…our little Son of MISCsalon kaffeeklatsch on Sunday. Many items were discussed, many of which may make it into the print MISC or onto this site.

Later that same day, many of us were also at Titlewave Books on Lower Queen Anne for the store’s monthly reading series. Above, print MISC contributor Doug Nufer warms up the crowd with a short story written in the jargon of circus workers. Below, fellow print MISC contributor Matt Briggs offers highlights from his forthcoming short-story collection.

COMING SOON to this site: You’ll get to buy lovely, durable prints of some of the great photos which have appeared on this site and/or which will appear in forthcoming MISCmedia-published books.

RICHARD TODD WRITES on the future of America’s diffuse culture: “Already in the post-Sept. 11 society we have seen a marked shrinkage in socially acceptable political discourse.”

…and instead attend our glorious Son of MISCsalon public hashing-out session. Some of the print MISC’s writers and artists will discuss the mag’s future, possible fundraisers, favorite Halloween costumes for this season so besmirched by real-life horror, and a properly palindromic greeting for the year 2002.

It’s all this Sunday, Oct. 28, 2 p.m.-on, at the spacious and well-lit Zeitgeist coffeehouse, in Pioneer Square at 2nd Ave. S. and S. Jackson St.

Then later that evening (7 pm), many of us will trek to Titlewave Books on lower Queen Anne for its monthly reading series, curated as always by print MISC contributor Doug Nufer. A plangent time is guaranteed to all.

Greg Thompson Productions, the Seattle-based mounter of musical revues in Vegas and elsewhere, held its annual pre-Halloween costume and garage sale recently. Sequins! G-strings! Wigs! Audio mixers! Prop motorcycles! Scenery flats! Even a real Rolls-Royce (for $25,000 OBO).

Now that the fall print MISC is out, work begins immediately on the next one. It will be the first issue planned with national distribution in mind. We won’t stop writing about Seattle, but our writings about Seattle will necessarily include more background material so the out-of-town readers can get into the narratives.

This will be the “Recession Is Good For You” issue, in which we shall discuss the (real) possibilities of forging a new, more people-friendly economy out of the smoldering remains of the one we have. Get your submissions in now. Speaking of economies…

WIRED MAGAZINE may now be media-conglomerate owned, but it apparently still operates under the Global Business Network ideology of its Frisco-elitist founders. Witness the current cover story, the first one in which the mag has had anything nice to say about Microsoft. And just what is it about MS that Wired thinks is so hunky-dory, peachy-keeny, and revolutionary? Contracting XBox video-game manufacturing out to the Third World! It’s a godsend for management; and as for the US workers, well they never really mattered ’cause they never earned enough to belong to the magazine’s target demographic.

…is now out at some 135 locations in Seattle, and has been mailed to subscribers. Beginning next week, it will also be made available nationally via Last Gasp, the alterna-book distributor and comix publisher soon to enter its 35th year. Ask your local alterna-bookstore to carry MISC as soon as it shows up in LG’s catalog.

I’VE STILL HOPE FOR THE MARINERS to pull this series through, even though they respectfully lost Game 1 and are behind by a run in Game 2 as of this writing. Faith and hope, after all, are what we’re told we need more of these days, right?

…our online of top Northwest power pop past and present, has been assigned a new URL by our server provider. This means those of you who’ve bookmarked it in WinAmp, iTunes, or other MP3-playing software will need to paste in the new address, http://www.live365.com/play/73998.

The new print MISC. is running a little late–or, actually, I’d hoped to get it out two weeks earlier than I’d originally promised, but now it will be out on the previously promised date of Oct. 15. A lot of terror-attack related commentaries have been stuck in. Our original plans for a large, complicated cartoon drawing commemorating Seattle’s 150th birthday was replaced by a simpler one-page photo collage. If you want to run an ad in it, email me now.

STILL LOOKING, by the way, for your suggestions of Things to Love About America. Will post the whole list midweek.

…of the print mag approaching, we’ll start posting select articles from the past issue.

First up: Jenniffer Velasco’s account of adding up the losses in her personal life.

The 10th-anniversary-of-grunge special, in which your humble author is interviewed on camera, will be rerun on the VH1 cable channel this Tuesday at 6 p.m. Pacific Time. The Mariners’ game is radio-only that night, so you’ve no excuse not to watch.

…I’ve been busy this week getting the next MISC print mag together. You still have time to place an ad in it; email for the particulars.

SEATTLE-AREA READERS ought to get out tonight (Friday) to the Red & Gold Gallery, 214 S. Jackson St. (between the Amtrak station and the rubble of the Fenix Underground). Jennifer Velasco (who wrote “Which Loss Is Worse?” in our last print-mag issue) and Jaime Depaz have an ultra-cool fashion show at 7 p.m. there, along with a dance performance and a set by the breezy pop band Laguna. See y’all there.

ONE WEB-EXCLUSIVE PIECE I am working on for next week is a list of Reasons To Love America. At this time of ultra-sappy patriotic fervor, you see, there are still some (actually many) things I realized I did love about The Land of E Pluribus Unum; many of which haven’t been mentioned in any of this month’s sappy-patriotic speeches and ads. You know: Corn dogs, upbeat-consensual porn videos for every known fetish, Wall Drug, high-school-graduation keggers, cookie-dough ice cream, 217 cable channels (at least 10 of which are showing the same dumb movie at any given time), drive-in biker movies, etc. etc. Send in your suggestions now.

…to me regarding my appearance as an interview subject during VH1’s tenth-anniversary-of-Nirvana’s-Nevermind special. I didn’t see the show myself, but it’ll be rerun on Tuesday, Oct. 2 at 9 pm ET/PT.

(besides your subscriptions, ads, and merchandise purchases, of course: The next MISC print zine will be the “Happy Birthday Seattle” issue. It will contain a suitable-for-framing big collage image caricaturing as many of the people, places, things, and events that have made this city great as we can fit in.

We need your suggestions as per who and what oughta be in it–historical names, fictional characters, artsy types, archtypical figures, landmark buildings past and present, etc. etc. Send your ideas via email to clark@speakeasy.org. When you write, let us know if you’re willing to have your email texts posted publicly on this site. (Even if you don’t want others to read your suggestions, we’ll still appreciate them.)

UNPLUGGED: The Gibson House on 2nd, another of downtown’s last surviving dive bars (after 30 years) and a live-music club where the G-word was still spoken without irony, suddenly closed. MISC correspondents were at one of the place’s last shows and saw such spectacles as a man stripping from overalls to nada in under five seconds. Its loss leaves Zak’s Fifth Avenue as Seattle’s last real raunch-rock venue.

At no small expense (make your PayPal donations now!), we’ve gone ahead and run off more copies of the summer MISC print mag. Some dropoff places where the thing’s already disappeared will get a replenished supply; other places that never got any copies will get some now. (Folk who wanna help with the distro process, please feel free to email me.)

SO BAD IT’S, WELL, BAD: What makes a truly bad movie? Hint: Plan 9 isn’t “truly bad;” A.I., however, might qualify. Another hint: A “bad film festival” film might be ineptly produced but can still promise fun-time entertainment. A truly bad film is a chore, something you might as well just go straight to the “surprise” endings of at Movie Pooper; or read the whole tell-all plot summaries at The Movie Spoiler. (Found by Memepool.)

Thanks to ye who attended our intimate little MISC Salon yesterday evening. Apologies to whomever tried to make it but couldn’t, because for a period of time that day another tenant of the space locked the front doors without telling me. We’ll do another gathering soon; watch this space for particulars.

GET YER MERCH HERE!: The luscious MISC Boutique is now online. T-shirts, coffee mugs, tank tops, mouse pads, even boxer shorts are offerred bearing Sean Hurley’s hand-drawn logo from our Summer 2001 issue (which is nearly gone from most dropoff spots–to make sure you get yours, subscribe.)

SPEAKING OF MR. HURLEY, our print mag’s illustrious illustrator has an art opening this Tuesday evening at the Little Theater, 608 19th Ave. E. (at Mercer) in Seattle’s east Capitol Hill neighborhood. His paintings and drawings never cease to amaze and astound. Be there, amigos and amigas.

ELSEWHERE:

You don’t have to use southern-California slang in your own life, but a UCLA student survey reveals a new regional definition down there of the term “ballerina”– as “an immoral person with a moral facade.”

“AIDS is not the wrath of God, nature’s revenge, or the new bubonic plague; it is a nasty infectious disease that requires clear thinking and investigation to overcome.”

The intimate, informal MISC Salon will take place tomorrow (Saturday Aug. 11), 5-7 p.m., at the Belltown Underground Gallery, 2211 First Ave. (just north of the ex-Frontier Room in formerly hip Belltown). Meet MISC contributors; make your suggestions for this little print-and-online rag. See ya!

The broadsheet MISC magazine is now at about half the planned dropoff outlets. It can be obtained in Belltown, downtown, Queen Anne, Ballard, and parts of Capitol Hill. It will arrive today in the rest of Capitol Hill and Pioneer Square. In the next few days, you’ll find it in Fremont, Wallingford, the U District, and other spots around town. Can’t get to any of those? Order your own copy via the link on this page’s left frame.