Oh, Baby!

We've Been Had!
We were astonished to read that the Phoenix New Times' story on Anna Nicole's Native love child -- you know, the one that everyone was talking about, teased oh-so delicately around the chain under the headline "One night, Anna Nicole Smith saw red" -- was a hoax. Can you believe it? Completely fabricated! Oh man, the razor sharp funnymen behind that ruse really had us with our pants 'round our ankles for a minute. Thank goodness for Inside Edition, who proved that the only thing more pathetic than the humorless story was the humorless reporting on the humorless story. But seriously folks...

Go Hoff! Bust that Graf!
We were kind of surprised that MNSpeak gave lesbian marriage pioneer Kevin Hoffman's first month on the job such tepid marks. C'mon guys, if you can't handle weed and massage parlors, get out of the alternative newsroom! Our sources at City Pages tell us that the graf buster's attempts to bro down with his staff have yet to lead to anything sweet, and that he swears like a sailor in staff meetings. Pax, dude. Pax.

Polish Up Those Resumes, Ladies!
Space enthusiast Tony Ortega, the new captain of the S.S. Village Voice, posted a call for the vacancy left by Joy Press and is probably typing up another one right now for departing sports writer Emma Span. We tired pretty quickly of Emma's locker-room naif shtick, but she was far from the Voice's worst offender. It really is amazing: New Times Village Voice Media has a singular talent for making us feel bad for writers we don't particularly like.

You, Too, Can Hasten Death's Slow March
We on the Watch have been thrilled to see our li'l hit counter spin, and want to thank you, our faithful readers. Please, join us on myspace, and keep those tips coming: altweeklydeathwatch@gmail.com.

Who's the Boss?

Man, alive! You turn your head away from the media empire for one second and what happens? They start running the bath and plugging in every toaster in the house. By now all you vigilant media hounds have had four early afternoon highballs in response to the news that space enthusiast and UFO believer Tony Ortega is the new Editor In Chief of that most venerable rag at 58 Cooper Square, the Village Voice. We want to add our voices to -- how do you say? -- the bienvenidos and say we're relieved to see that a person of color replaced that despicable racist Blum. Hopefully Ortega will return the Voice to the high journalistic standard that brought us "Ask a Mexican" and the recent claymation tribute to James Byrd Jr.

To help Mara Altman flourish in the Ortega system, we've culled some recon:
-- Mr. Ortega is an amateur astronomer.
-- A careful newshound, he's known to keep one eye trained on a television in his office, choosing to do most of his editorial critiques after a writer's story runs, via email.
-- Though the New Times Village Voice Media press release made mention of his bygone mohawk days, he's still on the bleeding edge. Just check out this hot story about him making "a leap of faith" and riding the train to work.

Some selected reading to help get acquainted with the new guy:

"There is no doubt that something real passed over Phoenix on the night of March 13. Hundreds of people reported what they saw passing slowly in the sky. Two New Times writers were among those witnesses."

--From The Great UFO Cover-Up in the New Times Village Voice Media mothership (get it?), Phoenix New Times.


"Yes, I'm a cardholding member of the Evil Empire, a New Times hack who's been at it for ten years, the boogeyman every Birkenstock-wearing hippie burnout still clinging to a paycheck at alt-weeklies sees in his sleep, coming to take his job and turn his paper into a soulless corporate moneymaker. Have keyboard, will travel. My corporate cookie-cutting overmasters have parachuted me into four of their newspapers in five different stints (Phoenix, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Kansas City, and now Fort Lauderdale) like the merciless mercenary that I am...Kansas City was a tough case. I think of it as my Fallujah."

--From a letter to the editor, posted at Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.

Related links:
-- The Media Mob.
-- Ortega's shocking series on edgy sex from New Times Broward Palm Beach, which informs us that "sex has come a long way since it was about a man climbing on top of his wife once a week." (Got that, Mara?) Part two.
-- UFO Maps.

The Blum's Off

Gawker beat us to it, but we hear that Village Voice editor David Blum, the man who gave the world Mara Altman and the term "Brat Pack," has been fired after just six months on the job. Gawker suggests it has something to do with certain impolitic comments made at an editorial meeting. We hear it has more to do with the steady accumulation of his well-documented incompetence. Rumored replacement: Bill Motherfuckin' Jensen. At least in the interim.

If we could get a decent copy of Photoshop, we'd move the Alt-Weekly Doomsday Clock's minute hand to 11:59.

Do the Jerk!

In the words of a wise IT guy, "At some point, the bullshit gets so thick that you have to flush the toilet," so let's flush:

Lawyer circle jerk!
We were delighted to get an email from Bruce Brugmann with an update from his paper about the contention that New Times Village Voice Media has been selling ads below the cost of producing them. Since we know that alternative media coverage in the alternative media is second in reader popularity only to girl-on-girl action, we felt compelled to report. From the Bay Guardian: "The New Times Newspapers, the 17-paper chain now known as Village Voice Media, has changed attorneys and retained Kerr and Wagstaffe, a local (San Francisco) law firm, in the Guardian's predatory pricing suit against the owner of the SF Weekly and East Bay Express...This is the third set of attorneys for the company. The first was the Silicon Valley firm of Fenwick and West. The second was the San Francisco firm of Orrick, Herrington, and Sutcliffe, with Garrett Rasmussen from Orrick's Washington, D.C., office."

Mobius circle jerk
Golly, we couldn't help but notice that a snarky, navel-gazing blog felt the urge to call out a snarky, navel-gazing writer. Is this the fourth dimension of head-up-ass media circle jerking? Oh, wait, no – this is!
PS. The whole strikethrough gag with the name was totally ours first, fucktards novel.

Commie circle jerk
We were pleased to see that OC Blog was so moved by the fact that our beloved Commie Girl found employ after jumping from the OC Weekly. Those two weeks of unemployment must have been rough, but we've heard whispers that more OC Weekly departures might be iminant. For the record, it was the Register that announced Schoenkopf's departure from the paper and then hired her, just in case you were keeping score.

Circle jerking reprise (with a side of retard)
It took us quite a while to figure out how to respond to the recent village voice article on retards fucking by editor Dave Blum's former student, Mara Altman. Well, we still don't really know how to. Of course, at least Gawker was there, ready to pounce!

Flush!

Spit, sweat, sod and....silence?

Imagine our disappointment when we ran to newsstands for a replay of that -- how should we say it? -- totally bitchin' essay by New Times Village Voice Media wussy-webmaster-turned-sod-covered-badass Bill Jensen, to find it absent from our fav year end poll, Pazz and Jop. As if we weren't crestfallen enough, Bob Dylan won the darn thing and was pictured doing a James Byrd Jr. on the the TV on the Radio guy.

What, pray tell, happened to that essay?
So glad you asked.

Dewey Defeats Truman!

Though we're a bit late to the party, we're happy to preview the illuminating Pazz and Jop essay, hot off the presses. Send along any tidbits to altweeklydeathwatch@yahoo.com, motherfucker.

New Times Village Voice Media Author Quiz!

Truly the biggest of the BSDs of the alternative weekly world, Phoenix-based New Times Village Voice Media employs some of the brightest minds in new journalism. Test your savvy by matching the following sterling nuggets with the responsible staff member.

1.) If ever there were a violation of basic human rights, it was slavery.

2.) For me that means books…

3.) There's something about pizza joints that makes the cheap snack shacks regular pit stops for rock types.

4.) When asked who I will vote for, I shake my head in disgust and reply, "Yo soy Mexicano."

5.) The brown walls, metal grating covering windows, bricks layered one atop the other, the glossy flooring and fluorescent lighting don't add up to much except for a building, but when people are added—the constant flow of community members sweeping in and out of the entranceway, up and down the stairs, back and forth through the halls—that building takes on life. The building beats, beats with blood, the blood of the people who come to the Morrisania Multi-Service Center for help or to help. The people fill the chambers, bustling with work and picking up phone calls. A hum ensues.

6.) No sane person believes music has much of an effect on politics, except for a few mush-brained burnouts and their contemporary wannabes.

7.) The heroin he's selling most likely originated in Afghanistan, where the more bombs fall and bullets fly, the more opium poppies bloom by the tens of thousands in huge fields, brilliant and beautiful, the color of bright-red arterial blood.

8.) All right, so the Band sucked. Does that mean Moviola sucks? No way, Moviola rules!

9.) Like a rock 'n' roll Sisyphus, the Slip have long been punished by their own eclecticism.

10.) Clack. Click-clack. Click-ity-click-ity-click-ca-click-clack.




Answers:
1.) Tom Walsh, Editor, SF Weekly!
2.) Karen Zuercher, Ass. Editor, Ret., SF Weekly!
3.) Jennifer Maerz, Music Editor, SF Weekly!
4.) Michael Lacey, Executive BSD, New Times Media Village Voice Media!
5.) Mara Altman, Village Voice!
6.) David Downs, Music Editor, East Bay Express!
7.) David Holthouse, Executive Music Editor, Ret., New Times Media Village Voice Media!
8.) Dan Strachota, Music Editor, Ret., SF Weekly!
9.) Johnathan Zwickel, Music Editor, Ret., Broward-Palm Beach New Times!
10.) Ryan Blitstein, Staff Writer,Ret., SF Weekly

Runners up:
1.) "It is a sound known by many names -- trance, progressive house, electronic dance music..." -- Mosi Reeves, Music Editor, Ret., Miami New Times
2.) "With impulsive, impossible-to-predict tempo swings..." -- Jason Bracelin, Music Editor, Ret., Cleveland Scene
3.) Collected writings, Sikle Tudor.

Do you wanna kiss me?

We apologize for our silence these past few weeks, but, really, it's not like anything interesting has happened in alt-weeklyland. Chalk it up to fatigue.