1/92 Misc. Newsletter

(incorporating three Stranger Misc. columns and

the 1992 In/Out list, also published in the Seattle Times)

1991 IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE RERUN COUNT: 21

Welcome to a new ever-lovin’ fun-filled year with Misc., the pop-culture report that doesn’t follow trends and doesn’t really lead them either, but just stays out of their way.

Philm Phun: After I saw Slacker, I stepped out of the theater and into a whole scene of street bohemians. After I saw Prospero’s Books on 11/28, I stepped out of the theater and into a sudden tempest. I don’t think I’m going to see The Rapture…. There appear to be two Addams Family movies: the lousy one all the critics saw, and the delightful one I saw. Maybe it’s like the different versions of Clue. If any of you saw the critics’ edition, tell me what it was like…. This year’s best-of list by Rocket film guy Jim Emerson (who moved to LA some years back and never bothers to check what’s playing in Seattle) only lists 2 films (out of 14) that didn’t show here, down significantly from previous years.

Cathode Corner: KING may be slowly recovering from tabloidmania. The 11 p.m. newscasts feature real news stories (sometimes more than one) alongside the typical crime/disaster tedium. The station’s next owner, the Providence Journal, was one of the papers that didn’t run the Doonesbury strips about Quayle’s possible past. It also enforced its syndicate contract to prevent any other Rhode Island paper from running them… Almost Live might go national next fall. Worldvision’s offering a syndicated weeknight version (with local jokes to be only partly toned down). It should give the gang a better showcase than they got on Fox`s mercy-killed Haywire.

Box Full-O-Art: The Seattle Art Museum, on the outside, is a standard low-rise box with a gaudy false facade; a perfect PoMo reincarnation of western frontier architecture. All the papers had special sections for the opening, but the best was in the Daily Journal of Commerce. It had headlines like “Some subs [subcontractors] charge design was flawed” and “Complex, condensed, SAM tough to build.” It had “thank you Seattle” vanity ads from Acme Iron Works, Mosler Security, Lone Star Concrete, Star Machinery Rentals, and the Carpet Resource Center. It’s more proof of how much easier it is to get politicians to spend for the arts when it goes to campaign-contributing contractors, instead of uncouth artists.

Mouths-O-Babes (two eight-year-olds on the bus, 12/11): “What’s that up there?” “It’s a gas station.” “No, that’s a flower. Don’t you know, flowers are bee pee stations.” The real BP has a kids’ book promotion with G. Burghoff saying it’s important for children to read, so “you can become anything you want to be.” No — it’s important so America can regain a capable workforce and keep our industries from being taken over by foreign companies like BP.

No “Willie” Jokes: The Smith trial had too many weird parallels. First, the grotesque attempt to brand the alleged victim as a slut (why do guys who insist they’re not rapists have lawyers with the mentality of rapists?) by noting that she owned licensed Madonna clothes; CNN’s electronic masking made her look like Madonna’s “Blank” character in Dick Tracy. The defendant’s name is too close to Willi Smith, NY fashion designer and Madonna pal who died several years back. The media kept calling him Ted Kennedy’s nephew but seldom mentioned his lineage from one of the JFK sisters, the true forgotten Kennedys.

Ad Slogan of the Month: “It’s not your mother’s tampon.” I should hope not…

Good Buy, Baseball!: So let’s get together and buy the Mariners. Granted, it’s not as important as saving Frederick’s, but it’s still a good cause. At $100 million, it’ll only take 20 guys with $5m each, or 10,000 fans with $10,000 second-mortgage loans. I’m reminded again of Jim Bouton’s words at the end of Ball Four, the book about Seattle’s first attempt to keep a team: “Any city that cares more about its museum than its ball park can’t be all bad.”

Junk Food of the Month: A colorless Pepsi is being tested, presumably to compete with Original New York Seltzer (really from Calif.)… The Seeds of Change exhibit at the Smithsonian shows how the conquest of the Western Hemisphere influenced diets of the world. You know about corn, potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco and coffee, but you might not realize that a lot of the slave trade was supported by the sugar industry, providing Europeans with a sweet treat provided thanks to the subjugation of human life. It’s appropriate that Roald Dahl’s Willie Wonka hired low-wage immigrants for his chocolate factory, depicted in true colonial fashion as carefree, hard-working semi-humans (albeit from an imaginary foreign land).

Xmas ’91: Frederick’s save-the-store campaign worked so well that for the first time they ran out of Frangos. Whether that’s a sign of confidence to the store’s bankers remains to be seen… Hasbro had a near-monopoly on toys this season, having absorbed such greats as Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, Kenner, Selchow & Righter, Coleco, Playskool, and Tonka. Its only big competition, besides video games, came from the Ninja Turtles. A giant segment of Hasbro’s product comes from Chinese sweatshops via its own Seattle dock.

Local Publication of the Month (just one this time): Victoria artist Nick Bantock’s Griffin and Sabine, An Extraordinary Romance is a short story in 19 original postcards (painting and collage on the fronts, mysterious correspondence on the back. Think of it as a one-man mail art show in hardcover.

None Dare Call It Schlock: Warner Bros. ads shout, “David Ansen of Newsweek says JFK is `Impressive. It holds you by the edge of your seat.'” Quite different from what the cover of the magazine says: “The twisted truth of JFK: Why Oliver Stone’s Movie Can’t Be Trusted.” But the last word, as always, goes to Oliver (“Fuck me, rock god!”) Stone: “I think a president was illegally killed.”

The Real NW: A further explanation is due of my assertion that the Northwest is not Paradise. There’s this whole mystique that gets more exaggerated every year, more divorced from reality. One guy who got off the plane from No. Cal. two months ago was talking about how Wash. voters “turned conservative” in the last election. I tried to explain how we keep turning down progressive tax plans and bottle bills, how the near-loss of the women’s-choice initiative was due more to opponents’ well-funded lies than any deep anti-choice sentiment, how we kept sending the build-more-bombs Scoop Jackson to the Senate, how we’re no more or less conservative than ever. It’s just getting harder to live up to this fantasy of Laidbackland, invented in the early ’70s by the hippie diaspora who redefined every place they moved to according to late-hippie priorities. (Bon ad, 12/15: “Northwest Style: Laid Back with Dockers.”) The reality of pre-1970 Seattle (and its kids) is that our “tolerance” was more like apathy. We’re not mellow, we’re cold and sullen. The real spirit of the Northwest isn’t in aPoulsbo bed-n’-breakfast, it’s in the acerbic Dog House waitresses and the bland Boeing corporate culture. (The syndrome’s worse in my birthplace of Oly, historically a town of bourbon-guzzling lobbyists but rechristened as an even purer Laidbackland by folks who think our State Reps are called “assemblymen.”)

Bulldozers of the Spirit: The real political history of Wash. and the non-Frisco west in general is a few crackpots, a few innovators, and a lot of fiends. The ugliness of the American landscape matches the ugliness of American politics, for a reason. The GOP is now controlled by the western land/resource industries, who made strip mines and strip malls and and tract houses and shrillily demand the right to destroy the few “real” spaces left.They built the S&L biz to pump money into subdivisions and then, with Reagan’s deregulation, into all forms of swindles. George (in oil) and Neil (S&L’s) Bush are insiders in this gang. The religious right is a mere tool, callously used by the moneybags to barter for votes and promote an authoritarian culture. Charles Keating, who financed anti-porn drives with loot from S&L frauds, was a pivot man in the scheme. The guys who made southern Calif. what it is today have no qualms about what their hirelings Nixon and Reagan did to the nation’s social terrain.

Mixed Signals: A great NY Times story on 11/27 discussed lawsuits and death threats among the heirs of the inventor of the “rabbit ears” TV antenna (and lesser ideas like a water-driven potato peeler). Marvin P. Middlemark died in ’89, leaving a Long Island mansion surrounded by vinyl tube fencing stuffed with used tennis balls, housing eight dogs, “nine miniature horses and eight miniature donkeys, 18 Chinese tractors, dozens of cement statues of Greek gods, stained glass windows of Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein, and 1,000 pairs of woolen gloves (one size fits all).” Sounds like my kinda guy.

‘Til our fab Feb. ish, make a ’92 resolution to petition KCTS to show The ’90s before midnight, force members of the Patsy Cline cult to listen, at least once, to any other country singer (Ranch Romance doesn’t count), and join us again.

PASSAGE

Dave Kendall on MTV’s 120 Minutes, 12/1: “The Red Hot Chili Peppers have a definite attitude, a stance, this kind of love-funk, aggressive peace sort of thing.”

IMPORTANT NOTICE

I don’t have a business checking account at this time. Please make all subscriptions payable to “Clark Humphrey.”

WORD-O-MONTH

“Synecdoche”

THE ONLY RELIABLE IN/OUT LIST FOR ’92

I don’t claim any hot trend will keep getting hotter forever. That’s the logic of bad sci-fi writers and high school counselors. I note what’s peaking, declining, about to cause a backlash, and what nobody else realizes yet. I previously predicted the rise of Estonia, ’70s music, and nose rings, as well as the fall of He-Man, Lisa Bonet, and certain dictators.

10/91 Misc. Newsletter

Bart and Buster Simpson

An autumnal welcome to Misc., the quite serious pop culture letter that wishes it had gotten the “Bumbershooters from Hell” T-shirt: “There’s a fine line between stupid and clever.”

We mark the passing of Wes Anderson, 39, dead of cancer in NYC, part of the Seattle art-direction mafia who used the Rocket as their portfolio for landing jobs at the Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly and elsewhere. A lot of musicians over the years have complained that the Rocket cared more about design than about local music. On the whole, though, those designers (including Anderson) got a lot more success in their field than our musicians had. As Anderson’s comrade Art Chantry noted a few years ago, the Seattle music scene had left a more notable visual legacy than a musical one (at that time).

Correction: This issue is #61, and the September issue was #60, despite what it said on the indicia. Sorry, collectors. That slip up will not stop us, however, from exposing other people’s slip-ups, such as the book bag sold at Tower Books: “Never Judge a Book By It’s Cover.”

Philm Phacts: The Commitments proves what the management of Bumbershoot and Pioneer Square clubs have known for some time now: that everybody loves black music, just so long as it’s 20 years old and performed by whites. It’s just what you could expect from the director of Mississippi Burning, that film “about” the U.S. civil-rights movement that had an all-white starring cast.

Needles-N’-Pins: TOf all the performances Larry Reid has conducted to pander to the thrill-cravings of the white-skin, black-clothes crowd, the piercing exhibition at COCA may have been the artsiest and classiest. It also brought a lot of questions about women and pain, women and self-righteousness, and women and the need to look beautiful (of the three most prominent spots in the room, two were given to the most conventionally attractive performers, with heavier or otherwise less “ladylike” figures positioned along the sides and back.) The third prominent spot, the front stage, was for a woman made-up as a marionette with her eyes masked by swim goggles and her arms and legs made up to look like puppet hinges. Her pierces were attached to strings, which were pulled by two assistants in a performance that Tristan Tzara might have thought of if he’d had the guts. She was clearly high on her own endorphines, as her pale arms and legs betrayed a massive shutdown of blood circulation. There was also a real-life log lady in the form of a tattooed, topless bodybuilder strung to a log to symbolize what a sign called “The Fate of the Earth;” a nude blonde with platinum-dyed hair (even below) who “wore” a hoop-skirt-like wire construction; and one in black tights who stood before a fan blowing a breeze onto streamers connected to her arms, the only participant who smiled and looked like she knew she was strong and beautiful. One beef goes to the sign outside the room, warning not to “touch or attempt to talk to the exhibits.” As if they were objects.

Cathode Corner: Bill Nye the Science Guy appeared on a syndicated special promoting the new cable version of the Mickey Mouse Club. He provided the only entertaining moment in a show of cute, talentless preteens in bad skits and dance numbers (including the requisite rap version of the old theme). Let’s hope this success doesn’t send him south for good…. The NY Times claimed that Law and Order is the only prime-time TV show this fall produced in New York City, dismissing The Cosby Show as a product of “Queens, N.Y.” — a place which has been part of New York City for about a century. Remember, this is the same paper that ran a huge essay questioning whether this country needed a (privately-supported) Museum of TV and Radio, implying that broadcasts that captured the hearts of America were too prole to be worth preserving.

Stuff I Missed, just because I didn’t like the featured attraction: A Rockcandy gig with the normally insufferable band the Mentors had an unannounced extra on 9/4, when a woman jumped onstage and stripped during the set. A young man soon joined her onstage, then joined her onstage. The baffling part is how any woman could be aroused by such a notoriously sexist, stuck-up band.

Sign of the Month (at the Varsity concession stand): “Special Award for an act of distinction: Scott White, `a man of congeniality,’ for explaining that `Exclusive Engagement’ is not the title of a film.”

Good Buy, Baseball!: The Mariners’ woes have a lot to do with a flaw in the social culture of Seattle. In the pioneer days, people (particularly women) came here to build a city, to create a society. In the recent past, Seattle attracted people who wanted to escape social obligations, to retreat to million-dollar “cabins” where they could carry out “lifestyles” close to nature but far from people. It’s an unattainable, narcissistic fantasy, of course; but it’s a powerful fantasy that gives would-be baseball investors (or arts patrons) an excuse not to get involved. The sports that work here are those with tradition here (football) or league salary caps (basketball) or low costs (junior hockey). Baseball, with 81 stadium-capacity home games, farm teams, and salaries essentially decided by the NY/LA teams, requires more (and more loyal) fans, more broadcast money, more ad money, and more long-term investment. Can we raise those things for good?

The Fine Print (excerpts from Playboy’s style manual, written by Arlene Bouras and quoted in the newsletter Copy Editor): “Always capitalize Playmate when referring to the girl on our centerfold. And try to avoid using the word in any other context…. Once a Playmate, always a Playmate. Never refer to a former Playmate.”

Legal-Ease: The exoneration of Oliver North on a technicality does not mean he’s innocent. It means that, at least this time in this place, our legal system believes in the law — something North, to all evidence, didn’t give a damn about. Or rather, he thought he was so totally and utterly right that he could do illegal things and it’d still be OK. He represents the same twisted morality that gives us mass-murdering”heroes” in movies and video games, the right-justifies-might lie shared by the most ruthless communists and the most repressive anticommunists.

Sports Spurts: Football claims to be the most popular men’s sport among women, as evidenced by a new line of NFL merchandise for women including costume jewelry with team logos. To contrast, in the long tradition of the “making it in the male dominated world of…” article, Ms. is pontificating about the status of women in baseball (perhaps as a plug for the forthcoming women-in-baseball movie). It is true that all these soggy baseball-mysticism books are total guy stuff, even as they blather about magic numbers and dewey outfields and de-emphasize references to the game as an athletic contest performed by jocks. On the other hand, there are a hell of a lot more women into playing amateur baseball and softball than amateur football.

It’s Only Words: The recent revival of Story magazine, a forum for short-story writers, turns out to be owned by the publishers of Writer’s Digest. Could it be that they’re subsidizing one magazine of freelance fiction, in order to keep up unreasonable hopes among the thousands of would-be writers that Writer’s Digest and its costly books, workshops and merchandise exploit?

It’s Square to be Hip: There are serious limits to bohemianism as a political philosophy. You simply can’t build a popular coalition for real change if you just sit around mourning the end of the ’60s or if you treat everybody “squarer” than yourself as an idiot. The anti-gulf war movement was, let’s face it, dominated by people who seemed more interested in proving their loyalty to the hippie subculture than in persuading outsiders to their views. What a coalition of right-wing groups and their journalistic stooges demagoguily calls the “politically correct thought police” is really just a few scattered groups who would love to see a revolutionof “the people” in this country but only if none of those unsightly working class saps were in it.

Local Publications of the Month: The Stranger is an exceptionally promising weekly free tabloid of reviews (everything from the book Black Elk Speaks to scat singing), essays (including quasi-serious defenses of smoking and Barbie dolls), a love-advice column for all orientations “by a queer nationalist,” a combo film review and searing fag-bashing memoir, indescribable fiction (my favorite kind), and graphics by the great James Sturm…. Performance artist/filmmaker/astrologer Antero Alli’s Talking Raven is back, this time in a tabloid format. I’m no poetry critic so I can’t judge most of the contents, but I adore the haunting illos by James Koehnline, Tim Cridland and others, as well as the Cataclysm and Apocalypse Survey (“Vote for your favorite doomsday scenario”)….

Big Storewide Sale: Frederick & Nelson, the ex-grande dame of Northwest retailing that in recent years has acted like a dowager in gaudy make-up, is in bankruptcy and closing half its stores so that the remaining locations will have enough (old) stock to fill the shelves this winter. Most of the closed stores came from the Liberty House and Lipman’s acquisitions in the ’70s, when the chain tried to buy the market penetration needed to justify TV and newspaper ads. Also now dead is the least of the chain’s original four stores, leaving Aurora Village even more desolate (it’s now worthless as a mall but remains a well-situated site for a future outdoor baseball stadium).

Billy Jack Goes to Washington: ’70s filmmaker Tom Loughlin is running for President. Don’t scoff: his movies preached peacemaking and practiced violence. By recent standards, he’s perfect for the job.

The Spin Doctor Is In: Local phone bills in Sept. carried the following statement: “Through the efforts of the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission and US West, we have implemented the five year Washington Revenue Sharing Plan which was approved in January 1990… It’s our way of thanking you for using US West services in Washington state.” The “plan” is actually a state-mandated rebate on windfall profits from regulated phone services, imposed after the post-breakup company stuck line fee after user fee onto phone bills.

Yes, But Is It Tableware?: Seattle’s own “environmental artist” Buster Simpson made the pages of Simpsons Illustrated, the kids’ activities magazine, under the heading “Unrelated Simpsons in the News.” The magazine noted how Simpson once “cast a set of vitreous plates and placed them at various sewage outfalls on Puget Sound. As the tide came in and out, pollutants in the water formed a hideous glaze on their surfaces. It’s clear that Buster could just as easily have conducted his work near the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.”

‘Til we greet you again in the throes of November, read my interview in the Oct. Belltown Brain Fever Dispatch, check out David Carradine’s Kung Fu Workout videos, see Slacker (the most seamless experience of exiting a movie and entering real life I’ve ever known) and the Seattle-set sitcom Good and Evil, and recall these words from Peter Brooks’s The Mahabharata: “Love, well made, can lead to wisdom.”

PASSAGE

Performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, quoted in the Village Voice (8/6): “The fabric of our society is composed of strands of synthetic desire.”

REPORT

Still waiting to hear from the software company that more or less promised to put my novel out on disk. Until then, The Perfect Couple is still available (Mac only) for $7.

I do not have a business checking account at this time. All subscriptions, fax subs ($9), ads ($15), and Perfect Couple orders should be on checks made out to me. I’m still accepting suggestions on how to turn this into a potentially profitable publication (come on, one of you must have an idea!).

WORD-O-MONTH

“Dolorous”

NOTE TO OUR OUT OF TOWN READERS

90 percent of Seattle’s bands don’t sound a thing like Soundgarden

10/90 Misc. Newsletter

CONNIE CHUNG AND MAURY POVICH:

STOP THEM BEFORE THEY BREED!

It’s time for the big reunification Oktoberfest and time to welcome you back to Misc., the pop-culture newsletter that still wants to know why certain teen and especially pre-teen boys consider male singers with long hair and high voices to be “real men” but dismiss male singers with predominantly female followings as pansies (musical qualities or lack of same being equal). I’m sorry that I had to cut my long Bill Cullen obituary from last month’s issue; the salient point was about finding (at Fillippi’s Old Books) a cheap LP of old show tunes “hosted” by Cullen, shown in a tuxedo on the cover in a dancing pose (from the waist up). A peculiar pose for the game show host who, due to a polio limp, preferred never to be shown walking on stage.

LAME: The long-rumored demise of Longacres at the hands of a land-hungry Boeing, and with it the possible demise of horse racing in Seattle and possibly the Northwest (would the Portland, Spokane and Yakima tracks survive the end of their bigger sibling?), would sadden several subscribing friends of Misc. It’s more than a gambling ritual (albeit one with much better odds than the Lottery). It’s a way of life, for bettors and trainers and riders. (Activists have questioned how great a life it is for the horses, but how well are most non-star athletes treated?)

ALSO IN THE END-O-ERA DEPT.: Twenty years ago, before Tower or Peaches came to town, the prime record store in the U District was Music Street, which became in turn Wide World of Music, Musicland, and finally Discount Records. This store was finally closed in mid-September, following the end of Nordstrom and Jay Jacobs’ Ave outlets. By this time, the top 40 hits that thrived at Music Street had become the nostalgia CDs that Discount Records could not stock or promote as well as other chains could.

DEAD AIR: The recently-publicized payola scandal, in which the Big-6 record labels hired a network of “independent” promoters to pay off radio stations with cash and drugs and hookers, affirms the “radio sucks” attitude of the punk era, the complaints then and now of great songs, even great accessible songs, being buried while hyped-up pablum and soft-rock dinosaurs obtained undeserved hits.

FLAHERTY NEWSPAPERS, R.I.P.: For 30 hellish months, I worked for sub-survival wages with past-death-rate typesetting equipment in Flaherty headquarters, a crumbling shack in the Rainier Valley with weeds rising from cracks in the concrete floor. There, I typed up the alleged “news” sections of seven neighborhood weeklies — smarmy hype stories for advertising merchants, cutesy notices for Catholic schools, a gardening column by an elderly lady who occasionally inserted anti-sex-education sermons, and, always and above all, unquestioned enthusiasm for the Seattle Police. I typed up too many of the squalid police-blotter columns (low-grade tragedy turned into morbid sensationalism), and to this day I lash back at anyone who refers to them as a source of camp humor. The papers were distributed by an ever-changing crew of pre-teens who had to deliver them to every house in a territory and hope some of the recipients would pay the small voluntary fee. Now, the little chain has been bought by an out-of-state takeover artist and will soon be merged with its onetime arch-rival Murray Publishing.

PHILM PHACTS: So far, no major Twin Peaks second-season filming locally. Generally, Seattle continues to be eclipsed in film activity by B.C. and Oregon. Paramount, for instance, has become the second established production company proposing to open a permanent studio in Portland. There can only be one potential logo for such an enterprise: A ring of stars surrounding the remains of Mt. St. Helens.

IS IT THE SHOES?: The Nike boycott by Black activists and the corporate culture of that company (U of O track vets and ex-hippies) are integrally related to the white-bread demographics of that whole-grain-eating city of Portland. That’s where Bill Walton was kept on the TrailBlazers payroll through years of injuries because, some say, laid-back mellow Oregonians would only support a basketball team if it had a white star. The famed progressive politics of Oregon have lately meant stands on environmental, nuclear, and foreign-affairs issues, soft-pedalling the social justice causes that the Left used to be all about. One good sign: The Oregonian has become the only NW daily with a Black editor-in-chief.

STILL MORE FROM SOUTH OF THE BORDER: Iowa artist Bill Witherspoon was charged with scratching a huge geometric pattern in a southeast Oregon desert. The whole thing looked, in news photos, remarkably like those mysterious “field circles” popping up along the English countryside. Maybe some international neo-Druid outfit is making these things and letting people believe they’re the work of spirits or UFOs or such. Maybe he just thought it would look neat…A Portland district judge is trying to keep his job, after he was revealed to have married wife #2 while still wed to #1.

CATHODE CORNER: American Chronicles utilizes artsy highbrow camera work to record the quirky rituals of lowbrow American primitives. In short, it’s a modern Spaghetti western not made by Europeans but perhaps for them. It looks like something really commissioned for Murdoch’s European satellite network……The Pentagon is partly funding Zenith’s research into hi-definition TV, according to a syndicated item in Puget Sound Computer News. Arguably, there might be military applications to more sophisticated video transmission and display systems, perhaps for radar or navigational systems. But essentially we’ve got our government subsidizing private industry, something that happens in every capitalist country but which is often considered a sacrilege to the “American free enterprise system.” What does Zenith think it is, a bank or a basketball team? (In one of his last books, BTW,Buckminster Fuller claimed that “free enterprise” religion was originally a 1776-era reaction to the colonial system of British crown-chartered commerce.)

OUTSIDE PITCHES: It’s hard not to stare incredulously at the Coors commercial with African-American activists working hard to refurbish a storefront community center, then celebrating the job by downing the Beer of Bigots…More songs in commercials: TheHair theme in a shampoo spot; Starship’s “We Built This City” becoming ITT’s “We Built This Company”…From the cable commercial for the compilation CD Those Fabulous ’70s: “Sorry, not available on 8-track”…Advertisers on one page of the Weekly’s 9/26 “adult education” supplement: Cornish College, Griffin College, UW Extension, and The Crypt (“20% Off All Ladies Leather”).

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Cookie Bowl I (that’s the roman numeral “one”) is a line of cookies in the relief shapes of NFL team helmets (for non-fans, it’s the Cleveland Browns who get royalty checks on the blank helmets). Available in chocolate, vanilla, peanut butter, and shortbread. But beware: They’re intensely male-oriented.

NO FREE RE-FILLINGS: Espresso Dental on Phinney Ridge is almost certainly the first combined coffeehouse and dental clinic in the nation (neck and back massages are also available). Do the lattes come with spit cups?

ON THE STREETS: I survived the biggest assemblage of preteen females in Seattle history, or at least in 25 years: The clean-cut, T-shirt-wearing devotees crowding their way into the Kingdome for the New Kids on the Block concert. That, and the accompanying traffic jam of Bellevue-based station wagons, made the September gallery walk a true navigational challenge. I did not notice the Kidfans directly interacting with the regular art-crawling Pioneer Squares. Had the galleries planned for this confluence of audiences, a little art-ed event might have rescued a few young consumers from a life of plastic culture. Then again, considering some of the works that were hung in those spaces…

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The Northwest Network (“Seattle’s Community Newspaper,” though it’s made in Kirkland) is the latest attempt at a serious-progressive local tabloid. The emphasis here is on analysis, re-interpreting the information given by the regular news media. (Seattle Subtext, still publishing after three months, gives you new news on international topics. There’s still nothing here like the Portland Free Press, doing original local investigative reporting.) Still, the presence of another competently written and produced paper, out every two weeks, is a hopeful sign that people are out there wanting to do things.

UNDERGROUND NEWS: The po-mo, engineered-by-committee bus tunnel turns out to be a visual masterpiece, comprising five waiting areas that any corporation would be proud to have as its office-tower lobby. It’s a blast to visit and to ride through. It’s a monument to the pretentions of today’s Seattle, one of those self-conscious boasts of “becoming a world class city.” It’s more successful as a meeting place and art project than as a transportation solution. Amenities sorely lack (subway stations with no newsstands? Unthinkable!). The lack of restrooms was a deliberate decision, by officials who prefer that the homeless relieve themselves in streets and alleys. The whole expensive thing tore up downtown traffic for four years and clearly was meant to appease bus-hating affluent commuters. Most buses running through it (starting next year) will be suburban routes (the reason for the specially built coaches that run on electricity in the tunnel but on diesel on highways and bridges). The layout of the tunnel (just slightly longer than the Monorail) was designed to move buses quickly onto I-5, I-90 and SR 520, not to get them around the city. What we oughta have is a light rail system like our filmmaking cities to the north and south.

HEADLINE OF THE MONTH (NY Times story on the new Germany, 9/25): “Bitterness Sears the Die-Hard Nationalists.” I knew the NY papers were hard up for advertising, but selling sneak mentions in news headlines?

THE LIGHTER SIDE OF A NATION’S COLLAPSE II: As of 10/3, no longer will the Dresden area, heretofore the only part of E. Germany unable to watch Dallas on W. German TV, be known as the Valley of Those Who Know Little.

YOU CALL THAT A FUTURE?: The Puget Sound Council of Governments, an agency whose own future is in peril, released a fancy public report predicting the look of the region in 2020. There are unspecified “rapid transit” systems between downtown and the burbs, and lotsa reclaimed greenbelts; but nowhere the ring of giant plastic-domed cities predicted in ’62 at the Century 21 Exposition…My cyberpunk contacts were outraged at the 9/3 Time mag’s goofy-human-interest piece about a UW-designed virtual reality machine (a computer-video unit in which you can pretend to fly over Seattle by “steering” with an electronic glove). These guys are adamant about making artificial experience work, even if early experiments like this have bugs to be worked out.

AT B-SHOOT: Rumors of the Big Wave found their so-politically-correct-it’s-painful music on the Miller Mainstage, sponsored by an affiliate of Phillip Morris Companies, best friend of the art-world and civil-rights enemy Jesse Helms. “Boycott Miller/Helms = Death” stickers were, however, plastered throughout the Coliseum. And for next year, remember the big sign at the Bumbershoot 1st aid tent: “Sorry. We cannot give out aspirin.”

‘TIL THE MUCH COOLER MONTH (God, I hope) of November, be sure to visit the peace vigil at Gas Works (NOT a quaint relic of the ’60s but people trying to make sure we have a future), watch the new Graham Kerr Show taped at KING, avoid the recently-named conditions “Nintendo thumb” and “espresso maker’s wrist,” and save the junk-mail foil envelope containing a card drenched inNeutron Industries’ mail-order citrus scent spray. The cards are great playthings for cats.

PASSAGE

Lawrence Durrell in the Alexandria Quartet: “Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time, not by our personalities as we would like to think. Thus, every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the position is changed.”

REPORT

It’s a year since Misc. became a self-contained newsletter; charter subscribers (you ought to know who you are) need to renew. Fax subscriptions to Misc. are now for $9 per year. The space at the bottom of this page is still available for advertising. Leave a message at 323-4081 or 524-1967 for details.

I’m also raising funds to self-publish my seemingly endlessly-announced novel The Perfect Couple. Any and all ideas welcome.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Esconce”

5/90 Misc. Newsletter

NEW PACIFIC 1ST FEDERAL TOWER BROKE, FOR SALE.

SERVES ‘EM RIGHT

FOR TEARING DOWN

THE MUSIC BOX THEATER

Welcome back to Misc., the column that is almost certain that the Log Lady did it (though we’re still trying to figure out what foghorns are doing on a small hydroelectric lake).

Clean, Reasonably Priced Accommodations: You may know by now that Twin Peaks’ Great Northern (named after a predecessor to today’s Burlington Northern Railway) is really the Salish Lodge. It was the Snoqualmie Falls Lodge for many years, a family-owned place known for honeymoon suites and a weekend farm breakfast; my parents went there often. Then Puget Power, which owns the building (and the dam behind the falls), decided to “upscale” the place by bringing in a new operator, who yuppified much of the old charm away.

Another Sawmill Soap Opera: The spotted owl is just a symbol of a whole eco-scape in danger. It’s not “environmental elitists” reducing timber-country jobs, it’s companies with their “efficient” automated clearcuts and log exports. If the forest lands now used were used in a more sustainable manner (as opposed to the short-term cash amortization of “high yield forestry”), we wouldn’t need to destroy the last of the old growth.

Behind Closed Doors: The Tacoma News Tribune revealed a Community Development Round Table, a group of business and media leaders started by the Times and the Seattle Chamber of Commerce in 1933, now including execs of the Times, P-I, KOMO and KIRO as well as bankers and business leaders. Members are bound by the group’s charter never to mention it to outsiders. A Columbia Journalism Review item about the TNT scoop noted that during the Boeing strike the Round Table invited a speaker from Boeing but not from the unions. Before you forment conspiracy theories, note that the press people in the group were execs, not editors, and that the media firms involved have long supported the business community. KIRO, for instance, shared a big booth at Earth Fair 1990 with the Forest Products Council.

Local Publication of the Month: Seattle Community Catalyst proposes to be the next great local alternative paper. The first issue’s a modest clearinghouse of info from assorted activist groups, plus a substantial background piece by Rich Ray on the making of the aforementioned Earth Fair, in which a commercial festival-organizing company pleaded with everybody to keep all exhibits upbeat and non-offensive to the major sponsors.

As it turned out, the people jamming the roads to Marymoor Park in their single-occupancy vehicles concentrated at the big tent crowded with all the little tables for the real environmental groups, with only a few straying out in the rain to the spacious covered displays for Chevron and Puget Power. Most of them missed the Wash. Natural Gas display, with free samples of a spirulina plankton-based protein drink packaged by its Hawaiian aquaculture affiliate.

Past Futures (from Uncensored magazine, April 1970): “A fascinating new book, The Country of the Young, paints a gloomy picture of what life will be in 1990 — when the generation war is all over and the drop-outs, pot-heads and sandaled freaks have become Old Hippies. The author, John W. Aldridge, says that the failure of the young today to develop their human resources, to cultivate discipline and skills, is going to backfire on them. If the hippies have their way and become catatonics, with all their needs supplied, `They will simply stare at walls for weeks on end, looking fascinated at such things as the copulation of insects. Having been relieved of the struggle of becoming, they would simply exist to be.'”

Phood Phacts: From in-flight magazines to the P-I to CBS This Morning, major attention has been drawn recently to something called the “Northwest cuisine.” WHAT Northwest cuisine? I’m a fourth-generation Washingtonian and never heard of any of these fancy dishes involving rhubarb, rack of lamb and alternatively-processed fish, let alone of many of their ingredients. It sounds suspiciously like some of those other western regional cuisines, invented from scratch from ex-LA chefs (Santa Fe, Colorado), allowing itinerant suburbanites the fantasy of “place” while the real communities of these places succumb to mall-ism. I am certain that we will see the “discovery” of Montana cuisine, North Dakota cuisine, and even Utah cuisine. Ya wanna know the true Northwest cuisine (at least among white people)? It’s Dick’s burgers (or Herfy’s burgers, now all but gone, in the outlying towns), barbecued fish with really thin bones, Shake ‘n’ Bake chicken, canned vegetables, Krusteaz pancakes with Mapeline-flavored syrup, maple bars, strawberry shortcake with Dream Whip, Fisher scones, Red Rose tea, Mountain bars, and Rainier Ale (the now-discontinued weak version). I don’t know if Lutefisk counts, since it seems to be perennially given as a gift but never eaten.

Your Own Private Idaho 1990: Many of Idaho’s civic leaders were all over the media in ’88-’89, insisting that the presence of a dozen neo-Nazis didn’t make them a fascist state. They were right, in a way. It’s the drive (vetoed by Gov. Andrus) to keep women barefoot and pregnant that makes them a fascist state, at least in potential. There ARE many truly non-fascist Idahoans, like liberals everywhere who complain but don’t vote. Some of these, there and here, are the same folk who eat fantasy regional cuisines. Maybe now that will change, as folks see the consequences of staying home and letting the Right win.

Junk Food of the Month: Again from Idaho, J.R. Simplot Inc. (best known as the nation’s top supplier of fast-food potatoes) brings us MicroMagic Microwave Milkshakes. You buy them frozen solid, then semi-thaw them in the zapper for 45 seconds. Will this be the foundation of the new Idaho cuisine? I doubt it. Some of the fun ingredients: Mono and diglycerides, guar gum, locust bean gum, polysorbate 80, carrageenan. The taste? Like a shake at a minor fast-food place that might buy its shake mix from the same source as its fries.

The Fine Print (from a Mr. Coffee coffee filter box): “Additional Uses: Use as a cover when microwaving. Line the bottom of your cake pans. Create snowflakes and Christmas decorations.”

Cathode Corner: KING sacked arts critic Greg Palmer after 14 years. I liked him most of the time, but that’s showbiz. What’s more shocking is that the the new KING news director is also vehemently opposed (sez the P-I) to on-camera signing of the 7:25 a.m. news insert, a friendly face and beautiful spectacle that’s helped many hearing people get through rough mornings and worse news. I once met longtime KING signer Cathy Carlstrom, who also signs church services and other events. She and her fellow signers deserve more respect…. So the world athletes in the Goodwill Games commercials are really local actors and models. What’s the fuss? We’ve all seen enough “Up Close and Personal” segments during the Olympics (or Lite Beer ads) to know that athletes are poor actors.

Ad of the Month (from the Weekly): “Sales, retail. MTV, trendy, fun & outrageous clothing. Mature person, exp’d only.”… Meanwhile, the newest batch of Rainier Beer ads soft-pedals the Only Beer Around Here” theme, dropping the slick stereotypes of mountain climbers and basketball players in favor of a partial return to the humor that made the old Rainier ads such favorites. One billboard reads in big black type, “Californians just don’t get it.” As far as I know, they’re made by the same Frisco ad agency that did last year’s unloved campaign.

Philm Phacts: It’s a shame that Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is so gory, because people will love or hate it just for that instead of for its many other qualities. It’s written for the screen, but could easily have been a five-act play. It mostly takes place on one huge 4-room set; the first hour unfolds in “real time.” The Thief, while nominally a gangster-extortionist, incarnates the whole history of English villainy (Henry VIII, Richard III, Dickens’ venture capitalists, on up to the Thatcherian present).

News from Medicine: A White Rock, B.C. man who walked around with a broken back for almost three months without knowing it was awarded $625,000 (Can.) damages. A Surrey, B.C. hospital had failed to notice the fracture when it treated him following an accident.

Who the Hell Are You?: The Kids Fair at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall was an ex-substitute teacher’s nightmare. A whole hall full of screaming kids, frenzied parents, and merchant booths grabbing for the parents’ wallets. Everything from Looney Tunes frozen dinners to back yard jungle gyms, professionally installed. The high/lowlight was when they brought out guys in 7-foot Bart and Homer Simpson felt body costumes, hugging adoring little fans who lined up for photos. If a real Bart were there, he’d have pelted the oversize imposter with a pile of Ninja Turtles coloring books.

Arena Football: Barry Ackerly will build a new Sonics home directly south of the Kingdome (thankfully not, as was threatened previously, where Sears is now), but only if the city shrinks the Coliseum’s capacity, making it commercially worthless. In its original life as the World of Tomorrow exhibit in the ’62 World’s Fair, the Coliseum housed a scale model of the Puget Sound region dotted with new domed cities. What’s one of the few present-day structures shown to be still standing in this fantasy future? As the taped narrators said, “Look! There’s Coliseum Century 21!” “Yes, in the future we will retain the best of the past.”

Sell It to Murph: Unocal Corp. (née Union Oil), which once boasted of being the last company to still make gas for older cars, is now going to buy hundreds of hi-smog clunkers in the L.A. area, in order to retire them from the road. As an Earth Day PR stunt it was very effective and probably cheaper than paying for a cleanup of their old Elliott Bay terminal, where the Port of Seattle is having to deal with the residue of 60 years’ worth of minor product leaks and spills.

‘Til the fourth-anniversary Misc. next time, don’t get caught trafficking in counterfeit Nintendo cartridges (lest they sick a lawsuit equivalent of the Hungry Goriya on you),watch the new international-music show Earth to MTV, and ponder these thoughts by my goddess Tracey Ullman on her role in I Love You to Death: “Because the accent is Northwestern, it was tough to stay in character all the time. Southern accents are easy and so are New York accents, but the Northwest accent is the most pure of all the accents. You can’t just put one accent on top of another. You have to lose your accent completely.”

PASSAGE

One of the less-controversial lines in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses:

“Should the inflight movie be thought of as a particularly vile, random mutation of the form, one that would eventually be extinguished by natural selection, or were they the future of the cinema? A future of screwball caper movies eternally starring Shelley Long and Chevy Chase was too hideous to contemplate; it was a vision of Hell.”

REPORT

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My novel The Perfect Couple is available on Macintosh discs for $10.

CALL TO ACTION

ABC will soon decide whether to renew Twin Peaks. Send cards & letters to ABC Entertainment, 77 W. 66th St., NYC 10023.

WORD OF THE MONTH

“Syncretize”

1/89 ArtsFocus Misc.

WHAT’S MORE PATHETIC:

JAMES BROWN IN JAIL

OR LITTLE RICHARD ON HOLLYWOOD SQUARES?

Welcome to the first `89 edition of Misc., the column that celebrates the end of the eight-year Age of Reagan and awaits the end of the 13-year Age of Cocaine. That’s about how long American attitudes and behavior have reflected those of coke users (aggressive euphoria, delusions of omnipotence, an insatiable need for more money). In what drug experts call “co-dependency,” these traits have spread to non-users, even to many who officially oppose the drug itself. It’s clearly shaped the power madness of much of the Reagan Administration. Reagan himself is a coke-addicted filmmaker’s stereotype of a statesman, a “high concept” hero. As violent as today’s coke gangs are, the big damage done by the drug is that done to our economy, culture and social fabric by business and government leaders who, often unknowingly, take the coke rush as their model for success.

This derangement is most visible in the obsessive speculation that’s captivated big business, exemplified by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Besides its recent gobbling of RJR Nabisco, KKR now controls Safeway and Fred Meyer (for a near-monopoly of the Oregon grocery biz), plus Dillingham-Foss Tug, Red Lion Inns, Motel 6, Playtex, and the onetime icon of corporate appetites, Beatrice.

International House Style: The next phase of drug-inspired behavior may be a return from effrontery to withdrawn introspection. Seattle’s Happy Face symbol and Seattle’s big sweatshirts are keystones of the Acid House style now popular in UK discos. The fad, which also involves Chicago-invented dance music and Swiss-invented LSD (or at least visuals inspired by it), should reach these shores in toned-down form this year. By then the Brits’ll be into something else.

Brought to You by the Letter “X”: Roscoe Orman, the kindly Gordon on Sesame Street, has celebrated the show’s 20th year by settling on child support for a viewer he helped create in Oregon in 1985. Some who grew up with the show may gasp at the thought of Orman and his therapist lover singing “Which of These Things Belong Together,” but I knew there was another side to him since the time he challenged the “exclusive” terms of his contract by moonlighting as a pimp on All My Children.

From Pawn to Queen: This was the first American Xmas for Elena Akhmilovskaya, now settled in Seattle after suddenly marrying US National Team captain John Donaldson. You’ll find our fair city far different from Moscow. Here, jeans are plentiful and chess players rare. And please go to more restaurants than just the Last Exit.

Cathode Corner: Filming PBS’ Ramona in Toronto destroys the thing I loved most as a kid about Beverly Cleary’s books: that unlike anything else in kid-lit, they took place in a land I’d actually been to (Oregon)…. The new baseball TV deal means more $$ to the owners, fewer games to the viewers (12 instead of 30). More games’ll be on cable, but at what price? At least we might have to see fewer racist Joe Piscopo commercials.

Stamp Act: The US Postal Service is retouching a stamp honoring the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, removing a bare nipple from the goddess of Liberty. Maybe we could use a revolution of our own.

Local Publications of the Month: ‘Twas a big season for local nonfiction (Boz, Knox, Robert Fulgham). I was more impressed by a well-made if kitschy fantasy, Frederick & Nelson’s Freddy Bear’s Favorite Christmas, a combined book-music box with text by our ol’ buddy Gretchen Lauber… Portland’s Northwest Computer News has started a Washington edition to compete with Puget Sound Computer User. The first News is full of cracks at User for reprinting a lot of material from its Minnesota parent paper…. The Real Comet Press plans to start a quarterly anthology of local comix, to be sold nationally.

Update: Last Jan., I told of changes in my hometown of Marysville. Now it’s a whole different place. Half the downtown’s been razed for a mall. The north side of town has two huge discount stores and a full compliment of middlebrow chain stores. Running between the two retail areas is a bus made up to look like a trolley (talk about a Neighborhood of Make-Believe). The countryside’s almost all gone from farming to tract houses. There’s even an indoor movie house (all we had was the Thunderbird Drive-In, still there). Still, some aspects of the old mill-town lifestyle remain: the video stores have such titles as Cut Your Own Deer At Home.

`Til our fab Feb. edition, visit the CT&T Gift Shop in Wallingford, admire the McDonald’s-sponsored hologram cover on National Geographic’s centennial edition (an issue all about our threatened Earth, not discussing the danger from foam boxes or razing forests for beef grazing), and ponder whether Shelley was predicting oldies radio when he wrote, “The world is weary of the past/Oh, might it die or rest at last.”

INS & OUTS FOR ’89

As always, this list might not reflect what’s hot now, but what will become hot in the year. This is not a substitute for professional tarot reading.

4/87 ArtsFocus Misc.

Greetings, pop-culture followers, to the 10th edition of Misc., the column that knows how to solve two of the city’s architectural dilemmas in one bold stroke: Simply move the twisted remains of the Husky Stadium project to Westlake Mall. Instead of yet another unfillable office/retail complex, we’ll have the world’s largest piece of found art at our core. It’ll be a beautiful, shimmering amalgam of bent steel, creating a fascinating pattern of lights and shadows throughout the day. With the proper supports, it can become a popular spot for climbing, eating lunch, watching musicians and performance artists, and (in the more obscure alcoves) developing new romances. Alternatively, the wreckage could go atop the Convention Center, in place of the planned rose garden dropped several budget cuts ago.

JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Sourdough Chips. Each tiny piece contains a powerful dose of flavors and seasonings, nearly enough to produce a profound centering experience. Habit forming; not for the wheat-sensitive.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Reflex, from the 911 Contemporary Arts Center (now desperately needing a new space). At last: A paper that treats the Seattle visual-art scene as worthy of serious criticism. By resoundingly eschewing the “It’s Not New York So Who Cares” attitude toward Seattle artists, it challenges artists and the art bureaucracy, leaving no excuse for mediocrity. Issue 2 has a long, good piece on the new Seattle Art Museum (the dawn of a new artistic consciousness or the same old snuff bottles in tourist trappings?) and a pack-page collage by one of this column’s favorite illustrators, who signs her work only with a logo of a triangle with a line through it. (She’s not related to the local band whose printed name was two diamonds with wings and whose spoken name was a growling scream.)

You already know I usually hate pro wrestling, but Britain’s The Face has a great section on Japan this month, highlighted by pix of top female wrestlers Dump Matsumoto and Bull Nakano, in punk kneepads and punk/samurai/KISS makeup, engaged in a typical real bodyslam, having finished their pre-match set of pop songs. The audience is mainly teenage girls; this is the refreshing overdue reaction of a generation raised on Hello Kitty kitsch. (In the same issue: an account of the Sankai Juku tragedy in Seattle.)

In other violent mythological spectacles, the end of the annual Ring Cycle could be a great blessing for local performing arts. Now we can put some of that money and effort into something fresher, something with more contemporary relevance than an interminable succession of tired ol’ proto-Fascist imageries. (The Ring was begun here as the centerpiece of a scheme to move the Seattle Opera out to Federal Way, something we can all be glad didn’t happen.)

Anyhow, there’s a second Richard Wagner leaving Seattle. This Wagner, he of the Anglicized pronunciation, opened the CBS NewsSeattle bureau less than two years ago. Now the network’s closing the bureau, as part of massive cutbacks orchestrated as an excuse for union busting, and Wagner has been reassigned overseas. Ex-KING anchor Bob Faw, meanwhile, is more prominent than ever at CBS as a national affairs reporter.

CATHODE CORNER: Could anyone have imagined the Beach Boys special with Brian Wilson, everybody’s favorite obese burnout case, resurfacing as slim, energetic and even cheekboned? It’s as if he totally regenerated, a la Doctor Who….

The “news” segments on the UHF Fundamentalist channel are really just more evangelism, with Reagan portrayed as God and the “liberal media” (even the aforementioned CBS) as Satan. The political agenda of Fundamentalism, to foster fear and mindless loyalty, is nowhere else as nakedly shown.

The local Sanctuary movement might be helped by a Supreme Court ruling making it far easier for candidates for asylum to prove they can’t safely return to their homelands. Ironically, it was a Nicaraguan’s case which may help the refugees of “friendly” genocidal governments.

Five members of the Jazz Section, a Czech underground music society, have been convicted of cultural treason for performing unauthorized types of music. It can’t happen here, though perhaps the politicians fighting Michael Spafford’s state Capitol mural and trying to keep all under-21 Seattlelites with no live entertainment would like it to happen here.

Merger mania, totally manufactured by Federal “regulators,” marches on. Now we must say goodbye to American Motors, the last little guys in the car biz and the inspiration to people in many other fields struggling to stay independent. Maybe if they’d brought back the Nash Metropolitan….

Kudos from here to KCMU, the volunteer-run new music station, on its powerful new 90.3 signal. Now people from Duvall to Bainbridge Island can get Ground Zero Radio — or at least hear it….

Further congrats to the Center on Contemporary Arts. Just as its ’87 season was starting (with the California Natural Foods gazebo on First Ave.), it found a new office space in the building where Trouble in Mind was filmed. May COCA keep troubling area minds for many years to come.

One side effect of the film Platoon’s success is in sportswear. Last year, area designers tooled up for the War-Is-Fun Look, inspired by the success of Rambo and Top Gun. Now that the candy-colored camouflage has arrived from the Asian factories, the attitudes that were supposed to have made it a hit have changed. Look for it all at your local close-out store real soon.

‘Til next month, remember this quote from A.M. Maslow: “A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.” Ta ta.