brendan halpin

I’m pleased to see the UK holding some of its sexual predator celebrities accountable. They’re definitely ahead of the US, where we only hold sexual predator celebrities accountable if they’re Black. (Or more accurately, only the Black ones face legal proceedings. Okay, Harvey Weinstein. Name another.)

But Russell Brand’s imprisonment and David Walliams’ exposure (definitely the most exposure he’s ever had here in the USA, where if they ain’t on Taskmaster, Derry Girls, or Great British Bakeoff, we don’t know ‘em) has me thinking about all the people who enabled them.

Brand has faced legal consequences and Walliams has faced career consequences, but what about all the many, many people who knew and never did anything about it? Now I’ve seen the Katherine Ryan video, and I understand that you can’t just go denouncing people with a ton of money lest they sue you for defamation. BUT. You don’t have to work with them. You don’t have to hire them. And you don’t have to hang out with them.

Which brings me to Matt Lucas, David Walliams’ longtime comedy partner and Great British Bakeoff co-host and Taskmaster Contestant. (See, this is why I know who he is!). I’ve seen the comedy awards video too, where a guy who’s never been on Taskmaster makes a joke about “these awards are 15 years old and drunk! They’re going home with David Walliams!” Ha! Oh, is there a richer comedy vein to mine than the sexual abuse of children?

Anyway, Matt Lucas is right next to David Walliams in that clip. He knew. Why did he continue to work with him? Has anyone asked? Do we still want to watch him on Bakeoff (disclaimer: I do not enjoy that show, but it’s on in my house a lot) being the kind, cuddly host knowing he looked the other way while his friend was being a sexual predator?

Kenneth Branagh put Russell Brand in a movie in 2022. Granted nobody saw it, possibly because it also featured alleged cannibal and sexual predator Armie Hammer, but everybody knew what Russell Brand was about by 2022. And Kenneth Branagh chose to employ him. Now, you can look at someone down the cast list—say James Schofield, who played “German Soldier #1” and go, “well, that guy really can’t control who he’s in a movie with,” but Kenneth Branagh sure as shit can. Ridley Scott produced that movie. Do you think he doesn’t have the juice to blackball a rapist? Of course he does. He just didn’t care.

We need to start asking people who associate with predators the hard questions about what they knew and when they knew it. And, furthermore, we need to stop giving them a pass for looking the other way at bad behavior. I was doing some research about celebrity bad behavior and came across this disturbing account of a child actor being at the home of Justin Long and Jonathan Togo and being assaulted by Jonah Hill. (And said child star also says her friend was raped by Togo). Now, Justin Long hasn’t been accused of anything except for giving alcohol to underage girls. Which, BTW, is a crime, but more importantly, he knew what was going on. He knew the kind of danger those girls were in. The child actor also says that some other celebrities at the party took her aside and warned her to be careful, and I’m sorry, but that’s not nearly good enough. If you are a grown adult and see a drunk 16-year-old at your party, you put them in a cab. You tell them they need to leave, and if they refuse, go to the host and tell him to make them leave. And start taking pictures and videos. “Oh, but then you might not get to hang out with Justin Long anymore!” Wow, yeah, that’s a terrible consequence. I can see why you wouldn’t want to risk that.

For the record, Long says he didn’t know about all the creepy sex stuff, which strains credulity, but he did know he had drunk underage girls at his party, and he had a responsibility as a human being to take care of people more vulnerable than him.

And so, for that matter, do we all. I could go on listing celebrities who have enabled other bad celebrities (Okay, okay, one more: Judd Apatow worked with James Franco, Jonah Hill, AND Russell Brand. He’s either dangerously oblivious or else a piece of shit.) (And people KNEW Neil Gaiman was creepy. For YEARS), but sadly this shit is not limited to celebrities.

If you know more than four men, you probably know one who has sexually assaulted someone. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but those one in four women aren’t sexually assaulting themselves.

Aside: something that gets lost in the conversation about men protecting other men who are predators is that the kind of men who like to exercise non-consensual power over women’s bodies as adults were very likely the kind of boys who liked to exercise non-consensual power over other boys’ bodies by beating them up. Boy culture is shockingly violent, and boys learn at a young age that calling bad boys out gets you beaten. The same rules may or may not apply to adults, but that aversion response is coded very deep for people who grew up as boys. We need to find the courage to overcome it, to say, “well, I’d rather get punched in the face than have that woman get raped,” but it’s not easy to silence the reptile brain telling you to flee.

Anyway, we all of us need to be more discerning about the company we keep. I’ve written about this before, but let us remember that there is no legal standard for declaring someone a piece of shit that you don’t want to hang out with. Women are better at this than men. So, like, if you identify as a man, imagine this scenario: a man and woman you know just got divorced, and she’s made it clear that he was abusive. But he was your friend first. He calls you up—do you wanna hang out?

I think I know what most men would do in that situation. I know from experience that it’s not easy to cut off a friend who behaves in a problematic way. But if you don’t, then you’re enabling the bad behavior. Forget legal proceedings for a minute—people need to see creepy men facing social consequences in their own lives. Will this stop men being creepy? Probably not, but it will, hopefully, convince men who have creepy impulses that being creepy is not worth the risk. Clearly none of the above celebrity predators ever thought, “I better not do this, or I could lose everything.” But they should. And administering the social consequences is up to us.

Every fall, undesirables from outside the city descend on Franklin Park. They vandalize the park with spray paint. They leave their garbage around. They are rude to other park users. And apart from the vandalism, they damage the park to an extent that grounds crews have to come in and remediate the damage they’ve done.

I’m talking, of course, about cross country runners.

While I believe Boston Latin School hosts a meet in Franklin Park, the rest of the meets are run by private colleges and schools and feature a lot of participants from outside the city.

And while some organizers are better than others, these people trash the park. They leave their course markers up. They spray paint the grass, the pavement, and even the trees. And if they run in the mud, they kill the grass and render grassy areas unfit for any other uses.

The BAA runs a half-marathon in Franklin Park, and they had to truck in a lot of tents for corporate sponsors as well as I guess the DJ and sound system, because of course you can’t run without someone spinning hits from the2010’s, and because it rained all weekend, the Playstead, which is used for BLA football practice, First Tee golf camp, cricket games, and baseball and softball games, is now absolute trash.

I’m wondering why this use and these users are prioritized over all others. I’m wondering if race organizers ever face a penalty for vandalizing the park. I’m wondering what benefit this use of Franklin Park brings to those of us who pay to maintain it.

“But they’ve been running cross country races there for over a hundred years!” True! And so what? It’s not 1915 anymore! Women can vote! We have antibiotics now! Rural electification happened! My point here is the fact that something has been done for a long time is the absolute worst reason to continue doing it. If Boston Public Schools want to host a meet here, great. Everybody else should find another park to trash. Or is it possible that they treat the courses in Lexington and Belmont with more respect?

In any case, it’s past time to get the undesirables out of the park.

If you’ve ever published a book, you’ve probably gotten one of these AI-generated emails all “I love your book [insert AI slop summary here] would you like me to work on publicizing it for you?”

I now get at least five of these a week. I’ve gotten them for Shutout, Losing My Faculties, It Takes a Worried Man, Donorboy, and Forever Changes. So all books that are in the neighborhood of 2 decades old. I wonder if I’m being targeted because they think I’m old and will fall for scams more easily.

In any case, these have recently started to get better. I got one asking if they could add my book to a Goodreads list, which, like, they don’t need my permission for, but I could see someone engaging, going “well, sure, knock yourself out,” and then presumably they come back and say “here’s all the other stuff I can do for you, send me some money.”

But today I got one pretending to be from Kate Tuttle, who writes about books for the Boston Globe. The email address it came from was info.kate.tuttle@gmail.com. Which is kind of weird but at least semi plausible as a real email. The email asks if I’d be interested in having a feature written about me, includes some AI-generated pap about Losing My Faculties, and does not ask for money. Presumably that comes with the next email.

I know enough about how books and book publicity works to know that writers do not just randomly reach out to authors asking if they could write a feature because the author wrote a book 20 years ago. I’m sure the real Kate Tuttle is inundated with requests from actual book publicists and has no need to be cold emailing obscure authors. But, again, I can imagine someone falling for this.

So, PSA. Don’t fall for this.

Also: this shit is exhausting. You just have to be constantly on guard for scams, which are coming at you through every communication method you ever use. AI didn’t create scamming, but it does seem to be facilitating it. One more reason to close the data centers.

Just saw that Chris Donisi of Burlington MA is the new Voice of Logan Airport.

And the man does have an objectively beautiful voice. And yet.

He’s welcoming people to Boston. Not to Greater Boston. And he lives 18 miles from Logan Airport, a solid 45+ minute drive from Logan at most hours of the day. And apparently grew up in Arlington, which is also not Boston but at least is only 10 miles from Logan but also probably a 45-minute drive because of the magic of Boston traffic.

And he’s a white guy with the working class accent that used to define Boston, which makes him a “real Bostonian” in the national imagination, despite the fact that he doesn’t live in Boston. And despite the fact that Boston is a majority-minority city with a large Black and Hispanic population.

I don’t know Chris Donisi’s family history, but a whole lot of white people with that accent are descended from people who moved out of Boston and into the suburbs in the 70’s so their kids wouldn’t have to go to school with Black people.

If that sounds ugly, it’s because it is.

A cornerstone of white supremacy in the USA is that white people are “real” Americans, and everyone else is just a guest in our country who should be grateful for the opportunity to live here. (never mind that white people stole this country and a lot of non-white people are descended from people who were trafficked here.). Choosing a white suburbanite to be the voice of Boston only reinforces the view that Boston is a city of and for white people. It’s out of step with the reality of 2026 and represents a fascist nostalgia for a bygone era when “real” (aka white) Bostonians were a majority of the population here.

You know who actually grew up in Boston and does a lot of voice work? Ayo Edebiri. But she barely even registers as a Bostonian in the national or, for that matter local conversation. I wonder why?

The Wayans family built a comedy empire (and made Jim Carrey a star) with In Living Color in the early 90’s. Now, at last, we can peek behind the curtain into the workings of this seminal show to witness the birth of brilliant comedy, as this transcript of an early pitch meeting shows.

Keenen Ivory Wayans: Okay, people, what have you got?

David Alan Grier: Get this—Damon and I are film critics. Like Siskel and Ebert?

KIW: I’m with you so far…

DAG:Only…gay!

KIW: Wait. That’s the joke? The film critics are gay?

DAG: Yeah, that’s the joke.

KIW: I LOVE it! Run with it! *laughs* Gay men—in the entertainment industry! Who ever heard of such a thing! Y’all are killing me! Jim, what do you got?

Jim Carrey: I play a fire marshal…with severe burns!

KIW: You want people to laugh at a burn victim.

JC: Yeah!

KIW: Well, I’m laughing already! Who’s next?

Jamie Foxx: Okay, so I’m gonna play a woman, right?

KIW: But wait a minute, Jamie! You’re a man!

JF: I know! But the woman is really ugly!

KIW: *laughs, wipes tears from eyes* oh, that’s good stuff. That’s real good stuff!

JC: Oh, boss, I’ve got another one!

KIW: Keep ‘em coming! This shit is GOLD!

JC: Okay, I play a fitness instructor, BUT..she’s a woman…AND she’s ugly!

KIW: Oh, you literally cannot go to that well too many times. It’s just a brilliant concept to hang a sketch on!

Damon Wayans: Alright, get this. I’m gonna play a superhero…who is handicapped! So like…how can he be a superhero, right? And I’ll do like a cerebral palsy voice!

KIW: That’s fucked up, D. You can’t make fun of disabled people like that.

DW: Oh, I—

KIW: I’m just playing! I love it! Go write it!