Your long day of corporate drudgery is over. Get out and enjoy the city! Here are a few ideas to get you started, lovingly picked by Boston Daily.

Find tomorrow’s next hot artists today at InsideOut: The Museum School Art Sale. Works in several media are on sale, so you’re sure to find something to add to your existing collection, or that will inspire you to get one started.

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Just got back from the press preview for the Museum of Science’s Baseball as America exhibit. It opens Sunday, but you can get an early look at the show here. You’re welcome.

Boston’s the last stop for this sizable traveling collection of equipment, documents and paraphernalia, which the Baseball Hall of Fame has been shipping around the country since 2002. There are 500 artifacts in all, and they sketch out ways that baseball has reflected – and, in some instances, instigated – changes in American culture. Onto this tapestry, the Museum of Science has added an interactive lab that examines the physics behind the sport.

And, this being Boston, gratuitous Sox shout-outs are everywhere. (more…)

In this edition of the Weekender, Boston gets left out of the Big Dance, the Red Sox get closer to Japan, and the Celtics win the Atlantic.

The best sporting event of the year is set to begin three days hence, and there are no representatives from the Bay State. Outside of Connecticut, the entire New England region was shutout. Our best hope, Massachusetts, doomed itself when the Minutemen blew a double-digit lead to Charlotte and then saw its at-large hopes dry up in an all-Philly Atlantic-10 final.

Boston College never got out of the blocks, and while the Eagles at least performed the admirable duty of putting Maryland out of its misery, they got hammered by Clemson in the ACC quarters. BU, the preseason pick in the America East Conference, lost in the semifinals. And Northeastern acquitted itself well in the CAA but isn’t ready to compete with the George Masons and Virginia Commonwealths in an underrated league.

So Boston won’t be dancing.

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Whenever there’s something I need to know about sports, there’s only one place I go: ESPN Sportsnation. The online clearinghouse for sports polls, Sportsnation’s completely-scientific, never-biased, always-on-the-money sports surveys are to truth what Yao Ming is to tall.

Which player in the NHL (huh, what’s that?) will win the Hart Trophy (huh, what’s that?), you might ask? I sure don’t know, but Sportsnation does. A small plurality of voters say it’s the Penguin’s Sidney Crosby, so it must be true.

But there is a crack in Sportsnation’s foundation. A troubling crack. One of SN’s latest polls asks NFL fans to declare their favorite team and then, as a member of that particular fan-base, vote for who they want to win the Super Bowl. So you’d figure that 100 percent of New Englanders would root for the Pats and all Giants fans would, you know, be backing the Giants.

Nope. (more…)

Catching you up on what you may have missed while testifying before Congress.

Boston Daily

Another day, another primary: Mitt can’t possibly lose this one, can he? Sorry, ‘win’ another silver medal?

American Idol or State of the City? On the one hand, there’s a chance for violence. On the other hand, the State of the City has Menino.

Oh, those Chargers: They’ll probably say something stupid, but we do enjoy that they have a lineman named Igor.

Sex and the burbs: We got prostitutes in Woburn and anonymous postings on craigslist.

Bostonista

Our newest TV show addiction: In praise of Mad Men.

Chowder

Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies, the recipe: You know you want it.

BostonNow editors could be forgiven if, like every poll-watching political junkie, they expected Obama to come up big last night. But the last time a newspaper went with an election-related hunch, instead of its on-the-ground reporting, the New York Post declared Dick Gephardt to be John Kerry’s VP pick.

That is, until this morning, when BostonNow was distributing papers with the cover you see here. (more…)

Some NFL analysts study trends. Others study stats. Our man, Gonz, does neither. But that won’t stop him from breaking down each week’s Patriots’ game. His picks are for amusement purposes only, since last year he dropped a small fortune to the world’s worst bookie.

Two games, two wins, until history. It’s never been done, but it is inevitable. The much-discussed 1972 Miami Dolphins went 14-0 during the regular season, then went on to win the Super Bowl and complete the NFL’s only perfect campaign.

They were rank amateurs.

If the Pats win Sunday, and they will, they’ll be the NFL’s first 15-0 team. And, as fate would have it, they’re playing the Dolphins. Most teams would overlook Miami. After all, the Fins have just one lonely win this season. Ah, but the Pats are not most teams. Why? Because, as you’ve likely heard, they are humble. And they enjoy pie. Pie of the humble variety.

Some out in Foxborough — the clever ones — call this combination humble pie.

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Some NFL analysts study trends. Others study stats. Our man, Gonz, does neither. But that won’t stop him from breaking down each week’s Patriots’ game. His picks are for amusement purposes only, since last year he dropped a small fortune to the world’s worst bookie.

Huh. Did something happen this week with the Pats and the Jets? Something about a videotape? I missed it. Really, who has time to keep up with the drama when there’s real news happening?

Well, probably doesn’t matter. Only a fool would make a huge deal about a videotape when he should be paying attention to the big story: Sunday is going to feature a serious beatdown. If the news reports are to be believed, the gods remain angry, and a crushing blow is about to be levied. This will not be for the weak at heart.

What? No, I’m not talking about the Pats smashing the Jets (though that will likely happen). I’m talking about the weather smashing all of us (including the Pats and the Jets)…Another storm’s a comin’ on Sunday.

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Some NFL analysts study trends. Others study stats. Our man, Gonz, does neither. But that won’t stop him from breaking down each week’s Patriots’ game. His picks are for amusement purposes only, since last year he dropped a small fortune to the world’s worst bookie.

This is getting out of control. A lot of people have been mad at the Patriots this season for various infractions, real and perceived. Let’s see, first people were upset about SpyGate. Then they were angry about the Pats running up the score. Most recently, everyone’s been talking about how the refs are doing everything they can to help New England win. Naturally, all of that has provided plenty of fodder for the usual Pats sycophants.

But as grating as that mindless back and forth between the Pats Colony and the rest of America is, I’ve grown used to it. (By the way, I’m working on trademarking “Pats Colony;” until then, try it out at a party free of charge.) What I haven’t grown used to, what needs to stop immediately, is the aggravating use of this latest edition to our collective lexicon: “Belichickian.”
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Some NFL analysts study trends. Others study stats. Our man, Gonz, does neither. But that won’t stop him from breaking down each week’s Patriots’ game. His picks are for amusement purposes only, since last year he dropped a small fortune to the world’s worst bookie.

Thanksgiving mercifully saved me from having to breakdown last week’s Pats-Eagles game. Between us, I just didn’t have it in me to write a preview about New England beating the crap out of my hometown Birds. Plus, had I written that, I would have been wrong.

In case you missed it, the once invulnerable New England Patriots, the guys everyone figured would throttle each of their opponents on their way to an undefeated season, barely squeaked out a win at home against Philadelphia last Sunday Night. In fact, the Pats were, arguably, one fewer AJ Feeley interception away from losing that game.

Suddenly, the Pats don’t look quite as unbeatable as they once did.

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