No Words For You!

The Writer's Guild of America, of which I am not a member, is on strike starting today. At issue, primarily, are the "zero" dollars received from the studio-sanctioned streaming and downloading of shows on the Internet. Especially where the viewer is charged a buck or two. Also at issue is receiving an appropriate share of DVD revenue.

Writers, like actors, only get paid when they are working and when the use of that work is protected with residual pay. The median yearly salary for a WGA writer is $5,000. As with acting, there are those who strike gold, but it's a small percentage and you never know when that vein will run dry.

Writing, like improv, stand-up, and comedy in general, is one of those professions that many people look at and think "I could do that." And they continue to think that until they actually do it. That usually shuts them up. Unfortunately, many of the people who think that it's easy - namely, producers or bank-rollers - never give it a shot and continue to live in the delusion that a writer is just a typist. It usually takes something like a strike to get across some appreciation.

The first casualties will be the talk shows and strip (five days a week) shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Most of them, if not all, will go into reruns this week. Soap operas will feel the pinch in a week or two. I'm not sure how they handled it last time (20 years ago, but I believe a lot of "winging it" was involved. The prime time shows all may have enough episodes in the can to finish out the year. The good news, is that it's unlikely the networks will cancel any shows during the strike. Why cancel a show that has eight episodes in the can? Some of them may have to go into production with scripts that are first drafts and they are, legally, not able to change them. That will certainly affect the quality as television writers work up til the last minute. Films, too, in production or going into production, will have to go with what they have. Although, due to the nature of the director's role in a film, they could have actors improvise scenes. Many actors would like to think they are brilliant at this, but we've all seen scenes of Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, or Robin Williams going way overboard and confusing ad-libbing with improvising.

For more information on the strike, read The Huffington Post's Writer's Strike Opinion page HERE.



1977 JC PENNEY CATALOG



My friend Lori from Portland sent me a link to this hysterical trip down memory lane. Johnny Virgil of the blog 15 Minute Lunch found a JC Penney catalog from 1977 and he shares some of the incredible fashion photos with some hilarious commentary. If you were born after 1980, yes, we really did dress like this and, yes, we really did think it looked cool. Read the whole post by clicking HERE.



THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

On Saturday, I asked...

"The man whose fabricated story of Iraqi biological weapons drove the U.S. argument for invading Iraq was known in intelligence circles by what name?"

40% answered "Deep Camel"
- A good guess, Watergate will live in infamy via nicknames with prefixes like "Deep-" and suffixes like "-Gate."

20% "Big Fat Liar"
- While informally they affectionately referred to him as "my BFL," it is not correct.

No one went for "Snowman"
- Not even The Hawk.

40% identified him correctly as "Curve Ball"

According to CBS News, Iraqi Rafid Alwan arrived in Germany by car and requested asylum at a refugee center outside Nuremberg. He told the Germans fabricated stories about Hussein and a biological weapons plant. Alwan’s story fit what Western intelligence agencies feared: that Saddam might turn to mobile weapons to evade American bombs. He was given a code name: Curve Ball. The Germans shared their info with the US, and even though the Germans told the CIA none of his story could be verified, George Tenet went ahead and told Powell and Bush that showing the United Nations Saddam had weapons of mass destruction would be a "slam dunk." And it was, except that it was all lies.

Saturday Morning Cartoons!

"Star Trek: The Animated Series" (1973)




Buffy the Vampire Slayer is currently living out the eighth season of the television series as a comic book. As innovative as this is, Joss Whedon wasn't the first to continue a series in a different form. Gene Roddenberry created a fourth season of Star Trek for Saturday morning cartoons. What's amazing, is that he didn't just sell off the rights to Filmation and turn it over to some Saturday Morning schlock producers to dumb it down and give Kirk a comic sidekick alien. The scripts are intelligent and the science fiction is heady. While not fully regarded as canon, the show IS Star Trek. He assembled the original actors to do the voices, apparently through the insistence of Leonard Nimoy, and many veteran Trek writers wrote for the series. Walter Koenig (Chekhov on the series) was not asked to return, which, depending on who you ask was either a move to save some money or an opportunity for Roddenberry and the creators to add a very alien looking alien to the bridge. Koenig did, however, pen the episode The Infinite Vulcan.

While the animation and the pacing can be a little stilted, the scripts are top notch and the designs are very accurate to the original while also being very creative. Storylines and characters from the original often popped up continuing their themes and adventures. In this one, scripted by the always dependable D.C. Fontanna, the Guardian of Forever returns and it's the first time we see the effects of someone changing something in the past and how it affects the "present day" crew.

This is part one...

I recommend seeking out parts two and three. You can find them on You Tube by clicking HERE.

William Shatner is infamous for a few outtakes he did while recording this show, including one where the voice director very diplomatically corrects him on the pronunciation of the word "sabotage." You can see from this clip that Mr. Shatner doesn't take direction very well. It sickens him.





THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"The Westboro Baptist Church has been protesting at the funerals of U.S. soldiers because they believe what?"

12% decreeded "God hates war."
- I thinks/he does in theory, but not in practice.

Nobody figured it was "God hates funerals." or "God hates flags."
- I think s/he only hates it when people worship the flag.

88% know for a fact that "God hates fags."

According to the Associated Press, the fiery message of the Westboro Baptist Church has led its followers into a fight for what they say are their First Amendment rights. The church believes that U.S. deaths in the Iraq war are punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality. The protesters carry signs bearing such slogans as "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "God hates fags." On Wednesday, the church was found liable for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress and jurors awarded a the grieving father $10.9 million. The church will appeal and the judgment is expected to be thrown out. Sometimes the constitution protects assholes, too.

Abridged Too Far

Robowriters Assignment

This week's assignment is to tell a story on crack. Not literally. Crack pipes make it difficult to type.

Early in the process of writing classes, I spend a lot of time coaxing, encouraging and cajoling students into writing scenes that take place in one location in one uninterrupted length of time. Given our overwhelming exposure to film and television, and our lack of exposure to stage plays that don't feel the need to emulate film and television, this is sometimes very difficult to get across. Why do it? It allows your characters the time and space they need to explore and heighten relationships and situations. Jumping around is usually an unnecessary distraction that moves everything but the story.

But for this week, jump around!

Or rather, jump forward.

This week's assignment is to cram as much story as possible into a short scene and to go full circle by ending at the beginning.

Start by breaking your story down into at least ten very outlandish plot points.

For example, a father and mother decide to tell their son the real story of how they met.

1) Father and mother are saying goodnight to their son who asks how they met. They tell him the story.
2) They met at the library. He loves the library. Even laminated his library card with is own money. She helps him find a book.
3) As she is showing him the book. They are attacked by robot ninja monkeys. She quickly dispatches of them and escapes with the father to her secret lair.
4) In her lair, she receives a communication from the Big Headed Commander that Dick Cheney sent the ninja monkeys to try to steal the mother's broach which holds a special gem Cheney can use to power a secret weapon. BHC sends the mother to find and infiltrate Cheney's evil hideout.
5) At Cheney's evil hideout, Dick is plotting the destruction of Portland, Oregon. His weapon is complete save for the one gem!
6) In Washington, D.C., the mother and father are at the Lincoln Memorial searching frantically for Cheney's hideout. Through deduction, and a tourist pamphlet found stuffed in Lincoln's bum, they realize Cheney's secret is in the Oral Roberts Prayer Tower is Tulsa, Oklahoma. Fortunately, the mother has a super-sonic jet pack that they can use to get there. The father hops on and they fly away.
6) In Tulsa, they find along side the road, an illegal immigrant child without healthcare and stop to help. It's a trap! A net is thrown over them, they are sprayed with sleeping gas, and they are dragged off by robot ninja monkeys.
7) In Cheney's lair, he confronts them and takes her broach. He screws it into his machine which comes to life. He aims it at Portland.
8) Cut to two a guy playing guitar on the street next to a woman selling paintings of her aura on paper plates next to another guy smoking a joint. The guy smoking a joint says, "Wow. What's that?" and points to the sky. They explode.
9) Cheney laughs maniacally and now sets his sights on a target geographically bigger than Portland. Micheal Moore.
10) The mother uses the edge of the father's library card to cut their bonds. The father uses the sleeping gas on the robot ninja monkeys (yeah, I know, they're robots - shut up) while the mother dispatches of Cheney. She and Cheney have a moment where we discover they had an affair in college. He broke it off when she started to "experiment" with women. She reaches into his chest and pulls out his heart, which is just an alarm clock with the gears spilling out.
11) Cheney dies. The mother and father kiss. Cut back to them in the bedroom, kissing. They ask the son what he thinks. "Ew! You fucked Dick Cheney?" Another option here is to also have an element of the story come back in, such as a reconstituted Dick Cheney or one of the robot ninja monkeys.

Each beat of this is super short and quickly paced with fast dialogue and action.

So, that's just one way to do it. You can also take a well known story, like Moby-Dick, and condense it into a quickie madcap recount by Starbuck of what really happened. Or, it can be a prophesy or "what if" story. At The Second City-Detroit, Keegan-Michael Key played a man at a Sbarro who orders his food to go and then, at the last minute, decides to eat it there. A minimum wage employee tells him he can't do that. If he does, he'll start World War III. He asks how and the food slave shows him in a quick-paced global chain of events exactly how. He thanks her and decides to go back to his office and eat. After he leaves the restaurant, he is struck by a car.

This kind of scene is a good exercise in heightening and really driving a plot. It's also an opportunity to unleash your imagination and have lots of crazy fun.



THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"The Ministry of Defence in England has unveiled new technology that will make a tank what?"

30% said "Quieter"
- It's not that the tank itself is loud, it's just that those guys keep blaring the gangsta rap while cruising in them.

15% picked "Hover"
- A tank that hovers? I think that's called a helicopter.

9% kindly chose "Softer"
- I think a tank made out of rubber is a great idea. Bullets would bing off of it and it could bounce over trees and walls.

46% saw that is was "Invisible"

According to the The Daily Mail, new technology that can make tanks invisible has been unveiled by the Ministry of Defence. In secret trials last week, the Army said it had made a vehicle completely disappear and predicted that an invisible tank would be ready for service by 2012. The new technology uses cameras and projectors to beam images of the surrounding landscape onto a tank. They are also working on making planes invisible. Here's an actual photograph of a prototype.

Eponymous

It's weird. I woke up with a word popping into my head.

Allow me to set the scene first.

My girlfriend has convinced me that we'll sleep better without cats in the bed. I was very reluctant to embrace this idea. Cats are warm and snuggly. But if it came down to having either a cat in my bed or my girlfriend, the girlfriend wins. Fortunately, she is warm and snuggly, too. In our old apartment, you had to walk through a small sun room to get to the bedroom. So, it was very easy to shut a door and let the cats reign over the living room and kitchen. In our new apartment, our bedroom is right off the living room with no buffer zone. Our cats, for the most part, have been pretty good at leaving us alone. Except this week. Oona has been scratching at the door in the middle of the night. I know she knows this is inappropriate behavior on her part because I'll open the door and she'll hide under a chair. There is a consequence for waking me up before my alarm goes off. Kitty jail. Which is my office at the other end of the apartment. As jail goes, it's pretty cushy. There's food, kitty litter, a workout area, cigarettes. I might have to resort to water-boarding if she keeps waking me up.

This morning, Oona is scratching at the door at 5am and I can feel myself being pulled from a dream. In the dream, I'm in a cluttered backyard telling a kid that everyone and everything dies. He points to a cardboard chessboard with plastic men scattered on top of it. "Yep, that will eventually die. The board will rot and the pieces will melt." He points to a wooden hand mirror on a rustic mission table. "The glass might stick around a long time, but the wood and the mirror itself will fade away." That's when I hear a scratching sound and just before I open my eyes, the word "eponymous" pops into my head.

I have heard the word before, or, at least read it. But I have never uttered it out loud or written the word until now. I wasn't even sure what it meant and had to look it up.

ep·on·y·mous /əˈpɒnəməs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uh-pon-uh-muhs] –adjective

giving one's name to a tribe, place, etc.: Romulus, the eponymous founder of Rome.

---

[Origin: 1840–50; <>epnymos giving name. See ep-, -onym, -ous]

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

With the exception of this blog, I don't feel like I have ever given my name to something so fully to be considered eponymous. Not to the point of almost being synonymous, as Steve Jobs and Apple or Gandhi and India. It sure has me thinking. What will I give myself to that will last beyond my years of shuffling around on this dirtball?



THE RETURN OF THE MAGNIFICENT ROBOWRITERS!

Itching to write? Looking to generate ideas for writing projects? Craving honest, useful feedback on your written work? Want to hear your words out loud and not just in your head? Our focus is short works intended for performance, such as comedy sketches, short one acts and scenes. We meet tonight at 6:30pm at the Uptown Writer's Space (a jazz club once owned by Al Capone), 4802 North Broadway at Lawrence. Between The Green Mill and Crew (a gay sports bar with great food).


THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"Clear Channel has forbidden its radio stations to play cuts from Bruce Springsteen's new album allegedly because of what?"

45% logically picked "Bruce's anti-war stance."
- Granted, some artists are more vocal than others, but if they did that they'd be down to playing the same five songs over and over. Oh, wait, they already do that.

27% chose "Bruce didn't play a free gig for them."
- No evidence that this was the case, even though they were hoping he'd spice up their boring ol' holiday office party.

10% decided it was "Bruce's lack of boobs."
- He's 58. He might very well have boobs at his age.

18% accurately pegged "Bruce's age."

According to Roger Friedman of Fox News (yeah, I know), Clear Channel has sent an edict to its rock stations not to play tracks from Springsteen's new album "Magic." Clear Channel, according to Friedman, seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius. In spite of Clear Channel's stranglehold on The Boss, "Magic" is the No. 1 album in America. Suck on that, Clear Channel! Thank God for Chicago's WXRT, or we'd never hear tracks from it! Here's a recent picture of Bruce. You can see a nipple on his left man boob.

Playing with Matches

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. —

A boy playing with matches started a fire in north Los Angeles County that consumed more than 38,000 acres and destroyed 21 homes last week, authorities said Tuesday.

Read the full story HERE.

Parents all around the world are revising their "don't play with matches warnings." I recommend some of the following...

- If you play with matches, George W. Bush will come visit you.

- If you play with matches, Arnold Schwarzenegger will wet your bed while you're still in it.

- If you play with matches, you'll cause over $1 billion worth of damage and it's coming out of your allowance, Mister.

- If you play with matches, FEMA will stage a press conference that paints you in an unflattering light.

- If you play with matches, Al-Qaeda will come get you...and try to recruit you.

- If you play with matches, you'll kill 14 people, destroy 2100 homes and your parents will turn you in for the $285,000 reward for your ass.




THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"Pamela Worden of Warwick, Rhode Island has been accused by police of stealing a parrot and doing what?"

50% said "Sewing it to a pirate costume"
- Sorry, Matey. Tis the wrong answer. Here's an obligatory "Arrrrr."

37% swore it was "Teaching it racial slurs"
- Polly, want a cracker?

No one swallowed "Eating it"
- Parrot tastes like chicken, in which case, just eat chicken.

Only 13% got the right answer "Cutting off its leg"

According to the Associated Press, prosecutors say Pamela Worden walked into a pet store in May, stole the $500 bird and later snipped off one of its legs to remove an identity tag. Prosecutors are seeking a prison sentence for Worden for possessing stolen goods and cruelty to animals. I couldn't find any information on how the parrot is doing. My hope is that it survived the ordeal, has been outfitted with a nifty peg leg, and has found a nice pirate with a matching peg leg to take care of it.

Hope for the Future...and the Past!

One of the really beautiful things about improv is that people are human and they make mistakes. While improvising a scene, the best way to handle it is to embrace it. Otherwise, it's the elephant in the room that no one is talking about and is hoping will go away. Of course, it is possible to acknowledge the mistake by treating the person making the mistake like they are an idiot. This doesn't do much to forward the scene and works to putting that person in their head and clamming up (which, at times, might be the desired effect). But for the audience's buck, it's wonderful to see mistakes parlayed into important elements.

The last time I played with The Improvised Shakespeare Company, I informed the king of England that an Irish army would be invading our shores at dawn-thirty by crossing the English Channel. In the next scene, my geographically-challenged plot point was called out by the leader of the Irish army. "Instead of crossing the Irish Sea into England, which would be the quickest and easiest route, we'll be going all the way down to France and crossing the English Channel into England from there!" It would have been easy for someone to just correct my mistake. It was more fun to call it out and embrace it as a brilliant feat of war strategy. Huzzah!

A mistake in Danse Macabre! last Friday came when one of the players called another player by their previously killed character's name. Instead of telling him he made a mistake, the player created the first of many sets of identical twins that also shared the same identical name.

Not to sound too much like a lame inspirational business poster, but mistake are opportunities. They could even be considered the subconscious of the group mind mischievously at work.

The title of this piece? It's something one of the students said last night in an improv game for a class I was subbing at Second City. The idea of having hope for the past made me laugh quite heartily. You could see on her face just a flash of "what the hell did I say?" and it's exactly the kind of mistake I'm talking about here.



THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Craig S. McCullough was arrested in a public restroom when he was found with his pants down doing what?"

33% naturally assumed "passing out Republican Party buttons"
- Now, if they can only swing putting voting booths in bathroom stalls.

33% thought health and "checking for testicular cancer"
- Well, he was feeling around down there, but he was more interested in making a lump than finding one.

9% hungrily answered "eating his lunch"
- Did somebody say Quizno's?

25% overcame their denial and got it right with "lying next to an inflatable doll"

According to the Associated Press, Craig S. McCullough was arrested last week after a government agent allegedly found him in an office building restroom lying next to an inflatable, anatomically correct doll with his pants down. McCullough's criminal record includes a 2004 conviction for burglarizing a Just For Me bridal boutique. Shortly after the burglary, police officers found McCullough in a nearby alley, carrying a mannequin wearing a bridal dress. It's a shame it didn't work out with his mannequin bride, but it's their kids who will really suffer.

The Magic of Comedy

When I was a kid, I loved magic. I couldn't get enough of it. The only magic I saw, however, was on TV variety shows and the occasional and rare birthday party or school assembly. I decided that if I wanted to see more magic, I would have to learn it myself. So, I started to absorb books on and by Robert-Houdin (the father of modern magic), Joseph Dunniger (a magician who amassed a huge encyclopedia's worth of magic history) and Houdini (a lithograph of his European tour as "The Wold's Handcuff King & Prison Breaker" is in my office). Imagine my disappointment when I quickly discovered that actual magic had nothing to do with, well, magic. Most of it seemed to be showmanship and misdirection. At which I am both horrible. I soon faded in my interest in being a magician and went back to being a fan. I love to be amazed. Being a magician, or studying magic, ruins magic for you. Your focus shifts to amazing others.

I love comedy and am fascinated with the mechanisms of what make someone laugh. At what makes me laugh. Unlike magic, I can still crack myself up and relish when I make someone else laugh. It still seems to have a lot to do with showmanship and misdirection. Showmanship in making sure a joke or laugh line is delivered in just the right way - is it a throwaway line or should I break out the bicycle horn for punctuation? Misdirection in that it's important to lead the audience down one path and then quickly turn a corner to a place they weren't expecting.


DANSE MACABRE!

I love Danse Macabre! We had a wonderful time at The Acorn Theater. Dave and Kim are exceptional hosts and if you have any opportunity to stop by there, please do. The cast did a fine job with the audience suggestion of "The Garden Grave." A very bizarre tale of a woman badgering her husband (with her "stubby finger of judgment") into making sure she won the blue ribbon for her vegetables. She wants to grow "corn as high as...corn!" The husband ensures her victory by eliminating the competition. In doing so, he releases a rival Celtic spirit who can only be killed by pure innocence. It was worth everything putting this show together to get to see Don Hall and James Honey as two virginal twin sisters both named Helen.



THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

On Friday, I asked...

"A mother in Naples, Florida is currently on trial for child abuse because she forced her 13-year-old daughter to do what?"

50% picked "Finish her homework before dinner"
- A criminal offense, indeed! Especially when that Science Fair project on hydroponics took her a month to complete. She was forced to eat her own soiless green tomatoes.

20% chose "Wear unfashionable clothes"
-She was forced to wear grandpa's hand-me-down tan Sansa-belt slacks all through sixth grade!

No one went for "Clean her room before going to bed"
- Apparently, that sounded more horrible to me than anyone else.

30% got it right with "Shave her head and pierce her genitals"

According to the Associated Press, the mother called on a tattoo artist friend to shave the girl's head and do the piercing after realizing that the girl had been having sex, including with the mother's boyfriend. The idea was to make the girl unattractive to men and, with the piercing, make it uncomfortable to have sex. Just swinging in the dark, here, but if a turd like her boyfriend is willing to jump on the bones of a thirteen year-old, the shaved head and pierced labia probably aren't going to act as deterrents for him. I think he's the one that should have received the Yul Brenner and the Prince Albert.