In the news industry, the large amount of space in the center of the newsweekly or magazine reserved for the most in-depth story is what's known as the "feature well." At The Stranger, the same area is referred to as "big long story go here," but this week, PAUL CONSTANT makes it a true "feature well": as in, a bottomless pit that threatens to consume the reader's wakefulness, other stories around it, and anything else that approaches this yawning maw of inaccuracies and bloviation.

Mr. Constant begins by making libelous attacks on my old buffalo-hunting companions, Larry King and Ted Turner, and from there he blathers on for what feels like an eternity about what he considers the sad state of book publishing. Mr. Constant, who famously cannot read and only garnered the Stranger books editor position through the judicious application of a tragic loophole in the Americans with Disabilities Act, was probably still insensate from the fruits of his five-figure expense account (that is, five figures if one includes the two figures after the decimal point) when he dictated this story to his long-suffering intern.

Loaded with the defamation of character of at least a dozen celebrities including Alec Baldwin and Amazon titan Jeff Bezos, this story ignores the seemingly notable fact that Mr. Constant in fact spent his entire weekend at Plungers, a Los Angeles strip club of obvious ill repute, and never once approached the book convention he ostensibly writes about. If a hypothetical reader were to somehow struggle through the entire essay, he would then no doubt be rendered dumb when he discovers that Mr. Constant wastes over a thousand additional words in the books section babbling about how one depraved, unhygienic German author could change the face of the American sex-writing industry.

Speaking of writers who should be fired, let us quickly pass over the tragedy of the news section (in short: up with drugs, down with professional sports, down with cops, and up with lazy political "journalism"), and instead remain focused on that gaggle of oft-inebriated mouth-breathers known as the arts editors, who this week manage to out-shame even Mr. Constant's smut-filled inanity. First up is theater, which finds CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE—who has yet to meet an issue of the New Yorker that he hasn't felt the urge to verbally copulate with, like some desperate stray dog meeting a well-appointed leg—attempting to conflate a musical featuring foul-mouthed puppets with the current democratic presidential nominee. The results, as you'd expect, are ghastly. Meanwhile in visual art, the formerly coherent JEN GRAVES tries (and also fails) to pull the same stunt in writing about a show called Black Art. Note to Mr. Frizzelle and Ms. Graves: If Stranger readers want to experience vapid political opinions, there's a whole stretch of pages for them to wallow in near the front of the book. Keep this paper's arts coverage as it's intended: poorly informed and proudly negative. Or at the very least, take a cue from Mr. Constant and make it about smut. recommended

publiceditor@thestranger.com