Friday, April 05, 2002

A LOT OF PEOPLE have told me they read the print MISC in the lavatory, but this is the first pants-down reader I've been able to document. Christine was one of the models for a body-painting exhibition last night at the Forgotten Works Gallery. (There were a total of two ladies and two gents with unclad but all-decorated physiques; though one of the guys kept a loincloth on.) All the models were bright and vivacious and (except for the loincloth guy) had no apparent qualms about total strangers seeing their total bodies (even bare feet) live and in person. You'll be able to meet Christine, fully and fabulously dressed, on April 25 at the Fashion Underground show in the Catwalk club in Pioneer Square. (Yep, she not only wears clothes most of the time, she designs 'em.)

SPEAKING OF THE PRINT MISC, the Science vs. Science Fiction issue will be out next week. (Anyone who’d like to help with distro should email me.) We go straight into production from there on the More Sex, Less Gender issue. (Get your story ideas in now.)

And consider yourselves warned: There will be another public MISCmeeting soon after the new issue comes out. Among the topics: Figuring out how to make this quixotic venture at least a little more fiscally self-sufficient. (Despite apparent rumors to the contrary, I'm not independently wealthy and cannot keep running it at a loss indefinitely.)

posted by clark 2:37 PM

ADVENTURES in celebrity name misspellings.

ANOTHER DIGITAL DIVIDE FALLS: More and more women are getting hooked on that onetime geeks-only craze, online gaming.

EXPLORE WILLFULLY-FORGOTTEN MEMORIES of Saturday mornings past at Bad Cartoons of the '80s.

posted by clark 12:26 AM

Wednesday, April 03, 2002

HAS ANYONE FOUND Michael Moore's new conservative-bashing book Stupid White Men at a big chain bookstore? If you have, let me know. As previously mentioned in this space, HarperCollins (Rupert Murdoch's publishing house) tried to pull out of its contract to publish the book unless Moore toned down his barbs against George W. After Moore publicized the fracas, HarperCollins backed down and issued the book as scheduled. But you can't find it (at least in my town) in the chains that heavily depend on promo bucks from the likes of HarperCollins. I've heard of record labels burying releases by bands they no longer care to promote; could this be a book-biz equivalent?

posted by clark 11:18 PM

Monday, April 01, 2002

SPRING HAS OFFICIALLY ARRIVED. Went to some friends’ annual Easter breakfast; got to smell cut lawn and see bright sunbreaks (as well as the gent seen above, getting into the true spirit of the season).

For the past week, sunsets finally sneaked past the 6 PM PST mark, putting an end to seasonal-affective-disorder season for another seven months.

And today, Mariner baseball returned. Our boys lost (since when did that ever happen?), but they played a hard-fought contest that literally went down to the final pitch. A good omen.

NORWESCON, the Northwest's biggest science fiction/ fantasy fan convention, held its 25th edition last Easter weekend at a SeaTac hotel. This year's theme was "The Road to the Emerald City," taken from the official Seattle tourist slogan coined by an ad agency in 1982. Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum's great-grandson was flown in as a guest speaker.

There were also the usual Star Wars and Doctor Who merchandise, homemade fan goods (including Klingon nutcrackers), role-playing-game tables, panels on breaking into the writing biz, Lazer Tag tourneys, video screenings, paintings of buxom droids and cosmic goth-dudes, and costumes everywhere (culminating in a Saturday-night masquerade ball).

Through these events, hundreds of everyday humans (many of whom had what the mainstream media would consider less-than-perfect physiques) get to be adventure heroes; they also get to dream of a more romantic world, freed from the inhibitions of the technocratic civilization science fiction once promised us in glowing terms.

posted by clark 9:59 PM

SMOOTH FINISH: The biggest Seattle print-media news this month is the debut of Matte, an ambitious square-bound quarterly arts review started by sometime Comics Journal employees Anne Elizabeth Moore and Carrie Whitney. It essentially covers "alternative"/"indie" music, film, comics, and visual art in the Comics Journal writing style--long and leisurely, full of verbatim interviews and philosophical reviews.

The editors and writers spend a lot of space promising what they'll get around to in future issues and explaining their sociocultural stances. These statements frequently invoke the familiar premise that all of American culture can be nearly divided into The Mainstream and The Alternative, or The Corporate and The Independent. (Music reviewer Tizzy Asher repeatedly invokes "white," "male," and "heterosexual" to decry America's ruling elite, as if everyone who fit one or more of those adjectives was rich and powerful).

Please note: By critiquing the Matte writers, I am not trying to shut them up. I'm asking them to be more challenging; to question their own preconceptions instead of just complaining about those held by others; to explore the more complex realities of how influence and pressure really work in this society. (Remember: Most rich people are white, but most white people aren't rich.)

Anyhoo, on to the parts of Matte I enjoyed. Robin Laananen contributes a haunting photo essay about people wasting away their evening hours. Greg Lundgren, of Minus 5 Gallery and Artists for a Work-Free America, waxes elequantly on the contradictions of working oneself to death in a culture that idolizes "leisure." Beautiful, well-told one-page comix stories are supplied by Jesse Reklaw, Laurenn McCubbin, Tatiana Gill, and several others. Jennifer Daydreamer and Phil Yeh debate whether the recession can lead to a DIY renaissance. And, scattered among the back acreage of record and book reviews, are quotations from various "radical" (left and right) manifestos over the years, showing how too often dreams for a "perfect" world would involve the suppression (or worse) of persons significantly different from the particular dreamer.

posted by clark 4:07 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.