TODAY'S MISC. WORLD is dedicated to America's only locally-produced sketch comedy show on commercial TV, Almost Live, now canned after 15 years. It means host John Keister, my old UW Daily staffmate, will now have to get more commercial gigs selling cell phones. It also dashes my hopes of ever getting paid and/or acknowledged for the occasional gag from this column they've stolen over the years. And, of course, it means the fine citizens of Kent, the suburb AL has always loved to chastize, can sleep a little easier.

Don't put the blame for the show's axing on "a changing Seattle," but on a changing TV landscape. Every year, fewer viewers are patronizing the old-line network-affiliate stations (which have, by and large, reduced their definition of "local" programming to sports and mayhem-based news). This meant AL's ratings declined to where it was only a break-even operation (not only did it have a full-time staff of ten writer-actors, it was the last show on KING to utilize a full studio crew, with humans operating the cameras and everything).

BACK-TO-SCHOOL DAZE: In the September Harper's, the highly respected author Francine Prose (Guided Tours of Hell, Hunters and Gatherers) complains about the institionally-endorsed mediocrities assigned for reading by innocent high-school students.

Prose's long rant piece, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read" (not available online), asserts whole generations of potential lit-lovers have been permanently turned off from the joys of reading by the less-than-enticing stories they're made to read in school, and by misguided approaches taken to teaching the kids about even the good writing that makes the English Lit cut.

Like some of her more politically-conservative fellow critics, Prose puts some of the blame on administrators and politicians obsessed with using English Lit to teach "diversity" and other life lessons. Prose figures that because these bureaucrats want to make sure the kids learn nothing more or less than the precisely intended lesson plan, they force-feed the kids really mediocre PC-lit.

She's got a particular beef against Clinton's fave poet Maya Angelou, the equally-sanctimonious Alice Walker, Harper Lee's one-dimensional racism memoir To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, Ordinary People, Studs Lonigan, and teachers who reduce all discussion of Huckleberry Finn to a mere rant about its author's alleged received racism.

Prose says there are plenty of better stories out there about rape, racism, girls' self-discovery, boys' temptations to cruelty, etc. etc. But the schools keep on assigning the mediocrities.

She suggests many possible motivations and/or intended or unintended results of force-feeding Our Kids such bureaucratically-acceptable bad writing (it'll turn the kids into TV-viewing, advertiser-friendly, thinking-challenged drones).

She skirts around a much more plausible consequence--that a diet of low-quality literature might raise a generation of potential school-administration bureaucrats, more interested in what which is collectively-acceptable than that which is really, really good.

What I would do: Divide high-school lit into two sequences. One would continue the life-lessons-thru-storytelling schtick (a technique well-used throughout the history of most civilizations), only using better-written stories. The other track would be strictly about intro'ing kids to some Great Kickass Writing.

This writing could still be from all sorts of races, genders, and nationalities; it'd even do a better "diversity" job 'cuz it'd showcase some of the best stuff from all over, instead of causing kids to associate minority and/or female authors with dull verbiage or one-dimensional ideologies.

MONDAY:Some examples of Great Kickass Writing.

PITCH IN: This time, I'm looking for cultural artifacts today's young adults never knew (i.e., dial phones, non-inline skates, and three-network TV). Make your nominations at our MISC. Talk discussion boards.

IN OTHER NEWS: Scientists now say they can genetically-modify mice to make them more intelligent. Only one response is possible: "Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?..."

ELSEWHERE: This woman wants "to ban the word 'cool' from the Web's lexicon..." According to this list, what you're looking at right now is not a "webzine." So be it.

(For an explanation of the above, look here.)

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