BOARD GAMES: A few nay-sayers in the performance-art community have privately suggested that the board members of On the Boards fired artistic director Mark Murphy, who led the production and theater-management outfit to national prominence, because those board members supposedly wanted to turn OTB away from art-for-art's-sake presentations and closer toward yupscale commercial crowd pleasers, whatever those might be in the realms of modern dance and post-jazz music. (Mellow acoustic folkies? Lord of the Dance clone acts?) Anyhoo, I don't quite believe the story. I have no proof either way, but I can imagine the board firing Murphy out of little more than personal spite. It's still a shameful situation that shouldn't have happened. Murphy's possibly the best arts promoter this town's seen (outside of the rock and DJ-music realms) since COCA's heyday. Part-time board members can come and go, but an artistic director like Murphy's someone you oughta try to keep under most any circumstances. UPDATE #1: The Big Book of Misc. goes to press this week! Everything's on schedule for the Tues., 6/8 release party, now tentatively scheduled for the new Ditto Tavern at 5th & Bell. Mail orders are now being accepted (details at this link); online ordering's still in the process of being set up. The updated version of my older book, Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story, also continues apace, with that publication date still more-or-less set for late Sept. or early Oct. I still wanna know which 1995-99 local acts ought to be mentioned in it; make your nominations at our splendido Misc. Talk discussion boards. UPDATE #2: Summit Cable has resumed transmitting the public access channel 29 after one week in which it claimed TCI had ceased feeding the channel to it and TCI claimed Summit was simply not receiving the feed properly due to an engineering glitch of some sort.
UPDATE #3: The Speakeasy Cafe will remain open! And, as I'd
recommended (not that they deliberately followed my advice or anything), its
post-June 1 format will reiterate its core identity as an Internet cafe and
low-key Belltown neighborhood hangout joint. The money-losing food-service side
of the operation (soups, salads, sandwiches, hummus) has already been cut back.
Within three weeks, there'll be no more cover-charge music shows in the front
room (which, besides drawing negative attention from
DANCING TO THE TUNE OF $$: 700 Club/Last Supper Club entrepreneur
Bill Wheeler says he loves being the target of that hate poster some
anonymous Judas has pasted all over Pioneer Square, headlined "The Last Supper
Club: All Hype" and berating it as a cash-grubbing nouveau riche
hangout, a traitor to the supposed "tribal" spirit of the dance-music
community. Wheeler says he couldn't have generated better publicity had he made
the poster himself (which he insists he didn't).
Wheeler's also quite proud of the expensive, elitist reputation his new
club has so far succeeded in creating, and which the poster-creator loathed:
"Can you believe it? People are paying $50 to get into the place! This is what
Seattle's needed." Well, loyal Misc. readers already know what I think
about headstrong San Franciscans (which Wheeler would freely admit to being)
unilaterally proclaiming what Seattle needs, so I won't persue that remark any
further. As for paying that kind of money as a cover charge for entree to DJ
music and a no-host bar (and suffering, on heavy nights, from a disco-era
"selective door" policy), I'm fairly confident true Seattle hipsters can
discern whether it's worthy of their bother and their $$ or not. If not, I'm
sure the savvy Wheeler can keep the business going by remarketing it to certain
cyber-wealthy squares who think they can buy their way into hipness. Speaking
of dance-club goers and notions of what's hip...
HET-SETTERS: Entrepreneurs in the Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla. area (you
know, home of the nation's raunchiest strip-club scene and the region that
tried to take away our baseball team) have launched a line of T-shirts and
other logo apparel called "Str8 Wear," purporting to announce
heterosexual pride. Of course, that's the sort of thing that stands to easily
get misconstrued as gay-hatred. The designers insist in interviews and on their
website that "We're not anti-gay, we're pro-heterosexual," and merely want to
offer "your chance to let everyone know you are proud of your sexuality," via
"an emblem that will identify you as a person who is available to the opposite
sex." It's especially intended, the designers claim, for patrons of certain
dance-music clubs and other urban-nightlife scenes where anyone who's not gay
might feel themselves branded as total out-of-it squares.
There are other problems with the Str8 Wear concept. It invites its wearers
to see themselves as a tight li'l subculture via a term that merely indicates
belonging to a vast, undifferentiated majority (except when referring to that
punk-rock subsector, "str8 edge"). (But then again, merchandisers have long
tried to persuade customers they're expressing their invididuality by being
just like most everybody else.)
A more positive, even more provocative, alternative might be the models at
that T-shirt store on University Way, "I (heart) Men," "I (heart) Women," "I
(heart) Cock," and "I (heart) Pussy." These come closer to provoking some of
the anti-hetero biases that still exist in an urban-hipster culture where, too
often, "sex positive attitudes" are permitted only to gay men, lesbians, and
female-dominant fetishists.
In the square/conservative realm, sexually active straight men are often
denounced as selfish rogues (or, more clinically, as "sex addicts"); and
sexually active straight women are still often disdained as sluts (or, more
clinically, as suffering from "self esteem issues").
In the so-called "alternative" realm, straight men are often viciously
stereotyped as misogynistic rapist-wannabes; and straight women are often
condescendingly treated as either the passive victims of Evil Manhood or as
really lesbians who just don't know it yet.
As I've said from time to time, we need to rediscover a positive vision of
heterosexuality, one that goes beyond the whitebread notion of "straight" and
toward a more enthusiastic affirmation of one's craving to connect with
other-gendered bodies and souls. Hets don't need to differentiate themselves
from gays as much as they need to learn from them. To learn to take pride in
one's body and one's desires, no matter what the pesky stereotypers say about
you. Elsewhere in gender-identity-land...
BEATING AROUND THE BUSCH: The big beer companies, seeing the money to be
made in gay bars, have for some time now tried to position themselves as at
least tacit supporters of the gay-rights cause. Miller (owned by Jesse
Helms's pals at Phillip Morris) has cosponsored the Gay Pride Parade in Seattle
for several years. Coors (owned by Orrin Hatch's pal Pete Coors) has run
ads in gay magazines claiming the company's a lot queer-friendlier than popular
rumor has sometimes alleged. And Anheuser-Busch has placed huge ad
banners inside gay bars reviving (and repurposing) the Bud Light ad-tagline
from a few years ago, "Yes, I Am." Now, the company's devised an ad for
mainstream magazines depicting two men holding hands; quite possibly the first
time this has been shown in any big company's product ad (even the Chivas
Regal ad from a few years ago had its gay couple maintaining proper
distance while they jogged along a beach). The slogan: "Be yourself, and make
it a Bud Light." Apparently, the company's got hundreds of homophobic phone
callers denouncing the ad. If you want to show your support, you can dial the
same number (1-800-DIAL-BUD). Remember, you can approve of this modest symbol
of inclusiveness even if you never drink the beer.
'TIL NEXT WEEK AT THIS SAME TIME (or whatever time you choose to read the
column), pray for warmth, root for the Seattle-owned TrailBlazers in the basketball
playoffs, and ponder these still-ahead-of-their-time words attributed to
JFK: "I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and
beauty."
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Copyright 2001 Clark Humphrey,
clark@speakeasy.org.
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