….I write seriously. It’s serious business, and stacked to the gills with truths.

“Can’t say I quite get the point of Andrew Earles’ vitriolic Where’s The Street Team? column in issue #68. Is this satire of some sort? I think not. Looking past the obvious points that it speaks wholly in generalities and literally dismisses/demeans the efforts and creativity of several thousand musicians and their supporters, what is this all about? Someone is love with their own icky voice and a forum to print it in, it appears. Printing the juvenile and tiny-minded blather of Earles, who apparently couldn’t get a date in Portland, Ore, seems like a pretty poor use of MAGNET’s limited editorial space. Simply put, his column is stupid.”

“What did you do with my subscription money? Give it to Earles for tweak? Of did you use it to take the Fiery Furnaces out for a cheap lunch? Either way, it’s cool. I like being a subscriber to a magazine that sits on newstands for a couple of weeks before it arrives in my mailbox. I deeply appreciate MAGNET’s consistent inconsistency. In issue #68 critique of Portland, Earles really hit it on the nose. Wish he and I could’ve met up when he was in town. We could’ve shot up under the Burnside Bridge after a long day of anti-Bush rallies and a couple of pitchers of sloe gin fizz. Maybe you could take my $14.95 and put it toward a plane ticket, or you could just bum a train like the rest of us in the Northwest. But, if you do make the trip, pack a flannel and some mace, because grunge is back and there’s a black guy in my neighborhood.”

Also to be noted is the more recent letter writer from Canada, who penned that “it would be funny if Andrew Earles got hit by a car.”