A long-delayed batch of randomosity (the first in more than a month) begins with the discovery of the newest local “mainstream microbrew.” Underachiever Lager appears to have begun as a promo vehicle for Tacoma designer-casual-wear company Imperial Motion, but is now being rolled out as its own thang in select local bars.

• The countdown to the possible decimation of King County Metro Transit continues, with professional Seattle-haters in the Legislature officially not giving a damn.
• Could the Seattle Monorail Project really be brought back from the dead?
• About eighteen years past due and not a moment too soon, there’s finally a local music show back on local TV. It’s Band in Seattle, and it airs at 11 p.m. Saturdays on the once-mighty KSTW (which hasn’t had any local programming in ages).
• Dj and promoter Derek Mazzone offers a fond remembrance of Ace Hotel/ARO.Space/Tasty Shows/Rudy’s Barbershop entrepreneur Alex Canderwood.
• We must also say goodbye to Dee Dee Rainbow, a longtime Meany Middle School art teacher, a fixture at just about every jazz show in the region, and a figure of joy and celebration wherever she went.
• As has been expected, a mega-developer is buying the old “Fairview Fannie” Seattle Times HQ. The 1930 art deco façade features might be retained.
• Monica Guzman has seen one of Amazon’s new “webisode” sitcoms and finds it to be a dreary dude-fest with female characters decidedly de-emphasized.
• Sinan Demirel at Crosscut remembers homeless-housing projects of the past, and ponders whether they contain any lessons for today.
• Is there really such a thing as “The Seattle ‘No,'” depicted as a passive-aggressive copout response? I’ve certainly had few problems saying a firm “No” to questions just like this one.
• City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant isn’t even in office yet and the carpers, local and national, are already circling.
• The Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center is in severe financial straits and might not survive.
• One of my fave hangouts, Bill’s Off Broadway at Pine and Harvard, closes Monday nite. Yep, redevelopment strikes again. The pizza/pasta joint and sports bar has already opened an exile location on Greenwood Avenue, and should be back in the rebuilt corner in 20 months’ time.
• To the surprise of very few, David Meinert and his partner Jason Lajuenesse are taking over the Comet Tavern.
• Matt Driscoll at Seattle Weekly describes Boeing’s single, unacceptable, set of take-it-or-leave-it demands for labor givebacks as the “dick move of the week.” But don’t worry; billionaire CEOs have made plenty of dick moves just in the two weeks since then.
• Lemme get this straight: A local ad agency is trying to convince other ad agencies to make ads here in Wash. state by playing on the image of this as a place where people don’t like being advertised to. Or something like that.
• KIRO-TV salaciously described the sidewalks surrounding City Hall Park and the Morrison Hotel as “The Most Dangerous Block in Seattle.” A local merchant there begs to differ, and asks that the down n’ out be treated with “your hope, not your contempt.”
• We’re learning that every time there’s a closed subculture run by leaders who demand total obedience, there’s apt to be child abuse. Latest example: NYC’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community.

getty images via huffington post

My first thought: How could such a still-vital part of our musical heritage, one of the original proto-punks, be gone from us so soon?

My second thought: How did the writer of “Heroin” (almost a love song to the drug), then later of “The Power of Positive Drinking,” live this long?

My third thought: Back to the first thought.

I mourn the Comet Tavern for what it had been. The un-upscaled hippie hangout; the dive that remained a dive when most of the other dives in town cleaned up their acts. I don’t mourn what it had become—a hangout ruled by an oft-violent aggro gang called Hate City. (A good friend, a petite female, was once roughed up by bouncers there, badly.) Could any new owners make it an inviting place again?

• My ol’ pal Steven Shaviro uses a lot of highly obscure intellectual-left lingo in this essay about the futility of “transgressive” art/film/music in today’s world. I believe he’s saying you can’t be a “rebel punk” anymore, because the hyper-corporate society you’re rebelling against is “punker” (more offensive, aggressive, destructive) than you’ll ever be.
• David Byrne has stopped pretending not to be white, long enough to notice one-percenter real estate speculation and Internet “disruption” (i.e., not paying content creators) as twin menaces to the arts and creativity.
• Meanwhile, our ol’ pal Tom Frank claims pundits who talk about “the creative class” are really just talking about corporate players who like to imagine themselves as “creative.”
• The e-book revolution has become a surprising boon to traditional big publishers. But it’s a hassle to libraries, which often have to pay more to provide e-books than physical books.
• A husband-and-wife music duo in Arizona came to a sudden end. The wife died in a hospital; the husband then killed himself—after posting each death to the wife’s Facebook page under her name.
• America’s biggest export to China was recycled plastic. But not anymore.
• Gay men don’t have the right to grope women without consent either.
• A British historian claims Jesus was a made-up character, invented by the Romans in an attempt to encourage conquered Jews to become more passive. Needless to say, there are many who disagree with this premise.
• Is Cinemax really discontinuing its late-night softcore shows, unofficially nicknamed “Skinemax”? From the sound of this story, it’s more likely the cable channel’s just preferring to promote its primetime originals, in which sex takes a decided back seat to violence.
• Andrew Fischer at GeneralForum.com has two lists (with a third promised) of “Really Annoying Facebook Friends We All Have.” Not included (yet): the one who posting vaguely-worded links to vaguely-headlined articles, attracting all vaguely-worded responses.
• Elsewhere in snarkland, there’s a blog entry all about ridiculous traveler complaints:

We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.

patchesofpride.wordpress.com

During our three-week-plus blogging absence, one of the events we failed to note was the demise of one of the unsung pop-culture greats, Samuel W. Petrucci. A logo and packaging designer, he worked on everything from the Charleston Chew candy wrapper to a Lassie lunch box. But he’s best known for the logo and box art on the original G.I. Joe dolls, often using himself as a model for Joe’s face. His daughter Lisa Petrucci is a prominent local “pop surrealist” painter and co-owner of Something Weird Video.

• Don James, R.I.P.: He may have been the last great Husky football coach to date. He was certainly a figure of respect and sportsmanship, prior to the “Scoreboard, Baby” era of win-at-any-cost that ended up ruining the program.
• A former contract worker at Google’s obscure Bothell office has mixed feelings about her time there; including, but not limited to, the paucity of female higher-ups.
• Yes, there are (even in this climate of starved social needs) alternatives to “boarding” the mentally ill.
• Alas, the extremely expensive manufactured crisis that was the govt. shutdown probably isn’t “the Tea Party’s last stand.” There will always be something else, real or made up, around which to ferment faux-outrage.
• Meanwhile, Michael Lind at Salon sez the extreme-right-wing tactics so visible these days are simply old Southern white-right politics, ramped up by local/state operatives afraid of changing demographics permanently ruining their historic privileges.…
• …and Daniel Goleman at the NYT says we face not only an economic gap but an “empathy gap.”
• You can run all the exposes of the Koch brothers’ extreme-right-wing funding machine you want. It won’t persuade the conservative follower who only knows what right-wing “bubble media” tell him and who, therefore, has never even heard of the Koch brothers.
• No, Cosmopolitan: The women who perform in hardcore porn vids indeed are “real women.” They’re just playing unreal characters.
• As some of you know, I hated loudmouth alpha-male San Franciscans before it was cool.
• Hollywood has successfully shut down a big BitTorrent index site.
• Let’s close with some seldom-seen Edward Gorey art from long out-O-print satiric verse books by the undeservedly forgotten Felicia Lamport:

via brainpickings.org

charter construction via ronald holden, cornichon.org

Gosh, has it really been more than three weeks since I’ve done this? Time flies when you’re desperately looking for paying work (i.e., absolutely not “for the exposure”).

Anyhow:

• The prefab apartment units (above) recently craned into place next to Dan’s Belltown Grocery on Third are not really “apodments.” They’re from a different developer than the company that owns that name. And they’re about 425 square feet each, a “regular apartment” size that’s much larger than those micro-apts.
• Meanwhile, the residents (many of them elderly) of a Ballard apartment complex are standing their ground and refusing to be evicted from their longtime homes in the name of upscaling.
• Use It Or Lose It Dept.: The current owners of Scarecrow Video say they’re in desperate fiscal straits. If enough former loyal customers don’t resume renting/buying “physical media” at the U District institution, “the world’s largest collection of movies” will go away forever.
• Tom Foley, 1929-2013: The Spokane liberal (yes, there really are such) and former U.S. House Speaker thrived in a disappeared age of gentler, more cooperative politics (i.e., two-way backroom dealmaking). The end of that era was the end of his political career; he was ousted by a corporate Republican who promised to limit his own terms of office, then promptly forgot that promise.
• As another baseball season reaches its last round, Steve Rudman claims the Mariners’ bosses don’t even know how clueless they are.
• Stop the coal trains! (Besides, I always liked Thelonius Monk better.)
• Great moments in market segmentation: Rave dancers now have a bottled water “made” just for them.
• Of course, Sean Hannity’s “victims of Obamacare” were all fake. But you knew that.
• Charles Simic at the NY Review o’ Books has harsh words for inequality deniers and other right-wing goons:

We have forgotten what this country once understood, that a society based on nothing but selfishness and greed is not a society at all, but a state of war of the strong against the weak.

• In the Dept. of Stuff You Can’t Unsee, here’s a posable manga/anime artist’s reference doll, complete with ginormous eyes n’ breasts:

rocketnews24.com

seattleglobalist.com

• The thorough folks at Seattle Globalist traced UW-licensed apparel items back to the places where they were made, to the people who made them, and to how much more the people who made them would need to earn to meet the local cost of living.
• Speaking of apparel, BuzzFeed’s got some sorry evidence of pathetic attempts to turn punk rock nostalgia into mere fashion-fad fodder.
• Still speaking of apparel, Sesame Street really doesn’t like unauthorized “Sexy Big Bird” Halloween costumes. (You can still get the “Pho King Hot” waitress costume, though.)
• Why is Storyville Coffee, a single espresso and pastry boutique in the Pike Place Market, spending so much on lavish pre-opening marketing (including a month of free food and drinks for invited guests)? Because (1) it’s the first unit of a planned chain, and (2) it’s got the zillionaire behind a for-profit college backing it. (And as an aside, the owners also have ties to the “hip” but reactionary Mars Hill Church.) (And as another aside, do they even know they’ve named it after New Orleans’ old red-light district?)
• Can the scenic, low-density office “park” that is the ex-Battelle Research campus in Laurelhurst be saved? And should it?
• Eric Stevick at the Everett Herald has the sad life story of a woman who basically never got a break her entire life, and then died in the Snohomish County jail because they wouldn’t send for medical help.
• Bumper salmon runs! Yay! Just, you know, keep ’em away from the dogs.
• Pasta-and-pride dept.: Barilla’s CEO doesn’t care much for the gays, but Bertolli (hearts) the gays. Or something like that.
• Bono wants a more equitable tax system in Ireland, but will still keep his own millions stashed away in offshore trust accounts.
• Could Google’s latest search-ranking changes finally kill off that bane to humanity that is “Search Engine Optimization”?
• Ted Cruz apparently didn’t understand that Green Eggs and Ham is a liberal allegory about open mindedness. But he’s yesterday’s news. Today’s news is the conservatives’ next showdown target, the debt ceiling.
• Do they serve Hello Kitty beer on the Hello Kitty plane?
• Let’s leave you today with some visual inspiration, of sorts, in the form of “Terrible Real Estate Agent Photos.”

terriblerealestateagentphotos.com

pelican bay foundation via capitolhillseattle.com

First, another “sorry folks” for not getting something up to the site lately. I know some of you enjoy these li’l linx, even when I don’t have a major essay about something.

For now, back to Randomosity:

• The mural at the Kingfish Cafe’s building on east Capitol Hill (see above) dates back to the ’70s and to a noble experiment in cooperatively-run artist housing. Read the comments to learn how it collapsed.
• A Bloomberg commentator decries Amazon’s South Lake Union “geek zone” as a swath of real estate “cursed by dullness.”
• Amazon’s newest Kindle Fire tablet has one “killer app” selling point: live, human, tech support!
• Getting the Rainier Beer “R” logo back up on the ex-brewery building will be nice. It would be even nicer if the brand’s current owners would make it here again, instead of at the Miller plant in the L.A. exurbs. There’s gotta be enough excess microbrewery capacity in Washington to make that possible.
• (Rhetorical) question of the day: Would the local Caucasian model who donned black body paint for a fashion shoot make a good (rhetorical) question for the blog Yo, Is This Racist?
• As discussed earlier this year at EMP, the likes of Miley Cyrus are, no matter how superficially “transgressive,” still the product of a star-maker machine that subjects female pop singers to a “packaging process.”
• When it comes to regressive taxation against the poor, we’re (still) number one! (But Washington’s still a “progressive” state because we love gays and pot, right?)
• A local grocery strike looks more likely.
• An “adjunct professor” in Pittsburgh died a horrid death, without savings or health insurance. This is a facet of the status quo the Obamacare-bashing right wingers so desperately want to preserve. (Another facet: the cuts to mental health services that leave the dangerously untreated on the streets.)
• No, Huffington Post,“Generation Y” folks don’t particularly feel “special” or “entitled.” Poverty-stricken and opportunity-deprived, yes.
• Could “Internet workers” be subject to minimum wage laws? I sure hope so. And the same goes for other freelance and “for the exposure” workers, who are workers indeed.
• I don’t need to view condom-free porn videos because, unlike apparently a lot of self-describing “straight” men, I’m indifferent toward the sight of other men’s parts.
• And to help you politely refute specious “comment trolls” online and in “real” life, here’s a handy li’l Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments.

ali almossawi

satoshi kon's 'paprika' (2006); via film.com

• The following are not among Film.com’s list of the all-time “Ten Most Beautiful Animated Films”: My Little Pony: The Movie, Bebe’s Kids, The Croods, Wreck-It Ralph, Gnomeo and Juliet.
• Microsoft buys Nokia’s cell-phone business: Is it really the end of MS as predominantly a software company? Is it the end of software as a stand alone industry?  Nah. Code shall always be needed, as will be upgrades and bug fixes and adaptations to said code. What it’s the end of is MS relying on outside hardware vendors (aka PC manufacturers), a marriage of convenience that left the hardware companies racing to the proverbial price-point “bottom” (and to overseas subcontractors).
• Nicklesville breaks camp and breaks up, to relocate three far-flung new sites.
• For infotainment at its most baffling, it’s hard to top “Strange Bloomberg Headlines.”
• Not even the song of Mothra‘s miniature princesses can save Japanese rubber-suit monsters from the onslaught of computer graphics.
• Big Freedia, the “Queen of Bounce,” says Miley Cyrus doesn’t know how to “twerk” properly.
• There’s no shortage of tech grads coming out of U.S. colleges. There are, however, scads of U.S. tech companies eager to legally bring in as many low-paid immigrant techies as they can.
• In news that comes as shocking to almost nobody, corporate pop stars and actors willingly perform for free (plus expenses) at Walmart shareholder meetings.
• Kim Messick at Salon explains, in terms of history and demographics, specifically “How the Republican Party Lost Its Mind.”
• Music history note: The legendary kitsch cover art for Devo’s debut LP, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO!, came from a merchandise display with golf star Chi Chi Rodriguez.

clubdevo.com

art_es_anna at flickr via kplu

• Cliff Mass debunks a major conspiracy-theory fave of fringe-lefties: There are no “chemtrails” spewing mind-control chemicals from airplanes.
• More of our very own “Einstruzende Neubauten” (“collapsing new buildings”): The big 2200 Westlake complex, with the Whole Foods, a luxury hotel, and a couple of fancy condo towers, has to undergo major repairs for water damage.
• Can the grafting-on of a prestigious baccalaureate program save the (mostly undeserved) reputation of Rainier Beach High School?
• When more people make their own electricity from solar, wind, etc., how will the various entities committed to maintaining the “grid” afford to do so?
• Beloit University’s annual “Mindset” list of pop-culture things modern college frosh have always or never known is a cheap publicity stunt. (That doesn’t make it any less fun.)
• I never cared much for the music of Linda Ronstadt (too baby-boomer bland for my tastes). But it’s still dreadful to hear of her enforced retirement due to Parkinson’s.
• Jessica Olien at Slate believes “social isolation kills more people than obesity does.”
• Psychology Today claims the ladies love casual sex just as much as the gents, as long as they’re made to “feel safe.”
• The FBI apparently once thought novelist William Vollman was the Unabomber. And the “anthrax mailer.” And a terrorist in training in Afghanistan.
• Elmore Leonard, R.I.P.: The crime fiction master left behind, among other achievements, a stunning collection of first lines and a few words of advice to writers (“never open a book with weather”). (Meanwhile, ESPN basketball announcer Len Elmore is still with us.)

The Sherman Clay piano store was one of only two buildings on its block to avoid the wrecking ball during the ’80s civic-planning quasi-fiasco that begat Westlake Center. Earlier, it was the place to buy concert tickets in the ’60s and ’70s. The California chain sold pianos in Seattle since the 1880s (before Washington became a state), and has been at its Fourth Avenue site since 1924. But the chain’s calling it quits. The main reason: It lost its Steinway franchise. (The storied instrument maker was taken over by hedge-fund guys, and plans its own retail outlets.)

As one door closes, etc.… T.J. Maxx is showing up in the upstairs of the Kress Building. If you recall, that’s where JC Penney was to have gone in a couple years back; but that deal was quashed during that company’s continuing internal roiling.

This Belltown nightclub believed it needed to post a sign reminding its own male customers to not behave as antisocial creeps. Sad.

messynessychic.com

• Be unique enough and intriguing enough and eventually you, too, could become a “meme.” Such is the case with Hilda, a “zaftig” novelty pinup character created by illustrator Duane Bryers and the topic of an online rediscovery.
• It only produced 33 total episodes over less than three years. Very few people saw them. But the legend of Heart Attack Theater, Kelly Hughes’ local cable-access anthology drama, just keeps growing.
• Waterfront tunnel construction has already disrupted rats’ homes, leading some to fear a coming “Ratpocalypse!”
• Capitol Hill’s “only vegan dive bar, music and Cakeroke venue” won’t have the “vegan” part anymore (or any food service for that matter).
• An indie, vinyl-centric record label just died after less than a year in business.
• Teabagger bigots still find new lows in sociopathy to which to descend. The latest fad: shaming disabled people as alleged “parasites” on the public dole.
• Women are now almost half of all video game players. Expect the gaming industry to give up its sexist-geek ways, oh, maybe one of these decades.
• Yahoo will have a new logo. But it’s teasing its online audiences by presenting a different fake logo every day for a month. I’m sure the final one, once revealed, will suck as much as the temp ones do.
• It’s one of the worst things with which a “progressive” commentator can be charged these days, but a former interviewee has accused Lawrence O’Donnell of “mansplaining.”
• Two Yale law profs believe “the Internet can save journalism,” by placing voluntary donation buttons at the bottom of article pages. The money would go to some nonprofit endowment fund.
• Note to would-be “mile high club” initiates: when having sex on a plane, try to be discreet about it, not like the Oregon couple who, er, interfaced in full view of other passengers.
• Finally, MISCmedia is dedicated today to the memory of Karen Black, Eydie Gormé, Eileen Brennan, and Haji. (Let’s not lose any more goddesses soon; we need all of those we can have.)

I’ve been asked to carry forward the following announcement about an online-radio debut, which should be of importance to all who care about local media, local music, and local culture:

Rising from the cable TV graveyard, The Spud Goodman Show returns live on NWCZ radio @ 7:00-8:00 pm Thursday 8/8/13. Featured on the debut episode are Seattle Sonics great Shawn Kemp, Seattle street-music icon Richard Peterson, and musical guests The F**king Eagles.

http://nwczradio.com/?page_id=8212

Thanks, we appreciate your support.

Lori Madson

Executive Producer

The Spud Goodman Show

via adweek

• Insurance companies should not change their logos often, if ever. The branding “mystique” for insurance ought to be about stability, reassurance. Well, one company had the dumb idea to “modernize” its identity. Yep, it sucks.
• The owners of Greenwood’s Couth Buzzard bookstore (where I had a lovely book presentation in ’11) have created an ongoing art and music project in memory of their daughter, who died from cancer at age 18.
• The NY Times picked up the story of the local woman who wrote her own, lovely, Seattle Times paid obit.
• The feud between Geoff Tate and the other original members of Queensryche: it’s gettin’ brutal. And not in a fun “shredding” sort of way.
• Seattle Weekly’s got a keen piece about graffiti artists in the abandoned Fisher flour mill.
• Folks in this state drink less beer than folks in most any other state.
• Here’s how the Sounders got Clint “Don’t Call Me Patrick” Dempsey.
• Sorry, Capt. Kirk: Teleportation is scientifically impossible, at least with living human subjects. The brain is just too complex to be instantly copied and re-built.
• Meanwhile, the next star of Doctor Who is 55, the same age First Doctor William Hartnell was at the show’s start a half century ago.
• A Miss Utah contestant was charged with throwing firebombs from a car.
• 24/7 Wall St. lists once-mighty restaurant chains that are either mostly or wholly disappeared.
• Books that are under copyright but out of print become part of a “hole in our collective memory.”

daily mail

• What’s creepier than plastic sex dolls? Watching them being assembled.
• Bauhaus Coffee, whose lovely East Pine Street building’s doomed for redevelopment, will stay on Capitol Hill for at least two more years at an as-yet undisclosed spot.
• A Forbes staff writer (not one of the mag’s online-only “contributors”) places Seattle at the top of the heap in the category of “America’s Most Miserable Sports Cities.”
• Could this year’s Seattle Hempfest be the last? (One can only hope.)
• SST Records boss Greg Ginn, Black Flag’s original lead guitarist, claims to own the Black Flag name, and is suing his ex-bandmates who are touring as “Flag.” Ginn, as you may have heard, also has his own Black Flag “reunion” tour underway. Ginn’s also suing Black Flag’s most famous ex-member, Henry Rollins, even though Rollins isn’t in either “reunion” venture.
• A male singer-songwriter offers a “feminist” anthem. Spin.com convenes a panel of biological females to diss it.
• Book-review bloggers who give “soft,” all-positive notices to bad self-published books aren’t doing a favor to anyone, including the authors.
• Thirty-three years after the cheesy docudrama movie, folks are still searching for “historic Jesus.”
• Right-wing “homeschool” history books would be hilarious if real kids weren’t being indoctrinated with them.
• Paul Krugman comes right out n’ says it:

…(T)he madness of the GOP is the central issue of our time.

• There’s now a soccer federation for “Cascadia” (i.e., B.C./Wash./Ore.). And it’s gotten provisional recognition from a global confederation of soccer interests representing other not-really-nations (Basque country, Kurdistan, etc.).
• Cracked.com tells you some reasons “why you can’t believe anything you read online.” One reason: A lot of click-whoring sites, including click-whoring “news” sites, try to make you feel angry and outraged at something, then to share your outrage via social-media links. (Maybe that’s why this site hasn’t taken off like Drudge or Kos. I’m not ordering you to go ballistic X times a day.)
• A week or two back, we remarked how Saks department stores had become, for a time, owned by an Alabama firm. No more. Saks will now be part of the Hudson’s Bay Co. (aka “The Bay”), the Canadian retail giant whose fur-trading heritage helped shape the initial settlement of this part of the world.
• Al-Jazeera America, the cable news channel replacing the low-rated Current TV, will have a Seattle news bureau. Allen Schauffler, who just quit KING after more than two decades, will run the outpost.
• Today’s local history lesson, brought to you by the Seattle Star: The time when the feds tried to arrest local Black Panthers because of a supposedly stolen typewriter.
• Dumb Criminal Report #1: When you’re wanted by the cops, it’s unwise to shoplift beef jerky.
• Dumb Criminal Report #2: Don’t set fire to the Aurora Sears. We love that store. It’s possibly the only truly beautiful suburban big-box store ever built around here.
• Are ebook sales peaking?
• Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon claims Amazon personifies “everything wrong with our new economy.” Apple, Walmart, Nike: You can rest easy now; you’re no longer the company everyone most dearly loves to hate.
• Yes, “existential depression in gifted children” is a real thing. Trust me on this.
• “Naked Juice” no longer claims to be “all natural,” and also is owned by Pepsi.
• Fox tries to create a clone of Adult Swim, only even cruder and dumber. The results are now here, and they’re immensely dreadful.
• The vinyl music comeback may be here to stay. Yeah, but does anybody actually, you know, play any of those records?
• David Byrne, meanwhile, details six modern business models for the modern musical artist.
• Unfortunately, there are still too many awful big-budget action movies. And, unfortunately, there are still economic incentives for the studios to make more.