Saturday, April 13, 2002

TODAY, MISCmedia IS DEDICATED to the memory of Jack Roberts, who, almost singlehandedly, kept two American traditions alive locally into the '90s: (1) The locally-owned, independent appliance store; and (2) the wacky-pitchman TV commercial.

posted by clark 10:57 AM

Friday, April 12, 2002

THE FANTABULOUS SPRING PRINT MISC is now out at about one-third of the regular dropoff points. The rest should follow over the next three days. Subscribers should look in their mailboxes starting Monday.

posted by clark 11:55 AM

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

WITH EVERY ISSUE of the print MISC, we try to have a public event. This time it's The Clark Show.

It's an evening of readings, odd music and video, audience-participation games, and (just perhaps) live singing.

It's Monday, April 29, at the glorious newly-redone Rendezvous Lounge and Jewel Box Theater, 2320 2nd Ave. (north of Bell St.) in Seattle. Two one-hour sets start at 7:30 and 9:00, with somewhat different material in each. Be there, okie?

posted by clark 11:38 AM

Tuesday, April 09, 2002

ONE OF THE ODD THINGS about the Net is the way news articles might not appear (or no longer appear) on the site of the organization that originated them, but might still be found on sites that buy syndicated content. Thus, this link peculiarly takes you to a site in India discussing a magazine that, to the best of my knowledge, still can't legally be obtained there.

The magazine in question, Penthouse, is suffering from the publishing/advertising slump worse than most. Thirty-three years after it first launched as Playboy's most ambitious rival to date (early slogan: "We're going rabbit hunting"), and three years after bringing true hardcore porn imagery to regular newsstand-distributed magazines, it's swimming in red ink and can't borrow any more money. Bossman Bob Guccione (now a 70-year-old widower who's battled cancer) has put his art collection up for hock and his NYC mansion up for sale. Circulation has fallen, as all the other skin mags (except Playboy and Perfect 10) have quickly moved to match its sleaze quotient, and as hardcore video and pay-per-view have grabbed a bigger share of American self-loving males' inspiration budgets. Many of the magazine's advertisers, meanwhile, have fled to the bureaucratically safer (though ultimately just as stupid) nipple-free "tease" magazines of the Maxim/FHM formula. Penthouse has tried to make some bucks in Net porn, but that effort was undercut by the fiscal troubles at its erstwhile online partner, Seattle-based Internet Entertainment Group.

If Penthouse does disappear sometime this or next year, as some financial analysts predict, it would mean the end to one of the odder experiments in magazine entertainment photography--the ongoing attempt to gussy up porn scenes (up to and including actual coitus) with pretentiously "arty" lighting and composition. (Of course, any aesthetic ambitions in the photo-narratives are immediately negated by the models' kabuki-like copious amounts of bleach, silicone, and heel lengths.)

There's still money to be made in 2-D representations of 3-D physiques. But the sleaze side of that market is way too overcrowded. The softcore side is almost totally the property of Playboy, which in its current ossified state is a tired (and not very enticing) remnant of its old formula. What this country needs is a good, respectable hetero sex mag. Those who would wish to help me start one can contact the email address below for investment opportunities.

posted by clark 1:41 AM

Monday, April 08, 2002

AFTER ONE WEEK, can we discuss the state of the '02 Mariners yet? Well, we will anyway. Compared to last year's once-in-a-lifetime April, this year's Ms are a respectable but unspectacular 4-3. Three of those four wins were come-from-behinds; two of the three losses involved insufficient comeback rallies in the late innings.

Of course, this is only against three opponents (two of whom, the A's and Angels, are division rivals who've surely spent a lot on scouting to research any possible Ms' weaknesses). And admittedly, a 4-3 week still puts a team on a pace to win a not-bad-at-all 104 games in the season.

All one can do now is hope Weeks 2 through 4 reveal a Seattle team emerging to its fuller potential.

posted by clark 10:45 PM

DIDN'T MENTION IT HERE yet, but The Stranger has indeed run a feature-piece by me. It concerns the (slight but extant) possibility of a revival of hipness in Belltown.

A BASTION FALLS: Beginning today, the Wall St. Journal introduces a loud new graphic design featuring bigger headlines, more white space, and color every which where. It's as much a symbol as anything we've seen that the business community (and, by extension, business journalism) doesn't want to be perceived as having stodginess, solidness, continuity, reliability, trustworthiness, confidence, or understated good taste. Everything's gotta be NOW-NOW-NOW, POW-POW-POW, all hustle and jive and hard sell.

I've long disagreed with almost everything written on the WSJ editorial pages; but I felt I could trust the accuracy of the matter on its news pages. Its front page had always been a form-following-function endeavor--three columns of news briefs (one on a topic that rotated throughout the week), two major news stories, and one well-written light feature. This page-one layout only changed on days when there was real, real big news (Pearl Harbor, 9/11). Now, it's changed permanently, and will likely change from day to day.

To summarize: The old WSJ was like the reliable, grey-suited neighborhood banker who offered low-key, sensible advice on providing for one's loved ones. The new WSJ is more like the boiler-room office that spews forth telemarketing cold calls about the latest sure-to-exponentially-rise-to-the-stratosphere tech-company IPO.

posted by clark 10:04 PM

TODAY, we start trying to keep an earlier promise by postiing selected articles from past issues of the print MISC. With any hope, it'll wet your whistle enough to want to subscribe.

In today's batch, we start with Matt Briggs's The Age of Uniforms, a memoir of one woman's work life as seen via clothes.

Then, Matthew Stadler offers a Letter From Astoria, chronicling one of America's strangest and saddest towns.

We're also making it easier to find past weblog items from 2002 by listing some of the better (or at least longer) ones by name on an index page.

posted by clark 1:03 PM

UPDATE #1: The two-week-delayed spring print MISC will be out this week. We're only waiting confirmation of one ad.

UPDATE #2: Michael Moore's Stupid White Men indeed showed up at a local Borders Books--and on the bestseller shelf. Still no Barnes & Noble sightings.

posted by clark 11:09 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.