While I have nothing against the “Today” show’s Matt Lauer, he’s still best known to me as the guy Tom Cruise called “glib.” I suspect I’m not alone in this category either. Regardless, the AP reports that Lauer is slotted to give the Senior Class Day speech at Harvard University on June 3.

This announcement comes on the same day as Harvard sends out acceptance and rejection notices to their record applicant pool of 29,112. Only 7 percent of those applicants will receive acceptance emails, according to the Crimson. (more…)

At some point in high school, I imagine every resident of Massachusetts read Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” The point of the mandatory exercise, as far as I recall, was detecting satire. In this specific instance, one learns that Swift did not really condone the roasting, boiling, stewing, and eating of Irish babies. In fact, Swift is pointing out just the opposite—that the plight of the poor Irish is too commonly dismissed.

Scituate Youth Soccer coach Michael Kinahan’s highly satirical pre-season letter to the parents of his new team resulted in his ousting for the season. Apparently the parents of the six-and-seven-year old girls playing in the league either a) missed that high school lesson on satire or b) disapprove of satirizing girls’ youth soccer.

Before launching into his “suburban satire,” Kinahan warns, “According to my wife, my emails get too wordy, so for those of you read too slowly, are easily offended, or are too busy, you can stop here. For the others……” (more…)

A few protests occurred at Oakland University and Millersville University when Bill Ayers gave lectures on campus. The protesters argued that Ayers helped found the Weather Underground, a violent anti-war group involved in domestic terrorist bombings during Vietnam—a line familiar to everyone who noticed the 2008 election.

So when a couple of student groups at Boston College invited Ayers, an educator, to lecture on urban education, BC’s administration could have hosted Ayers and simply permitted protests as did Oakland and Millersville. Or they could have followed Columbia University’s lead and simply prefaced Ayer’s lecture with a disclaimer as Columbia did when it hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Instead, BC canceled the lecture and the alternatively proposed broadcast feed. The school’s reason? They cite the Weather Underground’s alleged connection to a bank robbery that led to the death of Boston Police Sergeant Walter Schroeder in 1970. (more…)

Even Spirit airlines, described in Saturday’s New York Times as having the service policy equivalent of a Dick’s Last Resort, can’t match the type of no-frills, low fare service JetBlue inadvertently offered an employee over the weekend. A luggage handler snagged a free ride from JKF to Logan in the plane’s cargo hold. The front-page Metro blurb in today’s Globe features this inimitable quote:

“Even after talking to him, we were a little uncertain as to how it happened,” said David Procopio, a Massachusetts State Police spokesman. “This may have been accidental.” (more…)

In the February issue of Boston magazine, Francis Storrs compiled an oral history of This Old House on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. We asked former executive producer Bruce Irving, who now runs his own renovation consulting business and Rich Trethewey, the plumber who has been with the show since its first season, to exchange emails about what they thought about the piece.

Here are some excerpts. (more…)

Introducing The Weekly Watch, a new feature on Boston Daily where we take a look at the winners and losers (and those who both won and lost) from the past week.

We’ll start with the winners and make you jump for the losers.

Winners

1. Curt Schilling does it his way. By retiring on his blog. Forget the Hall of Fame debate–the fact that there even is one is a mildly disturbing indictment on sports writers–38 Pitches got 1,223 comments. We didn’t even get that many when we were ripping American Idol contestants.

2. Michael Flaherty, Sam Yoon, Kevin McCrea. Basically anyone not named Tom Menino who is, or who is thinking about, running for mayor. There’s the union thing, the hole in the ground in Downtown Crossing, and Flats held his ground in an online poll. (Of course the thing was taken over by firefighters but at least his constituency knows how to use the Internets).

3. Pam Wilmot. See, James Aloisi? That’s how you use the grass-roots progressive coalition. Well-played Pam.

4. Kevin Garnett and the Celtics. KG returned just in time to help snap the Celtics out of their mini-malaise. Even the loss in Orlando doesn’t seem that bad considering the circumstances. It’s almost April and the Celtics are finally get the band back together. (more…)

Like everyone else in town we’re waiting to hear what comes out of Morrissey Blvd. in regards to buyouts and/or layoffs. In the latest news, according to a memo from the New York Times Company that was posted on Romenesko, salaries are being rolled back 5 percent for folks at the Times, Globe, and boston.com.

Adam Reilly has been keeping a running log of some of the folks who elected to take the buyout including the paper’s top-notch health reporter Jeffrey Krasner. If you haven’t already, you should see Reilly’s exit interview with David Mehegan, who told Reilly that he left, in part, because the paper he used to write for no longer really exists.

There’s no Living/Arts section. I used to write these great profiles that were combined with great art and design, and now the section’s gone. In many ways, I feel as if the paper I used to write for has already departed.

But what comes after the names are revealed and the talent exits? Dan Kennedy has posted a thoughtful analysis of where the Globe goes from here, and among his more provocative arguments is a proposal for the paper to up its daily print cost from 75 cents to $2 daily and $5 on Sunday. (more…)

Shepard Fairey Strikes Again?

A grafitti artist glued a life-sized, detailed Christ-figure to the wall of a movie rental store in New Bedford. The Standard-Times provides the article and a great picture. No one seems to know why Jesus’ eyes are covered by his hands. We hazard our top five guesses.

5. Doesn’t like late fees on movie rentals.
4. Just the first part of the Christianized series of “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”
3. The artist was a deist.
2. Jesus didn’t have any sunglasses on him.
1. He’s playing peek-a-boo.

Medford’s Pathetic Heist

In a mind boggingly-dumb crime caper, a man and woman attempted to steal DVDs from a Blockbuster in Medford. The Medford Transcript reports that the man tried, unsuccessfully, to distract the clerk by asking him multiple questions while the woman shoved DVDs into a black bag. When the clerk asked the woman to put the movies back, the man pulled a homemade knife on him before they both dashed out the door.

The clerk called the police and, less than five minutes later, they were both under arrest. At the end of the story, the Transcript also helpfully reports that a “black back” filled with DVDs was found on the floor of the car. Come on, Transcript, you had almost made it too. (more…)

We’ve heard rumblings about excessive detail pay for police officers on and off for a couple of months now. Governor Patrick previously called for using more flaggers and fewer police officers on detail assignments, and the Globe published several stories documenting the amount of money earned by officers working detail on their own time for private companies.

As far as we can tell, not much has changed, which we suppose is par for the course. The Brookline TAB’s numbers from last week ought to revive attention, especially in the face of mounting budget deficits. In the TAB’s annual salary report, 15 of the top 17 earners in Brookline worked for the Brookline Police Department. These officers accumulated well over half a million in detail pay and approximately $400,000 in overtime pay.

The single top paid town employee was Superintendent Bill Lupini at $198,000, followed by Police Chief Daniel O’Leary at $190,000. Three other lieutenants and one patrol officer topped $175,000 by putting in extra hours of detail and overtime. Another 10 Brookline Police employees earned in excess of $150,000 with the same strategy, many of them working from a base pay of slightly more than $75,000. One patrol officer, Alfred Amendola, accrued $60,560 in detail pay and another patrol officer, Kevin Sullivan, earned $53,915 in overtime pay. (more…)

Long-known for his tenure in Primus and the creator of South Park’s infamous theme song, Les Claypool is still out there, making eccentric music that explores a choice assortment of aural nooks and crannies. His latest album, Of Fungi and Foe was released on St. Patrick’s Day, and is conceptualized around music he made for Nintendo’s Mushroom Men video game, and Pig Hunt, a movie about a wild boar that terrorizes the marijuana fields of Northern California, which sounds just about right.

Claypool set aside some time before bathing prior to his St. Louis show to chat with Boston Daily’s unstoppable intern Anne Vickman about his latest album and tour. (more…)