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IN HONOR OF all the kindly PR people who keep sending their bizarre promotional trinkets our way, Misc. hereby informs you that (1) Miller Beer is now printing scenes from its TV ads on the backs of its labels; (2) it’s the 35th anniversary of the Easy-Bake Oven and its makers are sponsoring a recipe contest at www.easybake.com; and (3) GameWorks now has a Jurassic Park walk-through “experience,” whatever that is.
UPDATES: Looks like we’ll get a Ballard Fred Meyer after all. The chain’s reached a compromise with neighborhood activists. As a result, Freddy’s will leave part of the ex-Salmon Bay Steel site near Leary Way for industrial use. The ex-Ernst site up the street, which I’d suggested as an alternate Freddy’s space, will now house the Doc Freeman’s boating-supply emporium…. Not only is the Apple Theater, the region’s last all-film porno house, closing, but so is Seattle’s other remaining XXX auditorium, the video-projection-based Midtown on 1st. Real-estate speculators hope to turn it into more of the yupscale-retail sameoldsameold.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Cindy Simmons’s Wallingford Word (“Cutest newspaper east of Fremont”) is a sprightly eight-page newsletter on north-central issues and events. The first issue highlights Metro Transit’s scary plan to chop service on all-day neighborhood routes in the near north end, in favor of more rush-hour commuter service–a scheme which, if implemented, would devastate the notion of transit as an option for voluntarily car-free urban life. Free in the area, or online at www.seanet.com/~csimmons.
THAT’S SHOE BIZ: The high-priced sneaker biz is collapsing fast, according to a recent USA Today business story. It claims teens and young adults are (wisely, in my opinion) moving toward sensibly-priced footwear and away from $120 high-tops bearing the name of this year’s overhyped slam-dunk egomaniac. What will happen to the NBA without endorsement contracts to make up for salary caps? (Some superstars make twice as much from shoe ads as they do from actually playing basketball.) Maybe something good–maybe the overdue deflation of the league’s overemphasis on individual heroics and the realization that it’s a better game when played the Sonics’ way, as a full-team effort. And maybe the Woolworth Corp. will be proven wrong to have jettisoned its variety stores to put its resources into its struggling Foot Locker subsidiary.
CREAMED: After all these weeks, folks are still talking about the Bill Gates pie-in-the-face incident in Brussels. Maybe it’s ’cause instigator Noel Godin knew the spectacle he wanted to make. Self-proclaimed “entarteur” (applier of, or to, tarts) Godin, 52, is a lifelong provocateur–a vet of the May ’68 rebellion in Paris and of that movement’s ideological forebearers, the Situationists (post-surrealist artists and theorists who explored what Guy Debord called “The Society of the Spectacle”). Besides his paid work as a writer and historian, he and a corps of volunteers have pied famous people in public for almost 30 years. Targets have ranged from writer Margeurite Duras (Godin told Time‘s Netly News website that Duras “represented for us the `empty’ novel”) and bourgeois art-world types to Euro politicians and TV personalities. Godin told Netly News he targeted Gates “because in a way he is the master of the world, and… he’s offering his intelligence, his sharpened imagination, and his power to the governments and to the world as it is today–that is to say gloomy, unjust, and nauseating. He could have been a utopist, but he prefers being the lackey of the establishment. His power is effective and bigger than that of the leaders of the governments, who are only many-colored servants.” Godin’s not merely out to poke fun at the mighty, but to call the structures of power and privilege into question. You can see Godin (as an author during a radio-interview scene) in The Sexual Life of the Belgians, available for rent at Scarecrow Video.
(I still won’t tell latte jokes in the column, but I will be guest barista this Tuesday, 8 p.m.-whenever, at Habitat Espresso, Broadway near John.)
MISC. CONTINUES to be haunted by the Winter Olympics opening-ceremony theme song, “When Children Rule the World.” Sometimes it seems they do now, only in grownup bodies…
SHADES OF PALE: The Times reported this month that Kenny G’s one of the most respected white musicians among black jazz purists. My theory: G represents a stereotype of whiteness corresponding almost perfectly to the stereotypes of blackness profitably portrayed for years by some white people’s favorite black acts.
DELIVERING INFLUENCE: A recent Wall St. Journal told how United Parcel Service tried to pay the Univ. of Wash. to lend its institutional credibility onto pro-corporate research. The formerly locally-owned UPS offered $2.5 million to the UW med school in ’95. But instead of directing its gift toward general areas of study, UPS insisted the money go toward the work of UW orthopedic surgeon Stanley J. Bigos. The WSJ claimed UPS liked Bigos because “his research has suggested that workers’ back-injury claims may relate more to poor attitudes than ergonomic factors on the job.” The company’s fighting proposed tougher worker-safety laws, and wanted to support its claims with “independent” studies from a bigtime university that happenned to need the money. Negotiations with UW brass dragged on for two years, then collapsed. Bigos insists he wouldn’t have let UPS influence his work if he’d gotten its cash. But if companies can pick and choose profs already disposed to tell ’em what they wanna hear, “academic independence” becomes a bigger joke than it already is.
THE DESTRUCTION CONTINUES: Steve’s Broiler has lost its lease and closed. The 37-year-old downtown restaurant/ lounge was beloved by seniors, sailors, and punks for dishing out ample portions of good unpretentious grub and drinks, in a classic paneling-and-chrome-railing setting. (It was also the setting for Susan Catherine’s ’80s comic Overheard at America’s Lunch Counters.) The owners might restart if they can find another spot. It was the last tenant in the former Osborn & Ulland building, which will now be refitted for the typical “exciting new retail” blah blah blah…. Remember Jamie Hook’s Stranger piece last year about the Apple Theater, one of America’s last all-film porno houses? If you want to witness this landmark of archaic sleaze, better hurry. The Apple’s being razed soon for an affordable-housing complex incorporating the apartment building next door where the Pike St. Cinema was, and where the rock club Uncle Rocky’s is now. Rocky’s will close when the remodeling starts, and won’t be invited back (the housing people don’t like late-night loudness beneath residences).
MORE, MORE, MORE!: A recent Business Week cover story calls it “The Entertainment Glut.” I call it a desperate attempt by Big Media to keep control of a cultural landscape dividing and blossoming to a greater extent than I’d ever hoped. BW sez the giants (Disney, Murdoch, Time Warner, Viacom, et al.) are trying to maintain market share by invading one another’s genre turfs and cranking out more would-be blockbusters and bestsellers than ever before, to the point that none of them can expect anything like past profit margins. (Indeed, many of these “synergistic” media combos are losing wads of dough, losses even creative accounting can no longer hide.) It gets worse: Instead of adapting to the new realities of a million subcultures, the giants are redoubling their push after an increasingly-elusive mass audience. Murdoch’s HarperCollins book company scrapped over 100 planned “mid-list” titles to make up for losses on costly big-celeb books. BW claims the giants’ movie divisions are similarly “spending lavishly” on intended Next Titanics and trying “to stop producing modestly budgeted fare.” Their record divisions are dropping acts after one album, while ardently pushing the retro rockstar-ism of Britpop. The longer the giants try to keep their untenable business plans going, the better the opportunities for true indies in all formats–if the indies can survive the giants’ ongoing efforts to crowd ’em out of the marketplace.
(If Jean Godden can make personal appearances at coffee shops, so can I. I’ll be “guest barista” the evening of March 10 at Habitat Espresso, on Broadway near John. Mark your calendars.)
REASON FOR THE SEASON: The oldtime Euro-pagans (and the Catholics who re-defined many of the old Euro-pagan holiday dates) had a reason for a holiday of romance this week. It’s the end of the 13 darkest weeks of the year. While not the time of fertility and blossomings, the waning of S.A.D. season is a reminder that more fruitful times are indeed ahead.
SIGN OF THE WEEK (marquee at the Oak Tree): “Fallen, Half Baked, As Good As It Gets.” Considering the quasi-pickled state of many Aurora nightlife patrons, this might be the most saleable set of letters they’ve ever put up there…. In other film-hype news, commercials for the quickly-disappeared Phantoms referred to its originator, hack writer Dean Koontz, as “The Master of Suspense.” At least when Brian De Palma stole that slogan from Hitchcock, he inserted a qualifier: “The Modern Master of Suspense.”
APPLYING YOURSELF: I’m sure it’s a coincidence that the folded cover of this year’s Bumbershoot performing arts application pamphlet looks amazingly like the Scientologists’ famous “Personality Test” flyer. So far, though, no reports of B-shoot’s selection committees hooking up any entrants to E-meters.
NO PLACE LIKE HOME: So new mayor Paul Schell’s official priority #1 is the city’s housing crisis, a topic loudly ignored by the prior regime. My first thoughts: Certain pundits used to say it took a Democratic president to get us into war and a Republican to get us out. Maybe it takes a member of the developers’ clique, rather than a politician merely working on the clique’s behalf, to deal with speculative overdevelopment’s effects on the social fabric.
But after reading preliminary accounts of Schell’s plan, a more realistic assessment seeped in. Rice was a politician who sucked up to developers. Schell’s a developer reasserting his roots as a politician. And pro-business-Democrat politicians love construction schemes better than anything in the world. Schell’s answer to runaway development: More development, via “targeted incentives” to builders, relaxed density and parking codes in selected neighborhoods, etc.
Schell’s plan also echos the Rice-era Seattle Commons and urban-village schemes (which weren’t really promoted as answers to exploding home prices and rampant evictions) in a less publicized goal: To get more people living in town, by increasing one of the lowest homes-per-square-mile ratio of any big U.S. city. It won’t slow down suburban sprawl that much, but the political extablishment undoubtedly hopes it’ll slow the decline in Seattle’s portion of the county’s and the state’s population–and hence stem the city’s loss of influence within the county council and the state legislature.
DISHING IT OUT: I hear from more and more people these days who’re getting, or wish they could get, a satellite dish. There’s even one guy who works on a public access program who told me he wants to replace his cable TV connection with a dish, even though he’d no longer receive his own show at home. The cable companies, meanwhile, are still feeling the PR fallout from prior censorship drives and are shying away from promoting the access channel as an asset you can only get with cable.
The cable people promise to combat the dishes with digital transmission and dozens more channels–one of these years. If that doesn’t stem cable’s loss of market share in time, how will access producers make their works available to ex-cable households? Maybe via web sites with “streaming video” files, particularly if promised higher-speed modems and more powerful home computers make that more feasible. But that won’t be free to producers, unless somebody donates server space at an Internet service provider. I could imagine that happening for shows allied to established political or religious groups. But what of the more personal statements? Who’ll support the streaming of Goddess Kring or Tea Talk with Leroy Chin? An arts group or producers’ co-op could do it, but even those outfits would probably have somebody deciding who could or couldn’t use their services. The freewheeling, no-gatekeepers thang that is today’s access channel might be something we’d better enjoy while still in its prime.
HIGH IQ=LOW XXX?: The papers were full of smart-folks-get-less-sex headlines the same week IDG Books brought out Dating for Dummies, the latest extension of a guidebook series initially aimed at people who needed to run computers at work but didn’t like to. Maybe they should’ve put out Dating for Smarties instead. (On the other hand, a programming-manual format’s perhaps an ideal means to show literal-minded people how to survive in such an un-left-brain activity.) (On the third hand, maybe it’s all the wrong way; reinforcing thought patterns completely useless for the realm of hormones and emotions.)
Smart ladies at least have Marilyn Vos Savant and the learned lovelies in Bull Durham and La Lectrice as sexy role models. Who’ve boys got: The antisocial (alleged) Unabomber? The hygiene-challenged Einstein and Edison? OK, there’s the fun-lovin’ late scientist Richard Feynman and certain brooding movie master-criminal types, but they’re the exceptions. But the more common image is the drooling fanboy in a three-sizes-too-small Capt. Kirk shirt, peering through inch-thick spectacles, looking for love in all the wrong places (like AOL chat rooms), fantasizing about Amazonian superwomen but incapable of chatting up a real one, perhaps still traumatized by high-school crushes who slept with jocks and treated him as a brother.
Many hyper-rational people of all genders fear the irrational, and love and sex are about the most irrational behaviors known to humankind. But becoming more desirable isn’t as impossible as it sometimes seems. Practice using a softer, sultrier voice in which to recite post-structuralist literary theory. Memorize love sonnets. Do something to get outside the comfy prison of your own head (yoga, gardening, cycling, pets). Reclaim your place in the physical/ biological/ emotional realm. To quote a love-struck professor in Hal Hartley’s Surviving Desire, “Knowing is not enough.”
`WORLD’ CONQUEST: I’ve heard punk-rock activists might try to disrupt location tapings of MTV’s Real World Seattle with pickets or street-theater type hostilities. I say we can be more creative than that. They think they’re an entertainment network; heck, we’ll show ’em some real entertainment. First, start a phone tree in advance, so you can descend on the place in numbers. Then when the crew and cast are sighted somewhere, arrive en masse in Santa suits, or chanting the Ivar’s Acres of Clams folk jingle, or loading the bar’s juke box to repeatedly play “Convoy.” Let’s show those stuck-up industry people we know how to have an old-school good time in this town. Speaking of entertainments…
WORDS & MUSIC: Fizz: A Blah Blah Blah Blah Magazine has put out its last issue and I’ll miss it. Some of publisher Cathy Rundell’s associates are regrouping to start a successor mag, Plus One. One of the things I loved about Fizz (and its LA-based predecessor Fiz) was its insistance on indie-pop as a force for creativity and empowerment, for doing things where you are with what you’ve got.
Compare this to the attitude in Resonance, the three-year-old local dance and pop mag. Where Fizz got personal with musicians, portraying them as just-plain merrymakers like you or me, Resonance keeps its critical distance. Even its interviews too often practice the same old provincialism, treating musical artists as gods and goddesses descending upon us from the media capitals. The irony, of course, is how dance music depends for its real innovations on stubborn trend-breakers, many from outside the NY/LA/SF/London axis. Another dance-club freezine, the LA-based Sweater, exemplifies this in a recent cover story about Derrick May, the Detroit DJ who pioneered late-’80s house music–and who only found a domestic market for his work after U.K. imitators “popularized” the style.
I’ve been criticized for having a rocker-reactionary “disco sucks” attitude toward the dance revolution. Not true. My beef’s with the self-defeating “real-life-is-elsewhere” attitude among too many dance-scene followers, too content to remain followers. Like an introspective genius afraid to date, the scene needs to shake off its inhibitions, to dare to be foolish, to really get down.
(Share your egghead love tips at clark@speakeasy.org .)
EARLY PROJECTIONS: This paper’s previously chided the Cineplex Odeon Meridian Cinemas, mainly over its lack of union projectionists. But the Pike St. multiplex has one good thing going for it: This past Thanksgiving week, it showed movies as early as 10 in the morning. Morning movies are a tradition in towns with costlier downtown real estate, where theaters have to maximize their assets; they also make “nightlife” not just for the nighttime. Let’s get it and other theaters to open early on a regular basis, at least on weekends. Instead of dinner and a movie, I say why not breakfast and a movie? See a show before heading off on weekend errands or shopping trips. And there’s nothing like a little drama before that dreary job. In other entertainment news…
PASTA PARTICIPLES: One of the fun things about following rock bands is the fun n’ confusion when different outfits take the same names. In my years I’ve heard of two different bands called the Cunninghams, two sets of Feelies, two Screams, two Clubber Langs, three sets of Mutants, and as many as three Nirvanas besides the famous one. Even individuals in the biz can be confused for one another; i.e. the musician/ producer Tim Kerr who has nothing to do with the founder of Tim/Kerr Records. Most recently, Kramden’s Bar and Grill way up on Aurora has advertised an R&B cover band called Eddie Spaghetti and the Meatballs–no apparent relation to the Eddie Spaghetti who’s fronted the cow-punk Supersuckers these past five-plus years. (On a similar note, Minus Five/ Young Fresh Fellow Scott McCaughey sez he’s no relation, as far as he knows, to Iowa’s young fresh McCaughey septuplets, even though both families pronounce it “McCoy.”) In still other entertainment news…
PANTS PARTICIPLES: Loved the notion of an all-female Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (by the new troupe Heads Up Gorgeous at Book-it’s stage). Shakespeare’s plays were originally executed by all-male casts; it’s only appropriate to have reverse-drag of sorts in Tom Stoppard’s sideways take on Hamlet. It also gives a chance for actresses to appear in strong roles that have little or nothing to do with sex or romance, something classic and even modern-classic theater hasn’t enough of. In other gender-related news…
BUYING CHAINS AT A CHAIN STORE: By now you’ve seen the ads for the Castle Superstore, the region’s newest and largest sex-toy shop. Is it worth going the 40 miles to Tacoma for? Probably not, at least not just for the merchandise; mostly the same stuff you can find in Seattle at Show World/ Fantasy Unlimited, Champ Arcade, the Crypt, and/or Toys in Babeland. What sets it apart is its highly female-friendly setting, in a suburban big-box store building (formerly Olympic Sports) right down Tacoma Mall Boulevard from the Discovery Zone and Chuck E. Cheese. Under bright fluorescents, along clean carpeted aisles, you’ve got stacks and stacks of X videos (straight and gay; buy or rent), lace teddies, handcuffs, condoms, body-part-shaped candies, Hustler magazine-brand vibrators, inflatable party dolls, hard- and softcore magazines (all shrink-wrapped), cat-fight paperback novels, oils, creams, perfumes, penis “desensitizing” gels, and more.
The day I was there it had a substantial and very coed clientele, all regular, Sears-clad folks out to make their private lives a bit less drab. There were no nervous giggles, no eyes darting away in shame–just apparently well-adjusted people comfortable with their bodies and with the sight of other people’s bodies. But the arrival of Castle (a Phoenix outfit trying to go national) doesn’t just represent the mainstreaming of the sex biz but the chaining of it. It proves there’s no retail niche too specialized or too outre for the consolidators.
SHOPPING DAYS may be winding down, but you’ve still time to send in your recommendations for the annual Misc. In/Out list. Send yours to clark@speakeasy.org. Remember, we seek people, places, and things that will become hot during the next year, not necessarily what’s hot now. If you think everything that’s presently big’s just gonna keep getting bigger, I’ve got some Macauley Culkin fan-club merchandise to sell you.
CLASS WARS: Amid the controversy regarding Ballard High’s students and staff being shunted from their reconstruction-impaired regular digs to the quite dilapidated Wallingford carcass of the closed-in-’81 Lincoln High, Showtime’s been running Class of 1999, a truly bad B-thriller filmed at Lincoln in 1989. Exec-produced by onetime SIFF co-boss Dan Ireland, this RoboCop ripoff starts with that #1 cliche of bad sci-fi, the present-day trend exaggerated into the future. Teen-gang violence gets so bad by ’99, the opening narration states, that high schools have become total-security compounds with armed robots disguised as teachers. Only some of the robots go schizo and start killing teens, causing the all-white gangstas to retaliate in a predictable orgy of blood and steel limbs. Anybody who saw it (or worked on the crew) could tell Lincoln was perfect as a fictional bombed-out shell of a school, hence a lousy site for a real school.
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: A kind reader, visiting a local dollar store, found and sent in a package of Smack Ramen, an Asian-style meal in a packet (as made in Costa Mesa, CA). While the name obviously derives from a Japanglish attempt to invoke lip-smackin’ goodness, there is (as is oft the case with Japanglish) an unfortunate double meaning. Is this also the cheapo-meal of choice for those who’ve spent all their money on a certain poppy-derived non-nutritive substance (also Asian-derived)?
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The second “more-or-less quarterly” issue of Platform, Morgain Cole and Bret Fetzer’s ambitious local theater zine, is now at Seattle theaters and other free drop-off spots. It’s got timely ideas about the organization and financing of local drama troupes, plus a 1983 Richard Nelson essay about the precarious state of “Nonprofit Theater in America.” He said the theater movement was “nearing disaster,” ‘cuz it was “without an adequate sense of tradition or a sense of social responsibility.” The fact that most of Nelson’s arguments could be made today (and are being made today, as in a recent NEA staff report) proves (1) the theater movement’s done a good job of not dying, and (2) how little further than that it’s gotten. (No subscriptions, but info can be had from 313 10th Ave. E, #1, Seattle 98102.)
WORKIN’ IT: The Discover U catalog offered a course two weeks ago on the “Secrets for Making Love Work.” For those of you who couldn’t attend that day or didn’t have the $29 class fee, we hereby offer a few of our own secrets:
I WANNA KNOW: Last month, we asked who you thought had more powers, Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It wasn’t one of our most popular surveys, but all four respondents agreed: Sabrina. Our next survey: What will ’90s nostalgia look like? Which sights, looks, sounds, and consumer goods will future movies and collectors deem as evoking those silly days of now as A Simpler Time? Submit your suggestions at our new email address, clark@speakeasy.org.
PASSAGE (from Topper author Thorne Smith): “Like life itself, my stories have no point and get absolutly nowhere. And, like life, they are a little mad and purposeless. They resemble those people who watch with placid concentration a steam shovel digging a large hole in the ground. They are almost as purposeless as a dignified commuter shaking an impotent fist after a train he has just missed. They are like the man who dashes madly through traffic only to linger aimlessly on the opposite corner watching a fountain pen being demonatrated in a shop window.”
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).
HERE AT MISC. we can’t help but anticipate and enjoy the arrival of autumnal weather. I claim to be not really a weather person, but I can’t help but feel more comfortable when the outside changes from garishly bright 70mm Technicolor back to muted 16mm Eastmancolor.
THE MAILBAG: Responding to our recent praise of the yet un-hippified genre that is marching music, Liz Dreisbach writes in to plug a group she leads, the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band. “It’s Americana at its best. Thirty players (ages 15 through 80), each wearing a radiant and different classic band jacket. We play nothing but old band tunes, mostly marches… We even have a sedentary majorette who twirls her baton sitting in her chair.” It next performs on Nov. 6, during a “Sousa Birthday Bash” at that hot new neo-vaudeville venue, Hokum Hall (7904 35th Ave. SW, West Seattle). In other old-timey spectacles…
FLIGHT OF FANCY: One event nearly ignored by the media this equinoxal season was the 50th birthday of Sea-Tac Airport. Airport management held a relatively low-key reception inside the main terminal recently: cake, mini-sausages, a kiddie choir, displays of ’40s-’50s flying memorabilia. The highlight was “stilt walker” Janet Raynor, dolled up in a ten-foot-tall version of a vintage-1967 Alaska Airlines flight-attendant’s dress. Raynor strode, pranced, and even danced in the long dress (which gave her the look of a mid-’70s Bon Marche fashion-ad illustration) while deftly fielding jokes from passers-by about which airline has the most legroom in business class. She also passed out reproductions of an old publicity photo with the dress’s original wearer standing beside the airline’s president. The guy in the photo’s just tall enough to provide the model with a degree of personal service not even Alaska Airlines is known for.
FEASTING ON A GRAND SALAMI: For as long as I could remember, Seattle was a sometimes-lovable loser of a city, whose “leaders” (mainly engineers, land developers, and steakhouse owners) wanted to become “world class” but usually muffed it. The Mariners, who played unspectacularly for so many years in that homely cement pit, matched this civic image perfectly. The same time Seattle became known as an assertive seller of software and coffee and sportswear, the Ms started becoming winners. This year, they not only won their division but had been widely expected to do so. Microsoft and Starbucks have become so dominant, they’ve generated ire within their respective industries as hyper-aggressive organizations bent on total domination. The Ms are a ways from that kind of rep, but how many consecutive seasons at or near the top would it take before they became as nationally reviled as the old-time Yankees? Just wondering.
HAVING A COMPLEX: The change of season often brings a reassessment of one’s life situation. If you’re feeling a little too much peace-‘n’-quiet in your personal world, here are some handy tips for voluntarily complicating your life:
‘TIL NEXT TIME, cheer on the Ms, make sure you check out the truly-fine selection of Halloween party novelties at Chubby & Tubby (including the bleeding-hand candle with wicks on each finger, dripping blood-red wax to reveal plastic bones underneath), ponder the possibilities of a home life with the clear plastic inflatable furniture from Urban Outfitters (hint: better not have un-declawed cats or careless smokers around), and heed these words of the one-‘n’-only Liz Taylor: “There’s no deodorant like success.”
WHAT A RELIEF!: By the time you read this, the Mariners may have clinched the AL West championship and secured a role in the baseball playoffs. They were damn close to the clinch when this was written, but with the state of the Ms’ bullpen all year long nothing was sure. For just such jittery situations, Queen Anne-based Beadle Enterprises now offers Ninth Inning Worry Beads. These translucent plastic beads on a metal string come in Mariner blue and tourquoise, with a tiny wooden baseball and bat attached. The company claims they’re just the thing to “soothe nasty symptoms associated with penant fever. Twirl them. Rub them. Jiggle them. Hold them in your hands and pray. They’re almost guaranteed to work.” (Sales info: 217-9002.)
A SCHMICH IN TIME: Earlier this summer, a humorous text document was disseminated on the Internet far and wide, labeled as a commencement address to MIT graduates by author Kurt Vonnegut. Then, Net news sites (and mainstream news media) reported it was a hoax: Vonnegut never spoke at MIT, and the witty words-O-advice to today’s youth were from a Chicago Tribune column by Mary Schmich. Earlier this month, the Seattle Scroll ran a story about Internet rumormongering, claiming (via an email message from one Jem Casey, purportedly reprinting a Chronicle of Higher Education article) the hoax story was itself a hoax–that Vonnegut really did give the speech at MIT, and nobody named Mary Schmich had ever worked for the Tribune. From there, Scroll writer Jesse Walker uses the case to chastize the media for their collective “Internet hysteria.”
Walker’s arguments are well-taken and I agree with most of them. Too bad the anti-hoax message he opens his piece with is, you guessed it, a hoax. All Walker had to do was look up the Tribune‘s Schmich page (www.chicago.tribune.com/columns/schmich/archives/97/803.htm) to learn she’s real, she really wrote the words-O-advice (which included a plea to be sure and use sunscreen), and Vonnegut was nowhere near MIT this past June.
(After this was originally posted, Walker wrote in to say he knew the anti-hoax statement was a hoax, and that careful readers of his piece could have discerned that he knew.)
NOT THE SAME OLD SONG:Some weeks back, Misc. asked your input on formerly-popular musical genres that haven’t yet been turned into hip revivals. Some of you continued to write in past the initial deadline. Here’s some more of your nominations, with some more of my comments:
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.)
WATCH THIS SPACE #1: A new independent movie house is tentatively set to open sometime next month, joining the Grand Illusion, the Admiral, and the part-time screening spaces around town. The 108-seat Casbah Cinema‘s downstairs in the Sailors’ Union building at 1st and Wall, next to the former Trade Winds/ My Suzie’s restaurant space. Owners Laura and Anton DeJong are self-described “big film fans” who’ve planned for years to set up their own “grand cinema on a small scale.” They promise “classic and foreign films, but nothing really obscure” on Thurs.-Sun. evenings, with early-week dates open for rental to independent screeners and community groups. The DeJongs are also opening a cafe in part of the space, but aren’t applying for a liquor license at this time–a shame, since some of the McMenamin brewpubs in Oregon have quaint little screening spaces attached to ’em.
WATCH THIS SPACE #2: A Barnes & Noble book superstore (or perhaps a B&N-owned B. Dalton regular-size chain bookstore) is rumored to be taking over the Fantasy Unlimited/ Deja Vu corner at 1st & Pike, previously considered for a new public library. Scouts for the chain are said to have been poring over Left Bank Books across the street in the Market, presumably to make sure the new B&N’s fully competitive in the fields of feminist-film-analysis zines and left-activist memoirs. B&N’s regional management claims no definitive plans to add a location downtown, or anywhere else in town, just yet. While anything’s possible, I’d bet against ’em taking that particular site. For one thing, it’s too small as is, and its adjacent buildings are controlled by too many different interests to make assembling an appropriate parcel easy.
STOPPING THE PRESSES: Aorta, the occasional local art tabloid, has published its fifth and last issue under its current all-visual-arts format. Publisher/editor Jim Demetre’s closing editorial gripes predictably about the vagaries of trying to mount a self-sufficient, unsubsidized journal promoting indie and fringe visual artists. But he also complains that “There are many issues which I am very interested in writng and reading about,” but “the local visual art scene… has rarely provided me, or my writers, with a relevant point of departure for discussing them.”
While thanking Demetre for going this far, and acknowledging he has every right to revamp his publicaiton into something he’s more willing to put time and toil into (he plans to resume later this year with a more generalist culture-crit rag), his statement says something about the state of contemporary-art criticism in America. In Aorta, its precursor Reflex, and some of the slick NYC art mags, critics haven’t seemed to want to write about art or artists as much as about the critics’ own philosophical/ political worldviews. Sometimes, articles and reviews in these would take no more than a sideways glance at the nominal art topic, before wandering around about the writer’s beliefs concernig The Dominant Culture and The Other; or about how prejudice is a major contemporary problem and it’s those people who aren’t like us who’re always committing it. We could still use a regional contemporary-art mag that’s really about contemporary art, but it’d take a whole rethinking of the critic’s role. Any takers?
STARTING THE PRESSES: Two Rocket veterans have pop-cult self-help books just out: Start Your Own Band by Marty Jourard and Start Your Own Zine by Veronika Kalmar. Both are packaged by one Jet Lambert (described on the back cover as “a muse to those bitten by the bug of entrepreneurism in the 1990s”) and distributed by Hyperion (the Disney book division that just paid an upteen-thousand-dollar advance for the yet-unwritten memoir of Seattle Schools boss John Stanford). Besides the juicy irony of learning about DIY culture-making from one of Earth’s hugest media giants, there’s something strange about instruction books for activities you’re not supposed to need instruction books for. Still, ex-Motels member Jourard does get some good basic topics covered (such as what chords are and why good used guitars can be better than bad new ones); while Kalmar’s book lightly touches on a lot of topics experienced zinesters (such as myself) already know plenty about.
YOUR HELP NEEDED: Can you think of any formerly-popular American musical genre which hasn’t been the subject of an attempted “hip” revival in recent years? If you know of one, please let me know at clark@speakeasy.org.
MISC. HEREBY CALLS for a 12-month moratorium on Seattle artists (in all fields) from moving to New York or California. If you must get out of town, go somewhere where you can learn more about life or where you can help build another decentralist scene. I know things look relatively bleak for indie arts round here; many photogs, actors, writers, playwrights, and artisans are again becoming tempted by the old belief that their careers would immediately take off if they only got outta Seattle.
But this is one of those times when the needs of the larger society outweigh the individual career goal. And what the larger society needs, I still believe, is the building of decentralized production and distribution infrastructures for painting, photography, literature, drama, performance, music, even film and TV. At this point, it might not matter how “rebellious” a song or an image is–if it’s sold through the same old NY/ LA/ SF culture machine (even through the “alternative” departments of that machine), it’s still enforcing a top-down, producer-consumer mindset.
At one time, I thought the Seattle music scene would provide the fulcrum for breaking the machine. I underestimated the machine’s ability for self-defense. By using its hype mechanisms to redefine the Seattle threat into a single “sound” and “look” to be promoted to death then discarded, the machine was able to resume selling safe, manufactured “rebels” to demographically specified markets. Despite this, more indie bands are selling records now; but more still needs to be done, in music and other fields.
You might be thinking…
* “But what can li’l ol’ me do without an established market?” You can help build such a market. This region now has the population base and the income base. It has artists. It has art buyers (anybody who reads or watches or listens to or looks at or wears anything). It has pieces of a sales infrastructure, at least in some fields (galleries, boutiques, record labels). It needs a little more of that last connecting piece, that hard-to-describe level of identity consciousness that binds a community together instead of leaving isolated individuals to absorb prepackaged identities from outside.
* “Dammit Jim! I’m an artist, not a marketer.” Yes, you’re an artist. A communicator of ideas. Bringing those ideas to life involves a set of skills. Getting cash out of the products of those ideas involves a different, only partly-overlapping, set of skills. These skills can be learned; or they can be hired or bartered for.
* “But I’m killing my dreams if I don’t go for the Big Time.” No, you’re killling them if you make them subservient to the industry’s machinations.
* “But everything here just plain SUCKS.” Then start working together to make things suck a little less. It’ll be hard, but for most of you it won’t be harder than trying to survive among the thousands of identically “transgressive” art-hipster wannabes in Frisco and SoHo.
I’m not merely wishing for a bigger Northwest role in the corporate culture biz. (Certainly Nike and Microsoft are NW-born outfits playing the mainstream marketing game as heavily as anybody.) No, I’m calling for nothing less than the realignment of how Americans think and dream. I want an American theater that treats the nation as the nation, not as raw-material sources for Manhattan. I want more movies made here, not just location-shot. I want more (and more work for) local costumers and video artists and curators and set builders and comedians, all of whom would build their careers by drawing audience bucks away from the tentacles of Global Entertainment. (There’s a lot of big-entertainment products I like, but I still want strong competition to them.)
And, yes, I have my selfish reasons as well. I want a great urban, contempo thang to thrive right here in City Lite. It’s not that an indigenous regional culture isn’t developing here. It is, and I don’t like it. We’ve still got so much potential. I don’t want to settle for a Seattle whose artistic ambitions don’t go beyond glass bowls and latte jokes.
(`Should I stay or should I go?’ Discuss the question now by email to clark@speakeasy.org. Here are some recent responses:)
Sent: 7/24/97 5:32 PM Received: 7/24/97 11:27 AM From: (withheld by request) To: clark@speakeasy.org
Read your column today, then bits and pieces of your website. Thanks for being the first person in this town to show any interest in whether I stay. Unfortunately, you’re alone, and that’s not enough.
I came to the great Northwest on a one-year contract, to teach theater at a local university. When that was up, I thought, “Hey! I’m in the heart of alternative-theater country!” (Or so my envious friends in L.A. told me.) “I think I’ll stay!”
So I volunteered for the legendary Alice B., a theater that had earned a mention in my 20th Century theater classes in California. I directed and dramaturged for one of its last performances, and watched the media and the community blame anyone but themselves for the theater’s demise. And I volunteered for Aha!, the grandmama of your Fringe, a few months ago, and watched the proceedings yet again.
Clark, I’m over 40, too, but I learned a few things off the playground, as well as on. One of them is that, if I can’t find work doing my art, then my art isn’t getting done. And I’ve got a limited lifespan to do it in. Unfortunately, I’m not “in” with the theatrical “in group,” so I can’t get work here. So I’m going where I can.
Lest you think these are the bitter grapes of a middle-aged wannabe, let me add that I have the credentials you want. I’ve directed over twenty productions and won alternative press “best play” awards. I founded a company that lasted for ten years doing all-original material in the midwest. I have an MFA, and I’m finishing my PhD. I headed a state-wide arts organization, overseeing marketing and administration. I’ve taught theater and published. I’m computer literate. And I can’t get an interview with any arts organization in this town.
OK, one interview, but they went with the “young, high-energy” candidate.
Clark, if you want me to stay, I gotta have something to do. I’ve given it three years, but I’m too old to wait any longer for Seattle to wake up to what it has. And I hope every artist, whatever their age, puts doing the work ahead of waiting for “the realignment of how Amercans think and dream.”
I’ll write when I find work.
–If you publish this in any way (even on your web site), please omit my name. I don’t want anyone to think this is a not-very-subtle effort to get a job.
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Subject: Stay Sent: 7/27/97 11:09 PM Received: 7/27/97 9:21 PM From: William Salyers, leoth@speakeasy.org To: clark@speakeasy.org
Hello;
I am one of those Seattle based artists who is moving to Los Angeles in the very near future, and your recent column in The Stranger prompted me to reexamine and give voice to my reasons for so doing. I found your piece thought-provoking and wanted to share some of those thoughts.
I came here in what local writer/performer Charley McQuary refers to as “the Great Rush of ’89”; New Year’s Day of same, in fact. I was cast almost immediately at Renton Civic Theater in their production of “Sleuth”, and while in rehearsal was also cast in the Seattle Public’s production of “The Apollo Of Bellaq”. “Well, this is great, ” I thought naively, “I’ll be at that big ol’ Seattle Rep in no time…”
Of course, that was before I had heard this community’s vital distinction between “fringe” (or what I like to refer to as Greater Metropolitan Seattle Community Theater) and the “big houses”. That was before I had my last general audition for the Seattle Rep (about six years ago), marked in my memory by the distinction that Daniel Sullivan could not be troubled to raise his eyes from his table and actually LOOK at me (and I assure you, while not the world’s most impressive auditioner, I’m rarely so bad that one must look away, as from a particularly gruesome car wreck).
After the initial rude awakening about the Seattle theater scene and how I fit into it, I settled in to do some work at various smaller venues, much of which I’m extremely proud: “21A” at the Annex, “Strindberg: By and About”, “True West” and “Tuesday” at the AHA!, “Judith” at the Fringe Festival, and “Holy Days” for Dust Bowl Productions at Book-It Theatre. I got a terrific agent, Tish Lopez of the Actors Group, and started doing some occasional TV and film work: a couple of episodes of “Northern Exposure”, the first episode of the short-lived “Medicine Ball”, several industrial videos and even some decent roles in independent features, such as Jeff Probst’s “Trust Me” and Ted Sod’s “Crocodile Tears”, with the Stranger’s own Dan Savage. I even strayed across the “big house” stages once in a blue moon, like a supporting stint at Intiman in “Peter Pan”.
All the while, I held a DAY JOB, that evil, necessary staple of the independent Seattle artist. Some where OK, and some were soul-sucking hellish pits of despair… well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but only SLIGHT- some were pretty bad. That was great, for a while. I even thought it made me better somehow, that having to use so much of myself to even BEGIN doing my art was a sort of ascetic earnest money.
Now, as I see my own 30-year milepost receding further and further into the distance, and hear my wife, a few years older than myself, saying more and more often how much she would like to have a child, I think less about paying my dues and more about reaping my benefits. I cannot speak for other artists, but for myself, I never claimed that all I wanted was to act. I want to make my way as an actor, I want to feed and clothe my family and myself with the fruits of that labor. To that end, I have decided to relocate to a place of greater opportunity. Which brings me to your article.
In calling for your moratorium, you seem to hold New York and California (may I presume you are thinking mostly of LA?) in greatest disdain, as you suggest that if one must leave, it should at least be for a destination other than those. You advocate going somewhere “you can learn more about life”. Isn’t it presumptuous and simplistic to suggest that Austin or Chicago have something to teach, while New York and Los Angeles do not? I just returned from a week in Los Angeles, and I learned some invaluable lessons in just that short time. Perhaps life’s lessons are where one chooses to learn them.
You also make reference to artisans who are “tempted by the old belief that their careers would immediately take off” if only they leave Seattle. If people are leaving with that idea in mind, they are indeed deluding themselves. Nothing will assure that your career will immediately take off, no matter where you are. You can, however, assess a place based on the relative amount of opportunities there. I want to move to Los Angeles because there is more of everything there: more good, more bad, more people, more opportunities. I don’t expect that my career will immediately take off once there, but after eight years in Seattle, simple logic tells me that not much will change if I remain here. Incidentally, while in LA, I spoke with many people from here that have moved there, ranging in length of stay from as recent as a month to as long as several years. None of them, without exception, said that they regretted their move or were contemplating a return.
I must take greatest issue with your idea that by staying here we “serve the needs of the larger society” which “outweigh individual career goals”. It is possible, while definitely not certain, that by staying in Seattle an artist might serve the needs of the larger society of latte’ land, but what of society as a whole? Perhaps the needs of the larger society, outside of Seattle, would be better served by some of these artists relocating to a larger market and reaching a wider audience.
You go on to suggest that we have a civic duty to refrain from enforcing the “producer-consumer mindset”. While I might agree with you that the free market system is far less than ideal, it is the one on which this country is based, and as such, it’s kind of hard to avoid. Everything, art included, is supported (or not) by the producer-consumer mindset. Your column (the whole Stranger, for that matter) comes to me by virtue of the producer-consumer mindset. I would love to be a trust fund child, or win the lottery, or come into a grand inheritance, but I am from a rather more humble background and must sell either my art or some other commodity if I am to make my way. If I leave and try to make my living selling my art I am commodicizing it and myself, absolutely; but do I do this city any service by slogging into a theatre exhausted after a day of suit and tie drudgery to give the dregs of my energy to that which I love most? Or does that simply reinforce the misconception of the second-rate Seattle actor, thereby giving the Warner Shooks and Sharon Otts of this town more justifiable leeway to look elsewhere for talent?
I think the ideas put forth in your column promote a stereotype just as ultimately useless as that of the kid who gets off the bus in LA and becomes an overnight star by virtue of his/her good looks and plucky charm. It is the stereotype of the anonymous, hard-working local artist who through sheer persistence and quality causes an entire community to awaken to the inherit worth of him/her and those who share that passion. Not that I am discounting that stereotype out of hand; no, indeed. Like you, I am powerfully drawn to it. I have been keeping the faith and working hard for nearly a decade, but when faith no longer serves its purpose, it’s time to examine the possibility that it has become merely force of habit.
I’m not relocating to Los Angeles to seek my fame and fortune in the Big Time. I’m just going to find more opportunities. You don’t go to Ohio to drill for oil and you don’t stay in Seattle if you want to make your living as an actor. That is not to say that there aren’t wonderful actors here who I respect and admire. I will miss working with them (although LA is only two hours away by plane, so maybe I won’t). But those people are actor/waiters, or actor/baristas, or, like myself, actor/administrative assistants. I want to at least try my hand at being an actor/actor, so I’m afraid I must decline to join your moratorium.
Thanks for reading my reply. I’m not as comfortable with the written word as the spoken, so please forgive any awkwardness of style or composition that may have made this difficult to read.
Sincerely, William Salyers
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Sent: 7/28/97 8:52 AM Received: 7/28/97 8:23 AM From: WIGWATCH@aol.com To: clark@speakeasy.org
dear clark,
how timely your article was for me, since ten days ago i decided to leave seattle to begin a new life in san francisco. i have closed the book on TRYING to be interested in seattle! i am an illustrator and fine artist, in my mid-thirties. after eight and 1/2 years of wading about, trying to find the pulse of this city, i’m through! for me, there is no pulse. i will head to san francisco, close to desperate, for an essential gasp of air.
the greatest barrier i have found in seattle relates to it’s peculiar “vibe”–i’ve tried to understand and transcend it, but have concluded that for some people this is impossible. i’ve found some interesting and lovely people here, but there is an overall lethargic and dull energy. this past winter i’ve gone to dance clubs more than once (kid mohair, moes) to find they had closed up for the night since no one had showed up. i can’t find interesting thirty-something people that want to get together and do interesting cultural events! this town seems to be made up of pierced twenty-somethings hanging out on broadway or emerging patagonia families breaking into sweat as they unload groceries from thier utility vehicles in wallingford. under all the piercings and fleece is a conservative town that refuses to open up or let it all hang out. it’s great to see people in seattle are finally dancing, it was hard to find ANY of that (save for a mosh pit and the re-bar) until a few years ago. i try to be productive and proactive in my life, and conscious of the choices i am making. i hate to complain, and i hate putting blame on things that i feel are within my power to change…after much concentrated effort to try and make seattle work for me, i realize that i simply don’t belong here. seattle, i have felt since the very beginning, has continuosly been trying to spit me out.
i initially came to this city and began to volunteer with Reflex magazine in hope of meeting artist types and aiding “our” community, but immediately received an unfriendliness, lack of appreciation for my efforts, & attitude up the whahooey. that was simply the beginning, i’ve found this to be the case ever since–from the music scene to the microsoft crowd.
attitude attitude attitude! and not much to back it up. why stay in such a cold, unextending, unstimulating environment? i feel no connection with seattle. my rent has just gone up to meet san francisco prices–i figure i may as well get my money’s worth, and put my life back in action. your plea perked my interest because it’s so unusual. i’ve often commented to friends that i’m surprised The Stranger doesn’t do an article on how disorganized and lacking the whole “scene” is here. there’s no focus, there’s no voice. it’s a void sporting a goatee (with a dab of latte foam)!! something i find really interesting is the resentment of people who are leaving. it seems so strange to feel this way about A PLACE, but ultimately it seems to boil down to this pretentious vibe. i’ve never come close to finding any sort of community. this makes it hard to feel any loyalty.
i realize i may sound like a bitter old spinster, and i apoligize for that, but my converse sneakers are about to burn some rubber as i head south where there appears to be life. thanks for your concern and effort, i hope seattle makes a breakthrough! The Stranger magazine has been, by far, the best thing about my seattle experience–the closest thing to making me feel connected.
i would prefer to remain anonymous. thanks.
The Action Cinema of Andy Sidaris:
Fit to Kill
Video review by Clark Humphrey for The Stranger, 7/14/97
Andy Sidaris just might be the only currently-active, American-born action filmmaker worthy of criticism. His movies really move, like the best Hong Kong actioners and unlike your basic bloated Hollywood shoot-’em-up. It helps that Sidaris (a former ABC Sports staff director who branched out into movies in ’73 and started his own production company in ’85) conceives his low-budget blowouts primarily for the same overseas theaters that play the Hong Kong stuff. (His works are straight-to-video releases in the U.S.) Many are set in Hawaii, the perfect mid-Pacific metaphor for his mix of American action elements (huge guns, huge muscles, huge breasts) and Asian film staples (preposterous stunts, exhaustingly convoluted plots). His stars (chiefly bodybuilders, male models, and Playboycenterfolds) know they can’t act and gleefully don’t care. His story premises might mix blackmail, espionage, and drug smuggling (his newest, Hard Hunted, even fits in Internet cyber-crooks); but they’re just excuses to get the characters’ Uzis out and their blouses off. His frequent softcore sex scenes exist in a universe of complete gender equality–his female roles are just as strong and assertive as his male roles; his guys are just as dumb as his gals. And no matter how steamy the snuggling or how gross the gunfire, the dialogue never gets naughtier than this line in Hard Ticket to Hawaii: “All I know is I want to lick the nail polish right off your toes.”Start with Malibu Express, his least violent film (and his first as producer). If you end up digging its over-the-top strangeness and eager-to-please showmanship, consider moving on to his more recent titles like The Dallas Connection, Picasso Trigger, and the aerobics-themed Fit to Kill.
(LATTER-DAY NOTE: The Sidaris family has asked me to invite readers of this page to their own site, www.andysidaris.com.)
ASIDE FROM THE CURRENT whereabouts of conceptual artist and convicted non-terrorist Jason Sprinkle (he’s out of jail and apparently doing OK), the most-asked question these days to Misc. World HQ (www.miscmedia.com) is “What’s gonna happen to the Cinerama?” Cineplex Odeon currently continues to operate Belltown’s early-’60s-vintage film box on a month-to-month basis. Independent parties are said to be attempting to buy the place, desiring to turn it into a not-yet-officially-announced entertainment concept, probably involving film screenings of some sort. If their quest succeeds, you’re sure to hear about it.
Next, let’s figure out a future for the ex-Cineplex Newmark Cinemas. I know there’s something of a surplus of performance spaces in town right now, but a five-theater fringe/ music/ dance/ whatever cavalcade would be the perfect contempo complement to the new symphony hall going up nearby.
UP IN SMOKE: Was listening to CNN’s live press-conference coverage about the potential ban on U.S. cigarette billboards while reading the 6/19 Stranger with the Kamel ad right up next to a Queer Issue article entitled “Nobody’s Billboard.” Sure, I’ll miss the cigarette billboards and the lovely defacements placed thereupon by enterprising protestors (as reported in these pages a couple weeks back). But I’m also a little worried. (I could say “a tad worried,” but I’ve been in the Seattle music scene to long to think of “a tad” as something small.) Without dumb ads in store windows and along strip-mall highways promoting smoking as a blasé, corporate-engendered, mainstream-American habit, how are we gonna convince the kids how uncool it is? (The cig brands in current favor among Broadway’s smoking vegans include some of the least heavily advertised, such as that indie brand falsely believed by many buyers to be made by Native Americans.) Indeed, with all the curtailments on cig ads in places where kids might be able to see ’em, we might be in for even more intense smoking-is-cool marketing pushes inside 21-‘n’-over joints.
TALKED OUT: The least talked-about ramification of the Second Seattle TV Network Switch is the sudden fallout of that early-’90s broadcast staple, the daytime “reality” talk show. Former KIRO and KSTW daytime attractions Maury Povich, Ricki Lake, Geraldo Rivera, Jenny Jones, and Crook & Chase have been shunted into the wee hours or onto UHF indie KTZZ. It’s not the genre’s end, but it could signal the beginning of the end. If the format does disappear, I wouldn’t worry about the fate of all those potential guests who’d no longer get to share their traumas and family secrets with the world. I would, however, feel sorry for all the op-ed columnists, sociology profs, and Republican politicians who’ve dissed the chat shows as proof of the inexorable decline of American mores. (These critics never seemed to find anything disturbing about the existence of incest, abuse, fraud, poor parenting, etc.; just about the public revelations of same.) Speaking of alleged attacks on allegedly traditional values…
MY-CUP-RUNNETH-OVER DEPT.: The religious-kitsch camp collecting fad has been bubbling under the radar of media attention for a few years. It’s now gone above ground with the opening of Coffee Messiah (neon window-sign slogan: “Caffeine Saves”), the latest espresso concept on Capitol Hill’s E. Olive Way. The joint looks terrific, with more cool prayer candles and crucifixes and Mary statues and religious paintings than you’d ever find in any Italian-American grandma’s house. So what if some might call it sacreligious. I see it more as sincerely celebrating the human expressions of faith and devotion, neither insistant nor perjorative about the ideological content of any particular belief. It’s like a small-business version of the Unity Church: all the reassuring ritual and artistry of worship, without any potentially troublesome theology.
If you really wanna see some urban hipsters belittling a popular object of solemn worship for the sake of cheap laffs and shock value, go enter the Mystic Sons of Morris Graves’ raffle for the chance to “Shatter a Genuine Chihuly!” (The glass-bustin’ event’s gonna be Thursday, Aug. 7 at the Lava Lounge, where $1 entry tix are now being sold; proceeds benefit the Northwest Fine Art Search and Rescue Team.)
HERE AT MISC. we’re bemused in a melancholy way by the new logo for the Landmark (ex-Seven Gables) theaters; imposed by their new owner, John Kluge’s Metromedia empire. It features the words “Landmark Theater Corporation” surrounding a hyperrealistic airbrush image of the Hollywood sign and palm trees. It precisely symbolizes that creepy showbiz “glamour” the Seven Gables indie-film citadels were always supposed to represent an alternative to. Speaking of the supposed Year of Independent Film…
BAD-MOON-RISIN’ DEPT.: Remember that lifetime-achievement Oscar to English Patient producer Saul Zaentz, the Hollywood establishment’s idea of a proper “independent” film guy? Admittedly, he’s generated some of the more interesting celluloid products of recent decades (Amadeus, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). But amid the peaens to Zaentz on the Oscar show and printed in newspaper tributes, John Fogerty was never mentioned.
Details of the Fogerty/ Zaentz fiasco have been disputed, in courts and elsewhere. The following is pretty much agreed on: Fogerty was underage when his band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, signed with Zaentz’s Fantasy Records, then a small Frisco jazz label. The terms were typically awful for the period (Fogerty & co. got pathetic royalties, the label took all ownership to their songs). Creedence became one of the biggest-selling acts in rock history, enabling Zaentz to expand his record empire (Fantasy now owns over a dozen labels, including the catalogs of R&B legends Chess and Specialty), and from there to enter the movie biz.
Instead of offering the band a better contract, Zaentz convinced them to invest their royalties at a Nassau tax-shelter bank. The bank disappeared in the ’70s, taking the band’s money with it. Fogerty left the business and moved to Oregon, living off the cents-on-the-dollar settlement he got years later from Fantasy’s lawyers. When he returned with a solo LP in ’86, Fantasy sued him, claiming one of his new songs sounded too much like one of his Fantasy-owned old songs. Fogerty’s first new record in a decade will be out in a month or two. Since he won’t perform any Fantasy-owned Creedence songs on tour, this little dispute will probably come up again. We’ll see if Zaentz (no longer active in Fantasy’s day-to-day management) gets mentioned in connection with the hassle. In any event, the story should serve as an object lesson for anyone who believes indie media operators are always more honorable than the majors. Speaking of pop history…
OTHER WORLDS, OTHER SOUNDS: Esquire magazine’s been so pathetic in recent years, it’s amazing its lounge-culture cover story turned out not-half-bad. Pity it didn’t more thoroughly explore one curious quotation from critic Milo Miles, complaining that the retro-cats were championing a worldview the Beats and hippies had desired to destroy. That’s true, but that’s also one of the movement’s positive points.
At its broadest definition, lounge culture is the culture of the first Age of Integration. It’s Sammy Davis refusing to perform at hotels that made him eat in the kitchen. It’s Sinatra demanding to tour with an integrated band. It’s Juan Garcia Esquivel, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Eartha Kitt, Yma Sumac, Perez Prado, Sergio Mendes, Nat “King” Cole, Desi Arnaz, Vikki Carr, Harry Belafonte, and Quincy Jones. (In comparison, can you name more then four stars of color in the past quarter-century of “progressive rock”?) It’s the sounds and sights of other lands, curated and juxtaposed to jostle the audience’s expectations (as opposed to the smiling-peasant complacency undertoning much of today’s “world beat” industry.) It reflects an aesthetic of respect for oneself and others, and also a postwar philosophy that personal and social progress were not only necessary but possible.
Sure, there’s a lot of posing and play-acting among today’s cocktail kids. But within the most “shallow” pose, as gay-camp afficianados know, lies a truth, or at least a desire for a truth. In the lounge revival, it’s a desire for seemingly long-lost ideals of beauty, adventure, community, mutual respect (the only source of true cultural diversity), economic advancement, and fun. Locally, that wish for a brighter tomorrow was and still is best expressed in the legacy of the Seattle World’s Fair. More about that next week.
