so, does anybody read the voice any more?

I do still check the site occasionally for Sietsema.

Why would you take someone who knows nothing about something and have them write a feature article about it? If you haven't the time, here's a sample:

"Barber's decision to retire at the peak of his game caused quite a stir, but I can't blame the guy for wanting to get out while he can still walk and see straight. Nearly every week various players are carted off the field with a cornucopia of injuries and head traumas; there is an X-ray room in Giants Stadium, right near the players' locker room, presumably because it would be a shame to waste a trip to the hospital if parts of your body were merely ripped, strained, or torn rather than actually broken."

Don't let your noisefriends find out.

It's atrocious.

Why is Wolfe—who for more than four decades has entertained millions of readers with stories about everything from heroic astronauts to whacked-out hippies to knuckle-dragging Wall Street power players —now writing at length about historic preservation?

But rhetorical repetitions aside, this latest Wolfe work doesn't stand up to his earlier successes

I still have to pinch myself that a Village Voice cover story is referring to that lazy anti-intellectual essay from Harper's as a "success."

In the meantime, I began digging back through Wolfe's lifework, hoping to figure out some pattern that might explain his latest obsession.

But LIKE I SAID, anything that shits on Tom Wolfe pleases me much more than it should.

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/01/06/new-york-special-keeping-tomorrow-real/

Sounds like not seeing it might be better than seeing it at this point, though.

http://villagevoice.com/people/0703,spot,75571,24.html

IS THERE SEX AFTER MARRIAGE? p. 2
401 WAYS TO BETTER ORGANIZE YOUR CLOSET p. 11
WHAT THE STARS WORE TO THE OSCARS p. 23
some arty films reviewed by not-yet-fired nerdy dude p. 78

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I sent your article to every married woman I know, including my own wife (while sitting at my computer in my home office). We even have three kids, and my initials are J.P. Thanks for a great and poignant article.
John Peters
Rochester Hills, Michigan

Is there an editor actually working here in New York? What is this crap by the boring new sex columnists? You have fired the most interesting writers and outsourced writing to red states, and now bore us with this drivel from rich white women who have nannies, babysitters, and housekeepers and still can't have sex for three months. We live in New York, not some Hicksville schighthole in Bush's America.
Goo Ber
Manhattan

You've got to be kidding. What can these women possibly have to say about sex that is remotely relevant to people who actually have sex or have sex-related issues they need help with (let alone the twentysomethings whom your advertising reflects is the bulk of your demographic)? I remember when I used to actually pay to read the Voice, but the way you are jettisoning exceptional columnists, you're going to have to start paying me to read it.
Michael Schreiber
Manhattan

This article was not only hysterical, but a true testament of what's wrong with most married couples. People have to give up this notion that marriage and sex don't go together. I'm far from a hopeless romantic, but if you can't have sex with your husband, then who? Showerhead or Rabbit vibrator, women should always put on sexy underwear and sip some coffee before their husbands come home from work, then pounce. If women don't initiate sex, men will forget it's an option.
Natalia Chavez
Jackson Heights, New York

Since when did the Voice become an urban version of McCall's? After reading the new sex column, I flipped through the rest of the issue half-expecting to see a vegan recipe for gingerbread houses. With everything else going on in the world, is this really cover material? Besides, the answer to Shelley and Carmichael's marital sexual ennui lies within that selfsame issue of the Voice, in Dan Savage's exquisitely written column: "When two people marry, they're making a solemn vow not only to be there in sickness and in health, but to be complete and total whores for each other." Ladies, stop complaining and tell your men to step it up.
Jessica Faller
via e-mail

That cover story was so boring, so offensively haute bourgeoisie and heterosexist that I am in shock. Who cares if married people no longer have sex? This topic warrants maybe one smart-assed Dan Savage column.
Ashley Hammarth
Carrboro, North Carolina

As a woman in my twenties, I found the cover story terrifying. It was my worst nightmare: a life where I am a grown woman who shops at Forever 21. A life where my husband is so busy shopping for printers that he doesn't notice me. A life where I can't get time alone from my hired help (being able to afford hired help might be nice). A life where my husband and I are so busy working to afford all the crap, we don't have time for each other. This seems to be the average life of people over 40 who have forgotten how to live. If you want a better sex life, stop blaming it on the kids and the marriage. Do something crazy and unexpected, and see if it doesn't make you horny.
Village Voice Spring Guide

Polly H.
Brooklyn

On her worst day, Rachel Kramer Bussel was far better than this. The dialogue is awkward. The writing is tepid, is redundant, and flows poorly. Where's this column going to go? Either she has sex with her husband, and we're done, or she whines interminably about not having sex with him. Just because Desperate Housewives is popular doesn't mean that people want to read about a desperate housewife.
Mikey Mongol
Brooklyn

been reading the Voice sigh almost 30 years now, mostly out of habit I still pick it up on wednesdays. lately I've been reading Musto and Sietsema and absoltuely nothing else. The fall-off in quality since the ownership change has been startling, something I wouldn't have thought possible. If that Tom Wolfe story is their idea of "reporting" good night and good luck...

"Kempner, who Koda confides had 400 bikinis but preferred to go topless, traversed those watering holes like clockwork, and the outfits she wore for this globe-trotting are on splendid display at the Met—her Madame Grés frocks, her Saint Laurent trouser suits, even a dashing if cheerfully vulgar Versace evening jacket. But that was then. Now so many faithful haute couture customers have passed away that the institution's very survival is in question, especially since the granddaughters of these customers, today's "social girls," are more often than not only interested in couture if it has the name Juicy attached."

http://www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/0704,musto,75611,15.html

Ugh.

It's a different city, bro. And yes, it's a lot fucking cheaper, and no it has not had a real estate boom on the magnitude of New York's. Way to do research.

Haha, cheesesteaks! Good one!

Dear editors of Time Out, I mean The Village Voice: I don't know if you realized it, but the last week of December is actually the last week of the year. Kudos for your cover story about candy; it was really on-target to close out this boring year: political upheaval, local scandal, deep-seated regional controversy, and a very progressive year in rock music. You're right; none of these topics is worth a year-end closer. Just keep rolling out mundane think pieces by no-name writers who, I'm sure, you pay in the same leftover jelly beans featured on your last cover of '06. Don't think you are putting one over on the public. We know that bottom line tops quality writing, and in this case, quality editing. Again, you've proven that you can take a dying paper and kill it over and over again. You haven't lost me yet, but you're trying as hard as you can.
Dave T.
Brooklyn

This is it? No critics' poll? No hilarious bits about every serious movie of the year? No debate? No fringe defenses of indefensible movies? Wow! I ignored the sinking quality of the paper for some time, but this . . . Your annual film roundup used to be the most comprehensive guide to the following six months of DVD renting. The Village Voice is dead. Long live Another Corporate Voice.
Adam Hardman
Brooklyn

What happened to the annual film poll that the Voice has been featuring for the last five years or so? Is it yet to come? Did it appear in another publication? Let me know.
Leger Grindon
Middlebury, Vermont

The article on Freekey Zekey is well written; however, the title is off base. He is not on parole, nor is he rallying for the position of role model.

As a journalist and editor myself, I'm disappointed that the correlation between title and article wasn't thought out a little better than that.

I am also Zeke's publicist, so of course it's in my and his best interest for his media coverage to be accurate. Zeke was enthusiastic and happy during his conversations with Patrick Winn, and there were several very bright, colorful, and happy pictures of him in the photo shoot he did. I understand that you're in the business of selling papers, and the title along with the dark, menacing photo of him does grab attention. However, the tone of the title is not really what the text of the article was going for.
Dove C.
Manhattan

What's with the new Voice? Articles about eating candy and ice hockey? I hate to tell you, but at this point Reader's Digest is edgier than you are.
Michael Gorelick
Phoenicia, New York

It goes on and on. They all basically say the same thing, but this one is my favorite:

Jesus H. Christ, lady. "I look dumpy in this dress from Forever 21 meh meh meh" Then shop at a more elegant store. It's not like you can't afford it. "The kids are in my bed, meh meh meh." You should have told them no from the start. The parents' bedroom is theirs. If you invite the kids in, you're asking for trouble. And like anyone gives a shit about your crappy sex life. Like people would actually applaud your magical TMI in a bakery. Where people EAT. You and your husband ought to hit the gym and quit bitching about your housekeeper and babysitter. You have a babysitter, so do what you want. Amelie Gillette has every right to make fun of you.

Haha "meh meh meh"

still worth picking up so I can see this:

http://www.credoaction.com/comics/2010/06/sensible-liberalism-featuring-chuckles

umm, maybe I'm missing something, but it's strange too me how much political conversation has turned into a straw-men version of that meta-argument, rather than the actual argument it's allegedly about

seriously, I see about 30x more of that kind "to criticize Obama or not" strawmanning than I see the actual discussion it alleges to stem from. is there some kind of site I should be visiting, or some ILX threads I've avoided, where people actual have this discussion, instead of just mocking one another for how the discussion allegedly breaks down?

that's a very fresh comic that is informative about current politics

nabisco, you could try The Nation; that's why I'm letting my subscription lapse.

ha, no, I don't actually want to see the argument

I just feel like 40% of political opinion I see some days is either about "your precious hero Obama" or the same sarcasm in the opposite direction, and yet I have rarely encountered any of the strawpeople these things are addressing their sarcasm toward

A good many of the woodchucks I meet have reduced their argument to "Would you rather have McCain?"

the original thread premise is still worth discussing. hard to believe that anyone would give a shit about the Village Voice at all anymore. no point to it, really.

sort of like everything else about NYC 2010. Dead, dead town.

some good pizza

pies n thighs re-opened.

i went there, it was pretty good

new old fried chicken places are the new village voice