Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Congoing

I expect to be showing my face at more comic conventions than usual in 2008. I'm a special-type guest at the WonderCon in San Francisco from February 22 through 24, and another special-type guest at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, which is July 24 through July 27. (Actually, it opens with Preview Night on the 23rd.)

Registration is now open for the 2008 convention in San Diego and if you're thinking of attending, it wouldn't be a bad idea to sign up now. They sold out of memberships last year and everyone will be very surprised if '08 doesn't sell out long before it occurs. I understand the current plan is to not even be set up to sell admissions at the convention. Memberships will probably be scarce enough that someone will be selling them on eBay for a goodly amount. That is a prediction, not a joke.

Also, there's a progress report out that will (one hopes) kill the oft-heard rumor that the convention is moving to Las Vegas or Anaheim or L.A. or Dubuque. We keep telling you here that they're staying put and somehow, no one believes us. The con has signed to be in the same place through 2012, which is as far ahead as any convention ever plans, farther than most. Hotel rooms may be as difficult to procure in '08 as they were in '07 but I'm hearing that after that — for a number of reasons, including new hotels opening — things should get a lot better.

Of course, I'm always at the San Diego con and usually at the San Francisco one, as well. What'll be different next year is that I'll be doing a lot of new (to me) ones, especially after my book on Jack Kirby comes out in — they tell me — late February. I'll also be doing a couple of brief book tours and I'll tell you all about these when plans are firmer.

• Posted at 1:02 PM · LINK

Strike Stuff

As a gesture of mutual back-patting or reaching-around or whatever you want to call it, I commend Bob Elisberg for his articles over on The Huffington Post that seek to make sense of the Writers Strike. And by the way, maybe we oughta stop calling it that and start calling it the Producers' Forced Strike or something of the sort. Of all the lunkheaded things that have been written and said about this ugly negotiation, none is more lunkheadier than the notion that anyone in power at the Writers Guild wanted to be on strike. In all the WGA picket lines I've walked, I've never encountered anyone who was "strike-happy" unless you define that in some aberrant, awkward way. ("He preferred going on strike to taking a rotten deal? Why, he must be strike-happy!")

So where are we today with this thing? They're negotiating, there's a news blackout and there are rumors that a deal has already been quietly made and that they're in there even as we speak, checking the commas on it. Excuse me if I don't believe that last part. It's possible but I think it would be healthier not to believe it. At least, not yet.

I do think a settlement is possible this year because I think the Producers have realized something. In order to soften this Guild up to the point where they'd take a crummy deal, they'd have to wait until March or April at the soonest. But there's really no point in settling with the WGA in April because the Screen Actors Guild contract is up at the end of June, and SAG is at least as militant on all the key issues as we are. That has been the brilliance of the WGA-SAG alliance in protest rallies and online videos. It has put the AMPTP on clear notice that SAG considers our fight as Coming Attractions for their fight.

To settle with the WGA in April would mean you'd be getting scripts in May and June...just in time to not start filming them because you're worried that SAG will strike. I mean, there ain't a lot of point to having scripts for My Name is Earl if Earl's out on the picket line. You're not going to start shooting a feature film on June 15 if the actors could all walk out on June 30. The only thing that makes sense from the Producers' position is to settle with the WGA and then try to make an early deal with one of the other two above-the-line guilds...probably the Directors Guild and then SAG. Once they've settled the trigger-point issues with two of those labor organizations, the third won't have a lot of room in which to manuever, nor a lot of necessity.

Like I said, I think it's healthier not to presume we're in the Endgame just yet. In any negotiation, one or both parties is liable to throw that last minute lowball, hoping the other party is eager enough to be done with it all. The WGA came into this with a pretty long list of issues that needed to be addressed, and the rank-and-file is expecting movement in some of those areas even if the matters of DVDs and Internet Streaming are resolved. That's why I don't think we're going to hear before the week is out, as some people seem to be predicting, that there's a deal that the WGA Negotiating Committee can recommend to the members. But I've been wrong before and on this, I'd love to be wrong again.

• Posted at 9:50 AM · LINK

Leftovers

As you may be able to discern from the time on this posting, my brain is still on East Coast time even though my carcass is decidedly situated in Pacific. That was one of the longest spells I've ever been away from home in my life and I found myself wishing the trip had been shorter...though so many great things happened during it, I can't imagine which days I'd have given up. A better hotel room in New York, a little less rain and better Internet access would have made things just about perfect. Oh, yeah — and it would have been nice if the lady who was housesitting for me hadn't phoned to say that a water leak from an upstairs toilet was creating an aquacade in my kitchen and dining room. There's a fun bit of news when you're far, far from home.

Here are a couple of other things I'm remembering from the trip, none of them particularly important...

• In Times Square, even in the rain, there are guys handing out leaflets and sales pitches, trying to get tourists to visit some night spot or store. Right outside the Marriott Marquis, there was a gentleman touting Dangerfield's, the comedy club that was owned by and named for Rodney Dangerfield. I've never set foot in there but the rumor is that if you do, you see a lot of underpaid comics perform to an audience of tourists, many of whom came under the delusion that there was a chance of Rodney putting in an appearance. Since his death, the odds of that happening have only gotten marginally worse. When he was alive, Rodney was filling big rooms in Vegas at $100+ a ticket. There wasn't much chance of him spending an evening surprising folks who'd already paid to be in a small room on First Avenue. Anyway, a week or so ago out in the New York rain, I was watching this guy hawking reservations to the small room, and I'm guessing he was on some sort of commission deal, getting X bucks for every outta-towner he caused to pass through the club portals. He was great, putting on a little show and doing an uncanny Rodney imitation. The logic of the sales pitch wasn't too sound — it was kind of like, "Go to this club because you used to love the comedian who sounded like this..." but he got the attention of passers-by, which few other street barkers were able to do. And he was probably funnier than half the comics you'd see if you did go to Dangerfield's. Also, cheaper.
• U.S. Airways has gone to an odd system for the boarding of the plane. Other airlines generally divide you up into three or more groupings based on rows — rows 21-30 get on the jet all at once, rows 11-20 get on at the same time, etc. U.S. Airways divides the plane into seven or more "zones" that seem to be based not just on rows but on whether you have a window seat, an aisle seat or one in the middle. Carolyn and I took two U.S. Airways flights yesterday and on each, we were assigned different zones even though we were sitting side-by-side. But the rule is — and they don't explain this very loudly — that if you're travelling with someone who has a lower zone number than you do, you board when they board. Since about 70% of all passengers (that's a guess) are travelling with someone else, this kind of wipes out the whole point of the new divisions...or would if everyone understood the part about boarding with whoever has the lowest zone number. I saw a number of people who didn't know and who had to figure out which of them would carry what onto the plane because they thought they couldn't all get on at the same time.
• I understand the need for security in office buildings these days but in order for Sergio Aragonés and me to get into the offices of MAD Magazine, the editor had to leave his desk and come down in the elevator to the lobby. Is this the best use of this man's time? In fact, isn't this the kind of thing MAD Magazine would be ridiculing?

And I'll probably think of more of these over the next day or three.

• Posted at 8:21 AM · LINK