Comments for MISCmedia, a report on popular culture by Clark Humphrey

Comment on RANDOM LINKS FOR 5/7/13 by Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart")

Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart") — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:43:14 +0000

My reading of the article quoting Harvey Weinstein indicates that what’s really got his knickers in a knot isn’t Google’s search-engine so much as YouTube (which actually _delivers_ content as opposed to proclaiming the existence thereof). I have a related beef about YouTube and similar sites like DailyMotion in that they’re indeed making a lot of money deluging the viewer with paid ads while a lot of the content people come looking for was compiled, and in many cases produced from scratch, by people working for free.

Comment on ARE THE SONICS BACK YET? (DAY 111) by Sally

Sally — Thu, 02 May 2013 02:15:43 +0000

I don’t know, Clark. Personally, I’m tired of my taxes subsidizing our parasitic billionaires.

Comment on RANDOM LINKS FOR 4/18/13 by Nadine

Nadine — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:10:57 +0000

Hi! Just saw this link to my blog post, and glad I found your site. Really wonderful. Do check out the video parody we created in response to the Dove campaign, highlighting the dysmorphic, lacking in diversity beauty standards. Because I wasn’t mad enough to keep it to my blog, I needed improv actors to embody my fury.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/26/you-are-beautiful.html

Comment on Fictions by Dex Quire

Dex Quire — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 02:16:20 +0000

Clark, (Doug Anderson here, via my pen name) let’s start a lit rag …again…I don’t know why but I keep thinking Seattle could use a tactile or palpable tabloid with an emphasis on literary things, stories, arias, novellas comics..Misc, Inc things…a merger between klang and Misc…I’m employed now so I’ve got a bit of income if we start humble…someting along the lines of the klang or misc tabloids of yore…I know everyone is headed towards the web for entertainment and reading but I can’t shake the sense that a hand-held coffee house tabliod could catch on…talent abounds…coffee houses abound…we’ve got Briggs, August Avo and many more…what do you think? Am I deluded…?

Doug (a.k.a. Dex)

Comment on OBJECT LESSONS by Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart")

Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart") — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:18:28 +0000

Clark, you might be interested to know that my wife Alice had the pleasure of getting to know Bud Tutmarc a few years before he passed away. Bud was out walking near his home and stumbled over a curb. Alice happened to be driving by, helped him up and gave him a ride back to his house. She got treated to a live-and-in-person version of the narrative you’ve linked to above, and he also gave her a couple of his CD’s. One thing I find a little fascinating is that Paul Tutmarc and Larry Hammond almost simultaneously hit on the idea of capturing a signal by wrapping a coil of wire around a magnet and placing it near a something made of steel that was in motion–vibrating strings in the electric guitar and bass, and spinning toothed “tonewheels” in the case of Hammond’s organ. If “intellectual property rights” had been dealt with then as they are now, the two of them might have engaged fleets of lawyers in an endless patent fight, neither instrument might have ever been produced, and popular music would have followed a very different evolutionary path.

Comment on RANDOM LINKS FOR 4/8/13 by Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart")

Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart") — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:39:56 +0000

Re: the SPD…Paul Richmond, who as a videographer chronicled the WTO “festivities” and now practices law in Port Townsend, observes that Jim Pugel is the guy who was praised as a hero by the establishment press after ordering tear gas to be used on thousands of people.

Comment on RANDOM LINKS FOR 4/8/13 by Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart")

Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart") — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:49:17 +0000

After Katrina, I suspect many of us cringed at the thought of a rebuilt “gentrified” Big Easy, with “smooth jazz” clubs lining a newly rebranded Chardonnay Street. Now it appears that some of that has come to pass, just taking longer than we would have thought. I’m more than a little surprised at Mitch Landrieu’s apparent degree of cultural tone-deafness, but reading between the lines of the linked article I see a familiar clash around some of the old clubs between neighbors who are growing older and less tolerant and the real troublemakers, who as it turns out (surprise!) are affluent punks who get wasted, piss on somebody else’s sidewalk and then smugly go back to their tony enclaves. Deja Pioneer Square (or Belltown or Ballard) all over again.

Comment on RANDOM LINKS FOR 4/8/13 by Matt

Matt — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 03:28:48 +0000

The obit for Hilly Krystal is from 2007.

Comment on WE ALL SCREAM FOR WE DAY by Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart")

Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart") — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 19:18:47 +0000

Clark,

While there isn’t a direct connection, our daughter Melissa, who now lives in Vancouver BC, works for a UK-based organization named Lattitude Global Volunteering which arranges for young men and women to take a “gap year” between high school and college doing charitable/activist work in a foreign land. Sort of like a non-government version of our Peace Corps, it’s common in the UK and throughout the British Commonwealth to put in such a year of service, and considered an important part of the process of becoming a responsible and successful adult.

Comment on RANDOM LINKS FOR 3/30/13 by Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart")

Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart") — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 23:32:54 +0000

The piece about Jiffy gives me a strong urge to pick up a box of their corn muffin mix on the way home! It also paints a stark contrast between the ethos of yesterday and what passes for one today.

On another note, it sounds like if it hasn’t happened already, someone needs to make an introduction between Neal Stephenson and “Whole Earth Catalog” creator and cheerily optimistic futurist Stewart Brand.

Comment on OF KRAFFT, AND OTHER CHEESE MERCHANTS by John Torrance

John Torrance — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:07:58 +0000

Krafft doesn’t appear to have learned his lesson. He did another appearance on a notorious neo-Nazi podcast just last night.

http://northwestfront.org/2013/03/charles-krafft-interview/

Comment on OF KRAFFT, AND OTHER CHEESE MERCHANTS by How Did Millions of Fans Not Know Charles Wing Krafft Was a White Supremacist? — The Good Men Project

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 13:31:16 +0000

[...] community shunning what should have been the obvious. Steinhauer takes the following quote from Seattle blogger Clark Humphrey on the subject of consumer awareness: “Like many participants in and observers of the Seattle [...]

Comment on A LOAD OF BULL-PUNKY by Deborah

Deborah — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 03:36:35 +0000

Seems to me hippies went through the same existential crisis when they hit midlife, and realised that they liked making money.

Comment on RANDOM LINKS FOR 2/25/13 by ArtFart

ArtFart — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 20:46:11 +0000

The author of the “catch-phrase” article seems to have hit all the bases with one exception. The term “investment in America” doesn’t seem quite right, and probably began as a counter to the right’s advocacy (absurd in itself) of “running government like a business”. I have to admit being at a loss for a two- or three-word phrase describing what good government ought by all rights to be doing, which has been verbosely referred to as “using the common wealth to promote the common good”. Today’s conservatives find such a thing to be anathema–they see common wealth as an impediment to ambition and believe in no such thing as the common good.

Comment on RANDOM LINKS FOR 2/27/13 by ArtFart

ArtFart — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 20:23:47 +0000

As longtime residents of northeast Seattle, we could certainly see the end coming for Claire’s. We ate there a few months after the Petosa family sold it and never again went back–the prices had jumped and the quality and portion sizes had undergone an almost shocking change for the worse. The owner of the building (who we know–he was our son’s Scoutmaster) used to tell us he wanted the restaurant to stay regardless of what he did with the rest of the property because he and his wife liked to eat there. I suspect they were put off by the new regime as much as we were.

As to the Italian Spaghetti House…that’s a huge loss, both to the community and to us personally. My bride to be and I ate there on many a date, they were the go-to place for take-out pizza and their food (for the prices) was uniformly great. Since they were nearly next door to Frank Colacurcio’s Talents West office (and not far down Lake City Way from Rick’s) it’s hard to avoid speculating on whether there was some sort of association, familial or otherwise, that got them into trouble. This is particularly true considering that the “offical” reason they gave for closing was that they couldn’t obtain a hard-booze license–and now the property is home to a mega-liquor store.