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WELCOME BACK TO THE ONE-&-ONLY ONLINE MISC., the pop-culture column that was as startled as you to find a full-color, almost full-page, atatomically-correct (more or less), side-view computer illustration of a male lower torso on the Lifestyles page of the 10/19 P-I. It was there, natch, for a long story encouraging prostate-cancer tests. But hey, if it takes the “educational” justification of a deadly disease to help demystify and de-demonize the Staff of Life, so be it.
STAGES: The Seattle Repertory Theatre now has a managing director named Benjamin Moore. So far, no scheduled productions of Paint Your Wagon.
AD OF THE WEEK (on the Stranger Bulletin Board page): “Lesbian Guitar Teacher.” Hmm, an instructor in the heretofore-underappreciated art of the Lesbian Guitar: I could go for the cheap anatomical-reference jokes every guitar student’s heard or said at one time, but instead will ponder “Lesbian Guitar” as a specific musical form. Could it be the ever-so-earnest acoustic fret-squeakin’ of Holly Near or Ferron? The somewhat more humanistic, yet still stolid, chord-thumpin’ of Phranc? The electrified “Torch and Twang” of early k.d. lang?
It’s the curse-in-disguise of all these women (and others of their various ilks) that they’re known first as statement-makers, second as stage presences, third as singers, and almost not at all as instrument-players. This neglect of the role of music in female-singer-songwriter-ing is at least partly responsible for the near-total lack of female instrumentalists on both Lilith Fair package tours. It dogged Bikini Kill throughout their career; it took that band’s co-leader Kathleen Hanna to start a whole new concept with a whole different instrumentation (Julie Ruin) for some critics to even notice that she’d been a darned-good musician all this time. (Lesbian-led bands that have gotten at least partial critical notice for their actual playing, such as Team Dresch, are exceptions that prove the rule.) Elsewhere in tune-land…
CLOSING TIME?: An NY Times story (10/15) discussed the precipitous decline of commercial rock as a music-biz force, noting sales charts now dominated by rap and rap/R&B hybrid acts. One quoted industry expert said “the Seattle bands” had been rock’s last best hope, but Nirvana ended and Pearl Jam got lost in its politics and the whole Rock Reformation got sidetracked. I’d put the blame on the suckiness of chain-run rock radio and MTV, which have bled the patient (themselves) to near-death with their repitition, selection of awful bland-rock acts, and stupidity. Of course, the suckiness of corporate rock radio (and of corporate rock promotion in general) is one of the things the Seattle bands had been trying to rebel against. Speaking of getting lost in politics…
BUMPER STICKER OF THE WEEK (seen in Belltown): “Chris Cornell for Mayor.” Actually, why not? If business success is the only prerequesite for a political career, Cornell sure counts. He and his Soundgarden bandmates started an enterprise from scratch, which grew steadily into a multimillion-buck operation that helped put Seattle on the music-biz map. (He’s even begun to assert a political worldview, having participated in that joint petition to Al Gore on behalf of old-growth forest preservation.)
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Steve Mandich’s Heinous #5 (the first issue in three years) is a professionally-written, DIY-printed mini-size zine, bound with strings of old audio-cassette tape. Topics include the Seattle Pilots (our ill-fated first MLB team), ’70s self-made celebrity The Human Fly, women’s motorcycle-jumping champ Debbie Lawler, rock records about Evel Knievel, and a Bob Newhart career retrospective for a change-O-pace. ($2 from P.O. Box 12065, Seattle 98102, or by email request to smandich@teleport.com.)
EX-LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Not only is commercial film production in Washington at an even lower ebb this year than last, but even MovieMaker, the slick magazine about indie filmmaking, suddenly moved from Seattle to L.A. over the summer. Does that mean no remaining hope for true indie (i.e., totally non-L.A.) filmmaking?
SCREEN PATTERNS: Actually, the reasons for the repertory program’s move to the Egyptian have little to do with the filmgoing tastes of college students and more with Landmark (née Seven Gables) Theaters’ schemes. 7G started repertory movies in Seattle at the Moore, which was where the Seattle International Film Festival also had started. Then Landmark came to town and bought the Neptune in the U District, driving 7G out of the repertory side of the biz until Landmark bought 7G. From there, Landmark decided to use the Neptune for hi-profile new releases, shunting the rep films to the smaller Varsity. Now it’s repositioning the Egyptian as the “Year Round Film Festival” theater.
(Still no word, by the way, about Landmark’s corporate fate. Last we heard, its current owner, financier John Kluge (who made a fortune selling five TV stations to Rupert Murdoch and promptly lost much of that fortune in Orion Pictures) had put the chain up for sale.) Meanwhile, Seattle’s other ex-locally-owned theater chain, the onetime Sterling Recreation Organization circuit now part of Cineplex Odeon, quietly had a change of management in recent months. CO’s now jointly owned by Sony and Seagram (whose respective studio units, Columbia and Universal, were the only major Golden Age Hollywood studios that hadn’t been connected to theater chains back in the ’40s).
MATERIAL BOY: Last week, I asked for your suggestions on new career moves I, your long-underemployed author, could take. A few of you didn’t quite get the “career” part of it (such as those who thought I should start a cable-access show or other unpaid stuff). Other responses generally fell into a few main categories, among them the following:
TO CLOSE, some words-O-wisdom from the recently-deceased former TV Guide reviewer Cleveland Amory: “`Action-packed’ means the boys can’t act but the girls are stacked.”
(Our next reader quiz: What does Seattle need? The full essay and invite will appear in next week’s column, but you can send in your ideas now to clark@speakeasy.org.)
AS PROMISED three weeks ago, here’s the official Misc. list of the 64 arts and sciences a modern person should learn; as inspired by one of the nonsexual parts of the Kama Sutra. (Here’s the original passage; here’s how to get the whole book.)
I’m not claiming to be an expert on all of these, or any. They’re just things I, and some of you, feel folks oughta know a little better, in no particular order:
street hockey, et al.).
cinematography, videography, Photoshop).
———————–
Subject: 64 Arts for the Modern Person Sent: 7/27/98 9:20 AM Received: 7/27/98 12:45 PM From: erinn kauer, eakamouse@webtv.net To: clark@speakeasy.org
Interesting topic. All modern persons should bone up (no pun intended) on the various methods of BIRTH CONTROL. To include: proper condom etiquette, taking the pill on time, abstinence, getting off without actually having intercouse, and covering one’s butt by always having a supply of the newly available emergency contraceptive pills (actually just the regular pill, taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse, it reduces the chance of actual conception by about 75%… this is not RU486, and does not abort anything, it just does not allow the conception to take place). PLEASE include this particular item in your list, there would be far less unwanted pregnancies occuring, either resulting in having the child because the misguided fool believes so strongly that abortion in wrong (like having a child unprepared and setting them up in this world on a shaky base is right) or in having the costly and scary and stigmatizing abortion and suffering needless guilt because of it. However, abortion is not the end of the world, and should be seriously considered if all other options are not viable at that point. Please call the FDA at 301/827-4260 and ask for Lisa D. Rarick for more info on the 72 hour emergency contraception pill, or 1-800-NOT2LATE, or your local pharmacy. Do not let the pharmacy give you any bullshit about having to get it through your doctor, it is available WITHOUT a prescription and is perfectly legal, etc, etc, etc. I found that my pharmacy balked at the notion, but this has only recently been approved and they are simply not used to it yet. They need to be shaken though, they are needlessly telling people to go through their doctor, but you DO NOT HAVE TO, this should be available OVER THE COUNTER.
Besides contraception, folks of the modern age should study organic gardening, meditation (stress-buster, dream fulfiller, life lengthener), keep an eye on politics and actually know something about the world and the U.S. of A., and how to make a good latte…
I am sure there is much more, and my list is pretty lame, but the CONTRACEPTION/ FAMILY PLANNING is extremely important.
Thanks for hearing me out!
Erinn Kauer / eakamouse
P.S. Concert ettiquette, Gourmet Camping, and the fine art of bodybuilding (look good now AND later!). Whatever. Bye.
BEEN AWHILE SINCE MISC.’S “Local Publications of the Week” department appeared, so we’ve a healthy backlog of printed treats to review. (As this is the last week of a month, some periodicals listed here might be succeeded by newer editions by the time you read this.)
Pioneer Square Gazette. Issue #3 of this occasional business-booster tabloid is still out at some drop-off spots in the neighborhood, and includes a revealing essay by Bradley Scharf about what he considers “the wrong lessons” of neighborhood growth. Among the ideas Scharf considers to be myths in need of shattering: the notion that preserving artists’ lofts from condo-conversion is a good thing. (Free from the Pioneer Square Community Council, 157 Yesler Way, #410, Seattle 98104.)
Voltage. There’ve been industrial/goth/dark music zines here over the years, but this is easily the slickest. Issue #6 has an extensive local-music section, a review of local dystopian novelist Ron Dakron, and an extremely dark-yet-funny column of supposed suicide advice (such as picking the proper rope for your body weight). (Free plus postage from P.O. Box 4127, Seattle 98104-4127.)
Words & Pictures. Marvel’s bankruptcy aside, there’s still an audience for action-hero comic books (and related entertainments such as action-hero novels, movies, posters, etc.) and Eric Burris’s zine is this audience’s local voice. Issue #8 features a tribute to the late Fantastic Four co-creator Jack Kirby. (Free plus postage from P.O. Box 27784, Seattle 98125.)
Feedback. Paul Allen’s sold off of his companies this past year, so he’s got even more cash to spend on his Experience Music Project museum and this, its house organ. It’s grown from a li’l CD-sized pamphlet to a giant 24-pp. poster book, with nearly every page suitable for framing. Vol. 4 No. 1 includes pieces on Sleater-Kinney, Buck Owens’s local past, Seattle punksters the U-Men, and old punk posters. (Free from 110 110th Ave. NE, #400, Bellevue 98004-9990.)
Platform. “Edition D” of the occasional theater-insiders’ mag’s got a big feature on the art of costuming, a profile of stage photographer Chris Bennion, and a semiserious suggestion for an annual Seattle Theater Parade. (Send a big envelope and $.78 in stamps to 313 10th Ave. E. #1, Seattle 98102.)
Blackstockings. Editor Morgan Elene’s leaving the editor’s desk at this newsletter for strippers and other sex workers. Her last ish (Vol. 2 No. 8 ) is as outspoken as ever; with a semihumorous list of “The Pros and Cons of Being a Sex Worker” (more “Pros” than “Cons”) and a how-to piece on going to work for an escort service. (Free at Left Bank Books, Toys in Babeband, Pistil Books, Red & Black, and other outlets; or with postage from P.O. Box 18571, Seattle 98118.)
Black Sheep. A new leftist/ anarchist monthly with some thought behind its tirades. Issue #1 discusses Tibet, NAFTA, the Jobs With Justice campaign, Michael Moore’s film The Big One, local rallies in support of California farm workers (but with no mention of Washington farm workers), and an obscure 1919 state law (still on the books) banning anarchist or radical-labor assemblies. (Six issues for $8 from Singularity Press, 1016 NW 65th, Seattle 98117.)
Hotty. Local music promoters Julianne Anderson and Jenny Bendel’s new zine elaborates on an idea recently promoted in these pages by Kathleen Wilson–that it’s perfectly OK for a woman to enjoy rocker boys’ sex appeal. Each co-editor has control over her own half of the magazine, each presenting a sequence of four skinny doodz with well-coifed hair and snarly smiles (all photographed by Celeste Willinger). While Bendel insists the whole thing’s simply an excuse for her and Anderson to be “silly and self indulgent,” I’d say it means something more. Like the Sensitive Geek Boys Calendar discussed here in January, it dares to nonchanantly assert “sex positive” womanhood isn’t just for lesbians and dominatrices anymore. In its silly, self-indulgent way, Hotty proves it’s perfectly natural for a woman to actually like men. (Subscription info: P.O. Box 95765, Seattle 98145, or email Bfleckman@aol.com.)
Tipton Bio Never Drags
Book feature for The Stranger, 6/25/98
Suits Me:
The Double Life of Billy Tipton
Diane Wood Middlebrook
(Houghton Mifflin) $25
You know the basic story. Billy Tipton, a nostalgic pop-jazz pianist and fixture of Spokane society for over three decades, died in 1989 and was revealed by doctors to have been a woman all along. Now here’s the long version.
Who was Billy Tipton really? At several points, Middlebrook (a onetime Spokanian herself) accepts the argument that Billy (born Dorothy Tipton in 1914) was a closeted lesbian who only dressed as a man to make it in the jazz business and/or because nobody in her world would accept A Strong Woman. Yet the details of Tipton’s life, which Middlebrook clearly spent much time and effort collecting, suggest otherwise. Instead of heading to NY or LA or Vegas, where lesbians and jazzy women would get as much acceptance as they would anywhere in those less enlightened decades, Tipton stayed in the Midwest and later the inland Northwest, where the potential career rewards were smaller but where the competition was also smaller. (Tipton only recorded two LPs, both of retro trad-jazz standards released in the ’50s on supermarket budget labels; his work, as described by Middlebrook, seems to have settled quickly into covers and, later, Lawrence Welkish nostalgia.)
I used “his” above for a reason. Despite Middlebrook’s psychoanalyses, her tale is clearly one of someone who saw himself as a man born with the wrong equipment, who wanted to be known exclusively as a man. There were plenty of strong women in Tipton’s dust-bowl Oklahoma upbringing; but their strength was in holding households and careers together, not in the letting-loose demimonde of jazz. By the ’40s, when female instrumentalists had started to emerge in jazz and pop (and young men not in the armed forces were often derided as unpatriotic), Tipton never took the opportunity to end his offstage “act.” Even when dying of untreated ulcers, Tipton refused the medical attention that might have revealed his secret.
No, the Tipton story isn’t a tale of tragedy but of triumph. Tipton wasn’t a jazz great and probably knew he’d never be one, but he died a success at becoming something, and someone, he wanted against all odds to become–and without benefit of surgeries, shots, or hormone pills.
Fun things in the book: The elegant design, the cover, the shadow-clef frontspiece logo, the descriptions of ’50s Spokane, some of Tipton’s creakily “naughty” onstage jokes about women and gays, the descriptions of Tipton’s cross-dressing details (strap-ons, chest-binding, elevator shoes, claims that sanitary pads were great for sopping up car-oil leaks).
•
The Crisis of Criticism
Edited by Maurice Berger
(New Press paperback) $17.95
Yes, there are readers who actually take arts reviews seriously. At least other reviewers do. When New Yorker writer Arlene Croce complained about the concept of “victim art” she accused a Bill T. Jones AIDS dance work of abetting (without Croce actually seeing the show), several members of the NYC-centric art-crit and lit-crit spheres fell into a tizzy.
This brief book compiles Croce’s un-review with eight other critics’ responses and ruminations on the value of criticism in today’s everybody’s-a-critic era. Granted, a lot of these pro critics and authors (especially bell hooks) are just sticking long words onto a desire for a world in which people such as themselves get more respect. But others argue, with varying degrees of success, for a new or reasserted role for their profession.
Some of the better pieces don’t address Croce’s beef at all, but instead explore other criticism-related matters. Particularly notable is Richard Martin’s “Addressing the Dress,” arguing for more serious and less hype-laden fashion journalism. With so much art, entertainment, etc. being churned out by the intellectual-property industries and their highbrow counterparts, the best of these essayists assert the importance of trying to make sense of it all, to sift the aesthetic diamonds from the aesthetic zirconia.
MAKING THE SQUARE SQUARER: From approximately 1971 to 1991, the official live music genre of Seattle was white-boomer “blooze,” as played at Pioneer Square bars. The “blooze” bars of 1st Ave. S. play on today, virtually unchanged. Yet P-I writer Roberta Penn recently claimed Seattle didn’t have a blues club. She probably meant we lacked a club that treated blues as a serious art form, instead of formulaic macho “party” tuneage. It’s worth noting that the only national star to emerge from this scene, Robert Cray, split for Calif. as soon as he hit big (and bad-mouthed the Square bars promptly after he left).
Now, the forces of development want to rechristen the Square as luxury-condo territory. Some developers say they’d like to rid it of such elements as nightly noisemakers (even if they’re sport-utility-drivin’ caucasisn noisemakers). I wouldn’t personally miss the “blooze” bars (though there’s something quaint about standing outside the 1st & Yesler bus stop on a Sat. night, hearing three bands from three bars playing three cacophanous variations on the same theme). But I wouldn’t want the clubs to be forced out by demographic cleansing, especially since the area’s handful of prog-rock and electronic-dance clubs would likely get the boot at the same time, if not first.
PHASES OF THE MOON: With the warm weather’s come an odd masculine fashion statement: dorsal pseudo-cleavage. It involves wearing jeans with a belt, but hanked down to show the tall waistband of designer boxer shorts. I know it originally came from tuff-guy street wear, which in turn was based upon prison garb (oversize trousers with no belts allowed). But in this incarnation, it’s like a male version of that “sex-positive” women’s book Exhibitionism for the Shy. And in case you wondered why there weren’t “sex-positive” books for men?)…
VIAGRA-MANIA: After 10 to 20 years of the magazines and the TV talk shows defining sexual issues almost exclusively from a (demographically upscale) woman’s point of view, now Time and its ilk are scrambling to out-hype one another on the concept of masculine performance, as a problem now chemically solveable. It comes amid a new wave of skin-free men’s magazines like Maxim, trying to attract male readers without that pictorial element proven to attract men but to scare off advertisers. So instead, all the sex in these mags is verbal, not visual, and it’s often in the how-to format so familiar to women’s-mag followers.
Viagra-hoopla might also mean we’re finally over the late-’70s orthodox “feminism” in which the erection was depicted as the root of all evil. In the Viagra era, an erection is seen as something all men and 90 percent of women crave and wish would occur promptly, predictably, and on cue.
Then there’s a scary story in Business Week depicting that pillow-shaped erection pill as a harbinger of a new generation of prescription lifestyle drugs, for people who wouldn’t die without ’em but would just like to “feel better.” In 1990, when the Lifetime cable channel ran programs all Sunday “for physicians only” (complete with slick ads selling prescription drugs to doctors), there was a panel discussion show in which a doctor predicted everybody in America would be hooked on at least one prescription drug (including remedies for common conditions not at the time considered “problems”) by decade’s end. Looks like he might’ve been close to right.
Another question could be posed from the hype: Is the legal “feel-good” drug industry morally distinguishable from the illegal “feel-good” drug industry? In the past, I’ve dissed both those who seek all the answers to life thru pharmaceuticals and those who piously seek to punitively condemn such seekers. Both camps, I wrote, were on ego trips more potentially dangerous than any drug trip. But with ordinary citizens going more or less permanently on chemicals for little more or less than self-confidence, perhaps that dichotomy will transform into something different.
THE SHOCK OF THE NUDE: As mentioned previously in The Stranger, Erika Langley’s Lusty Lady coffee-table-book photos won’t have their own Seattle Art Museum show (across from the peep-show emporium where Langley took her pix) after all. She’d been invited by one SAM official, then disinvited by highers-up (who’ve offered her a slot in a group exhibition next year instead). The official line: The show would’ve been in a hallway, where kids on group tours might be exposed to the sight of beautiful women’s physiques. (Langley’d already agreed to leave sexually-suggestive shots out of the show.) Yet Langley and her supporters noted (in this paper and elsewhere) that other nudes (M/F) have been on open display at SAM. I saw plenty of under-agers enjoy the drawn nudes at SAM’s Cone Collection exhibit last year, including several young art students copying the drawings into sketchbooks. But art’s gatekeepers have always preferred their nude images to be safely removed from the here-and-now. I believe as late as Monet’s time, painters were expected to set nekkid people only in historic (ancient Greece), foreign (Mideast harems), or mythical (Biblical sinners) settings. But a modern-day gal willfully showin’ off her bod sans shame? Alors! Speaking of sex-fear…
I WAS READING the 1965 intro to The Olympia Reader, wherein editor-publisher Maurice Girodias complained about French censorship in the de Gaulle era, when the radio told me about a Federal Way city council hearing wherein speakers claimed a planned Castle Superstores sex-toy shop would directly lead to wild-eyed rapists rushing the streets after any woman or child in sight (as if anybody in Federal Way walked anywhere!). As I previously wrote, Castle’s just a big-box consolidation of the indie and small-chain stores where nice straights (and nice closeted gays) buy silk undies, condoms, vibes, videos, and other tools for enabling their decent, wholesome sex lives. A criminal will think like a criminal with or without such stimuli. Indeed, a clean, well-lit, mainstream sex shop might help convince someone with borderline-criminal thoughts that sex isn’t necessarily the stuff of oppressive compulsions but is as natural (and potentially as dull) as any aspect of existence. Speaking of sex-role stigmas…
LESS OF A MAN’S WORLD?: The Seattle Times recently reprinted a Washington Post article (originally one of a five-part Post series on gender relations) claiming increased social stigmas against males, especially boys. It claimed boys were more likely to be ostracized for asocial behavior or “learning disabilities,” and more likely to later become perpetrators (and victims) of violence (to themselves or others). Post reporter Megan Rosenfeld wrote, “Boys are the universal scapegoats, the clumsy clods with smelly feet… feeling the tightening noose of limited expectations, societal scorn and inadequate role models” amid a lack of positive sex-role imagery (girls can now become most anything, but boys are still expected to be dumb jocks). Other reports, meanwhile, talk of lowered sperm counts and fewer boy babies in the major western nations, even of chemical-therapy estrogen finding its way (via sewage-sludge fertilizer) into the food supply. Whatever happened to the ’80s radfem cliché of “testosterone poisoning”? Speaking of a gradually more femdom world…
SPLITTING: Bikini Kill’s members have called it quits their way, after seven years of making music their way–avoiding major labelss, package tours, MTV, even movie soundtracks. It’s not that the band’s career was going nowhere. They achieved just about all they could achieve within their self-prescribed boundaries. And now they’re moving on to new creative endeavors, without major-label debts, contractual-obligation albums, or acrimonious “farewell tours.” While I disagreed with the anti-sexist sexism in some of their words, I always admired the strength of their convictions. When they called for “Revolution Girl-Style Now,” they meant more than simply wishing to stick some female bodies onto the same ol’ seats of power, or some military overthrow with subsequent reign of terror. It was about rethinking the whole premises of social engagement, including the way “rebel” music’s produced and distributed.
It’s a post-April Fool’s Misc., the popcult column that hopes the popular new local band A/C Autolux will one day appear on the same gig with the even-newer local band MoPar. Let’s just hope no band members forget their parts.
UPDATE: Since writing about the Triangle Broadcasting Co., I’ve learned of another gay radio outlet, sorta: The Music Choice section of the DirecTV satellite-dish service has a nightly package of “Out” music, starting around 11 p.m. It’s commercial-free and even flashes the titles and artists’ names on screen.
CLASS-ACTION RACISM SUIT HITS BOEING: Some of you theoretically might ask, “But aren’t pocket-protector-clad Boeing engineers the virtual epitome of squaresville fair play and quiet devotion to duty?” Maybe, in myth; but any huge organization with an almost all whitebread leadership (even an officially “nice” whitebread leadership) can be prone to insult “jokes,” promotion preferences and other discriminations, even anonymous threats and attacks. It’s happened in the past decade (according to suits and pubilshed accusations) at Nordstrom, City Light, the fire department, the ferry system. And with affirmative action under attack and with every boor and bigot using the all-justifying label of “political incorrectness” as an excuse to actually take pride in their own obnoxious inhumanity, we might see more ugliness ahead. Speaking of untoward behavior at unexpected places…
CATHODE CORNER #1: The (still alive, still free) online zine Salon recently ran allegations of sexual harrassment in the offices of 60 Minutes (following that show’s sympathetic treatment of Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey). Salon‘s article was built around eight-year-old allegations by freelancer Mark Hertsgaard, who’d written a piece for Rolling Stone (which published only a watered-down version). He charged the show’s bigwigs, including exec-producer Don Hewitt and anchor Mike Wallace, with acts of gender-hostility ranging from lewd jokes to groping and bra-snapping. It’s enough to bring new meaning to my old foolproof formula for “Safer sex” (imaginining that the person you’re about to have sex with is really Morley Safer oughta stop anything from happening).
CATHODE CORNER #2: KCPQ’s news, after the expected bumpy first weeks, is turning into a snappy li’l broadcast that, partly out of necessity (fewer camera crews, no helicopter), spends a little less time than the other stations chasing ambulances and a little more time covering issues, including issues deemed important to those youngish X-Files viewers. Any broadcast that gives top billing (on 3/17) to the fight to abolish the Teen Dance Ordinance at least has a set of priorities in concordance with those of some of our readers. Just one little thing: If they’re trying to skew to a younger audience, why do they follow the newscast with a M*A*S*H rerun that probably looked creaky when made (before the station’s target audience was born)?
PINNING IT DOWN: Bowling as a source for hip iconography is way on the rise. Bowling shirts (particularly the Hawwaiian variety) have been in for a couple of years now and may have another resurgence this summer (if the collectors haven’t stowed away all the good ones by now). New bars from the Breakroom to Shorty’s are festooned with balls, pins, and other acoutrements of the sport. It’s a way to be fun ‘n’ retro without the bourgeois trappings of the cigar-bar crowd. But don’t look for any new bowling alleys anywhere around here anytime soon. Banks and landlords think bowling’s a suboptimal use of square footage, compared to other entertainment or retail concepts. When a Green Lake Bowl or Village Lanes or Bellevue Lanes goes away, it doesn’t come back. All we can do is support the remaining kegling bastions (including the occasional “rock ‘n’ bowl” nights at Leilani Lanes in upper Greenwood).
QUESTION OF THE WEEK: If the Olympics come to Seattle in 2012 (and I know some of you are dead set against the idea but if the Schellites have their way it won’t be our decision to make), will you still be willing to be televised as part of a quaint, exotic human-interest piece about those strange local customs? Submit your reply, with your choice of quaint custom, at clark@speakeasy.org. (Remember, no latte jokes.)
The High-Tech Boys’ Club:
Now For Women Too
Book review by Clark Humphrey, 11/10/97
Release 2.0 by Esther Dyson (Broadway Books)
The Interactive Book by Celia Pearce (Macmillan Technical Publishing trade paperback)
Signal to Noise by Carla Sinclair (HarperCollins)
Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders by Jim Carlton (Times Books)
Interface Culture by Steven Johnson (HarperCollins)
Sometimes it seems a lot of people want to tell us about the future of computer-aided communications. Other times, it seems like it’s just the same few people putting out the same book. That’s because these screeds promising a decentralized, all-empowering cyberfuture are dominated by a small elitist cadre of ideologues who all hang out at the Global Business Network and other right-wing think tanks. These “digerati” all say pretty much the same things; none question their Gates-given right to not only predict but to dictate the direction of computers, the Net, etc. The first three authors in this review are women, but they’re still in the PC-biz “boys’ club.”
Esther Dyson’s a “digerati” insider of the first rank (daughter of celeb scientist Freeman Dyson, publisher of her own industry-insider newsletter). Her book’s essentially a general-audience reiteration of the digerati party line–the computerization of business is subverting all sorts of “paradigms,” you’ve gotta stay on your toes to keep up with market conditions that change overnight, don’t let pesky governments get in the way of all-kind-and-knowing companies, your kids’ll end up homeless tomorrow if their classrooms are computerless today. If you’ve already read Gates or George Gilder or Alvin Toffler or Nicholas Negroponte or any issue of Wired, you really don’t need another volume of the same.
Celia Pearce, who had almost as privileged an upbringing as Dyson (her industrial-designer dad’s worked on everything from Vegas light shows to Biosphere 2), could’ve used an editor. The Interactive Book, Pearce’s 580-page collection of essays, rambles on through her career designing group computer games for shopping malls, her love of the Internet visual-programming language VRML (whose co-designer wrote her introduction), her misadventures with the “new media” divisions of Hollywood movie studios (whom she believes will never “get it” regarding interactive media and its inherent differences from TV and movies), and how the Net and interactive media are supposedly on the verge of exploding all the old hierarchies of media, entertainment, and society in general.
Of course, behind most crusades against an old hierarchy there’s somebody who wants to build a new hierarchy with her/himself at its center. Carla Sinclair’s novel Signal to Noise doesn’t document this trait as much as help propagate it. Sinclair treats her friends and acquaintances in the Digerati as being important enough to have a roman a clef written about them. If you don’t personally knowDouglas Coupland or the Wired editors, there’s really no point in reading this long paean to their alleged hotness.
If the Digerati are the New Rock Stars folks like Sinclair claim them to be, then it’s natural to expect them to be subjected to scurrilous gossip. In Apple, Wall St. Journal writer Jim Carlton does the kind of hatchet job the digerati are always complaining about mainstream-media people for. Carlton blames office politics and executive infighting/ incompetence for Apple Computer’s fall from big profit margins in the late ’80s to multimillion-dollar losses the past year and a half. The eral story’s a lot simpler than Carlton’s account claims: When Microsoft wrested control of the PC platform away from IBM (with help from indie chipmakers who copied the IBM PC’s ROM chips for the first PC clones), MS turned PCs into low-margin commodities (similar to the old Kodak strategy of giving away the camera to sell the film). By then, Apple was already locked into an opposite business model, using the Mac’s superior operating software to sell its costlier hardware. MS’s Windows wasn’t (and still isn’t) as good as the Mac OS, but it got close enough for corporate computer buyers, threatening Apple’s market niches and decimating the high markups it had become dependent upon. None of the boardroom-soap-opera battles Carlton relishes in detailing had much effect on this corporate trajectory, and none probably could have. Apple put out a lot of superior products, but built a big organization that couldn’t change as fast as it needed to. An important story, but not the tabloidy tale Carlton’s trying to sell.
Amid all the hustle-hustle of uniform paradigm-subverting, it’s refreshing to read the occasional voice of common sense. Steven Johnson, who runs the pioneering webzine Feed, is out not to make websites hotter, just better. While Johnson’s Interface Culture isn’t flashily designed itself (not a single illustration), Johnson’s screed about the principles of online design makes compelling reading. He’s out to improve online communication on a structural level, applying oft-forgotten common-sense principles to the creation and organization of text and graphics. While other cyber-pundits blather about their mover-‘n’-shaker pals, Johnson quietly shows the rest of us how to start subverting their paradigms by making our own online statements more effective.
The Action Cinema of Andy Sidaris:
Fit to Kill
Video review by Clark Humphrey for The Stranger, 7/14/97
Andy Sidaris just might be the only currently-active, American-born action filmmaker worthy of criticism. His movies really move, like the best Hong Kong actioners and unlike your basic bloated Hollywood shoot-’em-up. It helps that Sidaris (a former ABC Sports staff director who branched out into movies in ’73 and started his own production company in ’85) conceives his low-budget blowouts primarily for the same overseas theaters that play the Hong Kong stuff. (His works are straight-to-video releases in the U.S.) Many are set in Hawaii, the perfect mid-Pacific metaphor for his mix of American action elements (huge guns, huge muscles, huge breasts) and Asian film staples (preposterous stunts, exhaustingly convoluted plots). His stars (chiefly bodybuilders, male models, and Playboycenterfolds) know they can’t act and gleefully don’t care. His story premises might mix blackmail, espionage, and drug smuggling (his newest, Hard Hunted, even fits in Internet cyber-crooks); but they’re just excuses to get the characters’ Uzis out and their blouses off. His frequent softcore sex scenes exist in a universe of complete gender equality–his female roles are just as strong and assertive as his male roles; his guys are just as dumb as his gals. And no matter how steamy the snuggling or how gross the gunfire, the dialogue never gets naughtier than this line in Hard Ticket to Hawaii: “All I know is I want to lick the nail polish right off your toes.”Start with Malibu Express, his least violent film (and his first as producer). If you end up digging its over-the-top strangeness and eager-to-please showmanship, consider moving on to his more recent titles like The Dallas Connection, Picasso Trigger, and the aerobics-themed Fit to Kill.
(LATTER-DAY NOTE: The Sidaris family has asked me to invite readers of this page to their own site, www.andysidaris.com.)
MY ADORATION OF JACK BENNY notwithstanding, I decided years ago I wouldn’t rue or deny the inevitable entry into the fourties. I wouldn’t be like those pathetic boomers, forever striving to retain ever-fading remnants of youthful bodies and identities. (My recent diet-exercise regimen had nothing to do with staying young; I was as out-of-shape at 17 as I was last year.)
No, I plan to age disgracefully into a crochety old geezer. Having bosses younger than me, at a paper targeted at readers younger than me, has offered plenty of practice. “Back in my day Sonny, we had real music. Einstruzende Neubauten! Skinny Puppy! Throbbing-fuckin’-Gristle! That crap they listen to these days: Why, it’s just noise!”
I also plan to enjoy the collected experience of my years on Earth. A few years ago I wrote something called “Everything I Ever Really, Really Needed to Know I Learned on the Playground.” Since then I’ve learned a few more things, including the following:
MISC. REGRETS TO REPORT this will be the final weekend for Belltown’s Cyclops restaurant (around, under various names and owners, almost as long as Soundgarden was). Dinner’s served for the last time this Saturday, followed by one final Sunday brunch. The artists living in the SCUD building’s other spaces will all be out by June. Last-ditch preservation petitions notwithstanding, Harbor Properties is itchin’ to replace it with demographically-correct condos (maybe even including a few hi-ceiling models to be media-hyped as “artist housing”). Speaking of developers and their close friends…
BEYOND THE NORM: Like Soundgarden (whom he still may have never heard), retiring mayor Rice may have felt he had no further worlds to conquer at this time. He’d put himself into a political dead end, as shown in his ’96 campaign for governor. Having turned his office over to the chain stores and developers, he had no more popular support left (except from the construction unions); while no urban Democrat, no matter how “pro-business,” stood much of a chance in a statewide race last year against the forces of Hate Talk radio. The question is what we’ll get next. Various city and county insiders are jockeying for position in the next mayoral election. I worry we might end up with yet another “civil society” insider who’ll promise loyalty to “neighborhood” priorities at first, only to end up within a year, as yet another developers’ lackey. Or somebody like city attorney Mark Sidran, who probably wouldn’t hold the populist pose half that long. Speaking of poses…
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Longtime Sub Pop art director Hank Trotter’s new slick-paper magazine Kutie is more than just another attempt at a cocktail-culture girlie mag. Trotter, a fan of pre-’70s pinup art who’s been planning the mag for over two years, has gone beyond nostalgia to rethink the whole men’s-mag formula. Unlike most anything else (“mainstream” “or “alternative”) out there, it treats the het-male sex drive not as evil or stupid but as an impetus to good quasi-clean fun. The photo spreads (shot by Charles Peterson, who previously took many Soundgarden pix) evoke a spirit of new-girlfriend playful discovery; a refreshing change from porn-biz ennui and supermodels’ cold smiles. Stranger fave Anna Woolverton’s got some cool writing in it too. ($7 at Fallout, Zanadu, and other fine indie-print outlets.) Speaking of manly displays…
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Reader Deborah Shamoon spotted a new fad from Japan (where Soundgarden’s long been popular): “You have probably heard of that peculiarly Japanese snack food, Pocky (pronounced `pokie’). It’s a thin pretzel stick dipped in chocolate. There are many variants, in which the flavor is somehow advertised in the name: Chocolate Swirl, Strawberry Custard, etc. Well, now there is a Men’s Pocky, available at Uwajimaya. It comes in a macho green box, with the word “Men’s” in English in stark white letters on a black background. On the back it says in English, “Crispy pretzel dipped in dark chocolate for the intelligent connoisseur who enjoys the finer points in life.” It goes on to expound in Japanese about the full cocoa flavor.
“American consumers may wonder what makes this snack food particularly male. The vaguely phallic shape?… Actually, I think this is a clever marketing ploy. Japanese people generally believe only women and children like sweet food; eating candy is seen as a sign of childishness… I remember my host father announcing scornfully he didn’t care for sweets as he wolfed down box after box of Valentine’s chocolate. A semi-sweet chocolate Pocky is the solution to this problem, and by adding “Men’s” to the name, [manufacturer] Glico clearly hopes to bolster the frail egos of men who have a yearning for a chocolate-coated pretzel snack.
“We have this kind of thing in the US, with men’s hair dye, hair spray, and (recently, I have heard) nail polish. I think the idea should be expanded: How about “Brawn,” the diet cola for men? Oreos for Men? Ben & Jerry’s Muscle Man? Clearly there is an untapped market potential.” As for me, I’ll patiently wait for the chance to sip a Man’s Mai-Tai while adventuresomely perusing a Rrugged Romance by Harlequin For Him. (Hey, it could happen.)
TURNS OUT IT WAS EASY to lose 41 pounds (one-fifth my old weight) in 21 weeks, after years of vowing to get around to it. I knew enough about myself to know I couldn’t have a prepackaged regimen, lifestyle, or personality foisted upon me. That would have disrupted both my internal chemistry and my ingrained behavior patterns, to the point where I’d get desperate to give up.
As soon as I told some people what I was doing (I admit to having been nearly insuffrably boastful), they’d give me all sorts of detailed advice on complicated schemes and self-help-book tricks I’ve found I didn’t need: The “Chew-Chew” Diet, the Rice Diet, the Popcorn Diet, the Drinking Man’s Diet, the Reversal Diet, the Purification Diet, ab machines, daily eating schedules, Topp Fast, and even spirulina plankton.
Instead, it was just less of the same–my usual food intake, cut to a 1500 calories a day (averaged out by the week), plus a daily half-gallon of water and regular conditioning workouts. No Jenny’s Cuisine, no fat-gram counting, no simple vs. complex carbos, no Enter the Zone, and no macrobiotics.
Because I’m big on prepackaged foods, it was easy to read calories on the “Nutrition Facts” label listings. For dining out, I carried a Brand Name Calorie Counter book. I used Sweet Success diet shakes at first, but realized I could have cereal or soup or toast for the same calories.
Certain aspects of my old intake regime did wither away. Beer and I became more distant friends. I lost contact with Hostess Sno-Balls. Cookies, crackers, and chocolates remained in my life on a limited basis; at the level of maybe one chocolate-covered cherry a day.
Some parts of the regimen were odd. Most diet books are written for women, and don’t mention the masculine predicament of awaking at 4 a.m., needing to expel a lot of that drinking water yet turgidly unable to do so.
On the other hand, those books also neglect the particularly masculine ego trip of discovering one’s thighs are no longer the most forward-reaching aspect of one’s lower anatomy.
I used nonprescription appetite-suppressant pills the first few months. They made me want and not want to eat at the same time. I also found myself losing interest in other favorite stimuli, like movies and concerts. I worried I’d become one of those bland boomers I’ve always ranted against. I pondered why those turn-of-the-century railroad moguls were so fat–maybe they had a hunger to grow, to acquire. I also pondered the words of an ex-anorexic acquaintance; she’d been reared to fear sex, to the point where she literally couldn’t stand to have anything enter her body.
During those initial weeks, I developed a running daily calorie count in the part of my brain where I’m normally obsessing about women or money. I’d weigh myself more than once a day, even more than once an hour. I’d get to worrying about “plateaus” and even about whether exercise was causing me to gain muscle faster than losing fat.
Because I’ve traditionally had the approximate metabolism of a hibernating bear, I started exercising to make sure I lost fat instead of muscle. I took a twice-weekly aerobic conditioning class at Belltown Ballet and Conditioning. Because it’s coed, it doesn’t have the kind of body-image jealousy trips I’ve seen in all-male sessions and I’m told can exist in all-female sessions. Still, the class is definitely tuff stuff, especially for the first eight to ten sessions. There are still stretching positions I simply cannot attain. But I’m getting better at it, slowly. I still can’t accomplish a chin-up, but I can do more crunches than I ever could in high school PE class.
By the end, I’d lost fat faster than my skin shrank, leaving billowy folds of empty flesh containers. I felt like that Dick Tracy villain who smuggled guns in the folds of his multiple chins.
Not that people noticed any change at first. In the difficult first few weeks, a few people volunteered they saw something different about me; but they all concluded I’d just gotten a different haircut. One old acquaintance asked if I’d switched from glasses to contacts (I’ve never worn either). My mom couldn’t even see anything different about me. Only in recent weeks have people been telling me they see any change.
One reason I did this was to look more desirable here in an “alternative” subculture where the single straight male is a decidedly surplus commodity. In his recent book Eat Fat, Richard Klein claims fat feminizes men. He notes how Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra refers to Cleo’s lovers getting fat in her presence as a symbol for ceding their manhood to the Egyptian seductress.
Lesbians have zines like Fat Girl; gay men have the “bears” clique. Men who love fat women, however, are often stereotyped as manipulative “chubby chasers,” out to control low-self-esteem women. And women who love fat men? Unheard of, except in places like the North American Association for Fat Acceptance.
Besides diet advice, dating advice is another of those genres almost never directed toward males. “You Must Not Be Fat,” warns Jim Deane in one of the few such books for men, The Fine Art of Picking Up Girls (1974). Deane claims there’s no such thing as a sexy fat man. I tried to think of some but only got to Brando, the later Elvis, Pavarotti, Babe Ruth, Barry White, and rapper Heavy D. More prevalant were images of near asexuality (Buddah, the later Orson Welles), arrested childhood (Curly Howard, John Belushi, John Candy), or inhumane lords of expanse (Jabba the Hutt, Henry VIII, Louis XIV, those railroad barons).
Klein’s book notes an archaic definition of “corporation” as a bodily protruberance, such as a gut: “…Like their anatomical counterparts, these great abdomens seem to aim only at expanding, greedily incorporating and consolidating in view of increasing their volume.”
Yet Klein also claims fat’s associated today with low-income, low-self-esteem people, while thinness is the visage for the rich and glamorous. The image of financial success these days is not the personal chef but the personal trainer; while today’s companies seem as insistant as Oprah to showcase their “downsizing” into new “lean and mean” forms. Klein quotes essayist Hillel Schwartz as calling yo-yo dieting “the constant frustration of desire,” a necessary mental state for Late Capitalism to function properly in selling unneeded goods (both excess food and diet schemes).
I still support International No-Diet Days and the Fat Pride movement. What I did was for me, and is not intended as a go-thou-and-do-likewise lesson. Different people have different bodies. Others may need or want to do something else, or nothing.
As for me, now comes phase two, best described by a zombie-bite victim’s deathbed promise in Dawn of the Dead: “I’ll try not to come back.”
MISC., YOUR SEASONAL-AFFECTIVE COLUMN, couldn’t help but be cheered up by the January Playgirl cover blurb: “Odd Men Are In!” What could be duller than square jaws, pumped pecs, and steely gazes? Conversely, what could be more fun than somebody with a deft wit, a neato wardrobe of mismatched shirts and ties, and a wicked pinball wrist? (At least that’s what I’ve always tried to tell women.)
TCI IN TROUBLE: The cable behemoth’s laying off 7 percent of its workforce, ordering exec-pay cuts, considering selling subsidiaries, and scaling back upgrade plans (though its long-promised Seattle upgrade’s officially still in the works). Boss John Malone has to placate stockholders, in particular the heirs of one recently-deceased exec, to keep the company from being sold out from under him. The long-term problem: Customers are fed up with Malone’s limited line-ups, rate hikes, and dumping of popular channels for channels Malone owns a piece of. Malone’s siphoned ratepayers’ bills into acquisitions, joint ventures, and power-grab schemes, while staying put too long with aging electronics and wires. Customers are going to mini-satellite dishes today. By ’88, they may turn to phone-company-run or Net-based video systems. I wouldn’t miss Malone, but the wrong kind of takeover could bleed even more money away from service and into junk-bond debt.
`STREET’ IMPROVEMENTS: Sesame St. was looking a little tattered in its 28th year. Once PBS’s ratings powerhouse and a merchandising gold mine, its disjointed mix of humans, Muppets, cartoons, animal films, and committee-written lesson plans has declined in viewership and grownup attention. As more of commercial TV took on Sesame’s frenetic flash, PBS found kids taking refuge in the decidedly steadier Barney and Magic School Bus. The show’s production company, Children’s Television Workshop, has taken cash from toy royalties to buy ads on the commercial networks, hoping to alert viewers that Sesame’s still on the map.
So it was a happy surprise for CTW when Rosie O’Donnell used a plush figure of Elmo, a relatively recent Sesame Muppet character, as a mascot on her talk show. O’Donnell’s endorsement brought parental attention to what had become Sesame’s most popular character. A vibrating “Tickle Me” Elmo doll is the hit toy of an Xmas season otherwise dominated by recycled older properties (Mario, Bugs, Dalmatians). A wide-mouthed, not-unbearably cute, everykid character created from a generic Muppet design, Elmo signifies kids embracing the defiantly innocent side of kidness, rejecting violent fantasy and smartass “attitude.” Now I know where the K Records listeners of tomorrow are coming from.
DOWN, ON THE FARM: Big agribusiness outfits in Calif. are suing for the right to not contribute to government-mandated marketing campaigns (the California Raisins, “Got Milk?”, California Summer Fruits). In an AP report, one plaintiff complained the slurping and chewing sounds in a Summer Fruits commercial were too sexually suggestive. Another said the mandate reeked of socialism. (Actually, it reeks of mercantilism, the belief that government’s highest duty is to enrich business.) I say government oughta quit the raisin biz. If these huge factory farmers wanna be foolish enough to kill some of the most clever and effective ads around today, let ’em.
WHITHER THE KINGDOME?: It’s not the echoing fan noise that made it such a good home for our teams. It’s the way its homeliness, its blatant architectural mediocrity, complemented the lovable-loser status of the Seahawks and pre-Griffey Mariners. Its concrete cheapness symbolized an ex-frontier town wanting to become a Big League City but unwilling or unable to do it right. Paul Allen sez he won’t buy the Hawks if they’re stuck in an aging, luxury-boxless Dome. The new M’s owners said the same. Besides the economic considerations, I think both parties were uncomfortable with an overcast-grey box whose un-gussy-uppable look of thrift contradicted today’s mania for yupscale pretension. Dunno ’bout you, but I’ll miss the humble giant hamburger bun if Allen gets the county to tear it down.
WE’LL MEET AGAIN on Boxing Day (my fave Canadian holiday!) with the annual Misc. In/Out list. ‘Til then, keep in mind my favorite aphorism from Rudolph, a line which has become my life’s motto: “Even among misfits you’re misfits!”
MISC. WASN’T SURPRISED by the cops’ way-over-reaction to Subculture Joe‘s big steel heart outside Westlake Center. Authorities here and elsewhere have long shown a fear of art surpassing only a fear of love.
THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA: With any luck, this will be the last Olympics to be packaged and curated for traditional network TV. The pay-per-view Triplecast in ’92 was the way it oughta be covered: Multiple channels, unedited complete live events, more field footage and less of that annoying human-interest featurizing. But they charged too much for the Triplecast, didn’t get enough buyers, and aren’t repeating it. If we’re lucky, we’ll get something like that on the Net or satellites or expanded cable (only free or at least cheaper) in time for the ’00 games.
BOTTOMS UP: First, there was that silly fad-let of snowboarding/ rave headgear resewn from boxer shorts. Now, an outfit called “Get A-Head” in Lewiston, Idaho (sister city to Clarkston, Wash.) offers Undee Shirts, women’s athletic sport tops made from men’s briefs (not pre-worn). Make your own joke here about that which you wish to hold close to your heart. I’m still pondering whether it’s another example of women appropriating masculine iconography for the sake of power (from George Eliot’s cigars to the ’80s “menswear look”). Speaking of the ol’ gender/ culture thang…
COCA LEAVES: “Seattle loves gay men but not lesbians.” That’s one of the theories given me by visual-art scenesters to explain the relative unpopularity of the Center on Contemporary Art’s first all-lesbian group exhibition, Gender, Fucked. (The opening-night party attracted “almost none of the COCA regulars,” said a COCA official.) I wouldn’t go that far, but it is true that lesbians are a minority-within-a-minority. (Just look at the proportion of lesbian to gay-male bars on Capitol Hill.) Events like the Pride Parade and all-encompassing monikers like “queer” notwithstanding, the lesbian and gay-male communities aren’t as intercommunicative as they perhaps oughta be. (Mr. Savage sez that’s a matter of men who prefer to be with men and women who prefer to be with women; I say it’s an aspect of larger forces in a society dividing into ever-smaller, more separate subcultures.)
Additionally (here’s where the scenesters’ theorizing comes in), lesbian artists have a PR problem. They’ve been stereotyped as humorless self-righteousness addicts. Gay-male art, the typing goes, are perceived to be outrageous and fantastical and fun even when it’s about the direst of topics; while lesbian art’s expected to be forever dour, judgemental and hostile to outsiders, even when it’s about desire and love. All it takes to disprove this is to look at some of the diverse works being made by lesbian artists in our own region alone, from the hypnotic choreography of Pat Graney to the wonderful cartooning of Ellen Forney to the universal rage and joy in Team Dresch’s music. These artists and others (including those at the COCA show) prove lesbians aren’t all the same, as the existence of lesbians proves women aren’t all the same.
OUT OF LINE: Politicians in Seatle and Tacoma, ever eager to find new ways to get you and me to support subsidies to business, want to impose a modem tax on all online communication. Tacoma’s scheme, which is further along than Seattle’s, would tax all data streams in, to, or from the city at 6 percent of monthly revenues plus an annual fee. The money would be taken from online providers no matter where they’re located, no matter how little of their business goes through Tacoma’s city limits. This is bad, for reasons beyond simple cyber-Libertarianism. The scheme’s logistically impossible; and taxing locally-based services simply invites ’em to move to a lower-tax city or state. Better to keep taxing online use indirectly, via the phone (and in the future, cable) lines they run on.
‘TIL NEXT TIME, enjoy the hydros (always faster, louder, and more fun than any dumb ol’ dreem-teem) and ponder the unexpected meanings of the online mission statement from arka.com: “This purpose of this server is to give free-thinking authors a place to put their web pages without fear of content.”
HERE AT MISC., the column that hated Valentine’s Day long before it was hip, we can hardly wait for the first snack foods with Procter & Gamble’s Olestra (the the re-engineered fat molecule that slides thru the body instead of staying around). It’ll also be the first junk food line since the old saccharin scare to carry govt.-mandated warning labels that the stuff might cause “loose stools.” (No wonder P&G’s backing it! An excuse for new Tide and Pepto-Bismol promos!) Speaking of food tech and its discontents…
HORMOANING: I’m miffed Savage got to write before I could about how after two decades of certain folks blaming excess testosterone for everything wrong in the world, now a few renegade scientists (as covered in the New Yorker and Esquire) say we’re really suffering from estrogen poisoning. They claim industrial pollution and food-tech chemicals mean the world’s females are hitting puberty at earlier ages while its males are getting pudgier and less fertile. I know some who’d say a more “feminized” species is just what society needs. Others would claim lower sperm counts would be good for our overpopulated planet. Maybe there’s really a biological basis to that “threatened male” talk last election season. Speaking of last vestiges of dude-osity…
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Mansplat is a too-clever-for-its-own-good 12-page tabloid put out by local rock promoter, author, and Almost Live! “Lame List” cast member Jeff Gilbert. It’s devoted to “Bathroom Litter-Ature For Men… But Chicks Can Read It Too!”. B movies take center stage in the latest issue (dated “Sunday, 1996”), with “The Mad Max Anger Management Course” and a tribute to horror/ sci-fi nude scenes. Also, KCMU “Rap Attack” DJ Glen Boyd writes about that thing on Mars that looks like a face. Available at the Crocodile Cafe and from 2318 2nd Ave., #591, Seattle 98121. Speaking of boy-entertainments…
CEL-ING OUT: This year’s TV gluts, trash talk and preppie sitcoms, have already passed their peak. Next year’s TV glut: cartoons. All the new pseudo-networks want their own weekday and weekend animation blocks, so they’re buying almost any idea they get. Among the series either in production or development, according to the Hollywood Reporter: New versions of Richie Rich, Casper, Little Lulu, Ghostbusters, Roger Ramjet, Superman (with ’30s-futuristic settings), and Gene Deitch’s legendary Nudnick. A hi-techNew Jonny Quest with computer-animated gadgetry and a sterner-looking hero. Duck Daze, in which Huey, Dewey, and Louie look more like mall rappers. Sinbad (producer Fred Wolf’s ripoff of Disney’s Aladdin). An animal-cast Oliver Twist (Saban Productions’ ripoff of Disney’s Oliver & Company). Pocahontas: The Princess of American Indians (Mondo TV’s ripoff of…). A Flash Gordon that looks like Marvel’s Silver Surfer. Cartoons based on movies that just came out (Jumanji), have been around (The NeverEnding Story, Poltergeist), or aren’t out yet (Starship Troopers). Shows based on toys that just came out (Sky Dancers) or aren’t out yet (Beast Wars). A Hello Kitty series in which the cute cat actually has a mouth. Tex Avery Theater, inspired by the late master of frenetic animation and incorporating him as a character (but not using any characters he created). Soap on the Range, “The World’s First Animated Soap Opera.” Even The Blues Brothers: The Animated Series.
With all this work (even though most of it’s finished by foreign sweatshops), there’s a shortage of animation artists in L.A. If you want a job and can hurry there’s an Animation Opportunities Expo, 2/24 at the Universal City Hilton. Despite this boom, the Reporter noted that John Kricfalusi, who created then lost control of Ren & Stimpy, hasn’t sold any of his post-R&S creations. Speaking of silenced voices…
INTERNET CENSORSHIP PASSES CONGRESS: So much for “getting government off our backs.” Net censorship, and the big-media monopolization bill it was tacked onto, was a politician’s wet dream–a chance to whore out to big business and buy votes from Pat Robertson’s gang at the same time. Their dream is our nightmare. The forces of control want to infantilize our era’s greatest tool for unfettered communicating and organizing. We can’t let them. Legal challenges are already underway; updates are at the WebActive website.
