I have created a monster

Regular readers will remember that a couple of weeks ago I spent the day at Motley Fool’s headquarters in Alexandria, Va., doing some training and drooling over the company “Game Room.”

One of the manifestations of that visit was published Tuesday by Fool writer Tim Beyers, who took my advice about looking for stories in 8-K documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday afternoon’s after the markets close.

Beyers, who has started a “Who’s Filing Now?” column as a result, wrote, “First, Men’s Wearhouse announced that board member Kathleen Mason — also CEO of Tuesday Morning — had decided to not run for re-election. Then, there was shell corporation nCoat, formerly known as Tylerstone Ventures, which filed an amended 8-K that revealed that the board had fired its accountant. Whoops.

“But my favorite filing comes from Home Properties, an apartment landlord based in Rochester, N.Y. that operates as a residential real estate investment trust or REIT, for tax purposes. (REITs get tax-favored status in exchange for disbursing roughly 90% of their profits to partners.)

“On Friday afternoon, Home Properties filed an 8-K in which it announced changes in how executives would be compensated. Here’s the specific language:

“‘Finally, the Board of Directors waived the application of the mandatory deferral component of the Company’s Incentive Compensation Plan with respect to the bonus to be paid to all participants, including the Chief Executive Officer and the other executive officers, for services rendered in 2006.’ [Emphasis mine.]

“Translation: We’d rather make as much money as we can right now, so we’re retroactively changing the rules.”

Read more here. Beyers also writes a weekly column on insider buying, but is thinking about making this a weekly column as well.

And if you’re not reading 8-K filings on a Friday afternoon, can you really call yourself a business journalist?