FROM SRI LANKA (“a world where suicide bombings are so routine they don’t make a ripple in the international news”), ten lessons in how not to fight terrorism.

THE GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: The corporate record labels are reeling in major losses, due mainly to the collapse of their longstanding business plans (the incessant hyping of a few bland superstars).

DESPITE THE TALIBAN’S FALL, there are still places on Earth where the simple enjoyment of pop music and nightlife is met with stern rebuke.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN, the NY Times’s second-most-anointed right-winger, facetiously proposes an all-nude airline, “Naked Air,” as a potential security solution.

If Friedman had been more of a journalist and less of a think-tank ideologue, he might have remembered that during the ’70s first wave of skyjackings, the unjustly forgotten humor columnist Arthur Hoppe wrote a much more entertaining piece based on the same premise. Hoppe proposed a Jaybird Airlines, in which not only would all passengers board the plane naked as a jaybird, but the male passengers would be assigned comely Seatmates to “entertain” them whilst in-flight. (Female passengers, in Hoppe’s piece, were expected to merely sit back and listen to the stewardesses (dressed in designer shoes and smartly-fashioned hats) explain the procedures for the unlikely event of a water landing.) The piece ends, of course, with a passenger attempting to take control of the plane–to prevent it from landing.

‘TWAS A GLORIOUS 20th anniversary party Sun. night for the Pink Door, our official fave gourmet-Italian eatery. (And not just because the name discreetly alludes to something I always like to go into.) The event had the swingin’ acrobat depicted here, a stilt walker, an accordian-tuba combo, several torch singers, a sax player, and street-music vet Baby Gramps. Fun was had by all.

AN EGYPTIAN INTELLECTUAL claims “Terrorism is the antithesis of self-determination.” (found by Rebecca’s Pocket.)

ROGER EBERT’S glossary of movie cliches (found by Robot Wisdom).

UPDATE #1: My ol’ pal Susan Rathke’s second and final Jeopardy! episode appeared tonight. Though she was felled by a particularly tuff “Final Jeopardy” question, she still left with $23,000 and a cool overseas vacation trip (not to mention an NY Times subscription and a copy of the home game). Way to go!

UPDATE #2: A Calif. entrepreneur is trying to relaunch Luxuria Music, the Internet radio station that played an amazing blend of lounge, exotica, swing, and related music prior to its April demise at the hands of radio mega-chain Clear Channel Commuications. You can read more about the scheme at his site, Luxuriamusic.net.

PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1999: The Seattle WTO protests of two years ago were already a nostalgia topic six months later. They were remembered in a series of events today. The one I went to (at Westlake Center) and the one attended by one of our MISC informants (at Seattle Central C.C.) were dull, pallid affairs. Each had no more than a couple hundred anarcho-hippies and aging punk rockers singing songs, chanting chants, and otherwise giving rote by-the-numbers “radical” stances.

Before today, we’d wondered aloud how the anti-globalization movement would respond after the terror attacks of Sept. (which were centered at a symbol of globalization that even had “World Trade” in its very name). The answer, at least as far as today’s events went: Quite lacklusterly. The two outdoor commemorations attracted few beyond the hardcore far-left kids (and even among them, the Mumia and Revolutionary Communist cliques didn’t have much of a presence).

A good case against global corporate power-grabbing can still be made. It is possible to despise what the skyjackers did and still seek a more fair, more just world, a world in which the needs of the people and the earth would be given more importance than the Almighty Stock Price. But such a stance would now require more subtlety, more tact, and more intelligence than the more one-dimensional parts of the anti-WTO shtick could’ve accommodated.

Trick or Treat

by guest columnist Mr. Hedley Bowes

MUSINGS ON THIS PAST All Hallow’s Eve season:

It’s 1991 (the shitter) economically; and after hundreds of thousands of layoffs this year and entire sectors wiped out, the government and business communities are looking to consumers to save our collective asses.

Sen. Patty Murray introduced the “Let’s Go Shopping” bill, which would put the Federal government in the business of rebating state sales taxes for a 10-day period during the fourth quarter of the year. This was announced on Halloween, a day when we’ve all been scared into avoiding shopping malls at all costs, lest we put ourselves at risk of terrorists.

It’s been said quite often in the last month it’s our patriotic duty to go shopping. And spend money. Tell that to the corporate community and the venture-capital investors.

Never mind the record: Consumers continued to spend and buoy a sluggish economy in the four quarters since last year’s “election.” Business spending fell sharply after last November and has continued to be soft. Sure, there was a rush in the energy sector; for a while it looked like that would be where the action was. But look where Enron is today (near-bankrupt and seeking a buyer). Gasoline prices (everywhere but here) are the lowest in years.

The second “economic stimulus” package this year is aimed at stimulating big players like IBM ($1.4 billion), General Motors ($833 million), General Electric ($671 million), Chevron Texaco ($572)r, and Enron ($254 million). Any one of these corporations has the option to:

• A) take the tax break and rehire or retrain employees at risk of layoff;

• B) plow the money back into the balance sheet, thereby improving earnings and buoying stock value; or

• C) exercise option B, while shutting domestic facilities in favor of continued offshore outsourcing.

Go ahead. As a contracted bonus-getting, shareholding C-level executive, pick your optimal A, B, or C.

Krispy Kreme, a franchise operation not from here, opened its much anticipated and over-hyped Issaquah store early one late October morning. Lines formed the night before as people camped out. One would think Mick Jagger himself was making the fucking things.

We were privileged to have a friend who camped out overnight for the precious things. After tasting one, we can say the secret ingredient of Krispy Kreme doughnuts is their high fat content. The stuff is also very likely airwhipped with powdery sweet confectioner’s sugar. A new drug for these tough times.

What’s going on here?

Historically, this region creates national (and global) trends: Microsoft, Redhook, Starbucks, Chateau Ste. Michelle, Red Robin (and any number of mid to high end theme restaurants) K2, JanSport, et al.

But things have been so quiet around here lately that a relative unknown from across the country can come in and leverage enough free PR from the local press to offset hundreds of thousands of startup dollars. And people are lining up overnight, as if they were waiting for a rock star to show up. Nope, it’s just a doughnut.

Have we lost our special place as an idea and business incubator? Or did we simply over-commit to high technology (a once darling sector) and big business that we forgot about the little things (like doughnuts)?

Game Three: Made for TV. GWB throws out the first pitch in the third game of the World Series. I watched the final inning, waiting for truth to prevail. I wanted so much for Arizona to bring the game to an even 2-2, to take it into extra innings so that we might have some hope that this was not just a made for television win. But it was not to be. And so the writing is on the wall. Through their own special brand of black magic, New York was now certain to take all three games at Yankee Stadium and take the series in seven.

Is it a matter of will? Destiny? Or (as with elections, energy markets, layoffs, tax breaks, and doughnuts) just the way things are “meant to be?”

Thankfully, this was not the way it played out. I don’t favor the Diamondbacks that much (indeed, the irony of a bunch of “desert snakes” taking on the New York Yankees in this of all years was not lost on me)

But the Yankees have come to represent the way things seem to be done in America: Presidents not elected but awarded the post by a court; corporate executives taking bonuses on declining returns on top of salaries that outstrip those of average workers by multiples of 1,000. Our world seems to be one where things are not decided but predetermined, where the decisions we do make as a people are somehow subverted, where the deck is increasingly stacked toward wealth and power: Don’t Mess With Texans (or those with Texas-sized appetites for power, wealth, fame…).

Then, in the ninth inning of the seventh game, a simple sacrifice brought the wealth and power of dynasty down, leaving in their places a restored sense of truth and hope. What’s great about baseball is that it can accomplish this peaceably. Baseball, our national catharsis—this American oddity is still very much alive.

NAOMI KLEIN comments on the eerie connections between the war and the “intellectual property” cartel.

TAKE PRONOUNCIATION AUDIO CLIPS from an online dictionary, set them to music, and you get Dictionaraoke!

THIS HALLOWEEN NIGHT marks the demise of the historic Rendezvous restaurant and bar, and of its small but sumptuous Jewel Box Theater.

We were there Friday for a lovely show of dissonant art-noise starring horn meistro Wally Shoup and a group calling itself Gidrah. While they played, beautiful scenes from Toho Studios monster movies played on the Jewel Box’s silver screen.

The Rendezvous first opened in the ’20s, as an adjunct to a company in the same building that outfitted the interiors of movie theaters. (Second Avenue was Seattle’s “Film Row,” where the big studios had their regional distribution offices and warehouses). The Jewel Box inside the Rendezvous was both a showcase for the theater-building company’s wares and a screening room where theater operators would preview new films.

In recent years the Jewel Box has hosted art-film screenings, music-video shootings, fringe-theater shows, literary readings, band gigs of all imaginable types, and AA meetings.

The Rendezvous bar, meanwhile, became one of greater downtown’s last refuges for old-timers and blue-collar drinkers. The recently broken-up local band Dodi was named after the joint’s tuff-but-lovable, beehive-coiffed, longtime barmaid.

Former OK Hotel mastermind Steve Freeborn is taking over the place and promises to reopen it early next year, restored and brought up to code. He also plans some of the OK’s old brand of art exhibitions and progressive performance bookings at the new Rendezvous.

But it just won’t be the same.

Some things seen around town recently, starting with longtime street musician Richard Peterson strolling through Pioneer Square and announcing (as he has done several times before) that “this is my last day on the streets.” I met him at the end of a tiring week schlepping print MISCs around town, and could instantly sympathize with the sentiment/threat.

You know that big white fabric rectangle on the back of the Bon Marche parking garage, that had a sign at the bottom apologizing that Salmon Streaming had been suspended due to the power shortage? Now we finally get to see what the heck Salmon Streaming is. It’s a short, looping, silent film projected onto the giant outdoor screen at night. Sponsored by Seattle City Light, it’s a promo film for fishery-restoration efforts near its Ross Dam project in the Skagit Valley. It’s also an odd bit of nature imagery in the heart of Seattle’s most urban-decay-looking block.

SOME BRITISH GUY mourns the age of the Polaroid camera, whose maker has filed for bankruptcy.

“Emperor” Lee Smith, 59, was Seattle’s premier top-40 AM disc jockey in the ’70s, just about the last time there were such things as top-to AM disc jockeys. He held the morning shift on KJR from 1969 to 1974, and aimed his show at the teens and preteens left behind by a “youth culture” industry more interested in following their older siblings. He spouted witty, energetic banter between the hits of the Spinners, Dolly Parton, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. He made public appearances (including annual “chariot races”) clad in a burgundy toga and gold sandals. He made his audience feel they had a DJ, nay a celebrity, of their very own. When he was transferred into the station’s sales department, his last on-air day featured a Watergate-themed comedy skit, “The Impeachment of an Emperor.” He died Oct. 12 from cancer.

Norm Gregory, one of Smith’s former KJR colleagues, said, “The first time I saw him was in 1967 and the last time was in 1995 and he was the same guy from that first day to the last. Emp was a wild and wacky radio personality, a great father, and a wonderful friend.”

More on Smith can be had at the KJR Memories site.

YR. HUMBLE EDITOR was recently awarded the honor of being one of the 18 jurors who selected the “MetropoList 150,” the Museum of History and Industry/Seattle Times list of the 150 most influential people in the 150-year history of Seattle and King County.

I’m quite satisfied with the final list, available at this link. There’s almost nobody on it I wouldn’t have wanted on it.

Nevertheless, there are several names I wrote in which didn’t make the final selection. In alphabetical order, they include:

• LYNDA BARRY: South Seattle native and acclaimed cartoonist and author. Her novel Cruddy was set in a fictionalized Rainier Valley.
• STEVEN J. “JESSE” BERNSTEIN: Poet and short-story writer of urban decay and dystopian fantasy.
• TED BUNDY: Clean-cut law student and serial killer.
• DYAN CANNON: West Seattle native who became a movie sex symbol at age 32.
• RAY CHARLES: R&B legend whose career started in Seattle’s old Jackson Street jazz scene.
• FRANCES FARMER: West Seattle-born actress with an ill-fated Hollywood career.
• CHET HUNTLEY: UW grad and pioneering network TV news anchorman.
• MARY KAY LETOURNEAU: Middle-school teacher who bore two children by a student, causing much public hand-wringing and analysis.
• MIKE LUKOVICH: Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and UW Daily grad.
• FLOYD SCHMOE (1895-2000): Seattle Quaker leader, mountaineer, and tireless peace activist.
• LESTER SMITH & DANNY KAYE: Seattle businessman Smith, first on his own and later in partnership with movie star Kaye, ran a string of radio stations (including KJR); they also were the Mariners’ original owners.
• DEWEY SORIANO: Was awarded ownership of the 1969 Seattle baseball franchise on the basis of his skill in managing the Pacific Coast League. He didn’t have the financial resources to keep the Pilots going, and the team was sold and moved to Milwaukee after one season.
• ICHIRO SUZUKI: Mariners sensation; first Japanese-born “position player” (non-pitcher) in the U.S. Major Leagues.
• EDDIE VEDDER: Singer for the rock band Pearl Jam. The group’s dispute with TicketMaster in 1993 presaged many later disputes by artists and fans against the bigtime music industry.
• ANN & NANCY WILSON: Leaders since 1973 of Heart, the first Seattle rock band to attain international prominence. Proved you could be all woman AND all rock.
• TOBIAS WOLFF: Acclaimed author and memoirist (This Boy’s Life).

IN ADDITION, here are some names nominated by other people (with the descriptions these anonymous nominators wrote) for whom I voted, but who also failed to make the final cut:

• DICK BALCH: Local Chevrolet dealer and irreverent pitchman for cars (smashed cars with sledgehammer on TV ads).
• OLE BARDAHL: Proprietor of Bardahl, the Ballard-based engine additive company known for its hydroplanes (the Miss. Bardahl) and its giant neon sign.
• SIR THOMAS BEECHAM: A renowned English conductor, Beecham became the director of the tiny Seattle Symphony in 1941. He is remembered most for his quote, “If I were a member of this community, really I should get weary of being looked on as a sort of aesthetic dust-bin.”
• PETER BEVIS: Founder and director of the Fremont School of Fine Arts and the Fremont Foundry, established in 1986. An artist who makes molds of road kill, Bevis’s work illustrates the recklessness of people in nature. He bought the Kalakala back to Seattle.
• BOB BLACKBURN: Longtime voice of the Seattle Supersonics, from their first season in 1967 until the early 1990s.
• BOBO THE GORILLA: Bobo introduced Seattleites to the great apes and to “exotic” wildlife in general; he taught a whole generation to abandon diabolical “King Kong” images of gorillas. He inspired better zoo husbandry and perhaps paved the way for primate preservation attempts. In his current taxidermied form, his legacy lives on.
• STAN BORESON: Scandinavian musician, comedian, and host of the long-running children’s program KING Clubhouse.
• BERKLEY BREATHED: Cartoonist, Bloom Country.
• FRED BROWN: The former Sonic star, who help lead them to their only title in 1979, influenced a generation of ballplayers locally and nationally through his long-distance gunning which inspired the term “From downtown…” now heard in broadcasts everywhere, but is as Seattle–and omnipresent–as “Skid Road.”
• HIRAM CHITTENDEN: An officer in the Army Corps of Engineers and one of Seattle’s first port commissioners, Chittenden worked to develop the Port of Seattle. He oversaw the construction of the Lake Washington Canal and locks, which now bear his name.
• JOHN CONSIDINE: Considine’s “People’s Theater” was a Seattle success, which led to his preeminent career as an impresario. He helped pioneer early Edison films and established the famous vaudeville circuit. Considine and his brother Tom were involved in the notorious killing of Seattle’s police chief, William L. Meredith.
• LLOYD COONEY: Former KIRO-TV station manager and editorial commentator.
• D.B. COOPER: Infamous airline hijacker (flight from Portland to Seattle) who may or may not have gotten away.
• JACK ENDINO: Recording engineer/producer who made early studio recordings of Nirvana, Soundgarden, the U-Men and other proto-grunge acts.
• JEAN ENERSEN: Television news anchor for KING-TV.
• RANDY FINLEY: Founder of the Seven Gables Theatre chain, which, along with the Seattle International Film Festival, fostered and bolstered Seattle’s appetite for fine cinema.
• CHARLES FRYE: Frye was a partner in Frye and Bruhn, Meatpackers. He founded the Frye Museum atop Seattle’s First Hill, an institution that is one of Seattle’s leading museums today.
• BOB HARDWICK: KVI disc jockey in the 1960s and 1970s, known for wacky on-air antics.
• DENIS HAYS: Director of the Bullitt Foundation; created Earth Day in 1970.
• SAM ISRAEL: A hermit who lived in Eastern Washington, amassed over 500 properties, worth between $100-$200 million at the time of his death (1994). He owned over 30 downtown properties, 14 of which were located in Pioneer Square. Due to his negligence many of his properties were vacated and fell into disrepair. However, the low rent helped spawn a lively artists’ scene in Pioneer Square.
• QUINCY JONES: Garfield High School’s musical prodigy has more Grammy nominations than anyone else in history. Jones has written film scores, sonatas, and popular music, done arrangements for other artists and performed throughout the world with his own band and orchestra.
• RICK “PEANUT MAN” KAMINSKI: If you attended an event at the Kingdome from the 1970s to the 1990s, you saw Kaminski throwing bags of peanuts to his customers, along with a tennis ball sliced open enough for the patron to place his money inside for the return toss.
• JOHN KEISTER: The quintessential bittersweet Seattleite who remembers how it used to be before so many people moved here, Keister used his position as host of KING -TV’s Almost Live! weekly comedy program to poke fun at Kent, Bellevue, Ballard and other Seattle suburbs and neighborhoods.
• NORM LANGILL: Founder of One Reel, producer of Bumbershoot and other cultural events.
• GARY LARSON: creator of The Far Side, a hugely popular cartoon panel. Prior to Larson’s retirement in 1995, the cartoon strip appeared in 1,900 daily newspapers in 40 countries, and was translated into 17 languages.
• GYPSY ROSE LEE: West Seattle’s Lee, with her sister June Havoc, performed in a kiddy vaudeville act that toured the nation. She parlayed her experience into a famous striptease that was a hit at the Zeigfeld Follies. Her life was portrayed in the musical Gypsy.
• LOGGERS: When white men first came to the Seattle area travel was long and difficult between Seattle and Tacoma. With the arrival of the loggers travel became significantly easier.
• DARRLY MACDONALD: Co-founder of the Seattle International Film Festival and purveyor of Seattle’s now firmly-established reputation as a city of cinematic connoisseurs.
• HELENE MADISON: When 19-year-old Madison returned to Seattle with three gold medals in swimming from the 1932 Olympic games, the city raised a celebration, including a ticker tape parade. Two pools in Seattle are named after Madison.
• VIC MEYERS: Seattle jazz-band leader who ran for mayor in 1930 on the whim of some practical jokesters at the Seattle Times. He was eager to lend himself to the joke, and Times reporters wrote him up throughout the “campaign.” After losing the election, he won the election for the lieutenant governor of the state.
• LORENZO MILAM: Founder of KRAB radio in 1962. KRAB was among the earliest community radio stations in the country. It was one of the voices and centers of the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s.
• SIR MIX-A-LOT (Anthony Ray): Seattle’s first national rap star, who hit it big with his “Posse on Broadway” single.
• DAVE NIEHAUS: He has been delivering colorful descriptions of Mariner baseball since the team was established in 1977. His enormous contribution to Mariner baseball was recognized when he was asked to throw out the ceremonial first pitch in the inaugural game in Safeco Field.
• MARNI NIXON: Broadway singer. Among her famous roles was singing for Audrey Hepburn in [the film version of] My Fair Lady.
• BILL NYE: Seattle star (and former Almost Live! character) on PBS’s Bill Nye The Science Guy, seen by millions of kids nationwide.
• PAT O’DAY: High profile disc jockey on KJR radio through the ’60s. The first disc jockey in Seattle to really start playing rock ‘n roll, an action for which he earned 37 percent of the radio audience.
• JOHN OKADA (1923-1971): Author of No-No Boy, winner of the National Book Award, a novel that explores the return home to Seattle of an interned Nisei Japanese, who refused to forswear allegiance to the emperor of Japan and to fight in uniform for the United States when those questions were posed in the internment camp.
• JIM OWENS: UW football coach. Took team to three Rose Bowls
• MARTIN PANG: Started the 1995 fire in the Mary Pang qarehouse downtown. Four firemen died while subduing the blaze. In his confession, Pang said he started the fire to relieve his parents the burden of running the facility.
• BRUCE PAVITT & JONATHAN PONEMAN: Co-founders of Sub Pop, Seattle record label that originally signed Nirvana, Soundgarden and other grunge acts.
• ANGELO PELLEGRINI: Italian immigrant who settled with his family in Southwest Washington; made his mark as a UW English professor and food and wine expert. He wrote many books and gave talks on Italian culture.
• GEORGE POCOCK: Designer and builder of racing shells, including those used by 1936 gold medal US Olympic Team. Also designed the hull of Boeing’s first commercial plane.
• THE PROSTITUTES OF THE 1800s: The main reason many men originally came to the Seattle area.
• DIXY LEE RAY: Washington’s first female governor. The idiosyncratic Ray was at the helm when Mt. St. Helens erupted.
• LARRY REID: Early director of COCA (Center on Contemporary Art).
• ROSIE THE RIVETER: Popular symbol during WWII of women entering the blue-collar work force in order to keep up industrial production to support the war effort; believed to be based on women in Boeing’s work force.
• BILL “THE BEERMAN” SCOTT: Kingdome concession employee who became the defacto yell king for the Mariners, Sonics, Sounders and Seahawks (when all played under the same concrete roof).
• RUBEN SIERRA: Founder of the “multi-cultural-before-its-time” Group Theatre.
• JEFF SMITH (FRUGAL GOURMET): Author and chef who popularized good cooking for a mass audience.
• DICK SPADY: Founder, with two partners, of Dick’s Drive In, which opened in Wallingford in 1954.
• ELBRIDGE A. STUART: Created the Carnation Co., which initially focused on evaporated milk. Stuart developed a dairy farm near Tolt, which was renamed Carnation. In 1926 Carnation entered the fresh milk and ice cream business. The firm [now merged into Nestle] was known for its slogan “Milk from Contented Cows.”
• CONRAD UNO: Egg Studios owner/producer who recorded and/or released records by up and coming Seattle acts in the 1980s and 1990s, including the Young Fresh Fellows, Posies, and Presidents of the United States of America.
• GORDON VICKERY: Driving force in getting Medic One in the Fire Department. Many thousands of lives have been saved because of this.
• BURKE WALKER: Founder of the Empty Space Theatre.
• BOB WALSH: Seattle entrepreneur behind the Goodwill Games (1990) and attempts to bring the Olympic Games to Seattle.
• ROB WELLER: Former UW Husky yell king and Entertainment Tonight host credited with creation of the circular, undulating group cheer known as “The Wave.”
• BILL YEEND: Longtime host (25 years) of KIRO radio’s number-one rated morning news program.
• MARION ANTHONY ZIONCHECK: Born in Austria, Zioncheck attended the UW. After passing the state bar exam he won a seat in Congress. His mental deterioration and suicide (leaping from the Arctic Building in Seattle) were national stories.

(This article’s permanent link.)

As promised a couple weeks back, here is my preliminary list of some of what I love about this nation of ours. Thanks for your emailed suggestions; more are quite welcome.)

• Corn dogs, and the proud people who make and serve them.
• 217 cable channels, at least 10 of which are showing the same dumb movie at any given time.
• Upbeat/consensual pornos in every known fetish.
• Urban intersections with a Starbucks on every corner.
• Suburban intersections with a 7-Eleven on every corner.
• September issues of Vogue thicker than the models.
• Fabulous babes coast to coast, many of whom have powerful careers.
• Boys happily puking into bushes at Florida Spring Break.
• Dr. Seuss, Mary Engelbreit, Charles Schulz, James Thurber, R. Crumb, Chris Ware, and Dan Clowes.
• Fudge-banana swirl ice cream.
• Dodge Darts.
• The Internet, MP3s, chat rooms, multi-user dungeons, and QuickTime movies.
• Jack Benny, Laurel & Hardy, Harold Lloyd, Looney Tunes, and Corey Feldman.
• The gum that goes squirt.
• Novelty stores with chocolate nipples and penis candles.
• The sports-book room at the Cal-Neva casino in Reno.
• The films of Russ Meyer and John Waters.
• The long lonesome highway, and the proud truckers and tourists who traverse it every day.
• Ann-Margaret, Betty Page, Mae West, Willa Cather, Beverly Cleary, Ella Grasso, Susan B. Anthony, Marilyn Chambers, and Jessamyn West.
• Sleazy detective magazines, “true crime” books, film noir.
• The Brooklyn Bridge, the Gateway Arch, the Brown Derby, and the Corn Palace.
• Anyone can grow up to become a corrupt politician or a sneak-thief business executive.
• Summer in Anchorage, winter in Honolulu, autumn in New England, and spring in Seattle.
• Old Faithful, the Mammoth Caves, Monument Valley, and the Trees of Mystery.
• Dollywood, Opryland, Wisconsin Dells, Wall Drug, Enchanted Village, and the Bible theme parks of Florida.
• All-you-can-eat buffets and bottomless cups of coffee.
• BBQ beef, Cajun catfish, smoked salmon, chicken nuggets, and pork rinds.
• Potato chips, ice cream cones, Hostess Sno-Balls, and non-dairy creamer.
• Crossword puzzles.
• Gene Rayburn, Betty White, Garry Moore, Bill Cullen, and Charles Nelson Reilly.
• David Letterman, Johnny Carson, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart, Fred Allen, Ricki Lake, Sandy Hill, and Rosie O’Donnell.
• Indie motels with fantastical neon signs.
• Butter-Lite flavor microwave popcorn.
• No-fault divorce.
• Retractable-roof stadia.
• Millions of assorted cults (religious, celebrity, musical, medical, investment, etc. etc.).
• Muddy Waters, Ethel Waters, and Barbara Walters.
• Bix Beiderbecke, Dizzy Gillespie, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Wayne Horvitz, and Raymond Scott.
• Julie London, Vikki Carr, the Andrews Sisters, the Mills Brothers, Motown, Phil Spector, the Ventures, the Ramones, the B-52s, and the Young Fresh Fellows.
• Wine bars, sports bars, pickup bars, pickup trucks, monster trucks, semi rigs, and fork lifts.
• Aaron Copland, Henry Partch, Charles Ives, Frank Zappa, and the Residents.
• Johnny Cash, Bob Wills, Tammy Wynette, Chet Atkins, Duane Eddy, Tex Ritter, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Kitty Wells, and Homer & Jethro.
• Pulp magazines, bodice-ripper paperbacks, and $100 collector’s editions of Walden.
• The Big Mouth Billy Bass, the Kitchen Magician, the Pocket Fisherman, and the George Forman Grilling Machine.
• Lou Piniella, “Louie Louie,” Louis Prima, Louis Jordan, Joe Louis, Tina Louise, and Louise Bourgeois.
• Miss America, Miss December, miscagenation, and Ms. magazine.
• Simon & Schuster, Simon & Garfunkel, and Simon & Simon.
• Folks from all the rest of the world are here.
• Quite a lot of the things I love about other countries are here too.

(This article’s permanent link.)

A Muslim-American is “shamed by the language and attitudes I find some of my fellow Americans using about Islam.”

The “commodification of ugliness.”

Love French pop singers (and who wouldn’t)? Then check out The Ye-Ye Girls tribute site.

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

What little creative spirit left in Seattle commercial radio is likely to get washed away. Longtime local station boss (and former Sonics owner) Barry Ackerley is retiring from the broadcasting biz and selling all his remaining properties (including KUBE-FM and KJR-AM) to Clear Channel Communications, the current 1200-lb. gorilla of U.S. media.

We first wrote about Clear Channel when it bought and promptly killed our second-favorite online radio station, Luxuria Music. That was the least of its crimes against culture. Thanks to government “regulators” allowing nearly unlimited industry consolidation, CC’s acquired over 1,100 stations. It runs them on the cheap: Firing local DJs, running centralized and automated playlists, bullying any remaining local competitors into cutting ad rates beneath break-even levels.

With this enormous airplay clout, CC’s become mighty pushy toward record companies. While it’s still legally prohibited from directly charging the labels to play their records, it manages to force other “considerations” from them.

Especially now that CC also owns one of North America’s two main concert promotion companies. It bought SFX Entertainment, of which The Stranger said in 1998 that “they could crush TicketMaster like a little bug.” As part of CC, it’s gotten even bigger and pushier, adding ticket surcharges and cutting artists’ fees. Many cloutless acts are even expected to perform for free at shows charging $25 or more per ticket, in exchange for airplay consideration on CC’s stations.

Clear Channel can easily be called the Microsoft of music and broadcasting. This is not a favorable comparison. Its strategies are clearly not competitive but monopolistic. It operates not to directly make money (indeed, it’s fiscal performance is at least as sorry as that of any media company in this ad-slump year) but to maintain and expand its power. And no politician has spoken out against it, not even the ones who love to bash the media. (Did I mention that Rush Limbaugh is now a CC employee?)

Seattle was the last big U.S. city not to have a CC-owned block of stations. Now our radio will likely suck as much as the radio everywhere else.

(This article’s permanent link.)

The Mariners have just lost their last regular-season game as I write this, and enter the playoffs tied for the best regular season in baseball history (based on number of wins, not winning percentage).

As most of you know, I’m of the generation that came of age with the indelible image of the Ms as a lovable-loser team playing in a lovable-loser domed stadium in a lovable-loser city. Even Seattle’s attempts to become a Big League City were typically of a feebly predictable variety (e.g., taxpayer subsidies for chain-owned luxury shops downtown).

But the Century 21 Ms are different. They’re the Real Freakin’ Thing. I adore the team’s stunning success like nothing else; but still have a hard time comprehending it. It’s off the visible spectrum of good news, just as the terror attacks were far further off the visible spectrum of bad news.

The Ms’ spectacle provides as good an excuse as any to survey the cultural status of this once-remote port city on the occasion of its sesquicentennial.

IN THE ’90S, Seatle seemed on the verge of bigtime cultural-capital status; corresponding to the city’s approach toward bigtime business-power status.

But the movie and TV location work mostly moved to Vancouver; the “Seattle Music Scene” craze was successfully crushed by the major-label conglomerates; and the local web-content companies that had been on the seeming verge of displacing both print and audiovisual media giants have either died or been fiscally chastized into safer market niches.

While Seattle still hasn’t permanently muscled in on NY’s hold on publishing or LA’s hold on film production, we remain a hotbed for many DIY-level arts genres (contemporary dance, experimental music, indie rock, snowboarding apparel, comix).

The recent, and apparently now ending, tech-biz gold rush meant some creative-type folk found the chance to finance some of their dreams (restaurants, coffeehouses, shot-on-video movies, self-released CDs). Many others took tech-biz jobs in that hope, but found themselves too drained by the hours and stress.

The upside of the dot-com collapse is many writers, painters, musicians, etc. who’d found themselves stuck working 60-hour weeks in Redmond now have the time to resume their real work (and real-estate hyperinflation is slowing, so they might be able to keep their studios and practice spaces.) The bad news: Many of these people lost much of their savings in the stock collapse (particularly those who worked for stock options).

THE REST of the local economy now lies as fragile as the world economy to which it’s become ever more closely interconnected.

Boeing, once synonymous with both Seattle and U.S. industrial-export might, is turning (or was trying to turn before the recession) into a financier-oriented investment company whose holdings only incidentally include airplane factories, and whose execs live and work far away from any of its physical-stuff-making operations.

Microsoft and Starbucks, those companies everyone loves to hate, are still here, still increasing their world domination of their respective industries, and still making enemies while insisting on their innate goodness.

And Amazon.com, the company that persued Bigness at any cost, used the end of E-Z deficit financing as an excuse to can hundreds of Seattle workers and ship their jobs to lower-wage locales.

“GET BIG FAST” was the title of a book about Amazon, based on the now-discredited mantra justifying the high burn rate of money-pit dot-coms. Amazon’s strategy meshed nearly perfectly with the ongoing insecurities of a city elite forever fretting about Seattle’s stature, ever concocting jump-start schemes to make us (yes, I know I overuse the phrase, but so do they) World Class. World Class-ness means we get big new “arts” buildings but can’t keep our artists from getting evicted. It means we’ve got all this private wealth but (thanks to the anti-tax Republicans some of these wealthy ones support) we can’t house our homeless, feed our hungry, or relieve our exurban sprawl and our traffic jams.

But the phrase “Get Big Fast” also expresses the craving to get beyond juvenile frustration ASAP, to give birth to a company and have it immeidately be “grown up.” Only things don’t quite work that way in the real world, or even in the real corporate world.

Seattle still doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up. But it’s anxious to grow up, or rather to act like a gangly adolescent pretending to be grown up. And it always has been. Like that Here Comes the Brides theme song goes: “Like a beautiful child/Growing up green and wild.”

But the result, all too often, is like seeing the adult actors in Porky’s II walking around in their receding hairlines, pretending to be hormone-stricken teenagers pretending to be worldwise grownups.

IF WE CAN just all forget for a moment about Getting Big Fast, maybe we can start to really grow up.

The Mariners became a powerhouse mainly by de-emphasizing the big cheap home run (to the point of buildiing a stadium where they’d be tougher to achieve); instead focusing on doing the little things right and pulling together.

Exactly what this town needs.

(This article’s permanent link.)

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