Dear Bostonist, I’m got a some holiday parties this month and I always show up with a random bottle of wine in hand for the party host. Do you have any creative, inexpensive gifts that aren’t alcoholic and not completely lame, to give to the party-throwers? Thanks! Sick of Chardonnay Bostonist has definitely been in that situation as recently as this past weekend when we showed up to a friend’s soiree with a 12 pack......

When Bostonist gets the Sunday New York Times (and yes, haters, we get the Globe too), we first find the magazine to see if the cover story is sufficiently compelling to make us jump right into it. When that is not the case (sorry, Joan Didion, but if we wanted extended meditations on grief on a Sunday morning, we'd go to church), we go to the Sunday Styles section to see how the other half......