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SEP 27, 2018 - OCT 04, 2018 BUSINESS PUBLISHER John Loftus ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone Jason Pramas SALES ASSOCIATES Christopher Bent Victoria Botana FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digboston.com BUSINESS MANAGER John Loftus

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 Casey Campbell, Morgan Hume, Daniel Kaufman, Jacob Schick

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ON THE COVER PHOTO OF OLLIE WEST AS HAMNET BY GIANMARCO BRESADOLA, PRINTED COURTESY OF ARTSEMERSON. CHECK OUT OUR REVIEW OF THE SHOW BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS IN THIS WEEK’S THEATER SECTION. ©2018 DIGBOSTON IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. CANNOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. ONE COPY OF DIGBOSTON IS AVAILABLE FREE TO MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS AND VISITORS EACH WEEK. ANYONE REMOVING PAPERS IN BULK WILL BE PROSECUTED ON THEFT CHARGES TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.

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I guess this is the inevitable Boston Voyager column that I knew I would write sooner or later. Because from the first time that I laid my bulging jealous eyes on its addictive cookie-cutter interviews, then clicked around to fast discover how its parent operation uses the exact same promote every single artist in the region tactic in multiple cities, I sensed there was some kind of scam in play. Sad as it is to say, it simply seemed demonstrably unlikely that a national news operation that pays close attention to up-and-coming creatives could be an actual above-board thing.

I know I’m not alone. Voyager’s nonstop hyperlocal headlines are a constant curiosity among many of us in the content business. It was only a matter of time until somebody pulled back the control panel and saw the journalistic algorithmic cyborg magic show behind the wheel. And for casting that first stone, I give serious kudos to Reddit user DiscoRace, who took the initial plunge. Here’s a sample of their research, which has now been bolstered by a small but sleuthy online platoon of armchair investigators: People have had very personal information about themselves published and not edited. One person literally had the words “do not publish this is personal info” and where they lived … That to me is dangerous, that there’s no one at the wheel here.

Said groupthink exposé triggered a miniature online mob, with readers and artists alike slamming the Voyager. Others came to its defense, including someone claiming to be from the publication who, in my mind, offered believable proof that it’s not a bot-run site pilfering personal info to sell off to hackers. Personally, I didn’t know how I felt about the whole thing until reading the following Facebook post by music promoter Richard Bouchard: Boston Voyager is run by a few developers in an office somewhere making bots to collect interviews in various cities so that they can create content and charge advertising revenue. Unlike every other site on the internet, where eschewing advertising money is the norm.

If the Boston Globe isn’t gonna profile artists in this city, I’m fine with BV doing it. Maybe it shows outlets staffed by humans that there’s value in that sort of thing.

Amen, brother. I couldn’t agree more, and that is why the Dig, not entirely unlike the Voyager in some regard, bends over backward to mine material and speak with Bostonians who create under the radar. I cherish the time that our former music editor Sean L. Maloney requested an interview with a bondage punk musician only days after the artist started a Bandcamp page; caught off guard, the obscure bedroom leather rocker thought his friends were fucking with him. That, dear reader, is what local media is (supposed to be) all about. Not endless coverage of the Wahlbergs and Tom Brady.

For those who still insist on being critical of Voyager, I understand your anger. But if you are expressing that hostility on social media, I simply want to note that you are similarly working to democratize reporting with each post you write. The Voyager may be generic in its questioning of Boston doers, but ultimately it’s doing what needs to be done, starting with paying attention to artists who lack the publicists or visibility to get covered in larger outlets.

So long as pics, info, and bios shared by the participants aren’t used in phoney personals for Russian fetish sites, I’m going to keep reading and sharing when people I respect are in their spotlight.

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NEWS+OPINION FIRE SALE PT. 1 NEWS TO US

Even for weapons dealers who have flouted state laws, there is major money to be made by selling munitions to police in Massachusetts

BY CHRIS FARAONE AND CURTIS WALTMAN

Mass Attorney General Maura Healey is well known for taking tough liberal positions on gun control. It’s a hardearned reputation by multiple measures, as the AG has investigated and fined scofflaw arms dealers, spoken loudly in the wake of mass shootings, and even led attorneys general from other states in urging Congress to strengthen national safety regulations.

In response to her actions and grandstanding, Healey’s been a target of lawsuits brought by gun rights advocates, as well as protests online and in real life. In 2016, hundreds of Second Amendment activists, many with the Massbased Gun Owners Action League, demonstrated outside of the State House after the attorney general moved to ban “copycat” semiautomatic assault rifles.

In addition to the penalties and rolled heads she and other prosecutors have accumulated in pursuing rogue dealers of firearms and gray market modifications, Healey’s office also monitors gun flow in law enforcement channels, a unique labyrinthine beast in its own right.

The state spends millions every year replenishing and bolstering its arsenals, plus adding advanced equipment and technology. As do municipal police and other taxpayer-funded public safety outfits.

These purchases often have little to no oversight beyond the procuring departments, and have as a result spurred certain impropriety; in one case, the Boston Globe first reported that Healey is investigating “allegations that … three troopers sold about 500 used state police guns to a Greenfield firearms dealer in 2015 on behalf of the department,” then “allegedly received nearly two dozen of those weapons as personal gifts.”

That ongoing spending scandal has been reilluminated as the state police also come under fire for overtime

State agencies sought

proposals from makers and distributors of everything from practice ammo and targets, to handguns, silencers, tasers, tear gas, chemical munitions, pepper ball launchers, dart guns, gas masks, and ballistic blankets.

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discrepancies between real hours worked and payments to dozens of lieutenants and captains, and with the media and public knowing that the brass ignored warnings about shenanigans that reportedly surfaced in an internal department audit. But even as prosecutors impugn payroll on one front and eye gun sales on another, private vendors and police-side purchasers of military gear have proceeded with business as usual. The Greenfield dealer still embroiled in the aforementioned buyback controversy has sold hundreds of thousands of dollars in goods to Mass in the last three years, while other active sellers include a shop in Worcester that the AG recently caught selling guns that are banned in this state.

Since the beginning of this year, our team at the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism has examined hundreds of state purchasing agreements, for everything from heavy crime-fighting equipment to consumables for laser printers. Of the many contracts that caught our attention, the firepower free-for-all unpacked herein (SP16AMMO-X85, abbreviated as AMMO in following references) stands out as especially dubious, with entities on all sides operating in an unchecked fashion despite being on the radar of state prosecutors. Nearly three years into the AMMO arrangement, a malleable open call that allows for multiple contracts to be approved under it, vendors have leveraged the opportunity to make millions of dollars off the state. For most of those procurements, there was no competitive bidding. And the process is far from transparent.

AMMO comes up for a one-year extension on Oct 31. To date, participating agencies have already rung receipts that double their allotted $1.5 million budget.

Unless somebody or something interrupts the supply chain, it’s likely that the spending spree will carry on indefinitely.

SELLER’S MARKET In September 2015, the Massachusetts State Police, along with the Department of Correction and the Environmental Police, announced that it had plans to solicit “bidders for the acquisition of firearms, ammunition, less than lethal munitions, and related training, accessories, and services/ maintenance.” A follow-up “request for response” notice was sent the following month to suppliers of “Public Safety, Law Enforcement & Protection” equipment. In this unveiling of AMMO, the participating state agencies sought proposals from makers and distributors of everything from practice ammo and targets, to handguns, silencers, tasers, tear gas, chemical munitions, pepperball launchers, dart guns, gas masks, and ballistic blankets. For anything that didn’t fit in those parameters, the authors included the catchall “use of force equipment.”

The procurement process is complex in Mass, as is the case in any public realm where millions—or for larger states, billions—of dollars are spent annually on everything from software, to vehicles, to catering and concrete. In order to help streamline thousands of transactions each

year (there are currently more than 2,500 contracts in the system), the state’s Operational Services Division (OSD), a department of the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, manages CommBuys, a massive dating site of sorts for approved private sector vendors and prospective buyers from state agencies, municipalities, and select nonprofits that apply for access to the clearinghouse.

A lot of bulk state purchasing is done directly through OSD, with its deputies facilitating everything from publicizing the announcement, to overseeing competitive bidding where applicable, to the selection process. Many software contracts, for instance, are managed by OSD, which connects departments to qualified suppliers. In such situations, among other safeguards, OSD designates strategic sourcing services teams (SSSTs), which are structured as deliberative bodies “composed of members drawn from departments and eligible public entities that have an interest or expertise in particular commodity and service categories” and that help make decisions about procurement. A sourcing team assigned to parse bids for a contract relative to school bus window replacement, for example, includes stakeholders from the departments of transportation and recreation, among others.

Whereas so-called statewide contracts as described above have direct OSD oversight, “nonstatewide” contracts simply use the CommBuys portal as a pass-through in procuring goods and services. For AMMO, the latest mass police solicitation of guns and other combat tackle like pepper projectiles and sound suppressors, it is solely the participating departments that weigh options and execute agreements. A review of publicly available and mined materials related to purchases stemming from arms-related contracts suggest that procedures of such ponderous proportion proceeding for years without input from a third-party administrator can lead to a lack of transparency as well as other concerns including but not limited to: • According to the secretary of the Commonwealth’s Guide to the Massachusetts Public Records Law, almost all bids, documents, and quotes on contracts are supposed to be made publicly available after the deadline for receipt of proposals expires. None of the few possible exemptions to the rule apply to departmental gun procurement; nevertheless, details about manufacturers and models, as well as volume and cost, are frequently redacted or omitted altogether from public documents. This has long been protocol; when MSP ordered 2,500 new pistols from the Springfieldbased Smith & Wesson in 2011, the department expressly withheld detailed pricing information to the consternation of reporters, activists, and good government groups.

• Whereas guidelines for “statewide” OSD-run contracts require buyers to “obtain at a minimum at least three quotes through the requisition process … to determine which contractor can provide the best value for the equipment/supplies/related repairs and services being purchased,” that rule is “for Commonwealth executive agencies [like OSD] only.” “Other entities [like MSP] do not have a quote requirement but are encouraged to get multiple quotes to ensure the best possible pricing on contract.” It’s like an honor system for defense contractors.

FIRE SALE PT. 1 continued on pg. 6•

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FIRE SALE PT. 1 continued from pg. 4 Of 18 vendor responses to the open AMMO solicitation that were publicly available to use as a lens for this assessment, all but one, which failed to meet basic eligibility qualifications, appear to have been accepted. It is difficult to ascertain what products were bought and for how much; some documents on CommBuys are blank, incomplete, or missing signatures completely, while spaces designated for bid tabulations and comparison pricing between various vendors are empty. Still, there are scattered clues that point to some particulars of the procurements.

This trend continues to unfold in Mass, even as more researchers arrive at the conclusion that the bulking up of local forces is for naught, or worse. A paper released in August by the National Academy of Sciences argues that “militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation.” The study concludes: “(SWAT) teams are more often deployed in communities of color, and—contrary to claims by police administrators—provide no detectable benefits,” noting that “seeing militarized police in news reports erodes opinion toward law enforcement.”

While such findings “suggest that curtailing militarized policing may be in the interest of both police and citizens,” that message hasn’t stuck in Massachusetts. The AMMO funnel is a prime example.

The open contract was supposed to total $1.5 million over its initial three-year term (2015-2018), or double that ($3 million) if it’s extended three more years through 2021, as is possible through optional one-year extensions starting this Oct 31. In practice, the state police, with some help from the Department of Correction and Environmental Police, spent more than $3 million—twice the initial allotment—in just the first three years, from 2015 to mid-2018.

Police don’t always get to process their own spending without oversight. Another comparably large umbrella contract MSP uses to purchase goods and services is managed by OSD, with strategically assigned stakeholders from various agencies making decisions.

In that case, certain pertinent information is publicly available—some quantities and dollar amounts are even listed. But unlike the AMMO solicitation, the procurement helped by OSD specifically excludes all “firearms, ammunitions” and “related training products.”

For the most part, it’s only when it comes to guns that law enforcement entities can buy whatever they want without any outside scrutiny.

Not that scrutiny and oversight always work as intended. Despite some semblance of checks and balances, one law enforcement contract run by OSD (abbreviated herein as FIRE), which stretches through the end of this year with an option to extend through 2020, appears to be deeply compromised. Three of the FIRE team members who were chosen to represent state police interests—Robert Outwater, Michael Wilmot, and Paul Wosny—are the same troopers who are being investigated by the AG for receiving weapons from a contractor in Greenfield.

In the meantime, as was reported in July, Wosny, a lieutenant commander with the MSP’s armorer’s section, has retired. As has Wilmot, who was an armory trooper.

Outwater, it recently came out, is cooperating with authorities. His attorney told MassLive, “The armorer’s division was completely mismanaged by the command

“Essentially, he had the opportunity

because he did

the purchasing.”

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staff. … In typical fashion the state police allowed the major and the captain to move on with their lives and with their pension, and my client now is being investigated.”

We filed more than 15 records inquiries for clarity on these contracts, with MSP, DOC, the AG, and the Environmental Police all receiving requests. So far, the only office to return any information at all was the AG, which mostly sent documents that were already public.

The state police failed to furnish all requested records and did not return specific questions and follow-ups before our stated deadline.

THE DEALERS There’s an excavation business south of Boston that isn’t allowed to contract with Mass until 2023. The demolition business was caught stealing wages from employees and landed on the Mass attorney general’s list of barred contractors. It’s a similar story for several construction and other small companies that were caught breaking various laws; many, for example, failed to properly insure their workers. At least five state agencies and offices keep such compendiums of businesses and corresponding individuals that aren’t welcome to bid on state gigs—among them, the attorney general’s office, Mass Department of Transportation, and the Executive Office of Administration and Finance. None of the lists, however, include weapons vendors that have run afoul of Mass watchdogs and prosecutors.

Some businesses the Commonwealth procures guns and other heavy cop equipment from have recently been looked at by the state attorney general, while certain companies have landed in headlines due to their inadequate transparency. Of the many vendors of militarized goods and services that Mass does business with, there are several interesting characters and contractors with noteworthy backgrounds.

the potentially limited accuracy of such weapons.”

In December 2016, the owner of the same Worcester-based range and retailer entered into an agreement with the AG that required him “to pay $10,000 in attorney’s fees … along with an additional $25,000 in penalties for the illegal sale of Glock handguns, which will not be collected if The Gun Parlor complies with the settlement for two years.”

Despite that agreed-upon probationary period, according to the Massachusetts open checkbook, a resource that’s ostensibly intended to increase public transparency (but frequently lacks info on gun sales), the Mass DOC recently spent more than $25,000 on an unknown quantity of unlisted items from the Worcester retailer.

• In 2010, DOC Lieutenant Gary Mendes was indicted by a Plymouth County grand jury and charged with three counts of larceny and two counts of procurement fraud. Already facing prior charges for illegally securing guns and other war toys for himself, it was additionally revealed that while serving on a committee that steered buying decisions, Mendes entered an unholy union with a vendor that landed a multimillion dollar contract with the DOC. As then-Attorney General Martha Coakley said at a press conference after staties assigned to her office arrested and arraigned him in 2009: “We allege that Lieutenant Mendes took advantage of his opportunity as head of procurements for the DOC in essentially stealing over $100,000 of equipment for personal use. … Essentially, he had the opportunity because he did the purchasing.”

Mendes pleaded guilty in 2011 and was placed on probation with a suspended prison sentence. In a public statement, Coakley noted, “This conduct will not be tolerated and our office will continue to prosecute and investigate these crimes of public corruption.” As for the vendor in question, which went unnamed in media accounts and AG press releases on the matter, Jurek Brothers were not criminally charged. In the time since the MendesDOC ordeal, the Greenfield dealer has done more than $2 million in business with Mass under various contracts. Several transactions have come since the Globe revealed in 2016 that the business reportedly gave free guns to troopers who were responsible for firearm purchasing. With a grand jury investigation reportedly pending on that matter, Jurek still does business with the state.

• Firearm enthusiasts may know Camfour, Inc. as the giant behind EZGun, the supplier’s simple “online system for ordering and account management.”

Residents of the Pioneer Valley, however, may primarily know the Westfield-based company from the noted philanthropy and influence of Peter Picknelly, a major investor behind Camfour who is also the CEO of Peter Pan Bus Lines. Two years ago, the Springfield Republican reported that Picknelly successfully lobbied against a proposed crossCommonwealth rail study, infuriating transit equity boosters.

Like Springfield-to-Boston rail advocates, anti-gun crusaders also dislike Picknelly; though not the direct seller, Camfour distributed the Bushmaster that Adam Lanza used to massacre nine people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.

Families of the fallen and one survivor attempted to sue Camfour and others for vending a weapon they argued has no place in a civilian setting, but a judge dismissed the case in 2016. In the time since, Bay State public agencies including the Berkshire County Sheriff’s Office and MassDOT have continued to work with the Westfield contractor.

Asked why a company that flouts the law would be permitted to conduct business with Mass, a spokesperson for the AG noted that the office has limited statutory authority over debarment and only does so in cases where public construction or independent contractor laws are violated.

Thomas Merrigan, a former member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Council who represents Jurek Brothers in his private practice, refused to comment on his client’s case, but told the Globe in July that there has “been no wrongdoing” by his client.

• An anonymous tip made in 2015 to the AG and the Worcester ATF office claimed the Worcester-based “Gun Parlor is known for selling non-compliant handguns and large capacity magazines.” After a subsequent investigation of the dealership, Healey’s office reported that “various violations of state law were uncovered, including the sale of … firearms that have not met the statutory safety testing requirements to be listed on the state’s approved handgun roster.” The AG’s dive also revealed that the Gun Parlor “failed to provide legally mandated safety warnings to customers, did not properly verify that handguns sold to law enforcement and military personnel were being purchased for official duties, and sold handguns with a barrel length shorter than three inches to consumers without first providing disclosures required under state regulations about

GUN MONEY Earlier this year, US Sen. Ed Markey and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh jumped on the political pile after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In headline-grabbing tandem, they proposed a bill at the federal level that would encourage other states to follow the Commonwealth’s “model” for gun control.

On the ground in Mass, however, things are hardly calm or steady on the firearm and law enforcement fronts.

In her role, Healey has continued to make good on promises dating back to her first year in office, when she informed the state’s 350 gun dealers that she was going to tighten enforcement of consumer protection regulations established in the late ’90s. The AG’s letter led to more than 2,500 grudge buys in a single day and

many more over the following months; despite such reactions and protest, Healey has endured, launching criminal investigations, and recently calling on Republican Gov. Charlie Baker to show more spine in handling his state police force.

For his response, Baker has taken rhetorical stands against graft. In an appearance on the WGBH show Boston Public Radio, the governor addressed the state police scandals head-on. “Stuff that goes on on my watch belongs to me,” he said. “Once issues are raised we will do whatever we can to fix them and address them.” In another interview, Baker acknowledged that “there’s a lot of work to be done here to polish this one up.”

Dennis Galvin, a retired MSP major who heads the education-focused Massachusetts Association for Professional Law Enforcement, has pushed for Baker to convene a “blue-ribbon commission” to investigate the state police, while members of the House of Representatives took action and provided funding for MSP oversight. Following multiple scandals that cost the Commonwealth millions of dollars, in their most recent budget state lawmakers included $300,000 for a unit, overseen by the inspector general, that will “monitor the quality, efficiency, and integrity of operations, organizational structure, and management functions and seek to prevent, detect, and correct fraud, waste, and abuse in the expenditure of public funds.”

Whoever ends up looking into contracts such as AMMO may want to peruse the Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) records of gun vendors, as well as the secretary of state’s lobbying reports. While the AG moves to moderate the sale of firearms in Mass, more conservative officials, from small towns out west all the way up to the governor’s office, are gorging on campaign gifts from distributors and dealers. Together, executives from military supply outfits (and their spouses and employees) have given pols hundreds of thousands of reasons to tread lightly.

In the scope of just the AMMO vendors, stakeholders from the Westfield-based Camfour have contributed thousands to Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito since 2015. Picknelly family members alone have written checks for more than $20,000 combined. The Arizona-based Axon Enterprise, which sells tasers and surveillance cameras among other items, has spent $30,000 lobbying on Beacon Hill so far this year and has executed contracts worth approximately $2.2 million with Mass under AMMO. The owner and managers of the Gun Parlor also gave to Polito and Baker, but in the time that they were under investigation by Healey, they neglected to accurately disclose their company affiliation. One salesman apparently listed his place of employment as “Gau Parlor,” effectively obscuring the donation on the public record. On the same day, another salesperson gave $500 to Polito; under the employer line, the OCPF record says “Gem Parlor.”

More than any other public entity in Mass, MSP has been repeatedly exposed for improprieties and faced blistering public and media scrutiny. Precedents, meanwhile, offer little promise that new revelations about purchasing, these or any other, will yield smarter spending. Past troubles with overtime abuse, for example, forced state police brass to seek fixes and solutions; but whether they deploy their safeguards is another question altogether. As the Associated Press reported about MSP wage corruption, cruisers were already equipped with devices that could have helped to verify worked hours, but troopers and their union resisted using the GPS function until the recent scandal surfaced and pressure mounted.

Offering an MSP response to those unsavory developments, in April State Police Col. Kerry Gilpin told reporters, “It is clear that the actions of members of this agency have threatened [the public’s] trust.”

Promising gradual, eventual reform, she added, “These changes will not happen overnight.”

In a state wracked by misconduct and abuse, that’s one thing residents of Mass can count on.

ke a m , r a our This ye y E R O T LL S I W D O rs! e t r a u THE GO q ead h n e e w Hallo

This article was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism as part of an ongoing series on procurement and purchasing in Massachusetts. To see more reporting like this, you can contribute at givetobinj.org.

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www.goodwillmass.org UPPER-RIGHT: FORMER AG MARTHA COAKLEY HOLDS UP A PHOTO OF FORMER DOC LIEUTENANT GARY MENDES. LEFT + BOTTOM: PROTESTERS HOLD SIGNS CONDEMNING AG MAURA HEALEY OUTSIDE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE HOUSE.

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WHY ADVERTISE WITH DIGBOSTON? To support independent journalism and beat back marketing propaganda, for starters

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Many people have taken to loudly bemoaning the supposedly sudden arrival of “fake news” since the 2016 presidential election… while becoming belatedly aware of the accompanying slow decline of print newspapers that are—whatever else one might say about them—the beating heart of American journalism.

Every other kind of news media owes its existence to these “dead tree” publications. Traditional radio and TV news outlets, and every form of digital news operation on the internet, are all possible because print newspapers—most commercial, some nonprofit—have been fielding thousands of reporters in hundreds of cities for decades. Doing the kind of deep ground-level reporting that makes all the hot (and more often shallow) takes on other media possible.

Advertising has been the main source of income for commercial print newspapers since the mid-19th century, and the advent of web-based online advertising blew a vast hole in that revenue stream. Precipitating, in no small part, the downward spiral in their fortunes over the last quarter century.

One result of newspapers shrinking and all too often ceasing to exist has been what one might call the rise of the marketers. With fewer and fewer full-time reporters doing their jobs, marketing firms have leapt to the fore. Offering a flood of “free” content to every conceivable type of news operation. Ceaselessly expanding the empire of the original fake news in the process. A fake news that, make no mistake, has existed for as long as there has been news.

Because rich and powerful institutions have always hired marketers or their equivalents. And marketers—in thrall to whichever institution hires them—are paid to lie to the public. And are therefore the polar opposites of (most) journalists.

Especially journalists at an independent metro newsweekly like DigBoston.

As a journalist-owned, journalist-run newspaper, we send reporters out into the communities we cover every week in search of information that’s as close to whatever truth may be happening as it can be. We then do our damnedest to faithfully report what we observe to our audience.

So, we can say with certainty that no human organization is good all of the time. Least of all the big corporations that run our society. But big corporations are the very institutions that spend the most money on paying marketers to spew propaganda at every level of news media.

And increasingly, understaffed and underfunded news outlets take even this worst of free marketing copy—this disinformation, this fake news—and run it.

Day in and day out. The public, for their part, can be forgiven for having trouble discerning reasonably honest reporting from unreasonably dishonest marketing copy. There’s nothing new about that either. Some people are critical about any news they encounter. Some are not. But marketing has gotten so sophisticated and so pernicious that even the wary have trouble telling the difference between journalism and propaganda.

At DigBoston, our audience doesn’t have to worry about that quandary. We exist to report the news in the public interest. In our own way, and with our own unique broadly left-leaning voice, to be sure. But we take our job very seriously, and we work very hard week in and week out to do it to the best of our collective ability. For 20 years and counting.

Given that, if you know nothing else about us, know this: We do not run the propaganda that paid marketers fill our email inboxes with 24/7. Like this morning’s stupid, stupid example entitled “Wondering about a sponsored post.”

That is, “wondering if you all are brainless enough to run this marketing copy for free and pretend it’s a real article by an independent journalist.” To which my colleague Chris Faraone gave our standard mocking reply, “$2,000 a post”—a price we know no marketer will ever pay.

However, we’re a free newspaper. As such, even more than those bigs that have a number of different ways to make money, we rely almost completely on advertising to keep publishing.

We offer advertisers a lot for their money, even in today’s viciously competitive media market. Our ads are obviously cheaper than larger publications. More importantly, though, they reach people who read, who support music and the arts, who are tastemakers, and who… patronize our advertisers.

Because of that fact, our existing advertisers love us. And we love them back.

But we need more of them. We need to grow our news operation if we’re going to give the many communities in Boston and environs that we cover the constant attention they deserve. To do that we need to be able to pay more full-time reporters, and part-time ones, too. To do that, we need a bigger business staff and more salespeople.

All of which is only possible if more institutions that could advertise with us— all the local businesses and charities who serve the communities we cover—step up and do so.

Rather than spend advertising dollars on marketers who straight-out lie to people and harm our struggling democracy rather than help it.

Folks interested in advertising with DigBoston can email our sales staff at sales@digboston.org.

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THE WORLD ISN’T A SPHERE RUBIK’S NEWS

Cube competition in Boston attracts world’s best WORDS AND PHOTOS BY MORGAN HUME

To most of us, the Rubik’s Cube is just a colorful, plastic puzzle that—no matter how hard you try—is physically impossible to solve. Getting all six sides back to solid colors is a lot trickier than it seems. Although the number of people who can solve the cube is low, the ones who know how to crack the code

often move at a rapid-fire speed.

This phenomena is better known as “speedcubing,” and Boston hosted the RedBull Rubik’s Cube World Championship last Saturday, bringing the best of the cubing community to the Cyclorama.

In 1982, less than a decade after the Rubik’s Cube was created, the first speedcubing world championship was held in Hungary. Ever since then, speedcubers from across the globe have gathered to compete against one another to see who can solve the puzzle the fastest.

At this weekend’s tournament, 50 cubers from over 15 countries battled it out for a $30,000 prize and a snazzy championship ring. Feliks Zemdegs, who has broken multiple world records, and Dana Yi, the fastest female speedcuber in history, proved to be some of the fiercest competition.

Cubers at this tournament competed in one of four categories: female, rescramble mixed, fastest hand, and speedcubing. The goal for all of them was to finish the puzzle as fast as possible, but each category had to follow slightly different rules along the way. For instance, the goal of fastest hand is to solve the puzzle with, you guessed it, one hand. The goal for re-scramble is to match a 3x3x3 cube to another cube that is randomly scrambled. They don’t get to see the cube ahead of time and there are literally quadrillions of ways to scramble a rubix cube. These cubers can find and replicate this exact combination in less than a minute.

The ultimate goal for many speedcubers is to beat their previous records, so the faster they can solve the puzzle, the better. Event organizers claimed cubers make up to 10 moves a second. Whether that’s physically possible or not, the sides appear to be whirling around each other so quickly that the cubes looks like a small orb of light to the typical observer of a competition.

But the ironic part about this need for speed is that Erno Rubik, the inventor of the Rubik’s Cube who also attended the event, said that to him, speed isn’t important. Rubik told DigBoston that he has never timed himself solving the puzzle before because it’s impressive enough to be able to solve the cube at all.

Speedcubing is similar to chess because it’s a mind game that requires players to plan their moves far in advance. Cubers are constantly thinking ahead, and they use different algorithms to help them create a mental game plan. In speedcubing rounds, cubers are given eight seconds to inspect the cube before solving it. That’s enough time for the cuber to plan their first eight moves.

No matter which competitor you watched, the bottom line was that these young people had a unique talent, since many of them were solving the cube in under 10 seconds. It all seems really nerdy, which it definitely is, but once you see it live in action you find yourself thinking, “Wow, I could never do that!”

Although the championship prize was a hefty wad of cash, the competition was all in good fun. Of course it’s upsetting to lose, but the cubers had no hard feelings against one another. There was more sportsmanship on display in the Cyclorama than there is in many professional sports.

Rubik said that back in the day when the cube was in its early stages, he never thought about the possibility of a Rubik’s Cube tournament. Those weren’t the types of questions or ideas he had for the cube’s future. He was focused on finding someone who was able to sell it, which nowadays seems to be the least of his concerns as the speedcuber community grows larger.

The final results from the day-long tournament were that Dana Yi from the United States won the female, Ricky Weiler from Germany won the rescramble mixed, Bill Wang from Canada won the fastest hand, and Feliks Zemdegs from Australia was crowned the speedcubing world champion.

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BERT + ERNIE OPINION

Why can’t puppets be gay?

BY REV. IRENE MONROE

LIVE MUSIC • PRIVATE EVENTS 9/28 & 9/29

Illegally Blind presents

Two nights of Fuzzstival w/The Monsieurs, Rick from Pile, What Cheer? Brigade, Mr. Airplane Man, Corridor, and many more

10/2

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Runaway Brother, Pale Lungs & Butch Baby

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

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Sesame Street’s famous duo of Bert and Ernie first appeared in 1969, the same year as the Stonewall riots, which to the nation’s surprise catapulted the LGBTQ liberation movement. At that time, the idea of partnering these two lovable striped-sweater-wearing puppets as gay was as inconceivable as the idea of legalized same-sex marriage.

But four-plus decades later, with Bert and Ernie’s relationship outliving many heterosexual living arrangements—roommates or married—and mirroring the subtle ways in which LGBTQ couples discreetly went about their lives back in the day, the question of whether the guys are gay is not only apropos, but so, too, is the question of their nuptials.

“They are not gay, they are not straight, they are puppets,” said Gary Knell, president and CEO of Sesame Workshop. “They don’t exist below the waist.”

A funny thing that I’ve learned as a lesbian is that the dominance of heteronormativity in society is always assumed—whether it’s above or below the waists of people or puppets.

Oddly, heteronormativity is also assumed without questions, expected without exception, and explained even in its silence.

But Knell was not entirely truthful in his reply that the puppets are neither gay nor straight.

My favorite Jim Henson Muppet is the over-the-top heterosexual prima donna, femme fatale, and sex siren Miss Piggy. And the love of her life, Kermit the Frog, unwittingly marries her in The Muppets Take Manhattan.

Sesame Street has always moved and grooved with the times. Its concept of “Muppet diplomacy,” a term coined to depict the show’s efforts to educate children around the world, has tackled tough social issues like HIV/AIDS, child obesity, 9/11, and military deployment, to name a few, and has danced and sang with mega artists like Bono, Beyonce, and Justin Bieber.

Is it possible that my “gaydar” is off about Sesame Street? Perhaps. But hasn’t it over the years, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, winked and nodded to the LGBTQ community?

For example, was it mere coincidence how, during Coming Out Month in October 2010, African-American lesbian comedian Wanda Sykes appeared on the show? Sykes is not the only openly LGBTQ person who appeared either. Openly gay guest stars like Neil Patrick Harris played a “shoe fairy,” while will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas sang “What I Am”—a song about self-acceptance, creating an online kerfuffle about its underlying message.

Is it now time for Sesame Street’s under-the-radar winks and nods to the LGBTQ community to be replaced with a full-throated statement of support? The show has a long history of teaching children about diversity and acceptance, so why should the issues impacting LGBTQ children be excluded? Moreover, many of the children watching the show are not only LGBTQ, but so, too, are their parents and households.

In other words, could it be that Sesame Street needs to come out of the closet?

In many ways, their most famous duo has. Bert and Ernie have not only been roommates, but they have also been sleepmates, lying next to each other like any longterm committed couple.

I realize that in a culture that constantly sexualizes the coupling of same-gender relationships as gay, we often label such friendships as “best friends forever” (BFF), which is what Sesame Street producers are stating about Bert and Ernie. In another example, for more than two decades Oprah and her gal pal, Gayle King, editor-at-large for O, The Oprah Magazine, have denied rumors they are lesbians, but instead have publicly stated they are just two sistah-girls being sister-friends.

After 30 years of four-times-a-day phone calls and frequent sightings of Oprah with Gayle, though, the public continues to question their relationship.

“I’m not even kind of a lesbian,” Oprah stated on a Barbara Walters special one time.

“The reason why it irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I’m lying.

That’s No. 1 … No. 2 … why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life.”

I also realize that in constantly labeling same-gender relationships as gay, it diminishes and distorts the romantic relationships we LGBTQ people have with our significant others.

As a matter of fact, constantly labeling same-gender relationships as gay not only wrongly assumes that the only reason for two people of the same gender getting together is for sex, but it also keeps in place the myth of the hypersexual and predatory LGBTQ person.

With that said, Sesame Street is an open classroom for kids, reflecting the times. Samesex marriage is one of the social issues of the day. How will the show explain to children in same-gender families and households why Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog can marry, but Bert and Ernie can’t?

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Mark Saltman, who wrote Bert and Ernie episodes, said that he has always thought of them as gay.

I have too.

TALKING JOINTS MEMO

A FAMILY THAT GROWS TOGETHER Local family-run Riverrun Gardens still fighting for a license

BY MIKE CRAWFORD After receiving city of Newburyport Planning Board approval for a special permit for a small cultivation business in August, it looked like RiverRun Gardens would be one of the first locally owned small applicants to get licensed by the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission.

That was then and this is now.

Today, RiverRun is looking for a new home due to reefer madness, specifically opposition from the business condo association connected to its leased space at the address that received the special permit. So it’s back to step one. “We’re a free agent,” co-owner Ed Desousa told me in answering some questions I threw at him…

I’ve heard you mention no-till organic cultivation. What is that, and what makes your flower different than what I’m smoking from a dispensary now?

[It] is the process of growing crops without agitating the soil. The technique increases both water absorption and organic matter retention by reusing nutrients back into the soil. The difference with a no-tilling method is that it relies on its own natural organic bacteria, beneficial fungi, and living organisms to maintain the soil. In essence it provides the health-conscious cannabis consumers a more natural and organic product they can consume.

RiverRun is dedicated to our product. There is no automation. Our plants are individually handled every day to ensure the plant is getting exactly what it needs. A good analogy would be your massive chicken farm vs cage-free farm. Both will serve, but there is a distinguishable quality found in the cagefree egg.

Any advice for smaller local players to win approval?

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Don’t give up! You can have the best business plan, financial plan, etc. … but when you are in pursuit town approval, you are on full display. You need thick skin and an empathetic approach. The prohibitionists will come out and you will be called every name in the book. I have even been told my kids should be taken from me. But you can’t give up.

We are fighting for something that doesn’t come around very often: the end to an unjust war on cannabis. This is the oldest medicine in the world, and it has been villainized for the last 90 or so years. I also recommend advocacy work. If people see your passion they begin to believe. I honestly feel municipalities have a responsibility to their public’s best interest, which is why they are so hard and demanding when it comes to zoning and permits.

But if they see you are passionate, if they see you at meetings, they will know that cannabis is a serious business and not just another attempt to ruin their town’s image and pollute the streets. You have to be an educator. The stigma is strong out there, and if you want to make it in the cannabis industry you have to fight to remove the stigma.

Do you have any suggestions for regulators to help the smaller local players get licensed and open?

Priority should have been given to microbusinesses and co-ops. The RMDs and large out-of-state entities don’t need it. They have money. In the end, money will get you things faster. For example, the other allowed cannabis business in Newburyport is an 86,000-square-foot company from Texas. They road our coattails while we were fighting for zoning. Then they swooped right in and got approved. We did the fighting, we were ridiculed, and they stayed silent and waltzed through.

Any advice to cities and towns?

Education is everything. I travel the state in support of cannabis rights.

I stand for other small businesses and their right to pursue the American Dream. You have over a year to learn the regs, to prepare for this new market, but municipalities are still being run in bias. Education is key to removing the bias and stigmas. Towns think if they zone, everyone is going to come out of the woodwork to set up shop. This isn’t the case. The barriers to entry are extremely high.

I would also like them to realize that by allowing the larger out-of-state entities, they are essentially driving money out of their town. A locally owned business is going to spend more in that town as they will use local labor, local resources, pay living wages, even offer equity in the company. These things don’t happen on the large scale. The larger the company, the more likely you are to be another number. With small businesses an employee becomes family.

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DEATH POSITIVE FEATURE

Mt. Auburn to host salon addressing death and mortality in a responsible way because “we’ve become so detached from these incredibly life-altering events”

BY HALEY HAMILTON @SAUCYLIT At Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge this weekend, the air will be crisp, and the leaves will start turning to Insta-worthy fiery orange.

Also, from Friday to Sunday, Mount Auburn will host the fifth annual Death Salon—a conference for and celebration of the death positive movement.

The what?

Death Salon is the largest public engagement event of the Order of the Good Death, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization with a mission to make death a part of our lives; to unshroud, as it were, the mystery of the funeral industry; and to dismantle the taboos surrounding death, burial, grief, and commemoration by reintegrating frank and open conversations about these subjects into mainstream culture.

Founded in 2011 by Caitlin Doughty, a mortician, activist, author, and public face of the now worldwide death positive movement and community, the Order of the Good Death has hundreds of thousands of followers and fans across the globe.

“Death is really treated in our society as a taboo, it’s treated as something that’s not natural,” Sarah Chavez, director of the order, says. “Death is looked at with a lot of fear and anxiety, and those fears are very present in our modern-day death processes and dying processes.

“We send our loved ones away when they’re dying.

We hire professionals, if someone dies, coroners, funeral homes, people come in and whisk the bodies away. We live in this very privileged society where we never see the dead or the dying, whereas not that long ago this used to be part of our everyday lives.”

Which, according to the order and the death positive movement, is horribly unhealthy.

“We’ve become so detached from these incredibly life-altering events of dying and death that we no longer know how to approach them or what they look like,” Chavez says. That, she adds, affects not just the way we think about death but the way we live our lives.

“Discussing death and mortality has tons of positive aspects to it,” Chavez says. “Even though death is an extremely difficult and sad and awful experience, by focusing on it, by examining it, we can actually appreciate life more.

“People who attend Death Salon consistently come out saying how much more joyful they feel about their lives, and studies also show and support that being aware of our mortality makes us value and enjoy our lives more. It makes us happier knowing that we have a finite time; we begin to put more importance on what we do with our time with our relationship, how we treat others, how we treat ourselves.”

Ultimately, Death Salon is here to ease your fears about death and dying, but also to help you take a deep breath, look around, and connect with yourself and your community.

“We started Death Salon in 2013 as a kind of happy hour scenario for folks within the order,” says Megan Rosenbloom, director of Death Salon. “We wanted to work with each other more, and also get the general public more involved.”

Their first event drew 300 people. This year, tickets for the salon at Mount Auburn sold out in a day.

“There is a lot of value in being there, being together with other people to discuss and interrogate these kinds of things,” Rosenbloom adds. “There’s this value that you have from being in the room and something clicks, you’re inspired, something sticks with you. Those kinds of things I think can be really important if you allow yourself to be in a physical space and open to the 12

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experience and hearing new things.”

That night, the order and Mount Auburn are also So, why Boston? And why Mount Auburn? hosting an Edward Gorey-themed fundraiser, an “We couldn’t pick a better venue,” Rosenbloom says. “evening of drinks, music, Edward Gorey artifacts, Founded in 1831, Mount Auburn was the first original art by Landis Blair, and the good company of cemetery of its kind. Back then, American and European your fellow Death Salon attendees and organizers. cemeteries were traditionally attached to churches Naturally, Gorey-themed attire is strongly encouraged,” and very frequently in the center of town, like the and tickets are still available.

Central and Granary Burial Grounds on Tremont and Other options for becoming involved in or exploring Boylston streets. Mount Auburn, built outside of the city, death positivity are Death Cafes, smaller-scale salon-type encouraged people to come visit the grounds—and the gatherings of people interested in discussing death, dead—with intention. dying, and how to make the whole concept of mortality “Mount Auburn was designed to be a space where less frightening. There are three Boston-area cafes the visiting public could certainly to come be comforted between now and January. by the beauty of the landscape, but more importantly to As the leaves turn from green to orange, as the come and learn and contemplate life,” says Bree Harvey, chill of autumn sets into New England, it’s hard not the destination’s VP of cemetery and visitor services. to think about change, about things ending. If there’s “This wasn’t only a very practical place to bury the anything the Order of the Good Death, Death Salon, dead but also a space that was supposed to encourage Mount Auburn Cemetery, and the hosts of Death the public to visit and have meaningful experiences Cafes worldwide tell us, it’s that we’re not alone in through their communion with the dead.” contemplating death, dying, and mortality.

At the same time, Mount Auburn, as a member We’re all gonna die. We may as well talk about it. of the funeral and undertaking community, has If you can’t make it out this weekend but want to be sought ways to incorporate death positivity into how involved in or attend events in the future, the Order of people relate to and bury or cremate the dead. It was the Good Death and Mount Auburn Cemetery both host the first cemetery in Mass to be certified to perform series of death positive events year-round. natural burial, or “green burial,” by the Green Burial Council and is dedicated to integrating sustainability into its commemoration services.

“Mount Auburn is doing the work of death positivity,” Rosenbloom says. “They’re on the vanguard of what does it look like for a traditional space to be truly death positive.”

In addition to offering green burial, Mount Auburn has recently renovated its crematory to make space, both physically and emotionally, for family participation in cremation services.

“Cremation services have always taken place behind closed doors,” Rosenbloom says. “The body is viewed by the family and then taken and burned. The renovations Mount Auburn has made allows the family to participate. It’s incredible.”

“We’re so excited to host Death Salon,” Harvey says. “It has become an underlying goal of the Friends of Mount Auburn, our nonprofit educational trust, to engage the public in dialogue about death and commemoration. It aligns perfectly with the philosophy and spirit of the Order of the Good Death and Death Salon.”

While the Salon itself is sold out, the order and Mount Auburn Cemetery are hosting what they’ve called Death Salon Field Day from 10 am to 4 pm on Friday, Sept 28.

Visitors can expect a day of events and presentations that is free and open to the public. Talks will focus on the facilities, history, and services DEATH SALON ORGANIZERS SARAH CHAVEZ, MEGAN ROSENBLOOM, of Mount Auburn, and wrap up with & CAITLIN DOUGHTY. PHOTO BY SCOTT TROYAN. a book signing by Caitlin Doughty.

OCTOBER 9

NEWS TO US

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

13

EATS

BROTHERS RESTAURANT, BROOKLINE A mellow and very eclectic spot that’s deep under the radar

BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON

Spiritual Longing

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When you hear the name “Brothers,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Greek cafeteriastyle food? Maybe deli food? Someplace that’s quick, ultracasual, and cheap? Many in the region might assume that all of the Brothers restaurants in the Greater Boston area are indeed such places, and for the most part, they would be right, with such old-school Greek spots as Brothers in Wakefield, New Brothers in Danvers, and Brothers in Peabody, or classic roast beef and seafood places such as Brothers in Peabody (and this is a different Brothers from the Greek spot in Peabody just mentioned), or maybe a neighborhood breakfast and lunch spot such as Brothers in Mattapan.

It can indeed get pretty confusing with so many dining spots having similar names while also being somewhat similar in concept, but there happens to be another Brothers that’s completely different from all the others while also being totally unrelated. And the Brothers Restaurant in Brookline also happens to be one of the most “hidden” of all hidden gems in the Boston area.

Brothers is an easy-to-miss spot in part because it is located on a stretch of Harvard Street between Coolidge Corner and the Allston line that is packed with dining spots and other businesses, and its sign doesn’t really jump out at you, especially if you’re driving. The space in which it resides is a bit unusual, taking up two storefronts that are completely separate from each other; the room on the right is long and narrow and dominated by a quiet bar on one side and a handful of high-tops on the other, while the room on the left is a dining area with low-top/cafe-style tables of varying sizes.

While some establishments have partitions that keep the dining and drinking area mostly separate while also having the two within view of each other, these are literally two different rooms with a floor-to-ceiling wall separating them, so if you enter the restaurant on the bar side, you walk all the way to the back and take a left to enter the dining room.

The overall vibe in both sections of Brothers is laid-back and almost elegant in a way, with white tablecloths and music being piped in that often veers into smooth jazz from the 1940s and 1950s as well as what can only be described as “Charlie Brown music.” So no, this is not exactly a dynamic spot with hip-hop, R&B, or rock blaring at volume 11, but it is one of those rare places where you can literally hear a pin drop (unless the Charlie Brown music is moved up to volume 4).

While not eclectic in an offbeat and funky way, Brothers in Brookline is certainly eclectic in a culinary way, offering food with a number of different influences including Mexican, Mediterranean, South American, Middle Eastern, Italian, Greek, Korean, and classic American, which would perhaps give the place that all-encompassing “new American” label that every other restaurant seems to have now. Highlights among the food offerings are many here, though because of the specials and the seasonal items served, don’t expect to see all of the same dishes available each time you come.

Some of the better options (again, depending on specials and the season) include fried calamari with hot cherry peppers and a rich red sauce; rosemary truffle fries with aioli that are heavy on the garlic; a falafel hummus plate that also comes with stuffed grape leaves, grilled pita bread, tzatziki sauce, and an arugula salad; hearty short rib tacos that come with chipotle aioli; marinated chicken and lamb kabobs, both of which are served with rice and tzatziki sauce; pan-seared rare ahi that’s good enough to convert people who aren’t typically into raw or lightly cooked fish; a plate of fish and chips with a spicy tartar sauce; chicken saltimbocca with parmesan, prosciutto, a creamy sage sauce, and fingerling potatoes on the side; and a decadent burger topped with fried eggs, cheese, and bacon.

Brothers has a full bar, with a decent selection of beers and a long list of wines along with martinis, margaritas, gimlets, punch, and more among its cocktail offerings.

Breakfast is also served here, with such items as challah French toast, eggs Benedict, pancakes, waffles, and steak and eggs available. Prices aren’t too bad overall considering that this is basically an upscale (though not a flashy upscale) spot, with dinners being mostly in the $15 to $25 range.

Brothers Restaurant is so little known that even some Brookline residents have never heard of it, and it’s one of those places where you generally don’t have to worry about lines out the door—especially on weeknights when it’s usually nowhere near full. If you’re looking for a big, greasy plate of cheap eats, this Brothers isn’t for you, but if you like quiet and refined spots that aren’t stuffy or formal, you might want to consider heading over to this under-the-radar eatery just north of Coolidge Corner. >> BROTHERS RESTAURANT. 404 HARVARD ST., BROOKLINE. BROTHERS-RESTAURANT.COM

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9.13.19 NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

FUZZSTIVAL MUSIC

A day-by-day breakdown of psych rock must sees

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN For the last five years, local music festival Fuzzstival has been bringing Boston’s best psych and rock acts to the forefront. Though it was started to specifically highlight those genres, it’s begun to look outward to become more inclusive, the result of which is a multiday festival that reminds residents just how stacked our music scene really is. Now, as the festival prepares to throw its sixth edition, it’s more diverse than ever.

This year’s lineup spans three days (this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday), two venues (Lilypad Cambridge and ONCE Somerville), and welcomes all ages. Attendees can spend roughly $15 a night—or $31 for a three-day pass—to see fan favorites as well as relatively new bands.

The whole thing is thrown together by Illegally Blind, the booking company of Jason Trefts. Both he and his larger booking moniker are too humble to take the credit for much of the work, though it should be noted: Putting this whole event together takes a lot of time, effort, and patience—especially six years in a row.

To help you optimize the schedule, here are the cherry-picked names of who we think you definitely should see, from the fresh faces early in the day to surprise guests later on.

THURSDAY, SEPT 27 Lilypad Cambridge THE PIPSQUEAK PICK: Ash & Herb. May as well start the festival off with some true wobbly psych. The duo of Matt Lajoie and his “sister anubis” Ash get lost in the heady waves of meditative drone and experimental folk, the type of music you could grow a third eye listening to.

It’s all about letting the waves wash over you. And if you show up a bit before them, you can even catch some of Damien Scalise, who you may know as the guitarist from IAN SWEET and Sun Young.

THE GOOD GRAB: Bad History Month. A lot has been said about Bad History Month in DigBoston, and all of it is good. We’re not biased, either; it’s just the truth.

Though the solo project of so-called Sean Bean roots itself in glum anti-folk, Bad History Month took a turn toward the sunlight on his most recent album, 2017’s Dead And Loving It: An Introductory Exploration Of Pessimysticism. While it may seem strange that such a quiet and emotionally harsh act would be on the festival lineup, allow yourself to get lost in the overwhelming storytelling skills of Bean and suddenly Bad History Month’s placement will make total sense.

THE DINE AND DON’T DASH: Wendy Eisenberg. Your hungry tummy can wait for dinner, especially when someone like Eisenberg is giving you so much to feast on musically. Perhaps best known for her work in the now-defunct abstract post-punk band Birthing Hips, Eisenberg’s solo work hypnotizes listeners through the ease with which she twiddles through complex parts.

Whether she’s armed with an electric guitar or a worndown banjo, Eisenberg is fascinating to see perform live

because watching her master the instrument—casually playing bizarre chord progressions or reimagining jazz tricks—feels like you’re witnessing an iconic virtuoso before the rest of the world catches on.

THE LATE-NIGHT ALLURE: Lisa/Liza. Technically hailing from Portland, Maine, she plays Boston frequently enough to be an honorary local. While you may be getting tired as the end of the night nears, know that you’re in for a treat with Lisa/Liza, a folk artist whose gentle whisperings and cooing guitar is the perfect lullaby for the night. Her music sounds like if Jessica Pratt teamed up with Brittle Brian and Julie Byrne, then made those comfortably brisk fall evenings stretch on for an extra couple of hours.

FRIDAY, SEPT 28 ONCE Somerville THE PIPSQUEAK PICK: HAIRSPRAY QUEEN. The allcaps name sounds airier than the band’s actual music.

The punk act is driving up from their hometown of Providence to play the gig, and we expect it to start things off with a huge punch of energy. Don’t believe us?

Listen to the band’s blistering live record, aptly titled Live, and then imagine what it will be like shaking your anger off to its set first thing in the afternoon.

THE GOOD GRAB: Leopard Print Taser. This poppy indie punk act brings a jolt of positivity to its live shows thanks to strong hooks and solid guitar work. Chances are you’ve seen it opening a national act’s bill of late, as the band has been setting aside plenty of time to pay its dues onstage this year. Though it shouldn’t have been a total surprise that the band would play the festival, it felt like one nonetheless because the group deserves more attention than it’s been getting. On a day of standout frontmen and frontwomen, tonight’s show will find it’s hard to top the type of all-in, guttural, commanding presence that Leopard Print Taser’s singer has.

THE DINE AND DON’T DASH: Corridor. Before you dip out to grab a sit-down dinner, remember you may be missing Corridor. Good luck seeing them again, as the fellows in that group hail from Montreal and don’t get over here too often. Their brand of crisp jangle pop slides through your ears smoothly, all polished guitar tones and interweaving notes, and leaves you feeling full of good vibes and good spirits. So bring some food to snack on during their set instead of missing it.

THE LATE-NIGHT ALLURE: The Monsieurs. It’s been a hell of a year for the Monsieurs, and you better see them before it comes to an end. Though the garage punk act

has been slaying for years here, it recently played the biggest stage of all, Fenway Park, opening up for the Foo Fighters. Expect nothing less than the usual from the band, aka tons of charisma, aggressive melodies, and the spirit of rock ’n’ roll past.

SATURDAY, SEPT 29 ONCE Somerville THE PIPSQUEAK PICK: Edge Petal Burn. Equal parts gruff punk edge and intricate Korean folk singing, the music of Edge Petal Burn is a beautiful combination of sounds we wish we heard more in music. Olivia West, the vocalist and primary songwriter of the band, has a tight grip on how to control songs about assault, past struggles, and other tough-to-stomach subjects without diving too deep into trauma.

THE GOOD GRAB: Oompa. It’s hard to miss Oompa these days, as the rapper is playing nearly every showcase in sight—and for good reason. Her work in Boston’s hiphop scene isn’t just influential for the here and now, but for all the other female, queer, black, and local rappers who will want to find their footing in Boston at a time when the rap scene isn’t always supported the way it should be. Though it’s surprising to see a hip-hop act on a psych fest bill, Oompa absolutely deserves the spot.

Chances are she will get every single person in the room singing along to her songs, even if they’ve never heard one before.

THE DINE AND DON’T DASH: Mr. Airplane Man. As far as forgotten Boston bands go, Mr. Airplane Man are perhaps one of the biggest victims… and the best to break free from their past. As a successful garage rock duo, Margaret Garrett and Tara McManus kicked around in their heyday of the early 2000s, eventually opening up for artists like the White Stripes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Today, they’re back in the saddle, performing behind a great new record with just as much blues-ridden talent as they had nearly two decades ago.

Get roped into their set and grab a meal quickly right after.

THE LATE-NIGHT ALLURE: What Cheer? Brigade.

Whatever inkling of sleepiness you have will be blasted out the window by the sweet sound of trumpets, trombones, and tubas. Though the band may seem like your usual type of brass marching band—however “usual” those may be—what What Cheer? Brigade brings to the table is a contagious urgency, making you feel not just happiness, as brass bands usually do, but passion and determination. No matter what you go into their set expecting, we guarantee the band will exceed your expectations. Be there in person to understand what we mean.

>> FUZZSTIVAL 2018. 9.27–9.29. LILYPAD INMAN AND ONCE SOMERVILLE. 6PM. ALL AGES. $12-$31. FUZZSTIVAL20183DAY.BPT.ME

MUSIC EVENTS THU 09.27

THU 09.27

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

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

[Atwood’s Tavern, 877 Cambridge St., Cambridge. 10pm/21+/$12. atwoodstavern.com]

LOCALS ONLY, NO DOGS ALLOWED SIDNEY GISH + PRIOR PANIC + SQUITCH

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QUIET MUSIC TO STIR YOUR SOUL ADVANCE BASE + GIA MARGARET

DIGBOSTON.COM

FRI 09.28

EXPERIMENTAL ELECTRONICA AMBIANCE AT NIGHT STEVE HAUSCHILDT + BRETT NAUCKE + MORE

[Lilypad Inman, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge.

10pm/all ages/$10. lilypadinman.com]

MON 10.01

SONGS OF PRAISE TO PRAISE IN PERSON SHAME + FLASHER

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$15. sinclaircambridge.com]

TUE 10.02

HOPEFUL AND FOLK-TINGED INDIE ROCK RUNAWAY BROTHER + PALE LUNGS + MORE

[ONCE Somerville, 156 Highland Ave., Somerville.

6:30pm/all ages/$8. oncesomerville.com]

TUE 10.02

SESSION AMERICANA RESIDENCY CONTINUES THE SUITCASE JUNKET

[City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston. 6pm/21+/$20. citywinery.com]

WHEEL OF TUNES

ILLUMINATI HOTTIES

New indie act talks vegan cheese, Reddit posts, and burritos from El Pelon

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Listening to Illuminati Hotties may be the first time you’ve heard Sarah Tudzin’s voice, but it isn’t the first time you’ve heard her musical hand. Though she’s technically the sole permanent member of Illuminati Hotties, a moniker she started using in 2016, she’s been busy in PHOTOS COURTESY OF ILLUMINATI HOTTIES recording studios over the years working as a production and engineering assistant to producer Chris Coady. She chipped in to a Porches studio session. She was in the production room with Macklemore. She even worked on the sound design for the original cast recording of Hamilton. But it’s her work as Illuminati Hotties that shows how talented Tudzin is in the studio spotlight, this time as a musician and a songwriter.

At first, Kiss Yr Frenemies sounds like a typical indie rock record, riding on amicable guitar melodies and driven singing. Give it a few songs, though, and the album showcases Tudzin’s skill for flexing the personable. Her heartfelt lyrical jabs appear between harsh noise and lulling interludes, the total of which drips with authenticity.

She’s turned the album into one that feels familiar while also fresh, the type of record you want to put on to start your day and then listen to again as soon as you’re back home. And according to Tudzin, it was a creative endeavor that was fulfilling, even if it was hard to stop toying with the demos and finally let that ship sail on its own into the public eye.

“Honestly, I think I’m the most proud of finishing the album at all,” says Tudzin. “It takes a lot to get from point A to point B on creative projects. The hardest part artists like myself run into is being done, saying, ‘This is okay for the world to see.’ Maybe you never feel like it’s done-done. Maybe you want to add bells and whistles. I’ve listened back and thought there were a few things I could take a new look at if I had the chance, but really being brave and calling it a finished product is big. You know when you listen to a song the whole way through without stopping it. Then you should probably leave it be.”

To get to know the relatively new face on the scene that is Illuminati Hotties, we interviewed Sarah Tudzin for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask musicians questions inspired by their song titles. With Kiss Yr Frenemies as the prompt, her answers are cheerful and optimistic—qualities that will quietly weave themselves through the music when the band headlines O’Brien’s Pub this Wednesday.

1. “Kiss Yr Frenemies”

How would you define frenemy, and who is your biggest frenemy?

I would define frenemy as someone that you get along with and would say hey to at the gig, but there is an undeniable air of competition about any interaction you have with them. You’re like, “Hey, what’s up man? Nice guitar solo!” But on the inside you wish you were up there ripping instead. So yeah, that. Someone who you get along with or maybe inspires you but while fueling your fire to win.

As for my greatest frenemy, that’s a really hard question. I don’t think I can call people out. Gosh. I wish I had an answer to that. I’m not ready to do that. But for now, I’ll say my greatest frenemy is my sister. She will be mad at me for saying that. We are friends, but for a long time we had sibling one-upness. She’s younger than me by three years, so enough for that to happen. We’re good now.

2. “(You’re Better) Than Ever”

Have you had any “glow up” moments this year so far?

Oooh. I’d like to think that the glow up is still in progress. I don’t think I’ve peaked yet. I hope I haven’t. I think once we fill into ourselves as adults and realize what we want to do and start working hard towards something, that’s when the glow up begins. I’m still glowing upping. Honestly, I was pretty terrified of performing music live for a long time. I spent so much time making music in the studio. That’s been a big difference in my art, that there’s a performative element now that I’ve been working hard at making fun, exciting, and special as the shows before it. We’re on tour with Diet Cig right now. The first show we did with them, during the quiet parts of the songs I could hear people singing along. That was a really awesome moment that I totally didn’t expect. That felt pretty glow upish.

Read the rest of the article at Digboston.com

CALL FOR COMMUNITY CURATORS

The Somerville Museum is pleased to announce the second bi-annual competition for Community Curators, two of whom will be selected to install their proposed exhibits in the Museum’s gallery spaces at 1 Westwood Road, Somerville, MA. Those selected will also receive seed grants of $2,500 for exhibition costs.

The Museum welcomes proposals and encourages applicants to visit both the Museum and its website at www.somervillemuseum.org to learn more about the Museum’s wide-ranging exhibition history.

Information Session

Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 6 pm Somerville Museum 1 Westwood Road, Somerville, MA RSVP to alison@somervillemuseum.org

Deadline

INFORMATION SESSION

Friday, November 2, 2018 (by 11 pm EST)

Friday, October 12, 2018 at 6pm

Somerville Museumforms can be found at Application 1 Westood Road www.somervillemuseum.org/curator-application.pdf Somerville, MA RSVP: somemuseum@gmail.com

Upcoming Exhibits Triple Decker Ecology: Somerville’s Urban Landscape

Curated by Pennie Taylor, with David Buckley Borden October-December 2018 Opening Reception: Thursday, October 11, 2018

Our Stories, Our Stuff, Our Somerville

Curated by Bess Paupeck February-April 2019 Opening Reception: Thursday, February 14, 2019 For more information check out our website.

Somerville Museum

SomervilleMuseum

1 Westwood Road Somerville, MA 02143 www.somervillemuseum.org

somervillemuseum

>>ILLUMINATI HOTTIES, OLDSOUL. WED 10.3. O’BRIEN’S PUB, 3 HARVARD AVE., ALLSTON. 8PM/18+/$10. OBRIENSPUBBOSTON.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

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THEATER REVIEWS ARTS

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

A BOY IN LIMBO, LOOKING FOR SHAKESPEARE HAMNET AT ARTSEMERSON

Given the choice of to be or not to be, Hamnet Shakespeare can’t fathom why anyone would ever choose not to be. And being that he’s had over 400 years to think about it, I guess you could say the boy’s given the matter some thought.

Hamnet, only son of William, has been 11 years old for the last four centuries and seems stuck in a kind of limbo, a place that—at least for now—has found a home on stage at the Emerson Paramount Center where ArtsEmerson is presenting the Dead Centre production of Hamnet, Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd’s innovative and odd playlet about one young boy who has never met his famous dad.

Not much is known about Hamnet, who died at the age of 11 while his father was out of town earning a living as an actor, and there is still much scholarly debate over how the loss of his son appeared in Shakespeare’s plays.

But what Hamnet seeks to explore is less how Hamnet may have influenced Shakespeare but rather how Shakespeare’s absence has influenced his son. Even though Hamnet has been dead all this time, he knows exactly who is father is and he’s been looking for him for hundreds of years.

Ollie West is giving a sweet, tender, playful performance as the young boy (he’s been with Hamnet since the beginning) and Hamnet works best when he’s the focus of the play. Passing the time by asking Google questions he doesn’t know the answer to, rehearsing Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue,” and bouncing a ball against the wall— he’s convinced that it will break through to the other side eventually—this boy may not have a father but he certainly has an audience.

But when his father materializes, Hamnet derails and instead becomes insufferably confusing and dull. There is pure magic in the visual effects and West is completely magnetic, but when co-director and co-writer Bush Moukarzel takes the stage as Shakespeare (who at one point removes all of his clothes for no apparent reason), it feels like he wants the play to become about him rather than Hamnet.

For all of the things that Hamnet could have been—and, indeed, comes halfway close to being—a vanity project shouldn’t have been one of them.

Following in the footsteps of game-changing musicals like Showboat, Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma! and Hair, Hamilton embodies all that is indelible about the Great American Musical and presents us not only with the musical of a generation but a theatrical innovation that advances an art form that is notoriously stuck in its ways.

The phrase “hip-hop musical” has a catchy, novel ring to it, but Miranda’s accomplished much more; his astounding score is relentlessly intelligent and draws on musical influences from Rodgers and Hammerstein to the Notorious B.I.G., Grandmaster Flash, and Gilbert and Sullivan. The complexity of his score—and his lyrical prowess—make him Broadway’s best wordsmith since Stephen Sondheim.

And in this top-shelf national tour—which is ours for the next two months—Miranda’s achievement brims with kinetic urgency and intoxicating swag thanks to Thomas Kail’s staging and Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography, which are as indispensable to the show’s innovation as the show itself.

Tickets are scarce and the ones that remain are expensive, but all is not lost: Hamilton gives away 40 $10 tickets to every performance via a lottery on the official Hamilton app. This is a revolution you won’t want to sit out.

HAMILTON. THROUGH 11.18 AT BOSTON OPERA HOUSE, 539 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON. BOSTON.BROADWAY.COM

HAMNET. THROUGH 10.7 AT ARTSEMERSON, 559 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON. ARTSEMERSON.ORG

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA’S REVOLUTION IS A REVELATION HAMILTON FINALLY ARRIVES IN BOSTON

It’s unlikely that you’re reading this in order to find out if Hamilton is any good or not, but rather how good.

So let’s get this out of the way: Yes, it’s every bit as good as its hype and impossible-to-get tickets suggest.

Lin-Manuel Miranda set out to achieve the unachievable by turning Ron Chernow’s 800-plus page biography of America’s most overlooked founding father, Alexander Hamilton, into a sung-through hip-hop musical with a cast of mostly nonwhite actors. He looked back by looking forward and in turn wrote the first truly landmark musical in two decades (four if you don’t think The Lion King counts), the influence of which will alter the landscape of the American musical for years to come.

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COMPANY - HAMILTON NATIONAL TOUR - PHOTO (C) JOAN MARCUS

JESSE SUGARMANN, WE BUILD EXCITEMENT (STILLS), 2013 DIGITAL VIDEO. PART OF THE MUSEUM OF CAPITALISM EXHIBITION.

IMAGINING AN AFTER VISUAL ARTS

Exploring the Museum of Capitalism

BY HEATHER KAPPLOW

I was looking and looking for a quote that I thought was from the philosopher Wittgenstein about how difficult— how structurally impossible it is—to analyze a cultural phenomenon from inside of it, but I was never able to find the quote and am now not even sure it was from Wittgenstein. It’s no matter because I found something else he said, in a diary entry in October of 1916, that is probably more applicable to the project that Museum of Capitalism has undertaken: “What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.”

Our host at the Museum of Capitalism, in all its myriad forms, is FICTILIS, a collaborative based in Oakland, California. FICTILIS is not one thing. It identifies as a very wide swath of things, focused on a range of projects that fall both inside and outside of the art world, sometimes simultaneously. But its primary interest is in “waste” and the capacity of all things—art as well as consumer goods—to become waste.

So first and foremost, the iteration of Museum of Capitalism currently on view at the Grossman Gallery at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University should be recognized as a highly organized, well-labeled and -lit pile of trash. Not everything in the show is currently identified as trash, but rest assured that someday it all will be. It has this in common with every other art exhibition that has ever happened and with the material components of many of the other experiences we have as we make our way through our days and nights and lives.

Since this perspective equalizes everything in the exhibition, it must be set aside temporarily and replaced with an imaginative exercise; let’s say capitalism, the economic system currently most favored around the world, was extinct, or almost extinct, and its artifacts were still accessible—had not fully converted to waste yet. What would be the most emblematic artifacts of the era? What would they have in common? What ground, together, would they cover in terms of telling the story of their time?

FICTILIS has used this device as a way to sidestep

the problem that the quote I can’t find articulates and at the same time does the magical thing that the quote I could find implies is necessary: It imagines a post-capitalist (American) moment that can be used by anyone who encounters it as a base to talk about what people do and don’t want next. It offers one vision of a new, non-capitalist universe up for critique as a means of imagining what could be next.

And so immediately, by being a museum of the present and the future simultaneously, it raises this question: Do we want museums that are anything like current museums in a post-capitalist future? Maybe we want our understanding of the past to take the form of a psychedelic smoothie in the non-capitalist future. Or a deep tissue massage. Or a children’s game that tells the story of now in the way that “Ring Around the Rosy” apocryphally tells the story of the plague. Why be trapped formally in the current, capitalist imaginary around memorializing and interpreting the past?

But okay, here we are in this museum, so let’s see what matters here.

There is a genuine effort to educate about exactly what capitalism is, and then there are lovely shifts back and forth through the show between humor and gravity, between artifice and genuine artifact.

Several key themes shine through as the most critical issues of the moment—policing is in the background in a way that never quite fades completely from consciousness. The links between racism and capitalism are foregrounded, standing out in sharp relief against everything else to underscore that capitalism does not oppress us all equally. There are many among us who are the most “victimized” (as FICTILIS puts it) by capitalism (or capitalisms—the exhibit identifies at least 12 kinds of capitalism, ranging from “Philanthro-Capitalism” to “Crony-Capitalism”) even if we are all impacted and implicated.

This exhibit tells some of the stories of these victims—like that of Beverly Henry—who worked in a textile sweatshop, making American flags, while she was in prison, as she has been most of her NEWS TO US

adult life, in California. She collaborated with artist/ documentary maker Sharon Daniel, as a part of a larger project, Undoing Time, to express her experience of marginalization (or “targeting” as she puts it, by virtue of her intersectional minority status,) through an interview, performance, and an installed element—a flag that’s embellished with the text of an op-ed she wrote about her disillusionment with America’s values.

It also collects documentation—some real, some bootleg—of the 1968 “Poor People’s Campaign,” a massive occupation/encampment on the Washington Mall that Martin Luther King was championing just before he was assassinated. Artist Kate Haug has tracked down artifacts and images, and recreated them as needed to show a history that is somehow not really in our textbooks… This display echoes the whole show’s fluidity around moving between fact and fiction, highlighting not only how much fact is laced with fiction, but how often fiction can shine a light on the factual.

On the humor end of the spectrum, the vitrine full of magic wands (including many consumer goods marketed as magic wands such as a magic marker, a Radio Shack security wand, and the most infamous old-school vibrator of all time) presented by the Center for Tactical Magic is pretty tongue in cheek. As is a collection of branded disposable plastic bags wrought in moose, deer, and elk hides by Jordan Bennett. There’s even one piece that operates capitalistically—Igor Vamos is turning a solid dollar per squished/imprinted penny every time someone goes for the option of making a souvenir with the phrase “Remember Capitalism” or “Property Is Theft” as a way of commemorating their visit to the exhibit.

Which, as we are still standing if not firmly, at least stockily, within what is most likely late-stage capitalism, could actually be a good investment.

So I guess, get ’em while you can?

MUSEUM OF CAPITALISM. 8.29–10.25. GROSSMAN GALLERY & ANDERSON AUDITORIUM, SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, TUFTS UNIVERSITY. 10 AM–5 PM MON-SAT. FEATURE

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FACES PLACES FILM

A brief introduction to the work of artist Kevin Jerome Everson, by way of Mubi and Tonsler Park

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

Something tells me that over the rest of our collective lifetimes we’re likely to see many films that take place on Nov 8, 2016. Some will regard the matters of that year’s presidential election directly, and others will do so indirectly. As for Kevin Jerome Everson’s Tonsler Park [2017], well, somehow it does both. Everson’s feature presents a series of black-and-white 16mm long takes filmed at polling stations in the Charlottesville, Virginia, area on the day of that election. We’re mostly looking at faces of poll workers as they check IDs, issue paperwork, and hand out ballots. Sometimes we’re looking at one person for 11 minutes straight, sometimes there’s one or two cuts to new images in the middle of a “reel,” sometimes the camera drifts from one subject to another in the middle of a shot.

But however the take is composed, Everson’s camera is basically always stationed far away from his subjects, so their faces are constantly obscured by the torsos of the voters themselves, who pass by at a pace that’s almost metronomic (in an interview with Mousse Magazine, Everson perhaps half-jokingly mentioned that he was “trying to make a flicker film,” although of course the actual movement of the voters is too slow to create that effect). As in so many other Everson films, what’s achieved here is something like great portraiture: The images are rigorous in their specificity, utterly rich in incidental detail, and presented for a necessarily expansive duration, essentially demanding the viewer project something back onto them (once again: the direct and the indirect). Pertinent to this point, I think, is an exchange between Everson and Terri Frances, director of the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University Bloomington, from an interview hosted on ShadowandAct.com that was first published back in February 2013, long before the artist began filming the workers at Tonsler Park: Francis: A lot of your films sort of trace work processes.

Everson: Because it’s all about movement… It’s always the backstory that I think is interesting. If you see like a 35-year-old black female working, then I think you’ve gotta add some narrative to it—maybe a heterosexual narrative with her husband, home. At least I do. I look through the viewfinder and I’m adding this narrative to it.

Francis: Narrative isn’t something I would associate with your films.

Everson: No, they’re all narratives.

Francis: What? … Are you the only one that thinks that?

Everson: Yeah, of course. Well, I don’t know what people think. Like I’m always asked this question about audience. Man, I’m a sculptor. You show up, you walk around it and walk away.

Audiences in this area have had multiple opportunities to “walk around” Everson’s work this past year. Back in February, the Harvard Film Archive hosted a retrospective of his films, “Cinema and the Practice of Everyday Life.” And just last week subscription-based movie streaming website Mubi.com began exhibiting Tonsler Park as the first entry in its own Everson

retrospective, “Made in America.” Everson’s film works works of Kevin Jerome Everson are images of people at have played regularly at festivals, museums, and film work. A recent DVD collection of his work, “I Really Hear institutions over the past decade (he is very much That,” described as “a compilation dedicated to films within the fine art sphere), but only a few of his movies focusing on the subject of labor,” is centered around have been accessible online prior to the Mubi program, Quality Control [2011], Everson’s startlingly beautiful so this is a rare chance for viewers to get acquainted portrait of a Mobile, Alabama, dry cleaning company. with his films within the confines of their own home.

Quality Control, which is also in the Mubi program, is And a certain level of acquaintance is very much about the same length as Tonsler Park and is similarly recommended with these movies, as the richness of organized: It presents a series of long takes that each Everson’s films unquestionably grows as you see more utilize mostly or all 16mm film cartridge. But it’s a of them. His repertoire of filmmaking techniques is more demonstrative film, in a way… You leave with expansive, and yet there’s nothing dogmatic about the some vague sense of how the dry cleaners operates, way he deploys those techniques—instead he matches maybe, or at least you leave with some conception of form and content on a film-by-film basis, finding the its organization, ranging from the people sewing and right approach for each subject. In the past couple speaking with customers up front to the machines years alone, he’s made films that are purely nonfiction being run and the jobs being done in the way back. (such as Tonsler Park), films that comment on historical There is no such how-the-job-is-done takeaway moments with actors and performance (such as How from Tonsler Park, which is singularly focused on the Can I Ever Be Late [2017], one of a cycle of films that he faces of the workers at the polls (it should go without co-directed with fellow professor Claudrena N. Harold), saying, but I’ll note that Everson has an unimpeachable films that comment on historical moments with help eye for screen-worthy subjects, as each of the people from primary sources (Round Seven [2018] and Fastest studied here commands real interest within the frame, Man in the State [2017]), and films that don’t feature often feigning toward certain moods and reactions any people whatsoever (Polly One [2017] is a study of the without ever seeming to actually reveal themselves).

2017 solar eclipse; Rough and Unequal [2017] is a study of The soundtrack is, also, deliberately undemonstrative: the moon’s surface).

For the entire film we hear a stream of nonsynced pollWhile his use of specific cinematic modes may station chatter, polite expressions of “good morning” or come and go, various other consistencies remain true other barely audible exchanges, mixed in with shuffling across Everson’s body of work: A number of his movies feet and noises from iPhones. But as with many films feature objects crafted by the artist himself, although where legible dialogue is notably scarce, the few things they’re often presented in a way that makes them we can hear seem particularly instructive. The very first indistinguishable as such (he sculpted a church bell for line heard in the movie, for instance, seems to describe his feature The Island of St. Matthews [2013], which is the film’s own formal strategy: “Okay, as long as you included in the Mubi program); many of the films can just face me, we’ll be good,” a woman says, maybe to be unofficially grouped together by form or region (each a group of volunteers she’s swearing in, but also now film co-directed with Harold focuses in some way on the to us, too. Much later on, we hear a woman rebuking history of black Americans at the University of Virginia); a presumed voter who’s looking to an official for help and finally, pretty much every person seen in Everson’s in understanding a question on the ballot. “We cannot films is black, although that is also not exactly upheld comment on anything,” the official says, “we can’t as doctrine (for instance, one of the most dynamic shots explain anything.” in Tonsler Park frames up an older black woman in perfect focus while two white women are stationed out of focus in the foreground—so for pretty much the entire 11-minute take, their constant hand movements are rendered as white blobs traveling across the frame, yet another human contribution to the faux-flicker material effect, form and content linked once again). © KEVIN JEROME EVERSON; COURTESY THE ARTIST; TRILOBITE-ARTS DAC; Another PICTURE PALACE PICTURES constant in the

>> “MADE IN AMERICA: THE CINEMA OF KEVIN JEROME EVERSON” WILL CONTINUE FOR THE NEXT MONTH ON MUBI.COM, WITH ONE NEW FILM BY EVERSON UPLOADED FOR SUBSCRIBERS EVERY WEEK. >> TONSLER PARK WILL BE AVAILABLE ON MUBI UNTIL 10.19 AND IS ALSO AVAILABLE FOR RENTAL ON SOME VOD OUTLETS. 20

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DIGBOSTON.COM

KILLING IT! LOCAL WEB SERIES

An interview with Marianne Bayard

BY JACOB SCHICK Marianne Bayard is an actor living and working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Originally from Wayland, Mass, Bayard graduated from Emerson College in Boston and later from Ecole Philippe Gaulier, a clown training school in Paris. Bayard has played supporting roles in Joy and Mindhunter.

She is returning to Boston for the screening of Killing it!, a comedy web series cocreated with Jonathan Kaplan that focuses on the lives of two best friends looking for fame and purpose late in life. We spoke via email.

You’ve said that this project is pretty much based on real life. Was there a specific moment or event that made you and Kaplan decide to create Killing it!?

Long story short, I moved to NYC right after Emerson, bopped around for a couple of years, doing some theater and spending hundreds on new headshots (cuz that’s what you do at 22), but never settled in. Grad school applications didn’t turn out exactly as I had hoped, (though I did get into some good conservatory programs, which I turned down, proceeding to shoot myself in the foot) and instead w[ent] to clown school in Paris—on a whim—for a year. Returning to Paris in 2008, I settled back in Boston, did some solo show work and started a regular day job, but decided I needed material for a film reel so I could maybe get some real acting work. I was hired for some great BU and Emerson school projects, as well as some big league films (i.e., Joy), but I was mostly getting serious “mom” parts. It was then, 2015, 2016 or so—that I said to Kaplan, who was also a clown, but living in NYC, let’s make something for me to be funny in. And so we did.

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There’s certainly a lot of work that goes into making something like Killing it!

What was it like building this from the ground up?

Lots and lots of writing. Since we lived in different cities—and we still do to this day, I am now based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he is still in Long Island/NYC—we have always shared work back and forth on Google Drive, Google Chatting while at our day jobs. And calling and texting. Now, we see each other once a month at least—for intense work or writing sessions. Kaps just left my house today, Monday, Sept 17, after working on our Seed and Spark crowdfunding pitch video, something that we hope will help us to finance season two.

The comedy comes from our real lives—our pain, our embarrassments, our wants, our joys. It’s the old adage “write what you know.” I would literally take word for word things my boyfriend and I—at the time, now husband—would say to each other in a fight, and write it down and send to Kaps. He would then look it over and suggest how and where to heighten the scene. Kaps is a stand-up and a veteran of the improv houses of NYC. He knows comedy—it’s very different from mine—but it’s great to be working with someone whose vision is so sharp, so clear, so direct.

As scenes started to come together, Kaps and I would still go back and forth on editing them and making sure they said what we wanted them to. Finally I said, “Let’s pick a date. We’re shooting these!” and so we did. We both took time off from our jobs—and I drove down to LI —and we did it, in three weekends. The first eight episodes were shot in Kaps’ apartment, because it was cheap: one location, no other actors, very small crew. Jonathan edited all the eppys and they are all on our website maresnkaps.com. We have big ideas and plans for season two, 1) that Mares and Kaps leave the apartment and 2) that they set out to face and follow their dreams. We want to do season two right, with great sound, great photography, actors, sets, all the goodies that come along with that—and so we know we need to pony up a good deal of money to make it happen. Thus the crowd funding and our day jobs. We very much intend to submit season two in full, to film festivals and in part to smaller web festivals. We will also be reaching out to distributors and production companies, and hopefully keep making more content, but ideally on someone else’s dime.

Read the action-packed full interview online at digboston.com!

Bayard and Kaplan will be attending the screening of the first season of Killing it! in the MicroCinema of the Somerville Theatre on Sept 28 and Sept 29, at 7:30 pm. Both screenings will feature a Q&A session following the showing.

NEWS TO US

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

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21

NEEDS & DEEDS SAVAGE LOVE

COMEDY EVENTS

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

THU 09.27 - SAT 09.29

AIDA RODRIGUEZ @ LAUGH BOSTON

I’m a 62-year-old woman. I was married for 33 years and left five years ago. We hadn’t gotten along for years, but he never stopped wanting or valuing me for sex—in spite of treating me like a household appliance and cheating on me regularly. Not long after the marriage ended, I met a guy online (my same age) who ticked nearly every box on my partner checklist—one of which was an ongoing interest in maintaining sexual relations.

In the beginning, things were hot and crazy—but they cooled after a few months (going from once or twice a day to maybe once a month). Other than that, the relationship continued to grow and we enjoyed being together. I tried to carefully broach the subject, but he was not forthcoming. I’m not proud of it, but I checked his internet history. Big surprise: LOTS OF PORN. No animals or children, but pretty much everything else, with an accent on trans. Eventually, I admitted my sleuthing and asked if his viewing habits were an indicator of his interests or the reason he had turned away from me. After the anger subsided, he explained that he had been single most of his life and had more or less gotten used to taking care of business solo. Also that the women he had been with who floated his boat sexually had been bad (crazy/unstable) in the partner department, and the good partners (me) had been less than satisfying for him in bed. The bottom line is that we are compatible in most every other area and have built a comfortable life together. We have intercourse every four to six weeks, and maybe once in between he will pleasure me. I enjoy both, and also take care of myself once a week. The struggle for me is more ego-driven. I’m no raving beauty, but I am reasonably fit and attractive for my age, and (used to) enjoy feeling desired and valued sexually. Can I get to the place of letting go of that and enjoy the rare occasions of physical congress?

Sex Advice Please “Good for her for getting out of a marriage where she was treated like a ‘household appliance’ and getting back in the dating game,” said Joan Price, author of the books Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex and The Ultimate Guide to Sex After 50. “But her new relationship, while it sounds comfortable and affectionate, doesn’t sound sexually fulfilling.”

This relationship doesn’t just sound unfulfilling sexually, SAP, it sounds infuriating generally. You entered into this relationship under false pretenses. You let your partner know that “an ongoing interest in maintaining sexual relations” was a priority for you, and he allowed you to believe it was a priority for him. In fairness to him, SAP, he may not have known himself to be incapable of sustaining a strong sexual connection, seeing as he’s been single for most of his life. But even if he wasn’t aware he couldn’t meet your needs then, that doesn’t change the fact that you aren’t valued/fucked the way you want to be valued/fucked now.

“I think her best option is to stay friends with this guy but start dating and having sex with others,” said Price. “She could continue to have occasional sex with this man if they both agree to a nonexclusive, friends-with-benefits arrangement. Or they could become platonic pals, if that’s better for them. But it’s imperative that she talk candidly with him.”

Your partner has an outlet that works for him and pretty much meets all his needs— porn and his own hand—but you don’t have an outlet that provides you with the feeling of being desired and valued sexually. Watching porn and/or “taking care of yourself” isn’t going to meet your needs. So the question is this: Do you have to exit this loving relationship to get your needs met, or can you stay with your current partner, a man who meets your emotional and social needs, while getting your sexual needs met elsewhere?

“SAP deserves a partner who matches her sexually,” said Price. And I agree.

If you’re telling yourself that you’ll have to settle for someone who claims he can’t perform for you because you’re not unstable enough to turn him on—you do realize that compliment he paid you (you’re so good!) was actually a dishonest bit of blame-shifting/ responsibility-dodging, right?—then you’re selling yourself short..

Follow Joan Price on Twitter @JoanPrice. She blogs about sex and aging at NakedAtOurAge.com.

On the Lovecast, Dan chats with Lizz Winstead of The Daily Show: savagelovecast.com

When Aida was a teenager one of her relatives declared that she would end up a statistic, she did, she is 1 out of the 10 to make it to the finals of NBC’s Last Comic Standing. Aida Rodriguez’s “edgy, raw and in your face” style of comedy has set her apart in a world that celebrates funny over double standards. Catching the eye of some of the most recognizable names in Comedy, she is creating a lane of her own.

Featuring: Lamont Price.

Hosted by Kindra Lansburg

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | VARIOUS | $25-$29 THU 09.27

HEADLINERS IN THE SQUARE @ JOHN HARVARD’S BREWERY & ALE HOUSE Featuring: Caitlin Reese w/ Brandon Vallee & more.

33 DUNSTER ST., CAMBRIDGE | 9PM | FREE FRI 09.28

DON’T TELL COMEDY

Secret locations. Secret comedians. BYOB! Don’t Tell Comedy is a secret comedy show that hosts some of the best and brightest comedians in the United States This time around we will be in Boston, MA in the Back Bay neighborhood. http://www.donttellcomedy.com.

BACK BAY| 7:30PM | $25 FRI 09.28 - SAT 09.29

NICK’S COMEDY STOP Friday: Derek Furtado.

Saturday: Dan Crohn.

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 SAT 09.29

LAUGHTER ON TAP @ ARTS AT THE ARMORY

Featuring: Emily Ruskowski, Caitlin Reese, Jack Burke, May Keith, Alex La, & Frankie Hill.

Hosted by Kathleen DeMarle & Kristin Carnes

191 HIGHLAND AVE., SOMERVILLE | 7PM | FREE SUN 09.30

THE PEOPLE’S SHOW @ IMPROVBOSTON

Comedy for the people, by the people.

Featuring: Jai Demeule, Robert Pooley, Kindra Lansburg, Anjan Biswas, Alex Giampapa, & Jimmy Cash.

Hosted by Paul Landwehr

40 PROSPECT ST. CAMBRIDGE | 9:30PM | $5 SUN 09.30

COMEDY SUNDAYS @ GREEN BRIAR PUB Hosted by Uri Shatil

304 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | FREE SUN 09.30

LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW

Featuring: Megan Baker, Logan O’Brien, Stirling Smith, Kendra Dawsey, Kindra Landsburg, Kwasi Mensah, Carolyn Riley, Mike Settlow, & Tooky Kavanagh.

Hosted by Ellen Sugarman

15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 MON 10.01

MONDAY NIGHT COMEDY IN THE SUPPER CLUB @ CAPO Hosted by Will Noonan

443 WEST BROADWAY BOSTON | 8PM | FREE SAT 09.22

THE COMEDY PIZZA PARTY @ PENGUIN PIZZA Hosted by A.J. Glagolev

735 HUNTINGTON AVE, MISSION HILL | 9PM | 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… savagelovecast.com

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WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

Aida Rodriguez

Comedy Central, Showtime, HBO Thursday - Saturday

COMING SOON The Taylor Strecker Show Special Engagement: Sun, Sept 30

Craig Shoemaker Showtime, Comedy Central Oct 4-7

THE WAY WE WEREN’T

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

Josh Wolf Netflix, Chelsea Lately Oct 11-13

Carly Aquilino MTV’s Girl Code Oct 18-20 OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

Pete Lee The Tonight Show, Comedy Central Oct 26-28 617.72.LAUGH | laughboston.com 425 Summer Street at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

23

Join us at our brewery for Boston’s largest Octoberfest! Live music, great food, fresh beer.

FRIDAY SEPT. 28 5:30pm—11:00pm

SATURDAY SEPT. 29 1:00pm—7:00pm

the HARPOON BREWERY at 306 NORTHERN AVE, BOSTON, MA Learn more at www.harpoonbrewery.com