With the news that Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, the late alleged murderer of two police officers and three city officials in Kirkwood, Missori, was a well known city-council gadfly, we set the wayback machine to 2003, for a Los Angeles Times story by Hugo Martin, explaining some of the tensions involved in giving broad leeway to public blowhards. Here it is in full print-spec glory: Los Angeles Times
Wednesday September 24, 2003
THE STATE
COLUMN ONE
Freedom's Test, or Just a Pest?
* Gadflies deemed out of order are arrested or ejected from some public meetings. The 1st Amendment and decorum are at odds.
Home Edition, Main News, Page A-1
Metro Desk
53 inches; 1834 words
Type of Material: Column
By Hugo Martin, Times Staff Writer
After greeting the San Bernardino County supervisors with a mock Nazi salute, Jeff Wright, a homeless Air Force veteran, stepped to the public microphone to complain about being arrested at a regional transportation meeting a few months earlier.
Board Chairman Dennis Hansberger told him to stay on the topic under discussion, which was the salaries of county attorneys. Wright then threatened to seal the supervisor's mouth with duct tape, which he had brought with him.
Hansberger responded by ordering sheriff's deputies to eject Wright, who was led out of the building in handcuffs, screaming about police brutality.
It was nothing new -- for Wright or for the board of supervisors.
The March incident was among the more than 100 arrests or ejections deputies have carried out at meetings of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors since 1989, according to an unofficial tally by one local activist.
Although law enforcement officials say they cannot confirm the exact number, they put the tally in the dozens.
In 2000, reports of those arrests earned the Board of Supervisors the "Black Hole" award, a dubious distinction given by the California First Amendment Coalition to public agencies and officials that the group says show disregard for open government and 1st Amendment rights.
In the past year, the pace of arrests and removals at San Bernardino County supervisors' meetings has increased to about one per month, with most speakers being removed for failing to stick to the agenda and then refusing to surrender the lectern.
Read on »
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.
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.
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 don't have to go to meetings or spend four months on a project. What do you think this is, Hamlet? You're competing against "Leave Britney Alone," folks. Let's see what you can do.
Self-criticism for the self-absorbed
At my Paramount spot today, I watched a BBC crew schmooze the picketing writers. The correspondent's questioning style was to hold forth on how amazingly fantastical the universal public support for the writers has been, and at one point he asked "But the real question is what will happen on Hollywood's biggest night of the year, The Oscars®?" And he said it with such deadpan Brit-fanboy breathlessness (you could actually hear the registered-trademark symbol) that I remembered why it's so hard to take seriously critiques of Hollywood like The Player and such: Because when you get down to it, Hollywood self-criticism is just another form of Hollywood tinsel.
Real criticism from the non-organized
I'm not as confident as the BBC in saying what the public feels about the strike. I spend some time around true Hollywood hangers-on who are not striking but out of work and/or business, and I keep hearing that the worm is turning against writers, with "greedy writers" commentary becoming more prevalent.
There doesn't seem to be much evidence for that claim. Here's an anti-guild screed from somebody whose husband's out of work; that's not exactly a groundswell. If web comments are any guide, the writers still have the upside in the PR war. And every day this week I've heard at least one horn-honk in support of the picketers.
How much value there is in the PR is another story. The ultimate arbiter of public opinion will be my favorite economic concept: revealed preference. If the people don't want to watch, nothing's gonna stop them. Public behavior on this issue may end up looking the way it does on so many other issues: Most people, as the BBC might say, just don't give a toss. That could be bad news for either side, or more likely for both.
Unanimous support found in four-person survey
A joke holds that Fox will lose more money if the Writers Guild of America grants a waiver for its broadcast of the NAACP Image Awards than it will if the show is canceled.
When I buttonholed a group of four WGA members — including but not limited to David N. Weiss, vice-president, board of directors; Skye Dent; and my friend David Wyatt — there was not much love in the air for me, with comments ranging from, "I don't know where you studied labor organizing," to "It's funny you say that because I know 26,000 journalists have been laid of in the last 10 years." But there was unamimous support for granting the waivers discussed in today's editorial, and for the guild leadership's strategy.
Welcome to Paramount
I will pursue no longer the question of blocking traffic flow at the studio gates. Wyatt's comment this morning: "We act as pedestrians. When the light is green we go; when it's red we stop." Weiss says some guild members have been ticketed for jaywalking, but according to him and a guild spokesman, no picketers been arrested since the strike began.
Dry sterile thunder without rain
I caused the most offense among this morning's sample by expressing my belief that the writers need to play harder ball. Weiss took umbrage at the suggestion of a Negative Golden Globes party, saying the cancellation of the awards show was nothing to celebrate. He also asked to be quoted in full as follows: "This is one of the premiere exports of this country. We don't export much anymore in this country. It generates billions of dollars of revenue, employs hundreds of thousands of people. You don't do that for a nickel and a dime. The notion of cutting the content creators out of the food chain is shortsighted."
The how'd-that-happen decade
My pals on the Paramount picket line were very critical of my non-objective, biased, know-nothing hackery, so I guess that frees me up to render a truly woolgathering opinion:
I used to think I lived in an inconsequential era, but now I think I live in a nonconsequential era. You can make decisions without taking any responsibility for the result. You want to invade a country but you don't want any soldiers to die. You want to go on strike but you don't want anybody to lose money. You want to buy an overpriced house but you don't want to have pay for it. Given the unidirectional nature of the time continuum, that's not really how grownups should be looking at the world. Maybe some presidential candidate needs to promise a cabinet-level department that will help make that point to all Americans. (And just to anticipate one potential consequence, I am speaking only for myself here, not the L.A. Times or the editorial board.)
This way to the egress
My hunch yesterday seems to have been accurate. The writers' blocking of the Paramount entrance was just for show. This morning they were back to waiting politely at the light while Paramount employees and visitors drove on and off the lot without incident. There was one guy dragging a wheeled basket who seemed to be making a point of clearing the intersection as slowly as possible, but that's too passive for even passive aggression. Business is being done at Paramount!
Welcome, Bridgewater College!
Among the loiterers at the Windsor entrance were a trio of chipper young Paramount hostesses in blue blazers, chinos and neckties, waiting to greet a bus tour from one "Bridgewater College." Whether that's actually Bridgewater State in Massachusetts or the Church of the Brethren-affiliated Bridgewater College in Virginia I don't know, but the latter boasts a "White, semi-conservative, [and] heterosexual" student body, so I say enjoy Hollywood with good cheer and an open mind.
What does the Paramount Tour consist of anyway? After living around the corner for nearly a year, I've never been curious enough to plunk down $35 to find out. To my suggestion that they needed to add an Indiana Jones' Ride of Doom to the itinerary, the hostesses only laughed politely.
Negative Golden Globes exert zero gravitational pull
The writers now hold the scalps of the Foreign Press Association, whose annual festivities are now in ruins. Wouldn't you think the WGA would be organizing a bash on Sunday, to boost morale and to celebrate the victory? Apparently not. I asked David Wyatt, who mans the tables at the Paramount picket line, where the best Negative Golden Globes party was going to be, but he didn't know of any parties at all (or so he claimed; this may be just be the principle that the best parties are the ones you don't tell anybody about).
Dreaming of a better-looking picket line
Two Screen Actors Guild reps were also standing behind the literature table this morning. They weren't taking any questions, however, and I'm not sure whether the show of support was for public consumption or for the writers themselves. In any event, the picketers could use the bucking up, even on a bright, cold day like this one. I've been struck by how glum the writers appear to be at a time when their position looks so strong. Then again, if you want a bunch of Knute Rocknes you're probably not going to find them in a writers organization.
Day 74, 75, 76?
I think I made the error of not counting November 5 itself in my calculation yesterday. I believe that makes today the 75th day of the walkout, right?
That's "heinously," Michelle!
Why is it corrections page never connect the stuff that actually needs correction. From today's For the Record section: In a Dec. 31 Calendar article about how soap opera writers are coping with the Writers Guild of America strike, a comment by "All My Children" writer Michelle Patrick was not placed in the correct context. When she said, "The more heinous the producers behave, the angrier I get," Patrick was referring to members of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, not the individual producers of soap operas.
Prominent writer goes fi-core
John Ridley's taking flack for his decision. Watch for Ridley's own explanation tomorrow at latimes.com/blowback.
No Globes for you!
TV junkies and foreign-flagged dipsomaniacs, despair! Nikki Finke reports it's curtains for the Golden Globes.
Conversational snippets: Pickets brave cold, talk trash
Nobody was picketing CBS Studios on Beverly Blvd. when I drove by this morning (the WGA's picket schedule indicates I was too early), so I headed over to Paramount Pictures on Melrose to find a score or so striking writers working the block. Overheard while shadowing two different picket-line duos: Writer A: There's fights, drinking, people passing out...
Writer B: Yeah, you see the overhead shot of everybody parked out there.
Writer A: There there are these people who set up an RV, flatscreen TV. They don't even go to the game. Illinois plates. They're at the game but they're not going to the game.
Second conversation: Writer C: Between the two extremes, I'd rather err on the side of cold than hot.
Writer D: Huh.
Also the picketers this morning seemed at first glance to have given up on the civil picketing pattern I applauded earlier, in which the sign carriers stop at red lights to allow cars to enter and exit the studio lot. Picketers were making a point of blocking the driveway as drivers were trying to get in. But don't bet on this being some aggressive new strategy for the work stoppage. There was a CNN cameraman taping the whole thing, and I suspect the show of force was for his benefit.
 For an editorial I'm working on I've been learning about the process by which the MTA auctions off its retired buses (don't ask, just be glad you're not me). My journey of spiritual discovery brought me down to a facility in Long Beach where Ken Porter Auctions at 10:00 am tomorrow will get rid of 55 former Metro buses, plus some non-running, no-provenance relics like the one pictured to the right. The MTA auctions off old buses once or twice every year, and according to the auction company there's a pretty brisk business in such liquidations for various municipalities. I was really struck by this plug-ugly vehicle because its interior is in pretty good shape and it seems like a steal for anybody in the set design or construction business. Isn't there a constant demand for vintage stuff like this in period films? For the prices we're talking about (inside dope is that most or all of tomorrow's inventory will be bought by scrap dealers), it would even be worth it for some high school class to buy this baby, strip off one side and use it as the set to do a Rosa Parks school play.
For that matter, who wouldn't want to buy one of the MTA's own, more recent, orange-and-white diesel gems? (See more details at the Ken Porter site.) My pal at Ken Porter Auctions tells me 44 of these babies have full engines and transmissions and could, in theory, still run. Won't they need a dozen or so buses to trash whenever they get around to making the next Die Hard picture? You could pick up a bunch now and sell them to Fox for a tidy profit! Or just buy a running vehicle, get your bus license, do some smog work and put in a port-a-john, and you've got the ideal traveling home.
Anyway, if you're thinking big or just want to keep me company, show up at 10 tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at 970 W. Chester Pl. Long Beach Ca 90813.
One of the buslines on my route has been canceled as of the end of this week.
As of the beginning of this month, my fare increased 20%, with the approval of the editorial board.
So if price increases 20% and service decreases 50%, how fast does a light rail train need to be traveling in the opposite direction for the collision with my bus to put me out of my misery?
A new poll [pdf] from WorldPublicOpinion.org caught the editorial board's eye today with its conclusion that allied Muslim majority countries still don't think too highly of the U.S.: More alarming is the support among citizens of allied countries for attacking U.S. troops in Iraq. That includes 91% of those polled in Egypt, 68% in Morocco, 35% in Pakistan and 19% in Indonesia....
Many apparently rationalize their support for Al Qaeda by concluding that it wasn't behind 9/11. Despite Bin Laden's televised boasting, fewer than one in four surveyed — and just 2% of Pakistanis — say they think that Al Qaeda masterminded the attacks. This depressing landscape suggests a steep uphill climb for the United States.
The board also argues that it's common sense to give passengers in cars the same 4th Amendment rights as drivers, and volunteers to clean up brush if Caltrans won't do it.
On the op-ed pages, columnist Ronald Brownstein compares President Bush to a polar bear, Doug Kaplan says developers don't need extra money, and former New York Times Asia correspondent Barbara Crossette writes that not everyone wants democracy, including the Bhutanese. From Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the multinational corps, writes in defense of security barriers.
Letter writers chime in on the Baghdad barriers, and most aren't happy about them -- for R. Donald Snyder, they're not far off from the Jewish ghettos of World War II: "Wall off all of the Sunnis into one area of the city where they are easier to exterminate?"
J. Michael Kennedy, a foreign correspondent for The Times, took a close look at Tehran for the Sunday Opinion on April 18, 1982, in the second year of the Iran-Iraq War. From the war front near the Iraqi border to the clogged streets of Tehran, Iran is a crazy quilt of contradictions. This country eludes definition, teetering back and forth between the past and the present.
It fights a war with modern machinery, but counts as its best weapon the young men willing to clear mine fields by running through them.
It desperately needs peace to salvage what is left of the economy, but instead vows to continue the campaign against enemies of Islam.
Kennedy highlighted the all too familiar clash between fundamentalists and moderates, particularly as it played out among and within recently repatriated youth. The son of the revolution had a question. Until that moment, he had been doing his job, proselytizing for the Ministry of War Propaganda about Iran's military superiority. But then Ali Shojanoori turned to face the back seat of the American-built station wagon.
'Is it true that John Belushi is dead?' he asked. 'And what about Johnny Carson? Is he still on the air?'
My column from today about American retirees (some of them illegal) changing the face of the central Mexico town of San Miguel de Allende talked a bit about the town's expat newspaper, Atencion San Miguel. Reading the "On My Mind" column therein by Joseph Dispenza reminded me anew that hell hath no sadness like an expatriate chagrined at how his "discovery" has been ruined by ... expatriates. The opening two grafs:  In this South of the Border Brigadoon, the recent appearance of monolithic supermarkets, multiplexes and fast-food franchises has many of us wakening to the sober realization that our idllic bubble may have burst. If one more superstore moves in, we may have to leave here and move to the next good place that still retains its enchantment -- its soul.
But what is happening here may not be merely a local issue. Towns a cities everywhere, it seems, are in the process of an inexorable debasement, a crumbling of culture under the weight of overdevelopment and overpopulation to the point of a bleak and depressing blandness. There may not be a next good place.
Well, there's always Cuba!
Over on the news side, Daryl Strickland reports on a fire that consumed the multi-unit building* at the northeast corner of Broadway and Fourth Street.
I can report that the fire is now contained, and since this is Opinion L.A., opine that the L.A. Fire Department did an excellent job, setting up water cannons on the roof of the Union Store For Men building, a four-story structure two doors down from the corner, which provided enough elevation to douse the roof of the corner building. They're spraying the smoldering embers as I type.
A note-taker who identified himself as an independent adjuster informs me that the owner of the building is Eli Sasson Sassoon, spelling unsure. The structure itself appears to be a prewar building with a stone facade that had been encased in shingles. The shingle casing covered all the windows in the stone facade, so firefighters knocked holes through the shingles. The blackened stone arches of the original wall can now be seen through a drapery of wrecked shingles. An LAFD representative tells Strickland the building was structurally compromised, though it would be nice if that original wall could be salvaged. The building's street level housed various shops. According to firefighters on the scene, the upper floors were vacant. Nobody was hurt.
The following stores were wrecked:
Botanica El Faraón: Consultas espirituales
Pan American Travel: Envios a Mexico—Sigue
DolEx: Dollar Express
Yadira's Bridal & Tuxedo
El Hurache Veloz: Autentica Comido Mexicana
Bridal Moments
Bridal World
Giromex: Envios de dinera a Mexico, Centro & Sudamerica
Adriana's Bridal & Tuxedo
Jackie Fashion: Wholesale & Retail
Thanks to the aforementioned excellent work by the LAFD, both one-story buildings that abut the burned building were spared. Casa India Restaurant, the next place down on Broadway went unburned, though a firefighter speculated it may have gotten water damage. The next building down Fourth contains a few other shops, all of which were spared, including www.BroadwayArmyStore.com, which is already open for business.
* Actually two buildings, but so attached as to be barely distinguishable from the street.
So there I was, standing in line for nearly an hour with about 100 people outside a busy train station in Paris, waiting for a taxi -- I'll let that sink in -- when two or three youngish men, minds clearly altered by some substance, began shouting and gesturing menacingly at various people in line, including a professional-looking single woman who appeared to be in her 30s. The proximate cause was, uh, people not standing in the right place or something, but there was no real reason; they were just crazy and trying to get a rise out of people. I thought there was going to be violence, and mentally rehearsed some kung fu moves, but luckily they grew distracted and walked away.
Having long been a purveyor of the unoriginal theory that France's public order today bears a striking resemblance to the bummed-out pessimism and occasional wildings of 1980s New York City (down to the shrugging cops, paralyzed onlookers, and easy accusations of racism against people who refer to the problem as ... a problem), what came next was no surprise -- the woman decided to be brave enough to ask every uniform-wearing human she could see if they could please help guard the line and maybe hunt down the menacers, because people felt destabilized about standing with their bulky possessions in the cold for nearly an hour while young men seemingly without restraint decided whether or not they were going to commit a little ultra-violence ... and, as expected, the responses ranged from irritated shrug (with matching facial expression) to snappy assertion that it's not our responsibility, madame, and don't you know how overworked we are?
In the end, no one stood guard, but a taxi finally came for us (after a first passed us over because he didn't want to deal with two suitcases). In a friendly sort of way, my wife asked the driver what the deal was with the no-taxis-at-Gare-du-Nord situation, and whether it was normal to wait for an hour. "And what about us!" he shot back (translation approximate). "What happens when we have to stand for an hour waiting for passengers!"
A few nights later, on one of those many French TV shows where a bunch of philosophers sit around a table sipping from goblets and talking loftily about politics, someone made the observation that the difference between cabbies in New York and Paris is that the former always tell you about their dreams and plans, and the latter just complain. I can neither confirm nor deny this theorem, though I always appreciate spinning the thinnest of French anecdotes into sweeping generalizations that probably don't hold up.
Seeing the West Bank from the back seat of an armored SUV is not an enjoyable experience. The windows are smaller (because of the armor), and if there are bumps in the road, which there are, you will smack your head on the roof, which is low (because of the armor). But it was worthwhile.
I could try and describe everything: The professor at Bir Zeit University who has a stunning view of the hills from his office that is "almost ruined," he said, by a settlement atop one of them. (I was encouraged, actually, by the adverb.) The careful Palestinian government spokesman who kept one eye on my notebook and one on the BBC as he talked, then explained (proudly or apologetically, I couldn't tell) as he was ushering us out of his office that he knew a lot more than he told us. The man hanging out in a mosque in downtown Ramallah who said he hasn't worked in eight months and has eight children at home. (He lives off "philanthropy," he said, looking at me expectantly.) The nervousness of our Palestinian translator as we approached a heavily fenced Israeli settlement.
Or I could just post a few photos, with captions....
That's me standing in front of what will be the tomb of Yasir Arafat.
It's all being paid for by the Japanese, our translator told us.
Some graffiti of Arafat on a wall in the Palestinian government compound in Ramallah. His image is everywhere; this one has fuller lips than most. Too bad it's slightly out of focus.
Here Abu Mazen, Arafat's successor, is slowly lowered into place in Ramallah. I will let the symbolism of this photo speak for itself.
Amos Oz’s house is in Arad, a two-and-a-half hour ride from
Jerusalem along the shores of an ancient sea (Dead) lined with modern hotels
(Caesar’s). The town is far removed from the intensity of Jerusalem, and Oz
himself at first seemed detached and tired when we met.
He answered questions about the peace process in perfectly formed,
perfectly bored paragraphs. He was exhausted by the issue, he said, as were
most Israelis, but he was also hopeful, since exhaustion is more likely to
bring peace than effort. “Only when both sides tire of a conflict can it end,”
he said.
We went on this vein for at least an hour, with Oz focusing mostly
on some vague point outside the window. As Israeli's most famous novelist, and one who is politically active, Oz is often asked about the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But he doesn't necessarily like it.
Not until the subject turned to the
Hebrew language did he become truly engaged. Oz writes in Hebrew, which he says is more flexible than English, and he was effusive about Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the founder of modern Hebrew.
Ben Yehuda was so monomaniacal that he eventually stopped speaking to his own mother because she couldn't understand Hebrew and he refused to speak anything else. "He was stark raving mad, but he was a genius," Oz said.
Left: Directions to Amos Oz's house in Arad, courtesy of a man at the taxi stand in the center of town. The directions are not in Hebrew.
My first day in Israel I took a three-hour tour — by helicopter. To paraphrase what Daniel Webster said about Dartmouth: It’s a small country, yet there are those that love it. The main purpose of the ride was to show how small Israel is, and thus vulnerable it is to terrorism, and thus how necessary is the barrier separating it from the Palestinian territories.
It succeeded — in the first goal, anyway. You can see the hills of the West Bank, the Palestinian territories, from a few hundred feet above the Mediterranean coastline. “The narrow waist of Israel,” our guide kept calling it, with a mixture of concern and enthusiasm.
Later we landed an army checkpoint in Gaza, where we climbed up a lookout post to get a better view of Israel’s vulnerability to terrorism. (Anyone else see a pattern here?) Palestinians in Gaza regularly lob low-tech Kassam rockets from Gaza into Israeli. Though they rarely cause loss of life, Israel retaliates with often disproportionate force.
It was a curious tour, designed to show both Israel’s strength and vulnerability, and never was it illustrated so well as when we meandered though the army checkpoint unchaperoned and seemingly unwatched. We were free to go where we pleased, said our guide. So long as we didn’t go where we weren’t supposed to.
Above: A lookout post near the northern border of Gaza. Rest assured, our guide told us, there are soldiers in there somewhere.
If you’re going to Israel from L.A., as I did last week, then
there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to fly on El Al. (It’s also the only
airline that flies nonstop from LAX to Tel Aviv.) And if you’re going to fly on
El Al, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to be interrogated. You may
also witness a marriage proposal, a shouting match or two and a fair amount of
pushing.
I have nothing against being interrogated; I thoroughly enjoyed
it. I was taken out of line at LAX and questioned for a good 45 minutes, long
enough that I actually began to believe I might be dangerous. The questions
were as incisive as they were random: Had I ever been to Israel? (No.) Did I
have any friends or relatives there? (No.) Did I speak any Hebrew? (Nada.)
Where was I staying? Did I have a reservation? (Yes; he looked it over and
said, “That’s a pretty good rate.”) We then engaged in a Socratic dialogue
about the purpose of my visit and, by extension, the purpose of newspapers in
general, the L.A. Times in particular and, most specifically, the editorial
page and its deputy editor. I learned a lot.
I eventually made it onto the plane, after a few more rounds of
less intensive questioning, where I sat in a middle seat for more than 12
hours. As we were entering our descent, the captain made an important
announcement: 49A had accepted an engagement ring from 49B. Mazel tov! The
cabin erupted in applause.
As we landed, it broke out again. The woman next to me looked
over. “Have you ever been to Israel?” she said. (And I thought I had already
answered all these questions…) When I said no, she explained that everyone
always claps upon landing. Then it’s every passenger for himself. “First the
clapping, then the pushing,” she said. “Welcome to Israel.”
The Martinez Chronicles through China continue today, with a fourth dispatch from the world's most populous country: The LAT delegation dined on Wednesday with three impressive female entrepreneurs in a hip restaurant that once served as an imperial ice house. I sat next to Wang Lifen, a producer whose show "Win in China" debuted this week on state TV. The hit sensation is the People's Republic version of Donald Trump's "The Apprentice," which of course means it is far more capitalistic.
Here the winning five contestants -- who undergo business trials and interviews and will have been picked from an original 20,000 applicants who learned about the show from the Internet -- will not end up with a salaried job working for an egomaniac developer. They will each end up with their own company so they can become their own egomaniac. Foreign venture capitalists have ponied up millions of dollars for the new companies and they will end up with a stake in them. Because hey, you never know....
But wait, there's more. The truly brilliant twist -- I think I said "wow, that's amazingly clever" to Ms. Wang like six times over dinner, though she understood me the first time -- is that viewers, in addition to getting to vote in the winnowing proces, get a chance to win shares in the company too! A few hundred viewers who text-message the show will be chosen to share a 15% stake in the company. I think the winner has about a 20% stake. And of course, the state TV company will end up with a stake, too. Because hey, you never know....
As I often say back home: What a country!
Actually, the next morning brought me back down to earth, or at least to the odd PRC version of it. I bought The Economist magazine at the hotel lobby, only to discover a couple of hours later that a page had been torn out of it.
How rude is that?! It took about five seconds for my mind to process that this wasn't some ordinary consumer gripe, but ludicrously low-tech censorship. Judging by the small bottom corner of the page that had survived the tearing, the article had something to do with Sino-Japanese relations. Later in the newsstand I picked up another copy of the magazine, which had a cleaner tear, no corners left.
Thursday night, at a cocktail party at the China Club, I met David Brooks, the country manager for Coca-Cola. China is now the company's fourth biggest market, volume-wise. What's fascinating is that countries like Mexico and the U.S. (Coke's two strongest markets) consume more than 400 annual Coke servings per capita. China is only up to 17. Again, like Hollywood and other industries -- and missionaries before them -- Coke can engage in some pretty mind-boggling number-crunching: "If we can get Chinese to consume a quarter as much Coke as Mexicans consumers, then...."
What I wouldn't have given to have had a Coke readily available the last time I was in China, 21 years ago. I spent the summer of 1985 studying here in Beijing, and lived on the campus of Normal University. The only place to have a Coke during that brutally hot, sticky summer was in one of the hotels around town, which we ventured to a couple of times. One of the high points of that summer was a July 4th party at the U.S. embassy because -- I will never forget this -- they flew in McDonald's from Hong Kong. Now, of course, the golden arches are ubiquitous here, but who needs them amid all the good restaurants?
In terms of how much the city has changed, I feel like my previous visit here had been in 1758.
I did wander around Tiananmen Square this afternoon, and that hasn't changed much, except for the large number of undercover cops making sure no one congregates. It is hard to stand there and not feel nauseous, and, well, ashamed. The 1989 massacre, truth be told, helped accelerate much of the prosperity-creating economic reforms, even as the government clamped down further on the political side. And yes, the party's gamble seems to be paying off, and we (me personally, my country, the Olympic movement, my favorite beverage company, you name it) are all complicit in this devil's bargain. And yet I am not sure there is a better alternative -- in terms of our options, that is.
A historian here told me that a class at Beijing University was recently shown the iconic Tiananmen picture of the lone student halting the progress of tanks, but today's students were unable to identify the context of the photo.
The tearing of pages can be taken to frightening degrees.... Make sure to read parts one, two and three.
Editorial Page Editor Andrés Martinez sends another note from China: "Mi3" may already be available on the streets of Shanghai, but the censors here in China haven't yet decided whether to approve the movie for theatrical release. It's not just about the Oprah couch incident. The film was partly filmed in this city, and that seems to be a strike against it. Word is that censors are worried that the movie suggests a certain lack of competence on the part of Shanghai's law enforcement, what with all the mayhem depicted.
Much to Hollywood's frustration, only 20 foreign films are allowed in for theatrical release each year. And while the studios once expected China to be their El Dorado -- as did Christian missionaries before them -- the nation's entire box office last year was in the neighborhood of a measly quarter-billion dollars. Ticket prices are outrageously expensive, another source of frustration for studios. On average, Chinese go to the movies once every five years, which must provide studio number-crunchers with all sorts of dizzying scenarios -- "if only we could get all Chinese to see one movie in the summer and one during the holidays, then...."
Meanwhile, the pirated DVD market is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $3 billion. Given that only a few titles get approved for theatrical release, can't the flood of pirated DVDs be considered a digital-era form of samizdat influence undermining the party? Just a thought....
Communist censors in Beijing do have different standards when evaluating movies for theatrical release, as opposed to releases on DVD (even legitimate). Older party apparatchiks recall using cinema to advance their propaganda, so they still get a bit jittery about the power of watching suggestive material with hundreds of other people, as opposed to watching it at home. So, for instance, "Last Samurai" was rejected for theatrical release, but ok'd for DVD. Not sure whether it's a go for in-flight entertainment....
On Friday we had lunch with a couple of architects and urban planners, among them Ben Wood, who has recently moved to Shanghai. Wood, an alum of the Rouse Co., which developed Baltimore's Inner Harbor and a lot of other such projects, was responsible for the Lincoln Ave. project in Miami Beach, and most recently, the refurbishing of Chicago's Soldier Field. He and another expat architect got into an interesting debate over whether it's an inherently Chinese yearning to create gated residential communities within cities -- your own version of the Forbidden City -- or whether the trend is a way of aping a foreign vogue.
Wood designed a wildly successful retail development in Shanghai, Xintiandi, which preserved the look and feel of a traditional neighborhood in the old French concession area of town. The result is like a Chinese version of The Grove, minus the streetcar. A few blocks away is the house where the Chinese Communist Party was founded, covertly, in 1921. The Founding Fathers no doubt were animated by a yearning to see a Vidal Sassoon salon and a Starbucks established in their neighborhood, and after a long march, their dream has been realized.
One of our nights here I met up with an old friend of mine, a law school classmate who heads up the Shanghai office of a big U.S. firm. We dined at Jean Georges on the Bund, the sister restaurant of the New York eatery, and then headed to Bar Rouge, where expats on the prowl mingle with young Chinese yearning to be eurotrashy. The Bund is the old colonial riverfront quarter. The outdoor deck afforded an awesome view of Pudong, the new city rising on the east side of the river. My friend Mark and his fellow expats residing in Shanghai can barely contain their "this-is-history-in-the-making-and-we're-here-baby" exuberance. And it's hard to be in this city-on-steroids and not be awed, and humbled, and not realize how silly we Americans are to feel like we live in the center of the universe.
That said, it's important, if hard, for visitors to Shanghai to keep in mind that this city is not representative of the real China, and the still-humble life of hundreds of millions of peasants in the countryside. It's easy to see how foreign investors come here, eat at Jean Georges, count the number of skyscrapers and Gucci stores, and say "I'm in." I myself am tempted to divert my monthly paycheck deduction devoted to Tribune Co. stock into a Shanghai-based REIT.
But lest you think foreigners here are all about making money, kudos to Burger King for spreading democracy in this communist country. The burger joint posts a playful bilingual "Bill of Rights" on its wall. The English version starts off by saying you have the right to have things your way, and so on, then gets progressively sillier ... "you have the right to laugh until soda explodes from your nose like a broken water main" ... but then, WHAM -- "You have the right to have an opinion on anything."
WHAT?!?! You most certainly do not, not here anyways. Did censors in Beijing approve this?
Not sure if the Chinese version of the Burger Bill of Rights next to it tracks the English exactly (I snuck into this fine eatery behind the backs of our paper's crack China-based staffers). But those characters do seem awfully familiar. Maybe they simply read: "Who would pay full price for Versace?"
Editorial Page Editor Andrés Martinez is currently in China, and sends along some impressions: Paging Dan Glickman: On my first day in China, I stumbled upon pirated DVDs of "Mission Impossible 3" at the sprawling Xiangyang Fashion and Gift Market. Fake Lakers jerseys are also popular, though not as hot as the faux Nike Barcelona Ronaldinho jerseys. My favorite items at the market were the huge Cultural Revolutionish bilingual banners at the entrance of this piracy haven. In English they read: "Assert intellectual properties is our common duty." But who knows about the accuracy of the translation? As far as I know, the Chinese characters could actually read "Who would pay full price for Versace?"
Some folks in Shanghai do pony up for the real deal, whether it's Versace or Ferragamo or Zegna.... Shanghai isn't just the most bourgeois communist city I have ever been in, it may be the most bourgeois city I've ever been in, period. Within a five block radius of my hotel, I count four Beverly Center-sized malls. The one next door, Plaza 66, is a gleaming glass pavilion with all the swank brands being peddled at the Xiangyang market. It's way too upscale for tourists. The mall feels like it belongs in Vegas, attached to one of the high-roller casinos. And I am sure some of the cash-rich Chinese customers are Steve Wynn's baccarat players.
You see two types of gawkers wandering around Shanghai in disbelief at all the new wealth -- foreigners, and Chinese from the provinces.
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