Logo: Matt Dorfman

WEEK IN CRAIG: YOU PUSSIES, IT'S JUST A FREAKING CONVENTION. -- Amy Blair
Seriously. Honey, spend a week in my world. I guarantee you, after a couple of nights, you'll barely even notice the hummers driving by at 3 a.m. blasting "In da Club." The car alarms will begin to sound like the sweet, peaceful sound of crickets chirping on a warm summer's evening, and the sound of your roommate humping through the paper-thin rent-controlled walls will lull you to sleep … Boston. What a bunch of wimps. MORE

TAKE MY LIME GREEN PRESS PASS AND CRAM IT UP YOUR TOOTER. -- Neel Shah
The Black Table has a strict "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to a number of things, like mystery pills found in the medicine cabinet, lingering smells in bedrooms and sex with strangers. So, we're not even about to ask how Neel Shah, Gawker's house slave, got a press pass to the Democratic National Convention. We don't want to know what he did to get it, who he got it from, or if he'll have to work out any issues in therapy. All we want to know is what he saw. MORE

YO, WHERE THE PARTY AT? -- Matt Callahan
Massachusetts has been loosening its puritanical collar in recent years. It is now legal to own ferrets, for example. You can get a tattoo without driving to New Hampshire or Rhode Island. And for the first time since Sam Adams was in diapers, booze is for sale every Sunday of the year. Perhaps Boston, giddy with the excitement of the national spotlight thrust upon it, would relax its nightclub curfews? Yeah, not so much. MORE

THE REALLY, REALLY DEMOCRATIC BLACK TEA PARTY PROTEST. -- Christopher Monks
As political rallies go, The Really Really Democratic Bazaar seems pretty typical. There are the requisite booths of allied political groups displaying their agendas through homemade signs and photocopied flyers. A revolutionary bookstore offers the obligatory Noam Chomsky and Emma Goldman oeuvre. Artists sell their wares, including a man hawking American flags with corporate logos in place of stars. "I've sold nearly 4,000 of them," he says proudly. MORE

THESE ARE THE CONVENTIONS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD. -- Matt Arnould
If I could hit the ball out of Fenway (and I probably can't), I could have put a few balls on the roof during Monday's opening festivities. It is for that reason that a copy of each resident's lease has been delivered under each door reminding us that we are in breach of contract should we elect to heed Boston urban legend and put our homes on the sublet market. Ten grand for the week would be nice, but the man is saying "no dice." MORE

RELAX, AMERICA. ANARCHY IN THE STREETS AIN'T SUCH A BAD THING. -- Andrew Rabkin
If anything can be said to characterize Boston's DNC, it is this culture of fear that has overtaken all sides. The protesters fear the police will crack down; the police fear the protesters will grow violent; the delegates fear any disruption, and Bostonians fear that their city, their economy, and their lives will be turned upside down for a week. All the while, of course, Homeland Security would have us all fearing a terrorist attack. MORE

THE BLACK LIST: WE'RE WATCHING SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO. -- The Black Table
Let's start with the first thing you may have missed last night: Bill Clinton's hum-dinger of a speech. A highlight? After Clinton smiled his way through the line "strength and wisdom are not opposing values,'' the crowd screamed and cheered as if he were the reunited, back-from-the-dead Beatles. Almost makes you wish he could run for Pres... Uh, what were we saying? Oh, yes. A whopping 12 reviews this week. MORE

INCOMING! JULY 26, 2004. -- S.E. Shepherd
The Democratic National Convention gets underway in Boston today. With the November presidential election only a few months away, the nation's Democrats descend upon the Land of Nomar to verbally fellate one another and, if they get around to it, officially nominate John Kerry as the Democratic candidate for president. As Democratic conventions go, this one promises to be more exciting than the 1988 snoozefest in Atlanta -- here's a special look at the whole week's worth of political conventioneering. MORE