Thursday, August 29, 2002

CONTINUING MY TOUR of local appearances by national game-show producers, I stood in line for nearly three hours on Wednesday to attend the Seattle auditions for the new syndicated version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It all took place in the unfinished second phase of KOMO-TV's new building, under the scary 30-foot-high grins of new Millionaire host Meredith Viera and new Pyramid host Donny Osmond. (The long "blemish" on Viera's face in the above picture is the Space Needle's reflection.)

Once we finally got inside, the 250 applicants in our group (one of four groups that day) were herded into a big unfinished room on the main floor. Among too-few folding chairs, big flat-screen monitors blared promos for the station's new fall shows for an hour.

Finally we were herded into unfinished elevator cars up to another big unfinished room on the fourth floor. We were handed No. 2 pencils, small sheets of cardboard, and fill-in-the-tiny-squares data-processing slips familiar to anyone who's voted in certain jurisdictions or taken certain public-school standardized tests.

We had 30 multiple-choice trivia questions to answer in 12 minutes. Only those who scored above an unmentioned threshhold were to be kept around for in-person interviews (where the production staff would presumably weed out candidates lacking in hot looks, perky personalities, or the correct demographics.)

Your former professional trivia writer failed to make the first cut. Perhaps if I'd previously boned up on Henry VIII's wives or Argentinian geography, but oh well... Back to worrying about the daily bills like most of the rest of you.

posted by clark 11:21 PM

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

TRUTH-IS-STRANGER DEPT.: When the Wonderbra was first brought to market, many commentators wagged about when a male equivalent would emerge. Now it has, under the aegis of Britain's biggest middlebrow clothing-store chain.

posted by clark 8:46 AM

Sunday, August 25, 2002

TODAY, I'M ENJOYING another of the umpteen-dozen unexpected joys of cable TV. AT&T Broadband just added three additional Fox Sports Net channels, re-purposing sports programming intended for FSN's 16 or so regional branches. Right now, I'm watching a minor-league baseball game involving the Brooklyn Cyclones, the team that's boldly brought the pro game back to a borough still mourning the Dodgers' move to LA 45 seasons ago. Besides shots of the Cyclones' courageous game play and their handsome-intimate new Coney Island stadium, the telecast is full of commercials for local Brooklyn businesses. There's a horseradish maker, a lobster restaurant, a lock-and-key store, even a cement contractor! Thanks to cable, these tiny family firms can televisually strut their stuff, and this non-customer 3,000 miles away can admire the utterly charming 30-second end results.

This same set of channels also brings me FSN's Detroit Sports Report, which is actually produced in Bellevue, WA by Fox's Northwest Sports Report team—same announcers, same set, same everything. I wonder if any Tigers fans ever wonder why Bill Wixey & co. have probably never been personally seen within 1,600 miles of Comerica Park.

(Too bad AT&T still won't give me the Boomerang (classic made-for-TV animation), Showtime Beyond (young filmmakers), or ABC SoapNet channels.)

posted by clark 4:14 PM

THIS PAST SATURDAY was proclaimed "Car-Free Day" by certain local lefty advocates. Certain other lefty advocates mounted a day-long political fair the same day, at a site approximately two miles from the nearest public transportation.

The "Rolling Thunder Down Home Democracy Tour," a summer barnstorming chataqua revue whose organizers include Jim Hightower (pictured above) and Tom Hayden, set up its elaborate show at Prtrovitsky Park, deep in the Renton/Kent suburban sprawl. At least 6,000 humans came for all or part of the event, braving 88-degree temperatures and problematic parking to take their Volvos and minivans (many festooned with environmental bumper stickers) to the large county park. Hundreds of others came by chartered shuttle buses from Seattle.

Once there, they got to listen to many speakers and musicians (including the Pinkos, seen below), toss objects at caricatures of Enron execs in a "Carnival of Oppression and Fun," stroll among literature booths hawking every cause from unionism to veganism, and participate in forums and workshops teaching how to organize grass-roots campaigns in your own community's sod.

It was a fun time, and an opportunity for left-O-center types of many assorted persuasions to come together and share, if nothing else, a sense of I-Told-You-So about today's corporate embarrassments and political anti-freedom attacks. More than that, it encouraged all these folk to come together, to take action, to work toward a better world instead of just protesting against the one we've got.

One of the smallest and most curious displays at the event was a small table offering stickers, badges, and pencils on behalf of an unofficial, unauthorized "Cusack for President" campaign. The women running the table didn't know that the John Cusack silhouette on the badges is an image from Say Anything, nor that that film had been set in Seattle.

The image of an undefeatable Cusack in Say Anything, wooing a reluctant Ione Skye by lifting a Peter Gabriel-blaring boom box up toward her bedroom window, is a great metaphor for what the left needs. Director Cameron Crowe's commentary track for the film's DVD release invokes Cusask's undying love-quest as representing "positivity as a rebellious stance."

For too long, we've let the conservatives get away with branding liberals and progressives as cynical spoilsports who only see the negative in anything and anyone. But these days, it's the Right that's pushing the bad-attitude envelope. They're openly selling political policy to the highest bidder, running roughshod over Constitutional rights, and rumbling about trying to start another war for oil. They tried to hound Clinton out of office over sins much more minor than their own. They'll use any demagoguic tactic to win elections, from borderline-racism to libel to hypocritical religious pieties.

A few of my more cynical leftie acquaintances have, to date, been content to sit around and scoff that this is simply the way it is. I prefer to think it's not the way it has to be.

Or, as Hightower puts it, "For too long progressives have walked fearful of their shadows, whimpering and whining about what's wrong and fighting amongst themselves over crumbs. That time is over. It's time to sing and work and build a new community dedicated to hope and real change. And good beer."

IN OTHER IDEOLOGICAL NEWS, one guy claims the 9/11 attacks might not have been an act of war (intended to conquer ertain territory or overthrow certain regimes) but of "fantasy ideology"--intended mainly for the perpetrators to live out "a specific personal or collective fantasy." In this case, the fantasy of being a wrathful deity's servants of vengeance. (The writer also claims the same justification's behind less-lethal political-theater acts, such as disruptive protests that turn bystanders' opinions against the cause supposedly being promoted.)

posted by clark 3:18 PM

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