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FOLLOWING THE TRAGIC November crash of a jetliner in New York City, the press and the government spokesfolk repeatedly proclaimed there were “no apparent links” between the crash and the terror attacks two months previous. In a world wracked by acts of deliberate harm, the authorities felt a compelling need to reassure all of us that accidents indeed still occurred.
Herewith, some other major and minor tragedies with no, repeat NO, apparent links to terrorists:
(This article’s permanent link.)
‘TWAS A GLORIOUS 20th anniversary party Sun. night for the Pink Door, our official fave gourmet-Italian eatery. (And not just because the name discreetly alludes to something I always like to go into.) The event had the swingin’ acrobat depicted here, a stilt walker, an accordian-tuba combo, several torch singers, a sax player, and street-music vet Baby Gramps. Fun was had by all.
AN EGYPTIAN INTELLECTUAL claims “Terrorism is the antithesis of self-determination.” (found by Rebecca’s Pocket.)
ROGER EBERT’S glossary of movie cliches (found by Robot Wisdom).
FINALLY SAW Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace Sunday night, during its free-TV debut. It was just as mediocre as its worst critics had claimed.
It was indeed full of not-so-thinly disguised ethnic slur characterizations. It indeed had long, long sequences intended to promote spinoff video games. It indeed depicted a Top Gun attitude toward warfare as a hunting adventure in which the good guys can kill without any nagging guilt complexes (most of the enemy foot soldiers were robots!). And it indeed substituted the original films’ pseudo-Nazi villains (creatures Just Like Us, only evil) with pseudo-Asian and pseudo-Arab heavies.
The one intriguing aspect of George Lucas’s story came at the very start and was fairly quickly faded into the backgorund. The future Galactic Emporer has acquired his first army of conquest by secretly taking over a stateless, intergalactic organization called “The Trade Federation.” In a film released five months before the Seattle WTO debacle (and written at least a couple years before that), Lucas already knew to exploit the growing public fears of transnational capitalism and its potential powermongering excesses.
YR. HUMBLE EDITOR was recently awarded the honor of being one of the 18 jurors who selected the “MetropoList 150,” the Museum of History and Industry/Seattle Times list of the 150 most influential people in the 150-year history of Seattle and King County.
I’m quite satisfied with the final list, available at this link. There’s almost nobody on it I wouldn’t have wanted on it.
Nevertheless, there are several names I wrote in which didn’t make the final selection. In alphabetical order, they include:
IN ADDITION, here are some names nominated by other people (with the descriptions these anonymous nominators wrote) for whom I voted, but who also failed to make the final cut:
As promised a couple weeks back, here is my preliminary list of some of what I love about this nation of ours. Thanks for your emailed suggestions; more are quite welcome.)
The Mariners have just lost their last regular-season game as I write this, and enter the playoffs tied for the best regular season in baseball history (based on number of wins, not winning percentage).
As most of you know, I’m of the generation that came of age with the indelible image of the Ms as a lovable-loser team playing in a lovable-loser domed stadium in a lovable-loser city. Even Seattle’s attempts to become a Big League City were typically of a feebly predictable variety (e.g., taxpayer subsidies for chain-owned luxury shops downtown).
But the Century 21 Ms are different. They’re the Real Freakin’ Thing. I adore the team’s stunning success like nothing else; but still have a hard time comprehending it. It’s off the visible spectrum of good news, just as the terror attacks were far further off the visible spectrum of bad news.
The Ms’ spectacle provides as good an excuse as any to survey the cultural status of this once-remote port city on the occasion of its sesquicentennial.
IN THE ’90S, Seatle seemed on the verge of bigtime cultural-capital status; corresponding to the city’s approach toward bigtime business-power status.
But the movie and TV location work mostly moved to Vancouver; the “Seattle Music Scene” craze was successfully crushed by the major-label conglomerates; and the local web-content companies that had been on the seeming verge of displacing both print and audiovisual media giants have either died or been fiscally chastized into safer market niches.
While Seattle still hasn’t permanently muscled in on NY’s hold on publishing or LA’s hold on film production, we remain a hotbed for many DIY-level arts genres (contemporary dance, experimental music, indie rock, snowboarding apparel, comix).
The recent, and apparently now ending, tech-biz gold rush meant some creative-type folk found the chance to finance some of their dreams (restaurants, coffeehouses, shot-on-video movies, self-released CDs). Many others took tech-biz jobs in that hope, but found themselves too drained by the hours and stress.
The upside of the dot-com collapse is many writers, painters, musicians, etc. who’d found themselves stuck working 60-hour weeks in Redmond now have the time to resume their real work (and real-estate hyperinflation is slowing, so they might be able to keep their studios and practice spaces.) The bad news: Many of these people lost much of their savings in the stock collapse (particularly those who worked for stock options).
THE REST of the local economy now lies as fragile as the world economy to which it’s become ever more closely interconnected.
Boeing, once synonymous with both Seattle and U.S. industrial-export might, is turning (or was trying to turn before the recession) into a financier-oriented investment company whose holdings only incidentally include airplane factories, and whose execs live and work far away from any of its physical-stuff-making operations.
Microsoft and Starbucks, those companies everyone loves to hate, are still here, still increasing their world domination of their respective industries, and still making enemies while insisting on their innate goodness.
And Amazon.com, the company that persued Bigness at any cost, used the end of E-Z deficit financing as an excuse to can hundreds of Seattle workers and ship their jobs to lower-wage locales.
“GET BIG FAST” was the title of a book about Amazon, based on the now-discredited mantra justifying the high burn rate of money-pit dot-coms. Amazon’s strategy meshed nearly perfectly with the ongoing insecurities of a city elite forever fretting about Seattle’s stature, ever concocting jump-start schemes to make us (yes, I know I overuse the phrase, but so do they) World Class. World Class-ness means we get big new “arts” buildings but can’t keep our artists from getting evicted. It means we’ve got all this private wealth but (thanks to the anti-tax Republicans some of these wealthy ones support) we can’t house our homeless, feed our hungry, or relieve our exurban sprawl and our traffic jams.
But the phrase “Get Big Fast” also expresses the craving to get beyond juvenile frustration ASAP, to give birth to a company and have it immeidately be “grown up.” Only things don’t quite work that way in the real world, or even in the real corporate world.
Seattle still doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up. But it’s anxious to grow up, or rather to act like a gangly adolescent pretending to be grown up. And it always has been. Like that Here Comes the Brides theme song goes: “Like a beautiful child/Growing up green and wild.”
But the result, all too often, is like seeing the adult actors in Porky’s II walking around in their receding hairlines, pretending to be hormone-stricken teenagers pretending to be worldwise grownups.
IF WE CAN just all forget for a moment about Getting Big Fast, maybe we can start to really grow up.
The Mariners became a powerhouse mainly by de-emphasizing the big cheap home run (to the point of buildiing a stadium where they’d be tougher to achieve); instead focusing on doing the little things right and pulling together.
Exactly what this town needs.
To Those Who Say I’m Not a Patriot
by guest columnist Eve Appleton
There was a famous Spanish animal expert who was quoted to say, “Man is the only animal to stumble over the same stone twice.”
Advocates of peace are patriots. Advocates of war are patriots. The argument is not one of patriotism. It’s of options.
Options, which in times of shock, pain and confusion are difficult to come by. During these times people are most vulnerable and most susceptible to propaganda. Most out of their reasoning minds.
In my day, now substantial years ago, I was a media queen. My voice could sell anything–product or concept. I engineered, wrote, produced, directed. News, entertainment, educational and commercial programming. I did whatever it took. And I could pump out the propaganda with a speed of force that left my bosses’ mouths agape. Straight to the heart and soul of the listening audience. I was a behavioral scientist in a field day of resources and a world of open receptive minds to play with.
Which is why I quit. I woke up one day to the realization I was feeding the people lies. Worse, they believed me. Even worse yet, they trusted me, acting on my words. Words, images and sounds meshed together with intent to manipulate behavioral response. To my benefit. The pay was handsome. The recognition thrilling. The demand growing.
I was dangerous. I was a hypocrite. And it suddenly became very difficult to look my children in the eye. So I quit. A decision I’ve not yet regretted. Doubt I ever will.
Film (including media broadcast formats) is considered the most prolific medium of manipulation. Its mastery is catagorized as an art. At it most basic function/application, it uses light–a very powerful and actually organic technology–to condition (or communicates with) the central nervous system through the optic nerves in our eyes. Its whole purpose is to manipulate sensory systems through varying patterns of light fluctuation which influence all sensory bodies to a programmed response. Like the sparkle of fire, which mesmerizes.
The difference is intent. Fire does not intend to mesmerize. It just does. Film intends to mesmerize. Media intends to mesmerize. When you get your target audience to respond as anticipated are you considered successful in the “Art.” Open any media text. This is what it will teach. You promptly learn there is no such thing as objective journalism.
I’m writing to you right now with intent to manipulate you. I openly admit it.
I’m trying to get people to think. Which is damn near impossible when they’re in a state of shock, pain and confusion. But, those of us who can. Who are more removed from the direct link to our most recent loss. We need to move out of our pain. Quickly. Because major decisions are being made in these days of confusion, which will affect all our lives for years to come. Decisions which are being made without the attention of the American people. Without giving measure of options. And while we find ourselves in a most vulnerable state.
No matter our pain, no matter our confusion, we need to stay alert. There’s something bigger then us at risk. There is an entire world’s future. And we are all responsible. This is very serious.
Every time I hear the word “war” I remember the Vietnam era. I feel caught in a past era’s nightmare. But this time, I have young adult children, male and female, who, based on my actions and the actions of my fellow Americans, could soon die.
And for what? A decision made in haste during a moment of shock and confusion? A decision made while we are out of our reasoning minds?
I don’t want my children to die. And I don’t want them to have to kill just to live. It’s not my right to ask this of them. Only they can make that decision. Let the people who are willing to die and kill go forward if they must; void of age discrimination, race discrimination, sex discrimination… That’s their right.
Let them go to the front lines. And, with them, the generals and politicians. Let them do the boot camp, carry the guns, shoot to kill. Something tells me the politicians just might protest.
My father was a career military man in the Strategic Air Command, the bulk of his career involving diplomatic and international services. Much of his work was classified. But the things he experienced we lived first hand, up close and personal, in our home. He was an officer, a colonel. It was said his career didn’t go further because he had a way of pissing off the generals. But they liked him by their side because they knew he was honest. Rare in the military.
He went to Vietnam as a volunteer. He reasoned it was his ability to afford one young person over there a return home chance at life. He felt it was the least he could do. He would grumble under his breath of the travesty of how the war was being run. Said at this rate the end of the war was nowhere in sight. The two biggest problems: Children being sent to do men’s jobs, and politicians running the war.
While he was there, he sent audio tapes from the front for our seventh-grade social studies class. He was very diplomatic. Careful not to say the wrong things. But we all felt it–a sober fear.
He also sent my mom audio tapes. Sometimes we could hear explosions and sirens and screams in the background. He assured us he was nowhere dangerous, far from the enemy front. Then he would chuckle and say he was too mean to die.
He was the one who told me the generals and politicians were never present at the front line. They hid behind the shield of their ranks, claiming themselves too important to be risked. He also said the news reporters never went to the front line, but instead sat at the bars and got drunk, taking their news feeds from the military propagandists. He said they had no idea what was really happening. We were being crucified. He was a career man who believed in his country. He was a devout patriot. He also knew from an eye witness point of view, truth from lie.
My father went to the front line. In fact he crossed the front line on many a mission which required, in his words, “the experience of an officer.” And in doing so, he was exposed to Agent Orange. We didn’t find out till his death. His files conveniently came up missing shortly thereafter. Files I’d read personally because I’d been named executrix of his health and estate. The government was afraid I’d sue and knew I had an ironclad case. It was laid out pretty clearly in those files. But I didn’t want to sue. I just wanted to know why they didn’t let us know sooner, so we could have helped him in his life. There’s nothing to be done after death.
What kind of parents are we if we ask our children to go to war, if not the worst kind? And please, don’t ask me to bless a war sanction and my children’s death for a boost to our economy. There are other ways to do that. And in fact, war doesn’t boost our economy. It leaves generations to come in dysfunction–even with all their body parts attached.
Call me selfish if you must, but I’m fighting for my children’s lives. I would consider myself a horrible mother if I did anything less. And I clearly understand the responsibility before me. I won’t ask my children to kill. I certainly won’t ask them to die. I have no more right to do this then ask children I don’t even know, to kill and die.
But I will ask them to help find and support clear reasoning, educated decisions, and alternative solutions. To start thinking. Justice for those we have lost does not have to be accompanied by more innocent bloodshed. Our children are innocent. If we can’t see this, we are obviously not in our reasoning minds.
What our current administration is asking us to do is not a TV show. It’s very real. The Vietnam War lasted what, ten years? More? If you have a child who is thirteen right now, in five years this child will be eligible for War. (Oh whoopie! He–or she–can die looking for some slimey crazed mad man. Oh goodie!)
And if we are successful in keeping the war off our home land, we can say bye bye to any current luxuries. Probably even our houses. We’ll be holding the jobs our children held while here. We’ll be living on poor wages–those of us lucky enough to hold jobs. Our savings will be depleted, as our industries shut down in the name of wartime crisis. As will our hearts, as our children are shipped home in body bags–or worse, as shellshocked, limbless vegetables.
Unless, of course, the nuclear bombs are deployed. In which case, there’ll be nothing for any of us because we’ll all be maimed, suffering slow death, or just plain dead.
So what do we do?
Options! Start thinking of options.
Our current option is unacceptable. We are intelligent, sophisticated, capable people who represent fairness, justice, liberty, freedom and equal rights. It’s an ideal which only we can make into a reality.
And no one ever said it would be easy. Retaliation is easy. Getting to the truth is more difficult. We need time to discern the information before we run off and start lynching. Lynching is our past. It doesn’t have to be our future. We don’t need to stumble again over this stone. It’s time we learn by doing something new. Something smart, conscious and yes, futuristic. If we don’t, we’ll only ever know war.
Justice doesn’t have to be accompanied by bloodshed. Nor will it be justice if we get only some, or possibly the wrong offenders.
And while we may have a damn good idea of one or some responsible, please don’t think I’m buying this was the act of a lone madman and a posse crew. That’s just ridiculous. Even Kissinger said that pulling off an attack of this sort required extensive resources. This guy may be rich, but clearances alone for what just happened suggest far more complicity. We need to get to the bottom of this.
It’s important to our future to know the truth. We need to account for all responsibility. We’re not going to be any more safe with a quick fix-it mobbing and a bunch of young dead lives. We’re just going to be more pathetic; or we’ll be nuclear waste.
In my in-box right now are several emails–hate mails–that, when compared to the 34 “non-hate” mails, don’t give a frame of reference to 85 percent of the American people wanting war. But our TVs keep telling us we want war. Our leaders urge us to raise flags. To wear them on our heads. Put them on our cars. We assume it to mean we support America. Our leaders are interpreting it as a vote for war. Where is the voice of the 34-vs.-2 emails?
Also, why is there an assumption that because I advocate peace, clarity and conscious action, I’m not a patriot? Peace is not a statement of anti-patriotism. It is a plea of intelligence. My resistance to flag waving right now, is not a negative statement toward my country, but toward the media blitz which seeks ratings and recognition and deep pockets without an ethical consciousness.
People are more divided right now then I’ve seen them in a long time. They are only under a symbolic media illusion of being united. But if you get into the streets, or listen for a moment to the ones who’ve been seeking peaceful solution; if you were to experience the hate mail and threats and name calling they have had to endure; you’d know there is an anger raging through the streets of America, dividing neighbor against neighbor, which is far more terrifying then any new advent of airplane bomb.
Our world has been glued to its TV sets, programmed by people they don’t even know. Unknown people they are empowering with their trust. Some of us have spent our time away from the TV sets–reaching out to sources of all kinds and status, looking for answers which may provide alternative solutions.
We have been thinking. Mostly because we are so very aware of how much there is to lose. And how precious this life really is. This does not sound anti-patriotic to me. It sounds smart. And caring. And compassionate. And concerned. And serious.
As you pray to your god tonight, or meditate in compassion, ask your god or your self to help us all start thinking. Of options; of solutions geared toward truth. Solutions which will show the world we are not barbarians like those who have terrorized us, but rather, intelligent, conscious, well reasoned and greatly empowered with the strength of clarity.
We are a great nation. And yes we are young. Maybe. And I do believe it possible. We the young can show this old world, old dogs aside, we know how to learn new tricks. We can reverse the sins of our fathers. We can successfully not trip over the same stone twice.
Please do not send children to war; world into hardship; hatred toward neighbor. Start thinking. Start writing. Start talking and advocating other ways. We can all do this together. Probably better then we can do any war. Peace for one and all.
Love
Eve
—
Eve’s Apple Laboratories
Herbal Aphrodisiacs
Home & Health Alternatives
Seattle, WA
http://evesappleinc.com
email: evzapple@zipcon.com
icq#:62566098
A MOVIE we’re not likely to see revived soon. And another.
SALON.COM’S eyewitness reports by their own freelancers. John Leonard’s entry in the package calls the attack “like the worst sort of TV movie.”
ADAM CURRY, the ex-MTV VJ now doing Net work in his native Holland, quotes author Tom Clancy on CNN: “This is life imitating art.” Curry adds, “This is like watching an action hero movie. I want Willis or Schwartzenegger to walk in right now. This is just un fucking real.”
At no small expense (make your PayPal donations now!), we’ve gone ahead and run off more copies of the summer MISC print mag. Some dropoff places where the thing’s already disappeared will get a replenished supply; other places that never got any copies will get some now. (Folk who wanna help with the distro process, please feel free to email me.)
SO BAD IT’S, WELL, BAD: What makes a truly bad movie? Hint: Plan 9 isn’t “truly bad;” A.I., however, might qualify. Another hint: A “bad film festival” film might be ineptly produced but can still promise fun-time entertainment. A truly bad film is a chore, something you might as well just go straight to the “surprise” endings of at Movie Pooper; or read the whole tell-all plot summaries at The Movie Spoiler. (Found by Memepool.)
From the Seattle offices of ESPN.com, it’s the thrilling Photoshopped adventures of Ichiro-Man vs. Godzilla!
An entire site devoted to the history of 45 rpm record label design!
“Comics I Don’t Understand.”
Why do rock stars have to look so surly all the time?
The new MISC magazine goes to the printer today. And it’s a beaut, if I do say so myself. Just gorgeous. You gotta get one. Seriously.
There’s a release party for it Sat., Aug. 11, 5-8 p.m. at the Belltown Underground Art Gallery, 2211 1st Ave. (where our photo exhibit is still up by popular demand). Be there or be… well, you know.
LESS ARTIFICE, MORE INTELLIGENCE: Here’s the haunting original short-short story behind the bloated blockbuster movie A.I.
How caffeine created the modern world.
The name says it all: “My Cat Hates You.com.”
Everything you could ever want to know about Godzilla.
Just when you’d forgotten about the Sonics’ former top star, a Houston-based site has a collection of (borderline distasteful) Shawn Kemp fat jokes.
Yr. ob’d’t c’r’s’p’n’d’t recently saw the classic 1960 film Elmer Gantry, based on the even-more-classic 1927 Sinclair Lewis novel of corruption and hypocrisy in the heartland.
I was struck by the film’s remarkable willingness, for a Hollywood product of its time, to maturely handle its topic (though it was still considerably toned down from the novel’s even harsher anti-hypocrisy message.) And, yes, I was pleasantly shocked to see Shirley Jones, Mom Partridge herself, as a hooker w/a heart-O-gold.
But I was even more astounded at the story’s lessons for today’s Netculture.
In the film, Jean Simmons’s revival-preacher character is wowed by Burt Lancaster’s smooth-salesman title character into turning her ministry into a cash-generating circus, only to lose everything as his snake-oil ways catch up with him and destroy her life’s work.
So must the online community (those of us, that is, who’ve worked to make a real community out of online communication) must now work to rebuild our battered tents and broken pews after the invasion by, and subsequent comeuppance of, the IPO gang.
In the movie, Simmons’s character is destroyed in a church fire (caused indirectly by Elmer’s having convinced town leaders to let him ignore building codes), while Elmer soldiers on to new scams. Can the human-scale Internet avoid such a metaphorical fate?
Commentator Dave Winer, whom we’ve mentioned here previously, likes to use the acronym “FUD” (for “fear, uncertainty, and doubt”) to describe the rhetorical hype mechanisms by which certain big companies try to control the medium’s future.
Companies accomplish FUD by convincing other companies and end users that, for instance, the Microsoft agenda will inevitably prevail, and hence that any technology or business model contadicting the MS agenda (Java, Linux, Macintosh, Netscape, RealAudio, open-source software, or cross-platform Net-based applications), and anyone attempting to use it, is doomed to the eternal damnation of techno-obscelescence.
But FUD doesn’t have to be deliberately spread by someone with an unterior motive. It can thrive on its own power. Folks in the tech-biz can get caught up into it on their own.
Companies can be be-FUD-dled into believing they’ll never make it unless they Get Big Fast, or that they’ll lose the “mindshare” wars unless they spend megabucks on hi-profile brand advertising, or that they won’t get or keep an A-list staff unless they pour more megabucks into perks for executives and other “key” personnel.
Hundreds of companies were so be-FUD-dled in these ways that they put everything they had and more into business practices any sane person could see were faulty. Many of these companies are no longer with us, burned up in fiscal disasters of their own making.
Those of us who have, thus far, survived the tech-biz equivalent of a trial by fire should consider ourselves duly chastized and inspired to follow the true faith of changing the world.
