The first two items in Performance Editor Brendan Kiley's Mar. 30 column reported on a couple of incidents in which local theaters in Seattle were victimized by small-time hoods. Determined to maintain the petty-theft theme but "unable to find any outlaws associated with" the third production he covered that week, Kiley took it upon himself to steal a cookie from the concession table. He determined that the play was "so-so" but "the cookie, full of chocolate chips, was pleasantly moist." There is no doubt that someone at the theater read the review, because, according to today's Stranger blog, Kiley received a bill from the theater this week -- $2.50 for one "moist chocolate chip cookie."

Continue ReadingThe Case of the Stranger Critic and the Stolen Cookie

Before he was in a position to charge a fortune for protection from gossip, Jared Paul Stern was a writer for New York Press. In this week's issue, Ernie Koy describes his first encounter with Stern, "a pretentious man who was suffering from early male-pattern baldness" and who "sucked up to whoever needed to be sucked up to." Based on these attributes, Koy decided that "he would do well in the New York media."

Continue ReadingAlleged Page Six Extortionist’s Days at NY Press

There will be something for everyone in Little Rock, the just-announced seminar line-up reveals. Managers will find plenty of training to keep them busy, and a slew of Internet-publishing sessions should educate alt-weekly staffers of all job types. AAN has even made the registration process simpler with a new Web site enabling members to use their aan.org passwords to register for the convention. And, as if that's not enough meeting-related excitement: AAN will also be holding a Web-publishing conference in the fall.

Continue ReadingProgram Announced for 2006 Annual Convention

R.J. Smith, senior editor at Los Angeles magazine, tells stories of bickering and battling at the Village Voice in an interview with rockcritics.com. Smith, who was a music critic for the Voice until he left in 1990, calls Robert Christgau "the most helpful and complicated editor I've ever had," someone who was so obsessive that when he received a baggie full of semen from a member of the Swans protesting a bad review, he just told his assistant "to file it under S for Swans. Order had to be maintained." Other edit staffers were not so serene, Smith says, so "every week there was some new line being drawn, one week it was the old city hall lefties versus the fresh radical feminists, the next week it was the folks who thought the performance artist who stuffed yams up her ass was the bomb scuffling with those who had their knickers bunched."

Continue ReadingWriter Fondly Recalls the ’80s at the Village Voice