MISC. was quite amused by the reader who spotted seeing a billboard in Barcelona for something called “Tacoma Jeans” (but was a wee bit offended by her follow-up remark, “Does that mean they smell bad and you can’t have any fun in them?”).

THE KALAKALA IS HERE NOW, and that’s apparently good news to the folks back in Kodiak, Alaska. According to a Kodiak couple I met who are wintering in Seattle, nobody there could stand the dead-fish smell that stank up the whole harbor during the three decades the ex-ferry spent stuck in the mud up there as a non-floating fish processing plant. The better news is the boat no longer reeks, even though it currently looks a ways from its former glory. Most of the dead-fish smell apparently came from the dead fish themselves while they were on the boat; what was left got cleaned away when the restoration crew prepared the classic ferry for its tow back to Seattle.

THE MAILBAG: A kind reader recently called to my mind a strangely prescient plot point in the otherwise snoozerific Sly Stallone flick Demolition Man (1993). Cop Stallone and crook Wesley Snipes wake up after decades of cryogenic “sleep,” to find themselves in a relentlessly pacified future–where every restaurant was a Taco Bell. Does this mean that chihuahua dog will have actually won his ‘Gorditas revolution’?

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Quisp is back in Seattle! Yes, QFC has stocked Quaker Oats’ original “Quazy Energy Cereal,” made famous in a series of classic Jay Ward/Bill Scott TV commercials starting in 1964 (in which the cute l’il spaceman with the built-in propeller on his head battled the macho tuff guy Quake, who also had his own cereal). Quake cereal disappeared in the early ’70s but Quisp hung on, though in recent years it was only distributed under that name in a few regions of the country. The rest of us had to settle for “Sweet Crunch,” the same “little golden flying saucers” packaged in a cello bag as part of Quaker’s bargain line. But now the cute spacedude’s face once again graces local shelves, on boxes that even offer your own $16.95 collectible Quisp wristwatch. I’m happy.

WATCH THIS SPACE: Denny’s is planning to go into the ex-Pizza Haven #1 building on University Way (most recently a dollar store). ‘Bout time the Ave had another 24-hour inside-dining place again (I love the IHOP, mind you, but sometimes you need something else at 4:20 a.m.).

EXCESS (IN) BAGGAGE?: In the late ’80s, during a cyclical height of fears concerning foreign terrorist attacks, a local performance artist actually got a gallery commission to travel around the world wearing a giant badge reading “AMERICAN TOURIST.” For this year, Perry Ellis has come out with a whole line of designer luggage bearing the name “AMERICA” as a brand logo. Does this mean Americans are no longer afraid to proclaim their nationality when traveling abroad, or that said nationality can probably already be inferred from their loud ties and uncouth attitudes?

MAGAZINE OF THE WEEK: Mode doesn’t complain about skinny women in fashion pictures. It proactively depicts wider ladies as perfectly attractive in their own right. I know guys who are into the pix in Mode and I can see why. It depicts women who love themselves, feel comfortable in their world and in their bodies, and would probably be lotsa fun to be around. Still elsewhere on the stands…

A DISTURBING TREND: Recent Cosmo and Playboy sex surveys claimed collegians aren’t doing it as much as their ’80s predecessors. Something clearly must be done to reverse this. Maybe part of the problem’s in the mags themselves, and the rest of the corporate media. For decades, humans have been commercially urged to sublimate their natural erotic cravings, into the care and feeding of the consumer economy instead of their own and their lovers’ bodies. Men are old that “women leave you” but a Toyota pickup won’t; and that “it’s a widely held belief” that men who wear a certain brand of shirts “are widely held.” Women are told it’s less important to have sex than to merely look sexy, which can only be accomplished via the purchase and use of assorted garments and products. Then there’s the postcard ad showing a perfect-preppy couple clutching in their undies with the slogan “Things get fresh when you unwrap it,” advertising “the gum that goes squirt.”

Maybe instead of using sex to sell products, we in the alterna-press, zine, and website communities could re-appropriate the language of advertising to promote more sex:

• “Sex–it’s not just for gays and lesbians anymore.”
• “Sex-positive attitudes–now men can have them too.”
• “Don’t drink and drive–stay home and have some sex.”
• “Sex–it does a body good.”
• “Sex–Just Do It.”
• “Eat less, lick more.”

Speaking of public service sloganeering…

CATHODE CORNER: A current anti-drunk-driving public service ad and a current motor-oil commercial are both using ultrasound fetus imagery. The former spot shows what the titles claim are in vitro images of a baby who was “killed by a drunk driver on her way to being born.” The latter shows an animated baby who repositions himself from the classic fetal position to a stance approximating the driver’s seat of a race car, and who then pretends to grab a steering wheel and roar away (tagline: “You can always tell the guys who use Valvoline“). Wonder if the second baby will grow up into someone who’ll run over someone like the first baby.

THOUGHTS ON TWIN PEAKS VIDEO NIGHTS AT SHORTY’S: This might strike some of you in the hard-2-believe dept., but next February will mark 10 years since David Lynch filmed a TV pilot film in North Bend and environs, and forever publicly linked Washington state with coffee, owls, and demonic serial killers. At the time the series ended in the spring of 1991, I was semi-distraught that something this beautiful, this perfect evocation of everything I found funny and evil and odd and fetishistically square about my home state could die. (Nobody knew the “Seattle Scene” music mania would reiterate many of these themes on a global stage by the end of that year.) Then, while watching the episodes on the Bravo cable channel a couple years ago, I realized the series couldn’t have gone on much longer anyway. Lynch was and is a filmmaker, not a TV maker; by breaking so many of the rules of episodic television and mass-market entertainment (among the transgressions: treating the victim in a murder-mystery plotline as a human, tragic figure instead of a mere puzzle piece) he and co-producer Mark Frost essentially doomed TP to a short, intense span on the air. The large cast, now dispersed to such other projects as LA Doctors and Rude Awakenings and Stargate SG-1, means we’re not likely to see any more reunion movies–except in written form, thanks to the sci-fi-born institution known as fan fiction. (Shorty’s, 2222 2nd Ave., screens episodes at 7 and 10 p.m. Tuesdays; 21 and over.)

THOUGHTS ON THE NEW RUBY MONTANA’S STORE: Even a cute knick-knack shop feels it has to grow up and become a retail-theater experience (albeit a mighty cool one, with elaborate hunting-lodge decor complete with a hand-carved fake fireplace). And since when did the daily papers start calling Montana’s new landlord, Ken Alhadeff, a civic leader and philanthropist? Doesn’t anybody remember this is the man who tore down the beloved Longacres horse-racing track for Boeing offices?

THOUGHTS ON THE BEATLES PHOTO-PRINT SHOW AT ANIMATION USA: Contrary to what dumb newspaper columnists like Tony Korsheimer still claim, Those Kids Today do not know the Beatles only as “the band Paul was in before Wings.” Folks who’ve come of age in the late ’80s and ’90s have been inundated with Beatles nostalgia all their lives, but have never heard of Wings (except for poor Linda, who preached a healthy lifestyle and got cancer anyway).

ANOTHER PERSONAL TRAGEDY: Just learned about the death of an ol’ pal from lung cancer. I didn’t hear about it until weeks later (apparently everybody who knew about it just assumed everybody else who knew her had also heard). She was one of the old-school punx. She got her kid, now nine, what might have been the first all-black baby wardrobe in Seattle. Now the kid will go off to live with other relatives, and I’m left with images of her smoking outside the office where we both worked in the ’80s. Like many smokers, she talked about quitting a lot, and actually attempted it several times. I’m also stuck with images of the many hipster kids who’ve come after her, many of whom actually believe smoking’s rebellious (yeah, becoming physically dependent on the products of Jesse Helms’s corporate buddies is like so anti-establishment) or it’s OK if it’s that smaller brand the kids mistakenly think is made by native Americans (it really isn’t).

‘TIL NEXT WEEK, don’t smoke anymore please but go ahead–have some sex. You’re worth it.

(Got any more slogans to help get the kids off the streets and into each other? Suggest them at clark@speakeasy.org.)

WELCOME BACK to Standard Time and to MISC., the popcult report that was quite bemused by the coincidental confluence of the fun, fake scares of Halloween and the depressing, real scares of election attack ads. The strangest of this year’s bunch has to be the one for Republican Rep. Rick White with the typical grim music and the typical grim B&W still images telling all sorts of supposedly nasty things about Democratic challenger Jay Inslee–ending with the criticism that “Jay Inslee is running a negative campaign.” (But then again, one can’t expect moral consistency from Republicans these days, can one?)

KROGER TO BUY FRED MEYER AND QFC: The Cincinnatti-based Kroger Co., long one of the big three upper-Midwest grocery chains (with A&P and American Stores/Jewel), was America’s #1 supermarket company for a while in the ’80s, at a time when it, Safeway, and A&P were all in downsizing mode, selling or closing not just individual stores but whole regional divisions. Now that the food-store biz has worked out a formula for profit levels Wall St. speculators find sufficient, the big players are expanding again, building bigger stores and gobbling up smaller chains. By gobbling Fred Meyer, QFC, and the various Calif. and Utah chains Fred Meyer’s absorbed, Kroger again will be #1 (ahead of American Stores, which just took the prize when it announced its big combo with Albertson’s). What’s it mean to you? Not much–what really matters in the biz is local-market dominance, not chainwide strength.

THE FIRST THING I’VE EVER WRITTEN ABOUT CLINTON-HELD-HOSTAGE: Why are followers of Lyndon LaRouche manning card-table protest stations downtown, pleading with passersby to support Clinton against the GOP goon squad? Maybe because the Repo men could quite easily be seen as trying to accomplish what LaRouche (before he was imprisoned on credit-card fraud charges) used to accuse liberals and Jewish bankers of conspiring to establish–a quasi-theocratic “New Dark Ages” where demagougery and raw power would overtake all remainiing semblances of representative democracy.

Another potential interpretation of the whole mess: Clinton’s lite-right political stances were engineered from the start to tear asunder the most important bond of the Reagan coalition, that between corporate Republicans and religious-authoritarian Republicans–not necessarily to improve the political lot of those more liberal than Clinton himself, but more likely to simply improve the playing-field chances of corporate Dems like himself. With the impeachment frenzy being whipped up ever more noisily by the authoritarians (to increasing public disinterest), Clinton may be almost deliberately setting himself up as a potential self-sacrifice to this Quixotic quest, to finally disrupt the Religious Right’s ties not only to its big-biz power brokers but its pseudo-populist voter base.

Of course, an institution at the heart of U.S. political maneuvering for some three decades or more (going back at least to Phyllis Schafly’s major role in Barry Goldwater’s ’64 Presidential bid and the concurrent drive to impeach Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren) won’t go away, and won’t give up its hold on the system without a fight. By driving the theocrats into increasingly shrill, dogmatic, and hypocritical positions, Clinton’s setting up next year to be the year the theocrats either shrink into just another subculture or finally achieve their darkest dreams of quashing the democratic system of governance as we know it. Next Tuesday’s midterm Congressional elections might or might not mean that much in the main scheme-O-things, but the months to follow will be a bumpy ride indeed.

WHAT THIS TOWN NEEDS: Last week, I asked you to email suggestions about things Seattle oughta try to get soon, now that we’re at the potential endgame phase of our recent economic boom. Here are some of your, and some of my, wants:

• A citywide monorail line. It’s being worked on.
• Repeal of the Teen Dance Ordinance. It’s being worked on.
• A sign in the library: “This is not a convenience store.”
• A community radio station. A collective called Free Seattle Radio is currently raising money to start another pirate FM operation. But what I’m talking about is a real station, licensed and above-ground, with just enough resources to cover the issues, arts, and voices that make the city.

  Reader Dave Ritter adds, “Seattle needs a new common ground. Ideally, this would be a radio station owned by a consortium of local entertainment figures. The programming would be market-exclusive and inclusive. The format would rely on tried and true radio (pre-1973) small market rock-radio principles. Kind of a Stranger with sound. It wouldn’t even have to be FM, if done correctly, but it would need to be legal, and competent.”

• A theater festival for the troupes and directors too big for the Seattle Fringe Fest (which is fringier than most other North American fringe festivals).
• A good Scottish pub (not Irish or English).
• Better bus service, particularly between neighborhoods (like Magnolia) and non-downtown workplace districts (like Elliott Avenue).
• Rent control or something like it. A reader named Dee writes, “I’ve heard enough horror stories and I feel Seattle is going in the same direction as San Francisco with the big money moving in, and people of low to moderate incomes becoming further displaced. My one hope is Seattle has strong working class roots with a bit of a socialist heart. I think enough educated people will become pissed off enough to make the noise which will lead to better changes.”
• A local, live hip-hop showcase club. For that, we might need–

• A city attorney who’s not a stooge for gentrification. Sure lotsa people hate the classist, possibly racist policies of Mark Sidran, but nobody even ran against him the last election.
• Saner liquor laws. The Washington Liquor Control Board was born in post-Prohibition times when the more “upstanding” elements of local society were worried at the threat of the wild-west saloon culture coming back. To this day, the liquor bureaucracy believes its mission to be keeping a tight lid on what adults can and cannot do on licensed premises while consuming legal drugs. A healthy urban society needs a strong nightlife industry; while the liquor bureaucrats are less restrictive in some aspects than they used to be, they’ve a ways to go toward abetting this the way other “regulatory” departments help the industries they lord over.
• A movie theater with booze. The truly-vast McMenamin’s brewpub empire in Portland has a couple of these. Up here, General Cinemas is planning to convert its low-profile multiplex at 130th & Aurora to a movie theater with food, but no word yet on a liquor license. Before Paul Allen bought the Cinerama theater downtown, another bidder on the property wanted to turn it into a viewing-‘n’-sipping establishment. The Rendezvous restaurant’s Jewel Box Theater has hosted many film screenings with full booze service. Some think there must be a Washington liquor regulation against booze and movies, but that appears to be not the case. Besides, if you can have sports bars with multiple big-screen TVs, you oughta be able to have a bar with a movie screen.
• A real winter bacchanale, not the tame bar-promotion event Fat Tuesday quickly became. Something with real joie de vivre. For that matter, our all-too-fair city could use a little less prudery overall. Scrap that ten-year “temporary” moratorium on new strip joints, so we could get one of those nice “gentleman’s clubs” your girlfriend’s not ashamed of you going to. Establish at least one public clothing-optional beach in the county. Even legalize (or at least decriminalize) prostitution, and make it a co-ed biz (old widows and middle-aged divorcees need love too, ya know).
• A bowling alley in or near downtown. Maybe one could go in part of the yet-unleased old Nordstrom complex, or in the Convention Center expansion (as a leisure amenity for tourists and locals alike).
• More spirit and less “attitude.”
• More democracy and less demographics.

‘TIL NEXT WE VIRTUALLY MEET, be sure to vote next Tuesday for the library bonds and the minimum-wage hike (and against the abortion ban and affirmative-action ban), and consider these words from Alexander Pope: “Vice is a monster so frightful to mein, that but to be seen is to despise; yet seen too oft familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

(Be sure to send in your Halloween party reports, including the number of Monica Lewinskys seen, to clark@speakeasy.org.)

WELCOME BACK TO THE ONE-&-ONLY ONLINE MISC., the pop-culture column that was as startled as you to find a full-color, almost full-page, atatomically-correct (more or less), side-view computer illustration of a male lower torso on the Lifestyles page of the 10/19 P-I. It was there, natch, for a long story encouraging prostate-cancer tests. But hey, if it takes the “educational” justification of a deadly disease to help demystify and de-demonize the Staff of Life, so be it.

STAGES: The Seattle Repertory Theatre now has a managing director named Benjamin Moore. So far, no scheduled productions of Paint Your Wagon.

AD OF THE WEEK (on the Stranger Bulletin Board page): “Lesbian Guitar Teacher.” Hmm, an instructor in the heretofore-underappreciated art of the Lesbian Guitar: I could go for the cheap anatomical-reference jokes every guitar student’s heard or said at one time, but instead will ponder “Lesbian Guitar” as a specific musical form. Could it be the ever-so-earnest acoustic fret-squeakin’ of Holly Near or Ferron? The somewhat more humanistic, yet still stolid, chord-thumpin’ of Phranc? The electrified “Torch and Twang” of early k.d. lang?

It’s the curse-in-disguise of all these women (and others of their various ilks) that they’re known first as statement-makers, second as stage presences, third as singers, and almost not at all as instrument-players. This neglect of the role of music in female-singer-songwriter-ing is at least partly responsible for the near-total lack of female instrumentalists on both Lilith Fair package tours. It dogged Bikini Kill throughout their career; it took that band’s co-leader Kathleen Hanna to start a whole new concept with a whole different instrumentation (Julie Ruin) for some critics to even notice that she’d been a darned-good musician all this time. (Lesbian-led bands that have gotten at least partial critical notice for their actual playing, such as Team Dresch, are exceptions that prove the rule.) Elsewhere in tune-land…

CLOSING TIME?: An NY Times story (10/15) discussed the precipitous decline of commercial rock as a music-biz force, noting sales charts now dominated by rap and rap/R&B hybrid acts. One quoted industry expert said “the Seattle bands” had been rock’s last best hope, but Nirvana ended and Pearl Jam got lost in its politics and the whole Rock Reformation got sidetracked. I’d put the blame on the suckiness of chain-run rock radio and MTV, which have bled the patient (themselves) to near-death with their repitition, selection of awful bland-rock acts, and stupidity. Of course, the suckiness of corporate rock radio (and of corporate rock promotion in general) is one of the things the Seattle bands had been trying to rebel against. Speaking of getting lost in politics…

BUMPER STICKER OF THE WEEK (seen in Belltown): “Chris Cornell for Mayor.” Actually, why not? If business success is the only prerequesite for a political career, Cornell sure counts. He and his Soundgarden bandmates started an enterprise from scratch, which grew steadily into a multimillion-buck operation that helped put Seattle on the music-biz map. (He’s even begun to assert a political worldview, having participated in that joint petition to Al Gore on behalf of old-growth forest preservation.)

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Steve Mandich’s Heinous #5 (the first issue in three years) is a professionally-written, DIY-printed mini-size zine, bound with strings of old audio-cassette tape. Topics include the Seattle Pilots (our ill-fated first MLB team), ’70s self-made celebrity The Human Fly, women’s motorcycle-jumping champ Debbie Lawler, rock records about Evel Knievel, and a Bob Newhart career retrospective for a change-O-pace. ($2 from P.O. Box 12065, Seattle 98102, or by email request to smandich@teleport.com.)

EX-LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Not only is commercial film production in Washington at an even lower ebb this year than last, but even MovieMaker, the slick magazine about indie filmmaking, suddenly moved from Seattle to L.A. over the summer. Does that mean no remaining hope for true indie (i.e., totally non-L.A.) filmmaking?

SCREEN PATTERNS: Actually, the reasons for the repertory program’s move to the Egyptian have little to do with the filmgoing tastes of college students and more with Landmark (née Seven Gables) Theaters’ schemes. 7G started repertory movies in Seattle at the Moore, which was where the Seattle International Film Festival also had started. Then Landmark came to town and bought the Neptune in the U District, driving 7G out of the repertory side of the biz until Landmark bought 7G. From there, Landmark decided to use the Neptune for hi-profile new releases, shunting the rep films to the smaller Varsity. Now it’s repositioning the Egyptian as the “Year Round Film Festival” theater.

(Still no word, by the way, about Landmark’s corporate fate. Last we heard, its current owner, financier John Kluge (who made a fortune selling five TV stations to Rupert Murdoch and promptly lost much of that fortune in Orion Pictures) had put the chain up for sale.) Meanwhile, Seattle’s other ex-locally-owned theater chain, the onetime Sterling Recreation Organization circuit now part of Cineplex Odeon, quietly had a change of management in recent months. CO’s now jointly owned by Sony and Seagram (whose respective studio units, Columbia and Universal, were the only major Golden Age Hollywood studios that hadn’t been connected to theater chains back in the ’40s).

MATERIAL BOY: Last week, I asked for your suggestions on new career moves I, your long-underemployed author, could take. A few of you didn’t quite get the “career” part of it (such as those who thought I should start a cable-access show or other unpaid stuff). Other responses generally fell into a few main categories, among them the following:

• 1. “Just write the same column but not about Seattle.” Easily the most common response. But not as easy as it sounds. Having observed the modest syndication success of Savage Love (one of only a half-dozen successful syndicated columns ever in “alternative” weeklies), I can appreciate the conceptual work required for one. I can’t just offer these papers an unlocal version of my regular commentary work, nor could I hook ’em on something their own staffs can produce (movie reviews, etc.). Besides, part of the whole point of this particular column concept is that it’s from one particular place at one particular time, even when it discusses the products of the far-off entertainment conglomerates. No, the Misc. shtick wouldn’t adapt well to the everywhere/nowhere of the national media universe. I’d have to start from scratch with a whole new column concept. (Which isn’t to say that I can’t or won’t.)
• 2. “Become a national magazine freelance writer.” There are prospects more depressing than the freelance life as lauded in old Writer’s Digest magazines (sitting in one’s home-office, sending the same “sure-fire” article proposals out to everybody from Grit to Cracked while cross-referencing all their rejections on index cards), but I can’t think of many right now.
• 3. “Chuck it all and go live (someplace warm) (in the country) (in NY/LA).” No; this little corner of Canadian-style propriety inside the U.S. (without Canada’s quaint accents or gun control or universal health care) is and will be my home. I could use some more travel, though. Anybody wanna fund my Searchin’-4-America book?
• 4. “Forget writing as a means of income, and take on a real career.” Thought about this one a lot, and still do. I’ve sent out lotsa resumes, attended the last High-Tech Career Expo, and scour the want ads for new exciting opportunities. Some of these pursuits (or at least fantasies about them) might lead to adventures or misadventures I’ll mention in future weeks. Imagine following me along as a taxi driver, meat cutter, stripper at bachelorette parties, legal assistant, or house painter.
• 5. “Go into business for yourself.” I am, to the extent I can afford to. This site may become more commercialized and more elaborate. The long-promised Best of Misc. book could appear as early as Xmas. There might be other assorted ventures as well. I’m already designing the T-shirts and looking at your-own-brand-on-the-box cereal makers. So while the global economy might be iffy, I’ll do everything possible to make Misc. World a more vibrant, economically robust place. Unless, of course, I win at Quinto one of these weeks.

TO CLOSE, some words-O-wisdom from the recently-deceased former TV Guide reviewer Cleveland Amory: “`Action-packed’ means the boys can’t act but the girls are stacked.”

(Our next reader quiz: What does Seattle need? The full essay and invite will appear in next week’s column, but you can send in your ideas now to clark@speakeasy.org.)

MISC. is the column asking the musical question: Would you even want to live in the same building with the maniacally-grinning GQ models depicted in all those condo ads?

UPDATE #1: Tosco, which runs gas stations under the BP brand in Washington, sez it’ll keep that name up for the time being, even though BP’s own stations in other regions will switch when BP takes over the Amoco brand. (Confused? Good.)…

UPDATE #2: QFC, having absorbed Wallingford’s fabulous Food Giant, is now taking over another of the top Seattle indie supermarkets, the gargantuan and lavish Art’s Family Center on Holman Road. Art’s was originally a multi-store strip mall containing both an Art’s supermarket (the last of what had been a five-store chain) and a Marketime drug-variety store. Fred Meyer bought Marketime in the ’60s, then unloaded its half of the Holman Road complex to Art’s (which kept many of the Marketime merchandise departments, making it what the French call a “hypermarket”). Now that Fred Meyer’s already bought QFC last year, it’s got the whole complex back. (Still confused? Good.)

HELD IN CHECK: Seafirst now has “Celebrate Diversity” checks, in a sort-of rainbow design–only this “diverse” colorscape is all mellow and pale. A lot like Seattle in general….

TOO CLOTHES FOR COMFORT: After a couple of weeks, I think the new Nordstrom store looks a LOT like the Forum Shops mall at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, a place that doesn’t even pretend to be sublime or understated. It was made clear from the start that nothing recognizable from Frederick’s, except for the exterior facade and the thick supporting posts, would be preserved. (Even the elevator and escalator shafts were moved.) But I don’t think many expected the new store’s total in-your-face experience of New Money, all proud and boastful and coldly showoffy yet trying conspicuously to be proper. If Bloomie’s or Saks had installed such a store, everybody’d complain how indiscreetly un-Seattle it was.

MILLENNIUM BUGGY: The Year 2000 Computer Problem hysteria hasn’t spawned a new survivalist cult, as some commentators and periodicals have claimed; but it has breathed new life into existing cults. The “head for the hills with canned goods and guns and gold” folks, having missed out (so far) on predicted apocalypses (apocali?) involving nukes, race riots, U.N. “black helicopters,” oil shortages, etc. etc., now get to invoke a simple yet oft-misunderstood software-upgrade failure as their new premise to solicit converts and customers–a premise conveniently scheduled on a date steeped in religious mysteries and referenced by prophets from Nostradamus to Plan 9 From Outer Space narrator Criswell.

Many of the “Y2K” doomsday scenarios promoted by the survivalists read less like knowledgeable tech writing and more like excuses to shoehorn in pre-existing survivalist dogma. Like the parts about inner cities turning into instant war zones while the rural inland west remains serene and posse-protected. Not only does this line ignore that over half the country now lives in suburbs, it ignores that major metro areas are usually the first to get upgraded civic electronics, while the countryside’s still stuck with some of the most antiquated phone and power-delivery systems–the ones most likely to not get fixed so their databases understand years that don’t start with “19.”

What the alarmists get right is how nearly everything in the modern world (air-traffic control, oil refineries, long-distance lines, Social Security, medical equipment, stock markets) is intertwined in mainframe-computer networks, the real “world wide web.”

But the Y2K problem won’t crash everything at once. It just means companies and governments that let these unprofitable but necessary system upgrades slide now have to implement them at once.

At the least it’ll mean a hit on most everybody’s financial bottom lines for the next two years; draining cash-flows and spurring various degrees of layoffs. At worst, some of the various software/ hardware fixes around the world might not be ready (or adequately tested) in time, so some databases might have to be put off-line for a few weeks and some utility and industrial-control systems might have to be switched to planned backup mechanisms. In an absolute-worst plausibility, some fixes that were thought to work won’t, causing scattered system crashes. And some stand-alone industrial machines with pre-programmed computer chips inside might hiccup; but even most of those failures should be predictable and worked around.

So don’t give in to the fear-profiteers in the canned-food and gun industries. If you want to believe in a Biblical-style apocalypse, remember the verse about how mankind “knoweth not the day nor the hour.”

(More good readin’ about this topic is in Paul Kedrosky’s recent essay at Rewired.)

MISC. CAN’T BELIEVE nobody else (to our knowledge) has noted how the new logo for Safeco Insurance (and, hence, for Safeco Field) looks a lot like a rightward-slanting dollar sign…. Speaking of stadia, turns out the Kingdome can’t be imploded on New Year’s 2000 without canceling a Christian convention tentatively scheduled for that night. Darn.

(SUB)URBAN RENEWAL: With the opening of the 3rd Ave. Deli in the ex-Bon Tire Center on 3rd, downtown has its own mobile, curb-based readerboard sign with arrow-pattern chase lights. Strip-mall flavor in the heart of the city!

AFTERWORD: Crown Books is closing all its Washington stores, as part of a nationwide retrenchment. The book superstore chains’ chief victims aren’t the specialty independents, but the smaller general bookstores of both indie and chain ownership.The stores that discounted the bestsellers, prominently displayed the most heavily advertised books, and offered very little else.

BUT DO THEY COME IN LONG-SLEEVES?: Viagra
that male-potency pill endorsed by everybody from Bob Dole to Hugh Hefner, isn’t available yet in some countries, including India. That hasn’t stopped a Bangalore, India company from marketing Viagra-logo T-shirts with the slogan “What the World Wants Today.” A co-owner explained to Reuters, “Today, Viagra is not just a pill… it is a positive attitude bringing hope to people.”

JUST IN TIME FOR XMAS: Mattel’s debuting a Barbie-sized Erica Kane doll. Imagine all the wedding gowns you could get for it! Or maybe you could play where she grittingly grins while your Marlena Evans and Vicky Lord dolls show off their tiny Emmys.

REVOLTIN’ DEVELOPMENTS: A couple months back
Misc. wrote about the possibilities (for good or ill) of a new American revolution. Seems the topic’s becoming popular; at least as a selling tool. Both Taco Bell and Dos Equis invoke bizarre takes on Poncho Villa to sell consumer consumables. A golf ball called the Maxfli Revolution advertises it’ll help you “Seize Power and Take Control.” Closer to home, the highly institutional-looking ARO.Space sez its initials stand for “Art and Revolution Organization” (its ads even say “Viva le Revolution!”). If this keeps up, Baffler editor Tom Frank will have enough “advertisers co-opting the language of dissent” rant topics to keep going for years.

PASSING THE TORCH: British Petroleum (which bought Standard Oil of Ohio in the ’80s) will buy Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana); so the former Mobil (nee Standard of New York), Exxon (nee Standard of New Jersey), and assorted other gas stations in Washington now bearing the BP brand will eventually change. (Alas, no more “Petrol for the lorry” lines, and no more jokes about where bees go to the bathroom.) But it’s not known yet whether they’ll assume Amoco’s torch logo or whether Tosco
the Connecticut-based company that bought BP’s Northwest operations in the mid-’90s and kept regional rights to the BP name, will instead change them to the 76 brand, which Tosco now owns outright. (After the print edition of this column went to press, Tosco announced it would keep the BP brand on its stations for the time being.) In other energy-related matters…

A BURNING ISSUE: It’s hard right now to think about heating equipment, unless it’s everybody’s favorite gas-powered industrial space heater. I speak, of course, of the mighty Reznor. When a rock singer using that surname showed up, some fans wondered whether he was related to the brand name bearing down from near the ceilings of stores, warehouses, artists’ studios, garages, nightclubs, etc. Turns out ol’ Trent is indeed a descendent of the company’s founder George Reznor (who entered the furnace trade in 1888, in the same central Penna. town where Trent grew up).

But the Reznor family’s had little to do in decades with the company, which has changed owners several times. Current owners gave 120 or so employees an “offer” last year: Take pay cuts of up to 28 percent, or else. The workers stood their ground. The owners shipped the jobs off to Mexico. Northeast politicians are now invoking the ex-Reznor workers as poster children for the injustices of NAFTA and the Global Economy.

So next time you hear Trent’s moans about frustration and helplessness amid a decaying industrial landscape, look up. If you see a Reznor heater above you, it’s a reminder that, for some, such feelings aren’t just an act.

WELCOME TO A MIDSUMMER’S MISC., the pop-culture column that hereby calls for a one-year moratorium on any further motion pictures depicting the violent destruction of computer-generated replicas of New York City.

UPDATE: The Cyclops restaurant, closed last year when its building was demolished in the Belltown redevelopment mania, will be reborn later this summer as a beneficiary of that same mania. It’ll be in a part of the ex-Peneil Mission/ Operation Nightwatch building, whose new landlords wanted more potentially lucrative tenants than the perenially underfunded social-service sector could provide. Since the building’s side sports half a faded old Pepsi sign blending into half a faded Seven-Up sign (the two have long had the same local bottler, which was once based in that building), it’d only be appropriate if a mixture of the two took a place on the beverage menu…. In other real-estate news, the nearby Casbah Cinema’s turned its SIFF-month closure into an indefinite one. The beautiful screening room in an alley location without dedicated parking is still for sale. And the former U District Clothestime juniors’ clothing store is now a National Guard recruiting office (talk about your yin/yang dualities).

OVERREACTION DEPT.: The supposed “gang riot” last Saturday at the Fun Forest was, as far as I’ve been able to determine, really just either an argument or an exhibition of horseplay by a handful of rowdy teens; climaxing either with a few gunshots into the air or (more likely) firecrackers. The ensuing scramble among sweaty, crowded kids set cops scrambling into crisis mode and herding all opposite-race youths off of the grounds. Live TV reporters got all hussied-up about a Sudden Threat to Public Safety, while the kids passing by just giggled or mugged it up to the cameras–this was a big Dionysian revel that had merely gotten a bit out of hand, not the huge angry mob depicted. More telling was the scene the following late afternoon, in which teams of cops with plastic face masks and billy clubs shooed any and all groups of three or more young Af-Ams not just off the Center property but out of the larger vicinity. It’s not just the Sidran gang and the anti-affirmative-action cadre who fear blacks, particularly young blacks. The fear is ingrained in the popular image of a clean, ordered city where everybody’s soft-spoken and unassuming. Lots of real Af-Ams are just like that, of course; but lots of whites still think (consciously or sub-) that Black + Young = Gangsta. (White teens can get rowdy too, but tend not to inspire such wholesale crackdowns.) Elsewhere last weekend…

DAYS-O-FUTURE PASSED: The Mariners’ Turn Ahead the Clock Night promotion, with uniforms and stadium signage supposedly harkening forward to 2027, finally let the Nintendo people put their graphic stamp on the team they co-own, at least for a one-game gimmick. The oversize, maroon-and-black, not-tucked-in jerseys with the huge, tilted logos and the “Xtreme-sports” style lettering, accessorized with metallic-colored batting helmets and racing-stripe pants legs, harkened back to an early-’90s computer-game interpretation of cyberpunk’s retro-modernism. Of course, it was all completely antithetical to the modern-retroism of the new Mariner stadium; so no regular Ms’ uniforms will probably ever look like that. (‘Twas also fun to ponder the fake out-of-town scoreboard listings for Venus and Mercury. If you think the thin air in Denver affects the game…)

DESIGNS FOR LIVING: A bookseller of my acquaintance recently tipped me off to one of the nonsexual passages (yes, there are several) in the Kama Sutra: a list of “the sixty-four arts and sciences to be studied” by a learned man or woman. They include some universals (“singing,” “dancing,” “tattooing”), some obscure-around-these-parts cultural practices (“binding of turbans and chaplets”), and some practical matters of life in ancient India (“storing and accumulating water in aqueducts, cisterns, and reservoirs”). Anyhow, it’s inspired me to compile 64 arts and disciplines (from the practical to the spiritual to the just plain fun) a modern person should know. As always, I’d like your suggestions, to clark@speakeasy.org. Results will appear in this space in three weeks.

(Here’s a link to the original Kama Sutra list)

(Next week: The 1998 Misc. Summer Reading List.)

It’s the 12th-anniv.Misc., the column that wonders if Vancouver essayist Brian Fawcett was right when he said malls and subdivisions are typically named after the real places they replaced, whether a corollary might be made about car commercials promoting further traffic-jamming steel tonnage with images of the wide open road, or (even better) SUV ads using nature footage to sell landscape-ruining gas-guzzlers.

OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS: Loyal readers have been sending junk food samples from far and near. Scott McGrath, though, takes the no-prize for the biggest cache of snax from the furthest-away place. The centerpiece of his shipment: a hamburger (made with chicken) he found at a Beijing convenience store, in a sealed envelope complete with bun, lettuce, and “salted sauce.” The English half of the envelope’s back warns of a two-to-three-day shelf life for the product, depending on the time of year. The bun got squished in transit, but it’s otherwise a normal looking way-past-pull-date meat food. The rest of his box contained Japanese, Filipino, and Taiwanese products he found in Guam: Banana catsup, dried squid and cuttle fish, soybean and herbal-jelly soft drinks, and Marine World Biscuits (shrimp-flavored animal crackers in fish shapes labeled, in English, “Tuna,” “Dolphin,” and even “Sea Lawyer!”). Many of these are more conveniently available at Uwajimaya and other local Asian-food emporia, but it’s the thought behind the gift that counts.

ANOTHER YEAR OLDER: I’ve traditionally used this, the anniversary week of Misc. (begun in the old ArtsFocus tabloid in June 1986), to take a look back at the column, the changes in Seattle, or my journeys. This time, I want to look ahead. This li’l corner-O-newsprint ain’t my sole ambition in life. There’s plenty of other things I’ve always wanted:

• My own restaurant. Under the big neon sign that just says EAT, the Merry Misc. Cafe would serve honest grub at honest prices. On the menu: Burgers, cheese steaks, whole-cut fries, meat loaf, fruit-cocktail salad. In the lounge: Old fashioneds, Brew 66, naughty-joke cartoon napkins. On the walls: framed drawings by alternative cartoonists, a Silent Radio LED displaying post-postmodern aphorisms, a TV displaying old-time car commercials or women’s bowling coverage.
• My own cereal. Frosted Miscberry Crunch would have the taste, and the crunch, that wakes a person up after a long night of arguing in bars about macroeconomic trends. Each box comes with a mini-Mensa exam on the back and a “Great Postpunk Singer-Songwriters” trading card inside.
• My own hydroplane. Watch the valiant Miss Misc. roar in the time trials, with rock-band bumper stickers strewn over its sponsons! Shudder as it flips on a harsh turn in Heat 2A! Cheer as the underfunded, underequipped pit crew uses duct tape and extra stickers to fix it in time for a come-from-behind victory in the Consolation Heat!
• My own travel agency. Misctour would arrange charter bus, train, and air journeys to all the truly great vacation spots–Tacoma! Ritzville! Bend! Wisconsin Dells! Akron! Tulsa! Moose Jaw! Dollywood! Wall Drug! And only the finest traveling amenities–clothing-optional planes; scat-singing tour guides; the Game Show Network in every motel room; complementary copies of DeLillo’s Underworld; emocore karaoke parties; free ice.
• My own (commercial) TV show. I’ve actually tried to make this happen, rounding up crews and shooting test footage on three occasions in the past two years. But it’s proven a tough nut to get an independently-produced series onto a regular broadcast station (not cable access). I’ve heard from producers with much more experience than I, who’ve all told the same stories of stations afraid to take a chance. Still, I believe broadcasters will eventually realize local programming (of all sorts, not just sports or mayhem-centric news) is their best competitive weapon against the growing horde of cable, satellite, and (soon) Net-based video feeds.

UPDATE #1: KING’s given the former Compton Report time slot, at least for now, to a blase travelogue show (by the station’s Evening Magazine unit) full of blase trips to blase romantic getaways. And as for the same station’s Sunday-night syndicated version of Almost Live: The same inconsistent humor, the same slick production values, just none of the here-and-now factor that gives the original AL its heart. And, of course, no Kent jokes.

UPDATE #2: Operation Nightwatch, the coordinated admissions service for local homeless shelters, just moved from across from El Gaucho and the Pampas Club to the Millionair Club building a block away. The cause–natch–redevelopment at its old building.

BETTER SHOP AROUND: The Stranger’s already written about big changes threatened and/or rumored for the funky li’l Fremont shopping district. Some funk-lovers worry that inflated rents and new developments like the adjacent Adobe abode could cause the district’s quaint knick-knack shops and cafes to get replaced by bland upscale emporia. So far the only official move is GlamORama, a Fremont anchor for almost 20 years, being put up for sale. If Fremont does get too ritzy for some current occupants, where could the new Groovytown be? It’d have to be a place within the city limits, convenient to buses, where lo-rent, hi-coolness retail stores and public-market-like booths could be amassed within less-than-glossy surroundings. Pike Place should be preserved for the merchants there now, but the moribund Newmark Center nearby might be remodelable into a sort of urbane anti-mall. Other possibilities: Georgetown, the cheap-furniture district on 1st Ave. S., Rainier Valley, or an abandoned supermarket or discount store somewhere. Roosevelt Square (the ex-Sears on NE 65th) could’ve served the bill, but it’s being largely taken over by an out-of-state “healthy foods” chain. Speaking of shopping…

MALLED DOWN: Northgate management, admitting the “Mall That Started It All” (the first modern U.S. suburban shopping center, built in 1950) has looked a bit dowdy of late, announced expansion plans. The central corridor and the exteriors would be spiffed up, but more important (and more problematic, zoning-approval-wise) are the new buildings to be added in the vast parking moats and across the street. Here’s why: There’s a nationwide decline of sales in mall stores, in favor of freestanding “big box” chains. To see the near-future of suburban shopping, look at the vast industrial-park expanses surrounding Southcenter. Where warehouses had replaced farmland, now Target and Circuit City and Borders and PetSmart have replaced the warehouses. Malls are trying to fight back with everything from frequent-shopper incentive programs to new mini-boutiques like “Piercing Pagoda.” But the one thing that keeps folks from avoiding Southcenter’s interior is the food court, which feeds big-box-store customers as well as mallrats. As department stores have served as traffic-drawing anchors for malls, now malls themselves are repositioning themselves as anchors for big-box clusters.

Malls, for all the limitations caused by their restrictive management, remain the closest things to “gathering places” in a lot of sprawling suburbs and exurbs. If they continue to decline, will these communities become even less communitarian, even more isolated? Or will a revived fascination with urban living (as seen in “restored” downtowns and the upscaling of places like Fremont) lead suburbanites to crave more real gathering places of their own? (Already, some Lynnwood residents are talking about wishing to build a “downtown” in that stretch of sprawl that never really had one.)

PUTTING THE `SIN’ INTO `INSINUATION’: Misc.’s truth-be-stranger desk notes how the Northwest’s biggest recent sex scandals now include one potential soap-stud moniker (Brock) and two potential porn-star names (Packwood and Moorehead). The former two were outspoken pro-feminist politicians who got accused of delivering unwanted gropes to several women. The latter’s an outspoken queer-hating preacher who’s been accused of molesting several men. It all just goes to show the seductive power of hypocrisy.

(These and similar matters may or may not be discusses at the fab 1998 Misc.-O-Rama, an evening of readings, music, games, and other pleasures; starting 8 p.m. Monday at Shorty’s, 2222 2nd Ave. No cover; 21+.)

SORRY TO LET YA DOWN, but Misc. just couldn’t come up with a sufficiently good/bad pun to describe the announced Quaker State/ Pennzoil corporate merger. Not even one involving the phrase “lube job.”

THE MAILBAG (via Michael Miller): “Regarding your question about being televised during a future Seattle Olympics under the `quaint local customs department,’ the answer depends. If a film crew expects me to walk around in Doc Martens, drink Starbucks, wear flannel, drive a 4 x 4, and brainlessly idolize Bill Gates, Boeing, and that idiot Chihuly, then the answer is `blow me!’ However, if they are willing to film me coming home from work in my classic Mustang, changing clothes, playing with my dogs, sneaking over to my neighbor’s mailbox, `borrowing’ her Victoria’s Secret catalog, and then jerking my stuff before yelling `Hi mom!’ into the camera, then fine, film away.”

LOADS OF SUDS: Anheuser-Busch, ever on the prowl for ways to replenish flat or slightly-declining beer sales, is now test-marketing Catalina Blonde, the “first beer for women,” in select areas (not around here yet). It’s a lighter-than-Lite concoction–half the alcohol content of regular Bud; fewer calories than Bud Light. No word on whether it’ll be promoted with tightly-dressed Catalina Blonde Boys tossing out key chains at the Flower & Garden Show.

PILOT LIGHT EXTINGUISHED: We neglected to previously report on the early-April passing of Dewey Soriano, the tugboat pilot who took effective control of the Pacific Coast League in the mid-’60s, and was rewarded for his efforts by the baseball establishment by getting Seattle’s first MLB franchise, the 1969 Pilots. He held a name-the-team contest as a PR stunt, but had already chosen to name it after his own former (and future) profession piloting commercial boats; that’s why its logo had a nautical, rather than an aviation, theme. Of course, his thin pockets could only take one year of losses at the beloved yet creaky old AAA ballpark, and by April 1970 (the same season Boeing laid off half its staff) the Pilots were sold and became the Milwaukee Brewers (now threatening to move again). The City of Seattle sued the American League, and in the settlement got the Mariners franchise seven years later. While the local dailies’ obits praised Soriano for bringing the majors to Seattle, I still wished the Pilots had owners who could’ve kept the team alive until the Kingdome finally got done. And it was touching, in a way, to see the ’98 Mariners remember Soriano by serving up Pilots-quality relief pitching in the weeks immediately following his passing.

SODDEN: Damn! The webzine Salon already did what I wanted–to request your own phony Microsoft support letters. If you’re tuning in late, the LA Times revealed a scheme wherein MS’s hired PR firms would concoct a supposedly spontaneous gush of letters and newspaper opinion pieces–all begging state and federal governments to back off from their assorted antitrust actions against the software giant. Commentator Jim Hightower calls these sorts of fake-grassroots campaigns “AstroTurf politics.” MS denied the allegations, claiming the newspaper had merely uncovered documents of unapproved PR-campaign proposals. The paper stood by its story.

It does read like something with which MS could conceivably try to get away. Except the trickery would’ve been all-too-obvious if all these supposed ordinary civilians all spouted the same leap-O-faith line–that the company’s dominance wasn’t really the result of its relentless deal-wringing and strong-arm tactics, but simply of releasing “popular” products within an unfettered open marketplace. It’s the kind of complex reality-distortion construct that too easily collapses when you try to translate it from spin-doctor lingo into more “natural”-sounding prose.

That’s where Salon’s invite comes in. They’re asking for original, equally preposterous, leave-MS-alone arguments. (Their own example letter: “Since I upgraded to Windows 95, my pancreatic cancer has gone into remission, my daughter was accepted to law school, and I won $50 in the Lotto Quick Pick.”) Send your own to www.salonmagazine.com. Or send ’em to us at clark@speakeasy.org.

MISC. IS PLEASED AS PUNCH, well at least pleased as non-alcoholic punch, that US West’s directory-assistance service has adopted the classic information number 411. Now, even the most clueless white mall gangsta-wannabe will get it when hip-hoppers they rap about being “down with the 411 boyyieee.”

UPDATES: KCPQ now has the made-to-be-rerun-forever Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine after its 10 p.m. news weeknights, an improvement over the tired M*A*S*H repeats previously at that time…. King County will probably ask voters to approve a 2012 Seattle Olympics bid, if the idea gets that far. I still wanna learn what quaint “local color” TV segments you’d be willing to appear in should the games come here; send suggestions to clark@speakeasy.org clark@speakeasy.org.

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: We’ll be kind and say the two new Joey Cora chocolate bars are for baseball-stuff collectors, not for candy lovers. Lovely label, though. ($2 at Safeway.)

LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE WEEK: With seemingly everybody today caught up in the mad dash for bux, it’s not surprising a zine like Space for Rent would show up. In fact, I’ve seen publications like it before, wherein everything’s really a paid ad, including the text articles. This thing’s so cheaply produced, though, it’s hard to see why any would-be pay-to-play writer or illustrator wouldn’t just put out their own photocopied pamphlet. (Available from P.O. Box 3234, Seattle 98114.)… like ex-Rocket Veronika Kalmar, who’s put together her own modestly-sized newsprint zine, The Iconoclast. The first li’l issue’s got Kalmar dissing celebrity journalism (perhaps a disguised potshot at her ex-employer), fellow sometime Rocketeer Dawn Anderson trashing “post-feminist” reactionaries, and assorted show and record reviews. (Free at the usual spots or $1.50 from 117 E. Louisa St., #283, Seattle 98102).

THE HOLE STORY: The Seattle bagel craze has apparently gone day-old. The Brugger’s Bagels chain has turned into a “Breads & Cafe” chain, Zi Pani (a name as meaningless as Håagen-Dazs). We could be in for a rerun of the mid-’80s retreat when all those cookie shops tried to reposition themselves as “treats” shops. Elsewhere in changing-storefront land…

THE DESTRUCTION CONTINUES: Rumor has it that the next hip outfit to be evicted later this year by the Samis Foundation (that alleged nonprofit that acts more money-grubbing mercenary than some for-profit companies) just might be Colourbox, for some five-plus years the odd duck of 1st Ave. S. niteclubs (i.e., the one place on that “Blooze”-bound street where you could actually hear tunes composed since 1970). No word yet on just when it’ll get kicked out, or what its operators might plan to do in the future. Elsewhere in clubland…

SQUARELY GAY: ARO.Space, the new mostly-gay dance club in the old Moe building, is as clean looking a night spot as any I’ve seen. With its muted pastels and recessed lighting, and retro-modern furnishings, it could easily pass for a set in a ’60s sci-fi film or in the future world fantasized at the Seattle World’s Fair. It might also be seen as a desperate attempt to be fake-London, or as something too damn institutional looking to be really fun, or as an expression of gay designers too enraptured by Ralph Lauren colors or by that new interiors magazine Wall.Paper. Under this theory, the space evokes gay men trying to prove they’re just as respectable as anybody else by being bland in a Zurich airport terminal kind of way. But I prefer to see it as a “neutral” gallery-type space, only with the dancers and clientele as the “art” on display. It enhances its clientele’s outrageousness by not competing with it.

CRASS? WELL…: Ex-GOP gubenatorial candidate Ellen Craswell has quit the Republican Party to start her own political movement, one where the purity of her authoritarian right-wing ideology wouldn’t be compromised by those success-obsessed corporate Republicans. She plans to call her movement the American Heritage Party. She apparently hadn’t realized the name “American Heritage” is already trademarked, by a magazine and book line owned by that quintessential corporate Republican Steve Forbes, who’s currently on a personal crusade to keep Religious Right followers within the Republican fold. Will Steve object, or even care? Time will tell, or rather Forbes will.

IN HONOR OF all the kindly PR people who keep sending their bizarre promotional trinkets our way, Misc. hereby informs you that (1) Miller Beer is now printing scenes from its TV ads on the backs of its labels; (2) it’s the 35th anniversary of the Easy-Bake Oven and its makers are sponsoring a recipe contest at www.easybake.com; and (3) GameWorks now has a Jurassic Park walk-through “experience,” whatever that is.

UPDATES: Looks like we’ll get a Ballard Fred Meyer after all. The chain’s reached a compromise with neighborhood activists. As a result, Freddy’s will leave part of the ex-Salmon Bay Steel site near Leary Way for industrial use. The ex-Ernst site up the street, which I’d suggested as an alternate Freddy’s space, will now house the Doc Freeman’s boating-supply emporium…. Not only is the Apple Theater, the region’s last all-film porno house, closing, but so is Seattle’s other remaining XXX auditorium, the video-projection-based Midtown on 1st. Real-estate speculators hope to turn it into more of the yupscale-retail sameoldsameold.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Cindy Simmons’s Wallingford Word (“Cutest newspaper east of Fremont”) is a sprightly eight-page newsletter on north-central issues and events. The first issue highlights Metro Transit’s scary plan to chop service on all-day neighborhood routes in the near north end, in favor of more rush-hour commuter service–a scheme which, if implemented, would devastate the notion of transit as an option for voluntarily car-free urban life. Free in the area, or online at www.seanet.com/~csimmons.

THAT’S SHOE BIZ: The high-priced sneaker biz is collapsing fast, according to a recent USA Today business story. It claims teens and young adults are (wisely, in my opinion) moving toward sensibly-priced footwear and away from $120 high-tops bearing the name of this year’s overhyped slam-dunk egomaniac. What will happen to the NBA without endorsement contracts to make up for salary caps? (Some superstars make twice as much from shoe ads as they do from actually playing basketball.) Maybe something good–maybe the overdue deflation of the league’s overemphasis on individual heroics and the realization that it’s a better game when played the Sonics’ way, as a full-team effort. And maybe the Woolworth Corp. will be proven wrong to have jettisoned its variety stores to put its resources into its struggling Foot Locker subsidiary.

CREAMED: After all these weeks, folks are still talking about the Bill Gates pie-in-the-face incident in Brussels. Maybe it’s ’cause instigator Noel Godin knew the spectacle he wanted to make. Self-proclaimed “entarteur” (applier of, or to, tarts) Godin, 52, is a lifelong provocateur–a vet of the May ’68 rebellion in Paris and of that movement’s ideological forebearers, the Situationists (post-surrealist artists and theorists who explored what Guy Debord called “The Society of the Spectacle”). Besides his paid work as a writer and historian, he and a corps of volunteers have pied famous people in public for almost 30 years. Targets have ranged from writer Margeurite Duras (Godin told Time‘s Netly News website that Duras “represented for us the `empty’ novel”) and bourgeois art-world types to Euro politicians and TV personalities. Godin told Netly News he targeted Gates “because in a way he is the master of the world, and… he’s offering his intelligence, his sharpened imagination, and his power to the governments and to the world as it is today–that is to say gloomy, unjust, and nauseating. He could have been a utopist, but he prefers being the lackey of the establishment. His power is effective and bigger than that of the leaders of the governments, who are only many-colored servants.” Godin’s not merely out to poke fun at the mighty, but to call the structures of power and privilege into question. You can see Godin (as an author during a radio-interview scene) in The Sexual Life of the Belgians, available for rent at Scarecrow Video.

(I still won’t tell latte jokes in the column, but I will be guest barista this Tuesday, 8 p.m.-whenever, at Habitat Espresso, Broadway near John.)

As of this writing, Misc. can’t see what the big deal is about a president who’s (allegedly) continued to behave like good-ole-boy politicians from all regions have been known to behave. At least, even if the worst current allegations hold up, it only means he’s conducted his affairs more discreetly than Wilbur Mills, more consensually than Bob Packwood, and with less potential damage to the republic than JFK (who, it’s largely acknowledged, carried on a long-term fling with a Mafiosa). Of course, JFK and even FDR didn’t have to deal with an out-for-blood industry of talk-radio goons, “Christian” TV demagogues, and rabid GOP hypocrites out to personally smash anyone who, like Clinton, even vaguely threatens their drive for unquestioned total domination. Hard to believe there was once a time when bigtime politicians were largely criticized over policy and job performance.

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: If you’ve always wondered where the term “having Moxie” originated, or remember the word popping up in old MAD magazines, it happens to be the oldest brand name in the soft-drink biz. It started as a patent medicine, or “nerve food,” in Massachusetts back in 1884. When the 1907 Pure Food and Drug Act restricted the beverage maker’s claims that it could cure almost any ill (including loss of manhood, “paralysis, and softening of the brain”), Moxie was reformulated as a carbonated recreational drink. It continued to be advertised with images of vigorous health, leading the name to be associated with spunk and audaciousness. It was sold nationally, and at one point was bigger than Coke. But by the 1960s it had retreated back into a minor New England regional brand.

Now, the Redmond-based Orca Beverage Co. is locally distributing drinks under the Moxie name. There’s a cherry cola and a creme soda now, with an orange-creme flavor soon to follow. They’re tasty drinks, with strong flavors and light carbonation–but none of these is the original Moxie flavor, a root-beer-like concoction described (by some ex-Bostonians I’ve met) as an acquired taste. That one’s not being brought out west, at least not now.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The slick Oly-based rockzine Axis just keeps getting better. The January issue includes brisk reports about Mudhoney, Nomeansno, Engine 54, Sky Cries Mary, an alternative-scene barter system, a recent Oly spoken-word fest starring Lydia Lunch, the Swiss suicide cult Solar Temple, and the cannibal-movie classic Motel Hell; plus kissable b/w photos and a raunchy-yet-innocent comic by Tatiana Gill. (Free at the usual dropoff spots, or $2 from 120 State Ave. NE #181, Olympia 98501.)

VISIONS: Another Super Sunday’s come and gone. While watching the game in a friendly neighborhood bar, I started wishing for more public video-viewing opportunities. Almost all bars and restaurants with TVs will only let you watch sports on them, with only the scattered X-Files or Melrose Place viewing parties for exceptions. I’d like to see a room with a satellite dish and different monitors in different corners, showing all kinds of fare in a convivial party atmosphere. People could join in to hiss at soap villains, cringe at awful music videos, see who can get the most obscure Simpsons gags, take umbrage at Sam Donaldson, and view shows unavailable in parts of town (Comedy Central’s South Park, the International Channel’s foreign music shows) or on any local cable (the Game Show Channel’s Gong Show reruns). The only fare you couldn’t legally show in such a place would be movies from home videocassettes, most of which aren’t licensed for public screening.

IN A STEW: Seattle magazine’s looking for “The Martha Stewart of Seattle.” The mag seeks a super-cook or super-decorator, but I think the title should go to somebody who, like Stewart, has forged a highly lucrative self-made-woman career by ironically promoting a fetishized version of old-fashioned stay-home-hausfrau values. Hmm, who do we know in this state who might qualify? Linda Smith perhaps, or maybe Ellen Craswell? If you can think of someone similar who lives a little closer to town, report it at clark@speakeasy.org.

Welcome back to MISC., the pop-cult column that thinks it’s finally figured the reasoning behind the Spice Girls’ second CD cover, which looks almost exactly like the first one except the letters SPICE are tall instead of wide. It’s probably a subtle claim that these women can get anything elongated. Elsewhere in gender-land…

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: By now even the most budget-minded among you probably have your clearance-sale ’98 wall calendars. You few remaining stragglers might consider the just-out Sensitive Geek Boys of Seattle calendar by Christina Malecka and Erika Rickel. Assorted sweet-faced models are photographed (by Trish Dickey and Cory Smith) exploring their feminine sides, in ways ranging from the sublime (smelling flowers, sewing) to the ridiculous (hugging at a “Pet Loss Grief Support Group”). Free at the Lava Lounge and elsewhere, or $6 from Rickel, SBRI, 4 Nickerson St. #200, Seattle 98109.

SIGN OF THE WEEK (at Larry’s Deli on 4th): “`Food’ Stamps Accepted Here!” Perchance a comment on the actual-food status of convenience store staples? Elsewhere in foodland…

PUT ‘EM UP, JOE: In the past couple of years, Metro route #2 has become a veritable study in contrasts for Seattle grocery fans. It passes by or within three blocks of the Plenty gourmet boutique in Madrona, the fancier-than-they-used-to-be Rogers on MLK Way and Red Apple on 15th, the already-mentioned-in-this-column Broadway QFC, the First Hill Shop Rite, the Pike Place Market, Belltown’s quite-fancier-than-it-used-to-be Dan & Ray’s, a smaller QFC, the great big Larry’s, the smallish lower Queen Anne Safeway, the fancy Queen Anne Thriftway, and the exquisite little jewel that is Ken’s Market.

And now the 2 goes right in front of the new Trader Joe’s gourmet convenience store at 1st W. and Galer. As you might expect from the slogan “Your Unique Grocery Store,” it’s from California (Pasadena to be exact). It’s got 113 stores scattered across nine states; this is its seventh Washington outlet. In less than 5,000 square feet (a tenth the size of the Broadway QFC) it’s full of goodies for gourmands with more taste than time. Everything about the store’s designed to increase the company’s profit margins above industry average while offering near-supermarket prices. Fresh meat, produce, and dairy (those notoriously low-margin departments) are almost nonexistent. There’s no bulk bins, no on-premises butchers or sandwich makers, no deli counter, no magazines, few staple goods (sugar, flour, etc.), and few housewares. Just about everything’s prepackaged, and most of it’s under the chain’s own house brands (various ethnic-flavored items are branded Trader Jose’s, Trader Giotto’s, or Trader Ming). This cutesy, “informal” style extends to store design (wood-paneled interiors, fake-driftwood aisle signs) and flyers (set in the Times Roman font family, a la early desktop publishing). The merchandise mix emphasizes wine (natch), prepacked veggies and salads, ethnic rice mixes, trail mix, candy and cookies (like you’d find at Cost Plus), frozen entrees (many of them vegetarian), frozen seafood, canned fruits and juices, soups, organic cat food, cheese, fake milk, microbrew beer and pop (including Ernest Borgnine’s Coffee Soda!), canned unground coffee, and vitamins. Unlike the monster-marts, Trader Joe’s doesn’t try to be everything to everybody. It just sells stuff that tastes good and/or lets you feel good.

THE SCIENCE OF THE LAMBS: Amid all the media furor over the threatened spread of sheep-like cloning to human subjects, there wasn’t much heard from people who might like it. Here are a few groups of potential supporters: Separatist lesbians who want reproduction without any involvement from men; bigots or twisted eugenicists dreaming of a super-race; medical-world types wishing to custom-engineer immunity to diseases (or to cultivate “spare parts” for transplants); sci-fi fans who’d like real-life mutant superheroes; techno-hippies seeking “the next plateau of human evolution;” rich people who want their own personages to live on; caste-society proponents who’d like a real Brave New World; fetishists who want to keep (or bring back) specific examples of human beauty. (Your question this week: Who’d you clone and why? Respond at clark@speakeasy.org.)

MISC. ISN’T REALLY as ironic as some readers seem to believe. Really. That AFLAC commercial using a cover of John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” to sell life insurance, without commentary–now that’s ironic. In another current attempt at irony…

THE GENERATION-GAP GAP: KMTT’s promoting its “grownup rock n’ roll” format with billboards proclaiming a mantra to “Turn On, Tune In, Drop the Kids Off at Soccer.” The unspoken premise behind the slogan is the same premise that’s ruled darn near all local mainstream media outlets for the past 15 years–that everybody (or at least everybody who demographically matters to advertisers) is an ex-Sixties radical now domesticated with preteen kids. The problems with this particular gross oversimplification: (1) Despite the eternal hype, a lot of folks who were around back in that still-overhyped decade weren’t necessarily college radicals (in fact, more than half the people living in America in The Late Sixties weren’t even college students!); and (2) folks with preteen kids today are far more likely to have come of age in the late ’70s and ’80s. That’s why KMTT’s sister station KNDD peppers its 9-to-5 hours with old U2 and Duran Duran tracks, to attract the commercially-desirable ex-waveoids now toiling away in dreary office parks. Of course, it’d be harder to make a flashy billboard slogan for grownup synth-popper parents. At the youngest end, there are now households with kids who only know Jane Curtin from 3rd Rock and parents who previously only knew Curtin from Kate & Allie. Speaking of TV celebs…

NEWS FROM UP NORTH: David (Red Shoe Diaries) Duchovny, who plays an occasionally-dead FBI agent on The X-Files, wants Fox to move the show from Vancouver to L.A. so he can spend more time with his sitcom-star bride Tea Leoni. I say, they maybe oughta merge their respective shows into one production so they can be together all the time. They could play a couple of intrepid tabloid photographers in search of E.T.s, killer vampires, and other assorted grisly phenomena. They could call it The Naked Truth Is Out There. Elsewhere in the world of romance…

TAIL HUNTING: A recent Cal Berkeley study claims sexual activity can alter the brain. According to an LA Times story, the researchers claimed that after four weeks, a group of sexually-active male lab rats showed much smaller (and perhaps more sensitive and responsive) nerve cells than the control group of celibate rats. While it certainly brings new meaning to the phrase “fucking one’s brains out,” more intriguing is the name of the prof behind the study–Marc Breedlove.

But these findings wouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with TV’s famous cartoon lab mice, Pinky and the Brain. In two episodes, the genetically-altered, super-smart Brain (a sort of pint-sized Lawnmower Man with an Orson Welles voice) neglects his usual obsession with taking over the world. Both times, it’s the lure of a female mouse that does it. Elsewhere in the world of science…

REAL VIRTUALITY: The Seattle-made Virtual i-Glasses (goggles with tiny LCD video monitors inside) are no more, but another local company, Microvision, has announced it’s working on a “virtual retinal display” technology that would, if and when perfected for mass production, would use hi-tech glasses or goggles to scan video images (from TVs, PCs, VCRs, etc.) directly onto the viewer’s eye via a low-level, laser-like beam. According to the company’s PR, “the user believes he’s seeing a video image an arm’s length away.” My question is, what would happen if somebody used Microvision to watch a videocassette that’s been copy-protected with Macrovision?

HALLOWEEN ROUNDUP: Your Misc. party-watch team personally witnessed two Xenas, umpteen sword-‘n’-sorcery warriors, lotsa devils, at least three Pippi Longstockings, two Fred Flintstones, a Grinch (with his dog Max and Cindy Lou Who), a bloodied Princess Di (trailed by a photographer sporting a “Le Press Pass” badge), one Bill Gates, several Catwomen (one with a condom on her tail), a pregnant cheerleader, a martini olive, a pair of potted poinsettias, and a Laverne & Shirley pair (I told “Laverne” how much I loved the film Awakenings; she didn’t know what I was talking about).

EVEN BEFORE the P-I front page discovered it, Misc. was in love with the new Westin Hotel rooftop signs. While the red letters are nearly four feet tall, they’re placed so high up on the hotel’s round towers that they look real tiny from the street. They provide an unexpected spot of cheer against the downtown skyline and bring back memories of the past golden age of hotel neon. They’re also a statement of pride for the locally-based chain, rocked in recent years from a succession of out-of-state parent companies. Elsewhere in greater downtown…

OFF THE MENU: The 5th & Denny restaurant graveyard building maintains its curse on would-be operators–most recently with a would-be southern-esque dining concept called Jambalaya’s. The curse acted faster than normal this time; Jambalaya’s “Coming Soon” signs came down and the “For Lease” signs came up without the joint ever opening. In other money-related fantasies…

GAME THEORY REVISITED: The Seattle Monopoly game, premiered in a big Bon Marche promo event last Friday, is Monopoly owner Hasbro’s belated answer to Stock Block and CityOpoly, two ’80s indie board games based heavily on the Monopoly concept but with different street and business names for each town they were sold in. The thing is, there are enough avid game players and professional game designers in town for somebody to think up a real (not fill-in-the-blanks) Seattle board game. Maybe it could be about trying to start a computer-related company that could make it big, but not so big that Microsoft would crush it by copying its technology. Or it could be about coming up with schemes to improve civic life and trying to get them realized in spite of opposition by the big-money people. For example…

RIDING HIGH?: You can tell it’s election season ’cause the local TV commercial slots and daily-newspaper ad space, normally full of appeals to be a “rebel” by buying officially “rebellious” consumer products, are instead saturated with images of authority figures exhorting citizens to do as they’re told and just say nope to those crackpot initiatives on the ballot. There’s images of cops against (mild) handgun control, and images of nurses against (very mild) health care reform. Another case in point: the Monorail Initiative, denounced by the increasingly rabid-right propagandists at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. Instead of opposing the initiative as the work of “crackpots” (i.e., of people outside the government/ business elite), our business leaders should welcome the chance to add more in-city mileage to a light-rail scheme initially intended for suburban commuters, and to add them in the form of a hi-profile, futuristic-looking elevated train system people would want to ride on.

We ought to pass the Monorail Initiative this election. Then we’ll let the city and the Regional Transit Authority (established in last year’s transit referendum) work out how best to incorporate the initiative’s mandate with the in-progress RTA planning and the future RTA operation. RTA was and is about reducing smog, easing freeway congestion, and making life easier for motorists by getting a few other motorists off the road. The Monorail Initiative is about those things, but it’s also about something more. It’s about dreams for the future, and about wresting control of these dreams from the suits, from the consultants and focus-group researchers and the politicians who never met a condo project they didn’t like. Historically, urban transit projects in the U.S. have been proposed from on high by political inner-circle members who would never deign to use public transit themselves, but who love the opportunity to award construction contracts to potential campaign contributors. This is something dreamed up by ordinary citizens, without years of bureaucratic “process.” And it appeals to everyone who’s ever loved the short Seattle Center Monorail and ever wanted to believe it really was the transportation system of the future. As I wrote back in April, much of the dream future presented at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair never happened. Here’s a chance to realize at least a piece of the fair’s promised “World of Tomorrow,” to be finished just a few years into Century 21.