This runs a little over six minutes but you'll love it. One of the cleverest, funniest men I know is Chuck McCann, who is an actor and a puppeteer and a voiceover artist and an inventor and if I ever needed a liver transplant, it wouldn't surprise me if Chuck couldn't do it and still be very funny at the same time. We have here a sketch that he did on one of his TV shows. Chuck is the man on the right and he's also the narrator. The gentleman on the left is our pal, the late Bob Ridgely. Ridgely was also a voiceover artist and an actor and an announcer and the possessor of the wickedest, filthiest sense of humor I've ever encountered. Here is one of the cleanest things he ever did...
Is there anyone out there these days who thinks that taxes should be lower for all? Everyone I see these days who advocates the cutting of taxes seems quite disinterested in trimming what our government spends and sometimes — as Kinsley notes — even hostile to the idea that new expenditures should be linked to some funding source. Unless I hear someone get realistic about how to pay for cuts or new expenditures, I figure it's all just another way of saying, "Spend as much as possible on the stuff I care about. Just make sure someone else pays for it."
June Foray is, of course, the First Lady of Cartoons. Last evening, ASIFA — the International Animated Film Society — hosted a lovely birthday party for her out in Burbank, despite the fact that her birthday was a month ago. In any case, a whole bunch of her fans and friends turned out to eat cake, toast her and have a good time.
There's not much else to say beyond that but since we all love June, I couldn't let the event pass without mentioning it. I'll also mention that June's long-awaited autobiography is nearing completion (Earl Kress and I are helping her with it) and I'll announce here when there's an actual publication date.
The vote total is in on the Writers Guild Strike Authorization Vote. A record (for the Guild) 5,507 members cast ballots with 90.3% voting for authorization. No one is surprised it passed but I think a lot of folks are surprised by that percentage. As I noted in this post, the WGA membership includes a lot of people who regard writing as a secondary or tertiary career and could perhaps be expected to vote in the interests of their other, main careers. I would have expected something more in the 80% range.
The more impressive number is the total number of members who cared enough to vote. There are around 12,000 members in the Writers Guild but many times when we're asked to vote on something, it's in the 30% range. Again, at any given time a lot of our members are simply not involved in TV or movie work and don't pay a lot of attention to Guild matters.
So does this mean no strike? Nope. At last report, the two sides were a hair closer to common ground and this may get them a few hairs closer...but we still want a number of things that the Producers seem determined to not give up. Not to us, not to the directors and not to the actors. The issues and determination are all still there for a nice, long, nasty work stoppage. The one hopeful thing here is that in the past, some of the worst strikes have resulted because the Producers grossly underestimated the Writers' resolve. Thanks to this vote, maybe they have a little better sense of what they're up against.
October 21, 2007
