4/90 Misc. Newsletter
IN MEMORY OF BOB & RAY
(THE BRAND YOU’VE GRADUALLY GROWN TO TRUSTOVER THE COURSE OF THREE GENERATIONS)
Damn. I was so looking forward to a baseball lockout. But at least we get to have an April edition of Misc., the pop-culture report that can hardly wait the five years it’ll take to build the proposed bullet train to Moses Lake. The concept is to have international air travelers to Seattle stop there, at an abandoned Air Force base. If we’re lucky, we’ll have a lot more surplus military and military-industrial plant to recycle, so we’d better start thinking of such inventive re-uses for them now. Besides, they could carry the rail line further east, for romantic getaways in Spokane (or even Wallace, Idaho).
GREAT STUFF: We in Seattle may have seen, thanks to the UW, the launching of women’s basketball as the hot new sport of the early ’90s. It’s competitive but not violent (so far), wholesomely sexy, and more down to earth than the men’s game (by about a foot). It’s also a frontier sport, not yet smothered under commercial endorsements and TV time-outs (again, so far). But will interviewers ever ask coaches of men’s teams how they juggle coaching with raising a family.
THE TRUTH ABOUT NICARAGUA: So, after 10 years, some folks got tired of Ortega, his teenage military draft, his Castro-inspired corporate culture, and his rhetoric (not to mention the contras and the US economic blockade). Ortega has proven his commitment to democracy by allowing himself to lose, something you don’t see in some of those anti-Communist dictatorships the US government loves. The Sandinistas remain the single largest party in the parliament, and might one day make an informal coalition with the non-Sandinista leftist parties that campaigned as part of the diffuse UNO coalition. And we must still remember that before Ortega, there was no democracy in that poor, tiny (fewer-people than Washington state), dictator-brutalized land.
FISH OR FOUL: UW art student Horace Luke made a sculpture incorporating 75 goldfish in a plexiglass tube, surrounded by neon lights. The fish were supplied with oxygen from an air pump, fresh water every three to four hours, and regular meals; but they still began to die, on full display in the Art Building. Then somebody, perhaps one of the piece’s several critics, stole the whole contraption on 3/7, except for the air pump. Without that, Luke told the Daily, any “rescued” fish probably died within 15 minutes.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Seattle Radio Guide, an ambitious effort to provide free weekly listings of everything on every station. Publisher Bruce Buckner (“Having never worked on a magazine before…”) is apparently appealing to the few of us who cruise the dial on futile searches for something that’s not bland, old, or excessively market-segmented; but it’s no threat yet to Soundings Northwest….
The local black community could use a more professional, dignified newspaper. The Skanner (new branch of a Portland-based chain) isn’t it. It does, however, have a boxing column by Geek Love author Katherine Dunn.
TATTLE TALES: Mark Goodson and his late partner Bill Todman are famous for producing TV game shows. But, it turns out in the Malcom-memorial issue of Forbes, they made the bulk of their fortune owning a string of suburban papers in Pennsylvania (subcontracting the papers’ management to another chain). I don’t know if the reporters ever vowed to tell the truth, or whether they were stopped by the sound of a bell after asking a few questions (or if they had to stop if they got a no answer).
UNFAVORABLE IMPRESSIONS: The Nov. issue of American Printer carries the sad tale of printers stuck with worthless inventories of fad products whose times passed or never came: Michael Jackson posters, Trivial Pursuit game boards, books on Agnew, Dukakis, Gerald Ford and Oliver North. In the weirdest story, a small print shop invested in costly hardware to stamp photo-engravings of Elvis onto chocolate bars. (Thanx to Fred Woodworth of The Match, a Tucson political journal, for the tip.)
JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Power Burst, an “advanced performance beverage” that vows to “beat Gatorade 7 ways.” All I know is you can prove your toughness by finishing an entire serving of the stuff….
A new line of oat bran English muffins is offered by a local outfit called Broadmoor Bakery. To the English, of course, Broadmoor is not known as an exclusive Seattle neighborhood but as a London psychiatric hospital.
SLOGAN OF THE MONTH: B.F. Goodrich T/A Tires, “The Athletic Shoes for Your Car.”
STAGES OF LIFE: The Coliseum Theater, last of the downtown single-screens, finally went RIP. Possible future uses for the historic building include yet another tacky upscale mall. Its death is directly due to 15 years of physical neglect by the misnamed Luxury Theaters, but can be related to the Reaganomics of the multiplex age, giving us (as noted in a recent Atlantic article) just long commercials, exercises in heavy emotional manipulation with little interest in storytelling or acting, let alone the “glamour” of the old Hollywood….
In happier news, Seattle promoters are trying to start an arts center in Concrete, Skagit County. They hope to set up shop in an old moviehouse this year or next, pending the success of a corporate fund drive.
NOSE FOR NEWS: I’m always defending USA Today from my fellow pseudo-intellectuals. One reason I like it: its recent national survey of urban smells. It printed a letter from Cedar Rapids, Iowa complaining about the local Quaker Oats plant (though “Thursdays aren’t too smelly because they make Cap’n Crunch”), from Wichita (where “the putrid smell of gas from the gas wells and crude oil from the oil wells was bad enough I wanted to brush my teeth”), and one from Milwaukee about the brewery and slaughterhouse smells (the mayor responds, “Milwaukee smells like a thriving city”).
BELLEVUE RICH KID DEAD IN C.D. CRACK SALE (3/20): Perhaps the only lesson from this tragedy is a reminder of the affluent who have abandoned the cities, their schools and industry, for a “quality” (euphemism for all-white) life in the suburbs, while serving as the customers who make the drug scourge possible. People are dying in the Rainier Valley and in Latin America so Eastside power-dressers can have their alleged fun.
SINGER FOR MOTHER LOVE BONE DEAD FROM HEROIN: Perhaps the only lesson from this tragedy is not to take ’60s revisionism too far. Back then, heroin was used by the Mafia/CIA to keep undesirable groups (first blacks, then radicals) under control. Besides, intense artificial “highs” are not the making of true cutting-edge art (especially in the age of Spielberg).
SWEET NOTHING: You know I don’t care for most commercial sentimentality, but I am wistful at Bartell Drugs’ centennial commercials showing an old drugstore soda fountain. The Northgate and old Westlake Bartells were just about the last drugstore soda fountains in town, but they were out by the late ’70s. (The last Seattle soda fountain was in an independent pharmacy on Broadway, replaced by a fancy restaurant that didn’t last five years.) I know they need room to stock all those high-tech prescription drugs and all those different shampoos containing “organic and other ingredients,” but they oughta find room in their bigger stores to bring the fountain treats back. Just don’t make it cutesy-wootsey, OK?
CATHODE CORNER: KIRO’s Aaron Brown has established himself as the nudge-nudge irony of modern TV adapted to local news. You know, the Lettermanian “We both know this is stupid but watch anyway” attitude that lets viewers think they’re too smart to be manipulated while continuing to be manipulated….
CBS has become an industrial dinosaur. Like GM and the Democrats, its attempts to revive itself fall back on the faulty practices that got it into its mess. Every “new look” show is over-researched, over-compromised and over-acted. When Moon Unit Zappa becomes a spouter of non-gag likes, you know something’s wrong.
PHILM PHACTS: The Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle was cool and quite the nostalgia trip, especially for the kids in the audience who were still in grade school when the Sex Pistols happened. It was fun to look back at England before Thatcher (the next European dictator to fall?), when it still had a veneer of respectability to rebel against. But punk was more grass-roots than Malcom McLaren still will admit. None of the hundreds of other bands were mentioned in the film. For example, the women of punk were not a wife/mistress auxiliary whose own works waited for discovery by historians (as in surrealism or the beats), nor the later second wave of an established genre (as in stand-up comedy or even rap). Punk’s women were out front from the start with X-Ray Spex, Siouxsie Sioux, Deborah Harry, Deborah Iyall, Au Pairs, the Slits, and dozens of others. Their legacy is to credit for the recent dominance of women on the pop charts (six of a recent Billboard Top 10).
‘TIL THE MERRY MONTH OF MAY, don’t wear a leather jacket to anti-fur rallies, enjoy the handmade Word of the Week signboard on Corliss Ave. N. heading north from 44th to 45th (a recent display: “Piscatorial”), read The Quayle Quarterly, consider private chess lessons from our own world champ Elena Donaldson-Akhmiloskaya ($25/hr.), try to figure out Lee Iacocca’s statement that “it’s time to peel off the Teflon Kimono,” and visit the Cap. Hill antique store with the simple name “OLD!” See ya.
THE MISC. LIST
Some still think I’m “just kidding,” that beneath the facade of an Angry Young Man there’s a carefree, apathetic party boy. There isn’t. I’m really like this.
Things that make other people laugh but just make me puke
Christian TV, professional wrestling, supermarket tabloids (especially the Weekly World News, made expressly to be laughed at), spoof movies, any movie with an ex-Saturday Night Live or SCTV star (except Strange Brew).
Things that make other people puke but just make me laugh
The flag nonsense, Nintendo, Milli Vanilli, Channel One, Smurfs.
Things people expect me to adore but I don’t
Science fiction, sword-and-sorcery (especially sword-and-sorcery disguised as science fiction), speed metal.
Things people expect me to just loathe but I don’t
Idaho Spud candy bars, designer sneakers, working-class people.
OFFER
No new Misc. subscribers signed up last month, so everyone who signs on this month will get a special bonus: A special frameable essay and two random pages from my forthcoming novel.
PASSAGE
Francois Campoin in the short story “Things That Made It Possible”: “I lost control of the video portion of my life. I kept fading in and out.”
WORD OF THE MONTH
“Aborescence”
