Theater Theater lovers! A rare treat - Part I *and* Part II of Tony Kushner's seminal modern epic "Angels in America" is in town and it runs until Feb. 10. It's about the painful disintegration of two relationships against a backdrop of greed, conservatism, and the discovery of AIDS. Presented by Boston Theatre Works. Fringy Theater That Tastes Like Chicken! Who can resist a play about chickens that advises, "Beware! Contains fowl language"? Useless Theater......

Two audience members stood out at Josh Ritter's October show in Somerville: the drunk Irishman who preferred to be escorted our rather than sit down, and the man who soberly and repeatedly called out, Play your old stuff. Last week's benefit shows may have been more to the latter's liking. (Bostonist attended the second of that Tuesday evening's two performances.) While Mr. Ritter did play a breakneck acoustic rendition of "To The Dogs Or Whoever",......

The baseball winter meetings are over, and the Red Sox find themselves without an ace. Except for the one they have. And the Japanese guy who might yet become one. And the old cowboy back for one more year. And the two or three promising kids who might be a couple years away. But they haven't landed Johan Santana, which is either a failure (if they really were after Santana) or a success (if their......

It seems wrong, somehow, to be focusing on the Red Sox in December. But given the fact that all of the other Boston-area pro sports teams - the ones now playing and, you know, winning - found themselves with a day off, Boston sports fans were drawn to the glowing-red hot stove action unfolding within the Red Sox organization. All day on Tuesday, the word was that it was close, this business between the Sox......

For a day that featured not a single Boston professional sports team in game mode, Tuesday was jam-packed with sports news. And what made things even more ridiculous was the fact that, for a good portion of the day, one faced difficulty figuring out what news was legit and what was a sports scribe's attempt at an exclusive gone wrong (Tom Brady exclusive, anyone? Don't worry, we'll get it to it). We're going to sort......

--After a series of positive experiences, Urban Paramedic has reconsidered the Guardian Angels: "People may disagree over the value of Guardian Angel patrols, but they certainly deserve credit for believing in what they do." --The Food Monkey has an epiphany thanks to Jacoby Ellsbury's winning a free taco for America. --On Common Ground evaluates the Globe's choices for this year's Top 25 Most Stylish People and finds this year's list to be an improvement over......

So Sheriff Beckett stared down the Cleveland gang last night. Once again, when the Red Sox needed Josh to be at his absolute best, he pretty much was. Sure, he gave up one more hit than he did in his Game One dazzler, but he only gave up one run - on a double play ball. Other than that, he struck out 11 Indians and gave 44,588 Clevelanders something to do with their towels beside......

First, the really great news: Josh Beckett managed to make C.C. Sabathia look like a Little League pitcher (no offense to some of those who are the future of America's pastime) on Friday night at Fenway Park, ably leading the Red Sox defense in what turned into a 10-3 routing in Game 1 of the ALCS. Seriously, we were a little worried about what hinted at a pitching fan's dream matchup - two great aces......

Well...that was a little scarier than it had to be, wasn't it? While Curt Schilling was completely dominating and mastering the Angels lineup, the Red Sox lineup took their sweet time getting around to dominating the game. So for a game that ended 9-1, there was an awful lot of fingernail chewing and knuckle whitening. The Sox did take the lead, insurmountable as it turned out, in the fourth, when Papi and Manny went deep......

LAist began the month with a new food series exploring the popular and unknown late-night eats around town. If a Top Chef winner opened up a late-night spot in Los Angeles, denizens would flock to it, yet the LA Times and other media might be wary. Turning to sports, the Dodger season was quite memorable in the way that it imploded and the LA County Sheriff's Department made some games of their own such as......

It looks like just might be a higher power looking down on the MLB postseason. He/She/It is a Red Sox fan and, judging from the sight of Derek Jeter slapping like mad at the bugs descending upon him at the Jake on Friday night, any higher powers out there have a wicked sense of humor. On a Friday night that gave us fire (well, on the T here in Boston), locusts cleverly passed off as......

Someone in the Red Sox front office deserves a bonus today. Someone must have found a loophole in American League rules that permitted Josh Beckett to pitch ping-pong balls at the Angels while John Lackey was forced to throw regulation-sized baseballs. He had to be throwing ping-pong balls. What other explanation could there be that the Angels, a good hitting team and champions of the West, were reduced to flailing around like overmatched patsies? After......

OK, we're as excited as anyone about the first game of the Boston-Anaheim ALDS. We'll get to that in a second. But let's begin by trying to imagine how thick the tension must have been within a conference room in the catacombs of Fenway Park recently, when Theo Epstein allowed Dan Shaughnessy to sit down and talk baseball. Seriously! After the columns and the gorilla suit, the jabs and the barbs, this was a matchup......

Forget for a moment the questions still lingering around the Red Sox. We know about those. Let's take a brief look at the angst-ridden article in today's LA Times about the myriad questions swirling around our first-round opponents, the AnaheimOrWhatever Angels. They don't know who's starting when (OK, neither do we). Two of their key sluggers, Vlad Guerrero and Gary Matthews, are nursing injuries and may not be 100% (hey, just like Manny!). Will their......

In between the drama of a pennant race and the pressure cooker of the playoffs, comes a day like today. A day when absolutely nothing is up for grabs. Yesterday the Red Sox won and the Indians lost, guaranteeing the Red Sox the best record in the AL (they'd win a tiebreaker with Cleveland) and Fenway-advantage throughout the postseason. The win yesterday (you might want to sit down) came largely thanks to J.D. Drew, who......

We're going to predict it now: regardless of how the coming weeks treat our local baseball team, the 2007 Red Sox season - sorry, 2007 Pennant-Winning Red Sox season - is going to go down as one for the history books. Years from now, there are going to be many people out there who exclaim that they never doubted that the Sox would win the division. They're going to talk about how they knew that......

Dare we say things are starting to click at the right time? The Red Sox finished off Oakland with an 11-6 win. Now only a monumental collapse (look upward; no lightning) will keep the Red Sox from celebrating an AL East clinchin' party in the next day or two. The Sox smacked Oakland largely due to the bat of Mike Lowell, who collected five of his 116 RBIs (a Red Sox 3B record) on a......

We're going to the playoffs! Sure, it's been an awful September, for the most part. And sure, the Red Sox still very much have to somehow finish off New York, and ideally fend off the Angels and Indians to secure home-field advantage throughout the postseason. But the first step is officially taken, as the Sox rallied to beat the Devil Rays 8-6 and ensure they would, at the very least, beat out Detroit for the......

Have the local witches lost their powers or something? They used to be hardcore. They withstood trials and hangings. But now they have to rely on flinging around raccoon carcasses to get their points across. In Salem, two witches allegedly performed a rite of intimidation on a budget by cutting up a dead raccoon and leaving the parts on the doorsteps of their enemies back in May. Sharon Graham, 46, and Frederick Purtz, her 22-year-old......

Long live the Slutter! There was much to celebrate in Red Sox circles last night, but at the top of the list, we have Jonathan Papelbon's brand (spanking) new pitch. The Slutter - a name that will leave mothers gasping as they cover the ears beneath their children's tot-sized hats and the cast of characters at the Cask'n Flagon cracking up. The Red Sox vernacular has expanded by leaps and bounds this season. We learned......

If the Tampa Bay Devil Rays were smart (and we're not for a moment suggesting that's the case), they'd look seriously into Tim Wakefield's "rolling" contract extension with the Red Sox, and try to figure out how much money it would take to lure Wake down to St. Petersburg full-time. Because it's possible that Tim's 19-2 lifetime record against the Devil Rays, and 9-0 lifetime record at Tropicana Field, are solely a result of the......

Eric Gagne, the reliever recently acquired by the Red Sox, hasn't exactly been burning up the field. Fans have been grunting and growling, and one fan in particular communicated his frustration Friday night by throwing a water bottle at the pitcher when Gagne muffed while playing the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The fan probably made a better pitch than Gagne has been delivering, but the BPD wasn't impressed. The Red Sox Nation can......

There are days when the Red Sox remind us of the Justice League of America - that inspired creation of D.C. Comics where a number of their best superheroes ally to use their unique talents, banding together to fight evil. Sunday was one of those days. Not that the Angels are evil, per se, but they clearly represented a menace to all that is good and just, or at least to the Red Sox' division-title......

It was a busy Friday in Boston sports - two Red Sox games, one Patriots exhibition game, baby news from someone other than Tom Brady...whew! We're just going to dive right in and give you the quick and dirty version of the Redux. Ready? Here goes: -- We've heard that Sox fans who attended the first game of the Friday Fenway doubleheader made sure to carefully tuck their ticket stubs away. We imagine that the......

Clay Buchholz is coming! The Red Sox have groomed and nurtured their up-and-coming phenom, and will turn him loose on an unsuspecting American Leage this afternoon. Well, not entirely unsuspecting, since it's been pretty widely reported. He has explosive stuff (if no gyroball), good command, and a great attitude, says everyone who's worked with him in the farm system. And he gets his first crack in the bigs today against the [Your Municipality Here] Angels.......

Boy, this one had "thrilling comeback" written all over it, didn't it? After the Red Sox pulled Tuesday night's game out of the grave, they spotted Tampa Bay a 6-0 lead yesterday afternoon. (Oh, inconsistent, Daisuke...what's to be done with you?) The Sox then started chipping away as they've done so many times. Jason Varitek's 2-run homer in the seventh chased starter Andy Sonnanstine to the clubhouse, then Crisp walked and Lugo followed with an......

We hate to throw around the term "must-win" game. Game 4-7 of the 2004 ALCS; now those were must-win games. An August game against a non-divisional foe, when you're winning your own division, shouldn't qualify for the term. But last night sure felt like it. The Sox had dropped two straight to the Angels and the Yankees have been getting closer and closer in the rearview mirror. Furthermore, the Sox were taking the field sans......

Where to begin? When it comes to baseball, most of the news that came out of Tuesday was dreary, almost as dreary as the skies over Boston this morning. It felt as if it took ages for Barry Bonds to take the final steps in his journey to become baseball's new home run king, but on Tuesday night, the San Francisco Giants slugger did it. Shortly before midnight Eastern time, at a time when many......

--After a lengthy undercover operation called "Operation Roadkill," the feds took down 15 alleged members of the Outlaws, a biker gang based in Taunton. In the raid, they picked up large quantities of drugs and, as Boston NOW gleefully noted, a stripper pole. We're not sure how the feds took the stripper pole from the house without leaving significant damage behind, but, by golly, the feds were going to take that stripper pole as evidence!......

Who knew that Commish Ed Davis' radical new idea of having police officers patrol the streets might actually work? According to the Globe, crime is down in Bowdoin-Geneva, Grove Hall, and Downtown Crossing, where the new beats started. Since the back-to-basics plan is doing so well, Davis wants to add even more regular foot patrols. We agree that the Blotter looks slightly less crazy as of late. But we're curious. What happened to the Guardian......