MISCmedia for 2/4/00
'Rising' Damp

BEFORE WE BEGIN, A QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT: My once-canceled talk radio appearance has been rescheduled on short notice. It'll be at noon this Sunday on "The Buzz," 100.7 FM.

WHILE RESEARCHING a future piece for this space about those screeching new business magazines, one phrase kept recurring in their headlines. It was a phrase I'd remembered from dreadful Reagan-era articles in the likes of Vanity Fair and Esquire about seemingly unstoppable tycoons and financiers.

Such profiles would almost inevitably carry the title "The Rise and Rise Of...."

The oft-unspoken assumption behind the phrase is that there were certain ultra-Alpha-Male money-gods for whom the rise-and-fall, birth-and-death rules of normal human existence do not apply.

You want to know the roots of today's supposed decline in "civil society?" The I-got-mine-screw-you zeitgeist exploited by conquest-of-nature SUV ads and ultraviolent video games? The who-needs-you "Attitude" of wrestlers, sexist/racist comedians, "aggro" rock bands, and Microsoft attorneys? It's all in those five short words, expressing the manufacture of a particularly annoying social archetype--the quasi-neo-Nietzschean ubermensch who believes himself to be above the petty rules of puny humans.

With this premise in mind, I did a quick Net-search for the phrase. Following are some of the hundreds of results of the search; people, places, and things that, according to various print and Net-only journalists, are or were on "The Rise and Rise":

• David Geffen
• The Small Press
• Structured Finance
• The Transnational Corporation
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• The Redmond Empire
• The Miniskirt
• Israeli Cuisine
• Paperless Trading
• The E-Consultants
• DJ Nash
• Aprilia, "Italy's finest and most successful motorcycle"
• David Bowie
• Deinonchus (a Dutch goth band)
• Spiritualized (the band)
• The Russian Mafia
• Middleware
• The Net
• The Chromosome Empire
• Dance Music
• United Overseas P.L.C.
• The Bagel
• Doctor Death
• The Video Game Emulator
• The Client/Server Game
• Ronald McDonald
• The Subaru Impreza

And, of course:

• The Rise and Rise Of The Fall.

There are also films entitled The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer and The Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket, and an earlier stage play called The Rise and Rise of Arturo Ui.

Mind you, I happen to like some of the stuff on this list (particularly Bowie, bagels, miniskirts, and the Net). It's just that nothing keeps rising forever and ever, except in theoretical algebra.

MONDAY: More media merger madness.

ELSEWHERE:

• Thanks to the Net, you can now see most of the Super Bowl commercials without watching the game! (found by Whim and Vinegar)....
• "Is Your Brain Really Necessary?... Has there ever been a person with more than two breasts?" (found by Feed)....
• "A celebration of breast art in everyday life and nature" (found by Bifurcated Rivets)....

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• Let's start celebrating Seattle's birthday a year and a half early.
• Parts one and two of a comparison between the old City Light and the new City Extra Light.
• 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?

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