2/93 Misc. Newsletter

(Incorporating four Stranger columns)

HILLARY’S JUST GOT IN;

ALREADY HALF

THE CAREER WOMEN

IN AMERICA

HAVE FOOTBALL-HELMET HAIR!

n the remote chance that you care, here at Misc. we spent the morn of 1/20 sitting warm in our electric-heated apartment, watched the swearing-in on crystal-clear cable, and felt sorry for all the folks here in Liberalville waited so long to see a Democrat inaugurated, only to have the power knocked out. No, we won’t make tapes of all the festivities for you. Besides, you don’t want to see Barry Manilow‘s opening act on the pre-inaugural special (a potential harbinger of disappointments to come?).

THE BUZZ OF THE NATION: Note that Pepsi was a sponsor of that same TV special. Traditionally, Coke was the Democratic pop (owned by Atlanta Dixiecrats) and Pepsi was the Republican pop (owned by Wall St. investors). During WWII, FDR pushed sweetheart deals to give Coke extra sugar rations and to let it build plants wherever our troops landed. In the ’50s, Nixon deliberately staged his “kitchen debate” with Kruschev in front of a Pepsi display at a New York trade fair. In the ’80s, Pepsi’s rise in the “cola wars” (under a management full of ex-military officials) mirrored the GOP’s power surge; as the Dems compromised and struggled, Coke lost its way with New Coke and ill-advised Hollywood investments. Now, it’s Pepsi that’s going weird at one end (with dumb ideas like Crystal Pepsi) and digging in at the other (buying fast-food chains to insure a captive market for its drinks). Clinton himself claims to be a Coke loyalist.

ENGULFED II: Predictably, the old order wouldn’t go away without one last blow by the GOP sleaze masters — the unilateral restarting of a war in hopes that the new guy would have to continue it, and thus continue the military spending levels and foreign-policy arrangements tied into it. History will, I predict, conclude that practical Republicanism, like practical Communism, was a system for preserving the rights of the privileged no matter what the cost to the nation as a whole, no matter how much it contradicted its own official ideology. If we’re lucky, maybe we’re over both of them.

SEARS CATALOG, 1886-1993: I suppose there’s little purpose for the Big Book in today’s malled and Wal-Marted America. Still, when any longrunning periodical dies, it’s a loss to the national scene. The Sears book, like the Wards book created (and died) before it, was a pioneer in what us art snobs now call interactive literature. You read the words and looked at the pictures. You imagined how the furniture would look in your home, you took your own measurements. Some of you tried to figure out the mysterious demarcation between Girls, Misses and Juniors. You could use it for bad toilet paper, worse cigarette paper, and cheap anatomy lessons via the underwear section. Now the masses have to shop in person, while the elite can stay home with their L.L. Bean and Victoria’s Secret books.

CATHODE CORNER: After honing his act for several years on assorted local cable channels, Spud Goodman has blossomed into a bright little show on regular TV (if that’s what you can call KTZZ), punctuated by outstanding live local-band segments and snappy graphics. Goodman’s own act consists of rambling interview/discussions that get interrupted by the large studio cast before they can get anywhere. While he treats himself as a god (“healing” viewers from the sin of having seen Bodyguard), everyone else treats him with patronizing indifference. The studio regulars don’t let him finish a sentence. The cameras, aping either experimental filmmaker Stan Brakage or AT&T ads, turn away toward people’s hands or goofy props. The tape editor cuts in fake poetry or meaningless location footage. Either they all disdain him, or they’re protecting him from the risk of boring the home viewer….Phoenix residents can now see The Maury Povich Show dubbed into Spanish, by accessing the same “Second Audio Program” signal used with some HBO movies. What a great way to teach our li’l kids to be bilingual! Forget those cute storybooks about spunky waifs back in the Old Country. Give us the wives who’ve become best friends with their husbands’ mistresses; that’ll hold anybody’s attention.

NITE LIT: Insomniacs such as myself have found a great companion and aid toward tiredness in USA Cable’s Up All Night, which takes old drive-in sex movies and cuts out the sex, making them even duller. Book lovers deserve their turn, so I propose a new book club. Boring Books Inc. would issue special editions of the classics, condensed to skim over the exciting parts and leave in all the tedium. (They’ll also help you write book reports when you’ve only seen the movie versions.) Just imagine the possibilities! The BBIMoby Dick: Just the documentary accounts of the whaling business. The BBI Lady Chatterly’s Lover: Just the passages about the decline of England’s agrarian society. The BBI Razor’s Edge: Just the gossip about Somerset Maugham’s rich friends. The BBI Fear of Flying: Just the parts about being a lonely affluent American in Germany, waiting for her weekly dose of The New Yorker. The BBI Thomas Hardy: Everything he ever wrote.

THE FINE PRINT (from the back of the Bradford Exchange Simpsons collector’s plate): “A decorative accessory. Not to be used for food consumption. Pigments used for color may be toxic.”

`POST’ MORTEM: There used to be a U-District jewelry store owner who tried for years to ban street posters. He said they were desecrating the neighborhood, that the Ave ought to look more clean-cut, more like Bellevue. Now, the Washington Music Industry Coalition and the Northwest Area Music Alliance have announced a campaign to get clubs and bands to stop postering light poles. This would further force music promotion into paid media (like here). Admittedly, it’s wasteful to make hundreds of nondescript big-type posters aimed at passing cars, that may only attract a few dozen people to a particular gig. Still, there’s something to be said First Amendment-wise for the right to poster. And, as shown in Instant Litter, Art Chantry‘s book of local gig posters from 1977-85 (still at remainder racks), the illustrated poster aimed at pedestrians is a vital art form. Some are more creative than the advertised bands.

NEWS ITEM OF THE MONTH (Wall St. Journal correction, 12/28): “A spokeswoman for News Corp.’s Fox Broadcasting said the show In Living Color is part of a “long tradition of sketch comedy,” not sex comedies, as reported. The spokeswoman was misquoted in an item in Thursday’s Advertising column.” Runner-up (P-I headline, 12/29): “Sadomasochism gaining influence in dominant culture.”

LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE MONTH: The Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints finally came out a bit late for Xmas giving, but is still a quality alternative to your standard art calendars. Written and collage-illustrated (anonymously) by Talking Ravencollaborator James Koehnline, it’s a glorious celebration of the world’s free spirits and insightful thinkers, represented through 15 months’ worth of alternative “saint’s days”. February alone gives you found art and short texts about Bob Marley, Sir Thomas More, Russian anarchist Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Susan B. Anthony, Copernicus, and Tex Avery. Available at Left Bank and A.K.A. books….Ex-Wire publisher, ex-KCMU DJ and ex-Stranger music reviewer Brian Less is back in business with Urban Spelunker, another free monthly tabloid about the local scene. As is the case with many aging music scenesters moving on to new interests, Less’s new mag is just a little about bands, plus a little about experimental-highbrow music, poetry, politics, and other stuff (but why did that David Fewster piece use an old quote from me, calling for more serious Northwest fiction, as the premise for a page of coffee jokes?)…Memo to IEM: If you’re gonna run Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream tributes, don’t call yourselves a local art mag. And what do those letters stand for anyway?

PHILM PHACTS: Robert Altman’s making a film cobbled together from pieces of Raymond Carver stories — only relocated, says,USA Today, “from Carver’s Pacific Northwest to suburban southern California.” Carver was arguably the best portrayer of pre-Yup Northwest society, a world of repressed Presbyterians who sit around brooding mournfully and talking very plainly. Can you really see Carver’s world enacted by light-haired Porsche drivers among the palm trees?

WHY THE COMMONS IS A DUMB IDEA: South Lake Union is Seattle’s version of the “cheap merchandise district” depicted in Ben Katchor’s great comic, Julius Knipel, Real Estate Photographer (seen sometimes in The Stranger and collected in the book Cheap Novelties). Every thriving city needs a low-rise, low-rent district adjacent to downtown, for all the commercial activities that need to be near the center but can’t afford tower rents. We need the suppliers, distributors, and photo studios that are there now. The problem is that to civic planners, there are no old low-rise buildings — just redevelopments that haven’t happened yet. The visionaries don’t see the needs of the real city, just the fantasy of an “Emerald City.” They can’t see the beauty of the Washington Natural Gas and Pacific Lincoln-Mercury neon. They demand their “piece of the country in the heart of the city.” They can’t see the beauty that’s already there. They can’t see that urban landscapes can have their own beauty. They can’t see the city for the trees.

SHAMAN ON YOU: Commercial exploitation of indigenous spirituality descends to a new low as Time-Life Books offers “a free hand-carved Zuni animal fetish” with The First Americans, a coffee-table book series picturing historical artifacts and the like. The ad copy proclaims, “Hand-carved by artists of the Zuni nation, these stone fetishes are believed to house the spirits of the animals they represent….The Zuni people believe that fetishes contain a spirit force that can be of great value to the owner. They can have many uses — in Native American rituals, on the hunt, for healing, for long life, for personal protection — and are considered very powerful.” Having conquered their land and destroyed their livelihoods, Anglos now turn native people’s most intimate beliefs into corporate kitsch in the name of “tribute.”

PRESSED: My Mirror job gives me access to the periphery of the daily journalism biz. These folks seem to attend so many meetings, you wonder how they get a paper out every day. One topic at these meetings: how to appeal to younger readers. It seldom dawns on them that maybe young people aren’t reading papers ‘cuz papers are so downright hostile to people born after about ’54. In the 1/12P-I, John Marshall applied his tiresome aging-boomer-sneering-at-those-kids-today routine to examine grunge (if he’s only heard about it now, he doesn’t deserve to be an arts writer); his highest compliment is that some of it sounds just like ’60s music (gag!). The same day’s Times ran a wire story about PBS going after “the youth vote” with shows about those fresh young teenybopper idols Elton John, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon!

BODY OF EVIDENCE DEPT.: Lollipop’s is a new Eugene no-booze strip joint open only to ages 18-20. “Lots of the kids come in to play pool,” the owner told Newsweek; “they don’t even watch the girls.” Apparently the boys of Deadheadville take the name of Seattle’s Déja Vú strip chain literally: Nothing you haven’t seen before.

MONOCULTURE: The Weekly still claims to be an “alternative” paper, only its apparent idea of “alternative” is to be more conservative than the dailies. Last December it and its sister paper Eastside Week ran a long essay on “The Downside of Diversity Training.” In it, EW staffer Ted Kenney whined about the inconvenience of affluent white guys at corporate training sessions, forced to think about the concerns of non-whites and non-guys. Its research was heavy on anti-affirmative-action position papers from think tanks “associated with a free market stance.” The author’s insensitivity only proves a need for diversity training. All this from a company that to my knowledge has never had a prominent nonwhite employee (please prove me wrong on this). To the Weekly, diversity means putting white male Reagan Democrats next to white female Reagan Democrats.

LIGHTS! CAMERA! MOSHPIT!: Here’s more about Seattle Backstage, the TV show about local music discussed here in January. It’s 13 half-hours, taped at the Backstage (natch), to premiere in Feb. or March on KCPQ. UW-discovered centerfold model Angela Melini hosts feature segments; KNDD’s Norman Batley is the main host. Michael Harris, who’s co-producing the show with the Backstage’s Ed Beeson, says he’s close to a national syndication deal. Bands already taped include locals (Tiny Hat Orchestra, Mudhoney, Posies, Sadhappy) and secondary national acts (Toad the Wet Sprocket, L7, Sarah McLachlan). This show is not to be confused with the separate team, led by Doug Bray (a UCLA Film School grad) and Steve Helvey, making a feature-length documentary. Tentative title: Fabulous Sounds of the Pacific Northwest (from an early EP by Bray’s old pals the Young Fresh Fellows, who took the title from a 1962 phone co. promotional record). They’ve held special filming concerts with the Posies, Fastbacks, Chemistry Set, Love Battery, 7 Year Bitch, the Gits, Coffin Break, Hammerbox, Mono Men, Supersuckers, and Gas Huffer. Future sessions are scheduled with Tad, the Young Fresh Fellows, Girl Trouble, Seaweed, Beat Happening, Mudhoney, and Dead Moon. Bray has unnamed investors, three Super 16 film cameras with synchronized time codes, digital sound recording. What he doesn’t have yet is a distributor.

(latter-day note: Seattle Backstage never made it to the air. Pray’s film, now called Hype, was finished but still looking for a distributor as of July 1995.)

CLUB ETIQUETTE: Remember, anytime you go to see a band at a bar that’s supposed to be cool, there will be uncouth ruffians to watch out for. These people will prey on anyone they perceive as weak — harassing women, fag-bashing men, “accidentally” shoving against people in order to spill their drinks. Fortunately, these goons are easy to spot. They travel in male pairs or trios (very rarely in coed couples). They’re always the most clean-cut looking guys in the bar, with the biggest jawbones, the costliest “ordinary” haircuts, the widest game-show-host smiles. You’re safe with the people who look like freaks; it’s the suburban slummers you must never speak to. This may change, should “designer grunge” make it to the malls. But by then we’ll all be wearing something else (most of us already do). Speaking of which…

DESIGNER GRUNGE UPDATE: That “Seattle fashion” craze invented in New York has reached Europe, according to articles in the London Sunday Times and Italian Glamour. The Sunday Times piece called Seattle “almost Canadian in its boringness.” Wish I could translate what the Italians said about Kurt, Courtney, et al.; the pictures all show the NY designer ripoff product, with no local images seen. Italian Vogue, however, has had photographers really here.

IF I HAD TO DO THE SAME AGAIN: The Wall St. Journal reports that the Next Big Thing in London clubs is upscale cover bands with names like the Rolling Clones, the Scottish Sex Pistols, and an ABBA tribute named Bjorn Again. Does this mean we can finally stop aping every new UK music fad? Can we stop buying those costly air-shipped copies of Melody Maker and I-D telling us what styles we must slavishly follow in order to be properly “alternative”?

‘TIL MARCH, remember this faux pearl of insight from one of the Amy Fisher TV movies: “I love him ’cause he loves me so much. We have great sex. And he fixes my car.”

PASSAGE

AutoWeek publisher Leon Mandel, quoted on the sales surge in big pickup trucks: “Something in the American spirit likes great size and a lack of subtlety.”

REPORT

Two bad colds in one month have interrupted my regular research rounds (and made much of the rest of my life into a minor hell). God, hope I last long enough to see this health care reform jive come to pass.

WORD-O-MONTH

“Hypaethal”