AND SO IT HAS COME TO THIS: Seems everything in this once-sleepy town’s Growing! Changing! Morphing!

Even in print.

The powers-that-be at The Stranger have decided they no longer want to publish this here little compendium of factoids and opinionoids.

The concept behind Misc., first in June 1986 at the old ArtsFocus monthly and since November 1991 at The Stranger, was to report aspects of the Seattle popular culture that didn’t fit a standard format of arts reviews, previews, and interviews.

Its schtick of assorted short and long items was never intended, as some have alleged, as a short-attention-span paean to any so-called “MTV generation” but rather a revival of the classic three-dot newspaper column as practiced by such past masters as Walter Winchell, Irv Kupcinet, and the P-I-era Emmett Watson.

The real value of a three-dot column isn’t depth but breadth. At a time when knowledge and careers are increasingly specialized, there’s a need for generalists who can explore the contexts, juxtapositions, and connections among seemingly unrelated phenomena, from something as general as global socioeconomic trends to something as specific as a candy bar.

This column’s treated fashion, food, politics, music, architecture, medicine, painting, porn, magzines, talk radio, etc. etc. as equally important disciplines, each with something to reveal about the larger world.

It’s treated its readers as intelligent humans, not as some target-marketing stereotype. It hasn’t told you what bands, movies, or shows to see; it hasn’t promised to make you wealthier or slimmer or more sociable or more orgasmic; just to inform and entertain. It’s taken a personal point of view, yet hasn’t tried to promote the author as its own biggest topic. It’s been opinionated, but without any in-your-face “Attitude.”

The column’s also tried to reflect and respond to today’s ever factioning, increasingly complex society. Canadians used to say the U.S. was a “melting pot” but Canada was a “mosaic,” where different ethnic and cultural groups got to maintain more of their own identities with less pressure to conform to a “mainstream” norm. Nowadays, the U.S. is getting more mosaic-y than ever (while Canada’s searching for some kind of social grout that’ll keep its tiles from flying apart).

It takes a generalist to detect the patterns among the tiles, the developing harmonies and disharmonies and color schemes–without excessively oversimplifying the patterns, without invoking obsolete stereotypes of one “dominant culture” vs. one “counterculture.”

While having fun with the convoluting minutae of modern urban life, the column’s tried to advocate the idea that this unmelting of the melting pot’s an overall good thing. Much as I enjoy the documentation and ephemera of our cultural past (movies, magazines, postcards, records), I’ve no wish to return to any “good old days” when racism was official national policy, or when book publishing was firmly controlled by a few tweed-suited men in Manhattan.

We need more tribes, more virtual communities, more ways for individuals to find their own voices and form their own affinity groups. But along with that we need ways for these communities to learn about, and from, one another.

Thanx and a hat tip to all my loyal readers, sources, and informants over the years, and to the Stranger staffers who’ve helped to keep it accurate, pretty, and properly-spelled. A special nod goes to Matt Cook and James Sturm, who helped get the column into the paper back in ’91, and to Alice (no relation) Savage, who commissioned its first incarnation at ArtsFocus.

The column existed before The Stranger did, and will continue online at Misc. World, www.miscmedia.com. There’ll continue to be non-columnar material by me elsewhere in the paper (“Cyber Stuff” and the new “Diversions” in the Calendar section, “X-Word,” reviews, one-shot essays and articles). And I’ll be working on new projects, including a long-threatened “Best of Misc.” book and a new edition of my local music-history book Loser.

‘Til then, some closing words from the last broadcast by ex-Seattleite and pioneer network newscaster Chet Huntley: “Keep the faith; there will be better and happier news, one day, if we work at it.”