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The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle canceled a fundraising appearance by Leonard Nimoy, after federation bigwigs discovered the retired actor and cult legend had just created a book of photos combining nekkid ladies with Jewish religious iconography. (The two great tastes that taste great together!) Instead, Nimoy will appear at a local Jewish congregation the next day, Oct. 24. Of course, this won’t be the first time he’s gone against Federation directives. (I know, I had to say it…)
THEY WERE THIN, they were (relatively) inexpensively produced, and they still look hotter than most fancy-schmancy coffee-table tomes. They’re Russian avant-garde books from 1910 to 1934, and the MoMA guys in NYC have a site about ’em.
David Halberstam’s 1972 book The Best and the Brightest
vividly describes the steps by which the Kennedy-Johnson administration, chock full of Ivy League thinkers and respected analysts, stumbled into the morass that was the Vietnam war. Among the most important factors in the stumble, according to Halmerstam, were the limited perspectives these operatives chose to view. They decided early on that theirs was a winnable war to defend a stable, pro-democracy ally; they chose to ignore any analyis or research that differed from the scenario. (I’m naturally vastly oversimplifying Halmerstam here; read the book itself for the whole sad story.)
The same thing’s happening now. Only the people doing it know they’re doing it. Our current battle-criers decided long ago they wanted to conquer and colonize Iraq. (An Australian newspaper story claims they’d started plans for an Iraq war even before Bush’s inaguration.)
We’ve got a whole Executive Branch establishment that, for all intents and purposes, proudly only listens to Rush Limbaugh, only watches the Fox News Channel, and only reads The Weekly Standard and books from ideological publishers like Regnery. This establishment does have staff people who scan CNN and the NY Times, but just to learn what its “Others” are saying in order to craft virulent rebuttals.
This establishment loves to scoff at liberals’ “political correctness,” but is fetishistically devoted to ideological conformity within its own ranks. It believes it’s always right, not because it’s smart but because it’s pure.
Actually, “pure” isn’t the right word, because it implies a sense of moralistic self-denial. These guys (and a few gals) want everybody else to do all the sacrificing; while they grow ever wealthier and more powerful.
We started with a book reference; we’ll move now to a film reference.
There’s a film, based on a stage play, set in an era in which a ruling class lived as libertine wastrels and the masses were subjected to strict authoritarianism.
An era enmeshed with domestic turmoil and colonial wars. An era of fierce political name-calling and backbiting. An era in which defenders of the corrupt social order will do anything to maintain their privileged status, despite the hindrance of an unelected ruler who often talks nonsense and behaves absentmindedly.
In short, an era with resemblances to our own.
Yes, we’re all currently suffering from, and for, the madness of King George.
…was celebrated all over town on Sunday. Hundreds of bibliophiles prepared for the long indoor season ahead at the semiannual Friends of the Seattle Public Library book sale, held at a former Sand Point naval-air hangar. (This is also where Northwest Bookfest is moving next month.)
Nearby in Magnuson Park’s no-leash beach, local dog owners gave their pets one last vigorous round of wet exercise.
Also nearby, Magnuson’s public-art collection of military submarine diving-plane tails, arranged to resemble orca fins, might just help one remember the sacrifices incurred in past wars, and thus help one resolve to try to prevent future carnages.
But let’s return, for now, to celebrating the equinox. A fairly large crowd gathered at Gas Works Park to do so, under the auspices of Seattle Peace Concerts. Hundreds paid varying degrees of attention to an all-day lineup of “blooze” music (you know, that music that’s sorta like blues, only all-white and all-aggressive).
Hundreds of others sipped, chatted, and danced at the second Fremont Oktoberfest. Some of my favorite current local acts (Peter Parker, the Beehives) performed, along with an all-polka afternoon slate.
But serious autumnal responsibilities waited just outside the beer garden, with a street-poster reminder of the monumental tasks ahead of us.
(Thanx and a hat tip to loyal reader Stephen Cook for research help on this piece.)
In a recent New York magazine, its tech-media beat writer Michael Wolff has proposed one possible post-MP3 future: A music business that’s more like the book business.
Wolff’s premise: Manufactured teen-pop acts are rapidly reaching their inevitable sell-by date. Commercial radio is becoming ever more corporate and ever more unlistenable. The Internet, MP3 trading, and home CD-R burning are furthering the indie-rock agenda of shunning rock-star decadence and championing a more direct rapport between artists and audiences.
Therefore, a record industry built around trying to make every release go multiplatinum is doomed. Also doomed is the whole industry infrastructure of waste and hype (“independent” promoters, payola, limos, drugs, hookers, mansions, plastic surgeons, promotional junkets for journalists, etc. etc.)
Instead, recordings will have to be sold more like books are. While there will still be some bestsellers, for the most part artists will carefully construct works that a few people will really love. Street-savvy marketers will promote these works to an infinite array of tiny niche markets.
If Wolff’s prediction comes true, we just might also expect a few other changes in the way music is made and sold, such as the following:
I was going to ponder if ecru sweaters and tweed jackets would become the new rocker uniform, but then I remembered Belle and Sebastian.
…this story, a mega-bank and a mega-bookstore chain are (separately) working to stick it against small book publishers.
First came the highly unofficial Star Wars Un-Premiere Party, Thursday at the Rendezvous (which is still open despite a little kitchen fire last Tuesday, thank you). Singer Cheryl Serio was the most elegant hostess, accompanied by our ol’ friends DJ Superjew and DJ EZ-Action.
Among the audiovisual attractions displayed on the video projector: Mark Hamill’s appearance on The Muppet Show (above), the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special (a truly bizarre spectacle indeed), and something billed as a Turkish language version of the original film but was really a whole different movie (a hilarious sword-and-scandal adventure) that happened to incorporate SW spaceship shots, with the SW producers’ apparent authorization.
ON SATURDAY, the 22nd anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens blowup was celebrated by Cheryl Diane (above) and three other singer-songwriter acts in Diane’s fourth annual Eruptive Revival cabaret. As you may recall, last year’s edition was cut short by that nasty fire at the Speakeasy Cafe (still a charred-out ruin today). No such mishaps marred this year’s show at the Cafe Venus/Mars Bar, thankfully.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, the University District Street Fair was underway again, as tired and worn-out as I’ve always remembered it being. The products displayed at the “crafts” booths were barely distinguishable from those displayed in the smarmiest tourist “fine art” stores of LaConner. The food concessions were no different from the elephant ears and kettle korn sold summer-long from Puyallup to Ellensburg. The assorted musical acts tried to grab passersby’s attention, but (at least the acts I saw) failed to overcome the cloudy-afternoon ennui in full smothering force.
And, of course, the booths only temporarily hid the dozen or more empty storefronts along the half-mile strip known to all as The Ave. The city thinks it knows just what to do about the retail ennui–a construction project. To the City of Seattle bureaucracy, every problem is solvable by a construction project.
But it’s hard to imagine anyone other than a bureaucrat imagining that wider sidewalks and prettier street lights will draw non-student shoppers back from the malls; not while the daily papers continue to smear The Ave as A Problem Place with Those Problem People.
And as long as there’s no money to do the right things for the throwaway teens (often banished by middle-class parents over not fitting a proper upstanding image) but plenty of money to do things against them (police harassment schemes that only make things worse), this situation won’t change.
ON A HAPPIER NOTE, Sunday evening brought two of my all-time fave cartoonists, ex-local Charles Burns and still-local Jim Woodring, to a singing session at Confounded Books/Hypno Video.
You’ve gotta check out Woodring’s newest, Trosper. Painted in bright pastel colors you can eat with a spoon, and printed just like an old Little Golden Book, it’s a wordless, utterly engrossing little tale of a cute little elephant who just wants to have fun, in a world seemingly bent on frustrating him. It even comes with a CD by one of our fave neo-improv artistes, the incomprable Bill Frisell.
NICHOLAS MURRAY WRITES: “Nineteen Eighty-Four has never really arrived, but Brave New World is around us everywhere.”
JUST A WEEK AGO, I was cautiously optimistic but still slightly worried about the 2002 Mariners, who at the time were only 4-3. Since then, they’ve only won nine straight road games against division opponents. Oh, me of little faith…
THE SPRING PRINT MISC has now been distributed to almost all the local dropoff spots. If you still have trouble getting one, consider subscribing.
UPDATE #1: The two-week-delayed spring print MISC will be out this week. We’re only waiting confirmation of one ad.
UPDATE #2: Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men indeed showed up at a local Borders Books–and on the bestseller shelf. Still no Barnes & Noble sightings.
…new conservative-bashing book Stupid White Men at a big chain bookstore? If you have, let me know. As previously mentioned in this space, HarperCollins (Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house) tried to pull out of its contract to publish the book unless Moore toned down his barbs against George W. After Moore publicized the fracas, HarperCollins backed down and issued the book as scheduled. But you can’t find it (at least in my town) in the chains that heavily depend on promo bucks from the likes of HarperCollins. I’ve heard of record labels burying releases by bands they no longer care to promote; could this be a book-biz equivalent?
The biggest Seattle print-media news this month is the debut of Matte, an ambitious square-bound quarterly arts review started by sometime Comics Journal employees Anne Elizabeth Moore and Carrie Whitney. It essentially covers “alternative”/”indie” music, film, comics, and visual art in the Comics Journal writing style–long and leisurely, full of verbatim interviews and philosophical reviews.
The editors and writers spend a lot of space promising what they’ll get around to in future issues and explaining their sociocultural stances. These statements frequently invoke the familiar premise that all of American culture can be nearly divided into The Mainstream and The Alternative, or The Corporate and The Independent. (Music reviewer Tizzy Asher repeatedly invokes “white,” “male,” and “heterosexual” to decry America’s ruling elite, as if everyone who fit one or more of those adjectives was rich and powerful).
Please note: By critiquing the Matte writers, I am not trying to shut them up. I’m asking them to be more challenging; to question their own preconceptions instead of just complaining about those held by others; to explore the more complex realities of how influence and pressure really work in this society. (Remember: Most rich people are white, but most white people aren’t rich.)
Anyhoo, on to the parts of Matte I enjoyed. Robin Laananen contributes a haunting photo essay about people wasting away their evening hours. Greg Lundgren, of Minus 5 Gallery and Artists for a Work-Free America, waxes elequantly on the contradictions of working oneself to death in a culture that idolizes “leisure.” Beautiful, well-told one-page comix stories are supplied by Jesse Reklaw, Laurenn McCubbin, Tatiana Gill, and several others. Jennifer Daydreamer and Phil Yeh debate whether the recession can lead to a DIY renaissance. And, scattered among the back acreage of record and book reviews, are quotations from various “radical” (left and right) manifestos over the years, showing how too often dreams for a “perfect” world would involve the suppression (or worse) of persons significantly different from the particular dreamer.
WHY, AND HOW, a major publisher would try to keep its own book off the bestseller lists.
FOLLOWING UP on a prior reference, a kindly reader submitted this link to (wondrous) images of Chris Ware’s 3-D paper toys!
A FRENCH CONSPIRACY THEORIST offers up some (dubious, in my opinion) theories about what really happened at the Pentagon on Sept. 11 in the form of a photo-seek type game, “Hunt the Boeing!”
ANNOY YOUR CO-WORKERS with an array of buzzer, horn, bell, and siren noises, all downloadable and ready to be turned into your computer’s standard alert sound.
IT’S BEEN A BANNER YEAR for business blunders; one magazine has found and ranked 101 of them! (Only 15 of which directly involve Enron.)
AN ENVIRONMENTAL WEBSITE gives some needed skeptical glances at The Skeptical Environmentalist, a book making summarizing the conservative boasts about how we supposedly don’t have any environmental problems and should just let big business do whatever it wants.
THANX TO THE NEARLY 100 souls who braved the blustery Feb. night to attend our suave Signifying Nothing exhibition opening last night. The rest of you can see it seven days a week until March 6 at the 2nd & S. Jackson.
BACK ON THE POP-CULT FRONT, that PBS workhorse Sesame Street got a major format overhaul this week. The kiddie-ed show now features far fewer one-minute-or-less blackout skits and films, instead favoring longer segments (up to 10 minutes) with narratives and familiar characters. Producers say this restructuring is the result of intense audience research into what Those Kids Today prefer to see.
This, of course, begs the question: What will come in future years, as this long-attention-span generation enters adolescence? I’m no corporate futurologist a la Faith Popcorn, but there are certainly intriguing possibilities to imagine emergine sometime in the mid-2010s:
RUPERT MURDOCH’S PUBLISHING HOUSE tried to get Michael Moore not to say bad things about George W. Bush in his new book. The question is therefore begged: What was Michael Moore doing at Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house in the first place?
OUR OL’ PAL Kathleen Wilson has written the greatest single piece of writing the Stranger’s ever published.
