SOME MORE REASONS why you should oppose the big-media power grab.

WHY, AND HOW, a major publisher would try to keep its own book off the bestseller lists.

FOLLOWING UP on a prior reference, a kindly reader submitted this link to (wondrous) images of Chris Ware’s 3-D paper toys!

A FRENCH CONSPIRACY THEORIST offers up some (dubious, in my opinion) theories about what really happened at the Pentagon on Sept. 11 in the form of a photo-seek type game, “Hunt the Boeing!”

ANNOY YOUR CO-WORKERS with an array of buzzer, horn, bell, and siren noises, all downloadable and ready to be turned into your computer’s standard alert sound.

IT’S BEEN A BANNER YEAR for business blunders; one magazine has found and ranked 101 of them! (Only 15 of which directly involve Enron.)

I’M BACK at the computer room of the Stamford Marriott, a midrise tower hotel in a midrise tower district just off I-95. Stamford, or what little I’ve seen of it on the Metro-North commuter train and in the hotel’s vicinity, appears to have formerly been a real community with a real downtown, which was almost completely razed (except for a few too-ornately “restored” blocks) and replaced with the ugliest of late-modern buildings. Office parks and towers, condos and “townhome” developments, hirise apartments and a Bellevue Square-like mall (multilevel parking garages instead of an outdoor parking moat). Somewhere out among those hideous office buildings are the headquarters of General Electric, Samsung USA, the World Wrestling Federation, and other famous outfits.

Got here after an 11-hour odeal that included two flights on the airline soon to be formerly known as TWA (what Howard Hughes hath joined together, Carl Ichan tore asunder), which is still in the process of being integrated into American Airlines’ systems. At the St. Louis layover, I saw the big hangars of what had been McDonnell-Douglas, now sporting the Boeing logo. The common adage these days is that Boeing thought it was taking over McDonnell-Douglas, but was infiltrated by it instead. Certainly the move of Boeing’s HQ to Chicago clearly bears the scent of Midwesterners’ plottings. From there, ground transportation took me through rustic-earthy Queens, still-striving-against-all-odds Harlem, and the progressively tonier suburbs going further away from the city.

The Crossword Puzzle Tournament itself has eight rounds. Six were completed today. I knocked off all six puzzles with time to spare, but was nowhere near the fastest at any of them. Confabbing with fellow entrants later, I’ve learned I’ve made at least two mistakes today. On Saturday, puzzle 7 will be issued, followed by the championship round 8 for the finalists in five skill levels. (As a first-timer, I’m in category C.)

Everyone sits at tables in the big hotel meeting room. Volunteers pass out photocopies of each puzzle, one puzzle at a time. Everyone works on each puzzle at the same time. Each has a predetermined time limit, from 15 to 40 minutes. Solvers’ filled-in grids are scored on accuracy and speed. I think I’ve done fairly well, but won’t know until tomorrow just how well comparitively.

There are about 400 entrants, almost all Caucasian. Eighty percent are from the Northeast corridor, with most from the NYC metro area. I’m one of only two Washingtonians here.

Will offer up more details later.

Tablet ran a story (not yet on the paper’s website) about a dispute between Benham Studio Gallery (one of Seattle’s top photo-art galleries) and Patricia Ridenour (one of Seattle’s top art photographers).

Ridenour made a series of 18 (fantastic) female and male nudes, in poses inspired by famous old paintings of women. About half the images include nude male figures in various states of repose. Benham displayed the pix in its front room for two weeks. But some customers of Benham’s portrait-photography service apparently expressed discomfort at the explicitness level of some of Ridenour’s works. (Hey, isn’t that what art’s for?)

One particular image, based on Manet’s painting Olympia but featuring a particularly endowed specimen of masculine desire, turned off so many portrait customers that owner Marita Holdaway felt she had to do something.

Just before the official opening of the show on Feb. 7, Holdaway moved Ridenour’s works to the gallery’s back room. Ridenour thought this was an act of censorship, publicly asked Holdaway about it at the opening reception, then personally took her pictures off the back-room walls.

The Tablet piece tried to interpret this unfortunate series of events as an example of a woman’s troubles trying to confront a male-dominated art establishment–even though both parties in the dispute are female, and Benham (which has shown many male nudes in the past, albeit mostly by gay-male photographers) is more of a feisty indie space than the center of art-world power.

Anyhow, a third woman, fashion-boutique owner Darbury Stenderu, has adopted Ridenour’s show and is displaying it at her store, 2121 1st Ave. Rather than simply denouncing ad-imagery, it posits an alternative vision, a healthier way to look at people and life. I didn’t see it as a work of confrontation but of celebration, of a woman daring to proclaim to the world that she actually likes men and men’s bodies, and wants to retroactively give them the loving display art’s historically awarded only to female figures. Female artists deserve the right to express their loves and desires and joys (toward themselves AND toward others) AS loves and desires and joys.

And you don’t have to be male to find that weird–or even disturbing to your preconceived gender-role ideas.

That’s because an artist like Ridenour faces two, equally restrictive, gender stereotypes–the older one that says women aren’t supposed to espress their sexuality, and the newer one that says women can like sex, but only in lesbian or self-directed contexts. In this restrictive worldview, anything a woman says about men is expected to be critical, even vengeful. Anything less than total negativity toward a woman’s Other was dismissed, in this ideology, as a mark of weakness, of subjugation to male dominance. (Not much different from the previous stereotype, in which a woman who “put out” was condemned as “loose.”)

The Tablet reviewer, Karla Esquivel, appears to have bought into the modern stereotype, by proclaiming Ridenour’s clear adoration of male beauty to really be a righteous attack on what ’70s critics used to call “The Male Gaze.” In the Weekly’s piece about the fiasco, Ridenour said she intended the show to confront both viewers’ body-image notions and the ever-somnombulant succession of “sexy” images in advertising. She did this by employing that one visual element (the male body, without the disarming justification of gayness) already identified as a symbol of threat by many females and some males.

I say “some males,” because millions of men under 35 have come of age with hardcore porn, and have spent some of the happiest moments of their adolescent and early-adult lives with images that included other men’s erections in full view.

And I, for one, am not afraid of the female gaze. In fact, I kind of like the idea that a non-gay male such as myself could conceivably be so pedestaled, openly craved for.

(Which leads to an even more provocative notion: What if the way men depict women in art has really, all along, represented (at least subconsciously) the way (at least some) men wished they would be seen by women?)

But going back to Ridenour’s work, it could very well have a therapeutic value. By showing explicit, photographic phallic imagery in the context of familiar PoMo deconstruction, she might help viewers (of whatever gender) overcome their fear of the phallus; helping, in a small-scale and personal way, to contribute toward a healthier sexual outlook toward themselves and others.

Failure.com is a neato online magazine covering such lovable (and otherwise) losers as the Edsel, the Hindenburg, and the ongoing mine fire in Centralia, PA. (found by Jerry Kindall.)

…intended for exotic dancers but valuable to many more of us (found by Geegaw):

“There are many excuses for not saving your money but in my experience few of them are valid. Single mother, health problems whatever- you can still afford to save.”

“Set enough aside to pay for all of your expenses–food, housing, tuition, utilities, car, whatever for 4 months. This is your emergency fund, put it in your saving account and don’t spend it. The rest you should invest.”

The best possible investment you can make is an education. With a nice big nest egg and a good degree you can do just about anything you want when you retire from dancing. Without an education or any job skills that money will eventually be gone.”

…on the intellectual property cartel and efforts to fight back against its brazen encroachments on our lives and cultural progress.

Declare it legal, then assess past-due taxes on it.

THE OSCAR NOMINATIONS came in this morning, and that literary action-adventure epic Lord of the Rings snatched the most preliminary honors. No matter what you think of the film’s achievements, it’s a semi-sad occasion because its success means more bucks go into the undeserving pockets of Saul Zaentz. The minor media mogul didn’t have a direct part in making the new Rings film but still profits from it. That’s because he owns all the film and merchandising rights to the Tolkein characters. (He got those rights when he funded Ralph Bakshi’s failed 1978 animated Rings.)

As we’ve noted here previously, Zaentz is infamous as the record label mogul who cheated Creedence Clearwater Revival bard John Fogerty out of his royalties and song rights. In a particularly sleazy misuse of the Creedence legacy, Zaentz recently leased Fogarty’s antiwar anthem “Fortunate Son” for a “patriotic” blue-jeans commercial. (The song’s re-recorded with vocals that fade out before the harsh messages start.)

AN ENVIRONMENTAL WEBSITE gives some needed skeptical glances at The Skeptical Environmentalist, a book making summarizing the conservative boasts about how we supposedly don’t have any environmental problems and should just let big business do whatever it wants.

…more institutions are succumbing to “Enronization.”

FOLLOW THE WAR-MOBILIZATION of America’s single most vital industry.

ONE MORE REASON I love the CBC: Tonight they ran a documentary about the first year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, right after a one-hour profile of Olympic women’s hockey players.

LISA SUCKDOG CARVER wrote the finest-ever ode to the faded glory that is Kmart, in her old zine Rollerderby. Here’s an excerpt:

“Kmart is great. All that stuff strewn around aisle after air-conditioned

aisle, and the easy listening makes you really feel like you’re shopping.

Don’t be daunted by the piles of voluminous clothing in ugly colors. Have

some patience and the prizes–like ban dana halter tops–will be yours…for

$1.99 each!!! The problem most people have with Kmart clothes is they’re

cheaply-made and behind-the-times. But that’s no problem for me! Some of

my best friends are cheaply-made and behind-the-times…oh, ho, ho, I crack

me up! Actually, that’s true about my friends. Anyway, what do I care if

my clothes fall apart after 20 wear ings? I don’ t want to wear the same

thing a million times anyway. And if I really love something, I’ll buy three

of it– that way I can be seen in it 60 times. And I’ve still paid only

six dollars! As for not being fashionable: I think it’s cute to be six months

to two years–or more!–behind everybody else. So some gal might look at

you in your tight K-mart jumpsuit (pink, with match ing pink bubblegum popping

in and out of your pink glossy lips) and think, “God, that outfit is

so 1982! And there’s a thread unraveling–can’t she afford anything better?!”

But that mean gal’s boyfriend is thinking, “That looks good!””

Carver’s whole Kmart essay is apparently not available online, but this similarly-flavored essay is.

On Thursday, I did my patriotic duty by helping support a valued yet endangered American institution.

Yes, I shopped at a Kmart.

Specifically, I obtained the Apex AD-3201, described by several websites as the best cheap DVD player currently available. It plays DVD movies, audio CDs, even MP3 audio files from CD/Rs. And with the right adjustments, it can even allegedly do things some much costlier players can’t.

The AD-3201 wasn’t out in the traditional back-wall TV/video display area (which had ample empty shelf slots). I had to hunt around to find a boxed unit, which I successfully did. I tried to reassure the clerk that the chain’s current crisis could indeed be nonfatal, as had the bankruptcy reorganization of the Bon Marche’s parent chain. She seemed insufficiently encouraged.

A leisurely stroll through the massive space revealed why she might have felt a bit down. About half the departments had at least some empty or near-empty shelves. Strolling customers were quite sparse (even for a recessionary January weeknight). Other display sections looked like they hadn’t been straightened up all day. Many floor tiles looked scuffy. Much of the apparel merchandise still looked thin and shoddy.

Stock clerks chatted aloud to one another, comparing the number of work hours they’d just had reduced. At the front, the head checkout clerk was dressing down her subordinates, demanding to know which one had been keeping an opened bag of potato chips at her checkstand.

The cheery signs and banners seemed an exercise in desperate, manic positivity. The whole place gave me flashbacks to the last six months of Frederick & Nelson.

Granted, the 130th & Aurora unit is one of Kmart’s oldest buildings, acquired in the early ’70s from the even cheaper old White Front chain. The other Seattle Kmart, in West Seattle’s lost valley of Delridge, is a lot nicer looking on the inside. But if the chain’s gonna mount any kind of serious comeback, it’ll have to get serious about making them inviting, fun places again.

…is now possible, thanks to eBay and its diligant participating merchants. Case in point: Get your very own Enron Retirement Planning coffee mug, only while supplies last! Slogan on the back: “Who decides where to invest your money? Only YOU!”

Also available, at least as of this writing: A copy of the company’s “Conduct of Business Affairs” book, complete with a memo by CEO Ken Lay and the following unattributed intro: “As officers and employees of Enron Corp., its subsidiaries, and its affiliated companies, we are responsible for conducting the business affairs of the companies in accordance with all applicable laws and in a moral and honest manner.”