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If you remember from last week, I freaked out a little bit about Tony Almeda's (seeming) move to the dark side after killing Larry Moss dead. While that was one of the more surprising moments in television history, it was surprising because '24' had spent the better half of a season setting Tony up as a good guy (after setting him up as a bad guy). If they can do whatever they want, why should we even bother watching it, let alone writing about it?

Imagine if you went into work tomorrow and told your boss, "I just signed a $12 million client!" Everyone would probably be excited and surprised. And then a couple days later when you said, "Just kidding, I didn't really sign anyone," everyone would be SHOCKED, they'd never see it coming. And then you'd get fired. That's what watching '24' is like, you don't care about the plot twists because they're based on lies. In any case, we'll be back here live at 9 EST.

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Today is Patriots' Day in Massachusetts, a day commemorating the battles of Lexington and Concord. Refreshing your American History, Lex and Concord were the skirmishes that touched off the Revolutionary War. Incidentally, Maine celebrates Patriots' Day because it used to be part of Massachusetts, but I have no idea why Wisconsin does.

Most of Boston celebrates Patriots' Day by (drunkenly) cheering on runners of the Boston Marathon and (drunkenly) watching the 11 AM Red Sox game. This year, my friend Aaron decided he wanted to celebrate it a little differently so on Saturday he organized the 1st Annual Paul Revere's Ride, a bike ride, following as closely as possible the route of Paul Revere's midnight ride. Revere, you'll remember, rode from Charlestown to Lexington to warn militias along the route that 'regulars' from the British Army were on the march. After 3 serious hills, the ride took us to the site where Revere was captured about 15 miles from Charlestown (though he was then released and made it to Concord to warn the arsenal which allowed the militias to win the day).

I ride to work everyday, but there's a big difference between the 4.5 miles each way and the 31 total miles of the Paul Revere Ride. I was hurting afterward and spent the rest of the day in a haze of exhaustion. In any case, much fun was had by all (except one unfortunate fellow who blew a tube) and I'm already looking forward to next year.

(PS The comments in Universal Hub post from last year's Patriots' Day are really worth a read for everything that's great about Massachusetts and the internet.)

You've seen this, I'm sure, but if not, the story of Susan Boyle will make your day, as will this video.

"Pete, the personal rancor reflected in that remark I don't intend to dignify with comment. But I would like to address your general attitude of hopeless negativism. Consider the lilies of the goddamn field or... hell! Take at look at Delmar here as your paradigm of hope."

-Coen Brothers O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Today's Sunday Globe Magazine has a 5,000 word profile of Jerry 'RemDawg' Remy. Interesting to read that his bubbly, fun loving on-air persona is so far from how he is when not doing game analysis. In the off-season, he stays out of the public eye completely "preferring to sit alone in his den, in front of his 70-inch flat screen, and smoke his Marlboro Reds".

There are some other tidibits including Remy quit smoking this year, his side business makes about a million dollars a year, and he hates giving speeches. Remy was soundly criticized for promoting The Remy Report a couple years ago, but toned it down drastically last year.

This profile was definitely not written for a sports fan and features many apparent contradictions, but it will give you a quick sketch of the man.

(Via Twitter)

This link submitted tearfully without comment.

Via Universal Hub here's what it looks like when you wear 365 bags.

After only seeing Lucero in divier venues (The Middle East, The Living Room, and a dingy boat riding around the Boston Harbor), I was interested to see what they did in a classier venue, like the Paradise. While the sold-out crowd was into it from the get go - singing along and finger pointing - the band started out a little stiff. Whether it was playing some new songs or the newer arrangements to older standards or the apparent complete sobriety, something wasn't clicking on stage for the first couple songs. The situation turned around quickly, though, and after the audience carried the band out of gate, they were treated to the Lucero performance they were expecting. [I don't know if there's ever been a more vanilla opening paragraph, blech. Writing about things dispassionately sucks!]

The band was joined on stage by a slide guitarist and keyboardist (and at one point towards the end, some random bald guy from the audience singing a Replacements cover) adding extra heft to the songs and all told, Lucero played for two and a half hours, which is NUTS. It got sloppy towards the end of the night, which is hard to avoid when 2 of the members are drinking straight from bottles of Jameson, but this was still the most polished performance I've seen - Ben only forgetting the words to one song and mixing around the verse order of another - and really, what did you expect?

This is from last week, or the week before, but James Wolcott's not-too-long take down of the DC hive-mindset is great, each delicious sentence dripping with scorn.

In a treasure trove of info that will appeal most to die hard fans of The Wire, Kottke has an awesome find from Media Fire of some scripts and other documents related to the show including what appears to be the pitch David Simon used in meetings with HBO. There's also the original names of McNulty, Barksdale, and Bell which you can click through to see.

I'd love to see 3-10 more seasons... Which topics would you want to see them cover most? Health care, definitely, taxes, probably, plus another 4 seasons on the media...