Rotten Tomatoes decided to celebrate the Fourth by determining the most appropriate movie for each state. Obviously, some states have more choices than others. (Wisconsin’s list entry is a short within a documentary).

Washington gets Singles. Not the greatest film made here (or even the greatest film set here), but a reasonable portrayal of what at least one generation thinks of as the scene that made Seattle famous.

…jump start the economy? Felix Salmon sez, “Pay the Artists!”

One of his former lawyers says it just might have been the same thing that did in his first wife’s dad.

The ultimate tabloid celebrity was also the ultimate mess of contradictions, as you’ve long known. He was a devout student of classic R&B who had a series of nose and chin reconstructions, straightened his hair, and wore whiteface makeup on and off stage. He was a self-made sex symbol whose mark of “toughness” was to shriek in an attempt to reach the high notes of his early fame. He was a creator of effortless-sounding music whose life was rife with chaos, drug/alcohol abuse, and music-industry sycophants. He was a beloved entertainer who was accused of some of the most heinous crimes. He’d attained unlimited wealth (or the closest thing to that any African-American man has ever had), then spent the last third of his life scrambling to avoid total financial collapse.

In all the TV, radio, and online chatter in the first hours since his demise, I’ve been reading and hearing the wildest tales. Given what we know about his life, even the wildest of these rumors seem believable, whether or not they’re true.

My favorite quotation about Jackson came in a Facebook message from ex-Seattle semiotician Steven Shaviro: “MJ, in his musical genius and in his sad racial and sexual confusions, epitomized American civilization more than anybody else ever did.”

Celebrity can be a fickle thing. So can typecasting. Fawcett was only on Charlie’s Angels for one season, 22 episodes (plus a three-episode return in the show’s fourth season). Yet that one role, and the accompanying glamour-image marketing, established her celebrity persona for life. From serious film roles to two Playboy appearances, nothing she did since overcame that initial inconography of the nipples, the teeth, and especially the hair. Only her slow, very public death did that.

…and best wishes to top local music producer Conrad Uno (Young Fresh Fellows, PUSA, and more). He and his lovely bride Emily Bishton renewed their wedding vows at Safeco Field on Sunday. The here-linked Seattle Times article mentions almost nothing about Uno’s musical career.

…And, one guy claims, the TV business will soon follow.

…ends in 19 minutes from the time I start writing this. I’m watching KING-TV (the first analog telecaster in our corner of the world) as its original transmission ends after nearly 61 years. Right now, it’s transmitting a Today show segment about how to find the right-size bra.

KING’s sister station KONG just ran a segment on its local morning news about the big digital switchover. They said KCTS (the local PBS affiliate) has already shut off its analog signal.

KOMO’s been running a Good Morning America outdoor concert segment with the Jonas Brothers.

Back on KING, Today‘s got the Black Eyed Peas, with some backup dancers in black-and-white striped full body suits. How appropriate, for some of the last signals to be carried on the ol’ 525 horizontal lines.

The segment ended with the 57-year-old station-break cue: “This is Today on NBC.”

On KIRO, The Early Show offers Lionel Richie (now mostly known as a reality-show star’s dad) on the deck of a Navy ship, presumably at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The onscreen program guide says I missed a segment with Betty White, that living TV legend.

KOMO’s local news break has a predawn car crash and the arrest of a male suburban YMCA employee for allegedly abusing a 13 year old girl, plus traffic, weather, and one more warning about the death of analog.

KING’s last analog commercials: Eastside Vascular Vein Center and the Village Theater. KOMO’s last analog commercial: The Jewelry Exchange in Renton.

KING has now switched to an infomercial about the big switch, in Spanish with English subtitles. It was preceded by an announcement, in English, by KING 5 News dude Glenn Farley, saying the Anglophone version of the infomercial will follow.

KOMO’s analog signal, beamed since 1954, is now dead.

KIRO’s analog signal, beamed since 1958, is also now dead.

KSTW’s analog signal continues, for now, with Divorce Court. Not what I’d have chosen to close out an era in American communications technology.

Update, 10:54 a.m.: Just called the receptionist dude at KSTW. They’re keeping their analog signal on until noon today. This means the official last analog telecasts in Seattle will be reruns of judge shows.

Update, 12:27 p.m.: The final switch came at high noon. At the end of “Family Court,” a pretaped announcement said, “KSTW 11 is now ending its analog signal. Please stand by.” Then static.

…ends this Friday. Does anyone care? This guy does.

Today’s Sunday paper is down to 76 pages (plus ad flyers, supplements, and comics). Weekday papers this past month have had as few as 26 pages. (That’s not the “news hole;” that’s the whole paper, ads and all.)

I’m not calling this feature a “death watch,” because the Times still has a lot further down it could go.

As yet, no major US city has lost all its daily papers. None probably will.

But the papers that remain could become unrecognizable. They could become tiny journals of record, like slightly more mass-market versions of the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce. They could become glorified pundit-newsletters promoting the local business community’s agenda of the day. They could become, to borrow from the old National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody, “newscasts in print,” lurid sheets emphasizing crimes, fires, and mayhem.

• Joel Connelly doesn’t like the idea of still more street construction in Belltown, worrying that all these closed lanes and parking spaces could fatally disrupt business, especially if Nickels’s “park boulevard” idea (reducing Bell Street to one lane of traffic and plaza-izing the rest) goes through. I believe if Bell’s gonna be revamped, it might as well be done now, while all this other work is already going on on or near it.
• Our favorite expert on the domestic automotive collapse, Michael Moore, says good riddance to the old General Motors. (Say, since we the U.S. taxpayers now own the company, let’s bring back the Geo! And let’s make us some of those hi-speed passenger trains, too, OK?)
• As the Chase-ification of Washington Mutual nears completion, a lot of WaMu ATM cards have stopped working. The possible culprit: Chase’s deal to switch WaMu’s debit card handling services from MasterCard to Visa.
• Seattle Business Monthly depicts the Seattle Times-owning Blethen family as a dysfunctional clan worthy of soap-opera depiction.
• Our pals at the local news site PubliCola have some real investment behind them now, thanks to Greg Smith, the real estate developer who almost ran for mayor this year. Yeah, he almost ran against Greg Nickels, for whom PubliCola cofounder Sandeep Kaushik now does campaign PR.
• And the equally fine folks at another local news site, Seattle PostGlobe, have published another photo essay by yr. intrepid c’r’s’p’n’d’t. It’s all about the demise of the Summit K-12 alternative public school.

…these online “abstracts” of New Yorker articles better than the articles themselves.

…one Sam Schulman argues what just might be “The Worst Case Yet Against Gay Marriage,” as described in a New Republic snark post. Schulman goes beyond the normally accepted bounds of reactionarydom, to posit that marriage is necessary to keep straight men in proper society and to keep women from “concubinage.”

By the way, this is the Sam Schulman who used to own the short-lived magazine Wigwag—not the (now late) Sam Schulman who used to own the Sonics.

So, Playboy came out with a list purporting to rank “America’s sexiest CEOs.” The 10 women include one porn producer, two lingerie company bosses, and the head of an L.A. gym called “Flirty Fitness.”

All proper meaningless entertainment fluff so far. Then, Huffington Post puts up a link to it. The link item led to a comment thread that runs the gamut from “objectification” gripes to “homely” gripes.

Why do the dumbest bits of media draw the dumbest responses?

Look: There have been plenty of women in business. A few of them, too few, have reached positions of leadership. Of those, several have had, or acquired, faces and figures that conform to commonly held notions of physical attractiveness. Yawn.

I do concur with one HuffPo commenter, who noted the Playboy list didn’t include any women who ran really big companies (other than Victoria’s Secret). There haven’t been enough females atop Fortune 500 companies; those who have could use more recognition, even if it’s for their more peripheral achievements.

…new news site is now up, christened Seattle PostGlobe. It’s as unassuming at its start as the rump relic of the official P-I site. Let’s hope both grow and blossom.