DigBoston 1.31.19

DIGBOSTON.COM 01.31.19 - 02.07.19

FEATURE

DIGSTORY

20-PLUS YEARS OF ALT PRESS

COVER

VOCALOID IN BOSTON MIXED HERE BUT FAMOUS OVERSEAS SUPER BOWL: NO THC ON CBS - PLUS THE DUMBEST BIG GAME HEADLINES

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BOWERY BOSTON WWW.BOWERYBOSTON.COM VOL 21 + ISSUE 05

JAN 31, 2019 - FEB 07,2019 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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DEAR READER DIGSTORY

If you follow news about the media itself, or perhaps even if you don’t, then you’ve probably seen the bloodletting—hell, the outright executions—that have brutalized the industry of late. From megacluster acquisitions that stand to hurt journalists and the communities we cover just so that a few gutless monopoly men can stack paper, to mass layoffs at shops like BuzzFeed that do great work but cannot seem to spin a dollar from the fifteen cents that web ads bring in, it’s often just a string of awful headlines, one domino falling after another as reporters are discarded like so many blunt roaches.

That nightmare considered, it’s a miracle the Dig is still standing 20-plus years after we started as Shovel in the distant ’90s. And by miracle, I mean that we’ve not only worked hard—media makers everywhere do that, whether or not their outlets are sustainable enterprises—but also improvised and innovated in order to not only remain standing, but to stay relevant. From our founding of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, the tandem outfit that we formed in 2015 to assist with deep reporting in this newspaper and others, to starting our cannabis newsletter, Talking Joints Memo, we’re hardly just a weekly print and online outfit. Instead, we’re one of the last independent publishers of hard news in the city where American newspapers were born, and we consider that a badge of honor.

The Dig has innumerable successful alums—journalists, comedians, photographers, screenwriters, and even businesspeople who, after a taste of the reporting life and Ramen for too many nights, decamped for the private sector.

In the past couple of months alone, several of our top recent contributors have landed full-time jobs at bigger shops, and we wish them all the best. Not just because we helped with their development to varying degrees, but because they will always be Dig fam. Writing for us isn’t like working at the Boston Globe or Associated Press, and not only because we pay far less. The Dig has always been a place where creatives are encouraged to follow their instincts, stupid as those instincts may be.

I often joke about how happy I am that the old Dig archives aren’t readily available online. They don’t exist there due to laziness, stupidity, and digital malpractice, but in hindsight, as an editor who would be held responsible for all things written in the paper back then as well as today, it’s harrowing to think about having to answer for the shit we published that would not be considered PC in 2019. I try hard to avoid being that dipshit straight white guy who rails against political correctness, but the last thing that I need are daily email feuds and flame wars with activist frauds who would love nothing more than to impugn our old articles. Nevertheless, having my name on roughly 500 of those past issues, I’ll gladly say that I am proud of what we published. Most of it, at least.

I have no doubt that more than a few people reading this haven’t known the Dig over the past five, 10, or even 20 years.

Some of you are probably picking our paper up for the first time this week; perhaps you just landed in town and sought out one of our street boxes to check out our concert ads and comedy show listings. Whatever the case, our history actually matters to you, too, because without our enduring all the storms that countless larger outlets couldn’t weather, Boston would most likely lack a notable subversive weekly that delivers the kind of diverse range of ideas and voices that get heard through an alternative rag like the Dig. The alt media movement has a remarkable past, and for those who want to learn more I recommend David Armstrong’s A Trumpet to Arms for the long backstory, plus Astral Weeks by Ryan H. Walsh for more Boston stuff.

For starters. As for the history of DigBoston itself, formerly known as Shovel and the Weekly Dig, we have you covered.

Check out the first installment of longtime contributor Barry Thompson’s oral history of the Dig in this week’s feature section, and stay tuned moving forward as we will be serializing his work all year in the runup to a larger book release.

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

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NEWS US

A POTENTIALLY BIG STEP FOR SEX WORK SAFETY NEWS+OPINION

New Mass bills seek to decriminalize prostitution. For the most part

BY JULES MARSH OF THE SHOESTRING

Last Wednesday, Mass state Rep. Kay Khan of Newton filed two bills, An Act Relative to Sexually Exploited Individuals and An Act Relative to Codifying Protections for Sexually Exploited Children, that seek to decriminalize the selling of sex. One completely decriminalizes young people involved in sex work by repealing a current statute, while the other attempts to decriminalize adult sex workers by striking certain language and creating a new category of sex workers that would be protected under the law. The two bills evolved from an earlier bill that was initially filed in 2017.

Any step toward decriminalization is a win for sex workers’ rights. Still, though there are some highlights as explained herein, critics say these bills leave statutes, language, funding, and institutional infrastructure in place that undermine the legislation’s goal of reducing criminalization, in part by creating incentives to pursue certain sex workers more aggressively than others.

While current law ensures that courts must go to great lengths to avoid the arraignment of sexually exploited children, loopholes remain through which young people in the sex trade can still be prosecuted. As stated in the Mass General Laws, “If the court finds that the child has failed to substantially comply with the requirements of services or that the child’s welfare or safety so requires, the court may remove the proceeding from file, arraign the child and restore the delinquency or criminal complaint to the docket for trial or further proceedings.” By repealing that section, the act relative to sexually exploited children closes those loopholes and completely decriminalizes young people involved in sex work.

The bill addressing adult sex workers, on the other hand, is much weaker than its counterpart. It partially decriminalizes the selling of sex but leaves in place 4

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statutes that criminalize the buying of sex, de facto establishing a model of sex work legislation introduced in Sweden in 1999. Such a model, which criminalizes clients but not sex workers, has created increasingly dangerous working conditions for the sex workers it allegedly aims to protect in the European countries that have adopted it. Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), an organization that advocates for social services and selfdetermination for sex workers of all genders, reports, “There is no evidence that levels of sex work have declined as the law [in Sweden] intended. Instead, sex work takes place in increasingly clandestine locations, and sex workers who more immediately need the income from their sex work experience greater danger and difficulty in the context of their sex work.” Ugly Mugs, an organization that collates reports from those working in the sex industry, found that one year after Ireland implemented the Swedish model, Irish sex workers reported a 77 percent increase in violent crime.

According to Caty Simon, a Holyoke-based organizer and co-editor of national sex worker media site Tits and Sass, “When clients are targeted the whole industry is driven underground. To avoid the risk of being caught, clients resist screening processes and opt for more isolated locations for sessions, exposing sex workers to more violence and reducing our access to harm reduction practices such as ID checks.”

Simon explains how criminalization of both clients and sex workers endangers sex workers and complicates their processes: “I can never discuss the conditions of my work with clients if I don’t want to incriminate myself. It’s as absurd as having writing invoices be outlawed, and as deadly as the fact that that omission leaves me vulnerable to rape.”

In Sweden, the sex industry was not outlawed—for workers or clients—prior to 1999. So while its model inaugurated new criminalization, the Mass bill differs in that it amends language that criminalizes sex workers, but simply leaves in place the existing statute that criminalizes clients. Rather than striking the solicitation statute that prohibits the selling of sex entirely, the bill introduces a new category of sex worker called a “Sexually Exploited Individual (SEI)” and creates an exception that states that SEIs shall not be punished by the solicitation law. The new category of SEI is broad and includes people voluntarily engaging in sex work, trafficking survivors, and “common night walkers,” a legal category often used in the arrest of street sex workers.

The decriminalization of SEIs is a huge step toward decriminalizing sex work. But the bill still enables criminalization on some level, creating a tier of privileged sex workers that the law favors over others. While the measure was being drafted, members of the Boston chapter of Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP-Boston) and Boston-based Massachusetts Sex Worker Ally Network (MASWAN) advised Rep. Khan that this new category, in tandem with existing language used to target sex workers, may have the unintended effect of creating a “perfect victim” class. In the meantime, other sex workers, whom the criminal justice system is likely to label as nonSEIs—people of color, foreign nationals, those with prior records—may be disproportionately harassed and arrested.

The bill could especially benefit outdoor and survival sex workers because it eliminates punishment for

“common night walkers [and] common street walkers.”

Sara Kollock from SWOP-Boston/MASWAN says that statue is “not only stigmatizing but has an actual concrete effect on the lives of people who work in street-based markets in that they are frequently targeted by police under this statute.”

While the removal of the “common night walkers” clause is a step in the right direction, the bill leaves in the criminalization of “disorderly persons” and “disturbers of the peace,” language known as “public nuisance” laws.

With such language in effect, street-based sex workers will still be at risk of criminalization. Kollock notes, “Once convicted, it goes on their record and compounds their vulnerability to the criminal system. Public nuisance laws have the effect of branding sex workers as disturbers of the peace.”

The act relative to exploited adults makes an effort to provide social services to sex workers, but according to advocates, the source of its funding may actually harm sex workers. SEIs are designated as eligible recipients of the Victims of Human Trafficking Trust Fund (VHTTF). However, the VHTTF is subsidized by wealth seized by the state from traffickers and clients of sex workers through arrests and fines. Because the fund is supported by arrests of clients, it ultimately endangers sex workers. The addition of a new category of eligible recipients might even lead to more intense criminalization of clients. “[The VHTTF] incentivizes seizure of assets from stings which historically and recently have targeted groups of sex workers who haven’t necessarily [been] trafficked in the way we tend to think,” Kollack says. “They are not kidnapped, they are not working without pay. And if they are foreign national sex workers it can be defined as a trafficking sting. Just because foreign nationals [are] selling sex doesn’t mean there is trafficking.”

The amount of money available in the VHTTF appears to be extremely low. We asked Rep. Khan’s office for an exact amount, but did not hear back. The Boston Herald reported that as of May 2017, the VHTTF had yet to award a single grant and had only $16,000 in it, most of which came from a one-time $15,200 deposit from the Worcester DA’s office.

Despite these flaws, these bills represent a heartening first step toward decriminalizing sex work entirely.

Summing up their potential impact, Simon stated, “Elimination of ‘common night walkers’ and the decriminalization of sex work by minors is a huge boon.”

“The whole point of the bill is to reduce criminalization,” Kollock says, but she still remains concerned about the impact on marginalized and lowincome sex workers. “SWOP-Boston/MASWAN applaud that, and this is a step forward. On the whole the bill should be really beneficial for indoor markets and escorts. But it leaves in place statutes that can be used to criminalize street-based work, and foreign nationals who are often targeted for trafficking in situations where trafficking is not taking place.”

This article was produced by the Shoestring. For more of its coverage of Commonwealth issues, particularly in Western Mass where it is located, check out theshoestring. org.

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APPARENT HORIZON

WHO I WRITE FOR: A MEDITATION

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

APRIL RYAN UNDER FIRE

Join correspondent and author April Ryan as she discusses excepts from her latest book, Under Fire, and shares her thoughts on the state of nation. Free and open to the public. RSVP required.

Friday, February 8th, 2019 Doors open at 10:30 AM Moderated conversation with Latoyia Edwards, Anchor, NBC 10 Boston 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Blackman Auditorium No food/drinks/backpacks permitted.

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Like pretty much every journalist, I think about who I am writing for* from time to time. Most writers aren’t just sending messages into the ether, after all. Unless they are writing for therapeutic reasons. Or they are diarists. But even diarists are typically writing for some future audience they have in mind. Be they archeologists, aliens, or merely grandchildren.

For myself, I write to a general audience, yes. But that’s not who I write for week to week. So I thought I should discuss that aspect of my process a bit for the curious or perplexed. And it’s helpful exercise for me, too. Since one doesn’t usually write this kind of thing down. As Johnny Cash, an artist and humanitarian who I have long admired, once did in his song “Man in Black.”

Naturally, I’m always thinking of the subjects of my articles when I write. The good guys, not the bad guys. If they’re getting a raw deal, then I certainly write for them.

And I write for my wife, my friends, and my extended family. Because they are the touchstone for everything I do. Even the ones I don’t see very often.

But there’s more to it than that.

I write for the common people. Just like me. The people who do not have great wealth. Who are not presidents or princes or potentates. Or executives or generals. The great mass of humanity that gets up every day and goes to work. Or works from home.

Or does housework and cares for their children. Not because they want to—although they may—but because they have to.

Because they need money to survive. Because it’s their responsibility. Because it’s necessary.

Or because they are forced to. By circumstance. Or convention. Or threat of ostracism… or even violence.

I also write for the people who cannot work. Because there aren’t enough decent jobs. Because they’re sick. Or disabled. Or addicted. Or tired of life.

I write for the very young. And the very old. Who have little say in the course of each day.

I write for the students. Just not the rich ones. (Unless they’re nice.)

I write for the outcasts. The street people. The homeless. The hustlers and petty criminals.

I write for the night people. The touched ones. The mad ones. The rebels.

And if you’re reading this, I write for you.

Though I can never speak for you.

You should speak for yourself.

Experience the world. Then write what you think.

Like the legend on the old Samuel Eliot Morison statue on Comm Ave: DREAM DREAMS THEN WRITE THEM AYE, BUT LIVE THEM FIRST And the world will be a better place for it. *Note to grammarians: Yes, I know that, technically, the correct usage of “who” as the object of the preposition “for” should be “whom” throughout. But as our copy editor said, “That means you’ve got an article called ‘Whom I Write for,’ which is awful.” So I’m sticking with the colloquial usage of “who” here. Like the townie I am…

Apparent Horizon—winner of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s 2018 Best Political Column award—is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.

Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2019 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

OPINION

BLANKET STATEMENTS

As long as POTUS attacks trans troops, America’s real war is with itself

BY REV. IRENE MONROE With a conservative Supreme Court on which Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito Jr., Neil Gorsuch, and Brett M. Kavanaugh have seats on the bench, it comes as no surprise that a 5-to4 vote has revived President Donald Trump’s discriminatory policy on transgender service members, while the merits of the cases will continue to be challenged in lower courts.

Last year, Trump’s ban on transgender service members was delivered in his inimitable style of communicating to the American public—in the form of a tweet: After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.

If Trump had his way, he would militarily eradicate transgender people from existence. Tuesday, his Supreme Court delivered his wish by supporting the exclusion of transgender people. Though the court doesn’t think so; its Orwellian argument is that the discriminatory policy is not a “blanket ban” since it only targets some transgender individuals, not all: The policy does allow transgender troops to serve but only if they do so in their biological sex, do not have a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or can show a 36-month period of “ stability” prior to military service.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in the workplace based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin,” does not bar discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. However, former President Barack Obama expanded the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect LGBTQ Americans, including providing federal guidelines permitting transgender students to use “gender-appropriate facilities” that align with identity. Obama’s policy also opened the military to transgender service members.

Since Obama ended the military policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) in 2011, military medical policies have unfortunately continued to discriminate against our transgender population. Evidence has shown that the military spends five times more on erectile dysfunction medications like Viagra and Cialis than it does providing medical services for transgender troops, while the president’s binary views of gender, along with the perceived excessive cost of gender confirmation surgery, give rise to his notion that transgender healthcare is a “tremendous medical cost and disruption” to the military.

For example, in a July 2017 ad by the Family Research Council, Chelsea Manning is pictured next to a military jet with the question, “Which one do you want our military to be spending your tax dollars on—transgender surgeries or equipment?”

In November 2017, the Pentagon gave its first-ever approval for gender reassignment surgery. It should be emphasized: The medical cost for transgender troops is one-10th of 1 percent of the military’s annual medical spending.

Last year, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified before Congress on behalf of transgender troops serving openly because of no known issues resulting from it. Today, it is surprising to me that amid several wars that need every able person who wants to serve, our transgender patriots would be excluded. Back in the day, LGBT service members who served our country were either closeted about their sexual orientation or gender identity, or they were discharged under “honorable conditions” called “Fraudulent Enlistment.”

Military readiness is not a heterosexual, cisgender calling. The president’s ban reverts to the military’s history of intolerance eerily reminiscent of when the military did not want to integrate its ranks racially.

Transphobia, like racism and sexism, is dangerous in our armed forces because it thwarts the necessary emotional bonding needed amongst service members in battle, leading to underutilized human resources that would make for a robust military.

Our transgender service members are prepared to defend this country with their lives. Without them, America would not be able to present itself as a united front on the battlefield. The real war in America is with itself.

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LOW BOWL MEDIA FARM

The most maddeningly stupid big game clickbait so far

BY MEDIA FARM We’re not here to piss on your Pats parade. That’s for football fans to literally do on the streets after they win this weekend. We just want to make sure people know how much they’re being pandered to by shitty journalists, particularly of the TV news variety, any time the Super Bowl is in our sights. The producer chumps in newsrooms who force their reporters to chase all and any big game stories they can wrestle up in the weeks leading up to Sunday may actually love the team, but that isn’t why they’re pushing all this garbage on you. They’re doing it because it gets a lot of clicks and eyeballs, and because some people really are stupid enough to read and share the kind of nonsense we’re mocking below.

“Homeless man gets three AFC championship tickets after helping a Chiefs player stuck in the snow” (Washington Post) Fine, this isn’t technically a Super Bowl headline, but it’s still worth mentioning since countless dingbats on the evening news from here to California covered the story as if the NFL eradicated homelessness.

“Going to the Super Bowl on a budget” (WBZ) We can’t find this one online, but we swear that we saw it on the news last week, and it’s obviously asinine.

Hopefully the station came to the same conclusion and scrubbed it from the internet. “‘Not a prediction, it’s a spoiler’: Patriots fan gets Super Bowl LIII champions tattoo” (WHDH) Please don’t make us have to explain the difference between skillfully predicting something and being a lucky moron who got a tattoo that happens to be accurate in retrospect. Face it, there hasn’t been a real good ink story since that putz got Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign logo on his forehead.

“Tom Brady closed out enormous Patriots Super Bowl send-off rally with mic ‘drop’” (Yahoo! Sports) 8

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This is literally a story about the way that Tom Brady stopped holding something. Also notable is that the reporter managed to speak with every single person at Gillette Stadium about their feelings on the turnout for the send-off: That face is just so Brady. He, and everyone else, was in awe at the size of the crowd. … Brady praised his teammates for staying grounded, and for listening to the coaches and not riding the emotional roller coaster of the season. And then he ended his remarks with a chant and a mic drop that turned into a mic toss.

“From dip to sliders: These 5 snacks will make you a champ with your Super Bowl party crowd” (Detroit Free Press) We are sorry to single out any particular outlet for this annual mass atrocity, but whatever, shame on the Detroit Free Press and anyone else who pretends people need to eat different foods during a football game. As far as we’re concerned, those who go the extra yard to cook things into special shapes for sporting events are as crazy as Ray Finkle’s mom. Laces out, weirdos.

“A 10-year-old kid wins the science fair by painting Tom Brady as a cheater” (CBS Sports) Some folks have suggested that it is unfortunate that some kid named Ace from Kentucky, whose science fair project didn’t actually prove that Tom Brady cheats despite what innumerable news outlets are blasphemously claiming, is being trolled by insane Patriots fans. But as one friend of the Dig suggested at a party this past weekend, “Uh, more like the kid is the troll in this case.” Which seems about right. For him to get this kind of press, the Brady hater must have hired the same PR goons who are polishing the rep of that stare-happy hairdo from Covington Catholic. Ace’s idiotic plea to Brady: “Give me some of your money; you don’t deserve it.”

“Pizza Hut ‘changes’ its name for Super Bowl LIII” (Fox News) Crouch down and prepare for some seriously diseased marketing diddly duh: It’s Pizza Hut’s first year as the official pizza of the Super Bowl, and in honor of the momentous occasion, they’ve changed their name to a pun you may not immediately get—unless you’re a football fan. Pizza Hut is now “Pizza Hut Hut.” “Will Spongebob’s ‘Sweet Victory’ be played during Maroon 5’s Super Bowl halftime show?” (Sporting News) How much do you want to bet that the Venn diagram comparing this list to the signatures that spurred Weezer to perform Africa resembles a cock ring?

The creator of Spongebob Squarepants, Stephen Hillenburg, died in November, 2018. Not too long after a petition was started on Change.org that garnered a lot of attention. The title? Have “Sweet Victory” Performed at the Super Bowl. The petition has over 1.1 million signatures as of this writing.

“Harry Potter rips Tom Brady” (NESN via Variety) Here’s one about how, unlike every alleged liberal in New England, British actor Daniel Radcliffe remembers that Brady either lacks the compassion and intellectual aptitude to comprehend why Donald Trump is a bigot, or on the other hand understands the POTUS completely and doesn’t care about the people or communities that are harmed by his presidency. Maybe this one’s not so stupid after all: “Take that ‘MAGA’ hat out of your locker,” Radcliffe said during a recent interview at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. “I feel like that was the moment when, as a country, we were all like ‘Oh, come on dude!’ We all want—you’re awesome—to be behind you. Don’t put that in there.”

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IMPAIRED LAWMAKING THE TOKIN’ TRUTH

Baker, DeLeo, and law enforcement lobby for new cannabis OUI laws

BY MIKE CRAWFORD @MIKECANNBOSTON

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and House Speaker Robert DeLeo are making a case for the Commonwealth to punish impaired cannabis drivers, and they’re seemingly doing so at the bequest of the law enforcement lobby. As the prohibitionist Boston Herald gushed, Baker and DeLeo “say passing new laws to target stoned drivers and get them off the road are a ‘priority’ on Beacon Hill.”

But there are two big problems that these State House honchos should face—science, and the courts.

The state’s very own Special Commission on Operating Under the Influence and Impaired Driving, which was stacked with law enforcement and private interest cannabis haters, was supposed to give recommendations calling for “mandatory blood and saliva tests of suspected pot-using drivers—under penalty of license suspension.” That’s what leadership and cops were hoping for, but the commission reversed course the next day. As the Boston Globe reported, “the commission decided that pressuring drivers to answer police questions as part of the [drug recognition evaluation] would violate drivers’ constitutional rights to not incriminate themselves. The panel said police could examine a driver for physical signs of drug use—such as reddened eyes—but not interview suspects without first advising them of their so-called Miranda rights.”

In the midst of the media blitz about stoned driving, one might think that at least some outlets would note another story from a couple weeks ago, “Massachusetts banned from using [alcohol] Breathalyzer test pending reforms at state police agency.” In that case, a district court judge found that the state’s Office of Alcohol Testing “intentionally withheld important evidence from defense lawyers.”

Yet Baker and DeLeo continue their campaign against legal cannabis, all while pushing for legalized sports betting and not getting called out on their apparent hypocrisy.

It’s fitting that the report generated by their special OUI commission packed in nearly 1,500 references to “cannabis” and “marijuana,” but only 877 to “alcohol.”

You might think that state leaders would think twice before pushing new cannabis driving laws that are likely to be challenged in court. Especially if those laws have been backed by law enforcement with an established pattern of withholding information from courts, which can lead to cases getting tossed. You would think it, but then there’s the appointment of people like John Scheft to the state’s 10

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OUI commission. A private practice attorney who owns a business with a mission of providing “police officers, supervisors and commanders with clear and comprehensive legal guidance,” and who sells manuals to law enforcement, he unsurprisingly supports adding more state funding for Drug Recognition Experts (DREs). Needless to say, no one in the local media who quotes Scheft brings up this potential conflict of interest.

Since Scheft likes to cite national data to support DREs and testing, I checked with a national expert who has written extensively on the subject matter. According to Dr. Greg Kane, a court-confirmed expert in the scientific interpretation of the scientific Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST) and of the scientific drug influence evaluation, “Leaders should understand that the National Academy of Science and academic science recognize that American courts accept forensic ‘science’ evidence that is in fact deeply unscientific, and traffic police sobriety testing fits that pattern.”

Kane adds, “Traffic-police drug influence tests are medical tests made up by traffic policemen, originally adopted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration without any scientific testing to see whether they actually work. NHTSA teaches officers that the testing they do was “validated” by two studies done by 1) a sciencefor-money contractor, and 2) an agency employee. NHTSA published these studies in-house, without allowing them to be reviewed by independent scientists checking for gross scientific errors and exaggerations. The studies have never been accepted and published by any scientific journal.

“My own peer-reviewed, journal-published research showed that these studies do not validate the drug influence tests now done by US law enforcement.”

Matt Allen is a field director with ACLU of Massachusetts, a representative on the OUI commission, and chair of the Public Safety and Community Mitigation Subcommittee of the Community Advisory Board for the Cannabis Control Commission. He’s the only rep on the driving commission that actually supported legalization and was the single vote against the majority recommendation.

“Currently there is no test for cannabis that can detect recent use with the reliability and accuracy that the breathalyzer does for alcohol,” Allen says. “Any tests to determine whether a motorist is OUI must be based in

science. Motorists shouldn’t be faced with losing their license for refusal to submit to a test that is not scientifically proven to measure impairment.”

It’s not that Allen doesn’t worry about impaired drivers. “It is important,” he says, “to note that even if impairment cannot be proved in court, police currently have the ability to intervene immediately by taking the keys away from anyone they think is a danger to have on the road.”

Dr. Kane cautions, “The general public should understand that NHTSA’s own official research proved that traffic police SFSTs are highly inaccurate at correctly identifying drivers who are sober. Sober people fail the SFST at high rates. People who are innocent take the test, and the test gives the wrong answer—it says they are guilty when they are not. If you are driving home sober, and an officer stops you and asks you to do an SFST, scientifically your best answer is, “Officer, I’d rather you just toss a coin— heads guilty, tails innocent.” NHTSA’s own official science reported that on sober people, a coin toss made fewer mistakes than the traffic police SFST.” Allen agrees: “This threatens the civil liberties of drivers who test positive even when not impaired. … And it undermines law enforcement agents who are using a tool that has never been proven to be accurate.”

Which is exactly what Dr. Kane worries about: “Drivers should understand that the official NHTSA training manual teaches police to meet with the prosecutor before trial, to work out a strategy to conceal from the jury the fact that even fit, active, sober police may fail the SFST. Officers are taught to work with the prosecutor to conceal this from the jury, because (the manual says) if the jury finds out they are likely not to believe the results of the driver’s test.”

Many roadside drug evaluations may not be admissible in Mass courts but for a very small number of cases, according to longtime cannabis advocate and attorney Steven Epstein. “Where there is evidence of recent marijuana use, the consumer may only be prosecuted for operating negligently so as to endanger, and then only when there is evidence of negligent, unsafe, or erratic operation in combination with recent ingestion of marijuana. Testimony regarding the physical characteristics of marijuana use must be accompanied by a jury instruction that such testimony is limited to establishing recent consumption and by itself does not constitute negligent operation.”

“Drivers should understand that they need to listen carefully to claims about [drug recognition evaluation] accuracy,” Dr. Kane says. “DREs have not been shown to accurately predict impairment or any change in driving ability.”

As for Scheft, he denies the conflict of interest, and says that no one on the OUI board has an “agenda.”

“No, there’s nothing in it for me,” he told me. Scheft noted that he had concerns about civil liberties and says that he rejected more draconian standards. He also said that he respects Matt Allen’s contribution to the board, along with the ACLU recommendations that were indeed included in the final report to the governor. Scheft continued, “The DREs would be trained by others who are experts in that field. I teach [police officers] the law.”

Gov. Baker’s press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Mike Crawford is the host and founder of Disrupt Boston’s The Young Jurks video show and publisher of the Midnight Mass newsletter. Get your tickets now for the Young Jurks 5th Anniversary Gala and Awards Show being held on Sat 4.27 at Down the Road Beer Co. in Everett.

TALKING JOINTS MEMO

BEAN PLAYER

CBS rejected marijuana Super Bowl commercials, but CBD gets green light at game

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON There’s been a lot of hullabaloo about the cannabis ad that was rejected for Super Bowl placement on CBS. That’s understandable, since it’s a story about an enormous holding company backed by former House Speaker John Boehner that was trying to run a spot calling for medical weed legalization.

At the same time, you’d think that there would be more noise about the relative feat in this realm, as there was also a recent announcement that Baristas Coffee Company will air ads for its new line of EnrichaRoast CBD coffee in and around Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta during the game. Sure, the business press took notice, but for the most part, mainstream pubs ran with the prohibitionist Boehner story instead.

As for us, we’re primarily excited to see that the beanery with which Baristas is collaborating on this historic commercial coup is Flower Power Coffee Co., which we praised last year for its product’s subtle brilliance and effective recipe.

We reached out to the company’s president, Leighton Knowles, to catch up about this major moment.

When you started Flower Power Coffee, how accepting did you feel the market was at the time of CBD products? How about CBD coffee? How open were people to it?

Flower Power Coffee Company debuted last July when we first began our research and development. After three months of fine-tuning our measurements and processes, our website went live in September 2017, and we made our sales on the first day.

We wanted to get cannabidiol (CBD) into the general public in a way that would not alter their daily routine. We looked for ways to pair CBD with commonly consumed products, and coffee worked out to be an amazing vehicle.

Coffee being consumed by almost 80 percent of society also makes it a great way to introduce people to CBD. We have travelled the world to trade shows, events, and speaking engagements as we advocate the benefits of the cannabis plant and help remove the stigma of cannabis consumption.

What has your brand tried to do to get people acquainted with CBD coffee?

What’s been your central message?

CBD is in the public eye because of the many health benefits being reported in recent medical research and public use. Also, as the opiate crisis continues to skyrocket, people are looking for safer and healthier alternatives for pain management. Cannabis has been prohibited since the time of World War II and information about the efficacy and usefulness of cannabis suppressed. Today, thanks to the tireless effort of the many heroes in our community, we now have access to this information.

How did this relationship come about with Baristas? What is a big brand like that looking for in a partner on the CBD front?

Back in September 2018, Baristas Coffee Company contacted us directly, as they were exploring the potential of including marijuana derivatives as part of its new EnrichaRoast brand of functional beverages based on coffee. The new blends are infused with substances that promote weight loss, vitality, sensuality, and recovery from hangovers, as well as potentially other health benefits. At Flower Power, our mission is to provide coffees and edibles that will enhance the life experience of health-conscious consumers through the use of legal, non-mind-altering infusions. Upon the initial discussions, [we] quickly realized the similarities between the two companies and the synergy of our respective mission statements.

Did you ever think that there would be CBD commercials during the Super Bowl? In 2019? What might that look like?

[In April 2017], [we] held [our] first CBD-infused “Prohibition Dinner” in New York. A few months later, and after several long nights of brainstorming and a few pizzas, the Flower Power Coffee Co seed was planted. We started appearing in local flea markets and food festivals, as well as launching our online store and selling to coffee shops in New York City. We’ve been on major news stations and publications as we advocated for the healthy and responsible consumption of cannabidiol (CBD), and were … one of the first cannabis companies to advertise on billboards in Times Square during the dropping of the ball on New Year’s Eve. The past 12 months have been an amazing year of bringing the counterculture of cannabis to the mainstream.

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

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AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE DIG: PART I FEATURE

This newspaper was born at night, but not last night

BY BARRY THOMPSON There’s a perfectly valid, if self-serving, introduction I could write here about the importance of alternative weeklies as incubators for up-and-coming disseminators of truth and places for stories too dangerous or weird for the establishment-friendly mainstream to handle. I could also delve into DigBoston’s undernoted influence on this city’s media legacy and, by extension, the entire national ecosystem of news and words and ideas and so on. I could do that, but I don’t think this is a story about journalism.

Don’t get me wrong; I spoke with a whole bunch of journalists for this, but I didn’t ask them about how they prepare for interviews, or their fact-checking routine, or their writing process. I mostly tried to get people talking about their experience working for this specific publication at that specific point in their lives. When you weave all these conversations together, you end up with a story about a company; therefore, I think this is a story about capitalism. In a broad sense, it works as a microcosm for the American economic paradigm. Every subject/character in the tale works, some of them rack up debt, and nobody gets paid enough.

This project started in the spring of 2016, when former Dig Editor-in-Chief Joe Keohane pitched me the idea of composing an oral history of the Dig to commemorate the paper’s 20-or-so-year anniversary. As the project snowballed in scope while deadlines came and went, I had the quixotic notion to turn it into a book. As I work toward that, DigBoston has agreed to serialize its own past. And here we are.

Attentive readers may notice sources contradicting each other now and again. I should explain that I knowingly left a few such discrepancies in the text, because especially with regards to decades-old events that may have occurred in the midst of heavy alcohol and/ or drug consumption, sometimes folks simply remember shit differently.

On that note, I hope you all enjoy this first installment of Good Luck In Sicily: The Oral History of DigBoston. If you think this one sucks, maybe one of the upcoming episodes 12

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will tickle your fancy. They’ll be running every few weeks, and of course compiled online as well. In my personal favorite, (spoiler alert) celebrated social commentator Luke O’Neil poops his pants, so keep an eye out for that issue.

The ’90z - 2003 Episode 1: Shovelin’

JEFF LAWRENCE (founding publisher): This was never about me. I’m not a writer. I’m not a messiah. I’m not somebody who—you know what I am? I encourage people to do what they should do. And that’s it. Everything else?

Fuck that. I don’t give a fuck.

GRAHAM WILSON (founding sales manager): Yeah, CherryDisc Records … my friend John Horton started the label in … probably ’91. We put out Letters to Cleo, Heretix, bunch of other bands. Started getting some decent airplay on ’FNX, and one thing led to the other.

JOE BONNI (founding editor): In ’93, CherryDisc started a really big zine or a very small magazine. I was never quite sure which way to describe it. A buddy of mine asked me to come aboard. I had been writing for the Noise, and the reason CherryDisc started the Pit Report was to cover heavier stuff: straight-up metal, hardcore, that sort of thing.

LAWRENCE: I was working at a print shop and stayed late one night working on a project and ended up finishing the project, but had nowhere to go after. I had a template for a brochure for a medical instrument company and whatnot. So I stripped it of all content, kept the template, saved it under a new file name, and started putting together the pieces. I wanted to design a magazine or a zine, but I didn’t know it would be Shovel at that point.

WILSON: We had a good little run from pretty much ’93 to ’98. We had Letters, Sheila Divine, Tree, Heretix, Tracy Bonham, Semisonic. I think CherryDisc moved to 129 Kingston Street in 1997, and with what was happening to the music industry with digital downloading, the writing was on the wall.

BONNI: I took over the Pit Report and ran it into the ground within three years. We got ourselves up in distribution—10,000 or 15,000 copies a month—and we got political. We covered the whole Northeast for a while, but I definitely didn’t fucking know how to run a business.

TAK TOYOSHIMA (art director): I first met Jeff at a mutual friend’s house, just a random party we happened to go to that we could’ve just as easily not gone to. He said, “Hey, my name’s Jeff! I’m starting a magazine!” I said, “Hey, I do comics!” My wife was doing poetry at the time, so we were all like, “Yeah! Let’s do this thing!” Some hallucinogens showed up, and suddenly we were having ideas about doing this and that.

LAWRENCE: Tak showed me this image of a devil girl that he drew for a concert poster, and I’m psyched to still own the original. I’m like, “That’s our mascot and Shovel is the name!” Like, the devil girl isn’t up, it’s down, and yeah, that’s where it all started.

CRAIG KAPILOW (founding associate editor): I was working at a store on Newbury Street called Boston Beat Records. The owner was advertising in Shovel and contributing a music column. So one week he went away on vacation and forgot to submit his CD reviews before he left. I picked up the phone, and it was Jeff. I can’t remember how the conversation took place, but ultimately I ended up writing the column instead.

TOYOSHIMA: Everybody knew somebody who could throw in to Shovel, so suddenly we had all this content. It was very ziney at first; but not quite a stapled-togetherat-Kinko’s kind of zine, since Jeff had access to good quality printing. Most of us had other jobs, so it wasn’t like an everyday we-had-to-go-there job. It was more like an, “Oh, crap, there’s an issue coming out next week. I better draw something!”-type of gig.

LAWRENCE: During the two-plus years of Shovel, we only reviewed one kind of movie—kung fu. So every month a guy named Rob Larsen did a movie review, but it had to be a kung fu movie. The only literature was poetry, and it was focused around astrology, which, y’know, I totally fucking hate, but somebody came to me and said, “I am really passionate about this.” That was also how the kung fu movie reviews started.

BONNI: Jeff looks normal in so many ways, but he’s not. That was kind of how we got along. He can absolutely come off as, you know, Joe Smith, but he is fucked up like I was, and that’s how we clicked through MassCann.

over two years, and then we went weekly.

LAWRENCE: I did some quick math and made some phone calls and said, “Fuck it.” I had enough money to last me three months, and if it didn’t pan out, I would get another job. So I quit the design job and went fulltime in.

WILSON: So in ’98, we were kind of shutting down the label. I was still managing Sheila Divine and Staind.

I’m not going to go into the fucking Staind story.

LAWRENCE: I don’t know if he mentioned this, but when Graham unloaded Staind, y’know who he negotiated with? Fred Durst, the lead singer for Limp Bizkit. CherryDisc sold Staind to Fred Durst.

WILSON: Then Sheila got signed, and I walked away from that, too. At that point I’m sitting on 129 Kingston Street, booking shows around town, killing time until I find something new to do.

LAWRENCE: My high school English class senior thesis was actually “Why Marijuana Should Be Legalized,” and that was in 1989. Then I sold to an undercover agent in ’92, and after that I became even more vociferous. I think one of the primary reasons was the judge said to me, “You clearly weren’t smoking it. You were just selling it,” ’cos I was a straight-A student, and he said, “You’re too smart to be smoking pot.”

I was like, “Fuck you.” So when I got out of jail, I spoke out at Harvard and at the state house about my experience, saying what a lot of people are saying now. “I’m a normal person; I’m a functioning adult; but I smoke weed.” So I spoke at the first two Freedom Rallies, and that’s obviously where I met Joe Bonni.

contacted me and said, “I need a job.” I said, “Well, this is what we’re doing.” And I had known Joe Bonni through MassCann/NORML. He and I decided to come together because I was like, “I can’t be the editor. I need an editor” WILSON: Joe came to me because he knew I was sitting on 2,000 square feet, something like that, of loft space. So when he said, “Hey, what’s up? We need some space in the corner to set up.” I was like, “I need all the help I can get to pay the rent.”

TOYOSHIMA: The atmosphere of Shovel transferred to the Dig, but it was going from this monthly with hardly any rules to suddenly having more advertisers, and that was kind of weird. I think I missed the first dozen issues or so. Then I started hanging out, and after a while, it was like, “Somebody’s got to pay for printing all these things, so why not?”

WILSON: I was in that office every day doing my bullshit, so for the first couple of days, I was just trying to get a feel for them. I was like, “Who’s doing your sales and marketing?” Jeff was like, “I dunno.” I just said “Fuck it, I’ll do it.” He was like, “Okay.”

KAPILOW: Was the quality of writing as good as it should’ve been? No. And the editing was terrible, including the hatchet jobs I did myself. But for a staff making zero money working the type of hours that we did, I think it was pretty incredible.

WILSON: I had never sold advertising, but I knew the game and I knew the background.

I basically had this little halfassed database I kept for CherryDisc, just to keep my contacts: retailers, Newbury Comics, distribution people.

Those contacts were the base for ultimately building a sales database for the Dig. TOYOSHIMA: A lot of it was very organic learning by doing.

A lot of the time these writers weren’t writers; they were just people who could type. There was me literally learning how to do graphic design on the job, lots of late nights, things like that.

BONNI: I don’t know if we were both on the board of MassCann at the same time?

That would be my guess. Jeff was doing Shovel magazine, and he knew I had been with the Pit Report and briefly with the [Boston] Phoenix, and he decided he wanted to take his monthly and go weekly to compete with the Phoenix.

LAWRENCE: My grandmother died, and she left my father some money. I got $40 grand. So I went swimming at the Somerville YMCA—I love to swim—and then afterwards, I was sitting in a hot tub. I was still really trying to find my place in this world in my mid-20s, and was like, “I need to do something.”

Shovel had become successful insofar as people were calling me up and buying ads, but I had no clue in terms of publishing. I had a background in journalism and working for a college newspaper, but I didn’t know the inner-workings. I don’t have a degree in business. But all of a sudden it just hits me; “The fucking Phoenix has no competition! I need to start a weekly!”

TOYOSHIMA: Shovel was around for maybe a little

KAPILOW: This was during the days of QuarkXpress. I think Tak figured out how to use the program in, like, 48 hours.

LAWRENCE: There were a lot of 24-hours shifts. It was fucking brutal. The first two years, at least, I drove the van a lot, and sold ads.

KAPILOW: I was backpacking through Europe after college and I got an email from Jeff saying, “Hey, do you want to start this paper with me?” He mentioned that he was hiring this guy Joe Bonni who used to run the Pit Report. I came back to Boston two weeks later.

LAWRENCE: It was me, Joe Bonni, and Craig Kapilow.

There were actually three other people—Alan Strack, Chris DeGaetano, and Tracey Newman—but they didn’t want to jump in full time. Craig was in Amsterdam. He NEWS TO US

BONNI: I was always under the assumption that we were going to burn out and fail miserably, and I was fine with that. I had already done that, so that was perfectly acceptable. I just wanted to tell stories that even the Phoenix wasn’t telling, and we were doing that.

Anything we wanted went in that fuckin’ newspaper.

It made no sense sometimes, but people responded positively.

Stay tuned for the next episode, in which we find out what happens when you fuck with Phoenix Media/ Communications Group.

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

13

INSIDE THE BOX MUSIC

In Boston, Nikolas Greenwald is a college student. In the box and overseas, he serenades thousands.

BY TAYLOR DRISCOLL AND EMMA TURNEY

Nikolas Greenwald stumbled across Vocaloid early in high school, and the unique musical subculture quickly became his main passion. At the time, he didn’t expect to be sitting in front of a computer only a few years later, at age 17, watching a live video of more than a thousand people singing along to his song in a country he had never been to before.

Categorized by its practitioners as concatenative synthesis, or the linking together of short samples of sound to create other sounds, Vocaloid creates artificial human singing through typed lyrics or melody. As the Red Bull Music Academy put it, “Users write lyrics, and then can adjust various aspects of the computergenerated voice afterward, such as pitch or how long specific syllables are delivered.”

Vocaloid was created in 2000 by computer scientist Kenmochi Hideki. Originally a research project at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, it soon after became a global phenomenon. In the time since, there have been four versions of the Vocaloid program, the most recent one developed in 2018. At the top of the genre, these “singers in a box” lead careers just like regular performers: They hold concerts and have substantial fan bases. The subculture may seem niche, even if it is impossible to ignore the presence of electronic sounds across mainstream music.

“It was for people who didn’t want to sing their own songs, for whatever reason,” Greenwald says. “I fell into this category because my voice was not great at the time. I enjoyed singing but I knew it was not for real.”

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Now a student at Northeastern University, Greenwald’s first big break in the genre came when he got the chance to create a demo for Alys, the first French Vocaloid singer. Alys is not a human singer, but rather a voice produced from software.

“I knew it had much more popularity in Japan, it kind of had taken off there,” Greenwald says. “I wanted to break into the Japanese scene. With my very broken eighth-grade Japanese, I began writing.”

In 2016, at 17 years old, one of the songs he created for Alys was played at a Vocaloid concert at Le Trianon, a massive concert hall in Paris.

“One of the coolest exposure things was that they toured all over at anime conventions and actual venues,” Greenwald says. “The biggest thing was a concert they had called ‘Rêve de Machine’ in 2016.”

He then dove deeper into the subculture. At Northeastern, Greenwald had an international group of musicians from England, Portugal, Japan, and Germany help him create a song called “Town of Cats.” Suddenly, he had fans in Japan and discovered some people covering his song on a karaoke app there. Another popular cut, which he created with German vocaloid musician Kira, racked up 500,000-plus views online.

Doug Bielmeier, an associate teaching professor of music at Northeastern who worked as an engineer in Nashville for years, says that Vocaloid can be of use to artists in several genres, and that while it may not be a phenomenon in the US right now, the music industry is unpredictable and often gets behind experimental technology like Vocaloid.

“Singers and songwriters would spend a lot of money getting special musicians, getting vocalists, and getting studio time for a song that maybe no one would be interested in buying,” Bielmeier says. “[Vocaloid] is certainly something that can help with this whole process where people are trying to get demos of their songs so that they can be picked up by larger artists.

“If you look at the music industry’s track record, they are not really great at innovating technology or using innovative technology. … They tend to not take innovation and build a business plan around it but rather see a paradigm that already exists and build one around that.”

There’s a lot to build around. One of the most famous Vocaloid singers, Hatsune Miku (translation: “the first sound of the future”), boasts more than two million likes on her Facebook page and has worked alongside artists such as Lady Gaga and Pharrell. And she’s not even human; according to Crypton Future Media, which created Miku, “Hatsune has traveled an interesting path from vocal synthesizer product to beloved collaboratively constructed cyber celebrity with a growing user community across the world. She is also often called a global icon or ‘hub,’ because the culture around her encourages a worldwide creative community to produce and share Miku-related content.”

Murray Sandmeyer of the ReGame-VR Lab at Northeastern spends a lot of his own time producing and creating songs for musicians as well. Similar to Greenwald, Sandmeyer became interested in music through his love for technology. The futuristic style of it all just grabbed him.

“In high school, you feel the pressure to get into a good school and have a good career path, and computer science is a good, vibrant career,” Sandmeyer says. “That was my plan, to study both. … I started making hyper pop electronic music, and I quickly came to realize that I liked electronic music but that human element to it. Even if those vocals were high-pitched or fast, or [if] they were superficial, I still wanted that human element to it.”

Sandmeyer says that with the increased popularity of electronic music, it’s not actually necessary to be an extremely gifted vocalist to make good music. Record companies aren’t exactly fighting the trend.

“It’s even funny how a company so adamant to be against file streaming and audio very quickly saw the revenue stream created by it and evolved,” said Bielmeier. “When the first big [Vocaloid] hit hits the United States and someone makes a lot of money off of it, people might change their tune.”

“Vocaloid,” says Greenwald, “encourages people who do not have access to professional recording studios to still realize their music and instant access to their following.”

This article was reported in collaboration with Northeastern University School of Journalism assistant professor Meg Heckman’s Journalism 2: Intermediate Reporting class.

NEWS TO US

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

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PHOTO BY DAVID NORTON

WE BANJO 3 MUSIC

Irish-Tennessean bluegrass badasses wax on notorious banjo battles

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON If you think a crew of Irish bluegrass folksters who mess with the country scene are off-brand for DigBoston, then it’s time for you to get acquainted with their unique sound and style, a mesmerizing spectacle of fingerpicking talent and relentless showmanship. They’re pretty damn hilarious as well, as you’ll see from the responses they gave to the curveballs we tossed at band members David Howley, Enda Scahill, and Martin Howley ahead of their upcoming show at the Somerville Theatre.

What’s the quick version of why there are four people in a band with the word “three” in the name?

DH: When we started the band, there were three banjos. I’ve been relieved of my banjo duties since then.

Plus, Ben Folds Five is only three people; at least with us you get one more than you bargained for.

What’s it like to split your time between Galway and Nashville? What’s the biggest similarity between the two places?

DH: We feel really lucky to be from Galway; it’d be hard to find another town like it in the world. We grew up with a world-class International Arts Festival, music in every pub and street corner—there’s just a general love for culture built into the ethos of the entire city. It’s what influenced the creation of the band itself; we love playing and just try to have as much fun as we can every night. I think the audience can feel that too: There’s no need to even know the songs beforehand, we’ll teach you everything you need to know.

Coming to Nashville has been an incredible experience; I’ve learned a lot and made some amazing friends. There’s a beautiful understanding here for music and the musician lifestyle. When you come home after

a long couple of months on the road people act like you never left. Music runs in the veins of both cities. I’m not sure I could live without that.

How big is your fan base in Greater Boston compared to other places you tour?

ES: Boston has a really vibrant, active Irish community who are huge supporters of Irish music and bands. They stay right up to date with the current Irish scene and are very connected to all happenings in Ireland. There are many great Irish bands who tour through the area, and Irish music is very much alive. As a result, we’ve sold out practically every gig we’ve done in the Greater Boston area.

You’re active in country markets in America, but is that a perfect fit for you? Is there any category that really works for you?

ES: We’ve had huge success across the Irish and Celtic markets, establishing ourselves as a headline act at Irish fests such as Milwaukee and Dublin, Ohio. In recent years we’ve made great inroads into the folk and bluegrass worlds, headlining at huge festivals like Merlefest, ROMP, Old Settlers, Four Corners, and Winnipeg Folk Festival. One of the standout attributes of the band is our musical flexibility, allowing us to rouse a bluegrass audience from their lawn chairs and on to their feet, and get the Irish audiences stomping on the bleachers and belting out the choruses. We’ve become known for mixing Irish musical virtuosity with Americana entertainment and bluegrass flair.

You hold “over a dozen All Ireland titles.” What does that mean? How competitive is banjo playing over

there?

MH: Banjo playing in Ireland is intense and cutthroat.

The level of competition is akin to the Olympics and the Tour De France combined. It is said that banjo is the instrument of ancient Celtic Kings, so everyone wants to play banjo. Once you have won a title, everything changes. Being mobbed on the street by adoring fans, hiring a big security detail. Not every hero wears a cape; some play the banjo.

Are there serious banjo rivalries? Like East Coast vs West Coast hip-hop in the 1990s?

MH: The banjo rivalries are mainly intercontinental.

In Ireland, we play the four-string tenor, whereas in the US, the banjo of choice is five-string. The rivalry is more of a mutual appreciation, however, as the crossover and cross-pollination possibilities are much more valuable.

We are better together, basically. It’s a little-known fact that Biggie (Notorious B.I.G.) won a[n] All-Ireland tenor Banjo title in 1985. He had a promising banjo career.

Is it true that Barack Obama is a fan? How do you think our current president feels about your music?

MH: We were lucky enough to meet Barack at the Friends of Ireland luncheon. He was extremely charismatic. We chatted about life after presidency, and he mentioned he has always yearned to play the banjo. Although last we heard, he is now playing Irish fiddle and wearing red pants (our fiddler, Fergal, left a strong impression on young Barack). We have not heard anything about President Trump’s fondness for banjo. We will keep you posted. Maybe the Mueller investigation will reveal that the president plays banjo all the time.

>> WE BANJO 3. SAT FEB. 2.9. SOMERVILLE THEATRE, 55 DAVIS SQUARE, SOMERVILLE. ALL AGES. SOMERVILLETHEATRE.COM WEBANJO3.COM 16

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LIVE MUSIC • PRIVATE EVENTS SHARON VAN ETTEN

MUSIC PICKS MUSIC

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

THU 1.31 STEVE GUNN + MEG BAIRD & MARY LATTIMORE Through he’s best known for his work as a fingerstyle guitarist, picking at the strings in a rapid and gentle way that mainly eliminates the need for a pick, Steve Gunn is now becoming more well known for his singing, mainly his lyrics. On this year’s acoustic dream of an album The Unseen in Between, he creates a new world within the folk realm with his stories, many of which should illuminate the room when played live. Best of all, there to open the show are Meg Baird of Espers and Heron Oblivion, and the harpist Mary Lattimore, both talented on their own but a particular brand of hypnosis live when they join forces.

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston. 8:30pm/18+/$16. greatscottboston.com] FRI 2.8 PLEASER & FRIENDS + MILK + LITTLEFOOT + KATHY SNAX + THEO HARTLETT Forget about wooing your crush and head on down to the Sweethearts Rodeo at the Lilypad. Four of Boston’s more promising rising artists are joining forces to whisk you off into the Wild West, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Pleaser & Friends will cover Loretta Lynn, Milk will cover Hank Williams Sr., Littlefoot & Friends will cover Patsy Cline, Kathy Snax & Ryan Major are fronting as Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, and Theo Hartlett (of Ovlov and Pet Fox fame) will be Johnny Cash. You read that correctly. Yeehaw, y’all.

[Lilypad Inman, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge. 8:30pm/all ages/$10. lilypadinman. com] FRI 2.8 SHARON VAN ETTEN + NILUFER YANYA Sharon Van Etten is the most human musician you may ever hear, and by no means is that an intentional flourish. Van Etten breaks down time and time again on her albums, but always with a gentle delivery, as if she’s giving herself a pep talk in the mirror immediately after crying, and she happened to leave the door open for you to see. On her fifth album, the brilliant Remind Me Tomorrow, Van Etten enters atmospheric compositions, letting her indie rock bloom into driven anthems, this time for herself and for you.

[Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston. 6pm/18+/$30. royaleboston.com] SAT 2.9 EL TEN ELEVEN + JOAN OF ARC There are few better pairings this month than the Sinclair’s show with El Ten Eleven and Joan of Arc. The former are a beautiful post-rock duo who string optimism throughout their instrumental music, creating scenic landscapes through guitar and drums alone—arguably the total opposite of what duos like the White Stripes do. Then there’s Joan of Arc, the brainchild of Midwestern emo hero Tim Kinsella for all of his absurd ideas. While both will go long in totally different directions, expect both bands to soothe a part of the creative’s soul, whether it’s by offering inspiration or showing how far weirdness can take you in life so long as you believe in it.

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

2/2

The Macrotones Air Congo

(Horn-driven funk in the Lounge)

2/7

Rasputina

(Unconventional and quirky cellos in the ballroom)

2/14

Scream Along

with Billy Black Hearts Ball

F*ck l*ve 2/19

Gang of Four

Legendary UK rockers 2/23

The Winter Moto Expo with The Von Traps, Humanoids, and the mighty Scissorfight!

3/9 CROSSROADS PRESENTS:

Mother Mother (Canadian indie rock)

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

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

SHAWN K. JAIN AS NAZRULLAH(LEFT) AND CAITLIN NASEMA CASSIDY AS GETEE(RIGHT).

PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER MCKENZIE, COURTESY OF NEW REP THEATRE.

THEATER REVIEWS PERFORMING ARTS

BY JACOB SCHICK @SCHICK_JACOB

AT NEW REP, HEARTLAND FAILS TO SHOULDER ATLANTEAN BURDEN OF MESSAGE

The impact of American propaganda on Afghani children is admittedly a difficult subject to understand and explain, let alone capture in a 105-minute play.

This doesn’t stop Heartland, a Gabriel Jason Dean play directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary, from giving it a shot.

But it seems that, just like the conflict in the Middle East, once you start wading in, you quickly find yourself out of your depth.

Nevertheless, Heartland attempts to tease out a nuanced view of the tension in Afghanistan through the lens of a personal story.

Harold (Ken Baltin), a retired professor, is living alone—and slowly finding it harder and harder to remember things—when he meets Nazrullah (Shawn K. Jain). Nazrullah is a young Afghani man who worked with Harold’s daughter Geetee (Caitlin Nasema Cassidy). The two taught together at a school for girls in Afghanistan.

Over the course of the show, Heartland switches

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back and forth between the present and the memories with Geetee of both Nazrullah and Harold. Through these memories, the audience watches as a relationship blossoms between the two teachers. The audience also watches the relationship between the daughter and her father fall apart. Geetee is never featured in the present because she was killed in a terrorist attack. Her death lends motivation to Nazrullah’s coming to America and Harold’s unwillingness to let go of the past and seek help.

The biggest problem with Heartland might be best explained through one of its most often-used allusions.

Both Harold and Geetee teach The Old Man and the Sea in their classes—Harold constantly espouses the virtues of the book and of Hemingway’s writing. Heartland might style itself as the titular old man, subduing the enormous fish that is American-Afghan relations against all odds. In practice, however, Heartland plays like a more disappointing version of the American classic novel. The man is too old, his boat too small, and the fish too big. Heartland’s story is too small, too microcosmic to really relate to or encapsulate the issue. The actors are incongruous with many of their more poignantly intended lines. This results in a play that waffles back and forth between hindsight moralizing of US foreign policy and a beleaguered attempt to deliver its message in a

package that remains entertaining.

Heartland would be a better play if its central issue was a little less complex and wide-reaching. It’s simply too big a fish to fry. The performances are perfectly serviceable but are not strong enough to convey Heartland’s message as intended. The set design, by Afsoon Pajoufar, is very well done, but it feels paltry and bare next to the script. The dialogue does the play a disservice. Heartland goes for so much that it often has to stop and explain itself to the audience. Unfortunately, this comes off as if the characters are reading to the audience from a textbook, or perhaps delivering one of Harold’s lectures. Breaking the momentum of the performance to essentially stop and read exposition about the nuanced meaning of the word “jihad” or the evolution of the Taliban stops Heartland from flowing naturally from scene to scene.

It’s unfortunate that Heartland isn’t able to carry its own message, and that its message weighs down the play. Each aspect, on its own, would be very interesting. It is the combination that proves too much to tackle.

HEARTLAND THROUGH 2.9. AT NEW REPERTORY THEATRE, 321 ARSENAL ST., WATERTOWN. NEWREP.ORG

e h t e v a S ! e t Da

SomERviLlE ComMUniTy

SumMIt

Somerville residents* are welcome to come meet DigBoston journalists and colleagues from other news outlets to discuss local issues that need more coverage

2pm 2 1 , 16 . b e F m Sat., allroo le

B vil r e m ONCE o ve., S A d n a ghl n, o t s 156 Hi o B y Dig b fit d o e r r p o n s o on or N f e Co-sp t u t Insti ), the J n N o I t B s ( C), Bo m M s S i ( l a r n e t Jour Cen a i d e M zen e o l l d i v a r Some e than titutional r o m and ins d n a y unit rs comm partne

*Not in Somerville? Interested in a similar community summit in your city or town? Drop us a line: editorial@digboston.com NEWS TO US

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

POEMS, LIKE BAROQUE LASERS BOOKS

Sally Wen Mao’s Oculus, a call for celebration REVIEW BY MAX CHAPNICK @MAXCHAPPY There are two title poems—poems entitled “Oculus”— in Sally Wen Mao’s second collection, Oculus: The first poem elegizes a “nineteen-year-old girl in Shanghai who uploaded her suicide onto Instagram”; the second reflects, ekphrastically, on a performance by Solange Knowles.

The poems rhyme. That is, Mao’s obsession with internal sound repetitions—an obsession that carries over from her debut collection, Mad Honey Symposium (as in “smile?

Simulacrum”)—turns from linguistic tic into structural device. Not only do these poems’ titles literally repeat, rhyming internally in the table of contents, they deal in resonating themes: the camera, the recording, and a woman of color as performer. Mao’s tricks of language reach for broader entangled dualities, namely the horrifying vs hopeful impulses generated by society’s entrancement with its screens.

Mao’s first “Oculus,” early in the collection, howls with its mournful song: “I can’t be held / or beheld here, in this barren warren.” The rabbit hole warren of the internet leaves barren pits for the lonely teenager to fall through, in this case, terrifyingly literally. Mao wonders: “How the dead girl fell, awaiting a hand to hold, / eyes to behold her.” Dan Chiasson in the New Yorker also notices the two “Oculus” poems as “opposite poles.” This poem as “elegy and investigation,” he says, “exposes Mao’s hunger, and ours” for digital “feed”; the girl is “both culpable and vulnerable: consumer at grave risk of being consumed.”

Much later, the second “Oculus” recounts “a cause for celebration,” where there are, surprisingly, no snapshots.

At the Guggenheim Museum in New York, “the most photographed place on earth,” the entire audience is rendered cameraless and asked to check their devices “at the door.” Sans lenses, they watch Solange dance; and though “fears still burned,” Mao is “hopeful,” “awed” by uncontainable performance. The two poems’ rhymed differences develop what could be called the book’s major theme, this ocular paradox. In the collection’s masterful reckoning with racism, representation, and robots, Mao succeeds because she deftly renders modern vision’s duality: the lonely perils of the screen vs a celebration of its gilded dances.

Mao, who immigrated from China to the United States at the age of five, writes about representation from migrant’s perspective. In a long, haunting sequence from her first book, called “Migration Suite,” Mao begins with a poem called “I: Transatlantic Flight” and ends with “X: Transpacific Flight.” The latter is a glorious ode to the eerie “restive moment” of long plane rides that might resonate with anyone, migrant or traveler, who’s spent nighttime hours above an endless ocean: “Ladies and gentlemen, drink your passports, kiss your ginger ale— / You’re going home or faraway and this is magnificent.”

In another section of “Migration Suite,” “VII: Green Card: Diary of Flight,” Mao writes, presumably from her mother’s perspective, of “early years in Boston.” Mao told me they “lived in many neighborhoods,” “from Somerville to Newton to Brookline,” before moving to California later in her childhood. She went to the Amos A. Lawrence Brookline elementary school, where she acted in plays and “developed a love of reading.” The woman in “Green Card” learns words like “peonies,” and “crocodiles”; she shares attraction to language with elementary-school-aged Mao, who told me she checked out books like Goosebumps from her local library, then imitated them in writing.

But transplantation isn’t all or always magnificent: “cold pendant drums her chest.” The woman makes her way through traffic’s “ smell of power,” and the “snow hid[ing] all her features.” This woman, cold and careful, “lives in a cave.”

Mao’s various transitory perspectives, both excited and wary, inform her poetry. When Mao writes her more polemical poems, like “Yellow Fever” in Mad 20

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Honey Symposium or “Mutant Odalisque” in Oculus, she articulates the relationship between Orientalist literary tropes and racist structures. “Occidentalism,” another of these more boldly political poems, also in Oculus, writes back against a man who “celebrates erstwhile conquests”; the man’s racist book, Mao writes, “defaces me,” so “I scribble, make Sharpie lines, deface its text.“ She ends, as if in a credo, with some of her collection’s more transparently vulnerable lines: The tome of hegemony lives on, circulates in our libraries, in our bloodstreams. One day, a girl like me may come across it on a shelf, pick it up, read about all the ways her body is a thing. And I won’t be there to protect her, to cross the text out and say: go ahead— rewrite this.

In an online interview, Mao was asked what makes her angry. She linked to her own Goodreads review of one particular book she herself encountered at a library, The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters. Mao gives the book one star: “once again someone is trying to justify racism, sexism, colonialism, and a very virulent type of Orientalism with an academic subject (history).” Racist representations, even, or perhaps especially, authoritative ones, do real harm. Mao would know. Only a few weeks after Trump’s election, Mao encountered the sort of racism that has risen since, when a man told her to “go back to Tokyo” in a Lower East Side diner. Today’s screens are yesterday’s tomes; Mao’s project of writing again and against aims “to protect” and validate the girl who may see commonplace racism on her digital library shelf.

Mao’s rewriting often takes a historical subject, as if from a scholarly shelf, and rewrites it, giving it future-focused spin. For example, two of the book’s five major sections speak from the perspective of Anna May Wong (1905-61), “Hollywood’s first Asian-American star.” The poems range from a muzzled, silenced anger in “Anna May Wong on Silent Films” to the sexy “flush flood” kissing in “Anna May Wong Goes Home With Bruce Lee.” Many, though they look to the future, offer ironic commentary on a film industry that wouldn’t give leading roles to AsianAmericans: from the ’60s just after Wong’s death (Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly is the “role I’d have died for”) to the tokenized characters of this century (in Kill Bill, The Last Samurai, Memoirs of a Geisha, etc.). When Mao has Wong imagine herself in the 1980s (“Anna May Wong Blows Out Sixteen Candles”), she demands, “it’s 1984”: so cast me in a new role already. Cast me as a pothead, an heiress, a gymnast, a queen. Cast me as a castaway in a city without shores. Cast me as a girl who rivets center stage or cast me away in the blue where my lips don’t touch The tripling of “cast”—to be given a role, like in film; to be thrown, like dice; or to be a castaway, like an abandoned sailor—takes on ethical tones. Who casts whom? How should we feel about all this casting and casting off? Mao,

through Wong, rewrites the lost potential: The Hays Code of Wong’s time prohibited an Asian-American woman from kissing a white man in yellowface, but Wong’s imagined time machine will transport her “where surely no one gives a fuck / who I kiss man, woman, or goldfish.” Hollywood’s decades of underrepresentation, a continuity that stretches across the poems, begs the question how much, really, have our screens changed from the ’30s to the ’80s?

How much from the ’80s to now?

Though maybe representation hasn’t changed all that much, technology has. In “Teledildonics,” Mao recounts internet sex via “haptic,” or sensory, machines: “kinesthetic toes / kinesthetically fucked.” In “Live Feed,” a ghostly speaker intones: “After I am dead, I will hunt you”; this person apparently comes alive in their online posts: “share me, my shards / and my innards.” Or in “Electronic Necropolis,” workers farm and recycle electronic waste, “slicing open dead circuitboards, / I cultivate rebirth.” All of these present-futures appear via the undead quality of cyber life. The celluloid silver screen gives way to the “riven, rising: a bloodless organ,” the organic, yet immortal, digital age, where the mistakes live on in cyberspace. When recyclers say, “It is the defects that incandescence, that supply / us with food, music, harm,” Mao reiterates the double-edged shard: The boundless potential for creative incandescence doubles as the ever-multiplied harm brought by the timelessness of digital records.

In the last third of the book, the present transitions to the future, rendered under the guidance of other science fiction artists. Anna May Wong appears as a cyborg in Cloud Atlas, “the writhing galaxy” of Cowboy Bebop comes alive, and a long sequence reflects on the futuristic conceptual art of Nam June Paik. Mao takes from Paik’s video art “a kind of Asian American futurism”; Mao told me that she was interested in this “more contemporary form of Orientalism.” These poems write and rewrite the “stereotype,” as Mao says, that “Asians are all uniform, robotic, and conformist—and they all look the same.” Often the artists and icons Mao uses to explore these futuristic themes—from anime to pop songs—fly like satellites well over my head, though sometimes, as in the pixelated Pokemon landscape of “Lavender Town,” I am right there with my Gameboy. Despite, or because of, the wide variety of allusions, these final pages of “robot opera” may be the best part of an already entrancing collection.

As poets often do when they are writing about other poets, Mao’s ode to Li Po and Janelle Monae, inside the Paik sequence, becomes a reflection on Mao’s own verse: “My robot, my poet, ancient and erstwhile and now / and f—ever”. Is it forever, future-ever, fuck-ever, or what?

The blank is that place where artist and audience come together: “we write this text together, rewrite history, rewrite his story / sneak past the auditorium of ruins.”

Knowing Mao’s obsession with assonance allows us to untangle the rhymed riddle of the simple assonance “we write” with “rewrite.” Mao’s sounds recognize the radical act of collaborative revision.

Mao extends an invitation to, most directly, that “girl like me,” but also to any reader who would join her in rewriting the damaging narratives. One might say the same of Mao: “I wait for your poems, like baroque lasers.”

Mao crafts strangely elaborate yet piercing poems, which struggle with past and future problems of representation; she shines this intricately focused, futuristic light onto questions of what and who we allow on our screens.

JUST FOR LAUGHS COMEDY

Balkan Beat Party

A look at some of the top talent auditioning in Boston this year

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON Here’s a timely metaphor that you can probably digest: the annual Just For Laughs festival in Montreal is the Super Bowl of comedy. Like, the biggest deal of all big deals in the bloodsport of humor.

For the second straight year, JFL is hosting this region’s New Faces showcase at Laugh Boston, where some of our city’s top comedic talents will audition on Feb 10 for a spot to perform at the fest this July (there’s also a character showcase that same day at Improv Asylum). Past winners of the big dance up in Canada include major stars like Kevin Hart and Michelle Wolf, so naturally we’re rooting for our home team this time around. And what a team it is; for a glimpse of those competing for a spot in Montreal, we pulled our favorite moments from Dig interviews with some of this year’s JFL hopefuls.

Corey Rodrigues (from our 2016 State of the Boston Comedy Union by Dan McCarthy): On occasional failure: “The easiest bombs to eat are the ones you can identify.

So the ones you walk off the stage and say, ‘I was going too fast,’ or, ‘They didn’t get [the joke].’ As long as you can diagnose it. The worst is like a break-up where you don’t know if you’re broken up. “Are we, aren’t we? Just fucking tell me!” When you don’t know it’s the worst.”

On Boston then and now: “In comparison to the way it was then when those guys were making a good living [in comedy] and didn’t want to leave Boston, it’s because they didn’t need to. When they were doing seven shows a night, and going back and forth from out in the north shore and back to the south shore, and then back in town, then yeah of course. It’s different now. But it’s still good, the quality [is] here. There’s bad comedy too, don’t get me wrong. But we have good comedians.”

Tricia Auld (from our 2015 cover profile of Auld by Aly Morrissey): On getting into comedy: “I used it as a creative outlet but wasn’t fully ready to take on the responsibility of owning the content.”

On motivation: “What fuels and fulfills me is when I put the most raw, honest, and pure form of myself on display and another human being identifies with that. It can be challenging and scary to put yourself out there in that way, but I do it because I know that it might turn someone’s day around, or make someone in a similar situation feel like they aren’t alone.”

Alex Giampapa (from our 2017 interview by Dennis Maler): On performing outside of the city: “Politically, they’re more conservative out there so just yelling ‘I don’t like Trump!’ doesn’t get an applause break like it does around the left-leaning city. It’s pushed me to present political material not as preaching what’s right—but simply how I see the situation, because of who I am. So instead of pretending that everything I think is the ‘correct’ opinion, I’ve moved more toward material like, “I was a Bernie Sanders guy, but like a lot of Bernie Sanders guys, I had never paid taxes before.” Once I criticize myself a little, they’re cool with me criticizing the conservative agenda a little bit as well. I’ve also noticed that out in small towns they tend to appreciate shows a little more.

The city is my favorite place, but every crowd had seven other things they could’ve done that night so there’s generally a real “impress me, clown” vibe going on. In smaller areas, the comedy show is the big thing to do that night—so while they may not be as open-minded about certain subjects, they do tend to lean in and listen a little bit more closely.”

Laura Severse (from our 2018 profile by Dennis Maler): On telling jokes about her kids: “There’s only a handful of parents on the scene in Boston, so there’s very little overlap or parallel thinking with the younger comics because I’m doing parent humor. The thing is, I never started out trying to be a mom comic. In fact, in the first two years I was doing comedy I barely mentioned my kids. They were young then and weren’t particularly amusing. As they get older they seem to be providing me with an endless supply of material.

I’d be a fool not to take advantage of that. But I also work hard to have variety in my sets because I am many things. Being a parent is just one of those things.”

Live music by

Sarma and Gogofski

Saturday February 16 at the Somerville Armory Doors open at 6:30 Dance instruction 7 to 8 Music and dance 8 to 10:30 Drink and light food available for purchase Admission $20 at the door.

www.balkanbeatparty.com

Don't Miss The Tony Award-Winning Musical

RAGTIME Weekends Through February 17

$5 off with code DigBoston

Mo Willem's

ELEPHANT & PIGGIE'S "We Are In A Play!"

SPECIAL SCHOOL VACATION WEEK ENGAGEMENT!

4 Performances only - Special 1pm Matinees

February 19, 20, 21 and 22 $5 off with code DigBoston

>> NEW FACES SHOWCASE. SUN 2.10 AT LAUGH BOSTON AND IMPROV ASYLUM. LAUGHBOSTON.COM FOR MORE INFO.

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

OMMISSIONS SAVAGE LOVE

COMEDY EVENTS

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

THU 01.31

THURSDAY NIGHT @ THE COMEDY STUDIO

I’m a 21-year-old woman, and I have an IUD. I’ve had sex with quite a few men, and one thing seems to be almost constant among them: trying to fuck without condoms. Many of the men I’ve been with seem to be perfectly fine and terribly eager to have sex without condoms. This has always angered me. They generally assume or make sure I’m on birth control, which they immediately take to mean condomfree sex is welcome. I don’t want to have sex without condoms without being in a committed relationship. I know people cheat and monogamy doesn’t mean STIs won’t happen, but it’s a risk I’m comfortable with. I’m so annoyed by how often men try to get out of using condoms (it’s often persistent, even with people I’ve been seeing a while) that I want to start lying and say I’m not on birth control. The risk of a baby seems to be the only STI most men are concerned with. Is it all right for me to lie and say I’m not on any birth control and explain why I lied later on if things get serious?

I’m Understandably Distressed Let’s get this out of the way first: You’re right, IUD, sexually transmitted infections (STI) do happen to people in monogamous relationships. People cheat, people lie, people contract, people transmit. A 2015 study found that people in consensually nonmonogamous (CNM) relationships were no more likely to contract an STI than people in monogamous relationships. The reason? If a person in a monogamous relationship screws around and doesn’t use a condom, they can’t ask their partner to start using condoms again without drawing attention to their infidelity. If someone in a CNM relationship asks their primary partner to start using condoms again— because a condom broke or fell off or didn’t wind up on a cock for some other reason—they’re drawing attention to their fidelity. Moving on…

Right again, IUD: Babies do seem to be the only STI many men are worried about.

Australian researchers conducted a large study about stealthing—the deeply shitty, rape-adjacent practice of surreptitiously removing the condom during intercourse— and they were shocked to discover how common this deeply shitty practice seems to be.

“The researchers estimated in advance that approximately 2% of the sample would report having been stealthed,” sex researcher Justin Lehmiller wrote in a blog post looking at the results of the study. “In fact, 32% of the women and 19% of the men surveyed reported having experienced stealthing… A majority of both groups reported discussing the event with their partner afterward, and most also reported feeling emotionally stressed about it. A majority also considered stealthing to be a form of sexual assault. These results suggest that stealthing is not a rare occurrence and we would do well to study it further.”

The researchers didn’t ask heterosexual men about being stealthed and, as Lehmiller points out, there are some scattered reports out there about women poking holes in condoms before sex or retrieving them after sex. We don’t need a study to tease out the motives of these women—they want to have a child and don’t care whether their partners do (and that is not okay)—but we could use a study that asked heterosexual men about their motives for stealthing. One question we should put to these assholes: Are they more likely to “go stealth,” i.e., to sexually assault a woman, if they know her to be on some other form of birth control? Or are they just so wrapped up in their own momentary sexual pleasure that they don’t give a shit about babies or any of the other STIs? Moving on to your actual question…

Can you lie? Of course you can. Should you lie? In the case of a casual sex partner who might not have your best interests at heart, i.e., some total rando you want to fuck but aren’t sure you can trust, I think you can lie and should lie. This lie doesn’t do him any harm; it’s not like you’re telling him you’re on birth control when you’re not. And if telling this lie inspires some rando to be more careful about keeping the condom on (sometimes condoms fall off by accident), then it’s a lie that made the sex safer for you and for him.

And if you get serious about someone you initially lied to about having an IUD— if some dude makes the transition from hot rando to hot boyfriend—and he reacts badly when you tell him the truth, just say (or text) this to him: “I could have waited to fuck you until I was sure you were a good guy. But then you would have missed out on all the awesome sex we’ve had up to now. Would that have been better? And by coming clean now, I’m basically saying that I think you’re a good guy that I can trust. I know that now, but I didn’t always know it because I’m not psychic. Now, do you want to raw-dog me or do you want to complain?”

Featuring: Tooky Kavanagh, Cam MacNeil, Carolyn Riley, Matt Amabello, Kathe Farris, Peter Martin, Jiayong Li, Doug Chagnon, Sean Rosa Donovan, Mike Roy Whitman, Comic in Residence J. Smitty, & more.

Hosted by Rick Jenkins

1 BOW MARKET WAY #23, SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $12 FRI 02.01 - SAT 02.02

RON WHITE @ THE WILBUR & THE CHEVALIER

Comedian Ron “Tater Salad” White first rose to fame as the cigar-smoking, scotchdrinking funnyman from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour phenomenon, but now as a chart-topping Grammy-nominated comedian and a feature film actor, Ron White has established himself as a star in his own right. White has always been a classic storyteller.

His stories relay tales from his real life, ranging from growing up in a small town in Texas to sharing stories of his daily life to becoming one of the most successful comedians in America. All 4 of his comedy albums charted #1 on the BillboardTM Comedy Charts.

He has sold over 14 million albums (solo and with the Blue Collar Comedy Tour), been nominated for two Grammys, and over the past 9 years (since 2004) been one of the top three grossing stand up comedians on tour in America.

02.01 @ 246 TREMONT ST, BOSTON 02.02 @ 30 FOREST ST, MEDFORD | $45-$240 FRI 02.01

STUDS OF COMEDY @ IMPROVBOSTON

Featuring: Jax Dell’Osso, J.Fox-Jones, Reese Cotton, Jai Demarle, & K’Rina Fort Hosted by Lady Vain

40 PROSPECT ST., CAMBRIDGE | 11PM | $12 SAT 02.02

LEAGUE OF LAUGHS @ COMICAZI

Featuring: Brett Johnson, Janet McNamara, Dom Smith, Kelly Vernon, David McLaughlin, Ryan Ellington, & Anthony Scibelli.

407 HIGHLAND AVE, SOMERVILLE | 7PM | $25 SUN 02.03

LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW

Featuring: Janet McNamara, Arty P., Dom Smith, Kathleen DeMarle, Liam McGurk, Ethan Diamond, Zach Russell, Mike Setlow, & Rob Greene.

Hosted by Stirling Smith

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

Lineup & shows to change without notice. Bios & writeups pulled from various sources, including from the clubs & comics.

RUTHERFORD

BY DON KUSS DONKUSS@DIGBOSTON.COM

On the Lovecast, Andrew Gurza on dating with disabilities: savagelovecast.com. savagelovecast.com 22

01.31.19 - 02.07.19

|

DIGBOSTON.COM

“sir, the 2% in question does not refer to interest”

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

Greg Fitzsimmons The Howard Stern Show Thursday - Saturday

COMING SOON Eddie Ifft

Comedy Central Presents, Last Comic Standing Feb 7-9

Just For Laughs New Faces Showcase

THE WAY WE WEREN’T

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

Special Engagement: Sun, Feb 10

Al Ducharme + Bernadette Pauley

Special Engagement: Thurs, Feb 14 (V-Day!)

Kyle Dunnigan

Reno 911!, Comedy Central Presents Feb 15 + 16

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

Elliott Morgan

Special Engagement: Sun, Feb 17 617.72.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

FEB 1 & 2 - BOSTON TICKETS:

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