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

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

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

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

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

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

Misc. began on June 6, 1986 as a column in ArtsFocus, the Lincoln Arts Center’s monthly tabloid. When that paper faded in 1989, Misc. became a newsletter with as many as 1,000 free copies and 100 paid subscribers. It joined The Stranger at the paper’s ninth issue in November 1991. Last year I stopped the newsletter and started the Misc. World HQ website, <http://www.miscmedia.com>.

Over these 10 years I’ve discussed many things, loosely tied to the concept of “popular culture in Seattle and beyond.” I’ve shared a few laffs and a few tears. But I’ve had one overriding subject–the city with which I have an ongoing lover’s quarrel. Seattle’s always had more than its share of vibrant, creative people. But they’ve long struggled against a social order opposed to anything too unclean, unrich, or unquiet.

The Commons people never understood why so many have grown tired of a city government exclusively By The Upscale, Of The Upscale, and For The Upscale. The “Parks Are For Everybody” slogan was clearly a desperation move by campaigners uncomfortable with the existence of non-yuppies and the need to appeal to such proles.

In much of the US, politics is controlled by money-stooges pretending to be “conservatives.” In Seattle, it’s controlled by money-stooges pretending to be “liberals.” Other politicians pay lip service to abortion foes and censors; ours pay lip service to gay-rights advocates and environmentalists. Both sets of politicians do these to buy votes while holding to their real cause, the worship of Sacred Business.

But I also believe politics is a subset of culture. Seattle’s politics tie directly into a culture that merely pretends to value “diversity.” A culture so thoroughly whitebread, it remembers the Sixties only as a playtime for college boys. A culture descended from Anglo Protestant “progressives” in Wisconsin and Minnesota, who’d championed an elitism of educated, understated “taste” to help keep working-class German Catholics out of power.

When Misc. started, Seattle’s arts had been for seemingly ever (at least since 1973) under the thumb of an extremely conservative “liberalism” I’ve since called Mandatory Mellowness. You know, the standard of “good taste” that wouldn’t merely discourage but forbid any art more challenging than Chihuly, any music more contemporary than Kenny G, any theater more immediate than doo-wop versions of Shakespeare, any literature more urbane than whale poems, any apparel more daring than “Casual Friday” suits, or any lifestyle more “decadent” than drinking whole milk instead of 2-percent.

While this aggressively bland anti-aesthetic still rules the city’s official culture, something else arose from the underground. Punk rock remained a relevant stance in Seattle throughout the ’80s precisely because it was the best available means of rebellion against the hypocrisy of mellowness. What the media called “grunge” was and is an aesthetic of darkness, but also one of honest discourse, passionate expression, and real pleasures. It values thrift and ingenuity, not the dictates of fashion. It sees Seattle as a city for Tugboat Annie, not for Niles Crane. It loves the south Lake Union neighborhood as it is. It would rather be “unhappy” yet truly alive than succumb to the Stepford-Wifedom of “The Northwest Lifestyle.” What the media call “cocktail nation” is the expression of these values through other means, to relive the best of pre-hippie pop culture and even to make jazz a populist genre again. Indeed, the staccato, disjointed Misc. format has always been a (perhaps feeble) effort to preserve the jazz-age three-dot column of Walter Winchell, Irv Kupcinet, and the P-I era Emmett Watson–perhaps America’s greatest literary invention.

If I’ve played any tiny part in popularizing these values, the values that made Seattle and real progressivism great, then I’ve succeeded at my goal–the Highlights for Children slogan, “Fun With a Purpose.”

(Thanx and a hat tip to those who attended the Misc. 10th anniversary party and to those who helped make it plausible; including Glen Allen, the band Big Sister, BSK(T) Screenprinting, Cellophane Square, Staci Dinehart, Rebecca Frey, Joseph Givens, Laughingas Productions, Verlayne McClure, Metropolis Contemporary Art Gallery, Moe, Mountain Sound, the New Store, Occupied Seattle, Charlotte Quinn, Frank Randall, Jeannine Uhrich, Joseph Weaver, and a host of others.)

Misc. was naturally bemused by the Newsweek hype piece about a Seattle only faintly resembling any real-world town, a town whose supposed biggest celebrity is New Republic/CNN Crossfire vet Michael Kinsley, esconced in Redmond to start Microsoft’s pay-per-read website Slate (presumably not named for Fred Flintstone’s boss). But we’re even more perplexed at what Kinsley told the Times a few weeks back, that Slate readers shouldn’t expect “a left wing magazine.” As if anyone familiar with his Reagan-Democrat views ever would.

A FASHIONABLE FORM OF CANCER: Tobacco companies are paying “hip” bars to sell their cigarettes. R.J. Reynolds paid Kid Mohair to exclusively sell Camels. Moonlight Tobacco (RJR’s “hipster” alias company) struck a deal (exact terms not publicized) to have its brands be the only cancer sticks sold at Moe, whose upstairs room has been renamed the Moonlight Lounge. (Both parties claim the room’s naming is a coincidence, not part of the deal.) At the opening party for the Moonlight Lounge, two Moonlight Tobacco PR drones walked around giving out long cigarette holders, wearing military-style jackets with the name patch NICK (as in -otine). Since nightclubs can be perennially on the edge of solvency, even a modest “promotional allowance” plus free ash trays is too good for many owners to resist. Speaking of club ups n’ downs…

OFF RAMP UPDATE: Here’s what we know about the glorious Eastlake dive where so much local music history was made and so much cheap Oregon gin was swilled. The old owners ran out of cash and agreed to turn the place over to new owners. But there was a snag in the liquor-license transfer process, so the place shut down at the end of April. The wannabe new management’s still trying to execute the financing and paperwork to reopen the home of “Gnosh Before the Mosh” soon.

But a revived Off Ramp will face the same problems other clubs now face. The explosion in touring indie bands these past two years has drawn audiences away from regularly-gigging local acts, whose once-steady appeal had brought a small degree of stability to the club circuit. Clubs have added an array of DJ nights, geared to draw specific sets of regular patrons, but that market’s spread increasingly thin by competition. We’re also coming on five years since the Seattle music eruption hit big; the original Mudhoney and Fallouts audiences are aging beyond the prime club-hopping years. Maybe a new Off Ramp management can figure a new recipe for sucess, one that can help the scene as a whole. Speaking of the “maturation” of indie-rock…

STOCK IT TO ME: Stock-music production companies are now coming out with “alternative rock” production music for use in commercials, TV shows, low-budget films, industrial films, video games, porn, etc. The Minnesota-based HyperClips company offers “Alterna,” a package of 40 “alternative rock and dance tracks. Give your project an edge with these grungy and atmospheric pieces. With all the moodiness and aggression that the Alternative styles have to offer, with everything from mellow acoustic grooves to hardcore distorted jams.” The Fresh Music Library, meanwhile, claims its “Alternative Rock” CD features “production values heard on today’s college and alternative rock radio stations… These themes evoke U2, Nirvana, R.E.M., the Smithereens and others. Exactly the disc for youthful energy.” Speaking of commercialism…

AD VERBS: You may have seen the cutesy ad for Seattle’s Westin Hotels, with a jealous-sounding female narrator accompanying butt shots of a stud: “Broke his neck to get the job, then broke the corporate sales record. Even broke the corporate no-jeans rule. Who’s he sleeping with?” The closing: “Choose your travel partner wisely.” Never before (to my knowledge) has a major hostelry chain so brazenly teased at the aura of naughtiness that’s always surrounded the industry.

(You’ve four days to rearrange your schedule, obtain the swankiest outfit, and leave room in your diet for the splendiforous Misc.Tenth Anniversary Party, 7 pm-whenever Sunday, June 2 at the Metropolis Gallery, downtown on University St. between 1st and 2nd. Odd video, fine food and beverage, games, entertainment, and fine memories will be had by all. More on the Misc. World HQ site, <http://www.miscmedia.com>. Be there. Aloha.)

UPDATE: I recently sought your proposed new uses for the Kingdome. The best came from one J. Drinkwater: “1) Fill it with water and house the sea lions from the Ballard Locks. 2) Rename it the Seattle Commons.”

SPACES IN THE HEART: Back when Seattle bands were just starting to attract out-of-town notice, the center of the town’s live-music action was a pair of clubs near Eastlake and Howell, connected by a walkway under a freeway overpass. The Off Ramp and RKCNDY weren’t posh by any means, but their drinks were strong and their PAs were loud. Newer and fancier clubs since stole their thunder. RKCNDY is closed and for sale; financing for a planned remodel apparently fell through. The Off Ramp has struggled as well. A new owner and new booker vow to keep things going; but the liquor-license transfer apparently hit a snag, and the home of Gnosh Before the Mosh is, as of this writing, also shut. Meanwhile, the all-ages music scene continues to take it on the chin. Fire marshalls suddenly halved the Pioneer Square Theater’s legal capacity the night of a show, making future shows there fiscally iffy. The Velvet Elvis almost stopped hosting concerts after a few rowdy punkboys disrupted a show in late April. Instead, the VE will continue to let indie promoters run all-ages music in the space, but has asked them to de-emphasise hardcore-punk lineups. In a final note, Park Ave. Records, lower Queen Anne’s Taj Mahal of collector vinyl, has called it quits. Its purported replacement: a branch of the Disc-Go-Round chain.

LOVE, ITALIAN STYLE: Director Bernardo Bertolucci shot his share of requisitely-picturesque Seattle scenes for his film Little Buddah. Now he’s introducing that other popular image of Seattle into his work. In the trailer for Bertolucci’s new film Stealing Beauty(no relation to Britain’s 1988 sexy-novice-priest movie Stealing Heaven), a pastoral scene in a decaying Italian farm shed is gloriously interrupted by Liv Tyler (daughter of Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler), as a teen brought to the farm against her will by her family, loudly singing and dancing to a tape of Hole’s “Rock Star.” The scene transforms a personal jeer at one particular clique (the Oly rocker-than-thous) into a universal defiance against cliquishness in general.

THE DRAWING ROOM: The Meyerson & Nowinski art gallery has instantly become the ritzy-upscale “contemporary art” emporium for Seattle. The splashy opening show gathers drawings and prints from artists of different nations and decades, collectively referred to by the gallery as “Picasso and Friends.” (It’s really no worse than TNT sticking Tom & Jerry cartoons onto a show called Bugs Bunny and Friends.)

Many of you remember Bob Blackburn Jr. as the sometime statistician and broadcast assistant to his dad, the SuperSonics’ original radio announcer. Bob Jr. also played in assorted Seattle bands (including the Colorplates) before moving to L.A. in ’89. He now works for the Westwood One satellite-radio empire, conducting celebrity interviews and organizing promotions. Last month his job led to the fulfillment of a longtime dream, the chance to meet ’50s bondage model Betty Page. As you may know, the sweet-faced, dark-haired Page posed mostly for obscure and under-the-counter publications for about 10 years, then retired to a very private existence. Only now, long after her pictures became the icons of a new mainstream-fetish cult, has she partly resurfaced, giving a few select interviews and authorizing a biography. Blackburn chatted with her for an hour and got her to autograph a picture for his friends in the Seattle sleazepunk outfit Sick & Wrong. He says Page “still looks really good” at 73, but won’t be photographed. The audio interview was mostly done, he says, “for the record.” Westwood One has no plans to air it on any of its satellite feeds, most of which aren’t carried in Seattle anyway. I think Blackburn should invite her to come work with his ex-employers. The Sonics (especially Kemp) could use someone to teach some discipline!

(Be sure to keep Sunday, June 2 open for the magnificent, marvelous, mad mad mad Misc. Tenth Anniversary Party at the Metropolis Gallery, on University St. east of 1st Ave. Details forthcoming.)

UPDATE: Some months back I named the Wallingford Food Giant Seattle’s best full-size supermarket. Since then, the north end’s been abuzz w/rumors that the place was being sold to Alfalfa’s, the out-of-state yuppie health-food chain. Not so, insists FG management.

THE MAILBAG: I can say the most outrageous things and get no response (perhaps because, as I’ve learned, some folks just assume I’m kidding); while the slightest throwaway gag can cause the most irate responses. Like my little joke about Vancouver’s new Ford Theatre. I’ll readily accept the letter writers’ assertions that Canadians probably know more about American history than Americans know about Canadian history–or than Americans know about American history. I know enough about Canada to endorse DOA singer Joey Shithead’s campaign for the BC legislature (can’t ya see it, “The Honourable M.L.A. Shithead”?). On a related note…

CANADIAN CATHODE CORNER: Canada, especially Vancouver, is gaining awareness as the prime filming site for exploitation TV dramas. I wouldn’t be surprised if next fall Fox aired more Canadian-made prime-time hours than Canadian network CTV. I also wouldn’t be surprised if sci-fi conventions started circulating “fan fiction” stories in which the universes of all the Vancouver-filmed shows (X-Files, Strange Luck, Sliders, Profit, et al.) collided at a dimensional gateway somewhere near the Cambie St. Bridge.

REFLEX, RIP: The regional visual-art tabloid was great while it lasted, and (particularly under first editor Randy Gragg) provided frequent glimpses into the peculiar jargon of art-crit (‘tho sometimes I wished they’d run a glossary of terms). It illuminated issues surrounding the corporate/ institutional art world and the role of creative individuals therein. And it gave many artists precious review clippings. But it was never all it could be, or all its community needed. Its bimonthly schedule meant it could never recommend a show while it was still up. Its nonprofit-bureaucratic structure meant it was eternally begging for gifts from the same funding sources as the artists the paper advocated.

AD VERBS: Still recovering from its old pretentious “Lack of Pretense” ads, Subaru is turning toward marketing at specific market segments. As part of this, it’ll soon run specially-designed ads in lesbian magazines, touting its autos as the perfect acoutrement to a practical, sensible Womanlove lifestyle. Meanwhile, Elvira (aka Cassandra Peterson) has quit as a Coors spokeswitch–not due to Coors’ support of right-wing causes but ’cause indie brewery Beverage International offered to market her own line of Elvira Brews. Look for the first bottles in test markets by July.

LET ‘EM GO: EastsideWeek’s new “Independent Republic of the Eastside” promotion sounds a bit like certain secessionist movements in Montana and Idaho, or at least like these pro-sprawl “new county” movements across the Cascade foothills. On the good side, the promotion (devised largely by editor Skip Berger) calls into question the “community spirit” of folks who’ve moved to the burbs precisely to avoid civic commitment, to drive from office park to mall to cul-de-sac without feeling any expressed need for “public space.” And it gives Berger a chance to question some assumptions about suburban growth by offering alternatives: “Will we become Paris, Rome, Venice, or Orange County?” (Place your own joke answer here.)

DOME SWEET DOME: What to do with the Kingdome, with no baseball in three years and possibly no football? (The NFL’s hinted at demanding a new arena in return for keeping or replacing the Seahawks.) The obvious is to keep it for auto shows and tractor pulls, and as an exhibit annex for the Convention Center. The county’s been planning this anyway.

I say, let’s go build two new stadia, with as much private money as possible. Make the football field convertible for NHL hockey; make both convertible for trade shows.

Then take the existing Kingdome, gut its current interior, and rebuild it into the living and recreation space of the future. A World’s Fair domed-city fantasy made real, or a pansexual “intentional community” utopia. Level upon level of PoMo condos around the concourses, looking onto an indoor plaza and celebration zone. The mind reels with the possibilities! (Got any fantasy Dome uses of your own? Send ’em here.)

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

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

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

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

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

* Van’s 105 Tavern (602 N 105th St.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gossip Galore, But Where’s the Love?:

The Girl With The Most Hype

Book feature for The Stranger, 4/17/96

I don’t really want to blame Melissa “Babs Babylon” Rossi for the disappointing content of her book, Courtney Love: Queen of Noise, A Most Unauthorized Biography (Pocket Books). I’m certain she was just following orders. You don’t have to read between too many lines to realize Pocket wanted this type of book, and dutiful magazine stringer Rossi complied. The type of book I’m talking about was best expressed in an old New York Rocker review of a Keith Moon biography: “All sex and drugs and no rock and roll.”

You get maybe 1,000 words at most about Courtney Love the singer, the musician, the songwriter, the still-aspiring actress. That’s scattered among some 85,000 words about Courtney Love the problem child, the reform school dropout, the stripper, the small-time groupie, the big-time groupie, the wife, the mom, the widow, the riot-grrrl hater, the force of nature, and most of all the Celebrity. Rossi’s book is a chronological compilation of my-god-what’s-she-done-now stories, divided into three sections of roughly equal length (before, during, and since her marriage). The cover photo might show an artfully cropped shot of Love in mid-guitar strum, but the inside teaser brings us not to a concert but to Love’s barging in on Madonna at the MTV Awards preview show. In the priorities of Rossi’s editors, the incident marks Love’s ascendancy to Madonna’s former title of #1 Rock Bad Girl–not because Love, unlike Madonna, writes her own material and plays an instrument onstage, but because Love’s unpredictably wild antics were more outrageous than Madonna’s calculated publicity schemes could ever be. Pocket doesn’t care who’s got the better tuneage, just who’s got the most hype.

(Indeed, at one point Rossi mentions trying to sell publishers on a Love book four years ago; the NY big boys decreed Love, fascinating a character as she might be, was not A Star and hence unworthy of mainstream publishing’s attention.)

On one level, this might be the way Love prefers to be known. More than anyone else in the Northwest “alternative” music universe (at least more than anyone else who succeeded), Love wanted to be a glittering light in the firmament of celebrity and fame. As Rossi thoroughly documents, this lifelong ambition for the spotlight has caused her, and continues to cause her, no end of conflict with music people in Portland, Seattle, and particularly Olympia who believe the punk ethic that music ought to be a creative endeavor and a personal statement, not an industry. Rossi also shows how Love’s ongoing quest to be (in)famous has endeared her to the NY/LA entertainment and gossip businesses. Five years into the “alternative” revolution Love’s late husband helped instigate, Vanity Fairand Entertainment Tonight (and Pocket Books) would still rather talk about Rock Stars than about rock. Love may appear out of control in dozens of the book’s episodes–drinking, drugging, harassing ex-boyfriends, sleeping around, encouraging her husband’s descent into heroin (or so Rossi alleges) then desperately failing to bring him back out. But she also clearly knows how to get and keep her name in the headlines, even when they aren’t always the headlines she wants.

Yet Love is more than just tabloid fodder. She’s succeeded by the pure-art standards she’s sometimes claimed to disdain. The first Hole album, Pretty on the Inside, is an experienced of focused anguish and vengeance, one of the finest American pure-punk records ever. Live Through This is a poppier, more rounded, more “accessible” work effortlessly careening between moments of beauty and ugliness. Love has spoken in recent months of wanting to be known primarily for her work, and also of wanting to be something at least closer to a positive role model (as in her backstage quip to a KOMO reporter about wanting “to prove girls can be the doctors, not just the nurses”).

Ultimately, it’s Love’s work that makes her life worth reading about, not her infamy that makes her records worth listening to. It’s these two contrasting aspects of her story that combine to make her such a fascinating figure.

Thus, by instructing Rossi to write almost exclusively about Love’s life as a succession of notorious (even by punk rock standards) incidents, Pocket loses out on a chance to fully explore Love’s story. Instead, we get a punkified version of The Rose with all the songs cut out.

One place where Rossi’s writing is allowed to shine is in her description of the old Portland music scene. Rossi and Love were both hangers-on in it, though they didn’t know one another. Rossi’s boast that Portland’s early-’80s punk world was livelier and more creative than Seattle’s is certainly a boast I could question; but Rossi makes a stong case for her allegation with Portland’s one great unsung band (the Wipers) and its many darn good bands ( Napalm Beach, Dead Moon, the Dharma Bums, the all-female Neo Boys). That the only mainstream star from that scene is Love, who’d only been a groupie in Portland and started her career in Minnesota and California, is indeed the minor tragedy Rossi makes it out to be. Of course, those other Portland bands didn’t try to be Stars above all other priorities; they tried to make great music, and under the financially-impossible conditions of indie rock at the time they succeeded at their goal.

If I had more space here, I could borrow a few clichés from the middle-aged scholars at our nation’s universities in the field ofAdvanced Madonna Studies, and write interminable ramblings about whether Love’s perceived interest in celebrity above accomplishment, along with her use of fashion-as-uniform and her cosmetic surgeries, somehow represent her identification with a notion of feminine being as contrasted to masculine doing. But I don’t so I won’t.

Welcome back to Misc., the local pop-culture column that tried to follow its bliss, until its bliss filed a restraining order against it.

WHERE THEY ARE NOW: Ross Shafer was poised to make it big in 1988 when he quit as the original host of KING’s Almost Live to star in the final post-Joan Rivers version of the Fox Late Show. His career since then has been one pathetic comeback try after another. Now he’s shamelessly ripping off the “Guy” comedy of Tim Allen, Jeff Foxworthy, and Red Green. He’s showing up on celebrity talk shows in overalls and no shirt to promote a “humor” book, Cook Like a Stud. You can imagine the routine, wreaking creaky gags out of the use of shot glasses as measuring spoons, claw hammers as meat tenderizers, and hubcaps as baking sheets.

WHERE THEY WERE THEN: Some of you may recall Marni Nixon as the singing hostess of KOMO’s late-’70s puppet showBoomerang. A few of you might also know the Seattle-native Nixon had a studio-singing career in the ’50s and ’60s before she returned home. She was perhaps the most famous “unknown” in Hollywood, the real soundtrack singer in such musical hits as Gigi, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and My Fair Lady. But few know her connection to that more-popular-now-than-ever master of space age pop, Juan Garcia Esquivel. In the liner notes to the recent CD compilation Music From a Sparkling Planet, vocal director Randy Van Horne credits Nixon as a session singer on Esquivel’s first U.S.-made LP, Other Worlds, Other Sounds (1958). Somehow, the vision of the perky, homey Nixon of Boomerang shrieking “Pow!” and “Zu-Zu-Zu!” seems oddly satisfying.

ANOTHER KIND OF PAY TV: The Seattle area’s getting an all-new TV station for the first time in 12 years, but don’t look for it to have any shows between its commercials. A Minneapolis company called ValueVision, partly owned by Montgomery Ward, is planning to launch an all-new UHF TV station in Tacoma (tentative call letters: KBGE). Actually, the broadcast transmitter’s just a loss-leader (at a reported cost of $4.6 million); they’re going on the air in order to force their home-shopping informercials onto local cable systems, thanks to an FCC rule requiring cable systems to carry all local over-the-air channels.

WHAT’S IN STORE: Vintage clothing was considered the latest “hot” thing in some circles, even before KING-TV heard of Cocktail Nation. And where there’s hype, money invariably follows. So it should come as no surprise that corporate-backed vintage chain stores are moving in big on what had been the territory of indie merchants and (usually) nonprofit thrift stores. You already know the Bufallo Exchange circuit; similar outfits rumored to be Seattle-bound include Crossroads (no relation to the Bellevue mall) and Wasteland. The Urban Outfitters chain has recently offered shelves of reconditioned garments alongside its new inventory. One indie vintage operator, the New Store, has started trying to defend its market share with flyers touting itself as the local, homespun alternative to “big corporate resale chains.”

GOOD NEWS: Centralized globalist culture may have peaked! An NY Times story, “Local Programming Cuts Into MTV,” notes with thinly-disguised alarm how broadcast and cable producers in assorted European and Asian countries are capturing viewers by offering local videos, in local languages–something MTV’s continent-wide satellite feeds just can’t offer. Seems audiences in assorted countries have increasingly had it with passive-aggressive acceptance of prepackaged superstar acts.

Since some global MTV acts in recent years have emanated from Seattle, some of you might see this as another sign of the long-hoped-for end of Seattle’s musical influence. I don’t. Most of our best bands and promoters weren’t trying to become global superstars; they were trying to smash the concept of global superstars. They were trying to promote a different attitude toward making and listening to “pop” music, as a creative force speaking directly to audiences rather than a brand-name entity to be manufactured and marketed. The more people there are around the world who make their own sounds, the more the Seattle scene’s real message to the world will have taken hold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATES: P!pe editor Soyon Im is a her, not a he… The kindly folks at the DMX cable-music service called to say yes, residential customers can get the full 90-channel service, not just the mainstreamed 30 channels offered on local cable TV systems–if you’re willing to buy your own 27″ satellite dish and tuner. For the “German Schlager” and Flemish Pop channels, tho’, it just might be worth it.

LIVE AIR: Pirate radio broadcasts have resumed in Seattle on the 89.1 FM frequency recently vacated by the Monkeywrench Radio collective. The new outfit, FUCC, includes some of the old Monkeywrench volunteer DJs. It promises long segments of “non-corporate” news and interviews along with the freeform music, 6 p.m.-2 a.m. nightly. The Pearl Jam members, rumored to have helped jump-start Monkeywrench, are officially not involved in the new operation.

PLAYLAND: Just as the Washington Bullets basketball team plans a change to a less violent name, two inventors from DC’s Maryland suburbs won a patent for “bleeding” toy figures embedded with tiny fluid-filled capsules that rupture during play. An NY Times report said the blood capsules would be attached to the toy in patches, which could be replaced for repeated “play.”

THE SWINDLE CONTINUES: A Mountain Dew ad has premiered on MTV with images of “Xtreme” sports accompanied by John Lydon singing a sneering-macho rendition of “Route 66.”

WATCH THIS SPACE: On the Boards announced it wants to raise money to buy and move into the current A Contemporary Theater building on lower Queen Anne, once ACT moves into the Eagles Auditorium downtown (around August). OTB sez its current home, Washington Hall, is too small and under-equipped for some of OTB’s favorite touring dance and performance-art acts. The stoic, historic old space would still be great for whatever theater or performance outfit picks it up next. Apparently at least one theater troupe’s vying for Wash. Hall, but nothing’s anywhere near final. (It’s also a perfect space for all-ages music events.)

PANGS OF GUILT: I understand the local media’s obsession with Martin Pang but I don’t share it. Should they try him for arson? Yes. Murder? No; manslaughter at most. Yes, four firefighters died needlessly in the fire Pang allegedly masterminded. But nobody’s even claiming he wanted or specifically sought their deaths.

C:\>HAWKS?: When Paul Allen bought the Portland TrailBlazers, I wrote about whether he’d bring sophisticated computer analysis to basketball and whether it’d result in increased throughput. As it turned out, Allen (and his privately-financed arena) made the Blazers a much enviable franchise financially, if not in the standings. Now, the MS/ Asymetrix/ Starwave/ TicketMaster/ Seattle Commons/ Hendrix Museum magnate’s talking about buying and saving the Seahawks (though owner Ken “No Ball” Behring, the almost-official Most Hated Man in America 1996, officially isn’t talking about selling). But the lack of any real sale prospects thus far doesn’t mean we can’t start pondering the possibilities. First, we can presume Pearl Jam won’t perform before any Hawks games like they’ve done for the Sonics. Jared Roberts wrote to the Internet newsgroup “alt.sports.football.pro.sea-seahawks” with further predictions: “There would be a trick play called the `Ctrl-alt-del.’ Tackling an opponent would be called `crashing’ an opponent.”

HATE TRIANGLE: Courtney Love’s put her band Hole on temporary hiatus and cleaned up her personal act (possibly to appease the movie producers she now wants to work for). To help fill any outrageousness gap, two local performing artists have trotted out characters named “Courtney Hate,” both gleefully exploiting Love’s recent-past rep for big make-up and crude stage antics. One is lounge-before-lounge-was-hip singer Julie Cascioppo; she’s done the role at her regular Pink Door gig and on her cable-access show (a show I’ve been on). The other’s a drag performer, who’s appeared at events including the recent Drag Queen Spelling Bee. He claims Cascioppo stole the idea from him; she denies it. I believe the idea’s so obvious, neither should claim it was a conception of major originality. Love herself is apparently amused; the gay paper Perv quotes her, “You know you’ve made it when you’re impersonated by a drag queen.”

Barbaric Pulsations and Mad Excitement:

Smegma Lives!

Record review by Clark Humphrey for The Stranger, 3/25/96

Smegma has been around, in one form or another, since 1973, issuing an average of a record a year out of odd tape-loops and jarring-yet-ambient original instrumentation long before electronic sampling was even a glimmer in Mr. and Mrs. Casio’s eyes. They achieved a small degree of noteriety in the ’80s as one of that proud elite of North American new-music acts hiply obscure enough to have European-only record deals. They’re also known among the anti-pop sound exchangers of the international cassette underground. They’re near-impossible to describe in rock-critic jargon, since their repertoire doesn’t really incorporate melodies, lyrics, or star personalities. I can report my first-ever makeout session was performed to the background of a Smegma tape; somehow, their animalistic PoMo primitivism brought the lady and I into “the mood” more effectively than any bass-thumping punk rock ever could.Nowadays, Smegma is still obscure, still amost exclusively a studio-bound outfit. But its recordings are now available in almost-mainstream outlets, thanks to Tim/Kerr Records. Their latest is The Mad Excitement, The Barbaric Pulsations, The Incomparable Rhythms of Smegma. It’s easy listening for the hard of hearing; a finely-sequenced suite of nine improvisational mood pieces that don’t reject traditional tunes and scales so much as ignore them, in favor of setting their own tonal environment of loud disgust and low-key sly bemusement. I don’t want to call it “dissonant” ’cause it makes more sense on its own sonic terms than a casual listen might belie. I don’t want to call it “industrial” ’cause that term’s become associated with NIN’s hard rock, instead of the post-rock or post-music noises of Smegma and its past and present contemporaries (Throbbing Gristle, Utterance Tongue, Eric Muhs). I also don’t want to discuss this disc’s resemblance to the works of 20th century avant-garde highbrow composers, ’cause you sure don’t need a musicology degree to appreciate it (in fact, it might hurt if you had one, or it might make you hurt).

Yes there are samples in the mix, including an old stand-up comedy record and some of the stock music previously sampled on the Clash’s notorious Sandinista! album. But this is primarily a work of original musicianship. This year’s version of the Smegma combo (including such colorful studio names as Lee Rockey, Josh Mong, Amazon Bambi, Rob Roy, Burned Mind, Dr. Id, Oblivia, Samek Cosmano, and Ju Suck) incorporate the damnedest mix of improbable ingredients, instruments both expected (guitars, synth, drums, assorted percussion, LP scratch-playin’, analog echo machine) and unexpected (musette, zither, clarinet, trumpet, theremin). It all adds up to something that builds an emotional setting and invites you to take a relaxing-yet-offputting visit in it.

WELCOME BACK to your Ides-O-March Misc., the pop-culture column that amusedly notes the first wedding of the age of media mergers, in which the widow of the publisher of the Spokane Spokesman-Review married the retired publisher of the NY Times. Who said you can’t get far in the journalism biz these days?

UPDATE #1: The state legislature’s regular session expired with hundreds of conservative-social-agenda bills allowed to die. Among these was the Senate bill to drive strip clubs out of business via over-regulation, discussed here two weeks back. House members apparently felt the bill wouldn’t survive club operators’ lawsuits. Also gone, for this year at least, are bills to ban gay marriages, require parental consent for high-school HIV education, etc. Most of these proposals (except the anti-stripping bill) were introduced by Religious Right-friendly House Republicans but blocked by Senate Democrats. The Repo men hope to capture both chambers this November. You oughta work to try and stop that.

UPDATE #2: I asked you a few weeks back to suggest Disneyland character mascots for what might become the Anaheim Ex-Seahawks. Choices included Scrooge McDuck (natch), Jafar, and Cruella DeVil. My favorite was from the reader who, commenting on recent Seahawk seasons, recommended Sleepy.

COINCIDENCE OR…?: The guy who played Henry Blake on the M*A*S*H TV show and the guy who played Blake in the movie died within days of one another. Talk about becoming one with your role!

AD SLOGAN OF THE WEEK (seen in the Stranger for the Backstage, 3/6): “Maria McKee: A Punk Edith Piaf.” Don’t bait me here, guys. The real Piaf was punker than you, me, or McKee will ever be. Ever heard her version of Lieber & Stoller’s “Black Leather Trousers and Motorcycle Boots”? Didn’t think so.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The P!pe is a tabloid run by ex-International Examiner staffer Soyon Im, who sez he wants “to debunk the myth that anything cool with Asian Americans is happening down in San Francisco or L.A.” It also helps debunk the squaresville reputation of King County’s large Asian American community. Issue #1 packs eight pages with stuff about Indian dance music, Japanese power pop, Korean fashions, “Pan-Asian” restaurants, Chinese-American comix, Vietnamese travelogue photos, Taiwanese interracial relationships, and old Japanese erotic art. There’s even a sex-advice column (where’d they get that concept?) by “Soybean Milkchick,” assuring readers there’s nothing deficient about Asian-American manhood. (In other words, don’t feel bad if you don’t look like the guys in that old Japanese erotic art.) At Pistil Books and elsewhere.

ONE TOO MANY?: Cocktail Nation hype has hit overdrive, less than two years after the first Combustible Edison record (albeit 15 years after Throbbing Gristle did its homage to Martin Denny). A glance at the “Cocktail Mania” display at Borders Music shows how nearly every record label with old middle-of-the-road instrumentals in its vaults is repackaging that material as something hip n’ ironic. And a local indie TV producer’s currently trying to launch a weekly entertainment-talk show called Atomic Lounge. Don’t be surprised if reproduction smoking jackets show up this fall in the Tiger Shop.

PAT-APHYSICS: Buchanan’s proving to be more than just another lifetime DC political/ media insider pretending to be an “outsider.” His (momentary?) campaign success signals the first significant crack in the GOP’s 16-year ruling coalition of fundamentalists and corporations (something I’ve been predicting or at least desiring for some time). About a quarter of the things he says (the parts about the plight of the downsized and the ripoff that is “free” trade) make more sense than what the other Republicans say. It’s just the other three quarters of the things he says are so freakish (the tirades against gays, feminists, immigrants, pro-choice advocates, and other humans guilty only of not belonging to his target demographic). If there’s hope, it’s that Buchanan’s polls rose after he started downplaying the hatefest talk and emphasizing the anti-corporate talk. Why’s the only candidate to challenge the sanctity of big money also the biggest bigot and bully? Why don’t any national-level Democrats speak against the corporate power-grab like Pat does?

WELCOME BACK TO MISC., the pop-culture column that still gets slightly disoriented when given a “Welcome to Fred Meyer” bag upon leaving the store.

SITE LINES: Adobe Systems is looking for new area digs for the Seattle software operation formerly known as Aldus, and possibly also for some of its currently Calif.-based divisions. I got just one piece-O-advice to the desktop publishing giant: keep it in town. You’re being tempted by developers to move to some soulless office park on some Eastside flood plain. But part of what made Aldus great was that it was in Pio. Square. The firm attracted people who liked walking to Ivar’s or to Mariner games. I believe this helped grow a corporate culture of creative, energetic people who could listen to others, including the people who used your warez; as opposed to the cult-like groupthink seen within certain office-park outfits.

ON A LONELY SATELLITE: Some of you can get 30 channels of DBX satellite music on your cable TV system. But what I want are the 60 extra channels the DBX company offers retailers and other clients via satellite dish. Instead of just mainstreamed selections like “Top Hits” and “R&B Oldies,” I could choose from polka, mariachi, Hawaiian, Danish, Greek, Brazilian, Indian, “Euro Pop,” “Canto Pop” (that’s Cantonese), “Traditional South African,” and that all-time fave “German Schlagers!”

AD VERBS #1: Denny’s sponsored the Harlem Globetrotters 70th Anniversary tour, which stopped in Seattle during African-American History Month. Let’s see, twelve Globetrotter players plus the sham-opposition team, trainers, and roadies… The restaurant chain instantly doubles its black employment!

AD VERBS #2: You may have been bemused by the Nike commercial with snippets of Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (as remade by KRS-One) alongside images of street basketball players; defining “the revolution” as mere recreation and fashion. Now the hypocrisy deepens. Nike and its ad agency Weiden & Kennedy have hired Scott-Heron as a consultant for a planned Nike-owned cable channel. The channel has no name or launch date; but you can expect it to rival MTV in associating “rebel” youth culture with the purchase and use of apparel and other consumer products. You can also safely bet it’ll never promote any “revolutionary” thinking which might question companies that export all their manufacturing jobs to pennies-a-day Asian sweatshops and spend all the “saved” expenses on dorky ads.

SPACE CASES: The pitifully thin ranks of Seattle all-ages concert spaces briefly increased by one before shrinking again. The venerable Showbox got special dispensation from the Liquor Board to run all-ages shows under strict conditions. Ever-zealous authorities spotted a relatively minor violation of one of those conditions one night, and promptly decreed the joint 21-and-over for all further events. This was two days before the Throwing Muses gig; promoters had to refund 200 tickets from under-21ers. The onetime punk palace has since changed management (again), so don’t blame that fiasco on the guys there now. Instead, keep questioning why our Powers That Be keep making all-ages music so hard to get put on and so easy to get shut down.

MIKE TAKES A HIKE: It’s a rise-n’-fall tale almost Shakespearean if it weren’t so mundane: A politician who used his out-of-step appearance and social sense to symbolize his devotion to unfashionable policies; who did more things for more people (or tried to) than any Washingtonian since the Scoop-Maggie gravy train; whose downfall came not from opponents but from a trusted aide who’d had enough of his social manners or lack thereof, as expressed thru unwanted “bear hugs.”

We may not have seen the last of Gov. Lowry, but neither may we see anyone like him again soon. And that’s a shame. He lived both in the world of three-martini politicians and that of six-fingered sawmill workers. He used the means of mainstream politics to help those outside the mainstream, at a time when politicians prefer to work chiefly for the overprivileged. (He even dared oppose tax rollbacks for Sacred Business!) And at a time when even many coffeehouse “leftists” ignore class issues or even sneer at working-class people, we need Lowry’s progressive populism more than ever.

HERE AT MISC., the column that hated Valentine’s Day long before it was hip, we can hardly wait for the first snack foods with Procter & Gamble’s Olestra (the the re-engineered fat molecule that slides thru the body instead of staying around). It’ll also be the first junk food line since the old saccharin scare to carry govt.-mandated warning labels that the stuff might cause “loose stools.” (No wonder P&G’s backing it! An excuse for new Tide and Pepto-Bismol promos!) Speaking of food tech and its discontents…

HORMOANING: I’m miffed Savage got to write before I could about how after two decades of certain folks blaming excess testosterone for everything wrong in the world, now a few renegade scientists (as covered in the New Yorker and Esquire) say we’re really suffering from estrogen poisoning. They claim industrial pollution and food-tech chemicals mean the world’s females are hitting puberty at earlier ages while its males are getting pudgier and less fertile. I know some who’d say a more “feminized” species is just what society needs. Others would claim lower sperm counts would be good for our overpopulated planet. Maybe there’s really a biological basis to that “threatened male” talk last election season. Speaking of last vestiges of dude-osity…

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Mansplat is a too-clever-for-its-own-good 12-page tabloid put out by local rock promoter, author, and Almost Live! “Lame List” cast member Jeff Gilbert. It’s devoted to “Bathroom Litter-Ature For Men… But Chicks Can Read It Too!”. B movies take center stage in the latest issue (dated “Sunday, 1996”), with “The Mad Max Anger Management Course” and a tribute to horror/ sci-fi nude scenes. Also, KCMU “Rap Attack” DJ Glen Boyd writes about that thing on Mars that looks like a face. Available at the Crocodile Cafe and from 2318 2nd Ave., #591, Seattle 98121. Speaking of boy-entertainments…

CEL-ING OUT: This year’s TV gluts, trash talk and preppie sitcoms, have already passed their peak. Next year’s TV glut: cartoons. All the new pseudo-networks want their own weekday and weekend animation blocks, so they’re buying almost any idea they get. Among the series either in production or development, according to the Hollywood Reporter: New versions of Richie Rich, Casper, Little Lulu, Ghostbusters, Roger Ramjet, Superman (with ’30s-futuristic settings), and Gene Deitch’s legendary Nudnick. A hi-techNew Jonny Quest with computer-animated gadgetry and a sterner-looking hero. Duck Daze, in which Huey, Dewey, and Louie look more like mall rappers. Sinbad (producer Fred Wolf’s ripoff of Disney’s Aladdin). An animal-cast Oliver Twist (Saban Productions’ ripoff of Disney’s Oliver & Company). Pocahontas: The Princess of American Indians (Mondo TV’s ripoff of…). A Flash Gordon that looks like Marvel’s Silver Surfer. Cartoons based on movies that just came out (Jumanji), have been around (The NeverEnding Story, Poltergeist), or aren’t out yet (Starship Troopers). Shows based on toys that just came out (Sky Dancers) or aren’t out yet (Beast Wars). A Hello Kitty series in which the cute cat actually has a mouth. Tex Avery Theater, inspired by the late master of frenetic animation and incorporating him as a character (but not using any characters he created). Soap on the Range, “The World’s First Animated Soap Opera.” Even The Blues Brothers: The Animated Series.

With all this work (even though most of it’s finished by foreign sweatshops), there’s a shortage of animation artists in L.A. If you want a job and can hurry there’s an Animation Opportunities Expo, 2/24 at the Universal City Hilton. Despite this boom, the Reporter noted that John Kricfalusi, who created then lost control of Ren & Stimpy, hasn’t sold any of his post-R&S creations. Speaking of silenced voices…

INTERNET CENSORSHIP PASSES CONGRESS: So much for “getting government off our backs.” Net censorship, and the big-media monopolization bill it was tacked onto, was a politician’s wet dream–a chance to whore out to big business and buy votes from Pat Robertson’s gang at the same time. Their dream is our nightmare. The forces of control want to infantilize our era’s greatest tool for unfettered communicating and organizing. We can’t let them. Legal challenges are already underway; updates are at the WebActive website.

THE MAILBAG: Jerry Everard at Moe clarifies that, despite rumors circulating last December, he and not any ex-MS exec makes all the club’s decisions. Everard and Scott Blum, who runs Moe’s Internet broadcasts, insist the Xing software they use is the best for the job. I’m willing to reconsider my judgment about it, once Xing makes a version that runs on my computer without pausing for four seconds between every second of sound. The real problem isn’t the software but the primitive science of netcasting itself; fewer people may get to hear a concert via the Net than in person. This isn’t a condemnation; experiments must be allowed to fail to be learned from. Speaking of not-quite-ready media…

JUNIOR’S MINT: So we’ll keep Ken Griffey Jr. after all, for only the highest salary in baseball history. Sure, we all have to pay a piece of it thanks to the complexities of the Ms/ Kingdome lease. But for that, we get a genuine star athlete, a living mascot for the new stadium deal (a role he can keep playing even if he gets another half-year injury), and an affable spokesperson for Nintendo and whoever else can pay him.

I wasn’t the only one to think “superficial contract-stalling ploy” when Griffey said he thought of leaving Seattle because of “all the rain and snow.” Ballplayers spend only about 13 weeks a year in their home team’s area (the rest is spent on the road, at spring training, and wherever they make their “real” home). Advocates of a no-roof stadium note that during baseball season we get less rain than any baseball towns outside California.

Griffey also said he wanted to be on a team that doesn’t sell off some of its best players, like the Ms keep doing so they can afford to keep him. The Ms’ problems as a “small market franchise,” trying to keep one megastar plus an adequate team behind him, are well known. What isn’t known is how to keep big players in small cities in an age of luxury boxes, owner-city blackmail, and splintering TV audiences.

Baseball was historically a hierarchical business. Minor leagues fed players to the majors, which had an established pecking order with the Yankees and old NY Giants always around the top, the Washington Senators and St. Louis Browns around the bottom. Lesser teams sold any promising players to the Yankees just to pay their hotel bills. (Remember the early years of Thunderbirds hockey, when they traded a player for a team bus?) In today’s baseball, under the right circumstances, a Cleveland or maybe even a Seattle can win a pennant. Is this situation a trend or just an anomaly? Wait ’til this year. Meanwhile…

THE BIG INTERCEPTION: Didn’t it seem this past season like the Seahawks were already gone? They had only one home sellout. Fan and media interest waned, especially in the early fall in the wake of Mariner-mania. But that doesn’t mean everyone stopped caring. The day rumors the team’s move to L.A. started flying, sports-talk radio was abuzz with the usual debates and rants. Callers generally followed a line about how team owners, especially Hawks owner Ken Behring, were Scroogeoid robber barons out to shaft the communities they purported to represent. Some callers suggested that team owners were just the most visible example of corporate welfare, that people and communities oughta get together to stop this nonsense in sports and other industries. Maybe this shows sports fans aren’t all the politically-reactionary boors us “alternative” folks love to stereotype them as.

GAS ATTACKS: You may have seen the newspaper ads and billboards in Seattle for the Shell Visa card, offering modest gasoline rebates. The catch is that in Seattle, Shell’s first U.S. market, the venerable Dutch/British company now only has stations at 175th & Aurora and down on E. Marginal Way S. It also means if you want to boycott Shell over its support of the murderous Nigerian junta, you’ll have a hard time finding a station to not get gas at.

WORD-O-WEEK (citizen-activist Makoto Sataka at a meeting about Japan’s bank-loan crisis, as quoted on CNN): “Trying to find morals in politicians and bankers is like trying to find morals in cockroaches.”