This is me, spamming your feeds and lists…
One of my supervisors at my day job offered me a chance to do a reading. Here at work.
Here.
At work.
I… erm… thanked her and declined. I’d just as soon do a pole dance.
Changing the (pop) culture
StandardA Hollywood producer writes–undercover of anonymity–about sexism in her industry. It’s interesting stuff, but here’s one of the many money quotes:
I heard a male agent once say that if the heroine of a script didn’t face higher stakes, he couldn’t see how someone would emotionally invest in her. OK, so the character is never chased to the edge of a cliff or anything, but plenty of successful movies exist with mediocre stakes.
Was anyone ever truly emotionally invested in whether Owen Wilson got it together in “Wedding Crashers”? It could be argued that the stakes of our movie were at least as high as learning to act like a grown man when you are one, so what gives?
Women in Film — We’re Not There Yet (Don’t bother with the comments.)
Transitions are for the weak!
StandardChat rooms: are they relics of a bygone age or are they still kicky fun?
Hee!
StandardThis morning, the Senate Health Committee passed its bill on a straight-party line vote. I hear it’s a pretty good plan, although I’d be surprised if it was as strong as the plan the House just passed.
The White House is calling it a bipartisan bill–not because Republicans voted for it. They didn’t. They’re calling it “bipartisan” because it contains Republican ideas. That matters, because they’re signalling to possible GOP moderates that they are not going to water down the final bill to win a few Repub votes.
Yay! Finally, some hopeful news.
And for bonus grins, ultra-conservative Republican senator Tom Coburn added an amendment to the bill requiring Congress to get their health care from the public plan. Rather than kill the amendment, Sens. Edward Kennedy (who voted by proxy) and Chris Dodd, both Democrats, called their bluff and voted for it.
Now, it seems pretty unlikely that the amendment would survive all the way to the final version of the law, but Kennedy likes the public plan, and really, why shouldn’t our elected leaders have a personal stake in public programs?
Warehouse 13
StandardI didn’t want to review this based only on the pilot, but having seen the first episode, I have to admit that I’m torn. It’s as if a team of talentless dorks found an incredible series pitch–complete with rough episode outlines–and ran with it as best they could.
The show is a weird mix of graceful, interesting moments and embarrassments like the male lead saying “Boobies?” or a slow-mo shot of a sexy woman entering the room to the tune of “Oh, yeah,” by Yello. There’s genuine pleasure there, but you have to endure a lot of pain to get to is.
God, I’m so fucking stupid
StandardThree visual items
StandardFirst: Seattle pranksters/vandals have been altering billboards around town. For instance:
Hee. See more.
Second, Jonathan King, the director behind the hilarious and underrated BLACK SHEEP, has a new movie coming out. Check out the trailer.
Third, a buddy dropped me an email pointing me toward these short romantic comedies. The series is called Turbo Dates, and they’re terrifically funny. Start with “Potion.” Seriously.
As a followup to my previous post
StandardThere are few plot problems that can’t be solved by asking Who are these characters and what do they want?
MAN BITES BOOK
StandardAfter a productive week, I’ve hit another wall with the plot. There are so many threads to tie up, and now that the book is 70K+ I should be wrapping all of them up.
But I need a long walk to think about the best way to tie up all the threads.
Of course, in the old, pre-contract days, I would have just put it aside for a month or two while I wrote short fiction. That’s not a viable option now.
Aaron Allston and working for corporations
StandardI first heard of this on The Swivet, and I’d like to help spread the word: Aaron Allston, a writer of fiction and paper-and-dice rpgs (including Champions, Car Wars and D&D, among others), had a heart attack a few months back. He’s recovering now, but he had a quadruple bypass, and now he has major bills to pay.
But Christ, the fact that this man’s friends need to start a collection to help him pay his medical bills should be an outrage to all of us. He didn’t have health insurance, and you know why? Because he works for himself, and the individual health insurance market is a disaster.
What about people who don’t have fans? What about a guy trying to start to start an auto-repair business? Or a woman building a client list for a new sports massage startup? Landscapers? Documentary filmmakers? Community activists?
I’ll tell you what about them: They catch cancer and lose their houses. They come down with Chrohn’s Disease and give up their own businesses to work for corporations. They have heart attacks and go bankrupt, lose their kids’ college funds, lose their retirement nest eggs.
Health care reform in this country is not just about the uninsured–people like Allston, who seek care at emergency rooms, the most expensive kind of care there is, and when they do go to a health care provider, they pay far more (often double if not more) than insurance plans do for the same services because they can’t bargain for lower rates. It’s not just about making those people healthy out of the kindness of our hearts. Yeah, they’d be able to seek care earlier (and at less expense) in their illnesses because they’d have a doctor of their own, and we’d have a healthier society.
But we’d also have fewer medical bankruptcies (currently, we have hundreds of thousands every year). We’d have fewer people stuck in jobs they hate because they’re afraid of losing their coverage. We’d have less wage stagnation (wages have been flat for years, but companies are paying more and more for their workforce–all that extra money is going to health insurers). And we’d have more people willing to strike out on their own to start their own businesses, to go freelance, to innovate.
Instead, we have a federal government that’s structurally biased toward inaction and gridlock.
For a country that claims to value entrepreneurship, we don’t seem to have the will to promote it.
Edited to add: Seen via James Nicoll: Comics writer John Ostrander can’t afford the medical treatments that would save his sight. Note that Ostrander has insurance, but it’s not enough.