WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOU’RE LAME: Here at Misc., we’re among the many sports fans who aren’t all that sad to say goodbye to Shawn Kemp. He wasn’t the first legend-in-his-own-mind to believe the world would instantly recognize and appreciate his all-around superiority if he only got outta Seattle, where grandstanding demands for idol-worship are often answered not with supplication but with dismissive pleas to get real. Most of the ambitious emigrants I’ve known, who all left town in full certainty of their imminent superstardom, got as far as becoming studio musicians on centerfold videos or bit parts on unaired TV pilots. It takes more than just a hostile attitude toward most everybody around you to make it in one’s chosen profession’s bigtime. It even takes more than the extraordinary talent Kemp’s definitely got. Despite NBA and Nike marketing themes to the contrary, basketball’s still a team game. And, as just about everybody’s middle-school P.E. teacher used to say, there’s no “I” in the word “team.” Speaking of poor sports…
THE FINAL SPORTS BLOOPER REEL: Disgraced sportscasters, like dead celebrities, appear to come in threes. First O. J. Simpson, then Frank Gifford, now Marv Albert. I’m just waiting for the inevitable Albert-meets-Tyson jokes to pop up. The whole tawdry affair almost makes those Fox Sports Northwest promo ads (the ones with images of the lovably square Dave Niehaus intercut with images of a trashed hotel room) seem nearly plausible.
THE MAILBAG: Seattle Scroll writer Jesse Walker writes in to insist he knew all along how the anti-Internet-hoax letter he ran in a recent “net hysteria” essay (reviewed in Misc. two weeks ago) was itself a hoax, and that attentive readers could’ve inferred from his piece that he knew. Unfortunately, he won’t get to clarify this in the Scroll‘s pages. The feisty year-old biweekly’s run out of money and probably won’t come out again.
DRAWING THE LINE: Recent years have seen lotsa grownup in-jokes in cartoons. One Cartoon Network promo spot’s built exclusively around material kids aren’t supposed to know about. It features the Tex Avery dog Droopy and Scooby Doo‘s Shaggy in a convertible, talking about how the Time Warner-owned cable channel’s now seen worldwide, when Shaggy asks, “Do you know what they call Pound Puppies in France?” Explaining how there’s no such thing as “pounds” in the metric system, Shaggy then asks, “What do they call Smurfs in Spain?” His answer: “Los Smurfs.” Only that’s wrong–as anyone who went to the Smurf theme park in France knows, the late Belgian cartoonist Peyo‘s critters have a different cutesy name in each major Euro language (Stroumphs, Schlumphs, et al.). In Spain, they’re “Los Pitufos.”
OFF THE LINE: Hard to believe it just a year ago when virtually every writer, photographer, cartoonist, graphic designer, and programmer in town was either being recruited for or trying to push their way into no-benefits “contract” employment as “content creators” for the Microsoft Network and/or Microsoft-owned websites. But now, the one company that could indefinitely sustain extensive, money-losing online ventures has chosen not to do so, at least not to its first extent. Many of the paid-access MSN sites (including the “alternative culture” site Mint) are being shut down; others are being scaled back. The free-access MSNBC website is also laying off almost half its “temp” workers; while the company’s Sidewalk entertainment-listing sites scattered across the country have faced greater-than-expected staff turnover (apparently several key people were hired as “creative” writers, only to find themselves stuck typing in movie-theater showtimes). While I’ll certainly look forward to seeing some of my acquaintances on this side of the pond a little more often,
ON THE LINE: After two years of development (interrupted by putting an ever-bigger paper out every week), there’s finally a Stranger website at www.thestranger.com. Each week’s current Misc. can be temporarily found on the site. The Misc. World HQ site (www.miscmedia.com) continues as a complete archive of the column and of assorted other things I’ve written over the years.
PASSAGE (from Incredibly Strange Music organist Korla Pandit): “Music may not save your soul, but it will cause your soul to be worth saving.”
