MISC. HEREBY CALLS for a 12-month moratorium on Seattle artists (in all fields) from moving to New York or California. If you must get out of town, go somewhere where you can learn more about life or where you can help build another decentralist scene. I know things look relatively bleak for indie arts round here; many photogs, actors, writers, playwrights, and artisans are again becoming tempted by the old belief that their careers would immediately take off if they only got outta Seattle.

But this is one of those times when the needs of the larger society outweigh the individual career goal. And what the larger society needs, I still believe, is the building of decentralized production and distribution infrastructures for painting, photography, literature, drama, performance, music, even film and TV. At this point, it might not matter how “rebellious” a song or an image is–if it’s sold through the same old NY/ LA/ SF culture machine (even through the “alternative” departments of that machine), it’s still enforcing a top-down, producer-consumer mindset.

At one time, I thought the Seattle music scene would provide the fulcrum for breaking the machine. I underestimated the machine’s ability for self-defense. By using its hype mechanisms to redefine the Seattle threat into a single “sound” and “look” to be promoted to death then discarded, the machine was able to resume selling safe, manufactured “rebels” to demographically specified markets. Despite this, more indie bands are selling records now; but more still needs to be done, in music and other fields.

You might be thinking…

* “But what can li’l ol’ me do without an established market?” You can help build such a market. This region now has the population base and the income base. It has artists. It has art buyers (anybody who reads or watches or listens to or looks at or wears anything). It has pieces of a sales infrastructure, at least in some fields (galleries, boutiques, record labels). It needs a little more of that last connecting piece, that hard-to-describe level of identity consciousness that binds a community together instead of leaving isolated individuals to absorb prepackaged identities from outside.

* “Dammit Jim! I’m an artist, not a marketer.” Yes, you’re an artist. A communicator of ideas. Bringing those ideas to life involves a set of skills. Getting cash out of the products of those ideas involves a different, only partly-overlapping, set of skills. These skills can be learned; or they can be hired or bartered for.

* “But I’m killing my dreams if I don’t go for the Big Time.” No, you’re killling them if you make them subservient to the industry’s machinations.

* “But everything here just plain SUCKS.” Then start working together to make things suck a little less. It’ll be hard, but for most of you it won’t be harder than trying to survive among the thousands of identically “transgressive” art-hipster wannabes in Frisco and SoHo.

I’m not merely wishing for a bigger Northwest role in the corporate culture biz. (Certainly Nike and Microsoft are NW-born outfits playing the mainstream marketing game as heavily as anybody.) No, I’m calling for nothing less than the realignment of how Americans think and dream. I want an American theater that treats the nation as the nation, not as raw-material sources for Manhattan. I want more movies made here, not just location-shot. I want more (and more work for) local costumers and video artists and curators and set builders and comedians, all of whom would build their careers by drawing audience bucks away from the tentacles of Global Entertainment. (There’s a lot of big-entertainment products I like, but I still want strong competition to them.)

And, yes, I have my selfish reasons as well. I want a great urban, contempo thang to thrive right here in City Lite. It’s not that an indigenous regional culture isn’t developing here. It is, and I don’t like it. We’ve still got so much potential. I don’t want to settle for a Seattle whose artistic ambitions don’t go beyond glass bowls and latte jokes.

(`Should I stay or should I go?’ Discuss the question now by email to clark@speakeasy.org. Here are some recent responses:)

Sent: 7/24/97 5:32 PM
Received: 7/24/97 11:27 AM
From: (withheld by request)
To: clark@speakeasy.org

Read your column today, then bits and pieces of your website. Thanks for being the first person in this town to show any interest in whether I stay. Unfortunately, you’re alone, and that’s not enough.

I came to the great Northwest on a one-year contract, to teach theater at a local university. When that was up, I thought, “Hey! I’m in the heart of alternative-theater country!” (Or so my envious friends in L.A. told me.) “I think I’ll stay!”

So I volunteered for the legendary Alice B., a theater that had earned a mention in my 20th Century theater classes in California. I directed and dramaturged for one of its last performances, and watched the media and the community blame anyone but themselves for the theater’s demise. And I volunteered for Aha!, the grandmama of your Fringe, a few months ago, and watched the proceedings yet again.

Clark, I’m over 40, too, but I learned a few things off the playground, as well as on. One of them is that, if I can’t find work doing my art, then my art isn’t getting done. And I’ve got a limited lifespan to do it in. Unfortunately, I’m not “in” with the theatrical “in group,” so I can’t get work here. So I’m going where I can.

Lest you think these are the bitter grapes of a middle-aged wannabe, let me add that I have the credentials you want. I’ve directed over twenty productions and won alternative press “best play” awards. I founded a company that lasted for ten years doing all-original material in the midwest. I have an MFA, and I’m finishing my PhD. I headed a state-wide arts organization, overseeing marketing and administration. I’ve taught theater and published. I’m computer literate. And I can’t get an interview with any arts organization in this town.

OK, one interview, but they went with the “young, high-energy” candidate.

Clark, if you want me to stay, I gotta have something to do. I’ve given it three years, but I’m too old to wait any longer for Seattle to wake up to what it has. And I hope every artist, whatever their age, puts doing the work ahead of waiting for “the realignment of how Amercans think and dream.”

I’ll write when I find work.

–If you publish this in any way (even on your web site), please omit my name. I don’t want anyone to think this is a not-very-subtle effort to get a job.

———————–

Subject: Stay
Sent: 7/27/97 11:09 PM
Received: 7/27/97 9:21 PM
From: William Salyers, leoth@speakeasy.org
To: clark@speakeasy.org

Hello;

I am one of those Seattle based artists who is moving to Los Angeles in the very near future, and your recent column in The Stranger prompted me to reexamine and give voice to my reasons for so doing. I found your piece thought-provoking and wanted to share some of those thoughts.

I came here in what local writer/performer Charley McQuary refers to as “the Great Rush of ’89”; New Year’s Day of same, in fact. I was cast almost immediately at Renton Civic Theater in their production of “Sleuth”, and while in rehearsal was also cast in the Seattle Public’s production of “The Apollo Of Bellaq”. “Well, this is great, ” I thought naively, “I’ll be at that big ol’ Seattle Rep in no time…”

Of course, that was before I had heard this community’s vital distinction between “fringe” (or what I like to refer to as Greater Metropolitan Seattle Community Theater) and the “big houses”. That was before I had my last general audition for the Seattle Rep (about six years ago), marked in my memory by the distinction that Daniel Sullivan could not be troubled to raise his eyes from his table and actually LOOK at me (and I assure you, while not the world’s most impressive auditioner, I’m rarely so bad that one must look away, as from a particularly gruesome car wreck).

After the initial rude awakening about the Seattle theater scene and how I fit into it, I settled in to do some work at various smaller venues, much of which I’m extremely proud: “21A” at the Annex, “Strindberg: By and About”, “True West” and “Tuesday” at the AHA!, “Judith” at the Fringe Festival, and “Holy Days” for Dust Bowl Productions at Book-It Theatre. I got a terrific agent, Tish Lopez of the Actors Group, and started doing some occasional TV and film work: a couple of episodes of “Northern Exposure”, the first episode of the short-lived “Medicine Ball”, several industrial videos and even some decent roles in independent features, such as Jeff Probst’s “Trust Me” and Ted Sod’s “Crocodile Tears”, with the Stranger’s own Dan Savage. I even strayed across the “big house” stages once in a blue moon, like a supporting stint at Intiman in “Peter Pan”.

All the while, I held a DAY JOB, that evil, necessary staple of the independent Seattle artist. Some where OK, and some were soul-sucking hellish pits of despair… well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but only SLIGHT- some were pretty bad. That was great, for a while. I even thought it made me better somehow, that having to use so much of myself to even BEGIN doing my art was a sort of ascetic earnest money.

Now, as I see my own 30-year milepost receding further and further into the distance, and hear my wife, a few years older than myself, saying more and more often how much she would like to have a child, I think less about paying my dues and more about reaping my benefits. I cannot speak for other artists, but for myself, I never claimed that all I wanted was to act. I want to make my way as an actor, I want to feed and clothe my family and myself with the fruits of that labor. To that end, I have decided to relocate to a place of greater opportunity. Which brings me to your article.

In calling for your moratorium, you seem to hold New York and California (may I presume you are thinking mostly of LA?) in greatest disdain, as you suggest that if one must leave, it should at least be for a destination other than those. You advocate going somewhere “you can learn more about life”. Isn’t it presumptuous and simplistic to suggest that Austin or Chicago have something to teach, while New York and Los Angeles do not? I just returned from a week in Los Angeles, and I learned some invaluable lessons in just that short time. Perhaps life’s lessons are where one chooses to learn them.

You also make reference to artisans who are “tempted by the old belief that their careers would immediately take off” if only they leave Seattle. If people are leaving with that idea in mind, they are indeed deluding themselves. Nothing will assure that your career will immediately take off, no matter where you are. You can, however, assess a place based on the relative amount of opportunities there. I want to move to Los Angeles because there is more of everything there: more good, more bad, more people, more opportunities. I don’t expect that my career will immediately take off once there, but after eight years in Seattle, simple logic tells me that not much will change if I remain here. Incidentally, while in LA, I spoke with many people from here that have moved there, ranging in length of stay from as recent as a month to as long as several years. None of them, without exception, said that they regretted their move or were contemplating a return.

I must take greatest issue with your idea that by staying here we “serve the needs of the larger society” which “outweigh individual career goals”. It is possible, while definitely not certain, that by staying in Seattle an artist might serve the needs of the larger society of latte’ land, but what of society as a whole? Perhaps the needs of the larger society, outside of Seattle, would be better served by some of these artists relocating to a larger market and reaching a wider audience.

You go on to suggest that we have a civic duty to refrain from enforcing the “producer-consumer mindset”. While I might agree with you that the free market system is far less than ideal, it is the one on which this country is based, and as such, it’s kind of hard to avoid. Everything, art included, is supported (or not) by the producer-consumer mindset. Your column (the whole Stranger, for that matter) comes to me by virtue of the producer-consumer mindset. I would love to be a trust fund child, or win the lottery, or come into a grand inheritance, but I am from a rather more humble background and must sell either my art or some other commodity if I am to make my way. If I leave and try to make my living selling my art I am commodicizing it and myself, absolutely; but do I do this city any service by slogging into a theatre exhausted after a day of suit and tie drudgery to give the dregs of my energy to that which I love most? Or does that simply reinforce the misconception of the second-rate Seattle actor, thereby giving the Warner Shooks and Sharon Otts of this town more justifiable leeway to look elsewhere for talent?

I think the ideas put forth in your column promote a stereotype just as ultimately useless as that of the kid who gets off the bus in LA and becomes an overnight star by virtue of his/her good looks and plucky charm. It is the stereotype of the anonymous, hard-working local artist who through sheer persistence and quality causes an entire community to awaken to the inherit worth of him/her and those who share that passion. Not that I am discounting that stereotype out of hand; no, indeed. Like you, I am powerfully drawn to it. I have been keeping the faith and working hard for nearly a decade, but when faith no longer serves its purpose, it’s time to examine the possibility that it has become merely force of habit.

I’m not relocating to Los Angeles to seek my fame and fortune in the Big Time. I’m just going to find more opportunities. You don’t go to Ohio to drill for oil and you don’t stay in Seattle if you want to make your living as an actor. That is not to say that there aren’t wonderful actors here who I respect and admire. I will miss working with them (although LA is only two hours away by plane, so maybe I won’t). But those people are actor/waiters, or actor/baristas, or, like myself, actor/administrative assistants. I want to at least try my hand at being an actor/actor, so I’m afraid I must decline to join your moratorium.

Thanks for reading my reply. I’m not as comfortable with the written word as the spoken, so please forgive any awkwardness of style or composition that may have made this difficult to read.

Sincerely,
William Salyers

————————–

Sent: 7/28/97 8:52 AM
Received: 7/28/97 8:23 AM
From: WIGWATCH@aol.com
To: clark@speakeasy.org

dear clark,

how timely your article was for me, since ten days ago i decided to leave seattle to begin a new life in san francisco. i have closed the book on TRYING to be interested in seattle! i am an illustrator and fine artist, in my mid-thirties. after eight and 1/2 years of wading about, trying to find the pulse of this city, i’m through! for me, there is no pulse. i will head to san francisco, close to desperate, for an essential gasp of air.

the greatest barrier i have found in seattle relates to it’s peculiar “vibe”–i’ve tried to understand and transcend it, but have concluded that for some people this is impossible. i’ve found some interesting and lovely people here, but there is an overall lethargic and dull energy. this past winter i’ve gone to dance clubs more than once (kid mohair, moes) to find they had closed up for the night since no one had showed up. i can’t find interesting thirty-something people that want to get together and do interesting cultural events! this town seems to be made up of pierced twenty-somethings hanging out on broadway or emerging patagonia families breaking into sweat as they unload groceries from thier utility vehicles in wallingford. under all the piercings and fleece is a conservative town that refuses to open up or let it all hang out. it’s great to see people in seattle are finally dancing, it was hard to find ANY of that (save for a mosh pit and the re-bar) until a few years ago. i try to be productive and proactive in my life, and conscious of the choices i am making. i hate to complain, and i hate putting blame on things that i feel are within my power to change…after much concentrated effort to try and make seattle work for me, i realize that i simply don’t belong here. seattle, i have felt since the very beginning, has continuosly been trying to spit me out.

i initially came to this city and began to volunteer with Reflex magazine in hope of meeting artist types and aiding “our” community, but immediately received an unfriendliness, lack of appreciation for my efforts, & attitude up the whahooey. that was simply the beginning, i’ve found this to be the case ever since–from the music scene to the microsoft crowd.

attitude attitude attitude! and not much to back it up. why stay in such a cold, unextending, unstimulating environment? i feel no connection with seattle. my rent has just gone up to meet san francisco prices–i figure i may as well get my money’s worth, and put my life back in action. your plea perked my interest because it’s so unusual. i’ve often commented to friends that i’m surprised The Stranger doesn’t do an article on how disorganized and lacking the whole “scene” is here. there’s no focus, there’s no voice. it’s a void sporting a goatee (with a dab of latte foam)!! something i find really interesting is the resentment of people who are leaving. it seems so strange to feel this way about A PLACE, but ultimately it seems to boil down to this pretentious vibe. i’ve never come close to finding any sort of community. this makes it hard to feel any loyalty.

i realize i may sound like a bitter old spinster, and i apoligize for that, but my converse sneakers are about to burn some rubber as i head south where there appears to be life. thanks for your concern and effort, i hope seattle makes a breakthrough! The Stranger magazine has been, by far, the best thing about my seattle experience–the closest thing to making me feel connected.

i would prefer to remain anonymous. thanks.

ASIDE FROM THE CURRENT whereabouts of conceptual artist and convicted non-terrorist Jason Sprinkle (he’s out of jail and apparently doing OK), the most-asked question these days to Misc. World HQ (www.miscmedia.com) is “What’s gonna happen to the Cinerama?” Cineplex Odeon currently continues to operate Belltown’s early-’60s-vintage film box on a month-to-month basis. Independent parties are said to be attempting to buy the place, desiring to turn it into a not-yet-officially-announced entertainment concept, probably involving film screenings of some sort. If their quest succeeds, you’re sure to hear about it.

Next, let’s figure out a future for the ex-Cineplex Newmark Cinemas. I know there’s something of a surplus of performance spaces in town right now, but a five-theater fringe/ music/ dance/ whatever cavalcade would be the perfect contempo complement to the new symphony hall going up nearby.

UP IN SMOKE: Was listening to CNN’s live press-conference coverage about the potential ban on U.S. cigarette billboards while reading the 6/19 Stranger with the Kamel ad right up next to a Queer Issue article entitled “Nobody’s Billboard.” Sure, I’ll miss the cigarette billboards and the lovely defacements placed thereupon by enterprising protestors (as reported in these pages a couple weeks back). But I’m also a little worried. (I could say “a tad worried,” but I’ve been in the Seattle music scene to long to think of “a tad” as something small.) Without dumb ads in store windows and along strip-mall highways promoting smoking as a blasé, corporate-engendered, mainstream-American habit, how are we gonna convince the kids how uncool it is? (The cig brands in current favor among Broadway’s smoking vegans include some of the least heavily advertised, such as that indie brand falsely believed by many buyers to be made by Native Americans.) Indeed, with all the curtailments on cig ads in places where kids might be able to see ’em, we might be in for even more intense smoking-is-cool marketing pushes inside 21-‘n’-over joints.

TALKED OUT: The least talked-about ramification of the Second Seattle TV Network Switch is the sudden fallout of that early-’90s broadcast staple, the daytime “reality” talk show. Former KIRO and KSTW daytime attractions Maury Povich, Ricki Lake, Geraldo Rivera, Jenny Jones, and Crook & Chase have been shunted into the wee hours or onto UHF indie KTZZ. It’s not the genre’s end, but it could signal the beginning of the end. If the format does disappear, I wouldn’t worry about the fate of all those potential guests who’d no longer get to share their traumas and family secrets with the world. I would, however, feel sorry for all the op-ed columnists, sociology profs, and Republican politicians who’ve dissed the chat shows as proof of the inexorable decline of American mores. (These critics never seemed to find anything disturbing about the existence of incest, abuse, fraud, poor parenting, etc.; just about the public revelations of same.) Speaking of alleged attacks on allegedly traditional values…

MY-CUP-RUNNETH-OVER DEPT.: The religious-kitsch camp collecting fad has been bubbling under the radar of media attention for a few years. It’s now gone above ground with the opening of Coffee Messiah (neon window-sign slogan: “Caffeine Saves”), the latest espresso concept on Capitol Hill’s E. Olive Way. The joint looks terrific, with more cool prayer candles and crucifixes and Mary statues and religious paintings than you’d ever find in any Italian-American grandma’s house. So what if some might call it sacreligious. I see it more as sincerely celebrating the human expressions of faith and devotion, neither insistant nor perjorative about the ideological content of any particular belief. It’s like a small-business version of the Unity Church: all the reassuring ritual and artistry of worship, without any potentially troublesome theology.

If you really wanna see some urban hipsters belittling a popular object of solemn worship for the sake of cheap laffs and shock value, go enter the Mystic Sons of Morris Graves’ raffle for the chance to “Shatter a Genuine Chihuly!” (The glass-bustin’ event’s gonna be Thursday, Aug. 7 at the Lava Lounge, where $1 entry tix are now being sold; proceeds benefit the Northwest Fine Art Search and Rescue Team.)

WHAT I DID ON MY WINTER VACATION: Having already given my annual why-I-love-snow-in-Seattle speech in this space, I won’t tell you how thrilled and elated I was by the Boxing Day Blizzard. Instead, I’ll relate some other things I did for fun that day and on the other days surrounding the recent calendar change.

* Pondered that Times headline celebrating the planned Boeing/ McDonnell-Douglas merger for its promise to create a “Goliath of the Sky.” The metaphor just doesn’t sound like something all that airworthy.

* Visited the new Value Village. And a gorgeous palace of pre-owned merchandise it is, indeed. Found nine old LP records I had to get. Unfortunately, three of them contained different records than were advertised on the sleeves. So instead of naughty “party songs” from the early ’60s I instead now own three volumes of ’40s country classics–still great stuff.

* Ordered an evening of Spice Pay-Per-View. Before I did, I believed the only people who ought to suffer through the stifling formulae and monumentally awful production values of hetero hard-porn videos were straight men who needed to see other men’s genitalia in action–and that, therefore, the Spice channel (which shows those videos with all the phallic shots edited out) had no earthly (or earthy) purpose. But after a couple hours of ugly silicone implants, ritualized acrobatics, and laughable “tuff” facial expressions, I caught on to the mood of the thing.

All formula fiction offers “adventure” to its characters and predictability to its audience. Hard-porn is no different. Its strictly-followed rites of banality envelop the viewer in a fantasy universe of cheap surroundings, harsh lighting, crude emotions, unspoken-yet-universally-observed rules of behavior, no thinking, no spirituality, and no love. Sorta like old Cold War-era propaganda stories about life behind the Iron Curtain, but with fancier lingirie. It still turns me off, but I now understand how it could turn on guys who’ve never gotten over adolescent sex-guilt.

* Tried Sanpellegrino Bitter. It’s an import soft drink in an utterly cute 3-oz. bottle. Probably intended as a drink mixer, it tastes remarkably like a liquid version of Red Hots candies. Tasty and startling. (At Louie’s On the Pike, in the Market.)

* Read Downsize This! by Michael Moore. While I’m not always keen on some of his gags, Mr. TV Nation has his heart in the right (or Left) place. More importantly, Moore’s got one Great Idea, which he talked a lot about in his local promo appearances but barely mentions in the book–the idea that left-wing politics oughta be primarily concerned not with Counterculture separatism or theoretical pontification but with improving the lot of the non-upscale. A third of a century after the New Left declared working-class people to be its enemy, it’s refreshing yet sadly shocking to read Moore’s gentle corrective–that if us college-town “progressives” don’t work for civic and economic justice, it doesn’t really matter how well we can deconstruct texts.

* Was amused by the NYC media’s proclamation of “The Evita Look” (apparently just the thing for the millionaire “woman of the people” in your family). Weeks before the film opened, Bloomingdale’s put up an Evita boutique, near its already-established Rent boutique (selling what the NY Times’ Frank Rich calls “fashions inspired by the transvestites, junkies, and AIDS patients of the Broadway hit”).

Movie- and play-inspired fashion trends aren’t new (I’m personally waiting for the Annie Hall look to come back), but seldom before have adult-size, non-Halloween fashions been sold as officially-licensed movie merchandise (T-shirts and Starfleet uniforms excepted). While the Evita costumes are at least inspired by a past golden age of couture, a question lingers: If we’re supposed to now look to a military strongman’s wife as a role model, when will we see the official Imelda Marcosreg. shoe line?

* Intercepted the following note in a tavern men’s room, apparently left by a local music-biz bigwig: “I like TicketMaster when it makes my band money.”

MISC. WAS PLEASANTLY SURPRISED at the announcement that Diahann Carroll would star in the touring version of the Sunset Boulevard musical, coming soon to Vancouver. We’d previously written that “race-blind casting” traditionally means all the starring roles in big commercial theatricals go to white folks. So we’re happy to note an exception (even if it’s an exception that proves the rule).

SINGIN’ THE BREWS: If you remember when Bud Dry was hawked as “The Alternative Beer,” get ready for another contender to that dubious title. New management at Maxwell’s, that longtime rock club inside a former Hoboken, NJ coffee factory (on what that PBS Baseball miniseries claimed was the first site where baseball as we know it was played), has installed a brewpub on the premises, with its own “Alternative Brew” and “Percussion Ale.” If market conditions seem plausible (right now the business press claims there’s an impending microbrew glut), they might get sold at other outlets, perhaps even out here.

LIVING OFF THE LAND: Eat the State!: A Forum for Anti-Authoritarian Political Opinion, Research, and Humor is an often-clever li’l four-page lefty newsletter. So far it’s been consistently witty and has had a good mix of local and national topics, though it leans a bit too heavy for my taste on the side of self-righteous ranting, too lightly on organizing and solution-seeking. I also have troubles with the name. At a time when even pork-barrel senators now purport to oppose “Big Government,” that ol’ punk-anarchist concept of “The State” seems almost like nostalgia for yesterday’s problems. The old nation-states are indeed being eaten, but it’s Global Business that’s doing the digesting. (Free weekly at the usual dropoff points; online at speech.csun.edu/ben/news/ets/; or $24/year from P.O. Box 85541, Seattle 98145.) Speaking of social theorizin’…

YOU’RE SO VEIN: I also have problems with the political piece in issue #2 of the regional visual-art journal Aorta, relating the Clinton/Dole rivalry to “The Twilight of The Patriarchy.” For nearly a quarter-century now, the leftist labeling of mainstream American society as “The Patriarchy” has utterly failed to recognize the significant contributions individual women have made in service to reactionary politics and social stagnation. After all, if women are capable of doing anything, they’re certainly capable of doing things you or I might not approve of. A writer living in the state of Craswell and Dixy Lee Ray oughta know this. Still speaking of social theorizin’…

GRIN AND BARE IT: As instigator of the cable-access show Political Playhouse, Philip Craft was a master provocateur, attracting the wrath of bluenoses like Sen. Gorton for his on-camera nudity and protest-comedy skits. Toward the end of his show’s two-year run, Craft had begun to move beyond simple protesting and had started to articulate a vision of his ideal alternative society based on practical anarchism. Unfortunately, his new self-published book The Fool on the Hill doesn’t spell out that vision, beyond calling for political power to be recentered onto the county level (an idea similar to ones expressed by the militia cults). Instead, he offers an autobiographical tale about cheating on his wife, taking lotsa drugs, getting investigated by the Feds for advocating some of those drugs on his show, taking on paranoid delusions, and hiding out in the woods. It’s a long way from Craft’s introductory claim that it’s “a paranoid comedy that will forever change the way you view the world… that conspires to bring down the political, economic, and religious institutions that enslave us today.” Rather, it’s a downbeat story of personal loss and confusion, imbued with a sense of vulnerability and humility unseen in Craft’s TV work. (Pay-what-you-can from P.O. Box 17320, Seattle 98107.)

WHAT I’LL MISS ABOUT ERNST HARDWARE: The clashing aromas of freshly-cut flowers and freshly-cut lumber. The annual Show Me How Fair in the old Coliseum. The Sonics “In The Paint” promotion. The slogan, “We’ve got a warehouse too; we just don’t make you shop in it.” And, of course, The Fellow In Yellow.

DUNNO ‘BOUT YOU, but MISC. is a bit leery about this week’s touring performances of The Wizard of Oz on Ice. When the witch melts, do they freeze over her remains before they resume skating? If they don’t, how do they finish the show?

UPDATE: Wallingford’s Fabulous Food Giant has indeed been taken over by QFC, but the only visible change so far is on the employee name tags. The signs, labels, bags, and product mix won’t change until the building’s remodeled and expanded in January. The big FOOD GIANT neon sign will then be replaced by an as-identical-as-feasible sign to read WALLINGFORD, if QFC can get the legal OK to exceed modern sign codes… Just a block away, an ex-Arco mini-mart has switched franchisors and now pumps Shell gas. Those who’ve wanted to protest Shell’s ties to the Nigerian dictatorship now have a place in Seattle to not get gas at. (The store’s independently owned, so you can still get your Hostess Sno-Balls there.)

SUDS ON THE SOUND: If the WALLINGFORD sign gets built, it’ll add to the parallels between Seattle and All My Children. We already have two businesses deliberately named after fictional businesses on the soap (Glamorama and Cortland Computer), plus institutions coincidentally sharing names with AMC characters (Chandler’s Cove restaurant, the band TAD). As longtime viewers know, when AMC dumps a character without killing them, they often get shipped to Seattle. A book by Dan Wakefield about the show’s early years had a passage noticing this and explaining how Seattle, with its nice-n’-civil rep, was the perfect place to send ex-Pine Valleyans. He didn’t add how Seattle, like Pine Valley, is sometimes referred to as a quiet little town but is filling up with morally-ambivalent entrepreneurs and weird criminals, while its old-money institutions remain in a few incestuous hands. If a soap had a family with as many political and media tie-ins as our ’80s Royer-James family, it’d be called a hokey plot device. Certainly the three new books about KING-TV reveal founder Dorothy Bullitt as a matriarch just as lively and outspoken as AMC crone Phoebe Wallingford (if less snooty).

WAVES: Broadcast demagogue Mike Siegel, fired from KVI for refusing to let trifles like the facts get in the way of his bullying, resurfaced a couple months back on Everett station KRKO, once the Top 40 station I grew up to. Back then, its slogan was “The Happiest Sound Around.” It could now be called “The Angriest Sound Around,” but instead is using the rubric “Talk Too Hot for Seattle.” I could say “they can have him,” but that would be not caring… KVI’s sister station KOMO-AM, longtime bastion of Ike-esque literate civility, now hawks its news-talk format with TV spots looking like KNDD rejects. Rave-flyer color splotches and snowboard-logo bleeding type exhort listeners to “Get Connected” and “Go Global.” It’s like seeing a golden-years relative suddenly sporting sideburns and driving a Miata; scary yet poignantly sad.

THERE GO THE BRIDES: In an economy move few years back, the Seattle Times stopped running free wedding pictures on Sundays, moving them to a once-a-month section in the lower-circulation weekday paper. That section, The Registry, will appear for the last time next month; to make the last installment, your ceremony has to be before Dec. 1. Because the section had a one- to two-month backlog, readers could amuse themselves by guessing which of the happy couples had already split up. After Dec. 2, if you want your nuptials remembered on newsprint, you’ll have to buy an ad.

SQUARE, INDEED: The demographic cleansing of Seattle continues with the Sam Israel estate’s plans to tear down the building now known as the Pioneer Square Theater (now we know why they refused to bring it up to code) for offices and the conversion of several other Pio. Square structures into “market rate” (read: only upscale boomers need apply) housing. The boomer-centric local media just adore the scheme, of course; just like they adored the Israels’ previously-announced plans to evict Fantasy (un)Ltd. for yet another blandly “unique” retail complex. It’d be funny if it weren’t so depressingly familiar.

I spent three days in Reno last week because there’s a hotel price war going on, that finally led to the ultimate discount–free. The Circus Circus hotel-casino (the one that used to sponsor a boat at the Seafair hydroplane races) has been giving away free nights online, at www.cybernetwork.net/c/circus/.

I hadn’t been to Reno since I was 12. Unlike other revisited childhood-memory sites, Reno is just as overwhelming now as it was then. The big hotel-casinos have gotten bigger, building huge hotel towers and parking garages. The Circus Circus is one of three casinos interconnected by skybridges to form a continuous quarter-mile-long space of slots, card games, and buffets.

But gambling profits in northern Nevada have stayed flat (as they’ve been, minus inflation, since 1970). The big new casinos have merely drawn business from independents (even the legendary Harold’s Club is now a deserted storefront); cheap hotel rates have merely drawn business from motels (which have compensated by renting at weekly rates to underclass families arriving in search of casino jobs).

Indeed, walk too far from the high-rises and you’re smack in a typical depressed inland-west town (there’s even a Spokane Street), with white and Mexican street kids boasting of their machoness, seedy bars where no microbrew has ever touched a tap, trailer parks, used-car lots that don’t bother to mop up the fluids leaking from the cars onto the concrete, and privately owned all-nite liquor stores.

Despite its problems, Reno remains a great destination with rich heritage. It was once the gambling capital of North America, before Vegas shot ahead in the ’50s. More recently, Vegas has reacted to the nationwide gambling explosion by turning itself into a collection of family theme parks, just as a new generation has become fascinated by the sinfully swingin’ culture Vegas used to symbolize. Reno’s still got that culture (or much of it).

What’s more, Vegas is a thoroughly suburbanized experience, with self-contained resorts strewn down an airport highway. Reno, in contrast, is an urban experience; 16 of its 25 major casinos (and six smaller storefront casinos) are on or near a real main street. It’s a place for strolling and watching the passing parade of giddy young honeymooners, world-weary middle-aged men in vintage suits, and troupes of exuberant senior ladies bussed in from across the west.

If Vegas is now a city for families, Reno is a city for women, specifically older women. At any given time, any given row of slot machines will be dominated by over-60 ladies emulating the grandmother in Dostoevsky’s The Gambler, gleefully losing her fortune at the roulette tables while her descendents impatiently wait for her to die.

As a city for women, Reno has nothing like the sex industry of Vegas (or even of Seattle). Porn shops are zoned far from the casino district. Strip clubs are few and small. The town’s only casino skin show (Playboy’s Ecstasy, produced by Seattle’s Greg Thompson Productions) gives almost as much emphasis to bare-butted men as to bare-breasted women.

There’s one island of unabashed masculinity in Reno–the sports-wagering area at the Cal-Neva, the biggest surviving non-hotel casino. Brown rec-room paneling. Thirty-six TVs, showing every available live game or horse race. Heinekin bottles for $1.25. Guys of all races (but only one waist measurement–XXL) arguing passionately about the baseball playoffs (“Good pitching ALWAYS beats good hitting!” “BULL-shit!”), but all agreeing the Ms would’ve won it all had Randy Johnson been healthy.

Proud yet unpretentious, loud yet inviting, the Cal-Neva (along with other indie casinos like the Nevada Club and the Original Nugget) is an honest goodtime place and a perfect Cocktail Nation destination. This, not hotel high-rises with marble shower walls, could bring the neo-hipsters and the young adults. They’d come for the old-time American sin and return for the skiing and the National Bowling Stadium. If Reno can reach out to a new generation by building on the best of what it still has, it could thrive again.

ONLINE EXTRAS

* Southwest Airlines is in many ways the Stranger of passenger air carriers. It goes out of its way to extol an attitude of fun and informal cameraderie, while actually scrambling hard and thinking cleverly to keep costs down and revenues up. Sitting in a crammed 737 without the sedating schticks used by the rest of the industry (headphones, movies, meals, warm interior colors) can be an ordeal. To Reno, it’s at least a relatively brief ordeal (95 mins.).

* My hotel room had a posted rate of $175/night. If I’d paid for it I’d feel cheated. No HBO (just a few dumb pay-per-view hits), no complimentary morning paper, no in-room coffeemaker, almost no room service (just continental breakfast in the morning, pizza and Cokes at night). The place doesn’t even have a swimming pool. You’re expected to use your room strictly for sleeping, bathing, and fucking, and to spend most of your time feeding cash to the slots and the card tables.

* To give an idea of the town’s one-industry status, there are almost 28,000 hotel and motel rooms in the Reno area, one for every nine residents. The only important non-tourism employers are the state university and the state capital (the latter in nearby Carson City). Any dip in tourism revenues wreaks havoc on local tax proceeds, further tattering social services.

* One problem affecting the tourism industry there is that the big operators have deliberately underbuilt non-gambling attractions. They haven’t even tried to attract conventions, believing conventioneers to be lesser gambling prospects. So there’s not much for families with kids (except the Circus Circus’s midway games and acrobat acts, the still-running Bonanza theme park, and a couple of ghost towns). Only one of the casinos has even a small shopping arcade; to buy most stuff, ya gotta go out to the mall.

* Tourist souvenirs, though, are happily available at many sites. (There’s even still a Woolworth’s in Reno!) This means you can get your boyfriend (or girlfriend) an “I Ate at Mustang Ranch” sweatshirt without visiting the legal brothel, situated in the forlorn hills across the county line.

* The aforementioned Playboy’s Ecstasy revue is just the kind of unabashed bad-taste experience a tourist could hope for. Male and female singers gave appropriately dumb, “high energy” renditions of Billy Joel’s lamest hits. A male magician told dumb phallic jokes while blowing up balloons (though his trained cockatoo was cool). The three boy dancers and five girl dancers were predictably frenetic and largely unerotic, through at least four changes of mini-costume. The set design looked “industrial” in an MTV/Eurodisco sort of way. The waiting area outside Harrah’s intimate 500-seat showroom featured a wall of Sammy Davis Jr. memorabilia.

* The rest of Reno’s live entertainment is disappointing at best. That plague of neo-easy-listening tripe sometimes known as “Young Country” has taken over most of the showrooms, except for the ones hosting Madonna or Motown impersonators or surviving ’50s crooners.

* My final status: $18 ahead.

(My sources include the Reno Gazette-Journal and the Utah-based magazine Edging West.)

UPDATE: Looks like the fabulously unkempt Lake Union Pub has indeed hosted its last punk gigs (as well as its last straight-edge-vs.-skinhead brawls and its last vomit launch on the carpet). The Off Ramp, on the other stamped hand, may reopen any week now. New owners promise “a new tile floor to wipe you off easy” and “bathrooms that won’t make you puke.”

DON’T MEX WITH ME: Ah, for the good ol’ days when a burrito was a burrito, before the invasion of Cal-Mex trendy concepts so darned “Cal” they drop all references to the “Mex.” On lower Queen Anne alone, you can now dine on World Wrapps, Global Wraps(at Macheezmo Mouse), or Todo Wraps (the new name for selected outlets of the Todo Loco chain). A conspiracy theorist (which I’m not) might even ponder whether the new Anglicized appellation constituted some sort of capitulation to election-year hate campaigns against Hispanic immigration.

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: The smashing success of Altoids has caused a curiously strong surge of imitation tinned mints, a trend that’s finally reached to Tacoma. There, Brown & Haley (“…Makes ‘Em Daily!”), famous for Almond Roca and Mountain Bars, has brought out its own brand of “Extra Strength Peppermints” in its own reusable tin. They’ve got a far smoother texture than Altoids. And, unlike the originals, they contain no sugar (or beef gelatin). And the tin is just as reuseable as the Altoids tin–good for sewing notions, keys, loose change, snuff, that Visa card you’ve promised to only use in case of emergency, or your first lover’s saved toenail clippings.

CARD ME: A recent Times story says those oh-so-collectible prepaid long-distance cards, which have a face value of $5 or $10 but can rate as much as $10,000 from foolish speculators, can be twice as valuable if they’ve never been used. This is taking the ol’ “mint condition” fetish to the point of ridiculousness. The card is physically unaltered by use; all it does is bear the number of a credit account at a phone company.

FOR (ST.) PETE’S SAKE: While Seattle’s politicians (and the businessmen who own them) keep insisting the next out-of-state chain-store branch will put downtown on the proverbial map, Seattle-mania continues; now spread as far as Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fla. (whose only prior interest in Seattle was trying to take away the Mariners). The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center recently mounted a play called Nirvanov, described by author David Lee as “Chekov’s Ivanov as seen through the eyes of Kurt Cobain and Frances Farmer.” As a local viewer reports via email, “Kurt angsts while Frances lurks around stage right in a black tail coat and offers advice and commentary. There is a chorus of Seattle Grunge Vampires, a fantastic Courtney imitation, several Nirvana songs recorded by a local band, and a live bat flitting around the theater (I never figured out if it was part of the show or had just wandered in).”

NO, THE CODE: The incredible shrinking 206 area code covered all of western Washington a few years ago. Next April, if US West and GTE get their way from government regulators, only Seattle, a couple of suburbs (Shoreline, White Center) and a handful of islands (Bainbridge, Vashon, Mercer) will be in 206 anymore. Tacoma and south King County will be called with the new 253 code; Everett and the Eastside will turn into 425 country.

The meanings are endless: Eastern Washington anti-sprawl bumper stickers, which now read “Don’t 206 509,” will have to be changed to “Don’t 425 509.” EastsideWeek editor Knute Berger will get a psychological boost to his only-half-exaggerated crusade for an “Independent Republic of the Eastside.” And, of course, both KVI’s hatemongers and our own scenester snobs will delight in the official declaration of Seattle to be its own territory, cut off from the realities of life in the outside world. Me? I’ll just be happy to have further proof that if a business, store, or arena isn’t in Seattle, it isn’t in Seattle. Circuit City? Incredible Universe? Ikea? Microsoft recruiting? Stop running downtown Seattle skyline photos in your ads! You’re not even in the same area code as Seattle!

HANK-ERING: Misc. received an anonymous letter from somebody complaining about a recent ish of No Depression, the “alternative country” zine co-run by Rocket vet Peter Blackstock. The letter-writer felt outraged at the cover image of the late Hank Williams Sr. posing alongside two white Negro-dialect impersonators. I highly doubt Blackstock intended to endorse the show’s crude ethnic humor. Rather, I’m sure he intended to explore Williams’ work and its historical context–like the Robt. Christgau Village Voice piece last month claiming Williams took his vocal shtick from NY performer Emmett Miller, who sang in blackface from the ’20s thru the ’40s.

CLUB IMPLOSION, CONT’D.: The Weathered Wall, for four years Seattle’s poshest (in a friendly way) live-and-recorded-music club (and the only local club to use a blown-up photocopy of an old Misc. column as a wall poster), shut its doors in mid-June. It’s been used since then as a location for a made-for-TV movie. Various interests are looking into getting it sold and/ or re-opened, but there’s nothing to announce now. Meanwhile, the Pioneer Square Theater has hosted its last all-ages gig. Promoters tried to raise prices after fire marshals halved the building’s legal capacity; but that put the concerts out of range of much of the underage crowd. Reportedly the marshals offered a list of improvements that had to be made before full capacity could be re-granted; but the space’s landlord balked at the expense. (If I were a conspiracy theorist, which I’m not, I’d wonder why the marshals didn’t go after the building back when it housed non-punk music and plays.)

And the Lake Union Pub, home to some of Seattle’s punkiest shows (and to some of the Liquor Board’s heaviest enforcement details), just had another 10-day closure, amid rumors the joint would be sold and turned into a sports bar. If it happens, the closure would mean three of the four alt-music clubs on the Commons Committee’s ’94 map of blocks it wanted to condo-ize would be dead (leaving only Re-bar). On the upside, the Pub’s quasi-neighbor, the Store Room Tavern, has been booking bands again; while the Seattle Parks Department (!) has co-promoted Wednesday night touring-punk bands at the Miller Community Center on east Capitol Hill.

THE BIG TURN-OFF: The Sonics’ recent successes reminded me how one of the joys of televised sports has always been the excuse to loiter among a department store’s TV displays, sharing the moments of triumph/ despair with instant friends without having to buy (or drink) anything. But that’s another of those disappearing urban pleasures. The Bon Marche’s new management, having disposed of the Budget Floor, the Cascade Room restaurant, and the downtown pharmacy, is now closing the electronics departments. Besides leaving Radio Shack (and pawn shops) as the only source for home electronics in the central downtown, the loss (effective August) leaves but a few public TV walls in the greater urban core (Sears, Fred Meyer, Video Only). At least we might see no more dorky Bon cell-phone ads (we love ya Keister, but keep your night job).

The changes show how the Bon, once powerful enough to rise above retail’s sea changes (documented in an ’80s P-I headline, “Bon Marches to Different Drum”), now bumps along in the tides like the rest of the industry. Further proof: the parent company’s apparent threat (still officially denied) to consolidate the chain with another of its holdings, Macy’s California, and planned cuts in commission pay which might lead to a clerks’ strike this month. Still, for now, the Bon remains the store “Where All Seattle Shops,” from dowagers hanging out in the women’s rooms to brides seeking just the right bread machine. It’s also the city’s crossroads point, having struck a deal in the ’20s to make its 3rd Ave. side one of the town’s biggest bus stops. While the downtown store’s merchandise mix is now based on strategies devised for mall branches, it’s still the first place to go for lots of stuff, sold in a respectful, relatively unpretentious manner. Would hate to see it deteriorate into just another store.

UPDATE: The Portland paper Willamette Week sez that town’s “Church of Kurt Cobain” was just a fraudulant publicity stunt. As opposed to the real publicity stunt we thought it was.

SONICS POSTMORTEM: No matter what happens to the team in future years, we’ll always have Games Four and Five to savor. For four glorious days, the whole city (save a few droller-than-thou alternative conformists) believed. Imagine–a team of great players could beat a team of spokesmodels! Like the Seattle music scene (to which the Sonics have consistently made closer overtures than any other local sports team), the Sonic victories celebrated talent, diligence, and cooperation instead of celebrity, arrogance, and corporate hype. How appropriate that it happen two weeks before the opening of Planet Hollywood, that chain restaurant expressly devoted to corporate celebrity hype, and which staged a PR stunt with professional hypemeister Cindy Crawford telling us if we were smart we’d root against our own team. Can you say, “Not quite the way to make new friends for your business”? Speaking of athletes striving for respect…

THE DEAD POOL: At its Olympics debut in ’84, synchronized swimming was often derided as a summer-games answer to ice dancing, less a sport than an excuse to show half-dressed women. Since then, the sport’s tried to shake that image and earn respect. In the biggest effort yet, the French national team crafted a routine inspired by the Nazi Holocaust. The choreographed playlet premiered at the European Cup finals in May and was planned for the Atlanta Olympics. To Schindler’s List soundtrack music, swimmers goose-stepped into the pool, then switched identities to impersonate women victims being taken to the ovens. But in early June, the country’s sports ministry ordered the team to drop all Holocaust allusions from the routine. Time quoted a dismayed team official, “The program was created to denounce not only the Holocaust in particular, but all forms of racism and intolerance that we see rising.” I say the routine’s well within postmodern performance art, and should be allowed; especially with the ex-Olympic city of Sarajevo only starting to rebuild from a half-decade of attempted genocide. Speaking of dances with a message…

BYE BYE BRAZIL: We’ve past reported on the ever-reaching tentacles of global corporate entertainment, even while American fans increasingly search for untainted pockets of “world beat” and other ethnic arts to bring home. Now, I must sadly report Mickey Mouse’s planned debut at next February’s Rio Carnaval parade. Samba school Academicos da Rocinha will get to use giant models of the Disney characters to celebrate 25 years of the Disney World theme park–as long as the parade’s 2,000-or-so women dancers all keep their tops on. “That was my first condition and thank goodness they agreed,” a Disney marketing official told Variety. In the same article, troupe president Izamilton Goes dismissed suggestions the cover-up would detract from the spectacle: “Inside all of us there remains something of a child and we all loved Disney.”

It’s not that Carnaval would be “cheapened” by Disneyfication. It’s been kitsch for decades. But it’s been its own indigenous brand of kitsch. It incorporates sex not as seamy exploitation but as joyous celebration. The dancers are often poor women who sew their own sequined costumes and arrange their own choreography, who bare their bodies proudly to an audience of men, children, and other women. They enjoy being admired as carnal beings after a year stuck in the wife-mother-laborer roles the Disney people are more comfortable with. Anyhow, the other 18 or so samba schools aren’t bound by Disney’s dictates. And the TV network that largely subsidizes the parades wanted to ban nudity a few years ago, hoping to increase foreign TV-video sales, but the samba schools said no. Speaking of broadcast empires…

BEHIND THE SCREEN: MSNBC, the forthcoming Microsoft-NBC cable news channel we won’t get to see for some months after its July launch, is now going to build new studios in New Jersey (with state-government aid), scuttling earlier plans to share space with NBC’s existing CNBC. Darn. CNBC could use some news people in its building, or at least somebody who could tell the channel’s talk-show hosts the O.J. Simpson trial is over.

Welcome back to a foolishness-free April Misc., the column that finds amusement anywhere it can, like in that brand new post-Broadway theater in Vancouver. Only a bunch of Canadians (or others with similar ignorance of basic U.S. history facts) would call a place the Ford Theatre. So when are they gonna mount a production of Our American Cousin?

PHILM PHUN: Toast With the Gods, the indie feature by Eric MaGun and Latino Pellegrini based loosely on The Odyssey and shot here gawd-was-it-really-almost-two-years-ago?, is finally finished and premiered late last month at the New York Underground Film Festival. When will we get to see it? No word yet. Speaking of undergrounds…

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Blackstockings (“For Women In the Biz”) is a small, low-key, personal newsletter aiming to raise solidarity and class-consciousness among “sex industry workers” (strippers, peep-show dancers, phone-sex callees, video models, escorts, even streetwalkers). Similar zines in other towns are run by politically-minded committees. This one’s run by one woman, a freelance stripper using the name “Morgan;” she and her contributing writers present themselves neither as society’s lurid victims nor as daring counterculture adventurers, but simply as ordinary folks doing work that’s like any work–occasionally invigorating, more often dreary. While the first issue focuses on sex workers’ personal lives (“Who’s a good dentist that doesn’t discriminate against us?”), political and legal issues inevitably appear. One item alleges that in the days before the Kingdome Home Show, police staged a sweep of street people and prostitutes in Pioneer Square–“For the women who they could not legally arrest, they poked holes in the condoms the women were carrying.” Available at Toys in Babeland or by leaving a message at 609-8201. Speaking of realities behind “glamour” businesses…

THE BIG TURN-OFF: As predicted here, the Telecommunications “Reform” Act promptly fed a massive drive to consolidate broadcasting into fewer and fewer hands. Thanks to rules enacted in the name of “greater competition,” speculators are amassing up to eight radio stations in a town. The owners of KMPS bought the biggest rival country stations, KRPM and KCIN, so they could change the stations’ formats and reduce KMPS’s competition. (KMPS’s owners also bought Seattle’s other country station, KYCW.) Viacom sold KNDD to the Philly-based Entertainment Communications, which already owns KMTT (both are already situated in the Can of Spam Building on Howell St.). No word on whether another Viacom unit, MTV, will still help devise KNDD’s ads, graphics, and web site. If all the currently-planned local radio deals go through, the Seattle Times estimates six companies will control 77 percent of the region’s listening audience. Speaking of media choices…

LIST-LESS: The Times’ highly-promoted new Sunday TV section debuted March 17 with 19 previously unlisted cable channels. But one channel was dropped from the 35 in the paper’s previous lineup–Public Access. According to spokesbot Pat Foote, Timeseditors deemed the access channel too marginal and too Seattle-specific for inclusion, even though they included several tertiary movie channels seen only on scattered suburban systems. However, an unspecified number of complaining phone calls persuaded ’em to reconsider. Access listings are back in the Times (the only print outlet they’ve ever been in) this week. Speaking of mis(sed) prints…

POT-CALLING-THE-KETTLE-BLACK DEPT.: Kudos to my fave computer user group, Mac dBUG (Macintosh Downtown Business Users Group), on its 10th anniversary. Its current newsletter (available free at the U Book Store computer dept.) has a cute word-O-warning, “Speaking of Spell-Checking,” reminding desktop publishers that even the best computer spell-check programs can’t catch real words in the wrong places. As examples, it used fractured phrases made of real words, all just one letter off from the expected words: “Share thy sod aid spool she chill,” “I switch it tires sages nice,” and “Take ham whole she fun spines.” Too bad they didn’t catch a real headline elsewhere on the same page: “What Does the Term `Bandwidth’ Means?”

‘TIL NEXT TIME, welcome Bedazzled Discs away from Pio. Sq. and into the ex-911 space on E. Pine, and eat all your chocolate Easter bunnies ears-first (otherwise ya lose all the flavor).

UPDATES: P!pe editor Soyon Im is a her, not a he… The kindly folks at the DMX cable-music service called to say yes, residential customers can get the full 90-channel service, not just the mainstreamed 30 channels offered on local cable TV systems–if you’re willing to buy your own 27″ satellite dish and tuner. For the “German Schlager” and Flemish Pop channels, tho’, it just might be worth it.

LIVE AIR: Pirate radio broadcasts have resumed in Seattle on the 89.1 FM frequency recently vacated by the Monkeywrench Radio collective. The new outfit, FUCC, includes some of the old Monkeywrench volunteer DJs. It promises long segments of “non-corporate” news and interviews along with the freeform music, 6 p.m.-2 a.m. nightly. The Pearl Jam members, rumored to have helped jump-start Monkeywrench, are officially not involved in the new operation.

PLAYLAND: Just as the Washington Bullets basketball team plans a change to a less violent name, two inventors from DC’s Maryland suburbs won a patent for “bleeding” toy figures embedded with tiny fluid-filled capsules that rupture during play. An NY Times report said the blood capsules would be attached to the toy in patches, which could be replaced for repeated “play.”

THE SWINDLE CONTINUES: A Mountain Dew ad has premiered on MTV with images of “Xtreme” sports accompanied by John Lydon singing a sneering-macho rendition of “Route 66.”

WATCH THIS SPACE: On the Boards announced it wants to raise money to buy and move into the current A Contemporary Theater building on lower Queen Anne, once ACT moves into the Eagles Auditorium downtown (around August). OTB sez its current home, Washington Hall, is too small and under-equipped for some of OTB’s favorite touring dance and performance-art acts. The stoic, historic old space would still be great for whatever theater or performance outfit picks it up next. Apparently at least one theater troupe’s vying for Wash. Hall, but nothing’s anywhere near final. (It’s also a perfect space for all-ages music events.)

PANGS OF GUILT: I understand the local media’s obsession with Martin Pang but I don’t share it. Should they try him for arson? Yes. Murder? No; manslaughter at most. Yes, four firefighters died needlessly in the fire Pang allegedly masterminded. But nobody’s even claiming he wanted or specifically sought their deaths.

C:\>HAWKS?: When Paul Allen bought the Portland TrailBlazers, I wrote about whether he’d bring sophisticated computer analysis to basketball and whether it’d result in increased throughput. As it turned out, Allen (and his privately-financed arena) made the Blazers a much enviable franchise financially, if not in the standings. Now, the MS/ Asymetrix/ Starwave/ TicketMaster/ Seattle Commons/ Hendrix Museum magnate’s talking about buying and saving the Seahawks (though owner Ken “No Ball” Behring, the almost-official Most Hated Man in America 1996, officially isn’t talking about selling). But the lack of any real sale prospects thus far doesn’t mean we can’t start pondering the possibilities. First, we can presume Pearl Jam won’t perform before any Hawks games like they’ve done for the Sonics. Jared Roberts wrote to the Internet newsgroup “alt.sports.football.pro.sea-seahawks” with further predictions: “There would be a trick play called the `Ctrl-alt-del.’ Tackling an opponent would be called `crashing’ an opponent.”

HATE TRIANGLE: Courtney Love’s put her band Hole on temporary hiatus and cleaned up her personal act (possibly to appease the movie producers she now wants to work for). To help fill any outrageousness gap, two local performing artists have trotted out characters named “Courtney Hate,” both gleefully exploiting Love’s recent-past rep for big make-up and crude stage antics. One is lounge-before-lounge-was-hip singer Julie Cascioppo; she’s done the role at her regular Pink Door gig and on her cable-access show (a show I’ve been on). The other’s a drag performer, who’s appeared at events including the recent Drag Queen Spelling Bee. He claims Cascioppo stole the idea from him; she denies it. I believe the idea’s so obvious, neither should claim it was a conception of major originality. Love herself is apparently amused; the gay paper Perv quotes her, “You know you’ve made it when you’re impersonated by a drag queen.”

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN SWELL: ‘Twas amusing a couple weeks back to find the Times discovering the danger of school textbooks so simplified and “dumbed down” that they’re fatally boring, losing more students by blandness than older texts might have lost by difficulty. I can believe it. I was certainly bored by most of the textbooks I had to read, and the Times report says they’ve gotten even easier/ dumber since then. From my two tenures working with public-school students (in 1983 and 1992-93), I’ve seen ’em to be, on the whole, much smarter and more naturally curious than most adults give ’em credit for. (Of course, I could say the same thing about readers of redesigned, simplified afternoon newspapers.) Speaking of textual achievements or lack of same…

POACHED POLITICS: Thanks to reader Bill Abelson, I’ve been re-introduced to egg, the 1990-91 fashion/ entertainment mag published by the country-club nerd known then as “Malcolm S. Forbes Jr.” and now as ex-presidential candidate Steve Forbes. He didn’t write or directly edit much of it, and Malcolm Sr. apparently had a bigger say than Steve in developing its concept; but it was Steve’s name atop the masthead and his money it lost. It was part of a rash of coffee table mags that appeared and disappeared almost in unison (remember Wigwag?). The page shape is a perfect square, giving a hint about the attitudes inside. The thing reeks of rich brats “slumming” in downtown NYC, laughing at the proles in dive bars and thrift stores when they’re not worshipping celebrities and ogling designer cleavage. It exemplifies Baffler editor Tom Frank‘s notion that “counterculture” or “avant garde” attitudes bear little significant difference from the “bold,” “rule-breaking” aggression of modern Global Business, that there’s nothing inherently “radical” about “hipness.”

Still, it’s vaguely encouraging to have seen a Republican candidate with evidenced knowledge of, and some level of fondness for, the contemporary arts and entertainment world. No major presidential prospect of either party since JFK has been allowed by his handlers to reveal awareness of any but the blandest current artists or performers. Speaking of politics & culture…

THE ART OF SANCTIMONY: So construction magnate/financier/Seattle Weekly co-owner Bagley Wright‘s giving a mess o’ money to this town’s “major arts institutions,” plus smaller annual gifts to individual painters or sculptors. In a town whose rich people mostly try to keep their names out of the papers, Wright’s largesse prompted editorial writers to pull out, as if from a word-processing program’s glossary file, every leftover piece of hype from the last govt.-arts-funding squabble about how the symphony and opera and museum benefit everyone, not just the institutions’ attendees, due to the uplifting air of culturedness provided just by having these institutions around.

I believe there really are positive impacts of a cultural scene on surrounding community; but they come only with the leap from cultural consumption to production. Any town with a few affluent residents and/or tourists can have an orchestra mounting all-Brahms nights and summer Pops Concerts, a theater performing the classics or last year’s NYC hits, a museum welcoming whatever touring exhibits it can pay the insurance for, and a dance troupe with an annual Nutcracker. Maybe it’s my writer bias, but I really believe a town becomes a community of higher-level discourse only when its “arts” priorities grow from film festivals to filmmakers, from symphonic “cover bands” to composers and improvisors, from performing theaters to producing theaters to creating theaters. Seattle’s getting there, thanks mostly to folks working apart from, or on the periphery of, the major arts institutions. Speaking of local cultural production…

CATHODE CORNER: Spud Goodman is on the road back to televisual presence, if not fame, over six months after being ceremoniously dropped by KTZZ. Goodman, his cast of fictional relatives, and a stripped-down crew are shooting 13 half-hour talk-spoof episodes for The Set, a Fox-owned cable channel seen nowhere in western Washington. Goodman’s new producer, Scott Piel, sez they’ll try to get Goodman’s brand of deadpan anti-schtick schtick picked up by a local broadcast station, at least for monthly specials. If that doesn’t pan out, they’ll at least try to hold public episode-screening parties somewhere.

Food for Thought on Cannibal Movies:

Bite Me

Film essay for The Stranger, 1/31/96

In the horror and horror-farce genres, vampirism is widely considered much cooler than cannibalism. Cannibals are messy and dismember their prey. Vampires simply exchange bodily fluids, in the process converting their prey into new members of the vampire species.

Yet in real life, vampirism is at best a matter of legend and historical conjecture. Cannibalism, on the other limb, is a well-documented practice of historic and indigenous societies around the world. Yes, devouring one’s own species violates the cardinal rule of the food chain; but people have gotten around that through the familiar-to-this-day shtick of declaring enemy tribes to be something less than human. Indeed, in some ancient communities consuming the flesh of a vanquished enemy warrior was/is said to give your warriors the strength or magic the enemy had.

Over the years, many directors have understood the shock potential of cannibalism as one of the cruelest one-on-one crimes imaginable, a crime that robs its perpetrators of their last claim to membership in their own species. In the docudrama Alive (1993) and the PBS documentary The Donner Party (1991), groups of people are trapped in the wilderness and must save their lives by eating their dead comrades, keeping their own bodies alive but destroying their souls. In Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989), the eating of human flesh is the only violent act the Thief can’t bring himself to commit.

Let’s examine some of the film formulae that have incorporated cannibalism. Note that I don’t count films like Little Shop of Horrors,Lair of the White Worm, or the Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man;” the victims in those stories are eaten but by non-human creatures.

Sociological drama. The native cannibal-warrior tradition was, of course, exploited and spoofed in countless Hollywood adventure features as recently as Conan the Barbarian (1982). It’s also the theme of what I feel is the best cannibal movie ever made, How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (1971; just now on video). Set in the early years of Brazil’s colonization as seen through Brazilian director Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s modern anti-colonial eyes, it’s the comic tragedy of a French sailor who gets captured by an Amazon tribe. He’s given a wife and lives as one of the villagers until the next ritual feast, when he’s scheduled to be communally devoured. He learns the local language and tries to sell himself as a shaman of European war magic (gunpowder), but all efforts to convince the tribe he’s worth more to them alive than dead prove futile. The “fleshy” aspect of the story is enhanced by the fact that everybody’s nude (including, after the first half hour, the Frenchman).

Thomas Harris’s character Hannibal Lecter is partly a return to the warrior notion of cannibalism. In Silence of the Lambs (1991) and its lesser-known predecessor Manhunter (1986), Hannibal is a rogue warrior without a tribe. He gnaws on his still-living prey (a quite inefficient way to kill) not for sustenance but to uncage the animalistic spirit that makes him capable of his crimes.

In a different modernization of the warrior-cannibal theme, the middle-class revolutionaries of the Seine and Oise Liberation Front in Godard’s satire Weekend (1967) took the then-emerging hippie notion of “going native” to its logical extreme. Proclaiming that “the horror of the state can only be answered by horror,” these terrorist wannabes proclaim their return to a “natural,” anti-industrial way of life by dining on captured bourgeois picnickers.

Big-budget exploitation. Richard Fleischer should’ve been happy to live off the Betty Boop merchandising he inherited from his dad Max. Instead, he became a hack director of grim action films. When Fleischer fils adapted Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room! Make Room! into Soylent Green (1973), he decided the book’s way-overpopulated world wasn’t grim enough. So he added cannibalism. In the novel, “Soylent Green” is a foodstuff made of soybeans and lentils. In the movie, as grim detective Charlton Heston discovers, it’s secretly made from reprocessed humans. Why’s it a secret? Imagine the shock when you tell your vegan friend about the beef gelatin in the Altoid she’s sucking, and multiply it by 40 million irritable 21st Century New Yorkers.

Low-budget exploitation. In a trend starting in 1963 and peaking around 1973-74, cheapo-horror makers found cannibalism a good excuse for gore effects the big studios wouldn’t dare. Herschell Gordon Lewis has said that he turned from directing nudies to gore movies like Blood Feast (1963) and The Undertaker and his Pals (1967) as a marketable genre the big studios wouldn’t muscle in on. After Lewis left films for a more “legitimate” career in direct-mail marketing, his legacy was continued in Deranged, Red Meat, Cannibals in the Streets, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Shriek of the Mutilated, The Folks at Red Wolf Inn (a.k.a. Terror on the Menu), and a score of direct-to-video shockers.

Foreigners got into the game too, like Jess Franco (White Cannibal Queen) and Joe D’Amato (Grim Reaper). Even Peter Cushing, in his pre- Star Wars career lull, chased after a people-eating killer in The Ghoul (1975).

From within this cycle of trashy flesh-feast films came the cannibal zombies of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968; followed by two sequels and one remake). Romero’s filmmaking skills (and sense of dark humor) set his work several notches above most others. He also gave a purpose to his gore. His speechless, pathetic killers are essentially grosser versions of vampires, gnawing on the still-living less to feed than to infect, to convert them to the zombie way. In a twist on the food-chain paradigm, the zombies enlarge their species by dining on ours. Romero’s cannibal lore was parodied in the Return of the Living Dead series, but his own films contain enough sick gags to make any spoofs superfluous.

Comedy and satire. Indeed, people-meat has often been treated for high and low humor. Some films use cannibalism for non-nutritive guffaws and sick sight gags, such as in the Rory Calhoun/ Wolfman Jack vehicle Motel Hell (1980).

But it can also be used for fun with a purpose, to reveal human nature by depicting inhuman acts. In Parents (1989), people-eating is a metaphor for the messy realities hidden behind ’50s suburban “family values.” In Eating Raoul (1982), it’s the logical extreme of an emerging yuppie class proclaiming itself a superior species to (and hence higher in the food chain than) those crude unsophisticate masses.

The Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd (1979) was based on a British legend (filmed as straight horror by UK horror master Tod Slaughter in 1936). Sondheim turned a story of deviance into a celebration of survival, with his downtrodden, disenfranchised London street people learning to literally “eat the rich.”

Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s elegant Delicatessen (1993) posits a post-apocalyptic future similar to Sweeney Todd‘s Victorian past, but without the class consciousness. Without class solidarity the survivors have to settle for small-group solidarity, with anyone from outside the delicatessen and its upstairs apartments treated literally as fair “game.” Made during the rise of the global financier-led Right and after the fall of socialism, it posits a future where only love and laughter can free us from the futility of rugged individualism. That’s a warning one can really sink one’s teeth into.

MISC. DOESN’T KNOW how to start this week’s item collection, with a touch-O-bemusement (the Jack Daniel’s Faux Faulkner writing contest limiting entries to 500 words or less? Bill couldn’t write a want ad that short!) or a solemn pledge (Guaranteed: Absolutely nothing about the Baby Boomers turning 50!).

SPACE PROBES: I know this is Anna Woolverton’s department but I gotta mention the gorgeous new Sit & Spin band room. A more perfect homey-glitz look I’ve never seen, and how they made a concrete box sound so good I’ll never know. Seattle band spaces never get bigger (at least not until this year’s planned RKCNDY remodel) but they do get better. Meanwhile, Beatnix (ex-Tugs, ex-Squid Row, ex-Glynn’s Cove) suddenly went the way of 80 percent of new small businesses; it’ll be back with new owners and probably a new name after a remodel. And there was big fun a couple weeks back at the reopened Pioneer Square Theater; whenSuper Deluxe sang their Xmas song about asking Santa for a skateboard and only getting a stupid sweater, the teen punx drenched the band members with sweaters. With occasional all-ages shows continuing at the Velvet Elvis that means there’s real punk now at both former homes of Angry Housewives, the punk parody stage musical that delighted smug yuppie audiences from 1983 to 1989.

TYPO-GRAPHY: I’m developing a theory that certain grammatical errors come in and out of fashion. F’rinstance, people in many stations of life still use “it’s” (the contraction of “it is”) when they mean “its” (the possessive). A year or two back there was a similar fad of spelling “-ies” plurals as “y’s” (i.e., “fantasy’s”), but it didn’t catch on very far. The incorrect phrase “A Women” was seen about a year ago in a Wash. Free Press headline. Then earlier this month the phrase showed up in a Sylvia strip. Even in hand-drawn comics dialogue, people seem to be falling back on the computer-spell-checker excuse (“it’s a real word, just the wrong word”). Either that, or cartoonist Nicole Hollander’s succumbed to the notion of “Women” as a Borglike collective entity.

MATERIAL ISSUE: As a tangental allegation to her $750,000 LA wrongful-termination/ sex-discrimination lawsuit, ex-Maverick Records employee Sonji Shepherd charges the Madonna-owned label and its day-to-day boss Freddy DeMann with running a payola machine, bribing DJs and station managers to play Candlebox and Alanis Morrissette songs with cash, expense-paid trips to lap-dance clubs, and even flown-in visits from Heidi Fleiss’s call girls. Candlebox-haters shouldn’t go around high-fiving and shouting exhortations like “Knew it! They couldn’t have gotten big without extra help!” That’s the same line rock-haters offered during the ’50s payola scandals, when pay-for-airplay charges destroyed pioneer rock DJ Alan Freed. Also, Shepherd’s allegations are aimed at label staff; no band members are charged with committing or knowing about anything unlawful.

NAKED TRUTH DEPT.: Ongoing science exhibits don’t often get reviewed in papers like this, but the best can give as much fun and insight-into-reality as any performance-art piece. My current all-time fave: the naked mole-rats at the Pacific Science Center. These li’l four-inch-long, furless pink rodents from sub-Saharan Africa are the perfect straight-edge punk mascot animals, the ultimate combination of cuteness and ferocity. They live totally underground, in networks of burrows that can be as big as six football fields. They’ve got an organized cooperative, matriarchal social structure (some dig, some walk backwards to shove dirt around, and the biggest ones shove dirt up through surface holes). They don’t drink. They’ve got huge long teeth that can chew through concrete. Their lips close behind their teeth. Science Center PR calls them “saber-toothed sausages.”

At the exhibit they live in a plexiglass-enclosed environment with clear plastic plumbing tubes to scurry around in. It may be impractical to get your own naked mole-rat colony (you’d have to specially import a queen and two or three breeding males, as well as build their elaborate home). But there’s plenty of other fun things you can make and do with science; an invitation elsewhere in this paper should help give you an incentive.

(Next week: A vilification of all those `Apple Computer death spiral’ media stories, and an appeal to Save The Blob.)

MISC. CAN HARDLY WAIT to try foam dancing, the latest craze from Spain. It landed on these shores at Miami trendspots, and is now showing up at a nightclub in (of all places) the Tri-Cities. It uses a modified artificial-snow machine to blow foamy bubbles all over and above the dance floor. Reminds me of the bubble-shower scene from Revenge of the Cheerleaders, only clothed.

FARE GAME: Some of you might have been confused when you called a cab to get home from the 1/1 festivities and a different cab showed up. Broadway Cab, the prompt and reasonably courteous taxi line whose car-side boasts of LOWEST RATES were generally true, has been folded into Puget Sound Dispatch, parent company of the larger (and costlier) Graytop Cab and Yellow Cab of Seattle. Most of Broadway’s cabs are being repainted Graytop’s colors and will charge Graytop’s higher rates; however, as Graytop rep David Gordon sez, “A limited number of Broadways will continue to operate as Broadways,” at the lower rate. Also, a dozen or so of Graytop’s current driver-operators are reportedly planning to launch their own independent service, Red Top.

IRIS OUT: The past Xmas season was the last for the Whole Toon Catalog, Seattle’s nationally renowned mail-order video sales outlet for all things animated. Some observers blame Whole Toon’s demise on its downtown retail store, which closed earlier this year after failing to generate enough sales to meet its high rent. But beyond that, Whole Toon had to deal with the consolidation of the video biz under Blockbuster and other big chains–many of which targeted the sell-thru kidvid market as a prime growth center. But what we’re losing with Whole Toon isn’t just another place to order the next direct-to-video Lion King sequel. We’re losing the one place where serious animation buffs could get every cartoon video in print (and hundreds of out-of-print rarities), from silent Felix the Cat classics to Baby Huey laserdiscs–plus French-language books about Tex Avery and the only reference book to ever print the names of the anonymous producers behind Underdog.

TURN OUT THE LIGHTS: According to the state Attorney General’s dept., the Zygon Learning Machine (a cassette player combined with opaque goggles that flash hypnotic light patterns into your eyes) not only doesn’t meet its claims as a subconscious brain-reprogramming device, it often doesn’t even mechanically operate properly. But if you can find a working one, it does make a good drug-free enhancement to ambient-techno listening.

I almost got a job at Zygon writing scripts for Learning Machine tapes. Its office was in Redmond’s most sterile office-park zone, near the Northern Exposurestudio (appropriate for the New Age fantasyland nature of Zygon’s claims). Hypnotic learning tapes have been a staple of the New Age industry for years; I’ve seen cassettes promising to help you do everything from find your soulmate to build your vocabulary or increase your bowling score. I’m naturally skeptical of anything that asks me to stop thinking and just receive mental reprogramming, but thousands of folks are willing to at least experiment with the things. Thus, I wouldn’t sick the state on Zygon over the Learning Machine’s basic claims. But I can support going after the machine’s mechanical frailties and Zygon’s selling tactics (including “electronic junk mail” messages sent to thousands of Internet users).

PREVIEWS OF COMING TRANSACTIONS: Expect a new owner for Seven Gables Theaters as soon as the end of the month. Seattle’s king of respectable multiplexes has been a pawn in a sequence of acquisitions over the past years, finally ending up in the hands of indie-film mogul Sam Goldwyn Jr.Goldwyn’s unsuccessful attempts at producing higher-budgeted films, along with the decline of his American Gladiators TV franchise, have led him to put various assets up for sale. John Kluge, the showbiz speculator who sold five TV stations to Fox and has used the proceeds to prop up what’s left of Orion Pictures, wants to buy everything Goldwyn’s got, including Seven Gables. Since Kluge also owns the old American International film library, maybe we should demand that if the sale goes through they should run weekly midnight screenings of Beach Blanket Bingo or The She Creature.