Critics' pet peeves: Don't you hate when that happens?

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And we're about to prove it.

In our brief time off between performances, screenings, readings and dining, we've been filing our fangs and amassing a New Year's list of things we wish could change in the local arts-and-entertainment world. This time, we're aiming less at audience etiquette (always a rich source of complaint), and more toward things we'd all like to see change in the presentations themselves.

Just so you don't think we're hopelessly cranky, we've also put together a joint list of Things We Love, so you know we have hearts beating beneath our reptilian exteriors.

Maybe you have some pet peeves of your own — in fact, we'd bet good money on it. Send us your tired, your weary, your huddled complaints yearning to breathe free, and we'll give you your say in an upcoming issue. Drop us a line at our e-mail address: talktous@seattletimes.com.

But for now, it's our turn. Read on:

Rampant tardiness: Why is that patrons are expected to adhere to the start time of a concert or a performance, but the same rule doesn't apply to the performer? If a show is slated to start at 8 p.m., why must the band or act not come on until 8:15, 8:30 or worse yet, approaching 9 p.m.? How about shaving a dollar off every minute you're late?

Smoking + drinking = club nightmare: What is it with club-goers who are oblivious to everyone else around them — usually a few hundred people, that's all — and proceed to hold a conversation, while drunk, with their cigarettes as pointers — that is, to make a point. This requires them to swing it around, wobble back and forth with it, and dance obnoxiously, all while putting everyone else around them at risk.

Beverage cups as projectiles: This is particularly bad at outdoor concert venues in the summer months when those large lemonade drinks, often times with the ice and hunk of lemon still intact, are hurled like footballs onto the stage and, more alarmingly, into the crowd. It's as bad as the days of moshing when you had to spend more time looking over your shoulder for fear that someone would fall out of the sky — and onto your head — at any second.

— Tina Potterf

Audio tours: Ever since King Tut, museums have gone gaga for audio tours, and their tuned-in, tech-happy audiences have been easily programmed to snatch them up. But when your ears swarm with the scripted voice of some celebrity telling you all about the show and the artwork and the artists, who needs to look? One friend complained recently that you can step between a painting and a person listening to an audio tour and the person won't even notice. Remember when visual art was experienced through the eyes?

Artist statements: These are useful in art school, where instructors need to know that students have actually thought about what they are doing and can articulate it — but in a gallery that should go without saying. A successful piece of art sends its own shock of recognition. If it doesn't, no amount of explaining by the artist is going to make up for it. (Imagine an artist's statement next to Mona Lisa ... )

— Sheila Farr

Spotty miking at musicals: It's bad enough if you can't hear everybody well. But when some singer-actors are blaring at you, and others are indecipherable, you start feeling like a "Twilight Zone" visitor.

Useless program notes: They either don't tell you enough or tell you too much. Whatever happened to insightful essays and background materials to help theaters give you a better appreciation of a play? They're a big plus. A big drag: a puffy, self-congratulatory director's statement about the production — which doesn't always match up with what they've put on the stage.

Actors who shout! This is a complaint for all seasons, maybe all epochs: Why don't all actors realize that you can communicate rage, excitement, lust and other primary-color emotions without screaming them at us? Sometimes the more restrained and quiet the delivery, the more powerful the effect.

— Misha Berson

Multiple disc jockeys: Every single radio station that plays music now, in their morning drive time, has two or three (or four!) disc jockeys. It's a blather of talking over each other and you can't keep track, and naturally they crack each other up. The audience? Who cares! We're entertaining each other!

The obligatory "encore." Please. It's stopped meaning anything — they're so scripted and completely NOT impromptu.

The obligatory standing ovation: See above.

TV news hyperbole: My favorite during the first snow was the "ARCTIC BLAST" header underneath the reporter standing on one pitiful patch of snow.

Useless DVD extras: They are practically sweeping the cutting-room floor and emptying the garbage cans into the disks ... just because they CAN. Basta! There should be a quality bar, and an alternate-ending limit (no more than one per film). Extras don't mean anything if the only thing you can say about them is that they're extra. Maybe there's a REASON they weren't in the original film, hmm?

Sneaky product placements: What deal did Apple computers cut with HBO? Every show of theirs has characters using an Apple laptop — "Sopranos," "Six Feet Under," "Sex in the City." And all of them are hammily shot from in front of the character so the Apple logo is front and center.

— Anne Hurley

Random dance: We have surely seen enough stream-of-consciousness modern-dance choreography in which one step follows another and another and another (are you falling asleep yet?) with no intelligible logic. Of course, a dance doesn't need to tell a story, or make narrative sense, but shouldn't it at least have some sort of spatial structure or other ordering principle? And don't tell me all that random movement is an intentional attempt to express the indeterminacy of the universe. Please. That idea is so out of date it's practically wearing pink leg warmers.

— Lynn Jacobson

Pre-concert blather, Part I: It's show time, and the houselights go down as you eagerly await the performance. Wait, that's not the piano recitalist or the troupe of actors coming out of the wings: It's the manager and the board president and a few officials, ready with some vital but unscripted fund-raising messages and acknowledgements, which ramble on and on while the audience is drumming its collective fingers.

Pre-concert blather, Part II: Here comes the conductor — but the music isn't about to start, because instead we are getting a lecture on music history as it pertains to tonight's program. Unless it's designed as a musical discussion program or a special celebration, the concert is a place for music, not chat.

The Maestro in Aisle T: That person seated next to you in the concert hall is really the next Gerard Schwarz — at least, he thinks he is, because he is merrily waving his hands and arms in time to the music. You would like to strap his arms to his sides, perhaps in a nice straitjacket. All that "conducting," of course, makes it hard to focus on the real conductor.

— Melinda Bargreen

CD junk tracks: Attention, musicians, we are not amused by tracks featuring: (A) You, cracking up after you botch a lyric. (B) Your friends, cracking up in the studio after you botch a lyric. (C) Your child, especially your child performing his/her own rap. And people wonder why nobody buys CDs anymore.

Reach out and smack someone: Everybody hates cellphones in audiences, but what about audience members calling each other? "Omigod, I'm six rows back from Dave Matthews! Is that you in the balcony, hi! Over here!" We recommend U.S. military-style cellphone jamming equipment at all venues. Either that, or ejector seats.

— Doug Kim

The absent-minded waiter: That is, waiters who "memorize" orders then fail to get them right. With the number of incorrect and/or forgotten items reaching epic proportion, I've considered buying pads and pencils and passing them out each time a waiter greets my table. Enough already! Please: Write the orders down.

The electronic "hostess": OK, so I've learned to put up with the phone-message-machine as "hostess" ("Please leave your name, the number in your party and the date and time you'd like to reserve, and we'll get back to you to confirm!"). But when phone-message technology became an excuse to not answer the phone until 10 minutes before a restaurant's doors open, that's more than annoying: It's bad business.

— Nancy Leson

Fake show times: You rush to get to the movie on time — and then it starts, oh, 20 minutes after the posted show time, due to interminable commercials and trailers on the big screen beforehand. Why can't theaters post the ACTUAL start time, so that people who want to watch all this stuff can come early and the rest of us can safely linger in the popcorn line, or at home on our couches?

The idiotic MPAA rating system: It shields teenagers from terrific little movies like "I Capture the Castle" or "Raising Victor Vargas," both absurdly rated R because of a flash of breast or a naughty word or two, and warns parents about the "drug use" in "Whale Rider" and "School of Rock" (both inexplicably PG-13). Note to parents: Ignore the ratings; check a Web site like www.screenit.com for movie content information instead.

Vague titles: Generic, "safe" movie titles don't give the faintest hint of what the movie's about. Later this month, for example, we'll see "The Big Bounce," "The Perfect Score" and "You Got Served." For the record, none of these movies are about tennis, but you wouldn't know it.

Movie clairvoyants: Instead of staying at home and using their powers for good, they attend movies whose outcomes they already know and insist on sharing with their fellow moviegoers, just before crucial moments. ("He's going to shoot him!" "She's going to fall!" "The kid's going to die!") Thanks, guys.

— Moira Macdonald

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company