MISCmedia for 1/28/00
From City Light to City Extra-Light, Part 2

YESTERDAY, we mentioned the pending Kingdome implosion as the perfect symbol of an old Seattle's passing away.

For this particular installment, let's try some superficial comparisons between the Seattle of the previous century (which I've called City Light) and the Seattle that's emerged in the past few years (which I'm calling City Extra Light).

• QUINTESSENTIAL FIGURE
  In City Light: The Boeing engineer.
  In City Extra Light: The dot-com tycoon.

• VEHICLE
  In City Light: Volvo (with a no-nukes bumper sticker).
  In City Extra Light: Mercedes SUV (with a fraudulant handicapped parking sticker).

• ARCHITECTURE (PUBLIC)
  In CIty Light: Multi-purpose and thrifty (if less than durable).
  In City Extra Light: Big and bold and for the PoMo ages.

• THE HOME
  In CIty Light: A modest yet homey bungalow.
  In City Extra Light: Either a $2 million waterfront "cabin" or a $1 million "art loft."

• FOOD & DRINK
  In CIty Light: "Gourmet" versions of regular-Joe staples (coffee, beer,hot dogs, burgers, gorp).
  In City Extra Light: Either pan-Asian fusion cuisine or Italian "peasant food" at non-peasant prices.

• NEWS MEDIA
  In CIty Light: Tasteful cheerleading for the Chamber of Commerce agenda.
  In City Extra Light: Desperate cheerleading for the Chamber of Commerce agenda.

• HUMOR
  In CIty Light: Smart and self-depricating wit (Almost Live, the Presidents, Young Fresh Fellows, Hate comics, early Lynda Barry).
  In City Extra Light: No humor at all (beyond ice-breaker remarks at schmooze parties and racist jokes excused as "parodies" of racist jokes).

• SPIRITUALITY
  In CIty Light: Either Protestantism Lite (Unity Church, liberal Methodist) or neopagan goddesses.
  In City Extra Light: The New Holy Trinity--money, power, and more money.

• MASCULINITY
  In CIty Light: The curious harmony of old-fashioned bourgeois tact and aging-boomer male-feminist submissiveness.
  In City Extra Light: "If you don't like my driving call 800-EAT-SHIT."

• FEMININITY
  In CIty Light: The curious mix of aging-boomer feminist sanctimony and post-sex-lib man-objectifying.
  In City Extra Light: "I want to come back as Barbie--the bitch has everything."

• ECONOMIC CLASS STRUCTURES
  In CIty Light: The illusion of middle-class unanimity (the poor tried to live above their means; the rich demured away from ostentatious displays of wealth).
  In City Extra Light: The Jell-O 1-2-3 economy (a thin creamy layer on top, a slightly thicker viscous layer just beneath the top, and a lot of gelled mass trapped on the bottom).

• SPORT
  In CIty Light: Lovable losers.
  In City Extra Light: Pissed-off near-winners.

• THE "FINE" ARTS
  In CIty Light: Prosaic glass bowls.
  In City Extra Light: Big new arts buildings housing "major institutions" that spend more on janitors than on local artists-playwrights-composers.

• THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS
  In CIty Light: Funky/populist performance pieces and gallery shows in lo-rent surplus buildings.
  In City Extra Light: Bam-bam-bam dance nights, all starring Californian DJs (with local DJs relegated to opening slots) and promoted in that Penthouse magazine Helvetica typeface.

More about this a little later.

MONDAY: How to make up for the canceled New Year's celebration.

ELSEWHERE:

• Guess who's tired of folks calling Congressional favors "pork"?...
• The American Dennis the Menace is a mere prankster compared to the British character of the same name--a chaos-causing, borderline-surly icon of U.K. boyhood cruelty. See him at The Beano....
• If marketing wizards can come up with ever-goofier names for car and house paint colors, why can't we name the 216 Website-safe colors already?...

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Parts one and two of a guest columnist's Turkey travelogue.
• Hollywood tries to kill the game show revival by over-stoking it.
• Norma Jean & Marilyn & Frances.
• Fantasizing about raking in big bucks via the Ex-Liberal industry.
• The dilemma of unused Y2K survival food.
• A few real-life movie locations revisited.
• Waiting for the Internet stock bubble to pop.
• The right and wrong reasons to recall Mayor Paul Schell.
• Should netzines go back to the (print) future?
• New media buys old media, or is it the other way around?
• Why women may become "johns" while traveling but not at home.
• Musings on the end of Peanuts.
• The always-splendiforous MISCmedia In/Out list.
• Remembering the Nineties, when seemingly nobody else is.
• Comparing punks to neo-punks.

ARCHIVES:

• 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
• Reviews of literature & art, monfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise
• Longer articles and essays
• The origin and future of MISCmedia