The Boston Traveler

…or at least local dancer Michael Kim can.
The best dance reality competition on television, Fox network’s So You Think You Can Dance, just wrapped up its six-city audition phase for the current fourth season earlier tonight. All of the candidates who make it through the first grueling phase then move on to an even more difficult level of competition in the Las Vegas second round. A final cut is made at the end of that stage, and the far fewer people who survive move on to the final level of competition that results in a single ultimate winner.
One …read more

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It looks like it was raining fairly hard this morning in New York, but that didn’t stop women around my age from showing up to drool and reminisce over the reunited New Kids on the Block when they appeared at Rockefeller Plaza. Since I was never into boy bands, I can’t say I share their enthusiasm. Still, who can grumble about so many having such a good time because of one music group? I’m happy for ‘em!
As promised, check out high-quality videos of the New Kids’ performance on NBC’s Today earlier today. Danny Wood, Donnie Wahlberg, …read more

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Forty years ago yesterday, on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The very next night, “Soul Brother Number One” and “Godfather of Soul” James Brown (1933–2006) was scheduled to perform a concert at the Boston Garden in Massachusetts.
Yet, after word of the reverend’s murder spread, riots quickly erupted in more than 100 cities across the United States. As a result, Boston’s newly elected mayor at that critical time, Kevin White, was left with the difficult task of preventing widespread disorder in the city.
His original …read more

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Despite overall lousy weather, it was very obvious that nothing could keep the ladies away from the Today show plaza this morning to get a look at boy-band icons New Kids on the Block.
The guys — Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood, and brothers Jonathan Knight and Jordan Knight — were in New York to make their first public appearance together in 14 years, and aside from Mother Nature’s refusal to play along, the reunion went off without a hitch.
Each member of the band looked pretty good given the passage of time, and as co-host Hoda Kotb noted at one …read more

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Back at the end of January, a revamped band website with suggestive video footage set tongues a-wagging about a possible reunion of Boston’s own 1980s–1990s boy-band sensation New Kids on the Block. There’s been little noise on the stone-cold-facts front since, until today when People magazine reported that all five members of NKOTB — brothers Jonathan Knight and Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, and Danny Wood — will appear on the April 4 edition of the NBC morning show Today.
That’s this Friday, fans, just in time for the weekend. The Boston Traveler will have footage of that …read more

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Tonight at 8pm EST, 72-year-old ice hockey legend Willie O’Ree will make a long-anticipated guest-star appearance on the critically acclaimed television comedy Everybody Hates Chris.
Narrated by Chris Rock, the series is based on the comedian’s experiences growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant community located in Brooklyn, New York. The highly publicized segment featuring O’Ree was filmed last August, and eager hockey fans in-the-know have been waiting to see it since last fall.
O’Ree, a Canadian of African ancestry from New Brunswick, is often called the Jackie Robinson of ice hockey for his accomplishment making history when he broke the color barrier …read more

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Do you like reality TV? Do you like the genre so much you’ve always dreamed of appearing on camera and in front of the entire nation, completing whatever odd task is set before you?
If the answer to both questions is yes and you’re in the Boston area, this Saturday you’ll have the ability to try out for your chance to make television history on NBC’s latest reality series, I Can Do That!
According to details at Boston Magazine, the new series is a mixture of CBS’ hit The Amazing Race and NBC’s absolutely disgusting (sorry, fans) Fear Factor. Another …read more

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If you recall, back on January 12th, intrepid commuters in Boston took to the subways and dropped their pants, all for the sake of the city’s first ever No Pants! Subway Ride. The historic stunt had been out of the news for a while, but it resurfaced this past Sunday when Boston Globe writer Charles Pierce gave it the humor treatment.
In the Globe Magazine piece titled “No Pants? No Problem,” the writer makes a persuasive argument for more depantsing in the public sphere. Why relegate the daring disrobing act to just one day per year when you can …read more

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A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that local band Dropkick Murphys would be appearing on the January 11th episode of David Letterman’s CBS late-night talk show.
Well, that appearance has come and gone, but thanks to the kindness and video skills of some YouTube-using fans, people can still enjoy their performance.
Band members actually played two tunes: the expected “State of Massachusetts,” the hit first single from their latest album The Meanest of Times, as well as a show-ending version of “I’m Shipping Up to Boston.”
For the unaware, the second song appeared on the Murphys’ 2005 album The Warrior’s Code, as …read more

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Non-Bostonians and Bostonians alike will get a chance to sample yet another local band in action this week when Quincy’s Dropkick Murphys pay late-night host David Letterman a visit on Friday in support of their latest full-length album The Meanest of Times.
If you’re not familiar with the group’s hardcore celtic-punk sound and background, there are three websites that can help rectify that: the Dropkick Murphys’ official home on the Web, the corresponding MySpace site, and the band biography on the website of the group’s former independent label Hellcat Records. All feature high-quality audio files and/or videos of the type …read more

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