Change a few of the nouns turn a couple of other parts sideways, and this Richard Cohen essay deriding “the myth of American exceptionalism” could easily be used against the myth of “alternative culture” exceptionalism.

Lots of media outlets, even the BBC, did the whole Obama/Osama confusion thang last week.

An edited, improved version of my snarky li’l manifesto piece from earlier this month became my first contribution to Crosscut.com. That’s the local punditry site founded by original Seattle Weekly publisher David Brewster.

It was up for just a few hours when all of Crosscut went down, a victim of last week’s Amazon “cloud computing services” crash.

But it’s up now. And it’s got a lively comment thread.

Some time within the next few days, something by me should be up at Crosscut.com. As you may recall, that’s the nonprofit local news n’ punditry site started by original Seattle Weekly publisher David Brewster. I’ll let you know when.

Joanna White at (the formerly locally based) Slate.com sees Charlie Sheen’s public meltdown (which I still believe he’d at least partly contrived, as a stunt to get out of his TV contract) as a sign of hope.

White wishes “mean sitcoms” with their insult gags and mutual-deprecation-society casts would go away. She would like the probable end of Two and a Half Men to portend the whole sub-genre’s oblivion.

I’m not so sure it’ll happen.

There’s at least one cable half-channel (Adult Swim) whose “humor” is built entirely around inhumanity. Perhipheral characters suffer and die violent deaths, and the main characters shrug it off with a quickie one-liner.

And since even cheapo Flash-based animation has a long production lead time, even a sudden sea change in the public ethos won’t end those shows very soon. Though it could render them fatally unhip.

UPDATE #1: Matt Zoller Seitz at Salon.com suggests a reason for all the current TV series centered around the celebration of aggressive, obnoxious, middle-aged, alpha-male “heroes.” Seitz sez it’s because that’s the psychological profile of all the studio and network bosses in charge of greenlighting the shows, the guys to whom the shows’ creators and producers must suck up.

UPDATE #2: In Stephen Battaglio’s excellent biography David Susskind: A Televised Life, producer Leonard Stern (Susskind’s associate on Get Smart! and He & She, and coincidentally also the creator of the Mad Libs books) is quoted as saying pro-social comedy’s a lot harder to write than insult comedy:

A comedy based on love—and I really believe this one [He & She] was—is harder to sell and harder to sustain…. Why? I don’t know. But comedy writers generally can do deprecating humor much more readily and easily than they can humor that is loving and caring.

I’ve been recruited into singing at this year’s Seattle (Elvis) Invitationals. The annual impersonation (or “tribute artist”) competition takes place this Saturday evening, Jan. 8, at Club Motor, 1950 1st Ave. S.

It will be my first singing in a public, non-karaoke setting in at least a decade.

Unlike many of the Invitationals’ entrants, I’m no professional tribute artist. I don’t expect to win this thing. I’m just in it for the show-biz-ness of it all.

Be there if you dare.

If you love political snark and the vilifying of easy big-boy targets as much as I do, you’ll love “Stop Spewman.” It’s a series of Web ads starring Jack Black as your ultimate astroturfy corporate shill (not that he has to exaggerate very much to make the shtick look ludicrous).

As a lifelong Seattle World’s Fair nerd, you know I love geeky pictorial presentations about the wonderful world that awaited us in the 21st Century. Today I have some thing different. The nostalgia site SquareAmerica.com has slides from an IBM business-to-business promo presentation about the near future of business computing, in 1975.

Note the date. This is the exact final year in which big mainframe computer complexes, and the companies that sold and maintained them, could realistically see themselves as the center of the data processing universe. The first true home computers came along the next year. By 1980, IBM was had authorized a fast-track project to develop the first IBM PC, midwifing MS-DOS along the way.

But in 1975, Big Iron still ruled. And the folk behind that Big Iron knew where the future lay. It lay with connecting mainframes and networking compatible databases.

In a word: ONLINE.

Hey, they were at least right about that part.

When I recently listed some things that may want to change their names for the sake of changing their initials, I forgot all about the BP. department at Nordstrom (formerly The Brass Plum).

The day after I suggested finding a new name (hence new initials) for “batting practice,” the Class A Brevard County Manatees renamed “BP” to “hitting rehearsal.”

• Batting practice.
• Blood pressure.
• Boiling point.
• Butt plugs.
• Beatrix Potter.
• Banco Popular.
• Bi-Polar disorder.
• Bryant Park.
• Beer pong.
• Block parties.
• Boston Pizza.

Our ol’ UW Daily colleague Jim Emerson has found a snarky fake movie trailer that perfectly encapsulates a “generic movie based on the movie they’ve been
releasing every single week since the 1980s.”

Thanks to kind reader Manuel W., I’ve learned some reality TV producer and part-time “undercover rap phenomenon” (i.e., a white dude in Brooklyn) has named his production company “Miscellaneous Media.”

Do not confuse that outfit with this, your one and only genuine original MISCmedia, providing the finest in verbal contemplations and brusque putdowns since that other dude was still rhyming milk-milk-lemonade.

There was a bizarre little bake sale in Belltown this past Wednesday. It takes a little explaining.

Real estate mogul Bruce Lorig fired his only African American female employee after eleven years on the job. She sued, claiming racial discrimination and harassment. She joined up with the Seattle Solidarity Network, a local activist group, to publicize her cause.

Lorig countersued her, and sued Seattle Solidarity to prevent the group from publicly criticizing him.

In response, Seattle Solidarity put up flyers claiming Lorig had to really be in bad fiscal shape if he has to go around trying to drum up cash from his own ex-worker. Hence, the snarky “Lorig Aid.”

It was held in front of Lorig’s First Avenue offices. Seattle Solidarity members “sold” donuts and cupcakes and sang a little folk ditty:

So won’t you please help Bruce Lorig

He has fallen on hard times

He has to sue his former secretary

So won’t you spare a dime

I’m currently listening to the instructions on an out-of-print VHS yoga tape:

“Imagine water coming in through your nose, and all the way down into your stomach. And as you inhale, your stomach expands outward. The water comes in, stacks on top of itself, until it catches all the way up to the throat.”