current tv via daily kos

It’s been pundit-firing season in Seattle area media, as cash-strapped station bosses seem to believe politics is a topic we don’t care or need to hear about.

After the November elections we’ve lost Robert Mak from KING, Bryan Johnson and Ken Schram from KOMO, Enrique Cerna from KCTS, and all the syndicated talkers who had been on Progressive Talk 1090. C.R. Douglas still covers local politics on KCPQ, but he’s on an increasingly lonely beat.

And nationally, Al Gore and megalawyer Joel Hyatt are now selling the little-watched cable channel Current TV to Al-Jazeera. The Qatar-based, pan-Arab news service is expected to rebrand Current to its own name, dropping all or most of its current lineup of pundit and documentary/reality shows.

The first incarnation of Current specialized in short-form documentary bits, often bought up cheap from aspiring filmmakers. Its second era began with the hiring of ex-MSNBC superstar Keith Olbermann, essentially the founding father of liberal talk TV. But Olbermann, as contentious a firebrand off-screen as on, repeatedly complained about the low budgets and sloppy production work, until Current fired him. After that, a post-Olbermann slate of talkers, including Eliot Spitzer, garnered as few as 40,000 viewers in prime time.

Hyatt, meanwhile, had signed deals with cable companies that restricted how much of the channel’s content could be posted online. That meant that even during the channel’s peak months with Olbermann, almost nothing from Current was on YouTube or iTunes, and was unviewable to households whose local cable companies didn’t receive the channel.

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas claims Joel Hyatt was less interested in building audiences or even selling commercials than in finagling subscription fees from cable companies. Hyatt apparently told big cable operators that Current would get and keep viewers who might otherwise drop their cable (political liberals being notorious for claiming not to even own TV sets).

That, Moulitsas alleges, is why Hyatt signed those contracts that kept him from promoting the channel’s content online.

Also, as a one-channel indie operation, Current didn’t have a “family” of other channels to air its promos.

Without any efficient means to keep attracting viewers, cable companies openly questioned the value of keeping Current in their lineups. Hyatt knew it was time to cut his losses and sell out.

Eventually, someone besides MSNBC will figure how to do liberal talk properly, and will make a mint at it. It just wasn’t these guys.

via listal.com

Very vague online rumors suggest David Lynch and Mark Frost might, just might mind you, be engaged in the very earliest negotiations toward a Twin Peaks sequel series.

I’ll believe it when I see a real announcement.

However, it should be noted that the original series was set in the winter and spring of 1989, the year the pilot and first season were filmed. The last episode, in which Agent Cooper’s soul became trapped in the alternate dimension known as the Black Lodge, seemed to imply that he’d be in there for 25 years. That would be, hey, 2014! If that denouement were to make it to the screen that year, the deals to make it happen would start, well, now.

I’m just a fan (albeit a huge one) of the series and its spinoff works; but I’ve got my own ideas how a revival should be plotted.

<FAN FICTION MODE>

• The demon Killer Bob, originally played by the late Frank Silva, will need to be recast. All other characters whose portrayers have passed on in real life (Jack Nance, Don Davis, etc.) will have passed on in the story.
• I would open the new series with the newly retired Agent Cooper moving into Twin Peaks and greeting his old colleagues, including now-sheriff Hawk and former sheriff Truman. But they’ve already been informed by Albert Rosenfield and Gordon Cole that Cooper isn’t the man he used to be; that Cooper’s early retirement had been predicated by a series of incidents that called his character into question.
• Hawk and Truman invite Cooper to help investigate a series of perhaps-connected recent crimes around town. The invite is Hawk and Truman’s excuse to keep a constant watch on Cooper himself.
• The Packard Saw Mill has closed, re-opened, and re-closed several times over the years. It’s now re-closed, perhaps for good.
• The Ghostwood Estates development project has been delayed so many times that townspeople joke that it’s “haunted.” Which it really is. Which is why all attempts to bulldoze Glastonbury Grove and environs have ended in bizarre “accidents.”
• The divorced Ben Horne and the widowed Catherine Martell continue their stormy lifelong affair, now openly. They’re still battling with one another over the Ghostwood and Packard lands.
• Ben’s fortune and legacy are also fought for by at least four offspring, legitimate and other. Audrey Horne has been through a few divorces, and has become a jaded manipulator like her dad. Donna Hayward needs the money to take care of hubby James Hurley, laid up for life after a mysterious (of course) motorcycle crash. The grownup Little Nicky, current boss of the town’s criminal element, is just plain greedy. And a mysterious crooked lawyer has filed a suit on behalf of Johnny Horne (who’s been hanging out with Leo Johnson as the lovable “town fools”).
• While Little Nicky is the ostensible main focus of Hawk and Truman’s investigation with Cooper, others are caught up in Nicky’s activities, knowingly or not. They include the young-adult and teen offspring of Andy and Lucy, James and Donna, Bobby and Shelly, Mayor Milford and Lana, and even Mike and Nadine.
• Yes, there’s a murder involving this milieu. The trumped-up investigation turns serious. During this, Cooper eventually reveals himself as not the super-clean force of morality he used to be. But he still hasn’t been exposed as Bob’s carrier. For that to happen, Hawk and Truman have to trick him into re-entering the Black Lodge.
• Along the way, Audrey somehow learns to love again; Julee Cruise sings; Dr. Jacoby fails to “heal” Cooper’s soul; the original series’ other (non-killed-off) characters make at least cameo appearances; and Lynch and Frost make a righteous snipe against the sports-bar chain that stole the Twin Peaks name.

</FAN FICTION MODE>

easy street records

Easy Street Records on Lower Queen Anne is located in a former Safeway (built in the telltale first-generation “supermarket” architecture) that had been Seattle’s first Tower Records, and later the long-mourned Tower Books (perhaps the only chain that knew how to market grownup book-reading as something actually enjoyable). As Easy Street, it hosted innumerable in-store signings and performances and Free Record Days.

It lost its lease. It closes Jan. 18, after 12 years. UnChaste Bank will take over the space. Damn.

Easy Street’s West Seattle flagship will continue.

• From CNN’s New Year’s nonsense, Kathy Griffin pretends to try to seduce Anderson Cooper (and not in a “family friendly” way).
• Native Americans protested inside the Tacoma Mall against the Canadian government. Sounds no more odd than the anti-Proposition 8 protests held in places outside California.
• No, pot is not the ultimate answer to every single problem the human race has ever encountered. Indeed, some people ultimately aren’t helped by it at all.
• Naomi Wolf alleges there was a big coordinated federal crackdown agenda against Occupy Wall Street and its spinoff protests, that started even before the protests did. At least in the hereby-linked story, Wolf’s charge seems more sweeping than the evidence she offers.
• Richard Eskrow offers up his “Top 12 Political Fallacies of 2012.” Among them: “We’re Living Beyond Our Means,” “It’s All About Politicians,” and “We’re Helpless.”
• Michael Lind remembers when destructive anti-government crazies claimed to be left-wing.
• Ishmael Reed talks about the latest Tarantino movie as if he expected Tarantino movies to have human characters.
• What does the phrase “the whole nine yards” really mean? Apparently, nothing.

Remember, one and all: Our anual fantabulous MISCmedia In/Out List arrives later this week. Look for it.

…back in 1973.

(It’s a sequel to The 2,000 Year Old Man, one of the great comedy LPs of all time.)

At least, that’s what I hope and pray it will be, for myself and for all of you.

'he-man and she-ra: a christmas special,' part of the festivities at siff film center on xmas eve

And a dreadful sorry for not posting in the last 12 days.

What I’ve been up to: Not much. Just wallowing in the ol’ clinical depression again over my first mom-less Xmas, trying to figure out how the heck I’m gonna pay January’s rent.

(For those of you who came in late, I’m not independently wealthy despite the old rumors; a few little local photo books don’t earn anything near a decent living; and my eternal search for a little ol’ paying day job has gone nowhere slowly.)

But I have vowed to stay at it. And there will be new MISCmedia products in the new year.

And, as always, it’s the time of year for MISCmedia’s annual In/Out List, the only accurate guide to what will become hot and not-so-hot in the coming 12 months. Send in your suggestions now.

On with the accumulated random links:

• To be a fan of a Seattle team is often like being a Who (Horton Hears a Who! version), constantly needing to scream “We Are Here! We Are Here!” to the NYC/Bristol CT sports media. Finally, they’ve heard about the Seahawks, who just might be “the NFL’s best team” right now.
• Get ready for big labor strife at the Northwest’s grain export terminals.
• Gray’s Anatomy costar Patrick Dempsey says he wants to buy the remaining Tully’s Coffee stores, and says he may make Seattle his “home away from home.” What, someone associated with Gray’s Anatomy actually plans to be in Seattle? How will that affect the Gray’s drinking game, where you take a swig whenever someone says something hopelessly inaccurate about this town?
• Today’s example of trying to make the homeless “invisible” is brought to you by the City of Olympia.
• Are Safeway stores deliberately overcharging? And is Staples.com charging different people different prices for the same stuff based on where they live?
• One pundit’s predictions for the e-book biz in ’13: Free e-book reader machines.
• Al Sharpton looks back at 2012 as “the year the rich couldn’t buy.”
• The Paris Review reviews porn novels. Yes, really. Specifically, contributor Avi Steinberg discusses five recent porn novels with librarian characters, and wishes (among other things) that they had more sex scenes that actually took place in libraries.
• It’s been a week of losses for fans of fun TV and movies, with the departures of Jack Klugman and Charles Durning. Now we must also add Gerry Anderson, creator-producer (with then-wife Sylvia) of Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, UFO, and Space 1999. His “Supermarionation” shows were nothing less than “F.A.B.”

capitolhillseattle.com

• After years of redevelopment-related doom staring it in the face, Capitol Hill’s beloved B&O Espresso and Bistro finally closed last week. B&O will live on, however, in a soon-to-open Ballard location, and might return within the new mixed use structure to be built on the old site. Word is another Hill coffee institution, the Bauhaus, might also resurface in Ballard.
• The pairing of Paul McCartney with the remnants of Nirvana turned out to be an original composition, which was not all that bad. Overall, though, that all-star (and mostly old-star) benefit for Hurricane Sandy victims could have had a little more variety on stage, such as even one woman.
• Some dude at Buzzfeed put up a supposedly shocking exposé of local web comix king Matthew (The Oatmeal) Inman. Once you take out the stuff that’s either exaggerated or based on a fake online profile made by somebody else, you’re left with the hardly reputation-killing facts that Inman is thinner and more athletic than the alter-ego character in his strip, and that he once had a day job in “search engine optimization” (the pseudo-science of gaming Google’s page rankings).
• A few select Seattle neighborhoods are getting ultra-speed home Internet service some time next year.
• Stupid Republican Tricks, WaState style: Another state Senate “coup” is in the works with two turncoat Democrats’ collusion.
• Are sales of e-book machines really falling victim to tablet-mania, or is this just another overhyped “trend”?
• You know you want to read every fake newspaper headline that appeared in the first 16 seasons of The Simpsons.
• Gawker lists 22 “terrible things that must end in 2013.” Among them: “twee framed sayings,” “fake Twitter accounts,” and “the word ‘swag.'”
• Feminist pranksters in Baltimore made a clever send-up of a Victoria’s Secret panty ad, complete with “No Means No” slogans.
• Urban Outfitters “buys yard sale clothes in bulk and resells them to hipsters as ‘vintage.'”
• Dan Mascai at Fast Company really hates silly media stereotypes about his own “millennial generation.”
• Another venerable mag leaving print behind for an online-only future: The Sporting News, the “bible of baseball.” While it expanded its coverage into the other big U.S. team sports, its prime asset is its record of every major and minor league baseball game ever played in the U.S. and Canada. That alone is an ongoing endeavor worth keeping alive somehow.

There was a spot on lower Fourth Avenue downtown on Sunday afternoon where the cheers from the gay marriage celebrants at City Hall and the cheers from the Seahawks fans in CenturyLink field were equally loud. And, with the Seahawks game a total rout, the cheers from both sources were about as frequent.

The City Hall scene was a big, one-time-only, spectacle of civic self-congratulation (the sort of thing Seattle does as often and as chest-thumpingly as possible).

But at the heart of this circus were the 137 couples who were legally wed, at five different chapels set up in the building, by a corps of judges working off the clock for free (including the aptly named Judge Mary Yu). Only the couples and their immediate guests were let inside the building.

Then the couples all got to descend the big exterior stairs and be congratulated with cheers, signs, and music.

Where there are mass weddings, there will be mass receptions. One was held at the Q bar on Broadway. Another was at the Paramount. The latter had its main floor all in flat seatless mode, with tables and tablecloths, and complimentary cupcakes and candies and wine and cider, all donated by local merchants.

Then the celebrity well wishers came on stage. Singer Mary Lambert, then Mayor McGinn, then State Sen. Ed Murray and fiancee (left).

A singer named Chocolate came on to sing a dutifully soulful rendition of “At Last,” leading the ceremonial “first dance” for all the couples.

At this time of year, when superficial wishes of love and joy are repeated to the point of meaninglessness, let us all heed the example of these couples, all all their gay and straight supporters who worked to make this happen, and to all before them who strove to have their love officially recognized in this way, and all who will marry (or simply know they can) in the days and years to come.

chris pirillo via google plus

In sociology, the controversial and oft-disputed “broken windows theory” claims that crime in an urban neighborhood can go up or down depending on how the locals perceive the place as a “nice” (orderly, civil) place or a “scary” (anything-goes) place.

This post is about an entirely different “broken Windows” theory.

It’s the perception, in some of the tech and business press, that Microsoft Windows is “broken.”

They’re not talking about the software itself being broken (as in inoperable), but the business model behind it.

Especially in regards to “upgrade” sales of the new Windows 8 for multi-desktop businesses.

The naysayers say Windows 8 does so many things so differently than previous versions that there’s a steep “learning curve,” and that businesses may not want that sort of disruption in their day to day operations if they don’t have to take it.

Another alleged issue: Windows 8 is supposed to provide one seamless operating environment among PCs, tablets, and smartphones. Only the tablets and the smartphones still aren’t selling all that well, compared with Apple and Android products.

What’s worse, PCs themselves (almost all of which still come with Windows preloaded) themselves aren’t selling like they used to, and might not ever do so again.

You sure don’t need me to tell you how important MS has become to the Wash. state economy, and that no number of XBox 360 Live subscriptions can make up for the value of all the new and upgraded Windows installations out there.

Oh well. There’s always the Plan B strategy of suing Android phone makers.

nanowrimo.org

I participated in National Novel Writing Month again this year. Came out of it with most of the first draft of something I’m tentatively calling Horizontal Hold: A Novel About Love & Television. More details as I come closer to making it presentable.

• There’s one of them online petition thangs out to try to persuade the CBS Radio Stations Group to keep KPTK-AM and its “Progressive Talk” format on the air.
• Bruce Pavitt’s put out an Apple “iBook” about the Nirvana/Mudhoney/TAD tour of Europe in 1989. And he’s talking about how he sold Sub Pop as a brand signifying coolness to two continents.
• The Seattle branch of Gilda’s Club is keeping its name. This is news because other outlets of the drop-in cancer support organization aren’t keeping the name. One reason: some young adults these days don’t remember who Gilda Radner was. That’s almost as sad as cancer itself.
• Daily Kos contributor “MinistryOfTruth” has some advice for Republicans trying to rebuild their party: “Don’t have a base of idiots.”
• Steve Fraser at TruthOut, meanwhile, wishes to remind you that the so-called “fiscal cliff” is, like so much else, a political invention.
• The business-press buzzword of the month: “Insourcing.” GE’s restarting work in some previously abandoned appliance factory buildings; and Apple’s assembling some iMacs in the U.S. with plans to expand. Just don’t expect this to be the one answer to the unemployment crisis. Factory work these days is so automated, and CAD/CAM design work can make it so efficient, that there’s not that much labor in the cost of a lot of stuff, no matter where it’s made.
• Finally, let’s all reflect (and refract) in the glory that was gay marriage license midnight madness at the Console Color TV Building (King County Admin) downtown, Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Actual gay weddings start Sunday.

kirotv.com

spoon-tamago.com via buzzfeed.com

• Newest fun invention from Japan: the “3D photo booth.” Stand very still for 15 minutes, and a few days later a figurine that looks like you shows up in the mail.
• Wash. state is Number One! As, er, a “net importer of out-of-state parolees.”
• Question: “Is Amazon.com Taking Over the World?” Answer: No. Only the world’s potential profit centers.
• The remaining Tully’s coffee houses may have a buyer.
• Did the Bellevue City Council not really know that light rail tracks have to have a rail yard (train car parking lot) with them?
• Gender-neutral marriage licenses are on the way. Will they show up in time for the first rush of gay nuptials?
• Walden Three, Greg Lundgren’s ambitious attempt to set up a multimedia arts center in the old Lusty Lady building (and to partly pay for it all as a years-long “documentary film shoot”), now has a blog. In it, Lundgren spins completely fictional stories about fabulous exhibits and shows that would be occurring there if it were operating now.
• The Illinois company calling itself Boeing is still stonewalling in talks with the engineers’ union.
• After 11 years, the final edition of KING-TV’s Up Front With Robert Mak airs this Sunday. It’s ending for no good reason. A studio interview show doesn’t cost that much to make, particularly if any good bits can be reused on your regular newscasts.
• Yes, the Florida Republicans really were trying to stop people in Dem-leaning districts from voting.
• Speaking of state-level GOPpers, they’re now in full control of 24 state houses. Expect more Wisconsin-like extremist legislation and dirty tricks, just on the other side of the holidays (if not sooner).
• I still meet left wingers who imagine that in some utopian pre-television age, all newspapers were local mini versions of the NY Times, noble progressive institutions exposing social ills. In real life, even the NY Times mostly wasn’t like that. A lot of them were pugnacious right-wing rags that supported, or even contributed to, climates of fear and hate. Case in point: The Hollywood Reporter. The venerable showbiz trade paper recently ran a big essay describing, and apologizing for, its role in promoting the 1950s “blacklist” against film people even suspected of “communist” beliefs.
• The “Black Friday boycott” at Walmart stores, thankfully, turned out to be more than just self-serving online rants by lefties who never go there anyway. There were actual pickets and other actions at the stores, in favor of fairer labor practices. And now, fast food workers in NYC are also demanding a living wage.
• Something lost in all the copyright-police suppression drives against “file sharing”: the “obscure music” blogs, which unearthed and shared long-out-of-print LPs, 45s, and 78s in all kinds of non-hit categories.
• Larry Hagman, 1931-2012: The Dallas/I Dream of Jeannie star was as kind hearted and generous off screen as he could be villainous on screen. I once got to know his daughter Kristina, a local painter who had a space in the old 619 Western building. She is also a kind and generous soul.

steven h. robinson, shorelineareanews.com

• After 82 years, Parker’s Ballroom on Aurora in Shoreline was demolished this month. Also known over the years as the Aquarius Tavern and Parker’s Casino, it originally opened as a naughty out-of-town “roadhouse” on the then-new highway from Seattle to Everett. The 20,000 square foot room (with no supporting posts inside) was a rollicking big-band venue during the swing years, then a major rock club hosting everyone from the Fabulous Wailers and the Sonics to Heart. It was a cardroom and sports bar most recently, closing earlier this year. If any attempt was made to save it, I haven’t heard of it. The site’s rumored next use: a car lot.
• KPTK-AM, aka “Seattle’s Progressive Talk AM 1090,” goes off the air the day after New Year’s. The station’s owned by the CBS Radio Stations Group. CBS has its own sports talk network in the works, and is “flipping” many of its AM outlets to make room for it. There’s already a “Save Progressive Talk” page on Facebook.
• SeattlePI.com Shrinkage Watch: Amy Rolph, most recent curator of the site’s “Big Blog,” is quitting to take an editorial post at MSN.com. PI.com still hasn’t replaced the last five people who left.
• The Lava Lounge, Belltown’s hip hangout bar since ’95, might or might not be sold within the next month or so, and might or might not be closing shortly after that.
• A homeless camp isn’t the place you want to be even when it’s not flooding.
• Hostess Update: Labor arbitration might save the venerable cake and bread maker as a going concern. Of course, that would leave the company’s “vulture capitalism” bosses in charge to keep increasing their own wages while cutting everyone else’s (and crippling the company’s ability to compete or even operate). However, a rival capital/buyout firm says it wants to take over Hostess, and keep its union workers.
• So let’s get this straight: Hope Solo, Olympic soccer star whose late dad often lived on the streets downtown, marries Jerramy Stevens, ex-UW and Seahawks football player with a history of sexual and other assault allegations—including a charge of domestic violence involving Solo herself. I’m not the only one hoping there’s no more drama in this story.
• The tiny town of Gold Bar, Snohomish County, may “disincorporate.”
• We now have the first vague idea what a new Sonics Arena might look like. It’ll look like a modern arena.
• Christy Wampole submitted an NY Times essay about “How to Live Without Irony.” Only she seems to completely misunderstand what irony even is. I could call that ironic but won’t.
• Sure enough, as soon as I plug one Kickstarter fundraiser on this site, I get folks asking me to plug their Kickstarter fundraisers also. This time, it’s a solo CD by venerable Red Dress singer Gary Minkler. He describes it as “contorted, gospel-rooted Americana (the broad definition), lyrically akin to American Modernist poetry sensibilities, shaped like cartoons but deadly serious.”
• Local web-comix legend The Oatmeal explains what “being a content creator” is like (well, other than the part where everyone wants you to do everything for free).

(NOTE: For reasons unknown to me, the first version of this post completely disappeared from the site. I’m rewriting it as best as I can remember.)

I have always called Seattle’s Dexter Avenue “Dextrose Avenue.”

That’s in honor of one of its major attractions, the Hostess Bakery.

Since some time in the 1930s, it has been a mainstay of the originally industrial, now posh-ified Cascade (now “South Lake Union”) neighborhood.

It had its logos built in to its concrete-block architecture.

Day and night, it enveloped the surrounding environs with the glorious smells of sugar, flour, egg whites, chocolate, etc. being poured, mixed, baked, and packaged.

At one time, they separated eggs and re-ground flour by hand; before the treats fully became the automated factory products they’d always appeared to be.

As a child during the early years of kids’ TV, I remember the live local kids’ hosts performing commercials, with the big cutaway props of Hostess Cup Cakes, Twinkies, Tiger Tails, etc.

(My favorites were always the Sno Balls. Even at a tender age, two side by side pink hemispheres meant something to me.)

Later on, after the FCC stopped local kids’ hosts from appearing in commercials (a move that essentially killed most of those shows), Hostess created animated talking versions of its goodies—Twinkie the Kid, Captain Cup Cake, Fruit Pie the Magician. (Unlike Will Vinton’s later M&M’s spots, these ads never addressed the implications of these “baked” toons inviting you to eat their relatives.)

Hostess treats will still be sold here (see below).

But they won’t be made here anymore.

The Seattle plant, and two others, will be closed.

Management blamed an ongoing bakers’ strike. (However, the mayor of St. Louis, whose Hostess branch is also closing, says he’d been informed of the closings months before the strike.)

The strikers refused the company’s demands for wage cuts and big layoffs; after the company already erased pension accounts.

That was as part of a bankruptcy procedure, the company’s second in a decade.

Hostess Brands has been slowly dying for longer than that, under three different owners.

Too many parents in recent years have demanded only “healthy” foods for their kids.

In response, Hostess re-targeted its advertising at adults, with little success.

And there are so many, many newer snack product brands, local, regional, and national.

Also, let’s not forget the impact imposed on all consumer-products companies by Walmart. It regularly sets ever smaller wholesale payments, which companies dare not challenge.

The Hostess site will surely be redeveloped, probably as a posh condo project.

A lot of these places are named after the things they’d replaced.

In this case, we should all demand the condo be christened “Twinkie Towers.”

UPDATE: Hostess Brands’ next bankruptcy move might be a staged “liquidation.” That could take several paths, but probably would involve Hostess Brands disappearing (and taking many obligations and all labor contracts away with it), then transferring assets to a shell company that would start a nonunion “new” Hostess.

Onetime P-I cartoonist Ramon "Ray" Collins, to be featured in the documentary Bezango, WA

• I don’t often plug Kickstarter fundraising projects here. But there’s one I fully believe in. It’s Bezango, WA, a feature documentary by Ron Austin and Louise Amandes about Northwest cartoonists past and present. It’ll have everybody from David Horsey to Ellen Forney. It should be a blast.
• It’s been a few days since the last Random Links, I know. No, I haven’t been dancing the liberal’s victory dance all this time. I’ve been working on another National Novel Writing Month novel. This one should be great. I’ve got a scene in which an electronics nerd compares a sexy woman to a freshly soldered joint. (Really.) (That part might not make the eventual final cut, though.)
• Remember, Seattle parks users: the owls are not what they seem.
• A nice Wikipedia contributor explains Seattle’s street layout. (This will be on your exam.)
• Don’t send too many Tweets® from a Husky football game, or the UW will accuse you of being an unlicensed media outlet.
• Andy Warhol’s studio submitted a proposal to paint the Tacoma Dome’s roof all floral-y. Now, it might finally appear.
• RIP Tristan Devin, 32. The Capitol Hill cafe owner and comedian was also the director of the “People’s Republic of Komedy,” staging group bills all over town and promoting a standup revival. Among the topics of his own act were his long struggles with depression and experiences in therapy.
• Bryan Johnson has retired after 53 years at KOMO radio and TV. On the radio side, he’d announced both the death of JFK and the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Transferred to the TV side, he became a sort-of local Mike Wallace. In his booming baritone, he asked the tough questions, he made the snarky comments, he delivered the gloom-n’-doom “analysis.” His official last piece was an in-studio commentary on whether the feds would act to prevent pot legalization here.
• Some Occupy ____ activists have an idea that might just actually benefit people. It’s called “Rolling Jubilee.” Under this scheme, a donation-funded nonprofit would buy up unpayable consumer debt at pennies on the dollar, just like collection agencies do. But the nonprofit would then cancel, instead of try to collect, those debts.
• Google allegedly now makes more ad revenue than all U.S. magazines and newspapers combined.
• Is selling out to commercials now the only viable business model for indie rock bands?