IT’S A THANKSGIVING MISC., the pop-cult column that asks the musical question, “Why doesn’t the columnist like sweet potatoes?” (Answer next week.)

THE MAILBAG: Ex-Almost Live! cast member John Garibaldi writes, “Credit my friend now in New Hampshire, Geordie Wilson. One visit back to Seattle this fall and he instantly renames the new REI store Hiketown.”

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Matt Asher’s Seattle Scroll has arrived to take the place of the now-suspended Perv as Seattle’s biggest one-piece-of-paper publication (it measures an odd 11″ x 40″). Its first issue was highlighted by associate editor Chris Walker’s essay on the real meaning of Chief Seattle and a haunting photo by George Vernon of Georgetown’s abandoned but still gorgeous Hat n’ Boots gas station. Biweekly at the usual dropoff sites, or from P.O. Box 3234, Seattle 98114.

BLOBOSITY: The second Seattle Scroll has a beautiful shot of the lower Queen Anne restaurant building unofficially known as The Blob. While that space still sits empty (but no longer awaiting demolition), its playful spirit lives in the hearts of local developers. The chapel now under construction at Seattle U., designed by Steven Holl, includes a sequence of oddly-shaped roof structures and baffles. As previewed in the local architecture mag Arcade, they represent elements of iconography, light, and mystery in Catholic tradition.

On a less meditative note, initial designs for the Experience Music Project at Seattle Center (still popularly known by its former working title, the Hendrix Museum) show a series of connected buildings, in shapes and colors that, looking down from the Space Needle, would vaguely resemble a smashed guitar. It attempts a “fun” rendition of Blobosity, but ultimately succumbs under the heavy thumb of Boomer-nostalgia pretensions. Speaking of spaces made for fun…

MALLED DOWN: By now there’s something pleasantly weather-beaten about Northgate, “The Mall That Started It All” (in 1950 it was the first complex of its kind anywhere), making it an almost human experience compared to newer, more hyperreal retail theaters. That hasn’t stopped mall management from vying to “upgrade” the joint with ever more yuppified chain boutiques.

But when the now-disappearing Ernst chain abandoned its N-gate hardware outlet, the mall took a rare populist turn and lured the first in-Seattle Toys “R” Us. If you’ve never been to one, it’s essentially an overgrown version of a discount-store toy department (it grew out of the long-defunct White Front discount chain). Tall shelves, narrow aisles, bright boxes, and more echoey sounds of screaming kids than in a suburban YMCA pool. The opening-day festivities included costume-character versions of favorite kiddie stars, including a woman dressed up as Barbie. (No, pervs, I didn’t ask her how she goes to the bathroom.) It’s nice to know the store’s there in case of a really good advertised special, but for day-to-day plaything accumulation I still prefer Archie McPhee’s.

IT AIN’T ME: By the time this comes out, we’ll have seen if the local media that got all aghast over Annie Dillard’s throwaway remarks about the Northwest’s intellectuals (or lack of them) will be equally incensed over the more deliberately nasty regional barbs of Nanci Donnellen, KJR-AM’s former Fabulous Sports Babe. In her new blather book, out this week and predictably titled The Babe in Boyland, the now nationally-syndicated radio sports gabber calls her ex-stomping ground “a hopeless zero” and “a fucked-up backwater town… filled with the dumbest people in the world.” Her KJR colleagues? “Small-time nobodies who thought that because they lived in Seattle they were some big deal and that the rest of the world should come kiss their asses.” To further prompt cheap over-reactions, she writes how when she moved here from Tampa she pledged to work to get the Mariners moved there. Her introduction even thanks Jeff Smulyan, the ex-Ms owner who tried to facilitate such a move, whom she calls one of her “true friends.” Yawn.

IT’S NEARLY TIME for our annual In/Out List. Your suggestions are now being accepted at Misc. World HQ. ‘Til then,ponder these improbably risque remarks attributed to Phyllis Schafly: “Marriage is like pantyhose. It all depends on what you put into it.”

ENNUI GO AGAIN: Nov. 5’s just around the metaphorical corner, and acquaintances of mine say they can hardly wait. They’re psyched n’ primed to head out, wait patiently in line, and be the first to buy the CD Presidents of the United States of America II,which cleverly goes on sale Election Day.

As for the election itself, has any major election in my lifetime been so near and yet so not-there? I’m not talking about voter apathy or ineffectual complaints about the electoral status quo; those have always been with us. I’m talking the total slouching-through-the-motions aspect of the exercise. I’ve struggled for a metaphor for this anti-spectacle: An end-of-season football game between two going-nowhere teams? The last, fitful, sex act of a couple about to split up? The rote “excitement” of Elvis- and Marilyn-dressed waiters at some silly theme restaurant, or a cover band at a high-school prom?

Sure, in ’84 everyone recognized and dismissed Mondale for being what Dole is now–a seasoned insider who got nominated thanks to connections and fundraising prowess, but whom nobody had great fondness for as a potential Prez. But then there were other things going on (like the Booth Gardner/ John Spellman gubernatorial race). Now we’ve got uninspiring sideshows like Ellen Craswell looking all lost and confused when speaking to anyone outside her ideological clique.

I was sorta hopin’ for a final public-discourse confrontation with the Religious Right’s central tenet (how Jesus Christ Himself wants you to cede all authority and power to Big Business). Instead, Clinton and Locke did an end-run and positioned themselves as the sane choice in pro-business politicians. They’re just as receptive to the desires of big campaign contributors as the Republicans are–but without the annoying baggage of a social agenda, without dependencen on followers who just might someday get around to reading that Bible verse about not serving God and Mammon.

CATHODE CORNER #1: You’d expect MTV to go all hyped-out over Madonna’s baby. Sure enough, the day the birth was announced, the channel went to all Madonna videos, with congratulations by MTV Online users crawled across the bottom of the screen, interspersed with predictions by infomercial psychics about the kid’s future life. What at least I didn’t expect was an MTV promo ad featuring drag queens dressed up as aged versions of Madonna and Courtney Love, re-enacting a scene from the cult-film classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, complete with barbed dialogue like “Why don’t you go re-invent yourself?” Given Love’s former taste for baby-doll dressing and Madonna’s former Joan Crawford fixation, it’s a wonder nobody thought of it before.

CATHODE CORNER #2: As was predicted here, the Telecommunications “Reform” Act has led to fewer media giants controlling more outlets. The Time Warner Inc./ Turner (TWIT?) combine has put the pre-1948 Warner Bros. movies back under Warner’s library for the first time since they were sold to a TV syndicator in 1957, but it also created a content behemoth big enough to threaten Rupert Murdoch’s world-domination schemes. Murdoch’s suing to get his Fox News Channel (which stops just short of promising a right-wing spin on all stories) onto TWIT-owned cable systems in NYC, systems now running their full physical capacity of channels. Murdoch-friendly Republican there have offered to stick Fox News on a city-controlled cable channel and dump the public access shows on it now. In short, give even more to the big programmers and kill what little access non-conglomerate voices now get. Fortunately, TWIT (and Manhattan’s other cable operator, Cablevision) are refusing this “solution,” at least for now.

PAY LESS DRUGS, R.I.P.: The Pay n’ Save stores, once the flagship of the local Bean family’s retail empire, were sold to NYC speculators, who then sold them to Kmart, which merged them with the Oregon-based Pay Less, then spun off the combined chain to private investors, who merged it with California’s Thrifty Drug. Along the way the G.O. Guy, House of Values, and Gov-Mart Bazaar chains also joined the Pay Less fold. Now, these 1,007 outlets will be part of the East Coast-based Rite Aid circuit. It’s a good thing drug stores don’t have the same combination-warning labels drugs have.

With only 12 days ’till the election and no major politician talking about America’s real ongoing crisis (the upward distribution of wealth and the developing two-tier economy), it’s up to Misc. to give you the business, in this all-local-retail column:

BOARD MEETING: Responding to my call for suggested new uses for the ex-REI building on Capitol Hill, reader Blaine Dollard writes: “Always thought it would make a great skatepark! Take the elevator up and start your run up in the Sale Attic, total acid drop or a few banks to get down the stairs, then get mass speed down that ramp leading from the shoes towards Pike and maybe a big bowl or snake run through the Gore-Tex zone. I think it would meet zoning laws too! Now just put an empty swimming pool or two in the basement and the neighborhood could be swimming with more skaters than ever. Wouldn’t hurt [nearby board shop] Cresent’s business either!” In other clever concepts…

FAST FOOD FOR THOUGHT: The Papa Murphy’s Take & Bake Pizza chain now displays a small “Food Stamps” logo in the upper right corner of one of its TV commercials. It’s a subtle reminder that as a deli store and not a restaurant, ye who are unemployed and/or underclass can go there as an occasional break from ramen. In other sales pitches…

SCENT PACKING: I have it on good evidence that the Cologne Cult is back in town. You remember them–the evangelistically fired-up, glassy-eyed young gals n’ guys who’d enter offices and other workplaces, somehow sneak past receptionists and other gatekeepers, and hawk inexpensive designer-imposter colognes to the workers (sometimes claiming they were the real brand name products). I don’t know where they’re from, where they go when they’re not here, or how they stay in business, since none of the myriad stories I’ve heard about ’em has ever mentioned a successful sale. In other discount goods…

THE BEST INTENTIONS: Best Products is closing its last 13 Washington stores. These include the final remnants of the former locally-owned Jafco chain and catalog, which supplied moderately-priced jewelry, sporting goods, home furnishings (including foam sofa-beds), and stereo gear to two generations of Northwesterners. I can still remember the day one of my high-school teachers showed off her brand new engagement ring (from a fellow teacher) in class. Just weeks later, I happened to find that exact ring in the Jafco catalog; giving me direct evidence that education was perhaps not the most lucrative of professions. In other closings…

THE LAST REWIND: Backtrack Records and Video, the Ravenna-based dean of local mondo-movie rental houses, is closing as of this Saturday. Owner John Black (one of this paper’s very first advertisers) has sold all his remaining inventory to Bedazzled Discson Capitol Hill, which should have Backtrack’s rental videos available again in a few weeks. Black and his original partner, attorney Fred Hopkins, started by selling used LPs, then added a modest but well-curated sci-fi/horror VHS selection in the early years of the video boom. (Today’s mammoth Scarecrow Video store began as a subleased shelf within Backtrack.) They helped sponsor a film series I curated in 1986-87, as part of their commitment to keeping the flame of cult cinema alive. They produced a public-access movie-review show (still occasionally rerun) and were involved in making a handful of amateur, shot-on-video creature features (one, Rock n’ Roll Mobster Girls, included early appearances by Jim Rose and Hole drummer Patty Schemel). Best wishes on all future endeavors. In other hipness artifacts…

THE COOL JERK: If you grew up around here, you probably recall snide remarks about the Bon Marche’s teen boutique, The Cube–remarks typically predicated on the fact that a “cube” is essentially a square, only multiplied. Now they’ve taken that to heart with this fall’s Geek Chic display. It’s complete with velour dresses, lime-green sweaters, fluorescent-orange fake-fur coats, and black PVC skirts. My favorite fashion analyst describes it as “the same doubleknit blahs you see on the Evening Magazine guy, only with a new name tacked on to make you think it’s not the same thing they’ve been selling you for four years.”

I spent three days in Reno last week because there’s a hotel price war going on, that finally led to the ultimate discount–free. The Circus Circus hotel-casino (the one that used to sponsor a boat at the Seafair hydroplane races) has been giving away free nights online, at www.cybernetwork.net/c/circus/.

I hadn’t been to Reno since I was 12. Unlike other revisited childhood-memory sites, Reno is just as overwhelming now as it was then. The big hotel-casinos have gotten bigger, building huge hotel towers and parking garages. The Circus Circus is one of three casinos interconnected by skybridges to form a continuous quarter-mile-long space of slots, card games, and buffets.

But gambling profits in northern Nevada have stayed flat (as they’ve been, minus inflation, since 1970). The big new casinos have merely drawn business from independents (even the legendary Harold’s Club is now a deserted storefront); cheap hotel rates have merely drawn business from motels (which have compensated by renting at weekly rates to underclass families arriving in search of casino jobs).

Indeed, walk too far from the high-rises and you’re smack in a typical depressed inland-west town (there’s even a Spokane Street), with white and Mexican street kids boasting of their machoness, seedy bars where no microbrew has ever touched a tap, trailer parks, used-car lots that don’t bother to mop up the fluids leaking from the cars onto the concrete, and privately owned all-nite liquor stores.

Despite its problems, Reno remains a great destination with rich heritage. It was once the gambling capital of North America, before Vegas shot ahead in the ’50s. More recently, Vegas has reacted to the nationwide gambling explosion by turning itself into a collection of family theme parks, just as a new generation has become fascinated by the sinfully swingin’ culture Vegas used to symbolize. Reno’s still got that culture (or much of it).

What’s more, Vegas is a thoroughly suburbanized experience, with self-contained resorts strewn down an airport highway. Reno, in contrast, is an urban experience; 16 of its 25 major casinos (and six smaller storefront casinos) are on or near a real main street. It’s a place for strolling and watching the passing parade of giddy young honeymooners, world-weary middle-aged men in vintage suits, and troupes of exuberant senior ladies bussed in from across the west.

If Vegas is now a city for families, Reno is a city for women, specifically older women. At any given time, any given row of slot machines will be dominated by over-60 ladies emulating the grandmother in Dostoevsky’s The Gambler, gleefully losing her fortune at the roulette tables while her descendents impatiently wait for her to die.

As a city for women, Reno has nothing like the sex industry of Vegas (or even of Seattle). Porn shops are zoned far from the casino district. Strip clubs are few and small. The town’s only casino skin show (Playboy’s Ecstasy, produced by Seattle’s Greg Thompson Productions) gives almost as much emphasis to bare-butted men as to bare-breasted women.

There’s one island of unabashed masculinity in Reno–the sports-wagering area at the Cal-Neva, the biggest surviving non-hotel casino. Brown rec-room paneling. Thirty-six TVs, showing every available live game or horse race. Heinekin bottles for $1.25. Guys of all races (but only one waist measurement–XXL) arguing passionately about the baseball playoffs (“Good pitching ALWAYS beats good hitting!” “BULL-shit!”), but all agreeing the Ms would’ve won it all had Randy Johnson been healthy.

Proud yet unpretentious, loud yet inviting, the Cal-Neva (along with other indie casinos like the Nevada Club and the Original Nugget) is an honest goodtime place and a perfect Cocktail Nation destination. This, not hotel high-rises with marble shower walls, could bring the neo-hipsters and the young adults. They’d come for the old-time American sin and return for the skiing and the National Bowling Stadium. If Reno can reach out to a new generation by building on the best of what it still has, it could thrive again.

ONLINE EXTRAS

* Southwest Airlines is in many ways the Stranger of passenger air carriers. It goes out of its way to extol an attitude of fun and informal cameraderie, while actually scrambling hard and thinking cleverly to keep costs down and revenues up. Sitting in a crammed 737 without the sedating schticks used by the rest of the industry (headphones, movies, meals, warm interior colors) can be an ordeal. To Reno, it’s at least a relatively brief ordeal (95 mins.).

* My hotel room had a posted rate of $175/night. If I’d paid for it I’d feel cheated. No HBO (just a few dumb pay-per-view hits), no complimentary morning paper, no in-room coffeemaker, almost no room service (just continental breakfast in the morning, pizza and Cokes at night). The place doesn’t even have a swimming pool. You’re expected to use your room strictly for sleeping, bathing, and fucking, and to spend most of your time feeding cash to the slots and the card tables.

* To give an idea of the town’s one-industry status, there are almost 28,000 hotel and motel rooms in the Reno area, one for every nine residents. The only important non-tourism employers are the state university and the state capital (the latter in nearby Carson City). Any dip in tourism revenues wreaks havoc on local tax proceeds, further tattering social services.

* One problem affecting the tourism industry there is that the big operators have deliberately underbuilt non-gambling attractions. They haven’t even tried to attract conventions, believing conventioneers to be lesser gambling prospects. So there’s not much for families with kids (except the Circus Circus’s midway games and acrobat acts, the still-running Bonanza theme park, and a couple of ghost towns). Only one of the casinos has even a small shopping arcade; to buy most stuff, ya gotta go out to the mall.

* Tourist souvenirs, though, are happily available at many sites. (There’s even still a Woolworth’s in Reno!) This means you can get your boyfriend (or girlfriend) an “I Ate at Mustang Ranch” sweatshirt without visiting the legal brothel, situated in the forlorn hills across the county line.

* The aforementioned Playboy’s Ecstasy revue is just the kind of unabashed bad-taste experience a tourist could hope for. Male and female singers gave appropriately dumb, “high energy” renditions of Billy Joel’s lamest hits. A male magician told dumb phallic jokes while blowing up balloons (though his trained cockatoo was cool). The three boy dancers and five girl dancers were predictably frenetic and largely unerotic, through at least four changes of mini-costume. The set design looked “industrial” in an MTV/Eurodisco sort of way. The waiting area outside Harrah’s intimate 500-seat showroom featured a wall of Sammy Davis Jr. memorabilia.

* The rest of Reno’s live entertainment is disappointing at best. That plague of neo-easy-listening tripe sometimes known as “Young Country” has taken over most of the showrooms, except for the ones hosting Madonna or Motown impersonators or surviving ’50s crooners.

* My final status: $18 ahead.

(My sources include the Reno Gazette-Journal and the Utah-based magazine Edging West.)

HERE AT MISC. we’ve figured out the easy way to figure out whom to vote for next month: Vote for all the candidates who appear on TV ads in color, and against all the guys who appear in black-and-white.

BELO CO. TO BUY KING, SELL KIRO: This leaves a wonderful opportunity. Let’s buy KIRO-TV. We (myself and you dear readers) will form a private-stock corporation, get some venture capital, and take over Channel 7. First, we’ll bring back J.P. Patches. Then we’ll show America how a station oughta be run. Imagine: A local performance-art variety show, with the Black Cat Orchestra and Pat Graney Dancers. Consumer-watch segments attacking the real corporate crooks, not nickel-and-dime mail-order frauds. The Sanjyit Ray Movie of the Week. Art lessons with Ed Fotheringham. Live curling matches. Late-night rerun marathons of Thunderbirds (the original versions, not the cut-up Fox manglings from two years ago).

FIRST XMAS CAROL spotted on a Seattle restaurant background music system: Sept. 23.

WATCH THIS SPACE: The Sailors Union of the Pacific Hall, home of such nice all-ages shows last year, is now about to house the reincarnation of El Gaucho, formerly one of Seattle’s best-loved steak and bourbon outlets. Its old downtown manifestation, now the Olive Way branch of the Red Balloon Co., was famous as the watering hole of old KVI DJs Bob Hardwick (the official Ninth-Coolest Seattleite Ever) and Jack Morton.

DILLARD’S DULLARDS: During a post-speech Q&A at a Michigan writers’ conference some six months ago, Connecticut essayist/ poet Annie Dillard was asked if she missed living in the Northwest (she was holed up in Bellingham and the San Juans in the late ’70s). She said no, claiming “it’s no place for an intellectual woman” and offering a brusque retort imaging NW females as breast-feeding, fruit-canning, chainsaw-wielding mutes. Dillard’s remark eventually caught the attention of editors at the Seattle Times, who don’t have a particular interest in intellectualism but do have a lot invested in the image of Seattleites as at least a pseudo-sophisticated sort. A Scene section front page was assembled around Dillard’s brief quotation, headlined “Women intellectuals: A Northwest oxymoron?.” To fill the rest of the space, the paper added interview quotes from local citizens and defensive editorial commentary (“OK, Northwest women, dab that drool off your chin, put down your chainsaw and listen up”), treating readers as if they were as dumb as Dillard claimed they were. The Times, which would rather cultivate readers who can grapple with complex wines than ones who can grapple with complex ideas, treated Dillard’s throwaway remark as a call to defend, not the Northwest Mind, but the Northwest Lifestyle. The notion that there could be some bright earth mamas out there, or some well-dressed urbane ditzes, hasn’t seemed to occur to the paper.

Incidentally, here’s a perhaps-fortuitous slice of Dillard’s only novel to date, The Living (set in 1890s B’ham): “…But the times had gotten inside them in some ways as they aged, and made them both ordinary… No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and they wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.” (Italics added.) (The Times’ review called The Living “a novel of character that blends history, social change, and individual dreams in a sophisticated, seamless prose.”)

BASES OF OPINION: So “Refuse to Lose II” ended with a whimper (and a wild pitch), not with a Grand Salami. That’s OK. Last year was the grand Drive for Repsect, when the Ms (and, by extension, the region) proved it had contender stuff. This Randy Johnson-less year was more for fun, for accomplishment for its own exhilarating sake, and for the fans to prove to the taxpayers there really was long-term support behind the team (and, by extension, the new stadium scheme).

‘TIL NEXT WE GRAPPLE with the limitations of the written word, recall these words from the legendary Hedy Lamarr: “Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”

KISS THE PICTURES! LICK THE PRINT! CHEW THE STAPLES!: After a seeming lull period, local zines and periodicals are again popping up. Here are a few that have slipped by lately:

* How to Tell If You’re Dead, by Michelle Beaudry and Lord Carrett: There are worse illustrated-joke books out there, but this at least qualifies for dishonorable mention. “You’re Dead If… Minnie Pearl’s price tag is on her toe.” ($6 from Laffbooks, 6201 15th Ave. NW, Seattle 98107.)

* The Movie Marquee. Somebody tries to start a self-published mainstream movie-review zine just about every year. This one’s from local freelancer Doug Thomas. It’s little better or worse than any of its ilk, desperately seeking artistic or at least financial significance the action thrillers made by the studios it wants to advertise. ($15/6 issues from 3015 NW Market St., #B115, Seattle 98107.)

* Replicant: A Journal of Seattle Area Industrial & Darkwave Musings. Small, personal, infrequent newsletter for Goth and industrial-dance music lovers. Recent issues have featured DJ Webb’s series “Name Calling,” offering handy intros about the confusing genres and sub-genres in recent dance music. (Pay-what-you-can from P.O. Box 48213, Seattle 98148.)

* ReAct: Practical Strategies for Ending Violence. Py Bateman ran the Alternatives to Fear self-defense school for umpteen years; her new monthly newsletter goes beyond the specific tactics of her classes, into larger issues of personal safety, power, and fear. In issue #3 she breaks with her profession’s traditions by including one story about a male assailee. ($25/year from P.O. Box 23316, Seattle 98102.)

* No Apologies: The Best of Real Change Poets, 1994-1996. I’ve never claimed to be a qualified judge of modern-day poetry, but this is the Real Thing with a capital RT. It’s not grad students sympathizing with (or slumming among) down-and-outers, it’s down-and-outers talking for themselves, with pride, anger, humor, wistfulness, nostalgia, and not a speck of malaise. The highlight is Dr. Wes Browning’s memoir “Art in Balance,” about (among other things) meeting Betty White at a USO show. ($6.95 from Real Change, 2129 2nd Ave., Seattle 98121.)

* Code: The Creative Culture Magazine. For some reason, this is the first issue I’ve seen yet it claims to be #5. It’s supposed to be the “Work Issue,” but at least half the 44 pages (on heavy-slick paper) seems to be about the personal life of the staff, particularly editor Lou Maxon. Squint past the sub-Ray Gun typography (hint: Adobe Courier is not a suitable magazine text face), and you read about how Maxon left the NYC rat race to end up working at a trauma center (presumably Harborview’s) while noblely struggling to get his friends’ names into print. You also get a lot of house ads, scattered around plugs for other people’s zines. ($3 plus postage from 2400 Westlake Ave. N., #21, Seattle 98109.)

* Steelhead: The Handbook of the Next Northwest. As ambitious as Code and more serious. Its 48 densely-packed pages are mostly devoted to cultural regionalism, to taking a hard look at the world directly around you and networking with like minds nearby; even though its second-longest piece is a semi-fiction story set entirely in California. I also don’t get the editors’ obsession with that dumb fashion mag George. Still, at least an attempt to ask some big questions about the Big-Big-Big Picture. ($3.95 from 4505 University Way NE, #420, Seattle 98105.)

* Slant. Issue #7 of the out-of-state zine that publishes more Seattle writers and artists than some local zines is about travel, foreign and domestic. The gargantuan newsprint rag includes words and/or pix by locals Charles Peterson (photos from Vietnam), Jan Gregor, Tom Kipp, Andy Cohen, Tim Midgett, Keith Bearden, and Leslie Talmadge Woodward, plus a visit to James Acord’s atomic art in Richland by Toronto writer Brian Freer. It’s free at Urban Outfitters (which publishes it), but if you subscribe you get a darling mailing label with the defiant slogan, “We Are Not An Alternative Publication.” ($4.50/3 issues from 1809 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19103.)

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.

Yes Depression:

Country Dick RIP

Record review by Clark Humphrey for The Stranger, 8/6/96

Dan Mclain, known to two generations of indie-fans as Country Dick Montana, was one of the leading lights of San Diego punk and cow-punk. With his ex-Penetrators bandmate (and now Seattle resident) Gary Heffern, Montana was one of the pioneers in the post-rock, neo-country “no depression” thang. In between his eight albums as drummer and part-time vocalist for the Beat Farmers, he collaborated with Mojo Nixon and pursued his own side projects, the Pleasure Barons and the Petting Zoo. Diagnosed with throat cancer, he called on some of his pals in the biz (including Dave Alvin and John Doe) to play on (and advance him recording funds for) a solo CD, which he rushed to finish while he still had a larynx. Appropriately for his hard-livin’ persona, he died with his boots on, of a heart attack during a Beat Farmers gig in a Vancouver suburb last November.

The record, The Devil Lied to Me (Bar-None), is finally out. About half its 19 tracks work as almost completely straight alterna-country, proving Montana knew the rules he was breaking. David and Douglas Farage wrote many of the songs, with a few choice covers (Tom Petty’s “Listen to Her Heart,” Joe Bob Barnhill’s “Party Dolls and Wine”). Indeed, Paul Kamanski’s opening road ballad “Indigo Rider” would be a perfect high-rotation pick for a non-schlock country station, if there still were any. Montana’s prematurely weary voice is low and gravelly, lower even than that guy in the Statler Brothers. When he sings about admiring a woman for giving him temporary shelter from the travails outside, his sincerity almost negates that new genre label of “No Depression.”

The first hint of Montana’s wild side pops up in a couple of between-song asides, during which he improvs on a piano while two California Girls reminisce about how the alcoholics in high school got all the dates. By the time Montana, Nixon, and co. give a sincere thrashing to Jim Lowe’s pop standard “Green Door,” all proverbial heck has broken loose. The comedy highlight, “King of the Hobos,” delightfully toys with both classic and modern images of bum-dom (“Uncle Barney, I have to pee!” “Go ahead, it ain’t my car”). By the time he finishes up with a demented sea shanty, it feels like you’ve witnessed a guy presiding at his own roof-blowing wake.

MISC. WASN’T SURPRISED by the cops’ way-over-reaction to Subculture Joe‘s big steel heart outside Westlake Center. Authorities here and elsewhere have long shown a fear of art surpassing only a fear of love.

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA: With any luck, this will be the last Olympics to be packaged and curated for traditional network TV. The pay-per-view Triplecast in ’92 was the way it oughta be covered: Multiple channels, unedited complete live events, more field footage and less of that annoying human-interest featurizing. But they charged too much for the Triplecast, didn’t get enough buyers, and aren’t repeating it. If we’re lucky, we’ll get something like that on the Net or satellites or expanded cable (only free or at least cheaper) in time for the ’00 games.

BOTTOMS UP: First, there was that silly fad-let of snowboarding/ rave headgear resewn from boxer shorts. Now, an outfit called “Get A-Head” in Lewiston, Idaho (sister city to Clarkston, Wash.) offers Undee Shirts, women’s athletic sport tops made from men’s briefs (not pre-worn). Make your own joke here about that which you wish to hold close to your heart. I’m still pondering whether it’s another example of women appropriating masculine iconography for the sake of power (from George Eliot’s cigars to the ’80s “menswear look”). Speaking of the ol’ gender/ culture thang…

COCA LEAVES: “Seattle loves gay men but not lesbians.” That’s one of the theories given me by visual-art scenesters to explain the relative unpopularity of the Center on Contemporary Art’s first all-lesbian group exhibition, Gender, Fucked. (The opening-night party attracted “almost none of the COCA regulars,” said a COCA official.) I wouldn’t go that far, but it is true that lesbians are a minority-within-a-minority. (Just look at the proportion of lesbian to gay-male bars on Capitol Hill.) Events like the Pride Parade and all-encompassing monikers like “queer” notwithstanding, the lesbian and gay-male communities aren’t as intercommunicative as they perhaps oughta be. (Mr. Savage sez that’s a matter of men who prefer to be with men and women who prefer to be with women; I say it’s an aspect of larger forces in a society dividing into ever-smaller, more separate subcultures.)

Additionally (here’s where the scenesters’ theorizing comes in), lesbian artists have a PR problem. They’ve been stereotyped as humorless self-righteousness addicts. Gay-male art, the typing goes, are perceived to be outrageous and fantastical and fun even when it’s about the direst of topics; while lesbian art’s expected to be forever dour, judgemental and hostile to outsiders, even when it’s about desire and love. All it takes to disprove this is to look at some of the diverse works being made by lesbian artists in our own region alone, from the hypnotic choreography of Pat Graney to the wonderful cartooning of Ellen Forney to the universal rage and joy in Team Dresch’s music. These artists and others (including those at the COCA show) prove lesbians aren’t all the same, as the existence of lesbians proves women aren’t all the same.

OUT OF LINE: Politicians in Seatle and Tacoma, ever eager to find new ways to get you and me to support subsidies to business, want to impose a modem tax on all online communication. Tacoma’s scheme, which is further along than Seattle’s, would tax all data streams in, to, or from the city at 6 percent of monthly revenues plus an annual fee. The money would be taken from online providers no matter where they’re located, no matter how little of their business goes through Tacoma’s city limits. This is bad, for reasons beyond simple cyber-Libertarianism. The scheme’s logistically impossible; and taxing locally-based services simply invites ’em to move to a lower-tax city or state. Better to keep taxing online use indirectly, via the phone (and in the future, cable) lines they run on.

‘TIL NEXT TIME, enjoy the hydros (always faster, louder, and more fun than any dumb ol’ dreem-teem) and ponder the unexpected meanings of the online mission statement from arka.com: “This purpose of this server is to give free-thinking authors a place to put their web pages without fear of content.”

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. HATES TO say it, but the rest of the local media were more than a bit mistaken about the hyped-up overimportance of a certain out-of-state chain restaurant opening up shop in Seattle. Now if White Castle had moved into town, that would’ve meant something.

Besides, we’ve already got a watering hole for Seattlites who love film. It’s called the Alibi Room. Instead of loudly pandering to manufactured celebrity worship (just what has B. Willis actually done to deserve this kind of Messiahdom?), this place quietly honors the art and craft of making film, with published screenplays on a shelf for browsing and many of Seattle’s growing tribe of director and cinematographer wannabes hanging out and networking. They’re even mounting a local screening series, “Films From Here.” Seldom has the divide over competing visions of America’s cultural future been more clearly shown than in the contrast between a corporately-owned shrine to prepackaged Global Entertainment and a local independent gathering place for creators.

LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE WEEK: The Vent may be the only alternative literary zine published on that rock of antisociality known as Mercer Island. The current issue’s highlighted by “Rage,” George Fredrickson’s two-paragraph micro-essay on “how crazy it is 2 live on Mercer Isl. and b black at da same time.” Free at Twice Sold Tales on Capitol Hill or pay-what-you-can from 3839 80th Ave. SE, Mercer Island 98040… July’s Earshot Jazz newsletter has an important piece by new editor Peter Monaghan about DIY indie CDs and some of the pitfalls unsuspecting musicians can face when they try to become their own record producers. (Free around town or from 3429 Fremont Pl. N., #309, Seattle 98103.)

NET-WORKING: the same week I read this month’s Wired cover story on “Kids Cyber Rights,” I also found a story from last September’s Harper’s Bazaar about “Lolitas On-Line.” In the latter article, writer David Bennahum claims there’s a trend of teen females (including “Jill, a precocious 15-year-old from Seattle”) acting out sexual fantasies in online chat rooms and newsgroups. Bennahum proposes, that online sex talk isn’t necessarily a Force of Evil but can, when used responsibly, be a tool of empowerment and self-discovery; letting users explore the confusing fascinations of sexual identity safely and pseudonymously.

In the Wired piece, Jon Katz offered some similar notions. I’m particularly fond of his assertions that children “have the right to be respected,” “should not be viewed as property or as helpless to participate in decisions affecting their lives,” and “should not be branded ignorant or inadequate because their educational, cultural, or social agenda is different from that of previous generations.”

Twenty years of punk rock should have proved kids can make their own culture and don’t like being treated as idiots. Yet the Right still shamelessly uses “The Family” (always in the collective singular, as one monolithic entity) to justify all sorts of social-control mechanisms. Near-right Democrats try to muscle in on the far right’s act, using “Our Kids’ Future” to promote gentrification schemes that make family housing less affordable, while cracking down on any signs of independent youth culture (punks, skaters, cruisers) and going along with dubious “protection” schemes like V-chips and Internet censorship. And too many of yesterday’s Today Generation (like Garry Trudeau) mercilessly sneer at anyone too young to be From The Sixties. (In ’92 a Times subsidiary hired me to write for its tabloid for teens; I was laid off when its baby-boomer bosses found, to their surprise, that actual teens could indeed compose their own sentences.)

Yes, teens and preteens face a lot of problems. They always have; they always will. But they’re far more likely to get abused by daddy than by an e-mail correspondent. They’ll hear more (and more creative) cuss words in the playground than on HBO. Let’s stop stunting kids’ growth by forcing them into subhuman roles they often can’t stand. Instead, let’s treat kids as human beings, who could use a little friendly advice now and then (as could we all) but who ultimately should, and can, take responsibility for their own lives. John Barth once wrote, “Innocence artificially preserved becomes mere crankhood.” I’d add: Innocence excessively enforced becomes fetishization.

HANK-ERING: Misc. received an anonymous letter from somebody complaining about a recent ish of No Depression, the “alternative country” zine co-run by Rocket vet Peter Blackstock. The letter-writer felt outraged at the cover image of the late Hank Williams Sr. posing alongside two white Negro-dialect impersonators. I highly doubt Blackstock intended to endorse the show’s crude ethnic humor. Rather, I’m sure he intended to explore Williams’ work and its historical context–like the Robt. Christgau Village Voice piece last month claiming Williams took his vocal shtick from NY performer Emmett Miller, who sang in blackface from the ’20s thru the ’40s.

CLUB IMPLOSION, CONT’D.: The Weathered Wall, for four years Seattle’s poshest (in a friendly way) live-and-recorded-music club (and the only local club to use a blown-up photocopy of an old Misc. column as a wall poster), shut its doors in mid-June. It’s been used since then as a location for a made-for-TV movie. Various interests are looking into getting it sold and/ or re-opened, but there’s nothing to announce now. Meanwhile, the Pioneer Square Theater has hosted its last all-ages gig. Promoters tried to raise prices after fire marshals halved the building’s legal capacity; but that put the concerts out of range of much of the underage crowd. Reportedly the marshals offered a list of improvements that had to be made before full capacity could be re-granted; but the space’s landlord balked at the expense. (If I were a conspiracy theorist, which I’m not, I’d wonder why the marshals didn’t go after the building back when it housed non-punk music and plays.)

And the Lake Union Pub, home to some of Seattle’s punkiest shows (and to some of the Liquor Board’s heaviest enforcement details), just had another 10-day closure, amid rumors the joint would be sold and turned into a sports bar. If it happens, the closure would mean three of the four alt-music clubs on the Commons Committee’s ’94 map of blocks it wanted to condo-ize would be dead (leaving only Re-bar). On the upside, the Pub’s quasi-neighbor, the Store Room Tavern, has been booking bands again; while the Seattle Parks Department (!) has co-promoted Wednesday night touring-punk bands at the Miller Community Center on east Capitol Hill.

THE BIG TURN-OFF: The Sonics’ recent successes reminded me how one of the joys of televised sports has always been the excuse to loiter among a department store’s TV displays, sharing the moments of triumph/ despair with instant friends without having to buy (or drink) anything. But that’s another of those disappearing urban pleasures. The Bon Marche’s new management, having disposed of the Budget Floor, the Cascade Room restaurant, and the downtown pharmacy, is now closing the electronics departments. Besides leaving Radio Shack (and pawn shops) as the only source for home electronics in the central downtown, the loss (effective August) leaves but a few public TV walls in the greater urban core (Sears, Fred Meyer, Video Only). At least we might see no more dorky Bon cell-phone ads (we love ya Keister, but keep your night job).

The changes show how the Bon, once powerful enough to rise above retail’s sea changes (documented in an ’80s P-I headline, “Bon Marches to Different Drum”), now bumps along in the tides like the rest of the industry. Further proof: the parent company’s apparent threat (still officially denied) to consolidate the chain with another of its holdings, Macy’s California, and planned cuts in commission pay which might lead to a clerks’ strike this month. Still, for now, the Bon remains the store “Where All Seattle Shops,” from dowagers hanging out in the women’s rooms to brides seeking just the right bread machine. It’s also the city’s crossroads point, having struck a deal in the ’20s to make its 3rd Ave. side one of the town’s biggest bus stops. While the downtown store’s merchandise mix is now based on strategies devised for mall branches, it’s still the first place to go for lots of stuff, sold in a respectful, relatively unpretentious manner. Would hate to see it deteriorate into just another store.

UPDATE: The Portland paper Willamette Week sez that town’s “Church of Kurt Cobain” was just a fraudulant publicity stunt. As opposed to the real publicity stunt we thought it was.

SONICS POSTMORTEM: No matter what happens to the team in future years, we’ll always have Games Four and Five to savor. For four glorious days, the whole city (save a few droller-than-thou alternative conformists) believed. Imagine–a team of great players could beat a team of spokesmodels! Like the Seattle music scene (to which the Sonics have consistently made closer overtures than any other local sports team), the Sonic victories celebrated talent, diligence, and cooperation instead of celebrity, arrogance, and corporate hype. How appropriate that it happen two weeks before the opening of Planet Hollywood, that chain restaurant expressly devoted to corporate celebrity hype, and which staged a PR stunt with professional hypemeister Cindy Crawford telling us if we were smart we’d root against our own team. Can you say, “Not quite the way to make new friends for your business”? Speaking of athletes striving for respect…

THE DEAD POOL: At its Olympics debut in ’84, synchronized swimming was often derided as a summer-games answer to ice dancing, less a sport than an excuse to show half-dressed women. Since then, the sport’s tried to shake that image and earn respect. In the biggest effort yet, the French national team crafted a routine inspired by the Nazi Holocaust. The choreographed playlet premiered at the European Cup finals in May and was planned for the Atlanta Olympics. To Schindler’s List soundtrack music, swimmers goose-stepped into the pool, then switched identities to impersonate women victims being taken to the ovens. But in early June, the country’s sports ministry ordered the team to drop all Holocaust allusions from the routine. Time quoted a dismayed team official, “The program was created to denounce not only the Holocaust in particular, but all forms of racism and intolerance that we see rising.” I say the routine’s well within postmodern performance art, and should be allowed; especially with the ex-Olympic city of Sarajevo only starting to rebuild from a half-decade of attempted genocide. Speaking of dances with a message…

BYE BYE BRAZIL: We’ve past reported on the ever-reaching tentacles of global corporate entertainment, even while American fans increasingly search for untainted pockets of “world beat” and other ethnic arts to bring home. Now, I must sadly report Mickey Mouse’s planned debut at next February’s Rio Carnaval parade. Samba school Academicos da Rocinha will get to use giant models of the Disney characters to celebrate 25 years of the Disney World theme park–as long as the parade’s 2,000-or-so women dancers all keep their tops on. “That was my first condition and thank goodness they agreed,” a Disney marketing official told Variety. In the same article, troupe president Izamilton Goes dismissed suggestions the cover-up would detract from the spectacle: “Inside all of us there remains something of a child and we all loved Disney.”

It’s not that Carnaval would be “cheapened” by Disneyfication. It’s been kitsch for decades. But it’s been its own indigenous brand of kitsch. It incorporates sex not as seamy exploitation but as joyous celebration. The dancers are often poor women who sew their own sequined costumes and arrange their own choreography, who bare their bodies proudly to an audience of men, children, and other women. They enjoy being admired as carnal beings after a year stuck in the wife-mother-laborer roles the Disney people are more comfortable with. Anyhow, the other 18 or so samba schools aren’t bound by Disney’s dictates. And the TV network that largely subsidizes the parades wanted to ban nudity a few years ago, hoping to increase foreign TV-video sales, but the samba schools said no. Speaking of broadcast empires…

BEHIND THE SCREEN: MSNBC, the forthcoming Microsoft-NBC cable news channel we won’t get to see for some months after its July launch, is now going to build new studios in New Jersey (with state-government aid), scuttling earlier plans to share space with NBC’s existing CNBC. Darn. CNBC could use some news people in its building, or at least somebody who could tell the channel’s talk-show hosts the O.J. Simpson trial is over.

AS YOU OUGHTA know, Misc. adores the raucous lasseiz-faire glory that is Aurora Avenue. From the Twin Tee-Pees restaurant to the Big Star Grocery convenience store (no relation to the same-named Memphis store or the band named after that store), Aurora’s the kind of rugged experience I figured could withstand any attack. I was wrong. PCC just turned the late, great Shop n’ Save supermarket into an aggressively earth-toned monument to upscale soullessness. What’s worse, it’s got only minimal signage facing the avenue. Its main orientation is toward side streets, as if to shun Aurora’s plebian proles and instead identify with the yups who drive to Green Lake, jog, and drive back. Elsewhere on Aurora…

EVERY DAY CAN BE A BAD HAIR DAY: The “G Word” may be considered horribly passé here in town, but it apparently still holds appeal in the ‘burbs. BodyFX, a line of teen-oriented hair products sold at Kmart, stocks “Grunge Gunk” (an “alternative hair styling mud”). You can tell it’s not a leftover item from ’93, ’cause every tube proudly advertises the corporate website, <www.bodyfx.com>. There you can learn all about Grunge Gunk and other “Alternative Attitudes for Your Hair”–Dread Head temporary dreadlocks, Speeder Beeder beading kits, Rags removable hair tape, and Brain Stain hair colors (available in Obviously Orange, Ballistic Blue, Righteous Red, and Global Green).

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Pasty is the “Poetry-Free Since 1994” personal zine of one Sarah-Katherine, who works as a retail condom seller and maintains a taste for the humorously distasteful. Issue #5 features her personal account of participating in a UW social-drinking lab study, a friend’s bathroom-humor tale, and a list of ways to “Make Yourself Loathed at a Condom Store.” That’s followed with a few ways to “avoid being despised” but most of those are “don’t” items, keeping with the negative theme (“Do Not–EVER!–tell us to have nice days”). ($2 plus postage from 6201 15th Ave. NW, #P-549, Seattle 98107.)

NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS: Less than a month after Seattleites rejected the demographic-cleansing plan known as the Commons, the forces of Mandatory Mellowness struck again. This time, they silenced the city’s only broadcast outlet for unfiltered progressive news and information. The threatened cancellation of the KCMU News Hour and dismissal of the newscast’s volunteer staff, announced

June 3, may not have been intended as an act of censorship, but it’s still an act of contempt by station management toward its audience. Four years after the World Cafe fiasco, in which KCMU management (under direction from KUOW management down the hall) tried to “mainstream” the station’s music programming, they’ve made another bonehead move officially intended to attract listeners (by offering uninterrupted evening tuneage) but will only end up alienating the station’s remaining loyalists.

Once again, the KUOW-KCMU bigwigs haven’t learned that the established rules of pseudo-“public” radio (crafting safe, mild fare for upscale-boomer audiences and the corporate underwriters who love them) don’t work at something like KCMU, where the most listener donations don’t come from passive, pacified yuppies but from intense fans who crave non-upscale, non-sanitized entertainment and information. Instead of continuing their futile drive to mold KCMU into a normal “public” station, KUOW should butt out and leave KCMU to people who know how to run and program it. Since they won’t, KCMU volunteers and listeners should get together with the UW top brass to spin the station off into a separate nonprofit entity. That’s the only sure way to ensure a source of noncommercial music and cultural programming for non-yups and newscasts addressing non-yup concerns.

Meanwhile, the commercial side of the radio spectrum also gets less and less diverse. The Philly-based Entercom empire’s added KISW to its local holdings, which already include KNDD and KMTT. Entercom now controls every commercial non-oldies rock/ R&B outlet in town except Barry Ackerley’s KUBE. Expect the stations to maintain a market-segment differentiation, a la Buick and Pontiac or the Times and P-I, without really competing.

(I neglected to thank some who worked on the Misc. anniversary earlier this month: Bomo Cho, Kurt Geissel, Steve Loane, Kelly Murphy, Sarel Rowe, Darren Sonnenkinder, and Triangular Dichotomy Productions.)