Low tide

My wife is ill, lying on the couch nursing a sore throat and a fever. I'm not well either, but it's different for me. I'll go into more detail another day (It's worth another entry, but I can't get it going right now), but I'm in a funk over writing, struggling with the valley part in the peak-valley sine wave that's common when you are trying to be creative. I'm in the low part, not happy with anything I'm doing. Nothing's good enough and I feel as if I'm standing in everyone else's shadow.

For now, I'm going to avoid it and go back to something I wrote a few days ago (April 18), about Madonna and her act of online bitchslapping aimed at the bit pirates out there trying to download copies of her new stuff before it hits the streets.

A few days ago, I heard Radiohead is coming out with a new album in June, and later read that the album had been leaked and the clever ones with dodgy ethics and a cable modem snatched up the files for a sneak preview. Scrolling through the message boards of music pirate sites, I found favorable reviews of the songs yet-to-be released, even probably the bizarro high praise of "I'm gonna buy this when it comes out in stores." You have the album on your hard drive…why drop $20 at your local soulless mega music chain in a month?

Well, simple. The stuff downloaded were rough mixes, which lead to the rampant speculation (on the Web, is there any other kind?) that one of the band members unleashed the working versions on the Web in some aurally tantalizing way to get fans all hot and bothered for the real thing. It's a clever mutation of marketing, bypassing the record label to offer a treat for the fans. If you're lucky, you can even have the pirates start generating a positive buzz. (P.S. If you think it only applies to music, think again. I'm sure it's not "the" script, but I can imagine it was a early draft that was released to hint at what's to come. )

And it makes my head spin that someone as crafty as Madonna didn't think of this earlier, instead of circling the wagons and spiking mp3 files with obscenities. I mean, what can it hurt to seek a bit more publicity by dropping a working version of a song into the vast swimming pool of the P2P playground, maybe laying down a challenge to see if some beat surgeon out there could engineer a remix in, say, 72 hours. The winner gets some cash, a sliver of fame, and the track included in a CD single when the song gets formally introduced to the street. Just like in the software world, I'm sure you could get people to pay for the privilege of working on the beta version of a product.

P.S...Madonna, here's a good tip for the future: Never piss off kids who are better than you at tech stuff, otherwise this happens.

P.P.S. There's a bit of a Jodie Foster vibe to the hack with regard to Ms. Webb, dontcha think?


And the day before that...


...I was talking about trying to track down (April 17) a cinematic rumor that in the original "Star Wars" trilogy Vader would come out alive in order to face a war crimes tribunal in the planned "next' trilogy (episodes 7-9, for you fanboys out there)

Well, I did my best kung fu on Google and came up with incomplete, but interesting, results. I found this from ReelInsider.com.


Intending the search for Han Solo to be the main plot point of Return of the Jedi, the Emperor wasn't originally going to appear until episode 9, Luke and Leia weren't going to be brother and sister and there was no second Death Star. Solo was going to die in the film's final battle, Luke was going to continue his Jedi training and Leia was going to resume her position as Queen of her people, separating the major characters in a downbeat ending similar to Episode 5. Kurtz strongly objected to Lucas's changes and insisted they should stick with their original plans. Lucas, however, just as strongly disagreed and the two parted company for good after successfully breathing life into two Best Picture-nominated films, American Graffiti and Star Wars.

Frankly, I was shocked. I always thought Lucas wasn't that daring when it came to his characters, and here he is, about to kill of Han Solo and end the first trilogy on a big downer. Make me wonder where the Ewoks came from. (On edit: I wonder if the writer meant Kurtz had the "downbeat" ideas, not Lucas. Hmm.)

Of course, I tripped all over some fan fiction, and this one was the best I found dealing with a "Vader lives/war crimes tribunal" theme. It's written by several people in a collaborative effort, yet it felt unified in voice. Interesting turns, but I was puzzled at the underplaying of the war crimes aspect. I'll have to go back and re-read it in case I missed anything.

Last but not least is this item, which asks something I never thought of: How did the Empire get those big, wildly impractical walking machines down to the ice planet in "Empire Strikes Back"? I mean, geez, there were huge so the support ship had to be enormous, right? They were dropped a distance away, so does that mean they were, say, dropped in pieces and then assembled, saying to any first-strike Rebel team coming to catch them unready, "Hey, no fair, we're not done yet. Give us an hour"?

I have on order the "Star Wars - Infinities" graphic novels of the first two films. Both editions take a wildly different approach to the canon, and I'm eager to see where it goes for the final part. When I don't have anything better to do, I picture an alternative history to "Return of the Jedi" with the Rebels staging a cinematically breathtaking D-Day-type invasion of the Death Star (after the "torpedo in the tail pipe" method failed in the first "Infinities" edition), complete with a wave of Rebel fighters fending off enemy ships as surface teams audaciously try to drill, blast or erode their way in. Meanwhile, the Imperial Destroyers are at a loss: Do we fire on the Death Star or let the Rebels continue their burrowing?

And then I remember that the ticking-clock premise of rebels in the upcoming Matrix films is something kind of similar. Argh. Self-imposed comparison overload! Batten down the hatches! Secure the gunpowder! Here we go again.