"So you want to be a Communist ..." by Geov Parrish

While it's possible that the editors of the Seattle Weekly took temporary leave of their senses last week, I want to believe that they are aware of the irony in running a package titled "So you want to be a Communist ..." alongside their annual Home and Garden issue. On the one page are lists of volunteer-starved lefty organizations, essays bemoaning the demise of socialism in the Pacific Northwest and a report on local teamsters. On the other is the sort of editorial mix Martha Stewart would produce if someone had dropped her some E and pierced her labia early in life: artist loft decor, a tell-all by a floral school dropout, the quest for the perfect bean bag chair and a dismal story about an underpaid writer's visit to one of those upscale, minimalist furniture stores with $10,000 wardrobes and couches shaped like kidney beans.

Both packages are a little off. The Home and Garden coverage can't decide whether it's catering to soon-to-be yuppies or anti-Ikea thrift-shoppers. And what becoming a Communist means exactly is never clearly defined. According to writer Geov Parrish, it has something to do with volunteering for one of Seattle's "more than 1,000 environmental groups, peace groups, social justice groups, church committees, unions, community councils, radical art groups, queer groups, women's groups, PTSAs, human rights groups, alternative media groups, campus groups, and, of course, revolutionary sects in our area, trying to influence public or corporate policy."

While I won't go into why Mr. Parrish needs to go back and read his Communist Manifesto, I would like to suggest that next year the Seattle Weekly combine these editorial offerings to create the first ever Pinko Home and Garden issue. Here are some story ideas to get things started:

• How to garden like a true proletariat
• Profiles of five ACLU lawyers' office decor
• Bourgeois comfort and Stalinist style -- you CAN have it all
• The ashcan of history: Wire, wicker or painted paper?
• Coffee-table books you can proselytize with
• Lenin in your living room: a guide to the couch-coordinated statuary

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"How Gates Got Game" by Mike Romano

With the growing success of Microsoft Network's Gaming Zone site, Bill Gates is following the money into the online gaming market. But before he can plunge wholeheartedly into the fun and games, he must grapple with the concept that not everyone uses computers for office management purposes -- a belief that runs contrary to his own vision. Mike Romano's reporting on Microsoft is consistently fresh and intelligent.

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The Stranger (Seattle), April 28-May 4

"Ex-Gay Conventioneers!" by Dan Savage and David Schmader

On May 1, Seattle is hosting a one-day conference called "Love Won Out," devoted to the prevention and overcoming of homosexuality through Juheeezus. Wickedly funny columnist Dan Savage and David Schmader take aim at their easy targets, kindly supplying a city guide customized for ex-gays. All the recommended restaurants serve fried chicken; the hotels selected are meant to test the determination of former homos to remain straight. They even provide a list of places for newly born-again gays and lesbians to backslide.

"The Art of the Crime" by Charles Mudede

An analysis of police crime scene sketches as art, launched from the Proustian premise that "the purpose of art ... is to permit one person access to the soul of another." Mudede looks at why some cops represent suicide victims as stick figures, while others draw them as gingerbread men. Someone, turn this story into a coffee-table book to sell at Urban Outfitters pronto!

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Baltimore City Paper, April 28-May 4

"Two-minute warning" by Heather Joslyn and Jack Purdy

Once, while shopping in Seattle, I was lured into a booth by a strange woman, shown two trailers for "Mr. Holland's Opus" and asked to give my valued consumer opinion. "I would rather die than see that movie," I muttered as I fled the scene in search of a Brita filter. I found the "Phantom Menace" trailer boring, and I'd like to strangle whoever is responsible for shoving that annoying, Offspring-blaring "Idle Hands" preview down my throat every five minutes on WB. Previews used to be fun, flirty invites to see a movie. Now they're mini-epics that lay out every pivot in the plot in full stereo voice-over so there's no need to see the damn film. Heather Joslyn and Jack Purdy take on this phenomenon and others as they plunge into a fascinating look at how previews are made and how they've become an art form (I use the a-word loosely) unto themselves.

Next page | Enough with the Shakespeare-is-hip stories, already!