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misc
Ruby Chow 1920-2008, slash fiction, Northwest Afternoon, Kress IGA by Clark Humphrey 
BRUCE LEE worked in Ruby Chow's restaurant in 1959. RUBY CHOW, 1920-2008: Before she was the first Asian American on the King County Council, she owned the first Chinese restaurant in Seattle outside of the Chinatown/International District. With her husband in the kitchen, she presided over the dining room as a pure diva. This name/face recognition fueled her rise to influence, both within the Asian American community and beyond. You may know of her daughter, longtime public-schools advocate Cheryl Chow. You might not know Chow was the sister of Mary Pang, whose frozen-foods mini-empire met a fiery end at the hands of Pang's convicted-arsonist son. GM TO SLASH TRUCK/SUV PRODUCTION, perhaps even sell or scuttle Hummer brand: All square-bashing "radicals" may now cease stereotyping non-hipster Americans as war-lovin' consumption addicts.---  STATE TO BAN DISHWASHING DETERGENTS with phosphates: Remember, when Cascade is outlawed, only outlaws will have sheeting action.
KIRK TO KURT: Utne Reader has discovered Seattle Sound magazine's item about an online sub-sub-genre of "slash fiction," this version involving the likes of Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl, among other bad-boy duos of rock.
"Slash" fiction, for the uninitiated, is a four-decades-old shtick in which mostly female writers imagine guy-pals of celebrity or fiction as if they were gay lovers. Most observers believe it started with Star Trek fan fiction. I'd go back earlier, to the college English profs who'd give an easy A to any student essay that "proved" the major characters of any major literary work were really gay.
Cobain, as many of you know, sometimes claimed to be bi; though there's no knowledge of his ever having had a homosexual experience. I used to figure he'd just said that because, in Aberdeen, to be a "fag" was the worst insult you could give a boy, while in Olympia and Seattle, upscale white gay men were the most respected "minority group" around.
Fiction based on real-life celebrity caricatures is also nothing new. The New Yorker did it in the 1930s. South Park has been doing it for a decade.
Anyhow, there are further slash frontiers out there than Seattle Sound or Utne have bothered to explore. They include "femslash," women writing about female fictional icons as if they were really lesbians. It might have started with fan-written stories about Xena and Gabrielle. It's spread to include other SF/fantasy shows with at least two female cast members, and from there to other fictional universes. The grossest/most intriguing, depending on your tastes, might be the stories imagining half-sisterly cravings between Erica Kane's daughters.---
NORTHWEST AFTERNOON RIDES INTO THE SUNSET: KOMO-TV's long-running afternoon talk show will disappear in August, ending a 24-year run.
Producers had tried to shake up the show in recent years, slicing it into four or five segments per hour instead of its traditional two. But the lure of low-cost, high-profit syndicated talk fare has finally done it in, just like it's done in most of the local gabfests around the country.
Also threatened by the dictum of talk-is-cheap: The daytime soap operas, which NWA cohost Cindi Rinehart has chronicled since the show's debut. At that time, there were 14 daily serials on American TV. Now there are just eight (not counting Spanish-language imports). Almost all of those shows are scrambling to cut their budgets and shrink their acting and writing staffs.
In the ultimate unintended irony, the syndicated show that will replace Rinehart and co. has the same title as a former long-running soap, The Doctors.---
MORE SONGS ABOUT BUILDINGS AND FOOD: The Kress IGA Supermarket finally opened on June 19. The pre-opening VIP gala occurred the previous Monday evening. The store's many local suppliers showed off their products. Reps from the city and the Downtown Seattle Association wished the store
and its Whidbey Island-based owners well.
I think it'll succeed, even though it's opening at a time when retailers in general are facing rough seas, and even though it's in a basement, and even though it has no dedicated parking, and even though indie groceries have taken a dive in this state (concurrent with the decline and fall of
the Associated Grocers co-op).
The place just feels right. It's not gargantuan (without the prepared-meals section, it's about the size of an old '60s-era supermarket), yet it's got a complete selection. Prices are at least competitive with those at the big chains. (IGA is a member-owned franchise operation, whose presence in Washington has ebbed and flowed over the decades.)
Even the deli part, intended as the store's main profit center, serves up a lot of honest grub at honest prices. (Though I don't understand why there's a whole olive bar. But perhaps I'm not hep to the whole olive revival thang.)
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