Maine author reviving Marvel character

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The Son of Satan is being reborn in the brain of a Maine writer.

Alex Irvine, a former Portland Phoenix staff writer now teaching English at the University of Maine at Orono, is doing what he calls a “reboot” of Daimon Hellstorm, a character in the Doctor Strange section of the Marvel Comics universe.

The new comic, the first in a five-part series, will be out in October. Irvine has a short-story collection, Pictures from an Expedition, coming out in the next few days, and a novel about Batman, called Inferno, being released by DC Comics shortly, too. (That one includes a new villain, but that’s all we can tell you.)

Irvine landed the Hellstorm gig while on a visit to New York to read a short story at a bookstore, after which his agent introduced him to a Marvel editor, with whom Irvine “kicked around” some ideas for characters to work on.

“The Hellstorm thing dovetailed really nicely with a story idea I’d had in my head for a long time,” Irvine says.

He says the process of creating a comic is “completely different from writing fiction,” involving illustrators and colorists as well as editors. It’s Irvine’s first comic, though he says “I actually wanted to write comics before I wanted to write fiction,” and is talking with Marvel about doing more after this series.

In this story, which Irvine calls “horror-noir-ish,” Hellstorm is “much less super-hero-y,” and is instead depicted as a son struggling with his own independence as well as how to please his father, Satan — a congenital liar who stands for evil but who gets his son’s admiration all the same.

The basic plot involves “an infestation of demons in post-Katrina New Orleans,” which Hellstorm discovers, along with “a woman who appears to be Isis,” the ancient Egyptian goddess whose main task is to reassemble the body of Osiris, the judge of the dead and the granter of life, to resurrect him.

The demons in New Orleans, Irvine hints, are the key to the final piece of Osiris’s body — what Irvine gently calls the “generative organs.” And, not to disappoint fans, the story has plenty of demons and “bloodshed and gruesome stuff,” he assures.

Daytime TV turns into a book

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Blame it on Oprah. Her penchant for finding strange but true stories and putting them on daytime television has inspired not only the tele-shrink career of Dr. Phil, but a novel by an Iranian immigrant living here in Portland.

And, though it’s a suspense thriller, the themes and ideas make Ali Alavi’s The Tombland’s Tale (self-published; 269 pages; $12.95) the kind of on-your-toes-but-feeling-good book Oprah might even like. Plus, it’s fiction, so she needn’t worry about any messy disclosures later.

Alavi, an earnestly softspoken USM grad who moved to Portland as an international student at USM in 1995, set his book in his adopted home, the Forest City, and on Peaks Island, using some of his own frequent haunts, like the USM campus and Exchange Street, and other vaguely camouflaged local elements (“the Atlantic Pearl, a floating restaurant” and the “A.P. Warren” paper company )as settings . Released last week, the creepy thriller explores the disappearance of three exotic dancers who work at a Portland strip club.

In this, his first novel, Alavi found a use for a character he had had in mind for a while, a forensic psychologist with spiritual leanings named Rashid Sanjih. Sanjih, a USM professor, plays mentor to Christopher Wayne, a character based on Alavi himself. Wayne, like Alavi at the time he was writing the book, is an engineer beginning to realize that what he thought he wanted to do in life was not making him happy any more . Inspired by a late-night conversation with his mentor, Wayne retreat s to coastal Maine to write a novel.

Alavi, who has written three poetry collections in his native Persian and several short stories, knew that if was going to use his professor as a character, the psychologist would need a narrative conflict.

Alavi was stymied until he saw an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show devoted to the real-life tale of a man who had abducted several women and kept them imprisoned for year s. Alavi knew that that story — including an on-camera interview with one of the victims — would form the basis of the book’s plot.

Into that mix Alavi threw some of the research he had been doing at USM, studying business administration, focusing on Jungian analysis of decision-making, seeking the subconscious motivations behind business choices. Inspired in part by New Hampshire author Wayne Dyer’s book The Power of Intentions as well as spiritually influenced fiction by Paulo Coelho, Alavi uses his protagonist to survey the concept that a person who puts himself in a positive, open state of mind causes inspiration to come and positive events to occur.

It’s just the sort of concept Oprah credits with her own success. Chalk up another one for the Queen of Lazy Afternoons.

Baxter School tries to ban Phoenix freelancer

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In response to our continued efforts to investigate conditions for students at the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf on Mackworth Island, the school has attempted to ban Portland Phoenix freelancer Rick Wormwood from the island, which is state-owned property, and part of which is a state park.

Wormwood has reported for the Phoenix about the school’s history of abuse (see “Why I Hate Mackworth Island”), and has continued to seek access to public records held by the school. He has previously been refused access to school grounds over the school’s objections to his reporting (see letter, “Past is Passed,” by Superintendent Larry Taub, June 18, 2004), and school officials have, as recently as last month, objected to Wormwood’s assignment to cover the school for the Phoenix.

An e-mail message, sent by Baxter Director of Business Operations Peter Gray to Wormwood on July 25, says, “you are no longer allowed access to Mackworth Island,” and says Gray made the decision “based on a long-standing history of confrontational outburts on the island,” alleging that one took place during Wormwood’s July 21 visit to hand-deliver a Freedom of Access request to the guardhouse on the island. The e-mail offers no specifics of the history.

In a surveillance-camera video recording of Wormwood’s July 21 visit to the island, shown to the Phoenix by Gray on July 24, Wormwood can be seen having a several-minute-long conversation with the guard. But the video, which has no accompanying audio, does not show Wormwood acting violent, threatening, or physically confrontational.

Wormwood replied to Gray’s e-mail in a letter seeking the formal legal grounds for the ban, in reply to which Gray wrote on July 27 that the school is seeking a restraining order.

Officials at the school, including Gray, Superintendent Larry Taub, and Director of Communications Jim Gemmell, did not return phone calls seeking comment for this story.

Assistant Attorney General Sarah Forster, who represents the Baxter School, says state law gives the school and the Department of Conservation joint jurisdiction over access to the island — which she describes as an “unusual” use of state land — possibly without a restraining order, though she says, “someone who was unhappy with that could sue them.”

Fighting for freedom: You are the key to government openness

Published in the Portland Phoenix

I carry a copy of Maine’s Freedom of Access Act in my pocket. It’s not only useful as a reference when dealing with government officials who want to hold on to information I or my newspaper would rather they set free, but it’s an excellent reminder of how to approach government officials: with the attitude that they work for us, that their records are our records, and that their business is our business.

A statewide study four years ago and a follow-up in May, whose results were released this week, show how far Maine officials are from remembering who employs them. The studies highlight a serious threat to our democracy: Maine residents are being denied access to important information about our government’s actions, particularly at the local level — information we have the legal right to inspect.

Maine’s Freedom of Access Law is clear and specific when it says you and I have the right to see any piece of paper, any computer file, any sheet of microfilm in the custody of a public official. We have the right to see any videotape, listen to any audio recording, read any e-mail on office computers. It is a simple principle: we own the buildings and pay the workers, so everything inside is ours, too.

Any time you approach a public office, or a public official, you must keep that in mind. Don't walk away empty-handed if an official won't show you the information you want. Demand to be shown the text of the law allowing that information to be kept secret. And don’t walk away unless you personally agree, upon reading the law yourself, that the information is legally secret.

The Freedom of Access Act has your back. It says very clearly at its outset, “public proceedings exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is the intent of the Legislature that ... actions be taken openly and that ... records ... be open to public inspection.”

You do not have to be a town resident, a Maine resident, or even a US citizen. You do not have to give your name, show ID, name your employer, say why you want the information, or give out any information at all about yourself.

We in Maine now have strong proof that public employees are defying the intent of the Legislature. 

This is particularly a problem at the local-government level, where, ironically, the officials denying us access to public records are the same folks whose salaries we pay with our property taxes. Nobody argues that “local control” should mean “local secrecy,” but in some towns that’s what we’re getting, even though there is no cost involved in showing a person a piece of paper that already exists on a desk or shelf somewhere.

In 2002, I helped with a Maine Freedom of Information Coalition public-records audit that found not even six in 10 government offices surveyed complied when approached by a member of the public seeking a record that was certainly public (according to lawyers who helped plan the audit). And nearly two-thirds of public employees who allowed access to the documents broke the law in other ways, by asking for ID or a reason the person wanted the information.

Statewide, the results were so bad that the Maine Legislature created a committee to study the 500-plus exemptions in Maine laws that permit public officials to keep information from the public, and to review any future proposals of laws that would allow government records to be kept secret.

This year, a follow-up audit to test compliance — after the law changes, the missives from organizations intended to help governments do their jobs better, and even after a warning e-mail from one town manager to all the others around the state that an audit was in progress May 3 — found more than one-third of public officials audited still broke the law by denying access. And more than half of the offices that did allow inspection of public documents illegally asked for either a reason the auditor wanted the information, or the auditor’s ID, and some did both.

Me? On audit day this year, I was charged $12.50 just to look at a public document in Old Orchard Beach, in what the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition is highlighting as one of the most serious transgressions of the day. On any other day, I would have refused, pulled out my copy of the law, and argued about it. That day, though, the point of the audit was to find out how these sorts of requests were handled. I paid in cash, didn’t give my name, and got a receipt to prove the law had been broken.

Seeing red: Center for Cultural Exchange’s books out of balance

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The Center for Cultural Exchange is in more serious financial difficulty than anyone outside the organization may realize, and is likely to shift its focus away from its past efforts to bring relatively unknown, but culturally significant, performers to Portland for shows with low ticket prices. What will come instead is anybody’s guess, but it will be less expensive to put together.

The news that it would sell its building just four months after vowing to remain in its landmark Longfellow Square home is just the tip of the bad-news iceberg. Even more troubling is a look at the group’s tax returns, which are public records because of the group’s nonprofit status.

The returns show that since at least 2002, the center’s managers have been spending far beyond the center’s revenues. Board president Jay Young and center co-founder James “Bau” Graves say this was because grant money is hard to come by. Graves, who left in December 2005, says it got harder in more recent years as governments cut back on funding for social-service agencies, forcing them to seek donations from the same individuals and foundations that had long funded arts and cultural groups.

The tax records show, however, that revenues weren’t the problem: income was largely flat from 2002 to 2004, even as the center’s spending increased 12 percent during those years. By 2004, the most recent year for which tax records are available, the group’s operating deficit was $188,390.

Young says 2005 “wasn’t great, either,” and acknowledges that while “various substantial grants from national grant-making organizations came to an end ... even with that level of support we had trouble breaking even.”

Rather than cutting back on expenses, the group’s “budgets were optimistic,” Young says, based in part on the past success of co-founders Graves and Phyllis O’Neill at landing significant grants from national organizations. “Though ’04 and ’05 we continued to apply for similar grants,” but when, “for whatever reason, they just didn’t come in ... we just didn’t adjust our budget as quickly as we should have in hindsight,” Young says.

Grant-revenue plans were supplanted by “plans that assumed more success in local fundraising” than actually occurred, and when the losses kept mounting, the center kept covering its costs. “We’ve borrowed out the equity in the building” by taking money from the endowment in exchange for additional mortgages on the building, Young says.

“The idea of what an endowment can be used for has changed” over the years, says Michael Nilsen, public-affairs director for the Association of Fundraising Professionals, a national organization promoting responsible stewardship of money donated to charities. “Typically an endowment is for a particular purpose,” and using that money for another purpose might violate the goals the money’s original donors had in making the gift. But Nilsen says that if the board talked about the decision — which Young says they did — and agreed the risk of never getting back the money being taken from the endowment was acceptable given the circumstances (including, in this case, a mortgage to the endowment), it “might pass the test,” though he cautions, “I don’t think it’s necessarily a practice that charities should be doing all the time.”

How much the mortgages total, “I don’t want to say, since we’re trying to sell the building,” Young says. But once the building sells, there will be “liquid assets, in the tens of thousands of dollars,” and an endowment back at its full strength of $280,000, which Young notes is still small for an endowment.

The building, bought for a song in the mid-1980s — Graves recalls it being either $65,000 or $67,000 — had about $1 million in improvements done, he says, though it’s now on the market for $735,000.

Back in February, when the group announced it would keep its home, executive director Lisa DiFranza says, the prevailing wisdom was “that we could sort of blast through” and make it through the rough patch. Now, after a few months to look over the books, she believes selling is the right move.

The operation has always been supported primarily by grants and donations, with never more than 20 percent of its annual revenue coming from ticket sales, but in 2004 things were particularly bad: ticket sales were not enough to cover either the salaries of the permanent staff (co-founders Graves and Phyllis O’Neill and financial manager Bev Dacey) or the operating deficit, the amount spent above revenue. Young says ticket revenue, even though prices were cheap to ensure people could afford to come to shows, is “way low for an arts-presenting organization.”

Graves, who left the center a few weeks after the 2004 tax filing was completed, says the financial picture was not part of his decision to depart.

Young says the board is “moving in some new directions,” away from the “concert-oriented” approach of Graves and O’Neill, which he calls “pretty esoteric, unique programming” that brought largely unknown performers to the city, where “there isn’t a built-in audience.”

When “trying to build an audience,” and setting low prices, “we just need a heavier subsidy” from local and national sources, from whom “it’s really just impossible to raise that money.” Even if the place sells out, the center’s auditorium holds just shy of 200 people, which at $20 a ticket — which was high in the center’s heyday — only brought in $4000.

Former executive director Lisa DiFranza, whose transition to a consultant role comes as a result of the lack of money to pay her a full-time salary, also describes the center’s previous model as “not a viable option.”

Because the group was mostly self-contained, not operating as a vehicle for funding other arts or culture organizations in the area, the damage will be limited, but Portland will lose a venue that was home to performances as diverse as Celtic-music stars Altan, African-style dancers from Harlem in concert with Maine gospel singers, and fashion shows of international traditional dress. The group also organized performances and events at other venues, including the Festival of Cultural Exchange, bringing together local and international artists and performers along Congress Street in 2004 and 2005.

Young is direct in saying that the center “can’t afford to run promoter’s risks,” the term for what non-show-biz folks call “you book some act and you hope the tickets sell.”

So there will be fewer shows, if perhaps any at all, for the time being — DiFranza notes it is likely the center will be entirely without a space for some unknown length of time — but Young expects the center will work with other promoters and community organizations to “support local immigrant and ethnic communities.”

The building has generated some interest, with “a couple people” taking tours, but no formal offers yet, Young says. He also says the group has recommitted to spending within its means, whatever those may be. “We’ll come out of this in financially solid shape,” he says.

George vs. George: Compare and contrast

published in the Portland Phoenix and the Boston Phoenix

President George W. Bush is the third man named George to hold the head office of our republic, after his father and George Washington. That makes him, effectively, President George III. The last time our country was ruled by a George III, the American colonists undertook a years-long bloody struggle to overthrow him. Let’s compare and contrast today’s George with the one we got rid of in 1782.

King George III	President George III
He ran up the national debt far beyond the country’s ability to pay, spending millions on occupation of faraway lands (the American colonies in particular), on entangling wars (against France and Spain), and in government subsidies to major corporations (especially the East India Company).	H e ran up the national debt far beyond the country’s ability to pay, spending billions on occupation of faraway lands (Iraq and Afghanistan in particular), on entangling wars (against Iraqi insurgents and the Taliban), and in government tax breaks and overpayments for services to major corporations (especially Enron and Halliburton).
He turned over administration of a vast Asian country to a private company. (India was overseen almost exclusively by the corporate officers of the East India Company.)	He turned over logistics support and some administration of a vast military operation to private companies. (Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown & Root are the major operators of US military bases and outposts around the globe.)
He was roundly criticized by political opponents for attempting to expand the authority of the monarchy well beyond its traditional role.	He was roundly criticized by political opponents — and members of his own party — for attempting to expand the authority of the presidency well beyond its constitutional role.
He donated thousands of books to the public, to start a national library.	He instituted (then failed to fully fund) an expensive, overarching, nationwide education-reform plan, which has yet to show any positive results.
He was a serious student of science, including having his own astronomical observatory.	He often rejected scientific arguments in favor of religious or ideological beliefs, even as he increased funding to the National Science Foundation.
He was very interested in agriculture, and was called “Farmer George” for the time he spent on his royal estates.	H e did a lot of brush clearing on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, during his “vacations” and “working holidays” there.
He took a strong interest in government-policy debates, and had a sometimes-heavy hand in their outcomes.	His orders and those of his deputies were often invoked to “edit” scientific reports issued by government agencies, to remove information that would support ideologies other than those held by the White House.
He was blamed for things, like the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend duties of 1767, that Parliament supported, undertook, and enforced, even though they were not always his ideas.	He was blamed for things, like the US refusal to join the Kyoto Protocol, that Congress supported and undertook on its own.
He paid for the founding of the Royal Academy of Arts.	His budgets, even after cutbacks in Congress, have increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
He did not learn to read until age 11.	He bragged about being a C student while at Yale University.
He imprisoned political opponents andfree-speech advocates.	His administration imprisoned American citizens without trial and investigated journalists for discovering inconvenient truths about his government.
His administration redefined the laws of treason to better control political opponents.	H is administration redefined the laws of national security, freedom of information, and terrorism, and then used them to spy on and manipulate political opponents.
He was eventually deemed mentally unfit to rule, by reason of insanity.	Nothing official yet.

Sources UK Government History; BBC; Spartacus Encyclopedia of British History; Associated Press reports; US federal records.

Searching themselves: New book recounts the hunt for a woman and her killer

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The authors of Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine had no way of knowing their book about the search for Amy St. Laurent, who went missing, as the news reports ominously intoned, “after a night out in the Old Port” in 2001, would come out at a time when the Portland City Council was talking about how to control the nightlife in the city’s busiest district.

They didn’t know that it would come out just a few months after the Old Port disappearances of two other people — one of whom, Lynn Moran, was later discovered dead of no apparent foul play in the water near the Portland ferry terminal; the other, Siphat Chau, is still missing.

Joseph K. Loughlin, who is credited on the book’s cover with his former rank of captain (he is now a deputy chief of the Portland police), and Kate Clark Flora, a former Maine assistant attorney general, don’t directly address the issue of partying in the Old Port, but their book offers a law-enforcement officer’s view of Wharf Street.

After a lovely description of the Old Port — “a mecca for tourists, who . . . flock to the interesting shops and restaurants” — even Flora’s prose gets shrill: “At night, it also becomes a destination for another crowd. . . . Underage teens looking for life beyond the empty streets of their small towns rub elbows with bikers, college students, drug dealers, gangsters, and young professionals. Fights are common. Crowd control is a perennial problem, especially late in the evening as the bars and clubs close, releasing thousands of patrons who are drunk, rowdy, and uninhibited onto the narrow old streets. At closing time, the swarm of bodies on Wharf Street can become so dense in the summer months the uniformed cops find it difficult to see each other when they’re only 10 to 15 feet apart.”

The book veers back and forth between two voices, Loughlin’s play-by-play first-person recollections of the investigation, and Flora’s reporter style, explaining, giving context, sharing an outsider’s wonder at the dedication police officers have to bring to their jobs. Loughlin's tone is authentic and gives an interesting picture of the demands of everyday police life. But Flora's tone misses. Having set the stage, she then waits more than 60 pages to point out that — oh yes! — Amy St. Laurent didn’t disappear in the midsummer crush on Wharf Street, but in late October, and voluntarily left a bar on Middle Street, a far less-busy place in terms of crowds at closing time, for a house on Brighton Avenue.

But despite these shortcomings, the book is a strong read, with a compelling set of elements — it is, after all, a true-crime book — that will bring readers closer to the story behind the news coverage.

Loughlin, who headed the city's detective bureau at the time, defers credit even from himself: “The real heroes in this book are” Danny Young and Scott Harakles, the lead detectives on the case, who spent sleepless nights and countless hours searching for St. Laurent and her killer.

But the most riveting moment, by far, in the entire volume, is the recounting, in tight counterpoint, by Flora and, most compellingly, Loughlin, of the discovery of St. Laurent’s body.

The disbelief is almost raw, even years later, as Loughlin says, “I still can’t believe we found her.”

The fulfillment of the title, easily the most voyeuristic chapter of the book, comes only halfway through the narrative. Finding Amy quickly turns to the subject of convicting Amy’s killer, Jeffrey Gorman, who was arrested while on the lam in Alabanma four days after St. Laurent's body was found, and the story becomes a cautionary tale, of sorts — warning would-be criminals about the vast resources police can draw on, most strikingly their personal commitment to doing the job.

But the book also, and particularly in the endnotes, serves as a warning to women. Loughlin notes that sexual predators are drugging drinks in the Old Port, as in most other club districts, and sexual assaults are common, though fatal ones are still rare.

Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine (University Press of New England) | Captain Joseph K. Loughlin + Kate Clark Flora | May 12, 7 pm | Books Etc, 38 Exchange St, Portland | 207.774.0626 | May 18, 7 pm | Kennebunk Public Library, 112 Main St, Kennebunk | 207.985.2173

Amy St. Laurent Foundation | Box 664, Yarmouth, ME 04096 | supporting Rape Aggression Defense training + other programs receives a portion of the book-sales proceeds

Sidebar: Pill pressure and reproductive rights: What are they? What’s in them? What do they do?

Published in the Portland Phoenix

There are dozens of variations on the birth-control pill, all of which have differing amounts of various chemicals simulating two hormones: progesterone (produced by the placenta during pregnancy) and estrogen (produced by the ovaries as they mature and release eggs). The popularity of certain brands may be tied more to their manufacturers' advertising budgets than anything else; variations on the Pill are among the most heavily-marketed drugs in the marketplace.

Typically, the Pill works by tricking a woman’s body into thinking it is already pregnant. That prevents ovulation, in which an egg is released from an ovary into the fallopian tubes, ready to be fertilized and to implant in the uterine lining. The various types of pills also have differing side effects, and some are thought to have lower incidence of certain side effects. Side effects vary not only from pill type to pill type, but from woman to woman.

The major commercially available brands of birth-control pills range in level from 0.05 mg of a synthetic progesterone (levonorgestronel, in Triphasil, Tri-Levlen, and Trivora) to 3 mg of another (drospirenone, in Yasmin), and from no estrogen at all (in Ortho Micronor and DepoSubQ-Provera, also called “the shot”) to 0.05 mg ethinyl estradiol (in Necon 1/50, Norinyl 1/50, Ortho-Novum 1/50, and Ovcon-50). Those with no estrogen, also known as “progesterone-only” pills, generally have fewer side-effects, because they do not have any estrogen in them to cause more.

Generally speaking, birth-control pills’ side effects can include nausea, headaches, mood changes, blood-pressure changes, skin problems, skin improvements, changes in the internal texture or external appearance of the breasts, vaginal irritation, urinary-tract infections, and irregular bleeding (also called “breakthrough bleeding” or “spotting”). Consult your doctor and read the documents accompanying your specific brand of pills to find out more.

SOURCES: Pill manufacturers’ Web sites, www.clevelandclinic.org

Shifting sands: Pill pressure and reproductive rights

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Reproductive rights are a moving target. No matter what decisions are made by the courts, Congress, or state legislators, birth control and reproductive rights are at the nexus of public policy, individual privacy, health-care regulations, ethical arguments, religious beliefs, and morality. As individual and societal interpretations of and positions on all of those elements shift with time, so will the laws, guidelines, rules, and social “acceptability” of a spectrum of options available to women, and more recently, men, regarding their rights and obligations, their desire and ability to bear children — or not — in the ways they want.

Thirty-five years ago, in 1971, the US Supreme Court issued its first-ever ruling on the subject of abortion, upholding a District of Columbia law allowing an abortion to protect the life or health of the mother. The court’s ruling in the case, United States v. Vuitch, held not only that abortions were legal, but that the word “health” in the law “includes psychological as well as physical well-being,” effectively opening a door to any woman who wanted to have an abortion.

But the fact that most states outlawed abortion except in cases where the mother’s life was at risk — even if her health would have been damaged in some way, so long as she survived — made the Vuitch decision a key component in the Roe v. Wade arguments and decisions. The ruling, handed down just eight months before the December 1971 first round of oral arguments for Roe, was the subject of much discussion between the attorneys and the justices, and figured prominently in both rounds of oral arguments for Roe (the second held in October 1972). (Vuitch was, in fact, the subject of the first question from the bench in the second round, according to official transcripts of the event.) And the Vuitch ruling draws together the legal framework for arguing that a fetus is not a “person,” as intended in the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits depriving a person of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

That argument was later expanded upon in the Roe decision, in which the Court noted that all of the references to “person” in the Constitution are to people who have been born already — not to the unborn.

At this very moment in the decision, however, just as the fetus-as-non-person argument was hitting its stride, its one weakness is also revealed: if a fetus were somehow to be included in the legal definition of “person,” its right to life would be guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Until Roe, however, women had to travel from one state to another to find places to procure abortions legally. Now, with the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Associate Justice Samuel Alito widely expected to result in a reversal of Roe, and with Planned Parenthood conducting a “Save Roe” campaign and the National Pro-Life Alliance sending mailers around the nation seeking donations to “reverse Roe v. Wade,” women are seeking secure ways to exercise control over their bodies, their lives, and their futures.

One of those methods, and the most common for women to use, is birth-control pills. (For men it is condoms.) The Pill is usually made with estrogen taken from the urine of pregnant horses, though it’s also manufactured with synthetic versions of that hormone and a related hormone, progesterone. Clinical studies show that the Pill (or really, the many variations on it) is between 92 and 95 percent effective in preventing pregnancy.

The Pill’s various side effects include some “desirable” ones, such as regulating the timing and quantity of menstruation, preventing acne and other skin problems, and, in some cases, reducing the risk of breast diseases, ovarian cysts, and uterine cancer.

But the Pill is not an easy answer. Taking it has medical risks, for which there are voluminous pages of warnings issued with every filled prescription. More than that, though, the Pill does not allow its users to avoid complicated questions about lifestyle, health, future, and morality. And in some cases, the Pill brings those questions closer.

In the past year, several lawsuits have been filed against the manufacturers of Ortho-Evra, a birth-control medication administered through a medication-infused patch that stays on a woman’s skin for weeks at a time, instead of being administered by daily doses of the Pill. The suits have generally alleged that the patch unacceptably increased the risk of stroke in women using it as a form of birth control, and allege that in as many as 20 cases the patch caused the death of a woman on the patch. (The patch’s manufacturer, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, has denied knowledge of problems with the patch, though that denial has come under fire as a result of the discovery, in lawsuits, of internal company documents some say refute it.)

Earlier this year, a Michigan man filed a federal lawsuit effectively seeking the right not to be a father. According to the lawsuit, Matthew Dubay was in a relationship with a woman during which he was very clear to her that he did not ever want to be a father or have children. The woman allegedly told him that she was infertile and using contraception (though what kind is not laid out in the suit, some news reports have assumed she was on the Pill). But the woman got pregnant all the same, and carried the baby to term. She then sought a court order for child-support payments, which Dubay is fighting, arguing that he deserves an analogous right to her unilateral right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. That is, he is seeking the right not to be a father, in a case that is being called “Roe v. Wade for men,” just proving that no matter how much — or how little — is ever actually “settled,” there’s always more to talk about, argue about, and figure out.

Beats moving: Press Herald editor heading south

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In a tiny item buried in the Portland Press Herald’s “Business Briefcase” column Wednesday, April 12, and not posted to the front page of the paper’s Web site until the Associated Press moved its version of the story online in the early afternoon, was the announcement that Eric Conrad, the paper’s managing editor for the past five years, is leaving May 1 to become the editor of the News-Times in Danbury, Connecticut, where he starts May 22.

“The last year or two in the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking I wanted to be a top editor,” Conrad says. He has been trying to find a “good paper” in a “good company” that would offer him a top post and the opportunity to live in a community where it would be good for him to raise his two daughters, one of whom is finishing second grade this year, and the other of whom will start kindergarten in the fall. He wanted the new job to be in New England as well, which “limits your options,” Conrad says.

In part as a result of that limitation, Conrad is moving to a paper about half the size of his existing employer. The newsroom at the Press Herald (daily circulation: 70,000) employs about 100 people; the Maine Sunday Telegram’s circulation is 110,000. Conrad’s new paper has about 50 people in its newsroom and serves 30,000 daily readers and 35,000 on Sunday.

“For me, I think that’s a good thing,” Conrad says, explaining he is a “hands-on” editor. He has moved to a smaller paper before, leaving the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel in Florida to come to Maine as the Press Herald’s city editor in 1995. He has also served as assistant managing editor for news and assistant managing editor for sports.

The News-Times is owned by Ottaway Newspapers, which calls itself “the community newspaper subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co.,” which owns the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and the Far Eastern Economic Review, among others.

Ottaway’s holdings in New England are the York Weekly and the York County Coast Star in Maine; in New Hampshire: the Portsmouth Herald, the Hampton Union, the News-Letter in Exeter, and the Rockingham News in Plaistow; in Massachusetts: the Cape Cod Times, the Nantucket Inquirer & Mirror, the Barnstable Patriot, and the Standard-Times in New Bedford; and in Connecticut: the Spectrum in New Milford, and the News-Times. The chain’s flagship is the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, New York, with a Sunday circulation of nearly 89,000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s report of the third quarter of 2005.

Press Herald Editor-in-Chief Jeannine Guttman could not be reached for comment directly, but her assistant, Jennifer Lizotte, forwarded a company-wide memo Guttman issued April 11, lauding Conrad’s “no-nonsense style, strong leadership and . . . aggressive approach to news.” Guttman’s memo also says Guttman will begin a search for a replacement “as soon as possible.”

Portland Newspaper Guild Vice-President Tom Bell, who helps lead the union representing reporters at the paper, says the union has no response to Conrad’s departure, but among staff “there’s some anxiety about who will replace” Conrad, who was known for being “smart, capable, and intelligent.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if the paper gets better when I’m gone,” Conrad says, anticipating that the management change will bring new vision to the paper. It has been struggling with “declining circulation and flat advertising revenue,” according to a 193-word business brief buried on page four of the business section on October 21, 2005. The paper imposed a hiring freeze “for all but critical positions” back then, and projected staff cuts “of some form.”

The Ottaway papers’ revenue was up “slightly” in the fourth quarter of 2005, with a one-percent increase in ad revenue, even as ad-sales volume declined six percent. Operating costs climbed as well, spurring promises of “increasing profits at Ottaway in 2006,” according to financial statements and data posted on DowJones.com.

In his new post, Conrad will also oversee the paper’s Web site, which is a different arrangement from what he had at the Press Herald, where “MaineToday[.com] and our newsroom are separate things,” Conrad says. There’s a chance for reunification: MaineToday.com editor Scott Hersey, who, along with other company brass, took lots of heat when the site started requiring user registrations, was quietly let go, or just left, in January, leaving the site leaderless even now.

Conrad’s wife, special projects writer Barbara Walsh, will be going with him to Connecticut. In a move unnoted in the pages of the paper, she left the paper “a couple weeks ago,” according to Conrad, to work on a book project. Bell says she took a leave of absence a few months ago, and recently formalized her departure to work on the book, about a Newfoundland sailing disaster.

Walsh has been one of the Press Herald’s claims to fame, on the basis of her contributions on the staff of the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune when that paper won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for general news, for its reporting on the Willie Horton scandal in Massachusetts, which drew attention to problems in that state’s prison system and hurt the election chances of former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, who was running for President.

Seen + heard: The Maine Deaf Film Festival shows everyone a new world

Published in the Portland Phoenix

These could easily be stories of alienation, of separation, of frustration. And those are here. But they are not in the majority of the fare at the Maine Deaf Film Festival, to be held on Saturday, April 15, on USM’s Portland campus.

Certainly there are the poignant, heart-wrenching stories of aloneness, of confusion, of fleeting connections, like in Stille Liebe, a Swiss film made in 2001 whose name, translated from the German, means “Secret Love.” Stille Liebe follows the life of a nun, played by famed European actress Emmanuelle Laborit, who was born deaf and has made a career of playing deaf characters in films that have won countless awards all across the continent.

But even as the film depicts her discovery of, and connection with, a deaf pickpocket from Latvia, and the change the relationship prompts in her life, it has another twist right out in front of everyone: “Stille,” in German, means not just “secret.” It also means “silent.”

A number of these films have puns and jokes in their names, as their deaf creators and actors play with a language not entirely their own, with the title No Talking Allowed, for example.

And that film also has what may be the most insightful look at deaf culture for hearing people — exploring the things hearing people do that drive deaf people crazy, as well as deaf people’s fears of a hearing world.

“We try to pick films that our deaf audience will identify with,” says USM linguistics lecturer John Dunleavy, one of the event organizers, who is deaf.

The concept that people have to be — or at least act — hearing to be “normal” is also explored in the British film Chronic Embarrassment, in which deaf people, as they often do, go to nightclubs pretending to be hearing because, well, nobody can really hear in a club. (The British Sign Language used in the film means the subtitles will be useful even for deaf audience members, who are likely to know American Sign Language best. They will recognize some of the signs but not all of them, and may be particularly confused by the fingerspelling alphabet used in Britain, which uses both hands, rather than just one, as with ASL.)

At a press screening (which only the Phoenix attended, to the shame of the other media around the city), Dunleavy, USM linguistics lecturer Brenda Schertz (both teachers of ASL), and several of their students explained some of the films’ subtle nuances.

Text, Batteries, and Earwax posits two divergent sub-cultures against each other, the “deaf culture,” in which people embrace signing and do not try to learn to talk, and the “oral culture,” in which people (often with partial hearing) do learn to talk, attempting to function as hearing people, and not always learning to sign.

There are also some straight-up silly films, including an eight-short series called “Pinky Tells the Real Story,” in which deaf actor and director Pinky Aiello explores the virtues and pitfalls of the Video Relay Service, one of the technologies hearing people pay for in our phone bills (grouped under the Universal Service Fund). With the VRS system, a replacement for the TTY device (which itself was barely a step above a telegraph), a deaf person can use sign language, combined with a video camera and a high-speed Internet connection, to communicate, through an interpreter, with a hearing person over the telephone.

Aiello’s shorts are laughably funny, if you understand the concepts she’s working with, including the idea that a person who is Too Far from the screen (the title of one of the shorts) is effectively whispering to the interpreter, who can barely see the signs. Many of the conceits treated in these films are inside jokes, but the frustration a deaf person has with an automated-answering system (in Get Real Live Person) is universal.

There are pictures here of a culture few of us will ever see — a thriving, vibrant culture with not just a lot of signs, but also a powerful voice.

Maine Deaf Film Festival | April 15, 1-10 pm | Luther Bonney Auditorium, USM, Portland | "inside deaf culture" films 1-3:30 pm | film discussion 3:30-3:45 pm | "telling it like it is" films 3:45-4:15 pm | film discussion with Pinky Aiell 4:30-5 pm | reception 5-6:30 pm | "British humor" films 6:30-7:15 pm | film discussion 7:15-7:30 pm | "to be deaf or not to be deaf" films 7:30-8 pm | feature film Stille Liebe (Secret Love) 8-9:30 pm | short films 9:30-10:30 pm | $15 full day, $8 half day | 207.780.4989 | TTY 207.780.4069

On the Web
Maine Deaf Film Festival: http://deaffilmfest.tripod.com/

USM's Radio days: WMPG launches election coverage

Published in the Portland Phoenix

WMPG-FM (90.9 and 104.1 FM) has launched news coverage of the upcoming elections, with the first installment already aired and posted online at the station’s Web site, www.wmpg.org.

While the community-minded, donation-funded station, based at the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus, already has several talk and public-affairs programs on its regular schedule, “none of them are really news reporting, per se,” says program director Dave Bunker.

The new effort comes in part as a result of a listener survey taken last fall, in which nearly 80 percent of the 400 respondents said they would be at least “somewhat” interested in hearing local news produced on WMPG, Bunker says, noting that more than 50 percent of the respondents expressed “strong” interest in WMPG launching news coverage.

However, “radio news is the single most expensive and time-consuming . . . radio to make,” Bunker says.

So without the money or the production space or the production staff, Bunker’s approach is a bit toned down, using some of the station’s senior volunteer-producers as editors and putting together an editorial process for handling stories to air in the weeks before the June 13 primaries and the November 7 general election.

The focus will be on state and local races, with particular attention to those in greater Portland, Bunker says, though the first edition, aired in late March and reported by WMPG volunteer Erik Eisele (also a Phoenix intern this semester), focused on the US Senate race for the seat now occupied by Republican Olympia Snowe. She is running for re-election, and two Democrats, Jean Hay Bright and Eric Mehnert, will be in the primary seeking to oppose her.

Bunker says he hopes to be able to schedule reports to start at specific times each day, especially in the immediate lead-up to the election days, though he stressed that the reports will be only as long or as short as they need to be, with “no filler” to make the spots last a pre-defined amount of time.

“I want it to be substantive,” Bunker says. “It may eventually lead to having a full-fledged news department,” and he is very aware that “you only get one chance to establish your credibility.”

Sidebar: Comic economics

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Nearly none of Maine’s comedians make their living at it — really only the folks who make it big and travel regularly around the country can do that. The rest work office jobs, retail counters, and anywhere else they can — just like other young, emerging artists and performers.

For a night of stand-up at the Connection, a local comic won’t make anything at all, says owner Oliver Keithly and booker Tim Ferrell: they’re just putting in their time, earning experience. Liquid Blue’s rotating cast of about 10 local performers make anywhere from $20 to $150 each, according to regular host Tammy Pooler, depending on how many people come in.

National headliners at both those venues make between $250 to $500, with Connection hosts and feature performers making $50 to $75 and $100 to $200 respectively, Ferrell says. “You’re not going to make money in comedy for the first four years” at least.

The money to pay comedians comes from the box-office receipts — between $5 and $12 for most shows — with bar receipts covering other costs, Ferrell says. The Connection packs people in, filling about 150 seats most nights, especially in the summer. Liquid Blue’s biggest show packed the house with about 100 people standing and sitting, according to club owner Tom Manning.

Sidebar: Banned? Getting a gig at the Connection

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Tammy Pooler, a Liquid Blue regular, says she spent $1000 on classes through the Connection and performed there sporadically for a couple years, before deciding she wanted more stage time. But when folks at the Connection found out she was looking elsewhere, she says they told her she wouldn’t be booked at the Connection anymore.

“Even though you spent so much money on the class, they don’t want you to go anywhere else,” says Pooler, who performed in the Connection’s “Hot New Talent” show in 2003. Her accusation of a threatened “ban” is echoed by half a dozen other comics who also perform outside the Connection, and denied by Connection owner Oliver Keithly.

He says he doesn’t bar comics from his club for performing elsewhere, but does give “preference” to comics who hang out at his club and wait their turn, filling in for folks who don’t show up, getting occasional spots to work on new material, eventually building up to a regular gig. “It takes a while,” Keithly says.

Tim Ferrell, the comedy-class teacher who also books the Connection, denies the club bans performers for performing elsewhere. He acknowledges, however, that there is a tipping point, unspecified but real, which could put a performer into a less-than-favored category. “There is,” Ferrell says, “a limit to what we will indulge.”

Karen Morgan, who hosts the Wednesday–night showcases at the Connection, says she believes people who learned at the club should stay there to develop and grow, out of a sense of mutual loyalty.

Seth Bond Perry took Ferrell’s class, and credits it with his success on stages all over Portland. When he first finished the class, he waited his turn on the Comedy Connection’s stage. But after a year, the last half of which saw him onstage five minutes a month, “for the amount of time I was getting, on off nights, I just didn’t consider myself one of the players” at the Connection.

Though he says he was told that if he played there he wouldn’t be booked at the Connection, Perry tried out a Liquid Blue show and “had so much fun” he decided to stay. Now he’s getting slots of 10 minutes or more every week at Liquid Blue, and practices at the Acoustic Coffee open-mic nights every other week.

“I was more in charge of my own destiny,” not just “waiting to be given a slot,” Perry says. After the class ended, “I didn’t realize there was more that I could do,” but once he found out there were other stages, other audiences, Perry never looked back.

Comedian Brian Brinegar says he felt his advancement was limited by Keithly’s preference to work with folks who perform exclusively at the Connection. Now, “I perform four or five times a week sometimes” — a level of exposure and practice he says he would never get at the Connection.

“There’s a lot of comics that don’t care if they’re banned” from the Connection so long as they get stage time, and even a little cash, says Pooler, who started Laugh Your Ass Off Productions to compete with the Connection’s comedian-booking business. “The more I work to get shows, the more people say, ‘Now I dare to leave.’”

Standing up: Portland’s comedy scene explodes

Published in the Portland Phoenix

For more than a decade Portland has had only one venue for stand-up comedy, the Comedy Connection, on Custom House Wharf. But today, some see — or at least hope to see — the city’s comedy scene as being on the brink of national prominence. There are now 15 local stages devoting time to comedy and an overflow of new comics to fill them.

Younger local comedians are comparing Portland’s current funny-business landscape to Seattle’s homegrown grunge-music scene of the early 1990s, and Maine comics are beginning to break into larger markets. Leading lights — most notably Bob Marley — are going on world tours but still come home, to growing audiences and rapidly multiplying venues.

Portland’s schtick circuit has truly exploded during the past year. Though it’s still a far smaller scene than, say, Boston’s, where three major clubs attract top-notch national performers nearly every night of the week, Portland is coming on strong. There are five venues with regularly scheduled weekly or bi-weekly comedy programs and 10 more that host occasional stand-up shows. Portland comedy fans can now see at least one show six nights a week — and often have more than one to choose from. (See “Regular Comedy” and “Now + Again Comedy,” below)

“I think Portland is poised on the edge of — at least in comedy — where we can draw national attention to us,” says Seth Bond Perry, in his second year of stand-up.

Perry played a gig in Boston on March 19 — his first there — and has high hopes to do more. In the meantime, “I play anywhere I can find,” he says. And Portland is welcoming. “It is the kind of town that is open to all kinds of art,” including standing in front of microphone working hard to make people laugh.

Perry, like many of Portland’s comics, learned his craft through a class at the Comedy Connection. Perry estimates there are “at least 100” comics in Portland who are looking for the elusive resource for all performers — stage time.

Tim Ferrell, the class’s teacher, who also books comedians at the Connection, estimates that between 150 and 170 students have been graduated from the classes over the past couple years, and now form part of what he calls Portland’s “terrific talent pool.”

Ferrell agrees with Perry, that in the past couple years “the comedy scene has changed dramatically,” with bigger audiences, more comics, and better energy.

Opening up
Bob Marley, the dean of Maine comedians, contrasting the experience of today’s break-in Portland comedians with his own 15 years ago, sees the good — more venues to perform in — and the bad: “It’s kind of a little bit easier to get in.”

“When we started out, we were working bars” — sometimes literally standing on the bar shouting out jokes — “and we would drive to Boston every night,” Marley recalls.

It took a bigger commitment back then, agrees Quinn Collins of Falmouth, who has been moonlighting doing stand-up for 10 years, while practicing law. “I didn’t think anything of driving two or three hours for a five- or 10-minute show,” says Collins, who once drove more than five hours to Poughkeepsie, New York, for a 20-minute bit, then turned around and drove back.

Marley and Collins — and Ferrell and Comedy Connection owner Oliver Keithly — agree that comedy is “an endurance contest.” As Collins puts it: the people who are good get better, and the people who are not fall away.

These days, the barrier is lower for the newcomers. Novice comic Seth Perry holds down a day job and performs on nights and weekends. Brian Brinegar, a motivated and energetic young father who recently moved to Maine from California, does the same. Tammy Pooler, one of the ringleaders of the comedy expansion in the city, is a mother, and runs a retail store and the Laugh Your Ass Off Productions comedy-booking agency, in addition to performing stand-up herself. (See “Comic Economics” ).

These are not folks who have to give up their regular lives to pursue their passions, though all say they are prepared to. “I’m either going to make it big or I’m not,” says Perry fatalistically. Brinegar, meanwhile, insists he will one day soon be on Premium Blend, the Comedy Central television network’s showcase night that boosts mid-level comics into the limelight.

Keithly, who has booked comedy for more than 20 years (see “What’s the Connection?,” below), says he has been working since his club opened on Wharf Street about 12 years ago to “have a strong community” of comedians and comedy audiences in Portland.

Now, “it’s the type of atmosphere that I always wanted to have,” he says. Through the class and in dealings with local comedians who perform on showcase nights (see “Comedy Lingo,” below), Keithly says he is “trying to create an environment . . . where people can learn the art-form the way that it’s been taught for years” — namely, by watching other comics work, constantly developing new material, and trying it out. Keithly is looking for “people who are serious, who have a serious passion for the art form,” which he estimates at about four percent of the graduates of Ferrell’s class.

By contrast, Ferrell estimates that more than 80 percent want the class to “lead to something else” in show business. And that 76-percent difference may be one of the reasons behind the sudden expansion of Portland’s scene.

In the middle
With Keithly believing that one in 25 graduates is serious enough to make it, and Ferrell saying four out of five want to make it, there’s plenty of room for disagreement. (See “Banned?” ).

Pooler, for example, says she got frustrated with performing only about five minutes a month at the Connection. “There’s way too many comics that want stage time” to be satisfied with just the Connection, she says. “When you’re a comic, you just thrive on having a stage.”

She met up with Tom Manning, owner of Liquid Blue, at a point when he was thinking about how to “build a comedy scene,” he says. And for a year Liquid Blue has had a stand-up comedy show on Saturday nights. The audience grew so big in the first summer that late that season, Manning added a Friday–night show as well. (On the other nights, Liquid Blue offers a DJ and dancing.)

Perry is a regular at Manning’s club, as wells as at the open-mic nights held every other week Acoustic Coffee, on Danforth Street. “When I meet the national comics, they tell me, ‘go out and do what you’re doing, play any stage you can,’” he says.

Perry spent about a year at the Connection after graduating from Ferrell’s class, but by the end he, like Pooler, found himself reduced to a single five-minute gig each month. So he, too, looked elsewhere for an audience.

At about the same time, Brinegar, just arrived from California, got a good audience response in the Portland’s Funniest Professional contest, sponsored every year by the Comedy Connection — but was disqualified for going over the five-minute time limit. Five minutes may not seem like much, but it’s a daunting task to keep a crowd amused — let alone laughing — for that length of time.

He considered taking Ferrell’s class as an entree to stage time at the Connection, after being told it had no open-mic nights, and no opportunity for would-be comics to bring paying customers to the club in exchange for five minutes with the microphone.

“I didn’t want to sink money and time” — both of which he says were in short supply — into the $300 eight-week class with no sure “return on investment.” So Brinegar ended up at Acoustic Coffee, where he met Perry and Pooler, as well as Ian Harvie, a Bridgton native with ties to the Connection. Harvie got a gig there for Brinegar, who also began performing at some of the “satellite” clubs the Connection books, like Spectators Sports Bar in Sanford. He has since reconnected with Pooler, and become an independent comedian booking some shows for himself and others through Pooler’s Laugh Your Ass Off agency.

Not all comedians leave the Connection. Karen Morgan, a Cumberland mother of three and a former attorney, started out in Ferrell’s class and then did well in the Portland’s Funniest Professional show in 2004. She was a 2005 finalist (and 2006 semi-finalist) in Nick at Nite’s “America’s Funniest Mom” competition, an annual reality-TV show and national search for mothers who are good comedians.

Like many Comedy Connection regulars, Morgan has never even been to a comedy show at a competing venue. She hosts a Wednesday night showcase at the Connection, which continued through the winter this year, partly in response to the number of people who want to get up on stage, says club owner Keithly. This summer, he will for the first time open a Tuesday-night showcase as well.

Morgan, who also is part of a trio of comedian-moms called “Mama’s Night Out,” says the Connection is “a really really good room” to work in, and preaches patience for those who wish to “make it big.”

“You have to sort of pay your dues in the showcase nights,” she says, noting that “the only way to get good is to do it over and over.”

Where to turn?
Liquid Blue’s Manning says his foray into comedy was “not about making money. This was about creating something that wasn’t there in Portland.”

And even now, a year on, comedy is a “loss leader” — a way to get people into the club who might not otherwise come. Manning’s operating costs include paying the comics, but, he says, the acts do attract new folks to his venue.

Manning and others at venues featuring comedy have found an expanded demographic showing up on laugh nights, which Manning says shows that people in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s “want to come and experience the Old Port” and feel safe doing so. At the same time, Acoustic Coffee made its weekly open-mic night an every-other-week event, in part because stand-up brought in fewer folks than live musicians do, according to Brinegar.

The Comedy Connection is also banking on an expanded draw, with plans to book stand-up comics at neighboring Boone’s Restaurant as part of that venue’s conversion to host corporate and group functions, Ferrell says.

Dan Drouin, owner of Thatcher’s in Westbrook, hopes to have Laugh Your Ass Off comics “at least once a month.” Recent shows have gone “really well” with “a lot of response,” particularly from people who don’t want to go into the Old Port. “It would be great if there were more places” for folks to go for comedy, he says.

Steve Burnette, the new producing director at the Biddeford City Theater, wants to be one of those places. His take, influenced in part by his experience with the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago, is to have an in-house improvisation and sketch-comedy group who can fill in between theatrical runs and other larger shows. Burnette says he also plans to have local stand-up a couple of nights a year.

Another aspect of the scene will come from Tim Reed, the new booking manager at Asylum, who has a couple of major stand-up comics coming to town — Todd Barry and Nick DiPaolo, who have been on Comedy Central — in April. They’re the kind of comics Reed says he wants to see in person, and will have local openers (Brinegar and Eggbot will open for Barry in early April).

Moving on
Nellie Coes, who took Ferrell’s class and went straight into this year’s “America’s Funniest Mom” competition, also credits Ferrell’s class and Keithly’s club with generating enough would-be comics to drive the rapid changes in Portland’s comedy scene. And when Coes found out she was one of the 20 semi-finalists in the competition, the Connection gave her some time to perform to prepare. She made it into the top 10, but is forbidden by contest rules from saying how well she did beyond that point.

Coes recognizes the growing scene here, but doesn’t see that much room to grow. It’s hard to get stage time, she knows, but asks rhetorically of those who want it, “Why the fuck would you live here?”

That’s a point of view endorsed by Collins, who plans to visit Los Angeles in April and perhaps move there with his family later this year.

Collins started in stand-up before Ferrell’s class began, and estimates the class “saves people probably two or three years” of experience. But he worries that the glut of new comedians could set the business back 10 years, when part of what killed the national comedy scene was that so many people were performing, and so many of them were not actually funny.

And Collins wonders if more venues in a place like Portland means people don’t have to be as serious, or sacrifice as much to get on stage, meaning less-dedicated folks can think they’re making it.

Marley, who moved to Boston and then Los Angeles and is only recently back to calling Maine home, says he is only able to live in Maine as a comedian because he makes his living on the road. “You’ve got to go to a bigger city” to really improve and get known, he says.

Marley suggests people work on comedy in Portland for a year, working wherever they can. But then, “once you get 10 or 15 minutes together, the first thing you ought to think about doing is moving.”

“You’ve got to get out there and challenge yourself,” he says. “I always tell new guys, ‘work on your set and move out of here so in 15 years when I’m on my way down I can open for you.’”

Marley likes it that a lot of folks are involved in comedy, and thinks they are “better comedians” for the practice they’re getting in the various places, but he’s blunt about the future. “I think a lot of them are probably going to go on to do really great things, once they move.”

Into the unknown
A new crop of folks is already on the street, working on making themselves better comedians. The Portland’s Funniest Professional contest began earlier this month, with 80 or 90 would-be comics, many graduates of Ferrell’s classes.

Perry would like to see more open mic nights, more venues, and even comedians opening for music acts, like Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison used to.

“This is something beginning here” says Brinegar, who is so driven to do things in unorthodox ways that he writes “M.H.” on his own skin before each show, in memory of comedy’s late off-beat renegade Mitch Hedberg.

Collins says the future of comedy may be looking brighter, but doubts it will ever return to where it was in the ’80s, when comedians were performing seven nights a week in the bigger cities, some raking in six-figure incomes. He says more folks are turning to comedy now, though — even his regular tiny gigs at the University of New England student center are drawing more folks than he’s seen in years. “I have no idea what’s causing that,” he says, though he guesses it could be because Comedy Central is back to showing more stand-up performances (rather than comedy shows like Reno 911 and South Park).

He says the money is in “the four Cs” — casinos, colleges, corporations, and cruises. The fifth C, clubs, are in a distant last place as far as making a living as a comic, Collins says. Clubs, however, are where comics make or break their reputations.

Marley and Collins see new ways to get “discovered,” besides just going somewhere else. Dane Cook from Massachusetts is nationally known from his massive following on MySpace.com (www.myspace.com/danecook). Collins notes there is a Maine effect as well, citing one comic who sold out his first performance at the Comedy Connection by networking online. And Marley filled his first-ever show in Denver the same way, bringing a seven-fold raise for his second show there.

New marketing, new venues, new comics — it all makes Marley “really happy,” he says. “None of that was ever available to me when I was starting out.”

REGULAR COMEDY:
Acoustic Coffee | open mic every other Wednesday | 32 Danforth St, Portland | 207.774.0404 | www.acousticcoffee.net

Chappie’s | every Thursday | 1192 Forest Ave, Portland | 207.797.9155

Cocktails | every Monday | 6 East Grand Ave, Old Orchard Beach | 207.934.4068

Comedy Connection | every Wednesday through Sunday | 6 Custom House Wharf, Portland | 207.774.5554 | www.mainecomedy.com

Liquid Blue | every Friday and Saturday | 440 Fore St, Portland | 207.774.9595 | www.portlandatnight.net

NOW + AGAIN COMEDY:
Asylum | 121 Center St, Portland | 207.772.8274

Café DeCarlo | every three months | 163 Main St, Bridgton | 207.647.4596 | www.cafedecarlo.com

City Theater | 205 Main St, Biddeford | 207.282.0849 | www.citytheater.org

Geno’s | the Escapists sketch comedy, monthly | 625 Congress St, Portland | 207.221.2382 | www.myspace.com/genosrockclub

Keeley the Katerer | benefit shows | 178 Warren Ave, Portland | 207.797.3550 | www.keeleythekaterer.com

Memory Lane | monthly | 2 Ossipee Trail East (Route 25), Standish | 207.642.3363 | www.memorylane2005.com

Oddfellow Theater | sketch comedy, monthly | Route 117, Buckfield | 207.336.3306 | www.oddfellow.com

Spectators Sports Bar | Route 4, Sanford | 207.324.9658

Steep Falls Fire Barn | every other month | 87 Boundary Rd, Standish | 207.642.3461

Thatcher’s Westbrook | 506 Main St, Westbrook | 207.854.5600

COMEDY LINGO
Host | Warms up the crowd, introduces comics, keeps atmosphere going throughout the night.

Showcase | A short (five- to 10-minute) slot for a young comic, often part of a “showcase night,” a series of eight to 10 such acts held usually on weeknights, in which comedians try out new material or refine existing jokes.

Feature | A mid-level comic; two or three perform 15- to 20-minute spots to get the night going and lead up to the headliner.

Headliner | A top-notch comic with 10 or 15 years of experience, the main performer of the night, who will perform for as much as an hour.

WHAT'S THE CONNECTION?
Oliver Keithly, owner of the Comedy Connection in Portland, used to work at the club of the same name in Boston. He owns the rights to the name, so when he moved to Maine, he used it for his club. The two are otherwise unaffiliated.

It was Geno

Published in the Portland Phoenix

It was the cigarette smoke wafting in from the sidewalk, making Geno’s air still potent that night.

As most night owls know, Geno D’Alessandro was a legendary and pioneering club owner in Portland. His death February 10 was the reason for last week’s memorial, but, as expected, it was more of a celebration.

Geno’s was Geno’s. It was unlike anywhere else, and the memorial was, too: folks barely 21 and senior citizens; punk rockers cleaned up and others still — or again — in the outfits of misfits; musicians just beginning and long since moved on; solo acts representing whole bands and entire groups reunited years later.

It was the punks and horsemen wanting to pay tribute together, greeting Geno’s welcome still hearty that night. Musicians who had never met — and at least one who hadn’t picked up a guitar in years — got up on stage together to play one last song for the man who gave them their start, who gave them encouragement every step of the way, and who, even when a winter parking ban kept any attendees away, was known to give out-of-town bands at least “enough for cheeseburgers and gas money” to get to their next gig.

It was the mourners struck dumb, hearing Geno’s sound still strong that night. Punk songs from the likes of Bates Motel, which hadn’t graced the Geno’s stage in more than a decade, roared from the speakers. His own stories and stories about him; his own words and words about him. Originals composed in his honor; old favorites — among them Sinatra’s “It Was A Very Good Year”; repurposed tributes — like Del Shannon’s “My Little Runaway”; lines scribbled on shreds of paper or printed formally from a computer; tales told, angst wrung out, honor paid.

It was the brave faces, seeing Geno’s look still bright that night. Smiles between strangers, hugs among old friends, the groomed and the rumpled, eyes bright and hands outstretched. In the eyes of a punk-country guitarist, of an impassioned ranter, of a two-man drum crew, of a bombed-out bassist, of old friends, family members, employees past and present, the same expression: happy curiosity. Glad they came, but with no idea what might really happen. And no concern, sure it would all be true, good, and beautiful.

It was stunned players looking through tears, finding Geno’s pool prowess still stiff that night. The light over the pool table shuddered more than once, reeling from hits more solid than the cue ball took. And balls that sank took longer to resurface, perhaps themselves slowing down to remember that the last time they rocketed into that corner pocket, it was at Geno’s hand, and that will not happen again.

It was to drown sorrow, sensing Geno’s thirst still unquenchable that night. The “no beer on stage” rule was too much for some, including a guy who “used to suck the beer out of the rug” of the Brown Street club, a memory drawing both laughs and grimaces from those who remember.

It was no dream, but Geno’s love still alive that night.

Good for you: Chocoholics find their calling in Portland

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Medical researchers — likely motivated by more than just academic curiosity — continue to explore the healing power of chocolate. Researchers from the Netherlands reported just last month that older men who ate chocolate regularly were less likely to die over the course of 15 years than peers who didn’t.

But why wait until you’re older? Sunday’s Chocolate Lovers’ Fling gives you the opportunity to start now, in style, and boasts a better side effect than most foods: it helps a good cause.

The event is the main fundraiser for Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine, which staffs a round-the-clock hotline handling 2500 calls a year, school-visiting prevention and education programs, and support groups for victims of sexual assault. Most of the work, including visits to hospital emergency rooms to counsel recent victims, is done by volunteers.

The need is great: In 2004, there were an average of 260 forcible rapes each day nationwide, according to FBI statistics. In Maine, there were 313 rapes or attempted rapes reported to police in 2004, or one every 28 hours and 4 minutes. Barely half of them — 51 percent — were solved by police, according to state records. And those crimes are only those reported.

But the topic is touchy. “I understand why people don’t want to talk about it,” says Cyndi Amato, the group’s executive director, who admits the chocolate-tasting event is an idea that draws people and donations in, without making them address the complex social issues at the same time. Amato is even taking steps to involve more kids and families, letting kids under 10 in for free for the first time, and creating a “kids corner” where they can decorate cookies that will be judged and win prizes, just like the real chefs in the rest of the event, hailing from restaurants, chocolate shops, caterers, bakeries, and other shops around southern Maine.

“I love chocolate and it’s a really, really good cause,” says Mary Paine, owner, chef, and manager at Pepperclub, 78 Middle Street, Portland. She is making a vegan and wheat- (gluten-) free chocolate cake made with tofu, soy milk, and brown rice syrup, as well as something that might be called “anti-vegan,” a Ghirardelli-chocolate cheesecake including eggs, cream cheese, and butter.

“I eat chocolate every single day,” Paine says, but she has had to do without this year — she gave chocolate up for Lent, and swears that in all her preparatory mixing and baking, she has not tasted a drop.

Paine is less competitive, and by her own admission less artistic, than many of the folks who enter complex structures of chocolaty goodness into the event’s competition, of which I will be one of several judges.

Christian Gordon, for example, will represent the restaurant where he is general manager and corporate executive chef, Federal Jack’s Restaurant and Brewpub in Kennebunk (owned by Sea Dog Brewing) with a cinnamon white-chocolate ginger-beer float using Sea Dog’s Eli’s Ginger Beer and hand-made ice cream.

In the past he has entered chocolate flourless tortes, a chocolate banana spring roll, chocolate raspberry raviolis (“that lost”), and chocolate nachos (“a big hit”). Like Paine a longtime participant in the event, Gordon sees it as a way to help out an organization that has assisted some friends of his through the hotline.

“I don’t really eat chocolate,” he says. “I like playing with it, making stuff with it.”

Chocolate Lovers’ Fling | March 26, 1-4 pm | Holiday Inn By The Bay, 88 Spring St, Portland | $20, free for children under 10 | 207.828.1035 | confidential hotline at 1.800.313.9900

On the Web
Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine: www.sarsonline.org