A Boston pharmaceutical sales rep who is on this season's cycle of "Big Brother" went to the hospital after having an allergic reaction to "slop." Allison Nichols had to eat the aforementioned "slop" as a punishment. (As far as Bostonist is concerned, being on or watching "Big Brother" is punishment enough.) Her lips swelled and she said her throat closed up. Meanwhile, another contestant had a seizure, Reality TV World and the New York Daily......

This afternoon, Bostonist waited in the cold rain for Paris Hilton to show up at the Harvard Lampoon castle this afternoon and had to leave because she was running so late. Bostonist was surprised by the small size of the crowd and thought it would have been bigger. A few people, including the news teams, couldn't wait to see Paris Hilton in person. Others stopped by briefly to take in the minor ruckus. One......

Somebody better check on Mitt Romney because he's not acting like himself. The campaign bus for Mr. I-Eat-My-Wife's-Granola-Every-Morning pulled into a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Reporters rejoiced. The LA Times declared, "Mitt Romney is human!" That all depends on how you look at it. Plenty of people might argue that eating KFC indicates you actually have a Teflon tummy instead of a human stomach. But when Romney strays from the script, he doesn't go that far.......

Say what you will about Mitt Romney, the man never loses his cool. Even if it seems like he loses his cool, such as in the ad in which he went jogging and his hair got mussed, the stray hairs were on purpose. But a reporter got under Romney's skin at a Staples in South Carolina this morning when Romney said lobbyists didn't run his campaign. The reporter, Glen Johnson, said that was bull. Alas,......

Don Aucoin at the Globe landed an interview with Denise the Not-Quite-Lunch-Lady, the Survivor contestant from Douglas who said she had been demoted from lunch lady to janitor. Mark Burnett gave her $50,000 since she had it so rough, but the Douglas School Superintendent swiftly revealed that Denise had actually been promoted. So, why did Denise do it? In an interview Aucoin said took 90 minutes, Denise told him that she got nervous on......

If things don't work out for former Massachusetts governor and current Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, he can always follow in ex-candidate Bob Dole's footsteps--as a spokesman for Viagra. CBS News' From the Road blog reports that Mitt Romney had this to say about his wife, Ann: “She’s a cute girl, I’ll tell ya,” Romney told the Iowa crowd that was packed into a small coffee house here. “She’s hot, too. Wow!” Romney then appeared......

In a surprise move, the NFL has decided to expand the broadcast of the Patriots-Giants game, which it had previously limited to WCVB and the NFL Network, leaving many New England residents out in the cold. The game will air on Saturday, December 29, at 8:00 pm. Boston residents will be able to watch it on WCVB, but the Herald reports that the NFL will allow the game to air on CBS and NBC, too.......

Is Denise Martin, fourth-place finisher in Survivor: China, a lunch lady? Is she a janitor? Is she a pawn of the "reality show" system? Or does the Massachusetts resident just have ladyballs as bold as her mullet? Denise Martin admitted that she had been promoted before leaving for China on CBS' Early Show in an extremely awkward interview. Apparently, a lot of people are visiting the site looking for more information on Denise the Lunch......

Last night, Denise Martin, who worked as a lunch lady in Douglas, said the school district she worked for didn't let her return to work as a lunch lady and that she had to work as a janitor and she was not happy at all. She received $50,000 from Mark Burnett as a result. (Having another castmate make a demeaning comment about "welfare" and saying Denise "sucks at life" probably also prodded Burnett to......

Survivor: China: In the next-to-last episode of Survivor: China, Denise has been struggling with a question--who does she think she can win against if she were in Survivor's final two? Denise had a tough choice after she won the immunity challenge, which involved players giving each other arrows. When the challenge started, Denise wound up with the next-to-least number of arrows and admitted that she was low on the totem pole of her alliance. To......

--Another snowstorm is on its way and is expected to have its greatest impact tonight. [WCVB] --Speaking of snow, Bostonist has the temperature and weather-condition icons at the top left of the home page. If you click on that icon, you'll get all the latest weather news. --People got cold in order to protest the heat of global warming during yesterday's Polar Bear Plunge in Concord. [AP/Globe] --Patriots owner Robert Kraft is partnering with......

Now that David, the Somerville LARPer, took the grand prize in Beauty and the Geek, we are focusing our attentions on Denise, the martial-arts aficionado with the heroic hair. Denise has hung on throughout several rough rounds of Survivor:China. This week, Denise caught a break since the reward challenge involved the presence of family members. The producers saved Denise's husband for last--for good reason. He is a big, burly dude who looks like he would......

Big Brother Casting Call Saturday, December 8, 12:00pm - 3:00pm Felt, 3rd and 4th floors, 533 Washington St., Boston (T: Downtown Crossing) Big Brother casting site The only people happy with the Writers' Strike right now is reality television fans and those who want to be on reality television. The latter will rejoice because CBS is launching another cycle of Big Brother, and auditions will be held at Felt. The release states that casting directors......

Both the Herald and Globe wondered today about whether and why Victoria's Secret model Selita Ebanks was booed during a promotional appearance Sunday night at Gillette Stadium. Could it be that a stadium full of "red-blooded American football fans" (as the Herald's Inside Track ladies put it) actually booed any model, let alone a Victoria's Secret lass? Bostonist was there, and we heard all the boos. And much as we give credit to anyone speaking......

Was it CBS or not? We thought we'd heard the end of the complaints about noise piped into the PA system within the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, but WBZ-TV is reporting that what seemed like an audio discrepancy during Sunday's Colts/Patriots game was no fluke - and a venue security guard told WBZ photojournalist Bryan Foley that it was intentional. According to WBZ-TV's story, Foley noticed that the sound of the crowd was painfully loud......

We're sad to report that the NFL has determined there's no fire to go with the smoke. As sure as people were, and as hopeful as we were that it was true, the league has said there's no evidence that the Colts were piping in artificial crowd noise Sunday against the Patriots. CBS blames faulty equipment in the truck to explain why, at one point during the game, it sounded like a CD skipped, then......

4:05 PM: Welcome to the Bostonist live blog of the Patriots/Colts game, live from Bostonist Auxiliary HQ in Central Mass. We're trying to follow the Celtics game right now (45-37, mid-3rd quarter), but the lure of watching Minnesota Vikings rushers destroy San Diego is hard to pass up. 4:15: It's time. Due to contractual obligations, CBS has to cut away from the end of the Viking-Charger game to show us a few commercials before going......

David Letterman's warning to Matt Damon when he appeared last night on Late Night. We caught the interview in a channel flip early in the west coast Sox game. Despite the disappointment handed to us in the bottom of the 11th, it's nice to go to sleep and awake to find that the tubes have done their magic and provided you with this video. In this case it's perhaps the lowest quality video we've seen......

Who cares about any other sport? It's Red Sox Opening Day! They will be up against the Kansas City Royals late this afternoon at 4:10 pm. It will be on NESN and ESPN and on WRKO and WEEI if you're catching it on the way home. Here's the lineup from the official site: 1. Julio Lugo, SS 2. Kevin Youklis, 1B 3. David Ortiz, DH 4. Manny Ramirez, LF 5. J.D. Drew, RF 6. Mike......

The brackets are here. Get it, and hide it from your boss! On second thought, your boss probably has one, too. The No. 1 seeds are Florida, North Carolina, Kansas, and Ohio State. Boston College is a seventh seed and will play against 10th seeded Texas Tech. At least they know what they'll be getting into with coach/professional nutter Bobby Knight. The Patriots buying frenzy continues, and they may have acquired a player who will......

Not feeling up for First Nighting? Unable to get to New York City to watch the ball drop in person? As usual, the TV networks are more than willing to provide you with the kind of entertainment that will drive you to drink. Here's the lineup: WGBH 2 (PBS): Garrison Keillor's New Year's Eve Special. 10 pm. This one's for those of you who are feeling civilized. WBZ 4 (CBS): Local First Night Special. The......

A major fire at One Broadway resulted in injuries, one of them critical. Universal Hub moved fast and posted a report from a woman who works in the building and saw the impact of the smoke inhalation firsthand. They also have a report from someone who was on the Kendall T stop platform and saw lights "flicker and flash and eventually [go] out." CBS4 has video of people describing the smoke, and they also......

Massachusetts political junkies didn't have an excuse to stay up late because the governor's race was over before it began. Democratic candidate Deval Patrick was projected as governor before the polling places closed. It was hardly a race. Patrick pummeled, pounded, and then mopped the floor with the competition. Anyone hoping for a little political drama was quickly disappointed, and they had to look elsewhere for suspense. The big losers were Republican gubernatorial candidate......

YouTube is still up and running and we're searching out some sweet copyrighted materials before Google really gets involved and forces some of it to come down. This week we've been hitting replay clip over and over trying to learn some new words to We Didn't Start the Fire thanks to bunkosquad. Take a look back at sports in the eighties in a five minute intro clip from the CBS 4 montage intro for their......

Something happened to television this week. New shows came on the air, new seasons premiered their new episodes, and a whole new network has taken to the stage – the CW. Since childhood we've known NBC, CBS, and ABC as the big three. At some point along the line that Simpson's carrying station Fox hit the UHF band, but we still had our favorite indie stations on the ultra-high frequencies. TV38 (WSBK) and WLVI 56......

Last week My Morning Jacket played two dates with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall. A small set of the Pops had been on Letterman backing up the Pops earlier in the month for a preview performance. The CBS set is a far cry from the Symphony Hall setting the full Pops gig allowed. After Wednesday's show a couple of recordings were floating around the internets, but they went up and down. Thursday's show new......

Apparently it isn’t enough that there is a Dunkin’ Donuts on nearly every block around Boston, and in some cases two. Two new Dunkies are set to open at Fenway Park. Fenway faithful waited 86 years for a Red Sox championship. Today, another long wait is over, as Red Sox fans and all visitors to Fenway Park can now finally enjoy a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee at Red Sox home games and other Fenway......

More details from yesterday’s accident at a construction site in Boston are being heard today. A 10-ton orange metal platform fell 13 stories down onto Boylston Street during the lunch hour and it’s been announced that three people were killed. Two victims were construction workers, who were thought to be working for the subcontractor, Boston Masonry: Romildo Silva, 27, and Robert Beane, 41. Michael Tsan Ty, 28, a doctor at Brigham and Women's Hospital, was......

Among the many reasons why this time of year is so fantastic there sits the ubiquitous "Madness" that is the NCAA basketball tournament. Sure, the hometown BC Eagles (playing tonight at 7:10 on CBS) look to have a very strong chance of busting into the Final Four, that's cause enough for many a Bostonian to celebrate. However, the legions of people who've moved to the Boston area have a great cause to be happy......

After a weekend of green, beer, and basketball, Bostonist is drained. It all started for us 10 years ago when our Western Mass. roots were honored as UMass Amherst team went to the Final Four with Coach Cal. and Marcus Camby (who later cost the Final Four standing for “improper gifts” – jewelry and prostitutes). Since then we’ve faithfully filed out our brackets each season. Sometimes we pick the underdogs for an upset and sometimes......