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opinion
My Seattle Heroes Right Now by Alex R. Mayer  I was reminded recently of the freaks in this town whose ventures and ideas aren't doomed or don't suck, because my ambitious Seattle food magazine, "Delicious City" - which aspired to navigate "Seattle's Fabulous Food Culture" - died, evidently sucking. The two worst investments in the world are 1) a restaurant, and 2) anything to do with restaurants, so my bad, a doomed idea. Anyway, I'm going to send salutes out now to some Seattle heroes - artists, politicians, other freaks - who are good and successful at what they do, so that maybe, in response, they'll tell me their secret.
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I have nothing but good things to say about trustafarian alcoholic, drug addict, exploiter of the wealthy and
also gonzo filmmaker Grant Cogswell.
Cogswell recently completed a gay indie horror flick called "Cthulhu," which
was nowhere near as popular as the making-of piece he wrote for local alt-porn weekly The Stranger
("The Horror: Making a Film in Seattle Can Destroy
You"), a piece so rife with lies, mistruths, anti-truths and doubled half-truths that it made me think that The Stranger's elite and
well-budgeted Fact Check Dept. had slept in that morning again. Example: even though Grant brags that he is "38%" gay
(that's what he told the P-I), he also bragged in the Stranger feature about getting "blown" by a female intern on the set of Cthulhu. Come on, Grant: I happen to know that the 62% of you that is not gay is too lazy to receive a blow-job.
I'm a Cogswell authority because he wrote for the Messenger for a while before starting his film. He asked me once for some general
filmmaking advice, and I told him, "If you want to make a public-access, sleazy, no-budget underground digital video comedy that no
one will see, then I'm the man to talk to. If you're looking to bilk unsuspecting art patrons out of millions of dollars to
finance an archaic, shot-on-film art piece that no one will see, I can't help you." Grant? For sheer audacity, for
having the nerve to consistently offend and beguile, you easily outrank your friend and
horse-sex filmmaker Charles Mudede,
and just about anyone else in Seattle's incestuous film community. I salute you!
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 Another local film freak worth honoring is Sandy Cioffi, who got some rich folks to
finance "Sweet Crude," the story of multinational oil companies exploiting the people of the Niger delta. Sandy and her crew managed to get themselves detained recently in Nigeria, which was publicity genius: she's since appeared on my favorite political program, "Democracy Now," and elsewhere. Sandy, you are a daring artist, and I salute you.
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 I'm pretty sure Sally Clark and her friend Jan were the ones that paid my friend Seth and me to print up a bunch of "It's time for them to go" T-shirts for the Democrats in 1992. Now she's a kick-ass city councilwoman. She has a promising political career ahead of her (first lesbian President?), especially since she never seems to have real candidates running against her. Her last opponent was a kook whose campaign theme was opposition to a nude statue at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Look, people: we need more nude statues, and more pols like Sally. Shout outs and salutes to her!
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 Finally, I honor popular PBS travel show host and Edmonds resident Rick Steves, who recently
publicly advocated the legalization of marijuana, and just returned from a trip to Iran where he filmed a new segment for his show,
Europe through the Back Door. A voice of sanity in a world gone mad. See more of him at ricksteves.com. Oh, Rick? Consider yourself saluted.
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These hero-freaks are so inspiring that I've decided to keep DeliciousCity.com around for a while, but with a new tagline: "A Taste of Seattle's Freak Culture."
This piece was heavily edited by
Mr. Mayer's legal advisor
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