State's budget no role model: California's fiscal crisis is worse than most. Much of the fault lies not with the economy but with bad policies. By Evan Halper

ON CALIFORNIA: A workaday road that cuts through the state's back story: Two-lane Highway 33 isn't a fabled route, but it's rugged and real. By Peter H. King

Zimbabwe sex slave confides her ordeal: The 21-year-old says she is forced to go to a militia base daily: 'If I run away, my mother will be killed.' From a Times Staff Writer

Not merely tennis, this was a match made in heaven By Bill Dwyre

Calling the shots on war movies: The Army, scathed by 'the crazy Nam vet,' tries to shape a new era of films by trading access for influence. By Julian E. Barnes

Backfire is right and wrong: Two brothers use the tactic to keep the Big Sur blaze from their compound. But one is arrested for doing so. By Eric Bailey and Deborah Schoch

Inside Today's Times:

In the spotlight at the economic summit: Japan, host of this year's G-8 talks, is in a strong position to talk about the environment. World, A4

An L.A. boxing legend dies: Mando Ramos won a title at 20 but lost his career to alcohol and drugs. He was 59. Obituaries, B7

Weather: Get ready for it to heat up this week. Downtown: 85/65. B8

Larry Lessig had a fascinating copyright idea in the other Times a while back, which gives an interesting perspective on this L.A. Times story about J.R.R. Tolkien's descendants' fight for some of the gross on the New Line Cinema "Lord of the Rings" adaptations. Writes Rachel Abramowitz:

Tolkien obviously isn't Peter Jackson, who directed the franchise, or Liv Tyler or Viggo Mortensen, who starred in it, or New Line Cinema, the studio that financed it, or Miramax, which owned the film rights for a second but couldn't get the movie made, or producer Saul Zaentz, who bought the rights in 1976. He's just the guy who dreamed up the cosmology, the whole shebang of hobbits and dwarfs, orcs, ents, wargs, trolls, whatnot. "Three rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-Lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne." Those were old John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's words.

But he's dead, so why should Hollywood share any of the dough?

In reference to a far less lucrative literary franchise, here's a good reason why not.

I realize this puts me at odds not only with the Times but with the EU, Her Majesty and the U.S. Congress. But I find it offensive to common sense to argue that the heirs of J.R.R. Tolkien (who are as dismayingly numerous as Kennedys in the court filing) are entitled to a shilling for work in which they had no hand and which was completed in 1949.

I'm not evaluating the legal merits of their case, the questionable management of New Line Cinema, or the Tolkiens' contractual rights under a contract that was signed with United Artists in 1969 and passed to New Line (and now to Warner Bros.) by way of Zaentz and Miramax. (Though with these dramatis personnae, it's amazing there's a plug nickel left to fight over.) I am saying current copyright law is well outside the bounds of rationality. There should be no fight over rights on the literary property because on a logical planet, a 59-year-old literary property by a 35-years-dead author would be in the public domain.

Now to Larry Lessig, who proposed a seemingly rational solution back in May:

Following the model of patent law, Congress should require a copyright owner to register a work after an initial and generous term of automatic and full protection.

For 14 years, a copyright owner would need to do nothing to receive the full protection of copyright law. But after 14 years, to receive full protection, the owner would have to take the minimal step of registering the work with an approved, privately managed and competitive registry, and of paying the copyright office $1.

It's not clear how the Tolkien case would play out under this regime. "The Lord of the Rings," as I have heard the story, didn't hit its full popular stride (or is that schritt?) until the 1960s, and it's possible that the author, preoccupied with the commercial potential of "Smith of Wooten Major" or "Farmer Giles of Ham," might have neglected to do the necessary update. Interestingly this would probably have had the effect (all else being equal) of reducing the specific take for Peter Jackson's movies, because they would have been competing with dozens or scores of previous adaptations, not just Ralph Bakshi's.

But more likely, Lessig's proposal would merely move these sorts of battles a few years into the future. I don't see any way around the central problem: Copyright term is simply too long. It needs to be dated for some reasonable period from the date of creation (I've previously said 35 years, so I'll stick with that figure), and then it needs to end. If you're the author or the author's estate, you can keep trying to use your goodwill and/or familiarity with the franchise to keep making money on it, but you've got to fight for it like everybody else.

Which, ironically, Tolkien's heirs have proven quite capable of doing. Back when Peter Jackson was known mostly for "Heavenly Creatures" (his true masterpiece), here's how my old friend Tom Spurgeon described Christopher Tolkien's place in the universe of lucky inheritors:

The Caretaker

Caretakers are all about access. Their basic strategy is to place themselves between a beloved creation and a still-rabid audience and claim their involvement is an extension of the creator's wishes — even if the nature of those desires must be inferred from beyond the grave. Once duly recognized as a keeper of the flame, the caretaker can dispense missives from the promised land with the measured touch of a Mr. Bumble. The perfect situation for the caretaker is to be placed in charge of an open-ended franchise targeted at anal completists. Christopher Tolkien and Brian Herbert are exemplars of this type, with multi-volume releases of first drafts or brand-new novels taken, cross-their-hearts, from papa's real, honest, left-behind notes. If criticized as a profiteer, the caretaker emphasizes his or her connection to the successful parent's life work, particularly if it ends up in a deal for a project celebrating the parent-child relationship, such as a suite of fairy stories or album of lullabies. While embracing the parent's vision is the most reliable way to pursue strategy, offering complementary skills necessary to maintain that legacy can be just as effective. Hugh Hefner popularized the Playboy philosophy by living it; Christy Hefner helped legitimize it because she didn't.

So buy your advance tickets to Ang Lee's "The Silmarillion" now!

Crossposted at Jon Healey's Bit Player.

What could be more titillating than a weeklong Dust-Up on L.A.'s $12 billion adult industry? Porn producer John Stagliano and Pepperdine professor Barry McDonald keep it clean while arguing about what's obscene, what's allowed, and what adults should be free to look at. Yesterday, Stagliano and McDonald debated legal definitions of obscenity and the federal case against Stagliano and his company. Today, they take a look at what the Alex Kozinski scandal says about public attitudes toward adult entertainment. 

Fuel prices squeeze cities: Safety patrols, school bus routes, even mowing services are cut as governments struggle with budgets. By Nicholas Riccardi

Hospital mistakes go public: Hundreds of patients are being harmed in preventable incidents, filings required by a new state law show. By Jordan Rau

COLUMN ONE: Kicking aside a social taboo: Women in soccer are frowned upon in Guatemala. But here, three hardworking sisters find freedom on the field. By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Mugabe's foes brace for fallout: As Zimbabwe's leader is inaugurated, analysts say his opponents are in danger. Observers reject the election. From a Times Staff Writer

Plot twist in union talks: stars vs. stars: SAG urges members to vote down a rival group's contract. By Richard Verrier

CAMPAIGN 'O8: Long and short of VP lists: What strategists say Obama and McCain are looking for. By Doyle McManus

Inside Today's Times

Drivers, hold all calls please: Cellphone use, even hands-free, is too big a distraction, research shows.

Earvin Johnson has Magic touch: The former Laker has built a business empire by investing in long-ignored urban areas.

Spain reigns at Euro 2008 soccer final

For your weekend reading pleasure, here's the NEA's new report "Artists in the Workforce: 1990-2005." While the percentage of self-identified artists, as a portion of the toal workforce, remained constant over the 15-year period, the report suggests a surprisingly robust creative community. Sez NEA Chairman Dana Gioia:

There are now almost two million Americans who describe their primary occupation as artist. Representing 1.4 percent of the U.S. labor force, artists constitute one of the largest classes of workers in the nation—only slightly smaller than the total number of active-duty and reserve personnel in the U.S. military (2.2 million). Artists represent a larger group than the legal profession (lawyers, judges, and paralegals), medical doctors (physicians, surgeons, and dentists), or agricultural workers (farmers, ranchers, foresters, and fishers).

With plenty of state-by-state and profession-by-profession breakdowns, it's an interesting study. Read the full report.

Columnist Tim Rutten blames our year-round Caprese cravings for the tomato menace:

A proper insalata Caprese is one of the jewels of Campania's incomparable cuisine.

All that's required are ripe tomatoes just off the vine, fresh mozzarella di bufala, basil coaxed to aromatic fullness by the sun's heat, a sprinkling of coarse salt, a grind of pepper and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. It's a gloriously simple dish that happily reproduces the colors of the Italian flag and virtually stares up from the plate, whispering "high summer."

The fact that you now can order some variation of it in February from half of America's restaurant menus or supermarket takeout counters goes a long way toward explaining what's behind the current national recall of tomatoes across the United States.

Contributing editor Max Boot says its time to re-up our Iraq commitment by protecting troops. Sci Fi Channel advisory board chairman Peter Schwartz says sci-fi should trade in its "Blade Runner" dystopias for some "Flash Gordon" fun to get people optimistic about the future. And Radisson Hotel LAX owner/operator Peter Dumon urges his fellow hoteliers to stop fighting the living wage.

The editorial board discusses the iPhone's limits, declares the start of silly season for oil policy, and wonders at the Bush administration's irrational immigration policy:

As we hustle to show resolve in the immigration "crisis," we're getting used to the idea that all private endeavor is subject to Washington's prior approval. What kind of country do we want? A few years ago, a border wall would have seemed a relic from medieval China or Central Europe in the totalitarian era. Now it is official U.S. policy.

On the letters page, readers respond to a two-page anti-gay-marriage ad that ran in The Times. L.A.'s Ari Solomon says, "I know newspaper subscriptions are down and ads help pay the rent, but this was blood money."

*Cartoon by Lisa Benson, Washington Post Writers Group

European policy experts John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell look to 'The Godfather' for diplomatic pointers:

[Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather"] is also a startlingly useful metaphor for the strategic problems and global power structure of our time. The don, emblematic of Cold War American power, is struck by forces he did not expect and does not understand, as was America on 9/11. Intriguingly, his heirs embrace very different visions of family strategy that approximate the three schools of thought -- liberal institutionalism, neoconservatism and realism -- vying for control of U.S. foreign policy today.

Freelance writer Lionel Beehner has another proposal for smoother diplomacy: pronouncing foreign dignitaries' names properly. Columnist Tim Rutten tells an L.A. version of "A Tale of Two Cities," and contributing editor Erin Aubry Kaplan explores why poet and long-time Watts resident Eric Priestley is fighting City Hall to keep his home.

The editorial board praises a California Supreme Court decision voiding the death sentence of Adam Miranda, presses for a shield law, and says now isn't the time to scold Myanmar's leaders:

It has been clear for more than a decade -- and especially since last year's suppression of the would-be Saffron Revolution -- that Myanmar's odious junta cannot be shamed into reform. It is too isolated and xenophobic to worry about its image, too paranoid to learn from outsiders and too blood-drenched to believe it can survive any loosening of control over its hapless people. The contradictory combination of U.S. sanctions and an engagement strategy adopted by its neighbors has failed to produce any improvement. Attempts to use the catastrophe of Tropical Cyclone Nargis as leverage to pry open the country will almost surely fail as well.

No news here, but this strikes me as one of the great unresolved disputes in pop culture history:

I watched the original Star Wars a few days ago, and noted that on the commentary track George Lucas provides a new version of the development of the Obi-Wan Kenobi character. According to Lucas, he decided at some point in the production that Kenobi had to die part of the way through the movie — over the objections of Alec Guinness, who wanted to keep on working. Nothing remarkable there, except that Guinness very famously gave a totally different version of the story: that Guinness himself talked Lucas into killing off the character because he was bored with reciting "those bloody awful, banal lines." As the late actor told the late Talk magazine in 1999, "I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo."

That's two incompatible versions of the same event. One witness is dead and the other is a fairly energetic reinventor of his own back stories. Which one do you believe? Against my usual habit of not trusting anything George Lucas says, I'm inclined to say he is telling the truer story.

Guinness built up a great reputation as a Star Wars basher over the years, but he didn't start out that way; there's very little in the contemporary record to suggest the kind of contempt for the movie he later showed. The argument-from-self-interest also works against Guinness' version. Actors want to keep acting, as Guinness himself went on to prove: Well into his career as a Star Wars refusenik, he accepted cameo roles in both sequels. Finally, Lucas earned a small believability credit with me by including the original, blissfully non-remastered version of the original movie in the DVD package, which suggests he has given up on his subtle but persistent campaign to convince everybody that the original Star Wars was always called Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope.

Whichever version is true, I'm well satisfied that the entire Star Wars project ran out of steam once Kenobi got killed off. They kept making the movies, but from that point I tuned out, only waking up from time to time out of respect for Lando Calrissian, inter-galactic cock-blocker.

Armchair shrinks, movie fans, L.A. billboard zealots and personal detractors, what does the following say about me?

The summer movie season is coming, and the neighborhoods are full of ads. I see them everywhere, sometimes for stuff I should theoretically be interested in seeing: I enjoyed 2.5 of the Indiana Jones films, enough so that a rote, lackluster, unimaginative, uninteresting marketing campaign should not keep me from wanting to see the fourth installment in the trilogy. I also find the idea of Bob Downey as Iron Man vaguely intriguing.

And yet the only movie I have any desire to see is Baby Mama. Let me rephrase: The bus posters for this movie are the only film advertisements around right now that do not fill me with weltschmerz and contempt.

Actually, I just looked up Baby Mama, and I think I don't even want to see that. I initially took it to be some kind of surreal picture with Amy Poehler doing an adult/child performance like Martin Short in Clifford. It turns out it's actually got the dullest concept imaginable, though the following IMDB note still gives me some hope:

Movie Connections: Spoofs Silkwood (1983)

Anyway, am I speaking solely for myself or is anybody else out of sympathy with the lineup of coming attractions? I'm only referring to the marketing. It seems to me we're in a real movie-magic doldrums, but that could just be my own dolorous dullness...

Hey would-be Beijing protestors, watch out for Jackie Chan. The Hong Kong action hero isn't putting up with any lip, as Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bill Zwecker reports:

Chan told me he's also going to be part of the torch relay once it nears Beijing. Demonstrating one of his famous kung fu moves with his hands, he quipped, "Demonstrators better not get anywhere close to me" -- a clear challenge to those who might want to disrupt his and the torch's progress.

How would Chan hold up in a head-to-head with a certain celebrity Tibet champion? No, not Steven Spielberg, but Steven Seagal. The two martial artists are friends, or at least so says IMDB, but to settle this subject, they might have to take it outside. Who'd win?

The winner: Jackie. Now enjoy some of his best fights.

Maybe I'm more broken up than most about the death of Charlton Heston, but it seems to me one of Heston's most important achievements has been missing from the appreciations of his half-century-long career: At an age when most men are sliding into paunch and griping about their bad backs, in an era when barrel-chested Victor Mature types had not yet yielded the stage to more sinewy men, Heston brought the hardbody to America.

This is not to say Heston was the only actor of his time who bothered to stay in shape, but the references in our obit to his "lean-hipped" look and nude scene in Planet of the Apes raise an important question: How many 45-year-olds, then or now, would be comfortable showing that much skin on a giant movie screen? More important, how many would look that good? If you check out the other top box office performers of 1968, you'll find even the svelte Steve McQueen and John Cassavetes letting none of it all hang out, and the rest of the list is filled with lumpish leading men like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Say what you will about Heston's unpopular politics or (allegedly) wooden acting; but you could do your laundry on those abs.

Nor is this just a tour of my own homoerotic inner mind. I'd like to stand up for the trilogy of dystopian science fiction of which Planet of the Apes is merely the first part. The New York Times doesn't even mention Soylent Green or The Omega Man in its obit, and our own coverage is pretty dismissive of both. (Planet of the Apes is now canonical enough that highbrows belittle it at their own risk.) I'd argue that both those movies are touched by greatness and live on for, if nothing else, the insights they provide into the culture of their time.

The Omega Man — which opens with Heston tooling around an empty, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles (the city where the world was meant to end, damn it!) and, in a brilliant touch, watching, over and over again, the only movie still playing, Woodstock — is as full an examination of the relationship between the establishment and the counterculture as any film of its time. It's an olive branch from Heston to the hippies, with the hero repulsed, fascinated by and ultimately in love with the groovy kids he recognizes as the only future for mankind. Who else but Heston could have been at the same time hip enough and square enough to share a hot makeout scene with the late Rosalind Cash, and have that actually mean something? Who else could have rocked that ascot-and-Sgt.-Pepper-jacket look? That Anthony Zerbe's black-robed zombie inquisitor puts a face of intolerance and anti-rationality onto the rhetoric of progress ("Forget the old ways, brother, all the old hatreds") just shows that even when Heston put a hand out to the flower children, he did so recognizing that they shared a common enemy in unreason.

The state Supreme Court is in Los Angeles this afternoon to consider this question: How blatantly does a prosecutor have to exploit a case for big Hollywood or book bucks before the case is compromised?

The better known of the two cases focuses on the movie "Alpha Dog" and the real-life prosecution of Jesse James Hollywood in the kidnapping and killing of Nicholas Markowitz. Santa Barbara Deputy District Attorney Ronald J. Zonen, who was assigned to prosecute Hollywood, also served as an unpaid consultant to writer/director Nick Cassavetes in the making of the film. In October 2006, an appeals court ruled that Zonen had created a conflict of interest that should prevent him from proceeding with the case.

Then there is the "Intoxicating Agent" case, in which Santa Barbara Deputy District Attorney Joyce Dudley wrote a book describing the prosecution of a man for drugging and sexually assaulting his victim. She happened to be prosecuting, at the time, a man for drugging and sexually assaulting his victim. The supposedly fictional heroine is prosecutor Joyce, uh, no, sorry -- Jordan Danner. The appeals court ruled that Dudley, like Zonen, had compromised her ability to continue prosecuting the case.

You know what they say about Santa Barbara prosecutors. What they really want to be is waiters and waitresses in Los Angeles...so they can say that what they really want to be is screenwriters.

Haraguchi v. Superior Court -- that's Dudley's case -- and Hollywood v. Superior Court are both scheduled for oral arguments at 1:30 p.m. at the Reagan State Building at 300 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles.

Here's one for the "Who Knew?" files: the news media's attention to the sub-prime fiasco rises and falls in step with its fascination with Britney Spears. Coincidence? I think not! I would not have noticed this linkage had it not been for Trendrr, a fascinating site that recently went live. An offshoot of Wiredset, a New York agency that specializes in promoting media through the Web, social networks and mobile carriers, Trendrr lets users assemble and compare data from a dozen sources (more to come soon), including Google News, Bit Torrent, eBay and YouTube. It also invites users to request new sources or submit their own. For example, you might want to gauge interest in a particular band by seeing how often people were posting videos of that act on YouTube. Or, if you were a studio, you could graf how often the trailer for your summer blockbuster was being played on MySpace.com vs. YouTube vs. DailyMotion. My examples don't do Trendrr justice, so click here to check out the site's most popular trend-mapping exercises. Then try creating some of your own.

USA Today has full-cast dossiers on the new crew of the starship Enterprise. As is usually the case with these new-cast spreads, the Star Trek XI feature looks to me pretty much like a deck of SAG trading cards; I recognize only two of the people involved. Of those two, one choice — Simon Pegg as Engineer Scott — is nothing less than inspired. I'm not as encouraged by Lt. Uhura choice Zoë Saldana, who is button-cute but has a pretty serious known Star Trek deficiency that only YouTube commenter LMUli and I appear to have noticed.

In the Steven Spielberg joint The Terminal Saldana plays a CIS officer who is secretly a Star Trek fan. It's a fine plot device, but as you can see from this clip, when called upon to do the nearly universally recognized Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" salute, she completely screws it up! I suppose this problem could be spun in Trek XI into a variation on the hoary old joke about how humans have a hard time making the Vulcan (actually rabbinical) hand gesture. In any event, kudos to Saldana's agent.

This of course is not the end of the worries. There's the odd-number curse to consider. And this teaser trailer is a bit too fond of the dark-n-edgy trend for my taste: If anything needs to be recovered from the original Trek, it's the bright lighting, high-key color schemes and spare set decoration that make so much color TV from the sixties still so delightful to watch. Finally, having lived next door to Paramount pictures for a year and a half, I'm convinced there's nothing The House Popeye Built can fail to ruin. It's ominous that nobody on the mountaintop has thought to roll out the obvious tagline: "This is your father's Star Trek!" And if you really want to fear for the future of the Federation, hop on over to Trekkies Against Torture and sign up!

Something that had been not-quite-missing from my daily routine these past few months was the very mixed blessing of being able to rubberneck movie and TV productions. The Soloist did film on our third floor during the strike, and the cast and crew, in sharp distinction to the tradition of movie-production jackholery, were notably polite and patient, with the Steve Lopez-portraying Robert Downey Jr. personable and sober as a judge at 8:30 in the morning. On the other hand, a Tom Arnold comedy which included a prop van topped with a giant-ant simulacrum ("See, you can tell it's a comedy," one P.A. told me, pointing at the van) was filming late at night in the no-man's-land around the corner from me a few weeks back, and while walking one of my kids to sleep I got a snippy attitude from somebody who was at least acting like a director. (I like to think it was The Skeptic helmer "Tennyson Bardwell," because if you're going to get rudeness you might as well get it from somebody with a cool-sounding name, but the plot synopsis doesn't sound like what I saw shooting.)

Now that the productions are back in earnest, I am again haunted by an economic question: How can an industry with such a dubious future still support such largesse? Shark was filming outside the L.A. Times building a few days back: Seven trailers, ten or so tents, two 18-wheelers, several more six-wheelers, assorted pickup trucks and other vehicles, the usual mountains of food... Now I like pretty much anything with James Woods, who came as close as any American to preventing the 9/11 attacks, but does a second-ten-rated series really generate that kind of economy anymore?

At the risk of seeming to side with Rush Limbaugh, I am bemused by the controversy over the casting of Fred Armisen as Barack Obama in "Saturday Night Live”’s send-up of the contest between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The skit, which portrayed the media as star-struck Obamaniacs,  got more exposure than usual when Clinton mentioned it in the last Democratic debate. Hillary didn’t mention that the actor impersonating her rival wasn’t black. But others have pounced on  SNL’s decision to cast Armisen, who is of mixed South American and Asian ancestry, as Obama.

"Let's get one thing straight,” Hannah Pool wrote. “The moment anyone starts reaching for 'blackface,' they are on extremely dodgy territory. Anyone who thinks it's either necessary or, for that matter, remotely funny to black-up needs to have the gauge on their moral compass reset." But the point of Armisen’s impersonation wasn’t the mockery of the made-up minstrel; it was to try to create a reasonable facsimile of the senator. And it worked. Modern makeup is pretty amazing: It can make Joe Flaherty look like the late William F. Buckley Jr. and Dave Thomas a dead ringer for the dead Bob Hope. Physique and stature are harder to fake than skin color or Hope’s ski nose, which is why the lanky Armisen beat out his burly African castmate Kenan Thompson for the Obama gig.

So one response to the complaints about Armisen-as-Obama is that all that matters is the final illusion: Armisen may be a non-African-American, but he can convincingly play one on TV.  So why the controversy? I don’t think it’s because the impersonation is the moral equivalent of an old-style minstrel show, or because in casting Armisen as Obama Lorne Michaels was “taking sides” between Obama’s black and white parents or perpetuating the idea that Obama isn’t “really black.” The Washington Post offered another explanaton: the casting seemed to add insult to the injury of SNL’s chronic underuse of African-American performers. Here was an easy opportunity to feature a black comedian, and they blew it.

In this sense the Obama flap is reminiscent of another casting conmtretemps: the objection a decade and a half ago to the casting of the British actor Jonathan Pryce as an Eurasian pimp in “Miss Saigon” on Broadway. Pryce didn’t help matters when he said: ''If the character is half Asian and half European, you've got to drop down on one side of the fence or the other, and I'm choosing to drop down on the European side.''  (Armisen was wise enough not to make a similar comment about playing the biracial Obama.)  Actors Equity, which had refused to agree to Pryce’s casting, later negotiated a compromise with the producer under which he advertised for other roles in Asian-American newspapers.

That sort of outreach is a good idea, but it can’t resolve all the contradictions in the debate over race and casting which has been raging in theatrical circles, amateur and professional, for a long time. (I can be a source of strife in at schools where the racial composition doesn’t match the range of ethnicities in the school play.) Makeup can only do so much, and in some plays — a conventional  dramatization of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” say — it matters that the actor look like the character. But in others, the suspension of disbelief can be extended to accepting a black man in a part written for a white man  . . . or a short man playing a  tall man . . . or a woman  as Hamlet  (or John Travolta as a woman). But sometimes it’s too much of a stretch, as SNL will discover if it tries to cast Fred Armisen as Hillary.

The Pope of the New Novel is dead.

Or, let me rephrase that: The body of Alain Robbe-Grillet is room temperature though seemingly cooler to the touch, with slack surface areas along its longitude and discolorations in transverse patterns. The anterior section is a faded beige while the dorsal area and extremeties show evidence of settlement.

Dullest writer of the twentieth century? Visionary genius of the post-religious age? Cinematic huckster? Fearless explorer of the post-rational? I'd say all of the above. The author of, among others, The Erasers, The Voyeur and La Jalousie, and the screenwriter of the mother of all art-house puzzlers Last Year At Marienbad was 85 years old. If you're going to give Robbe-Grillet a shot, I'd suggest any of the above, although my favorite is the short novel In the Labyrinth. I suspect with his passing we are now out of literary lions in winter, those people like Norman Mailer who could still pass as enfants terribles even in their ninth decades.

Dennis Dutton has a useful collection of obits. Le Monde calls him of all the great postwar writers "undoubtedly the best-known abroad and the least-liked in France." A very extensive piece in The Telegraph recounts the following telling anecdote:

In 1961 he had a narrow escape when the aeroplane in which he was travelling from Paris to Tokyo crashed on take-off after a stop at Hamburg airport. Robbe-Grillet dictated his account to a journalist, who found (as so many of the novelist's readers were to find) his version of events objective, but lacking in drama.

This soon changed to a complaint that Robbe-Grillet's version was described in clichéd journalese. His protestations that the journalist was responsible for these infelicities were ignored, though Umberto Eco rushed to his defence.

Whatever you think of his stuff (and the chances are extremely high that, whoever you are, you'll hate it), you can learn more about writing no-loaded-language descriptions from Robbe-Grillet than from any other recently deceased author.

Winding up for the winddown

Yesterday at 8:30 a.m., I canvassed the four picketers then on line outside CBS on Beverly. Do they think the Writers Guild is close to a deal? Resonses:

1 qualified yea
1 wait and see
1 I dunno
1 I'm not on the negotiating committee

Same question same place same time same number of writers, this morning:

2 hope we're close
1 I'm on the staff so I don't want to be quoted in any way
1 Yes!

What did writers do online?

What will I miss most about the strike? I'll miss being able to nurse that mad hope that the big, steaming pile of creativity allegedly centered in Los Angeles might start to ooze into these here interwebs — that the experience of total fiscal drought might drive the writers to hustle and do it themselves, proving that they could master this whole online thingee without suckling from the massive studio apparatus.

Preliminarily, I'm saying the strike appears to be winding down with no important developments on the web. Speechless? Zero out of five stars. Why we fight? The entertainment equivalent of that nice boy who liked you way back when. Strike TV? As noted here previously, this effort to raise money and make work for jobless writers spent time in development hell and doesn't seem to have generated actual content (though the Strike TV myspace page did lead me to this, and who wouldn't like a less-challenging version of The Spot?). I'm waiting to hear back from a Strike TV spokeswoman about whether that group, or any other striking writers, did anything worth checking out online; I'll update if or when evidence comes in.

I also canvassed the editorial board for interesting filmmaking writers did online during the strike, with "interesting" defined as "anything more than one micron above the 'Speechless' series in terms of quality and compellingness." That search returned this and this, neither of which peel my banana — your mileage may vary. Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskowitz' experiment in beautiful-people Dada Quarterlife came right out of fantastically-successful-and-connected-award-winner left field to land a spot in NBC's February lineup. But I was kind of thinking of people at a lower level of attainment than master of the message Zwick, the show was shooting or shot before the strike even began and in any event I fully concur with Aaron Barnhart's ruling that it's "a show that old people might make about young people."

If you have other examples of good independent webshows made during the strike, send them my way.

Update: Strike TV press liaison Julie Rayhanabad (who's OK in my book because her one IMDB credit is for a Garret Morris movie) gets back with the following:

Strike TV: Hollywood Unplugged is ongoing.  There are a number of productions currently working towards completing material for the online channel - a few are still in preproduction, while others are in active production.  We haven't released anything yet. We will be doing an announcement closer to the release date, with information about the slates that are being released and the talent behind them. 

The beauty of the Strike TV: Hollywood Unplugged fundraiser is that its about writers doing what they do best, creating, while being proactive during the strike and gaining more experience in creating for the Internet. It's not really about competing with the networks or the studios, because it's not about those parts of the industry. It's about Hollywood being unplugged and seeing what writers can accomplish and what they can experiment with - it's coming straight from the creative people behind film and television production. Further, it helps raise money for the Writer's Guild Foundation's Industry Support Fund, raising money for non-WGA members that have been seriously affected by the strike... 

There have been a number of online pieces created by members that have been in support of the strike - including Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy), members of the writing staff from The Colbert Report and the Jon Stewart Show, members of the Samantha Who writing staff - just off the top of my head.   There's also the "Speechless" pieces and the "Voices4Action" pieces that are available. Those are all strike-related. Non-strike related, recently, a few series have been purchased that were originally webseries and are now going to be aired on network television.  The SCIFI Channel bought a web-series called Sanctuary that they're now planning on making into a series for the network.  Also, I'm sure you already have the information about Quarterlife, which was recently purchased for air on NBC (actually airing this february).

Seven pickets in a row: Survey finds 100% opposition to L.A. Times

Seven picketers on the line outside CBS this morning. I stopped to chat them up. To the following question...

Do you think the L.A. Times' coverage of the strike has been horrible?

...I got seven affirmative responses.

Optimism unbound

Nikki Finki, who has actually covered world issues as a foreign correspondent, hears optimism coming from the labor side of strike negotiations. And more optimism. Nothing but optimism for five days or so. Even the Oscars may go forward.

Who's the only loser in this? I am, the guy who wants the strike to continue for at least one full calendar year.

Republicans must really be feeling down at the mouth. If the GOP presidential field weren’t in such disarray, surely by now we would have been hearing full-throated harangues about a dangerous, ascendant liberal dynasty.

Not the Clintons. The Brolins.

Oliver Stone’s making a bio-pic of George W. Bush; the 43rd president is to be played by actor and registered Democrat Josh Brolin, he of the SAG award-winning ensemble cast of  ‘’No Country for Old Men.’’ George W. Bush, before things went pear-shaped on him, was a conservative hero who aspired to be like his great conservative hero, Ronald Reagan.

And in a 2003 Emmy-nominated TV miniseries, Reagan was played by … James Brolin, Josh’s father, also a registered Democrat.

Which means that the two actors cast in the only movies to date to portray two significant Republican leaders are the stepson and the husband of … Barbra Streisand, the Hollywood liberal Republicans love to loathe.

Coincidence????

Let the conspiracy spinning begin...

You read in doubt this week: Michael Shermer earned the week's top spot not only at Opinion but for all of latimes.com with his piece on the class jealousies of the economically ignorant. Speaking of which, Hillary Clinton also proved a strong draw. Southern Californians were willing to give the old hip hip to the folks at JPL, while the governor cleaned up. Hanging in for encore Top 10 performances were Robert J. Spitzer and the man guild writers love to hate, John Ridley. Thanks for reading Opinion L.A.:

1. Why people believe weird things about money, by Michael Shermer
2. Hillary's gotta have it, by Meghan Daum
3. The correct Hillary Clinton stereotype, by Susan Faludi
4. The 'pocket veto' peril, by Robert J. Spitzer
5. Inquisition at JPL, by Tim Rutten
6. Change: the empty word, by Timothy Noah
7. A black president? Seen a few, by Joel Stein
8. Conservatism's buzz-kill, by Jonah Goldberg
9. John Ridley goes fi-core, by John Ridley
10. Reform term limits, by Arnold Schwarzenegger

DGA and AMPTP settle

Contract negotiations between the directors and producers have concluded. Details from the DGA site:

Increases both wages and residual bases for each year of the contract. 
Establishes DGA jurisdiction over programs produced for distribution on the Internet. 
Establishes new residuals formula for paid Internet downloads (electronic sell-through) that essentially doubles the rate currently paid by employers. 
Establishes residual rates for ad-supported streaming and use of clips on the Internet.

Pickets' charge

Only eight picketers on the line at Paramount when I went by at 8:30 this morning. I didn't stop to say hello. As Dean Martin says in some movie: "I don't go into Hollywood anymore. Too depressing." It looks to me like the picket schedule is getting leaner too, but I don't have much historical data to go on.

Then again, don't believe any numbers coming out of me...

It's the 74th day of the strike, right? Not the 84th or 85th. I don't know what's more discouraging: that I keep getting this simple figure wrong or that nobody bothers correcting me.

Shield honcho: They're all against us!

Shawn Ryan, creator of The Shield and dead ringer for Michael Chiklis, believes the L.A. Times, Variety and the rest of the MSM are all against the Writers Guild, strongly implying that it's that ol' consolidated media at its shadowy work. Interestingly, he and his interlocutur in this interviewer both seem to think Nikke Finke, whom I would have characterized as pretty much a pushover for the writers' view, is a studio stalking horse. Nikki vants to be alone right now, so in the absence of a response I'm chalking this up to the writers' engorged sense of embattlement.

More persuasively, Ryan makes an interesting point about how the importance of secondary and international markets means American Idol's success doesn't count for as much as it might seem. As it happens, The Shield frequently films around the the L.A. Times building, and I am always impressed by the huge amount of waste that can be supported by a cable show: Double-digit numbers of large vehicles, scores of idle cast and crew members ambling around, and most importantly the catered breakfasts — and I'm talking about real breakfasts, with sausage and eggs and pancakes. Can a spot in the FX lineup, just a click or two away from a Deep Space Nine rerun on Spike, really generate such a vast economy? Apparently it can, thanks to secondary markets — though I had thought the point of this whole long-tail thing was that it didn't depend on blockbusters with big up-front costs.

More economic ignorance partially corrected

Boy do I not know how many people are entitled to catered meals in this town! Devoted Opinion L.A. readers, if such people exist, remember that I tried to dope out the average salary of late-night gabfest staffs back in December, by doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations from Bill Carter's claim that the hosts were paying figures "from about $150,000 a week to as high as $250,000 a week" to keep their non-writing staffs off the dole. This is now old news, but a quote from Jay Leno in an L.A. Times business story earlier this month makes a mockery of my confidence that you could pull off one of these shows with no more than 50 people. Said Jay: "We had to come back because we have essentially 19 people putting 160 people out of work." So that means the average Jay Leno non-writer is making anywhere from $48,750 and $81,250 per year. Much smaller ranges than I had guesstimated, but with a much, much larger staff.

So there you have it: 160 people, plus 19 writers, plus Jay, plus Mavis, to put out The Tonight Show. I repeat my earlier question about the lean, mean agility of this dynamic and rapidly changing industry.

John Ridley responds to our recent Blowback from Frank Pierson. Ridley's original piece on his decision to take the WGA's "financial core" option is here, and Pierson's response is here. A host of WGA-member reactions, of varying degrees of politeness, is here:

Re: Frank Pierson's response to my explanation as to why I've gone financial core within the Writers Guild

I take Mr. Pierson at his word when he says he has no recollection of speaking with me on the phone back in the early nineties. He was, after all, the much-lauded writer of Cool Hand Luke. I was just a junior staff writer for some weblet TV show, and would been talking some crazy talk about diversity. I was probably no more than a name on his call-back sheet, and clearly diversity's not the kind of subject that holds much traction for some.

I will just say the tenor and rancor of his repose was like a trip down memory lane for me.

But never mind the past, if I could just address two assertions made by Mr. Pierson:

Regarding diversity, Mr. Pierson writes: "The guild does not hire or fire."

He is absolutely correct. But in the case of television staffs, it is the show runners who hire and fire the members of the writers' room. Show runners are perhaps the most powerful sect within the guild. When I dissent from the Groupthink, I'm often hectored that the guild is a brotherhood. A family. And this family has to stick together.

If this family can make a priority of such crucial issues as product integration — an issue over which the guild actually engaged in guerrilla actions against the studios — could they not do the same for something as mildly important as diversity in the workplace? Or is equal opportunity for all less critical than having to stick a Buick in one's show? The non-fluctuating stats on diversity in television say no.

Mr. Pierson writes:

... the guild, with our continuing contributions, will take care of Ridley when he's sick, protect him from predatory rewrites, pay him his residuals and support him in his old age, and he doesn't even have to walk for it.

A reminder to Mr. Pierson: Even though I'm financial core, I continue to pay dues to the guild. Our contributions are my contributions as well. And those contributions are paid into the health fund by the producers, based on the amount of work I do. Predatory rewriters? Well, of course, the brotherhood of writers never rewrites each other. And the guild, as I'm sure Mr. Pierson is aware, does not pay my residuals. It collects on my behalf residuals paid by the producers. With regard to supporting me in my old age; like millions of Americans who are fortunate enough to do so, I've chosen to set up my own self-administered pension fund. Call me crazy, but I prefer self-reliance over depending on the largesse of others.

Interesting, a man who doesn't remember speaking with me claims to know so much about me.

And finally, no, I don't have to walk for all that. But I do have to WORK for it. Contrary to the pejorative "parasite" with which Mr. Pierson labels me, I not only work for my meals but bring my own table. A reminder: My membership in the guild is compulsory. If Mr. Pierson doesn't care for parasites such as myself, he should bring his considerable influence to bear so that the leadership will allow myself and all others who so desire to chart our own path.

But really, enough with the name-calling, the nastiness and the negativity. Frankly (no pun), I'm surprised at the level of attention that's been paid to the gadfly I supposedly am. I would encourage everyone at this point to dispense with the vitriol and get back to the truly important issue at hand: bringing to conclusion the labor action which has caused so much pain to so many unintended victims in our community.

John Ridley took home our top score for the week with his fiery fi-core fussilade. Strike stuff dominated the top 10, in fact, while Patt Morrison's modest proposal and Elizabeth Larsen's adoption article prove that everybody loves a mom in trouble. (Look for former WGA head Frank Pierson to give Ridley whatfor in Blowback, and keep reading for the previous week's top 10, by the way.) Here are the details:

1. John Ridley goes fi-core, by John Ridley
2. Leno writes a wrong, by Meghan Daum
3. Democracy: inevitable no more, by Madeleine K. Albright
4. Britney's law? Not so crazy, by Patt Morrison
5. Writers strike is war, by the editorial board
6. Israel's false friends, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
7. The 'pocket veto' peril, by Robert J. Spitzer
8. How to remember 1968, by Todd Gitlin
9. A sequel with the same ending, by Thom Taylor
10. The adoption quandary, by Elizabeth Larsen

Much more fiber in our previous-week results, with foreign policy, the real estate bust, immigration and even a 2007 know-it-all test dominating. As always, thanks for reading Opinion L.A. and we hope to keep on pleasin'...

1. The great fall of China, by Walter Russell Mead
2. Aunt Benazir’s false promises, by Fatima Bhutto
3. George Allen’s curse, by Dan Schnur
4. A dynasty isn’t a democracy, by Rosa Brooks
5. How to survive the bust, by various writers
6. Beyond Benazir, by the editorial board
7. A year of living dangerously, by Paul Slansky
8. Is anyone listening? by Tamar Jacoby
9. The Benazir I knew, by Amy Wilentz
10. And you don’t want to know what’s going to happen to Britney, by Joel Stein

Voluminous reader mail on our recent Blowback "John Ridley goes fi-core." Support, condemnation, and a controversy over who did or did not tell whom to shut up. If anybody out there has audio or video of the meeting in question, please send it along and we'll try to sort out the controversy. Or at least turn it into a ring tone.

Rick Mitchell, Los Angeles

Dear Editor:

John Ridley's comments about the Writers Guild sound very much like those of Thirties liberals who joined the Communist Party but left in frustration over its fascistic attitudes but were made to suffer for that membership in the late Forties. And it was nice to see a different perspective on this strike for a change. More objective coverage would be appreciated.

Roberto Bacalski, Los Angeles

Dear Editor:

I want to publicly voice my support for John Ridley's decision to stand on principle and tread his own path. Writers have always been staunch defenders of free speech. Telling one of their own to "shut up" is a terrible betrayal. As a SAG member, I support the goals of the writers' strike but the WGA will self destruct if they continue to alienate their own members.

Bernard Lechowick, Los Angeles

Dear Editor, There are nearly 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of American and John Ridley is your choice for Blowback? Justify that, please.

Ken Martin, Los Angeles

John Ridley's entitled to his opinion. No big deal. But his complaints about WGA negotiators not being experienced enough is a dated, dead issue. And it was discussed at the meeting in December. Which he should know since he said he was there. Patrick Verrone answered it directly and without any malice to the writer who asked it. And the crack John made about someone at the meeting commenting that: "Anyone who didn't have anything good to say about the strike should shut up." -- That was a member who stepped up to the mike and simply felt that way following the previous speaker. I'm sorry, but isn't that what he said we should all be okay with - speaking your mind? The leaders never cheered. The membership did. That's what happens in membership meetings like that. No leader on stage went into a 'frenzied' state and declared that this would now be the new theme of the night. Here's the truth: John Ridley is a sensitive guy. That's cool. But what he also is is a selfish member of this creative community by blasting the very guild that is trying to protect his and everyone else's future. The leaders aren't perfect - none of us are. So run for one of the WGA board or leadership positions if you're not happy. But don't shit on the sacrifices they and all writers are making by posting an LA Times Op-Ed piece with things like: "Bargaining chips moved on and off the table in the haphazard manner of a first-time gambler at a roulette wheel; interim agreements arbitrarily granted, without the necessary vote by membership."

Arrogant. Selfish. Mis-leading. And incredibly self-serving. I have no problem with John Ridley disagreeing with WGA tactics and policies. What I have a problem with is him giving up after hitting a few roadblocks. Being intimidated by a few writers who said you shouldn't go into the WGA's Santa Monica meeting in December. Then throwing his hands up like a spoiled, angry child and going by way of the LA Times Op-Ed route. Independent thinker: Maybe. A guy who really stands for something: Absolutely not. Cowardly: Absolutely!

Mike Scully, Los Angeles

While it's flattering to think that I helped inspire John Ridley to leave the Writers Guild of America (the union that has fought to make sure he was paid for his work and to protect his creative rights) and declare Financial Core status, I really don't deserve the credit he has so generously given me. I was the "high-profile (thank you again, John) television writer" who made the remarks at the membership meeting that Ridley referred to in his op-ed piece.

The problem is that John was not listening closely. My words: "tell them to shut the ----- up", was a reference to agents and producers (people who make a very nice living off of the work of writers) who were making public statements about the strike without any regard to the damage they were doing to the very people who pay their salary.

I never told other writers in the room that they could not express dissenting opinions, and that is why the Guild leadership did not feel the need to stand up and defend anyone - because nobody was being attacked.

So long, John. Good luck in "the Core"...

Bonnie Garvin, Los Angeles

Apparently John Ridley knows as little about truth as he does about solidarity. He claims by going "fi-core" in the WGA strike he is taking a neutral action. Ridley is anything but neutral. He is a flagrant opportunist who is using the strike to gain the notoriety that has eluded him as a screenwriter. Ridley has taken a page from Alan Keyes, Clarence Thomas, Ann Coulter and other disgruntled reactionaries who try and achieve success at the expense of those who fought on their behalf. I doubt Ridley refused the health and pension and other benefits his WGA membership afford him. What is most disturbing is that Ridley resorts to absolute and total fabrication to make his argument. I too was at the December meeting where he reports "blood fervor" and "threat" carried the day. Sounds more like a page from a bad Hollywood melodrama than the uplifting meeting I attended. His representation of that meeting is not only factuous, it is a slap in the face to the 3000 plus members who voted in favor of a strike. Apparently he thinks we're all stooges. Only John Ridley knows best.

Jack Kenny, Los Angeles

Please. If Mr. Ridley is "done" with the guild, why must he still plead to make his case, and then add two extra paragraphs just to say he's done? If you are so finished with us, Mr. Ridley, then just walk away like a man. Don't back away whining about nobody loving you. And if you think your 1 1/2 % of gross only pays for your subscription to Written By, you may be even more stupid than you appear. Why don't you keep your dues and negotiate with each future employer to pay for your pension and health benefits. I'm sure they'd happily pony up. By the way, membership in the Guild is as mandatory as the mininums you were no doubt paid when you first joined... oh, boo-hoo, you were forced to join the Guild.

Mark Wilding, Tarzana

Obviously John Ridley's fictional endeavors don't stop at just his screenplays or novels. I also attended the WGA members meeting in December. At NO point did anyone ever stand up and say that if a fellow member didn't have anything good to say about the strike, they should shut up. That NEVER happened. NEVER. John Ridley simply made it up. So in addition to being a screenwriter, blogger, novelist and commentator he can now add the work "liar".

If you're delivering stuff to a studio, schedule it for Friday

To end up my week of strike reports, I wanted to hit a different picket line this morning, and so went even further out of my way than usual, to the Fox lot on Pico and Motor...only to look like a cartoon jackass when I discovered that I'd been looking at a Monday-through-Thursday picket schedule from the WGA. There was nobody assailing the house Babes built, which was probably just as well since the surrounding streets house my least favorite form of life: busybody residents who finagle no-parking-any-time rules out of the city. (One of these days, zoning partypoops, the Cavanaugh reign of terror's gonna start!) In fact there seems to be very little picketing activity anywhere on Fridays. I put in calls to a few studios to see if they've begun to arrange their pickup and delivery schedules around picket lulls. Will follow up if I get an answer.

Mixing it up on the picket line, at last!

And here's what I missed at the Fox lot. A little old-school fisticuffs on the line! Nikki Finke blames the "Fox white collar worker" for the altercation, but is big enough to allow that she disapproves of aggressive tactics by the picketers too — although her example of the latter doesn't strike me as all that objectionable.

Please don't throw me in that briar patch, Brer Bear!

I have yet to hear anybody make a non-ludicrous case that waivers, exceptions and other side deals during a strike are anything other than straight-up good news for management and bad news for labor — though stay tuned to Blowback next week, when a guild member will give it another try. But here's an intriguing unsourced item from Nikki's catalogue of producer misbehavior:

Harvey Weinstein received a number of phone calls from the moguls warning him "You shouldn't do it," and "We can get this done with the DGA," when word leaked out that he was making a side deal with the WGA to be able to hire striking writers.

Presuming that there's any truth to this report, I'd expect Weinstein's logical response to be, "Think about it, dummy. Management doesn't need solidarity; labor does. My cutting a side deal is either a wash for you if you're a competitor or a benefit for you if you're a partner."

But it's a crazy world out there. If producers believe (and I mean actually believe, not just claim to believe for public consumption) they stand to lose through waivers and side deals, and writers believe they stand to benefit, I have no choice but to think there's something to this premise even though I see no logical basis for it. Am I missing something?

No Negative Globes, but a funny response

I was hoping at least New Yorkers, who are said to be a hardboiled bunch, might go in for a little gallows celebration of the ongoing awards-show apocalypse, so I asked the writer Rob Kutner where the Big Apple's best Negative Golden Globes party would be. His reply:

I would say Times Square, because nothing looks better on a massive Jumbotron than a star-unstudded press conference!

And now a word from the free market

One of my weird byways in the always tangled paths of libertarianism was to dissent from what I considered a too-forceful opposition to unions. Not that I support organized labor or condone its outsized political clout. But I've always been just a little too ready to view unions as private entities that are entitled to their own freedoms of association and action, and to resist efforts, like Gov. Schwarzenegger's Proposition 75 a few years ago, to rein them in. (You can read through my Prince Hamlet routine on that issue here.) But I do enjoy getting a bracing dose of individualist grit amid all the collective passion. Here's one I just received from the documentarian Dan Gifford:

My take on the Writer's Guild strike is that it is, at its heart, driven by class warfare and capital naivete about the fact that those who put up the money and take considerable financial risk to fund films want changes because they are not making a profit. A recent Global Media Intelligence/Merrill Lynch report made that fact crystal clear as well as the reason: "Most of the income - past and future - that studios and writers have been fighting about has already gone to the biggest stars, directors and producers in the form of ballooning participation deals" as one story summarized the study's findings. But that does not matter to most WGA members I talk to and overhear while attending many film screenings at the WGA. What is being said comports completely with Lawrence O'Donnell's characterization of the WGA several years ago on CNN's Reliable Sources: "The Writers Guild of America, my union, is at a minimum, 99 percent leftist liberal and, like me, socialist."  And the sentiment I hear O'Donnell's socialists consistently express is that "the rich" are just greedy pricks who don't want to share their wealth.

Dan

Our do-nothing president

I caught up with Melrose Larry Green this morning, while he was working the 76 station at the corner of Highland and his namesake avenue, waving a poster in support of Mitt Romney. Larry, who attended college in Massachusetts and admires Romney for his values and his leadership of the Bay State, despises the Clintons and had this to say about the Writers Guild of America strike:

"The strike is a disaster. The mayor, who has a background as a labor organizer, and the governor, who was a bigtime actor, ought to be working together every day to settle this thing."

Asked to pick a favorite between the two sides, Larry declined, saying, "Probably both sides are to blame. I think President Romney would have intervened, because this is not just Los Angeles; this is the whole country. I think President Bush should intervene and get this thing settled."

Strike TV, where art thou, or, it's 1997 all over again!

The prediction that the strike would lead to an explosion of new media creativity is looking creakier all the time. Strike TV, an online channel promising to feature new, non-strike-related work by WGA members, aims to raise money for the strike's fund. The channel is supposed to be coming in February to YouTube and Google Video, and Strike TV held a seminar yesterday, which is described in detail by Fun Joel.

I'm second to nobody in my nostalgia for the Clinton era, but are people really still holding conferences where they talk about the challenges of monetizing the Internet? There's even a reference to "Hollywood 2.0," a concept I loved when I saw it 11 years ago on the cover of Wired. Seriously, the point of these here interwebs is that you