Steve Hely's Blog, page 111
April 19, 2017
April 19. Patriots Day.
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Worth remembering that the American Revolution started when the federal government sent troops to take away people’s guns and ammunition.
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More men from Needham died on April 19, 1775, I believe, than from any other town except Lexington:
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The detail in that footnote! What she remembers, the old blind woman: how many of the soldiers had thrown away their coats! It was under the will of this venerable lady that he first received a legacy!
History gets so much more interesting when you get into how do we know this? what is the source? who claims this? who saw it happen?[image error]
The Needham Public Library.
Amos Doolittle wasn’t there but he showed up a few weeks later:
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My favorite book on this topic is:
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Tourtellot is really kind of funny when he rips into his least favorite patriot, vain old John Hancock:
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that illustration up top from:
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a British book – is there a pro-Redcoat bias?
April 18, 2017
TAKE: vote yes on WGA strike authorization
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The Writers’ Guild is weird. For one thing, some of the members are owners or bosses. Writers who become showrunners and share in the profits of a show can have an owner’s interest. Another: writers have agents who negotiate for them.
Some writers make lots and lots of money. Others are unemployed, or at least unemployed as writers. It’s not really a union, it’s a guild, like a medieval guild, an association of craftspeople who work a certain trade.
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Why is Staalmesters translated as “Syndics”? Rembrandt’s Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild. The Sampling Officials sounds cooler.
Or maybe something like London’s livery companies?:
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The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers
A writers union going on strike can seem silly when you picture a union like this:
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and a strike like this:
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I find this on the Post-Bulletin: Steve Martell, Charles Brown, and an unidentified third man stand on the picket line on the morning of August 17, 1985, outside the Hormel Foods plant in Austin, Minnesota. Did Trump steal that style of hat consciously?
and writers like this:
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But, if you’re in the Writers Guild, and you’re a Helytimes reader, I think you should vote yes on the strike authorization.
If you’re not in the Writers’ Guild, here are the facts, as I misremember them:
TV writers are making less and less money but working the same amount of time. As shows have smaller orders of episodes, ten instead of twenty-two, writers are still working the same amount of days, but since many of us get paid per episode, we’re getting paid less for the same or more amount of days working.
The studios are making enormous profits.*
The studios sort of owe it to us to maintain our healthcare and pension plans, due to deals that were made over the years, and they’re saying they’re not going to do that.
Like all workers, we’re getting squeezed as much as possible by companies whose mandate is to be as profitable as possible for shareholders.
Workers can and should use every tool they can to fight for as much as they can. Our guild’s leaders are negotiating and have asked us to vote to authorize a strike, so they can bargain as effectively as possible.
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Gunawan Kartapranata provided Wikipedia’s photo for the article on Bargaining
That’s pretty much my take. I hope it doesn’t happen. It will be very painful and hurt a lot of people. It shuts down production, which means grips, PAs, electricians, etc. are all out of work too. And actors, lots of whom have really struggled to get a shot and are going to continue to struggle.
I think the studios should just give us what we asked for. Disney is one of the studios we’re negotiating with. They have a market cap of $178 billion. I appreciate that Bob Iger has his strategic challenges with ESPN and so on but it seems wise and reasonable to me to say “fine let’s give the creators of our highly profitable content their not ridiculous demands and continue generating money from some of the world’s most popular entertainment, TV shows and movies.”
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During the last strike my dad sent me his book of AFL-CIO songs
If we do go on strike, I think we shouldn’t picket. That was unhelpful. There should be some human shows of solidarity, but daily picketing got to be a weird ritual, some kind of bizarre martyrdom that in the end made us look more ridiculous. I am proud to say I feel like I did my duty, but I preferred my days answering the phones at Strike Headquarters to making small talk with Tom Bergeron while I held a sign outside CBS. Although that was fun too.
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We discussed Rap Around. Source.
A dissenting opinion from a writer with always interesting takes:
The idea of a WGA strike in these times, when freedom of expression is a far more fundamental issue than small differences between comparatively large amounts of money, is stunningly tone deaf and offensive.
That’s on a moral level.
On a strategic level, strikes are only effective when one side has both desperation and leverage. The WGA has neither.
I voted for the WGA strike in 2008. I regret it. The tangible benefits to the lives of working writers have never been explained in any relevant or understandable terms. The tangible losses to writers’ lives were painfully clear.
This is a bad idea masquerading as the right thing to do. On every level, it is not.
The issues at stake in the last strike were complex. I thought it was important for writers to get some kind of residual for streaming content. Whether it was necessary or well-executed, I’m not informed enough to answer. There was a layer of silliness to it for sure.
I do feel some energy like “one strike is fine, but two in this short a time is awful much.”
I kind of get that? But: the WGA is sort of the first union down the chain. We’re on the frontier here, that’s why we keep having to fight.
So, that’s my take.
* I saw the number $51 billion thrown around. I have no idea where that came from. Does it include, for instance, Disney’s theme park division? It’s hard to assess how much profit the studios are making. The AMPTP represents over 350 companies. I’m sure some of them are doing terribly!
But, here are some numbers for the bigger companies, from a 2015 Forbes magazine rundown by Natalie Robehmed:
Once the theatrical run of a film is over, studios make money from home video, video on demand, and through syndicating hit TV shows, as 21st Century Fox was able to do with Modern Family. Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox clocked the second highest profit of the publicly traded studios, earning $1.5 billion in 2014. It measured revenue of $10.3 billion, largely from betting big on books that turned into box office hits hits such as Gone Girl and The Fault in Our Stars.
Undeterred by the failed Comcast/Time Warner merger, NBCUniversal outdid itself and recorded its most profitable year ever. The studio notched $711 million in profit on $5 billion in revenue – the second best ratio in Hollywood.
Warner Bros.’ films grossed a collective $4 billion in 2014, but the studio pocketed $1.2 billion in profit from $12.5 billion in revenue. This was up 23% on 2013’s tally. The studio weathered its fair share of flops: Transcendence, Blended and Winter’s Tale all failed to perform. Its pockets were fattened by the last Hobbit movie, plus popcorn cruncher The Lego Movie which has a sequel in the works. The studio is also expanding its $5 billion television business internationally, paying $267 million for production company Eyeworks which operates in 15 countries
etc. There is poor baby Paramount:
The title of least profitable studio goes to the Viacom-owned Paramount. Despite an increase in its films’ performance at the international box office, the filmed entertainment division tallied just $219 million on revenues of $3.7 billion. This was a decrease from 2013, when profit surged thanks to selling distribution rights for Marvel movies to Disney.
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Hit me up if you disagree, find factual errors, want to express a contrary view!
Star Axis
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When completed it will be eleven stories high and one-fifth of a mile long. (Star Axis by Charles Ross, not Vali)
Star Axis was begun in 1971. The Star Tunnel is the central element of Star Axis. It frames our north star, Polaris. The Star Tunnel is precisely aligned with the earth’s axis. Within it a stairway rises 10 stories toward a circular opening at the top that frames all of the orbits of Polaris throughout the ages. As you climb the stairway toward the circular opening you see larger and larger views of the sky. The view from each stair frames an orbit of Polaris for a particular time in the 26,000 year cycle called precession. The smallest orbit of Polaris, viewed from the bottom stair, is about the size of a dime held at arms length. The largest orbit of Polaris, viewed from the top stair, encompasses your entire field of vision.
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April 17, 2017
Literary Life
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Some real talk from Larry McMurtry[image error]
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One of these days I’m going to rank all of McMurtry’s non-fiction books. They’re all chatty and great. This is the single best one.
Either Film Flam or Hollywood tells what it’s like to be friends with Diane Keaton and her mom.
McMurtry has really meant a lot to me. Here are some other posts about him:
about the time I heard him talk about Brokeback
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April 15, 2017
Joshua Tree from the air
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from Google Earth. A little closer to the ground:
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April 11, 2017
Bob Marley’s lawyer
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Diane Jobson, as seen in the Marley doc. (contender for best doc ever?)
250 points if you can guess the pun headline for this article about sorting out the Bob Marley estate.
Marley had eleven kids with seven women and left no will. Good luck, Diane!
April 8, 2017
More on Chikamatsu
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Donald Keene isn’t having any of this Japan’s Shakespeare business:[image error]
A poem:
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April 7, 2017
Railroading was a talent
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Reading about Casey Jones:
Railroading was a talent, and Jones was recognized by his peers as one of the best engineers in the business.
Campfire cooking
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Working on taking campfire cooking to the next level. HT various campmates for the photos and ideas.
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Some notes:
Foil packeted onions and peppers came out pretty well. More elaborate foil pack meals have been a bust for me. I tried some stew meat / potatoes sitch once, pointless. Keep it simple.
Wrapping a potato in foil and putting it in the ashes is such a crapshoot. You have to leave it in there for a good hour I believe.
You always want the cheapest hot dog buns you can find.
Enjoyed reading these camping experts’ recipes from kayakcritic.net and would like to try Cristina Lash’s cast iron apple cinnamon oatmeal.
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Man vs. nature. A tie, in this case.
April 4, 2017
You’re the puppet
Bunraku is Japanese puppet theater. It’s been around since the beginning of the 17th century. The puppets are maybe three feet tall and are operated by people all in black.
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Must credit young adult book The Master Puppeteer by Katherine Paterson for giving me some background in this bizarre art when I was a boy.
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When I was in college the Awaji Island Puppet Troupe of Awaji Island came and did a performance in Boston. I went to see it and only left with more questions. Awaji puppets are similar to but not exactly bunraku.
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Here we see Chikamatsu Monzaemon, who wrote at least 130 plays and is sometimes compared to Shakespeare. Until 1705, he wrote kabuki plays, for human actors. Then he abruptly switched to puppets.
WHY?
Why did Japan’s greatest dramatist switch to writing plays for puppets?
Wikipedia wagers some guesses:
The exact reason is unknown, although speculation is rife: perhaps the puppets were more biddable and controllable than the ambitious kabuki actors, or perhaps Chikamatsu did not feel kabuki worth writing for since Tōjūrō was about to retire, or perhaps the growing popularity of the puppet theater was economically irresistible.
Perhaps in Chikamatsu’s day the puppets weren’t really point, the point was the lyrics and the music, so you may as well have puppets instead of actors.
How cool would it be if Aaron Sorkin switched tomorrow to puppets? Or better yet Shonda Rhimes?
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“I only do puppets now!”
After the switch, Chikamatsu’s career followed an all too familiar path:
Chikamatsu’s popularity peaked with his domestic plays of love-suicides, and with the blockbuster success of The Battles of Coxinga in 1715, but thereafter the tastes of patrons turned to more sensational gore fests and otherwise more crude antics
I feel I’ve reached the end of what I can learn about this art form unless I actually go to the National Bunraku Theater in Osaka to see a performance of The Love Suicides at Sonezaki.
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The National Bunraku Theater – Mc681 on Wikipedia.
“Art is something that lies in the slender margin between the real and the unreal.” — Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Naniwa Miyage
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