Friday, November 9, 2007

Writer's Guild strike presents a unique opportunity.

There are two reasons why I hope Hollywood's pens remain unmanned for as many weeks as possible while writers stand out in the cold with picket signs.

1) This is a great opportunity to fix a broken agreement between a group that deserves just as much compensation from DVD and digital distribution sales as everyone else involved. There's no logical explanation behind the idea that writers only get paid residuals from on-air reruns.

The days of "Dallas" season box sets filling up an entire shelf with VHS tapes are long gone. In fact, much like the newspaper business, television is facing great challenges to delivering content and wind is blowing towards online. Why wouldn't a writer want to be compensated from what will be the primary means of delivering content to end users in the future?

2) Maybe if this situation continues, TV shows will dry up and we'll all be forced to watch reality television enough to cause some sort of an uprising. Let's face it, TV is garbage, unless we're talking about Bill Maher, that new CBS show "Cane," or that one show on TLC where the guy eats tree slugs and various other Temple of Doom tasties.

Thank God Maher does his own writing and the slug eater's show is light on the lines.

I figure that an overdose of crap will wake everybody up and more people will starting reading books and newspapers or spend time online visiting their favorite websites and participating in forums and other online community centers.

A box that flashes pictures is looking more and more like cave drawings to me.

Sorry I don't really have anything Dexter related to discuss. There are some things I could talk about, but you'll just have to read next week's Leader. After Monday we should have a new Village President named. That move has the potential to cause some problems, if it's not a certain someone, but we'll just wait and see.

I will leave with on this note. The more I look at the condition of services in the communities that I cover and the county as a whole, the more I realize that something has to be done. Higher taxes? Probably. Consolidation of services? Oh yeah.

It's amazing how ingrained this idea of a kingdom is in the American psyche and how pervasive it is in so many things, several of which are mentioned above.

Man the battlements!

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