…for the know-nothing videophobes in our audience (ignorance of your culture is NOT considered cool):

• Bill Maher asked Newark mayor Cory Booker why America’s economy needed to keep growing all the time; doesn’t everybody already have more than enough? Booker quietly reminded him that not everybody does. Another guest, bio-ethicist Peter Singer, chided Paul Allen for devoting too much of his charity money to projects in the affluent Northwest; Booker chimed in with the observation that plenty of folks and organizations in the NW could really use that money.
• Angie Mentink on Fox Sports Net Northwest, during a postgame discussion of the UW men’s hoops team and its historic Pac-10 regular-season title, on why the team and its fans should save some celebration energy ’til after the Pac-10 tournament: “There’s a difference between feeling ‘happy’ and feeling ‘satisfied.’ It’s something I’ve tried to teach my husband about.”
• A Today segment discussed frugal living with a tabletop tableau of “simple life” stuff—a Netflix envelope, a Scrabble board, a package of store-brand toilet paper, a drip coffee maker, etc. Excuse me, but you think we haven’t already familiarized ourselves with these?Unless the show’s producers are on the vanguard of a new media meme. Let’s call it “the upscale downsizing.” This schtick is to talk about economizing precisely for people who haven’t had to economize. It demographically separates the newly downscaled from those of us who’ve already been here a while.

…during a soliliquy about Thursday’s heroic plane rescue: “What I always say about Airbus, they float better than they fly.”

As usual, this annual list (the most reliable of its type published anywhere) reports the people, places, and things that will become hot or hot-hot during the following year, not necessarily what’s hot or not-hot now. If you think everything that’s big just keeps getting bigger, you probably bought WaMu stock in ’06.

…and the whole greed/corruption/warmongerin’ Bush era dept.: Saturday’s Sunday-preview Seattle Times will have its editors’ choices for the top local news stories of the year. Here’s mine:

1. Washington Mutual goes pffft.

2. The Sonics go blort.

3. Safeco goes doink.

4. General economic and real-estate kerplunk-ness.

5. Obamamania a huge hit locally; Democrats win just about everything except the 8th Congressional District.

6. December’s Snowtopia brings beauty, wonder, photogenic bus wipeouts, and the sudden discovery that not everyone loves the Nickels administration.

7. Seattle music rules again (Fleet Foxes, Grand Archives, Saturday Knights, the Dutchess and the Duke, Team Gina, Mono in VCF).

8. The incredible shrinking newspapers.

9. We learn just how corrupt the Port of Seattle’s been.

10. Northwest Afternoon goes twok.

Some runner-up stories, in no particular order: Whooped-up nonsense over an atheist billboard at the state capitol; all major local sports teams have pathetic seasons at once; the local news media discover gang violence when it strikes in white neighborhoods; Twilight mania; Amazon Kindle a hit; Alaskan Way Viaduct and SR 520 replacement choices drag on; another round of school-closure threats.

We’ll miss ’em: Edward “Tuba Man” McMichael; politicians Ruby Chow, Jeanette Williams, and Ellen Craswell; sculptor/video artist Doris Chase; sports promoter Dick Vertlieb; Ellensburg installation artist Richard Elliott; DJ/jazz promoter Norm Bobrow; Blue Moon Tavern co-owner Bob Morrison.

And Su Job. The fiber artist, arts promoter-advocate, and 619 Western studio landlady passed peacefully at 7 p.m. Christmas night.

…to see the snow-melting rains appear, even though we all knew they had to appear one day.

Snowtopia ’08 does leave me with one question: If Seattle refuses to put salt on its roads, how about Mrs. Dash instead?

Teenagers have bodies. They have sexualities. They have occasional tendancies toward ill-advised behavior. Get used to it.

If anyone has a reasonable explanation for this, please tell me.

…in certain paid political announcements, we know who the true original Mavericks are–James Garner and Jack Kelly.

This year’s most famous (real) pregnant teen happens to live in a town that’s a homonym for the name of last year’s most famous (fictional) pregnant teen. The result, of course, is a Photoshopped movie poster advertising that quirky comedy hit, Juneau!

Alas, McCain’s veep pick Sarah Palin is no relation to Michael Palin, who at least has vast experience in foreign relations.

Instead, the GOPpers offer us another pseudo-“maverick,” complete with all the proper pro-gun and anti-choice credentials.

But for now, let’s riff on some lines by the more famous Palin:

“Look, matey, I know a dead political party when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.

“No no he’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable party, the Republican, idn’it, ay? Beautiful plumage!”

“The plumage don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.”

“Nononono, no, no! ‘E’s resting!”

“E’s not restin’! ‘E’s passed on! This Republican Party is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARTY!!”

“Well, I’d better replace it, then.”

Postscript: Perhaps the one outsider who correctly guessed Ms. Palin’s selection was the lucky joker who’d already registered the domain name VPILF.com.

Certain commentators and bloggers on Tuesday were all outraged or snickering or both. The reason: John McCain, in a campaign stop at the Sturgis bike rally, “jokingly” suggested his wife ought to enter the event’s biker beauty pageant–a contest known for nudity and sexually suggestive stage acts.

But across the proverbial pond, a veteran model who’d appeared in dozens of topless/bottomless stills in the 1990s is now the first lady of France.

Mind you, there are differences between the two situations.

Carla Bruni had retired from that sort of public exposure before she became a political wife. Cindy McCain already was a political wife when her hubby made his joke, which was applauded by the Sturgis audience but jeered and mocked elsewhere.

But a bigger difference is context. The French edition of Elle is a far different space than the Buffalo Chip Campground.

…(really) has today’s vulvic-imagery-in-a-consumer-product image. It’s for margarine. Bearing the name of Lee Iacocca. You know the puns you’ll see in the item’s comment thread.

Everyone knows the “fist bump” gesture was invented by Howie Mandel!

…hits Ed McMahon. It might take a miracle to keep him housed; either that, or winning a magazine sweepstakes.

…speak my mind about the “Belltown Crime” YouTube videos.

The clips in question, no longer publicly viewable, were placed by an anonymous 26-year-old white female who moved into an apartment here and was shocked to find poor people hanging out in the alleys.

That’s a snarky sentence, I know. It makes the videographer sound like one of those upscale couples who move into quaint country houses near picturesque cattle pastures, then complain about the wafting aromas.

Please note the videographer’s not claiming the persons in ehr video clips had directly threatened any crime against her own self. Nor was she overtly ranting about the poor or the homeless, but about what she calls “crackheads.” She’s not dissing them for existing but for existing while (allegedly) drugged up.

Yet, to the untrained (suburban) eye, the behavior of a disoriented, mentally ill, or simply out-of-sorts man or woman, particularly if the man or woman has an unkempt appearance, can be mistaken for the behavior of a frizzled-out drug user.

Downscale people have existed in Belltown long before upscale people did. There have been three traditional newcomer responses to the downscalers’ existence:

1. Ignore, shy away, close the curtains, cross the street, don’t talk to them, don’t look them in the eye, pretend you didn’t see anything.2. Harass, belittle, demonize, call for police crackdowns, alert the media, evict social-service agencies, demand Someone Do Something Now.

3. Empathize, donate, seek positive solutions (no matter how incomplete).

You can probably discern which category I believe the videographer has chosen, and which I believe you should choose.