I’m about as interested in having comedy explained to me by the Globe as I am getting stock tips from a koala bear. Still, they insisted, and so I have no choice but to respond. Today’s Living/Arts story about the fine line between funny and offensive in comedy was a complete and utter disaster, embarrassing the Globe, demeaning the very notion of humor, and, more importantly, reestablishing Globe staff writer Vanessa Jones as one of the worst writers in the city.

Which is saying something. (more…)

In the February issue of Boston magazine (on newsstands today!), Joe Keohane writes that we should not delight in the imminent demise of the Herald. Not only does the presence of a second paper keep the Globe on its game, but what other publication can take the news that crime on the MBTA is down and turn it into a sordid tale of petty theft and perverts?

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The meltdown continues. Weeks after the Globe booted a story about the Metro’s supposedly plummeting circulation, and days after the Globe booted another story about a Metro layoff/bloodbath that wasn’t, the Metro retaliates by running a story about how the Globe is planning to lay off “hundreds” of workers and raise the newsstand price of the paper to 75 cents. The Globe contends this is entirely false (though as the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly notes, they’re not ruling out layoffs).

(The hilarity is further elevated by the Metro’s contention that “The Globe… owns 49 percent of Metro Boston,” which, at the risk of being nitpicky, is incorrect. The New York Times Company owns 49 percent of the Metro. Not the Globe.)

One begins to suspect a conspiracy. Was Metro editor Saul Williams, who wrote the piece yesterday, simply getting the broadsheet back for peddling damaging misinformation about his paper? Or did someone at the Globe deliberately feed him a bum tip to embarrass the commuter daily so badly that young people would throw it in the garbage in disgust and start reading adult papers again, causing the Metro’s circ to drop to 170,000 (the number the Globe mistakenly published in the first salvo of this increasingly weird back and forth)? (more…)

My next door neighbor has been holding his parking spot with a recycling bin for over a week now. Most of the snow on our street is melted, and parking spots are ample. Yet still he persists. At first, this was because he shoveled the spot, and didn’t want some squatter to swoop in and take it. Now, he’s just being a selfish prick who wants to use what’s left of the snow as a pretense to horde the choice spot in front of his house.

Now multiply that by about 10,000 and you have Southie, which, once again, is at war with the mayor over its long-held cultural practice of holding their parking spots with parking cones, chairs and whatever other crap they have lying around their houses and yards. (more…)

Last Wednesday (blame the holidays for my tardiness) the Globe ran a piece on how Downtown Crossing is completely and utterly screwed this holiday season. Filene’s Basement shut its doors in September, and people have stopped coming to the Crossing to do their holiday shopping.

“Downtown Crossing,” ventures the piece, “once a retail mecca that attracted families every weekend, has struggled for years to reinvent itself amidst the departure of department stores, persistent vacancies, and suburban competition.” (more…)

We all know by now that the Rose Kennedy Greenway is the biggest waste of time and space since City Hall Plaza. But however poorly conceived and executed the project is, at least it was reasonably clear who it was named after. Until now.

Today’s Globe carries a story on “Rose,” our new presumptive Greenway mascot. At the urging of Greenway Conservatory head Peter Meade, popular local children’s book author Peter Reynolds created a book starring the eponymous Rose, a tawney-hared, oval-headed cartoon tot. (more…)

Watching the furor over Jon Keller’s failure to include footnotes in his book The Bluest State has been fascinating. Not because the scandal is that interesting, or Keller’s omission even that unusual, but because of the way people have reacted to it. Here’s a breakdown of the most compelling aspects of Kellergate: (more…)

There’s a case to be made that trend journalism is the extrapolation of an entire overarching social movement from the phrase, “some say.” The Globe has a trend story today on how black men are treated differently in office environments. The subhead: “Some black men say they’re held to higher standards than whites in the workplace.” The thinly sourced piece contains several assumptions that range from dubious to outright ludicrous. Let’s have a look. (more…)

The Mayor’s office announced today it will be launching its new Healthy Meals Initiative (HMI) today. HMI is a pilot program, cooked up by the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Public Health Initiative, and meant to gradually defatten small children via more salubrious cafeteria fare. “The new program features a professional chef cooking in two schools and educating cafeteria managers citywide about healthier ways to prepare and present meals that are both nutritious and delicious,” says the mayor’s office.

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Newly minted Globe columnist Kevin Cullen has a piece today on Bob Whetstone. Name doesn’t ring a bell? OK, how about “the scary, smelly man who stands in front of Fenway with a terrifying sandwich board reading, ‘Heaven or Hell - It’s Your Choice’ over an image of hundreds of heathens falling into the firey pits of hell?”

That ring a bell?

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