Tom Keane

Area Restaurant Gives Out Free Food, Goes Out of Business

Fred’s Bar and Grill, a favorite of residents for over a decade, filed for bankruptcy yesterday after a failed “free food” experiment proved too costly to its owner.

“I don’t understand,” said owner Fred Grimes. “Once we began the free-food program, we had lines around the block.  I had to hire extra staff and stay open later to handle the demand.  You would think that with all of the new business, the restaurant would have been doing great.”

Indeed, business was up sharply, with over 1,000 customers being served daily -- a jump of more than 750 from the days when Grimes would charge people for their meals. However, Grimes also found his costs increasingly dramatically, while revenues withered away to almost nothing. Going ever deeper into debt, he was forced to shutter the restaurant yesterday.

Grimes said he got his idea for the free-food program from the newspaper industry’s move to on-line publishing. “They put all of their stuff on the web for free, so people no longer have to buy the paper,” Grimes said.  “If it worked for them, why didn’t it work for me?” 

Knuckleheads Flock to MBTA

Knuckleheads from across the country descended on the area’s rapid transit system, jamming turnstiles and creating havoc with their inept efforts to use the T’s newly installed automated fare collection system.

Some observers first blamed Bostonians for the mess, but T officials said that was unlikely.  “Automated fare collections systems have been in place for years in other major cities,” said a spokeswoman for the transit system. “New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, all have them.  In fact, DC’s has been around since the system first opened in 1976.  Everyone there manages to use farecards without confusion or complaint.  It’s simply not possible to believe that Bostonians are somehow more stupid or incompetent than the residents of those cities.”

The only possible explanation, concluded officials, is a mass migration of knuckleheads from elsewhere to Boston that somehow coincided with the first use of the new fare system. “It’s well known that there is some small percentage of people -- perhaps less than a tenth of a percent -- who are genuine idiots,” said a UMass professor of sociology. “Even the simplest of devices bamboozles them.  One sees them occasionally -- they’re the ones who never know which side of the credit card to swipe or are constantly punching in the wrong PIN at an ATM. Unfortunately for the T, for some reason all of those people suddenly decided to come to Boston.”

MBTA officials said they hope that the knuckleheads eventually will tire of the city and move on.  “Until then,” suggested the T spokeswoman, “We’d advise our regular customers to use their cars.”

Developer Roundtable

Developer 1: I like Tom Monaghan’s idea for Ave Maria.

Developer 2: Avenue Maria? A street?

Developer 1: No.  It’s Latin for Hail Mary.

Developer 3: Football's good.

Developer 1: And there’ll be plenty of that.  But no sex, no drugs. No contraceptives in drug stores, no X-rated flicks on cable.

Developer 2: Monaghan’s the Domino’s Pizza guy, right?

Developer 1: Yeah. Which means no Pizza Hut either, I guess.  Imagine.  Monaghan's building an entire town devoted to clean living, family values, and the Catholic Church.  It gives me ideas.

Developer 3: You want to build your own clean-living town?

Developer 1: No.  But how about something for everyone else?

Developer 2: You mean, like the people who wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like Ave Maria?

Developer 1: Exactly.  Bars open all night.  Entertainment of every sort.  Every dissolute activity one can imagine packed into one town. Anything you want would be for sale.

Developer 3: Sounds great.  We could feed into every base, coarse desire people have.  Non-stop action, unlimited temptation. Let Monaghan have the in-bed-by-ten crowd.  We’ll go after everyone who wants to cut loose. And believe me, I bet the market for that would be a lot bigger than it is for a holy roller place like Ave Maria.

Developer 1: Millions.

Developer 2: I’m on board too.  What should we call it?

Developer 1: How about, New York?

Money Trumps Mortality as Stocks Surge on Ash Wednesday

Despite fresh worries by traders about their own mortality, stocks rose today, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting gains of more than 60 points.

The mortality fears were signaled by the presence of a smear of ashes on the foreheads of many traders at the New York Stock Exchange and other trading floors. Put there as part of a Roman Catholic ritual connected with Ash Wednesday, the ashes are intended to remind adherents that, “thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.” The ceremony “strips away any pretensions we might have that we are somehow grand and great and glorious,” said one religious scholar, “reminding us of the impermanence of earthly life and the sacredness of our immortal souls.”

Nevertheless, most traders said that within an hour or two of receiving the ashes, they were back on track. “It was heavy stuff,” said one trader, “and it really forced me to think about things. What’s the meaning of our lives? Why do we waste our days in an inane pursuit of money and wealth? Stuff like that. But then I showed up at work and trading began and all of a sudden I remembered that yacht I wanted and so I was able to refocus.”

“Getting the ashes on a Wednesday, right in the middle of a work week, is annoying,” complained another trader. “For a while you can’t get these images of death and mortality out of your head and it really interferes with trying to figure your bid and ask. Maybe things like this should all be moved to Sunday, when the markets are closed, so we have a full day to shake off these kinds of thoughts.”

New Orleans Reports Best Hangover In Six Months

Revelers in New Orleans woke this morning with pounding headaches, dry mouths, and bouts of nausea that rivaled those following Hurricane Katrina just six months ago.

“Katrina was still the best,” said one bead-encrusted partier vomiting in a French Quarter alleyway. “But yesterday certainly comes in a solid second.”

Even for a city known for its fondness of getting wasted, Katrina had proved a challenge for some residents. Yet billions of dollars of aid from government, charities, and individuals have helped people get back on their feet so that they could get wasted yet again.

“The rest of the country figured we had been thrown for a permanent loop,” moaned another bleary-eyed celebrant. “But the New Orleans spirit of hard-core partying just can’t be put down. It took us a while to recover, but we’re back in the saddle again.”

“It’s starting to feel like old times,” said a bartender at one Bourbon Street haunt. “We’re finally getting back into that permanent fog of inebriation where you stop worrying about things like levees, weather, and bad engineering.  You just live for the moment, sure that, no matter what happens, something -- like credit cards from FEMA -- will always turn up to make things right.”