MISCmedia for 3/29/00
Even MISC-er

SOME SHORT STUFF TODAY:

WORKIN' IT: I-Spy, the sanitized-for-your-protection DJ club in the former Weathered Wall space on 5th, has started an '80s-rock night on Tuesdays called "Raygunomics: An '80s Experience." Among the attractions on the event's premiere week: That recently moderately-popular fad, "New Wave Karaoke."

I think the concept could be extended even further, into "Seattle Rock Karaoke." You could have Chris Cornell karaoke, Scott McCaughey karaoke, even Carrie Akre karaoke....

METROPOLITAN LIVING magazine had a good, if superficial, March cover story about our ol' pal Alex Steffan and his crusade, as current head of the civic-advocacy group Allied Arts, to keep Seattle "funky" and human-scale.

Revealing just the mindset Steffan's up against was the back cover ad, displaying the rear end of a gaudy Cobra penismobile at the Pike Place Market with the slogan, "Not your average groceries. Not your average grocery getter." The image defines the Market's as no longer a funky working-class value venue, but as just another upscale-gourmet-emporium-slash-tourist-trap.

JOHN CARLSON, KV-Lie demagogue and an old personal nemesis of mine, is running for governor. For the past decade, Carlson's either been the instigator or principal cheerleader for almost every regressive piece of legislation or initiative measure in Washington state. Perhaps a high-profile personal campaign will finally publicly expose just the kind of shallow-but-slick, self-serving operator he really is.

BACKSTAGE MUSIC & VIDEO in Ballard closed in early March. It marks the end of two local-biz institutions. It was the last remnant of what had been the Peaches Records chain. In recent years, it had been owned by the operators of the Backstage music club on the same block, which shut its doors circa '97.

IN CASE YOU switched from cable to a satellite dish and haven't been able to watch, the local public access channel has been running in tape-only mode this past fall and winter. The access studio up by 98th & Aurora has been undergoing a much-dragged-out remodel and refitting. This meant, among other things, that many cult-favorite access shows (Bend My Ear Seattle, Don't Quote Me On This) have been in rerun mode or off altogether, and that lefty journalist-types who wanted to comment on the WTO debacle had to do so in prerecorded fashion; no live reports or studio call-in shows were feasible.

But the city (which is taking over a larger share of control over the channel from AT&T Cable) has announced the access studio will finally reopen to producers. The date, appropriately enough for much of the channel's fare, is April 1.

TOMORROW: Another cool space in transition.

ELSEWHERE:

• The most damning thing I can imagine about the designer of the Experience Music Project building: "Perhaps in the end [Frank] Gehry can only be understood in the context of Los Angeles...." (found by Arts and Letters Daily)
• "I think if I lived in an oppressive country I might become a truly great filmmaker...."

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Even Los Angeles worries about losing its civic identity.
• Business without the B.S. would still be business.
• Identity politics, target marketing-- what's the difference?
• Where America no longer shops.
• Learning to appreciate the worst comic in the papers.
• When the Muzak's over.
• It's an "X-treme" world.
• An attempt to re-think progressive politics.
• A few of the many, many things I don't know.
• The channel formerly known as The Nashville Network.
• The singluar joys of single-artist Net radio.
• A magazine "celebrates" the global-marketing monoculture.
• The Net needs more fat guys and fewer tall guys.
• The limits of bohemianism as a "revolutionary" stance.
• What's in a (corporate) name?

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