Brother can you spare a couple of quarters? Inflation, you know. Load up on 50 cent tapas at Masa from 5-7 p.m.

There are sales, and then there’s a sale at Louis Boston. All fall and winter duds are 50 percent off, and if you need a primer, we’ve got you covered there too.

My nieces tell me that High School Musical 2 is the best show going. Catch it before it heads out of town.

Following three closed-door meetings, it was determined that Troiano “created a hostile work environment by viewing the material.” His resignation came after a Sept. 17, 2008, motor vehicle homicide conviction that resulted in the death of 69-year-old Lilija Berents of East Falmouth. Troiano received two years of probation and lost his license for 15 years for his involvement in the May 2007 crash, but kept his job with the town.

While we’re not advocating porn consumption, extenuating circumstances should be taken into account for Troaino’s case. First, he was at home, not at the office desk. Second, the American porn industry is facing a crisis.

It’s so big (ahem) that Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis and Hustler’s Larry Flynt requested a $5 billion bailout from the government on Wednesday. The two porn titans sent a letter to Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asking for federal assistance.

They cited declining revenue—DVD sales and rentals have dropped by 22 percent—in the $13 billion industry. “People are too depressed to be sexually active,” says Flynt in the statement. “Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex.”

Flynt’s logic is both hilarious and completely nonsensical. A) Our personal vehicle-based infrastructure would crumble without cars and we wouldn’t survive economically, and B) porn doesn’t actually help Americans have sex; it just helps them watch other people having sex.

But Flynt contends that since the government has seemingly bailed everyone else out, “It’s time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America.”

Perhaps Troiano was merely doing his civic duty, contributing his time and money in order to save our tax dollars from a bailout. Of course, Hopkinton’s tax money did buy that laptop… On second though, maybe he should have just bought a Hustler DVD. Flynt would have thanked him.

Brad Penny and John Smoltz (apparently) have been added to the pitching staff, Josh Bard is the first step in solving the catching conundrum, and Rocco Baldelli is your new fourth outfielder. (Somewhere Derjue is smiling over her fellow Ocean Stater joining the Sox). It’s hard not to like these moves in that they are all for one year and relatively low money. All four do carry some risk, however.

Penny has a violent delivery, which has caused some arm problems, Smoltz probably won’t be able to pitch until May or June, Baldelli suffered from mitochondrial disorder, while Bard suffered from knuckleballitis his first time around.

My weei.com cohort Alex Speier has a solid bit of analysis on the subject, and he points out that the buy-low strategy has paid off for the Sox in the past (See: David Ortiz, Todd Walker, Bill Mueller, et al). Other times, not so much as in Wade Miller and Matt Mantei.

In general though, this has proven a sound strategy for Theo Epstein, provided there are alternatives in place. The Sox have a handful of prospects who are either ready, or could be ready, by the end of the year in a best-case scenario. A kid by the name of Lars Anderson potentially lessens the Teixeira blow, particularly toward the end of Tex’s 10-year contract with the Yankees.

Among the signees, Baldelli and Bard will be on the spot as they both fill positions of need, but Smoltz and Penny are the kind of pitchers (if healthy) who could be the difference between making the playoffs and finishing third in the loaded American League East.

I’m curious most of all to see if Smoltz is pegged as a starter, or as a potential bridge to Jonathan Papelbon, which would be one hell of a scary bullpen. The other interesting development for the Sox is they are apparently content to see if Mike Lowell can play again and have done little to upgrade the offense after missing out on Teixiera.

Epstein has always stressed that the goal is to win 95 games, contend for a playoff spot, and not give up the store for a short payoff. Considering he’s brought home two World Series titles in six years, that’s proven to be a sound strategy, regardless of how much money the Yankees throw around.

Alan Holliday, Hill Holliday cofounder, Dies:

The Globe’s write-up is lively and solid—touching but not mawkish. Unfortunately the lead sentence pegs Holliday founding the company 20 years ago. Where was he for the other 21 years? [Globe]

Quincy Post Office Delivery—Electrocuted Dog: A dog received a nasty electrical shock yesterday when it touched a light fixture outside the Quincy Post Office. The dog was, uh, a bit fried but survived. We may not be able to say the same for Pavlov-quipping Chelsea-FC on the comments board. [Patriot Ledger]

Shrewsbury Pol’s Shrewd Move: (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) State Representative Karyn Polito sent a letter to Deval Patrick yesterday declining the 5.5% pay raise, or $3,200, issued to state legislators. Polito, whose base salary is $58,237, tells PolitickerMA, “I feel it will show that I am connecting to my constituents and the hardships they are feeling.” [PolitickerMA]

Another Old, Bearded White Guy: Speaking of salaries, John Smoltz and the Red Sox reportedly reached a preliminary contract agreement for $5 million, plus another $5 million possible in bonuses. Smoltz pitched for the Atlanta Braves since 1988, racking up over 200 wins and 150 saves. [WBZ]

Meeting Harris for the first time is like introducing yourself to a typhoon—I just reached for the nearest inanimate object (which I believe was a cone of fries at the late, lamented Garden of Eden) and held on tight. Being new to town Harris reported back to her cohorts that I was an OK kind of guy, and now I’d like to return to the favor.

Harris has started a blog called “Women Do,” the concept of which, I’ll just let Harris tell it…

If you are, or happen to know personally, a woman, this site is for you. And if you are perpetually amazed by how perpetually amazed newspaper reporters and editors are that women can do stuff, this site is REALLY for you.

See, it’s crazy, but women can apparently do all kinds of things. And here’s the catch: Just like the men-folk. Amazing, right?  Make room on Page One, Duffy!

At any rate, Harris used to chronicle these kinds of things for the Dig, but then she went off to grad school  in an effort to make herself respectable and left her days of flower-pot throwing tantrums fulminations behind her. And now she’s back. Brace yourselves.

The paper of record announced in today’s business section that it will begin displaying front-page advertisments sometime this quarter. Its parent company, The New York Times, displayed a CBS ad on Monday in a horizontal strip at the bottom of the front page.

Globe spokesman Bob Powers tells Boston Daily that the decision was made within the past few weeks, but they have yet to determine the ad’s format. “We are looking at a couple of different models, including the model The Times uses,” Powers says.

It seems likely the paper will run its ad below the fold in the manner of the The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Powers stresses that the ads will not clash with the front page’s editorial environment. “We don’t want the loud, one-day sale ad. We’re looking more towards branding, not the hard sale.”

The Globe also announced that it is dropping the independent classifieds section from its Monday through Thursday issues of the paper due to decreased interest in early week advertising. The paper will retain classifieds in the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday issues and at Boston.com. Apparently, weekend advertisers have yet to hear of Craigslist.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority, never one to sit by idly, has already jumped into the fray as well. They recently contacted The Globe about potentially rezoning the paper’s property along Morrissey Boulevard. According to Powers, the BRA task force is studying different scenarios for the land, including rezoning it for mixed-use residential and commerical buildings. “We told them we had no intentions or plans to move or sale this property. They [the BRA] said that was their intention anyway.”

Perhaps the most distressing print news of the week comes from Adam Gaffin at UniversalHub who noticed an ad on Craig’s list soliciting “people in and around Boston who enjoy reading local newspapers.” The people running the study will dole out $100 to each participant in the hour-long focus group. Is this rock bottom? Boston Daily can imagine the conversation now.

“Hey Jimbo, want $100 to talk about how you read The Globe or Herald?”

“The Who and the What now?”

If he wanted, Markopolos could be bigger than Jeffrey Wigand, the tobacco company whistleblower immortalized on the big screen by Russell Crowe in The Insider. The only question is who would play him? Robert DeNiro, maybe could bring a sort of somber intensity to the part. Or, if we’re not going for subtlety, maybe Al Pacino.

IT”S WRONG. AND YOU KNOW IT’S WRONG! Etc, etc.

But the portrait of Markopolos that was nicely fleshed out in the Globe this morning is that of a reluctant hero. “They’ll just add in sex and violence,” Markopolos told the paper.

The portrait actually fits with the depiction of most whistleblowers. A studious accountant, Markopolos skipped his appearance before a congressional committee because he felt he wasn’t prepared enough to answer the questions.

(If he has watched any congressional hearings lately, he should know that being prepared is about the least of the qualifications necessary for such an appearance).

Markopolos seems to be sort of Mark Felt character, better known as Deep Throat. When he met with Barney Frank’s counsel he asked the attorney for ID. “I don’t like newspapers,” Deep Throat said to Bob Woodward. “I don’t like inexactitude.”

The real crime here is that if the warnings laid out bu Markopolos, and others like him, get glossed over–be it in Hollywood or with a best-seller–and then are left to die on the vine. We have seemingly only scratched the surface of the depths of the murk left in the wake of the financial crisis. I’d still pay to see that movie though.

The whole thing strikes me as odder than odd. When a coach like Jagodzinski, who has an NFL background, has the level of success he’s had at a place like Boston College, he’ll inevitably get looks from the pros, but  BC Athletic Director Gene DeFilippo is acting like a spurned teenager.

“I want to go on record as saying that the decision was mine,” DeFilippo said. “I am the director of athletics, I made the decision. I asked for approval from the administration, and they gave me that approval, and I made this decision because I think that Jeff and I were really divided on the future of this program and what we wanted for the program, and with that in mind, this decision has been made.

Now, it turns out that Jags wasn’t being truthy with the BC administration about the interviews, which is even stranger. Why would he lie? Unless he really wanted to get out of his contract, and if that was the case, why not just up and quit?

BC has been down this road before. Tom Coughlin got the Eagles headed in the right direction and then split for Jacksonville and Tom O’Brien left for North Carolina State after realizing that 8-4 seasons were about as good as it would get. It sounds like veteran defensive coach Frank Spaziani is in line to get the job, and while he hasn’t been a head coach at this level, it seems like a decent fit.

BC football is in a strange place. Even when they were ranked second in the country with a legit Heisman Trophy candidate at quarterback, Boston merely shrugged. The Eagles 2008 season was a feel-good affair.  Picked for the bottom of the division BC beat Florida State and Virginia Tech and returned to the ACC Championship Game, and no one outside of the alums noticed. Maybe that’s why Jagodzinski bolted, but he had to know that when he came back to be the head coach.

Boston College desperately wants to be big-time in football and basketball, and the Eagles have done far better than most people thought they would when they left the Big East. But there is a limit. The reason they keep getting relegated to the minor bowl games is that they don’t travel well. There will be never be overwhelming support from the city of Boston for college sports. It just doesn’t work that way here.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

Or something. Well, we love a good media fight here at Boston Daily and since Schilling is essentially a media member now, here’s a breakdown of the ruckus.

Shaugnhessy, in a column about BC coach Jeff Jagodzinski got in a few shots at Schilling:

After the 2007 World Series, Curt Schilling signs a one-year deal for $8 million plus incentives. When he shows up in spring training looking like Chris Farley, unable to throw a Wiffleball because of an injury, the club is on the hook to pay him the $8 million. For no services. The club must live up to the contract.

To which Schilling traces back the roots of their feud to a Shaughnessy (CHB) column, in which he ripped Pedro Martinez for leaving early:

See our little feud dates back to this article. If CHB ever did like me (which he claims he did) it all ended after he wrote this. I called him in the clubhouse, talked about the Clemens piece and then asked him about the Pedro piece. Why the two different views? Why was it, that all the players CHB appeared to rip and detest, from Carl Everett, to Pedro, were not white? Was he a racist? I had to ask, I assumed I already knew that he wasn’t but I had to ask. If not that then what? Star hater? Did he try and find a way to just not like the good to great players here?

Schilling then goes on to say that most members of the press rip each other behind their backs daily (true) and then goes on to name a few folks that he likes: (Tony) Maz, (Rob) Bradford, (Steve) Buckley, Sean Mac(adam), (Ian) Browne, (Amalie) Benjamin because:

I do believe they know what they’re talking about more often than not but part of that is because I feel like every one of them is a fan of this team and cares about the team. They are certainly objective for the most part. Maz and Buck can get carried away at times but it’s never out of malice.

To which the respective media types reflexively cried out: We’re NOT fans. And so on. We await the inevitable Shaughnessy response.

For the next 12 months, I’m suggesting a three-part resolution:

1. To get more exercise…by walking around galleries and museums in the Boston area.
2. To be a better listener…by going to more concerts and plays at local venues.
3. To read more…not just books, but also subtitles at our arthouse cinemas and film festivals.

In that light, these resolutions don’t seem that hard, right?

And now we can progress with our first full cultural column of 2009:

G’day, Berklee!: Walk by Berklee any moment of the day and you’ll find dozens of hipsters with instrument cases and chain-smoking habits lining the block. But what locals may not realize is that 20 percent of these dudes and dudettes come from more than 70 countries. The music school manages to find these students by hosting a “world scholarship tour” from Accra to Athens, Sao Paulo to Seoul.

This week, auditions are taking place in Australia for the first time ever; they just had the auditions in Melbourne Tuesday, and Sydney’s turn will be on January 13. Michael Shaver, assistant director of International Admissions, cites AC/DC, INXS, the Bee Gees, and Men at Work as aspirational models for what they’re looking for Down Under. Depending on your view, that either sounds cheesy or awesome (I’m in the latter party). But it’s definitely Anglo, so in a rather PC nod, he’s announced that he’s also looking for “students who are versed in Aboriginal music.” May didgeridoos join flowing mullets, skinny ties, and Vegemite sandwiches on the concrete shores of Mass. Ave!

Of course, the school is saying that its expansion to Oz means that it holds auditions on every continent but Antarctica—clever, that. But the tour is really an impressive affair, with $20 million in funding and visiting 40-plus cities. Music is global after all, and it’s one good reason why Bostonians can still stubbornly claim that we live in an international city.

Bad day, rock pioneers…: It’s not high art, but I cannot ignore that Monday was depressing for any fan of punk or electronic music. Two of the most important (if not most popular) bands of the last half century faced terminal upheaval.

In tragic news: Ron Asheton, guitarist for the Stooges, was found dead at his Ann Arbor home. He was 60 years old, and while any notion of cause is purest speculation at this point, it doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise, considering how hard that band lived in its early ’70s heyday. But think of any killer riff off any Sex Pistols or Green Day or Guns ‘N Roses album—especially the ones that blow the doors off all emo or indie rock today—and it really all started with Asheton.

Iggy Pop provided all the frontman charisma for the Stooges—Asheton was kind of schlumpy—but the sonic danger was in the snarling, deafening guitarricanes that managed to sound nihilistic, angry, and roughed up by bluesy Motor City scuzz. While Asheton’s work is really limited to the seminal Stooges albums (The Stooges, Fun House, Raw Power), all of which are more than 30 years old, we should be thanking him all our lives for practically inventing the concept of breathless catharsis we now know as rawwwwk.

On the complete other side of the spectrum (which is also much less awful news), the 40-year-old duo of Kraftwerk essentially announced their split yesterday too. This German electronic band is usually mocked for presenting themselves as actual robots in concert and for writing songs about pocket calculators and modes of transportation. Sure, they’re pretty darn German, but they also influenced every realm of non-acoustic popular music from David Bowie to Kanye West’s new album. Not one electronic song since 1974 has been created without their influence—and I refuse to yield on this point.

Notoriously reclusive perfectionists, Kraftwerk produced few albums over the past 20 years, but had recently picked up the pace with regular if limited world tours. But I guess even this was too much for Florian Schnieder, the particularly mannequin-looking co-founder, who quit Monday after 40 years. He leaves only longtime musical partner Ralf Hütter to (maybe) carry on the name. (The other “band members” you may see or hear about have almost always been considered secondary to this duo.) As per the typical Kraftwerk code of silence, no reason was given, and I’ll be shocked if we ever see any new Kraftwerk music again.

As with the Stooges—albeit very different music—go back and listen to 30-year-old albums like Autobahn, Trans Europe Express and The Man Machine, and just when you dupe yourself into thinking that this pristine, oddly danceable poptronica could be made today…remind yourself that these guys made this prophetic music when synthesizers were still made out of tubes. In fact, the Kraftwerk menschen are often cited as possibly the third-most sampled artists in hip-hop, along with James Brown and George Clinton/Parliament-Funkadelic.

So, perhaps I go on too long, but I can’t help it: artistic iconoclasts such as Asheton and Schneider come along ever more rarely these days, let alone these ones who had seismic effects on pop culture worldwide. Thus the ends of their eras, whether by tragedy or choice, must be honored.

Ringing in the Awards Season: Official accolades and the attendant bling are in this winter season, as they are every year, both locally and nationally. In this neck of the woods, literally, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park announced the winner of their annual Rappaport Prize. German artist Ursula von Rydingsvard now has this prestigious award on her CV and $25,000 added to her bank account.

Her life story is as interesting as her massive sculptures, as she spent her childhood in Nazi labor camps and post-World War II refugee zones. She specializes in outdoor art, constructing huge forms out of wood that evoke the liminal area between the natural and manmade, creating monumental structures that evoke everything from shelters to geologic mounds. Not many artists can say that their medium is 4-by-4-inch cedar boards rubbed with graphite, and only this one can use it to create incredibly varied works on such a grand scale.

The DeCordova Museum itself is actually closed until January 24th for the installation of a new exhibit, but the sculpture park remains open. If you’re up in Lincoln, stop in and check out her 1997 sculpture ence pence in the “Wetlands” part of the park. How von Rydingsvard managed to achieve that texture and patina is such an alluring mystery that you be hard-pressed not to touch it. Don’t do that, of course—they just finished renovating it.