Miami Caliente players Anonka Dixon and Tina Caccavale have been placed on probation by the Lingerie Football League for wearing too many clothes during a photo shoot for Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach. A league spokesperson tells NBC Miami that the problem stems from the players wearing non-sponsored league gear. "One of the covers has an NFL logo and they had on Rawlings shoulder pads and Nike wristbands," Stephon McMillen says. "They were displaying non-league partners. It's a legal issue for us." Turns out the league didn't like the New Times story that much either; the writer, Michael J. Mooney, has been banned from being credentialed to cover any Lingerie Football League or Miami Caliente events.

Continue ReadingLingerie Footballers Get Probation for Wearing Too Much in New Times

White uses most of his space in this week's New York Press review of Greenberg to reflect on the controversy that spilled out last week over his being disinvited from the film's screening. The snub, which was the subject of much chatter among New York film and media types, was allegedly due to White's calling for the mother of Greenberg director Noah Baumbach to have an abortion. As this allegation was debated on the web, Village Voice critic J. Hoberman dug up a copy of the review, which wasn't available online, from the public library and posted it online in a post titled "Proof That Critic Armond White Did Call for Noah Baumbach's Abortion." (By the way, Baumbach's mother, Georgia Brown, was a Voice film critic in the 1980s.) That gesture was not looked upon kindly by White, who contends that Hoberman "deliberately mischaracterized the review," before attacking the longtime Voice critic for "normaliz[ing] the arrogance of class privilege" and calling him "a force behind racist snobbery" and "the scoundrel-czar of contemporary film criticism." MORE: Hoberman responds.

Continue ReadingArmond White Talks ‘Greenberg’ Snub, Attacks Village Voice Critic

Despite rumors that were flying around the web yesterday, the controversial film critic has not been banned from seeing a screening of director Noah Baumbach's latest film. "He has RSVP'd for Friday afternoon," Baumbach publicist Leslee Dart tells the Village Voice. "I made a decision, not the filmmaker, that based on the horrible comments he's made about Noah personally -- like how his mother should have had an abortion and how he's never met him, but he's an asshole -- I made a decision that he shouldn't be one of the first critics to see the film." IFC.com's Independent Eye blog has more on the backstory involving White and Baumbach's mother, Georgia Brown, who reviewed movies for the Voice in the 1980s. MORE from New York and Movieline.com.

Continue ReadingNew York Press’ Armond White Will See ‘Greenberg’ Screening

New Times editorial operations manager Jay Bennett, a 40-year-old music fan and musician, is authoring the "Nothing Not New" blog, where each weekday, he listens to one new record and writes about it. Music editor Martin Cizmar says the project springs from Bennett's "aesthetic atrophy," an "unavoidable consequence of aging" defined as the "wasting away of the ability to appreciate new, different, or avant-garde music." Checking in a little more than two months into the year-long experiment, Bennett says it has been "fun, but difficult," adding: "It's like traveling abroad for two weeks but really missing American junk food after day 10, or dining out so much that you've forgotten the simple joy of preparing and eating a home-cooked meal."

Continue ReadingPhoenix New Times Staffer Fights ‘Aesthetic Atrophy’ with Music Blog

Conor Friedersdorf, in his annual roundup of the year's best journalism, spotlights two very different pieces from alt-weeklies as exemplary work. First, Mark Groubert's "Box of Broken Dreams," which appeared in LA Weekly in January, gets a nod for "Exceptional Storytelling," along with pieces from This American Life, the Washington Post and Esquire. Meanwhile, Matt Taibbi's New York Press takedown of Thomas Friedman -- "Flat N All That" -- gets the nod for "Best Rant," with Friedersdorf writing that it puts Friedman "so far up a creek he'll need three shovels and a steering wheel to spelunk himself out."

Continue ReadingTrue/Slant Columnist Picks Two Alt-Weekly Pieces as 2009’s Best

While its sister paper Seattle Weekly counts rockers Krist Novoselic (of Nirvana fame) and Duff McKagan (from Guns N' Roses) as columnists, Miami New Times has brought on Luther Campbell, the former leader of raunch-rappers 2 Live Crew, to write a column. "It's the perfect place for me. I am a free-speech guy," Campbell says. "It's just a match made in Heaven. Can you believe that? Me turned loose on the world in New Times. Wow."

Continue ReadingMiami New Times Brings On Former 2 Live Crew Frontman as Columnist

Brian Stauffer has received the Society of Illustrators' highest honor for a cover he conceived for Phoenix New Times. The winning illustration will be printed in a hard-bound book later this year. "I can't really describe how surreal this experience is for me, given that I started out in this business 18 years ago assigning illustrations to the industry legends I now consider close friends," Stauffer writes on his blog.

Continue ReadingLongtime VVM Illustrator Takes Top Prize

The Sex-Positive Journalism Awards have announced the winners of the 2009 Sexies, the annual awards that go to stories that "improve the quality of dialogue around sex and create a more well-informed reading public." Seven Days' Judith Levine took home a first-place win in the Opinion category, where she also tied for second place with a Village Voice piece by Tristan Taormino. Amanda Hess of Washington City Paper picked up a third-place win in the Columns category for "The Sexist," while in the News/Features (Alt-Weeklies, Monthlies) category the Alibi's Marisa Demarco placed third and Rich Kane (OC Weekly) and Michael J. Mooney (New Times Broward-Palm Beach) both were named runners-up.

Continue ReadingAlt-Weeklies Pick Up Some Wins at the 2009 ‘Sexies’ Awards