting a reporter for the “By that justification as written, it doesn’t make any actions of people he was covering comes only one day after sense for me to be one of the people they are focusing Republican Sen. Jeff Flake gave a long speech criticizing on. But it has never made any sense to be focusing on Trump’s attacks on the press as the “enemy of the people.” any of us,” said Elizabeth Lagesse, one of the defendants “It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the in the case who is also part of an ACLU civil suit against phrase ‘enemy of the people,’ that even Nikita Khrushchev DC’s Metropolitan Police Department and a number of forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that individual officers who, they claim, violated civil rights or the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose engaged in violence while on duty that day. of ‘annihilating such individuals’ who disagreed with “With my case in particular I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that I’ve been outspoken or that I am part of the ACLU lawsuit,” she said.

“This has always been political,” said Dylan Petrohilos, one of the people accused of planning the anti-capitalist, anti-fascist march that resulted in some broken windows. “Not only has it always been political, it’s already been a year-long punishment.”

Petrohilos says he was not even at the protest. Months later, police officers raided the home where he was living, taking an antifa flag and copies of progressive magazines like the Nation as evidence.

Since the beginning of the case, MPD and US prosecutors have worked closely with far-right media. On the day of the protest, a police officer released a spreadsheet with the names of everyone who was arrested to the farright site gotnews.com. In the first trial, prosecutors made liberal use of videos of an alleged planning meeting secretly recorded by an operative for James O’Keefe’s shady far-right sting site Project Veritas. Although prosecutors had previously argued for a protective order that would prohibit body camera footage from being released to the media, the night before they filed ILLUSTRATION OF AARON CANTU BY ANSON STEVENS-BOLLEN their intent to continue prosecuting 6

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

the supreme leader,” Flake said. He did not mention the name Aaron Cantú in his speech. Nor did the pundits who attacked the president’s “fake news awards” given out later that same night.

Most of the mainstream media still treats Trump’s war on the press as a Twitter feud. The prosecution of Cantú and others who have talked to the press such as Lagesse and Petrohilos shows that it is far more than that.

In most jurisdictions, these crimes would be prosecuted by state’s attorneys, but in the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice oversees such prosecutions. The suit cites specific DOJ guidelines intended to prohibit just such prosecutions of the press. But when Jeff Sessions’ prosecutors ignore those rules, the mainstream press remains shamefully silent.

Cantú and his lawyers are clear about the the stakes, however. “Prosecution of journalists not only imposes severe penalties on the individual journalists arrested and charged, but it significantly deters other members of the press from exercising their constitutional rights,” the motion argues, claiming that “the government’s conduct amounts to an outright ban on newsgathering at demonstrations.”

But it is not only journalists who enjoy the protections of the First Amendment. Lagesse, who appeared on Vice News days before the government’s notice was filed, was insistent that she would not back down.

“If they’re going to fight, so am I,” she said. “If they think they have a good case against me, then they’re wrong and I want to keep fighting. If it’s because they’re mad that I have been outspoken, I’m not planning on being any less outspoken.”

Baynard Woods is a reporter at the Real News Network and the founder of Democracy in Crisis. Email baynard@ democracyincrisis.com; Twitter @baynardwoodszz

VERY FUNNY SHOWS.

Seven Nights A WWk. IMPROVASYLUM.COM | 617.263.6887 NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

7

SEA LEVEL RISE IS JUST ONE OF BOSTON’S WORRIES APPARENT HORIZON

As Earth approaches several catastrophic global warming “tipping points”

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Before writing more columns examining Boston city government’s emerging plans to cope with the effects of global warming, I think a quick review of what area residents are likely to face in the coming decades is in order. Because it’s important to disabuse people of the idea that we’re dealing with “just” a handful of significant problems over time—a rise in air temperature, an increase of extreme weather events, and a rise in sea level—that those problems are isolated to just Boston or the United States, that they are going to continue until the end of the century and then stop, and that there are some simple things we can do to prevent those problems from becoming unmanageable.

The reality is far more frightening. According to Mother Jones, “In 2004, John Schellnhuber, distinguished science adviser at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the United Kingdom, identified 12 global-warming tipping points, any one of which, if triggered, will likely initiate sudden, catastrophic changes across the planet.”

There’s been much research and debate since that time about which systems can be considered tipping points and which ones need more research before we can be sure, but the Environmental Defense Fund has a page on its website with an overview of the latest science. It’s called “Everything you need to know about climate tipping points” and you should read it in full. But here’s a quick summary of the tipping points that the Earth is passing or on its way to passing. Largely due to humans continuing to burn CO2-producing oil, gas, and coal decades after it was known to be suicidal to do so.

1) Disappearance of Arctic Summer Sea Ice The poles are warming faster than the rest of the planet. In the Arctic, sea ice has been melting much more quickly than it used to for much more of every year as the average global temperatures rise year after year.

Scientists are now predicting ice-free Arctic summers by mid-century. The less of the year that ice covers the Arctic, the less sunlight is reflected back to space. Sunlight that is not reflected warms the Arctic Ocean, leading to other problems and more global warming overall.

2) Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet Of particular concern to Bostonians because of our relative proximity to Greenland, the melting of its ice cap may continue for the next few hundred years until there is none left. Unlike melting sea ice that doesn’t add water to the world’s oceans, melting ice from land does. This will ultimately result in global sea level rise of up to 20 feet, and the process is underway.

Beyond these, there are several other expected tipping points being studied: the disruption of ocean circulation patterns from the massive influx of fresh water from melting ice (especially in the North Atlantic, which would play havoc with Boston’s climate), the release of marine methane hydrates (which would accelerate the global warming already being caused by the CO2 emissions considered the main cause of climate change), ocean anoxia (a process creating growing oxygen-deprived “dead zones” in our oceans that can no longer support most life, aka “bye bye seafood”), the dieback of the Amazon rainforest (caused by human activity like cutting down huge numbers of trees with devastating consequences for biodiversity coupled with the loss of a major CO2 sink), the dieback of the boreal forests (still being studied, but means the death of more vast forests in and around our latitude of the planet), the weakening of the marine carbon pump (the Earth’s oceans have been absorbing much of the excess carbon in the atmosphere, but through this process will become less effective at it), the greening of the Sahara (some positive effects would come from this, but many basic ocean life forms rely on nutrients from the desert sand blowing into the ocean and will be negatively affected by losing it), and the increasingly chaotic Indian summer monsoons (could result in extensive drought in one of the Earth’s most populous regions).

Other processes underway may also be potential tipping points, including the collapse of deep Antarctic ocean circulation, the appearance of an Arctic ozone hole (joining the existing Antarctic ozone hole in causing rising UV levels in the Arctic with various negative effects), the aridification of the US Southwest (as moisture moves to the upper Great Plains), the slowdown of the jet stream (which could leave more weather systems stuck in place for weeks at a time, including extreme systems like our recent polar vortex-induced cold wave, among other negative effects), the melting of the Himalayan glaciers (which help provide fresh water for much of South Asia’s population), a more permanent El Niño state (which could result in more drought in Southeast Asia and elsewhere), permafrost melting (which results in more CO2 and methane being released, accelerating global warming further), and tundra transition to boreal forest (with uncertain effects).

Adding the above to the general effects of global warming that we’re already experiencing—areas that got lots of rain getting less and areas that got little rain getting more rain storms for more of the year, hotter

3) Disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet This tipping point may already have been passed— with the West Antarctic ice sheet already starting to collapse. Like the Greenland ice sheet, it too is expected to take hundreds of years to finish melting, but when it does it could raise the global sea level up to 16 feet.

4) Collapse of Coral Reefs With oceans already warming and becoming more acidic, the algae eaten by the coral that make up the world’s often huge and spectacular reefs is being jettisoned, resulting in coral bleaching. This process weakens the coral and hastens its death. Which is accelerating the destruction of marine spawning and feeding grounds globally with dire consequences for many nations whose economies rely on them—and for biodiversity. Scientists now predict that the remaining coral reefs will collapse before there is rise in the global temperature of 2 degrees from the old normal average.

Most climate models show the world reaching that threshold before the end of this century.

8

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

IMAGE VIA ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND

temperatures overall leading to an array of bad effects like tropical diseases moving north, and the “sixth extinction” of large numbers of species of animals and plants— and keeping in mind that this is happening everywhere around the planet, readers should understand that we’re not facing a localized crisis.

And remember, all the processes mentioned above are interlinked in complex ways that are absolutely not fully understood by our current science.

So Boston is not just going to “trial balloon and town hall meeting” its way out of this array of existential crises.

Surviving even one of the major problems caused by global warming—like the flooding from rising sea levels I wrote about last week—is going to be very difficult… and very expensive. And who’s going to pay for it? Well, going forward, in addition to pointing out that we’ll have to devote an ever-increasing percentage of public budgets to these problems, expect me to call for the corporations that started and continue to profit from global warming—the oil, gas, and coal companies—to pay for cleaning up the mess they created. To the degree possible. Which might not be sufficient to the monumental tasks at hand.

Still, it will be critical for Boston to join municipalities like New York City in suing the carbon multinationals Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and others for redress. While divesting the city from all investments in those companies’ stocks. And suing, and ultimately deposing, governments like the Trump administration that are aiding and abetting these corporations’ destruction of the planet.

Failing that, Boston and all of human civilization is literally sunk… burned… and perhaps ultimately suffocated. Dying not with the bang of nuclear war—itself a fate we also need to organize immediately to avoid given the federal government’s return to atomic sabre rattling— but with an extended agonizing whimper.

It’s up to all of us to stop that from happening.

Boston is not just going to “trial balloon and town hall meeting” its way out of this array of existential crises.

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

9

OBIT

REST IN BEATS DRU GARRITY

Shaun King

Commonwealth Records founder was relentless advocate for artists

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

Feb 9, 2018 • 11am-12:30pm

Northeastern University welcomes activist and writer Shaun King to discuss how dialogue and awareness are an indispensable for extending crucial conversations about social justice and equality.

Info & RSVP: northeastern.edu/crossing or 617-373-2555

Gregory Csikos, CPA csikoscpa.com TAXATION ACCOUNTING PLANNING I’m a Boston-based CPA here to provide a full spectrum of accounting and tax services to meet the needs of individuals, small businesses, start-ups, and non-profit organizations. My clients get more than an experienced and dedicated accountant, they get a problem solver. I thrive on breaking down complex issues into practical steps, allowing you to focus your energies on what matters most to you.

From helping you keep accurate books to the filing of your tax returns, I handle the numbers while you focus on handling your life. ​Call to find

out more at 857.636.1694 10

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

The fucking guy would call me every week. Sometimes twice a week.

Sometimes twice a day.

Plus there would be emails.

And then the emails from the publicists he hired.

He was relentless.

“You gotta hear this new DRU ON THE SET OF SLAINE’S artist I’m working with. Do you “RICH MAN, POOR MAN” VIDEO. think we can get something PHOTO BY A. GARCIA COURTESY going in the Herald? How OF COMMONWEALTH RECORDS. about the Dig?” The distinctly jovial Mass accent on those calls belonged to one Dru Garrity, who passed away during a complicated surgery last week, leaving behind a wife and two daughters, as well as an army of New England artists he boosted. The founder and owner of Commonwealth Records, which dropped releases from a range of legendary Boston hip-hop acts from 1998 through 2013, he was the kind of advocate rappers absolutely needed in their corner before social media drove press coverage, and that sadly seems to exist less and less as the game gets more fragmented and perpetrators land big-label deals without paying legitimate dues. As Slaine wrote to his fans about the awful news: Dru… put out my first vinyl 12” … Needless to say, he believed in me early on. Today he passed away after having open heart surgery. He leaves behind a wife and two daughters who he loved dearly. I spoke to him the day before his surgery and hoped and prayed he’d make it through it but unfortunately he did not. I’ll remember him as a good guy who took me to Christmas dinner at the McCarthy’s house in Roslindale at a time when I was down and out. He always believed in me. Thanks man. Rest easy my friend.

Many others have wept similarly about Dru, and as the journalist on the receiving end of his perpetual championing of the Commonwealth roster, I can attest that they are hardly being hyperbolic. Dru was unlike almost every other indie label owner I ever interviewed, in that he had no aspirations to become a mogul. He was all about the job at hand—getting promo for his artists to feed show and album sales—even if that meant having to work a backbreaking job himself. Whereas most people in hip-hop, including those who have yet to sell any albums whatsoever, tend to front like music is their full-time gig, Dru was the rare exception who wore his real story on the sleeve extending from his true-blue collar. As he told me for a profile that I wrote about him for the Herald many years ago titled “Label boss whips up hip-hop success”: I’ve been working in kitchens since I was 15 and I got in trouble. Instead of hanging out, my father put me to work at his friend’s restaurant. I eventually became a chef. …

I started [Commonwealth] with money I made as a chef. My first [Bawston] Strangla single, which was a cassette, only cost me $250 to put out. When my projects make money, I just flip it over to the next one. … Most labels are preoccupied trying to recoup their investments in the short term. … Me, I’d rather wait and get my maximum profit. I don’t need the money right now. I’ll always have a job waiting for me. No matter what, people need to eat.

Perhaps it was that mix of prudence and pragmatism, plus the way Dru trafficked in enthusiasm without bombast, that spurred Commonwealth to become an imprint that will always be enshrined in the annals of regional rap music, if not solidified with alt hip-hop as a whole in its seminal era. Without selling dreams to artists, Dru, who was physically quite massive but far from intimidating, helped countless acts achieve their goal of getting heard. Dru didn’t care much about props; still, Commonwealth racked up some accolades. Among them: the 1999 single “Mental Flux,” by the Rhode Island duo Clockworx, landing on a Rolling Stone editor’s year-end list in 1999—that kind of nod actually meant something back then—as well as noms from the Boston Music Awards and the short-lived MIC Awards, and regular appearances on college charts. It’s also critical to note that he was among the first label owners to pursue the MP3 game with significant vigor, both on his own and at Amalgam Digital, where Dru served as a guiding A&R during the final leg of his entertainment career.

Though Dru moved overseas a couple of years ago, he kept a steady online presence, even if only to bust chops over politics and share old Commonwealth material. News about his passing came as a horrendous shock and nightmare, and brought tears to the eyes of tough guys who don’t cry too often, but hopefully it serves as a reminder that while end users and music fans don’t always realize how sounds get from their favorite artists to their ears, it takes a whole lot more than skill or money, or at least it used to. It takes undying support and a love for the people you’re working with. And while the muscle underneath his ribs stopped ticking on that operating table, figuratively speaking, Dru had one of the most gracious and tremendous hearts of anyone I’ve ever known in hip-hop.

Your Trusty Massachusetts Cannabis Newsletter subscribe for free at

talkingjointsmemo.com NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

11

SUPER BOWL TALKING JOINTS MEMO

Former Pats player becomes cannabis entrepreneur

BY CHRISTINE GIRAUD Former New England Patriots player Eric Martin didn’t use cannabis in high school. His parents believed the stigma that it was a gateway drug and forbid it. When he got to college, he tried it and quickly discovered it wasn’t just fun—it helped him play football.

“After football games I just wanted to relax, but sometimes I couldn’t because my body was so sore,” Martin says. “Cannabis relieved the pain and helped me rest.”

He wasn’t alone. Many of his fellow players used cannabis to recover after playing. While nobody hid that fact, it wasn’t something they broadcast.

“It was pretty common, but you didn’t want to have a stoner reputation,” Martin recalls.

In his post-football career, Martin is now speaking up about his advocacy, as well as eyeing several business opportunities. He’s had his mind on sports recovery through cannabis for some time.

Beyond physical recovery, cannabis also helped Martin deal with stress, which was intense in the National Football League (NFL). As a free agent, he was contracted to a total of four teams in three and a half years: the Toronto Argonauts (2016-2017), New England Patriots (2014-2015), New Orleans Saints (2013), and the Cleveland Browns (20132014).

“I was always fighting for a spot,” he says. “Contracts can be game to game. You know what players say NFL stands for now? Not For Long.”

But it was the everyday physical trauma to his 12

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

body that spurred Martin to rethink his career path.

To give some perspective, football practices can entail anywhere from 100 to 200 plays a day of smashing into 300-pound guys. Frequent hits to the head can cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a debilitating brain disease that can lead to memory loss, impaired judgment, aggression, depression, and eventually dementia. Martin knew all of this and, after his third major concussion, decided it was time to retire at 26 years old.

It’s common for players to leave football while still young. According to the NFL Players Association, the average career length is only 3.3 years. One might surmise that the physical toll football takes on players convinces many to leave.

To reduce pain and keep players in the game, NFL doctors often distribute opioids. Still, many players believe that such hard drugs only mask damage, while cannabis and other natural aids can help their bodies heal.

Science backs them up. Cannabis researchers have found that the plant helps heal the brain after acute trauma. It also alleviates pain and can reduce the risks from opioid use. In one move toward awareness, the group Doctors For Cannabis Regulation teamed up with the nonprofit Athletes for Care to educate people and sent an open letter to the NFL explaining why cannabis should be taken off the list of “prohibited substances.”

The greater acceptance of cannabis in mainstream society has emboldened athletes from football and other sports to speak out about their use of cannabis to self-

medicate. Examples of former and current athletes that have gone public about cannabis: Ricky Williams, Eugene Monroe, Derrick Morgan, Nate Jackson, Even Britton, Nick Diaz, Ronda Rousey, Floyd Landis, Jim McMahon, Avery Collins, Rob Van Dam, Jay Williams, Cliff Robinson, Riley Cote, and many others.

Some say there is only so much the NFL can do while cannabis is still federally illegal. Nevertheless, there is some apparent hypocrisy since the league and individual teams combined accept tens of millions of dollars each season from the alcohol industry.

Martin is excited about entering the legalized cannabis industry in Mass. Among other initiatives, he hopes to create a line of CBD edibles that are specifically for athletes and their needs. He’s imagining shakes, pills, and power bars. Cannabidiol (CBD) is a cannabinoid in the cannabis plant that is non-psychoactive. Research has shown CBD has analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-anxiety properties. Many athletes are using CBD oil and edibles to stay focused, relieve stress, sleep, and heal their joints and muscles. Last September, the World Anti-Doping Agency announced that CBD will no longer be banned from use by athletes, effective January 1, 2018.

It’s great news for cannabis entrepreneurs like Martin.

“Right now, what’s out there are edibles for building muscle,” he says. “But there isn’t as much for healing.

That’s where CBD comes in.”

CANNABIZ CORNER

CLIMATE RESOURCES GROUP (CRG) Helping to reduce the carbon footprint of cannabis

BY ALEX BRANDON By mission, the Massachusetts-based Climate Resources Group (CRG) is an “independent consulting firm that works with a range of stakeholders to seize opportunities at the intersection of climate change, business and public policy.”

So, what are they doing in the cannabis space?

For starters, says CRG principal Sam Milton, the company is working to help “reduce the environmental impact of commercial marijuana cultivation.” For this latest installment in a series of interviews with various canna-business interests, however tangential, we asked Milton about where his outfit intersects with the burgeoning Mass industry.

Climate Resources Group is an environmental consulting company, so why has the legalization of cannabis drawn your attention?

One of the greatest challenges of our time is global climate change. Full stop. If you look at the science and climate trends, it is clear that humans have managed to dramatically alter the planet’s climate. If you think about how massive Earth’s atmosphere is, this is absolutely astounding. But climate change isn’t happening in a vacuum; it’s largely the result of fossil fuel-driven industrialization. The cannabis industry largely relies on fossil fuels to power its notoriously energy-hungry facilities in an industry which is exploding. Ultimately, this will exacerbate the climate challenge. So I’ve taken on the mission of working with the cannabis industry and stakeholders to shrink its carbon footprint as low as possible.

What possibilities does the future hold for us here in Massachusetts with legal cannabis? What changes are likely within our lifetime from an environmental standpoint?

Massachusetts has a real opportunity to lead in sustainable cannabis cultivation, but the question is: how many poorly designed grow ops will come and go before Massachusetts cannabis cultivation facilities are as environmentally responsible as they can be? As in every other state with legal marijuana, many commercial facilities are built with a focus on low cost and quick setup. If the “quick and dirty” model persists for years to come, the environmental impacts will be serious: we’ll see a sharp uptick in statewide power demand and commensurate power plant emissions, significant solid waste from discarded lights and growing media, and impacts on freshwater resources from high rates of consumption and wastewater discharge. The overall effect has the potential to be detrimental to life on Earth, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

What are the environmental challenges facing the cannabis industry, and what improvements could be made?

Many standard practices in conventional cannabis cultivation carry significant environmental impacts. For example, powering and cooling lights that indoor growers depend on require massive amounts of power, and if the electricity comes from the power grid it has a sizable carbon footprint that worsens climate change.

In many cases, water management systems are poor or nonexistent, so we’re seeing cases where plants are getting more water than they need. In many cases, the runoff contains large amounts of nutrients that are great in small quantities for your plants, but not so great when dumped into a sewer or stream. The good news is there are offthe-shelf alternatives to the dirtier default options, both for home and for commercial growers.

Many cannabis cultivators are interested in adopting greener growing methods, but the start-up costs associated with doing so are cost prohibitive. What does your organization recommend to help this situation?

The least efficient way of growing is sadly likely going to be the cheapest, and believe me as someone who likes to live frugally I totally get the urge to keep upfront costs low. But growers only need to consider their ongoing operating costs to understand cheaper lamps and other equipment will cost them much more over time. For lights in particular, this is because they burn out quickly, draw more power and require significant A/C to prevent plants from overheating. Additionally, commercial growers can get utility rebates to further bring down those upfront costs.

Some businesses can offer financing options including leasing the lights to growers, minimizing any initial pain.

If you could provide one piece of advice to Massachusetts’ Cannabis Control Commission, how would you help them regulate the industry?

Several thoughts come to mind, but if I had only one, I’d want the CCC to direct commercial growers to share data about their energy and water use with the state or with a trusted third party. This data would help growers and regulators better understand cultivators’ energy and water usage patterns, paving the way for more efficient practices to become the norm. The fact is that a lack of available data is one major reason why current inefficient cultivation approaches persist. Legalization will open doors to a truly sustainable industry, and this is why I’m excited to be working on these issues. It’s one piece of the puzzle in solving climate change but an important one.

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

13

PLEASANT CAFE, ROSLINDALE HIDDEN EATS

| RESTAURANT | INTIMATE CONCERT VENUE | | URBAN WINERY | PRIVATE EVENT SPACE |

Old-school Boston at its best

BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON

upcoming shows

JANUARY 25

JANUARY 26

Howie Day

the posies

JANUARY 27

JANUARY 28

The Black Lillies

Brandy Clark

JANUARY 30

JANUARY 31

TALIB KWELI

JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE

FEBRUARY 1

FEBRUARY 7

w/ H.C. MCENTIRE

bilal

sierra hull w/ phoebe hunt

FEBRUARY 10-11

FEBRUARY 11

Ian Hunter & The Rant Band

Peter Bradley Adams

FEBRUARY 14

FEBRUARY 16

Eleanor Friedberger

griffin house

special events The Champagne Experience

1.29

stump trivia

prizes for top three groups!

2.6

E S D A Y CITY WINERY theT URiedel BOSTON champagne experience

TICKETS $110

6:30 PM

FEB. 6, 2018

In this Riedel Comparative Tasting, experience for yourself the difference which the shape and size of a glass can make to your wine drinking experience.

Featuring the fine champagne of Besserat de Bellefon.

Besserat de Bellefon Cuvée des Moines

Brut NV - 92 pts, Wine Spectator

Besserat de Bellefon Cuvée des Moines Brut Rosé - 92 pts, Wine Spectator Besserat de Bellefon Cuvée des Moines

Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru

- 91 pts, Wine Spectator

2.27

3.21

City Winery and american airlines Present

City Winery and american airlines Present

australian wine dinner

THIS IS A FREE EVENT!

R S V P: I N F O @ W I N E S E L L E R S LT D. C O M

greek wine dinner

Get Married in Urban Wine Country email eventsboston@citywinery.com for more info

80 beverly st. Boston Ma 02114 (617) 933-8047 |www.citywinery.com/boston

14

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

Much like New York, Philadelphia, and other historic cities along the East Coast, Boston has no shortage of old restaurants and bars with tons of character, and yes, many of them are hugely popular with tourists, such as the Union Oyster House, Durgin-Park, and the Chart House. But what about dining and drinking spots with a lot of history behind them that tend to be favored more by the locals?

Plenty of them can be found as well, with Doyle’s Cafe in Jamaica Plain, Marliave in downtown Boston, and Jeveli’s in Eastie coming to mind, along with a classic old Italian-American restaurant called the Pleasant Cafe that is a bit farther out (near the Roslindale/West Roxbury line) but well worth seeking out for its old-school charm, laid-back vibe, and excellent food and drink.

The Pleasant Cafe basically sits on the east “slope” of Boston’s highest point (Bellevue Hill) on a stretch of Washington Street that drops steeply down into Roslindale Village, which is just under a mile to the northeast. The dining spot is tough to miss at night with its bright neon sign out front—and yes, neon signs are a real rarity in the Boston area for some reason—and the vintage feel continues inside with the almost obligatory wood paneling, hissing radiators, narrow diner-like restaurant section, and old-fashioned bar area complete with a wood-paneled partition that separates the actual bar from another narrow dining area. The staff at the Pleasant Cafe is exceptionally friendly, with servers seeming to know many of the customers by name while also welcoming newcomers to the place. By the way, the Pleasant Cafe has something that not too many restaurants within the Boston city limits have—a lot with free parking. And if the parking lot is full, plenty of spaces can be found along the street, so for those who drive, it is generally a pretty stress-free situation once you get here.

There seems to be a common thread among many of the old-school restaurants and bars in the Boston area—they tend to focus at least in part on ItalianAmerican food, with such places as NewBridge Cafe in Chelsea, Gregg’s in Watertown, Pearl Street Station in Malden, and Kelley Square Pub in East Boston being a few of the better examples of this. The Pleasant Cafe is certainly in this category as well, offering classic Italian-American comfort food dishes that tend to be simple and unpretentious, while portions are mostly substantial enough that bringing leftovers home for a second meal the following day is not an uncommon occurrence. The restaurant’s menu has a good number of highlights, with some of the best of the best including a wonderfully old-fashioned chicken and eggplant parmigiana combo plate with plenty of house-made red sauce; a hearty lasagna with lots of cheese and sauce, and dense and delicious meatballs that pretty much make this dish; a large and reasonably priced roast prime rib of beef that is offered on Saturday nights; a ravioli plate that can be ordered with sweet Italian sausage; and some of the best thin-crust pizza in all of Boston, with the eggplant and meatball toppings being two faves here. The drink menu at the Pleasant Cafe is something to behold if you’re a fan of old-fashioned cocktails, with good takes on such options as a ward 8, tom collins, brandy alexander, harvey wallbanger, sidecar, old fashioned, and so many more. For those not in the mood for a mixed drink, more than 30 beers and more than 40 wines are available as well, along with the usual soft drinks, coffee, and tea.

The Pleasant Cafe is one of those places that is so “Boston” that it really would be tough to imagine the city without it. Here’s hoping that this 80-year-old restaurant and bar keeps going for at least another 80-plus years, as it is a neighborhood icon that is truly a destination spot for those who like a little history with their food and drink.

>> PLEASANT CAFE. 4515 WASHINGTON ST., ROSLINDALE. PLEASANTCAFE.COM

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

NATURE SHOTS MUSIC

How keeping faith helped a lo-fi musician cope with back-to-back deaths

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

PHOTO BY SAM TASSEY When Michi Tassey, the musician behind the moniker Nature Shots, wanted to meet at a coffee shop for our interview, I was caught off guard. It didn’t seem like the ideal place to discuss death, a topic we would no doubt get into given the subject matter of her debut solo full-length, Foreclosure. But then the plan changed. On the warmest day this winter, we ditched it in favor of walking down Newbury Street and sat on a bench in Copley Square. There was the comforting toll of a bell from Trinity Church— which, in some ways, is where Tassey’s story as Nature Shots begins.

Multiple decades ago, before purchasing buildings in Boston was a hobby for the rich, Tassey’s parents bought a building in Back Bay. It became home to a church, complete with a modest vestibule and nave, that her parents attended but did not run nor found. These days, her parents live in New Hampshire, but they still rent rooms to families of the church. Tassey herself lives in one of the apartments. She studied music therapy at Berklee. It was there that she met Chris Lee-Rodriguez, a member of indie jazz rock group People Like You, who then invited her to record (and eventually join) his band—the group Tassey is most known for. But Tassey’s journey as a musician began before she joined People Like You. It’s the story of her solo career as Nature Shots, which came to shape in solitude in this apartment.

When she was younger, Tassey met one of her closest friends through the church. They went to church camp together. They took a gap year pre-college to do service projects together. In 2013, right after they finished the program, her friend was diagnosed with an illness. Two years later, she passed away. Though Tassey doesn’t give too many details, most notably her friend’s name, it’s clear it’s not for a lack of memory or vividness. It’s out of respect.

“She was a human of service, full of giving and gratitude,” she says of her friend. “And to be able to explain

at shows—whether it’s prior to performing or during my performance—who this person was, what they did for the world, and how they impacted so many people is a way to spread their spirit.”

Her passing struck Tassey deeply, and she struggled to process the events. It wasn’t that she was grasping at straws to cope. Instead, she was trying her best to understand, to be empathetic even after her friend had passed. Songwriting gave her a way to organize her thoughts in one medium. “It was a way to process, in real time, what was happening,” says Tassey. “As her illness progressed and leading up to her passing, I wrote these songs..”

Songwriting began with journaling. Tassey jotted down snippets of imagery, feelings, or conversations that were happening during the time of her friend’s illness. They were miniature sketches of spontaneous emotion. Then, months after that, her grandmother passed away. The back-to-back blows hit her hard, to a point of feeling stunned.

While there are pieces of what her grandmother and friend meant to her, tiny pieces of their characters, most songs aren’t about how she remembers them. They’re the raw, ugly parts of what was happening—an important part for Tassey to express. “Watching other people that I loved and connected with deeply be in pain with the human experience of death, a part of me felt like no one except for them and maybe others who have gone through it can understand what they’ve gone through, the chaos of that, the pain,” she says. “In a way, I was trying to understand what they were going through.”

The most obvious reference is her moniker itself, Nature Shots. When she was a teen, Tassey would dig through VHS videos at her grandmother’s house in Vermont, eager to find footage of herself as a child. Instead, she uncovered countless videos of her grandmother filming on the back porch, camcorder in hand and totally silent, slowly zooming into various bits of nature. She zoomed into a bush with a beautiful flower on it. She zoomed into a bird at the birdfeeder. Though comical, it was also beautiful, and Tassey’s family came to refer to those tapes as her grandmother’s “nature shorts.” Naming her solo project after those was a hopeful attempt to capture that purity and patient awareness of what surrounds her. Closing track “fickle folly” is a proper ode to her as well.

Eventually, Tassey found herself with an album’s worth of songs and the need to thread them together. During

July of last year, she spent four days recording Foreclosure in Philadelphia studio the Metal Shop with Cameron Boucher of Sorority Noise. Songs that began as rough sketches were shaped into beautiful, sweeping, intimate numbers. They turned into reverb-laden lo-fi musings. As far as instrumentation is concerned, the album is relatively minimal: acoustic guitar, electric guitar, grand piano, Rhodes piano, upright bass. She filtered them through a myriad of reverb pedals and midsong manipulation.

She credits Boucher as helping her try new ideas, like transitioning a piano part from one instrument to the next, but her desire to allow various parts to texturally convey her emotions drove the album.

“Michi is one of the most talented, humble, and giving people I’ve ever met,” says Boucher. “Her voice and vocal style is unmistakably unique. Once the pieces of the puzzle finally fit together on ‘Mama’ and we gave it our first listen through, I couldn’t believe how it had come out.”

The final product is a minimalist listen with a clear path forward. Each electric guitar echo bounces behind her as her words hang in the air, track after track. Songs like six-minute number “what is the word for when you are screaming and no one can hear?” haunt you from beginning to end.

On first listen, it’s clear that faith plays a role in Foreclosure. The music has the same massive space you would hear in a church hall. Because her parents raised her in a faith called Unificationism, Tassey couldn’t help but let it impact the way she sees the world and, ultimately, strives to be. She says it made her who she is and influenced what she wants to be for the world, for other people, and for the community. Besides that, she has taken a step back from religion, so the ties here are subtle.

“Young people who don’t have a big religious or faithbased foundation, even people don’t believe in God, will often pray when they’re desperate because eventually there’s nothing else you can do,” she says. “It essentially turns to begging, a plea of final hope. That’s normal. We can’t help but do it. ” So it makes sense that Nature Shot’s record release show will take place in the chapel of her family’s building: a quiet, family-first, understated rooting in faith. The building’s old walls and central location are as much a reminder of her youth as they are a welcome invite for listeners to reflect more on how they tie into the world at large.

As easy as it is to view Nature Shots as a one-off outlet for Tassey to work through her experience with loved ones’ deaths, it’s not. It’s a proper solo project that she plans on returning to over time to express herself.

“Being a solo performer has been a lesson in learning to take up space,” she clarifies, taking a big pause. “My performance is 100 percent my responsibility. That terrified me, but it also challenged me to have a voice and express myself articulately.”

>> NATURE SHOTS’ DEBUT ALBUM, FORECLOSURE, IS OUT NOW VIA BANDCAMP.

MUSIC EVENTS THU 01.25

SUN 01.28

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston.

8:30pm/18+/$12. greatscottboston.com]

[Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston.

7pm/all ages/$15. atwoodstavern.com]

GREET THE NEW FOLK ROCK FEMMES SNAIL MAIL + LOMELDA + BEDBUG

16

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

LATINX POWER LINEUP CUCO + HELADO NEGRO + LIDO PIMIENTA

DIGBOSTON.COM

SUN 01.28

ART POP AND COLOR BLOCK KIMBRA + ARC IRIS

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

TUE 01.30

STOMPIN’ BLUES ROCK RUMBLES MR. AIRPLANE MAN + PURE HORSEHAIR

[Atwood’s Tavern, 877 Cambridge St., Cambridge.

9:30pm/21+/$10. atwoodstavern.com]

WED 01.31

HIP-HOP’S BIG SOCIAL ACTIVIST TALIB KWELI

[City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston. 7pm/21+/$22. citywinery.com]

WED 01.24

TRICKED OUT POST-EDM ELECTRONICS EMANCIPATOR ENSEMBLE + BLOCKHEAD

[Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Allston. 7pm/18+/$23. crossroadspresents.com]

ANNA MEREDITH WHEEL OF TUNES

Composer talks Apple apps, London, and stolen sweatshirts

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Anna Meredith isn’t your traditional classical composer. The Scottish artist is ripe with talents, and she sees no point in keeping them in their respective columns.

Instead, she blends her interests together: Synthesizers dance with tubas, cellos rally against staccato vocal harmonies, and the classical world meets a genre too PHOTO BY ANNA VICTORIA BEST modern to have a title… yet.

On her most recent album, Varmints, Meredith found a way to turn classical music into a playground full of happy shrieks and unexplored shadows. Because she worked with other musicians, she found herself faced with the struggle most bands are used to: getting everyone to commit to performance times. Meredith not only got her performers in line to help bring her ideas to life in the studio, but she turned Varmints into a record that takes sharp turns when you aren’t expecting it to—and you’re glad it did.

“I think in terms of colors of shape, and I try to realize those shapes,” she says of the songwriting process. “Rather than making a bassline, I’m thinking about what would make an effective buildup or atmosphere. Then I pick instrumentation to fit whatever color or shape it is I’m trying to make. It’s like blank paper with a timeline, and I draw graphic shapes that can help control the storytelling. It’s a planning tool to help me architect a song, piece out the parts, the energy of a song, the speed and energy. It’s a lot of fun and pretty chaotic.”

To help Meredith polish off her imagination before headlining Brighton Music Hall, we interviewed her for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask bands questions inspired by their song titles. Her answer are as colorful as you would expect.

1. “Nautilus” Which of the nautilus mollusk’s traits would you like to have: poor memory, a built-in water jetpack, or protective slime?

Poor memory? Maybe that would be good. I’m quite an anxious person and hold on to things. Being able to forget your troubles as you go would be amazing. Nobody wants to forget stuff in the moment—you don’t want to be Dory from Finding Nemo— but being able to amble forward without stressing would rule.

2. “Taken” Have you ever had something stolen from you? Did you ever get it back?

Yeah, actually. My family went to Disney World and planned this big trip. I got this Mickey Mouse sweatshirt that I absolutely adored and wore every day. Because I was quite big, I got a size I could wear later in life as an adult. I wore it all the time. But I left it at a gig. When I returned, they said it was gone. Whenever I’m at a thrift shop, I always look for it. It was a ’90s-era black sweatshirt with a velvet Mickey Mouse on it and yellow and red stripes on the arms. Pretty cool, actually.

3. “Scrimshaw” If you got to create a scrimshaw, what designs or images would you carve in it?

What a nice question! I would love to be able to. My sister is amazing at illustrating, and she does these very simple, mostly animal drawings that look anxious and weird.

Whenever I draw, it’s a bit overworked. I would love to be able to do her stuff in that effortless way, all those facial expressions and so much movement with so few lines.

Whenever I try to draw that way, I’m just hacking away [laughs].

4. “Something Helpful” What’s the most helpful piece of advice, intentional or not, you learned from someone last year?

I think there’s something really nice about that, about overhearing advice. My cellist recently said something about an Apple app. When you’re a musician, you use the Voice Memos app on your phone for when you come up with a musical idea on the go.

When you’re doing music work with kids, it’s a fast way to record stuff. Apple made a new version of that app that I can’t remember the name of, like Music Memo, that is designed for musicians to pick audio up more easily. It’s not the most helpful advice, but I imagine it’ll help.

FIND THE REMAINING TRACKS FROM NINA’S PIECE AT DIGBOSTON.COM

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

Boston’s Best Irish Pub

MONDAYS

WEDNESDAYS

THURSDAYS

MAKKA MONDAY

GEEKS WHO DRINK

ELEMENTS

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

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

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

FRIDAYS

SATURDAYS

PRETTY YOUNG THING

BOOM BOOM ROOM

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 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.

CHECK OUT ALL PHOENIX LANDING NIGHTLY EVENTS AT:

WWW.PHOENIXLANDINGBAR.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

6,000 PROTEST SIGNS VISUAL ARTS

from the 2017 Boston Women’s March preserved online

BY GREG COOK @AESTHETICRESEAR

After the 2017 Boston Women’s March, thousands of participants left their protest signs around the iron fence surrounding the Boston Common Central Burying Ground. They were going to be thrown away—until three local teachers came along.

“Towards the end of the march in Boston, me and few colleagues and friends found an impromptu exhibition of the posters that had been arranged all around the perimeter of the Boston Commons, and because we found out that they were going to be destroyed, we decided to rescue the signs,” Alessandra Renzi— who initiated and produced the project with her colleagues Dietmar Offenhuber and Nathan Felde—says in a documentary video about their effort.

The trio of Northeastern University professors got permission from city workers to collect the signs for posterity. People pitched in to help them load some 6,000 posters into a rented van to be taken away for safekeeping. These have now been digitally scanned to create a browsable, online public archive called “Art of the March.”

Renzi says, “They valorize the fact that protest is a very important tool to retain the democratic structures in society.”

Offenhuber says in the video, “The one thing that really made this collection unique [is] that it’s almost like a complete snapshot. It’s not just taking the 30 best signs or the most representative signs but taking everything. So you have kind of a complete sample of what the march looked like.”

LIVE MUSIC • LOCAVORE MENU PRIVATE EVENTS 1/25

Octave Cat, Swimmer

Feat. Jesse Miller (Lotus), Eli Winderman (Dopapod) 1/26

Dewpoint, The Van Burens & Whistlebot Jam rock.

1/27 (12pm)

Punk Rock Aerobics A Benefit for Girls Rock Campaign With Hilken Mancini, Melanie Bernier & DJ Sit and Spin 1/27

Ian Moore, Abbie Barrett Texas Americana soul 1/31

Jay Allen’s Mess-Around With Justine Covault, Tom Baker & special guests

156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA 617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com   @oncesomerville /ONCEsomerville

18

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

Greg Cook writes about art and more at Wonderland: a magazine of arts and cultures, gregcookland.com/wonderland. This article is also published there.

LUNCH TIME COMIX

FOR EVERY REACTOR

THERE IS AN EQUAL OPPOSITION REACTION

THE BOSTON INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT JOURNALISM AN

PRESENTS PILGRIMS

ORAL HISTORY COVERING 50 YEARS OF ANTI-NUCLEAR PROTESTS IN NEW ENGLAND

DROPPING IN JANUARY 2018 BOTH ONLINE AND IN LIMITED STANDALONE PRINT EDITION WRITTEN AND RESEARCHED BY

MIRIAM WASSER

EDITED BY

JACQUELINE HOUTON

COMING SOON WITH COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT EVENT DATES TBD binjonline.org

@binjreports

givetobinj.org NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

THEATER REVIEWS ARTS

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

ROAD TO NOWHERE: ROAD SHOW AT THE LYRIC STAGE

It’s not exactly a secret that Road Show isn’t a very good musical.

The Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical has undergone reinvention after reinvention—and title change after title change—from its 1999 premiere as Wise Guys to its 2003 revision called Bounce. Road Show, in its final form (which runs at the Lyric Stage through Feb 11), premiered Off-Broadway in 2008 to the same kind of negative reviews that it had been met with from the start.

Sam Mendes couldn’t get it right. Hal Prince couldn’t get it right. John Doyle couldn’t get it right. I’m sensing a pattern.

The musical tells the true(ish) story of Addison and Wilson Mizner, two brothers who left nary a stone unturned in their dogged pursuit of fortune and success.

(They are played in the Lyric’s production by Neil A. Casey and Tony Castellanos.) From the Yukon to New York City to Boca Raton, there wasn’t much they weren’t willing to try.

Both achieved relative success in their lifetimes, though you wouldn’t know it from Road Show: Addison was a successful architect who left his fingerprints and influence all over Southern Florida, and Wilson had some success as a Hollywood screenwriter and co-owner of the famed Brown Derby.

Road Show also suggests that both brothers lost everything as a result of their botched attempt at turning Boca Raton into the “Venice of the Atlantic,” an endeavor into which they poured all of their resources. While bankruptcy did follow, it didn’t totally ruin them.

Sondheim and Weidman have dreamed up a fictional character, Hollis Bessemer (the always great Patrick Varner), in an effort to dramatize the downfall of the Mizner’s Boca project. Hollis, Road Show purports, was a lovercum-business partner of Addison’s whom the brothers exploited in order to get their project off the ground. In reality, the brothers put together an association full of investors, which included Irving Berlin and Elizabeth Arden.

The true story of the brothers is fascinating enough that it feels like a reckless and baseless decision to pepper it with 20

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

inventions.

And yet, ironically, the Hollis narrative is virtually the only interesting slice of this musical. It’s not that the writing is particularly clever as much as it is a testament to how talented Varner is, who has over the last several years become one of Boston’s most reliably good performers.

As far as praise goes, that about all I’ve got for Road Show, although Cristina Todesco’s wall of furniture set is terrific. Aside from Varner, this production’s greatest asset is the breakneck speed with which the story unfolds and in turn its relatively short running time. At an intermissionless 90 minutes, the audience’s suffering is somewhat mitigated.

Road Show is almost relentlessly boring with virtually no highlights, musical or otherwise; it’s inconceivable that musical theater’s greatest living composer is behind it.

That the Mizner brothers led such over-the-top, intriguing lives makes their story ripe for dramatization, and the fact that Road Show is so lifeless is confounding.

Spiro Veloudos (producing artistic director at the Lyric) and Ilyse Robbins serve as co-directors of this production, and while none of the show’s faults can be blamed on them, their production does nothing to compensate for any of its shortcomings. As the two brothers, Neil A. Casey and Tony Castellanos are serviceable, yet neither possess the charm or gift of musical comedy required to carry this clunker on their shoulders.

Part of Veloudos’ artistic mission at the Lyric Stage has been to present all the works of Stephen Sondheim, and so with that mission comes the inevitability of Road Show. It is a worthy mission and I commend him for producing this infamously problematic musical. Yet, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. >> ROAD SHOW. THROUGH 2.11 AT THE LYRIC STAGE, 140 CLARENDON ST., BOSTON. LYRICSTAGE.COM

LIFTING THE VEIL: UNVEILED AT NEW REPERTORY THEATRE

Unveiled may not be the most spectacular play to hit

Boston this new year, but so far it is undoubtedly the most affecting.

Written and performed by Rohina Malik, Unveiled shares the stories of five different Muslim women and their experiences in a post-9/11 America. It’s the first professional play that the London-born, Chicago-based Malik ever wrote, and she’s been performing it around the country ever since it premiered at Chicago’s 16th Street Theater in 2009. There is ample opportunity to catch it here in Boston: It plays through Jan 28 at the New Repertory Theater in Watertown and will then play Stoneham’s Greater Boston Stage through Feb 16.

The five stories are largely inventions of Malik, though elements are grounded in real events and actual displays of hatred, including one such display that she encountered while trying to attend a friend’s wedding with her two children.

We meet Maryam first, a Pakistani immigrant who is told to “take that shit off [her] head” as she arrives at her friend’s wedding. “If you’re an American, dress like one,” the man yells after her. Her first instinct is to just keep on walking, but she turns around to confront the man when she decides that she cannot allow herself or her children to be treated like they aren’t human.

Noor is a Moroccan-American born and raised in Chicago who falls in love with a boy at her school after he defends her against bullies that pull off her hijab, and Inez is an African-American convert to Islam who recalls the looks she got from people on Sept 11, the day that—she says—her rights as an American were stolen by her fellow Americans.

Shabana is a South Asian rapper whose mother used to make her rub lemons on her face as a child to brighten her skin. Through her music, she longs to address what she calls a global problem, where generation after generation of girls are taught to hate their black skin.

Lastly there is Layla, a Palestinian immigrant who recalls pleading on Sept 11, “Please, Allah, make it be a mistake.” When she sees a friend being beat up on the street while trying to enter a mosque, she intercedes and begs the bully to get to know her before passing judgement and to remove the veil from his heart.

Lifting the veil from our hearts is what Malik sets out to do with Unveiled, and there is little doubt that she is successful on that front. The marvel of her work can be found not just in her characters’ anecdotes that highlight the struggles and hatred that plague the Muslim community (furthered by our media and our president), but in the way in which she communicates the everyday grace and courage that his hatred is often met with.

If there is any criticism to be found it is only that Unveiled sometimes feels less like a work of theater and more like an educational vehicle intended for schools and field trips. Indeed, Malik has crisscrossed the country over the last few years performing Unveiled at different places of worship, schools, and theaters. But given the amount of time that she has spent performing it, there is sometimes a stiltedness to her performance that places an emotional cap on some of the more gripping moments.

This production does not have a director, and it’s hard to imagine that her performance wouldn’t be even more stirring with a bit of vision and shaping.

Still, Malik has fashioned a deeply resonant and profoundly moving play that feels especially crucial in this age of Trump. The theme of New Repertory Theatre’s current season is “resilience.” Let’s hope next season’s is “resistance.” >>UNVEILED. THROUGH 1.28 AT NEW REPERTORY THEATER, 321 ARSENAL ST., WATERTOWN. NEWREP.ORG 2.7–2.16 AT GREATER BOSTON STAGE, 395 MAIN ST., STONEHAM. GREATERBOSTONSTAGE.ORG

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

SAVAGE LOVE

MOTHER LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET My father left my mother abruptly when I was 14 years old, and he hasn’t contacted either of us since. It was a crushing blow for her, and she retreated from the world. She was never bitter about it, but it was devastating. She lost the love of her life for no apparent reason and was left completely alone, except for me. We have both done our best to forget about him. We were extremely close for the next four years and actually slept in the same bed every night. Eventually, we began doing something that most people would consider evil but neither of us has ever regretted. It was just something that happened. And it wasn’t something that just happened once—it went on for two years and ended only when I left to go to university. I haven’t thought about this for years, and it is something my mother and I have never discussed. She has since remarried and seems perfectly fine. But even today, we sometimes send each other friendly messages that are vaguely suggestive. The problem is I mentioned it to my wife recently and she went ballistic. She called me and my mother sick and moved into another bedroom and refuses to have sex with me. I wish I had never mentioned it, but it was part of a truth-or-dare session we were having. This has been the situation for the last three months.

I have finally lost my patience and I am thinking of leaving. I have mentioned going to a counselor, but she refuses and claims that she is married to a monster and that no woman would want me. We don’t have any children—so if I were to leave, I wouldn’t be disrupting an innocent’s life. Do you have any advice?

Truthful Revelation Unmakes Two Happy Spouses I’m not a professional counselor, TRUTHS, but I’m gonna climb out on a limb and say that a game of truth or dare isn’t the right time to reveal an incestuous sexual relationship with a parent. Dr. Hani Miletski and Dr. Joe Kort, on the other hand, are professionals: Dr. Miletski is a psychotherapist and a sex therapist, and Dr. Kort is a sex and relationship therapist. Both are certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, and both are authors—Dr. Miletski literally wrote the book on the subject of mother-son incest: Mother-Son Incest: The Unthinkable Broken Taboo Persists.

“There’s no wonder his wife is so upset,” said Dr. Miletski. “Sexual relations between mother and son are considered the most taboo form of incest.”

Dr. Miletski told me it isn’t uncommon for a woman who has been abandoned by her husband to turn to an adolescent son for emotional comfort.

“These women are often very insecure and needy,” said Dr. Miletski. “Unbeknownst to the son—and sometimes to the mother— the son begins to feel responsible for his mother’s well-being and emotional support. The son becomes ‘parentified’ and is treated by his mother as a substitute husband. Occasionally, this close relationship between a mother and her son evolves into a sexual relationship, and the substitute husband becomes her lover as well.”

Dr. Miletski prefers not to use terms like “abuse” or “trauma” unless the person involved uses those terms themselves—which you didn’t, TRUTHS, but I’m going to go ahead and use them. Here goes: You say you have no regrets, and you don’t mention feeling traumatized by the experience, but the absence of trauma doesn’t confer some sort of retroactive, after-the-fact immunity on your mother. She is responsible for her actions—actions that were abusive and highly likely to leave you traumatized.

But that was then, TRUTHS. What do you do about your situation now?

“Unfortunately, I don’t think his wife will ever be able to put this revelation behind her,” said Dr. Miletski. “I think his best bet is to leave her, move on, and seek therapy. A therapist will help him deal with the emotional upset of the breakup with his wife, as well as process what happened with his mother.”

No way! On the Lovecast, it’s Sarah Silverman! savagelovecast.com

COMEDY EVENTS THU 01,25 - SAT 01.27

RICH VOS @ LAUGH BOSTON

A master of crowd work who prides himself on being able to make any audience laugh, Rich Vos’ range has earned him credits running from The View to Def Comedy Jam. Vos has also had a number of his own Comedy Central stand-up specials. He may be best known, though, for his star turn as a finalist on NBC’s Last Comic Standing.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8 & 10PM | $20-$25 FRI 01.26

REFORMED WHORES @ THUNDER ROAD

Featuring: Reformed Whores (Katy Frame & Marie Cecile Anderson) & Christa Weiss.

379 SOMERVILLE AVE., SOMERVILLE | 7PM | $12 FRI 01.26

MARIA BAMFORD @ THE WILBUR

Maria is the creator & star of Maria Bamford: the special special special & of the cult hit web series The Maria Bamford Show, which screened at the Museum of Art & Design. She was the first female comic to have two halfhour Comedy Central Presents specials & starred alongside Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifianakis & Brian Posehn in the Comedy Central series The Comedians of Comedy & Netflix’s Comedians of Comedy: The Movie.

246 TREMONT ST., BOSTON | 7:30PM | $27-35 SAT 01.27

TOKEN: RETHINK WHAT COMEDY CAN BE @ IMPROVBOSTON

Featuring: Corey Saunders, J Smitty, Angela Sawyer, Justin P. Drew, Andrew Williams, Carolyn Riley, & Tricia Auld.

Hosted by Tooky Kavanagh & Gloria Rose

40 PROSPECT ST., CAMBRIDGE | 7PM | $12 SAT 01.27

DAN CROHN @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

Dan Crohn has been performing stand up comedy in & around Boston for years. His jokes can be heard on XM Radio & he has been a guest on the popular podcast WTF with Marc Maron.

A semi-finalist in the Boston Comedy Festival & the Laughing Skull Festival, Dan’s stories of family & friends have entertained audiences from all over the country. Dan was named one of the top 100 comics for Season 9 of Last Comic Standing.

His former day job of teaching 4th graders has provided him with endless amount of material. He has wanted to be a comedian since the age of eight when he stumbled upon his Father’s Henny Youngman records.

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 SUN 01.28

LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW

Featuring: Mike Recine David Thomas, Kathleen DeMarle, Logan O’Brien, Daniel Donahue, Ryan Chani, & Emily Ruskowski.

Hosted by Brett Johnson

15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 MON 01.29

RAZOR SHARP COMEDY @ RAZORS BARBERSHOP

Featuring: Nick Chambers, Chris Post, Travis Libman, Emily Ruskowski, Dan Boulger.

Hosted by Ryan Chani

308 HIGHLAND AVE., SOMERVILLE | 7PM | $10 WED 01.31

COMEDY PUNCH @ ARTS AT THE ARMORY

Featuring: Dan Boulger, Sean Sullivan, Stine An, Nora Panahi, Dave Robinson, Liam McGurk & more.

Hosted by Vally D.

191 HIGHLAND AVE., SOMERVILLE | 7PM | FREE

Lineup & shows to change without notice. For more shows & info visit BostonComedyShows.com 22

01.25.18 - 02.01.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

Rich Vos

Comedy Central, Last Comic Standing Thursday - Saturday

COMING SOON Yannis Pappas Comedy Central, The Tonight Show Feb 1-3

Jared Freid’s The JTrain Podcast Live!

THE WAY WE WEREN’T

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

Special Engagement: Weds, Feb 7

Jenny Zigrino

Bad Santa 2, Comedy Central Feb 8-10

Jon Stetson

America’s Master Mentalist Special Engagement: Sat, Feb 10

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

Laugh Is For Lovers Comedy Show

Featuring: Will Noonan, Dan Boulger, Tricia Auld + more Weds, Feb 14

617.72.LAUGH | laughboston.com 425 Summer Street at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

23

Providing the highest-quality medical marijuana products and the very best in customer care to the Greater Boston area

FLOWER INFUSED CONCENTRATES NON-MEDICATED ACCESSORIES Do Something Revolutionary

Come Join Us!

67 Broadway Somerville, MA 01245 617.213.6006

revolutionaryclinics.org Free patient education, materials, consultation and regular patient events!

Learn more:

Hours of Operation Sun: 11AM - 4PM Mon: 9AM - 7PM Tues: 11AM - 8:30PM Wed: 9 AM - 7PM Thu: 11 AM - 8:30PM Fri: 9 AM - 7PM Sat: 11 AM - 8:30PM

Revolutionary Clinics

FREE ON-SITE

PARKING

I-93

Sullivan Sq. (Orange Line + Buses)

/RevClinics

@RevClinics