Two weeks until Preview Night at Comic-Con. They should start posting the Programming Schedules any day now on their website. I highly recommend that if you're attending, you spend the time to read over the schedule, make notes on what you want to attend…and make notes on what you'll attend as your second choice if you can't get in to your first choice. I will be posting my schedule here after the con posts their entire schedule over there. Other parts of their website may be of great value to you also, especially their COVID Policy.
It's kinda fun watching Chris Christie running for some job like Tucker Carlson's old one on Fox News. Pundits keep saying that he has no chance of getting the Republican nomination but really no one does if Trump stays in the race. If fact, if Trump has to drop out, it strikes me that Christie may have a better chance than the rest of that mob. All he might have to do is demonstrate that he can do as fine a job bashing Democrats as he's currently doing bashing Trump. If the Trump Fans have to look for another guy, they're not going to go with someone polite. They'll want an Attack Dog.
I had a call today from a lady who claimed to be with Medicare and almost immediately, she asked me to verify that I was a member by giving her my Social Security number. I told her, "If you were really with Medicare, you'd just be asking me for the last four digits because you'd already have the whole thing." She sighed, said "You're right…I'm not with Medicare" and hung up.
When I wrote here the other day about the SAG-AFTRA negotiations for a new contract, I forgot to make an important point I was going to make…
Ordinarily when you have one of these negotiations or a threatened strike, there's a rift in the union that may be subtle or it may be somewhat overt. Imagine two kinds of members of the actors' union. One is the Tom Hanks/Scarlett Johansson type. The other is the guy or gal who's living from bit part to bit part, hoping to get a few lines in this movie or a decent role on that sitcom…and maybe having to supplement their acting income with other kinds of employment.
In the cause of unity, the union has to serve both kinds but their needs are very different. Tom and Scarlett aren't working for minimums and with their clout, they can probably get all or most of what they want when their agents negotiate their deals.
The difference has caused schisms in SAG and AFTRA negotiations in the past…but this time, a major part of the battle is over Artificial Intelligence. And that's an issue that both categories of actors care deeply about. Both kinds want some control over how their voices and likenesses will be used and how they'll be compensated for that usage.
So this may be the strongest the actors' union has been in many, many years. The topic has certainly united a lot of the richest writers with the poorer ones in my union.