IAN SANDS

Old trickster

IAN SANDS — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:30:50 GMT

At age 78, able-bodied Alan Abel’s life is still one big joke
On New Year’s Day 1980, telegrams sent from Utah arrived at the New York Times and the Daily News announcing that 50-year-old media hoaxter Alan Abel had suffered a heart attack at a ski resort near Orem, Utah. He left behind a wife, Jeanne, and daughter, Jennifer.

HOAX-US POCUS: Alan Abel posing as Jim Rogers, founder of a group that sought to abolish breast-feeding, calling it incestuous and responsible for many of society’s ills

On New Year’s Day 1980, telegrams sent from Utah arrived at the New York Times and the Daily News announcing that 50-year-old media hoaxter Alan Abel had suffered a heart attack at a ski resort near Orem, Utah. He left behind a wife, Jeanne, and daughter, Jennifer.

It seemed like a tragedy, to be sure.

In the obituary published the next day, the Times wrote, “Mr. Abel . . . made a point in his work of challenging the obvious and uttering the outrageous.”

News of Abel’s fate sparked an outpouring of tribute. Mourners sent more than 100 letters to his old house in Westport, Connecticut, bemoaning the loss; several dozen orders for flower arrangements were placed with a florist.

Only thing was, Abel wasn’t dead.

He’d been holed up at a friend’s apartment in New York City.

The whole thing started when, during negotiations with a movie studio for rights to his life story, he overheard two lawyers in an elevator saying they should wait until the prankster died, then “buy the rights for peanuts from his estate.” So Abel decided to oblige them.

A few days after the obits ran, a second flock of telegrams went out to the press reading, REPORTS OF MY DEATH HAVE BEEN GROSSLY EXAGGERATED. THERE WILL BE A NEWS CONFERENCE TOMORROW AT 12 NOON AT THE BILTMORE HOTEL.

It would be the first time the Paper of Record would have to retract an obituary.

Modest beginning
Abel, bless his heart, has been pulling shit like that for nearly 50 years. In 1959, he embarked on his first high-profile hoax, a tongue-in-cheek crusade to clothe naked animals “for modesty’s sake” under the banner of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA), a stunt that landed him and SINA’s “president” (actor/writer/friend Buck Henry) guest appearances to explain their position in character on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and the Today Show. The campaign was an attempt to poke fun at the professional moralists of the ’50s, do-gooders who were, according to a write-up on Abel’s Web site, “busy censoring bikini-clad women, outspoken books and films, and classic statues.”

Since the SINA gag, Abel has baited media into covering a fictitious Jewish grandmother’s presidential campaign (1964); his very own “Omar’s School for Beggars” (1975), which he says was “a satirical commentary on the rise of unemployment and homelessness in America”; a sham wedding he threw for former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and a WASP (1979); and a campaign to ban breast-feeding (2000).

Yes, but why?

IAN SANDS — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:07:16 GMT

Bumpkin Island puzzler
Isolation was part of the challenge.

DOWN TO EARTHY: The Camofleurs combined natural disguises with, they claimed, bird nesting practices.

“I am curating for the event! Would anyone switch with me?”

That was the plea from a woman who, for safety reasons this past Sunday, was asked to give up her space on the boat taking us to the Art Encampment on Bumpkin Island. We were aboard an inter-island shuttle, commissioned to relay mainland passengers from George’s Island to Bumpkin. It was not the most convenient of locations for an art event.

Then again, isolation was part of the challenge. Ten teams of artists effectively marooned themselves on the Boston Harbor island from Thursday, August 28, through Monday, September 1, with only whatever art and survival supplies they could carry with them. Their mission in exile was to create “site-specific” performances or installations.

In Erik Conrad’s case, the remote site forced him to mine unexplored artistic territory. Conrad, wearing a suit as he manned his Tactilist Theater booth, explained that on the mainland he works with computers. But inside his tent he’d assembled a vast collection of local flora, fauna, and natural artifacts, scattered purposefully around the interior. He escorted me through his installation with my eyes closed, running my hands over the stuff. It was the sort of thing you’d find at any number of children’s museums, but way cooler, I decided, because he had put it all together from scratch.

Not long after, I ran into the Camoufleurs, a troop of artists wandering around the island in “earth outfits” made from scavenged local materials, including feathers and berries. According to a guide pamphlet I’d received, their work combined “military concealment strategies” used during World War II with “bird nesting practices.” To what end, I wasn’t sure, so I ventured to talk to these strange folks. “Why are you dressed that way?” I asked. “Why are you dressed that way?” came the rejoinder from a man with stalks of sweet grass rising from his shoulders. Fair enough, I resigned myself to concede, and didn’t push the issue.

Next I ducked into an installation called the Honorable Bumpkin Island Company, which was closed for lunch. I snooped around the makeshift structure and found an assortment of goods to be bartered: Hershey bars, canned soups, Ramen noodles. On the wall I spied a copy of the Saturday edition of the handwritten island newspaper, the Bum-kin Islander. Stories included a weather report, an alert to a bike heist, and a news item concerning a fruit-cocktail shortage.

The art of being homeless

IAN SANDS — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:28:05 GMT

Street photography
Jake Anderson was a high-school sophomore from Lexington, walking down a Boston street, when a man rattling change in a cup asked for help.

Rip off

IAN SANDS — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:47:38 GMT

Sightings
The man, on this bright, crisp Saturday morning, stood facing a utility pole outside the Central Square Starbucks tearing down a flyer.

The man, on this bright, crisp Saturday morning, stood facing a utility pole outside the Central Square Starbucks tearing down a flyer. For a moment, it seemed as if he would replace it with an announcement of his own. By the look of him — middle-aged, carefully sculpted beard, wrinkle-free, white button-down shirt — you’d have pegged him to be promoting a church service or a garage sale.

It fast became clear, however, that this man’s business wasn’t advertising but rage. It was in his eyes. In the tight little look on his face. And in what he did next, which was to take down another flyer. And another. And then another. Until he had amassed a fistful of paper, which he hurled into a nearby garbage can.

You couldn’t tell just then, but prior to this episode the guy was actually having a pretty good morning. He’d been in and out of his Inman Square barbershop in 20 minutes, a personal record for a Saturday morning when the place was swamped with customers. Afterward, he’d scarfed down a hefty plate of pancakes and eggs at Zoe’s Diner on Mass Ave. On his way out the door, a pretty waitress had struck up a conversation. He was not so deluded as to think that he stood a chance, but it felt good nonetheless to think he was charming enough to compel her to stop and chat.

As he left the restaurant and waited to cross Mass Ave, something caught his gaze. It was the green eye of his cat, Ulysses, staring out at him from a pole covered with fliers. For a moment, the image failed to make sense. Then it dawned on him. What he was seeing was a patch of the missing-pet poster he’d drawn up a month back when Ulysses had disappeared into the night.

The memory of that evening in late May came at him then like a stone to the gut. He had been on the porch of his house brushing out his cat’s excess fur. Ulysses, never truly accustomed to this activity, was stirring in his lap. The man was aware of the pet’s growing distaste, but knew he was doing it for the cat’s own good — after all, the warmest months were coming. Suddenly, a German shepherd passed by the porch and Ulysses, wriggling free, made a run for it across the street and out of the man’s life.

Virtual brotherhood

IAN SANDS — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:44:55 GMT

Uniting the world by two-way video
Three kids camped out in front of Brookline Booksmith’s storefront window in the middle of June and peered into a video screen broadcasting real-time views of a street corner in Dudley Square.

DOUBLE VISION: Dudley neighbors (top) meet the kids from Brookline (bottom), despite the fact that their paths seldom cross.

Three kids camped out in front of Brookline Booksmith’s storefront window in the middle of June and peered into a video screen broadcasting real-time views of a street corner in Dudley Square. Every so often a person would pass by, and the kids would shout: “Guy in the black shirt!” “Dude!” “Hey, you!” Eventually, a black man on crutches approached the Roxbury camera.

“What happened to your leg?” asked one member of the group.

“I banged my knee and it got infected.”

“Cool!” the kid exclaimed.

Children, it seems, got the biggest kick out of the digital-media art installation, “Virtual Street Corners,” which linked up Coolidge Corner, Brookline, and Dudley Square, Roxbury, from June 12 through June 21 this month via a 24-hour, live digital feed. But that wasn’t the intent.

When John Ewing, a Mission Hill–based artist, dreamed up the project in 2004, he planned to place video links in three cities: Tel Aviv, Ramallah, and New York.

“All of the information we get through the media and the government is not always reliable,” he says. “The idea was to set up an alternative network that would be kind of a people-to-people diplomacy.”

Ewing had laid some of the groundwork before things fell apart. “The folks in Ramallah said they just couldn’t talk at all to Tel Aviv, and then there were all these issues of translation, security. . . . So then I thought, why not start out at a local level?”

Coolidge Corner and Dudley Square may not be as bitterly divided as the war-torn Middle Eastern cities, but they’re divided nonetheless.

“[O]ne is predominantly white and one is predominantly black — or black and Latino, and I guess the other is white and Asian,” explains Ewing, touching on the obvious. “Obviously when you look, there isn’t a lot of crossover between the two.”

To drive his point home, Ewing asked 25 people in each of the locales to describe their routes around the city on any given day. What he discovered was that the two groups’ paths almost never intersected (the map on which he scrawled the 50 routes is up on his Web site, virtualcorners.net).

Unappealing zoning

IAN SANDS — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:22:03 GMT

No live/work lofts for Lowell
“That’s where I want to live,” says Maxine Farkas, a painter at Western Avenue Studios (WAS), artists’ workspaces housed in two buildings — the A-Mill and the so-called main building — on an old mill complex in an industrial section of Lowell.

LIZ SMITH, who currently works on the industrial site, thinks the artists can handle the challenges.

“That’s where I want to live,” says Maxine Farkas, a painter at Western Avenue Studios (WAS), artists’ workspaces housed in two buildings — the A-Mill and the so-called main building — on an old mill complex in an industrial section of Lowell. She’s pointing toward the far end of a sea of open space interrupted only by some columns and a ladder. This is the first floor of a portion of the complex the artists are not using called the G-Mill, which Farkas says hasn’t seen a tenant in “2.5, going on 3 years.” WAS wants to fill the G-Mill with live/work lofts for 48 artists.

Unfortunately for Farkas, she won’t be moving in anytime soon. Back in January, the Lowell Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) denied WAS a special permit for the lofts. (An updated proposal was filed this past month and is on its way to the Lowell Planning Board for a June 16 hearing; the ZBA would still need to approve a special permit for the project to move forward.) The rationale for that decision largely had to do with conflicts the board presumed would arise over traffic and noise between the would-be resident artists and the industrial/commercial tenants located in the surrounding area. One of the board members also mentioned that the area was too dirty, smelly, and noisy for creating art.

Naturally, those artists who work from the complex —there are currently 160 in the A-Mill and the main building — took offense.

“We’re already here living with this. I don’t know if they’ve ever visited,” says Liz Smith, a crafter of handmades selling under the name “Made in Lowell”. Smith, who has graciously agreed to be my tour guide for the afternoon, needles felts as she talks in her studio on the third floor of the A-Mill. “I understand the challenges of living in an area like this, but I think people as intrepid and open-minded as artists can handle it.”

To Smith’s left are her wares — a basket of handmade beads, gorgeous decorative eggs with intricate patterns, felt and rope bracelets. I notice a few paintings hanging on a wall. She tells me they’re not for sale. “That’s the art I do for myself.”

Torturous portraits

IAN SANDS — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:13:00 GMT

Crappy art near Somerville johns
If you’d gone downstairs to pee during a movie two Wednesdays ago at the Somerville Theatre, chances are you stumbled upon a gallery opening in the works.

VOILA! Sunday on the Pot with George

If you’d gone downstairs to pee during a movie two Wednesdays ago at the Somerville Theatre, chances are you stumbled upon a gallery opening in the works. The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) was celebrating the release of its book, The Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks, as well as christening a new space — MOBA 2, it’s being called — in the theater’s basement, around the corner, yes, from the johns. True to form, MOBA fashioned the event as a send-up of a typical gallery opening. Instead of wine and cheese, there were Cheetos and grape juice. And in what was an especially nice touch, a fake security camera was perched in a corner.

MOBA may be the arbiter of all things hideous in the art world, but even it has standards. One of the first things I confronted was a section devoted to “Not Bad Art.” I learned that paintings on velvet, children’s art, and something called “tourist art” (à la resort-town sidewalk sales) were not MOBA-worthy. See, it’s not enough that a piece is run-of-the-mill bad — it has to be bad in an interesting way.

With this in mind, they gave us Queen of the Chocolate Chip, a portrait of Her Majesty in full regale clutching a tiny cookie, which the MOBA folks pitched as a commentary on royalism’s growing estrangement from the modern world. There was also Sunday on the Pot with George, a pointillist piece depicting a fat, near-naked man in the bathroom for which the artist was meticulous in his construction of the minutest details but had quite unbelievably not provided his subject with feet.

Some of these pieces have made appearances before in the museum’s original location in Dedham. That collection, much like MOBA 2, sits in the basement of an old movie theater near the bathrooms. There is one major difference between the two MOBAs, however. Dedham’s is free; Somerville’s cannot be viewed without first purchasing a movie ticket.

Will this discourage people from visiting the new space? Possibly. But the MOBA folks have assured me that the gallery will be free on special occasions. Plus, MOBA 2 has other things going for it, like, uh, it’s not in Dedham.

Meeting Dad

IAN SANDS — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:54:12 GMT

Sightings
They were in a circle chatting on the edge of the Harvard campus: a petite undergrad, her boyfriend, and her middle-aged alumni parents.

For the birds

IAN SANDS — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:17:00 GMT

Artful lodger comes to MIT
Buckminster Fuller was an odd duck, one who routinely tackled concepts foreign to him.

One of the first slides LA-based architect Fritz Haeg showed this past Wednesday during his lecture at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) was a 1964 Time magazine cover featuring Buckminster Fuller, a Milton-born architect/inventor/designer/whatever remembered best for his work with geodesic domes. Fuller was an odd duck, one who routinely tackled concepts foreign to him. But his picture was right at home, since Haeg, a disciple of Fuller’s if ever there was one, has similarly pursued projects outside of his expertise, including his ongoing Edible Estates project — for which he travels to different parts of the country to install gardens on front lawns. An architect by training, Haeg admits that he is not a botany expert; he’s picked it up as he goes along.

It’s Haeg’s latest project, Animal Estates, that brought him to MIT, and once again has him venturing well beyond his comfort zone. Haeg has been commissioned by local art institutions to build habitats in cities across the country for animals, some of whom, according to his Web site (fritzhaeg.com), “have been displaced or unwelcome by humans.” He kicked off things this past month in New York during the Whitney Museum’s Biennial, where, among other creations, Haeg built an eagles’ nest and a beaver lodge. MIT won’t be hosting beavers any time soon, but it is getting homes for two birds: the American Kestrel Falcon and the Tree Swallow.

“I suggested them because, for both, there are successes in terms of creating artificial structures for them to nest,” says Jeremiah Trimble, a curatorial associate in Harvard’s ornithology department whom Haeg consulted. Kestrels, more so than swallows, are seeing a decline as of late, says Trimble. “Part of the problem with both of them is that they’re tree-cavity nesters. Nowadays, anytime there is a dead tree with a hole in it, it gets cut down just because it’s an eyesore, or a hazard.”

The night after his lecture, Haeg held a workshop for those interested in helping with bird-house construction, and I took a friend to lend a hand. It felt like junior-high technology class all over again — except this time I didn’t have Mr. Wakefield to do everything for me. The first task was to puncture a hole in a piece of wood using the industrial-size jet press, which reached just above my head. When the kid wearing the Death From Above 1979 shirt walked up behind me, I was pretty sure it was a bad omen.

Rough power

IAN SANDS — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:42:46 GMT

Bill Gage has Down syndrome. And his band rocks
Watching Bill Gage perform with his band, BILL, is an eye-opening experience.

VIDEO: BILL, "Steve Pepper"

BILL, "Spider" (mp3)

John Gage on the accusations that BILL is exploitative (mp3)

Watching Bill Gage perform with his band, BILL, is an eye-opening experience. You go in not knowing what to expect, maybe even a little nervous on behalf of everyone involved — the crowd, the band, yourself. But then you’re witness to a sizzling and raw hard-rock display, and your reservations vanish.

Gage doesn’t so much sing songs as tear through them, his vocals occasionally sounding as if they’re coming from someone twice his size. As he sings “Big Foot,” a track off of the band’s second and most recent album, Bat Man, Gage bellows the title line over and over, all the while pacing back and forth like some caged beast, swaying to the ominous, industrial-ish score. You think for sure his voice is going to give out any moment, but it never does. It’s magnificent.

“I had a boss once who’d seen Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, James Brown,” notes Gage’s older brother, John Gage, who plays guitar, among other things, for BILL (the band, he insists, is spelled in all capital letters). “So I was playing a tape of Bill, and he had just walked into the place where we worked, and he says, ‘Who is that — Muddy Waters?’ And I was, like, here is a guy who has seen James Brown, and he’s saying Bill sounds like this 40-year-old black man.”

Bill isn’t Muddy Waters, obviously, and he isn’t James Brown, either. But he is a rock-and-roll trailblazer in one respect: though he is an exuberant performer and a natural rock vocalist, Bill has Down syndrome.

A pretty good time
I’m sitting with most of the band in the TV room of BILL guitarist Greg Ansin’s spacious two-story South End apartment. Ansin, Bill and John, drummer Daren Follower, and bassist Gaylen Moore (John’s fiancée) have recently finished taking some publicity shots. Instruments are scattered throughout the apartment. The band (minus guitarist Eric Morin, who’s not around today) will be playing together after I leave. Bill seems very excited about this.

As for our conversation . . . it’s odd, even by rock-band-interview standards. John had warned me by e-mail that his brother isn’t “much for small talk and storytelling (outside of some of his songs).” John, on the other hand, loves to talk. Which is fine. Because nobody knows BILL better than John, who has collaborated with his brother on the project for more than 20 years.

Dunkin' rage

IAN SANDS — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:15:21 GMT

Sightings
They were siblings in a spat.

They were siblings in a spat. She was fashionable, clad in a black, diamond-studded jumper. He, less so, in a light-blue sweatshirt — hood pulled up over his head. She was slight and pretty with a prominent nose. He was overweight and ugly.

They barely spoke, and then only a few indecipherable words as they redistributed the coffees they’d been mistakenly served at the near-empty Dunkin’ Donuts. He had been given her French vanilla, while she had been given his regular.

The tension between them had to do with love. Back in Russia, he had been engaged to a woman. She to a man. The couples spent many evenings together. They visited the world-famous Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg. Though none of the four was much for art, they nonetheless had marveled over the fact that there had been a theft at the museum only a few weeks prior. It was there at the Hermitage that the couples had agreed they would immigrate to America together.

Then something awful happened — something the siblings hadn’t yet spoken of out loud to each other. Their lovers, one day over breakfast, broke the news that they were having an affair and planned to marry. At the time, the brother had received the news with nary a complaint. She had wept.

Three months later, here in America, she blamed him for not protecting her from getting hurt. He was her older brother, was he not? He had been doing it all her life. In grade school, whenever the other kids would pick on her, he’d pin the kid in the corner and sit on the culprit until he/she promised never to say another foul word about his sister.

She looked at him now in disgust as he began to use his shirt sleeve to wipe some drink from his upper lip. She had once found her brother’s penchant for hooded sweatshirts oddly charming, but today his dress only annoyed her. Was he not a grown man? Why couldn’t he wear the cardigans and collared shirts that civilized men his age wore? And why was that bloody hood over his head when they were inside? It made him look like a creep.

A woman behind the counter called out the hooded man’s order. A minute or so passed, but he did not budge from place. The woman repeated the order. This time the man stole off his hood and rose to collect the food.

Diamonds in the rough

IAN SANDS — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:17:53 GMT

Holocaust survivor Meyer Hack kept a special collection of jewelry secret for 60 years
In 1941, 27-year-old Polish Jew Meyer Hack was deported to Auschwitz along with his mother, two sisters, and brother.

In 1941, 27-year-old Polish Jew Meyer Hack was deported to Auschwitz along with his mother, two sisters, and brother. Upon arrival, his family was split in two. The men were sent off to labor at Birkenau, a satellite camp of Auschwitz. The women died in the gas chamber.

Hack’s brother, Gershon, was beaten to death by supervising Nazis, including an SS officer, with a two-by-four. Hack saw the whole thing.

He was the only one of his family to survive. His secret weapon? A piece of string that he tied around his neck and pulled in order to bring "the blood from my toes to my face,” explains Hack, now 92, from the living room couch of his Brighton home. “If you have a yellow face, out you went into the gas chambers. I knew about this. This piece of string saved my life." As he talks, I notice his eyes. If the rest of his face has grown stiff with age, his eyes remain animated.

Under the impression there'd be a photographer with me, Hack is wearing a suit. But apart from this one miscalculation, his mind, or “computer” as he likes to call it, is pretty sharp. Sharp enough to read his own press and take issue with it.

In profiles, he’s been categorized as a “laundry worker” or as part of a “laundry crew” at the concentration camp. But neither of these are accurate terms, he explains. Instead, he worked in a section of the camp called the bekleidungskammer, where stacks of discarded clothing belonging to incoming prisoners were stored. Hack worked with these bundles and distributed striped uniforms to prisoners.

One day, as he was going about his business in the bekleidungskammer, he made a discovery. “I was sitting like you’re sitting here. Something pinched my back. I take out the bundle. I take out the jacket. I take a knife. I cut it out, and American gold piece came down,” says Hack, his gray hair slicked back well beyond his deeply lined forehead. For the next few years, Hack fished out jewelry and other treasures from the stacks in this way, keeping what he found in a stocking.

“My sense is that these pieces represented a certain part of his survival, that the idea that somehow he could continue to exist as a person in an absolutely horrific environment where essentially any kind of personal existence is wiped to nothing,” says Dr. Dean Solomon, a longtime friend and one of the few people Hack told about the jewels later in his life.

Strip club

IAN SANDS — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:47:42 GMT

Underwear underground
Do not show up unless you plan to take your pants off. This includes media.

HAIRY LEGS AND ALL: Our reporter (center) reads the paper, trying to forget he is pants-less.

THIS IS A PARTICIPATORY EVENT. DO NOT SHOW UP UNLESS YOU PLAN TO TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF. THIS INCLUDES NEWS MEDIA.

That message, posted on a Facebook event page, must have furrowed the brow of many a features writer assigned to cover this past Saturday’s “No Pants 2K8” Boston T-Ride. The project, organized by the local arm of the NYC-based group of public pranksters called Improv Everywhere, was as simple as it was pointless: take off your pants and ride the subway in your underwear.

The Facebook post posed a journalistic quandary they don’t cover in J-school: do you drop trou and get the story or do you chicken out and miss it? Ultimately, I decided on the former tack — partly, yes, for the sake of journalism; partly because the event sounded enjoyable.

As I walked up the Alewife T station stairs, I was met by a jovial crowd of mostly students and random twentysomethings. The majority were dressed inconspicuously, though a handful did wear suits or costumes. Adam Sablich, of Improv Everywhere’s Boston chapter, announced our route — Alewife to Park Street, then on to Kenmore, and back — via bullhorn, then divided us into groups of 15 to 20.

When our train came, I boarded the second car with Group Two, and took a seat next to a friendly Asian couple. A woman and I tried to figure out when exactly we were supposed to de-pants. We decided to take our cues from our team leader, a clean-cut, smiley guy named Chris, who was sitting nearby. That settled, I dug through my bag for a newspaper and attempted to pass the time. Needless to say, I retained nothing.

People’s pants started coming off some time after we pulled into Davis Square. I tried to appear nonchalant, mouthing the words to a Chris Brown song while I went to work. As I stuffed my jeans into my bag, I had an absurd thought that made me laugh out loud. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if bystanders started dropping their pants instinctively? They didn’t, of course. Instead, they just looked on, wide-eyed and baffled.

Bring your own pillow

IAN SANDS — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 20:29:26 GMT

Playing in the street
In 2006, an unruly mass of folks gathered on a lawn before the majestic, domed courthouse in the French-speaking city of Lausanne, Switzerland.

In 2006, an unruly mass of folks gathered on a lawn before the majestic, domed courthouse in the French-speaking city of Lausanne, Switzerland. They weren’t there to protest an unjust law or to storm the structure in an attempt to unseat the government. They were there for a pillow fight.

A similarly impressive group assembled this past October next to the Eiffel Tower in the heart of Paris. Again, not to protest but for a feathery fracas.

The guerilla-styled, flash-mob pillow fight is having something of a moment, you could say. In addition to the European locales, such events have popped up in several major US cities, including New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. (The fights have become near-traditions in some cities in the past few years.) Add to that list Boston, which is due to get a pillow fight of its very own this Saturday at 1 pm on the Boston Common, courtesy of Banditos Misteriosos, a new, loosely defined local organization comprising an eclectic group of artists, musicians, and other creative types, as well as some fun-loving “regular” people, too.

As a flash-mob event, the Common fight is something of an open secret — which is to say you’ll be able to find out about it only via the Web, word of mouth, or flyers, and not, say, from the city’s cultural calendar (or, usually, from any newspaper). And for good reason, says recent Brandeis grad Ethan Feuer, sitting with fellow Brandeis pals-turned-Banditos Ben Kuss and Courtney Rand, on Sunday night at Remington’s. “It’s more organic this way,” says Feuer. “It’s not like we’re trying to go under the radar. This is a public space, we should be able to do this stuff here. Why aren’t we? Why aren’t we having fun together?”

Feuer is echoing the sentiment of the “urban-playground movement,” which is well established in New York and Toronto, two cities where a group called Newmindspace has been promoting flash-mobs for some years. The movement’s goal, according to newmindspace.com, is “reclaiming public space, inventing new ways of having fun, and creating community.” Popular events, in addition to pillow fights, include subway parties and capture-the-flag games.

Banditos Misteriosos want to bring this Urban Playground mentality to Boston. Feuer and Kuss have been tossing around one idea meant to combat the dearth of street signs in the Boston area. “We want to have artists creating street signs and putting them up in high-traffic areas where there aren’t any,” offers Feuer. “And there are so many of those.” It is uncertain whether the two men, along with Rand, will be able to pull off some of their ideas in the face of certain logistics and legal issues. What is certain, though, is that this city would be the richer for them.

Dynamic duo

IAN SANDS — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:59:42 GMT

Steven Vallarelli and Tim Griffiths forge their own Antiques
As Sting once famously suggested, being in a band is like marriage without sex. And joining a band is often a lot like entering into a romantic relationship.

COMMITTED: Vallarelli and Griffiths are in some ways opposites — but they do share a fondness for fake beards.

As Sting once famously suggested, being in a band is like marriage without sex. And joining a band is often a lot like entering into a romantic relationship — it’s a commitment that entails long hours at the practice space, working together to write and record material, book shows, and keep all the egos in balance.

That doesn’t even begin to skim the surface of experience the local band Antiques have had over the past several years. Formed by Steven Vallarelli and Tim Griffiths, the band have taken the idea of commitment to a whole new level. Not only does Griffiths live in the Arlington home Vallarelli shares with his wife and their dogs, but that’s also where Antiques do their recording. And outside the band, the duo support themselves with a small business they’ve started — Marquis De Sod Landscaping.

The pair’s intimacy tends to be reflected in their live show. When, for example, they played P.A.’s Lounge back in September with a full band, it was hard not to notice the lopsided way in which the energy was distributed among the four players. On the one hand, you had Griffiths (drums) and Vallarelli (singer/guitarist). Every so often, Griffiths would rise from his seat to enter into a fit of frenzied convulsions, all the while taking desperate stabs at his kit. And Vallarelli, wearing a fake beard, would stumble over to the drums to share in the excitement. They spent more time jamming together than any drummer/lead-singer pair I’ve ever seen. The other half of the band simply stood their ground: Billy Durette was nearly motionless as he delivered his keyboard parts, and beside him bassist Ari Sneider was similarly subdued. It was as if the two pairs of players were in two different bands, playing two different shows.

When we get together to talk at my house in Cambridge, I ask Griffiths and Vallarelli about this seeming disconnect. “It’s a little weird, sure,” remarks Griffiths. Sitting beside him, Vallarelli doesn’t seem to feel the need to add anything to that statement.

Griffiths and Vallarelli first met in 2004 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The New England–raised Vallarelli, a Civil War buff, had been touring the South and ran into Griffiths, a Michigan native who had been working as a session musician in Memphis, outside a diner. The two became fast friends and Griffiths eventually followed Vallarelli back to Massachusetts.

About shutting down . . .

IAN SANDS — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:18:12 GMT

Jimmy Tingle opens up
A little more than a year after the Someday Café closed its doors, it seems that Davis Square is poised to lose another beloved institution.

Inspiration and a tune up

IAN SANDS — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:39:17 GMT

The mechanical arts
I’m lost. I was supposed to be at Aladdin Auto Service in Cambridge like now .

I’m lost. I was supposed to be at Aladdin Auto Service in Cambridge like now. When I phone the shop’s owner, artist/mechanic Mahmood Rezaei-Kamalabad, to deliver the bad news, he utters: “Never say you’re lost. Look up. Can you see the sky?” Normally, I might’ve been thrown by this remark. But during each of our previous calls, he’s calmly dispensed spiritual advice.

“I come get you,” he says eventually.

Soon, Rezaei-Kamalabad, wearing a prayer cap, shows up in a Chevy pickup. Minutes later, we arrive at a nondescript space behind the Entertainment Cinemas at Fresh Pond. Once the truck is parked, he moves briskly to where a young couple is waiting inside. Their car is ready, he announces. Thank you, they say, and the woman adds that they hope to attend his exhibition’s reception here at Aladdin. If you do, he says, that will be great; if you don’t, that’s great also.

In any other repair shop, ducking out to retrieve an inept reporter would be bad business. But Rezaei-Kamalabad isn’t running any other shop. Surrounding his waiting room are about 40 pieces of artwork, some steel sculptures, some made of other metals, all created by Rezaei-Kamalabad. Many are rusted red and bear a diverse array of religious images. At the center of it all, atop a massive rock, is a book he penned called The Light — a combination of the Old and New Testaments and the Koran. With so much to behold, it’s easy to see why customers aren’t in a rush to leave.

Rezaei-Kamalabad, an Iranian immigrant, goes to work on a Civic in the adjoining garage. Behind him, atop a lift, is the “Aladdin Car” — a tannish converted Dodge Colt with the steering wheel placed directly at the vehicle’s center. The traditional design puts the driver’s body off balance, he says, and if the body is off balance, then the mind is as well. As he’s leaning over the car to deliver this explanation, I notice his arms, thick with hair and sweat. Is it insured, I inquire? He tried, “but they were asking too much money.”

Later, over tea and green grapes, we get to talking about The Light. Like much of his work, it attempts to unify the major religions. Seven of these books (12 were made) were distributed throughout the world, including to the Vatican and the Iraqi and Israeli National libraries. The one in the shop was actually intended for the Egyptian National library, but it was sent back. Of the incident, he remarks: “I said God wants the number seven in my own hand. With God, there are no mistakes.”

Blessed be He

IAN SANDS — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:26:59 GMT

One Jew’s struggle with God
Shalom Auslander’s memoir, Foreskin’s Lament , begins with a hoot of a first chapter, one that’s sure to be quoted on nationwide Jewish e-mail chains.

SWEET SINNER: Auslander writes about his first traif experience as one might a first-sex scene.

Foreskin’s Lament | By Shalom Auslander | Riverhead | 320 pages | $24.95

Shalom Auslander’s memoir, Foreskin’s Lament, begins with a hoot of a first chapter, one that’s sure to be quoted on nationwide Jewish e-mail chains. In it, Auslander considers the twisted relationship he and other Jews have with their God. God, he points out, is a big prick: striking Moses dead just before he reached the Promised Land, making Sarah barren because she giggled. And compared with other moments in history, these were good moods. “Some days he hated us so much, he killed us; other days, he let other people kill us,” writes Auslander. Yet despite all that, “This was the song we sang about him in kindergarten: God is here, God is there, God is truly everywhere!”

Auslander’s own twisted relationship with God comes from a childhood spent in an Orthodox community in Monsey, New York. His father, a humorless drunk, isn’t the best Jew in the world, but he does command that his sons be good ones. His mother, a dour sort, has a habit of rushing to bury the dairy and meat utensils in the house plant should they touch. Along with his Yeshiva teachers, his parents threaten him often with the promise of God’s wrath.

Of course, the tighter the reins, the more likely — and stranger, as it happens — the rebellion. Told that in Heaven he “would be boiled alive in giant vats filled with all the semen I had wasted during my life,” he lustily constructs a makeshift woman from his mother’s laundry. Told that eating traif (non-kosher) food is a loathsome sin, he becomes addicted to the stuff.

Auslander writes about his first traif experience as one might a first-sex scene. It’s full of excruciating descriptive detail, the indifference of the world at large juxtaposed with a tense interior narration as he works up the nerve to buy a Slim Jim:

“This is what Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said that God said about someone who eats non-kosher: God loathes him in this world and He tortures him in the next.
I don’t have all day, kid, said the Snack Shack man. — Anything else?”

Later, he discovers that he’s short 75 cents.

“This was God; this was God Himself, intervening in my behalf, giving me one last chance to pull me back from the brink of . . .
Skip the soda, I said.”

Auslander revisits these scenes of his Orthodox upbringing in Monsey from his adult vantage as a relatively secular Jew living in Woodstock. In these passages, the author, who is “mostly estranged” from his parents, can’t shake himself free of the God that was thrust on him as a child. He’s plagued by the old demons, as well a new one: he must decide whether to circumcise his infant son — should his pregnant wife, Orli, give birth to a boy.

Punk folk?

IAN SANDS — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:21:18 GMT

Bread and Roses do the regular-joe thing
What comes to mind when you think of roots music? Neatly trimmed facial hair?

NO DROPKICK MURPHYS COVER: But the rootsy repertoire does have everything from female pirates to Carl Sandburg to a shape-note number.

What comes to mind when you think of roots music? Neatly trimmed facial hair? A Stetson or two? Maybe matching outfits? Okay, now check out the men and woman of Bread and Roses. The release party back in July at the Middle East for their fine punk-spiked folk album Deep River Day (Fistolo Records) had the makings of a full-on punk-rock affair, with acoustic-guitarist Steve Fournier disappearing minutes before show time and fiddler Adam Haut suggesting later that he might take off his pants. More than these, it was the presence of Nate Puffer — cradling a mandolin in a wifebeater, his left arm sleeved in tattoos — that seemed to suggest a Dropkick Murphys cover was in the offing. But the Allston-based band — whose line-up also includes singer Morgan Coe (upright bass), Dan Pond (acoustic guitar), Dan Wilder (drums), and Whitney Weiss (banjo/acoustic guitar) — didn’t once break from their rootsy repertoire. That included a sea-shanty-styled number about a pair of female pirates, a musical take on Carl Sandburg’s poem “Grass,” and a partly reworked hymn unearthed from a shape-note songbook.

Now it’s two weeks later, and I’m sitting down with Coe, Haut, Fournier, and Puffer at the Common Ground in Allston, and wondering how they came to be hooked on these oldies. “We started out an electric band,” offers the sandy-haired, serious Coe, with only a dash of the Tom Waits-ian coot that comes out when he sings. “A lot of our stuff sounded like Gang of Four, maybe early Fugazi, nothing like we do now.” This was around 2002, when the line-up was just Coe on electric guitar and his friends Andrew Graham (bass) and Shin Matsuda (drums). The latter, a cook with an odd work schedule, had a habit of showing up late to shows. While waiting for his ass, the other two killed time with acoustic tracks like “Waltzing Matilda” and “Dump the Bosses Off Our Back.” Coe continues, “We were like, ‘Well, we’re not playing electric guitar without a drummer . . . ’ It was pretty much a desperate survival strategy.”

Working girls

IAN SANDS — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:23:58 GMT

Northern State keep their raps real
Northern State’s YouTube video for “Better Already” is a thing of low-budget beauty.

VIDEO: Northern State, "Better Already"

Northern State’s YouTube video for “Better Already” is a thing of low-budget beauty. The camera opens on the surface of a bed. The props — a collection of stuffed animals — rest against the wall on bed. As the lyrics begin — “We don’t have to leave the living room to have a good time” — three arms bring to life a teddy bear and two ugly dolls. Soon, the raggedy trio, joined by a stuffed dog, are engaged in a dance routine, trading verses.

This tossed-off silliness stands in marked contrast to the straight faces Northern State’s Spero, Hesta Prynn, and Sprout were keeping on their big-budget flop of a debut, the ?uestlove/DJ Muggs/Pete Rock–produced All City (Columbia; 2004). On that disc, the NYC-based MCs (who play the Middle East this Wednesday) traded in the charmingly nerdy, unschooled approach of their rough early recordings for major-label spit and polish. Straightforward beats were scrapped for elaborate production. The literary references, pop-culture witticisms, and shout-outs to shitty white-collar jobs were swapped for a lot of scowling at would-be haters and for party-girl posing. Although it would be tempting to attribute the changes to some unseen corporate hand, Spero, when I reach her by phone in New York, insists that they really weren’t Columbia’s doing. She chalks up what happened to what she terms “a hip-hop mindset: when you’re with Muggs in the Cypress Hill studio, you’re not gonna rhyme about Sylvia Plath.”

Spero does, however, take Columbia to task for the marketing of All City — or lack thereof. “There was no plan that you could just pull out of a drawer that would work for us.” Indeed, there is no blueprint for selling smart-ass white-girl hip-hop to mainstream kids. And so, she recounts, the label gave up on Northern State. “For whatever reason they did not promote our record: they did not do a good job with it, and they did not include us in the process.”

Frustrated, the girls moved on to Ipecac, the indie label headed by Faith No More frontman Mike Patton. And they returned to their lives in NYC. “We were regular people again, and we all started playing in side projects for fun, which we hadn’t been able to do for a while. Sprout and I play in this all-girl rock group called Lucky Bitch, and Hesta Prynn was doing a different band called Lucy.”