While Mickey Mouse entertains diners at a Disneyland hotel restaurant, rats may be wreaking havoc in the kitchen. OC Weekly's Nick Schou talks to employees, some of whom have filed claims against the hotel for a variety of illnesses they say are connected to filthy kitchens -- live rats, rat droppings, toxic molds and backed up drains. "When they started all this expansion at Disneyland, it brought us all the rats," one former employee tells Schou. "There were also roaches and worms."
LA Weekly's Brendan Bernhard interviews a naked Benedikt Taschen, the king of the coffee table art book, as he lies flat on his back at an LA spa."Taschen is a postmodern tycoon for the 21st century, a brash and stylish entrepreneur who has turned the world of illustrated-book publishing upside down. ... The jet-setting 41-year-old German publisher produces exquisite coffee-table books that range in subject matter from the complete etchings of 18th-century Italian engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi to the pornographic digital diaries of 21st-century Internet exhibitionist Natacha Merritt."
Taking a page from Gannett, the Chicago Tribune is seriously considering launching a five-day-a-week tabloid aimed at the elusive 18- to 34-year-old urban reader, the Tribune's Jim Kirk reports. "The new Tribune paper would be aimed at the same demographic that has made the city's free alternative papers, such as the Reader and New City, successful," Kirk writes. Gannett is launching "alternative" weeklies in target markets.
For Sept. 11 week, Seattle Weekly looks not to the past but to the future and the prospect of "a nightmare war in Iraq," says Editor Knute Berger. The Weekly's anti-War issue includes a lead essay by Philip Gold, a conservative Marine defense analyst, and articles on the environmental and political implications of an Iraq War.
It's the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and the nation is in a period of mourning and memories. Some alternative weeklies are pointedly eschewing additional coverage, but most are taking a special look back at the day that changed everything. Their viewpoint, of course, is quite different from the largely sentimental outpourings of the mainstream media. Alt-weeklies look at Sept. 11 and see lost civil liberties, Muslim communities under siege and Americans who are confused, angry, sad and at times uplifted. Here is a sampling of the alternative view of Sept. 11.
One phrase that has not been synonymous with Sept 11 is "civil liberty." The one-year anniversary not only marks a significant day in history but also the continuation of an assault on the Bill of Rights. "The U.S. Department of Justice continues to wage its own war to keep Americans in the dark about its vast incursions into their civil liberties — including secret arrests and deportations, lowered barriers to covert searches, and a 'don’t ask, won’t tell' attitude toward public scrutiny," Richard Byrne writes in the Boston Phoenix.
Greek shipping heir Taki Theodoracapolus, who writes Taki's Top Drawer for New York Press, is providing the financial backing for The American Conservative, a new magazine platform for Pat Buchanan's species of conservatism. The new magazine will be printed bi-weekly on newsprint, in a format similar to The Nation, and mailed to likely subscribers.
