Injunction not granted, City Paper

This "journalism bankruptcy complaint" feature is possibly the worst, most bizarrely self-absorbed, lazy cover story our alternative weekly has ever published.

Know what, City Paper? It's not about you. Or maybe, We're just not into you.

Actually, I kinda am into the WCP, when they're not publishing lazy-ass cover stories and lazy-ass copycat stories that I have complained about in the past. Pick yourself up, kids, you're better than this.

Rough week at the City Paper?

Color me unimpressed with the Washington City Paper's cover "story" this week. The topic: the public forums at which locals overwhelmingly opposed Mayor Fenty's plan to close 23 neighborhood schools.

The article includes about five hundred words by Erik Wemple, followed by a montage of quotes (in varying point sizes) and photos from the forums. Looks like a scrapbook; reads like somebody got lazy and just filed his notes instead of synthesizing and analyzing the information and stringing it together into a story.

Sigh, it's so hot and cold at our local alternative weekly. I'd take another Eastern Market arson investigative piece any day.

Beware the suggestive oversell

Ever since reading chef Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, I've been a little skeptical of ordering things like fish on Fridays (the end of the week, before new fish is delivered) and brunch specials (the way a restaurant gets rid of ingredients that have been hanging around for a while).

That's why I was so amused by a waiter's behavior at the Beacon Bar and Grill last night. Settling down for some drinks and small plates as we waited for a friend, my companion ordered bread. "You mean the shrimp toast," the waiter replied weirdly. "Umm, no, venison sausuage, and an order of bread," we said. When a third friend arrived, the waiter immediately asked him, "How about the shrimp toast?" It was all kind of blatant. Shrimp toast was mentioned at least once more during the course of the evening.

Why are they trying so damn hard to move the shrimp toast? My guess would be that that shrimp is nearing the end of its useful lifespan. I'd advise not ordering anything containing shrimp at BBG in the near future. Especially not the shrimp omelet that may appear on the brunch menu this weekend. Bon appetit.

By the way, there's a nice article in the City Paper this week in which Anthony Bourdain and other chefs try to top each other's horror stories.

Practice what you preach, City Paper...

In this week's Washington City Paper, Erik Wemple calls out the Washington Post on a "clip job." He cites internal Post e-mails regarding a March 17 Post story on "flash point" killings--one that closely echoes a previous New York Times story on the same topic. Wemple quotes a WP staffer as e-mailing, "i, too, liked the very well done casual-killing story. i would have liked it a whole lot better, though, if i hadn't read it in the NYT a couple weeks ago."

This would be funny enough, if the City Paper had not published, in the very same section and on the very same page, a clip job of its own. This week's City Paper story by Ryan Grim on the overblown crystal meth epidemic--and the Post's inaccurate coverage of said "epidemic"--is a virtual book report on an article that appeared in Slate last week. And it also appeared in the "Dept. of Media" section, mere inches from the story about the Post's NYT envy.

Hey, takes one to know one.