Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Loop Orbit, Part Ten by Greg Dziawer

The eye has it!

   

NOTE: Classic good news, bad news situation this week, folks. The good news is that Greg Dziawer is still looking into very obscure 1970s pornographic loops in search of Ed Wood's involvement therein. The bad news is that he is having computer problems this week and was unable to complete his latest article. But he did send me a partial rough draft of it (NSFW), and I am happy to present it here at the Ed Wood Wednesdays Tumblr. Enjoy. - J.B.

UPDATE (9/6/2017): Greg is back up and running, and he has finished this article. Here it is, complete with more photos. Still NSFW. Enjoy. - J.B.

UPDATE (9/13/2017):  Part 11 of the series is here. Again, it's NSFW. - J.B.

Here's a newly-minted trailer for 'Ed Wood: The Musical!'

Tor, Dolores, Vampira, Bela, and Ed sing their hearts out in Rick Tell's Ed Wood: The Musical.

I am truly sorry to have abandoned you this last week, my dears. It was not by choice, believe me. Work has been very heavy lately, so I've had precious little free time to devote to Dead 2 Rights recently. The real culprit, however, is technology. My poor computer, my beloved Gateway laptop, is still in the clutches of the Geek Squad. The original time frame they gave me for its repair was "two to three weeks." Well, that was three weeks ago today, and as of now, it looks like I won't have my computer back for another week and a half at least. Can you imagine? Five weeks in the shop for what I feel was a very minor issue! (The power cord would occasionally come loose, so the machine wouldn't charge properly.) So now I am in technological Siberia. All because I decided -- stubbornly and and not a little foolishly -- to have my computer repaired rather than replaced! They're punishing me, the bastards! This is punitive.

Anyway, in the meantime, I am forced to work on my all-contingency emergency backup computer: an obsolete Sony Vaio first purchased during the days of George W. Bush. Like Mr. Bush's cerebral cortex, this computer is slow and unreliable and freezes up often. Working on it is a stone drag. I simply cannot do the kind of pieces I like to do for Dead 2 Rights on this machine. It would take a lifetime! Doing that last Ed Wood Wednesdays piece about Jesse Berger's Glen or the Bride nearly killed me! I only did it because I loved the film and wanted to write about it. But working on this machine is just no fun, and I want blogging to be fun. It shouldn't feel like a chore, right? So that's why there's been no new content for a while here. Again, I'm sorry. I really hope to have the blog up and running at full capacity soon.

In the meantime, please please please enjoy Rick Tell's new trailer for Ed Wood: The Musical! This is a wonderful little three-minute highlight reel of songs from the show, accompanied by historically-appropriate film clips and pictures from Ed Wood's career. I know Rick has put a lot of work into this trailer, and it definitely deserves to be seen. So see it already!

Expect delays at Dead 2 Rights for a while

This is never a good sign.

I am currently waiting for the delivery of a new, hopefully more reliable power cord for my laptop computer. Until then, it will not be possible for me to write longer, more complex articles for Dead 2 Rights. I have a very particular way of working on this blog, you see, and a key component of my creative method involves writing while sitting up in bed, comfortably propped up on pillows like Marie Antoinette. (At least, that's how I'd imagine Marie Antoinette as a pop culture blogger.) It's the way I write 99.9% of the material on this blog, and it's not possible until I get that cord. I was hoping to get a new "Ed Wood Wednesdays" article out this week, but those pieces take hours and hours to write, and I can't do them if my computer has to remain stationary on a desk or table the whole time. I tried working on the latest "Ed Wood Wednesdays" piece that way yesterday, and I got a stiff neck and sore back like you wouldn't believe. It was physically painful to write like that. Do you see how I suffer for the benefit of my readers? But I'm only willing to suffer up to a point. So this little blurb here is my way of letting you know that "Ed Wood Wednesdays" is on hiatus indefinitely. Look for the next installment in the series once I get my computer up and running again. Until then, hang in there, true believers! I'll try to post some shorter items in the interim, but I'm not promising anything.

SAD UPDATE (1/16/2015): My computer is definitely going into the shop tomorrow and is possibly beyond repair. I have no idea when I'll be able to start blogging again. I will return, however. - J.B.

Hollywood's Greatest Monsters... And Their Crummy Personal Websites : An Expose!

Wolfie, Frankie and Drac: Internet failures all.

Remember that Internet gold rush of the 1990s, when everybody was scrambling to buy up any potentially lucrative URLs just as quickly as possible? Yeah, well, that's over. Know how I know? Because horror's three greatest names -- Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man -- have utterly failed to become desirable Internet addresses. Go ahead and add a .com to any of their hallowed names, and you know what you get? A whole lotta nothing, that's what!

Read on... if you dare!

The site: Dracula.com

Might as well be Dracula smiling and wearing a backpack.

Yes, dear readers, that uninspiring screenshot shows you what you get when you type dracula.com into your browser's address bar. It's one of those lousy generic placeholder pages. Apparently, the domain name is for sale. At least there are links to "Real Vampire Photos" and "Dracula Games," but there's also a shameful link to "Bratz Girls Games." How embarrassing, Dracula, for a nobleman such as yourself to be dragged down to the level of the slutty-looking proletariat!

The site: Frankenstein.com

Boris Karloff inadvertently shills for a "web production" company.

What you get here is something called Castle Pink Frankenstein, apparently a "web production company." (That exists? That's a thing?) Their awkwardly-worded sales spiel reads like this:

"CPF Web Production has worked with individual artists, small business, non-profits and politicians. Our main goal is to empower it’s clients with a web presence that works for them and to make it easy and affordable to keep the site updated. We deal with customized and integrated Word Press blogs, databases, social networking integration, Content Management Systems, iWeb customization (manage your own site once we build it for you!), eCommerce and of course standard plain old web pages."

The site: Wolfman.com

Note the lack of wolves, were or otherwise.

"This website reflects my Love of Macaws, Wolves, and Dogs." The fact that wolves get second billing in that sentence is a clear, early indication that this site maybe isn't going to be a tribute to Universal's Wolf Man, as played by Lon Chaney, Jr. (In case you're wondering, adding "the" to the name doesn't help. Thewolfman.com is just another domain-for-sale placeholder page, lamer even than Dracula's.) Wolfman.com turns out to be the personal page of someone named Jim Morris. The site's contents seem to consist of pictures of Morris' pets and brief articles about those same pets. So he's a "wolf man" in the sense that he's a man who likes wolves. Just like how so-called "cat people" are not really human-feline hybrids.

So these sites fail to make the grade, horror wise. What if you're opposed to monsters and want to call in the professionals? Your first move might be to type ghostbusters.com into your browser. So what do you get when you do that?

Well, this...

The site: Ghostbusters.com

Still at it after more than a quarter-century. Nice to know.

It's a very fancy, rather thoughtful promotional site for the Ghostbusters franchise. Once you get past the loading screen (above), you're taken to a city street with lots of clickable buildings. Yes, the theme song starts playing after a while. And, yes, the Ecto-1 zooms by occasionally. Slimer and Marshmallow Man put in their expected appearances. Apparently, the first film had a theatrical re-release in October 2011. Did you know about that? I didn't. Anyway, the site's most interesting detail might be something written in small type at the bottom of the screen...

So You Think You Can Ghostbust?

Can you read it? It says "Employment Opportunities." An employment opportunity? With the freakin' Ghostbusters? Ye gods! But hold on, Tex. You might think you're going to be the next Winston Zeddemore, but the link just takes you to the Sony Pictures Entertainment Career Connection, where you'll find such unappetizing employment opportunities as "Client Production Services Manager." So, no, you won't be bustin' any ghosts

Le sigh.

(sort of today's zomby) AND SOME OTHER STUFF AS WELL!

Hello once again, dear readers.

Due to the Christmas holiday and a heavy work schedule, I've been taking most of this week off from the old blog-a-roo. But here are some cartoons to make up for it. Instead of doing a typical Zomby!!! adventure, I've decided to do another variation on Tom Wilson's venerable Ziggy. Namely, I've taken a few recent panels and transformed the unlucky protagonist from a miserable idiot into a blissful idiot. Here's how it turned out:

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I don't know about you, but I like this little guy. He's optimistic and he's clearly learned life's greatest lesson: take pleasure in the little things. Bweakfast, kitties, comprooders... they're all here for our enjoyment.

I'd like to close out this little post with a few songs which have taken up residence in my subconscious lately. Hell, I should be charging them rent! First up is comedienne Tracey Ullman and her 1983 smash hit, "They Don't Know." Yes, Ullman first reached our shores not as an actress but as a singer. Her remake of this lovely Kristy MacColl number reached as high as #8 on the Billboard charts. The video is great, too, with a surprise cameo near the end.

Almost 20 years earlier, The Newbeats reached #2 with their pop soul tune, "Bread and Butter," which I first heard as a jingle for Quaker Rice Cakes in the 1980s. I'd heard the Newbeats' record on the radio many times and always assumed that the lead vocal was by an African-American female singer. I can't tell you how surprised I was to see an actual performance clip of the Newbeats and discover that their leader was in fact a slim, blond-pompadoured man named Larry Henley. Rarely has the disparity between sight and sound been so drastic:

And finally, since this is the last day of the year, I thought it was time for a reflection on the events of the last twelve months. All in all, 2011 proved to be a tough year for power mad dictators. Let's face it: that's a stressful job. Sure, it has its rewards, but dictatorship is rarely the type of career which ends with a cake and a gold watch. So as 2011 draws to a close, I thought I'd leave you with the catchiest song ever written about a brutal dictator. Honestly, this song -- "Amazin' Man" by British satirist John Bird -- might well have you singing Idi Amin's name while you do laundry or run errands.

Idi, Idi, Idi Amin! Most amazing man there's ever been! He's the...

Damn it!

(today's zomby) AND BEANS!!!!!!

Third thought: Not even MasterCard!

I hadn't done a voodoo zombie one in a while. So here's one of those. Side note: Does anyone still have computer monitors that look like that? And speaking of clever segueways... Lewis Arquette loves beans!

I don't know what it is about this little speech from Waiting for Guffman, but I never get tired of it.

Guess who's back? Back again! ZOMBY's back! Tell a friend!

My dear sinner friends,

So glad to be back with you once again. This is actually the FIRST blog post from my brand NEW computer. The last couple of months have been marked by terrible technical problems on my end, pretty much preventing me from being the full-tilt Wayne Kotke you have come to expect. I think... or at least hope... that those problems are now largely in my past. I look forward to a bright, shining new future with my snazzy new computer.

Hopefully, I can also go back to doing fully-produced segments for the Mail Order Zombie podcast again soon, but I make no promises there.

In any event, I hope this post finds you well and that you are fully enjoying the Fourth of July holiday.

Yours in living impairment,

Wayne Kotke

P.S. - Do we have any Audacity experts/wizards out there? On my new computer, I can't seem to toggle between different audio input sources as I used to, i.e. recording from the microphone and recording directly from the sound card. This feature seems to have been disabled (the mixer toolbar is visible as usual in the upper right hand corner but now doesn't actually do anything), and it is absolutely essential to me in recording. Thanks in advance.

Experimental ZOMBY: The horror of the unknown

As countless horror movies have demonstrated, sometimes what we don't see is much scarier than what we do see. There is inherent terror in the unknown, the unseen. Take, for example, today's Zomby Minus Zomby. What, exactly, is causing our generic female functionary to back away from her computer screen in alarm?

We shall never know.