Thursday afternoon, GQ Magazine revealed photos from their latest issue featuring Trainwreckstar Amy Schumer in joking, sexual situations with Star Wars characters like C-3PO and R2-D2. Friday, Lucasfilm responded and not in kind.
In a post on Twitter by the official Star Wars account, they said the following: “Lucasfilm & Disney didn’t approve, participate in or condone the inappropriate use of our characters in this manner.” What “manner” do they mean? Well, the photo above, as well as these.
Obviously, GQ and Schumer didn’t mean to disrespect Lucasfilm with these photos. They’re just supposed to be funny, weird and provocative. Like Schumer and her comedy.
In fact, that they chose to use these characters at all is a testament to their cultural significance. It’s kind of a compliment. But Star Wars is owned by Disney.
Disney is a family company and they obviously wouldn’t be cool with anyone, even the biggest comedienne in the world, fellating a lightsaber. At least in public.
The Ramones of the ’70s are iconic. They were at the vanguard of punk, and arguably pop punk, and created songs that are still considered classics of the genre today. You go to a sporting event, you hear “Blitzkrieg Bop.” Their look was easily recognizable, and influential. They appeared in Rock ‘N’ Roll High School. Then came 1980’s End of the Century which was, in its own way, the end of an era for the band. By 1995, when they released their final studio album Adios Amigos!, they were no longer part of the zeitgeist. They were an afterthought, and they weren’t even the same band.
The change from Tommy to Marky on the drums had happened a while back, with a brief stay from Richie in there as well, and, in truth, changing the drummer isn’t really going to rile up many people. However, by the time of Adios Amigos!, Dee Dee was also all but gone, although his presence is still felt on the album, as he is credited as the writer on many of the songs, including a handful from other projects of his. He had been replaced with C.J. Ramone, who was given a lot of credit by his bandmates for bringing some much-needed youthful energy to the band. C.J. could only do so much, though. This was a band that had been releasing music for 20 years. Nobody could blame them for being burnt out.
Adios Amigos! begins with the iconic “1, 2, 3, 4!” count off that was synonymous with the band, but after that it feels decidedly like warmed-over Ramones. Now, this could be where one would break out the old chestnut about how even bad pizza is pretty good, and how the same can be said for the Ramones. The Ramones were still making the music they’ve made for years. Charging guitars. Simple drumbeats. Although, they do slow it down a bit more than they did in the past, in part to ease the strain on Joey’s vocals. He gets to croon a bit, and he’s not half-bad at it.
The album is hit-or-miss. In addition to the songs from Dee Dee, there is a cover of Tom Waits’ “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” and Johnny Thunders’ “I Love You.” They are both fine. “Fine” is about the highest level this album achieves. “Life’s a Gas” is pretty good, but also goes on a bit too long. In the end, the songs that Joey sings on are reminiscent of the glory days of the Ramones. The issue is that on four of the tracks, C.J. takes the lead vocals. One of the song, “Scattergun,” is OK, but the others are abysmal. Of course, one of those songs is “The Crusher” from Dee Dee’s brief time as a rapper, so C.J. can’t take all of the blame. Nevertheless, it’s one of the worst things ever recorded for posterity.
Dee Dee’s impact on the album is felt in his songwriting, but his only tangible appearance is on the final song “Born to Die in Berlin,” wherein he (literally) phones it in from Germany. None of the original Ramones (Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Tommy) would die in Berlin, but they have all now passed away. Three of them have been dead for over a decade now. However, those Ramones weren’t the Ramones by the time the band was winding it all down. Adios Amigos! isn’t a stain on their legacy by any means. It has its moments, and it sounds like the Ramones, which has merit. Based on their album title, obviously, they knew this was the end. They didn’t go down in a blaze of glory, but at least they said goodbye without embarrassing themselves.
iOS bug lets people crash others' iPhones by sending them one line of text
Though the effects of the prank can be fixed, there doesn't seem to be a way of stopping it happening
iPhones can be crashed if they receive a text containing one specific line of Arabic characters and symbols.
Sending the letters in a text message causes the phone to crash and then power off, leaving the Messages app unusable once the iPhone turns back on. Users have found a way of fixing the problem once it has happened, but there appears to be no way to keep phones from being vulnerable to it happening again.
If users open the Messages app and the problem text is still open, users can just send a reply to fix the problem. If it's not, users must either receive a message or send a message to themselves, using Siri or by texting from the "share" option that can be found in many apps.
The problem appears to come from the way that the phone tries to show the message in notifications. The characters cause that system to break, so that it briefly tries to show it before crashing and then re-setting the phone in an attempt to fix it.
It doesn't turn it off, it just crashes it. If ur jailbroken, it sends you to safe mode and if ur non-jailbroken, it just resprings your device.
effective.
Power
لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ 冗
Send that to someone with an iPhone it turns their phone off
Copy all above the line and text it to another iPhone and it will shut it off.
I wonder what other things we can control with this, rather than just "power off the device."
Any ideas?
Edit 1: you don't need that first line, plus i fixed it
edit 2: a list of things we discovered so far
it only seems to work if your phone is not onsafe mode
on a jailbroken phone it shoots you into safe mode...could means that it might be related to a Springboard vulnerability
it doesn't work if the person you are sending is looking at your texts, they can be anywhere else on their iPhone
edit 3: something i've noticed, apple changes the api with every new ios, right? maybe it has something to do with that?
edit 4: what's weird is I'm on iOS 8.1.2 and it crashes my phone as well...
edit 5: we found out what it is. it is due to how the banner notifications process the Unicode text. The banner briefly attempts to present the incoming text and then "gives up" thus the crash creds to /u/sickestdancer98
The text was found by Reddit users, who also discovered how the problem was affecting phones. The issue seems to have been around since iOS 6, users said, which was released in 2012.
Apple's engineers are aware of the problem and are looking to fix it, according to Twitter users. Members of the site also found what was going on to make it work.
“Adult Wednesday Addams” Pulled From YouTube Over Copyright
Apparently there’s such a thing as a parody web series being too good. The hit series “Adult Wednesday Addams” created by Melissa Hunter has disappeared from YouTube after the original creators of “The Addams Family” flagged it.
The web series shot to fame recently when an episode about Wednesday Addams getting her revenge on catcallers went viral and earned her international press coverage — enough to catch the attention of the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation, who hold the copyright for the work of American cartoonist Charles Addams.
Melissa addressed the show’s disappearance on Facebook. “Thank you for the outpouring of support and concern about the disappearance of Adult Wednesday Addams from the internet. As many of you have seen, the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation flagged the show and, for now, it is off of YouTube. I am working actively on coming to a resolution and will not let Wednesday be caged in internet purgatory. I appreciate your patience and support while I sort this issue out!”
Judging by the flood of dismayed comments, “Adult Wednesday Addams” fans are not going to accept this decision easily.
I don't understand why this isn't covered as parody?
nope if it's parody. The problem is that this isn't a parody of the universe or character, but a direct, logical progression in the form of a fan made
but a direct, logical progression in the form of a fan made sequel. It's why Scary Movie can copy all the movies they did, so this is the issue "Wednesday Addams" is (c) by MGM
We have a contract with MGM to produce a full-length animated feature film of The Addams Family® to look exactly as Charles Addams originally painted them. That contract prohibits anyone from portraying those characters in any media during the life of the contract.
