the grind, day infinity
Friday, November 16, 2007
Remember how I said today was going to be better? I should just stop making predictions. Remember when I said there’s no way the dot-com bubble would burst (and I put “burst” in air quotes)? Remember when I told my brother that he could fly if he just got a start from a high-enough place and then flapped really hard? And then a year later, when I told him that if he strapped enough bottle rockets to his wheelchair he could jump over the vat of glass at the recycling center? So much for predictions!
Today wasn’t better, is all I’m saying.
And remember when I said that the Daily Show writers rule before I even saw what the Colbert Report writers had to offer?
Well, the Daily Show writers still rule, so I’m not so bad. Many people can rule. And now that I think about it, maybe my brother just wasn’t using enough bottle rockets. Back to the drawing board on that one.
sorta solidarity
Monday, November 12, 2007
Mondays and Tuesdays are going to be rough the rest of the month. Probably Wednesdays and Thursdays, too. And Fridays. But not as rough as Mondays and Tuesdays. It’s just, we’re coming up on awards season and so we have all these special sections to ZZzzzZZZ…
So I said I’d stage a walk-out of my own when the writers strike started, but I lied. Turns out there are some entertainment blogs that are going dark as a show of solidarity for the Writers Guild. Wish I could too, but promises to myself are more important than promises to WGA members. Plus I’ve never been big on symbolic gestures that won’t amount to much. Now, if I could walk out of my 9-to-5 gig as a show of “solidarity,” that might change things a bit. You’re right, it’s more of a 10ish-to-6ish gig, but you know what I’m saying.
Speaking of that, just over a year and a month ago I was handed a pile of blue correcting pens when I started my current day job as copy editor for a weekly entertainment trade. I don’t even like blue. I looked at that pen pile and I thought, “Why do I have to be blue?” Then I told myself — promised myself, really — that I’d be out of there before the last pen had run dry. Arbitrary, yes, but it was a gauge that seemed apt. Well, I’m down to my last pen.
writers strike, and me without my solidarity
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
The writers strike is on, and I’m feeling a little guilty about my pledge for solidarity that ended up being what some might consider a lie. I vowed not to write a word once the strike began. Turns out I won’t get paid if I don’t write (I’m not sure if the Guild members realize this, but it’s sort of an important point). Also, how am I going to the grocery store without a list?
So it was more of a symbolic gesture, or an idle threat against no one in particular (lord knows my bosses don’t read this blog. I hope). I’m not a Writers Guild member, anyway, so no big deal, right? WRONG!
I still felt bad for making promises I never had any intention of keeping, so this morning I awoke with the single-minded determination to make some amends — or at least make myself feel better. I had a plan.
I live about three blocks from the Sony lot in Culver City. Sony is home to many TV series that will be severely effed if the strike lasts any significant amount of time, including the hit daytime series Days of Our Lives. Yeah, shit could get bad. More importantly, the Sony mega-complex is the site of some intense picketing. So I figured I’d drive by the picket line on my way to work and give them a long, loud honk of solidarity. It’s what I came up with, okay?
At 8:45 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, I headed north up Overland Avenue, positioning my hand over my car horn as I crossed Culver Boulevard and cruised by the main entrance to the Sony lot (in the right lane, for maximum effect). But where I should have seen a pissed-off throng of chanting scribes, all I saw was a van with three dudes unloading piles of signs in front of a table and chairs.
But where were the writers? The organized, motivated WGA members? Then I realized. Too early. I should know better than to expect writers to be anywhere before 9 a.m., and maybe 10 a.m. is a more realistic lower boundary. In fact, if everyone’s internal clocks weren’t still an hour ahead from the recent time change, the few go-getters I saw probably wouldn’t have been there yet, either.
I didn’t honk because one of the older-looking organizers was carrying what looked like a relatively heavy load, and I wouldn’t want to do anything to cause injury to a striking writer, because I want my first appearance in Defamer to be because I slept with a drunken starlet. So I didn’t really get to pay the WGA back for my lies, but I tried. I think that counts.
