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+.)

UPDATE: Erika Langley’s Lusty Lady peep-show photos will get a display in Seattle after all. After the Seattle Art Museum said it’d show tamer images from Langley’s photo book, then chickened out, the Linda Cannon Gallery announced an uncensored Langley exhibit, opening June 4. Speaking of images and misunderstandings…

INK SLINGIN’: The Newspaper Association of America’s running ads on MTV, pleading for the kids to “Read a Newspaper Every Day.” Not that the publishers are gonna make papers any less parochial or conservative or bland; nor are they gonna stop stereotyping teenagers as dumb thugs and young adults as soulless slackers. Speaking of media and attitude problems…

ONE LAST `SEINFELD’ ITEM: The Variety Club held a “Sein-Off” benefit party at the Paramount last Thursday. You could support kids’ charities by showing your admiration for a show about total selfishness, that ’90s too-hip-to-care attitude-schmattitude so big in today’s Global Business zeitgeist. Speaking of corporate aggression…

THOTS ON THE VIDEO RELEASE OF `ANASTASIA’: Why hadn’t I realized it before? The total symmetry of a movie made under the auspices of that would-be emporer Murdoch, at a studio he built in Phoenix for anti-union purposes (AZ’s a “right-to-work” state), depicting the world of the Russian czars as a lost Golden Age–an age depicted as having been destroyed not due to a workers’ revolt, or even due to military conquerors who exploited a workers’ revolt, but by an individual villain within the aristocracy. Speaking of modern-day empires…

THE MERGE LANE: So Chrysler’s gonna let itself be bought out by Daimler-Benz, makers of Mercedes snobmobiles (and of the infinitely cooler Freightliner trucks). This means the Germans will now own the Jeep trademark, originally coined to describe the U.S. Army’s “general purpose” vehicles in WWII. However, we ought to think of this as an opportunity to wring some favors out of the company during the antitrust and SEC approval hearings. Let ’em merge, I say, if they promise to (a) bring that ultracool tiny Mercedes/Swatch Smart Car to America; (b) fire the Dodge commercial spokesdork and bring back Ricardo Montalban; (c) re-introduce some Chrysler Chlassics like the Dart Swinger and the Plymouth Duster (not to mention some of those old American Motors cars Chrysler now owns the rights to, like the AMX and the Pacer!); and (d) pay to track down, buy up, and melt down all K Cars still on the road. Speaking of the romance of industrial design…

JUNK FOODS OF THE WEEK: Two companies are selling candies in containers that look exactly like computer mice. Candy Mouse tarts, made in Mexico by a Wrigley subsidiary, taste like SweeTarts but are shaped like pet-mouse food pellets. Web Fuel mints (“Cool Mints! Cool Sites!”), made in Holland for NYC-based World Packaging, are triangular faux-Altoids; the paper wrapping inside the aluminum box is printed with addresses of “cool” websites, including that of local kids’-computer-game firm Headbone. The Candy Mouse container looks like a two-button PC mouse and costs less than the Web Fuel box, which looks like a one-button Macintosh mouse and holds a tastier, more powerful product. (Both are at Walgreen’s.) Speaking of the march of modernity…

BIG STADIUM FALL DOWN AND GO BOOM: It’s more or less official. The homely yet homey home of Griffey and the Big Unit, of the Sonics’ 1979 championship, of Promise Keeper rallies and U2 shows and monster trucks and Boeing strike votes, will go away, almost certainly in one spectacular implosion. But when? If our area politicians had succeeded in attracting the 2000 Democratic National Convention, the Kingdome would probably have had to stay up until that August. But now that the Dems have removed Seattle from their list of convention hopefuls, the Dome can go boom whenever the exhibition facility in the south lot, between the Dome and the new baseball field, is done. Work on the exhibition hall can’t really start until the adjacent new baseball stadium’s complete, sometime around July 1999. Likely, that won’t allow for an implosion party on the big Millennial New Year’s, alas.

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.

MISC. HEREBY BREAKS its policy against weather jokes to allow you to go do what many of you are already doing–blaming El Nino for everything. Raining? It’s El Nino’s fault. Not raining? It’s El Nino’s fault. Internet connections really slow today? Can’t achieve orgasm? Sluggish, achy feeling all over? Waxy yellow buildup? You guessed it–that pesky El Nino again.

THE BLOB REMEMBERED: Ultimately, the beloved (by me, anyway) Lower Queen Anne restaurant building’s clever (though cheaply built) false front wasn’t what did it in. Essentially, it was one of those “restaurant graveyard” sites nobody could make a go of, before or after the fun façade was added to it. Still, it’s a shame the condo developers who now have the land won’t install any of their own molded-white-plaster turrets or protruberances as a Blob remembrance.

DEMOGRAPHICS ON PARADE: Austin, one of the towns billed a few years ago as a potential “Next Seattle,” has achieved that dubious goal, sorta. According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the Texas state capital (and “alternative country” music center) has just surpassed Seattle as the 22nd most-populous city in America. They’re up to 541,278 folk; we’ve just gotten up to 524,704. (We had over 550,000 in the 1960 census, back when the households in our vast single-family neighborhoods were having more kids; we declined in the ’70s and started climbing again in the ’80s.) Of course, they’re benefitting from immigration more than we are, and they’re in a position to annex some of their outlying sprawl. Other towns you might not know are bigger than Seattle: San Antonio, El Paso, Memphis, Milwaukee, San Jose, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Jacksonville, FL. Towns you might not know Seattle’s bigger than: Nashville, Cleveland, New Orleans, Kansas City, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati.

WASN’T TOMORROW WONDERFUL?: Two weeks or so ago, I asked for your ideas as to which late-’90s popcult trends would be the likeliest nostalgia fodder in future decades. Reader Ian Morgan expressed doubts on the whole idea: “This entire decade has been a flaccid rerun of the seventies! A second Woodstock, Sex Pistols reunion, platform shoes, bellbottoms, etc. Don’t forget grunge. Sorry, the punkers did nihilism better the first time around. If history is merciful we’ll all forget the ’90s. Everyone here wishes they were sometime else.” Kim Adams was more hopeful, sorta: “Future generations, inundated with a gazillion sources and sites for information and babies whose first words will be ISDN or TMI (too much information), will long for a return to the simpler times of single-phone-line households and mere 33.6k modems.”

AS FOR ME, a few passing fancies are evident. DVDs will make today’s CD-ROM games seem quaintly primitive (such small video windows; such choppy animations). When digital video lets anybody become a moviemaker, today’s big-budget action films will become popularly disdained as bloated dinosaurs, then later inspire subsequent generations as mementos of a second Hollywood Golden Age. And 21st-century genetic engineering might make both tattoos and breast implants seem positively retro-chic. Of course, all this depends on what the future generates, then finds missing. Maybe there’ll be a huge hammered-dulcimer mania in the 2010s, causing kids in the 2020s to yearn for the good old days of techno.

BUT FOR NOW, it’s time for all good Misc. readers to think shorter-term and send in their suggestions for our annual In/Out List, not to be confused with any similar-looking feature which may or may appear in this or other print media. Send your nominated people, places, or things to clark@speakeasy.org.

‘TIL THEN, visit the new downtown clothing store New York Exchange (apparently meant for folks too urbane and downstate to shop at Buffalo Exchange); ponder whether, considering the former reputation of 2nd and Pike as a center for intimate commerce, it was really wise to rename the carton-cigarette store there the “Bangmi Smokeshop;” and consider these equally-urbane thoughts from the website of local photog Kim Rollins : “There are eight million stories in the naked city–and fifteen million in the greater naked metropolitan area.”

CLASS WARS: Amid the controversy regarding Ballard High’s students and staff being shunted from their reconstruction-impaired regular digs to the quite dilapidated Wallingford carcass of the closed-in-’81 Lincoln High, Showtime’s been running Class of 1999, a truly bad B-thriller filmed at Lincoln in 1989. Exec-produced by onetime SIFF co-boss Dan Ireland, this RoboCop ripoff starts with that #1 cliche of bad sci-fi, the present-day trend exaggerated into the future. Teen-gang violence gets so bad by ’99, the opening narration states, that high schools have become total-security compounds with armed robots disguised as teachers. Only some of the robots go schizo and start killing teens, causing the all-white gangstas to retaliate in a predictable orgy of blood and steel limbs. Anybody who saw it (or worked on the crew) could tell Lincoln was perfect as a fictional bombed-out shell of a school, hence a lousy site for a real school.

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: A kind reader, visiting a local dollar store, found and sent in a package of Smack Ramen, an Asian-style meal in a packet (as made in Costa Mesa, CA). While the name obviously derives from a Japanglish attempt to invoke lip-smackin’ goodness, there is (as is oft the case with Japanglish) an unfortunate double meaning. Is this also the cheapo-meal of choice for those who’ve spent all their money on a certain poppy-derived non-nutritive substance (also Asian-derived)?

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The second “more-or-less quarterly” issue of Platform, Morgain Cole and Bret Fetzer’s ambitious local theater zine, is now at Seattle theaters and other free drop-off spots. It’s got timely ideas about the organization and financing of local drama troupes, plus a 1983 Richard Nelson essay about the precarious state of “Nonprofit Theater in America.” He said the theater movement was “nearing disaster,” ‘cuz it was “without an adequate sense of tradition or a sense of social responsibility.” The fact that most of Nelson’s arguments could be made today (and are being made today, as in a recent NEA staff report) proves (1) the theater movement’s done a good job of not dying, and (2) how little further than that it’s gotten. (No subscriptions, but info can be had from 313 10th Ave. E, #1, Seattle 98102.)

WORKIN’ IT: The Discover U catalog offered a course two weeks ago on the “Secrets for Making Love Work.” For those of you who couldn’t attend that day or didn’t have the $29 class fee, we hereby offer a few of our own secrets:

• Cut off love’s phone and cable TV.
• Threaten to cancel love’s MasterCard and/or bar tab.
• Offer love a management-track position with three weeks’ vacation, stock options, and full dental.
• Show up at love’s door in a Ride-Share commuters’ minivan. Keep a-honkin’ the horn ’til love comes out.
• Enroll love in an employees’ softball league.
• Change the locks on love’s room and throw all love’s stuff onto the sidewalk.
• Get love a really cool metal lunchbox, pre-filled with a pastrami sandwich and a pack of Hostess Sno-Balls.
• Enroll love in an SCCC career-training program.

I WANNA KNOW: Last month, we asked who you thought had more powers, Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It wasn’t one of our most popular surveys, but all four respondents agreed: Sabrina. Our next survey: What will ’90s nostalgia look like? Which sights, looks, sounds, and consumer goods will future movies and collectors deem as evoking those silly days of now as A Simpler Time? Submit your suggestions at our new email address, clark@speakeasy.org.

PASSAGE (from Topper author Thorne Smith): “Like life itself, my stories have no point and get absolutly nowhere. And, like life, they are a little mad and purposeless. They resemble those people who watch with placid concentration a steam shovel digging a large hole in the ground. They are almost as purposeless as a dignified commuter shaking an impotent fist after a train he has just missed. They are like the man who dashes madly through traffic only to linger aimlessly on the opposite corner watching a fountain pen being demonatrated in a shop window.”

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.

AFTER LAST OCTOBER’S COLUMN about a trip to Reno, several readers suggested I go to Las Vegas next time for the real gambling/ tourism/ party spectacle. I did. Some pseudo-random thoughts:

It’s hot. A hundred degrees in the afternoon, eighty at night, seven to nine months a year. No wonder so many tourists are willing to stay indoors, inside their all-under-one-roof hotel-resorts. It’s amazing the Strip has as much foot traffic as it does.

It’s large. Much larger than you think. The bigger of the two main tourist zones, the Strip (a highway built parallel to a railroad from L.A.) is four miles long and a mile wide.

It’s modern-day capitalism laid bare. Incessantly gaudy and hyper, devoted to redistributing wealth from the many to the few. If Seattle’s official mindset is mandatory mellowness, Vegas’s is mandatory excitement, unending “fun.” (Fortunately, I stayed at the Horseshoe, known as the most serious of the downtown hotel-casinos.)

On the plus side, it’s what Republicans and capitalists can accomplish when they don’t have to buy votes from Christians. It’s loud yet clean, gaudy but slick, naughty in a thoroughly businesslike manner.

While the famous Nevada brothels are zoned way outta town, Vegas generally treats sex not as a natural aspect of life: i.e., as something to make cash from. Bigtime skin shows operate in some of the same casino theaters as “family” shows (magicians at 8, breasts at 10). Honeymooning brides from Japan line up to get their photos next to the seven-foot nude male statue in front of Caesar’s Palace.

The #1 category in the Vegas yellow pages is 150 pages of “Entertainers–Adult” (hotel-room strippers). I’m told most don’t fuck for money, though some will let you think they might until after you’ve paid them. I didn’t find out for myself.

I didn’t gamble either. Like veggie burgers or sex with men, it just didn’t personally attract me. Instead, I watched other humans of all adult ages, genders, and nationalities feed coin after coin into hungry slots, hoping the machines would come down with a sudden case of coin diahhrea.

On the strip you can visit ersatz versions of nearly every spot on the world: Latin America (Rio, the small Aztec), Europe (the Riviera, plus Paris and Venice resorts to come), Britain (Excalibur), the Caribbean (Treasure Island), the U.S. East (New York New York), the U.S. South (the Orleans, Texas Station), the U.S. midwest (Countryland, soon to come), north Africa (Luxor, the Sahara). But not Australia, Canada, or the Northwest (except for some totem poles outside a downtown ethnic-art store). But the weirdest work of cultural appropriation is the MGM Grand, “honoring” the movie studio that was dismantled and sold in pieces to finance the casino. But Vegas is always engorging on its former selves; witness the just-demolished Sands and Dunes. Next to go: the Aladdin, this Xmas.

Just beyond the Strip is street-level Vegas: bars and liquor stores, industrial buildings, wedding chapels, one or two real churches, motels, trailer courts, malls, strip malls, strip clubs, cul de sac subdivisions, gas stations, panhandlers, industrial businesses servicing the casino trade. More human-scale than the resorts, but little more heartwarming.

The casinos’ “sports book” areas became my idea of a potential full-time life environment. Imagine a cross between Number Two’s office in The Prisoner and a network TV studio on Election Night. Eighty-seven TV monitors, streaming news tickers, huge odds boards. I fantasized about the life of a casino pro: sleeping any hours I chose, eating at the buffets, gathering all available info about the teams and the horse races, living off the only consistantly winnable games in town (sports bets and poker). Watching the Ms’ first two losses on multiple big-screen TVs was a heartbreak experience, and a sign beckoning me home again. I realized I couldn’t live there, even if I could take the heat. So much of my life here doesn’t exist in the city that supposedly’s got everything (or exists only in scattered locations, far from the tourist areas)–things like bookstores, indie coffeehouses, fringe theater and performance art, anything that’s not part of the unending hustle for money.

Online Extras:

To imagine the size of The Strip, think of the I-5 corridor from the Montlake Cut to Northgate Mall. Or for you out-of-Seattle online readers, imagine one-third the length of Manhattan Island, devoted entirely to tourism and specifically to one mega-resort after another, interrupted only by a (very) few side streets, gas stations, fast-food stands, a handful of strip malls, a few surviving indie casinos, and some huge vacant lots where new mega-resorts are about to be built.

The Horseshoe hotel, where I stayed, is in the downtown area, the second and smaller casino district. (There are also individual resorts along other arterial highways and scattered other spots throughout Clark County.) Downtown Vegas was started as a railroad company town in 1906; above-ground casino gambling began there in 1931 as a Depression-era gimmick. But because the city had slightly more stringent licensing rules in the ’40s and ’50s than the state and county governments, most of the Mob and Teamster money that built the initial core of today’s Vegas went to developments on The Strip, just outside the old city limits. In the early ’90s, the city took the step that’s proven fiscally fatal in other towns, and turned its main street into an outdoor mall. Somehow, it worked. The giant canopy over five blocks of Fremont St. helps block the punishing desert sun, and the nighttime light shows on the canopy unite the 11 casinos on it into one entity of closer-to-human-scale thrills. Particularly cool is the block of the mall devoted to the “Neon Museum,” a half-dozen achingly cool old casino, motel, and milk-plant signs now removed from the buildings they once drew people toward. Walk outside the malled area downtown and you’ll find, well, not much. Just governmental buildings, law offices, a Kinko’s Copies, a couple of squatty six-story bank buildings, some of those famous picturesque wedding chapels, a city transit center, and a freeway separating the district from the residential zones to the north. How complete is the economy’s dependence on entertainment travel and gambling? When the local minor-league baseball team sought relatively modest public subsidies for a new stadium (which would also be offered as a spring-training site for major-league teams), authorities rejected the request on the grounds that it wouldn’t bring in enough out-of-towners.

As noted in Peter Rock’s novel This Is the Place, a large part of the Vegas mentality is based on notions of rebellion against a specific type of conservatism, that of the Mormons who populate much of the lightly-populated inland west (and who briefly had a mission at what later became today’s Las Vegas). The bright lights, the larger-than-life ostentatiousness, the endlessly-flowing booze, the intense freneticism, the strip shows, the uniformly “naughty” vision of sexuality, the insistent “bad taste,” and the total immersion in the idea of pleasure thru spending–all directly relate to universal human temptations the Mormons (and the Mormons’ arch-rivals-in-the-same-league, the Fundamentalists) devote their lives toward repressing.

Vegas, however, could use a little more of one positive Mormon trait, their sense of community. Public spending hasn’t kept up with the area’s massive population growth (now nearing 1 million). Not just the public schools but even the police and fire departments have had to resort to special levy elections, which invariably lose. School buildings either run year-round or on double shifts to pack in all the kids of workers at the casinos (and at the supply and construction companies servicing the casinos, and at the secondary and tertiary employers like car dealers and pawn shops). Meanwhile, the more affluent residents and newcomers (mainly from California) hole themselves up in new gated subdivisions patrolled by private rent-a-cops, steadfastly unwilling to consider themselves part of a larger regional tribe.

And forget about finding any of the lounge music associated with historic Las Vegas by latter-day hipsters. There’s still plenty of lounges, but they’re almost all devoted to “high energy” Earth Wind and Fire cover bands.

WELCOME ALL to your pre-autumnal-equinox edition of Misc., the pop-cult column that can’t decide whether the new-look Seattle Weekly represents the passing of the moderation-to-excess aesthetic that’s dominated local media for a quarter-century, or instead just signifies a corporation trying too hard to appear hip. Speaking of commercial images in flux…

EVERYTHING RETRO IS NEO AGAIN: A half-decade ago, back when the outside world associated Seattle hipster-wear with looks actually designed in NYC by the likes of Marc Jacobs, the Zebraclub store on 1st Ave. was a bright, white showcase for the loudly-logoed products of Seattle’s real youthwear industry, with such once-hyped labels as Generra and International News. Today, the big Z sports a “homier” image, with faux-rustic walls and less abrasive lighting.

If you go there and you’re nice to them, they’ll give you the current catalog for Diesel, the Italian sportswear outfit that (a la Calvin Klein‘s ’94 “kiddie porn” ads) uses the detrius of American commercial-underground media to impart an image of American dangerousness onto its Euro-designed garments. This year’s Diesel catalog’s in the manner of a tacky small-press self-defense manual, titled Fight Me. It depicts young perfect-bodied female and male models in action poses, kicking and stabbing and choking imperfect-bodied (often overweight) villains. One aren’t-we-outrageous sequence shows a little girl punching the face of an older-woman pedophile. The attack techniques throughout the book range from the impractical to the ludicrous (“Master concentration-through detachment… will yourself to levitate”). An inside-back-cover disclaimer asserts the company “deplores, in the strongest possible terms, the current prevalence, and, in some sad quarters, vogue for violence.” Yeah, right–the common parodist’s copout, getting off on something then claiming it was just a joke. Speaking of convivial boorishness…

CYLINDRICAL OBJECTS ON PARADE: I wish the current cigar-mania (stinky, choky, life-threatening, etc.) would stop, but how? It appeals to too many universal temptations (even Freud joked, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”). Besides, in an age where the lowly mass-market cigarette’s an object of scorn and humiliation, there’s nothing like a fat, smelly cigar to make a smoker feel righteously vengeful. As long as there’s social pressure to conform to social standards of blasédom, many males and some females will always choose to rebel, albeit often in crude, loud, and ineffectual ways. The ’90s spin on this, natch, is many of today’s proponents of laid-back conformity claim to be political liberals, while many of the “rebels” are Harley-ridin’, KVI-listenin’ Young Republicans. (This has its precedents, such as the decadent rich kids of pre-Victorian England; many of whom also loved a good cigar.) Speaking of social mores…

OLYMPICS IN SEATTLE IN 2012?: Besides offering yet another clear line of demarcation between the civic-builder gang (ever pursuing “world-class” status for our fair burg) and the anti-development human-scale advocates (who’d probably leave town en masse for the event’s duration), the pro-Olympic boosters are offering a unique argument. In the past, the Games have been used by cities worldwide as excuses for massive construction projects, often using vast amounts of their respective countries’ tax dollars. The Seattle Olympics boosters claim the opposite. With the town’s two new stadia, the to-be-expanded Convention Center, and other existing or already-planned facilities, we’ll already have most of the sites a Summer Games would need. All we’d have to build would be a big swimming pool, horseback and archery venues, a few dozen additional hotels and motels, and (maybe the biggest single new one) a place to house a few thousand jocks and jills for 17 days under tight security. (The 1990 Goodwill Games housed their athletes in UW dorms, but that setup might be impracticable for the Olympics for all sorts of reasons.)

‘TIL NEXT WE MEET (with more of your suggestions of yet-unrevived musical genres), be sure to become the first on your block to order the $229 Ken Griffey Jr. 12″ bronze statue seen in regional-ad editions of Time, and visit the new Seattle Art store on Wetern Ave.

DINE & DANCE: As mentioned in a recent review, the classic pre-fab stainless-steel-and-neon diner isn’t common here, but in its Eastern Seaboard homeland it’s enjoyed a recent revival/ preservation movement. Now, a Denny’s franchisee in Florida has put the chain’s menu into a real modular diner building (and added that oft-annoying trend of singing/ dancing waitstaff). The trade mag Nation’s Restaurant News says the place is a hit, and that the parent chain “plans to use the diner to rehabilitate its image nationwide.” Best-case scenario: the chain opens faux-diners in real diner buildings here, they fail, and indie operators reopen them as unpretentious real diners. Speaking of entertainment exhumations…

NAME THAT TUNE: A couple weeks back, Misc. asked you to name formerly-popular North American musical genres that haven’t been subjected to “hip” revival attempts in recent years. I wanted to see what, if any, pieces of America’s musical heritage could still be enjoyed as honest expressions of art and/ or showmanship, without PoMo irony smoothing out their creases. Some of your recommendations, with some of my comments:

• Accordians. Nominated by someone who’d likely never heard of the Black Cat Orchestra, Those Darn Accordians, the various “punk polka” sub-fads, or even Weird Al. Face it: Accordions are hip, and have been for some time.
• Political folk (pre-’60s), such as IWW rally songs. Joe Kiethly (née Joey Shithead of Vancouver punk pioneers D.O.A.) included some of these in his Bumbershoot solo-acoustic set. They fit perfectly with his own kill-the-yuppies ballads, showing how a punk can grow old, stay angry, and stake his place in an older protest tradition.
• Gospel. One of Paul Simon’s earliest homage victims back in the ’70s, its influence can be at least indirectly felt in some of those R&B love-song harmony groups so big on KUBE these past couple of years.
• Ragtime. If the Squirrel Nut Zippers can bring back the jitterbug, somebody can bring back the rag, last revived a quarter-century ago in the aftermath of The Sting soundtrack (Randy Newman’s score for the 1981 film Ragtime doesn’t really count).
• Pan flute. One of the few foreign-exotica musics not yet assimilated by the Luaka Bop/World Beat homogenizers. I like it that way.
• Muzak. The real thing, not merely easy-listening instrumentals like 101 Strings. TheGrunge Lite CD (made in 1994 by Stranger staffer Sara DeBell) came close, but lacked the essential ingredient of real Muzak: “Stimulus Progression,” the Muzak company’s trademark for a 15-minute set of tunes that starts slow-‘n’-soft and ends up slightly less slow-‘n’-soft to enhance workers’ spirits and productivity. God knows plenty of bands could use this principle in planning their sets.
• Lawrence Welk. (And, presumably, other conserva-core ensembles like the King Family, Mitch Miller, and Guy Lombardo.) This would be darn near the ultimate challenge: Making something hip out of something whose utter and complete squareness was its entire raison d’etre. It’d be even tougher if it were attempted on a non-parody level.
• Marching tunes. Now we’re getting somewhere. As local-radio vet Norm Gregory writes, “I don’t think Dr. Dre has sampled march music yet . . . but I might be wrong.” It’s a form not heard on the pop charts since “Tusk” in 1979 (perhaps Fleetwood Mac‘s greatest moment). A decade before that, the Monty Python folks took their theme from ol’ J.P. Sousa’s “Liberty Bell March,” finding the spirit of old English music-hall bombast in this most American of composers. There was an “Anti-Fascist Marching Band” in town in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but if it’s still around it’s kept a mighty low profile lately. Slightly-skewed marches are a big part of the Doo Dah Parade, mounted by Pasadena, CA locals every November as a Rose Parade alternative. Sousa’s compositions helped launch the recording industry 120 years ago–they were short, loud, and brassy; perfect for Edison’s unelectrified horn mics and cylinder phonographs. They’re still loud, short, and brassy, and they involve instruments taught at almost every high school. All they need is a different context, so kids stop thinking of them as something militaristic (or worse, as something teachers and parents force upon kids).

(More of your suggestions in two weeks.)

I KNOW IT’S PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE, but here’s my fantasy: We move the now-surplused Kingdome to the Interbay landfill, then turn it into a community of tomorrow. In the stands: moderately priced housing, artists’ studios, offices, and light-industrial work spaces. In the corridors: tasty brewpubs and burger stands, charter schools, and convenient shops. On the playing field: a combo park, playfield, bazaar, and art/ performance space. At least let’s dismantle and rebuild the Dome’s prefab pavilion annex for a year-round street fair, complete with food and merchandise booths, exhibits, and an all-ages music club. The gracefully-curved pavilion looks too neat (like an inner hallway in some giant space station) to just trash.

UPDATE: The bike-messenger zine Iron Lung, mentioned here in May, has a new address: c/o Stephanie Ehlinger, 1719 E. Spring St. #104, Seattle 98122.

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: PMS Crunch, from a Scarsdale, NY outfit called “Time of the Month Inc.,” claims in food-trade magazine ads to be “the perfect combination of salty and sweet–the taste and the gift that’s always in season.” The can promises “Chocolate, Nuts, and More Chocolate.” Its primary slogan: “The Best Snack… Period!” (Wholesale orders can be obtained at 1-800-PMS-44ME.)

NEWS YOU CAN ABUSE: I got some decidedly mixed messages from those huge newspaper ads for the Fox News Channel. I couldn’t tell whether the ads’ incessant insistance on fair, unbiased reporting on the channel is meant to trash CNN (which Fox proprietor Rupert Murdoch has previously, and falsely, accused of liberal bias) or to appease viewers apprehensive about the conservative bias of other Murdoch properties (most infamously, the New York Post and London Sun).

In any event, I’m intrigued by the notion of a news source with more nuts-‘n’-bolts info and less mealy-mouthed “analysis.” Of course, that’s not what Fox News gives you. That’d require more people and money than a startup cable channel’s gonna have (even one with Murdoch’s dough). Instead, you get hour upon hour of talking-head interviews and pontification, officially “unbiased” ‘cuz the opinionating’s done by the guests, not the hosts. This is augmented during daytime hours by functional but unremarkable top-of-the-hour news briefs.

FRAG-MENTATION: The other day I was talking with a musician who said her all-time favorite childhood memories included Fraggle Rock, Jim Henson’s Canadian-produced ’80s puppet series. The more she triggered my own memories, the more the show seemed a metaphor for the precarious existence of the would-be “alternative” artist or intellectual in our day and age. If you stay where you are, you can be safe and happy, working and playing and having funny misadventures with your own kind, but at the cost of ireversibly depleting the one resource that sustains you (the rock/ the safety of your subculture). Leave in one direction, and you end up in a smotheringly bourgeois purgatory (the handyman’s shop/ middle-class satiety). Leave in another direction, and you risk more directly hostile forces (the Fraggle-eating monster boy/ censorious conservatives). In the show’s final episode, the Fraggles found a solution to their dilemma by tunnelling to a new home. Perhaps we all need to (at least metaphorically) find our way toward a new premise for our lives and work.

THE INSANITY CONTINUES: I don’t care how the Camlin Hotel’s new owners redevelop the rest of the hotel’s block (now just parking and a motor-hotel annex). And if they must upscalize the hotel rooms, the rest of us will just have to find another site for our wedding receptions and/or just-divorced parties. But the plan to replace the venerable Cloud Room with luxury penthouse suites simply must be stopped. I don’t know how, but it must.

At a time when prefab retro-cocktail hangouts and stinky “cigar bars” are sprouting all over, we mustn’t lose one of the last real, un-“restored” martini emporia. I’m sure the Camlin-block development will still be plenty profitable with an intact Cloud Room. I suggest you go there at every opportunity in the coming weeks, and let it be known (both in the lounge and at the front desk) you love the joint and seek the chance to keep going there in the future.

WELCOME TO A MAY-DAY MISC., the pop-culture column that believes if the Seahawks had been even half as incessant on the field as their pseudo-grassroots fan group has been in the political arena, the team would never have gotten into its current mess.

THE FINE PRINT (on separate sides of a King Edward Cigar box): “These cigars are predominantly natural tobacco with non-tobacco ingredients added”; “This Product contains/ produces chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm”; “A Great American Custom: Ask for King Edward Birth Announcement Cigars.”

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: They’re billed as “Seattle’s Original,” despite actually coming from Darkest Bothell. Despite this labeling inaccuracy, Frutta Italian Sodas do have a certain bite all their own, combining assorted fruit and “cream” (vanilla) flavors with my personal all-time favorite soda ingredient, glycerol ester of wood rosin (it’s a thickening agent that gives fruit-flavored pop a “mouthfeel” more like that of real juice). At hipper convenience stores near you.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Iron Lung is Stephanie Ehlinger’s conversation and information zine for the bike-messenger community. Issue #2 includes a historical account of the Critical Mass rides, first-person stories of weirder-than-normal messenging runs, and an ad for a bicycle-injury attorney. Free at Linda’s and other outlets, or pay-what-you-can to 924 16th Ave., #204, Seattle 98122,

LIKE SWEEPS WEEKS ON THE SOAPS, real life often brings short fits of big changes in between long stretches of stasis. This might be one of those times, at least locally. First, Rice sez he won’t run for mayor again, opening up at least the possibility of a City Hall not completely owned by megaproject developers. Second, the Weekly, 21-year voice of the insider clique that gave us Rice, gets sold.

Third and least publicized of the trends, Nordstrom announces a flattening of its previously rapid sales-growth trend. Since the ’70s, Nordy’s has personified the philosophy of upscale-boomer consumerism and the aesthetic of obsessive blandness cultivated by the Rice administration, the Weekly, and other insider institutions. It’s the centerpiece of Rice’s whole downtown plan, as this paper has previously documented. Nordy’s troubles are partly due to national shopping trends away from the mainstreamed wares of department stores and mall shops, toward specialty boutiques and discounters. But I’d like to think this was also affected by changing customer tastes, away from the tired retrowear pushed lately by Nordy’s (and by corporate fashion in general). But industry trend-proclaimers insist retro’s still the way to go. For this fall, they’re planning to succeed the ugly-but-spirited ’70s revival with an ’80s power-suit revival. Everything you hated about Reagan-era dressing is slated to come back, from Dress for Success pomposity to women’s “menswear” with shoulder pads almost suitable for playing football in. I’m confident this won’t be nearly as popular as its pushers want it to be. What remains to be seen is how far down this gap between sellers’ and buyers’ tastes will drag Nordy’s and other companies.

It’s easy to tell why the industry loves the looks of the ’70s and early ’80s. They represent a time before DIY culture really took off, a time when a fashion industry at its peak of power felt it could dictate trends which the nation’s shoppers would ecstatically obey, no matter how homely or depersonalized. Similarly, Nordstrom’s business strategy has been heavily predicated on wringing sweetheart deals from cities and mall landlords. But with neighborhood and strip-mall shops now drawing business away from big malls, and online shopping arriving any year now, high-profile locations aren’t going to be as important. Nordy’s collection-of-shops store layout might help it weather this sea change into a post-mass-market era, if it doesn’t get caught up in trying to preserve a passing status quo.

‘TIL NEXT TIME, stock up on dented cans of marischino cherries at the Liquidator’s Outlet store in the old Sears basement, check out the new Tube Top record (splendiforously fresh!), and ponder these words attributed to Lilian Helman: “If I had to give young writers advice, I’d say don’t listen to writers talking about writing.”

If you get the chance, get to Uptown Espresso to view John Rozich’s utterly beautiful chalk paintings on the menu boards, commemorating next week’s 35th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair (a.k.a. the Century 21 Exposition). Rozich’s exquisite works, modeled after original Space Needle ad art, engender a nostalgia for something once called the future. A mythical state, located in real space and unreal time, where most everything would be better.

I’ve been watching videotapes of KING-TV’s 25th-fair-anniversary telecasts from 1987, based on kinescope films of live fair coverage. The tapes show KING’s first news anchor, Charles Herring, hawking the fair as “A futuristic look into the future… How man will live and work and play in the year 2000.” In other moments, olden-throated announcers present incredible inventions-to-be: Sun power. A 200-mph pneumatic passenger train. An automated highway. Gas-turbine cars. Microwave ovens. Picturephones.

One scene takes viewers to the “World of Century 21” exhibit in the old Coliseum. As the camera closes in on scale models of domed cities connected by monorails, an unseen narrator booms, “We think and plan differently now. Science and technology are the twin architects of tomorrow’s homes… Our energy sources: solar or atomic. Climate control is automatic. Built-in vacuum systems keep our home spotless. The home communication center brings the world’s news, culture and entertainment to our homes in color and perhaps three dimensions… It’s not just any day. It’s tomorrow. The fine day you and millions like you plan and build. And it can be both beautiful and practical. City Century 21. The highest concentration of civilization. The ultimate expression of man’s collective endeavors… Home and work are closer to each other, and near to nature. Our transit-ring monorail provides commuters rapid and enjoyable mass transit. Electronic streets serve as safe, pleasurable secondary highways… Our city is a place men want to live in, not have to.”

But the mood of the Fair was more important than any specific predictions. As John Keister noted on one of KING’s retrospective shows, “It was a time of optimism, knowledge, and beauty. And I loved it.”

Within five years, the fair’s vision became popularly denounced as an empty promise, derived from a pro-industry, anti-environmental agenda. But it really represented something more complex: postwar liberalism, the world of the original Pro-Business Democrats. Our longtime U.S. Senators Magnuson and Jackson, who helped bring the fair here, sincerely felt America could and would be led forward into a Golden Age by Big Business, Big Government, and Big Labor working hand-in-hand-in-hand to ensure mass prosperity (without socialism), strengthen science, popularize education, advance minority rights, and promote artistic excellence.

There have, of course, been several futures since then. Various religious and military cults’ utopias fantasize vicious, vengeful doom for all guilty of not belonging to the right cliques. Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia sees Washington and Oregon becoming colonies of a San Francisco city-state, wihch in turn would be run by a plutocracy of the environmentally-enlightened. William Gibson and other cyberpunk authors dream of a dark, violent external world overshadowed by an internal world enhanced by virtual-reality software.

Today’s most intensely promoted future is that of cyber-futurists like George Gilder and Alvin Toffler. But instead of gleaming cities in the sky, these guys look forward to a day when the top-income-bracket folks will never need to leave their gated exurban compounds. Indeed, most currently-promoted futures are anti-city, if not anti-social. White-flighters, black separatists, eco-communalists, Bainbridge nature poets, right-wing mountain men: Most everyone seems to want to be around only their own sort. Perhaps not since the fair did professional visionaries forsee diverse peoples wanting to live among one another. Even the concepts of “urban villages” and “civil society,” at least as intrepreted by Seattle’s top political brass, invoke a definition of “the people” extending no further than Nordstrom’s target demographic.

Still, the Space Needle beckons as its promised century draws closer. Don’t just look on it as a relic of yesterday’s industrial optimism but as a call forward, encouraging us to imagine better, more inclusive tomorrows than the tomorrows we’ve been imagining.

`MISC.’ GLADLY LEAVES behind the Year of ’96 Tears and heads face-forward into a time of uncertainty in many aspects of our civic culture. Three months ago, the regional architecture rag Arcade ran a story called “Is Seattle Losing It?” The piece was predicated on the Commons defeat, which I called a victory for city-dwellers and they called a defeat for planners and dreamers. Since then, my faith in local voters’ priorities was further affirmed by the transit vote, which will add immeasurably to regional liveability.

THEN CAME the dueling-stadia debacle. Since the Mariners’ and Seahawks’ demands and responses to those demands seem to change several times daily, there’s no way to predict how it’ll turn out. It should’ve been expected, tho’. Sports-superstar salaries continue to skyrocket, while sports TV ratings have been fractured by cable. Since team owners won’t give up their private jets, their only new-income sources (besides team-logo products) are to sop up additional stadium revenue (through high prices, luxury boxes, etc.) and to slash stadium costs (by getting taxpayers to foot the bill).

It’s all coming to a head now because some U.S. Senators threaten legislation this next session to stop localities from issuing tax-exempt bonds for stadia. So if the owners are gonna get their big public subsidy, they’ve gotta get it now. Hence, the PR blitzes, threats, and crocodile tears to cajole our leaders and us to fork over a staggering half-billion. That’s $100 (plus future bond interest) for every Washingtonian. And it still won’t solve Big Sports’ real problem–runaway costs in the face of heightened competition for entertainment and ad bucks. The sports biz hasta get its own house in order; then it can invest its own dough into new houses based on the basic risk-and-return principles that got these owners rich in the first place. Besides, there’s something annoying about the sense of bland “luxury” in the drawings of the proposed new Hawk stadium, something deadeningly Commonsesque.

MEANWHILE, the side of Seattle Stranger readers are expected to care about has hit its own doldrums, as Kathleen Wilson deftly analyzed here last month. The major record companies, MTV, and commercial radio have succeeded at killing “alternative” music by ignoring or mishandling today’s more original artists in favor of promoting the most formulaic, derivative bands. (How can anything called “Blur” be distinctive? How can anything called “Garbage” be really good?) That, and the maturing of the late-’80s music scenesters beyond prime moshing age, has left a distinct malaise over the local scene. Many of the more promising 1993-94 bands have broken up. Others are wallowing in the purgatory of record-label nonsupport. The three top local clubs get their biggest draws from touring acts. Everybody from the NY Times to Time has noted how the latest Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Presidents discs are vastly underselling their predecessors.

But they’re underplaying the fact that overall record sales are holding steady, despite the drop in superstar sales. This means more listeners are listening to a wider variety of stuff, not just the same few hyped celebrities. For everyone except the major labels and the celeb-obsessed media, this is good news. It’s good for musicians, for indie labels, for the stores that bother to stock indie labels, for clubs, for fans who prefer non-arena venues, for publications like this that tell you who the heck all these touring indie bands are, and especially for my oft-stated ideal of a decentralized culture, where smaller groups of people are into things they really like instead of following the dictates of mass marketing. This is, at least on one level, what the Seattle music scene had been all about–not providing material for the rock star machine, but building an alternative to the rock star machine. To quote one of Bruce Pavitt’s early zines, “A decentralized cultural network is obviously cool. Way cool.” When the dust settles from this industrywide reorganization, I fully expect Seattle’s bands, managers, and labels to be better equipped than most for a post-superstar world. (And don’t worry about the Soundgarden guys; they can always sell more of their band-photo phone cards thru their fan club.)

MISC., YOUR SEASONAL-AFFECTIVE COLUMN, couldn’t help but be cheered up by the January Playgirl cover blurb: “Odd Men Are In!” What could be duller than square jaws, pumped pecs, and steely gazes? Conversely, what could be more fun than somebody with a deft wit, a neato wardrobe of mismatched shirts and ties, and a wicked pinball wrist? (At least that’s what I’ve always tried to tell women.)

TCI IN TROUBLE: The cable behemoth’s laying off 7 percent of its workforce, ordering exec-pay cuts, considering selling subsidiaries, and scaling back upgrade plans (though its long-promised Seattle upgrade’s officially still in the works). Boss John Malone has to placate stockholders, in particular the heirs of one recently-deceased exec, to keep the company from being sold out from under him. The long-term problem: Customers are fed up with Malone’s limited line-ups, rate hikes, and dumping of popular channels for channels Malone owns a piece of. Malone’s siphoned ratepayers’ bills into acquisitions, joint ventures, and power-grab schemes, while staying put too long with aging electronics and wires. Customers are going to mini-satellite dishes today. By ’88, they may turn to phone-company-run or Net-based video systems. I wouldn’t miss Malone, but the wrong kind of takeover could bleed even more money away from service and into junk-bond debt.

`STREET’ IMPROVEMENTS: Sesame St. was looking a little tattered in its 28th year. Once PBS’s ratings powerhouse and a merchandising gold mine, its disjointed mix of humans, Muppets, cartoons, animal films, and committee-written lesson plans has declined in viewership and grownup attention. As more of commercial TV took on Sesame’s frenetic flash, PBS found kids taking refuge in the decidedly steadier Barney and Magic School Bus. The show’s production company, Children’s Television Workshop, has taken cash from toy royalties to buy ads on the commercial networks, hoping to alert viewers that Sesame’s still on the map.

So it was a happy surprise for CTW when Rosie O’Donnell used a plush figure of Elmo, a relatively recent Sesame Muppet character, as a mascot on her talk show. O’Donnell’s endorsement brought parental attention to what had become Sesame’s most popular character. A vibrating “Tickle Me” Elmo doll is the hit toy of an Xmas season otherwise dominated by recycled older properties (Mario, Bugs, Dalmatians). A wide-mouthed, not-unbearably cute, everykid character created from a generic Muppet design, Elmo signifies kids embracing the defiantly innocent side of kidness, rejecting violent fantasy and smartass “attitude.” Now I know where the K Records listeners of tomorrow are coming from.

DOWN, ON THE FARM: Big agribusiness outfits in Calif. are suing for the right to not contribute to government-mandated marketing campaigns (the California Raisins, “Got Milk?”, California Summer Fruits). In an AP report, one plaintiff complained the slurping and chewing sounds in a Summer Fruits commercial were too sexually suggestive. Another said the mandate reeked of socialism. (Actually, it reeks of mercantilism, the belief that government’s highest duty is to enrich business.) I say government oughta quit the raisin biz. If these huge factory farmers wanna be foolish enough to kill some of the most clever and effective ads around today, let ’em.

WHITHER THE KINGDOME?: It’s not the echoing fan noise that made it such a good home for our teams. It’s the way its homeliness, its blatant architectural mediocrity, complemented the lovable-loser status of the Seahawks and pre-Griffey Mariners. Its concrete cheapness symbolized an ex-frontier town wanting to become a Big League City but unwilling or unable to do it right. Paul Allen sez he won’t buy the Hawks if they’re stuck in an aging, luxury-boxless Dome. The new M’s owners said the same. Besides the economic considerations, I think both parties were uncomfortable with an overcast-grey box whose un-gussy-uppable look of thrift contradicted today’s mania for yupscale pretension. Dunno ’bout you, but I’ll miss the humble giant hamburger bun if Allen gets the county to tear it down.

WE’LL MEET AGAIN on Boxing Day (my fave Canadian holiday!) with the annual Misc. In/Out list. ‘Til then, keep in mind my favorite aphorism from Rudolph, a line which has become my life’s motto: “Even among misfits you’re misfits!”

AS LONGTIME MISC. READERS know, I love snow in Seattle. That pre-Thanksgivin’ white surprise we had was a perfect example. It kept Eastsiders out of town while blessing urban denizens with a two-day-duration Wonderland of brightly altered vistas. Its glistening blanket offered a temporary respite from our normal Seasonal Affective Disorder-inducing grayout conditions. It created an instant holiday, a Jubilee interrupting the routines of work and school and shopping. It turned everyday life into an adventure, from Counterbalance snowboarding to parking-lot snowball fights. Yes, I know it was a horror for the homeless, but we oughta be taking better care of our brethern year-round anyway.

CATHODE CORNER: As you assuredly all know, Frasier contains enough Seattle inaccuracies to make a drinking game. (“Finish your glass if Niles pronounces Oregon “arra-gone.”) But even that didn’t prepare me for seeing John Mahoney, who plays Dad on the show, miss the following answer on Jeopardy!: “This Seattle-based coffee chain takes its name from the first mate in Moby Dick.” Speaking of local landmarks…

WHAT’S REALLY WRONG WITH THE AVE: No merchant-sponsored rent-a-thugs harassing the street kids will improve the currently sorry state of U District retail. The District’s problems go back a decade, to when Ave landlords decided to jack up rents in one big hike. Longtime indie businesses were replaced by chains. Some of those, like Crown Books and Godfather’s Pizza, then bugged out of their leases at first opportunity). Other stores spent so much on rent, they cut back on interior improvements, merchandise, personnel, etc. Meanwhile, the long-slumbering U Village blossomed into a shopping theme park for the Volvo set. The Ave has risen and fallen several times before. It can rise again. But strong-arm tactics won’t do it; indeed, they’d just make the street’s young-adult target market feel unwelcome. Speaking of questionable neighborhood “renewals”…

WANTON-DESTRUCTION DEPT.: The end of Belltown’s 11-year artist-housing experiment SCUD (Subterranean Cooperative of Urban Dreamers, named years before the Gulf War) and its downstairs eatery neighbor Cyclops had been rumored for over a year. Now it’s official, with MUP boards announcing plans to raze the lo-rise for condos. Cyclops’ owners are already looking for a new restaurant site, perhaps in Fremont. As for the much-photographed golden Jell-O molds gracing the SCUD exterior these past five years, no fate has been announced. I’d have ’em auctioned off to benefit new artist housing (and I mean real artist housing, not the millionaire penthouses sometimes promoted under that term). Speaking of goodbyes…

`PANDEMONIUM,’ 1992-96: Most of what I’ll miss about the idiosyncratic music monthly had already disappeared from its pages in recent months: The schmooze-free gossip column, the Tacoma-centric features, the odd columns like “Town of the Month.” ‘Twas sad to see the tabloid’s “Final Print Issue” carry a Seattle instead of a Tacoma mailing address. Seattle Square, a budding commercial Web company, has bought the Pandemonium name and will now use it for music review and interview pages on its site. Speaking of what’s-in-a-name…

INTO THE DRINK: In the spirit of Husky Cola (that early-’90s fundraising soda for UW athletics) comes Keiko Draft Root Beer, from Newport, OR. Every can bears the image of America’s most famous killer whale, who starred in the two Free Willy films and now lives in a rehab tank at Newport’s Oregon Coast Aquarium. An unspecified “portion of the proceeds” from the pop has been pledged to the foundation paying for Keiko’s veterinary treatment. I’ve only seen the stuff in regular, not diet, so if you consume too much you could become, you know… There’s also Keiko Brand coffee, but I’m still holding to my no-coffee-jokes policy.

ANSWER TO LAST WEEK’S RIDDLE: Because he’s just a commontator.

YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT FOR XMAS: Your suggestions for the year-end Misc. In/Out list. Send ’em to clark@speakeasy.org. ‘Til then, consider these words by ex-Philly restaurant critic Jim Quinn: “Never eat in a restaurant where the menu is larger than the table, the pepper mill larger than your date, and the baked potato larger than your steak.”