boston

We all know B.J. Novak as Ryan Howard on The Office (he's also a writer and associate producer on the series). However, long before that, he was sharpening his comedic skills on the unsuspecting patrons of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Give Me My Remote has the scoop, straight from Novak's MySpace: while in high school B.J. and his brother decided to swipe the cassettes used for audio tours at the museum and replace them with their own tour, complete with Chinese music and everything (the tapes were for the Chinese art exhibit). The boys recruited fifteen of their friends to sneakily replace the regular cassettes with the new ones, thus giving museum goers a tour unlike any other.

You can download the Novaks' audio tour via iTunes by clicking here. Trust me, it's worth it. This is one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time.

Via Adult Swim HQ comes news that the charges against the two men who placed various Aqua Teen Hunger Force displays around Boston have had the charges against them dropped.

Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens were hired by a marketing firm in New York to place various light boxes around Boston that featured a Mooninite giving the finger. They have since been performing community service as part of their plea.

Cartoon Network set up a guerrilla marketing campaign in several major cities to drum up interest in the movie Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters. It was in Boston, however, that that the marketing stunt backfired when the displays were mistaken for bombs and the two artists subsequently arrested. By the time it was all over, the president of Cartoon Network had resigned and Turner broadcasting had paid two million to the cities of Boston, Somerville and Cambridge.

If you live in the Boston area and were afraid you might miss out on the premiere of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, you can rest easy. Despite Mayor Thomas M. Menino asking theaters not to screen the movie after the publicity stunt turned "bomb" scare that resulted in Turner paying two million in damages to the city, and the resignation of the head of Cartoon Network, local theaters have decided to go ahead and show the movie anyway.

Long before he toted a machine gun and traded quips with Mr. T, George Peppard starrred as the suave, clever insurance investigator Thomas Banacek on the Boston-based mystery series Banacek. Both characters loved their cigars.

A company called Hart Sharp Video is going to release a two-disc DVD set of the show's first season. It will be released on May 15 and is part of a series of sets they're going to release (the others are The Crow and Trapped In TV Guide, a prank show based around classic TV shows). Extras on the Banacek discs will include a photo gallery, a microsite, and a special TV Guide crossword puzzle.

So you're a fan of anthropomorphic food, disdainful aliens and civil disobedience? And you wish you had something to do with all that wood and LED lights just sitting around your home taking up space? Don't worry, I found a site that should be right up your alley. Now you too can create an awesome flashing Mooninite sign that's suitable for display and possible legal action.

Whatever your feelings are on the recent kerfuffle spurred by Turner's Aqua Teen promotion in Boston, you have to admit that flashing signs is probably the worst idea a terrorist could come up with. I mean, it might attract attention, but it's not exactly boss, ya know? Although, it would be nice to live in a world where the only acts of "terrorism" were completely innocuous: they make flashy signs, we retaliate with skywriting over Afghanistan that reads, "Osama has poopy pants." We could hire kindergartners to head our counter-terrorism efforts, leading us into the great I Know You Are But What Am I? Insult War of 2012. My god, it would be beautiful.

Anyway, College Humor has an idea of how this whole mess in Boston got started. I think they might be onto something. Check out the video below.

• American Idol contestants are accusing Simon Cowell of fixing the competition.
  
• Did the head of Cartoon Network really need to resign following the Boston bomb scare over Aqua Teen Hunger Force advertisements?
  
• Clay Aiken's plan for fighting back against tabloid rumors is bound to backfire.
  

The folks at National Lampoon have created a bizarre parody video combining 24's Jack Bauer and the Cartoon Network's bird-flipping Mooninites, interwoven with real cable news footage of the discovery of the Aqua Teen Lite Bright battery-operated boards that terrorized Boston last week.

The video starts with the 24 ticking clock and shows Jack Bauer interrogating various cartoon characters, including the Aqua Teen milk shake known as "Master Shake" who is duct-taped down to a chair while Jack threatens him.

In another scene, Jack tells Meatwad that he'll put a bullet through his brain (Meatwad has a brain?) unless he coughs up the intel. This was just before the Mooninites taunt Jack via cell phone.

The video's embedded after the jump.

[Via 24weblog.]

• Boston's bomb scare turned out to just be advertising for Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
  
• Is all the praise finally going to Jennifer Hudson's head? She describes her time on American Idol as "abusive."
  
• Dustin Diamond was forced to be quarantined while filming Celebrity Fit Club because of something he said to past American Idol contestant Kimberly Locke.
  

Reader Amy asked us if it was true that an early screening of Reno: 911 Miami was showing in Seattle. I immediately checked every site I could think of to find information, and came up empty. Thankfully, our sister site Cinematical did find some information, and yes, RENO: 911 MIAMI IS SCREENING FOR FREE TODAY in Seattle, Boston and Phoenix. Click here to see where exactly. According to Cinema Blend, all showings are at 7:00pm, and one deputy from the series will be at each event. I recommend you call the theater to make sure that time is correct, though.

Apologies for getting this news to y'all at the very last minute, but my typically awesome online detective work left me empty-handed this time. I have failed you, and to punish myself, I'm going to watch nothing but the Oxygen Network for the rest of the day.

Oh yeah, one last important thing: to get into these free showings you'll need to show up with a print out of your MySpace page. It's easy to sign up for one, so if you live in any of those cities, get crackin'. Then come back here and tell me how awesome it was.

PBS' Frontline series will air "Hand of God" on Tuesday, January 16 at 9pm. The 90-minute special tells the story of Paul Cultera, who, in the 1960s at the age of fourteen, was sexually abused by his priest, Father Joseph Birmingham in Salem, Massachusetts. It wasn't until thirty years later that Cultera decide to confront the Catholic Church and launched his own investigation into whether or not the Archdiocese of Boston was moving Father Birmingham from parish to parish and putting other children in danger. Cultera placed ads around towns where Father Birmingham had lived, which resulted in many more people coming forward and alleging abuse. Birmingham allegedly abused almost 100 different children.

"Hand of God" was filmed and directed by Joe Cultera, Paul's brother.