Some major-league punkings went down today. One of them included a gag from the Weekly Dig, which proclaimed in its Daily Dig that Radiohead would be doing a free benefit for the Oxfam Cafe. They even threw in a must-see video promo. The UMass-Boston Mass Media website also offered a cutout Mr. T mask that would help you look cool and properly pity the April Fool. The Harvard Lampoon April Fool's was okay, if a......

Now that filmmakers have rediscovered Boston, the city wants to take advantage of it by building a movie studio in Weymouth, the Herald's Scott Van Voorhis reports: Seeking to build political support and persuade the state to expand existing tax credits, a team of Hollywood film moguls is flying into the Hub this week for meetings with state lawmakers and the development firm that controls the former naval air station in South Weymouth, industry sources......

Audiences went for the light and frothy this weekend. Fool's Gold, with Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, triumphed at the box office, followed up by the Martin Lawrence vehicle Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins. Neither of the top two movies made local critics very happy. James Verniere dismissed Fool's Gold as "a 110-minute advertisement for celebrity lifestyles you cannot afford. You can’t afford the boats, the bodies, the hair, the clothes. You can’t afford one of......

Some super-snazzy stuff is going on around Boston this week in the film world. The African Film Festival at the MFA is going strong, and Harvard Film Archive brings us José Luis Guerín's In the City of Sylvia (En la ciudad de Sylvia) with the director live and in person. (Sometimes we wonder what the point of saying "live and in person" is--would we really go to an event with someone dead and in person?......

Not to be outdone by Charlize Theron, who is being honored by the A-list Hasty Pudding, Paris Hilton continued to cut a wide swath through Boston when she was at The Estate. In fact, she garnered attention by dancing on a coffee table. With Oompa-Loompas. And then she showed her boobies. We're wondering what was up with the Oompa-Loompas. Sadly, Bostonist does not have rights to the photo the Track Girls put up, but at......

--The Patrick administration is working on stopping the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe's attempt to get approval for a casino through the federal government. The administration would prefer that the tribe bid for one of the three casino licenses Patrick hopes to auction off. [Boston Herald] --A plane on its way to Paris from New York City had to make an emergency landing at Logan Airport after a passenger attempted to attack a flight attendant. [Boston......

Music Cat Power will be at the Orpheum. Last time Bostonist saw her, she seemed a little plowed and, with her dark glasses, she resembled country singer Ronnie Milsap. Since then, she's been hanging out with Karl Lagerfeld. She's different every time, but the music is always memorable. 7:30 pm. It's cosmopolitan night at the MFA, and we aren't talking about drinks. The uber-sophisticated Keren Ann and Dean & Britta will perform. MFA, Remis Auditorium,......

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......

After freezing our buns off outside Casa Lampoon, while 'Pooners were slinging T-shirts and crackers at the crowd, only to be told that Paris Hilton was late, we're glad that we weren't the only ones who missed out on seeing the Queen of Wine in a Can.* The BPD denied a group of rowdy fans the opportunity to see Ms. Hilton early this morning on Warrenton Street: As officers were attempting to move traffic and......

Music Few acts in hip-hop's young guard come more correct than Berkeley, CA crew The Pack. Roiling, minimalist beats, raps about partying and sneakers, and a whispered menace that keeps you off guard: it's like degree zero of the art form. Sounds great on record (or Myspace), but can they rock an audience? Harper's Ferry, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston, 7:00 pm, $12/$14. Could your music options for tonight be any different? "Lady rapper" Leslie......

Ed. Note: No wonder the Harvard Lampoon is honoring her. She brings her own beverages. Socialite Paris Hilton has posed naked in a new advertising campaign to launch her luxury sparkling wine in a can brand. The hotel heiress can be seen nude, covered in gold paint and crawling across a desert for the advertising campaign for her drink Rich Prosecco. The drink is described as: “The perfect ’starter drink’ for your night or a......

Did you know that there's another Dave from Somerville on reality television this season? Well, somewhat. This Somerville Dave left Massachusetts for Los Angeles, made his fortune in sex toys at sextoy.com (find it yourself), started wearing a semi-faux-hawk, and installed a stripper pole in his home. Sextoy Dave made an appearance on Bravo's Millionaire Matchmaker, in which a woman runs a business for millionaires to meet his ideal lover. (She swears it isn't an......

The Hasty Pudding, the filet mignon to the Harvard Lampoon's ground chuck, has announced the recipients of its Hasty Pudding award. This year, Charlize Theron is Woman of the Year, and Christopher Walken will be Man of the Year. The Crimson announced that Theron will be honored with a parade and roast on February 7, while Walken will be honored on February 15. Walken has been spotted here recently while filming The Lonely Maiden. And......

--A few days old, but still exciting--the MBTA says it will improve the lighting at the JFK/UMass stop. [Boston Globe] --Speaking of transportation improvements, the city will start work on the intersection of American Legion Highway and Walk Hill Street, which one neighbor calls "Kamikaze Way." [Boston Globe] --Want to know how to help Frank Enwonwu, the local man who may be deported to Nigeria, even though he informed for the DEA? [Bostonist] --Cable......

Famous people visit Harvard all the time, but the university announced that two equally well-known, yet quite different, women would be visiting soon. JK Rowling will be speaking at commencement, and the Harvard Lampoon will honor Paris Hilton on February 6. You'd think that Harry Potter creator JK Rowling and socialite Paris Hilton would have nothing in common, but you'd be surprised … Let's start with the obvious. Both are blonde. Both have an......

--After such nice weather, a Nor'easter? You're kidding, right? Oh, no. You're not. At least it's scheduled to arrive Sunday, which will make the Pantsless T Ride much more pleasant. [WBZ] --A report indicates that a terrorist attack on Everett LNG would be a bad thing. Gee, ya think so? [Boston Globe] --Alex Jimenez, the soldier from Lawrence who went missing in Iraq last May and who still has not been found, has been......

Boudoir photography is normal. Boudoir photography being leaked to the masses is somewhat normal (thanks, Pam Anderson and Paris Hilton, for sharing). But Greater Boston's sex blogger, Lena Chen of Sex and the Ivy, is facing an unpleasant twist on the bedroom snapshot. A 35-year-old grad student Chen used to go out with has been spreading images of her on the web and buzzed IvyGate that he had nude photos of her. (FYI, Bostonist is......

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. Being the nation's capital, DCist felt especially proud to let freedom ring this week by exposing the really important issues, like how sad they......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

The nicer the weather gets, the busier we get across the Ist-A-Verse. But we like being busy. Here's a peek at what we've been up to since last week! Chicagoist had an interview with Audrey Niffenegger, whose popular book, The Time Traveler's Wife, was based in their fine city. They also had a heated discussion about Rush Limbaugh's controversial Barack Obama parody, talked about whether Uncle Julio's Hacienda is a good place to get......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

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......

Bostonist told you last night about how a group walked out of monologuist Mike Daisey's performance of "Invincible Summer" at ART on Thursday. One member of the 87-member group poured water onto the original outline Daisey uses for the show as the rest of the group left the space. Daisey posted today video of the incident and the moments that followed (his director and wife, Jean-Michele Gregory, records all of his performances). In the video,......

Forget small talk or introductions. Mike Daisey hasn't the time. There are 90 minutes available to him to weave New York, subways, family, borscht and 9/11 into "Invincible Summer," the monologue now making its New England premiere at the Zero Arrow, and he's bursting at the seams with information. So, instead, he immediately begins to tell American Repertory Theatre patrons about his wedding. With this comes Daisey's assumption that his audience -- presented with Daisey,......

Need your seasonally-mandated scary-movie fix, but wary of those Grudge 2's and Saw XXVIII's? Bostonist has researched the alternatives, and alternatives to those alternatives. Thursday 10/26 House of Wax The BPL schedule doesn't specify which House of Wax, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's not last year's tepid Paris Hilton vehicle. Boston Public Library (South Boston Branch, 646 East Broadway), 6 pm, free For a gentler, lighthearted ghost story,......

Mel Mania was clogging the tubes. The Best Week Ever blog even reported that they'd broken their own record – posting on Mel Gibson more in one week than even Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton. We're not sure if Mel "what you looking at sugar tits?" Gibson was watching NESN's coverage of the Sox game earlier this week, even if he wasn't the video and transcript are available throughout the series of tubes. Denis Leary......

Although Bostonist has been pretty oblivious to the 2006 Mass. gubernatorial race thus far, a story in the Globe couldn’t help but reel us in. Apparently independent candidate Christy Mihos didn’t realize that when someone said a life in politics was for the dogs, they weren’t exactly advising him to get his favorite pooch involved in his campaign. Mihos isn’t just using his best pal, Reagan, as a photo-op but actually giving him a commanding......

Haven't people learned anything from the Paris Hilton sex tape? If you don't want people to be able to rewind and fastforward your sex life, then don't videotape it. And if you happen to be a minor, then you really shouldn't be doing it. Oh, and if you are a 31-year-old teacher and start having an affair with your 16-year-old student, you are just dumb to even consider videotaping it. Well, Amber Jennings, a teacher......