Just a small platter of link sausages today, so heavily flavored with outrage that each stands alone.
- One need say very little other than "Yo-yo Ma rules!" I really don't care if Donna never shuts up about it, because there's plenty of Josh's reaction to go around.
And if Drumpf's father really had been born in Germany (nope, grandfather; bad enough that his father was born in the Bronx, in 1905, as that's on the wrong side of the Hudson and therefore uncivilized), he'd be a child of immigrants, right? With parents who came over taking advantage of ridiculously racist quotas that trapped at least thousands of Jews in Shoah territory, perhaps including relatives of his son-in-law; what a great thing to ponder for Passover. And under nineteenth-century standards, maybe his grandparents were seeking asylum, which would certainly foreshadow other mischief.
- Yet another instance of the "original" being overpriced just because it's "fine art," leaving one to wonder exactly which proportion of society gets to play these games in the first place, and whether the artists benefit. Let's see, a $450 million price tag restricts things to…?
- Last for now, the continuing foolishness in the film/TV industry. At least one actor-screenwriter seems to understand what's really going on. The real problem is quite simple, actually, and demonstrates that the spokesbacterium for the Association of Talent Agents is either fundamentally dishonest or fundamentally stupid (maybe both):
Asking the other side in a negotiation to "compromise" on ethics isn't about compromise at all.
I would be very, very skeptical indeed if my representative in a negotiation suggested that the way to reach a business agreement was to remove one party's ethical considerations from the negotiation. It would certainly make me wonder what other ethical considerations he or she was ignoring… things like "accuracy of accounting" being obvious, but other things like "won't appropriate ideas in violation of Desny in favor of more-lucrative joint clients" being perhaps more important.
Bluntly, packaging appears to be an unfair trade practice and probably violates labor law even for non-unionized writers, as I've been arguing for a couple of decades. Apparently, the Guild agrees with me and has the additional advantage of having labor statutes specific to unionized workforces in mind. Naturally, the literary agents' trade association has been silent… because it's next. Right, T___ M___? Right, Full Fathom Five, llc?
And maybe without packaging we won't be stuck with crap like… well, too damned much that's produced, for starters. Yeah, they'll find another way to screw it up, but at least they might be from competent scripts.