And to Think It's All Here in Spokane

Every great city longs for its moment in the global spotlight, and for Spokane it came the summer when Richard Nixon yielded to pressure of scandal and resigned. You can learn about Expo '74 over at the Expo Museum. Though it hosted over five million people and turned a profit, Expo '74 is often discredited as being the beginning of the end for World's Fairs.

When Peter Max was commissioned to design the stamp commemorating the event, there was much excitement. That cooled when on an interview he pronounced the name of the host city as "Spoke cane."



spō·kăn, Please!

Just as St. Louis had a theme song to herald the fair, so did Spokane. From Bolder to Boston, kiddos were humming the Bobby Bellows huge hit "Yes, You Can in Spokane". Take a listen to it here. Building on momentum of the enormously popular single, fair organizers brought in diminutive singer/songwriter Paul Williams to compose the score an entire musical of the same title. Starring Liza Minelli and directed by Bob Fosse, it was meant to echo the themes of "Meet Me in St. Louis" with a closing shot of a coked out Liza looking out at the fair declaring, "And to think it's all here. Right here in Spokane."

Sadly, backing did not come in time for the filming to commence before the end of the fair's run and it languished in storage at Paramount for years until the early 1990s when it was adapted for Tina Yothers and Eric Estrada for a skating version of the show called "Spokane on Ice".

Though generally a family attraction, like all fairs it had its share of ribaldry. Mirroring the famed Sally Rand fan dance of the Golden Gate International Exhibition, the "Northwest Naughties" turned the tables in those gender equity conscious days. Billing itself to have the "most beautiful lads of the greater Pacific Northwest" it featured acts like The Boise Boyz in "Mormons Gone Wild". The undisputed hit, however, was 15-year-old Matt Lattanzi from Portland who would go on to have a bit role in "Xanadu" and a break out performance in "Rich and Famous" and "My Tutor" before becoming Mr. Olivia Newton John. Sadly, like Stacey Q, Matt has been reported missing since the mid-1990s.

Seven Minute Fiction: Gypsies, Tramps & Ascots

As I mentioned Sunday, I have been a member of an intergenerational writing workshop for nearly nine years but have written less and less for the group as life, work, this blog, my house take up more and more of my time. Fortunately we've gotten back to writing in class exercises instead of bringing in pre-crafted work. Having worked in my early career in noisy, chaotic news rooms, I do my best when being in a public environment and under a very short deadline. So I've enjoyed having to write on the spot more often. I really want to get back into it and have thought about launching a second blog called "7 Minutes Fiction" to display some of my recent and past exercises.

Here is last night's seven minute exercise which is not 100% fiction and is backed up by some facts. In other words, it's not entirely true but also not entirely false... I had had enough of San Francisco and announced to my circle of fair weathered friends over dinner at Boulevard that I was leaving this city that had brought me nothing but alienation and boredom.

Raising my glass of Rías Baixas Albariño I let them know that I was moving to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho to open an ascot shop called Knots Landing.

Marianne Worthington de Hamasaki, ever the catty soul that she was, brayed, "Oh, Vivian Skyfe-Sappington has an ascot shop by the same name in Laurel Village. She'll sue you for every wretched penny you've got."

"Just let her try, " I snarled back.

It really didn't matter since most of the people in Coeur d'Alene pronounced the shop 's name as Kuh-naughts Landing and that was just fine by me.

"Why would anyone try to open an ascot shop in Idaho? There is nothing up ther but potato farmers and Mormons," Tarquin Wong Ferguson asked, stroking his own crimson brocade ascot with such smug superiority.

I let him know that I'd already built a healthy online trade and now was ready to open my show room on Oak Street in posh Far North Coeur d'Alene down the block from Restoration Hardware at the corner of Moroni and Fontana.

I also let Tarquin know that Spokane, just 35 minutes away, has the largest Gypsy population in North American and as we all know, Gypsies are obsessive about ascot collecting which they wear to any formal occasion.

"But they'll never pay you for them," Tarquin said. "Everyone know that Gypsies will steal you blind." He began cackling haughtily as I lunged across the table, knocking over wine glasses and half eaten creme brulets that crashed to the floor with a mighty force as I grasped my hands around Tarquin's neck, screaming, "You worthless racist snot!" I pulled the far ends of his ascot as he spat out Viennese champagne, arugula and braised goat cheese all over my Hugo Boss suit.

Marianne hit the back of my neck with a broken crystal goblet, screaming, "Stop before you strangle poor Tarquin with his dickie!"

"It's not a dickie, it's an ascot," I shouted back, as I tightened the knot.


CODA: I was curious to see if there was actually a Tarquin Wong Ferguson out there. Unfortunately I didn't find one, but I discovered Tarquin Thornton-Close (an equally cool name, and pictured on the right) who is a student at Earlman College in Richmond, Indiana. Boy, does he ever live up to that name in the photo!