kentaro lemoto @tokyo, via daily kos

• Hey McDonnell Douglas Boeing, how’s that whole foreign outsourcing thing working for ya?
• Add to the endlessly growing list of cool places disappearing: the Alki Tavern, where bikers once held drunken brawls in front of a spectacular Elliott Bay view. Yep, the real estate’s going for luxury condos. Damn.
• Already gone before we could say goodbye: Costa’s Opa, Fremont’s anchor Greek eatery for 32 years. The villain in this story is the same as the one in the Queen Anne Easy Street Records disappearance: unChaste Bank.
• The NY Times has officially “discovered” Pike/Pine. Does that mean the place is, you know, “over”?
• City bureaucrats still don’t want meals for the homeless to be served, you know, where the homeless are.
• There might be nothing sicker, and sadder, than allegations of sexual harassment at King County’s sex crimes unit.
• Not every Catholic priest does horrible things to boys. At least one’s been caught dealing meth and having sex with (adult) cross-dressers.
• Atari has faced “Game Over” before. But this time, its fate is in the hands of obscure holding companies and hedge funds.
• Last week’s Saturday Night Live tribute to the tropes of (clothed dialogue scenes in) ’70s softcore movies definitely qualifies as a “10 to 1″ sketch, the edgier or just odd stuff often snuck in at the show’s end.

• Gay marriage update: Now that the opponents of equality have filed enough petition signatures, Ref. 74 goes to the ballot in November. Pro-equality folks, who were asked to “decline to sign” the referendum petitions, will now have to vote “yes” on the referendum itself to keep marriage for all on our state’s books. (Too bad, though, about the “Approve R 74″ campaign logo. It looks too much like a Hanford radiation leak.)
• Heads up, TV viewers in Comcast-less areas of Seattle. The full transition from the pathetic Broadstripe Cable to the much more promising Wave Broadband takes full effect on July 17. Soon to arrive at last: Current TV! IFC! Ovation! MLB Network! NFL Network! C-SPAN 2! And HD versions of HBO, TCM, CNN, MSNBC, Comedy Central, and Cartoon Network! (Still no Sundance or the French channel TV5, though.)
• In previous posts about the above topic, I’d called Wave Broadband “locally owned.” It’s now been sold to out-of-state private equity interests, but remains locally based.
• That Seattle Children’s Hospital patients’ lip-sync music video, based on the Kelly Clarkson song “Stronger?” The record label got it pulled from YouTube. You can still see it at the Huffington Post.
• CNN wants to pick a fight between Seattle and Portland, apparently in the name of regional bragging rights. Why bother?
• Some Shell Oil execs held a PR fest at the Space Needle, celebrating the opening of a new drilling platform in Alaska. Only the three-foot-tall “oil rig” drink dispenser malfunctioned, making a big mess. Lots of blogs snickered at the ill-timed fail. Except: It wasn’t real. It was all a hoax stunt, devised by anticorporate hoax-stunt devisers The Yes Men.
• We must say goodbye to Travelers Tea Co., the East Indian themed gift, food, and home-furnishings shop and cafe on East Pine, after 14 years. Travelers’ one-year-old second restaurant location on Beacon Hill remains.
• I haven’t seen ‘em, but supposedly there are web-guru essays chastizing Pinterest for attracting a predominantly female user base; as if Grand Theft Auto discussion boards were valuable “mainstream” services but “girls’ stuff” was just too insubstantial for tech investors to put their money into.
• An ad man claims we’re heading into “the golden age of mobile.” He means media and advertising made for smartphones and tablets.
• Is an ex-Coca-Cola marketing exec really sincere about renouncing his junk-food-shilling past, or is he just trying to sell himself in a new shtick as a health-food marketing exec?
• The print magazine business has apparently stabilized, if you believe this account from, ahem, a print magazine.
• Colson Whitehead has a lovely memoir of his childhood as a horror movie fanatic.
• Black activist A. Phillip Randolph put out a short book in 1967 advocating A Freedom Budget for All Americans. Randolph and his co-authors claimed their plan, based on Federal economic incentive spending, would essentially end poverty in America within eight years. The whole document’s now online, and it’s full of economic-wonk language to support its claims.

joybra.com, via seattlepi.com

• Dept. of Things You Never Knew You Needed: UW business students have designed a bra with a pocket for an iPhone.
• Seattle’s (the nation’s? the world’s?) longest running serialized stage play, the Asian American-centric Sex in Seattle series, ends after 12 years with episode 20, opening this weekend.
• Amazon’s quarterly profits are 35 percent lower than a year ago. To Wall Street, that’s seen as good news somehow.
• The Sacramento Kings’ arena deal is apparently dead. The team might or might not be put up for sale any week now. Seattle has a wannabe majority owner, a perfectly functional arena, and the land and initial plans for a new arena.
• Vancouver punk legend Joey “Shithead” Kiethley sez he’ll run next year for a seat in B.C.’s provincial legislature. He’s done this twice before, on Green Party tickets. But this time he’ll run on the ticket of the New Democrats (Canada’s official national “opposition” party). He’s putting into practice his old motto, “Talk – Action = Zero.”
• Gay Divorcee Dept.: A B.C. judge has ruled that a split-up lesbian couple has to split their jointly owned sperm-bank deposit.
• Are outspoken homophobes really gay but suppressing it? All I know is for me, other men’s bodies are like eggplant casseroles. I don’t wanna eat ‘em but I don’t mind if you do.
• Will the Arab world need a full-scale “cultural revolution” before women have rights there?
• Nutella: not as “healthy” as some consumers apparently thought.
• The story about Egypt legalizing sex between widowers and their dead wives? A complete hoax.
• In an interview promoting her new film Hysteria (about the first electric sex tools for women and the “medical” excuses advertised for them), Maggie Gyllenhaal talks about why there are so few emotionally powerful sex scenes in U.S. movies. My theory: Most sex scenes in mainstream films are escapist in nature. Many serve as breaks from the plot, like the songs in many musicals. These include scenes choreographed to emphasize the woman’s responses. To use such a scene to reveal a character’s personality, emotions, and vulnerabilities, to show a female character with her sense of public decorum stripped away, is a rare feat.
• Did Romney only tell 10 major lies last week?

This Sunday’s Grammy Awards telecast will feature the three living original Beach Boys, reunited on stage for the first time in a couple of decades.

The performance kicks off a short tour promoting the group’s 50th anniversary and its recent Smile Sessions box set.

Probably the last major release by Capitol Records before Sony devours its parent EMI, the box set presents, in as complete form as possible, the most legendary unreleased album in pop history.

•

The story of Smile is long and convoluted. Whole books have been written about it.

To make this long story short:

In 1966, the pop music scene was changing. LPs and “album rock” FM radio were becoming more important than singles and top-40 AM. Pop combos like the Beach Boys were threatened with irrelevance.

Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ composer-producer, had already quit touring with the band to be in the studio full time. With the Pet Sounds LP, he’d turned away from the Boys’ early songs about surfing and cars, toward more complex subjects and arrangements.

Then with the single “Good Vibrations,” Wilson experimented with “modular recording.” Using L.A.’s top session players for all the non-vocal parts, he recorded (and re-recorded) different sections of the tune in different studios, then mixed-and-matched them for the final hit.

Wilson decided to make an entire LP the same way.

What’s more, it wouldn’t be a set of self-contained songs, but a concept album (the term was just coming into use).

The concept: a “teenage symphony to God.” Themes and motifs would flow, blend, cut away, and recur.

As with “Good Vibrations,” Smile’s instrumental tracks were recorded in the form of dozens of fragments, some as short as five seconds. Some fragments were more or less intended to be merged into standard-length songs. Others were stand-alone musical miniatures.

Wilson had composed and arranged these bits without a running order in mind (for the individual bits or for the LP as a whole), planning to figure that out later.

Wilson’s chief compatriot in the project was Van Dyke Parks, a young L.A. scenemaker. Parks wrote conceptual, sometimes surreal lyrics to Wilson’s melodies, and sat in with Wilson at the instrumental sessions.

These tracks were ready when the Beach Boys returned to L.A. from a long tour. At first, the Boys didn’t “get” Brian’s pop-symphony ambitions. Lead singer Mike Love especially felt Parks’ abstract, allegedly drug-inspired lyrics were too removed from the Beach Boys’ format (what would now be called their “brand”).

Vocal recordings were about three-quarters completed, then suspended.

Parks singed a singer-songwriter deal with Warner Bros. Records and quit the Smile project, with at least one song lyric unwritten.

A few months later, the Boys’ press agent issued a statement saying the album had been scrapped.

Some of its tracks were reused or re-recorded on later Beach Boys releases. Others made their way onto the tape-trading circuit, and eventually as CD bonus tracks.

Then in 2004, Wilson and his current solo band premiered a full reconstruction of Smile on stage, followed by an all newly-recorded CD.

Critics adored it. They called it a timeless work, beyond mere “oldies” status. It deftly mixed different pop sensibilities with modern classical and experimental “musique concrete” influences.

Now we have the “official” Beach Boys Smile CD, assembled in the order Wilson had used in 2004, supplemented with several discs of outtakes and alternate tracks.

•

Several factors contributed to Smile’s original scrapping, including Love’s opposition and the group’s ongoing beef with Capitol management.

The probable real reason, I believe: Wilson didn’t know how to assemble all the bits into a coherent whole. He was slowly but steadily “losing it” mentally, due to drugs and/or clinical depression. (I suspect the latter was the greater reason.)

Nobody else knew how to assemble all these bits either.

The following is how I conjecture it could have been completed (I’ve probably got some historical details wrong, but go along with me).

•

[alternate-history mode]

After Parks quit the Smile project, Capitol bosses examined the hours of recorded bits and pieces. They decided the project needed adult supervision, if the label stood a chance of making back its investment.

The label brought in a “record doctor.” We’ll call him “Mr. A.” He was familiar with both pop-rock and the outer reaches of modern jazz.

Mr. A’s nominal job was to replace Parks as Wilson’s uncredited co-producer.

His real job was to create a shippable product.

He was respected enough within the business to gain Brian Wilson’s trust, at least at first. The Beach Boys were more reluctant to accept him, but agreed under the condition that, once this quagmire was out of the way, the group would have their own (i.e., Mike Love’s) way on their next LP.

First, Mr. A scheduled two vocal sessions to wrap up Parks’ last unrecorded lyrics. Only the first session required the whole group at once, recording six group parts for four tracks.

The second session involved solos and duets, for three or four standard-length songs and three fragments. Love declined to sing any more of what he called Parks’ more “trippy” lyrics, so those parts were divvied up among the other group members.

While Brian conducted those sessions, a crew of assistants re-logged all the instrumental and vocal fragments, built “scratch track” vocal/instrumental mixes, then redubbed all these onto radio-station tape cartridges.

Mr. A sat Brian down in a mixing booth, where he used these “carts” to play the bits in different sequences. He started with the tracks that most closely resembled traditonal song structures (“Surf’s Up,” “Wonderful”).

Wilson signed off on each approved sequence, under daily and weekly deadlines imposed by the label. As this work dragged on, Wilson reportedly became less active in suggesting or rejecting different options.

Mr. A and Wilson eventually reached a track for which Parks hadn’t written a lyric. Pet Sounds lyricist Tony Asher was quickly brought in to supply words, under the new title “Hawaiian Islands.” Love agreed to sing on this one, because it updated the classic Beach Boys topic of wholesome recreation. Brian took advantage of this extra studio date to redo some already-recorded vocal bits, punching up some and smoothing out others. But the label steadfastly refused to budget any more studio time after that.

Next came the placing of the one-minute-or-less song bits. Mr. A labeled these “M&S” on log sheets, for “medleys and segues.” Higher-ups at the label, during interoffice chatter, unofficially reversed the initials.

Under Capitol’s dictates, the fragments were used more sparingly than Wilson wanted. This was particularly true of the all-instrumental bits. The label’s reasoning: This was a Beach Boys record, not a “Brian Wilson Orchestra” record.

What Wilson had vaguely planned as three sides running 49 minutes became two sides running 43 minutes.

During the tedious final mixing sessions, Wilson allegedly nodded off in the booth at least once. Later rumors claimed Mr. A forged Wilson’s initials signing off on some of the track mixes.

Upon hearing early versions of the mixes, Love allegedly felt surprised. This music wasn’t druggy; it was dense and cerebral. But that, he’s said to have said, still wasn’t Love’s idea of a proper Beach Boys record.

Smile was released in the fall of 1967, a year after the first instrumental sessions. The previously-printed LP covers got pasted over with sheets listing the final song titles in order, and including the small-type credit: “Mixed by Brian Wilson with Mr. A.”

Some critics called Smile a “flawed masterpiece.” Others called it a more intellectual, but less emotionally involving, work than the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, released earlier in the year.

It undersold its predecessor Pet Sounds.

In later years, pop historians noted that many of the era’s “concept albums” supplied reassuring (even if loud) music to get stoned by. Smile failed miserably at this use, with all its abrupt changes of melody and mood.

The Beach Boys’ next LP was the back-to-basics Wild Honey. It was recorded without outside musicians, and mostly without Brian’s songwriting. It was the Boys’ last Capitol release.

In 1968, the group negotiated with Warner Bros. to distribute their own Brother Records. The Brother roster included Brian as a solo act. However, WB did the least it had to do in regard to funding (and, later, promoting) Brian’s solo debut.

That debut, You’re Welcome, didn’t come out until 1970, and included several leftover compositions from Smile (re-recorded, since Capitol claimed rights to the tapes).

Wilson, like Scott Walker (another top-40 balladeer who’d moved into loftier creations), would be viewed as a post-pop innovator whose releases steadily became more creative, less commercial, and much less frequent.

When CDs came along, Capitol reissued the LP version of Smile, in both the original mono and in a reconstructed stereo version. Several years later came a “director’s cut” version, with many tracks lengthened and restored.

[/alternate-history mode]

•

The later career and personal trajectories of the Beach Boys and of Brian Wilson would have probably been about the same as they wound up in real life.

The only difference was that Smile would have existed as a critics’ darling and as a curious artifact, not as a legendary unheard “ghost record.”

(from the Tacoma News Tribune):

An item on Page A2 of Wednesday’s paper incorrectly stated that it was singer Etta James’ 74th birthday. James died last week.

The Modern Language Association, those ol’ guardians of the university English department as the supposed nexus of all thought and creativity in America, are meeting in town this week.

Besides the members-only conferences and seminars on surviving campus budget cuts and why doesn’t America appreciate the greatness of English profs, there are a couple of major peripheral events open to the general public.

On Saturday (1/7/12), Town Hall hosts mini-readings (three minutes max) by “60 Writers,” including “upstart, altertative” scribes. Some are local; some are in town for the conference. It’s free and starts at 7:30.

And Washington State University’s Creative Media and Digital Culture Program is organizing a display of “Electronic Literature.” Its curators describe the exhibit as featuring:

…over 160 works by artists who create literary works involving various forms and combinations of digital media, such as video, animation, sound, virtual environments, and multimedia installations, for desktop computers, mobile devices, and live performance.

The works in the exhibit were all “born digital.” That is, they were designed to be experienced as digital media spectacles, not merely adapted from straight-text products.

The exhibit is open Thurs.-Sat. (1/5-7/12) in the Wash. State Convention Center Room 609. There’s also a free tie-in reading event, 8 p.m. Friday (1/6/12) at Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave. on Capitol Hill.

(UPDATE: Even though the Electronic Literature exhibit’s web page says it’s free, it’s really only open to ticketed MLA convention goers. Locals can attend the Hugo House reading, however.)

It’s only appropriate that all this is happening this year in Seattle, ground zero for the big transition from dead-tree lit product to the brave new digi-future.

Be there or be pulp.

• So, like is this Capitol Hill retail mainstay claiming it’s barren and lonesome enough to successfully hide out in?
• Forty years after its founding, and six years after developers first threatened to demolish it for a six-story apartment complex, Capitol Hill’s legendary B&O Espresso may finally be doomed, at least as we know it. The developers plan to have a restaurant/retail space in their new building at the corner of Belmont and Olive (hence the coffee house/bistro’s name). But that space will be half the size of today’s B&O.
• KIRO-TV is still stalling in talks with its unionized technical staff. The station doesn’t explicitly want to bust the union, just to take away most of the things union crews get to do, like complain about hours and working conditions.
• Masins Furniture is leaving Pioneer Square. The Seattle Times-approved reason: The neighborhood is beset by costly parking and, you know, those people. A more likely reason: Two and a half years without folks moving into new urban housing units, and without a lot of folks having the funds to refurnish the housing units they’ve got.
• Labor Day Weekend Thought #1: How long does it take to turn from unemployed to “effectively unemployable”?
• Labor Day Weekend Thought #2: Robert Reich wants a Labor Day with fewer picnics and more protests.
• Word (or rather phrase) of the day: Mighty Whitey. Refers to the long tradition of the fictional white hero who not only sympathize with other ethnicities’ struggles “but also becomes their greatest warrior/leader/representative.” Cf. Last of the Mohicans, Snow Falling On Cedars, Avatar, and most recently The Help. Also see every white blues/soul/rap musician, especially if British.

• Despite what Republican politicians would have you believe, Washington state actually leads the nation in new business creation these days.
• One of these new businesses will be a downtown JC Penney store, in the old Kress five-and-dime store building at Third and Pike. That’s just a block from the old (1930-82) Penney store (Target’s going in on that site later this year). It’s great news, but what will become of the loveable, and vitally needed, Kress IGA supermarket in the building’s lower level? Its operators insist they’ve got a long term lease and are staying no matter what.
• It’s not just the state civil payroll that’s ethnically un-diverse. The state legislature is only 6.8 percent nonwhite.
• Local theater blogger Jose Aguerra asks whether local troupes are being too coy and inoffensive, even in their depiction of female orgasms. (In my day, Seattle’s live theaters prided themselves on presenting edgy, daring material, even if the promise was grander than the product.)
• A UW Medical Center administrator got caught embezzling a quarter mil from the hospital. You’re only hearing about it now because the state auditor made a statement publicly praising the U for how it investigated and prosecuted the inside thief. A potential huge scandal was thus turned into a low-key moment of triumph for the administration. At least if you read the Seattle Times version of the story. KOMO offers a far more critical spin on the affair.
• Grist.org’s David Roberts ponders what the heck Friends of the Earth is doing getting involved with right-wing lobby groups in proposing a “green” federal budget slashing scheme.
• The link we ran last week about the electric-guitar company? The company that got raided by federal agents, who were supposedly looking for endangered imported wood? The company flatly denies all allegations. And the Murdoch Wall St. Journal, ever eager to bash anything environmentalist, claims the feds could next go after folks who own old vintage instruments that contain now-restricted components.
• Should any of us care about speculation about the new Apple CEO’s private life? Ars Technica says no.
• Birth rates are dropping in many countries, especially those where female fetuses are sometimes selectively aborted. The Economist calculates some countries, at their current rates of decline, could totally run out of people in 600-700 years. Of course, if you’re not a dystopian scifi fan you know trends don’t stay the same, at the same rate, forever.
• Sasha Brown-Worsham believes “we should parent more like they did in 1978.” More Boo Berry and daytime TV; less overprotectiveness and constant fear.

(in no particular order):

• Yes, I will want to have sex with you. Pretty much immediately. ESPECIALLY if I’m too timid to come out and say so. Be aware of this.
• I’d rather you didn’t complain to me about the guys you sleep with, whilst refusing to sleep with me.
• I have a large repertoire of firmly held, and occasionally contradictory, beliefs. You can try to change some of them if you want to.
• I watch TV. I eat meat. I don’t smoke pot. You won’t be able to change any of these.
• I have a lot of persnickety minor food allergies and strange food dislikes. I won’t expect you to know all of them right away. For now, just know that if you order the two of us an almond-encrusted dessert, you’ll get to eat all of it.
• I enjoy images of the female figure. This does not mean I hate women; it means I like women.
• I may have a “baby face,” but I’m over 50, under 5′ 10″, and beer bellied. Looking for a tall dark prince? Keep looking.
• I’m among the long term unemployed. I don’t think it’s romantic or noble. I want to change it. I want a real job. The specific real job I want changes. Sometimes what I want is an office cubicle with my name on it. I want to process data, perform boring routines, and get a deserved compensation.
• Some women have said they would be too intense for me to deal with. In the past, I have had capital-R Relationships with a D.I.D. patient, a bipolar alcoholic, and two women who expected me to casually agree that all males were intrinsically evil. I believe I can handle “intense.”
• People call me “A Writer.” I’ve always rejected that title, and the “romantic” stereotypes associated with it. I have no interest in living in a cabin on an island. I have no interest in becoming famous only after I’m dead. I have no interest in becoming dead.
• I don’t want to be your dependent, your co-dependent, your enabler, your user, your abuser, your enemy, your submissive, your dog, your platonic friend, your gay friend, or your girlfriend. I want to be your boyfriend.
• My sexual fetish is Love.

So David Stern apparently doesn’t know how to run a sports league during a recession. He’s talking openly about letting the NBA’s weaker franchises die. Anything, I suppose, to keep Seattle from getting its rightful due.

(Cross-posted with the Belltown Messenger.)

Tim Girvin is one of the world’s foremost logo designers and corporate branding gurus. For three decades, he and his staff have worked on everything from movie ad campaigns to complete “identity packages” for products and companies. He has branch offices in New York and Tokyo; we met at his main office on Stewart Street.

On business challenges in this economy:

“The thing that is really interesting to consider now is two words. One is intention. The other is attention. They both come from “tenet,” and tenet is principle. In this tough time, what do you stand by? What is the guiding factor by which you brand your business? The ones I’ve found most successful are the businesses that have this clear. The ones I find having the most challenges are the most chaotic.”

On his current projects:

“We’re doing local things, supporting local businesses—like creating a new restaurant design, a new perfume, a new retail concept, helping a local university, and doing some charitable work.

“We’re working on repositioning luxury products in Sweden, new brand storytelling strategy for Japanese cosmetics in Tokyo, international hospitality and hotel/resort work, global food and beauty assignments.”

On the essence of branding:

“The idea of the brand really is about the commitment to passion and focus. A lot of the work that we do is about how that story can be told. I find more often than not the real power of the brand is with the people who drive it.”

On how he would rebrand Belltown:

“I’ve found, by living and being in different cities around the world, the richer they are the more nonstop they are. Everybody doesn’t go to bed at 10 o’clock; there’s lots of things happening all the time. Some of those are incredibly good, amazing, wonderful. Some of them are less so.

“As Seattle grows, and as Belltown evolves, we start moving into that fuller cycle where the action is going on all the time..… Part of it is there’s more action, vitality, more restaurants, more places to be; and then there’s the other side of that.

“The more the time gets extended, the more mobile you become. I know. I have to sign on to international conference calls at 4 in the morning, or link to Tokyo at 7 or 8 at night, or look at emails from friends in Europe or the United Arab Emirates at sometime after midnight. There’s so much creative action that’s happening all the time. I think when a city begins to extend its hours it begins to live in international time, which is a more creative way of looking at every waking moment.”

On my suggestion that Nordstrom restore the full name “Brass Plum” for its teen boutique, instead of those now-unfortunate two initials:

“I would totally agree. I worked on the original design program for the Brass Plum identity and signage… I’ve been working as a freelance design consultant to Nordstrom since the ’70s. I think that is a very astute position.”

In yet another example of far-reaching overgeneralizing about contemporary US society (damn there are so many of those), Camille Paglia asserts there’s an epidemic of sex frustration among the white bourgeois—a caste to which a wide swath of Seattle either belongs or aspires.

The essay appears in the NY Times on the day of the Seattle gay pride parade. This does not in any way disprove her thesis, at least as far as it might be applied here.

The Seattle establishment (heart)s gays not because of their sexuality, but in spite of said establishment’s fear of sexuality in general.

Gays are the Seattle powers-that-be’s favorite minority group because they’re so much less “minority-y.” You can be gay and still be an upscale white person. Supporting the gays allows a local company, agency, or institution to proclaim its inclusiveness, without having to examine caste or race inequality.

What’s more, lovin’ the gays allows straight Seattleites to assert their moral superiority over Those People Out There In Evil Mainstream America. We’ve got no bigots here, no siree. We welcome clean-cut people with money no matter what they do in the privacy of their well-appointed homes.

But the great disruptive thing about the pride parade is there’s always someone to crash the party. Someone who takes outness a little more seriously than it’s supposed to be taken. While the official parade attractions were mostly trite (down to the official theme, “Over the Rainbow”), the attendees felt no need to be safely “different.”

There were fully nude men, with paint or see-thru thongs.

There was a young (straight) couple, the female of whom was shirtless, making out on the sidewalk in pure hormonal bliss.

Various clothed boy-boy and girl-girl combos also hugged and kissed a lot. They weren’t settling for public tolerance. They were practicing their love in full view. No pleas or false modesties or passive-aggressive apologies. Just passion, compassion, and shameless lust.

That’s worth more than a hundred guys dressed up as Dorothy standing on bar-sponsored floats.

If you don’t eat meat, don’t put out a book with a subtitle mentioning “…the Meat We Eat.”

This grammatical advice also goes out to all you radical-chic-sters.

“We” means “me and you and maybe more.” It does NOT mean “those stupid mainstream sheeple who aren’t as cool as you and me.”

As we prepare for the 20th anniversary of Twin Peaks, word comes that the  Laura Palmer house is for sale. It’s not in North Bend but Monroe. (Thanx and a hat tip to Seattle Dream Homes.)