THE GUY WHO TRIED to move the Seattle Mariners to Tampa is now in line for a cushy federal appointment, despite his career history of shady dealings.

A SCOTTISH JOURNALIST wonders why the recent media hype over the “porno chic” women’s-fashion fad hasn’t involved actual porn performers.

“44 REASONS NOT to get a boob job.” (By the (male) author of “Why I’m Still Not a Libertarian.”)

Trick or Treat

by guest columnist Mr. Hedley Bowes

MUSINGS ON THIS PAST All Hallow’s Eve season:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s going on here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHATEVER HAPPENED to investigative reporting?

JUST HOW are we gonna pay for this war, anyway?

BASEBALL COMMISSIONER BUD SELIG (you know, the guy who stole the Seattle Pilots away) has won owner approval (but will undoubtedly get player-union challenges to) a plan to not move two teams but to shut them down altogether. This would leave places for the remaining owners to threaten to move their own teams to, and would lower the leverage of the players’ union in the next round of contract negotiations.

Baseball needs to bring more parity to its small-market teams, not pare them down. The Expos, Twins, and Marlins (the three teams most likely to get one of the two death sentences) all were league leaders at different times in the ’90s, and all have had reasonable attendance before current owners mismanaged them to near-death. Yet it’s those very owners who’d benefit the most from killing the teams. They’ll get cash from the other owners, and will be permitted to buy other MLB teams, thus letting them wreak their destructive management styles onto the Angels or A’s.

“Contraction” (Selig’s term for the scheme) isn’t something successful sports leagues do. It’s what outfits like the American Basketball Association and the North American Soccer League did, just prior to folding completely. For Major League Baseball to get away with this would be an outrage to the sporting community.

In human physiology, a contraction can lead to a birth. Selig’s contraction plan, however, could help lead to the death of baseball as we know it, or at least make it fiscally sicker.

The Mariners’ Miracle Season sputtered to a halt in the American League Championship Series, when for the second consecutive year our boys were pummled by the still-OK-to-hate New York Yankees. Despite the unglorious end, it was still an amazing ride and a spectacular display of teamwork. It was, and is, one for the record books and a lifetime of memories. Now comes the off-season trading and maneuvering, with one crystal-clear goal: Somehow getting the AL pennant out of the Bronx for once.

…is now out at some 135 locations in Seattle, and has been mailed to subscribers. Beginning next week, it will also be made available nationally via Last Gasp, the alterna-book distributor and comix publisher soon to enter its 35th year. Ask your local alterna-bookstore to carry MISC as soon as it shows up in LG’s catalog.

I’VE STILL HOPE FOR THE MARINERS to pull this series through, even though they respectfully lost Game 1 and are behind by a run in Game 2 as of this writing. Faith and hope, after all, are what we’re told we need more of these days, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

(This article’s permanent link.)

MARINERS WIN DIVISION SERIES AFTER ALL: What was I possibly thinking, for doubting The Best Team Ever after one rout loss on Saturday? Our doodz played their kind of game (pitching, defense, hit-and-run, manufactured runs) and steadily, systematically, sent Cleveland home.

At the time of the Ms’ victory, there was a chance that the AL Championship Series might very well have pitted Seattle against the Oakland A’s. I was psyched for an I-5 Series, for the chance to show those NoCal snobs that, no, Seattle isn’t some hick cowtown.

But no. It’ll be a Mariners/Yankees ALCS for the second consecutive year. With any luck (and with our much stronger lineup and their aging staff), it won’t be a repeat of the ’00 series, which the Ms essentially threw away on the tired arm of relief pitcher Arthur Rhodes (who has more than redeemed himself thus far this year).

Of course, this matchup also means us Mariner fans are in the unenviable position of wishing to deny the citizens of New York City the spirit-lift they could so dearly use these days. I say to that: New Yorkers are a tough and resiliant lot, as has been so elequently proven these past five weeks. They’re bouncing back from something infinitely worse than a lost pennant. They’ll easily be able to bounce back from a Mariners win.

Another note: All four remaining playoff teams have seven-letter hometown names (Seattle, New York, Arizona, Atlanta). And the NL finalists both start and end with the same name. Somebody who follows baseball superstitions might be able to come up with an intriguing comment on this coincidence. I can’t.

MARINERS EVEN THE DIVISION SERIES 2-2: And a glorious payback game it was indeed, with the Ms not getting to Cleveland until the seven inning but then slaying ’em. Game 5 now happens in Seatle Monday afternoon. I like our chances in it. Really.

The fear here is that the Best Regular Season Team Ever might turn out to be like the Shawn Kemp-era Sonics, a team that could overpower opponents one at a time but could be successfully scouted against in a long series.

Our boys had better clobber, or at least not get clobbered by, Cleveland the next couple of playoff games. We’ve gotta prove there can indeed be a decent baseball team out here in what NY/Calif. still mistakenly believes is The Sticks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exactly what this town needs.

(This article’s permanent link.)

BLOGGER, the page-generation service I’m using to update this site, has been working at less than optimal efficiency this night. Not only are Net connections swamped worldwide, but many Blogger users are, like me, trying to post many updates. I’ve still got my regular FTP access to the Speakeasy servers, and can use that as a backup means.

ARTS AND LETTERS DAILY bears the simple masthead statement: “JESUS WEPT.”

MORBID ASIDE #5: There’s no knowing when baseball games will resume, and whether all the games canceled would be rescheduled. It might be that once the Mariners clinch the AL West title (just two Seattle wins or Oakland losses away), the Major League Baseball honchos would simply let the canceled M’s games remain canceled. Thus, the team might not get to try for the all-time best regular season record in baseball history, which it was on a pace to break.

From the Seattle offices of ESPN.com, it’s the thrilling Photoshopped adventures of Ichiro-Man vs. Godzilla!

An entire site devoted to the history of 45 rpm record label design!

“Comics I Don’t Understand.”

Why do rock stars have to look so surly all the time?

The All-Star Game was a game that didn’t count in any standings, but was a nearly flawless example of what a great baseball game can be. Ichiro battled the Big Unit and won; Seattle pitchers got the win and the save; and fan-favorite Cal RIpken got the MVP trophy. All it lacked was 2001-Mariners style clutch hit-and-run play.

However, one piece of KCPQ’s postgame hype show struck me–the part where the pretty-girl and pretty-boy anchorbots lavished praise on the event as the civic-pride booster Seattle’s needed ever since WTO, Mardi Gras, and the bopping of a megaphone into the mayor’s forehead. Yeah, like anybody was expecting a riot at an exhibition game that charged hundreds for standing-room tix.

ELSEWHERE:

Great ’60s and ’70s View-Master disc covers.

A recent emigrant from here to there offers “An American’s Guide to Canada” (found by Pop Culture Junk Mail).

The aforementioned National Peanut Tour van, spotted at Myrtle Edwards Park on the Fourth, is now parked outside the Stadium Exhibition Center as part of the hoopla surrounding the All-Star Fan Fest. Also parked outside the Ex Center, and thus free of charge this weekend:

• Bud World, “The Ultimate Budweiser Experience.” You spend fifteen minutes watching a big-screen video about how wonderful Budweiser beer and the people who make it are; then you spend another fifteen minutes listening to a brewery representative talk about the beermaking process. At the end you get a credit-card style certificate naming you as an Official Beer Master. (All you get to drink there, however, is their new 180 energy drink, which tastes just like Coca-Cola’s old OK Soda.)
• The Jetsons Home Tour, sponsored by Century 21 Real Estate. Watch computer-animated visions of the Jetsons animated universe while a full-size Rosie the Robot doll tells you why you should buy George and Jane Jetson’s Sky City condo. Watch a “food replicator” create computer-animated cookies while cookie smells envelope the room (really a van).

As for the Fan Fest itself, it’s basically an exercise in letting area citizens imagine they’re a part of the All-Star Game experience, even though the game itself offerred only a few, mightily expensive, tickets on the local market.

The Fan Fest is a disappointing $15 extravaganza of baseball-card sales booths, apparel and merchandise sales, kids’ games, autograph line-ups, and sponsor-logo banners. The only really good parts are three historical displays: One on the Negro Leagues, one on 100 years of minor-league baseball, and one on Seattle baseball history. The latter, curated by local baseball historian extraordinaire Dave Eskanazi, is almost worth the price of admission alone.