Win or lose, we'd always planned on evaluating the best and the worst Super Bowl commercials. In general, 2008 was a bum year for commercials since most of them seemed to forget to tell the audience what it is they're actually promoting, but a few broke away from the pack. The Best 1. The Doritos commerical with the huge rat/person dressed as a rat. So the word "Doritos" wasn't mentioned, but the rat-person was a......

Bostonist finds that food makes a great gift for even the most difficult to shop for. Some of our favorite local food purveyors have made it easy for us with food-of-the-month clubs. We’d be thrilled to receive the gift of pork from Savenor’s, which has a bacon-of-the-month club. For something sweet, Pemberton Farms of Cambridge has a coffee-cake-of-the-month club and plenty of locally themed gift baskets. Formaggio Kitchen, famous for having its own cheese......

Thursday, November 8 Elaine Scarry, Jerald Walker, and Robert Atwan, The Best American Essays, 7:00 pm, Brookline Booksmith Three contributors to this year's The Best American Essays will discuss what went into the book this year--and maybe we'll hear a little about what got left out. Monday, November 12 Jennifer Ackerman, Sex, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Dream, 7:00 pm, Porter Square Books Science writer Ackerman takes a fantastic voyage through the body to see how it......

The American Idea First Parish Church Meetinghouse, 3 Church Street, Harvard Square (Corner of Mass. Ave. and Church St.) Friday, October 19th, 7:00 pm, $5 More info There are a lot of things you could do to celebrate your 150th anniversary. For a magazine, publishing a book seems like a good idea: anthologize the best of your magazine writing in a more permanent format so it can be remembered for all time. And that's just......

We're a day late on Authorial Intent, our wrap-up of the week's readings. That's largely because we were talking to two of the authors who will be in town tomorrow night, which seems to be the night that the stars aligned and all writers thought it would be a good idea to visit Boston. So, without further adieu … Thursday, October 11--Today, Super Thursday! Robert Reich, 6:00 pm, Swedenborg Chapel (via Harvard Book Store), 50......

It's college-ranking time. Of course, these rankings are about as scientific as a game of pin the tail on the donkey, but schools have a lot of fun learning about how other campuses see them. For example, the University of New Hampshire was named one of the top party schools. UNH is no West Virginia University, which appears to have abandoned the pretense of higher education altogether, but UNH was number seven on the party-hearty......

All of a sudden we've got winter. The bonus prize is that it came late enough that when we leave work at 5 o'clock there's still natural light – soon enough it will still be light when we reemerge from the commute home underground on the T. Until the next few weeks pass and we can taste the summer concert and festival season in the spring air we'll continue to keep jamming through the......

Mel Mania was clogging the tubes. The Best Week Ever blog even reported that they'd broken their own record – posting on Mel Gibson more in one week than even Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton. We're not sure if Mel "what you looking at sugar tits?" Gibson was watching NESN's coverage of the Sox game earlier this week, even if he wasn't the video and transcript are available throughout the series of tubes. Denis Leary......

While we don’t long for the days of having a required summer reading list, Bostonist has been feeling a bit inspired to pick up a book and actually start reading something not on a computer screen. Since we’re going to be “vacationing” in the city this year, we might as well read some books that are set here in our fair state. Here are some of our Bostonist staff picks for your reading enjoyment. History......

Eliza Dushku knows something we’ve known all along: The Best Girls Root for Boston. Bostonist missed it when we decided to catch some shut-eye instead of staying up to watch Conan on Tuesday, but the Internet didn’t miss a thing. Dushku is originally from Watertown (but claims Boston in her bio, we don't fault her), and showed Conan that she still has love for the hometown team. She ported two pieces of Homegirls apparel including......

If you are feeling a bit adventurous cinematically and would like to take a break from the summer “blockbusters” (you know, “Wedding Crashers” and “The 40-year-old Virgin”), consider making your way out to the Coolidge Corner Theatre (a Bostonist favorite) next Tuesday, August 30, for “The Best of Open Screen” in celebration of the one-year anniversary of Open Screen. Open Screen is a series that CCT began a year ago that provides an opportunity......

Lance Morrow teaches a class at BU on "The American Presidency", and it's one of those classes that is always talked about and whispered about and a hot ticket for a semester. Bostonist has had the pleasure of having Mr. Morrow in class and he's an insightful and fascinating guy, one of those teachers who has stories to tell. When he's not teaching at BU, he writes cover stories, essays, and book reviews for......