afka.net has the first and last page of Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People, an unproduced Zappa screenplay. Wiki/Jawaka has a little bit more information, but only a little.
Zappa loved B movies, and this one looks like it would have been a lot of fun.
You know, I'll say one thing for Windows:
Every single time I have a problem with Linux serious enough that I start to contemplate how much easier life would be if I just used Windows, Windows finds a way of reminding me that no I really wouldn't at all.
I don't know what happened to my HTPC. I suspected file corruption, but chkdsk /f came up clean; waiting on /r right now. Sincerely hope there's nothing wrong with my hard drive; I've reinstalled enough OS's in the past few weeks. And anyway, I've run chkdsk and it's come out clean.
It worked all right when I sat down. A little sluggish bringing up Colbert, and the lipsync was off for a bit, but it self-corrected and played all right. Right up until the end, when VLC hung and then everything else hung.
I did a hard reset; the system hung again, solid hard drive light, and I saw something I've never seen before: when I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, it stalled and eventually pulled up an error message saying it couldn't bring the Ctrl-Alt-Del screen up.
Repeat this stuff over a few reboots and iterations, some Safe Mode, the erroneous theory that last night's AVG update was responsible...you get the idea.
No idea what the fuck is wrong. Tired of this shit. Why must all my computers fail at once?
I'm typing this on my laptop. Which I haven't upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu yet, because I don't need one more computer to break.
A very brief Zappa excerpt about mental health.
Via uploader tomtiddler1, who attributes it to "Rockpalast, March 18th, 1976. WDR"
I had another post pre-scheduled about how today was Graduation Day 2, with the whole university, but we decided that was just too much of a pain in the ass and stayed home.
Sort of.
Actually the wife and I and a couple of in-laws and our nephew hoofed it up to the corner and grabbed some chicken sandwiches.
It was a good time. More walking is probably a good idea; we've both been sick and not exercising like we should. And Little Nephew is always entertaining; tonight he had a whole Ministry of Silly Walks thing going on.
My wife graduated today.
Well, okay, so I'm writing and scheduling this post in advance, but I'm assuming everything's going to go the way it's supposed to and by the time it posts she'll be all graduated.
I've known this woman a little over four years; she went back to school a little under four years ago.
To say it's been long and hard would be a half-truth. It's certainly been hard, but it feels like she tore right through it. Despite chronic and often unexplained illnesses (up to and including two trips to the ER in the past few weeks), she didn't just pass her classes and certifications, she excelled -- I don't think her GPA dropped below a 4.0 until last semester. She's graduating (or has graduated -- again, writing this in advance) with two sets of honor cords, despite all the barriers she's had and all the days she's barely been able to stand up straight.
She's something special, and the workforce she's going into will be much better for having her. And I'm immensely grateful to the people who've helped and supported and accomodated her -- professors, teachers, doctors, nurses, family, friends. (And yeah, there were a couple of people who didn't help and who made things harder for her. These three parenthetical sentences are all the acknowledgement I will give those people. Fuck the roadblocks; they are far outnumbered by kind, flexible, compassionate people.)
I'm proud to know her, and grateful to everyone who helped her get this far. Now on to the next thing.
San Carlos, 1984; not the best quality but better than I generally expect from an audience recording. Uploaded by YourArf.
In light of the recent excellent news of the legal sanctions facing copyright troll Prenda Law, here are some things I wrote on the subject a couple months ago. Originally posted on Brontoforumus, 2013-03-07, 2013-03-12.
...so have you guys been paying attention to the Prenda Law case? Because it's pretty amazing.
Prenda Law is one of those copyright trolls that sends people threatening letters alleging that they've illegally downloaded porn. The idea is that people would rather pay a settlement than be a named defendant associated with downloading porn.
It's extortion. Which is bad, and was bound to catch up with Prenda sooner or later.
But that's actually the tip of the iceberg. Popehat has an exhaustive rundown, but the highlights are that Prenda Law is most likely run by people who own the rights to the porn videos in question and who have not disclosed that interest, and also they appear to have stolen a guy's identity and named him as their CEO. (He's suing them.) The lawyer who's been representing them in court appears to be distancing himself from the organization now and blaming his bosses for everything; the judge seems righteously pissed and has dropped the word "incarceration" into his list of potential sanctions.
A followup post indicates that the company's entire business strategy appears to be to buy up cheap rights to porn movies that are cheap because they're frequently pirated, and then pursue pirates, ostensibly to reduce piracy and increase the value of their investments.
I'm just astounded by the combination of stupidity and balls involved in this scam. I mean, at least people who run Ponzi schemes put some effort into appearing legitimate.
I understand the greed part. I just don't understand how they thought they could get away with it. Like I said earlier, if all they'd done was shake people down for blackmail money they could have gotten away with just having their business shut down; it's the layers of incompetent and half-assed fraud that are really breathtaking and liable to lead to disbarment and possible incarceration.
I am very much looking forward to seeing this organization dismembered and its corpse hung out as warning for all the other copyright trolls and would-be copyright trolls to see. Some prison time for the principals would be a bonus.
The bad news just keeps piling up for Prenda; now its owners/lawyers are facing potential disbarment and criminal investigations.
Popehat has lots more under the prenda-law tag, and Ars Technica has plenty under the tags intellectual-property and lawsuits.
Another fine upload by tomtiddler1, who says: "KCBS-TV, Los Angeles, November 6th, 1981."
A highlight reel from the last couple days on Brontoforumus:
(Originally posted yesterday, 2013-05-05.)
The free Tick is pretty great but makes a basic storytelling mistake in not introducing the supporting cast. I know who Tick and Arthur are, but Bumbling Bee and Rubber Ducky aren't referred to by name until pages 12 and 13, and they never say Cod's full name, unless Cod is his full name.
I know there's a general backlash against techniques like the 1960's era of characters all addressing each other by name on the first couple of pages, and the 1990's method of just having each character's name appear in a caption when they first appear, but there are still ways to integrate it organically in the story. Arthur addresses Bumbling Bee as "Bee" several times in the first few pages, and she later tells Cod she wants to "meet up with Ducky". Those could trivially be changed to the characters' full names without seeming out-of-place.
And again, Cod is referred to as "Cod" exactly once in the story, and I assume that's one more shortened name.
For all that it's still a perfectly fun Tick comic. Arthur gets a vacation, Tick gets an undersea adventure, there are hijinx with the other heroes, and eventually Arthur gets to save the day. It's enjoyable. I would buy more Tick comics if they didn't charge seven bucks for 20 pages. And I heartily recommend the Complete Edlund collection, even though it is really pricey for its quality of materials. ($35 for B&W on newsprint -- but you will definitely get $35 worth of enjoyment out of it. I keep meaning to do a full writeup of it.)
The backup stories and prose sections aren't bad either. But given the latter's repeated reference to how this is bound to be some people's first Tick comic and be introducing people to these characters for the first time, it's that much more baffling that they dropped the ball on actually introducing the characters.
(Originally posted yesterday, 2013-05-05.)
DC, of course, has spent the past two years on a big relaunch, where its continuity is fundamentally changed and all the characters are redesigned.
And so, for the Free Comic Book Day issue of Superman, which is likely the first Superman comic many people have picked up in years, if not ever...
...they reprint the Donner/Johns/Kubert issue from, what, 2006, 2007, that introduces Chris Kent.
Lois still knows Superman is Clark Kent. They're still married. His costume still has red trunks on it. And the story is best-known for the introduction of a character who was written out pretty soon after, who nobody really remembers, and who sure as hell doesn't exist in the New 52.
But we can't have Stephanie Brown appear in Smallville, because that might confuse people.
(Originally posted earlier today, 2013-05-06.)
The Free Comic Book Day issue is pretty much the perfect little Star Wars story: somebody for some reason decides it would be a great idea to fuck with Darth Vader, and then learns that it really isn't after all. Also Boba Fett gets to shoot some dudes.
I think it's Wood's best Star Wars comic yet; all of my complaints about the pacing-for-the-trade present in the main series are gone here, it's over and done in pretty short order.
It's so easy, after the last 4 movies, to think of Vader as a gigantic pussy. This comic doesn't just play him as a stone-cold badass, it actually uses his engineering talent cleverly too (spoiler: as he's crawling around the outside of the ship, his would-be assassin tries to jump into hyperspace -- but Vader's already destroyed the hyperdrive with his light sabre).
Anyway. It's free (though you've gotta sign up for an account); it's well worth reading. It comes with Avatar (the Last Airbender) and Captain Midnight, too; haven't gotten around to reading those yet.
(Originally posted earlier today, 2013-05-06.)
Anyhow, for those who missed FCBD, Bleeding Cool has a list of freebies available at Comixology, the Dark Horse store, and elsewhere. No Tick, sadly, but definitely check out Star Wars.
Mike Keneally, from the same 1991 Ritz show as the Brown Shoes recording I posted last October and the Dirty Love one I posted last August, shortly after Zappa announced he had cancer. (Er, the show, not my post.)