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Stage blogging

A chat room sex scandal
The main characters of the play Speech and Debate, three Oregon high school misfits, do a lot of their living among the modern technologies of chat rooms, Google, and personal video blogs.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | April 01, 2009

Sitting pretty

The guy with the cash can play a waiting game if he wants
Richard Connor has cleverly cornered the market on the Portland Press Herald and its sister papers, and is now in what can only be called the catbird seat.
By JEFF INGLIS | April 01, 2009

A few tips

Giving the Press Herald a fighting chance
There are, in fact, some pretty basic things that would help ensure the paper might have a chance.
By JEFF INGLIS | April 01, 2009

Fold or float

How to save the Portland Press Herald
It doesn't matter who the new owner of the Portland Press Herald is, or whether there even is one. The state's largest-circulation daily newspaper simply cannot survive in its current form.
By JEFF INGLIS | April 01, 2009

Review: The Edge of Love

A soap opera about Dylan Thomas
John Maybury evoked the genius of Francis Bacon in Love Is the Devil , but he goes off the deep end with this ludicrous soap opera about Dylan Thomas.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 01, 2009

Black and white and red all over

The stylish ultraviolence of MadWorld
The most common problem afflicting video games these days is a deficit of imagination. So many releases look alike, sound alike, and play alike.
By MITCH KRPATA | March 31, 2009

26. Vince Offer

SCAM WOW
Vince’s face is a throwback to the movie stars of yesteryear — mainly Stripe from Gremlins . This beady-eyed pitchman, born Vincent Offer Schlomi, is more schlemiel than sales genius, and that Britney headset he wears when he’s yapping about the Sham Wow looks like that full-head retainer your mom made you wear in the ’80s. Lately, he’s been seen on television offering stay-at-home MILFs the worst pickup line ever: “You’re gonna love my nuts.” But his pitchman schtick may be nearing its end. The Smoking Gun just dug up a police report from last month in which Vince admitted to punching a woman he'd paid $1000 for sex. According to his arrest report, Vince told cops that after forking over a grand in $20 bills to one Sasha Harris, she "bit his tongue and would not let go," whereupon Vince "began to strike [Harris] numerous times in the face area."
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 30, 2009

21. JASON MESNICK

BACHELOR, NUMBER TWO
As creepy as it was to see a single dad trying to find his son a stepmom on a reality dating game, at least Mesnick had the sympathy vote going into this season’s The Bachelor , thanks to the screwing he took during the final rounds of the previous season’s The Bachelorette . But by the time his star-turn season ended in travesty — in quick succession he proposed, un-proposed, then turned around and propositioned another comparably useless bimbo — his name had become synonymous with “two-timing douchebag.” He also revealed himself as an incurable chin-grabbing kisser, which is arguably even worse.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

15. Andrew Dice Clay

SAD CLOWN
We thought it best to sum up our Dice entry in a nursery rhyme: Roses are red, violets are blue, your routine is more tired than a Lunesta rep’s, and your pathetic, shameless appearances on VH1 reality shows and on Celebrity Apprentice are, too. OHHHHH !
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

97. Toby Young

BRIT TWIT
It’s easy to make this list when you sit next to the sexiest being on this green Earth: Top Chef hostess Padma Lakshmi. Still, Tom Colicchio managed to keep himself off our radar, and so did the dramatically unsexy Ted Allen. But Young is a shoo-in. Besides his canned one-liners and nonsense observations (actual Times headline for a review of Young’s book: “Learning To Succeed as a Loser, on Two Continents”), this baldie looks like a British inbred cousin of James Carville.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

91. George W. Bush

BRAIN-DEAD PREZ
What, did you think we were done ripping the Neanderthal who set the country back five decades in just eight years, just because he’s out of office? Well, we want to be the first to mock all of those involved in building a library commemorating America’s first illiterate president. We’d also like to recommend the first book for inclusion in the project: The Pet Goat .
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

89. Greg Behrendt

HORSEFACE KILLAH
We’re just not that into you, either. And not just because this unfunny self-help writer belittles desperate women, or because he looks like the offspring of Dane Cook and an old banana. This so-called author/comedian is one of those one-hit wonders who can’t accept his destiny, but who for some reason will have opportunities to produce a new failed talk show on E! every few years.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

64. Mark Halperin

NOSTRA DUNCES
If Time magazine political prognosticator Mark Halperin bet on horses, he’d be broker than one of Bernie Madoff’s pigeons. Here’s just one headline we’re sure he wants back: WHY OPRAH WON’T HELP OBAMA . Bonus Unsexy Points for being a sore loser and whining about pro-Obama media bias.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

71. John McCain

SILVER MEDALIST
Now that John McCain has proven that he’s as effective a campaigner as he is a power forward, it’s time he shuts his yap once and for all. Watching this shipwreck sound off on the Senate floor is like watching a bag lady scream at ducklings.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

73. Robert Mugabe

ROBBY COMMODESTEAMER
First of all, dictatorial madmen are supposed have names that inspire terror in Western minds. Really? You couldn’t do better than “Robert”? More importantly, in the basket case that is post-colonial Africa, your resource-rich country of Zimbabwe actually once served as a model of hope. Now you’ve placed that hope squarely in the shitter, and have one of the least progressive countries on the planet. Here’s hoping you meet a JFK-like fate, without even getting to bang Hollywood starlets.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

75. Hammer

TWITHEAD
His non-stop Twittering has suddenly made it okay for every self-indulgent celebrity to text their faces off, as if LA had become the world’s least interesting cheerleader squad. And we find it ironic that the man who once famously hocked his gold shower knobs is now rolling deep with Ed McMahon and asking the rest of us to sell our bling. We had to say it, Hammer — you can’t touch this.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

17. Steve Wozniak

APPLE FRITTERER
Overheard, repeatedly, by viewers during the first couple episodes of this season’s Dancing with the Stars : “Ewwww, what the hell happened to Stephen King?” Nope, Stephen King isn’t doing the mambo — that’s the Woz, who looks as if Francis Ford Coppola swallowed a Hobbit. If seeing this Apple co-founder on the dance floor didn’t make your stomach do back flips, here comes the four unsexiest words in Hollywood: he dated Kathy Griffin.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

7. Jim Cramer

CROCK BROKER
CNBC’s Jim Cramer is the Jenna Jameson of financial reporting: the more the economy took it in the rear, the louder his screams of ecstasy became. We had this loudmouthed, prop-wielding financial Gallagher on our list a full year before he got pwned by Jon Stewart — but in 2009, Cramer wins our most-devolved award, streaking up the list from his 91st-place showing in 2008 to now land inside the top 10. How’d we figure it? Simple calculation: we moved him up a spot every time the market went down like a porn star — and added bonuses every time he whimpered “I should’ve done better.”
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

19. Judd Apatow and Friends

BROVEREXPOSURE
In their non-probing, unprovocative films, the characters this Hollywood comedic mafia chooses to celebrate are homely, smoke a lot of pot, and watch way too much porn. We get it. Yes, Apatow, Seth Rogen, and Jonah Hill aren’t exactly anyone’s dream dates based on physical attributes alone. But we saved a special unsexy spot for this threesome based on the inescapable fact that we’re completely sick of getting inundated with their repetitive shtick. Apatow gets bonus unsexy points for the right-wing current bubbling beneath his flicks.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

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