Your long day of corporate drudgery is over. Get out and enjoy the city! Here are a few ideas to get you started, lovingly picked by Boston Daily.

True story—James Brown once saved Boston. (No, he didn’t negotiate a contract for our firefighters.) The Night James Brown Saved Boston celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Godfather of Soul’s legendary Boston concert. Televised live the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Brown helped calm the crowd and is credited with keeping our city riot-free. The VH1 special makes its world premiere at WGBH tonight.

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If we’d spent a year on the presidential campaign trail, feigning enthusiasm for the very young and the very old while eating tasteless chicken dinners, we’d need a vacation. Since the bulk of the campaigning happens in New Hampshire, we’d opt for someplace warm. Preferably near a pool and a stocked liquor cabinet.

It seems Mitt Romney took some time after his defeat to soak up some rays. When he surfaced on Thursday to campaign in the West with John McCain he looked as orange as Lindsay Lohan.

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Last November, we were saddened to hear that the Metro beat the Herald in the circulation game. Then-Metro editor Stuart Layne took some time to gloat, and we feared the end was near for our perv-obsessed tabloid.

It seems we may have worried our pretty little heads about nothing. Adam Reilly reported late last week that an audit of the Metro’s numbers showed its circulation dropped precipitously at the end of last year. Which means we are once again a two-newspaper town.

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This afternoon, Patriot owner Bob Kraft made his first public comments about Spygate since the season ended. During the annual NFL meetings in Florida, he addressed the topic, though most of what he had to say wasn’t a surprise: He’s not over the Super Bowl loss; he’s aware of the negative reaction the team has evoked since the video incident; and he’s been storing up some special venom for everyone’s favorite tabloid.

“A newspaper made a damaging allegation about the so-called Matt Walsh affair. I believe it’s something that never happened,” Kraft said. “If so, why wouldn’t — two months later — anything have come out? But we live in a society where people can make any kind of allegations. But then, it has to be substantiated.”

Kraft was speaking about this story that ran two days before the Super Bowl, a story that has yet to be truly substantiated or debunked. And that won’t change until Matt Walsh speaks. (more…)

Taking you around the internet for your afternoon enjoyment.

This one is for all you fans of irony out there: Boston Police arrested a man at the Liberty Hotel on a slew of charges, and he then spent the night in jail. One currently in service, not the former Charles Street Jail. [BPDNews.com, second item]

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21, the celebration of MIT geeks based on Ben Mezrich’s novel was the highest grossing movie in the country this weekend. While millions of Americans were watching Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth wear fun costumes, another made-for-Hollywood story from MIT was making news.

The latest scandal is less Oceans 11 and more All the President’s Men. An MIT doctoral student has been subpoenaed by the New York City Police Department for information about TXTmob, a service that is like an internet bulletin board, but instead of checking your email to get the latest communication you send and receive text messages. The service was used by protesters during the 2004 Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and the NYPD wants to know who was using it.

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One of my grandmother’s favorite hobbies is calling her utility companies and demanding better rates. When she gets an offer from AT&T for unlimited long distance at a few dollars less than Verizon, she calls her current provider up and tells them she’s jumping ship unless they make her a comparable offer. Chris Matthews looks like a pussycat after you watch my grandmother play hardball.

She must be in heaven right now. It seems that Comcast and Verizon are fighting over how much is too much in the battle to win customers.

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In retrospect we probably shouldn’t have been surprised that 60 Minutes’ piece on statistical guru, and Red Sox adviser, Bill James had less bite than John Halama’s slider. CBS certainly sent up enough warning signals with its promo hype: There’s this guy and he’s kind of schlubby, but he’s the man responsible for the Red Sox winning the World Series.

Anyone who follows baseball with any seriousness knows who Bill James is, and everyone who does already knows the story—frustrated genius works as a nightwatchman in a factory and satisfies his creative Jones by turning conventional baseball wisdom on its ear. Apparently not CBS though. (more…)

Saturday
Come on. Somebody’s got to be excited about adding Gov. Deval Patrick’s autobiography to their Good Reads shelf in 2010. Right?

No?

It proves he’s still tone deaf when it comes to understanding politics and the media in the commonwealth” said Tobe Berkovitz, interim dean of the Boston University School of Communications.

Maybe in the Globe?

“Candidate Patrick campaigned on transparency, and he told us that he would be a full-time governor,” Rob Willington, executive director of the Massachusetts Republican Party, said in a statement. “At this point, his book should have a whole section on how to run a misleading and disingenuous political campaign.”

Ah well. There are more important things to think about. Like whether the governor can actually write worth a damn. He can’t possibly do worse than this unfunny top 10 list from the Herald.

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Your condensed guide to today’s daily papers.

If the New England Journal of Medicine can do it, why not BU? Big tobacco companies gave millions of dollars to four Massachusetts colleges to investigate medical conditions that are linked to smoking. The schools say the source of the funding didn’t have any bearing on the outcome of their research. [Globe]

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