Blogs

Fenway Recording Sessions #141: WILD BEAST with BOBBY, THE STATIC JACKS, and DJ CARBO

Where: The Paradise
When: 9/27/11 at 7:00pm
Tickets available online at Ticketmaster.com or at the Paradise Box Office

See you there!

The Rockport Legion Band, Cape Ann's community band (established in 1932) is seeking musicians on all traditional concert band instruments. We are a non-audition organization that rehearses and performs all year.

If you are a "lapsed" musician (that is, you played well in high school or college and you'd like to take up playing again) OR you continued playing after school and need an outlet to for your talents, then we may be the perfect place for you. We have players from all over the North Shore and from as far away as Woburn.

If you are interested, you may visit our web page for further information and sound clips by Googling "Rockport Legion Band" (sorry, the link function doesn't seem to work).

You may also contact the music director at: rockportband@gmail.com

[View the story "Paul Pierce Goes To China" on Storify]

I've started seeing "Who is Annie Mulz" stickers all over my neighborhood. On signs, signposts, mailboxes, and so on.
A quick search shows me that Annie Mulz is an edgy clothing store on Newbury Street. By edgy, I mean the kind of place that looks like it might hire a publicity firm that might carry out a guerrilla marketing campaign that plasters stickers all over the place, all while being plausibly deniable and non-liable for damages and cleanup. This kind of thing makes our neighborhoods ugly and pisses me off. Does anyone have better insight into this problem...

There was just an earthquake in Virginia. According to the USGS it was a magnitude 5.8 earthquake. We felt in my office and I saw all the monitors on peoples' desk shaking.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/at00lqe6x3.php

Oh, do check out the inflammatory rhetoric in the Herald. Chris Cassidy is successfully riling up the ragers there.

Yesterday, it was Cyclists, drivers are wheeling and dealing — keying off on ticket numbers and starting with a Steve Murphy slam on bikers. Today, Cyclists plan provocations in Hub bike-car war is even more heavy handed. He does the straw-man thing, manufacturer the pitched battle and sits back.

The comments are even harsher than those on bike posts here.

by Jason A. Stephany, August 8, 2011

Since he took office February 4, 2010, US Senator Scott Brown has yet to host a public town hall or open forum. His schedule has included more than 250 stops for ribbon cuttings, groundbreaking ceremonies and photo opportunities – even a slew of book signings to market his autobiography. But Brown has yet to offer a single opportunity for Massachusetts taxpayers to gather in an open, public setting and ask questions of their senator.

So when aides to Brown announced he would tour the state to share his agenda and interact with constituents on job creation and economic development issues, it made headlines. After 18 months of private, scripted events, the commonwealth’s junior senator was finally coming out of his shell to discuss important issues at the forefront of everyone’s mind – or so we thought. READ MORE

The Longfellow Bridge has its design challenges ahead, and the BU bridge has been no picnic for engineers.

But another bridge in Boston – the Chelsea Street bridge between Chelsea and East Boston – is a simple affair. By the end of the summer, the new bridge, designed by HNTB and built by J.F. White of Framingham, may be complete. It may even happen ahead of schedule.

Although the men working with iron above the river are having no trouble, the men who move mud below it have been facing a dozen daunting engineering tasks for over a year.

They’re all trying to figure out how to make the channel for oil tankers wider. Engineers, pilots, tug captains, oil companies, private landowners, and Coast Guard and Army personnel have been at the drawing board for two years now.

The new bridge, after all, will span the more than 200-ft. wide channel without interruption. That’s thanks to two superstructures that now dominate the Chelsea skyline (anyone can see them from the Tobin Bridge). So the bridge, when opened, might be wide enough to fit a “Panamax” oil tanker headed to the Gulf, Irving and Global tanks upstream.

Originally posted at Union Jack Creative on July 29th, 2011 - from two Boston bikers to hundreds of new Hubway riders, nine tips to make biking better for you, and for the rest of us.

It’s no secret that we’re pretty big on bikes. We think they’re pretty fun to ride (and are kind of like magic carpets ferrying you home in the wee hours when everyone else is fighting for cabs) and we love when friends ask us for help breaking into biking in the city. More bikes are better for everyone involved, in our opinion.

And so, though we’re a bit confused as to the target market, we really want to get behind Boston’s Hubway bike share initiative, which had its grand opening last Thursday. Kiosks are up, bikes are out and locals are signing up – but what about that influx of new riders?

Broke and trendy? Roslindale film maker and blogger Elaine McMillion has put together a directory of every thrift store, boutique, and consignment shop in the Boston area along with ideas of what to do with all the homeless ex-belongings.

http://www.beansinacan.com

Once upon a time, perusing a book about the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, I noted that some twelve centuries before Homer, in about 2000 B.C.E., the scribe Khakheperresenb was already voicing what I like to call Khakheperresenb’s Complaint: “Would I had phrases that are not known,” the scribe laments, “in new language that has not been used not an utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken.”

Do I Repeat Myself?
By John Barth
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/08/do-i-repeat-myself/8572/

Dear Mayor Menino,

My wife and I have lived at [elided] in Brighton since 1997. At least a third of the residential units on our block are rental units, most of which are rented to a different set of Boston College students each year. Some years are good: the students are respectful of the neighborhood, keep the noise down, and keep things clean. Some years are bad: the students host loud, rowdy, outdoor parties until all hours of the night; get drunk; throw plastic cups, beer bottles and cans everywhere; throw up or urinate in the street; set off fireworks under cars; etc.

Although we never know what we're going to get in terms of students, we do have a pretty good idea of what we are going to get from the police department, which is that when we call the department at 2:00am on a Sunday morning because the students are playing Denis Leary's "Cause I'm an Asshole" at top volume out of an open window, drunkenly screaming along, and waking up the entire neighborhood, and we call 911 and ask for someone to come do something about it, the odds are that nobody is going to show up.

Common Cause Massachusetts is hosting a Redistricting Olympics this summer. We will be taking citizen drawn Congressional, State House, and State Senate maps all summer, evaluating them, declaring a winner, giving out prizes and submitting the winning maps to the MA Legislative Redistricting Committee for consideration.

The purpose of the redistricting Olympics is threefold: to educate the public about the steps in the redistricting process, to initiate public participation in the political arena, and to pressure the legislature to draw the districts so that the citizens are appropriately represented.

Help show the legislature that redistricting is about our interests, not theirs. By participating in our redistricting Olympics and learning how to draw your own fair districts, you can acquire the tools you need to expose attempts by public officials to politicize the state’s new legislative maps.

For more information check out and/or email us at .

Participate in our democracy!

I loved dancing in and around Boston. I am looking for all of the girls I danced with. They include: Alice in Wonderland from the Teddybear. Loved working with her!! Dusty, Cookie - She was beautiful and funny! Bucky - the real Boss of all of us and a good friend to me. I will never forget him. Sonny from Squire. What happened to him?? Christina Fox - her St Bernard used to come up the back stairs at the end of the night, and if I was on stage, I let him come out and he loved it!! What a ham! The Band from about 1975-76 with Jo Ann singing. They were wonderful to dance to. Lorraine Gail made G-Strings in the dressing room in a club in Calif. When we met in Boston at the 2'oclock, she noticed my G-string as one of hers!! She had a different look and name in Calif so I did not connect the two. I got my poodle Oliver from Peggy the bartender (loved her!) He actually came from Bernadette at the Silver Slipper. I had him for 14 years. I took him to Europe with me. I shared a dressing room with Diane Lewis for two years. I remember in Nov 1972 at the 2'oclock, Sandy Beach (the most beautiful) Bambi, Michelle, Mickey Martin, Melanie, Jerry Dean, Diedra Rhodes, Nevada Sands, Mary from Vegas, Lee Miles. Lee was the first stripper I ever met in Paul Jordans' office. She said "If you want to make it in this town, you have to go nude". I was told in Calif.

Trying to post in here. This will be the 4th try.

The biggest. most raucous production of this show yet.

"2010: Our Hideous Future," is coming to Oberon, and excitement is high. Have you seen that place? It's pretty much the future right there.

THE WAY, FAR DISTANT FUTURE, A.D. 2010, EAST COAST METRO ZONE A, NEW MALDEN: a time of techno-studded blechhiness. Lonely human freedom fighter Kate Brick plans a last stand against the oppressive Artas, artificial life forms who control humankind through torture, brainwashing, and Facebook. But judging by the complacence of her lover Dehnise Compuserve and the general apathy of her fellow humans, it may be too late.

This near futuristic dystopian cyberpunk musical comedy returns to the stage featuring its original cast of local artists: Kamela Dolinova, Katie Drexel, Julia Lunetta, Timothy Hoover, John Deschene, Kay Coughlin, Ginger Lazarus, Emily Taradash and Will Todisco.

Inspired by the performance space at Oberon, The Unreliable Narrator Theater Group and The Pluto Tapes will update this fan favorite with new songs, staging, and interactive elements known as the MC’s Hall of Interactive Hideousity.

This production will feature the FAC2010: Post-Show Dance Party featuring the DJ stylings of The Pluto Tapes. Music and Lyrics are still by Andy Hicks, Book still by Carl Danielson and now featuring Choreography by Alex Nemiroski.

The Rockport Legion Band announces the start of its seventy-eighth summer concert season. Details of the opening concert are available HERE.

An ex-Stop & Shop barely remains on Truman Parkway. Last week, it looked like they'd fill the lot behind the Jersey barriers with construction equipment and never get to tearing down the not-so-supermarket, liquor store, bank and pharmacy.

Two workdays later, there's not much left. An empty brick shell may be gone this week. We're figuring to see the big-assed version of grocery and drugstore within six months. Walgreen's is now a trailer pharmacy.

When Americans get into deconstruction, they get serious.

Local filmmaker Chelsea Spear has made a short film, "Jumbo in a Jar", involving Tufts University, sports and the cremains of the most famous elephant who ever lived.

Synopsis: When the Barnum Building at Tufts University burned to the ground in 1975, it took with it the taxidermied remains of Barnum's favorite elephant, Jumbo. The sports department was able to step in and save Jumbo's ashes for future generations of Tuftonians. In this documentary, Sports Director Emiretus Rocky Carzo talks about Jumbo's life and legacy."

Plus, it introduced the word "Tuftonian" to my vocabulary.

The film is in a competition to be featured at the Palo Alto International Film Festival. I know many UHubbers favor the quirkier bits of Boston-area lore. Wouldn't it be cool to vote "Jumbo in a Jar" into an International Film Festival?

The voting link is here.

RT @realdealneal: Boston Globe front page tomorrow http://tinypic.com/r/2dch1ts/7 #whitey #bulger

Boston gangster surrenders quietly in Calif. after 16 years on run: Fugitive mobster James “Whitey" Bulger was arrested last night at a house in Santa Monica after 16 years on the run, police said early this morning. The 81-year-old Bulger, charged with 19 murders, did not put up any resistance.

The announcement came two days after the FBI unveiled a new television ad blitz to help find the fugitive couple. A tipster who saw the public service announcement urging the public to be on the lookout for Bulger’s girlfriend, Catherine Greig, alerted the FBI yesterday that Bulger and Greig were staying at a house in Santa Monica, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

So does the tipster get the $2,000,000 reward?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/06/whitey-bulger-arrest-santa-monica.html

No one should get arrested for this.

Boston police arrested Simon Glik, a young attorney, on charges that sound pretty serious at first: illegal wiretapping, aiding the escape of a prisoner, and disturbing the peace. But all Simon did was hold up his cell phone and openly record Boston police officers making a rough arrest on Boston Common.

Watch our interview with Simon--including video he made of police.

Mayor Mumbles is so afraid of major events in "his" city. Loves that the Red Sox and Celtics won their recent titles on the road. No worry about the Pats as the Super Bowl will never come to Mass. Remember the great job he did with the Democratic Convention a few years back? He closed the city, businesses went broke and Dems vowed never again to hold the event in Boston.

The last big Red Sox game in Boston, his police panicked and shot and killed a collage kid with a "non lethal" weapon.

Cop starves his dog

The Unreliable Narrator Theater Group and The Pluto Tapes are hosting a CD release party for the cast album of 2010: Our Hideous Future: The Musical! on Sunday, May 22 at The Burren, located at 247 Elm St, Somerville, MA at 3 PM.

Featuring local artists Kamela Dolinova, Emily Taradash, Julia Lunetta, Timothy Hoover, John Deschene, Kay Coughlin, Katie Drexel, Ginger Lazarus, and Will Todisco, the cast album features all of the songs from the hit cyberpunk musical comedy 2010: Our Hideous Future: The Musical!, ranging from whimsical (“Doing The Best That I Can”), to the grooving (“Bangor Boogie”) to the memorable and uplifting (“The Future’s Not What It Used To Be”). Joining them are local artists electronic violinist Mei Ohara (fresh from performing at the Unreliable Narrator Showcase), the cyberpunk band Br1ght Pr1mate, and the Pluto Tapes.

The cast of 2010: Our Hideous Future: The Musical! will also perform songs from the album.