AntcuFaalb

The best answer to this question is given here.

(Note: The 2006 and 2008 Bonus DVDs are the same.)

~2 weeks left! How's it coming along?!

Leonardo said:

AntcuFaalb said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

As I was born in 1987, I don't know if I have any memories of the '80s. My earliest concrete memory - that of being on an operating table to sew up my big toe after dropping a pickle jar on it - only goes back to 1990; I have no way of knowing if any of the images/impressions I have from the time before that go back much further.

'88 here :-)

March of '88, present!

January here!

Thanks for the story, doubleKO. It was really fun to read!!!

More, guys! More!

Jay: TinyMCE (the WYSIWYG editor) is broken on IE9. Several hits on https://encrypted.google.com/#hl=en&q=TinyMCE+IE9 imply that upgrading may provide a fix.

Jay: Can you include Last Post Time on the User Profile page?

TV's Frink said:

Hi.

Ah, another Darth.

Whatever happened to Darth Balls?

jturd said:

Nice detective work! Let me sit with this info for a hot minute while I work out the outline for something to write. I'm a pretty big punk fan but I've never heard of Smear (unless it's somehow related to Germs guitarist Pat Smear, which I don't think it is)...lemme look into that as well. Thanks for your help here, I think this is the start of something interesting.

It's a shame I can't get a well-paying job as a "WWW Sleuth".

Thanks for the help! I'm looking forward to what might come out of this, as I'm really interested in what she may have to say.

vbangle said:

Watched the trailer, the shots of the project looked a little blurry, like this particular copy is blurry on the film stock. Am I seeing it wrong? Is there anything you can do to sharpen up the image?

Which trailer did you watch? I've seen many of -1's videos, so I'm not sure if I remember the one to which you're referring.

Please link me!

Brooks said:

AntcuFaalb said:

Brooks said:

cbaka said:

We all owe to George lucas the love of Star wars he IS the maker, he changes cinema for ever, he will be always "the Chosen one" who makes us dream, some of us (many) don't like what become to star wars..but it's his creation after all..George lucas is and always be a genius.

kevin smith, ben affleck, edgar wright, Duncan jones, one of these gentlemen should direct the next Star wars.

I don't want to stir up any debate but I'll throw myself onto some train tracks if Kevin Smith directs the next star wars.  What about Spielberg?  Ever since I was a kid in the 80's there've been rumors of him directing one.

Not a Kevin Smith fan? :-D

Not at all, though a lot of my friends are.  I haven't seen all of his movies, though I have seen most, but I guess I shouldn't rush to judgement.  Has he ever directed a movie that he hasn't written?  I guess you never know, I remember hearing that Peter Jackson was doing lord of the rings and thinking "Wha??  The meet the feebles guy?!"

Despite his many misses I think Spielberg would do a fine job, he seems to understand the sense of wonder that a star wars film needs.

I've seen many of his movies, but I'm not sure if he's ever directed one that he didn't write.

With that bring said, I think people are bringing him up because he's a big SW fan, like us. He understands what we, the fans (himself included), want from a SW movie.

captainsolo said:

AntcuFaalb said:

msycamore said:

Nice to hear that you got a copy of your own, that went fast. :) Looking forward to see what quality you can get out of it, and if it suffers from the crosstalk seen on my copy.

Yes, it most certainly did.

I just e-mailed every SWE seller on Amazon and eBay to ask them for the mint marks and waited to see Technidisc's format :-)

I think most of the crosstalk will be eliminated by the comb filter in my Panasonic DMR-ES10, but we'll have to wait until Christmastime to know...

Holy crap, this is what I've done for months with no luck. I was beginning to think there was no Technidisc ESB or ROTJ. Can't remember if it's been covered elsewhere, but were these ever confirmed to be smear-free as well?

A really high-end capture would be spectacular. I've just been wanting a copy of my own to watch on the CRT because as much work has gone into Harmy's de-specialized I can't shake my preference for this look.

Damn, I'm going to start sending those mint marks to sellers again...

I'm sending you a PM. Enjoy!

Brooks said:

cbaka said:

We all owe to George lucas the love of Star wars he IS the maker, he changes cinema for ever, he will be always "the Chosen one" who makes us dream, some of us (many) don't like what become to star wars..but it's his creation after all..George lucas is and always be a genius.

kevin smith, ben affleck, edgar wright, Duncan jones, one of these gentlemen should direct the next Star wars.

I don't want to stir up any debate but I'll throw myself onto some train tracks if Kevin Smith directs the next star wars.  What about Spielberg?  Ever since I was a kid in the 80's there've been rumors of him directing one.

Not a Kevin Smith fan? :-D

There's a 52 year-old Anne M. Arbogast residing in CA*, now known as Anne M. van Blaricom who is or was married to a Douglas van Blaricom, a guitar player on 1984's Dotted Line vinyl (genre: Rock) with Robert Seidler.

*Notice that the Berkeley Square club mentioned in the article is on University Ave. in Berkeley, CA.

Edit: Her birthdate is 13-Jul-1960.

Edit 2: The Facebook image of Anne van Blaricom (https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/60401_116361755087357_1960055_n.jpg) looks a lot like the woman in the bottom left of the Pixar image I linked to in one of my earlier posts in this thread.

Edit 3: More information on Douglas van Blaricom...

Doug performs device-side software engineering for CrowdOptic and served as Technical Manager for ITK USA, a subsidiary of ITK Telecommunications, AG. Doug is a lifelong Bay Area resident, studied at a music conservatory in southern California and played lead guitar in the semi-famous 80's band Robert Seidler.

OK, so she would either be 51 or 52 now, depending on whether or not her birthday is before or after 6 March.

The following is from the 6-Mar-1984 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. It is reproduced here without permission, but doing so is believed to be protected by fair use.

Jabba The Hutt's Favorite Singer
By Peter Stack

I should have figured that Jabba the Hutt in "Return of the Jedi" was punk. But then I only met Annie Arbogast the other night. She's a punk rocker whose voice can crush dachshunds. She wrote and sang Jabba's favorite tune, "Lapti Nek," a sort of weird hit.

Arbogast's swirly blonde hair almost stabbed out my eyes when I met her the other night at Berkeley Square, a dumpy nightclub on University Avenue.

The place was a zoo of people wearing spikes, black leather and white-face. Annie was performing with her four-piece band called Smear. It was louder than a train wreck, and punkers with hair gelled into wrought-iron heaps and machetes for earrings were slam dancing.

I wanted to be in South City at the truckers' brawl, but I'd made this date to meet Arbogast, 23, on account of her "Lapti Nek" fame. It seems she's riding it to a kind of career.

In the movie, the tune is performed by alien vocalist Sy Snootles, the character with slurpy lips at the end of an elephant's trunk. Snootles is the main warbler in Jabba's court, a place to avoid unless you've got a submachine gun for a dance partner.

Annie Arbogast got the "Jedi" gig by being in the right place at the right time - a Hollywood type of story played out in San Rafael. At Lucasfilm Ltd., where she's a computer technician, she was standing in a cafeteria line when a honcho working on "Jedi" noticed her gun belt of thirty-ought-six bullets and her dog collar bracelets. He asked her who she was, and she said she was a rock singer.

One thing led to another, and Arbogast was given the chore of creating "Lapti Nek" for Sy Snootles. She made up the "Huttese" lyrics by spilling pieces of Scrabble and Perquacky on her kitchen table in East Oakland, and picking them up at random.

"They wanted a sound that was a cross between Captain Crunch and Olive Oyl and a parrot stuck in an elephant's trunk. I figured I could handle that," Annie told me.

"Now the song's very big. They made a video of it for MTV," she said. What she's earned has enabled her to buy a new Toyota.

Arbogast's steam-engine singing voice is one thing. When she talks she's shy like a farm girl, blushing and self-conscious. At our meeting in a cold backroom at Berkeley Square she was wearing her rock and roll costume - a metal junkyard over a mini-dress that would raise eyebrows even in the Tenderloin.

"I'm not really a punker," she said, a little blush in her painted eyes. She tore the filter off a Winston and lit it like a sailor in the wind.

"I been with this band Smear for seven months now. I don't know what you call our music, exactly. Somebody said it was modern rock, or acid power pop. I don't really want to be a computer tech all my life. I think my future's in music.

"I write lyrics all the time. I get these ideas, and I write 'em down. I got into poetry after I got kicked out of St. Leo's in Oakland in seventh grade. Then I went to Maybeck, the alternative high school. It's for people that have adjustment troubles. But they encourage you to learn poets."

She got into computer technology following a brief career as a stage hand for various local bands.

"I was fascinated with wiring stuff, so I finally went to Merritt College and took electronics courses. I got my job at Lucasfilm when I met this guy who works there, at a science fiction convention. It was weird. I sent them a resume, and a year later they called me."

Arbogast's rock and roll lyrics aren't exactly Byronic. But her songs have a certain jagged appeal, as if you were staring at a jackhammer blade.

"Nude Boy" is one of her favorite creations, "Sad Bitches" another, and a skewed, half-yelled thing the calls "Twisted." One titled "Burden of Proof" she wrote while on jury duty in Alameda County Superior Court.

"I voted to send a guy up the river. The judge kept talking about burden of proof, and it kept running through my mind," she said.

Arbogast and her band, which plays so loud it sometimes buries her singing, don't have a big following yet. Mostly they do opening acts at punk clubs, and their friends show up. They opened the other night for Fade to Black and Necropolis of Love.

About midnight, I slipped out a side door of the club, and looked back once at the dancers bashing each other. As I drove towards the Bay Bridge, I thought to myself: There are people in the world who make Jabba the Hutt look normal.

jturd said:

Well, according to Gruska, we know Arbogast was once possibly the apple of George's eye. I'd be willing to track her down if it were for a larger project...I don't just want to cold call her as a fan, without any kind of backup. Maybe I could start compiling an oral history of "Jedi" for its thirtieth anniversary next year. You feel what I'm sayin' here?

I see what you're sayin', so what's the next step?!

lpd said:

Has everyone forgotten that George believes the end of the world is this December.

Does he really believe that rubbish?

muddyknees2000 said:

Lapti Nek AND Jedi Rocks (dumbest name ever) are BOTH out. To be replaced with...???

Oh, they're both being taken out?

I thought he was just putting Lapti Nek back in...

jturd said:

AntcuFaalb said:

jturd said:

Hey there, I'm James Greene, Jr., the author of those two articles (and longtime lurker here at OT.com). Thanks for drudging them up, AntcuFaalb! I worked pretty hard on the "Lapti Nek" saga as presented. Glad someone feels like preserving it all. As for the whole fair use/copyright issue, I hereby use my power as the author to say go ahead and post 'em where ever---just don't profit off 'em. The powers that be like to pretend Crawdaddy never even existed anyway. The site's owner really mistreated it, eventually folding us into Paste Magazine, after which we (Crawdaddy writers, editors) all basically lost our jobs and the website itself was transferred to that awkward CrawdaddyArchive.com web address to collect dust. It's sad. Red-headed stepchild stuff.

At least I have all those versions of "Lapti Nek" to comfort me!

Thanks, James! It's awesome that you're a member here.

I appreciate you letting me preserve your articles. They're excellent!

Aw shucks, thanks. I wrote at least one other "Star Wars"-related feature for Crawdaddy about my quest to find an album that synchs up with the original film a la "Dark Side of the Moon"/"Wizard of Oz": 

http://www.crawdaddyarchive.com/index.php/2008/07/09/dark-side-of-the-death-star-or-how-i-wasted-eleven-months-of-my-life

It also goes without saying that I'd love to hear Annie Arbogast's side of the "Lapti Nek" saga (especially how she felt being wiped out in favor of "Jedi Rocks").

Cool article!

Do we actually know anything about Annie Arbogast besides the facts that (1) she was a Sound Engineer at LFL, (2) wrote and recorded Lapti Nek, and (3) later worked at Pixar?

I'd love to track her down. Would you be willing to work with me to do so?

Also, I love Runco LJRIII as this is the only THX laserdisc player ever produced. The Panasonic LX-900 and LX-1000 are good.

The Runco LJRII is, internally, a Panasonic LX-900U with some minor differences.

The Panasonic LX-900U is more than a "good" machine. It's really underappreciated.

doubleofive said:

If he let us finish the work, the Wampa would be a sock puppet.

Start the countdown for a Star Wars Sock Puppet Fan Edit thread!

Bingowings said:

It can't be more complicated that flat packed furniture, nothing is that complicated.

Surely nothing is that complicated for Dr. Bing Owings!

Adywan: Do you plan to use Michele Gruska's recording of Lapti Nek for ROTJ:R?

I prefer Annie Arbogast's version, but the version by Michele Gruska is much higher quality and, if George Lucas wasn't bedding Annie Arbogast at the time, it would have most likely been chosen for the theatrical release of ROTJ.

I'm told that Annie Arbogast is the woman in the bottom left of this image: http://www.disaboomlive.com/Galleries/storage/1000.11687.25080.Levon-Pixar%201987.jpg

This is so sad!

The following is an autograph from Annie Arbogast on a picture from the ROTJ SE... a movie from which she was erased.

http://let-the-wookie-win.com/index.php?showimage=1081