Charlie Krafft is the latest artist to feel the post-Littleton chill. Having been offered a three-month fellowship at the Kohler porcelain factory in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Krafft was told he couldn't use the fellowship to craft more of the Delft-style ceramic assault rifles and handguns he'd been making lately. Oddly, it was slides of these beautifully creepy sculptures that had gotten him the fellowship in the first place. Krafft ultimately spent three months building Delft-style ceramic renditions of another great symbol of our fear of teenagers: skateboards.

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My friend Jamie Hook recently reminded me of a curious fact about all the new construction and renovations for civic institutions like the library, city government, opera, and symphony. The projects are all aimed at ridding us of our unloved legacy of post-war civic architecture. It's ironic that the demolition of the downtown library, Henry Library, city hall, public safety building, and so on, will occur at a time when '60s architecture is just coming back into vogue, courtesy of magazines like Wallpaper. As I walk around the city and see all the doomed structures, I start to get a little sad, especially about the quite lovely libraries. I still hold out some hope that a genius will find an entertainment-based use for the soon-to-be former home of the Henry Library, that lovely, raised on stilts, highlight of post-war modernism on Capitol Hill: a bowling alley/restaurant, maybe?

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My dig at the stoopid name the Seattle Weekly music staff came up with for its club-hopping column, MetroGnome, didn't go unnoticed on Western Avenue. Last week's Weekly featured the new title "Culture Wars," originating "From the Desk of M. Gnome." That's kind of funny, but that column's actual title still isn't.

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A tip from one Jonathan Lawson clears up my confusion last issue about the Seattle venue for the much-anticipated Charles and Ray Eames exhibition. According to the Eames office website, the show will come to the Pacific Science Center at the start of 2001.

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Could someone with a spare five million please donate it to the Seattle Art Museum and Trust for Public Land, like, today? The groups have until this Friday to put a $17-million down payment on land for a Belltown sculpture park, and they're a bit short. I'm a little worried about what's going to be shown there, given the tastes of major local sculpture patrons Virginia and Bagley Wright (Anthony Caro, Richard Serra, and many other monumental males) and sculpture garden endowment funders Jon and Mary Shirley (Alexander Calder, Mark di Suvero). But I couldn't be more pro on SAM and TPL's idea, which expands both our art-going opportunities and our downtown park areas.

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Quote of the week--Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran, in response to U.S. District Judge John Coughenour's ruling that a 60-year-old state law requiring bars and clubs to obtain a license for live music or dancing was unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds (as quoted in the P-I): "As for now, I think the bottom line is, party on dude--no regulation." If only. Now if we could just get rid of the state liquor board and get hard liquor, naked people, and rap music back into the bars where they belong, we'd really have a party going.