WHEN mix CDs are outlawed, only outlaws will thump 160 bpm.

Turns out local police have, for some years now, had a word for car dealers who force buyers into usurious loan terms after the sale: “bushing!”

…feel a lot as if I was a townsperson in It’s A Good Life, the Jerome Bixby story made famous in a Twilight Zone episode starring future comic-book writer and Barnes & Barnes novelty singer Bill Mumy.

Our whole society (local, national, global) is being ruined by the collective equivalent to that story’s boy villain–a pre-adolescent mindset of greed and vengeance. Not only must we obey fully, we must obey cheerfully. We must always think good thoughts, even as everything we love is torn asunder. In “lifestyle” journalism, that means the writer must, MUST, MUST absolutely, gushingly adore whatever the upscale demographic target market’s expected to like. Huge ugly vehicles? Snooty restaurants? Fantastic! Development schemes devised to give the waterfront to Paul Allen? Gotta love ’em! Gutting health-care and education funding to support subsidies to Boeing and Amgen? It was good that the politicians did that!

…and mom-n’-pop operators take over, they’re “Not Fooling Anybody.”

BRITAIN’S BOOK PUBLISHERS are reportedly slashing the number of new books they’ll put out, so they can concentrate on (1) established bestseller names and (2) “‘good-looking’ first-time novelists who are more marketable.”

I’m immediately reminded of the bleak Brit movie Morvern Callar. Its heroine, a sexy young party babe stuck in a small town, wakes up to find her struggling-author boyfriend has deliberately OD’d. She sells his novel manuscript, under her byline, for big bucks. The movie never directly says, but clearly implies, the boyfriend’s book would never have sold if publishers didn’t get the chance to stick Ms. Morvern’s cute face on the back cover.

One can only wish they’d change the name to Finko’s. But then again, those corporate types never listen to me. When Phillips 66 bought Union 76, they refused my suggestion to change the name to 142.

Above and below, the former Les Piafs boutique on Second. (It moved to become the only locally-owned retailer in the city-subsidized downtown mall Pacific Place.)

Above and below, the former Land Rover showroom on Westlake. (It moved into the historic Lincoln-Mercury building up the street.)

Cardhaus, the role-playing-game parlor on Roosevelt that opened after Wizards of the Coast’s more elaborate game room closed, is just plain gone.

…Boeing (or what’s left of it) announced its passenger plane biz (or what’s left of it) will stay here after all, at least the final-assembly part.

It’s a good first step toward the agenda previously recommended in this space, of reaffirming Boeing’s heritage as a domestic manufacturing company with roots in a real place (this place); eschewing American business’s self-destructive obsessions with financial falderal and the Almighty Stock Price.

More, though, is still needed.

WE’VE NOT HERETOFORE discussed the Lord of the Rings movies, except to bemoan that their merchandising rights are controlled (and have been humongously exploited) by John Fogerty’s least-favorite record mogul Saul Zaentz. But the current New Yorker has a fond but not fawning essay comparing the films, not unfavorably, both to Tolkien’s original books and to Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle operas. Along the way, the essay gives particular praise to the one member of the films’ creative team with the closest New York connection, composer (and original Saturday Night Live bandleader) Howard Shore.

“Trag” writes:

“Hey Clark,”I agree about escort services being harmless (not sure how “essential” they are, though … :-)), but wonder how you can assume it’s conservatives and ‘right-wingers’ out to shut them down? My experience as a reporter and editor convinces me that it’s the most uptight folks who are most likely to be using these services! They can’t get it any other way.”

The latest King County Police crackdown on escort websites.

Despite the best efforts of the police PR flacks and their media friends (particularly at KIRO-TV and the P-I) to make it sound like a noble crusade against a horrible-horrible criminal gang, even the quickest between-the-lines read shows it’s just about the most victimless “crime” you could think of. It all takes place in private quarters, far from the offendable eyes of conservative civilians. It provides a vital service, safely and discreetly. The practitioners are paid well for their work, and are well appreciated by their clientele.

The “escort review” websites, such as the one mentioned in one of the P-I stories (and which is now down, apparently because its server host didn’t want to be associated with the publicity), make the profession even more professional. Clients can be warned about ripoff providers. Providers can be warned about abusive clients. Providers tastefully advertise their specialties.

A community, a subculture, has developed around a ritual of brief encounters. What had been a shadow world, prone to threats of disease and physical assault, became (at least on this “high end” level) an honest, respectful, even loving endeavor.

Could anybody, other than prudes and right-wingers, disapprove of that?

P.S.: The cops claim they’ve got a “little black book” listing hundreds of clients of the escort agency under investigation, and claim they’re gonna make unspecified “calls” on these guys. I don’t know if any of those guys or their service providers are reading this, but if they are, remember: Innocent until proven guilty, Miranda rights, don’t let The Man scare you into submission, etc.

THIS PAST FIRST THURSDAY, the Forgotten Works space found a way to become a little less forgotten. It held a big, wide-open holiday art sale, with as many works (all limited to 8″ x 10″) as would fit on the walls.

The previous first Thursday, the Nico Gallery space (where my own City Light, City Dark premiered) held a live dance/performance/whatever event entitled Flipeography. Seven dancers, spaced around the room, held static poses until passersby touched them to cue a “flip” to a new pose.

Castle, the multi-state sex-shop operation we once described here as “buying chains from a chain store,” opened a new outlet on Broadway, in a former Wherehouse music store. (Just think: They could’ve kept the old sign and just changed the third letter.)

Most of Castle’s branches are self-contained big-box (pun unintentional) buildings with plain storefronts. Its first Seattle store, on Fairview between the Seattle Times and Hooters, is so minimally marked you essentially have to already know it’s there. But the Broadway store’s got a big open display window, inherited from its prior tenant. Everyone who passes by can see what’s in the windows (so far, fetish wear and Xmas decorations). Everyone who passes by can see when you enter and leave. (But they don’t have to know what you bought.)

Still, for intimate goods I’d still recommend a more intimate store, such as Toys in Babeland.

Meanwhile, Abercrombie & Fitch announced this week it won’t make any more of its wacky catalogs, infamous for their use of naked models to sell clothes.

Say what you will about the chain, but its catalog was the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It taught a generation of iron-jawed frat boys to think of themselves as objectified sex toys; as exemplified by the photo-op models seen here at the downtown Seattle store on the day after Thanksgiving.

ON NOV. 30, Doug Nufer emceed the final installment in the Titlewave used-book store’s monthly live reading series, after nine years. We’ll miss ’em.

It’s a couple years too late, but Boeing CEO Phil Condit has resigned.

Under Condit, the once proud commercial aircraft giant lost its global leadership role in the passenger plane biz to Airbus, and became more heavily dependent on military contracts for its survival.

Condit decided he didn’t like to use his own products, so he set himself and his executive support staff up in a new Chicago head office; a move that also gave him the chance to tell Seattle to drop dead.

Condit turned a company known for its engineering and manufacturing leadership into just another stock-market listing that happened to own some factories. He gave away Boeing’s technological crown jewel, its wing technologies, to Japan.

He turned the new 7E7 program into a job-blackmail scheme, demanding ever bigger subsidies from local governments for the opportunity to host what will be a bare bones, robot-manned assembly plant.

And finally there was this little ethics scandal, with some of Condit’s underlings caught bribing fed officals over a tanker-plane deal.

Granted, the past two and a half years have been a perfect storm for the plane biz. Any Boeing CEO would’ve found trouble. But this particular one handled almost every crisis the wrong way, and created some needless crises of his own.

Boeing’s still an industrial giant and a huge factor in the local and national economies. The next CEO can get the firm back on track.

Step one: Move back to Seattle. Be a manufacturer again.

Boeing’s steady decline as a world-class manufacturing enterprise (let alone as a Wash. state employer) continues with the announcement that the new 7E7 jet’s wing assemblies will be subcontracted to Japanese companies.

Michael Chrichton’s otherwise pathetic mid-’90s thriller novel Airframe, set at a fictionalized Lockheed, has a big subplot predicting this, and denouncing the export of the US aerospace biz’s most important proprietary technology.

I’d denounce it too, if I thought denouncing it’d accomplish anything. Today’s Boeing, though, seems to care about nothing but its own short-term stock price.

(via Anne Silberman):

“I usually agree with your take on sex and frivolity and the joys of loving our bodies and those of others.  However, I feel I must take issue with your stance on the Naked Sushi trend.  I wasn’t offended until I read the story at the Seattle Times and saw the photo.Perhaps it was because the model’s face wasn’t included in the shot but I couldn’t help but see the dehumanizing quality of using a living, breathing female as a serving platter!  I was horribly offended and even more so when I read that this is a trend that started in Japan and has moved to the US, first in Los Angeles and now in Seattle!  Where will it stop?  This is not celebratory of life at all.  It is exploitative. Perhaps if others find it offensive, the sushi bar will lose customers and the practice will stop. In a paternalistic, capitalistic society, that is the best we can hope for.

Otherwise, still love Miscmedia.

Anne”