Month: April 2014

New England vs. Ireland

New England vs. Ireland

Come support the Grealish boxing club and enjoy a night of Boxing on April 26th !!!

We remember…

We remember…

Two years ago today we lost three young Dot Rats to a bad car accident. Everyone who knew these young folks has got nothing but good things to say about them. John Carter, Paul Reagan & Samatha Pinson were taken from us way too early….but we have not forgotten them. 

Thank You…

Thank You…

These are the actual people who made tonight happen….

My family…..

Paula Skalinski and Heather Munroe worked with Saint Ann’s, the City of Boston and Prospect Hill. Niall Murphy and Alec Bonelli – Thank You!

There was a team of big and little people who assembled the candles donated by Prospect Hill – Thank you!

What do I know about stages? The event crew from the City of Boston are some hard working folks….I have never seen a stage, PA system and tent built that fast in my life – Thank You!

Do you really think I know how to MC anything? Fr. Sean and Courtney Grey….thank them for leading us.

I asked everyone if they would like bagpipers and you all gave me a resounding YES! Well, Jim Leahy along with his father Jim Sr, Liam McDermott, Joe Hickey, Kevin Conroy, Mike Casper of the Greater Boston Firefighters Pipes And DrumsTim MacMaster, Mark Doherty of the band Dot Rats and Scruffy Wallace of the Dropkick Murphys converged and helped make that happen. Thank them by supporting local music!!

You would think I would know a thing or two about media given this world class website…..why is everyone staring at me? Umm yeah, Bill Forry and Dorchester Reporter lent their expertise and they are the reason why the event had good coverage….nobody does it better than Bill and his staff!

Do you really think politicians read this website? Sure, everyone from Dot claims to know a Wahlberg and a Walsh but my guess is that dotrat.com is probably filtered out at City Hall and the State House. I got three words for ya …. Jill Cahill Baker….the girl just rocks! Thank you to Marty Walsh, Frank Baker, Dan Hunt and Dan Cullinane for taking time out of a very hectic day to remember with us.

If you really want me to pretend like I know how to protect you in the event of an emergency I could try, but I think the Boston Police and the Massachusetts State Police did a fantastic job tonight and had a very strong presence.

My fellow bloggers really helped get the word out through social media…they are: News Around DorchesterJust DoTDorchester Online TimesDot Stop – Caught in SouthieUniversal Hub – @WelcometoDot and @OnlyinBos

How could I forget you?

During the lead up, I took a walk through the middle of the field to lend a hand passing out candles. It was my chance to see you all coming into the park. Some of you had very long days at work and school….your hard work is easily read through the eyes. A few of you even came from quite a distance to be at Garvey tonight. I’m sure it would have been much easier to sit at home and watch it on the tube….but you showed up. You came with American flags, you brought the kids, some of you came in wheelchairs. I gotta be honest, none of this surprised me. Dorchester has always been a strong community….and Boston would not have it’s character without neighborhoods like it.

Every last one of you decided to show up and contribute because of your love of country. You wanted to remember the innocent people who’s lives were taken away or forever altered for nothing more than being fellow Americans.

Whether you all know it or not, it’s moments like these that restore my faith in human beings. With all the bad things we see on a daily basis it’s easy to get lost. But it’s these moments that make me so proud to be a Dot Rat.

Thank you all so much for making it happen!!

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One year later…an evening at Garvey Park

One year later…an evening at Garvey Park

On Tuesday April 15th at 7:00 PM there will be a gathering at Garvey Park to remember those lost in last years marathon. I think everyone loved the way the neighborhood came together last year and I’m hoping to see that again. This event will 

US court removes limits on overall campaign donations

US court removes limits on overall campaign donations

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday removed the overall limit on contributions a donor can make to political candidates, a move that could open the floodgates to campaign funding by rich individuals. The move was immediately hailed by Republicans, who…

Beached at Strawberries…

Beached at Strawberries…

So umm yeah, when I was young Dot Rat I was troublemaker. I know, you’re all sitting there like “aaahaaa I knew it”….to which I say GFY…..the majority of us were troublemakers in one form or another. Some of the funniest and most heartwarming stories in any Dot Rat’s barroom convo arsenal include those from our youth….and the dumb shit we used to do. For instance my buddy Ricky liked to sit on the mailbox in Adams Corner on hot summer days wearing nothing more than shades and a pair of Adidas while giving cars the thumbs up….and no not that thumb. Then after he was bored with that he walk over to McDonald’s on Gallivan, stand in line and order Big Macs…..I mean utterly brilliant stuff here.

Who could forget the legendary Duchaney that did the Dorchester 500 buck naked on a moped…

Well my story is not as naked as those but you get the idea.

Myself, my big brother and my buddy Chris liked to take the shit show on the road. We were a tight knit group of maggots that loved screwing with people for a laugh. It wasn’t that we didn’t come from good homes or that we didn’t know right from wrong…..in retrospect the adrenaline involved was the allure. It started off small with tossing snowballs at cars and buses driving down the street….eventually we graduated to eggs. Put a small piece of granite on a trolley track….boom…awesomeness. A wrist rocket and a bag of M80’s was an entire weekend of fun. Smoke bombs on the trolley bus during the political rallies at Adams Corner….epic! An electrified pen left on a table where people fill out lottery tickets is pure magic too. Chris and I had a love of technical tricks so we started the clicker game. Cablevision of Boston used to have these remote controls designed to work with any cable box much like the Comcast ones today. Arm yourself with one of these bad Larry’s and get yourself within eyesight of someones TV….and you got a party on your hands.

Our chase for adrenaline led us to petty theft. Not something I’m particularly proud of to be perfectly honest. We didn’t go around pick pocketing innocent people or breaking into people’s homes, we did have some ethics even if it’s hard to decipher when talking along these lines. We liked to go into a department store and gank a video game or an RC car for our own enjoyment. As you can imagine, this hobby of mine was very nerve racking. If my father ever caught me…well dotrat.com may not exist today. Ma wouldn’t have been too pleased either…. and this lady was Bruce Lee with a shoe let me tell ya.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyVV0okFUbo

Anyway, we are trolling around Downtown Crossing one afternoon when my buddy Chris decides to check out Strawberries Records. We walk in and immediately start casing the joint, the manager is giving us all the evil eye, he knew we were up to no good. Not like it mattered, we were all cocky at that point. What I never accounted for that day was a new technology called a security tag. You see in 1987, this little invention was taking the theft prevention industry by storm but, someone forgot to give this f*cking guy the memo and I did not know there would be ONE STRATEGICALLY PLACED ON THE CD I WAS ABOUT TO STUFF IN MY DRAWERS!!!! I’m sorry but this sh*t still angers me to this day, my “blood brothers” knew to tear their tags off but didn’t share the insight. So I prance toward the exit not even conceiving that these giant partitions would light up and set off an alarm that sounded like the goal horn at the garden.

Yeah, I started singing too….OH NOOOO OH NOOOOO. So Urkel the manager comes over and starts frisking me like I’m going to Concord MCI for a 10 year bid. He stops short of asking me to bend over and spread em before I finally give up the EPMD CD thinking he would have mercy on me. He tells me that he wants me to go back to the office so he can call the police. I freak out…there is no way I can let my parents find out I’m heisting CD’s…all I can picture is my father walking into the police station like Mike Tyson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTTAB4V3-Zw

I had to hatch a plan quick….so I used simple mathematics, my weight versus Urkel’s weight. Easily a 50 to 60 pound difference here so I sat on the floor. He comes over and asks what I was doing. I told him straight up…. “there’s no way I’m going back there, my parents will kill me if I get arrested”. He tries grabbing the hood of my jacket and attempts to drag me to the back of the store. I can see my crew outside the front door losing their f*cking minds laughing….literally fogging up the windows on the front of the store. Urkel’s head is turning purple because he can’t budge me. This is probably the only time in my life I truly felt blessed to be a girthy dude. Finally after five minutes…he gives up and tells me to screw. I jump right up and belt out a “see ya!” …I couldn’t contain my relief. I ran outside of Strawberries and declared from that day forward I would never steal again. My brother still laughs about it till this day….I still can’t believe it actually worked.

I guess the moral of the story is it doesn’t pay to steal, and if you are still going to do it, be prepared for consequences.  Just be a good person, or start eating and get really good at beaching yourself……