Remember that scene in Airplane! when the guy who can craft a pterodactyl or a brooch out of a piece of paper pulls the plug and makes the air-traffic-control tower go dark? The gag was funny in the movie, but it wasn't funny at all when a similar episode happened at Logan yesterday. An aviation worker cut the wrong cable and put out communications at the airport for two hours. Joe Dwinnell at the Herald......

Iranian Film Festival The Red Card (Carte ghermez) Mahnaz Afzali, 74 minutes, documentary, Persian with subtitles Saturday, November 17, 3:15 pm Remis Auditorium, MFA, Boston $10, Tickets and More Info While Iran's culture seems largely shut off from the United States or represented by the face of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the culture shares two strong similarities with that of America--celebrity worship and an attraction to bizarre crimes. The documentary The Red Card is like the OJ......

Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair November 16-18 Hours: Friday 5-9 Saturday 12-7, Sunday 12-5 Hynes Convention Center Directions | Tickets (Purchase $15 weekend tickets on Friday, or $8 for Saturday or Sunday only) If nothing turns you on like yellowed pages and musty smells, the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair is for you. From a copy of Ariel inscribed by Ted Hughes to an original copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone with promo......

The Heartbeat Detector France, 2007, 144 minutes, French/subtitled Boston Jewish Film Festival Saturday, November 10, 7:00 pm, ICA, $10 Official site for the BJFF Bostonist only started to plumb the depths of the offerings at the Boston Jewish Film Festival with last week's list of highlights. Another movie, The Heartbeat Detector, has also intrigued us, and it will make its New England debut tomorrow night. Also known as "La Question Humaine," this movie follows a......

Last Saturday, a group of wallflowers, mostly in their twenties, lined the auditorium of Allston's International Community Church (ICC). The event had all the markings of an awkward youth group mixer, from the empty checkerboard floor to the folk singer on stage. But the attendees weren't there to pray. They were there to eat. It was the Launch Party for the Boston Vegan Association (BVA), and tables sat covered with food donations from members and......

International Pop Overthrow The Great Scott, Allston Friday Nov 2 - Tuesday Nov 6 $10 // 7 PM // 18+ except for 11/3, 21+ Sounds cool, doesn't it? Well, we certainly think so. The International Pop Overthrow, the brain child of creator David Bash, comes to Boston for the Festival's 5th year. The 5-day long event will showcase local bands whose sound can be classified as indie, rock and/or pop. But wait - pop?......

Definitely a sad announcement to make: Lawrence, Massachusetts, native Robert Goulet died tonight at age 73. He was an international star who catapulted into fame in his 1960 Broadway musical role as Lancelot in Camelot. Originally befallen to stage fright, he was encouraged by his parents in his early teens to continue performing. Following the success of Camelot, he appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show," and began branching out into film and a recording career.......

All the local news outlets went nutty over Ben Affleck at the Boston premiere of Gone Baby Gone. They were especially tickled that Matt Damon showed up, too. Of course they both said they would sneak out so they wouldn't miss the Red Sox game. Affleck is on a real hearts-and-minds mission. On Tuesday, he went to City Hall and joined Mayor Menino to help the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) unionize hospital employees.......

Boston Latino International Film Festival Howard Thurman Center at Boston University 775 Commonwealth Ave October 19-21 Free! [ Schedule ] BLIFF may sound like bluff, but we're not bluffing when we say that the Boston Latino International Film Festival has some fine films (shorts, documentaries, full-length features, and more) coming up in this final weekend of the festival's 6th year running. Titles include Bragging Rights: Stickball Stories, Immigrant Reflections: Three Boston College Service Workers......

Honest-to-goodness Nobel Laureates, along with a few non-Laureates, indulged their silly sides on Thursday night when Harvard University hosted the 2007 Ig Nobels ceremony. The Annals of Improbable Research magazine (that sounds like something Dave Eggers would have thought up) grants the "Ig Nobels" for achievements in "unusual and imaginative scientific discovery." Here's a list of this year's winners in all the Ig Nobel fields from the Guardian UK: Medicine: Brian Witcombe of Gloucester and......

This week, Phillyist saw the waters of a landmark fountain run red for a Showtime marketing stunt, the Phils pull ahead, and some serious nostalgia. They also got a chance to review an awesome tribute album, reminded folks to see the King and appreciated their beautiful skyline. Chicagoist knows what it's like to like the Cubs. But naming your kid Wrigley Fields? At least they can breathe a little easier now that Grossman's out and......

Yo La Tengo Presents "The Sounds of Science" Tuesday, September 25, 8:00 pm Coolidge Corner Theatre $25 Introduction by Fabien Cousteau The third-annual Muddy River Environmental Film Series is running at Coolidge Corner Theatre. The series covers wine, global warming, and Tuvalu. Closing night features a screening of several works by Jean Painlevé, a nature filmmaker who sounds like a real-life Steve Zissou, only without the silly outfits. Painlevé's images shocked the scientist crowd, not......

The Joiner is a newcomer to Boston and a compulsive joiner of clubs and organizations. He shares his experience joining Boston area groups weekly at Bostonist. Pedestrians trying to navigate the Atlantic Avenue sidewalk on the Boston Waterfront at 7:30 Sunday morning had more to contend with than the usual pointing and clicking tourists. They also had to bypass the mound of tripods and camera bags piled outside Dunkin' Donuts, where members of the Boston......

Yeah, baby! We all know that the Red Sox should be thumping the Devil Rays, but it's hard to argue with two consecutive hard-fought, come-from-behind wins from a lineup that's been painful to watch for stretches this season. Last night, the Sox surrendered four early runs to Tampa Bay, with starter Jon Lester throwing 65,431 pitches and only making into the fourth inning. Rays starter Edwin Jackson, looking like a Cy Young candidate (the Sox......

The Joiner is a newcomer to Boston and a compulsive joiner of clubs and organizations. He shares his experience joining Boston area groups weekly at Bostonist. The scene at Downtown Crossing's Alley Bar the afternoon of Saturday, September 1, should have been more somber, considering New England's only gay rugby squad had lost its first match of the season by a score too embarrassing to relate. But that's not how rugby works. After the match......

A man slipped past screeners at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport around 8 o'clock this morning and has not been seen since. The Transportation Security Administration says that the concourse was shut down and about 15 planes were searched, but not before 12 flights had already taken off. These flights will be searched once they land. Wherever they're going. Did they land yet? Whatever. That's just great. Can I have my lighter back now? (MSNBC)......

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......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

Troops found the ID cards of two of the missing men, including Sgt. Alex Jimenez of Lawrence. The cards were located in an "al-Qaeda safe house." Jimenez was captured on May 12. A group had claimed that Jimenez and another soldier who went missing on the same day were dead, but no bodies have been found. Three soldiers were taken in the original May 12 ambush. One of them was killed, and his body was......

It's summer, and summer likely means a trip to Cape Cod at some point. If you're planning to go, you might want to think about driving because the latest news about flights to the Cape scares us. Cape Air cancelled flights through yesterday to this afternoon because engines have failed three times. Here's the details on the failures from the Globe: The decision to shut down the airlines was made after two engine failures over......

Today it seems like anyone can get an honorary degree. Even Pats owner Robert Kraft got one at this year's UMass-Boston graduation. But some honorary degrees get sticky. For example, twenty years ago, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe received an honorary degree at UMass. Today, UMass trustees are reconsidering their decision today. According to the Globe, "the Undergraduate Student Senate at UMass-Boston unanimously passed a request to retract the degree." And for good reason. Although he......

Harry Doyle and the Friends of the Feathered are breathing a sigh of relief this morning. After two losses at Fenway, Chief Wahoo's Tribe turned on the juice Wednesday night, pounding out a season-high 18 hits and smacking the Sox 8-4. Boston gave Daisuke a 2-0 lead after four innings, but Dice had been living dangerously all along, and Cleveland finally started to make him pay. And pay and pay. The Indians score two in......

Until May 21, representative Jim McGovern is seeing how some of his constituents live by taking the Food Stamps Challenge. He and his wife, Lisa, are living on food stamps and blogging about the simple fact that living on a food-stamp budget sucks. The challenge started on the 15th, and CNN aired coverage of the representative involved in the challenge forlornly picking at iceberg lettuce and lentils. But these meals haven't prompted McGovern to cheat.......

American troops keep dying in Iraq, and that includes several troops from Massachusetts. A Lawrence family is left wondering if their son is dead or captured, and a well-known BU professor who spoke out against the war lost his son. Alex Jimenez of Lawrence is one of three soldiers who are missing after an ambush in Mahmoudiya that left four soldiers and a translator dead. One soldier who has died has not been identified, which......

Police blew the dust off a 1995 murder. In 1995, Bobby Mendes was stabbed to death, and police captured the man who may be his killer today at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Arnaldo "Nardo" Lopes had changed his name and had just returned from a Jamaica vacation. Mendes' mother, Isaura Mendes, became a community activist and later lost a second son to violence. In response to the arrest, she said, "I don't hate anyone. I just......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. Austinist has a chat with the ever-fashionable Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, and managed to catch some local fashionistas making......

Maybe you can't get tickets to Fenway anytime soon, but a little bit of baseball, international-style, will be coming to the Somerville Theater as part of the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Rumbo a Las Grandes Ligas will be making its East Coast debut on Monday night at the festival. The documentary by Jared Goodman explores the persaviveness and the love of baseball in the Dominican Republic, which produces a number of major leaguers-per-capita high......

The wet weather didn't deter marathon runners earlier today as they started their journey in Hopkinton. Suni Williams, as promised, hopped on the treadmill in the International Space Station and began her run to complete the 26.2 miles while circling the Earth. At about 9.5 miles she had already circled the globe once. Her pace was approximately 6 miles per-hour as she ran - but it's all relative. The space station was orbiting the......

Today the final list of Webby nominees was released. According to the press release:Hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet" by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international awards honoring Web sites, online film and video, interactive advertising, and mobile content. The Webby Awards is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, a 550-person judging academy... Unlike other awards shows, where only judges choose the winners, The Webby......