Thursday, September 06, 2001

GOING AGAINST THE 'FLOW': Due to several reader requests, we've replaced the "flowing" text in our photo-illustrated stories with stand-alone image tables. Hope this solves the problem some readers, on some browsers, have had viewing the texts.

posted by clark 3:23 PM

Wednesday, September 05, 2001

IT'S AN HONOR, CONT'D: In Monday's email, I received the Museum of History and Industry's long list of nominees for "MetropoLIST," the MOHAI/Seattle Times scheme to name the 150 "most influential" people in Seattle and King County, tying in with the city's upcoming 150th birthday. (I get to be one of the voters on the final lineup.)

The long list has over 450 people on it. My first cut dropped a bunch of old-family lawyers and Boeing executive vice-presidents and suburban hospital administrators, but still left 192 people I thought worthy of the list. I had to chop that down to 150 to vote for, including any write-in suggestions of my own (the long list didn't even include such big names as Eddie Vedder, Dyan Cannon, and Mary Kay LeTourneau!).

I'll get my final votes done and sent into MOHAI probably by the end of today. The final roster, as voted on by the whole panel, will appear in the Times on Sept. 30.

Two weeks later, our own MISC roster of famous/infamous Seattleites will appear, in illustrated-poster form, as a centerspread in the next issue of our print mag.

posted by clark 11:20 AM

Monday, September 03, 2001

LET IT RUST: The best "new" TV series of 2001 (thus far) is a leftover from 1999 that just happens to completely outdo that overblown A.I. movie in regards to questioning the nature of humanity-vs.-machines.

It's a cartoon on the Fox Kids schedule, The Big Guy and Rusty.

The show's origin lies with a graphic novel made in the mid-'90s for Portland comics giant Dark Horse, by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow. Miller (who's often credited with the "darker" characterization of Batman that inspired that figure's movies) and Darrow had collaborated since the late '80s on sullen, violent, and stunningly-drawn titles such as Hard Boiled.

The Big Guy was a slight departure from the established Miller-Darrow formula. It was set in a bright, futuristic urban environment modeled on latter-day Japanese anime films. Its heroes (inspired by those of the early Japanese cartoons Gigantor and Astroboy) were real heroes, not gruff antiheroes (albeit more heavily armed, and more prone to retaliatory vengeance, than their wholesome precursors).

The Sony-owned Columbia Tristar Television bought the animation rights in 1995. During its four-year development period, executive producer Richard Raynis kept Darrow's character and background designs but tossed most of Miller's plot. Raynis and his team concocted a new premise for the characters, one that could support a strong central cast while allowing subplots and conflicts to unfold among multiple episodes.

So as the TV version starts, the Big Guy has already been defending Earth from alien invaders for 10 years. He's an imposingly huge grey robot with an immobile "face," a booming voice (spouting patriotic cliches), and giant arms filled with, well, giant arms (missiles, bombs, guns). He's the oldline military-industrial America strutting its might and heft.

But only the Big Guy's support team knows he's not a "real" robot but just a big metallic suit, piloted by one Lt. Dwayne Hunter. Dwayne's a soft-spoken, unassuming pilot who, when he's out of the suit and walking on his own legs, shares none of his alter ego's bombast.

Rusty, the show's real protagonist, is a real robot, something the Big Guy's original designers (a defense-contractor conglomerate whose tower is the tallest building in New Tronic City) have only now been able to accomplish. Rusty has the personality of an enthusiastic boy adventurer, avid to clobber the bad guys but lacking in experience or wisdom. Rusty represents the "new economy" and the high-tech future that seemed so promising in 1999, when the show was produced--high-flying, free-wheeling, but sometimes almost fatally immature.

Rusty adores the Big Guy as a substitute dad, but only knows Lt. Dwayne as the Big Guy's "chief mechanic." Lt. Dwayne initially dismisses Rusty as an unfinished technology, but grows to trust and feel for the "Boy Robot," both when inside and outside the Big Guy suit.

This central relationship, along with those of a strong human supporting cast, carry the series through 26 installments that unfold as chapters in a novel (like the best anime shows). But Fox, desperate for a quick ratings fix in the Pokemon-dominated 1999 cartoon season, dropped TBG&R after only six installments had aired. The network's been "burning off" the entire series in a spring-and-summer run this year. Its ratings this time have apparently been OK, but the show's creative staff has dispersed to other projects and a second season is apparently unlikely.

But the shows that were made work well as a complete "work," with a beginning and end. In between are some episodes that work as stand-alone adventures with foes (and friends) of assorted alien origin, some episodes that explore the relationship between the real robot and the fake one, and some episodes involving a set of recurring villains, the Legion Ex Machina (evil, real robots out to eradicate the human race).

In the last episode, the Big Guy's original chief designer is seen for the first time. He claims the Big Guy had been "a failure" because it depended on a human pilot; even though the man-in-a-suit had successfully fought off countless bug-eyed alien monsters and destroyed the Legion.

Similarly, Fox treated TBG&R as a failed show. But it's really a success. At a time when primetime "reality" shows are pulling the lowest common denominator ever lower (even lower than is possible with scripted fiction shows, which must maintain a minimal story credibility to work on a weekly basis), TBG&R is a highest-common-denominator show.

Its premise is full of holes (if the Big Guy is so important to Earth's survival, why was only one ever built and why does it have only one trained pilot?).

But the characters (even the bad guys) are fully developed, the storylines fully explore the complexities of these characters, the scripts are smart without succumbing to overt "hip" attitude nonsense, and the artwork (all done in traditional cel animation) is often spectacular.

See it while you still can.

posted by clark 9:27 PM

Sunday, September 02, 2001

MARK-ING TIME: Sure enough, the Seattle Times (run by a publisher who's complained that this town's too overrun with "ultraliberals") endorsed that dittoheaded dweeb Mark Sidran for mayor today, one week after the supposedly less conservative P-I did likewise. It proves the city's business establishment is lining up in lockstep behind the KVI-anointed Sidran and dumping their last hand-picked favorite, current incumbent Paul Schell.

And already the apologists are coming forth, as if a Sidran victory were inevitable, trying to reassure us that the city government's point man on mandatory mellowness and demographic cleansing weren't so bad. The Times endorsement editorial appeared in the same edition as a front-page story claiming few significant policy differences between Sidran, Schell, and Greg Nickels.

Why, one longtime progressive activist tried to personally reassure me that "Sidran's not as dangerous as The Stranger says he is."

Actually, Sidran really is that dangerous. It's just that he's not been the lone voice of conservative reaction many have billed him as, including, often, himself.

The Sidran-drafted "civility" laws (assorted attacks on the young, the homeless, the poor, the black, etc.) mostly passed the City Council (often on 7-2 votes) and were mostly signed into law by Schell and/or mayor predecessor Norm Rice.

The corporate clout-mongers who backed Schell in '97 and back Sidran now clearly want what Jim Hightower calls "business more than usual"--the same power-mongering, insider dealmaking, corporate welfare, and sticking-it-to-the-little guy, only more aggressively persued and with fewer compromises. That's what they want from Sidran, as the Times endorsement statement clearly states.

If Sidran really were the lone-wolf conservative battling a liberal municipal establishment he's sometimes claimed to be, he wouldn't be someone to worry about. But with the daily papers' publishers and the Downtown Seattle Association types fawning over him like they do, Sidran is definitely a local-elite insider. And if he did get into power, he could definitely accomplish a lot more anti-democratic mischief.

posted by clark 11:09 PM

SHOOTING THE BUMBER: For 31 of Seattle Center's 39 years of existence, Bumbershoot: The Seattle Arts Festival has been its biggest annual event.

Devised from the start to encompass the entire former World's Fair grounds (except the now separately-run Space Needle and Pacific Science Center), it's also the last of Seattle's annual lineup of big populist summer gatherings (starting in May with Opening Day of Boating Season and the Film Festival, then continuing with Folklife, the Bite of Seattle, and Seafair).

Bumbershoot's premise: An all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet of culture. A book fair in one corner, short plays in another, contemporary art installations in another. At the big stages, bigname music celebs. At smaller stages scattered about, secondary performers of all types.

And between everything, the familiar sideshow attractions of Thai-food booths, street jugglers, balloon sellers, and fenced-off beer gardens.

In its early years, Bumbershoot was strictly aimed at a specific socioethnic caste then taking control of the city's cultural identity--aging, increasingly square baby-boomers. Nonwhite performers were largely limited to boomer-friendly blues bands; mainstage shows were heavy on the likes of Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor.

In the late '80s, that started to change slightly. Younger, hipper, and more diverse acts have steadily gained their way into the mix.

A bizarre P-I preview story called this year's lineup "Bumberpalooza," comparing it to the '90s Lollapalooza rock package tours. I initially thought the article's writer used the analogy to claim the festival was becoming more corporate-mainstream.

But the writer, still believing Lollapalooza's original "alternative" hype, really wanted to say B'shoot had become edgier and more experimental. Fortunately, she was right.

With more hip-hop acts, a whole electronica stage, and a mainstage lineup ranging from Loretta Lynn to G. Love and Special Sauce, Bumbershoot 2001's fulfilling its name's promise of an all-covering umbrella of expression.

In these images: Happy crowds; the Book Fair (including, this year, only one small press with the word "heron" in its name!); local collectors' caches of electric mixers and Harlequin Romance cover paintings; an information booth at the start of the slinking line into KeyArena; Posies legend Ken Stringfellow; a hula-hoop demonstration on the main lawn; and, below, our ex-Stranger colleague Inga Muscio.

Muscio, scheduled to perform on the Starbucks-sponsored literary stage, peppered her half-hour slot with plugs for smaller coffee brands. She ended it with a story about dreaming Starbucks boss Howard Schultz was her S&M slave.

posted by clark 1:04 PM

ARCHIVES:

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