I'll come totally clean on this: as much as I was enjoying this season, it wasn't until this week that I thought the Celtics were a real NBA Championship contender. Much like everyone else, I was simply expecting the eventual champion to be a western power, be it San Antonio, Los Angeles, or Utah, with New Orleans, Dallas, Phoenix, et al looking at a tougher road but still having a puncher's chance if they made it in. Boston I saw as the Eastern Conference version of the early '00s Kings - they'll go through the regular season like a hot knife through butter, but when it came time for the playoffs they'd be too thin, too worn out, too simply ill-prepared to keep up with the elites.

After the events of this week - winning a hard-fought defensive struggle against the reigning champs, dominating a team in the midst of a historic win streak, and overcoming an off night from its two point guards to beat Dallas (a team, granted, that's still adjusting to life with Jason Kidd) - we fail to see how anyone could think this team is anything less than the best team in the NBA. They are playing their best ball of the season, they're getting contributions from their entire roster (except for Brian Scalabrine,) and they're now deep enough to keep their big three healthy (and win games without them.)

Also, Boston Globe? I know the Red Sox basically run this town, but could we maybe get some coverage of this team?

3/21/2008 9:18:16 AM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

3/18/2008 9:27:16 AM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

HOLY PURPOSE
5 years ago
March 14, 2003 | Michael Bronski talked to a peace activist with the idea of sending the Pope to Iraq in order to stop the impending war.
“Renowned peace and anti-nuke activist Helen Caldicott thinks she has a way to stop the all-but-inevitable war with Iraq: convince Pope John Paul II to join the human shields in Baghdad. Caldicott, who became well known during the 1980s for her anti-nuke activism, is urging people around the world to contact the pope and ask him to travel to Iraq...

“Caldicott argues that ‘[t]he Pope’s physical presence in Iraq will act as the ultimate human shield, during which time leaders of the world nations can commit themselves to identifying and implementing a peaceful solution to this war that the world’s majority clearly does not support.’ The Web site of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute (www.nuclearpolicy.org) posts a letter from Caldicott as well as a sample letter to send to Vatican City that argues her case in the most serious terms — ‘your physical presence in Baghdad will prevent the impending slaughter of hundreds of thousands of human beings’...” Read Full Article

THE TARANTINO TOUCH
10 years ago
March 13, 1998 | Rachel O’Malley imagined what certain classic productions would be like in Quentin Tarantino’s hands.

“1. Oklahoma!
Wait Until Dark at the Wilbur was just the beginning for Tarantino’s stage career. O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A spells D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R when Quentin plays Curly in this once-hokey musical. Curly is sick of Laurie’s wiles, and by the time they reach the square dance, the shiny little surrey with the fringe on top is wrecked. Curly accidentally blows Laurie’s head off with his .45 when they hit a bump in the dirt road. All he wanted was a little respect.

...
5. Hamlet
This Hamlet is much shorter than Kenneth Branagh’s recent film. Hamlet has Claudius, Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern bound and gagged 10 minutes into the play. An hour later, they’ve been forced to listen to Polonius repeat his ‘To thine own self be true’ speech about six times, and Rosencrantz is pleading to keep his other ear.”

COLD COMFORTS
20 years ago
March 11, 1988 | Ric Kahn reported on the passing of local celebrity-cum-hermit Bill Brit.
“There’ll be no more newsroom phone calls from Bill Britt. God has called the 52-year-old hermit of Chestnut Hill home from the simple wigwam that, standing tall on a small patch of public land near the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, served as one man’s castle for almost 20 years. Authorities say Britt froze to death in the Massachusetts winter.

“For what seemed like half his breathing hours, Bill Britt waged an unyielding battle against bureaucratic bullies who viewed his attempts to be left out in the cold, amid the raindrops and raccoons, as merely trespassing. Like other offbeat souls who choose to live their lives off society’s beaten path, Britt’s campaign to camp out with Mother Nature — frugally financed by the coins collected from turning in discarded bottles and cans — exposed the overbearing nature of the state, which resorted to using the courts,... a cop masquerading as a reporter, and a bulldozer to try and toss out one solitary man, Billy Britt.”

STEVEN TYLER SOCIETY
25 years ago
March 15, 1983 | Surveying the crowd at an Aerosmith show at the Cape Cod Coliseum, Doug Simmons recalled the old days when he was a freak for the band.
“...the group’s bargain-basement Stones show delighted guys like me and my friends. We aped the band’s delinquent image, albeit with less mascara, and marveled at Joe Perry’s kerchunkachunka guitar and Steven Tyler’s gypsy sleaze and ripped-larynx singing. Looking back I have no regrets, but looking across Cape Cod Coliseum’s iceless hockey rink, my nostalgia soured. Were my friends and I this surly? Probably....There was only one difference between the Cape crowd and my crew a decade ago: as a companion said of the 6500-strong mob, ‘If we nuked Iran tomorrow there aren’t three people in this place who would care.’ We would have cared, but only because when it came to war we had Vietnam to wise us up.” Read Full Article

3/13/2008 10:51:12 AM by Ian Sands | Comments [0] |  

Judging from the lunchtime crowd there just now, it seems the word is already out, but it bears mentioning anyway: El Pelon is back open for business. The place looks great, too.

1/29/2008 12:56:25 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

Okay, so we all know about the Red Sox. And the Patriots. But it's quite possible that Boston could turn into a three-title-team town this year. Very possible.

Oh, no, we're not talking about the Celtics, although they're off to a great start. We're talking about the motherfucking New Englad god-damn Revolution. This is now the third consecutive year that they've been in the finals with no hardware to show for it. Do we really think they're going to become the Buffalo Bills of Major League Soccer?

During last night's qualifier, Taylor Twellman (remind us again why he didn't make the roster for the World Cup team last year?) scored one of the sickest goals you will ever see in your life. There's video here.

11/9/2007 10:54:55 AM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

10/29/2007 2:15:03 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

As previously mentioned, here is video of our visit to Harmonix's Central Square offices, where a few of us got a chance to play around on Rock Band, the awesome new game from the folks who brought you Guitar Hero. One-sentence review from Will Spitz: "It's really awesome, especially the drums."

The Rock Band Tour Bus is at MIT today and tomorrow, with a performance by Bang Camaro (a band which features some Harmonix employees) scheduled for 1 pm. You'll be able to check out the game for yourself there.

PREVIOUSLY: Our complete interview with Sean Baptiste

Also, here's the list of tracks that have so far been confirmed for the game. This is not the final set list, but it's still damn impressive.

10/25/2007 3:12:48 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [1] |  

Last Friday, the Phoenix visited the Central Square offices of Harmonix, the video game development house behind the first two Guitar Hero products, and, with help from their new parent company, MTV, the upcoming, hotly-anticipated Rock Band, which, as you may have heard, takes Guitar Hero's authentic musical simulator feel and stretches that to accommodate a drummer and vocalist. There's video forthcoming, but in the meantime, we present our conversation with Sean Baptiste, their director of community development, and one of the game's de facto spokespeople. One of the things that came across that might not come through in text, though, was just how passionate and genuinely excited about Rock Band he was. You get a clear sense talking to him that he will gladly talk about it for hours, and never lose interest. He even told us as much. Anyway, here it is after the jump:

10/19/2007 12:13:56 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

Nice work, MIT:


Pic via Joystiq.

9/25/2007 8:13:03 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

Last Wednesday night began average enough for Lee Peters. He stopped in at Economy Hardware on Mass Ave in Boston, near Christian Science Plaza, around 6 p.m. When he walked outside, he explains via an e-mail from the Boston Critical Mass chain, he saw “two people standing around my bike in the middle of stealing it. I ran forward, the guy saw me laughed as if we were friends. Then he took a swing at me with the bolt cutters. I ducked. He ran. I got on my bike to follow. I couldn't find him.”

But the story doesn’t end there. Turns out there are some Good Samaritans in Boston - Christian Science Monitor staffer Andrew Heining, a stranger to Peters, who’d had two bikes stolen in the same area, witnessed the incident, and took action. He explains, via a lengthy entry from his Facebook page (we shortened it to the abridged version):

“One of them ran across Mass. Ave., directly toward me. Never one to shy from the action, I took chase. In fact, I began yelling: 'Call the police! This guy's stealing bikes!'

I was right on his heels for most of the chase (I was on my bike and he on foot), and I never stopped yelling for people to call the police, much to their collective puzzlement... It was at this point that he got a little tired of me following him, and he stopped running... I again yelled for someone to call the police (and this time, someone did - a bystander from Mass Ave, who'd followed us, cell phone in hand, and was standing behind me now)... he came at me, swinging the bag of tools he'd been carrying - a pair of bolt cutters, a socket set, a screwdriver, and I think a saw - hitting me in the back. We wrestled, Greco roman style... he escaped, pushing both me and the other guy who'd stopped to help out of the way, and running, this time up Dalton St., over the Mass Pike. ...a police car came screaming down Scotia street after like 45 seconds, and, upon being told that I had been chasing the thief, the officer told me to get in and help him look for him.”

A different police car eventually tracked down the thief, and the police asked Heining to ID him. Now, he says, the thief is being charged with: "larceny, being in possession of burglary tools (he dropped the bag of them in the scuffle with me at Scotia street), and, get this – assault with a deadly weapon. Yep, that bag of tools constituted a deadly weapon."

One bike thief down, thanks to two unfuckwithable bystanders. And a bunch o’ police. Nice job, guys.

9/24/2007 3:07:02 PM by Caitlin | Comments [1] |