MISC. REGRETS TO REPORT this will be the final weekend for Belltown’s Cyclops restaurant (around, under various names and owners, almost as long as Soundgarden was). Dinner’s served for the last time this Saturday, followed by one final Sunday brunch. The artists living in the SCUD building’s other spaces will all be out by June. Last-ditch preservation petitions notwithstanding, Harbor Properties is itchin’ to replace it with demographically-correct condos (maybe even including a few hi-ceiling models to be media-hyped as “artist housing”). Speaking of developers and their close friends…

BEYOND THE NORM: Like Soundgarden (whom he still may have never heard), retiring mayor Rice may have felt he had no further worlds to conquer at this time. He’d put himself into a political dead end, as shown in his ’96 campaign for governor. Having turned his office over to the chain stores and developers, he had no more popular support left (except from the construction unions); while no urban Democrat, no matter how “pro-business,” stood much of a chance in a statewide race last year against the forces of Hate Talk radio. The question is what we’ll get next. Various city and county insiders are jockeying for position in the next mayoral election. I worry we might end up with yet another “civil society” insider who’ll promise loyalty to “neighborhood” priorities at first, only to end up within a year, as yet another developers’ lackey. Or somebody like city attorney Mark Sidran, who probably wouldn’t hold the populist pose half that long. Speaking of poses…

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Longtime Sub Pop art director Hank Trotter’s new slick-paper magazine Kutie is more than just another attempt at a cocktail-culture girlie mag. Trotter, a fan of pre-’70s pinup art who’s been planning the mag for over two years, has gone beyond nostalgia to rethink the whole men’s-mag formula. Unlike most anything else (“mainstream” “or “alternative”) out there, it treats the het-male sex drive not as evil or stupid but as an impetus to good quasi-clean fun. The photo spreads (shot by Charles Peterson, who previously took many Soundgarden pix) evoke a spirit of new-girlfriend playful discovery; a refreshing change from porn-biz ennui and supermodels’ cold smiles. Stranger fave Anna Woolverton’s got some cool writing in it too. ($7 at Fallout, Zanadu, and other fine indie-print outlets.) Speaking of manly displays…

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Reader Deborah Shamoon spotted a new fad from Japan (where Soundgarden’s long been popular): “You have probably heard of that peculiarly Japanese snack food, Pocky (pronounced `pokie’). It’s a thin pretzel stick dipped in chocolate. There are many variants, in which the flavor is somehow advertised in the name: Chocolate Swirl, Strawberry Custard, etc. Well, now there is a Men’s Pocky, available at Uwajimaya. It comes in a macho green box, with the word “Men’s” in English in stark white letters on a black background. On the back it says in English, “Crispy pretzel dipped in dark chocolate for the intelligent connoisseur who enjoys the finer points in life.” It goes on to expound in Japanese about the full cocoa flavor.

“American consumers may wonder what makes this snack food particularly male. The vaguely phallic shape?… Actually, I think this is a clever marketing ploy. Japanese people generally believe only women and children like sweet food; eating candy is seen as a sign of childishness… I remember my host father announcing scornfully he didn’t care for sweets as he wolfed down box after box of Valentine’s chocolate. A semi-sweet chocolate Pocky is the solution to this problem, and by adding “Men’s” to the name, [manufacturer] Glico clearly hopes to bolster the frail egos of men who have a yearning for a chocolate-coated pretzel snack.

“We have this kind of thing in the US, with men’s hair dye, hair spray, and (recently, I have heard) nail polish. I think the idea should be expanded: How about “Brawn,” the diet cola for men? Oreos for Men? Ben & Jerry’s Muscle Man? Clearly there is an untapped market potential.” As for me, I’ll patiently wait for the chance to sip a Man’s Mai-Tai while adventuresomely perusing a Rrugged Romance by Harlequin For Him. (Hey, it could happen.)

CORREC: GameWorks does indeed have a Sonic the Hedgehog video game on the premises. Still no Crazy Climber, though…

THE MAILBAG (via Michael Jacobs): “I realize you’ve just lost all this weight and everything, but here’s the lowdown on a couple new candies. Starburst Fruit Twists: The ad looked good so I grabbed a pack. I was a bit disappointed. It was like flavored licorice, but made (I think) of that fruit-based plastic they use to make Dinosaurs fruit snacks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fruit snacks etc. Only a little harder. Reese’s Crunchy Cookie Cups: Go find some! They’re like peanut butter cups, but the inner bottom has a chocolate cookie. It’s as if Reese took an Oreo side and built a peanut butter cup around it. Suprisingly, they’re better than you’d expect by far!”

GOING FLAT?: The Northwest microbrew craze may have peaked. A recent Puget Sound Business Journal piece by M. Sharon Baker described how, after growing 20 percent a month earlier this year, state microbrewery output fell 2.5 percent in November, the last month for which the Liquor Board had numbers. The questions: Have the indies taken as much business (now 8-10 percent of local beer sales) from the big boys as they’re gonna? Have bars run out of tap space for all the hefeweizens, porters, and ales? And has that Cocktail Nation fad permanently drawn young ladies & gents away from the foamy stuff? If the latter’s true, when will “microdistilleries” pop up?

BETWEEN THE LINES: Last time, I complained about word worship–the popular-in-highbrow-circles notion that the mere activity of reading, regardless of content, automatically makes you smarter. Now I wanna discuss the similar notion of word nostalgia–the longing for a past Golden Age of U.S. publishing. Mark Crispin Miller’s Nation cover story, “The Crushing Power of Big Publishing,” embraced this nostalgia as a contrast to today’s big-stakes, corporate-dominated bookland. In my recent feature piece about Amazon.com Books, I said early-20th-century publishing only seemed “purer” because it was a more elitist cabal reaching a much smaller audience.

Since then, I’ve found corroboration via The Wonderful World of Books, published in 1952 as part of a Federal program to encourage reading. (Yes! Even back when TV was still an expensive toy found mostly in the urban Northeast, society’s bigwigs worried about folks not reading enough.) Among essays by spirited-minded citizens extolling how books are fun and nonthreatening and good for you and you really should try a few, there were numbers on the narrow scope of books then. There were only 1,500 regular bookstores, plus another 1,000 outlets (department stores, church-supply stores, gift shops) where books were sold along with other stuff. Darn few of those were outside the big cities and college towns. Mass-market paperbacks were more readily available, but they only accounted for 900 titles a year (mostly hardcover reprints) from 21 publishers. The industry as a whole produced 11,000 titles a year back then, of which 8,600 were non-reprints (including 1,200 fiction titles and 900 kids’ selections). Only 125 companies put out five or more “trade” (bookstore-market) books a year. The book also noted, “The output of titles in England often exceeds that in the United States.”

Today, a U.S. population one-and-two-thirds times as big as that in 1952 gets to choose from five times as many new books, from hundreds of small and specialty presses as well as the corporate media Miller vilifies, sold just about everywhere (96 “Books–New” entries in the Seattle Yellow Pages alone). I won’t presume to compare the quality of today’s wordsmiths to Faulkner or Hemingway, but there’s plenty more styles and a helluva lot more races and genders on the stacks now than then. Behind the celebrity bestsellers is a diverse, chaotic, unstable, lively verbiage scene. Not everybody in it’s making money these days, and a lot of good works aren’t getting their deserved recognition. But I’d much rather have the current lit-landscape, with its faults and its opportunities, than the tweed-and-ivy past Miller yearns for, when bookmaking and bookselling was run almost exclusively by and for folks like him.

MISC. IS ALWAYS BEMUSED when mainstream media outlets suddenly discover the existence of “youth scenes” that are nearly 20 years old, like the Times’ back-to-back exposés of Goth and hip-hop (at least the latter series, by Cynthia Rose, was somewhat respectful of the genre and its participants). By this track, we’re due for a two-page feature about, say, the ambient-dance scene sometime in 2011 (mark your calendars). Speaking of issues recently in the news…

SITE LINES: Your community-conscious column hereby offers an ingenious solution to the still-asmolderin’ controversey over Fred Meyer‘s desire to build a big new store on Leary Way industrial land (the retail giant was denied a rezone, but is appealing the decision). They oughta leave that site be, and instead take over the ex-Ernst space up the street by the Ballard Bridge. This way, near-North-enders will still get a place to buy their Levi’s and bicycle tires and My-T-Fine canned peas, and neighborhood activists can preserve the mid-Leary stretch for manufacturing jobs. The Ernst block’s closer to established traffic patterns (and is on more bus lines), but is far enough from other big stores that Freddy’s can still have the local dominance it likes. It’s smaller than the steel-plant site Freddy’s wanted to build on, but should be just the right size if the store’s built with rooftop and/ or basement parking (both of which Freddy’s uses at other locations). they wouldn’t even need to tear down the venerable Mike’s Tavern & Chili Parlor on the block’s southwest corner. Speaking of eatin’-drinkin’ establishments…

IN CLUBLAND: The opening of the Capitol Club, the new Blank Generation cocktail bar and fusion eatery on E. Pine, is a sea-change event for several reasons. First, it signifies the “Cocktail Nation” phenom as not just a slumming fad but as a bankable long-term trend. Second, its smart but non-aggressive style calls out for an end to generation gaps. Tasteful and comfy but still nonpretentiously elegant, it’s meant to appeal to everyone from neo-swingers to grand dames. It’s a force for community unity amid an increasingly fragmented society.

The aspect of the place that initially disturbed me was the lower-level dining area. Call me a traditionalist, but when I think of the restaurant half of a real Cocktail Culture restaurant-lounge, I think of either classic American fare (burgers, chicken), standard American expense-account fare (steaks, seafood), or that pseudo-Euro stuff dissed by author Calvin Trillin as “Maison de la Casa del House, Continental Dining.” Instead, the Capitol Club offers fancy-schmancy entrees (grilled eggplant, Saffron Seafood Rosetto) and appetizers (Grilled Chorizo, Sauteed Spinach). “What’re they trying to be,” I initially thought to myself, “another stuffy Cuisine-with-a-capital-C site for condo boomers?” I’ve since been reassured by management and early customers that that wasn’t the intention. I’d forgotten how many young-adult artists and musicians have spent years in restaurant work, much of it at joints with more exotic fare. I’d also forgotten how many of these folks, when they do come into money, prefer to dine on the fare of places like Il Bistro and Marco’s Supper Club. And besides, I’m told CC’s BBQ chicken is fine (haven’t tried it yet). Back in prole-fare land…

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Fizzies are the reincarnation of a soda-pop-in-a-tablet product first tried out some years back. These flavored, medicineless Alka-Seltzer knockoffs turn a glass of water into an adequately-tasting diet beverage, though the dissolving experience is more fun than the drinking experience. According to rumor, General Foods was trying to invent a better version of this stuff when it accidentally invented Pop Rocks. Available at Bartell Drugs in assorted flavors, including “Chillin’ Cherry.”

‘TIL NEXT TIME, here’s some day-before-Valentine’s advice from Af-Am Stanford U. chaplain Floyd Thompkins, in his ’91 treatise Enemies of the Ebony Warriors of Love: “Love’s greatest enemy is cynicism. (Cynicism’s) power lies in the fact that it makes sense. The optimism that love requires does not make sense… Cynicism is based on the absolute facts of the world. Optimism requires one to accept a supposition difficult to affirm–that the facts are not always the truth.”

MISC. MUST BELATEDLY mourn the passing of Vox Populi Gallery, for nearly three years the town’s best locale for exciting, fun, provocative, and just plain rockin’ painting, photography, and comic art. Writer Grant Alden, who co-founded the gallery with Carl Carlson, has been living out of town working magazine jobs the past several months. Alden decided in mid-January to cash in his interests and leave the art-selling biz entirely. Seattle still needs a space like VP.

TUBE TIES: The pending sale of KSTW to Atlanta’s Cox company means for the first time since the Bullitt sisters sold KING, we’ll have a woman-owned TV station. The Cox sisters of Atlanta were listed in Parade as among the world’s 20 richest women, up with the likes of Queen Elizabeth. The Cox heiresses’ managers built a small southern newspaper chain into a media mini-giant, from the Auto Trader magazines to film producers Rysher Entertainment. Their Atlanta monopoly daily has given my ex-UW colleague, editorial cartoonist Mike Lukovitch, a prominent and relatively censor-free forum. By selling channel 11, Gaylord Entertainment‘s giving a clear no-confidence vote in CBS’s drive to avoid permanent also-ran status. It’s a vote I hadn’t expected, since Gaylord and Westinghouse (CBS’s new owners) are partners in the Nashville Network. (Westinghouse was recently rumored to be considering buying Gaylord, with or without KSTW.)

IN A HAZE: I’m still thinking about the pathetic spectacle that was the Jimi Hendrix statue dedication late last month, in front of Audio Environments Inc.‘s Broadway offices. It’s an extremely hideous artifact, made with less artistry than seen on a Franklin Mint collector’s plate. Some folks saw irony in the statue being commissioned and totally funded by AEI, a background-music company. I didn’t see that as much as I saw it as yet another instance of white boomers fetishizing the guy as an icon for their notions of the black man as sexy savage. I’m positive Hendrix, an intelligent and innovative artist who seemed to be slumming in rock for the money, would’ve eventually spurned that image and settled into a prog-jazz career (maybe finding a jazz-rock melange that would’ve prevented the development of fusion). We must also remember he left Seattle at 18 and only performed here again as a touring act. From all accounts, he found the Seattle of his day a town with neither the racial openness nor the artistic opportunities he needed. For local boomers to keep enshrining him as the city’s pride n’ joy is something he’d probably have had a heck of a time getting comfortable with.

PRESENT TENSE: After years of wanting to, I finally got in this year to the Seattle Gift Show, a trade show for retailers and wholesalers of less-than-necessary merchandise. It was just as great as I’d imagined–a gigantic bazaar, taking up the whole Convention Center and two Seattle Center buildings to boot; full of booths hawking the widest array of stuff. There were acres of “country craft” baskets, Husky sweatshirts, “Over The Hill” bras designed to droop, small-penis-joke greeting cards, Absolutely Fabulous fridge magnets, cocoa mix from an outfit called Pure Decadence, landmarks-of-hockey-map jigsaw puzzles, Alaska souvenir pennants, men’s-restroom plastic miniatures (complete with digitized flushing sounds when you press a button), bonsai mini-fountains, angel statues, Prozac/ happy-face T-shirts, Russian dolls, Men of Africa calendars, and more. One booth offered the perfect bachelor-pad accessory, the Moon Lamp (a milky-white large plastic globe emanating spots of pastel light). An Issaquah outfit called Loveable Chocolates offered chocolate and white-chocolate novelty gifts in assorted shapes, even as a set of dentures (“We sell a lot to dentists,” the woman at the booth claimed).

But the item that might most interest some Stranger readers is Magnetic Jewelry, from the Gravity Free Factory (an NYC-founded outfit with a new Seattle office). It’s a line of stud, crystal, and spike-shaped face jewelry giving the appearance of piercing with no holes, thanks to a second magnetized piece of metal you wear on the other side of your ear, lip, or nostril. (No other applicable body parts were mentioned in the brochure or at the booth.)

WHAT I DID ON MY WINTER VACATION: Having already given my annual why-I-love-snow-in-Seattle speech in this space, I won’t tell you how thrilled and elated I was by the Boxing Day Blizzard. Instead, I’ll relate some other things I did for fun that day and on the other days surrounding the recent calendar change.

* Pondered that Times headline celebrating the planned Boeing/ McDonnell-Douglas merger for its promise to create a “Goliath of the Sky.” The metaphor just doesn’t sound like something all that airworthy.

* Visited the new Value Village. And a gorgeous palace of pre-owned merchandise it is, indeed. Found nine old LP records I had to get. Unfortunately, three of them contained different records than were advertised on the sleeves. So instead of naughty “party songs” from the early ’60s I instead now own three volumes of ’40s country classics–still great stuff.

* Ordered an evening of Spice Pay-Per-View. Before I did, I believed the only people who ought to suffer through the stifling formulae and monumentally awful production values of hetero hard-porn videos were straight men who needed to see other men’s genitalia in action–and that, therefore, the Spice channel (which shows those videos with all the phallic shots edited out) had no earthly (or earthy) purpose. But after a couple hours of ugly silicone implants, ritualized acrobatics, and laughable “tuff” facial expressions, I caught on to the mood of the thing.

All formula fiction offers “adventure” to its characters and predictability to its audience. Hard-porn is no different. Its strictly-followed rites of banality envelop the viewer in a fantasy universe of cheap surroundings, harsh lighting, crude emotions, unspoken-yet-universally-observed rules of behavior, no thinking, no spirituality, and no love. Sorta like old Cold War-era propaganda stories about life behind the Iron Curtain, but with fancier lingirie. It still turns me off, but I now understand how it could turn on guys who’ve never gotten over adolescent sex-guilt.

* Tried Sanpellegrino Bitter. It’s an import soft drink in an utterly cute 3-oz. bottle. Probably intended as a drink mixer, it tastes remarkably like a liquid version of Red Hots candies. Tasty and startling. (At Louie’s On the Pike, in the Market.)

* Read Downsize This! by Michael Moore. While I’m not always keen on some of his gags, Mr. TV Nation has his heart in the right (or Left) place. More importantly, Moore’s got one Great Idea, which he talked a lot about in his local promo appearances but barely mentions in the book–the idea that left-wing politics oughta be primarily concerned not with Counterculture separatism or theoretical pontification but with improving the lot of the non-upscale. A third of a century after the New Left declared working-class people to be its enemy, it’s refreshing yet sadly shocking to read Moore’s gentle corrective–that if us college-town “progressives” don’t work for civic and economic justice, it doesn’t really matter how well we can deconstruct texts.

* Was amused by the NYC media’s proclamation of “The Evita Look” (apparently just the thing for the millionaire “woman of the people” in your family). Weeks before the film opened, Bloomingdale’s put up an Evita boutique, near its already-established Rent boutique (selling what the NY Times’ Frank Rich calls “fashions inspired by the transvestites, junkies, and AIDS patients of the Broadway hit”).

Movie- and play-inspired fashion trends aren’t new (I’m personally waiting for the Annie Hall look to come back), but seldom before have adult-size, non-Halloween fashions been sold as officially-licensed movie merchandise (T-shirts and Starfleet uniforms excepted). While the Evita costumes are at least inspired by a past golden age of couture, a question lingers: If we’re supposed to now look to a military strongman’s wife as a role model, when will we see the official Imelda Marcosreg. shoe line?

* Intercepted the following note in a tavern men’s room, apparently left by a local music-biz bigwig: “I like TicketMaster when it makes my band money.”

AS LONGTIME MISC. READERS know, I love snow in Seattle. That pre-Thanksgivin’ white surprise we had was a perfect example. It kept Eastsiders out of town while blessing urban denizens with a two-day-duration Wonderland of brightly altered vistas. Its glistening blanket offered a temporary respite from our normal Seasonal Affective Disorder-inducing grayout conditions. It created an instant holiday, a Jubilee interrupting the routines of work and school and shopping. It turned everyday life into an adventure, from Counterbalance snowboarding to parking-lot snowball fights. Yes, I know it was a horror for the homeless, but we oughta be taking better care of our brethern year-round anyway.

CATHODE CORNER: As you assuredly all know, Frasier contains enough Seattle inaccuracies to make a drinking game. (“Finish your glass if Niles pronounces Oregon “arra-gone.”) But even that didn’t prepare me for seeing John Mahoney, who plays Dad on the show, miss the following answer on Jeopardy!: “This Seattle-based coffee chain takes its name from the first mate in Moby Dick.” Speaking of local landmarks…

WHAT’S REALLY WRONG WITH THE AVE: No merchant-sponsored rent-a-thugs harassing the street kids will improve the currently sorry state of U District retail. The District’s problems go back a decade, to when Ave landlords decided to jack up rents in one big hike. Longtime indie businesses were replaced by chains. Some of those, like Crown Books and Godfather’s Pizza, then bugged out of their leases at first opportunity). Other stores spent so much on rent, they cut back on interior improvements, merchandise, personnel, etc. Meanwhile, the long-slumbering U Village blossomed into a shopping theme park for the Volvo set. The Ave has risen and fallen several times before. It can rise again. But strong-arm tactics won’t do it; indeed, they’d just make the street’s young-adult target market feel unwelcome. Speaking of questionable neighborhood “renewals”…

WANTON-DESTRUCTION DEPT.: The end of Belltown’s 11-year artist-housing experiment SCUD (Subterranean Cooperative of Urban Dreamers, named years before the Gulf War) and its downstairs eatery neighbor Cyclops had been rumored for over a year. Now it’s official, with MUP boards announcing plans to raze the lo-rise for condos. Cyclops’ owners are already looking for a new restaurant site, perhaps in Fremont. As for the much-photographed golden Jell-O molds gracing the SCUD exterior these past five years, no fate has been announced. I’d have ’em auctioned off to benefit new artist housing (and I mean real artist housing, not the millionaire penthouses sometimes promoted under that term). Speaking of goodbyes…

`PANDEMONIUM,’ 1992-96: Most of what I’ll miss about the idiosyncratic music monthly had already disappeared from its pages in recent months: The schmooze-free gossip column, the Tacoma-centric features, the odd columns like “Town of the Month.” ‘Twas sad to see the tabloid’s “Final Print Issue” carry a Seattle instead of a Tacoma mailing address. Seattle Square, a budding commercial Web company, has bought the Pandemonium name and will now use it for music review and interview pages on its site. Speaking of what’s-in-a-name…

INTO THE DRINK: In the spirit of Husky Cola (that early-’90s fundraising soda for UW athletics) comes Keiko Draft Root Beer, from Newport, OR. Every can bears the image of America’s most famous killer whale, who starred in the two Free Willy films and now lives in a rehab tank at Newport’s Oregon Coast Aquarium. An unspecified “portion of the proceeds” from the pop has been pledged to the foundation paying for Keiko’s veterinary treatment. I’ve only seen the stuff in regular, not diet, so if you consume too much you could become, you know… There’s also Keiko Brand coffee, but I’m still holding to my no-coffee-jokes policy.

ANSWER TO LAST WEEK’S RIDDLE: Because he’s just a commontator.

YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT FOR XMAS: Your suggestions for the year-end Misc. In/Out list. Send ’em to clark@speakeasy.org. ‘Til then, consider these words by ex-Philly restaurant critic Jim Quinn: “Never eat in a restaurant where the menu is larger than the table, the pepper mill larger than your date, and the baked potato larger than your steak.”

ON A ROLE: Because of the deadline structure at The Stranger, this week’s Misc. (like Wednesday’s Christian Science Monitor) was sent to the printer before election returns came in. Therefore, we’ll just have to pretend it wasn’t happening or wasn’t worth talking about (which most citizens seemed to feel anyway).

Instead, let’s discuss the annually-weirder spectacle that is grownup Halloween, now America’s #2 shopping holiday. Is it me, or have grownup Halloween parties gotten simultaneously more elaborate and blasé? The art of costuming, of adopting temporary personas for celebration and/or awakening, is among humanity’s oldest traits. But the way middle Americans (even young, urbane middle Americans) do it is like the way middle Americans do a lot of things, half-hearted and aloof. “Square” middle Americans often keep their inner passions inhibited because they’re afraid; “hip” middle Americans often keep their passions inhibited because they’re afraid, but pretend they’re doing it because they’re too cool. The mainstreaming of fetish dance parties might have helped change that, but (at least in this town) that trend seems to have peaked. (It didn’t help that the Liquor Board’s lifestyle police have borne down hard on such events, contributing to the Catwalk’s fiscal problems.)

I don’t think the answer is to replace today’s Halloween festivities with World Beat-style “tribal” role playing events. The gods, demigods, devils, and myths of pre-industrial societies are those people’s property–in many cases, the only things colonists didn’t take from them. We have plenty of our own gods, demigods, devils, and myths to explore; including the myths propagated via popular entertainment and media. So keep going to parties as Audrey Hepburn or Capt. Janeway or Ross Perot–but don’t stop at the clothes.Become Hepburn or Janeway or Perot for one night. Explore the presence of Hepburnness, Janewayism, or Perotosity within your soul.

(For the record, the Champion’s costume store ran out of plastic breasts, couldn’t sell the formerly-popular Power Ranger costumes even at 50 percent off, and had to turn down many frustrated requests for Xena costumes (the show’s producers neglected to have any made).

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Issue #3 of the NW Sleep Guide, a newsletter for ambient-DJ music fans, contains a conceptual Brian Eno review consisting of the words “A light sharp touch refined but so ugly so merciless like the stinging rain,” repeated and rearranged to fill all the available space. Clever. (Free at Ohm Records and Wall of Sound.)

EYE ON POTATOES: The Wall St. Journal recently exposed the secret behind the “crispier French fries” now promised by Jack-in-the-Box and other chains. They’re coated with a batter made of potato starch, augmented in some formulae with wheat starch and dairy protein. It’s supposed to keep ’em warm and unsoggy up to 15 minutes, three times as long as untreated spud-segments. I tell ya, does this country have an ingenious food-tech industry or what?

IN A BIND: Organizers of the second NW Bookfest made a few improvements to the Pier 48 site but kept the site good and funky and un-Convention-Centery. It’s still the sort of event where the “marketplace of ideas” metaphor is made most literal, with authors on microphones and sellers in booths all hawking their wares. KOMO-TV weekend anchor Eric Slocum was prominently hawking his Childrens Hospital-benefit poetry book (remember, you can always donate direct instead) right next to a booth hawking political tracts about what “the globalists” don’t want you to know.

But it was a trek to find anything really interesting in the interstices between whale-poetry chapbooks, Men Are From Orion/ Women Are From the Crab Nebula homilies, and Windows 95 recovery manuals. By the time I got back out and faced the literacy volunteers with their hype for literature-as-generic-commodity, I wanted to tell ’em, “Next time you ask me to Support Books, tell me which ones.”

With KTZZ now up for sale, three of the area’s six commercial TV stations are up for grabs, thus driving down any one station’s prospective price. This is a rare moment of opportunity. Leave your suggestions on what you’d do if you owned your own channel atMisc. World HQ, www.miscmedia.com/intro.html.

HERE IT IS, a mere 40 days before the last Presidential election of this century (unless you’re one of those who believes decades and centuries start with the “1” year instead of the “0” year), and it’s receiving about as much public hoopla as a Behring-era Seahawks home game. This despite the novelty of a Dem actually favored to win re-election while the Repos flay around trying to prevent internal ideological spats from imploding their coalition. You can tell the Dole guys are desperate when they resort to the lowest of smears (unsupported allegations of Clinton carrying STDs) while still claiming to be the campaign of “character.”

Needless to say, my search for even unfunny Jack Kemp/Shawn Kemp puns is a washout, as Kemp’s own campaign role has been as of this writing. Kemp’s succeeded merely at “doing no harm” to the Dole ticket, making no Quayle-esque standout moves that might attract criticism. Indeed, if you got all your info about the GOP ticket from Clinton and Gore’s speeches, you might thinkGingrich was running for prez and Dole was running for veep. There will, of course, be a vice-presidential debate in the next couple of weeks, which will let Kemp shine in the spotlight for one evening trying to out-wonk Gore. (The syndicated Ike-conservative Bob Novak claims unnamed higher-ups in the Dole camp are displeased with Kemp for spending too much time talking to African-American voters about inner-city revitalization instead of luring back wayward white Reagan Democrats.)

CORREC: The revived Spud Goodman Show is actually on KCPQ at 1 a.m. Tuesday nights/Wednesday mornings. The new show, produced with spit, bailing wire, a couple of Betacams, and massive tape editing (the cast easily outnumbers the crew) actually looks more professional than Spud’s studio-based old show ever did.

WHAT’S IN STORE: The boarded-up Westlake Center storefront with the mysterious sign mentioned here a month or so ago is now open. It turned out to be Inside Out, a boutique offering interior accessories and knick-knacks of pseudo-rustic and “provincial” bents. Sort of like that Complete Gardener plant store at 2nd & Pine, but without any plants.

IN THE CHIPS: Thanks to reader Joseph K. Aikala, who found it while traveling to Colorado, I now have a giant bag of Doritos Max tortilla chips, a test-marketed Frito-Lay product with the molecularly-engineered fake fat Olestra. I’m happy to report none of the digestive problems consumer rabble-rousers have associated with the stuff. On the other hand, they’re not the tastiest snack foods I’ve ever had–there’s a peculiar brittle, unsolid feel to them, and a blandness only partly covered by the heavy dosage of Cool Ranch flavoring. For a lo-fat chip I’d still recommend the same firm’s Baked Tostitos product.

KEEPING TABS: The tabloidization of American media, viewed with alarm by media critics for over a decade, may be on the wane. Daytime sleaze-talk TV ratings peaked over a year ago; most all of last year’s new talk shows died swift, painless deaths. And now comes word that the supermarket tabloids, having finally gotten grudging respect from mainstream media as a source of stories, are on a long-term downswing. An NY Times story reports the National Enquirer, its sister rag the Star, and the rival Globe have each lost 30 percent of their average circulation since ’91, even despite OJ. What’s more, the tabs’ audience is aging, with young adults either less interested in celebrities’ private lives or finding enough of that fare elsewhere. (The article didn’t mention the self-parodicWeekly World News, the third member of the Enquirer trioka and the favorite “slumming” material for people who think they’re the only readers in on the joke.) I admit to being one of those post-Boomer readers who are indifferent to the grocery tabs’ fare. But the format itself is one of your classic literary forms, and could theoretically be revived by people who knew how to tell intriguing stories well.

(I’ve met “radical” guys who claim to hate “The State,” but love the Presidential bid of Ralph “There Oughta Be A Regulation” Nader. Why do you suppose this is? Leave your ideas at clark@speakeasy.org.)

LET US RETURN to Misc., the pop-culture column that’s indifferent about the threatened Federal ban on goofy cigarette brand merchandising like Marlboro Gear, Camel Cash, and the near-ubiquitous Your Basic Hat. Wearing or carrying that stuff’s a walking admission of subservience to a chemical god, disguised (as so many human weaknesses are) as bravado. Speaking of personal appearance…

BEAUTY VS. COMMERCE: The Portland paper Willamette Week reports many employers in that town are altering their dress codes to regulate employees with nose and lip rings. An exec with the espresso chain Coffee People was quoted as saying his company allows up to “three earrings per ear and a nose stud,” but forbids nose rings. Starbucks baristas in the Rose City may wear up to two earrings per ear but no face rings, no tattoos, and no “unnatural” hair colors. Dunno ’bout you, but I like to be served by someone who shows she knows there’s more important things than serving me. Speaking of trendy looks…

UPDATE: Got a bottle of Orbitz pop thanks to the guys at Throw Software, who’d smuggled three bottles from NYC. It’s made by a Vancouver company (Clearly Canadian) whose US HQ’s in Kent, but it’s only sold so far in the Northeast. It’s more beautiful than I imagined–a clear, uncarbonated, slightly-more-syrupy-than-usual concoction with caviar-sized red, yellow, or orange gummy globules in perfect suspension, neither floating nor sinking. It uses Clearly Canadian’s regular bottle shape, which is already sufficiently Lava Lamp-esque for the visual effect. As for the taste, reader Jeannine Arlette (who also got hers in NY) sez it’s “less icky tasting than the dessert black-rice-pudding, but just a little… The little neon `flavor bitz’ lodge in the gag part of your throat as you swallow, and, they have no flavor except possibly under some very loose definition where texture is considered a flavor.” Speaking of beverages…

THE FINE PRINT (at the bottom of an ad offering video-rental “happy hours,” complete with cocktail-nation cartoon imagery): “Rain City Video does not condone the use of alcoholic beverages with some movies.” What? Without a few good highballs or mint-liqueur martinis in your system, what’s the point of watching something like Leaving Las Vegas, Barfly, Under the Volcano, The Lost Weekend, or I’ll Cry Tomorrow? Certainly the Thin Man films nearly demand six martinis. Speaking of film and morals…

WATCH THIS SPACE: The Rev. Louis Farrakhan, in his paper The Final Call, recently blasted the producers of Independence Day.He claims they knowingly stole and corrupted a 1965 prophecy by his predecessor, Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammed, that a fleet of space ships will one day descend from their “Mother Plane,” secretly built by Africans in 1929 and currently hidden in high orbit, to destroy white America. (This is the source of the “mother ship” imagery George Clinton sanitizes for mainstream consumption.) Farrakhan claims all the world’s political and media leaders know about the Mother Plane but have never admitted it, except to slander it in a movie. (Farrakhan’s also displeased that the UFO-blasting hero in Independence Day is so openly Jewish.)

Many of you first became acquainted with the advanced mysteries of the Nation of Islam at the Million Man March, when Farrakhan preached about conspiracies revealed by magic numbers. A nonbeliever might find it strange, but it’s no stranger than tenets followed by Catholics, Mormons, Evangelicals, and New-Agers.

Besides, the premise of an apocalypse from the skies is as old as War of the Worlds. Several sects have predicted violent or benign spaceship-based takeovers over the years; the Church of the Sub-Genius parodied it in its tracts claiming that “Jehovah is an alien and still threatens this planet.” And compared to real-life crimes against blacks (like the recent report in the mainstream press that CIA-connected crooks jump-started the crack industry, and the resulting gang violence, in order to finance the Nicaraguan Contras), and Farrakhan’s charges seem relatively mild and almost plausible.

‘TIL NEXT TIME, ponder these thoughts of Courtney Love on smells, from a 1993 issue of Mademoiselle: “All boys love Chanel No. 5 because it reminds them of their moms when they got dressed up.”

DUD RANCH: Montana’s got the (alleged) Unabomber, but in Seattle it’s the summer of the Unbomber! Indeed, we’ve got Unbombers all over town! Even though a certain politically ambitious prosecutor’s trying to throw the book at one alleged Unbomber, subsequent Unbombs continue to pop up everywhere! Since an Unbomb isn’t a bomb, it can be anything–unclaimed luggage, grocery bags, stalled cars, a garage-sale lamp, stray free samples of Honey Bunches of Oats, that Arch Deluxe box in the gutter–any unattended physical object of any appreciable size. Remember, don’t be a litterbug–you could get charged with planting an Unbomb, with un-threatening hundreds of innocent lives!

UPDATES: While the Off Ramp’s rebirth has taken a little longer than expected (don’t these things always?), its Denny/ Eastlake neighbor in noise, RKCNDY, may also arise from the ashes. Lori LaFavor, who booked many of the 1994-95 Sailors’ Union Hall shows, says she hopes to book a few all-ages shows in the space while the new owners get their remodeling plans and liquor-license application going… The couple who ran the Toaster Museum in Seattle’s AFLN and Wonderful World of Art galleries have moved to Portland and are raising funds to open a larger display of historic bread-burners there. To learn how to help write The Toaster Museum Foundation Inc., P.O. Box 11886, Portland, OR 97211, or email <ericn@SpiritOne.com>.

THE MAILBAG: Blaine Dollard writes, “What’s up with these buses?” It’s simple, really: In honor of King County taking over Metro Transit, a new luscious purple-based exterior color scheme was devised for the buses. But to save money, existing buses won’t be repainted until either (1) an advertiser pays to get a bus painted and that deal expires; or (2) a particular coach has its turn in the five-year cycle in which all the buses get repainted anyway. So from now until the new millennium, when you peer down the road to see if your bus is coming, you’ll have to squint to perceive either the luscious new colors or the old burger-chain browns (or for those weird ad buses, but that’s another item).

NO `SAX’ PUNS HERE: ‘Twas nice to unexpectedly spot the Billy Tipton Memorial Sax Quartet a few weeks back on Black Entertainment Television’s Jazz Discovery show, a mail-us-your-video-and-maybe-we’ll-play-it affair similar to MTV’s old Basement Tapes. It marked the first time I saw five white women on BET and it didn’t turn out to be an infomercial.

INTO THE DRINK: In the good ol’ days of the ’80s (trust me, they’re already being marketed by the nostalgia industry as “A Simpler Time”), the General Brewing Co. in Vancouver USA used to put fun little rebus picture puzzles inside the bottle caps of its Lucky Lager and generic “Beer Beer.” Pabst, which bought and closed General, still uses the puzzle-caps on its cheaper brands and malt liquors; unless you’re an Old English 800 fancier, you’re more likely to see such a cap strewn on the sidewalk than on a bottle you’ve personally bought. The gang at Portland’s Widmer Bros. Brewery must have remembered these; for their new bottled-beer line includes a line drawing inside the cap of two clinking glasses, the slogan “A Prost” (German for “toast”), and one of 20 different salutations (“To Palindromes,” “To Paleontologists,” “To Button Fly Jeans,” “To Firewalkers,” “To Dogs Named Steve,” “To the Platypus,” “To the Polar Bear Club”). Frankly, I’d rather have a rebus. At least with them, if you couldn’t solve it you knew you’d had enough. Speaking of beverages…

CALL TO ACTION 1: I previously asked if any of the column’s out-of-town readers could supply me with some of those Olestra fake-fat snacks. Nobody did, but now I’ve got another favor to ask. The Clearly Canadian drink company’s supposed to be launchingOrbitz, a soft drink with neon-colored “flavored gel spheres” floating in the bottle like edible little Lava Lamp bits, in selected test markets. Damn, I want some.

CALL TO ACTION 2:I now seek your opinions on whether the Sex Pistols’ slogan “Kill the Hippies” ever was, or is still, valid. Email your responses to clark@speakeasy.org. The more interesting replies will appear on this site sometime in September. Thank you.

UPDATE: Looks like the fabulously unkempt Lake Union Pub has indeed hosted its last punk gigs (as well as its last straight-edge-vs.-skinhead brawls and its last vomit launch on the carpet). The Off Ramp, on the other stamped hand, may reopen any week now. New owners promise “a new tile floor to wipe you off easy” and “bathrooms that won’t make you puke.”

DON’T MEX WITH ME: Ah, for the good ol’ days when a burrito was a burrito, before the invasion of Cal-Mex trendy concepts so darned “Cal” they drop all references to the “Mex.” On lower Queen Anne alone, you can now dine on World Wrapps, Global Wraps(at Macheezmo Mouse), or Todo Wraps (the new name for selected outlets of the Todo Loco chain). A conspiracy theorist (which I’m not) might even ponder whether the new Anglicized appellation constituted some sort of capitulation to election-year hate campaigns against Hispanic immigration.

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: The smashing success of Altoids has caused a curiously strong surge of imitation tinned mints, a trend that’s finally reached to Tacoma. There, Brown & Haley (“…Makes ‘Em Daily!”), famous for Almond Roca and Mountain Bars, has brought out its own brand of “Extra Strength Peppermints” in its own reusable tin. They’ve got a far smoother texture than Altoids. And, unlike the originals, they contain no sugar (or beef gelatin). And the tin is just as reuseable as the Altoids tin–good for sewing notions, keys, loose change, snuff, that Visa card you’ve promised to only use in case of emergency, or your first lover’s saved toenail clippings.

CARD ME: A recent Times story says those oh-so-collectible prepaid long-distance cards, which have a face value of $5 or $10 but can rate as much as $10,000 from foolish speculators, can be twice as valuable if they’ve never been used. This is taking the ol’ “mint condition” fetish to the point of ridiculousness. The card is physically unaltered by use; all it does is bear the number of a credit account at a phone company.

FOR (ST.) PETE’S SAKE: While Seattle’s politicians (and the businessmen who own them) keep insisting the next out-of-state chain-store branch will put downtown on the proverbial map, Seattle-mania continues; now spread as far as Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fla. (whose only prior interest in Seattle was trying to take away the Mariners). The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center recently mounted a play called Nirvanov, described by author David Lee as “Chekov’s Ivanov as seen through the eyes of Kurt Cobain and Frances Farmer.” As a local viewer reports via email, “Kurt angsts while Frances lurks around stage right in a black tail coat and offers advice and commentary. There is a chorus of Seattle Grunge Vampires, a fantastic Courtney imitation, several Nirvana songs recorded by a local band, and a live bat flitting around the theater (I never figured out if it was part of the show or had just wandered in).”

NO, THE CODE: The incredible shrinking 206 area code covered all of western Washington a few years ago. Next April, if US West and GTE get their way from government regulators, only Seattle, a couple of suburbs (Shoreline, White Center) and a handful of islands (Bainbridge, Vashon, Mercer) will be in 206 anymore. Tacoma and south King County will be called with the new 253 code; Everett and the Eastside will turn into 425 country.

The meanings are endless: Eastern Washington anti-sprawl bumper stickers, which now read “Don’t 206 509,” will have to be changed to “Don’t 425 509.” EastsideWeek editor Knute Berger will get a psychological boost to his only-half-exaggerated crusade for an “Independent Republic of the Eastside.” And, of course, both KVI’s hatemongers and our own scenester snobs will delight in the official declaration of Seattle to be its own territory, cut off from the realities of life in the outside world. Me? I’ll just be happy to have further proof that if a business, store, or arena isn’t in Seattle, it isn’t in Seattle. Circuit City? Incredible Universe? Ikea? Microsoft recruiting? Stop running downtown Seattle skyline photos in your ads! You’re not even in the same area code as Seattle!

MISC. CAN ONLY admire the Times for daring to run a front-page banner headline on 6/24 with the quotation “I’m Really Boring.”

THE GRIND: McDonald’s now offers official Babe Happy Meal toys with purchase of a hamburger, cheeseburger, or Chicken McNuggets. No, you can’t substitute a Sausage McMuffin (I tried).

CASH FROM CHAOS DEPT.: Remember when Misc. reprinted a slogan from the Usenet newsgroup alt.society.generation-x, “I Am Not A Target Market”? The June YM had that very phrase–as the tease line for a slick fold-out Nike ad section. Only Nike (and its ad agency, Weiden & Kennedy) would try so desperately to be hip as to try to co-opt youthful rebellion against co-option. Speaking of clever bizpeople…

WHAT’S ON SECOND?: Spurred by the success of Mama’s Mexican Kitchen, a bunch of other eatin’-&-drinkin’ joints wanted to make of Second Ave. in Belltown blossom with a whole string of sidewalk dining spots. It’s been slow in coming, thanks to bureaucrats in the city and at the state Liquor Board holding up the permitting process. The Lava Lounge and the Crocodile got their al fresco OKs, but Goodchow and Tula’s haven’t yet and the Speakeasy’s request was refused. Maybe somebody’s worried about hoped-for hordes of volunteers not being able to navigate narrowed sidewalks to get to the Norm Rice for Governor campaign office, also on Second.

MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING DEPT.: The Nation had a comparatively flimsy essay a couple months back bashing “profits from poverty”: companies discovering new opportunities from the downsizing of America (dollar stores, check-cashing stands, gambling, “secured” credit cards, telephone-reconnect services, etc.). The article claimed something was wrong in this. I say it’s not something companies persue out of spite, exploitation, or evil thoughts. It’s value-neutral, like most of capitalism. If you wanna argue that value-neutrality is exactly what’s wrong with capitalism, I’m willing to listen. Besides, what’s capitalism good for if it can’t properly service its own victims? Speaking of outfits servicing diverse clienteles (or are supposed to)…

DOWN THE PIKE: The heavy hand of demographic cleansing continues on assorted fronts around Seattle. Seems like just yesterday (really a couple years back) the Pike Place Market fended off a hostile-takeover bid from NYC investors who wanted to turn it into a prettified, market-research-driven mall-oid exclusively for yups and tourists. Now, market activists (including theInternational Examiner newspaper and sometimes-heretic market council member Michael Yeager) charge market management with attempting this process on its own. Their claimed evidence: (1) six recent evictions or lease non-renewals of Asian-American shopkeepers who’d sold non-yup wares; and (2) a statement to the press by market executive director Shelly Yapp, in which she envisioned the market as a place primarily for upscale shoppers in competition with Larry’s Markets and Westlake Center. Twenty-five years ago this summer, the Pike Place Preservation and Development Authority (the city agency employing Yapp) was chartered to preserve the market as a real place for real people, including low-income, elderly, and non-whitebread people. If Yapp and her staff really are ignoring or abrogating this aspect of the market’s mission, then it’s time for a few changes. Pike Place, like the city as a whole, should be for everybody, not just the upscale elite already served by retail institutions that don’t get taxpayer support.

SIGN OF THE WEEK: The following message, each line in descending type size a la an eye chart, is the only thing visible at a boarded-up storefront in Westlake Center: “We waited a long time to get this location and we wanted to keep it a secret and build suspense but the manager of Westlake Center said that according to the lease we were obligated to put something up in the window to let everybody know something exciting is happening in the mall which really surprises us but they probably buried important information like that in the fine print just like we’re doing. Announcing the grand opening of our new store. (Coming soon!)” In the short time it took me to copy the sign’s words into a notebook, three shoppers asked if I knew what the store would be. (I don’t.)

WELCOME AGAIN one and all to Misc., the pop-culture column still anxious to try those Olestra potato chips with the chemically-engineered fake fat. If any out-of-town readers live in the chips’ test markets, could you send some over here? Thanx.

UPDATE: Looks like the brick-and-concrete light-industrial building that housed RKCNDY, that recently-closed rock n’ roll purgatory, may soon house the Matt Talbot Day Center, a Catholic Community Services drop-in ministry attending to drug-addicted or otherwise troubled teens. The lease hasn’t been finalized and could still fall through (like the deal last winter to buy the club and keep it operating). I’ll let you generate your own forces-of-redemption-take-over-din-of-iniquity remarks; you might even consider it the Big Guy’s smirking revenge for Moe taking up business in an ex-Salvation Army rehab center.

AD VERBS: Not too long ago, advertisers loved to claim their products would help you attract a sex partner. Now, masturbation metaphors are the rage. First, there was the shampoo that promised women a veritable scalp orgasm. In a more recent spot, a phone-sex worker emotes gushingly about the Pay Day candy bar’s sensuous qualities. And a still-small but growing trend of advertising for women sneaks in references to that self-satisfaction aid, hardcore porn, like the Revlon lipstick promoted as “SuperseXXXy.” If you believe the conspiracy-theory thinking in zines like Adbusters Quarterly (I don’t), you might theorize how the marketeers want to exploit people’s natural drives by redirecting those drives away from the nature-intended craving for intimacy with another human soul and toward sexual identification with the Product itself. Certainly the ad where a woman fantasizes (apparently during intercourse) about how she’d rather be driving a Mercedes could be so interpreted.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The Industrial Workers of the World, the radical-labor outfit that earlier this century tried to forge “One Big Union of All the Workers,” still exists. The Real Deal: Labor’s Side of Things is its regional monthly zine, edited by Mark Manning. It offers a little labor history (in the May ish, an essay on the Spokane IWW’s fight to overturn 1909 laws banning public speech in the Lilac City). But most of it’s of the present day, documenting workers’ struggles and conditions here and in other parts of the world. At a time when much self-styled “radical” literature either ignores or sneers at working-class Americans, Manning refreshingly extols not just sympathy for but solidarity and common cause with wage slaves everywhere. One flaw: The back-page article chiding downtown business interests for opposing hygiene centers for the homeless starts picking on one particular businessman without explaining why. (Pay-what-you-can to PO Box 20752, Seattle 98102.)

PRICELESS-ADVICE DEPT.: One side effect of writing for an increasingly popular alterna-paper is mainstream journalists treating you, perhaps foolishly, as an expert on Those Darn Kids. An AP writer called from Portland late last month, preparing a story on theChurch of Kurt Cobain opening down there and wanting my sound-bite-length comments. I said Cobain was clearly uncomfortable with the role of Rock Star, and would undoubtedly reject veneration as some demigod prophet of Gen X. As I interpret his work, he longed for a world without gods or at least without leaders and followers, a world where folks create their own cultures and work out their own ideas. From first glance, these lessons seem to be lost on the church’s founder, Jim Dillon, who told the P-I his 12-member congregation “pays homage to this alienated tribe and to the man who they have called `saint.'” But then again, if Jesus’ words can be interpreted in as many different ways as they are, it’s only natural to expect Cobain’s sometimes expressionistic word imagery to become similarly reread or misread.

‘TIL NEXT WE SHARE INKSTAINS, ponder these words of Indian movie star Madhuri Dixit, quoted by interviewer “Bitchybee” in the magazine Cineblitz: “Work is worship. Play is a waste of time. Night clubs, parties socializing saps your energy and gets you nothing, but unwanted notices from snoopy gossip journalists. Avoid the night spots and dark circles. It’s even helpful in avoiding pimples.”

IT’S TYPOGRAPHICAL MAKEOVER WEEK here at Misc., the pop-cult column that’s ever-so-slightly confused by Tropicana orange juice’s big promotion for Apollo 13 videos. Shouldn’t the Tang people be doing this instead?

SORRY, ALL YOU CLEVER MUSIC PEOPLE: Hate to tell ya, but there’s already a band named Mad Cow Disease. It’s an indie-label industrial combo (latest import CD: Tantric Sex Disco) formed in 1990 in a mostly-rural part of England where herds were already suffering from the deadly epidemic, years before authorities discovered it could spread to humans.

AIR CHECK: Two more attempts at pirate radio operations are now underway, joining the existing FUCC collective in the few open slots on the FM band. “KXTC” (info: 587-9487) hopes to be on the air next Monday night at 89.9, for once-a-week broadcasts of dance and house music. And “Seattle Liberation Radio” (PO Box 85541, Seattle 98145), a group of some 12 local political and cultural advocates, wants to start a full-time unlicensed station to primarily transmit alternative news and talk programming under the slogan, “End Corporate Hegemony of Media.”

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: I’ve previously mentioned Dan Halligan’s approximately-quarterly punkzine 10 Things Jesus Wants You to Know. But the new issue #13 particularly stands out, due to Katrina Hellbusch’s essay “A Friend No Longer.” In explicit, downbeat, name-naming detail, Hellbusch (a member of the local punk band Outcast) writes about passing out drunk at a party, awakening to find herself being raped by a close friend (a member of another local punk band). Never straining for exploitation or self-pity, Hellbusch vividly images a crime in which the assailant degraded himself to a subhuman state and tried to shove his victim there with him. She also begs (but doesn’t specifically ask) what this means about the punk scene–whether it’s an excuse for self-styled Bad Boys to be rowdy without rules, or whether it is (or oughta be) a closer-knit community of people who cooperate with and protect one another. Free at Fallout and Cellophane Square, among other dropoff sites, or $2 from 1407 NE 45th St., #17, Seattle 98105.

ONE, ETC., FOR THE ROAD: Recently, at two different occasions among two different sets of people, the topic arose about whether one could bar-hop in Seattle hitting only places with numbers in their names, in numerical order. I think I’ve figured how. Some of these places are far apart so you’ll need wheels (as always, be sure to have a designated driver and always drink responsibly):

* Van’s 105 Tavern (602 N 105th St.)

* Either the Two Bells (2313 4th Ave.), 2 Dagos From Texas (2601 1st Ave.), or the 211 Club (2304 2nd Ave.)

* Either the 318 Tavern (318 W Nickerson), or one of the two unrelated Triangle Taverns (1st Ave. S. or 3507 Fremont Pl. N.)

* Either the Four Mile Tavern (15215 Aurora Ave. N.), the Four B’s (4300 Leary Way NW), the Four Seas Restaurant (714 S. King St.), or the lounge at the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel (1300 4th Ave.).

* Either the 5 Spot (1502 Queen Anne Ave. N.), the 5 Point (415 Cedar St.), Zak’s 5th Ave. Saloon (206 5th Ave. N.), or the Old 5th Ave. Tavern (8507 5th Ave. NE).

* Either the Six Arms (600 E. Pine St.), the Six Eleven (611 2nd Ave.), or the 6th Ave. Bar & Grill (2000 6th Ave.).

* Either Cafe Septiéme (214 Broadway E.), or the 7th Ave. Tavern (705 NW 70th St.).

* The Speakeasy Cafe (2306 2nd Ave.), home of the Internet site for Dom Cappello’s Cafe 8Ball comic.

* Either the Gay 90s (700 Pike), or the bar formerly known as The Nine (now the Family Affair, 234 Fairview Ave. N.).

That’s about it sequentially. With the end of Rosellini’s Four-10 and Six-10, the closest thing to a “10” joint is the Tenya Japanese Restaurant (936 3rd Ave.). Then you’d have to skip a couple to get to the 13 Coins.

‘TIL NEXT TIME, try the Hershey’s Cookies and Creme bar (yum-my!), giggle at the new Mercedes 4 x 4 (ugg-ly!), and ponder these inscrutable words credited to Winston Churchhill: “We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm.”

Welcome back to a foolishness-free April Misc., the column that finds amusement anywhere it can, like in that brand new post-Broadway theater in Vancouver. Only a bunch of Canadians (or others with similar ignorance of basic U.S. history facts) would call a place the Ford Theatre. So when are they gonna mount a production of Our American Cousin?

PHILM PHUN: Toast With the Gods, the indie feature by Eric MaGun and Latino Pellegrini based loosely on The Odyssey and shot here gawd-was-it-really-almost-two-years-ago?, is finally finished and premiered late last month at the New York Underground Film Festival. When will we get to see it? No word yet. Speaking of undergrounds…

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Blackstockings (“For Women In the Biz”) is a small, low-key, personal newsletter aiming to raise solidarity and class-consciousness among “sex industry workers” (strippers, peep-show dancers, phone-sex callees, video models, escorts, even streetwalkers). Similar zines in other towns are run by politically-minded committees. This one’s run by one woman, a freelance stripper using the name “Morgan;” she and her contributing writers present themselves neither as society’s lurid victims nor as daring counterculture adventurers, but simply as ordinary folks doing work that’s like any work–occasionally invigorating, more often dreary. While the first issue focuses on sex workers’ personal lives (“Who’s a good dentist that doesn’t discriminate against us?”), political and legal issues inevitably appear. One item alleges that in the days before the Kingdome Home Show, police staged a sweep of street people and prostitutes in Pioneer Square–“For the women who they could not legally arrest, they poked holes in the condoms the women were carrying.” Available at Toys in Babeland or by leaving a message at 609-8201. Speaking of realities behind “glamour” businesses…

THE BIG TURN-OFF: As predicted here, the Telecommunications “Reform” Act promptly fed a massive drive to consolidate broadcasting into fewer and fewer hands. Thanks to rules enacted in the name of “greater competition,” speculators are amassing up to eight radio stations in a town. The owners of KMPS bought the biggest rival country stations, KRPM and KCIN, so they could change the stations’ formats and reduce KMPS’s competition. (KMPS’s owners also bought Seattle’s other country station, KYCW.) Viacom sold KNDD to the Philly-based Entertainment Communications, which already owns KMTT (both are already situated in the Can of Spam Building on Howell St.). No word on whether another Viacom unit, MTV, will still help devise KNDD’s ads, graphics, and web site. If all the currently-planned local radio deals go through, the Seattle Times estimates six companies will control 77 percent of the region’s listening audience. Speaking of media choices…

LIST-LESS: The Times’ highly-promoted new Sunday TV section debuted March 17 with 19 previously unlisted cable channels. But one channel was dropped from the 35 in the paper’s previous lineup–Public Access. According to spokesbot Pat Foote, Timeseditors deemed the access channel too marginal and too Seattle-specific for inclusion, even though they included several tertiary movie channels seen only on scattered suburban systems. However, an unspecified number of complaining phone calls persuaded ’em to reconsider. Access listings are back in the Times (the only print outlet they’ve ever been in) this week. Speaking of mis(sed) prints…

POT-CALLING-THE-KETTLE-BLACK DEPT.: Kudos to my fave computer user group, Mac dBUG (Macintosh Downtown Business Users Group), on its 10th anniversary. Its current newsletter (available free at the U Book Store computer dept.) has a cute word-O-warning, “Speaking of Spell-Checking,” reminding desktop publishers that even the best computer spell-check programs can’t catch real words in the wrong places. As examples, it used fractured phrases made of real words, all just one letter off from the expected words: “Share thy sod aid spool she chill,” “I switch it tires sages nice,” and “Take ham whole she fun spines.” Too bad they didn’t catch a real headline elsewhere on the same page: “What Does the Term `Bandwidth’ Means?”

‘TIL NEXT TIME, welcome Bedazzled Discs away from Pio. Sq. and into the ex-911 space on E. Pine, and eat all your chocolate Easter bunnies ears-first (otherwise ya lose all the flavor).