Tuesday, August 05, 2008

DOUBLE STANDARDS DEPT.: Certain commentators and bloggers on Tuesday were all outraged or snickering or both. The reason: John McCain, in a campaign stop at the Sturgis bike rally, "jokingly" suggested his wife ought to enter the event's biker beauty pageant--a contest known for nudity and sexually suggestive stage acts.

But across the proverbial pond, a veteran model who'd appeared in dozens of topless/bottomless stills in the 1990s is now the first lady of France.

Mind you, there are differences between the two situations.

Carla Bruni had retired from that sort of public exposure before she became a political wife. Cindy McCain already was a political wife when her hubby made his joke, which was applauded by the Sturgis audience but jeered and mocked elsewhere.

But a bigger difference is context. The French edition of Elle is a far different space than the Buffalo Chip Campground.

posted by clark 11:04 PM

Saturday, August 02, 2008

META-FAD OF THE DAY: You may have heard of "Garfield Minus Garfield."

That's the Web site that takes Jim Davis's iconic comic strip, removes the titular cat from all frames, and leaves behind "Jon Arbuckle... an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness."

Well, now there's going to be an official Garfield Minus Garfield book. It's authorized by Davis and published by Garfield's regular paperback licensee.

posted by clark 11:06 AM

Thursday, July 31, 2008

JUST ABOUT ANY pre-existing story property can now become the basis of "fan fiction," erotic or otherwise. Even 1984.

posted by clark 6:48 AM

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

THE 'RIGHT' WORD: I've been trying to develop a simple essay/open letter, perhaps in the form of a .pdf e-booklet, to help persuade remaining conservative voters toward the Progressive side in this and future elections.

My brother, the unemployed naturopath, would like a simple side-by-side book. Each two-page spread would juxtapose something George W. Bush said a few years ago with something he said more recently on the same topic.

I foresee two problems with this approach:

• Examples of overt double-headedness from Bush himself are relatively rare; he's notorious for living in, and publicly promoting, a reality distortion field of facts-be-damned consistency.

• Bush's name isn't appearing on any more ballots. Despite the liberal blogosphere's catch phrases about "Bush's third term" and "John McSame," this election's not really a referendum on the Bush legacy. It's about how we'll deal with that legacy's multiple tragic results.

So: What other approaches could one take?

I'm currently thinking of a values-based approach. I'd ask my intended readers what they truly believe in--perhaps faith, prosperity, health, safety, security, opportunity, truth, beauty, public ethics, an honest reward for honest work, or simply a good burger at a decent price.

Then I'd explain, item by item, how the right-wing coalition's various components have afted against all of these values, and how they've instead propagated greed, fear, graft, corruption, recession, and needless bloodshed.

Then I'd show how each of these values is far better served by a progressive-populist movement (as respectfully differentiated both from conservative DLC Democrats and from exclusionist college-town "radicals").

I won't expect such a document to convert everyone. Not every follower of conservatism does so out of any true adherence to higher values, however defined. Some are just plain bigots, war lovers, and extreme nationalists. I call these folk "tribal conservatives." They'll stick with their chosen tribe to the end.

Then there are the folk who care only about money and other forms of raw power, and who've sided with the Right as their best bet for achieving those aims. They won't likely switch either. If they do vote Dem this November, it would be a mere conversion of convenience.

But we have a chance with the people who still believe in something beyond themselves, at least a little.

I'm interested in any advice from you as to how to win them over.

posted by clark 3:56 PM

Monday, July 21, 2008

PARTYING LIKE IT'S 2002: It seems like just six days ago, instead of six years ago, that the headlines were full of gloom-n'-doom about economic hardship and consumer cutbacks.

Then, for a while, the media (particularly much of the "alt" media) were back to ignoring the poor and the working families, preferring to inhabit (or imagine) a world of unlimited luxury.

Around here, this meant slick magazines and online shopping guides dedicated to the highest and best possible spending of money. It meant "progressive" local politicians who unashamedly sucked up to the upper castes, and to the merchants and real-estate developers who outfitted and supplied upper-caste households. It meant hundreds of elegant bistros and whole grocery chains dedicated to ever-dearer visions of The Good Life.

Now, though, we've got front-page wire stories talking about Americans' supposed "newfound frugality."

As if tens of millions of us haven't been pinching pennies all along.

In my current stompin' grounds of Belltown, the alleged Good Life has been what it all was supposed to have been about for a long time. I've got old condo ads from 1992 offering up fantasy visions of unparalleled beauty and elegance, quoting old British aristocrats in wedding-invitation typefaces.

Later in the decade came the big billboards with the manically grinning young couples striding happily into their utterly fabulous view homes.

But behind the marketing images, there were a lot of young couples whose parents had donated down payments, hoping to get their kids into home ownership while it still could sorta happen.

There were law-firm junior partners and hospital physicians living just beyond their means, trusting/hoping their careers would grow to match their mortgages.

There were AARP-agers downsizing from bigger homes elsewhere with more stuff in them.

There were Microsoft stock-option early retirees, who'd pinned the whole rest of their lives on the premise that their accumulated nest eggs would remain uneaten by inflation.

They, and much of the rest of us, now await whatever's next, wondering how to stay afloat.

posted by clark 3:14 PM

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

HI-FIVES ALL AROUND to my longtime pals Garth Brandenburg and Tor Mitskog. They're in a big Seattle Times color pic. It's due to their participation in a house rock band at the Perkins Coie law firm, which goes off to a "Battle of the Corporate Bands" contest in L.A. this weekend. Knock 'em dead!

posted by clark 5:39 PM

Monday, July 14, 2008

A CONQUERED KING: Anheuser-Busch surrendered to the Belgian-based InBev. Miller was sold to South African Breweries (which, despite the name, is based in Britain). Coors merged with Molson.

So: What's the biggest remaining American-owned suds maker?

As you recall, the company now calling itself Pabst is simply a budget-priced marketing company, whose products are made under contract in Miller plants.

Next on BeerInfo.com's Top 50 list: Boston Beer, a.k.a. Samuel Adams. Boston used to be a "virtual brewer", like today's Pabst. But today the majority of its product comes from the former Hudepohl Brewing plant in Cincinnati, bought by Boston a decade ago.

In sixth place stands Pennsylvania's Yuenling, the biggest remaining regional lager producer.

Several Northwest microbrewers are also on BeerInfo's list--Widmer, Redhook (both of which have distribution deals with Anheuser-Busch), Pyramid (now merged with a Vermont firm), Deschutes, Full Sail, Mac and Jack's.

This prominence signifies both the strength of regional specialty brews and the disappearance of the industry's whole former second tier (Stroh's, Ballantine, Schaffer, Falstaff, Blatz, Carling, Lucky, Rainier, Oly, Blitz-Weinhard, etc. etc.).

posted by clark 8:37 AM

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

SOMETIMES I MISS the International Channel. It aired blocks of programming from all different countries, right on basic cable, with ethnically-targeted commercials and everything.

Part of what I loved about it was the music shows. Samba, Bollywood, tango, Afropop, Hungarian operettas, Japanese techno, and much much more. And it was all curated by and for folks of these various ethnicities themselves! It was the real stuff, not Paul Simonized for baby-boomer comfort listening.

Some of this joyous cacophony is back, thanks to the National Geographic Channel. It's got a post-midnight music block, Nat Geo Music. The block runs in Italy as a 24-hour channel; Geographic's talking about launching it as a separate channel here.

The show compiles music videos (remember those things?), documentary shorts, and concert clips by lots of different people in lots of different places. Sure, the show's got mellow folkie stuff, reggae, salsa, etc. But it's also got digital cut-up music and raucous celebratory stuff and dissonant percussion. (And, in good National Geographic tradition, they're not afraid of a little artistic nudity in the videos.)

About all you won't hear on Nat Geo Music: Elmer Bernstein's bombastic orchestral theme from the old National Geographic network specials.

posted by clark 11:39 AM

Monday, July 07, 2008

SOME TIME BACK, I documented local sign structures that no longer bore any messages. Now, it seems there's a whole Signifying Nothing city. It seems the city leaders of Sao Paolo, tired of their burg being ignored by the world in favor of the smaller but prettier Rio, took the bold step of banning billboards and most other outdoor advertising signs. They called it a move against visual pollution.

Of course, a city without advertising is still the same city, just a little less dressed. In this case, it's a huge city with some stunning skyscrapers and civic monuments, but also a lot of non-cosmetic civic problems, many arising from an exploding population and poor urban planning.

posted by clark 7:33 PM

Sunday, July 06, 2008

SPEAKING OF TV ENDS-OF-ERAS (see below), last Tuesday apparently saw the demise of Procter & Gamble Productions. This would also mean the end of sponsor-owned programming as a regular feature on the old-line broadcast networks.

When network radio was launched in the U.S. in the 1920s, networks would sell whole blocks of time to advertisers. The advertisers, in turn, would hire ad agencies to create and package both the commercials for the advertisers' products and the shows that would surround the commercials. Procter and its soap-making competitors were the main sponsors of melodramatic daytime serials; thus the nickname "soap operas." One of the first of these, The Guiding Light, was originally sponsored by Procter's "P and G White Naphtha Soap."

When TV came along, so did sponsor-owned programming. But TV's higher production costs meant such ventures as The Colgate Comedy Hour and The Camel News Caravan faded from view.

But Procter & Gamble Productions (PGP) continued, like the stories on its shows. At its 1982-84 peak, PGP controlled 25 hours of network programming per week (more than Fox or The CW broadcasts these days).

Through PGP, P&G financed the shows and exerted both censorship and hiring control over them. But the shows' actual production was subcontracted to ad agency Benton & Bowles. That agency disappeared some years ago in a series of global corporate mergers. Its TV-production unit was renamed Televest, then spun off as Telenext Media, which is apparently now an independent company.

(I know, this story's getting to be as convoluted as any As the World Turns storyline.)

Anyhoo, on July 1, PGP's name and logo disappeared from the ATWT and GL closing credits, replaced by that of Telenext. The shows' official Internet message boards changed addresses from "pgpphoto.com" to "tnmphoto.com."

Without any official notice of what, if anything, has changed, online message boards are rife with speculation.

Some users claim P&G must have sold off its interests in the shows. That wouldn't be out of character with the company's recent spate of portfolio-shuffling. (In recent years P&G's bought Tampax, Gillette, Braun, and Clairol, while selling Comet, Duncan Hines, Crisco, Jif, and Folger's.)

Of course, the credit change could just be a matter of semantics. But many of these message-board users have complained about P&G's (mis)management of the serials, including drastic budget cuts on GL and its alleged cold feet concerning ATWT's current gay-love storyline. Some of these users say they would like the shows to become independently owned.

Of course, even the deftest indie producer would have to be pretty clever to effectively confront the daytime-soap genre's collapsing ratings and revenues.

But that's a topic for another day. Tune in again.

posted by clark 11:39 PM

WHILE FEW OF US noticed, Kids WB signed off in May. Someone calling himself Peter Paltridge did notice, and offers a retrospective of the cartoon programming block's first and last days on the air. If you don't understand why Earthworm Jim was a greater show than Skunk Fu, you soon will.

posted by clark 9:59 PM

Saturday, July 05, 2008

WHY LOVE AMERICA (STILL)?: Warning: The following essay mixes metaphors pretty much without discipline.

This day after Indie Day finds much of the nation in a pensive mood, waiting for the pages to turn and for 1/20/09 to show up already.

Meanwhile, the reign of Nixon 2.0 drags on in a seemingly interminable final act. It's beyond my old metaphor of the annoying jam band that will never leave the stage with its trite 45-minute noodling routines. It's more like the emotionally abusive old relative who ruins every family gathering by reciting the same endless, unfunny racist "jokes" and always messing up the punch lines. Nobody tells him to shut the hell up anymore, because they know he won't.

During this time, everything's winding down. The thievery on high gets more desperate and more overt. The cast of crooks gets more blatantly maniacal.

(Next in our metaphor megamix: The pre-climax of an old mad scientist movie when the mad scientist goes utterly kabong and starts declaring himself to be immortal and invincible, just before his monster/alien ally/chemical formula/hypnotic spell turns around to attack him.)

Yes, a few industries with close ties to the Thief-in-Chief are reaping obscene profits, while the economy as a whole is speeding into reverse.

Yes, this stupid/tragic/inane/unneeded war drags on and on.

Yes, the graft, the corruption, the sweetheart dealing, the money grubbing, and the power grabbing all have gotten as blatant as you could imagine, then went beyond that, and still keep going beyond that.

Yes, the nationalism/tribalism excuse for a state religion of FUD (computer-world-ese for "fear, uncertainty, and doubt") keeps getting trotted out in the face of decreasing belief.

Yes, the environmental health of this and all the other continents gets ever more precarious.

And yet—

There's still so much in this land for which to be grateful.

There's still so much wealth (material and other) from which we can rebuild the old wastes.

But we can't wait until January, or even November.

We need to build upon all the values that make up America-at-its-best. The loveable human-mongrel melting pot, the can-do spirit, the love of adventure, the love of novelty, the optimism, the devil-may-care foolishness, the risk-taking, the what-if imagining.

Those are all vital aspects of what's made this country great.

Those other things, the bigotry and the fearmongering and the inter-tribal hate, those aren't really American.

Alas, those traits can be found in every big society on Earth and a lot of the smaller ones.

And since America is a huge mix-tape of folks from all those places, it's only natural that we'd pick up on those cultures' dark sides, and that they'd have melded into one big all-American dark side.

But for every yang there's a yin and vice versa.

This X-Treme-osity is America's weakness and her strength.

And it's how we're going to get out of this mess-of-messes.

posted by clark 1:16 AM

Friday, July 04, 2008

JESSE HELMS, RIP: Yes, the right-wing firebrand ex-senator helped to perfect what we've all come to know as conservative standard operating procedure. Bash the blacks and the gays; openly appeal to fear and bigotry; proclaim a love for "America" that includes a hatred for many, if not for most, of the people living in it.

But it's important to remember, no one politician, not even Helms with his devious genius for divisiveness, created this recipe.

Helms simply exploited and extended the heritage of intolerance and lizard-brain emotions that's long been a part of our nation's dark side.

Of course, there's another side to out nation's history. Many sides, in fact. I'll mention them in my next post (which, thanks to the conventions of blogging, you may have read prior to reading this).

posted by clark 11:49 AM

Thursday, July 03, 2008

YEP: STILL ANGRY. But not as eloquent about it all as this guy.

posted by clark 1:55 PM

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

DRAT! FIDDLESTICKS! AND OTHER SALTY EXPRESSIONS!: To mix sports metaphors, the city punted. Nickels took a dive. They settled for a settlement. They whored out to Clay Bennett. They took sheckels of gold (and the vaguest of non-promises by the NBA for a new team in some future decade) instead of continuing the fight to keep the Sonics here.

The separate Howard Schultz lawsuit continues, and is our only remaining chance to keep this team, OUR team, our first big-league team.

This feels worse than the 1978 finals loss, the 1996 finals loss, and the trading of Ray Allen combined.

posted by clark 5:23 PM

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