Meryl Streep we're depending on you!

Well here goes Hollywood again. The two actors' unions are splitting up in a public divorce more relevant than Brenifer and Branjolina. (I don't really even know what that means).

"Board members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), which represents some 70,000 actors, singers, announcers and journalists in the industry, have voted over the weekend to sever the union's 27-year joint bargaining agreement with the 120,000-member SAG." (source)

who the hell is AFTRA? I thought it was all SAG.

"The two unions have clashed over territorial and procedural issues, with SAG pondering a stance on soap operas -- an area traditionally handled by AFTRA -- and seeking more seats on the joint bargaining committee under the rationale that it shoulders more of the work." (source)

OH, OK! so AFTRA handles the soap stars, the folks who wish they were actually actors (I KEED I KEED I would never begrudge somebody who lands a permanent position doing what they love to do) Why does SAG want the soap stars though?

"The Screen Actors Guild has about 120,000 members and AFTRA has 70,000, including actors, singers and other types of performers. The two rosters include about 40,000 people who belong to both unions, according to Handel."

And um... this is just getting murkier and murkier. Those damn actors just HAVE to make everything so complex. What's their motivation here?

"On March 10, AFTRA reached a preliminary agreement with the major television networks covering actors and crews who work on daytime soap operas and reality shows. Prime-time dramas and comedies are covered separately in the contract expiring in June." (source)

That cleared up all the confusion right?

This split will slow things down, and increase the odds of another strike. This is what most concerns me. I mean MY GAWD, what WILL we do?



Will Meryl Streep don a mullet and join the righteous fight again?



on a side note, she was hot with that mullet. Here check this out:



and on an even sider note, Cher is still one of the hottest lesbians on screen:



And on a personal note, I think this was the movie that made me gay. I wanted Meryl Streep and Cher to make out so bad I cried real tears. My parents thought I was moved by the story. I still don't really remember what the story is, other than Cher's girlfriend was Christina Crawford



And that was just not satisfying. I spent a lifetime waiting to see Meryl Streep make out with a woman. Thank God my Meryl Streep cherry was popped by none other than Allison Janney (the second hottest lesbian in cinematic history):



But really why is everything lesbian this, and lesbian that with me? JESUS CHRIST THERE COULD BE AN ACTORS' STRIKE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! And in JUNE for crying out loud (the tentative date is June 30th).


I mean what are the Golden Globes going to look like if the actors are on strike over this summer season, when the Oscar and Globe contenders are made? NOT TO WORRY Meryl Streep will save the day:

there's MAMA MIA:



That will cover the musical and comedy categories.

And for the dramatic categories, in post-production currently is the movie DOUBT.

"Synopsis
Set in the Bronx in 1964, Doubt explores the shifting, elusive nature of truth as reflected in a crime that may or may not have occurred. The stoic, hidebound Sister Aloysius (Streep), principal of a Catholic parochial school, is certain that one of her more popular teachers, Father Flynn (Hoffman), has been molesting a young male student. A novice, Sister James (Adams), unwillingly caught up in the intrigue, does not remain entirely convinced of Flynn’s guilty actions. Determined to arrive at the truth, Sister Aloysius decides she must confront the boy’s mother (Davis)." (source)


This movie is in post production, and sounds just wonderfully dramatic enough with just the right cast that even if it sucks, if there is a strike, well-they at least have a movie to drink champagne over.

And finally in production currently is a movie about Julia Childs, Julia Childs being portrayed by none other than Meryl Streep. So I really think that this year will be the year of Meryl. I believe there are seven other movies in post-production where Meryl Streep plays every character. In one movie she plays conjoined twins (brother and sister) who overcome all odds and become famous ballet dancers. She will also be starring in the opera "A Cry In The dark" where she even plays the Dingo. Talk about being a master of accents!

This will be the year that will go down in history as the year Meryl Streep Single handedly saved Hollywood. God I love that woman. Is there NOTHING she can't do?!

I am at work, and there isn't a whole lot to do, so I've watched some movies and surfed the oracle... and here are the results:

I watched Michael Clayton. I am Geo Clooney's biggest fan. OK no I'm not. I'm not even at the bottom of that list. I do think he's one of the most beautiful people on the planet, and I do have fantasies of him being drunk at the same bar as me... of course he'd have to be REALLY drunk, and the bar would have to be nearly empty-but whatever, it could happen. I'd pay for cab fair. Because as they say, "a pretty person that goes out with a ugly person gets at least cab fair..." OK so anyway, Geo aside that movie was mediocre at best. Tilda Swinton is a damn fine actor. And I got the feeling that the stakes were really high in this story. I felt it from the opening lines all the way to the end. "The stakes are high," I kept telling myself, "so pay attention to this movie." I couldn't get over Tilda Swinton's character-was there some sexism going on? Here's the thing-she was in this very real position of terrible power. She's the leader of some massive multi-national corporation. She couldn't really hack it. And you know this fact from the first moment you see her, crouching on the restroom floor with sweaty arm pits. You know she can not hack this. And then the movie...well moves, and it moves fast. You better not look down at the popcorn, just reach in and grab... because you will miss something... and then there's the fact that she was really frumpy looking and there are strange scenes where attention to her physical appearance is heightened as she is rehearsing the lines of an interview that she is going to be giving. Then, so you know it's an interview there are cuts back and forth between her putting on her nylon stockings, which are clearly business and not pleasure, and her in the conference room in front of a camera talking about how she is ready for this position of terrible power. Geo is a card playin' "fixer" for a law firm who drives a fancy car (that belongs to the firm) dealing with his business (a bar he tried to buy with his junky brother) who has a son from a previous marriage, and basically his life is falling apart around him. The stakes are high, don't forget this. But I never really could figure out which stakes were really the highest, it was like doing ten huge lines of cocaine and then trying to organize an office party. You know that there are a whole lot of office politics and you have to keep all of these in mind as you plan the seating arrangements, and you also feel like it's really important and it has to be done RIGHT NOW, but you can't prioritize, you can't sort it out, and it's going SO Fast. SO FAST. That's how that movie was. I didn't ever really figure out what these stakes were. I never quite got why it was so tense. I didn't figure out why George Clooney gets in that cab at the end of it and slowly a smile spreads across his face. Oh I mean I get that he calls Tilda's character out on some serious broken laws (murder and attempted murder to name a couple). I understand that he pulled his brother in on the bust, thereby paying his brother back for his fuck-ups. It just didn't mesh well with me. All of these things that wrapped up in the end, just didn't match the feeling throughout the rest of the movie. The intrigue, the fast, and deliberately confusing pace, the quick cut, MTV editing... none of it matched the actual pace of the story. So I guess I finished the movie wanting to take a nap, but not really understanding why.

I re watched Hustle and Flow. Now THERE's a quality movie. Unsentimental, but so so so so touching, and real and clever and original, but not so original that it's unfamiliar. I really like that movie, and you know, it's hard out here for a pimp. Seriously. GREAT movie. What I love about it is that this guy really is a pimp, and he is a fucking pimp, an ass hole, he beats his bitches. There's no glamorizing it. And the women are not glamorized either. But they are humanized, and that is the key to a really great story. I can't say enough that I think the best stories are the stories about people who are actual. And Terence whooseewhatsit is a damn fine actor and put so much into that character. I really think that movie is one of the best movies of the last fifteen years. And I wonder if the fact that it's about black people, or if it's because it's about poor black people, but it didn't really make it as huge as it should have. Although it was critically acclaimed. and the song won an academy award. I believe that was the same year as Crash and Brokeback Mountain... Fucking CRASH won best movie-what a JOKE was that... such a horrible waste of celluloid...

so the other thing I have done this weekend was play on the internet. So what kinds of things are on the internet that I want to share with all my fans? YOu know all thousand gazillion of you reading this blog? Do you know, the other day I was walking down the street and someone came running up to me saying "JESUS LANDSCAPING OH MY GAWD!" and she asked for my autograph... she even asked my to take a picture with her. What else could I do? I said, "well, I'll see what I can do"


internet trash:

The marketing campaign for the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall has hit the streets. It's horrendous. OK not really. Initially it's really clever. Unfortunately when you figure out that it's a campaign for this movie, you are truly disappointed. Well I was. Here's the campaign:




So these billboards are posted everywhere. ANd if you go to the website that is posted beneath them, you are taken to a really poorly written blog about some girl that dumped this guy and how he is over her and how much he hates her. You can tell it's some sort of mass marketing thing, but you have to keep searching to figure it out. A LOT OF HYPE for this:

Plot synopsis:

Guy gets dumped by girl- presumably Sarah Marshall. He decides to go Hawaii to forget her (the movie is called Forgetting Sarah Marshall) but she ends up there too, with her new boyfriend. It's a comedy, if you hadn't guessed.

At any rate, I know I shouldn't judge a picture by its marketing campaign, but I gotta tell you that if it needs this much covert marketing... well there you have it, the marketing is covert for a reason: whoever is producing this movie paid a really good ad agency for it. And this ad agency must have seen the movie and figured that it would be best to be covert about it. Since the movie sucks, let's be really creative and covertly bring people to it.

I could be really wrong. Maybe it's just a fantastic movie. But really, I'm not interested in watching more movies about a guy who's heart has been broken by a girl and then an hour and some minutes of some adolescent man-child basically throwing a temper tantrum about it. It's not funny. It's not clever. My advice to the boys out there writing these scripts is: unless you're Woody Allen, and my guess is you are NOT, you might want to tell a different story.

Honestly I'm just pretty much sick of seeing movies by and about boys. Women aren't doing it enough. And often when they get the chance to do it, it ends up being by and about boys anyway (Diane Lane in the past five/ten years is a good example of this). I'm guessing the women aren't to blame for this. OR at least entirely to blame for this. There are amazing women out there writing and acting, and I'm sure that there are even some amazing women out there that are directing, producing and editing...but no one's giving them ad campaigns like I hate Sarah Marshall That campaign cost money.

So I spend a lot of my time impatiently between movies about women. I'm annoyed by this. So on this I agree with the poor man-child who wrote this movie: I also hate sarah marshall.

Also this weekend: I work with adults with developmental disabilities. One of my clients went sky diving yesterday. I am really proud of him. How cool is that?!

I have to take a break. Why? Why do I have to take a break? I mean I'm only writing for a few hours. It took that long to get some good inspiration. The problem I have here is that the other stuff I have not been inspired at all by and yet I still have to turn it in. Several hundred words of which are to be written for a teacher that I have a mad crush on... it's a nerd crush, it's not really actually a romantic crush, although it manifests itself similarly. A nerd crush though is when you are in the presence of someone so unbelievably brilliant that they are just infinitely totally fucking sexy to you.

That's a nerd crush. The problem with nerd crushes is that you want your work to be really good for them, and so you sweat it. You cry over it. You pull your hair out over it. You know. You absolutely KNOW your limitations. And in that context your limitations just suck.

But right now I'm not writing that paper. I'm writing a really fun paper on Dostoevsky and Christ and the individual and what's at stake there. It's fun. That stuff is just so much fun to write. I think I understand Dostoevsky. And I think that only because I've spent my entire life MISunderstanding him. Seriously getting it wrong time and again. And I think that gives me a jump on some other people in the whole study of the BIG D. If he met me... well, first of all, talk about NERD CRUSH... although that's kind of creepy and weird. So anyway, he would totally NOT like me... and would CRUSH ME in one sentence. But still, I think I understand him. Of course that could be the alcohol talking.

I want to now copy my favorite poem ever because next quarter I will get to study it. With a teacher who is more brilliant than even the really brilliant teacher that I have a nerd crush on right now. So I am going to put that poem here to make me really happy and make me remember to not be miserable-that I am almost done and I can go be a train conductor for a while and not think about school for a minute before I go to grad school to be chewed up and spit out by smart people:

"What are bell and drum, rare dishes and treasure?
Let me be forever drunk and never come to reason!
Sober men of olden days and sages are forgotten,
And only the great drinkers are famous for all time.
... Prince Chen paid at a banquet in the Palace of Perfection
Ten thousand coins for a cask of wine, with many a laugh and quip.
Why say, my host, that your money is gone?
Go and buy wine and we'll drink it together!
My flower-dappled horse,
My furs worth a thousand,
Hand them to the boy to exchange for good wine,
And we'll drown away the woes of ten thousand generation!"

"Sen. John McCain said Tuesday that proposals by Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to use pressure tactics to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement could undermine U.S. trade relationships with other nations.

"We've got to stop this protectionist, NAFTA-bashing," the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting told a town hall meeting at Savvis Inc., an information technology company.

McCain said his potential Democratic opponents were wrong to threaten pulling out of NAFTA to force Canada and Mexico to negotiate more protections for workers and the environment in the agreement.

If that threat is made, McCain asked, "What are the other countries in the world going to think about the agreements we've negotiated with them?"


I'm just pulling this out of my ass-but perhaps they will think that the US respects the rights of workers to work in safe conditions, the rights of the people in communities to have a decent environment in which to live, and so on. Perhaps these other countries that Mccain worries about will respect the US for knowing when to admit that something is WRONG and has been WRONG from the beginning...

(But don't trust Clinton to pull out of NAFTA)

Speaking of Pulling Out:

SPITZER SWALLOWS his pride:

"Scandal-hit NY governor resigns
Mr Spitzer announced he was resigning with wife at his side
Spitzer statement
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has resigned, after being linked to a prostitution ring.

Flanked by his wife, he told a news conference he could not allow "private failings" to disrupt public work. He is to hand over power on Monday.

Mr Spitzer again apologised for not living up to the standards he demanded of others - but he gave no details.

Mr Spitzer had allegedly been identified arranging to meet a prostitute in a Washington hotel."

notice he was FLANKED by his wife...



"you son of a bitch" maybe.... or perhaps:

"remember that threesome I promised you for your birthday? well you can forget it".

Of course this wouldn't have happened to him if he was black. Just ask old no job Geraldine:



A Hillary Clinton adviser has resigned over her comment that Barack Obama would not be ahead in the race for the White House if he were not black.

Geraldine Ferraro, a vice-presidential candidate in 1984, announced she was stepping down from an honorary role on Mrs Clinton's finance committee.

Earlier, she had told US network ABC that her remarks had been "spun by the Obama campaign as racist" but were not.

Mr Obama in turn rejected the idea that being black was a big advantage.

Mrs Clinton has distanced herself from the comments, quoted in a US newspaper interview last week.

Because we all know that the power base in the US is in the hands of blacks...-I don't know if you can tell, but this is a BIG FUCKING ROLE OF MY EYES YOU TWAT IF YOU THINK THAT BEING A BLACK MAN GIVES YOU AN ADVANTAGE IN THE US.

Speaking of Black...The real force behind Barak is:



But every family has its drunk uncle:



"Monster' row exposes intense rivalry
By Kevin Connolly
BBC News, Washington

The words "off the record" have a kind of magical power in the overlapping world of journalism and politics.

They allow politicians to talk freely to journalists without having their words publicly attributed to them.

And the phrase enables ideas to be floated, insults to be traded and rumours to be circulated with more freedom than would be possible if every word that passed your lips was formally identified as yours.

But there is a limit to the magical powers of the expression, as the strange case of Samantha Power and the Scotsman newspaper demonstrates.

You cannot just blurt out something sensational and then use the words retrospectively like a kind of cloak of invisibility to escape responsibility if you are having second thoughts.

It is an odd lapse - Samantha Power is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and a Harvard academic who knows the rules of the game, and how the game is played.

So when she was discussing Hillary Clinton with the Scotsman and said "she is a monster... she is stooping to anything", it was not enough hastily to add "that's off the record".

The damage - at least to Ms Power's future in the campaign - had been done.

In the fast-moving and unforgiving world of American politics, Ms Power - who advised Barack Obama on foreign policy issues - has already "decided" to resign, issuing, as she went, a not entirely convincing statement in which she spoke of her admiration for Senator Clinton's leadership and public service."

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrright...

WAIT WAIT When I said MONSTER, I was saying that she was a MONSTER in the bedroom, like good... uh, no, er... wait when I said MONSTER, I meant like a MONSTER truck ralley, that the trailer trash would vote for her... no, er... I meant that I admire her greatly for her leadership abilities... yeah that's it, that's the ticket...



Meanwhile, Romney sends love-note to Mccain durring Math class:

Can I be your VP-check yes or no:


Romney made clear Tuesday night he's interested in being McCain's running mate. (Getty Images)

(CNN) — Mitt Romney's message came through loud and clear to John McCain.

The Arizona senator joked Wednesday he got the impression Romney is interested in the No. 2 spot on the Republican presidential ticket after watching a recent interview with the former Massachusetts governor.

"I got that impression from him watching his interview last night, I got that impression," McCain said laughing on his campaign plane in New Hampshire."

Their campaign slogan will be something like:

MORE EARNIN' LESS LEARNIN'-the best campaign slogan since:



THIS IS SERIOUS:
Mercenary to be sent to Colombia
A Russian court has approved the extradition to Colombia of a former Israeli army officer.

In 2001, Yair Gal Klein was tried in his absence in a Colombian court for training guerrillas.

He was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in jail for training paramilitary groups in "terrorist techniques".

He was detained by Russian police at Moscow airport last year following a tip off from Interpol, as he was about to board a flight to Israel.

Mr Klein is also accused of working as a mercenary for the Medellin drug cartel, a charge he denies.

A spokeswoman for Moscow city court said Mr Klein had 10 days to appeal to the Supreme Court.

If he did not do so, the extradition order would take effect.

Colombia's paramilitary militia groups were formed in the 1980s to protect landowners from attacks by left-wing guerrillas.

The militias are themselves accused of killing thousands of people.

More than 30,000 paramilitaries have handed in their weapons and surrendered to police in recent years, under a peace deal that offered reduced jail terms.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/7291689.stm

And finally, but certainly not least, in the news this week: you can rest easy folks, particularly women between the ages of 18 and 45. Army Wives will return soon to fill you up with a nice dose of clever manipulation:



Watching Army Wives Watching ‘Army Wives’
By FELICIA R. LEE

FORT DRUM, N.Y. — Poor Denise Sherwood. Her nasty son smacks her around. And she just learned that the Blackhawk helicopter carrying her husband, Maj. Frank Sherwood, was shot down in Iraq. So maybe the real Army wives at this post near Syracuse, watching Denise on TV in the hit Lifetime drama, “Army Wives,” would show her some love, or at least cut her some slack?

Nah.

“Nobody answers the telephone that way,” one of them commented when Denise breathlessly picked up the receiver and said, “This is Major Sherwood’s wife.”

The eight women gathered here recently to watch Episode 4 of the new one-hour series said that identifying yourself by your husband’s rank would be like announcing his income, a definite no-no on the post.

Despite their critique of the show, the real Army wives are among an average of 3.6 million people who have made “Army Wives” the highest-rated series in Lifetime’s 23-year history. Shown Sunday nights at 10, the 13-episode series, which began on June 3, is shot in Charleston, S.C., at a fictional post called Fort Marshall and is based on the book “Army Wives: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage” by Tanya Biank, herself an Army brat turned Army wife. Ms. Biank is now a consultant to the show.

Still, the real Army wives said, the plots often feel more likely to play out on Wisteria Lane (“Desperate Housewives” on ABC) than at this 107,000-acre post in upstate New York, which is home to 17,000 soldiers and their families (another 14,000 people) and has about 3,500 troops in Iraq. The first episode ended with the Army wife and ex-cop Pamela Moran (Brigid Brannagh) giving birth on a pool table in a bar surrounded by the rest of the wives and an Army husband. She swigs vodka from a bottle as an anesthetic and admits — she is white and the twin babies are black — that she had been hired as a surrogate.

Mrs. Urquhart said some of the stories rang true, like Denise’s desire to go to Iraq to find her husband. “I had a friend who thought her husband was dead,” she recalled. “The first thing she did was she wanted to get on a plane.”

Still, entertainment means bending reality said Mark Gordon, principal of the Mark Gordon Company (which created “Grey’s Anatomy”) and another executive producer of “Army Wives.”

And despite their quibbles, some of the women at Fort Drum declared themselves fans. “The plotlines were fabulous,” said Deborah Stellfox, who has two children and whose husband, Lamar, has been in the military for 26 years. “The problems were the technical aspects. Hollywood writers writing about the military is like men writing about childbirth.”

But, she said, “you notice that we keep watching, week after week. That says something.”

I'm starving now. All that TV talk just does something to me...

Today I'm going to read several thousand pages of Chinese history.
But I can't read in a messy room.
Today I'm going to clean my room.
But I can't clean my room without first doing my laundry.
Today I'm going to do my laundry.
But I can't do my laundry on an empty stomach.
Today I'm going to make myself dinner from scratch.
But I don't have all the materials.
Today I am going to go grocery shopping.
But I don't have any clean clothes.
Tomorrow I'm going to get out of bed.

Well, not that anyone wants to read a blog about someone's illness, so I will keep this short. Well, the part about my illness. short. I'll keep that part short.

I have been ill now for nearly two months. I have been diagnosed with a few things, but I have not been fixed. Well I went back to the doctor today. I have atypical pneumonia... is that walking pneumonia? I am not sure. At any rate, I think it must be because he said it would not put me completely in bed like regular (laying down?) pneumonia would. I already had pneumonia this year. So here I am, the first Saturday off in a very very long time and I feel like shit.

Which brings me to the real point of this post. I am watching one of my all time favorite movies: Gosford Park.



I'm really not feeling all that well (der) so I am going to write a little plot synopsis and some photos. It's about a shooting party at an aristocrat's estate in the 1920's English country side. It's directed by Bob Altman, so you can imagine that it is full of great detail, with a great list of great character actors and so on.. There are two "levels" in the story-the upstairs (the bougies) and the downstairs (the valets, etc). There are several sub-plots, cheating wives, young aristocrats who like fucking the help, and so on... Then there is a murder, so the story evolves into this great classic murder mystery. It's a really satisfying movie. Trashy, and naughty, but really well made, with pretty people, lots of great details, the colors are nice and muted, and so on... and it's perfect to watch repeatedly when one is ill-or even once since it is a very long movie. Also one of my favorite lines in a movie ever: "Is she like affected, or is she British?"





this would be Maggie Smith, she plays my absolutely favorite character. He character is catty, manipulative, and so on. She has the best lines ever. Like when the American film producer who has been invited there by the patriarch of the family is telling everyone at the supper table about his new movie which is a murder mystery. She asks, "who did it?" and he says "Well, I wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone here". Her response to that is, "Well, no one here will see it".
Or when she is asking the actor, "Tell me, how long are you going to go on?" and then adds, "it must be hard to know when to throw in the towel"... She is just a WONDERFUL bitch. If you like Maggie Smith even slightly, and have not seen this movie- you will LOVE her in this movie.



this is Bob Altman, of course, and Emily Watson. Emily Watson is one of the best actors around.

She was in one of the most heart breaking but amazing movies I have ever seen:




Ok actually, I am just trying to put in cool little pictures in my blog now.

at any rate, so here I lie watching Gosford Park-also starring Kristin Scott Thomas, a lovely beautiful actress who I will always be in love with.