Waldo is a fascinating and diverse guy, i’ve known and admired him since he was a snot-nosed mall-rat… then and since he’s done a shit-ton for this town and should be celebrated and praised for it ALL. I think the snark comes from knowing that he cannot be harmed by snark, and that he is adequately celebrated to merit it. He also has a terrific sense of humor and a tidy fearlessness about ticking people off (like the Wired weenie, or the Hook-lawsuit guy). I love that he tweaked Cvillain on his cvillenews, then dropped-in to chat with us about it—shows wit and character (like Halsey when he commented here for a while, even if he did tell me it seemed like it was always raining whereever i stood). If anything, i can be especially mirthful at his expense because all the wonderful things he does are completely over my head (politics? news? new-media? hunh?).

Same largely of VQR. I LOVE that it is OURS, that it is made here and published here and that it brings glory to Cville and UVA. It’s amazing too that they’d let Waldo, with no academic/scholarly/literary credentials-depth-pretensions write half of their website. That’s awesome. But, again, VQR can’t be hurt by snark… nor can it be particularly helped by being praised locally. it already succeeded, so it doesn’t NEED slavering promotion locally (same objection to PCA, that they only love and promote artists everyone already loves). And, as with Waldo, in commenting about VQR I can be especially vigorous because they operate in an arena beyond my reach. One in three pieces is intensely interesting to me. One in three is tiresome and irksome and overdone politico-savetheworld-neo-feelgood-pseudo-new-LitTheory dreck that makes me want to pull my beard out at the roots. the third of every three i just don’t ‘get’.

so, you win. hands-down. don’t make me go all META again, though, which i do here only out of respect for you and curiousity about your anti-snark devotion to Waldo/VQR–which you’ve defended righteously and well.

/me, i just step high wide and handsome with Nemesis at my heels.

works at the national recognized Virginia Quarterly Review
Seriously you going to challenge

Dude.

/grammatical errors, including mine own, make me feel like I’m walking the DT Mall in my brain.

VQR isn’t sacred to me at all but I admire it’s work and think Waldo is a good guy who has done nice things for this area with little reward. If these type of people are not to be defend then who is? We ask people to give back and when they do I don’t make light of it. Even when I don’t agree with them, I always respect the effort.

Like all the work Shenanigans did for the Artini. I came to her defense when people gave her grief. She work hard and with no pay. She can call me a short albino sexist pig but I still respect her efforts and will take exception with anyone who say otherwise. that’s just how I was raised.

Meta-Writing from our July 1926 Issue
Waldo Jaquith
“Why not write an except for the home page?” the web editor suggested.

Web Dev and Web Editor. I believe that largely consists of, upon publication of each new issue, of performing the Select-All, Copy, and then Paste function from a Word document into a pre-formattted webpage. Cvillain’s web-dev/web-edit worked for a week or two and makes a tweak now and again. i suspect he works abundantly and diligently and 80 hours a week on othjer important (no joke) and useful (no joke) stuff elsewhere, but to suggest he is staff of the review implies involvement in the formation and refinement of the magazine qua magazine…. content. he’s a periodic consultant and updater-in-bulk.

as to all the rest, and not to belabour the point:
1) what gives? why is this bovi so sacri to you?
2) play a game–email me any appropriate but highly outre topic, i’ll write an essay in the next few days for submission to one of the next few issues, i’ll send you the acceptance-letter… and i’ll embed your name periodically throughout the piece in veiled anagrams and sidebar mentions.

I haven’t said they are the best, most important, or any other of your reductio ad absurdum points. And if you open up your VQR and look at the masthead you would find that Waldo Jaquith is the Web Developer/Web Editor. That sure looks like work to me.

on the web i tend to obliterate the difference between contraction and possesive pronoun…

/smiley face.

Is that what your calling it these days…?