Just released. . . the latest Dateline Jasoom podcast from
www.panthanpress.com

Episode 47. A chat with Alex Simmons, who wrote the Tarzan Sunday comic in 2001 and 2002, for his take as an African American on the apeman and ERB. 
ERBzine has posted some of Alex's strips in ERBzine 2140
Simmons will curate "The Color of Comics" in February at Bronx Community College.

Episode 46. A Barsoomian expedition from Helium to the frozen north and into the Carrion Caves. Part 2 of our discussion of the University of Arkansas Little Rock class that casts Tarzan as a literary icon, with ERB fan Steve Allsup. 

continued from:

Episode 45. Tarzan: Literary icon? University of Arkansas literature professor Paul Yoder discusses ERB's apeman in the context of Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, Jonathan Swift, Byron, and others. It's a good read, too, he says. 

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A pending online Barsoom release:
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars: Shadows of a Dying World (d20) PDF 
Skirmisher Publishing
Set on the red planet not as it exists, but as people at the turn of the 20th century thought it might be, Shadows of a Dying World is drawn from the Mars series of Edgar Rice Burroughs and presents creatures from his world in game terms. 

The author "starglim" states:
This isn't a licenced product though we've been in contact with the Burroughs estate about it. All of our sources are in the public domain. I'm a fan of Leigh Brackett and also Clark Ashton Smith's Mars stories. I know of O. A. Kline's work and Lin Carter's Mars novels but haven't read them extensively (I see that The Swordsman of Mars is or will be available through Planet Stories, good stuff). This is solely an ERB-based product.

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From the Sir Bunch Site: 

Vocabulary - Word of the Day
turn-coat
noun :: One who forsakes his party or his principles; a renegade; an apostate. "I might have expected naught better from a turncoat foreign knave such as thee, who once joined in the councils of De Montfort, and then betrayed his friends to curry favor with the King.” –Burroughs, Edgar Rice
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ef-fete
adj. :: Worn out with age; exhausted of energy; incapable of efficient action; no longer productive; barren; sterile. “Uncouth, perhaps, and brutal, too, if judged too harshly by the standards of effete twentieth- century civilization, but withal noble, dignified, chivalrous, and loveable.” — Burroughs, Edgar Rice
------------------------------------------------------------------------
er-u-dite
adj :: Having or showing profound knowledge. “The erudite gentleman in whom I confided congealed before I was half through.” –Burroughs, Edgar Rice
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pan-e-gyr-ic
noun :: An oration or eulogy in praise of some person or achievement; a formal or elaborate encomium; a laudatory discourse. “Perry was right in the midst of a flowery panegyric on the wonders of the peaceful beauty of the scene when a canoe shot out from the nearest island.” –Burroughs, Edgar Rice

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
More at:
http://sirbunch.com/?s=Edgar+Rice+Burroughs

The Man Behind the Comics
Jules Verne Festival Pays Tribute to Icon Stan Lee
Downtown LA Scene ~ December 1, 2007
Lee cited Verne, along with H. G. Wells and Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, as authors who shaped his formative years leading up to his first comic book writing assignment, in 1941, for Timely Comics’ Captain America series.
Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival ~ Dec. 5-9 ~Shrine Auditorium and Dec. 14-15 at the Los Angeles Theatre

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A Starred Review for Philip Jose Farmer
Subterranean Press ~ December 3, 2007
Congratulations to Philip Jose Farmer, whose gathering of “fictional author” tales, Venus on the Half-Shell and Others, just received a coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly: “Finally, after demonstrating how Tarzan might have sounded had he been written by William S. rather than Edgar Rice, Farmer dons the mantle of Conan Doyle’s Dr. Watson and introduces Tarzan to Holmes in ‘The Adventure of the Peerless Peer.’ Only a writer as mature as Farmer could have pulled this stunt off so successfully.”
More>>>

 

TARZAN MOVES TO GERMANY

Source : 28-11-2007 www.musicalworld.nl
Today, Stage Entertainment has announced that in 2008  people can watch the musical 'Tarzan' in Germany.
The main character will be elected via a TV show called "Ich Tarzan, Du Jane".
Stage Entertainment will produce this "election" show  together with Sat 1 and it will be aired on television in February 2008.
A German premiere date for the stage production is not known yet.

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Gold Album Award for Holland's Tarzan the Musical Cast Album
Phil Collins receives the album from Chantal Janzen and Ron Link Source: http://www.musicals.nl/jetp/misc/index_2306.htm
The Tarzan Musical Cast Album has earned Gold status having sold more than 35.000 copies.
Chantal Janzen and Ron Link flew together with Erwin van Lambaart, managing director/producer of Joop van den Ende Theater Productions on a surprise trip this week to Genève. 
There they surprised popicon Phil Collins, who wrote the music and lyrics for the musical, with a golden award. 
Because of the golden CD of the Tarzan musical there will be a limited version of the cast album produced by Universal Music, as well a unique bonus dvd.
A Phil Collins said: 'I am delighted with the golden status of Tarzan's Dutch cast album! It is very special to see this kind of appreciation for your work and to see how the Dutch audience embraces Tarzan.' 
Erwin van Lambaart is also very happy with the result: 'The success of Tarzan is incredible. The cd is gold already and we also have sold 650,000 tickets for the musical!'

For the Tarzan Musical Phil Collins expanded the songs he wrote for the award-winning Disney film animation with nine new songs. Since this was his debute as a stage musical composer, the recordings for the cast album were very important for him. He was very happy that the songs he wrote were sung by the cast members in the way he meant for them to be done. The pop star therefore spent much time in Holland to support the Dutch cast and practice with them. The Dutch translation of the lyrics was done by Martine Bijl. The CD contains the popular numbers 'Jij Woont In Mijn Hart' (You'll Be In My Heart) and 'Everything That I Am', a bonus track by Phil Collins.

The special bonus DVD features: The Making of' Tarzan, The trailer of the musical Tarzan, The act during the Musical Sing-A-Long and The Musical Awards Gala. The excitement, the emotions, the hard work, the tears, the joy, the bad luck and finally the beautiful result; you can follow it on this dvd.

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News stories reported by ERBzine's European correspondent, Ron de Laat

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TARZAN THE MUSICAL TO OPEN IN SWEDEN
ERBzine ~ November 20, 2007

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The first production of the Tarzan Musical was on Broadway and the second in Scheveningen, Netherlands. Now the third staging will be in Kristianstad, Sweden. The premiere will be on February 16, 2008. Rehearsals will start next week. While the first two casts were original Disney productions, the third will be an independent production (but still licensed by Disney and ERB, Inc.). Twenty-nine shows are planned (roughly 10,000 tickets), but if the audience keeps coming, the show's run will probably be extended.

Producer Emil Sigfridsson, who also plays the leading part of Tarzan, is 27 years old and makes this production through his one-man company. The leading parts are professional singers and many of the supporting cast are amateurs playing for fun. The dancers come from a company called Kaoz, where the members are part-time professional dancers.

The band is made up of six professional musicians. Two keyboard players, two drummers, bass and guitar. The music will be based on the Dutch score, but with a lot of local arrangements, as the Dutch band is much larger.

The aerial movements will be designed by a Swedish company that works with bungee-jumping, etc.

The same script as the original Disney production is used, but some of the staging will be different. There will also be some changes in who sings some of the songs. For example, the opening song "Two Worlds" will be sung by Terk and a girl from the ensemble, not by Tarzan.

Emil and his girlfriend Zara (who plays Jane) were in New York in October and had a meeting with the Disney staff. It is hoped that Phil Collins and Disney representatives will attend the premiere. The actor who plays Porter is neighbour to the mother of Phil Collins' house maid, so there might be an inside track to invite him.

Olle Högberg who plays the part of Snipes, the sailor who arrests Clayton in the end, has just started a Website for the production. The site, which is still in its early stages, is at:
www.tarzan-kristianstad.se

This report has been compiled from information provided by 
Olle Högberg, cast member and Webmaster for the Swedish Tarzan Musical
and Ron de Laat of the Holland meets ERB! Website

Swingin' Memoir
New York Post ~ November 15, 2007
A deal was just signed for an even hotter celebrity memoir: Cheeta's. Tarzan and Jane's chimp sidekick, now 75 and officially the world's oldest chimp, inked a deal with publisher Ecco, which will have "Cheeta: My Story" out next fall. The ghostwriter is anonymous. Ecco chief Dan Halpern said, "Tarzan and Jane's best friend still loves the ladies - in 2006, he was seen canoodling with legendary chimpologist Jane Goodall. Cheeta, who's been known to watch his old movies with his grandson, promises to dish on his career (and the likes of Errol Flynn), as Hollywood's most famous swinger." 

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Cheetah's Tail-All
World of Wonder Report ~ November 15, 2007
We don't know if Cheeta, in his ghostwritten memoir, Cheeta: My Story, will be revealing whether or not he ever touched Maureen O'Sullivan inappropriately (like children, animals can get away with that), but it's bound to be a good read nonetheless. The now-graying 75-year-old chimp starred in a dozen Tarzan movies, outliving his costars, and retired from films in 1967, after presumably having a speaking part in Dr Doolittle. Said the oldest living chimp's publisher, Dan Halpern, "Tarzan and Jane's best friend still loves the ladies

"I've just read the news about the difficulties with the patent of the 'Tarzan Yell' by the European Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market. If I remember correctly, the graphs of the normalized envelope and the spectrogram presented by R.G.C JENKINS & CO in this office are not considered to fulfil the 'self-contained' requirement. 

"I'm just working on scientific software that can extract from any monophonic sound, through several steps, a very accurate score with conventional notation on 5-lines staves, including several specific - although also conventional - microtonal music symbols because the 'Tarzan Yell' is not tempered in the semi tonal scale. Thus, the final score I've created fulfils all the requirements of any patent office. 

"In order to test aurally the accuracy of this score, I built from it artificial midi-sounds. As you know, midi-files can be performed by a lot of synthesizers and computer music software. Thus, you can ultimately hear the 'Tarzan Yell' played by many different midi-instruments in the following mp3 sound files: 

Tarzan Yell on Clarinet
Tarzan Yell on Oboe
Tarzan Yell on Pan Flute
These artificial sounds can be compared with the original recording: 
Original Tarzan Yell
You will notice how how the artificial sounds keep all the features of the latter." 

Yours sincerely, 
Francisco M. Camas 
Spanish National Biotechnology Centre (CNB)
Madrid (Spain)

For more on the yell see: ERBzine 1929 and ERBzine 1482

 
Tarzan thuis met gebroken teen
(Tarzan at home with broken toe)
AD.NL ShowBizz ~  November 11, 2007
Actor Ron Link, who plays the leading role in the Musical Tarzan, has to take a rest for several weeks because of a broken toe. 

Link broke his middle toe at Friday evening. He collapsed with his bare feet against something and broke his toe.

If he is able to play again next week depends on the recovery process. While Link is recovering, his understudy, John Vooys will perform the role of Tarzan,

News item submitted and translated by Ras Thavas

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Balkans’ Idolatry Delights Movie Fans and Pigeons 
New York Times ~ November 11, 2007
ZITISTE, Serbia — In this sleepy farming village, residents talk of a new spirit of exaltation ever since a towering bronze and concrete statue of Rocky Balboa was erected in the village square, his boxing gloves raised in a heroic gesture of triumph. But Rocky will soon have company in the region: Tarzan, Bruce Lee and a former Playboy model. In a phenomenon that is either delighting or alarming cultural critics, monuments to icons of Hollywood and popular culture are sprouting across the Balkans, after almost a decade of bloodshed and vengeance that killed as many as 125,000 people in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. 

In Medja, a farming village about 12 miles from Zitiste near the Romanian border, city officials are frantically lobbying to raise money to erect a bronze statue of Tarzan. The statue will pay homage to Johnny Weissmuller, the actor and Olympic swimmer. Residents say he was born in Medja in 1904 and proudly show off his birth certificate at City Hall. When he was a baby his family emigrated to the United States. There, he went on to global stardom playing the loin-clothed ruler of the apes and booming out his distinctive ululating yell. 

In Medja, Tarzan’s soon-to-be new home, Dragan Pusara, an assistant to the mayor, said he hoped that the brawny likeness of the town’s native son, Johnny Weissmuller, would bring luck and investment to Medja, after devastating floods. He said Tarzan was a fitting icon for Serbs because Tarzan had been put in the jungle with nothing and, against all odds, managed to survive. Tarzan, he added, would transcend the ethnic divisions of Medja — home to Serbs, Hungarians and Serbs of German descent — because “he belongs to everyone.” “After World War II, hundreds of displaced people arrived here with their families and one piece of luggage, and they needed to be strong to survive just like Tarzan,” he said. More>>>

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A Place for Strangers and Beggars 
Where story tellers and friends hang out
Jim Van Pelt Live Journal ~ November 9, 2007
http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/89988.html
Simultaneous time:  There's no reason a story needs to be told chronologically or from a single character's point of view (as long as it works, right?).  If a story has multiple points of view, it may be necessary to tell what is happening at the same time but to different characters.  The classic transition into simultaneous time is, "Meanwhile, back at the ranch."  Edgar Rice Burroughs made an entire career out of switching viewpoints and simultaneous time.  I think almost every Tarzan book tells you what Tarzan is up to for a chapter until he gets in trouble, then cuts to some other characters and what they are up to until they get in trouble, and then it's back to Tarzan.  The simultaneous time creates suspense and paces the story. More>>>

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Dateline Jasoom Podcast 43 has been launched
www.PanthanPress.com
Where did ERB get the name Billy Byrne for The Mucker? A search of the Chicago Daily Tribune provides a possible answer. A Tarzan Pepsi commercial. A comedian's song about a chimp and a woman. Elmo introduces the Panthan Press YouTube site.

TARZAN YELL IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK IN AMERICA. . . 
". . .  a significant example of U.S. protection of unconventional marks."

Legal firm, Fross Zelnick has crafted unique and innovative strategies to protect clients' most valuable intellectual property assets, including the legendary TARZAN yell. . . . The registration was granted, under Registration No. 2,210,506, and is often cited as a significant example of U.S. protection of unconventional marks. More>>>

BUT. . .
EU REJECTS THE YELL IN EUROPE
DEMANDS THAT IT BE WRITTEN IN MUSICAL NOTATION
See the actual EU trademark authority decision document in Tarzan.com at:
http://www.tarzan.com/docs/yell.pdf

The story has been reported worldwide but the most widely read has been the one appearing in the London Times on November 1, 2007. ERBzine supplied images and background information to the editors. They linked to our ERBzine feature - THE STORY OF THE TARZAN YELL in ERBzine 1482

Anyone can ape Tarzan as court rules his yell is public property in Europe
The Times ~ November 1, 2007
Tarzan’s famous cry could summon animals from the jungle but appears to have had little influence over the beasts of European bureaucracy. After a ten-year legal battle the apeman’s distinctive yell has been rejected as an EU registered trademark. With a fortune to be made from ringtones, advertising and computer games, the literary estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author who created Tarzan, is keen to protect the sound. But the EU trademark authority has ruled that, although it is possible to protect sounds that can be represented by musical notes, Tarzan’s cry does not qualify. The application described the yell as “consisting of five distinct phases, namely sustain, followed by ululation, followed by sustain, but at a higher frequency, followed by ululation, followed by sustain at the starting frequency”. It even included a spectrogram of the cry, which dates from the first “talking” Tarzan film starring Johnny Weissmuller. More>>>

It's A Jungle Out There
Tarzan's yodel is surely not the only calling card which merits a trademark
The Times ~ November 1, 2007

The Greatest Tarzan Yells of All Time
The Times ~ November 1, 2007

 

PIRATES OF VENUS

New sites of interest to ERB fans
from Mark Maine, Executive Producer of Angelic Pictures,
ANGELIC PICTURES - PRODUCER'S OF ERB'S PIRATES OF VENUS
www.AngelicPictures.com
Pirates of Venus movie - myspace
Carson Napier - Earth Man on Venus
Princess Duare - JanJong of Kooad, Venus
Dateline Jasoom No. 42 has been cast . . .
Hear it at www.panthanpress.com
Episode 42. The Muckers host a visiting member of the L.A. SubERBs, Tracy Griffin, on a tour of the Oak Park Historical Society and various ERB sites around Chicago. For pics of this thrilling adventure, click here. 

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Since ERBzine released news on Pixar's visit to the ERB, Inc. offices the story has been picked up by hundreds of SF/Movie/Comics/Entertainment Web sites and Blogs -- worldwide. See the story HERE
It's even appeared on digg.com:
JOHN CARTER OF MARS - 5th TIMES THE CHARM?
"Disney and Pixar are once again hard at work in hopes of another successful film - and considering the long list of hits they've put out, we're betting on this one to be a winner too. This time around it won't be Cars or Incredible superheroes; nope, they're sticking with the classic sci-fi of Edgar Rice Burroughs as they prepare to bring his character, John Carter of Mars, to life on the big screen. ERBzine, the official Edgar Rice Burroughs Incorporated web-zine, said "Pixar's Jim Morris [vp], Andrew Stanton [director], and Mark Andrews [screenwriter] discussed the John Carter of Mars film project with Burroughs representatives, Danton Burroughs, Sandra Galfas, and Jim Sullos."... 
This, after spending most of last Tuesday digging through the ERB Inc. archives in search of buried treasure (we think they found it!). 
Everyone involved is thrilled to get their hands on this project, and most of them admitted to being "inspired by Burroughs' creations from a very early age," according to ERBzine.
If the film does well at the box office, they've got a trilogy in mind

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Story of Tarzana
Active Rain Real Estate Blog
Tarzana is woven with interesting history.  The area was known as the South Hills of Van Nuys prior to March of 1919, which was when Edgar Rice Burroughs purchased what was known as the Miraflores Estate and renamed it “Tarzana”.  The estate, comprised approximately 540 acres, along the south side of Ventura Boulevard (which was then the State Highway), and West of what was known as Encino Acres.  With the newly paved Reseda Avenue at the center, the property extended back to the skyline of the Santa Monica range of mountains.  Edgar Rice Burroughs was best known as author of “Tarzan of the Apes”.  He began subdividing approximately 4 years later. More>>>
The page links to one of our ERBzine Tarzana pages ". . . for the rest of the story."
www.ERBzine.com/tarzana

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Lifetime Achievement Award For Burroughs
Standard Bred Canada
Mal Burroughs, a gentleman, builder, sportsman, visionary, horse owner, breeder, amateur driver and the first horseman to breed, own and drive a Hambletonian winner will be the recipient of the Monticello-Goshen Chapter USHWA's Lifetime Achievement Award when the chapter holds its 49th Annual Awards Banquet on Sunday night, October 28 a at Kutshers Country Club in Monticello, New York. And though he claims to be kin to the writer Edgar Rice Burroughs of Tarzan fame, in reality Malvern Burroughs is, and has been, more intrigued with harness racing than he ever was with literature. More>>>

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'The Rembrandt of the comic strip'
CNN Entertainment
HiLites:
* Milton Caniff retrospective at Ohio State University
* Leading cartoonist created "Terry and the Pirates," "Steve Canyon"
* His vibrant style was groundbreaking, influential

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Study: Common Ancestor of All Apes Walked Upright
Fox News
The ancestors of humanity are often depicted as knuckle-draggers, making humans seem unusual in our family tree as "upright apes." Controversial research now suggests the ancestors of humans and the other great apes might have actually walked upright too, making knuckle-walking chimpanzees and gorillas the exceptions and not the rule. In other words, "the other great apes we see now, such as chimps or gorillas or orangutans, might have descended from human-like ancestors," researcher Aaron Filler, a Harvard-trained evolutionary biologist and medical director at Cedars-Sinai Institute for Spinal Disorders in Los Angeles, told LiveScience.

Filler analyzed how the spine was assembled in more than 250 living and extinct mammalian species, with some bones dating up to 220 million years old. He discovered a series of changes that suggest walking upright — and not with our knuckles — might actually have been the norm for the ancestors of today's great apes. In most creatures with a backbone, the body is separated roughly in half by a tissue structure that runs in front of the spinal canal. This "horizontal septum" divides the body into a dorsal part (corresponding to the back side of humans), and a ventral part (or the front half). A strange birth defect in what may have been the first direct human ancestor led this septum to cross behind the spinal cord in the lumbar or lower back region — an odd configuration more typical of invertebrates. This would have made horizontal stances inefficient. "Any mammal with this set of changes would only be comfortable standing upright," Filler said. "I would envision this malformed young 'hominiform' — the first true ancestral human — as standing upright from a young age," he added, while the rest of the mutant's family and species continued to walk around "on all fours." This change to an upright posture could have occurred "very abruptly, with just a few shifts in 'homeotic' genes, or ones responsible for how the body plan is laid out," Filler said.
 

 

Pixar's "John Carter" Team Visits Tarzana
Pre-production for the Disney/Pixar "John Carter of Mars" film is gathering steam

Tarzana, CA: October 2, 2007
The Pixar creative team spent Tuesday morning exploring the massive Edgar Rice Burroughs archives in the ERB, Inc. offices on Ventura Blvd.  Pixar's Jim Morris (vp), Andrew Stanton (director), Mark Andrews (script) discussed the "John Carter of Mars" film project with Burroughs representatives, Danton Burroughs, Sandra Galfas and Jim Sullos. 

All six members at the meeting expressed a deep commitment to the project, acknowledging that they had been inspired by Burroughs' creations from a very early age. This is evidenced in the excitement held for the John Carter property and the plans for a film trilogy faithful to the Burroughs books. Projected release date is sometime before 2012.

Danton Burroughs presented the creative team with a wealth of resources, including art samples and books by ERB scholars such as Irwin Porges and John F. Roy. They noted that their major resource to date had been the thousands of official ERB, Inc. Webpages and Webzines.

~ Bill Hillman