Thursday, June 17, 2010

Surprise, Surprise!

As you probably heard, Congressman Joe Barton today apologized to BP for the "tragedy" of them having to come up with money to cover the damages that their drilling operation is doing. Barton has since backpedalled and retracted his apology, claiming it was misunderstood. But of course it wasn't. He was just operating via his natural instincts, which are to always side with the overdog...and with his campaign donors. According to this blog post, his biggest contributor is Andarko Petroleum. And what is Andarko Petroleum? Well, they're a partner in the operation that led to the oil spill/leak.

• Posted at 10:56 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

The seven dumbest things that BP execs have said about the oil spill.

And come to think of it, is "spill" really the right word for this mess? Doesn't "spill" suggest the oil was all collected and then somebody dropped it? Isn't this more like an uncontrollable leak?

• Posted at 8:37 PM · LINK

Street Stars

This time each year, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce votes thirty more names to be embedded in the coming year in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That's thirty more people (or acts) who'll have their handles placed into the sidewalk so tourists can walk over them and read the names aloud and dogs can editorialize. This year, the thirty are as follows...

MOTION PICTURES: Penelope Cruz, Bruce Dern, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Ed Harris, The Muppets, Kenny Ortega, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ridley Scott, Sissy Spacek, Donald Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon.

TELEVISION: Danny DeVito, Tina Fey, Simon Fuller, Neil Patrick Harris, John Langley, Ed O'Neill, John Wells, and Oprah Winfrey.

RECORDING: Melissa Etheridge, Los Tigres Del Norte, Rascal Flatts, Go-Go's, Slash, Will i. Am, and Bebe & Cece Winans. Posthumous: Buddy Holly and Louis Prima.

LIVE PERFORMANCE/THEATRE: Joe Mantegna.

No dates have been announced for the unveiling ceremonies. Something will be worked out with each star and their agents, and the celebs have up to five years to schedule their ceremony. Every so often, they don't. Stan Lee was voted a star in 2008 and I guess he's been too busy...or something. It hasn't happened yet.

The next ceremony is on June 25 at 11:30 AM. It's for the recording group Rush and like most recipients, they've timed the unveiling to coincide with some project they wish to promote. In this case, they have a new CD, a new tour and a new documentary all happening. If you want to be kept up to date when future ceremonies occur, follow this person on Twitter.

• Posted at 1:42 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Sixteen years ago today, there was something on the news about O.J. Simpson...something about his wife and another person being murdered over in Brentwood and they said Simpson was a suspect. I was busy that day getting an assignment done and getting ready for a big dinner that evening to honor June Foray so I didn't pay much attention to stuff like this. (You may have to watch a brief commercial before you get to the stuff to which I didn't pay much attention...)

That evening, a bunch of us were at this dinner...and I remember that though it wasn't strictly formal, I wore my tuxedo because I thought it would amuse June and also I'd forgotten to send my suit coats out to be dry-cleaned. We were milling during the pre-supper cocktail hour when someone came in and said, "O.J. Simpson's on TV! He's in a car and the police are chasing him and he's threatening to blow his brains out!" Well, there's a distraction. Everyone drifted (some scurried) out of that ballroom and over to an adjoining room where a TV was on. There, we saw news coverage like this. (You may have to watch a brief commercial before you get to the news coverage to which we did pay much attention...)

Eventually, most drifted back to the reason we'd gone to that hotel that night, though many ducked in and out to watch, and we got periodic updates from the next room. I remember feeling sorry for June that her big evening was marred by this distraction...though if it bothered her, she sure didn't show it. I also remember thinking how what was on TV was surreal but it was even more surreal for me because I was wearing a tuxedo. I'm not sure I can explain why that is.

No one, I'm sure, realized we were witnessing Chapter One or Two (depending on how you count) of a spectacle that would consume our nation, change so many lives and call our entire system of justice into so much question. Amazingly, the "slow-speed chase" and Simpson's quasi-suicide note were barely mentioned in the subsequent criminal trial. The defense didn't want to mention them because they seemed to denote guilt. The prosecution didn't want to mention them because they feared they'd evoke sympathy. It was that kind of trial.

June had a very nice evening in spite of it.

• Posted at 1:08 PM · LINK

Thursday Afternoon

As some readers of this site seem to be able to discern from my posting rhythms, I've been pretty swamped the last week or so. I'm sorry...for myself as much as for you. It's a lot of fun to write things for this blog, at least when they're not about friends of mine dying. "Why do you blog?" is a question I get a lot and the answers (plural) have a lot to do with networking and keeping in touch with people but primarily with the same reason that a professional artist sometimes likes to just sketch, drawing what he feels like drawing, not what someone else is paying him to draw.

One of the things I learned from Jack Kirby — hey, there's a name I almost never mention — was the concept of commitment to your line of work. Jack accepted that long hours at the board were a part of the path he picked for himself; that having chosen to write and draw comics, he had to look not for reasons to not work (you can always find good ones) but for reasons to accept and even enjoy the grind. He'd complain about the labor and with good reason. At times, it was excessive and he was always underpaid. But had they suddenly showered him with dollars, he would not have quickly become a man of leisure. He would have continued writing and drawing...just at his pace, not their pace.

I knew I could never match Jack for the sheer brilliance of the output, nor could I come close. Few have. But it was and is theoretically possible for us mere mortals to work that hard. We can be that committed to finishing projects and assignments that meets whatever dubious standards we set for ourselves. So I write a lot. Dorothy Parker famously said, "I hate writing, I love having written." I've never understood that approach. Why become a writer if you hate writing?

Writers, for the most part, tend to over-romanticize their profession and I don't mean to do that. I've never thought whether my job is better than somebody else's except, of course, to decide that it suits me better than some other vocation might. So I guess the reason I blog is that writing is what I do and this is an enjoyable outlet for which to write. Maybe that's not the best reason in the world but I'm afraid it's all I've got.

• Posted at 12:09 PM · LINK

Recommended Listening

If you can spare a half hour in the next five days, you might want to give a listen to this BBC radio documentary about the Marx Brothers in Britain. But five days is all you have because it goes away after that.

• Posted at 12:55 AM · LINK