The crime bill, however, deserved to die. In order to get a simple, rational ban on some deadly assault weapons and a few modest prevention programs through an NRA-coddled Congress, Clinton loaded a bulky omnibus bill with a lot of dumb and/or misguided ideas — more cops, more prisons, more prisoners, longer sentences, the death penalty for almost five dozen new crimes, including the killing of a federal egg inspector; in short, more of the same old “Git Tuff” bluster that just plain doesn’t work except to raise politicians’ and talk-radio callers’ adrenaline levels. And half those 100,000 new federally-subsidized cops are allocated for towns under 100,000 pop., and all of them go off the federal payroll in five years. Once again, they’re spending a lot of our money just to feel good about themselves.

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD DEPT.: Again this year, there was a Belltown Inside Out promotion, celebrating the Denny Regrade as an allegedly “diverse” and even “artistic” urban village. Over the past four years the “artistic” part of the program has steadily diminished, befitting a neighborhood where most of the artists’ studios and affordable artist housing have gone to condos. Meanwhile, the J&M Cafe, longtime crawling ground of Young Republicans and other escapees from Bellevue, is moving to Belltown; adding to a circuit of “upscale” drink and/or dance joints coexisting increasingly uneasily with the artsier music and hangout spots. I’ve come to know the yuppie bars as places to avoid walking past at night if you don’t want to be fagbashed or sexually harassed by suburban snots who’ve never been told they can’t just do any damn thing they want. I’m perfectly happy to let these folks have their own scene; I just wish they had more decorum about it, befitting their alleged status in our society — i.e., I wish they’d stop pissing in my alley. (I also wish they’d leave the Frontier Room for those of us who actually like it.)

TURN OFF, TUNE OUT, DROP DEAD DEPT.: I come not to praise Woodstock nostalgia but to bury it. Yeah, Woodstock ’94 is a big crass commercial operation–but so was the original. It directly hastened the consolidation of “underground” music into the corporate rock that by 1972 or so would smother almost all true creativity in the pop/ rock field. If there was a generation defined by the event, it was one of affluent college kids who sowed their wild oats for a couple of years, called it a political act, then went into the professions they’d been studying — the Demographically Correct, the people advertisers and ad-supported media crave to the point of ignoring all others.

By telling these kids they were Rebels by consuming sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, the corporate media dissuaded many borderline hippie-wannabes from forming any real movement for cultural or political change, a movement that just might have only broken down the class, racial, and demographic divisions that boomercentric “Classic Rock” serves to maintain.

NO PLACE LIKE DOME: The local TV stations, especially KOMO, still persist in their tirades against so-called “government waste,” usually involving state or county buildings that were constructed for more money than they absolutely had to have been. Apparently, KOMO would prefer that all public works be built as cost-efficiently as the Kingdome originally was…

GROUNDING OUT: At the start of this baseball season, Misc. remarked that the sport’s biggest current problem was its association with right-wing cultural values, in all their contradictions. The strike only confirms this diagnosis. The owners (most of whom now represent Reagan-era speculative new money, as opposed to old family fortunes) aren’t so much in conflict with the players as with each other, representing different visions of conservatism; just as the post-Reagan Republican Party struggles to keep the religious ideologues and the free-market folks in one camp.

Baseball has traditionally had richer teams that could afford to get and keep the best players (like the Yankees and Red Sox) and poorer teams that couldn’t (like yesterday’s St. Louis Browns and Washington Senators). Today, there’s less of a caste split in the standings than there used to (the Royals and Indians have done well, the Mets and Dodgers haven’t) but there’s quite a split in the financial coffers. By advocating league-wide revenue sharing, the relatively poor “small market teams” (which really include bigger towns like Detroit and Montreal) want to lead corporate baseball into a paternalistic philosophy not unlike the pre-Thatcher UK Tories, based on joint investment in the future prosperity of the whole investing class. The profitable, so-called “large market teams” (which include smaller towns like Atlanta) are out to preserve the sport’s current philosophy of Reaganite rugged individualism.

This means, perhaps ironically, that the owners in New York and Boston are advocating the so-called “radical conservatism” traditionally associated with western Republicans, while the owners in Seattle and Colorado are advocating the old-boy-network spirit associated with Boston Brahmins and old-school Wall St. bankers. Without a united business philosophy, the owners can’t present a united front to the players, who are simply holding on to their own by opposing a salary cap, a move that puts them in unofficial cahoots with the rich teams.

DOWN WIT’ DA FLAVOUR: Your ob’d’nt correspondent recently spent half a week on Vancouver, the town that gave the world the smart sounds of DOA, 54/40, Skinny Puppy and k.d. lang. Now, though, thrash-fratfunk music is seriously considered by many to be the thing to put BC music back “on the map.” I stood through parts of a day-long free downtown outdoor rockfest, sponsored by a skateboard store; the skate demonstrations were astounding; but the bands mostly suffered from tiresome macho posturing. Some of them were accomplished players if you’re into that sort of thing, but I always want more.

There are still Vancouverites who try for creative sounds (including Cub and the Smugglers), but they’re hampered by a struggling club scene that’s stifled by real estate costs and liquor laws more restrictive than Washington’s (except for their 19-year legal age).

It was the week before the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, and the BC protest community was planning civil disruptions to call attention to Canada’s treatment of native peoples and the environment, England’s treatment of Ulster, et al. Official corporate sponsorships for the Games were in full force, including a billboard promising “The Best Coverage of the Games” — sponsored byShield condoms. That was next to a non-Games billboard that proclaimed, “You don’t have to abstain, just use protection” — showing a suggestive-looking hot dog and a package of Maalox. B.C. isn’t among the test markets for OK Soda but they do have the new plastic Coke bottle that looks like an old glass Coke bottle, sort of.

Anyhow, the fun and weirdness we know and love as Canada (from ketchup-flavored potato chips to the big nude virtual family that is Wreck Beach to the relatively-working community experiment of Co-Op Radio) might not be with us forever. Quebec separatists are now the official opposition party in the House of Commons; if their next referendum for provincial secession passes, the whole nation might collapse. Some folks have talked about creating a new Nation of Cascadia combining B.C., Washington and Oregon (whose motto, coined in the pre-Civil War days, is “The Union”). I’d love it if we could get their health care, gun control, strong public broadcasting, and appreciation for urban communities; just so long as we don’t have to have their high booze and gas taxes, media censorship, greasy-palm political corruption, and lack of a Bill of Rights.

PUMPED: Unocal 76 isn’t just gonna turn some service station service bays into convenience stores, but into complete fast-food-to-go kitchens. Reminds one of that mythical roadside sign, “Eat Here and Get Gas.”

DUMB AD OF THE MONTH: I’ve two questions about the current commercial, “Like a robot, I kept using the same tampon.” (1) Most humans who use those things don’t keep using the same one (unless they use those health-food-store washable sponge thingies). (2) I’ve never seen a robot that uses such products, have you? (You can imagine to yourself about The Jetsons’ Rosie or the Heavy Metal cover droids.)

STRIPPED: The worst comic strip in the daily papers in recent memory was Mallard Fillmore, billed in a P-I publicity blurb as “a conservative Doonesbury.” But Doonesbury sets its liberalism in solid character gags. Old-time conservative strips (Li’l Abner, Little Orphan Annie, Steve Canyon) anchored their politics in a holistic set of traditional cultural values, including the values of solid storytelling and fine draftsmanship. Mallard simply had an unattractively-designed, boorish duck character spout snide personal insults about the Clintons. If Models Inc. doesn’t know it’s not hip, Mallard doesn’t know it’s not funny…. It was dropped the same weekend that my trashing of it went to press.

PRESSED: The Times has lost a reported 14,000 readers since its redesign late last year, a change that turned a dull but idiosyncratic paper into a dull but bland one. Perhaps Fairview Fanny management is finally awakening to the notion that if you make your paper as boring as possible you should expect readers to be bored by it. But at least in the new design you always know where everything is: World news in the A Section, local news in the B Section, birth announcements in… you get the picture.

BOOZE NOOZE: Some legislators think it’d be a good idea to scrap the state liquor stores and let big chain stores sell the stuff. I support any move to dilute the power of the WSLCB, a truly outmoded institution whose picayune policies helped thwart any real nightlife industry here. However, I’m gonna miss the old liquor stores with their harsh lighting, no-frills shelving, surly clerks, and institutionalistic signage. Every aspect of the experience expressed a Northwest Protestant guilt trip over the evils of John Barleycorn; just like the old state rules for cocktail lounges, which had to be dark windowless dens of shame.

FLYING: A high-ranking exec with Northwest Airlines (America’s first all-non-smoking airline) was nabbed at the Boise airport earlier this month for holding pot. Shouldn’t he rather be working for that new commuter airline in Olympia?

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Ball Park Fun Franks are microwaveable mini-wieners with their own mini-buns! Tiny li’l critters, they rank in size somewhere between Little Smokies and the fictional “Weenie Tots” on a memorable Married…With Children episode. Speaking of weenies…

WHO’S THE REAL PRICK?: If you didn’t already have a good reason to vote against Sen. Fishstick, a.k.a. Slade Gorton, a.k.a. Skeletor, here’s one. Taking a cue from Jesse Helms’s perennial NEA-bashing, Fishstick’s just introduced a bill in the Senate that would let local cable companies censor public access shows. The poster child in his attack: our ol’ pal Philip Craft and his Political Playhouse show, in which groups of left-wing merrymakers chat up about hemp, safe sex, health care, military intervention and other fun topics–occasionally uncostumed. I don’t know what attracts Fishstick toward his obsession with the privates of Craft and co-hostBoffo the Clown, but this is a clear act of political silencing, under the guise of cultural intolerance. Craft’s weekly series only sometimes shows bare penii, but always speaks out against the kind of pro-corporate, anti-environmentalist policies that Fishstick supports. Oppose his divisive vision now, while you still can.

FLOWER POWERLESS: Rob Middleton, singer for the band Flake, made the mistake of picking a few flowers early one morning at Martin Selig’s Metropolitan Plaza towers (the Can of Spam Building and Zippo Lighter Building across from Re-bar, and site of KNDD’s studios). Four cop cars showed up to nab the vandal, who was arrested for theft, trespassing and assorted other charges. Our coveter of thy neighbor’s flora spent a few hours in jail until $850 in bail was paid.

RAISING STAKES: Just in time for Spy magazine’s return to the stands comes some local news about its favorite subject. Up by my ol’ hometown of Marysville, the Tulalip Tribes are talking up an offer to jointly develop a reservation casino with gaming mogul and NY/NJ regional celebrity Donald Trump, who’s apparently rethought his previous quasi-racist remarks against reservation casinos. I hadn’t gotten along well in that town when I lived there, and wasn’t sad when it was transformed from a country town into a suburb. But I dunno about the place becoming a squeaky-clean version of sin city. And I sure dunno if I want Spy following every move of my old neighbors; tho’ Taso Lagos, the frequent Spy letter-writer from Seattle who’s now trying to sell a movie project called American Messiah (starring Keister as a movie director who says “fuck” a lot in the video trailer), might.

`X’ WORDS: Thanks to artist-critic Charles Krafft, I’ve now gotten to see the original Generation X–the book Billy Idol’s old band took its name from. It was written in 1964 by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson; the cover blurb on the US paperback promised to expose “what’s behind the rebellious anger of Britain’s untamed youth.” It’s mostly about mods, rockers, teddies, all yourQuadrophenia types. There’s also two pages about playwright Joe Orton.

The title resulted from an ad the authors placed in a London paper, asking young people to send life stories. Responses included a poem titled Generation X, “written in the peace and tranquility of the trees and gardens of a psychiatric hospital” by “a female, age 20, suffering from depression and neurosis.” Lines include “Who am I? Who cares about me? I am me. I must suffer because I am me…Money, time, these are substitutes for real happiness. Where can I find happiness? I do not know. Perhaps I shall never know…” That original coiner of today’s most overused media catch phrase, who’d now be 50, wasn’t named.

‘TIL WE NEXT CROSS INKSTAINS, be sure to toast 20 post-Watergate years by making your own 18 and a half minute gap, write NBC to demand more episodes of Michael Moore’s mind-blowin’ TV Nation, and enter our new Misc. contest. Name the TV show (past or present, any genre) that’s least likely to be turned into a movie–then write a 50-word-or-less synopsis of a movie based on that show. Remember, there’ve already been movies based on soaps and game shows, so anything’s open. The best entry, in the sole opinion of this author, receives a new trade-paperback book of our choosing. There’ll also be a prize for the best scenario based on the title Nightly Business Report–The Movie.

PASSAGE

1955 magazine ad for Formfit girdles:

“It’s true! This local gal made good

In glamorous, clamorous Hollywood!

To wine and dine me nights, at nine,

The wolves would line for miles on Vine.

My footprints at Grauman’s Chinese?

They took my imprints to my knees!

They soon acclaimed me Miss 3-D:

Delightful, Dazzling, De-Lovely!

And what made me a thing enthralling?

My Formfit outfit. Really, dah’ling!

REPORT

My book on the real history of Seattle punk and related four-letter words should be out next March. Rewrites, pic-gathering, fact-checking, lyric-clearing and page-laying-out are about to commence bigtime. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see me out much this fall.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Mistigri”

HOW MANY OF YOU STILL WANT THE SONICS

TO GO TO THE KINGDOME NEXT SEASON?

MISC.’S TOP 22Sunday Mexican movie musicals on Univision

Suzzallo Library, UW (even with the awkward-looking new wing)

The Beano, UK comic weekly

Bedazzled Discs, 1st & Cherry

Hal Hartley movies

NRBQ

The New York Review of Books

M. Coy Books, 2nd & Pine

Salton electric coffee-cup warmers

Real Personal, CNBC cable sex talk show

Bike Toy Clock Gift, Fastbacks (Lucky Records reissue)

Daniel Clowes “Punky” wristwatches at the Sub Pop Mega Mart

Lux Espresso on 1st

The stock music in NFL Films shows on ESPN

Hi-8 camcorders

Seattle Bagel Bakery

First Hill Shop-Rite

Off-brand bottled iced tea

Carnivore, Pure Joy (PopLlama reissue)

Granta

Opium for the Masses, Jim Hogshire (Loompanics Unlimited)

Bulk foods

MISC.’S BOTTOM 19Telemarketers hawking car-insurance plans, who don’t take “But I don’t own a car” for an answer

Today’s Saturday Night Live (except for Ellen Cleghorn)

Voice-mail purgatory

Pay-per-view movies and home shopping taking over more cable channels

MTV’s rock merchandise home-shopping shows

The Paramount-Viacom merger

CDs with no names on the label side, just cute graphics that lead to misplacement

Mickey Unrapped, the Mickey Mouse rap CD

Tampon and diaper ads showing how well the things absorb the same mysterious blue liquid (they must be made for those inbred, blue-blooded folks)

KVI-AM (dubbed “KKKVI” by Jean Godden), the 24-hour-a-day version of Orwell’s “Two-Minutes Hate”

Speed

PBS/KCTS’s endless promo hype for Ken Burns’s Baseball miniseries

Goatees

Backward baseball caps Rock-hard breads from boutique bakeries, especially if loaded with tomato or basil

Morphing

Ice beer

Slade Gorton