This Bostonist finally got around to seeing There Will Be Blood last night, so we're prepared to concede that the West can be a harsh and pitiless place. Until this week, the West had been very good to the Celtics. But now they're drinkin' our milkshake! The reeling C's have matched their longest losing streak of the year (two) after Baron Davis broke our hearts with a game-winning shot for the last of his 29......

--A massive fire that started in an abandoned nightclub and eventually destroyed 14 buildings in downtown Lawrence broke into the national news. In a miracle given the size of the fire, no one was hurt. However, 30 families were displaced. Authorities think the fire is suspicious. The owner, who was in the process of turning the spot into a restaurant, says he has no insurance and that someone "jealous of his success" started it.......

The Mayor's Office announced today that there are more homeless families in Boston. Mayor Thomas Menino and company held their annual Homeless Census and got the bad news. The number of homeless families shot up by 22%, from 2,535 to 3,084 this year.* This rise is alarming. The press office notes, "The number for families is higher for the third year in a row, meaning that children continue to be our fastest growing homeless population."......

--Why merge the blotter with snow emergency announcements? 2007 appears to be ending quietly, blotter-wise, and, if the incoming storm is going to be as bad as the weatherheads say it is, someone's gonna get arrested for a parking-related problem. In fact, the city of Boston has declared a snow emergency. The Mayor's Office announced that "the snow emergency and parking ban will go into effect at midnight tonight." For more Boston-related information, go......

When it snows in Boston, the rule is clear--you don't park in a spot that another person has shoveled out. The Mayor's Office backs this up: Any Space-savers in on-street parking spaces that have been cleared should be removed 48 hours after a snow storm has ended. WHDH reported on an East Boston resident who found out the hard way what happens if you park in a spot that has been shoveled out and is......

Got the feeling, power steering, Pistons popping, aint no stopping now! Panama, panama Panama, panama Now that the movie Superbad has revived Van Halen's song "Panama," it might be appropriate for Mayor Menino to upload the track to his iPod for his upcoming trip to Central America. The Mayor has managed to finagle his way into a trip with Carlos Gutierrez, the nation's secretary of commerce, to explore business opportunities in the region. He will......

The mercury hit 70 three weeks ago, didn't it? Overnight tonight forecasters are calling for single digit temperatures, tomorrow they'll barely break into the double digits. Wind chill temps will make it seem like the temps are actually below freezing. These bitter cold temperatures will combine with sustained northwest winds of 15 to 20 mph to produce below zero wind chills. Wind chills will drop to between 5 and 15 below zero late tonight... and......

Tom Menino introduced the City’s very own podcast last summer and called it Citycast. It hasn’t even had a dozen episodes yet. The weekly column published on the City’s website might not have the depth of reach that Menino is looking for. What about CityLine, the email and website magazine touting the new initiatives and successful programs in the Hub? You can find that on the website too. But Menino is tired of relying on......

With visions of sugar plum fairies dancing through their heads, the -Ists began to get into that holiday mood. Well, some did. Austinist wasn't as the NY Times dissed them and a local Tex-Mex institution sold out. Making them feel better was music, sweet music and the local theater getting name checked on "Heroes" Chicagoist tried to wrap their heads around a religious movie being banned from a Christmas themed park. To wash that......

LAist is flashing a sad peace out to their editor Carolyn Kellogg with one hand and bumping knuckles with their new head typist L.A. blogger king Tony Pierce with the other. Where do ist editors go when they hang up the 'editorial we'? They take on MySpace, apparently. At least Ben Brown does. Austinist reminds of the just rewards of less savory careers this week and then they witness the Arctic Monkeys and We Are......

Back in 1999, Bostonist grabbed the VHS from the local video store and popped in Chris Rock’s “Bigger and Blacker.” While entertaining, there was one joke in particular that caught our attention, and it resurfaced on our DVD player years later when Michael Moore made use of it in Bowling for Columbine:You don't need no gun control. You know what you need? We need some bullet control. Man, we need to control the bullets, that's......

The Mayor seems disposed to do anything conceivable to fight violent crime, except put more police on the streets. We've seen him blame t-shirts for lawlessness in Boston, and now he's focusing on pay phones. The theory, as detailed in a story in today's Globe, is that drug dealers and prostitutes use pay phones for their business and congregate around the phones. When Bostonist lived in a poor immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn, we recall pay......

When Bostonist thinks of the theater scene here in the city, we immediately think of our beloved Mayor Menino front and center at a matinee viewing of "Kiss of the Spider Woman." Okay, so we never really thought of him hitting up the theater district at all, but Menino announced his "Mayor's Holiday Special" for this upcoming month of December. Teaming up with ArtsBoston.org, a non-profit association that oversees lots of the city's performing......

While the Patriots get closer to Superbowl Sunday, the city of Boston is in preparation as well for the big day. Last night, Mayor Menino met with local police and university administration to discuss preventing more game-related rioting. He plans on putting an 600 more police officers in "key places" (i.e. Kenmore Square, Faneuil Hall, and the Northeastern University area) throughout the city, along with a no-tolerance policy for those involved in any sort......