MISC. WAS BAFFLED by a notice on the Internet search site
Yahoo!
promising a link to a British nudist camp for transvestites. How
can you
be undressed and cross-dressed at the same time? Did the queens just wear
wigs,
and high heels? But on reading the "Garden of Eden" site
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/R_Brett3/), the explanation was
simple. By summer it's a normal nonerotic family nudist camp. (As the
site says,
"Our club is widely recognised as being the in place to go for a fun time
holiday.") But during the miserable Welsh winter, it holds weekends for
fully-cross-dressed closeted queens to express their lifestyles away from the
general populace. You have three seconds to fantasize about Robert Morley
types
or the bluebloods from the movie Scandal sharing high tea in
frilly lace
things.
THE FINE PRINT (at the bottom of a "No Food/Drink" sign outside a video
arcade on University Way): "Thank You For Your Coordination."
CATHODE CORNER: Wm. Bennett, the Bush Administration drone we've
previously dissed for his dissing of trash TV, plans to turn his heavy-handed
pieties into a cartoon show, Adventures from the World of Virtues.
It'll
air on PBS, which Bennett had previously denounced as a waste of tax
bucks. If
I had kids I'd rather let 'em watch Melrose Place.
BACK INTO THE DRINK: Your fave bar or coffeehouse might soon stock the
Canadian-made Jones Soda, the latest attempt at a Gen-X pop sold at
microbeer prices (and distributed by microbeer jobbers). It's got five fruity
flavors, each with a different level of carbonation, dressed in as many
as 56
different label photos including a pierced navel, a coffee cup, a cigarette
lighter, a skateboard, barstools, an OPEN sign, a black fedora, and a
Corvette
logo. If you ignore the desperate-to-be-hip marketing the pop itself's
not bad,
especially the cherry flavor.
DEAD AIR REDUX?: I do have nice things to say about the Weekly
sometimes. F'rinstance, their Mike Romano got KUOW/ KCMU boss
Wayne Roth to quasi-confirm a rumor I'd published a couple months
back,
that Roth was considering killing KCMU and using the frequency for a
classical format aimed at the affluent audiences corporate sponsors (oops,
"underwriters") love. (Roth's office issued a statement claiming his
Weekly statement only expressed speculation, not a firm policy
decision.) There's nothing wrong with KCMU's programming or finances that
can't
be traced to Roth's mistaken belief that the station is, or should be, his
personal bureaucratic turf. Public broadcasting, when it's really public,
isn't
a private business and shouldn't be run as one. It's a trust between a
dedicated programming team and a closely-involved community of listeners.
CLUB ME: F'r another instance, a Weekly brief last month casually
revealed the mysterious "Erik Shirley" lurking behind the scenes at Moe's was
the son of Jon Shirley, prominent ex-Microsoft/ Radio Shack exec,
who in
turn has a bit of investment in the joint. I can't imagine a Radio Shack vet
caring about music, 'cept those cool ol' stereo-separation LPs. Besides, if
Moe's was led by somebody who knew tech, they wouldn't have entrusted their
first live Internet concert (with the Presidents on 12/31) to Spry/
CompuServe
and Xing StreamWorks, the outfits behind the Paramount's Cyberian
Rhapsody fiasco.
MISC.'S TOP 7: How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman, dir. Nelson
Periera dos Santos (New Yorker Video), the greatest all-nude Amazon
cannibalism
comedy ever made... The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, dir. Dave
Borthwick (Manga Entertainment Video)... Safeway coupon books...
Cerealizing
America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal, Scott Bruce
and Bill Crawford (Faber & Faber)... The Box: An Oral History of
Television, 1920-1961, Jeff Kisseloff (Viking)... Blue Raspberry Squeeze
Pop, the candy that looks like a tube of Prell... Yugoslavia: Death of a
Nation (BBC/ Discovery Channel miniseries)...
MISC.'S BOTTOM 6: Watch This! (KING-TV)... AJ's Time
Travelers (KTZZ)... CompuServe's Usenet censorship (one more reason to
switch to an indie Internet provider)... Double-cross-platform
software
(stuff that's promoted as running on different operating systems but really
only works on Windows)...The NBA's attempt to shut unofficial fan websites...
Betting on the Bud Bowl (it's pre-scripted! You could be betting with
the film editor's cousin). |
2001 COLUMNS 2000 COLUMNS 1999 COLUMNS 1999 COLUMNS 1998 COLUMNS 1997 COLUMNS 1996 COLUMNS 1995 COLUMNS 1986-94 COLUMNS ESSAYS FICTION X-WORDS 'THE BIG BOOK OF MISC.' THE BOOK 'LOSER' MISCmedia, THE MAGAZINE FUTURE PROJECTS CYBER STUFF THINGS I LIKE 'MISC. TALK' DISCUSSION FORUM CLARK'S CULTURE CORRAL: BOOKS, MUSIC, MOVIES REVIEWED AND SOLD (Support MISC. Media; make your Amazon.com purchases thru this link.) |
Copyright 2001 Clark Humphrey,
clark@speakeasy.org.
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