Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Wednesday Evening

Just back from the event I mentioned earlier...the opening of the Will Eisner art exhibit at Storyopolis, a fine art gallery and bookshop on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. Lots of fine, creative people were there. Lots of Eisner art was on the walls. Couldn't have been a nicer evening.

Another weblog that mentioned the event made it sound like the exhibition would only be up for this one evening. Not true. For the next month or so, you can drop by Storyopolis and see a lot of drawings that will remind you just how good Will was. I suggest you do this if you're in the area.

• Posted at 11:21 PM · LINK

Memory Lapses

Scott McClellan's new book quotes George W. Bush as saying he can't remember if he ever used Cocaine.

I don't know if McClellan's quotation is accurate. But I do know that if you can't remember if you ever used Cocaine, then you used an awful lot of Cocaine.

• Posted at 5:34 PM · LINK

Go Read It!

The ten most incredible art thefts of the modern era. Take a look.

• Posted at 5:27 PM · LINK

Hollywood Labor News

Despite recent and dire reports of deadlocking, AFTRA has arrived at a deal that its board is recommending to the membership for ratification. This morning's press reports would suggest it is not a great deal, and I would imagine that Screen Actors Guild leaders are studying it right this minute — unless they don't yet have its actual terms — and pondering a response. One possible one could be a massive push to get AFTRA members to reject it.

The slightly-overlapping memberships of the two actors' unions may come into play here. SAG has 122,000 members. AFTRA has around 80,000. There's about a 44,000 person overlap and it's generally believed that those who are members of both unions are more likely to be actively working and therefore more likely to vote. So a lot of those who'll vote on the AFTRA deal will be doing so with an eye towards what that would mean for SAG.

AFTRA covers primarily magazine-type programs, some soap operas, a few game shows, some cable shows, no movies and very few prime-time shows, especially the kind that have storylines. If SAG went on strike but AFTRA signed, the networks would have some new programming...mainly the shows that managed to stay in production during the Writers Strike.

That's not a likely situation — AFTRA signing, SAG striking — but it's possible. What I'm waiting for is some response from SAG leadership. They're going to have to decide (and soon) if they're prepared to hold out for substantially better terms. The studios have dropped their formerly-intractable demand for the right to use clips of actors in almost any venue without the actors' specific permission. Presumably, the AMPTP guys realized that was an issue that could galvanize an actors' strike...one which would even be rejected by AFTRA, the less militant of the two unions. So it's gone...for now. With that matter off the table, SAG will be left with a deal that's just plain weak on the dollars and cents, especially with regard to home video.

Let's see if the leadership of SAG is prepared to denounce the terms AFTRA's negotiators have accepted, and to insist they'll never settle for that. They probably are. So then the next question will be if SAG is prepared to follow through on that vow.

• Posted at 11:06 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

The foreign policy failures of the Bush administration are largely the failure of the "neocon" movement. In fact, the neocons have been consistently wrong about everything they urged this administration to do. Fred Kaplan says that John McCain's foreign policy would be to stay that course and even return to some of the neocon ideas that Bush abandoned because they weren't working.

• Posted at 10:17 AM · LINK

Tonight!

Just a reminder: This evening, there's a gala exhibition/party about the artistry of the late Will Eisner. It's at the Storyopolis gallery in Studio City and it's free, though I think you have to R.S.V.P. to be there. Doors open at 7 PM and around 8:00, there will be a panel discussion of the works of Will. Present on this panel will be Denis Kitchen, Jackie Estrada, Sergio Aragonés and me. But even better, the whole place will be full of pictures drawn by Will Eisner. Should be quite an event.

• Posted at 10:03 AM · LINK

Before Bedtime

Even though I think she's lost the race and oughta start acting that way, I still have great respect for Hillary Clinton. She's a smart woman and I wouldn't bet that she won't be president some day.

That said, I don't think someone whose campaign is $21 million in debt should be telling us how good she is at financial management.

Good night, Internet. See you in the morning.

• Posted at 3:42 AM · LINK