First came the highly unofficial Star Wars Un-Premiere Party, Thursday at the Rendezvous (which is still open despite a little kitchen fire last Tuesday, thank you). Singer Cheryl Serio was the most elegant hostess, accompanied by our ol’ friends DJ Superjew and DJ EZ-Action.

Among the audiovisual attractions displayed on the video projector: Mark Hamill’s appearance on The Muppet Show (above), the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special (a truly bizarre spectacle indeed), and something billed as a Turkish language version of the original film but was really a whole different movie (a hilarious sword-and-scandal adventure) that happened to incorporate SW spaceship shots, with the SW producers’ apparent authorization.

ON SATURDAY, the 22nd anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens blowup was celebrated by Cheryl Diane (above) and three other singer-songwriter acts in Diane’s fourth annual Eruptive Revival cabaret. As you may recall, last year’s edition was cut short by that nasty fire at the Speakeasy Cafe (still a charred-out ruin today). No such mishaps marred this year’s show at the Cafe Venus/Mars Bar, thankfully.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, the University District Street Fair was underway again, as tired and worn-out as I’ve always remembered it being. The products displayed at the “crafts” booths were barely distinguishable from those displayed in the smarmiest tourist “fine art” stores of LaConner. The food concessions were no different from the elephant ears and kettle korn sold summer-long from Puyallup to Ellensburg. The assorted musical acts tried to grab passersby’s attention, but (at least the acts I saw) failed to overcome the cloudy-afternoon ennui in full smothering force.

And, of course, the booths only temporarily hid the dozen or more empty storefronts along the half-mile strip known to all as The Ave. The city thinks it knows just what to do about the retail ennui–a construction project. To the City of Seattle bureaucracy, every problem is solvable by a construction project.

But it’s hard to imagine anyone other than a bureaucrat imagining that wider sidewalks and prettier street lights will draw non-student shoppers back from the malls; not while the daily papers continue to smear The Ave as A Problem Place with Those Problem People.

And as long as there’s no money to do the right things for the throwaway teens (often banished by middle-class parents over not fitting a proper upstanding image) but plenty of money to do things against them (police harassment schemes that only make things worse), this situation won’t change.

ON A HAPPIER NOTE, Sunday evening brought two of my all-time fave cartoonists, ex-local Charles Burns and still-local Jim Woodring, to a singing session at Confounded Books/Hypno Video.

You’ve gotta check out Woodring’s newest, Trosper. Painted in bright pastel colors you can eat with a spoon, and printed just like an old Little Golden Book, it’s a wordless, utterly engrossing little tale of a cute little elephant who just wants to have fun, in a world seemingly bent on frustrating him. It even comes with a CD by one of our fave neo-improv artistes, the incomprable Bill Frisell.

Today’s case in point: Those chewy, gritty, “nutritionally balanced” processed snack foods of the Apollo age, Space Food Sticks, are back! (Albeit only available online, in bulk quantities, imported from Australia.)

THERE ARE ODD TV COMMERCIALS, then there are the truly, utterly strange, quasi-surreal spots that make you wonder what the ad agency people were drinking; or, in this next case, eating.

The spot I describe aired on various network daytime shows in early January. It opens with a business-suited yes man addressing “Governor Kempthorne.” The scene opens up to reveal a replica of the Idaho governor’s office, with the real governor seated at the desk. The aide continues, “Good news. There’s only one person more popular than you–Spuddy Buddy.”

A poorly drawn cartoon potato suddenly pops up on screen. He dances and sings the praises of baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, fries, and assorted other ways you can devour his tuber brethern. The half-minute closes with the governor telling the potato toon, “I hope you’re not running for office anytime soon.”

The Spuddy Buddy character was created by the state’s potato commission two or three years back, at least partly as an icon for children’s merchandising. A major PR agency spent untold bucks and person-hours researching ways to get consumers to demand Idaho spuds instead of whatever’s cheapest, and apparently decided a lovable spokescritter would be a great teach-’em-while-they’re-young concept.

The cartoon spud, however awkward looking, does have enough fans to generate at least one fan-fiction story of a sort, to be mentioned as a prop in other net-fiction, and the subject of speculators’ attempts to create a new Beanie Baby-style collecting fad.

But the figure has a different meaning for me. He reminds me of my lonely-college-boy days in the UW School of Communications. The advertising majors loved to scoff at us editorial-journalism majors, boasting that they were sure to get high-paying careers and we weren’t.

Then, one day in a Communications Building classroom, I saw the image that made me decide once and for all to follow my dream and avoid the suckup world of bigtime corporate advertising. As you might be guessing, it was a storyboard for a mock TV commercial featuring a singing, dancing cartoon potato.

I’m thinking I ought to send out for the Spuddy Buddy plush doll, as a reminder of the ol’ road-not-taken thang.

GEOV PARRISH’S LIST of alternative war-news sources.

SOMETHING I’VE LONG DREAMED OF is finally almost here–the chance to have my own cereal! (A heaping bowl of Frosted MISCflakes, anyone?)

BURIED HALFWAY or so through this Seattle Times story is a great opportunity. The Washington Shoe Building, Pioneer Square’s premier artist-studio space until all the artists were evicted for would-be gentrification last year, is now for sale at a relative pittance to anyone willing to finish the repairs from the Ash Wednesday earthquake.

That’s just the sort of sweat-equity project artists often go for. Let’s bring the Shoe back!

‘TWAS A GLORIOUS 20th anniversary party Sun. night for the Pink Door, our official fave gourmet-Italian eatery. (And not just because the name discreetly alludes to something I always like to go into.) The event had the swingin’ acrobat depicted here, a stilt walker, an accordian-tuba combo, several torch singers, a sax player, and street-music vet Baby Gramps. Fun was had by all.

AN EGYPTIAN INTELLECTUAL claims “Terrorism is the antithesis of self-determination.” (found by Rebecca’s Pocket.)

ROGER EBERT’S glossary of movie cliches (found by Robot Wisdom).

Trick or Treat

by guest columnist Mr. Hedley Bowes

MUSINGS ON THIS PAST All Hallow’s Eve season:

It’s 1991 (the shitter) economically; and after hundreds of thousands of layoffs this year and entire sectors wiped out, the government and business communities are looking to consumers to save our collective asses.

Sen. Patty Murray introduced the “Let’s Go Shopping” bill, which would put the Federal government in the business of rebating state sales taxes for a 10-day period during the fourth quarter of the year. This was announced on Halloween, a day when we’ve all been scared into avoiding shopping malls at all costs, lest we put ourselves at risk of terrorists.

It’s been said quite often in the last month it’s our patriotic duty to go shopping. And spend money. Tell that to the corporate community and the venture-capital investors.

Never mind the record: Consumers continued to spend and buoy a sluggish economy in the four quarters since last year’s “election.” Business spending fell sharply after last November and has continued to be soft. Sure, there was a rush in the energy sector; for a while it looked like that would be where the action was. But look where Enron is today (near-bankrupt and seeking a buyer). Gasoline prices (everywhere but here) are the lowest in years.

The second “economic stimulus” package this year is aimed at stimulating big players like IBM ($1.4 billion), General Motors ($833 million), General Electric ($671 million), Chevron Texaco ($572)r, and Enron ($254 million). Any one of these corporations has the option to:

• A) take the tax break and rehire or retrain employees at risk of layoff;

• B) plow the money back into the balance sheet, thereby improving earnings and buoying stock value; or

• C) exercise option B, while shutting domestic facilities in favor of continued offshore outsourcing.

Go ahead. As a contracted bonus-getting, shareholding C-level executive, pick your optimal A, B, or C.

Krispy Kreme, a franchise operation not from here, opened its much anticipated and over-hyped Issaquah store early one late October morning. Lines formed the night before as people camped out. One would think Mick Jagger himself was making the fucking things.

We were privileged to have a friend who camped out overnight for the precious things. After tasting one, we can say the secret ingredient of Krispy Kreme doughnuts is their high fat content. The stuff is also very likely airwhipped with powdery sweet confectioner’s sugar. A new drug for these tough times.

What’s going on here?

Historically, this region creates national (and global) trends: Microsoft, Redhook, Starbucks, Chateau Ste. Michelle, Red Robin (and any number of mid to high end theme restaurants) K2, JanSport, et al.

But things have been so quiet around here lately that a relative unknown from across the country can come in and leverage enough free PR from the local press to offset hundreds of thousands of startup dollars. And people are lining up overnight, as if they were waiting for a rock star to show up. Nope, it’s just a doughnut.

Have we lost our special place as an idea and business incubator? Or did we simply over-commit to high technology (a once darling sector) and big business that we forgot about the little things (like doughnuts)?

Game Three: Made for TV. GWB throws out the first pitch in the third game of the World Series. I watched the final inning, waiting for truth to prevail. I wanted so much for Arizona to bring the game to an even 2-2, to take it into extra innings so that we might have some hope that this was not just a made for television win. But it was not to be. And so the writing is on the wall. Through their own special brand of black magic, New York was now certain to take all three games at Yankee Stadium and take the series in seven.

Is it a matter of will? Destiny? Or (as with elections, energy markets, layoffs, tax breaks, and doughnuts) just the way things are “meant to be?”

Thankfully, this was not the way it played out. I don’t favor the Diamondbacks that much (indeed, the irony of a bunch of “desert snakes” taking on the New York Yankees in this of all years was not lost on me)

But the Yankees have come to represent the way things seem to be done in America: Presidents not elected but awarded the post by a court; corporate executives taking bonuses on declining returns on top of salaries that outstrip those of average workers by multiples of 1,000. Our world seems to be one where things are not decided but predetermined, where the decisions we do make as a people are somehow subverted, where the deck is increasingly stacked toward wealth and power: Don’t Mess With Texans (or those with Texas-sized appetites for power, wealth, fame…).

Then, in the ninth inning of the seventh game, a simple sacrifice brought the wealth and power of dynasty down, leaving in their places a restored sense of truth and hope. What’s great about baseball is that it can accomplish this peaceably. Baseball, our national catharsis—this American oddity is still very much alive.

For 31 of Seattle Center’s 39 years of existence, Bumbershoot: The Seattle Arts Festival has been its biggest annual event.

Devised from the start to encompass the entire former World’s Fair grounds (except the now separately-run Space Needle and Pacific Science Center), it’s also the last of Seattle’s annual lineup of big populist summer gatherings (starting in May with Opening Day of Boating Season and the Film Festival, then continuing with Folklife, the Bite of Seattle, and Seafair).

Bumbershoot’s premise: An all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet of culture. A book fair in one corner, short plays in another, contemporary art installations in another. At the big stages, bigname music celebs. At smaller stages scattered about, secondary performers of all types.

And between everything, the familiar sideshow attractions of Thai-food booths, street jugglers, balloon sellers, and fenced-off beer gardens.

In its early years, Bumbershoot was strictly aimed at a specific socioethnic caste then taking control of the city’s cultural identity–aging, increasingly square baby-boomers. Nonwhite performers were largely limited to boomer-friendly blues bands; mainstage shows were heavy on the likes of Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor.

In the late ’80s, that started to change slightly. Younger, hipper, and more diverse acts have steadily gained their way into the mix.

A bizarre P-I preview story called this year’s lineup “Bumberpalooza,” comparing it to the ’90s Lollapalooza rock package tours. I initially thought the article’s writer used the analogy to claim the festival was becoming more corporate-mainstream.

But the writer, still believing Lollapalooza’s original “alternative” hype, really wanted to say B’shoot had become edgier and more experimental. Fortunately, she was right.

With more hip-hop acts, a whole electronica stage, and a mainstage lineup ranging from Loretta Lynn to G. Love and Special Sauce, Bumbershoot 2001’s fulfilling its name’s promise of an all-covering umbrella of expression.

In these images: Happy crowds; the Book Fair (including, this year, only one small press with the word “heron” in its name!); local collectors’ caches of electric mixers and Harlequin Romance cover paintings; an information booth at the start of the slinking line into KeyArena; Posies legend Ken Stringfellow; a hula-hoop demonstration on the main lawn; and, below, our ex-Stranger colleague Inga Muscio.

Muscio, scheduled to perform on the Starbucks-sponsored literary stage, peppered her half-hour slot with plugs for smaller coffee brands. She ended it with a story about dreaming Starbucks boss Howard Schultz was her S&M slave.

Thanks to Comedy Central, I just realized the perfect fictional portrayal of George W. Bush, decades before the fact–Charles Grodin’s act as a Saturday Night Live guest host who, in a running-gag storyline, didn’t realize it was live and didn’t show up until the day of the show. The gag climaxed with Grodin stumbling through a fake public-service ad, “Hire the Incompetent.”

ELSEWHERE:

“Instant Ramen–The Invention That Changed the 20th Century World” (found by Larkfarm).

The amazing breadth and scope of Yugoslav cuss words….

Patricia Ryan, 56, who owned Belltown’s Two Bells Tavern from 1982 to 1999, died at the Swedish Cancer Institute on Aug. 4, after a seven-year bout with ovarian cancer. She turned the little tavern on a low-foot-traffic stretch of Fourth Avenue into the virtual living room for the then-burgeoning Denny Regrade arts community; it’s survived as a refuge for regular folk left behind by the neighborhood’s gentrification. Her survivors include artist and curator Rolon Bert Garner, who worked as a part-time bartender for Ryan in 1982 and married her two years later. Over the years, the Bells hosted several MISC live events and anniversary parties, as well as scores of the little meetings and confabs that have helped make this report-thang what it is. Further info is at HistoryLink.org.

Of all the annual summer mega-events in Seattle, the Bite of Seattle is the most divergent from its officially hyped image.

In the media previews and recaps, it’s almost always billed as a perky-bland, homogonous ritual in which nice upscale suburban families can partake of the finest dishes from the region’s finest restaurants.

It’s really the one big free annual gathering of KIng County’s middle-class and lower-middle-class masses (the people Sidran would like to deport from the Seattle city limits).

They come to pig out on empty calories from a larger array of the same junk-food and fast-food booths you see at any street fair; to collect freebies and promotional trinkets; and to listen to the region’s most pathetically smarmy oldies-cover bands.

Yeah, it’s a “family” event. But it’s one for real families: screeching kids, horny/sullen teens, ulceric grownups, and cranky oldsters.

And I love it.

Along with Seafair, it’s one of the last truly populist huge happennings in a town that’s increasingly at odds with its industrial roots and frightened of non-affluent people, particularly if said non-affluent people are darker-skinned.

During the post-Mardi Gras rancor this past February, certain talk-radio goons branded the Bite as a “gangbangers’ ball.” Bah. It attracts regular ol’ folks of all kinds, some of whom are young and/or black. And like working-class teens of all ethnic types, they can act loud and boistrous if given the opportunity to do so.

Webvan.com, which bought out the Kirkland-based HomeGrocer.com, is calling it quits. Like a lot of venture-capital-chompin’ dot-coms, it tried to “get big fast” by spending heavily on high-profile operations and advertising. Unlike other dot-coms, it had to also spend tons on warehouses, trucks, and merchandise in a notoriously low-margin industry.

The consumer-level “Internet revolution,” meanwhile, crawled as high-speed home connections remained costly and sparse. (Ever try to access HomeGrocer or Webvan on a 56K modem? Not pretty.) But Webvan couldn’t wait for the bugs to be worked out of the process. With its truckers and its conveyer belts in a half-dozen big metro areas, it had to immediately hit it big and stay there.

Why, many are now asking, did anybody (especially in the investment community) think that was sure to happen?

One possible answer: A mistaken comparison between the early WWW and the early cable TV.

Today’s 206-channel cable landscape is still largely dominated by the channels launched in the business’s 1976-84 infancy–CNN, ESPN, Nickelodeon, HBO, MTV, Discovery–and their latter-day subsidiary channels. But that’s because channel capacity was so limited all those years; would-be competitors couldn’t get on enough cable systems. In contrast, anybody can put up a web server, and anybody with an ad budget can get it promoted. Potential profitability in consumer e-commerce, if it comes, will come not from early “mind space” domination but by buildiing a service people want to use, offering products people want to buy.

In short, from doing the boring stuff and doing it properly.

A lesson the entirety of e-commerce should have learned from the pre-Webvan grocery business.

(on a package of Nestle’s Toll House cookie dough): “Bake cookie dough before consuming.”

ELSEWHERE: When a dot-com manages to stay in business and even attract new investors, it’s news, apparently.

UPDATE: Turns out others besides Dave Winer are interested in the idea of dissolving criminal corporations. Those wacky Vancouverites at Adbusters magazine are also proposing it.

THE FINE PRINT (on the back of a Spoon Size Shredded Wheat box): “POST is committed to nurturing and championing the well-being of families across America. Our families, like yours, have challenges and triumphs. We celebrate both the big and small events–the everyday joys and moments that sustain us. We’d love to hear from you about the things that help make a difference in your family.” [Then, in almost unreadably tiny type:] “Comments and materials submitted become the property of Kraft Foods and may be used by Kraft Foods without compensation to the submitter.”

TALES FROM THE INTELLECTUAL-PROPERTY INDUSTRY: Michael Jackson currently owes Sony Music $30 million! If the major-label system doesn’t work for even one of its (formerly) most lucrative artists, for whom the hell does it work?

Singles to Jingles

by guest columnist Charlotte Quinn

IN THIS WACKY WORLD, TV ads create the music hits.

The radio stations wouldn’t touch Sting’s new album, but suddenly got bombarded with requests for his new song after the Jaguar commercial aired. So now we have greedy and artless ad execs chosing our records for us (rather than greedy and artless radio producers).

Then there is Moby, who deserves brief mention, since he sold every song on his album Play to advertisers. The Chemical Brothers sold out to Nike, but most horrible of all is, of course, the old Nair commercial that some how got the rights to “Short Shorts.”

This leaves us with the obvious question: Is there any dignity left?

I wonder if it has anything to do with 100 TV channels, or the MTV generation, or the gradual coorporate overtake of the music industry, or… oh whatever! Truth is, when this generation gets older, our favorite songs, the anthems of our generation, will be fuel for Rolaids, Paxil, and feminine itch products.

Here are some possible ads we may see in the future:

• Britney Spears, “Oops, I Did It Again”: Adult diapers.
• Nirvana, “Come As You Are”: Viagra.
• Jay-Z, “Can I Get A…”: Visa (“Whoop whoop” will be replaced with “Gold card”).
• Quarterflash, “I’m Gonna Harden My Heart”: Anti-diarrhea medicine (“Heart” replaced by the word “Stool”).
• Ben Folds Five, “She’s a Brick and I’m Drowning Slowly”: Anti-constipation medicine.
• No Doubt, “Don’t Speak”: Hallmark (“Don’t tell me cause it hurts” replaced by “Say it with Hallmark cards”).
• Ramones, “I Wanna Be Sedated”: Bladder-control medication (much better than the “Gotta Go” jingle).
• Mudhoney, “Touch Me, I’m Sick”: Paxil, the social anxiety disorder pill.
• PiL, “Rise”: Microsoft (“May the road rise with you” replaced by “Where do you wanna go today?”).
• Coldplay, “Yellow”: Ultra Brite toothpaste (“Look at my teeth, look how they shine for you… Yeah, they’re not yellow”).
• Sheryl Crowe, “You Oughta Know”: Ford (“Know” replaced by “Own… (a Ford truck)”).
• Blink 182, “What’s My Age Again?”: Erectile-dysfunction medication.
• Prince, “Little Red Corvette”: Dentu Grip denture adhesive (“Little red Corvette, baby you’re much too fast” replaced by “A little Dentu Grip, baby it sticks so fast”).
• Eminem, “Slim Shady”: Norelco Slim Lady shaver (“…All you other slim shavers are just imitatin”).
• Soundgarden, “Black Hole Sun”: Hemorrhoid medicine.
• Madonna, “Papa Don’t Preach”: Clorox bleach (song becomes a plea from daughter to father not to over-wash the clothes, “preach” replaced by “bleach”).
• Sir Mix-A-Lot, “Baby Got Back”: Ford (“I like big butts” replaced by “I like big trucks”).
• ‘N Sync, “Bye Bye”: The Bon Marche (word “Bye” replaced with “Buy” and “Day-O” gets a rest).
• Assorted Artists, “We Are the World”: Coke (all the actual artists (still living) will perform it, replaceing, “We are the children” with “We are the Coke drinkers”).
• U2, “Bloody Sunday”: Motrin, menstrual cramp relief.
• Tears for Fears, “Shout”: Shout stain remover (“Shout, shout, get it all out, these are the stains we can live without…”).
• Moby, “Trouble”: Roto Rooter, Desinex for jock itch and athletes foot, and Gynolotrimin (they are the only ones left who haven’t bought it yet).

THE FINE PRINT (warning on the side of a Frosted Mini-Wheats box): “CONTAINS WHEAT INGREDIENTS.”

IN OTHER WORDS (Rex Stout’s detective hero Nero Wolfe in Champagne for One, 1959): “Nothing is as pitiable as a man afraid of a woman.”

ON OTHER SITES: Kindly reader Byron Jones typed “Clark” and “Misc.” into a search engine, and found a long-lost dog….

FURTHER PRINT FUTURES: It’s official. The print MISCmedia will be reborn as a broadsheet. That’s right, a magazine with the page size of a daily newspaper. Not only is it cheaper to print, but it leads to many wild layout possibilities while expressing the show-bizzy punch I’ve been looking for (so as to balance the sometimes borderline-dry content I’ve been producing). Look for it later this summer.