Saturday, July 13, 2002

WHILE I'VE SEEN all but one of TV Guide's "50 Best TV Shows of All Time," I've seen only 32 of the shows on the mag's worst-ever list. I don't know if that means anything.

posted by clark 1:44 PM

Friday, July 12, 2002

I CALL THIS LITTLE IMAGE Church Under Wraps. It was taken at a Catholic parish on Roosevelt Way currently undergoing a major structural and landscaping overhaul. If you wish to see it as a metaphor for Catholicism itself in disarray, you might as well do so.

posted by clark 1:44 AM

TEAM SPIRIT DEPT. The Seattle School Board has just decreed that West Seattle High School's sports teams shall no longer be known as the "Indians."

Fair enough; about time, some of you might say. But the board also declared the name be replaced before the start of the next school year. That means the school's students might not get to vote on a new name.

So it's up to us, the loyal friends of youth, to help come up with some possible replacements.

The best new WSHS team name I can think of, the "Alkis," isn't a tribal name but does derive from the old "Chinook Jargon" trading language, and hence might still be too native-oriented to qualify. (And besides, some say the name's correctly pronounced "al-key," something the authorities might not want to be associated with minors.)

Other possibilities, equally neighborhood-centric but more palatable, include "Admirals" (from the north WS business district) and "Cranes" (from the beautifully rugged cargo-container lifts flanking the Duwamish River). But there's gotta be something better out there. Email me with your suggestions. I'll pass them all along to the school officials.

INANE POLITICAL IDEA OF THE HALF-WEEK: Sanctimonious, bipartisan hypocrites in the U.S. Senate have drafted an all-purpose bill to allow police to shut down virtually any public gathering at which drugs might be consumed or even discussed—raves, Hempfests, neo-hippie country festivals, and potentially even scrictly political events at which someone might state that the war on drugs wasn't a great thing. The bill has already passed one Senate committee. You might consider letting certain people know you think this stinks.

posted by clark 1:19 AM

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

THOSE SILLY NEW YORKERS: The NY Times ran a long and rather dumb article on Wednesday about the Montreal Jazz Festival, one of the largest events of its type on Earth. The feature's writer loves the festival all right, but questions what the heck the culture of jazz music has to do with La Belle Provence.

I'll tell you what. Quebec has long thought of itself as the bastion of European civilization in North America. Jazz, or rather certain flavors of classic and modern jazz, have long been commercially centered in Europe, particularly in France. You can hence think of the Montreal fest as a gift of the Francophone world, graciously giving a North American-invented genre back to us.

Also, a major feature of the festival is a nightly downtown street party with high-energy "world music" acts. I just saw one such performance tonight on the Francophone cable channel TV5. A big street party's the sort of event everybody around the world can dig (they even had 'em at the Salt Lake Olympics). But in a city of hot passions and often cold weather, a summer night's especially worthy of celebrating. And the Quebecois I saw did just that, splendidly.

posted by clark 10:54 PM

Monday, July 08, 2002

"LABELS TO NET RADIO: Die Now." (Steven Levy, Newsweek)

JIM HOAGLAND ASKS, "Where is the populist outrage that would have swept the Capitol even a generation ago, when investment bankers and tycoons were more target than vital source of campaign funds?"

posted by clark 9:40 AM

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