HERE IT IS, a mere 40 days before the last Presidential election of this century (unless you’re one of those who believes decades and centuries start with the “1” year instead of the “0” year), and it’s receiving about as much public hoopla as a Behring-era Seahawks home game. This despite the novelty of a Dem actually favored to win re-election while the Repos flay around trying to prevent internal ideological spats from imploding their coalition. You can tell the Dole guys are desperate when they resort to the lowest of smears (unsupported allegations of Clinton carrying STDs) while still claiming to be the campaign of “character.”

Needless to say, my search for even unfunny Jack Kemp/Shawn Kemp puns is a washout, as Kemp’s own campaign role has been as of this writing. Kemp’s succeeded merely at “doing no harm” to the Dole ticket, making no Quayle-esque standout moves that might attract criticism. Indeed, if you got all your info about the GOP ticket from Clinton and Gore’s speeches, you might thinkGingrich was running for prez and Dole was running for veep. There will, of course, be a vice-presidential debate in the next couple of weeks, which will let Kemp shine in the spotlight for one evening trying to out-wonk Gore. (The syndicated Ike-conservative Bob Novak claims unnamed higher-ups in the Dole camp are displeased with Kemp for spending too much time talking to African-American voters about inner-city revitalization instead of luring back wayward white Reagan Democrats.)

CORREC: The revived Spud Goodman Show is actually on KCPQ at 1 a.m. Tuesday nights/Wednesday mornings. The new show, produced with spit, bailing wire, a couple of Betacams, and massive tape editing (the cast easily outnumbers the crew) actually looks more professional than Spud’s studio-based old show ever did.

WHAT’S IN STORE: The boarded-up Westlake Center storefront with the mysterious sign mentioned here a month or so ago is now open. It turned out to be Inside Out, a boutique offering interior accessories and knick-knacks of pseudo-rustic and “provincial” bents. Sort of like that Complete Gardener plant store at 2nd & Pine, but without any plants.

IN THE CHIPS: Thanks to reader Joseph K. Aikala, who found it while traveling to Colorado, I now have a giant bag of Doritos Max tortilla chips, a test-marketed Frito-Lay product with the molecularly-engineered fake fat Olestra. I’m happy to report none of the digestive problems consumer rabble-rousers have associated with the stuff. On the other hand, they’re not the tastiest snack foods I’ve ever had–there’s a peculiar brittle, unsolid feel to them, and a blandness only partly covered by the heavy dosage of Cool Ranch flavoring. For a lo-fat chip I’d still recommend the same firm’s Baked Tostitos product.

KEEPING TABS: The tabloidization of American media, viewed with alarm by media critics for over a decade, may be on the wane. Daytime sleaze-talk TV ratings peaked over a year ago; most all of last year’s new talk shows died swift, painless deaths. And now comes word that the supermarket tabloids, having finally gotten grudging respect from mainstream media as a source of stories, are on a long-term downswing. An NY Times story reports the National Enquirer, its sister rag the Star, and the rival Globe have each lost 30 percent of their average circulation since ’91, even despite OJ. What’s more, the tabs’ audience is aging, with young adults either less interested in celebrities’ private lives or finding enough of that fare elsewhere. (The article didn’t mention the self-parodicWeekly World News, the third member of the Enquirer trioka and the favorite “slumming” material for people who think they’re the only readers in on the joke.) I admit to being one of those post-Boomer readers who are indifferent to the grocery tabs’ fare. But the format itself is one of your classic literary forms, and could theoretically be revived by people who knew how to tell intriguing stories well.

(I’ve met “radical” guys who claim to hate “The State,” but love the Presidential bid of Ralph “There Oughta Be A Regulation” Nader. Why do you suppose this is? Leave your ideas at clark@speakeasy.org.)

WELCOME TO A late-summer sunspotted Misc., the pop-culture column that knows there’s gotta be some not-half-bad Jack Kemp/ Shawn Kemp jokes out there. If you know any, send them to clark@speakeasy.org.

UPDATES: Adobe Systems will indeed keep the former Aldus software operation in Seattle; it’s negotiating to build offices in the Quadrant Industrial Park next to the Fremont Bridge… Wallingford’s fabulous Food Giant, winner of this column’s no-prize last year as Seattle’s best regulation-size supermarket, won’t become an Alfalfa’s “natural” food store. It’ll become a QFC. The wonderful Food Giant sign, its nine letters blinking on and off in not-quite synchronization and with a few neon elements always out, will shine for the last time around mid-November. The store will then be redone to QFC’s standard look, floor plan, and merchandise mix. Oh well, at least Wallingford will still have the original Dick’s.

AUTO-EROTICA?: A home video called How A Car Is Made, currently plugged on TV ads, is sold in separate adult and children’s versions. Does the adult version show more explicit rivet scenes? Or maybe nice slow shots of a car’s steel frame descending into a paint bath, emerging moments later all dripping-damp and pink?

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: It took the long, slow, painful death of Reflex before this town could get the take-no-prisoners (or grants) visual-art zine it’s needed. The new bastard-son-of-Reflex bears the highly apt title Aorta. (The name was chosen long before Jason Sprinkle’s big steel heart became the most important work by a Seattle visual artist in this decade.) EditorJim Demetre seems to have the right priorities: Northwest art, he and his contributors believe, ought to be something more original than copying the latest flavor from NY/Cal, and something more personal than the upscaled decorative crafts now dominating the local gallery market. The first issue’s highlighted by a clever piece by Cydney Gillis on how local artists were persuaded to donate their time to benefit SAM’s Chinese-textiles show, while SAM still does little on its part to support non-Chihuly local art. The only problem so far: Like Reflex, Aorta will only appear every two months, so no exhibit it reviews will still be up when the review comes out. Free around town or pay-what-you-can to 105 S. Main St., #204, Seattle 98104.

SIGN-O-TIMES (on the readerboard at the Eastlake flower shop): “Pro-Environment Bumper Stickers–Joke of the Century.”

DAUGHTER OF `DESIGNER GRUNGE’: The trumped-up media outcry over the alleged Heroin Chic look has brought atention to a new outfit called Urban Decay, which has been cleaning up on helping young women look dirty. Its cosmetics, sold with slogans such as “Burn Barbie Burn,” just might be the only products sold at both Urban Outfitters and Nordstrom. Its nail polishes and lipsticks have dark un-shiny colors and come in styles named Pallor, Bruise, Frostbite, Asphyxia, and Plague. Its ads read like the work of professional ad copywriters trying to sound like slam poets (“Colors from the paint box of my life. Pallor is the sheen of my flesh.”) Founder Sandy Lerner has promoted herself everywhere from the fashion mags to the NY Times as an expert on pseudo-dirty “street” looks; even though she’s quite non-street herself (she co-founded Cisco Systems, a computer-networking giant) and her company’s based on the not-so-mean streets of Silicon Valley. But then again, fashion has always been about role-playing, and in that context “gritty reality” is just another fantasy. It might be more expedient, marketing-wise, for Lerner and company to be closer to the mall kids who wish they were on the Lower East Side than to actually be anywhere near the Lower East Side.

LET US MAKE a pledge to meet in September, and until then ponder these Ways to Praise Your Child, from a refrigerator magnet available from KSTW: “Terrific Job. Hip Hip Hurray. A+ Job. You Tried Hard. What An Imagination. Outstanding Performance. You’re A Joy. You’re A Treasure. A Big Hug. A Big Kiss. I Love You. Give Them A Big Smile.”

MISC. HATES TO say it, but the rest of the local media were more than a bit mistaken about the hyped-up overimportance of a certain out-of-state chain restaurant opening up shop in Seattle. Now if White Castle had moved into town, that would’ve meant something.

Besides, we’ve already got a watering hole for Seattlites who love film. It’s called the Alibi Room. Instead of loudly pandering to manufactured celebrity worship (just what has B. Willis actually done to deserve this kind of Messiahdom?), this place quietly honors the art and craft of making film, with published screenplays on a shelf for browsing and many of Seattle’s growing tribe of director and cinematographer wannabes hanging out and networking. They’re even mounting a local screening series, “Films From Here.” Seldom has the divide over competing visions of America’s cultural future been more clearly shown than in the contrast between a corporately-owned shrine to prepackaged Global Entertainment and a local independent gathering place for creators.

LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE WEEK: The Vent may be the only alternative literary zine published on that rock of antisociality known as Mercer Island. The current issue’s highlighted by “Rage,” George Fredrickson’s two-paragraph micro-essay on “how crazy it is 2 live on Mercer Isl. and b black at da same time.” Free at Twice Sold Tales on Capitol Hill or pay-what-you-can from 3839 80th Ave. SE, Mercer Island 98040… July’s Earshot Jazz newsletter has an important piece by new editor Peter Monaghan about DIY indie CDs and some of the pitfalls unsuspecting musicians can face when they try to become their own record producers. (Free around town or from 3429 Fremont Pl. N., #309, Seattle 98103.)

NET-WORKING: the same week I read this month’s Wired cover story on “Kids Cyber Rights,” I also found a story from last September’s Harper’s Bazaar about “Lolitas On-Line.” In the latter article, writer David Bennahum claims there’s a trend of teen females (including “Jill, a precocious 15-year-old from Seattle”) acting out sexual fantasies in online chat rooms and newsgroups. Bennahum proposes, that online sex talk isn’t necessarily a Force of Evil but can, when used responsibly, be a tool of empowerment and self-discovery; letting users explore the confusing fascinations of sexual identity safely and pseudonymously.

In the Wired piece, Jon Katz offered some similar notions. I’m particularly fond of his assertions that children “have the right to be respected,” “should not be viewed as property or as helpless to participate in decisions affecting their lives,” and “should not be branded ignorant or inadequate because their educational, cultural, or social agenda is different from that of previous generations.”

Twenty years of punk rock should have proved kids can make their own culture and don’t like being treated as idiots. Yet the Right still shamelessly uses “The Family” (always in the collective singular, as one monolithic entity) to justify all sorts of social-control mechanisms. Near-right Democrats try to muscle in on the far right’s act, using “Our Kids’ Future” to promote gentrification schemes that make family housing less affordable, while cracking down on any signs of independent youth culture (punks, skaters, cruisers) and going along with dubious “protection” schemes like V-chips and Internet censorship. And too many of yesterday’s Today Generation (like Garry Trudeau) mercilessly sneer at anyone too young to be From The Sixties. (In ’92 a Times subsidiary hired me to write for its tabloid for teens; I was laid off when its baby-boomer bosses found, to their surprise, that actual teens could indeed compose their own sentences.)

Yes, teens and preteens face a lot of problems. They always have; they always will. But they’re far more likely to get abused by daddy than by an e-mail correspondent. They’ll hear more (and more creative) cuss words in the playground than on HBO. Let’s stop stunting kids’ growth by forcing them into subhuman roles they often can’t stand. Instead, let’s treat kids as human beings, who could use a little friendly advice now and then (as could we all) but who ultimately should, and can, take responsibility for their own lives. John Barth once wrote, “Innocence artificially preserved becomes mere crankhood.” I’d add: Innocence excessively enforced becomes fetishization.

MISC. CAN ONLY admire the Times for daring to run a front-page banner headline on 6/24 with the quotation “I’m Really Boring.”

THE GRIND: McDonald’s now offers official Babe Happy Meal toys with purchase of a hamburger, cheeseburger, or Chicken McNuggets. No, you can’t substitute a Sausage McMuffin (I tried).

CASH FROM CHAOS DEPT.: Remember when Misc. reprinted a slogan from the Usenet newsgroup alt.society.generation-x, “I Am Not A Target Market”? The June YM had that very phrase–as the tease line for a slick fold-out Nike ad section. Only Nike (and its ad agency, Weiden & Kennedy) would try so desperately to be hip as to try to co-opt youthful rebellion against co-option. Speaking of clever bizpeople…

WHAT’S ON SECOND?: Spurred by the success of Mama’s Mexican Kitchen, a bunch of other eatin’-&-drinkin’ joints wanted to make of Second Ave. in Belltown blossom with a whole string of sidewalk dining spots. It’s been slow in coming, thanks to bureaucrats in the city and at the state Liquor Board holding up the permitting process. The Lava Lounge and the Crocodile got their al fresco OKs, but Goodchow and Tula’s haven’t yet and the Speakeasy’s request was refused. Maybe somebody’s worried about hoped-for hordes of volunteers not being able to navigate narrowed sidewalks to get to the Norm Rice for Governor campaign office, also on Second.

MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING DEPT.: The Nation had a comparatively flimsy essay a couple months back bashing “profits from poverty”: companies discovering new opportunities from the downsizing of America (dollar stores, check-cashing stands, gambling, “secured” credit cards, telephone-reconnect services, etc.). The article claimed something was wrong in this. I say it’s not something companies persue out of spite, exploitation, or evil thoughts. It’s value-neutral, like most of capitalism. If you wanna argue that value-neutrality is exactly what’s wrong with capitalism, I’m willing to listen. Besides, what’s capitalism good for if it can’t properly service its own victims? Speaking of outfits servicing diverse clienteles (or are supposed to)…

DOWN THE PIKE: The heavy hand of demographic cleansing continues on assorted fronts around Seattle. Seems like just yesterday (really a couple years back) the Pike Place Market fended off a hostile-takeover bid from NYC investors who wanted to turn it into a prettified, market-research-driven mall-oid exclusively for yups and tourists. Now, market activists (including theInternational Examiner newspaper and sometimes-heretic market council member Michael Yeager) charge market management with attempting this process on its own. Their claimed evidence: (1) six recent evictions or lease non-renewals of Asian-American shopkeepers who’d sold non-yup wares; and (2) a statement to the press by market executive director Shelly Yapp, in which she envisioned the market as a place primarily for upscale shoppers in competition with Larry’s Markets and Westlake Center. Twenty-five years ago this summer, the Pike Place Preservation and Development Authority (the city agency employing Yapp) was chartered to preserve the market as a real place for real people, including low-income, elderly, and non-whitebread people. If Yapp and her staff really are ignoring or abrogating this aspect of the market’s mission, then it’s time for a few changes. Pike Place, like the city as a whole, should be for everybody, not just the upscale elite already served by retail institutions that don’t get taxpayer support.

SIGN OF THE WEEK: The following message, each line in descending type size a la an eye chart, is the only thing visible at a boarded-up storefront in Westlake Center: “We waited a long time to get this location and we wanted to keep it a secret and build suspense but the manager of Westlake Center said that according to the lease we were obligated to put something up in the window to let everybody know something exciting is happening in the mall which really surprises us but they probably buried important information like that in the fine print just like we’re doing. Announcing the grand opening of our new store. (Coming soon!)” In the short time it took me to copy the sign’s words into a notebook, three shoppers asked if I knew what the store would be. (I don’t.)

HANK-ERING: Misc. received an anonymous letter from somebody complaining about a recent ish of No Depression, the “alternative country” zine co-run by Rocket vet Peter Blackstock. The letter-writer felt outraged at the cover image of the late Hank Williams Sr. posing alongside two white Negro-dialect impersonators. I highly doubt Blackstock intended to endorse the show’s crude ethnic humor. Rather, I’m sure he intended to explore Williams’ work and its historical context–like the Robt. Christgau Village Voice piece last month claiming Williams took his vocal shtick from NY performer Emmett Miller, who sang in blackface from the ’20s thru the ’40s.

CLUB IMPLOSION, CONT’D.: The Weathered Wall, for four years Seattle’s poshest (in a friendly way) live-and-recorded-music club (and the only local club to use a blown-up photocopy of an old Misc. column as a wall poster), shut its doors in mid-June. It’s been used since then as a location for a made-for-TV movie. Various interests are looking into getting it sold and/ or re-opened, but there’s nothing to announce now. Meanwhile, the Pioneer Square Theater has hosted its last all-ages gig. Promoters tried to raise prices after fire marshals halved the building’s legal capacity; but that put the concerts out of range of much of the underage crowd. Reportedly the marshals offered a list of improvements that had to be made before full capacity could be re-granted; but the space’s landlord balked at the expense. (If I were a conspiracy theorist, which I’m not, I’d wonder why the marshals didn’t go after the building back when it housed non-punk music and plays.)

And the Lake Union Pub, home to some of Seattle’s punkiest shows (and to some of the Liquor Board’s heaviest enforcement details), just had another 10-day closure, amid rumors the joint would be sold and turned into a sports bar. If it happens, the closure would mean three of the four alt-music clubs on the Commons Committee’s ’94 map of blocks it wanted to condo-ize would be dead (leaving only Re-bar). On the upside, the Pub’s quasi-neighbor, the Store Room Tavern, has been booking bands again; while the Seattle Parks Department (!) has co-promoted Wednesday night touring-punk bands at the Miller Community Center on east Capitol Hill.

THE BIG TURN-OFF: The Sonics’ recent successes reminded me how one of the joys of televised sports has always been the excuse to loiter among a department store’s TV displays, sharing the moments of triumph/ despair with instant friends without having to buy (or drink) anything. But that’s another of those disappearing urban pleasures. The Bon Marche’s new management, having disposed of the Budget Floor, the Cascade Room restaurant, and the downtown pharmacy, is now closing the electronics departments. Besides leaving Radio Shack (and pawn shops) as the only source for home electronics in the central downtown, the loss (effective August) leaves but a few public TV walls in the greater urban core (Sears, Fred Meyer, Video Only). At least we might see no more dorky Bon cell-phone ads (we love ya Keister, but keep your night job).

The changes show how the Bon, once powerful enough to rise above retail’s sea changes (documented in an ’80s P-I headline, “Bon Marches to Different Drum”), now bumps along in the tides like the rest of the industry. Further proof: the parent company’s apparent threat (still officially denied) to consolidate the chain with another of its holdings, Macy’s California, and planned cuts in commission pay which might lead to a clerks’ strike this month. Still, for now, the Bon remains the store “Where All Seattle Shops,” from dowagers hanging out in the women’s rooms to brides seeking just the right bread machine. It’s also the city’s crossroads point, having struck a deal in the ’20s to make its 3rd Ave. side one of the town’s biggest bus stops. While the downtown store’s merchandise mix is now based on strategies devised for mall branches, it’s still the first place to go for lots of stuff, sold in a respectful, relatively unpretentious manner. Would hate to see it deteriorate into just another store.

AS YOU OUGHTA know, Misc. adores the raucous lasseiz-faire glory that is Aurora Avenue. From the Twin Tee-Pees restaurant to the Big Star Grocery convenience store (no relation to the same-named Memphis store or the band named after that store), Aurora’s the kind of rugged experience I figured could withstand any attack. I was wrong. PCC just turned the late, great Shop n’ Save supermarket into an aggressively earth-toned monument to upscale soullessness. What’s worse, it’s got only minimal signage facing the avenue. Its main orientation is toward side streets, as if to shun Aurora’s plebian proles and instead identify with the yups who drive to Green Lake, jog, and drive back. Elsewhere on Aurora…

EVERY DAY CAN BE A BAD HAIR DAY: The “G Word” may be considered horribly passé here in town, but it apparently still holds appeal in the ‘burbs. BodyFX, a line of teen-oriented hair products sold at Kmart, stocks “Grunge Gunk” (an “alternative hair styling mud”). You can tell it’s not a leftover item from ’93, ’cause every tube proudly advertises the corporate website, <www.bodyfx.com>. There you can learn all about Grunge Gunk and other “Alternative Attitudes for Your Hair”–Dread Head temporary dreadlocks, Speeder Beeder beading kits, Rags removable hair tape, and Brain Stain hair colors (available in Obviously Orange, Ballistic Blue, Righteous Red, and Global Green).

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Pasty is the “Poetry-Free Since 1994” personal zine of one Sarah-Katherine, who works as a retail condom seller and maintains a taste for the humorously distasteful. Issue #5 features her personal account of participating in a UW social-drinking lab study, a friend’s bathroom-humor tale, and a list of ways to “Make Yourself Loathed at a Condom Store.” That’s followed with a few ways to “avoid being despised” but most of those are “don’t” items, keeping with the negative theme (“Do Not–EVER!–tell us to have nice days”). ($2 plus postage from 6201 15th Ave. NW, #P-549, Seattle 98107.)

NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS: Less than a month after Seattleites rejected the demographic-cleansing plan known as the Commons, the forces of Mandatory Mellowness struck again. This time, they silenced the city’s only broadcast outlet for unfiltered progressive news and information. The threatened cancellation of the KCMU News Hour and dismissal of the newscast’s volunteer staff, announced

June 3, may not have been intended as an act of censorship, but it’s still an act of contempt by station management toward its audience. Four years after the World Cafe fiasco, in which KCMU management (under direction from KUOW management down the hall) tried to “mainstream” the station’s music programming, they’ve made another bonehead move officially intended to attract listeners (by offering uninterrupted evening tuneage) but will only end up alienating the station’s remaining loyalists.

Once again, the KUOW-KCMU bigwigs haven’t learned that the established rules of pseudo-“public” radio (crafting safe, mild fare for upscale-boomer audiences and the corporate underwriters who love them) don’t work at something like KCMU, where the most listener donations don’t come from passive, pacified yuppies but from intense fans who crave non-upscale, non-sanitized entertainment and information. Instead of continuing their futile drive to mold KCMU into a normal “public” station, KUOW should butt out and leave KCMU to people who know how to run and program it. Since they won’t, KCMU volunteers and listeners should get together with the UW top brass to spin the station off into a separate nonprofit entity. That’s the only sure way to ensure a source of noncommercial music and cultural programming for non-yups and newscasts addressing non-yup concerns.

Meanwhile, the commercial side of the radio spectrum also gets less and less diverse. The Philly-based Entercom empire’s added KISW to its local holdings, which already include KNDD and KMTT. Entercom now controls every commercial non-oldies rock/ R&B outlet in town except Barry Ackerley’s KUBE. Expect the stations to maintain a market-segment differentiation, a la Buick and Pontiac or the Times and P-I, without really competing.

(I neglected to thank some who worked on the Misc. anniversary earlier this month: Bomo Cho, Kurt Geissel, Steve Loane, Kelly Murphy, Sarel Rowe, Darren Sonnenkinder, and Triangular Dichotomy Productions.)

Misc. was naturally bemused by the Newsweek hype piece about a Seattle only faintly resembling any real-world town, a town whose supposed biggest celebrity is New Republic/CNN Crossfire vet Michael Kinsley, esconced in Redmond to start Microsoft’s pay-per-read website Slate (presumably not named for Fred Flintstone’s boss). But we’re even more perplexed at what Kinsley told the Times a few weeks back, that Slate readers shouldn’t expect “a left wing magazine.” As if anyone familiar with his Reagan-Democrat views ever would.

A FASHIONABLE FORM OF CANCER: Tobacco companies are paying “hip” bars to sell their cigarettes. R.J. Reynolds paid Kid Mohair to exclusively sell Camels. Moonlight Tobacco (RJR’s “hipster” alias company) struck a deal (exact terms not publicized) to have its brands be the only cancer sticks sold at Moe, whose upstairs room has been renamed the Moonlight Lounge. (Both parties claim the room’s naming is a coincidence, not part of the deal.) At the opening party for the Moonlight Lounge, two Moonlight Tobacco PR drones walked around giving out long cigarette holders, wearing military-style jackets with the name patch NICK (as in -otine). Since nightclubs can be perennially on the edge of solvency, even a modest “promotional allowance” plus free ash trays is too good for many owners to resist. Speaking of club ups n’ downs…

OFF RAMP UPDATE: Here’s what we know about the glorious Eastlake dive where so much local music history was made and so much cheap Oregon gin was swilled. The old owners ran out of cash and agreed to turn the place over to new owners. But there was a snag in the liquor-license transfer process, so the place shut down at the end of April. The wannabe new management’s still trying to execute the financing and paperwork to reopen the home of “Gnosh Before the Mosh” soon.

But a revived Off Ramp will face the same problems other clubs now face. The explosion in touring indie bands these past two years has drawn audiences away from regularly-gigging local acts, whose once-steady appeal had brought a small degree of stability to the club circuit. Clubs have added an array of DJ nights, geared to draw specific sets of regular patrons, but that market’s spread increasingly thin by competition. We’re also coming on five years since the Seattle music eruption hit big; the original Mudhoney and Fallouts audiences are aging beyond the prime club-hopping years. Maybe a new Off Ramp management can figure a new recipe for sucess, one that can help the scene as a whole. Speaking of the “maturation” of indie-rock…

STOCK IT TO ME: Stock-music production companies are now coming out with “alternative rock” production music for use in commercials, TV shows, low-budget films, industrial films, video games, porn, etc. The Minnesota-based HyperClips company offers “Alterna,” a package of 40 “alternative rock and dance tracks. Give your project an edge with these grungy and atmospheric pieces. With all the moodiness and aggression that the Alternative styles have to offer, with everything from mellow acoustic grooves to hardcore distorted jams.” The Fresh Music Library, meanwhile, claims its “Alternative Rock” CD features “production values heard on today’s college and alternative rock radio stations… These themes evoke U2, Nirvana, R.E.M., the Smithereens and others. Exactly the disc for youthful energy.” Speaking of commercialism…

AD VERBS: You may have seen the cutesy ad for Seattle’s Westin Hotels, with a jealous-sounding female narrator accompanying butt shots of a stud: “Broke his neck to get the job, then broke the corporate sales record. Even broke the corporate no-jeans rule. Who’s he sleeping with?” The closing: “Choose your travel partner wisely.” Never before (to my knowledge) has a major hostelry chain so brazenly teased at the aura of naughtiness that’s always surrounded the industry.

(You’ve four days to rearrange your schedule, obtain the swankiest outfit, and leave room in your diet for the splendiforous Misc.Tenth Anniversary Party, 7 pm-whenever Sunday, June 2 at the Metropolis Gallery, downtown on University St. between 1st and 2nd. Odd video, fine food and beverage, games, entertainment, and fine memories will be had by all. More on the Misc. World HQ site, <http://www.miscmedia.com>. Be there. Aloha.)

Belltown’s Plastic Palace Closing After Three Years:

The End of the World (Pizza)

Article for The Stranger, 5/24/96

“We’ve seen a lot of changes in this neighborhood,” Aaron Cone says while sipping a Coke outside the pizza stand he runs with his brother Adam. “It’s a different town than it was three years ago. We’ve seen a lot of friends move away, out of town or to other parts of town. Places like the Dog House and the old Last Exit are gone, places where we held some of the early meetings to plan this place.”

Adam Cone nods in agreement from a ’50s molded fiberglass chair on the sidewalk. “In a place like ours you really get to see the characters that make a neighborhood. A lot of them are gone. A lot are going. It’s strange to feel antiquated in your own back yard.”

After three years and untold thousands of slices, World Pizza departs Belltown on Friday, April 26. The closure leads directly from long-standing disputes with the Cone brothers’ landlord, the Bethel Temple evangelical church across the street. But it can also be seen as a sign of changes in the neighborhood, as condo developers eye nearly every lo-rise building in sight for elimination. “When we asked about the chance of moving into another building nearby, (the property manager) said he didn’t expect anything on that block to remain standing in a few years.”

That kind of mega-capitalism is a long way from the DIY entrepreneur spirit of the Cones, two would-be artists who’d gotten into food-service work to pay the bills but hated working for other people. Deciding to strike out on their own, they each took two jobs (including a stint making collector prints for Dale Chihuly), saving up a total of $6,000 to use in starting their own place.

In late 1992, Adam (then 23) and Aaron (then 20) found a former accountant’s office in a side-street storefront on Lenora. The rent was reasonable, and it was within a late-night stroll’s distance from the Crocodile, the Vogue, the Weathered Wall, and the future Sit & Spin.

Over the winter, the Cones slept in their pizza-stand-to-be, behind papered-over windows. By day, they built it into a mini-palace of plastic furnishings while learning from experience about the inticracies of restaurant construction and health permits. Finally, in May 1993, World Pizza premiered with the first of its five semiannual private parties. The party, and the place, were instant hits. Diana Ross and ABBA blared from a boom box. Slices were inhaled seconds after arriving from the oven. Good Italian red wine was emptied by the case. Overheated Belltowners quickly expanded the party from the cramped space into the sidewalk, drawing police complaints that eventually got back to the church landlords. Despite their spoken reservations and occasional eviction threats, the church people continued to rent the space to World Pizza on a month-to-month basis.

While the parties earned no income, they instantly established World Pizza as a “scene” place, a friendly place with what Adam Cone calls “a real atmosphere.” For the first year or so, it stayed open weekends until 3 a.m. to cpature the after-the-bars business. The Cones worked seven days a week, adding hired help as they could afford to; eventually building up to a staff of nine. They even offered delivery in the neighborhood for a brief while, until Adam took an order to a Moore Hotel guest who greeted him in the nude, apparently hoping Adam was the female clerk who’d taken the phone order.

The menu was kept simple, to ensure efficient service from the compact kitchen. A meat pizza, a veggie pizza, and the house specialty, potato pizza. Whole pies made to special order. Standard soft drinks and drip coffee. Home-baked sugar cookies. Lemonheads and Red Hots candies.

Adam describes the scene at World Pizza, on a good night, as “an energy, a nervous energy.” A lot of young lovers, punkers, Vogue fetish-night patrons. A few fights. More than a few late-night patrons who’d nod off halfway through their slices. Young brides on girls’-night-out wearing penis necklaces. A few old and neo hippies who’d come in, confused by the name and perplexed when it turned out not to be a whole-earth kind of joint. A lot of what Aaron describes as “people who weren’t quite all the way there.” An old man who, informed one night the place had no anchovy pizzas, would march past it night after night screaming, “No anchovies, no pizza!” A homeless guy who always wanted half a pepperoni slice and half a lemon. A guy who’d try to sell ball-point pens or women’s coats to the customers.

When the Nu-Born Tribe clothing store vacated its Second Avenue storefront in the same building in early 1995, World Pizza finally had an opportunity to add an auxiliary dining room, to relieve the standiing-room-only conditions at peak evening hours. The Cones tore down a small section of back wall to join the two rooms. The new room became a more spacious version of the old, with room for more ’50s-style seating and fun posters. On Sundays, the windows were covered up and the room was rented out for life drawing classes.

The new room opened with the biggest World Pizza party of them all. Thirty cases of wine were consumed that night, at a rate of a bottle a minute. The church people forbade any further such parties on the premises. Worse, the extra dining space didn’t lead to enough increased business to pay for its rent. The Cones reluctantly retreated to their original room. Bethel Temple now plans to use the Second Avenue storefront for a temporary thrift store and food bank.

In retrospect, World Pizza was a basic recipe of a few well-chosen ingredients. It all added up to a place that, while never holding a live music event and never giving a damn about the Seattle media stereotypes old or new, became a perfect encapsulation of the real “Seattle scene” spirit. Lively yet steadfastly unpretentious, knowing but never smugly “ironic,” it took honest admiration in both a perfect pepperoni slice and a candy-colored plastic water fountain. It was a refuge for people who enjoyed good food and a good time at a good price.

But it was also a child of a specific place and time; a time that ended when the church decided to clear out the building, while preparing to receive offers for the underlying real estate. When the Cones return this fall from a long-delayed European summer, they say they’ll look into re-entering the restaurant biz. They own all the restaurant’s equipment and fixtures, and will keep them in storage while they evaluate their futures. But their next venture might not be in Belltown, might not be a short-order drop-in joint, and probably won’t revive the World Pizza name.

Still, as Adam Cone puts it, “it’s more of a beginning than anything else.”

“We made very close friends,” Adam adds. “I’m still going with a girl I met here in the first few weeks we were open… It seems more like a time period than a restaurant. It’s taken on more of a personal level. I had things confirmed; what’s really important, like friendship, a sense of place, having an idea and finishing it.

“And we learned how to make pizza.”

MISC. SAYS GOODBYE this week to one of its favorite conglomerates, American Home Products, maybe the biggest company you never heard of. It’s being broken up, with divisions sold off, so management can focus on its drug operations (Anacin, Advil, Dristan, and many lucrative prescription patents). Unlike the late Beatrice, AHP kept its corporate profile low while promoting its brands (Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, Pam, Brach’s candy, Ecko kitchenware, Easy-Off, Aerowax, Black Flag) with near-monomaniacal aggression. It was be said if you didn’t have a headache before an Anacin ad, you had one after. When Procter & Gamble’s ’50s soap operas offered up Presbyterian homilies of hope and family alongside the tears and turmoil, AHP’s soaps (Love of Life, The Secret Storm) relished unabashed melodrama, the harsher the better. While AHP was never a household name, its contributions won’t be forgotten by anyone who ever dined on Beefaroni while listening to a Black Flag LP.

BLOCK THAT METAPHOR! (NY Times blurb, 5/6): “If television is the Elvis of communications media and the Internet is Nirvana, radio is Bach.”

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: From our pals in the Seattle Displacement Coalition comes Seattle’s Urban Counter-Point, a four-page tabloid chastising the city’s inaction against homelessness and its action against homeless people. It does a better job than anybody at explaining how and why Seattle’s political machine, giving lip service to “progressive” homilies while actually serving at the beck and call of big money, is “a system of establishment control that is more subtle and in many ways more effective than outright graft.” Issue #1 doesn’t propose many solutions to homelessness, but does get in some well-placed digs at public officials’ war against the poor, and promotes a public forum where more proactive policies will be debated (Mon. June 10, 6 p.m., downtown library). The paper’s free (donations accepted) from the Church Council of Greater Seattle, 4759 15th Ave. NE, Seattle 98105.

FOAMING: KIRO-TV’s feature series earlier this month about the “fake microbrew” phenomenon successfully revealed the philosophy that sets real “craft” brewers apart from not only mainstream beer, but from mainstream business in general. “Contract brewing” is the product of a notion, increasingly popular in American business, that all that matters is a product’s concept and its marketing; actually making the stuff is a technicality to be dealt with as expediently as possible. That philosophy is why ad agency Weiden & Kennedy and its stable of spookejocks earn more money from Nike than all the Third World sweatshoppers who actually make the shoes. Craft brewers, on the other hand, put great pride and/or elaborate PR into the brewing process, into being able to control and refine every step.

This lesson hasn’t been lost on Minott Wessinger, the Henry Weinhard heir who sold that company, got into the malt-liquor trade, then tried to re-enter mainstream beer in ’93 with Weiden & Kennedy’s Black Star ad campaign. Wessinger’s about to re-launch the Black Star brand, without W&K and with a new corporate identity. He’s now doing business as the Great Northern Brewing Co., and proudly advertising every aspect of his new brewhouse in Whitefish, Mont. Black Star will now be promoted as something as carefully produced as microbrews, but with a more mainstream taste.

THE SKINS GAME: Another International No-Diet Days has come and gone. This year, the week of body-acceptance forums and events followed a curious NY Times piece on high schoolers across America these days (girls and boys) refusing to undress in the shower. Apparently, if you believe the article, kids everywhere are hung up on not looking like supermodels and/or superjocks. (It doesn’t seem to get any better in the gay world–papers like the Village Voice are now full of ads with bare male chests, all completely pumped and completely hairless.) As one who is neither jock nor model, I say there’s billions of great body types out there. Standards of perfection are for machine tools, not people.

(Party games, entertainment, performance art, memories–the giant Misc. 10th Anniversary Party’s got ’em all. Sunday, June 2, 6 pm-whenever, at the Metropolis Gallery, University St. between 1st and 2nd downtown. Be there. Details at the Misc. World HQwebsite, <http://www.miscmedia.com>.)

The Info Age, Our Way:

The Road Ahead Less Traveled

Eessay for The Stranger, 5/1/96

You’ve heard lots of hype about the Information Superhighway, the Infobahn, a bright promising tomorrow coming your way out of a little wire running into your home.You may think the hype sucks.

You’re right to be skeptical. The digital utopia promised more or less in unison by the phone companies, the cable TV companies, the online services, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Alvin Toffler, George Gilder, Wired magazine, and Bill Gates (all of whom get their ideas from the same handful of pro-business think tanks) is a future not appreciably better than our present, and potentially a lot costlier. While claiming to promote “empowerment,” it would merely move us from a society run by a financial elite to one run by a technological elite.

But theirs is not the only possible scenario. The Digital Age can be better, if we can wrest control of it away from the people doing the promising.

THEIR FUTURE

As late as 1994-95, the corporate techno-futurists were boasting of a future in which everyone (or at least everyone who mattered) would live through computer/video screens connected by fiber-optic lines to proprietary online networks. The owners of these online services would become America’s most powerful institutions, controlling everything from entertainment to banking and even politics.

In this future, you could look forward to choosing your morning news packaged in assorted combinations of verbal and visual output, filtered to emphasize your favorite subject areas. You could even choose your news interpreted from a variety of ideological perspectives, all the way from the far right to the near right.

Then, after you’ve downloaded Rush Limbaugh’s or Pat Robertson’s latest commentary, you could instantly contact your elected representatives to demand their support of the Limbaugh/Robertson agenda.

From there, you could log onto a commercial online services to see the latest Treasury Bill yields or a video by your favorite major-label singer. You could enter a virtual-reality chat room, where you’d control a 3-D cartoon character exchanging pleasantries with other characters (all supervised by service employees, ensuring nobody says anything they oughtn’t).

But eventually you’d have to get to work. In this future, all the important work will be done by an upscale Knowledge Class, who will all live in big isolated houses in the country or outer suburbs (since the techno-futurists believe nobody, given the choice, would ever want to live in a city). Most of the Knowledge Class would operate from home workstations, in contact with the boss via video teleconferencing. The other 80 to 90 percent of the population would be freed from the daily grind thanks to corporate downsizing; they’d get to go into business for themselves, selling products or services to the upscale class, at wages competitive with Third World labor.

Come the evening, you wouldn’t need to leave home to be entertained. Just order the latest hit violence movie on Pay Per View, available whenever you are. Hungry? E-mail for grocery delivery from the digital mall; while you’re “there,” get that blouse for tomorrow’s video-conference meeting. The kids, meanwhile, are entertaining themselves with their masturbation robot dolls or vicariously exploding other kids in virtual-reality games.

This nonexistent world already looks incredibly passé. Initial market tests show little interest in high-price, low-selection pay-per-view systems. Meanwhile, the Internet’s near-instant popularity has throttled all but the biggest online services, and those such services that remain are rapidly trying to reposition themselves as Internet gateways.

So instead we’re getting the revised pipe dream of a corporate Internet, in which the wide-open online frontier would be tamed. Data transmission might be based on a decentralized Internet protocol or something like it, but a few dozen companies would still control most of the content and most of the transactions.

ANOTHER FUTURE, AND ITS PAST

But there’s another potential future. It’s a future without major record labels, big Hollywood studios, or broadcast networks; or at least one where they’d have less power. Instead of 50 or even 500 TV channels, Internet server computers would offer tens of thousands of text, video, and audio programs–some free, some pay-per, some by subscription. Virtually anyone with something to say or show could send it to virtually anyone else.

Thousands of subcultures would thrive, none interested in lowest common denominators. Uncensored chat, bulletin boards and e-mail could spark a revolution in active, highly personal, discourse.

This re-personalization of everyday life could lead to a whole re-scaling of American society: co-operatives, barter associations, community schooling, a Babel of new political movements, religious cults, sub-genres of art and literature, cuisines and craft movements, ethnic pride groups (and, yes, a few ethnic hate groups).

These creative, energized people would tire of staying home on the keyboard. They’d find ways and reasons to gather in the flesh: cafés, theaters, musical societies, youth soccer leagues, reading clubs, performance-art troupes, sewing circles. Many would eschew the sterility of the subdivision, the isolation of the exurb, in favor of real communities.

Work and commerce would be increasingly conducted on a person-to-person level, instead of being molded to fit the long-term strategies of giant organizations. Corporations would devolve into small, focused operations doing a few things well, joining forces by short-term contracts to complete individual projects.

The Internet’s most enthusiastic followers are the inspirational descendents of a subculture where “computer hacker” meant a highly individualistic programming ace, not a crook. They’re the people who started using university e-mail in the late ’70s, PC-based bulletin board systems in the early ’80s, the Internet in the late ’80s, and the World Wide Web in the early ’90s. As this group grew, it developed a communications aesthetic now known as “Netiquette,” an aesthetic favoring unfettered, ungated info-culture (expressed in Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand’s 1986 adage that “information wants to be free”).

Corporate futurists patronize these people as “early adopters of technology” whose wishes must now be abandoned so the Net can be “mainstreamed.” But the Internet doesn’t want to be “mainstreamed,” and neither do many of its users. They don’t want to be constrained by top-down ad agency, studio and network thinking–the cornerstone of American mass culture since the 1920s. They also want to talk to one another. Even on the commercial online services, whose only unique selling point is professionally-created “content,” e-mail and discussion-group messages between users account for an estimated two-thirds of time spent online.

MY LIFE AS AN EARLY ADOPTER

I’ve had the privilege to see this culture develop. I was on local bulletin board systems as early as 1983, and was co-sysop of a board from 1984-88. I wrote a hypertext novel in 1988. I watched as university e-mail systems evolved and merged with a military research network to become the Internet. I saw bulletin board systems like Robert Dinse’s Eskimo North develop the threaded message-topic systems later adapted into Internet newsgroups. Eskimo North went on to add Internet e-mail, then add Internet newsgroups with once-a-day feeds of new material, then become a professional Internet service provider with a full-time Net connection. Some BBSs fell by the wayside as their operators moved to other pursuits; others started up to take their place. New companies started up as Internet service providers; it proved not to be a simple “turnkey” moneymaking operation, and many providers died off if they charged too much and/or couldn’t keep up with user demands for faster connections and fewer busy signals.

I’ve seen online services like Prodigy and CompuServe grow from novelties to semi-major powers, then saw them shrink in relative importance as the World Wide Web became the flavor of the year.

MORE BACKTRACKING

The Web is hard to describe tersely, and most mainstream journalists don’t try too hard. Basically, it’s an Internet-based system for transmitting documents of text, graphics, and/or other media formats, with clickable links within and between documents.

It was developed over the winter of 1989-90 at a Swiss particle-physics lab by programmer Tim Berners-Lee. He wanted a simple, unified system for accessing and cross-referencing research data, one that would work on all the lab’s computers. He used the concept of clickable hypertext links (conceived of by computer visionary Ted Nelson and implemented in the mid-’80s in programs like HyperCard and SuperCard) to interconnect texts, graphics, and other document types. Berners-Lee wrote a simple hypertext programming language, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), that allowed some limited text formatting.

Berners-Lee expressly wanted to move the premises of communication from one-to-many to many-to-many. In his initial proposal to CERN management Berners-Lee wrote, “Everything we have seen so far (in the telecommunications field) is information distributed by server managers to clients everywhere. A next step is the move to universal authorship, in which everyone involved in an area can contribute to the electronic representation of the group knowledge.”

The web initially spread to other research institutions, including the UW. In early 1993 Marc Andressen, a $6.75-an-hour student programmer at a U. of Illinois computer center, devised a program called Mosaic as a “graphical front end” to the Web on Unix terminals. That fall, Mosaic came out for Mac and Windows. The following spring, after Wired and others started to hype the web, Andressen got California venture capital to start Netscape Communications, releasing its first Web browsers in October 1994.

Faster than you could download an audio clip, the culture of telecommunications changed. The corporations didn’t notice at first, or didn’t admit it. They continued to talk about the umpteen channels of HBO action hits they’d love to sell us if we’d only give them unregulated-monopoly powers and wait 5-10 years for them to figure out which kind of new wiring systems to install.

The buzzword in places like Wired last year was how the spoils in the New Media race would go to the best-marketed (not necessarily the best) infotainment “brands.” This is the thinking that got us big media mergers and the so-called Telecommunications Reform Act.

But the Web’s astounding growth shows a different paradigm. People are hungry for unfiltered artistic work, for honest discourse and forthright opinions. The web provides a glimpse of such a culture, and it leaves people hungry for more.

THE ROAD TO BANDWIDTH

The content of a post-mass-media culture is here already, or will readily get here. The means to distribute quality audio, video, graphics, and formatted text on the Internet, one- and two-way, exist. But existing modems take forever to receive them. Right now, conventional phone-line modems (which translate data into analog audio signals and back) run no faster than 28.8 kilobits per second. Experts used to claim higher bandwidth would require all-new wiring to every home and business; and that phone and/or cable companies needed an “incentive” to lay this wiring by getting to monopolize the content sent thru it. That was the original justification for the pre-World Wide Web vision of an Information Superhighway of hit movies and home shopping. But the Net community hasn’t been clamoring for a hundred channels of Van Damme movies, but for high-speed transmission from anywhere to anywhere.

The only way now to get anything faster to your home is to plead with US West to sell you an ISDN line. ISDN is technologically and bureaucratically cumbersome, and costly–US West charges $60 a month for a basic package; it’s applied to the state to triple that rate. For that you get up to 128 kilobits per second, a rate barely fast enough to get tiny, lo-res video at Max Headroom frame speeds.

One potential ISDN rival is TCI’s scheme for cable modems. Most neighborhoods are already wired for cable TV, and those cable lines can potentially send digital data much faster than analog phone lines can. TCI said it would start testing its system in California by now, but has pushed that back to later this year. If it works out as currently planned, your cable system would also become your Internet provider (eliminating all the independent phone-based providers) and a subscription-based content provider too.

Meanwhile, Lucent Paradyne (one of the companies being spun off from AT&T) is pushing a scheme called ADSL to fit ultrafast data through regular phone lines refitted with new all-digital modems at each end, as long as you’re within 2-3 miles from your phone exchange office (good news for us in-towners, tuff luck to the exurbanites). It’s potentially cheaper than ISDN and offers far greater speeds (as much as 6,000 kilobits per second). US West and GTE are just starting ADSL test installations, both in other states. US West tentatively plans to eventually offer ADSL as part of its “Interprise” service package, also supplanting the role now provided by indie Internet providers.

There’s another drawback: Like the Hotel California, ADSL and cable modems are programmed to receive. ADSL only lets you transmit at the speed as ISDN; cable modem users might have to use a regular phone modem to send data out. At worst, this will mean a continued role for independent Internet service providers, as operators of high-speed uplink lines connected to hard drives where “publishers” of music, movies and digi-zines would make their works available.

A third scheme for cheap broadband could eliminate even that obstacle. Apple Computer’s asked the FCC to allocate a chunk of the airwaves for two-way wireless data. Potential uses for these frequencies include two-way digital radio units sending and getting data at up to 24,000 kilobits a second.

OTHER OBSTACLES

If bandwidth were the only obstacle toward my ideal networked nation, I’d have little to worry about. But there are other obstacles. One is the corporate-culture status quo. It’s invested a lot toward its vision of a global business cadre dictating the world’s entertainment, cuisine, behavior, politics, and even religion. It’ll maneuver and hustle to preserve the one-to-many communication model into the digital age. (Note TCI’s logo, depicting a satellite beaming its one-way wares to all the Earth.)

Another obstacle is the Net-censorship movement in this and other countries. The futility and unconstitutionality of Net censorship won’t stop politicians from trying to impose it. If we’re lucky, the battle over censorship could lead to a breakdown of relations between the religious right and the political right (the latter opposing it on the principle of unfettered trade). In time, I believe many people who care about religious beliefs will find their causes better served by the Internet’s wide-open exchange of ideas than by cowtowing to politicians who exploit religion to buy votes and promote authority.

CONCLUSIONS AND POTENTIALS

I suspect so many people wanted to own Netscape stock not because of expected profits (they’re not likely to have any for some time) but because they wanted to own a piece of the Web, in a sense of being connected with that amorphous non-thing that’s starting to change the world and could mean the end of media as we know them.

There’ll still be daily papers and broadcast TV, just as there’s still radio. But the change that’s coming will be more profound than the change TV brought to radio. We’re talking information and art, not marketing and entertainment. We’re talking about what the DIY punk rockers were talking about: Cultural expressions people actively relate to, not just time-wasters.

It won’t be a utopia. Some censorship advocates have sincere reasons for fearing a wide-open Net. It now provides voices for unpopular ideas and unpopular sexualities. It’ll eventually provide voices for every conceivable point of view, including perhaps a million Limbaughs and Robertsons as well as a few thousand Jesse Jacksons. Without mass news media to impose a semi-official version of “the truth,” what’s real and what’s important could depend on who you choose to believe.

On a less political level, an open Net will lead to a lot of bad art and media (you think you’re tired of rave graphics and sword-and-sorcery imagery now?). It could collapse the economies of scale that make major motion pictures possible (look what happened to porn movies when shot-on-video took over).

And it could increase the factionalization of America, as the artifice of “mainstream society” withers to leave thousands of warring subcultures. As we’ve seen in Africa and the Balkans, there’s a side to “tribal consciousness” you don’t hear about in New Age fantasies. And what will “alternative” folks do when there’s no more mainstream to rebel against?

Yet it can also become Patti Smith’s “age when everybody creates.” Imagine the potentials. Then go fulfill some of them.

(The Seattle Community Network, a bulletin board and web site operated by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, has started a “Market Place” group to bring independent Internet service providers together and to “protect the grass roots nature of the Internet.” To get involved contact Doug Tooley, P.O. Box 85084 Seattle, WA 98145, or e-mail dltooley@scn.org.)

SIDEBAR: FOR WHOM THE CHIMES TOLL

As I’ve said before, I’m no conspiracy theorist. But if I were, I’d ponder the following:

1) Microsoft enters into “strategic alliances” with NBC (a couple of high-profile Bill Gates-Tom Brokaw interviews, Leno plugging Windows 95, and a planned jointly-owned online news service to be called MSNBC). Brokaw even became the UW’s first out-of-town commencement speaker in years–not because the UW was the alma mater of Brokaw’s late predecessor Chet Huntley but because Gates reportedly asked him to come.

2) The Internet has gotten in the way of both companies’ plans. MS doesn’t own the Net or the software that runs it. Companies like Sun Microsystems claim with the right Net connection, many users could do all their computing on a $500 terminal device instead of a full PC, a setup that could render MS software obsolete.

3) NBC, meanwhile, sees TV viewership on a long-term decline, and (here’s where the theory starts) perceives a threat not just from online usage but from the Internet aesthetic, encouraging many-to-many communication and close community/ subculture ties instead of submission to Big Media.

4) MS first tried to extend its rule of software into the online biz with the Microsoft Network. But paid-access services like MSN are getting swamped as more and more users prefer the Internet, where no head office decides what you’ll get to see. The surviving online services are trying to reposition themselves as Internet access points. But the MSNBC service is planned to reinforce MSN’s position as a provider of exclusive “professional” content.

5) The biggest threat to the Internet as a free, uncentralized medium is the “Communications Decency Act,” championed by retiring Sen. James Exon. Passed as an amendment to a bill to let broadcasters and phone companies consolidate ever-larger empires, the act (if upheld in court) would stick it hard to any Internet server, service provider or content producer who uploads anything a Utah prosecutor might declare “indecent.” It thus threatens everything online except the precensored content of online services. Exon’s original inspiration? An exaggerated, sensationalized “cyberporn” segment on (yep!) Dateline NBC.

The theory breaks down after this point. Gates has issued statements opposing Net censorship; MS and MSN are among the plaintiffs in the court case trying to overturn the Communications Decency Act. And NBC, particularly the Brokaw show, has lately gone out of its way to praise Web-based enterprises including Netscape.

UPDATE: Some months back I named the Wallingford Food Giant Seattle’s best full-size supermarket. Since then, the north end’s been abuzz w/rumors that the place was being sold to Alfalfa’s, the out-of-state yuppie health-food chain. Not so, insists FG management.

THE MAILBAG: I can say the most outrageous things and get no response (perhaps because, as I’ve learned, some folks just assume I’m kidding); while the slightest throwaway gag can cause the most irate responses. Like my little joke about Vancouver’s new Ford Theatre. I’ll readily accept the letter writers’ assertions that Canadians probably know more about American history than Americans know about Canadian history–or than Americans know about American history. I know enough about Canada to endorse DOA singer Joey Shithead’s campaign for the BC legislature (can’t ya see it, “The Honourable M.L.A. Shithead”?). On a related note…

CANADIAN CATHODE CORNER: Canada, especially Vancouver, is gaining awareness as the prime filming site for exploitation TV dramas. I wouldn’t be surprised if next fall Fox aired more Canadian-made prime-time hours than Canadian network CTV. I also wouldn’t be surprised if sci-fi conventions started circulating “fan fiction” stories in which the universes of all the Vancouver-filmed shows (X-Files, Strange Luck, Sliders, Profit, et al.) collided at a dimensional gateway somewhere near the Cambie St. Bridge.

REFLEX, RIP: The regional visual-art tabloid was great while it lasted, and (particularly under first editor Randy Gragg) provided frequent glimpses into the peculiar jargon of art-crit (‘tho sometimes I wished they’d run a glossary of terms). It illuminated issues surrounding the corporate/ institutional art world and the role of creative individuals therein. And it gave many artists precious review clippings. But it was never all it could be, or all its community needed. Its bimonthly schedule meant it could never recommend a show while it was still up. Its nonprofit-bureaucratic structure meant it was eternally begging for gifts from the same funding sources as the artists the paper advocated.

AD VERBS: Still recovering from its old pretentious “Lack of Pretense” ads, Subaru is turning toward marketing at specific market segments. As part of this, it’ll soon run specially-designed ads in lesbian magazines, touting its autos as the perfect acoutrement to a practical, sensible Womanlove lifestyle. Meanwhile, Elvira (aka Cassandra Peterson) has quit as a Coors spokeswitch–not due to Coors’ support of right-wing causes but ’cause indie brewery Beverage International offered to market her own line of Elvira Brews. Look for the first bottles in test markets by July.

LET ‘EM GO: EastsideWeek’s new “Independent Republic of the Eastside” promotion sounds a bit like certain secessionist movements in Montana and Idaho, or at least like these pro-sprawl “new county” movements across the Cascade foothills. On the good side, the promotion (devised largely by editor Skip Berger) calls into question the “community spirit” of folks who’ve moved to the burbs precisely to avoid civic commitment, to drive from office park to mall to cul-de-sac without feeling any expressed need for “public space.” And it gives Berger a chance to question some assumptions about suburban growth by offering alternatives: “Will we become Paris, Rome, Venice, or Orange County?” (Place your own joke answer here.)

DOME SWEET DOME: What to do with the Kingdome, with no baseball in three years and possibly no football? (The NFL’s hinted at demanding a new arena in return for keeping or replacing the Seahawks.) The obvious is to keep it for auto shows and tractor pulls, and as an exhibit annex for the Convention Center. The county’s been planning this anyway.

I say, let’s go build two new stadia, with as much private money as possible. Make the football field convertible for NHL hockey; make both convertible for trade shows.

Then take the existing Kingdome, gut its current interior, and rebuild it into the living and recreation space of the future. A World’s Fair domed-city fantasy made real, or a pansexual “intentional community” utopia. Level upon level of PoMo condos around the concourses, looking onto an indoor plaza and celebration zone. The mind reels with the possibilities! (Got any fantasy Dome uses of your own? Send ’em here.)

IT’S TYPOGRAPHICAL MAKEOVER WEEK here at Misc., the pop-cult column that’s ever-so-slightly confused by Tropicana orange juice’s big promotion for Apollo 13 videos. Shouldn’t the Tang people be doing this instead?

SORRY, ALL YOU CLEVER MUSIC PEOPLE: Hate to tell ya, but there’s already a band named Mad Cow Disease. It’s an indie-label industrial combo (latest import CD: Tantric Sex Disco) formed in 1990 in a mostly-rural part of England where herds were already suffering from the deadly epidemic, years before authorities discovered it could spread to humans.

AIR CHECK: Two more attempts at pirate radio operations are now underway, joining the existing FUCC collective in the few open slots on the FM band. “KXTC” (info: 587-9487) hopes to be on the air next Monday night at 89.9, for once-a-week broadcasts of dance and house music. And “Seattle Liberation Radio” (PO Box 85541, Seattle 98145), a group of some 12 local political and cultural advocates, wants to start a full-time unlicensed station to primarily transmit alternative news and talk programming under the slogan, “End Corporate Hegemony of Media.”

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: I’ve previously mentioned Dan Halligan’s approximately-quarterly punkzine 10 Things Jesus Wants You to Know. But the new issue #13 particularly stands out, due to Katrina Hellbusch’s essay “A Friend No Longer.” In explicit, downbeat, name-naming detail, Hellbusch (a member of the local punk band Outcast) writes about passing out drunk at a party, awakening to find herself being raped by a close friend (a member of another local punk band). Never straining for exploitation or self-pity, Hellbusch vividly images a crime in which the assailant degraded himself to a subhuman state and tried to shove his victim there with him. She also begs (but doesn’t specifically ask) what this means about the punk scene–whether it’s an excuse for self-styled Bad Boys to be rowdy without rules, or whether it is (or oughta be) a closer-knit community of people who cooperate with and protect one another. Free at Fallout and Cellophane Square, among other dropoff sites, or $2 from 1407 NE 45th St., #17, Seattle 98105.

ONE, ETC., FOR THE ROAD: Recently, at two different occasions among two different sets of people, the topic arose about whether one could bar-hop in Seattle hitting only places with numbers in their names, in numerical order. I think I’ve figured how. Some of these places are far apart so you’ll need wheels (as always, be sure to have a designated driver and always drink responsibly):

* Van’s 105 Tavern (602 N 105th St.)

* Either the Two Bells (2313 4th Ave.), 2 Dagos From Texas (2601 1st Ave.), or the 211 Club (2304 2nd Ave.)

* Either the 318 Tavern (318 W Nickerson), or one of the two unrelated Triangle Taverns (1st Ave. S. or 3507 Fremont Pl. N.)

* Either the Four Mile Tavern (15215 Aurora Ave. N.), the Four B’s (4300 Leary Way NW), the Four Seas Restaurant (714 S. King St.), or the lounge at the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel (1300 4th Ave.).

* Either the 5 Spot (1502 Queen Anne Ave. N.), the 5 Point (415 Cedar St.), Zak’s 5th Ave. Saloon (206 5th Ave. N.), or the Old 5th Ave. Tavern (8507 5th Ave. NE).

* Either the Six Arms (600 E. Pine St.), the Six Eleven (611 2nd Ave.), or the 6th Ave. Bar & Grill (2000 6th Ave.).

* Either Cafe Septiéme (214 Broadway E.), or the 7th Ave. Tavern (705 NW 70th St.).

* The Speakeasy Cafe (2306 2nd Ave.), home of the Internet site for Dom Cappello’s Cafe 8Ball comic.

* Either the Gay 90s (700 Pike), or the bar formerly known as The Nine (now the Family Affair, 234 Fairview Ave. N.).

That’s about it sequentially. With the end of Rosellini’s Four-10 and Six-10, the closest thing to a “10” joint is the Tenya Japanese Restaurant (936 3rd Ave.). Then you’d have to skip a couple to get to the 13 Coins.

‘TIL NEXT TIME, try the Hershey’s Cookies and Creme bar (yum-my!), giggle at the new Mercedes 4 x 4 (ugg-ly!), and ponder these inscrutable words credited to Winston Churchhill: “We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm.”

MISC. DOESN’T BELIEVE everything’s cyclical, but still finds it cute when something that goes around comes around again. F’rinstance, local mainstream retailers seem again interested in exploiting the popularity of the local music scene. Why just last week, the E. Madison Shop-Rite had its neon sign altered, either deliberately or by accident, to read 1ST HILL FOO CENTER.

INDECISION ’96: Drat. Now I won’t get to recycle old druggie jokes about “a really bad Gramm.”

LEGISLATURE WANTS TO BAN STRIP CLUBS: When lap dancing is outlawed, only outlaws will wear buttfloss. But seriously, our elected guardians of hypocrisy are out to kill, via punitive over-regulation, one of the state’s growth industries, employing as many as 500 performing artists in King County alone, many of whom support other artistic endeavors with their earnings. (Old joke once told to me: “What does a stripper do with her asshole before she goes to work? Drops him off at band practice.”)

Yes, these can be sleazy joints, drawing big bucks by preying on human loneliness. Yes, in a more perfect world these clubs’ workforce would have more fulfilling employment and their clientele would have more fulfilling sex lives instead of costly fantasies. Yes, no organized political faction is willing to defend them (‘cept maybe some sanctity-of-the-entrepreneur Liberterians). But if we let the state’s sultans of sanctimony outlaw something just ’cause they think it’s icky, there’s a lot of gay, lesbian, S/M and other stuff they’d love to ban next.

REELING: You’ve heard about the Oscar nominations representing a surprising triumph for “independent” cinema. I’m not so sure. Just as the global entertainment giants have created and/ or bought pseudo-indie record labels, so have they taken charge of “independent” cinema. The Independents magazine given out at 7 Gables theaters lists the following participating sponsor/ distributors: Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight Films, Fine Line Features (owned by Turner Broadcasting, along with New Line and Castle Rock; all soon to be folded into Time Warner), Miramax (Disney), and Gramercy (PolyGram).

Seven Gables’ parent firm, the Samuel Goldwyn Co., just became a sister company to Orion, which at its peak was considered a “mini-major” but is indie enough for my purposes here. And there are a few other real indies still out there, including Jodie Foster’s Egg Films. But between buying up the domestic little guys and crowding out foreign producers, the Hollywood majors (half now non-US owned) are on their way to monopolizing everything on big screens everywhere in the world. Speaking of silenced voices…

THE OTHER SIDE: This paper’s reported how ethnic-rights and environmental activists in Nigeria have faced arrest, torture, and execution. The Nigerian govt. defended itself in a slick eight-page ad supplement running only in African-American papers (includingThe Skanner here). In the same quaintly stilted 3rd World PR prose style seen in the USA Today ad section Our World, the supplement extols the west African nation as a land of “Investment Opportunities” and “Investment Incentives,” whose rulers are “Truly Peace Makers and Peace Keepers.” The center spread insists the country’s military junta’s still on “The Road to Democracy” (“Only those detractors who deliberately persist in a negative view of Nigerians and their efforts fail to take account of all that Nigerians have achieved in a short time”).

The junta’s execution of opposition leader Ken Saro-Wiwa is discussed on the back page, in a “Letter to the Editor” by Af-Am conservative Rev. Maurice Dawkins: “The Nigerians are learning the hard way that the majority media and the international liberal left network is a dangerous foe.” Dawkins denounces Saro-Wiwa as “a terrorist determined to overthrow the government” and his anti-junta movement as “a group of bandits;” justifies the crackdown against his movement under “the right of a soverign nation to conduct business and maintain law and order within its borders,” and accuses the junta’s western critics of holding “a racist double standard, depicted by misinformation and disinformation.” In short, the persecutors are re-imaged as the persecuted–a classic Limbaughan doublespeak technique.

PASSAGE (British-Israeli-American social critic Eli Khamarov in Surviving on Planet Reebok): ” People are inherently good. Bad people are created by other bad people; their survival is guaranteed because of their safety in numbers.”

CATHODE CORNER: After a little under two months on the air, the NorthWest Cable News channel can politely be termed on a “shakedown cruise”. What oughta be a brisk, informative roundup of regional happennings is instead a clumsy repackaging of footage from the four King Broadcasting stations. The same stories are rerun hour after hour, often with only the weather updated. I won’t talk about the evening sports guy, a comedian-wannabe who spends more time on unfunny gags than on the games. Still, it’s intriguing to hear about economic conditions in Spokane (lousy) and last month’s Oregon Senate race (wacky). I remember the semipro beginnings of CNN and ESPN, so I’ll let NWCN grow into its role. Others, like TCI customers who lost CBC for NWCN, might not be as charitable. I do sorta like how they insist on spelling “NorthWest” with software-marketing style “intercaps;” it’s a way of proclaiming your media market as a virtual nation, like when the Chicago Tribune coined the term “Chicagoland.” Speaking of media institutions…

FALLLING FLAT: The most inadvertantly fascinating part of last month’s PBS Fight Over Citizen Kane documentary was Wm. Randolph Hearst’s creaky newsreel sermon against FDR’s increases to upper-bracket income taxes. It reminded me a lot of Steve Forbes’s flat tax nonsense. Both publishers’ tactics use populist rhetoric to promote the self-interests of the wealthy, particularly those with significant inherited wealth such as themselves. The comparisons go beyond there. Forbes and Hearst are/ were party-lovin’ men-about-town known to hobnob with movie stars. Hearst’s papers provided a self-contained information system, in which no voice too far from his own worldview got heard or respected. Forbes’s magazines haven’t gone that far, but the right-media universe of talk radio, televangelists and opinion magazines (whose support the GOP candidates are courting) fulfill Hearst’s formula better than the old man could have imagined.

(If anyone saved a copy of Forbes’s short-lived entertainment-fashion mag Egg, I’d love to borrow it. It could potentially be a hoot.)

THE MATS: Once the media consolidation bill (the one Net censorship was tacked onto) was signed, the Disney/ ABC and Time Warner/ Turner Broadcasting merger plans went “on” again. The latter deal was protested in an NY Times ad: “Attention TBS Stockholders: Does Ted Turner have a personal vendetta against the World Wrestling Federation? Time Warner Beware!” Turner’s properties happen to include a rival faux-sport circuit, World Championship Wrestling. WCW scored a coup a couple years back when it signed Hulk Hogan, formerly WWF’s #1 star. I’m foggy on the details, but I believe there was tangled legal wrangling before Hogan was freed to use his stage name (which WWF had trademarked) on WCW shows. Methinks the WWF guys take their stage bombast too seriously.

ROOM AT THE TOP?: The gentrification of upper Queen Anne has gone into overdrive. On one block alone a hobby shop, a café, a bakery, a state liquor store, and a pharmacy have perished to make room for as many as seven espresso emporia and two bagel stands. And you know a neighborhood’s gone out of our hands when San Franciscans open ridiculously sublime restaurant/ nightclubs there (Paragon). Queen Anne News writer Robin Hamilton’s taking it in stride. Writing about a co-marketing arrangement between Starbucks and its new QA neighbor Noah’s Bagels, Hamilton shows her knowledge of Jewish lore in explaining how “Noah’s will play Ruth to Starbucks’ Naomi.”

PLAYING MONOPOLY: A fight for the hearts and minds of America’s youth ended with Mattel withdrawing its $5.2 billion hostile-takeover bid for Hasbro (which went on its own acquisition spree a few years back and owns Playskool, Romper Room, Selchow & Righter, and Milton Bradley). Re-create the excitement at home with your handy Barbie vs. GI Joe land war playset… Meanwhile, Hasbro’s lawyers keep upping demands for reparations against a Seattle-based adult website for using the name “candyland.com,” claiming it could be confused with the Candy Land game. If I wanted a porno-pun on a board game, it wouldn’t be that. Maybe Chutes & Ladders, or Go to the Head of the Class…

THE MAILBAG: Jerry Everard at Moe clarifies that, despite rumors circulating last December, he and not any ex-MS exec makes all the club’s decisions. Everard and Scott Blum, who runs Moe’s Internet broadcasts, insist the Xing software they use is the best for the job. I’m willing to reconsider my judgment about it, once Xing makes a version that runs on my computer without pausing for four seconds between every second of sound. The real problem isn’t the software but the primitive science of netcasting itself; fewer people may get to hear a concert via the Net than in person. This isn’t a condemnation; experiments must be allowed to fail to be learned from. Speaking of not-quite-ready media…

JUNIOR’S MINT: So we’ll keep Ken Griffey Jr. after all, for only the highest salary in baseball history. Sure, we all have to pay a piece of it thanks to the complexities of the Ms/ Kingdome lease. But for that, we get a genuine star athlete, a living mascot for the new stadium deal (a role he can keep playing even if he gets another half-year injury), and an affable spokesperson for Nintendo and whoever else can pay him.

I wasn’t the only one to think “superficial contract-stalling ploy” when Griffey said he thought of leaving Seattle because of “all the rain and snow.” Ballplayers spend only about 13 weeks a year in their home team’s area (the rest is spent on the road, at spring training, and wherever they make their “real” home). Advocates of a no-roof stadium note that during baseball season we get less rain than any baseball towns outside California.

Griffey also said he wanted to be on a team that doesn’t sell off some of its best players, like the Ms keep doing so they can afford to keep him. The Ms’ problems as a “small market franchise,” trying to keep one megastar plus an adequate team behind him, are well known. What isn’t known is how to keep big players in small cities in an age of luxury boxes, owner-city blackmail, and splintering TV audiences.

Baseball was historically a hierarchical business. Minor leagues fed players to the majors, which had an established pecking order with the Yankees and old NY Giants always around the top, the Washington Senators and St. Louis Browns around the bottom. Lesser teams sold any promising players to the Yankees just to pay their hotel bills. (Remember the early years of Thunderbirds hockey, when they traded a player for a team bus?) In today’s baseball, under the right circumstances, a Cleveland or maybe even a Seattle can win a pennant. Is this situation a trend or just an anomaly? Wait ’til this year. Meanwhile…

THE BIG INTERCEPTION: Didn’t it seem this past season like the Seahawks were already gone? They had only one home sellout. Fan and media interest waned, especially in the early fall in the wake of Mariner-mania. But that doesn’t mean everyone stopped caring. The day rumors the team’s move to L.A. started flying, sports-talk radio was abuzz with the usual debates and rants. Callers generally followed a line about how team owners, especially Hawks owner Ken Behring, were Scroogeoid robber barons out to shaft the communities they purported to represent. Some callers suggested that team owners were just the most visible example of corporate welfare, that people and communities oughta get together to stop this nonsense in sports and other industries. Maybe this shows sports fans aren’t all the politically-reactionary boors us “alternative” folks love to stereotype them as.

GAS ATTACKS: You may have seen the newspaper ads and billboards in Seattle for the Shell Visa card, offering modest gasoline rebates. The catch is that in Seattle, Shell’s first U.S. market, the venerable Dutch/British company now only has stations at 175th & Aurora and down on E. Marginal Way S. It also means if you want to boycott Shell over its support of the murderous Nigerian junta, you’ll have a hard time finding a station to not get gas at.

WORD-O-WEEK (citizen-activist Makoto Sataka at a meeting about Japan’s bank-loan crisis, as quoted on CNN): “Trying to find morals in politicians and bankers is like trying to find morals in cockroaches.”