2/88 ArtsFocus Misc.
MAKE LOVE NOT WARHOL
Welcome to Misc., the column that loved seeing all the Martin Luther King Day signs at banks accused of redlining. We’re also not the official column of Family TV Viewing Month, a recent publicity stunt that involved two households going tubeless for a week. I can’t imagine what’d be worse: another Cagney & Lacey rerun or following the advice of state first lady Jean Gardner.
Aural Threat: For five and a half years, on a tiny budget and a tinny frequency, KJET has been one of the few commercial radio stations in town doing anything worthy of criticism (the best in progressive pop played announcers who dare to assume that their listeners have brains). Now that owner SRO has a few bucks to spend, it’s pondering the removal of this proven format. KJET has extremely loyal listeners. It could have more of them with better equipment and more promotion. The station’s outspokenly asking us to plead with them to let the Jet live. Do it. They’re at 200 W. Mercer, 98119.
No reprieve, however, is apparently possible for the beloved Rainier Beer ads. For 12 years, Heckler & Associates’ campaign (always “zany,” sometimes truly witty) has made Rainier #1 in Washington by distinguishing it from the majors and their cloying, zillion-dollar ads. The brewery’s new Australian owner’s hiring an Australian agency to make Rainier’s ads more like Bud’s and Miller’s –certain doom for a regional brand. Before Heckler, Rainier was sinking in the market. It tried a light beer and a draft beer years before Miller, a dark beer years before Michelob, fancy bottles, fictional spokesmen, outdoorsy jingles — nothing worked until it made commercials people wanted to watch. The campaign also helped put the Seattle production community on the map. It proved that local people can top the LA gold-chain crowd (though some local advertisers, like Bell and the Lottery, still send their customers’ money south).
Sunken Treasures?: Another endangered landmark is Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, Seattle’s second oldest retail business (after L&H Engraving on Elliot). The pier on which the venerable souvenir stand is situated is in danger of collapsing, under the strain of drywall construction further up the waterfront. The contractor won’t ease up on the heavy vibrations until April, when the shop’ll move next to Ivar’s. If Sylvester the mummy sinks, he’ll become the eternal martyr to Seattle’s construction mania.
Philm Phacts: Housekeeping is a great film with great characters, set in a believably matriarchal Northwest town. Its only flaw is easily attributed to a Scottish director filming in Canada: The heroines as girls, being driven across Washington, stop at an Esso station. Standard Oil of N.J. never had rights to the name (an acronym of “S.O.”) in the western U.S., and so used Carter and then Enco before switching nationwide to Exxon. More fascinating info on the gas biz is at the General Petroleum Museum, which sells old pumps, signs, and memorabilia to collectors and rents a hall filled with the stuff for banquets and meetings.
Tunnel Woes: Wouldn’t it’ve been nice if Metro’d kept boring through the soft ground? They could do it at night with advance notice, so nobody’d be hurt when the Century Square building drops to a more reasonable height. If some of the Sharper Image merchandise gets damaged in the process, so much for the better.
Truth is Stranger Dept.: A while back, some clever folks published a parody of the Seattle Arts Commission newsletter. In the fictional lead story friends of commission members were being hired as “Art Buddies” to inspire local artists. It was a slap at programs to “support the arts” without giving a dime to artists. Now the real commission wants to hire three “nationally known” (your tax $$ going to NYC) art critics to advise artists with commission grants. Even Regina Hackett (the William Arnold of art writers) questions the idea (“Artists who want advice should ask artists whose work is in sympathy with their own”).
Wet Dreams: The recent Boat Show was a spectacle of American grandiosity at its finest. Best was the seemingly endless series of interconnected tents outside the Dome, just dying to become the site of a movie chase scene. The boats themselves generally got uglier as they got costlier. By $300G you had Joan Collins beds and blue plush carpeting on the walls. Still, there’s a lot to be said for living on a boat, with its split levels and cozy quarters. If you could only get a moorage with cable TV….
Local Publication of the Month: Columbia, the Magazine of Northwest History. Read, in lovely type with by quaint picures, of the early years of our remote corner of the world — but remember that “early history” here is “modern history” most anywhere else.
Headline of the month (Times, 1/25): “Two hospitals weigh liver transplants.” Lessee, at $1.87 a pound….
Cathode Corner: Some of the best TV entertainment is in commercials on obscure cable channels. Financial News Network has five-minute “paid programs” twice an hour. Gruff-voiced brokers insist that their option-futures-ratio-index packages are still sound investments. Sometimes they appear in phony “interviews” with actors hired to say “Sounds very impressive, Mr. Goldman.” Their heads are electronically squeezed into the top three-quarters of the screen, with stock prices swimming on the bottom.
‘Til March, visit the Old Firehouse second-hand mall at 110 Alaskan Way, watch Bombshelter Videos 1 a.m. Thurs. night/Fri. morn on KSTW, and remember the Valentine’s Day greeting on Pine Street: “Do Not Enter Except Metro Busses” (Look it up).
