Cold-cocked by Ned Flanders

In a side writing gig, I pen movie reviews for Richmond.com. Well recently, some churchgoers took offense to a negative review I gave to big screen summer bomb “Evan Almighty.”

It turned ugly.

Will the RTD ever sit at the cool kids' table?

Why is the Times-Dispatch personally weighing in on Tony Soprano or writing localized stories about Paris Hilton – and publishing these stories on the front page of their website?

Seriously, right now they're acting like the 12-year-old boy who tries to score high school chicks by growing a mustache and practicing making out on a CPR dummy.

When it comes to being arbiters of national pulp culture, the RTD should stick to NASCAR fan fashion and the thread count of Elliott Yamin's bed sheets.

I understand trying to be hip and parlaying the momentum of national stories into some sort of local insight, but it just doesn't work unless you have a staff so shallow and pretentious that its writers lowercase all the letters of their names even in legal documents and claim to own a hypodermic needle that Amy Winehouse once actually used. (Seriously, haven't you seen an US Weekly reporter - they like to mug with celebs throughout their rag, so you probably have).

Such writers/fame whore chasers are awful, awful, awful people, but at least they can let me know the very second that James Gandolfini quits Atkins (again), or Paris Hilton gets stabbed with a toenail shiv while in the clink – and hopefully report it with an amazing allusion to Pam Grier's "Black Mama, White Mama."

My point? There's enough South Side traffic ordinances or West End Tupperware parties to fill the ink in the RTD. We know where to go for everything else.