The Boston Phoenix has been covering the trends and events that shape our times since 1966. These selections, culled from our back files, were compiled by Chris Brook.
BORED GAMES | 5 years ago | January 26, 2001 |
Chris Wright suggested ways to keep from going stir-crazy during the winter months.
“Late January. The whole world’s coated with a flinty shell of ice. To set foot outside your door is to risk a bone-shattering pratfall or a blood-plundering bout of flu. So you stay indoors. You watch Law and Order and you eat. You watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch and eat more. Suddenly, without really knowing how you got there, you are a fat, lonely, bitter person…
“Here, then, is a regimen of five daily activities to keep yourself occupied through these long, grueling winter months:
• Press your face up against a window and yell, ‘I’m stuck!’
• Call up Guinness World Records Ltd. and tell them you want to set the record for Most Calls to Guinness World Records. When they hang up, call them back.
• Learn how to bowl using eggs.
• Track and capture a cockroach. Try to determine its sex.
• Perfect your sigh.
BRATTLE WOUNDS | 10 years ago | January 26, 1996 |
Gerald Peary discussed the future of the Brattle Theatre with its owners.
“ ‘We’re not in trouble to the point of changing our programming, and we’re paying our bills,’ says Marianne Lampke, co-director of Cambridge’s Brattle Theatre. ‘But it’s time to acknowledge out loud that, as an independent art house, we have to do more than just sit out our problems. We have to forge a creative collaboration with another group. ...
“Everyone admires the Brattle’s program, usually a different double feature each day. But Lampke and Connie White, who have managed the Brattle for the past nine years through their company Running Arts, Inc., foot the bills alone. ...
“Simultaneously, Lampke and White are struggling to reduce the $100,000 debt that the Brattle accrued fixing up the ancient theater, including rebuilding the projection booth…
“ ‘Maybe because of our programming, there’s a misconception that we’re a non-profit theater, a community-run place,’ Lampke explains. ‘But Running Arts is our company, our small business, and people need to understand that we’re like a mom-and-pop drugstore having a very hard time staying competitive. Running old movies as the Brattle does, is, let’s face it, not a great lucrative idea, though it’s something we do happily for film fanatics.’ ”
CANDY BREAK | 15 years ago | January 25, 1991 |
Mark Leibovich investigated the mysteries behind the latest Life Saver product, “Holes.”
“Picking up on the Dunkin’ Munchkin concept of making do with holes (in that case, donut holes), Life Savers now offers ‘Holes,’ little beads of Life Saver candy that fit perfectly into the famous Life Saver hole.
“In a classic bit of hard-hitting journalism, the Phoenix has learned that the original Life Savers are designed with holes to begin with, made by wrapping various liquid solutions around a long spool. Thus, there’s no middle to remove. These new little droplets aren’t holes. They’re just little droplets of Life Saver. (Could Urban Eye’s first Pulitzer be that far off?)
“How are Holes made, then? ‘It’s a proprietary process,’ says Chuck Wallington of the RJR Nabisco company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. ‘I can’t talk about it.’ ”
AIDS WATCH | 20 years ago | January 28, 1986 |
Neil Miller reported on the history of AIDS research and the struggle for answers.
“In April 1984, when National Cancer Institute researcher Robert C. Gallo announced the discovery of a new virus that he identified as the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, some enthusiastic scientists predicted the development of a vaccine within two years. A little more than a year and a half later, in December 1985, Peter Fischinger, deputy director of the National Cancer Institute, made the same prediction: a vaccine within two years, pushing the date to the end of 1987. From the outside, Fischinger’s announcement seemed to indicate that nothing much has changed in the field of AIDS research. The survival rates of those diagnosed with AIDS are no greater now than they were 21 months ago. No satisfactory treatment for AIDS has yet been discovered.”
REVOLUTION ROCK | 25 years ago | January 27, 1981 |
Ariel Swartley analyzed the Clash and their triple-disc, genre-defying Sandinista!
“When the Clash’s London Calling, one of the strongest, most consistent double-albums ever made, was released in England a little over a year ago, it was accused (oh, unkind cut) of being too American. With the album’s bleak references to Brixton, Rudie and Jimmy Dread, it’s hard to see why, unless at the current nadir of British despair, strength itself seems like a national betrayal. Especially when it’s exhibited repeatedly by a bunch of hometown sods in need of dental work.…
