DigBoston 5.31.18

DIGBOSTON.COM 05.31.18 - 06.07.18

DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

WE INTERVIEW THE REAL RICK ROSS BOOKS

THE VERMIN ISSUE

PLUS DIG’S ANTI-TICK FIX-IT KIT

SEARCHING FOR AUTHENTICITY WITH TOMMY ORANGE

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AS THE GLOBE BURNS

Institutions vary in how they manage harassment claims.

Soon after Harvard prof Jorge Domínguez was publicly accused of misconduct in March, the university placed him on leave.

In a higher profile scenario, after Matt Lauer was accused of inappropriate sexual behavior at NBC, the “Today” show host was fired.

Such precedents aside, facing its latest developing scandal, the Boston Globe took a wildly unique approach.

Since former boston.com (owned by the Globe) editor Hilary Sargent, in a series of tweets on May 22, added a name to her months-long vague excoriation of the company’s misogynistic culture and mishandling of harassment complaints, the newspaper has thrown shade on the accuser, filed a lawsuit against her, and allowed the accused party, Globe editor Brian McGrory (whose attorneys also threatened separate action against Sargent) to carry on, even having him co-author an unrelated company wide memo about downsizing and buyouts in spite of the public turmoil.

I have broken down the claims on all sides in a longer version of this rant online, but in short I’ll summarize that while a letter written by McGrory to his staff noted that he “was not anticipating the situation,” only a crash test dummy hibernating in a bunker underneath the Globe’s hermetic bubble could have missed the warning shots.

Sargent has been hammering the newspaper on social media for months, even offering to help with any internal investigations into harassment matters, while readers and critics alike knocked the decision made by brass last year to withhold the name of a journalist facing misconduct accusations.

The unrelenting arrogance of Globe bosses has spurred scrutiny from the most boorish corners of the Massachusetts media. Not always for what woke blokes might call “the right reasons,” but nevertheless, the debaucherous shitposting gadflies at Turtleboy Sports were the first to cover Sargent’s damning tweets.

It’s terrifying that so many right-wing goons have led coverage on this front. Because when it comes to sexual harassment, my enemy’s enemy isn’t my friend. From what I can tell, they’re simply getting kicks and laughs at the expense of reporters they loathe on conservative principle, and because they feel the Globe is too far to the left! Considering their range of content when they aren’t sniping journos, it’s unlikely that many of them crusade for the #MeToo movement in their spare time.

There is something missing in a lot of the deserved vitriol aimed at the Globe this past week. And that’s a desperate hope for our newspaper of record to emerge from this mess brighter than ever, with new exciting and diverse leadership, fresh ideas, and a reinvigorated plan for its own future.

It doesn’t look like that will happen though. Their allowing an embattled and (at least) temporarily compromised McGrory to deliver critical employment news is hamfisted at best and reckless and insensitive at worst. It is also a decision that a first year PR joker wouldn’t make under the influence, which makes it seem like it is all deliberate. And which makes me think they’re trying to pull off the legal version of what their reporters do whenever they block haters on Twitter. They think they can make it all go away, and they may be right.

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NEWS+OPINION MORE POTENT THAN RODENTS SPECIAL NEWS FEATURE

Poisons meant for pests are killing animals and impacting humans in Mass

BY LAURA KIESEL @SURVIVALWRITER

The body was found on a chilly morning in early April 2014, lying under a tree, the legs and feathers stiff with rigor mortis. For four years, Ruby the Red-Tailed hawk was a beloved presence in the Fresh Pond section of Cambridge, where she had shared a nest on the seventh-floor ledge of an office building in the middle of the mall with her longtime mate Buzz. A live camera was even set up to record and broadcast their comings and goings over the years. But now she was suddenly and mysteriously dead, and her many fans were wondering what happened.

Another April morning only one year later, I was emerging from my apartment to travel to a doctor’s appointment when I first saw a man dressed in a khaki coverall uniform placing a large number black metal boxes around the apartment complex. As I approached, he straightened up to face me and I asked what they were for.

“Rats,” he said, placing another one against the backdoor of my own building.

I inquired if there had been any rat sightings in or around the complex recently.

“Not yet,” he replied. “This is just a precaution.”

My town of Arlington had been gearing up for a massive, multi-month reconstruction project on Mass Ave. In anticipation of the rats that businesses and property managers assumed the project would scare out of the sewers and into our residential streets, the bait boxes began to proliferate all over town.

As a former natural resource scientist and conservation biologist, I watched anxiously as I knew what was in these boxes: poison. Not just regular poison, but rather a special kind that doesn’t quickly kill rats or mice, but instead lingers in their system for days or sometimes a week or more. During that time, whatever eats these poisoned rats—whether cats, or coyotes, or raptor species like hawks and owls—can also become poisoned and can die. This is what had claimed the life of Ruby the Red-Tailed Hawk, as a necropsy performed by Tufts Wildlife Clinic in Grafton showed she had suffered a lethal dose of rat poison after eating too many rodents spiked with laced bait.

It does not appear that Ruby was an isolated incident.

Impacts of such poisons have hit many other animals and even people, especially children.

Research reveals rat poisons are becoming increasingly 4

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commonplace in the bloodstreams of birds of prey in the Bay State. Specifically, another study conducted by Tufts Wildlife Clinic, between 2006 and 2010, found traces of a particular class of “super” poisons—known as Second Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticides, or SGARs—in the liver tissue of up to 86 percent of the Mass-based raptors they tested. In the far reaches of California, rat poison is even killing off threatened bobcat and cougar populations.

Pets can be affected. According to Deputy Director of Advocacy for the Massachusetts Society for the Protection Against Cruelty to Animals Laura Hagen, the MSPCA-Angell veterinary clinic has seen at least 18 cases of suspected or known rodenticide ingestion this year alone.

“The use of rodenticide is especially concerning because it puts both wildlife and companion animals at significant risk of prolonged suffering and death,” Hagen says.

The worst part? Despite this rampant use of rat poison and its unintended repercussions, we are still losing our war against rats.

THE BREEDERS Soon after the anniversary of those first bait boxes being laid down in my complex, I began to notice others in the summer of 2016.

I was sitting on a bench at Spy Pond Park, only two blocks from my home, when a rat suddenly scurried up to my sandaled foot in broad daylight and cocked its head up at me, as if asking for a treat. He scampered away after I made shoo-ing motions, but over the next several minutes, two more approached me and then began to run around the bench in a frolic. In the four years I had lived here and been a daily visitor to the pond, I never once spotted a rat. Now, I see them frequently and they approach me without any fear. They seem to be as much a part of the ecosystem as the ducks that paddle around. More poison in my town has not seemed to result in less rats.

The same year the rats staked their claim on Spy Pond, over in Boston proper, the city’s Inspectional Services Department logged more than 3,500 rodent-related complaints in the city—a startling 30 percent increase from the preceding two years. In July 2017, Governing magazine placed Boston as number two in the nation for rat sightings

and complaints, surpassed only by Philadelphia. Many people have scrambled to identify some of the causes in increased rat activity, which range from warmer winters due to climate change, to less exposure to predators, to more population density (more people equals more trash), to increases in development and construction projects.

However, some have also posited that the widespread use of poisons may in fact be a contributing factor to exploding rat populations in Boston and beyond.

In a feature article on rats published in Boston Magazine earlier this year, the word poison was used multiple times to describe the efforts of Boston officials to manage rats, including phrases such as “buckets of poison,” “a paint bucket full of rat poison,” and “a truck full of poison.” But nowhere in the article are these poisons identified. Nor is there an explanation of how they work, or of their history in the United States.

Most poisons in bait boxes are of the same class that killed Ruby the Red-Tailed Hawk—SGARs that include brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, and difenacoum.

These poisons work by interfering with the blood-clotting process in whomever or whatever ingests them, resulting in internal hemorrhaging that can be fatal. Animals with dangerous levels of the poison have been found bleeding from the nose, eyes, and mouth, as well as from open wounds.

These poisons, however ironically, may be doing a better job at wiping out some of the most effective predators of rats, while the rats themselves manage to keep rebounding.

Experts note that this may be because rats are such rampant breeders—they tend to mate and can even breed year-round, while a single female can give birth to up to 2,000 babies annually (some estimates even go much higher). By contrast, raptors, like hawks, eagles, and owls, are seasonal breeders who only lay eggs for two to four chicks every spring on average. Simply put, rats outbreed the poison, with the constant presence of bait luring new populations once preceding ones have been eradicated. “[It] is wasteful and tragic to kill off the best natural solution to controlling rats that we have,” says Lisa Owens-Viani, president and founder of the Californiabased nonprofit project Raptors Are the Solutions (or “RATS”), which was established to educate people about the ecological role raptors play in urban and suburban environments and how they are adversely affected by the widespread use of rat poisons.

In particular, Owens-Viani points to a recent scientific study based in Ventura County, California that found that local hawks and owls were nearly 50 percent more successful in reducing burrowing damage caused by resident rodents as compared to anticoagulant bait stations used at a control site. She also criticizes poisoned bait as perpetuating the infestations they are supposedly designed to deter.

“When you think about the word ‘bait,’ it literally means you are baiting [the rats] into an area and they’re going to keep coming back as long as bait keeps getting put out,” says Owens-Viana, whose RATS project recently established a Massachusetts chapter.

PERMANENT SGARS Non-target animals like wildlife and pets aren’t the only victims of the rat poison.

In 2008, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced it would begin phasing out the availability of over-the-counter SGARs over a three-year period. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the

manufacturer of the popular over-the-counter SGAR product D-Con, Reckitt Benckiser, balked at the newly proposed restrictions and a lengthy legal battle ensued. They resisted despite reports revealing that more than 10,000 children were accidentally eating SGAR poisons sold over-the-counter annually. Furthermore, the poisonings were disproportionately impacting low income children of color ages four and under. In one case in 2015, 19 inmates at Rikers Island Correctional Facility in New York were sickened due to eating meatloaf that had somehow been tainted with SGARs. In 2014, Reckitt Benckiser finally agreed to stop producing 12 of its SGAR-based D-Con items. However, the new EPA guidelines still allow licensed pest control operators to market and use the poison in so-called “tamper-resistant” bait stations, while some pre-existing inventories of now-banned D-Con products can occasionally be found on store shelves. Moreover, the new bait stations are sometimes heavily marketed by some exterminators to their consumers, most of whom are not likely aware of their extensive environmental and public health risks.

In the absence of natural predators, many cities and towns are trying to find out what else can be done to control rats that doesn’t include poison. Locally, from 2014 through 2016, the City of Somerville partnered with the corporation Senestech to use a nonlethal bait the latter had developed called ContraPest. As its name suggests, ContraPest significantly lowers the fertility rates of both male and female rats, cutting down on their overall populations. Unlike poisons, the ContraPest bait is quickly metabolized by rats (within minutes of ingestion) and is not stored in their fatty or organ tissue—meaning it does not work its way into the food chain like poisons do. According to Denise Taylor, spokesperson for city of Somerville, pilot studies they conducted found that rodent population growth was suppressed by 57 percent and 67 percent at ContraPest test sites at Trum Field and Gilman Street, respectively.

In addition to ContraPest, Somerville provided new “rodent-resistant” 64-gallon trash carts to every resident in the city free of charge in June 2014. These carts come equipped with secure lids and are made of sturdier material that can better keep rats from accessing the trash inside of them, while also being less prone to blowing over in the wind. The city also implemented rigorous dumpster licensing and inspections guidelines—increasing the number of licensed dumpsters from 177 to 622 in order to ensure they are clean of outside debris and food waste, free of holes and have suitable, tight-fitting lids. In the first 18 months of spearheading this expansive effort, Somerville experienced a 36 percent decrease in rat sightings.

Taylor explains that using Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques that include an array of methods, ranging from better trash management to public education initiatives and innovative technologies like ContraPest, offer the best chance at success in controlling rats.

“All of these approaches work in tandem and are needed,” says Taylor. “But we did observe our most significant declines in rodent activity after the simultaneous introduction of the city-issued trash toters with accompanying public outreach and the intensified dumpster registration and inspection program which fits with a key approach to successful rodent control: restricting access to food and water sources.”

Currently, Somerville is no longer using ContraPest—which cost $70,000 to test pilot. While Somerville still uses some SGARs to bait sewers in areas of suspected rodent activity, they’re instead refocusing their program on preventative measures and exclusion.

They’re also looking into using dry ice to eradicate specific rat nests and burrows they identify—that is, now that it looks like dry ice is a feasible option.

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ICE AGE In 2016, Boston and several other cities across the US made headlines for using dry ice for rat control—even as it was not formally registered as a rodenticide with the federal government. As a result of this public revelation, the EPA ordered that municipalities stop using it immediately.

By the end of June 2017, Bell Laboratories was granted federal registration of their dry ice product as a rodenticide (aptly known as “Rat Ice”), meaning it can now be legally used to exterminate rats across the US pending state registration and municipal-level approval.

Currently, its availability is limited to a handful of major cities, including Boston, though that will likely be quickly expanding in the near future.

Dry ice works to eliminate rat nests by releasing a deadly amount of carbon dioxide fumes into their burrows as the ice melts. Unlike baits with poison or ContraPest, dry ice depends on a more targeted approach, and must be stuffed into confirmed rat burrows that occur only in outdoor settings (dry ice usually can’t be used inside structural dwellings because the CO2 fumes can potentially harm humans).

The extent to which alternatives like dry ice and ContraPest, or more comprehensive plans that utilize IPM methods like better trash management, will replace poisons is unknown. To that end, I’ve taken the liberty as a concerned citizen to file a draft of a bill that would establish an independent commission that would investigate the wider impacts of SGARs on our natural environment and public health and explore alternative solutions. State Rep. Sean Garballey (D - Arlington) will file it this year.

In the meantime, co-founder of Senestech, Dr. Loretta Mayer, notes that while some newer methods might have larger upfront costs, they can offer lasting benefits in the long term. Overall, she believes that striking a balance between different rodent management methods is key to regaining control over rat populations.

“Rats have been a problem for centuries,” Mayer says. “We all need to listen to one another and work together and with wildlife conservation in mind to make certain wellplanned and cautious steps to succeed.”

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5/25/18 9:18 AM

MEMORIAL DAY NOTES APPARENT HORIZON

Peace actions, Harvest Co-op needs help

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

the Boston Common on Monday to protest a federal government that increases spending for war while cutting money for social programs—resulting in, ironically, more veterans becoming homeless.

The event featured 30 red tents that symbolized the situation, and speakers addressing topics ranging from gun violence to racism, according to the Boston Globe.

A full slate of oppositional activities is underway.

To get involved, go to the campaign’s national website at poorpeoplescampaign.org or connect to its eastern Massachusetts chapter at facebook.com/pg/emappc.

Member-run markets in trouble

So I’m writing on a holiday weekend that began with my joining DigBoston and Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism colleagzue Chris Faraone in having some fairly nasty dental work. What better excuse, then, for doing some brief dispatches this time out instead of the single topic I typically focus on with an Apparent Horizon column?

Peace activists arrested at Hanscom AFB After allowing the planet to breathe a collective sigh of relief for a few weeks on the Armageddon front, President Donald Trump just tossed away his Nobel prize prospects by cancelling a planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over some nonsense or other.

[No wait, maybe it’s back on now! Or not. Whatever.

Moving on to my point …] But it turns out Bostonians had little reason to relax anyway. Because nearby Hanscom Air Force Base is now the home to the Program Executive Office for Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3).

According to the Hanscom website, the NC3 unit “executes a portfolio of 17 programs valued at $1.2B over the FYDP that provide survivable and endurable communications for the nuclear enterprise. Additionally, the directorate is responsible for integrating over 60 individual nuclear command and control communications systems that underpin and enable nuclear deterrent operations.”

Clever though it may be that the military can develop communications systems that can survive nuclear attacks, humanity cannot. Since there are very few plausible scenarios in which “limited” nuclear strikes of the type that the Trump administration has

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spoken casually about will not escalate into an all-out conflagration. And with NC3 in such close proximity to Boston, we can now expect at least one more nuclear warhead to be added to the several with which our city will be hit in the event of World War III. Which is why six peace activists got arrested protesting it over the weekend, according to the Lowell Sun. John Back, of Arlington and the Cambridge Friends Meeting; Laura Evans, of Unitarian Universalist Society of Rockport; Pat Ferrone, of St. Susanna Parish in Dedham; and Dan McLaughlin, of Cambridge; Jerald Ross of Chelmsford, and Massachusetts Peace Action; John Schuchardt, of the House of Peace in Ipswich, and Veterans for Peace were busted for attempting to deliver a critical letter to the Hanscom base commander.

In an op-ed in the Metrowest Daily News, Mass Peace Action leader Cole Harrison points out that “the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and Hanscom area Congressional Reps. Seth Moulton, Katherine Clark, and Niki Tsongas, have expressed support for the DoD’s decision to house the NC3 program in the heart of residential Massachusetts.”

Not cool.

To join Mass Peace Action and affiliated organizations in putting heat on such feckless congresspeople, and the military-industrial complex that convinces them to support the suicidal expansion of America’s nuclear “warfighting” capability, plug in at masspeaceaction.org/act/.

Protest links war economy and homeless vets In a related action, the Poor People’s Campaign took to

The Harvest Co-op grocery stores have been losing money for years and are now in danger of closing, according to the Cambridge Day and the Jamaica Plain News. Like other cooperative markets, members pay with investment and sweat equity to provide groceries for themselves at a discount. Shoppers who are not members pay full freight. But membership in Harvest, which was founded in 1974, has been trending downward for some time—from 4,000 in 2012 to 3,200 this spring.

In a recent email, Harvest leadership urged members “to take some obvious steps such as using the co-op for more shopping, especially by buying more bulk items, prepared foods, supplements and body care items; urging more people to switch to Coop shopping; and paying cash.” They also asked them to buy a $200 gift card and not use it for two years.

It remains to be seen if such measures can help close a $300,000 funding gap before the cooperative is expected to start closing its stores in August. But now would be a good time for new folks interested in helping out to consider becoming members. Interested readers can join Harvest at harvestcoop.com/membership.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2018 Jason Pramas.

Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

DigBoston has gone on record joining the movement to abolish nuclear weapons.

Editorial Note: Op-eds wanted. A quick reminder to DigBoston fans. We’re always looking for 500-700 word opinion articles from those of you who work with local organizations trying to make life better for Bostonians in tangible ways. Either politically, socially, artistically, or culturally. If there’s some important doing that you think the Dig audience should know about, then send finished drafts to editorial@digboston.com. Hate groups, naturally, need not apply. And fair warning that public relations and marketing hacks who think this is an invitation to send us more bullshit than they already do daily will be mercilessly mocked. And bottom feeders who try to get us to run “articles” that are really ads will be invited to to pay us $10,000 for each “placement”—and informed that we’ll surround their copy with “THIS IS A FUCKING AD” legends in some giant ugly font should they ever be stupid enough to pony up that much lucre.

—Jason

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7

DRUG WARRIORS DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

CIA-Contra cocaine conspiracy fall guy “Freeway” Ricky Ross talks Oliver North

BY BRANDON SODERBERG Video from the mid-’90s shows tennis prodigy turned cocaine dealer and eventual cog in the CIA-ContraCrack conspiracy “Freeway” Ricky Ross bounding around his South Central Los Angeles neighborhood. He’s in a striped T-shirt—nothing flashy—shaking hands, dapping associates, and sucking up a whole lot of love for both his superheroic drug dealing skills and putting a whole bunch of his blow money back into his neighborhood by way of new basketball hoops and local businesses.

In March 1995, not long after the video was shot, Ross was arrested trying to buy 100 kilograms from his connect, a Nicaraguan anti-communist named Oscar Danilo Blandón, who had been cooperating with the DEA. Ross did 12 years in prison, and became the most fascinating character in the Iran-Contra scandal, wherein Ronald Reagan’s administration, aided by Oliver North, funded oppositional troops in communist Nicaragua by any means necessary, including dealing arms to Iran and giving the profits to the contras and tacitly—if we’re being generous— allowing cocaine traffickers to move

“I’m selling cars, I’m flipping houses, I’m teaching people how to be millionaires through speaking, I’m mentoring kids, I’m trying to enter the legal cannabis industry,” Ross says. “I’m all over the place.”

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drugs into the United States so they could funnel money back to the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries.

As described by journalist Gary Webb in Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Explosion, this was a perfect storm of government complicity, drug war cruelty, and dope dealer ingenuity. As outrageous amounts of cocaine entered the country, guys like Ross bought and sold it, and the boys below him cooked it up and sold it as crack, creating an epidemic in neighborhoods that cops couldn’t give a shit about—at least until they could arrest everybody for the drugs the government allowed into the country with a wink and a nod.

Oliver North’s conviction in the Iran-Contra scandal was overturned in 1991 (six other Iran-Contra defendants were additionally pardoned by George Bush) and he went onto run for Senate and become a popular right-wing talking head. Earlier this month, North was announced as the new head of the National Rifle Association.

“The NRA is pretty ruthless,” Ross said over the phone last week. “With all the gun violence we have in the schools, they’ve taken a pretty hard stance on keeping guns as accessible as they can get it, so them picking Oliver North is not surprising, not surprising at all.”

Guys like Ollie North just win. Ross has seen it before.

It’s what happens. These days, Ross is focused on a steady diet of hustles, charity endeavors, and entrepreneurial opportunities—so not all that different from what he was doing in the ’80s and early-’90s, just “legal,” as he puts it.

“I’m selling cars, I’m flipping houses, I’m teaching people how to be millionaires through speaking, I’m mentoring kids, I’m trying to enter the legal cannabis industry,” Ross says. “I’m all over the place.”

In October 2015, Ross was arrested in Sonoma County, ground zero for legal weed in California, for having $100,000 on him and, according to the arresting officer, smelling of cannabis as his car cruised by a cop on the highway.

“They caught me going up the mountain where all the weed is grown at,” Ross says. His arrest was another case

of “driving while black,” he says, stressing that only cash was found on him, and that it was part of plans to buy a pot farm. “I was interested in buying into it and still plan on doing that.”

When I first spoke to Ross back in 2012, he was suing the correctional officer-turned-rapper William Roberts (stage name: Rick Ross) for using his government name for profit (a case Ricky lost) and deeply caught up in contemplating his past—all the money he had made, all the lives he had ruined, and how naive he had been.

“I saw a system that was oppressing me and my friends. Not giving us opportunity,” Ross told me at the time. “I thought that cocaine was just another one of those things that whites didn’t want us to have, as blacks.

Just like they didn’t want us to live in Beverly Hills and have a tennis court in our backyard. I thought that it was the same thing with cocaine.”

While he now says he was wrong about that, his interest in weed comes from a similar place—where rebellion, racial justice, and capitalism collide.

“Seeing the lack of black participation in the cannabis industry made me want to get it,” Ross says. “The grand schemes I had when I was a drug dealer might be suitable for the cannabis industry. Cannabis and cocaine are side by side—and both were illegal at the same time.”

Ross, the fall guy in a massive scandal that many don’t believe really happened, has become an accessible O.G. and a social commentator, a cult figure. So it was refreshing when one of the country’s most high profile young activists called attention to Reagan, North, and the entire right wing’s dark alliance.

Brandon Soderberg is the former editor of the Baltimore City Paper, former news editor of the Baltimore Beat, and the author of Daddy Lessons: A Country Music Zine for the Trumpocalypse. You can order it at daddylessons. bandcamp.com. Follow him on Twitter @notrivia.

INTRODUCING: BOSTONERS TALKING JOINTS MEMO

Profiles in cannabis, this week with comedian Will Noonan

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON For 20 years, DigBoston (along with our newsletter, Talking Joints Memo since 2016) has covered the cultural corners of cannabis, as well as the more leathery legislative issues around pot and the law. This new recurring feature/column, “Bostoners,” is a smidgen of both—superficially, they’re cheeky interviews with local artists and creatives about cannabis in their careers and lives, but we’re doing them because despite legalization and evolving tolerance in general, there are still a lot of stigmas to dissolve, as anyone who has been watching as municipalities across the commonwealth ban retail operations is aware.

We’re just doing our part. In hopes that the effort can help set examples for people who remain ashamed to consume in front of friends and family members.

We’re not saying everybody needs to burn in public parks and dress like Tommy Chong; rather, it would just be nice if the joint rollers among us could at least be able to join the nicotine inhalers at family gatherings, instead of always being banished to a car parked down the street.

Baby steps, you might say, and you can help us out. If you have a favorite Greater Boston artist or musician of some sort who is open about their cannabis consumption, please send a note to: newsletter@talkingjointsmemo.com.

Without further ado, here’s our first installment featuring comedian and podcaster Will Noonan, who will also be contributing to the Dig as a sporadic columnist starting in the coming weeks.

Have you always been public about your pot use? To what extent?

Other than with my mom, I’ve always been pretty public about it. One of the bonuses of being in the comedy/acting world is that there are so many other people around with serious drug and alcohol problems that “just” smoking weed basically makes you look like a health nut.

What kind of cannabis consumer are you currently? Is there a main reason that you like to get high? How and why has that changed through the years?

I would definitely say I’m a daily smoker, but the amount in a day varies greatly. It could be bongs hits every half hour after noon, or just a small hit off a joint before bed.

It varies a whole lot depending on how busy I am, how great the music I am listening to is, and how much my FIFA 17 franchise needs me to be clearheaded. As I get older, I probably smoke a little bit less than I used to. But I have more money for it. Life is cruel.

What are some of your favorite works of art, from film to music, to take in when you are high?

I love a nice film when I’m high, but honestly a video game is where it’s really at.

Smoking the right weed and playing the right video game is an immersive experience like no other. I often wonder if when I’m 90 on my deathbed if I’ll look back on the 100 hours I spent playing Skyrim fondly, or as a waste of time. Hopefully I’ll be so baked I don’t give a shit.

Do you have any current favorite strains, brands, dispensaries, etc.? What potentially excites you most about recreational sales?

I’m admittedly sort of intentionally ignorant when it comes to weed progress. I love to smoke, but the explosion of edibles, shatters and oils sometimes makes me feel like a scared old man shaking my fist at an mp3 player. I’ve tried it all, but I guess I’m just a basic bitch who loves a bong hit. I experimented with the “gray market” for a little while, buying “T-shirts that come with free weed” online for 120 bucks a T-shirt, but I eventually went back to just buying from my small time dealing buddies.

Do you have anything you are currently pushing, whether an event, a new site, etc.?

My podcast title, “High Pathetically with Will Noonan,” comes from an old joke of mine about weed. I used to say, When I smoke weed, high is how I get, pathetically is how I feel. The joke always got laughs because it’s sort of punchy, but it never sat 100 percent well with me. I actually rarely smoke weed and feel pathetic, but I do feel less arrogant.

There is something humbling to the ego about weed, and that has always been one of my favorite things about it. I’ve often noticed that a lot of the people who hate weed the most vocally seem to be narcissistic egomaniacs, and it’s almost as if they know that smoking it would let them see themselves in actual size.

Cool theory, right? I was high when I came up with that.

More about Will and where to find him on stage and on the air @ willnoonan.com NEWS TO US

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DAS BOOT FILM FEATURE

New Vermin Supreme doc shows politics through lens of a kaleidoscopic clown car

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 When you enter the DigBoston newsroom, the first thing that you see—parked on a shelf above some vintage Royal typewriters—is a piece of art depicting former US Congressman and eternal human stain Newt Gingrich soaring through the air, shirtless with his arms spread wide like plane wings. It’s not merely a single flying Gingrich either; it’s hundreds, a ferocious flock of far-right turds born from the mind of filmmaker and artist Rod Webber.

Webber’s known for many DIY creative and reportorial endeavors, starting with his visiting—some might call it trolling—politicians while they’re on the stump, sometimes just to give them flowers but on occasion to get up on stage and entertain. He also sometimes dresses like a clown. If any of this sounds vaguely familiar, you may be thinking of perennial political icon Vermin Supreme, who at this point I should not have to explain to people. As observers may have guessed, while they each march with a unique purpose and approach, upon working the protest zone with each other, Rod and Vermin bonded swimmingly. So much so that the former made a documentary, This Is Vermin Supreme, about his friend and associate.

With a rough cut ready and an eye on distribution, and this being our vermin issue and all, we asked Webber about his new project.

Is Vermin a celebrity at this juncture?

But of course. Vermin has always been a celebrity.

There was never a question. We could quibble about the meaning of “celebrity,” or which timeline we’re talking about within the multiverse, but I see it as this: Vermin’s got more charisma in his little pinkie finger than any mainstream celebrity I’ve met, and I’ve met my share. It’s on them if they haven’t caught up yet.

Case in point—the movie opens with Vermin challenging the actors from the Lord of the Rings to an imaginary battle with Narnia. The crowd went wild and knew Vermin immediately—but Sean Astin and Elijah Wood were bewildered. About an hour later, Astin called over to us, conceding that he had just done a crash course in Vermin Supreme. The two of them spent the next six minutes talking about anarchist philosophy—Peter Kropotkin and mutual aid, and all that good stuff. By the end of the encounter, Vermin had Sean reading lines for his 2020 campaign commercial.

So, yes—it’s an Andy Warhol world, and Vermin has grafted himself into the public psyche as the world’s greatest boot-headed dictator, even if you don’t know it yet.

What is the difference in reaction to Vermin out there in the real world, or at least the political world, to what it is online?

Vermin is like a comic book superhero—so that all depends on whether you’re talking about the mildmannered pot-smoking boot-free political philosopher who literally has a secret hideaway in the woods called “the compound,” or … whether you’re referring to the larger-than-life persona who darts in and out of campaign events sporting a galosh on the dome, a red cape, and a stuffed pony under his arm. This also depends on which cult of Vermin online you’re talking about— there’s the memes and the goofy cub-reporter articles about him, but he’s got the Rainbow [Gathering] fans, and occupier fans, antifa fans, and the libertarian fans … and some of those groups mixing together outside of Verminism could be like fire and ice. That said—somehow it works, because he is a unifier, and they all rally around him regardless of whether any of it makes any sense whatsoever.

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More recently, he’s been hitting the comic cons, for which he’s had to devise a policy for the simple act of getting around. At times, he is so mobbed by people wanting selfies that we have to ask folks to let us take 10 steps before the next selfie with Vermin is taken. I guess the main difference between people online and IRL is like anything—online is full of trolls, but in real life, the trolls can’t survive in the magical aura of the boot. He has certainly got some real-life enemies—but Superman can’t be Superman without Lex Luthor, and Batman couldn’t be Batman without his villains.

The politicians have got mixed reactions and strategies for dealing with either of us. Vermin can freak them out when he gets on the bullhorn and starts shouting, “Come out with your pants down and hands up.” And he loves to hit ’em up about ponies, mandatory dentistry, time travel, and zombie awareness—which Ted Cruz even included in one of his speeches (which, unlike Hillary Clinton, he at least attributed it to Vermin.)

Is Vermin Supreme a disruptor, as they say in the startup world?

I’ve heard plenty of politicians claim “the world needs disrupters.” I’d agree with that, despite the intent of the politicians.

But yes—Vermin is a physical shock to the system. His whole appearance is designed to make people feel there was a rift in the time-space continuum, and this guy just stepped in from another dimension—which, again, is exactly what Sean Astin said. No matter who you are— Bob the comic book nerd to the president of the United States, seeing that boot is an “oh fuck” moment.

Do you or anybody else have some kind of running list of the extremely powerful people he has photobombed, so to speak?

I think it might be easier to come up with a list of people he hasn’t—and that’s including the general population.

As someone who is closer to Vermin than most, deep down how pissed off was he that his whole ponybased economy election strategy has been co-opted by everyone from Stephen Colbert to Hillary Clinton?

Vermin doesn’t approach anything from a place of anger. He truly wants free ponies for all. I’m not saying he hasn’t retained an intellectual property lawyer, but he definitely wants free ponies for all. Also, ponies are currency, as we all know.

Make sure you have your pony with you at all times.

I know that you have always rejected the Vermin understudy label; but despite doing your own thing, from the handing out of flowers to your visual art,

it may be true that Vermin will need somebody to fill his boot eventually. How many more presidential races do you think he has in him?

There is only one Vermin Supreme. That’s all there ever can be—that’s all there ever will be—and I think Vermin can run for as long as he wants to, unless his body gives out, or he declares a Highlander system to be put in place, at which point I suppose I’d be willing to cut off his head and bolt it to a robot, or whatever he asks.

This is really an art film. Part long-form meme, about a meme, if that makes any sense. Camera angles aren’t uniform, there’s a cornucopia of mixed visual media, etc. How do you describe the project?

In the future, all movies will be movies about memes, full of Dutch angles and a total disregard for the fourth wall, and cut at such a frantic pace that it will be unclear to the viewer whether they are watching a film or being snatched up for the rapture.

Vermin and I wanted the film to be fun. I may be biased, but I can’t get enough—so, if forced to review my own film, which you have put me in the position of doing, it’s fun. It’s poignant. It’s a side of politics you’re not going to get by turning on CNN or Fox News. It’s the 2016 election through a kaleidoscope clown-car lens—which is the truth of how it went down. It’s the Trump rallies, it’s the protests, it’s Standing Rock, it’s Vermin and Becky’s 30th anniversary. It is a movie everyone should see, if not for you, but for the sake of your children, and your children’s children. This is how it really went down. This is a movie you can’t live without!

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ONE FOR THE TEAM TRAVEL

A local’s journey into Boston’s Seaport District (Part 1 of 2) LIVE MUSIC • PRIVATE EVENTS 5/31

Take It Personal Hip Hop Improv Show

Featuring Cipha Sounds & Nitty Scott 6/01

Michael Rault, Corin Ashley

(Early Lounge show) Psych pop rock 6/01

An Evening with the Trashcan Sinatras Prog pop 6/05

The Well, Death Pesos, Hooch Psychedelic rock 6/06

La Luz, Gymshorts, Anna Fox Rochinski (from Quilt) Surf, garage rock

156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA 617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com a @oncesomerville b/ONCEsomerville

BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON Being a food writer and a local walks/hikes leader for the Appalachian Mountain Club, I have been to nearly every nook and cranny in the Greater Boston area, but both of my alter egos have mostly kept me away from the Seaport District of Boston.

Well, the changing of this waterfront area (which is technically part of South Boston) from a dusty, sketchy “wild west” section of town to a swanky and chic playground for the rich is so jarring that it feels almost more intimidating now then it did before.

Behind the glitter and trendiness, however, are pockets of the old waterfront along with fairly extensive green areas (or blue if you’re a boater), and with this knowledge I led an AMC walk a couple of years ago to try to get a taste of the more tranquil side of the Seaport, sadly with some not-so-great results due to half-finished walkways, heavily-trafficked roads, shuttered independent restaurants, and more than a few drunk people encountered along the way.

We decided to walk back into the belly of the beast once again on a recent AMC walk, this time with a specific plan that included visits to newly-added open spaces and walkways, both of which kept us mostly away from the neighborhood hubbub.

The results? An enjoyable and dare I say it, memorable evening in a part of the city that many tend to ignore.

THE JUMP-OFF Our walk began at South Station, which is a good starting point for several sections of Boston, including the Fort Point neighborhood, which we strolled through at the start—and the end—of the journey. Taking the Harborwalk along the east side of Fort Point Channel from Summer Street, we headed north, gawking at the spectacular views of the Boston skyline across the water while also viewing the wonderful old warehouse and loft buildings to the right. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly where Fort Point ends and the Seaport District begins (these days, the marketers claim that everything north of Stoughton is the Seaport District), but as we walked under Seaport Boulevard, the peace and quiet started to be replaced by loud voices and clinking glasses while the historic buildings quickly gave way to huge glass towers, cranes, and scaffolding everywhere.

We knew we had arrived.

When you get to the Seaport Boulevard bridge over Fort Point Channel (also known as the Moakley Bridge), the obvious route to many would appear to be Seaport Boulevard and east into the heart of the district, but for our purposes—basically, to stay away from the heart of the Seaport—we continued north on the Harborwalk past the long-closed Northern Avenue Bridge, lamenting for a few minutes how the structure is now off-limits to pedestrians, before winding our way past the Moakley Courthouse with the mouth of Fort Point Channel to our left.

It was around this point that the noise and traffic quickly started to vanish again, with unforgettable views of Boston Harbor emerging. We quickly found ourselves at Fan Pier Park, a gorgeous oasis right on the water with views of downtown as well as East Boston and Charlestown. Then the Harborwalk continued to turn a bit and hug the water, going past a stillin-the-works pavilion that will feature a cafe from the Frank Anthony’s Gourmet Market folks under its stairs.

This part of the walk by Fan Pier appeared much different from two years ago, and we felt thrown off in a number of ways. (Waterside Avenue? What the hell is Waterside Avenue? What’s the purpose of this pavilion that is basically a staircase to nowhere? Why do the roads have patterns that look like dress socks?) The peace and quiet was particularly nice though, and just where the Harborwalk veers right at the pavilion, a long dock appears out of nowhere that can be accessed by the public (well, we didn’t see any signs saying otherwise, at least).

Walking down to the dock brought us to extraordinary views of the harbor and the islands, and since it was around 7:30 pm, a sunset over the water that made our knees week. As we stood mesmerized by it all, a water taxi pulled up and let out some people who appeared to be in desperate need of booze (I nodded in sympathy), and we noted that this would be a fun way to bounce around Eastie, Charlestown, the North End, and downtown. Or even better, a way to find places to drink booze.

Standing at this beautiful little piece of the waterfront, we had a feeling that it couldn’t get much better, and it turns out we were right, at least not counting a hidden section of Fort Point (more on this in a bit). Turning south away from the harbor and toward Northern Avenue, the Harborwalk seemed to peter out with construction taking place in a number of areas, though this part of the walk is in much better shape than it had been two years earlier.

We took a left toward the Institute of Contemporary Art, with water views still at our left, and we walked the perimeter of the outside of the ICA, noting the sheltered outdoor space that would seem to be a nice spot for concerts and other events, then we wandered along the water to what turned out to be a real head-scratcher. Right there, within sight of all the uber-high end residential towers and upscale restaurants is a … a fish cleaning station? And a vending machine that sells bait?

We tried to picture multi-millionaires walking over in loafers to grab a pint of frozen squid while bringing over a five-pound flounder to prepare for dinner, and, well, we just couldn’t. Could it be that the Seaport District isn’t all about money and glitz after all?

Our next stop, after a miserable walk past the long-closed Eastern Pier II restaurant and down Seaport Boulevard for a block or two because there was really nowhere else to walk, brought us to the historic Boston Fish Pier, which confirmed to us that there is more to this area than gorgeous views and multi-million dollar condos.

Walking down to the dock brought us to extraordinary views of the harbor and the islands, and since it was around 7:30 pm, a sunset over the water that made our knees week.

For the second, food-focused installment of Marc’s dispatch from the Seaport, check digboston.com or pick up next week’s paper.

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ED BALLOON MUSIC

Floating through electro-pop R&B with Boston’s own

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

If you see Ed Balloon on the street, chances are he’s bobbing his head to a melody he just made up, a bit of levity in his step. That’s just who he is. Really, I mean, it’s in the name.

Ed Balloon is a 27-year-old musician worth keeping an eye on as he’s primed to float up and over whatever will come his way, just like his moniker implies. Born in Roxbury, he has been channeling music through his system ever since he was 10 years old, forming a band with neighbors and idolizing artists like Michael Jackson and Prince who took the stage with undeniable, mesmerizing confidence. Balloon began writing music on his own time in high school. Soon, he left to study philosophy at Brandeis University, with the underlying intent that he could eventually become a lawyer. But it wasn’t until talking with a career specialist in his final year of college that he realized it was music he wanted to pursue, no matter how risky the entertainment industry is for creatives.

Now, Balloon lives in Quincy, unable to afford anywhere else in Boston proper like most local musicians, where he’s following through on that dream. And while it sounds like a pathway covered in glitter, the decision wasn’t as easy to make as it sounds.

Balloon and his younger brother were the first Americanborn children in his family. His parents emigrated to the US from Nigeria. That meant he and his siblings would grow up with a slightly different set of standards, following traditions from their parents’ homeland instead of the typically American traditions his classmates experienced at home. It also meant that Balloon was raised on the belief that you must pick a career path that’s stable and dependable, particularly in regard to income. Being a musician isn’t the safest choice in that sense.

“Black Americans don’t have as strict parents as immigrant parents, I think,” he says. “I was the first child they had in America. I did what I wanted to do, while still respecting them. I saw that my American friends were encouraged to do whatever they wanted to do. And I think now, after I’ve decided to dedicate my life to this, my parents have come around on it to support me. Because at first, that wasn’t’t the case. My dad sat me down and

It’s the one month in America where everyone decided to celebrate black people... I’m so much more than a month.

said, ‘What are you doing? You won’t make any money. black people. After that, it’s like nobody celebrates us This isn’t right.’ There was a sense of fear. They came from anymore. I’m torn, because you feel like you’re waiting a third-world country and sacrificed so much to help their for February of next year to arrive. People get killed every children have a better life. It’s difficult to come here and day, but it feels like it happens less in February because difficult to see your kid walk their own path. You have to of it. I feel like we only have those days to be free. Once be able to understand where they’re coming from, and it that time has ended, in that short month, then we’re back took me a long time to see that.” to work, fighting for our rights. It’s painful. I’m so much When Balloon decided to commit to a career as a more than a month. It’s not fair that we’re shoved into musician, he knew he couldn’t slack off. Not a single year those 28 days. Being a black male means, okay, if it’s not has gone by where he’s wasted his time; he’s released Black History Month then I’m not allowed to be a certain a steady stream of EPs: No Smoking in 2015, Yellow way. Black History Month should be every day. ” 20-Somethings in 2016, and Flourish in 2017. No matter Though it’s been a struggle to get a start creating which EP you put on, the music feels like magic, as if it music beyond the indie rock, jazz, and rap pillars that pops out of the speakers to swirl around you, playfully take up the majority of the Boston music scene spotlight, juggling glam pop, electronic beats, filtered guitar, and Ed Balloon has found a way to rise up. He’s spent months thick, alternating drums. Ed Balloon has figured out a way trying to track down producers who not only create to diversify what it means to be a pop artist while zoning original work, but producers who invest in the music they in on the heart that gives R&B such an immersive sound. help shape by caring about the final product and what it Perhaps his interest in artists like of Montreal, Jill Scott, stands for. He spends extra time turning his tracks into and Maxwell explain the blend. experiences, bringing the studio-polished versions of his All of this comes as somewhat of a shock, though, songs to life onstage thanks to new arrangements with a when you realize Balloon doesn’t play any instrument. full band.

He never took piano lessons. He never fooled around on All of that’s to say, yes, Ed Balloon is working on a a guitar. He never took concert band in school. Instead, proper full-length right now, and fans will be pleased he’s been blessed with the gift of an innate songwriting to know that it expands upon the wide range of sounds ability. It’s a skill that allows him to come up with he has showcased so far. But it also takes a turn into melodies, harmonies, and hooks while walking around on something new. While he’s hesitant to expand on the the street or sitting at home. After creating a sound, he theme or the collaborators featured on it—“I’m definitely then works closely with producers and friends to turn the releasing a lot on this album. Like, a lot,” he says with a ideas cooking in his head into concrete notes he can then laugh. “Take that as you want.”—it’s clear the album will confirm or deny match the song in his head. be nothing less than special. At the very least, know that The twist that makes Balloon’s music so special is the album will help you keep your chin up, just like how how he imbues optimistic but heavily-grounded lyrics Balloon’s past work helps him keep his head bobbing. into the mix. The blend of social and political undertones feel approachable, as he does his best to pin them down with personal experiences. On a song like “BDA (Still Riding),” he confronts the way finances directly influence our lives, often cutting off more opportunities than building them. Nowhere does his voice shine as brightly as it does on “@ # trapkaraoke,” an ode to “black boy joy.” It’s one of his favorite songs he’s written, particularly due to the resonance of the lyric, “Only got 28 days to black out before they call the cops.” It’s a timeless and deeply upsetting truth.

“I put that song out to comment on Black History Month,” says Balloon. “It’s the PHOTO BY BUCK SQUIBB one month in America where everyone decided to celebrate

>>NNAMDI OGBONNAYA, ED BALLOON. TUE 6.5. GREAT SCOTT, 1222 COMM. AVE., ALLSTON. 8:30PM/18+/$10. GREATSCOTTBOSTON.COM

MUSIC EVENTS THU 05.31

FEMME PUNK FROM THE EX HEX FOLKS BAT FANGS + SHEPARDESS

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

8:30pm/18+/$10. greatscottboston.com]

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FRI 06.01

SOFT SOUNDS FROM A PERFECT PLANET JAPANESE BREAKFAST + LVL UP + MORE [The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge.

7pm/all ages/$16. sinclaircambridge.com]

DIGBOSTON.COM

SAT 06.02

OW ASCEND/DESCEND + LET IT ROT + TWIN STRIKE + LABOR HEX [O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/21+/$8. obrienspubboston.com]

SUN 06.03

THE ALL-STAR TEAM OF LOCAL INDIE ROCK HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE + LILITH + MORE [Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston.

8:30pm/18+/$10. greatscottboston.com]

MON 06.04

GREEN ONIONS AND HAM BOOKER T JONES

[City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston. 6pm/21+/$35. citywinery.com]

WED 06.06

GIRLY SOUND TO GUYVILLE LIZ PHAIR + SOCCER MOMMY

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$35. sinclaircambridge.com]

BOSTON CALLING REWIND MUSIC RECAP

An impressive weekend from diversity to energy, but still room for improvement

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

In a culture that’s increasingly rooting for equality, it’s tempting to point fingers at music festivals for a lack of diversity. It’s hard to do so with Boston Calling.

When the festival announced its 2018 lineup, it boasted genre diversity including rap, PHOTO BY TIM BUGBEE folk, rock, and electronic artists, and racial diversity that doesn’t depend on rap acts to represent black musicians. There’s also gender diversity present, with a little less than half the acts including a female-identifying member—but as anyone can point out, most of that diversity was at the bottom of the lineup.

The festival’s sole female semi-headliner was Paramore, a pop punk-turned-tropical rock band thanks to lead singer Hayley Williams. Friday night saw the band offer a spectacular high-energy set from beginning to end, performing 16 songs in just over an hour. Though the set mostly featured new songs, the crowd reacted intensely, with hordes of onlookers dancing in place or belting along.

As for the Killers … the alt-rock band started their headlining set with a ballsy move, beginning with “Mr. Brightside,” then churned through some Hot Fuss singles, a Tom Petty cover, and other familiar-yet-not-at-all songs. Their stage was spotted with unrelated light displays. The Killers aren’t a bad band. They have memorable hits, they play with subdued gusto, and frontman Brandon Flowers has experience with large crowds. But the crowd basically stood still. Diehard fans in the front sang along, but the rest of the crowd bailed to grab food, lay on the grass, or leave altogether.

Comparatively, when Paramore’s set ended, the crowd remained in place, cheering for an encore even 10 minutes after the band left the stage. This wasn’t just a few dedicated fans; it was a sizable portion of the crowd, many of whom seemed to be there solely to see Paramore. So, why didn’t they headline? That’s hard to answer, but by not making space for non-male, non-white acts on the main stage, Boston Calling makes it harder for a lot of artists to see themselves in that place, facing a massive crowd, given the opportunity to own the show years from now.

Saturday saw a slew of high-energy acts deliver. There was the garage psych mania of Thee Oh Sees, the sports-adopted hits of Jack White, the British appeal of duo Royal Blood, and even the eager excitement of the recently reunited Boston band Belly. But what separated enjoyable sets from memorable ones was the way in which artists told their stories, and the real turn in emotional delivery came from the hip-hop acts.

Early in the day, New York rapper Leikeli47 brought a burst of relentless, fun optimism. The notoriously masked rapper completed that visual vibe with a head-to-toe camouflage bodysuit, and radiated nothing but positivity with songs from a relatable context: overcoming heartbreak, learning to love yourself, dealing with a bad day.

On the other end of the spectrum was Tyler, the Creator. Seeing the former Odd Future MC switch from shock factor one-liners to self-aware singles has been a welcome surprise, and his material onstage in Boston was brutal, honest, and emotional. Tyler’s nature-driven set design paired with songs about kissing boys as a preteen and falling in love made it impossible not to root for him, or, in the case of numerous fans, not to relate to him. Seeing a modern day rap icon shout out LGBTQ kids in the crowd without turning it into an ordeal felt like a welcome support system.

The final day kicked off with local talent, which was mostly grouped together on Sunday for some undisclosed reason. Boston hip-hop group STL GLD brought enough upbeat music and positivity to get crowd participation to work first thing in the afternoon, while alt-rock group Weakened Friends came out strong as a guitar-driven act intent on slinging hooks like pros, and Cousin Stizz delivered a classic beat-heavy set fresh off his latest release.

Look, Boston Calling has plenty to be proud of. Last year they booked one of their most musically diverse bills. The year before that they had two solo female headliners, while in 2015 both spring and fall editions of the festival asked bands with a female member to headline. In 2014, they highlighted both veteran and rising musical artists, and in 2013 they let local artists perform on the main stage. The festival has never been offensively bad or in the wrong; they just have room to improve.

One thing that’s consistently in need of betterment throughout the festival’s existence is its lack of female headliners, and this year set them back significantly on that front. Out of the festival’s cumulative 22 headlining spots, only five artists with a female member (Sia, Robyn, Pixies, Alabama Shakes, and Lorde) have headlined over the years. If we don’t have inclusive headliners, why should lower-booked artists believe they could be given that spot in the future? When do we stop rewarding a band just because we rewarded them before, especially if it can open space up for somebody new?

Hopefully in 2019, that’s when.

Read all of Nina’s dispatches from Boston Calling at digboston.com.

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BOOK REVIEW LIT

There There by Tommy Orange

BY ED MEEK

In America we always seem to be in search of the authentic. Whether it’s Jay Z or Cardi B, we like our artists to keep it real. So it’s not surprising that there is a lot of buzz about a novel written by a Native American set in Oakland. It’s a world most of us do not know much about.

Here is Tommy Orange talking in the New Yorker—which also published an excerpt of There There as a short story, “The State,” which appears late in the novel as a chapter—about why he wrote There There: I knew I wanted to write a multi-generational, multivoiced novel about Native people living in Oakland. My wanting to write it largely had to do with there not already being a novel about Native people who live in cities, and very few novels set in Oakland.

The title of the novel comes from a famous Gertrude Stein quote about there being no there there—no identifiable place. In other words, Orange is saying there is this community that we don’t know about of Native Americans, and they have a sense of place and identity.

There is a there there.

Although this is his debut novel, Orange is ambitious.

As he goes on to say in his New Yorker interview: Native people suffer from poor representation as it is, but having little representation in literature, as well as no (literary) version of our (urban Native) experience, was what made me want to write into that space, that void, 18

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and try to honor and express fully all that it entails to be Native and be from Oakland.

There are, of course, many excellent Native American writers including: Louise Erdich, Michael Dorris, James Welch, Sherman Alexie, the poet Joy Harjo. Still, Orange brings a new and welcome voice to the table.

There’s a lot to like about There There, especially as a first project. Orange’s voice, for the most part, rings true, and he’s not afraid to write from the point of view of men and women of all ages and backgrounds.

One character has Down syndrome, and Orange brings nuance to our understanding of the condition. He also writes in a refreshing way about Native Americans searching for their identity, all while being quite at home with metaphor and up on music and technology. One character makes use of a drone. Another character prints guns on his own 3D printer.

Orange is a student of Native American history, and he begins the book with nonfiction excerpts of horrors that Native Americans were subject to by Europeans.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in a recent essay in the Atlantic, “American unity has always been the unity of conquistadors and colonizers—unity premised on Indian killings, land grabs, noble internments, and the gallant General Lee.” Orange would probably endorse that claim.

Overall, the novel is written from the point of view of 12 (plus) characters. On one hand, that effort gives the book a sense that Orange has attempted to create a

microcosm of urban Native America. On the other hand, it can creates some problems for the reader and for There There as a novel. It’s difficult to keep track of who’s who; one of William Faulkner’s family trees might help, but then you’d have to go back and check out the chart. With so many voices, the characterization can be thin; as a result, when something bad happens to one of them, the reader may not be too empathetic.

It’s pretty clear where the novel is heading by the halfway point—we know it’s going to turn out badly.

It seems we’re witnessing an internecine struggle, as the novel seems to suggest that a lot of problems in the Native American community are self-inflicted. As happens in the movie Crash, a number of coincidences bring the characters into close contact with each other.

In another small drawback, Orange goes a bit too far with having characters use 3D-printed plastic guns, which according to tests conducted by federal agents are hardly reliable firearms at this point. Nonetheless, despite some flaws, There There is a compelling read about a victimized American minority group that deserves better treatment.

With that, Orange joins the list of writers—Native American or otherwise—worth reading and listening to.

Orange will read from There There and sign copies at Harvard Book Store on Thursday, June 7.

COMEDY

LAURIE KILMARTIN

A day in the life of a mom, writer, and orphan author

BY DENNIS MALER @DEADAIRDENNIS As a cis male comedian, I use the most effective contraception known to man: my personality. So I don’t have to worry about the stress of balancing a career and standup while raising a kid.

Comedian Laurie Kilmartin, on the other hand, is doing more than just telling jokes and working. In the morning, she gets her 11-year-old son to school, then heads to write for some of the funniest late night talk shows. Then there is more family time, and eventually Kilmartin finishes most days off with a set.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Here’s our conversation about her daily and her comedy routines …

You joined the writing staff for Conan just as the show came to TBS in 2010. Was there an uncomfortableness among the returning staff after the NBC debacle?

I kind of joined a moving train, but I think everyone was pretty excited. I think once the TBS deal was announced, everyone was happy to be working again.

I remember watching your most recent performance on Conan a year ago. When you’re a writer on the show, is the process of getting on the show different compared to other comedians?

It’s a little easier for me because I know that booker, but I’ve only done the show twice. I mean, I know a lot of comics that don’t work for the show that have done it way more than me.

Do you consider yourself more a writer or a performer?

I guess I have more of a strength as a writer. If I had to, I would say 51-49 that way.

What’s the difference when writing on multiple talk shows?

It’s all your host’s sensibility. I didn’t write for Craig Ferguson for long. His monologue was starting to turn out to be much more of a storyteller monologue, which really fit his style much more. And Conan’s is super traditional; it’s very Carson-esque. It’s very short, two-sentence jokes, and in between the jokes is when he messes around with Andy and the crowd and stuff like that.

At 11 years old, does your son understand what mommy does as a writer for TV and as a comedian?

A little bit. He doesn’t really watch my act. He overhears it if I bring him to a club or something, but he doesn’t really pay attention to that.

So you bring your son to the clubs with you when you’re performing?

Sometimes I do. I mean, he just sits on his iPad and no one notices him. I’m bringing him to Boston with me because I want to show him Boston and I want to take him to some historical sites. He’s old enough to sit in a corner and not bother anybody.

As a comedian on tour and single mother, do you find dating to be difficult?

I haven’t dated in awhile. I don’t have a lot of free time when I’m not doing standup, so I want to hang out with my son. … Right now my son is 11, and he’ll be 14 or 15 soon, and then he won’t want to have anything to do with me and then I can definitely go on dates.

What is your new book about?

The book came out in February and it’s called Dead People Suck. It’s about my dad. It’s a comedic memoir about my dad dying of cancer. It covers hospice care, things you want an old person to do before they die, how you want to prepare yourself for your parental death, and ultimately your status as a middle age orphan.

As member myself, I’d like to welcome you to the Dead Dad’s Club.

There’s a chapter called “People Who Say, Welcome To The Dead Dad Club.”

Is it a good chapter?

No. It’s under the subheading “People Are Awful.” What I hated about it is people said it to me the day after my dad died. I kind of felt like, Hey, you know what? This is my thing to joke about. Your dad died five years ago, so you’re in a different place, don’t assume I’m there yet. And I don’t want to be there, I don’t like this, and I don’t want to be in your fucking club.

But I don’t care now. It’s been four years. There’s another chapter called “When the Wrong Parent Dies.” So you can imagine what my relationship with my mother is like.

Laurie Kilmartin’s newest book, Dead People Suck, is out now. You can get a signed copy and see Laurie from May 31 through June 2 at Laugh Boston. Check out the full, unedited conversation by downloading the podcast at deadairdennis.com/podcast.

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SELF-TOLD FILM

Jennifer Fox’s cinematic memoir looks for truth in memories

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN CONTENT WARNING: The following article reviews a film by a director grappling with her memories of childhood sexual abuse.

Writer/director Jennifer Fox’s The Tale [2018] is a barelyfictionalized account of the sexual abuse that she experienced herself as a 13- and 14-year-old child in the mid-1970s. And given that subject it feels almost disrespectful to consider the movie in terms of a genre framework. Yet I couldn’t help but do exactly that: The Tale has a narrative and rhythm which recalls the shape of detective stories, and it uses that genre’s formal hallmarks toward surprising and unexpected ends.

The film begins with a 48-year-old Fox (Laura Dern), who makes her living as a nonfiction filmmaker, being confronted by her mother Nettie (Ellen Burstyn) regarding an essay that she wrote in middle school; in that essay, she describes her “relationship” with a middle-aged man, Bill, who she refers to as her “first boyfriend” (to illustrate the extent to which fiction and nonfiction are blurred here, I’ll note that we even see see Dern’s Fox editing footage of Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman [2006], the documentary film that director Fox was making when these events occurred.) Once these abuses have been unearthed, the film immediately begins to incorporate brief clips from Jennifer’s memory into fuller scenes which take place in the present day; and those clips from the past explicitly represent her interior thoughts, as opposed to more objective “flashbacks.”

We first see the teenage “Jenny” as she remembers herself at 13: as a beautiful girl who speaks with the calm low voice of a young adult, and who looks as though she’s about to graduate (at this point she’s played by Jessica Sarah Flaum, who seems to have been around 17 years old when the film was shot). We see this iteration of Jenny being introduced to Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki), a horseback riding coach who both facilitated and participated in the abuses committed later by Bill (Jason Ritter), a running coach located near the same property.

But the next piece of evidence shown is a photograph of a 13-year-old Jennifer, which displays her looking far less ‘adult’ than she’d remembered. And once we see that photograph, the film’s representations of Fox’s memory shifts accordingly. The same introduction with Mrs. G plays onscreen once again, but now the teenage Jenny is played by Isabelle Nelisse, who was just 11-years-old when this film was produced. And that is only the most obvious example of a technique which The Tale employs throughout its 115 minutes—it constantly recalibrates visual representations of past events whenever new information is introduced. The mystery which the Fox character works to unravel is an interior one. She’s looking for the line which separates the past as it occurred from the past as she’s chosen to remember it.

In searching for that line, The Tale utilizes a discernibly

The Tale has a narrative and rhythm which recalls the shape of detective stories, and it uses that genre’s formal hallmarks toward surprising and unexpected ends.

modern editing rhythm. Much of the film resembles a longform montage, with many scenes clipped down to just a few moments each. And we move between these clips quickly because the film is operating on about four different levels of reality: there are dialogue-based present-tense sequences where Dern’s Fox interacts with other characters; there are voiceover-based present-tense sequences where Fox ruminates to herself about the state of her journey; there are dialogue-based past-tense sequences which document her memories of the period where she was abused by Mrs. G and Bill (memories which constantly shift to accommodate new findings or revelations, as detailed above); and lastly there are timeline-collapsing interview-based interludes where Fox interrogates the characters from her memory (either her younger self or her abusers), though of course she’s actually speaking to her own internal monologue.

These different “realities” are designed to converse with one another: a phrase heard in the present day may provoke a flashback to the past, which might then provoke a “conversation” between the present Fox and her memory of her past self, which might then provokes the next step of her investigation back in the present day. Each of these realities coexist with one another throughout the entire film, but the narrative could be loosely separated into four different movements: in the first one, Fox is confronted by her mother, begins to replay her own memories, and realizes the aforementioned shift in the way she pictured herself at 13; in the second, she confronts an older and vaguely regretful Mrs. G in the present day (Frances Conroy) while recalling the ways that same woman was culpable in the abuses Jenny suffered during her childhood; in the third, she comes to fully accept that she was indeed a victim of these adults (in noted contrast to “my first boyfriend”) and recalls the abuses and rapes themselves (a separate content warning: those attacks are seen onscreen at length, with close-ups on the actors’ faces throughout); and in the final movement, she recalls her escape from Bill and Mrs. G’s control, hires a professional detective to aid her in contacting the older Bill (John Heard), and emotionally reckons with the fact that her 13-year-old self truly believed that she had at least some control or agency within these so-called “relationships.”

This multivalent construction is exactly what gives the film its intense power—you quickly discern that it’s not so much in search of “truth,” but rather in search of a sense of balance. Fox herself has described The Tale as “issue-based fiction,” but this is not a film about a 48-year-old woman that educates her 13-year-old self, and the audience along with her. Rather it’s a film about the process by which those two radicallyopposed perspectives might come to coexist—a union inherently complicated by the fact that one can only exist within the memory of the other.

The Tale does represent the unreliability of memory, but it doesn’t rewrite film grammar in doing so. The cuts to the past come when you expect them to—and they come in ways you’ve seen before: Like when Fox is having sex with her fiance (Common) and clips of her past interrupt the scene to illustrate her distracted focus, or when one of Mrs. G’s old aphorisms (“quiet hands, quiet horse”) is repeated in the presentday, which cues an edit back to the memory of the first time that Fox heard it. These are

relatively standard choices, and they’re executed in a way that does leave other elements of the film underserved— Dern is given little to do in the first hour, on that note, in part because the structure requires her to be continually staring at objects which remind her of moments from her past.

Even at its most uninspired, the film steadfastly refuses to simplify the implications of its own structure.

In that I think it gets at something ineffably true about the human experience: it depicts the way that we’re all inevitably left as the stewards of our own personal history, the way that we’re all left with unreliable memories which only seem to hint towards a more objective truth that can never actually be grasped. And for that exact reason, there’s one character from The Tale I’ve thought about most, despite the fact that she only appears in a few brief scenes. That would be Iris, a 19-year-old who worked on Mrs. G’s farm when Jenny was also there, and who meets with Fox in the film’s present tense to discuss her own memory of the earlier time period (she’s played by Madison David and Gretchen Koerner, respectively).

Iris had an ostensibly-consensual sexual relationship with Mrs. G and Bill when Jenny was being abused, and the adult Fox recalls that her rapists had indeed planned on forcing Jenny into one of their weekends away with Iris, though the 19-year-old’s own involvement in planning that weekend it is left relatively vague. When Fox relates this memory to an adult Iris, the older woman reacts with both shamed recognition and palpable disgust. That reaction lines up with the times we’ve seen Iris in flashback—times when we’ve been forced to ask questions like, Is that a legitimately innocent smile she’s giving to Jenny, or a cruelly knowing one? And how could one know—how could anyone know—when the only evidence is a 40-year-old memory of a facial expression?

If the film begins as a detective story, it ends by rejecting the concept of resolution outright. And though it depicts unforgivable and traumatic assaults with an unblinking moral clarity, it refuses to make easy moral judgments on anyone left to make sense of their aftermath. It knows what it knows, and just as clearly, it knows what it doesn’t.

>> THE TALE PREMIERED ON HBO LAST WEEK. IT IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON ALL OF HBO’S ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION PLATFORMS. SEE HBO.COM FOR OTHER LISTINGS OR THETALEMOVIE.COM FOR EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES AND OTHER DETAILS. 20

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WHAT WORKS SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET I am a 38-year-old gay man with a serious problem. My boyfriend of five years has developed a strange fascination. We’ve always watched porn together, but now he has been looking at straight porn and even lesbian porn (!!!) more and more often. More than once he has expressed an interest in having a MMF threesome—and he’s a self-proclaimed gold-star gay! This week, I discovered he had hidden a Fleshlight from me. I could tell he had used it. What is going on with him? On the other hand, we still have sex pretty frequently. He really gets off when I call his ass a “pussy,” which I’ll do to turn him on, but I find it pretty weird. He also tells me he gets off on the thought of the two of us fucking a woman together. This really seems bizarre! Could my beautiful bottom boy be turning bi? If he is, I don’t know how we can handle it.

Guy Alarmed, Yeah, By Younger Boyfriend’s Interest Turning bi? Unlikely.

Always was bi and only just realized it? Likelier.

Always was bi but identified as gay because (1) he prefers men as romantic partners and (2) the biphobia he encountered in gay male spaces/bedrooms/buttholes convinced him to stay closeted but he doesn’t want to live a lie anymore and he’s done hiding from the man he loves but instead of using his words and coming out to you like a grown-up, GAYBYBI, your boyfriend is letting you know he’s bi with his porn choices and a big push to make a MMF threesome sound like a sexy adventure you would both enjoy? Likeliest.

As for how to handle it, GAYBYBI, you’ll have to use your words: Ask your boyfriend if he’s bi. (Spoiler: He’s bi, bicurious, or so homoflexible he could tour with Cirque du Soleil.) If you’re not interested in having sex with women, tell him so. If being with you means he can never have sex with a woman, tell him so. And if you would never knowingly date a bi guy, tell him he deserves better.

I have two complaints: one with the world and one with you.

My problem with the world is that it seems to think it is possible to embrace the rights of sex workers and still stigmatize the men who employ them. I am in a happy monogamish marriage, and I enjoy a very good, vanilla-but-bordering-on-tantric sex life with my wife.

Early on, when we discussed how open our marriage should be, we decided it would be all right for me to see escorts several times a year. This gives me some sexual variety and keeps her from feeling threatened by my becoming emotionally involved with a third party.

She is very mono and has no interest in going outside the marriage for sex. My quarrel with you has to do with your oft-repeated advice that people should break things off with partners who don’t perform oral sex. My wife doesn’t like to give head—and I really don’t like getting it from her, since she doesn’t like doing it. It is, however, one of the things on my list for my quarterly pro session. So I go down on her, she doesn’t go down on me, and I see escorts who do. And… It Works For Us In regards to your first complaint, IWFU, there are sex workers out there fighting for their rights and fighting the stigma against sex work—along with fighting prohibition, the Nordic Model, and SESTA (google it)—but you don’t see the men who employ them stepping up and joining the fight. “[It’s time for] all of you clients out there [to] get off your duffs and fight,” as sex worker and sex-worker-rights advocate Maggie McNeill wrote on her blog. “Regular clients outnumber full-time whores by at least 60 to 1. Gentlemen, I suggest you rethink your current silence, unless you want to be the next one with your name and picture splashed across newspapers, TV screens, and websites.”

In regards to your second complaint, IWFU, it is true that I’ve said—on one or two occasions—that oral comes standard and any model that arrives without oral should be returned to the lot. I’ve also said that you can’t be in an LTR without paying the price of admission, and I’ve said that a lot more often. If not getting oral at home is the price of admission you’re willing to pay to be with your wife, and if allowing you to get oral elsewhere is the price of admission she’s willing to pay to be with you, then Godspeed, IWFU, and tip the sex workers you patronize and speak up to fight the stigma against doing sex work and hiring sex workers.

On the Lovecast, “Ask a Fuck-Up!”: savagelovecast.com.

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COMEDY EVENTS THU 05.31

PROBLEM CHILD @ IMPROVBOSTON

Featuring: Caitlin Arcand, Val Kappa, & The Voices in Our Heads.

40 PROSPECT ST., CAMBRIDGE | 9PM | $12 THU 05.31

HEADLINERS IN THE SQUARE @ JOHN HARVARD’S

Featuring: Elisha Siegel, Valley D., Josh Filipowski, Tim King, Tom Kelly, Andrew Della Volpe, & more.

33 DUNSTER ST., CAMBRIDGE | 9PM | FREE THU 05.31-SAT 06.02

LAURIE KILMARTIN @ LAUGH BOSTON

Laurie Kilmartin is a stand up comedian, late night writer and New York Times bestselling author. Laurie has performed standup on CONAN, Jimmy Kimmel Live and numerous shows on Comedy Central. Her Seeso special, 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad, made Vulture’s Top Ten Comedy Specials of 2016, as well as Paste, Splitsider, Interrobang and The Decider. Before joining the writing staff at CONAN (2009 to present), Laurie was a staff writer on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Too Late with Adam Carolla and Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. In 2012, Laurie wrote the New York Times bestseller Sh*tty Mom, a parenting book that Time Magazine called “criminally funny.” Her podcast with comedian Jackie Kashian, The Jackie and Laurie Show, is big with young comedians and middle aged men.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8PM & 10PM | $25-$29 FRI 06.01

BILL’S BAR COMEDY @ BILL’S BAR

Featuring: Ryan Donahue, John Baglio, Mike Roy Whitman.

Hosted by Zach Russell & Robert Pooley

5 LANSDOWNE ST., BOSTON | 7PM | $5 FRI 06.01-SAT 06.02

FRANK SANTORELLI @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

Frank Santorelli is best known for playing the recurring role of “Georgie the Bartender” in The Sopranos. Frank is also well known for his star role in The Godfathers of Comedy.

Frank has starred in numerous movies, including: No Reservations, Meet the Parents, and Crooked Lines. His passion has always been comedy and has headlined at some of the world’s most famous comedy clubs.

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 SAT 06.02

THE SLEEPY TIME COMEDY SHOW @ THE RIOT THEATER Featuring: Ken Reid, Emily Ruskowski, & more.

Hosted by Val Kappa

5 BASILE ST., ROSLINDALE | 10PM | $10 SUN 06.03

LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW

Featuring: Ryan Donahue, J Smitty, Zach Russell, Janet McNamara, Shiv Patel, Mike Setlow, & more.

Hosted by Paul Roseberry

15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 MON 06.04

FREE COMEDY @ CITYSIDE

Featuring: Jono Zalay, Josh Day, & more.

Hosted by Sam Ike & Anjan Biswas

1960 BEACON ST., BRIGHTON | 8:30PM | FREE MON 06.04

STANDUP @ THE CASTLE IN BEVERLY

Featuring: Kylie Alexander, Katie Que, Jeff Medoff, Liam McGurk, J Smitty, & Sean Sullivan.

Hosted by Will Martin

240 RANTOUL ST., BEVERLY | 7:30PM | $8

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

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

Revolutionary Clinics

FREE ON-SITE

PARKING

I-93

Sullivan Sq. (Orange Line + Buses)

/RevClinics

@RevClinics

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