…is now out at about one-third of the regular dropoff points. The rest should follow over the next three days. Subscribers should look in their mailboxes starting Monday.

WITH EVERY ISSUE of the print MISC, we try to have a public event. This time it’s The Clark Show.

It’s an evening of readings, odd music and video, audience-participation games, and (just perhaps) live singing.

It’s Monday, April 29, at the glorious newly-redone Rendezvous Lounge and Jewel Box Theater, 2320 2nd Ave. (north of Bell St.) in Seattle. Two one-hour sets start at 7:30 and 9:00, with somewhat different material in each. Be there, okie?

TODAY, we start trying to keep an earlier promise by postiing selected articles from past issues of the print MISC. With any hope, it’ll wet your whistle enough to want to subscribe.

In today’s batch, we start with Matt Briggs’s The Age of Uniforms, a memoir of one woman’s work life as seen via clothes.

Then, Matthew Stadler offers a Letter From Astoria, chronicling one of America’s strangest and saddest towns.

We’re also making it easier to find past weblog items from 2002 by listing some of the better (or at least longer) ones by name on an index page.

UPDATE #1: The two-week-delayed spring print MISC will be out this week. We’re only waiting confirmation of one ad.

UPDATE #2: Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men indeed showed up at a local Borders Books–and on the bestseller shelf. Still no Barnes & Noble sightings.

…will be out no later than April 10. The summer issue should follow in a mere two months from that, partly as a test to see if we can move permanently up to a faster turnaround. Having spent a few days in the World Media Capital has given me the inspiration to keep trying to make the print MISC a “real” magazine, capable of holding its own in the local and/or national marketplace. We’ll be discussing this further on.

AFTER TWO DAYS official threats/promises, the ultra-rare March snow came to Seattle Thursday night. It was bee-yoo-tee-ful. I was out in it on my regular First Thursday gallery crawl, and saw the city itself become a temporary art installation, an arrangement of pointillist streaks and abstracted white textures. Of course it didn’t last; it never does. But during the mini-storm’s eight-hour life, it was a mini-vacation from dreary late-winter reality.

EARLIER THAT EVENING, I attended the release party for the Spring issue of Arcade, the Northwest’s regional architecture-design journal.

I knew some of my Signifying Nothing images would be in it, in de-colorized form. I was pleasantly surprised that one of them made the cover! The thing’s available for $6 at the Elliott Bay Book Co., Peter Miller Books, and a few other select outlets.

…more of the print-only articles from the first three broadsheet MISCs will be posted on this site over the next few weeks. Details will be announced in this space.

It now looks like yr. humble editor will indeed get to attend the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in glamorous Stamford, Connecticut on Ides-O-March weekend. Thusly, production schedules for the spring print MISC will be adjusted.

The new ad and copy deadline is March 23.

The issue will be out April 7, in plenty of time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair.

The summer issue will either be about parents and kids or the long-promised “more sex, less gender” theme. Email your preference now.

…to 51-year TV veteran Mary Stuart, who has finally found the “Tomorrow” for which she had searched.

OUR ‘SIGNIFYING NOTHING’ PHOTO SHOW at the spendid Zeitgeist Kunst & Kaffee (2nd & Jackson in Seattle’s nicer-than-you-think Pioneer Square) ends this Wednesday. See it immediately.

However, this will not be your last chance to see our haunting color photos of abandoned signage. Another whole batch of these images will appear in the Spring issue of Arcade, the Northwest architecture-and-design journal. A release party for the issue will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. this Thursday, March 7, at the picturesque Panama Hotel Tea House, 605 1/2 South Main Street in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District. Be there or be longitudinal.

WHY bad habits can actually be good for us.

A LOVING TRIBUTE, complete with audio clips galore, in honor of ’70s TV shows and commercials.

Be in Seattle’s still-earthquake-hurt-after-one-year Pioneer Square Thursday evening to see my own (gorgeous) photo exhibition Signifying Nothing at Zeitgeist Kunst & Kaffee, 2nd & S. Jackson, 6-9 p.m. See ya!

…by the local-TV-news hype over “StormWatch 2002” (or actually hoped, like I did, to get caught up in the big rare Seattle snowstorm that, this time, didn’t happen). I speak of those of you who came to our spectacular MISCparty last Saturday night. Special thanks are due to the band Laguna!, to DJ Superjew and DJ E-Z Action, and to the staff of 2nd Avenue Pizza, without whom none of the fun would’ve been possible.

…to attend our scrumpdilyicious MISCparty! this early Saturday evening (6-11) at Second Avenue Pizza, on Second north of Virginia in Seattle. The live band Laguna plays sultry pop-rock; DJ EZ-Action and DJ Superjew spin suave Europop sounds. There’s also odd video, readings, games, strange snax, and much much more. It’s all ages, with beer and wine available for the over-21ers. And it all benefits the print MISC mag. Be there or be quadrangular.

Subscribers to the print MISC should get their copies the day after New Year’s or shortly thereafter. Seattle dropoff distribution is almost complete.

Work begins immediately on the spring issue, with the “Science vs. Science Fiction” theme. We’re still looking for writers who know about written science fiction and can explain its subgenres, cliches, and occasional joys to an audience of intelligent outsiders.

…and a prog-report on print MISC distro: Local Seattle dropoffs are two-thirds done. Subscribers should expect their copy any day now, depending on the vagaries of post-Xmas mail. National alterna-bookstore copies will arrive next Monday at the Last Gasp warehouse (ask your local cool-book or comix dealer to order it).

MARK YR. CALENDARS: There’s not one but two (count ’em!) live MISC events comin’ yr. way in future weeks:

• The gorgeous, spectacular MISCparty on Saturday, Jan. 26 in the lovely Rainier Room at 2nd Avenue Pizza, 2015 2nd Ave. at Virginia. DJ Superjew and DJ EZ Action will spin much fun, tasty Europop and other loungy tuneage. Novel drinkables and eatables will be served. Curiously odd video footage will be screened. Fun will be had. You can have some of it; be there.
• The opening of our upgraded Signifying Nothing photography show on Thursday, Feb. 7 at Zeitgeist Kunst & Kaffee, 171 S. Jackson St. at 1st Ave. S. This is a revamped, re-curated version of last summer’s exhibition, with images of decayed urban signage that are now hauntingly beautiful, semi-abstract forms of shape and color.

OUR NEW NATIONAL readership may also enjoy these silent messengers at our new Signifying Nothing online gallery, which will be accessed at this link. Images can be viewed; prints can be purchased in many sizes and formats. Images from our next book after that, City Light, will be up soon.

And remember, we’ve also got a line of (luscious) T-shirts, mugs, bags, mouse pads, etc. for sale at this link.

…but the mouth-wateringly luscious Winter print MISC is finally done! Dropoff copies will wend their way thru the greater Seattle area over the next week. Subscription copies should arrive on Boxing Day or soon thereafter.

As you might have noticed, we got this one out on the Winter Solstice. The print mag will have a solstice/equinox schedule until further notice.

And, I must say, it’s the best issue yet. It includes a reprint of last year’s favorite, the cautionary fable “A Dot-Com Christmas Carol;” plus a number of features relating to the economy and why the recession can be good for you:

• “A Manifesto for the New-New Economy” (explaining why the old “New Economy” was such a dud from the get-go and how a more cooperative, street-level economy can rise from its ashes);
• “The Age of Uniforms” (one woman’s 25-year job history, told via what she had to wear to each workplace);
• “How to Love America” (how “alternative” folks can still take pride in their nation whilst still questioning its government);
• “Why Pay Less When You Can Pay More?” (comparing fancy gift-store candles and lunch boxes to their mass-market equivalents);
• “Welcome to the Working Week” (imagining economic restructuring as if people mattered);
• “The Death of Charity” (why nonprofits can’t count on private-sector largesse anymore);
• “Harry Potter vs. 7th Heaven” (comparing religious statements in mainstream entertainment):
• “Letter From Astoria” (a report from one of America’s oddest towns, where hard times are a way of life);
• “Dear Mr. Blethen” (an open letter inviting the Seattle Times publisher to make good on his earlier threat to move the whole paper to the ‘burbs);
• “Politics Gets Nickels-and Dimed” (how the Seattle mayoral election was about class wars, not “culture wars”);
• “Poetry Camp (With Alcohol)” (a memoir from last summer’s slam-poetry championships);
• “D-I-Y-Not-Now?” (the indie-rock lifestyle as an economic strategy);
• “EWWWWipe Out” (the obscenely wealthy become the merely annoyingly wealthy);
• “How to (heart) the Downturn” (reasons to be cheerful in these times); and
• “The Agony of Debt” (a philosophical-fatalistic look at the hell of plastic obligation).

Plus essays, book-music-video reviews, satirical shorts, and snappy b/w illos.

More than half of this issue has not appeared on the website; so even if you’re a regular here, the print mag will still be a fresh and exciting read. Look for it at a dropoff spot near you (in Seatown) or for sale at an alterna-bookstore near you (in the rest of the land). Or better yet, subscribe at the handy link somewhere on the left side of this page.