Ask A Babson Boulder

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Our “Ask” series is an advice column with a special panel of guest columnists. Today’s guest columnists are the Babson Boulders of Dogtown.

Dear Babson Boulders:

I think my husband is cheating on me. He suddenly stays late at work, but when I call his work line, I always get voicemail. Last week, a woman called our house for him and when I asked to take a message, she hung up! I don’t want to believe it – we have four children together and I gave up my career to stay at home with them! Should I confront him, am I being crazy? Help?

– Suspicious in Rockport

Dear Suspicious:

Figure10

 

 

Dear Babson Boulders:

I have a bit of a dilemma. I got into the grad school of my dreams! I was all set to go in a few weeks, and then I found out my girlfriend is pregnant. She wants me to stay here with her and move in together, and her parents agree. But this was my chance! I love her and I did want to marry her someday and have kids, but after I was done with my degree! Should I be selfish and leave for grad school, or leave all my dreams behind and get a low-paying job to raise my soon-to-be kid?

– Choosing on Cape Ann

Dear Choosing:

get_a_job

 

 

Dear Babson Boulders:

I’m a teenager entering Sophomore year, and I always have a lot of homework to do. My mom is raising me and my two younger brothers on her own. My dad is on the West Coast touring in a Steely Dan cover band and only sends child support half the time. My mom works a lot of overtime and wants me to make dinner sometimes and clean up. But I have so much homework and then I also want to spend time with my friends. She has threatened to ground me if I don’t help by doing my own laundry or a load of dishes. I want to move in with my dad, who doesn’t ever make me do anything during my time visiting him. What should I do?

– Put-upon in West Gloucester

Dear Put Upon:

helpmother

 

That concludes this edition of our “ask…” series. Stay tuned next time for more advice from well-known Gloucester figures!

Make a Happy HUMVEE

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I’m pretty much a huge fan of the GPD. They’ve saved my butt a bunch of times and have always been practical and professional in my interactions with them. Too professional, even. There have been times when I really wanted to see them beat the shit out of some shirtless asshole they were arresting after spending way, way, too long trying to rationalize with a dude who can’t even figure out the basics of torso coverage. Check out my homage to them and how I don’t think they are anything like the out-of-control play-soldiers in Ferguson MO here.

But for a while I’ve been wondering, and in light of the recent events in Missouri I think it’s now worth asking:

Can someone explain why we have not one, but fucking two military-grade HUMVEES sitting out in the police parking lot?

And if the zombies take our our first Humvee, we have the backup...

And if the zombies take our our first Humvee, we have the backup.

What are those things doing here in G-town? What possible practical purpose could they serve? And how is that purpose better served by not one, but two of them? Are we planning on some kind of scenario where the police, who now have multiple SUVs, trucks ATVs and that faux Segway thing that looks like something out of the 1980s Dr. Who series, cannot hack it with the vehicles on hand and need to deploy not one, but a pair of jacked-up war-surplus utility combat vehicles? Are there also crossbows and flamethrowers? What. The. Hell. (Note: Don’t even start with “snow” okay? Snow-equipped vehicles have shit like plows and winches and that’s really the Fire Department anyway. This is the police.)

Chainsaw bike. Do they have chainsaw bikes?

Chainsaw bike. Do they have chainsaw bikes?

The worst thing about them from the perspective of Gloucester Police is, in a word, optics. We don’t need our police force looking like a military outfit, because they don’t act like one. Unlike what we’re seeing out in Missouri, as I said above, our cops are completely different. So looking like a military-equipped police force has become, like so many things where one bad group ruins it for everyone, over. It’s like how hipsters ruined wolf sweatshirts forever.

Also ironically rides a mobility scooter in the grocery store

Also ironically rides a mobility scooter in the grocery store

I assume we can’t get rid of them. So what to do? We here at your beloved The Clam are all about solutions. So if we can’t get rid of them, how about we pimp them? Thus, The Clam offers some solutions for our police parking lot to make it appear less like a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan circa 2003.

OPTION 1: PINK IS THE NEW CAMO How can you feel threatened by anything this adorable? I recommend gluing pink felt all over both vehicles Then it’s like, this isn’t a tactical response, it’s a tactile one!

Hug assault, on the way!

Hug assault, on the way!

OPTION 2: STEAMPUNK We’ve already explored how the police have moved beyond the practical to pure optics, so why not go all the way? Zeppelins; hot, tattooed, half-Asian chicks in corsets; impractical weaponry. The GPD could embrace both the arts and Geek communities in one simple stroke. And no one is intimidated by Steampunks. Once you put on knickers and a tophat festooned with brass telescopes, your threat posture evaporates.

Stop! In the name of Her Majesty Queen Victoria!

Stop! In the name of Her Majesty Queen Victoria!

OPTION 3: DELICIOUS CANDY So the primary use of these vehicles is for the Horribles Parade? Then go all the way and just coat the thing in gumballs.

Suck on this, lawbreakers and jawbreakers alike!

Suck on this, lawbreakers and jawbreakers alike!

OPTION 4: FRENCH BAZOOKA VESPAS Look, I’m going to level with you guys here. Sometimes at your The Clam the image tail manages to wag the content dog, as it were. I don’t really have much more to say about how this would work for the GPD, I just really googled “impractical military vehicles” and saw this then found I really liked writing the words FRENCH BAZOOKA VESPAS in all caps. Also FRENCH BAZOOKA VESPA would be a funny name for an absurdist comedy troupe. Also: Owl Stretching Time.

The French thought this was a good idea for a weapon. Say no more.

Hey French Army, I think that’s pointing in the wrong direction. Snap!

OPTION 5: LEGO Even the most terrifying looking vehicles become family-friendly fun when made out of the creative bricks from Denmark. Out in Ferguson everything is awful. But with Lego-styled Hummers, in Gloucester everything is awesome!

I only work in Tan. Or very dark Khaki.

I only work in Tan. Or very dark Khaki.

Ok, that’s it. Submit your ideas to make our local enforcement vehicles more approachable and less reprochable in the comments.

Oh, and note to military-hardware pedants: I know that it’s a recoilless rifle on the Vespa, not a bazooka. Save your breath.

KT’s Wicked Tuna Recap: The Mighty Bite

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Oh lordy tuna, we’re back with another recap of everyone’s favorite show involving Gloucester. This week starts off with the DRAMATIC EXCLAMATION that there’s JUST TWO WEEKS LEFT so SHIT’S GONNA GET REEL, SON. See what I did there? A goddamn fishing pun. That’s how low I stooped just then.

The show flashes to a shot of the Hard Merchandise preparing for Operation Fish While Inhaling from a Marlboro Red, which includes using something called the Chum Cutter. Like a bagel slicer, but for stank fish.

There are no words for this invention.

There are no words for this invention.

Captain Marciano has also awoken me to the fact that apparently the plural of “bait” is actually “baits.” Who knew? Anywho, he’s all up early as shit to get more fishing in. I can’t even be bothered to get up before 6 to ride my bike this summer, so more power to the guy.  They end up hooking a fish, and Dave yells, “This could be what we’re waiting for!” A fish, yes, that’s what your job is, to catch them. I feel like he wakes up in the morning to a note next to his bed he wrote the night before that says “Dear Captain Marciano: Today you catch fish because that is your job. Your boat is at the Marina. The chum cutter is in the dishwasher. Smokes are in your Angelica Fisheries hoodie, like usual.”

The fish ends up being a shark (which is not actually a tuna, fair warning to those following along at home), and Dave smokes introspectively while lamenting his luck. I actually feel bad, since he’s had kind of a rough year since his fucking boat sank at the Marine Railways and that is always a week-ruiner.

Flick your cigarette, you're gonna burn your dang crotch!

Flick your cigarette, you’re gonna burn your dang crotch!

 

The Hot Tuna decides to go to Ipswich Bay because they’ve had luck there (also close proximity to JT Farnham’s, naturally. A man’s gotta eat). They get there and there’s like 50 other boats and they’re pissed. I didn’t even know tuna existed that close to here, so I have learned a thing. I thought Ipswich Bay was for lobsters and white tourists with boat shoes and sweaters tied around their necks.

It's like when everybody wears the same dress to a party. A tuna party.

It’s like when everybody wears the same dress to a party. A tuna party.

AWW YISS Stonerboat is back! Our favorite blazed as a kite captain is sick and looks like death warmed over, but he knows he really biffed it this season so he wants to fish as much as he can to not lose quite as hard. I feel for the kid, being an outsider in Gloucester is tough, and he kinda was a bit of a douchebag which I’m sure didn’t help matters. His ragtag team of adorable, floppy haired frat brothers help him out with the beep-beep fish machine thing since he’s sick.

In a single two-second stretch, Tyler knocks over a nudie calendar that has to be blurred out, and then his boatmates are wandering around hands-deep in a box of Cheezits, with Bob Marley crap all over the walls. This is legit the best thing about this show.

Ruh-roh Shaggy! We're low on Scooby Snacks.

Ruh-roh Shaggy! We’re low on Scooby Snacks.

Anyway I’m not one to judge, since I literally have my hand in the exact same box of cheezits with the cartoon cheeses (cheezes?) drawn on the back of it. And then, nine minutes into the episode, I hear my first “We really need a fish here, BAD.” If I was not in charge of a retail establishment at this very moment (clearly working ever so hard), I would pour myself a shot. Tyler then refers to the captain of the Hot Tuna as “Tubby Tuna.” Shots fired across the bow!

Hebertboatbort returns to shore with a $14k fish, which puts them in 2nd place under the boat that fired him last year or the year before, whichever, I didn’t watch. So the whole point of this show, I guess, is that you win when you make the most money. This boat was run by a loudmouth and his browbeaten older brother and was in last place the whole season, so now I assume more lovable loudmouthery will take place. I mean, this is Gloucester so that’s kinda how we roll.

Over on the HMS Tunafore, they catch a fish but some other boat decides to drag by very slowly like 10 feet away from them when they have the entire fucking ocean in which to do this, so Dave is angry. Seriously it’s like camping in the empty woods and then some dipshit sets up right fucking next to you. They lose the $10k fish because this giant net from the other boat is in the way, and Dave goes and confronts the dude. Dave is kind of soft-spoken and pleasant mannered, so it’s refreshing to see him call someone else a “fucking douchebag.”

Back on Stonerboat, Tyler is officially dead at this point. He leaves most of the work for the two goofy dudes in the back, and instead they eat strawberries while making stupid faces for the camera.

strawberries

charming.

The next scene has the Hot Tuna talking about, you guessed it, needing a fish. As they get one on their hook, the delightfully rotund captain runs over while trying to hike up his pants, but fails and NatGeo has to blur the resulting plumber’s crack.

Pride of the Gloucester fleet, right here.

Pride of the Gloucester fleet, right here.

Back on the tuna.com, I hear another “we could really use this fish!” Are you shitting me? You made 100,000 this season already. This is getting a bit out of hand. Stop saying that. Stop. Everybody.

Stonerboat is at the dock and Tyler has chest pains, which I’m pretty sure one of the deckhands describes as “gnar.” So they wheel him off in a little cart to bring him to get it checked out.

Toot toot!

Toot toot!

The episode ends with some fish catching, chain smoking, and exclamations of “needing this fish.” There’s one more week of the season, and then I’m on to the special “Wicked Tuna: North vs South” thing whatever the hell that is. Ugh. Can I recap like, Jeopardy instead?

 

Movie Review – The Giver

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxFJvlWqphM&w=853&h=480]
With Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites, Alexander Skarsgård, and Katie Holmes; Written by Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide; Directed by
Phillip Noyce; Rated PG-13 for a mature thematic image and some sci-fi action/violence. 94 minutes.

“The book was better than the movie,” is usually a statement made not as a matter of fact, but as shorthand to say, “I have the mental focus, the copious leisure time, and the kind of cultured upbringing required to actually read a book, you illiterate, populist plebian.” Making the comparison is not only passive-aggressively dickish–and often spoken with the same teeth-gnashed, barely-contained, Thurston Howell III disdain as the dig “I don’t even own a television”–but also misses the point. Yes, Plato, men and women sure are different, a dog is not a cat, and a book is not a movie. And congratulations–you’re an insufferable baggadouchio and a master of the obvious. Now, in the spirit of the book, take off your shirt, lie face-down on the bed, and prepare to be on the receiving end of an unpleasant rub.

Predictably, many will make the same ol’ snooty-snotty Buch-über-Film claim of THE GIVER, the long-brewing adaptation of Lois Lowry’s 1993 dystopian YA novel. “The Giver” tells the story of young Jonas (Brenton Thwaites of “Maleficent”), the oldest child in a future-y planned community (that looks very much like Walt Disney’s original vision for EPCOT). Here, life is perfect, because it is engineered that way, from the precision of the language, to the job you will train for starting at age 12, to the person you will marry. But Jonas is very different and special, and his very different specialness catches the attention of the Elders (the Chief of which is played by a surprisingly one-note Meryl Streep). The Elders inform Jonas that his path is that of “The Receiver,” the esteemed keeper of all the knowledge of the very, very bad world that came before. This reality is kept from the citizenry, which is kept in docile darkness with a daily morning dose of what’s probably a cocktail of Zoloft, lithium, and Flintstones chewable salt peter (kind of like a hypodermic Philip Glass record). His secretive, not-at-all-creepy man-boy training with “The Giver” (producer Jeff Bridges) begins, and he takes it upon himself that the world should know all the joys and horrors that existed in it before it turned so very, very bad.

However, ‘baggery-be-damned, “the book was better than the movie” is a hard claim to support here, as neither the book nor the movie is particularly well-written. Rather, they are both spartan to the point of being vague, and in both cases we never recover from the awkwardness of the very structured and precise language (also: why Bridges talks like Carl from “Sling Blade” is never explained). Neither the book nor the movie is refreshing, either, instead smacking of a forgettable, late-series “Twilight Zone” episode, in much the same way that M. Night Shyamalamadingdong’s derivative “The Village” did. The book is significant, though, as it was the modern dystopian novel that primed the pump for the likes of “The Hunger Games,” “Divergent,” and [whatever the kids are totes-magotes into this school year]. This may or may not be a crime against humanity, depending on how difficult it is to get your child to read a book without the aid of a quarantine, histrionic ransoming of handheld devices, or an EMP that mercifully takes out the power grid.

The gimmick in which a character sees only in black-and-white until he or she finds enlightenment was done defter in 1998’s “Pleasantville.” That movie’s director, Gary Ross, directed the first “Hunger Games” movie and created with it an immersive post-apocalyptic world. Here, the usually stalwart mercenary Phillip Noyce (TV’s “Revenge” and a laundry list of fair-to-middling movies you’ve probably half-enjoyed on cable TV over the years) makes the right stops through Lowry’s book, but in a very mechanical, book report-y kind of way. And for every dystopian cliché that adapters Robert B. Weide (“Woody Allen: A Documentary”) and first-timer Michael Mitnick avoid, like milking a romantic off-roading between Jonas and Fiona (Odeya Rush of “The Odd Life Of Timothy Green”), they are saddled with servicing two of Lowry’s clunkers. There’s the one in which Jonas must single-handedly free the world from its ignorance, and the one that has the entire society hidden away and not allowed to have knowledge of its very, very bad past. If romantic trope fetishist Nicholas Sparks wrote sci-fi, this would be his “Logan’s Run.”

It is the illustration of this very, very bad past during which the movie’s jagged seams become evident. When the Giver is imparting visions of the world before to Jonas via a handshake/psychic link (which was wisely changed from the slightly-nambla-riffic, half-naked back-rubbing in the book), they actually use GODDAMN YOUTUBE CLIPS. Nice production value, guys! Did you shoot the rest of the film on iPhones? Text-message script revisions back-and-forth? It is this kind of laziness that sums up the long journey of a movie that actually had the chance to rise above its unspectacular upbringing, but instead plays it safe and lives out its destiny as a cable TV staple that you kinda watch because you kinda remember it from middle school. It makes you wish that with all the apologizing that goes on between the characters in the movie that Bridges would show up in a post-credits stinger scene and say sorry for not giving us enough movie for our $11.00.•••

North Shore Movies has given this film a score of 2 out of 5.Robert Newton is Editor of North Shore Movies Weekly, and also the founder of the wicked quaint, living-room-style Cape Ann Community Cinema in Gloucester.

No Snark Sunday: Luck, The Police

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A lot of us this weekend are thinking about Ferguson Missouri which seems to have taken the bad news we typically see coming out of other countries full of foreign people and landed it right in the USA: Uncountable paramilitary police firing rubber bullets on crowds, reporters getting detained and all in the wake of an unjustifiable shooting. Where is this, Uruguay or something? It’s Missouri? What? Didn’t they all seem so nice and polite during the World Series to our typical Boston assholishness? What the hell happened? At least when our Boston cops were running around in camo all jacked with military hardware they were going after actual terrorists. Take a lesson, “Show Me State” (and what the fuck does that even mean?).

Armored police vehicle responding to guy who'd planted actual bombs

Armored police vehicle responding to guy who’d planted actual bombs

I don’t care if the kid in Ferguson did rob a store, you don’t shoot fleeing, unarmed people in the back. Not here, not ever. There is no justification for this, none.

And calling the aftermath a “militarized” response is an insult to our military who know a lot better than to run into a bunch of angry civilians with MRAPS and start pointing the assault rifles with all the nifty tubes on them at everybody. They aren’t acting like soldiers, they are acting like a 9 year old with  Nerf guns.

American cop in our actual country. Note gloves.

Ferguson cop dealing with civilian unrest caused by fellow officer killing an unarmed teenager

 

No gloves.

A far more responsible rifleman awaits a target

But luckily this is not going down HERE here. We are incredibly lucky to have a police force in Gloucester that is actually a community force. I grew up around cops, cops in Lynn no less. I can tell you that years of dealing with idiot criminals all day can change you. If every interaction you have during your work day is with shirtless dudes who just punched their girlfriend, you start to see the world differently. Your brain starts taking shortcuts- “Guy with no shirt, drinking Monster Energy drink, white hat with flat brim worn at askew angle…hmmm…wonder if he has any warrants?” (spoiler: he does).

In the end, cops are human but it’s all about training and tactics. The military’s primary mission is to fight, the police are here to protect. Once you start crossing the streams it becomes a huge pain in the ass for everyone. Like the Marathon Bombings, there are going to be times when the cops need to go after armed, demented bad guys out to do as much damage as possible. But that is not, repeat NOT what was going on in Ferguson. After the not-at-all-surprising reaction to their own straight-up killing of a guy, the cops there just broke into the toy chest and ramped the whole thing up.

Hey, Ferguson cops: The response to a civilan reaction to police brutality is not A METRIC FUCKTON MORE POLICE BRUTALITY WITH A BUNCH OF SHIT FROM THE HOMELAND SECURITY HOLIDAY CATALOG.

I experienced a far, far more minor version of outsized police response in a nearby town a decade or so ago where I was in a convenience store with my brother, who happens to resemble the average of any given Ramones lineup. The Fuzz-by-the-Sea burst in with guns drawn while we were buying sodas and snak mix because the owner of the store had called 911 to report the counter phone had been suspiciously busy for an hour.

This shit is starting to get depressing so I'm adding kittens.

This shit is starting to get depressing so I’m adding kittens.

Apparently protocol for that situation in a town where the police notes are heavy with “suspicious van” sightings and the occasional coyote, required bursting into the place with irises the size of tea saucers and pupils the size purely theoretical particles, then sighting down on two random shabby-looking dudes (We’d been working on my house all day) yelling all kinds of cop-orders bullshit like “Show me your hands NOW!” which were already pretty much shown what with the snak mix and the Coke Classic in them preventing me from wielding any kind of weapon more dangerous than whatever the fuck terrible chemicals the ranch dressing powder is made of.

Say your prayers, Copper!

Say your prayers, Copper!

This is what these officers decided the best response to the “busy signal” situation was. Rather than calmly walking in and finding that the somewhat pronounced keister of the behind-the-counter employee had knocked the phone off the hook and thus making it so the owner couldn’t call in, they went with “tactical assault from Bruce Willis movie.” For the record: I am whiter than Al Gore in a sweatervest playing ukulele at a Farmer’s Market, which is probably the only thing that kept them from shooting me dead on the spot.

In Gloucester I can’t imagine that happening. Or if it did, at least we would all laugh about it after the Glocks got holstered, rather than the cops keeping up the massive dickhead attitude like in that town-I-won’t-mention-the-name-of even after we figured out the whole ass thing. Even after the phone got hung back up they continued to aggressively question us, as if this was all part of our supercriminal plot to release an army of robot zombies on their golf course or something. Officer, it was the clerk’s ass. There is no further investigation to be done. You don’t need to see my ID or ask me what my “purpose” here is. That shit is self-evident (see: mix, snak).

In contrast, the police in Gloucester, despite having to deal daily with the problems concurrent with poverty, drugs and alcohol abuse are an actual community police force. Most officers live in town, they know everybody and overall they work to solve problems rather than gin up confrontations. I have only ever had positive interactions with them, even when they were dealing with some messy situations. I’ll tell y’all about my heroin dealer neighbors in Lanesville some other post, but they handled it with respect and care not only to us and themselves, but to the suspects as well. And I have to admit that after living next to these idiots for six months I was ready to see some nightsticking or at least a mild pistol whipping when the bust finally went down. There was none of that. The GPD were a class act all the way.

Side note: the GPD also didn’t wear “tactical gloves” like total tools when busting the drug dealers, unlike the guys responding to the “suspicious busy signal” call. Jesus what assholes those guys were.

There were thousands of illustrations I could have used to make this point. I chose this one.

There were thousands of illustrations I could have used to make this point. I chose this one.

The Ferguson thing is terrifying because it combines about every flash point in our society: Race, inequality, the increasing availability of military-grade hardware, social media and the pervasiveness of video recording surpassing traditional media as an information source. As a Gloucesterite I feel profoundly lucky to live in a place where the vast majority of us feel like we’re in this thing together and the biggest enforcement concern seems to be dog crap on the beach.

As an American, I’m ready to do what it takes to make “unarmed black guy killed” something that stops happening. Like, ever.