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Friday, July 04, 2008


Obama's Fourth: Cox in Butte action (VIDEO!)


Nothing to see here: just Barack Obama and the fam enjoying a leisurely Fourth of July out in Montana.

In Butte, actually. Hmm. And then inexplicably a truck marked "Cox" rolls by.

Is this dude fucking with us?

(Equally inexplicable: the horrible cover band playing "Sweet Home Alabama." Dude, you're in Montana!)


7/4/2008 2:50:00 PM by phloggist | Comments [0] |  




Monday, April 28, 2008


VIDEO: Rating the Phoenix's mustaches



A Lip Tree Grows in Kenmore Sq: Rating the Phoenix's Mustaches

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!


4/28/2008 12:15:51 PM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  




Thursday, April 24, 2008


Mental Detox Week






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


4/24/2008 12:43:37 PM by Will Spitz | Comments [0] |  




Friday, April 18, 2008


Flashbacks: an embedded reporter goes over to the “dark side,” dumb things John Silber once said about gay people, and the virtual house call


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.

“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.


4/18/2008 10:03:18 AM by Ian Sands | Comments [0] |  




Monday, April 07, 2008


VIDEO: The Wire's David Simon at Harvard


With The Wire's fifth and final season in the can -- we'd talk more about it, except that a couple of our slacking staffers are still plowing through seasons one through four -- creator/mastermind David Simon stopped by Harvard to accept we're-not-worthy genuflections from a few serious social-science superstars. Leading off was William Julius Wilson, whose landmark When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor was namechecked by Simon as a strong influence on the dockworkers' plot in Season Two. WJW, in his introduction (which you can stream below): "Indeed, I do not hesitate to say that [The Wire] has done more to enhance our understanding of the challenges of urban life and the problems of urban inequality than any other media event or scholarly publication including studies by social scientists."

Simon was his typically combative self -- if not the angriest man in television then, well, still angry. His remarks on what led him from a beat on the Baltimore Sun to writing The Wire is as lacerating a critique of journalism as you'll hear -- it's a potent argument that should sit side-by-side all the reams of html being expended on how the internet is killing newspapers. When one budding j-school student asked whether Simon had overstated the case against journalism by making one of Season Five's villains a newsroom fabricator, Simon responded by referencing "those two fellows at the Globe," by which we can only assume he meant Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith. He also declined to answer the spoilerific best question of the evening -- "How come Omar had to get whacked by that little hopper?" -- a question which we'll attempt to answer ourselves in a post later this week.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Wire-at-Harvard event if there wasn't some dweeby white kid attempting to pick a message-board-grade argument with the series creator by suggesting that Simon should've picked a Baltimore club track for the Wire's opening theme. (We didn't get a chance to scream, "Dude, Season 4 Episode 8!") We'll post that clip later this week, after we finish shuddering with embarassment for everyone involved. Suffice to say that Simon had a very plausible answer for a totally absurd question, and that DJ Technics will survive this latest indignity.

We'll be posting the FULL AUDIO of the conference on Thursday; check back for the mpfree.


David Simon at Harvard: Introduction by William Julius Wilson


David Simon at Harvard: on the birth of The Wire


David Simon at Harvard: on the death of journalism

COMING SOON: later this week, we'll be posting highlights from the panel discussion, where Simon traded bons mots with WJW, a Boston Police Deputy Superintendant (Simon made a show of checking her stripes after she declared The Wire authentic, noting that he'd never gotten that kind of straight talk from anybody over the rank of sergeant), Bronx-reared author Geoffrey Canada (Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America), and the swashbuckling sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, who went undercover with street gangs to write an insider's look at thug politics and also posted on the Times' Freakonomics blog about watching The Wire with actual street criminals.


4/7/2008 10:10:35 PM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  




Monday, March 31, 2008


VIDEO: Anime Boston wrap-up



Anime Boston 2008

ThePhoenix.com's resident cosplay expert, Maddy Myers, reports from Anime Boston. And yes, if you must know, she made that Zelda suit from scratch. 

 

Good idea: 15,000 Anime Fans swarming Hynes Convention Center.

Bad idea: Only five computers set up to register them all.

 

Staffers were undeniably overpowered by attendance at Anime Boston 2008. Nicknamed "Line Con", Anime Boston featured a wait for almost every event. (It probably didn't help that there was an outbreak of "Con Flu.") Hopefully, the higher-ups will have found a better way to organize registration by 2009, but that won’t stop the lines for other huge events. Patience has become a necessary virtue for Massachusetts-based otaku.

 

When events ran well, they ran quite well indeed. The Pillows concert exceeded the already-high expectations (for those willing to wait in the hours-long line to see them). The Tetris Ninjas returned to the Masquerade this year to do an amazing Duck Hunt sketch. And, as always, cosplayers from far and wide came together to impress the heck out of each other (my highest compliments to the Devil May Cry 4 group, Ultima from FFXII, the Companion Cube from Portal, the humongous Jigglypuff, and . . . well, I could go on all day).

 

Even though I saw a lot of kids bitterly pawning their 3-day passes after a disappointing Friday, I think Anime Boston is still worth attending. Despite its notorious disorganization problems, the convention has always had impressive guest speaker lists and a huge variety in events. Next year, fans will know what to expect and the long lines won’t disappoint or surprise. We’re all just hoping that the staff size starts catching up with the attendance rates. The Anime fans of New England deserve it!

-- Maddy Myers


3/31/2008 8:19:14 PM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  




Tuesday, March 25, 2008


There Will Be Vader


We try not to post too many memes these days, but this one was pretty good. It's self-explanatory: scenes from Star Wars with Darth Vader's dialog replaced by Daniel Plainview's from There Will Be Blood.




3/25/2008 8:30:46 AM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  




Thursday, March 13, 2008


Trailer park: Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Lost Boys 2


First the one we've all seen by now, Iron Man:



Next, one we have kind of high hopes for (no doubt setting ourselves up for disappointment), The Incredible Hulk:



One we don't know quite what to make of, Speed Racer:



And finally, Lost Boys 2:


3/13/2008 3:16:52 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  




Thursday, March 06, 2008


More Notes on the Project Runway Finale







Proj Run! Ian beat me to the official rundown, read on if you want to hear more post-finale ramblings.

Christian took it all, which was totally expected even having known in advance that his collection would be the least wearable and even more "costume" (read: couture) than Chris's stuff ever was. I knew he would win as soon as Jezebel deliciously leaked each of the collections (note: ringers Chris AND Sweet P. presented!) as well as the fact that Posh was the guest judge. The networks lurve a boy genius. Soo yeah, Jillian's knits were interesting, though I liked the idea of them more than I actually would like to wear them. That sweater with the cut-outs? Can you say J.C. Penny junior dept. sale rack? Nevertheless, I adore her. And not just cause she's a neurotic, over-careful, quietish girl from my home territory of Lawnguyland. The best part of all is that she seems so much nicer than the Mean Fashion Girls I went to high school with -- their personalities were much more akin to Christian's, actually, which is hardly a surprise. I expect very cool things, and many amazing jackets from Jillian in the future and I hope her boyfriend proposes to her asap because he seems to be very much in love, which warms my heart. Did you see how sweetly he kissed her while she was crying over her loss? It was like the cameras weren't even there! This is what I live for. But anyway, the real success of the Bryant Park show was Rami. Mr. Drapey McDraperson is an expert tailor, who knew! So WHAT if he likes "Brady Bunch colors" (read: jewel-tones, which I love)? Mike Kors, you're such a jackass. Rami really is the most cerebral and I think he'll have just as much post-show success as Christian will. He may even be the Clay Aiken to Christian's Reuben. We shall have to wait and see. Love you, Rams. Love you even more when you trot after Christian when he says, "Come on, girl!"

To squelch my sadness over having no more PJ for months and months, I've been catching up on the Bravo blogs. There's an incredible post-win Q&A with Christian here, and I urge you to read it in its entirety. (It also includes a fucking great mini-photoshoot with Christian and Heidi, as seen above) For posterity's sake, here is the ultimate, most amazing, best quote ever -- and so true. Christian, you're a sassy, foul-mouthed little bitch with high-maintainance hair, but you know your shit:

Did you just know that Victoria Beckham would like your collection?
In the back of my head, I’m not going lie, I was like, “Victoria’s the judge. This is me.” She’s who I design for! She’s English, she’s from Europe, she’s very very into high fashion, and some of her favorite designers are McQueen and Chanel and Lagerfeld, you know? I knew there was no way she was not going to like what I did. It was amazing because she’s someone I would actually want to try to dress. I actually think I said when we first started and Bravo asked us all who we’d want to dress, I’m pretty sure I said Victoria Beckham. Well, and I said Britney, but actually I said I wanted to save Britney! My new goal in life is to come up with my new reality show called Project Britney where I transform her and I save her life and make her the most fabulous person ever! She needs a gay! She has no gays! Have you ever noticed that? She has no gay boys helping her! She only has straight people and, no offense, but straighties don’t know how to fix the divas! It’s so weird! I’ve never seen any gay stylists working her.

The perfect ending to a delightful Season Four: The Tim and Christian walk-off!!



3/6/2008 12:33:55 PM by Sharon Steel | Comments [0] |  




Thursday, February 14, 2008


Bootlegged Indy 4 trailer hits the net


Because nothing says "Happy Valentine's Day" like an old guy blowing stuff up:



2/14/2008 10:13:10 AM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  




Tuesday, February 12, 2008


Like Hope, Only Different: Comedians for McCain


On the off chance you're one of the three people who hasn't seen the original, the above will be much funnier after you watch this.

One thing we're gonna miss about the Hollywood writers' strike: dudes are gonna have less time on their hands for stuff like this. We only wish Mitt had dropped out a week later, if only so we coulda heard Fred Armisen warble "I saw my dad march with MLK." 


2/12/2008 11:36:04 AM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  




Monday, February 04, 2008


Patriots: Nobody's Perfect


As always, in times of trouble, trial, and tribulation -- no less THE SINGLE WORST LOSS IN NEW ENGLAND SPORTS HISTORY -- we look to . . . Hannah Montana. Oh, Miley, what would you sing to a town writhing in misery this morning? What have you for the vanquished 2007-08 New England Patriots, a team whose season is destined to replace "Casey at the Bat" as the tragic, cautionary sports tale of all time?


2/4/2008 8:12:03 AM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  




Tuesday, January 29, 2008


Japanese Smash Bros. intro vid hits the net




For those of you with Smash Bros. delay blues, this video will surely serve as some comfort, particularly since it reveals a couple of favorites who appear to be playable (it's Marth and Ness - not exactly surprising but they hadn't yet been confirmed.)

The game is out in Japan, so details are emerging. More here.


1/29/2008 9:44:02 AM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  




Wednesday, January 09, 2008


Blooper Reel: The Worst of New Hampshire Primary Night


Five worst quotes we heard last night:

5. New York Times on Grandmama Obama:
"It's pretty amazing to see her as she sorts her corn on the ground."

4. Douchebag local radio interns, heckling Hillary:
"Iron my shirt!"

3. Bill Bennett on John McCain's unlikely comeback:
"Here's a guy who's 71 years old, a guy with broken bones, a guy who can't comb his hair."

2. John McCain, recalling his unlikely comeback strategy:
"I'm goin' to New Hampshire and by gum I'm gunna tell 'em the truth!"
[ed note: we made up the "by gum" part]

1. Tom Brokaw, on the mainstream media's coverage of New Hampshire:
"We got some explaining to do."

Craig's List Alert: Stage Managers Needed

1. Mitt Romney, stepping to the podium microphone: "I just spent 45 minutes writing some very carefully thought out notes on exactly what I want to say. They're right here. But there's no podium, so I'm not gonna use those." Oopsy. But hey, two silvers! He thought of that all by himself!

2. Barack Obama, re-introducing his "Yes We Can" slogan. Beware the white people. Obama patterned his speech on the testifying, call-and-response patterns of a Baptist sermon. Folks, here's how it's supposed to go: Barack says "Yes We Can," you say "Amen." Instead, an audience raised on NASCAR and high school football falls into default-cheerleader mode and just yells whatever he says back at him, really fast, like a hardcore band, totally disrupting Obama's MLK-like flow. The result: a man thrown off his rhythm by his own audience, like when Jay-Z lets Beanie Sigel get on a beat. Let's see if we can get this straight, South Carolina, mmmkay?

Best/Worst Campaign Music Award: John Edwards

Blue Mass Group reports that Desperate Housewives hubby James Denton was in NH canvassing for Edwards yesterday, using Wilco's "Heavy Metal Drummer" as his theme music. How? Why? Is this some kind of in-joke? Which beautiful-and-stoned Denton co-star likes to screw heavy metal drummers? Whatever the answer, it's an altogether better choice than that fucking John Cougar Mellencamp Ford commercial that Edwards is using for his entrance music. We don't care if the Cougar sings it for you or notThe campaign has mercifully excised the tune from the official Youtube clip -- hopefully realizing that there isn't a soul on earth that wants to hear that song ever again.

Worst Gadget

Well, it's better than . . . whatever you call that thing Anderson Cooper was fucking with in Iowa. But CNN's "Magic Wall" worked about as well as you'd expect a giant obnoxious iPhone screen to work. Which is to say: not so well. (For the record, here's how it's supposed to go down.) Hugenormous video touch screen to zoom in on breaking election returns? $30 million. Watching your correspondents poke a TV screen like it's a broke ATM machine? Priceless.


1/9/2008 3:45:49 PM by Carly Carioli | Comments [1] |  




Monday, January 07, 2008


Water in video games: a video history


This video is oddly hypnotic, and not just because of the Sigur Ros on the soundtrack. In a semi-related story, 2008 marks the 20th anniversary of Super Mario 3.



1/7/2008 5:36:39 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  




Thursday, December 20, 2007


Our video year: ThePhoenix.tv's Best of 2007




Queens of the Stone Age does "In the Fade" at First Act Guitar Studio, proving they are just as awesome acoustically as they are plugged in.



James Parker reads a poem about Britney Spears's wild night with Criss Angel, backed by a bunch of jellyfish.



Rilo Kiley live, proving, much to our amazement, that there were actual good songs lurking underneath the studio polish of Under the Blacklights.



No list of internet videos in 2007 would be complete without a Soulja Boy reference...



Spiritualized performs "Soul on Fire," an excellent song from their upcoming album at the MFA.



We visited with the cast of Superbad at a bowling alley. Nice dudes.



Paddy-O's in Faneuil Hall may seem like an odd choice for a rock show, particularly one by a band like The National, but in spite of some dark conditions, it turned out to be a great show.



Way back in February, we checked out the Boston Burlesque Fest. Bet you had forgotten all about the Moononite incident.



Paramore took a break from their march towards world conquest with this performance at First Act Guitar Studio



We got a sneak peek at the truly awesome Rock Band at the offices of the game's developers, Harmonix



Tegan and Sara entertained First Act Guitar Studio with their music and their words.



In advance of the Police's big show at Fenway, we talked to David Bieber, the Phoenix's archivist about the band's early years.



Spoon broke through to the mainstream in 2007 on the strength of their hit single "Underdog," performed live and acoustically here at First Act Guitar Studio.



Film editor Peter Keough interviewed Michael Moore about Sicko in Manchester, New Hampshire



Yo La Tengo brought their Freehweelin' tour to the Museum of Fine Arts in November, and performed a lengthy set of covers and fan favorites like "Stockholm Syndrome."



Michael Palin spoke to the Phoenix's Peter Kadzis, and revealed the origin of the Lumberjack sketch.



We got some bonus footage of Isis.



And now we're premiering this video of My Brightest Diamond covering Roy Orbison. See you all in 2008!


12/20/2007 3:28:37 PM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  




Thursday, October 25, 2007


VIDEO: The Phoenix gets a sneak preview of Rock Band




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] |  




Monday, October 22, 2007


TV Links operator arrested, Site shut down


It's Saturday, October 20th. Like most days that follow Friday, you plan to spend this one gathering up all of your sweets in the house and plopping down in front of the computer for a half day of TV, courtesy of the UK-based website TV Links. Complacent and happy, you press the necessary keys that would normally take you to the free goodness. Rather than come up, an error screen appears. You dismiss this as a momentary glitch in the wireless, then calmly refresh said screen. The same message pops up. You still don’t panic. You exit out of Internet Explorer, reopen the browser and return to the site. Still nothing. You load up Firefox. No luck. Now you’re starting to imagine the worst. You restart your computer and wait for the damn thing to load up before returning to the site. It doesn’t. Becoming slightly delusional and perhaps superstitious, you take the computer over your head so as to achieve maximum internet usage, tap on the wall 3 times, and then futilely and miraculously (what with your hands hoisting the computer) tap the keys that just a few days before had delivered you into the ultimate time suck. When that doesn’t work, you punch your computer in the screen.

 

Helpless and desperate, you turn to Google News for some sort of diversion, however inferior it is to what that glorious site, TV Links, typically has to offer. Unthinkingly, you type the words "TV Links UK" into the "search news" box and — shit, fuck, son of a bitch — your worst fears are realized: the site’s operator has been arrested, the site itself shut down.You very nearly shed a tear for the 26-year-old Cheltenham man, but more for your sad, suffering self.


10/22/2007 3:37:36 PM by Ian Sands | Comments [0] |  




Friday, October 19, 2007


VIDEO: Nick Hornby jinxes Red Sox at Brookline reading


Game 5 of the ALCS was about an hour from start-time when Nick Hornby took the stage at the Devotion School in Brookline last night. The first question from the floor concerned, not surprisingly, Hornby's take on the current Red Sox series -- given that Hornby's Fever Pitch, a book about English soccer fanatics, had been magically turned into a Farrelly Bros film about Red Sox obsessives, which in turn was famously forced to undergo several last-second rewrites as the real-life Sox miraculously won their first World Series in 81 years.

Given that experience, you'd think Nick Hornby would understand that making even idle, humorous remarks about the Sox' prospects would not be taken lightly by the famously superstitious Fenway faithful. We're not sure if this rises to the level of the Curse of the Bambino, but it's damn well close. (Click above to see what we're talking about, and listen for the audience's audible gasp.) FOR GOD'S SAKE, MAN, THEY WERE DOWN 3-1. The Sox' subsequent drubbing of the Indians notwithstanding, we reserve the right to hold a book-burning on Yawkey Way should Our Boys fail to take two at home.

More from the Hornby appearance, including a reading from his fantastic new "young adult" novel Slam, coming over on Word Up on Thursday of next week. Thanks to Brookline Booksmith for hosting the reading.


10/19/2007 4:28:27 PM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  




Friday, October 12, 2007


VIDEO: MIT does the Soulja Boy Dance



Crank Dat Supernerd: MIT Does Soulja Boy

DJ Lonewolf aka Kevin Driscoll invited us to document the making of the MIT comparitive media studies dept's attempt to create the most-populated video of folks doing the Soulja Boy dance on the internet. Read Caitlin Curran's account, watch the making-of video above, and check out some of the results.


10/12/2007 1:07:09 PM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  




Thursday, September 27, 2007


Wes Anderson's short film available as a free iTunes download




It's called "Hotel Chevalier," and you can get it here. It's intended as a companion piece to Wes Anderson's upcoming Darjeeling Limited: a 13-minute prologue of sorts about Jason Schwarzman and Natalie Portman's characters. Somewhat ridiculously, it had a gala premiere at Apple stores in four cities the other day.

Also in this short: Natalie Portman naked.

UPDATE: It's now on YouTube. Still NSFW, as if you didn't know.

Apple | Film | video

9/27/2007 3:27:13 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  




Tuesday, September 25, 2007


YouTube videos to air with ads in 2008


I guess we all should have seen this coming: YouTube is sticking ads on to its videos next year.

On the surface, it seems like this might bring the site's popularity down a shade, but then again, Google has a history of creativity when it comes to this stuff. Who knows. Maybe this stab at legitimacy will incite more companies to open their video vaults.

Because this blog entry needs to run with a video, here's "Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off!"



9/25/2007 9:55:21 AM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  




Monday, September 17, 2007


Actual good show wins award



(Not that we watched the Emmys or anything)

It's true: while The Office and Extras may have had the better stories, Emmy-winner 30 Rock was, in fact, the funniest show on TV this season. People have been calling it a sort of "spiritual successor" to Arrested Development, and the comparison is apt, though 30 Rock is more mainstream-friendly (less original, too, but it's hard to fault them for borrowing Simpsons jokes). It's to the show's credit that they found a way for Tracy Morgan's schtick to not get old (mostly by playing him off Jack McBrayer's uber-naive NBC page Kenneth.) Also worth noting: turns out the Jane Krakowski/Rachel Dratch swap may have been a good call, as Krakowski is actually really funny as a self-obsessed grown-up theater kid. More bonus points for incorporating Chris Parnell as Doctor Spaceman (his surname is three syllables,) a sort of real-life Dr. Nick Riviera, and for bringing in Emily Mortimer for a few episodes as Phoebe, the underhanded appraiser with "avian bone syndrome."



Season One is on DVD, and it's worth a watch if you haven't checked it out yet.


9/17/2007 9:18:06 AM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  




Wednesday, September 12, 2007


The Patriots' videotaping scandal: Let's all take a deep breath here




I'm not sure there's any way I can attempt to take a rational look at the recent revelations of t