In Praise of Male Heterosexuality

Original online essay, 1/9/95

I write to defend, yea to praise, the most commercially exploited sexuality in the so-called “mainstream” culture and the most viciously disrespected sexuality in the so-called “alternative” culture.

I assert that male heterosexuality is just as valid a lifestyle as female and/ or gay sexuality, and that male heterosexuals are just as human as women and gays. Not superior, but not inferior either.

The male heterosexuality I praise is neither the crude stereotype presented by the commercial sex industry (which seeks to turn men into mindless stimulus-response machines) nor that presented by the anti-porn movement (which avers that men already are such machines). Nor is it the “mystic warrior” stereotype (often a regression to presexual YMCA/ Boy Scout notions of “playing Indian”), nor the postmodern masochist (all too eager to accept self-pitiful guilt trips over other men’s crimes), nor the crude sexual boasting of “macho” rappers and metalheads (all about playing dumb power games with other guys and nothing about reaching out toward a woman’s heart).

No, I praise the man of passion and soul, of heart and joy, of unpretentious self-confidence and mutual respect, the man who eats and drinks and makes love with a big heart, who gives his lust to a woman while receiving grace from her and vice versa.

It is this passion, this yang zest for living and loving, that is obscenely absent from most manifestations of “sexual liberation” inside the “alternative” culture.

Without going too far into my private affairs, I will admit that I’m still on the path toward discovering my passions and releasing my inhibitions. But at least I know now where I need to be. I need to explore the fullness of my positive male self.

This does not mean by becoming a mere consumer of corporate sex, which is even more life-denying and unfulfilling than corporate food or corporate entertainment.

Nor does it mean the soulless “casual sex” advocated by the Hipster Chamber of Commerce types in NY, LA and especially SF. TheCyborgasm CD, hyped to death in the Frisco “alternative” media, is as loveless a formula product as any XXX video. And S/M can be equally life-denying. Of all the pictures in the recent local “Definitive Erotica” fetish-photo exhibit, only one held any real eroticism. It was also the only picture in which the two models appeared to like one another.

Perhaps love’s opposite isn’t hate or even indifference but power. It’s easy for some of us to see the destructive effects of power madness in the political Right. It can be harder to see it within ourselves. Power madness destroys the heart through the mind, by instilling the false but oh-so-tempting concept of Good People and Bad People (instead of average people who do good and bad things).

The people (of any demographic or political stripe) who claim to be The Good People are the ones who most need to be confronted with their averageness. That’s one of the things sex can teach you, that you’re not one separate loner rebel but a node of the biological continuum.

The devilish temptation of power is not the exclusive property of the Right. You see it in gay bars that use slogans like “Dare to be Different” then post a six-foot-long dress code inside the door. You see it in new-age “men’s movement” zines that promote misogyny in the guise of denouncing misandry. You see it in the stifling codes of thought emanating not only from the Right (denouncing almost all sexualities) but also from the neo-Puritan Left (endorsing almost all sexualities except het-male). And yes, you see it in “radical” ideologies that brand straight men as one mass entity of cruel, idiotic woman-haters.

The true heterosexual male, in my definition, doesn’t hate women. He likes them, having alredy learned to like himself. He takes honest pride in abetting the life and dreams of the woman he loves. The Mahabarata said that “the mark of an efficient society is its respect for women.” In olden days when life was physically tougher and women didn’t get enough iron in their diet, supporting women meant one thing. In this age of coed workplaces and two-career couples, supporting women means helping them achieve their goals in and out of the home.

Feminists and gays should invite the support of sympathetic het-males, not spread oversimplistic stereotypes against them. To engage in gender-bigotry is to tacitly, indirectly accept its use–including its use by those who would use it against you. To demand that more men behave humanely, you must first acknowledge those men who already do. And in the Age of Newt, progressive elements need all the sincere supporters they can get, right?

Besides, without an acknowledgement of a positive role for male yang energy, the Left is bereft of the psychic and emotional means to take charge. It can react (passively or aggressively) against the Right’s actions well enough, but it can’t take proactive steps to promote any agenda of its own.

Sexual love, whatever the genders of its participants, ought to be about breaking down the walls between souls, not building them up. Intimate ecstasy is the abandonment of individualistic power trips. It’s the willful sacrifice of cold individualism for the sake of building something stronger.

Real lovemaking, particularly real hetero lovemaking, its most spiritual level is about discovering and connecting on every level with a life force outside and different from yourself. It’s about the yang becoming enveloped by the yin; what a new-age yoga book described as “the jewel in the lotus.”

This is something far beyond the mechanical sex of the porn industry or the even more mechanical sex of much “alternative” erotica (e.g., the Mondo 2000 dream of one day being able to masturbate with robots–yecch!).

I do not condemn the sex industry or its clientele; a starving person without access to a homecooked feast will find at least some sustenance from an Egg McMuffin. And face it, an Egg McMuffin can seem downright tasty at the right time and context. But those who always settle for the most expedient never learn to train their palates.

My vision of het-male sexuality at its best is of a passion, of the Lust for Life that Van Gogh and Iggy Pop advocated in their own ways (not to mention Henry Miller or Cobain). It’s a vision of blood as the life force, the elixer that feeds the soul; of the heart, the vulnerable organ within us that we don’t see; of braving the risk of looking like a fool or an idiot, the risk of rejection; of intimacy; of the pain no one can see. It values sentimentality, the fulfillment of yearning through remembrance of what the heart truly feels. It values emotional equality instead of loveless sex, friendship instead of name-dropping parties to be seen at but not heard. It affirms life, instead of the surface-level soullessness that the “alternative” culture falls prey to just as badly as other subcultures in today’s America. Indeed, the “hipness” defined by NY/ Calif. is in some ways more life-denying and consumerist than a lot of “mainstream” subcultures.

But that’s not to say we don’t have our own cultural constraints working against active love. Seattle, this land of Mandatory Mellowness, this land of pale Edwardian smugness posing as “progressivism,” especially needs to learn the power of positive passion, to really believe in something, to be really attached to someone, to really live.

UPDATE: The Weathered Wall’s new owners are now gonna keep live music there Thurs. and Fri., and maybe add it on other weeknights later on. Anxious bands can contact the club’s new in-house booking agent, Julie Wynn (728-9398).

DEAD AIR RE-REVISITED: One issue in the three-year KCMU Kontroversey was the ongoing drive to turn the station into an adjunct of KUOW. That’s become official, now that KUOW’s taking over KCMU’s administrative and fundraising operations. They’re not changing KCMU’s programming, like they tried during the World Cafe era, but the move sets up a chain of command that would allow it. They fail to understand that KCMU succeeded in the past because it was perceived as a grass-roots operation of people who loved music, not a professional institution out to draw well-heeled donors with bland “upscale” fare. It’ll be up to the next UW prez to sort it out. Let’s hope s/he understands it’s in both stations’ best interests to be separate operations with separate missions.

WISH I’D SAID THAT DEPT.: I don’t normally comment on other things in the Stranger (what do you think this is, the Vill. Voice?). But now and again there’s a piece I get additional thoughts about. Here are some recent ones:

Die Hard w/a Vengeance review (4 * 34): Don’t think it’s been mentioned in the media, but the Seattle Symphony recorded some of the background music for the film. Of course, they also did the theme to KIRO’s old News Outside the Box…

The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black preview (4 * 34) The V.H. of K.B. singer is like Madonna’s good twin: lo-fi and funky, but still an image-based performance artist who only uses songs as a means to an end, and who as such can be recommended as a live (or home-video) act only. Audio-only documentation of her work is superfluous.

Bathhouses (4 * 33): I know I’m not the only lonely straight guy who’s been jealous of gays for having such an industry . Imagine, going to a place alone and getting laid on the spot, and not by a paid worker but by someone who wants it just as bad as you–the male zipless-fuck fantasy, unencumbered by feminine propriety.

Savage Love (4 * 33): What the letter writer calls “insanity” could also be interpreted as discovering his new lover’s “real” self, not her sociable front persona. If he’s having trouble finding a woman who always keeps the illusion of “sanity” most of us maintain in public, maybe he should resign himself to shallow affairs with married women who want to “bring romance back to their lives.”

The Information book review (4 * 33): Lots of people who think they have talent are jealous of the success of people they think have less talent. Almost every highbrow author-wannabe I’ve met has tried at one time to write a commercially successful work just by making something “bad enough to sell,” without knowing the formulae and disciplines involved in genre lit.

Theater calendar comment (4 * 32): Ah, “risk” in theater. The Empty Space, Bathhouse, Pioneer Square Theater (RIP) et al. have for decades boasted of their daring programming while mounting boomer-friendly wink-wink-nudge-nudge parody revues. AHA! merely follows in this venerable tradition.

COCA feature (4 * 29): Greg implied but didn’t state that bad-boy art might have seemed rebellious and “alternative” enough in the ’80s; but in the Newt era, when the John Carlsons of America drive Harleys and call themselves “rebels,” a different aesthetic may be more appropriate.

Cut & Run (4 * 29): The usual rad-feminist response to an author like ex-Portland punk singer Rene Denfield is to first accuse her of backsliding from the orthodox view of what All Women are or should be. S.P. instead accuses Denfield of the same gross overgeneralizing Denfield accuses Robin Morgan and Andrea Dworkin of. There’s no such thing as All Women, and certainly no such thing as All Feminists. A movement for individual self-realization can’t be (or become) a monolith.

LAST PLUG: Our ninth-anniversary reading/ performance/ video shindig, Fun With Misc., happens this Thurs., 7:30 p.m.-whenever, at the Metropolis Contemporary Art Gallery, downtown on University between 1st and 2nd. BYOB; clothing optional.

Polyamory: One plus one plus…

Feature article for the Stranger, 1/27/95

The concept of nonmonogomous, consensual, structured relationships is an old idea. From King David’s harem and the Mahabharata’s princess with five husbands to the early Mormons to turn-of-the-century free-love communities, people have looked for workable alternatives to monogamy and cheating.

People exploring nonmonogamy these days use a lot of different terms to describe their lifestyles, including “polyfidelity” and “polyamory”. The two words are more-or-less interchangeable, though the former is more likely to be used by people who consider their current multi-partner setups more or less stable and who aren’t taking or looking for other mates.

I had a long, boistrous chat with 14 “polys” I met through a computer bulletin board. They came from a variety of backgrounds, although the plurality were middle-aged hippies who hadn’t stopped questioning society’s norms. There were heteros, lesbians, gays, and a few bi males. (One man said he got into the poly world because he’d fallen in love with a woman but didn’t want to give up men.) They were currently and/or formerly in a variety of nontraditional partnerships–triads, quads, “Vs” (one person who sleeps with two other people who don’t sleep with each other). Some were in closed relationships; some had “primary” partners plus other lovers.

They met me after their regular Polyfidelity Potluck, where they’d dined with fellow polys (and people interested in becoming polys) and discussed issues relating to their lifestyle. Some of them also meet regularly for group massage and hot-tub parties. Some were raising children, conceived with present or previous partners.

(Everybody here is identified by a fake name unless otherwise noted. Some of them say that in their particular workplaces or social situations, it’s easier to come out as gay or bisexual than as having multiple lovers.)

How they got into it

Several said they’d found their way into the poly life after unsatisfying experiences with impersonal promiscuity, either on their own or in the swinger underground. That lifestyle delivered sexual variety but left the spirit very unfulfilled. George, one of the over-40s in the group, said, “What I found in this community was a way to fall in love again. I spent 15 years after my divorce fucking my brains out, keeping loving relationships at arms length.”

George, 50, has had “lovers who were significantly younger than I. It wasn’t like we were bonded in some perverse monogamous way. They weren’t going to be caring for me when I was 80 or anything.”

Carol had been in a longterm relationship with Mark, when she began to have affairs in secret. “He found out. We went to a polyfidelity workshop. I was amazed by the integrity, the quality of the people I’ve found. It seemed like a workable model. It’s forced us to be honest in a way I’d never dreamed we could be.”

Mark, Carol’s lover, said he found people in the poly subculture seemed to be “much more vulnerable and open. That’s helped me relax a lot.”

Kathy and her lover had been involved in the swinger subculture. “There was a lot of free sex, but a taboo on being lovers.” She longed to share hearts with more than one person, not just orgasms. She said she’s found this in the poly subculture. “I never felt much jealousy, any reason any relationship should do away with any other relationship.”

Gina originally was “with a partner, sort of by chance monogomous. He was getting restless, concerned about being stuck in a relationship. He broached the subject of being with other people. I said, `It sounds like fun. Sure. Now what do we do?’ Nothing happened for a while. We answered ads in Fantasies (a swinger magazine). They were swinger or cruiser types, just in it for sex. It didn’t work out. But from one step after another, we found a community. This community, this family, is very important to me.”

The community

Scott came to the meeting with his female lover; both have spouses. “This is a community of people who understand open sexuality, the possibilities of nonmonogamy. They can pull together in understanding, better than a monogamous group can. My wife wanted to leave me 10 years ago. Our lovers came to us; they offered consolation and love in a non-judgemental way. They gave us the support to stay together.

“I haven’t been in a committed relationship, because I didn’t want the baggage of coupledom. The group gave me a new vision of coupledom: of giving each relationship its full potential, the full open range of what each particular relationship has.”

Melanie, Scott’s lover, was one of the founders of the potlucks. She said she was initally surprised at the degree of bisexual affection she found when she joined the polyfi community, even among the men. “Sexuality among the same sex is always there. You won’t do it with someone of the same sex necessarily, but when you remove the artificial barriers to it, it all opens up.”

George believes some people are destined to be in love with more than one person at a time. “Most cupids have a few bows and arrows; some have submachine guns.” George also differentiates between the poly subculture, with its emphasis on safe sex and mutual support, and unthinking promiscuity. “What we’re doing has some basic tenets; honesty and consensuality especially. Adultery is a part of monogamy. What we’re doing is different from that. People in this group are interested in sexuality and expanding it. We push the boundaries of sex, the whole gradation between shaking hands and fucking one’s brains out.”

How they work it out

Gene, one of the younger potluck members at age 29, came to the group interview with his lover and her three children. His wife was out of town that week. “We agreed to this when we got married over 10 years ago,” he said. “It’s unreasonable to assume that one person would be your be-all and end-all for the rest of your life.”

Still, he noted that “you trade one set of problems for another when you’re willing to let your partner look at other people naked and want to touch them.”

Janet agreed that with a consensual poly life you get rid of the dishonesty that comes with cheating, as well as the frustrations that come with unrequited desires, but you still have to deal with the natural jealousy. “You shouldn’t expect the jealousy to ever go away, but you learn to live with it.”

Scott has “a primary partner who has a wife; but her wife doesn’t do boys.” He said every nonmonogamous relationship sets up its own boundaries: “Just about everyone’s negotiated their comfort level with their partners.”

Another problem, and the main reason everyone in the interview wanted fake names, was outside intolerance. “We get targeted by the religious right just like any other sexual minority,” Scott added. “We sometimes call it `dysphilia,’ the inability to love or the fear of love.”

Outside intolerance is especially tough when partners in an open or multiple relationship are raising children; neighbors, school officials, and government agencies have been known to interfere in nontraditional households with kids. Marianne, 42, has been in one nonmonogamous relationship or another her whole adult life. She believes children can get more care and attention in non-nuclear families. “Groups are a wonderful way to raise children. Children really benefit when there are more adults around.”

One woman’s story

After two “triads,” Marianne fell in love with a UW researcher four years ago. “He hadn’t done multiple relationships before. He said `Let’s be open to it in the future.’ Then in grad school, he began studying with a woman. We all became friends.

“Then we got a national newsletter about multiples. He was reading it, came to bed, and said he’d like a `secondary’ relationship with this woman. We finally figured out the thing that would be most comfortable for me is that they’d see each other every Wednesday. It wasn’t strict, but it was a framework. We tried a threesome once, but she was uncomfortable with it. That relationship went on for over a year. She went on to other things. It just faded. We’re still open to other intimate relationships in our life. He again has a woman he sees once a week. I don’t think they’re sexual and I don’t care.”

Differences of interest

Professional counselor Kathy Severson (her real name) recently advertised in the Stranger Bulletin Board for a nonmonogamy discussion group she wanted to start. She got 26 responses from men and only one from a woman. She placed a similar ad in the Lesbian Resource Center’s paper and got no responses. Severson, herself a participant in a lesbian poly relationship, believes women (gay or straight) are more hesitant than men (gay or straight) about expressing a desire for multiple partnerships–even though women can be about as likely as men to cheat on their lovers. “My perception is that gay men have an easier time accepting nonmonogamy; while lesbians resist the idea. It’s more how we’re socialized as men and as women.”

Severson says she’s sometimes “astounded” by some people’s lack of curiosity about alternate relationships. “It threatens what they’re doing. You talk about it and they give you this stony-faced look. Lifelong monogamy is an ideal some people don’t want to give up, even people who’ve come out as lesbians and gays….The nuclear family model has been so destructive. It isolates people. The ownership issue in monogamy still needs to be questioned, the notion that `I own your body.’ We want to control, to define everything, including our most intimate relationships. There’s all that angst going on, with all the divorces and unhappy couples out there, but when you suggest alternatives you get such resistance….We have knowledge of how to live without fear, scarcity or ownership. But here we are, bound in structures and contracts that bind us. To heal that dichotomy is the challenge.”

In her work, Severson has found two main ways people come into non-couples. “There are some people who discover nonmonogamy consciously, on their own or with a partner, try to consciously come to a new way to relate. The other group are those like me who almost accidentally find our way into questioning the dominant relationship structures. I fell in love two years ago with a woman who had another lover. Since then, nonmonogamy has been my group and counseling focus for about two years.”

One of her favorite aspects of nonmonogamy is its opportunity for what counselors like to call `personal growth.’ “Each relationship calls forth different aspects of your being. If we are secure enough to say `I know I’m special to you,’ why set up road blocks to people’s energies?”

Still, Severson is the first to admit a nonmonogamous life creates as many challenges as opportunities. “It’s about being completely present to whoever I’m with. There are questions of time, space, and energy when you’re trying to be a real intimate partner with even one person, let alone two. If you bring a level of consciousness to a relationship, it’ll do well.”

Resources

The Polyfidelity Potluck is held every other month on Capitol Hill. Some of the people who go to the potlucks also go to a bimonthly workshop studying about ZEEG, an “intentional community” in Germany where open relationships are regularly practiced.

For more info on either group call the BiNet voice mail line, 728-4533. They also recommend the newsletter Loving More or the bookPolyamory: The New Love Without Limits by Deborah Annapol. And there’s an Internet newsgroup, alt.polyamory, where issues such as these are discussed in sometimes-excrutiating detail. Severson can be reached for group or individual counseling at 233-8538.

As has been our practice since 1988, this year’s list reflects what will become big over the next 12 months, not necessarily what’s big now. If you believe everything already big will just keep getting bigger forever, we’ve got some Northern Exposure and Barney merchandise to sell you.

1/95 Misc. Newsletter

(the last newsletter edition)

(incorporating expanded versions of three Stranger columns

and one Stranger zine review)

ALL LIFE TO THE LIVING! (FRANKLIN ROSEMONT)

As it must to all zines, death comes to the newsletter version of Misc. Do not feel forlorn; I’m simply gonna concentrate on the Misc. column in the Stranger and on my book projects, including the Seattle music history coming out this spring.

Misc. started in June 1986 as a monthly column in the Lincoln Arts Association rag ArtsFocus; the current numbering system dates from that first monthly column. When that paper slowly died, I started the newsletter version (in August 1989) to keep the pop-cult chroniclin’ job going. Since November 1991, Misc. has concurrently run as a monthly newsletter and a weekly column in theStranger. Newsletter subscriptions have fallen drastically in the past year as the Stranger’s free circulation grew. It’s time to concentrate my work on the 80,000 Stranger readers instead of the 50 remaining newsletter subscribers. For now, let’s start one more big roundup of the weird and wonderful:

I DUNNO BAYOU: Winter draws nigh, and with it the seasonal yearning for warmer climes. This year, the preferred destination of many Seattlites isn’t Hawaii or Mexico but New Orleans, and not merely as a visitation site. At least two people I know, who don’t know one another, are moving there; two other friends of mine are thinking about it. As southern-tier towns go, it’s got a lot to offer. It’s perceived as a place of classic architecture, raucous partying, cool cemeteries, hot food, traditional music and weird spirituality; especially when compared to the New South stereotype of sterile suburban sprawl, sleazy developers and sleazier politics. But be prepared. I know people who’ve gone there and come back. They describe a French Quarter full of yuppies in the houses and fratboys on the streets, a political system as sleazy as any in the Sunbelt, a city totally dependent on tourism and plagued by tourist-targeting thieves. There’s a lot to be said for any town that could give us Tennessee Williams, Fats Domino and Anne Rice; just be ready to see fewer welcome mats than you might expect and more “Show Your Tits” placards.

AFTER THE SMOKE CLEARS: It’s not the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that failed this past November, it’s the conservative wing. The wimpy, submissive Lite Right tactics, the tactics of Dems from Scoop Jackson thru Jimmy Carter and beyond, utterly collapsed. Now that there’s no further purpose in preserving the careers of “moderate” Democratic officials, liberals should take over the party machinery and offer up a strong, no-compromise, no-apologies alternative to the right.

To do that, the Dems’ll have to stop playing by the Republicans’ rules. This isn’t a matter of simply infiltrating precienct committees and party organizations to force McGovernite policies onto party platform announcements. I’m talking the whole works, the big boring job.They’ve gotta rethink everything from constituency groups to organizing to fundraising to advertising. We’ve gotta flush away the stinking turd of the idea that liberalism can’t become really popular.

(This ties in with what I’ve been saying about the making of a populist left; one that will expunge the English Department elitism, and instead bring in the funky inclusiveness of the motley loveable mutt of a nation that is America.)

The Right’s ideology has divided society between the Bads who don’t support a big-money agenda (media, government, intellectuals, gays, the “counterculture”) and the Goods who do (big business, big military, big religion, developers, seniors, yuppies). The conservative Democrats divided America between the Bigs who deserved to run things (big business, big government, big construction, big labor) and the Littles who didn’t (pesky Left activists, loony Right demagogues). The post-hippie Left has, for far too long, been trapped with the narrowest goodie/baddie division of them all, between philosopher-king wannabes and those heathens who never studied for a liberal arts degree. All three of these ideologies imply the inevitability of a centralized, hierarchical system of power; they disagree over which sectors of society should have that power.

There’s another way out there, a way that favors small business over big, close communities over sprawling suburbs, new decentralized media over old centralized ones, thinking over obedience, passion over zombiedom. This is the way that could build a coalition among punks, intellectuals, immigrants, minorities, feminists, the downwardly-mobile working class, people who like a healthy environment, people who prefer real economic progress instead of pork-fed defense industries. It won’t be easy; it’ll be hard to keep all these disparate elements together. But it’s the only real way toward a post-conservative future.

FREAKS R US: Don’t have my annual Snohomish County suburbanization rant ‘cuz I stayed home this Xmas. Went back for Thanksgiving, tho, and decided then that there’s one thing you can say about going home for the holidays. It reveals that all of us are connected by fewer than six degrees of separation to at least one potential Montel Williams or Jenny Jones guest. Indeed, tabloid TV serves a vital purpose in remaking our social myths. In the past, people were intimidated into thinking they, or the people they were close to, were just about the only people around with nasty secrets That may have been especially true in places like the Northwest, where a fetishized vision of bland “normality” (the so-called “Northwest Lifestyle”) is virtually a state religion. Weirdness isn’t something that happens only to strangely-dressed people who live in “abnormal” parts of town. And no matter what people do to escape weirdness (like building ever-blander suburbs ever-further-out), it’ll always be there with ’em. “Normal” is simply a wishful fantasy. Understanding this could become one step towards the left-wing populism I’ve advocted. We Outré Artsy Types aren’t the only people who ever transgress against whitebread-Christian behavior. Everybody (almost) is doing or has done it. Need more proof? Just go to any 12-step meeting in a middlebrow neighborhood. The confessions there are enough to make the people on talk shows seem positively blasé. Artsy folks like us aren’t really rebelling against square people, only against their delusions. We’re only exhorting folks to stop hiding their weirdness and start celebrating it. As Boojie Boy said nearly two decades ago, “We’re All Devo.”

COPY WRONGS: Actually found myself agreeing with something Newt the Coot said, when he championed the Internet and other “new media” for “many-to-many” communication rather than “few-to-many” corporate entertainment. Newt saw the rise of right-wing media (talk radio, religious TV, “upscale” magazines, et al.) become a counterforce to the “objective” corporate media, and thinks the new telecommunications could further strengthen his favorite voices. (Let’s not tell him his favorite media’s just the same few-to-many syndrome without the old-school bureaucratic propriety Newt mistakenly calls “liberal.” Real many-to-many communication would encourage real empowerment, not submission to the rich and the PACs.)

Anyhow, another reason Newt wants to keep the new media (the Internet, umpteen-channel cable, video dialtone, et al.) out of the claws of the established media industry’s ‘cuz the latter has been in bed with the Clinton/ Gore crowd. Of course, the media biz also loved Reagan, and any politician who supports its expansionist agenda.

One example: the way Reagan, Bush and Clinton-era FCC officials kept rewriting the broadcast rules to favor ever bigger radio-TV station ownership groups, to the point where broadcast properties are increasingly held by out-of-town financiers bent less toward serving the stations’ communities than toward speculation and empire-building.

Another example: the Clinton administration’s proposed copyright law rewrite. Clinton’s National Information Infrastructure Task Force has drafted legislation to drastically limit what folks can do with information. Among other nasty provisions, it’d trash the “First Sale Right” that lets an info buyer do whatever she wishes with the copy she bought — the right that allows the video-rental industry to exist. In addition, the “fair use” provision (allowing authors to use brief relevant quotes from copyrighted works) would be greatly restricted; devices that could undermine electronic anti-copying systems would be outlawed; and “browsing” a copyrighted work, in a store or online, would be technically illegal.

As the online service GNN NetNews quotes Univ. of Pittsburgh Prof. Pamela Samuelson, “Not since the King of England in the 16th century gave a group of printers exclusive rights to print books…has a government copyright policy been so skewed in favor of publisher interests and so detrimental to the public interest.” NetNews also quotes Wayne State Prof. Jessica Litman as saying the proposals would “give the copyright owner the exclusive right to control reading, viewing or listening to any work.”

The punk/DIY decentralization aesthetic isn’t just a cute idea. It’s vital if the “info age” isn’t going to be a globally-centralized thought empire. Newt, despite his rhetoric of “empowerment,” wants a thought empire controlled by the Limbaughs and Robertsons; Clinton wants one controlled by the Viacoms and Time Warners. It’s up to us to demand None Of The Above.

SCHOOL DAZE #1: Ya gotta hand it to UW Prez Wm. Gerberding. He may be retiring soon, but he’s still got a keen eye for PR. He tried to raise public sympathy against state-mandated university budget cuts by threatening to shutter the Environmental Studies department, but to no avail. But then he made another presentation in which he threatened to close the journalism school, and by golly it made just about every front page in the state. As a grad of the School of Communications, I can attest that it was (and probably is) a graveyard for a lot of outmoded ideas about what makes good media, and its only official purpose (to provide entry-level staff to local media companies) might seem moot in an age when every opening for a local proofreading job gets 100 resumés from ex-NYC managing editors, but I’d still hate to see it go.

SCHOOL DAZE #2: The Garfield High School Messenger student paper published a student poll last month on the question, “What Makes A Person A Ho?” Responses from female students included “It’s the way you carry yourself, the number of people doesn’t matter;” “A girl that sleeps with more than five people a week is a ho;” “Most girls that guys call hoes aren’t;” and “If a person is having sex with two different people during the same time period of two weeks, for example, she is a ho.” Male responses included “It depends on how easy it is to get it and how quickly they can get it;” “If a girl has sex with another girl’s boyfriend she is a ho;” and “If you don’t demand your respect and you allow yourself to be treated any kind of way, then you sleep with them anyway, you’re a ho.” When asked “Can a guy be a ho?” one male student said no, “but it is a blatant and unfair double standard.”

PINE CLEANERS: The holidays are when merchants put on their friendliest seasonal spirit. Not so for Jim “Ebenezer” Nordstrom. With all the civic-blackmail skills his family learned as ex-NFL team owners, he’s promising (after months of hedging) to move his store into the old Frederick’s building as part of Mayor Rice’s pet development scheme, but only if the city re-bisects the tiny Westlake Park and lets commuters careen down 5th & Pine again. Granted, the street isn’t used much, except as a parking strip for cop cars and a walkway between the park’s two little plazas (themselves poorly planned and expensively built).

The city’s done so many things to aid private developers downtown, and so few have worked. Westlake at least partly works, so a lot of people are understandably upset at its threatened desecration. It doesn’t take an urban-planning degree to see what really works in downtowns: Lively streets and sidewalks with something intriguing every step of the way. Vancouver’s got lively street retail along Robson (which has car traffic) and Granville (which doesn’t). What will save downtown Seattle are (1) more stores for all tastes and income levels, not just the upscale, and (2) an adventurous day-and-night street life.

Instead of making threatening demands on the city, the Nordies oughta make grand promises to help build something better than some windswept empty one-block street: a new downtown that’s a life-affirming gathering place, with all the joyous chaos that makes urban life great. Offer shoppers and pedestrians something worth giving up that block of Pine for.

XMAS XTRAVAGANZA: Again this year, the gift industry’s outdone itself. Among the wackiest ideas is LifeClock Corp.’s Timisis, a digital clock embedded in a fake-granite desktop pyramid paperweight. Besides offering the current time and “Motivational Messages Every Minute,” the top readout line lets you “watch the hours, minutes and seconds counting down until your next vacation, until you must meet your sales quota, until your retirement, OR… The rest of your statistical lifetime!”

Also for the grownups are the Marilyn Monroe Collector’s Dolls, with six costumes but no tiny bottles of sleeping pills, and theScarlett Barbie-Rhett Ken series. Kid stuff’s hit a creative lull this year, as violence-genre video games and Power Rangers character products grab most of the cash and glory. One glorious exception: Zolo, a plastic doll-building set sort of like Mr. Potato Head, only with cool modern-art shapes and colors so you can build anything from a Dr. Seuss-like creature to a Calder-like mobile. Also worth noting are the pocket computer notebooks for kids, including the all-pink girls’ model My Diary (at last, something to draw young girls into computing!).

Haven’t get gotten around to trying the CNN board game, in which you take the role of your favorite TV correspondent trotting the globe in search of breaking news (I can imagine all the drag-queen-theater people playing it and all of them wanting to be Elsa Klensch).

SPINNIN’ THE BLACK CIRCLE: For every image of the corporate takeover of “independent” music (including Time Warner taking 49 percent ownership Sub Pop for a rumored $20 million), there are also signs of hope for the real thing. The NY Times reported that indie record labels (including pseudo-indies like Caroline and Seed) have gained a few points of market share in the past two years, to between 16 and 20 percent of the overall record market. That figure includes genres like country and classical where the majors completely dominate. (The indies’ share is undoubtedly higher in rock, rap, dance, and ethnic music.) And Pearl Jam‘s vinyl first-edition release of Vitalogy became a boon to the specialty stores that still stock the black flat things. Speaking of sonic artifacts…

JUNK FOODS OF THE MONTH: Skeleteens beverages from L.A. capture the PoMo generation spirit in ways the OK Soda people couldn’t even dream about. There are five varieties — Love Potion No. 69 (lemon-berry), The Drink (lemon-cola), DOA (vaguely Mountain Dew-ish), Brain Wash (a tart carbonated herbal tea), and Black Lemonade. All are sold in bottles only, in bars and cafes only for now, at hefty microbeer prices. All have cute-skeleton graphics and cute slogans on the labels (Love Potion “Helps to Keep Your Heart On;” Brain Wash “Relieves the Garbage They’ve Been Dumping In Your Mind”). All have plenty of caffeine, ginger and ginseng for a kick stronger than Jolt Cola or many espresso drinks (don’t drink more than one at a sitting if you’ve got a heart condition). Other ingredients in one or more of the flavors include jalapeno, ginko leaf, skull cap, ma hung, mad dog weed, jasmine, dill weed, and capsicum. Brain Drain has a tourquoise color that sticks to your lips and tongue (and other digestive organs and their byproducts). They’re so system-altering in their undiluted state, I’m scared to imagine them as mixers…

Some of you may recall Wrigley’s 1981 bubble-gum novelty in the shape of a tiny LP, packaged in tiny reproductions of Boston and Journey cover art. Now there’s CD’s Digital Gum, from Zeeb’s Enterprises in Ft. Worth, a five-inch slab of gum in a CD jewel box, complete with fake cover art. The six flavors include “ZZ Pop” and “Saltin’ Pep-O-Mint.” If you chew it backwards, do you get secret Satanic messages?

KNOW THE CODE: With the new year will come the new 360 area code, comprising two non-contiguous areas of western Washington: from Marysville north (including the San Juans) and from Olympia south (including the Olympic Peninsula). It could be interpreted as a symbol of growing isolation between the Seattle area and the rest of the state, as exploited in Republican political campaigns. It also means the Oly music-scene people finally get symbolic confirmation of their self-image as the capital of their own little world.

STARRY EYES (UW astrophysicist Dr. Bruce H. Margon in the 11/29 NY Times): “It’s a fairly embarrassing situation to admit that we can’t find 90 percent of the universe.” Maybe it’s under the sofa, or tucked away forgotten in a mini-storage unit. Maybe it’s in another dimension, the place missing socks go. I hope we don’t find a way into that dimension if it’s there, ‘cuz ya know the first thing that happens is that unlucky dimension will get zoned for all Earth’s prisons, waste-treatment plants and landfills.

AFTER DARK, MY SWEET: Caffé Minnies, that just-slightly-overpriced all-night diner on 1st & Denny, has just opened a second 24-hrs. outlet on Broadway, in the space where Cafe Ceilo had replaced one of the dopiest restaurant concepts in Seattle history, the fern bar Boondocks Sundeckers and Greenthumbs (home of the silly-pretentious “Established 1973” sign). ‘Bout time the Hill had an all-night spot (besides IHOP and the Taco Bell walk-up). In other grubbery news, the Hurricane Cafe has indeed become a “scene” place, though not necessarily a scene I’d wanna get very far into. The Puppy Club, the other son-of-the-Dog House, is shaking out into an experience as solid but plain as its food. Worse, it closes at 10 (Sundays at 6!).

HOW CHEESY: There was this recent newspaper ad with the headline “No Cheese Please” and the logo of a wedge of cheddar inside a slash circle. Local oldsters might remember those as the name and logo of a 1981-82 Seattle power-pop band, The ad had nothing to do with the band, but instead offered a mysterious, undefined “personal care kit” called The Ark, packaged by Survivor Industries Inc. and sold at warehouse stores and gun shops. The ad didn’t explain what a “personal care kit” was but hyped it as a gift-giver’s alternative to cheeseballs and fruitcakes.

It turns out to be a box of survival gear (up to three days’ worth of preserved food and water plus a blanket). This could arguably be useful for those who spend time out in (or driving thru) the mountains or other places where the power supply’s subject to the whim of seasonal windstorms. While the ads don’t mention that or any other suggested use, they subtlely identify with the apocalypse/ mountain man ideology. Not exactly a peace-on-Earth-good-will-n’-brotherhood kinda feeling.

‘TIL NEXT WE MEET IN THE PAGES OF THE STRANGER, look for word of our big Misc.-O-Rama live event Fri., Jan. 20 at 911 Media Arts, and check out these words found on a bumper sticker on a Honda: “Preserve Farmland. Live In Town.”

PASSAGE

A lovely parting gift from paintmeister David Hockney: “Always live in the ugliest house on the street. Then you don’t have to look at it.”

REPORT

Every current subscriber with at least three issues remaining will get a free copy of my book, now retitled Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story, when it comes out (current ETA: April).

Those who still want to get the column in the mail can subscribe to the Stranger: $19.95 for 12 months or $11.95 for six months within Washington state, $49.95 for 12 months or $29.95 for six months out of state. Don’t write to me but to Stranger Subscriptions, 1202 E. Pike St., Suite 1225, Seattle 98122-3934. Yes, it’s a lot more than the final Misc. sub rate of $12/year, but you get tons more stuff, including my own slightly troubled crossword puzzle, music reviews by me and others, disturbing cartoons, political commentary, and other people’s columns that I don’t always agree with.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Altricial”

ZINES I NEVER GOT AROUND TO REVIEWING

I used to cover zines regularly in Misc.,

but I’ve gotten so verbose at other topics that the zine reviews got sidetracked.

For now, here’s a roundup of self-made publications I’ve seen.

Mad Love: The Courtney Papers (no longer available): Billed on the cover as “posts from America Online left by, presumably, Courtney Love.” At least some of the entries are really hers; some might be hoaxes. On one level, these 17 electronic missives could be seen as the creatively-spelled, quasi-venomous rantings of a person with a past reputation for egotism and flakiness (like many music-scene types), someone who’s burned her share of bridges, particularly with her estranged father and with much of the Olympia rock community. But on another level, they’re the public soul-stripping of a survivor, facing the twin shocks of sudden widowhood and public scorn and slowly getting her shit back together with the tools available to her, chiefly the gift of sarcastic wit.

22 Fires (Chris Becker, 4200 Pasadena Pl. NE #2, Seattle 98105): A 12-page half-legal-size zine, with listings/ reviews of 49 Washington-based zines, plus a cassette sampler of local bands (including one of my faves, Laundry). Issue #2 should be out soon; if it’s as good as #1, it’ll be an invaluable resource for regional self-publishers. Highly recommended.

Radio Resistor’s Bulletin ($1 from P.O. Box 3038, Bellingham 98227-3038): An outgrowth of the battle to keep community-access programming on Western Washington U. station KUGS, this newsletter covers efforts to promote and defend true noncommercial and community broadcasting across the country. Learn how battles against NPR/ Corp. for Public Broadcasting bureaucratic types are popping up all over, not just at KCMU. Issue #6 reviews the book Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy, Rocket co-founder Bob McChesney’s revisionist history of the so-called “Golden Age of Radio” detailing how a potentially powerful tool for public education and enlightenment was quickly monopolized by the purveyors of Amos n’ Andy.

10 Things Jesus Wants You To Know ($1.58 from Dann Halligan, 1407 NE 45th St. #17, Seattle 98105): It comes out regularly, it’s big, and it’s chock full of indie-rawk bands from here and elsewhere (#8 had Chaos UK, Unsane, and NOFX). Halligan’s editorials provide concise arguments for the indie-purist party line. Christine Sieversen, who sometimes writes for the Stranger, also sometimes writes for these folks.

Feminist Baseball ($3 from Jeff Smith, P.O. Box 9609, Seattle 98109): Smith was Mark Arm’s partner in the fondly recalled teen-punk band Mr. Epp and the Calculations. Now he’s involved in a couple of small labels, Box Dog and Cher Doll, and puts out this tightly-packed collection of articles and over 250 record reviews. Issue #13 features an interview with Richard Lee, the guy who goes on public access Wednesday nights to claim Cobain and Kirsten Pfaff were murdered (accusations based on seemingly minor discrepancies in the coroner’s and media’s accounts of the deaths).

Thorozine ($2 from Mark M., P.O. Box 4134, Seattle 98104-0134): Well-scanned photos (a zine rarity) accompany profiles of punk & noise bands (#6 includes Portrait of Poverty, Fitz of Depression, and North American Bison). No relation to out-of-town zine Thor-A-Zine.

Farm Pulp ($2 from Gregory Hischak, 217 N. 70th St., Seattle 98117-4845): Twenty issues old; still the slickest zine in town. Beautiful manipulated Xerox and collage art; fascinating surrealist fiction.

Point No Point: A Blue Moon Reader (free from Blue Moon Tavern, 712 NE 45th St., Seattle 98105): Maybe the only “alternative” literary zine to ever have a (real, paid) full-page PR ad from Boeing (editor Patrick McRoberts has a day job at a PR agency). A mostly-male, mostly-old-hippie crew contributes solid if sometimes bland fiction, poetry and essays. Highlight: Charles Mudede’s story “Crepuscule With Clarity,” fast-paced and action-packed.

1/94 Misc. Newsletter

(incorporating four Stranger columns)

TO OUR OUT-OF-TOWN READERS:

THERE ARE OTHER SEATTLE ARTISTS

BESIDES CHIHULY

Here at Misc. (your source for hot news in a cold climate) we were bemused by KING’s week-long series on filmmaking in the Seattle area: Five long reports promoting Hollywood location shoots, nothing about supporting indigenous filmmakers. Of course, that’s common thinking in this alleged “movie town.” Portland and Vancouver support real local films by homegrown directors; at the last Seattle International Film Festival, the top “regional film” award went to a feature filmed entirely in LA by an LA guy who’d moved to Mercer Island. It was an honorable film, but by no real means a Northwest one.

DUFF ME: We seldom talk about live shows, but had to remark on the Fastbacks gig at the Crocodile on 12/1. Joining Seattle’s longest-running alternative band for its encore was its 1981 drummer, Duff McKagan. He split nine years ago and joined Guns n’ Roses, the definitive example of what alternative rock is an alternative to. (Their album of old punk covers is the worst artist-repertoire match since Pat Boone covered Little Richard.) He’s reasserting his Seattle roots in interviews to promote his solo CD, and is rumored to be moving back. He had the prettiest hair and only silk scarf in the building.

CLEANING UP: Remember how the homeless children of Rio were swept from the streets just before the Earth Summit? Just before APEC, Seattle Police held a mass roundup of street people. Even before any economic pacts were signed, we were already becoming closer to official foreign mores.

HYPERHYPE: Perhaps more important than APEC was another convention in town, the fifth International Conference on Hypertext. Computer multimedia and hypermedia could spawn whole new art forms, new ways of looking at the world, empowering people whose stories have been ignored. But the convention was dominated by eastern university guys (especially from Brown) whose vision of on-screen reading simply moves genteel-white-guy fiction onto screens. The potential of cyber-lit could be better exploited by an aesthetic of exploration and connections, rather than the centrist worldview of the academic aristocracy. A computerized story about a colonial-era farm could let users click and read about the different jobs on the farm, the growing cycles, the lives of the working families. With all that, who needs to bother with the drawing-room angst of manor lords?

INTER-ACTIVITY: Similar corporate scrambling and punditry surrounds the promised big cable TV/phone/computer hookups. This really could profoundly improve the world — if our “leaders” don’t ruin it. Every new media technology has had political implications. Phones and telegraph developed under corrupt administrations that, fat with railroad payoffs, looked the other way on monopolies. Radio and talkies arose in the Coolidge-Hoover era, friendly to consolidation of power into four commercial networks, seven studios and five big theater chains. Truman tried to maintain the media status quo by holding up new TV stations; once Ike came in, big-sponsor-controlled TV was allowed to essentially run free. (KOMO and KSTW had their 40th birthdays last year; until ’53, there was only one station in Seattle and none in Portland.) The Nixon crew developed PBS precisely to be a bureaucratic farce in submission to corporate money. The Reaganites revoked commercial TV’s few remaining requirements for public service and journalistic fairness. Meanwhile, two by-products of Cold War military investment, the microprocessor and the Internet, helped create a new aesthetic of direct communicating, without the compromises or corruption of Hollywood and Madison Ave. The 500-channel future could give just lots of pay-per-view blockbuster violence movies. Or we could have universal two-way access, where anyone can transmit anything to anyone. This wouldn’t mean the end of pop culture but its fullest blossoming. Just as the best “pop” music of the past decade has been outside the Top 40, the best “pop” video of the next decade will be made by small troupes who love their work. The information superhighway” is currently more hype than policy; the danger is that it’ll become a policy of profit above empowerment. Let the powers that be know you want “common carrier video,” or something that can be upgraded to it.

LOVELY PARTING GIFTS: Some of the new-media hypes involves proposed “interactive” versions of that most purely televisual of program forms, the game show — at a time when it’s nearly disappeared from broadcast channels. ABC hasn’t had any since the Ross Shafer Match Game revival. CBS has only the ancient Price Is Right; NBC has only the new Caeser’s Challenge and six-year-old Classic Concentration reruns (both to be canceled soon). The only syndicated games are Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and Family Feud. The game show has no connection to real life. It exists in a studio universe of flashing lights and goofy sound effects. It’s a fantasy out of place among today’s “reality shows.” Cable’s keeping the chase-lights blinking with assorted shows on Lifetime and Nickelodeon, though the new shows with their corner-cutting budgets don’t quite have the joyous trash factor of the reruns on USA or the Family Channel, including amazing old Let’s Make a Deal shows where polyestered housewives go agog over winning a new AMC Hornet!

ART OF MUSIC: Great to see the distinctive illustrative style of Ed Fotheringham in ads for the 5th Avenue Theater’s Cinderella. Imagine: Rodgers & Hammerstein sold by the ex-singer for the Thrown Ups, who got famous painting Mudhoney and Flop record covers.

A COIN NAMED SUE: That scourge of late-’70s product design, the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, is back. The Post Office refitted its vending machines to give back Anthonys from $5 bills. They’re showing up at stores, where most clerks don’t know what to do with ’em. One Fred Meyer clerk asked, “Is this a Canadian quarter or what?”

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Movie Maker is a local film rag by Tim Rice (not the lyricist). The first issue’s largely reviews, but Rice promises to mainly cover indy filmmakers, particularly locals. It’ll be a great asset toward building the DIY film/video scene here (as opposed to the state film office’sP.O.V., mostly about Hollywood location work).

MALLED OVER:Three Christmases ago, Aurora Village‘s new managers vowed to revive the declining shopping center, half of whose spaces were boarded up. Two Christmases ago, Frederick & Nelson shut its AV store during its penultimate contraction. Last Christmas, only Nordstrom, a movie multiplex, and a few other stores remained. Earlier this year, Price-Costco bought the site. Big 5 Sporting Goods and Seafirst are the only buildings standing like Little Houses on the Prairie amidst the rubble of demolished stores and jackhammered parking. Go see it; it’s great-&-eerie. Just don’t buy a gun at one place to use robbing the other.

CONSUMER ALERT: While the sleeve doesn’t say so, one side of the C/Z Christmas record plays at 33, the other at 45. I’ll let you figure out which.

FAST FOOD OF THE MONTH: Had enough of generic foods? Hope not, ‘cuz a local company’s offering plain-label salmon at the ridiculously low price of $1.79 for a big can. Look for it at the Leschi Food Market and elsewhere.

GOT THE LOOK: Despite what I’ve said about fashion models, I don’t hate ’em. I’ve been fascinated by them as an institution. Supermodels exist because the media needs female celebrities, but Hollywood won’t develop enough star actresses. So editors and ad agencies created a type of celebrity who existed purely to sell products by selling her image. The supermodel presents a persona of leisure, of being rather than doing; yet she’s is a pivotal cog in the American consumer machine. Nineteenth-century literature was full of pale waifs beautifully “dying of consumption” (TB). Modern magazines are full of pale waifs exhorting you to consume. Old-time femininity was a moral stance that stood above crude and petty things like commerce. Postmodern femininity is an instrument of commerce, in the name of that tenuously-defined quality that is beauty. I don’t condemn that. Leftist males often denounce femininity and beauty as counterproductive to the great revolutionary toil. They promote an ideal world in which women would affirm the superiority of masculine behavior by emulating it. I don’t. As a suffragette anthem said, “Give us bread but give us roses.” We need aesthetic truths as much as political ones (maybe more). Whether the aesthetic of Elle is the one we need is another question.

WOOD YOU?: Tree Hugger Fire Logs are advertised as the first environmentally-correct fireplace logs, ’cause they use “no live trees, only wood waste.”All packaged fireplace logs since Weyerhaeuser’s original Prest-O-Log are made of mill ends and pressed sawdust. Sawdust logs also pollute the air just like natural logs.

THE FINE PRINT (from a counter display for Sugar Free Breath Savers): “Not a reduced calorie food. See back panel for details.”

SIGN OF THE MONTH (at Eyes Rite Optical on Aurora): “Contacts and Galsses, $49 a pair and up.” Hope they’ve sold a pair to the signmaker…

CLEARING OUT: The “clear products” craze never came. Example: Tab Clear, clearance-priced in some stores at 49cents a half gallon. Among its problems: the ad slogan, “It’s not what you think.” My mom told me that whenever I found her reading a paperback with a T&A cover. She never told me what it really was, or what she thought I thought it was. Neither did Tab.

CIVIL WRONGS: Black Diamond cops confiscated a guy’s pickup during a coke bust. The arrested guy’s dad sued to get the truck back, claiming the impounding was a civil-rights violation. A judge ruled in favor of the cops, and ordered the dad to pay $212,000 for defaming the officers’ character. Can you say “precedent for government intimidation against citizen complaints”?

LIFE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN: I used to give an annual It’s a Wonderful Life rerun count; it aired up to 33 times some Decembers. This year, it only ran nine times. It used to be a forgotten oldie that aired once or twice a year on the Saturday afternoon movie; then the movie’s original 28-year copyright expired in ’74 and wasn’t renewed; anybody could show or copy it, and many did. In 1975 it became the annual Christmas movie at the Grand Illusion. By the end of the decade every non-network station ran it, sometimes two or three times a season. As cable developed, every channel that ran movies ran it. But now, a company called Republic Pictures sez it controls the film’s original negative, its music, and the story on which it was based, and will enforce those rights against unauthorized showings. IAWL was made in ’46 by director Frank Capra’s own company and released by RKO. The firm now called Republic used to be NTA, a cut-rate TV distributor that bought lots of old movies in the ’50s (including IAWL and the library of the original Republic cowboy studio) and didn’t bother with copyright renewals. If this seems trivial, it isn’t. The new Republic is challenging the notion that once copyrights die, they stay dead. It could be a precedent for other movies. Under the 1978 copyright law, works owned by companies (instead of individuals) lose protection after 75 years. All the early talkies will start going public-domain in less than a decade — unless the law is revised, or owners find alternate means of protection.

IN OUR MIDST: Somebody was raped in the Colourbox women’s room, during a show by local metal band Forced Entry. The criminal was spotted by another patron, but eluded chasers out the back door. People I talked to about it presumed the creep was upscale suburban scum gone “slumming”, of the same class of overdressed goons who verbally fag-bashed Re-bar’s patrons after the Weekly “discovered” the place. The rationale ignores the possibility that the asshole might very well have been one of “our” group. I’ve blathered about people’s temptation to dehumanize people outside their own lifestyle. Take this delusion of superiority to its coldest extreme and you get the me-first mentality of an assailant. In any event, the drive by Pio. Square businesses to “clean up” the area by harassing street people won’t do shit for public safety when the real danger can come from these businesses’ own customers.

COMING DOWN: Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders proposed a rational drug policy. The president disavowed it, as anyone hoping for re-election naturally would, but it’s a start. I’ve seen many become slaves to drugs. Prohibition didn’t make or help them stop; it only put them in legal as well as physical peril. The War on Drugs has utterly failed at curtailing supply or demand; it’s succeeded at propping up dictators abroad and police harassment at home. Like alcohol prohibition 70 years ago, it’s created surreptitious enterprises whose antisocial behavior is directly due to their illegality. The best way to defuse gang warfare is to eliminate its only logical purpose: drug networks’ battles for sales turf. There are three drug crises: the drugs themselves, the thuggery of the drug industry, and the thuggery of the anti-drug industry (police, armies, urine tests). Regulated legalization will resolve crises #2 and #3, and make it easier to treat crisis #1. Imagine a world of such common sense; then work to build a political climate where it’s possible.

PASSAGE

From the eternal Frank Zappa: “In the fight between you and the world, back the world.”

REPORT

My book on the history of local music is nearly done, but still needs a little more info. I currently need:

* Photos of the outsides of old clubs, especially the Bird and WREX

* Suggestions of current club bands that ought to be mentioned

* Stories, wacky anecdotes

Thanx.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Alembic”

THE 8TH ANNUAL ONLY ACCURATE IN/OUT LIST

Last year’s list correctly foresaw the rise of

Dark Horse Comics, mass-appeal hiphop, Afrocentric art, and Letterman on CBS;

plus the fall of Ralph Lauren, Crystal Pepsi, mass-murdering movie “heroes,” and Arsenio.

Remember, this is a prediction of what will become hot in the coming year.

If you think everything that’s hot now will just keep getting hotter,

then I’ve got some Last Action Hero merchandise to sell you.

9/93 Misc. Newsletter

(incorporating four Stranger columns)

NO WEATHER JOKES! NO SLUG JOKES! NO COFFEE JOKES!

Here at Misc., the only column that wonders why ads for toilet paper consistently use images of infants (the only humans who don’t use the stuff), we feel obligated to repeat a disclaimer issued earlier this summer: A concert held in the middle of Eastern Washington with no public transportation cannot by any logical definition be called a “Seattle” show. I wouldn’t even call it an Ellensburg show.

`OTHER’ WISE: Two readers have suggested that the source of “The Other,” that now-ubiquitous term used by Reflex writers to rant about how bigoted everybody outside the Art World is, was Simone de Beauvior’s classic essay The Second Sex. She apparently used it to describe how people divide the world of their own minds and bodies (“The Self”) from everything else in the universe (“The Other”). Most of the folks using the term today intend to denounce other people’s bigotries, but inadvertently reveal their own (damning entire groups of people, defined by such totally superficial criteria as their race and gender, as incapable of sympathy toward Otherness). We need alternatives to bigotry, not just alternate forms of bigotry.

NOSTALGIA REVISITED: Pop-culture recycling is completely out of hand. With every permutation of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s re-played to death, they’re now reviving gimmicks from the ’80s that didn’t make it the first time. Seventeen brashly proclaims that thefashion trend for fall will be — ready? — “The New Romantics: Fall’s fresh style takes its cue from the romantic dandy, mixing floaty white shirts with an old English beat.” Where’s Adam Ant when we need him?

Speaking of dumb fads, did I tell ya I got a designer grunge fashion spread from a March ish of the Glasgow Sunday Post? Imagine — telling the Scots how to wear plaid.

And even worse, some UW-licensed sweatshirt company’s got a “Grunge Puppy” design: a UW Husky looking like it’s high on something, in torn jeans, Docs and an open flannel shirt over a T-shirt reading “Eat, Sleep, Party.” Looks as horrid as it reads.

MUST TO AVOID: Under no circumstances should you pay money for The Seattle Style Guide, a self-published handbook for new residents. The author lives in Bellevue (the first sign of knowing nothing about Seattle), he refers to certain obnoxious yuppie bars as hangouts for the “artistic crowd,” he calls Kenny G Seattle’s proudest contribution to music, and he suggests you learn to appreciate grunge by playing a little Pearl Jam in between your Eagles records.

CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE DEPT.: KCPQ’s got this ad chiding all the recent turmoil, firings and resignations in local TV news departments, and offering its own nightly information alternatives – A Current Affair and Inside Edition!

LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH: Teen Fag is a little zine of stories and art not exclusively for teens or fags. Its main selling point is a review of the final Seattle show by G.G. Allin, NY’s self-proclaimed “violent and obscene rock performer,” who died weeks later. There’s also an extensive piece on Naughty Bits cartoonist Roberta Gregory. Available at Sound Affects Records on E. John (home of the sign, “Hey boys and girls: Home taping is killing the music industry. Keep up the good work”)….

Also available there is Sixth Form, a stapled Xeroxreg. zine with a thickly laminated cover, devoted to the (or should I say “thee”) gothic side of things. Issue #2 documents the heretofore undocumented Seattle/Salt Lake City band connection, apparently based on the ethereal/dreamscape bands Faith and Disease, Mary Throwing Stones and Ursula Tree. The zine celebrates a tight little clique of black-shawled explorers down there in Zion. Local coverage includes Diamond Fist Werny, Self Help Seminar, and a brief piece on Common Language‘s forthcoming British CD. (Hey, Common-ers: You’re one of the greatest bands around, but import-only releases by American alternative bands sucked 13 years ago. They still suck today. Same goes for the Walkabouts: Please get your stuff out at the affordable price, even if it’s on a label the size of eMpTy.)

DEAD AIR: It’s been a while since we talked of the KCMU Konflict. The CURSE/UW lawsuit is somewhere in the digestive tract of litigation. It’s been almost a year since station management imposed authoritarian controls and bland programming. Their official reason was to keep increasing station ratings and revenues. Even by those dubious measures, they’re an utter failure. So why would they apparently rather see the station die than admit they made a mistake?

It’s becoming clear that money isn’t what they’re after. The mess now seems to really be after the one thing all good UW administrators crave above all other desires: administrative turf. In the “nonprofit” equivalent of a corporate takeover, the honchos at KUOW down the hall wanted to assert control over KCMU, to turn it from a volunteer community station to a paid-staff institution that would suck up to wealthy listeners and corporate donors in the established NPR manner. They sincerely don’t understand that KCMU thrived as a very different station, with a different audience and a different operating philosophy. If they really want to make KCMU strong again, they should gentlemanly step aside and let it be run by the people who know how to run it right, the ex-volunteers who built it.

CLICHESTOPPERS NOTEBOOK: The only thing more lame nowadays than calling your band “grunge” is to call it “not grunge.” I’ve been reading the latter label applied in the last month to everything from the cowgirl-kitsch Ranch Romance to local rappers to a compilation record of frat-party bands (see below). As early as 1990, stupid national rockzines labeled 90 percent of Seattle bands as “not your typical Seattle band.” Don’t tell me what you’re not, tell me what you are.

NOTES: Just when you thought music meant something again, the forces of mindless entertainment prepare to counterattack. I’ve seen what promoters and managers are offering as the Next Big Thing, and it ain’t pretty: white funk bands. Jocks and fratboys from Portland, Boise and elsewhere, in backward caps and butt-cleavage jeans, waving attempted guesses of gang hand signals. These guys reinterpret Funkadelic and Run-DMC the way George Thorogood reinterpreted the blues, into one-dimensional macho posturing. The sounds associated by mainstream America (rightly or wrongly) with drug dealers are being revamped into the property of drug buyers. Actually, some of it’s stupid-cute, as long as you don’t take these guys as seriously as they take themselves. Few onstage sights are sillier than accountants’ sons hunching their backs and shouting “Yo!” And as for the authenticity issue, ya gotta figure that your average ex-high school football player has probably had more black friends than your average ex-conservatory jazz player.

CAN’T YOU SMELL THAT SMELL?: One of the few pleasures of my current unemployment (you thought this column was a full-time job or something?) is living without fear of the dreaded cologne cult cornering me at my desk. At most every office I’ve worked in, even spaces separated from the public by two layers of reception desks, I’d invariably get confronted this time of year by blank-eyed young adult males demanding that I buy their cheesy impostor colognes or cheesier framed prints of floral arrangements. I don’t know who they are or where they come from. I haven’t been able to stop any of them long enough to ask.

CULTURE CLUB: With something of a budget finally passed and health-care reform a while away, the right-wing Gridlock Machine has been backtracking for targets. Among the “scandals” recently recycled on talk radio and in pundit magazines is that all-purpose nemesis, the National Endowment for the Arts. They’re giving the same ol’ blah-blah about Our Tax Dollars and flaky artist types who mock all that is pure and proper. The real scandal about American arts funding isn’t that taxpayers are supporting too much “controversial” art but too little.

A couple of people who say “fuck” on stage notwithstanding, most NEA money subsidizes formula entertainment for the rich. It’s just as bad on the local level. Washington’s reputation as an artistic center is overrated and based more on consumption than production. We rank well in the bottom half of states in terms of public arts support. And a lot of that money goes either to bland sculptures by out-of-state artists, to “major performing institutions,” or to “support services” (buildings and bureaucrats); while the citizens who make images/films/texts, particularly of the non-touristy or non-upscale kind, scrape by as always.

The rich should pay for their own lifestyles, either directly or thru corporate support. I don’t wanna see any bassoonists lose their jobs in today’s economy, but if the symphony and the Rep are gonna get public money, it should be for public stuff: free or discounted shows, in-school appearances, etc. Since we’re always gonna have inadequate arts funding, what we can spend should emphasize investment in new works, works that might or might not find a big audience, works that might or might not even be good (experiments must be allowed to fail).

NEWS THAT DIDN’T MAKE THE NEWS: About 10 Seafair parade drunks headed to Broadway near midnight 7/30, presumably to fag-bash (baseball bats in hand), but were rounded up by a herd of police and State Patrol cars sent up the hill from the parade site.

COP OUT?: Twist Weekly claims to be the real reason Police Chief Patrick Fitzsimons resigned. The gay tabloid ran some articles about Paul Grady, an openly gay police sergeant who resigned in May. He said it due to harassment by fellow officers; but only Twistreported Grady’s claim that Fitzsimons specifically allowed and even encouraged the harassment. More damaging, Twist claims Fitzsimons’s homophobic attitude was a front — that the chief privately made moves on Grady and other male officers, and that he once tried to pick up a teenage restaurant busboy. Local mainstream media (except for KVI talk host Mike Siegel) pooh-poohed or hush-hushed the allegations, and treated Fitzsimons’s sudden resignation as the ordinary retirement of a great public servant. (Seattle Weekly did mention it, including Fitzsimons’s denials of all charges). If true, it’s another tragedy of the Closet — of someone trapped between his true self and a career that made him deny it, only to hurt himself and others. In any case, Fitzsimons still leaves a questionable legacy: the harassment of gay officers, overzealous tactics against young and/or black people, the still-in-the-works Weed and Seed paramilitary-occupation plan.

POST(ER) IMPRESSIONISM: Somebody (not me) put up street posters along Broadway and U Way, to harass my ex-employerFantagraphics Books. Around an old teenage photo of co-owner Kim Thompson (misspelled as “Thomson”) and rows of dollar signs, the poster invites people to work there and “earn up to $500 a week. Summer may be hot, but the heat is on!” Apparently, the office was inundated by calls from Ave rats seeking big bucks at the comix publisher. The hoax was probably instigated by one of those firees. The same person may have been responsible for a press release claiming Fantagraphics star Peter Bagge (Hate) was leaving to start his own comix company; the phone number on the press release belongs to a Bellevue dry cleaner.

PHILM PHUN: If you’re like me, you’re tired of hearing some stupid movie star favorably describing their stupid movie as “like a roller coaster ride,” sometimes using old Disneyland lingo as “an E Ticket ride.” For that matter, a lot of films these days are being turnedinto theme park rides, usually cheesy and expensive ones. I say, if we’re going to have theme park attractions based on movies, let’s have ’em based on good movies: The Murnau Sunrise streetcar, the Magnificent Ambersons sleigh ride, the Lover Model A (on a fake colonial-Saigon street), the Women on the Verge taxi, the (adult-scale) Battleship Potemkin baby carriage, the Detour hitchhiking experience, the Lift elevator ride, the Women in Love male wrestling show…the list is endless. And concession stands: Under the Volcano bar drinks, Merchant-Ivory cucumber sandwiches, Repo Man plates of shrimp, Prospero’s Books wedding feasts. Let’s have licensed merchandise from good movies, too: Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! bath toys, When the Wind Blows fallout detectors…

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: I know this department used to appear a lot more often in the past than it does now, but that’s because fewer great new junk foods are being developed these days. One reason: the consumer-products conglomerates, like the media conglomerates, are fading. The recession’s led consumers toward store-brand products, while the breakup of the mass media leave fewer resources to build new brands. (Procter & Gamble, once TV’s biggest advertiser, whose daytime dramas inspired the term “soap opera,” is laying off an eighth of its workforce due to permanent downsizing.) But General Mills is giving it one more go by launching Fingos, billed as “the cereal you eat with your fingers.” They’re actually like little cinnamon-graham or oat crackers, and quite habit-forming indeed. They’re also a great on-the-run alternative to gooey breakfast bars.

DYING WORDS: Two separate parties have sent me copies of These EXIT Times, an 8-pp. zine distributed at the Oregon Country Fair by a small group called VHEMT (Voluntary Human Extinction Movement; the acronym refers to “vehemence”). Business interests sometimes accuse environmentalists of being anti-people; these folks really are. They want the human race to agree to die off without reproducing, so “the earth can recover.” They don’t want you to kill yourself, just to leave no progeny. I don’t see how they can expect ideology to overcome standard-equipment biological instinct. Besides, why preserve the land for future generations if there won’t be any? (Remember Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt, who said it was OK to exhaust the Earth because the Rapture was coming soon?)

ON THAT INSPIRATIONAL NOTE, be sure to visit the years-in-the-making Toaster Museum inside the Wonderful World of Art studio-gallery, refurbish your home for cheap with durable, utilitarian items from office furniture surplus stores (dumping the working tools of all those laid-off bank employees), and heed these words of Bret Maverick: “My pappy always said to never cry over spilt milk. It could’ve been whiskey.”

PASSAGE

Robert Anton Wilson from Reality Is What You Can Get Away With (published in 1992, already badly dated): “In an accelerating, fast-evolving universe, whoever does not change moves backward relatively. Did you ever notice that takes only 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative, without changing a single idea?”

REPORT

Still looking for people to talk to for my history of the Seattle music scene. I especially need to talk to people who’ve been involved with local music since the mid-’80s, not just from the early punk days. So write me, OK?

Also, I’m thinking of an alternative tourist guide to Seattle, showing the joints everybody who comes here wants to see but regular tourist guides don’t mention (the Off Ramp, Jimi’s grave, et al.). Depending on space, it may also have a few cheap eating/drinking/shopping/staying places. What do you think should be in it? (Don’t nominate only your own business.)

WORD-O-MONTH

“Lenticular”

THE REAL MESSAGE OF `EDUCATIONAL’ CARTOONS:

YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH SHODDY WORK

IF IT MEETS BUREAUCRATIC REQUIREMENTS

3/93 Misc. Newsletter

(incorporating four Stranger columns)

`TEEN SLANG’ IN ADS:

HOW OLD WHITE PEOPLE THINK

YOUNG WHITE PEOPLE THINK

YOUNG BLACK PEOPLE TALK

Misc. once again wades into the juxtaposition of the global and the local, the wide weird world of society and media culture in a secondary port city at the close of the millennium; the pancultural, high-bandwidth world we live in — a world the mainstream arts scene is losing sight of. I’m rapidly losing tolerance for the cutesypie, the fetishistically bland, the upscale formula entertainment. I’m glad the New Yorker changed; it still hasn’t changed enough. I keep trying to listen to Morning Edition, thinking it’ll be good for me like an aural wheatgrass juice; I keep turning it off in disgust over the smarmy music and the cloying attitudes. A few months back, a woman complained to me that the local theater companies that made the loudest campaigns against NEA censorship were the ones with the least adventuresome programming; I couldn’t contradict her. The very thought of A River Runs Through It makes me queasy. I keep looking for real ideas, real thinking, and all I seem to find are snooty baby boomers whining about how perfect Their Generation is, or the most simplistic square-bashing, or rites of cultural “sophistication” akin to drug-free trances. I want more.

BOEING BUST III: It’s happened before, in the early ’70s with the cancellation of the federal SST project (the unbuilt plane the SuperSonics were named after) and again in the early ’80s (after the post-Vietnam defense slump, but before Reagan’s return to Vietnam-era defense spending sunk in). In the mid-’80s, Reagan’s airline deregulation and defense boom led to many more planes and war goods being built than anyone had a practical use for. This time, the 18-28,000 laid off workers are paying for that overexpansion. Let’s face it, the country never needed all those missiles and bombers. And while civilian airline overbuilding led to cheap air fares, it’s no bargain if nobody’s making money. Like many industries, aviation’s in an upheaval due to institutional bloat and outmoded concepts. We oughta (but probably won’t) take advantage of this restructuring opportunity to rethink our domestic transportation system. High-speed rail could move people more efficiently and cheaply, especially on routes that don’t cross the vast inland west. At today’s levels of freeway and airport congestion, intercity trips up to 300 miles could even be faster by rail than by car-to-airport-to-airport-to-car. It’d be a great investment opportunity, with just a directing push by the feds needed. We could’ve already had this now, but the feds pushed aerospace (like nuclear power) to bring civilian investment into a Cold War military technology. Even the Interstate Highways were first promoted as a defense investment (because the movement of war goods wouldn’t be threatened by railroad strikes anymore). Our real national security’s to be found in building a secure economy.

WHERE MEN ARE MEN: If Clinton blinked in his first challenge to the sleaze machine on military bigotry, he succeeded in exposing the religious and talk-radio demagogues as naked creeps. As if the U.S. military that brought you the Tailhook scandal, that turned prostitution into the growth industry of several Asian countries, was a model of gentlemanly behavior. As if the ban on gay soldiers was some time-honored tradition, instead of a Reagan-era appeasiment to the bigot constituency. He might have floated that issue during his first week as a test, to see just how he might ideologically disarm the right. He’s used that lesson with his budget speeches, which he delivered like a good ol’ preacher exhorting the faithful to feel not the ecstasy of Baptist togetherness but the righteousness of Calvinist self-denial. With a few deft moves, Clinton reversed the socio-moral compass of the past 20 years. He positioned himself as the beacon of morality and the preacher/radio goons as the decadent materialists. That moral division’s been evolving for a while, ever since the Carter-era rift of the gold-chain epicureans vs. the tie-dye puritans. In the ’80s, you had the radical conservatives vs. the conservative radicals. By the Bush era, snooty Young Republicans “rebelled” by riding Harleys and telling racist jokes. Fewer of us are fooled by people who boast of their righteousness but whose only real values are their own lusts for power (listening, Mr. Knab?).

THE CONCEPT OF GAYS in the military also diffuses a major tenet of the gay bohemian left: that gays and lesbians are a species apart. Gays are a lot more like everybody else than gays or straights want to admit. Granted, the military’s a declining institution of dubious purpose in an age when our real wars are of the “trade” kind. (Eastern Europe and north Africa just don’t know this yet.) Still, soldiers are about the most ordinary people you’ll meet, having been socialized to be parts of a machine. And ordinary people, people with bad haircuts and clumsy dance moves, can be just as homosexual as any drag queen or lesbian folksinger. Even “different” people are different from each other.

WHERE PERSONS ARE PERSONS: The Times revealed that Julia Sweeney, that belovedly androgynous Pat on Sat. Nite Live, is a Spokane native and UW drama grad. Not only that, but she was platonic pals here with Rocket film critic Jim Emerson, who helped her develop the character (after they’d moved separately to LA) and is co-writing a Pat movie. Emerson’s infamous for his annualRocket 10-best-films list, which always includes off-hand remarks about at least one film that (unknown to him) never played Seattle.

JOKE ‘EM IF THEY CAN’T TAKE A FUCK: In January, I was one the local arts writers corralled into performing at a COCA benefit show, Critics Embarrass Themselves. Afterwards, COCA’s Susan Purves wrote the participants a thank-you form letter in the wacko spirit of the show: “We promise never to think of you as fatuous or overblown again without remembering what you did for us.” Two of the critics (I’ve been asked not to say who) angrily called Purves’s boss Katherine Marczuk demanding a retraction. Purves had to send a second form letter: “I am truly sorry if any individual felt I was actually making personal references. I was not….Please accept my sincere apologies as well as my sincere thanks for your original participation.” This sensitive-white-guy syndrome has gone too far. These days, you’ve gotta watch your language more carefully in bohemia than in church. My theory is that PC-ese, which isn’t about being sensitive to the disadvantaged but to other sensitive white people, is all the fault of those snooty Bay Areans who don’t want you to use the perfectly good nickname Frisco.

NOT-SO-MAGNIFICENT SEVEN: We felt such electricity throughout the city in early Feb., waiting impatiently for “News Outside the Box.” For you who nevvvuh watch teh-luh-vision, that’s KIRO’s slogan for a new presentation package, with music by the Seattle Symphony and a million-dollar newsroom set in “authentic Northwest colors” (an immediate tip-off that it was designed by a Californian). Ads in the month before the change promised more attention to content and less to slick presentation; the reverse proved to be true. The show’s full of forced busy-ness, devised to offer a different visual composition in every shot; all the wandering around looks like life in an open-plan office (or an open-plan school that prepares kids for adulthood in an open-plan office). What’s really wrong with TV news isn’t “The Box” (the traditional desk-and-mural set). It’s the industry-wide mix of slick production technique with gross ignorance about the issues being discussed. News ratings are down among all stations (KIRO’s are just down further). As more viewers find TV news irrelevant, stations respond by making it even more irrelevant. Last year at this time, you learned more about why Randy Roth‘s wife died than why Pan Am died. Maybe the new KIRO set is a symbol for real change; we’ll see. (The Times and others noted that KIRO’s “coming out” theme is enhanced by a triangular logo (its first all-new symbol since ’64), remarkably close to the Seattle Gay News logo.)

WHAT WON’T KILL YOU ANYMORE?: Just what we omnivores need: one more excuse for the neopuritans to go I-told-you-so. I spent the first week after the E. coli scandal going consecutively to all my regular burger hangouts (excluding the Big Jack), asserting my oneness with the greasy grey protien slabs in (foolish?) defiance of my well-meaning vegan friends. Just before that scandal, some UW MD’s wrote a serious report for a medical journal on mud wrestling illnesses, due to animal feces mixed into the mud that entered unclad human orifices. Meanwhile, activists claim those scented magazine ads for perfumes can cause horrible allergic reactions. Maybe that’s why all those naked women in the Calvin Klein Obsession ads don’t have nipples. They must’ve mutated and fallen off. (I know it sounds gross, but to many the inserts smell grosser.) I’d comment on the claim that cellular phones can kill you, ‘cept as Kevin Nealon said, “nobody cares if people who own cellular phones die.”

WHAT’SINANAME: A mystery author appeared at Elliot Bay Book Co. on 2/19 with the official legal name of BarbaraNeely. This marks the progression of “InterCaps” typography from cheesy sci-fi/fantasy books (ElfQuest) through computer programs often created by sci-fi/fantasy fans (WordPerfect) and back into pop fiction.

MOSHPIT TOURISM UPDATE: I told you before of a dorky Boston Globe story about the spread of “grunge culture” to that city. The paper’s since run a two-page Sunday travel piece about “the Seattle mindset,” which writer Pamela Reynolds calls “a vague cynicism paired ironically with progressive idealism.” She calls Seattle home to “funky organic restaurants, odorous boulangeries, and inviting juice gardens.” She lauds N. 45th St. as a bastion of “dining, Seattle Style. That is to say, if you have a taste for hamburgers, hot dogs, steaks, or French fries, this is not the place to be” (must not have been to Dick’s). If there is a “Seattle mindset,” it’s one that throws up at sentimental touristy pap like this. Think about it: if we’re now world famous for our angry young men and women, maybe there’s something here that they’re justifiably angry about.

FOR MEN THIS YEAR, LEOPARD SKINS WITHOUT PANTS: Alert locals were slightly amused by a reference to a fancy store called “Nordstone’s” in the latest Flintstones special. But then again, historical revisionism is nothing new in Bedrock. In the original series, which premiered in 1960, Stone Age technology had advanced to the point of reel-to-reel audio tape recorders. In The Flintstone Kids, made 25 years later but set 25 years earlier, young Fred and Barney already had VCRs.

ZINE SCENE: Fasctsheet Five was the beloved “hometown paper” of America’s underground publishing community, until founder Mike Gundelroy burned out and quit after 44 issues. San Francisco writer Seth Friedman bought the name and has now revived it. While it’s nice to see it back, the new F5 is another great thing that moved to Calif. and went soft, just like Johnny Carson, Motown and Film Threat. The classic F5 reviewed non-corporate media of all genres and discussed the assorted issues surrounding them in acres of sprightly prose set in tiny 7-point type. F5 Lite covers print media only, in plain straightforward language, professionally laid out in large, readable type. What a shame. (Gives my ‘zine a nice review, tho.)

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Safeway’s ripped out the Coke and Pepsi vending machines outside (or just inside) some of its stores. In their place, it’s put up machines selling something called Safeway Select for just a quarter. It’s a new prominence for what used to be a lowly house brand called Cragmont, the chain used to stack the stuff off to one side, unrefrigerated, away from the high-priced pop. The new Select flavors still taste like Cragmont — corrosive-tasting colas, syrupy orange and rootless root beer.

ADVICE TO OUR YOUNGER READERS: I’m occasionally mistaken for a successful writer by folks who want to become successful writers. Here’s the only proven method I’ve seen to become a successful writer in Seattle, in two easy steps: (1) Become a successful writer somewhere else. (2) Move to Seattle.

AD VERBS: Now that Almost Live‘s an apparent hit on the scattered cable systems that get the Comedy Central channel, you may wonder whatever happened to the show’s original host, Ross Shafer. The gladhanding comic, who started AL on KING in ’84 as a straight talk show with Keister as a sketch sidekick, left in ’88 to become the final host of the Fox Late Show, which led to other brief network stints (including a Match Game revival). Now, Shaffer’s descended to the nadir of has-beens, never-weres, and Cher. He’s hosting a half-hour commercial for a programmable VCR remote. (Ah, modern commercials: where they take 30 minutes to describe a car wax and 30 seconds to describe a car.)…In the future, don’t bet on the Bud Bowl. It’s animated, for chrissake! The person you’re betting against might know someone at the postproduction house. (Alert Simpsons fans got a laugh when this year’s Bud Bowl spots were hosted by the MTV VJ known only as Duff, the same name as Homer’s favorite beer.)

DODGE-ING THE ISSUE: Infamous Las Vegas financier Kirk Kerkorian became Chrysler’s biggest shareholder in February, holding nearly 10 percent of the company’s common stock. This is the jerk who dismantled MGM, the greatest motion picture factory in the world, and used the asset-sale proceeds to build a gaudy little airline and a big hotel that burned thanks to shoddy design. Maybe it’s time for all real film lovers to switch to Fords.

DE-CONSTRUCTIVISM: A building permit to replace the Vogue with a 26-story condo is apparently active again, according to theDaily, after being on hold during the construction slump. Yes, I’ll miss the last venue from the punk/wave days still open today. I saw my first music video there (under its predecessor concept, Wrex). Anybody who’s been in or near the local music scene either played there, danced there, got drunk there, picked someone up there, ditched someone there, got plastered there, and/or had bad sex in the restroom. Me-mo-ries…

CORRECTION OF THE MONTH (UW Daily, 2/3): “…an erroneous and insulting headline ran above yesterday’s page one article about Microsoft executive Bill Gates’s lecture on campus. The headline should have read, `Microsoft’s Gates foresees conversion to “digital world.”‘” The original headline on 2/2: “Bill Gates admits he’s a homely geek.” Could Bill’s mom Mary, a UW Regent, have influenced the retraction?

BUDGET CUT IDEA #1: The Wash. State Convention Center has its own toilet paper, specially embossed with its logo.

‘TIL WE WELCOME IN SPRING in our next missive, be absolutely sure to see the Portland Advertising Museum’s traveling exhibit at the Museum of History and Industry thru 3/29, and ponder the words of turn-O-the-century philosopher-printer Elbert Hubbard in the June 1911 edition of his self-published tract (the old term for ‘zine) The Philistine: “I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”

PASSAGE

In honor of the 4th Seattle Fringe Theatre Festival, choice words from Samuel Beckett, quoted in 1988 by Lawrence Shainberg: “The confusion is not my invention…It is all around us and our only chance is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess.”

REPORT

I’ve been writing this feature, in various formats and forums, for nearly seven years. I’ve got that itch. I need a new name for this. Any ideas? (No slug or coffee jokes, please.)

I’m also thinking of cutting back (again??) on free newsletter copies. I’ll still accept subs, but I have to pay more attention to the 25,000 Stranger readers than to the 450 newsletter readers. Starting next month or the month after, the newsletter will reprint theStranger column, instead of the other way around. That way, the weekly tabloid audience will have fresher material.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Captious”

12/92 Misc. Newsletter

(incorporating four Stranger columns

and one newsletter-only essay)

THERE’S HUSKY COFFEE NOW!

JUST DON’T SERVE IT ICED.

IT DOESN’T HOLD UP UNDER COLD CONDITIONS

At Misc., we have only one response to the reported infestation of coyotes in Discovery Park: Where’s Acme when you need it?

CLARIFICATION: For those of you not up on your pop-cultural literacy, the “Woody” referred to last month wasn’t Mr. Allen but Mr. Woodpecker.

ELECTION AFTERMATH: The electorate issued a big dose of reality. A positive reality, as in waking up dazed yet refreshed, to find Patrick Duffy telling you that the past 12 years were just a bad dream. For too long, our government and its business backers lived in a fantasy, in which the declaration of one’s innate “morality” excused all immoral actions, in which the stagnating defense of old socioeconomic privilege could be sold as a “growth policy.” The denizens of this delusory Pleasure Island, long since having turned into asses, expected that with enough money (ours) and lies (theirs), they could maintain the fantasy forever. But the lies ran out quicker than the money. The sleaze machine will finally be out of the Executive Branch. No more gag rules, no more Council on Competitiveness, no more friendly dictators, no more executive orders to appease Pat Robertson. No more race-baiting or gender-baiting as official policy. Now for the boring part: establishing a long-term, active constituency for getting done what needs doing. The two drug cartels (illicit and prescription) are still bleeding the nation dry. The pro-unemployment and anti-environment lobbyists maintain their unelective offices; they and their pundit pals still brand anyone who dares oppose them as “special interests.” Think it’s OK to go back to hip apathy? Get real.

IF I’M RIGHT about this being a new era, we’re gonna need a new aesthetic to go with it. It’s not just that the Clintons and Gores don’t like harsh lyrics and other shock art, but that they don’t like the divisive concept behind them. The visions of Karen Finley and Henry Rollins are clumsily reversed clones of the GOP’s politics of hate. The Young Republicans long ago co-opted the image of the self-made rebel sneering at the petty concerns of the little people; there’s no point in alternative artists acting like that anymore. There’s still a helluva lot to be angry about, but it needs to be answered by a more inclusive kind of anger, something that goes beyond the mere vilification of enemies. Now that 62% of the voters have rejected the organized Right, it may be time for the art world to reconsider its hostility against the so-called “sap masses” and to start communicating with people about the real problems. Leftist art used to be about promoting solidarity with the working classes; it can be about that again. The post-Bush era also means there’s less value in enduring bad art just so you can smugly know that you’ve consumed something the Right would hate. What counts now is whether you like it.

BEFORE WE FORGET the campaign, let’s remember the curiosity that was Ross Perot. It wasn’t just money that got him as far as he got. It wasn’t just a bullheaded unwillingness to play by the rules (including the rule of listening to others’ ideas). It was that he played these as assets. He exploited the ’80s romance of entrepreneurism as Reagan and Bush tried but couldn’t. His contrived maverick act caught many hearts within the subcultures that the NY Times doesn’t know about: Computer bulletin board users. Talk radio listeners. Franchisees and multi-level marketers. “Couples’ erotica” video renters. Self-help readers. Family nudists. The 30 percent of the population that no longer watches prime time TV. People in 12-step groups. Upscale health food eaters. Bodybuilders. People who use powder cocaine while denouncing people who use crack. People who go to comedy clubs. People who used to read National Lampoon in high school. Members of spouse-swapping clubs. Science fiction fans. Everybody who thinks they deserve to break the rules. A savvier candidate might have turned these groups into a force to be reckoned with indeed. God help us if it happens.

APPEARANCES #1: Someone signed only Elvira says she usually likes Misc., but that my consenting attitude toward shirt-doffing G ‘n R fans “really struck out”: “Is the above aimed at women specifically? If so then you are no more `enlightened’ than the band is regarding women! Why would anybody, actually, show a lot of flesh at concerts? Or anywhere else for that matter?” I can think of a million reasons, starting with: why not? I can’t tell women what to do. And I have no monolithic attitude toward all women. Fifty-two percent of the human race can’t be all alike. If some wanna make fools of themselves at dumb corporate-rock shows, I won’t go look but I won’t condemn ’em either. And yes, I’d support male nudity in mutually supportive situations, like the Berkeley, CA student who showed up in class either bare or bottomless all semester, to the condemnation of management but the support or indifference of his fellow students.

APPEARANCES #2: The same week that Pentagon brass got all cowardly about admitting gays and lesbians, a woman wrote in the NY Times about the lack of full male skin in mainstream studio sex movies. Both probably have something to do with some men’s fear of other men’s sex (an emotion oft exploited in wartime propaganda, the ol’ keep-the-huns-off-your-wife line). As I’ve said before, writers who depict “Men” as a single collectivized psyche are wrong. Forty-eight percent of the human race can’t be all alike either. We’re isolated souls; many of us hate each other. I grew up from locker-room intimidation games long ago, and wish others could do the same. And while I’m not attracted to other guys’ parts, I don’t mind their images. I’ve seen enough male nudity in plays and foreign films to know how it can add that ever-needed human vulnerability.

APPEARANCES #3: The fashion press has certified the “Grunge Look” as the official Next Big Thing. Except that some of these designers (including Perry Ellis staffer Marc Jacobs) turn it into commercial crap, with sand-washed silk “flannel” shirts and models’ hair elaborately styled to look unkempt. Others (including Betsey Johnson) define “Seattle style” as Dee-Lite-meets-Frederick’s-of-Hollywood, with sheer tops and rainbow bell bottoms over Doc Martens. I’ve nothing philosophically against $500 see-thru dresses or butterfly pasties (see above), but authentic Seattle wear oughta be something you can wear in November without catching pneumonia. More seriously, the Seattle arts community (in music, fashion and other media) is at its best when it gets folks together, unpretentiously, to achieve honest expressions (even honest banal expressions). If the big designers reinterpret it in pretentious ways, maybe it’s just too much for corporate fashion to understand.

APPEARANCES #4: Betty Page, the reclusive ’50s S&M model whose pinup photos are reprinted in countless books, mags and trading card, who’s inspired everyone from Madonna to the Cramps’ Poison Ivy with her kinky innocence, was finally found in Calif. by Robin Leach. She describes herself now as “old and fat” and living off Social Security; some of the publishers who’ve made money off her image are volunteering to help her out, which is nice. I never was turned on by her myself; I mean, her pictures in regular clothes look like my mom did at the time.

AIRING IT OUT: At the save-KCMU rally 11/8, several people booed when a speaker mentioned the letters “NPR.” They knew that despite NPR’s several liberal political voices, in operating practice it’s become a very Reaganite institution. For one thing, it does a lousy job at serving ethnic or cultural minorities. If you’re not an upscale baby boomer, you’re not welcome. KUOW’s newsletter boasts about how it appeals almost exclusively to the well-off, the perfect consumer audience for “enhanced underwriting announcements.” Also, many under-40 listeners loathe NPR’s cloying aesthetic, its patronizing attitude toward non-yup subcultures, and its “down home” features celebrating the purity of life in all-white towns. (See the current Whole Earth Review for more details.) Also, I’m as guilty as the rest of the local alternative press in keeping quiet about KCMU’s gradual state of siege until now. I wanted to support the station too much to speak ill of it, even as great volunteer DJs got axed one by one for disobeying petty rules or playing too much of the “harsh and abrasive” music that was making Seattle famous. Just call me a listener who loved too much.

JUNK FOODS OF THE MONTH: Even if there weren’t a new fad of cereal-box collecting, the Cocoa Puffs Factory box would be a collector’s item. A flap on the back unfolds into a 3-D image of a Rube Goldberg contraption, with a working chute system. Put a handful of the cereal in the bin at the top, release a trap, and watch the puffs roll down the device and into your bowl. Get one to use, and one to save for your grandkids… Hershey’s Desert Bar (“special formulation for desert and tropical conditions”) is a melt-resistant chunk of chocolate mixed with egg whites for extra body, as enjoyed by the troops of ’91. It’s a substantial biting experience, less gooey and sugary than the regular bar. It’s also got the powdery-white exterior familiar to anyone who’s worked in a candy kitchen and sampled a brick of “industrial chocolate.”

NATIVE LORE: The 11/23 Times sez the number of self-designated Native Americans in Wash. grew from 58,000 to 78,000 in the last census period, a figure far higher than that of officially recognized tribal members. I knew there were phony New Age shamen running around, but I didn’t know there were so many.

AD VERBS: Howcum all these half-hour commercials are for products that you could explain in a minute, while the stuff that could use the time (like cars) still only gets regular spots?

THE FINE PRINT (on a bag of Fritos): “You may have won $10,000. No purchase necessary. Details inside.”

BEHIND THE PINE CURTAIN: Oregon’s Prop. 9, which would have officially dehumanized homosexuals, lost — but by a dangerously small margin. Its sponsor, the Oregon Citizens Alliance, plans to keep resubmitting the measure, to gain administrative control of the state Republican Party (onetime home to progressives like the late Gov. Tom McCall and Sen. Wayne Morse), and to start a Washington branch.

The OCA and the Idaho Nazis are not aberrations to the recent mystique of the “laid back” Northwest. Their presence reflects the logical extreme of the myth of “getting away from it all” to a refuge populated only by “people like us.” This was one of the last parts of the continent that whites conquered. After that, we had race riots against Chinese laborers; after that, we sent our citizens of Japanese ancestry off to wartime internment camps. The “Northwest Lifestyle” ideology that coalesced in the mid-’70s promotes turning one’s back on “urban problems” (such as nonwhite people) and putting down roots in “God’s country” where everybody’s identically “nice” and wholesome. We don’t need any more of that. We need to attract people into the region who are willing to live among other people.

CATHODE CORNER: Sony’s about to bring the cyberpunk vision one step closer by introducing a Visortron “headset video screen.” The goggle-like device contains two tiny 0.7″ LCD screens, one just in front of each eye. Not only could this mean perfected of 3-D movies, it’ll let bus riders and hospital patients remove themselves even further from their immediate surroundings. Also, it’s one of the components that “virtual reality” developers have clamored for. They want to be able to rig up users with sensor gloves, feed computer animation into their eyes, and send them on journeys into computer-created “worlds” (depicted in the Neuromancer books and the forthcoming film Toys). Advocates claim it could be used for everything from simulated drug trips to sex with robots (a pitifully sterile fantasy, if you ask me). But you know it’ll end up being primarily used for military training.

STAGES: ‘Twas something really peculiar about seeing the New City production of Fever (Wallace Shawn‘s monologue piece about the limits of rich-liberal guilt trips) performed at a substitute venue: First Christian Church, usually occupied by people who don’t just go to upscale plays about poverty and suffering but actually try to do something about them. Shawn posited a world consisting only of the oppressed and the privileged (the latter including himself and, by implication, his audience). He conveniently concludes (or seems to, since he’s conveniently equivocal) that there’s little his class can do but feel sympathetic and give a little money to street people. Sorry Wally, not good enough. Next time, try to see the rest of the world, not as an artist looking for source material but as a citizen looking for a task to be done. You could start at the church and its ongoing ministry to street people.

OUR ANNUAL ‘IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE’ RERUN COUNT: 24, including three colorized showings; plus three showings of Marlo Thomas’s remake It Happened at Christmas. Fortunately, the lucky few who get Summit Cable can see Rope (J. Stewart’s most morally ambiguous role) this month.

‘TIL WE MEET AGAIN in another year (with Seattle’s most accurate In/Out list), remember this holiday entertaining advice courtesy of Fay Weldon in Praxis (1978): “Never feed your family gourmet meals, because they will come to expect them.”

NEW CABINET SUGGESTIONS

• Energy: Who’s got more than Robin Williams?
• National Security Agency: Leo Buscaglia makes everybody feel more secure.
• Housing and Urban Development: Nobody’s created more housing for less money than the punk squatters.
• Human Services: Warren Beatty‘s serviced a lot of humans.
• Nat. Endowment for the Arts: Who knows more about art and endowment than the Men on Film guys?
• Defense: It’d take an army of millions to hold back Chuck D.
• Central Intelligence: Marilyn Von Savant‘s the most intelligent person I know.
• Treasury: The computer phreakers of the Legion of Doom know deeply how “virtual” (imaginary) our money system is.
• Commerce: Nobody in America knows anything about this anymore. Sell the dept. to Matsushita.
• Internal Revenue: We need someone with proven fundraising skills. Jerry Lewis could also work on increasing U.S.-European relations.
• Interior: The Mariners are great at keeping open spaces quiet and underpopulated.
• Agriculture: Orville Reddenbacher looks like he still gets up early to listen to the Farm Report.
• Veterans Affairs: The classic rock DJs know how to appeal to guys who’re still obsessed with our last wartime era.
• Labor: Jane Pauley‘s been through it a few times.
• Education: Spike Lee‘s always ready to teach a thing or two.
• Attorney General: A. Hill would be the obvious applause-getting choice, lest we forget her solid conservative stance. Otherwise, how ’bout someone who knows today’s legal frontiers, like whoever’s defending Negativland from U2’s anti-sampling suit.
• State: Let’s get someone who can bring people together and keep ’em smiling, like Mark De Carlo.
• Transportation: Who shows more love for public transit than George Carlin, the new Conductor on Shining Time Station?

PASSAGE

Ken Siman of Grove Press, on his Drew Friedman cartoon ad appearing in rags like the Village Voice:

“You don’t have to be snooty or dull or pretentious to read books.”

REPORT

After seven grueling months, I finally have a new day job as assistant editor of Mirror, a new local monthly for high school students, distributed only in the schools. If you’re a Clark completist (God knows I’m not), go to a local middle or high school starting Jan. 5. And while you’re there, consider joining a volunteer tutor or mentor program.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Noumenon”

9/92 Misc. Newsletter

(incorporating four Stranger columns)

WHAT’S A FAMILY VALUE?

TO WOODY’S AND MIA’S LAWYERS,

A FEW HUNDRED GRAND IN FEES …

Misc. is sorry to have missed the debut of the Grunge Rock Poets at the Puss Puss Cafe. I gotta see their next event, at least to check out the audience behavior. The thing is, hard rock fans are joyously eager to deride anything with the faintest scent of lameness, while poetry fans fraternally support even the tritest poet in their midst. What would grunge-poetry fans do, hiss at the poets and then give them hugs and handshakes?

CORRECTION: OK, I wrote “effect” last month when I meant to write “affect.” Sue me.

APOLOGY, SORT OF: Some music clubs are still sensitive that I referred to their clientele with the adjective “fratboy” some months back. I’m sorry. Few businesses want to be associated with guys who think “Handicapped Parking” signs are really “BMW Parking” signs, who scream sexist jokes at bartenders from their tables via cellular phones, who insult anybody on the street whose looks they don’t like. Now if fewer universities felt the same.

STRATEGY FOR DEFEAT #3: The Republican convention was like an ad for an impulse product (beer, cigarettes, candy) that offers no claims about the product, only images of its ideal consumers. If you’re not an evangelical, country music-loving, hetero nuclear family (white or white-wannabe), they don’t want to see your face. Not long ago, the Republicans promised to become the new majority party for the next century. Last month’s convention abandoned this ambition, along with any coherent political or economic policy. The only remaining GOP agenda is cultural: the promotion of a British-style class system, with financiers and influence peddlers on top and passive-aggressive fundamentalists beneath. If you don’t belong to those categories, the Repos want nothing to do with you. Like the ’80s left, the ’90s right is obsessed with purifying its own ranks, not with building a sufficient base of support.

ONE LAST CONVENTION ITEM: In the Wall St. Journal, an anonymous Demo complained about the inefficiency of getting around in New York: “If this same convention had been held in Seattle, it would have been a success.”

PUMP IT UP: Years of Benny Hill jokes are fulfilled in Cole of California’s Top Secret swimsuit, with air-filled cups controlled by a discreetly placed pump. According to designer Jacqueline Bronson, it’s “the ’90s way to have cleavage.” The only one I’ve seen looked too small to provide anything practical, like floatation assistance.

MY MIND WANDERS: The Twin Peaks Festival at the Snoqualmie Historic Log Pavilion was free of the geekiness associated with fan movements. It was mainly a standard small-town fair, just the obsessively “normal” display of feigned innocence that David Lynch loves to deconstruct. Lynch loved “the look and the smell” of the North Bend Cinema, the moldy, 400-broken-seat concrete box where the festival ended with the premiere of the TP movie. Having grown up in a Wash. sawmill town, I loved the series as a mostly-realistic portrayal of power and frustration in such a place. The film goes further, abandoning donut fetishes and comedy relief to concentrate on how evil is executed and covered up beneath our region’s shallow protestations of “small town values”.

IT’S THE CHEESIEST!: I reiterate that people who only read the NY Times don’t have a clue about non-bourgeois existence. Take its essay on the “Cheese” movement, the paper’s term for the ’70s bad-art craze (from disco to Karen Carpenter). A third of the verbiage went to the writer musing whether or not “Cheese” was really derived from “cheesy.” (Of course it was. Duh.)

STILL, IT WAS NICE to see the NYT mentioning a big Seattle law firm, Williams, Kastner & Gibbs, running local TV spots that don’t sell consumer services but promote an image to corporate clients. The paper described the ads as “actors impersonating lawyers at work and play — sailing, fishing, water skiing, jogging, reading to their children…Also on display were soaring images of the Pacific Northwest.” Where did the firm go to create this invocation of the stereotype Northwest Lifestyle? That’s right, to a California ad agency.

MALLED DOWN: We’re pleased to see a nice word about the Everett Mall city hall in a NY Times article, which also noted the Happy Church of Denver (an evangelical church which lightened its theology to attract boomer families and uses a smile face instead of a cross for its logo) has taken over an abandoned mall for a sanctuary, office, gym, bowling alley, and rec center. Suburbs still suck, but more varied activities will make them suck a little less.

ALSO ON THE STANDS: Spy, the only magazine that thinks Bret Easton Ellis is still important, ran an esaay on “The Descent of Man,” purporting to show how downhill we’ve gone. One of their examples read: “Culture: Athens…Paris…New York…Seattle.”

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Sabot Times is an occasional four-page newsletter by some disgruntledSeattle Times reporters, vowing to sabotage the corrupt newspaper biz from within. Topics include how and when to fabricate quotes, a defense of “checkbook journalism” (paying interviewees and sources), and the shenanigans of creepy bosses. While the Times is the apparent topic of many items, issue #3 also discusses the Gannett chain’s papers, “where all of the stories (but none of the men) are eight inches long.” $1 cash per copy or $10 per year from “Lois Lane,” 12345 Lake City Way NE, Box #211, Seattle 98125.

A RIOT OF THEIR OWN: When you get covered in the Weekly and USA Today the same week, ya gotta worry about what you’re doing wrong. That’s the situation faced by the Riot Grrrls, a loose-knit network of punk women with its biggest scenes in Oly and D.C. Neither paper really said that this is hardly a new movement; these 22-year-old women embrace something that goes back to the late ’70s with the Slits and Lydia Lunch. I’ve said before that punk’s main difference from most cultural revolutions is that it had women out in front from the start, instead of in an auxiliary or a follow-up (such as the ’70s “women’s music” , a second wave of hippie folk). Also, while some R.G. ‘zines spout the same reverse-sexist slogans as earlier radical feminists, the R.G.’s I’ve met are open to the support of men who want to help change a society that’s hurting all of us. They know that there’s no organized conspiracy of all men to oppress all women (if there is, I’ve never been invited to its meetings). Men tend not to see themselves in solidarity with all other men. That’s why men have these little things called wars.

TRUE CRIME: It’s been reported that the Denny Regrade Crime Prevention Council, dominated by rich condo residents, singled out black music nights as the sole target of club-censorship recommendations, even though more violent acts have occurred at white bars. After living in Belltown a year, I’ve not been personally threatened by blacks but have been by gay-bashing whites. (You don’t have to be gay to be gay-bashed; you just have to look insufficiently macho for a drunken twerp’s taste. You can even be walking with a woman, while the twerp’s in an all-male group.)

MORE TRUE CRIME: New York officials claim that, thanks in part to new police reforms, their town has fewer reported major crimes per capita than Seattle. Don’t scoff! It could happen. NYC just might be safer, but it’ll still feel more dangerous with its noise, summer heat, canyon-like streets and tense people. If a loud residential burglary happens there, 300 people might hear it and think of it as one more thing to hate about New York. The same crime here might be heard by 10 people, and they might think, “that’s weird. That doesn’t happen here in wholesome little Seattle.” Well, it does.

DON’T BANK ON IT: Key Bank is running ads depicting local businesses it claims to have worked with since the ’50s. Those firms really had a long-term banking relationship with Seattle Trust, Key’s first local conquest. But if Bush can claim credit for Gorbachev’s accomplishments, why not this?

RAP SHEET: I’ve said before that hip-hop is the first black-culture invention that white hipsters haven’t been able to convincingly “tribute” (i.e., take over). More proof: The Pillsbury Doughboy wearing dark glasses and rapping, “It’s a pie thing.” Still more proof: the Basic fashion show at Down Under. White guys in baggy candy-color trousers slumped down the butt, a graffiti backdrop, an onstage DJ pretending to spin records and swigging from a quart bottle of malt liquor. Quite silly.

`M’ IS FOR THE MANY THINGS SHE GAVE ME: The personal celebrity of new mom Courtney Love is eclipsing the career of her still-somewhat-obscure band Hole. Now, she’s done her own Vanity Fair full-belly pic (in undies). FutureNew Yorker editor Tina Brown ordered a lit cigarette airbrushed out of the shot, declaring that smoking while pregnant is not role-model behavior. Brown left in text claiming that Love and hubby Kurt Cobain shot up heroin and other drugs during the early months of her fetus’s life. She vehemently denies it. The mag stands by the story.

GOD HELP US IN THE FUTURE: My used-bookstore wanderings have landed Criswell Predicts, a 1968 paperback by the late syndicated prognosticator who also narrated the cult film Plan 9 From Outer Space. Here, he predicts a Soviet leader whose five-year rule will transform the USSR toward free enterprise “with only a few symbols of communism remaining;” the death of another socialist leader and the breakup of his country in a civil war (only he thought it was gonna be Mao); a series of “homosexual cities” (“small, compact, carefully planned areas…complete with stores, churches, bars and restaurants”); bald women on the streets of a major city (he blames it on pollution); contraceptives in the water supply (industrial contaminants might make us sterile, so it could happen); the evacuation of New York City due to floods; and the end of the world in 1999 (just like Nostradamus, Prince, and the evangelists I mentioned last month).

He also makes predictions for each state. “I predict that the state of Washington will become the art center of America, for it is in that state that a Federal Arts Center will be built. Persons showing aptitude in any of the arts — painting, music, dance, writing, acting, etc. — will be allowed to go to this Federal Arts Center and live at government expense to pursue their talents. From this arts center will come road companies of performing artists who will tour the nation.” Hey, Kurt & Courtney: You’re just fulfilling a destiny.

SPURTS: I saw pieces of the Olympics Triplecast in bars. It seemed to be almost worth the money: Coverage from the international-pool video feed, without the network frills. No personality profiles of people who (since they’ve spent every waking hour since age 3 training) have no personalities. Far less jingoism. Non-Americans actually shown winning things. With three channels, you could keep watching Olympics without having to see the nightmare of the “Dream Team” treating the real Olympians like the Harlem Globetrotters’ sham opponents.

MORE SPURTS: I finally got two drawings (shown below) in response to my invitation to speculate about John McCaw, reclusive car-phone magnate and Mariner investor. The contributor on the left, D. K. O. Dog, suggests that more people didn’t enter because “your readers aren’t in the sporting class. I for one could give the proverbial rip if the Seattle Mariners moved away and became the Boise Weiners.” I’ve been noticing an all-too-outspoken hatred of sports among mandatory ideology of conformist hippies. A couple of self-styled “radicals” even told me that all sports fans were “fascists.” The problem with radicals is that they’re too conservative. Bohemian square-bashing is just another form of mindless bigotry. For the record, while I’m no fanatic, I don’t hate sports. Also, I don’t hate fast food. I don’t hate technology. I don’t hate computers. I don’t hate USA Today. I don’t hate TV. I don’t hate MTV. I don’t hate contemporary music. I don’t hate Madonna. I don’t hate rap. I don’t hate men. I don’t hate teenagers. I don’t hate people from small towns. I’m not kidding.

‘TIL NEXT TIME, be sure to see the magnets, hats and cow furniture at Magnetic North on 12th near Denny, furrow your brow at the faux-obscurity of the Bon‘s “98181” billboards (you did know it was them all the time, didn’t you?), and remember: when the far right claims that everybody in the “real” America belongs to it, don’t believe it.

FUN FOR THE WHOLE DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY

What I love/hate about Seafair is what I love/hate about this town in general. I love its unabashed hokiness. I hate its coldness, its Protestant stoicism concealing a face of sheer terror. It started in the early postwar years, when our raucous post-frontier city was trying too hard to prove it had grown up. A civic-development group, Greater Seattle Inc., devised a series of rough-and-tumble events with a veneer of good clean fun. The core events reveal two facets of Seattle: an obsessive blandness on the surface (influenced by the Boeing corporate culture) and repressed frustrations underneath.

Newcomers hate it. It contradicts the laid-back stereotype of the modern Northwest. It’s a throwback to the clumsy, pre-pretension Seattle. It’s also an example of what feminists call “imbalanced male energy.” Officials try to downplay the rowdy parts, especially the Seafair Pirates, costumed mischief-makers, originally recruited from Elks lodges. (In the ’50s the Pirates used to “kidnap” a young woman at their annual landing ceremony, “releasing” her at the end of the afternoon with a big badge that said “I was raped by the Seafair Pirates.”) But there’s still the hydros (250,000 people getting drunk and waiting for a boat to burn). There’s the Blue Angels, loud fast planes that terrify dogs and neighborhoods for Navy recruiting. There are shiploads of sailors on the streets, courtesy of the same Navy that brought you Tailhook. There’s a Friday-night parade before 300,000 spectators who are eager to release their ids but are instead shown marching bands, motorcycle drill teams, corporate floats, and sideshow clowns. Take that many people (many with Thermoses of booze), bore them to tears, and some are bound to end up fighting.

The chief female energy comes from a beauty pageant that was already innocuous, and is now toned down further to avoid charges of sexism. Turning it into an amateur talent show reduces its ability to add any yin to the yang-heavy activities. Compare Seafair to Portland’s more civilized Rose Festival; on the Saturday of the (daytime) main parade, the Oregonian would devote its full front page to a color photo of the Rose Queen and her court, in a healthy respect for traditional feminine power. Or compare it to Mardi Gras, where Catholic passions and Creole sensuality are gleefully celebrated.

Still, I do like the hydros. There’s something noble about big, fat machines of wood and fiberglass, run on obsolete surplus airplane engines, maintained by mechanical geniuses who spend the year scrounging for enough parts to challenge Budweiser’s big bucks. These great manic-depressive machines either bounce above the water at a roaring 150 mph or conk out and die. There’s a lesson for us all in there.

PASSAGE

Jennifer Finch of L7, quoted at “Endfest” on Seattle rockers’ 12-year loyalty to plaid flannel shirts: “It’s a sad state of affairs when you can’t tell the lumberjacks from the rockers.”

WORD-O-MONTH

“Crenellated”

11/91 Misc. Newsletter

Clarence the Cross-Eyed Judge

A cool-weather greeting from Misc., the newsletter that couldn’t afford to go to the $295 Nov. 14 touring seminar on Producing, Designing & Writing Newsletters by a Georgia consulting firm. We’ll have to get along without learning what the flyer called “the 27 essential elements of all good newsletter copy which increase readership, credibility and motivation.”

Sign of the Month (taped to the inside of a Magazine City window): “Please don’t support the belief that panhandling supports drug abuse. The fact is, most `homeless’ people don’t have the mental capacities to get on government legal panhandling programs like welfare and food stamps. Besides, it’s your money and your decision right?? O.K. Pal… Thanx, `a homeless person.'” Runner-up (orange posters on Roosevelt Way light poles): “This is a Totem Pole. This pole is talking.”

Ad Slogan of the Month: “Fits like a glove. Feels like love.” The product: Side 1 tennis shoes.

When’s A Critic Not?: P-I art critic Regina Hackett, quick to denounce any work she doesn’t like, provided an unquestioning piece on 9/28 toward controversial writer Andrea Dworkin. You could almost learn that Dworkin has, over the years, denounced all heterosexual intercourse as rape, written novels about totally-good women and totally-bad men (except those who pledge never to confront a woman with an erection), and provided true believers with a drug-free high based on the intense power of martyrdom (a universal feeling, one I’ve experienced through other means and found dangerously addictive). Her most famous assertion is that virtually any image of a woman designed for men or by “male culture,” no matter how sweet/bland/loving/silly, is a statement of violent domination against all women. There is no love in Dworkin’s world, no humanity, only rage. Her only solution to old repressive stereotypes is to create new ones. Anyone who knows anyone who doesn’t conform to her archetypes knows her worldview is incomplete; but unlike many feminists, Dworkin doesn’t appeal to reason but to passion. She exploits a very real pain and fear held by many women. They find a recognition of their pain in her that they don’t find anywhere else. Yet she offers no way out, only the same compulsion for censorship and vindictiveness I abhor in right-wing males. Speaking of whom…

Here Comes the Judge: The Thomas/Hill debate was like a 12-hour episode of LA Law, without the comedy relief. It was exquisite that ABC’s Day 1 coverage led into Family Matters, the sitcom about a teen geek who mistakenly thinks he’s a great lover. The behavior charged to Thomas (and charged to others in acres of local-angle stories) is one aspect of office hustler behavior. From J.R. to self-styled “right-wing rebels,” a strain of American culture has mistaken obnoxious and contemptuous people for “winners.” This attitude embodied most of the Reagan White House except Reagan himself, and was taught in seminars and self-improvement courses (including the book Winning Through Intimidation). Nobody specifically endorsed sexual harassment, but they promoted an atmosphere of arrogance that incubates many expressions of rudeness. (These men also harass subordinate men in non-sexual ways, that feel psychologically like a schoolyard beating, not rape.) This is why I say we’ve got to get rid of all bigotry, all stereotypes, all dehumanizing, or you’re just emulating the behaviors you claim to hate. Oh — and Thomas was wrong when he said, “This isn’t America. This is Kafkaesque.” Don’t be silly: America is Kafkaesque.

Dough Boys: There was a great Times piece 9/29 on corporate debt. The same politicians who used to scream about government deficits arranged the regulatory policies that led to the funny-money economy of the late ’80s. The same business advocates who bitched about public debt eagerly built up the private debt that strangulates the economy. Companies can’t borrow or spend out of the recession; they’re too busy paying for funny-money takeovers. Laid-off workers, consumers who face fewer choices at higher prices, callers cut off because AT&T cut its maintenance budget, bank depositors, and all the rest of us are paying for the games of corporate predators. A UN study shows that this is the first year since ’45 in which world industrial output declined. Some of that is due to the collapse of the Soviet economy (a different type of funny-money), but a lot of it’s due to the damage by the western world’s speculator joy-riders.

One More Reason Not to Live in LA: The music video for Fun Day, shot on the streets of LA, shows Stevie Wonder driving.

Block That Metaphor (Paul Gregutt wine col. in the Weekly, 10/16): “This takes Brusset’s Cairanne to another dimension. It’s like the difference between Star Trek on TV and Star Trek in the movies…a voyage where no palate has gone before. Berries, sage, tannin, and acid explode from a wine that might be described as a zinfandel recruited by Hell’s Angels.”

The Hammering Man Crash: I wasn’t there at the time it fell, but got to see the massive wreckage. One can question whether the Seattle Art Museum should have spent $400G on a clone sculpture from LA, the town whose business is imposing its culture onto the rest of the world. One can question the smug condescension implied in a self-styled tribute to the Working Man at a development that represents the expulsion of working-class labor from downtown, overlooking the waterfront that now represents the expulsion of working-class labor from America. (I’m reminded of Vancouver author Brian Fawcett’s assertion that malls and subdivisions are typically named after the real places they replaced.)

Yes, But Is It Alive?: Belltown Inside Out was billed as a celebration of the “artistic neighborhood;” it turned out more like a wake. The big exhibit was highlighted by people who used to live and/or work downtown, before the arrival of the real estate speculators. The new and “restored” apartments and condos on display were shoddy-to-average pieces of construction, gussied up with thick rugs, goofy light fixtures and weight rooms. The image of an art community is considered important by the developers who are driving out all the artists (one brochure touts “Sidewalk cafes, galleries, pubs, the market and the most vibrant downtown north of San Francisco”), so expect more such events. The area was swarming with cops that Fri. nite, like the tower-dwellers’ political lobby has wanted for some time; only they didn’t seem to be going after any dealers providing pharmaceuticals for the fratboy-disco clientele, but just stood near the gallery spaces looking reassuring. It was also the first weekend of the Donald Young Gallery (nothing from here; nothing anybody here not named Gates can afford) and the last weekend of the Belltown Film Festival at the Rendezvous (a program and space virtually made for one another). The promotion seems to have worked overall; as of the first week of the UW fall quarter, the 1st Ave. bars were overflowing with the fresh faces that make old hippies squirm in disgust/jealousy. Seattle’s various hipster scenes over the decades never fully capitalized on the largest student population west of Austin. It’s happened now, for good or ill.

Yes, But Is It Mutating?: Seattle artist James L. Acord Jr., who makes “nuclear sculpture” using old luminous, uranium-containing Fiesta Ware, received a giant 2-part profile in the 10/14 and 10/21 New Yorkers, with an apparent first for that mag’s editorial pages: a color photo. (Color has occasionally been in New Yorker cartoons in recent years.)

Stages of Life #1: Penta, who as Leslee Swanson sang perky pop tunes with the early-’80s band The Dinette Set, has returned momentarily from NYC with a husband, a baby, and a street-theatre company. The Alchemical Theatre collectively creates and choreographs song/dance/chant/rant rituals to promote nonviolent anarchism. It sounds heavy and didactic, and some of it is; but parts of their work are also stirring indeed, as the seven performers mingle with the audience to seek a world without violence, hate or wasteful work. Their next piece will touch upon “desire, technology, pleasure, and revolution.” Look for it in a Pioneer Square cellar near you, or call 682-9359 or 447-1566 for reservations.

Stages of Life #2: It’s appropriate that Intiman’s Mary Traverse keeps the heroine clothed while stripping her mate during an abstracted simulated-sex scene. Nudity is oft used in film to strip the male hero’s girlfriends while not exposing him. Here, the heroine (who presumably knows what her own body looks like) offers her reaction to seeing a man’s body. Demystifying the male body would be a step toward more sexual honesty. Maybe those “butt shots” in male-action movies are a positive sign.

Cathode Corner: There’s a peculiarity to listening to football on the radio while watching the same game on TV. The TV signal is bounced off a far-away satellite, so we see the outcome of a play a second after it’s told by the radio announcers…. Al Owens is slowly growing into his job as KSTW entertainment reporter. His rhetorical reach still exceeds his grasp, but it’s still entertaining to see what his next overblown comment is going to be.

Fashion Plate of the Month: The woman on Broadway with a denim jacket, painted in blue with the slogan “Read Chomsky.”

Get a Life Dept.: A man was convicted for continually trespassing at Ann Wilson’s house. Maybe he could get hitched up with Letterman’s female trespasser and they could invade each other’s homes and stop bugging others.

Deconstructivism: The Music Hall’s back wall looked forlorn this past month, with a giant Jerry Mouse hole cut into it to let the demolition machines in. A tragedy that should have been permanently prevented years ago, when credit wasn’t as tight.

Steven Jesse Bernstein, 1951-1991: Didn’t really know one another that well (he sometimes confused me with ex-local writer David Humphries). I knew him well enough to chat up with him outside the Bon circa ’82 while waiting for his fiancée to come out. He talked all hopeful about the forthcoming marriage ;watching from inside a bus a minute later, I saw him cussing out loud for her to get out already. I kept wishing his work would show more discipline, more coherence.But people loved his incoherence, and his reality. He appealed to a punkoid audience who play-acted at despair, because he displayed real despair. For more than a decade, he alternated between periods of fpopular readings and periods of withdrawal (including visits to the U Hospital psych ward, to keep his emotions in check and to stay off drugs, a battle he lost months before ending up with a slit throat on Neah Bay).

‘Til our gala year-closing December saga, see the new SoDo Center (the good-ol’ 1st Ave. Sears plus Bizmart discount computers-n’-things), ask the folks putting up Anita Hill for President posters if they remember that she’s still a conservative, and ponder whether it’s time to listen to something else when those Silent Radio electric signs add a “Top 5 World Music LPs” chart.

PASSAGE

Walter Kendrick in The Thrill of Fear: 250 Years of Scary Entertainment: “Our next age is the first in human history that will have all prior ages to gaze upon at will.”

REPORT

Not a single person responded to my request for ideas on turning this into a less unprofitable venture. If I don’t think of something, I may eventually have to reconsider this whole thing (at least in its present form).

My computer novel, The Perfect Couple, is apparently going to be out sometime this winter. More info when I learn it.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Impecunious”

HALLOWEEN IS SUPERFLUOUS WHEN

TODAY’S SCARIEST CREATURES LOOK THE MOST `NORMAL’

12/90 Misc. Newsletter

MILLI VANILLA FRAUDS?

NEXT THEY’LL CLAIM ARCHIE AND JUGHEAD

DIDN’T SING THEIR SONGS!

Here at Misc., we’re holding a public wake for the 50-year-old Lacey V. Murrow Floating Bridge (known henceforth as Galloping Gertie II), which reached the end of its life “span” with a bang, not a whimper. Before the sinking, it had become a mile-long, 40-foot-wide construction/demolition project, strewn with a few scattered cars and Honey Buckets. It already looked like it was about to sink (something Boris S. Wart threatened but never accomplished on the J.P. Patches show). (Event info on other side.)

OUT WITH THE OLD, PLEASE!: Nostalgia is going to be the death of America. Every previous fad added something to the national heritage, for good or ill. Nostalgia only subtracts. It boils the flavor and texture away from our past, leaving a gooey syrup of vague memories. It’s getting harder and harder to find a restaurant, store, or beauty salon where the sound system plays any recent music. “Square” places play top 40 hits of 1956-69. “Hip” places play hipper music from that same era (Muddy Waters instead of the Beatles). Only in designer-jean stores can you hear songs by groups whose members are all still alive. And many of them take pride in never playing a single riff that isn’t reorganized Led Zeppelin.

ADDITIONALLY, I’m finding it harder and harder to explain to people that I’m neither (1) a nostalgist for the hippie era nor (2) a conservative. I regard hippie-era politics as a well-intentioned failure. The progressive, populist side of American leftist tradition got smothered by what we might as well call a bohemian aesthetic. There will never be a real left in this country until it stops depicting all working-class people as “the unwashed masses,” as hicks and flaming fascists. The world is not the few enlightened “Us” vs. all the ignorant “Them.” It’s all of “Us.”

NORTHERN REVOLT: The Canadian subsidiary of Popsicle Brands is under vocal attack from children from Victoria, BC (Mile 0 of the Trans-Canada Highway) to St. John’s, Newfoundland (the other Mile 0). According to the Vancouver Sun, the company promised free Nintendo cartridges to kids sending in 15,000 points’ worth of Popsicle sticks; instead, 10,000 kids got only letters of apology claiming that the company’s stock of 6,000 cartridges had been depleted and that substitute prizes would be given to everybody else sometime next year. Still, maybe the kiddie Canucks ought to be grateful to get even that; in a famous mid-’80s essay, Ontario’s ownMargaret Atwood wrote of growing up with Popsicle labels offering wonderful prizes but bearing the fine-print disclaimer, “Offer Good Only in U.S.”

NO FREUDIAN COMMENTS, PLEASE: A staffer at King County Juvenile Hall reports that teenage boys inside there are signifying their gang membership by affixing Dole or Chiquita banana stickers onto their belts.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Manna Raisins & Oat Bran Flakes cereal, made in Delta, B.C. and “sprouted for life.” It’s “Certified Organic,” but (oddly, considering the name) isn’t certified kosher.

IS NOBODY INCORRUPT?: The Wall St. Journal (10/29) reports that the Doris Day Animal Fund Inc. spends 90 percent of its income on direct-mail fundraising (billed in official budget statements as “public education”).

AD VERBS: Rainier Light’s “It’s R Light” commercials are much better than the previous ad agency’s work, but they’re still hollow compared to the classic Heckler Associates spots, and for the same reason. While the Heckler ads had real fun in promoting the beer as a beverage for enjoyment, both of its successor agencies fell into the trap of selling a target audience on an image of itself, with the product merely a supporting player in the drama.

NO MORE FUR AT NORDSTROM: This is how an industry dies, when the first PR-conscious retailer proudly capitulates to public furor (and flat market shares). But fur is more than an inefficient source of outerwear; it’s one reason we’re here. The trapping of wild fur animals was the first white industry in the Northwest. The Hudson’s Bay Co. and others subsidized many of the first non-military settlements in Washington Territory. They were supported by sales to the society ladies of Europe, whose essential financial contribution was totally ignored in last year’s books on women in Northwest history.

SAY IT AIN’T SO RUMOR OF THE MONTH: Is the Comet Tavern going to be upscaled?

(latter-day note: It wasn’t.)

HEADLINE OF THE MONTH (Times, 11/14): “A story of 4 kids and how they died/`Anybody who has a teen-ager will related to this’ tale of tragedy.” Now that’s headline writing in the classic manner, almost Victorian in its cadence.

LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH: It’s a shame that The Facts has such ugly design and typography, because some truly eloquent African-American voices may be found there. For example, hear the bitter “Life Among the Thorns” edition of F. Justina Nubay’s column “Say It With Flowers”: “I wholeheartedly believe that Thanksgiving should continue to be the only day when public spirited people ply the hungry with turkeys, pies, and other filling foods, enough to last them the entire year. Like the howling hyena, the hungry and the homeless, for the time remaining, should continue to gorge themselves on carrion and roam their jungles in wild anguish.”…At Cause is a Christian paper with a difference: A Reubenesque nude drawing on the front page, an essay titled “Party On!” saying it’s OK for Christians to “have exhilaration, ecstasy, bliss” — including being gay and/or transvestite if they wish to be so. (Editor M.F. Whealen seems to be an ex-Scientologist, from the use of certain catch phrases.)…The Oregon-based Sinsemilla Tipsmagazine folds after 10 years. Publishers blame the War on Drugs, which they claim has made people scared to sell or advertise in the mag.

CATHODE CORNER: Does the rash of inside jokes on The Simpsons (Marge’s surprise at “a Simpson on a T-shirt,” the on-air homage to Bart’s Macy parade balloon, his chalkboard message “I am not a 32-year-old woman”) mean the show has passed its peak?…A producer has paid millions for all rights to The Ed Sullivan Show; plans to release several video compilations, including the censored TV debuts by famous rockers and a tape of 50 different people doing the Twist. But will they ever include the peg-legged tap dancer, or the National Model Race Car Championship? (A licensed version of Sullivan’s most popular feature, the puppet mouse Topo Gigio, now appears in Spanish on cable’s Univision.)

KRIME KORNER: A Seattle man was fatally shot by an unlicensed Safeway security guard for allegedly pocketing a pack of cigarettes. Now will you listen to me about the dangers of smoking?… The Martinsburg, W.Va. city council plans to require panhandlers to buy $25 licenses or face jail terms. But how do you get the money to tell people you don’t have any money?

MALLED DOWN: The National Endowment for the Arts gave a $50,000 grant (with a 2/1 matching requirement) to the Rouse Co. to sponsor non-threatening art programs in shopping centers (including Westlake Center). Now we know the true priorities of new NEA head John Frohnmayer. He’s using “bringing art to the people” and corporate matching-fund requirements as ways of rewarding works acceptable to business/marketing interests.

PRESSED: Our news media, presuming us all to be beer-swilling xenophobes, devoted their attention on 11/22-23 to how nothing had really happened in the Persian Gulf lately, and only cursorily mentioned that the last major European dictator fell from power. The beginning of the end might have been foretold in an item from USA Today (11/12): “Richard Needham, British minister for Northern Ireland, apologized for calling Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher a “cow” during a car-phone call to his wife. A paramilitary group in Northern Ireland picked up the call on a radio monitor and sent a recording of it to a news agency.”…What they didn’t tell you about the female, Socialist, pro-contraception Irish president is that the position is largely ceremonial, a sort of elected king. She will be less able to take political stances than when she was in the Irish senate.

SECTION BEE: The Killer Bees may finally be on our way! (Times, 11/3) It turns out that they’re not really that much more vicious to humans, but they are less tameable and they do drive out domesticated breeds.

XMAS GIFT OF THE YEAR: The Dance Aerobics game cartridge by our Redmond neighbors at Nintendo. You can vicariously experience the self-punishment and body-consciousness of aerobics without having to actually do the exercises. It’s one of only two games I’ve seen with a female lead character…. The Trivial Pursuit ’80s Edition is historically inaccurate. It’s got a question about Saturday Night Live’s Mr. Bill, who was on from ’77 to ’80….Lynnwood’s Pacific Trading Cards is drawing national attention for itsAndy Griffith Show card set….Trump: The Game (“It’s Whether You Win”) was marked down from $39.95 to $19.90….Seattle’sGenerra has a “Men’s Collective” shirt line, for junior execs old enough to remember their student-Maoist pasts (they’re even made in the PRC!).

MORE VEGETARIANS IN LEATHER: The Vancouver rockmag Discorder sez the next big thing’s “straight-edge rock,” punk-like bands (including Seattle’s Undertow) who belong to the Hare Krishna movement. Their premise: Just as punk stripped rock of impurities and distractions, so should we do with our lives.

PHILM PHIRE: Remains from the blaze at Universal Studios (soon to be owned by Panasonic) soon became a major attraction on the Universal Tour; the simulated “burning building” attraction was temporarily closed. The sale of Universal/MCA leaves Time Warner as the last major US-owned record company. It also brings Japanese money into US publishing (MCA owns Putnam, Berkley and Ace).

NOT IN STORE: You won’t get to shop this Xmas at B.N. Genius, that land of expensive electronic playthings that you’d never buy but always loved to play with in the store. Meanwhile, the end of the Northgate Woolworth leaves only the downtown store as an inexpensive source for hats, socks, and hobby supplies, not to mention the long shelf of cheesy crossword magazines. (It’s also one of the last places still selling Clark candy bars.)

PICK A PEC: The 11/24 Newsweek (the same issue with the essay that claimed that “Cynicism is alien to America”) reported that trendy LA men are now getting silicone implants to make their upper bodies look more muscular. Look dudes, this recent interest in “men reclaiming the feminine side of their natures” ought to mean taking up the smart things about womanhood; just as women’s assertiveness training generally excludes lessons in beer-swilling or sexual harassment.

WE’LL TALK AGAIN in the palindromic year of 1991 (that year which picky purists insist is the real start of the decade), when I’ll count exactly how many times you could have seen It’s A Wonderful Life this holiday season. Until then, watch the astounding South Africa Now 12:30 p.m. Saturdays on KCTS, try to avoid calling the NY Times crossword-help 900 line, appreciate the appropriateness of the big Marilyn Monroe mural inside the Broadway Pay ‘n Save (shouldn’t all drugstores bear the images of people who died from prescription overdoses?), read The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, pray for snow, work for peace, and consider the words of Frank Zappa on unauthorized musical sampling: “It’s just so cheese-oid.”

NOTICE

Sign at the Wood Shop, Pioneer Square: “Authentic East German nutcrackers. Last chance. Buy now or you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

REPORT

It’s been threatened before, but now it’s really gonna happen. I’m holding two live readings this month: Sun., 12/16, at the Two Bells Tavern (10 p.m.) and Wed., 12/19, at the Rendezvous (7 and 9 p.m., with vintage educational films). Each show contains at least some different material; each is a partial benefit for my Perfect Couple novel publication fund. (The novel is still available only on Mac disks, for $6.)

Subscribers may notice a new mailing-label design. My old label program crashed (thank God and Apple I could retrieve the data with the ResEdit program).

WORD-O-MONTH

“Vituperative”

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”

6/90 Misc. Newsletter

Look Out, Tuna Boats!

The Incredible Mr. Limpet’s Got A Gun!

Welcome back one and all to the fourth anniversary (and still ungraduated) edition of Misc., the essential news source for all local“Posties” (a term used in a silly KING report about all of us who are postmodern, posthippie, postpunk, etc.).

UPDATE: The Blue Moon Tavern lives; while the shell of the old Rainbow Tavern next door will be sacrificed to luxury condos. In the midst of all the fuss, developer Scott Soules (a bystander in the dispute) said about the western U-District, “The area is prime for redevelopment.” Tell that to the folks who lost affordable housing to massive apartments supported by steel posts over ugly street-level parking, or to anyone driving on NE 45th during Safeco rush hour.

AXL ROSE MARRIES DON EVERLY’S DAUGHTER: “How we gonna tell your pa?”

LOCAL BOOM #1: The 10th anniversary of Mt. St. Helens was a lot of fun. I know full well that the eruption killed 57 and could have killed hundreds more. Still, seeing the old blast footage on the endless TV retrospectives brought back fond memories of a spectacular, exciting event that affected most everybody here. My memories are also all tied up with general memories of 1980, a year when it began to look like things were getting hopeful in music, in fashion, in world affairs (the start of Solidarity, the fall of Somoza) — until the end of the year brought the rise of Reagan, the fall of Lennon, and all the stupidity that followed. Now it’s another “zero year,” and things are again looking cautiously hopeful in most areas of the world culture (except, for now, in U.S. partisan politics). This time, let’s hope it sticks. (Also loved a Spokane candy firm’s chocolate mountain with a powdered-sugar middle that you can “erupt” with a tiny plastic air pump.)

LOCAL BOOM #2: In 1980, Seattle was still (mistakenly) perceived by many people here and elsewhere as some backwater burg, an overgrown town instead of a city. Some loved the image, some hated it, but few disbelieved it. But in 1990 I’m preparing myself for the expected onslaught of Northwest Chic. Twin Peaks has turned a tiny cafe seen in two minutes of the first show (re-created in an LA studio for later episodes) into a tourist/reporter mecca. It’s going to get worse when the show appears in Europe (at last word, UK documentary crews were still prowling the streets of Dallas for anything reminiscent of J.R.). After that, throw in all the national hype over the local coffee, those flashy local sportswear companies like Generra and Nike, the Nordstrom labor flap that still helps publicize Nordy’s “uniqueness,” the increasing sight of local landmarks in national car commercials, the acclaim over local cartoonists, rappers and thrash-rock bands, and a certain upcoming cable-TV sports event. Responding to this and other activity, Newsweek almost opened a Seattle bureau this past winter, but then decided to save its money. Can such a sparsely-peopled region (only 10 million including B.C.) deserve or survive much more limelight? Well, that’s more people than N.Y.C. and much more than other places that get far more attention in the U.S. as a whole, places like Nicaragua and Israel, so why not let it be our turn (preferably without warfare).

CATHODE CORNER: While the eruption footage on the St. Helens TV specials still looked spectacular, some of the news tape from the weeks before the blast was washed out and bereft of many “scan lines”. Will current video footage last? When high-definition TV comes along, will current video images look so bad in comparison that they’ll be retired from common viewing? If so, that’d make filmed shows and news footage from the ’50s and ’60s eternal but leave taped stuff from the ’70s and ’80s to rot. The Beverly Hillbillies would live forever, while Married With Children becomes a trivia question. Many shows now shot on film are still edited on tape, and would also look decidedly low-definition on HDTV…. Graham Kerr is taping a new syndicated series at KING. The ex-Gallopping Gourmet still lives in Tacoma, across town from the Frugal Gourmet’s house.

AD VERBS: Those spots touting Puget Sound Bank as the last home-owned big bank also display an anti-city bias. The outside-owned banks are represented by urban scenes of LA, SF, Portland and NYC (for Key Bank, actually based in Albany), while the narration about the good home boys accompanies country and suburban scenes….The Home Club hardware warehouse stores are running commercials with The Addams Family theme song (“Yes!, I wish they said, “your house can look just like theirs!”)….Those cable commercials for Mace for women, in tasteful pocketbook-size applicator cans, exploit fear of the opposite-sex, opposite-race stranger in the parking garage (while most violent crimes against women are actually done by acquaintances).

THE FINE PRINT (small sign posted in downtown library): “Title Change: Switch Fund Advisory has become Mutual Fund Investing.“

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Tina is the typewritten/photocopied journal of the Church of Tina Chopp in Bellingham. It’s a variant on the Church of the SubGenius fun and games, built around the “Tina Chopp is God” graffiti that was everywhere in B’ham and Seattle in the early ’80s. Like real churches, it has a detailed philosophy and an us-vs.-them demarcation (in the “Tinite” worldview, to “go Safeway” is to become that most unforgivable of sinners, a suburbanite). Don’t expect any facts about who Tina Chopp is or was (various rumors peg her as a male WWU student’s unsuccessful love pursuit or as a Seattle rock groupie). If you’re really out there, please write and tell us the true story.

Latter-Day Note: On 9/28/99, I received the following email:

the little blurb about The Church finished with the request “If you’re really out there, please write and tell us the true story.”

now i realize that this article was originally written in 1990, and someone may have directed you towards our web site since then (it has been online since 1995), but if not, you can read “the true story” for yourself at http://www.aa.net/cotc/

if you would like any further information about the church, please feel free to write.

Praise Tina Chopp!

Rev. Guido S. DeLuxe, DD, LDD, OGG, OHS, ST, MSU

High Priest – The Church of Tina Chopp

deluxe@marijuana.com — http://www.aa.net/cotc/

CUCKOO’S NEST CUISINE: Officers at the Oregon Correctional Center in Salem can now resume their experiment in disciplining inmates while reducing waste. A state appeals court ruled that Nutra Loaf, baked ground leftovers served to disobedient prisoners, was not cruel or unusual punishment.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Envir-O-Mints are little chocolate mint wafers from Seattle’s Environmental Candy Co. Each mint is stamped with the image of a different endangered species; each wrapper also holds a tiny photo-card of another threatened animal, plus an address on the back for your own Wildlife Action Kit (free) or Endangered Species T-shirt ($3 and 20 wrappers).

IN A JAM: Like most tots in the (then) farm and sawmill town of Marysville, I served my penance as a summer strawberry picker at Biringer Farms, a large operation that sold fresh fruit to traditional wholesale markets. It also had a U-Pick operation and shortcake stands at county fairs. Now my past has risen, in the form of a Biringer store and shortcake stand in the Pike Place Market. Besides breakfasts and desserts (with local fruit when in season), it sells its own new line of gourmet jams, fruit taffy, honey, tea, cocoa, dessert pasta, rum cake, and “Ecstasy” ice cream toppings. They package many of the items in gift sets; they take mail, phone, and fax orders. I know they had to do something like this or lose the farm to tract houses. Still, there’s an ol’ loss-O-innocence about it all, like a nice homely old building “restored” with gaudy paint.

PHILM PHACTS: The most belovedly odd hit of this year’s Seattle Int’l Film Festival could be The Documentator, a 3.5-hour Hungarian orgy of re-cut video (action and sleaze films, TV commercials, socialist economic speeches), interspersed with the story of three people illegally amassing western currency by selling pirated videocassettes. This decidedly peculiar attraction sold out (though several dozen left the Harvard Exit at the start of hour 3).

SONIC DOOM?: It’s quite appropriate that Barry Ackerly’s proposed basketball arena, for which city taxpayers would directly and indirectly bribe him not to move the Sonics, is on the site of a former railroad yard, near the old terminus of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific. These and other lines received massive tracts of free land by the U.S. government and decades of virtual land-transportation monopoly in their operating regions, in return for “opening” the American west to white settlement.

BORN TO HUSTLE: Convicted swindler Ivan Boesky has deducted his fines from his income tax, and even bribed fellow prisoners to do his laundry. Did he ever see the last scene ofThe Producers ?

CENSORY OVERLOAD: Dennis Miller got to perform at the White House, but all his jokes were pre-screened for questionable content (can’t have any obscenities in earshot while you’re working on strengthening our friendship with the Chinese government). Locally, the King County Arts Commission put part of an exhibit in its upstairs Smith Tower gallery behind black butcher paper, later replacing that with a partition. The hazardous image? A male nude.

O NO CANADA!: My favorite foreign country may be irreversibly headed toward dissolution, yet the U.S. media virtually ignore it. If the confederation fails, will it be considered a sign of the inherent weakness of the North American capitalist system?…In lighter news, the new Toronto Skydome has hotel rooms overlooking the stadium, where one guest couple made their own show with the curtains wide open during a Blue Jays/M’s game.

UNTIL OUR NEXT EXCITING CHAPTER, get all the plastic postage from cash machines that you can (bound to be a collector’s item), avoid the espresso bar at University Ford (inferior lattes fail to protect against thermal breakdown of viscosity), get those neato Graffiti Gear jackets that you can decorated with marking pens then wash clear, see the Russian constructivist art at the Henry Gallery, and join me in celebrating the 25th birthday of the Lava Lamp.

PASSAGE

Author-social critic Barbara Ehrenreich (Fear of Falling ) in New York mag: “I left my exercise session after I’d only done one leg. I risked asymmetry.”

HYPE

The Weekly seems to like Misc. “The best one-page read in town,” sez their Bruce Barcott. All Weekly readers are invited to subscribe to Misc. this month for $6 and get a bonus sample from my forthcoming novel. Age, height, race not important.

WORD OF THE MONTH

“Optative”

HOW OFFICIAL ARE YOU?

In order to be a true Goodwill Games fan,

you must consume as many Official Products and Services as you can.

Use this handy checklist.

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”