…of Snowtopia ’08’s final flourish of flurries, we must say goodbye to Eartha Kitt, Ms. “Santa Baby” herself. I had the privilege of seeing her at Jazz Alley sometime in the mid-1990s. She was still as sultry and saucy as ever. I knew I was in the presence of a living goddess; and so did everyone else in the room.

…they could get away with appropriating the music of Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne. But now they’re learning a bigger lesson–you don’t mess with Ann and Nancy.

After all the hate-mongering on Wednesday, McCain himself showed up on Thursday evening with a semi-informal, drab sequence of remarks. Some of it was conciliatory and even “friendly.” But the basic branding was still there–more war, more drilling, more giveaways to the rich, 9/11 and POW fetishism, offers of “bipartisan” cooperation with anyone who’ll totally accede to the far-right agenda.

I felt like I was watching a victim of some delusional syndrome such as intermediate senility, occasionally lapsing into lucid human speech before reverting to nonsense.

(NO, this is not age-bashing. The late George Carlin was just a few months younger than Mr. McC., and maintained his wit and sensibility to the end. My mother’s older than Mr. McC., and could undoubtedly out-debate him.)

…to my longtime pals Garth Brandenburg and Tor Mitskog. They’re in a big Seattle Times color pic. It’s due to their participation in a house rock band at the Perkins Coie law firm, which goes off to a “Battle of the Corporate Bands” contest in L.A. this weekend. Knock ’em dead!

…the International Channel. It aired blocks of programming from all different countries, right on basic cable, with ethnically-targeted commercials and everything.

Part of what I loved about it was the music shows. Samba, Bollywood, tango, Afropop, Hungarian operettas, Japanese techno, and much much more. And it was all curated by and for folks of these various ethnicities themselves! It was the real stuff, not Paul Simonized for baby-boomer comfort listening.

Some of this joyous cacophony is back, thanks to the National Geographic Channel. It’s got a post-midnight music block, Nat Geo Music. The block runs in Italy as a 24-hour channel; Geographic’s talking about launching it as a separate channel here.

The show compiles music videos (remember those things?), documentary shorts, and concert clips by lots of different people in lots of different places. Sure, the show’s got mellow folkie stuff, reggae, salsa, etc. But it’s also got digital cut-up music and raucous celebratory stuff and dissonant percussion. (And, in good National Geographic tradition, they’re not afraid of a little artistic nudity in the videos.)

About all you won’t hear on Nat Geo Music: Elmer Bernstein’s bombastic orchestral theme from the old National Geographic network specials.

Utne Reader has discovered Seattle Sound’s item about an online sub-sub-genre of “slash fiction,” this version involving the likes of Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl, among other bad-boy duos of rock.

“Slash” fiction, for the uninitiated, is a four-decades-old shtick in which mostly female writers imagine guy-pals of celebrity or fiction as if they were hot n’ heavy gay lovers. Most observers believe it started with Star Trek fan fiction.

I’d go back earlier, to the college English profs who’d give an easy A to any student essay that “proved” the major characters of any major literary work were really gay.

Cobain, as many of you know, sometimes claimed to be bi; though there’s no knowledge of his ever having had a homosexual experience. I used to figure he’d just said that because, in Aberdeen, to be a “fag” was the worst insult you could give a boy, while in Olympia and Seattle, upscale white gay men were the most respected “minority group” around.

Fiction based on real-life celebrity caricatures is also nothing new. The New Yorker did it in the 1930s. South Park has been doing it for a decade.

Anyhow, there are further slash frontiers out there than Seattle Sound or Utne have bothered to explore. They include “femslash,” women writing about female fictional icons as if they were really lesbians. It might have started with fan-written stories about Xena and Gabrielle. It’s spread to include other SF/fantasy shows with at least two female cast members, and from there to other fictional universes. The grossest/most intriguing, depending on your tastes, might be the stories imagining half-sisterly cravings between Erica Kane’s daughters.

The Kress IGA Supermarket should finally open sometime this week. The pre-opening VIP gala occurred Monday evening.
(Yes, you may ask why I photographed this event, but didn’t try to get into many SIFF-related parties and didn’t photograph the one I was at. I won’t answer, but you can ask.)
At the gala, the store’s many local suppliers (particularly in the deli and to-go-meals section) showed off their products. Reps from the city and the Downtown Seattle Association were on hand to wish the store and its Whidbey Island-based owners well.
I think it’ll succeed, even though it’s opening at a time when retailers in general are facing rough seas, and even though it’s in a basement, and even though it has no dedicated parking, and even though independently-owned groceries have taken a dive in this state (concurrent with the decline and fall of the Associated Grocers co-op).

The place just feels right. It’s not gargantuan (without the prepared-meals section, it’s about the size of an old ’60s-era supermarket), yet it’s got a complete selection. Prices are at least competitive with those at the big chains. (IGA is a member-owned franchise operation, whose presence in Washington has ebbed and flowed over the decades.)

Even the deli part, which is obviously intended as the store’s main profit center, serves up a lot of honest grub at honest prices. (Though I don’t understand why there’s a whole olive bar. But perhaps I’m not hep to the whole olive revival thang.)

Another TV season has come and gone. Ratings across the channel spectrum continued to plummet, even on shows/channels that weren’t hit by the writers’ strike.

And with the explosion in programming across broadcast and cable channels, telecasters are constantly on the lookout for entertainment forms that haven’t yet been adapted to the screen.

Saturday Night Live, as you’ll recall, was born from trends in stage sketch comedy that hadn’t yet been brought to TV on a regular basis.

Later years brought us televised karaoke, poker, ballroom dancing, shows based on video blogs and webcams, travelogue shows at pubilc-drunkenness events, and even prime-time bingo.

So: What else is out there, to feed programmers’ ravenous appetites for stealable concepts?

Here are a few ideas. (If any readers successfully package a series based on one of these, you may pay me a modest royalty.)

• Poetry slams
• Jam bands
• The entire worlds of classical music, opera, ballet
• Modern dance
• “Legitimate” theater
• Conceptual performance art
• Easter egg hunts
• Neo-burlesque
• Alternative circus acts, such as Circus Contraption
• Drag cabarets/pageants
• Mr./Ms. Leather contests
• Drum circles
• Sewing circles
• Storytelling competitions
• “Cuddle parties”
• Role-playing games (not cartoons based on the characters in the games, but actual sit-down game playing)

Please feel free to suggest your own.

One of Frank Zappa’s kids will edit Disney comics.

…another 7 daze since I last posted. Excuses: Got none. (Except that a startup entrepreneurial venture I’d been involved with this past year seems to have gone “on hold.”)

In the nooze recently:

• That novelty Hillary Clinton nutcracker I told you about late last year? Somebody used one as the focus of a bomb scare at the Olympia state capitol. Unfunny.
• As you may have heard, the Clinton campaign’s “3 a.m.” TV commercial was assembled from purchased stock footage. The little girl in the footage is now grown up, she lives here in WashState, and, yep, she’s an Obama supporter.
• That most recent, well-funded save-the-Sonics drive heads toward a not-really-that-drastic deadline. While the plan for minimal KeyArena improvements (mostly a food court and new concourses; not that many new seats) would rely on private funding for half its cost, the would-be new owners want the state to chip in $75 million. It’d take some pushing n’ cajoling to get that request thru the Legislature’s current regular session, scheduled to wrap up darn soon. Some Legislative leaders, such as House Speaker Frank Chopp, have built their public images around the idea that they don’t cave in to such big-money demands, at least not right away. But Gov. Gregoire can still call a one-day special session to pass the funding (in my opinion, a reasonable investment for a reasonable reward). The hard part’s still persuading Clay Bennett to sell and persuading league boss David Stern to stop being Bennett’s toady.
• It’s a big night for all lovers of classic Tacoma power pop, as the Ventures get into the R n’ R Hall o’ Fame.
• The Sunday Times/P-I cut its total opinion pages (which, by contract, are alloted 50/50 to each paper) from six pages to four. When the joint Sunday edition launched, 24 and a half years ago, each paper got six pages to express its “editorial voice.”
• Boeing boosters blame McCain for that big Air Force tanker contract going to Airbus. So much for a GOP revival in this state this year.

…your Starbuckless evening. Now on to a new day!:

• Did you know Seattle’s got a waterfront maritime museum? Well, you better see it now, while you still can.
• Seattle U to students: We wanna become the undisputed top private college in the region. To do that, your tuition’s going up.
• A local politician is heeding the siren call for capital-C Change. It’s Republican Dino Rossi.
• Real headline: “Seattle home prices up a tad in Q4, says report.” I’ve been around the Seattle music scene too long to think of “a Tad” as something small.
• Jus’ for fun, let’s take a look at who’d like to buy the Seattle City Council.
• Urban townhomes: Could they possibly look any less dorky?
• Did a honeymooning hubby really invite two strippers to his and his bride’s hotel room, or was it all, as hubby now claims, an unsolicited break-in?
• The European Union’s fined Microsoft $1.3 billion. To put it into perspective, that’s enough to pay Bill Gates’s household expenses for almost a day.

The locally based, globally minded music mag No Depression is calling it quits, effective with the May-June issue.

Cause of death: A dying music industry, whose endemic issues are finally reaching indie labels, who can’t afford to buy as many magazine ads as they used to.

For 13 years, ND has been the greatest chronicler of “alternative country,” “Americana,” and assorted other essential US/Canadian homegrown musics.

The big irony here: An institution dedicated to honoring longstanding or lost art forms, and to celebrating contemporary artists who keep those forms alive, is itself becoming history.

…publicly endorsed any candidates in Election Ought-Eight. (I’d briefly, privately, been an Edwards guy.) But here’s a local, unofficial pro-Obama music video shot at the Columbia City Theater, with gospel singer Pat Wright and Pearl Jam member Matt Cameron among its participants.

…a handy guided-tour-in-print to some of Seattle’s most beloved former rock clubs.

…arrives with the belated announcement of Gruntruck/Skin Yard frontman Ben McMillan’s demise, following an eight-year bout with advanced diabetes. McMillan was a hard-drivin’, hard-playin’, hard-livin’ hard rocker who never got his due piece of the Seattle Music Scene hype.