ON A ROLE: Because of the deadline structure at The Stranger, this week’s Misc. (like Wednesday’s Christian Science Monitor) was sent to the printer before election returns came in. Therefore, we’ll just have to pretend it wasn’t happening or wasn’t worth talking about (which most citizens seemed to feel anyway).

Instead, let’s discuss the annually-weirder spectacle that is grownup Halloween, now America’s #2 shopping holiday. Is it me, or have grownup Halloween parties gotten simultaneously more elaborate and blasé? The art of costuming, of adopting temporary personas for celebration and/or awakening, is among humanity’s oldest traits. But the way middle Americans (even young, urbane middle Americans) do it is like the way middle Americans do a lot of things, half-hearted and aloof. “Square” middle Americans often keep their inner passions inhibited because they’re afraid; “hip” middle Americans often keep their passions inhibited because they’re afraid, but pretend they’re doing it because they’re too cool. The mainstreaming of fetish dance parties might have helped change that, but (at least in this town) that trend seems to have peaked. (It didn’t help that the Liquor Board’s lifestyle police have borne down hard on such events, contributing to the Catwalk’s fiscal problems.)

I don’t think the answer is to replace today’s Halloween festivities with World Beat-style “tribal” role playing events. The gods, demigods, devils, and myths of pre-industrial societies are those people’s property–in many cases, the only things colonists didn’t take from them. We have plenty of our own gods, demigods, devils, and myths to explore; including the myths propagated via popular entertainment and media. So keep going to parties as Audrey Hepburn or Capt. Janeway or Ross Perot–but don’t stop at the clothes.Become Hepburn or Janeway or Perot for one night. Explore the presence of Hepburnness, Janewayism, or Perotosity within your soul.

(For the record, the Champion’s costume store ran out of plastic breasts, couldn’t sell the formerly-popular Power Ranger costumes even at 50 percent off, and had to turn down many frustrated requests for Xena costumes (the show’s producers neglected to have any made).

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Issue #3 of the NW Sleep Guide, a newsletter for ambient-DJ music fans, contains a conceptual Brian Eno review consisting of the words “A light sharp touch refined but so ugly so merciless like the stinging rain,” repeated and rearranged to fill all the available space. Clever. (Free at Ohm Records and Wall of Sound.)

EYE ON POTATOES: The Wall St. Journal recently exposed the secret behind the “crispier French fries” now promised by Jack-in-the-Box and other chains. They’re coated with a batter made of potato starch, augmented in some formulae with wheat starch and dairy protein. It’s supposed to keep ’em warm and unsoggy up to 15 minutes, three times as long as untreated spud-segments. I tell ya, does this country have an ingenious food-tech industry or what?

IN A BIND: Organizers of the second NW Bookfest made a few improvements to the Pier 48 site but kept the site good and funky and un-Convention-Centery. It’s still the sort of event where the “marketplace of ideas” metaphor is made most literal, with authors on microphones and sellers in booths all hawking their wares. KOMO-TV weekend anchor Eric Slocum was prominently hawking his Childrens Hospital-benefit poetry book (remember, you can always donate direct instead) right next to a booth hawking political tracts about what “the globalists” don’t want you to know.

But it was a trek to find anything really interesting in the interstices between whale-poetry chapbooks, Men Are From Orion/ Women Are From the Crab Nebula homilies, and Windows 95 recovery manuals. By the time I got back out and faced the literacy volunteers with their hype for literature-as-generic-commodity, I wanted to tell ’em, “Next time you ask me to Support Books, tell me which ones.”

With KTZZ now up for sale, three of the area’s six commercial TV stations are up for grabs, thus driving down any one station’s prospective price. This is a rare moment of opportunity. Leave your suggestions on what you’d do if you owned your own channel atMisc. World HQ, www.miscmedia.com/intro.html.

LET US RETURN to Misc., the pop-culture column that’s indifferent about the threatened Federal ban on goofy cigarette brand merchandising like Marlboro Gear, Camel Cash, and the near-ubiquitous Your Basic Hat. Wearing or carrying that stuff’s a walking admission of subservience to a chemical god, disguised (as so many human weaknesses are) as bravado. Speaking of personal appearance…

BEAUTY VS. COMMERCE: The Portland paper Willamette Week reports many employers in that town are altering their dress codes to regulate employees with nose and lip rings. An exec with the espresso chain Coffee People was quoted as saying his company allows up to “three earrings per ear and a nose stud,” but forbids nose rings. Starbucks baristas in the Rose City may wear up to two earrings per ear but no face rings, no tattoos, and no “unnatural” hair colors. Dunno ’bout you, but I like to be served by someone who shows she knows there’s more important things than serving me. Speaking of trendy looks…

UPDATE: Got a bottle of Orbitz pop thanks to the guys at Throw Software, who’d smuggled three bottles from NYC. It’s made by a Vancouver company (Clearly Canadian) whose US HQ’s in Kent, but it’s only sold so far in the Northeast. It’s more beautiful than I imagined–a clear, uncarbonated, slightly-more-syrupy-than-usual concoction with caviar-sized red, yellow, or orange gummy globules in perfect suspension, neither floating nor sinking. It uses Clearly Canadian’s regular bottle shape, which is already sufficiently Lava Lamp-esque for the visual effect. As for the taste, reader Jeannine Arlette (who also got hers in NY) sez it’s “less icky tasting than the dessert black-rice-pudding, but just a little… The little neon `flavor bitz’ lodge in the gag part of your throat as you swallow, and, they have no flavor except possibly under some very loose definition where texture is considered a flavor.” Speaking of beverages…

THE FINE PRINT (at the bottom of an ad offering video-rental “happy hours,” complete with cocktail-nation cartoon imagery): “Rain City Video does not condone the use of alcoholic beverages with some movies.” What? Without a few good highballs or mint-liqueur martinis in your system, what’s the point of watching something like Leaving Las Vegas, Barfly, Under the Volcano, The Lost Weekend, or I’ll Cry Tomorrow? Certainly the Thin Man films nearly demand six martinis. Speaking of film and morals…

WATCH THIS SPACE: The Rev. Louis Farrakhan, in his paper The Final Call, recently blasted the producers of Independence Day.He claims they knowingly stole and corrupted a 1965 prophecy by his predecessor, Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammed, that a fleet of space ships will one day descend from their “Mother Plane,” secretly built by Africans in 1929 and currently hidden in high orbit, to destroy white America. (This is the source of the “mother ship” imagery George Clinton sanitizes for mainstream consumption.) Farrakhan claims all the world’s political and media leaders know about the Mother Plane but have never admitted it, except to slander it in a movie. (Farrakhan’s also displeased that the UFO-blasting hero in Independence Day is so openly Jewish.)

Many of you first became acquainted with the advanced mysteries of the Nation of Islam at the Million Man March, when Farrakhan preached about conspiracies revealed by magic numbers. A nonbeliever might find it strange, but it’s no stranger than tenets followed by Catholics, Mormons, Evangelicals, and New-Agers.

Besides, the premise of an apocalypse from the skies is as old as War of the Worlds. Several sects have predicted violent or benign spaceship-based takeovers over the years; the Church of the Sub-Genius parodied it in its tracts claiming that “Jehovah is an alien and still threatens this planet.” And compared to real-life crimes against blacks (like the recent report in the mainstream press that CIA-connected crooks jump-started the crack industry, and the resulting gang violence, in order to finance the Nicaraguan Contras), and Farrakhan’s charges seem relatively mild and almost plausible.

‘TIL NEXT TIME, ponder these thoughts of Courtney Love on smells, from a 1993 issue of Mademoiselle: “All boys love Chanel No. 5 because it reminds them of their moms when they got dressed up.”

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.”

SEATTLE OLYMPICS IN 2008? First, let’s get our transit problems sorted out (and not with space-wasting freeway lanes, pleeze). Otherwise, the politicians proposing this (and the businessmen who own them) have one point: we’ll already have most of the physical plant the Games would need. Depending how the Seahawks situation works out, we’ll have three to five full-sized stadia in the area, plus three big arenas, four smaller arenas, a AAA baseball field, a convention center or two, a rowing facility, the swimming pool from the ’90 Goodwill Games, and UW dorms that could house a few thousand jocks. Of course, that leaves plenty of spaces to be constructed (for tennis, bicycling, horses, skeet shooting, etc.); and since there’s nothing Pro-Business Democrats love more than mega construction projects, expect more hype about the Olympic bid than you heard about the Commons (even though the Olympic bigwigs won’t decide for years).

AW, SHOOT:Ads for the film The Shot shamelessly rip off the happy-face-with-bleeding-forehead image from the ’80s cult-favorite comic book Watchmen. But don’t worry, fanboys: Watchmen will be famous as long as there’s an audience for “alternative” superheroes; The Shot may leave theaters this month, to live on in video obscurity (unless one of its actors gets famous later).

LIP GLOSS: The fashion mag Marie-Claire claims the Beautiful People have a new cosmetic-surgery thang: labia lifts. My first thought: Perhaps only in the age of Hustler would straight women see enough of other women’s crotches to feel jealous of them. Second, they’ve always been the one part of a woman’s exterior sexual anatomy that’s been considered strictly for sensation, not appearance (until the piercing rage went mainstream). Call me old fashioned, but I sorta like it that way. Speaking of old-style ladies…

OLD WORLD SWORDER: Xena, Warrior Princess (plugged by KIRO-TV sports guy Tony Ventrella as “a clean girl in a dirty neighborhood”) made the cover of Ms. Sure, star Lucy Lawless appeared in a lesbian film (on the compilation Women from Down Under, at Video Vertigo and elsewhere). But essentially, this alleged role model for women’s empowerment is just another Conan-in-drag role, a fantasy formula seen everywhere from Red Sonja to the UK comic Axa. The only essential difference is how, as a low-budget syndicated show that has to fill more talk between the battles, it takes time to explore how non-warrior women would fare in such a muscle-bound world. Speaking of the politics of action heroes…

CURLY CUES: I’ve been feeling guilty about watching the Three Stooges. Not about the films themselves, but about watching them on Pat Robertson’s “New Family Channel.” Promos bill it as “a division of International Family Entertainment, a publicly-owned company,” but the NY Times reports most of the stock’s still held by Robertson, his son, and organizations they control. Indeed, next week it’ll “cover” the Republican Convention via GOP-sponsored hours starring GOP-appointed commentators, promising viewers needn’t spend a second outside the closed-loop system of Right propaganda. Even if I’m not in a Nielsen household and don’t buy any product advertised, I’m patronizing an organization started to spread Robertson’s anti-poor, anti-immigrant, anti-queer, anti-choice, pro-censorship, pro-corporate agenda.

Anyhow, my guilt was relieved slightly when I remembered the Stooge films were originally made for Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn, whose politics were just as Neanderthal as Robertson’s (and who required sex from actresses as a condition for employment, something Robertson’s never been accused of). Also, there’s something satisfying about catching the last seconds of Robertson’s sanctimonious 700 Club rants, followed by some of cinema’s greatest anarchists. I’m sure Robertson’s staff bought the Stooge films (which had been off TV for several years during a merchandising-rights dispute) ‘cuz they were thought to represent current right-wing entertainment tastes (lotsa violence, no sex). But they probably didn’t remember how regularly and thoroughly the Stooges demolished the pretensions of authority and conformity systems–pretensions not unlike Robertson’s. Robertson permits no rebuttals to his political stances on his cable channel, but I can imagine no more elequent rebuttal to the cultural assumptions behind his stances than these Depression-era inner-city Jews confronting WASP society.

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.”

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.)

WELCOME AGAIN one and all to Misc., the pop-culture column still anxious to try those Olestra potato chips with the chemically-engineered fake fat. If any out-of-town readers live in the chips’ test markets, could you send some over here? Thanx.

UPDATE: Looks like the brick-and-concrete light-industrial building that housed RKCNDY, that recently-closed rock n’ roll purgatory, may soon house the Matt Talbot Day Center, a Catholic Community Services drop-in ministry attending to drug-addicted or otherwise troubled teens. The lease hasn’t been finalized and could still fall through (like the deal last winter to buy the club and keep it operating). I’ll let you generate your own forces-of-redemption-take-over-din-of-iniquity remarks; you might even consider it the Big Guy’s smirking revenge for Moe taking up business in an ex-Salvation Army rehab center.

AD VERBS: Not too long ago, advertisers loved to claim their products would help you attract a sex partner. Now, masturbation metaphors are the rage. First, there was the shampoo that promised women a veritable scalp orgasm. In a more recent spot, a phone-sex worker emotes gushingly about the Pay Day candy bar’s sensuous qualities. And a still-small but growing trend of advertising for women sneaks in references to that self-satisfaction aid, hardcore porn, like the Revlon lipstick promoted as “SuperseXXXy.” If you believe the conspiracy-theory thinking in zines like Adbusters Quarterly (I don’t), you might theorize how the marketeers want to exploit people’s natural drives by redirecting those drives away from the nature-intended craving for intimacy with another human soul and toward sexual identification with the Product itself. Certainly the ad where a woman fantasizes (apparently during intercourse) about how she’d rather be driving a Mercedes could be so interpreted.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The Industrial Workers of the World, the radical-labor outfit that earlier this century tried to forge “One Big Union of All the Workers,” still exists. The Real Deal: Labor’s Side of Things is its regional monthly zine, edited by Mark Manning. It offers a little labor history (in the May ish, an essay on the Spokane IWW’s fight to overturn 1909 laws banning public speech in the Lilac City). But most of it’s of the present day, documenting workers’ struggles and conditions here and in other parts of the world. At a time when much self-styled “radical” literature either ignores or sneers at working-class Americans, Manning refreshingly extols not just sympathy for but solidarity and common cause with wage slaves everywhere. One flaw: The back-page article chiding downtown business interests for opposing hygiene centers for the homeless starts picking on one particular businessman without explaining why. (Pay-what-you-can to PO Box 20752, Seattle 98102.)

PRICELESS-ADVICE DEPT.: One side effect of writing for an increasingly popular alterna-paper is mainstream journalists treating you, perhaps foolishly, as an expert on Those Darn Kids. An AP writer called from Portland late last month, preparing a story on theChurch of Kurt Cobain opening down there and wanting my sound-bite-length comments. I said Cobain was clearly uncomfortable with the role of Rock Star, and would undoubtedly reject veneration as some demigod prophet of Gen X. As I interpret his work, he longed for a world without gods or at least without leaders and followers, a world where folks create their own cultures and work out their own ideas. From first glance, these lessons seem to be lost on the church’s founder, Jim Dillon, who told the P-I his 12-member congregation “pays homage to this alienated tribe and to the man who they have called `saint.'” But then again, if Jesus’ words can be interpreted in as many different ways as they are, it’s only natural to expect Cobain’s sometimes expressionistic word imagery to become similarly reread or misread.

‘TIL NEXT WE SHARE INKSTAINS, ponder these words of Indian movie star Madhuri Dixit, quoted by interviewer “Bitchybee” in the magazine Cineblitz: “Work is worship. Play is a waste of time. Night clubs, parties socializing saps your energy and gets you nothing, but unwanted notices from snoopy gossip journalists. Avoid the night spots and dark circles. It’s even helpful in avoiding pimples.”

Misc. began on June 6, 1986 as a column in ArtsFocus, the Lincoln Arts Center’s monthly tabloid. When that paper faded in 1989, Misc. became a newsletter with as many as 1,000 free copies and 100 paid subscribers. It joined The Stranger at the paper’s ninth issue in November 1991. Last year I stopped the newsletter and started the Misc. World HQ website, <http://www.miscmedia.com>.

Over these 10 years I’ve discussed many things, loosely tied to the concept of “popular culture in Seattle and beyond.” I’ve shared a few laffs and a few tears. But I’ve had one overriding subject–the city with which I have an ongoing lover’s quarrel. Seattle’s always had more than its share of vibrant, creative people. But they’ve long struggled against a social order opposed to anything too unclean, unrich, or unquiet.

The Commons people never understood why so many have grown tired of a city government exclusively By The Upscale, Of The Upscale, and For The Upscale. The “Parks Are For Everybody” slogan was clearly a desperation move by campaigners uncomfortable with the existence of non-yuppies and the need to appeal to such proles.

In much of the US, politics is controlled by money-stooges pretending to be “conservatives.” In Seattle, it’s controlled by money-stooges pretending to be “liberals.” Other politicians pay lip service to abortion foes and censors; ours pay lip service to gay-rights advocates and environmentalists. Both sets of politicians do these to buy votes while holding to their real cause, the worship of Sacred Business.

But I also believe politics is a subset of culture. Seattle’s politics tie directly into a culture that merely pretends to value “diversity.” A culture so thoroughly whitebread, it remembers the Sixties only as a playtime for college boys. A culture descended from Anglo Protestant “progressives” in Wisconsin and Minnesota, who’d championed an elitism of educated, understated “taste” to help keep working-class German Catholics out of power.

When Misc. started, Seattle’s arts had been for seemingly ever (at least since 1973) under the thumb of an extremely conservative “liberalism” I’ve since called Mandatory Mellowness. You know, the standard of “good taste” that wouldn’t merely discourage but forbid any art more challenging than Chihuly, any music more contemporary than Kenny G, any theater more immediate than doo-wop versions of Shakespeare, any literature more urbane than whale poems, any apparel more daring than “Casual Friday” suits, or any lifestyle more “decadent” than drinking whole milk instead of 2-percent.

While this aggressively bland anti-aesthetic still rules the city’s official culture, something else arose from the underground. Punk rock remained a relevant stance in Seattle throughout the ’80s precisely because it was the best available means of rebellion against the hypocrisy of mellowness. What the media called “grunge” was and is an aesthetic of darkness, but also one of honest discourse, passionate expression, and real pleasures. It values thrift and ingenuity, not the dictates of fashion. It sees Seattle as a city for Tugboat Annie, not for Niles Crane. It loves the south Lake Union neighborhood as it is. It would rather be “unhappy” yet truly alive than succumb to the Stepford-Wifedom of “The Northwest Lifestyle.” What the media call “cocktail nation” is the expression of these values through other means, to relive the best of pre-hippie pop culture and even to make jazz a populist genre again. Indeed, the staccato, disjointed Misc. format has always been a (perhaps feeble) effort to preserve the jazz-age three-dot column of Walter Winchell, Irv Kupcinet, and the P-I era Emmett Watson–perhaps America’s greatest literary invention.

If I’ve played any tiny part in popularizing these values, the values that made Seattle and real progressivism great, then I’ve succeeded at my goal–the Highlights for Children slogan, “Fun With a Purpose.”

(Thanx and a hat tip to those who attended the Misc. 10th anniversary party and to those who helped make it plausible; including Glen Allen, the band Big Sister, BSK(T) Screenprinting, Cellophane Square, Staci Dinehart, Rebecca Frey, Joseph Givens, Laughingas Productions, Verlayne McClure, Metropolis Contemporary Art Gallery, Moe, Mountain Sound, the New Store, Occupied Seattle, Charlotte Quinn, Frank Randall, Jeannine Uhrich, Joseph Weaver, and a host of others.)

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.)

MISC., THE COLUMN that likes to be dressed in tall, skinny type out here in the shade, welcomes the arrival of TicketMaster master Paul Allen to the Seahawks’ helm, tho’ it could mean a Kingdog might soon cost $2.75 plus a $10 convenience charge.

CORREC: Katrina Hellbusch, whose published first-person rape story was mentioned here last month, works in music promotion but isn’t in a band herself.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The Grand Salami is a 12-page, slick-paper sports zine put out every Mariners homestand by Jon Wells and Mark Linn. Each ish features updated stats about the Ms and their upcoming home opponents. The next ish will have a cartoon of the editors’ choice for a new stadium–they want one built on top of the present Kingdome, with a AAA team playing in the old dome for quick player transfer. $1 at Bulldog News or outside the Dome before games, or $15/year at 328-1238. Speaking of running for home…

ON THE ROAD: Was amused by the minor brouhaha when a Seattle urban-advocacy group issued a report a few weeks back claiming you’re physically safer living in town than in suburbs, ’cause we might have a few more violent crimes but they’ve got a lot more car wrecks. The suburb-lovin’ Seattle Times found a UW traffic-engineering prof to call the study flawed. He claimed the report’s methodology was insufficiently documented, and questioned its choice of neighborhoods to compare–the gentrifying upper Queen Anne vs. the sprawling, insufficiently-roaded outskirts of Issaquah. While I can buy the validity of the prof’s hesitations, I also think the report’s premise is definitely worth further study ‘n’ thought. For too long, we’ve allowed “personal safety” to be defined by interests with a decided bias against cities and walking, for suburbs and driving. I know I personally feel more secure in almost any part of Seattle than in almost any part of Bellevue. Speaking of symbols of comfort…

THE GOLDEN BOWL: You already know I think cereal, that all-time “comfort food,” is one of America’s eight or nine greatest inventions. On those rare occasions when I neglect to eat prior to leaving home in the a.m., I always look for a place with cereal on the breakfast menu. (I’m allergic to eggs, so I have few other breakfast-out options.) I was pleased when the Gee Whiz espresso palace opened near the Weathered Wall on 5th, with a modest yet tasty selection of flakes, mini-wheats and Crunch Berries. Now I’m even more pleased ’cause the Red Light Lounge is now open at 47th & U Way (at the front of the New Store’s newest annex). In a setting of classic (and increasingly expensive) diner furnishings, it offers heaping helpings (not tiny single-serve boxes) of your choice from over 50 great cereals, in beautiful oversize bowls with beautiful oversize spoons. No cartoons to watch, but you do get to look at the latest fashion magazines while you enjoy a sugar-frosted treat those emaciated models must deny themselves. Speaking of fast food and gender roles…

WHAT’S YOUR BEEF?: At a time when Burger King and McDonald’s have simultaneous Disney promos, some burger chains are indeed trying to reach adult eaters (or at least arrested-post-adolescent eaters). An Advertising Age story reports how the Rally’s chain has a TV spot (running in about 30 percent of the country but nowhere near here) that opens with a shot of a pickup truck waiting at a traffic light. As the article relates, “A convertible pulls up with a guy driving and two beautiful babes aboard. `What’s he got that I ain’t got?’ the pickup driver says to his friend, who responds matter-of-factly, `he’s probably got a Big Buford.’ The driver stares downward in astonishment: `Look at the size of that thing!’ `We see the women in the car suggestively eating their giant Big Buford hamburgers. `You like ’em big, huh?’ the driver says to one of the women. `It’s not the size,’ she says coyly. `It’s the taste, stupid.'”

‘TIL NEXT TIME, ponder this from the late great Erma Bombeck: “Know the difference between success and fame. Success is Mother Teresa. Fame is Madonna.”

Welcome back to Misc., the local pop-culture column that tried to follow its bliss, until its bliss filed a restraining order against it.

WHERE THEY ARE NOW: Ross Shafer was poised to make it big in 1988 when he quit as the original host of KING’s Almost Live to star in the final post-Joan Rivers version of the Fox Late Show. His career since then has been one pathetic comeback try after another. Now he’s shamelessly ripping off the “Guy” comedy of Tim Allen, Jeff Foxworthy, and Red Green. He’s showing up on celebrity talk shows in overalls and no shirt to promote a “humor” book, Cook Like a Stud. You can imagine the routine, wreaking creaky gags out of the use of shot glasses as measuring spoons, claw hammers as meat tenderizers, and hubcaps as baking sheets.

WHERE THEY WERE THEN: Some of you may recall Marni Nixon as the singing hostess of KOMO’s late-’70s puppet showBoomerang. A few of you might also know the Seattle-native Nixon had a studio-singing career in the ’50s and ’60s before she returned home. She was perhaps the most famous “unknown” in Hollywood, the real soundtrack singer in such musical hits as Gigi, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and My Fair Lady. But few know her connection to that more-popular-now-than-ever master of space age pop, Juan Garcia Esquivel. In the liner notes to the recent CD compilation Music From a Sparkling Planet, vocal director Randy Van Horne credits Nixon as a session singer on Esquivel’s first U.S.-made LP, Other Worlds, Other Sounds (1958). Somehow, the vision of the perky, homey Nixon of Boomerang shrieking “Pow!” and “Zu-Zu-Zu!” seems oddly satisfying.

ANOTHER KIND OF PAY TV: The Seattle area’s getting an all-new TV station for the first time in 12 years, but don’t look for it to have any shows between its commercials. A Minneapolis company called ValueVision, partly owned by Montgomery Ward, is planning to launch an all-new UHF TV station in Tacoma (tentative call letters: KBGE). Actually, the broadcast transmitter’s just a loss-leader (at a reported cost of $4.6 million); they’re going on the air in order to force their home-shopping informercials onto local cable systems, thanks to an FCC rule requiring cable systems to carry all local over-the-air channels.

WHAT’S IN STORE: Vintage clothing was considered the latest “hot” thing in some circles, even before KING-TV heard of Cocktail Nation. And where there’s hype, money invariably follows. So it should come as no surprise that corporate-backed vintage chain stores are moving in big on what had been the territory of indie merchants and (usually) nonprofit thrift stores. You already know the Bufallo Exchange circuit; similar outfits rumored to be Seattle-bound include Crossroads (no relation to the Bellevue mall) and Wasteland. The Urban Outfitters chain has recently offered shelves of reconditioned garments alongside its new inventory. One indie vintage operator, the New Store, has started trying to defend its market share with flyers touting itself as the local, homespun alternative to “big corporate resale chains.”

GOOD NEWS: Centralized globalist culture may have peaked! An NY Times story, “Local Programming Cuts Into MTV,” notes with thinly-disguised alarm how broadcast and cable producers in assorted European and Asian countries are capturing viewers by offering local videos, in local languages–something MTV’s continent-wide satellite feeds just can’t offer. Seems audiences in assorted countries have increasingly had it with passive-aggressive acceptance of prepackaged superstar acts.

Since some global MTV acts in recent years have emanated from Seattle, some of you might see this as another sign of the long-hoped-for end of Seattle’s musical influence. I don’t. Most of our best bands and promoters weren’t trying to become global superstars; they were trying to smash the concept of global superstars. They were trying to promote a different attitude toward making and listening to “pop” music, as a creative force speaking directly to audiences rather than a brand-name entity to be manufactured and marketed. The more people there are around the world who make their own sounds, the more the Seattle scene’s real message to the world will have taken hold.

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?

WELCOME BACK TO MISC., the pop-culture column that still gets slightly disoriented when given a “Welcome to Fred Meyer” bag upon leaving the store.

SITE LINES: Adobe Systems is looking for new area digs for the Seattle software operation formerly known as Aldus, and possibly also for some of its currently Calif.-based divisions. I got just one piece-O-advice to the desktop publishing giant: keep it in town. You’re being tempted by developers to move to some soulless office park on some Eastside flood plain. But part of what made Aldus great was that it was in Pio. Square. The firm attracted people who liked walking to Ivar’s or to Mariner games. I believe this helped grow a corporate culture of creative, energetic people who could listen to others, including the people who used your warez; as opposed to the cult-like groupthink seen within certain office-park outfits.

ON A LONELY SATELLITE: Some of you can get 30 channels of DBX satellite music on your cable TV system. But what I want are the 60 extra channels the DBX company offers retailers and other clients via satellite dish. Instead of just mainstreamed selections like “Top Hits” and “R&B Oldies,” I could choose from polka, mariachi, Hawaiian, Danish, Greek, Brazilian, Indian, “Euro Pop,” “Canto Pop” (that’s Cantonese), “Traditional South African,” and that all-time fave “German Schlagers!”

AD VERBS #1: Denny’s sponsored the Harlem Globetrotters 70th Anniversary tour, which stopped in Seattle during African-American History Month. Let’s see, twelve Globetrotter players plus the sham-opposition team, trainers, and roadies… The restaurant chain instantly doubles its black employment!

AD VERBS #2: You may have been bemused by the Nike commercial with snippets of Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (as remade by KRS-One) alongside images of street basketball players; defining “the revolution” as mere recreation and fashion. Now the hypocrisy deepens. Nike and its ad agency Weiden & Kennedy have hired Scott-Heron as a consultant for a planned Nike-owned cable channel. The channel has no name or launch date; but you can expect it to rival MTV in associating “rebel” youth culture with the purchase and use of apparel and other consumer products. You can also safely bet it’ll never promote any “revolutionary” thinking which might question companies that export all their manufacturing jobs to pennies-a-day Asian sweatshops and spend all the “saved” expenses on dorky ads.

SPACE CASES: The pitifully thin ranks of Seattle all-ages concert spaces briefly increased by one before shrinking again. The venerable Showbox got special dispensation from the Liquor Board to run all-ages shows under strict conditions. Ever-zealous authorities spotted a relatively minor violation of one of those conditions one night, and promptly decreed the joint 21-and-over for all further events. This was two days before the Throwing Muses gig; promoters had to refund 200 tickets from under-21ers. The onetime punk palace has since changed management (again), so don’t blame that fiasco on the guys there now. Instead, keep questioning why our Powers That Be keep making all-ages music so hard to get put on and so easy to get shut down.

MIKE TAKES A HIKE: It’s a rise-n’-fall tale almost Shakespearean if it weren’t so mundane: A politician who used his out-of-step appearance and social sense to symbolize his devotion to unfashionable policies; who did more things for more people (or tried to) than any Washingtonian since the Scoop-Maggie gravy train; whose downfall came not from opponents but from a trusted aide who’d had enough of his social manners or lack thereof, as expressed thru unwanted “bear hugs.”

We may not have seen the last of Gov. Lowry, but neither may we see anyone like him again soon. And that’s a shame. He lived both in the world of three-martini politicians and that of six-fingered sawmill workers. He used the means of mainstream politics to help those outside the mainstream, at a time when politicians prefer to work chiefly for the overprivileged. (He even dared oppose tax rollbacks for Sacred Business!) And at a time when even many coffeehouse “leftists” ignore class issues or even sneer at working-class people, we need Lowry’s progressive populism more than ever.

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.”

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