Super Bowl Media Day is the professional football equivalent of the annual family reunion. A bunch of people get together, often traveling long distances, for the purpose of catching up. There's little that they have in common, but since they sort of fall under the same name, everyone has to make nice. The hijinks on display makes for a hilarious time for those not directly involved. People make nice and dumb down the stories of......

-- Call him Governor Patrick-agressive. Deval Patrick unveiled his 2009 budget, and it had a little surprise. $300 million of revenue is set to come from taxes on three casinos that do not yet exist. Patrick wants to license casino gambling in Massachusetts but faces heavy opposition in the legislature. It's a battle he has already won in his own mind. Nearly half -- $124 million -- of the speculative funds will shore up a......

The cold weather - and holiday festivities - descended upon Gothamist. The Rockefeller Christmas tree was lit, Broadway stagehand finally ended their strike, and NASCAR decided to run their victory lap through Times Square. There were disturbing photographs revealing the working conditions in which many city manholes are produced and ninjas were also a hot topic, either robbing homes or entering into alibis. But the city was really rocked by how Rudy Giuliani's visits......

Michael Ondaatje will be reading from Divisadero at Brookline Booksmith Monday, June 4, at 7:00 pm. In Michael Ondaatje's latest work, a young woman in Petaluma, California, is caught with the family farmhand, tearing a family apart and setting off a chain of events that run through Nevada and all the way to France. At first, the novel is all about this family - sisters Anna and Claire and the farmhand, Coop. They are scattered......

Plenty of fascinating news this week for our oft-neglected New England neighbors: Vermont: The poor folks in Vermont will miss out on the wonders of the new iPhone because the iPhone will use Cingular, and Vermont doesn't have Cingular networks. They won't be the only ones: "The iPhone service won't be available in all or large portions of Alaska, Colorado, the Dakotas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, upstate New York,......

Jamie Thompson (aka J'aime Tambeur) and Patrice Agbokou of Islands sat down with Bostonist before their first show of their North American tour, on Wednesday night at the Middle East, to discuss their new album, Return to the Sea, file sharing and secret Canadian Handshakes (shhhh!!). You might remember Jamie & lead singer Nick Diamond's other band, The Unicorns, and their other other band, the Corn Gangg. So what does the new venture sound like?......