The Boston City Council chose a new Council President at their first meeting of the year, and it wasn't Chuck Turner. [Boston Herald] First maritime fatalities off Gloucester of '09. [Gloucester Times] First Amtrak suicide of '09. [Attleboro Sun Chronicle] First citation under new marijuana law of '09? [WWLP-TV] Children's Hospital Boston is almost first in the nation. [Parents via WBZ] Obama adds another Harvard connection to his administration. [...

Last night, Bostonist came across a framed print of a painting of an imaginary Ewok-infested moon, leaning against a trash can on Allen Street in Cambridge. We believe that this vignette says something about Porter Square: It is a place where people own this sort of thing, and discard this sort of thing. It is a place of transition....

2008 was a great year for Bostonist. We expanded our coverage, got some great new contributors, had lots of sassy posts and commentary, got our 15 minutes of fame on TV ( !! ), and most importantly had a lot of fun. The Photo of the Day feature has been a dynamic and creative part of the site, and with 2009 the time has come for a new Photo of the Day......

Well, sorta. The Herald reports that Amtrak is increasing service from Boston (among other cities) to DC for Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20, and many airlines plan to offer additional flights to the capital for the festivities as well. So that makes it seem kind of like Obama has made us all reconsider our addiction to cars, but that isn't quite the case—plus the increased train and plane usage is probably not that great for the environment anyway. Regardless, increasing......

It's another quiet evening around the Hub. Movies -- Tom and Ray Magliozzi (those are the real names of the guys who do the NPR show Car Talk) present one of their favorite films, A Thousand Clowns (1965), the story of an out of work comedy writer and his fitness for parenthood. The Magliozzi brothers will field questions after the screening, presumably about things unrelated to cars. Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline, 7 p.m. $9/$6....

At what point do we ready the panic buttons? Two legitimate losses to two legitimate good teams (LA, Portland), one stinker that can be chalked up to Laker hangover (G.State)...but then, this, now. The Celtics' eight-game winning streak against the Knicks, which stretched back to those prehistoric pre-KG teams, is over. The C's looked flat, couldn't keep up with New York's speed and intensity, and fell 100-88. Doc Rivers, who spent much of the night in this exact pose, summed it up succinctly: "I......

Photograph of Times Square during the first moments of 2009 by Neil Epstein/Gothamist Gothamist said good-bye to 2008 by looking back at the year and rang in 2009 in Times Square. (God bless YouTube for capturing Kathy Griffin's salty New Year's comments to a heckler.) Phillyist interviewed Robert Bielski, whose father will be played by Daniel Craig in the upcoming film, Defiance. Seattlest entered 2009 shaking off some bad pizza recommendations and debating whether or not the New Year's Eve police shooting of a UW......

With December movies always released in Boston a good fortnight or more after their LA/New York premieres, it seemed only fitting to wait a few days before posting our year in review. Of course, between the MFA, the Harvard Film Archive, the Brattle Theater, and other venues, Boston had great film events almost every night of the year (You do read Happenings, right?), and we could have easily turned this look back into a representation-is-as-big-as-the-whole allegory ala Synecdoche, New York or Borges' Exact Map. But, instead, we'll stick to the conventional format and highlight a few of the recent past's more notable moments....

In late winter, Bostonist Locavores notice, charcuterie frequently gets some action in the media. People like to play with the bits of the animals that get slaughtered right before it gets too cold to feed them the things that are growing in the farms. There isn't much growing that is worthy of notice anyway. Lionettes, a South End meat market, gets a whole pig in once a week. They render the leaf lard, so you don't have to. If you understood anything that......

Metal? -- Bostonist is a mere bystander in the epic conflict between hipster metal and real metal, which means we don't take sides. Those of you who do so can judge which camp tonight's showcase at the Middle East belongs to. We're All Gonna Die, Amigazo, and Riff Cannon all hail from Boston. Finisher, which bills itself as "The True War Wizards," comes from Rochester, NY. Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, 9 p.m. $8. Nostalgia -- English punk band the Damned......

Well, it had to end sometime. The Bruins' longest winning streak since 1973 came in emphatic fashion, as the boys were outworked and outplayed by the Sabres at the Garden yesterday. Buffalo scored twice early, and it was a hole the B's never got out of, as they didn't get a lot of shots on Justin Miller and flat-out missed some of the shots they did get. The Bruins were united in their assessment of what went wrong. Shane Hnidy: "We didn't capitalize on our chances." Zdeno Chara: "We had some really......