Why The WGA Is On Strike

You may or may not know that the Writers Guild of America is on strike. You may or may not care. But for those of us who are trying to make a living in the entertainment business, it does matter.

The issue is over residuals. Networks don't want to pay writers a piddly 2 1/2 percent residuals for shows broadcast over internet. And everything is going to the internet. And if writers don't get them, you think we actors will? My brother-in-law was an accountant for MCA Universal. He saw where the money went. It's one reason he left entertainment biz. Studio chiefs and networks make gazillions of dollars. And they charge their lavish lifestyles to a production. Because they can.

The Youtube video below will explain it all. or read this blog posting from Ed Bernero, producer of Criminal Minds .

Take me back to 1977

Larry got this email with a bunch of pics from the JC Penny Catalog, 1977. It looked like it had been circulating around, so I did some sleuthing and found the original. It's a blog posting on 15minutelunch. Here are some previews. Seriously did anyone ever wear this?
Or take a dump while sitting on this? I don't want to steal the blogger's thunder. Go check out the original post.

My letter in the Times

Every once and a while an article prompts me to write a letter to the editor. Like downward spiral musings of Chrissy Hitchens in "Why Women Aren't Funny." Vanity Fair published part of my response, along with scores of other women. And I got a good rant of it on Burnside. A week and a half ago, LA Times writer Carina Chocano "No Laughing Matter For Actresses" about the dearth comedy roles for women. Which is probably a better examination of the issue. Anyway, they published my letter in the Sunday Calendar Letters today! I don't know if it's available online but it's on Page E2 of Today's times. Aw heck, here it is. ...

Purple State of Mind, Take This Bread.

I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed this week with the amount of work I've got to do on my book; As well as depressed over how little I've managed to do, and how little I've been contributing financially in my marriage. Not to mention my car has been in the shop for 8 days.

Last week Larry was shooting a video, which was great because that meant he didn't have to write boring fund raising copy. But for the second time we've missed a screening our friend Craig Detweiller's film, A Purple State of Mind.
It opened the City of Angels Film Festival last week. Craig co-chairs Fuller Theological Seminary's Reel Spirituality program, where they integrate faith and film. Here's a synopsis from the Purple website

Craig Detweiler and John Marks have known each other for twenty-five years. When they roomed together as sophomores at Davidson College, they were devout Christians. It was Craig's first year in the faith, John's last. After college, they parted ways, and when they met again, years later, they never talked about what happened... until now... Their conversation starts as a bull session between pals and becomes a story about how people make friends, and how they lose them; how people change, how they grow, and how they deal with the big stuff: death, sex, the meaning of life, God. The conversation between Craig and John captures in all its intimacy and difficulty a one on one reckoning between two people who want to understand each other but won't compromise their beliefs.

Now this is a film I am determined to see, and I don't want to wait for Netflix.

I emailed Craig my apologies and frustration over missing his film. I also wanted to tell him about a book I stumbled upon. Take This Bread by Sara Miles. An amazing story of a terribly inconvenient, 21st century conversion. Here's an excerpt I condensed from her prologue....

Mine is a personal story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert: a blue-state, secular intellectual; a lesbian, a left-wing journalist with a habit of skepticism. I'm not the person my reporter colleagues ever expected to see exchanging blessings with street-corner evangelists. I'm hardly the person George Bush had in mind to be running a “faith-based charity.” ....

... At a moment when right-wing American Christianity is ascendant, when religion worldwide is rife with fundamentalism and exclusionary ideological crusades, I stumbled into a radically inclusive faith centered on sacraments and action. What I found wasn't about angels, or going to church, or trying to be “good” in a pious, idealized way. It wasn't about arguing a doctrine--the Virgin birth, predestination, the sinfulness of homosexuality and divorce––or pledging blind allegiance to a denomination. I was, as the prophet said, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I found it at the eternal and material core of Christianity: body, blood, bread, wine poured out freely, shared by all. I discovered a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where the poor, the despised and the outcasts are honored. ... In this book I look at the Gospel that moved me, the bread that changed me and the work that saved me, to begin a spiritual and an actual communion across the divides.

You can read more about Sara and her book on her website.

For more on Craig and his movie, check out A Purple State Of Mind. They're taking their show on the road, so check the Purple Website to see if it's coming to your town.

Halloween is over. Today is All Saint's Day. I'm inspired by saints everywhere who are living out their faith, no matter how inconvenient, difficult or challenging.

And now I'll get back to my book and stop whining ...

Become Your Best You, Doo-bee doo-bee doo

Joel Osteen has another book out entitled, "Become a Better You." It follows his wildly successful book, "Your Best Life Now." Maybe I can contact George Clooney and see if he can air drop some of these books on his next mission to Darfur. They can package them along with "The Secret." You know, if the Muslim extremists in Sudan could just apply these seven principles on how to "become a better you," maybe they'd drop the whole genocide thing. Or maybe they'll become better at mass murdering. It could go either way.

Osteen is the pastor of a massive church where ten thousand people flock every week to hear his uplifting sermons. He seems really nice. Sweet. Happy. His wife seems really pretty. So why does the guy makes me nervous? Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon. I know our world is mired in negativity and we could all use a boost. His uplifting messages aren't evil. But haven't the past 30-40 years of therapy, self-help, self-actualization, etc, proven that SELF-improvement isn't why we're here? Or as Jesus put it: "The Son of Man did not come to BE SERVED but to SERVE, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

I remember hearing an actor at a seminar say basically this: In movies, the characters we most admire are those who face horrible circumstances, insurmountable odds. They struggle, they doubt, they despair, but they push on. Even if they fail or die, they win a larger victory, and we love them for it. And yet, we wake up every morning and want God to make everything go our way.

My small group is going through scenes and movies that have impacted us spiritually. Last night we watched a scene from The Two Towers. Frodo and Sam are exhausted from trying to get the ring to Mt. Doom. Here's the text:

SAM: It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are.
It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something.

FRODO: What are we holding on to, Sam?

SAM: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

What is it, do we not have anything worth fighting for any more? It seems like the battles worth fighting are taking place elsewhere: in Darfur or Somalia. Places where real lives are at stake. Or if they are here, but they're in the ghettos and the prisons, far from any photo ops. Meanwhile the battle to eradicate our own selfishness and narcissism is glossed over by cute little principles about "Becoming Your Best You." I wonder if we whole foods shopping botox shooting middle class chumps have forgotten what really matters.

Seek pleasure -- and in the long run you will find boredom, disillusionment and enslavement. Seek God -- and you will find, among other things, piercing pleasure.
John White, "Eros Defiled."

Katrina It Ain't

Maybe we've learned lessons from Katrina. The LA Times praised Qualcomm stadium as "a relief center to behold." Cots, games, free coffee from Starbucks, ethnic foods, and jazz bands. The number of volunteers rivaled the number of refugees. Neighborhoods reconstructed themselves. Good. I need to focus on the good.

I need to check out the photo galleries, the faces of the people who've lost everything. Well OK, there's an aerial shot of a burned down mansion with a six car garage. They have other houses I'm sure. But I need to keep my mind on people when I pray.

Because my cynicism kicks in. Some areas hardest hit by the fires ... Poway, Rancho Bernardo, are where the mansions are. Are they receiving this treatment because of their wealth? PS: Please read comments from aazmom at the end of this post. She's in northeast end of San Diego on the front lines and her observations are worth noting!

A fellow Burnside blogger posted a link to a Mike Davis' book Ecology of Fear, to the chapter, "Let Malibu Burn." Davis exposes the disparity between how the rich and poor are treated. Worse, the way LA leadership caters to developers and landlords at the expense of the poor.

My friends have a ranch about 25 miles northeast of Castaic (site of the northernmost LA county fire this week). It looks north to the Tehachapis, and down into the southernmost tip of the Antelope Valley. It’s rustic. No DSL. A computer modem can't go faster than 24K on dialup. But they bought it for that purpose: to get away from the speed an insanity of urban life. To them, quiet is beautiful.

They nearly lost the ranch a few years ago to wildfire. They were lucky. But it's sub-desert. It's risky country.

Land developers don’t view it the same way. They’re trying to convince the locals that a self-contained town would do well down in that empty unused valley space. They come in, build some houses and a mall, and Bob's Your Uncle, you're set. Think of the revenue, the jobs, the consumers ... think of the Starbucks! My friends have gone to the town meetings, bringing fears about the lack of water, the fire danger, and the noise pollution. But the developers talk louder about revenue. Maybe the fires will convince neighbors to vote against building. But they already voted in a Dick Cheney style Hunt club.

I hope to get back to their ranch. After the fires die down, before the snow. And before the developers bring their back hoes and destroy that valley's greatest resource: Silence.