Danny Goldberg's new Dispatches from the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit has a great premise: that the decline in political power of the American "left" stems from its increasing alienation from the popular cultures that define the worlds of millions of young Americans.

It's an intriguing idea, worth exploring. Unfortunately, it's presented like the sort of marketing decision Goldberg, a long-time recording industry executive, might make. Instead of tacking a hit record onto his memoirs, Miramax Books seems to have decided it needed a catchier theme and a new opening chapter.

Goldberg managed acts from Led Zeppelin to Nirvana, going on to help run seemingly every big L.A. corporate music division, about one a year, through the merger-happy '90s, before starting his own independent label. That history serves here as a name-dropping background to Goldberg's free speech activism (especially with the ACLU) and fundraising for Democratic candidates. The ultimate "Hollywood liberal" political memoir turns out to be a semi-monotonous 30-year narrative of electoral cycles and music censorship battles, and the meetings that love them. Zzzz.

It's hard to judge one person's account of such now-obscure brouhahas. (Remember 2 Live Crew?) Meanwhile, vast chunks are missing from Goldberg's discussion of his subtitled topic. Are Democrats out of touch? His argument rests almost entirely on adult condemnation of youth culture--stop the presses!--and a stunningly unhip 2000 campaign featuring Tipper Gore and Joe "I'm more religious than you" Lieberman.

But do Democratic candidates now hate kids, or are moralistic adults bigger donors and more frequent voters? This isn't new--Southern Dixiecrats, a major Democratic Party bloc, were among Elvis' biggest critics, and from Spiro Agnew to Dan Quayle to Robert Dole to Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft, it's easy to find more recent Republican counterparts.

Older societal leaders are forever clueless to the ways of the young. Including, apparently, Goldberg, who fails to tell us what "teen spirit" is, how it could be regained, or how it might be applied in politics. Youth, here, don't have energy or ideas--only votes and disposable income. Goldberg never once quotes or cites an actual young person; in his world, unit sales and hip corporate executives, rather than politicians, speak for the young. The young themselves still don't speak.

If they did, perhaps they'd mention other factors--like the perceived irrelevance of politicians or futility of trying to influence them. Or they'd discuss--unlike Goldberg--non-electoral, youth-led phenomena like the anti-globalization and sweatshop movements, which have been ignored by Democrats. Goldberg does discuss Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential bid, but ignores the reasons why so many 18-to-24-year-old voters found the equally wooden Nader (who, Goldberg reports, had no idea in 2000 who Austin Powers was) more compelling than Gore. (Might the young 'uns be responding to--gasp!--the Democrats' anemic policies? Or Nader's accomplishments?) Goldberg can't even tell us whether Republicans are drawing youth votes from the Democrats (what about Reagan?), or whether kids simply aren't voting at all. And in discussing the elite left's antipathy for rap and hip-hop, the wealthy, white Goldberg somehow forgets race and class.

Far more people are drawn to a good time than to a position paper--or to a music executive's free speech memoir. I'll take Emma Goldman's revolution any day. "The left"--the traditional American voice of the disenfranchised, including youth--should absolutely sneer less at pop culture, and celebrate it more. A book on the topic would be a great idea.--Geov Parrish

On June 6, I boarded the S.S. WingDing, at the Northwest Actors Studio, on Capitol Hill. Billed as "Carlotta's Late Night Wing Ding," this interactive comedy/variety show, which changes themes and guests weekly, was held in a brick loft, with overstuffed chairs and couches for the "passengers."

Passengers were greeted by the crew as we crossed the gangplank onto the deck. Carlotta, our eccentric "Entertainment Commander" wore a flowery dress with a lei. Another crew member wearing a life jacket, asked passengers if they could swim as they came aboard. The doctor circulated the deck, explaining he had come to fix a hole in the boat, but now stayed on as the doctor/bartender. He took orders and returned with drinks, in between checking up on the passengers' health. Carlotta picked up a megaphone and announced, "Attention passengers and crew, in about 10 minutes we will be shoving off."

A call for "All Aboard" was finally made and the cruise shoved off. The crew stood on board and all leaned one direction and made a creeking noise! Then waved and drank toasts. One crew member had to jump for the ship at the last minute, and he almost drowned! As we sailed off into the sea, crew member Randy, our ship's devoted Led Zeppelin fan, with bangs over his eyes and a cigarette hanging on his lip, blared Zeppelin's "The Ocean."

The crew consisted of Carlotta and her son Slaw (named after her favorite salad), Rockin' Randy, an effeminate (fatphobic) cruise director, the doctor/bartender, and a kid with black Goth face paint who never smiled and insisted on being called "Hyperion." The cruise began with a splendid musical number (done in actual harmony, these people can sing too), with lyrics such as "Consider yourself at sea, consider yourself one of the passengers..." Carlotta explained that she could spend her time doing many things, but chose cruises because of the people she meets, and for the feeling of royalty she gets eating at "boo-ffets" with them. Mrs. Happy Day's daughter's maid and Neil Diamond's mother were on her last cruise!

The cruise director shared his story of inheritance of this cruise ship, due to Gavin McCleod losing at a poker game of actors in New York. Chaos ensued as the ship was temporarily accosted by a great white squid. Carlotta tried to obey the directions to grab it by the tentacles, but there was confusion over the words tentacle and testicle. Carlotta later had problems with nautical and naughty, gangbang and gangplank...

First Mate Randy reclaimed some of his seafaring heritage for us, strapping a piece of animal fur to his chest and holding a traditional Viking whaling pole, as he opened a Led Zeppelin songbook and read from "The Immigrant Song." He was a wealth of culture. He played Moby Dick as he fished with his whale pole later. Randy would also share poetry, inspired by a guy he saw at a Bavarian pretzel shop in the Mall on the ship's 21st floor..."Want gooey cheese, she gave him more, must be delirious, washed it down with an Orange Julius..."

Guests for the evening were Ronnie Pierce, one f*cking good clarinet player, and Monty Banks, a local pianist. Beth Amsbary did a funny piece about architecture in the Midwest. Which began with a large picture of the house she grew up in during the 1950's. It quickly degraded into displays of stick figures of the family that lived in the house and a commentary on life and time in general. It was quite amusing.

Carlotta announced into the megaphone we were almost at Kokimo! I was sad to see the cruise end. The cast for this production was Ian Duncan, Patrick Giblin, Tom Ledcke, Eric Mayer, Troy Mink and David Nixon. This production was brought to us by the Ursa Major Theater Company (www.ursamajortheater.org) and the Northwest Actors Studio. They promise more to come!--Kirsten Anderberg

I regularly buy tickets to the Seattle International Film Festival primarily so I can see documentaries and foreign films. Many of the films shown at SIFF never make it to PBS or cable TV, because they're "too political" or "too experimental" or because they're foreign, subtitled films. (All very good reasons to go see them!) SIFF's documentaries, in particular, have become very popular; last year, SIFF showed 24 documentaries, and this year they booked over 40. I wasn't able to see them all, naturally, but I do have five favorite films that folks should keep an eye out for and try to buy for personal viewing, or bring to town and show as a benefit for whichever social justice group you're a member of. They are:

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Dir. Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain). An Irish film crew traveled to Venezuela to take the pulse of President Hugo Chavez's experiment in popular democracy. They were in the country for only a few months when the three-day coup happened, and they were caught in the middle, filming every minute. This is a gripping, on-the-spot account of those tense few days when the world thought Hugo Chavez was done for. Highly recommended. This film won both the audience and jury awards for best documentary at this year's SIFF.

In This World. Part documentary, part feature film, this is the story of two Afghan cousins trying to reach London traveling overland from their refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan. This film, directed by Michael Winterbottom, won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival, and it's easy to see why.

Unprecedented (dir. Richard Ray Perez and Joan Sekler) takes a critical and highly informed look at the 2000 presidential "election"/coup here in the US. Special bonus: it includes a scene of Greg Palast in action!

Life After War (dir. Brian Knappenberger) follows Sarah Chayse, the radio reporter who covered the Afghanistan war for NPR from Quetta and Kandahar, as she accepts a challenge from Hamid Karzai's brother-in-law: to stay in Afghanistan and help rebuild the country. Sarah chooses to oversee the reconstruction of 13 houses in a village bombed by the US; the film chronicles her struggles to get the first house finished and shows the devastation that was largely absent from US TV screens.

11/09/01 is a project conceived by the French film company Studio Canal. Eleven directors from all over the world were commissioned to make short films about September 11, 2001, and the results are entertaining, shocking, thought-provoking, heart-rending, and beautiful. Familiar directors Ken Loach, Mira Nair, and Sean Penn are joined by artists from Japan, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Israel, France, and the Balkans. Particularly unforgettable is Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's soundscape, peppered with flashes of people jumping from the Twin Towers. Find this film and see it whenever and wherever you can; it will never be shown on US TV.