2/88 ArtsFocus Misc.

MAKE LOVE NOT WARHOL

Welcome to Misc., the column that loved seeing all the Martin Luther King Day signs at banks accused of redlining. We’re also not the official column of Family TV Viewing Month, a recent publicity stunt that involved two households going tubeless for a week. I can’t imagine what’d be worse: another Cagney & Lacey rerun or following the advice of state first lady Jean Gardner.

Aural Threat: For five and a half years, on a tiny budget and a tinny frequency, KJET has been one of the few commercial radio stations in town doing anything worthy of criticism (the best in progressive pop played announcers who dare to assume that their listeners have brains). Now that owner SRO has a few bucks to spend, it’s pondering the removal of this proven format. KJET has extremely loyal listeners. It could have more of them with better equipment and more promotion. The station’s outspokenly asking us to plead with them to let the Jet live. Do it. They’re at 200 W. Mercer, 98119.

No reprieve, however, is apparently possible for the beloved Rainier Beer ads. For 12 years, Heckler & Associates’ campaign (always “zany,” sometimes truly witty) has made Rainier #1 in Washington by distinguishing it from the majors and their cloying, zillion-dollar ads. The brewery’s new Australian owner’s hiring an Australian agency to make Rainier’s ads more like Bud’s and Miller’s –certain doom for a regional brand. Before Heckler, Rainier was sinking in the market. It tried a light beer and a draft beer years before Miller, a dark beer years before Michelob, fancy bottles, fictional spokesmen, outdoorsy jingles — nothing worked until it made commercials people wanted to watch. The campaign also helped put the Seattle production community on the map. It proved that local people can top the LA gold-chain crowd (though some local advertisers, like Bell and the Lottery, still send their customers’ money south).

Sunken Treasures?: Another endangered landmark is Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, Seattle’s second oldest retail business (after L&H Engraving on Elliot). The pier on which the venerable souvenir stand is situated is in danger of collapsing, under the strain of drywall construction further up the waterfront. The contractor won’t ease up on the heavy vibrations until April, when the shop’ll move next to Ivar’s. If Sylvester the mummy sinks, he’ll become the eternal martyr to Seattle’s construction mania.

Philm Phacts: Housekeeping is a great film with great characters, set in a believably matriarchal Northwest town. Its only flaw is easily attributed to a Scottish director filming in Canada: The heroines as girls, being driven across Washington, stop at an Esso station. Standard Oil of N.J. never had rights to the name (an acronym of “S.O.”) in the western U.S., and so used Carter and then Enco before switching nationwide to Exxon. More fascinating info on the gas biz is at the General Petroleum Museum, which sells old pumps, signs, and memorabilia to collectors and rents a hall filled with the stuff for banquets and meetings.

Tunnel Woes: Wouldn’t it’ve been nice if Metro’d kept boring through the soft ground? They could do it at night with advance notice, so nobody’d be hurt when the Century Square building drops to a more reasonable height. If some of the Sharper Image merchandise gets damaged in the process, so much for the better.

Truth is Stranger Dept.: A while back, some clever folks published a parody of the Seattle Arts Commission newsletter. In the fictional lead story friends of commission members were being hired as “Art Buddies” to inspire local artists. It was a slap at programs to “support the arts” without giving a dime to artists. Now the real commission wants to hire three “nationally known” (your tax $$ going to NYC) art critics to advise artists with commission grants. Even Regina Hackett (the William Arnold of art writers) questions the idea (“Artists who want advice should ask artists whose work is in sympathy with their own”).

Wet Dreams: The recent Boat Show was a spectacle of American grandiosity at its finest. Best was the seemingly endless series of interconnected tents outside the Dome, just dying to become the site of a movie chase scene. The boats themselves generally got uglier as they got costlier. By $300G you had Joan Collins beds and blue plush carpeting on the walls. Still, there’s a lot to be said for living on a boat, with its split levels and cozy quarters. If you could only get a moorage with cable TV….

Local Publication of the Month: Columbia, the Magazine of Northwest History. Read, in lovely type with by quaint picures, of the early years of our remote corner of the world — but remember that “early history” here is “modern history” most anywhere else.

Headline of the month (Times, 1/25): “Two hospitals weigh liver transplants.” Lessee, at $1.87 a pound….

Cathode Corner: Some of the best TV entertainment is in commercials on obscure cable channels. Financial News Network has five-minute “paid programs” twice an hour. Gruff-voiced brokers insist that their option-futures-ratio-index packages are still sound investments. Sometimes they appear in phony “interviews” with actors hired to say “Sounds very impressive, Mr. Goldman.” Their heads are electronically squeezed into the top three-quarters of the screen, with stock prices swimming on the bottom.

‘Til March, visit the Old Firehouse second-hand mall at 110 Alaskan Way, watch Bombshelter Videos 1 a.m. Thurs. night/Fri. morn on KSTW, and remember the Valentine’s Day greeting on Pine Street: “Do Not Enter Except Metro Busses” (Look it up).

11/87 ArtsFocus Misc.

To comply with the water shortage, your favorite column, Misc., has made its wit even drier this month.

Earlier this year, I predicted a ’70s revival. While wide ties, brown polyester and dope jokes aren’t back, we have seen the return of some of the decade’s worst musical acts (Boston, Fleetwood Mac), plus video games, environmental activism, whale-mania, and economic stag-flation. And with water supplies so low, electricity cutbacks can’t be far off.

One great thing from the ’70s we’re losing is the classic Starbucks Coffee mermaid. The chain’s new logo, previewed in flyers for its first out-of-state store (in Chicago), not only covers up the mermaid’s bust but makes her look like the “international-style” symbol of some Swiss bank or Danish tractor company.

Meanwhile, that late-’70s relic John Lydon and his latest incarnation of Public Image Ltd. have a very slick song called “Seattle,” full of lines about barricades and how “What goes up/Must come down/On unfamiliar/Playing ground.” The video, full of shots of fish and construction cranes, was all shot in London; I’ve played it 10 times and still can’t fully discern what inspired Lydon about Seattle, which he last visited two PiL lineups ago. Still, no local angle can hide the fact that Lydon, who’s now as old as the hippies were when he was slagging them as a Sex Pistol, is becoming the sort of rock dinosaur he’d denounced.

The prospects for the ’70s revival, however, may be dimmed by another decade seemingly anxious to come back — the ’30s. We’ve already got homeless legions and a plunging stock market; now comes a new twist on that nutty ’30s sport of flagpole sitting. Actor William Weir plans to continue living in a tiny room built onto a Millstone Coffee billboard at 45th and Roosevelt until Nov. 12, for a total of 32 days. “I feel like a Woodland Park Zoo exhibit,” he told the UW Daily. A Northwest Harvest collection truck is parked under the billboard…. In other ads, Alaska Airlines had two Gold Lion awards in the Cannes Goods commercials festival recently seen at the Neptune…. Joanne Woodward’s appearing, but not speaking, in Audi ads. Here’s what she might say: “My husband Paul puts his life on the line when he gets in his race car. Now I can experience that same thrill every day.”

The most telling moment at The Transit Project performance piece came at the end. I stayed at the start-finish bus stop, waiting for a real bus to take me home. The rest of the audience all left by car. For all I know, perhaps nobody at any of the performances had ever ridden a Metro bus before. They’re missing a lot of real-life drama, much more interesting than the Yuppie angst of The Transit Project, though not as well choreographed.

Local publication of the month: An anonymous flyer posted on light poles around town. For a title, it has a graphic symbol that looks like computer-punchcard lettering in Arabic. #6 has an essay on “The Freedom to Give Away Freedom,” a chart comparing gorilla and human cranial cavities, an Einstein quote, four brief poems, drawings of goddesses and half a dozen other items — all on one legal-size page.

Pioneer Square’s bicycle police unit’s gained major press attention lately. Nobody’s mentioned that Seattle didn’t have the idea first. On an early Letterman show, Harry Shearer did a skit showing still photos he claimed were from a pilot for a bicycle-cop TV show. Shearer on his bike was shown aiming a gun at some bad guys, “but of course we can’t shoot them because we’d fall off the bikes from the recoil.”

An independent convenience store in town recently displayed a life-size cardboard stand-up display of a slickly made-up woman in a low-cut evening gown. Anyone with real taste, she asserts, will treat her to a bottle of Thunderbird — one of the horrible fortified wines the county may soon ban. The idea that any Thunderbird drinker could still have enough self-control left to accurately put on eyebrow pencil is just its most obvious improbability.

Imagine the gall of the developers who announced a 150-acre theme park (similar to California’s Knott’s Berry Farm) to be built near LaConner, perhaps the only place in the state besides Port Townsend where a promoter of such a thing’s likely to get thrown into an acid-filled hot tub.

Philm Phun: William Arnold said the Union St. locations used for House of Games should be declared an historic landmark. He’s a bit late; the buildings are all slated for demolition or fatal remodeling…. Have you ever met anybody in Seattle who talks like the people inA Year in the Life?…. Vital film series to attend include Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern at SAM, A (Samuel) Fuller Frenzy at the Phinney Neighborhood Center, and 911’s Open Screening of local films and videos the second Monday night of each month at the New City Theater.

As you ponder the mixed messages of the Honda Spree scooter seen on Queen Anne with a “no-55” sticker (it can’t go faster than 30), be sure to watch Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures Sat. morns (the first consistently good thing Ralph Bakshi’s ever made), see The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle at the Seattle Children’s Theater, don’t buy cheap stocks just because the certificates make elegant wallpaper, and return here next time.

10/87 ArtsFocus Misc.

Here’s Misc., the column that’s more fun than a Shaw Island heretic nun. Opinions here aren’t necessarily those of ArtsFocus Associates or its advertisers. In fact, offer me a Supreme Court post and I’ll retract or explain away any position I’ve ever taken.

The Summer of ’67 commemorations turned out to be largely duds. That’s OK, really; it’s good to see folks being respectfully apathetic towards the hippie dregs’ shrieks about their own importance. I mean, everybody back in the late ’60s can’t have been as hip ‘n’ progressive as the ex-rads now claim everyone was – somebody voted for Nixon.

But all summers must make way for autumn. Each year at this time, Seattle’s five-month ennui generated by the Mariners vanishes with the first frenzied football crowds. But this year, there’s only half the madness, with the NFL players away. One issue: owners’ demands that players take mandatory drug tests for the privilege of entertaining 60,000 drunks.

The NY Times reports an unnamed Seattle air express firm sent a rare Picasso to a Texas Air Force base instead of the eastern museum expecting it. The story didn’t say if the museum got the aircraft parts the Air Force was expecting, but they would’ve made a great found-sculpture installation (they probably cost more than the Picasso, too).

Junk food of the month: Souix City Sarsaparilla (made in New York), with a taste that blows root beer clean away and two stunning cowboy relief images on each exquisite bottle. Available at the Sunnyside Deli in Wallingford.

Local publication of the month: No one selection this time. Invisible Seattle: The Novel of Seattle by Seattle is finally out, four years after it was made, and indeed worth the wait (it’s even turned out to be prophetic in its theme of an entire city disappearing before your eyes). Semiotext(e) USA, a compilation of underground-press materials co-assembled by ex-local Sue Ann Harkey, is out six months late with the best material being supplied by SubGenius Foundation cartoonist Paul Malvrides. Four-Five-One is back seven months after its fundraiser with a beautiful poster-mag featuring Marsh Gooch on Hank Williams, Angela Sorby on practical nihlism, and Kenneth M. Crawford on a toy-factory worker replaced by a machine, until “the machine eventually goes Union and puts the company back to square one.”

We’re not the only town to lose its semblence of economic power to outside speculation. A Philadelphia paper sez that town, the country’s 4th biggest, is also now bereft of any big local banks and of many locally-based industries. The city celebrating the 200th birthday of the Constitution has lost the last of its economic independence.

Ann Wilson Update: The Heart singer is now seeking a husband with “streetwiseness.” Object: to sire 3 kids. . . . In other celeb gossip, one of the less harrowing parts of Patty Duke‘s memoir Call Me Anna is how she left hubby John Astin when he fell in with the fundamentalist-Buddhists and pressured her and the kids to do the same. Somehow, the vision of Gomez Addams sitting in the lotus position chanting “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” through his cigar all day has an eerie sort of appeal to it.

The Hollywood idiots are at it again: Responding to the popularity of sexual themes in films like Betty Blue and She’s Gotta Have It, the studios have done their usual misinterpretation of the market and come up with a cycle of virulently anti-sex films. Don’t see Fatal Attraction (jilted mistress on a rampage), Tough Guys Don’t Dance (N. Mailer writes AND directs, ’nuff said), Lady Beware (creator of erotic window displays stalked by a sicko), Kandyland (exotic dancer stalked by pimps & pushers), or Blood on the Moon (feminists slaughtered by serial killer).

Among the fall TV season‘s only promising shows is Trying Times, a comedy anthology coming to PBS later this month. It was filmed in that familiar Vancouver-pretending-to-be-America, and was shown on the CBC as part of its series Lies from Lotus Land. It’s the perfect treat for your friends visiting Seattle, trying desperately to find the locations they saw in Stakeout….The Garbage Pail Kidscartoon show was unceremoniously yanked by CBS days before its debut, but don’t fret: a feature-film version is in the works.

Looks like a great theatre season in town with hot offerings coming from Performa ’87, the Group and Seattle Children’s Theatre among others. The best stage value of all has got to be New City‘s Late Night shows with music, dance and a serialized staged reading, “The Life and Times of Baby M,” every Saturday night for 99 cents.

One of Seattle’s best dinner-floor show combos is at the Broadway Jack-in-the-Box. Every Friday night, patrons are treated to the entertainment of watching an endless stream of teens barging in, walking right past the counter to the restroom doors, discovering that the restrooms are now locked to non-customers, and barging right out again without buying anything or speaking to anyone.

While you spend the next month figuring out what the Australians will buy next (after Rainier Beer and Ms. magazine; it was also an Aussie who sold the Beatles’ songs to Michael Jackson), we close with some of Team Chalk‘s work at Bumbershoot: “Outwit the great theif despair — an exercise in radical trust…It’s always tornado season in someone’s heart.”

9/87 ArtsFocus Misc.

ArtsFocus is back and so’s Misc., Seattle’s only whole-grain rumor mill. Opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of ArtsFocus Associates, its advertisers, or Brian Bosworth.

Welcome to the summer of our discontent. Some complained this summer about the traffic, the leaky roof at the Bagley Wright, about paying $8 to see the hydros without being able to get drunk n’ crude, about paying $16.50 for Dana “Church Lady” Carvey in the rain at the Mural Amphitheater, about paying $2 more for Madonna than for the Dylan/Dead show in Eugene, about celeb sellouts like Lou Reed for American Express. Me: I’m not complaining that much, though I did wish we could have had a combined Contra hearing/Isuzu ad, so you could always know when they were lying.

FOR THE RECORD, it’s also been the summer when Seattle got its own overpaid sports legend-in-his-own mind, its own MTV VJ, its own near Presidential hit-and-run, and the start of its own Underground.

Hope y’all had an enlightening time during the Harmonic Convergence. Remember: Author Jose Arguelles sez 144,000 of you had to be meditating at local sunrise 8/16. If the world ends 25 years from now, I don’t want to hear you moaning, “Darn it, I knew I should’ve set my alarm early.”

Already some hopeful news has emerged from the heart of New Age country, on people finding the personal energy to influence the world around them. Port Townsend’s local teens are battling one of the most backward, reactionary social forces known to humanity, the Northwest Nature Poets, over the right to eat Big Macs without having to drive to Port Angeles. More karma to them.

Patrick McDonald has endorsed the Young Fresh Fellows as a local band bound to make it big. As McDonald’s pick-to-click has traditionally meant the Kiss of Death (anyone remember the Heats?), the Fellows should immediately renounce it, declaring that they have absolutely no intention of ever getting a national hit record.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Flavored fortune cookies, as introduced at the Bite of Seattle. Seattle’s Rose Brand will soon market the treats in vanilla, mocha, strawberry, mint, raspberry, banana and bubblegum flavors. Every fortune has two happy-face symbols on it (you can also special-order cookies with custom fortunes).

Procter & Gamble’s announced multi-million losses from its Duncan Hines Soft Cookies. P&G expected a big hit due to a chemical emulsifier that made them soft, figuring it wouldn’t matter how poorly they tasted. They’re not giving up, though: Their next product will be diet cookies, made with a new “sucrose polyester” to be called Olestra.

PHILM PHUN: Japan’s Tampopo, easily the best comedy of the year, is also one of the few films anywhere to deal entirely with the preparation and consumption of food. The most that US films have come to discussing with this most pervasive of all human activities are Fatso, a few cannibalism pictures and some good Woody Woodpecker cartoons.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The Seattle Design Association Newsletter. Issue 18 has die-cut finger holes in all 12 pages; 11 of those pages have extremely clever illustrations by Carl Smool, Linda Owens, Michael Dougan and other famed local artists, all supervised by (who else?) Art Chantry. A measly $1.50 at Peter Miller Books on 1st Ave.

CATHODE CORNER: The use of retro rock in TV ads gets ridiculous when Time magazine uses the Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn,” a song originally made in part to protest the Vietnam War — a war that Time supported.

T. Boone Pickens, who tried to conquer Boeing, has made a fortune attacking companies; some of them have surrendered to other overtakers rather than face his wrath. Unocal, Phillips 66, Gulf and Citgo got no government help against his assaults, but state and federal pols rushed to the side of our beloved big employer/big defense contractor. One of the govt’s fave companies was threatened, starting the end of unregulated company-poaching, one of the hallmarks of ’80s commerce….

In other big news, the Easterners who bought Seattle Trust claimed at the time to be impressed by the bank’s reputation and good name — so why’d they demolish it all, as soon as the takeover deal was cleared, by slapping on those ugly Key Bank signs?….

Microsoft’s illustrious reputation has finally gained a little tarnish. A major software program was released full of bugs; then the Redmond firm received undeserved criticism when IBM released new computers designed for an operating system that MS won’t have ready for another year.

Get those “Save the Turf” badges back out. A Contemporary Theater has replaced Intiman as the cultural villain in a plot to destroy one of Downtown’s last truly human spaces for yet another totally unneeded office project. Expect no intervention from the city, which has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the developers…. Give thanks that the Paramount Theater/KKFX empire was rescued from possible bankruptcy. With its prime Convention Center location, the grand ol’ Paramount just might have been bought and razed.

As the moths swarm around the Frederick Cadillac floodlights this hot August night, a final reminder to avoid the $.25 foil-pouch wine at the Liquor Stores, take the 911 Homes for Art tour, read the new bio of cartoonist Winsor McCay, watch Cruzin’ Northwest Sat. morns on KSTW, and come back here next month. ‘Til then, peace and flowers for all.

7/87 ArtsFocus Misc.

Time again for Misc., the column that didn’t enter the contest to replace Ann Landers, co-won by a Wall St. Journal writer who entered just to do a story about it. Of course, the Chicago Sun-Times might not appreciate the sort of advice we’d give: “Protect yourselves, but go for it. You’re both only going to be 17 once, you know.”

It’s summer, and Seattle is like a bombed-out ruin as the tunnel goes down and all the towers go up. It’s great! Central downtown has finally become a place of excitement and activity. The Westlake Mall controversy has brought public activism back into city planning (the ’70s live again!). And the best part is Pine St. at the Roosevelt Hotel, reopened just in time to give a great view of the biggest current street hole. For future scholars, the old mid-downtown wasn’t a great place. A few islands of human energy (the 211 Club, the Turf Restaurant) were isolated among block after block of dull 5- to 10-story brick buildings, whose only character came as they were allowed to deteriorate before they were torn down. The cheap new buildings will age much faster. Since they’re so “contemporary” in design, they’ll also look really odd to future generations.

On May 1, Frederick & Nelson ran full-page ads with a special offer to new charge customers: charge $50 or more during May, June, July or August and get a $25 credit. The ad didn’t say the store didn’t mean the real months but its in-house billing cycles. Depending on the first letter of your last name, that could end as soon as the first week. Many customers were surprised to get undiscounted $49 bills in mid-May. Adjustments have been promised but, as of this writing, have not all been delivered.

TROUBLE AT THE MALLS: Southcenter’s new owners promptly, sharply raised rents, a move seen by some as a ploy to drive out the last local, independent stores…. University Village kicked out the troubled, formerly-locally-owned Pay n’ Save chain after getting a better offer from the thriving, still-local Bartell Drug. Mall mgmt. then wouldn’t let Pn’S move into part of sister-chain Lamonts’ space, causing legal disputes that may be resolved when you read this. The new Bartell’s, meanwhile, is several times larger than any of their other stores. From its look, they seem perplexed on now to fill all that space.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: The Space Needle chocolate bar on a stick. It’s made by an entrepreneur in Bozeman, Mont., under the name Space Needle Phantasies. His number’s on the wrapper, in case you’d like to share Space Needle obsessions. At Ruby Montana’s, near 1st on Cherry — one of this column’s all-time fave stores.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The 100th Boyfriend, one of the rare “women’s books” that treats men as human beings with complex emotions, not mere plot devices. Its vignettes (all purported as true to compilers Janet Skeels and Bridget Daly) are being excerpted in at least two national magazines.

No “rap riot” occurred at the Run DMC/Beastie Boys concerts, in a major disappointment to cops, KOMO-TV and other reactionary forces. The youth of Seattle have proven themselves unworthy of the disrespect they’ve gotten. The city should apologize for this bad rap by repealing the teen-dance prohibition law NOW…. Meanwhile, what extremely popular Black performer, with no earlier ties to this city, is building a digital recording studio in Seattle?

(latter-day note: I forget who this was supposed to have been about.)

In world news, the guy who flew his private plane into Moscow’s Red Square may get off lighter than the guy who parachuted into New York’s Shea Stadium…. A clue to the Korean crisis may be found in a recent Sharper Image Catalog, boasting of great values to US consumers made possible by Korea’s near-slave wages.

Bantam Books is promoting the paperback release of His Way, Kitty Kelly’s shattering Sinatra bio, with a Sinatra CD giveaway. Hear the songs of love, read the stories of backbiting and sleaze, all in the comfort of your own home.

PHILM PHUN: The Witches of Eastwick contains a major plot flaw: Real witches don’t worship Satan. To believe in the Devil, you have to believe in the Christian God first. Witchcraft is a tradition completely separate from (and older than) Christianity…. Variety sez sex is the hottest marketing ploy in independent films, proving not only that America has respectfully declined the “new Puritanism,” but that highly personal subjects are best handled outside the Hollywood bureaucracy….

NEW CARTOONS to anticipate include a Garbage Pail Kids TV show and The Brave Little Toaster, a feature about kitchen appliances on a quest to find their missing owner.

The Harry and the Hendersons crew discovered the new Pacific Northwest Studio isn’t soundproof. Important takes were ruined by freight trains on the Fremont spur track or even rain on the ex-warehouse’s roof.

Nice to hear Bill Reid back on KJET, but won’t they ever trash or fix that tape system so we actually hear the same songs the DJs introduce?…

Other congrats from this corner to UW grad and ex-colleague Mike Lukovich, a Pulitzer Prize runner-up for his New Orleans Times-Picayune editorial cartoons.

CATHODE CORNER: Lifetime now has Our Group, a daily, fictional group therapy session with a real shrink and actors as patients. It’s almost as entertaining as the cable channel’s “medical-ed” shows for doctors with slick prescription-drug ads…. As the Telephone Auction Shopping Program deservedly goes under, another firm is staring Love and Shopping, a soap opera/shopping combo with characters shown using products that are then offered to viewers. It’s a change from the traditional soap universe, where characters put away groceries with white tape stuck all over the brand names…. Using John Lennon music to sell sneakers is no worse than Gershwin for Toyota or Sondheim for stuffing mix.

Cabaret chanteuse Julie Cascioppo is back from NYC gigs with the Mark Morris dancers. “Tommy Tune said I was wonderful, and Mikhail Barishnikov asked me to hold court with him; it was great,” says the world-traveling vegetarian from a family of Ballard butchers. Her shows (ranging from romantic standards to “The Woody Woodpecker Song”) continue Wednesdays at the Pink Door in the Pike Place Market.

Finally, Maxwell House wants people to write songs about their hometowns to the tune of their current jingle. Winners from Seattle and other participating cities will compete in LA for big prizes. “It’s the way we burn up restaurants / It’s the way we tear up Pine / It’s the clocks at 4th and Pike / Telling you three different times.” No, don’t think we’ll enter this one either.

‘Til September, be cool, avoid the flu goin’ around, see Greeks at the Pioneer Square Theater, don’t pay $21 to see Madonna at the Dome, and live for love. Toodeloo.

6/87 ArtsFocus Misc

(one-year anniversary)

Welcome to the first issue of the new Arts Focus and the first anniversary of Misc., the at-large column that tries to keep ahead of a world where Hüsker Du goes on the Today show, the Central Area’s Liberty Bank becomes the largest Seattle-owned commercial bank by default, the M’s briefly take first place, and the Pope tries to stop people from doing all they can to have babies.

Top story of the month: Procter & Gamble, Kellogg’s and other top national advertisers are refusing to place any ads in Florida, after that state passed a tax on advertising and other professional services. If Booth had gotten his original tax plan past our myopic Legislature, we too would be sharing in this rare and wonderful blessing.

At that same time, Contragate and Hartbreak battled for the public viscera, with many Americans somehow finding lying, cheating, and killing in the name of democracy to be less immoral than sleeping around.

Local junk food of the month: Midnight Sun Dark Chocolate, made in south King Co. by an Alaska firm, with such a bold flavor that it’s the Everclear of candy bars. No relation to the “Midnite Sun Chocolate” in Eskimo Pies.

Local publication of the month: Moviemakers at Work. Despite what the Times says, this is Microsoft Press’ first non-computer book, and its choice of interviewees reflects the real star system in late-industrial Hollywood. Not a single actor, writer or composer is in the book; the only subjects with director credits are two animators. Instead, we get audio technicians, photographers, editors, and most especially special-effects artisans. The newfound prominence of these people indicates how the big-money boys now in charge at the movies have dropped all notions of story, dialogue and character in a relentless rush toward old Darryl Zanuck’s dream: to find a movie formula wherein investing in a certain level of pure spectacle will bring a guaranteed return. It didn’t work for Zanuck (Cleopatra, Dr. Doolittle); it’s not working today.

Time Travelers, one of this column’s favorite record and comic stores, hopes to move away from 2nd near Pine this summer. The folk there say it’s ‘cuz the neighborhood has become too scuzzy, and I agree. That Nordstrom Rack has attracted totally the wrong element. In other comic news, Marvel is now owned by New World Pictures, presumably meaning we’ll get more great comic-based films in the grand tradition of Howard the Duck. Gary Larson, meanwhile, has sold rights for a live-action Far Side movie to Alan Rudolph (Trouble in Mind, Welcome to L.A.) would fit in perfectly, as long as he doesn’t sing.

Sports spurts: Have the Sonics’ recent playoff successes led me to reconsider my stance against letting more than half of any league’s league’s teams into its playoffs? No. This does not mean I don’t love the Supes or will approve of any move to Bellevue (what would they be called then? The Evergreen State Warriors?)…

Most of the potential new local owners for the Mariners are stingy bean counters just like George Arduous. They might meet the requirements of Commissioner Peter Uberalles, but could keep the team strictly a stop for players on their way up or down. The M’s may be contenders now, but the question is whether this year’s stars’ll get paid what they deserve here next year or go to someone who will.

Cathode Corner: Joan Rivers has finally been fired by Murdochvision. Why didn’t it happen sooner? ‘Cuz Rivers & Rupert shared the same worldview, one based on gross-out aesthetics and Righteous Right politics. With any luck Murdoch’s Fox Network will fold this year, leaving KCPQ to running its great movies (with the usual breaks from greatness for the monthly Gratuitous Violence Week). I’d hate to see the Ding-Ding Channel’s uniqueness become lost to more of those fashionable-but-dumb Fox shows, shows which prove that it’s square to be hip.

4/87 ArtsFocus Misc.

Greetings, pop-culture followers, to the 10th edition of Misc., the column that knows how to solve two of the city’s architectural dilemmas in one bold stroke: Simply move the twisted remains of the Husky Stadium project to Westlake Mall. Instead of yet another unfillable office/retail complex, we’ll have the world’s largest piece of found art at our core. It’ll be a beautiful, shimmering amalgam of bent steel, creating a fascinating pattern of lights and shadows throughout the day. With the proper supports, it can become a popular spot for climbing, eating lunch, watching musicians and performance artists, and (in the more obscure alcoves) developing new romances. Alternatively, the wreckage could go atop the Convention Center, in place of the planned rose garden dropped several budget cuts ago.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Sourdough Chips. Each tiny piece contains a powerful dose of flavors and seasonings, nearly enough to produce a profound centering experience. Habit forming; not for the wheat-sensitive.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Reflex, from the 911 Contemporary Arts Center (now desperately needing a new space). At last: A paper that treats the Seattle visual-art scene as worthy of serious criticism. By resoundingly eschewing the “It’s Not New York So Who Cares” attitude toward Seattle artists, it challenges artists and the art bureaucracy, leaving no excuse for mediocrity. Issue 2 has a long, good piece on the new Seattle Art Museum (the dawn of a new artistic consciousness or the same old snuff bottles in tourist trappings?) and a pack-page collage by one of this column’s favorite illustrators, who signs her work only with a logo of a triangle with a line through it. (She’s not related to the local band whose printed name was two diamonds with wings and whose spoken name was a growling scream.)

You already know I usually hate pro wrestling, but Britain’s The Face has a great section on Japan this month, highlighted by pix of top female wrestlers Dump Matsumoto and Bull Nakano, in punk kneepads and punk/samurai/KISS makeup, engaged in a typical real bodyslam, having finished their pre-match set of pop songs. The audience is mainly teenage girls; this is the refreshing overdue reaction of a generation raised on Hello Kitty kitsch. (In the same issue: an account of the Sankai Juku tragedy in Seattle.)

In other violent mythological spectacles, the end of the annual Ring Cycle could be a great blessing for local performing arts. Now we can put some of that money and effort into something fresher, something with more contemporary relevance than an interminable succession of tired ol’ proto-Fascist imageries. (The Ring was begun here as the centerpiece of a scheme to move the Seattle Opera out to Federal Way, something we can all be glad didn’t happen.)

Anyhow, there’s a second Richard Wagner leaving Seattle. This Wagner, he of the Anglicized pronunciation, opened the CBS NewsSeattle bureau less than two years ago. Now the network’s closing the bureau, as part of massive cutbacks orchestrated as an excuse for union busting, and Wagner has been reassigned overseas. Ex-KING anchor Bob Faw, meanwhile, is more prominent than ever at CBS as a national affairs reporter.

CATHODE CORNER: Could anyone have imagined the Beach Boys special with Brian Wilson, everybody’s favorite obese burnout case, resurfacing as slim, energetic and even cheekboned? It’s as if he totally regenerated, a la Doctor Who….

The “news” segments on the UHF Fundamentalist channel are really just more evangelism, with Reagan portrayed as God and the “liberal media” (even the aforementioned CBS) as Satan. The political agenda of Fundamentalism, to foster fear and mindless loyalty, is nowhere else as nakedly shown.

The local Sanctuary movement might be helped by a Supreme Court ruling making it far easier for candidates for asylum to prove they can’t safely return to their homelands. Ironically, it was a Nicaraguan’s case which may help the refugees of “friendly” genocidal governments.

Five members of the Jazz Section, a Czech underground music society, have been convicted of cultural treason for performing unauthorized types of music. It can’t happen here, though perhaps the politicians fighting Michael Spafford’s state Capitol mural and trying to keep all under-21 Seattlelites with no live entertainment would like it to happen here.

Merger mania, totally manufactured by Federal “regulators,” marches on. Now we must say goodbye to American Motors, the last little guys in the car biz and the inspiration to people in many other fields struggling to stay independent. Maybe if they’d brought back the Nash Metropolitan….

Kudos from here to KCMU, the volunteer-run new music station, on its powerful new 90.3 signal. Now people from Duvall to Bainbridge Island can get Ground Zero Radio — or at least hear it….

Further congrats to the Center on Contemporary Arts. Just as its ’87 season was starting (with the California Natural Foods gazebo on First Ave.), it found a new office space in the building where Trouble in Mind was filmed. May COCA keep troubling area minds for many years to come.

One side effect of the film Platoon’s success is in sportswear. Last year, area designers tooled up for the War-Is-Fun Look, inspired by the success of Rambo and Top Gun. Now that the candy-colored camouflage has arrived from the Asian factories, the attitudes that were supposed to have made it a hit have changed. Look for it all at your local close-out store real soon.

‘Til next month, remember this quote from A.M. Maslow: “A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.” Ta ta.

3/87 ArtsFocus Misc.

Hi again, pop-culture fans, and welcome to Misc., the only column that ate at the Silver King, drank at the Trade Winds, and lived to tell the tale.

The building that until recently housed the Lesbian Resource Center and Seattle Women’s Gym is about to become a bridal shop. This trivium is offered merely for the sake of irony, and is not in any way to be considered an encouragement of the new homophobia. (Ever notice how many of the mass media only talk about AIDS when straights get it, or how the new soft-focus-scare condom ads never mention the existence of gays?)

In business news, B. Freshman’s in Wallingford, the noble experiment in drawing the hypertasteful Nouveau Riche to mark prices on groceries with great pencils inside a cramped basement, somehow failed. (More closures in our handy sidebar.)

In new business activity, Razz-Ma-Tazz on Denny offers all the essential elements of a topless bar without toplessness or a bar. For a small fee, you can enter a room with flashing lights and blaring Bon Jovi where legally-dressed young women will smile, touch your shoulder and request additional fees for a soft drink, a conversation or a 2-minute “table dance.”… Could that ’80s nostalgia landmark, the Showbox Theater, really be slated for conversion into a movie multiplex?

(latter-day note: Razz-Ma-Tazz went topless and is now all-nude, at least on stage; its table dances are still less explicit than those described in police reports about suburban strip clubs. And the Showbox became a comedy club with an ugly interior remodel.)

CATHODE CORNER: Continuing our theme of antisexploitation, KSTW is following the lead of the USA Network in running cheap sex comedies with the sex scenes all cut out. What’s left makes less sense than the Spanish channel makes if you don’t know Spanish….

Hope you didn’t watch Amerika. Remember: The networks don’t care if you love or hate a show, as long as you keep watching. The only effective protest is to turn it off….

The most fascinating show on the Discovery Channel’s week of Soviet TV was Serious and In Jest. Segments on the value of satire in increasing industrial productivity were intercut with film of degrading police interrogations of vodka scalpers and a melodramatic sketch in which a boy suffers a total breakdown after learning his parents met while dealing in the black market….

The CBC this month is presenting not only the curling championships but also the return of Seeing Things, the offbeat mystery show about a clairvoyant crime reporter. It can descend into corn, but at its best blows the slick US crime shows out of the water.

Now that Bob Barker has successfully used the Miss USA pageant to campaign against furs, maybe he’ll now talk about the way humans are treated in the countries where he MCs Miss USA’s parent show, Miss Universe. I don’t remember him commenting when Imelda Marcos raided the Philippines’ public-housing budget to build an auditorium in Manila, which opened by hosting that year’s Miss Universe show. (By the way, the introduction of computerized scoring to Miss USA may encourage those who criticize pageants for the wrong reasons. A pageant queen is not the idealized lover but the idealized daughter. The spectacle does not objectify the start of the breeding cycle but its final result.)

I keep telling people computers can be our friends. Now it turns out that a White House mainframe, which preserved even “erased” files, may become the best witness to the Iran-Contra scheme and a whole network of other potentially illegal acts organized under the doublespeak moniker “Project Democracy.” As the nation takes what John Chancellor has called a “trip down memory lane,” the Reagan Discs may prove more useful in uncovering abuses of power than the Nixon Tapes.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The Amazing Adventures of Mighty Mole, a comic book distributed to elementary schools by Metro. Our tunnel-digging hero exclaims that the downtown bus tunnel is “a totally rad concept,” excavating equipment is “totally awesome,” and that “digging a tunnel is really exciting work.” And I always thought it was boring. (For our slower readers, that was a pun.) (For our early readers, more local publications will be featured at the Underground Press Convention, Feb. 28 here at Lincoln Arts.)

The Globe Radio Theater production of Gogol’s Dead Souls, produced in Seattle by Jean Sherrard and John Siscoe, will soon be available on cassettes for repeated nuance-hunting. KPLU has aired the mini-series right after Bob and Ray Sunday evenings, for a whole hour of consciousness-bending, low-key humor. With great intellectual entertainment like this on public radio, who’ll miss Garrison Keillor (who ran out of ideas three years ago anyway)?

DUMB AD OF THE MONTH (in the P-I): “If it’s true that automatic transmissions are capable of unintended acceleration, then all cars with automatic are suspect. Audi is the only manufacturer to date who has addressed the problem to protect their owners.” A local dealer thus attempted to depict as the leader in responsibility a manufacturer who refused to do anything about the problem until it could not hide from the evidence any more….

Several more respectable cars are on display in a great new book, I’ll Buy That: 50 Big Deals and Small Wonders. It’s published by Consumer Reports as a 50th-anniversary celebration, and covers 50 major contributions to American life, including not just consumer products (the Mustang, the Beetle, the minivan, detergents, frozen foods), but such other innovations as the Salk vaccine, the birth control pill, the credit card and the suburban housing tract.

EARLY WARNING: With spring coming soon, the New City Theater Directors’ Festival is also coming soon, and then the Seattle International Film Festival. Only a few weeks of winter remain in which to stare at your Video Aquarium tape from the How-To-Do-Anything Store. ‘Til then, let’s return to Soviet TV for this closing thought, from its equivalent to CBS’s Morning Program: “If we entertained you, made you smile, and did not make you late for work, then our job here has been a successful one.”

DOWNTOWN BUSINESS WHICH HAVE CLOSED

SINCE THE START OF CURRENT CONSTRUCTION JOBS

Seattle Design

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Florsheim

Weisfield’s

Town Theater

Music Box Theater

Golden Crown

Bernie’s

TJ’s Men’s Wear

The Frankfurter

J.K. Gill

Pipelane Ltd.

ABC Corral Western Wear

Walden Books

Leed’s Shoes

Lindy Shoes

Copper Kitchen

J. Spencer Books

2/87 ArtsFocus Misc.

Hi again sports fans, and welcome to the compressed short-month edition of Misc., the regional pop-culture column that had Shirley MacLaine’s baby in a previous life.

The passenger ferry is, as of this writing, in deep trouble. Seems would-be riders never know if the boat’s going to be in the water or in the shop on any given day. Officials say they can’t effectively test the service’s appeal without, you guessed it, a second boat to run when the first one doesn’t have its act together. Maybe we could also get a spare set of ferry officials.

The NY Times sez it’s OK in DC social circles again to call yourself a liberal, even to admit that you liked Carter. Social concern isn’t as gauche as back in the early ’80s, when the Reaganites had everybody thoroughly intimidated. Perhaps, just perhaps mind you, this is another sign of the nation waking up as if from a long dream (or a masochistic love affair). Other ins/outs are in our handy sidebar.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Pocky, the colorful little rice candy sticks from Japan. Eat the chocolate or fruit flavors (both with that distinctive waxy taste), then keep the lovely boxes as collector’s items.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Pacific Northwest’s “40 Local Leaders Under 40” issue. Your columnist is not listed but has about a dozen more tries to go.

UPDATES FROM PAST COLUMNS: The CD menace continues its assault on the American tradition of cheap populist sound recordings, with the Seattle Symphony joining the list of artists refusing to cater to us vinyl proles. Rhino Records, however, is to be commended for its forthcoming 25-record set of 78s, intended for jukebox collectors…. SRO sold its theaters to Cineplex Odeon, the Canadian-based firm that produced The Decline of the American Empire (now showing at someone else’s theater). The bad news: Cineplex is half-owned by MCA, the parent company of Universal Studios which, according to a new book, was once known as the “Octopus That Ate Hollywood” and had close ties to both Reagan and the Mob. The good news: MCA’s lost millions lately on flop movies and overpriced reruns; the whole company may be sold off, as a whole or in pieces.

J Michael Kenyon, the rusty-throated practitioner of homespun cynicism and low-key wit, is back on local radios at last. At this point he’s having a hard time reconciling his style to KING-AM’s withering all-news image, but he may turn out to be KING’s ticket out of the ratings cellar.

If you haven’t seen a TheaterSports performance, you’re missing one of the funniest, liveliest experiences in this or any city. My personal favorite team in the weekly improv wars: The Many Splendored Things.

CATHODE CORNER: The first arthritis ad with a rock song is now on the air. A portent of the decades to come, when my generation will have to pay for the much larger Big Chill generation’s Medicare…. Don’t buy anything on “home shopping” shows. It just encourages them to put on more…. KOMO, home of the most pandering news scripts on local TV, now advertises “News You Experience.” Somehow, I’ve never wanted to be, even vicariously, a preteen Iranian soldier or a hit-and-run victim.

(By the way, our secret support of both Iran and Iraq has helped to lengthen a ghastly war (7-year body count: 300,000+), just to prop up oil prices and achieve the “geopolitical” goals of a White House that calls itself “pro-life.”)

The Little Biscuit deli-grocery on Broadway, one of that neighborhood’s last cheap places to eat, suddenly closed over the new year. If there is a higher consciousness, please don’t let the site become another trendy mini-mall. Pretty please with sugar on top.

The Jackson Street Gallery had a wonderful show in January: K.L. Slusher’s “Images of Construction” (documenting the Convention Center), John L. Harter’s “Construction of Images” (acrylic fantasies of the formation and decay of ideas), and R. Mutt’s “Constructions” (really nice industrial sculptures). Just when I began to think Pioneer Square had irretrievably evolved from a noun into an adjective, something great and provocative like this shows up.

Incredibly Strange Matinees, the independent film club I’m directing, is now renting the plush little Grand Illusion screening site for 12-noon Sunday tributes to the best exploitation films. ‘Til then, contemplate on the inner meanings of the phrase “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” So long.

INS AND OUTS FOR ’87

Unlike the authors of some lists of this type,

I’m not assuming that any trend that’s hot now will simply keep getting hotter.

I’m glad the authors of some lists of this type don’t work for my stockbroker.

Insville

• Ford Taurus
• Emilio Estevez’s brother Charlie Sheen
• Curling (the last gentleman’s game)
• Video camcorders
• No-booze nightclubs
• Group marriages
• Single-flavor ice cream
• Olives
• Plastic shoes (known to animal lovers as “cow-free”)
• The color green (except then used to refer to money)
• Artichoke hearts
• Social concerns
• Underground desktop publishing
• Georgetown/South Park
• Woolworth’s
• The ’70s
• Max Headroom (until he’s blanded out for ABC)
• Cleavage as symbol of defiance
• Sean Penn (not as an actor but as the Norman Maine of the ’80s)
• Astro Boy

Outski

• Cross-country skiing
• BMWs
• Mimes<
• He-Man
• Jolt Cola
• The “new celibacy”
• Cauliflower
• Ad slogans with the word “America”
• Wine coolers
• Prime-time soaps
• Power
• Entrepreneurs
• The ’50s
• All ex-Saturday Night Live stars
• Downtown NYC
• AIDS hysteria
• Wrestling
• Wheel of Fortune
• Big sweatshirts
• Cleavage as symbol of passivity
• Camp
• Conspicuous consumption

1/87 ArtsFocus Misc.

Welcome again, shopping survivors, to Misc., your pop-culture column and voice of the Post-Sixties Generation.

THE TOP STORY THIS MONTH: Seattle is becoming world corporate headquarters for Muzak. The most famous name in office music recently merged with locally-based Yesco, a purveyor of music tapes for bars and other businesses for which the briefly famous DJ Steve Rabow once worked as national program director. From now on, when you hear a 100-violin rendition of U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)” at your local doctor’s office, you can take pride in knowing that the dulcet tones are being carried across North America from right here in your hometown.

The fact that the new Stage Left Cafe is advertised as being right next door to Angry Housewives first and in the Smith Tower second must say something about the relative public awareness of the two longstanding Seattle landmarks.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Blue Suede News. Pick up a free copy at a better record store and read all about cool music that would never have been recorded if CDs and “adult contemporary” radio had been around in its day.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Old-time gum. Beeman’s, Clove and Black Jack are back in a few select stores (some of which are already sold out). If you ever wanted to chew Beeman’s, the official gum of The Right Stuff, now’s your chance.

BEST NEW ALL-AGES LIVE MUSIC VENUE: The Century Square mezzanine. A recent Saturday night found me in the ground floor plaza there, with some professional-sounding (slick but bland) rock emanating from above. At the top of the escalator I found five guy musicians in identical shirts and a young woman singing in exactly the same type of contrived hysterics heard each week on Fame.The answer came in the slick brochures stacked next to the band: They were from the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, a new private school that appears to be for parents who want their teens to be just like the Fame kids. The band really cooked considering its limitations as a class project, and the acoustics of that huge glass-walled space made it sound even better.

CATHODE CORNER: Cable viewers should check out an awesome Japanese cartoon series (dubbed in Montreal), Astroboy, 9:30 a.m. Saturdays on BCTV. It’s the adventures of a robot boy with superpowers and jet-rocket feet, and his robot sister (without superpowers, which means traditional-sex-role-time in the rescue scenes, the show’s only flaw). It has way-cool music, pleasing characters and very imaginative scripts, many based on the Futuropolis humans’ unfounded prejudices against robots. The best part is the four-minute filler scene at the end of each show, when Astro summarizes the episode’s plot with one obscure error in a name or storyline. You’re supposed to play with your friends after the show and see who spots the mistake — but they never tell you the right answer. A must-see….

With the Michelob Yuppies off the scene, the current Worst Commercial on TV is the one for a maxi-pad using computer graphics to show how it fits in your undies better than any other brand….

Coming to a video store near you: Video Shorts 6, the winners of last month’s national video-art contest run by Seattle’s Parker Lindner. The best video on the tape (and the only winner from Washington) is Crash Your Car, a sprightly music clip using edited gore from old driver-ed films with a peppy synthesizer tune. The real psychotronic thing about it is that the finished video is actually being shown in driver-ed classes!

UPDATE on last month’s item on cable deregulation: Group W’s selling its last local systems to TCI, which burst into town with an instant image problem. They announced that in return for an extravagant rate hike, they’d give viewers many new channels — which turned out to be garbage networks like The Weather Channel and Cable Value Network, which TCI happens to own stock in. To make room, some popular local channels would be dropped out and others moved down to the far end of the black box. Thanx to Reagan’s foxes in the FCC chicken coop, the city could do nothing to stop it – except delay approval of the license change until after the new federal tax law, which would cost TCI millions. So it looks like KVOS and KTPS are safe — for a while.

My best wishes to New City Theater, which has had hard times of late. They’ve taken many notable risks this season, trying to expand into a “full service theater company” showing contemporary and challenging works without a camp/nostalgia cash cow production to support them. Hope they’re back in good shape soon.

More kudos to The Weekly for its recent follow-the-money expose of the downtown building boom. Turns out all those glass boxes haven’t been built because anybody needed the office space, but because the old tax law and deregulation of banks and pension funds made real estate speculation a lucrative proposition whether or not the buildings themselves made any money. Therefore, expecting the free market to regulate tower growth without public intervention is useless. This cancerous growth has been going on in most US cities. In Manhattan they call it “gentrification;” in San Francisco they call it “Manhattanization;” in Seattle they call it “becoming more like San Francisco.” In Houston they call the new, unleaseable glass boxes “see-thru buildings.”

Until next month, let me leave you with a line from an obscure Portuguese film about a beautiful woman dying of consumption: “I love you like God loves sinners.”

12/86 ArtsFocus Misc.

Welcome to Misc., the regional pop-culture section of ArtsFocus, the second most widely-read publication among the Seattle arts community.

The first is, of course, the Weekly World News. And if I may be presumptuous, I think we’re better. Sure, the WWN is handsome looking and has great mail-order ads, but buying something just so you can laugh at everyone else who buys it is an aesthetic dead end. It leads to an unattractive smugness, an attitude of scoffing at other people’s lives without ever questioning one’s own.

The logical extreme of this attitude is shown by audiences of the documentary Rate It X. “Progressive” guys watch this film of interviews with sleazy redneck guys and come away confirmed about their superiority to those working-class creeps. “Progressive” women come away knowing they don’t have to care about anyone or anything to be morally superior, since men obviously aren’t really people.

There are more pressing crises in this day than anti-thought “intellectual” films, though — like the closing of the Rainbow Tavern, just as it had finally broken the stranglehold of aging hippie R&B bands that had ruled all local clubs for too many years, and had established the most eclectic, truly progressive array of live music this town’s ever seen. The Seattle music scene will never be the same, even if a “New Rainbow” opens in the spring in some less-convenient location.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Seattle Star. One of the best free papers around, it’s a forum for the wittiest just-above-ground comics created anywhere.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Soup in a tube. From Germany, where everything from mayonnaise to milk comes in toothpaste-like tubes, comes Nutri-Soup, a thick sludge of bullion, herbs and natural and artificial flavorings. Just two inches (one tablespoon) is enough for a cup of great-smelling and adequately-tasting soup.

I hope you all saw the Art Expo in the Trade Center last month. It was a true cash-from-chaos scene, as the city’s art hustlers abandoned all remnants of cultured propriety. From now on, the question in visual art won’t be whether creative people can also sell, but whether salespeople can also create.

One answer to that question is found at D’Art, the home of Quality Artist’s Products. The permanent D’Art store may now be closed, but a holiday edition is now open in the Madison Valley neighborhood. As always, it’s filled with cute, outrageous and just plain rockin’ things, all at somewhat reasonable prices.

Alan Lande’s recent Autocratic, a “ballet for cars” in the new SCCC garage, was also tons-O-fun. Where they got a wrecked car in the same color as the rented wreckers was only the first of many great mysteries that night, as four concrete floors of dance, live and recorded music, video bonfires, signs with names of parts of the human digestive system, and other post-industrial entertainments were explored by an audience of carpools stretching a quarter-mile north of the site.

There’s a wine store in Post Alley with a great tabletop miniature of a modern winery. It uses taped narration, flashing lights, and motorized machinery to show the entire winemaking process, from vineyard to tasting room. It does not contain a tiny AA or MADD meeting.

This is being written in a tiny room overlooking the central downtown waterfront. The Port of Seattle and the usual development suspects are out to destroy the waterfront we know and love, by putting up yet another scheme of junky “gourmet” boutiques, junky “luxury” hotel rooms and junky “upscale” offices. I love the waterfront just as it is now, and don’t want it turned into another lifeless pseudo-suburb like today’s lower First Avenue or Broadway. It’s the same sort of destructive “improvement” that threatened the Market and Pioneer Square, before those great areas were “saved” by putting the trashy new businesses in the great old buildings. The waterfront deserves more than that — it deserves to stay the honest, funky, lo-rent district it is now.

In more uplifting news, Sen. Fishstick has been granted a permanent leave of absence from his taxpayer-supported position of being “hard on Communism” in Latin America as an excuse for being soft on fascism, of promoting the censorship of musicians who even suggest that religious and lifestyle alternatives exist, of making deals to let incompetent but ideologically-correct men become judges. America is even rediscovering the grand and noble tradition of disrespect for one’s president. Now comes the hard part: Getting away from complaining about the way things are done long enough to do them some other way.

Despite the posters, the local small-press book Young Men Can Sing is not “the first novel with advertisements.” Mass-market paperbacks have often had ads stuck in the middle. I remember one ’50s paperback with an ad for Time magazine, promising to inform me all about “Pasternak, Voice of the World’s Free Spirit… Einstein, Investigator Into the Unknown… Kruschev, Frank Lloyd Wright, Brigitte Bardot.” And I’d always thought she was the Voice of the World’s Free Spirit….

CATHODE CORNER: The first Christmas commercial this year came on Oct. 13 on WTBS, for an LP of holiday favorites….

Viacom Cablevision will soon add the Cable Value Network, one of many channels and individual programs established in the wake of FCC regulations regarding all-advertising “shows” and “services.” Using sophisticated marketing techniques at relatively unsophisticated audiences, these companies prey on compulsive shoppers to buy tacky wall clocks and briefcases. Cable systems running the channels get a percentage of all sales from their subscribers. No system that runs this form of unabashed audience manipulation should ever again claim to be providing a public service to plea for exorbitant rate increases. Not that it’s necessary; by this time next year the FCC will let cable systems charge whatever they can get away with.

Don’t ask where I got it, but I’ve now got a 1972-vintage tourist map of scenic El Salvador. It looks just like a Tourmap publication, with cheesy drawings of local industries and recreational opportunities. The saddest part, though, is the color photos of ugly modern lo-rise office buildings. The government is obviously proud of its attempts to make its capital city look like an imitation LA. Pity.

I’ll see you at the Incredibly Strange Matinees, noon weekends at the University Cinemas. Until then, remember to always be a good sport, be a good sport all ways. So long.

11/86 ArtsFocus Misc.

Welcome again to Misc., the regional pop-culture column with the same non-aspirin pain reliever as the prescription brand Motrin.

The astounding playoff and World Series performances by ex-Mariners Dave Henderson and Spike Owen, now in Boston, prove there really has been some Big League Stuff in the Kingdome, if not in the team owner’s box.

Twenty-four percent of the Forbes 400 richest Americans got their fortunes in entertainment or publishing. You’ll notice the name printed at the top of this column was not on that list.

The long nightmare is over: Expo 86 closed. Even with almost as many visitors as there are Canadians, the thing still lost hundreds of millions of dollars (Canadian dollars, but it’s still a lot). The deficit will be paid from BC lottery revenues which normally support charities.

Speaking of what BC politicians call “megaprojects,” seen (or better yet driven under) the Convention Center yet? That thing’s a monster! It’s already totally out of scale with the surrounding First Hill neighborhood, just a few months into its four-year construction cycle. It’s fun looking now as a Paul Bunyan-sized Erector set, but once it gets walls it’ll be a horrible monolith — at least until the graffiti artists get to it, we can only hope.

HUGE STOREWIDE SALE DEPT.: Frederick & Nelson is now under local management and I’m sure they’ll do well, particularly if they follow these few suggestions: bring back the fabric and pet departments, the lending library, the Men’s Grill, and especially the Paul Bunyan Room. The big Paul & Babe mural and the serpentine counter may need to be rebuilt from scratch, but it’ll be worth it….

The Bon may be bought by a Canadian company. If it happens, don’t expect the name to ever revert to The Bon Marche. The original name, borrowed from a Paris store, originally means “good buy,” but in colloquial French has come to mean “cheap” in the demeaning sense — not the best image to promote to the French-literate Canadians who drive to Seattle to shop….

The Heart of Pay n’ Save, that great section with discount imported trinkets of all sizes, colors and uses, has been dropped by that chain’s new out-of-state owners. They concluded shoppers here aren’t as bargain-driven as elsewhere. Much of the “Heart” merchandise will remain in the stores — but at higher prices….

Three of the U District’s best stores and one of Broadway’s have been replaced this year by candy-colored sweatshirt stands. Can the horror be stopped before it devours us all?

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Market Tab. This photocopied sheet contains gossip, items of interest around town and pithy comments, much like another writing product I know of.

LOCAL JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Cheese sticks at the Gourmet Thrift Shop. Each fresh batch is made with a food processor full of real cheeses. Like everything at the quaint little shop in the old Rubato Record space on Broadway, it’s amazingly good and amazingly cheap. Now if they’d only stop playing that same Steely Dan tape over and over….

In other junk food news, the Dr Pepper Co. just bought the 7 Up Co. Upon hearing the news, I used a can of each product and one drinking glass to determine just how well the companies will merge. Results: a definite clash of corporate cultures.

FILM CLIPS: Jumpin’ Jack Flash isn’t a big hit; audiences are comparing Penny Marshall unfavorably to the three other directors in her immediate family. I still may see it, ‘cuz Whoopi Goldberg’s bank-telecommunications job in it is the same job I used to have. Never got involved w/any spies or killers like she does, ‘tho….

Children of a Lesser God raises some interesting questions. Will Hollywood ever find another starring role for hearing-impaired star Marlee Matlin? And the special subtitled screenings for the hearing impaired are nice, but why don’t studios make similar prints for other domestic films? Deaf people are interested in other things than just deafness, ya know.

Foreign films come with subtitles, of course, like the ones shown by The Cinematheque, which I associate-direct, at the University Cinemas on 55th and U Way. This month a new Cinematheque series begins weekends at noon, with (non-subtitled) horror, cult, comedy and other specialty films. Like the foreign films, these are for the viewer who wants an active, adventuresome film experience.

EARLY WARNING: A local theater company is planning a musical based on a certain very popular cartoon property. High-level rights negotiations are underway between the theater’s fearless leaders and a Mr. Big in LA.

Industrial art takes on a new meaning as construction begins on 6th Ave. S. for a new office-warehouse for the Frye Art Museum. How the Industrial District’s loft photographers, painters and video artists will react to the pastoral oils and watercolors moving in is anyone’s guess.

We all know the local literary scene generally won’t accept anything too far removed from free-verse nature poetry, the written equivalent of a Frye painting. Other writers give me flack for not hating technology (writing this on Lincoln Arts’ word processor instead of in longhand, watching TV). Our local Luddite authors, however, have a ways to catch up to the reactionary behavior of a Chicago group, Writers Without Phones.

There’s one piece of electronics I do despise: The compact disc. They don’t give you big cover art or colorful labels. You can’t make a scratch mix with them. They sound sterile, flat, too clean for any of the music that made this country great: Hot jazz, swing, bebop, bluegrass, gospel, folk, blues, R&B, country, and their mongrel child rock n’ roll. What’s worse is that the record biz is realigning itself to favor the high-priced spread. Already Motown has dropped 82 oldies albums, which henceforth will be sold only on CD. Those records, like most good non-classical music made since 1950, owe their original existence to the low cost and mass market created by cheap vinyl discs. If CDs take over, all you’ll get is slick, bland product (like the current Motown roster). CDs suck real big.

CATHODE CORNER: Pee-wee’s Playhouse, the undisputed Best Show on TV this year, is now on at 9 a.m. Saturdays, despite what the papers say. Don’t miss it, or the rest of the day people will scream when you inadvertently say the Secret Word and you won’t know why.

Maybe I’ll see you at the next Ballard Market Singles Night. If not, keep stroking your miniature replicas of Waiting for the Interurban until next month. We’re in touch, so you keep in touch.

9/86 ArtsFocus Misc.

Hello again, pop culture fans. Welcome to episode 3 of Misc., the column that asks just how lucky we are to live in an era when we can get gas with “High Tech Techroline.”

This has been a summer of torn streets, noisy construction, disappearing bus stops and other hassles, many of which will be with us for the next four years. The good news is by that time, the only people left downtown will be those of us who demand urban life. Life may soon become a lot less overcrowded for those who refuse to go to Bellevue. Sadly, we’re losing Chapter 2 Books in the University District to that Nowhereland to the east, and are in danger of even losing the Pacific Science Center. This threat to Seattle’s cultural life must be stopped. You wanna have to tell your kids someday that they can’t pitch pennies into the fountains or get their hair raised in the static-electricity exhibit without spending an hour on the bridges? The only arches that belong in Bellevue are golden.

(By the way, the widow and daughter of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc have started a California peace group, Mothers Embracing Nuclear Disarmament. With nuclear weapons, they must have finally found something to crusade against that’s worse than their food.)

Passionately urban life does seem to be catching on in Seattle as a permanent thing. Broadway this summer has been a wonderland of all different kinds of people making all different kinds of scenes. At Dick’s alone you can find some 200 people being sociable at 1:30 a.m. Whenever anybody in Seattle has this much fun, somebody has tried to outlaw it. Already business interests are demanding something be “done” about this “problem” — which is really the best thing that has happened to Seattle since the saving of the Market. Any real city has spontaneous street scenes — gatherings of ordinary people who may not have a destination in mind when they take to the streets, but have an invigorating time getting there. Not everybody who stands on a sidewalk and talks to friends is a criminal; we should be glad the attempts to make Broadway a district for yuppies and only yuppies has gloriously failed. Now if they can only tear up those nauseatingly-cute footsteps…

THINGS I DID THIS SUMMER: Saw the University Book Store remainder sale and was pleased to find How To Sell What You Write marked down to $1.49. Noticed the resemblance between International News’s brightly colored, slogan laden clothes and those of the 1900s comic strip star, The Yellow Kid. Discovered Seattle’s ultimate food store, other than the Pike Place Market: Marketime Foods in Fremont. Was captivated by Cisterna Magna, an exquisite dance/visual performance at Belltown’s Galleria Potatohead. Concluded that any movie, fashion style, entertainer or politician advertised as “hot” is probably going to be dreadful.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Heritage Music Review. Longtime area piano player/disc jockey Doug Bright uses a Braille word processor to make this knowledgeable guide to old rock, R&B and jazz performers of the region and nation. Available in regular print at Elliot Bay Books and other select sources.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Bubble gum cards that didn’t make it. The Sports Stop in the Center House basement has cards for entertainment properties that outstayed their welcome (Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper) or never caught on at all (the Dune andSupergirl films). The cards are collector’s items; the gum’s undoubtedly stale, though.

Our last column had a snide remark about an SRO theater. I don’t really hate SRO. About a decade ago, when smart people were briefly being courted as audiences by major motion pictures, SRO was considered the “Establishment” of area theaters. Lately though, SRO has shown itself capable of the finest in theater architecture (though the pink and gray on the Uptown has got to go) and concession food. They continue to subsidize KJET, the closest thing we have to a progressive commercial radio station, and in 1970 tried to save the Seattle Pilots baseball team. Now, this heritage is threatened by a takeover attempt from Paramount Pictures. It might be seen as Paramount’s revenge on Washington state; it was our native son, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who wrote the famous “U.S. vs. Paramount” decision forcing the big five studios to sell the theater chains though which they controlled the entire industry. With today’s federal antitrust regulators (who could more rightly be called protrust), the big distributors are itching for their old monopoly powers back. The remnants of the original Paramount theater chain (not including the Seattle Paramount) are now owned by Coca-Cola, which also owns the Columbia and Embassy studios and half of Tri-Star. Other alliances are underway. If you think the movies this past year have been pitiful, just wait until the big studios control so many theaters they can lock out independent films.

When that time comes, we’ll all have to go to VCRs to see anything interesting. Already you can check out an amazing variety of stuff, including a series of tapes called Video Romance. One store has them in the Adult section even though they’ve no sex, nudity or cussing, and are in fact far tamer than the evening soaps. What they’ve got are impossibly innocent (especially for their glamorous professions) women meeting and taming tall men who have wavy hair and vague accents. All this plus cheap productions (we never see the exotic locales in which the stories are set, only living rooms), syrupy music, bad acting and “Your Host, Louis Jourdan” and you’ve got more real entertainment than in the entire collected works of Michael J. Fox.

Another recently viewed tape: Urgh! A Music War, 1981 concert footage of some 35 bands gathered under the awkward, inaccurate label “new wave.” Only one of them was big at the time (the police, who helped finance the film). Others became stars (the Go-Gos, UB40, Devo), had solid cult followings (Magazine, Steel Pulse, XTC), or met deserved obscurity (Athletico Spizz 80, Splodgenessabounds). I found myself viewing the proceedings as nostalgia for my own generation, and seeing how, even while many of the best bands never had a major hit, the attitudes they represented have become quite pervasive in American society — in butchered form, of course. A lot of the worst aspects of punk/new wave (shallow imagery, aggressive hype, destructiveness to self and others as romanticism, bigotry as nostalgia, shamelessness, lousy manners, celebrations of stupidity) have become everyday aspects of modern business, government and lifestyles. Even agriculture has gone punk: It’s dependent on drugs and panhandling, lives fast, dies young and leaves a good-looking corpse.

Home video’s an even bigger happening in the Asian American community. The wonderful variety stores of the International District all have amazing tape boxes promising music, farce, soap opera, horror, kinky sex, and serious drama, as well as the martial arts you’d expect (often more than one genre in the same production). While you might not want to buy a membership for unsubtitled tapes in a language you don’t speak, the stores will usually have a video playing while you buy some of their fine foods, clothes, jewelry, toys and housewares. Treat yourself to a view of another culture’s pop culture.

We close this edition with a call for entries in the first Misc. Helga Lookalike Contest. The Northwest is abundant with the stoic Nordic romantic look now associated with painter Andrew Wyeth’s mystery woman, as seen in both Time and Newsweek. Send a picture of yourself in any appropriate costume to Misc. c/o Lincoln Arts Center, 66 Bell St., Seattle. All ages and races welcome; bonus points will be awarded for the best floral headband.

7/86 ArtsFocus Misc.

Welcome back, cult following, to the second installment of Misc., the column that explores popular culture in and out of Seattle. (Unlike that national “arbiter of popular culture” Ian Shoales, I’m not a fictional character created by a comedian. To the best of my knowledge, I really exist.) The opinions herein are not necessarily those of the Lincoln Arts Association or anyone affiliated with it. This column is appointed to be read in churches.

A professional person recently asked me, “How would you define a positive attitude?” A reasonable question, deserving a reasonable answer. Increasingly, the phrase “positive attitude” is used in our society to encourage the worst sorts of behavior. To me, artificial perkiness is not a positive attitude. Conformity is not a positive attitude. Masochism is not a positive attitude. Blind, unquestioning loyalty to your company or your country is not a positive attitude. To be truly positive is to see the things that need changing and to commit to helping change them. It’s easier than it sounds; it just starts with a commitment to be a professional person.

The immediate vicinity of Lincoln Arts now has its own positive-thinking honorary mayor. Ann Nofsinger, actress-writer-Two Bells Tavern waitress, was the narrow victor in a week-long campaign which became far more serious than many people had expected, especially considering that the first Mayor of Belltown was a drag queen named Dominic. This time, the three candidates had official-sounding slogans and platforms on real issues. Suffice it to say not all the debate/balloting audience at the Two Bells was as serious as the candidates.

Interest is now bound to increase in Nofsinger’s acting role in “White Elephants,” a 20-minute video play by Debla Kaminsky and Kurt Geissel. Originally devised to accompany a gallery show of “white paintings,” the play includes over 90 visual and verbal references to the all-reflective color, ranging in obscurity from a sack of flour and a man named Clifford Dover to the patron saint of virginity. It’s all served up within a story of feisty-innocent Nofsinger trading innuendoes with braggart Earl Brooks as they’re painting her apartment all in – you guessed it.

Not to be in Belltown much longer is Display and Costume Supply, the wonderful store where slumming normal people stood outside in line every Oct. 30 to get Halloween office party costumes. The latest victim of the real estate boom is going out with a public auction July 22, when loyal customers can stock up on Conehead wigs, mirror balls, sequins, vampire teeth, party favors, trophies, styrofoam Statue of Liberty torches, lamé fabrics, and plastic hot dogs, croissants, and lobsters. It’ll all still be available, but you’ll have to go north of Northgate to get it.

Also joining the ranks of the disappeared is WorkShop Printers, home of high-quality, low-cost printing for posters, newsletters, flyers, etc. by cultural and political groups. WorkShop products have bee so pervasive in these circles that I always thought they’d been around forever, or at least since the late ’60s, when in fact it has only been in business since 1980.

The new Display and Costume Supply is in the same general area as the Oak Tree Cinemas, the state-of-the-art sixplex everybody’s raving about. I’ll give a full review of the place as soon as it shows something worth seeing or at least something better than Top Gun,that two-hour commercial for the Pentagon budget. The willingness of Rolling Stone to hype that film is the final proof that the magazine no longer cares about anything and probably never did.

AD SLOGAN OF THE MONTH: “Silo, Where People Have Fun With Electricity.”

LICENSE PLATE HOLDER OF THE MONTH: Seen on Capitol Hill, this white-on-black custom job with the middle blacked out with masking tape, DAVE ‘N’ 4-EVER.

FOOD FAD OF THE MONTH: Teriyaki fast food. Once the monopoly of the former Toshi’s stands at Queen Anne and Green Lake, they’re now popping up all over town, from Beacon Hill to a resurrected Toshi’s on Aurora. You can eat huge helpings of calrose rice, crisp greens and your choice of beef, pork or a half chicken, usually for under $3. It’s the Pacific Rim-inspired alternative for non-vegetarians who really like to eat.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Wiggansnatch. James Leland Moore has been making this incredibly handsome “Alternative Realities Literary Magazine” for three years now, overseeing its growth into one of the Northwest’s most original, contemporary media of fiction and art. Faced with rising losses, he’s cut back on size and scope with the latest issue, dropping the astute news-briefs column and returning Wiggansnatch to its roots in stories based on pagan and mystic traditions. It’s still great reading for your $2 at Left Bank Books and other select spaces.

The Interstate 90 landscaping in the Rainier Valley has, with the hot weather, bloomed tall grasses along rolling slopes. It’s as if the unfinished freeway has already started making Eastern Washington closer to Seattle.

A Lincoln Arts tenant, the Youth Defense Campaign, has a page in the California-based punk magazine Maximum Rock n’ Roll. YCC’s David Stubbs writes about the group’s efforts to stop the official suppression of independent underage entertainment. The July issue also has the shocking story of LA police arresting and indicting Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, America’s premier political-punk band, on trumped-up charges of “distributing pornographic materials” — an explicit painting by Academy Award-winning graphic designer H.R. Geiger, printed on the fold-out inside cover to an album with a warning sticker on the front. To quote a DKs song. “California Uber Alles” indeed. It’s time to take a true positive attitude and, to quote Biafra’s girlfriend Suzanne Stefanac in the article, “defend your right to deviant behavior.”

That’s it for now. Don’t get overdrawn on your Linda Farris Gallery custom credit card before we meet again.