April 29, 2008
The Celtics, who won 66 games during the regular season, have now lost two consecutive games to the Hawks, a team that just barely sneaked into the playoffs with a sub-.500 record. As if that on its own wasn't indignity enough, the Celtics are getting a little hostile, perhaps feeling some combination of frustration and pressure. Paul Pierce has been fined for making a "
menacing gesture" at Hawks rookie Al Horford (allegedly
a gang signal, though
Danny Ainge says otherwise.) But potentially more dangerous for the Celtics is what happened in the video above - Hawks forward Zaza Pachulia reacted to a perceived elbow from Kevin Garnett by headbutting the big ticket, and while Garnett didn't retaliate against Pachulia, he
did shove an official, and Celtics center Kendrick Perkins
did leave the bench - two offenses that have been
suspension-worthy in the past.
While we're still not exactly worried about the Celtics' prospects in the series - hard to imagine the Hawks taking one in Boston - we still find the whole thing incongruous. The Celtics certainly aren't carrying themselves like the superior team that they are. They almost look a little frightened of the young Hawks. Give Atlanta credit for getting inside the Celtics' heads, and let's just hope that the Celtics remember who they are, and that Stern and Co. don't bring down the hammer. They probably won't - the TV ratings for a Hawks-Sixers Eastern Conference Finals would be abysmal.
April 28, 2008
The long decline continues for
Roger Clemens as the
New York Daily News today reports that sources tell them the very married
Clemens had a lengthy affair with country star Mindy McCready. The affair is alleged to have begun when Clemens was a 28-year-old star with the Red Sox and McCready was 15 years old.
Yes, you read that correctly.
(Hat tip,
Baseball Musings and
The Big Lead)
April 28, 2008
Just after April Fools' Day, the Boston Phoenix implemented a mandatory-mustache policy in its Kenmore Square offices. Several weeks later, we invited noted Mustachiologists TD Sidell (of Big Digits fame) and Chris Braiotta to survey the damage. In the above video, TD and Braiotta -- regulars at Eugene Mirman's monthly Union Square Round Table -- rate the Phoenix mustaches thus far. For those of you who haven't been following along at home, you can keep an eye on the 'stashes at www.thephoenix.com/mustache. Feel free to show us up by uploading your own. And mark your calendars for Boston's first annual CINCO DE MUSTACHE party, coming May 5 to the only Irish-Mexican joint that would have us. Here's an offer you probably haven't heard before: free mustaches at the door for the ladies!
April 24, 2008
The rumors have been flying
for more than a year now, but
Fox News is saying it's now official: Jimmy Fallon will replace Conan O'Brien when O'Brien takes over the
Tonight Show next year.
Nothing about this can possibly be good.
April 24, 2008
And speaking of not detoxing, here's more shizzle from the Interwebs.
Garfield Minus Garfield
is exactly how it sounds: the lonely, depressing tale of John Arbuckle
or, as the GMG mastermind puts it: "Who would have guessed that when
you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an
even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty
desperation of modern life?" A sampling:
More
here.
-Caitlin E. Curran
April 24, 2008
Happy Mental Detox week! Yeah, so Mental Detox week began on Monday and I have yet to actually turn anything off - or at least the things that
AdBusters,
who launched the original TV Turn-Off week (now renamed Mental Detox Week) back in 1994,
want me to. AdBusters has changed the guidelines to be both more forgiving and more
inclusive. Sign of the times: I actually (unintentionally) haven't
turned on my TV at all this week, which means if it was still plain-old
TV Turn-Off Week, I'd be all "Hey, no problem! I can go without TV
easily,"
but the Internet?! Here's the thing, a job that requires staring at
Snap Judgments and
bus stop street art on the Internets all day +
IFFB + newly downloaded episodes of
My So-Called Life, which I can't believe I'm still obsessing over, via
Miro + Does seeing live music count? Because I've already done that twice this week =
Too Many Complications for Mental Detoxification. FAIL.
Here's what AdBusters wants me to do:
"Today you’re not going to listen to your iPod. You aren’t going to stare at a computer screen any more than you absolutely have to. Today you won’t worry about unanswered email, and you’re not going to login to Facebook. You’ll cut the time you spend on digital devices right down to the bone.
In the evening maybe you will watch your favorite TV show for an hour, but after that you switch off, have a conversation, wash the dishes, read for a bit, and just relax. You do that for five days, and then on Friday night you make a decision to unplug completely for the whole weekend.
For a couple of days you might feel like an addict in withdrawal: peevish, agitated, and distracted. But then something will happen. Your over-stimulated brain will cleanse itself. You’ll relax. You’ll feel calmer, more grounded."
The fact that all of this is posted on a website (and now I'm reposting it on a blog) is sort of cloaked in irony - how are we supposed to spread the word about Mental Detox Week and actually detox at the same time? Smoke signals? Snail-mail chain letters? Don't get me wrong, Mental Detox week would be great if I could take the week off and go camping at Yosemite, gather a group of friends and a cooler of cold beverages (but no road-tripping tunes, of course!!), but I can't. I guess this is just my way of saying "Hi, My name is Caitlin, and I'm addicted to glorious, musical, visually-stimulating technology, AKA mental toxins."
-- Caitlin E. Curran
April 24, 2008
PLAYING FAVORITES
5 years ago
April 25, 2003 | Brent Kendall analyzed how a presidential candidate’s declared “favorite book” can affect his campaign chances.
“The 2000 election demonstrated precisely how candidates' book choices play right into the media's preconceived storylines--for better and for worse. The vice president announced his book selection on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ Stendhal's The Red and the Black...Unfortunately for Gore, The Red and the Black provided a convenient plotline for his detractors. Stendhal's protagonist Julien Sorel may be one of the great characters of 19th-century literature, but he was also an opportunist whose actions were calculated to advance his career. Reporters seized on Sorel's inauthenticity as an analogy for Gore's. When Gore decided not to pursue the 2004 nomination, National Review extended the analogy even further, writing that his fancy for ‘Stendhal's novel of a career chosen against inclination’ was evidence that he ‘felt that politics was a burden.’
“George W. Bush fared much better, citing Marquis James's The Raven, a 1929 biography of Sam Houston, whose life had hit an alcohol-induced rock bottom after years of success, only to be once again lifted when he moved to Texas and rediscovered his guiding principles. That was Bush's campaign story in a nut-shell...In the end, each book jibed with the media's storyline about each candidate — Bush, the easy-going, prodigal Texan, and Gore, the know-it-all pandering phony.” Read Full Article
BARNICLE’S BLUNDERS
10 years ago
April 24, 1998 | Dan Kennedy pointed out an embarrassing error Mike Barnicle made in a Boston Globe column.
“There he goes again.
“In this past Sunday’s Boston Globe, columnist Mike Barnicle sneers at those who are not familiar with the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, writing that ‘if you do not know who he is or what he has written during his life, then drop this section and go directly to the comics.’
“Trouble is, Barnicle misspelled McCullough’s name — repeating his feat of a week earlier, when he mangled the names of music legends Bo Diddley and Brownie McGhee...”
IT'S A MAD, MAD WORLD WE LIVE IN
20 years ago
April 22, 1988 | Susan Buchsbaum attended a Baby Miss of America pageant at the Holiday Inn in Randolph, Mass.
“Music plays, lights blaze, and the first parent steps from behind a curtain to display Nicole, a two-month-old infant who is fast asleep. Desperately, the mother tries to rouse the child, shaking her vigorously as the judges look on. The panel will be deciding on the Best Outfit, the Most Photogenic Baby, and the child with the Most Fascinating Eyes. Valiantly the mother continues to jiggle her baby...as the emcee informs the audience that ‘Nicole’s favorite food is formula.’ ...
“...Nicole actually wins the prize for Most Photogenic. Jasmine, a five-month-old wearing a floppy white bow...wins for her outfit and her eyes. When she is also pronounced the overall winner in the Pee Wee category, the music soars...and the puzzled infant...is draped with a banner and crowned...Modeling, says St. John, who directs the Babies of America Modeling Agency, is definitely in the cards.”
SACRIFICIAL LAMBS
25 years ago
April 26, 1983 | Michael Matza got both sides of the debate in a piece dealing with animal experimentation in local biomedical research facilities.
"As many MFA supporters see it, morally dubious animal research has been promoted by a stream of platitudes about curing cancer and saving children. ‘The public and the press has pandered slavishly, almost sycophantically, to anyone who wears a white coat,’ says Annette Pickett of Lincoln, MFA’s (The Mobilization For Animals) coordinator for the Northeast...She is deeply suspicious of the motives and methods of university-affiliated scientists. ‘It’s no great, bursting desire to save human life’ that motivates them...’They’re out for their own egos...,’ she asserts. ‘They’re out to extract the secrets of the universe by literally cutting animals apart. That seems to me the least likely way to learn the mysteries of life.’
...
“Defenders of the primate center in Southboro...mention the disease studies in cats that played a role in the development of the polio vaccine; they also mention the use of dogs in the discovery of insulin 60 years ago...Other life-saving medical breakthroughs include the development of techniques related to organ transplants and coronary bypass surgery, as Dr. S.J. Adelstein, dean for academic programs of the Harvard Medical School, told the Harvard Gazette last month. ‘And this list is just the beginning,’ he said. ‘Artificial hips and knees for the elderly, treatment of children with congenital heart disease..., all of these and other breakthroughs have only been possible through animal studies.’ ”
April 24, 2008
So a pirated copy of the PAL (Australia, New Zealand, and the EU) version of
Grand Theft Auto IV - in part, the subject of
the cover story of this week's
Phoenix -
hit the internet last night. Presumably, someone leaked an advance review copy (don't look at us, we haven't even gotten it yet.)
But here's the thing: the people who are playing it illegally - some of them, at least - are not too smart. Why? Because in addition to posting
a series of videos to GameTrailers.com,
they're playing it while signed in to Xbox Live, meaning that Microsoft, if they so chose, could quite easily find out their names and billing information. And, from the sounds of what Xbox Live honcho Major Nelson told Kotaku, they're planning on
doing exactly that. So way to go guys, you're about to usher in a new era of paranoia from game publishers. What's next, watermarks?
April 22, 2008
The original title of this post was going to be "Unzipping Scar-Jo's Assets," since that's what we did a few minutes ago when the .zip file showed up with the press materials for Anywhere I Lay My Head. Ironically, we were in the midst of posting a video of a non-Scar-Jo Tom Waits cover when this stuff showed up. The album itself has been circulating around the office for the past week, and most of us are still scratching our heads. Don't get us wrong -- it doesn't outright suck, and parts of it are downright pretty. In an age when the accepted workflow for a Hollywood pop album is to line up platinum producers and set Pro-Tools on auto-tune, we give Scarlett bonus points for going au naturel -- maybe it's just that we OD'd on American Idol's Mariah Carey week, but we think you can hear the imperfections in Scar-Jo's lower range pretty clearly. Thing is, that kinda works well on these tunes; more than a few people have already noted what a smart move it was for her to court auteurism by going after the Waits catalogue, anyway. Without putting Scar-Jo in the same vocal league, we hear echoes of early Sinead O'Connor and Sarah McLachlan in her phrasing; and if the arrangements had been any less vanilla, we suspect some blogs may have forgotten about She & Him for a few minutes and put some more of these photos on their homepages.
STREAM SCARLETT JOHANSSEN'S ANYWHERE I LAY MY HEAD: QuickTime / Windows
Preorder: iTunes / Amazon
April 20, 2008
At first glance,
this imported household product looks like a package of six multi-colored
abrasive sponges. But after reading the label, we’re not so sure. Clearly, this
product necessary product improves with culture knowledge of dwelling
understanding.
Brushing & Washing King
- Never stick any grease
- Good helper for cleansing
- The superior Choice Residential Necessaries
This product is
the clear high-tech kitchen with general world Clean appliance, have decontamination
power strong do not have scar to not glue The characteristic such as oil is the
kitchen clean appliance that receives America, Japan and Italy deeply to wait
for the world housewives thick love of every place.
Suitable scope:
Family, guesthouse and hotel etc. rub to wash the clean utensil such as
refrigerator, washer, and plastic product of aluminum products, porcelain wares
and glass utensil.
Yu Wu Jiang Ting
Ting Commodity Factory
Factory site: Zhe
Yi Tuan Industrial District
Made in China
April 18, 2008
From the Times: a Salem man who was molested by his priest recounts the events that led to his meeting with the Pope...
"Mr. McDaid said he received a call about two weeks ago from Ms. Thorp and the Rev. John Connolly, who has overseen the Archdiocese’s efforts to respond to reports of clergy sexual abuse. The three met for dinner at a Cheesecake Factory restaurant at a mall in Burlington, Mass."
Our foodie friends hate on Cheesecake Factory, but we go to that jawn up in Burlington on the regular. Oversized caesar salads like whoa. And the tiramisu is tight.
April 18, 2008
>>CLICK HERE FOR HI-RES VERSION
While hanging out with the folks at Harvard's student radio station for a story about a long-running specialty show, Phoenix music editor Michael Brodeur was shown a shelf filled with grade-school-style composition notebooks dating back to the early 1980s. Since first coming on the air in 1984, DJs at WHRB's Record Hospital have been keeping meticulous records of every night, every playlist, every song (or non-song) they've ever played. (And let's face it: any radio station that can go 24 years without playing "Sister Christian" deserves a closer look.)
The hand-written journals, which were kept in the studios and became the primary means of communication between dozens of DJs, reveal that many of the tropes that we tend to associate with message boards -- the snarky put-downs, the punning screen-names, the long-running flame wars -- were actually alive and kicking at least a decade before the Web browser. It's kind of like finding AIM chats in a cave painting. Note: the images below are merely thumbnails -- click on the links to see the pages in their full context/splendor.
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>>CLICK HERE FOR FULL IMAGE
This playlist from September of ’84 demonstrates the Hospital’s penchant for mishmash--like throwing the local likes of the Del Fuegos, The Neats and The Neighborhoods in with Corrosion of Conformity, Let’s Active, and tons, tons of Hoodoo Gurus--which seems so odd for some reason. Maybe I just need to listen to Hoodoo Gurus. Thanks, Record Hospital!
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>>CLICK HERE FOR FULL IMAGE
Most DJs would kill to have 42 listeners call their underground punk radio show in the middle of the night. Change that to “42 requests for bullshit Dio and Scorpions tracks” and it doesn’t sound as appealing.
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>>CLICK HERE FOR HI-RES IMAGE
Some nights were slow, and gothy blocks were interrupted by tropical daydreams.
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>>CLICK HERE FOR FULL IMAGE
The RCB (Rock Communications Book) is an ongoing communique between Record Hospital DJs, hand-scrawled over volumes and volumes of 99-cent composition notebooks. Journal entries are marked with “symbols” identifying their writers and intended audiences (though surely much of the fun was watching the turmoil of others unfold from a safe, anonymous distance). This, plus the eerily pre-internet references to “flaming” (and this is ’84, not ’94), make these notebooks an eye-opening peek into the makings of modern messageboarding.
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>>CLICK HERE FOR FULL IMAGE
PWNED: The RCB was also a great way to call out flakey DJs. Oh! You’re a Harvard freshman and have a lot of studying to do? Well Jesus, Ron, we’re all just blown away over here.
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>>CLICK HERE FOR FULL IMAGE
Another tie to the online forums of today: The private humiliation of unwitting members of the public.
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>>CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL IMAGE
NO FAIR!: One major advantage to the analog approach: You can edit the living hell out of your posts.
-- Michael Brodeur
April 18, 2008
CROSSING OVER
5 years ago
April 18, 2003 | Dan Kennedy discussed what he thought was “perhaps the most astounding media story to come out" of the Iraq War.
“This past Sunday, Jules Crittenden, the Boston Herald reporter embedded with the Army’s Third Infantry Division, described how he ‘went over to the dark side.’ While rolling through Baghdad, Crittenden called out the positions of three Iraqi soldiers aiming rocket-propelled grenades at the vulnerable, ‘lightly armored’ vehicle he was riding in so that an American gunner could kill them. ‘I saw one man’s body splatter as the large caliber bullets ripped it up,’ Crittenden wrote. ‘The man behind him appeared to be rising, and was cut down by repeated bursts.’
“Crittenden then added: ‘...Now that I have assisted in the deaths of three fellow human beings in the war I was sent to cover, I’m sure there are some people who will question my ethics, my objectivity, etc...Screw them, they weren’t there. But they are welcome to join me next time if they care to test their professionalism.’ " Read Full Article
CANDID CAMERA
10 years ago
April 17, 1998 | Ellen Barry wrote about a potentially controversial Children’s Hospital program where patients are sent home with video cameras to report on the causes of their conditions.
“The home movies, when they came in, contained a wealth of visual information—rooms full of plants, which are grade-A mold producers; dusty construction sites outside kids’ windows—the kind of things you’d have to visit to see. There’s also information that might not come out in an old-style house call; footage of a smoke-filled kitchen; of medication overused or wrongly used; of hostility to doctors and isolation from peers...In one shot, an adult hand holding a cigarette reaches across the lens to turn the camera off. From the podium, watching the doctors watch the tapes, is Dr. Michael Rich. ce:office" />
“Rich’s project, the Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment program, or VIA, may change the way doctors treat asthma...[I]t also has the potential to go much further. ‘We used this methodology with a relatively tame subject, but we want to apply it to much more controversial issues,’ Rich says. Video intervention could be used not only to monitor the lives of kids with chronic illnesses such as sickle-cell disease, diabetes, and HIV, but also to achieve ‘complex medical interventions’ in cases that involve substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and violence in the home. It could bring the child’s experience to center stage.”
GAY BASHING
20 years ago
April 15, 1988 | Daniel Pearl reported on the quest to expand Boston University’s anti-discrimination policy to include the phrase “sexual orientation.”
“Boston University Students have staked out the next battleground in their continuing war with the administration over sexual politics: BU’s 119-year-old anti-discrimination policy, which some feel should be amended to include the phrase ‘sexual orientation.’ But BU President John Silber indicated during an address to students last week that the administration is no more receptive to that policy change than it was to putting condom machines in BU’s bathrooms.
“When Jeff Nickel of the BU Lesbian/Gay Alliance asked whether the university would include ‘sexual orientation’ in its anti-discrimination protections, Silber replied, ‘Now suppose someone’s sexual orientation is toward child molestation. What happens then?’ The new language, he continued, would permit ‘all forms of perversion and sex with animals and children and anything else. We’re not going to do that.’ Silber also said he does not believe that homosexuality is a ‘normative way of life’ and would not want incoming students to think the practice is desirable.”
STEER CLEAR
25 years ago
April 19, 1983 | During a party given in his wife’s honor, Alan Lupo managed to alienate most everybody there.
“I am a Bermuda Triangle conversationalist. I start talking, and people begin disappearing. ‘I have to jog,’ one young woman insisted.
“ ‘But its dark and dangerous out there,’ I cautioned.
“ ‘Oh, that’s no problem,’ she said, backing toward the door. ‘Lots of runners out, lots of joggers, no sir, no problem at all, nice to meet you...'
“Moments later, my new conversation partner announced to me in what appeared to be a prepared statement, ‘I must get some wine.’ She fled to a corner, where she began drinking and talking to anyone who was there...I thought I spotted her glancing warily in my direction from time to time.”
Plus: Twenty years ago, reporter Sean Flynn investigated the controversy surrounding an inflammatory student newspaper at Dartmouth College. Read the article in full here.
April 16, 2008
Before the Breakdown: Steven Jan Vander Ark at
SectusSerious drama is afoot in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!
We wrote about what the end of the series meant for some local HP disciples last summer, but there's a new, extremely serious rift in
superfan land happening right now. It's between author J.K. Rowling and Steven Jan Vander Ark, a sweet 50-year-old librarian and who runs the obsessive
Harry Potter Lexicon, a go-to HP online encylopedia. Even Rowling has used it, she has said, when writing on the road and without her own books to refer to. She even gave the Lexicon her fan site award a few years back. Recently, after Rowling learned that Vander Ark had been tapped by the tiny RDR Books to publish the Lexicon as an HP encyclopedia,
she decided to sue for copyright infringement. You see, she's planning on penning her
own Harry Potter glossery, and assumes nobody will care to purchase hers if they've already got Vander Ark's! Plus, the billionaire author contends the print verrsion of the site merely repackages her own work, and unlike a free site, is intended to churn out a profit.
The Leaky Cauldron, one of the top HP fan sites, has severed ties with the Lexicon -- they'd previously maintained a friendly webby allegiance grounded in HP love. But it hasn't stopped there.
The Times reports on the heartbreak:
On the witness stand in Federal District Court, he [Vander Ark] portrayed the famous
writer as his idol, his true literary love, who had been unaccountably
bewitched by the evil, money-grubbing forces of publishing, like one of
Voldemort’s vassals. One day, he testified, Ms. Rowling was singling
out his Harry Potter Lexicon Web site, out of “hundreds of thousands”
of Potter fan sites on the Web, for praise; the next, she was accusing
him of plagiarism for wanting to turn it into a book.
“I did,” Mr. Vander Ark said, his face reddening, as he turned away from Ms. Rowling, who was sitting 10 feet away at the plaintiff’s table, listening intently.
Then he burst out crying. “Sorry,” he said, regaining his composure. “It’s been difficult because there’s been a lot of criticism, obviously, and that was never the intention.”
Rowling has a real knack toying with her fans' emotions. This is upsetting, considering some of us still aren't over Dumbledore.
April 10, 2008
Incoming!
Behold the big, beautiful baby heads, entitled Day and Night, installed in the lawn of the MFA. The sculptures, by Spanish realist Antonio Lopez Garcia, are emotive enough to stop traffic.
MP3: MFA contemporary art curator Cheryl Butvan talks to FNX about the baby heads and existence.
Day
Night
