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11/93 Misc. Newsletter
(incorporating four Stranger columns)
Welcome back to Misc., the pop-cult report that knows something’s gone wrong again when the songs on 120 Minutes are indistinguishable from the songs on VH-1, that loved Edward Muybridge‘s ol’ stop-motion photography experiments long before thatU2 video ripped him off.
STOP THE MADNESS!: Seems hardly a week goes by without another important cool thing about Seattle dying off. Next is the giant downtown Woolworth emporium, home of Seattle’s best selections of cheesy crossword magazines, kitschy souvenir mugs, by-the-pound chocolates, home aquariums, 10-pack tube sox, photo booths, board games, and fedoras (it’s where I’ve gotten all my hats). Where will we get any of these in the future? At some small-selection pharmacy or remote mall store? Hah! The store’s not performed poorly; the company just wants to cannibalize the variety stores for their real estate, then shunt the proceeds into more Foot Locker mall outlets. Do we need more places to buy Air Jordans and fewer places to buy $9 canvas deck shoes?
BP SELLS ALL WASHINGTON ASSETS: Guess we’ll have to go back to pumping gas into the pickup instead of replenishing the petrol supply of the lorry. Pity.
GENTRIFICATION MARCHES ON: The Eastlake dock that housed the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store for decades will now be a franchise of T.G.I. Friday’s, the NY-based king of meatmarket bars.
CITY-O-DESTINY DEPT.: It’s been a bad year for our pals in Tacoma. Their plan for a beautiful walkway from downtown to the waterfront died when Seattle talk-radio jerks branded it a waste of state funds. Then they lost the landmark ASARCO smelter smokestack, the Anti-Space Needle. Now the B&I Circus Store (one of the last independent discount stores in a region that used to be awash with Valu-Marts, Gov-Marts and Yard Birds) is bankrupt and will likely be sold to some chain, sending Ivan the gorilla to some out-of-state zoo. At least Tacoma’s greatest gift to rock in the past 25 years, Girl Trouble, isn’t breaking up as far as we know.
IN-A-NAME DEPT.: Haven’t said it before, but we’ve always been perturbed by the idea of Ortho brand contraceptives. Would you really put something in your body that had the same name as a bug poison? And do the burly truck jockeys ridin’ on Hyster brand heavy equipment know that that’s the old Greek word for a uterus?
MOREL CONCERNS: Mushroom hunters in Eastern Oregon forests have been shooting one another this year over the precious fungi. So much for the notion that the stuff makes you pacified and at one with the universe.
AD OF THE MONTH (from the Weekly): “I wish to apologize to all the people I called fat when I was selling a weight loss product. I am very sorry I offended each of you. I failed to see the essence of your being and your uniqueness. Maggie.” Runner-up (same source): “Achtung Baby! U2 can earn 3K/mo. starting in my international brokerage firm…”
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The Death of Rock n’ Roll, by Times freelancer Jeff Pike, is more than just a big book with all your favorite dead-rock-star vignettes. It also covers rock songs about death (especially the teen-suicide and car-crash songs of the early ’60s) and essays about “the three deaths” of rock itself (the clampdowns in the late ’50s, the wilting of flower power in the late ’60s, and punk’s supposed shattering of R&R populism in the late ’70s. I’d argue with the last point: instead of driving the final nail in rock’s coffin, punk and “alternative” music revived and codified the image of bad boys with guitars, for better or worse. Speaking of which…
AUDIO FILES: Didn’t care much for George Clark’s Stranger parody, The Whimper (too held-back and off-target), but his tape of Six Delightful Grunge Jingles is great. It’s the evil twin of Grunge Lite: Instead of making familiar tunes of bitterness more “commercial,” he makes bitter commercials. In the form of a fictional demo tape for a radio-ad production company, he introduces a band called Behavior Management that grinds out a perfect generic jam of drum thuds and guitar distortion, capped by a screeching rendition of “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” The other five jingles further explore the dichotomy between aggressive-poser music and ad happy-talk, as well as the desperation of marketers trying to latch onto any fad. Speaking of which…
DUDS (P-I headline on regional fashions): “It’s not just grungy anymore.” It never was. How many times to we have to say it: What the media call “grunge fashion” was invented by Marc Jacobs in New York, based mostly on Greenwich Village rich-kid primping. Don’t blame anybody here for it…Or maybe blame Charles Schulz. He’s got a new sweatshirt of Pigpen with the simple slogan “Original Grunge.” Speaking of which…
MORE DUDS: Nirvana agreed to have a logo sticker inserted in the new Sassy, but the band undoubtedly didn’t plan for it to be stapled in the middle of a fashion spread called “Oops, Your Bra Is Showing.” The sticker appears right in front of a monochrome shot of an outstretched butt in sheer undies. Speaking of which…
RETRO GRADES: Kudos to the Pearl Jam guys for refusing to be interviewed for that tacky, utterly point-missing Time cover story last week. First, the mag makes the most pathetic definition of “alternative rock” this side of Rolling Stone. Then, it patronizes present-day rockers as mere ’60s throwbacks without even mentioning those ’60s bands who really did influence today’s kids (MC5, Stooges, Velvets). Then, it chooses as the definitive angry young punk combo an outfit that never claimed to belong to any dissonant postpunk genre, but whose neo-blues-rock sound probably appeals to yup journalists more than the N-boys, the Overkill kids, the Pumpkins, the The, or other still-popular yet somewhat more street-level bands. But at least Time gives its clumsy sort of recognition to modern rock — unlike a 10-page rant in the new Utne Reader, that pseudo-liberal magazine that thinks the most oppressed people in the world are affluent white boomers. In it, some ex-hippie whines that there hasn’t been any good rock since (you guessed it!) the ’60s. He insists there won’t be any good rock again until those persnickety kids start obeying their elders by (you guessed it!) conforming to the blues-rock tradition. He doesn’t see that today’s post-mass-media world doesn’t need white R&B; we can get our black music from black people today. What the rest of us can make is music, art, etc. that speaks to our own life situations, no matter how rootless and disillusioning they may be, and hope the message doesn’t get too diluted in the hype. Speaking of which…
IN MOTION: In the new Wired, Paul Saffo posits that all it takes to start a cultural revolution in America is about 100 people plus overzealous press hype. That was about the number of hardcore Beats prior to the publication of On the Road (as Saffo quotes George Leonard), and about the number of real Cyberpunks in the mid-’80s. Saffo could’ve added, but didn’t, that there were maybe 100 Dadaists in 1920, or 2-300 Soundgarden and Green River fans in 1986, or about that many Riot Grrrls in early 1991. Seen in this light, a mass event like Woodstock could be viewed not as the dawn of an era as it was usually hyped, but as its close. It could also mean that we really do have to be as afraid of little hate groups as the media want us to be. Or, taken to an extreme, it could mean that any movement big enough to have its own professional magazine is already too unwieldy big to be effective. By the time the mainstream media hears about a scene, it may already be over. Speaking of which…
THE NON-SHOCK OF THE NON-NEW: Most “political” writing and art from as late as last October seems utterly dated now. One can almost look at the late ’80s-early ’90s as what all nostalgized eras are called, a simpler time. Everything seemed obvious then: “Activist” art didn’t have to bother with changing the world, only with announcing your own righteousness. All you had to do to call yourself politically active was sit and complain about Bush and other easily dehumanized targets. Because Republican rule was considered permanent, you didn’t have to bother with devising any practical agendas of your own. You could just keep making pseudo-“confrontational” art that only slammed people you safely knew wouldn’t be in your audience. Then we got a president who wants to make a better country, even if a ’50s-style Congressional coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats doesn’t want to help too much. There are detailed debates going on about not just whether but how to climb out of America’s assorted messes. You have to actually think about things these days, not just follow some “hip” line. Speaking of which…
PRESSED: Remember when the Weekly “discovered” the Italia restaurant as headquarters of “the new art scene” in town? Guess who’s on the ground floor of the paper’s new building? Speaking of which…
REVOLTIN’ DEVELOPMENTS: NYC politicians are supposedly giving up on their 25-year dream of razing most of Times Square for bland monolithic office towers. Actually, they still want to build the office towers, but now they’re grudgingly willing to have street-level retail in them, maybe some fast-food chains with appropriate-for-the-area loud signs. They probably wouldn’t think to have the wig shops, music stores, and other places that give the human touch to that huge district. And no more porn, of course. Speaking of which…
PRO-CREATIVITY: It’s common knowledge that the best aspects of most XXX videos are the titles based on regular movies (Fleshdance, Edward Penishands). So don’t be surprised that a Nevada company’s made Sleeping With Seattle.
CATHODE CORNER: Imitation Ren & Stimpy cartoon shows are popping up all over. They’ve got the flashy colors and gross-out gags but not the comedic or artistic excellence instilled by fired R&S creator John Kricfalusi. Nickelodeon’s new Rocko is produced by the same in-house team that’s preparing the new version of R&S, to premiere later this year. If the sorry Rocko‘s any evidence, the new R&S won’t be much. And the Ted Turner people running Hanna-Barbera have 2 Stupid Dogs, whose rehashed retro-’50s design is unsupported by flat gag plots….Meanwhile, if the makers of New Pink Panther show had to give the cat a voice, it shouldn’t have been the nasal Canadian whine of Matt Frewer. To me, the only guy living who could voice this character right would be Tony Bennett.
AUTO MANIA: Damn, I want one of those 2.5-foot-wide “commuter cars” proposed by Subaru to meet Calif.’s forthcoming tough emissions requirements. The prototype shown in the Times is bright red and about the size of an Indy car, seating one passenger behind the driver. Utterly, utterly cool.
ICY DILEMMA: I’ve been receiving reports from college towns across the country, via people on my newsletter mailing list. They’re talking about what they see as a new social coldness on campuses. Students are shutting themselves off from public displays of affection or courtship. Men and women aren’t even looking one another in the eye.
Under the new propriety it’s OK to have a boyfriend or girlfriend if you publicly treat the relationship nonchalantly, as settled down into blasé platonics; otherwise, you’re supposed to be aloof and untroubled by those pesky anti-intellectual hormones. That’s not being cool, that’s being frozen.
There are plenty of potential causes: a decade-long media campaign to instill a fear of sex (you won’t get AIDS by eye contact), ongoing ill-will between macho men and judgmental women, rising heterophobia within the boho/alternative community (reminding me of a line attributed to Robert Anton Wilson or to the book Principia Discordia about “what was once compulsory is now forbidden”).
It is possible to be a man (or a woman who loves them) and a human being. Don’t buy into one-dimensional stereotypes, mainstream or alternative flavors. You don’t lose your soul via emotional intimacy, you strengthen it. This neo-puritanism doesn’t deter abusive relationships (creeps don’t bother with intellectual dogma except when it suits them). It only reinforces the fears of smart but shy young sensitives, the very people who need relationships, who could bring more humanness into the social realm.
It’s OK to be whatever sex and sex preference you are, even if it’s an outré one. It’s not what’s in your pants that makes you good or evil, it’s what’s in your heart.
MISC. UNPLUGGED: Power outages aren’t supposed to happen to urbanites with underground wiring. They’re supposed to happen to middle-class couples out in some forlorn suburb they mistakenly think is “The Country,” where overhead wires dangle dangerously beneath wind-vulnerable tree limbs. Little did I realize (‘tho I should’ve, from friends’ experiences in the ’88 downtown outage) that all these new Regrade condo projects had been fed into the same aging WWII-era circuitry.
So, around 2 a.m. Monday morning, I glanced at the digital alarm to find it off. Everything was off, even at the seniors’ housing out the window. Only the emergency lights were on in my hallway (by 9 a.m. their batteries died, and the windowless halls became pitch black). The Sunday/Monday wee hours are radio’s traditional dead spot, so there was no news of the outage ’til KIRO-AM signed on for the morning commute. Even then, local radio stations seemed to care little for the story, even the stations that were in the blackout zone. You could go for two or three consecutive news breaks without hearing a thing about it. In the Information Age, this is a pathetic excuse for “When You Want to Know First.”
‘Twas weird to see the Space Needle enshrouded in the morning fog without even its top aircraft beacon. ‘Twas weirder to glance into the Western Ave. band studio, one of those mazes of cheaply-built sheetrock walls; too bad one of the bands based there,Candlebox, couldn’t live up to its name.
Found myself depending on the kindness of strangers, including one household where I spent one night on a couch with two hyperactive kittens shoving each other all night for the right to claw me. More frustrating were my attempts to recruit sympathy from acquaintances outside the affected area; so many “hip” folks these days are so proudly ignorant of any local news, that I had to explain what an outage was and why I had one.
As my computer/video/stereo withdrawal set in, I caught a glimpse of the pristine life of info-chastity my acquaintances were living. Its simplicity was seductive, but dull! I decided quickly that I like modern life. Heat, hot water, electric shavers, coffeemakers, toasters, dishwashers, answering machines, VCRs, and modems are good things (‘tho there was something nice about not hearing the next apartment’s bass speaker).
People in the neighborhood were serviced with a Red Cross meal van, serving up free coffee, fruit, soup, and Spam sandwiches. I spent as much time out of the house as I could, hanging out at art spaces. The evening after getting re-plugged, I was doing the Pio. Square gallery crawl and happened to run into ol’ pal Bill Rieflin, who’s drummed in a couple of famous bands but was best known here for his work with one of Seattle’s best-ever combos, the Blackouts.
Lessons? Only that big developments, even in established urban areas, entail a public price for infrastructure. City Light bet it could get away without upgrading its wiring system, and lost. The Seattle Commons plan, which would stick a population the size of Pullman into what’s now a square mile of light industry, will take a lot of public investment. The advocacy group Allied Arts wants a public vote before the city spends or rezones toward the Commons condos. They’re right. I like living downtown, and wouldn’t mind more company, but we all need a voice in whether to adopt this massive scheme.
‘TIL NEXT TIME, try to figure why the state puts signs in over-21 places saying you’ve gotta be 18 to buy cigs, and hope all your troubles disappear as completely as the Canadian Conservatives.
PASSAGE
Sign outside Dr. Zipper on Fremont Ave.: “When I, Dr. Zipper, made the Zippocratic Oath, I pledged to fix zippers on PARKAS and PACKS, Heal SLEEPING BAGS and TENTS. Apply the mending touch to snaps and buckles. Restore CAMPING GEAR and SOFT LUGGAGE to useful life. Invisibly Patch Gore-Texreg. and other STORMGEAR. Restitch CLIMBING GEAR for maximum safety. Teach the MENDING ABC’s: All-One-Zipper Meshed-In-Line, All-One-Zipper Save-You-Money, New-Life-To-Outdoor-Gear Lesson. Don’t Replace! REPAIR-REPAIR-REPAIR OK!” (Cf. Dr. Bronner’s soap bottles.)
REPORT
Still seeking a publisher for my local-music history book. Thanx to all who’ve participated in it so far.
WORD-O-MONTH
“Pithacoid”
10/93 Misc. Newsletter
`HAMMERING MAN’ ISN’T ART. THE BALL-AND-CHAINÂ IS.
Return now to Misc., the column that wished the new local fringe-drama outfit Theater Schmeater was related to the former local fringe art-outfit Gallery Schmallery.
WHAT WE DID THIS SUMMER: Couldn’t help but be amused by the preprinted Sizzler kids’-meal coupons in the Sunday funnies the week of the chain’s e. coli crisis. Thought KIRO-TV’s retreat back to the anchor desk should’ve been accompanied by Alice in Chains‘s “I’m the Man in the Box.” Noted that the station that banned two Picket Fences shows clearly showed the slogan on a new pro-Huskies T-shirt, “Puck the Fac-10.”
BOWING DOWN: For years, the Huskies struggled in the LA powerhouses’ shadows, even though the UW was far bigger than any single California campus. But in the ’80s the team grew toward three straight Rose Bowls and one of those “mythical national championships.” We now know these achievements partly came by cheating on the vague regulations that let college ball pretend to be an amateur sport. Husky players had pathetic graduation rates, despite simplified classes and elaborate tutoring. There were allegations of drug dealing in the team dorm. Some players got cushy jobs and cushier cash, arranged by rich boosters.
Now, the Pac-10 Conference saddled the team with recruiting restrictions, a two-year ban from bowl games, and other penalties. Coach Don James (who wasn’t implicated in the charges) quit. The violations had to have been known by authorities.
How could they excuse the overzealousness? I think it’s ‘cuz the UW itself has become a big-money grant factory that relegated teaching to a very low priority. It’s partly the legacy of our late Sens. Jackson and Magnuson, who funneled tons of federal research pork our way. The campus got obsessed with being “a world class research institution,” regardless of how well it serviced the state’s kids.
We’ve discussed the yuppification of KCMU in the context of the UW corporate culture. The administration thought the station could raise more donations with tamer programming; they’d funnel that into enough salaried staff positions to qualify the station for public-broadcasting grants. The men who turned KCMU into the New Coke of radio weren’t malicious; they just behaved like good UW administrators (including manager Chris Knab, who resigned after his pay got cut in half due to sagging donations). They saw no purpose higher than organizational growth.
Similarly, the football program was allowed or encouraged to grow by any means available. While tuitions skyrocketed and academic budgets stagnated, the team generated big cash surpluses. But little football money went up to the main campus.
If rich alums want to pay for football, let ’em, within limits at least as strict as those set by the Pac-10. But funnel part of that income, and a portion of Husky merchandising money, into academic scholarships. And go further with a professed priority of new athletic director Barbara Hedges: getting the players an education. As a kid who used to get beat up by jocks, I’m not intrinsically sympathetic to their plight. But they are risking permanent injury for the slim chance of a brief NFL career. If they can’t get under-the-table cash, they oughta get a degree that might help ’em earn some bucks in the future.
KICKS: The Seahawks used to have a 5,000-name waiting list for tickets. But after last year’s spectacular flop, they’re running commercials pleading for walk-in traffic. Between that and the Huskies’ debacle, Seattle’s football “Wave” may finally crash.
MISC.’S INDEX: Number of local bands profiled/reviewed in the Rocket since June 1992 that are described as “not a typical Seattle band”: All of them.
WHERE FRIENDS MET FRIENDS: It’s time for concerned citizens to again rally behind a preservatory call: Save the Dog House! Not only is it one of the few things in the world that my father and I both like, not only is it one of the last old-time roadhouse diners, it’s a remnant of everything that used to be cool and unpretentious about pre-Yup Seattle. We need a sympathetic investment group to take over the place under two directives. (a) Don’t “restore” it into some plastic imitation of itself. Keep the signs, keep the menu designs, keep organist Dick Dickerson, keep the low drink prices, keep the dogs-playing-poker prints. (b) Revise the food only as much as you have to. Many people love the Dog House’s murals but not its meals; the new owners will have to provide some new things to attract them, and make careful changes to existing items without imposing that gentrified faux-diner cuisine seen in some newer places.
FOR MEAT LOVERS ONLY: One local chow-down institution still going strong, Dick’s Drive-Ins will celebrate its 40th anniversary by publishing a “Memory Book” early next year. They’re asking for people’s stories and photos of life at Seattle’s classic burger emporia (top prize: $100). I know a guy from Vancouver who makes a point when he’s in town to visit all five locations (even the obscure Holman Road outlet, the Dick’s That Time Forgot). In the mid-’80s the Broadway Dick’s was the teen cruising hangout, until the parking lots were closed by the powers that be. It was the setting of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Posse on Broadway,” the first proof that an artist could reach a national audience without pretending not to be from Seattle. One important memory is gone: they stopped selling their orange T-shirts (“Dick’s, where TASTE is the difference!”) to the public, and now outfit their staff in new blue designer jobs (not available to civilians). The new shirts betray Dick’s heritage as a place that didn’t follow trends, but just made the greatest grease and sugar products anywhere.
ELECTORAL COLLAGE: Rice, Sidrin and other politicians sometimes loathed in these and other pages are up for re-election this year but are either unopposed or have only token rivals. For all the boasts people around town give me about how “political” they are, there’s damn too little real organizing going on to provide a truly progressive influence on (or alternative to) Seattle’s Democratic machine politics. To really be “political” doesn’t mean to stand around and proclaim how morally superior you are. It means to form alliances with other people (yes, even with squares, meat eaters and TV viewers) to forge a popular consensus toward rebuilding our frayed social fabric.
BE “R” GUEST: The Stouffer Madison Hotel not only stamps its logo into all the ashtrays every day, it replaces its elevator carpets daily: “Have A Pleasant THURSDAY.” An excessive service perhaps, but it is useful to business travelers who need to be reminded where they momentarily stand in the time-space continuum.
GOO: The UW alum mag Columns reports that researcher Patricia Kuhl’s got some big govt. grant to try and decode baby talk, believing it holds the key to language learning. Why doesn’t she just read some Sugar & Spike comic books or watch Rugrats?
COLOR ME BEMUSED: Why’s any sweatshirt or trinket boutique that screechingly claims to be “Seattle Style” invariably drenched in California-airhead pastels that have nothing to do with how light and color look here? A real “Seattle Style” would start with the misty hues of the Northwest School painters, then add the muted tones of bark brown, pine-needle green, and the steely gray of a lake on an overcast day. No pink, no “sky blue,” no saturated brightness, no neon violet, no harsh contrasts.
CLEANING UP: Sit & Spin, the new cafe/laundromat on 4th, apparently stands on the ex-site of Vic’s, a jazz club run in the early ’30s by local big-band leader Vic Meyers. I’ve told you about Meyers: In ’32 he ran for lieutenant governor as a publicity stunt, won in the FDR landslide, and stayed in office 20 years. S&S promises to open up a back room for performances later. One current local band would be perfect for its opening: Laundry. Past bands that oughta consider re-forming to play there: Red Dress, Skinny Ties, Green Pajamas, and Ironing Pants Definitely. They could cover songs from Nirvana’s album Bleach.
FROM FLY II SHAI: A year ago I predicted that by 2002 there’d be upscale rap festivals in tourist towns, where nouveau riche couples would listen to perky Vassar grads perform a cross between scat singing and Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs. Since then, new (arrested) developments made that obsolete. We’ve already seen the (PM) dawn of soft hip-hop, and it’s different from my prediction (never trust sci-fi stories that think every present trend will keep going forever). You could see it at last month’s KUBE Summer Jam: two dozen acts (most with recorded backing tracks), who had rap names but sounded like neo-Commodores or neo-Pointer Sisters. These groups celebrate the only recent black music hip white guys haven’t muscled in on: “quiet storm” love songs of the ’70s and early ’80s. The new R&B eschews the white-hipster image of blacks as lust-crazed savages. Mall rats are still appropriating gangsta rap’s romanticized violence, selfishness and sexism (in both directions); while the neo-doo-wop aesthetic finds sexiness galore in solid black-middle-class values: good grooming, hard work, mutual support. Since the black music of today usually becomes the white music of tomorrow, those white hiphop shows of the early 21st century are now more likely to have Boyz II Men cover bands, and today’s preteen daughters of Bellevue lawyers may someday go to their first bars awkwardly crammed into En Vogue dresses.
BUDDY LOVE LOST: The French may still love Jerry Lewis but his ex-wife doesn’t, according to her soon-to-be-published memoir that lists his extramarital escapades over the years. It may be painful for some of you to imagine Lewis having sex, but I can envision him afterwards, looking the lady in the eye, pointing a finger at her face and declaring, “Did you know that this is one of the greatest humanitarians this business has ever known? Give her a big hand!”
DEAD AIR: The ex-KJET went soft again. The Z-Rock network dropped its AM affiliates, so KZOK-AM quit the Hard Rawk to simulcast KZOK-FM’s tired oldies. The sign-off brought the end of the station’s local afternoon shift, facilitated by Jeff Gilbert. For the first time in 35 years, nobody’s playing new rock records on Seattle AM radio.
`IT’S,’ A CRIME (graphic during an ad for HBO on ABC): “Has Saturday Night Lost It’s Magic?” No, but apparently HBO has lost its ability to spell.
MIXED ICONS DEPT.: The Times ran an article comparing home mortgage rates today with those during the 1960s. It was festooned with all the cliché images of hippie nostalgia: a peace sign, a VW bus, et al.; all in tie-dye-ish colors. They should’ve used images appropriate to the kinds of folks who were buying houses back then: plastic-smiled suburbanites in green pantsuits and Sta-Prest slacks holding barbecues with delightful recipes from Sunset magazine.
STAN RIDGWAY REVISITED: The greatest channel on cable these days, without peer, is Univision. Everything on that channel is utterly cool: Variety shows with sensational female performers; outrageous game shows; goofy (and obviously censored) sex-farce movies; dubbed kung fu movies; and best of all the novelas, semi-lavish tearjerker dramas of sin and betrayal that run to 50 or more episodes and then stop. In a way it’s even more fun if you don’t know Spanish; you can just absorb the energetic performers, the great clothes and the cool-camp graphics without worrying whether the dialogue makes any sense. If that’s too much trouble for you, one of the channel’s greatest stars, the utterly remarkable children’s entertainer Xuxa, now has an Anglophone show at 3 pm weekdays on KTZZ. Who else would get cabaret singer/gay activist Michael Feinstein as the first guest on her US show — a show bankrolled by Pat Robertson? No wonder Forbes listed her as the second-wealthiest entertainer based in the non-English-speaking world (after Julio Iglesias).
ACTIVE CULTURES: In a Stranger article a few months ago I called for the death of Hollywood. Now, the decentralization of American culture looks unstoppable. New means of production and distribution are bypassing (or influencing) media monarchies. With Hi-8 camcorders people can make pro video for less than the annual cost of many prescriptions. The music video format has freed a generation of moving-image makers from the tyrannies of linear narrative and feature length. With DTP and quick-printing, the last financial barrier to self-publishing is the cost of binding to bookstore specs. The revolution is here, it is being televised (at least on odd cable channels), and it’s gonna be rough. You’ll see a lot of unlistenable indie records, unwatchable direct-to-video movies, unreadable desktop-published books, and unbearable fringe-theater plays. It’s the natural stumblings of people learning painfully to make their own culture, instead of merely choosing which prepackaged NY/LA/SF/UK worldview to adopt.
GE WANTS TO BUY BOEING, according to a Wall St. Journal rumor: If this column had editorial cartoons, it’d show a pilot’s seat occupied by a six-foot weasel.
SCENE STEALING: As late as 1990, there were only a couple dinky places to hear original rock bands in Seattle. Those times may return. The Times published a map showing the Seattle Commons proponents’ plans for east downtown. You know they want a long park from Denny Way to Lake Union. That’s the sugar-coating for their real scheme: thousands of condos and apts., mostly upper-income. The Times map showed all the blocks the Commons advocates plan to demolish. The Off Ramp, RKCNDY, and Lake Union Pub are all slated for removal. (The neo-folk Eastlake Cafe and the 911 film-video center would be allowed to live; Re-Bar might also be spared.) If I were paranoid, I’d call this another plot in the 15-year official conspiracy to crush local music. But my more understanding nature believes the rich suburbanites behind the plan are disinterested in live music and don’t care whether bands have a place to play. In the ’70s, citizens saved Pioneer Square and the Pike Place Market from smaller redevelopments; those areas are now tourist traps. The powers that be don’t get that the music scene is Seattle’s new major tourist attraction. This summer, you could hardly walk downtown without spotting Euro and Japanese young adults in the finest flannel, poring over maps and Strangers. (On a recent Fox TV magazine show, Ron Reagan Jr. had to tell Mayor Rice who Mudhoney was!)
‘TIL NEXT WE MEET, go look at Seattle’s first color TV camera (now on display at Olympic Lincoln-Mercury on Aurora), tape theamazing early talkies at 2 a.m. on KTZZ, and worry about your favorite waterfront businesses getting “discovered” and ruined after the Weekly moves there.
Bonnie Morino on the Vicki Lawrence show, telling how excited she was to be hired as a Playboy model: “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that doesn’t happen very often in one’s life.”
Still working on my new book. Still nowhere near selling it.
Will the person in Calif. who left a message about participating in one of my publishing projects please call again? The number given me doesn’t seem to work. Thanx.
“Audile”
9/93 Misc. Newsletter
NO WEATHER JOKES! NO SLUG JOKES! NO COFFEE JOKES!
Here at Misc., the only column that wonders why ads for toilet paper consistently use images of infants (the only humans who don’t use the stuff), we feel obligated to repeat a disclaimer issued earlier this summer: A concert held in the middle of Eastern Washington with no public transportation cannot by any logical definition be called a “Seattle” show. I wouldn’t even call it an Ellensburg show.
`OTHER’ WISE: Two readers have suggested that the source of “The Other,” that now-ubiquitous term used by Reflex writers to rant about how bigoted everybody outside the Art World is, was Simone de Beauvior’s classic essay The Second Sex. She apparently used it to describe how people divide the world of their own minds and bodies (“The Self”) from everything else in the universe (“The Other”). Most of the folks using the term today intend to denounce other people’s bigotries, but inadvertently reveal their own (damning entire groups of people, defined by such totally superficial criteria as their race and gender, as incapable of sympathy toward Otherness). We need alternatives to bigotry, not just alternate forms of bigotry.
NOSTALGIA REVISITED: Pop-culture recycling is completely out of hand. With every permutation of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s re-played to death, they’re now reviving gimmicks from the ’80s that didn’t make it the first time. Seventeen brashly proclaims that thefashion trend for fall will be — ready? — “The New Romantics: Fall’s fresh style takes its cue from the romantic dandy, mixing floaty white shirts with an old English beat.” Where’s Adam Ant when we need him?
Speaking of dumb fads, did I tell ya I got a designer grunge fashion spread from a March ish of the Glasgow Sunday Post? Imagine — telling the Scots how to wear plaid.
And even worse, some UW-licensed sweatshirt company’s got a “Grunge Puppy” design: a UW Husky looking like it’s high on something, in torn jeans, Docs and an open flannel shirt over a T-shirt reading “Eat, Sleep, Party.” Looks as horrid as it reads.
MUST TO AVOID: Under no circumstances should you pay money for The Seattle Style Guide, a self-published handbook for new residents. The author lives in Bellevue (the first sign of knowing nothing about Seattle), he refers to certain obnoxious yuppie bars as hangouts for the “artistic crowd,” he calls Kenny G Seattle’s proudest contribution to music, and he suggests you learn to appreciate grunge by playing a little Pearl Jam in between your Eagles records.
CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE DEPT.: KCPQ’s got this ad chiding all the recent turmoil, firings and resignations in local TV news departments, and offering its own nightly information alternatives – A Current Affair and Inside Edition!
LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH: Teen Fag is a little zine of stories and art not exclusively for teens or fags. Its main selling point is a review of the final Seattle show by G.G. Allin, NY’s self-proclaimed “violent and obscene rock performer,” who died weeks later. There’s also an extensive piece on Naughty Bits cartoonist Roberta Gregory. Available at Sound Affects Records on E. John (home of the sign, “Hey boys and girls: Home taping is killing the music industry. Keep up the good work”)….
Also available there is Sixth Form, a stapled Xeroxreg. zine with a thickly laminated cover, devoted to the (or should I say “thee”) gothic side of things. Issue #2 documents the heretofore undocumented Seattle/Salt Lake City band connection, apparently based on the ethereal/dreamscape bands Faith and Disease, Mary Throwing Stones and Ursula Tree. The zine celebrates a tight little clique of black-shawled explorers down there in Zion. Local coverage includes Diamond Fist Werny, Self Help Seminar, and a brief piece on Common Language‘s forthcoming British CD. (Hey, Common-ers: You’re one of the greatest bands around, but import-only releases by American alternative bands sucked 13 years ago. They still suck today. Same goes for the Walkabouts: Please get your stuff out at the affordable price, even if it’s on a label the size of eMpTy.)
DEAD AIR: It’s been a while since we talked of the KCMU Konflict. The CURSE/UW lawsuit is somewhere in the digestive tract of litigation. It’s been almost a year since station management imposed authoritarian controls and bland programming. Their official reason was to keep increasing station ratings and revenues. Even by those dubious measures, they’re an utter failure. So why would they apparently rather see the station die than admit they made a mistake?
It’s becoming clear that money isn’t what they’re after. The mess now seems to really be after the one thing all good UW administrators crave above all other desires: administrative turf. In the “nonprofit” equivalent of a corporate takeover, the honchos at KUOW down the hall wanted to assert control over KCMU, to turn it from a volunteer community station to a paid-staff institution that would suck up to wealthy listeners and corporate donors in the established NPR manner. They sincerely don’t understand that KCMU thrived as a very different station, with a different audience and a different operating philosophy. If they really want to make KCMU strong again, they should gentlemanly step aside and let it be run by the people who know how to run it right, the ex-volunteers who built it.
CLICHESTOPPERS NOTEBOOK: The only thing more lame nowadays than calling your band “grunge” is to call it “not grunge.” I’ve been reading the latter label applied in the last month to everything from the cowgirl-kitsch Ranch Romance to local rappers to a compilation record of frat-party bands (see below). As early as 1990, stupid national rockzines labeled 90 percent of Seattle bands as “not your typical Seattle band.” Don’t tell me what you’re not, tell me what you are.
NOTES: Just when you thought music meant something again, the forces of mindless entertainment prepare to counterattack. I’ve seen what promoters and managers are offering as the Next Big Thing, and it ain’t pretty: white funk bands. Jocks and fratboys from Portland, Boise and elsewhere, in backward caps and butt-cleavage jeans, waving attempted guesses of gang hand signals. These guys reinterpret Funkadelic and Run-DMC the way George Thorogood reinterpreted the blues, into one-dimensional macho posturing. The sounds associated by mainstream America (rightly or wrongly) with drug dealers are being revamped into the property of drug buyers. Actually, some of it’s stupid-cute, as long as you don’t take these guys as seriously as they take themselves. Few onstage sights are sillier than accountants’ sons hunching their backs and shouting “Yo!” And as for the authenticity issue, ya gotta figure that your average ex-high school football player has probably had more black friends than your average ex-conservatory jazz player.
CAN’T YOU SMELL THAT SMELL?: One of the few pleasures of my current unemployment (you thought this column was a full-time job or something?) is living without fear of the dreaded cologne cult cornering me at my desk. At most every office I’ve worked in, even spaces separated from the public by two layers of reception desks, I’d invariably get confronted this time of year by blank-eyed young adult males demanding that I buy their cheesy impostor colognes or cheesier framed prints of floral arrangements. I don’t know who they are or where they come from. I haven’t been able to stop any of them long enough to ask.
CULTURE CLUB: With something of a budget finally passed and health-care reform a while away, the right-wing Gridlock Machine has been backtracking for targets. Among the “scandals” recently recycled on talk radio and in pundit magazines is that all-purpose nemesis, the National Endowment for the Arts. They’re giving the same ol’ blah-blah about Our Tax Dollars and flaky artist types who mock all that is pure and proper. The real scandal about American arts funding isn’t that taxpayers are supporting too much “controversial” art but too little.
A couple of people who say “fuck” on stage notwithstanding, most NEA money subsidizes formula entertainment for the rich. It’s just as bad on the local level. Washington’s reputation as an artistic center is overrated and based more on consumption than production. We rank well in the bottom half of states in terms of public arts support. And a lot of that money goes either to bland sculptures by out-of-state artists, to “major performing institutions,” or to “support services” (buildings and bureaucrats); while the citizens who make images/films/texts, particularly of the non-touristy or non-upscale kind, scrape by as always.
The rich should pay for their own lifestyles, either directly or thru corporate support. I don’t wanna see any bassoonists lose their jobs in today’s economy, but if the symphony and the Rep are gonna get public money, it should be for public stuff: free or discounted shows, in-school appearances, etc. Since we’re always gonna have inadequate arts funding, what we can spend should emphasize investment in new works, works that might or might not find a big audience, works that might or might not even be good (experiments must be allowed to fail).
NEWS THAT DIDN’T MAKE THE NEWS: About 10 Seafair parade drunks headed to Broadway near midnight 7/30, presumably to fag-bash (baseball bats in hand), but were rounded up by a herd of police and State Patrol cars sent up the hill from the parade site.
COP OUT?: Twist Weekly claims to be the real reason Police Chief Patrick Fitzsimons resigned. The gay tabloid ran some articles about Paul Grady, an openly gay police sergeant who resigned in May. He said it due to harassment by fellow officers; but only Twistreported Grady’s claim that Fitzsimons specifically allowed and even encouraged the harassment. More damaging, Twist claims Fitzsimons’s homophobic attitude was a front — that the chief privately made moves on Grady and other male officers, and that he once tried to pick up a teenage restaurant busboy. Local mainstream media (except for KVI talk host Mike Siegel) pooh-poohed or hush-hushed the allegations, and treated Fitzsimons’s sudden resignation as the ordinary retirement of a great public servant. (Seattle Weekly did mention it, including Fitzsimons’s denials of all charges). If true, it’s another tragedy of the Closet — of someone trapped between his true self and a career that made him deny it, only to hurt himself and others. In any case, Fitzsimons still leaves a questionable legacy: the harassment of gay officers, overzealous tactics against young and/or black people, the still-in-the-works Weed and Seed paramilitary-occupation plan.
POST(ER) IMPRESSIONISM: Somebody (not me) put up street posters along Broadway and U Way, to harass my ex-employerFantagraphics Books. Around an old teenage photo of co-owner Kim Thompson (misspelled as “Thomson”) and rows of dollar signs, the poster invites people to work there and “earn up to $500 a week. Summer may be hot, but the heat is on!” Apparently, the office was inundated by calls from Ave rats seeking big bucks at the comix publisher. The hoax was probably instigated by one of those firees. The same person may have been responsible for a press release claiming Fantagraphics star Peter Bagge (Hate) was leaving to start his own comix company; the phone number on the press release belongs to a Bellevue dry cleaner.
PHILM PHUN: If you’re like me, you’re tired of hearing some stupid movie star favorably describing their stupid movie as “like a roller coaster ride,” sometimes using old Disneyland lingo as “an E Ticket ride.” For that matter, a lot of films these days are being turnedinto theme park rides, usually cheesy and expensive ones. I say, if we’re going to have theme park attractions based on movies, let’s have ’em based on good movies: The Murnau Sunrise streetcar, the Magnificent Ambersons sleigh ride, the Lover Model A (on a fake colonial-Saigon street), the Women on the Verge taxi, the (adult-scale) Battleship Potemkin baby carriage, the Detour hitchhiking experience, the Lift elevator ride, the Women in Love male wrestling show…the list is endless. And concession stands: Under the Volcano bar drinks, Merchant-Ivory cucumber sandwiches, Repo Man plates of shrimp, Prospero’s Books wedding feasts. Let’s have licensed merchandise from good movies, too: Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! bath toys, When the Wind Blows fallout detectors…
JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: I know this department used to appear a lot more often in the past than it does now, but that’s because fewer great new junk foods are being developed these days. One reason: the consumer-products conglomerates, like the media conglomerates, are fading. The recession’s led consumers toward store-brand products, while the breakup of the mass media leave fewer resources to build new brands. (Procter & Gamble, once TV’s biggest advertiser, whose daytime dramas inspired the term “soap opera,” is laying off an eighth of its workforce due to permanent downsizing.) But General Mills is giving it one more go by launching Fingos, billed as “the cereal you eat with your fingers.” They’re actually like little cinnamon-graham or oat crackers, and quite habit-forming indeed. They’re also a great on-the-run alternative to gooey breakfast bars.
DYING WORDS: Two separate parties have sent me copies of These EXIT Times, an 8-pp. zine distributed at the Oregon Country Fair by a small group called VHEMT (Voluntary Human Extinction Movement; the acronym refers to “vehemence”). Business interests sometimes accuse environmentalists of being anti-people; these folks really are. They want the human race to agree to die off without reproducing, so “the earth can recover.” They don’t want you to kill yourself, just to leave no progeny. I don’t see how they can expect ideology to overcome standard-equipment biological instinct. Besides, why preserve the land for future generations if there won’t be any? (Remember Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt, who said it was OK to exhaust the Earth because the Rapture was coming soon?)
ON THAT INSPIRATIONAL NOTE, be sure to visit the years-in-the-making Toaster Museum inside the Wonderful World of Art studio-gallery, refurbish your home for cheap with durable, utilitarian items from office furniture surplus stores (dumping the working tools of all those laid-off bank employees), and heed these words of Bret Maverick: “My pappy always said to never cry over spilt milk. It could’ve been whiskey.”
Robert Anton Wilson from Reality Is What You Can Get Away With (published in 1992, already badly dated): “In an accelerating, fast-evolving universe, whoever does not change moves backward relatively. Did you ever notice that takes only 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative, without changing a single idea?”
Still looking for people to talk to for my history of the Seattle music scene. I especially need to talk to people who’ve been involved with local music since the mid-’80s, not just from the early punk days. So write me, OK?
Also, I’m thinking of an alternative tourist guide to Seattle, showing the joints everybody who comes here wants to see but regular tourist guides don’t mention (the Off Ramp, Jimi’s grave, et al.). Depending on space, it may also have a few cheap eating/drinking/shopping/staying places. What do you think should be in it? (Don’t nominate only your own business.)
“Lenticular”
THE REAL MESSAGE OF `EDUCATIONAL’ CARTOONS:
YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH SHODDY WORK
IF IT MEETS BUREAUCRATIC REQUIREMENTS
8/93 Misc. Newsletter
(incorporating three Stranger columns)
AREN’T YOU GLAD BUDWEISER’S GOT BRANCH PLANTS?
Here at Misc., where we can’t help but repeat what you all must have thought about Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts (i.e., surely he could have picked better), we think the next Brit blue-eyed soul singer, Mercer Island blues babe, or frat-boy funk band that pretends to be black should have to earn it. Get thrown out of Denny’s, get hassled by cops just for standing outside, get rejected for jobs and mortgages for no good reason, see your band blackballed from almost every venue and rental hall in town while blue-eyed party boys imitate your music at showcase clubs every week. Only then you could boast about how much soul you’ve got.
UPDATE: Remember when we talked about the old Seattle band that had a logo instead of a written name and a yelp instead of a spoken name? They’ve re-formed! Look for ’em in the club listings any week now, printed as “Aiieee!” or something similar.
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES: During the Stranger‘s recent off week, some folks with access to DTP and too much time on their hands created a 12-pp. spoof, the Whimper. It’s OK and sorta funny, ‘cept for the “Miscue” column. I’ve been spoofed two or three times now, and nobody’s gotten it right. Keep trying.
1991 NOSTALGIA: I’d forgotten, as many of you likely forgot, that no Democrat gets nominated for President without the support of pundits and interest groups that demand a business-as-usual foreign policy. By starting Gulf War Lite, the Pentagon’s acting just like the Irish and Mideast vigilante armies that answer opponents’ isolated acts of mindless terror with their own. The week before the missile attack on Iraqi intelligence HQ, the new Wired had a short article claiming tomorrow’s warfare would be “infrastructure war”: precision raids against electronic and information targets. Maybe Wired really is the magazine o’ the future it claims to be.
LACTOSE INTOLERANCE: Tower Records Pulse! sez Danken’s licensed “Strawberries and Pearl Jam” ice cream won’t come back from its limited production engagement, partly ‘cuz some band members are anti-dairy vegans. One potential successor: “Nirvanilla.”
THE SAME OLD SAW: KIRO’s running a half-hour infomercial paid by the timber industry. Washington Private Forest Report, hosted by ex-KIRO anchorman Jim Harriott, is a self-congratulatory paean for timber management’s current environmental practices, with edited remarks by corporate, governmental, tribal and environmental “leaders” who all back the industry line about “a balanced solution” between ecological and commercial needs (i.e., letting the big companies cut all they can get away with). The show only discusses practices on company-owned lands, without directly mentioning the dispute over clearcutting old growth on Forest Service lands, though its “trust us” message is clearly meant to apply to public as well as private lands. Shows like this reduce issue politics to the level of campaign politics: the side with money gets to say anything in the media at any time; the side without money only gets a few words in real newscasts, edited by station employees and “balanced” with words from the moneyed side.
LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH: Zealot claims to be Seattle’s first-ever motorcycle zine (there’ve been bicycle and scooter zines), by and for the local rider community (more intelligent, and more co-ed, than old biker stereotypes suggest). A glance at the staff box reveals the street integrity here: 14 people listing the bikes they personally ride, plus one business manager who admits to having a Toyota Corolla. Within the free tabloid are bike photos, hot bike comix, repair tips, race reviews, and Dana Payne’s essay on the differences between riders and non-riders: “They look at us and see lemmings, chattering happily down the road to destruction. We look back at them and see the eyes of rabbits, of guinea pigs. Soft. Dewy. Fearful.” And not a single precious Young Republican Harley in the whole paper….When Adam Woog wrote his book about local inventors, I said it was the kind of book I should have written. His and Harriet Baskas’s new Atomic Marbles & Branding Irons is a book I have tried to write (the backing never came through). It’s a guide to “museums, collections and roadside attractions in Washington and Oregon.” You get all about the General Petroleum Museum on Capitol Hill, Dick and Jane’s Art Spot in Ellensburg, the Walker Rock Garden in West Seattle, the Advertising Museum in Portland, and the “world’s largest hairball” at Oregon’s Mount Angel Abbey (but not Tiny’s Fruit Stand in Cashmere). Recommended.
MAD RAGS: You can now get the most realistic G-word-wear from one of the authentic sources used by the original musical creators. Yes, the Salvation Army store on 4th Ave. S. has opened an “Alternative Gear” boutique, complete with 15-percent discount flyers for “ripped flannel.” (G-word insiders prefer Value Village or Goodwill.) Meanwhile, USA Today (which boasts to advertisers that, “compared with the general population,” its readers are “23 percent more likely to dance/go dancing”) ran a pic of a truly stupid designer-G-word teen couple taken from the JC Penney Back To School ’93 collection. Maybe if the chain likes the Seattle urban look so much now, it’ll think about having a store in town again.
LOVE’S LABOURS: We now know that several weeks back, Kurt was arrested and went to jail for three hours on a domestic-violence rap, before being released without charges. Cops say they went to his place on a neighbor’s noise complaint. There,Courtney supposedly said they’d argued about his gun-buying binge and their busted $300 juicer; they supposedly shoved each other, he supposedly dragged her to the floor and choked her. (So much for juiceheads being laid-back.) She insisted to the P-I that it was all a big misunderstanding, that they’d argued but not physically fought, that he’s still a great guy and an ardent feminist. She echoed these remarks at the Hole gig at the Off Ramp: “This is a song about domestic violence, not! I don’t mean to joke about it, I know it’s a serious issue and shit…” The show itself was one of those gigs where the band valiantly keeps efficiently chopping away throughout the frontperson’s half-drunken stumblings (she gave up on guitar playing in the middle of a couple of songs). In short, a definitive sloppy old-fashioned punk show. Perfect.
THE FINE PRINT (disclaimer title on the public-access show H.A.R.D. TV (Hardbody Alternative Rock Digest)): “All bands on this show sound 500% better live. This audio is the worst (and we know it).”
WHERE AMERICA SHOPPED: It’s one thing for Sears to kill its catalog, but to remove the candy counter at its 1st Ave. flagship (its oldest surviving U.S. store) is unforgivable. That little stand between the first-floor escalators was the heart and soul of the place. They might as well stop selling DieHards.
PHILM PHACTS: Free Willy is a new mid-budget “family film” about a boy who helps a lonely killer whale escape a nasty, fictional “Great Northwest Water Park.” Execs from Sea World, the Anheuser-Busch-owned theme park chain with 18 performing killer whales (all named Shamu), have reportedly been to the San Juans, hobnobbing with area whale experts to help assemble their anti-Willy PR campaign. They’re telling you that captive orcas have great lives and are treated fine, that no Willys need ever be freed….I got to see a few scenes from Sleepless in Seattle some months back, and the finished film is every bit as stupid as those scenes cracked it up to be. Yo, Hollywood: We’re not all rich boomer airheads here.
NOTES: The Chamber of Commerce’s idea of Seattle music, Kenny G, will play the Coliseum in Sept. with Peabo Bryson. He’s the male half of most of those sappy love-song duets at the end of dumb blockbuster films (new catch phrase: “The movie ain’t over `til Peabo sings”). He oughta have a giant screen behind him showing closing credits through his entire set.
GRAFFITO OF THE MONTH (outside B. Dalton Books on 1st): “Read less. Live more.”
THE NOAM-MOBILE: Congrats to all of you for making Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media one of the biggest documentary hits in a long time, even though I don’t agree with much of it. Chomsky treats the mass media as one monolithic, unstoppable force exercising mind control over all America (except for himself and his East Coast intellectual pals). He can’t, or won’t, notice how tentative that hold really is. People who consume lots of media are very cynical about what they’re consuming. Compare the faux-ironic, “air quotes” speech patterns of MTV viewers with the blind-faith naiveté of tube-loathing neohippies. A typical TV viewer takes nothing by faith, treats everything with (excess?) skepticism. A typical nonviewer is ready to believe almost anything, as long as it’s told in the proper “alternative” lingo by recognizably “alternative” faces. The Robertson right, the Perot moderate-right, and the Chomsky left all hate the commercial mass media. Everybody’s a “rebel” these days, and the press is one of the few universally recognized symbols of what everybody’s rebelling against. Newspaper circulation is flat, and ad revenues have plummeted. (Ratings and ad revenues for TV news are also down.) Most people are already aware that their local newspaper is beholden to its town’s business and political bigshots. It doesn’t take listening to three hours of Chomsky to figure out that national and Eastern-regional media might be similarly beholden to the NY/DC bigwigs. The New York Times is, after all, the Cadillac of American newspapers: it’s bigger, and it’s got more luxury features, but it’s still built on the same Chevy drive train.
Just as leftist economists talk as if the world’s economy was still based on heavy industry, so do media critics like Chomsky still “analyze” an American media comprised only of three networks, two wire services, two weekly news mags, five opinion mags, and two or three big Eastern papers. Can Noam adapt to a media, and a nation, that are becoming more decentralized and diffuse (but perhaps no more “progressive”)? Stay tuned.
RE-PRESSED: At least Chomsky does sometimes get around to telling you his worldview, instead of just dissing other media worldviews. That’s the problem with most leftist “media analysis,” especially the syndicated “Media Beat” columnists in the Saturday Seattle Times. Those two guys give only a shadow of the “reality” they claim exists. They keep telling us that the papers aren’t telling the whole truth about some issue, but they expend little or no space telling us what their idea of the “true story” is. I wanna throttle those guys and dare ’em: “Yeah yeah, I know these other people aren’t telling me the whole story; so why won’t you tell it to me already?”
NOT MY GENERATION: The Weekly still treats rich baby boomers as the only people (besides political-corporate bigshots) it wants to talk about. Its preview of summer music festivals treated tame boomer nostalgia music as a refreshing novelty, not the reactionary albatross that’s helped keep original music off bigger stages for two decades. The same issue had Walt Crowley with one of those puff pieces about how great it was to be young 25 years ago (ostensibly a review of a book about old underground papers, like the one he used to edit). Like most such articles, it depicted a Sixties America populated only by middle-class college boys. Unlike most, he didn’t treat it as a gone-forever “age of miracles.” Instead, he wished young’uns would follow the path set by elders like himself, without saying how. It’d be unwise to do everything like it was done then. Hippies made a lot of mistakes: they appropriated Black Power slogans while doing little to integrate their own world; they abrogated 50 years of leftist heritage by stereotyping all working-class people as redneck fascists. We’ve gotta learn from that time, including its mistakes, to do better. Don’t live in the Sixties, be radical now.
MIA ZAPATA, 1965-1993: In the past three years I’ve said goodbye in print to six members of the local music/arts scenes, some I’d known personally and some only through their work. They all died needlessly and too soon. This may be the most senseless death of them all. Zapata, a poet, painter and singer-lyricist for the Gits, was found strangled in an alley near 25th and S. Washington, an hour and a half after she left a small get-together at the Comet, honoring the one-year anniversary of her friend Stefanie Sargent’s fatal overdose. Zapata died a week before she was to have recorded vocals for the Gits’ second CD. I knew her only as a presence on a stage, a dynamic presence delivering some powerful and fun tunes, a voice rooted in the early notion of punk rock as a statement of positive defiance, not just a lowbrow lifestyle.
Some 300 friends of Zapata and the band attended a wake at the Weathered Wall, which included the surviving Gits and friends playing her songs one last time (the band won’t continue without her) on a stage filled with candles and yellow roses. Some people ask me how Seattle bands can be so strident and negative, contradicting the official image of Seattle as heaven on earth. I tell those people to look around themselves: There’s a madness here, subtlely different from the madness in the nation at large. Due partly to our western boomtown heritage and surviving Greed Decade attitudes, far too many people here believe they have the right to do anything they want, to whomever they want. Seattle’s “nice” image is at best a cover-up, at worst an emotional repression. Beneath the enforced attitude of passivity sometimes called “the Northwest lifestyle,” you’ll find a barely-contained force of sheer terror. There’s no running away from it; you’ll still find that terror in the white-flight suburbs and the hippie-flight countryside. Don’t move out, stay and reclaim the public space. Do that and we can help fulfill the pledge shouted by the people at her wake, “Viva Zapata!” (A reward fund is being formed to help find her killer, in cooperation with King County Crime Stoppers. Any info that might lead to Zapata’s killer can be given anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 343-2020.)
‘TIL WE MAKE A PLEDGE to meet in September, be sure to see the digitized Snow White, be courteous to foreign Seattle Sound tourists, and ponder this thought from Night of the Living Dead master George A. Romero: “People are operating on many levels of insanity only clear to themselves.”
PASSAGE Chris Stigliano in the Sharon, PA zine Black to Comm: America’s Only Rockism Magazine:
“Don’t you miss the days you could turn on your fave UHF station and watch any of the Nick at Nite programs without the computer animation and with those great car salesman ads? Me too….You can pay upwards of $30 a month to see ’em presented in a yuppie/disco manner that ultimately insults them (and you), but ain’t television supposed to be free and not controlled by spoiled brat cokeheads with little understanding of what we (as noncorruptable, wild rock & roll reactionaries) are?”
Almost finished with the first draft of my book chronicling the Seattle music scene since 1976. All you who’ve been holding back on offering your stories and reminiscences: Drop me a line already. All you who have offered, but haven’t heard back from me yet: Be patient a week or two longer.
I’m thinking of offering official Misc. T-shirts, stickers and the like. Any favorite slogans you’d like?
“Orphic”
7/93 Misc. Newsletter
Demographic Cleansing
Misc. thanks all who went to our big variety spectacular last month at the Two Bells. If you didn’t, future speaking engagements may be in store, possibly broadcast. I’ll forgive you; you were probably preoccupied anxiously waiting for the new-look Seattle Times (more on that later).
END-O-ERA DEPT.: A tired old sitcom about a bunch of maintenance drunks leaves TV after 11 years and gets the biggest hype campaign this side of the end of Communism. Dave leaves the same network after 12 years and doesn’t even get an ad in TV Guide. One word says it all: Weasels.
MEMO TO LOWRY’S HANDLERS: You’ve gotta reach out to the people of the state. Explain that the Right’s no-new-taxes/slash-all-spending/just-don’t-ask-us-how line is a crock. Remind folks that the interests that scream the loudest about slashing spending are the ones that lobby the hardest for breaks or subsidies for themselves. Point out that this “We The People” petition is really backed by big-bucks lobbies that like the health-care and transportation messes the way they are, that’ll do anything to stop real reform. Remind folks that we need roads and schools and colleges (not to mention prison guards for all the throw-away-the-key sentencing laws), and we’ve gotta get health care and public transit into shape or the state’s fiscal health will just get worse. To build a better future, ya gotta invest. Even rugged-individualist Eastern Wash. was settled by government aid (railroad land grants, dams, irrigation, farm price supports, Hanford).
TURNING A PAGE: The new Barnes & Noble book superstore in an old bowling alley (one of Bellevue’s few truly beautiful buildings) proves that the intellectual-elitist myth is wrong: people do read books these days, in increasing numbers. If they didn’t, corporate empires like B&N owner K mart wouldn’t build monster outlets like this. It’s what all these folks are reading that we can still argue about.
TURNING ANOTHER PAGE: Book sales boomed in recent years, but newspaper circulation hasn’t kept up with population growth. The Times is particularly frustrated, with suburban papers whopping it on its outer turf. In response, the paper’s built a Bothell printing plant and launched a massive redesign. Launched after two years of committee meetings, focus groups and “pagination” consultants, the new-look Times is a mix of elements from the NY Times, Wall St. Journal, SF Examiner, Oregonian, Tacoma News Tribune and many other papers. Most redesigned papers adopt huge type sizes that let ’em fill the same space with fewer reporters; the Times redesign is relatively modest about this, losing only 5 to 10 percent of its verbage per column inch (more is lost to goofy new features like the Page 2 blurbs). It’s like the remodel at the paper’s biggest remaining advertiser, the Bon. The paper, like the store, was an old workhorse not noted for flashy looks, suddenly given a “return to elegance” that it’d never had. The new Times is just more “tastefully” dull than the old.
BUMMER OF THE MONTH: The Nowogroski Insurance Agency closed its old office across from Safeco Tower in the U-District, and moved out somewhere by Northgate. It wouldn’t concern us, except the storefront office (an ex-A&P store) still bore the name of one of the operations that had been merged into it: the James M. Cain Insurance Agency. I always wanted to take out a life policy there, just so I could ask if they had a double indemnity clause.
THEY LOVE US IN EUROPE: Posh Italians think we’re “the ultimate frontier of the American look, costume and sound.” It says so in “Il Futuro Arriva de Seattle” (the future comes from Seattle), a 15-page spread in the Euro-style mag Max. There’s no NYC “designer grunge” wear (indeed, almost no women) in the Seattle spread, shot by photog Loca Trovato in January. You do get bike cops, fish tossers, the Smith Tower, the singles apartment house, Bruce Lee’s grave, Waiting for the Interurban, Bulldog News, the Waterfront Streetcar, and a mention of Bernardo Bertolucci filming Little Buddha here. The mag describes grunge (“Uno Stile, Una Musica”) as “expanding like an oil spill on the world scene,” local clubs as teeming with record producers ready to sign a band on the spot, and Seattle as a “laboratory for tomorrow…where the human dimension lives together with the future of technology, avant-garde urban planning and respect for nature.” They’ve got shots of the Sub Pop guys, Nirvana, Mother Love Bone, current club bands Dumt and Spoonbender, the Off Ramp, the Crocodile, the Vogue men’s room (looking unusually clean), the Colourbox and the Paramount, plus the fraudulent NY Times “Grunge Glossary” (Max doesn’t know it’s fake), a wacky sidebar on Madonna’s attempt to sign a grunge band (Candlebox, not Hole) for her label, and Chris Cornell complaining about the overcommercialization of the scene. And this allegedly common benediction: “It’s not rare, frequenting the Seattle clubs, to speak with anyone and hear the response: `Grunge will be you’ or `Grunge will belong to you.'” (Thanx to Tom Orr of Twist Weekly for translating help.)
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: XLR8R is the free monthly tab for local rave, techno and dance music lovers. Issue #2 includes an update on the rave-harassment issue, from the point of view of a promoter who’s managed to meet every bureaucratic hurdle and hold successful shows at the West Seattle rehearsal building Nirvana uses. He even reported getting a personal inspection and OK from asst. mayor Donna James (who’s married to the brother of the ex-wife of the brother of the previous mayor — all four of whom are present or former local TV personalities).
MORE SPACE EXPLORATION: The Showbox lives! — sorta. The legendary 1st Ave. ballroom that was Seattle’s grandest punk palace, then became a branch of the Improv comedy chain, has DJ/rave dance nights on Mondays. The Odd Fellows Temple also lives again with 18-and-over shows Fri. nights. The new promoters claim to have worked out all police and fire regs; we’ll see if the city tries to censor it again. And somebody named Troy is inviting bands to submit demos for a new all-ages series; call 285-0385 Mon. and Tue. afternoons for info.
THE FINE PRINT (from Cyborgasm, producer Lise Talae’s CD of surround-sound sex scenes): “Cyborgasm is a 3D audio fantasy anthology. The activities presented here have been created using sonic rendering and digital simulation. Cyborgasm should not be taken as an endorsement of these activities.”
SIGN OF THE MONTH (outside the Off Ramp): “We don’t care if you smoke, snort, sniff, or shoot. Just don’t do it in here.” Runner-up (in the window of the Salvation Army service center on E. Pike, adjacent to a liquor-license notice): “The Salvation Army is moving. The liquor license is being sought by the future owners of the building. The Salvation Army has nothing to do with this.”
(latter-day note: The building in question became Moe, perhaps Seattle’s finest alt-rock club and one of my fave hangouts. The one relic from the space’s Salvation Army days is a long inside sign with the slogan “Self Denial Will Prove Your Love to God.” The current occupants stuck a big MOE sticker over “God.”)
`OTHER’ WISE: Where did this now-ubiquitous term “The Other” come from anyway, and why do all these white het male art critics use it to complain about white het males? I know there was an NY underground rag long ago called The East Village Other, but they presumably got the term from somebody else. The critics invoking it (including most everyone at Reflex) imply that there are only two classes in American society: the class of all the people they don’t like (called either The Patriarchy or The New World Order) and the class of all the people they like (The Other); the critics analyze all artworks accordingly. Shoehorning art into oversimplistic ideology is just silly, and sheds no insight onto either art or politics. In the ’70s, academic leftists claimed that Everything Is Political. I’m starting to believe Everything Is Aesthetic. Besides, anybody who thinks there are only two cultures in the U.S. isn’t looking very hard.
CATHODE CORNER: Local actor Patrick-Alden Moore wants to produce a weekly TV sitcom in Seattle. It’d be an all-local production: not just location shooting but local writers, actors, and crews. He’s writing a pilot script, which he hopes to film with money from some of those Hollywood bigshots with Puget Sound island homes. He envisions a lighthearted soap-parody like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman or Soap, though not too weird or too sexy (“I want this to be something everyone can enjoy,” he says, adding that he thinks The Simpsons is too racy for kids). His written premise involves psychiatry jokes and ethnic jokes (an Hispanic bartender learning Yiddish). Don’t look for any local references: the title, City, is the only name the show’s town will have. Casting isn’t final yet, but he says he’d like to get the unlikely teaming of Ichabod Caine (country DJ and born-again Christian) and Peggy Platt (empress of local standup comedy and outspoken pro-choicer).
WHAT’S (NOT) IN A NAME?: So Prince wants to no longer be referred to by name, just by his abstract pseudo-zodiac logo. It’s been done. There was a Seattle band in ’81 that had no written name, just a symbol of two interlocking diamonds with wings on each side and a graph line inside. Unlike the Prince symbol, this outfit did have a spoken name: a guttural shriek. And there’s still the famous local illustrator/tattoo designer, known by the logo of a triangle-slash.
DEMOGRAPHIC CLEANSING: Sometimes it seems that yuppies don’t want to coexist with anybody, that they want to take over a place, shove everybody else out, then appropriate the evictees’ cultural heritage. The downtown “cleanup” campaign can be seen as a plan to remove the young and/or poor from public areas. The Belltown “anti-crime” campaign is a system for harassing black kids who stand around quietly, while ignoring far rowdier white kids nearby. But now comes the second draft of the Seattle Commons Plan. The rich suburbanites behind the plan now insist they want to keep the same number of low-income housing units in the South Lake Union/Cascade area (not necessarily in the same buildings), though most of the planned net increase in housing stock would be luxury or “market-rate” (upper-middle-class). They’re even talking about keeping the Lincoln-Mercury building (without the great neon). But nowhere in the 126-page report is there a mention of the neighborhood’s funky lo-rise character, its half-dozen or more rehearsal studios, its photo studios, or its other current values to the city. Low-rent, high-ceiling districts are as precious an urban resource as jogging trails, and have just as much right to exist.
I ORDER YOU TO RELAX!: You probably missed out on Lighten Up America Day on 6/22, devised by Portland corporate-motivation speaker C.W. Metcalf (no relation to “Convoy” singer C.W. McCall). He thinks Americans are too darn depressed these days (I can’t imagine why). Metcalf wants us to think brighter thoughts, to let more light into our hearts. Speaking of which…
CHURCH WINDOWS: Some members of St. Mark’s Cathedral want glass artist Dale Chihuly to design the Episcopal landmark’s still-unfinished interior. I’d always thought of the Episcopalians/Anglicans as a religion of grandeur and spectacle. Chihuly, who sells prosaic decorative bowls to Microsoft millionaires, would be all wrong for that (‘tho I like his idea to freeze neon lights inside theTacoma Dome hockey surface). His passionless work would be more appropriate to my alma mater denomination, the Methodists. Speaking of which…
THE GOOD NEWS: Those who miss the activist calendar in Community Catalyst should check out The Source, the monthly “Ecumenical Newspaper” of the Church Council of Greater Seattle. Even for non-churchgoers, it’s a great resource for events along the social-concern wing of mainline Protestantism. Last month’s topics include the Dalai Lama’s visit, Hiroshima memorials, the survival of faith in a hi-tech age, the Ste. Michelle wine boycott, helping the homeless, Cuban friendship advocates, and a big section about gay rights vs. right-wing disinformation campaigns. Speaking of which…
DEAD AIR: The talk radio goon squad, predictably, is at the forefront of pro-gridlock politics. The demagogues and their TV-pundit pals fancy themselves as Scarlet Pimpernels, valiantly rescuing helpless aristocrats from the pinko insurrection. They’re really more like old Soviet state ideologists, using twisted logic to find “moral” or “economic” justifications for preserving the status quo of power and privilege. They’ve got Clinton in retreat, forcing compromises on any issue that can be oversimplified into a faux crusade. The White House ought to capture the moral high ground. Hillary‘s trying, with her remarks about a “politics of meaning” to fight the “sleeping sickness of the soul” caused by a dehumanizing society. (It’s paraphrased from ex-UW campus radical Michael Lerner, who now runs the Jewish social-philosophy mag Tikkun.) The pundits and talk-radio guys (I hate to call ’em “hosts,” a term that implies gentility) scoffed: How dare a politician be sincere about social leadership, instead of using it as an excuse for hate-mongering? How dare anyone talk about spirituality who doesn’t belong to the former state religion of Robertsonism? Mrs. C.’s going where Mr. C.’s backed off, toward disarming the Right by exposing its corporate hypocrisies. Speaking of which…
BOXING BOUT: Buying CDs in jewel boxes, from stores that don’t supply those wasteful cardboard longboxes? Think you’re saving the Earth? Think again, after you pass the Precision Sound warehouse on Republican St. east of Westlake. On a rainless day you’ll see a crew of dudes & dudettes out on the loading dock, tearing off longboxes and tossing them into a Dumpster. Sure they’re all recycled, but it’s still a waste to make ’em in the first place. Any record co. that puts environmental hype in its inserts ought to offer jewel box-only CDs. Besides, longboxes were the last bastion of big cover art; you should have the option of getting ’em. They will be collectibles. Speaking of which…
CANNED HEAT: Some folks claim to have found syringes in diet-pop cans. It’s really either a hoax or a tampering, but I can’t help fantasizing about a company doing it as a stunt to become the Choice of a New Generation, Seattle-style. (Imagine the alternative-rock-star endorsement possibilities!) Note that officials insist any contaminant chemicals would never survive in a Pepsi can (should our kids drink stuff that strong?) Also note that KIRO handed the commentary spot about the soda scandal to its longtime resident shrink, Dr. Pepper Schwartz (no relation).
TRUTH IS STRANGER DEPT.: In an item cut from a column back in February, I pondered future developments in watered-down “grunge” style: (1) stage-diving classes at summer camps and grade schools, (2) nipple-piercing in malls, and (3) Grunge Barbie. The first hasn’t happened to our knowledge, but a Basic/Cramp copycat store has opened in Southcenter, and Mattel’s got a designer-grunge outfit for Barbie’s pal Skipper.
‘TIL NEXT TIME, be sure to see the Betsey Johnson fashion show at Benham Studio (one “designer grunge” maker who’s actually been here!), get your official Jurassic Park dino-dolls with built-in, take-apart flesh wounds (just don’t bother with the movie, an overblown mix of WestWorld and Godzilla on Monster Island), and ponder this headline from British Vogue: “If Georgia O’Keefe were alive today, she’d be modeling in Gap ads.”
Louis M. Haber in a Washington Post Op-Ed essay, defending Barney the Dinosaur:
“Is this incredible hostility toward Barney just a reflection of societal prejudice against idealistic and cheerful people who are often discounted as simpletons? Against males who are not afraid to reveal a delicate and sensitive persona and to display gentle mannerisms?…Are you so hard-boiled as to be unable to accept anyone who accepts everyone? So cynical as to think of those who are undauntingly optimistic as obsequious?”
My book on the history of alternative culture in Seattle still doesn’t have a publisher (they’re throwing away the investment opportunity of a lifetime), but it’s attracting attention from here to Montreal (I’ve been interviewed for the CBC French channel about what Seattle kids really wear).
A broadcast Misc. is still in the works; more info when it happens. I’m also working on other marketing ideas (T-shirts, stickers, posters, a 900 line). If you’ve got an idea you think might work, drop me a line.
“Penuriousness”
FIRST, LOCAL BANDS GET BIG. NOW, THE M’S ARE CONTENDERS.
I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!
4/93 Misc. Newsletter
GREAT! GATES GETS HITCHED
JUST AFTER I TOSS MY OLD LIST
OF COMPUTER-NERD SEX PUNS…
Misc. hopes you’ve all got your copy of the white-on-black T-shirt featuring a hypodermic needle superimposed on the Space Needle beside the slogan, ” I went to Seattle to make a score and all I got was this lousy recording contract.”
UPDATE: I recently said we should preserve Seattle as a working city and resist the huge “Seattle Commons” yuppification project. Advocates of the Cascade neighborhood, a neglected pocket of affordable housing threatened by the Commons plan, have now formed the Cascade Residents Action Group to fight the wrong kind of redevelopment (info: 624-9049 or 523-2569).
BEEHIVE VIDEO, R.I.P.: It began 15 years ago on N.E. 45th as a far-flung outlet for the Peaches record chain, housed in an ex-Ford dealership. When that chain went Chapter 11 in ’81, the local manager bought it and added a Ballard outlet. It was the last large locally-owned record store in town, and the last to stock new vinyl. The first sign of trouble came in ’87, when the Wherehouse chain opened across the street, followed by Blockbuster down near U Village. In ’90, the store stopped paying for the Peaches name and held a contest for a new name (which meant no more word-balloon signs with the “Peachy” mascot pointing to the “Gay and Bisexual Videos” shelf). In ’92, they sold the Ballard store and made the 45th outlet all-video. It bravely (foolishly?) failed to stock umpteen multiple copies of blockbuster action hits, instead keeping a large stable stock of cool obscurities. The strategy cut costs and attracted a loyal clientele, but it still wasn’t enough. On 3/22, I rented my regular Monday 2-for-1 titles and saw nothing strange, except that the sale shelf of close-out tapes was a bit fuller. The next afternoon, I went in and was abruptly told I couldn’t rent anything else: “I’m sorry, we just went out of business. We’re only taking returns.” Its loss leaves a lot of frequent-renter cards that’ll never get filled up, and leaves the central U District without a decent foreign-film store.
OUT TO DRY: The Squire Shops are in Chapter 11; many of the remaining 23 outlets are closing. Just as the ugly clothes that made ’em famous are coming back! Squire sold clothes that young mall-crawlers thought were hip. In its heyday, that meant jeans with cuffs nearly as wide as the waist. Seattle wore bellbottoms years after the rest of the country stopped. Several companies formed here to keep Seattle in clothes the national companies no longer made. That scene led to the local firms that gave the world loud sweatshirts with goofy slogans and Hypercolors; some of those firms are now on the wrong side of that fad and face money trouble themselves. (“Designer grunge” has virtually nothing to do with the local fashion biz.)
LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH: The Washington Free Press promises to be the hard-hitting investigative newspaper Seattle’s never really had, with the possible exception of the pre-JOA P-I. Several tabloids over the years promised this, but soon turned into lifestyle rags that just used `politics’ to define their subcultures (Community Catalyst is just as guilty of this, in its way, as the Weekly). Free Press isn’t like that. It doesn’t tell you what clothes you have to wear or what food you have to eat. It just reports the under-reported big stuff. In the April ish, that’s a huge piece about Boeing’s spotty environmental record and vigorous influence-peddling. The rest of the free monthly tab’s weaker (talk radio-style rants against Jack in the Box) but shows promise….Beyond the Cultural Dustbin is Hans and Thelma Lehmann’s personal history of highbrow art, music and dance in Seattle since 1938, when UK conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (scion of the drug empire that now owns Contac) came to lead the Seattle Symphony. He left a year later, calling Seattle “a cultural dustbin.” The book argues that we’ve come a long way since then, from the Northwest School painters of the ’50s and John Cage‘s residency at Cornish to today’s proliferation of dance and theatrical troupes. The book implies but doesn’t directly ask: We’ve got culture now, but is it art?
JESUS JONES WITHOUT THE JONES: Counter Culture is the first Christian alternative-music zine I’ve seen in Seattle since the Jesus Freak scene of the ’70s. Its cover interviewee, Tonio K., was a minor ’79 LA singer-songwriter (best-known LP: Life in the Food Chain) who’s now born-again and wants a crossover hit just like Amy Grant. The writers insist at several parts that you can still like Jesus even if you don’t like the Religious Right. It displays calls to prayer in standard cut-up punkzine design. It covers Christian grunge bands that mix “`70s funk with the anxious mind of `80s punk rock with the heart of God.” But then, punk and its descendants, even in their nihilism, held a righteous notion of good and evil, a conviction that the world should be better than it is. Bands like U2 and 10,000 Maniacs already use songs as sermons. Take out sex and drugs, add New Testament imagery, and you too could exhort the faithful at the Vineyard coffeehouse in the U District.
TO WOMB IT MAY CONCERN: First Moments is a local firm offering “videos of your child’s first moments” — ultrasound images of the fetus, to be treasured as a family heirloom; there’s blank tape at the end so you can add birth and infancy footage. Forgetting the unspoken anti-abortion implication, it makes you wonder: if you’re sick of friends’ cloying baby pix now, just wait!
OPEN MEMO TO CURSE: You’ve successfully exposed the hypocritical machinations behind KCMU-Lite and its instigators. But to restore the station as a community resource, you’ve gotta deal with the UW Board of Regents, who control the license. The current managers were turning the station into nothing but a self-serving fundraising machine, something the Regents can identify with. After fundraising, their no. 2 priority is saving face; with all the other campus scandals, they might seek the safest way out of the KCMU dilemma. Unfortunately, there are “safer” ways than restoring Classic KCMU. They could turn it into an automated classical outlet, or return it to the Communications School. You’ve gotta assert that any format change would violate the promises made in membership drives. Then, offer an olive branch. Ask your comrades, the fired DJs with the class-action suit, to back off if the Regents will let you help set up a new structure for the station, not like it’s now but not quite like before either. Tell them you don’t want to restore all of the station’s rough-hewn past. You want to build on its heritage, to more strongly serve students, alternative-music communities, and others now unserved by local radio. Even after that, you’ll have to deal with KUOW management down the hall, people who’ve asserted excessive control over KCMU and who honestly don’t get what’s wrong with institutionalized “public” radio. People who only seek the most upscale listeners. People who mistake blandness for a virtue. The announcers on NPR stations all sound like HAL 9000, for chrissakes! They oughta sound more like the booming, colorful voice who used to announce the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. They oughta reflect the glorious pomposity of orchestral and opera music, the twee affectations of chamber music, the life-affirming spirit of real jazz, instead of a yup variation on BBC English. Public radio should be by and for the public, not just by the bureaucracy for the upscale.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? DEPT.: Ex-KCMUers Debbie Letterman and Kathy Fennessy are now spinning CDs as live “queue jockeys” for callers on hold for Microsoft’s product-support lines. While it’s a novel job that pays OK, Letterman told the Puget Sound Business Journal that she’s still tied into as restrictive a format as she faced at KCMU-Lite before she quit. “The key word is mellow:” Enya si, Ministry no.
THE URBAN TOURIST: Columbia Center sounds as strange as it looks. The climate-control hum and rushing air from elevator shafts give the 5th Ave. entrance cool noises (they’d be great for a sci-fi movie). Even weirder is the Seafirst Corridor, a passageway under 5th and Columbia from Columbia Center (where the bank execs work) to Seafirst 5th Ave. Plaza (where the back-office staff works). It’s the most surreal walkway since the United terminal at O’Hare. On the walls, plastic-covered pastel lights flash in a slow sequence of colors, while New Age music and ocean sounds enhance the creamy dreamscape. At the end, two elevators take you one flight up to the harsh utilitarian corridors of the 5th Ave. Plaza, where a security guard waits to let you back into a numbing temp job.
DODGE-ING THE ISSUE: If you think Portland ad agency Wieden & Kennedy‘s Subaru spots are already odd, wait ’til you see the one with a dude in black jeans saying that the Impreza’s “like punk rock, only it’s a car”.
OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS (via Michelle McCarthy and David Humphries): “London news has reported the NY bomb news prominently, but I think Londoners were squinting a little at the panicky New Yorkers having had their first initiation to bomb-based evacuation. Since we’ve lived here, areas as populous as Wall Street are evacuated for bomb threats close to weekly, and one actually goes off about once a month. It’s hard to imagine the US tolerating the constant shutdown and occasional destruction of its biggest cities and business districts.”
CHRISTIAN GORE AT 911: Three years ago, Gore was the uppity editor of a Detroit ‘zine about perverse film and video. Now, he’s the uppity editor of a slicked-up, mass-market Film Threat, based in Beverly Hills (at that ZIP Code) and financed by Hustler‘s Larry Flynt. Gore puts big stars on the cover (for sales) and trashes those stars inside (for credibility). He covers “B” Hollywood horror and sci-fi, and still promotes a few undergrounds. Gore promised two different nights of video treats, but the Friday and Saturday shows shared half the same material: drive-in movie trailers, Sid & Marty Krofft theme songs, banned Ren & Stimpy episodes (Gore’s cronies with the original R&S team), psychedelic computer animation. At both shows, Gore passed around cans of cheap beer and asked the audience to sit back, yell if they thought something was boring, and act like they were in his living room. I took advantage of this after he showed a student film about an “artist” who has naked women with blue paint on their bodies press up against butcher paper: “Everybody knows that’s based on a real artist, right?” Gore, incredulous: “It is?” Me: “Of course. Yves Klein! He was in the first Mondo Cane movie.” “I didn’t know that.” A guy who doesn’t know the daddy of schlockumentaries shouldn’t call himself a weird-film authority.
IT’S SQUARE TO BE HIP: I don’t just want you to question the assumptions of mainstream culture. I want you to question the assumptions of your culture, like the assumption that it’s sacred to be “hip” and profane to be “square.” The hip-vs.-square concept is the alternative culture’s unexamined legacy from the beats’ misinterpretation of jazz lingo. In the NY jazz scene, “hepcats” (derived, sez Zola Mumford, from the Senegalese word hipicat, “one who is very aware of their surroundings”) were those who played and/or listened to advanced black music (instead of the watered down Paul Whiteman versions) and who’d mastered the complex codes of social gamesmanship in Manhattan. It was a concept for a specific time/place that no longer exists. Square people these days are a lot hipper than a lot of self-proclaimed hipsters. Squares enjoy drag queens on Geraldo and buy male pinup posters. Squares buy Soundgarden CDs and watch The Simpsons. Squares grow and haul the food we eat. Squares make our cars. Squares support education and world-relief drives. As Wes “Scoop” Nisker writes in Crazy Wisdom, “the illusion that we are separate and special is the root of our suffering.” There is no superior race (not even yours). There is no superior gender or gender-role (not even yours). There is no superior culture (not even yours). The real enemies are people who think they’re hip but aren’t: The Religious Right (not a mass movement but a tightly organized minority that gets out its vote in low-turnout elections); the civic fathers/mothers who want to outlaw youth culture. (More on this below.)
IN BLOOM: When I told people I wanted to write a book about the local music scene, most said “you’d better get it out right away. Nobody will care about Seattle next month.” I don’t know if the “Seattle sound” is really the flash in the pan that so many local wags think (hoping they can go back to their familiar nihilism?). People here are so used to obscurity, when the spotlight shines they squint and wait for it to stop. But like I’ve written before, this could just be the flash that lights a lasting fire. Jonathan & Bruce shrewdly took a subgenre that’s been developing for 10 years, put a slogan on it, made it the Next Big Thing and made us its capital. But the sound they built isn’t one of those short-half-life sounds like power pop. It’s an identifiable sound, imitable yet sufficiently diverse to allow infinite variations. The dozens of “generic grunge” bands now playing opening sets at the Off Ramp could form the tourist bedrock of a permanent scene, like the “generic country” bands in small Nashville bars, bringing in the bucks and attention to support more advanced work. If we play our cards right, Seattle could become the Nashville of rock.
BUT NOT IF the forces of repression have their way, as led by our city’s “progressive” political machine. Most mayors like to kiss up to their town’s fastest growing industry, but not ours. From feminist/prohibitionists to the tepid No Nukes concert film, some of the most adamant political liberals were cultural conservatives. Norm Rice wrote the Teen Dance Ordinance as a City Councilmember; as mayor, he’s apparently behind the actions to shut down all-ages concerts and raves and the effort to seize part ownership of RKCNDY. Rice comes from the disciplinarian side of the black middle class, where adults want young people to strive hard at all times and avoid idle temptations like pop music. Rice doesn’t get that the rock scene is a hard-working, industrious bunch of people empowering themselves. He calls himself a “supporter of the arts” while clamping down against Seattle’s first indigenous artform since the ’50s Northwest School painters. He promotes Seattle as a “KidsPlace” while trying to shut young people up.
‘TIL NEXT TIME, be sure to check out the Etiquette of the Underclass exhibit at the ex-Penney’s site on 2nd & Pike (where the real homeless are studiously kept outside), and heed the words of surrealist Francis Picabia: “Beliefs are ideas going bald.”
Christine Kelly in Sassy:
“While watching the inaugural balls, I realized that Hillary Clinton is the Courtney Love of politics. If the people want Kurt (Bill), they gotta take Courtney (Hillary) too. People will accuse Courtney (Hillary) of trying to break up the band with her constant meddling and poisoning influence, even though Courtney (Hillary) has her own band (office). Hillary (Courtney) said provocative things to the press about baking cookies (taking heroin). Courtney (Hillary) was on MTV with her husband. Both chicks have a cute, sassy daughter. There is one major difference: Courtney has too much taste to mix jewel tones like amethyst and royal blue while watching her husband accept an MTV award (get inaugurated).”
Like I said somewhere here, I’m starting to write the major history of the Seattle music scene from ’76 to today. I’ll need to talk to everybody who was a major part of it (players, promoters, ‘zine editors, designers, producers, club people). Write for details. If any of you know the addresses of ex-locals who’ve left town, also write.
“Pecuniary”
2/93 Misc. Newsletter
(Incorporating four Stranger columns)
HILLARY’S JUST GOT IN;
ALREADY HALF
THE CAREER WOMEN
IN AMERICA
HAVE FOOTBALL-HELMET HAIR!
n the remote chance that you care, here at Misc. we spent the morn of 1/20 sitting warm in our electric-heated apartment, watched the swearing-in on crystal-clear cable, and felt sorry for all the folks here in Liberalville waited so long to see a Democrat inaugurated, only to have the power knocked out. No, we won’t make tapes of all the festivities for you. Besides, you don’t want to see Barry Manilow‘s opening act on the pre-inaugural special (a potential harbinger of disappointments to come?).
THE BUZZ OF THE NATION: Note that Pepsi was a sponsor of that same TV special. Traditionally, Coke was the Democratic pop (owned by Atlanta Dixiecrats) and Pepsi was the Republican pop (owned by Wall St. investors). During WWII, FDR pushed sweetheart deals to give Coke extra sugar rations and to let it build plants wherever our troops landed. In the ’50s, Nixon deliberately staged his “kitchen debate” with Kruschev in front of a Pepsi display at a New York trade fair. In the ’80s, Pepsi’s rise in the “cola wars” (under a management full of ex-military officials) mirrored the GOP’s power surge; as the Dems compromised and struggled, Coke lost its way with New Coke and ill-advised Hollywood investments. Now, it’s Pepsi that’s going weird at one end (with dumb ideas like Crystal Pepsi) and digging in at the other (buying fast-food chains to insure a captive market for its drinks). Clinton himself claims to be a Coke loyalist.
ENGULFED II: Predictably, the old order wouldn’t go away without one last blow by the GOP sleaze masters — the unilateral restarting of a war in hopes that the new guy would have to continue it, and thus continue the military spending levels and foreign-policy arrangements tied into it. History will, I predict, conclude that practical Republicanism, like practical Communism, was a system for preserving the rights of the privileged no matter what the cost to the nation as a whole, no matter how much it contradicted its own official ideology. If we’re lucky, maybe we’re over both of them.
SEARS CATALOG, 1886-1993: I suppose there’s little purpose for the Big Book in today’s malled and Wal-Marted America. Still, when any longrunning periodical dies, it’s a loss to the national scene. The Sears book, like the Wards book created (and died) before it, was a pioneer in what us art snobs now call interactive literature. You read the words and looked at the pictures. You imagined how the furniture would look in your home, you took your own measurements. Some of you tried to figure out the mysterious demarcation between Girls, Misses and Juniors. You could use it for bad toilet paper, worse cigarette paper, and cheap anatomy lessons via the underwear section. Now the masses have to shop in person, while the elite can stay home with their L.L. Bean and Victoria’s Secret books.
CATHODE CORNER: After honing his act for several years on assorted local cable channels, Spud Goodman has blossomed into a bright little show on regular TV (if that’s what you can call KTZZ), punctuated by outstanding live local-band segments and snappy graphics. Goodman’s own act consists of rambling interview/discussions that get interrupted by the large studio cast before they can get anywhere. While he treats himself as a god (“healing” viewers from the sin of having seen Bodyguard), everyone else treats him with patronizing indifference. The studio regulars don’t let him finish a sentence. The cameras, aping either experimental filmmaker Stan Brakage or AT&T ads, turn away toward people’s hands or goofy props. The tape editor cuts in fake poetry or meaningless location footage. Either they all disdain him, or they’re protecting him from the risk of boring the home viewer….Phoenix residents can now see The Maury Povich Show dubbed into Spanish, by accessing the same “Second Audio Program” signal used with some HBO movies. What a great way to teach our li’l kids to be bilingual! Forget those cute storybooks about spunky waifs back in the Old Country. Give us the wives who’ve become best friends with their husbands’ mistresses; that’ll hold anybody’s attention.
NITE LIT: Insomniacs such as myself have found a great companion and aid toward tiredness in USA Cable’s Up All Night, which takes old drive-in sex movies and cuts out the sex, making them even duller. Book lovers deserve their turn, so I propose a new book club. Boring Books Inc. would issue special editions of the classics, condensed to skim over the exciting parts and leave in all the tedium. (They’ll also help you write book reports when you’ve only seen the movie versions.) Just imagine the possibilities! The BBIMoby Dick: Just the documentary accounts of the whaling business. The BBI Lady Chatterly’s Lover: Just the passages about the decline of England’s agrarian society. The BBI Razor’s Edge: Just the gossip about Somerset Maugham’s rich friends. The BBI Fear of Flying: Just the parts about being a lonely affluent American in Germany, waiting for her weekly dose of The New Yorker. The BBI Thomas Hardy: Everything he ever wrote.
THE FINE PRINT (from the back of the Bradford Exchange Simpsons collector’s plate): “A decorative accessory. Not to be used for food consumption. Pigments used for color may be toxic.”
`POST’ MORTEM: There used to be a U-District jewelry store owner who tried for years to ban street posters. He said they were desecrating the neighborhood, that the Ave ought to look more clean-cut, more like Bellevue. Now, the Washington Music Industry Coalition and the Northwest Area Music Alliance have announced a campaign to get clubs and bands to stop postering light poles. This would further force music promotion into paid media (like here). Admittedly, it’s wasteful to make hundreds of nondescript big-type posters aimed at passing cars, that may only attract a few dozen people to a particular gig. Still, there’s something to be said First Amendment-wise for the right to poster. And, as shown in Instant Litter, Art Chantry‘s book of local gig posters from 1977-85 (still at remainder racks), the illustrated poster aimed at pedestrians is a vital art form. Some are more creative than the advertised bands.
NEWS ITEM OF THE MONTH (Wall St. Journal correction, 12/28): “A spokeswoman for News Corp.’s Fox Broadcasting said the show In Living Color is part of a “long tradition of sketch comedy,” not sex comedies, as reported. The spokeswoman was misquoted in an item in Thursday’s Advertising column.” Runner-up (P-I headline, 12/29): “Sadomasochism gaining influence in dominant culture.”
LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH: The Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints finally came out a bit late for Xmas giving, but is still a quality alternative to your standard art calendars. Written and collage-illustrated (anonymously) by Talking Ravencollaborator James Koehnline, it’s a glorious celebration of the world’s free spirits and insightful thinkers, represented through 15 months’ worth of alternative “saint’s days”. February alone gives you found art and short texts about Bob Marley, Sir Thomas More, Russian anarchist Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Susan B. Anthony, Copernicus, and Tex Avery. Available at Left Bank and A.K.A. books….Ex-Wire publisher, ex-KCMU DJ and ex-Stranger music reviewer Brian Less is back in business with Urban Spelunker, another free monthly tabloid about the local scene. As is the case with many aging music scenesters moving on to new interests, Less’s new mag is just a little about bands, plus a little about experimental-highbrow music, poetry, politics, and other stuff (but why did that David Fewster piece use an old quote from me, calling for more serious Northwest fiction, as the premise for a page of coffee jokes?)…Memo to IEM: If you’re gonna run Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream tributes, don’t call yourselves a local art mag. And what do those letters stand for anyway?
PHILM PHACTS: Robert Altman’s making a film cobbled together from pieces of Raymond Carver stories — only relocated, says,USA Today, “from Carver’s Pacific Northwest to suburban southern California.” Carver was arguably the best portrayer of pre-Yup Northwest society, a world of repressed Presbyterians who sit around brooding mournfully and talking very plainly. Can you really see Carver’s world enacted by light-haired Porsche drivers among the palm trees?
WHY THE COMMONS IS A DUMB IDEA: South Lake Union is Seattle’s version of the “cheap merchandise district” depicted in Ben Katchor’s great comic, Julius Knipel, Real Estate Photographer (seen sometimes in The Stranger and collected in the book Cheap Novelties). Every thriving city needs a low-rise, low-rent district adjacent to downtown, for all the commercial activities that need to be near the center but can’t afford tower rents. We need the suppliers, distributors, and photo studios that are there now. The problem is that to civic planners, there are no old low-rise buildings — just redevelopments that haven’t happened yet. The visionaries don’t see the needs of the real city, just the fantasy of an “Emerald City.” They can’t see the beauty of the Washington Natural Gas and Pacific Lincoln-Mercury neon. They demand their “piece of the country in the heart of the city.” They can’t see the beauty that’s already there. They can’t see that urban landscapes can have their own beauty. They can’t see the city for the trees.
SHAMAN ON YOU: Commercial exploitation of indigenous spirituality descends to a new low as Time-Life Books offers “a free hand-carved Zuni animal fetish” with The First Americans, a coffee-table book series picturing historical artifacts and the like. The ad copy proclaims, “Hand-carved by artists of the Zuni nation, these stone fetishes are believed to house the spirits of the animals they represent….The Zuni people believe that fetishes contain a spirit force that can be of great value to the owner. They can have many uses — in Native American rituals, on the hunt, for healing, for long life, for personal protection — and are considered very powerful.” Having conquered their land and destroyed their livelihoods, Anglos now turn native people’s most intimate beliefs into corporate kitsch in the name of “tribute.”
PRESSED: My Mirror job gives me access to the periphery of the daily journalism biz. These folks seem to attend so many meetings, you wonder how they get a paper out every day. One topic at these meetings: how to appeal to younger readers. It seldom dawns on them that maybe young people aren’t reading papers ‘cuz papers are so downright hostile to people born after about ’54. In the 1/12P-I, John Marshall applied his tiresome aging-boomer-sneering-at-those-kids-today routine to examine grunge (if he’s only heard about it now, he doesn’t deserve to be an arts writer); his highest compliment is that some of it sounds just like ’60s music (gag!). The same day’s Times ran a wire story about PBS going after “the youth vote” with shows about those fresh young teenybopper idols Elton John, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon!
BODY OF EVIDENCE DEPT.: Lollipop’s is a new Eugene no-booze strip joint open only to ages 18-20. “Lots of the kids come in to play pool,” the owner told Newsweek; “they don’t even watch the girls.” Apparently the boys of Deadheadville take the name of Seattle’s Déja Vú strip chain literally: Nothing you haven’t seen before.
MONOCULTURE: The Weekly still claims to be an “alternative” paper, only its apparent idea of “alternative” is to be more conservative than the dailies. Last December it and its sister paper Eastside Week ran a long essay on “The Downside of Diversity Training.” In it, EW staffer Ted Kenney whined about the inconvenience of affluent white guys at corporate training sessions, forced to think about the concerns of non-whites and non-guys. Its research was heavy on anti-affirmative-action position papers from think tanks “associated with a free market stance.” The author’s insensitivity only proves a need for diversity training. All this from a company that to my knowledge has never had a prominent nonwhite employee (please prove me wrong on this). To the Weekly, diversity means putting white male Reagan Democrats next to white female Reagan Democrats.
LIGHTS! CAMERA! MOSHPIT!: Here’s more about Seattle Backstage, the TV show about local music discussed here in January. It’s 13 half-hours, taped at the Backstage (natch), to premiere in Feb. or March on KCPQ. UW-discovered centerfold model Angela Melini hosts feature segments; KNDD’s Norman Batley is the main host. Michael Harris, who’s co-producing the show with the Backstage’s Ed Beeson, says he’s close to a national syndication deal. Bands already taped include locals (Tiny Hat Orchestra, Mudhoney, Posies, Sadhappy) and secondary national acts (Toad the Wet Sprocket, L7, Sarah McLachlan). This show is not to be confused with the separate team, led by Doug Bray (a UCLA Film School grad) and Steve Helvey, making a feature-length documentary. Tentative title: Fabulous Sounds of the Pacific Northwest (from an early EP by Bray’s old pals the Young Fresh Fellows, who took the title from a 1962 phone co. promotional record). They’ve held special filming concerts with the Posies, Fastbacks, Chemistry Set, Love Battery, 7 Year Bitch, the Gits, Coffin Break, Hammerbox, Mono Men, Supersuckers, and Gas Huffer. Future sessions are scheduled with Tad, the Young Fresh Fellows, Girl Trouble, Seaweed, Beat Happening, Mudhoney, and Dead Moon. Bray has unnamed investors, three Super 16 film cameras with synchronized time codes, digital sound recording. What he doesn’t have yet is a distributor.
(latter-day note: Seattle Backstage never made it to the air. Pray’s film, now called Hype, was finished but still looking for a distributor as of July 1995.)
CLUB ETIQUETTE: Remember, anytime you go to see a band at a bar that’s supposed to be cool, there will be uncouth ruffians to watch out for. These people will prey on anyone they perceive as weak — harassing women, fag-bashing men, “accidentally” shoving against people in order to spill their drinks. Fortunately, these goons are easy to spot. They travel in male pairs or trios (very rarely in coed couples). They’re always the most clean-cut looking guys in the bar, with the biggest jawbones, the costliest “ordinary” haircuts, the widest game-show-host smiles. You’re safe with the people who look like freaks; it’s the suburban slummers you must never speak to. This may change, should “designer grunge” make it to the malls. But by then we’ll all be wearing something else (most of us already do). Speaking of which…
DESIGNER GRUNGE UPDATE: That “Seattle fashion” craze invented in New York has reached Europe, according to articles in the London Sunday Times and Italian Glamour. The Sunday Times piece called Seattle “almost Canadian in its boringness.” Wish I could translate what the Italians said about Kurt, Courtney, et al.; the pictures all show the NY designer ripoff product, with no local images seen. Italian Vogue, however, has had photographers really here.
IF I HAD TO DO THE SAME AGAIN: The Wall St. Journal reports that the Next Big Thing in London clubs is upscale cover bands with names like the Rolling Clones, the Scottish Sex Pistols, and an ABBA tribute named Bjorn Again. Does this mean we can finally stop aping every new UK music fad? Can we stop buying those costly air-shipped copies of Melody Maker and I-D telling us what styles we must slavishly follow in order to be properly “alternative”?
‘TIL MARCH, remember this faux pearl of insight from one of the Amy Fisher TV movies: “I love him ’cause he loves me so much. We have great sex. And he fixes my car.”
AutoWeek publisher Leon Mandel, quoted on the sales surge in big pickup trucks: “Something in the American spirit likes great size and a lack of subtlety.”
Two bad colds in one month have interrupted my regular research rounds (and made much of the rest of my life into a minor hell). God, hope I last long enough to see this health care reform jive come to pass.
“Hypaethal”
1/93 Misc. Newsletter
ST. PETER TO MARK GOODSON:
`WILL YOU ENTER AND SIGN IN PLEASE?’
It’s another year, another Misc., and another Xmas review. Again this year, the Hasbro cartel (comprising over a dozen once-independent brands) had the coolest new games. In Mall Madness (“the electronic shopping mall game”), players move pieces around a 3-D game board while buying merchandise, as directed by “specials” announced on a digital sound chip. In Dream Phone (“guess who likes you in this talking telephone game”), young females use a fake phone to “call 24 boys and listen to what they have to say.”
From other companies, the preschool set’s ruled by Barney the Dinosaur (a smarmy guy in a purple felt suit who hugs kids and sings “Caring Is Sharing” songs). The Ninja Turtles may be on the way out but still have a few tricks left, like the new Subterranean Sewer Hockey Game (gee, they could play against Victoria’s WHL team). Mattel’s Baby Rollerblade and Tyco’s California Roller Baby ought to settle their competition once and for all on a Roller Derby track.
In a throwback to the days of TV-based board games, PC users can play computer versions of Beverly Hills 90210 (set on “Rodeo Drive, where shopping fantasies come to life”), Wayne’s World (“join up with those infamous public-access TV stars on a hilarious quest to save their show from a most bogus cable executive”), and L.A. Law (“working your way to become a senior partner by trying an assortment of challenging cases”).
The PBS merchandising catalog hyped Free To Be Me, a short-haired, wider-waisted fashion doll that looks like Barbie’s square suburban cousin (she doesn’t offer a line of PBS-lifestyle accessories, so you can’t get her own Volvo or wine cellar). At least F.T.B.M. doesn’t do anything as silly as the new Rappin’ Rockin’ Barbie, who wears a black vest and miniskirt, a baseball cap on her blonde tresses, a gold chain, and a boom box with digitized “scratching” sounds. (At least she doesn’t wear the new Rap Musk spray perfume.)
Rappin’ Barbie’s pure blue-eyed whitebread, but there are black Barbie and Ken dolls (sold separately, so you can mix-n’-match), and a new Mattel line called Shani (“A world of beauty and success”) with her friends Nichelle and Asha. The independent Olmec (“An African American Owned Company”) has Imani (“An African American Princess”) with her pals Consuelo and Menelik. It’s also got some pre-teen characters, the Hip Hop Kids (“We’re into everything cool…like music, rap and school”). Local creator Tobias Allen received big-time scandal but only modest sales with his Serial Killer board game, where you get to slay old people across state lines.
SMELLS LIKE $$: I spoke too soon about a hypothetical “Grungeland” tourist attraction. Rumors claim that Disney World plans a “Northwest theme” resort hotel on its Fla. grounds. And the Boston Globe reports the opening of the Other Side Cosmic Cafe, a “Seattle style” espresso bar with soups, sandwiches, Tim’s Cascade potato chips, and wheatgrass juice. The paper calls the cafe’s owner “a Northwest native who recently migrated east to cash in on the Seattle craze.” The paper even ties the Celtics’ hiring of former Sonics basketballer and Singles bit player Xavier McDaniel into some Seattle-mania, “a loosely defined amalgam of guitar-heavy rock music, retro-hippie fashion, laid-back attitude and cafe culture”. On another front, investors are reputedly sought for a proposed syndicated TV show about the local music, to be titled Seattle Backstage and to be hosted by last summer’s Playboy centerfold from the UW Communications School. Cameron Crowe has, however, declined offers to turn Singles into a weekly sitcom.
AFTER THE GOLD RUSH: What’ll really mean something is if all the Seattle hype leaves, as World’s Fair promoters say, a “permanent legacy” — if we build an infrastructure of clubs, record labels, agents, producers, and players who stick around and keep their creative spirit. Consider this an open letter to everyone in the Seattle music scene who’s making it: Please don’t move to Los Angeles. For 70 years, the Hollywood cartel has controlled the world’s expressions and dreams. We don’t need that anymore. We need music that’s made everywhere. Heck, we even need movies that are made (not just location-filmed) everywhere.
SCENE STEALING: With the OK Hotel going 21-and-over and KCMU turning to soft alternative hits, the music scene is increasingly inaccessible to the next generation of would-be Iggys. This could potentially lead to the next wave. The “Seattle sound” bands had the time and space to make their own identities because they were shut out from most of the bar circuit; they had nothing to lose. Shutting 16-20-year-olds out from the current scene is bad for everyone in the short term, but may lead to a new scene that could kick the faded jeans off of what we’ve got now….
The Colour Box recently had a dress code on Saturday industrial-dance nights: “Leather, Vinyl or Lots of Black. No Exceptions.” The code, and the dance nights, are now replaced by an all-live format. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether an all-black requirement contradicts the “Colour” name, since technically black is the absorption of all colors.
WHAT’S YOUR SIGN?: The P-I‘s Art Thiel wants the city to rename a street near the Kingdome in honor of the late Seahawks radio announcer Pete Gross. There’s already S. Royal Brougham Way, a short side street south of the Dome named for a P-I sportswriter who died (in the press box!) in ’77 after 60 years on the job. I think the city also oughta turn one of the streets on the Dome’s 4th Ave. S. side into “S. Long St.,” so the Hawks could have an official street address at 4th and Long.
THE FINE PRINT (on the outer wrapper of Deja Vu Centerfold trading cards): “All models pictured are over 18 years old. Models’ stage names are used. Neither photos nor words used to describe them are meant to depict the actual conduct or personality of the models. All photography was completed before 5/11/92.”
AT THE HOP(S): The Black Star beer campaign is legendary Portland ad agency Weiden & Kennedy’s intricate, loving tribute to advertising art of the past 50 years. Each ad is like a mini-visit to Portland’s Museum of Advertising, which W&K helped instigate. Oh yeah, there’s also a product to go with it, in case anybody cares (the agency seems not to). The real history of Black Star is that Minott Wessinger was a descendant of Henry Weinhard and a marketing genius behind the Henry’s brand, until the family sold the Blitz-Weinhard Co. in ’80 to the Heilman combine (which also owns Rainier). The deal included a 10-year “non-compete” clause in the general beer market. Wessinger kept busy as an owner of St. Ides malt liquor, whose ads targeted inner-city African Americans using several rap stars (and one impersonator of Public Enemy’s Chuck D., who sued to stop the mimicry). Some critics charged that St. Ides promoted underage drinking among blacks (as opposed to the brands that promote underage drinking across ethnic lines). Now that Wessinger ‘s contractually free to market regular beer again, he’s made a product almost identical to Henry’s (taste differences are subtle at best). If you buy it you’re supporting an independent company and encouraging it to push fewer 40-oz. jugs of the strong stuff.
JUNK FOODS OF THE MONTH: I’ve finally found a place that sells the hot and sour candy mentioned on KIRO as the big new fad among grade-schoolers: the gift shop in Roosevelt Place, the ex-Sears store on 65th. The hot licorice by one “How Can It Be So Sour Co.” is really just sugar-gritty; the Heide Silly Sours are tame jelly bean-like creations. But the Canadian-made Mr. Sour candy rolls are the real thing: a burst of brash intensity that hits you like a bugle call. One of the all-time greats….
Quaker Oat Cups, a microwave oatmeal currently being test marketed, represent a classic American art form, the junkifying of classic “real” foods. In about the time that it takes to nuke the water for making regular oatmeal, you can heat up a pre-cooked cup of oats, sugar and fruit flavors. Not only is it hearty eating, but you can use the foil-sealed cups as aerobic weights.
ENRAPTURED: Faith healing has come to Moscow, with a twist. England’s Guardian newspaper reports that one Boris Zolotov, a “bulky blond family man” who “believes man’s role is to make women happy” draws hundreds of women at a time to 10-day healing seminars at former Communist Youth League discos and campgrounds, for about $40 (an average month’s pay). The scene at a Zolotov rally includes “a huge communal bed, a sea of sweaty tracksuits and pulsating American soul music.” In the midst of a rousing speech he calls out, “Who wants an orgasm?” Dozens of women scream back, “I do.” According to the paper, “He grimaces with concentration. The music stops. The lights go up….About 50 devotees [of a total attendance of 400] are found to be lying in a heap, moaning. About 30 appear to have had a sexual climax.” And we’re stuck with Oral Roberts.
IT’S NOT OVER OVER THERE: One of the “Ins” on last year’s Misc. In/Out list, the united Europe, is limping along. Countries still bicker and delay, playing for points of privilege in the new movement of people, money and things. I’d hoped for a dynamic, enlightened Euroland to bring prosperity to the rest of the western world and to lead the U.S. toward the benefits of the mixed-economy welfare state. Instead, we’ve come on our own path toward the detriments of such a state without the benefits. In the quasi-socialist countries of pre-Thatcher Europe, a profit-making enterprise would often be used to feed money up toward supporting other enterprises (armies, opera companies, public broadcasters, health care). In our post-capitalist economy, profit-making enterprises are now used to pump money back into their owners’ takeover debts.
WIRED: TCI vows to bring over 300 digitally-compressed cable channels within two years, at least to some customers. NPR did a typically-smug contest for ideas on filling those channels; most were puns on C-SPAN, the only cable channel NPR listeners admit to watching (“She-SPAN,” “Tree-SPAN,” “Ski-SPAN”). More practically, you’re likely to see every major league sports event. Music channels with all the genres (and probably all the stupidity) of mainstream radio. Specialized movie channels (all-romance, all-war). Umpteen immigrant languages. Here’s what I’d like to see: Channels for non-fundamentalist religions. National public access, with the best/worst of indie video from all over. A channel with every city’s local news, for folks who’ve moved around a lot. The entire BBC schedule, including all-day darts tourneys and other cheesy shows we never see. An abstract-art channel. Live sex channels of every preference. An All-Pearl-Jam Channel. Cameras permanently aimed on Times Square or the French Quarter. A channel of people in their underwear reading 19th Century poetry.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Deran Ludd’s Sick Burn Cut (published by the art imprint Semiotext(e)) is something I’ve wanted for years: a serious Seattle-based novel with no “Emerald City” mawkishness. It’s the gritty-yet-empathetic tale of a white transvestite gangster (made more believable than it sounds here), shooting guns and drugs in a Belltown that Ludd’s fictionalized to the extent that its grimy pre-condo milieu still exists in the present day. I’ve worked on Ludd’s performance art projects in the early ’80s, but his “Clark” character (host to an S&M/house-music party at the late Savoy Hotel) is all fictional….
I’ve also longed for a book like The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, by Evergreen prof Stephanie Coontz. At last, someone shows that the ’50s family fetish wasn’t the way things had always been. In fact, Ike-age America was a lot more like the Kramdens than the Cleavers.
‘TIL OUR FAB FEB. ISH, be sure to check out the Hot Circuits video game retrospective at Pacific Science Center and the exhibit of other classic toys at the Museum of History and Industry, and maybe also visit SAM’s exhibit from the collection of CBS founder William Paley (you’ve gotta perversely admire a guy who gave the world Jed Clampett and bought Cezannes for himself).
Cyberpunk author John Shirley, quoted in the Mondo 2000 compilation book: “It’s a big world. It’s a swollen world. It’s a tumescent world. It’s an overburdened, overflowing, data-loaded, high-content, low-clarity world, soaked in media and opinion and, above all, lies. What’s important in all this input? Who decides? Which filters have you chosen? Have you mistaken the filters for the truth?”
Those seeing this before 12/31 can see my Stranger colleague Dan Savage at the Crocodile Cafe’s New Years shindig. I’m looking for a scrupulous publisher for my next book concept, an extended essay on the Real Northwest as I see it (guaranteed: no slug or espresso jokes, no hiking trails).
“Flocculent”
•
AMERICA’S ONLY TRUE AND ACCURATE IN/OUT LIST
For the seventh consecutive year, here’s our comprehensive guide,
not to what’s hot now, but what will become hot in the next 12 months.
The Young and the Clueless: To be young today is in itself an act of defiance. You’re the target of both the whiskey-drinking old farts and the pot-smoking middle aged farts. Some people will presume you’re an idiot because you weren’t around for WWII. Other people will presume you’re an idiot because you weren’t around for Woodstock.
Earlier this year, the conservative American Enterprise Institute held a pop culture symposium, dominated by a succession of old male Madonna-bashers. (Have any of them ever heard any other contemporary performing artist?) The panel purported to encompass a right-to-left spectrum: 50-year-old Republicans who whined that we’ve gone to hell since the golden age of movie censorship, and 40-year-old Democrats who whined that we’ve gone to hell since the golden age of Dylan.
More recently, Ken Kesey made very snide remarks about “the MTV generation” having no attention span, being somehow unable to digest a traditional narrative. If that’s the case, howcum you see the bombastically long products of Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins in so many campus lunchrooms?
There’s a common assumption, based on unsupported charges in Neil Postman and Jerry Mander books, that you kids today aren’t reading anything, and that the younger kids in back of you won’t even learn to read. In truth, according to the book industry’s own figures, bookstore sales boomed in the ’80s and are holding better in the ’90s recession than many other retail sectors. The big bookstore chains are granted prime mall space precisely because they do such good business. Books for children and young adults showed the most spectacular rise of all. (Total book sales might be down, if you include school and library purchases affected by government budget cuts.)
The thousands of ‘zines produced across the country, and the hundreds of spoken-word and “poetry slam” events in hip bars, prove that this is a generation more, not less, devoted to the word. Not since the ’50s beats (a much smaller minority of their era) has a generation worked so hard at documenting itself in print, with so little encouragement from its elders. Instead, the Volvo-drivin’, NPR-listenin’ English profs eagerly swap horror stories in the faculty lounge about how stupid you are because you wear different clothes than they do or because you didn’t come to college already knowing all about their favorite ’60s heroes.
Then there’s the charge made by self-styled “radicals” for 20 years now, that all college students since them are fascistic zombies. As if every college class forever must be compared to those three brief years of (mostly futile) Vietnam protests, that quickly wound down in ’71 once the Army stopped trying to draft college boys.
I’ve seen plenty of campus political activity in the last 13 years, from big marches to backstage organizing, about everything from apartheid to nuclear power to the gulf war. These were mainly people who didn’t have their own hides on the line, but who were disgusted enough to want to do something.
As opposed to being too disgusted to want to do anything. The opposite of activism isn’t pacifism, it’s defeatism. I find it in too many folks of all ages. Not voting is the exact same thing as voting for Bush. You can’t change the system by leaving it as is. That’s like stating that, as a protest against the injustice of the rain, you’re not going to fix your roof. Too many members of my own generation, the Pleasure Islanders of the early ’80s, thought they were preserving their purity by being politically chaste. Instead, they (and we) wound up getting, well, you know… (More about that later.)
10/92 Misc. Newsletter
(incorporating four Stranger columns and four newsletter-only items)
Here Comes Moshpit Tourism!
OK OK OK, Misc. is now ready to admit that the “Seattle Sound” is dead. The evidence: not Singles, but the 9/13 travel page of the Sunday newspaper insert USA Weekend (stuffed into the Bellevue Journal-American and dozens of other papers around the country), right after the Haband ad for mail order men’s slacks. The headline: “Get Set for the Seattle Sound: Next weekend’s rockin’ movie Singles puts the limelight on this musical metropolis.” As Jim Kelton writes, “Just as Memphis has the blues, Chicago and New Orleans have Jazz, and Nashville owns country, Seattle now has its own hard-driving sound, dubbed ‘grunge rock,’ giving travelers another reason to visit the city…Visitors will find entertaining and fiercely outspoken music in nearly every corner of this sprawling city. But first-timers should note that the best spots to hear its sounds aren’t always upscale. You can take in the sights during the day, then fill the nights with the fresh Seattle sound.” The page gave prospective grunge-tourists listings of five clubs, two costly hotels (including the Meany Tower, inaccurately described as being close to many important grunge venues), the youth hostel, and two eateries: 13 Coins and the Dog House (“the ‘in’ place for musicians and music fans”).
NOW LET’S GET THIS STRAIGHT: The article encourages tourists to come here to see live gigs by the very bands that got into making records in the mid-’80s because they couldn’t get live gigs. The music that was rejected by so many clubs for so many years might now become a boon to the state’s hospitality industry. Maybe we should just replace Seattle Center with a Grungeland theme park. Flannel-shirted costume characters could sneeringly blow Export A smoke into the eager eyes of affluent American families, on their way to enjoy hourly indoor and outdoor performances in between stops at a Jimmy the Geek house of thrills, senior citizen moshing lessons, an all-vegan food circus, bumper cars that look like beat-up Datsuns, wandering Iggy impersonators, beer-can crushing competitions, a detox clinic fantasy ride, (for the gents) a contest to become L7‘s chaste bondage slaves, and (for the ladies) an all-scrawny, all-longhair male strip show.
CRIMES AGAINST CULTURE?: The city wanted to collect 3% admissions tax on the “suggested donation at the door” for the Two Bells Tavern’s Chicken Soup Brigade musical benefit. On Sept. 23, city official Dale Tiffany sided with the tavern and withdrew the tax bill, noting in a letter that “you made a quite persuasive case”…. Meanwhile, COCA ran afoul of the police dept.’s crusade to shut down all-ages musical events. Its non-alcoholic rave party was shut down in August over a few creative interpretations of technical ordinances and the infamous “Teen Dance Ordinance,” a law ramrodded through the city council a few years back intended to ban all-ages events under the guise of regulating them.
ON DISPLAY: I saw COCA’s Native American political art exhibit, which uses images of pre-Columbian daily life as symbols of defiance, in the context of what if our entire way of life were similarly suppressed. After thinking some more about it, I couldn’t think of many aspects of mainstream U.S. culture that that weren’t already symbols of our past conquests. What music do we have that isn’t Black- or immigrant-rooted? What fashions have we got that aren’t based on street or folk dress? Through ethnic art (often designed for white consumption) and its equivalents in literature and music, armchair lefties like me get to anoint ourselves with the vicarious righteousness of pretending to be what some white ideologists call “The Other.” It’s a change from most American cultural experiences, which are typically fantasies of conquering something or someone. The only American genres to discuss what being conquered might feel like are science fiction and Red-baiting propaganda, usually as a pretext for heroic action. But imagine: What if our entire way of life was suppressed as North America’s indigenous cultures were? What practices would be kept underground? What pieces of everyday life that you take for granted would turn into symbols of rebellion? What things that you care about would be turned into jokes and stereotypes by the conquerors?
CAN’T I GET LIBERATED TOO?: The (Ero) Writes/Rights panel at Bumbershoot was mostly the usual inconclusive porn-vs.-erotica debate. But one woman made a good point about “censorship of the spirit and the intellect,” something too many of us do to ourselves. The alternative literary scene would attract more people if it weren’t always so grim and staid, if it expressed the whole range of human thoughts and feelings in our big wide world. In many ways, small press literature is the most aesthetically conservative art form this side of barbershop quartet singing (and a hell of a lot less fun). You’re not gonna get young people involved in advanced prose if it offers nothing more than Montana travelogues and ’60s nostalgia. I long for a literature of compassion, of participation. A good place to start is erotica, by its nature a genre that mustn’t be self-centered. Like Jae Carrlson and Kirby Olson in Reflex, I believe the answer to bad porn is better porn, that gleefully celebrates human connection in all its varieties.
OTHER B-SHOOT NOTES: Loved Book-It, the troupe that dramatizes short stories verbatim. Much more literate than most of the “literary” events….
Missed They Might Be Giants, who filled up the Opera House an hour and a half before they went on. In the line, two suburban kids joked about how this show should’ve been in the Coliseum instead of Queen Latifah (this year’s token non-’60s black act), because “nobody’s going to shoot anybody at this show.” I wished to hell I’d had a Walkman so I could’ve made them listen to TMBG’s song “Your Racist Friend.” The Latifah show was, by all accounts, a sedate affair full of perky White Negro wannabes….
The $25Â Quick Access Pass was an elitist scam, going against B-Shoot’s one-big-crowd tradition, and should not be repeated….
Michelle Shocked had a great line at the Interview Stage comparing most rock music to “a blackface minstrel show” without the makeup — affluent whites acting out a simplistic persona of blacks as sexy savages….
EXCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THIS GUY: I can’t wait for the Jimi Hendrix museum to open, even if it doesn’t display the uncensored Are You Experienced? cover art or Suzie Plastercaster‘s famous life-cast of his masculinity. Well-heeled local backers are looking at at least two potential sites, including the ex-Seattle Art Museum annex in Seattle Center. The guy deserves a proper public memorial. (KZOK tried a few years ago to get a memorial in a city park, but the Parks Dept. wouldn’t go along; the station settled for a pile of “hot rocks” at the African savannah exhibit of the zoo.) Besides, these days it’d be good to remind people of a guy who joined the Army just to get out of Seattle, his only hope of making it in music.
THE MAILBAG: Charles Kiblinger writes, “Perhaps you might be able to enlighten us as to what exactly is the deal with this baseball cap display on the rear dashboard thing?” Would you please be more specific? What are these items, and what do you wish to learn about them?
JUNK FOODS OF THE MONTH: Husky Dawgs, in bright wrappers bearing official UW football logos, are really repackaged Canadian Jumbo Hot Dogs (the expiration date sticker says both “Meilleur Avant” and “Best Before”). As all good Seattle barflies know about Jumbos, they’re hearty if underseasoned tube steaks that can be steamed, boiled, or grilled, and are virtually impervious to decay even after rotating under a heat lamp all day….
As my budget and diet allow, I’m planning to try all of the faux Frangos being offered around town: Nordstrom Best Mints, Ala Bons, Boehm’s Encore, Seattle Chocolate Co.’s Milt Chocolate, etc. The Times sez that Nordstrom uses a higher grade of chocolate, no salt and no tropical oils. The Seattle Chocolate Co. makes the Nordstrom candy (mint flavor only), and also makes its own brand with a slightly different recipe (in three flavors). Ala Bons, the first faux Frango, are smaller and flatter, not as fully whipped. Boehms, in gold foil boxes, only have six ounces for $6.95 (Frangos and most of the imitators have eight ounces)…
MANGO TANG UPDATE: Mark Campos claims to have tried the stuff, obtained from relatives through an Oregon food warehouse outlet. “The mad chemists at the Tang labs were nowhere hear a mango flavor consensus…no matter how much I stirred, a majority of the stuff marched to the bottom of the glass and stayed there. Also, it’s the most unappealingly colored stuff. Like Mountain Dew, it should not be put into clear glasses for consumption.”
1-900-FAILURE: Megaquest, the Queen Anne-based parent company of some 50 phone talk services (many, but not all, sex-related) in a half-dozen countries, is close to bankruptcy, after earning a net income of $14 million in 1990. According to a great story in the Sept. 4 Puget Sound Business Journal, original partners Arthur Joel Eisenberg and Betsy Superfon (apparently her real name) are battling in court over control of the companies, whose revenues have tumbled as government agencies and phone companies crack down against the rights of those unimaginative Americans who can’t even abuse themselves without coaching.
AD OF THE MONTH (newspaper ad for Nationwide Warehouse and Storage Furniture): “The Chastity 4-Piece Bedroom Set, $198.” Runner-up: the Wm. Diericx Co.’s radio ad for office supplies, selling paper shredders endorsed by Fawn Hall.
“DIS” INFORMATION: Still still more proof that hip-hop culture can’t be successfully whitened comes from the Suzuki 4 x 4’s fall ad campaign, “Fear of a Flat Planet” (a notably lame exploitation of Public Enemy‘s Fear of a Black Planet).
A DAY WITHOUT SUNSHINE: The Florida state tourism dept. rushed out some newspaper ads insisting that their state was still open for business. The state had to produce the ads at their own Tallahassee office, because it couldn’t complete a phone call to its Miami ad agency.
CATHODE CORNER: Alert home satellite dish owners know about the supplemental feeds of network football games, with the field pictures and sound but no announcers or commercials. I saw part of a Seahawks game this way; you can tell all the important aspects of the game, and don’t have to hear any dumb anecdotes.
DUDS: One piece of good news in the Generra bankruptcy came in a Times story noting that the company, like many in the sportswear biz, is starting to get clothes made in the U.S., after years of only using overseas sweatshops where workers make as little as $1.03 a day. Seems that it takes too long to ship stuff from over there. By the time a fad item gets here, the fad can be over.
“DON’T WALK” THIS WAY: Bellevue officials are promising to make their town “more pedestrian friendly” — by beefing up citations against people walking against the Don’t Walk lights. If they really wanted to help walkers, they’d change the lights on some intersections that allow walking for only three seconds every three minutes, so you have to jaywalk to get anywhere on time.
LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH: Tiny, King of the Roadside Vendors is an affectionate tribute by Sharon Graves Hall to her late brother, Richard “Tiny” Graves, the girthy and jovial operator of Tiny’s Fruit Stand in Cashmere (one of Washington’s few authentic “roadside attractions”, with ad signs attracting tourists along U.S. highways throughout the west). For just $12.95, the book’s more fun than a case of Aplets and Cotlets….
Meet Me at the Center is Seattle Center’s authorized history, written by ex-Times guy Don Duncan. It’s chock full of World’s Fair camp images (which I can’t ever get enough of). It’s also essential reading for all of you who don’t know what Seattle was like in the era prior to Starbucks and PCC, when a small remote city was trying desperately to join the “jet set” its machines had made possible….
Journeys of the Muse is a 12-page quarterly newsletter by Pamela Reno of Naches, Yakima County. Topics include “The power of thought to influence the sun: A turning point for humanity?”
FUN WITH WORDS: Husbands and Wives stands a chance of becoming the biggest audience-participation movie since Rocky Horror. Here’s how it works: go with all your feminist friends, and hiss whenever Woody says something that turns out to have been eerily lifelike… Another great new cussing site is the downtown library, specifically at the terminals of the new computer card catalog. On any given afternoon you may find retired schoolmarms, Mormon ancestor-researchers and valedictorian wannabes struggling to cope with the confusing software and the mistake-ridden data, talking back to the VDT’s with words not found in the bowdlerized dictionaries.
INDECISION ’92: A requiem is in order for failed gubernatorial primary candidate “You Must Be” Joe King. He’s actually been a pretty good state House speaker, fighting to keep the Wm. Spafford murals up in the Capitol and to support a lot of good legislation. But for his first statewide campaign, he let image consultants package him as something just this side of a Reagan Democrat; an unlikely recipe for success this year….
Campaign commercials used to feature a big red “NO!” crashing down on the face of the sponsoring candidate’s opponent. This time, at least one candidate used “NOT!” instead.
‘TIL NEXT TIME, pick up some great bargains at Blowout Video on 1st (the video equivalent of a remainder book outlet) and the Evergreen State Store in the Center House (your one-stop tourist trinket shop), watch the Japanese soap The 101st Proposal Sat. mornings on KTZZ, and heed the words of Thomas Hobbes (the philosopher, not the cartoon character): “Fear and I were born twins.”
John Kricfalusi, the cartoonist-director-actor who made Ren & Stimpy into the cult sensation of the year (and just got fired for his trouble by Viacom bureaucrats), quoted in Film Threat before his dismissal: “Everybody’s ugly in real life. You just have to look close. Look inside anybody’s nose. Look in — who’s the big actress today? Look inside her nose and then think about porkin’ her.”
“Funambulist”
STOP THIS WEATHER CHITCHAT ALREADY.
WE’VE GOT ABOUT THE DULLEST WEATHER IN THE WORLD.
8/92 Misc. Newsletter
(incorporating three Stranger columns and an original essay)
High Fashion and Running Naked
Welcome again to Misc., the only column made with the Miracle Substance ZR-7. This is the one and only genuine, original Misc. Accept no substitutes! Especially not “High and Low” in the Weekly. The title comes from a tacky show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on “modern art and popular culture” that treated the greatest works of illustration, cartooning, entertainment and industrial design as mere fodder to inspire “real” artists. And while B. Barcott can write a halfway-decent item, his apparent assignment is to belittle anyone doing anything interesting, in the tradition of old-fogey columnists everywhere. I’m reminded of the words of
John Lydon: “Imitation isn’t the sincerest form of flattery. It’s damn annoying.”
RESULTS of our last contest, wherein we asked “What does John McCaw, Mariner investor and noted recluse, look like?”: No entries were received by the deadline. You oafs.
HOW TO KILL A SCENE: Some of the same alleged criminal elements who used to be at Jersey’s Sports Bar are said to have been outside Club Belltown, starting fights on 7/19 that culminated with gunshots fired into the air, which cops didn’t respond to for 20 minutes. Some downtown residents are advocating the restriction or even closure of music clubs. It took a lot less violence and damage to shut down the live punk scene a decade ago, a loss from which local music has only now recovered. (Jersey’s is now reopened with different DJs, few problems, few customers.)
ONE HOT SHOW: It’s sad that that old Leary Way warehouse burned before the Bathhouse Theater and On the Boards could move in, but I’m glad it burned without a cast and audience inside.
PHILM PHUN: The LA Times said Bill Gates wants to start a Seattle movie company. He denies it. Maybe he dropped the idea after observing his tax-bracket comrade John Kluge, who made a mint selling some TV stations to Murdoch and has spent a lot of it keeping Orion Pictures alive. Gates’s only movie project to date is a Microsoft Press book, Moviemakers at Work. Its authors slighted the more boring film practitioners (writers, actors) in favor of what they felt were the real movie stars — designers, editors, and especially special effects crews. While I’d love to see more movies made here, I admit that most of them are bad. The only distinguished features made here were Tugboat Annie (’33), The Slender Thread (’67), and maybe Cinderella Liberty (’73). The Fabulous Baker Boys was a doze when the Bridges Boys were on. Twice in a Lifetime got undeserved praise from critics eager to proclaim a “film for grownups at last.” I won’t talk about McQ, Harry in Your Pocket, Harry and the Hendersons, and 99 44/100% Dead (though I have a soft spot for Elvis’s It Happened at the World’s Fair and the David Jannsen-Frank Gorshin thriller Ring of Fire).
A FRIEND WRITES: “The best part of Tina Brown‘s assumption of command at The New Yorker was USA Today‘s headline: ‘Vanity Fair Editor Takes Over Fave Literary Mag.’ Second best: Everything I read about Brown talked about her own strengths and weaknesses, and didn’t just call her the `First Woman Editor.'”
THE BALD FACTS: The Hair Club for Men is now one of the top advertisers on MTV, showing middle-aged out-of-its enjoying second childhoods thanks to phony-looking hair transplants. Are 40ish geezers really watching the channel, searching to stay young? Does that mean that imitation rap slang will soon be audible in lawyers’ watering holes? Will we see Body Gloves in the Columbia Center Club? Worse things have happened (cf. every men’s fashion ad in a 1971 Playboy).
THE BARE FACTS: Political Diversities, Seattle public access cable’s first all-nude talk show, is an exercise in ego-tripping under the guise of politics. The host and his guests (to misquote B. Breathed, “pretty much an ugly all-male operation”) preach indignantly about the hemp movement (they like it) and censorship (they hate it). I agreed with most of their points, but wish they could make them more persuasively, without presuming their viewers to be idiots. The show’s backdrop wasn’t designed with close-ups in mind; the painted banner features all sorts of provocative icons, but the host’s face is right in front of a swastika. I still like the idea for the show (and have, ever since I picked up a paperback of Rex Reed‘s
Conversations in the Raw and was disappointed to find the title was just a come-on).
SINCE WE’RE NEIGHBORS DEPT.: The dreaded Port Townsend Lifestyle Police struck again, ordering Safeway to replace its regular-style sign with “old style” letters. Next thing you know, they’ll stop the store from selling Twinkies and meat.
SIGNS OF THE MONTH (flashing sign at Honda of Seattle): “Nikki is awesome…single & pretty.”… At Front Street Specialty Nutrition in Issaquah: “Always lowest prices! Well, usually — O.K., O.K., at least sometimes!”
ART MEETS NON-ART: Live music keeps popping up in new places. One recent Sat. nite, a clerk at the Glass Curtain porn shop on 1st was playing a saxophone on duty. His only audience: the wandering people outside and the photos of fake fun inside.
SEARCH FOR YESTERDAY: Shokus Video’s Sudsy Television is a 3-videocassette series of the true American video noir, black-and-white soap operas. Forget everything about TV being incessantly bright and snappy. These are interminably slow 15-minute shows, performed live on small, shabby sets (sometimes just furniture and prop doors in front of scrim curtains) by somber, uptight actors who stumble over half their lines but stay inside their Beckettian grimness. The infamous organ music (used on General Hospital
as late as 1978) sounds more like a restored-silent-movie soundtrack than like anything to do with modern entertainment. Even the commercials are stern: beady-eyed announcers pointing at diagrams, reiterating the values of Anacin compared to regular strength tablets. Most of the actors never went further than this, but you do see a pre-Mayberry Don Knotts and a very pre-St. Elsewhere Bonnie Bartlett.
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE: Margaret Thatcher‘s landed a consulting job with
Philip Morris to increase cigarette sales in developing countries. As if she hadn’t done enough to her own country…
FUTURE RULES FOR A POST-REPUBLICAN FCC: Classic R&B songs should not be used in commercials (a) for laxatives or (b) for companies that wouldn’t do business with blacks when the songs came out.
JUST PLAIN BILL: Didn’t hear much of Clinton‘s speech on 7/26 (they didn’t have speakers in every direction), but I did get handed a tract by a Korean-based fundamentalist group that predicts the Rapture for Oct. 28 (that’d make the campaign irrelevant, if it weren’t that it’s been predicted many times before, and will be many times again, especially at the turn of the millennium).
THE RACE IS ON: With Longacres on track for demolition, the big hope for horse racing may lie with Native American tribes. Following the modest new
Tulalip casino, the Muckleshoot and Puyallup tribes announced separate projects for tracks and huge 24-hour casinos. The Puyallup plan, which would be managed by a Vegas firm, would also have a 1,000-room hotel, mall, bowling alley and native-theme amusement park. Both plans require the state Gambling Commission’s OK, which may be tough.
‘FAMILY’ FEUD: If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, family values are their next-to-last refuge. Or, as GOP loyalist G. Will sez, “morality is the last refuge of the politically desperate.” Almost any destructive policy can be trumped up as a pean to “The Family” (as if there were only one kind anymore, and as if all families were good for the people in them). Bush/Quayle, in their total lack of contact with the real world, haven’t noticed the spectacular rise of “dysfunctional family” 12-step groups and other forces that are pointing out the basic structural faults of the nuclear-family system. “The Family” is, to millions, an image of stifling cruelty and authoritarianism — just what the Right loves.
HELP WANTED, FEMALE: Anybody who generically votes for any female candidate, no matter who she is, wasn’t living in Wash. when Dixy Lee Ray was governor. Ray was a co-founder of the Pacific Science Center and ex-head of the Atomic Energy Commission, who ran in ’76 as a Democrat (a label of convenience, to gain the party-line endorsement of our powerful senators
Magnuson and Jackson). In office, she tried to demolish environmental laws and to prop up the unprofitable Hanford nuclear industry. She amassed a massive re-election fund from timber and development interests, but lost in the ’80 primary. Today she speaks to business groups trying to quash land-use laws.
AMAZING DISCOVERIES DEPT.: Two Seattle women have invented a washable, reusable sanitary napkin. It saves trees and doesn’t use the dioxin bleaching used to make paper white. I laughed too soon when I snickered at the commercial that starts, “I’ll borrow my mother’s earrings, but my mother’s tampons?”
JUNK FOODS OF THE MONTH: Seattle Mariners chewing gum is very soft (like the team), is very sweet (like the team), and has a strong aroma (like the team)…. I’m still trying to get a jar of Mango Flavor Tang, sold mainly thru Hispanic-oriented groceries in the southern tier states. It presumably tastes as much like mangoes as regular Tang tastes like oranges. I wonder if it was in the spaceship with Bill Dana, the Hungarian-born comedian who did the Mexican-dialect comedy record The Astronaut.
ON TAP AT THE KIT KAT CLUB: The gourmet pet food craze reaches a new extreme with Alpo Dairy Cat, described as a “low lactose milk for cats that have trouble digesting regular milk.” Why not go further and make sure that your cats only catch mice that eat fake cheese?
ON THE AIR: As some of you know, I was one of the first new music DJs on KCMU, one of the first to practice what they now call the “variety format”: juxtaposing hard rock, skinny-tie new wave, reggae, R&B, and anything else that seemed to fit in. The concept still works, with one exception: the momentum of the music comes to a halt four times an hour, when the volunteer DJs are told to go to the “world beat” rotation. There’s a lot of great music around the world, but KCMU’s world-beat bin is mostly bland yuppie exotica, the P. Simon/D. Byrne unthreatening Afropop or Braziliapop that belonged more on the old KEZX. I’m not asking the station to stop playing foreign music, I’m asking it to play more diverse, more exciting foreign music. To find it; they’ll have to get on the lists of a lot of obscure record companies. But it’ll be worth it.
ON THE STREETS: A middle-aged man with short-trimmed hair and a grey suit came up to me outside a deli-market and repeatedly asked, “Do you read the newspapers? Do you read the paper regularly?” After two minutes, he asked if a minor recent news item was really published. I said it was. He walked away.
‘TIL NEXT TIME, have a gourd reading at Tribes Native and Nature Art and Tea Co. in Fremont, collect all of Mattel’s Beverly Hills 90210 dolls (almost as completely hot as the people on the show and just as good actors).
“Napiform”
DOES ALPHA HYDROX FACE CREME COMEÂ FROM THE INSIDES OF COOKIES?
BODY CONSCIOUSNESS
One recent weekend, I saw two very different events celebrating the human body. Both promoted leisure-time lifestyles baed on distinct philosophies of life:
(a) Arena 3, a fashion show at the Mountaineers Hall on a Friday night, celebrated the body strategically hidden and revealed. Night heat in the city. Crowds of people in their best clothes and brashest attitudes. Eighteen local designers and some 100 models (mostly women, mostly young, many races) slinking down the runway, to the flash of photographers and upbeat music.
(b) The Bare Buns Fun Run, a nudist foot race at the Fraternitie Snoqualmie Nudist Camp on a Sunday morning, celebrated the body unencumbered and unadorned. Searing daylight in the suburbs, halfway up Issaquah’s Tiger Mountain. Nearly 300 people (mostly men, mostly 35ish and older, almost all white) running along 5K of steep trails, most clad only in socks and shoes. Afterwards, many runners enjoyed a leisurely afternoon at the lawn, pool and sauna.
Despite its aura of proud individualism, Arena showed off a design scene that’s become a true community of people working together to bring attention and employment into Seattle. The Seattle designers have grown to attract national (or at least NYC) notice. They’ve got a diverse set of styles that all express a fun, play-dress-up attitude.
The nudists boast of being one big family living in laid-back togetherness. But their retreatist lifestyle reflects the get-away-from-it-all philosophy behind many of America’s problems (suburban sprawl, urban neglect, alienation). Also, the road up to the camp was clogged with cars; you’ve got to guzzle lots of gas to commune with nature.
Nudists like to laugh at the hypocrisy of nudity in fashion marketing (such as the Drew Barrymore cover of Interview magazine, an Arena co-sponsor), contrasting it with their own de-emphasis of lust. They assert that by treating no body part as special or shameful, they’ve become some of the least sex-crazed people around; even though much of their literature features pictures of nubile young adults. In fact, the nudists were courteously seeing and being seen. But the scene was still much less gaze-active than a normal Green Lake Saturday; maybe because it was mostly married couples and older guys. It’s too bad more women don’t join; it might help overcome negative body image to be in a safe environment with a lot of bodies that are clearly no better or worse than yours.
Arena, on the other hand, reveled in positive body consciousness with personas that ranged from ridiculous to stunning. I can’t subjectively comment on the gay costumes (Jason Harler had a topless guy in half-unzipped pants and a feather boa; other designers had see-thru shorts above codpieces). The more straightforward men’s looks were playful and joyous. As for the women’s wear, I fell in love several times per minute. Short black dresses with short red hair (by Siren Blue). Red and black patterned cocktail dresses (Carol McClellan). A cherry-red bridal gown (Tohma). A calico dress with acres of frills (Raven). A green raincoat, doffed to reveal a backless one-piece swimsuit (Susan Hanover). Orange vinyl body suits (Direct). All modeled by people clearly at home inside their bodies.
Many of us need to break out from our social norms and make friends with our physical nature. That can mean taking off your clothes or putting on better ones. A nudist camp membership is cheaper than a designer outfit, but you don’t have to leave town to get dressed.
(Many of the clothes shown at Arena 3 are available at Fast Forward, 1918 1st Ave.; Darbury Stenderu, 2121 1st Ave.; and Basic, 111 Broadway E.)
(The next Fraternitie Snoqualmie public event is “Nudestock” in mid-August. Tickets will be available through KISW radio; for info call 392-NUDE. Nude & Natural magazine, sold at better newsstands, covers issues related to the nudist philosophy.)
7/92 Misc. Newsletter
Is John McCaw Batman?
A warm, warm greeting to another distinctively cool edition of Misc., the pop-culture report that can’t decide which is sillier: calling Hollywood producers “cultural elitists” or calling them “cultural”.
HOT WEATHER DRESSING: Misc. still wears its baseball caps with the brim in front, the way Abner Doubleday intended. Besides, you can tell when a fashion trend has outworn its welcome when they start making custom caps with frat-house letters printed only on the back.
IN YOUR EAR: Last week, Misc. showed several people the Times picture of a half-dozen acupuncture needles stuck into a heroin addict’s ear to reduce his dependency; only ear-pierced women gasped “Gross” at the sight. The therapy combines the popular trend of body piercing with a sadly “hip” form of self-destruction (Seven Year Bitch guitarist Stefanie Ann Sargent died of an apparent overdose on 6/27; many other local musicians are said to use heroin). Trendy rockers are bound to imitate the look for fashion’s sake. I only hope people will take the real acupuncture or otherwise try to clean up. Remember: hard drugs are a tool of people in power to silence opposing voices.
PHILM PHUN: Here in the town that was among the first in the U.S. to discover the Dutch and Australian new waves, Hong Kong movies are the certified Next Big Thing. They just can’t churn out Chinese Ghost Story installments or vicious/spectacular gangster films fast enough. “But what,” you ask, “is gonna happen to these filmmakers in ’97, when Beijing’s butchers take over the colony?” Many of Hong Kong’s production companies, along with the crime syndicates that allegedly provide financing as well as subject matter for some films, have begun their own 5-Year Plans by setting up offices in Vancouver. Just think: we’ll have a genuine full-time Northwest feature industry, and Canada will finally make movies that don’t look like Hollywood on a discount.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Muttmatchers’ Messenger is a bimonthly photo-ad tabloid promoting “Companion Animals for Adoption.” Photos of forlorn cats and dogs appear, accompanied by a description and phone number. Some are part of display ads, “sponsored in the interest of animal welfare” by Realtors, insurance agents, lawyers, a garage, and a clinical psychologist.
NATIONAL LAMPOON, 1970-1992?: “The Humor Magazine for Adults” was more like a college paper’s April Fool edition, only with good writers and great artists. It was a true rebel without a cause. Its purpose was not to make you smile but to stare you down. Born as the student protest movement passed its peak, its only message was its own sense of self-righteous superiority to the world. No wonder original co-editor P.J. O’Rourke emerged as a right-winger, and Belushi’s character in the NL movie Animal House became a senator. Like the teen/college generation that grew up with it (mine), its only sacred cow was the Almighty Ego Trip. Some people insist that it used to be funny, before its original staff dispersed to Saturday Night Live and elsewhere. I wouldn’t give it that much credit (though it did nourish the career of a few great cartoonists, including Seattle’s own Sherry Flenniken and her droll Trots and Bonnie). The magazine’s officially on “a six month hiatus” (its NYC office is closed and it hasn’t published since February). It may not come back. But its spirit lives on, in thousands of rude stand-up comics.
SPURTS: Still no hope for NHL hockey here, but the Canadian Football League‘s considering its own southern invasion. It’s being courted by Portland, which had a team in the short-lived World Football League. See if they can live with a 110-yard, three-down game where scores of 57-36 are common. Heck, it’d still be better than either Oregon college team. Just make sure it doesn’t get an Indian-motif team name, ‘cuz the Portland paper won’t print it.
STUFF YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE HEARD: Over half of the 18,000-ish arrests after the LA riots were against Hispanics; the sweep has given the Immigration and Naturalization Service a chance to ship hundreds of immigrants back to Mexico and Central America, while others languish for failure to pay exorbitant bail (sez the Nation).
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Ralston Purina’s Batman Returns cereal is far better than the cereal made for the first Batman film (I didn’t like the first movie much either). The new cereal contains the following “fun-shaped” marshmallow pieces: “White bats, purple Penguin hats, tan Batmobiles, blue cat heads.”
CATHODE CORNER: The Seattle City Council is thinking about taking over the local cable TV franchises as a city-owned company. Do we really want politicians deciding whether we’d get to keep MTV, let alone the Playboy Channel?
FOLLOWING FASHIONS LIKE CATTLE: The San Angelo, TX Standard-Times (it’s called that even during Daylight Savings) reports that “the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo adopted new market steer regulations calling for animals to have no more than one-fourth inch of hair any place on their body, besides the tail switch.” Reporter Jeanne Serio quotes a show official: “The sculpting of long hair has become so intense in junior market steer shows that we have lost sight of the original intent of this competition, to teach young people responsibility, knowledge about the care and raising of animals, and skills in choosing and raising market animals with proper body structure and conformation.” I say if long hair is good enough for the entire male student population at Evergreen, it’s good enough for other neutered beasts.
PRESSED: Ever wonder if newspaper headline writers actually read the articles? A 6/24 USA Today cover blurb went, “Book Buying in Dumps: Are We Doomed?” The article itself noted that “spending on adult consumer books increased 10.7% between 1985 and 1990″ and kids’ book sales were even higher. (The story didn’t mention that newspaper circulation in that era was flat and network TV viewership dropped.)
HAD TO HAPPEN SOMETIME: The Beatniks are a new-music cover band, giving totally straight copies of your favorite R.E.M., Violent Femmes and Nirvana songs in between the more typical stale Beatle tunes. It brings to mind an idea: how about some smart promoter forming multiple “Sounds of Seattle” cover bands, all assembled from scratch, to perform your grunge-rock favorites in every Sheraton dance lounge in America.
STRATEGY FOR DEFEAT #1: When I ask folks why don’t they like Clinton, they offer vague allusions about an unattractive personality or a simple “isn’t it obvious?” His groomers are working to give him this image. He’s being handled the way Carter, Mondale and Dukakis were, by party leaders who believe America will elect a “lite right” candidate who doesn’t bash conservatives too much and says as little as possible about non-suburban issues, all for the mythical “Bubba” vote in the south (where Jacksontook seven states in the ’88 primaries). Party leaders ignore the concrete examples that this approach will never work. Clinton’s the “beneficiary” of a primary system in which Demo fundraisers anoint the candidate most likely to run a consultant-controlled campaign — and most likely to lose the election.
STRATEGY FOR DEFEAT #2: Winds-o-change are a-blowin’, and coffeehouse leftists may worry about the threat of actually attaining a voice that people might listen to. No problem! Just use these handy steps to let the right wing win every time: Don’t vote. Don’t run for office or support anyone who does. Never try to respectfully persuade new people to your views. Call everyone who doesn’t already agree with you a redneck, a fascist, or both. Keep using that strident us-vs.-them rhetoric that worked so well in the ’60s to turn people away from progressive causes. Shun modern media and communications, so the right can monopolize them. Do this and you can keep complaining about the world without ever having to do anything.
SIGNS OF THE MONTH (handwritten flyer on downtown light poles): “Public Information Notice. If you are in a high plant pollen area, it is a good idea if you properly wrap your vegetable scraps, bread scraps and meat fat, vegetable oil-soaked paper towels-rags and tie the top of the bag securely. Wrap your cigarette, tobacco scraps separately, making sure that they are not ignited before you dispose of it. If you have meat that is `bad’ or milk that has soured, wrap it in two plastic bags and tie the top or seal it and then put it in a paper bag, writing on the paper bag `Bad Meat’ before you dispose of it, so that if anyone does look through the garbage they will not construe it as something healthily eatable. If you go to a park or a bench, instead of putting your cigarette out in the dirt or sand, bring a container along with you that is metal, like a small canister or cough drop box, and make sure that the tobacco and/or tobacco filter is no longer ignited before your dispose of it. If you wash your garbage containers on a regular basis, it will make your environment healthier also. Please try to do these things, for it will lessen the possibility of infection for yourself and others in the area. It will lessen the chance of food poisoning and may also reduce the amount of emergency intake at hospitals. Thank you for your cooperation.”… Handwritten note with a Sylvester sticker, taped to a garbage can at 3rd & Blanchard: “In our area, look for a solid wall of windows that can’t be opened by guests. The Rabbit.”
TABLED: I remain perplexed by this phony “Northwest cuisine”. In the P-I, Stouffer Madison Hotel chef Rene Pax insisted that “Seattle food means fresh food and the best of the fresh produce.” If there really is a culinary tradition here, it would have to take into account our short growing season (the freshness obsession comes from LA-trained chefs used to year-round growing) and our frontier heritage, particularly of the days before highways or rural electrification. Truly traditional NW foods would be those with brief seasons (cherries), or are made to keep (evaporated milk was invented here). A cuisine that reflects the character of the local populace (as opposed to laid-back fantasies) would stay modest and unpretentious, at least fun. Nothing gaudy or cutesy. An honest smoked salmon, adequate white wine, plain tossed salad, and the quiet elegance of an Almond Roca dessert.
WAITING FOR THE CLAMPDOWN: The authorities made their second move to silence the Seattle music scene (after banning Pearl Jam from Gasworks) by shutting down the funk nights at Jersey’s Sports Bar. It must be noted that Jersey’s mostly-black crowd was, on the whole, no more or less rowdy than the white suburban crowd at local yup meatmarkets.
TRUE CRIME: I’ve had two reports of skinheads bashing homeless people outside the New Hope Mission next door to 911 Media Arts on the night of 5/2. Apparently, the skins claim to be Army men, despite their swastika tattoos and designer boots. They repeatedly kicked and beat men sleeping under the I-5 overpass to the point of major internal injuries. Despite frequent emergency calls, the attacks were unresponded to by cops too busy standing watch over Westlake Center.
VIBES: My Pleasure vibrators may be the first women’s product endorsed by porn queens (“Personally Chosen by the Girls Who Know Them Best”). According to a blurb on the box by one Ginger Lynn, “I like a vibe that’s of exceptionally high quality, and with variable speed control. Because I like sexual control. And I am quality.” What if sex stars as role models catch on? Would beauty standards come to be based on what men seem to like (instead of what women think men like)? Would women reshape themselves toward plump torsos with fat silicone lips and catatonic eyes? Would they imitate porn “acting” by slurring their words and staring blankly into space?
BET ON IT: The new Tulalip Reservation casino was described by a spokesperson on KUOW as “a touch of Las Vegas with a Northwest Indian motif.” What’s that, a Thunderbird totem stitched on the back of a silk jacket?
HYPOCRISY ON PARADE: Rupert Murdoch fired Fox TV executive Stephen Chao, at a Murdoch-convened symposium at an Aspen, Colo. hotel on “the threat to democratic capitalism posed by modern culture”, filled with the usual conservative media-bashers. Chao gave a routine anti-censorship speech at the meeting, claiming violence was more obscene than sex or nudity. On cue, a man in a hotel uniform revealed himself to be a male stripper hired by Chao; he stood nude for 30 seconds before the shocked panelists (including Defense Secretary Dick Cheney his wife, Nat’l Endowment for the Humanities head Lynne Cheney) while Chao talked about how people have to get over their hangups about the human body. Murdoch, who made his first fortune with the toplessPage Three Girls in his UK tabloids, called Chao’s spectacle “a tremendous misjudgment” and sacked him on the spot.
THE REAL CULTURAL ELITISTS: The state Republican convention, as dominated by the religious right and at least tolerated by top GOP officeholders, condemned abortion rights, homosexuality, divorce, sex education, foreign aid, the UN, arts funding, civil service, and the teaching of non-western cultures. It also denounced “channeling, values clarification, relaxation techniques, meditation, hypnosis, yoga, Eastern religious practices, or similar ideas.” My yoga teacher might call that sort of bigotry a fiery ball of negative energy, that impassions people but can also engulf them. Meanwhile, some Nevada Republicans officially denounced that over-publicized Elvis stamp as glorifying “a habitual drug user.”
EYES WITHOUT A FACE: It’s nice that the Mariners are finally a local team again. But why won’t team investor and car-phone tycoon John McCaw appear in public? When the papers ran pictures of the other new owners, they put a blank box above his name. At press conferences, he sent a lawyer to speak for him. Is he ashamed to show his face with the hapless M’s? Will he show up in the owners’ box with a New Orleans ‘Aints paper bag on his head? What if he’s a mystery man, who can’t appear in public lest someone discern his crimefighting secret identity? We invite you to send in (a) a picture of what you think he looks like, or (b) a written explanation of his seclusion. Accuracy doesn’t count, since we don’t know what he looks like either. Stranger employees and people who’ve seen McCaw are ineligible. Results will be published here in three weeks.
ROBERT E. LEE HARDWICK, 1931-1992: Before what we now call “talk radio” took off here, he ran a chat show with a few records. He was adamant that non-rock radio needn’t mean “middle of the road.” He ruled Seattle radio (adult division) from the late ’50s to 1980, when new KVI management decided his postwar-jazz sensibility was an anachronism. He spent a decade wandering from station to station, supported in some years only by commercial endorsements. Sponsors loved his straightforward, no-nonsense persona; station managers hated it, because it contradicted the hype and hustle of modern radio. He was a Scotch-on-the-rocks guy in a wine-cooler world. Two months after losing his last gig (on KING-AM), he drove into the Cascades and blew his brains out. The KING-TV newscast that announced his death had one of his commercials (for Honda dealers).
‘TIL NEXT TIME, be sure to go to the Seattle Hits exhibit of local pop culture at the Museum of History and Industry (including the gallant return of Bobo the stuffed gorilla), visit the exquisite Collector’s Doll Store on 35th and Northlake, and ponder this Cynthia Tucker commentary from the Times: “Successive tides of human progress have rolled back slavery, the subjugation of women, and more recently the oppression of communism.” About time we stopped oppressing communism, don’t you agree?
A Tri-Cities community college student’s guide to life from Shampoo Planet, the forthcoming new novel by Generation X author Douglas Coupland: “Flippant people ask stupid questions and expect answers. Secrets divulged under flippant circumstances aren’t valued. People don’t value other people’s secrets, period. That’s why I keep my secrets to myself.”
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
My computer novel, The Perfect Couple, is supposed to finally come out on disk this summer. Contact Eastgate Systems Inc., (800) 562-1638.
“Adumbration”
EVERY VEGETARIAN I KNOW SMOKES THE HIGHEST-TAR CIGARETTES AVAILABLE.
ARE THEY TRYING TO GET EXTRA PROTEIN OR WHAT?
6/92 Misc. Newsletter
(incorporating five Stranger columns)
QUAYLE SHOULDN’T PICK ON CANDICE BERGEN.
SHE GREW UP LEARNING HOW TO ARGUE WITH A DUMMY
We at Misc. bemusedly note the spectacular rise of Perot as the candidate of bus commuters, computer bulletin board users, and talk radio callers. He appeals to their sense of independence, of freedom from the petty rules of governance. The GOP has long appealed to the frontier mentality of people living outside the old social structures, especially in the west. But when times got tough, the Repos retreated to their old-money, old-power base, leaving the Mad-As-Hell crowd to seek a new champion. But Perot’s not beholden to special interest groups, he is one. He ran a bureaucratized company with a Safeco-like dress code, courted politicians of both parties for sweetheart contracts, and sponsored dubious foreign adventures on behalf of right-fringe causes. (His name is a soundalike to moralistic fairy-tale writer Charles Perrault, whose version of Red Riding Hood was an uppity female who paid for her unladylike curiosity by becoming wolf chow.)
PAY ‘N SAVE, 1947-1992: Washington’s dominant drug chain for four decades grew from a single outlet at 4th & Pike to over 120 outlets. It was the flagship of the Bean family’s retail empire, which at various times included Tradewell, Rhodes of Seattle, Ernst, Malmo, Lamonts, Sportsland, Sportswest, Schuck’s, Bi-Mart, Price Savers, The Bean Pod, and Pizza Haven. The Beans were known for their Mormon paternalism, particularly in their generous employee benefits — which made the company ripe for a hostile takeover and dismemberment in 1984. Shorn of its sister chains, Pay ‘n Save lost its focus and market share. Now, the stores will be absorbed by Pay Less, a much less classy operation started in the ’20s by the Skaggs family (also involved in the founding of Safeway and Albertson’s). By the ’60s the Pay Less logo was divided among three completely separate companies: one in Oregon and Washington; one in California; and a four-store chain in Tacoma. The northern and southern Pay Lesses were both bought by K mart a few years back; they remained somewhat gaudy places, while P ‘n S was getting glitzy in past years. P ‘n S stores will now change to PL’s garish pastels. But the P ‘n S headquarters staff will be thrown out. A similar front-office closing is rumored for for Seven Gables Theaters, which will now be run directly from LA by the parent company, Samuel Goldwyn. As we’ve seen with banks, fewer people will be able to authorize local charitable or arts donations. Fewer firms will be able to respond to local market needs.
ICONO-GRAPHICS: CNN’s Showbiz Today lists the weekly Neilsen ratings against a graphic of TV antennas rising from urban rowhouses. A cable channel offering nostalgia for the pre-cable days…
CORRECTION (Times, 5/12): “To keep cats away from indoor herb and vegetable plants, sprinkle leaves with red cayenne pepper. An article in the home/real estate section on Sunday listed another spice.”
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The Journal of Northwest Music is Bruce Blood and Chris Carlson’s catalog of discs (real and compact) by area bands from the Dynamics up to the Melvins. It’s also got an interview with jazz guitarist Larry Coryell (an ex-UW Daily writer just like me), on his early days in Seattle rock, circa ’61 (“the kind of music the local bands were playing for the kids was a higher, more sophisticated type of R&B than they might be getting in other regions”).
THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT: In endorsing the destruction of most spotted owl habitat in Washington, Bush gave final proof of his total submission to big bucks. The owl is an indicator species whose disappearance signals the decline of an ecosystem. To move a few birds away as an excuse to level that ecosystem is the most cynical action that could be taken. Few jobs will be saved by clearcutting at an already too-high level. Timber workers are out of work because of log exports, mill automation, corporate consolidation, and excess cutting from past years that’s left too little old growth left and not enough tree-farm stands to replace them.
SIGN OF THE MONTH (at the Christopher Paul Bollen print gallery on 3rd): “Hi. Popcorn, candy, children and pets are most WELCOME in this gallery. If you break it, no big deal. No shoes, no shirt? Goodness, it must be sunny. COME ON IN.”
AD OF THE MONTH: (huge boldface slogan on a brochure for Ultra Meditation tapes from Zygon of Issaquah): “In 28 Minutes You’ll Be Meditating Like a Zen Monk!”… We’re always mesmerized by the Horizon Shuttle billboards with the digital clocks flashing in half-hour increments every second, bearing the slogan “Nonstop Non-stops to Portland.” As I recall, Delta was the first to run billboards proclaiming, “Fly Non-Stop to Portland.” Every flight from Sea-Tac to Portland is non-stop. There’s no place for a commercial-class plane to stop, except an emergency landing at McChord AFB.
CATHODE CORNER: When Sony took over Columbia Pictures, it inherited rights to the Merv Griffin and Chuck Barris game shows. Now, it plans the latest specialized cable network, The Game Show Channel. (What’s next: The Soap Channel? The Blooper Channel? The Station Break Channel?)
JUNK FOODS OF THE MONTH: The much-touted Milky Way II bar has the solid, chalky taste of the original Milky Way imitator, Milk Shake. The 25-percent calorie reduction comes from Caprenin, “a reduced calorie fat made from natural sources”… Get ready to welcome back that fond relic of the ’80s, New Coke, rechristened “Coke II.” It’s being test-marketed in Spokane, and may go national this fall…. People call me a cynic but I’m not. When I shop for a soft drink I look for Minute Maid Orange Soda because I enjoy the bizarre combination of syllables of that mystery ingredient, “glycerol ester of wood rosin.” I enjoy the slippery thickness it gives to the beverage, making a glass of flavored water feel like something juicier.
THE MAILBAG: The anonymous editor of something called Eye on Nirvana: A Report on Nirvana and Nothing Else writes in part that I shouldn’t scoff at Rolling Stone‘s comparison of Seattle to Liverpool; since we’re “becoming one of the power centers of the alternative music scene”, I could only oppose publicity for the town if I were living “in fear daily of having our little pan of heavenly mazurkas sliced into even thinner pieces and distributed to even more `outsiders.'” Yes, I used to scoff at outsiders. But the people coming here now are making real contributions to our community. They’re moving here to be part of something. People used to come here to avoid social involvement. That horrible “Emerald City” slogan, adopted by the Convention and Visitors Bureau in ’82, typified a post-hippie generation wanting to get away from it all to a dreamland where nothing ever happens. So many people wanted their own nature oasis that they destroyed a lot of nature so they could have their big ugly estate houses. We don’t need that. We do need all the people we can get to make great cultural stuff, to make a better community.
MAKE YOUR OWN JOKE HERE #1 (NY Times “Surfacing” brief, 5/14): “Test Tube Pets: Today, leopards by artificial insemination. Tomorrow, sperm banks for cats.”
MAKE YOUR OWN JOKE HERE #2: In the unauthorized bio Hard Drive, an ex-girlfriend of Bill Gates describes him as “a combination of Einstein, Woody Allen, and John Cougar Mellencamp.”
THE FINE PRINT (from Cakes Men Like, Benjamin Darling’s book of photostatted pages from old food-company recipe brochures): “The recipes in this book are the product of an earlier era, and the publisher cannot guarantee their reproducability or palatability for contemporary readers.”
LATEX LESSON: Without straying too far into Mr. Savage’s topic range, Misc. wants to briefly note how the ex-“new morality” generation just doesn’t understand the cultural implications of safe sex. They think that anybody having sex must be having it the way it was had in the ’60s, either as strict monogamy or undisciplined licentiousness. They don’t get that with today’s much more assertive women, relations would naturally be more protection-conscious even without STDs to worry about. Contraception alone would be taken more seriously. Women taking more charge, even in short-term relationships, invariably means more discipline (I don’t mean S&M but simply more thought and planning). That attitude shows in the elaborate visions of club fashions, in dance music that’s all about energy and control instead of “letting it all hang out”.
WIRED: Pat Robertson tried, then gave up trying, to buy what remains of United Press International, the news service that reported the end of World War I a couple days prematurely in 1918 and hasn’t had editors’ full respect since. It’s no longer carried by many papers, including the Times. (It’s still a big supplier of news bulletins to computer information services.) Anyone who’s seen a 700 Club “news” segment knows that Robertson’s idea of news is more like sports reporting, cheering his heroes (Reagan, Helmes, Israel, the Pentagon) and hissing his villains (abortion-rights supporters, peaceniks, artists, the First Amendment, rock music, unions, environmentalists, anybody to the left of Franco). The UPI name may live a while longer, but any remaining credibility it had is shot.
YOU THOUGHT THE SIMPSONS WERE TOO MERCHANDISED: The Channel 9 Store in Rainier Square is one of a series of boutiques run by PBS stations. They sell books, soundtrack CDs, videos, toys and assorted doodads inspired by your favorite “noncommercial” shows. No MacNiel/Lehrer salt and pepper shakers, yet…
OFFICE HUMOR TURNS PRO: The Wall St. Journal sez a New Jersey branch of Seattle’s Red Robin restaurant chain has comedy shows in its bar, and is getting local companies to sponsor employee entrants in a Corporate Laugh-Off. Do you tell your cruelest boss jokes to win, or not tell them and keep your job?
FOR YOUR TRAVEL PLANS: Seattle-area McDonald’s are sporting paper tray liners with a cartoon map of all its 25 outlets in Alaska. It shows a Coke straw-sipping salmon, a French fry-eating moose, and burger bags delivered by float plane, snowmobile, and in an eagle’s talons. However, the lifelong Dog House fan in me can’t help but be offended by the headline on the liner, “All Roads Lead to McDonald’s” — a ripoff of the “All Roads Lead to the Dog House” placemats.
‘TIL NEXT TIME, voice your opposition to those who want to ban musicians and street vendors from Broadway, and heed the words of local artist Joanne Branch in her recent show at Art/Not Terminal: “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly, at least for a little while.”
Hugh Hefner’s editorial in the first Playboy (1953), on why his would be one of the few men’s mags of the day not about hunting or fishing: “We plan to spend most of our time inside. We like our apartment.”
BIG EVENT!
The sixth birthday of Misc., and the 35th birthday of your correspondent, will be celebrated Mon., 6/8, at the Queen City Film Festival Dream Theater, 1108 Pike St. (Enter thru the mystery bookshop.) Bring stuff to celebrate with. There’ll be readings, short films, and audience participation.
“Amanuensis”
IN THE STREETS
The Weekly, in one of its best reportages ever, noted that the 4/30 mixed-race window-busting spree downtown was smaller than fight scenes at two Rainier Valley dances last year that the white media ignored. As you know, the following night’s mob scene was mostly white guys, led by U-District anarchists who wanted a riot of their own. They’re the successors to the punks I knew in the early ’80s, whose idea of creativity was to imitate the latest LA fad. But like the second wave of most subcultures, today’s circle-A guys are more orthodox and serious than their forbearers. They may think they were formenting revolution in solidarity with blacks, but (with the help of irresponsible media who exaggerated the threat) they just made white Seattle more afraid of African Americans, who will now be collectively blamed for the anarchists’ work. Most of the busted windows, except for the Bon and a 7-11, were at youth- or hip-oriented stores, including a sneaker outlet, blue jean boutiques, the Broadway Jack in the Box and Kinko’s Copies. Most were independent businesses that could least afford the damage and the panic-driven loss of clientele; none had anything to do with the Rodney King verdict. The nightclubs that weekend were shut or mostly empty; the anarchists directly threatened a youth culture that’s taken 10 tough years to build. To the people who stayed home, I say: Two isolated sprees of highly visible property damage must not kill the scene. If anything, we need more people out at night, making positive contact with one another.
BACK SOUTH, who’s to blame for the conditions that sparked the rage? Every CEO who moves jobs to the suburbs, the Sunbelt or overseas. Every politician who ignores lower working class people or treats them as something to protect “decent people” against. Every baby-boomer who treats minorities as sexy savages, not as human beings. Every yuppie customer of drug dealers. Every bank that “invests” in funny-money schemes instead of in its own community. A tax system that insures that only rich suburbs get the best schools.
I HOPE THIS IS THE END OF LA LA LAND, of the disgusting mythical SoCal of Fleetwood Mac and Tommy Lasorda, limos and liposuction. Of celebrities who’d rather care for the rainforest than for their own city. Of violence movies celebrating “cops who break all the rules”. Long before this, when people tried to turn me on to the latest “alternative scene” in LA, I told them that LA is what everything else in the world is an alternative to. If LA’s so hip, how come it gave us Nixon and Reagan? Calif. wasn’t just home to those old student rebels, it was home to most of the things they were rebelling against. Then, the more violent faction of the white New Left accomplished little except to serve its own ego trips, drive working-class whites into the law-&-order Right, and destroy any hopes for a real broad-based movement to actually help people. Few “relevant” white songwriters mentioned racism except as a pretext for peace-n’-love sentiments. One song that did address the issue was Frank Zappa‘s “Trouble Coming Every Day,” from the now-reissued Freak Out! album. In biting monotonic couplets that predate rap, Zappa describes watching the 1965 Watts riots through the then-new gimmick of live TV helicopters. At one point he shouts, “I’m not black but there are times when I wish I could say I’m not white.”
2/92 Misc. Newsletter
Love Songs for Vacuum Cleaners
Welcome to another morosity-packed edition of Misc., the pop culture report that believes all Presidential candidates, just to be fair, should have to eat (Times, 1/9) “marinated raw salmon, consommé with mushrooms, filet of Japanese beef, cooked vegetables, salad, passion fruit and ice cream with strawberry flavor.” If Brown wants to forego the beef, he can substitute stale bean curd.
UPDATE: Puget Sound Bank indeed cut funding for local arts on public TV, but both the bank and the station insist that the decision came long before they saw the Seattle Men’s Chorus show. So don’t call ’em homophobic. If you must complain, complain that as a proud urbanite you deplore last year’s commercials where PSB showed itself as the bank of wholesome white suburbia while associating its out-of-state competitors with evil inner cities (even using Manhattan images to bash Albany, NY’s Key Bank).
GOOD BUY, BASEBALL!: Nintendo of America singlehandedly brought an entire industry back from the dead. It may be the shrewdest entertainment marketer in the world today. I can think of no higher qualification for a Mariners owner. Besides, it couldn’t hurt the team to adopt some of the philosophies in those zen-of-baseball books or in the Asian-American Theatre’s play Secrets of the Samurai Centerfielder. As I write this coming home from a sold-out SAM retrospective of Yoko Ono films, I think of how this town is socially closer to Japan than it is to certain other US regions. Not only are Boeing and the timber companies among the nation’s top exporters, we’ve got the Nissan and Subaru docks. Hardly the “xenophobia” attributed to us by nature writer Andrew Ward… The 1/27 “Morning” (née Tacoma) News Tribune had a headline, “M’s deal shows where the action is: in Seattle’s suburbs.” The paper, whose current circulation push is into those suburbs, noted that none of the would-be buyers works in Seattle. It didn’t note that the government and business leaders who brokered the deal are all downtown.
IN THE STREETS: I witnessed the anti-hate-crime march on Broadway 1/25, but didn’t catch the start of when it turned violent. People who saw part of it put the source of the roughness at provocations toward cops by the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, run by Bob Avakian, who claims to be a purer Maoist than China’s current leaders. For 12 years, I’ve seen the RCYB as the smallest, loudest part of any protest march, ready to move in on any movement and pretend to be leading it. Members of another of his groups started that whole flag burning fuss. They know how to make precise, irrelevant acts that provoke the most fiery backlashes. This is not the same skill as building a real movement to empower real people.
STAGES OF LIFE: A major hit of the London theater season is A Tribute to the Blues Brothers, starring Aykroyd/Belushi impersonators ripping off their ripoffs of R&B greats. Ads quote a Times of London review: “The most slickly staged concert since the last Madonna tour, and much more fun.” Maybe somebody could do a tribute to it, so you’d get a ripoff of a ripoff of a ripoff (or politely, a tribute to a tribute to a tribute).
IMPRESSIONISM: Behind all the hoopla surrounding the end of the Reds, there was a little item about how the freedom movement survived at its nadir, thanks to one of my favorite things in the world, self-publishing. Newsweek sez that during the ’81 crackdown on Solidarity, the Polish underground fashioned a printing system using inks made from detergent and silkscreens made from elastic from men’s underwear. Imagine: the Soviet Union undone by union suits.
DEFENSIVENESS: The Weekly immediately followed its sensational date rape cover (proving just how hard it is not to get tabloidy about the subject) with an equally tabloidy self-defense story, with circulation staffers studiously removing the “This Image Offends Women” stickers from the vending-box windows. Let’s hope they find another reason soon to have two non-restaurant covers in a row…. And what’s this new pseudo-Rocket logo, anyway? The old Weekly logo was no award-winner, but it was a mark of design evolution going back to the paper’s founding in ’76 — when it ignored people too young to be “from the sixties,” instead of scoffing at us like it did in recent years. Now, the paper can only maintain its circulation/ad base by reaching out at last to us Generation X-ers. Natch, it does this in a patronizing way, with an uninspiring pomo logo that looks like what out-of-it oldsters think “those kids” will eat up. (I may have a totally diff. opinion a month from now.)
BUSH CAMPAIGN HEAD WILL PETUS (in USA Today, 1/12) insisted the campaign was not hopeless by saying, “George Bush has been declared dead more times than Elvis Presley.” The thing is, Elvis was declared dead just once, accurately. It’s the folks who declare him undead who are insistent and wrong. Which is the better metaphor for Bush’s chances?
PHILM PHUN: The Seattle film-production community is growing to the point of extensive postproduction facilities. This means we get such spectacles as Rebecca de Mornay, dubbing her lines from The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, telling techies how proud she is of how her breasts look in one scene. Forsaking us for cheap Vancouver filming are the producers of This Boy’s Life, based on Tobias Wolff‘s Skagit County coming-O-age saga that’s the closest anybody’s come in nearly years to the Great Northwest Novel. R. DeNiro and E. Barkin star.
LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH: Commas Are Our Friends is English teacher Joe Devine’s “painless, fearless, and fun-filled approach to the rules of grammar.” At last: somebody who doesn’t use the language to belittle his inferiors, but who communicates the importance of communicating, the elegance of well-designed writing that leads to (and from) well-designed thinking…The Cereal Killings is Stranger cartoonist James Sturm’s new comic book that uses a standard murder mystery to ponder what if breakfast talking animals were real (and not like Roger Rabbit but like any sensitive artist forced into the compromise world of advertising). The premise brings a whole new dimension to the American iconography of spokes-critters. You could even stick in an analogy between black customers not allowed into the Cotton Club and the Trix Rabbit never getting the cereal with his own face on the box. (Well, maybe not.)
THOUGHT WHILE LISTENING TO KNDD replay the greatest nonhits of my youth: The punk/newave era can be said to have begun in ’76 with the first Ramones LP. Its end is somewhere between Angry Housewives, Duran Duran, and the LA hardcore bands that made punk orthodox and stale. But the real deathknell came with the emergence of rap, which fulfilled what the bebop guys had set out to do: create a black music that didn’t need white people to “popularize it” (i.e. muscle in). The whole century-old premise of what it meant to be a hip white boy was dislodged. (KNDD, by the way, is using its mention in last month’s In/Out List in its sales brochures. They didn’t mention my earlier, less nice, piece about ’em.)
EVENTS WE OUGHTA HAVE: Chicago’s Berlin Club advertised an “8th Annual Anti-New Year’s Party…No midnight announcements. No party favors. No cheap champagne. No `Auld Lange Syne.’ No more Father Time to kick around. We’re going to be covering all watches with tape at the door to prevent cheating.”
COLOR ME BEMUSED: There’s a distinct color-scheme generation gap. Yuppies (and yuppie ad agencies trying to appeal to teens) are into bright, gaudy, neony colors. Teens themselves are dressing in black and watching b/w music videos…Why is it that the kids who are supposed to be the New Chastity generation strut about in skintight spandex and black bras, while the newly middle-aged who still boast of their wild swinging pasts wear ugly grey sweaters and shapeless faded jeans?
CATHODE CORNER: Who at NBC saw to place a Teen Spirit deodorant ad in Sat. Nite Live‘s last network commercial slot (separated by two local slots) before Nirvana’s network debut of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (whose title wasn’t mentioned in the intro and isn’t in the lyrics)?…Some of the 71 Awards for Cable Excellence categories: “Directing live sports events coverage special or series. International educational or instructional/magazine/talk show special or series. Business or consumer programming special or series. Extended news or public affairs coverage. Entertainment host. Program interviewer. Stand-up comedy series. Game show special or series.”
REWIND: I’d like to advise you to avoid Blockbuster Video stores. You may already know that they’re trying to drive indy video stores out of business (exec Scott Beck in Video Business: “We’ve done our best to eradicate as many as we can, but they just stick with it”), that they’ve banned NC-17 movies while amply stocking repulsive slasher and shoot-em-up flicks. Now, film zine Ecco sez BBV’s imposed chainwide buying (preventing local stores from choosing anything), and has cut back sharply (some sources say entirely) on independent, foreign or classic films. If you don’t want the video revolution to die, don’t go there, or else we could end up with nothing to see but action hits.
JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Gosanko Chocolate Art makes chocolate baby coho salmon, $5 at fancier non-chain candy shops near you. Since the same molding process can be used to make both candy and plastic toys (indeed, a Quaker Oats division sells “industrial chocolate” to candymakers), sweetness can be made in virtually any 3-D shape. We’ve already mentioned the Ken Griffey Jr. bar, the Space Needle on a stick, and the skyline-of-Seattle collection. We can hardly wait for the Stars of Grunge Rockcollection.
NO DIRTY WORDS: Thanks to my antique-dealer mom, I now have a copy of Songs of Regina, a 1931 songbook for door-to-doorvacuum cleaner salesmen. The lyrics, written to the tune of popular songs of the day, were presumably to be sung at motivational sessions. “Glory, glory what a cleaner/Yes, the name of it’s Regina/And the money it will bring ya/As we go marching on.” The company survived the depression, perhaps due in part to these pep-rally songs. But it couldn’t survive the ’90s recession. The brand recently disappeared in a merger.
THE WORKS: A sense of realistic despair fell over the country rather swiftly, after years of strained overconfidence and hip nihilism. America’s hi-tech/service sector future was replaced by visions of a nation of glorified temp workers with no pensions, no insurance, no futures, no ability to buy the luxury goods and services that our economy was restructured around. What little investment was made in this country was made in the expectation of an affluent professional class that the rest of us would serve. That class is now shrinking, and nobody’s making anything for any other class. We’re reaping the fruits of the cynical ’70s-80s, from non-voting liberals to conservatives who’ll sell themselves (and the country) to anybody. From speculators who buy companies to loot their them, to CEOs who annihilate their workforces (decimating the consumer wealth needed to support their own companies’ products).
MAILBAG: Michael Protevi sez, “Misc. is wonderful. I can’t wait to show my friends/family back East. I really appreciate `The Real NW.’ It’s refreshing to hear news of the old Seattle, the pre-deluge. It always bothered me that they would tear down so many great buildings (Music Hall, etc.) and then pat themselves for being the most environmentally conscious (`recycling,’ etc.). What a crock! Obvious where the real power lies (and lies).”
‘TIL OUR RITE-O-SPRING March ish, vow to ask the next would-be tuff guy on the street in an LA Kings jacket if he’s ever in his life been to a hockey game, see the Museum of History & Industry’s five wooden-ship maidens on a stairwell wall (all sealed up in plastic packing wrap like seabound Laura Palmers), visit the new Signature Bound bookstore on 2nd, and recall the wisdom of child-development expert Joseph Chilton Pearce (from the Canadian journal Edges): “Intellect alone has never changed anyone. All change comes from the heart.”
THE GOOD OLE DAYS
Time, 9/15/61: “The ban the bomb campaigners…are dedicated to the dubious proposition that any political fate is preferable to the horror of atomic war.”
Thanks to the person who listened to my KING radio appearance on 1/15.
The format of Misc. will remain stable for the near-term. Should I find a way to reduce the number of other things I do in order to support this, a bigger newsletter may ensue (maybe with ads, graphics and/or a cover price).
“Fueilletonist”
JUST CUZ WE MAKE CARS TOO BIG FOR JAPANESE CITIES,
WITH THE STEERING WHEELS ON THE WRONG SIDE…
Videophobia
Essay for the Seattle Times, 1/28/92
If you visit independent bookstores, you may have seen the National Book Week poster showing one book surrounded by 51 blank TV screens, with the slogan “One week a year is all we ask.”
The poster exploits an almost religious belief held by many book lovers against TV, despite the fact that talk shows are the greatest sales tool the book business has ever known. Despite the fact that the top book publishers and sellers are stronger than ever, while the big TV networks and many local stations are bleeding red ink.
Literary folks love to think that they’re a downtrodden enclave of true believers surrounded by video heathens. To admit to even owning a TV set is to be labeled as one of the unclean hordes.
Allow me to state this with no guilt or shame: I do not hate television.
It’s the most flexible communications medium in the world today. It combines the languages of film, theater, oratory, music, graphics, and every other visual and performing genre, plus a video vocabulary all its own. Its presence is immediate and intimate, not overwhelming like feature films. It can mix genres and formats much more easily than film, which is pretty much stuck with straight narrative. TV news has grown from a simple headline service to a true window on the world.
But still, the videophobes scoff at the entire medium. Every so often, some parents’ group launches a “turn-off week” campaign, accompanied by publicity campaigns designed to get them on the TV news.
Some videophobic comments involve pseudo-scientific rhetoric, based on vague “evidence” or pure speculation. Author Jerry Mander claims that since the video image is an array of colored dots and lines, it’s inferior to a “real” picture. If that’s true, then we should toss out all pointilist paintings, tile mosaics, and Oriental rugs. Mander also charges that TV consumption is inherently passive and unquestioning. Has he never seen baseball fans arguing over a play? Or a family heatedly discussing a news report? He also can’t explain why literacy rates and per-capita college graduation are higher than in the pre-tube ’40s (though still not high enough for our high-tech society).
Many TV-bashers, including Mander, came of age during the 1960s and have failed to appreciate all of society’s changes since then. They talk as if there were still just three or four channels all showing bland shows like “My Three Sons”.
But their prejudices really go back further, to an old intellectual prejudice against oral and visual expression. Before the Protestant Reformation, religious faith had been inspired largely by the spoken liturgy and visual icons. But after Martin Luther and moveable type, many Europeans believed that ideas were somehow purer when expressed in writing. They believed that words informed and enlightened, while pictures seduced and deceived.
Of course, words can deceive very easily indeed. Holocaust-revisionist “scholars” use reasonable-sounding rhetoric and seemingly authoritative documentation to assert that six million Jews weren’t systematically murdered — unless you notice that their only “substantiation” comes from one another’s books.
And reading alone doesn’t make you smarter. Some of the most mindless people I know devour a book every two days, books carefully chosen to provide predictable entertainment and predictable rhetoric.
The top 10 book publishers did more business last year than the major movie studios. Bookstores were the second-fastest-growing retail industry during the past 10 years (after restaurants). Much of their sales consist of gossipy bestsellers, formula romances and thrillers, and self-help homilies. Can you honestly say that Sidney Sheldon’s trash novels are better than his classic series “I Dream of Jeannie”?
Still, the book business has always had room for a healthy highbrow segment, while TV used to have very little intellectual content. The networks originally promised to bring high culture to every corner of the nation. But after a while, culture shows like Alistair Cooke’s “Omnibus” were replaced by westerns and cops. By 1960, you were basically stuck with light family entertainment every night of the week.
But that was the Old TV. The rise of PBS in the early ’70s was the first step in making a New TV. That was soon followed by the domestic satellites that made cable networks feasible. Also at this time, a few “video artists” started experimenting on new, smaller cameras and recorders; they explored subjects and styles that video could handle differently from film.
Home VCRs showed up in 1976 and brought a new relationship between programs and viewers. People tend to be more involved with a program that they’ve physically left the house to get. Tapes let anyone examine a show or movie, to study the techniques that make a production work. With the camcorder, millions could apply this knowledge toward making their own material.
The New TV goes beyond just watching “whatever’s on.” You can (indeed, you have to) plan in advance. Choose from the best of broadcast, cable and home video, and you can have several evenings a month of quality viewing, to complement the other activities of a well-cultured person.
Mainstream TV entertainment is, on the whole, smarter than mainstream movies with all their lurid violence and visceral special effects. If I had kids, I’d rather they like “Beverly Hills 90210” than Steven Seagal.
CNN may be the first American mass news medium to take everyday, non-disaster news from other countries seriously. Even the network newscasts have a better eye on the nation these days. We get to see the human survival stories behind the abstract word “recession.” in the ’60s, we’d only get to hear what various pinstripe-clad analysts had to say about it.
The cost of TV production and the limitations of TV distribution used to mean that only a few people got to make any. But now, adequate-quality camcorders can be rented for $10 a day. To see what a few smart people with camcorders can do, watch the independent documentary series “The ’90s” (which KCTS will only show at 3 a.m. Wednesday nights). There are also scattered spots in the MTV schedule that expose new visions, new ways of seeing and hearing things.
Also, check out the video-art screenings held at 911 Media Arts, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and elsewhere. You’ll see a generation of people making their own TV, questioning the preconceptions of their culture. People who expose themselves to the widest range of influences, who learn new views and new languages — verbal, aural, and visual.
The New TV is an almost limitless tool. It’s not always pretty, but neither is life. Like any medium, it has its strengths and its weaknesses. Its main weaknesses are its informality and its overambitiousness (it seldom has the time or money to do anything perfectly). Its main strength is that it can take the widest spectrum of material and bring it into the home. Now there’s a new TV, and a new generation of people using these tools to make their own audiovisual vocabulary. The enemy of good writing isn’t other media, it’s bad writing (resulting from sloppy thinking). Taking control of your media is a big step in thinking for yourself.
(Clark Humphrey reads plenty of books, some of which he reviews in The Times. He also edits Misc., a monthly newsletter on popular culture.)
