MISC. CAN HARDLY WAIT to try foam dancing, the latest craze from Spain. It landed on these shores at Miami trendspots, and is now showing up at a nightclub in (of all places) the Tri-Cities. It uses a modified artificial-snow machine to blow foamy bubbles all over and above the dance floor. Reminds me of the bubble-shower scene from Revenge of the Cheerleaders, only clothed.
FARE GAME: Some of you might have been confused when you called a cab to get home from the 1/1 festivities and a different cab showed up. Broadway Cab, the prompt and reasonably courteous taxi line whose car-side boasts of LOWEST RATES were generally true, has been folded into Puget Sound Dispatch, parent company of the larger (and costlier) Graytop Cab and Yellow Cab of Seattle. Most of Broadway’s cabs are being repainted Graytop’s colors and will charge Graytop’s higher rates; however, as Graytop rep David Gordon sez, “A limited number of Broadways will continue to operate as Broadways,” at the lower rate. Also, a dozen or so of Graytop’s current driver-operators are reportedly planning to launch their own independent service, Red Top.
IRIS OUT: The past Xmas season was the last for the Whole Toon Catalog, Seattle’s nationally renowned mail-order video sales outlet for all things animated. Some observers blame Whole Toon’s demise on its downtown retail store, which closed earlier this year after failing to generate enough sales to meet its high rent. But beyond that, Whole Toon had to deal with the consolidation of the video biz under Blockbuster and other big chains–many of which targeted the sell-thru kidvid market as a prime growth center. But what we’re losing with Whole Toon isn’t just another place to order the next direct-to-video Lion King sequel. We’re losing the one place where serious animation buffs could get every cartoon video in print (and hundreds of out-of-print rarities), from silent Felix the Cat classics to Baby Huey laserdiscs–plus French-language books about Tex Avery and the only reference book to ever print the names of the anonymous producers behind Underdog.
TURN OUT THE LIGHTS: According to the state Attorney General’s dept., the Zygon Learning Machine (a cassette player combined with opaque goggles that flash hypnotic light patterns into your eyes) not only doesn’t meet its claims as a subconscious brain-reprogramming device, it often doesn’t even mechanically operate properly. But if you can find a working one, it does make a good drug-free enhancement to ambient-techno listening.
I almost got a job at Zygon writing scripts for Learning Machine tapes. Its office was in Redmond’s most sterile office-park zone, near the Northern Exposurestudio (appropriate for the New Age fantasyland nature of Zygon’s claims). Hypnotic learning tapes have been a staple of the New Age industry for years; I’ve seen cassettes promising to help you do everything from find your soulmate to build your vocabulary or increase your bowling score. I’m naturally skeptical of anything that asks me to stop thinking and just receive mental reprogramming, but thousands of folks are willing to at least experiment with the things. Thus, I wouldn’t sick the state on Zygon over the Learning Machine’s basic claims. But I can support going after the machine’s mechanical frailties and Zygon’s selling tactics (including “electronic junk mail” messages sent to thousands of Internet users).
PREVIEWS OF COMING TRANSACTIONS: Expect a new owner for Seven Gables Theaters as soon as the end of the month. Seattle’s king of respectable multiplexes has been a pawn in a sequence of acquisitions over the past years, finally ending up in the hands of indie-film mogul Sam Goldwyn Jr.Goldwyn’s unsuccessful attempts at producing higher-budgeted films, along with the decline of his American Gladiators TV franchise, have led him to put various assets up for sale. John Kluge, the showbiz speculator who sold five TV stations to Fox and has used the proceeds to prop up what’s left of Orion Pictures, wants to buy everything Goldwyn’s got, including Seven Gables. Since Kluge also owns the old American International film library, maybe we should demand that if the sale goes through they should run weekly midnight screenings of Beach Blanket Bingo or The She Creature.
