Monthly Archives: August 2008

The Los Angeles City Council has passed, and the Mayor is expected to sign, an ordinance that would place a moratorium on the construction of new fast food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area inhabited by half a million low-income people. This sounds ridiculous to me…a case of government forgetting it's supposed to be government and thinking it's our parents.

I was curious to see just how they define "fast food" but was unable to find the actual bill online anywhere. I did read something about how it bars restaurants that have a "limited menu" and that McDonald's might have a wide enough selection that it would not be affected. Well, that would certainly make the bill effective. One report said that since Subway sandwich outlets don't have drive-thru windows and do make their food "to order" from fresh ingredients, they'd be exempt.

If this is so, then the bill is even dumber than it appears at first. I mean, I don't think the city has any business making it harder for you to get a Double Whopper with Cheese in the first place…but if it was in the public interest to limit fast food places, you'd have to define them in a way that addresses the real problems with them. It's not that they have drive-thru windows or small menus or pre-make their product. It's that the Double Six Dollar Burger from Carl's Jr. contains 1520 calories.

Is there evidence that the building of new KFC outlets is preventing entrepreneurs from building more sit-down restaurants that serve salads and grilled chicken? If so, there might be a case for limiting the Colonel…but I always thought the problem, such as it is, is that Americans just plain want what the fast food places offer. I always figured that if there was any sort of demand for healthier cuisine, it would be available. We have a fading chain in Southern California called Koo Koo Roo that offers fresh, non-fried fare…and they ain't doing so well. The Koo Koo Roo company's about as healthy as the folks eating those Double Six Dollar Burgers.

I eat very little fast food these days and would be happier if there were more places like Koo Koo Roo. But the only thing that's going to make that happen is a change in consumer tastes that changes a marketplace that is driven by what's already making money. People are going to eat what they want to eat, and right now what they want to eat is something that's been deep-fried, has a lot of cheese on it and has the potential to immediately close one or more heart valves. I think all the city council's going to accomplish is to make it harder for a lot of unskilled labor to get jobs.

The big labor news in show business is that Thomas C. Short has finally, as long expected, announced his retirement. Short was the president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, a post he's held since 1994. Assuming his successor (Matthew Loeb) is not a clone, this is good news for writers. Mr. Short was openly hostile to people who do that for a living, both as members of the Writers Guild and as members of The Animation Guild. The Animation Guild is an I.A.T.S.E. union, meaning it was under Short's supervision, and he wasn't much nicer to the writers who were members of his own organization.

Mr. Short was the man who authorized the Stagehands' strike in New York which shut down most of Broadway for many weeks, greatly inconveniencing the public and costing a lot of actors, producers and workers a helluva lot of money. He okayed or threatened other strikes by I.A. locals but when any non-I.A. union began painting picket signs, he was out there condemning them and wailing that they were greatly inconveniencing the public and costing a lot of actors, producers and workers a helluva lot of money. It was kind of stunning to see so much anti-union rhetoric coming from the guy who headed up the largest entertainment union in the world.

In other news, no one seems to know what's happening with the Screen Actors Guild but no one seems to think it's going to be anything but a disaster for that union. I've heard several possible scenarios from folks who know more about this kind of thing than I do. All are different ways in which the union folds, possibly with a major change of leadership occurring at or about the same time. So I don't know what's going to happen…only that it won't be pretty.