After the death of Kurt Cobain

resulted in skyrocketing sales

of Nirvana posters and Jerry's

sordid demise gave a boost to

the sales of a particular flavor

of ice cream, you wouldn't have

to have an M.B.A. to realize

that there's nothing like a rock

star death to boost dwindling

sales. It came as no surprise,

then, that Web music outlet

CDNow was capitalizing on the

death of pseudo-hippie crooner

Shannon Hoon with a front page

blurb on the incident (leading,

ultimately, to a convenient

order form for the latest CD, of

course). But we would have

hoped they'd have at least

enough respect for the dead to

get the name right. As we go to

press, the bee girl is still

unavailable for comment.

If every production house looking

to make a splash on the Web

employed the sort of twisted

methodology as World Sports &

Events Now!, our sad little

digital village might be very

cyber indeed. Check out the

Electomatic, which World Sports

co-produced with Might, an SF

magazine that pulls off the

delicate balancing act between

GenX leechery and vague social

conviction with a surprising

degree of originality and humor.

The Electomatic is a handy

little aid for voters in the

upcoming SF mayoral election,

with a nonpartisan attitude that

reaches out to us, the

politically disinformed. As

equal-opportunity shitslingers,

World Sports and Events has

created an artifact that speaks

to the cosmopolitan malcontent -

an admirable sport, and, considering

the tone of the times, quite an

uncommon event.

Jean François Chaput is a French

filmmaker who's created a lush,

bilingual site chronicling the

decline of the French movie

theater: Enquête d'un

projectionniste. That most of

the historic theaters have been

converted into cheap porn houses

only adds to the entertainment

value. JPEGS of lonely biddies

selling tickets behind thick

glass barriers are satisfyingly

seedy, and the photos of the

unfortunate projectionists are

good for, at the very least, a

grim chuckle or two. As our

hero, Ed Anger, might say - if

the French would've ditched all

that Toto Le Hero crap in favor of

The Last Action Hero, it

would've never come to this...

All press is good press, but

analog press is better. Robert

Rossney of the San Francisco

Chronicle went from chump

Internet beat reporter to

incisive net critic mighty

quick when he wrote up Suck in his

biweekly Online column. Amidst his

general praise for the site,

though, he did get one thing

wrong: we don't think we're

"cooler than [our readers will]

ever think [they] are" - we just

think our readers are far cooler

than most traditional media

tools would ever care to admit.

Now if we could only get a

feature, we might have a chance

to set the record straight.

Our friends on the Internet

Marketing mailing list have been

remarkably quiet lately when it

comes to class action suits

against services that provide

caching of Web pages via a proxy

server, probably because someone

was kind enough to explain to

them the Pragma: No-cache

header. But there are proxies,

and then there are proxies. How

long before some clueless

commercializer sues Universal

Access Inc. for the Zippy

filter, or CSA for our new

favorite, the Decoder-a-go-go!, for

copyright violation? We just

keep repeating to ourselves: the

Web? We should have listened to

Ted...

www.eastvillage.com is a fairly

popular site - at least,

according to our logs. If you

recall, we gave a small

side-mention to the future home

of the planned cyber-soap opera

a while back, based on a press

release of Marinex, our favorite

targeter of "an upscale

18-34-year-old male audience -

the digital elite". Marinex may

be setting its sights on the

digerati-with-penises set, but

we wonder how much geek appeal a

company that announces domain

names that it hasn't bothered to

register yet can have. While we

toss out the possible variations -

east-village, evillage,

theeastvillage - we hope that

Marinex realizes that everyone

has a price.

Speaking of cyber-soap operas,

the Spot made good on its

promise of a "Spot Illustrated"

swimsuit issue. Not only are we

happy to provide a link to the

hard-to-discover "My Butt's All

Wet Now" movie, but, as a public

service, we're pleased to

present the entire 52-frame

opus as a slide show for your

no-handed surfing pleasure

(assuming you have Netscape 1.1

or above) - yes, that's including

all the "hidden" photos. Go ahead -

pull your client.