…of the umpteen-dozen unexpected joys of cable TV. AT&T Broadband just added three additional Fox Sports Net channels, re-purposing sports programming intended for FSN’s 16 or so regional branches. Right now, I’m watching a minor-league baseball game involving the Brooklyn Cyclones, the team that’s boldly brought the pro game back to a borough still mourning the Dodgers’ move to LA 45 seasons ago. Besides shots of the Cyclones’ courageous game play and their handsome-intimate new Coney Island stadium, the telecast is full of commercials for local Brooklyn businesses. There’s a horseradish maker, a lobster restaurant, a lock-and-key store, even a cement contractor! Thanks to cable, these tiny family firms can televisually strut their stuff, and this non-customer 3,000 miles away can admire the utterly charming 30-second end results.

This same set of channels also brings me FSN’s Detroit Sports Report, which is actually produced in Bellevue, WA by Fox’s Northwest Sports Report team—same announcers, same set, same everything. I wonder if any Tigers fans ever wonder why Bill Wixey & co. have probably never been personally seen within 1,600 miles of Comerica Park.

(Too bad AT&T still won’t give me the Boomerang (classic made-for-TV animation), Showtime Beyond (young filmmakers), or ABC SoapNet channels.)

The venerable game show shot fifteen episodes over three days at Seattle’s Washingotn State Convention and Trade Center. (The show was there previously in 1995; in between came that little World Trade Organization conference you might have read about.)

(The 30 total Wheel shows shot in Seattle over these two visits account for 29.5 more episodes than Frasier ever shot here, and 30 more than Dark Angel did.)

I’d neglected to write in for tix. But the will-call desk provided me with an unused VIP ticket, which meant I got to sit in an aisle seat only 10 rows back of the puzzle board (a relatively privileged spot among the nearly 2,000 seats).

As has been the show’s recent norm, it built a very elaborate set, complete with a 12-foot neon-lit Space Needle, representations of the Pacific Science Center, the Pike Place Market, and real Seatown skyscrapers, and a little monorail wheeling back and forth throughout the shows.

They also didn’t skimp on the technical element. There were five regular studio cameras, two Steadicams, and three crane cameras (all Sony, of course), plus an elaborate studio-audience lighting rig.

As they’d done in the show’s ‘95 visit, the University of Washington marching band and cheerleaders performed throughout the shows and breaks.

(Game show trivia note #1: Former Win, Lose, or Draw host Robb Weller is often credited with having invented the “Wave” cheer when he was on the UW cheer squad.)

Wheel announcer Charlie O’Donnell looked every bit the distinguished aging lounge singer in his blue blazer and white hair and goatee. His audience warm-up act was smooth, understated, and thoroughly professional. He told a few pleasant jokes, chitchatted with KOMO-TV news personalities, and got the audience’s energy level up with some well-timed calls for applause (supposedly to be used as “sweetener” over any edits).

(Game show trivia note #2: Noting that he’d been an announcer on the original American Bandstand, O’Donnell asked everyone to watch for the forthcoming NBC family-nostalgia show American Dreams, in which O’Donnell will be impersonated by Match Game ‘99 host Michael Burger.)

The shows I saw were episodes #4 and #5 of College Week, with fresh-faced, perky, campus-logo-sweatshirt-clad undergrads—four from the UW, one from Washington State, one from Western Washington U. About five minutes before the shows’ openings, the players taped their screeching “Hi! I’m __!” proclamations, which were then edited into the shows themselves. (Presumably this was done so, if one of the players had trouble remembering her own name, she could do a retake without stopping the momentum of the main program.)

Then at 7:30 (an hour after the hall’s doors opened and three hours after some spectators started lining up), O’Donnell crooned: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Wheel of Fortune episode R-3467, recorded on eight-ten-oh-two, for airing on eleven-fourteen-oh-two.” Five seconds later, the big-screen monitors burst forth with a quick-cut montage of your standard touristy Seattle shots (fish throwing, coffee, microbrew beer taps, Safeco Field, and the UW campus). A UW cheerleader introduced the stars of the show, who made their usual entrance and went straight into the business at hand.

Ms. White, I’m proud to say, is just-as-lovely-in-person and an inspiration to all us 44-year-olds. Mr. Sajak’s role on the show has been reduced to that of a hard-nosed boss, pushing the proceedings to keep up with the sped-up pace instituted to accommodate additional commercials and local-news promos. Each show contained three “toss-up” games, three regular games, one “final spin” game, and a bonus round, plus a full compliment of prize and promotional-consideration plugs and Vanna-travelogue spots before the breaks. The stars addressed the studio audience twice per episode—during the first break and after the end. No, they didn’t say anything memorable.

There was just enough time between the two shows to run to the restrooms (no, I couldn’t resist the urge to shout “I’ll take a P, Pat!” along the way) while O’Donnell answered audience questions. (I didn’t get to ask whatever happened to the dreaded used-letter board.)

Then everything happened a second time. As for game-play spoilers, I’ll simply tell you that a couple of huge jackpots were squandered on wrong letter choices, and one episode concluded with the winning of a Nissan SUV.

For reasons known only to the producers, the first two commercial breaks on each show went by in almost “real time.” But there were long tape stopdowns for the third and fourth breaks (before and after the stars’ very brief closing remarks).

Shortly after 9 p.m., the last episode ended. O’Donnell thanked the audience and advised them to drive safely. As almost 2,000 people exited the huge room as briskly as almost 2,000 people could, a PA announcer called for the crew to be back and ready to work by 10:30 the following morning.

Just before the four flights of escalators back down to Pike Street, a horde of perky temp workers shoved WOF mouse pads and American Airlines packaged-tour promo brochures at any spectator willing to receive them. I’ve got four of the mouse pads now. Even though I’m only using a laptop these days.

WHILE I’VE SEEN all but one of TV Guide’s “50 Best TV Shows of All Time,” I’ve seen only 32 of the shows on the mag’s worst-ever list. I don’t know if that means anything.

…at their advertised uses, but those “diet belts” on TV infomercials turn out to be great vibrators.

AUTHOR KEVIN PHILLIPS has a simple theory for all the corporate scandals: When the rich get too rich, you end up with “a taste for speculation and highly developed sense of “gimme” that winds up jeopardizing both the American economy and the vitality of the American democracy.”

…to Rosemary Clooney–singer, actress, aunt of Batman, mother of Twin Peaks’ Agent Rosenfield, and ex-wife of Cyrano de Bergerac.

This summer marks the 10th anniversary of the movie Singles, writer-director Cameron Crowe’s light-‘n’-fluffy love letter to Seattle and the striving, sincere young adults therein.

At the time of its release, it was the victim of a Warner Bros. marketing campaign that emphasized the suddenly-hot local bands in its audio background (the soundtrack CD came out months before the film did), rather than the characters or plot(s). When it turned out to be a frothy tale of six dating-scene survivors, only one of whom was a musician, certain audience expectations were shattered. Nevertheless, it had a respectable theatrical run and remains a decent-selling video title.

It’s also the rumored unofficial inspiration for the Warner-produced sitcom Friends. (Check-list the similarities: A sextet of dreamy looking young Caucasians, representing a variety of serious and artistic careers, all of whom hang out at the same coffeehouse, most of whom live in the same apartment building that inexplicably has a couch in its front courtyard, and who head into and out of assorted romantic entanglements, sometimes with one another.)

According to the “grunge” stereotype popular in the national media of the film’s time, young Seattlites (especially those involved in the rock scene) were alleged to be listless, rootless, directionless slackers. Crowe saw something quite different: Aware, ambitious moral-decision-makers who want to take charge of their lives, to make a difference in the world and to experience ultra-ecstatic true love, but who are (to varying degrees) thwarted by an urban society that wants to stick them into confining, unfulfilling roles.

Campbell Scott (the film’s real male lead) plays a state transportation planner who’s staked his whole up-n’-coming career on a proposed elevated-rail project he calls the Supertrain, bound to resolve rush-hour jams, slow down suburban sprawl, and create a more Euro-like urban community. (Any similarity to currently hyped elevated-transit proposals is purely coincidental.)

Scott’s main affection object, played by Kyra Sedgwick, has some not-completely-identified job trying to stop water pollution.

And Matt Dillon’s messy-haired musician character is shown by film’s end to be the most courageous of the lot. He systematically, indefatigably works on getting his girlfriend bac, just as he works on getting his musical career off the ground. His no-compromise stance toward realizing his dreams makes him a heroic ideal to which the other characters can only try to emulate.

That said, Singles remains a fairly dumb film. The gag scenes and plot complications are way too predictable. The drab lines and situations given to the characters mirror the drab life-destinies they’re trying to escape. But it gives its characters far more dignity than so many later mating-n’-dating comedies.

And, of course, local viewers l love the many geographic inaccuracies (Sheila Kelley’s character bicycles from south Lake Union across the Fremont Bridge and into the Pike Place Market in successive shots), the now-gone sites (RKCNDY), and the now-gone cameo players (Wayne Cody, Layne Staley).

Now here are accurate descriptions of some of the Warner Bros. cartoons you’ll never see on TV.

IN HAPPIER TV NEWS, the Viacom media conglomerate might be close to aggreiving an 11-year-old mistake. TV Guide reports one of the company’s cable channels, TNN, is planning to commission new episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show, the cartoon classic originally made for, and mismanaged into the ground by, Viacom’s Nickelodeon channel. The atonement part is that TNN’s negotiating to rehire R&S creator John Kricfalusi, whom Nickelodeon ceremoniously fired as producer shortly into the original show’s second season.

Trio is a tertiary cable TV channel, originally formed as a US outlet for Canadian and British drama series. Late last year it became part of the USA Networks stable, which a few months later was acquired by Vivendi Universal. One of the new management’s first modes was to schedule Uncensored June, a month-long package of “Viewer Discretion Advised” movies and documentaries “Presented Unedited and Commercial-Free.”

The program block premiered Wednesday night. Uncensored turned out to be so heavily censored as to be a joke–or a pathetic publicity stunt.

The opening offering was Art and Outrage, a documentary recap of the ’80s-’90s “shock art” genre and the vehement politicians and preachers who unwittingly helped make it such a hit. Interspersed among the valiant speeches by freedom advocates denouncing American prudery toward the human body were still shots of the artworks in question. Any image areas containing genitalia, breasts, or sexual positions was obscured with digital blurring, superimposed big red dots, or both. The same thing happened an hour later with The Last Temptation of Christ. They’re gonna show Last Tango in Paris on Thursday–any guesses as to what’ll be left of that film when they’re through sanitizing it for our protection?

Other cable channels carried on basic or digital-basic tiers have had no problems showing nude scenes now and then (the Independent Film Channel, the History Channel, even A&E on occasion). One would like to imagine that Trio, under new French ownership, would be at least as uninhibited. But apparently non.

Somebody’s making new, electronically up-to-date versions of the classic streamlined TV set of the early ’60s, the fabulous Predicta!

First came the highly unofficial Star Wars Un-Premiere Party, Thursday at the Rendezvous (which is still open despite a little kitchen fire last Tuesday, thank you). Singer Cheryl Serio was the most elegant hostess, accompanied by our ol’ friends DJ Superjew and DJ EZ-Action.

Among the audiovisual attractions displayed on the video projector: Mark Hamill’s appearance on The Muppet Show (above), the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special (a truly bizarre spectacle indeed), and something billed as a Turkish language version of the original film but was really a whole different movie (a hilarious sword-and-scandal adventure) that happened to incorporate SW spaceship shots, with the SW producers’ apparent authorization.

ON SATURDAY, the 22nd anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens blowup was celebrated by Cheryl Diane (above) and three other singer-songwriter acts in Diane’s fourth annual Eruptive Revival cabaret. As you may recall, last year’s edition was cut short by that nasty fire at the Speakeasy Cafe (still a charred-out ruin today). No such mishaps marred this year’s show at the Cafe Venus/Mars Bar, thankfully.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, the University District Street Fair was underway again, as tired and worn-out as I’ve always remembered it being. The products displayed at the “crafts” booths were barely distinguishable from those displayed in the smarmiest tourist “fine art” stores of LaConner. The food concessions were no different from the elephant ears and kettle korn sold summer-long from Puyallup to Ellensburg. The assorted musical acts tried to grab passersby’s attention, but (at least the acts I saw) failed to overcome the cloudy-afternoon ennui in full smothering force.

And, of course, the booths only temporarily hid the dozen or more empty storefronts along the half-mile strip known to all as The Ave. The city thinks it knows just what to do about the retail ennui–a construction project. To the City of Seattle bureaucracy, every problem is solvable by a construction project.

But it’s hard to imagine anyone other than a bureaucrat imagining that wider sidewalks and prettier street lights will draw non-student shoppers back from the malls; not while the daily papers continue to smear The Ave as A Problem Place with Those Problem People.

And as long as there’s no money to do the right things for the throwaway teens (often banished by middle-class parents over not fitting a proper upstanding image) but plenty of money to do things against them (police harassment schemes that only make things worse), this situation won’t change.

ON A HAPPIER NOTE, Sunday evening brought two of my all-time fave cartoonists, ex-local Charles Burns and still-local Jim Woodring, to a singing session at Confounded Books/Hypno Video.

You’ve gotta check out Woodring’s newest, Trosper. Painted in bright pastel colors you can eat with a spoon, and printed just like an old Little Golden Book, it’s a wordless, utterly engrossing little tale of a cute little elephant who just wants to have fun, in a world seemingly bent on frustrating him. It even comes with a CD by one of our fave neo-improv artistes, the incomprable Bill Frisell.

…(after Kevin Seal, natch) claims the recently assassinated Dutch politician you’ve read about wasn’t really as right-wing as international media accounts allege. (Other Dutch commentators and analysts, as you might expect, disagree with the ex-VJ’s assessment re: the politician; and insist the politician was almost as reactionary as the US newspapers would have you believe.)

THANX AND A HAT TIP to all who dared sit indoors on the first warm evening of the year to attend our glorious Clark Show at the Rendezvous. There will be another installment, bigger and better (see this space for exact date and time).

I’M PROUD TO SAY that I’ve seen at least one episode of almost every series on TV Guide’s new list of the 50 greatest TV shows of all time. The only one I’ve still never viewed: The old E.G. Marshall lawyer show The Defenders. I finally got to see a complete episode of Your Show of Shows at NYC’s Museum of TV & Radio, during last month’s Eastern jaunt.

…to the memory of Jack Roberts, who, almost singlehandedly, kept two American traditions alive locally into the ’90s: (1) The locally-owned, independent appliance store; and (2) the wacky-pitchman TV commercial.

ADVENTURES in celebrity name misspellings.

ANOTHER DIGITAL DIVIDE FALLS: More and more women are getting hooked on that onetime geeks-only craze, online gaming.

EXPLORE WILLFULLY-FORGOTTEN MEMORIES of Saturday mornings past at Bad Cartoons of the ’80s.