3/91 Misc. Newsletter

Think We’ll Ever See A Sensitive, Reverent Film

About Indiginous Americans Without A White Hero?

Welcome to the in-like-a-lion March Misc., the newsletter that liked Sofia Coppola no matter what anybody said. We begin by mourning the end of Kitchy Koo, the 11-year-old boutique of waveoid fashion (and, in its peak years, the world’s coolest Post Office contract station). We’re also trying to figure the mysterious message taped to bus shelters: “Please don’t buy vegetables, furniture, clothing, toys or gifts. Buy fruits, food, and necessities only (for 4 months).”

Engulfed: At this writing, the war had been “won” but our units were still occupying a lot of Iraq, as if awaiting a march to Baghdad (like our 3-year attempt to overthrow N. Korea after quickly retaking the south). When will enough butt have been kicked? When will Bush stop acting like a wimp trying to prove his toughness? Vengeance does not stifle barbarism, it sets the stage for more… Pro-war spectacles grabbed the lion’s share of TV coverage, including a rally staged outside ABC’s LA lot by the Rick Dees show (one more reason the ex-Disco Duck sucks). Locally, KOMO loaded a Town Meeting with a one-sided audience and charged that protesters were smoking pot outside the Federal Building (they were burning sage, a memorial to those who would die in the war)… KING referred to the ground assault as a “lightning war.” In what language have we heard that phrase before?… CBS had one of its commentators, Gen. Michael Dugan (from East Texas?) run battle diagrams on a Kuwait map with the John Madden CBS Chalkboard… A new paper, War News, claims nearly all the network expert commentators come from the same conservative think tank that created the theory claiming the USSR was behind the attack on the Pope… CNN’s war theme music started out as solemn drumbeats the first week, then became more “upbeat.” By week 6, it was a brassy fanfare.

On the Lighter Side of Armageddon, the Rio de Janiero Carnaval canceled its “Night in Baghdad” party, a tradition going back 40 years. Woody Harrleston (Cheers) became the first actor blacklisted due to the war, when a Mardi Gras committee withdrew an offer for Harrleston to lead a parade after he appeared at a peace rally. The All-Breed Dog Show scheduled for the Sand Point Naval Station was scrapped “due to threat of terrorist attack”… Network newscasts replaced canceled ads with public service spots– including a cartoon reminding young men that if they don’t register for the draft, they’ll lose scholarships and will be losers the rest of their lives…Iraqi disinformation claimed U.S. troops on Muslim holy territory were entertained by thousands of Egyptian prostitutes — and, worse, by the dreaded Madonna.

Overheard on a Bus: Two fashion workers discussed how the war will affect home-front tastes: “Fluorescent nylon is out. What’s in is tough and practical clothes for people facing nuclear annihilation.”

Eastern Airlines, 1928-1991: Remember, airlines are dying and nobody can afford lots of bombers at every model change (this war is being fought from “inventory”), but Boeing will not be affected. Sure.

Cathode Corner: The Nostalgia Network, cable home for a re-titled version of KING’s Seattle Today, turns out to be owned by associates of Rev. Sun Myung Moon. The Fox network of Moon’s fellow conservative Rupert Murdoch canceled Haywire, a half-hour combining routines from KING’s Almost Live with astoundingly lame LA-produced skits…. The “lost episodes” of The Avengers on A&E with Honor Blackman may be cooler than the famous Diana Rigg episodes. The Blackman shows were taped without US money in a small studio, usually in one take. These disciplines enhance the show’s basic tensions, between good and evil and between weirdness and straight espionage. (Earlier episodes, where Steed had a male partner, aren’t being shown)… TBS’s Voice of the Planet is, so far, the great cheesy educational show of the year. It’s hard to describe the voices of Faye Dunaway and William Shatner out-over-emoting one another, making a mockery of the environmental disaster footage shown under the narration.

Deja Vu Isn’t What It Used to Be: Just as another unjust war re-divides American opinion, CBS trotted out retrospectives of three TV series that defined the era of the last war. At the war’s start, Ed Sullivan depicted a mass culture united by big bands and clean comedy, with a little guitar-pop mixed in for the kids. By 1970, Mary Tyler Moore showed a middle class pretending all was still holding center (its shock was a 30-year-old woman in no hurry to marry). Four months later, All in the Family (an off-Broadway play made for TV) broke through witha non-cute hippie and a foul-mouthed, beer-swilling lead. While embodying Hollywood’s stereotype of the “typical” TV viewer, the concept was based on a British show; the chief UK influence was the idea that political and class issues were a recognized part of everyday life. Seen anything like that on US TV lately?

Local Publication of the Month: The Protagonist is a quarterly newsletter produced by Tsao Lagos, Washington’s most famous Spy letter writer, on behalf of an outfit selling screenwriting courses… Deja Vu Showgirls is the first Seattle-made commercial nudie mag. Most of the models are local women you see every day in the malls, aspiring actresses, single mothers, laid-off word processors, your classmate who left school for a brief marriage… The Seattle Sourcebook by Roy F. Peterson Jr. superficially looks like an ordinary lifestyle guide. It even has “ads” for familiar restaurants, some of which went out of business since it was printed. Then you notice the pyramid behind the Space Needle on the back cover, or the spaceship chased by a flying dragon on the front. The book turns out to be an accessory rule book for Shadowrun, a role playing game that, behind the cute facade, seems to be the same old fantasy-action cliches.

Correction: Homer Spence was a UW instructor in marketing, not politics as said last time (as if you can tell the difference these days).

Computers Are Our Friends (letter in the computer magazine Macworld): “A spelling check on a recent document I was working on questioned my use of the word childcare. The editors of Microsoft’s dictionary, however, were able to offer only one alternative: kidnapper.”

Sign of the Month (inside the Pendelton store on 4th) “As long as sheep fall in love, there will be wool.” Don’t know how long the sign’s been there, but I noticed it the week after an NY Times feature about research into sheeps’ mating/nurturing hormones.

Airing It Out: Sandy Bradley’s Potluck, a folk hour on KUOW, included on 1/26 a “folk rap” (more like an ethnomusicologist’s attempt at a square-dance call) promoting an adult-supervised youth group called “Graffiti Busters.”One middle-class white guy simultaneously denigrated three authentic American art forms, turning two of them into smug pabulum… In Cincinnati, there’s a battle over what radio stations call themselves. WKRQ has sued to stop a rival station from using WZRQ.

The Fine Print (from the Wild Orchid video box): “This unrated version contains explicit `footage’ not included in the R-rated version released theatrically in the United States. Discretionary viewing by minors is strongly advised.”

True Crime: An Everett woman applied for a waitressing job, to receive a counter-offer from the restaurant manager to become his mistress for $3,000 a month. “He said she couldn’t get a better paying job with her credentials,” said a cop, who arrested the manager on solicitation.

School Daze: The Longview School Board voted to keep on its high-school reading list Stotan!, a novel about a Spokane swim team. A teacher said it had “vividly detailed descriptions of sadistic and erotic acts, vulgar names to degrade black women, put-downs about special education students, jokes about fornication and morally bankrupt philosophies.” In other words, it’s just like school itself.

Ad of the Month (newspaper insert): “A President’s Day Offer: Free Broccoli when you buy Cheez Whiz.” The ad shows a tiny, grinning G. Washington pouring pasteurized process cheese spread atop an oversize plate of the vegetable.

Archi-Text: John Graham will be remembered as the designer of Seattle’s best known structure (the Space Needle) and its most destructively influential (Northgate), but not for dozens of nondescript buildings that kept his firm in business, buildings that marked the true postwar Seattle spirit or lack of same.

Striking: So the M’s are getting yoga instruction. Maybe they’d be better off with zen, particularly the proverbs where the hapless loser of the class is proven to be the wisest of all… Chuck Jones has drawn a set of Looney Tunes baseball cards, and made Daffy Duck a Mariner!

Ever So Humble: I’ve talked in the past about my hometown of Marysville, a place that once meant sawmill workers in dark taverns, clutching beer mugs with all seven remaining fingers. It has since become a Boeing suburb. But the Tulalip Reservation across I-5, home of several tribes “united” by Federal edict (and of the Boeing test site where live chickens are blasted from cannons onto windshields) is nearing approval to expand its bingo parlor into full casino gambling. While there won’t be any Vegas nightlife, it’ll still be the most exciting thing there since the Thunderbird Drive-In used to show sex flicks, fully visible from I-5.

Junk Food of the Month: A chain of burger kiosks has gone up in the streets of Cuba, where meat has not been in significant supply for several years. The official newspaper Granma insists that the burgers are “highly nutritious” and contain “a minimum of 60 percent pork.” Says The Economist,” “Granma failed to mention what is in the remaining 20 percent.”… Prior to the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, there are Turtles Pies (“Fresh from the sewers to you!”) and Turtle Eggs. Since there are no female mutant turtles, I don’t know where the eggs come from; the pies have “vanilla puddin’ power” within the famous Hostess crust and green frosting.The “vanilla” probably came from a 42-year-old Seattle plant that made over 3 million pounds of vanillin a year, extracted from sulfite-waste liquor from wood pulp, processed with sodium hydroxide and used for important drugs as well as flavoring. It’s being replaced by a Sunbelt plant that will make a synthetic substitute — an imitation imitation. (No grumblings about how unappetizing this sounds. Vanillin is chemically identical to vanilla from a bean. Besides, some food purists drench pancakes with concentrated tree sap.)

Stuff: Women’s basketball gets corrupted by a 6-team pro league, the Liberty Basketball Association, featuring smaller balls and courts, shorter hoops, and “form-fitting uniforms.” The opposite of the no-nonsense attitude of women’s college basketball (about the only sport where women compete directly in the same space).

‘Til April, see Fantagraphics’ cartoon art exhibit Misfit Lit starting 3/15 at COCA; heed these words from Misc. subscriber Steve Shaviro’s book on social theory, Passion and Excess: “Power itself never notices, but the one thing it cannot regulate or pacify is its own violent arbitrariness, its own quality as an event;” and keep working for real peace.

PASSAGE

The only memorable lines in Manoel De Oliveira’s obscure 1983 Portugese film Francisca: “Men have hearts like dry bread”; “I love you like God loves sinners.”

REPORT

Wendy Brauer of NYC says “I’m quite amused” by Misc., but complains that “there’s a boycott on of those non-recyclable, waste-paper-backing stamps.” What? Recycle this? I thought you were all storing them carefully, waiting for me to offer deluxe collector’s portfolios. Don’t have those yet, but I do have ad spaces at $15 and $25 (first come first served); call 524-1967 for info.

A Mass. software firm might issue my novel this year. My second live reading was well-received; expect another one this summer.

Fax subs: $9/year.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Integropalliate”