Saturday, March 23, 2002

WHY, AND HOW, a major publisher wouldtry to keep its own book off the bestseller lists.

FOLLOWING UP on a prior reference, a kindly reader submitted this link to (wondrous) images of Chris Ware's 3-D paper toys!

A FRENCH CONSPIRACY THEORIST offers up some (dubious, in my opinion) theories about what really happened at the Pentagon on Sept. 11 in the form of a photo-seek type game, "Hunt the Boeing!"

ANNOY YOUR CO-WORKERS with an array of buzzer, horn, bell, and siren noises, all downloadable and ready to be turned into your computer's standard alert sound.

IT'S BEEN A BANNER YEAR for business blunders; one magazine has found and ranked 101 of them! (Only 15 of which directly involve Enron.)

posted by clark 9:04 PM

Thursday, March 21, 2002

TRIP ASIDE #1: Mementos of my own formerly-fair city were everywhere in Stamford and NYC. Starbux stands and Microsoft ads were ubiquitous, of course; but there were also Seattle's Best Coffee-serving restaurants and Eddie Bauer boutiques. (There's supposedly a Nordstrom in some suburban mall outside NYC, but I didn't see it.) The Virgin Megastore in the infamously Disneyfied Times Square stocked plenty of Seattle bands, even the semi-obscure ones. (F'rinstance, a Fartz CD was on prominent display!) One quasi-Seattle-related person, Fantagraphics cartoonist Chris Ware, had a huge display of his (fantastic) original art in the Whitney Museum's 2002 Biennial exhibition. And the Tuesday edition of everyone's favorite rabid-right tabloid included a positive review of the new CD by our ol' pal Christy McWilson.

TRIP ASIDE #2: My flights both ways, as previously mentioned in this space, were on the airline soon to be formerly known as TWA. Thanks to the overcast conditions also previously mentioned in this space, both flights offered the comforting illusion of sailing on a sea of cotton fluff. Only the eastward flight offered a movie (K-PAX, displayed on LED video monitors).

Both flights included stops at the ol' TWA hub in St. Louis. Right out the window, you could clearly see the old McDonnell-Douglas HQ complex at the other side of the main runways. The building now bears a big Boeing logo, even though it's becoming increasingly clear that MD has staged a palace coup and essentially taken over Boeing.

TRIP ASIDE #3: I'll try to scan some snapshot-camera pix I took of NYC, including Ground-0 (still an extremely quiet and solemn quarter-square-mile surrounded by the famous NYC bustle).

posted by clark 12:06 PM

THE SPRING PRINT MISC will be out no later than April 10. The summer issue should follow in a mere two months from that, partly as a test to see if we can move permanently up to a faster turnaround. Having spent a few days in the World Media Capital has given me the inspiration to keep trying to make the print MISC a "real" magazine, capable of holding its own in the local and/or national marketplace. We'll be discussing this further on.

posted by clark 11:26 AM

FINALLY, YR. OB'T EDITOR HAS RETURNED to lovely equinoxic Seattle. Apparently, y'all have had New York-style late-winter weather while the NY area, where I was these past 5.5 days, had very Seattle-esque weather (steady rain, low clouds, and only warm enough to not snow).

In the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, I ended up finishing 150th out of approximately 412 entrants using the tournament's complex accuracy-and-speed scoring system. (Out of the 145 first-time entrants, I finished 21st.) It was a good weekend; I stayed at a good hotel room, met a lot of others who share the odd hobby of speed-solving, made some contacts, got some advice re: putting my own X-Word back into national syndication, and scored several interesting puzzle books.

There was one downbeat point to the week, however. My lovely Olympus digital camera disappeared in the Stamford hotel. After being warned repeatedly by my mom and others to watch all my material belongings in big bad Manhattan, I lose my fourth-costliest possession in the heart of the whitebread suburbs. (Further details to follow.)

posted by clark 11:22 AM

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.