martin_cizmar_pot


PHXated World HQ is buzzing with reports about strange doings on New Times' Up on the Sun blog, which covers music and is the dubious domain of Young Martin Cizmar, the Boy Who Always Takes Things Too Far™.

Readers of the blog will remember Sarah Ventre, who contributed regularly in addition to doing hardship duty behind the scenes as Young Martin’s intern.

PHXated has met Ventre and found her, aside from some lingering indications of Stockholm Syndrome, relatively unscathed by the experience.

Anyway, Ventre is now in D.C., interning for NPR. She recently wrote something for the organization’s web site, part of a series of interns writing on music. Ventre wrote about how she wasn’t familiar with the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, but on listening to it found it to be …

… quite good:

The more I listened, the more I realized that the album has virtually no moments of silence in it. Each song is filled with stacked sounds that provide a fluid backdrop to the guitars and vocals that The Beach Boys are so well-known for. There is a constant, subtle motion that carries the music, and it’s easy to see why people get so swept in.

Now, as PHXated hears the story, Young Martin read Ventre’s piece and let loose a screed of invective on the Up on the Sun blog.

His issue, apparently, wasn’t her thoughts on the album.

It was that Ventre had been writing professionally about music for some time, and that this was outrageous considering she’d never listened to Pet Sounds.

Cizmar compared her in some way to Jayson Blair, the NYT’s plagiarist and fabricator, along the way and said he was sorry he’d ever employed her. The posting was serious, not jovial.

He underlined the point by posting the item on his Facebook page, tagging Ventre so her friends would see the attack as well.

Well, you might think; let’s see this post!

That’s the strange twist to the story. The blog post is no longer up on the NT site.

If you Google “Cizmar Ventre Jayson Blair”, you get this:


cizmar_ventre


But the link—to a story apparently entitled “Former New Times Music Intern Cops to Never Having Heard Pet Sounds"—is dead.

… and, mysteriously, there’s no Google cache of it!

As readers might know, it’s a little odd, on the internet, to try to remove published material without alerting readers to the fact and offering an explanation why.

PHXated hears that the post stirred no little controversy inside New Times, and that the post was removed by higher-ups at the paper.

More details as we get them!


All of PHXated’s writings on Young Martin Cizmar are here.