MISC. WELCOMES VALUE VILLAGE to E. Pike. The beloved for-profit thrift store plans to take part of REI’s current space next year, despite opposition from advocates of the Dictatorship of the Upscale, who apparently don’t like any stores folks like us can actually shop at.
KAMPUS KAPERS: Since the UW’s new prez is from Chapel Hill, that media-appointed Next Seattle®, let’s hope he understands the value to a town of a thriving music scene and of a college radio station that supports it. Maybe we should’ve demanded a better deal: get this guy and the Archers of Loaf, in trade for an ex-Fastbacks drummer and two singer-songwriters to be named later.
INFO HIGHWAYMEN: The “Telecommunications Reform” bill passed by the Senate, and now in the House, is a bad idea wrapped inside a worse idea. Most Internet users are aware of the “Communications Decency” amendment inside the bill, co-sponsored by our Sen. Fishstick (Gorton), an unconstitutional and unenforceable move to censor online discourse. The main part of the bill poses a greater threat. It essentially lets the huge media conglomerates grab an even bigger share of the airwaves and cablewaves than they’ve already got, and would let cable companies gouge consumers all they want. You’re not likely to hear much against it in the corporate media, so it’ll be up to you to spread the word to your U.S. Rep. and the White House that we don’t want this.
CLEANING OUT: Another venerable American pop-art form is on the skids. The open-ended daytime soap opera has been damaged by sleaze talk, OJ coverage, fewer stay-home moms, and the networks’ declining clout with affiliates. Guiding Light, the oldest ongoing dramatic production in the world, is rumored to be on or near the chopping block. ABC’s pulling the plug on Loving, its half-hour rest home for former All My Children actors (and Emergency! legend Randolph Mantooth). Current Loving storylines wrap up by November, when some of the younger characters get transferred to a New York-set successor show, LOV NYC, to star Morgan Fairchild. The new show’s said to be a fast-paced Melrose-ish romp involving allegedly Beautiful People and their troubles at being so darn young, affluent and in-demand. Sounds like desperation time at the nets. No wonder they want the feds to give them more power. They can’t compete in the changing media universe without it.
PRESS RELEASE OF THE WEEK (from Warner Bros., 6/16): “Please note the following correction to your Batman Forever press kit: The Batsuit Wrangler’s correct name is Day Murch.”
PLAYERS: Went on a recent press junket to Nintendo in Darkest Redmond, with six writers from desperate-to-be-hip mags like P.O.V. and Bikini. After two days of hearing these guys shout n’ schmooze about their life with rock stars and expense accounts, I finally understand why those magazines are the way they are. They’re tied in to industries that exist by persuading people to gamble (“invest”) their money into projects based on little more than promises that this is going to be HOT HOT HOT. These mags aren’t trying to be any generation’s “voice” but to expidite a flow of hyper-hype from advertisers and publicists to a nonexistant typical demographic consumer.
The tour itself wasn’t much; saw Nintendo’s big clean warehouse and its help-line operators, but the company’s wares are still made overseas and mostly designed either in Japan or by outside developers. Nintendo of America’s basically a marketing operation, hampered by the parent company’s lack of new hardware–it won’t have a 64-bit game machine ’til next spring. For now, they’ve got two main interim plans to make up lost market share: (1) new software like the Mortal Kombat clone Killer Instinct that pushes the graphic limits of current Super Nintendo hardware (and stretches the company’s former policies against graphic violence), and (2) Virtual Boy, a battery-operated game machine with a 3-D video headset. The latter might actually be fun: the graphics are mind-bending and not excessively “realistic;” the spacey 3-D effect really works. It’d at least make a great hardware platform for ambient-rave animations and New Age self-hypnosis programs.
WORD OF THE WEEK: “Eleemosynary”
