DigBoston 12.13.18

DIGBOSTON.COM 12.13.18 - 12.20.18

COVER: FILM

HOW THE AUTEUR AUTEUR OWNED 2018

A SPIKE LEE POINT FEATURE

A SUBURBAN MBTA ODYSSEY

TALKING JOINTS MEMO: WORTH THE WAIT – WE REVIEW LEGAL MASS WEED

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BOWERY BOSTON WWW.BOWERYBOSTON.COM VOL 20 + ISSUE 50

DEC 13, 2018 - DEC 20, 2018 BUSINESS PUBLISHER John Loftus ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone Jason Pramas SALES EXECUTIVES Victoria Botana Derick Freire Nate Homan Nicole Howe FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digboston.com

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, Sophia Higgins, Morgan Hume, Daniel Kaufman, Jillian Kravatz, Elvira Mora, Juan A. Ramirez, Jacob Schick

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DESIGNER Don Kuss COMICS Tim Chamberlain, Pat Falco Patt Kelley, Don Kuss, Cagen Luse DigBoston Phone 617.426.8942 digboston.com

ON THE COVER CHECK OUT FILM EDITOR JAKE MULLIGAN’S YEAR IN SPIKE LEE FEATURE IN THIS WEEK’S ARTS SECTION, AND NO MATTER WHAT, REMEMBER TO ALWAYS DO THE RIGHT THING

©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.

DEAR READER FAKE CANNABIS NEWS ALERT

This is not the winter transit issue. We don’t have a winter transit issue. Nonetheless, we have an excerpt from a critical report about Hub transportation shortfalls that was commissioned by Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu, as well as a feature by Nate Homan about the leastused stop in the MBTA system, so I suppose this is a transportation-oriented issue after all. And so I will apply some icing to the cake with yet another tirade about just how awful the reporting is around stoned driving.

I’m not endorsing blunt cruises. Rather, I am here to skewer journos who don’t know the first thing about weed but still insist on echoing cheap law enforcement fear campaigns when covering the topic. Look, drugged driving is a major problem—it always has been. Just ask anyone whose parents liked to drive around on quaaludes in the old days. But that doesn’t change the fact that countless recent reports about motorists and legal weed are not based on new research but instead spring from a festering ignorance and absolutely do not belong on the evening news.

If you want to see how stupid journalists can look when being made into pathetic tools of cops and politicians, then check out last week’s viral failure from 22 News in Springfield. Titled “Ford-developed impaired driving suit to mirror operating under the influence,” it’s a stunning shameless fake news advertorial based solely on publicity materials from Ford, excerpted in part here: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, approximately 18 percent of all motor vehicle fatalities involve drugs other than alcohol [Ed. note: Ford links to a two-and-a-half-year-old report and comes nowhere close to accurately paraphrasing the findings]. … We have developed a new innovation that aims to improve those statistics by giving young drivers a chance to experience what it’s like to operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of illicit drugs. The new Drugged Driving Suit is designed to mimic some of the common effects that illegal substances like cannabis, cocaine, heroin and MDMA (otherwise known as Ecstasy) have on the body.

This new innovation? Wrapping someone up in headphones, vision impairment glasses, neck bandages, elbow bandages, wrist weights, a tremor generator, knee bandages, and ankle weights. The press release goes on to quote an expert saying, among other things, that “the goggles distort perception and produce colorful visual sensations—a side effect of LSD use.”

So finally, an acid driving simulator.

One would hope that a trained journo or producer would see through those goggles. But not at WWLP, where they sent someone to try the suit on—while also wearing high heels, I’m guessing in case all those other impairments weren’t enough—and to report back the details. The result is as ridiculous as it’s predictable—the reporter fails a field sobriety test, and even though the results obviously have nothing at all to do with cannabis, the resulting story claims that “Ford developed impaired driving suits to simulate driving … while under the influence of drugs like marijuana.”

Hardly. More like Ford developed a good way of getting press, and these knuckleheads at 22 News fell for it. And by fell for it, I mean they threw a bone to an advertiser— just like the station did with comparably compromised features in September (Marcotte dealership finishes its remodeling), October (Super Sixty awards held by the Springfield Regional Chamber honors local companies), and November (Marcotte Ford celebrates opening of new dealership in Holyoke).

Because if you’re going to pass off an ad as real news, you might as well stir up some fear on the backs of cannabis users and get a whole bunch of clicks in the process.

CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Need more Dig? Sign up for the Daily Dig @ tiny.cc/DailyDig

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

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NEWS+OPINION

BRICKBOTTOM FOUNDERS SPEAK ARTS NEWS TO US

Pioneering Somerville artist live/work co-op celebrates 30th anniversary

BY JACOB SCHICK

Approaching the block of buildings from Chestnut Street, all you can see are five stories of basically identical windows amid levels of concrete. Stripes of color run along the sides, framing the official entrance to 1 Fitchburg St in Somerville.

What isn’t immediately clear, unless you know what you’re looking at, is that this is the entrance to the Brickbottom Artists Association. Behind these windows lies a thriving community and colony of artists and their families, and it’s been that way for 30 years.

In honor of 30 years in the building, Brickbottom recently hosted an event called “Founders Speak” for the longstanding members of this unique community.

Artists walked downstairs, or down the hall, from their apartments to see their friends and neighbors talk about how it all started.

Following an intro by Ellen Band, a longtime resident, three speakers stepped up—Randal Thurston, Alana Thurston, and Robert Goss. Each has spent a large part of their lives in Brickbottom. According to Band, the evening was Goss’s idea—he hoped that it would help to excavate some of the history behind the place.

Speaking first, Randal Thurston brought a presentation full of old pics of the founders, early construction efforts, and aerial snapshots. He began with carefully selected words that, over the course of the evening, only grew in their poignancy.

“When we see a place, we only see a small section—the time that you’re in,” Randal said. “The longer you’re in a place, the better you know it.”

Randal, his daughter Alana, and Goss have all spent enough time here to see a large section of Brickbottom’s history—they know it well.

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Clicking through slides, Randal explained that Brickbottom came to be because he and about 100 other artists couldn’t stand or afford to live in Boston proper anymore. At 215 A St in Southie there was no heat and countless surprise inspections, while at the co-op on 249 A St there simply wasn’t enough space and rents were always going up. Endless meetings occurred as to where to move 100 people.

When it was finally decided that the grimy shell of an old A&P still full of dry storage goods all the way in Somerville would be the new home for this group, Randal and his partner and fellow artist Alyson Schultz (also present in the crowd) dropped out entirely.

While eventually they both rejoined Brickbottom, the anecdote speaks to how nearly desolate the small section of Somerville was back then. Randal went on to explain that he neighborhood still isn’t residential because the state wanted to build a highway over it. The plans were laid, and houses and businesses were quickly abandoned.

But the highway never came.

Randal’s presentation on the physical history of the space helped to provide context for subsequent talks by Goss and his daughter Alana. Also using the projector, Alana explained how she was born in Brickbottom and spent the first 18 years of her life surrounded by 300 artists, including her parents. Set against a slideshow of pics from her childhood—including one in which an Easter basket was “hidden” on top of a work of art—Alana wove in stories about what it was like to live there.

Even as a child, Alana was an artist in her own right.

But surrounded by professional artists, she often found herself trying to break the mold. She worked a great deal with pointillism and was very successful with it—as

evidenced by the quality of work shown on screen.

She eventually went to school and majored in chemistry, taking a semester abroad to study mushrooms and other fungi. Alana made her way to Alaska to study the effects of warming climates on the tundra.

She is now in the process of moving to New Zealand to seek a cure to a fungal pathogen that is killing culturally significant trees there.

But her artistic roots seem to be catching up with her. In recent years Alana found that she could put her talents to use with lab drawings or even textbook diagrams that could more easily explain the work that she was doing.

In his turn, Goss began by saying that his time at Brickbottom is “the longest I’ve been at any one place in my life.”

His presentation consisted mostly of anecdotes, lending a storylike, tall tale-esque quality to the evening. When Brickbottom was first chosen, he recalled, many artists like Thurston dropped out because of the way it looked. He cited the racist graffiti covering the walls and the burned-out car in the parking lot. He recalled the countless meetings—that he was in charge of running—of the artists. Every meeting he could remember was fraught with argument and strife.

“The hardest meeting was standing in front of 100 artists to pick the color of the stripe on the building,” Goss said.

They finally decided on the color of the sweater that one artist in the meeting was wearing—a light blue.

While the meetings were cause for frustration, Brickbottom also provided Goss with a home, and more.

He first met his wife, Susan Schmidt, in the process of building selection. When it came time to enter into the housing lottery to see which room they would receive, Goss and Schmidt decided to enter as a couple so they might get a better spot.

At this point in his speech, a member of the crowd shouted, “Is that how you proposed to her?” to the laughs of Goss and the rest of the audience.

But the two did get married, and remain so to this day.

They had their wedding in the gallery.

Toward the end of the evening, audience members who were also Brickbottom founders had the chance to speak—calling up ancient memories or simply thanking everyone present for all that they had done. As the event closed, some members stayed to chat and catch.

Other artists gathered up their children—also born into Brickbottom—and headed upstairs for the night.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES GUEST FINDINGS

And now a word from the Boston Youth Transportation Project

BY LILY T. KO

We were enthusiastic to read through the new report commissioned by Boston City Councilor-At-Large Michelle Wu about public transit in Boston. Compiled by Lily T. Ko, a Tufts University Graduate Policy Fellow studying urban and environmental policy and planning, the Boston Youth Transportation Project was assisted by young interns, and built on input from directors and coordinators from youth programs all around the region. Since Ko’s report takes so many voices into consideration that are typically ignored on this topic, we decided to publish her executive summary in full, and we recommend checking out the full report at michelleforboston.com. -Dig Editors The Boston Youth Transportation Project (BYTP) examined the transportation experiences of Boston teenaged youth. BYTP researched whether Boston youth face any barriers to transportation and what attitudes they held toward different transportation modes. The project was motivated for two main reasons: 1) to examine whether transportation challenges are affecting the socioeconomic mobility potential of youth, and 2) to gauge youth’s affinity toward biking and public transit in support of the City of Boston’s climate change goals. In total, 264 youth took a survey and 240 of them also participated in one of 23 focus group sessions.

While the City of Boston and MBTA provide substantial transportation benefits to Boston youth, there are still thousands of young people locked out of these benefits and who may face financial barriers to transportation. Youth face inequities across the system as to who receives transportation benefits due to distance from school, participation in summer programs they join, employment, their individual school policies, and/or attending school outside of Boston through METCO. This results in missed opportunities related to education, employment, personal development, and social life that contribute to an ever widening education and social gap.

Beyond affordability, transit dependability is another vital enabler for Boston students to truly take full advantage of their opportunities. Youth travel all over and outside the city in order to attend higher quality schools not offered in their own neighborhoods due to historic and persistent racial segregation.

Unfortunately, the unreliability of public transit service results in academic ramifications and adverse effects on youth’s health, jobs, parent relationships, and most importantly—youth

autonomy.

Safety is another key element. Most Boston youth reported feeling unsafe on public transit, especially around people under the influence of drugs and alcohol. This affects youth behavior and prevents them from getting where they need to go. At the same time, public transit helps youth feel safer in areas where they would otherwise have to walk. Unfortunately, transit unreliability meant that safety wasn’t always guaranteed.

In regards to affinity for various transportation modes, the car dominated all ratings and the vast majority of teens strongly preferred to get around the city by car or transportation network company (i.e., Uber or Lyft). These preferences have dire implications for our environment, but there are indications that their preferences are malleable and that there are changes that would get increase youth biking or transit usage.

Among their suggestions are a drastically safer bicycle network and more reliable service as well as better amenities that make public transit a more competitive mode. The suggestions in this report largely come directly from Boston youth and mark a clear path for improving the quality of life for young people in Boston today and removing impediments to their future success.

The Boston Youth Transportation Project (BYTP) was motivated for two main reasons: Socioeconomic Mobility First, geographic mobility has been shown to be strongly linked with economic mobility. More opportunities for jobs, higher income, education, reasonably-priced food and goods, quality housing and healthcare depends upon efficient and affordable transportation. Thus, for a 1 2 3 4 5 socially-just society,

NEWS TO US

it is vitally important that public transit services are reliable, efficient and accessible.

Unfortunately, existing research demonstrates that people’s access to high-quality transportation options as well as the degree to which these options provide timely and convenient access to civic, social, educational, and recreational opportunities vary across race and income lines. Public transit is also disproportionately relied upon by communities of color 6 and lower-income households , and existing research demonstrates that their access to 7 high-quality transportation options and reliable services are worse than for White, higher-income communities.

Furthermore, transit policy has historically focused on expansion through suburban systems—serving White and wealthier constituents more reliably than those living in inner cities—and leaving comparatively fewer resources for improving transit service in lowincome areas with a higher proportion of transit dependents. Bus service tends to be more 8 relied upon by low-income, communities of color—but has suffered continual disinvestment.9 While it’s critical to look at adult commuters and their opportunities to access jobs and other resources, it is just as important to investigate youth experiences.

The City of Boston has an abundance of economic and out-of-school enrichment opportunities for its young people, including the Mayor’s Summer Jobs Program; copious museums, libraries, and community centers; as well as numerous events and youth-centered programming sponsored by local universities and private organizations. However, Boston youth must be able to easily get around the city in order to access opportunities like these.

Environment Second, transportation is one of the top contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The EPA reported that transportation accounted for the largest portion (28%) of total U.S. GHG emissions in 2016, with light-duty vehicles contributing to 60% of it.

The City of Boston also 10 reported that transportation emissions contribute significantly to pollution in Boston today and that transportation makes up somewhere between a quarter to a third of its GHG emissions.11 Because of this, the City aims to reduce GHG emissions from transportation by 50% of 2005 levels by 2030.

Currently, the majority of teenaged youth are still captive transit riders and 12 have relatively fewer transportation mode choices. However, they will soon be our next generation of potential daily drivers. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand how youth view different modes of transportation, whether they are inclined to use more sustainable modes of transportation (like public transit and biking), and what would make them more excited to use these modes of transportation.

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

5

SAVE COMMUNITY MEDIA EDITORIAL

Tell the FCC that you support your local cable access station by Dec 14

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS At DigBoston, my colleagues and I put a lot of effort into working with local community media stations around Greater Boston. Because they are the heart and soul of grassroots democratic public broadcasting in the United States. And because we get so much out of hanging out with their staff and members that we just love them to pieces.

Somerville Media Center, Cambridge Community Television, Brookline Interactive Group, Malden Access Television, Boston Neighborhood Network, roughly 300 other stations around Massachusetts, and over 1500 nationwide provide a multitude of useful services to the cities and towns they’re based in. Perhaps better known by the older appellations “cable access stations” or “PEG (public, education, and government) access stations,” they broadcast city government meetings, public school events, and neighborhood happenings of all kinds.

Something no other media institution does anywhere near as consistently.

In addition, many community stations allow literally anyone in their locales to walk in off the street and get trained to make media of their own—on increasingly sophisticated equipment, for cheap or even free—amounting to tens of thousands of homegrown productions of every conceivable description every year.

Effectively creating the only US broadcast alternative where free speech, hard won in running legal battles all the way up to the Supreme Court, is taken very seriously.

They are generally member-driven and run by small staffs of extremely committed experts. A fair number of whom were originally trained at community media stations when they were kids. As were many staffers at major media outlets to this day.

For all that great work, such stations require very little money to run. Federal regulation and laws enacted since the early 1970s have created a system in which cable companies like Comcast have to negotiate franchise fees with cities and towns for the privilege of laying their cables on public streets. The maximum annual franchise fee was codified in the federal Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, 47 U.S. Code § 542 (b): “For any twelve-month period, the franchise fees paid by a cable operator with respect to any cable system shall not exceed 5 percent of such cable operator’s gross revenues derived in such period from the operation of the cable system to provide cable services.”

Some of the resulting funds can then be used to run community media stations. Local governments can also negotiate for other things, too—including what are called “cable-related, in-kind contributions” like capital expenses for studio facilities and broadcasting equipment. Another important concession the cable companies have to provide local governments is the channels that the stations broadcast on. This helps the stations’ bottom line by relieving them of the cost of leasing those channels. Which does mean that cable companies lose whatever profits they might have otherwise made on those channels.

Together the franchise fee and the in-kind contributions provide most of each station’s annual operating budget and physical plant—and the free cable channels help keep costs low. Though many community media stations still have to raise extra money to make ends meet every year by charging dues to members who can afford to pay, crowdfunding, and applying for grants.

Like PBS or NPR on a smaller scale.

Unfortunately, since the original Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules mandating the establishment of such stations in many municipalities, the cable industry has been trying to eliminate them.

In the interest of making even vaster profits than they already gouge from consumers. First by legal challenges culminating in the 1979 Supreme Court decision FCC 6

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v. Midwest Video Corp. that struck down the earlier cable access rules and directly resulted in the 1984 cable act as a “compromise” between community media stations and the cable industry. And later by successful lobbying campaigns to give states the sole power to negotiate franchise fees for all their cities and towns in the interest of “efficiency” (read: worse deals than many of those municipalities had been negotiating on their own). Which is how the system currently works in many states—though not, happily, in Massachusetts.

Further, as new monopoly telecom companies like Verizon arose (both ironically and predictably) after the government breakup of the old AT&T telephone monopoly in the 1980s, they began expanding well beyond their core telephone businesses. Seeing cable television as a growing market, they successfully lobbied for provisions in the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 that allowed them to provide cable service as well. This caused the cable companies to bring even more political pressure to bear to end the franchise fee system as “unfair”—since the telecoms aren’t covered by the 1984 cable act and don’t have to pay the fees that support community media stations.

Also, the landmark global communications advance represented by the internet has further eroded the position of community media stations in some respects over that same period by providing other ways for Americans and immigrants alike to create their own media programming and reach audiences all over the world. Though usually not local audiences of the size and quality that community media stations can provide.

Meanwhile, the cable industry has continued to do its level best to shrink the number of community media stations with all kinds of crafty business and policy tricks. For example, Comcast’s practice of refusing to list the schedule of community media stations in its program guide—which drastically reduces the local audience for each station—makes it easier for the cable giant to make the case to get rid of the legal mandate to fund those stations through the franchise fee.

Now, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai—a former Verizon lobbyist who is the living embodiment of “regulatory capture” (the control of a government regulatory agency by the very industry it’s supposed to regulate) and who, it must be said, is an Obama appointee—is moving in for the kill. Fresh off his successful assault on net neutrality.

Another anti-democratic communications move that virtually no one supported… except the cable and telecom industries.

On Sept 25, under Pai’s watch, the four FCC commissioners (three of whom are Republicans, with one seat on the five member commission remaining empty thanks to Trump administration politicking) released an official document snappily entitled the “Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in Implementation of Section 621(a)(1) of the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 as Amended by the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, MB Docket 05-311.” Also known as the “Second FNPRM.” Or, for the purposes of this editorial, the “FNPRM.” If the FCC enacts the FNPRM, cities, towns, and states (where applicable) will no longer be able to negotiate up to a 5 percent franchise fee plus the aforementioned cable-related, in-kind contributions like studios and other necessary infrastructure for community media stations. Instead those governments will be forced to allow cable companies to assign a “fair market value” to the channels it provides community stations and deduct that amount from the franchise fees that keep them going. The companies will also be allowed to catalog a wide variety of cable-related, in-kind contributions to cities and towns and deduct those from the fees, too.

Including some contributions related to the stations, according to analysis by the Community Media Center of Marin in California. And it turns out that typical capital costs for community stations are only a fraction of the total in-kind contributions that cable companies historically agreed to provide to municipalities in exchange for using public rights of way for their cables.

Cities and towns often have important civic buildings like schools and fire stations connected with cables and equipment provided by the companies that have been used for a variety of important purposes—including emergency services—for decades. Taking those costs off the top of the franchise fees will be significant indeed.

Gaithersburg, Maryland Mayor Jud Ashman gets to the crux of the problem with the possible FCC action in his recent testimony against it: As proposed, the FNPRM’s broad definition of all “cable-related, in-kind contributions” other than PEG capital costs and build-out requirements could be interpreted as “franchise fees,” which could result in: • Cable companies no longer paying the typical five percent franchise fees permitted by federal law.

• Cable companies using local rights-of-way for any purpose, regardless of the terms of the franchise agreement, and avoiding paying their fair compensation to the local government for the use of funded assets in the rights-of-way.

• Significant reductions in cable franchise fees, depending on how the “fair market” value for PEG capacity and transmission is calculated within a given jurisdiction. This proposed change would result in PEG programming being drastically reduced, if not eliminated altogether in most jurisdictions.

In practice, community media station advocates are saying that the FNPRM will quickly result in a loss of a significant portion of annual revenue for their entire sector. Which will cause many stations to drastically reduce their services… or cease operations entirely.

But local government officials like Mayor Ashman are saying that the effect on cities and towns overall will be even worse than the effect on the stations. Because as my longtime colleague Fred Johnson—noted community media policy maven and documentary filmmaker—said to me in a short interview for this editorial, “This is about seizing power and treasure from the cities.” If the FNPRM is enacted by the FCC, it will be allowing the cable companies to fundamentally devalue the use of public rights of way that have allowed them to make massive profits—by cutting into franchise fee revenue that is already far lower than it should be.

Incidentally, the FNPRM also doubles down on the part of the FCC rule trashing net neutrality that claims lower levels of government can’t reintroduce that reform by “prohibiting [cities, towns, and states] from using their video franchising authority to regulate the provision of most non-cable services, such as broadband Internet access service, offered over a cable system by an incumbent cable operator.” But, brevity being the soul of wit, I’ll have to address that issue another day.

In any case, to stop all that bad stuff from happening, DigBoston calls on our loyal audience to contact the FCC by this Friday, Dec 14, and join with thousands of other people around the country in demanding that the powerful agency do what’s best for American democracy and leave cable access franchise fees alone.

Readers can find a letter template and simple instructions for how to file your “reply comments” with the FCC on the Somerville Media Center website: somervillemedia.org/federaassaultonlocalmedia/.

It’s going to be an uphill fight in the current political climate. But with all of your help, community media stations can survive and thrive for decades to come. And municipalities will be much better off, too.

Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston.

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

7

STRAIN REVIEW TALKING JOINTS MEMO

G13 Hash Plant from Cultivate in Leicester

BY CITIZEN STRAIN

BOSTON, MA MARCH 22-24

Tickets on sale Nov. 12th, 2018

SPRINGFIELD, MA JUNE 21-22

Tickets on sale Mar. 1st, 2019

First of all, you’re going to adore the canisters.

The eighth of G13 Hash Plant we bought at the ballyhooed dispensary in Leicester came inside a plastic jar no taller than a shot glass with a rubber seal to keep things fresh. Unlike an annoying pill bottle with too narrow a neck to fit your fingers, these are wide enough to dig into and pinch away. Which you’ll be doing every time you run into a friend you want to hook up with a taste of your first batch of legal Massachusetts weed.

All they had for sale when we showed up was flower, so we decided on some Durban Poison—always a sweet aromatic indica, including in this case— as well as the aforementioned Hash Plant. The wait was only a little over an hour—we showed up at around two pm last Thursday, and we were back in the car and driving to Boston by a quarter after three. Once home, we cleaned the resin out of one of our most trusty tasting pipes and were blazing bowls and joints by 4:20 (we swear it was an innocent corny coincidence, but the timing nonetheless felt like a divine sign of some kind).

For prime smoking condition you will want to grind your Hash Plant down to a consistency between freeze-dried oregano and powder. That’s especially if you’re using a pipe or bong, which is true for most strains, but this stuff is somehow perfectly moist and dry enough to roll up at the same time; while we don’t recommend it, you could probably get Hash Plant burning evenly using a soda can.

Though it wasn’t listed on Cultivate’s online menu, at 19.6 percent THC the G13 Hash Plant comes in among the shop’s most potent picks. Compared to those that they have listed, only the Jamie Lee is higher, clocking in at an intimidating 22.7 percent THC. In my experience the past few years—going back and forth between legal rec spots in Oregon, medical dispensaries in Mass, farms in Maine, and various black market sources—we’ve found that such outstanding stoner boner toner is more likely to come out of the professional precision grows, be they legal or illegal.

These nugs are in that exalted category. As Hash Plant connoisseurs have come to expect, spinoff strains tend to be hybrid gold; Cultivate’s is no exception, seemingly as ideal for ailments of the anxiety variety as it is for straight hanging on a weekend afternoon. Why the weekend? Because this stuff is what those of us who have been twisting kind buds for some time used to refer to as a creeper weed. You may be able to retain your wits for a few minutes, perhaps even a half-hour. After that, if you keep on hitting it, you’re sure to feel the boomerang. It’s benevolent enough, but not exactly a good choice if you’re working retail or entering socially demanding situations.

Finally, there’s something else that’s special about the riff on the beloved hash strain that Cultivate is serving—it smells delicious. Not to your friends or roommates who hate the way all pot smoke reeks; they’ll probably hate it.

But for the kind of diehards who since voters pulled for legal weed stopped even trying to cover their scent with breath mints and perfume, this Hash Plant leaves a little something extra in the nostrils. Super dorks might call it an Afghan scent, but to us it smells like coffee sweetened with a hint of hash.

On second thought, considering that anyone can simply walk into a store and buy some for themselves, you might also say it smells a lot like freedom.

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

9

PAINLESS BOOK EXCERPT

What would you give to achieve a life without pain?

The following was excerpted from the debut novel Painless by Weymouth author Marty Thornley …

Streams of smoke and steam rise into the sky from the burnt underside of a car, wrecked and resting on its roof.

The heat of the engine and exhaust distorts the air above, and the metal crackles as it cools in the breeze of early morning.

1965 Cadillac Coupe De Ville. Black. It still has that new-car shine. Even with the wreckage of the crash, it is evident the car was cleaned and cared for. The tires, still spinning, slowly come to a stop.

A small hand reaches from the broken back window.

A boy drags himself carefully out of the twisted, broken door. Blood drips from his scalp, down his face and onto his suit—disheveled from the crash but cleaned and ironed just a couple of hours ago.

He stands and, though only seven-years-old, stumbles and braces himself against the car like a drunk who just pulled himself out of his own wreck.

For a moment he looks out into the distance.

It is quiet here.

The pine trees lining this lonely stretch of road are swayed by an almost silent wind. Behind the seemingly endless forest, snow-capped mountains stand indifferently.

A woman moans in pain.

The boy moves forward, making his way around the back of the car, bracing himself on the tail light, the license plate, the bumper. He rounds the corner to the driver’s side. A woman’s head and arms hang out of the driver’s window. A pool of blood spreads around her.

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“Mama?”

She tries to smile. Blood drips from her lips.

“Does it hurt?”

She reaches for the back of her neck. “I can’t... get it...”

Her fingers grasp a shard of metal that has pierced her spine. “Agh!” The boy moves aside her hair, exposing an angled fragment of chrome window trim—embedded deep in her neck, its bent and twisted length shooting through a ragged and bleeding gash of skin. As his fingers brush against the shiny protrusion, she closes her eyes and clamps her mouth shut—refusing the pain and stifling a scream.

“I... need... you to... pull it...”

The boy tugs. The metal moves.

“AHHHHHHHH!” The boy hesitates.

“PULL IT!” He tugs again. The chrome spike slides out of her neck.

Blood splashes off the end and splatters his face.

A serene calm washes over Mama’s face.

“Thank you, baby. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“It doesn’t?”

Mama smiles. Her hand reaches up, wiping the blood from her son’s face with her thumb.

The boy smiles back.

Mama’s hand goes limp and drops away. Mama’s eyes gloss over.

“Mama?”

Mama is dead.

A drop of crimson pools at the tip of the sharp and twisted chrome, still held tightly in his fingers, finally building the critical mass to drip down into the dirt between his feet.

The boy stares down. Cold and calculating.

* * * Far away from any city lights, the woods are dark. The forest floor, covered by the canopy of tall pines, is quiet but for the cry of the crickets.

Light breaks the darkness, and a revving engine sneaks into the silence. Headlights.

A car flies down the curving tree-lined road, interrupting the forest’s slumber.

The boy is now grown.

More than grown. He is pushing sixty, but the wild locks of gray hair make him look older. He is probably driving too fast for these back roads, but he turns with precision.

With purpose. He has done this drive many times. Just another day on the job. The sad old economy car, showing all of its fifteen-plus years of service—faded and discolored paint, misaligned tires turning at angles, suspension barely keeping the rusted undercarriage from throwing sparks—struggles to conquer the curving road.

The wood-lined road opens into a parking lot in front of a building that looks like an inner-city public school from somewhere in the 70’s. But here it is, surrounded by the darkness of the deep woods.

There is a single streetlight in the parking lot and a lone light above the main entrance. Just enough to park and walk to the door and no more. The rest of the building is lights-out.

The struggling car chugs its way out of the woods and finds the one lit parking spot, screeching to a halt. With a sigh of relief, the engine sputters to a stop. Cold air finds the heated metal. Clicking. Hissing. A song known to any proud owner of an old car in cold weather.

The driver’s door pops open, and he steps out, an old weathered briefcase in hand, breathing a cloud of steam out into the air. In one motion, he closes the door behind him and marches toward the building.

* * * Hands and forearms are ferociously washed under hot water, foaming soap being rinsed away. He is now wearing scrubs. The doctor is ready for surgery.

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HOLIDAY OPEN HOUSE

Enjoy holiday tunes by DJ José Massó as you meet neighbors and colleagues at Northeastern Crossing’s third annual Holiday Open House. Guests are invited to celebrate the season by creating origami decorations as holiday ornaments or gifts.

A special holiday menu will be served.

Tuesday December 11, 2018 4:30 PM- 7:00 PM 1175 Tremont Street, Roxbury FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

RSVP: northeastern.edu/crossing

* * * A golden retriever whines in pain. It is laid out and strapped down to an operating table. The doctor enters with arms bent, elbows at the waist and hands up in that pose that doctors perfect after scrubbing in. He does not acknowledge the dog as he crosses to the counter and snaps on his surgical gloves. Typically someone else would hold the gloves, so the clean hands do not touch anything. But the doctor is alone. No staff.

A tray is wheeled into position, covered with surgical instruments and filled needles. He picks up one of the needles, taps it, and pushes the plunger until a drop of the liquid inside drips out.

“It’s almost over.”

The dog whines and breathes heavy. Its back leg is encased in a cast. But the good doctor is not looking at the leg. He injects the dog in the middle of a previously shaved spot at the base of the neck.

He lifts a scalpel and pauses, waiting for the medication to take hold. It doesn’t take long, but he is impatient.

“Hold still.”

The scalpel traces a small line down the back of the dog’s neck, blood leaking out onto the shaved skin.

“I have a treat for you.”

The doctor turns to the tray of tools and turns back with a cutting tool, a small cylindrical metal tube with an angled and sharpened end, like the tip of a feather-quill pen. Except this looks like a weapon.

“You want a treat?”

He holds the dog’s head with his left hand and brings the cutting tool to the back of the dog’s neck.

CRUNCH. The dog yelps.

The cutting tool is deep into the dog’s neck and spine. It twists with a sickening crack. The doctor looks down with no concern for whatever the dog might be feeling.

A jar oozes the steam of liquid nitrogen. The doctor dips an empty needle into the jar and fills the chamber, the sides instantly crawling with frosty condensation. He turns and moves toward the dog.

He inserts the needle into the dog’s neck and pushes on the plunger, sending the liquid nitrogen into the spine.

Marty Thornley spent 15 years in the film industry creating screenplays and short films, and 10 years as a web developer and software architect. He returned to New England after years spent in Los Angeles, dusted off one of his screenplays, and turned it into his debut novel.

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

11

THE STOP LEAST TRAVELED

FEATURE

Daybreak at a semihistoric MBTA station you have never heard of and will probably never use

BY NATE HOMAN

It’s an everyday struggle if you head inbound toward Boston from the least-used MBTA train station.

There’s only one commuter rail that heads that way on weekdays, and it leaves at 6:58 in the morning.

The platform consists of about 10 feet of pavement in a marsh on the bank of the Neponset River.

From the road, the Plimptonville station could pass for a DPW lot. Or any lot next to a cedar swamp backyard in any Massachusetts suburb.

It’s hardly mobbed with tourists; unless they want to work around the once-a-day-each-way schedule, those visiting attractions nearby such as Lewis Castle or the MCI-Cedar Junction maximum security prison have to drive.

It’s easy to miss the name of the station, which is printed on an aluminum street sign the size of a sheet pan. There’s no bench, no shelter, and no newspaper stand. Just a miniature placard hung with rusted bolts on a deteriorating telephone pole. There’s no car lot either, just a yellow steel barrier gate with a “No Parking Tow Zone” sign and a small patch of asphalt where the train stairs line up.

“Sometimes they miss it with the door,” says Tony Chen, a stalwart Plimptonville commuter for two years.

He’s nice enough to answer a few questions before 7 am, just as the first sunlight flickers over the autumnal tree tops. “They usually are pretty good about it.”

In a system that covers hundreds of miles of tracks and serves hundreds of thousands of people a week in one of the 10 biggest suburban transit networks in the country, Plimptonville is the puniest pickup location of all.

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In 2005, according to MBTA records, the station serviced a mere three round trips a day. It’s less than a mile and a half as the crow flies to either of the two neighboring Franklin Line stops, Walpole Station and Windsor Gardens. Those two averaged more than 1,000 combined inbound riders a day in 2013.

I drove to Plimptonville one morning this fall, I think to find its reason for existing. Assuming there is one.

First built in the 1840s, what’s known today as the Franklin-Forge Park commuter rail line first ran from Dedham down the main streets of towns including Walpole, which was unpaved through the start of last century. The stretch was part of the long-since abandoned Norfolk County Railroad, and locomotives on the tracks hauled locally produced snuff, textiles, and twine to and from an industrial village run by Plimpton Iron Works.

The Walpole company was owned and operated by George Arthur Plimpton; a third-generation iron magnate (and granddad of the late famed author and Paris Review co-founder George Plimpton), George Arthur was the kind of guy who got what he wanted. Like a train stop for his booming business.

Trade and commerce thrived along the Neponset, and in time residences grew from farm homes and companyowned boarding houses in the early 19th century into estates and gentleman farms by the late 1800s, according to Walpole’s Communitywide Historic Properties Survey.

On Plimpton Street today, parts of an original iron fence still remain; otherwise, like so many other once great industries that fell to progress, the trade’s a memory.

There are no sidewalks along modern Plimpton Street,

which snakes under the iron horse’s solid steel bridge then crosses the river to Route 1A on Main Street. It’s only four klicks east of the Walpole Mall off of I-95, but it is the middle of nowhere. The closest bus stop, for the 34 out of Forest Hills 16 miles away, would leave an aspiring commuter with a 20-minute walk to Washington and Short streets, granted they know their way down the wooded path.

“I explain it to people as a swath of dirt in the woods,” morning commuter Joanne O’Rourke says. “They do as little as they can to maintain the station, and as little as they can to uphold the agreement they had with the people they originally bought the land off of.”

Locals are defensive of their tiny station, and while there’s never any guarantee that privatized MBTA trains will stop there forever, they do have history on their side in a sense. According to the US Department of the Interior National Park Service, Plimptonville is cemented in the National Register of Historic Places through its

“We chat with each other every morning. I don’t see that with any other station because everyone is on their phones or listening to music.”

connection to Walpole (formerly Union) Station. Drawing on the Rail Lines of Southern New England, a 1995 book by Ronald Dale Karr, a 2016 register document notes: Construction of the Norfolk County Railroad (18471849), the first railroad through Walpole, included stops at Plimptonville (later Tiltonville, and now again Plimptonville), Walpole (the town center), and rural West Walpole. Service on the 26-mile line, which ran between Dedham and Blackstone, opened April 23, 1849.

The previously chartered Walpole Railroad Company had projected a seven-mile branch line, connecting Walpole with the Boston & Providence line at Dedham.

This branch was not built, and the company merged with the Norfolk County Railroad. A connection to Boston, made at Dedham, opened in June 1850, giving Walpole its first through-service for commuters.

Under various agreements involving multiple railroads, this east-west line through Walpole eventually operated as a segment of a through route between Boston and New York, carrying both long-distance and commuter trains.

For the most part, it doesn’t look like very much has happened at the crossing through the years. Records show that in 1899, one Dugald Kelley, an agent at the Plimptonville station (yes, it apparently had actual agents back then) was struck and killed by an engine there. It’s been quiet ever since.

Today, there’s not even an MBTA map on the grounds.

No bike rack, no indication that this train is even for commuters. According to the most recent available MBTA BlueBook of rider stats, a solid 13 daily inbound riders held down Plimptonville in 2014. By comparison, Walpole Center averaged 945 a day that same year, while the second least-trafficked stop in the whole MBTA matrix, Silver Hill on the Fitchburg Line, saw a steady 20 riders.

As I witnessed, a dedicated fellowship of round-trip commuters congregate at Plimptonville on workday mornings. There is genuine interaction among them, especially for people up this early and heading to nineto-five jobs with an hour-or-less break for lunch. Some of them ride back together as well on the 5:02 pm out of South Station—the only weekday outbound train to Plimptonville. There’s no service at all on the weekends, naturally.

“We’re all wicked friendly here,” O’Rourke says. “We

NEWS TO US

chat with each other every morning. I don’t see that with any other station because everyone is on their phones or listening to music.”

It’s such an insider’s club, in fact, that the MBTA doesn’t even bother listing Plimptonville on online timetables. To find arrival and departure times, you need the print schedule (or the PDF of it), which denotes the stop with either a purple “f” for flag stop, in which “passengers must tell the conductor that they wish to leave” and “passengers waiting to board must be visible on the platform for the train to stop,” or in blue letters, which means “the train may leave ahead of schedule at these stops.”

“If you miss the morning train,” Chen says, “you have to walk one and a half miles to the nearby stations.”

Mostly, though, they ride together.

“We hit a record high not too long ago,” he adds.

“There were 14 people.”

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

13

NORTHBORO COUNTRY MUSIC

How Chris Moreno got to Nashville… from Boston

BY MORGAN HUME Though he’s been captivated by country music since way back, Chris Moreno’s journey to full-time musicianship has hardly been a steady climb.

A Massachusetts native raised in Northboro, Moreno went to UMass Amherst and landed in Boston about 10 years ago. Before that, he was that kid who locked himself inside his bedroom with a stack of albums and at 12 years old convinced his parents to buy him his first guitar.

Throughout high school, Moreno played gigs with a band as a guitarist, never a singer. His journey as a vocalist began more recently, when he decided to take lessons just to see if it was something he could possibly pursue. In a short time he fell in love with singing.

Despite his country act, Moreno’s spent the past 10 years making a name for himself in Boston, performing in the places that you might be more accustomed to seeing your favorite indie rock and pop acts. As a whole, he says that the exposure has helped him grow as an artist and build strong connections with other local musicians. A nominee for Best Country Artist of the Year at the 2018 Boston Music Awards, he’s done a solid job of getting his name out there.

Moreno’s passion for music has always been lingering, but his drive to perform wasn’t always there.

At one point, he took a five-year break from playing to focus on his former corporate career, but despite having good friends and steady work, he says something was missing.

“I definitely felt kind of unfulfilled, and I think I just didn’t really know why,” Moreno says. “I didn’t know what the solution was.”

Eventually, Moreno realized the solution was to dust off his guitar and warm his vocal chords back up. The five-year break gave him a new appreciation for his craft, the time away showing him how much he truly values the feeling of having music in his life. And though he grew up on rock music like the Deftones and Aerosmith, these days he draws inspiration from country stars like Keith Urban and Brett Young.

“The more I started getting into country and the storytelling through the lyrics,” he says, “the more I sort of realized that this was the right fit for me as far as genre.”

With so many country singers writing songs about love and relationships, Moreno says it is important to

find qualities about yourself that set you apart from similar artists. “You have to have something that makes you different, and so I’m always trying to figure out what it is about me that’s different,” he adds.

On his newest single, “It Was You,” Moreno sings about a past relationship and his struggle to move on, but instead of focusing solely on feeling hurt he reflects on the good times, adding a positive spin on a sad situation.

Though Massachusetts is his home, earlier this year Moreno moved to Nashville to push his career ahead. He says Boston was the stepping stone he needed to gain experience and build confidence, but he ultimately had to head down south.

“If you’re doing country, this is the place to be,” Moreno says. “It was really just wanting to move to a place where I feel like I could elevate myself and where I would be best and see where things go from there.”

With solo artists who carry a full band dominating country charts these days, he sees a unique opportunity.

“I want that full band sound,” Moreno says. “I want to honor all those rock roots that I grew up with.”

>> CHRIS MORENO 12.14/8PM AT BOSTON MARRIOTT COPLEY PLACE, 110 HUNTINGTON AVE., BOSTON. 12.15/9PM AT FINN MCCOOL’S PUBLIC HOUSE, 200 HIGH ST., BOSTON. 14

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LIVE MUSIC • PRIVATE EVENTS 12/12

Moth Radio

Story Slam: Roads Final show at ONCE as they move to their new home

FEB 1 & 2 - BOSTON TICKETS:

beeradvocate.com/extreme

12/15

Emperor Norton’s Honkin’ Holiday Bash with Eddie Japan.

Honk ho ho

12/16 DAY

Holiday Buzz

Gift Market 11am - 5pm

12/16 NIGHT

Country Christmas

w/ Slim Jim & The Mad Cows, Magen Tracy & The Missed Connections and Lonely Leesa & The Lost Cowboys 12/19

The 14th or 15th Annual

Boston Christmas Cavalcade For the Homeless!

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

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

THE ULTIMATE MUSIC GIFT GUIDE MUSIC

10 Boston-based gifts for the music lover in your life

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Buying holiday gifts is hard enough already. Buying gifts for a music fan, however, always seems to up the stakes—not just in gift choice, but in price. Somewhere between discounted instruments, professional music lessons, and stadium concert tickets, your wallet starts frowning at you pretty fast.

To make that process easier, we’ve gathered some of the best gifts to give to someone in your life who loves music without breaking your bank. Best of all, every single item in this list was made by Boston locals, so you can help our little city’s ecosystem stay alive while giving the capitalistic tendencies of major corporations a middle finger. It’s gonna be a merry Christmas after all.

MOUTHGUARD BY SADIE DUPUIS gramma.press/bookshop/mouthguard/ $16 Indie rock act Speedy Ortiz are a fan favorite around here because of how sick their riffs are and how they’re bettering the DIY scene in every way.

In her spare time, self-described frontdemon Sadie Dupuis has been writing a book of poems dubbed Mouthguard. Most of the poems delve into magical escapism while remaining grounded in manic love, loss, and coming to terms with who you are. They run the gamut in terms of insightful scope and emotional prowess, so it’s best to flip through a copy to understand why it stopped us from grinding our teeth at night.

ED BALLOON’S HI SERIES CONCERT TICKETS greatscottboston.com $10 To see Ed Balloon live is to understand just how much creativity can fit inside a single human being.

The 27-year-old musician has been secretly rejuvenating Boston’s music scene with his unique blend of electropop, R&B, and indie rock. So far, he’s only released a string of EPs and singles, but he’s been working on new material that may see the light of day in 2019. That may explain why he earned a short residency at Great Scott this upcoming January. Dubbed Ed Balloon’s Hi Series, the string of dates will see him take the stage on Jan 2 with Winona and the Riders and Maeko, Jan 9 with Cliff Notez and Garth., Jan 16 with VQNC and Niu Raza, and Jan 23 with Oompa and Billy Dean Thomas. Pick any night and be ready to dance, because Balloon will get you grooving along from the very first song he plays.

DISPOSABLE AMERICA PENCILS disposableamerica.bandcamp.com/merch $1 Of all the record labels in Boston, it’s Disposable America that always makes us feel loved. Not just us as in DigBoston staffers, either. The indie rock-favoring label packages its purchases with a smattering of goodies, from tiny pins to trivia cards. Which means you will get a tiny pack of fun when you order its new blue pencils. Unsharpened graphite pencils with “DISPOSABLE

AMERICA :) :) :) FOR TRUE BELIEVERS ONLY” engraved in comic sans? Sounds like the perfect gift for the person in your life who’s constantly writing lyrics or jotting down notes for a concert review. Help keep your pals sharp this season.

BLACK BEACH T-SHIRTS blackbeachma.bandcamp.com/merch $15 Show off your taste in garage rock and punk with Black Beach T-shirts. Hand-drawn by Sami Martasian of anti-folk group Puppy Problems, these shirts come in three different colors: forest green, off-white, and yolk yellow. It’s the merging of two of Allston’s greatest musical minds for the sake of some genuinely good apparel. On the plus side, sporting the shirts will get a few random passersby or coworkers to Google the band and, likely, get what all of the heart-eyed hype is about.

FREE STUDIO TIME VIA 617 SESSIONS 617sessions.com $0 Old ’heads will remember Fort Apache Studios, the legendary Boston recording studio that the Pixies, Buffalo Tom, and the Lemonheads all cut their teeth working on material. In 2009, Janos Fulop and Owen Curtin remodeled it into the Bridge, a similarly high-end recording studio that’s working with some of the best of today. The Bridge partnered with the Boston Music Awards to create the 617 Sessions, a music series that gives an entire day of studio time, including engineers and studio assistants, to local musicians. It’s a bit far off to apply for the 2019 edition of the 617 Sessions, but it would be quite the meaningful gift to pledge to nominate your musician pals for the series in a handwritten card, eh?

FIDDLEHEAD T-SHIRT runforcoverrecords.limitedrun.com $18 Loyal DigBoston readers are already familiar with Fiddlehead and you should be, too. The artsy punk and post-hardcore band sees Have Heart frontman Patrick

Flynn on lead vocals, Basement member Alex Henery on guitar, Casey Nealon on bass, Have Heart member Shawn Costa on drums, and Alex Dow on guitar to form a whirring, intricate, and above all else passionate burst of music that will move you more than music of that genre usually would. After giving them a listen and falling in love (Trust us; you will), nab this TV T-shirt repping their name. Fiddlehead’s self-designed apparel sells out within hours on their website, in part because they create the cuts in under-100 quantities. Thankfully local record label Run For Cover, who pressed their 2018 LP Springtime and Blind, stepped up by creating limited edition shirts for sale, only this time there are more than 100 available for purchase. Which means those of you holding out for a dope last-minute gift will luck out with this one.

DUNEDEVIL deathwishinc.com $50 Give the metalhead in your life exactly what they want: another Converge deep-cut collectable to add to their display case. Frontman Jacob Bannon spent one week residing in the C-Scape Dune Shack in Provincetown’s Peaked Hill Bars National Register Historic District working on abstract mixed media, photography, and music. Last year, he released a book of his artwork from that period, dubbed Dunedevil.

It sold out almost immediately. For those who missed the initial run, his record label, Deathwish Inc., announced a special second edition press of the book, this time limited to 500 copies. The hardcover, Verona linen clothbound, foil-embossed book is 300 pages of bright beauty, contrasting the dark imagery of Converge. It’s a gorgeous collection of work, and given the detail that went into it, the $50 price tag isn’t too shabby.

THE BEST LOCAL ALBUMS OF 2018 digboston.com $5 - $30 We don’t pour our hearts into our coverage of the local music scene for nothing. At the end of each year, DigBoston prints a list of the 30 Best Local Albums of the Year. We also release a Best Local EPs of the Year list.

That list comes out shortly, and we can’t recommend actually buying the music enough. Pick up Edge Petal Burn’s heavy emo debut Glass Cannon from Bandcamp for $8. Buy Vundabar’s latest reckless indie pop romp Smell Smoke on vinyl for $15. Grab Nature Shots’ hushed ambient record Foreclosure off Bandcamp for $5. Grab the metalcore revival record errorzone by Vein on an electric blue splatter vinyl for $18. There’s so much good music out there, and any music nerd in your life would be thrilled to hear, nevermind own, these.

For Nina’s complete list of gifts check out digboston.com

MUSIC EVENTS THU 12.13

SAMPLE A CUP OF ALLSTON PUDDING OOMPA + JELANI SEI + AMANDA SHEA + HONEY CUTT

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

8:30pm/18+/$10. greatscottboston.com] 16

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THU 12.13

NEW VOICE, NEW YOU, NEW AMBIENT FOLK ANJIMILE + NOVA ONE

[Atwood’s Tavern, 877 Cambridge St., Cambridge. 9pm/21+/$9. atwoodstavern.com]

DIGBOSTON.COM

THU 12.13

ELASTIC DAYS OF DINOSAUR SENIOR J MASCIS + LULUC

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$33. sinclaircambridge.com]

SUN 12.16

THE LOST & FOUND TOUR JORJA SMITH + RAVYN LENAE [House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston.

7pm/all ages/$29.50. houseofblues.com]

MON 12.17

TUE 12.18

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$24. sinclaircambridge.com]

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

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

HUSH PUPPY FOLK AND FREEWHEELIN’ GOODNESS HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER

POSITIVE INDIE POP TO HOP TO BEACH BUNNY + FIELD MEDIC + LILITH + LADY PILLS

WHEEL OF TUNES

MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA

Signed Pinkerton vinyl and impulsive grocery purchases

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN It’s easiest to summarize Manchester Orchestra as an emotionally driven alt-rock group, but the Atlantabased band always seems to deviate just enough away from that sound to warrant more accurate descriptors. Since starting it in 2004, frontman Andy Hull has guided the group from acoustic confessions PHOTO COURTESY OF MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA to indie rock moodiness to bitter punk-tinged rock to spacious production.

Despite dressing Hull’s lyrics in new outfits with each album, Manchester Orchestra has managed to be dependably moving, building the type of trust with their listeners that keeps them coming back, faithfully, to hear what’s next on the docket.

Last year, that meant following them to A Black Mile to the Surface, their fifth proper studio album. On it, the band tries its hand at looser song progressions and more subtle changes, creating a mellow atmosphere that has a spiritual pulse to it.

Lyrically, it centers around the town of Lead, South Dakota, an old gold mining town now home to a neutrino science experiment, and the various research questions that have risen about matter and our universal evolution. Together, the album is a proper package, one that the band only recently unwrapped.

“You have to get out of your own way to actually hear what you’ve made,” says Hull. “I used to focus on things that didn’t matter, like the placement of a random shaker in a song. So I had to walk away from it and let the fans take it. It was the best thing I could have done. We saw their reaction to the record, which made us more secure in what we made. A lot of the record felt like it was a ‘first record’ for us to make because we weren’t comfortable with the things we were trying out.”

To get to know Manchester Orchestra, we interviewed Andy Hull for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask musicians questions inspired by their song titles. With A Black Mile to the Surface as the prompt, his answers are discreetly touching and colorful—qualities that will hide the band’s music when it headlines the Tsongas Center in Lowell this Tuesday.

1. “The Maze” When was the last time you got lost?

Well, it used to be a whole lot harder because you didn’t have phones. I remember back in high school getting lost driving a car because of it. [laughs] It used to be up to the help of a gas station attendant. I have no idea the last time I was lost, though.

It was honestly as easy as not knowing where my wife was at the grocery store. All I have to do is hope she sneezes. Then I’d be able to find her because she’s the world’s loudest sneezer. I’ve heard and found her more than once by hearing her sneeze in a store.

2. “The Gold” What’s the most priceless thing you own because it would be impossible to replace?

I have a signed original copy of Pinkerton that Matt Sharp—who is now a friend, but before he was my friend I was just an admirer of his—sent me. He sent me the vinyl for Christmas one year. I have a signed Magic Johnson basketball. And also fan letters. I try to keep all of that, letters and things they give me, in a box. I hope to give it to my kids to read some day. I don’t have a PO box, though, so it really depends on the person running into us for me to get a letter. Sometimes if they run into us in person, it happens. I wouldn’t say it’s all the time, but it definitely keeps occuring, enough for me to have a box of them.

THE BLOW EVAN GREER + MORE

3. “The Moth” What’s a dangerous thing you’re often drawn to, like a moth drawn to a flame?

Alcohol. [laughs] I think that’s for everybody though. That would probably be the most dangerous thing that I enjoy doing, but I try not to do it dangerously. That’s the key. Other than that, I’m not really a strange sports type of dude or anything. I’m more of a “Netflix and read a nice book” type of guy.

SAT, JANUARY 19. 8PM MILKY WAY / BELLA LUNA TICKETS ON SALE NOW

FIND THE REST OF NINA’S PIECE AT DIGBOSTON.COM >> MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA, THE FRONT BOTTOMS. TUE 12.18. TSONGAS CENTER, 300 MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. WAY, LOWELL. 6:30PM/ALL AGES/$24.50. TSONGASCENTER.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

THEATER REVIEWS PERFORMING ARTS

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS & JUAN A. RAMIREZ @ITSNUMBERJUAN

ROLAND IN THE DEEP: FRONT PORCH ARTS COLLECTIVE DEBUTS AT THE LYRIC STAGE

tremendous performances keep Breath & Imagination airborne. Doug Gerber is fine as Arthur Calhoun, a Chattanooga choir director who sees something in a young Hayes, and Nile Scott Hawver is impressive in a handful of small roles (and makes one hell of a woman).

But it is Davron S. Monroe who makes Breath & Imagination one of the most unforgettable productions of the year. It is a curious thing that despite his prodigious talent Moore has been relegated mostly to small, thankless supporting roles over the last few years.

He proves here that he’s a bonafide leading man who can carry an entire show on his back without breaking a sweat. From the comedy of a playful, pouty child being dragged to church to the assurance of a world-renowned singer with “the pain and the promise” of his people in his throat, Monroe’s epic portrayal is both divinely touching and unforgettably stirring.

If this is the kind of work that we can expect from Front Porch, I’d say the city of Boston just got a whole hell of a lot richer.

The Front Porch Arts Collective raised a few eyebrows this past spring when its name was found in the season announcements of three prominent Boston theater companies: Central Square Theater, Greater Boston Stage Company, and the Lyric Stage, Boston’s oldest professional theater. What was this Front Porch Arts Collective and why did it seem like everyone wanted to work with it?

Formed by two major players of the Boston stage, Dawn M. Simmons (a director and the new executive director of StageSource) and Maurice Emmanuel Parent (an actor, educator, and—now—director), Front Porch is, according to Simmons, “a new black-led theatre company committed to advancing racial equity in Boston through theater.” What’s more, it’s the city’s first black theater BREATH & IMAGINATION. THROUGH 12.23 AT THE company.

LYRIC STAGE COMPANY, 140 CLARENDON ST., BOSTON. There is wonderful harmony to the idea of Boston’s LYRICSTAGE.COM oldest professional theater joining forces with its —Ehlers youngest, and their union has resulted in a first-rate revival of Daniel Beaty’s Breath & Imagination, a A FRENETIC BARBER SHOP CHRONICLES AT biomusical based on the life of Roland Hayes, the first A.R.T. African-American to perform at Boston’s Symphony Hall.

Not only is Breath & Imagination Front Porch’s firstever production, but it also marks the professional directorial debut of Parent, who has shown here that we may have a formidable new director on our hands.

And while this is far from Davron S. Monroe’s first Nigerian playwright Inua Ellams’ Barber Shop performance, his star turn is so virtuosic that it feels very Chronicles—a smash in the UK—has been on an American much like we are seeing him at his full potential for the tour since October and has just settled into a month-long first time. run at Cambridge’s American Repertory Theater, where it Breath & Imagination charts Hayes’s journey from a will run through Jan 5. child born to slaves in Georgia to becoming one of the Directed by Bijan Sheibani, Barber Shop Chronicles highest-paid concert singers in the world. In 1917, he is set in six different barber shops between London and famously rented out Symphony Hall for a concert and Africa. Under a chaotic tangle of telephone wires and a sold out, turning hundreds of people away at the door.

What Beaty does well in his one-act musical is that he efficiently touches on all of the pivotal moments in Hayes life without becoming Wikipedian, and the fact that the score is made up mostly of Negro spirituals infuses the work with rousing authenticity. Songs like “Plenty Good Room,” “Who’ll Be a Witness for My Lord,” and the spinetingling “Were You There” are given magnificent treatment here by music director Asher Denburg.

If the skeleton of the story is Hayes’s remarkable talent, then its heart is his relationship with his mother, Angel Mo’, who is played here by a brilliant Yewande Odetoyinbo.

Odetoyinbo captures the fear of a woman who finds herself a sudden widow after her husband is denied entry to a hospital for being black, as well as the pain of a mother whose only child leaves her behind to pursue a career path she doesn’t approve of.

(She hoped he’d become a preacher; Hayes eventually did come back for his mother, and they moved up to Boston together.)

ENSEMBLE OF BARBER SHOP CHRONICLES US AND CANADA TOUR. PHOTO BY TIM TRUMBLE. Even when the musical’s narrative becomes a little repetitive, the 18

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giant Universal Studios-like globe suspended from the ceiling with a disco ball in its center (??)—Rae Smith is the designer—different men in different countries are having the same kinds of conversations: fatherhood, football, masculinity, homophobia, and the N word. Even in Ellams’ overly scripted play, the men seem to be approaching various kinds of truths, even if it isn’t always clear to the audience what they’re talking… and talking… and talking about.

Even if the ending of the play feels too pat, Barber Shop Chronicles becomes something of a stunner in its final 20 minutes. Sadly, 20 minutes does not a play make and the rest of the play is not only an assault on our patience but also on our will to extract any kind of sense.

And, for what it’s worth, I’m usually someone who goes weak in the knees for plays in which nothing..seems...to... happen.

There are some admirable performances, though, chief among them Tuwaine Barrett, who at one point delivers a master class in comedy, and Elliot Edusah, who under better circumstances may very well be the heart of the play.

But there is also an alienating chaos to the production that doesn’t serve it well. Rather than be invited into their world, I felt stuck on the outside of it, not only because I had no idea what they were talking about most of the time, but because the cast seemed to be having a grand old time regardless. (Emblematic of this is Patrice Naiambana’s bizarrely over-the-top performance, which gave his scenes a weird self-indulgence).

At the end of each haircut, a mirror is held up so that the guy in the chair can get a good look at his fresh cut.

But even if the guys on stage were able to see themselves reflected perfectly, our own reflections remain fuzzy and just out of view, lost under a tangle of telephone wires and noise.

BARBER SHOP CHRONICLES. THROUGH 1.5 AT AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER, 64 BRATTLE ST., CAMBRIDGE. AMERICANREPERTORYTHEATRE.ORG —Ehlers

HUNTINGTON’S MAN IN THE RING A TOTAL KNOCKOUT

A gentle Caribbean breeze gets caught in a storm of violent masculinity in Man in the Ring, Michael Cristofer’s play about the life of boxer Emile Griffith. In a firstrate production directed by Michael Greif (Dear Evan Hansen; Rent), the legendary prizefighter’s past, present, and future battle it out in an unforgiving tempest of celebrity, identity, and legacy.

Griffith, who emigrated from Saint Thomas as a teenager and worked gleefully as a Manhattan hat maker, is best remembered for a 1962 match against Benny Paret, in which 17 punches in five seconds landed Paret in the hospital, only to be pronounced dead a few days later. Griffith, who only entered the world of boxing through outside pressure; who, privately bisexual, went into that fateful fight blinded by rage at his opponent mocking him with homophobic slurs; who failed to understand why anyone would want to see two men fight, never recovered from the night’s aftermath, descending into trauma-related dementia before dying penniless in 2013.

Working within a rather traditional rise-and-fall biography, Cristofer finds the most to say about queerness itself, and how it shades Griffith’s relationships with himself and others. He is, to his core, a joyful, loving man, attentive to his mother (a devoted Starla Benford), with whom he has an electric relationship. His relationship with Luis (Victor Almanzar) is one of the best sketched portrayals of homoerotic love I’ve seen on a stage, equal parts lustful and tender. That he inhabits the life of a successful fighter seems as much a surprise to him as to the men he encounters in dimly lit bars, who coarsely ask him how the devil could make one man so strong yet so pretty.

The legendary prizefighter, with all of his contradictions, is a figure out of a Greek tragedy, and his dualities are made visible in the casting of Kyle Vincent Terry and John Douglas Thompson as the man at young and old age, respectively.

Facing himself for nearly the duration of the play, Terry and Thompson play Griffith as both sides of the same withered coin; a life-loving smile joins the two performances as they diverge in one man’s youthful turbulence and another’s rueful nostalgia. As the late-in-life Griffith becomes lost in a haze of memories, Greif stages a mosaic of life as a spectator sport, complete with a chorus of Caribbean songs that keep the fighter’s roots at surface level.

The music, supervised by Michael McElroy, is almost always wellemployed, though it sometimes veers the production into musical theater territory it need not enter. Nonetheless, the use of Spanish lullabies give the production such a delicate air of unvarnished innocence, it is impossible to resist, especially as the older Griffith clings to them as a baby does his mother.

David Zinn’s scenic and Ben Stanton’s lighting designs pack the show with a startling one-two punch, with metal staircases framing the action, which is often punctuated with flashes of light that act as photographers’ bulbs, but play as the blinding effects of a life lived receiving punches, not the least of which came in 1992, when Griffith was beaten within an inch of his life while exiting a Manhattan gay bar.

Battered from years of physical and emotional trauma, Griffith never was able to reconcile the many aspects of his life, and Man in the Ring provides no tidy ending. What it does provide, quite beautifully, is the clear-eyed meditation on Griffith’s troubled life that he was never able to accomplish himself.

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MAN IN THE RING. THROUGH 12.22 AT CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE BCA. 527 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG —Ramirez

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

SPIKE LEE, C.V., 2018 FILM

A year in review (with just one filmmaker in mind)

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN Spike Lee has earned our attention many times over, but that said, he can be damn hard to keep up with. Perhaps the most prolific commercial filmmaker working in the United States today, Lee releases his joints across various formats on a nearly yearly basis: feature-length films (fiction and nonfiction), short films (mostly nonfiction), music videos, television programs, commercials, etc. And this year did not skimp on works by Spike Lee. In 2018 the director released four projects with the “joint” label: a nontheatrical performance film, a music video, a narrative feature, and a 40-minute Uber commercial (!) (?), the 61-year-old filmmaker setting a pace that few of his peers, regardless of age, can keep up with.

If I were in a ranking mood I’d probably say the best work Lee released this year was Pass Over [2018], also the first of the four chronologically speaking, premiering at Sundance in January. The latest in a long series of Lee-directed performance films, Pass Over is a record of a play written by Antoinette Nwandu and directed for the stage by Danya Taymor, both produced and filmed at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Primary characters are Moses (Jon Michael Hill) and Kitch (Julian Parker), two loquacious men hanging out interminably under a Chicago street sign on a spare Godotesque set; they are joined over the course of the play by two white oppressor characters, Ossifer (Blake DeLong) and Mister/Master (Ryan Hallahan), who harass them in manners both direct and indirect, with aggressions micro and macro.

Moses and Kitch’s dialogue repeatedly contextualizes their own contemporary peril (to wit, their conversations are regularly interrupted by gunshots and police sirens) within larger traditions of historical oppression (the writing cites eras ranging from biblical Egypt to colonial/ colonized America), and the piece concludes with a coup de théâtre that very much implicates the audience in a racist act of violence committed by the Mister character (in an article published by American Theatre last year Nwandu wrote that “My play Pass Over … engages a majority white audience in a conversation about the violent effects of white oppression on black bodies”).

Lee enacts a few changes onto this framework leading into a coup more cinematic than theatrical: The opening of his Pass Over film depicts the audience for the show as they make their way to Steppenwolf, his framing making clear that at least some of the group is departing from the Saint Sabina Church on the south side of the city. This is not a “majority white audience,” and given that Lee’s formal/editing choices often work to align the presumed experience of this crowd with the experience of the two primary characters—clear, say, when the film cuts away from the performance on the first time that Moses and Kitch are interrupted by the sounds of gunfire to show frames of knowing faces in the crowd, some even nodding in recognition. This kind of dynamic leads directly into the finale of Lee’s film, which doesn’t implicate the audience so much as it sides with them, and then indeed continues beyond the conclusion of the play, literally following the audience back onto the streets in a multiformat montage (even some 8mm, I think) that mixes together landscape shots of Chicago (in many cases locations featuring antiviolence activist art) with portraits of the departing crowd (seen in both posed and “observed” images). It’s the first instance of a tendency that recurs across many of Lee’s works, but especially in his recent ones—film techniques are used to forge direct visual connections between movies, performances, or other artworks and the actual communities they depict or engage with.

Community portraiture is, on that note, the primary approach in Lee’s Da Republic of Brooklyn, released in

July, which just so happens to be a five-part expanded commercial for Uber. My subject today is aesthetic continuities across Spike Lee’s body of work in the past year, decidedly not the business ethics of how Spike Lee makes his living, so I won’t get into The Matter of Uber, but I will note that these commercials are on a formal level very much in line with the compositional tendencies seen in many other Lee-directed interview-based nonfiction works. Take, for instance, the first of the five that comes up when you go to the website for this piece—Malka—which spends 30 seconds on an opening credits sequence shot with recognizably Spike Lee-esque angles (highlighting the subject’s work as a hairdresser), then about six minutes on an interview with Malka shot from multiple perspectives for high-speed cross-cutting that’s very characteristic of the director’s established aesthetic (during which Malka discusses the abuse she suffered with an arranged marriage, her mostly positive experiences with New York’s housing services, and the path that led her to working in the hair salon), then finally about 90 seconds of blatantly rose-colored discussion about Uber itself (as one can imagine, this is the part of the commercial that airs whenever or wherever there are time constraints). Say what you will about the larger project, but what comes through in the work is a desire not too far from what’s happening at the end of his Pass Over film: a convincingly sincere dedication toward emphasizing the individuals of a community alongside the motion picture work that’s representing them for other purposes, be it art or commerce.

Commerce is similarly the nature of the third Spike joint of the year, a music video for Prince’s recording of “Mary Don’t You Weep” that doubles as an “extended trailer” for BlacKkKlansman [2018], itself the fourth and final of the Lee pieces released this year, a narrative fiction feature adapted from the memoirs of former Colorado Springs police Detective Ron Stallworth. Lee’s feature casts John David Washington as Stallworth and Adam Driver as the white cop who helps him to infiltrate both local and national chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, in a plot that during its lighter and more expository moments sometimes affects the general tone of ’70s-revenge-action-comedies.

But a much different mood is achieved by most of the film’s major sequences, many of which are also expressly concerned with the matter of how a community represents itself. In one of them, Stallworth attends a speech by Kwame Ture, which begins with comments about how the younger generation “must define beauty for black people.”

The entire sequence is intercut with close-ups of black people who seem to be listening to Ture, but who aren’t necessarily part of his audience, seeing as how we see their faces in close-ups against dark, velvety backgrounds that suggest a space completely unreal, as if this new definition being called for is being sculpted by the film itself (the sequence is in my opinion among the most ravishing in the entire Lee filmography—the cinematographer for both this film and Pass Over, it should be noted, is Chayse Irvin). This idea of cinematic portraiture (and community portraiture with it) to me always seemed central to Spike Lee’s work—his documentaries about New Orleans postKatrina both end with the interview subjects listing their credentials while holding literal picture frames around their own faces—and in this sequence, that preoccupation reaches some kind of apotheosis.

In close alignment with Pass Over, BlacKkKlansman has its own fourth-wall-breaking conclusion, which sees two of its primary characters actually walk a hallway toward the present day, the film concluding with a compendium of clips from the white supremacist riots and rallies that occured in Charlottesville during August 2017. A performance film that prizes the faces of the local audience in the crowd, an Uber commercial that sincerely foregrounds worker’s voices as well as depicting the kind of systemic hardships that cause a person to need second and third jobs in the first place, a studio-financed periodset policier that uses nonfiction footage of contemporary American atrocities as its grand finale… Lee is working in established formats and not so much subverting or breaking rules, but drawing clear lines, with great urgency, which connect the represented to the representation— maybe erasing some of the line between fiction and nonfiction, and at his best maybe even depicting something of both at the same time.

SPIKE LEE ON SET OF BLACKKKLANSMAN, IMAGE COURTESY FOCUS FEATURES

>> BLACKKLANSMAN IS AVAILABLE ON HOME VIDEO FORMATS AND VIDEO-ON-DEMAND OUTLETS. RATED R. PASS OVER IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON WITH A PRIME SUBSCRIPTION OR FOR INDIVIDUAL RENTAL. NOT RATED. DA REPUBLIC OF BROOKLYN IS AVAILABLE TO STREAM AT UBERPRESENTS.COM. LEE’S MUSIC VIDEO FOR “MARY DON’T YOU WEEP” IS AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE AND ELSEWHERE ONLINE. 20

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VOL 10

Saturday • December 15 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Art by Barrington Edwards

Grove Hall Branch of the Boston Public Library 41 Geneva Ave • Dorchester 02121

Comics In Color is a safe space where you can come and nerd out about illustrated stories by and about people of color.

THIS MONTH! • Featured Guest: Michelle Abreu

Michelle is an Illustrator and comic book artist with two comic series, Novengard & The Lamb of the Altar, which can be found on AbreuIllustration.com.

• Discussion

Into the Spiderverse

• All-levels comics making activity • Samples of POC Comics • SNACKS! All are welcome but this is an event focused on comics by and about people of color.

COMICSINCOLOR.ORG

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

MAGA STUMBLE SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

Straight and married but not boring, and heading to my parents’ house for our first family Christmas since my asshole MAGA brother “stumbled over” the Tumblr blog where the wife and I posted about our sexual adventures. (Pics of MMF threesomes and crossdressing/pegging sessions, plus some dirty “true enough” stories.) My brother has always been an angry screwup, so he leapt on the chance to make me look bad by sending the link to my parents, siblings, and even some close family friends. Our Tumblr blog is still up because we aren’t ashamed. Any advice?

Totally Uncool Malicious Bastard’s Lame Reveal Your Tumblr blog isn’t going to be up for much longer, TUMBLR, as the company that owns Tumblr—Verizon—is ashamed of your blog and the millions of others like it.

Tumblr announced last week that all “adult” content is banned as of December 17. And the definition of “adult content” is pretty broad: “photos, videos, and GIFs of human genitalia, female-presenting nipples, and any media involving sex acts, including illustrations,” although they will allow genitals and those wicked “female-presenting nipples” in images of classical art. (No contemporary junk or lady nips allowed.)

This is not just a blow to people who use Tumblr for porn—and that’s most people who use Tumblr—but also to the sex work community. Sex workers had already been driven off most other online platforms by anti-sex-work crusaders, and now sex workers are being driven off Tumblr as well. Forcing sex workers off the internet won’t end sex work, the stated goal of anti-sex-work crusaders, but it will make sex work more dangerous—which tells us everything we need to know about the motives of anti-sexwork crusaders. While they claim to oppose sex work because it’s dangerous, they push policies that make sex work more dangerous. Sex workers weren’t just advertising online, they were organizing—in addition to honing and making the political argument for decriminalizing sex work, they were screening potential clients and sharing information with each other about dangerous clients. Just like anti-choice/anti-abortion crusaders, anti-sex-work crusaders don’t want to “protect” women; they want to punish women for making choices they disapprove of. (As a general rule: If what you’re doing makes people less safe, you don’t get to claim you’re trying to protect anyone—it’s like claiming you only set houses on fire to drive home the importance of smoke alarms.)

Anyway, fuck your sex-shaming/smut-shaming brother, TUMBLR. As for the rest of your family, you and the wife should slap smiles on your faces and act like you’ve done nothing wrong—because you haven’t done anything wrong. Your asshole brother is the bad guy, and any family members who wish to discuss how offended they were by your Tumblr blog should be directed to speak with your brother, as he’s the one who showed it to them.

How can I explain to my sisters that although I am a free sexual woman, I still prefer men as sexual partners? My sisters are both involved with women and they cannot understand how, with all the awful sexual inequality in the world, I can still be primarily attracted to men. Sometimes I even imagine my sexuality as a gay man’s sexuality in a woman’s body, and I try to explain it to them in this way. I’m not a secret right-winger or someone kidding around by asking this question. This is a real issue.

Give It To Me Straight P.S. I have a straight male friend who says he’s a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. What do you think of this?

COMEDY EVENTS THU 12.13 - SAT 12.15

APRIL MACIE @ LAUGH BOSTON

April Macie travels the world collecting stories and experiences, which she then translates into humorous, relatable tales in front of audiences worldwide. April is a regular guest on the Howard Stern show, where in 2008 she was voted the “Funniest and Hottest” comedian in America.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | VARIOUS | $25 THU 12.13

STAND UP @ THE GREEN ROOM

Featuring: Bethany Van Delft, Jiayong Li, Sam Ike, Brian Higginbottom, Katie Qué, Ellen Sugarman.

Hosted by Carolyn Riley & Gloria Rose

62 BOW ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 SUGGESTED DONATION FRI 12.14 - SAT 12.15

DAVE RUSSO @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

As co-host of NESN’s Dirty Water TV, he produces a regular comedy series, in addition to reporting on the best of Boston nightlife. He has appeared on The E! TV series “The Entertainer”, NBC’s “The Today Show,” FOX 25 with Gene Lavanchy, “The Phantom Gourmet,” and was hand selected by the producer of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” to perform on NESN’s Comedy All-Stars.

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 FRI 12.14

COMEDY NIGHT @ THE REVOLUTION HOTEL

Featuring: Carolyn Riley, Alex La, Michelle Sui, and Comedy Central’s Dan Boulger.

Hosted by Will Noonan

40 BERKELEY ST., BOSTON, | 8PM | FREE FRI 12.14

COMICS 2 CURE @ LAUGH BOSTON

A portion of the proceeds to Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown MA. Featuring: Donnell Rawlings from Chappelle’s Show, w/ Clark Jones, & Joseph Vescey Hosted by Chase Abel

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $27.50 SAT 12.15

SATURDAY NIGHT @ THE COMEDY STUDIO

Featuring: Christa Weiss, Will Smalley, Emily Ruskowski, Katie Qué, Arty Przychodzki, & Dan Hall Hosted by Rick Jenkins

1 BOW MARKET WAY #23, SOMERVILLE | 7 & 9:30PM | $15

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…

RUTHERFORD

BY DON KUSS DONKUSS@DIGBOSTON.COM

People don’t choose to be straight—some poor motherfuckers are born that way—any more than hetero-romantic bisexuals choose to be hetero-romantic bisexuals. You can’t help who you’re attracted to, GITMS, primarily or otherwise, and the contempt of family members can’t change a person’s sexual or romantic orientation. Your sisters should understand that, since they most likely wouldn’t be with women if the contempt of family members had that kind of power.

As for describing yourself as a gay man trapped in a woman’s body and your straight male friend describing himself as a lesbian trapped in a man’s body… Unless the two of you are trans—in which case, you could be homos trapped in the wrong bodies—your friend is just another straight guy mortified by the mess straight people (mostly white, mostly men) have made of the world. You’re also mortified by straightness, GITMS, or at least the sexual inequality that often comes bundled with it. But instead of your straight male friend opting out of heterosexuality (which he can’t do) or you framing your attraction to men as a gay thing to get your sisters off your back (which you shouldn’t have to do), your friend should identify as straight (because he is) and you should identify as someone who doesn’t give a shit what her sisters think (because you shouldn’t).

If good straight guys and “free sexual women” in opposite-sex relationships don’t identify with heterosexuality and/or hetero-romantic orientations, GITMS, all the shitty straight people will conclude that they get to define heterosexuality (which they don’t).

On the Lovecast: RealDoll brothels?! Listen at savagelovecast.com.

“HE says his wife ran off with some %*&@! MOVIE STAR” 22

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WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

HEADLINING THIS WEEK! April Macie

The Howard Stern Show, Last Comic Standing Thursday - Saturday

Comics 2 Cure Presents: Donnell Rawlings Fri @ 9:45 PM

COMING SOON Guy Branum

FX, truTV, The Mindy Project Dec 21 + 22

Erica Rhodes

THE WAY WE WEREN’T

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

Special Engagement: Weds, Dec 26

Toast to Boston Comedy Legend Tony V Special Engagement: Thurs, Dec 27

Mark Normand

Tuesdays with Stories, Comedy Central Dec 29-31 (NYE SHOWS!) OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

New Year’s Eve Showcase

Ft. Dan Boulger, Kelly MacFarland + more Dec 31 @ 10 PM 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

DECEMBER 26