The Manny Ramirez sycophants are still chirping, but whether they like it or not, the Jason Bay era has begun. Bay arrived in Boston and although, he didn’t get the police escort that Doug Mirabelli got when he returned back to Boston; he did receive a hero’s welcome. Not bad for a guy who’s been playing for a team that no one cares about. Last night, Bay and the Sox beat the Oakland A’s 2-1.......

Comcast SportsNet ran an ad that says, "We can pronounce Worcester ... without sounding like an Athol." Beavis, meet Butthead. As if residents of Athol haven't heard that gag before. They're still not amused by it. In fact, the AP says they're pissed off, and now Comcast SportsNet isn't running the ad anymore. (If you haven't had your coffee yet, just say it a few times, but don't do it around your boss, okay?) Oh,......

--As if it couldn't get any worse for the MBTA. Hackers have been playing with the Charlie Card. [Boston Herald] --The owner of Tai Ho Restaurant, where Boston firefighters Paul Cahill and Warren Payne died, wants to reopen. It's worth remembering that the fire gathered in the ceiling because grease accumulated in the vents. [WBZ] --A task force has decided, after much back and forth, to take down the homemade signs on highways thanking......

Tears and sorrow fill the offices of mainstream publisher Riverhead books as another memoir delivered from the school of hard knocks turns out to be a complete fabrication. Love and Consequences, a memoir released last week by Margaret Seltzer (published under the silly pseudonym Margaret B Jones), which chronicles the author's difficult life story of foster families, drug running, and all around thuggin' on the mean streets of L.A., turns out to be a complete......

Jorge Furtado's Porto Alegre Harvard Film Archive Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge Friday, March 7 -- Saturday, March 8 More information Brazilian director Jorge Furtado's work should be better known among American film audiences. His movies are hilarious, thoughtful and unpretentious -- they aim to entertain above all else. The Man Who Copied (O Homem Que Copiava) (2003, screening Friday) is a case in point. It's the story of André (Lázaro Ramos), whose humdrum......

Six bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1870. You can't afford them. On March 14, Skinner, in conjunction with Lower Falls Wine Co., presents an auction of fine wines in Boston. This is only the second fine wine auction in Boston. As an effort to earn a piece of the nearly $200 million annual wine auction market, Skinner and Lower Falls Wine Co. presented the first one back in 2007. The auction offers something for everyone.......

It felt great for a second or two, flipping the pages of the local dailies to check in with the Bruins. Win, win, shootout win, come from behind win, win...and then that Monday night game against the Capitals happened. The Bruins came back home to Boston last night a little humbled, but we'd hoped that they were ready to kick it up a notch and not make absolute fools of themselves again deliver a quality......

You'd think that Boston College would know to steer clear of controversy after the Condoleezza Rice Fiasco. But Boston College Law School invited Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who won't say that waterboarding is torture, to speak at their commencement, and not everyone is happy about it. As a compromise, Mukasey will get to speak, but he won't get a Founder's Medal from BC. Then again, it could have been worse. They could have invited Alberto......

Last night, Bostonist received the unsettling news that the add-value machines at T stops weren't accepting credit or debit cards. On the last day of the month. As in, prime time for adding passes to their Charlie Cards. A tipper said that, after delivering the news, an MBTA employee yelped, "Don't kill the messenger!" The employee had reason to be concerned, as finding out one's card has been denied repeatedly makes people snippy. Real snippy.......

As more concerns rise about the Big Dig bolts, the Green Line goes on the fritz, and the fact that our tunnels don't have sprinklers, Amtrak is adding its own small voice to the mix. Amtrak must replace railroad ties made of concrete that is starting to crack. The company says that replacing the ties will cost "tens of millions of dollars." Here's the insulting part--Amtrak put the ties in during the 1990s. They should......

Last week brought the drama: Chris and Rami are going to have to compete (again!) for a spot on the runway at Fashion Week in NYC. Whoa! As Rami puts it, "Once we thought the rollercoaster was over, there was still another loop." And it's a killer! After giving the contestants 3.5 months to work, Tim Gunn visits the contestants. "Talk about make it work," says Tim Gunn in response to seeing Christian's tiny closet......

Music Atlas Sound, featuring Bradford Cox going solo during Deerhunter's hiatus, hits the Middle East tonight, riding a wave of praise for his new project. Cox's hometown weekly, Atlanta's Creative Loafing, raves, "Let the Blind contains Cox's most haunting and sad songs to date. It throbs with delirious depression, and is bursting with powerful, barely contained emotions." For those of you who can handle strong emotions in the bleak winter, Cox is your fella.......

A Boston pharmaceutical sales rep who is on this season's cycle of "Big Brother" went to the hospital after having an allergic reaction to "slop." Allison Nichols had to eat the aforementioned "slop" as a punishment. (As far as Bostonist is concerned, being on or watching "Big Brother" is punishment enough.) Her lips swelled and she said her throat closed up. Meanwhile, another contestant had a seizure, Reality TV World and the New York Daily......

Call us crazy, but we're not as excited about the Oscars as we could be. We're happy the writers' strike is over, because we support writers as much as anyone (we're pretty writerly ourselves, y'know). Still, the fact that everyone's excited about ads, parties, and fashion (though we do like the Penelope Cruz pick) rather than films speaks to just how Hollywood our movie industry has become--and just how sad that is for the films......

--Are you freaking out over the fact that the St. Patrick's Day parade falls on the same day as Palm Sunday, March 16? 'Cause the press sure seems to be making a fuss. [Boston Herald, Boston Globe] --The local papers are bombarding us with Foreclosure Doom. Foreclosures in Massachusetts are up 128% in January. Bus tours of foreclosed homes might reflect a corresponding increase. [Boston Globe] --A Globe blog post headlined "Suburbs, the future......

Elections are expensive this year, and it turns out that former Massachusetts governor and former presidential aspirant Mitt Romney paid a pretty penny for each delegate he received before dropping out of the race. Foon Rhee reports that Romney put in $42.3 million of his own money into his presidential campaign. As of last October, he had already put in $17.5 million, suggesting that he made a massive money push in the last days.......

This Bostonist finally got around to seeing There Will Be Blood last night, so we're prepared to concede that the West can be a harsh and pitiless place. Until this week, the West had been very good to the Celtics. But now they're drinkin' our milkshake! The reeling C's have matched their longest losing streak of the year (two) after Baron Davis broke our hearts with a game-winning shot for the last of his 29......

--Hendry Street isn't the only place suffering from the home-foreclosure crisis. In fact, so many areas are suffering that real estate agents are taking possible buyers on bus tours of other people's property. As if someone losing a home doesn't have enough misery, now they have to have complete strangers tramping about on the front yard. [Boston Globe] --A group of mayors, including Mayor Menino, are banding together with labor union reps in support of......

As it becomes more likely that the use of handheld gadgets while driving will be banned, the Globe tossed out a thought worth debating--if drivers are still allowed to use headsets, will they drive better? Or is the mere act of talking the problem? Noah Bierman talked to an MIT engineer who said, "Conversations are the problem, not the phone." A Virginia Tech researcher added that the act of trying to dial was also distracting.......

For some of you, welcome back from a long weekend. In case you missed it, the Herald ran a shocking story about the MBTA cutting rides from its schedule without telling riders about it. They did it on purpose to save money, effectively punking riders who are told a bus or train will come at a certain time, only to wait for a ride that will never arrive. Bostonist already posted on the subject when......

An editorial in yesterday's Globe swiftly rose to the top of the "Most E-Mailed" ranks. The title alone was a grabber: "Go-Go Dancing All Over Red's Grave." The author, Kate Darnton, writes a juicy screed against the Boston Celtics dancers, who are in her opinion more like strippers than dancers. She describes how embarrassing it is to watch the dancers strut their stuff: "The lights dim, the music pounds, and suddenly you've all been......

--MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas has received plenty of angry e-mails in his time, and should be able to take some serious heat. But he is furious about an e-mail from a Department of Corrections employee that got way too personal. Grabauskas is gay, and the e-mailer used anti-gay slurs about Grabauskas when describing MBTA service. Now Grabauskas is upset with Deval Patrick and his administration for not doing something about it sooner. The......

Fashion Week for Fall 2008 has come to a close. Yes, everyone from Anne Hathaway to K.Fed sat with Anna Wintour and Andre Leon Talley and witnessed what Boston can expect from the fashion world in a matter of months. There was the usual drama and gossip that surfaced--Donna Karan is the latest victim of PETA’s wrath, and Rachel Zoe wasn't let into Marc Jacobs' show--that’s what you get for talking smack about Anna. As......

Harvard LoveFest: Science is Sexy Cambridge Queen's Head Pub, Harvard Square Noon As the old saying goes, "Valentine's Day at Harvard is like Father's Day at an orphanage." In other words, the geeks just don't get the girls (or guys, for that matter). Fortunately for the beaker-bearing types, a group of determined Harvard students has decided to change that. Today's Valentine's LoveFest, organized by a group of science-minded Harvard students called Zing, will feature stimulating......

Tim Duncan and the city of Boston have had an interesting relationship over the years. It looked like the big guy would be coming here as a reward for the dismal 1997 Celtics season; Rick Pitino [make evil eye sign, spit on ground] even took the C's coaching job assuming that he'd get to coach Tim. As we all know, the Spurs' tank-job paid off, Duncan went to San Antonio, and Pitino stayed. Just to......

On the third episode of "Gone Country," Bobby Brown started displaying the eccentric behavior for which he is known. The episode kicks off Brown drinking alcohol for breakfast instead of coffee or tea. Music producer John Rich dragged the cast to a farm, where they were scheduled to do farm-appropriate tasks with "Redneck Woman" singer Gretchen Wilson. Theoretically, the trip should have sobered Brown up, but maybe all the horse poop and chewing tobacco got......

--The State Supreme Judicial Court just overturned the conviction of a Methuen ex-police officer accused of raping a woman in 2000. The case hinged on whether or not lawyers could prove the woman was "too intoxicated to consent, not that she was merely high and drunk." However, the SJC felt that the trial judge didn't give proper instructions to the jurors. The ex-officer will get a new trial. [Boston Globe] --In a similar case,......

Yesterday we focused on the negative: neither Ted Kennedy nor John Kerry nor Deval Patrick was able to help Barack Obama to a win in the Massachusetts primary. However, Atlantic blogger Matthew Yglesias slowed the rush to proclaim Kennedy's irrelevance with a helpful chart: It's obvious there (and it was obvious here and here) that Obama had a lot of momentum heading into the voting--though it's impossible to say exactly how much of that was......

After freezing our buns off outside Casa Lampoon, while 'Pooners were slinging T-shirts and crackers at the crowd, only to be told that Paris Hilton was late, we're glad that we weren't the only ones who missed out on seeing the Queen of Wine in a Can.* The BPD denied a group of rowdy fans the opportunity to see Ms. Hilton early this morning on Warrenton Street: As officers were attempting to move traffic and......

We can't control the nasty weather that occasionally strikes Boston. When the sleet stings your face, or when you step into a deep, cold puddle, you just have to convince yourself that the moment will pass. Soon, you'll be underground in a cozy T stop where you can thaw out or dry off. Or will you? Over the past weekend, the Globe did a piece on how rain is soaking through T stops thanks to......