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MAR 14, 2019 - MAR 21,2019 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
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As you might imagine, I was kicking rocks and punching sand while pissing in the ocean, also known as trying to tell a conservative why it is not okay to be a bigot, but perfectly acceptable to call somebody out for saying something racist. It’s a situation that a lot of other lefties may have also found themselves in over some issue or another these past couple of years, and especially these past few weeks. Between having to tell ignoramuses that questioning the role that Israel plays in American politics is different from being anti-Semitic, to occasionally tuning in to the nonstop parade of severely unlettered intellectual heathens on Fox News for whom it’s a regular exercise to accuse progressives of behaving like Nazis, the current grind on social media can be quite grating. So I was looking for assistance. A few friends and followers came to the rescue. “Ask them whether they’d rather be lynched or scolded,” one recommended; another suggested that I tell the dolt I was debating, “You’re not being oppressed, you’re being an asshole.” But the best words came from my old friend Saul Tannenbaum, who wrote, “It’s called the Paradox of Tolerance.” As it turns out, the phenomenon has a proper name and definition via philosopher Karl Popper, who coined the term in 1945: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. As I tweeted back, “Amazing Saul, but no dummy’s gonna understand that.” To which he replied, “Regrettably, it really can’t be put more simply than, ‘If we tolerate the intolerant, toleration will disappear.’” And that’s really the rub here—how are those of us who read books and value any level of complex thought whatsoever supposed to argue with lumpish American flag-waving xenophobes? It’s like wrestling a corpse—impossible to win, and you’ll probably have to puke when you’re done. Dumb if you do, and damned if you don’t. A paradox indeed. CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Quick I need help what is the easiest way to explain to a moron how there is a difference between being intolerant of people on the basis of race and being intolerant of people who are intolerant of people on the basis of race?
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NEWS US THIS IS U.S. OUT OF TOWN NEWS
A community confronts stigmas hurting immigrants in America BY OLIVIA MASTROSIMONE
PHOTOS BY OLIVIA MASTROSIMONE “In that moment, they said give your son your blessings.” José Oliverio Diaz spoke to audience members at a recent public forum held in Lynn. With a social worker from the Lynn Community Health Center translating his words into English, he described the experience of emigrating from Guatemala in 2018 and being separated from his child at the border, where the 15-year-old was detained and removed from his family for what would be approximately 60 days. “I didn’t know why they were asking me to do that,” Diaz said, “so I just hugged him and I said, ‘I don’t know when this is going to end.’” Diaz was speaking at “Why U.S.? The Immigration Crisis in America.” The public forum, organized by the New Lynn Coalition and Essex County Community Organization, was held at the Lynn Housing Authority and included presentations by professors, activists, community and faith leaders, and Diaz, whose testimony provided a real-life foundation for the conversation. “We want to demystify the immigration crisis and understand why people are coming to the US,” said NLC organizing director Jonathon Feinberg. “The rhetoric surrounding immigrants needs to be normalized, people need to hear their stories.” The New Lynn Coalition, formed in 2011, is an alliance of 13 labor and community organizations that works to empower and support working-class families of all races, ethnicities, and economic standings in the region. The federation serves Lynn and the surrounding areas in countless ways but focuses its efforts on fighting for inclusionary zone ordinances, funding for adequate job training, and diversity in municipal housing. The NLC hosts regular events and actions, and had notable success with the passing of Lynn’s antiforeclosure ordinance in 2013, as well as with the completed construction of Gateway North, a union-built, mixed-income housing development, in the summer 4
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of 2018. The coalition’s most recent project, “Why U.S.?,” was organized to dispel stigmas held about immigration and challenge anti-immigrant sentiments, from the mainstream media to public policy. Lynn is a majorityminority city with a large immigrant population— according to 2018 census data, 34.7 percent of the city’s residents were born outside of the United States. The emerging sentiment at the forum: There is a disconnect between Lynn residents and city leadership. While the community is home to more than 60 languages and cultures, and has various organizations and outreach programs to support and empower its diverse population, according to Feinberg, Lynn struggles more with “less overt, more systematic racism.” As an example, some activists note long waiting lists for ESL classes and a lack of low-income and affordable housing options. “We don’t have that representation at all, not in city hall, not with our elected officials,” Maria Carrasco, chair of the New Lynn Coalition, said before the forum began. “You don’t see the balance. … Latinos make up around 35 percent of the population, we should hold at least some power in the city.” Carrasco also explained that, since she came to the US from the Dominican Republic in 1982, she has seen many of the resources that were at one time available to her and other immigrants disappear. “When I came here I felt welcome, but if you don’t have those resources, how do you welcome somebody? How do you make them feel at home and respected here?” Organizers of the NLC forum sought to answer such questions and to educate Lynn residents while fostering respectful and supportive relationships between all residents. To that end, panelists addressed specific topics, with each speaker tapping their own expertise to shed light on the plight of immigrants. Timothy Seiber, an activist and professor of cultural
anthropology at UMass Boston, addressed the myth of immigrant criminology. His detailed presentation focused on youth crime and called into question certain assumptions that President Donald Trump has about immigrants, specifically those from Mexico. “Why blame immigrants, and especially immigrant youth, for being criminals when overall crime rates are now historically low, when we don’t have a crime crisis, and when immigrants actually make our communities much safer?” Seiber asked. “I suggest that it has a lot to do with scapegoating.” Author, activist, and Salem State University professor Aviva Chomsky also spoke about such scapegoating, specifically in relation to the loss of American jobs. “In order to talk about immigrants and jobs, we also have to talk about race,” Chomsky said. “We also have to talk about colonialism.” In a conversation with the Dig after the forum, Chomsky added, “A lot of the anti-immigrant sentiment comes from a very deep misunderstanding of US history and the country’s role in the world. In order to think about how we can make our system more just, we have to understand what the system actually is.” Angel Tito Meza, a Honduran activist and member of the Honduran Project, called the system out in his turn. “What I know about Honduras, what I know about El Salvador, what I know about Venezuela, is that the people really want to change things for the better,” Meza explained. “But the government of the United States and multinational corporations are there because they don’t want these countries to develop their own economies.” Other speakers included Lynn pastor and community activist Eduardo Cáceres, whose presentation on land theft, drugs, and youth displacement, translated by an interpreter, featured a moving description of the hardships that Guatemalan people face along with reasons some families leave homes for America. Cáceres is originally from San Marcos, Guatemala, and spoke about native farmers in his native region. “It is like an art, the way that they work,” Cáceres said. “These people paint the mountains with their hands. What I see in those people is the effort to do the same hard work they do in their country and do it here.” The San Marcos area has been dually devastated by natural disasters and institutionalized corruption, giving many Guatemalans no choice but to leave the country in search of stability and security. “[America] is hope for these people,” Cáceres added. “They have a very high risk getting here, but that risk is worth their whole life.” “Now more than ever, we have to be prepared to educate everyone,” Fabiola Alvarez, an NLC intern, said. “If one misinformed person gets the message, that is a mission accomplished. ”
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DEPT. OF COMMERCE
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5
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF POLITICAL ACTIVISM IN AN AGE OF EXISTENTIAL THREATS APPARENT HORIZON
BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS
But my life would have been less meaningful. I would have felt I was just passing through this plane of existence. A helpless leaf being blown on the winds of fate. Maybe I would have turned to alcohol and drugs like so many others I have met in the dead-end gigs I have worked. One thing’s for sure, though: I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror, as I occasionally do now, and say, “Whatever happens, I did fight.” JASON PRAMAS AND AMY CARTER AT THE “NORTHAMPTON 15” CIA OFF CAMPUS Fellow activists and I did win some TRIAL IN NORTHAMPTON, MA ON APRIL 8, 1987. STILLS FROM WGBH ARCHIVAL small battles for what we believe VIDEO, COURTESY OF THE BOSTON TV NEWS DIGITAL LIBRARY. to be just causes. Even if thus far in this era, we have lost the large ones. This week, a reminder that politics is not a spectator However, turning back to those existential battles, sport. I was listening to a recent Noam Chomsky humanity cannot afford to lose them. There are actually appearance on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. And the two many such large fights. But global warming and the giants of the American left sparred a bit on particulars threat of nuclear war loom above all of them. but agreed that humanity faces two existential threats: Taking each in turn, the news on anthropogenic global warming and a revival of the nuclear arms race. climate change just keeps getting worse and worse. Both of which I write about frequently. Looking at just one current report, scientists writing When it came to the inevitable discussion of how to in the February issue of the journal Nature Geoscience tackle both problems, the noted thought leaders diverged. announced that if the global mean atmospheric carbon Nader started talking about the need for a large third dioxide level—presently at 410 parts per million, and party to change politics. Then Chomsky retorted that the already above the predicted tipping point of 350 parts per human race can’t wait long enough for Americans to get million for several years now—goes up past 1200 parts our act together. And that we must start filling the streets per million (as it is expected to do by 2100 if we fail to to demand action from the US on both threats. Linking lower carbon emissions soon), then the stratocumulous up with increasingly vibrant campaigns abroad. The two clouds over the oceans could weaken and disappear. then discussed periods like the 1980s when Americans Causing surface warming of 14 degrees Fahrenheit joined the global movement for nuclear disarmament. globally—and up to 18 degrees F in the subtropics. Added Which was effective… to a point. Massive rallies resulted to the global warming that’s already predicted, that in accords like the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear would be lights out for human civilization. And probably Forces Treaty that the Trump administration is now trying for the human race. to walk away from. The threat of total nuclear war, as I’ve already This got me thinking about my own life. When I was a inferred above, remains high. The Bulletin of the Atomic teenager in the early 1980s, global warming was not quite Scientists’ Doomsday Clock is stuck at “two minutes to on the public radar yet. Although oil companies already midnight” for the second year running. “Midnight” being knew about it, according to a landmark 2015 investigation a global nuclear conflagration. The group’s board of by InsideClimate News. But the threat of nuclear war Nobel laureate scientists and other luminaries has not was on everyone’s mind. And the mass movement that declared the clock’s time to be so close to midnight since Chomsky and Nader mentioned was strong enough to 1953—when a hydrogen bomb was detonated by the USSR reach through the morass of the American news media of a year after the US detonated the first one during one of the time—which turned out to be far better than today’s the most dangerous periods of the Cold War. in key respects—and inspire an average kid like me to act. Both crises require swift and immediate action. By the time I was 18 in the summer of 1985, I was And many people in the US are definitely stepping up. deeply committed to the anti-nuke movement. By the But many more need to join them on a regular basis. time I was 22 in 1989, I was part of the early stage of We cannot afford business as usual in the face of our the environmental movement to stop global warming. impending demise. For almost 35 years all told, I have been continuously Still, I know what most of you are thinking: You’re too politically active. Sometimes mainly as a journalist as is busy working to make ends meet or with school or taking currently the case, but most of the time as a foot soldier care of loved ones or all three of those things to join and eventual leader in all kinds of activist campaigns on protest movements. the political left. And I’m sympathetic to that all-too-common Doing politics at the street level—as I do not believe situation. I’ve spent most of my life juggling those very that the ballot box is its primary locus—has not been necessary activities with participation in political activist easy. It has been hard. The past three-plus decades would campaigns. I know it’s difficult for many people to even have been much more pleasant if I had been apolitical. consider doing. But I’m asking you all to consider it I would not have been expelled from two colleges and nonetheless. banned from one, if I had failed to act on my beliefs. I I’m also quite well aware that there are more might not have been stuck in a long series of part-time, immediate political crises at the local level that some contract, and temp jobs for much of my adult life, as of you feel can be more easily handled through politics my age group was the last one to have a consistent as usual than confronting super frightening issues chance at finding decent long-term employment with head-on worldwide. And I definitely concur that those an undergrad degree in the 1980s. My family would have “manageable” problems need to be dealt with. Though been much happier with me, too, particularly during the my long experience with local politics informs me that rough patches—arrests, trials, and all that jazz. 6
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activist pressure campaigns will still be required if change is going to come fast enough to matter. For example, let’s look at two local crises: The MBTA fare hike that was just passed yesterday according to WBUR, and the woeful lack of public housing in a state that continues to allow rents to skyrocket. After some fairly strong pushback from transportation justice groups and politicians like Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu and state Rep. Mike Connolly of Somerville, some minor modifications were made by the T’s Fiscal and Management Control Board. But fares will still be increased by an average of 6 percent. And major reforms to benefit working families were off the table. Be it the free public transit Wu has been calling for, or Connolly’s demand “for additional forms of revenues to help fund the MBTA, including taxing large businesses, wealthy individuals and hiking fees on Uber and Lyft.” Meanwhile, the Mass association of local housing authority officials is greeting the news of a new report showing that 160,000 people are now on public housing waiting lists across the Commonwealth with dismay, according to State House News Service. Since the state budget for public housing only just went up to $64.5 million this fiscal year after six years of level funding, and housing authority advocates say it would require a budget of at least $120 million a year to expand Mass public housing to meet current needs. Though likely not future needs. It’s absolutely true that action on such local policy crises is vital. And it’s just as true that, as with the life or death fights at the global level, we’re not going to see the kind of government action needed to really solve our housing or transportation problems in the Bay State without much larger protest campaigns than those that are already happening. Because, as Frederick Douglass once put it, power concedes nothing without a demand. All of which is to say that we’ve got to get back to a place where we were in the US in the 1930s and 1960s (and the conclusion of that “long decade” in the 1970s) when millions of people went into the streets to protest crises large and small… and stayed there, despite all the hardships that come with concerted political activity until they won major victories. Be it Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Environmental Protection Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments Act, or putting an end to the Vietnam War, grassroots activists pushed the government at all levels and the corporations that have dominated them for over a century… until they gave in. Nothing is perfect, least of all big political movements, but they won real reforms that lasted for decades. And that’s what has to happen now. A culture of popular resistance must flower. Sparking movements for peace, justice, democracy, and ecology that will make Occupy and Black Lives Matter look like walks in the park. At the planetary level, the alternatives to mass nonviolent direct action are too grim to contemplate. At the local level, failure to act means that our communities will continue to deteriorate until the haves completely decouple from the have-nots—and democracy dies in shadow. Shortly before the biosphere does. 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.
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AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE DIG: EPISODE 3 FEATURE
Nakedness from another time BY BARRY THOMPSON
The ’90z - 2003 (cont.) In our previous installment, our much bigger rival, the Boston Phoenix, lowered its per-issue price tag to zero dollars and zero cents, while hideous orange street boxes containing the Weekly Dig appeared scattered throughout the Boston area. And as the Dig’s visibility and influence increases, so too, must the staff… How we came to cover music no one else gives fuckall about J. BENNETT (music editor): Jeff [Lawrence] basically hired me as the delivery guy, and I figured that was my step in the door, because I went from delivery guy for about a year and a half to the music editor. It’s not like I piggybacked over 10 people who were in line for the job. There weren’t that many other people. JEFF LAWRENCE (founding publisher): There was a van ride from after we did a beer event at Bukowski Tavern. I have a scar. I had ridden my bike to work, so it was in the van, and J. Bennett was driving, and he fucking slammed on the brakes ’cause he was going to hit somebody or something, and I went face-first into my bike pedal. So I’m bleeding profusely. I’m like, “Drive me home! I’ll fucking stitch it up!” J. walked me into my house, and I butterfly stitched my own fucking eye. J. BENNETT: Joe [Bonni] has the Prince Albert piercing, which means he has to sit down to pee. Apparently you can’t pee standing up, because the ring gets in the way. JOE BONNI (founding EiC): It’s like putting your thumb on a faucet. It sprays in six directions. J. BENNETT: Some intern was apparently pissing on the seat, and Joe would get so bent out of shape about this. At one point there was a sign made reminding people to put the seat up if they took a wizz. SHAULA CLARK (managing editor): I started as an intern in January of 2001, I believe. I had read
Transmetropolitan and, to me, Joe Bonni represented Spider Jerusalem—the coolest person in the world. I heard he had gotten his wedding cake made at Sweet-NNasty. I was, like, 18 at the time, so I thought, “Wow, that’s cool, man!” I look back at that now as a bit dubious, but I do respect him. J. Bennett just seemed like a metal wizard who sat in the corner. J. BENNETT: Once a month I would do this thing called “Extremities”—a roundup of all the best heavy metal and hardcore albums that came out that month. And then I got Keith Bennett—no relation, but a good friend of mine—I got him involved and he and I handled the “Extremities” stuff. KEITH BENNETT (music writer): Initially, me and J. Bennett had our own metal and hardcore zine called Hex Bender. So we put out a second issue, then J. started doing some freelance stuff for the Dig, and then he became the music editor, and that took over all his time. So instead of me driving him up the wall saying, “We’ve got to get issue #3 of Hex Bender out! What the fuck?!” he suggested letting the Dig absorb Hex Bender. LAWRENCE: We couldn’t pay the rent early on, so we figured out a way to supplement that. We held parties. Like, keg parties. CRAIG KAPILOW (associate editor): Keith Bennett had a history of getting naked at parties. I think he swung feces up at a DJ booth at a Dig event. KEITH BENNETT: No, no, it wasn’t feces. It was a cup full of piss, and I think the nakedness was from a different time. I’m not sure. But yeah, in both instances, there were … Before what we now know as “hipsters,” we had what we called “New Boston” types. Just really shitty, snobby people who, y’know, came to Dig parties and just … You can tell when people aren’t real. I’d see them and think, “You’re going to be living in The Back Bay, you want the million dollar condo in the South End, you don’t want what we have.” So whether it was one time or two different times, it was straight up, “Fuck these people.
Why are they here? They obviously don’t like us or what we do. They’re here to be seen and eat our food and drink our fucking beer and do some social climbing over us and on top of us, so fuck them.” BONNI: One of our most successful advertising gambits was the extreme metal column. It brought in actual advertising revenue because the labels were so happy that an alt-weekly was covering their shit. The Phoenix would cover the next Nirvana-ish alterna-pop thing, but Opeth? That just wasn’t happening. KEITH BENNETT: Nobody in Boston was writing about black metal at all. We were absolutely the first people to feature black metal, and even darker sounds like power violence and neo-folk. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the Dig readership had no idea what we were writing about, so we tried to resonate with the percent that would, and just try to entertain everybody else. I knew the average person on the Green Line doesn’t know fuckall about Norwegian black metal, but maybe I could entertain them while they’re stuck in the subway. J. BENNETT: With the weekly deadline, I felt kind of stressed out a lot of the time. I should mention that not only was I the music editor, I copy edited the entire publication. So if maybe I gave off the impression that I wasn’t very gregarious or talkative or anything like that, that’s because I wanted to get my shit done. My phone was always off. Also, part of my job was going to the clubs five or six nights a week. That’s part of the gig, y’know? So there wasn’t a lot of sleep happening. There were a lot of stimulants involved. KAPILOW: The Phoenix would cover Sasha and John Digweed and Paul Oakenfold—the super mainstream DJ stuff. The Dig was the only weekly in the country other than, say, The Village Voice that really covered electronic music. I mean, we had people who were very, very respected music producers and DJs, some of them touring all over the world, writing for our paper in those early days. BONNI: I think I played it up like I was more resistant to electronic music than I actually was just to fuck with Craig. But electronica—we nailed that, too. J. BENNETT: I can’t remember if anyone else did this or if it was just me, but when the office was in Chinatown … Red Bull is this formula this guy took from Thailand, carbonated it, tripled the price, and sold it to white people. But when Red Bull was still fairly new, you could still buy these little brown medicine bottles in Chinatown, and they had a red bull logo on them, and the stuff was not carbonated, so it was like drinking cough syrup. That shit would put you into outer space, man. That’s all for this week! We should probably mention Extremities eventually goes totally crypto-fascist and winds up cancelled, but it’s gonna be awhile before we get to that part of the story.
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FACE CALM LIFESTYLE
Is the hottest facial treatment around all hype? Or is it actually helpful? BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS
There are tons of trends in the beauty industry, and sifting through the noise (and celebrity endorsements) to find results-driven treatments that won’t require a second mortgage can feel like a fool’s errand. In an age where all it takes is a Kardashian to post a selfie at the dermatologist to get people talking about the next breakthrough, it can be difficult (and daunting) to decide where to start and what to look for. Within the last couple of years, one such treatment—touted as a celebrity red carpet secret—began showing up seemingly everywhere. HydraFacial, it is said, tackles virtually every skin malady in just one quick, painless 30-minute office visit. You may have heard people chatting it up or posting about it—no downtime, no need to run out the back door with a scarf wrapped around your head, and no need to sell an organ to be able to afford it. Lofty claims go hand in hand with most skincare, so I set out to put it to the test. Can a noninvasive, needle-free, lunch break facial really be that good? RN Esthetics, which has three locations on the North Shore (Lynnfield, Salem, and Newburyport), has the rare distinction of being a HydraFacial Black Diamond practice, a top honor bestowed on the most elite spas across the country (elite doesn’t necessarily mean expensive, it just means good). Comparatively, the practice is recognized as an Allergan top 1 percent provider of Botox and fillers in the country, an honor that most Beverly Hills dermatologists can’t even claim. According to Linda Vecchione, co-founder of RN Esthetics, HydraFacial functions as both a treatment that produces immediate results (bright, glowing, firm skin) and a treatment that, when repeated regularly, will give you the best skin of your life. In addition to lessening fine lines and wrinkles, each HydraFacial treatment is said to bring you one step closer to flawless skin. And all this sounds wonderful, but can one treatment really make that big of a difference? The answer? Um, yes. The first thing that happens is that a wand-like tool opens your pores, washes your face, and eliminates that pesky top layer of dead skin cells. Then, a gentle acid peel is used to exfoliate the skin one step further (no, it doesn’t burn). Then—get this—a magical kind of skincare vacuum unclogs pores and sucks all the nasty stuff up a big tube. Finally, a magical vortex tool infuses the skin with serum rich in antioxidants and collagen. I didn’t only look considerably better right after the treatment, but I could see the difference in my skin for a full week after the procedure. Even with just a simple moisturizer, my skin had an unreal glow to it. A bothersome sunspot was faded, I had virtually no pores, and my skin seemed temporarily immune to the harshness of an unforgiving New England winter. It’s hard to judge most skincare treatments from only one session, but HydraFacial more than delivers on its promises, just as the ladies at RN Esthetics told me it would.
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THE FOILIES 2019 FEATURE
Recognizing the year’s worst in government transparency The cause of government transparency finally broke through to the popular zeitgeist this year. It wasn’t an investigative journalism exposé or a civil rights lawsuit that did it, but a light-hearted sitcom about a Taiwanese American family set in Orlando, Florida, in the late 1990s. In a January episode of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, the Huang family’s two youngest children—overachievers Evan and Emery—decide if they sprint on all their homework, they’ll have time to plan their father’s birthday party. “Like the time we knocked out two English papers, a science experiment, and built the White House out of sugar cubes,” Evan said. “It opened up our Sunday for filing Freedom of Information requests.” “They may not have figured out who shot JFK,” Emery added. “But we will.” The eldest child, teenage slacker Eddie, concluded with a sage nod, “You know, once in a while, it’s good to know nerds.” Amen to that. Around the world, nerds of all ages are using laws like the United States’ Freedom of Information Act (and state-level equivalent laws) to pry free secrets and expose the inner workings of our democracy. Each year, open government advocates celebrate these heroes during Sunshine Week, an annual advocacy campaign on transparency. But the journalists and researchers who rely on these important measures every day can’t help but smirk at the boys’ scripted innocence. Too often, government officials will devise novel and outrageous ways to reject requests for information or otherwise stymie the public’s right to know. Even today—20 years after the events set in the episode—the White House continues to withhold key documents from the Kennedy assassination files. Since 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a nonprofit that advocates for free speech, privacy and government transparency in the digital age) has published The Foilies to recognize the bad actors who attempted to thwart the quests for truth of today’s Evans and Emerys. With these tongue-in-cheek awards, we call out attempts to block transparency, retaliation against those who exercise their rights to information, and the most ridiculous examples of incompetence by government officials who handle these public records. The Corporate Eclipse Award - Google, Amazon, and Facebook Sunshine laws? Tech giants think they can just blot those out with secretive contracts. But two nonprofit groups—Working Partnerships and the First Amendment Coalition—are fighting this practice in California by suing the city of San Jose over an agreement with Google that prevents city officials from sharing the public impacts of development deals, circumventing the California Public Records Act. Google’s proposed San Jose campus is poised to have a major effect on the city’s infrastructure, Bloomberg reported. Yet, according to the organization’s lawsuit, records analyzing issues of public importance such as traffic impacts and environmental compliance were among the sorts of discussions Google demanded be made private under their non-disclosure agreements. And it’s not just Google using these tactics. An agreement between Amazon and Virginia includes a provision that the state will give the corporate giant— which is placing a major campus in the state—a headsup when anyone files a public records request asking for information about them. The Columbia Journalism Review reported Facebook has also used this increasingly common strategy for companies to keep cities quiet and the public in the dark about major construction projects. 10
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The Unnecessary Box Set Award - Central Intelligence Agency After suing the CIA to get access to information about Trump’s classified briefings, Kel McClanahan of National Security Counselors was expecting the agency to send over eight agreed-upon documents. What he was not expecting was for the files—each between three and nine pages each—-to be spread out across six separate CD-ROMs, each burned within minutes of each other, making for perhaps the most unnecessary box set in the history of the compact disc. What makes this “extra silly,” McClanahan said, is that the CIA has previously complained about how burdensome and costly fulfilling requests can be. Yet the CIA CDS - COURTESY OF CIA could have NATL SECURITY COUNSELORS easily combined several requests onto the same disc and saved themselves some time and resources. After all, a a standard CD-ROM can hold 700 MB, and all of the files took only 304 B Kof space.
The Unreliable Narrator Award - President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. District Court Judges When President Trump tweets attacks about the intelligence community, transparency groups and journalists often file FOIA requests (and subsequently lawsuits) seeking the documents that underpin his claims. The question that often comes up: Do Trump’s smartphone rants break the seal of secrecy on confidential programs? The answer seems to be no. Multiple judges have sided with Justice Department lawyers, concluding that his Twitter disclosures do not mean that the government has to confirm or deny whether records about those activities exist. In a FOIA case seeking documents that would show whether Trump is under investigation, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said that the President’s tweets to that effect are “speculation.” Similarly, in a FOIA suit to get more information about the widely publicized dossier of potential ties between Trump and Russia, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said that the President’s statements are political rather than “assertions of pure fact.” And so, whether Trump actually knows what he’s talking about remains an open question.
The (Harlem) Shaky Grounds for Redaction Award Federal Communications Commission After repealing the Open Internet Order and ending net neutrality, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai doubled down on his efforts to ruin online culture. He released a cringe-inducing YouTube video titled “7 Things You Can Still Do on the Internet After Net Neutrality” that featured his own rendition of the infamous “Harlem Shake” meme. (For the uninitiated, the meme is characterized by one person subtly dancing in a room of people to Baauer’s track “Harlem Shake.” Then the bass drops and the crowd goes nuts, often with many people in costumes.) Muckrock editor JPat Brown filed a Freedom of Information Act request for emails related to the video, but the FCC rejected the request, claiming the communications were protected “deliberative” records. Brown appealed the decision, and the FCC responded by releasing all the email headers, while redacting the contents, claiming that anything more would cause “foreseeable harm.” Brown did not relent, and a year later the FCC capitulated and released the unredacted emails. “So, what did these emails contain that was so potentially damaging that it was worth risking a potential FOIA lawsuit over?” Brown writes. “Pai was curious when it was going live, and the FCC wanted to maintain a veto power over the video if they didn’t like it.” The most ridiculous redaction of all was a tiny black box in an email from the FCC media director. Once removed, all that was revealed was a single word: “OK.”
The Cross-Contamination Award - Stanford Law Professor Daniel Ho One of the benefits of public records laws is they allow almost anyone—regardless of legal acumen—to force government agencies to be more transparent, usually without having to file a lawsuit. But in Washington State, filing a public records request can put the requester at legal risk of being named in a lawsuit should someone else not want the records to be made public. This is what happened to Sarah Schacht, a Seattlebased open government advocate and consultant. For years Schacht has used public records to advocate for better food safety rules in King County, an effort that led to the adoption of food safety placards found in restaurants in the region. After Schacht filed another round of requests with the county health department, she received a legal threat in November 2018 from Stanford Law School professor Daniel Ho’s attorney threatening to sue her unless she abandoned her request. Apparently, Ho has been working with the health department to study the new food safety and placard regulations. He had written draft studies that he shared with the health department, making them public records. Ho’s threat amounted to an effort to intimidate Schacht from receiving public records, probably because he had not formally published his studies first. Regardless of motive, the threat was THE FOILIES 2019 continued on pg. 12
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an awful look. But even when faced with the threat, Schacht refused to abandon her request. Fortunately, the lawsuit never materialized, and Schacht was able to receive the records. Although Ho’s threats made him look like a bully, the real bad actor in this scenario is Washington State’s public records law. The state’s top court has interpreted the law to require parties seeking to stop agencies from releasing records (sometimes called reverse-FOIA suits) to also sue the original requester along with the government agency. The Cash for Crash Award - Michigan State Police As tech companies experiment with autonomous vehicles on public roadways, reporters are keeping tabs on how often these cars are involved in collisions. That’s why The Information’s Matt Drange has been filing records requests for the crash data held by state agencies. Some government departments have started claiming that every line of the dataset is its own, individual record and subject to a copy fee. Our winner, the Michigan State Police, proposed to charge Drange a 25-cent fee for each of a 1.9 million-line dataset, plus $20 for a thumbdrive, for a grand total of $485,645.24, with half of it due up front. Runners-up that quoted similar line-by-line charges include the Indiana State Police ($346,000) and the North Carolina Department of Transportation ($82,000). Meanwhile, Florida’s government released its detailed dataset at no charge at all. The Bartering with Extremists Award - California Highway Patrol In 2016, the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP), an infamous neo-Nazi group, staged a demonstration at the California State Capitol. Counter-protesters fiercely opposed the demonstration, and the scene soon descended into chaos, leaving multiple people injured. When the dust settled, a member of the public (disclosure: also a co-author of this piece) filed a California Public Records Act request to obtain a copy of the permit the white nationalist group filed for its rally. The California Highway Patrol rejected the request for this normally available document, claiming it was related to a criminal investigation. Two years later, evidence emerged during criminal proceedings that a CHP detective used the public records request as a bargaining chip in a phone call with the TWP protest leader, who was initially reluctant to provide information. The officer told him how the request might reveal his name. “We don’t have a reason to...uh...deny [the request],” the officer said, according a transcript of the call. But once the organizer decided to cooperate, the officer responded, “I’m gonna suggest that we hold that or redact your name or something...uh...until this thing gets resolved.” In light of these new facts, the First Amendment Coalition filed a new request for the same document. It too was denied. The Scanner Darkly Award - St. Joseph County Superior Court ProPublica reporter Jessica Huseman has been digging deep into the child welfare system and what happens when child abuse results in death. While following up on a series of strangulations, she requested a copy of a case file from the St. Joseph County COURTESY OF Superior Court JESSICA HUSEMAN in Indiana. Apparently, the clerk on the other end simply took the entire file and ran everything through a scanner. The problem was that the file contained a CD-ROM, and that’s not how CD-ROMs work. “Well this is the first time this had happened,” Huseman posted to Twitter, along with the blotchy black12
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and-white image of the top of the disc. “They scanned a CD as part of my FOI and didn’t give me its contents. Cool cool.” The Preemptive Shredding Award - Inglewood Police Department In defiance of the law enforcement lobby, California legislators passed a law (SB 1421) requiring police and sheriffs to disclose officer misconduct records in response to California Public Records Act requests. These documents, often contained in personnel files, had historically been untouchable by members of the public and the press. Almost immediately, police unions across the Golden State began to launch lawsuits to undermine these new transparency measures. But the Inglewood Police Department takes the prize for its efforts to evade scrutiny. Mere weeks before the law took effect on Jan. 1, 2019, the agency began destroying records that were set to become publicly available. “This premise that there was an intent to beat the clock is ridiculous,” Inglewood Mayor James T Butts Jr. told the LA Times in defending the purge. We imagine Butts would find it equally ridiculous to suggest that the fact he had also been a cop for more than 30 years, including serving in Inglewood and later as police chief of Santa Monica, may have factored into his support for the destruction of records. The What the Swat? Award - Nova Scotia and Halifax Law Enforcement One Wednesday morning in April, 15 Halifax police officers raided the home of a teenage boy and his family. “They read us our rights and told us not to talk,” his mother would later tell CBC. “They rifled through everything. They turned over mattresses, they took drawers and emptied out drawers, they went through personal papers, pictures. It was totally devastating and traumatic.” You might well wonder, what was the Jack Bauerclass threat to geo-political stability? Nothing at all: The Canadian teen had just downloaded a host of public records from openly available URLs on a government website. At the heart of the ordeal was some seriously terrible security practices by Nova Scotia officials. The website created to host the province’s public records was designed in such a way that every request and response had a nearly identical URL and placed no technical restrictions on the public’s ability to access any of the requests. This meant that regular public records requests and individuals’ requests to access government files about them, which included private information, were all stored together and available on the internet for anyone, including Google’s webcrawler, to access. All that was necessary was changing a number identifying the request at the end of the URL. What Nova Scotian officials should have done upon learning about leaks in their own public records website’s problems was apologize to the public, thank the teen who found these gaping holes in their digital security practices, and implement proper restrictions to protect people’s private information. They didn’t do any of that, and instead sought to improperly bring the force of Canada’s criminal hacking law down on the very person who brought the problem to light. The whole episode—which thankfully ended with the government dropping the charges—was a chilling example of how officials will often overreact and blame innocent third parties when trying to cover up for their own failings. This horror show just happened to involve public records. Do better, Canada. The Outrageous Fee Request of the Year - City of Seattle When self-described transparency advocate and civic hacker Matt Chapman sent his request to Seattle
seeking the email metadata from all city email addresses (from/to/BCC addresses, time, date, etc), he expected some pushback, because it does sound like an incredible amount of data to wrangle. Seattle’s response: All the data can be yours for a measly $33 million. Officials estimated that it would take 320 years worth of staff time to review the roughly 32 million emails responsive to Chapman’s request. Oh, and they estimated charging an additional $21,600 for storage costs associated with the records. The fee request is the second highest in the history of The Foilies (the Department of Defense won in 2016 for estimating it would take $660 million to produce records on a particular computer forensic tool). Then the city did something entirely unexpected: It revisited the fee estimate and determined that the first batch of records would cost only $1.25 to process. We get it, math is hard. But wait—that’s not all. After paying for the batches of records with a series of $1.25 checks, Chapman received more than he ever bargained for. Rather than disclosing just the metadata for all 32 million emails, Seattle had given him the first 256 characters of every email. Those snippets included passwords, credit card numbers, and other personally identifying information. What followed was a series of conversations between Chapman, Seattle’s lawyers, and the city’s IT folks to ensure he’d deleted the records and that the city hadn’t just breached its own data via a public records request. Ultimately, Seattle officials in January 2018 began sending the data to Chapman once more, this time without the actual content of email messages. The whole episode doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in Seattle officials’ ability to do basic math, comply with the public records law or protect sensitive information. The Least Transparent Employer Award - U.S. Department of Justice In the last few years, we’ve seen some great resignation letters from public servants, ranging from Defense Secretary James Mattis telling President Trump “It’s not me, it’s you” to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ forced resignation. But the Trump DOJ seems to have had enough of the tradition and has now determined that U.S. Attorney resignation letters are private in their entirety and cannot be released under the Freedom of Information Act. Of course, civil servants should have their private information protected by their employer, but that’s precisely what redactions should be used to protect. Past administrations have released resignation letters that are critical of executive branch leaders. The change in policy raises the question: What are departing U.S. Attorneys now saying that the government wants to hide? The Intern Art Project Award - Vermont Gov. Phil Scott Seattle isn’t the only city to stumble in response to Matt Chapman’s public records requests for email metadata. The Vermont governor’s office also wins for its scissor-and-glue approach to releasing electronic information. Rather than export the email information as a spreadsheet, the Vermont governor’s office told Chapman it had five interns (three of whom were unpaid) working six hours each, literally “cutting and pasting the emails from paper copies.” Next thing Chapman knew, he had a 43-page hodgepodge collage of email headers correlating with one day’s worth of messages. The governor’s attorney told Chapman it would cost $1,200 to process three more days’ worth of emails. Chapman pushed back and provided his own instructions on exporting the data using a computer and not, you know, scissors and glue. Sure enough, he received a 5,500-line spreadsheet a couple weeks later at no charge.
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THE FOILIES 2019 continued from pg. 10
The Clawback Award - The Broward County School Board After the tragic Parkland shooting, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel went to court to force the Broward County School Board to hand over documents detailing the shooter’s education and disciplinary record. A judge agreed and ordered the release, as long as sensitive information was redacted. But when reporters copied and pasted the file into another document, they found that the content under the redactions was still there and readable. They broke the story of how the school denied the shooter therapeutic services and alternative education accommodations, but then uploaded the school board’s report with working redactions. Rather than simply do better with double-checking their redactions next time, the school board struck back at the newspaper. They petitioned the court to hold the newspaper in contempt and to prevent anyone from reporting on the legally obtained information. Although the local judge didn’t issue a fine, she lambasted the paper and threatened to dictate exactly what the paper could report about the case in the future (which is itself an unconstitutional prior restraint). The Wrong Way to Plug a Leak Award - City of Greenfield, California The Monterey County Weekly unexpectedly found itself in court after the city of Greenfield, California, sued to keep the newspaper from publishing documents about the surprising termination of its city manager. When Editor Sara Rubin asked the interim city manager for the complaint the outgoing city manager filed after his termination, she got nothing but crickets. But then, an envelope containing details of a potential city political scandal appeared on the doorstep of one of the paper’s columnists. The weekly reached out to the city for comment and began preparing for its normal Wednesday print deadline. Then, the morning of publication, the paper got a call saying that they were due in court. The city sued to block publication of the documents, to have the documents returned and to have the paper reveal the identity of the leaker. Attorney Kelly Aviles gave everyone a fast lesson in the First Amendment, pointing out that the paper had every right to publish. The judge ruled in the paper’s favor, and the city ended up paying all of the Monterey County Weekly’s attorney fees. If it Looks like a Duck Award - Brigham Young University Police Brigham Young University’s Police Department is certified by the state,* has the powers of the state, but says that they’re not actually a part of government for purposes of the Utah transparency law. After the Salt Lake Tribune exposed that the university punished survivors of sexual assault for coming forward and reporting, the paper tried to get records of communications between the police department and the school’s federally required sexual assault coordinator. BYU pushed back, saying that the police department is not subject to Utah’s Government Records Access and Management Act because the police department is privately funded. This actually turns out to be a trickier legal question than you’d expect. Brigham Young University itself isn’t covered by the state law because it is a private school. But the university police force was created by an act of the Utah legislature, and the law covers entities “established by the government to carry out the public’s business.” Investigating crime and arresting people seems like the public’s business. Last summer, a judge ruled that the police department is clearly a state agency, but the issue is now on appeal at the Utah Supreme Court. Sometime this year we should learn if the police are a part of the government or not. *Because BYU police failed to comply with state law, and was not responsive to an internal investigation, the Utah Office of Public Safety notified the department on February 20th that the BYU police department will be stripped of its certification on September 1, 2019. The University police also plan to appeal this decision. The Insecure Security Check Award - U.S. Postal Service Congressional elections can turn ugly, but the opponent of newly elected U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger got a boost when the U.S. Postal Service released Spanberger’s entire personnel file, including her security clearance application, without redaction of highly sensitive personal information. When a third party requests a person’s federal employment file without the employee’s permission, the government agency normally releases only a bare-bones record of employment dates, according to a Postal Service spokesperson. But somehow Rep. Spanberger wasn’t afforded these protections, and the Postal Service has potentially made this mistake in a “small number” of other cases this year. Security clearance applications (Form SF-86) are supposed to be analyzed and investigated by the FBI, raising questions about how the FOIA officer got the information in the first place. The Postal Service has apologized for the mistake, which they say is human error, but maybe security clearance applications should be kept just as secure as the state secrets the clearance is meant to protect.
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The Foilies were compiled by Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Investigative Researcher Dave Maass, Staff Attorney Aaron Mackey, Frank Stanton Fellow Camille Fischer, and Activist Hayley Tsukayama. Illustrations by EFF Art Director Hugh D’Andrade. For more on our work visit eff.org.
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753 SOUTH IN ROSLINDALE FIRST LOOK
An overflow spot that can stand on its own BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON
LIVE MUSIC • PRIVATE EVENTS 3/24 ONCE LOUNGE:
Scream Along with Billy: Purple Rain
(Singing, ranting, and fucking around)
3/28
Comedians in Bars Hosting Trivia (Interactive Comedy Trivia Show)
4/18 CROSSROADS PRESENTS:
DEATH
(Rock/Punk Legends)
4/27 ONCE LOUNGE:
SCHOOL OF ROCK LYNN PREVIEW SHOW (Rock)
4/28 ONCE SOMERVILLE PRESENTS:
Hayley Thompson-King The Quahogs (Fuzzed Out Rock)
5/13 CROSSROADS PRESENTS:
John Paul White (The Civil Wars) (Americana)
156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA 617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com a @oncesomerville b/ONCEsomerville
It seems like so many new restaurants that open up these days give off an aura of anticipation, from passing the final inspection to a soft opening for friends and family to a grand opening, which sometimes even has a ribbon cutting. Not all new dining spots are that way, however, as some forgo the endless press releases, the tweets and Facebook posts that give a countdown, and the reaching out to those of us who write about such things to say that opening day is soon arriving. As a result, some restaurants debut and immediately become a spot mainly just for the immediate neighborhood, since no one else ever gets to know about them. This seems to be the case with a relatively new place in Roslindale called 753 South, which is so far under the radar that it is basically invisible to most Bostonians, but based on initial impressions of the eating and drinking spot, we may be looking at something truly special here. The restaurant sits across the street from the wonderful Delfino, an Italian spot whose team opened this place in the middle of 2017. Being that it is affiliated with Delfino—which rivals some of the best restaurants in the North End, by the way—753 South is in some ways an “overflow”spot where people can grab a drink while waiting for a table. But it’s really more of a standalone restaurant than an extension of its sibling, and much like Delfino, it has a somewhat elegant but unpretentious feel to it. Inside you will find a gorgeous little bar to the right, another bar area front and center that looks out at an open kitchen, and plenty of high-top and low-top seating throughout along with a small patio out back for during the warmer months. In some ways, the window tables in the very front are the pick of the lot for seating (although both bar areas are great as well), but be forewarned that on particularly cold nights, the curtain that you walk through to get into the place doesn’t keep all of the frigid air out whenever the doors opens. Inventive comfort food and new American fare are all the rage these days, and as mentioned here before, both terms are used way too much (it is particularly difficult for fish and chips to be inventive, for instance), but 753 South certainly has some interesting twists on comfort food items. One such example may just be one of the most unusual—and one of the most mind-blowingly delicious—items in the entire region, as the polenta goat cheese Twinkie is something that may initially make you say, “Huh?” but after one bite you won’t be saying much of anything until it’s all gone. Looking almost exactly like a Twinkie but savory rather than sweet, the dense and mild-tasting exterior “cake” balances perfectly with the slight tanginess of the creamy goat cheese, and the marinara and, especially, the pesto served with the dish only add to the goodness. The Twinkie is so over-the-top special that ordering two (or three) and calling it a meal would certainly be acceptable, but a look around the rest of the menu shows some other impressive options, including roasted Brussels sprouts—an item on special that seems to be offered at more and more places, but this version is especially tasty with the addition of pancetta, which adds some salty goodness to the dish. Chicken under a brick is another item that is everywhere these days, though not all of them are worth getting, but 753 South does a terrific job with this one, as the chicken is firm but not overly dry while the smashed potatoes that come with it seem almost like stuffing with a particularly lumpy texture and some herbs and spices added. The restaurant also offers sandwiches at dinnertime, which more places really should do in case people want a somewhat lighter meal or don’t have money to burn, and a highlight here is the Cuban, which includes delicious slow-roasted pork along with ham, Gruyere cheese, chipotle mayo, and pickles, all of which are stuffed into a delicious flatbread—and while nothing will ever compare to the Cuban sandwiches at the long-closed Chez Henri in Cambridge, this one actually comes pretty close. Drink choices at 753 South include a limited but solid beer list (Jack’s Abby House Lager, Night Shift Whirlpool, and Maine Beer Peeper Ale are a few options), a decent wine list that focuses in part on West Coast options, and twists on such familiar cocktails as gimlets, daiquiris, and whiskey smashes. Prices for food and drink are plenty reasonable considering that this place has an upscale vibe to it, with small plates being on either side of $10, some of the main courses being under $20, and the beers being as low as $4. Roslindale continues to be one of the most interesting sections of Boston for dining, but many of the restaurants here remain mostly little known, and in the case of 753 South, nearly completely unknown. Whether it’s the generic name (and please don’t ask for the address for the place), the very quiet opening back in 2017, or the overall lack of marketing, this is certainly no Giacomo’s or Eastern Standard when it comes to name recognition, but it definitely seems to be a restaurant worth seeking out no matter where in the Boston area you live. >> 753 SOUTH. 753 SOUTH ST., ROSLINDALE. 753SOUTH.COM
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03.14.19 - 03.21.19 |
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FLORIDA DAZE BOSTON BETTER BEER BUREAU
Beer-wise, this is what warm weather tastes like BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON Sometimes there are fringe benefits to working in journalism. They rarely add up to an acceptable salary, but sometimes they do involve lots of alcohol. Like a recent trip that some of us took to a journalism conference in Florida; in addition to getting us out of the chill for a couple of days, the event and its hosts introduced us to some serious suds worth writing home about. The list of local winners in the Tampa Bay market is long, with Jai Alai by Cigar City Brewing, which is distributed quite widely around Boston these days, right near the top. Otherwise, here are our favorite picks, some of which we understand may sporadically surface in Mass once the snow clears. Circus City IPA The folks at Big Top Brewing in Sarasota call this selection a “very rare English style IPA,” bursting with “amazing hop aroma, mesmerized by the vibrant copper hue, and fascinated with it’s [sic] hop flavor balanced with a caramel malt finish.” Aside from the misspelling, it’s actually a damn good description. We didn’t see the beer outside of the can for long enough to ogle the hue, but were quite fascinated by the caramel ending, since that’s a flavor that, at least in the context of beer, we typically associate with dirty draft lines. In this case, however, it really is a welcome surprise, and the perfect tongue treat for a lasting positive impression. Bimini Twist IPA We know that the word “serviceable” doesn’t typically come off as complimentary, but that’s nonetheless how we’ll chiefly describe this effort from the talent at Daughters Brewing in St. Petersburg, and we mean it in a good way. Sunshine State shores call for something light and tasty to sip through the afternoon, and since we aren’t savages who fall for mass advertising, it’s not like we’re going to tilt Silver Bullets all day. At 7 percent APV, Bimini Twist is definitely stronger than a lot of all-day IPAs, and by its own admission on the side of the can, leans harder on the bitter than the sweet. But if you are an aficionado of sorts on vacation in the region, you’ll definitely want to pack a six of these in your beach cooler. Big Nose IPA The gorgeous trippy can for Swamp Head Brewery’s tribute to big schnozzes says “inherently Floridian” near the mouth hole. We’re not sure what that means, but wow oh wow this is a winner. The Big Nose claim is that the stuff’s “created with crystal clear spring water that originates deep in the Okefenokee Swamp” and is “a mystical nectar brewed for hop lovers” with a “rich malt backbone [that] combines with the intense hop flavors to deliver a balanced finish.” That’s hyperbolic but essentially the truth, as this Big Nose selection is a grade A pick, a rare nonfruity number that goes down smoothly. People beyond Florida should hope it finds some major distro, as this is something that could easily become a daily beverage..
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BRANDIE BLAZE MUSIC
“Yeah, I’m bossed up. That’s what my music is about.” BY OLIVIA MASTROSIMONE While her parents may have given her “the talk” as a teenager, Brandie Blaze says she learned a lot more about the birds and the bees from Lil’ Kim and Missy Elliot. The 32-year-old hip-hop artist remembers walking to school listening to The Notorious K.I.M. on her blue Walkman and being struck by the pride Lil’ Kim showed in her body and her sexuality. Inspired by the shameless self-love of her idols, Blaze uses lyrics to reverse the power dynamics of rap music and redefine what it means to be a woman in the industry. Born and raised in Boston, she tells the story of the city from a queer, black, plus-size, and female perspective. Raised on ’70s R&B records and the female powerhouses of ’90s rap, Blaze combines activism and nostalgia, creating socially conscious cuts with a local focus and universal message. “I would describe my sound as trap feminism,” Blaze explained. “You don’t have to feel pressured to be something you’re not. You can be anyone, and you can be anything, and you can still be sexual and still tell them, Yeah, I’m bossed up. That’s what my music is about.” Blaze says she’s been an entertainer since she was just 3 years old, and it shows in her sets. Having first performed on stages with a jazz dance class as a young girl, the rapper jokes that she was only in it for the outfits at the time. She also had a brief stint with vocal and acting lessons, but even though those didn’t stick,
Blaze was still drawn to the spotlight and eventually found her place in poetry and rap. Now she’s captivating audiences—just instead of local dance recitals, she’s rocking shows at venues like the Sinclair. Blaze hasn’t been writing rhymes her whole life. The rapper says she didn’t pen her first poem until junior high school, when she started using poetry to help cope with a death in the family. “It felt good because I was able to express all of the things I was too shy or too scared to say,” Blaze explained. “I just kept writing from there.” These days, you might see Blaze sitting in her car, blasting music and writing hooks, or practicing the flow for a new track during her commute. While her passion for writing was born out of tragedy, beyond personal expression she says she uses her poetry as a platform for public outcry. Specifically, Blaze tries to connect with and empower those with perspectives that are often overlooked in hip-hop. To that end, she blends substance with silliness, using lyrics that can sometimes seem inconsequential to mask witty retorts to the problematic lack of representation of certain minority groups in the culture. “I write primarily for black women, especially fat black women,” Blaze said. “There just isn’t enough for us. … I mean, how many times can we listen to cishet men on the radio be like, ‘I’m gonna disrespect you?’
“It gets old, it gets boring. People want to hear something different.” Blaze is just that—something different. The rapper explains that she uses Boston’s unique “sound” to her advantage, exploiting the local scene’s lack of a cohesive style to create music that is undeniably her own. “Some people see [the lack of a sound] as a weakness, but to me, it’s great because there’s something for everyone.” Blaze works primarily with DJ WhySham and her engineer Fresh, as well as a number of area producers to build tracks that are both playful and substantive—“hiphop with a message,” as Blaze calls it. Her new single, “Drown,” drops this week and is a perfect example of the rapper’s lighthearted but poignant style. In it, the MC rhymes about an ex-boyfriend of hers who she met after boxing him in at a gas station. “He see all this ass lit up by headlights,” she raps. On the strength of solid rhymes and shows, the buzz around Blaze is increasing. All while she explores intricacies of female sexuality, relationships, and meeting significant others while blocking traffic. “Some people get to a certain point and they don’t look behind them,” Blaze said. “No matter how big and how far this goes—it can go nowhere and it can go everywhere—I have to stay humble and stay grounded.”
>> BRANDIE BLAZE SINGLE RELEASE SHOW W/ LIK MERAKI AND TREVA HOLMES. THU 3.14. DORCHESTER ART PROJECT, 1486 DORCHESTER AVE., BOSTON. 16
03.14.19 - 03.21.19 |
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NEWS TO US
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FILM REVIEW: COLD WEATHER AND GEMINI FILM
Aaron Katz’s ambitious works play at the Harvard Film Archive BY CADEN MARK GARDNER @CADENMGARDNER Things do not go according to plan in Aaron Katz’s films. This has been the case with his work from the start. People disappear and plans get put on ice, as do relationships between characters. These films then turn into quirky, surprisingly intriguing mysteries. Katz’s two best works, Gemini (2018) and Cold Weather (2010), will be playing at the Harvard Film Archive back-to-back on Saturday March 16 and Friday March 22 under the program title “Accidental Detectives.” These two formally polished, confidently told films play with genre and stick out as indies that create a constant conversation between character and region. With that, Katz’s forays into the mystery genre and the film noir tradition have become one of the more intriguing developments in contemporary American independent cinema. Katz’s humble beginnings came in directing microbudget movies Dance Party USA (2006) and Quiet City (2007) that fell under the term “mumblecore,” a movement of 2000s-era independent filmmaking that had him associated with Greta Gerwig, Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg, and brothers Jay and Mark Duplass. Katz has always stood out from the gentrified Brooklyn stereotypes regularly associated with mumblecore, partially due to the settings of Katz’s work as much as his genre proclivities (film critic J. Hoberman, in his review of Cold Weather for the Village Voice, notably called the film “a founding work of mumble-noir,” although that quite never materialized as a subgenre). The native Oregonian Katz may not have carved an easily recognizable or influential film identity in his home state like his filmmaking hero Gus van Sant, but Katz’s strengths as a filmmaker, much like van Sant’s, include an evocative sense for depicting place. Cold Weather is a hybrid of comedy and neo-noir mystery set against the pine green Oregonian forests and rain-soaked rocky river gorges around Portland. The film is highly original for a number of reasons, and part of that comes from giving the audience something they have not seen before by providing a new, different location for the type of genre it operates under. Cold Weather can come across as a riff on the milieu and malaise associated with the millennial generation. The main character Doug (Cris Lankenau, previously in Katz’s Quiet City) returns to Portland after not completing his graduate program in forensic science; his new job at an ice factory barely pays him a living wage. Despite the film’s release around the time of the global financial crisis that limited the ambitions of millions of young Americans, Doug is the opposite of an depressed, angry sad sack for failing to complete his career aspiration. Instead Doug accepts being underemployed, possessing no clear drive nor ambition for anything beyond his meager comforts, preferring to see his interests as hobbies rather than occupations. When his ex-girlfriend Rachel disappears, Doug, a detective-novel obsessive, becomes an amateur detective, even taking on tics such as smoking a Sherlock Holmes-esque wooden tobacco pipe. Doug is a slacker but the intrigue and potential danger of somebody he knows vanishing pushes him— as do his sister Gail (Trieste Kelly Dunn) and co-worker Carlos (Raul Castillo), who assist him in untangling the web of what happened to Rachel. Longtime Katz collaborator, cinematographer Andrew Woods, uses the then-new RED camera to capture a crisp, clean digital image of the nature and vegetation of the beautiful Oregon landscapes. The momentum in the film can be
heard in the clock-like percussion-heavy score provided by composer Keegan DeWitt, another longtime Katz collaborator, which plays over the risky adventures of this do-it-yourself investigation, which Katz so often structures around more human images—characters exchanging glances. Katz portrays the modern detective mystery as one where the tropes and logic of the form are known by these characters, a byproduct of the legacy that true crime and detective fiction has on modern culture. The characters run into mundanities in being on the trail of a mystery as nonprofessionals, needing to rely on a shaky scholarship foundation of Doug’s forensic science education and everything they learned from detective fiction and other media, which gives their investigation a run of trial and error. There are no experts or systems running the investigation for them seen. Cold Weather speaks to an era of access and information democratization, marked by the idea that anybody can be an expert on something. The film has a relationship to the internet age that ultimately figures into the crime solving, although this predates amateur “web-sleuthing” on Reddit, where crimes get solved from Internet deep dives on computers or digital devices. Katz and co-writer Brendan McFadden prefer to show the legwork of their characters, who are regularly depicted investigating out and around the city. And Cold Weather itself becomes less of “whodunit?” mystery procedural. The film feels closer to a Jacques Rivette-like conspiracy narrative, full of secrecy and unseen forces at work, while Rachel’s disappearance has the elusiveness of a Michelangelo Antonioni film. Rachel’s role as a symbolic enigma is made clear when her physical absence becomes stylized by Reed and Katz in shots of landscapes dwarfing the characters and near-empty rooms. Somebody is missing and people do care, even if their hobbyism is just as much the driving force. Gemini leans more into the earlier mystery film thrillers of the VHS tape era of the 1980s and 1990s as a piece of DNA to inhabit than as a reference tool for characters like detective fiction was used in Cold Weather. This time it is shot in Katz’s adopted city, Los Angeles. Much like Katz’s previous films, Gemini functions as a two-hander that maintains that quality, even as something once again happens to disrupt the priorestablished character dynamic. The story about harried personal assistant Jill (Lola Kirke) working for tabloid fodder sometimes-actress Heather (Zoe Kravitz) becomes a film of intrigue when Jill walks in to find Heather’s dead body on the floor from a gunshot. Jill must contend with a deadpan LA Detective Ahn (John Cho), who is highly suspicious of Jill. As she seeks to exonerate herself, Jill’s insecurities mount along with the uncertainties in
finding out the truth. Andrew Woods’ cinematography once again stands out, a neon blue color palette that creates a smooth cocktail with Keegan DeWitt’s score that trades the reverberating percussion of Cold Weather for jazzy synth techno. Gemini has its own visual and aural pleasures, but there is more to the film than a look and a posture, going further than pastiche. Katz lets you go alongside Jill as she becomes an amateur detective getting lost and obsessed with details, desperately seeking a tidy resolution that is not at all there. Gemini is about living in an existential crisis, something that shifts from permeating Heather’s sad life and ennui to transferring to Jill, whose isolation and alienation overwhelm her. The only acknowledgement Jill has in this life station is her association with a murder. What materializes from that presents an opportunity, a way to reinvent
and start fresh in a new identity for Jill. After all, she is in Hollywood now. She’s on a ride, and Katz is the driver who will take detours that give their audience a unique viewing experience of a kind that feels missing from most American indies that rely on eagerness to please the audience. In fact, Gemini will likely divide audiences with how it ends. But Katz is not taking audiences for fools. If you were as invested in this mystery as Jill was, one can only expect to feel the exact way she does when the film ends. Aaron Katz’s movies on amateur gumshoes are filtered through modern times and unique settings that show characters invested in their own connections with events and disappearances of others. These characters come from places of personal histories in failing and finding stability in mediocrity. There is a moment in Gemini when Detective Ahn asks Jill, “Did you always want to be a personal assistant?” a true query aimed toward figuring out how somebody can feel so comfortable in such a thankless position. Cold Weather and Gemini show characters who find a different drive and purpose once investigating the crimes at the center of these films. Investigation becomes an outlet to give them a new lease on what they want to do and an opportunity, however tenuous, on starting anew.
>> “ACCIDENTAL DETECTIVES. TWO FILMS BY AARON KATZ” IS A DOUBLE FEATURE PLAYING AT THE HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE ON SAT 3.16 AND FRI 3.22. >> GEMINI. PLAYS AT 7PM ON 3.16 AND 9PM ON 3.22.
>> COLD WEATHER. PLAYS AT 9PM ON 3.16 AND 7PM ON 3.22. $9 PER FILM. 18
03.14.19 - 03.21.19 |
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THEATER REVIEWS PERFORMING ARTS
BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS AND JILLIAN KRAVATZ @JILLIAN_KRAVATZ
THEIR SILENT FACES: BOSTON THEATER COMPANY PREVIEWS MOVE YOUR FACE
Boy meets girl, boy dates girl, boy marries girl, boy loses girl. Tale as old as time, really. And while the old-fashioned courtship at the center of Move Your Face seems a dime a dozen and almost hardly worth dramatizing, the way that director and co-creator Joey Frangieh and company tell this particular story is what gives it a winning amount of heart. Don’t get me wrong; I still don’t entirely understand the reason for wanting to tell this story this particular way (the characters all wear masks and don’t speak), but Move Your Face has the charm and sweet tenderness of a short Pixar film, complete with a bittersweet ending that just might bring a tear to your eye. Lilly (Lindsay Eagle) and Nile (Nick Perron) may have met on Tinder, but everything else about their relationship is old-fashioned, from the conventional dates they go on to the way that their very heteronormative relationship progresses (they don’t even move in together until after they get married). And for a play that seems to
THE FUTURE BECOMES THE PRESENT: THE GLASS MENAGERIE AT BOSTON CHILDREN’S THEATRE
If you asked me to come up with a list of, say, 50 plays that should be performed by a children’s theater, nothing by Tennessee Williams would make that list. It isn’t only because of the material, that weighty, stifling, angry, desperate, liquor-soaked material, but also because the dynamics of the play are all wrong when you have a teenage Tom battling it out with an Amanda who in any other production would be the right age but in this case comes across as his grandmother. But I do realize that Boston Children’s Theatre’s production of The Glass Menagerie, which is being directed by Burgess Clark, is somewhat immune to such criticism given the company’s invaluable mission to give voice to young artists. And indeed, what an incredible thing it is for three young artists to play some of the most
SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING NEW
Walking into the Huntington Avenue Theatre to take your seat at its current production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, you might be reminded of your middle school field trip to the United Nations. You might also remember the American Repertory Theater’s recent staging of Othello, where TV screens and army barracks aimed to place the tragedy in an overtly modern, political world. Huntington’s take is similar. Rather than the hackneyed stucco wall, wrought-iron balcony and ivy-covered trellis that have graced stagings of Veronas past, Wilson Chin’s scenic design is instead marked by several blinking TV screens, dark marble walls, slim midcentury chairs, and imposing flags. This is not so much a modern-day Verona as it is a glossy, global embassy. Despite the elaborate set, the political trappings of the show are not what make this Romeo and Juliet stand out. Rather, director Peter DuBois’s witty, inventive blocking and the grace and agility of his ensemble as a whole make this Romeo and Juliet a staging you don’t want to miss. Together, the cast manages to capture the
want to look at things differently, it spends an awful lot of time showcasing the stereotypical differences between how women approach dating (spending an eternity picking an outfit) and how men approach it (throwing on the least dirty shirt). Advertisements for the play say that Move Your Face is “an action play about getting action.” And while the first half of that statement is true, from the tagline alone one might assume that the play is more about sex than marriage. There is clearly a disconnect between the way that the show is advertised and what the show actually is, which is a fair conundrum to be in considering that this is just a preview production: The actual premiere will occur next year. Putting aside all of this, though, what Frangieh has managed to create is a thoughtful, funny, and welldevised piece of theater that is surprisingly perceptive. It would also appear as if a great deal of time has been spent on the physical movements of each actor— remember, we don’t see their faces or hear their voices— and the results are impressive. Lindsay Eagle is forever an asset, and her performance here is special, especially for the gentle sincerity that she brings to the role without so much as a word or a facial
expression. The entire company does impressive work in respect to their faceless, wordless physicality: Nick Perron as Nile, of course, but also Simon Rogers, Ivy Ryan, and Grace Trapnell, who play friends of Lilly and Nile. Nate Schaffer’s original music, which is something like what a modern day silent movie soundtrack might sound like, works well to punctuate the actors’ movement; that Schaffer is performing it all live (on several instruments) is even more impressive. Move Your Face doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be or how to get there, but that’s what this preview run is for; still, there is ultimately more than enough to admire. The gentler moments work best, and what moved this particular serial theatergoer the most was its ache of an ending, one that reminds us that we will all lose the person sleeping next to us each night. It’s only a matter of how. And which mask we’ll be wearing when it happens.
complicated roles ever written for the stage. It is common BCT practice to have adults cast alongside the younger actors in certain key roles, just as Kate Miller is cast here as Amanda, the aging Southern belle blind to reality who is left with her two adult children after her husband abandoned them years prior. But the other side of the mission coin is one where paying audiences are coming to see a story being told. For that reason, The Glass Menagerie isn’t an ideal choice. It isn’t that the actors aren’t capable: 17-year-old Genevieve Young plays Laura with the requisite gentility and inferiority, and 16-year-old Keith Robinson plays Jim O’Connor, the gentleman caller, with the confidence and brio of an actor twice his age. The problem, really, is that a 15-year-old boy plays Tom. The trouble isn’t the actor (Charlie Berger does just fine) but his age. Tom is an angry, frustrated, disillusioned man who drinks too much and feels suffocated by the fact that he has to work hard to support his family, something his long-gone father should have done. When a 15-year-old child portrays Tom, much of what is necessarily complicated about this character goes out the window (or, as the case may be, down the fire
escape), and as a result, the other relationships in the play don’t work. And then there’s the homosexuality of Tom, which is never touched on or explored in this production. (Because: kids). Whether it was Clark’s intention or not, there are many moments in this Menagerie that garner laughs where they should not, and that is partially due to the fact that a child is playing Tom. “I’m going to the movies” shouldn’t be funny. His drunkenness shouldn’t be funny. As a result, the play is neutered by the audience’s inability to see the cracked soul of Tom Wingfield. With that said, The Glass Menagerie does come alive in the second act. It is the latter half (the Tom-less half) where the production approaches a kind of magic, gorgeously lit by Gifford Williams, that hints at just how potent a production this company is capable of.
bitter animosity between Romeo and Juliet’s families, the youthful swiftness of Romeo and Juliet’s love, and the illfated circumstances and slip-ups that lead to their tragic end while imbuing the show with a new sort of lightness. DuBois’s production appeals to those who have seen countless iterations of Romeo and Juliet and also to those who might be experiencing it for the first time. In more ways than one, the Huntington’s production pays homage to well-known adaptations that precede it. The costumes (designed by Ilona Somogyi), raucous dance scenes, and general air of tackiness seem influenced by Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film adaptation, Romeo + Juliet. (The use of contemporary pop hits in the background also seems to borrow from Luhrmann’s more recent The Great Gatsby). And when Romeo first spots Juliet from across the dance floor, the scene is straight out of West Side Story—all the other actors fall into a slow-motion sea of swaying hips while the lights dim, the music slows, and a spotlight illuminates Juliet’s white party dress. Despite these familiar notes, DuBois has found clever, innovative ways to house each of Shakespeare’s scenes, especially those lesser-known ones we tend to forget. Friar Laurence talks to his plants in a Breaking Bad-esque lab. A butler of the Capulet house bumbles around the stage, hilariously talking to pillars and accidentally NEWS TO US
MOVE YOUR FACE. THROUGH 3.17 AT BOSTON THEATER COMPANY AT BOSTON PLAYWRIGHTS’ THEATRE, 949 COMM. AVE., BOSTON. BOSTONTHEATER.ORG -Ehlers
THE GLASS MENAGERIE. THROUGH 3.16 AT BOSTON CHILDREN’S THEATRE AT THE PLAZA THEATRE, 539 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. BOSTONTHEATRESCENE.COM -Ehlers
inviting Romeo and his rowdy friends to the Capulet ball. Stomach-turning fight scenes choreographed by Rick Sordelet and Christian Kelly-Sordelet emphasize the brutality of the Capulets and Montagues’ “ancient grudge.” While Romeo’s (George Hampe) and Juliet’s (Lily Santiago) performances leave nothing wanting, the strength of the more minor character’s performances drive the production, often illuminating lesser-known passages of the play. It is a joy to watch the Friar (Will Lyman) exasperatedly scold Romeo as he whines about his feelings. Or to see the motherly excitement on the nurse’s face (Nancy E. Carroll) as she embraces her Juliet, utterly delighted that she has found such a dashing young suitor. Mercutio, too (a fiery, funny Matthew J. Harris), lights up the stage with his crass jokes and his tragic death. Each of these actors offers stunning, complex portraits. The Huntington’s Romeo and Juliet reminds us that the “starcrossed lovers” do nothing alone. They are part of their families, their friends, their city. ROMEO AND JULIET. THROUGH 3.31 AT HUNTINGTON AVENUE THEATRE. 264 HUNTINGTON AVE., BOSTON. HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG -Kravatz FEATURE
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19
MIKE BENT HUMOR
Pedagogy of a magic and comedy professor BY DENNIS MALER @DEADAIRDENNIS I was excited to finally sit down and chat with magician and comedian Mike Bent. Ever since the introduction of the comedy studies major at Emerson College, I wanted to know what goes into creating the first-ever such program. Who are the students that take it? What does it take to teach kids how to be funny? Also, as you’ll read, Bent has had an interesting background in comedy and magic. He started during the comedy boom of the late ’70’s and managed to carve out a successful career for more than 30 years, inspiring hundreds of performers along to way. He even managed to get the approval of quite a few comedy legends as well. When someone finds out you’re a magician and a comedian, how do you answer the question, “So, where do you usually perform?” It’s funny, I liked the fact that we do the show, the Mystery Lounge, every Monday at the Comedy Studio. I can always easily direct people there. I’m very bad explaining what I do. Like my barber, I just hope the question never comes up. “Are you off today?” I’m like, “Yes” and I’ll just change the subject. I do a lot of different kinds of shows, and they can’t come to see me because I’m in a school or a library or something, and I’m not going to tell somebody, “Come see me with 800 kids.” It’s sort of awkward. What specifically makes for a good kids comedy show as opposed to adults? Really not that much difference. You don’t treat them like they’re stupid. When I see other people, that’s kind of what they do. Hello, boys and girls. It’s just like all artificial and phony. Kids really know if you’re not sincere, they’re literally programmed to, it’s like a defense thing. They know if you’re not having a good time, they know if you’re not having fun. There isn’t anything in there that doesn’t work for everybody. I have a Shining reference in the kid show. I make all the kids say, “Red Rum.” It works. They don’t know what I’m talking about, but the adults do. It’s gotta be fun for them. I do what I think is funny and it just happens to work. I always say a good kid show is like a shark—it has to keep swimming or it dies. You can’t carefully put away props. I just ditch and move on to the next trick. It’s just way more faster paced. I’m more leisurely in my stand-up and way more fast pace when it comes to kid shows. You’ve performed at the White House Easter Egg Roll in past years, right? Yeah. I did it 10 times. I did it two times for President Bush and all eight years of Obama’s time. Actually, I’ve opened for Obama and the first lady, which is amazing. I warmed up the kids, got them ready, and then go, “Here’s the President!” When I did it under George Bush, it was about 3,000 people over the course of the day. The Obamas opened it up to 35,000 people over the course of the day. When I did it originally, it seemed kind of privileged, people who were like friends of friends. And then just regular people, which made it a lot more fun and easier. And I know that they’ve scaled the numbers back. So I had a good run, I’m happy with it. When you’re performing magic, do you see the spark of inspiration from a kid in the audience? Do you think, Oh he’s going to be me in 30 years? It’s the best hobby you can push on a kid. I was a very, very, very, very shy kid. Very, very introverted. It’s the only hobby that forces you have to do it for someone. So it’s the thing that actually kind of forced me to interact with other kids.
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How old you were when you started? I got a magic set when I was six and I never stopped. Every year I got a magic set and magic books and I lived at the library. I grew up in Somerville, and the Somerville Library had great books. I have them all memorized. I know them by heart. It’s definitely the thing that forced me to be a performer because you just can’t do this by itself. When did you start as a performer? The first show that I remember doing was in middle school. I had a friend there who said, “Hey, my church group wants to hire you to do a show.” So I’m like, “All right, great!” I was getting 10 bucks or something, and I did 20 minutes and it was all magic kit stuff, just real basic stuff. When I finished, the guy who was in charge of their youth group talked about how evil I was for about an hour and that I was league with the devil. What I was doing was real, I was harnessing the dark arts. I thought, I must have been really good if I fooled them that much that they really thought I was using Satan to make a handkerchief disappear. I think that would’ve scared most people off, but I was like, “Wow, that was kinda cool actually.” I liked the fact that I kind of annoyed the guy. The first regular thing was in a restaurant doing table magic. I was probably about 16. My first stand-up thing ever was at the Ding Ho. Lenny Clarke was the MC. He liked having me on because he could use this intro he had for me: “He’s like the kind of magician that pulls a rabbit out a hat, but then he cuts them in half with a chainsaw.” I think he just put me on because you could do the joke because it killed. Barry Crimmins at that time was sort of running the Ding Ho, and he was very, very critical about what I was doing, cause I was doing all old gags. That’s the problem with magic is you can buy an act, you can just pick up all this stuff. I didn’t know any better. It kind of put the fear of God in me really quick. So basically over the course of six months, I dropped everything and then picked up doing my own thing, and it worked out pretty well. Were you ever doing just standup? Or was it always a mix of magic and comedy? It’s always been a mix of magic and comedy. I never wanted to do just regular stand-up. I’ve always thought of myself as a magician first who does stand-up. I always liked doing the weird stuff. I would do a bit where I would say this is a jack in the box inspired by the movie Alien. It would be this black biomechanical Jack in the Box, and it plays Pop Goes The Weasel, and it wouldn’t work. Steven Wright, one time said, “You’re doing what I do, but you’re proving it. You’re living in this weird, surreal world, but you actually prove it.” When I started you had to work extra hard to get comedians to like what I was doing. Stephen and Jonathan Katz were the two people that really went to other people, You should see this guy, just forget all that stuff. Look at what he’s doing. And they were like my big cheerleaders and they really helped me an awful lot. At what point do you go from being a road magician and comedian to teaching at Emerson? This fall was my 31st year working at Emerson. I’ve been there a long time. When I got the gig, legendary Boston comic Ron Lynch recommended me for it, and I was floored because I will do whatever he says I should do because I really respect him.
When I started it was just a general writing class. Over the years I changed it. I added a sketch comedy class where the class is a comedy troupe and write the sketches and do the sketches at the end of the semester. Then I added the stand-up class where, again, people do their thing and all that. Emerson is the only college in the world where you can major in comedy studies. I’m on the committee, I’m one of the people that oversees the major and helps develop it. It’s very popular. We had to like double the program the first year, which was insane. The last couple of years I’ve been really busy because I’ve been taking on more courses and it’s just a tough schedule. What is the basic syllabus for a class specifically about comedy writing? It’s more how can you come up with ideas. The first month is just brainstorming. I came up with these little techniques over the years that let you come up with really great original premises pretty quickly. I just show them that you can’t sit around and wait for an idea to come to you, you can make the idea happen. I run every class like a writer’s room. And the stand-up one is a little bit different because they’re not working in a group thing. I always say, In comedy your weaknesses are your strengths. What are your phobias? what are your anxieties? It’s more getting them to come out of a safety zone. Comedy can offend some people, how do you handle that in class? It’s pretty open. They still have to follow the rules that are in the the school at large, but they’re encouraged to really push the envelope. We have it upfront that if something really bothers you, you should speak up, and if you don’t feel comfortable speaking up, talk to me about it and I will speak up for you. I can usually kind of pull out the things that I think are going to be problematic, and I usually will bring it up first, but I don’t go with a laundry list saying, “You don’t do this, you can’t do that.” I have to make sure everybody feels like they can go up with their stuff, and if they’re going to feel marginalized, I don’t want to have that environment. Have you noticed the demographic of the class shifting? Yeah. When I first started there would be maybe one or two women in the class. Now it’s probably 50/50, if not more women than men. The major is pretty much split down the middle. And that’s honestly just based on who applies and who gets in. When I started, if there was a student who was gay, they wouldn’t really want to talk about it. Now it’s become so commonplace that it’s kind of like, Do you want to be defined by this necessarily? You should talk about it, but it shouldn’t be your whole thing. Where do you want to work? Do you want to work mainstream clubs? Do you want to work gay clubs? Both are great, but you need to start making decisions now about where you’re going to go. So all that stuff that people didn’t want to talk about, now they’re talking about it, which is great. It just makes it way more interesting, way more fun, and they’re just more honest. GET MIKE’S BOOK, THE EVERYTHING GUIDE TO COMEDY WRITING: FROM STAND-UP TO SKETCH - ALL YOU NEED TO SUCCEED IN THE WORLD OF COMEDY ON AMAZON OR WHERE BOOKS ARE SOLD. CHECK OUT THE FULL UNEDITED CONVERSATION AT DEADAIRDENNIS.COM/PODCAST.
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THE SINS OF THE GRANDFATHER SAVAGE LOVE
WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM
BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET
My grandfather was a pillar of the community and beloved by his family. He was also sexually abusive. He died when I was a child. I remember only one incident happening to me—during a cuddle session, he encouraged me to put my mouth on his penis, and then told me to let it be our little secret. I heard rumors as an adult that he molested other kids in the neighborhood. He also had a sexual relationship with my mother. She says nothing happened as a child. But as an adult, he started telling her he loved her in a romantic way. He told her he wanted to take nude Polaroids of her, and she let him. And she loved him—she and her sisters all pretty much idolized him. My one aunt knew (she said nothing happened to her), and I asked her how she reconciled that. She said she compartmentalized it—she thought he was a wonderful father and didn’t really think about the other stuff. I did lots of therapy in the late 1980s and early ’90s. I read books, I journaled, I talked to my mom and tried to understand what she experienced. And I moved on as much as anyone could. So now it’s 2019 and I’m almost 50. My mom just moved into a nursing home, and while cleaning out her drawers, I found the Polaroids my grandfather took of her. I know it was him because he is in some of them, taken into a mirror as she goes down on him. They were taken over a period of years. She had led me to believe he never really did anything sexual with her besides taking photos. But he did. And here’s the thing, Dan: In the photos, she looks happy. I know she was probably acting, because that’s what he wanted from her. But it just makes me question my assumptions. Was it terrible abuse or forbidden love? Both? What am I looking at? What would I prefer—that she enjoyed it or that she didn’t? She kept the photos. Were they fond memories? I know she loved him. She kind of fell apart when he died. Was he a fucking manipulator who had a gift for making his victims feel loved and special as he exploited them for his own selfish needs? I don’t know if I’m going to bring this up with my mom. She’s old and sick, and I dragged her through these types of conversations in my 20s. So I’m writing you. This is so far out of most people’s experience, and I want someone who has heard more sexual secrets than probably anyone else in the world to tell me what he thinks. Whirlwind Of Emotions I think you should sit down and watch all four hours of Leaving Neverland, the new HBO documentary by British filmmaker Dan Reed. It focuses on the experiences of Wade Robson and James Safechuck, two now-adult men who were sexually abused by pop star Michael Jackson when they were boys. Allegedly. It’s an important film to watch, WOE, but it’s not an easy one to watch, as it includes graphic descriptions of the sexual abuse both men claim to have suffered as boys. The second most disturbing part of the film after the graphic descriptions of child rape—or the third most disturbing part after the credulity/culpability of Robson’s and Safechuck’s parents—may be what the men have to say about Jackson. Both describe their abuser in romantic terms. They both say they loved Jackson. And they both remain deeply conflicted about their feelings for Jackson then and their feelings for him now. It was their affection for Jackson—their desire to protect him and to safeguard what Jackson convinced them was a secret and a bond they shared—that led both men to lie to law-enforcement officials when Jackson was accused of sexually abusing different boys. You should also listen to Reed’s interview on The Gist, Mike Pesca’s terrific daily podcast. Reading your letter the morning after I watched Leaving Neverland reminded me of something Reed said to Pesca: “What the film is about is the reckoning. It’s two families coming to terms with what happened to their sons. And a big part of understanding that, you know—so why the silence? Why did the sons keep silent for so long? Why did they keep the secret? And the key really is to be able to explain why Wade gave false witness and perjured himself on the witness stand. And the reason for that, of course, has to do with how survivors of sexual abuse experience that. And how they keep a secret and how they sometimes form deep attachments with the abuser and how that attachment persists into adult life.” Your mother, like Robson and Safechuck, lied to protect her abuser, a man who abused her and abused you and probably many others. She may have held on to those photos for the same reason Robson and Safechuck say they defended Jackson: She loved her father, and she was so damaged by what he did to her—she had been so expertly groomed by her abuser—that she felt “loved” and “special” in the same way that Jackson’s alleged abuse once made Robson and Safechuck feel loved and special. So as horrifying as it is to contemplate, WOE, your mother may have held on to those photos because they do represent what are, for her, “fond memories.” And while it would be a comfort to think she held on to those photos as proof for family members who doubted her story if she ever decided to tell the truth, her past defenses of her father work against that explanation.(continued...)
RUTHERFORD BY DON KUSS DONKUSS@DIGBOSTON.COM
Read the rest at Savagelove.net
On the Lovecast: Yikes! It’s the trigger show. Listen at savagelovecast.com. 22
03.14.19 - 03.21.19 |
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