PS3 in a world of pain

Sales figures analyzed on the Compete.com blog reveal that Sony's new Play Station 3 is faring pretty poorly on the sales front. Not only was it trounced by Nintendo's Wii, it's also failing to outsell Microsoft's year-old XBox 360. Something tells me that a third-place trophy is not what the corporate bosses were expecting when they debuted their stunningly powerful next-generation console.

Personally, I'm still happy with my PS2 and have no plans to drop half a grand on a new system!

Matt Pace reports:

* The Wii, the clear underdog with its relatively modest specs, surprised many skeptics by sustaining its post-launch interest and outselling the PS3. This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who tried in vain to find a Wii at anywhere close to its suggested retail price.
* The PS3 was a quick flash in the pan that fizzled on the backs of negative publicity, its lofty price and supply shortages. After only a few weeks on the market, the PS3 was attracting barely as many shoppers as the year-old Xbox 360.
* Xbox 360 demand spiked at the start of the holiday shopping season thanks in part to a highly publicized sale on Amazon, spill-over interest in the Wii and PS3, and the introduction of the smash hit Gears of War.
* With Xbox 360 and PS3 demand now running in lock-step, it will be difficult for Sony to gain ground on Microsoft due to a perceived price disparity between the two consoles and Microsoft’s broader game catalog.

We'll JEW?!?!?

Sean Salisbury of ESPN combines his admiration of Peyton Manning with a healthy dose of old-fashioned anti-semitism. Michael Felger reports in the Boston Herald:

"What a brouhaha ESPN analyst Sean Salisbury created last week when he apparently used the word “Jew” as a verb to describe Peyton Manning’s dink-and-dunk passing style this postseason.
Several Web sites have slowed down the tape of Salisbury’s appearance and the epithet is fairly clear to hear.
“We’ll nip, we’ll tuck, we’ll go, we’ll punch, we’ll ‘Jew,’ ” Salisbury is heard to be saying during an appearance on the network on Monday. “We’ll do it all. Peyton made the plays when it mattered and nickeled and dimed them all through the second half.”

We'll spin the driedel and turn your Cover 2 into a Cover Jew!

Salisbury went on his local radio show in Chicago later in the week and vehemently denied using the word. According to Salisbury and ESPN, the word he used was “chew.”
“I said crunch and ‘chew,”’ Salisbury said. “I don’t know where a Jewish comment would have any place in talking about a quarterback driving down the field. If an (Internet) blogger heard what he wanted to hear, there’s nothing I could do about that. But I didn’t say anything remotely close.
“People who know me know when it comes to religion, race, color, sexual preference, those things don’t matter to me. At some point you’ve got to defend yourself. We’ve all made mistakes, but that wasn’t a mistake.”

Big Brother is still a big deal in the Commonwealth

This is just bizarre, but it's a huge story across the pond. From Reuters:

LONDON (Reuters) - Two reality TV contestants at the center of an international row over racism and bullying face off in a public vote on Friday that the British media are casting as a battle between beauty and the beast.

Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty and Jade Goody have been shortlisted for eviction by fellow housemates on "Celebrity Big Brother." Goody is hot favorite to be kicked out after a public telephone ballot.

Shetty's treatment at the hands of the 25-year-old, her mother and three other contestants in the Big Brother house has triggered a storm of protest in Britain and India.

A major sponsor of the show has pulled out, two contestants have had commercial deals suspended or canceled and Britain's media watchdog received nearly 40,000 complaints from viewers.

Even senior politicians have weighed into the row, which has overshadowed a visit to Shetty's homeland India by British finance minister Gordon Brown.

"There is a lot of support for Shilpa," Brown told reporters on Friday after visiting Bollywood producer Yash Raj Chopra and film stars at a studio in a northern Mumbai suburb.

"It is pretty clear we are getting the message across. Britain is a nation of tolerance and fairness."

Because the house is cut off from the outside world the contestants are oblivious to the controversy.

Either Shetty or Goody, who became famous in Britain only for her performance in an earlier Big Brother show, is in for a big surprise on Friday evening when they leave the show.

"Celebrity Big Brother" has prompted intense debate in Britain about whether Shetty's treatment constitutes racism, and to what extent the unseemly scenes that have reduced the 31-year-old to tears are a reflection of British society.

Some commentators argue that the issue is more one of class than race, while others consider events in the house as little more than bickering prompted by female jealousy.

Hmm. I'm going to go with "female jealousy."

Shetty herself has rowed back from earlier comments suggesting she was a victim of racism, and she and Goody hugged and made up late on Thursday.

Goody, challenged on the show to explain her behavior toward Shetty, said: "It's not in me to be racial about somebody. If it offends any Indians out there I apologize."

Channel 4, under increasing pressure to act, said on Thursday said it would not stop airing the show.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said: "I think this is racism being presented as entertainment and I think it's disgusting."

Carphone Warehouse, Europe's biggest mobile phone retailer which paid around 3 million pounds ($5.9 million) for a year's sponsorship of this series and another in the summer, said it was pulling out because it did not want to be associated with allegations of racist bullying.

A perfume store withdrew Goody's scent from its shelves while she was on the show, and a motor insurance company has dumped [Danielle] Lloyd as its model.

But audience figures have soared as a result of the publicity, hitting 5.2 million for Wednesday's highlights programme compared with 3.5 million two days earlier.

Channel 4 said it would donate profits from the telephone eviction vote to charity.

In a full-page open letter to Goody in the Independent newspaper, the Indian Tourism Office outlined the ancient and modern delights India had to offer.

"Once your current commitments are over may we invite you to experience the healing nature of India," it said.

How'd It Get Burned??!!?

Words can't describe this. I laughed so hard that I cried.

Walter Mitty and the NFL

Gregg Easterbrook started writing his lengthy Tuesday Morning Quarterback columns for ESPN.com again this season. He opens his latest effort with an analysis of the modern lionization of sports coaches:

"Right now is the annual peak for coach obsession, as NFL teams fire and hire head coaches. Practically every aspect of American society has in recent decades become overblown – pumped up with money, media focus and popular fixation. Coaching is no exception. Coaches at all levels of sports have changed from figures frowning on the sidelines to celebrities who receive high pay, sign endorsement deals and are spoken of as possessing mystical abilities. NFL head coaches now earn at least $1 million per season,and several earn $4 million or more; dozens of college football coaches now earn more than the president of their colleges; in an increasing number of high schools, the best-paid person is the football coach. Beyond money, there's an increasing sense that having top coaches is essential to the well-being of a city, college or high school. Coaches, especially football coaches, have never been a hotter commodity. Why?

Let me propose that the current national obsession with coaches reflects these themes:

• The illusion of control.

• The abdication by politicians and intellectuals of the father-figure role.

• The exaggeration of insider knowledge.

• The illusion of special motivational ability.

• The winner-take-all of modern economics.

• The Walter Mitty daydream.

First, the illusion of control. Obviously some coaches are better than others – I'd certainly rather be coached by Pete Carroll than Nick Saban. (More on Saban below.) But as sports become ever-more important and ever-more analyzed, there seems an increasing tendency to want to believe that everything on the field happens for a reason. The ball didn't just bounce into some guy's hands, good coaching put the guy into the right position. The receiver didn't just run fast and get open, hours of round-the-clock study enabled the coach to determine precisely what pass pattern to call. It wasn't that the Colts played well Saturday while the Chiefs had an off day, this happened because Tony Dungy did an astonishingly good job of preparing his team using subtle psychological tools plus mega-brilliant game planning, while Herman Edwards did a poor job of preparing his team. Actually, Dungy and Edwards probably both did pretty much the same things all week before that game – Indianapolis just has better players than Kansas City. But we don't want to believe that, we want to believe the coach is in near-total control of events and outcomes. The explosion in conspiracy-theory thinking, in books and movies supposing there are secret agencies and master plans controlling our lives, spills over into sports in the sense that we want to believe Team A didn't win mainly because it's better than Team B, it won because someone was in control of the entire event. That someone has to be the coach. The phrase "everything happens for a reason" has taken on resonance in popular culture, and not only in religious circles. We don't want to believe luck and coincidence are major factors in our lives. We want to believe someone is in control. Project this thinking onto sports and the importance of the head coach inflates.

Second, the abdication by politicians and intellectuals of their father-figure roles. For good or ill, for generations people have looked to political leaders and intellectuals as father figures of society. Even if you had a good relationship with a good father, you still need other father figures, since your own father inevitably will pass on, and at any rate most people's own fathers are not players in high-profile public matters. But roughly since Watergate, politicians steadily have demeaned and trivialized themselves; is there anyone on the current national political scene you'd want as a father? A few generations ago, millions looked for life guidance to the examples of public-spirited intellectual figures such as Albert Schweitzer or Upton Sinclair. Today's intellectuals seem arrogant, money-focused and contemptuous of the average person. So we switch our father-figure thinking onto coaches who seem both men of achievement and who share one of our common concerns, love of sports. A few coaches such as Knute Rockne achieved national renown in the period before general cynicism. But it may be telling that the onset of the coach as superstar, the first instance being Vince Lombardi, came roughly at the same time disillusion with political and intellectual leadership began setting in.

Next is the exaggeration of insider knowledge. Pretty much every possible play and tactic, and every practice technique is known to every coach. Of course, it's also true that all chefs work with the same ingredients; two people can employ the same basic knowledge and one can come to a much better result than the other. But we seem to want to believe good coaches aren't merely people who are good at their professions, we want to believe they have incredible insider information. This mirrors the current national fascination with the notion that hush-hush secret information is at the crux of world events. Hollywood encourages this view, when the less sexy reality is that most events reflect nothing more than what meets the eye.

Next is the illusion of special motivational ability. Anyone who's been involved in competitive athletics knows that 90 percent of motivation comes from within the athlete. But the coaching guild doesn't want you to know that. A good coach can help the athlete realize the last 10 percent of motivation, while a bad coach can depress what the athlete already has – but in either case the real power of athletics comes from the players' psyches. But we live in a moment when celebrities and supposed experts get $50,000 to give motivational speeches, during which they stand on a stage flailing their arms and screaming "Get going, get going." We want to believe there are secret motivational tools that will unlock our hidden potential. Athletes will tell you that an amazing percentage even of successful coaches have poor interpersonal skills and are poor motivators – mainly, they yell. Show me a coach who yells a lot, and I'll show you a coach who is wasting everybody's time. But the illusion that coaches have incredible motivational abilities adds to their mystique.

Next is the winner-take-all aspect of modern economics, nodding here to Robert Frank of Cornell University, who has documented this phenomenon. Coaches at the top of pro and college football today earn 50 times what a high school varsity football coach earns. Not a single one of the top pro or college coaches is 50 times more able than the typical high school coach. I'd estimate that today's very best football coaches, such as Bill Belichick or Carroll, are approximately twice as good at what they do than any high school football coach who won a 4A or 5A state championship this fall – but Belichick and Carroll earn 50 times as much. At the high school, small-college, big-college and NFL level there are several thousand skilled, competent football coaches of approximately equal ability – coaching skill at the small-college level is especially overlooked. Of the several thousand able football coaches, a handful become rich while the rest labor for typical wages. This distorts our perspective of coaches, as winner-take-all economics distorts our perspective of Hollywood figures, CEOs, rock stars and the rest.

Finally there is Walter Mitty's daydream. We can't imagine actually becoming an NFL player, because we're not strong enough or fast enough. We can't imagine becoming a movie star because we're not good-looking enough, or becoming a pop star because we know we can't sing. The sports coach, on the other hand, has no special physical abilities or God-given gifts. Coaches can't run a 4.4 or hit a high note. I could be like him, I could run that team is in a lot of fans' minds. We don't imagine ourselves actually becoming Supreme Court justices and heart surgeons because we know professions like these involve many years of intense study and training. Coaching, on the other hand, seems like something almost anyone could learn. In the end, we revere coaches as persons of incredible prowess when really they are not all that different from the typical man or woman. And they would prefer this not be generally understood, thank you."

Why was a getaway car waiting?

See if you can figure out the answer to this mystery!

"A Waltham woman who caught her husband with another woman in their home over the weekend almost lost her thumb after her hand became jammed in the car as the mistress tried to run from the marital mess.

The unidentified wife and mother was taken to a local hospital Saturday night after she was dragged down the street by a car carrying the fleeing other woman, police said.

The alleged victim and the couple’s three children, ages 1, 13 and 14, arrived at their Hammond Street home in Waltham about 10:30 p.m. Sunday, to find Jimmy Colon inside with another woman, Detective Sgt. Tim King said.

He said Colon, 40, grabbed his wife and threw her to the ground when she tried to get inside the house.

The other woman ran out of the house to a waiting car, King said.

“The wife chased her, and the woman shut the wife’s hand in the car door and screamed go, go, go’ (to the driver)” King said.

The unidentified woman was dragged down the street and sustained road rash injuries and a serious hand injury.

King said he does not know how far down the street the woman was dragged, or how she was freed from the car door.

“Her thumb was nearly amputated,” he said.

Colon, who gave police an address of 4 River St. in Gorham, N.H., was charged with assault and battery, King said.

He said the other woman and the driver of the car remain at large. King said police do not know why a car was waiting for the woman outside the Hammond Street home.
The incident is under investigation."

Why WAS that car waiting outside?? Hmm, think about it...

Figure it out yet?

The "mistress" was a ho!

The GOP loves to pop pills!

Everyone knows about Limbaugh's painkiller addiction, but it turns out that the OG of GOP pill popping was actually the late Chief Justice, William Rehnquist! Homeboy went crazy on downers and the government worked feverishly to cover it up! The Washington Post reports on newly-released FBI files. I love me some Freedom of Information Act.

"The late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist took a powerful sedative during his first decade on the Supreme Court and grew so dependent on it that he became delusional and tried to escape from a hospital in his pajamas when he stopped taking the drug in 1981, according to newly released FBI files.

The files also show that during both of Rehnquist's confirmation battles -- when he was first named to the court by President Richard Nixon in 1971 and when President Ronald Reagan nominated him as chief justice in 1986 -- the Justice Department enlisted the FBI to find out what witnesses lined up by Senate Democrats were prepared to say.

The FBI this week released 1,561 pages from its files on Rehnquist in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed after his death in September 2005. Privacy laws forbid disclosure of such files during the person's lifetime.

The fact that Rehnquist checked into George Washington University Hospital for a week in late December 1981 to be treated for back pain and dependence on a prescription drug was previously known. Journalists had noted that fall that Rehnquist's speech was sometimes slurred on the bench, and The Washington Post reported on the hospitalization.

But the files reveal dramatic new details about the length and intensity of the addiction. During its routine 1986 investigation of Rehnquist's background, the FBI concluded that Rehnquist began taking the drug Placidyl for insomnia after back surgery in 1971, the year before he joined the court. By 1981, he apparently was taking 1,500 milligrams each night, three times the usual starting dose.

Placidyl, known generically as ethchlorvynol, is a sleep-inducing drug that is not usually prescribed for more than a week at a time. It is not an opiate and is not a painkiller, but it is addictive, and withdrawal can cause hallucinations and temporary memory loss.

Doctors interviewed by the FBI told agents that when the associate justice stopped taking the drug, he suffered paranoid delusions. One doctor said Rehnquist thought he heard voices outside his hospital room plotting against him and had "bizarre ideas and outrageous thoughts," including imagining "a CIA plot against him" and "seeming to see the design patterns on the hospital curtains change configuration."

At one point, a doctor told the investigators, Rehnquist went "to the lobby in his pajamas in order to try to escape." Ultimately, the doctors concluded that the withdrawal symptoms were so severe that they began giving Rehnquist the drug again and slowly lowered the dosage until he quit taking it entirely Feb. 7, 1982.

I need a fix, mothafucka!!

By 1986, the files show, all the doctors interviewed by the FBI said the former drug dependence should not affect Rehnquist's future work on the court, and it did not become an issue in his confirmation as chief justice.

Alexander Charns, a lawyer in Durham, N.C., who was among the scholars and journalists who received the documents this week, said that in his view, they contain evidence of "the ongoing use of the FBI for political purposes, not only in the sixties and seventies but well into the 1980s."

Because the FBI withheld some documents on national security grounds and because many of the pages it released are heavily edited, "no one can be entirely certain what happened and why" when the FBI conducted its background investigations, Charns said.

But in the files that have come to light, he said, there is a clear partisan tilt. "You don't have Democrats calling up the FBI saying, 'We need to know what the Republican witnesses are going to say about Rehnquist' the way you have Republicans calling up saying, 'We need to know what the Democratic witnesses are going to say,' " Charns said.

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment on any documents released by the bureau. "We don't expand beyond what has been released, because that's all the information that's been released pursuant to the law," he said.

However, Bresson denied that the FBI's background investigations for judicial nominees are partisan in any way.

"We are not political; we are apolitical. We're just trying to find the facts," he said. "It's a very rigorous process that involves investigating both people who are going to say very favorable things and people who may not. We don't make suitability judgments. . . . We report the facts to the agency that has requested the background check, in this case the White House."

The files indicate that in 1971, the Nixon administration was deeply concerned about hostile witnesses to Rehnquist's confirmation after the Senate's rejection of two previous Supreme Court nominees, Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell.

In an October 1971 memo, an aide to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst had telephoned to request a "criminal background check" on two Phoenix residents who were expected to testify against Rehnquist's nomination.

The Post reported at the time that the FBI was stirring controversy by questioning potential witnesses against Rehnquist, including Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe. When a Harvard official complained that the interviews were "seriously intimidating," Kleindienst wrote back that the questioning was impartial and that "any assumption that interviews were conducted with a view toward 'intimidation' is completely unjustified."

In 1986, the FBI files show, Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked the FBI to interview witnesses who might testify about allegations that Rehnquist had "challenged" blacks waiting in line to vote in Phoenix in 1962. Rehnquist was a legal adviser to the local Republican Party at the time.

Thurmond's request was relayed to the FBI by John R. Bolton, who was then an assistant attorney general and who recently stepped down as ambassador to the United Nations after the Senate did not act on his nomination. Although an FBI official warned that the bureau might be accused of "intimidating the Democrats' witnesses," Bolton approved the request and wrote that he would "accept responsibility should concerns be raised about the role of the FBI."

Pixnit tags Beantown

Back from my vacation...

Another graffiti artist making a name for themselves, this time by tagging Boston and royally pissing off a lot of rich people. The Boston Globe reports.

"CAMBRIDGE -- At 2 a.m. on a Monday in November, this stretch of Massachusetts Avenue, from Plympton Street to Harvard Square, is lit up like a vintage pinball machine. So it's testament to Pixnit's experience that even in the neon glow cast by nearby storefronts she can vanish, almost completely, into the smallest of shadows.

There's a practiced grace to every motion: the stencil fitted to the dark slice of pavement, the aerosol yanked from a black backpack, and then three passes with the blue paint. By the time a passerby kneels to examine the art -- a small, pastel flower Pixnit calls a "spore" -- Pixnit is halfway down the block, her hands, covered in black fingerless gloves, in her pockets.

"Why are we so afraid of paint on walls?" she says, later that morning. "What is it, exactly, that we're afraid of?"

This is a question that has been plaguing Pixnit, who refuses to reveal her real name publicly, her entire life. She tagged walls as a kid in the Southwest, and says that by the time she came east to get her master's degree from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts , she had created hundreds of pieces of urban art. But it's in Boston that Pixnit has achieved her greatest -- and what she hopes will be her lasting -- fame.

After seeing her graffiti around Boston, the Globe attempted to find Pixnit. A reporter eventually tracked her down through her MySpace page , and she e-mailed back from an anonymous address. She agreed to meet in person but would be photographed only with her face partially disguised. The Globe does not know her real name.

In just more than a year, Pixnit has populated every neighborhood from Jamaica Plain to Somerville with her spores, which can be red, white, blue, or green. She's painted the tops of buildings in the Back Bay, alleys in Allston, bridges in Fort Point, and dumpsters in the South End. She's shown at a handful of local galleries, including the Rhys Gallery . A sticker campaign is in the works, along with a plan to sell her stencils around town , so the spores can "reproduce." And she's never been apprehended by the police. All of which has made Pixnit one of Boston's most polarizing alt-art outlaws.

Allegedly hot graffiti artist Pixnit

"A lot of artists I know are interested in street art -- it's an inspiration for them," says artist James Manning , assistant director of exhibitions at the New England School of Art & Design at Suffolk University, who is acquainted with Pixnit. "Pixnit takes it much further. "

"She's one of the few stencilers out there who are actually carving out a name," says Kerry Simon of Allston, a local urban artist and clothing designer who does not know Pixnit personally. "And there is no one out there who is going for the coverage she's going for."

But Pixnit's prolific street profile has also made her a target of local residents, who say they spend thousands of dollars each year to remove graffiti. In neighborhoods such as the Back Bay and the South End -- where Pixnit has left a series of bright spores, sometimes atop hard-to-reach four - and five - story buildings -- a collision with police and graffiti-removal groups seems inevitable.

Repeated requests for comment from police in Boston and Cambridge went unanswered. Anne Swanson , the chairwoman of a local group called Graffiti NABBers , a part of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay's crime committee, says she is very familiar with Pixnit's work and would "love to know the identity of this tagger."

"A real artist would come forward and acknowledge the 'art,' " she added. "This is graffiti vandalism like any other."

Swanson says the members of Graffiti NABBers devote an incredible amount of time and energy to halting the spread of graffiti , which they see as destructive to the area's architectural fabric.

"Everything in this neighborhood has to be micromanaged. Unbelievable care goes into every sign, every step, down, even, to the type of material used for windows," said Meg Mainzer-Cohen , president of the Back Bay Association . "People go through a lot of hoops, so to have someone come in, considering themselves an artist, and putting their graffiti everywhere -- it's just downright wrong."

Pixnit launched her Boston campaign in the spring of 2005, shortly after she says she earned her master's of fine arts. Initial spores were small, and often imprecisely executed. But many of the pieces were not painted over by residents and business owners who like her work, so Pixnit says she began to work bigger, experimenting with different colors and shapes, and with different locations -- crosswalks, hard-to-reach walls, manhole covers.

"Her work began to really blossom," says Maryellen Latas , a sculptor who is represented by the Barbara Krakow Gallery on Newbury Street. "On a formal level it's become more and more highly developed. It portrays a real sense of beauty."

Pixnit has become an anomaly on the local graffiti circuit, which is composed largely of younger, lone - wolf taggers. Bubble letters and sprawling, shapeless designs dominate most walls here. Since there is no community among area taggers, the art tends to be less refined than larger operations in cities like New York.

In fact, Pixnit, who is 33, bears little resemblance to the popular image of a tagger. She is a well-educated artist -- not a rough-around-the-edges high-school drop-out -- and her work is nuanced and dynamic. In person, she is articulate, often launching into long diatribes on the state of modern street art, and is astonishingly pretty, with a wide, off-kilter smile.

"There's a certain mold that Pixnit is shattering, definitely," says Latas, who has met her. "Graffiti, as a form, is typically perceived as being made by a less-educated teenager. It's exciting to see her doing this."

This willingness to see Pixnit's work as revolutionary, though, is not shared by everyone on the local art scene. Rhys Gallery director Lydia Ruby , who helped bring Pixnit's art to the Rhys in 2005, confessed she was "unsure, really, how to feel about it."

"I live in the South End, and I see [graffiti] on a regular basis. It can be gratuitous and really obnoxious," Ruby said. "But there's obviously an allure to her art."

For business owners and managers in areas that Pixnit frequents, a similar sort of uneasiness prevails. Erin Scott , the manager of New England Comics in Allston and a member of the nonprofit Allston Village Main Streets program, said she was split between her fondness for urban art and the mission statement of the AVMS, which promotes "ongoing graffiti removal."

"One of [Pixnit's] pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen , because it looks pretty awesome," Scott said, referring to the popular diner on Harvard Avenue . "She does seem respectful."

Scott added, however, that she has "no tolerance for people who tag up my windows. Sometimes graffiti is graffiti."

Chris Giroux , who manages the Seven Stars shop in Cambridge, says he knows Pixnit; he was hesitant, however, to endorse her work. "In [Jamaica Plain] there are lots of people who commission artists to legally do graffiti -- they'll give you a big, blank wall," Giroux said. "But to destroy the property of someone else without consulting them first? That's not good."

The divisive feelings her art can inspire are not lost on Pixnit.

"My work is illegal," she says. "I'm not an advocate for graffiti being legalized -- the illegality is what gives it its bite. I'm just most interested in creating and sustaining a kind of culture."

If caught, Pixnit would likely face large fines and an order to make restitution; jail time would be a worst-case scenario. But for now, she has showed no signs of slowing down. She has new stencils in the works -- with plans to sell them through local galleries -- and has signed on with Gallery Revisited in Los Angeles for an upcoming show.

"I do worry about Pixnit on a personal level, because there is so much risk with urban artists. I wouldn't want her to get arrested," said Leora Lutz , the owner of Gallery Revis i ted. "But what she's doing is so fascinating -- this juxtaposition of high art and urban art. Besides, with anything you do in life, there's a risk, right?"

Asked whether property owners in Boston had a right to be angry about graffiti, artist Simon said , " No matter how many laws people make, people are going to put this stuff where they want, and how they want. You're never going to stop graffiti."

He laughed, then added: "I understand their annoyance. If my stuff got tagged, I'd probably pretty angry, too.""