…I seek your help in assembling the ultimate Seattle memory book. Please add your own favorite long-gone landmarks to the ones on this big list.

Our ol’ pal, Loser designer and graphix genius Art Chantry has announced on this Net-radio show that he’s coming home from his six-year, self-imposed exile in the Midwest. He’s going to reside in his ol’ hometown of Tacoma, and commute to Seattle to the School of Visual Design. He taught there part-time for some 18 years. Now he’s gonna be a student, to finally learn the computer production skills he’s pooh-poohed since the crude early days of desktop publishing.

I’m working on another book.

The tentative title: Vanishing Seattle.

It’ll be a picture book all about fondly remembered local bygones–restaurants, stores, TV/radio personalities, buildings, landmarks, tourist attractions, and more.

Suggest your favorite such topics today at this handy email link.

…data confirm what I’ve always suspected/known–that TV viewers and thinkers are not mutually exclusive sets.

…the fake memoir schtick has indeed merged with the older fake Native American schtick.

The Northwest’s official strangest book publisher, and one of the strangest in the world, is finally calling it quits after some three decades. Loompanics Unlimited (named for its first title, an unofficial index to National Lampoon back issues) spent most of its existence pursuing a very specific niche. It commissioned genre-specific nonfiction and how-to titles “with a ‘beat the system’ slant,” as mentioned in its authors’ guidelines (which are still up on the firm’s web site). Its outlaw lifestyle guides covered such useful topics as Dumpster diving, fake ID, weapons, drugs, living “off the grid,” and fighting the IRS. Its target audiences included “mountain man” militia members, Libertarians, old and neo hippies, and young adults just out to laugh at the weirdness. In Loompanics’ ’80s heyday, when most of Wash. state’s small presses hewed tightly to a square-baby-boomer aesthetic of nature poetry and self-congratulatory smugness, Loompanics particularly stood out as a brand, shouting crass commercialism and rock n’ roll rebellion as two notes of the same chord. It’ll be missed.

Weaving Women’s Words: Seattle Stories isn’t about weavers.

…currently touring in Ireland submits its list of “bands and their corresponding authors.” Nirvana paired up with Wm. Burroughs is appropriate, since Cobain and Burroughs collaborated on a spoken-word CD single. Public Enemy/Langston Hughes and The Doors/Jack Kerouac also seem right, even though Kerouac was more of a jazz fan. Some of the other pairings, though, seem a bit odd, such as AC/DC with Julia Child and Tori Amos with Alice Walker.

In the first day it’s been available, by new electronic book Take Control of Digital TV has sold a whopping 141 copies.

It’s all thanks to the well-crafted niche marketing operations at TidBITS Electronic Publishing. And it just goes to show you: Create a product that fulfills a consumer need, showcase it effectively, and watch the proceeds roll in. I’ll have to remember this lesson the next time I decide to devote a half year of my life to an artsy literary endeavor.

My latest verbal opus is finally available, and it’s a beauty. It’s Take Control of Digital TV, a beezy read telling you just about everything you need to know to join the high-definition video age. The book’s sold exclusively online, through my ex-Seattlite friends at TidBITS Electronic Publishing. Go on their site, buy it, download it instantly, and get started on the road to greater televisual splendor in your home.

…instead of writing to this Web site:

• Finished the fourth edited draft of my forthcoming ebook, Take Control of Digital TV. It’s gonna be a blast when it comes out, which will be before the end of the year.
• Finished the gorgeous November Belltown Messenger. It should be out this weekend, at all the usual dropoff spots.
• Recovering from one of them there eight-day cold or flu bugs. A nasty li’l bugger this one was. Last Friday and Saturday, when I was barely staying awake for an hour or two at a time, I was reminded of my father’s sleepy final years.
• Waited on a new day job, which I hope will appear damn soon. Otherwise, it’s the return of desperate fiscal straits, a situation I’m damned sick and tired of, as much as I’m sick of being tired and tired of being sick.

Congrats to local boy Neal Stephenson and my personal idol David Foster Wallace for making Time‘s list of the “All-Time 100 Novels.” Still undeservedly missing: Edward Bulwar-Lytton, Jackie Collins.

…by yrs. truly in the SeaTimes today. It’s about The Great American Jobs Scam, a sprightly little collection of anecdotes about corporate welfare gone wild.

…in the Seattle Times by yrs. truly concerns My Life in CIA by Harry Mathews, a deft little novella that blurs the line between fact and fiction.

I should’ve come to Harry Potter Midnite Madness last night with a mom and kid, so I could take digipix of the scene whilst pretending to take digipix only of my own party.

The Potter events, at both Borders and B&N, were just what I’d expected and more. Both stores did their best to keep the way-past-their-bedtime girls n’ boys awake and entertained.

B&N had a children’s choral group, storytellers, and costumed employees cavorting with wands. They even gave away plastic Potter eyeglass frames. They also had an elaborate purchasing system, reminiscent of Southwest Airlines’ boarding routine. You reserved your place in “line” by pre-registering and getting a wristband. At midnight, as the colorfully-printed cardboard cases of books were wheeled out to behind the counter on hand trucks, a clerk called all-points bulletins on the PA for numbers 1-50, etc.

The Borders fete was simpler. No wristbands or numbers; simply a line. The line included at least two teens who sat on the floor and stared into laptop computers. There was a crafts table where kids could make and decorate their own conic construction-paper wizard hats. There was a Potter trivia quiz, and Harry and Hermione lookalike contests, all with Potter-merchandise prizes. And, thankfully for the way-past-their-own-bedtime parents, there were vats of coffee (which, alas, ran out around 11:35).

A clerk on the PA system counted down each of the last five minutes until midnight. As the hand trucks wheeled in the cases of books from a back storeroom, the clerk counted down the seconds, while other employees unpacked the books and stacked them to be plopped into customers’ anxious hands. Finally, at the stroke of midnight, the customers at the front of the line were prompted to stand up and single-file their way toward the sales counter, where all transactions were handled promptly and efficiently.

Along the walk back to B&N, the streets were still boistrous and joyous. When I’d first spied on B&N at 10:30, ACT and the Paramount had let out their audiences, who’d spilled onto Pine. This, my friends, is what big-city life is all about–happy upeat total strangers in crowds, milling about and sharing each other’s auras. After midnight, the scene was still busy, with diners/drinkers from Von’s and the Cheesecake Factory, lingering Cineplex Oedipus theatergoers, and Potter purchasers ranging from post-collegiate fantasy geeks to tots barely big enough to hold the weighty tome (which, at 650-some pages, is actually shorter than the previous sequel volume).

Overheard quotes: Outside B&N, a fantasy-dude in a beard and Utilikilt said he was “just happy to see all these kids waiting in line for A BOOK.” I tried to convince him that reading had not become an unpopular activity in general, as evinced by the size and prominence of big-box chains such as B&N. I don’t think I succeeded. Oh well–some people like to fantasize about themselves as the only magicians in a world of “muggles;” other people like to fantasize about themselves as the only literates in a world of hicks. As the Potter books prove, myth is a powerful thing.

On the escalator down from B&N’s small street-level storefront in Pacific Place, toward the basement-level bulk of the store, I was in front of two high-school dudes as anxious as anybody else to grab the novel. But once they caught their first glimpse of the wristbanded preteen hordes already down there, anticipation turned to frustration: “I just wanted the fucking book! I don’t give a fuck about fuckin’ little kids in costumes!” I didn’t stick around to see if the teens stuck around, but I’m sure they have their copies now.

It’s a quiet Saturday morning as I write this. Throughout the English-speaking world, happy parents are waking to stillness and serenity. No shrieking, no sibling-fighting, no running indoors, no video-game explosions. In millions of households, peace reigns today.

For some grownups, that alone qualifies as magic.