snip~ It was father Frank Zappa who first nurtured Ahmet's love of beasties. 'He was always recording, so if I wanted to spend time with him he'd stick headphones on me, put on a monster movie and laugh in the background at the pure rubber stupidness on-screen.'

His full name is Ahmet Emuukha Rodan Zappa. Rodan is from a Japanese monster movie (Rodan's most recent outing was in 1993's Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II) ~snip

full text here

I attended a panel at SDCC that Ahmet was on, he talked a lot about the rubber monster movies the family used to watch, and how it influenced his writing (specifically The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless). I had no idea it was part of his name, though. Pretty cool.

> I attended a panel at SDCC that Ahmet was on

Huh! I had no idea . . .

My friend Tim Eldred was on the "Competing for the Young Adult Mind with Words and Pictures" panel that Friday:

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci06_prog_fri.php

Ahmet did monopolize the conversation a bit, and I had a feeling many of the attendees were there to see him, but he did bring up some interesting stuff during the discussion.

Don't forget Zappa & Gary Panter knew Hedorah was way cool way back!!

you wanna believe I've had the Sleep Dirt LP since, what, 84 and I NEVER said to myself "say, that's Hedorah", while jammin' to "Filthy Habits"

Gads, I suck.