Friday, April 26, 2002

'THE FASHION UNDERGROUND' was an "alternative" fashion show held Thursday night at a packed Catwalk nightclub in Pioneer Square. Billed by its promoters as "the next level of multi-media art," it comprised runway segments by 12 local designers (including print MISC writer Jennifer Velasco), all coordinated and sequenced to form one semi-continuous spectacle.

The clothes were all fun and well-constructed. Some outfits were more creatively designed than others; but even the nothing-you-haven't-seen-before garments (PVC fetish dresses; pseudo-rustic "tribal" rave wear) were perfectly good examples of their subgenres.

The hour-and-a-half show began over an hour late, and was prefaced by a long set of annoyingly repetitive techno music and video projections of war, famine, and mushroom clouds. Then a solitary female model wandered onstage and sat herself down, expressionless and mute.

This depressing moment was followed by several runway segments devoted to similarly downbeat themes (described in the show's flyer as "Anger," "Deception," "Future Fear," and "Mourning." I began to worry that the whole show would be another example of Seattle people thinking they could only be hip if they imitated a New York sensibility--in this case a cynical, everything-sucks type of New York sensibility.

Only in the eighth segment, entitled "Inspiration" and costumed by our pal Christina Collins (see picture below), did the mood lighten up. The rest of the show, thankfully, was about (as the flyer said) "the transformation from darkness to light, from winter to spring." The music became more listenable; the video images became more hopeful. Models began to prance instead of sulk; some even smiled.

The next designers' segments continued the warming trend. I-Ching Lao showed off funky multicult wear, on models of non-bulimic stature. Megan Wilson presented colorful, sheer "Girlie Fashions," on models who visibly enjoyed living in their bodies. Then came Velasco's brief segment (see picture below), with bright-and-bouncy clubwear in cool shades of white.

On the freebie table at the front of the Catwalk were stacked copies of what might just be the dumbest fashion/lifestyle magazine ever created (and I know that's saying a lot). The San Diego-based Revolt in Style combines pictorials about swimsuits and boxing, profiles of allegedly rising stars in music and movies, and strip-club ads. The name itself, of course, is the dumbest aspect of the mag. If this country ever had a real revolution, it'd be against commercial tripe such as that represented in Revolt.

posted by clark 4:10 PM

OUR OL' PAL UMBERTO ECO reviews a new book about today's up-'n'-coming miniature art forms, including film clips and trailers, websites, and even banner ads. (The book being reviewed is apparently not yet available Stateside.)

posted by clark 12:08 PM

Wednesday, April 24, 2002

PASSAGE (Michael Bolton CD review by Elysa Gardner in USA Today, 4-23): "...Other selections artfully combine adult-contemporary clichés with the most banal aspects of modern pop, from gaudy faux-Latin flourishes to gooey bubblegum reverb. What remains distinctive is Bolton's inimitably constipated vocal style, which seems to disprove the theory that men can't empathize with the pain women suffer in childbirth."

posted by clark 9:54 AM

TODAY, MISCmedia.com IS DEDICATED to the memory of LInda Lovelace, whose topsy-turvy life (now ended with a car crash at age 53) pivoted around her status as the first woman to become an above-ground celebrity for appearing in an explicit sex film.

Hardcore porn on theater screens, and pubic hair in magazines, emerged in 1970-71, which meant the media became obsessed with sex at exactly the same time I did. (But by the time I was old enough to legally view hardcore films, they'd already started to become the formulaic tripe porno videos are now. I preferred softcore, and still do, because it was more attractive to look at and gave me female characters to fall in love with, not just female physiques to hunger for.)

Lovelace's post-porn memoirs were believed by conservatives who'd never read them to be righteous indictments against the whole genre of sex films. The books could be more accurately described as tales of a personal abusive relationship with a controlling husband-manager and his small-time-hood cronies. (I've never heard anyone invoke the marital ordeals of Ronnie Spector or Tina Turner as a pretext to condemn the entire institution of pop music.)

Her private troubles and triumphs aside, Lovelace will forever be the first real Sex Star. There had been famous upper-class courtesans thoughout history; some of whom performed in live sex shows at discreet venues for the decadent rich; there had also been "stag reel" hardcore films screened surreptitiously in private clubs and homes. But those women were still perceived all too often as "fallen women," unfit to be mentioned in polite society. There had been famous nude models and dancers in North America and Europe for decades, but these were women who proudly displayed themselves with an essence of decorum and dignity. The early-'70s porn queens, in contrast, were shown doing the full down-'n'-dirty, to the point of total out-of-control mindless ecstasy (or at least imitations of it), in garish color images projected ten feet tall. And for doing this they were marketed as not just respectable ladies but as admirable goddesses.

If you remember that this had never been done before in anything even close to "mainstream" American culture, you might more easily understand how it would rile a lot of people--not just political conservatives but also many progressives and feminists who'd traditionally equated women's empowerment with rising above such tawdriness. You can also imagine how, when Lovelace had left both the relationship and the business, she could have identified the two as interchangeable incarnations of extreme ickiness.

Nowadays, porn is just another corporate, LA-monopolized entertainment enterprise. There's also a more "respectable" (though almost as formulaic) parallel genre of woman-friendly "erotica." (There's even a whole consumer trade show of middle-class-couple oriented "sex-positive" seminars and merch sales in Vancouver this weekend.)

In her last published interviews, Lovelace claimed to have come to terms with both her porn and anti-porn careers. She said she'd never found anything wrong with being or looking sexy, that she didn't advocate censorship but simply "awareness," and that the best sex she'd ever had was in an ongoing relationsip with a guy she liked. She'd finally become an ordinary woman who'd found her peace with the world.

posted by clark 1:11 AM

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

IT'S SIX DAYS N' COUNTING to our next glam-filled live event, The Clark Show, Monday nite at the redone Rendezvous lounge in Belltown. Be there.

PASSAGE (Former ACT Theater boss Gordon Edelstein in the NY Times, on his return to the NY tri-state area): "[In Seattle] when the curtain rises on a play, the audience is open, but their tacit agreement is that life is pretty good, it's important to be comfortable, and that human beings actually can be healthy.... The curtain rises on a New York audience, and everybody agrees we're basically sick and we want redemption and we want a good time but we're not made uncomfortable by deeply disturbing news about our psyches. In fact, that feels like the truth to us."

posted by clark 1:27 AM

Sunday, April 21, 2002

IT'S PHOTO DAY TODAY, starting with some more examples of American business standing up for our nation (don't you dare imagine any commercial exploitation of the popular emotions could be involved.)

First, it's good to know the bowling pins of America refuse to be knocked over by internal divisiveness...

...And almost as good to know that giant balloon eagles are valiantly defending our right to consume mass quantities of imported oil to power our big-ass RVs.

Meanwhile, some folks who had other ideas about America and commerce staged protests across the nation on Saturday. Locally, rallies took place at Westlake Park, the Seattle Central campus, and at Broadway and East Thomas Street (where activists staged a symbolic "Take Back the Streets" exercise in the middle of the intersection.)

Whilst phalanxes of cops protected oil-company assets, peaceful advocated advocated peace. Peace was about the only thing all the protesters seemed to be for (some attendeess also expressed support for the Palestinian cause).

The protests across the country were ostensibly about the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Protest leaders have depicted the organizations as loan sharks, ruining the economies of Third World countries for the benefit of big global corporations. But, as often happens in a lefty gathering, topic drift abounded.

So you got bashers of the Bush oil policy, the Bush Mideast policy, the sanctions against (and potential invasion of) Iraq, the war on drugs, SUVs, domestic banks, and capitalism in general.

Later on Saturday, about 100 fans of Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley held a quiet vigil at the Seattle Center International Fountain. Staley, 34, was found dead at his University District home late Friday night; probably from an overdose.

In his songs and in interviews, Staley frequently admitted that he'd used heroin and that it had turned his life into a living hell. His lyrical imagery was perfectly matched by the band's music--heavy metal dirges, often slow and pounding.

By 1993 AIC's brutal and tragic aesthetic, unrelieved by the pop-punk energy of Mudhoney or the cynical wit of Nirvana, had come to most purely embody what many people (including most rock people in Seattle) claimed they hated about the media's "Seattle Scene" stereotype. By 1996, Staley had essentially retired from making music. He seldom appeared in public, stopped performing live, and contributed to only a handful of new recorded songs. The few friends who kept in contact with him didn't talk.

A Stranger gossip item last year said he'd been seen, looking presumably healthy, at a local club. A lot of us wanted to believe it. Instead, it now turns out to have been one of many unsuccessful sobriety attempts.

Staley never glamorized drug use. His songs and interviews spoke plainly of heroin's momentary joy and lingering sadness. He lived in a private hell; it ultimately didn't matter that this hell was initially of his own making.

posted by clark 7:17 PM

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