Back Talk: The Unchained Id of Lowell, Mass.

April 23, 2012 Leave a comment

The (Lowell, MA) Sun is a venerable daily broadsheet serving the city of Lowell, northwest of Boston; its presses started running in 1878. Jack Kerouac once wrote for the paper as a sportswriter. But today, the most entertaining commentary published in its pages is in a regular feature called “Back Talk.”

Back Talk is created from messages recorded on an anonymous call-in line or submitted anonymously through the Internet. Anecdotally, the contributors are generally cranky senior citizens from Lowell and nearby towns who have had it UP TO HERE with the shenanigans they see going on around the city.

ROTI has been monitoring “Back Talk” for some time now, collecting the entries that best encapsulate the amusing material found therein. Enjoy this treasury of complaints about welfare recipients, the Red Sox, President Obama, local elected officials, inconsiderate neighbors, and other topics that enrage elderly citizens of Lowell.

NOT A DUMPSTER: I have a mattress and a TV in front of my house on Canada Street. Someone else decided to put out a bunch of shelves, too. How dare you. I’ll get your plate next time.

FOWL MOOD: Why do these large chain markets that do rotisserie chickens make them look sick? They’re always grayish.

RETIRING PITCHER: Tim Wakefield was so popular with the Sox, they named a city after him: Timbuktu.

PRIVACY POINT: Remind people to cover their bathroom windows because there are several families on Gilmore Street witnessing your use of your bathroom. We’d like it to stop.

SEEING IT ALL: The presidential candidates want to show they look like the rest of us. They showed us the blue jeans, now show us the tattoo and flip-flops.

NOT CUTTING IT: I was just wondering — could the Gillette Co. send a bunch of razor blades down to the Red Sox in Fort Myers?

Ugh, shave that DISGRACE on your face!


LOW-BALLING VARITEK: The Red Sox can do a little more with Jason Varitek; couldn’t they have offered him something else? It’s insulting, especially to be a person like him.

PALIN BY COMPARISION: Last time gas prices got this high, Sarah Palin said we should drill. Yet, this past week, Obama says we should check the air pressure in our tires. Something tells me Palin is looking smarter on this one.

CONFUSION IN CHIEF: Every day there is more bad news with this president. He’s either enforcing contraception, apologizing, not allowing the pipeline to go through, allowing abortions. I wake up and wonder what he will do today. Let’s elect Romney and get this over with.

WELFARE ISN’T FAIR: I am so tired of paying high taxes on everything. People on welfare are the ones that make out good, they don’t have to worry about anything.

CRIME WITHOUT TIME: Why is there always a double standard for women? If I was a woman, I’d steal all sorts of things. You’ll never go to prison.

SHARP DEPARTURE: What happened to the youth today? Back in the day if there was an argument, you’d settle it using your fists. Now every­one uses a knife!

TV DRAMA: Why is Comcast taking off SoapNet and replacing it with another Disney channel? Can’t you leave us something to watch at night?

GUTTER POLITICS: It’s a sad day in Chelmsford politics when people who put out a sign to support their candi­date get their house toilet­papered. It has now stooped to a new low.

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The Signs of Sav-Mor Spirits

April 13, 2012 Leave a comment

Boston-area liquor chain Sav-Mor Spirits (also known as Sav-Mor Liquors) has four locations in Somerville, Cambridge and Medford.

According to their Facebook page,

Sav-Mor Spirits, a responsible provider of alcoholic beverages, has been family owned and operated for more than 40 years. We offer over 600 types of craft beer, wines from nearly every country, and a tremendous selection of spirits, all at the best prices. If there is one thing that distinguishes Sav-Mor, it’s our commitment to customer service, providing an atmosphere that makes it easy to purchase — and to return time and time again. We’re rightfully proud of the long-term relationships we’ve formed with customers and the communities we serve.

Fair enough, but if there’s another thing that distinguishes Sav-Mor, it’s their amazing sign postings. The giant sign that stands beside McGrath Highway is especially known for its funny messages, but other stores have been known to strike comedically from time to time.

I shop at their stores all the time — in addition to good prices and selection, they do cool things like posting stickers that describe each type of beer and its qualities — and I’ve been thinking for a while that the Sav-Mor Signs needed to be chronicled…

Thanks to the company’s social media presence, that dream is a reality! A number of classic signs have been immortalized on Zuckerberg’s servers.

Therefore I’m pleased to present to you this slide show: The Signs of Sav-Mor.

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Billy Baldwin is Delightful in “The Craigslist Killer”

January 5, 2011 2 Comments

Our series on the best music of 2010 continues all week, but allow me this interlude to praise Billy Baldwin’s performance in the latest feature film from Lifetime, a network whose movies are an ongoing obsession of this webzone.

Lifetime’s examination of the crimes of Philip Markoff, “The Craigslist Killer,” is another entertaining entry in the network’s long line of superbly cheesy melodramas.

Suffice it to say that Jake McDorman does an admirable job of portraying murderous psycho Markoff, and the film ably plays up the tale in the overwrought style that Lifetime is famous for. I could regale you with descriptions of the entertaining scenes in this film — for example, the scene in which Markoff takes pictures of his dong in the bathroom while his innocent fiancee Megan McAllister sleeps — but given that this is based on a true story in which one girl got killed and another got her life ruined, it just seems in bad taste.

If you’re evil, you will find the entire film entertaining. But even if you’re not, you have to love the performance delivered in this film by one William “Billy” Baldwin, who plays hardened Bawston cop Detective Bennett, the lead investigator on the case.

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The One with Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit [Facebook Roundup]

December 4, 2010 Leave a comment

We’ve been posting a bunch of great links and videos on the Rumors on the Internets Facebook page.

If you’re not in the posse, or you have soooo many friends that you can’t keep track of all the updates, here’s what you missed over the past few weeks.

This absolutely glorious montage of Nic Cage losing his shit.

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A Tale of Two Mayors

November 4, 2009 Leave a comment

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Elections were held in New York City and Boston yesterday, and both cities re-elected their mayors to new terms.

Yet the true results of these elections were as different as the cities themselves.

In Boston, Mayor Tom Menino won a record-setting fifth consecutive term in office, defeating challenger City Councilor Michael Flaherty by 57% to 42%.

In NYC, Mayor Michael Bloomberg won a third term, but by a narrow margin, defeating insurgent William C. Thompson by 51% to 47%.

Boston’s Menino is being called “Mayor for life” this morning, while observers are reacting with shock that New York’s Bloomberg barely got himself back into office, despite high approval ratings and a staggering advantage in campaign cash.

Both men have come a long way from their childhoods in Boston — Bloomberg left town to become one of the richest men in New York City and the successor to Rudy Giuliani, while Menino has never strayed from his enclave of Hyde Park, and slowly, gradually amassed a iron grip over the city of his birth.

Menino cruised where B-berg struggled yesterday because he knew something that the Wall Street billionaire didn’t – In politics, dogged incumbancy is an unstoppable strategy for maintaining a hold on power.

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