The only solace I can take from this week's "Genius" issue is that it comes a merciful once a year. The fact that this group of dropouts, who normally act like they're in a years-long shoot of Fast Times at Hangover High, now wants you to believe that they have the authority to bestow the title of "Genius" upon anyone—I mean, where does this grandiose belief in the power of their meager collective judgment come from? In what realm do these people claim to have any authority? Moral? Please. (Start flipping backward from the last page and you'll see my point.) Intellectual? Come on. (See I Love Television, Free Will Astrology, Drunk of the Week, and something called Porns). Artistic? I believe the initialism, as I've received it in many an e-mail from a Stranger staffer of late, is: WTF???

And yet, here we are, once again facing this ignoble issue, once again afflicted with eight and a half pages of slobbering "coverage" of this year's crop of "Geniuses"—drawn from the realms of film, theater, and visual art—people who are no doubt wondering, at this very moment, whether they have been handed a momentary curse-disguised-as-blessing or a career-ending pox on their reputations. I will answer the question for you here and now, my dear, pitiable "Geniuses": It is both of those things and more. See you on September 14 at this so-called "Genius" party, to be held, I hear, at the grand but soon to be irrevocably sullied Central Library, where I will be the one holding the scotch, wearing the three-piece suit, and openly betraying my mocking mirth at all that is transpiring, while you will be the ones lugging your brand-new cross along the scuff-resistant floors and up to the stage. If years past are any indication, I will soon thereafter see you in my e-mail inbox, where you will be begging for excommunications, revocations of your new titles, restraining orders against this staff of freeloaders and status destroyers, etc., etc., all of which will be answered with four words: I told you so.

In other sorrows: It appears that the banishment of Bradley Steinbacher from the film section was only temporary. I regret the temporariness of said banishment, pray to all that is holy that it will be reinstated once film editor Annie Wagner returns from her vacation (which return, of course, if she asked my honest opinion, I would advise her to delay as long as possible, for her own sake), and suggest that true lovers of film skip past anything to which Mr. Steinbacher's name is attached, for their own sake.

And now, if I may, I would like to address directly the writers of the back-page atrocity known as Blowjob: I feel, every time I read this new offering, the way any person who has encountered a half-hearted, poorly executed act of fellatio must feel: unsatisfied, disinclined to repeat the experience, and uncomfortably sticky. If that is what The Stranger calls success—and I fear it is—then, fine: Bad job well done.