You invite Isaiah Washington to the music section’s gay-pride parade, and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt and two CDs off the Straight’s Top 50. Here’s this week’s winning whine.

Dear Payback Time: Adrian Mack, I just wanted to say thanks so much for the fascinating profile of Papa Roach in last week’s issue. It is truly satisfying to know that there are still musical “geniuses” out there. The unique insight you provide into their recording process (ghosts, banging strippers in the ass, et cetera) is a perfect companion piece to what is surely one of the finest records of the last 25 years. I am very much looking forward to next week’s profile of Limp Bizkit. I can only hope that you will continue to shine your journalistic light on other equally shitty bands of the ’90s.

> Dave Mix

Adrian Mack responds: Dearest Dave—A quick glance at the Top 50 chart on page 70 of last week’s issue should help clear your head a little. Just look at all the musical “geniuses”: Switchfoot, Incubus, Our Lady Peace, Oasis—a veritable shower of shitty ’90s acts, all clamouring for press, all of them bound to turn up here in Vancouver to perform for the throngs of consumers who continue to vote with their pocketbooks for a popular culture that obviously makes you weep. And it is our duty to entertain their admittedly tedious tales of excess. Like General Smedley Butler so famously said, “Music is a racket,” and this is all just business. If the Straight felt that it could or should tailor its content specifically toward the loners who bombard Payback Time, then it most certainly would—and you would therefore have the music journalism you apparently seek: rich with fascinating tales from acts as new, vital, and cutting-edge as the Beatles and Justin Timberlake. I will concede this, however: all that stuff about coke, strippers, and butt-fucking? I take a personal interest in that sort of behaviour because that is a precise description of the label payola that comes my way after tolerating asswipes like Jacoby Shaddix for 10 minutes on the phone, and for the subsequent 10 minutes I spend writing about him. Okay? Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for a little “powwow” with Universal over at the No. 5, if you get my drift (sniff).

For taking the time to abuse us, Dave Mix takes home the Beatles’ Love and Justin Timberlake’s Futuresex/Lovesounds. You can voice your impotent rage by snail mail or by sending an e-mail to payback@straight.com .