Happy freaking Halloween. Now listen to three of our hungover editors talk about what’s in Blast this month.

There will be some spoilers in the podcast. Click at your own risk.

Now that the movie has been shown to fans, we can finally sit down and talk about it.

I saw “Boondock Saints II” last week. I liked it.

I didn’t like it in the way that I’m a news editor and occasional film critic. I didn’t love it in the way that I’m an artist and I can appreciate a classic piece of film.

Let’s face it, there’s two kinds of people in the world: The ones that love “The Boondock Saints” and the ones who hate “The Boondock Saints.”

And I love “The Boondock Saints.”

Shit, I put it on the cover. But I’m not a damn fanboy. I’m not a fanboy about anything. In fact, the more I like something, the harder I tend to be on the people in charge. You can ask the people at Sony when PlayStation 3 first came out, and you can ask Boondock writer/director Troy Duffy, because I changed the pace on Monday and asked him some pointed questions.

What you’re going to hear in the podcast on the top of this article is my session on one of a series of roundtable interviews that Duffy and actors Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, and Billy Connolly put on at The Black Rose bar in downtown Boston. We had a good time and we laughed throughout most of the 20-minute session, but I was on a mission to bring home some data for this piece of our month-long coverage on the sequel, “All Saints Day.” But, besides that, the podcast is mostly hilariousness and gay jokes.

“It was just like riding a bicycle,” Duffy said about his return to directing.

“He sucked equally on this one as he did in the first one,” Flanery added after a pause, laughing.

But return it is. Duffy made Boondock in 1999 and hasn’t made a film since. He was a young director coming out to Hollywood, and he made some mistakes — and I’m probably being nice here. But he still managed to make a good movie amidst it all.

“They talk about Troy as a new director, but from day one it looks as if he was doing it his whole life,” Connolly said.

Just as people either love or hate Boondock, they either love or hate Duffy. (The Documentary “Overnight” really hurt him too)

The people in the original movie seem to be loyalists. Nearly everybody — including someone you don’t expect (it’s in the podcast) — is back for the sequel.

“Everything just happened,” Connolly said. “Everybody seemed to be there for the love of the piece, not just to be in a movie or earn some money.”

It showed. When you listen to the podcast and check out our other interviews, you’ll hear how good of a time they all had making both movies.

Boondock is an organic cult success, and the cast and crew know it.

“Half of Boondock was one guy sitting another guy down going ‘you’re watching this movie,’” Duffy said.

Will there be a third movie?

“Lets just ride this one into the shore and see what happens,” Duffy said. “I got some ideas.”

It’s also up to the studio and the fans. If the sequel makes money in theaters, I say bet on a trilogy.

At the end, I asked Duffy what we could expect from him going forward.

“During that 10-year period, I have written a bunch of scripts,” he said, “and I intend to knock them down like dominoes one by one. They’re in ascending budgets, all different stories. One is a period piece, a buddy comedy, a black comedy, one is about serial killers, one is called “The Peregrines” which would take me an hour to describe what the’s about, one is about a historical figure, which will take a lot of money to do that last one.”

The four guys also toured Boston College and Emerson College before premiering the movie for fans on Monday night. Here’s a vid from their day:

“Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day” is in theaters October 30.

“Land of the Lost” hits theaters June 5.

1. Emily

Emily and her friends running from danger

2. Ribet

Ribet as one of the creatures in the Land of the Lost

3. Joshua

Joshua traveling down the river to escape the T-rex!

4. Daniel

Daniel captured by a ravenous T-Rex

5. Susie

Susie skillfully turned her fiance into Will Ferrell. Sneaky sneaky

6. Yusef

Yusef is caught in an alternate dimension

1. Expanding food coverage
1.5 MEETING!
2. Redesigned section pages
3. LOCAL
4. News coverage
5. Editors changing jobs
6. Our new intern

First of all, I’m happy to announce that we’re going to be expanding our food and drink coverage, adding regular content from John Forrester, who started at the Globe on the same day as me “way back in the day.” He’s the past editor-in-chief of the Suffolk Journal, and we’re lucky to have him.

He gave us a few stories last year, ( http://blastmagazine.com/the-magazine/culturefashion/2007/03/irish-eats-shepherds-pie/ ) and I’ve been badgering him ever since.

You’ll be hearing from him soon, because John has set up a Blast meet-up on November 12 in Boston. More on that soon.

Second big announcement: I have completely redesigned the Culture page. http://blastmagazine.com/culture/

I’ll be coding variations of our Food and Entertainment pages over the next few weeks. It takes a full day to do each page, so bear with me.

Please give me feedback on this! It will be vital as I do the rest of the sections.

Third big announcement: Blast is going local. Ok, maybe not totally local. But we’ve decided to base ourselves in the Northeast U.S., where we (mostly) live. That’s mainly Boston, New York, and then Philly for our sports guys. This will not change anything in a negative way — we won’t be removing anything, but we’ll be adding something very important that ties into the fourth announcement.

Fourth announcement, Blast is covering news. You’ve seen the amazing stylings of Sachin Seth and his Terra Blog http://blastmagazine.com/terra/ as our first foray into world news coverage. It’s been an amazing success and is drawing a ton of traffic. We’ll be creating a News Page on the site and incorporating a redesigned Boston/Local page that we’ll be promoting much more (JP, take notes). We’ll also incorporate the Terra Blog, and taking World News, People, and Enterprise out of Culture, and putting them into the news section. We’ll also add our Business section, which never really took off. We’re also adding a national and legal/crime news sub-section.

We’re not just going to cover news for the sake of covering news. We’re taking specific topics like cyber crime, privacy law cases, and topics that appeal to our Generation Y audience. For example: http://blastmagazine.com/the-magazine/technology/2008/10/fbi-major-cyber-attacks-in-the-rise/

And we’ll have a few new contributors to announce next month and at the meeting that are looking forward to tackling this section.

This is a big deal for Blast, because we always wanted to have a NEWS component that was separate from the magazine, and now we have it.

Going forward, it’s very important to push the concept of three totally different components to BLAST. There’s “The Issue” and “The Magazine” — our monthly content and regularly updated push content in our sections. There’s “The Blogs” — controlled directly by the writers. And “The News” which straddles the line between both.

The next announcement is that we’re realigning our editors. — Just bear in mind that this doesn’t mean that anyone is limited to only working within their sections. We all write everything, and we all help each other out.

Bessie King, who added culture and fashion to her repertoire when Dan Peleschuk went to Ukraine, will become the Culture Editor on November 1. She will oversee Culture, Fashion, Beauty, Politics, Automotive, Art, Love, Sex, Book Reviews and Travel in this diverse, vital section of the magazine. She will also be the editor in charge of our new “Literary” section ( http://blastmagazine.com/the-literary ) which takes original and public domain literature and features it for our readers.

Terri Schwartz will be elevated to Entertainment Editor on November 1. Terri proved herself after covering E3 and Comic-Con for Blast in California. She’s already built up a network of connections and recruited new writers, who you’ve seen this month. She will oversee Music, Movies, Celebrities (including an upcoming Celeb Gossip blog, shhhh, it’s still a secret) and that “Twilight” page that gets SO MANY freaking hits and comments, it’s not even funny. In her capacity, she is doing a ton of work with opinion pieces and reviews, so she will be contributing to the Technology section as well by helping out managing some of the video game reviews.

Joe Sinicki remains Technology Editor. This section is one of our main draws, and we’re hesitant to make any changes. I will say that we’ve flirted with the idea of making Technology more of a science and hard tech section and pulling video games and video game reviews into their own section. That’s not happening right now though.

Liz Raftery is still second in command. She’s the ace in the hole; one of the best writers and reporters I’ve ever worked with. Even the editors have to go through her when they want to put something on the cover. She’s also responsible for Enterprise, The Blast Interview, and we’re working her into News.

Micah and Perry are still sports. Though I’m sure they’d rather be in charge of world news.

That leaves me. In addition to the design and coding, I managing the staff and oversee Tech and Sports. I also manage the blogs, Food, Retro, Shoebox, and I will take point on News until someone takes it off my hands.

The rough, loose reporting structure has Terri and Bessie reporting to Liz for copy editing and guidance and Joe and Micah/Perry reporting to me.

That is just meant to give you a general overview of how a story goes from reporting to live on the site. Two sets of eyes need to see any non-blog post before we post it.

Last but not least, Blast took on an intern this semester. Liz McClendon is a student at Virginia Tech. She’s especially interested in Twilight and Literature, so she’ll be adding to The Literary and will be a big part of our News coverage going forward.

We’ve had a great few months, and the things we’re putting into place are going to take Blast to the next level.

And it’s all because of you.

John

The same search bar you see up top is now programmed for the Google Custom Search. Go to it!

The best thing about Custom Search is that it allows us to not only search by all facets of the site (like who wrote it) but that it lets us import all the sites in our network to one searchable database.

Therefore, you can search PSA, OTR, MadeHand, PRrag, Blast, all the internal blast blogs, This is God Given, and even some of our regular writers’ personal blogs all in one place!

This is a big move for WordPress, which has been looking for a new commenting system for a while and seems to have found it finally.

In a blog post on their website, IntenseDebate describes the deal and what it means for the product.

1. We will be temporarily going back into private beta. This won’t affect our current users, but new installs will require an invite code. This is just to give us a little time to ramp up the hardware and get our ducks in a row as we join the Automattic team.

2. You’ll be seeing IntenseDebate a lot more often. We’re really excited about the distribution possibilities this opens up, so expect to see our comment system and use your IntenseDebate profile on a lot more blogs.

3. You can look forward to tighter integration with some of the other Automattic joints including Akismet and Gravatar.

The next major release of WordPress, version 2.7, will be the first implementation of the popular blogging and content management system to incorporate the IntenseDebate features, which include threaded commenting, user reputation, comment analytics and better administrative tracking of comments than WordPress’ current system.

WordPress is the system that powers Blast Magazine.

When WordPress 2.7 is released, we will first install it on a test server, then begin to integrate it into our outside blogs first, testing for bugs and incompatibilities with Blast-specific features like our custom popup galleries, before we install it on the main magazine.

This month’s package included a full-size official poster from the movie “The Diving Bell And The Butterfly” with the film’s official soundtrack courtesy of Miramax. Jeff is also receiving a copy of outlandish new DVD, “Cougar Club” and a copy of The New Rivals CD courtesy of Universal. Jeff also gets an Art of Blast 2008 desk calendar.

How did Jeff get all this? By reading Blast and mentioning us in his blog. We knew he was a fan of “The Diving Bell And The Butterfly” so we’re shipping off a bunch of swag.

We’ve got more for you guys coming in 2008!

Not only do we have a bunch of copies of “Cougar Club” and The New Rivals but how about this? We have over a dozen Plantronics Audio 350 gaming headsets that we’re just throwing at our readers next month. Enjoy the ultimate gaming headset for free!

We also have copies of Roxio Crunch and Popcap’s hits for PS2 and Xbox 360.

And on top of all that, we have a “The Diving Bell And The Butterfly” mini poster and the novelization of the movie FREE.

What do you have to do to get any of these freebies? Write a review! Review a new movie, music album, video game, software, hardware, gadget, laptop, camera, pretty much whatever Santa gave you this year. Write up a review that’s at least 400 words, and if we use it, you’ll get a freebie!

Email all reviews to newsroom@blastmagazine.com, and include your name, address, website address if you have one, the review, any photos you have of the product and don’t forget the “Quick hits” info like you see here.

It’s free! Happy New Year from Blast!!

One of Blast’s great mid-year staff editions, Holly Jobbagy decided to combine video golf and teddy bears for her boyfriend.

“He’s especially into golf, and since he can’t play this time of year, I got him the Plug-and-Play Golden Tee Golf Game from Brookstone — available online or in the store catalog,” she said. “I also went to Build-a-Bear and got built him one, but included a special, personalized message. When he presses the Bear’s hand, he will hear my voice.”

The bear will be holding the game in its paw!

Blast Correspondent Ashley Dean shared a unique tradition.

“After our big dinner we get out a big box of fancy chocolates and play a game. ,” she said The rules are:

1. Go in a circle, everyone takes on at a time
2. No looking at the guide to see what kind you’re taking
3. Take a bite, if you don’t like it you can put it back or finish it anyway. If you put the rest back, you’re out
4. The winner is the last person left!

Here’s Samantha Lavine’s recipee for super holiday Rice Krispies treats!

Ingredients:
3 Tablespoons margarine or butter (John says use butter)
1 Package regular marshmallows or 4 cups miniature marshmallows
6 Cups Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Cereal OR 6 Cups of Kellogg’s Cocoa Rice Krispies Cereal
Holiday Sprinkles
Red String-Licorice

Then:

• Melt margarine in large saucepan over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat.
• Add cereal. Stir until well coated.
• Using buttered spatula or waxed paper, press mixture evenly into 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan coated with cooking spray. Cut into 2-inch squares when cool.
• Decorate with holiday sprinkles and use red string licorice for ribbon.

Best if served the same day.

Mircowave Directions:
In a large microwave-safe bowl, heat margarine and marshmallows at HIGH for 3 minutes, stirring after 2 minutes. Stir until smooth. Follow steps 2 through 4, above.

As for me, I’ll be in Connecticut embracing my Italianness, eating fresh fish and playing Pinochle. Pinochle is a game that I love so much that I’m letting you download a little DOS game for free as one of my Christmas gifts to you.

We have Carlos Watson and a 20-something who works as a mortician next month. Keep on reading!

Happy Holidays from Blast Magazine and Happy 2008!

Then the counter started ticking like dollars on a gas pump.

By the end of the day on November 15, more people visited our little story than any other article in the 12 months of Blast Magazine. And every day that number grows.

In many ways it’s a testament to the Internet user, but in another respect, the growth in traffic we received from this 24-year-old vixen was largely due to us getting the article out early and Google rewarding us for our efforts.

I didn’t believe the latter myself until we rushed to get the Mitchell Report online. We put the report out to our readers as soon as it was released to the media, and lo and behold we’re #2 on Google.

So we’re excited about out recent efforts to make search engine optimization an priority, given that the previous owner of Blastmagazine.com abused it like a dog that wouldn’t fight. For the first few months, we weren’t even listed on Google!

The big story this month is that Blast is now one year old! We’ve come a long way, through three major redesigns, but we’ve maintained our major design points, quality photography and written work and, of course, our monthly magazine cover.

As we go into 2008, we’ve already started expanding our coverage to include daily gaming news, ongoing movie reviews, entertainment news and political commentary. We’re looking to add more original video content and keep up our long-form reporting in 2008.

We have some big news this issue. We put out the first major American review of SunAge, an upcoming strategy computer game. We also reported on the controversial dismissal of a Gamespot editor.

In Culture, you have to read newcomer Jocelyn Carleton’s piece on what national restaurant chains are doing to attract local regulars.

We also sat down with fashion designer Paula Hian and talked about her new dress that’s sweeping the couture world.

Speaking of interviews, Bessie King put Dr. Jonathan Katz on her couch this month to talk about his new Comedy Central DVD.

Last but not least, our cover story this month is an excellent, intimate interview with Sara Quin of the sisterly music duo, Tegan and Sara. Don’t miss this one!

That’s December. Happy Birthday to us!