Saturday, June 01, 2002

FROM, OF ALL LEAST-LIKELY SOURCES, a straight-talkin' non-exploitative essay on FoxNews.com:

• "Last week, U.S. News ran a rather sensational cover story on teen-age sex, making what I think is the mistake of treating teen-age sex as something novel or unnatural.

  "Teen-agers have been having sex forever. Their bodies are maturing, their hormones are raging and doing what comes naturally is, well, natural. Indeed, for most of human history, teen sex was an entirely normal part of life, since people tended to marry and be treated as adults at what were, by modern standards, very early ages. Programs that don't take that into account aren't likely to succeed, and media coverage based on sensationalism doesn't help."

posted by clark 12:13 AM

Friday, May 31, 2002

WHAT IS BEAUTY, and why do so many humans obsess about it? Beautyworlds.com attempts to sort it all out.

posted by clark 10:48 AM

Thursday, May 30, 2002

EVEN MISC-ER:

• The new Frontier Room: Travesty or abomination?

• I tried to follow my bliss, until it filed a restraining order.

• It's hard to believe sometimes, but people have been having sex since before you were born.

• Philip Morris sells Miller Beer to South African Breweries Ltd.: Since Miller owns Olympia Brewing (the Northwest's last mass-market brewery), how will the radicaler-than-thou Olympia downtown scenesters react to their town's biggest non-governmental institution becoming part of what used to be apartheid's biggest profiteers? (I know they cared little about Philip Morris owning Oly; except for the straight-edgers, those Olympia scenesters smoke like factories.)

• Who doesn't love the ever-evolving typography of movie title graphics? And who doesn't think they were a lot cooler in the olden days of real showmanship?

DROPPING THE NEEDLE: Even before Barry Ackerley's radio stations become part of the Clear Channel evil empire, they're changing for the worse. One of them, which had briefly run a nice nonthreatening '80s nostalgia format, has suddenly become "Quick 96," playing only six- to ten-second sound bites from oldies songs, which are given credit only on the station's web site. (The snippets are separated by an automated voice announcing three-digit numbers, which you must look up on the site.) My initial reaction: I'm reminded of the countdown-roundup snippets on MTV's TRL, without the pictures of course. My second reaction: Is anybody actually expected to like this enough to listen even past one commercial break? My suspicion: This is likely intended as a short-term filler concept, until the sale to Clear Channel goes final, at which time it'll adopt one of the chain's satellite-fed network formats. When an earlier sale doomed an earlier operation on the same frequency, KYYX, the station ended with a week of nothing but an electronic voice counting down the seconds to sign-off--for an entire week.

UPDATE TO THE ABOVE: Sure enough, "Quick 96" turned out to be a publicity stunt. Forty-eight hours after the "innovative new station" debuted, back came the '60s-'70s oldies library of The Beat's immediate predecessor format, KJR-FM, played as full-length tunes; this format (conveniently using music tapes already on the station's premises and requiring no additional new recordings) will presumably stick around until Clear Channel moves in.

posted by clark 11:17 PM

Monday, May 27, 2002

TODAY, some non-caption-requiring people shots from the Forklift Festival.

posted by clark 5:50 PM

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• Past weblog entries.
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