Utne Reader has discovered Seattle Sound’s item about an online sub-sub-genre of “slash fiction,” this version involving the likes of Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl, among other bad-boy duos of rock.

“Slash” fiction, for the uninitiated, is a four-decades-old shtick in which mostly female writers imagine guy-pals of celebrity or fiction as if they were hot n’ heavy gay lovers. Most observers believe it started with Star Trek fan fiction.

I’d go back earlier, to the college English profs who’d give an easy A to any student essay that “proved” the major characters of any major literary work were really gay.

Cobain, as many of you know, sometimes claimed to be bi; though there’s no knowledge of his ever having had a homosexual experience. I used to figure he’d just said that because, in Aberdeen, to be a “fag” was the worst insult you could give a boy, while in Olympia and Seattle, upscale white gay men were the most respected “minority group” around.

Fiction based on real-life celebrity caricatures is also nothing new. The New Yorker did it in the 1930s. South Park has been doing it for a decade.

Anyhow, there are further slash frontiers out there than Seattle Sound or Utne have bothered to explore. They include “femslash,” women writing about female fictional icons as if they were really lesbians. It might have started with fan-written stories about Xena and Gabrielle. It’s spread to include other SF/fantasy shows with at least two female cast members, and from there to other fictional universes. The grossest/most intriguing, depending on your tastes, might be the stories imagining half-sisterly cravings between Erica Kane’s daughters.

Kress IGA, that is, as of 7 a.m. this morning. I’m happy.

…with phosphates: Remember, when Cascade is outlawed, only outlaws will have sheeting action.

The nonexistent (outside Africa) hetero AIDS scare that was supposed to hit us any year now has cost governments and health groups about a billion bucks. Bucks that could’ve been spent on treatments and possible preventions for those who really did have it, or who really were at risk.

The “Save Our Sonics” rally outside the new Federal Courthouse on Stewart Street was far more exhilarating than anything seen on the KeyArena floor this past year (except the Obama rally).

The organizers scheduled it to coincide with the start of the city’s lawsuit trial inside the courthouse and with game 6 of the NBA finals. With the help of the local sports media, they drew more than 3,000 people to the courthouse steps.

Sonics legends were there (Gary Payton, Xavier McDaniel) to spur on the shouting. So were several men, and at least one boy, in Slick Watts getup.

As per the organizers’ permit, the 4:30 p.m. rally lasted just over half an hour, long enough to be covered live for the 5 p.m. local news. It served to drive home a crucial point in the city’s case against Clay Bennett and co.: We don’t want a settlement. We don’t want to be bought out of the team’s arena lease, at any price. We want our team. Period.

The Kress IGA Supermarket should finally open sometime this week. The pre-opening VIP gala occurred Monday evening.
(Yes, you may ask why I photographed this event, but didn’t try to get into many SIFF-related parties and didn’t photograph the one I was at. I won’t answer, but you can ask.)
At the gala, the store’s many local suppliers (particularly in the deli and to-go-meals section) showed off their products. Reps from the city and the Downtown Seattle Association were on hand to wish the store and its Whidbey Island-based owners well.
I think it’ll succeed, even though it’s opening at a time when retailers in general are facing rough seas, and even though it’s in a basement, and even though it has no dedicated parking, and even though independently-owned groceries have taken a dive in this state (concurrent with the decline and fall of the Associated Grocers co-op).

The place just feels right. It’s not gargantuan (without the prepared-meals section, it’s about the size of an old ’60s-era supermarket), yet it’s got a complete selection. Prices are at least competitive with those at the big chains. (IGA is a member-owned franchise operation, whose presence in Washington has ebbed and flowed over the decades.)

Even the deli part, which is obviously intended as the store’s main profit center, serves up a lot of honest grub at honest prices. (Though I don’t understand why there’s a whole olive bar. But perhaps I’m not hep to the whole olive revival thang.)

In all the years I’ve been doing this gig, I’ve never once mentioned stamp collecting… at least as far as I remember. But I just ADORE the UK post office’s new Hammer Films and Carry On stamps, derived from period movie posters.

Clay Bennett’s minions have been making public statements that could only properly be responded to by laff tracks. The latest: After fielding as lousy a team as they could, moving the Sonics’ radio broadcasts to a comparatively low-rated right-wing-talk station, tarting up the Sonics Dance Team’s routines and costumes, and generally behaving like twerps, Bennett’s dudes now claim there’s no real Seattle interest in the team. As King Kaufman at Salon puts it, “This is a little like a kid who murders his parents, then begs for mercy because he’s an orphan.”

KOMO-TV’s long-running afternoon talk show will disappear in August, ending a 24-year run.

Producers had tried to shake up the show in recent years, slicing it into four or five segments per hour instead of its traditional two. But the lure of low-cost, high-profit syndicated talk fare has finally done it in, just like it’s done in most of the local gabfests around the country.

Also threatened by the dictum of talk-is-cheap: The daytime soap operas, which NWA cohost Cindi Rinehart has chronicled since the show’s debut. At that time, there were 14 daily serials on American TV. Now there are just eight (not counting Spanish-language imports). Almost all of those shows are scrambling to cut their budgets and shrink their acting and writing staffs.

In the ultimate unintended irony, the syndicated show that will replace Rinehart and co. has the same title as a former long-running soap, The Doctors.

Everyone knows the “fist bump” gesture was invented by Howie Mandel!

Before she was the first Asian American on the King County Council, she owned the first Chinese restaurant in Seattle outside of the Chinatown/International District. With her husband in the kitchen, she presided over the dining room as a pure diva. This name/face recognition fueled her rise to influence, both within the Asian American community and beyond. You may know of her daughter, longtime public-schools advocate Cheryl Chow. You might not know Chow was the sister of Mary Pang, whose frozen-foods mini-empire met a fiery end at the hands of Pang’s convicted-arsonist son.

Or rather, it’s finally begun.

So now what?

For one thing, there will, to quote a recent movie cliche, be blood.

No matter how lame McCain’s own speeches are, the Right’s many screeching mouthpieces will do all they can to defame the Obama campaign, by any sleazy means necessary.

The next 22 weeks will be brutal.

But they can also be exhilarating.

Let’s get started.

…hits Ed McMahon. It might take a miracle to keep him housed; either that, or winning a magazine sweepstakes.

…perhaps even sell or scuttle Hummer brand: All square-bashing “radicals” may now cease stereotyping non-hipster Americans as war-lovin’ consumption addicts.

Another TV season has come and gone. Ratings across the channel spectrum continued to plummet, even on shows/channels that weren’t hit by the writers’ strike.

And with the explosion in programming across broadcast and cable channels, telecasters are constantly on the lookout for entertainment forms that haven’t yet been adapted to the screen.

Saturday Night Live, as you’ll recall, was born from trends in stage sketch comedy that hadn’t yet been brought to TV on a regular basis.

Later years brought us televised karaoke, poker, ballroom dancing, shows based on video blogs and webcams, travelogue shows at pubilc-drunkenness events, and even prime-time bingo.

So: What else is out there, to feed programmers’ ravenous appetites for stealable concepts?

Here are a few ideas. (If any readers successfully package a series based on one of these, you may pay me a modest royalty.)

• Poetry slams
• Jam bands
• The entire worlds of classical music, opera, ballet
• Modern dance
• “Legitimate” theater
• Conceptual performance art
• Easter egg hunts
• Neo-burlesque
• Alternative circus acts, such as Circus Contraption
• Drag cabarets/pageants
• Mr./Ms. Leather contests
• Drum circles
• Sewing circles
• Storytelling competitions
• “Cuddle parties”
• Role-playing games (not cartoons based on the characters in the games, but actual sit-down game playing)

Please feel free to suggest your own.