After a year of inactivity, The Melon is back on track with fresh articles, fresh writers mixed with some of the originals.  Electric Elliot Trotter continues to be the force behind The Melon and Chris “The Wedge” Van Vechten has returned to write.  Both were the original founders of The Melon and genius behind what we have today.

Jen Drake, a contributing author brought on by Elliot and Chris (and who later married the stated Van Vechten), took a hiatus from The Melon to focus on her career and is now back in force  to be Editor-in-Chief and with her has come 25 (and growing) new writers, varying in interests, hobbies, location, and looks.

The Melon has been a voice for Tacoma and abroad in the past and will continue to be so in the future.

The Melon is a forum/community for individualized insights, discussion and enlightenment. Our goal is to empower, inform and inspire.

First planted in 2007 as a news and political talk radio show deemed The Melon on KUPS 90.1FM Tacoma, the seeds of melon have grown into an electro-rag of the same name. Since 2008, The Melon serves as the home of the Melonites who deliver daily news ripenings and various seedlings. For news, opinion, art, discussion and satire that’s good enough to eat, taste The Melon.

Our writers will share their insightful views, and we will continue to be ready, ripe, and juicy as ever.

TOP NEWS STORIES

#1 LAKEWOOD POLICE OFFICER SHOOTINGS

#2 THE RISE AND FALL OF JUDGE HECHT

#3 MARILYN STRICKLAND ELECTED MAYOR OF TACOMA

#4 RCV REPEALED IN PIERCE COUNTY

#5 SAMI and FIRST CREEK open doors and minds

#6 RUSSELL LEAVES TACOMA FOR SEATTLE

#7 QANNIK THE PDZ BELUGA DIES but BALI THE TIGER MOVES IN

#8 TPS SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER CONNIE RICKMAN ELIMINATED IN RECORD-BREAKING 6-WAY PRIMARY

TOP TACOMA PERSONALITIES OF 2009

#1  R.R. Anderson

#2  Victoria Woodards

#3  Marty Campbell

#4  Jim Merritt

MOST MISSED TACOMAN

#1  Elliot Trotter

Close Second is Matt Stevens

Rollie, Travis and Taylor discover a magic lamp and are granted one wish to change the face of humanity.

A couple of my movies, Time Shower Episode 2 & 3 will be playing at a Juno/Seattle film event featuring movies made by Seattle and Juno artists.  It’s being hosted by the crew from Alaska Robotics.

It’s free and at the Rendezvous JewelBox Theater in Seattle. Come check it out.

Location: 2322 2nd Ave

Model Citizen

City bus banner

Gazing Hooters invitation through my windshield

A model citizen no doubt

Prepared to giggle and tickle my testicles

You gorilla vision to sugar scene

Relishing in tiled shower, I move to hold hair and

Sample vanilla silicon

But sight rolls in a different lane

I fondle steering wheel

O mind of merit!

Give passion to poster and pours to eyes

The better to embrace…

Gasp! You reach out past glass and dashboard

To feel, to caress, to delight

Hand nears my chest, abs, lower, lower please…

But no brushed touch erects

Instead fingers of raw and meddle

Desires to thrust cooled by air-conditioning and

The stink of fried poultry

I once walked under nocturnal eyes

Taking water and fries

I sat amongst great men doused in their Thursday’s best

We called upon you, asking for apple pie

And your teeth flashed like billboards

A gasoline flow

The cycle of statues runs deep into our animality and

Beyond comprehension

Inspiring heights and doubt

Shall statue be blamed for lust

Or lips that kiss it?

Patron desires sculpture

Sculpture grows from desire

Where does power lie

In a symbiotic paradox?

And so, as red turns green I hoot

“My dear lady

What is a golden owl, but a golden calf?

What is a poster, but a mirror?”

Copies of World War Me are still available. Contact etrotter(at)themelononline(dot)com if interested.

I present to you, in my humble opinion, the greatest poem about Tacoma ever written.

Paging dramatic sky, come in dramatic sky, come in

What is this place Great Cthulhu?

Which judged by its lowest lows

Embodies those who go by names not social device

My city the drug dealer, the homeless schizophrenic

My city the shitty landlord, the constant siren

My city the obstacle course, the affected college student

The polluted, crime-ridden, stereotyped, constantly under construction, meth capitol USA

Asshole of Seattle, my city the fucked up dead-end of a town

City, with all you possess

No wonder you weep without notice

And your people, ever cast in plastic grays and greens

Parade through drizzle, your quiet but constant drizzle

Reflecting a sunken past and a soaking present

That falls from hoods and drips down pink noses

Passing an exhaled smog

A smog of discontent, perhaps

But also a smog of resilience, of hope

Of positivity, of potential, of knowing that while this is not quite the top

It is far from the bottom

The rip of tape from skin strip after strip

Tacoma, the swamp of middle-American delusion

And so-called convenience

But its places to convene…

Places where trees still rule the earth

Where the sound crashes

Calling rain to moisture

Shells and shale to shore

Nearby the clank of trains and bicycles

Roams our city the terror

Squirming and scrapping its long claws

From rustic warehouse to graffitied coffee shop

Ancient Cthulhu, whose surroundings may origin or result from

As if with spare parts of the deep

Your mighty arms placed this town together

A dome here, a giant teapot there

Your materials seem wild but

Your plans are to rebuild

In the muck that grew you

Through some whim of fortune or mutation

Like spirits, our ancestors inspired and revived you

Inspired you to climb up from your slumber

Crack through toxic silted air and

Reclaim the oasis of our city’s destiny

No matter who or what declared it so

While our city, Tacoma

Like legends before and all things to come

Will one day sink back into its primordial creator

This place knows itself

Where it has been and where it’s going

It knows community comes from desire

That color strives from gates

That glass can only be born from fire

And this lost city, though fragile

Shall burn once more

Dylan and Todd hit the courts for the first time in a while.

Here’s the exclusive world premiere of the long awaited sketch by Melon Visual – Musican!