5/92 Misc. Newsletter

(incorporating four Stranger columns)

SAM KINISON & BENNY HILL

ARE NOW PLAYING AN ETERNAL POKER GAME

IN HEAVEN’S CHEAPEST BACHELOR PAD

At Misc., we’re prouder than heck that Rolling Stone declared Seattle the “New Liverpool”. This must mean we’re a decaying western seaport, far from its country’s power centers, inhabited by roughhousing gay sailors with an incomprehensible accent. Or, to quote UK statesman Benjamin Disraeli, “I am deeply sorry for the unkind things I said about Liverpool. I had not seen Leeds at the time.” Meanwhile, I was in Fremont’s spectacular Glamorama when KCMU played Weird Al Yankovic‘s Smells Like Nirvana. A customer spoke up: “These don’t sound like the original lyrics.”

Cathode Corner: The Almost Live syndication plan is apparently dead, according to Variety. Worldvision (the backer of Twin Peaks, who had enough foreign sales to pay half the costs of keeping that show alive but didn’t have the credit to borrow the rest) failed to sell AL to enough stations. Instead, a rerun package will air on Comedy Central, a cable channel seen here only half the day, only on Viacom systems. Worldvision’s now trying to sell new AL shows to ABC… I get Summit Cable, which has a few channels TCI and Viacom don’t. Weekend mornings offer shows from Italy’s RAI network, including a four-hour Star Search-like talent show that included 20 Astaire-Rogers tribute dancers (just like Fellini’s Ginger and Fred!), many torch singers in black dresses, and a surprise guest spot by Hammer and his full dance squad, grinding out to a recorded music track in front of a silent 40-piece orchestra. Afterwards, they were promptly shooed offstage by the bald, tux-clad host with a quick “Ciao, Hammer, Ciao”…

Events I Heard About Too Late: “Nude Trek: The World’s First Nudist Star Trek Convention” was held in January at the Sultan naturist camp. Events included video screenings, games, skits, role playing, a hot tub and sauna. Perhaps fortunately, James “Scotty” Doohan was not scheduled to appear.

A Three-Hour Hobby: One David Goehner of PO Box 66, Dryden, WA 98821 is offering “the first collectible figures ever” from Gilligan’s Island. You can get a 9″ vinyl figure of Gilligan or the Skipper on an “island stand” for $15 or both for $26, or 4″ figures of the two characters for a total of $8. No coconut-shell telephones or pieces of the true S.S. Minnow.

Surreal Estate: For Rent magazine has a front-page ad inviting people to come live at Walden Pond, “A home that the heart never leaves…Sense the peace of living by the pond…In this fast-paced world of hustle and bustle, it’s nice to know that there is someplace where you can enjoy the peace and comfort of easy living.” It turns out to be a south Everett condo on a man-made lake. The “luxurious 1, 2, & 3 bedroom homes” offer designer fireplaces, covered parking, free aerobics classes, an exercise room, tanning salon, pool, sauna, video lounge, and gym. “And it’s only minutes from work, school, Boeing, Everett Mall, and all major conveniences.” By the way, if you still believe you must move to a country town, look for the three most prominent main-street storefronts. If they’re all real estate offices, drive back. The place is already lost to future suburban sprawl.

Those Phunny Phoreigners (Reuters, 2/19): “French master chef Paul Bocuse is suing McDonald’s for $5 million to $7 million over an advertisement in the fast food firm’s Dutch outlets showing his assistant dreaming of Big Mac hamburgers while working in his kitchen. The advertising agency says it did not realize Bocuse and his assistant were among the chefs in the photo, although Bocuse’s name was on their aprons”….Meanwhile, EuroDisney attracts scoffers from the French culture gods. Right-wing pampleteer Jean Cau calls it “a cultural Chernobyl.” Ex-Socialist government spokesperson Max Gallo: “Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are to culture what fast food is to gastronomy.”

Something Fishy: No concept is too lame to be imitated, not even Ted Turner’s “environmental superhero” Captain Planet. Gorton’s Fish Sticks has inagurated its own cartoon commercial hero, Captain Gorton, who thwarts small-time polluters and keeps the seas safe for seafood. Maybe he could teach a lesson to founding-family heir Slade Gorton, well-known enemy of environmental legislation.

Local Boy Makes Waves: Ex-KIRO news director John Lippman was severely dissed in the LA Times after he “tabloidized” the news at his new home, KCBS-TV. The station’s run a sex-slaves “exposé” and a promo spot using the song “Riders on the Storm” with explicit footage of a drowning boy.

Local Publication of the Month: Northwest Photo Network is a bimonthly tabloid for pro photographers. It’s got an ad warning photographers not to sell their copyrights to clip-art services, a photographer writing about how hard it can be to find the right model for a shoot (while would-be models still get defrauded into costly, worthless “trainings”). And an anonymous article cries that the Seattle Commons proposal, which would clear dozens of blocks northeast of downtown for a huge park, would eradicate over a dozen photo studios and suppliers. Objects of beauty (or at least of commercial appeal) are made in buildings the Commons activists call eyesores… Memo to Art Rag and Community Catylist: Weekly World News spoofs are so lame.

Junk Foods of the Month: Smoked salmon cream cheese spread is fast becoming the toast/bagel topping of choice among newcomers desperate to fit in with the “traditional Northwest lifestyle.” Don’t tell them the stuff was just recently invented. It’s at Still Life in Fremont, Cafe Counter Intelligence in the Market, and elsewhere… People presume me to be a cynic or a kidder but I’m not. When I shop for a soft drink I look for Minute Maid Orange Soda because I enjoy the bizarre combination of syllables of that mystery ingredient, “glycerol ester of wood rosin.” I enjoy the slippery thickness it gives to the beverage, making a glass of flavored water feel like something juicier.

Magazine Ad of the Month: “Does he sleep with you? Does he get jealous? Does he wake you up in the morning? Does he nibble at your ear?… Amoré. Isn’t he worth it? (The product is a cat food.)

Sam Walton, 1918-1992: The king of discount wasn’t known here. Even in the states Wal-Mart’s in, it’s not big in the metro areas where media people live. Thus the press was shocked in the ’80s to see it become the #1 retailer. Its stores were so big, in towns so small, that they destroyed thousands of Main Street merchants across the southern-tier states. Walton aided the ’80s consolidation of wealth from the many to the few, and naturally became a favorite Reagan-Bush insider. But just as shoppers are re-learning the value of selection and service, so are they getting upset at our Wal-Mart government (with its Neiman-Marcus military). Postmodern America is the discount society: a land of slipshod engineering, lousy quality, few real choices, and service that’s not “efficient” as much as nonexistent. The tax-cutters are wrong to think that discount taxes will ever bring prosperity. We’ve already got the lowest overall tax rates in the industrial world; it shows in our inadequate civilian services (education, health, arts, infrastructure). Countries that still respect the value of public investment are whipping us in the world marketplace (or are at least doing less poorly).

Icono-Graphics: CNN’s Showbiz Today lists the weekly Neilsen ratings against a graphic of TV antennas rising from urban rowhouses. A cable channel offering nostalgia for the pre-cable days…

Found Object: An Enumclaw used-book store turned up Daughters of Genius, an 1890s-era biography of famous women of its day (the Brontes, George Sand, Flo. Nightengale, Harriet Beecher Stowe). The intro said it was natural that, as long as the human race was predicated on war and conquest, masculine values would prevail; but that with a more civilized society dawning, women were making themselves known “in most of the professions and all of the arts.” The book erred in timing: war and its values remained, yet the emergence of prominent women progressed incrementally anyway.

Fashion Update: Hypercolor sweatshirts, declared “Outski” here in January, fell even faster than I thought; so much so that Generrais laying off a quarter of its staff. Sorry guys: I never meant to have that much influence.

How Long Was It?: I remember being 12, sneaking into the living room after bedtime (I was already an insomniac!), turning on the Zenith at the lowest volume to catch Johnny Carson from New York: always fresh and energetic, having a blast with his well-groomed guests. By the time I got the occasional OK to stay up late, Carson moved to LA and became a soft, predictable doppleganger of his former self. Friends ask why I don’t move to California; that’s one reason. I don’t want what happened to him (or to numerous once-great musicians who lost it in LA) to happen to me.

‘Til June, check out the Wizard of A-Z gift shop on Market St. in gorgeous Ballard, and recall these words from Gregory Hischak’s odd local zine Farm Pulp: “So let us love and eat and mulch, there isn’t any other obvious reason to be here.”

PASSAGE

From Hal Hartley’s exquisite TV movie Surviving Desire: “The trouble with us Americans is we always want a tragedy with a happy ending.”

SPECIAL EVENT

I’ll be on the Laura Lee talk radio show on KVI (570 AM), Sat., 5/9/92, at the raucous hour of 1 a.m. Skip the end of Sat. Nite Live, get home early from pub-crawling, or set your radio alarm to awaken you for a special treat. I will be taking your calls.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Panegyrics”

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POST-EASTER SPECIAL

A few weeks ago, we asked your responses to the premise, “What if Jesus were alive today, in his teens, preparing to return to public life at the dawn of the new millennium?” Excerpts follow.

JILLIANN SIMS AND LEIGH DUNHAM: “Jesus would be one of the fine, upstanding citizens we lovingly call `Ave Rats.’ He would hand impressionable, young students fliers proclaiming, `Love thy neighbor (but not too much, and safely please)’.”

BRENDA MARTIN: “The Catholic churches would hunt him down and have him killed for security reasons.”

BRUCE LONG: “The whereabouts of the adolescent Jesus: Someplace blessed with a bumper crop of second chances.”

MUSTAFA PATWA: “Jesus is indeed alive and well. He is currently preparing for public life in the early 21st century by playing Doogie Howser, America’s favorite teenage doctor, on the show of the same name.”

BOB ARMSTRONG: “He’d be an illegal immigrant in east LA who got turned onto computers by a white nerd at his high school, and will soon make a raid on the interlocking banking computer network, shifting funds around to more appropriate accounts. He’s Catholic, but hasn’t been seen around the church in some time.”

SID MILLER: “Jesus is probably a sophomore at a high school east of Lake Washington. Real trendy haircut with shaved sides and a pigtail/rattail down the back. Wants his own TV show or his own band. Doesn’t have the gumption to practice his guitar — too busy with skateboard. Hopes grungy skateboard buddies will piss-off Mary, who is preoccupied with telling all who will listen that Joseph has `run off’. She recently blurted out, `He’s not really your father.’ Jesus has been talking with his buddies about how `cool’ it would be to set a wino on fire. Bought gun for $25 from acquaintance and brings it to parties. Wants a car so he can go cruising. Mother of his child will turn 16 three weeks before baby is due.”

ORAN WALKER: “Jesus would be the son of a working-class family; the father a professional craftsman, possibly union. The mother would be a secretary in a Catholic church. He had his pick of schools and ended up at a small college not far from New York City, where he spends his holidays and weekends, to the chagrin of his mother. She knows he doesn’t attend church and hangs out on the Lower East Side with God knows what socially marginal types, most likely Hispanics and Queers. She doesn’t know that he has been fucking around with his friends, both boys and girls, since he passed the age of accountability five or six years ago. `Safer sex’ has been more than a catch phrase with Jesus, since he realized early that sexual contact is such a complicating factor in the lives of both participants…He is making above-average grades, especially in ecology policy courses. He has written two essays on the need for global awareness and human charity among the earth’s peoples and probably will expand his ideas into his master’s thesis, but it’s early yet. He has been assured that he’ll live to a grand old age — unless he gets those messianic ideas again.”