Saturday, February 23, 2002

THE NORTHGATE THEATER closed Feb. 21 after 51 years. It was the first shopping-mall cinema in the U.S. Its design “modernized” and toned down the old prewar movie-palace look, but still emphasized going to the movies as a special experience, with a huge screen and other amenities intended to emphasize the differences between cinema and TV. With over 1,000 seats, it had become Seattle’s largest remaining single-screen movie house by its end. It was finally done in by multiplex competition, long-planned redevelopment plans at the mall, and by the bankruptcy-forced retrenchment plan of its current operator, Loews Cineplex (formerly Cineplex Odeon). The chain had let the Northgate lapse into decay for over a decade; many seats were broken, the carpets had been ripped out, the interior walls had stains and holes. But at its peak, as a flagship of the locally-based Sterling Recreation Organization circuit, it housed the local-exclusive first runs of many blockbusters, and gave many lonely suburban kids a glimpse of life’s more glamorous possibilities.

posted by clark 3:39 PM

CHUCK JONES, 89, was a Spokane boy who became the world's most influential director of cartoon shorts. (And, as everyone knows, it's really duck season.)

posted by clark 3:35 PM

NICKELED-'N-DIMED DEPT.: A UW survey claims young white male workers have a worse start in life, and fewer opportunities for a better life, than their early-'80s forebearers.

Undoubtedly, the Dittoheads will misinterpret these findings to claim affirmative action has gone too far, that women and minorities are now the privileged castes and society must now focus on returning the erstwhile sons of privilege to their supposed rightful place.

What it really means is a new caste system has developed in the U.S., based less on race and gender than on the purer inequalities of money and power. There are still bastions of white-male privilege, in the corporate boardrooms and the corridors of political power. But remember, most rich people are white but most white peope aren't rich. And the nonrich whites are in the same unstable boat as the nonrich blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and native Americans.

This means progressive-lefty types need to rethink 30-year-old (or older) notions of a world where "white" plus "male" equals "oppressor." There are millions of pale penis people stuck in the same no-future rut as millions of women and minorities. A liberalism that worked would reach out to these people, inviting them in to a movement to try and make things better for everybody.

posted by clark 3:22 PM

Friday, February 22, 2002

PRINT MAG UPDATE: The spring "Science vs. Science Fiction" issue of the print MISC is in production. We hope to have it out by the end of March, with only one possible encumberance to that goal (see below).

YR. HUMBLE EDITOR has a chance to attend the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, to be held St. Patrick's Day weekend in the heart of intensely suburban Connecticut. If any of you know anyone in the greater NYC tri-state area with whom I could stay for a couple days or so before or after the tourney, lemme know.

posted by clark 1:50 PM

Thursday, February 21, 2002

HOW TO be a leftist but not a cynic.

posted by clark 8:43 PM

Wednesday, February 20, 2002

A BETTER WAY to control prostitution: Declare it legal, then assess past-due taxes on it.

posted by clark 3:06 PM

Tuesday, February 19, 2002

MONTY PYTHON ALUM Terry Jones ponders what would happen if current ideologies i/r/t bombing any country where a terrorist lives were applied a little closer to home.

posted by clark 11:08 AM

Monday, February 18, 2002

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA are finally discovering something I knew all along: "It's cool to be Canadian!"

It's only natural this discovery should happen during an Olympic Games, in which media critics (and thousands of other viewers) in norther-tier U.S. regions routinely discover the more thoughtful, less hype-centric CBC coverage.

CBC's even more vital during a Winter Olympics, what with the Dominion's traditional strength in hockey, snowboarding, and especially curling (the official World's Greatest Game). This vitality was only serendipitously enhanced by the emergence of two Canadians as heroes of the current games' biggest story.

It must be noted, however, that NBC's coverage this time around is thankfully more CBC-like. That is, it's more devoted (especially in its daytime blocks on MSNBC and CNBC) to actual sports coverage aimed at people who are, or could conceivably become, interested in the actual sports. Someone there finally noticed that with the network no longer airing baseball, pro football, or (after this season) pro basketball, it'd better start to do right by the one big sports package it still controls.

Over the past three biennia, NBC's Olympics telethons drew fewer and fewer viewers, especially young-adult TV viewers, even though they're a celebration of young-adult achievement. By dumbing-down the events and their storylines into ready-for-prime-time pablum, tape-delaying events and then showing only brief snippets of them in between interminable personality-profile segments (usually about workaholic athletes who don't really have personalities), and by reinterpreting every event as The US vs. Those People, NBC made its telecasts a big joke to anyone who seriously participated in these sports and a squaresville turnoff to other young-adult viewers.

So this time, we get long(er) stretches of live (or, on KING, two-hour-old) events, with canned cutaway segments respectfully educating viewers on the events and their particular inherent dramatic qualities. The personality pieces are fewer, and include at least a modicum of non-US participants. (Of course, it helped the network that it had a real news story at the games to which it could give the OJ/Monica/Jon Benet tabloid treatment.)

I still prefer the CBC approach, though. For one thing, they've got much more curling. Also, they spent much less time reiterating every twist-N-turn in the skating-judging affair, even though it starred two Canadians. And its late-night shows are refreshing apres-ski entertainments built around the games' outdoor concerts (several of which have starred Canadian performers). NBC has the same ol' grating Leno, who just gets more Attitude-dependent and unlistenable as he approaches his tenth anniversary.

posted by clark 11:57 PM

ARCHIVES:

• Past weblog entries.
• 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns.
• Reviews of literature & art, nonfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise.
• Longer articles and essays.
• Some slightly weird little fiction pieces.
• X-Word crossword puzzles, now with on-screen solving.
• Cyber Stuff, links to cool and/or useful sites.
• A listing of many Things I Like (and a few things I hate).
• The origin and future of MISCmedia.