Category Archives: r.i.p.

R.I.P. Punk Planet

I know it’s old news, but I’ve been in denial for a while: Punk Planet is deceased.

As much as it breaks our hearts to write these words, the final issue of Punk Planet is in the post, possibly heading toward you right now. Over the last 80 issues and 13 years, we’ve covered every aspect of the financially independent, emotionally autonomous, free culture we refer to as “the underground.” In that time we’ve sounded many alarms from our editorial offices: about threats of co-optation, big-media emulation, and unseen corporate sponsorship. We’ve also done everything in our power to create a support network for independent media, experiment with revenue streams, and correct the distribution issues that have increasingly plagued independent magazines. But now we’ve come to the impossible decision to stop printing, having sounded all the alarms and reenvisioned all the systems we can. Benefit shows are no longer enough to make up for bad distribution deals, disappearing advertisers, and a decreasing audience of subscribers.

[read the rest of the post]

So very, very sad.

I LOVED Scooby Doo when I was a kid.

Sad news:

Iwao Takamoto, the animator who created the cartoon canine Scooby-Doo as well as characters on such shows as “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons,” died Monday after suffering a massive coronary, a spokesman said. He was 81.

Takamoto died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for respiratory problems, said Gary Miereanu, a spokesman for Warner Bros. Animation.

Takamoto designed Scooby-Doo, his equally famished and cowardly master Shaggy, and their pals Velma, Daphne and Fred in the late 1960s while working at the Hanna-Barbera animation studio.

[read the rest of the story at Reuters.com

His credits are an amusing little tour of some of the nuttier cartoons of the 70s, I had no idea he also directed the original version of Charlotte’s Web. And, he was a producer for the Addam’s Family. I think those two might just make up for his role in The Partridge Family 2200 AD, which just sounds like it must have been a thing of great evil. (Although my lifelong loathing for the original program might be colouring my perceptions ever so slightly).

National (day? week?) of mourning

The obituaries contained more world-changing news than usual on Saturday. Alas, our internet connection speed has hovered somewhere around 56k for many days now (It’s Comcastic!) so I couldn’t gorge myself on the Aaron Spelling news the way I wished. Rather than rehash his career, here’s the L.A. Times piece from Saturday:

TV Mogul Spun Fluff Into Gold

Aaron Spelling, whose knack for tapping into the public’s taste for light entertainment made him both the most prolific and one of the wealthiest producers in television history, died Friday evening. He was 83.

Spelling died at his Holmby Hills mansion of complications from a stroke he suffered Sunday, according to his publicist, Kevin Sasaki. His wife, Candy, and son, Randy, were at his bedside.

[read the rest of the article in the L.A. Times]

I had to settle for watching some of his, um, greatest hits on TV rather than reading the overwrought coverage of his death that abounded online. It’s appropriate to mourn his passing by watching his programs, but really, you watch too much of that stuff and your brain mooshes into something with the relative consistency of Velveeta. I do hope that all of the networks will carry the funeral coverage wall-to-wall like they did for the Pope. I mean come on, it’s Aaron Spelling. Kids should get the day off from school. Not right now, since even year-round schools are going on break. I think Aaron Spelling day should be sometime during Fall Sweeps. It seems only fitting.
Perhaps more personally distressing to Washingtonians was the death of Joseph Nardelli, jr, owner of the Tune Inn. I remember during Freshman orientation in college when they were trying to herd us onto buses to attend a performance of the infernal Kennedy Center “hit” Shear Madness, our R.A. held us back because she had a better plan. She took us to the Tune Inn. I believe we were all better people for it.

To round out the parade of death, Harriet the 176 year old tortoise also died. Sure, most of us probably didn’t even know she existed until she died, but now that you know about her doesn’t it sort of boggle your mind? I have to say that I do find it silly when people say things like, “Think of all the history she witnessed!”

She was a tortoise, I doubt very much she was even aware of the rise and fall of empires, wars, monarchies, technology, or, for that matter, Satan’s School for Girls.