Monthly Archives: August 2009

Carolyn was just sent a link to a site that features photos of live rats playing tiny musical instruments. How could I not post such a thing?

Every so often, someone writes to ask me what web hosting service I use for this weblog and the other sites I maintain…and they also want to know how happy I am with them. As you can see in the margin over on the right, it's Dreamhost. How happy am I with them? Well, I've been there since October of '98 and have never thought of going elsewhere. What does that tell you?

There are occasional outages and tech problems but that's true of any web hosting company. Every problem I've had at Dreamhost has been fixed promptly and with a real sense of someone on the other end who was trying to help. I can't imagine what any other outfit could offer that would wrest me away from where I am now. Maybe service that was just as good plus Creamy Tomato Soup.

I even make a few bucks through my web hoster. If you sign up with them by clicking through one of my Dreamhost banners, I get a tiny cut. So here's another one of those banners…

Writers Guild elections tend to be messy and argumentative and there are times when we seem more interested in clobbering each other than in besting those we should be uniting against. I have a certain respect for anyone who wades into WGA politics just for the sheer selflessness it requires. No matter how reasonable or moderate you are, there will be times when you're a Democratic Congressman addressing a town hall full of Glenn Beck fans.

It's campaigning time for the next election and it comes down to one slate versus another. One has Elias Davis as its presidential candidate; the other has John Wells. Both men have long histories of Guild service and anyone who tells you that either would destroy the WGA is engaged in hysterical hyperbole.

Davis and his cabinet have been endorsed by Larry Gelbart in a much-circulated open letter. I respect the hell out of Mr. Gelbart as a writer and as an advocate for writers, and I'm also backing the Elias crew. I do think though John Wells scores some solid points in his rebuttal to it.

For what, as they say, it's worth: I think it's true, as Larry says, that the years John Wells was our president were years when the guild was too timid and should have been more militant. What I'm less sure about is how much of that was John and how much of it was the mood of the membership at that time. There's only so much any leader can do to drag unwilling, bickering combatants into battle. I'm pretty much a hawk on Guild negotiations but I'm not willing to write off the view that there are times when we just aren't "together" enough to go that route, and it's better to get what we can get via non-confrontational discussions. In that context, John Wells just might be an ideal Chief Exec.

But I also think that an approach of that kind can only serve us in the short run and in times of weakness. Moreover, being non-confrontational almost always leads to the kind of rotten offers that sooner or later make confrontation mandatory. In a very real sense, every time the WGA has found itself in a position where a strike was necessary, it was necessary because Management thought it could exploit a perceived unwillingness to strike…so strike we must. Or at least, we have to make it clear that we will walk if they try to force a package of rollbacks and bad terms on us.

The last negotiation was one such period of necessity. We'd been too accepting and we paid for it. We had to go on strike to prove we wouldn't roll over and take what was truly a dreadful offer. Striking or acceptance were the only two options open to us and striking was the lesser evil.

Fortunately, through the wisdom and courage of our wartime prez Patric Verrone and his administration, the WGA got its act together…and I thought they handled a bad situation about as well as humanly possible. Given the spectacular collapse of the Screen Actors Guild in its subsequent negotiation, and given that the studios have obviously not abandoned their wish-dream of keeping all the revenues from New Media and not sharing, it would be insane for us to to forsake the momentum we've established. The best guy to keep that up and running is Elias Davis.

One other point. If you read the above links or other discussions of WGA politics on the 'net, you will do yourself a favor to remember the following. Ignore (do not even read) messages that are not signed by someone who at least appears to have signed a real name. Folks who sign themselves "Working Writer" may be unemployed gardeners. Six people in a row hiding behind pen names may all be the same person agreeing with himself. An anonymous person who claims to be working on a hit TV series may be working at Baja Fresh. It's not so much that they're lying but to get a sense of the "electorate" by reading those messages is like trying to gauge the mood of America from the people who phone in to Talk Radio. They're not the most representative. They're just the angriest.

Less than three hours ago, I asked here if someone could recommend a piece of software I need. Several folks, the first of whom was Steve Billnitzer, suggested dbpoweramp Music Converter. I'm using it now and it seems like exactly what I need, especially since I downloaded some extra codecs. Thanks, all.

In the past here, I've plugged the heck out of Zero Hour, a one-man show in which the one man is my buddy Jim Brochu playing Zero Mostel. A great evening in the theater. If you're in New York between November 14 and the end of January 2010, you have a chance to see it. See it.

I'm looking for a piece of PC software that can do the following. You specify a directory and it goes through that directory (and maybe any sub-directories) and automatically converts all the .m4a and .wma files to .mp3 files.

I saw something of the sort a while ago but foolishly did not obtain it then. I can't find it or anything like it now. Anyone here have a thought?

The schedule of programs on the C-Span website is always a mess. It's a great batch of channels but they have a dreadful website. Anywho, I don't know how it is on everyone else's screen but on mine, shows always overlap and run into each other and it's hard to tell what's on at what time…which matters a lot with a channel like C-Span that's forever deciding what to put on or changing their minds about it at the last minute.

And the way they overlap or truncate names can be annoying, as you can see from the actual screen capture above. I have a pretty low opinion of George W. Bush but even I wouldn't call him that.

I used to have a friend who would jokingly quote the maxim, "A lie is as good as the truth if you can get anyone to believe it." Funny how I keep thinking of that as I read about this whole "Death Panels" nonsense.

End-of-life Counselling is a very good idea, not only for the government but for the person whose life may be ending soon. If someone wants to make the case against things like Living Wills and Advanced Directives, I wish they'd speak up and make it honestly…but I don't think anyone does.

Newt Gingrich certainly doesn't. As noted here, just a few months ago, he was saying that it "empowers patients and families to control and direct their care." He also noted how much money it would wind up saving our health care system while simultaneously doing better by the folks receiving that care.

Sarah Palin certainly doesn't. In April of '08 as governor or Alaska, she signed a proclamation for a "Healthcare Decisions Day" to note "the need to plan ahead for health care decisions, related to end of life care" and went on to "encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives."

As far as I can tell, no Republican leader does. The 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill which the G.O.P. wrote and passed overwhelmingly contained funding for such counselling.

But we're now in that wonderful realm where you campaign by deliberately misrepresenting the opposition's position. Democrats have sometimes done this by claiming that some G.O.P. proposal would destroy Medicare or Social Security, thereby panicking older voters into shunning it. Some Republican or Insurance Company stooge (not that there's much separation there lately) looked at the Health Care Reform proposals, noticed the same end-of-life counselling provisions and thought, "Hey, we can pass this off as giving the government power to kill your grandparents!"

The Republican leaders spreading this manure don't believe that. In fact, once this country passes whatever kind of Health Care Reforms it winds up passing, there will probably be a bill to reinstate whatever part of the provision gets dropped, and the reinstatement will probably be co-sponsored by Republicans. But right now, folks like Chuck Grassley obviously think it's a dandy way to stall the bill and weaken the parts of it that they really think should be weakened…so they're willing to go along with this lie. And it's a sad fact for everyone that lying seems to be working. That just means there'll be more of it — from everyone.