‘Life, The Movie’:

All the World’s a Multiplex

Book feature, 2/3/99

Life, The Movie:

by Neal Gabler

Knopf, $25

Seems most everybody these days hates the mass-media industry, including a lot of the folks who work in it.

Now, in Life, the Movie, we’ve got Hollywood biographer Neal Gabler complaining semi-coherently about Hollywood’s power to shape the popular zeitgeist. I’ve complained about that myself over the years. But my beef’s different from his.

I believe the six big studios (and the five big record labels, the three or four big networks, the 12 big cable-channel owners, and the similarly concentrated magazine and newspaper operators; most of which are cross-owned by a dozen or so media Goliaths) concentrate too much sway over the world’s visions, dreams, and consciousnesses.

Gabler, though, apparently has no problem with a nation (and, by extension, a world) beholden to a single set of ideas dictated by a small cultural elite. He just wants a different elite to be in charge. If anything, he thinks a society organized around mass media (and various interest groups’ need to attain publicity via mass media) istoo populist. From politics and warfare to religion and academia, from fashion and architecture to journalism and bestseller literature, any venture or idea Gabler surveys is one that has to become popular to succeed, and to become popular it has to put on the old razzle-dazzle, to gussy itself up in a narrative arc and a star system and a carefully-staged spectacle and a happy ending.

Gabler’s take will likely appeal to both liberal and conservative elitists. I suspect he’s personally on the left wing of what the webzine Salon calls “the literate overclass,” for the simple reason that Gabler, like a lot of left-elitists, is far more articulate about what he’s against than about what he’s for. He admires that sourpuss left-elitist prude Neil Postman, and he expresses wistful nostalgia for dour Puritanism with its repression of individual personality in favor of “character” (yet he disapproves of cynical politicians who preach about “character” while practicing stage-managed campaigns and market-researched platforms).

While not explicitly calling for it, Gabler seems to want a society run, well, by people like him. A more ordered, rational society, such as that fantasized by the “civil society” movement. A society where a few urban-Northeast big thinkers ponder what’s best for everybody, then face few obstacles of authority in putting their decisions into action. A society where all of us residing outside the corridors of power work hard, save our money, and solemnly tend to our own affairs. Something like what those Seattle City Council members admired so much about Singapore on their junket there a year or two back, before today’s Asian recession discredited a lot of that paternalistic-central-planning ideal.

Besides, America isn’t and never was what Gabler seems to wish it was. Hell, the human race isn’t. We’re a sensual, sensuous species. From the Noh theater of Japan to the Greek tragedies to African tribal dances to Shakespeare to carny shows to museum mega-exhibitions to porn to the Indy 500 to the fashion runways to heavy metal to Japanese magazine ads showing fantasies of American cowboys, we want and love to have our passions stirred, and marketers and publishers and preachers and politicians would be fools to not know it. And, on at least one level, Gabler seems to know it too. In his long, tedious invective over the failings of all humans less brain-centric than himself, Gabler reveals himself to be what the gays call a “drama queen.”

The Ratio of ‘Alpha’ to ‘Pi’

Film review, 1/20/99

Alphaville

Home Vision Cinema

Pi

Artisan Entertainment

When I finally saw the video release of Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (known on-screen, and on the video box, by the Greek letter), it was on the same day I happened to catch Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville on the Independent Film Channel. The two films turn out to be bookends of the modern information age.

Alphaville, as all good film-studies alums know, was Godard’s low-tech response to the popular fears generated by the high-tech advances of the late ’50s and early ’60s. His storyline involved hardboiled private eye Lemme Caution (Eddie Constantine) venturing to a far-off planet where one hyper-rational, central mainframe computer ran everything, and where the display of human emotion was a crime punishable by death. But it was shot on contemporary-modern locations with a small cast, off-the-rack costumes, and no special effects (the voice of the evil computer was played by a throat-cancer patient with an electronic voice-box implant). Godard’s statement against dehumanization was made with rigorously human-scale tools. Since its making, several films have referred to images or plot elements in Alphaville (from Blade Runner to Trouble In Mind to a no-budget ’80s indie called Betaville). But Pi’s the first to both do so successfully and to put a modern spin on the original film’s theme.

Like Alphaville, Pi’s shot in grainy, hi-contrast black-and-white, and utilizes lotsa extreme-close-up cutaway shots of flashing digits–its antihero Max Cohen (Sean Guillette) apparently dabbles in stock-market “day trading” to finance his lonely pursuit of mathemetical keys to the meaning of life. But where Lemme Caution seeks to reclaim human souls from the cold, inhumane hyper-rationality associated with IBM 360-era centralized computing (and visualized by stark, bureaucratic office buildings and harsh fluorescent lights), Max is the ultimate loner-male computer hacker, preferring literal “known quantities” to the chaos of humanity (as visualized by teeming NYC street scenes). Max finds relief from everyday existence’s humdrum disappointments in the burning heat of ultra-logic (literally–he’s addicted to the very intense thought processes that also aggrivate his severe migraines, which he can only partially relieve via massive prescription combos). Like some mid-’80s computer fanatics I knew, he’s devoted most of his small Manhattan apartment to a complex, personally-assembled “kludge” of a computer setup, which he’s even named (“Euclid”). To him, logic isn’t the enemy of life but the heart of its very being. He believes if he can master the ultimate mysteries of math and geometry (which, in his case, include Leonardo’s “magic rectangle,” numerological interpretations of the Hebrew Torah, and the ultimate math-mystery, the unending and unrepeating number at the heart of the circle and known by the greek letter pi), he can unlock the final mystery of–well, if he knew what it was, it probably wouldn’t torment him as much as it does.

Both films have thriller subplots to add on-screen action to their cerebreality. Lemme engages in espionage and chase scenes against the agents of Alphaville’s machine-controlled regime; Max is pursued in the subways and streets by the employees of a Wall Street financier (Pamela Hart) and by a cabal of Jewish mystics; each party seeks to exploit his way with figures for purposes only partly revealed by the film’s end.

Yet near the end, he proclaims to the mystics that they, and he, were mistaken to seek the ultimate truth in a mere number. “It’s not the number–it’s the meaning, the syntax, the spaces between the numbers.” Only after this (and the death of his only friend) does the film’s image briefly switch from stark b&w to shades of grey. Max Cohen understands the temptations of the desire for rational knowledge far better than Lemme Caution ever could, but ultimately reaches a similar conclusion in regards to logic’s frustrating limitations. Max realizes too late, it really isn’t what you know but who you know.

It should also be mentioned that Pi is a tour-de-force directoral debut blah blah blah; but more importantly, it’s a real independent film. It’s not a low-budget, “hip” version of a standard Hollywood formula. Despite the chase interludes, it’s not some commercially-released demo reel intended to show the director’s skill at orchestrating violence or mayhem. Nor is it a Sundance Festival-formula product, full of relatively-affluent WASPs standing around talking about relationships. It’s a real movie about real ideas–something rare in any age.

THE VOICE OF DESCENT: On this Pearl Harbor Day, let us remember not too many years ago, when “the Japanese threat” meant their high-flying companies were going to take over our economy. Now, there’s a new Japanese threat–that their troubled companies, and those of other structurally-shaky Asian economies, might stop buying America’s soybeans, wheat, and jet aircraft.

Once again, as it has several times over the past 30-odd years, Boeing’s given a lump of coal to the Puget Sound region’s collective Xmas stockings. After all the manic growth, all the stupid growth, all the countryside-clearing growth and all the urban-life-draining growth, part of me actually looks forward to the more sluggish economy 48,000 layoffs and unfilled job vacancies might bring. Yet another part of me still feels sorry for the young adults and newcomers who’ve known nothing here but constant economic expansion, and who might find it more difficult to land decent jobs or backing for their dream restaurants.

ALREADY WE’VE ONE major business closure due to changing economic conditions. As you might expect, the last week of KSTW’s local news (mandated by the station’s current owner, Viacom) played out as both personal desparation (clips of old cute-dog stories strung together by a staff obviously intent on assembling demo reels for its resumes) and light pathos (co-anchorman Don Porter holding up a “Will Anchor For Food” sign). The headline graphic for the top story on the final newscast (a story about a newly-found cache of dynamite in Puyallup): “TNT Destroyed.” KSTW’s former call letters, several owners ago, were KTNT (from its original owner, the Tacoma News Tribune). Also throughout the final broadcast, the station ran the logo from its old ownership by Gaylord Broadcasting–not the ugly “UPN 11” symbol Viacom management had imposed. The cancellation means 62 newsroom and studio layoffs, and turns what had been one of the strongest non-big-three-network stations in the country into just another mere outlet for reruns and forgettable semi-network shows (can you even name any UPN original production other than Star Trek Voyager?).

PULP FRICTION: A couple weeks back, I mildly dissed a Stranger article dissing the retro-swing revival. Now I’ve something I never expected I’d say: Seattle Weekly, once one of the few “alternative” weeklies to be more conservative than its town’s daily papers, has lately become darn near pinko with Geov Parrish publicly questioning the canonization of the late Seattle School District PR machine John Stanford and Mark Worth listing Seattle’s equivalent of the “50 families” that run everything in certain Latin American countries. This is one case of a publication becoming more progressive under chain ownership. When it was locally owned, the Weekly was tied heavily into this town’s business and political elites, far more so than many urban weeklies in other towns. Founder David Brewster was a defender (to this day) of ’70s-style notions of leadership by an enlightened intelligentsia; as applied in his pages, it meant individual politicians and political decisions could be criticized but not the larger priorities of our Pro-Business Democrat machine. But after Brewster retired and sold out to the Hartz Mountain chain of papers, the paper’s rather suddenly started growing something resembling a spine. (And I’m not just saying these things ‘cuz I’m trying to get a job with them. Honest.)

CATHODE CORNER: Finally saw digital cable over the holidays, and was immediately taken by the way each channel first appears on screen as a collage of small screen areas, taking as long as a second before all the rectangles fill in. How long do you think it’ll take before the effect appears as a deliberately-planned schtick in music videos? (It’s already been used in series, if you count the “puzzle piece” effects that used to lead into and out of commercials on Get Smart! and The Streets of San Francisco.)

SCREEN DEFENSE: The same week the mighty Scarecrow Video store celebrated 10 years of rough-and-tumble survival, Capitol Hill’s smaller but equally feisty Video Vertigo posted photocopied trade-magazine articles on its wall, claiming 400 indie video-rental shops are going out of business each week in the US due to predatory pricing by, and sweetheart deals offered by studios to, Blockbuster. While some of these individual stores and small chains probably won’t be missed (I’m thinking of those stores offering only the same creaky action-hits and moldy ’80s sitcom movies as the big chains), there are also plenty which deserve to stick around (with more, or different or better, selections than the corporate stores, and/or better rates or looser return policies). Wanna see a flick at home tonite? Go to one of those joints first.

THIS MONTH’S FIRST-THURSDAY HIGHLIGHTS:

1. Gloria DiArcangelis’s stunning neo-realist paintings at Myerson & Nowinski. Nobody else (on this continent anyway) can make contemporary faces and figures look so much like they belong in the Renaissance.

2. Meghan Trainor’s tiny wall shrines (made from “authentic Boeing aluminum” and what look like labels from ancient brands of produce) at the relocated Roq La Rue.

3. Parris Broderick’s “Sitting Duck” series at Zeitgeist Espresso. You’ve seen his murals, sandwich signs, etc. all over town; now see his loving post-expressionist touch applied to images of ducks (or are they decoys?).

4. The abstract-installation piece at Oculus, a study in geometric form and color created by gluing hundreds of Starburst Fruit Chews to the wall.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Emerald City Connections (“Seattle’s #1 Meeting Place”) purports to be a slick singles’ resource with personal ads, relationship advice, and related articles. But six of the first issue’s 24 pages comprise ads for escorts, phone-sex lines, and other “adult services”–as if the publishers were admitting the personal ads might not work. (Free at vending boxes around town, or from 1767 15th Ave. S., Seattle 98144.)

TWO FOR THE SHOW: At least one secret to understanding the eternal conflict of American culture can be found in the decades-old conflict of burlesque vs. vaudeville. Burlesque wasn’t just raw as in naked (or rather as naked as the law allowed or could be bribed into allowing). It was raucous; its dancers and skits and comic monologues celebrated the boistrous passions of turn-of-the-century urban immigrants. It also regularly barbed politicians, judges, bosses, and other authority figures. Vaudeville (as shown in a KCTS documentary late last year which still haunts my memory) was squeaky clean, celebrated “wholesome family entertainment,” and promoted a monocultural America of thorough white-middlebrow dominance (with just a few ethnic touches inserted for the mildest of spiciness).

Vaudeville led to the everywhere/nowhere America of Hollywood movies (several of the big studios trace their corporate history from vaudeville-theater chains), Lawrence Welk, Mickey Mouse, Reader’s Digest, Miss America, soft rock, light beer, weak coffee, and eventually to what The Nation and The Baffler call today’s global “culture trust.”

Burlesque, conversely, led to Milton Berle, Betty Boop, the prewar version of Esquire, drag-queen shows, the comedy-relief segments in early porn films, and (eventually and indirectly) to punk rock, S/M showmanship, and zine culture.

Despite its handful of often fondly-remembered burlesque “box house” theaters in and near today’s Pioneer Square, and our status as home to burlesque’s greatest star Gypsy Rose Lee (born into a vaudeville family), Seattle was a vaudeville town through and through. Seattle’s first corporate inroad on the national entertainment biz was the locally-founded Pantages vaudeville circuit.

The battle continues. Across the country, city governments are trying to banish strip clubs and adult video shops (slicker yet raunchier descendents of burlesque), sanitizing downtowns for the sake of Planet Hollywood and The Disney Store (dining and shopping as toned-down descendents of vaudeville).

At its best, the spirit of vaudeville represents precision, energy, showmanship, and a pleasant good time. And all those things are good. But at its worst, it represents cloying paternalism and sentimental “family entertainment” that bores kids and insults grownups’ intelligence. Burlesque’s descendents have their own downsides; particularly the recursive traps of parody and ironic detachment seen in so much pseudo-hip art, music, and advertising.

But we need more of burlesque’s assertive populism, its healthy skepticism about authority and its healthy affirmation of the life force. Somewhere between post-vaudeville’s mandatory naiveté and post-burlesque’s relentless cynicism lies the truth.

(Good, close re-creations of classic vaudeville can be found year-round at Hokum Hall in West Seattle. The best evocation of burlesque in town’s the “Fallen Women Follies,” held two or three times a year at Re-bar. You can also see the old days of burley-Q at the Exotic World museum out in the southwest.)

‘TIL NEXT WEEK, pray for snow, and be sure to enter your nominations for this year’s Misc. World In/Out List (the only worthwhile and accurate list of its type in the known world), either by email or in our lovely new >Misc. Talk discussion boards.

WORD OF THE WEEK: “Aporia”

Words Against Words

Original book feature, 12/7/98

THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESS:

The Conflict Between Word and Image

by Leonard Shlain

(Viking) $24.95

THE RISE OF THE IMAGE, THE FALL OF THE WORD

by Mitchell Stevens

(Oxford) $27.50

Between these two tomes, you get two men taking 728 pages to denounce left-brain linear thought and its chief manifestation, the written word.

Surgeon-physicist-author Leonard Shlain, in particular, has few nice things to say (except as afterthoughts) about either his own medium or his own gender. One of those men who loves to claim everything associated with his own kind is intrinsically evil, it takes him until a brief afterword to acknowledge that a few males have done a few good things during this planet’s history. Most of his long, long account involves reiteration after reiteration of one greatly oversimplified premise; an expansion on the new age/radical feminist belief that the whole world was into goddesses and matriarchy but it ended just before recorded history started.

His notion: It was the ability to record history itself that put goddess worship out of business; that as soon as any particular tribe or nation of humans started (or, in the case of the Renaissance, restarted) the widespread use of written language, everything promptly went straight to H-E-double-hockey sticks, particularly regarding women’s civil rights. Shlain sees militaristic Sparta as having been far more gender-equal than literary Athens. Egypt: A supposedly great place for the ladies during the hieroglyphic days, much less so once they got ahold of the Coptic alphabet. China: Despite its whole different writing system it’s still a writing system, blamable for everything from foot-binding to the Cultural Revolution. Wherever writing goes, Shlain posits, narrow-mindedness, drab official clothes, grim military discipline, sexual repression, and male domination, and denunciations of visual art all follow.

In real life (that universe far more complex than even the best-thought-out book), left-brain, literal thinking isn’t just for men; and visual-spatial enjoyment isn’t just for women. Women can certainly create and consume words. Indeed, women buy most of the novels in this country; men buy most of the comic books (and porn videos). Women can be literal-minded too, and self-righteous, and grim and drab. Women can also be very interested in the maintenance of strict social rules and castes (particularly those women who are on the winning side of those rules).

Still, Shlain’s initial premise could, with tweaking and better arguments and more acknowledgement of the diversity and complexity of social existence, turned into a notion with a few intriguing possibilities. I’d suggest a slightly different premise, no more or less supported by Shlain’s package of historical “evidence.” I’d say wherever militaristic nationalism takes hold, with its need to mold humans of all genders into impersonally-assigned roles, that all those glum suppressions follow. Shlain would likely counter-argue that you couldn’t have big, far-flung, Roman-style armies without written commands, so it’s still writing’s fault.

NYU prof Mitchell Stevens can write about the limitations of writing much more effectively than Shlain can. Mitchell’s clearly a professional wordsmith who struggles daily with his art form’s strengths and weaknesses. But his choice of hopeful talismans for a new, neo-iconic age are a bit odd: those ’60s “collage films” that always seemed to stick a mushroom-cloud image into everything; hyperactively edited MTV specials; the image-layered intro to an ABC documentary on religion in America. The use of these particular examples, out of the hundreds of thousands of filmed, videotaped, televised, and/or animated works generated this past century or so, basically reveals Stevens’ own wishes for what he calls “the New Video.” He wants a medium that can do what he feels can’t be done in boring ol’ text narratives. He wants quick juxtapositions of images that can stir viewers’ minds as well as their emotions. He wants works that can combine and compare scenes from different places and times. These tasks have been accomplished in verbal form (from the interludes in John Dos Passos’s USA trilogy to any newspaper front page).

While both Stephens and Shlain see hope for a post-linear mindset from computers and the Net, they forget programming is intensely literal and abstract. Indeed, any post-Word age is going to be at least as word-filled as this one. Movies and videos have scripts and editing lists. Websites have text surrounded by HTML scripts, which are intrepreted by more abstract program code. The daily stuff of commerce and governance will still involve forms, documentation, instructions, memos, etc.

Mind you, I’ve got my own problems with The Word and those who purport to be its champions. If any medium, even my own, has stuffy pendants like Jerry Mander, Neil Postman, and George Will as its bigtime defenders, there’s got to be something wrong with it. Besides, words can be so darn clumsy at trying to express what Bette Davis or Salvador Dali or animator Tex Avery could get off in a single, well-planned instant. But words can do many things images can’t do well (witness any number of good novels made into bad movies). Instead of seeing words and pictures as rivals, as Stephens and especially Shlain do, it’d be better to see them as complementary ways of seeing our world and of imagining other ones.

NO, YOU’RE NOT living out a real-life version of that TV show where the hero gets tomorrow’s newspaper today. Your online Misc. dose now comes on Mondays, in a change from the Thursday posting dates that had coincided with the column’s former publication in The Stranger. Now you can start your week with these fun & informative insights. Or, you can wait until midweek and still find a relatively-fresh column waiting your perusal. It’s just one of many changes in the works, to make Misc. World one of the most bookmarkable, remarkable pop-cult-crit sites on the whole darned Web.

ONE MORE REASON TO HATE SAN FRANCISCO: The December Wired (now owned by NYC magazine magnate S.I. Newhouse Jr. but still based in Frisco) has this cover story listing “83 Reasons Why Bill Gates’s Reign Is Over.” I actually got into it, until I got to entry #31: “All Microsoft’s market power aside, building World HQ near Seattle has not shifted Earth’s axis or altered gravitational fields. The Evergreen State is still the sticks….” A sidebar piece recommends Gates “get connected–move software headquarters to Silicon Valley.” Look: You can badmouth the big little man all you like (I’ve done so, and will likely do so again). But when you disparge the whole Jet City and environs, them’s fightin’ words.

BEDLAM AND BEYOND: Ultimately, the Planet Hollywoodization of America’s urban downtowns is the same process as the Wal-Martization of America’s small-town main streets. Bed Bath and Beyond, a suburban “big box” chain that does for (or to) shower curtains what Barnes & Noble does for (or to) books, represents something else. Some call the big-box chains, which normally hang out off to the side of malls, an extension of the Wal-Mart concept. I differ. Wal-Mart (and such precursors as Fred Meyer and Kmart) offer a little of everything. But big-box stores (also represented in greater Seattle by the likes of Borders, Sleep Country USA,Video Only, Office Depot, OfficeMax, and Home Depot ) try to bowl you over with their sheer immensity, to offer every darned item in a product category that would possibly sell. Speaking of which…

NAILED: Eagle Hardware, the Washington-based home-superstore circuit, is selling out to Lowe’s, a national home-center chain with no prior presence up here. Flash back, you fans of ’70s-style ’50s nostalgia, to the Happy Days rerun where Mr. Cunningham lamented the threat to his Milwaukee hardware boutique by an incoming chain from out of town called Hardware City: “They’ve got 142 different kinds of nails. I’ve only got two: Rusty and un-rusty.” Now, flash ahead to the mid-’90s, when P-I editorial cartoonist Steve Greenberg ran a fish-eating-fish drawing to illustrate mom-and-pop hardware stores being eaten by regional chains like Ernst and Pay n’ Pak, who are then eaten by big-box superstores. Greenberg neglected to include the final fish, the national retail Goliath eating up the superstore operators.

PHILM PHUN: Finally saw Roger Corman’s 1995 made-for-Showtime remake of A Bucket of Blood a week or two back. The new version (part of a series he produced for the pay channel, and released to video as The Death Artist) of is not only more slickly produced than the 1959 original (which I know isn’t saying much, since I’d promoted the original’s last local theatrical showing, in 1986 at the Grand Illusion), but the story works far better in a contemporary setting.

Largely known today merely as the precursor to Corman’s 1960 Little Shop of Horrors (both original films were written by Charles Griffith, who had to sue for credit when Little Shop became a stage musical which in turn was filmed in 1986), the horror-comedy plot of Bucket involves a struggling young sculptor named Walter Paisley trying unsuccessfully to break into the hipster Beatnik art scene–until he sticks plaster onto a dead cat, displays the resulting “artwork” to hipster audiences enthralled by his combination of realism and gruesomeness, and finds he has to make more and grislier “works” to maintain his new-found status, to the point of seeking out street bums to turn into “artistic” corpses.

In the original, Corman had to fictionalize the beat art-scene beyond recognition in order for the beat art-scene characters to fall in love with life-size dead-man statues. But for the ’90s Bucket, he and his collaborators merely had to accurately portray the postmodern art world with all its adoration of cartoony morbidity.

END THE BEGUINE ALREADY!: One good thing about this column no longer appearing in The Stranger is I can now comment on things that are in it, such as freelancer Juliette Guilbert’s 7,000-something-word diatribe against retro-swing mania.

One of Guilbert’s more curious stabs against the movement is its embracing of big-band pop jazz and not the more intellectually challenging modern stuff that started later in the ’40s. Of course, college undergrads aren’t going to get into bebop on a mass scale. Even Guilbert acknowledges the whole point of bebop was to make a black music that whites couldn’t easily take over.

The Swing Era was not the nadir of race relations Guilbert makes it out to be but rather was a first, halting step out from that abyss (at least for African Americans–Japanese Americans faced problems of their own at the time). I’ve previously written about the previously-nostalgized Lounge Era as the dawn of the Age of Integration. The seeds of this progress were sown when white sidemen first played under black bandleaders, when Josephine Baker calmly demanded to be served at the Stork Club, when Jackie Robinson first donned a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball uniform, when thousands of black families migrated from the rural south to industrial jobs in northeast cities (and in Seattle), etc.

And sure, there aren’t many modern-day African Americans in the swing revival. Traditionally, black audiences rush to the Star-Off Machine to abandon black music forms once they’ve gone “mainstream” (white), which with retro-swing happened sometime after Kid Creole and the Coconuts. (When ruthless Hollywood promoters turned rap into gangsta rap, nakedly exploiting white mall kids’ stereotypes of young black men assexy savages, black audiences rushed to support acts you or I might consider sappy love-song singers, but they saw as well-dressed, well-mannered, prosocial alternatives to the gangsta crap.)

Similar statements could be made gender-wise about the swing years, esp. when thousands of women took over civilian jobs during the war. It was at swing’s end when gender roles temporarily went backward. The Pleasantville movie connection here, of course, is Ozzie and Harriet. Ozzie Nelson was a swing bandleader, Harriet Hilliard (who still used her own last name when their show started on radio) an RKO contract actress who’d become Ozzie’s singer and wife. When they saw the market for swing bands collapse after V-J Day, they invented new, desexualized, images for themselves on their radio show. It was the end of the Swing Era that coincided with (or presaged) the movement to get women back in the kitchen.

Besides, gay men are forever celebrating the style and glamour of decades in which their own sexuality was thoroughly repressed. What’s the Cadillac Grille on east Capitol Hill but a work of fetishized nostalgia for, well, for the Ozzie and Harriet golden-age-that-never-really-was (especially for gays)?

As you might expect from these summaries, Guilbert also finds something semi-scary in the swing kids’ dress code; the stuff their grandparents wore and their baby-boomer parents rebelled against. What she doesn’t realize are the reasons for voluntarily dressing up today can be quite different from the reasons for involuntarily dressing up yesterday.

Guilbert ultimately assigns the swing movement to plain ol’ materialism, “the late 20th century tendency to define the self through purchased objects.” That might be the case with some collectible-hoarders among the retro crows, but it sure doesn’t apply only to retro folks. You see it in people who define themselves by what they do or don’t eat, what they do or don’t drive, etc.

My conclusion? It all goes to show you. If a lot of young people do something (anything), some grownup’s gonna whine about it. Having lived through at least three or four attempted swing revivals (remember Buster Poindexter? Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive LP? The Broadway revues Five Guys Named Moe and Ain’t Misbehavin’? The movies Swing Kids and Newsies?), it amused me at first to see a new generation actually pull it off. Of course, as with anything involving large masses of young adults, it tended to become something taken way, way too seriously. Guilbert also takes it very seriously, perhaps more seriously than the kids themselves. My Rx for her: A good stiff drink and a couple spins of that Ella Fitzgerald sampler compilation.

IT’S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR when we’re supposed to find things to be thankful for. It’s been an up-‘n’-down year around Misc. World HQ, but I’m way, way grateful for my web server Speakeasy.org, which is helping me construct the next version of the site, and to the many kind letters, phone calls, and emails supporting the column’s online continuation. I invite you to share what you’re thankful for this season to clark@speakeasy.org; selected responses will appear here next week.

AND SO IT HAS COME TO THIS: Seems everything in this once-sleepy town’s Growing! Changing! Morphing!

Even in print.

The powers-that-be at The Stranger have decided they no longer want to publish this here little compendium of factoids and opinionoids.

The concept behind Misc., first in June 1986 at the old ArtsFocus monthly and since November 1991 at The Stranger, was to report aspects of the Seattle popular culture that didn’t fit a standard format of arts reviews, previews, and interviews.

Its schtick of assorted short and long items was never intended, as some have alleged, as a short-attention-span paean to any so-called “MTV generation” but rather a revival of the classic three-dot newspaper column as practiced by such past masters as Walter Winchell, Irv Kupcinet, and the P-I-era Emmett Watson.

The real value of a three-dot column isn’t depth but breadth. At a time when knowledge and careers are increasingly specialized, there’s a need for generalists who can explore the contexts, juxtapositions, and connections among seemingly unrelated phenomena, from something as general as global socioeconomic trends to something as specific as a candy bar.

This column’s treated fashion, food, politics, music, architecture, medicine, painting, porn, magzines, talk radio, etc. etc. as equally important disciplines, each with something to reveal about the larger world.

It’s treated its readers as intelligent humans, not as some target-marketing stereotype. It hasn’t told you what bands, movies, or shows to see; it hasn’t promised to make you wealthier or slimmer or more sociable or more orgasmic; just to inform and entertain. It’s taken a personal point of view, yet hasn’t tried to promote the author as its own biggest topic. It’s been opinionated, but without any in-your-face “Attitude.”

The column’s also tried to reflect and respond to today’s ever factioning, increasingly complex society. Canadians used to say the U.S. was a “melting pot” but Canada was a “mosaic,” where different ethnic and cultural groups got to maintain more of their own identities with less pressure to conform to a “mainstream” norm. Nowadays, the U.S. is getting more mosaic-y than ever (while Canada’s searching for some kind of social grout that’ll keep its tiles from flying apart).

It takes a generalist to detect the patterns among the tiles, the developing harmonies and disharmonies and color schemes–without excessively oversimplifying the patterns, without invoking obsolete stereotypes of one “dominant culture” vs. one “counterculture.”

While having fun with the convoluting minutae of modern urban life, the column’s tried to advocate the idea that this unmelting of the melting pot’s an overall good thing. Much as I enjoy the documentation and ephemera of our cultural past (movies, magazines, postcards, records), I’ve no wish to return to any “good old days” when racism was official national policy, or when book publishing was firmly controlled by a few tweed-suited men in Manhattan.

We need more tribes, more virtual communities, more ways for individuals to find their own voices and form their own affinity groups. But along with that we need ways for these communities to learn about, and from, one another.

Thanx and a hat tip to all my loyal readers, sources, and informants over the years, and to the Stranger staffers who’ve helped to keep it accurate, pretty, and properly-spelled. A special nod goes to Matt Cook and James Sturm, who helped get the column into the paper back in ’91, and to Alice (no relation) Savage, who commissioned its first incarnation at ArtsFocus.

The column existed before The Stranger did, and will continue online at Misc. World, www.miscmedia.com. There’ll continue to be non-columnar material by me elsewhere in the paper (“Cyber Stuff” and the new “Diversions” in the Calendar section, “X-Word,” reviews, one-shot essays and articles). And I’ll be working on new projects, including a long-threatened “Best of Misc.” book and a new edition of my local music-history book Loser.

‘Til then, some closing words from the last broadcast by ex-Seattleite and pioneer network newscaster Chet Huntley: “Keep the faith; there will be better and happier news, one day, if we work at it.”

> iMPRESSIONS: The Stranger office just got a couple of them new iMac computers. They’re gorgeous; they’re screamingly fast; they’re just plain fun. The iMac’s the first “home” computer designed as a piece of home decor, like old “cathedral” radios used to be (one old radio name, Motorola, makes the CPU chip in the iMac). Just as importantly, it expresses the MacOS’s superior visual aesthetic into tangible, physical form. This has the practical effect of reducing the dissonance, the trance effect a computer user may have while really concentrating on the “mindspace” of working or running software. On plain beige-box computers, an advanced user can become almost unaware of his/her physical presence (unless, of course, something goes wrong with the hardware). The iMac’s more noticable, yet pleasant, presence might help hardcore gamers and Net-skimmers keep at least partly aware of the tangible world surrounding them. That, in turn, might help relieve or prevent the loneliness and depression cited among hardcore computer jockeys by some Carnegie Mellon U. sociologists.

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Usually for weird potato-chip flavors you’ve gotta go to Canada. But Benson’s T-Bone Steak Crisps are imported directly from England to local spots like the Old Pequliar tav in Ballard. They don’t taste like steak, but have an oddly smoky flavor without being overly spicy. The slow frieght, tho’, can leave ’em a little less fresh-tasting than domestic chips.

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Swaank (no relation to the porn mag Swank) is a rip-rollickin’, stylish-as-all-get-out chronicle of local swing-revival happennings. Besides musician and dancer interviews, it’s got a valuable jazz-history lesson and retro-fashion tips that thankfully go beyond the semiannual “Return to Elegance” nonsense in larger publications. There’s even a cartoon demonstrating how a neo-bopper can revise an outdated death-rock tattoo! (Free at clubs with swing nights, or $12 for four issues from 12437 110th Lane NE, #P101, Kirkland 98034.)

ANOTHER YEAR OLDER: Who’da thunk The Stranger (originally a li’l 12-page sheet of coupon ads, movie listings, sex advice, and cartoons) would become such a robust force in alterna-media, reaching some 150,000 readers and revered nationwide? The growth of the paper has parallelled the growth of its “virtual community” of readers and advertisers. While a lot of beloved stores, bands, clubs, eateries, performance troupes, galleries, etc. have left us since late Sept. ’91, a lot of others have joined us. And while the corporate-rock biz has largely left Seattle alone lately (local bands no longer even feel they have to insist on how “not grunge” they are), there are more pro musicians doing more different kinds of things here now than maybe ever. (How many of them are really good at it is another question.)

But what’s in store? Wasn’t too long ago when the stock market was supposedly on a never-to-end rise, when Wired magazine predicted a “long boom,” when the only question anybody asked about the economy was how to keep up with (or survive) the megagrowth. Nowadays, things seem a bit more uncertain, particularly among anyone with direct or indirect dependencies upon Canada, Mexico, Russia, east Asia, or the U.S. stock market (as you might guess, that’s a lot of dependents). Can’t say what’ll happen next, but it might not be all on the upswing.

If there really is a recession later this year or early next, how will it affect our community? Seattle ain’t the same place it was when we lived on the trickle-down from Boeing and its subcontractors. But now the $$ coming into Seattle isn’t merely trickling down from overall national business conditions. It’s coming from whole consumer-economy sectors (software, chain coffeeshops) centered here, shipping cash into head offices that directly employ many art-worlders and art-biz customers. Of course, an overall slowdown will slow down these companies as well; just perhaps more moderately and slowly than Boeing slumps used to be. For whatever it’s worth, the nothing-ever-happens pre-Stranger Seattle ain’t coming back.

MISC. is the column asking the musical question: Would you even want to live in the same building with the maniacally-grinning GQ models depicted in all those condo ads?

UPDATE #1: Tosco, which runs gas stations under the BP brand in Washington, sez it’ll keep that name up for the time being, even though BP’s own stations in other regions will switch when BP takes over the Amoco brand. (Confused? Good.)…

UPDATE #2: QFC, having absorbed Wallingford’s fabulous Food Giant, is now taking over another of the top Seattle indie supermarkets, the gargantuan and lavish Art’s Family Center on Holman Road. Art’s was originally a multi-store strip mall containing both an Art’s supermarket (the last of what had been a five-store chain) and a Marketime drug-variety store. Fred Meyer bought Marketime in the ’60s, then unloaded its half of the Holman Road complex to Art’s (which kept many of the Marketime merchandise departments, making it what the French call a “hypermarket”). Now that Fred Meyer’s already bought QFC last year, it’s got the whole complex back. (Still confused? Good.)

HELD IN CHECK: Seafirst now has “Celebrate Diversity” checks, in a sort-of rainbow design–only this “diverse” colorscape is all mellow and pale. A lot like Seattle in general….

TOO CLOTHES FOR COMFORT: After a couple of weeks, I think the new Nordstrom store looks a LOT like the Forum Shops mall at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, a place that doesn’t even pretend to be sublime or understated. It was made clear from the start that nothing recognizable from Frederick’s, except for the exterior facade and the thick supporting posts, would be preserved. (Even the elevator and escalator shafts were moved.) But I don’t think many expected the new store’s total in-your-face experience of New Money, all proud and boastful and coldly showoffy yet trying conspicuously to be proper. If Bloomie’s or Saks had installed such a store, everybody’d complain how indiscreetly un-Seattle it was.

MILLENNIUM BUGGY: The Year 2000 Computer Problem hysteria hasn’t spawned a new survivalist cult, as some commentators and periodicals have claimed; but it has breathed new life into existing cults. The “head for the hills with canned goods and guns and gold” folks, having missed out (so far) on predicted apocalypses (apocali?) involving nukes, race riots, U.N. “black helicopters,” oil shortages, etc. etc., now get to invoke a simple yet oft-misunderstood software-upgrade failure as their new premise to solicit converts and customers–a premise conveniently scheduled on a date steeped in religious mysteries and referenced by prophets from Nostradamus to Plan 9 From Outer Space narrator Criswell.

Many of the “Y2K” doomsday scenarios promoted by the survivalists read less like knowledgeable tech writing and more like excuses to shoehorn in pre-existing survivalist dogma. Like the parts about inner cities turning into instant war zones while the rural inland west remains serene and posse-protected. Not only does this line ignore that over half the country now lives in suburbs, it ignores that major metro areas are usually the first to get upgraded civic electronics, while the countryside’s still stuck with some of the most antiquated phone and power-delivery systems–the ones most likely to not get fixed so their databases understand years that don’t start with “19.”

What the alarmists get right is how nearly everything in the modern world (air-traffic control, oil refineries, long-distance lines, Social Security, medical equipment, stock markets) is intertwined in mainframe-computer networks, the real “world wide web.”

But the Y2K problem won’t crash everything at once. It just means companies and governments that let these unprofitable but necessary system upgrades slide now have to implement them at once.

At the least it’ll mean a hit on most everybody’s financial bottom lines for the next two years; draining cash-flows and spurring various degrees of layoffs. At worst, some of the various software/ hardware fixes around the world might not be ready (or adequately tested) in time, so some databases might have to be put off-line for a few weeks and some utility and industrial-control systems might have to be switched to planned backup mechanisms. In an absolute-worst plausibility, some fixes that were thought to work won’t, causing scattered system crashes. And some stand-alone industrial machines with pre-programmed computer chips inside might hiccup; but even most of those failures should be predictable and worked around.

So don’t give in to the fear-profiteers in the canned-food and gun industries. If you want to believe in a Biblical-style apocalypse, remember the verse about how mankind “knoweth not the day nor the hour.”

(More good readin’ about this topic is in Paul Kedrosky’s recent essay at Rewired.)

IN STORE: Borders Books held an Ally McBeal fan party and trivia competition on 8/20. Seeing this tribute to gushily pathetic “vulnerability” next to the diet and fashion books brought me a revelation: Ally isn’t a sex-object fantasy, it’s a target-marketing fantasy. An attempt at female-oriented counterprogramming opposite the male-targeted Monday Night Football and cable pro-wrestling shows, built around the most exploitive stereotypes from modern women’s-magazine articles. Of course, that’s just as antithetical to feminist precepts as any sex-object fantasy would be.

(The same store is now selling official “Windows 98 Roast” brand coffee. Sometimes it’s hard to keep my vow to never write a coffee joke in the column.)

LOOSENING UP: The week of the Clinton quasi-confession (an attempt to defuse the “family-values” demagogues’ attacks) was the same week Rupert Murdoch took over Pat Robertson’s Family Channel, turning it into Fox Family (a repository for former Fox Kids Network cartoons, plus such non-700 Club material as Pee-wee’s Playhouse reruns and a Spice Girls special). The ol’ squeaky-cleanness just didn’t produce Murdoch’s desired profit rate. A potential omen to PaxNet, the UHF broadcast network to launch this week with a format even squeakier than Family used to have.

THE VIEW FROM THE ROAD: The Oldsmobile Sihlouette Premiere, a forthcoming minivan, will offer a built-in VCR and an LED video screen (out of the driver’s view). Besides wondering if the GM-installed machine will try to scramble any attempted viewing of Roger and Me, imagine the possibilities:

• Kids will have something new to argue with each other and parents about on long trips (“But we already saw Mulan on the way to Yakima. Can’t we watch something else please?”)
• Folks on long trips across monotonous scenery could watch travelogue videos and pretend they’re going someplace interesting.
• Seahawk fans could beat the home-TV blackouts by driving ’til they can receive the Portland stations.
• Commuter vanpools and airport-shuttle buses could offer your choice of sports highlights, porno, music videos, cartoons, stock reports, or (something some Vegas shuttle buses already provide) tourist-targeted commercials.

Some Amtrak trains, and some European intercity bus lines, already have ground-level “in-flight movies;” no reason Greyhound couldn’t do the same (or for that matter, the Green Tortoise would be the perfect venue for watching Half Baked!).

FILLING THE BILL: I’d fantasized about doing it for years, but now it’s been done: A Vancouver band has taken my all-time wannabe band name, the Special Guests. They never headline a gig, but they’ve opened for everybody! (Until this happened, I appeared to be the only person whose favorite wannabe band name wasn’t “Free Beer.”)

TAKING UP THE SLACK: I don’t read the Wall St. Journal every day, so it took an attentive reader to let me know I’d missed its 8/6/98 front-page story on the last of the slackers congregating in Seattle, where supposedly “Good Times Are Bad” for goateed Caucasians wishing to identify themselves as victims of a no-future society.

Writer Christina Duff took a rather snide attitude toward young-adult males who dared refuse to join in the WSJ-proclaimed great boom economy: “Their ranks thinning everywhere, many aging slackers are congregating in Seattle, as if circling the grunge wagons…. The slackers’ last refuge here is the Capitol Hill area, where tattooed 20-somethings walk the streets giving hugs and high-fives…. Faced with the depressing news that things aren’t as depressing anymore, some are shamed into shedding their angst.”

Of particular scorn was one D.J. Thompson, belittled for choosing to only work part-time pouring coffee while his girlfriend pursued a Real Career.

Duff’s kinder to “ex-slacker Joanne Hernon,” now “a computer consultant for law firms” with unkind words for her former fellow Linda’s barflies: “They feel they need to be on the outskirts. Keep themselves in a poor position. Blame everyone but themselves. It’s easy to make money these days.”

Duff and Hernon don’t say how it’s easier for some (such as, admittedly, pale-skinned young-adult college grads) to make money than others; or how relative prosperity can more folks the option to choose not to devote their whole lives to material pursuits or the kissing of boss-butt. (Besides, Seattle’s currently up-‘n’-coming Boho-hood isn’t the maturing Capitol Hill but Georgetown.)

AS PROMISED three weeks ago, here’s the official Misc. list of the 64 arts and sciences a modern person should learn; as inspired by one of the nonsexual parts of the Kama Sutra. (Here’s the original passage; here’s how to get the whole book.)

I’m not claiming to be an expert on all of these, or any. They’re just things I, and some of you, feel folks oughta know a little better, in no particular order:

• Appreciating different aromas, textures, and tastes. Discerning the difference between Ritz and Hi-Hos.
• Rudimentary knowledge of a foreign language.
• Intelligent discourse with persons of other subcultures.
• Hosting a successful party.
• Dancing (Lindy hop, Virginia reel, tap, lap).
• Holding your liquor; preventing or relieving hangovers.
• Personal health and hygeine; including brushing and flossing.
• Contraception and STD prevention.
• Chemistry; including different pharmaceuticals’ good/bad effects.
• Tanning without burning.
• Posture and bearing; preventing carpal-tunnel syndrome.
• At least one athletic or semi-athletic activity (downhill skiing, swimming, yoga, step aerobics, bowling, bicycling, Buns of Steel).
• One or more social games (poker, Scrabble, Twister, pinball, foosball, Quake,

  street hockey, et al.).

• Knowledge of the major professional sports (other than wrestling).
• Food preparation and storage; knowing how long to microwave a leftover pizza slice.
• Dining for pleasure, not merely for sustenance. Creating unusual food combinations (peanut butter on mashed potatoes).
• Discernment of fine yet reasonably-priced liquors and beers.
• Knowledge of agriculture, food technology, and the dangers of fad diets.
• Architecture and civic planning.
• Home building and repair.
• Interior design and/or Feng Shui.
• Gardening; mulching and composting.
• Acquaintance with U.S. and world literature, art, comics, film, theater, TV, and periodicals.
• Knowledge of the world’s assorted cultures, philosophies, and religions.
• Music theory and history; awareness of at least one country singer other than Patsy Cline.
• Awareness of the natural environment of your home and the larger world.
• Awareness of the history, politics and economics of your home and the larger world.
• Political action and organizing.
• Dealing with corporate and governmental bureaucracies.
• Judging people not by the color of their skin, but by the color of their lip gloss.
• Inquisitive skepticism toward public, political, and commercial speech.
• Holding your own amid hostile situations (i.e. workplaces, playgrounds). When to engage in verbal self-defense; when to keep your big flap shut.
• Value shopping; bargaining and haggling.
• Cordial relations with neighbors, relatives, and postal workers.
• Politely yet firmly declining the entreaties of proselytizers and telemarketers.
• Being nice to young children without letting them walk all over you.
• Caring for and feeding pets (biological or virtual).
• Getting along with housemates, lovers, cubicle mates, or bandmates without killing one another or even wanting to. Social negotiation and consensus-building (deciding which film to see or which pitcher to get at happy hour).
• Falling in love hard; falling out of love soft.
• Developing a healthy self-esteem, not an unhealthy egomania.
• Reinventing oneself every few years, a la Madonna or George Carlin.
• Personal discipline (getting to the center of a Tootsie Pop without biting).
• An area of knowledge associated with a different ethnicity or gender (for a man, Barbara Cartland novels; for an African American, butoh).
• Fashion design, selection, color-coordination, accessorizing, and repair.
• Sorting laundry.
• Programming a VCR and remote (not that hard, really!).
• Personal law (wills, contracts, income tax, warranties, et al.)
• Improving or repairing your credit.
• Packing a carry-on suitcase.
• Traversing your city via public transportation; reading a timetable.
• Solving crossword and jigsaw puzzles.
• Short-term weather forecasting.
• Ability on a musical instrument (including the voice).
• At least one of thevisual arts(painting, drawing, calligraphy, photography,

  cinematography, videography, Photoshop).

• Rudimentary computer usage.
• Desiging a website with no annoying “construction signs” or bad MIDI music.
• “Netiquette”: Writing e-mails to the point, but not too pointedly.
• Grammar and spelling; knowing the difference between “its” and “it’s.”
• Composing effective thank-you notes, resumes and cover letters, yearbook salutations, personal ads, and responses to threatened legal actions.
• Dressing and grooming for various occasions (seductions, funerals, job interviews, Halloween).
• Magic tricks and parlor games.
• A healthy sense of humor; jokes and anecdotes for all occasions.
• A repertoire of film, music, and TV trivia.
• How to tell different types of trees from a far distance. Number one–the larch….

———————–

Subject: 64 Arts for the Modern Person
Sent: 7/27/98 9:20 AM
Received: 7/27/98 12:45 PM
From: erinn kauer, eakamouse@webtv.net
To: clark@speakeasy.org

Interesting topic. All modern persons should bone up (no pun intended) on the various methods of BIRTH CONTROL. To include: proper condom etiquette, taking the pill on time, abstinence, getting off without actually having intercouse, and covering one’s butt by always having a supply of the newly available emergency contraceptive pills (actually just the regular pill, taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse, it reduces the chance of actual conception by about 75%… this is not RU486, and does not abort anything, it just does not allow the conception to take place). PLEASE include this particular item in your list, there would be far less unwanted pregnancies occuring, either resulting in having the child because the misguided fool believes so strongly that abortion in wrong (like having a child unprepared and setting them up in this world on a shaky base is right) or in having the costly and scary and stigmatizing abortion and suffering needless guilt because of it. However, abortion is not the end of the world, and should be seriously considered if all other options are not viable at that point. Please call the FDA at 301/827-4260 and ask for Lisa D. Rarick for more info on the 72 hour emergency contraception pill, or 1-800-NOT2LATE, or your local pharmacy. Do not let the pharmacy give you any bullshit about having to get it through your doctor, it is available WITHOUT a prescription and is perfectly legal, etc, etc, etc. I found that my pharmacy balked at the notion, but this has only recently been approved and they are simply not used to it yet. They need to be shaken though, they are needlessly telling people to go through their doctor, but you DO NOT HAVE TO, this should be available OVER THE COUNTER.

Besides contraception, folks of the modern age should study organic gardening, meditation (stress-buster, dream fulfiller, life lengthener), keep an eye on politics and actually know something about the world and the U.S. of A., and how to make a good latte…

I am sure there is much more, and my list is pretty lame, but the CONTRACEPTION/ FAMILY PLANNING is extremely important.

Thanks for hearing me out!

Erinn Kauer / eakamouse

P.S. Concert ettiquette, Gourmet Camping, and the fine art of bodybuilding (look good now AND later!). Whatever. Bye.

MISC. STILL REMEMBERS overhearing two men at a 1991 party recommending the most profitable way to sell a Seattle house–advertise it only in the LA Times. Such subterfuge is probably no longer necessary; now most Angelenos can’t afford a house here either.

UPDATES: The cool-stuff store Ruby Montana’s Pinto Pony will soon have a new home near 2nd and Stewart, escaping death-by-redevelopment at its old site…. The 66 Bell art studios will probably get redeveloped, despite a ruling that the building’s outside’s a city landmark. Negotiations to keep at least some of the artists’ spaces continue…. US West’s high-speed home Internet service, using ADSL technology, has been delayed by state regulators who want the phone co. to become more accepting toward local-service competition.

IN CLUBLAND: The Lava Lounge has a doorman whose name really is Carlton. If you get the coincidence, you’re probably old enough for him to let you in. (But bring picture ID anyway.)

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Glyph (“Monthly Tales of Highbrow Pulp”) is a well-put-together comix tabloid from Labor of Love Studios, described by editor Sarah Byam as “a sweat equity cooperative for working artists and writers.” The tab format’s perfect for elaborate layouts and visual storytelling, exemplified in the first issue by Byam and artist Ted Naifeh’s “Past Hope” (an ambitious, ironic four-page parable about “The woman who could not love and the man who loved too much”). (Free plus postage from 117 E. Louisa, #253, Seattle 98102.)

LI’L FOLKS: Seems everybody in the Seattle creative community’s getting preggers or getting somebody preggers these days. Some of the lucky mommies and daddies include: Our own art-crit Eric Fredericksen, arts-promotion vets Tracey Rowland and Larry Reid, Gourmondo Cafe co-proprietess Jennifer Clancy with antiquarian-book and punk-record collector Jeff Long, videomaker Debra Geissel, comedian/ singer Kathy Sorbo, and gallery owner Linda Cannon (she’ll close her exhibition space to concentrate on mommyhood, though she’ll still sell some art privately). Call it a massive coincidence; call it a release of long-suppressed maternal/ paternal urges at a time of relative prosperity. Just please don’t call it “something in the water.”

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: Small bookstores might be a threatened species amid big-chain consolidations, but one that’s thankfully not going away any time soon is the U.S. Government Printing Office bookstore on the ground floor of the Federal Building (900 1st Ave.). It’s small, but chock full o’ stuff you can’t get anywhere else–Posters of old Air Force planes! Colorful field guides to the national parks! Statistical abstracts of the nation’s consumer-buying habits! NASA fact guides! A gazillion volumes of tax codes! Research studies on teen alcoholism! Helpful guidebooks with names like Whistleblower Appeals, World Class Courtesy, Aviation Weather, Building a Nation of Learners, A Safe Trip Abroad, and Your Guide to Women’s Health! And (even cooler) you get to go thru a metal detector on your way in! Kids’-book advocates always say reading’s like an adventure trip; but this is the only bookstore that’s like getting on an airliner.

FREAK OUT: A second book about the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow is coming out, and this one’s unauthorized. Circus of the Scars, from the married team of writer Jan Gregor and illustrator Ashleigh “Triangle Slash” Talbot, promises to be a lavish hardcover account of the troupe’s early years (much of it from the viewpoint of ex-member Tim “Torture King” Cridland). For now, it’s being sold only by mail-order (via Brennan Dalsgard Publishers, Box 85781, Seattle 98145) and online (at www.circusofthescars.com). I haven’t seen the volume yet, but its creators hint Rose might not like its portrayal of him. What–like he gives a darn about his reputation (except to make sure it’s a nasty one)? I could only imagine one way you could really damage Rose’s public image: Claim he’s a mild-mannered teetotaler who plays a gentlemanly golf game, never cusses offstage, cried during multiple viewings of Titanic, and loves nothing better than to mellow out to the soothing sounds of the Smooth Jazz station.