4/92 Misc. Newsletter

(incorporating four Stranger columns)

Why Men Don’t Get Madonna

We at Misc. do listen to consumer needs. Several readers complained about the shorthand used in many of the report’s segments. I don’t always explain the local news events I’m commenting about, out of the presumption that you’re already aware of the underlying issues. But that’s not proving to be the case, and not just with my out-of-town subscribers. Many of you told me that Misc. is your only local news source. Whoa — that’s way too much responsibility for me, man. To paraphrase the Residents, ignorance of your community is not considered cool. If you only read the New York Times or only watch McNeil-Lehrer, you’ll never know what’s really going on. Even on the world/national scene, those two news-for-the-rich institutions either don’t care or don’t know about whole aspects of reality happening outside of NY/DC/LA. Gil-Scott Heron was wrong: the revolution will be televised; it just won’t be made possible by a grant from AT&T. The revamped Weekly wants to be the local news source for people who don’t like local news; maybe they could grow into the job, or somebody else could do it. In the meantime, here’s a brief guide to Misc. terminology: When I say “Portland,” I mean Oregon not Maine. “The Times” means the Seattle Times. “Rice” refers to our mayor, unless it appears in the “Junk Food of the Month” department. And “Bellevue” means a vast low-rise suburb, not the New York psychiatric hospital (and no jeers from the balcony about how do you tell the difference).

Junk Food of the Month: Espresso continues to turn up in the most unlikely spots, like McDonald’s and 7-Eleven, thanks to newfangled pushbutton machines. With steam rising from everywhere and assorted pumping noises, they’re a romantic reminder of what industrial processes ought to look and sound like. Still, the ambience of those places isn’t right. For that you still need to go to a real espresso joint, like the Tiki Hut inside Archie McPhee’s on Stone Way.

Rock the Boat: Britain’s Economist magazine reported on 2/29, “It seems appropriate that Seattle is home to America’s trendiest musical fad: grungerock (a cross between punk and heavy metal); still more appropriate that the leading exponent of the art should be a group called Nirvana. To jaded middle-class Americans, the north-west seems like heaven: a clean, successful world of highly paid manufacturing jobs, coffee shops and micro-breweries.” In the ’60s, the peak of the U.S. auto biz coincided with the peak of Detroit pop (not just Motown but also proto-grungers Iggy Pop and Ted Nugent). Can one only be a successful nihilist when surrounded by relative prosperity? Does the illusion of a golden age make rebels sharpen their messages?

Big Storewide Sale: Don’t scoff right away at the plan to save Frederick’s downtown store by spinning off all other assets. In the ’50s and ’60s, it was thought that a dept. store needed to be in a ring of malls around a metro area, to make TV ads worthwhile. But nowadays shrinking TV stations don’t give you a strong audience anyway; Nordstrom, Neiman-Marcus and other chains successfully run single outlets in cities far from their home areas. Besides, it hurt Frederick’s to try to be everything to customers from Everett to Corvallis; one store with a strong identity could be a better bet.

The Fine Print (Phoenix Arizona Republic correction, 2/15): “An article on Page B1 on Friday implied that 72 percent of the men in a survey had fallen in love at first sight. That percentage applied only to those men who believe in love at first sight.”

Memo to Roger Anderson: Your almost-daily Geraldo jokes in the Times have become as tiresome as Geraldo himself. Besides, tabloid TV and talk radio are getting less funny and more scary, as these shrill exploiters take over the national agenda with calculated hysteria over non-issues (flag burning, shock art, Congressional check-bouncing).

Cathode Corner: My new home is on Summit Cable, which has a few channels that TCI and Viacom don’t. Weekend mornings, for instance, offer a block of shows from Italy’s RAI network, including a four-hour Star Search-like talent show that included 20 Fred and Ginger tribute dancers (just like in Fellini’s movie Ginger and Fred!), a succession of torch singers in black dresses, and a surprise guest spot by Hammer and his full dance squad, grinding out their routines to a recorded music track while in front of the show’s 40-piece orchestra. After their number, they were promptly shooed offstage by the tux-clad host with a quick “Ciao Hammer, Ciao”… Remember when I bashed PBS’s conservative programming? It’s not conservative enough for far-right senators looking for another election-year non-issue; they want to pull the network’s already-inadequate funding unless it sets “safeguards” against anything pro-gay or pro-black. They even want Bill Moyers fired. PBS and many affiliates are running scared, trying to placate the right; it won’t work. They ought to fight the pressure. They ought to have gutsy shows that will build a loyal audience who won’t stand for political interference. They ought to work for a support system free from annual pressure tactics, more like that of their heroes at the BBC.

Exhaust: The candidates are all talking about where all our next cars are going to be made. Few of them consider that maybe wedon’t need more cars. We’ve got too many autos, used too inefficiently. They give us the suburban sprawl that destroys true community along with the landscape. You know the dangers of pollution and of military alliances with emirates. Eastern-hemisphere governments subsidize rail transit, as a reasonable price to reduce those maladies. Only Harkin understood that we’d have a smoother-running, cleaner-burning economy if we redirected some of the money spent making, selling, feeding, and servicing the metal monsters. If we had decent mass transit within and between metro areas, we could have closer-in and more affordable housing. We’d have a renaissance of street-corner retail, the drop-in shops strip malls just can’t match. We’d have more people meeting by chance, interacting and (if we’re lucky) learning to get along.

Speaking of Politix, I still feel Harkin had the most on the bean; he just couldn’t run an effective campaign machine, which many voters take as a sign of whether a guy can run an effective government. Also, he was wrong was when he called himself “the only real Democrat” in the race. They’re all “real” examples of different kinds of Demo: Tsongas’s Magnuson-like vision of business, labor and government acting as one; Kerry’s senatorial quest for popularity by promoting ahead-of-its-time legislation; Clinton’s state-house gladhanding and self-aggrandizement. And Brown shrewdly built a public image that appealed to voter blocs in his home state; his courage and/or folly is trying to sell that image elsewhere.

Is This a Cool World Or What?: Times columnist Don Williamson wrote on 3/1 that modern teen standards of “coolness” promote delinquency; he partly blames the media for not depicting straight-A students and Meals on Wheels volunteers as sexy. This argument goes back to the anti-rock n’ roll crusades of ’50s parents and beyond. While hair and clothing styles change, the perennial definition of cool is to be that which your parents hate. Earlier in our century, kids found rebel styles in jazz and gangster movies. In the ’70s, what we now think of as disco clothes were based on the flamboyant apparel of East Coast pimps. Selling squareness as a role model doesn’t work. You’ll never get kids to stop smoking/snorting/drinking if your only advertised examples of non-smokers/snorters/drinkers are mama’s boys, good little girls, and Jesus-jocks. Besides, it’s hard to proclaim that smart is cool whenBill Gates still can’t get a girlfriend…

Brock the Boat: The first reaction to l’affaire Brock Adams: What do you expect from a guy with a name like a soap opera stud? The second: Yes, it is possible for a senator to be sincerely interested in promoting women’s legislation and to privately act as a predatory jerk. Political maneuvering and office sexual harrassment are both all about gaining power over close colleagues. It doesn’t just happen in governments, as we found out in the recent case against Boeing. As I wrote after Thomas/Hill, it’s not about sex but domination — which has substituted for leadership in many scenes for several centuries now. Working women don’t want just an end to catcalls and gropes, but a new way of doing business based on cooperation instead of coercion.

Notes: The giant inflated Rainier bottles on the roofs of Rockcandy and the Off Ramp to promote “Fat Rockin’ Tuesday” made those “alternative” venues look just like ordinary mainstream commercial rock bars. On the other hand, maybe it’s good that the rock scene might be getting less pretentious, more aligned with the flow of local money and attention. And the event was a healthy alternative to the tired regular Fat Tuesday, now just an excuse for bringing in higher-paid performers of the same loutish fratboy “blues” Pioneer Square’s always got. On the other hand, I can’t wait to see the 20-foot balloon butt traveling record stores to plug Sir Mix-A-Lot‘s Baby Got Back (I Like Big Butts).

Bank Notes: Guess we won’t see any more of those awful Puget Sound Bank ads touting themselves as good-guy locals, now that they’re merging with one of their out-of-state-owned competitors (Key Bank, the one based in Albany, NY that PSB identified in its ads with Manhattan; they’d better learn their NY state geography quick). Washington Mutual and Portland-based U.S. Bank quickly placed slick full-page newspaper ads taunting PSB, ads that looked like they were prepared weeks in advance. Besides, PSB’s community reinvestment record was not significantly better than the out-of-state banks, as monitored by federal agencies. As part of Key Bank, it’ll still have to put a certain percentage of deposits into local investments.

License Plate Holder of the Month (on a Ford Escort in the KOMO lot): “Broadcast Designers Do It on Television.” Yes, it’s unoriginal and not even very funny, but that’s KOMO for you…

The Mailbag: Michael Mikesell writes, “I was baffled to find you actually recommending To the End of the World.” Wm. Hurt’s not my fave actor, and his line about words being good and images being bad is an orthodox-hippie chiché unworthy of image genius Wim Wenders. But the gadgetry was fun, the chase plot was inspired silliness, and the dream scenes were worth the price alone. The thing worked… After March’s remark about baby-boomer journalists who treat Their Generation as the Master Race, Jeffrey Long writes: “Smug and sanctomonious, they have willfully neglected to acknowledge and credit those who gained social and political awareness after the 1960s.” Another reader pointed out 3/10 Weekly cover piece (“Did Drugs Fry Your Brain?”) whose author presumed all her readers to be of Her Generation, and a 3/8 Times column: “Now that many of us are entering our 40s…”

‘Til our return in the merry-merry month-O-May, stock up on collectible U2 Achtung Baby brand condoms, demand that the city preserve Occidental Park as a public space for all (not a sterile strip for retail only), vote against any candidate who voted for censorship or for humiliating the poor, and heed the words of Stephen Bayley in Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things: “Nostalgia is the eighth deadly sin. It shows conempt for the present and betrays the future.”

PASSAGE

Miami crime reporter Edna Buchanan in her new book Never Let Them See You Cry: “People who look for trouble never fail to find it. Other people never look for misfortune, pain, or woe, but it finds them just the same.”

READER SURVEY

What if Jesus were alive now, in his teens, training to re-enter public life at the turn of the millennium? What’d he be doing? Where’d he live? Send replies to the address below; results next month.

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WORD-O-MONTH

“Orthogonal”

10/90 Misc. Newsletter

CONNIE CHUNG AND MAURY POVICH:

STOP THEM BEFORE THEY BREED!

It’s time for the big reunification Oktoberfest and time to welcome you back to Misc., the pop-culture newsletter that still wants to know why certain teen and especially pre-teen boys consider male singers with long hair and high voices to be “real men” but dismiss male singers with predominantly female followings as pansies (musical qualities or lack of same being equal). I’m sorry that I had to cut my long Bill Cullen obituary from last month’s issue; the salient point was about finding (at Fillippi’s Old Books) a cheap LP of old show tunes “hosted” by Cullen, shown in a tuxedo on the cover in a dancing pose (from the waist up). A peculiar pose for the game show host who, due to a polio limp, preferred never to be shown walking on stage.

LAME: The long-rumored demise of Longacres at the hands of a land-hungry Boeing, and with it the possible demise of horse racing in Seattle and possibly the Northwest (would the Portland, Spokane and Yakima tracks survive the end of their bigger sibling?), would sadden several subscribing friends of Misc. It’s more than a gambling ritual (albeit one with much better odds than the Lottery). It’s a way of life, for bettors and trainers and riders. (Activists have questioned how great a life it is for the horses, but how well are most non-star athletes treated?)

ALSO IN THE END-O-ERA DEPT.: Twenty years ago, before Tower or Peaches came to town, the prime record store in the U District was Music Street, which became in turn Wide World of Music, Musicland, and finally Discount Records. This store was finally closed in mid-September, following the end of Nordstrom and Jay Jacobs’ Ave outlets. By this time, the top 40 hits that thrived at Music Street had become the nostalgia CDs that Discount Records could not stock or promote as well as other chains could.

DEAD AIR: The recently-publicized payola scandal, in which the Big-6 record labels hired a network of “independent” promoters to pay off radio stations with cash and drugs and hookers, affirms the “radio sucks” attitude of the punk era, the complaints then and now of great songs, even great accessible songs, being buried while hyped-up pablum and soft-rock dinosaurs obtained undeserved hits.

FLAHERTY NEWSPAPERS, R.I.P.: For 30 hellish months, I worked for sub-survival wages with past-death-rate typesetting equipment in Flaherty headquarters, a crumbling shack in the Rainier Valley with weeds rising from cracks in the concrete floor. There, I typed up the alleged “news” sections of seven neighborhood weeklies — smarmy hype stories for advertising merchants, cutesy notices for Catholic schools, a gardening column by an elderly lady who occasionally inserted anti-sex-education sermons, and, always and above all, unquestioned enthusiasm for the Seattle Police. I typed up too many of the squalid police-blotter columns (low-grade tragedy turned into morbid sensationalism), and to this day I lash back at anyone who refers to them as a source of camp humor. The papers were distributed by an ever-changing crew of pre-teens who had to deliver them to every house in a territory and hope some of the recipients would pay the small voluntary fee. Now, the little chain has been bought by an out-of-state takeover artist and will soon be merged with its onetime arch-rival Murray Publishing.

PHILM PHACTS: So far, no major Twin Peaks second-season filming locally. Generally, Seattle continues to be eclipsed in film activity by B.C. and Oregon. Paramount, for instance, has become the second established production company proposing to open a permanent studio in Portland. There can only be one potential logo for such an enterprise: A ring of stars surrounding the remains of Mt. St. Helens.

IS IT THE SHOES?: The Nike boycott by Black activists and the corporate culture of that company (U of O track vets and ex-hippies) are integrally related to the white-bread demographics of that whole-grain-eating city of Portland. That’s where Bill Walton was kept on the TrailBlazers payroll through years of injuries because, some say, laid-back mellow Oregonians would only support a basketball team if it had a white star. The famed progressive politics of Oregon have lately meant stands on environmental, nuclear, and foreign-affairs issues, soft-pedalling the social justice causes that the Left used to be all about. One good sign: The Oregonian has become the only NW daily with a Black editor-in-chief.

STILL MORE FROM SOUTH OF THE BORDER: Iowa artist Bill Witherspoon was charged with scratching a huge geometric pattern in a southeast Oregon desert. The whole thing looked, in news photos, remarkably like those mysterious “field circles” popping up along the English countryside. Maybe some international neo-Druid outfit is making these things and letting people believe they’re the work of spirits or UFOs or such. Maybe he just thought it would look neat…A Portland district judge is trying to keep his job, after he was revealed to have married wife #2 while still wed to #1.

CATHODE CORNER: American Chronicles utilizes artsy highbrow camera work to record the quirky rituals of lowbrow American primitives. In short, it’s a modern Spaghetti western not made by Europeans but perhaps for them. It looks like something really commissioned for Murdoch’s European satellite network……The Pentagon is partly funding Zenith’s research into hi-definition TV, according to a syndicated item in Puget Sound Computer News. Arguably, there might be military applications to more sophisticated video transmission and display systems, perhaps for radar or navigational systems. But essentially we’ve got our government subsidizing private industry, something that happens in every capitalist country but which is often considered a sacrilege to the “American free enterprise system.” What does Zenith think it is, a bank or a basketball team? (In one of his last books, BTW,Buckminster Fuller claimed that “free enterprise” religion was originally a 1776-era reaction to the colonial system of British crown-chartered commerce.)

OUTSIDE PITCHES: It’s hard not to stare incredulously at the Coors commercial with African-American activists working hard to refurbish a storefront community center, then celebrating the job by downing the Beer of Bigots…More songs in commercials: TheHair theme in a shampoo spot; Starship’s “We Built This City” becoming ITT’s “We Built This Company”…From the cable commercial for the compilation CD Those Fabulous ’70s: “Sorry, not available on 8-track”…Advertisers on one page of the Weekly’s 9/26 “adult education” supplement: Cornish College, Griffin College, UW Extension, and The Crypt (“20% Off All Ladies Leather”).

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Cookie Bowl I (that’s the roman numeral “one”) is a line of cookies in the relief shapes of NFL team helmets (for non-fans, it’s the Cleveland Browns who get royalty checks on the blank helmets). Available in chocolate, vanilla, peanut butter, and shortbread. But beware: They’re intensely male-oriented.

NO FREE RE-FILLINGS: Espresso Dental on Phinney Ridge is almost certainly the first combined coffeehouse and dental clinic in the nation (neck and back massages are also available). Do the lattes come with spit cups?

ON THE STREETS: I survived the biggest assemblage of preteen females in Seattle history, or at least in 25 years: The clean-cut, T-shirt-wearing devotees crowding their way into the Kingdome for the New Kids on the Block concert. That, and the accompanying traffic jam of Bellevue-based station wagons, made the September gallery walk a true navigational challenge. I did not notice the Kidfans directly interacting with the regular art-crawling Pioneer Squares. Had the galleries planned for this confluence of audiences, a little art-ed event might have rescued a few young consumers from a life of plastic culture. Then again, considering some of the works that were hung in those spaces…

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The Northwest Network (“Seattle’s Community Newspaper,” though it’s made in Kirkland) is the latest attempt at a serious-progressive local tabloid. The emphasis here is on analysis, re-interpreting the information given by the regular news media. (Seattle Subtext, still publishing after three months, gives you new news on international topics. There’s still nothing here like the Portland Free Press, doing original local investigative reporting.) Still, the presence of another competently written and produced paper, out every two weeks, is a hopeful sign that people are out there wanting to do things.

UNDERGROUND NEWS: The po-mo, engineered-by-committee bus tunnel turns out to be a visual masterpiece, comprising five waiting areas that any corporation would be proud to have as its office-tower lobby. It’s a blast to visit and to ride through. It’s a monument to the pretentions of today’s Seattle, one of those self-conscious boasts of “becoming a world class city.” It’s more successful as a meeting place and art project than as a transportation solution. Amenities sorely lack (subway stations with no newsstands? Unthinkable!). The lack of restrooms was a deliberate decision, by officials who prefer that the homeless relieve themselves in streets and alleys. The whole expensive thing tore up downtown traffic for four years and clearly was meant to appease bus-hating affluent commuters. Most buses running through it (starting next year) will be suburban routes (the reason for the specially built coaches that run on electricity in the tunnel but on diesel on highways and bridges). The layout of the tunnel (just slightly longer than the Monorail) was designed to move buses quickly onto I-5, I-90 and SR 520, not to get them around the city. What we oughta have is a light rail system like our filmmaking cities to the north and south.

HEADLINE OF THE MONTH (NY Times story on the new Germany, 9/25): “Bitterness Sears the Die-Hard Nationalists.” I knew the NY papers were hard up for advertising, but selling sneak mentions in news headlines?

THE LIGHTER SIDE OF A NATION’S COLLAPSE II: As of 10/3, no longer will the Dresden area, heretofore the only part of E. Germany unable to watch Dallas on W. German TV, be known as the Valley of Those Who Know Little.

YOU CALL THAT A FUTURE?: The Puget Sound Council of Governments, an agency whose own future is in peril, released a fancy public report predicting the look of the region in 2020. There are unspecified “rapid transit” systems between downtown and the burbs, and lotsa reclaimed greenbelts; but nowhere the ring of giant plastic-domed cities predicted in ’62 at the Century 21 Exposition…My cyberpunk contacts were outraged at the 9/3 Time mag’s goofy-human-interest piece about a UW-designed virtual reality machine (a computer-video unit in which you can pretend to fly over Seattle by “steering” with an electronic glove). These guys are adamant about making artificial experience work, even if early experiments like this have bugs to be worked out.

AT B-SHOOT: Rumors of the Big Wave found their so-politically-correct-it’s-painful music on the Miller Mainstage, sponsored by an affiliate of Phillip Morris Companies, best friend of the art-world and civil-rights enemy Jesse Helms. “Boycott Miller/Helms = Death” stickers were, however, plastered throughout the Coliseum. And for next year, remember the big sign at the Bumbershoot 1st aid tent: “Sorry. We cannot give out aspirin.”

‘TIL THE MUCH COOLER MONTH (God, I hope) of November, be sure to visit the peace vigil at Gas Works (NOT a quaint relic of the ’60s but people trying to make sure we have a future), watch the new Graham Kerr Show taped at KING, avoid the recently-named conditions “Nintendo thumb” and “espresso maker’s wrist,” and save the junk-mail foil envelope containing a card drenched inNeutron Industries’ mail-order citrus scent spray. The cards are great playthings for cats.

PASSAGE

Lawrence Durrell in the Alexandria Quartet: “Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time, not by our personalities as we would like to think. Thus, every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the position is changed.”

REPORT

It’s a year since Misc. became a self-contained newsletter; charter subscribers (you ought to know who you are) need to renew. Fax subscriptions to Misc. are now for $9 per year. The space at the bottom of this page is still available for advertising. Leave a message at 323-4081 or 524-1967 for details.

I’m also raising funds to self-publish my seemingly endlessly-announced novel The Perfect Couple. Any and all ideas welcome.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Esconce”

5/90 Misc. Newsletter

NEW PACIFIC 1ST FEDERAL TOWER BROKE, FOR SALE.

SERVES ‘EM RIGHT

FOR TEARING DOWN

THE MUSIC BOX THEATER

Welcome back to Misc., the column that is almost certain that the Log Lady did it (though we’re still trying to figure out what foghorns are doing on a small hydroelectric lake).

Clean, Reasonably Priced Accommodations: You may know by now that Twin Peaks’ Great Northern (named after a predecessor to today’s Burlington Northern Railway) is really the Salish Lodge. It was the Snoqualmie Falls Lodge for many years, a family-owned place known for honeymoon suites and a weekend farm breakfast; my parents went there often. Then Puget Power, which owns the building (and the dam behind the falls), decided to “upscale” the place by bringing in a new operator, who yuppified much of the old charm away.

Another Sawmill Soap Opera: The spotted owl is just a symbol of a whole eco-scape in danger. It’s not “environmental elitists” reducing timber-country jobs, it’s companies with their “efficient” automated clearcuts and log exports. If the forest lands now used were used in a more sustainable manner (as opposed to the short-term cash amortization of “high yield forestry”), we wouldn’t need to destroy the last of the old growth.

Behind Closed Doors: The Tacoma News Tribune revealed a Community Development Round Table, a group of business and media leaders started by the Times and the Seattle Chamber of Commerce in 1933, now including execs of the Times, P-I, KOMO and KIRO as well as bankers and business leaders. Members are bound by the group’s charter never to mention it to outsiders. A Columbia Journalism Review item about the TNT scoop noted that during the Boeing strike the Round Table invited a speaker from Boeing but not from the unions. Before you forment conspiracy theories, note that the press people in the group were execs, not editors, and that the media firms involved have long supported the business community. KIRO, for instance, shared a big booth at Earth Fair 1990 with the Forest Products Council.

Local Publication of the Month: Seattle Community Catalyst proposes to be the next great local alternative paper. The first issue’s a modest clearinghouse of info from assorted activist groups, plus a substantial background piece by Rich Ray on the making of the aforementioned Earth Fair, in which a commercial festival-organizing company pleaded with everybody to keep all exhibits upbeat and non-offensive to the major sponsors.

As it turned out, the people jamming the roads to Marymoor Park in their single-occupancy vehicles concentrated at the big tent crowded with all the little tables for the real environmental groups, with only a few straying out in the rain to the spacious covered displays for Chevron and Puget Power. Most of them missed the Wash. Natural Gas display, with free samples of a spirulina plankton-based protein drink packaged by its Hawaiian aquaculture affiliate.

Past Futures (from Uncensored magazine, April 1970): “A fascinating new book, The Country of the Young, paints a gloomy picture of what life will be in 1990 — when the generation war is all over and the drop-outs, pot-heads and sandaled freaks have become Old Hippies. The author, John W. Aldridge, says that the failure of the young today to develop their human resources, to cultivate discipline and skills, is going to backfire on them. If the hippies have their way and become catatonics, with all their needs supplied, `They will simply stare at walls for weeks on end, looking fascinated at such things as the copulation of insects. Having been relieved of the struggle of becoming, they would simply exist to be.'”

Phood Phacts: From in-flight magazines to the P-I to CBS This Morning, major attention has been drawn recently to something called the “Northwest cuisine.” WHAT Northwest cuisine? I’m a fourth-generation Washingtonian and never heard of any of these fancy dishes involving rhubarb, rack of lamb and alternatively-processed fish, let alone of many of their ingredients. It sounds suspiciously like some of those other western regional cuisines, invented from scratch from ex-LA chefs (Santa Fe, Colorado), allowing itinerant suburbanites the fantasy of “place” while the real communities of these places succumb to mall-ism. I am certain that we will see the “discovery” of Montana cuisine, North Dakota cuisine, and even Utah cuisine. Ya wanna know the true Northwest cuisine (at least among white people)? It’s Dick’s burgers (or Herfy’s burgers, now all but gone, in the outlying towns), barbecued fish with really thin bones, Shake ‘n’ Bake chicken, canned vegetables, Krusteaz pancakes with Mapeline-flavored syrup, maple bars, strawberry shortcake with Dream Whip, Fisher scones, Red Rose tea, Mountain bars, and Rainier Ale (the now-discontinued weak version). I don’t know if Lutefisk counts, since it seems to be perennially given as a gift but never eaten.

Your Own Private Idaho 1990: Many of Idaho’s civic leaders were all over the media in ’88-’89, insisting that the presence of a dozen neo-Nazis didn’t make them a fascist state. They were right, in a way. It’s the drive (vetoed by Gov. Andrus) to keep women barefoot and pregnant that makes them a fascist state, at least in potential. There ARE many truly non-fascist Idahoans, like liberals everywhere who complain but don’t vote. Some of these, there and here, are the same folk who eat fantasy regional cuisines. Maybe now that will change, as folks see the consequences of staying home and letting the Right win.

Junk Food of the Month: Again from Idaho, J.R. Simplot Inc. (best known as the nation’s top supplier of fast-food potatoes) brings us MicroMagic Microwave Milkshakes. You buy them frozen solid, then semi-thaw them in the zapper for 45 seconds. Will this be the foundation of the new Idaho cuisine? I doubt it. Some of the fun ingredients: Mono and diglycerides, guar gum, locust bean gum, polysorbate 80, carrageenan. The taste? Like a shake at a minor fast-food place that might buy its shake mix from the same source as its fries.

The Fine Print (from a Mr. Coffee coffee filter box): “Additional Uses: Use as a cover when microwaving. Line the bottom of your cake pans. Create snowflakes and Christmas decorations.”

Cathode Corner: KING sacked arts critic Greg Palmer after 14 years. I liked him most of the time, but that’s showbiz. What’s more shocking is that the the new KING news director is also vehemently opposed (sez the P-I) to on-camera signing of the 7:25 a.m. news insert, a friendly face and beautiful spectacle that’s helped many hearing people get through rough mornings and worse news. I once met longtime KING signer Cathy Carlstrom, who also signs church services and other events. She and her fellow signers deserve more respect…. So the world athletes in the Goodwill Games commercials are really local actors and models. What’s the fuss? We’ve all seen enough “Up Close and Personal” segments during the Olympics (or Lite Beer ads) to know that athletes are poor actors.

Ad of the Month (from the Weekly): “Sales, retail. MTV, trendy, fun & outrageous clothing. Mature person, exp’d only.”… Meanwhile, the newest batch of Rainier Beer ads soft-pedals the Only Beer Around Here” theme, dropping the slick stereotypes of mountain climbers and basketball players in favor of a partial return to the humor that made the old Rainier ads such favorites. One billboard reads in big black type, “Californians just don’t get it.” As far as I know, they’re made by the same Frisco ad agency that did last year’s unloved campaign.

Philm Phacts: It’s a shame that Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is so gory, because people will love or hate it just for that instead of for its many other qualities. It’s written for the screen, but could easily have been a five-act play. It mostly takes place on one huge 4-room set; the first hour unfolds in “real time.” The Thief, while nominally a gangster-extortionist, incarnates the whole history of English villainy (Henry VIII, Richard III, Dickens’ venture capitalists, on up to the Thatcherian present).

News from Medicine: A White Rock, B.C. man who walked around with a broken back for almost three months without knowing it was awarded $625,000 (Can.) damages. A Surrey, B.C. hospital had failed to notice the fracture when it treated him following an accident.

Who the Hell Are You?: The Kids Fair at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall was an ex-substitute teacher’s nightmare. A whole hall full of screaming kids, frenzied parents, and merchant booths grabbing for the parents’ wallets. Everything from Looney Tunes frozen dinners to back yard jungle gyms, professionally installed. The high/lowlight was when they brought out guys in 7-foot Bart and Homer Simpson felt body costumes, hugging adoring little fans who lined up for photos. If a real Bart were there, he’d have pelted the oversize imposter with a pile of Ninja Turtles coloring books.

Arena Football: Barry Ackerly will build a new Sonics home directly south of the Kingdome (thankfully not, as was threatened previously, where Sears is now), but only if the city shrinks the Coliseum’s capacity, making it commercially worthless. In its original life as the World of Tomorrow exhibit in the ’62 World’s Fair, the Coliseum housed a scale model of the Puget Sound region dotted with new domed cities. What’s one of the few present-day structures shown to be still standing in this fantasy future? As the taped narrators said, “Look! There’s Coliseum Century 21!” “Yes, in the future we will retain the best of the past.”

Sell It to Murph: Unocal Corp. (née Union Oil), which once boasted of being the last company to still make gas for older cars, is now going to buy hundreds of hi-smog clunkers in the L.A. area, in order to retire them from the road. As an Earth Day PR stunt it was very effective and probably cheaper than paying for a cleanup of their old Elliott Bay terminal, where the Port of Seattle is having to deal with the residue of 60 years’ worth of minor product leaks and spills.

‘Til the fourth-anniversary Misc. next time, don’t get caught trafficking in counterfeit Nintendo cartridges (lest they sick a lawsuit equivalent of the Hungry Goriya on you),watch the new international-music show Earth to MTV, and ponder these thoughts by my goddess Tracey Ullman on her role in I Love You to Death: “Because the accent is Northwestern, it was tough to stay in character all the time. Southern accents are easy and so are New York accents, but the Northwest accent is the most pure of all the accents. You can’t just put one accent on top of another. You have to lose your accent completely.”

PASSAGE

One of the less-controversial lines in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses:

“Should the inflight movie be thought of as a particularly vile, random mutation of the form, one that would eventually be extinguished by natural selection, or were they the future of the cinema? A future of screwball caper movies eternally starring Shelley Long and Chevy Chase was too hideous to contemplate; it was a vision of Hell.”

REPORT

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CALL TO ACTION

ABC will soon decide whether to renew Twin Peaks. Send cards & letters to ABC Entertainment, 77 W. 66th St., NYC 10023.

WORD OF THE MONTH

“Syncretize”

2/90 Misc. Newsletter

LATIN DEBATE: IS THIS YEAR “MCMXC” OR “MCMLXL”?

Return with us now to Misc., the monthly information source that hopes one day to earn the phrase a Wall St. Journal headline (1/16) gave to Boeing’s Pentagon spy, “Loyal to Seattle to the End.”

More Than Meets the Eye?: We love to study the mysteries of the world, the unexplained phenomena that some discount as mere coincidence. One such mystery occurred with Ranger Charlie, the jovial host of KSTW’s morning cartoons for the past year. Sometime in December, he disappeared from the screen, leaving his puppet raccoon friend Roscoe in charge. Finally, in January, Roscoe again had Ranger Charlie to banter with — only the beloved ranger had become shorter, younger, and female. Now, that’s something you don’t see in cartoons, not even on The Transformers.

The Fine Print (from a P-I ad insert): “Safeway’s 1/4-inch trim is trimmed to 1/4-inch external fat excluding natural depressions in the contour of the underlying meat.”

The Not-So-Fine Print: A Crown Books in-store poster touts a discount dictionary as the “best in it’s class.” Never buy a dictionary from people who can’t spell. The book in question is a reprint of the ’83 version (since supplanted) of theRandom House Dictionary, inherited via a series of Random House subsidiaries by “Portland House, New York,” successor to the Oregon computer-book house dilithium press.

Local Publication of the Month: The Way of the Lover, a self-help book of sorts by West Vancouver, B.C. spiritualist Robert Agustus Masters. You might not immediately buy into the mythological or meditative content, but you’ve gotta love such chapter titles as “Releasing Sex (and Everything Else) from the Obligation to Make Us Feel Better.”… The Weekly-ization of the local press continues, as local media hype Hawaii tourism this winter as never before. The Times andWashington magazine even ran “editorial” sections trying to find local-angle stories about a place thousands of miles away…. Caverns, a “collaborative novel” by Ken Kesey’s Univ. of Oregon writing class, is a plain piece of commercial storytelling, recommended only for those interested in how it was made (like me) and Kesey completists (unlike me).

Cathode Corner: KING’s first ads after the flood-day (1/9) 11 pm news were two of those awful Infiniti spots wherein you don’t see the car, just a lot of water; followed by a spot with the opening line “drowning in a sea of high bills?”…. Ted Turner, who expects to lose millions on the Seattle Goodwill Games, tried to make a little of it back by colorizing Jailhouse Rock, a film made in ’57 (well into the Eastmancolor era) with a major star, at a time when the only major black and white films were done deliberately that way…. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was almost set in Seattle, instead of Minneapolis. According to a new book about the show, its producers felt that a show filmed before a live audience would need to be set in a town where people spent lots of their time in small indoor rooms. (As you recall, MTM went on in ’70, a year before All in the Family and after several years of sitcoms with outdoor scenes and canned laughter.) As the show coalesced, they decided Minnesota was more indoorsy than Seattle. Instead of Hüsker Du remaking the MTM theme (by old Buddy Holly sideman Sonny Curtis), it could’ve been Capping Day or even Pure Joy.

A Classic Tragedy: Cable’s American Movie Classics channel seldom lives up to its name (most of its flicks are dated Don Ameche vehicles); but on 1/14 it ran one of the weirdest pieces of video ever shot: the Frances Farmer episode of This Is Your Life. The 1958 live telecast, made at the start of Farmer’s return to public life after her lobotomy, shows the Seattle-born actress staring into space while greasy-haired host Ralph Edwards (who also created Truth or Consequences) rattled off a summary of her sad life story. During her turns to speak, she looked offstage (possibly to a prompter). In an elegant but slurred voice, she slowly explained that “I did not believe and still do not believe that I was truly ill.” At the end, she was rewarded for her bravery with a new Edsel.

Junk Food of the Month: Hostess Lite! Thicker snack cakes, slightly less sweet, for “grown-ups.” Most of the reduction in calories is due to a reduction in size from the regular Hostess product…. Burger King announced new oat bran buns for its burgers, just before the gov’t. announced that the oat bran craze had been based on exaggerated claims…. Chateau Ste. Michelle has brought out a special bottling of ’86 Chenin Blanc to honor the UW’s 125th Anniversary. It would have been a more appropriate tribute if it had been a wine more UW people drink: cheap Chablis in a box. But then again, this grad can’t imagine what a UW frat was doing with a sheep during induction week, except perhaps to show it off as a role model.

Praying for a Space: Chicago’s Catholics are faced with declining attendance and a priest shortage, but one downtown parish is investing in a new church building, to be financed by a 20-story parking garage to be built above the sanctuary. They’re just following the lead of my childhood denomination: Chicago Methodists already have a downtown church-office tower and a neighborhood church with a Fotomat booth in its front yard.

The Severed Arm of the Law: A North Carolina firm’s selling a “lawyer doll,” the heads and limbs of which are attached with Velcro for easy mangling, apparently to place curses on lawyers for the other side of your case. Or, you could leave it headless to resemble your own attorney. Such quasi-voodoo rituals didn’t help Noriega, but who says they won’t work for you?

Reach Out and Severely Inconvenience Someone: The AT&T system crash, in which about half of the long-distance network simply refused to put calls through, shows that even the ex-Ma Bell is no longer a paragon of American technological supremacy. The big glitch was blamed on faulty software; just the admission they’d like to make while AT&T’s computer unit tries to wrestle control of its UNIX computer system software back from various licensees.

What’s With Utne These Days?: Utne Reader, the bimonthly digest of the alternative press, now has its very own Publishers’ Clearing House stamp, right between Stamps and Time. When you win your $10 million in the sweepstakes, you can read how to put the dough into socially responsible investments.

Those Phunny Phoreigners: This sign in a Northwest Trek-style wildlife park in Nara, Japan, is noted in the book Gems of Japanized English by Miranda Kendrick: “CAUTION: Everybody: Take care of Hind! It is the season Fawn is born about this time. It may be case if you approach him, his mother deer being full of maternal love gives you a kick by her forefeet.”

We’re Only In It for the Freedom: The first U.S. private citizen to meet with new Czech president Vaclav Havel wasn’t an industrialist or banker but Frank Zappa. Havel, it turns out, is a longtime Zappa fan; during his years as a banned playwright, he let banned musicians, such as the Zappa-influenced Plastic People of the Universe, record tapes in his country house. Zappa may use his friendship with this anti-authoritarian hero to bolster his fight against rock censorship. Zappa would probably be upset by managers of the new Yakima domed arena, who wouldn’t let the B-52s bring the Greenpeace info booth the band has had outside every tour date. The arena bosses claimed it would “set a bad precedent.”

Tomorrow Ain’t What It Usta Be: The Futurist magazine has published some wild ‘n’ wacky predictions for the ’90s. Among them: Flight from the Greenhouse Effect may make Canada more populous than the U.S. Cash money will become illegal for all but very small transactions. Computers with automatic language translation and voice synthesis will enable people to speak in one language that listeners will hear translated into another language. Computer chips will be in everything from houses to clothing. Household robots may be as common as refrigerators. Almost one-fourth of the world’s population will be Moslem. Self-propelled, computerized lawn mowers will be able to “see” where the grass needs to be cut and to avoid trees. Remember, these may be the same seers who said we’d now have home helicopters but not home computers.

‘Til March, you might as well abandon the Sonics this year and root for the Seattle-owned Portland TrailBlazers, thank the nondenominational dieties that there will be no Robert Fulghum sitcom (which would have starred John Denver), and review these words by author/educator John Gardner: “More people fail at becoming successful businessmen than fail at becoming artists.”

PASSAGE

Julio Cortazar in the “Love 77” chapter of A Certain Lucas (1979):

“And after doing everything they do, they get up, they bathe, they powder themselves, they perfume themselves, they comb their hair, they get dressed, and so, progressively, they go about going back to being what they aren’t.”

OFFER

Tell your friends about Misc., the one piece of monthly first-class mail they’ll be glad to get. New subscribers will receive the humorous essay “God as I Understand Him” and first word on future Fait Divers products (the computer novel The Perfect Couple, special mini-posters).

WORD OF THE MONTH

“Descry”