F*ck the NBA!
Category: Sports

Everyone has a guilty pleasure, a dirty (or ridiculous) secret that maybe they spend too much time thinking about.  Mine is the goddamned Seattle Supersonics who are, as of next season, moving to goddamned motherf*ckin' Oklahoma City!  OKLAHOMA CITY?!  Ok, now, I know I never intend to move back to the Emerald City, as much as I love it, as purty as it is, and as civilized and progressive are its citizens.  But f*ck!  They lost their team to OKLAHOMA CITY?  LAME!  LAME!  LAME!

F*ckf*ckf*ckityf*ckf*ckf*ckf*ck.  I followed the Sonics when they were the only pro team in town.  I followed them when they went from the worst record in the league to the Finals in the same year.  I followed them when they finally won the only pro sports championship the Emerald City has ever won.  I've been gone for almost 30 years and I still follow them religiously, even after several years of CRAP, including last season's WORST EVER, and I even watched the most recent draft via the Internet, knowing full well the team they are assembling would probably not contend until they were long gone..  And now they ARE gone?  F*ck them!  F*ck the NBA!  F*ck that fat OKCity Pig Clay Bennett and his F*ckin' lyin' bastard partners!  F*ckityf*ckf*ckf*ck!  Love Stinks.  Argh!

*crying like an inconsolable infant*

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Obama’s Asian American Sister
Category: News and Politics

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Rilke Quote
Category: Writing and Poetry

"How should we begin to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples... [P]erhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.  Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." -- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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Nikki Finke on SAG-AFTRA

I don't quite know what to make of Nikki Finke, but she definitely had more info and a broader view of the Writer's Guild strike/negotiations than any other source, whether one agreed or disagreed with it. She's got a pretty eye-opening column in this week's LA Weekly about SAG, AFTRA, and the AMPTP. Here's part of the column (it's LONG) and at the bottom is a link for the rest. No one escapes unscathed in her analysis, but again, whether you agree or disagree, there's more food for thought here than I've found anywhere else:

PART I: SAG/AFTRA/AMPTP Overview

The sense of panic among actors, writers, directors and below-the-liners is palpable in Hollywood right now. Matched only by the angst of agents whose phones aren't ringing, and out-of-town journalists struggling to write "strike sequel" stories for Monday. Strange, isn't it, that the only Hollywood types without any visible flopsweat from the de facto shutdown of production are the network and studio moguls. Because they are the puppeteers pulling everybody else's strings. From behind the scenes, they order Hollywood to jump, and the town asks how high. And never more so than during all these guild negotiations. If only the entire industry could stay focused on the actions of Big Media and start pressuring the Hollywood CEOs to put people back to work. But instead everyone's attention has strayed to the carnival sideshow of SAG vs AFTRA, and AFTRA vs SAG, and Big Star vs Big Star, and all the other diversions in an already confused situation.

Now take a deep breath and calm down. To understand what's going on right now, I first need to ask you to do the following: reflect on everything you knew surrounding the writers strike, and then throw it all out the window. What's going on with SAG and AFTRA and the AMPTP is the complete opposite of what happened a few month back. The writers were for the most part united. The actors are divided to the point of distraction. The writers went after the AMPTP and the Big Media behemoths. The actors are going after each other. The agents and moguls backchannelled negotiations with the WGA. Hardly any backchannelling is going on right now between the moguls and SAG, while the agents are sitting on their hands. All the moguls kept close tabs on pre- and post-strike talks with the writers. Now some CEOs are so disengaged they're not bothering to read their labor lawyers' memos, much less to demand updates. The writers strike crippled television while movies went virtually unscathed. But the de facto strike or de facto lockout, depending on your POV, has seemingly halted moviemaking while television production continues mostly uninterrupted.

The result is that Hollywood has to rewire, reboot and rethink everything. In this case, past doesn't have to be prologue. There doesn't have to be a strike. In fact, I can definitely tell you that SAG has "never suggested that a strike was an objective or essential," I'm told by an insider. "Yes, it is an option. But SAG leadership has not been the ones threatening it or sabre-rattling." And another insider puts it even more forcefully: "Not only is there no strike plan, there is no strike authorization, and there is no requirement that SAG has to go on strike once the contract expires on June 30th. It's not uncommon in labor disputes for union members to agree to extend the contract or to remain working under the existing terms of the previous contract while negotiations continue."

And yet there are highly organized factions at the top of the studios and networks, IATSE locals, AFTRA leadership, and even SAG's own board that want to scare everyone into thinking a walkout is inevitable unless there's complete contract capitulation by SAG leadership. I'm here to tell you this is untrue.

Yes, there's a countdown to June 30th when SAG's contract with the AMPTP expires at midnight. What happens then? In all likelihood, the two sides will continue bargaining. (After all, the AMPTP is on record saying that the only reason it left the negotiations with the WGA after the writers' contract expired is because the guild called an immediate strike.)

A more definitive deadline is July 8th when AFTRA announces its ratification vote results. So what happens then? Again, not a SAG strike. The guild's leadership understands that there's no urgency within the membership at this time for such an extreme call. Which is precisely why there's no impetus atop the guild to even consider holding a strike authorization vote. If one were held and no authorization given, SAG would suffer a psychological blow from which it probably couldn't recover this contract cycle. Ergo, no push for a vote. However, it's underhanded for AFTRA to try to put one over on its members with language that a "yes" vote ratifies its recently drawn up AMPTP contract but a "no" vote doesn't just send the pact back to the negotiators to try for better terms but actually puts in motion something far more draconian which is to authorize the AFTRA board to call a strike (...)

More at: http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/

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More Abundance
Category: Life

OK, this is kinda weird - it looks weirder when you put it out there for public consumption, so maybe I won't do the whole experiment - it makes me kind of self-conscious, and really, part of the point of automatic writing is you don't judge, you just keep going, so self-consciousness, which can lead to editing, is not a good thing. Here's one more, though:

"Money is not my supply. No person, place or condition is my supply. My awareness, understanding, and knowledge of the all-providing activity of the Divine Mind within me is my supply. My consciousness of this Truth is unlimited, therefore my supply is unlimited."

It's these flat-out statements that I understand to be affirmations that I sometimes have difficulty with. I really like the first part, knowing that money is not my supply, nor is anything else. And maybe the second part of the statement is meant to be broader than this, but in a way, it reminds me of the Gratitude quote we have up on refrigerator, that gratitude makes everything enough – maybe gratitude, appreciation, and rejoicing are all part of the activity of the Divine Mind, something beyond counting blessings but truly being inside one's blessings. I have to tell the truth and say that I haven't been very good at that lately, but I know what it feels like. I once read a poem that was from the point of view of a guy lying in bed listening to his wife and child having fun in the morning, and the gist of that poem was capturing a quiet peak experience born out of the simple everyday.

I have pictures that go by randomly on my computer desktop and the one right now is Rosie at about nine or ten hugging me at the top of some hill in the Santa Monica Mountains after a hike, and I have to believe the Divine Mind put that on my desktop at this moment to remind me that my supply is joy. I started out thinking that the statement "my consciousness of this Truth is unlimited" was really not true, but maybe I know more than I think.

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Blogger’s Remorse
Category: Blogging

I'm having blogger's remorse. Why did I say I'd be sharing my abundance stuff? That's just so...so...weird.

Maybe I'll share one, just 'cause I said I would. It's not profound or anything, it's kind of like automatic writing, where you just start writing for a few minutes and whatever comes out is what comes out, so...blah, blah, blah, excuse, excuse, excuse, I haz fear, but here goes:

"Through my consciousness of my God Self, the Christ within as my Source, I draw into my mind and feeling nature the very substance of Spirit. This substance is my supply, thus my consciousness of the Presence of God within me IS my supply."

I'm beginning to understand that. Like so many things, sometimes you have to feel it beginning to take root inside you before you can really say you understand it, and right now, it's a seedling. I used to think when people said that they felt something inside them, that it was metaphorical, like they meant the voice inside them that is actually their mind, but now, after all these years of this sort of practice, whether active or dormant, I'm starting to feel that when I understand something inside, I understand it in my body. The cells in my arms and torso and gut start to understand something. Is this the beginning of God consciousness? The understanding that one does not just reside in one's brain, but throughout this shell of a body? I feel it. I feel the very substance of Spirit. And the idea of drawing the substance of Spirit into my mind and spirit feels tangible also. Like when we were taking a walk this morning, I could, on a certain level, feel spirit all around. And once you can feel that, the idea that Spirit is substance and that substance is one's supply, starts to take on a tangible meaning. And that consciousness is joy, a low thrumming of joy, not always the ecstatic craziness that I sometimes experience as joy, more of a low bass note that reverberates just barely outside my normal awareness.

I like this one.

5:08 PM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Experiment?
Category: Life

When I first started this blog, almost two years ago, I really tried to post every day. Like every diary or journal I ever started, that didn't last too long...well, maybe a year, which is pretty good, considering I'm really disorganized, my schedule is highly changeable, and I'm so easily distracted. But I've been pretty unable to keep up with things that I absolutely have to do and want to do, much less fun stuff like a blog.

But I had an idea:

If you read this blog, you might have to bear with me, because it might be horribly self-indulgent and New Age in the extreme, and I hate to think people are judging me for gazing at my own navel, so this is a bit of a leap.

Sharon, myself, and a friend of mine have resumed something we did a long time ago, about a year or so after we moved to LA. At that time, we were really broke, living in a kind of crappy apartment, and seriously wondering if we were just too freaking old to have made the move from SF to LA. We had a kid, we went a year or two without insurance because we didn't qualify and didn't have the scratch to pay for ourselves, though we did pay for our kid, and needless to say, we were really, really depressed.

A friend of ours, also an actor, also a New Age kind of person, suggested we do something called The Book of Abundance. It's kind of a long story, but basically, there are about ten statements about abundance written in the middle of this book. You have to read one, then meditate on it for fifteen minutes, then write about it for another fifteen minutes - whatever comes to mind. I had a lot of resistance to it, because it talked a lot about God, whom at that time, I had a real problem with, and it was full of gobbledygook which I thought was bullshit, and also, I really thought that one shouldn't be putting one's focus on material things, which is the way I interpreted "abundance" back then. We had to do this every day and go through the entire cycle of ten statements four times, so basically, we did this for forty days in a row.

I don't want to sound like a shill for the book, but basically, our lives changed after that. I mean, it wasn't immediate, and really, it took some time before we were able to look back, and say, "Holy shit, that's when everything changed," but really, our whole lives changed after that.

Years later, we've had a pretty good stretch, last year was excellent, but like a lot of folks, for us, this year has been far more scary. Plus, our daughter is now looking at college, and the places she wants to go...? Well, we'd pretty much have to put off retirement indefinitely to afford. So, we're doing the abundance work again.

I feel a lot better equipped to do it this time. I feel like I understand a lot more now than I did when I was in my thirties, and there's just a lot I take for granted now that back then I thought was just pie-in-the-sky bullshit.

So here's the experimental part of this whole thing:

I thought maybe I'd post what I wrote as part of this work.

That might not be healthy, I mean, I think the whole idea is you're supposed to just write whatever comes to mind, and it's a little weird to think you're writing in a public forum, so maybe I shouldn't do this. But I thought I'd post what I'd written so far, just as an exercise of faith...that I'm not ashamed of where I'm at right now.

Is that really narcissistic and weird?

Well, if it gets too weird, I'll go back to posting quotes.

Feel free to tell me if you don't like this!

3:59 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Benefit for the Asian American Justice Center

Hey, besides being her twin brother and basking in her reflected glory, I want to post this fundraising invitation because I think all of us, including those of us who toil in the entertainment industry and those of us whose lives are touched in any way by institutional racism or those of us who just like seeing more people of color on TV, owe a debt to her and her organization.

As far as us actors go, I got to see for myself, starting in 1999, when EWP became one of the founding members of what would become the Asian American Media Coalition, which worked in coalition with Latinos and Native Americans, along with the NAACP, in convincing the networks to create diversity programs and to make a conscious and concerted effort to diversify their prime time programming. Now, we may all agree that they still have a long way to go, but on the other hand, things are MUCH better now than they were in 1999, and many of our colleagues who have either regular or recurring roles were often talked about in those meetings with the networks, so I KNOW that these semi-annual meetings (sometimes battles) with the networks have borne fruit.

I hope you'll join me in celebrating the 50th birthday of Karen K. Narasaki, one of our country's leading authorities and champions for advancing civil rights, on Tuesday, July 15th from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. at The Japanese American National Museum located at 369 East 1st Street in Los Angeles, CA.

Karen is the President and Executive Director of the Asian American Justice Center (AAJC), a 501c3 non-profit organization that has been at the forefront of advancing the civil rights of Asian Americans and is a proven expert on issues of direct importance to the Asian Americans of all ethnic groups across the United States. Karen has devoted her life to societal change and has been an inspiration to me and many of us who believe in the need to continue the fight to advance human and civil liberties in our nation.

Your donation of ANY AMOUNT will not only grant you admission to this event that is being hosted by AAJC board member, Julia Y. Huang, President and CEO of InterTrend, but it also benefits the Asian American Justice Center – the organization that Karen has devoted the last fifteen years of her life to.

You can help honor Karen and her stalwart commitment to the civil rights movement by donating here: https://secure.entango.com/donate/zK4pQikLJds and choosing "In Honor of Karen's 50th Birthday" under the program area. Even if you are unable to join us, please know that your donation of any amount will help us to continue the important and much-needed work that the Asian American Justice Center does everyday. To learn more about Karen and the Asian American Justice Center, please visit: www.advancingequality.org.

I hope that you will be able to join me in supporting Karen and this wonderful organization. Please don't hesitate to contact June Jimenez: jjimenez@advancingequality.org / (202) 296-2300 x138 with any questions or concerns.

Her proud bro,

Ken


Celebrate Karen Narasaki Diving Into Her 50s

At an evening buffet dinner hosted by

Julia Y. Huang
on
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
at
The Japanese American National Museum Gardens
369 East First Street
Los Angeles, CA

RSVP requested by Thursday, July 10th to June Jimenez:

jjimenez@advancingequality.org / (202) 296-2300 x13
______________________________________________

Asian American Justice Center
June A. Jimenez
Director of Development
1140 Connecticut Ave., NW
Suite 1200
Washington, DC 20036
P - 202 296-2300 Ext. 138
F - 202 296-2318
jjimenez@advancingequality.org

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Cesar Chavez Quote
Category: Writing and Poetry

"The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people." - Cesar Chavez

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AFTRA-SAG
Category: Writing and Poetry

I've hesitated to weigh in (at least in this space) on the dust-up between SAG and AFTRA as they go up against the giants of media, mostly because I have friends who disagree with me and I happen to like those friends a lot. But, since voting is underway, I do feel compelled to say that I think the AFTRA contract is giving away an awful lot and contrary to the perception that it is somehow in line with what the writers and the directors got, it doesn't protect actors who have unique concerns and individually, at least, do not make the kind of money that writers and directors do when they do work unless, of course, they are stars. I am posting the notice from SAG chief negotiator Doug Allen, because I'm not at all involved in this and truth be told, I only understand the broadest strokes of what's going on. But his statement gibes with my limited understanding, and it gets to the heart of why I voted "no" on the AFTRA contract:

June 23, 2008

Dear Member:

The Screen Actors Guild National Executive Committee voted to authorize Screen Actors Guild to undertake a campaign to encourage SAG members who are dual card holders to vote NO on the ballot for the AFTRA Prime Time Television tentative agreement.

I want you to know why, as SAG's Chief Negotiator, I strongly endorse our campaign for a NO vote.

First, a NO vote does not mean a strike.

In fact, it makes a strike less likely because it will send the clear signal that working actors aren't satisfied with the AFTRA deal and, to get a deal, management will have to do better. It gives us more leverage not less at the negotiating table and makes it less likely we would have to consider the ultimate leverage of a strike. Any sane union leader wants to avoid a strike if at all possible.

This is all about SAG's negotiations, not the internal operations of AFTRA. We are not interfering in their internal affairs. Not when our negotiations cover the same actors, same networks and studios, ­same producers, same jobs and not when we represent over 90% of the shows in primetime and pay TV and 100% of movies. The only reason this issue exists is because AFTRA walked away from our joint bargaining relationship and then didn't finish the job.

SAG members three-year earnings under the TV/Theatrical contracts exceeded $4 billion. AFTRA members three-year earnings under this contract were less than $40 million. But if the AFTRA deal is ratified, the AMPTP will regard that as a signal from SAG members who are dual card holders that we are done with negotiations and that the AFTRA deal is enough. That is why a NO vote is so important.

The AFTRA deal falls far short of "good enough". It doesn't achieve most of the priorities we established in our joint SAG/AFTRA Wages and Working Conditions meetings across the country with hundreds of working actors.

The AFTRA Deal:

* Allows non-union new media production.
* Doesn't put enough new money in working actors pockets or increase pension/health contributions enough and doesn't include an increase for mileage.
* Doesn't provide enough protection to actors negotiating clip consent in the future.
* Provides no increases in DVD residuals.
* Provides no protection from product integration abuses.
* Doesn't protect collectively bargained force majeure protections.
* Eliminates most residuals for reruns of productions made for new media.

Most importantly, the AFTRA deal allows our signatory employers to produce programming made for new media entirely non-union. The AFTRA deal would pay no residuals for almost all made for new media programming when rerun on new media. Even if SAG overcomes the non-union/no residuals problems and negotiates a better contract, AFTRA's contract won't be upgraded with these improvements. AFTRA has no "me too" favored nations clause for improvements, other than for force majeure and exhibition windows. This would set up AFTRA as the cheaper, more producer-friendly alternative in new media. When unions compete with different contract terms, actors lose. It starts a race to the bottom that SAG doesn't want to win.

AFTRA claims that a "sunset clause" in the deal will provide the opportunity to fix any problems in three-years. Who thinks that the same employers who have refused to improve the unfair home video/DVD formula for over 20 years, will jump at the chance to put new media residuals back in place after they have eliminated them? Or agree to all union productions when they have produced non-union under the same contract? If programming rerun on ABC pays residuals but programming rerun on ABC.com doesn't, where do you think original scripted programming will quickly migrate?

For all of these reasons, I urge you to vote NO on the AFTRA deal. I do so without any personal or institutional hostility to AFTRA members or leadership. A No vote is not an attack on AFTRA. It is simply a recognition that these negotiations should conclude with a contract that is fair for actors and, one that all actors can support.

Please feel free to respond to contract2008@sag.org with your thoughts and suggestions.

In solidarity,

Doug Allen

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