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As of this writing, Misc. can’t see what the big deal is about a president who’s (allegedly) continued to behave like good-ole-boy politicians from all regions have been known to behave. At least, even if the worst current allegations hold up, it only means he’s conducted his affairs more discreetly than Wilbur Mills, more consensually than Bob Packwood, and with less potential damage to the republic than JFK (who, it’s largely acknowledged, carried on a long-term fling with a Mafiosa). Of course, JFK and even FDR didn’t have to deal with an out-for-blood industry of talk-radio goons, “Christian” TV demagogues, and rabid GOP hypocrites out to personally smash anyone who, like Clinton, even vaguely threatens their drive for unquestioned total domination. Hard to believe there was once a time when bigtime politicians were largely criticized over policy and job performance.
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: If you’ve always wondered where the term “having Moxie” originated, or remember the word popping up in old MAD magazines, it happens to be the oldest brand name in the soft-drink biz. It started as a patent medicine, or “nerve food,” in Massachusetts back in 1884. When the 1907 Pure Food and Drug Act restricted the beverage maker’s claims that it could cure almost any ill (including loss of manhood, “paralysis, and softening of the brain”), Moxie was reformulated as a carbonated recreational drink. It continued to be advertised with images of vigorous health, leading the name to be associated with spunk and audaciousness. It was sold nationally, and at one point was bigger than Coke. But by the 1960s it had retreated back into a minor New England regional brand.
Now, the Redmond-based Orca Beverage Co. is locally distributing drinks under the Moxie name. There’s a cherry cola and a creme soda now, with an orange-creme flavor soon to follow. They’re tasty drinks, with strong flavors and light carbonation–but none of these is the original Moxie flavor, a root-beer-like concoction described (by some ex-Bostonians I’ve met) as an acquired taste. That one’s not being brought out west, at least not now.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The slick Oly-based rockzine Axis just keeps getting better. The January issue includes brisk reports about Mudhoney, Nomeansno, Engine 54, Sky Cries Mary, an alternative-scene barter system, a recent Oly spoken-word fest starring Lydia Lunch, the Swiss suicide cult Solar Temple, and the cannibal-movie classic Motel Hell; plus kissable b/w photos and a raunchy-yet-innocent comic by Tatiana Gill. (Free at the usual dropoff spots, or $2 from 120 State Ave. NE #181, Olympia 98501.)
VISIONS: Another Super Sunday’s come and gone. While watching the game in a friendly neighborhood bar, I started wishing for more public video-viewing opportunities. Almost all bars and restaurants with TVs will only let you watch sports on them, with only the scattered X-Files or Melrose Place viewing parties for exceptions. I’d like to see a room with a satellite dish and different monitors in different corners, showing all kinds of fare in a convivial party atmosphere. People could join in to hiss at soap villains, cringe at awful music videos, see who can get the most obscure Simpsons gags, take umbrage at Sam Donaldson, and view shows unavailable in parts of town (Comedy Central’s South Park, the International Channel’s foreign music shows) or on any local cable (the Game Show Channel’s Gong Show reruns). The only fare you couldn’t legally show in such a place would be movies from home videocassettes, most of which aren’t licensed for public screening.
IN A STEW: Seattle magazine’s looking for “The Martha Stewart of Seattle.” The mag seeks a super-cook or super-decorator, but I think the title should go to somebody who, like Stewart, has forged a highly lucrative self-made-woman career by ironically promoting a fetishized version of old-fashioned stay-home-hausfrau values. Hmm, who do we know in this state who might qualify? Linda Smith perhaps, or maybe Ellen Craswell? If you can think of someone similar who lives a little closer to town, report it at clark@speakeasy.org.
MISC. ISN’T REALLY as ironic as some readers seem to believe. Really. That AFLAC commercial using a cover of John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” to sell life insurance, without commentary–now that’s ironic. In another current attempt at irony…
THE GENERATION-GAP GAP: KMTT’s promoting its “grownup rock n’ roll” format with billboards proclaiming a mantra to “Turn On, Tune In, Drop the Kids Off at Soccer.” The unspoken premise behind the slogan is the same premise that’s ruled darn near all local mainstream media outlets for the past 15 years–that everybody (or at least everybody who demographically matters to advertisers) is an ex-Sixties radical now domesticated with preteen kids. The problems with this particular gross oversimplification: (1) Despite the eternal hype, a lot of folks who were around back in that still-overhyped decade weren’t necessarily college radicals (in fact, more than half the people living in America in The Late Sixties weren’t even college students!); and (2) folks with preteen kids today are far more likely to have come of age in the late ’70s and ’80s. That’s why KMTT’s sister station KNDD peppers its 9-to-5 hours with old U2 and Duran Duran tracks, to attract the commercially-desirable ex-waveoids now toiling away in dreary office parks. Of course, it’d be harder to make a flashy billboard slogan for grownup synth-popper parents. At the youngest end, there are now households with kids who only know Jane Curtin from 3rd Rock and parents who previously only knew Curtin from Kate & Allie. Speaking of TV celebs…
NEWS FROM UP NORTH: David (Red Shoe Diaries) Duchovny, who plays an occasionally-dead FBI agent on The X-Files, wants Fox to move the show from Vancouver to L.A. so he can spend more time with his sitcom-star bride Tea Leoni. I say, they maybe oughta merge their respective shows into one production so they can be together all the time. They could play a couple of intrepid tabloid photographers in search of E.T.s, killer vampires, and other assorted grisly phenomena. They could call it The Naked Truth Is Out There. Elsewhere in the world of romance…
TAIL HUNTING: A recent Cal Berkeley study claims sexual activity can alter the brain. According to an LA Times story, the researchers claimed that after four weeks, a group of sexually-active male lab rats showed much smaller (and perhaps more sensitive and responsive) nerve cells than the control group of celibate rats. While it certainly brings new meaning to the phrase “fucking one’s brains out,” more intriguing is the name of the prof behind the study–Marc Breedlove.
But these findings wouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with TV’s famous cartoon lab mice, Pinky and the Brain. In two episodes, the genetically-altered, super-smart Brain (a sort of pint-sized Lawnmower Man with an Orson Welles voice) neglects his usual obsession with taking over the world. Both times, it’s the lure of a female mouse that does it. Elsewhere in the world of science…
REAL VIRTUALITY: The Seattle-made Virtual i-Glasses (goggles with tiny LCD video monitors inside) are no more, but another local company, Microvision, has announced it’s working on a “virtual retinal display” technology that would, if and when perfected for mass production, would use hi-tech glasses or goggles to scan video images (from TVs, PCs, VCRs, etc.) directly onto the viewer’s eye via a low-level, laser-like beam. According to the company’s PR, “the user believes he’s seeing a video image an arm’s length away.” My question is, what would happen if somebody used Microvision to watch a videocassette that’s been copy-protected with Macrovision?
HALLOWEEN ROUNDUP: Your Misc. party-watch team personally witnessed two Xenas, umpteen sword-‘n’-sorcery warriors, lotsa devils, at least three Pippi Longstockings, two Fred Flintstones, a Grinch (with his dog Max and Cindy Lou Who), a bloodied Princess Di (trailed by a photographer sporting a “Le Press Pass” badge), one Bill Gates, several Catwomen (one with a condom on her tail), a pregnant cheerleader, a martini olive, a pair of potted poinsettias, and a Laverne & Shirley pair (I told “Laverne” how much I loved the film Awakenings; she didn’t know what I was talking about).
WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOU’RE LAME: Here at Misc., we’re among the many sports fans who aren’t all that sad to say goodbye to Shawn Kemp. He wasn’t the first legend-in-his-own-mind to believe the world would instantly recognize and appreciate his all-around superiority if he only got outta Seattle, where grandstanding demands for idol-worship are often answered not with supplication but with dismissive pleas to get real. Most of the ambitious emigrants I’ve known, who all left town in full certainty of their imminent superstardom, got as far as becoming studio musicians on centerfold videos or bit parts on unaired TV pilots. It takes more than just a hostile attitude toward most everybody around you to make it in one’s chosen profession’s bigtime. It even takes more than the extraordinary talent Kemp’s definitely got. Despite NBA and Nike marketing themes to the contrary, basketball’s still a team game. And, as just about everybody’s middle-school P.E. teacher used to say, there’s no “I” in the word “team.” Speaking of poor sports…
THE FINAL SPORTS BLOOPER REEL: Disgraced sportscasters, like dead celebrities, appear to come in threes. First O. J. Simpson, then Frank Gifford, now Marv Albert. I’m just waiting for the inevitable Albert-meets-Tyson jokes to pop up. The whole tawdry affair almost makes those Fox Sports Northwest promo ads (the ones with images of the lovably square Dave Niehaus intercut with images of a trashed hotel room) seem nearly plausible.
THE MAILBAG: Seattle Scroll writer Jesse Walker writes in to insist he knew all along how the anti-Internet-hoax letter he ran in a recent “net hysteria” essay (reviewed in Misc. two weeks ago) was itself a hoax, and that attentive readers could’ve inferred from his piece that he knew. Unfortunately, he won’t get to clarify this in the Scroll‘s pages. The feisty year-old biweekly’s run out of money and probably won’t come out again.
DRAWING THE LINE: Recent years have seen lotsa grownup in-jokes in cartoons. One Cartoon Network promo spot’s built exclusively around material kids aren’t supposed to know about. It features the Tex Avery dog Droopy and Scooby Doo‘s Shaggy in a convertible, talking about how the Time Warner-owned cable channel’s now seen worldwide, when Shaggy asks, “Do you know what they call Pound Puppies in France?” Explaining how there’s no such thing as “pounds” in the metric system, Shaggy then asks, “What do they call Smurfs in Spain?” His answer: “Los Smurfs.” Only that’s wrong–as anyone who went to the Smurf theme park in France knows, the late Belgian cartoonist Peyo‘s critters have a different cutesy name in each major Euro language (Stroumphs, Schlumphs, et al.). In Spain, they’re “Los Pitufos.”
OFF THE LINE: Hard to believe it just a year ago when virtually every writer, photographer, cartoonist, graphic designer, and programmer in town was either being recruited for or trying to push their way into no-benefits “contract” employment as “content creators” for the Microsoft Network and/or Microsoft-owned websites. But now, the one company that could indefinitely sustain extensive, money-losing online ventures has chosen not to do so, at least not to its first extent. Many of the paid-access MSN sites (including the “alternative culture” site Mint) are being shut down; others are being scaled back. The free-access MSNBC website is also laying off almost half its “temp” workers; while the company’s Sidewalk entertainment-listing sites scattered across the country have faced greater-than-expected staff turnover (apparently several key people were hired as “creative” writers, only to find themselves stuck typing in movie-theater showtimes). While I’ll certainly look forward to seeing some of my acquaintances on this side of the pond a little more often,
ON THE LINE: After two years of development (interrupted by putting an ever-bigger paper out every week), there’s finally a Stranger website at www.thestranger.com. Each week’s current Misc. can be temporarily found on the site. The Misc. World HQ site (www.miscmedia.com) continues as a complete archive of the column and of assorted other things I’ve written over the years.
PASSAGE (from Incredibly Strange Music organist Korla Pandit): “Music may not save your soul, but it will cause your soul to be worth saving.”
UPDATE: On the day last week’s Stranger Misc. column went to the printer, with its call for the P-I to bring back Zippy the Pinhead, the paper announced it would indeed reinstate Bill Griffith’s exquisitely-drawn, smartly off-kilter comic. Nice to see the paper’s editors know what’s good for the publication as a whole, even if it’s not what scores highest in market research. Speaking of publications in tune with their readers…
I AM JOE’S LUMBAGO: The oh-so-venerable Reader’s Digest is having some financial woes. Executives are resigning, the stock price’s going down, circulation’s flat (though still 15 million, comparable to the whole population of English-speaking Canada). It’s easy to see why Wall Street doesn’t like the magazine or the company that makes it. At a time when Deadheads are joining AARP, RD‘s Lawrence Welk image isn’t what many advertisers want. More importantly, the clean-cut, hyper-respectable brand of conservatism RD‘s championed doesn’t fit with today’s go-go, business-above-all mentality.
It hadn’t always been this way, of course. In the ’20s, RD founders DeWitt and Lila Wallace forged a niche product, taking existing articles from other magazines and rewriting them for fast, easy reading by people on the move. (For decades, its only ads were endorsements for itself by corporate hotshots and movie stars). By the ’50s, the Wallaces had turned their little reprint mag into a global brand, aimed squarely (pun intended, natch) at the most straitlaced of mass audiences. By championing cultural as well as political conservatism, it built a loyal subscriber base (a handy market for RD‘s mail-order books and records). But by defining itself and its audience as off to oneside from the social zeitgeist‘s twists-‘n’-turns, it now risks being left behind. Can RD avoid offending its easily-offended reader base while reaching out beyond it? As “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power” might say, “Dubitable.” Speaking of shifting zeitgeists…
SPANKING NEW: If you think S/M fetishes around here have gotten as mainstreamed as they could get, you haven’t seen NYC’s new restaurant La Nouvelle Justine (named for the de Sade novel). An AP dispatch claims the three-month-old eatery supplmenents its French-inspired cuisine with “a birthday paddling, boot cleaning, or the chance to eat from a dog bowl at the feet of a whip-wielding mistress,” plus “Masochist” and “Necrophiliac” cocktails. Dimly-lit walls are etched with medieval fetish scenes. There’s a fake prison cell, an oversized high chair, and leather wrist cuffs. Waitresses and waiters are dressed as “dominants,” busboys as slaves. The story claims the place “draws more giggling voyeurs than hard-core afficionados of the master,” quoting one serious fetishist as saying it “could be a spot for bus tourists.” Speaking of fads gone too far…
OFF THE RACK: The Spice Girls, that singing group (Sporty Spice, Sexy Spice, Strong Spice, Scary Spice, Posh Spice) that claims in interviews to not be the shallow studio-manufactured image machine it really is, has proven so popular it’s spawned knockoff quintets throughout Britain. Here’s my idea for my own “Misc. Spice Melange”:
(Speaking of musical fads, we’ve already received plenty of entries in our search for formerly-popular music genres that haven’t been subjected to recent “hip” revival attempts. You’ve still time to send your suggestions to clark@speakeasy.org. Results here next week.)
Here at Misc., your officially not-as-funny-as-it-thinks-it-is column, we’re intrigued by the recent New York magazine headline, “Can Estrogen Make You Smarter?” You can just bet all the natural-superiority-of-women advocates are smugly gloating over their faxed third-generation photocopies of the article in college faculty lounges across North America. If the claims of the researchers quoted in the piece get confirmed, it’d sure make an easier argument for fem-dom supporters than the now-traditional rants against testosterone (since the latter hormone actually exists in humans of all genders). And I’m sure birth-control pills would mix perfectly into those rave-dance “smart cocktails.” I just hope the theory doesn’t inspire phrenologists (those folks who claim they can measure intelligence via the size and shape of someone’s skull) to start testing a little lower on the body.
UPDATE: The Newmark Cinema, which I said last month oughta be appropriated for fringe-theater use, has since been temporarily used just for that purpose. The Brown Bag Theater had to temporarily vacate its space elsewhere in the building, and so used one of the recently abandoned movie spaces for its production Wanna Come Back To My Place And Justify My Existence?
AD SLOGAN OF THE WEEK: “Redhook. It’s not just a beer, it’s a companion.” Is that meant as a reassurance or as an AA recruiter’s threat?
THE DESTRUCTION CONTINUES: Another of Seattle’s ever-dwindling supply of classic American-style eateries, the Nitelite in the Moore Hotel, just reopened with a new look (all spackled-brown in that pretentiously “unpretentious” way) and a new menu (featuring chicken scarpariello, bistecca melange, and mixed-grill kabobs). At least the Nitelite’s truly lovely bar wasn’t altered a bit. The bar, in fact, stayed open all the weeks the restaurant part was closed for remodeling; something the Liquor Board wouldn’t have allowed just a few years back.
YOU MAKE THE CALL: Paul Allen’s established a company related to the new Seahawk stadium project, named 1st & Goal Enterprises. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sets that up as an address to the new stadium, making up a Goal Street as a short access road from 1st Ave. S. I was always hoping the city would name a side street on the 4th Ave. S. side of the Kingdome “South Long Street,” so the Hawks would have the more appropriate street address of 4th & Long.
DRAWING THE LINE: Earlier this year, the P-I ran what it called a week-long test run of eight new comic strips. Those which proved most popular with readers, the paper claimed, would be added to an expanded Coffee Break section. This month, the paper added all eight newcomers. It made room by shrinking some Coffee Break features and dropping others–including Bill Griffith’s up-from-the-underground classic Zippy the Pinhead. None of the new strips so far show any wit or style or reason for being (other than demographic target-marketing) Some of the new batch are almost amazingly amateurishly drawn. (Hint to editors: Dilbert‘s popular in spite of its boxed-in look, not because of it.) The closest thing to an exception is the competent if unspectacular gagstrip Zits, by veteran stripper Jerry Scott and editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman.
Zippy, however, is a masterpiece of exquisite draftsmanship, precision dialogue, and multi-layered humor. It treats its readers not as statistics but as intelligent fun-lovers. And it loves to eat a great corn dog. Zippy is in the domain of the P-I‘s fellow Hearst subsidiary King Features Syndicate, as are four of the paper’s new comics. Back in the day, William Randolph Hearst made his papers run George Harriman’s now-acknowledged classic Krazy Kat even though it scored low in popularity polls, because Harriman’s surrealistic shenanigans added that little touch of quality Hearst’s papers sorely needed. The folks running today’s P-I (Hearst’s second-largest remaining daily paper) ought to do what the old man would’ve done and bring the Pinhead back.
Update: The day after this was posted, the P-I announced it would resume the Pinhead’s misadventures begginning on Labor Day. Yay!
WORD OF THE WEEK: “Aporia.”
(We’re still asking the question: Can you think of any formerly popular musical genre which hasn’t been the subject of an attempted “hip” revival in recent years? Make your recommendation at clark@speakeasy.org.)
KISS THE PICTURES! LICK THE PRINT! CHEW THE STAPLES!: After a seeming lull period, local zines and periodicals are again popping up. Here are a few that have slipped by lately:
*Â How to Tell If You’re Dead, by Michelle Beaudry and Lord Carrett: There are worse illustrated-joke books out there, but this at least qualifies for dishonorable mention. “You’re Dead If… Minnie Pearl’s price tag is on her toe.” ($6 from Laffbooks, 6201 15th Ave. NW, Seattle 98107.)
*Â The Movie Marquee. Somebody tries to start a self-published mainstream movie-review zine just about every year. This one’s from local freelancer Doug Thomas. It’s little better or worse than any of its ilk, desperately seeking artistic or at least financial significance the action thrillers made by the studios it wants to advertise. ($15/6 issues from 3015 NW Market St., #B115, Seattle 98107.)
*Â Replicant: A Journal of Seattle Area Industrial & Darkwave Musings. Small, personal, infrequent newsletter for Goth and industrial-dance music lovers. Recent issues have featured DJ Webb’s series “Name Calling,” offering handy intros about the confusing genres and sub-genres in recent dance music. (Pay-what-you-can from P.O. Box 48213, Seattle 98148.)
*Â ReAct: Practical Strategies for Ending Violence. Py Bateman ran the Alternatives to Fear self-defense school for umpteen years; her new monthly newsletter goes beyond the specific tactics of her classes, into larger issues of personal safety, power, and fear. In issue #3 she breaks with her profession’s traditions by including one story about a male assailee. ($25/year from P.O. Box 23316, Seattle 98102.)
* No Apologies: The Best of Real Change Poets, 1994-1996. I’ve never claimed to be a qualified judge of modern-day poetry, but this is the Real Thing with a capital RT. It’s not grad students sympathizing with (or slumming among) down-and-outers, it’s down-and-outers talking for themselves, with pride, anger, humor, wistfulness, nostalgia, and not a speck of malaise. The highlight is Dr. Wes Browning’s memoir “Art in Balance,” about (among other things) meeting Betty White at a USO show. ($6.95 from Real Change, 2129 2nd Ave., Seattle 98121.)
*Â Code: The Creative Culture Magazine. For some reason, this is the first issue I’ve seen yet it claims to be #5. It’s supposed to be the “Work Issue,” but at least half the 44 pages (on heavy-slick paper) seems to be about the personal life of the staff, particularly editor Lou Maxon. Squint past the sub-Ray Gun typography (hint: Adobe Courier is not a suitable magazine text face), and you read about how Maxon left the NYC rat race to end up working at a trauma center (presumably Harborview’s) while noblely struggling to get his friends’ names into print. You also get a lot of house ads, scattered around plugs for other people’s zines. ($3 plus postage from 2400 Westlake Ave. N., #21, Seattle 98109.)
* Steelhead: The Handbook of the Next Northwest. As ambitious as Code and more serious. Its 48 densely-packed pages are mostly devoted to cultural regionalism, to taking a hard look at the world directly around you and networking with like minds nearby; even though its second-longest piece is a semi-fiction story set entirely in California. I also don’t get the editors’ obsession with that dumb fashion mag George. Still, at least an attempt to ask some big questions about the Big-Big-Big Picture. ($3.95 from 4505 University Way NE, #420, Seattle 98105.)
*Â Slant. Issue #7 of the out-of-state zine that publishes more Seattle writers and artists than some local zines is about travel, foreign and domestic. The gargantuan newsprint rag includes words and/or pix by locals Charles Peterson (photos from Vietnam), Jan Gregor, Tom Kipp, Andy Cohen, Tim Midgett, Keith Bearden, and Leslie Talmadge Woodward, plus a visit to James Acord’s atomic art in Richland by Toronto writer Brian Freer. It’s free at Urban Outfitters (which publishes it), but if you subscribe you get a darling mailing label with the defiant slogan, “We Are Not An Alternative Publication.” ($4.50/3 issues from 1809 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19103.)
MISC. WASN’T SURPRISED by the cops’ way-over-reaction to Subculture Joe‘s big steel heart outside Westlake Center. Authorities here and elsewhere have long shown a fear of art surpassing only a fear of love.
THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA: With any luck, this will be the last Olympics to be packaged and curated for traditional network TV. The pay-per-view Triplecast in ’92 was the way it oughta be covered: Multiple channels, unedited complete live events, more field footage and less of that annoying human-interest featurizing. But they charged too much for the Triplecast, didn’t get enough buyers, and aren’t repeating it. If we’re lucky, we’ll get something like that on the Net or satellites or expanded cable (only free or at least cheaper) in time for the ’00 games.
BOTTOMS UP: First, there was that silly fad-let of snowboarding/ rave headgear resewn from boxer shorts. Now, an outfit called “Get A-Head” in Lewiston, Idaho (sister city to Clarkston, Wash.) offers Undee Shirts, women’s athletic sport tops made from men’s briefs (not pre-worn). Make your own joke here about that which you wish to hold close to your heart. I’m still pondering whether it’s another example of women appropriating masculine iconography for the sake of power (from George Eliot’s cigars to the ’80s “menswear look”). Speaking of the ol’ gender/ culture thang…
COCA LEAVES: “Seattle loves gay men but not lesbians.” That’s one of the theories given me by visual-art scenesters to explain the relative unpopularity of the Center on Contemporary Art’s first all-lesbian group exhibition, Gender, Fucked. (The opening-night party attracted “almost none of the COCA regulars,” said a COCA official.) I wouldn’t go that far, but it is true that lesbians are a minority-within-a-minority. (Just look at the proportion of lesbian to gay-male bars on Capitol Hill.) Events like the Pride Parade and all-encompassing monikers like “queer” notwithstanding, the lesbian and gay-male communities aren’t as intercommunicative as they perhaps oughta be. (Mr. Savage sez that’s a matter of men who prefer to be with men and women who prefer to be with women; I say it’s an aspect of larger forces in a society dividing into ever-smaller, more separate subcultures.)
Additionally (here’s where the scenesters’ theorizing comes in), lesbian artists have a PR problem. They’ve been stereotyped as humorless self-righteousness addicts. Gay-male art, the typing goes, are perceived to be outrageous and fantastical and fun even when it’s about the direst of topics; while lesbian art’s expected to be forever dour, judgemental and hostile to outsiders, even when it’s about desire and love. All it takes to disprove this is to look at some of the diverse works being made by lesbian artists in our own region alone, from the hypnotic choreography of Pat Graney to the wonderful cartooning of Ellen Forney to the universal rage and joy in Team Dresch’s music. These artists and others (including those at the COCA show) prove lesbians aren’t all the same, as the existence of lesbians proves women aren’t all the same.
OUT OF LINE: Politicians in Seatle and Tacoma, ever eager to find new ways to get you and me to support subsidies to business, want to impose a modem tax on all online communication. Tacoma’s scheme, which is further along than Seattle’s, would tax all data streams in, to, or from the city at 6 percent of monthly revenues plus an annual fee. The money would be taken from online providers no matter where they’re located, no matter how little of their business goes through Tacoma’s city limits. This is bad, for reasons beyond simple cyber-Libertarianism. The scheme’s logistically impossible; and taxing locally-based services simply invites ’em to move to a lower-tax city or state. Better to keep taxing online use indirectly, via the phone (and in the future, cable) lines they run on.
‘TIL NEXT TIME, enjoy the hydros (always faster, louder, and more fun than any dumb ol’ dreem-teem) and ponder the unexpected meanings of the online mission statement from arka.com: “This purpose of this server is to give free-thinking authors a place to put their web pages without fear of content.”
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.
UPDATE: The Portland paper Willamette Week sez that town’s “Church of Kurt Cobain” was just a fraudulant publicity stunt. As opposed to the real publicity stunt we thought it was.
SONICS POSTMORTEM: No matter what happens to the team in future years, we’ll always have Games Four and Five to savor. For four glorious days, the whole city (save a few droller-than-thou alternative conformists) believed. Imagine–a team of great players could beat a team of spokesmodels! Like the Seattle music scene (to which the Sonics have consistently made closer overtures than any other local sports team), the Sonic victories celebrated talent, diligence, and cooperation instead of celebrity, arrogance, and corporate hype. How appropriate that it happen two weeks before the opening of Planet Hollywood, that chain restaurant expressly devoted to corporate celebrity hype, and which staged a PR stunt with professional hypemeister Cindy Crawford telling us if we were smart we’d root against our own team. Can you say, “Not quite the way to make new friends for your business”? Speaking of athletes striving for respect…
THE DEAD POOL: At its Olympics debut in ’84, synchronized swimming was often derided as a summer-games answer to ice dancing, less a sport than an excuse to show half-dressed women. Since then, the sport’s tried to shake that image and earn respect. In the biggest effort yet, the French national team crafted a routine inspired by the Nazi Holocaust. The choreographed playlet premiered at the European Cup finals in May and was planned for the Atlanta Olympics. To Schindler’s List soundtrack music, swimmers goose-stepped into the pool, then switched identities to impersonate women victims being taken to the ovens. But in early June, the country’s sports ministry ordered the team to drop all Holocaust allusions from the routine. Time quoted a dismayed team official, “The program was created to denounce not only the Holocaust in particular, but all forms of racism and intolerance that we see rising.” I say the routine’s well within postmodern performance art, and should be allowed; especially with the ex-Olympic city of Sarajevo only starting to rebuild from a half-decade of attempted genocide. Speaking of dances with a message…
BYE BYE BRAZIL: We’ve past reported on the ever-reaching tentacles of global corporate entertainment, even while American fans increasingly search for untainted pockets of “world beat” and other ethnic arts to bring home. Now, I must sadly report Mickey Mouse’s planned debut at next February’s Rio Carnaval parade. Samba school Academicos da Rocinha will get to use giant models of the Disney characters to celebrate 25 years of the Disney World theme park–as long as the parade’s 2,000-or-so women dancers all keep their tops on. “That was my first condition and thank goodness they agreed,” a Disney marketing official told Variety. In the same article, troupe president Izamilton Goes dismissed suggestions the cover-up would detract from the spectacle: “Inside all of us there remains something of a child and we all loved Disney.”
It’s not that Carnaval would be “cheapened” by Disneyfication. It’s been kitsch for decades. But it’s been its own indigenous brand of kitsch. It incorporates sex not as seamy exploitation but as joyous celebration. The dancers are often poor women who sew their own sequined costumes and arrange their own choreography, who bare their bodies proudly to an audience of men, children, and other women. They enjoy being admired as carnal beings after a year stuck in the wife-mother-laborer roles the Disney people are more comfortable with. Anyhow, the other 18 or so samba schools aren’t bound by Disney’s dictates. And the TV network that largely subsidizes the parades wanted to ban nudity a few years ago, hoping to increase foreign TV-video sales, but the samba schools said no. Speaking of broadcast empires…
BEHIND THE SCREEN: MSNBC, the forthcoming Microsoft-NBC cable news channel we won’t get to see for some months after its July launch, is now going to build new studios in New Jersey (with state-government aid), scuttling earlier plans to share space with NBC’s existing CNBC. Darn. CNBC could use some news people in its building, or at least somebody who could tell the channel’s talk-show hosts the O.J. Simpson trial is over.
UPDATE: I recently sought your proposed new uses for the Kingdome. The best came from one J. Drinkwater: “1) Fill it with water and house the sea lions from the Ballard Locks. 2) Rename it the Seattle Commons.”
SPACES IN THE HEART: Back when Seattle bands were just starting to attract out-of-town notice, the center of the town’s live-music action was a pair of clubs near Eastlake and Howell, connected by a walkway under a freeway overpass. The Off Ramp and RKCNDY weren’t posh by any means, but their drinks were strong and their PAs were loud. Newer and fancier clubs since stole their thunder. RKCNDY is closed and for sale; financing for a planned remodel apparently fell through. The Off Ramp has struggled as well. A new owner and new booker vow to keep things going; but the liquor-license transfer apparently hit a snag, and the home of Gnosh Before the Mosh is, as of this writing, also shut. Meanwhile, the all-ages music scene continues to take it on the chin. Fire marshalls suddenly halved the Pioneer Square Theater’s legal capacity the night of a show, making future shows there fiscally iffy. The Velvet Elvis almost stopped hosting concerts after a few rowdy punkboys disrupted a show in late April. Instead, the VE will continue to let indie promoters run all-ages music in the space, but has asked them to de-emphasise hardcore-punk lineups. In a final note, Park Ave. Records, lower Queen Anne’s Taj Mahal of collector vinyl, has called it quits. Its purported replacement: a branch of the Disc-Go-Round chain.
LOVE, ITALIAN STYLE: Director Bernardo Bertolucci shot his share of requisitely-picturesque Seattle scenes for his film Little Buddah. Now he’s introducing that other popular image of Seattle into his work. In the trailer for Bertolucci’s new film Stealing Beauty(no relation to Britain’s 1988 sexy-novice-priest movie Stealing Heaven), a pastoral scene in a decaying Italian farm shed is gloriously interrupted by Liv Tyler (daughter of Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler), as a teen brought to the farm against her will by her family, loudly singing and dancing to a tape of Hole’s “Rock Star.” The scene transforms a personal jeer at one particular clique (the Oly rocker-than-thous) into a universal defiance against cliquishness in general.
THE DRAWING ROOM: The Meyerson & Nowinski art gallery has instantly become the ritzy-upscale “contemporary art” emporium for Seattle. The splashy opening show gathers drawings and prints from artists of different nations and decades, collectively referred to by the gallery as “Picasso and Friends.” (It’s really no worse than TNT sticking Tom & Jerry cartoons onto a show called Bugs Bunny and Friends.)
Many of you remember Bob Blackburn Jr. as the sometime statistician and broadcast assistant to his dad, the SuperSonics’ original radio announcer. Bob Jr. also played in assorted Seattle bands (including the Colorplates) before moving to L.A. in ’89. He now works for the Westwood One satellite-radio empire, conducting celebrity interviews and organizing promotions. Last month his job led to the fulfillment of a longtime dream, the chance to meet ’50s bondage model Betty Page. As you may know, the sweet-faced, dark-haired Page posed mostly for obscure and under-the-counter publications for about 10 years, then retired to a very private existence. Only now, long after her pictures became the icons of a new mainstream-fetish cult, has she partly resurfaced, giving a few select interviews and authorizing a biography. Blackburn chatted with her for an hour and got her to autograph a picture for his friends in the Seattle sleazepunk outfit Sick & Wrong. He says Page “still looks really good” at 73, but won’t be photographed. The audio interview was mostly done, he says, “for the record.” Westwood One has no plans to air it on any of its satellite feeds, most of which aren’t carried in Seattle anyway. I think Blackburn should invite her to come work with his ex-employers. The Sonics (especially Kemp) could use someone to teach some discipline!
(Be sure to keep Sunday, June 2 open for the magnificent, marvelous, mad mad mad Misc. Tenth Anniversary Party at the Metropolis Gallery, on University St. east of 1st Ave. Details forthcoming.)
WELCOME BACK to your Ides-O-March Misc., the pop-culture column that amusedly notes the first wedding of the age of media mergers, in which the widow of the publisher of the Spokane Spokesman-Review married the retired publisher of the NY Times. Who said you can’t get far in the journalism biz these days?
UPDATE #1: The state legislature’s regular session expired with hundreds of conservative-social-agenda bills allowed to die. Among these was the Senate bill to drive strip clubs out of business via over-regulation, discussed here two weeks back. House members apparently felt the bill wouldn’t survive club operators’ lawsuits. Also gone, for this year at least, are bills to ban gay marriages, require parental consent for high-school HIV education, etc. Most of these proposals (except the anti-stripping bill) were introduced by Religious Right-friendly House Republicans but blocked by Senate Democrats. The Repo men hope to capture both chambers this November. You oughta work to try and stop that.
UPDATE #2: I asked you a few weeks back to suggest Disneyland character mascots for what might become the Anaheim Ex-Seahawks. Choices included Scrooge McDuck (natch), Jafar, and Cruella DeVil. My favorite was from the reader who, commenting on recent Seahawk seasons, recommended Sleepy.
COINCIDENCE OR…?: The guy who played Henry Blake on the M*A*S*H TV show and the guy who played Blake in the movie died within days of one another. Talk about becoming one with your role!
AD SLOGAN OF THE WEEK (seen in the Stranger for the Backstage, 3/6): “Maria McKee: A Punk Edith Piaf.” Don’t bait me here, guys. The real Piaf was punker than you, me, or McKee will ever be. Ever heard her version of Lieber & Stoller’s “Black Leather Trousers and Motorcycle Boots”? Didn’t think so.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The P!pe is a tabloid run by ex-International Examiner staffer Soyon Im, who sez he wants “to debunk the myth that anything cool with Asian Americans is happening down in San Francisco or L.A.” It also helps debunk the squaresville reputation of King County’s large Asian American community. Issue #1 packs eight pages with stuff about Indian dance music, Japanese power pop, Korean fashions, “Pan-Asian” restaurants, Chinese-American comix, Vietnamese travelogue photos, Taiwanese interracial relationships, and old Japanese erotic art. There’s even a sex-advice column (where’d they get that concept?) by “Soybean Milkchick,” assuring readers there’s nothing deficient about Asian-American manhood. (In other words, don’t feel bad if you don’t look like the guys in that old Japanese erotic art.) At Pistil Books and elsewhere.
ONE TOO MANY?: Cocktail Nation hype has hit overdrive, less than two years after the first Combustible Edison record (albeit 15 years after Throbbing Gristle did its homage to Martin Denny). A glance at the “Cocktail Mania” display at Borders Music shows how nearly every record label with old middle-of-the-road instrumentals in its vaults is repackaging that material as something hip n’ ironic. And a local indie TV producer’s currently trying to launch a weekly entertainment-talk show called Atomic Lounge. Don’t be surprised if reproduction smoking jackets show up this fall in the Tiger Shop.
PAT-APHYSICS: Buchanan’s proving to be more than just another lifetime DC political/ media insider pretending to be an “outsider.” His (momentary?) campaign success signals the first significant crack in the GOP’s 16-year ruling coalition of fundamentalists and corporations (something I’ve been predicting or at least desiring for some time). About a quarter of the things he says (the parts about the plight of the downsized and the ripoff that is “free” trade) make more sense than what the other Republicans say. It’s just the other three quarters of the things he says are so freakish (the tirades against gays, feminists, immigrants, pro-choice advocates, and other humans guilty only of not belonging to his target demographic). If there’s hope, it’s that Buchanan’s polls rose after he started downplaying the hatefest talk and emphasizing the anti-corporate talk. Why’s the only candidate to challenge the sanctity of big money also the biggest bigot and bully? Why don’t any national-level Democrats speak against the corporate power-grab like Pat does?
HERE AT MISC., the column that hated Valentine’s Day long before it was hip, we can hardly wait for the first snack foods with Procter & Gamble’s Olestra (the the re-engineered fat molecule that slides thru the body instead of staying around). It’ll also be the first junk food line since the old saccharin scare to carry govt.-mandated warning labels that the stuff might cause “loose stools.” (No wonder P&G’s backing it! An excuse for new Tide and Pepto-Bismol promos!) Speaking of food tech and its discontents…
HORMOANING: I’m miffed Savage got to write before I could about how after two decades of certain folks blaming excess testosterone for everything wrong in the world, now a few renegade scientists (as covered in the New Yorker and Esquire) say we’re really suffering from estrogen poisoning. They claim industrial pollution and food-tech chemicals mean the world’s females are hitting puberty at earlier ages while its males are getting pudgier and less fertile. I know some who’d say a more “feminized” species is just what society needs. Others would claim lower sperm counts would be good for our overpopulated planet. Maybe there’s really a biological basis to that “threatened male” talk last election season. Speaking of last vestiges of dude-osity…
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Mansplat is a too-clever-for-its-own-good 12-page tabloid put out by local rock promoter, author, and Almost Live! “Lame List” cast member Jeff Gilbert. It’s devoted to “Bathroom Litter-Ature For Men… But Chicks Can Read It Too!”. B movies take center stage in the latest issue (dated “Sunday, 1996”), with “The Mad Max Anger Management Course” and a tribute to horror/ sci-fi nude scenes. Also, KCMU “Rap Attack” DJ Glen Boyd writes about that thing on Mars that looks like a face. Available at the Crocodile Cafe and from 2318 2nd Ave., #591, Seattle 98121. Speaking of boy-entertainments…
CEL-ING OUT: This year’s TV gluts, trash talk and preppie sitcoms, have already passed their peak. Next year’s TV glut: cartoons. All the new pseudo-networks want their own weekday and weekend animation blocks, so they’re buying almost any idea they get. Among the series either in production or development, according to the Hollywood Reporter: New versions of Richie Rich, Casper, Little Lulu, Ghostbusters, Roger Ramjet, Superman (with ’30s-futuristic settings), and Gene Deitch’s legendary Nudnick. A hi-techNew Jonny Quest with computer-animated gadgetry and a sterner-looking hero. Duck Daze, in which Huey, Dewey, and Louie look more like mall rappers. Sinbad (producer Fred Wolf’s ripoff of Disney’s Aladdin). An animal-cast Oliver Twist (Saban Productions’ ripoff of Disney’s Oliver & Company). Pocahontas: The Princess of American Indians (Mondo TV’s ripoff of…). A Flash Gordon that looks like Marvel’s Silver Surfer. Cartoons based on movies that just came out (Jumanji), have been around (The NeverEnding Story, Poltergeist), or aren’t out yet (Starship Troopers). Shows based on toys that just came out (Sky Dancers) or aren’t out yet (Beast Wars). A Hello Kitty series in which the cute cat actually has a mouth. Tex Avery Theater, inspired by the late master of frenetic animation and incorporating him as a character (but not using any characters he created). Soap on the Range, “The World’s First Animated Soap Opera.” Even The Blues Brothers: The Animated Series.
With all this work (even though most of it’s finished by foreign sweatshops), there’s a shortage of animation artists in L.A. If you want a job and can hurry there’s an Animation Opportunities Expo, 2/24 at the Universal City Hilton. Despite this boom, the Reporter noted that John Kricfalusi, who created then lost control of Ren & Stimpy, hasn’t sold any of his post-R&S creations. Speaking of silenced voices…
INTERNET CENSORSHIP PASSES CONGRESS: So much for “getting government off our backs.” Net censorship, and the big-media monopolization bill it was tacked onto, was a politician’s wet dream–a chance to whore out to big business and buy votes from Pat Robertson’s gang at the same time. Their dream is our nightmare. The forces of control want to infantilize our era’s greatest tool for unfettered communicating and organizing. We can’t let them. Legal challenges are already underway; updates are at the WebActive website.
MISC. CAN HARDLY WAIT to try foam dancing, the latest craze from Spain. It landed on these shores at Miami trendspots, and is now showing up at a nightclub in (of all places) the Tri-Cities. It uses a modified artificial-snow machine to blow foamy bubbles all over and above the dance floor. Reminds me of the bubble-shower scene from Revenge of the Cheerleaders, only clothed.
FARE GAME: Some of you might have been confused when you called a cab to get home from the 1/1 festivities and a different cab showed up. Broadway Cab, the prompt and reasonably courteous taxi line whose car-side boasts of LOWEST RATES were generally true, has been folded into Puget Sound Dispatch, parent company of the larger (and costlier) Graytop Cab and Yellow Cab of Seattle. Most of Broadway’s cabs are being repainted Graytop’s colors and will charge Graytop’s higher rates; however, as Graytop rep David Gordon sez, “A limited number of Broadways will continue to operate as Broadways,” at the lower rate. Also, a dozen or so of Graytop’s current driver-operators are reportedly planning to launch their own independent service, Red Top.
IRIS OUT: The past Xmas season was the last for the Whole Toon Catalog, Seattle’s nationally renowned mail-order video sales outlet for all things animated. Some observers blame Whole Toon’s demise on its downtown retail store, which closed earlier this year after failing to generate enough sales to meet its high rent. But beyond that, Whole Toon had to deal with the consolidation of the video biz under Blockbuster and other big chains–many of which targeted the sell-thru kidvid market as a prime growth center. But what we’re losing with Whole Toon isn’t just another place to order the next direct-to-video Lion King sequel. We’re losing the one place where serious animation buffs could get every cartoon video in print (and hundreds of out-of-print rarities), from silent Felix the Cat classics to Baby Huey laserdiscs–plus French-language books about Tex Avery and the only reference book to ever print the names of the anonymous producers behind Underdog.
TURN OUT THE LIGHTS: According to the state Attorney General’s dept., the Zygon Learning Machine (a cassette player combined with opaque goggles that flash hypnotic light patterns into your eyes) not only doesn’t meet its claims as a subconscious brain-reprogramming device, it often doesn’t even mechanically operate properly. But if you can find a working one, it does make a good drug-free enhancement to ambient-techno listening.
I almost got a job at Zygon writing scripts for Learning Machine tapes. Its office was in Redmond’s most sterile office-park zone, near the Northern Exposurestudio (appropriate for the New Age fantasyland nature of Zygon’s claims). Hypnotic learning tapes have been a staple of the New Age industry for years; I’ve seen cassettes promising to help you do everything from find your soulmate to build your vocabulary or increase your bowling score. I’m naturally skeptical of anything that asks me to stop thinking and just receive mental reprogramming, but thousands of folks are willing to at least experiment with the things. Thus, I wouldn’t sick the state on Zygon over the Learning Machine’s basic claims. But I can support going after the machine’s mechanical frailties and Zygon’s selling tactics (including “electronic junk mail” messages sent to thousands of Internet users).
PREVIEWS OF COMING TRANSACTIONS: Expect a new owner for Seven Gables Theaters as soon as the end of the month. Seattle’s king of respectable multiplexes has been a pawn in a sequence of acquisitions over the past years, finally ending up in the hands of indie-film mogul Sam Goldwyn Jr.Goldwyn’s unsuccessful attempts at producing higher-budgeted films, along with the decline of his American Gladiators TV franchise, have led him to put various assets up for sale. John Kluge, the showbiz speculator who sold five TV stations to Fox and has used the proceeds to prop up what’s left of Orion Pictures, wants to buy everything Goldwyn’s got, including Seven Gables. Since Kluge also owns the old American International film library, maybe we should demand that if the sale goes through they should run weekly midnight screenings of Beach Blanket Bingo or The She Creature.
As we’ve done since 1988, this list reflects what will become big over the next 12 months, not what’s big now. If you believe everything big now will keep getting bigger, we’ve got Power Rangers movie videos to sell you.
INSVILLE..................OUTSKI
Mac clones.................Windows 95
Sun/Netscape...............Intel/Microsoft
Gentlemen..................Guys
Pete & Pete................Friends
Pinky & the Brain..........X-Men
Bravo......................HBO
Flagship Ale...............Muenchener
Community syndicalism......Global capitalism
Many-to-many...............One-to-many
Freedom....................Censorship
The City...................Melrose Place
Bizarro....................Dilbert
Sophia Loren...............Marilyn Monroe
Curling....................Snowboarding
Condo-izing office towers..Exurbs and "edge cities"
Albuquerque................New Orleans
Rotterdam..................Prague
Avant-Pop fiction..........Cyberpunk
Steak houses...............Coffee houses
Puppetry...................Computer animation
Electric cars (finally)....Luxury 4 x 4s
Kitty Wells................Patsy Cline
Fedoras....................Baseball caps
African food...............Thai food
Rosicrucianism.............Neopaganism
Opium tea..................Herbal ecstasy
Citizens Utilities.........Green Day
Sherman Alexie.............bell hooks
Padded butts...............Silicone
DVD........................CD-ROM
ADSL.......................ISDN
Dr. Laura Sleshinger.......Limbaugh and his wannabes
Coal.......................Alanis Morissette
Leonardo DiCaprio..........Jim Carrey
Lounge.....................Techno
Zog Logs...................Pog
H.L. Mencken...............Hunter Thompson
Raconteurs.................Stand-up comics
Virgin Megastore...........Sam Goody
Shoe Pavilion..............Payless ShoeSource
Crossroads.................Bellevue Square
Indian musicals............Special-effects thrillers
Women's basketball.........Beach volleyball
Poker......................Magic: The Gathering
Boa constrictors...........Pot-bellied pigs
Union jackets..............Gas-station jackets
Co-ed strip clubs..........Cybersex
"Return to civility"......."Return to elegance"
Mandalas...................Fractals
The power of love..........The love of power
Skepticism.................Cynicism
Braided pubic hair.........Genital piercings
Garcia sightings...........Elvis sightings
Black Jack.................Bubble Yum
Free Quebec................NAFTA
Percogesic.................Melatonin
Ang Lee....................Paul Verhoven
Lili Taylor................Sharon Stone
ESPN2......................Sonics pay-per-view
Infobahn...................Wired
Phrenology.................Astrology
Aldous Huxley..............Terence McKenna
Hypertexts (finally).......In/Out lists
THANKS TO ALL who went to my two most recent reading/ signing gigs. I’m not sure, tho’, what to make of the Elliott Bay Book Co. blurb calling me “an ardent supporter of books and reading.” That sorta language usually describes either terminally mellow NPR-heads or closed-minded videophobes who hate all non-book media formats. Mind you, I love books in general, though there are many, many specific books I’m either nonplussed about or absolutely abhor. And they’re not always the books someone in my position’s expected to hate. F’rinstance, I have nothing against formula romance novels. The early Harlequins, originally imported from Britain, can be read as object lessons in how pre-feminist young women could move ahead in the British class system, by marrying money and calling it love.
KITSCH N’ KABOODDLE: Longtime Misc. readers know we don’t go in for camp-for-camp’s-sake, so we shuddered as fearfully as you may have when we heard about a new TV talk show to start next month, co-starring Tammy Faye Baker and washed-up sitcom actor JM J. Bullock (Ted Knight’s bumbling son-in-law on Too Close for Comfort). No further comment is necessary.
ONLY ANOTHER NORTHERN SONG: The Beatles Anthology has left TV and we’re thankfully in the eye of the associated PR storm, before the hype campaign for longer home-video version of the miniseries starts up next month. During “A-Beatles-C” week, the hype (culminating in the release of two old Lennon demo tapes with schlocky new backing tracks tacked on) got so hot, even Monday Night Football got in by unearthing a 1974 halftime chat between Lennon and Howard Cosell. The corporate media’s completely manufactured re-Beatlemania was a nostalgia for a time when the corporate media’s power was at its height. Despite what the boomer-biased media have proclaimed, there have been many, many joyous, intricate pop, post-pop and power-pop bands since. Bands like the Jam, Pere Ubu, the Posies, and Shonen Knife. It’s just none of those folks had the full-on marketing assault the Beatles enjoyed (or suffered from).
And none of those folks, luckily, found themselves profitable commodities for the truly pathetic hyper-spectacle that is the boomer nostalgia industry. If I were a conspiracy theorist (which I’m not), I’d fantasize about the Powers That Be working to prevent any rebellion among current or future young generations by smothering them with a disinformation campaign “celebrating” The Sixties while mentioning nothing but the wild-oat-sowing of upper-middle-class college kids–leaving out any mention of the environment, the Cold War, or the Black Struggle, and thus turning off any kids who might have silly notions of wanting to change the outside world. Speaking of retooled boomer fads…
THE-GRASS-IS-GREENER DEPT.: After reading last week’s Stranger piece about the bloated save-the-world claims made by the hemp movement, I finally understand the motivations of the wheeler-dealers in the Oakland Hills who thought up the whole hemp-mania in 1990-91. The hemp movement revises the pot aesthetic to seem less pathetically complacent, more in tune with the brash go-for-it dynamism of the ’90s. It does this by deliberately never mentioning pot smoking (except as a potential prescription painkiller), even though pot smoking is what it really wants to legalize. Eschewing the popular association of long-term cannabis use with sleepwalking fogheadedness, it instead markets the drug as an investment commodity, as the best potential friend capitalism didn’t know it had. More sky-high claims are being made for hemp today than were made in the early ’60s for the schmoo (a little bowling-pin-shaped animal that threatened to solve the world’s food problems and thus upset the global economy) in Al Capp’s comic strip Li’l Abner.
AD VERBS I (ad headlines in the 12/95 Wired): “At this mall, you can even shop naked” (MarketplaceMCI)… “Shop for CDs without the inconvenience of getting dressed” (MusicNet)… “If you’ve never been shopping while eating Mu Shu pork in your underwear, then you’ve never really been shopping” (éShop Plaza)… “Put our jeans on” (The Gap).
AD VERBS II (electronics-store slogan found in The Irish Times): “Harry Moore–Bringing you the future for more years than we care to remember.”
