Gilbert Gottfried - a bigger loss than you think

My second RIP post in a matter of weeks, but what the hell. This is important for me, and the two people who read this blog. 

Gilbert Gottfried died this week. People know the raspy voiced New York actor/comedian from a million little things, but most of the world would know him as the voice of the parrot in Alladin and appearances in both Problem Child film. But his unique, chalkboard delivery has gotten him work in lots of cartoons, and many oddball live action roles, such as Abraham Lincoln in A Million Ways to Die in the West, and many 90's sitcoms. As far as cartoons, my favorite was Mxyzptlk in the 90's animated Superman series.

And the definitive pronunciation of a name I 
had struggled with all my life "mixy spit lick"

Gil's no-holds-barred humor got him in a lot of hot water. His family claims his early 90's appearance at The Oscars where he rattled off several Pee Wee Herman jerking-off references resulted in a partial blacklisting in Hollywood, where only directors and writers who were steadfast fans tended to give him character actor work. 

In the 90's he made many appearances on The Howard Stern Show, where "Woke" had yet to exist. There was a multiple appearance segment where Gilbert donned a Dracula costume, and went down to the bustling Manhattan streets to ask passersby questions about the OJ Simpson case ("do you think OJ has a black heart? As black as the darkest caves of Transylvania?"). Pretty nutty. 

"Do you believe Chris Darden 
shtooped Marcia Clark?"

And doing a Dracula voice had already been part of his act for many years. See, GG was a fan of old movies. Especially horror movies of the 30's through 50's. But not just Horror. Abbot and Costello, Three Stooges, all the Universal stuff. I remember long ago reading about how Gilbert would do stand up at colleges, and nobody would know any of his ancient references or voices. Only when doing something like a Mickey Mouse joke would he get laughs. 

But if you are a certain age, say well over 40, you may well have grown up where one of the few local off channels showed old movies in the afternoon, and sometimes all day on the weekend. All the Universal horrors, Dead End Kids, Bogey, Stalag 17. King Kong, Godzilla, and here and there some old Hammer horror films. And you probably had a weekend horror host, such as Elvira and various local "ghoulish" personalities, like in LA we had "Seymour" a mustachioed Gomez Adams wanna be in a cape and fedora. These had the real treats. 

This is what Gilbert grew up on in New York, where the force was strong with old movie marathons apparently. So this was a large part of his stand up. And this love of the old and often obscure led to him starting the podcast that is the subject of this post: Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. 

Along with co-host, writer and fellow old film buff Frank Santopadre, they discussed old films, actors, and conducted many interviews, with Frank keeping the agent of Chaos Gil on the straight path. They worked hard to bring on old guests who were in the last years of life, to preserve their memories and words. Staggering old actors (it was mostly women in their 90's who still lived) from Frankenstein films or old musicals would come in and share tales of sad old Hollywood while Gilbert cracked wise and howled with laughter. Discussions about moments in time that would never be spoken of again where the order of the day. Deep, deep dives. 

And raunchy stories were some of Gilbert's favorites. He was an old Hollywood gossip machine. He would ask old celebrities if they knew about Cesar Romero's fetish for having orange wedges tossed at his naked ass, or about how Tony Curtis was in a limo in the 70's, saw Walter Matthau walking down a New York street, and rolled down his window to Brag about having just slept with Yvonne Dicarlo of the Munsters. 

More modern comedians would often come on to tell their own tales of Sad old Hollywood fandom, such as Patton Oswalt, or voice actor Billy West (Stern Show, Futurama, Ren and Stimpy) who much like Gil was influenced by old celluloid, being well known for impersonations of Grandpa Al Lewis of the Munsters, or Larry of the Three Stooges (basis for Stimpy). 

There are other great podcasts about old film, such as another fave of mine You Must Remember This. But the amount of stories, and heavily sought after interviews with the barely living, that made the podcast special. A treasure, in a way. 

And that is as much a tragedy maybe as the loss of the man. His work, though sometimes crass, cast a light on the forgotten but not all gone. How many tales still hanging in there will not be told? 

The podcast will probably be retooled by Santopadre. I'd like to see it be rotating hosts; Billy West, Patton, Seth MacFarlane. Any old movie fan with a sense of humor may not replace Gil, but they can carry on his important work. Important to a fan of, I'll say it again, Sad old Hollywood. 

that well again...

But for now, go take a look at the archives. I think much older ones are behind a paywall, but that might change. Give some props to Frank and dearly departed Gilbert if you grew up on stuff that was already decades old. Goodbye Gil, I hope you are an angel with a dirty face (old movie reference, 'natch).

Cheers.

 

Goddamn - it's Outdoor Survival!

 Last night was board game night at my place. I had been looking forward to it all week. Eldritch Horror, Dead of Winter, and maybe Call to Adventure were the likely favorites. But since my newest game was Formula D, that demanded a trial run. It was an immediate new favorite game. We played two full Moracco races. I didn't do so great, but that my besties loved it brings me the most joy. Playing a cool game with friends that are so close they are like family.

I was going to post about that today, but something else happened that demands attention. So my post of Formula D must wait. I simply cannot skip the headline. 

"L" has started a new hobby. She is going around yard sales and swap meets to find old/beat up board games, intact or otherwise. She has been planning other things to make out of those games. I'm not real sure what all that is, though it sounds like it could be anything from game-themes wall art to game-themed handbags. I'm not creative in that way, but it sounds pretty cool. And she has been picking games up for next to nothing. 

So they show up and  L has a pile of games she got that morning for around 3 bucks all together, and she wanted to show them to me. OK, cool. 

But when they walk in, I'm on the big screen playing GTA 5. I was actually playing tennis in the game, and this court happened to be right across the street  from the 'Vespucci Beach" canals, a loving recreation of the place I was born not long after my parents immigrated to Los Angeles. So with great pride I was able to run across the street and show them my childhood stomping grounds.

So then cool things of the night number 2. L's score of old games.

Hmm..I think I've heard of these. Especially Last Night on Earth, which I think is a zombie game with minis. That's maybe a good one. Hope its intact.

I hope this is just a zombie cosplayer
and not a homeless guy fucking with
somebodies game

Then there was Wizards, with a cover I recognized right away. I know that cover, but don't remember the game. But I feel I at least played it way back in the day. I'm having vague childhood memory flashes. Maybe Gary at Aero had it stocked.  

Then of course is the main course. I saw it and exclaimed "Goddamn! It's Outdoor Survival!!!

Poor L. Though she and hubby B have been fairly enthusiastic boardgamers prior to meeting me, L didn't play D&D until the campaign I was tapped to run for them and a few other locals. We became best friends during that campaign, while most of the other players were more or less asses in seats. But now more than two years later they are like family to me. But I guess I mention them and their importance to me since I moved to a new city where I didn't know anybody, in a lot of my posts.

Yet another well I
maybe go to too much.

But anyway, she (along with B) had no knowledge of these games. Which is even more exciting, because she is into lots of boardgames. Lots of them discovered in recent years at a local brew pub that has hundreds of games. Many abstract ones I have no interest in (I just want action along with my whimsey). But she it into it enough that she sometimes will don dollar store costuming that goes with  particular game themes, such as in King of Tokyo..

Run for your lives, 
it's Gigazuar!

But she did not know these. She was thrilled to see my reaction to this stuff, all of which she got for next to nothing. And on first glance most look like they have the minis and stuff. But I backed off. I always have after-guilt when we play something like Eldritch Horror, and some satanic force makes me start going on about things they are unaware of. I end up explaining what shit like Mi Go and Hounds of Tindalos are all about. They are usually interested in the things I suddenly geek out about though. I'm kind of their pop culture guru. But they were especially eager to learn what (little) I knew about Outdoor Survival. 

L is so clueless as to deep gaming pop culture she can't even get her terms right. Last week she referred to me in a text messge as a nerd. So I of course corrected her. I'm a "geek", dammit. Nerds are what Fonzie used to beat up.

Pictured: Fonzie, a nerd, and
whatever the hell a Chachi is.

So I began my long tale. Naw, not really. What I knew could fit in a thimble. But as I started gaming with the little OD&D books I was exposed to the couple of blurbs about some mysterious board game you added to the mix to do outdoor adventures. I certainly didn't seek it out back in the day. At first my games were primarily city based, first with City State of The Invincible Overlord (the city had dungeons, and you just had to exit the front gates to be in a wilderness so who needed a world map?) and not long after my own homebrew city of Tanmoor and environs. 

But remembering Outdoor Survival from my childhood to this day might have been possible because of a couple shortish OD&D campaigns I did over the last decade or so. The existence of the OSR and my exploring it online a little over 10 years ago is why I probably had the box cover in my mind and all this stayed in my memory banks. 

So I mostly tell them right off that it was mentioned in Original D&D and suggested that the map at least be used for wilderness stuff. And of course I later learned that many back then and even more recently used the map as their campaign map. Hell, if I had it back in the day I for sure would use it. I used maps back then from old SPI WW2 games for local terrain and stuff. Outdoor Survival's map seemed to have a wide variety of terrain, making it useful for all types of adventures. And maybe the most cool of facts about it, that outdoor enthusiast shops stocked it. That it was maybe getting a lot of play on camping trips. 

..and grab a copy of that boardgame so
we don't get lost and die of thirst

But yeah, the simple but bitchin' map is what maybe helped keep this timeless. 

So my pals got a kick out of all this. And I did to. I'm not sure which, if any, L will be cannibalizing for her projects, but I'm thinking of talking her into keeping it. Not just because it seems she could get anything from 50 to 100 and something online for it (it seems to only have a little box wear - whoever she bought them off seemed to have respected the games). But most importantly I've been trying to talk her into being a dungeon master, and the OS map would make a good campaign starting place. But all in all it was a really outstanding geek-out night thanks in part to a neat discovery. 

Oh, and we played some Formula D. Very exciting game. I'll post about that soon. 

Cheers. 

GTA5 - not love at first sight, but love did come

 

At some point after getting the newest model XBOX the other year, I picked up Grand Theft Auto 5. I had seen game play at friends' houses for years and knew I would try it sooner or later. I mean, I was long used to being years behind on my games.  But had gotten into playing with others online in other games, especially with my old friend "T." She had been a Skyrim nut for a handful of years, and I had suggested we try Elder Scrolls Online as a thing to do together, since I had been playing ES since the original Morrowind. Though we could still play together, little dungeon delves and fishing and such, she had been putting much more time into it on her own. She is now in guilds and in far off lands, while I sort of futz around when I play alone. Since she is playing ONLY ESO, and I like to diversify, we will never be anywhere near equals in that game. 

Imagine her as Valeria from the Conan movie. 
Now imagine this is me..

As I was trying to keep up with T for several months, GTA5 only got a little play here and there. Maybe an hour every weekend or so. Though much of it is intuitive, it is also hard at times for a noob. Driving was bad enough, but driving and shooting? Yeesh. Fairly early on there was a mission for main character Michael that had you chasing crooks on a big rig that had stolen his yacht (don't ask), and you drove your sports car on the equivalent of the 405 Freeway, shooting at dudes on the yacht who were trying to kill your buddy Franklin who had climbed aboard. Man, it was hard. Must have played out that mission a dozen times before being successful. 

I figured that even harder missions would follow, and that was intimidating. It may have kept me from playing it as much as ESO. But man, this game setting did appeal to me. So much of it was not just based on Los Angeles, but even parts of my home town Venice Beach (Vespucci Beach in the game), the side streets and alleyways, was spot on. Buildings I had been in and neighborhoods I grew up around were recreated, often in loving detail. My favorite was the Venice Canals, my birth place. Having a gunfight in my childhood neighborhood was mind blowing. 

And this familiarity with Los Santos/Angeles was super appealing to me. But what else to keep me involved? I mean, every time I got in a car to drive I ended up rear ending other cars, and accidentally running over pedestrians. You see, if you don't drive crazy, you are pretty much just stuck in traffic. The main reason I actually Left Los Sant...uh, left Los Angeles. So even just tooling around you are blowing street lights and driving on sidewalks. Otherwise its an LA traffic simulator. Yeah, fuck that mess. Then the cops chase you, and you crash and get out to run as bullets blast into your body. 

Yeah, a bit disappointing at first. But in the last couple of weekends I suddenly went from "meh" to "omigawd I love this shit". Here are some reasons why:

Maybe some 10 or 12 hours into it, I get it. Understanding has come to me. You see, you spend 10's of hours putzing around, driving and walking around nice areas, getting into occasional fist fights and gunfights and wondering what the hell is the point. Well, it finally dawned on me. As I started getting better at driving and other activities, I realized that the game has a grand plan. It is training you for what is to come. Basically, this is the prelude for you putting together your gang of bank robbers. The game is letting you fuck around so you can get familiar with just being alive. The physics of your world. It knows you will be a bad driver at first. It knows you will be bad at shooting people. And it wants you to get better by just plain experiencing the school of hard knocks in Los Santos. It knows that no setback is permanent. You die or get caught by cops, the just try again. 

When I turn the game off and go to bed I imagine
myself as that Mayhem insurance guy walking
away leaving this behind..

I started regularly going to the shooting range to be a better gunman. I started driving at high speeds around the city to be a better driver. I stopped worrying about being a better driver, and just drove at high speeds through the city. And suddenly I was exponentially better at that.  School of hard knocks.

 

Suddenly I could feel the improvement. Not just in my personal skill, but the game engine itself eases up on you, steadies you. A sort of smoothness starts setting in. 

The other night I was playing the main character, Michael. I decided to go down to "Santa Monica Beach" at the California Incline (his psychologist lives down there), and ran into a jogger lady. You know, one of those older, cut, kinda pretty but hard jogger ladies you see who are way serious about it. She challenged me to a race down the incline stairs to the beach, and though I was wearing a suit and dress shoes, I took her up on it. I was doing OK for a middle-aged guy dressed up, but I kept faltering. I clearly did not have the stamina to keep up. So another activity goal; do some jogging to get better at running. I'll probably need that for bigger missions later anyway. And to eventually beat that lady. Oh, sensible shoes probably don't hurt.

The boy from the hood character, Franklin, gets in a street race. All the other racers seem so much better than me. I try and try but just can't win it.  I keep crashing into poles or houses on tight corners. Then around the 6^th try I remember that Franklin has a special ability to go into "slow time" when driving. Boom, I win that race. Again, this will likely be important skills during a heist. The game is prepping you. School of hard knocks. 

OK, also, for whatever reason playing Tennis was unlocked. Michael's big Sunset Blvd house, surrounded by office buildings, has a tennis court. Wandering over to it, the choice to play is activated. Michael's alcoholic, cheating wife shows up to play. I quickly get my ass handed to me, while she chides me and insults my manhood. Ugh. My vow to get better at tennis happens. And there are other tennis courts around the city where I can play other people to get better on the side. And this isn't for nothing. I looked it up, and playing tennis makes your character all around stronger. Hell yeah. School of (kinda) hard knocks. 

Now that's my kind of hard knock school 😍

As an aside, an encounter happened to me playing Michael last week that just blew my mind. I was tooling around downtown, and saw a question mark in the courtyard of some big office building. I got out the car and walked over to see what was up, and some guy had a marijuana legalization table set up by the fountains. After his speech he gave me a doobie. And when I hit it I realized it was clearly sprinkled with some stronger drug, because ugly aliens suddenly appeared in the area. A ray gatling gun appeared in my hands. Suddenly here I am, in the heart of downtown, being charged by weird aliens as I gunned them down one by one with my Buck Rogers blaster. It blew my mind. This was truly when I knew I loved this game. Anything can happen. School of hard knocks.

They have mental powers. I have a Sci Fi
gatling gun. I like my odds.

But yeah, the improvement of mechanics and physics as you go along is something I always loved in games.  The Elder Scrolls seems to have lost that, but I remember loving it when it was present in Morrowind and Oblivion. But it is so obvious in GTA5. I can actually feel myself getting better as I do things. Yeah, the feeling has won me over. 

So Michael's old geek buddy Lester has a jewelry store heist in mind. We staked out the Rodeo Drive jewelry store and everything so far. But before the mission I think I need to maybe put a few more hours into practice to get prepared for the big time. More driving around the city. More time in the shooting range. And of course, more tennis and jogging. For the job. And of course to be able to beat my nagging, ball busting adulterous wife at tennis, and to win a race against that mouthy jogging bitch down by the beach. School of hard...well, you get the point. 

I predict I will be playing the campaign mode for a long time to come. Hell, I'll probably mostly be jogging and playing tennis around the city for the next month. Just driving around there are always nice things to look at as you level up your skill set..

And testosterone level

Cheers

Nazi's of Tekumel

 

Hardly a subtle title for a post about an obscure game/setting that after several decades is getting more chatter than it ever did, though not for reasons (most) of its fan base is happy about. 

A focal point of the sudden controversy is over at the blog Grognardia, where blogger (often pejoratively referred to as "The Pope of the OSR") James Maliszewski has, since his return from his abandoned Kickstarter debacle years ago, been making the occasional post about his long running Empire of the Petal Throne campaign online. Though the setting has its fans, the posts about his gameplay seem not as welcome as his posts on old gaming magazines and Dungeon Master Guide snippets such as hit point generation and henchmen concepts. 

Maliszewski even did a post not too long ago seeming to lament the lack of comments on these entries and threatened to stop posting them. "Oh no!" cried his faithful. "Please don't!" OK, maybe not so much. But this campaign he does, along with posting long (quite dry IMHO - I rarely could get past a couple paragraphs when I tried to follow them) entries about the gameplay, seems of prime importance to him. But now his heart is broken. Sundered. He is bewildered and lost. Naw, after the weeping and gnashing of teeth he started posting again chop chop. Will he continue his campaign? Perhaps, but I might hazard a guess he'll stop posting about it. At least one of his posts following the wake seem Tekumel related. 

FYI this post seems to be about Grognadia only because the blog kind of seemed to have more Tekumel stuff going on than other places. Though I didn't look too hard. I'm not real in touch with what is going on in Grognard circles these days.  Tenkar's Tavern seemed to have a video post about it, and no beef with The Tavern, but I can't get past a minute or two of most OSR related videos anywhere on the net. His are no exception.

OK, enough potatoes and on to the meat. Apparently, MAR Barker, creator of Tekumel, is an unabashed Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite, as evidenced by some Sci Fi book he wrote while still living, extolling the virtues of Nazi ideals (and perhaps even ripping off decades old Marvel Comics Captain America plotlines regarding a "4^th Reich").

The big takeaway for this image is
Jane Weidlin from The Go Go's
has a blog about comic books

 Ouch. Not just that, but that the Tekumel Society, (Made up of his fans? Family members? I dunno), has known about it for a long time. 

I don't know about Nazi, but Barker
could have a Blofeld/Goldfinger
 thing going on here...

Maliszewski is shaken. His readership pop up in the comments to offer support/unsupport. 

My heart breaks for you. May you find peace with your relationship to Tekumel and all the joy and belonging that it has helped you find.

This really must be the utter worst for fans of Tékumel. It's bad enough when a favorite author turns out to be a bit of a prat, but in the RPG setting you feel like you've been walking around inside the mind of the author. I'm sure people in online fora will be debating and relitigating for years over whether Tékumel is "tainted" by its author's views. Just a sad situation all around.

I refuse to join in with an outrage mob of barbarians seeking to destroy all art and civilization.

It's really awful, and I sympathize with your situation as a "name" in the fan-community. 

OK, I'm not here to make fun, though acting like a family member died over finding out some fairly unknown game/setting/fictional language designer turned out to be a skinhead at heart is.. I dunno. Nothing I can say in that regard won't sound bad. Sure, James at Grognardia was in love with this stuff, and even had a fanzine going, so I guess you can feel bad for him. But, you know, campaigns end. You stop liking some stuff. I read LOTR 3 times growing up, and loved the films. But if I found out Tolkien ran around secretly setting homeless people on fire it would Surprise me. But overall, my reaction would probably amount to "...ah well. That sucks. But I was probably never going to read the Trilogy again anyway." Sure, if I did I would look at it differently. But it wouldn't ruin having hobbits in D&D for me. Oh well, there but for the grace of God go I.

Though I suppose if I was running some long campaign in Middle-Earth it would give me more cause to think. But getting all verklempt over it? Naw. Life is too short. If you can move on from a lost loved one, you can move on from an RPG to another. There are plenty of setting and genres to love (shit, there are guys like Erik Tenkar who appears to love and play them all). Many not put together by a modern Nazi. That we know of, anyway. 

 I have my own history with Empire of the Petal Throne. Not deep in experience, but deep in time. You see, as a youngster I hung out at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica (famous in OSR circles for its mention in Playing at The World), and here I was exposed to early RPG's at around the time they came out. When I started playing there the owner Gary and his crew were pretty much past playing D&D. They were playing Bushido, Runequest, Traveller, and even a bit of Chivalry and Sorcery. And also some Empire of The Petal Throne. I think I only played a couple of sessions. It had a dungeon crawl element, which made it a lot like D&D. But other than that it was very different. I appreciated that in a way. Its even possible I tried a session or two with my friends, though If I did it clearly did not stick. 

Big time EOTPT fan. I get the feeling this
guy isn't too worried about the 
nazi stuff

In Tekumel, Culture and such were very different. There were oddball aliens races. And it had a very complex history involved that I found fascinating at first. An advanced resort planet out of Star Trek or Dr. Who or something. Indigenous races rounded up into reservations so visitors from outer space could enjoy Space-Disneyworld.  The whole shebang getting lost in a dimensional vortex and smooshed together on one interdimensional planet devoid of stars. And THEN the apocalypse begins. Flash forward ANOTHER 60,000 years and hey presto Sci Fi world is now a fantasy world. Hmm..Ok, that all does sound pretty cool. Assuming I got it right. 

Like I said, fascinating at first. But these concepts did not hold my interest for long. I was far more interested in other batshit and perhaps more lowbrow stuff like Arduin or Wilderlands of High Fantasy. City State of The Invincible Overlord. This stuff was not the type of setting implied in early D&D. But I could grasp what it was. More or less easily described to players, if needing described at all. I don't remember my first time as a player in Empire of The Petal Throne. In fact, the older dudes briefly all wrapped up in it at Aero probably didn't even bother to describe the background to a young teen. But I can imagine there was something like "Your fighter of the single Gammahydron, "Umaoprah", arrives on the shores of Whatasnozz, and exits the boat. A large Sar'to'nack approaches you and hands you a moldy purple plum. This is your invitation to fight in the labyrinth of Gr'in'zel'mort for prestige, honor, and a shot at becoming a fighter of the second Gammahydron.."

Ok, it's been over 20 years since I read the book. But I'm sure a lot of names were all Ch'alty. 

 Arduin and Wilderlands were far more accessible. And they were full of variety. They were chaos really, and as a very young person I did not need more explanation than that. And I don't think it was less serious than some far flung, mushed together pocket dimension, high tech as magic setting such as Tekumel. Now, decades later I learn more and more about Wilderlands and Glorantha, that makes me wish I appreciated those even more back in the day. Wilderlands was a setting at the end of its days, a land made up of layer upon layer of civilizations that lay under our sandaled feet in the form of endless ruins, and a place still reflecting the remainders of ancient interstellar war. That was at least as awesome to me as what EOTPT had going in terms of background IMO.  And Glorious Glorantha, which I loved perhaps most for its divided map of "in Column A you get ancient Ireland/Germany and in Column B you get ancient Middle East...with a topping of ancient Greece." Great stuff, mostly just lacking made-up languages. Unless somebody did that. I'd like to know what Praxian sounds like. But again, more accessible. 

I suppose many consider Empire of The Petal Throne is more for the "intellectually" inclined. If you are like James at Grognardia and say "indeed" a lot, then I guess that's for you. 

So back in the day during its brief run at Aero, I got a copy of the game. I don't know when the boxed edition was available, but mine was pretty much the rules and a map in a plastic bag. For decades it was in my collection, occasionally pulled out to look at and wonder if I should try to run a campaign, or just stare at it like the oddity it was.  But I usually ended with a "nope," and playing something else. So many good things to play. 

Around 2000 I put up a lot of my old unused game stuff on Ebay. Bunnies and Burrows, early White Dwarf issues. And EOTPT went as well. Don't even recall what I got for it. But while I regret not holding on to that adorable old copy of Bunnies, I never missed Empire of The Petal Throne. Thought to be honest I'd like to look at it now. 

Would I run it? I guess. Maybe not. I dunno. If I did it would be as a museum piece. I don't really tend to hold up classic game designers on pedestals. Gygax, Perrin, Peterson. I loved the games but most of the time don't think much of the men behind them besides basic historical context. For the most part these guys despite often being the catalysts were just part of the ultimate stews they made, especially as time went by. But Barker was the sole dude behind EOTPT. It makes a difference. Yeah, I'm not Nazi, but I'd maybe run a short campaign of it if give the opportunity. Mostly if I didn't have to study the ins and outs of the backdrop. And I guess I would have to. And that combined with the Nazi stuff would probably make me "nope" and save the (probably pirated) PDF onto one of my old external drives. 

YMMV, as they say.