MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive RANDOM LINKS FOR 4/8/13

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RANDOM LINKS FOR 4/8/13

April 8th, 2013 by Clark Humphrey

via seattle bike blog

Enterprising citizens calling themselves “Reasonably Polite Seattleites” took it upon themselves to install unauthorized “bicycle lane protectors” (reflective plastic pylons) along Cherry Street uphill from downtown. The city vows to remove them.
Seattle police chief John Diaz will retire, allowing Mike McGinn (or perhaps a successor mayor next year) to put in another figurehead for uncontrolled street-cop brutality.
In a Belltown where anything non-one-percenty is increasingly out of place (more about that in a day or so), Roq La Rue has been kicked out of its longtime space in the old Film Row RKO distribution offices. Fortunately, Seattle’s premier “pop surrealist” art gallery has found new quarters in Pioneer Square, effective some time this summer.
Meanwhile, a Crosscut contributor named Andy Fife asks whether there is aÂ “Seattle arts aesthetic.” Actually, there are several. There’s the “world class or bust” desperate slickness of most of SAM’s big permanent displays. There’s the “rich ex-hippie” mellow slickness of Chihuly and company. There’s the “modern monumentalist” big stuff seen at the G. Gibson and William Traver galleries. There are the house styles of Cornish and Gage and their recent alums. And there’s the “let’s put on a show” urban folk/pop styling of most of my personal faves.
New Orleans city bosses apparently want to simultaneously (1) shut down music venues, and (2) promote their city as a live-music tourist destination.
NBCNews.com blogger Wilson Rothman claims Apple’s iTunes is “out of date and out of touch.” Specifically, Rothman dislikes the whole idea of having to pay for song recordings. He seems to prefer the Spotify model, in which artists make fractions of fractions of pennies. That’s supposed to be the modern way?
Here’s one author who hates the new economics of the book bizâ€”Scott Turow, one of the few writers who’d thrived under the old system.
Joshua Macht at the Atlantic claims Time magazine has perhaps three years to live.
Hacked computer data shows the global one-percenters are hoarding trillions in secret overseas tax-haven accounts. Leaders of nations other than ours claim to be aghast.
The newspaper industry has started measuring revenue from online paywalls and ancillary products/services. The resulting figures show papers are nowÂ losing a little less money than previously thought.
The death last week of Spanish exploitation-film giant Jess Franco has been followed by the loss of another of that country’s great directors of sex and/or violence, Bigas Luna.
Annette Funicello, 1943-2013: The only original Mickey Mouse Club cast member to have a real adult showbiz career was the wholesome sex symbol in the Beach Party movies, and a pop singer of unusual clarity and panache. During her cameo in the Monkees’ film Head, she proved not afraid to parody (without breaking) her squeaky-clean image. She remained gracious and classy, even during her long slow illness.
We’ve also lost Les Blank, who directed 42 documentaries of varying lengths and topics (all shot on film). He’s probably best known for Burden of Dreams, the “making-of” film about Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. Many critics considered Blank’s behind-the-scenes story to be more compelling than Herzog’s feature.
And another goodbye, this one to Hilly Krystal, influential owner of NYC punk club CBGB. While he opened it as a hippie spot dedicated to “country, blue grass, and blues,” he quickly adjusted to welcome the burgeoning Bowery underground scene. The result was what the New Yorker called “the ultimate garageâ€”the place garage bands everywhere want to play.” (Update: This hereby-linked story is from 2007. Krystal’s still worth remembering nowadays, though.)
Femen and associated groups held an “international topless jihad day” across European capitals, though the slogans painted upon themselves seemed to almost all be in English.
Ending the drug war was never one of Obama’s top priorities. I suspect it’s because the whole bohemian-relaxation vibe clashed with the striving-for-progress zeitgeist that informed Obama’s worldview. But, as with gay marriage, he may be soon forced to act by a groundswell of popular opinion.
The Nielsen ratings now claim there are 5 millionÂ “zero television” households in the U.S., up from a mere 2 million in ’07. (The “kill your television” “radicals” will, naturally, completely ignore this information.)
Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch’s minions threaten to pull the Fox broadcast network off of over-the-air stations (including affiliates tied up in long-term contracts) and go cable-only, unless the courts outlaw a service to stream local over-the-air stations to local viewers via Internet connections.

3 Responses

Matt writes:
April 8th, 20138:28 pmat

The obit for Hilly Krystal is from 2007.
Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart") writes:
April 9th, 201312:49 pmat

After Katrina, I suspect many of us cringed at the thought of a rebuilt “gentrified” Big Easy, with “smooth jazz” clubs lining a newly rebranded Chardonnay Street. Now it appears that some of that has come to pass, just taking longer than we would have thought. I’m more than a little surprised at Mitch Landrieu’s apparent degree of cultural tone-deafness, but reading between the lines of the linked article I see a familiar clash around some of the old clubs between neighbors who are growing older and less tolerant and the real troublemakers, who as it turns out (surprise!) are affluent punks who get wasted, piss on somebody else’s sidewalk and then smugly go back to their tony enclaves. Deja Pioneer Square (or Belltown or Ballard) all over again.
Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart") writes:
April 11th, 201312:39 pmat

Re: the SPD…Paul Richmond, who as a videographer chronicled the WTO “festivities” and now practices law in Port Townsend, observes that Jim Pugel is the guy who was praised as a hero by the establishment press after ordering tear gas to be used on thousands of people.