You force the music section to buy Vancouver Canucks seasons tickets, and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt, two recently released major-label CDs, and two tickets to a Live Nation club show taking place in Vancouver within the next four weeks. Here’s this week’s winning whinge.

Dear Payback Time: This is directed at Adrian Mack’s review of Eddie Vedder’s Vancouver show on April 2. You’re not a big fan of Eddie, are you? I’m slightly offended by Adrian describing bands I love in his review as “gonad herniating faux-grunge rockers”. First of all, I have no gonads as I’m female, and many of those musicians in some of the bands were as well, and second of all, the term grunge is media-generated crap used to classify people. However, sorry you had such a poopy experience at the show; the majority of people there had a great time. The second show by the way was very amazing and well done, but of course you don’t even mention that. Vedder and Pearl Jam’s material does not lack in anything, and the people that truly love the music don’t pick it apart with an ice pick. He’s not a friggin’ music machine, he’s a human being that people relate to. I feel sorry for you, Adrian, because during your unconscious mind melt of nitpicking and judgment making, you missed a really unique and personal performance.

> Tara Oostwouder (aka T. Wood)

Adrian Mack replies: Dearest Tara—your letter is so ridiculous on so many levels that I’m stumped. Ignoring the fact that you sent in three drafts of this bilge, or that I had to retype the whole fucking thing thanks to your all-caps fetish, where can I start? I feel like I’m standing at the foot of Everest with nothing but a pair of Bermuda shorts and a Schneiders Hot Rod—if, by Everest, we mean “the possibly insane ALL CAPITALIZED opinions of Tara Oostwouder (aka T. Wood)”. Why do you have two names, Tara? What’s it like being you? Hectic? Dark? Loud? I love that you prefaced the word amazing with the word very. I’m very laughing at you for that. I wish I understood Eddie Vedder’s appeal, but, honestly, I can’t fucking stand the guy. I had him pegged as a poseur from the first time I heard “Alive”. I thought I’d keep my review polite out of respect for his fans. But your letter mocks me, Tara. All three of them do. It’s like I’m a character in an H. P. Lovecraft story, confronted with something so incomprehensibly monstrous and horrific (Tara Oostwouder) that I descend into madness, or worse! Your name even has a Lovecraftian feel: The Call of Oostwouder. I’m not man enough to go there. I’m out. Very out. You very win. Usinger, in the name of all that’s holy, give her whatever she wants.

Tara Oostwouder (aka T. Wood) continues the terrifying tradition of refusing to let us know what CDs and tickets she’d like. You can voice your impotent rage by snail mail or by sending an e-mail to payback@straight.com.