There was a time when the governor’s mansion in this state was in the hands of a “centrist” Republican named Dan Evans.

He was followed by Dixy Lee Ray, a right-winger who ran under a Democratic Party flag-of-convenience. She was followed by John Spellman, another corporate Republican.

Then came Booth Gardner.

He ran in 1984. If you recall, that was the time of Ronald Reagan’s re-coronation (and its accompanying royal jubilee, the L.A. Olympics).

He’d been a state legislator and Pierce County Executive. But his statewide rep was relatively obscure.

He also had the Republican establishment (at the start of its drift into far-right insanity) going against him fierce. (One particularly ludicrous TV attack ad had a heavy-set actor playing a cigar-chomping “big union boss” who’s “got this Gardner guy right in our pocket.”)

What he had going for him was family (Weyerhaeuser family) money and connections, and access to Sen. Henry M. Jackson’s donor/organizer mailing list.

And he had the support of just enough “swing” voters who admired Reagan’s national public image but were less enamored toward Spellman.

Gardner beat Spellman. The Washington governorship has been in Democratic hands ever since.

That’s not to say it’s been easy to lead this state, then or now.

Entrenched interests, inter-regional feuds, the unelected would-be dictatorship of Tim Eyman, our regressive but hard-as-hell-to-change tax system, have all held back the pace of reform (now more desperately needed than ever).

But with Gardner, it all at least seemed possible.

•

Some politicians retire to the golf course. Others find new causes, new campaigns.

In Gardner’s case, his encore on the public stage was thrust upon him, with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease just a year after the end of his second term.

As his appearance and health deteriorated (to the point that he had to tell people, “I used to be governor of the state of Washington”), he became an increasingly outspoken advocate for the rights of the terminally ill.

In 2008 he campaigned for a (successful) “death with dignity” initiative.

He took his crusade national with an Oscar-nominated documentary short, The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner. (You can watch part of it at this link.)

• Sound-effect words in comics: to ugly-art maestro (and great Washingtonian) Basil Wolverton, they were an art form all their own.
• The State Legislature could help save Metro Transit. But will it?
• A Chinese-American family gave a lot of Chinese robes and other objects to the Tacoma Art Museum, hoping they would be a permanent reminder of our region’s ugly racial history. Decades later, the museum’s current management decides to auction them off out-of-state. However, the story’s even more complicated.
• Mr. Kim Thompson, one of by ex-bosses at Fantagraphics, has lung cancer.
• The Belltown Business Association’s got a lovely virtual tour of Belltown’s history.
• It’ll take years to even start getting nuke waste out of Hanford’s leaking tanks. And the sequester’s just slowing the task down a little more.
• As T-Mobile prepares to digest MetroPCS, the layoffs arrive. Lots of ’em.
• First, the AOL/Time Warner corporate marriage collapsed. Now, Time Warner itself is splitting up, with the Time Inc. magazines and associated properties sent to fend for themselves.
• 3D printing has come to custom fashion, of the purportedly “sexy” variety.
• Ed Wood’s “lost” last film was found this past autumn, in the inventory of a defunct Vancouver porno theater!
• The “other guy” in the Bill and Ted movies is now a documentary director. (I know, just like anybody with a smartphone-cam these days.)
• Paul Krugman says progressives shouldn’t worry so much about appearing “respectable.”

scarfolk.blogspot.co.uk

• Some clever Brits have devised “Scarfolk,” a blog of made-up historical artifacts from a fictional (and dreary as hell) English town. Along the way, they have a lot of fun with ’60s-’70s UK graphic design.
• An “alternative taxidermy” artist from Tacoma will appear on a reality-TV show on Thursday evening.
• Also on Thursday, a Belltown boudoir-photography studio’s holding a “donate a bra” night to help clothe the needy.
• The next big Seattle Schools scandal: alleged racial double standards in student discipline.
• The secret ingredient of Seattle hiphop just might be Pho.
• Local stoners might want to drag out their right-wing grandparents’ “Get US Out of the UN” signs.
• Another year, another threat of no Fourth of July fireworks unless big donations pour in.
• Perhaps 60 Everett Herald print/distro workers will lose their jobs as Sound Publishing (which already has its own Everett printing plant) takes over the paper.
• The Atlantic, supposedly one of the “success stories” of legacy print media in the Internet age, is not above asking writers to work for free.
• Staged readings from Lolita are in hot water in Russia, thanks to the Putin regime’s calculated drive to demonize liberals and Westerners “for the benefit of a poorer, older, more rural voter base.” Hmm, that sounds familiar….
• It’s a “golden age for corporate profits.” Just not for the rest of us.
• Get ready for North Pole ship crossings, thanks to that climate change that billionaires pay Republicans to claim doesn’t exist.
• Australia’s “multiethnic” TV channel goes to the lands surrounding the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and finds tales of horror and survival.
• Peggy Orenstein notes that the “Disney Princess” characters, and their counterparts in other fictional universes, aren’t really about waiting for a prince as they are about vanity and shopping:

No, today’s princess is not about romance: it’s more about entitlement. I call it “girlz power” because when you see that “z” (as in Bratz, Moxie Girlz, Ty Girlz, Disney Girlz) you know you’ve got trouble. Girlz power sells self-absorption as the equivalent of self confidence and tells girls that female empowerment, identity, independence should be expressed through narcissism and commercialism.

boingboing.net

• Seattle artist Shawn (“Beatkit”) Wolfe’s simple absurdist gag about tech product hype, the “RemoverInstaller,” is 20 years old and still going strong in a new “anniversary edition.”
• Alden Mason, 1919-2013: The master Northwest landscape painter deftly switched to beautiful yet playful abstractions, then again to cartoony acrylic works that fit right in with the “pop surrealist” movement (yes, that term again). The point is, he kept looking for something new to do, and always did it well.
• Even before it’s digested Seattle Weekly, the Canadian-owned Sound Publishing has bitten off its biggest local media morsel yet, acquiring the Everett Herald from the Washington Post Co. Not included in the sale are the Herald’s building or its printing plant. (Sound already has a plant in Everett that prints its assorted suburban and small-town weeklies.) The Seattle Times now runs the Herald’s home-delivery operation.
• Surprising nobody, Chris Hansen’s group has officially applied to the NBA to move the Sacramento Kings (which Hansen’s group has already applied to buy) to Seattle.
• REI boss Sally Jewell is, barring Republican obstruction tactics, the next Secretary of the Interior.
• City Councilmember Sally Clark participated in the “One Night Count” of Seattle’s homeless. Her team found a dead woman.
• Does everybody on a gluten free diet really need to be?
• Budapest’s current nightlife fad, that of “ruin pubs,” is threatened both by upscale development and by commercialized fake ruins.
• The Society of Illustrators thought it got a good deal when it contracted the printing of its latest Annual of American Illustration to a Chinese printer. That was until the plant refused to print a page containing an unflattering caricature of Mao. The society got its book copies with a blank page where that piece was supposed to be. It was later printed separately and hand-inserted into each copy.

alex nabaum’s 'the evolution of china'

seattlestairwaywalks.com

• You know I love walking and Seattle and Walking Seattle. So I support “Stairway Walks Day” this Saturday.
• There’s something called “The HUB in Seattle.” It’s a new corporate meeting center in the old Masins furniture store in Pioneer Square. Whoever gave it that name can’t possibly be a UW alum.
• It is possible for a downtown parking garage to lose money. Especially, apparently, when it’s City-owned.
• Reviews of the Super Blackout Bowl range from the usual rants by sports-hating hippies to the usual highlight-hype. Will Leitch, though, has a good piece about CBS’s announcers and their failure in the face of daunting circumstances.
• Was Ed Koch gay? We still don’t know for sure.
• Mother Jones has a vast, yet probably still incomplete, chart of looney Obama conspiracy theories.
• “Freaky” body modifications should not be done without sterile instruments and the supervision of trained professionals. This includes implanting dice in one’s penis, an apparent fad among Australian prisoners.
• MySpace’s latest site redesign seems to have evaporated members’ fan lists. The company’s final, fatal mistake?
• Imagine “Super WiFi,” available nationwide (even in Eastern Washington?), offering beyond-broadband speeds and fancy new services, open to the general public, for free. Some Federal officials believe this is possible, for a modest investment, over existing FCC-controlled bandwidth.

via archive.org

• The collected entries of a New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest entrant who always enters the same caption: “Christ, what an asshole.”
• Seahawks fans still love their team after that last-minute win that turned into a last-half-minute loss, and rightfully so.
• First United Methodist Church, which sold its landmark downtown building to speculators, was and is a “welcoming congregation” (i.e. they like the gays). City Church, which just moved into the Methodists’ ex-building: not so much.
• Can any old buildings in South Lake Union be saved from high-rises?
• What would/will rising sea levels due to Seattle? Let’s just say you can make that down payment on waterfront property in High Point.
• Booze at the movies: because theater audiences just aren’t noisy enough.
• The American software mogul who was (and still is) wanted by police in connection to a Belize murder investigation has surfaced in Portland.
• It turns out Lance Armstrong’s cancer charity was less about research and more about raising money to raise money, and to promote Armstrong’s own celebrity. (I.e., just like “Komen for the Cure.”)
• Speaking of which, Texas Monthly magazine gave Armstrong a “Bum Steer Award.” This is an annual “honor” bestowed by the mag since 2001, and is not a snarky comment on Armstrong’s anatomical condition.
• More U.S. troops kill themselves than are being killed in combat.
• A top legislative priority in states with Republican-monopoly governments: making those states’ tax systems as unfair as they can.
• And in case you missed (trucked-in) “Snow Day” at Seattle Center, here come the pix.

seattlerex.com

nanowrimo.org

I participated in National Novel Writing Month again this year. Came out of it with most of the first draft of something I’m tentatively calling Horizontal Hold: A Novel About Love & Television. More details as I come closer to making it presentable.

• There’s one of them online petition thangs out to try to persuade the CBS Radio Stations Group to keep KPTK-AM and its “Progressive Talk” format on the air.
• Bruce Pavitt’s put out an Apple “iBook” about the Nirvana/Mudhoney/TAD tour of Europe in 1989. And he’s talking about how he sold Sub Pop as a brand signifying coolness to two continents.
• The Seattle branch of Gilda’s Club is keeping its name. This is news because other outlets of the drop-in cancer support organization aren’t keeping the name. One reason: some young adults these days don’t remember who Gilda Radner was. That’s almost as sad as cancer itself.
• Daily Kos contributor “MinistryOfTruth” has some advice for Republicans trying to rebuild their party: “Don’t have a base of idiots.”
• Steve Fraser at TruthOut, meanwhile, wishes to remind you that the so-called “fiscal cliff” is, like so much else, a political invention.
• The business-press buzzword of the month: “Insourcing.” GE’s restarting work in some previously abandoned appliance factory buildings; and Apple’s assembling some iMacs in the U.S. with plans to expand. Just don’t expect this to be the one answer to the unemployment crisis. Factory work these days is so automated, and CAD/CAM design work can make it so efficient, that there’s not that much labor in the cost of a lot of stuff, no matter where it’s made.
• Finally, let’s all reflect (and refract) in the glory that was gay marriage license midnight madness at the Console Color TV Building (King County Admin) downtown, Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Actual gay weddings start Sunday.

kirotv.com

priscilla long, via the american scholar

• Priscilla Long takes you on a geological tour of North America without leaving downtown Seattle, simply by exploring the marble and other stone claddings on our office buildings.
• John Koster, a Republican candidate for the U.S. House in Washington’s revamped First District, says he’d oppose abortions even in cases of “the rape thing.”
• An out-of-state right-wing “SuperPAC” is sinking millions into sleazy attack ads on behalf of Reagan Dunn’s campaign for state attorney general. The Politico site seems to approve.
• When I first heard about this issue, I said I understood. I told the guy I preferred Thelonius Monk myself. Then he told me he was really criticizing a “coal train.”
• When is a nude woman in public not cool? When she punches and strikes a chair at a (clothed) elderly woman in the same apartment building.
• Thankfully, Puyallup’s organized diaper theft ring has been caught.
• As the World’s Fair anniversary winds to a close, Jon Talton wonders whether Seattle can hold its own economically in a 2062 world that could be dominated by global “alpha cities.”
• A self-proclaimed conservative Christian from Tacoma pretended to be gay for a year. Insights on humanity and understanding ensued.
• Did all those hours upon hours of “parka boy” standups by cable TV news reporters help anyone understand Hurricane Sandy’s impact? Probably not.
• David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon’s Monday night shows, performed without studio audiences, may be the greatest non-election, non-hurricane TV events of the year.
• Yes, the polling companies are still under-sampling people who only have cell phones, not landlines. The probable result: a supposedly “close race” that may really be more Obama-leaning than it appears.
• Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson reminds you that Mitt Romney really is as awful and amoral as they say he is; while HuffPost’s Michelangelo Signorile’s dug up some video of Romney spewing the most hateful anti-gay bigotry. And Christina D’Angelo claims the GOP’s devolution into a home for virulent racists is like “lynching Lincoln.”
• New Yorker book critic Arthur Krystal attempts to claim the superiority of “literary fiction” above so-called “genre fiction.” As if highbrow weren’t really just another genre.
• Chris Wade at Slate wants you to learn to appreciate the Speed Racer movie.
• Disney, having already digested ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Marvel, and the Muppets, is now taking over LucasFilm and the Star Wars properties. Immediately, a new Star Wars feature film is being planned. What I want to see is a mashup concept involving all these “universes.” Bonus points if you write this as a story for a Lifetime TV movie (half-owned by Disney).

amidst-the-everyday.com

“Amidst the Everyday,” a project by photographers-artists Aaron Asis and Dan Hawkins, aims to reveal “elements of the unseen urban environment.” You go to places around town, scan QR codes (etched in wood!) at various buildings, and receive images of their hidden treasures. (Above, one of the unoccupied-for-decades upper floors of the Eitel Building at Second and Pike.)

• I’m not disillusioned by the news of a potential sitcom that would carry the title Smells Like Teen Spirit. (The show concept sounds more like a ripoff of Family Ties, which is also something we don’t need.) However, I am at least a little disillusioned by the news of a potential Kurt and Courtney stage musical, which would be licensed by Courtney Love via Britney Spears’ estranged ex-manager.
• Lester Smith, 1919-2012: The Mariners’ original principal owner had, in partnership with Hollywood star Danny Kaye, a number of business endeavors. They ranged from rock-concert promotion to direct-mail marketing. But Smith (or Kaye-Smith) will always be legendary for stewarding KJR-AM during its 1955-80 golden age as Seattle’s Top 40 (or “Fab 50”) powerhouse.
• The Seattle Times‘ free ads for Rob McKenna caught the LA Times‘ attention; not to mention a less-than-kind portrayal in the SeaTimes‘ own “Truth Needle” department.
• The next step up from bicycle lanes: physically separated “bike tracks.”
• Knute Berger reiterates what I’ve been saying about the waterfront development scheme. Let’s not let it be “sanitized by good intentions.”
• Dominic Holden would like you to know the biggest reason for legalizing pot. It isn’t for the stoners (and it sure ain’t to shut up the stoner evangelists, which had been my reason).
• Joe Copeland takes up the continuing legacy of Floyd Schmoe, one of the greatest people I ever met, leader of Seattle’s Quakers and hands-on advocate for peace and reconciliation.
• The next hurdle toward getting the NBA back in Seattle has been overcome. That hurdle is Commissioner David Stern, whose butt will be out of that particular chair by the end of next season.
• A major casual-games convention may be leaving Seattle.
• UK film blogger Petra Davis looks back admiringly at the still-underrated Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, 20 years old this year…
• …and, with the winding down of the World’s Fair semi-centennial, our pal Jim Demetre has some kind words for the (mostly justifiably) forgotten It Happened at the World’s Fair.
• In other film news, the Columbia City Cinema is being reopened (yay!). The new owner has repaired all the previous owner’s not-up-to-code “renovations.”
• Note to Amazon Kindle users: Buy all your e-books while you’re physically in the same country, lest you be targeted as a Terms of Service violator.
• Today’s dire-threat-to-America’s-youth story comes to you from a California high school where boys and girls alike are invited to join a “fantasy slut league.”
• Penguin and Random House are in merger talks. This is bad news, since book publishing is one of those industries that’s too consolidated already.
• Today’s lesson in the folly of products marketed as “For Women” is brought to you by Fujitsu and its “Floral Kiss” brand laptop PC.
• Among all the slimy, sociopathic, and bigoted things Republicans are saying and doing these days, add this overt racism by Sarah Palin.
• Pseudonymous Daily Kos diarist “bayushisan” wishes gamer culture had fewer macho jerks in it. (The same, of course, can be said about athiests and “skeptics,” online comment threads, U.S. politics, and even atheists and “skeptics”.)
• Paul Karr loathes the dot-commers’ worship of “disruption” as a sacred concept, and the Ayn Randian me-first-ism behind it.
• The BBC notes that “creativity is often intertwined with mental illness“…
• …and Simon Reynolds disses the “modern dismissal of genius” in today’s “age of the remix.”
• Earthquakes can’t be predicted. That hasn’t stopped a court in Italy from convicting seven scientists who failed to do so.
• Community organizer “B Loewe” believes you should not get into lefty causes to feel good about yourself, and you shouldn’t try to be your own, or your only, emotional “caregiver.” Instead, you’re to practice prosocial interdependence as both ideology and a way of life.
• Someone says something nice about so-called “hipsters!” They’re credited with helping bring back Detroit (the place, not the car companies).

kurzweilai.net

• Did the U.S. Air Force really think up plans for a supersonic flying saucer in the 1950s? And would it have been practical (i.e., would it fly)?
• What does it mean to be “indie rock royalty” these days? It means you can play Radio City Music Hall and still have to share a studio apartment. Speaking of which….
• KEXP’s pledge-drive playlist of the most important records of the past 40 years is essentially a canon of “indie” music classics, plus a few “mainstream” mentors. Nevermind predictably tops the listener survey. The list is top-heavy with the Pixies, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., New Order, Arcade Fire, etc. etc. The list’s only surprise is its paucity of female artists. The top woman-fronted act, the Pretenders, appears at spot #51.
• A HuffPost blogger disparages Vancouver as “No Fun City,” a place where nightlife is essentially nonexistent. I can recall ages ago when I looked up to Van as having the bars and live-music venues Seattle could only dream of having. Since then, Seattle has vastly changed while Van has, if anything, become more moribund.
• The Olympic Peninsula’s northwest tip has no teen vampires, but it is an ideal spot to measure climate change with solid empirical data.
• Even “underground food market” dining operations (one-night-only food courts) have to have health permits.
• Nintendo’s next game machine will be a tablet. It will also stream video content to TVs. It could be big.
• Amazon’s paying a cool billion to buy the Paul Allen-owned buildings it occupies in South Lake Union.
• Stalking and harassing apartment residents is no way to sell cable TV.
• Seattle’s next would-be mega-developers? The Bill Pierre car-selling family.
• Can the waterfront tunnel be built without massive city subsidies (that the city really doesn’t want to pay)?
• Stranger staffer Kelly O tells a San Francisco website “12 Things You Should Know About Seattle.” These things include (too much) pot, (endangered) graffiti murals, and (yummy) street hot dogs.
• White cops shooting at nonwhite civilians with little or no true justification: it’s not just happening here.
• I had a boring and/or miserable time in the Boy Scouts. But, as we’re all learning, it could have been worse. Much, much worse.
• CNN contributor Simon Hooper asks if we can finally get over Beatles (and James Bond) nostalgia now.
• A self-described “middle aged punk” gives forth a back-in-my-day-sonny lament, nostalgizing about getting beaten up by jocks.
• Don’t look now, but Walmart workers are trying to organize.
• Having solved all of the world’s other problems, 60 Minutes sics its fangs on the designer-eyeglass-frame monopoly.
• Today in right-wing sleaze, two GOP senators are asking defense contractors to fire thousands of people just to make Obama look bad; while Arizona is suppressing the votes of up to 200,000 Latino-descent citizens in the name of “cracking down on illegals.” Also, a Legislative candidate in Arkansas says parents should be allowed to put “rebellious children” to death.
• The University of Idaho’s getting the world’s biggest collection of historic opium pipes. Hey, you gotta have something to do out there.
• Forbes contributor Steve Cooper believes content-based websites could make more money by directly selling stuff on their sites, instead of running low-profit ads for other companies selling stuff. That biz model might work for sites focused on entertainment or lifestyle topics (music, food, bridal, travel, etc.). For local newspapers’ sites, it’d be a tougher fit.
• Don’t look now, but rain (remember that?) might finally appear locally later this week.

from the book 'mail order mysteries' via laughingsquid.com

• Oh we so wanted to believe the miracle products advertised in comic books really worked as advertised (or at least were as cool as the ads claimed).
• I might be in the minority even among local fans, but I believe the replacement refs made the right call in awarding Monday night’s final play (and hence the game) to the Seahawks.
• No, the Edmonton Oilers hockey team isn’t ever going to move to Seattle. The local visit by Oilers execs is only an exercise in “arena blackmail” toward Edmonton politicos.
• David Goldstein puts the blame for Washington’s regressive tax structure on a state Supreme Court ruling back in 1933.
• Pundits look at Washington state’s political “Cascade curtain.” Micah Cohen at the NYT‘s FiveThirtyEight sees the west/east divide in terms of women’s rights issues…
• …while Eli Sanders dissects how, in the last State Supreme Court race, an unqualified white candidate beat a highly qualified Hispanic candidate in Eastern Washington, even in 40-percent-Hispanic areas.
• Speaking of Eastern Washington, those bigass, electricity-hungry “server farm” computer installations there might not employ very many people once they’re built, but they still demand political clout.
• A judge refused to throw out a class-action suit by female Costco employees, alleging discrimination in promotions.
• TV ads for the gay marriage referendum don’t show any actual gay people. I’m reminded of the 1998 initiative to end affirmative action in the state. The anti-initiative ads showed, as their examples of affirmative action’s needy beneficiaries, only white little girls. The tactic didn’t work.
• The good folks at Seattle Indian Health Services claim the city, led by councilmember Nick Licata, is trying to take over their agency so it can sell the land on which their offices sit to a private developer.
• A national church mag calls Seattle’s own Mars Hill Church (home of “hip” misogyny/homophobia) America’s third fastest-growing church.
• The Northwest’s oil refining capital could also host the nation’s biggest bottled-water plant. What could possibly go wrong?
• The airline now calling itself United (a shotgun marriage of the original UAL with Continental) has posted a nice time lapse video of a Boeing 787 being put together. It’s enough to warm this Snohomish County guy’s heart.
• Andy Williams, 1928-2012: The seemingly ageless singer/TV host began as a child in a singing-brothers act, then jump-started the career of a similar act (the Osmonds). He was a quintessential icon of the square side of the 1960s, smooth and slick and pleasant and never ruffled. He was one of those personalities who seemed to inhabit a world of serenity that flowed all around him; which made his latter-day emergence as a right wingnut even stranger.
• Ben Adler at the Nation says the truly crazy wingnut conspiracy theories and insult “jokes” don’t start on radio or Fox “News”, but at obscure blogs and e-mail lists.
• Today’s Romney/Ryan bashings: Richard Eskow believes Ryan still believes his former Ayn Randian denunciations of Medicare and Social Security. Florida Republicans are up to their old voter-suppression tricks. Greg Palast claims Karl Rove’s ol’ election-stealing dirty tricks operations are still up and running. And Jonathan Chiat visits some extremely rich people who imagine themselves to be America’s most “persecuted” and overtaxed sector.
• Economic philosopher Angus Sibley has a highly lucid, step-by-step breakdown of what’s wrong with libertarian economics.
• If outsource manufacturers like Foxconn in China keep up their reputation for workplace horridness, western tech-hardware companies just might have to return production in-house just to avoid the bad PR.
• Victoria’s Secret has quietly discontinued its “Sexy Little Geisha” ensemble. Anti-racist bloggers claim credit.

seattle chapter, american institute of architects via kplu.org

• What to do with the soon-to-be former 520 floating bridge’s surplus pontoons? Several folks have ideas. One of them, above, is to build a walkway just below Lake Washington’s surface, for the ever-popular “walking on water” illusion.
• Seattle’s own alt-country rising star Brandi Carlile has officially come out.
• Fast Company seems to find it odd that Microsoft’s new hardware products have embraced a newly enriched design aesthetic without CEO Steve Ballmer being in hands-on charge of the initiative. A good boss knows when (and to whom) to delegate authority.
• Amazon’s proposed three new towers won’t just be big, they’ll also be bold.
• Earlier this year we mentioned how the Swedish Hospital system said it was losing loads of money. Similar news has now come from Group Health.
• Private housing developers are getting tax breaks for building “affordable” housing units, without enough proof that they’re actually building ’em.
• Meanwhile, City Councilmember Nick Licata wants you to know that more than of Seattle’s “renter” population, 20 percent spend more than half their income on rent.
• Starbucks now has its own branded home espresso machine.
• If there’s anybody with an apparent greater sense of L’etat, C’est Moi than Seattle police, it’s Bellevue police.
• More first-birthday greetings to the Occupy movement: Bainbridge Island-based Yes! magazine uses a tree graphic to show how the movement has “born fruit.”
• Who wants to keep simple majorities in the Legislature from deciding revenue bills? Big business, of course. Like duh.
• As of Wednesday evening, HuffPost’s Electoral College map lists only one tossup state, North Carolina. Obama has taken leads (at least small ones) in all the other previously “swing” states.
• Richard Eskow of the Campaign for America’s Future claims Romney’s “47 percent” speech reveals the combination of privilege, selfishness, and rage that defines “the radical rich.” (A certain megahome-building couple in Leschi might be considered among these.)
• Those print-on-demand book machines are coming to lots more locations. But will the new models allow color interior pages, or be even halfway decent with photographs?
• Jack Hitt at The New Yorker has a hi-larious “Conservative History of the United States,” based entirely on wingnut politicians’ and pundits’ actual untrue statements.

seanmichaelhurley.blogspot.com

• My ol’ pal and fellow Stranger refugee, painter/illustrator Sean Michael Hurley, worked the “safety patrol” at the Downtown Emergency Service Center for the past two years, until earlier this month. Here are his poignant reminiscences of this tough job.
• Not since (or even including) Dukakis have I seen a Presidential campaign come apart at the rivets so thoroughly, so quickly. Having apparently abandoned even most of the remaining “swing states” (of which some polls say there are now only six), the Romneyites are retreating to their remaining hardcore base—their billionaire donors. That’s the reason for the masses-bashing speech Romney gave to some donors last week, which got leaked to Mother Jones.
• Next, the Romney cronies will try to double down on the “culture war” nonsense, to try to keep the wingnuts interested in propping up the GOP downticket races.
• Wall Street was re-occupied, with the expected police over-reaction.
• Timothy Harris at Real Change, meanwhile, insists there’s life yet in the Occupy shtick.
• Nanci Donnellan, KJR-AM’s former “Fabulous Sports Babe,” has had major health issues in recent years, but is still doing the brassy-mama act on the air in Tampa.
• Did a European magician try to copy one of Penn and Teller’s (well, Teller’s) signature bits? Or is it all just another of the team’s elaborate hoaxes?
• Today’s lesson in officially homophobic institutions covering up rampant child abuse comes from the Boy Scouts.
• So the organized anti-American attacks in the Mideast aren’t really due to an awful, no-budget American movie. But if they had been, so many more cringeworthy-bad films are out there. Where’s the rioting over Manos the Hands of Fate or The Wasp Woman?
• There are still vast places in America, nay in Wash. state, where there’s no cell phone service and previous little Internet service. Some people who don’t live in these places imagine them to be heaven. I do not.
• A Tacoma teacher says education reform has become like the unsolvable training exercise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I think it’s more like one of those Doctor Who season finales that require a millennium or two to resolve.
• Jen Doll at the Atlantic says the changing book biz means the end of the cloying back-cover blurb. (You’ll also enjoy the article’s stock photo of the old Elliott Bay Book Co. location.)
• Harvard researchers claim “a wandering mind is not a happy mind.” I’d tell you more about the story, but I had these 30 other browser tabs open at the time….

via upworthy.com

• In this deck of cards, they’re all “jokers.” Presenting 52 Shades of Greed, a playing-card deck (dis)honoring some of the financial debacle’s greatest villains.
• Amazon’s new e-book hardware shtick: new readers and Android tablets. Amazon’s new e-book content shtick: fiction serials, just like Dickens used to make (well, sort-of).
• Jon Talton sees the Chicago company calling itself Boeing as engaging in a labor-relations “race to the bottom.” And as acting very one-percenty in the process.
• You may have heard about the mysterious, off-and-on, West Seattle Hum. Now at this link, you can hear the hum itself.
• The Seattle Channel and Norm Gregory remember the days when electric streetcars crossed Seattle.
• A study claims up to 30 percent of America’s total health-care spending is wasted, between unnecessary procedures and cumbersome bureaucracy.
• Here’s precisely how Bill Clinton’s Wednesday speech differed from the (shorter) draft approved by the Democratic Convention brass. And here’s how Clinton used specific rhetorical strategies to drive home his messages.
• Here are the Thursday DNC moments by the Foo Fighters, a fictional Gabrielle, a real Gabrielle, Kerry, the Veep, and the Prez himself.
• HuffPost blogger Nomiki Konst believes this might be the last election of the TV era, the last Presidential cycle to be dominated by campaign commercials—and the megabucks fundraising machines needed to pay for them.

As promised, here are my observations of Bumbershoot 2012, Seattle’s annual big culture buffet.

As others have noted, it was a sunny but not unbearably hot three-day weekend, bringing out strong-sized crowd despite the steeper than ever ticket prices. (It was either charge $50 a day, or go back to having no musical stars bigger than Hall & Oates.)

Behold, my first ever deep fried candy bar (a Snickers). Gooey. Messy. Yummy.

How are curly fries made? With good old American industrial knowhow, that’s how.

They may call it the Seattle Center Armory now, but to me it will always be the Center House and/or Food Circus.

In this post-record-industry age, live gigs are more important than ever to a band’s financial model. So are gig posters, as lovingly seen at the latest Flatstock exhibit.

The historic video games exhibit (still up) shows the young’uns what real entertainment was like, 8-bit style.

But amid all the fun there’s some deadly serious stuff. World Vision International would like you to know AIDS is still devastating much of Africa.

This “House of the Immediate Future” was named after a model home full of futuristic devices at the ’62 World’s Fair. The new one exemplifies affordable-housing designs that could be factory-built, then installed on small real-estate footprints.

A few inflatable rides are no substitute for the late, great Fun Forest.

The Toyota-sponsored “Whac-A Hipster” game. Hipster-bashing has become corporate,and therefore beyond passé.

The heart of the “Put the Needle on the Record” exhibit, a mini-recording studio where you can record your own music and/or voices for a time capsule, is this recording lathe that cuts real phonograph-record masters.

Today’s greatest ETA (“Elvis Tribute Artist”), El Vez, does his massive act with a massive in-house video production (like all the big music stages had this year).

An inflatable icon of the original Elvis stood over two exhibits.

To the right, the Record Store, a display of classic vinyl LPs with DJs and live small combos.

To the left, the Elvistravaganza. Marlow Harris and Jo David applied their kitsch curatorial touch to the World’s Fair’s most enduring celebrity visitor. I contributed my (quite modest) ETA talents at the all-day karaoke stage.

As I departed the Center grounds to the soothing strains of Hey Marseilles, I regretted the many acts I hadn’t seen but felt enlivened and revived by the ones I had seen.