In July 2010 interview, Louie did this interview in which he talked about how he trained as a boxer in order to prepare himself for standup:

…I’ve trained in boxing gyms with boxing trainers and sort of approached every special as the fight, you know, my new title fight. So, yeah, I didn’t have a goal to lose weight or to look better, but I lost weight because I was trying to get more stamina and trying to get -you know, when you’re boxing, you have to think under pressure, and that’s what standup is like. So it was a good kind of metaphorical training.

GROSS: So you actually trained with a boxer, not just lifting weights, but doing boxing?

Mr. C.K.: Yeah, I did, and sparred and stuff. I trained with Micky Ward for a while, who’s this guy they’re making a movie about. I think it’s called “The Fighter.” I’m not sure. But Micky Ward is this amazing Irish boxer from Lowell, Massachusetts, and he - Micky is famous for fights he had with a guy named Arturo Gatti, where they went - they did three fights that are considered, by some people, the best three fights in history.

They just pummeled each other for 12 rounds every time, and they had a draw and they each won one. So they were just so perfectly matched. And I can’t imagine how he did it. And so I met him, and what I learned is that it’s, ah, it just - Micky will tell you, it’s just training. You just got to train. You just got to be in shape. That’s all it is. It’s just getting in the gym and being dedicated enough to do the grunt work and the boring, constant training so that you’ll be fit enough to take the beating.

It’s no great - he didn’t go to the North Pole and have an ice forest like Superman. He just worked out. So that’s why I asked him to train, and he travelled with me a little bit. He came on the road with me, and we trained together, and I tried to draw from him and learn how to do that. [via NPR]

I never thought I’d say this, but I am ready for a sequel to “The Fighter.”

The news that he had been caught, that he was still alive, was, for Boston, a hometown version of the killing of Osama bin Laden, who until last month shared with Mr. Bulger a listing on the F.B.I. fugitive list. [via NYT]

Whoever is next on this fugitive list, watch out. You’re next. (OK, maybe they don’t have them ranked.)

Dick Lehr, a former Boston Globe reporter who was an author of a book about Mr. Bulger, “Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the F.B.I. and the Irish Mob,” said the newer generation of F.B.I. agents had been determined to catch him.

“In recent times, they really wanted him,” Mr. Lehr said. “There’s been this cloud over the Boston office.”

Um, I think the members of the Boston FBI’s Fringe Division would disagree.

[via ESPN]

This guy is one of my favorite people I’ve ever interviewed…And I’m pretty sure I’ve been to that gun range.

Pittsburgh: it can double as a post-apocalyptic wasteland OR a crime-ravaged city. [via Vulture]

Laura Barton explores the path of “Roadrunner” by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers:

Roadrunner is one of the most magical songs in existence. It is a song about what it means to be young, and behind the wheel of an automobile, with the radio on and the night and the highway stretched out before you. It is a paean to the modern world, to the urban landscape, to the Plymouth Roadrunner car, to roadside restaurants, neon lights, suburbia, the highway, the darkness, pine trees and supermarkets. As Greil Marcus put it in his book Lipstick Traces: “Roadrunner was the most obvious song in the world, and the strangest.” [via Guardian]