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3/87 ArtsFocus Misc.
Hi again, pop-culture fans, and welcome to Misc., the only column that ate at the Silver King, drank at the Trade Winds, and lived to tell the tale.
The building that until recently housed the Lesbian Resource Center and Seattle Women’s Gym is about to become a bridal shop. This trivium is offered merely for the sake of irony, and is not in any way to be considered an encouragement of the new homophobia. (Ever notice how many of the mass media only talk about AIDS when straights get it, or how the new soft-focus-scare condom ads never mention the existence of gays?)
In business news, B. Freshman’s in Wallingford, the noble experiment in drawing the hypertasteful Nouveau Riche to mark prices on groceries with great pencils inside a cramped basement, somehow failed. (More closures in our handy sidebar.)
In new business activity, Razz-Ma-Tazz on Denny offers all the essential elements of a topless bar without toplessness or a bar. For a small fee, you can enter a room with flashing lights and blaring Bon Jovi where legally-dressed young women will smile, touch your shoulder and request additional fees for a soft drink, a conversation or a 2-minute “table dance.”… Could that ’80s nostalgia landmark, the Showbox Theater, really be slated for conversion into a movie multiplex?
(latter-day note: Razz-Ma-Tazz went topless and is now all-nude, at least on stage; its table dances are still less explicit than those described in police reports about suburban strip clubs. And the Showbox became a comedy club with an ugly interior remodel.)
CATHODE CORNER: Continuing our theme of antisexploitation, KSTW is following the lead of the USA Network in running cheap sex comedies with the sex scenes all cut out. What’s left makes less sense than the Spanish channel makes if you don’t know Spanish….
Hope you didn’t watch Amerika. Remember: The networks don’t care if you love or hate a show, as long as you keep watching. The only effective protest is to turn it off….
The most fascinating show on the Discovery Channel’s week of Soviet TV was Serious and In Jest. Segments on the value of satire in increasing industrial productivity were intercut with film of degrading police interrogations of vodka scalpers and a melodramatic sketch in which a boy suffers a total breakdown after learning his parents met while dealing in the black market….
The CBC this month is presenting not only the curling championships but also the return of Seeing Things, the offbeat mystery show about a clairvoyant crime reporter. It can descend into corn, but at its best blows the slick US crime shows out of the water.
Now that Bob Barker has successfully used the Miss USA pageant to campaign against furs, maybe he’ll now talk about the way humans are treated in the countries where he MCs Miss USA’s parent show, Miss Universe. I don’t remember him commenting when Imelda Marcos raided the Philippines’ public-housing budget to build an auditorium in Manila, which opened by hosting that year’s Miss Universe show. (By the way, the introduction of computerized scoring to Miss USA may encourage those who criticize pageants for the wrong reasons. A pageant queen is not the idealized lover but the idealized daughter. The spectacle does not objectify the start of the breeding cycle but its final result.)
I keep telling people computers can be our friends. Now it turns out that a White House mainframe, which preserved even “erased” files, may become the best witness to the Iran-Contra scheme and a whole network of other potentially illegal acts organized under the doublespeak moniker “Project Democracy.” As the nation takes what John Chancellor has called a “trip down memory lane,” the Reagan Discs may prove more useful in uncovering abuses of power than the Nixon Tapes.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: The Amazing Adventures of Mighty Mole, a comic book distributed to elementary schools by Metro. Our tunnel-digging hero exclaims that the downtown bus tunnel is “a totally rad concept,” excavating equipment is “totally awesome,” and that “digging a tunnel is really exciting work.” And I always thought it was boring. (For our slower readers, that was a pun.) (For our early readers, more local publications will be featured at the Underground Press Convention, Feb. 28 here at Lincoln Arts.)
The Globe Radio Theater production of Gogol’s Dead Souls, produced in Seattle by Jean Sherrard and John Siscoe, will soon be available on cassettes for repeated nuance-hunting. KPLU has aired the mini-series right after Bob and Ray Sunday evenings, for a whole hour of consciousness-bending, low-key humor. With great intellectual entertainment like this on public radio, who’ll miss Garrison Keillor (who ran out of ideas three years ago anyway)?
DUMB AD OF THE MONTH (in the P-I): “If it’s true that automatic transmissions are capable of unintended acceleration, then all cars with automatic are suspect. Audi is the only manufacturer to date who has addressed the problem to protect their owners.” A local dealer thus attempted to depict as the leader in responsibility a manufacturer who refused to do anything about the problem until it could not hide from the evidence any more….
Several more respectable cars are on display in a great new book, I’ll Buy That: 50 Big Deals and Small Wonders. It’s published by Consumer Reports as a 50th-anniversary celebration, and covers 50 major contributions to American life, including not just consumer products (the Mustang, the Beetle, the minivan, detergents, frozen foods), but such other innovations as the Salk vaccine, the birth control pill, the credit card and the suburban housing tract.
EARLY WARNING: With spring coming soon, the New City Theater Directors’ Festival is also coming soon, and then the Seattle International Film Festival. Only a few weeks of winter remain in which to stare at your Video Aquarium tape from the How-To-Do-Anything Store. ‘Til then, let’s return to Soviet TV for this closing thought, from its equivalent to CBS’s Morning Program: “If we entertained you, made you smile, and did not make you late for work, then our job here has been a successful one.”
DOWNTOWN BUSINESS WHICH HAVE CLOSED
SINCE THE START OF CURRENT CONSTRUCTION JOBS
Seattle Design
Kentucky Fried Chicken
Florsheim
Weisfield’s
Town Theater
Music Box Theater
Golden Crown
Bernie’s
TJ’s Men’s Wear
The Frankfurter
J.K. Gill
Pipelane Ltd.
ABC Corral Western Wear
Walden Books
Leed’s Shoes
Lindy Shoes
Copper Kitchen
J. Spencer Books
2/87 ArtsFocus Misc.
Hi again sports fans, and welcome to the compressed short-month edition of Misc., the regional pop-culture column that had Shirley MacLaine’s baby in a previous life.
The passenger ferry is, as of this writing, in deep trouble. Seems would-be riders never know if the boat’s going to be in the water or in the shop on any given day. Officials say they can’t effectively test the service’s appeal without, you guessed it, a second boat to run when the first one doesn’t have its act together. Maybe we could also get a spare set of ferry officials.
The NY Times sez it’s OK in DC social circles again to call yourself a liberal, even to admit that you liked Carter. Social concern isn’t as gauche as back in the early ’80s, when the Reaganites had everybody thoroughly intimidated. Perhaps, just perhaps mind you, this is another sign of the nation waking up as if from a long dream (or a masochistic love affair). Other ins/outs are in our handy sidebar.
JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Pocky, the colorful little rice candy sticks from Japan. Eat the chocolate or fruit flavors (both with that distinctive waxy taste), then keep the lovely boxes as collector’s items.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Pacific Northwest’s “40 Local Leaders Under 40” issue. Your columnist is not listed but has about a dozen more tries to go.
UPDATES FROM PAST COLUMNS: The CD menace continues its assault on the American tradition of cheap populist sound recordings, with the Seattle Symphony joining the list of artists refusing to cater to us vinyl proles. Rhino Records, however, is to be commended for its forthcoming 25-record set of 78s, intended for jukebox collectors…. SRO sold its theaters to Cineplex Odeon, the Canadian-based firm that produced The Decline of the American Empire (now showing at someone else’s theater). The bad news: Cineplex is half-owned by MCA, the parent company of Universal Studios which, according to a new book, was once known as the “Octopus That Ate Hollywood” and had close ties to both Reagan and the Mob. The good news: MCA’s lost millions lately on flop movies and overpriced reruns; the whole company may be sold off, as a whole or in pieces.
J Michael Kenyon, the rusty-throated practitioner of homespun cynicism and low-key wit, is back on local radios at last. At this point he’s having a hard time reconciling his style to KING-AM’s withering all-news image, but he may turn out to be KING’s ticket out of the ratings cellar.
If you haven’t seen a TheaterSports performance, you’re missing one of the funniest, liveliest experiences in this or any city. My personal favorite team in the weekly improv wars: The Many Splendored Things.
CATHODE CORNER: The first arthritis ad with a rock song is now on the air. A portent of the decades to come, when my generation will have to pay for the much larger Big Chill generation’s Medicare…. Don’t buy anything on “home shopping” shows. It just encourages them to put on more…. KOMO, home of the most pandering news scripts on local TV, now advertises “News You Experience.” Somehow, I’ve never wanted to be, even vicariously, a preteen Iranian soldier or a hit-and-run victim.
(By the way, our secret support of both Iran and Iraq has helped to lengthen a ghastly war (7-year body count: 300,000+), just to prop up oil prices and achieve the “geopolitical” goals of a White House that calls itself “pro-life.”)
The Little Biscuit deli-grocery on Broadway, one of that neighborhood’s last cheap places to eat, suddenly closed over the new year. If there is a higher consciousness, please don’t let the site become another trendy mini-mall. Pretty please with sugar on top.
The Jackson Street Gallery had a wonderful show in January: K.L. Slusher’s “Images of Construction” (documenting the Convention Center), John L. Harter’s “Construction of Images” (acrylic fantasies of the formation and decay of ideas), and R. Mutt’s “Constructions” (really nice industrial sculptures). Just when I began to think Pioneer Square had irretrievably evolved from a noun into an adjective, something great and provocative like this shows up.
Incredibly Strange Matinees, the independent film club I’m directing, is now renting the plush little Grand Illusion screening site for 12-noon Sunday tributes to the best exploitation films. ‘Til then, contemplate on the inner meanings of the phrase “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” So long.
INS AND OUTS FOR ’87
Unlike the authors of some lists of this type,
I’m not assuming that any trend that’s hot now will simply keep getting hotter.
I’m glad the authors of some lists of this type don’t work for my stockbroker.
Insville
Outski
1/87 ArtsFocus Misc.
Welcome again, shopping survivors, to Misc., your pop-culture column and voice of the Post-Sixties Generation.
THE TOP STORY THIS MONTH: Seattle is becoming world corporate headquarters for Muzak. The most famous name in office music recently merged with locally-based Yesco, a purveyor of music tapes for bars and other businesses for which the briefly famous DJ Steve Rabow once worked as national program director. From now on, when you hear a 100-violin rendition of U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)” at your local doctor’s office, you can take pride in knowing that the dulcet tones are being carried across North America from right here in your hometown.
The fact that the new Stage Left Cafe is advertised as being right next door to Angry Housewives first and in the Smith Tower second must say something about the relative public awareness of the two longstanding Seattle landmarks.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Blue Suede News. Pick up a free copy at a better record store and read all about cool music that would never have been recorded if CDs and “adult contemporary” radio had been around in its day.
JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Old-time gum. Beeman’s, Clove and Black Jack are back in a few select stores (some of which are already sold out). If you ever wanted to chew Beeman’s, the official gum of The Right Stuff, now’s your chance.
BEST NEW ALL-AGES LIVE MUSIC VENUE: The Century Square mezzanine. A recent Saturday night found me in the ground floor plaza there, with some professional-sounding (slick but bland) rock emanating from above. At the top of the escalator I found five guy musicians in identical shirts and a young woman singing in exactly the same type of contrived hysterics heard each week on Fame.The answer came in the slick brochures stacked next to the band: They were from the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, a new private school that appears to be for parents who want their teens to be just like the Fame kids. The band really cooked considering its limitations as a class project, and the acoustics of that huge glass-walled space made it sound even better.
CATHODE CORNER: Cable viewers should check out an awesome Japanese cartoon series (dubbed in Montreal), Astroboy, 9:30 a.m. Saturdays on BCTV. It’s the adventures of a robot boy with superpowers and jet-rocket feet, and his robot sister (without superpowers, which means traditional-sex-role-time in the rescue scenes, the show’s only flaw). It has way-cool music, pleasing characters and very imaginative scripts, many based on the Futuropolis humans’ unfounded prejudices against robots. The best part is the four-minute filler scene at the end of each show, when Astro summarizes the episode’s plot with one obscure error in a name or storyline. You’re supposed to play with your friends after the show and see who spots the mistake — but they never tell you the right answer. A must-see….
With the Michelob Yuppies off the scene, the current Worst Commercial on TV is the one for a maxi-pad using computer graphics to show how it fits in your undies better than any other brand….
Coming to a video store near you: Video Shorts 6, the winners of last month’s national video-art contest run by Seattle’s Parker Lindner. The best video on the tape (and the only winner from Washington) is Crash Your Car, a sprightly music clip using edited gore from old driver-ed films with a peppy synthesizer tune. The real psychotronic thing about it is that the finished video is actually being shown in driver-ed classes!
UPDATE on last month’s item on cable deregulation: Group W’s selling its last local systems to TCI, which burst into town with an instant image problem. They announced that in return for an extravagant rate hike, they’d give viewers many new channels — which turned out to be garbage networks like The Weather Channel and Cable Value Network, which TCI happens to own stock in. To make room, some popular local channels would be dropped out and others moved down to the far end of the black box. Thanx to Reagan’s foxes in the FCC chicken coop, the city could do nothing to stop it –Â except delay approval of the license change until after the new federal tax law, which would cost TCI millions. So it looks like KVOS and KTPS are safe — for a while.
My best wishes to New City Theater, which has had hard times of late. They’ve taken many notable risks this season, trying to expand into a “full service theater company” showing contemporary and challenging works without a camp/nostalgia cash cow production to support them. Hope they’re back in good shape soon.
More kudos to The Weekly for its recent follow-the-money expose of the downtown building boom. Turns out all those glass boxes haven’t been built because anybody needed the office space, but because the old tax law and deregulation of banks and pension funds made real estate speculation a lucrative proposition whether or not the buildings themselves made any money. Therefore, expecting the free market to regulate tower growth without public intervention is useless. This cancerous growth has been going on in most US cities. In Manhattan they call it “gentrification;” in San Francisco they call it “Manhattanization;” in Seattle they call it “becoming more like San Francisco.” In Houston they call the new, unleaseable glass boxes “see-thru buildings.”
Until next month, let me leave you with a line from an obscure Portuguese film about a beautiful woman dying of consumption: “I love you like God loves sinners.”
12/86 ArtsFocus Misc.
Welcome to Misc., the regional pop-culture section of ArtsFocus, the second most widely-read publication among the Seattle arts community.
The first is, of course, the Weekly World News. And if I may be presumptuous, I think we’re better. Sure, the WWN is handsome looking and has great mail-order ads, but buying something just so you can laugh at everyone else who buys it is an aesthetic dead end. It leads to an unattractive smugness, an attitude of scoffing at other people’s lives without ever questioning one’s own.
The logical extreme of this attitude is shown by audiences of the documentary Rate It X. “Progressive” guys watch this film of interviews with sleazy redneck guys and come away confirmed about their superiority to those working-class creeps. “Progressive” women come away knowing they don’t have to care about anyone or anything to be morally superior, since men obviously aren’t really people.
There are more pressing crises in this day than anti-thought “intellectual” films, though — like the closing of the Rainbow Tavern, just as it had finally broken the stranglehold of aging hippie R&B bands that had ruled all local clubs for too many years, and had established the most eclectic, truly progressive array of live music this town’s ever seen. The Seattle music scene will never be the same, even if a “New Rainbow” opens in the spring in some less-convenient location.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Seattle Star. One of the best free papers around, it’s a forum for the wittiest just-above-ground comics created anywhere.
JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Soup in a tube. From Germany, where everything from mayonnaise to milk comes in toothpaste-like tubes, comes Nutri-Soup, a thick sludge of bullion, herbs and natural and artificial flavorings. Just two inches (one tablespoon) is enough for a cup of great-smelling and adequately-tasting soup.
I hope you all saw the Art Expo in the Trade Center last month. It was a true cash-from-chaos scene, as the city’s art hustlers abandoned all remnants of cultured propriety. From now on, the question in visual art won’t be whether creative people can also sell, but whether salespeople can also create.
One answer to that question is found at D’Art, the home of Quality Artist’s Products. The permanent D’Art store may now be closed, but a holiday edition is now open in the Madison Valley neighborhood. As always, it’s filled with cute, outrageous and just plain rockin’ things, all at somewhat reasonable prices.
Alan Lande’s recent Autocratic, a “ballet for cars” in the new SCCC garage, was also tons-O-fun. Where they got a wrecked car in the same color as the rented wreckers was only the first of many great mysteries that night, as four concrete floors of dance, live and recorded music, video bonfires, signs with names of parts of the human digestive system, and other post-industrial entertainments were explored by an audience of carpools stretching a quarter-mile north of the site.
There’s a wine store in Post Alley with a great tabletop miniature of a modern winery. It uses taped narration, flashing lights, and motorized machinery to show the entire winemaking process, from vineyard to tasting room. It does not contain a tiny AA or MADD meeting.
This is being written in a tiny room overlooking the central downtown waterfront. The Port of Seattle and the usual development suspects are out to destroy the waterfront we know and love, by putting up yet another scheme of junky “gourmet” boutiques, junky “luxury” hotel rooms and junky “upscale” offices. I love the waterfront just as it is now, and don’t want it turned into another lifeless pseudo-suburb like today’s lower First Avenue or Broadway. It’s the same sort of destructive “improvement” that threatened the Market and Pioneer Square, before those great areas were “saved” by putting the trashy new businesses in the great old buildings. The waterfront deserves more than that — it deserves to stay the honest, funky, lo-rent district it is now.
In more uplifting news, Sen. Fishstick has been granted a permanent leave of absence from his taxpayer-supported position of being “hard on Communism” in Latin America as an excuse for being soft on fascism, of promoting the censorship of musicians who even suggest that religious and lifestyle alternatives exist, of making deals to let incompetent but ideologically-correct men become judges. America is even rediscovering the grand and noble tradition of disrespect for one’s president. Now comes the hard part: Getting away from complaining about the way things are done long enough to do them some other way.
Despite the posters, the local small-press book Young Men Can Sing is not “the first novel with advertisements.” Mass-market paperbacks have often had ads stuck in the middle. I remember one ’50s paperback with an ad for Time magazine, promising to inform me all about “Pasternak, Voice of the World’s Free Spirit… Einstein, Investigator Into the Unknown… Kruschev, Frank Lloyd Wright, Brigitte Bardot.” And I’d always thought she was the Voice of the World’s Free Spirit….
CATHODE CORNER: The first Christmas commercial this year came on Oct. 13 on WTBS, for an LP of holiday favorites….
Viacom Cablevision will soon add the Cable Value Network, one of many channels and individual programs established in the wake of FCC regulations regarding all-advertising “shows” and “services.” Using sophisticated marketing techniques at relatively unsophisticated audiences, these companies prey on compulsive shoppers to buy tacky wall clocks and briefcases. Cable systems running the channels get a percentage of all sales from their subscribers. No system that runs this form of unabashed audience manipulation should ever again claim to be providing a public service to plea for exorbitant rate increases. Not that it’s necessary; by this time next year the FCC will let cable systems charge whatever they can get away with.
Don’t ask where I got it, but I’ve now got a 1972-vintage tourist map of scenic El Salvador. It looks just like a Tourmap publication, with cheesy drawings of local industries and recreational opportunities. The saddest part, though, is the color photos of ugly modern lo-rise office buildings. The government is obviously proud of its attempts to make its capital city look like an imitation LA. Pity.
I’ll see you at the Incredibly Strange Matinees, noon weekends at the University Cinemas. Until then, remember to always be a good sport, be a good sport all ways. So long.
11/86 ArtsFocus Misc.
Welcome again to Misc., the regional pop-culture column with the same non-aspirin pain reliever as the prescription brand Motrin.
The astounding playoff and World Series performances by ex-Mariners Dave Henderson and Spike Owen, now in Boston, prove there really has been some Big League Stuff in the Kingdome, if not in the team owner’s box.
Twenty-four percent of the Forbes 400 richest Americans got their fortunes in entertainment or publishing. You’ll notice the name printed at the top of this column was not on that list.
The long nightmare is over:Â Expo 86 closed. Even with almost as many visitors as there are Canadians, the thing still lost hundreds of millions of dollars (Canadian dollars, but it’s still a lot). The deficit will be paid from BC lottery revenues which normally support charities.
Speaking of what BC politicians call “megaprojects,” seen (or better yet driven under) the Convention Center yet? That thing’s a monster! It’s already totally out of scale with the surrounding First Hill neighborhood, just a few months into its four-year construction cycle. It’s fun looking now as a Paul Bunyan-sized Erector set, but once it gets walls it’ll be a horrible monolith — at least until the graffiti artists get to it, we can only hope.
HUGE STOREWIDE SALE DEPT.: Frederick & Nelson is now under local management and I’m sure they’ll do well, particularly if they follow these few suggestions: bring back the fabric and pet departments, the lending library, the Men’s Grill, and especially the Paul Bunyan Room. The big Paul & Babe mural and the serpentine counter may need to be rebuilt from scratch, but it’ll be worth it….
The Bon may be bought by a Canadian company. If it happens, don’t expect the name to ever revert to The Bon Marche. The original name, borrowed from a Paris store, originally means “good buy,” but in colloquial French has come to mean “cheap” in the demeaning sense — not the best image to promote to the French-literate Canadians who drive to Seattle to shop….
The Heart of Pay n’ Save, that great section with discount imported trinkets of all sizes, colors and uses, has been dropped by that chain’s new out-of-state owners. They concluded shoppers here aren’t as bargain-driven as elsewhere. Much of the “Heart” merchandise will remain in the stores — but at higher prices….
Three of the U District’s best stores and one of Broadway’s have been replaced this year by candy-colored sweatshirt stands. Can the horror be stopped before it devours us all?
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Market Tab. This photocopied sheet contains gossip, items of interest around town and pithy comments, much like another writing product I know of.
LOCAL JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Cheese sticks at the Gourmet Thrift Shop. Each fresh batch is made with a food processor full of real cheeses. Like everything at the quaint little shop in the old Rubato Record space on Broadway, it’s amazingly good and amazingly cheap. Now if they’d only stop playing that same Steely Dan tape over and over….
In other junk food news, the Dr Pepper Co. just bought the 7 Up Co. Upon hearing the news, I used a can of each product and one drinking glass to determine just how well the companies will merge. Results: a definite clash of corporate cultures.
FILM CLIPS: Jumpin’ Jack Flash isn’t a big hit; audiences are comparing Penny Marshall unfavorably to the three other directors in her immediate family. I still may see it, ‘cuz Whoopi Goldberg’s bank-telecommunications job in it is the same job I used to have. Never got involved w/any spies or killers like she does, ‘tho….
Children of a Lesser God raises some interesting questions. Will Hollywood ever find another starring role for hearing-impaired star Marlee Matlin? And the special subtitled screenings for the hearing impaired are nice, but why don’t studios make similar prints for other domestic films? Deaf people are interested in other things than just deafness, ya know.
Foreign films come with subtitles, of course, like the ones shown by The Cinematheque, which I associate-direct, at the University Cinemas on 55th and U Way. This month a new Cinematheque series begins weekends at noon, with (non-subtitled) horror, cult, comedy and other specialty films. Like the foreign films, these are for the viewer who wants an active, adventuresome film experience.
EARLY WARNING: A local theater company is planning a musical based on a certain very popular cartoon property. High-level rights negotiations are underway between the theater’s fearless leaders and a Mr. Big in LA.
Industrial art takes on a new meaning as construction begins on 6th Ave. S. for a new office-warehouse for the Frye Art Museum. How the Industrial District’s loft photographers, painters and video artists will react to the pastoral oils and watercolors moving in is anyone’s guess.
We all know the local literary scene generally won’t accept anything too far removed from free-verse nature poetry, the written equivalent of a Frye painting. Other writers give me flack for not hating technology (writing this on Lincoln Arts’ word processor instead of in longhand, watching TV). Our local Luddite authors, however, have a ways to catch up to the reactionary behavior of a Chicago group, Writers Without Phones.
There’s one piece of electronics I do despise: The compact disc. They don’t give you big cover art or colorful labels. You can’t make a scratch mix with them. They sound sterile, flat, too clean for any of the music that made this country great: Hot jazz, swing, bebop, bluegrass, gospel, folk, blues, R&B, country, and their mongrel child rock n’ roll. What’s worse is that the record biz is realigning itself to favor the high-priced spread. Already Motown has dropped 82 oldies albums, which henceforth will be sold only on CD. Those records, like most good non-classical music made since 1950, owe their original existence to the low cost and mass market created by cheap vinyl discs. If CDs take over, all you’ll get is slick, bland product (like the current Motown roster). CDs suck real big.
CATHODE CORNER: Pee-wee’s Playhouse, the undisputed Best Show on TV this year, is now on at 9 a.m. Saturdays, despite what the papers say. Don’t miss it, or the rest of the day people will scream when you inadvertently say the Secret Word and you won’t know why.
Maybe I’ll see you at the next Ballard Market Singles Night. If not, keep stroking your miniature replicas of Waiting for the Interurban until next month. We’re in touch, so you keep in touch.
9/86 ArtsFocus Misc.
Hello again, pop culture fans. Welcome to episode 3 of Misc., the column that asks just how lucky we are to live in an era when we can get gas with “High Tech Techroline.”
This has been a summer of torn streets, noisy construction, disappearing bus stops and other hassles, many of which will be with us for the next four years. The good news is by that time, the only people left downtown will be those of us who demand urban life. Life may soon become a lot less overcrowded for those who refuse to go to Bellevue. Sadly, we’re losing Chapter 2 Books in the University District to that Nowhereland to the east, and are in danger of even losing the Pacific Science Center. This threat to Seattle’s cultural life must be stopped. You wanna have to tell your kids someday that they can’t pitch pennies into the fountains or get their hair raised in the static-electricity exhibit without spending an hour on the bridges? The only arches that belong in Bellevue are golden.
(By the way, the widow and daughter of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc have started a California peace group, Mothers Embracing Nuclear Disarmament. With nuclear weapons, they must have finally found something to crusade against that’s worse than their food.)
Passionately urban life does seem to be catching on in Seattle as a permanent thing. Broadway this summer has been a wonderland of all different kinds of people making all different kinds of scenes. At Dick’s alone you can find some 200 people being sociable at 1:30 a.m. Whenever anybody in Seattle has this much fun, somebody has tried to outlaw it. Already business interests are demanding something be “done” about this “problem” — which is really the best thing that has happened to Seattle since the saving of the Market. Any real city has spontaneous street scenes — gatherings of ordinary people who may not have a destination in mind when they take to the streets, but have an invigorating time getting there. Not everybody who stands on a sidewalk and talks to friends is a criminal; we should be glad the attempts to make Broadway a district for yuppies and only yuppies has gloriously failed. Now if they can only tear up those nauseatingly-cute footsteps…
THINGS I DID THIS SUMMER: Saw the University Book Store remainder sale and was pleased to find How To Sell What You Write marked down to $1.49. Noticed the resemblance between International News’s brightly colored, slogan laden clothes and those of the 1900s comic strip star, The Yellow Kid. Discovered Seattle’s ultimate food store, other than the Pike Place Market: Marketime Foods in Fremont. Was captivated by Cisterna Magna, an exquisite dance/visual performance at Belltown’s Galleria Potatohead. Concluded that any movie, fashion style, entertainer or politician advertised as “hot” is probably going to be dreadful.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Heritage Music Review. Longtime area piano player/disc jockey Doug Bright uses a Braille word processor to make this knowledgeable guide to old rock, R&B and jazz performers of the region and nation. Available in regular print at Elliot Bay Books and other select sources.
JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Bubble gum cards that didn’t make it. The Sports Stop in the Center House basement has cards for entertainment properties that outstayed their welcome (Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper) or never caught on at all (the Dune andSupergirl films). The cards are collector’s items; the gum’s undoubtedly stale, though.
Our last column had a snide remark about an SRO theater. I don’t really hate SRO. About a decade ago, when smart people were briefly being courted as audiences by major motion pictures, SRO was considered the “Establishment” of area theaters. Lately though, SRO has shown itself capable of the finest in theater architecture (though the pink and gray on the Uptown has got to go) and concession food. They continue to subsidize KJET, the closest thing we have to a progressive commercial radio station, and in 1970 tried to save the Seattle Pilots baseball team. Now, this heritage is threatened by a takeover attempt from Paramount Pictures. It might be seen as Paramount’s revenge on Washington state; it was our native son, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who wrote the famous “U.S. vs. Paramount” decision forcing the big five studios to sell the theater chains though which they controlled the entire industry. With today’s federal antitrust regulators (who could more rightly be called protrust), the big distributors are itching for their old monopoly powers back. The remnants of the original Paramount theater chain (not including the Seattle Paramount) are now owned by Coca-Cola, which also owns the Columbia and Embassy studios and half of Tri-Star. Other alliances are underway. If you think the movies this past year have been pitiful, just wait until the big studios control so many theaters they can lock out independent films.
When that time comes, we’ll all have to go to VCRs to see anything interesting. Already you can check out an amazing variety of stuff, including a series of tapes called Video Romance. One store has them in the Adult section even though they’ve no sex, nudity or cussing, and are in fact far tamer than the evening soaps. What they’ve got are impossibly innocent (especially for their glamorous professions) women meeting and taming tall men who have wavy hair and vague accents. All this plus cheap productions (we never see the exotic locales in which the stories are set, only living rooms), syrupy music, bad acting and “Your Host, Louis Jourdan” and you’ve got more real entertainment than in the entire collected works of Michael J. Fox.
Another recently viewed tape:Â Urgh! A Music War, 1981 concert footage of some 35 bands gathered under the awkward, inaccurate label “new wave.” Only one of them was big at the time (the police, who helped finance the film). Others became stars (the Go-Gos, UB40, Devo), had solid cult followings (Magazine, Steel Pulse, XTC), or met deserved obscurity (Athletico Spizz 80, Splodgenessabounds). I found myself viewing the proceedings as nostalgia for my own generation, and seeing how, even while many of the best bands never had a major hit, the attitudes they represented have become quite pervasive in American society — in butchered form, of course. A lot of the worst aspects of punk/new wave (shallow imagery, aggressive hype, destructiveness to self and others as romanticism, bigotry as nostalgia, shamelessness, lousy manners, celebrations of stupidity) have become everyday aspects of modern business, government and lifestyles. Even agriculture has gone punk: It’s dependent on drugs and panhandling, lives fast, dies young and leaves a good-looking corpse.
Home video’s an even bigger happening in the Asian American community. The wonderful variety stores of the International District all have amazing tape boxes promising music, farce, soap opera, horror, kinky sex, and serious drama, as well as the martial arts you’d expect (often more than one genre in the same production). While you might not want to buy a membership for unsubtitled tapes in a language you don’t speak, the stores will usually have a video playing while you buy some of their fine foods, clothes, jewelry, toys and housewares. Treat yourself to a view of another culture’s pop culture.
We close this edition with a call for entries in the first Misc. Helga Lookalike Contest. The Northwest is abundant with the stoic Nordic romantic look now associated with painter Andrew Wyeth’s mystery woman, as seen in both Time and Newsweek. Send a picture of yourself in any appropriate costume to Misc. c/o Lincoln Arts Center, 66 Bell St., Seattle. All ages and races welcome; bonus points will be awarded for the best floral headband.
6/86 ArtsFocus Misc.
(the first Misc. ever)
This “At Large” column will mainly discuss things that don’t fit into the other ArtsFocus departments, but which are still a part of the culture in which we live. All opinions are my own, not necessarily those of the Lincoln Arts Association or its affiliated artists, supporters or advertisers. This column does not settle wagers.
I keep expecting one of the student DJs on KCMU or KNHC to mispronounce the name of the current Bathhouse Theater production as “A Day in the Life of Vic and Shar-day.” Hasn’t happened yet, though.
LOCAL SMALL PRESS PUBLICATION OF THE MONTH: Manzine, from Tom Grothus’s Function Industries Press. If you’ve ever seen the droll humor of Function’s little cartoon books (Errata, Land of the Cynical Dog-Men), you’ll enjoy this tiny collection of comics and stories. Available at Art In Form in Belltown, 2nd Story in Wallingford and other better book outlets.
LOCAL JUNK FOOD OF THE MONTH: Vernell’s Gummy Transformers. Not only can you make them do robot aerobics by twisting them around (they never snap apart), but the very concept of violent Japanese robot toys depicted as colorful, chewy candies made in Bellevue contains almost Zen-like ironies.
Until further notice, the worst comic strip in the newspapers is Boomer’s Song. David Horsey, the P-I editorial cartoonist (now on sabbatical in Britain) and progressive Christian, obviously feels offended by ex-radicals now engaged in airheaded materialism. Unfortunately, Horsey’s contempt for his characters is too heavy-handed, his gags more bludgeoning with an unfunny punchline lettered in boldface italic with an exclamation point. While Horsey’s in Britain, he should get some lessons from Andy Capp cartoonist Reg Smythe in making unsympathetic characters appealing.
On the national scene, National Public Radio had a tribute to the late folk singer Phil Ochs a few Saturdays ago. It finally made this liberal understand what other people have against liberals. The show featured a number of Ochs’s fellow folkies. They all embodied, but didn’t discuss, the dilemma of how to love the Common Man and hate the Great Unwashed at the same time. One of them interrupted his off-key dirge to The People by remarking, “In the old days everyone would be singing along by now.” There was a lot about Us vs. Them, Them consisting of Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell. You can tell when a liberal has it all wrong when s/he pays too much attention to the paper tiger Falwell and not the real bigwigs in DC.
Elegant posters were up around town last month for “Elan 86, An Expression of Self-Assurance,” a fashion show by design students at Seattle Pacific University. Didn’t make it to the show, but the clothes on the poster were quite sharp. It’s nice to see a sense for good looks among the Free Methodists, operators of SPU and known as one of the most modesty-obsessed religions this side of the Mennonites. (SPU used to send recruiting brochures to high schools with a cover photo of the Phinney Ridge traffic sign pointing in opposite directions for Zoo and Seattle Pacific University. The comparison was intended, not just with big universities, but with other little religious schools.)
You certainly wouldn’t have seen any Free Methodists among the corps of tract-passers seen downtown recently. They held colorful red-and-white flags with a Gothic crest and were dressed like refugees from a Renaissance Faire. Their big two-page tract proclaimed that Halley’s Comet was a sign from the prophet Jacob, signalling the impending punishment of “tyrants and despotisms,” leading to the victory of the true believers. The whole thing is beautiful, with shocking pink headlines and 1940s-style graphic design. It even has small-print sheet music to a non-rhyming hymn: “Co-met comes to destroy / Kingdom of beasts and tyrants / Christ the Lord shall come soon / To build up Cosmic Republic.” I’m not passing judgment on the theology of this Grace of Jesus Christ Crusade, based in Taiwan; I just like their style.
The style of humor on KING-TV’s Almost Live has improved greatly in recent weeks due to a new crop of writer-actors, including former Off the Wall Players Andrea Stein and Joe Guppy. One of their ex-colleagues, Dale Goodson, has recently turned from comedy to music with the Dick Everson Trio; another, Mary Machala, was, at last report, part of the off-season staff at the Grand Canyon National Monument.
In other video events, Frito-Lay has a commercial in which the suave Tostitos man converses, through the miracle of film editing, with Addams Family stars John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan and Ted Cassidy. The fact that all but Astin are no longer with us just adds to the macabre aura associated with their beloved characters. I’m sure the posthumous endorsements are approved by the actors’ heirs; Frito-Lay once got into big trouble with the W.C. Fields estate over the unauthorized use of a “W.C. Fritos” character.
The 17th University District Street Fair was almost identical to the 7th, the earliest one I saw. The rainbow candles, seascape prints, brown leather sandals and wooden duck toys were just as trite then as now. It’s hard to imagine merchandise like that ever having been fresh. Since the fair has always been tightly controlled by a screening committee employed by a Chamber of Commerce, I suspect it may have been this stale from the beginning, an attempt to tame the hippie spirit into a tourist attraction. It’s sad to see all these aging craftspeople who might have become innovative artists save for the need to please committees.
CLOSING THOUGHTS:
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”– Albert Einstein
“The mediocre mind you encounter may be your own.” — Gilbert Hernandez
