At Misc. we know some things are just too creepy to turn away from. That was the case when some folks working late in a CapHill building looked ou the window and saw a film crew re-creating the Mia Zapata abduction for Unsolved Mysteries. Under banks of lights, an actress in vaguely punkish clothes kept getting into a passing car, take after gruesome take.
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Can’t get it here, but Semtex is the hottest new soda pop in Prague. It’s named after one of the old Czechoslovakia’s most notorious exports–a plastic explosive popular with various terror and organized-crime outfits the world over. An NY Times story sez the chemical factory that made the now-banned explosive is suing. The soda people say they adopted the name ’cause it inspires “a feeling of activity and motion.” That’s probably the same reasoning behind Royal Crown Cola’s new fake Mountain Dew, Kick (“Warning: Contains stuff you don’t even want to know about!”).
BRETHREN AND CISTERN: For unknown reasons, the wife of sometime Stranger writer Bryan Clark was put on the mailing list for Your Church magazine (“Helping You with the Business of Ministry”). It’s a Protestant Sharper Image Catalog, by the publishers ofChristianity Today but with no theological content. Just blurbs and ads for nifty products: Office-cubicle walls “repurposed” to house Sunday School groups, vinyl siding, fiberglass baptism pools, choir robes, bulk quantities of communion wafers, candle holders, electronic organs (“the way Sunday should sound”), clear plastic pulpits (“where no visual barriers exist between you and your congregation”), new and used pews, shatterproof fake stained glass windows, kitchen supplies (“Equipping the Saints in a practical way”), computer software to keep track of membership and fundraising, even entire prefab church building sections. Coolest of all are the electronic music boxes, “digital carillons” (by a company called Quasimodo Bells) and “digital hymnals” (“Instantly plays thousands of hymns, choruses, praise music, children’s songs, wedding music, and gospel favorites”). Our lesson: Even the heirs of Calvinist austerity can’t help but be eternally fascinated by that most basic of human desires, the Quest for Cool Stuff.
`R’ GANG: Entertainment Weekly’s piece on the recent box-office failure of several “sex” movies only pointed out how unsexy those anti-erotic, un-thrilling “erotic thrillers” and equally grim exercises like Showgirls really were. Don’t worry: Sex still sells, these movies just weren’t selling it. They were trying to sell fear and/or hatred of sex; but hundreds of direct-to-video Basic Instinct ripoffs wore out the concept.
TELE-KINETICS: When the new-age talk show The Other Side was suddenly, quietly canceled last month, NBC was left with only three hours of daytime programming. Ratings for the show, which took an almost-rational look at “psychic phenomena, ESP, ghosts, alternative healing, and more,” were never great. Replacing original host Dr. Will Miller (the preacher/ psychologist/ comedian from old Nick at Nite promos) with a perky Entertainment Tonight droid only made things worse. You can make your own joke here about the show’s fans still being able to contact it psychically. Speaking of daytime TV personalities…
THE NEVERENDING STORY: I’ve avoided O.J. Simpson in this column, but now note that the recently retired daytime personality’s looking to start a new life in the face of ostracism by former L.A. acquaintances and hangouts. The Philadelphia Weekly reports his representatives are looking into potential homes for him in Philly’s ritzy Main Line suburbs. Imagine–the figure who nearly put the soaps out of business, moving to the real-life Pine Valley.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Perv, a new local monthly gay paper, is a lot like what the Misc. newsletter would have become if I’d kept it going. It’s one big sheet of paper in Stranger’s old paper size but sideways, crammed with gossip, jokes and comix. Of course, I’ve never written about the gay-male bar scene and Perv writes about little else. Still, you don’t have to be gay yourself to realize the way-serious Seattle Gay News can’t be the only possible gay viewpoint in town. And I do like Perv’s comment on how “if every fashion show in town is fetish, then fetish isn’t much of an alternative anymore, is it?”
