Monthly Archives: April 2019

Okay, so why is Mr. Peanut on the packaging for Planters Cashews? It's bad enough he's selling his family — his whole species, in fact — urging you to purchase and devour his kind. But shouldn't that be sufficient for him?  Why is he on the cashews? And why isn't there a Mr. Cashew?

Or was there once and he was murdered, shoved into the roasting pits by some unidentified goober with a top hat, cane, gloves and a monocle?  Thereafter, Mr. Cashew's family was horrifyingly chopped up into halves and pieces, and now Mr. Peanut is selling them, too.  Has anyone looked into this?

Is his goal here to boost cashew sales so that peanut sales will diminish?  Is he like Daffy Duck urging Elmer Fudd to shoot rabbits instead of ducks?  Somebody help me with this.  I can't be the only person sitting up night after night wondering about this kind of stuff.

As we are all well aware, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested the other day on suspicion of computer hacking, rape and impersonating David Letterman. This brings up all sorts of ethical questions. Is this man a journalist whose alleged transgressions ought to be tolerated in the name of Free Speech? Or is he a trafficker in purloined documents with no more rights than a guy who deals in stolen cars?

One thing I do know: The vast majority of people are thrilled and delighted when leaks of private documents embarrass or harm their enemies, and outraged when they themselves are harmed. Just about no one stands on any principle larger than that.

Emily Stewart sums up the two sides of the argument, shedding genuine light on it and making me more confused than ever on where I stand on this.

Julien Neel, the one-man singing group, favors us with this fine selection…

Here's Frank Rich explaining why William Barr is a bad Attorney General, why Joe Biden is a bad candidate and why Pete Buttigieg may be a very good candidate.

I agree with Rich on the first two. Barr is there to work for the interests of D.J.T., not U.S.A., and Biden increasingly reminds me of his lookalike, McLean Stevenson: An excellent supporting player but not a star. I like what I've seen of Buttigieg but it's way too early in the mating game for me to pledge my heart to anyone.

Dave Gordon writes to ask…

I've been reading with interest your postings on the dispute between the WGA and "agents who package," and was wondering if this dispute might spill over to other workers "in the biz" who work through agents, such as actors and directors. Do you have any insight about this, or information from actor or director friends?

This will definitely impact actors and directors and perhaps others who are not going to let the WGA get a piece of packaging fees (or whatever comes of this current mud-wrestling) and not get that piece for themselves.

We have a thing in this town called Pattern Bargaining, which essentially means that when one of the three major guilds — WGA, DGA and SAG/AFTRA — gets or loses something, a corresponding get/loss is almost inevitable for the other two. If the writers get $100 more, the directors will get $100 more and the actors will get an even greater amount since any film or TV show will have many more actors than it has writers or directors. Other labor organizations may benefit as well.

There are occasional exceptions to this but they are rare. Often, the producers seek to capitalize on this by configuring what they give up so it is more meaningful to one guild than another. When Cable TV was coming in and it was apparent they'd have to make a deal to compensate writers, directors and actors for working in this new marketplace, they came up with a formula that worked for directors but did not work for writers. Then they gave it to the DGA and tried to force it on the WGA…and we had to strike to not take that bad-for-us deal. We finally won but it took an ugly strike to achieve it.

The WGA tends to be the union that most often fights these battles first, which is why we strike more often than the other two. The Directors Guild never strikes. The actors strike rarely. It was kind of inevitable that when the issue of packaging became a cause célèbre, it would be the writers who would be the first to charge into the fire. In a way, I'm proud of my guild for being so bold but we do tend to get singed more than the others.

If you have high cholesterol, maybe you'd better not watch this video. Just seeing the luscious hunks of beef served at Peter Luger's Steak House could cause you to need a massive injection of Lipitor. Peter Luger's is probably my favorite restaurant in the country and the "probably" is because I haven't dined there in more than ten years. I'm just assuming it's still as good as it ever was. If you go there, remember these seven things…

1. They don't take credit cards.
2. Look all you want at the menu but you're going to order the steak.
3. The German Fried Potatoes are about as good as any side dish you will ever eat.
4. I don't eat desserts but if you do, you're going to want to leave room for dessert.
5. When they deliver your steak to the table, don't dive in. Let it sit for at least five minutes to finish cooking and to rest.
6. And the plate itself will be so hot that it will do to your flesh what it did to the cow's.
7. But the shlep to Brooklyn and the hassle of making a reservation and the price…it's all worth it.

So let's visit the place where the best steak in the country (some say) is served and devoured…

Talks have broken off between the Writers Guild of America (the folks who represent writers) and the Association of Talent Agents (the folks who represent their agents). The issue on the table is packaging — when the agency that represents you, the writer, also represents (or is) the production entity. The contention here is that when you're in this situation, your agent's main loyalty is to the show or movie, not to you. Your agent(s) could actually profit by not getting you top dollar for your services or by advising you to accept terms or offers that are in the best interest of the movie or show, not you.

This has been going on for a long time in this town. I'm not entirely sure why it has become a battle to the death right now but the membership of the WGA recently voted 7,882 to 392 — that's 95.3% — to take a stand on this. There's a new document agencies must sign and in it, they agree not to engage in packaging arrangements. The agencies responded by saying they have to do business that way in the changing marketplace wherein they deal with mega-corporations. They proposed settling the dispute with a list of concessions which include sharing packaging fees with writers and increasing transparency in where the money comes from and where it goes.

The deadline in these negotiations was extended once but expired today. Today, the WGA told the ATA that their offers were woefully inadequate in terms of scope and numbers. WGA members are now being told that if they are represented by an agency which has not signed onto the new agreement — which is almost all of them, including the major agencies/packagers — they must fire their agents. They can do this by signing a letter online via DocuSign and the WGA will deliver them.

So you know what side I'm on but — full disclosure — this does not directly affect me since I don't have an agent at the moment. If I did, I'd fire him or her if I had to. I was with three different agencies over thirty years but none of them were "packagers" while I was with them. I declined all offers of representation by agents who did that kind of thing because I was always at least a little suspicious of such arrangements. At times, I became quite aware how a writer can be horribly wronged when his or her agent has this kind of conflict of interest.

To be fair, some writers profited greatly from these arrangements but many did not. The practice needs to be eliminated or at least changed in ways that will prevent all that wronging. Since I haven't followed the current brouhaha closely, I have no idea how likely a compromise is…or if it comes down to a big game of "Chicken," who'll flinch or cluck first.

I do know it's going to be messy. And I hope that we don't wake up and find Show Business sprawled on the pavement unmoving while the police draw a big chalk outline around it. I'm imagining every agent in town is on the phone, trying to sell the whole thing as a new series with "CSI" in the title and a lot of his clients in key positions.

Ten minutes of conversation with the real Bob Fosse, much of it about All That Jazz. There are parts of that movie I love and parts of it that make me cringe but every bit of it is kinda fascinating…

Writer Christopher Geoffrey McPherson took time out from working on his current novel to send me this short/sweet story…

Just want to share a story I have about waiting for a doctor: A few years ago I was scheduled for heart surgery (heart defect necessitated a new artificial valve). I got to the hospital about 9:00 a.m. My surgery was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. About 10:00 a.m. they told me the doctor was delayed and offered to reschedule the surgery. I'm pragmatic about such things. I opted to stay (I'd already fasted, arranged to be at the hospital all day, etc.)

At about 6:00 p.m., they finally prepped me for surgery. I was on the table until about 10:00 p.m.

The next day the surgeon came to see me. He thanked me for working with him to reschedule my surgery. He said: "I got a call that a man had suffered a coronary artery dissection," the thing that'll kill you if it's not treated right away. "Because you were able to wait for your surgery, I was able to save that man's life."

Sobered me up right away.

Yeah. I think something like that happened when I was kept waiting the other day. And come to think of it, when I had my gastric bypass surgery in 2006, I had to wait something like six hours past the scheduled time because my surgeon had to open someone else up first to fix someone else. I could wait but that guy's problem couldn't.

I absolutely understand that. I just think in the era of cell phones, there's a way they can alert us to this kind of thing. We'll still have to sit in waiting rooms for long, boring hours sometimes but every now and then but there could be times we could get there later or even go out and fill that time with something useful and come back.

• I enlarged and studied that first photo of a Black Hole. I think I see Trump's tax returns in there right next to a complete copy of the Mueller Report.

Tomorrow is the day hotel reservations open for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Read here all about it and do not ask me for assistance. I have nothing to do with this.

This runs twenty-one minutes and features songs from twenty-nine Broadway musicals. Your challenge, should you decide to accept, is to watch the entire thing without singing along. Those of you who don't know the words to any of these tunes will have a significant advantage…

Call it a feeling, call it a hunch, call it wishful thinking…but I still have something suggesting to me that the Republican nominee for president in 2020 may not be that Trump guy.  If it is him, then it may not matter all that much who the Democratic nominee is because the whole election will be a big referendum on Trump.

By then, I don't think there'll be any swing votes about him.  Everyone in the country will be pretty committed to wanting Anyone Else or Nobody Else.  And Trump won't be running against whoever the Dems nominate.  He'll be running against Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and maybe Robert Mueller and anyone else who has made up the Fake News that he's ever done anything dishonest or wrong in his life.

Hard to believe but today marks two years since my lovely friend Carolyn Kelly left this planet. I think I said this last year here but there are times when it seems like twenty years ago and times when it feels like twenty minutes. She was a major part of my life for two decades and almost every day now, something reminds me of her. When I was sitting in that jury room last Friday, there was a woman sitting a couple of rows ahead of me who could have stunt-doubled the back of Carolyn's head.

Alas, when she turned around, she wasn't Carolyn. No one is these days…which is a true shame. The genuine article was a vibrant, mostly-sunny, compassionate presence in the world. She cared about everyone she met and even people she never met but only heard of. We need more of that.

During the twenty-or-so years she was my companion/girlfriend, we separated five times, I believe. I remember every time we got back together and I even remember some hurtful things that were said during or around the break-ups. That's the downside of having a good memory: Sometimes, you remember things you'd prefer to forget. But what I have forgotten are the particular events or statements that led to those break-ups. I mean, I know they were all her fault just as I'm sure she remembered them as all my fault. But I can't recall or even imagine a reason to not be with someone as bright and beautiful as she was.

I do remember one moment when I knew we'd be getting back together. I was never going to see Carolyn again and she was never going to see me and I was in Las Vegas with another lady. Our third and last evening there, I was telling her a story that involved my "ex" and this other lady stopped me and said, "You're going to get back with her, you know."

I said, "What makes you say that?"

She said, "Because every time you address me by my name, I hear a tiny 'K' sound in your voice before you correct yourself and get my name right."

I thought for a second, sighed and told her, "Yeah, I guess I am going to get back with her."

The relationship changed (of course) when her cancer reached the stage that I knew I'd be losing her permanently in the sadly-foreseeable future. Her doctors unanimously confirmed it to me and one even laid out a timetable that was only off by about two weeks. It was not until around the final month that Carolyn seemed to accept it, though as long as she could speak, she still tried some of those "miracle" cures that patients with nothing to lose try. I don't think she expected any of them to work but I can see where it might feel good to not stop trying.

I got to thinking a lot about her the other day when I was picking out the photo of her to post with this piece. I have hundreds to pick from so it was a matter of deciding which one best captured that real, pure, beautiful smile of hers that I so enjoyed being around. Like most great smiles, hers was a two-part effort involving not just the mouth but the eyes as well, along with a sense of the joyous spirit within the person.

The photo I selected was taken when we were at a WonderCon in San Francisco in 2009. She was posing with someone else but I cropped him out. The picture doesn't do the smile full justice but I'm not sure any photograph could. You had to be there to fully experience how wonderful it was. It's one of the things I miss most since she went away — along with her voice and her wit and her insight and her understanding and her charm and her talents and her approval and…well, it's a long list. By next year, it will probably be an item or two longer.

One more thing about the post preceding this one: Several folks have written in to remind me of something I noticed myself once in the film of Damn Yankees. Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon do that great dance number and as they come off stage, Tab Hunter — who starred in the film — thanks and congratulates them. And what he says to Mr. Fosse is, "That was terrific, Fosse!" You'll have to listen fast to hear it but that's what he says. Go back and play the last few seconds of the clip if you don't believe me.