Backtalk: David Archer, Walter Wood, Shelley Ismail, Phish

READY, AIM: Fire? Depends on who you talk to about the former — or suspended — manager of Memorial Auditorium. David Archer was fingerprinted, photographed and cited last Friday on grand larceny charges for allegedly stealing more than $500 from Memorial Auditorium. Details of the theft have not been disclosed because the case is still under investigation. “The only thing I know is that my tenure at Memorial Auditorium is over,” says Archer, suggesting the problem is less about embezzlement than “political and personality stuff.” Burlington City Arts hired Archer to manage Memorial two years ago when it took on the building in a double-edged deal to save its budget. Fast-talking Archer seemed like the man for the job — a contractor, custodian and rock promoter rolled into one. “He was thoroughly checked out,” City Arts Director Doreen Kraft says of the hiring process. She also stresses that Archer has been suspended, not fired, pending a city personnel hearing. Whatever the outcome, the 47-year-old does not seem inclined to return to his old job. “You couldn’t beg me to go back there,” he says. “I’ve just been kicked in the balls.” According to Archer, he’s been planning to get out of Dodge for a while now — one of many details left out of a cover story praising Archer and his “lasting memorial” in a recent issue of Vox. “I dedicated the last two years of my life to changing Memorial from a pit to a nice place to be,” he says. “Now it’s time to move on.” Way to go.

GETTING HIS DO: When they are not discussing the federal budget, or public education, or Bill, Madeleine Kunin and Hillary Clinton talk hair. Kunin still gets hers done in Vermont — by hair stylist extraordinaire Walter Wood. Only recently did she catch on that he doubles as a body piercer. “She was very intrigued,” Wood reports. “She wanted to know all about it.” Hillary, on the other hand, was more interested in the Vermont-made Kunin coif, which Wood describes as “close around the ears and back of the head, nice and full on top. Makes her look important.” Like the former governor, who spends a lot of ink agonizing over hair in her autobiography, Living a Political Life, Clinton is acutely aware of the politics of dooing it right. Wood is ready and willing to take on the First Lady. “I wouldn’t charge her half the fee,” he hints. “I’d even pay my way down.”

MOVING BACK: Musicians think they’ve got it bad. Try finding toe shoes in Vermont. Not to mention a class to wear them in. The good news for classical ballet dancers is that Shelley Ismail is back in town, teaching at the Movement Center in Essex — one of her students, 17-year-old Annie Waltz, just got snatched up by the feeder school for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. The bad news is that she is going back to the Bahamas at the end of next summer . . . After commuting back and forth to Vermont for years, Richard Gonzales is putting down roots in the chilly soil of Shelburne. The Latino mover has changed a lot since he put dancers through the paces in sweaty sessions above Tubbs Restaurant in Montpelier. “It’s no longer boogie your butt,” he explains from home in Brooklyn. “We have a community of dancers who are on a more spiritual level.” Gonzales plans to assemble a small troupe to bring Caribbean-influenced dances into Vermont schools. He’ll teach a class every Friday night at Edmunds.

LOCAL NOTES: What does every Phishhead want for Christmas? Bumper stickers for life? A bootleg tape from the Garden? A miracle? What they’ll get — this year, anyway — is a concert close enough to hitchhike to. Phish plays December 16 and 17 at the Olympic Arena in Lake Placid. Tickets go on sale next Friday . . . “A little more attitude, a little more oomph” is what deejays are promising “after eight” on WNCS. “Everything is experimental now,” Chris Griffin says of the station’s plan to air more local, eclectic music on the “modern side of things.” Says Griffin, who is seeking “colorful characters” to sit in, “We want to sound like we are hanging out at Nectar’s.”