Music Hometown keytar heroes Freezepop have returned from touring the world (okay, Florida, and the Rust Belt) to once again rock Cambridge, with the help of the The Information, The Main Drag, and Michael Hensley. Middle East Downstairs, 8 pm, 18+, $14. Beer Harpoon will hold its St. Patrick's Festival at the brewery on 306 Northern Avenue. Wear galoshes because the floor may well be slick with beer. Harpoon Brewery, 5:30 to 11:00 pm,......

We wish we could tell you about Ashlee Simpson's appearance at Gypsy Bar on Friday night. We'd love to report on what she was wearing, if she was pleasant, or if she said anything to the audience of Boston club-goers packed into a glassed-in section of Gypsy's VIP area. We can't. And what makes it worse is that we were there. Invited to attend and photograph Simpson's only Boston promotional event in support of her......

Short Cartoons You saw the nominees for the Live Action Short Film Academy Award last night; come back to the ICA for the contenders in the animated category. Formats include traditional 2D animation, CGI, and claymation. Check out the John Lennon interview film "I Met the Walrus." Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Avenue, South Boston, 7:00pm. $7/$9. Recover Heal a broken heart with laughter. Ben Karlin has assembled a collection of raucous breakup......

Sometimes you want something nicer than a counter-service type of place but you don't want to spend a ton of money. Pub food is always a good choice in that situation. Many bars, though, have only standard (i.e. greasy) food to go with the drinks. Silvertone Bar & Grill, located on Bromfield Street near the Park Street T stop, serves up just what you need. On first entry, the subterranean room feels like a noisy......

Remember when two Boston College football players and a State Trooper got involved in a bar brawl that sent a software programmer to the hospital? According to Dave Wedge, a judge has thrown out felony assault charges against Trooper Joseph Boike, who also co-owns The Greatest Bar, where the fight took place in August. Boike was accused of using a bottle in the fight, but the judge didn't find evidence that Boike did that. However,......

Music --Multimedia artist and musician Brian Dewan will join Bostonist faves Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys, the Boston Typewriter Orchestra, and S. Joe Hazelwood at Church. Of course, the Broken Toys are promising frilly panties and corsets. 69 Kilmarnock Street, 9:00 pm. --The Lemonheads make a return to the Middle East. Evan Dando is bringing members of the Descendents with him. Dando still has a wild streak--he talked 'shrooms and Cro-Magnon man......

--Former Boston City Councilor, Albert "Dapper" O'Neil, who probably enjoyed the best nickname bestowed up on a councilor, passed away at age 87. The Globe used many adjectives to describe him, all of which can be freely interpreted, such as "irascible" and "colorful." He opposed desegregation and, in the words of the Globe, "railed against feminists, gays, and immigrants." [Boston Globe] --In a piece from 1997, Yvonne Abraham reflects on Dapper O'Neil's unusual appeal to......

The 2008 Golden Globe nominees were announced yesterday, and to nobody's surprise, they skewed heavily toward the period drama Atonement. Charlie Wilson's War, No Country for Old Men, American Gangster, and Sweeney Todd all emerged with at least 4 noms each. Local fave Casey Affleck was nominated for his (non-Jesse James) title role in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and though Gone Baby Gone didn't get a nod in the......

Now that absinthe is legally available for sale in the US, the green fairy has landed on cocktail menus in Boston. Bostonist went to a couple local bars recently to try out the storied liquor of artists and poets. First, we tried out a more-or-less classic absinthe preparation at Kingston Station. It’s an interactive cocktail, and very pretty—you pour a bottle of spring water over a sugar cube sitting on top of a slotted......

--When word got out that Mayor Menino wanted to bring in a petting zoo to revitalize Downtown Crossing, we thought it was a joke. But it turns out that the barnyard animals are at the crossing on weekends outside Filene's Basement. Animal activists are underwhelmed, and how can looking at sad, cold animals inspire people to shop? [Boston Herald] --Wondering what all the screaming was about early yesterday evening at Downtown Crossing? It didn't......

Four Stories The Bitter End: Stories of loss, endings, and final acts Featuring Jeremiah Healey, Drew Johnson, Julia Glass, and Joan Wickersham The Enormous Room 
(567 Mass Ave,
 Central Square) Monday, December 3 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Free! Four Stories is a unique reading series: Boston-based but also Japan-based, set in a bar, and featuring four writers instead of just one, the event proves that readings don’t have to be torture. The unorthodox setting and......

--A man who was shot on Friday night in Roxbury died at the hospital yesterday. Ruel Davis, 20, was shot on Walnut Avenue and Rockland Street. Davis' murderer was cold-blooded. O'Ryan Johnson reports that the shooter walked around Davis' body and kept firing until he thought the job was done: "Witnesses said the gunman coolly paced around the victim and continued shooting the man as he laid on the sidewalk outside the Walnut Avenue apartment......

Despite the efforts of those who don't want wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, the Cape Wind project keeps coming back like a pissed-off zombie. Opponents may try to kill it, but Cape Wind springs back to life with continued vigor. Cape Wind opponents might want to bar the door this time because the AP has reported that contributions to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound have dropped. The Alliance raised $2 million in 2006--a hefty......

-- Buy Nothing Day turnout was discouragingly high. Retailers worry that consumers will not continue not to buy nothing. -- Red Sox season ticket holders are scumbag profiteers shrewd financial wizards who sell tickets they don't own yet. -- “Mitt Romney is throwing this very capable judge under the bus for his own political ends,” said Ed Ryan, head of a Massachusetts bar association task force on fair and impartial courts. “It is gutless.” --......

Mike Doughty proved Saturday night that the Hannah Montana scalping uproar could be easily solved if Miley Cyrus and her target audience were old enough to drink. While welcoming his audience of about 75 people to the intimate basement space of the Lizard Lounge, the singer-songwriter and former Soul Coughing front man explained that tickets to the evening’s show had sold out in one minute. There had been postings on Craigslist charging $100 a ticket.......

The Globe reports that the Milky Way will remain open through Monday, pending a court hearing. The Jamaica Plain bar and night club, one of three in Boston closed for failing to install fire sprinklers, won an injunction from Suffolk Superior Court last night. It reportedly came too late to prevent the cancellation of one event, the Rock 'N' Roll Fashion Show. The bar has requested a one-year extension from state fire officials for installing......

Hiss & Chambers The Pill Great Scott, 1222 Commonwealth Ave., Allston 10 p.m., 21+, $7 The Pill website | Hiss & Chambers myspace There's a glam element to Hiss & Chambers, the Portland-based four-piece set to headline The Pill's regular festivities at Great Scott tonight. The sound is indie dance at its strongest, full of the driving beats and tight riffs that feel as if they would motivate the creme de la creme indie kids......

This Bostonist swung by the newest sushi restaurant to invade Back Bay last week, and the overall impression was a good one. First off, Haru is a New York city implant, and the location in Dick's Last Resort's old spot in the Prudential Building is the chain's first in the city. Thank you very much, New York. We'll take your trophy AND your sushi. That'll be just fine. But Bostonist digresses. The decor at......

An audition for the next bubbly Rachael Ray or earthy Emeril Lagasse would be rowdy, right? You'd think the personalities would be bouncing off the walls as chefs rumbled over who made the best coq au vin. But yesterday's atmosphere at the Flat Iron Tapas Bar & Lounge at the Bulfinch Hotel was tense and quiet, almost like a classroom in which students wait to take the SAT. The Next Food Network Star had......

Online dating is becoming as big of a commitment as a serious relationship. The applications and endless profile-building keep you chained to your computer when you could be out meeting The One or at least adding to your repertoire of Hell-Date stories. Crazyblinddate.com, which is launching today in Boston, New York, and San Francisco, strips the online-dating process down to its bare bones. Crazyblinddate.com promises to get you interacting with as many people as......

Next Food Network Star Auditions Tuesday, November 6, 2007, 11:00 am-4:00 pm Flat Iron Tapas Bar & Lounge, Bulfinch Hotel 107 Merrimack St., Boston More info Auditions are being held for a new season of The Next Food Network Star. Last time, the show plucked Tommy Grella from Methuen out of a lineup because of his oversized personality, body type, proportions, and ever-present stogie. Unfortunately, homesickness got the better of him, and he left early.......

A visitor to the Fall Celebration held by the Boston Association of Cabaret Artists (BACA) last Monday could be excused for getting a little lost. The event took place in the hidden back room of Club Cafe on Boylston Street, beyond an empty and darkened corridor. But, when you came within range of the tinkling piano keys and the rousing rendition of "Luck Be a Lady," you knew you were in the right place. According......

Bostonist came across an image of Bobby Brown going country at Perez Hilton, who got a photo of Brown in a cowboy hat: Brown was at the Wildhorse Saloon in Nashville, which is far too glossy to be true country. It's like a My First Country Bar. The hat looks all right on Brown, but don't expect him to be wearing it if he shows up to get his Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's......

We love Dots and Butterfinger minis, but lately Bostonist has been wondering what kind of higher-end Halloween candies you can get around town. Some of our spooky finds included “eyeballs” at Gourmet Boutique, … A white-chocolate shell painted to look like a blood-shot eye gives way to a grossly gooey lemon crème filling. A little too gross for us: We preferred their mint-chocolate leaves with chocolate filling. The incomparable L.A. Burdick has adorable white......

The Brendan Behan Pub isn't the greatest place in Boston to catch a ballgame. The Jamaica Plain watering hole is little more than a single room with booths crammed to one side, the bar taking up the other. Patrons jostle each other to get a view of the single projection screen on the far wall. And tonight, during Game Four of the World Series, the women's restroom was out of order. But its patrons......

--The BPD has issued another warning asking Red Sox fans to "play it safe," and they have announced that they will shut down the Fenway area one inning early. The last time they announced a warning, before Game 7 against the Cleveland Indians, they said they would shut things down for the 7th inning, but for tonight's Game 4: If you are not already inside an establishment, be it a bar or restaurant, you will......

There's been interesting discussion prompted in New England these days: that we're the center of the sports universe. We don't know what will come of our shiny and new Celtics lineup, but it sure looks pretty. The Patriots have suggested thus far this season that they are as close to unstoppable as a team that has to play on any given Sunday (or Monday) can be. The Bruins have decided to stop lurking in the......

STEP Fundraiser hosted by Taza Chocolate Thursday, October 25, 2007 Bloc 11 Cafe, 11 Bow Street, Union Square, Somerville 6:30 to 9 p.m., $25 suggested donation Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership can list a lot of fine reasons to extend the green line into the town that sits north of Cambridge like a jaunty sailor cap: pollution, population density, lawsuits, "revitalization". Bostonist has selfish reasons of our own, and they live in Union Square: crack-laced cream......

--Miguel Perez, 22, was shot around 1:00 am while standing in the rain outside the bar Gigi's Palace. Brian Ballou at the Globe writes that the owner of the bar didn't let Perez in because he thought Perez was "trouble" and may have been involved with a shooting that happened inside the bar two weeks ago. The owner, Andy Barros, can't be blamed for not wanting trouble--his cousin died outside Gigi's Palace last year, and......

Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys Saturday, October 20, 8:00 pm Lizard Lounge Official Site Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys, last seen on Bostonist during the closing of Somerville's Sky Bar and the Great Lowell Cable Access Television Fiasco of 2007, will be bringing their experimental goth-rock to the Lizard Lounge. Their website promises that they combine "music, shenanigans, toys, and voice to make an organic industrial texture-core Death-folk ride......