What's my gripe? My gripe is how lame your "What's My Gripe by Michael Stipe" column is. It was marginally funny when you did it two years ago. Now it's just painfully stupid. Can't you guys come up with anything new? If you find it a laugh riot to use my name and photo, then by all means, be my guest. But it just seems like it's a big waste of paper. There are major things going on in this world and in Seattle, and you have a big readership of young people with a lot of energy, so why don't you do something positive instead of trying so hard to be "funny?" Oh yeah, I almost forgot: I call bullshit on that.

Sincerely,

Michael Stipe

Note from the Editors: After Michael's amazing performance at Bumbershoot last weekend, Mr. Stipe found himself a bit under the weather, and was unfortunately too ill to write this week's What's My Gripe? by Michael Stipe. So instead we decided to print the above submission from an obvious fraud. The real Michael Stipe regrets that there are sick people in this world who would sink to such levels as to besmirch his good name.

Though we are sadly discontinuing Mr. Stipe's column, we hope you'll join us next week in this space, where we'll be introducing our exciting new column, Paying Those Bills with Mike Mills.