News You Can't Use: Classes for Jedis Run Afoul of the Lucasfilm Empire

Would you like to take a class where you learn to use your nerd stick and get valuable tips on life destruction via escapist fantasy worlds that now must be treated with the sort of grim seriousness formerly reserved for "this time we get to win" Vietnam war movies? Well, there's this thing called "intellectual property" and "litigation" so get ready for a lesson in the real dark side, you rebel scum. It's a Disney property now and, in case you didn't know, if you mess with the mouse you lose your house.

Obsessed fans of “Star Wars” have long enjoyed a tolerant relationship with owners of the pop culture empire’s copyrights and trademarks.

There was this crazy idea that encouraging fandom might actual lead to more revenue in the future. I know, pretty wild stuff. Let's shake off that bizarre idea and start suing the basement boys into oblivion.

But several companies that offer lightsaber combat and Jedi training classes for adults and children apparently went too far for Lucasfilm and its new owner, the Walt Disney Company, which has a reputation for zealously guarding intellectual property.

Your lightsaber moves are no match for our massive illegal monopoly. Here come the lawyers. I've got a bad feeling about this.

Lucasfilm filed a lawsuit last week against New York Jedi and Lightsaber Academy, which teach classes on how to engage in Jedi battles, alleging that the businesses’ use of the words “Jedi” and “lightsaber” along with a logo of the Jedi Order are in violation of intellectual property laws.

New York don't play, sucker. Up here in the world's worst city we fight off underground cannibals and subway dancers with fudging hand-lightning and crazy battles. Come and try it, addict in a Hello Kitty costume, I've had numerous Dirk Starkiller classes.

The lawsuit identifies Michael Brown, also known as Flynn Michael, as the man behind the businesses.

Hands up, don't sue.

Mr. Brown answered emails on Tuesday but said he was too busy and had poor cellular reception, so he could not answer questions about the lawsuit. He did not respond to an email message early Wednesday.

Never change, rotten apple. "I had trouble with my phone, ah'ight? My e-mail's broken too, so don't even bother."

A spokeswoman for Lucasfilm declined to comment on details of the lawsuit but said, “We protect our intellectual property rights vigorously and we take reports of suspected infringement seriously.”

Yeah, right. You can't do anything to me if I stop answering my phone.

New York Jedi offers private lessons and weekly group classes in Midtown Manhattan with “experienced dancers, martial artists, and cosplayers that know a thing or two about saber choreography.”

You'll be surrounded by mentally healthy individuals who enjoy successful and well-balanced lives at pew-pew fantasy academy.

On one part of the site, the classes are listed with a price of $10; elsewhere, it says the classes are free, but donations are accepted to help cover room fees.

Leave your "donation" on the nightstand. If you want me to do the Yoda voice or make droid sounds that costs extra.

The New York Jedi website also advertises a separate group called “Saberkids” for children ages 7 to 13.

Son, I don't think you're getting picked on enough in school so I signed you up for "sand gets everywhere" training.

For a small "donation" this could be you!

Lucasfilm has a long history of fan-created projects, some of which have had implicit endorsement from the company, which was purchased by Disney in 2013. 

The end of that nonsense is a small price to pay for one new soulless and uninspired film per year for the next century.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here. 

News You Can't Use: How 'remake' became a dirty word in Hollywood

As The Bard William Shaker once so rightly observed a rose by any other name would probably get a vastly different response because branding is critical to the success or failure of a product and a good name and slogan can sell anything. At least that's what I think it was, maybe something about brevity and wit, but I think we all get the idea. The reason there's audible groaning during the endless previews at the theater isn't because no one wants to see a remake of "Dude, Where's My Car." It's because the word "remake" itself is putting people off and if we'd just come up with a better term for Hollywood's creative impotence everything would be solved and we could go back to swimming around in the money bin all day.

Some of the greatest Hollywood movies of the modern era are remakes.

Citation missing, as they say.

Martin Scorsese’s grubby Boston gangland thriller The Departed riffs shamelessly on the Hong Kong crime epic Infernal Affairs

That's not, strictly speaking, a remake. If it is, then the fudging original "Star Wars" is too. It's just ordinary laziness, not the super jet-fueled laziness that produces things like "Ben-Hur."

And yet the very term, along with its younger sibling the “reboot”, seems to have become a dirty word in Hollywood in 2016.

I just don't get, I mean there's nothing more exciting than the same old drivel reheated.

If Star Wars: The Force Awakens had been made a few decades ago, it might easily have been sold as a remake, but with George Lucas’s prequels having already been blamed for ruining countless childhoods, the movie was pitched as a sort of “re-quel”, a sequel with all the elements of a remake necessary to inspire nostalgia but enough new material to move the story on and set up future adventures.

Blame your ruined childhood on your freezer mother, not on the minstrel show/government procedural in space that the prequels represented. Clearly the answer is "re-quels" where it's basically the same story but with enough half-assed changes to trick you into buying a ticket and once you realize you've been shucked it's too late.

One imagines Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters might have saved itself a lot of pain by following a similar approach.

Or by actually being funny. Or having special effects that didn't look like something out a student film. Or showing even a glimmer of basic competence. Yes, just a few minor tweaks would have saved that dog's dinner.

“This summer a new team will answer the call.” Sadly, by this point, it was already too late: the media had long been referring to the movie as a female-fronted remake, and the “bro” brigade was already on the warpath.
 
Leave it to "bros" to notice the massive technical and artistic failings of a cynical cash-grab and ruin it for everyone.

The Rock this week on Instagram insisted the new version of the Robin Williams fantasy romp Jumanji is most definitely not a remake. “For the record, we are NOT making a reboot, but rather a ‘continuation of the story’,” he wrote. 

I just don't smell whatever it is you're cooking, Mr. The Rock.

Roma Downey, producer of the new Ben-Hur movie, was at it too last week at the LA premiere for the swords and sandals, ahem, reworking.

Now with 80% less leprosy!

“It’s been almost 60 years since the Charlton Heston film,” she told Variety. “There is a whole generation of people who haven’t even seen the 1959 film."

And it's not like that classic was preserved in any way, so we're forced to make a new version. If only movies could be somehow stored on portable media, but as you know, that's impossible.

"And there are so many differences in this version, so if you brought grandpa along, he wouldn’t recognise it.”  

He'd be saying "this is soulless modern garbage," and he'd be right.

 My Summer Chariot.

Then there’s the forthcoming new version of The Craft, the little-remembered witchy 90s teen chiller that’s been reworked with Leigh Janiak, director of the critically acclaimed low-budget 2014 horror Honeymoon

Can't wait to see what a new generation will do with an "I used evil magic to change my hair color!" stinker.

Here’s the thing. If the term “remake” has become taboo in Hollywood, studios only have themselves to blame.

Yeah. I think we made the point that needed to be made.

Full Article.

Komment Korner  

I was seriously expecting them to land on Mt. Olympus in the more recent past, given the Hellenic names the characters had.

Just wait until they remake (recycle? reboot? regurgitate?) "Casablanca" with an all female cast.

Who, I always wonder, is watching this ephemeral trash?

I think something is wrong with my T.

Dune is too complicated to work in a single film  

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here. 

News You Can't Use: ‘Star Wars’ Lightsaber Causes Farmingdale State Scare, Cops Say

Today's little morality fable features many of the best elements of the student loan racket, including the extended adolescence (rapidly approaching extended infantilism), the constant fear of deadly violence from an unhinged classmate, personal atomization and, of course, the steady infiltration of prison language and culture and militarized goon squads into our daily lives. There's also a "funny" bit about mistaken impressions and a movie that I guess a few people saw, but with so much going on we should just dive right into this glorious feast instead of padding out an introduction like this is an undergraduate paper or something.

A college student with a “Star Wars” lightsaber in a campus parking lot sparked an alert Wednesday morning at Farmingdale State College, where staff and students were briefly advised to shelter in place, officials said.

It turns out it was quote unquote "Star Wars" some sort of obscure lazy sci-fi that you, as a regular sex-haver, probably are completely unaware of. This led to a command to "shelter in place" which I guess means hide under your bed, tuck your head between your knees and start kissing your butt goodbye.

A student alerted campus police about 9:45 a.m. after seeing a person assembling what appeared to be a rifle in a car in a campus parking lot, Suffolk County police said.

Rifle, plastic toy, it's an easy mistake to make when you're deep in debt, getting a B+ in Finger Painting 327 and are about as isolated from reality as a person can get without entering a zen monastery or Tibetan cave.

“It was not a weapon. It was a toy lightsaber,” Insp. Mathew Lewis, commanding officer of the First Precinct, said after the investigation.

After an extensive morning panic, the fully deployment of all the police tanks and general chicken minus head ineffectual motion we've made this determination. The bell tower blaster was actually a lowly space nerd stick.

Campus police alerted the county police, and officers from both forces flooded the parking lots to find the car, Lewis said.

The land of the free and the home of the brave.

Officers finally found the occupant of the car, also a student, at his off-campus job and established that the supposed weapon was a toy, Lewis said.

Total cost of these Keystone Kops follies to taxpayers: 1.7 million dollars.

We're here to protect you and we care deeply about your individual rights.

The school issued an alert to students, faculty and staff advising them to shelter in place, according to a text message a student showed a reporter. The alert was lifted shortly before 11 a.m. 

As it turns out there was no deranged shooter randomly blasting you and your friends. Isn't that a relief? Please go about the rest of your day as if nothing happened.

Full Article.

Komment Korner   

not as clumsy or random as a blaster, an elegant weapon from a more civilized age

get a dog or a girlfriend for God's sake!

Fortunately the SAFE ACT limited the amount of batteries allowed in the light saber to 1 or we may have had a crisis of epic proportions.

God bless our Imperial Storm Troopers for keeping the Deathstar safe and...secure....oh, wait....nevermind.

dont be such a square

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.  

News You Can't Use: Fox News Contributor Gets Death Threats for Mocking Star Wars Fans

It's about time to make that list of things to be thankful for, but let's instead make a list of things we'd be willing to kill or die for because that's also psychologically healthy and hey, Fox News, haw haw. What would make your list? Televised games? The inherent, god-given right to fantasy football? Dead bird gluttony? Sure, all of that seems reasonable enough, but what about that new Star Wars film, featuring lots of sand, thrilling computerized animations and maybe an awesome sub-plot where elderly Chewbacca gets checked into a nursing home and the caregivers are stealing his possessions and then lying about it to his remaining loved ones, even going so far as claiming old age dementia is making him "imagine" the thefts. Yes, this very necessary follow-up to Part Six: Revenge of the Jedi that will answer all your nagging questions (Do they ever get that spice trading deal signed or what?) is definitely worth displacing your keyboard psychopath over.

Not everyone is excited about seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens in theaters this holiday season.

These unimpressed people are also sometimes referred to as "mature adults" or "non-losers."

Last month, Fox News contributor Katherine Timpf jokingly insulted fans who were excited for the newest trailer during a guest stint on the late-night political comedy show Red Eye w/ Tom Shillue. Now, Timpf has revealed she’s recieving death threats for her comments.

First all those LYING LIES about the desert oil war or whatever and now this. What is it with Fox News and sand that just doesn't work out? I mean it's rough and gets everywhere instead of being smooth and soft like you, Princess, but still.

“I have never had any interest in watching space nerds poke each other with their little space nerd sticks, and I’m not going to start now,” Timpf shared on the original broadcast.

You know what, from now on I'm going to start calling it my "space nerd stick." "Yeah, I'm poking you with dat space nerd stick, baby. You like that? Yeah, you like that." The various rando encounters will just have to accept this as part of my amazing total package.

You people are crazy. You Star Wars people are crazy. Yesterday I tweeted something, and all I said was that I wasn’t familiar with Star Wars because I’ve been too busy liking cool things and being attractive — people threatened my life.

I'm too busy being the world's most important person, rocking it nine days a week and generally laying down the awesome to understand the pathetic troglodyte fantasy world you losers inhabit. Don't get angry, you crazy nut, I'm just telling it like it is.

You’re not really branding yourself in a way that makes me want to join your life-threatening club.

The first rule (and second rule, too) of life-threatening club is you don't talk about life-threatening club. If this is your first time someone will threaten your life tonight.

On Tuesday, Timpf wrote a piece published by the National Review, sharing her thoughts on online bullying and noting that she wouldn’t back down in the face of threats.

Getting paid to bust on nerds and then pretend you're the victim, it must be nice.

“A lot of people are clearly a lot of upset. But guess what? I’m not apologizing,” Timpf wrote.

You misspelled "Trump" in this line clearly lifted from every article about The Donald published since June.

This political-correctness obsession threatens free speech, and I absolutely refuse to be a part of it.

Yeah, this is a Fox News deep thinker all right.

Live long and prosper.

Bottom line: If you are telling me that I should die and/or apologize for making a joke about a movie you like, then you are too sensitive

Let's argue over which over-reaction is appropriate, that's an efficient use of our time.

I’m sick of oversensitive mobs in our overly sensitive society bullying people into saying that they’re sorry over jokes

I'm the one who is supposed to be doing the bullying, since I'm attractive and have a great life and don't have time for that geek stuff, etc.

So, for that reason, I will not apologize.

Apologize or do not apologize. There is no "try to apologize."

Full Story.

Komment Korner   

THE SOCIETY OF BEGNAZI!!!!!!!!!!!

Those threatening her don't seem to realize they are on the dark side.  

Pretty sure nobody likes Fox correspondents for their brains.

I think she's pretty cute - need to see her standing up.

You think this is bad, wait until nano and femto aggressions.  

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.    

News You Can't Use: This Insane Homemade Lightsaber Burns Straight Through Things

If idle hands are the tools of the devil, then idle, nerdy, overly educated hands are the tools of awesome. Some guy, the name apparently isn't important, has created a lightsaber! And it burns through "things." There's a lot of vaguely defined greatness right there. Search your feelings, you know it's true.

A crazy laser enthusiast actually built his own lightsaber capable of burning straight through things.

If wanting to make your own lightsaber makes you "crazy" I have little interest in so-called sanity.  

The monster 3W laser, made from a diode taken out of a DLP projector bolted to two high-power lithium ion laptop batteries, is capable of burning straight through paper, cardboard, wood, and even a ping pong ball.

For some reason the "ping pong" ball is the most impressive part for this author. Are they really that strong? Should I bullet proof my house with a stack of table tennis projectiles?

...and I've used some strong ones, if you know what I'm sayin'.

You certainly wouldn’t want this bad boy pointed in your direction.

I've got a bad feeling about this.

Not quite a real flesh-and-blood lightsaber, but about as close as we’re ever really going to get. 

I'm not sure why this guy is such a pessimist when it comes to laser sword technology. We're already so close! One of those lame "double ones" from that dog-shit prequel is a year or two away, tops.

Just don’t get this thing anywhere near your eyes. 

Or your groin, for that matter.

"If lung cancer cuts me down I'll become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Komment Korner 

Lasers scare the crap outta me. I won't even use a laser mouse.

The pussy in me is scared of the refraction and reflections of the beam. 

Here...stand still while I burn a hole in you. ;-)

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in e-book format at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.