Saturday, May 29, 2004

YOU MIGHT NOT FEEL very proud of the human race after glancing through the vast array of gross-out stereotype references contained at "The Racial Slur Database."

posted by clark 12:40 AM

Friday, May 28, 2004

BOOK RETURN: Here's our last batch of shots from the spankin'-new downtown library.

Have I any qualms about the PoMo (or is it NeoMo?) palace of info? A few.

The phunky phoam phurniture's slick and tres comfy, but I dunno how the chairs and couches will survive under constant use-n'-abuse.

The kids' area is boistrously joyful, but at least a little sound muffling might be nice. (The Mixing Station area can also be a little quietude-challenged.)

But aside from these minor qualms, I'd say the place is a solid hit. It's got thousands of books, lots of other printed and audio-visual documents, dozens of makeout spots, clean restrooms, mod colors, free wi-fi, and more fun-type atmosphere than most retail stores.

posted by clark 12:32 PM

A BIG P-I FEATURE STORY acknowledges there are as many as 20 Seattle barber shops specializing in "hip-hop" dos. Upon which one does the paper choose to focus? You guessed it: The one that's in the north end and owned by two white guys.

SAD NEWS IN CULTURELAND: Northwest Bookfest has thrown down its last galley of type, and won't be back this fall. That just gives us book-lovers the opportunity to start over and launch a brand spankin' new Lit-O-Rama weekend.

I'd say: Forget about staging it in a funky but remote location such as Sand Point. Use the new library for a scaled-down fair; or bring the neo-modern aesthetic of the new library into the Convention Center, the Trade Center, the Seahawks Exhibition Center, or Key Arena. Make it festive, celebratory. Make it a fun gathering for people who will be spending the winter curled up at home with books.

posted by clark 10:21 AM

Thursday, May 27, 2004

DUDE, WHERE'S MY SUBGENRE?: The NY book-biz buzz this spring has apparently been about the much-hyped rise and spectacular thud of something called "Lad Lit." It's apparently supposed to be publishers' dreams for a male-oriented counterpart to the "Chick Lit" novels of the Bridget Jones flavor. The much-advertised premier titles of the would-be fad have apparently flopped in the stores.

I've only seen one of the buzzed-about titles, Scott Mebus's Booty Nomad, and can easily see why it's not a bestseller. Mebus's antihero isn't a character, he's a demographic marketing fantasy. The protagonist is essentially Maxim magazine's target reader; which is to say a dumbed-down boorish stereotype of bad behavior. It's hard to imagine female readers (the overwhelming majority of fiction buyers) could fantasize about a guy like this, even to dream about civilizing him. (As for male readers, the book biz still expects them to only care about violence/action stories.)

It is possible to write compelling tales of adult male characters imbued with intelligence, human emotions, and romantic confusions. Writers have done this for centuries. You don't need a goofy promotional handle for it either.

posted by clark 12:45 PM

REALITY CHECK: A British cable channel is claiming to offer the ultimate low-budget "reality" series. Watching Paint Dry would be "exactly what it says on the tin. Every day a different kind of paint will be put on to a wall and you get the chance to vote for your favourite. Confirmed contestants include matte, silk, gloss, satin, vinyl, eggshell textured and smooth masonry—all of whom are eagerly looking forward to their first brush with fame." Something tells me this is a cheeky hoax, but it's still fun to imagine.

posted by clark 12:09 PM

IN THE LAND OF HAGGIS and soggy fish n' chips, there's a drive within Britain's Parlaiment to ban junk food ads aimed at kids. MPs were particularly miffed by Cadbury's "Get Active" promotion, in which schools could get free playground equipment if students donated enough candy wrappers. Fortunately for advocates of free speech (and of some of the only decent food-like products that nation produces), a ban now seems unlikely.

I say: When Tony the Tiger is outlawed, only outlaws will be grrrr-eat!

posted by clark 11:58 AM

PASSAGE (Stanislaw Lem, Poland's greatest speculative-fiction export, from One Human Minute (1986)):

"The mass media, it said, are never completely objective. In fact, the pattern is like this: the worse the news in the local press, the more freedom there is and the better conditions are in the society that prints it. If journalists are wringing their hands, tearing their hair, predicting the end, and bewailing imminent ruin, then the streets are rivers of glistening cars, the store windows are packed with delicacies, everyone walks around tanned and rosy-cheeked, and a handcuffed wretch brought to prison at gunpoint is harder to find than a diamond in the gutter. And vice versa: where prisons are overcrowded, where gloom and fear prevail, where poverty is terrible, one usually reads—in the papers—news that is cheerful, uplifting, determinedly joyous (telling you that you had better participate in the general happiness), and syrupy press releases paint life in rainbow colors (except that it is a rainbow that will shine—but not just yet)."

posted by clark 11:22 AM

CATHODE CORNER: Finally saw a complete episode of American Idol. Like most "reality" shows, it constructs a very specific, detailed fictional "reality." This particular show's fabulist conceit is that the banal rehashing of '70s soul music is, and always has been, the main and only form of popular vocal music in the U.S.

A few years back, some baby-boomer intellectual wrote a book in which she whined about Those Kids Today, whose music didn't got the same soul as that old time rock n' roll. I don't know if that author's an Idol viewer, but the show's conceit might fit her idea of a musical utopia, in a "be careful what you wish for" way.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, KOMO-TV anchordude Dan Lewis has started each 11 p.m. newscast on the station's roof. This serves no journalistic purpose. I can only imagine three non-journalistic purposes for the ongoing stunt:

• To make the broadcast seem Important and Relevant, even though it's usually a rehash of the most gruesome personal events already exploited at 5 and 6:30;

• To show off how Lewis's carefully sculpted hair can remain perfectly in place, no matter what the weather;

• To let Lewis repeatedly drop the name "Fisher Plaza," the station owners' block-long, massively under-occupied office development.

posted by clark 9:38 AM

JUST CALL ME CHRISTOPHER, 'CUZ I'M WALKIN': I felt like a traitor to Fast Food Nation on Wednesday, when I got my "Go Active" Happy Meal.

The version I chose was the "Fiesta Salad." For the same calories as a small burger and a small bag of fries, you get a whopping bowl of flavorless lettuce, sprinkled with some almost-as-flavorless corn-chip strips, a dollop of sour cream, and a few scattered ground-beef morsels. You also get a plastic packet of Paul Newman salsa, which is as mild as milk but at least adds need moisture to the concoction.

The package deal includes a bottle of Coca-Cola's Dasani brand water (regular tap water with mineral flavoring added).

But the real reason I got the meal wasn't edible (as if the salad was). It's the li'l "Step With It!" pedometer, a friendly looking piece of clip-to-your-belt electronics encased in green and black plastic. The first thing, I trotted around the corridors of my multi-unit building until I reached the magic 2,000 paces (more or less a mile). As soon as we have a relatively rainless day around here, I'm gonna take the thing out and see how long it takes to reach the magic 10,000 mark just on my daily errands.

posted by clark 12:27 AM

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

AL GORE has reinvented himself as a more dynamic, more forceful speaker. Most recent example: His rant calling Bush "the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon:"

"They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics."

posted by clark 9:17 PM

LAURIE SPIVAK (no apparent relation to former Meet the Press MC Lawrence Spivak) wants progressives to stop being so darned defensive. She says the left has to do more than just react against the right; and it has do do so through old-fashioned marketing.

posted by clark 5:29 PM

TEMPERANCE SERMONS FOR A KERRY NATION: Blue America's favorite "Presumptive Candidate" showed up in town today for another public speech, along with some private bigtime fundraisers.

Kerry was driven to Pier 62 in an SUV (a Chevy Suburban, to be precise), to talk about our nation's scary dependence on fossil fuels.

He told a drenched midmorning audience how, if elected, he'd launch a serious crash program for more renewable energy sources, more hybrid vehicles, and "transparency" in energy markets.

Not the most electrifying of topics (pun intended, natch); but he gave it his rhetorical all.

Folks who had invites for the inner seating area had to abandon their umbrellas outside the fences, leaving this forlorn scene.

posted by clark 4:01 PM

PRUDERY ON PARADE: Something's gotta be done to overturn the banning of Western Washington U's "Pornfest."

posted by clark 1:26 PM

I'M REALLY TRYING not to be judgmental about judgmental people anymore. But sometimes I can't help it. Such as when KOMO's voice-O-relative-sanity Ken Schram gently lambastes the NIMBY hypocrites fighting he homeless "Tent City" camp in Bothell.

posted by clark 12:20 AM

THE NY TIMES APOLOGIZES, almost-vaguely-sort-of, for some of its past pro-war cheerleading: "…We have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been."

Elsewhere on the same shovelware site, our ol' pal and Oly indie-pop legend Lois Maffeo defends the right of oldsters such as herself to keep going to rock shows, and the right of youngsters to make their own music even if the oldsters don't approve. (Here's the original essay to which Maffeo's responding.)

posted by clark 12:11 AM

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

AS THREATENED YESTERDAY, yet more shots of the new downtown Seattle Public Library, designed by Dutch celebrity-architect Rem Koolhaas.

On one of the chartreuse escalators, a cute yet stunning public art piece awaits in hiding. In this image, you can just barely see a porthole, though which other patrons can peer out, and thus become a temporary part of the art itself.

I've heard only a few criticisms of the place thus far. One patron told me the place was louder than a library oughta be. Another, believing a Seattle public building should express a "Northwest" character, criticized a lack of wood on the walls.

And one woman said the Dutch architect didn't understand American fears; otherwise, he wouldn't have designed so many nooks and alcoves in which homeless child-abductors might hide.

I believe this fear to be grossly exaggerated. I'm also SO tired of the anti-homeless "jokes" I've heard, even from self-styled "radicals," during the weeks before the new library's opening.

Yes, we need a dedicated downtown drop-in and hygiene center; despite the consternations of merchants. We need to take care of our less-privileged citizens, not demonize them.

A library's not the place for those functions. But it is a place for other aspects of rebuilding one's life, including self-education and job research. The vastness of the new library's public spaces makes this possible, with relative comfort for all of us.

posted by clark 5:20 PM

WE'LL RUN LOTSA LIBRARY PIX over the course of the week. Be prepared.

It was a glorious day inside and out. Everyone seemed truly joyous; as if this magnificent cathedral of popular learning would herald a brighter future for our troubled region.

Seattle’s been called both a “city of readers” and a “city of engineers.” The new Seattle Public Library’s primarily a feat of stunning engineering, and secondly a tribute to reading and to the imagination.

More importantly, out of all the fancy-schmancy new PoMo monuments in this town, it’s the one that’s open to the public every week of the year with no cover charge.

(Now, if the city’d only commit enough funds to properly run the place…)

Head Librarian Deborah Jacobs (like me, a onetime Corvallis-ite), the mayor, and most of the City Council were on hand at the opening, along with several drum ensembles.

Welcoming patrons from inside the Fifth Avenue entrance: Everyone's favorite Action Librarian, Nancy Pearl.

The sign adjacent to Pearl reveals:

(1) The Koolhaas team's penchant for bold colors, especially chartreuse (named for a liqueur invented by "Chartist" monks, and hence perfectly appropriate for a contemplative place), and

(2) The team's choice of Futura Extra Bold as the library's official typeface. You can tell near the top left corner of this page that I'm also a Futura fan. More significantly, it was the official typeface of the Sub Pop Singles Club, which probably led the Dutch designers to think of it as a "Seattle" font.

I was elated to see the "writers' room" near the top of the building's co-named for our ol' pal Carlo Scandiuzzi, who booked rock shows at the Showbox before becoming a movie actor-producer, and member of assorted local arts/humanities boards.

The children's area is vast, raucously noisy, and right on the ground floor. It's got lotsa large, angular concrete posts, which may remind some oldsters of past fun times at the Kingdome or the Coliseum. It's got games, toys, fun props, kid-sized computer desks and chairs, and a semi-hidden "story hour room."

One person I met compared the vast interior to a set from a Jacques Tati film. I was thinking more sci-fi. Indeed, it'll be hard for Paul Allen's new Science Fiction Museum to look more science-fictiony than parts of the library.

posted by clark 12:11 AM

Monday, May 24, 2004

GET YOURSELVES READY for the sleaziest, dirtiest, most despicable campaign ever.

posted by clark 2:52 PM

I'M STILL SORTING THROUGH the 250-plus pix I took at the new library opening today. I'll have some of 'em up later Monday. 'Til then, ponder this list of the top 10 movies set in llibraries. Why this person chose UHF and not The Name of the Rose, I'll never know.

posted by clark 12:16 AM

Sunday, May 23, 2004

WE'VE SHOWN YOU quite a number of pix of the Space Needle over the years. Today, some pix from the elegant symbol tower.

posted by clark 1:02 AM

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