DigBoston 6.21.18

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APPARENT HORIZON

MILLIONAIRES’ TAX BLOCKED LET THEM EAT BAKER

DIG INTERVIEW

KATHY GRIFFIN

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EDITORIAL

EDITOR IN CHIEF Chris Faraone EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jason Pramas MANAGING EDITOR Mitchell Dewar MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan THEATER EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COMEDY EDITOR Dennis Maler STAFF WRITER Haley Hamilton CONTRIBUTORS G. Valentino Ball, Sarah Betancourt, Tim Bugbee, Patrick Cochran, Mike Crawford, Britni de la Cretaz, Kori Feener, Eoin Higgins, Zack Huffman, Marc Hurwitz, Marcus Johnson-Smith, C. Shardae Jobson, Heather Kapplow, Derek Kouyoumjian, Dan McCarthy, Rev. Irene Monroe, Peter Roberge, Maya Shaffer, Citizen Strain, M.J. Tidwell, Miriam Wasser, Dave Wedge, Baynard Woods INTERNS Thomas Ashton (Hampshire College), Endre Joseph (UMass Boston), Abigail Martin-Ryan (Lesley University)

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DEAR READER DETROIT DISPATCH

Fifteen years ago I drove to Buffalo, New York, for a friend’s wedding, and the condition of the city at the time left a significant impression on me. At one point, while my date and I were out taking a walk in the commercial district, we looked at each other only to realize that we were both holding back tears. Seriously.

It was a ghost town, with almost every storefront shuttered other than a standout shining Church of Scientology. Depressing stuff.

All these years later, last week the Allied Media Conference brought me to Detroit, B-lo’s bigger, comparably challenged brother in the next state over.

You know the city’s story well; a massive post-industrial metropolis that has been massacred by economic trends that cripple workers and level neighborhoods, the D has seen much better decades. It’s among the most extreme US examples there are of the promise as well as the peril that can visit any region.

At the current moment, Detroit is famously recovering in countless areas—from urban farms to green development. Yet despite the general feeling that the city is finally hurtling toward hope and away from despair, from the perspective of somebody who has mostly lived in booming East Coast playgrounds where there is a cupcake shop for every dozen or so residents, it really doesn’t seem like Detroit is entirely okay. Considering the stories I heard from folks I met in bars and at the conference, as well as my own raw anecdotal observations, it’s hard to ignore the disparity and wounds that still exist, and that may even worsen as the place slowly but certainly gentrifies. Nor should we; when the story becomes all about the money coming in and excludes those who have been bulldozed and pushed out, you basically end up with what we are quickly approaching in Boston.

What does it really mean for a city to bounce back from ruin? For a municipality to truly win? And for its people to succeed? Detroit makes you think about these things. Deeply. Like when I realized just how many new amenities are fashioned to function without any help from humans—the unmanned “people mover,” kioskcontrolled food carts. That in a city with a 9.5 percent unemployment rate in a state with approximately half that many people out of the job.

Sure, Boston has its troubles. For obvious starters, almost every creative friend and coworker I have has, like me, had to move outside of city limits due to the lack of affordable housing. Nevertheless, visiting Detroit, just like my trip to Buffalo did many years ago, helped me see how lucky I am to be a northeastern pauper cosmopolitan and showed me how this absurdly glistening yuppie mirage could vanish at the whim of some sleazy modern industrialists.

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NEWS+OPINION

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST NEWS TO US

The final cries of EMF musicians echo a longstanding Cambridge reality WORDS AND PHOTOS BY OLIVIA DENG @OLIVIADENG1 Last Saturday, a crowd formed around a stage set up at Brattle Plaza, chanting, “No artists, no art!” Occupying the Make Music Harvard Square Festival, the demonstrators raised a large banner that read “SAVE EMF,” in reference to the recently embattled and then shuttered musician rehearsal and recording space on Brookline Street outside of Central Square.

The occupation of the festival was just the latest move by those campaigning on behalf of EMF and against gentrification. As it turned out, the president of the group behind the event, the Harvard Square Business Association, is also the owner of the contested EMF warehouse. John DiGiovanni bought the property in 2016 for $4 million, and this past February, his tenants were notified of their pending eviction from the space on April 30.

City officials were able to negotiate an extension to stay until May 31. Still, the campaign to save (or at least shine light on the plight of) EMF has generated a considerable amount of attention, with the anti-artist-displacement protest on Saturday drawing a crowd of more than 150 people. The Make Music Harvard Square Festival normally features 100 artists but had just 40 this year, seemingly the result of an ongoing battle between now-former tenants and DiGiovanni.

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“I feel like every year or every two years a community that I care a lot about, that I invest a lot of my time in, that makes me feel good, is ripped out completely,” said Sophia Grogan, a 22-year-old musician who used EMF to practice.

Grogan was also a part of the communities at Out of the Blue Gallery and All Asia, which both closed in the past few years.

“We are facing an ongoing emergency in the shortage of affordable housing,” said State Rep. Mike Connolly, who joined artists, art supporters, and some members of the Cambridge City Council at the protest. “We are facing an emergency in the shortage of … basically space for anyone who isn’t part of [the] 1 percent.”

The issue is a lot more complicated than the singular incident of EMF evictions: Gentrification and displacement have long since transformed formerly working class neighborhoods like Cambridgeport to upper-middle enclaves. Nevertheless, largely thanks to the development and dollars that technology and biotech behemoths increasingly bring to the city, Cambridge continues to shed aspects of its creative identity—as well as many of the people, especially the younger ones, who shape arts and culture there.

Jon Glancy, a musician who’s practiced at EMF for 11

years, said the EMF evictions are indicative of a citywide crisis.

“I think the trend currently is that poor and lowerincome people who are not in the system in affordable housing are being pushed out of Cambridge very rapidly,” Glancy said. “There is a class divide between people who can afford to stay in Cambridge because they work in biotech, or they’re students who are going to school here and have student housing. … I think that a number of people like myself who are low-income, working multiple jobs, are getting pushed out of the city.”

***

More than any other identifiable culprit, critics point to the end of rent control in 1994 as a negative turning point in the long arc of Mass gentrification. According to Carolyn Shipley, a board member of Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association and Cambridgeport resident since 1981, “People across the state of Massachusetts voted rent control down. That opened up far more units, properties, houses, apartments for renovation, for a higher resale value. It kept going up and up … so that now, if you can find a single-family house, it would be $1.6 million or something.”

(According to the National Bureau of Economic Research,

the overall valuation of Cambridge’s housing stock increased by $1.8 billion from 1994 to 2004.)

Shipley added that the end of rent control changed the fabric of the neighborhood.

“Condos and buildings changed an awful lot. … You don’t know neighbors, so on and so forth,” she said. “A lot of industry moved in, biotech and high-tech and things like that.

They moved in onLack the fringes near the That brings a lot of energy or MIT feelarea. stressed?

Join usoftocommuters and vehicles into Cambridgeport. … It created bottlenecks all over.”

“Artists are very vocal … lots of connections, lots of skills. … The struggle is trying to • quickly relieve stress and anxiety; improve sleep make collaborations with other groups that might not have the skills and connections to quality talk to politicians so easily,” said Matt Kaliner, professor of sociology at Wellesley College.

• improve concentration, focus and brain power; realize “I think artists in Somerville and Cambridge are pretty well organized, good at gathering true potentials respectable numbers to get attention to any issue. Which is probably why the EMF • boost immune system and recover from ill health building has gotten so much attention. It’s been in the conversation.”

• strengthen increase flexibility In startup-dominated Kendallbones Square,and many entry-level tech workers cannot afford the rents, Kaliner said. “If they [startup employees] can’t afford to live here, can nurses, can all the people who work in restaurants live here? No, obviously not. It’s a tough place.

Name here of Event: Free Energy Bagua The amount of inequality is shocking. … The kind of people whoWalking are affected by the EMF evictions, their foothold in the city’s fading.”

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Date and Time: July 12 at 7p-8:30p & July 15 at *** 2p-3:30p When Melissa Lee Nilles, a musician and expressive arts therapist who practiced at Address: 101 Mystic Ave, Medford MA 01255 EMF with her band Miele, first visited Central Square eight years ago, she was attracted to Phone Number: 781-874-1023 the scene.

E-mail : boston.bodhi@gmail.com “[It was cool] to see live music happening there, through the windows, walking Website: https://www.puti.org/en around and seeing so many more music establishments, and seeing that there’s

something happening here in Central Square,” she said.

Nilles has been at EMF for four years, recorded an album using one of the building’s studios, and split her band’s $465-per-month room cost with two other bands that shared the room.

“I liked being there because I felt like I was a part of the community,” Nilles said. “Just going by and hearing people’s music and wondering who they are and meeting them later. There was weird art on the walls. It was enough for what we needed.”

In trying to make the best of their situation, EMF evictees, with help from city officials, have sat down with DiGiovanni to discuss the building’s future. As was chronicled in detail by reporter Marc Levy at Cambridge Day, while there is finally communication between rival parties, there remains an impasse.

“He was not kind,” Nilles said. “He was very frank in terms of how he’s influenced by finances. Even though we are a paying tenant, he wants to make an even larger profit.”

Former tenants are especially angry about revelations that the building has allegedly been unsafe to occupy for more than a year.

“He won’t admit that he’s done anything wrong, or put anyone in danger, or should’ve communicated with us right when he bought the building,” Glancy said.

“He’s not taking personal responsibility for the fact that he has effectively dismantled a community of over 200 musicians.”

As for the future of the building, the current ownership has yet to disclose plans (DigBoston reached out to DiGiovanni, but did not get a response before deadline).

Cambridge City Councilor Quinton Zondervan said that the way that EMF was handled is another example of a property owner seeking the highest return at any cost, adding that the larger problem is the housing market.

“Once the building is renovated to increase the rents, they [prior tenants] will not be able to afford it,” Zondervan said.

Councilors, including Zondervan, are working on initiatives including a foreign buyers tax, a transfer tax, and a vacancy tax.

“Those are all sources of funding for the city to build and preserve affordable housing,” Zondervan said. “It could be used to preserve affordable workspaces as well.”

Additional solutions include creating more incentives for Section 8 housing and the creation of an arts overlay district that could protect spaces like EMF. “My only concern with that [arts overlay district],” Zondervan said, “is if that’s all we do it will still cater primarily to the high-end market. … We have put in place specific subsidies or incentives to cater to the lower-end market as well to keep things affordable.”

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***

A couple days before EMF interlopers crashed the festival in Harvard Square, Herb Morciglio, a solo musician who’s used EMF’s practice space for the last three years, walked down the maze-like halls of the nearly 100-year-old building that was home to 200-plus artists for the past decade. The walls that were once covered in art were bare, except for a few flyers. The corridors that were once filled with sounds from bands practicing were eerily silent.

Morciglio sat on a red chair in a cluttered room strewn with instruments, empty beer cans, paintbrushes, and flyers. This one area, he said, is the last rented space, and so the eight remaining tenants have been sharing it, mostly to organize against the owner.

“We are just taking one last stand,” Morciglio said. “We are keeping the soul of the place alive for at least a little bit longer.” “[From] the folk rock scene when my parents were here to the present, it’s a place that fosters ideas and creativity,” Kaliner, the Wellesley sociology professor, said about Cambridge. “If that shifts entirely to software and data storage industries, that’s a big cultural shift. If everything is just universities and biotech, it makes for a different kind of city.”

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CAPITALIST VETO APPARENT HORIZON

Popular “millionaires’ tax” referendum question blocked by a pro-business SJC

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The Fair Share Amendment—better known as the “millionaires’ tax”—that would have gone before voters this November as a statewide referendum question was shot down this week by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). So the effort to increase taxes on people making $1 million-plus a year and spend the resulting funds on social needs is over. For the moment.

Organized over the last three years by Raise Up Massachusetts, a major coalition of labor, community, and religious organizations, the initiative had the support of two-thirds of Bay State voters in recent polling and had a good shot at passing.

The campaign was spearheaded by the Commonwealth’s two largest unions, Service Employees International Union and Mass Teachers Association.

And naturally, most Massachusetts rich people had no intention of letting anyone—let alone a bunch of union leaders, social workers, and priests—raise their taxes.

Flunkies and front groups were then unleashed.

The Massachusetts High Technology Council put together a bloc of capitalist lobby groups—including the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, Associated Industries of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership—and challenged the amendment’s constitutionality.

They were aided in this push by the fact that Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, was able to appoint five of seven justices to the SJC since taking office in 2015.

Including one that, in fairness, wrote the dissenting opinion on the Fair Share Amendment ruling.

Thus, it was no big surprise that the SJC shot the millionaires’ tax down on a legal technicality. Since the wealth lobby had no convincing political argument against the tax beyond “we don’t want to pay it.” But they had high-powered lawyers, plenty of money, and a court stacked in the right direction. Theirs. A capitalist veto in the making.

Professor Lawrence Friedman of New England Law | Boston explained the decision succinctly on a special edition of The Horse Race podcast—hosted by Lauren Dezenski of Politico Massachusetts and Steve Koczela of the MassINC Polling Group: “What a majority of the court concluded was that this petition didn’t satisfy the requirements of article 48 [of the Mass constitution] for a valid petition that can go before the voters in November. Because it failed what’s 6

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called the ‘relatedness’ requirement—the various parts of the petition didn’t relate to each other sufficiently to pass constitutional muster.

“So the three parts of the petition involve the revenue raising measure, the so-called millionaire’s tax, and then two distinct dedications—one to education and one to transportation. And the court essentixally said that, except at a very abstract level, those things are not sufficiently related to satisfy the relatedness requirement.”

The minority of the court, for their part, had a very different view. According to Justice Kimberly Budd (joined by Gov. Deval Patrick appointee Chief Justice Ralph Gants, and pardon the legalese here): “Disregarding the plain text of art. 48, The Initiative, II, § 3, of the Amendments to the Massachusetts Constitution, as amended by art. 74 of the Amendments, which requires that an initiative petition contain ‘only subjects … which are related or which are mutually dependent,’ the court concludes that, in drafting this language the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1917-1918 inserted the words ‘or which are mutually dependent’ as superfluous text. … The court goes on to conclude that the people may not express their opinion on a one section, four-sentence petition because it contains subjects that are not related. … That analysis is flawed.”

In plain English, to rather brutally paraphrase further remarks by Friedman on The Horse Race, activists amended the state constitution a hundred years ago to allow the people of Massachusetts to make laws by referendum because even then the legislative process had been captured by corporations and the rich in ways perhaps unforeseen by John Adams when he drafted the document in 1780.

To block the Fair Share Amendment referendum from going on the ballot for a vote is therefore not in the spirit of the sentence at the core of the SJC majority’s case. The court’s pro-business majority focused on the “relatedness requirement.” Its pro-worker minority countered that referendum questions that contain “unrelated” items that are “mutually dependent” pass constitutional muster. But with five votes to two, the majority prevailed.

The result? The tiny percentage of Mass residents who make more than a cool million a year will not see their state taxes rise from 5.1 to 9.1 percent. And the estimated $2 billion that was expected to be raised from that levy annually will not be applied to the Commonwealth’s education and transportation budgets.

Both areas that are ridiculously underfunded given our state’s wealth relative to much of the rest of the nation.

Worse still, the spurious myth that the Mass capitalists’ “coalition of the willing” flogged—and continues to flog in the case of the Boston Herald’s

ever fact-light columnist Howie Carr—that rich people leave states that increase their taxes will continue to seem like reality to less careful onlookers of the local political scene. Despite the fact that a major study and a book entitled The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight: How Place Still Matters for the Rich by Stanford University sociology professor Cristobal Young have used big data to dismiss the idea as mere scaremongering, according to Commonwealth magazine.

Now Raise Up Massachusetts has two options: 1) start the referendum process all over again with language that will pass muster with the narrowest and most conservative interpretation of the “relatedness’ requirement,” or 2) take the fight to the legislature.

With the chances of the legislature passing any kind of tax increase being approximately zero as long as Robert DeLeo is House speaker, starting the referendum process again from scratch is pretty much the only way to go.

Unless Raise Up leaders decide to make some kind of “deal” with the legislature. Which I sincerely hope is not the case. Because the whole Fair Share campaign is already a major compromise given that the real goal of any forwardthinking left-wing reformer in this arena has to be the repeal of article 44 of the state constitution that prohibits a graduated income tax system. Followed by the passage of such a system.

While I’m well aware that every attempt to do that has been defeated in the past, I’m also aware that if referendum questions aimed at the much broader goal of winning a fair tax system were on the table, then it would be possible to negotiate for something smaller like the “millionaires’ tax” if the effort ran into trouble.

As things stand, Raise Up Mass appears to have little room to maneuver. So, better to start preparing for a win in 2022 on an improved referendum strategy— preferably aiming for a graduated income tax to replace our anemic flat tax system—than to make a bad deal merely to be able to declare a false “victory” to its supporters and switch its public focus to the two other drives it still has in play: paid family and medical leave, and the fight for a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

Because the whole Fair Share campaign is already a major compromise given that the real goal of any forward-thinking left-wing reformer in this arena has to be the repeal of article 44 of the state constitution that prohibits a graduated income tax system.

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.

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FATHER’S DAY OF ACTION NEWS TO US

Chickadee is opening soon!

We are currently hiring for all positions!

Come help us curate a fun, education forward, and positive work environment that will yield an unforgettable guest experience. Located in the heart of the Innovation and Design Building in Boston’s Seaport District, Chickadee will be a culinary oasis serving locally inspired Mediterranean cuisine while staying true to its humble New England roots. Chickadee’s kitchen strives for culinary excellence, and at all times to be in harmony with the restaurant’s beverage program, which will share the same committed focus to quality, seasonal ingredients.

We are looking for kind, dedicated, hospitality driven individuals to help bring our mission to life in a community of skilled artisans and craftspeople who make up our fellow tenants at the IDB. We offer great benefits, competitive pay, opportunity for growth within the company, and the chance to be a part of something truly unique. Submit your cover letter and resume along with the position you are interested in (in the subject heading please) at the following email address:

careers@chickadeerestaurant.com

Applicants must be residents of the city of Boston

The unpopular fight against family separations in Mass

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

It’s not unusual for Jamarhl Crawford to make a lot of noise about police brutality.

And about law enforcement officer misconduct in general. But the Roxbury activist (and occasional contributor to DigBoston) also wears some other hats, and in addition to being an MC, poet, and lecturer, Crawford advocates for dads. As in fathers, especially those caught in the crosshairs of the probate and child support system, as he was many years ago.

“The court is supposed to be the place where you seek justice, and where truth and facts are determined,” says Crawford, speaking on behalf of the group For Fathers, which organized a march on Tuesday. “The actions of [Suffolk Probate and Family Court] have had a devastating impact on and traumatized the lives of both children and fathers. Children have been placed in potentially dangerous, abusive, and neglectful environments.”

We asked Crawford about this lane of his activist work…

You have been involved in a number of causes through the years. How would you say fathers’ rights compares to other issues as far as how hard it is to find sympathetic ears?

It is probably harder. The concocted image of the deadbeat dad is a tough narrative to beat.

People view this as an assault on mothers or women. On the contrary, this is a fight for the children and what is best for their wellbeing and future. We are not revisionists or caught in some anti-feminist fantasy, where all men are without blame. There are men who shirk their duties, are abusive and all the rest. What we are saying is that the court must take everything on a case-by-case basis. All men are not deadbeat dads, and all women are not truth-telling saints.

While some may be aware through experiences themselves or the experiences of someone they know, the general public is largely unaware of the injustices prevalent in the probate court and child support system. There is no more appropriate place for restorative justice than family court, and the court needs to shift focus from enforcement and punishment to what is best for the child in consideration of all factors.

You personally dealt with courts over custody and visitation rights for many years. Is it easier to do work as an activist on this front now that your own drama is behind you?

No. I don’t feel like this is or will ever be behind me or my daughter. My daughter and I were both robbed of time that we cannot get back. She was denied opportunities growing up that now impact both her and I. This is in fact the most difficult issue I have ever faced personally or in my organizational life.

I cannot accurately describe the trauma that that first court interaction set off and continues to this day. I find it very difficult to even read paperwork from this court or anything related to probate and child support.

What are some examples of the way that judges abuse their power in probate court?

Family court is probably the only place where someone can make a completely unverified, unsubstantiated claim and the judge operates as if it is a fact.

Allegations of abuse or criminal activity are often made, and without investigation the father is now judged without proof and treated as such.

With so much outrage over ICE separating kids from their parents, where do you think the disconnect is on the home front that results in less general concern about the breaking up of families right here in America?

I have been watching this unfold in the media and thinking about why so often here in America we view tragedies differently depending on proximity and media trends. After the suicide of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, everyone is concerned about suicide, but that does not translate to actual concern for their own loved ones, family members, friends, and neighbors.

What can be done about any of this? What are the goals of this protest? Of this movement?

We seek to change legislation as it relates to probate laws and fathers’ rights, particularly addressing children born out of wedlock. There has to be some remedy for fathers to address erroneous court orders and payment issues like garnishments, arrears, liens, and levies.

If the legislature and the general public were aware of horror stories and injustices prevalent in the system, and the damage done to children and fathers, I don’t think anyone in good conscience can say that this is the best that can be done and we are satisfied with the outcomes. The entire system needs to be studied and revamped to benefit families equally and impartially.

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TALKING JOINTS MEMO

TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN The politics of the psychedelic renaissance

BY BAYNARD WOODS @BAYNARDWOODS I took a massive dose of mushrooms at the beginning of the Trump regime. I was trying to prepare myself for the worst, like they do in the studies for cancer patients that have been carried out at Johns Hopkins.

This was entirely off the books, an attempt to reinvent the underground in the face of a new tyranny. Or at least a new face of an old tyranny. I got a big bag of fresh mushrooms from one source and went through several therapy sessions with someone else. Then, on January 3, 2017, I took a moderate dose of about four grams. My guide sat there with me, but he didn’t need to do much. I lay on the couch with a blindfold. Things were kind of dull until I ate another little piece, took a bong hit, and switched the music to Philip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach.”

Then I was flying. The feeling was one of motion—for the first time, after almost 30 years of tripping, I realized why it was called that. I was moving through space. And through Trump’s face, which I burst through.

But a couple months later, in March, I doubled that dose. Immediately I started to shake. People talk about the heavens opening up and becoming one with the light—well, this was the opposite. An abyss in me opened and I imploded in on myself and fell endlessly through myself like the darkest and coldest and unhuman empty space. I screamed that it was torture. Nature was a Herzogian nightmare until I had been ripped entirely apart.

I always thought mushrooms had a sense of humor. But this was brutal—if extremely valuable—and there was nothing funny about it at all. I ripped my shirt to shreds in the throes of my misery.

After five hours, I texted my wife that I was hungry. It is one of the great things about mushrooms. No matter how intense it is, the trip is pretty short lived, about five hours.

Psychedelics are having a big moment. Food guru Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence just came out and got a New York Times Magazine cover. Pollan’s book gives a certain legitimacy to the work being done by a number of doctors, scientists, and therapists at Johns Hopkins and in weird back rooms and jungle shacks around the world.

Alleged creep “alt lit” wunderkind Tao Lin also just came out with his own “expose” into the world of psychedelics, Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, which will surely introduce the work of the now-departed psychedelic theorist Terence McKenna to a new generation of seekers.

But there is something about all of this psychedelic rebranding that troubles me—and it is mainly because I am troubled by myself. It struck me at a Willie Nelson and Sturgill Simpson concert on Memorial Day weekend. On the surface, things were changing, but under us, in us, was always the abyss, even in the most beautiful places.

On the way in, they looked in my fanny pack and found a bag of weed. To get your weed taken at a Willie Nelson show—and not by Willie! What the fuck? I had a vape pen and some edibles, anyway.

I’ve been seeing Willie Nelson play all my life. “Pancho and Lefty,” where he and Merle Haggard cover Townes Van Zandt’s tragic ode to outlawry, set my thirdgrade brain afire. And Sturgill Simpson’s “Turtles All the Way Down” brought psychedelics, McKenna-ism, and infinite regress into country music.

So why did it feel so weird? When I looked out at the crowd, it looked just like the scene at a Trump rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania—mostly white, suburban, and relatively wealthy. The frat boys in plaid sang along as Sturgill belted out “Turtles,” and I wondered what they could know of the abyss I had fallen into in March.

That feeling has stayed with me, and I have felt it when going through difficult things as a sort of ball above my shoulder. But it had ended. And the Trump regime has not yet brought that upon me. But I imagine that feeling of being ripped to pieces as you fall through an utterly inhumane darkness is the everyday reality of the children that Trump and Sessions are ripping from their parents at the border each day. And for them it does not end. We are the abyss and we are the darkness.

But we might be so busy looking inward that we miss the atrocities afflicting others Sign up for Talkimg Joints Memo newsletter at Talkingjointsmemo.com

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SUMMER JAM MUSIC NEWS

Roller disco for Hub music icon turns five

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON The concept of the Donna Summer Roller Disco Party is simple: head to Boston City Hall Plaza this Friday, strap on some wheels, and show off your best moves.

If you don’t have your own skates, the city even has some for you (we recommend showing up early).

But beyond that basic concept, which will be rolled out (pun intended) this week for the fifth time in five years, is a robust musical and family legacy built on the memory of one of Boston’s greatest performers of all time. We spoke with Robert Grant, a nephew of Donna Summer who helps run the annual roller bash, for some critical background…

Five years is a long time to be throwing a major outdoor roller disco. Was this originally planned as a one-off? Or was the goal to keep it going for a long time?

It’s very exciting that people still love disco and love to roller skate. … The event gets bigger and bigger every year and the demand is insane, so I thank Marty Walsh and his staff for continuing to honor her in this way. It’s now known throughout the world and is a must-go-to event for the summer for Donna Summer fans locally and globally. I have been contacted by people all over the world for this event.

s i b a n n a C en The

When Donna Summer was doing her thing during the disco era, where was the spot to go dancing in Boston? Are there any clubs in particular where she would perform before she got big enough to do stadiums?

Donna was in the church and sang in the church until she was 18. She didn’t perform until she auditioned for the play Hair. From there she moved to New York then was off to Europe. She did used to go to a place called the Sugar Shack to see the stars perform.

e u Q

For those of us who weren’t around back in the day, please fill us in on just how hot of a trend roller skating actually was. Any favorite spots to skate come to mind?

Any that Donna Summer may have frequented back when she was at the Burke? Was it Chez Vous even back then?

Chez Vous was definitely the spot back then, but like I said, Donna was heavily involved in the church when she was younger and didn’t go out much.

I know that family members, including you, help run the roller skating jam these days.

Can you tell us a little bit about the role you all play and about how this event has evolved and grown through the years?

I’m the only family member that works directly with the city of Boston for this event.

As a vendor with the city, I coordinate and collaborate with them on all aspects, from marketing promotions and performances to music selection.

This event has become a staple in the community thanks to Marty Walsh and the city.

Each year the demand gets bigger and bigger.

When people come for the first time, they experience so much fun and love and affection from our family but also dance their butts off!

It’s an experience like no other. When they leave all they say is, I’m telling everybody about this event and I can’t wait till next year!

Donna was in the church and sang in the church until she was 18. She didn’t perform until she auditioned for the play Hair.

What can you tell us about the effort to build a Donna Summer memorial in Boston? Where should it go? What should it look like?

This still is a work in progress, and that is the big question we are working on.

Donna had so many different looks throughout her career. It’s really hard to pinpoint, but I would like it to resemble her the most natural and accurate as possible. She was a beautiful woman inside and out. >> DONNA SUMMER ROLLER DISCO PARTY. SAT 6.22. 6-10PM. FREE

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11

PUMP UP THE BAMS FEATURE

Catherine Morris had a Boston calling. This weekend, her festival vision becomes real.

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

PHOTO VIA KINDRED THE FAMILY SOUL About two years ago, sometime in the sweltering summer of 2016, Catherine Morris visited my home with a small group of Boston nonprofit friends. Among other things, during the notably un-air conditioned ad hoc retreat, we shared our short- and long-term goals with one another.

If there’s one thing I remember about that day, besides the unbearable heat, it’s that even in a roomful of tireless wide-eyed community advocates, Morris had the most visionary, extraordinary-sounding game plan of the group. Her lofty goal: to organize a major festival experience that would “connect and celebrate Afro-centric culture, heritage, and contributions to the American fabric,” and to do it in the black community in Boston!

Until getting to know Morris a little better, her plans also seemed to be unfeasible. BAMS Fest, as she explained it then—and, it turns out, what it will be in reality this weekend, in its year-one incarnation—was conceived as an “epic outdoor, multistage, fun-for-all festival.” But the more I recognized her work ethic in action, the more I realized she was trained and calibrated for the challenge.

Morris was born in Jamaica Plain, raised in Roxbury, and brought up on a steady diet of the classics. “My mom made me listen to 33s and 45s and 8-tracks,” she says.

“Funk and soul music were always at the helm. Old school.

Growing up with that, I always wanted to do something bigger than myself.”

An initial chance at organizing toward the spotlight surfaced early, as Morris became heavily involved with many of the talent shows that were extremely popular back then. “My first taste of this chaotic world was at the Blue Hill Boys and Girls Club on Talbot Ave,” she recalls.

Along with memories of visiting First Night festivities on New Year’s Eve. “Something that massive, with multiple genres and disciplines, was like the most magical thing that a 13-yearold can imagine,” Morris says.

Over the following decades, she remained a student of large crowds.

“I’ve seen the Macy’s Day Parade, I’ve seen the Roots Picnic,” she says. “It’s people coming together to live in the moment for the arts, and it allows people to be vulnerable.”

Morris later pursued similar interests while in college at Temple in Philly, where she “saw how people on the local arts scene can support each other.”

“When I got to Philadelphia I purposely immersed

myself and lived in the city with natives,” she says. “I wanted to understand the music and the arts scene. There is a lot of history of making music part of the culture instead of just something to do, which in Boston is where I think it sits right now.”

Jumping in neck-deep, Morris took an internship as a production assistant at Welcome America, Philly’s annual blowout Fourth of July celebration, where she handled scattered duties and logistics for a half-million-person party. Morris marks the experience as one of her proudest to date, plus one during which the music diehard got to work in the company of Hall & Oates, Patti LaBelle, and John Legend, among others.

“You have to really understand how the people in a city move to understand how it will work in a particular way,” Morris says. “It’s a lot of work, but just being there and seeing young, and old, and folks with disabilities, and everybody else come out—for free—was super dope, and I wanted to come back and do something like it here.”

Morris returned to Greater Boston in 2008, and despite the economic downturn landed work in hospitality, which later led to a position managing events at MIT. Helping host everything from small student activities to a reception for the Dalai Lama, she learned how to deal with the heat that comes with such extreme career multitasking.

Still, there was a missing strand between her tasks at MIT and the more social justice-minded event planning she had done coming of age in the Hub. So while in graduate school at Simmons College, Morris started mapping out her independence.

“The seed of how BAMS Fest came about was in a business plan writing class,” she says. “All of my life I have done social justice work, youth development, and event planning. I wanted to do that and I wanted to have creative control.”

As if leaving MIT wasn’t a big enough plunge, Morris committed her personal savings to help get the festival started. The runup to this weekend’s cultural extravaganza has included 20 smaller concerts, each ambitious in their own right and all run by volunteers, some of whom work up to 40 hours every week.

“Our first artists were Obehi Janice, Latrell James, and Elideusa,” says Morris, whose initial BAMS Fest prequel was held in September 2015 at ArtsEmerson’s Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre at the Paramount Center.

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“They were the first who worked with me at Arts Emerson, and we sold out [150 tickets]. … I had these ideas to pursue culture and art like this [three] years ago, and I mean what I say.”

In the time since, the BAMS Fest apparatus has employed more than 100 artists from the Greater Boston area, plus built an audience of more than 3,000 fans through events. That in addition to securing partnerships and critical assists from the likes of ArtsEmerson and the Fenway Alliance.

“Being a tall, black African-American woman and being able to articulate a festival that is typically done in New York and California, people just don’t want to believe it. There are leaders in this community who tell me we are going to fail. There are people who say that I won’t be successful because of where it is. And I just have a different view—Franklin Park itself connects six neighborhoods, and Franklin Park is underutilized.

“It’s been 30 years since the concerts at White Stadium that used to have large crowds. People don’t always want to go downtown—they want to be in their backyards.”

As for how BAMS, which Morris describes as “Essence [Music Festival] meets Afropunk in Boston,” ultimately shaped up on the talent side—some notable relative numbers include two stages, 20+ musical acts, 90 percent of whom are local, and all of whom will be paid to perform in front of thousands this weekend. The list of artists who are throwing down is robust and eclectic, and features acts spanning headliners Kindred the Family Soul, to STL GLD, to the superbly poetic Hub rap up-and-comer Oompa. There’s also a graffiti installation showcasing six artists, as well as an urban dance school.

All the entertainment’s free of charge, plus there’s a vendor market and a food truck zone for those who want to spend their dough with minority-owned businesses.

“A lot of time, folks who live in Cambridge may not go to Roxbury, and [the other way around], but there is a total similarity between their interests,” Morris says.

“There is a perception that my kind may not walk with y’all, but when it comes to similarities in arts and culture it doesn’t matter what neighborhood you’re from …

“You have to convince the people that it’s possible.

We’re going to be looked at.”

PHOTO BY BRYNNE QUINLAN

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AN EXCERPT FROM WRITERS RESIST 2018 FEATURE

INTRO BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

Last year, Carissa Halston of Aforementioned Productions organized a marathon reading of the Sinclair Lewis antifascist classic It Can’t Happen Here.

The event was a success, with dozens channeling their anti-Trump outrage together through literature.

But since it is still happening here after all, Halston and the Aforementioned team, along with a several other organizations, including PEN America, are returning with Writers Resist at the Boston Public Library this Saturday.

The event will feature 10 authors and two student writers who will discuss their politicized poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

“Many writers have committed years and pages to counteracting the work of those in power who would undermine equality, abolish diversity, and silence freedom of expression,” said Halston. “Their writing enriches our communities, and their voices represent the breadth of our city. Above all, their work sharpens our resolve to protect our right to an inclusive and free press.”

We asked Halston to share some of that work, specifically something that will be featured on Saturday, with us to excerpt.

How I became truly American (By Sam Cha) Once (a lifetime or a decade ago, depending on how you measure time) it was mid-October, and I had just turned 29. I’d moved from Jersey to Boston at the end of the preceding year; had gotten divorced in January, and had subsequently careened into: A) a job as a legal assistant at a small (“boutique” they called themselves) patent law firm in the financial district, and B) a relationship with a 23-year-old from Alabama. The job was a bore, a full-body anaesthetic, but I had plenty of time to goof off and write while I was at work.

The relationship was three months old and obviously doomed, though I was trying not to acknowledge the

warning signs. I liked her long vowels, the flush on her cheeks, her wait, wait just as she was about to come, and these things were sufficient as blindfolds—the texts she didn’t answer, the cancelled dinner plans, the way her conversation had turned monosyllabic—none of these things really meant anything, right? Still, I needed a break— both from the job that I wasn’t doing, and from what I thought of as a post-divorce paragnosis of loss.

So I went off to Jersey for the weekend. I’d lived there for four years, first for grad school at Rutgers, and then later (after Rutgers and I had our messy breakup) for inertia, and I still had a bunch of friends there.

Not grad school friends—I was book-smart but socially moronic, and I’d burnt a lot of bridges, or felt like I had. My friends were autochthones, indigenes, townies, disaffected underemployed twentysomethings from East Brunswick and Metropark and Edison and Metuchen and Dunellen I’d met playing in video game tournaments.

My best friend was a skinny, loud, stubborn spikyheaded guy I’ll call Cam. Cam lived in a squat brick apartment building somewhere in the Amboys, with two other kids I’d met in passing at one tournament or another. Of these, one was a vast sarcastic Indiandescended man I’ll call Mat. Mat had been to Afghanistan as a Marine. Mat was consistently in between IT support

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jobs: he was unemployed roughly as much as he was employed, and when he was unemployed he spent a third of his time asleep, another third looking for the next IT support job, and the last third drunk. He was on the drunk part now.

We were all drunk, but Mat was drunker. He’d been drinking when we walked in, sitting at a big plastic card table with a handle of Jim and a half-full cut-glass tumbler, and he’d kept on drinking as we played Cards Against Humanity, and he kept on drinking as we moved on to Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies (my first time playing), and he kept on drinking as we moved further back into the history of video games—a level of Dynasty Warriors 6, a level of Dynasty Warriors 5 (this with the original save file that Cam and I had painstakingly filled, beer by beer, character by character, boss fight by boss fight, over the course of my last summer in Jersey), and a couple of dozen matches of Soulcalibur 2, which was the game that had brought us all together in the first place— and then Mat stopped drinking, got up off of the couch, and disappeared into his room.

Hey, Mat, where the fuck’d you go? we yelled.

Three-way with your moms, he yelled back.

Hold your tits, I’ll be right back!

Which was what passed for witty repartee with us.

Kevin Smith used to be a thing back then, or at any rate had been a thing recently enough that he was still part of the parlance.

Then Mat came back out of his room, holding a matte black aluminum case.

Not this shit again, said Cam. What is that? I said.

Monkey business, said Mat, sitting down.

What? I said.

Need my pipes cleaned, said Mat, wriggling around to settle himself in the chair.

Still not getting it, I said.

Cam stayed quiet.

Ma-caaaque, drawled Mat, interlocking his fingers, stretching his arms, turning his palms out, cracking his knuckles.

Needs grooming, said Mat. Needs a rubdown, said Mat. Needs oiling, said Mat. Needs some love, said Mat. and opened the case.

The air smelled like dead beer and gamer sweat and stale cigarettes. I looked down at the thing inside the case, nestled in black foam rubber.

Oh, I said.

Here, said Mat. You wanna hold it?

It was the damnedest thing.

I didn’t, but I did.

And this, I believe, was how I became truly American.

Sam Cha was born in Korea.

He earned an MFA from UMass Boston. A winner of two Academy of American Poets prizes and a St. Botolph’s Club Emerging Artists Grant, his work has appeared in apt, Best New Poets, Boston Review, DIAGRAM, Missouri Review, and elsewhere. He’s a poetry editor at Radius, and his collection, American Carnage, was recently published

by Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs. He lives and writes in Cambridge.

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15

WHEEL OF TUNES MUSIC

Jami Morgan of Code Orange breaks down ‘Forever’

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

stories. Yesterday, that rapper XXXtentacion was murdered.

You feel how people forget everything so quickly.

It’s already going to be forgotten and nobody will care in two hours. Nobody cares about anything anymore.

Anything you do, someone else can do in two seconds.

It’s impossible to stay in your lane. If you’re using this platform to educate yourself, you never know what’s real and what’s not. We get a lot of positive communication, but there’s so much negativity on the internet. The shit people says is dark. It goes deep.

I can’t even imagine what artists who are big go through.

7. “Spy” Which movie or TV show spy device do you wish you could use in real life?

Hm. I don’t fucking know. Maybe a little radar to see if someone is a damn spy. That’s what that song is about. Sitting there, drinking in all of your shit, and then they go and tell everyone who will listen. So I need a little flasher thing that Will Smith has.

8. “Ugly” What is the ugliest personality trait a person can have?

PHOTO BY HANS CHRISTIAN TERSLIN 1. “Forever” If you had to do two of your current daily habits, one unhealthy and the other healthy, for the rest of your life, which would you choose?

Hm. I’m going to say, well, I train jiu jitsu everyday. I would definitely do that forever.

3. “Real” Which news story or cause do you believe isn’t getting enough attention?

I feel like people should know more about how many people here don’t have healthcare or don’t get access to healthcare. I hear stories about people not being able to … It’s not the people that act like the people they’re made out to be. They aren’t lazy. They’re 60-year-olds who have been working their whole lives.

5. “The Mud” When you get stuck in a negative thought or pattern of thinking, what do you tell yourself to pull yourself out of it?

When I was in high school and the beginning of college, the two months I went, I used to write a lot more about those type of feelings and thoughts. I’ve had a

lot of them and still do, those intrusive and depressive thoughts.

I felt like I changed some of that by changing my writing style and thought process to become more selfaffirmative and self-empowering. That changed my mental process in a lot of ways, and I think it’s changed all of our mental processes. Just trying to have selfconfidence. There’s a group of us, so we’re lucky, and I sympathize for people who don’t, who are on their own.

When you have five people around you that are there for you and understand your nuances, it’s helpful.

6. “The New Reality” In the current era of US politics, what’s a positive and a negative of our everyday lives?

Politically, it’s all negative it seems. I don’t even like to think about it because it makes me sick. But then if you don’t think about it, it appears on your doorstep or on your neighbor’s doorstep. It’s almost becoming cliche, but the way our minds are because of how fast the technology is and how quickly things are thrown in your fucking face and then completely forgotten has created a totally different mental pattern than I remember having or my parents having. It feels cliche to say, but it’s important. Whether it’s music or any medium of entertainment, you need a break from these horrific

Disloyalty. Being a friend to all … We have a song on our last record called “Friend to All, Loyal to None.”

That’s what people are like now.

9. “No One Is Untouchable” When was the last time you felt invincible?

I probably feel that way too much. Sometimes on stage, sometimes talking to people like you, it can hit you like a wave.

11. “dream2” Which profession would you want to work in if you weren’t already a musician?

I have no other way. Ever since I can remember, which sounds cliche, I 100 percent knew I would make it in this situation and my friends would as well. I didn’t see another road. I literally can’t, even now, thinking as hard as a possible. I don’t want to be a musician either.

I don’t like playing music or playing drums in someone else’s band. I want to do this: being creative, playing with friends, making things. We’ve done it all.

Read Nina’s whole interview at digboston.com.

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FENWAY ROOFTOP SESSIONS MUSIC

Baseball stadium swings (and almost misses) a musical homerun

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

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

No matter how big a sports buff you are, this is the time when the buzz of baseball season wears down. Players go on the DL for injuries, the crisp air at Fenway Park has long ago left the air, and the Red Sox’s phenomenal winning streak has cooled off. But the folks at Fenway Park want to keep the buzz going—just not as you would expect it.

On June 14, the Red Sox announced that a new music series was in the works: Fenway Rooftop Sessions. The seven-date summer series will let prechosen artists perform on the rooftop corner of Fenway Park. Each mini concert takes places before a home game at Fenway, the allure being that the cost of a ticket to the show includes a seat to the game itself. Unsurprisingly, the series is billed as an “exclusive” “pre-game party” with a private cash bar. But surprisingly, the talent they chose is homegrown, all artists who frequent Boston’s music scene—a fact made even more surprising given the event is presented by Vineyard Vines.

The focus on local music suggests a shift for the iconic baseball stadium’s themes. While it’s hosted non-baseball sporting events for decades and legendary concerts for just as long, Fenway Park has never been ahead of the game when it comes to highlighting the music from its backyard unless you’re at the TD Garden level of fame. Is Fenway Park giving back to its neighbors? Is it letting smaller artists get a leg up by performing at a small section of a massive venue? Is it simply trying to connect with its community on a more one-on-one level? I hope it’s all three.

Kingsley Flood, Will Dailey, Parsonsfield, City Rivals, Dalton and the Sheriffs, Latrell James and Friends, and Sarah Borges are the artists chosen to perform at the inaugural event. The series kicks off on June 24 and ends on Sept 9.

You don’t have to zoom in on the lineup to see a glaring pattern. Latrell James and Friends is the only group to include a person of color. Sarah Borges is the only female act. Every other artist on the bill fits the straight white man stereotype. While nobody should be penalized for how they look, it does feel quite clear that whoever handled booking for Fenway Rooftop Sessions didn’t dig too deep, or even dig at all, into Boston’s music scene to find artists to perform. There are a lot of artists with more hype than some of the artists on usual rotation listed there. We won’t point fingers, because they aren’t at fault for continuing to pursue music, but it would be nice to see an artist listed in the main summer months that you absolutely have to see. After all, isn’t the whole point to lure more ticket buyers into the stadium?

But hey, maybe we should just bite our tongues, because after all, any improvement is good improvement—especially when it’s out of nowhere like this could-be musical homerun.

out more at 857.636.1694

>> FENWAY ROOFTOP SESSIONS. ALL SUMMER LONG. FENWAY PARK, 4 YAWKEY WAY, BOSTON. REDSOX.COM/FENWAYROOFTOP

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GO AHEAD, CALL IT A COMEBACK A+E

Kathy Griffin hits the road for the first time since Trumpgate

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS Kathy Griffin doesn’t need much of an introduction, so we’ll begin right in the middle of this rant from our recent interview with the comedian…

That fucker tried to ruin me! Tried to decimate me, damnit, and this is my comeback! I’m so excited to be coming to Boston, and I’m going to spill it all. I was under a fucking two-month federal investigation, and I still have people that send Bibles to my house on an almost daily basis to save me. I hope you know who my neighbors were during this trauma because, magic. Their names are Kim Kardashian West and Kanye Kardashian West. I know this is all crazy, but … I’m going through this whole Trump thing and it’s super crazy, and my sister is dying of cancer and I shaved my head in solidarity, and then there’d be days when my mom came over one day and she’s just really depressed—she’s going be 98—and she was just feeling like, “Oh, I’m not going to live forever”—typical Maggie until I get her her boxed wine. I know this is hard to believe because God knows I’ve made my career doing things like calling the Kardashians filthy whores—but sure enough in the middle of all this crazy shit I text Kim Kardashian—who I’m not best friends with, I’m not acting like I am—but I just said, “Can you send the kids over? I don’t know where you are on the planet but my mom’s really depressed.” Sure enough, she’s like, “No problem.” A half an hour later the nannies arrive and the two kids come over, and my mom got to babysit them for an hour and it was hilarious, so all sorts of crazy things have been going on at this time. As crazy as this journey has been, and it continues, there really is a lot of comedy in it.

don’t mind if people call it a comeback, I’ll take it. But to sell out Carnegie Hall in one day is just really gratifying.

And honestly, there are parts of this story that are funny. I read one of my death threats on stage— [laughs] Thank you for laughing! Because the grammar alone is funny.

When tickets went on sale for this tour, did you just kind of hold your breath?

Oh, absolutely. And let me tell you, none of the men on my team supported it. I had to fight like an animal to get Carnegie because the promoters and stuff said, “You can’t do it,” and I said, “Look, it’s a risk and I’ll do it for $1, I don’t care” and then it freaking sold out in a day. They didn’t want me to play the Kennedy Center and I just kept fighting. I’m going to play the Kennedy Center in September because I thought it would be fun to play DC closer to the midterms.

He’s going to be so mad.

I know.

If he’s still around.

That’s right. Like I said, I’m hoping for at least house arrest. Don’t be fooled, don’t think that President Pence is going to be an improvement. That one’s crooked, too.

Have you seen Pence’s chief of staff? You should Google him. I think when you do you’re going to wonder what those two are doing on the weekends.

Oh! You heard me. You can’t pray the gay away.

What is the balance like between the serious stuff and your usual pop-culture commentary?

My mandate is funny first. I’m saying with this particular tour, there is some meat on the bones and a couple of serious moments. I’m not going to brag, but overseas I did get a standing ovation after every show. I’m very proud.

Taking back your apology for the photo is the most badass thing that you’ve ever done.

Thank you. I definitely took that apology back, and I take it back tenfold because, you know, I was in such a swirl and when my comedy friends gave me shit for making an apology … I always say, “Well, I tell you what— when you’re under a federal investigation” and—by the way—they wanted to charge me with—wait for it—conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States, I say to my friends, “When that happens to you, you talk to me about not apologizing.” But in that swirl I wanted to apologize. I’ve performed in warzones. I’ve performed in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Kuwait and Uzbekistan, if you really want to know, so it definitely hurt that the veterans turned on me. Let’s face it— everybody turned on me. Yesterday someone sent [me] an email, and it said “Kathy Griffin, you are an American trader.” T-R-A-D-E-R. That’s the Trump fans. Or, by the way, that could have been Trump himself.

It totally could have been.

It could have been Tiffany, who I’m a little obsessed with. The model who’s really a car model, but, let’s go with model. And then Ivanka and Jared, I mean, the fact that they’re called Jivanka … this can’t continue.

It seemed to me like the outrage from liberals was not genuine.

Oh, that’s what hurt the most. I had friends that came at me that day: Debra Messing, Don Cheadle, Jeffrey Wright, and I’m looking at my Twitter feed like “holy shit!”

When people say I’m like the Dixie Chicks I always have to correct them. [They] had the full support of the artistic community, they were on the cover of Time magazine, they were on the cover of Entertainment Weekly; they were glorified by the left. Everybody turned on me, so that’s why I’m making my comeback, if you will, and I

PHOTO BY MIKE RUIZ. COURTESY OF KATHY GRIFFIN.

>> KATHY GRIFFIN. 6.21 AT BOCH CENTER’S SHUBERT THEATRE, 265 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. NORTH AMERICAN TOUR THROUGH 10.26. KATHYGRIFFIN.NET 18

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OIL AND WATER FILM

Photographer Valery Lyman’s installations forge new paths in old institutions

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN For two years running, the Waterworks Museum has played host to brief springtime exhibitions of Breaking Ground: An Immersive Meditation on the Oilfields of North Dakota, a work by artist Valery Lyman that populated the museum’s Great Engines Hall with her still photographs and audio recordings. The exhibit took place after dark, for the photographs were projected onto the walls, ceilings, and the machinery itself—just past the door, for instance, you might’ve heard the whistle of a train on a nearby audio channel, while a succession of photographs depicting individuals disembarking from rail travel were projected onto a steam engine directly in front of you.

Breaking Ground’s photographs and audio recordings document the culture surrounding the North Dakota oil boom of the 21st century, with Lyman’s focus spread relatively evenly between shots of individuals drawn to the area by economic opportunity, images that document the sub industries generated in the wake of the boom, and photographs of the North Dakotan landscape, which are typically seen adorned by at least one large piece of industrial machinery. And in the introductory text stationed outside the space, a specific historical association was emphasized, one with a direct link to industrial economics: “America’s western region is scattered with the remains of old boom towns,” it read, “well preserved by the high desert climate.”

When I interviewed Lyman a few months ago, she noted this historical connection was something that drifted to the back of her mind once she was actually photographing on location—but when it came time to actually install Breaking Ground at the Waterworks, it surged back to the forefront. “In presenting the work now, it’s come back full circle to that idea of the cyclical nature of boom towns and their pathway through history,” she told me, “and that’s represented by these industrial remnants at places like the Waterworks.”

We published transcripted excerpts from that interview while the exhibition was being presented, but I want to reflect on Breaking Ground again now because, here at the halfway point of this year, it stands out as having been one of the few audiovisual experiences that’s left a deep and lasting impression on me thus far. Yet that’s not to suggest that this is “cinema,” or even that it’s “expanded cinema” in the fine-art sense of the phrase—in fact it’s defiantly not, at least, not literally, because Lyman’s installation of the photographs specifically precludes such classification.

“The photography was never translated into video, very intentionally,” she told me, as we discussed the proper term for what to call the succession of photographs displayed by the projectors (loops, perhaps?). “I never conceived of this particular work as a film,” she continued. “But I was talking to somebody recently, and she said, it doesn’t sound like photography, it sounds like a film. And, well, I guess it is kind of like a film, if you smashed a film with a hammer and its various parts fled to different corners of the room. And then, you enter. It’s important to me to bring the body into the experience.”

Breaking Ground resists easy classification. And you could say the same of the artist who created it. Lyman has been working regularly in the film industry for well over a decade, and in that time she’s practiced a very diverse selection of crafts. She began in sound recording (even pitching in on Andrew Bujalski’s seminal Allston-set Funny Ha Ha [2002]), then worked as sound mixer and/ or camera operator on various projects, leading up to some work as a producer/cinematographer for nonfiction television programs (Boston Med [2010] and NY Med [2012]).

During this same period, Lyman worked on her own

20

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short films—some of them, including One of These that brought you over in the first place. Now imagine Mornings [2009], played at festivals—while also devoting all that compounded by the fact that other people are her free time to still photography. It would be that in the hall too, doing the same thing, creating fresh latter practice to which she deferred in documenting obstructions just by weaving their own path through the Bakken oil boom, a project that she dedicated many the projector-laden exhibition (“I like people’s shadows years to, often by embedding herself in a manner not and the way their bodies interact with the imagery and totally unlike that of a photojournalist. And in fact some become part of it,” Lyman told me), thus forcing you to images presented within Breaking Ground have been make even more readjustments in their wake (“There’s presented as journalism before—they can be found this idea here, of a collapse between past and present, published under Lyman’s name by outlets including into one landscape, one set of imagery, that could be the Guardian, and some of the statements you hear in past, present, future,” she also said, “and that we then are the exhibit’s audio channel are quoted verbatim in the wandering, and inhabiting, this landscape together”). articles that accompany those photographs. Yet Breaking This is a dense and urgent work grounded in a highly Ground itself, as presented, feels extremely far removed specific sociopolitical context, and furthermore, one that from the practice of journalism. For me, even the subject makes room for the larger historical contexts suggested of the photographs seemed to slip into the background, at its margins. And yet that all seems to fall away in especially in retrospect. What remains instead is the face of its grand formalist gesture: an uncanny something primally experiential. What remains is a vivid fusion between the shots projected on the walls and the memory of how the space was laid out and of how I shadows cast by the people looking at them. traveled through it.

For Lyman, who’s recently served as a Harvard Film So if the exhibit does succeed in “bring[ing] the body Study Center fellow (2016-2017, 2017-2018), the next step into the experience” (as it did for me), then it does so is finding new paths for the Breaking Ground series itself. by relying on the various elements of Lyman’s craft and An iteration of the installation is currently on view at by refracting them against each other. We might refer Living Arts in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where it’s being presented to Breaking Ground as multi-channel mixed-media as part of a larger group exhibition until mid-July. And in installation art—and it uses the possibilities offered by August, Lyman will begin a residency at the University of those mixes in ways I found deeply insightful, even just Buffalo, courtesy of the school’s Creative Arts Initiative, within the context of the installation itself. Each of the which will allow her to continue working on projects projectors displays a loop of photographs that relate to related to Breaking Ground (and to create yet another a specific topic within the larger chosen subject (one installation project specific to that particular site). Last display focuses on the “man camps” where oil industry month I received an update from Lyman, from Tulsa, and laborers find relatively affordable housing; another it once again returned to this deeply intrinsic link at the depicts the sex workers that labor in the spaces adjacent heart of this work—that being the connection between to the oil industry; another depicts the protests at her own artwork and the venues in which it’s been Standing Rock and some of the lodging used by activists exhibited. “I am convinced that the experience of taking living there), which allows for one to find their own this piece around the country will become a part of the “narrative” or rhythm simply by choosing their own path work,” she wrote me, “some ultimate form that it will through the space. The photographs themselves have take.” not been edited to fit onto the architecture, so the corners of frames are often lost into the labyrinthian pipes of the antiquated machines, which gives you ample reason to circle around in search of new perspectives.

Meanwhile each of the six audio channels plays out its own succession of clips, with the statements usually loosely correlating with the subject of a nearby photography loop. And with all that going on, your overall experience then becomes one of constant readjustment: You may shift around one engine to better see a photograph being projected onto it, then hear something unexpected nearby and move to investigate, only to happen upon another BREAKING GROUND EXHIBIT AT WATERWORKS MUSEUM. loop of photography PHOTOGRAPHS BY NICK MCKINNEY. REPRINTED COURTESY THE ARTIST. that could even recontextualize the sound

JOEL KIM BOOSTER COMEDY

HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

Comedian breaks down his workout regimen, dating habits

BY DENNIS MALER @DEADAIRDENNIS

I hate being late. Not to my full-time desk job, because I hate going there, but to important things like interviews.

I’ve had a pretty good record of meeting with or calling comedians exactly on time. Until this most recent one.

The publicist for Joel Kim Booster had rescheduled the date and time for this call seven times. Finally, after we settled on an appointment, I missed it by half an hour because I went for a hike as “exercise” in the woods and got lost. When I did get to call him backstage at Bonnaroo, I thought we could commiserate about a mutual hatred for working out, at least in addition to the usual stuff about his being a successful adopted gay Asian comedian, but I was wrong. Instead I got a very detailed explanation of his workout habits and routines, along with stories about some of Booster’s more embarrassing moments.

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Joel Kim Booster Conan, Comedy Central Thursday - Saturday DIG5 code valid on ALL SHOWS.

COMING SOON Mick Foley: Twenty Years of Hell Tour

As a comedian on the road, is working out important to you?

It’s very important to me. I find one of my two favorite things to do to sort of get a sense of a town is go to a nonchain gym wherever I am. Work out there, and I also usually try to find the closest gay bar. Especially in a small town, like where I am right now in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, these are the gems of gay bars. When you’re in a smaller town, there’s usually like one gay bar in five counties. So there’s a real sense of community that you sort of miss when you’re in a larger city because there’s so many gay bars and so many different subgroups within the gay community. It’s really nice to go to these small towns and find these gay bars where it is like the the hub of activity in a 100-mile radius.

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The Tonight Show, Girl Code, NBC Jun 28-30 DIG5 code valid on all shows – except June 23, 8 pm.

Being on the road a lot, is it difficult maintaining relationships? Is it better to maintain shorter relationships?

I haven’t been in a relationship in so long, and I think because it’s definitely harder. I’m gone every two weekends. It’s tough, especially when you are based in a major city. Attention spans are short, and there’s a lot of people and options for them. If you’re not there and you’re not putting in the work, they’ll move elsewhere, and I found that happened to me a lot. That’s why I think a lot of my straight comedian friends are dating other comedians, because you have to find somebody who understands the schedule and the lifestyle.

Frank Santorelli w/ Orlando Baxter + Peter Martin Jul 5 + 6 DIG5 code valid on ALL SHOWS.

What influenced you to do standup comedy?

I never had dreams or aspirations to be a comedian when I was growing up. It wasn’t until probably after college even that I thought it was something that I had to offer to the world. I’ve always been funny or people have told me that I’d been funny. I’ve always liked to make people laugh. It’s pretty standard growing up in a town where you’re different, whether that be as an Asian or as a gay student aid.

It is because of that defense mechanism to sort of deflect from the fact that you’re different, and to sort of use it in a way that makes people socially comfortable around you. I think most kids who are different develop that, and I think that’s where a lot of my comedic instincts come from.

Brooks Wheelan

Saturday Night Live, Comedy Central’s The Half Hour Jul 7 + 8 DIG5 code valid on ALL SHOWS.

Did you feel that there wasn’t any representation for you, either as a Korean, a gay man, or as being adopted in media?

Margaret Cho was a huge outlier. And when I say that, I didn’t ever see myself in her career when I was a teenager. I remember seeing zz for the first time. That was a huge moment for me because I’d never seen someone like myself represented on television. And it really does have an effect on you when you’re a little kid. The fact is we haven’t really seen Asian families on TV until Fresh Off the Boat. Which is why I also remember that Cinderella reboot ABC did with Brandy and the Asian prince.

Moments like those are some of the clearest memories I have of growing up. Seeing those two pieces of entertainment for the first time was a full paradigm shift for me.

Seeing those two things made me want to be in entertainment.

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

Check out the unedited conversation by downloading the podcast at deadairdennis.com/ podcast. And for a full listing of all the comedy shows in Boston visit bostoncomedyshows. com. >>JOEL KIM BOOSTER. THU 6.21–SAT 6.23 AT LAUGH BOSTON, 425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON. NEWS TO US

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BLOWN AWAY SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET I am a 24-year-old straight guy who recently broke up with my girlfriend of more than four years. One of the reasons we broke up was a general lack of sexually compatibility. She had a particular aversion to oral sex—both giving and receiving. I didn’t get a blowjob the whole time we were together. Which brings me to why I am writing: One of my closest friends, “Sam,” is a gay guy.

Shortly after breaking up with my girlfriend, I was discussing my lack of oral sex with Sam and he said he’d be willing to “help me out.” I agreed, and Sam gave me an earth-shattering blowjob. I was glad to get some and had no hang-ups about a guy sucking me. Since then, Sam has blown me three more times. My problem is I am starting to feel guilty and worry I am using Sam. He’s a very good buddy, and I’m concerned this lopsided sexual arrangement might be bad for our friendship. Sam knows I am not into guys and I’m never going to reciprocate, and I feel like this is probably not really fair to him. But these are literally the only blowjobs I’ve received since I was a teenager. What should I do?

Totally Have Reservations Over Advantage Taking Only one person knows how Sam feels about this “lopsided sexual arrangement,” THROAT, and it isn’t me—it’s Sam. Zooming out for a second: People constantly ask me how the person they’re fucking or fisting or flogging feels about all the fucking or fisting or flogging they’re doing. Guys ask me why a woman ghosted them, and women ask me if their boyfriend is secretly gay. And while I’m perfectly happy to speculate, I’m not a mind reader. Which means I have no way of knowing for sure why that woman ghosted you or if your boyfriend is gay— or in your case, THROAT, how Sam feels about the four norecip blowjobs he’s given you.

Only Sam knows.

And that’s why I wrote you back, THROAT, and asked you for Sam’s contact information. Since you were clearly too afraid to ask Sam yourself (most likely for fear the blowjobs would stop), I offered to ask Sam on your behalf.

I wasn’t serious—it was my way of saying, “You should really ask Sam.” But you sent me Sam’s contact info, and a few minutes later I was chatting with Sam. “Yes, I have been sucking my straight friend’s cock,” Sam said to me. “And I am flattered he told you I was good at it. That’s an ego booster!”

My first question for Sam: Is he one of those gay guys who get off on “servicing” straight guys?

“I’ve never done anything with a straight guy before this,” said Sam. “So, no, I’m not someone who is ‘into servicing straight guys.’ I have only ever dated and hooked up with gay guys before!”

So why offer to blow THROAT? “I didn’t know until after he broke up with his girlfriend that he hadn’t gotten a blowjob the whole time they were together—four years!” Sam said.

“When I told him I’d be happy to help him out, I was joking. I swear I wasn’t making a pass at my straight friend! But there was this long pause, and then he got serious and said he’d be into it. I wondered for a minute if it would be weird for me to blow my friend, and there was definitely a bit of convincing each other that we were serious. When he started taking his clothes off, I thought, ‘So this is going to happen.’ It was not awkward after. We even started joking about it right away. I have sucked him off four more times since then.”

For those of you keeping score at home: Either THROAT lost count of the number of times Sam has blown him—THROAT said Sam has blown him three more times after that first blowjob—or THROAT got a fifth blowjob in the short amount of time that elapsed between sending me his letter and putting me in touch with Sam. So does this lopsided sexual arrangement—blowing a straight boy who’s never going to blow him—bother Sam? “I suppose it is a ‘lopsided sexual arrangement,’” said Sam. “But I don’t mind. I really like sucking dick and I’m really enjoying sucking his dick. He has a really nice dick! And from my perspective, we’re both having fun. And, yes, I’ve jacked off thinking about it after each time I sucked him. I know— now—that he thinks it is a bit unfair to me. But I don’t feel that way at all.”

So there is something in it for Sam. You get the blowjobs, THROAT, and Sam gets the spank-bankable memories. And Sam assumes that at some point, memories are all he’ll have.

“I assume he will eventually get into a relationship with a woman again, and our arrangement will end,” said Sam. “I only hope nothing is weird between us in the future because of what has happened in the past few weeks.”

22

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On the Lovecast, what makes a kinkster a kinkster?: savagelovecast.com

COMEDY EVENTS THU 06.21 - SAT 06.23

JOEL KIM BOOSTER @ LAUGH BOSTON

Joel Kim Booster is a Chicago bred, Brooklyn based comedian, writer and playwright. Born in Jeju, South Korea, Joel was adopted at a young age and moved to the southwest suburbs of Chicago. Both homeschooled and evangelical, Joel has read the bible literally dozens of times, but has no idea where the state of Oregon is on a map. As a comedian he has appeared on Conan, Comedy Central’s The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail and @midnight, Logo’s Comedy Cabaret and truTV’s Comedy Knockout.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8PM & 10PM | $25-$29 THU 06.21

QUEER QOMEDY HOUR @ IMPROVBOSTON

Featuring: Jai Demeule, Isha Patnaik, Jonathan Thomas, May Keith, Kwasi Mensah, & David Thomas.

Hosted by Chloé Cunha

40 PROSPECT ST. CAMBRIDGE | 7PM | $5 THU 06.21

DON’T TELL BOSTON (BACK BAY)

Comedy’s Worst Kept Secret.

South End Soccer is a youth soccer league that provides free programs to over 1,200 Boston youth annually. They work to bring together diverse communities through soccer, and break the barriers of economics and logistics that hinder urban youth playing sports.

To purchase tickets you can go to our website: http://www.donttellcomedy.com.

BACK BAY | 7:30PM | $25 FRI 06.22 - SAT 06.23

JIAYONG LI @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

Jiayong Li bid farewell to his family in Beijing and embarked on a journey of mathematical study at MIT. Along the way, he came upon stand-up comedy, and started delivering his cerebral material in a calm and comfortable voice. In 2017, he was selected as one of the New Faces at Montreal Just for Laughs Festival.

Featuring: Jiayong Li, Will Smalley, Nick Chambers, Shawn Carter, & Emily Ruskowski.

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 SAT 06.23

BACKFAT VARIETY PRESENTS: ONE LINER MADNESS @ GREAT SCOTT 64 Boston comedians will compete in this fast-paced, oneliner joke contest. Comedians advance based on audience applause, and the structure is a single elimination, March Madness style bracket.

Hosted by Emily Winter

1222 COMM AVE., ALLSTON | 7:00PM | $12 SUN 06.24

STAND-UP & BEER TASTING @ BENT WATER BREWERY Featuring: Tricia Auld, Joe Begley, Amanda Cee, Andrew Della Volpe, Tom Kelly, & Kevin M. Quigley.

Hosted by Josh Filipowski

180 COMMERCIAL ST., UNIT 18, LYNN | 6PM |$25 MON 06.25

MONDAY NIGHT COMEDY IN THE SUPPER CLUB @ CAPO

Featuring: Zach Brazao, Deadair Dennis Maler, & Kindra Lansburg.

Hosted by Will Noonan

443 WEST BROADWAY BOSTON | 8PM | FREE

Lineup & shows to change without notice. For more info on everything Boston Comedy visit BostonComedyShows.com Bios & writeups pulled from various sources, including from the clubs & comics…

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