MISCmedia for 3/5/01
The Big Schell-Out?

SOME COMMENTATORS are already speculating that the re-election of Seattle Mayor Paul Schell could be inevitable, despite his lingering unpopularity.

God, I hope not.

The pundits' scenario?

(1) Local incumbents almost always get re-elected; and

(2) The September primary just might leave a runoff between Schell and the even more-despised City Attorney Mark Sidran.

That, though, is the worst-case scenario.

The best-case scenario is both Schell and Sidran running, splitting whatever pro-development and anti-poor constituency there might be, and both getting knocked out at the primary stage.

The second-best-case scenario is Sidran running for mayor (thus giving up his prosecutor job) and getting knocked out at the primary level, leaving Schell to face City Councilmember Greg Nickels or middle-class populist Charlie Chong (or some other challenger yet to announce).

But let's not let Sidran know we're working toward this scenario. He might not run then. And if he instead runs for re-election as city attorney, he just might run unopposed like he did in '97.

(One more note on this: The Weekly piece on Sidran called him "Seattle's version of Rudy Giulani." Actually, NYC Mayor Giuliani is that town's version of Sidran. Sidran (and predecessor Doug Jewett) and Schell (and predecessor Norm Rice) pioneered the agendas of mandatory mellowness and demographic cleansing later adopted in NYC and other cities.)

NEXT: PBS discovers marketing to teens.

ELSEWHERE:

• See great consumer products past, along with other non-obscure objects of desire, at 100 Years of Design (found by Larkfarm)....
• Those of you who've stopped smoking since New Year's can still find uses for a Zippo lighterÉ.

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

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• Hardcore porn producers tone down their works for a new mainstream market.
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• That integral aspect of the Seattle zeitgeist, complaining.
• Previewing a whole empire of MISCmedia products.
• Does the "Northwest Lifestyle" personality type even exist?
• An amateur experiment in age-regression therapy.
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• A photographic ode to the wonders of snow in Seattle.
• How a conspiracy theorist might view the power-crisis mania.
• Complaining about the Filmlooked versions of Red Dwarf.
• Learning to like Valentine's Day.
• Parts one and two of a cash-strapped single mom's travails thru the welfare bureaucracy.
• A personal account of being pushed out of dot-com employment.
• A fashion makeover gone very wrong.
• Parts one and two of a mild pique of jealousy for Mexico's public-transport system.
• Amazon.com tries the wrong way to become a respectable company.
• What might be the basis of '90s nostalgia.
• Boo for consumer-sex and non-sex; yay for real sex.
• What's wrong with Playboy isn't what its most vocal critics claim is wrong with it.
• What we know so far about the new administration.

ARCHIVES:

• 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
• Reviews of literature & art, nonfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise
• Longer articles and essays
• Some slightly weird little fiction pieces
• X-Word crossword puzzles, now with on-screen solving
• Cyber Stuff, links to cool and/or useful sites
• A listing of many Things I Like (and a few things I hate)
• The origin and future of MISCmedia