…arrives with the belated announcement of Gruntruck/Skin Yard frontman Ben McMillan’s demise, following an eight-year bout with advanced diabetes. McMillan was a hard-drivin’, hard-playin’, hard-livin’ hard rocker who never got his due piece of the Seattle Music Scene hype.

…we remain snowless yet another day (and for the whole season?).

In other nooze:

• The city’s program of forcibly clearing homeless camps is inhumane, according to community advocates who spoke at a public hearing.
• The bureaucratic process of investigating the Seattle Police Dept.’s internal investigations might have conclusions soon.
• Rumors say Boeing just might shift some 787 assembly to San Antonio.
• And that Bush guy apparently said something Monday night, but nobody seems to remember what it was.

The TV this morn has lots of lovely snow footage from Tacoma, Lynnwood, and Issaquah. But here in the heart-O-Seattle, we’ve got some white-dusted rooftops and icy roads but little more. Alas.

…endorsed Obama as the Democratic candidate of choice in the Washington caucus/primary combo. As David Goldstein sez, it’d be more impressive if they didn’t endorse a Republican.

Can’t anybody stage a hiphop club night without somebody firing guns outside?

…you might not have seen before: Serious, respectful sex advice for straight guys!

…anxiously awaits the long-threatened but still nonexistent Snowstorm ’08, here’s what else has been going on:

• That plan to restore the boarded-up, aluminum-clad windows at the King County Courthouse? Not gonna happen.
• That plan to channel state money for a Husky Stadium remodel? Not dead yet.
• Seattle’s finally getting a new strip club; sure enough, it’s situated right alongside the unofficially-named South Lake Union Trolley.
• The many human services groups based at First United Methodist Church are packin’ up and movin’ out. The last church service at the classic sanctuary: Easter, 3/23. That building’s being saved for commercial use, but the ’50s-era annex building’s going away.
• There’s good news for music lovers: Capitol Music, the city’s top vendor of orchestral instruments and sheet music for more than 90 years, has reopened in Roosevelt, a year after development consumed its last downtown location.
• Caucus or primary? Wash. state’s got both.

…if any of you find these morning headline thangs useful. I find them useful, at least. So without further ado:

• There’ll be another Sound Transit referendum. We just don’t know when or for how much.
• But there won’t be legislation to provide state funding for a Husky Stadium rebuild.
• There’s a heartwarming human interest story about several local radio vets and legends who’ve put together an online radio station with the aid of Seattle Community Colleges, streaming the sounds of Seattle airwaves’ past.
• More Port of Seattle shenanigans were recently unearthed, including a sweetheart deal to cover up cost overruns on the Sea-Tac third runway.
• Seattle’s homeless population is up 15 percent from the last “one night count.”

…And in the nooze:

• The local biz world would be a less poppin’ place if out-of-staters take over WaMu.
• Affordable-health-care advocates have picked their current local target business—not some big-box retailer but the venerable 13 Coins restaurants.
• The Wash. State Legislature— America’s second gayest.
• Metro’s got more riders than ever. Don’t worry; the Eymans and Reicherts will keep insisting on car-only transportation solutions, no matter what.
• Coyotes are so 2007. The new feral menace in Seattle: Exotic cats.

…for Evening Magazine went lovely yesterday morning. We shot at a variety of locations, including the freshly re-closed (alas) Andy’s Diner and the under-destruction Rainier Cold Storage building.

Elsewhere in recent days:

• Blood bank bias. Say that five times fast.
• The next local company to potentially get bought out: Getty Images.
• Today’s AT&T: Wannabe Internet censors.
• Washington Mutual used to call itself “The Friend of the Family.” We didn’t know “the family” meant its own top execs.
• Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren: One more year, then it’s quits.
• With all the hoopla concerning oil spills and sludge, one can forget that diesel watercraft pollute the air too.
• This is the dawning of the age of asparagus.
• More Catholic boy-abuse claims are made, this time dating back to the 1950s.
• A research study by two “nonprofit journailsm organizations” concludes: Bush lied. A lot.

…local news of note the past couple of days, except for one item of great importance. Yr. o’b’d’n’t web-scribe will tape a segment for KING-TV’s Evening Magazine this Tuesday. No word yet when it will air. Stay tuned for further details.

Last night I finally saw the local Spanish-language newscast on KUNS-TV, Fisher Communications’ Univision affiliate. The same program also airs in Portland on KUNP, also Fisher-owned.

As you might expect, the broadcast makes heavy use of redubbed footage from Fisher’s Anglophone KOMO and KATU. But it also has original coverage of stories aimed at the Univision audience (immigration, citizenship, farm workers, etc.) The sports segment that Friday included a lot of Latin American soccer highlights before it previewed the NFL playoffs. An in-studio interview with a lady painter, featuring cutaway shots of her works, included two langorious and uncensored nudes—a rare sign of a local broadcast station’s respect for its audience’s maturity.

Then there were the commercials. They featured, besides redubbed versions of familiar Anglophone spots, two categories you normally don’t see on local newscasts—Christian music CDs and class-action lawsuit attorneys.

The Univision audience, at least around here, is thus perceived by its sponsors to be both pro-Jesus and anti-corporate.

Political types who wish to reach the nation’s growing Latino segment might wish to ponder this.

…electioneering going on today in NV and SC. Around here:

• Strippers at Sugar’s in Shoreline are fighting back after cops staged what the dancers call a pattern of mass arrests and harassments.
• The standardized-testing backlash in the schools continues, as the State Senate considers delaying the last WASL graduation requirements.
• The legislature’s also pondering whether to impose a cop on condo conversions, and is allocating money to provide financial counseling to foreclosure victims.
• A Canadian border guard insists he didn’t take cavity searches too far.

I first heard about the troubled chess master in a column in Boys’ Life magazine. This would have been circa 1969-70. Fischer was depicted as the teen genius he had been a decade before. He (or his ghost writer) gave helpful tips each month to kids just learning the game.

Then, in 1972, Fischer became a full-fledged media manipulator. He took all the tricks of the era’s alpha-male rebel gods and applied them to one of the world’s most staid, insular pastimes. He promoted a made-for-TV match with Russian champ Boris Spassky in exotic Iceland. Then he declared he couldn’t perform with the film cameras whirring, and demanded to play the match’s remaining games in a more private setting.

Up to this point, Fischer had followed all the “breaking all the rules” rules.

Then he really belied all expectations.

He retired, not just from chess but from public life. He became a jet-set hermit, living alone in a succession of Eastern Hemisphere locales. He occasionally emerged to spout bizarre, often anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (he was half Jewish himself).

In retrospect, Fischer had obviously retreated into his own head, into a world of ideas that made perfect rational sense to him, no matter what anybody else said. Then again, he’d probably spent his whole life looking down on those idiotic ordinary people who could never understand what he could cognate.

…black characters in movies who don’t just exist to magically improve the lives of white heroes.