What happens when you don't open your computer all weekend

This blog is funny. That blog is not funny. It's quite simple: I know them, and Molly and Brian are clearly just bored at home with their cat in Baltimore. Also, I heard Darcy James Argue was involved. Get off Photoshop and write some music! I'd love to know how much traffic they get after this first week buzz dies down. More importantly, AMANDA, do you know if the Ahn Trio was OK with that racist post? I'd be interested to know how you would respond if one of your clients was attacked like that.

Yikes! With friends like this...But to answer your question, and it is a serious one, misinformation has been put out into the world about my clients on much higher trafficked sites/in wider read publications than The Cereal List and it's very upsetting and frustrating. When an actual factual error is made, you have to decide how much negative effect it will have. For example, a classical music magazine recently said Hilary was 30 and not 29; OK, it's embarrassing that they don't have fact-checkers/don't know how to use Google, but I'm not going to make a fuss when we're talking about a year. An important year, but a year. It's also a matter of knowing what your clients do and don't care about, so sometimes little things are worth making fusses about for their personal reasons. I've also found that the more prestigious magazines I've worked with - The New Yorker, Marie Claire, Gotham, New York Magazine - do extensive fact-checking. The New Yorker fact-checks ever concert listing! It seems the higher-read the publication, the less chances of inaccuracies, which is reassuring, though it doesn't excuse the rest.

Re: The Ahn Trio, I don't know their management or PR team, so I can't comment on the specifics. The entry reads, "I recently caught up with the Ahn sisters and took a photograph of them." If that did not happen, I would e mail the site and complain. They're also quoted in the post, which leads me to believe the Trio agreed to the faux interview. If not, I'm sure(/I hope?) The Cereal List consulted lawyers before it launched! Thanks for commenting. -AA

I think The Cereal List is pretty darned amusing.

Amanda! Why so discreet?? I'm disappointed. These people are making it their jobs to embarrass other people, and you won't post his name? Boo. Well, the e mail was forwarded to me too and I have no problem telling LAP readers that it's Brian Sacawa, "concert saxophonist". Concert saxophonist who apparently has a lot free time on his hands (bitter, much?). Sacawa is the "writer" who calls himself "Miss Information" on The Cereal List. His wife if your co-Arts Journal blogger Molly Sheridan, who also writes for The Washington Post, Time Out New York, and New Music Box. So!! No big surprise that they have "gossip" from the critics association, right? By trying to ruin other's careers, they may, oops, very well ruin their own.

Come on, didn't you at least get a chuckle out of those Naxos covers -- and that Gheorghiu clip?

Similarly in the US--the reason they can't make you buy the record to win the tix is that that would be a betting operation. No, it doesn't make sense when there are (as in Canada) so many exceptions, including Off-Track Betting, state lotteries, casinos, and (here in California) card rooms where you can play draw poker and low-ball--games of skill, you understand, like chess or Go--but not stud poker or blackjack which are mere games of chance. Go figure.

This is due to some silly archaic law that we have in Canada which prohibits betting and lotteries (aside from casinos, government-controlled lotteries, and a few other exceptions) but does not disallow prizes awarded for "contests of skill". So all competitions and lotteries with prizes have to include some sort of 'skill test' to make them legal. We Canucks are all very accustomed to them! The typical question is something like this:
(4 + 16) / 5 = __ ?