SAMIZDATA FROM THE GEO-GULAGS, Page 3



Click HERE for page 1, with the first samizdata from the Geo-Gulags.


Click HERE for Page 2 of the samizdata from the Geo-Gulags.

Click HERE for Page 4 of the samizdata from the Geo-Gulags -- "back-ups" or "piracy"?

Click HERE for Page 5 of the samizdata from the Geo-Gulags -- the crash of Yahoo! Inc. stock.


The Jaundiced Eye in Exile: 16 July 1999


Yahoo! Stockholders Begin Bailing Out:

Yahoo! Stock Falls 16% As "Terms of Service" Controversy Flares Up.

1,148,313 Shares Offered; Motorola to Sell Off 152,551 Shares.


Since Yahoo announced their "terms of service" adhesion contract on 6th July, their stock has fallen 16%, and their shares were down 4 3/16ths today despite record highs on NASDAQ and other market indices. Today (07/16/99) Yahoo filed an SEC Form 424B3 (File Number 333-81629) announcing the intention of major stockholders to sell off 1,148,313 shares of Yahoo! Inc. common stock; Motorola, Inc. is pulling out of Yahoo to the tune of 152,551 shares. This is despite a 156% increase in second quarter earnings over last year!

Despite one brief rally, Yahoo! Inc. prices have dropped like a rock since they began trying to force GeoCities members to sign a "terms of service" adhesion contract which could potentially expose Yahoo! Inc. to massive civil lawsuits for copyright infringement from copyright holders and from third parties who have licensed copyrighted materials to GeoCities members. With such entertainment industry giants as the Walt Disney Company, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures Entetainment, and several television networks numbered among the third-party copyright holders, many Yahoo! shareholders are apparently afraid that the company could not withstand the legal onslaught which is likely to be caused by Yahoo!'s attempts to enforce the "terms of service."

Having already been the target of one brief, but devastating international boycott by GeoCities members, the spectre of a significant joint boycott by an unlikely alliance of civil liberties groups and Christian organizations has been growing steadily, and could bring the financially over-reaching Yahoo! crashing down.


Here ends the "samizdat from the Geo-Gulags" for 16 July 1999.




The Jaundiced Eye in Exile: 20 July 1999

Yahoo! Inc. Speeds Broadcast.com Acquisition and Investors Spurn Yahoo! Stock


According to a story reported 20 July 1999 by Reuters: "We {Yahoo! Inc.} successfully completed the Broadcast.com acquisition ahead of schedule and are moving swiftly to integrate the company's audio and video programming, business services and advertising programs into Yahoo!," Jeff Mallett, Yahoo!'s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.

Stock market investors, perhaps fearing that Yahoo! Inc.'s acquisition of the live video company increases Yahoo! Inc.'s potential vulnerability to possible criminal charges or indictments due to the actions of their un-named "partners," reacted by increasing their sell-off of Yahoo! stock, which fell an additional 7 3/8ths points today. This brings the overall drop in Yahoo! Inc. stock prices to approximately 23% since they began their efforts to force GeoCities members to sign new "terms of service" beginning on 6th July.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! Inc.'s assertion in their 25th June 1999 filing that they would begin expanding their efforts to publish their content in Mandarin Chinese, has possibly paid off for the firm. In a recent e-mailing forwarded to GeoCities members by Yahoo! from a site on hongkong.com, the GeoCities members (some possibly as young as 13-years-old), were directed to the Incest City web site, whose tag-line is:


"If you've ever had a fantasy about doing a family member, try Incest City! Illustrated stories, XXX pix. Damn hot! Age verification required!"


(Note from the Grand Panjandrum: since Yahoo! Inc. has already forewarded to GeoCities members e-mail about a publication with information on how to obtain "Real {sic} Fake ID," we question how Incest City is actually going to verify the ages of 13-year-olds with "Real {sic} Fake IDs" obtained courtesy of the e-mail sent to them through Yahoo! Inc.!)


The banner for this site reads: "Incest City Keeping Sex In The Family" and "Only I know how to b____ my BROTHER!" with a photograph between those two phrases of what appears to be a teenaged girl preparing to demonstrate her ability to prove that point.


Yahoo! Inc. having already forwarded to GeoCities members e-mail for a company which BOASTS that it has been "banned in over 39 countries" and which has "20,000+ XXX Video Feeds" and "Tons of Hidden Camera Feeds," its acquisition of Broadcast.com, whose principal business IS "video feeds" (before the Securities and Exchange Commission could prevent the $5,000,400,000 deal) has seemingly scared off investors afraid of legal action against Yahoo! Inc. and its nameless international "partners."



Dances With Films Festival

World Premiere of Esteban Louis Powell's Newest Film

The Dances With Films festival runs from July 23rd to July 29th at Laemmele's Santa Monica Theater, 1332 2nd Street, in Santa Monica, California. It will screen 36 films at 1 theater over 7 days, and "is the only festival in the country to exist solely for the UNKNOWN filmmaker."

"No 'known' actors, directors, producers...."

Esteban being a "known" actor, Random Acts of Violence, in which he co-stars, is officially "out of competition," but it is STILL having its World Premiere at Midnight, July 23rd (one of the few places where it fit in the heavy schedule!).

As we have predicted elsewhere, Random Acts of Violence and Deal of A Lifetime will rapidly give Esteban Powell the credit he deserves as an actor and boost his standing on our "My Favorite Jaundiced Star" survey. Remember, a lot of people thought that our On-Line Reviewer's comment in his review of Get Real, "Look out Leonardo, Ben Silverstone has arrived!" was a ridiculous exageration, but Ben Silverstone is now running neck-and-neck with international sex symbol Ryan Phillippe on our survey and is well ahead of super-star Ben Affleck.

Tickets for Random Acts of Violence are US $7.00, "on a first come, first served basis."



On-Line Reviews

American Pie and Muppets From Space

© 1999 by Christian Leopold Shea. All Rights Reserved.

Forced to write reviews in this cramped "samizdat from the Geo-Gulags," and without being able to post any photographs ("Thank you, Yahoo!"), I am obliged to pair up a couple of disparate comedies.

American Pie is the story of some over-sexed teenaged boys (is there any other kind?) who make a vow that each of them will lose his virginity before high school graduation.

Despite this seemingly sleazy premise, American Pie goes a long way to applying some gentle correction to this very "sex-at-any-cost" attitude, and as the movie progresses, the boys grow up in more ways than one, and learn that sex really isn't everything in a relationship, and that sometimes friendship with a sexy girl can be more important than sex or sports or beer or any of the other sacred icons of cinematic teenaged boys.

Unfortunately, some of the jokes in American Pie fall flat and this reviewer cannot rate it as highly as he ordinarily would. Eugene Levy, however, certainly deserves "The Phil Hartman Memorial Award for Best Supporting Father in a Comedy," turning in a performance quite as funny as Phil Hartman's in Small Soldiers, but with a totally different attitude towards life and its little awkward moments, and giving a whole new meaning to "put a sock in it!" (Alyson Hanigan's role of "Michelle," by the way, makes "the evil anti-Willow" from "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" seem positvively naieve by comparison!)

American Pie gets our middling rating of W5: Worth $5.00; see it as a discount matinee or twilight show. However, many of American Pie's fans will probably want to buy it on videotape or DVD when it comes out, and if it is priced to "sell through," by all means buy it -- it is a keeper.

The explanation of how Muppets From Space wound up in this strange double-review is simple: we intended to see The Blair Witch Project, but with its first show having a block-long line in the middle of a miserable heat-wave, another film was clearly called for, and Muppets From Space was next on the agenda, and it could hardly have been a better choice.

With no little kids hanging around (like, who's going to bring kids to see The Blair Witch Project?!), watching Muppets From Space was a sheer joy! It is a very, very funny movie with an R & B soundtrack so cool it's hot. Spared the squeals of any little proto-consumers and the crying of babies, every joke was easily heard, and the sight gags (dozens of them) were not obstructed by any little ankle-biters running up and down the aisles.

Since there actually is a little bit of mystery and suspense in Muppets From Space, even if they are child-sized chills, I won't review the plot details here, except to say that Gonzo may not be the only one of his kind, but "his kind" may be from outer space -- which doesn't sit well with a certain top-secret government agency and its nefarious employees.

One of those "nefarious employees" is David Arquette of Scream and johns. His is just one of several surprising cameos in Muppets From Space, so watch it closely -- you may be surprised at just who pops up where.

Naturally, I give Muppets From Space my highest rating: W8: Worth $8.00. It's worth even more if you can see it in a theater free from the children to whom it is being marketed! Like Small Soldiers, this can be a very funny film for adults.

-- 30 --

Here ends the samzdat from the Geo-Gulags for 20 July 1999.




The Jaundiced Eye in Exile:

25 July 1999.

"Random Acts of Violence," Esteban Powell and Ethan Embry

Papa's not gonna preach today, chillun -- there's too much good news to share.

First, Esteban Louis Powell's new movie, Random Acts of Violence, about a fresh-faced New Jersey boy who gets caught up in a maelstrom of violent chaos during his first week in Los Angeles, had its world premiere at the "Dances With Films" festival in Santa Monica, California last week, and was wildly and enthusiastically cheered by the crowd. Esteban, who both starred in and co-produced the film, would seem to have a little hit on his hands.

Who should have been sitting right next to our On-Line Reviewer during the film but Ethan Embry, for whom we had set up one of his first Internet fan pages! We hadn't been doing updates on Ethan for a long time (click the link to Quinzelle's page on our page to get caught up with his professional career) because we hadn't heard from him.

Ethan explained why no one has had any really recent news of him for a long time: his own computer broke down, and when he tries to communicate with people using other people's computers or by phone, they refuse to believe it's him! So here, straight from Ethan's own hand-written notes (he's a lefty, by the way), are some current and not-so-current facts about him which have been overlooked by almost eveyone else:


It's easy to see why Ethan has been such a fan favorite sicne he was a little boy: he still carries with him -- in real life as well as in his movie roles -- the freshness and zest of a starry-eyed kid. Expect to see an up-dated and better-illustrated "mirrored" Ethan site at https://members.tripod.com/the-grand-panjandrum/ethan.html within the next week or so as part of our plan to rescue our web site from the corrupt slime at Yahoo!

We will gradually "mirror" our whole site onto Tripod, including ALL of the fan pages and reviews so that we can keep updating it as legal proceedings against Yahoo! Inc. go forward. We have NO intention, however, of surrendering our GeoCities homestead to the pirates of Santa Clara -- fully mirrored and expanded to twenty megabytes on Tripod or not, this page shall remain on GeoCities while we soak Yahoo! Inc. and their international "partners" in state and federal courts, and -- if necessary -- in foreign courts, as well, because, . . .


WE'RE NUMBER EIGHT! WE'RE NUMBER EIGHT!


Contrary to what you see on those web pages of ours which the pirates of Santa Clara will not permit us to update, and DESPITE ALL OF THE NASTIEST EFFORTS OF THE YAHOOS, this weekend we bacame EuroSeek's™ 8th Most Popular Class 1 "Cool Site" in our category . . . in the whole world! We again firmly assert our claim to being a site which is "a work of recognized value," and the more vigorously the Yahoos try to block us, the more popular we become all over the world as people turn to our little samizdat to learn how to fight to protect themselves from corporate parasites like the Yahoos, who are out to plunder gigabytes -- if not terabytes -- of words and graphics which belong to GeoCities homesteaders and to major corporations who have licensed them to us homesteaders -- but not to Yahoo or any of their dubious international "partners.

Shane is back -- and he's working for us to save this homestead.


Here ends the samizdat from the Geo-Gulags for 25 July 1999.