Famous people make the news

Still can't post pictures on Blogger, so I'm reduced to this:

The Good:

Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe on the importance of careers that require one to actually get off ones ass and work for 8 hours a day with little or no fanfare from the so-called "intellectually elite":

I'm here today because of my grandfather. 

His name was Carl Knobel, and he made his living in Baltimore as a master electrician. He was also a plumber, a mechanic, a mason, and a carpenter. Everyone knew him as a jack-of-all-trades. I knew him as a magician.

For most of his life, my grandfather woke up clean and came home dirty. In between, he accomplished things that were nothing short of miraculous. Some days he might re-shingle a roof. Or rebuild a motor. Or maybe run electricity out to our barn. He helped build the church I went to as a kid, and the farmhouse my brothers and I grew up in. He could fix or build anything...

Thirty years later in San Francisco when my toilet blew up again. This time, I didn't participate in the repair process. I just called my landlord, left a check on the kitchen counter, and went to work. When I got home, the mess was cleaned up and the problem was solved. As for the actual plumber who did the work, I never even met him.

It occurred to me that I had become disconnected from a lot of things that used to fascinate me. I no longer thought about where my food came from, or how my electricity worked, or who fixed my pipes, or who made my clothes. There was no reason to. I had become less interested in how things got made, and more interested in how things got bought...

Right now, American manufacturing is struggling to fill 200,000 vacant positions. There are 450,000 openings in trades, transportation and utilities. The skills gap is real, and it's getting wider. In Alabama, a third of all skilled tradesmen are over 55. They're retiring fast, and no one is there to replace them...

In general, we're surprised that high unemployment can exist at the same time as a skilled labor shortage. We shouldn't be. We've pretty much guaranteed it.

In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We've elevated the importance of "higher education" to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled "alternative." Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as "vocational consolation prizes," best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of "shovel ready" jobs for a society that doesn't encourage people to pick up a shovel.

Unfortunately, on the subject of honest, humble, hard work he wasn't exactly preaching to the choir.  Read the whole thing here: Mike Rowe's Senate Testimony.

The Bad:

From Yahoo: Celebrity tweeters risk boring fans.  Seriously, they just now noticed this?  I can't tell you how many famous people I followed early on in the mistaken belief they'd be as interesting on their own as they are scripted or edited down to short, snappy soundbites.  WRONG!!! 

Tweets on singer Katy Perry's page include: "What does it mean when you see the number 33 all the time? For instance, I've seen it over 7 times today."

While actress Demi Moore, one of Twitter's most prolific celebrity users with over 3.5 million followers, wrote on Friday: "Kind of digging soft curls with a side part. A good change from straight with a middle part?"

One of my earliest Twitter reality checks was when I realized indie-cool actor Steve Buscemi wasn't and he became one of my first unfollows.  It pained me to do that, really it did.

The Ugly:

The New York Post owes everyone a big bucket of brain bleach for this headline.   Seriously, no one wants that mental image.  Now having said that, when all other fishwraps have gone the way of dinosaurs, I wouldn't be surprised if the Post is still around with its un-PC, in-you-face, "Hey, we were all thinking it!" headlines.

And the just plain ridiculous:

Jennifer Aniston bought an NYC penthouse in her dog's name.  In fact, not just in the dog's name, but in the dog's trust's name.  Yes, her dog has a trust.  I hope thanks to the tax breaks that this stupid thing is no doubt meant to create means that Jen can avoid going broke and having to live out of her car, and ensuring that she can keep making bad movies that tank at the box office.  Seriously, who are these people who keep casting her?  She hasn't had a hit since Friends.

Blogging fail

Have a few things to update, but Blogger was down for an extended period yesterday and today it's not uploading photos.  At some point when Blogger gets its crap together there will be catchup posts.

Update: The problem with uploading pictures has not been resolved, so I guess I can't post the fabulous pictures of the Hello Kitty wine (yes, you read that right) I snapped at the KTA in Keauhou today.  Although based on this hot mess, not being able to upload pics is the least of Blogger's problems right now.  I'm not sure exactly what happened during yesterday's "maintenance", but today some Blogger accounts have gone missing completely and who knows if they'll get them back or not.  What really sucks is that I logged back on to Typepad today in case I need to switch TLAT back there and realized that once I got the Blogger version of this baby launched, I deleted the Typepad version of it.  This means that if Blogger doesn't get its shit together soon, I get to manually copy the entire blog post by post to another host for the second time in a month.  Joy.

Snarky awesomeness, celebrity style

Today's interwebz were an embarrassment of riches for my sleb-snarking self.  Consider the following developments.  I know I did.

CSI star Marg Helgenberger says two-time guest star Justin Bieber was an immature douchebag brat on set.  Stop hatin' on the younger chicks, Marg!  I kid.  Call the unprofessional ones like you see 'em, Emmy award-winning actress!  And CSI producers, seriously, stop stunt casting and start hiring professional actors.  Or just call it a day, if you're that desperate for attention.  Look, you've had your decade in the sun and your place in TV history is secure.  Bieber casting once just might be the television gods telling you it's over.  Twice the Bieber?  That's worse than the Grissom - Sara shark jump.  Hey, I'm not trying to be mean - just because I haven't watched in years doesn't mean I don't care.  If ever a show deserved to go out in shark-free style, it was CSI.  But Biebering isn't the way to go out in style.  On the other hand, this particular sad stunt casting gave the world this awesome death scene:

Nice shooting, Nicky.

Lakers crash and burn (don't care) and a sportswriterly type goes out on a massive limb and suggests that one of their players, along with his Z minus minus minus-list "celebrity" spousal unit and their lameass TV show might have had a less than positive affect on his play and his team.  No, really???  Because no one in L.A. saw that one coming. </sarcasm>  Although from that article, it does seem like soap-operaness abounds on the Lakers.  My guess is that there will be more Lakers related shitty TV before there's another title.  Don't care.  Better them than the Kings.

And finally, because I'm weird this way, I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to TP Sheryl Crow's house.  Why?  Because the genius who can afford a personal chef but thinks the little people should limit themselves to one sheet of the aforementioned TP per visit to the loo has "co-written" a...Wait. For. It...cookbook!  There's a secret ingredient joke in there somewhere.  Notice her hands are hidden on the book cover?  Also, "those pesky occasions" is my new fake band name.  In a perfect world, where I actually have some musical aptitude, Those Pesky Occasions would totally exist and totally rock the charts!  Please to be getting yourselves over to iTunes to BUY BUY BUY SO WE CAN HIRE PERSONAL CHEFS download our first hit, Don't Bogart That Toilet Paper.

Not bad for a Monday!

What I've been missing, courtesy of Hollywood Patch and Curbed L.A.

Still in Hawaii for ongoing family stuff.  Yeah, it's not the worst place to be stuck, but it's not home.

Luckily the internets are doing a pretty decent job of keeping me apprised of the goings-on back in the City of Angles so I don't feel so left out.  This is especially true of Hollywood Patch, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite source for all things local.

Here are just a few examples of what's going on in crazy hometown in my absence:

Just another festive Saturday night in Hollywood: Shooting outside a Franklin x Cahuenga nightclub, pedestrian mowed down by party bus and left in grave condition, idiot runs out into lanes on the 101 and is left in dead condition.  People, if God wants you to be on the 101 he will put you in a car first and even then there are no guarantees.

Some friendly advice: Drunk in public is never going to work to your advantage and sex in a public place is a bad idea.  Not being a drunken slut willing to have sex in the Arclight garage would probably also help avoid awkward situations involving law enforcement, the media, and criminal misunderstandings.

How the heck did I miss this?  LAPD gun buyback program rewards include Ralphs and Visa giftcards.  I would rue not owning any illegal firearms but I would have missed it anyway.  I'll just have to continue have to pay for my groceries with cash and not by holding the place up.
Update: The buyback netted 2,000+ weapons, including "953 handguns, 688 rifles, 330 shotguns and 91 assault-style rifles".  That's a lot of giftcards.

The American Cinematheque is showing off its sense of humor with a Mother's Day screening of Mommie Dearest at the Egyptian this evening.  Tickets appear to still be available.

Via Curbed L.A. this happened at the Hollywood Roosevelt last week.  I'd have been there taking pictures if I'd been home, but instead we'll all have to settle for this awesome video:

It might have sucked to actually be in one of those rooms while this was going on, but I would have loved to have seen it.

On the upside, I also missed Jennifer Lopez at Hollywood & Highland, so I've got that working in my favor.

 

Home sweet home

Arclight rapist caught

Okay fine, alleged rapist.  Via Hollywood Patch.  Either way you call it, I'm just glad they got this guy off the streets.

Attention writer/directors: Screenwriting Expo adds film festival

This is for you:

In this festival, the writer-director is the entrant.  The director must be one of the writers. 

All the rules, regulations and other pertinent info are here.

So glad to be posting this and not spending the entire morning on a politically related long-ass post *fingers crossed*

How to make a story out of nothing

Talk about Much Ado About Nothing: White House asks teeny-tiny weekly California paper to remove perceived unflattering remark about Michelle Obama from an article about Marine One (the helicopter version of Air Force One).

She also wrote a sentence that the White House thought made FLOTUS look snooty.

“Basically the reporter said that the First Lady didn’t speak to the pilots but acknowledged them by making eye contact,” Allen wrote in her email.

Allen says she “complied” with the White House’s request “because it was not worth making a fuss over.”

She added, “I thought it was interesting, though, that the [White House] was concerned enough about image to contact a little weekly paper in Pleasanton.”

A sentence. All this fuss over a sentence. It wasn't like the article was a hit piece on FLOTUS, it was a fluff piece about a helicopter that mentioned her.

Replace "concerned enough about image" with "thin-skinned" and "hyper-sensitive" and I'm in. Seriously, remember all the unrestrained and at times hysterical criticism and crap President Bush took over every single thing he said or did and basically ignored it? It's called being an adult. And come on, isn't this Celebrity 101? You put yourself in the public eye, people are going to comment on you and it's not all going to be flattering. Besides, what happened to no such thing as bad publicity?

This is why people in the public eye have handlers. Anyone who put any thought into the situation could have advised that by doing this, you would draw much more attention to the article and the offending comment than if you just ignored it. If they hadn't, probably very few people outside of Pleasanton (population 69,000) would have seen it. Now it's on Drudge Report (population 40,788,912 in the past 24 hours) and it looks petty.

To me the bigger issue here is whether or not the reporter's observations were accurate. If not, then sure, ask that they be edited out because of their inaccuracy. But that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Also, consider that at times Michelle Obama has seemingly conducted herself like a queen. The White House didn't seem too concerned about the extravagance (real or perceived) of the infamous Spain trip, not to mention this is the same woman who put in an appearance at a food bank clad in $500 sneakers. Did the White House really think anyone who happened to be in the Pleasanton Weekly's limited readership (who also happened to find the prospect of a "soft feature" about the Presidential helicopter worth a read) would bat an eye at the idea of this woman only semi-acknowledging the hired help? Did they think anyone would?

As a writer I should be taking better notes on this president and everybody he surrounds himself with. By the time he's out of office I could redefine the political thriller as bumbling comedy.

I really hadn't meant for the blog to get all political lately, but when life gives you story material you write it down (or something like that, lemons and lemonade...) I think it might be because I dumped the Twitter and Facebook accounts recently so I have two fewer places to vent wax poetic about the world around me. The blog is pretty much it these days.

And story material is all around me. 

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any. (Orson Scott Card)

More Bin Laden news

This just in: Osama Bin Laden is still dead.

Looking out for Numero Uno: Pathetic to the end, Osama used his wife as a human shield.  Update: The story now is that she either jumped in front of him or lunged at the Navy Seals in a threatening manner, rather than Osama using her as a shield.  Hopefully the story isn't being sanitized to spare the delicate sensibilities of The Dead One's fellow peace-loving Muslims.  Regardless of what happened, you would really think and hope our powers that be would have the story straight before revealing it to the world.

<Ricky Ricardo voice> Looks like Paaahkeeestaaan has some 'splainin to do! </Ricky Ricardo voice>

And from Twitter, this: OsamaInHell.  Some choice tweets:

 

In addition to giving voice to Osama In Hell, Twitter served as the most up to the moment source for ongoing news about the operation.

Speaking of Twitter, there was also this: The guy in Abbottabad who inadvertently live-tweeted the whole thing as it went down.

Watch your back in the Arclight parking garage

Via Hollywood Patch: Men sought in sexual assault in Hollywood parking garage.

Keep your eyes open, don't go out in deserted areas or structures at odd hours without backup and be safe everyone!

Invasion of the Bin Laden Snatchers

Forget Al Gore and Michael Moore - someone please give Barack Obama a well deserved Oscar for his performance yesterday as Warmongering Nazi George W. Bush in Death of a Terrorist Asshole.  Hopefully during his Academy Award acceptance speech PrezBo will remember to thank the Navy Seals who actually punched the trigger on Bin Laden's long overdue one way ticket to hell (after he thanks his fanbase, the mainstream media, of course).

I have to admit that speech last night was impressive as hell.  It was 100% pro-American and I didn't notice Obama so much as flinching in discomfort even once as he proudly announced the death of a monster responsible for thousands of deaths by terrorism man-caused disasters.   In fact his passionate, shameless patriotism in that speech would put your average Tea Partier to shame.

There was none of the usual bipartisan derision or snarky comments about those who don't agree with him on everything, and he hardly made it all about himself at all.  He certainly didn't downplay his role in this historic event, but when it was over he turned and walked away, leaving the American public to their exuberant celebrations and ongoing love affair with our military and everything they do for us.

I couldn't help but wondering where he got his new speechwriters (borrowed from Chimpy McBushitler?) or if he'd been replaced by an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style pod Obama.  Seriously, it was like listening to President Bush cowboying up in the face of a cruel, vicious enemy.  In other words, it was like 2001 all over again, only without the horrifying images.

Speaking of Bush, I really need to listen to the speech again and much more carefully, to see if Obama gave the Kamikaze Cowboy credit for having the guts to launch the war on terror after the attacks of 9/11, especially after the criticism Bush was subjected to when he made his emotional statement about hunting Bin Laden ("I don't care.  Dead or alive.  Either way, it doesn't matter to me.")  Because when you get right down to it, we didn't care either.  Well, yes we did.  We preferred dead and it took nearly a decade, but we got it.  Right between the eyes, up close and personal.  I take great pleasure in knowing that the murdering bastard spent his last few moments knowing an American serviceman was about to put a bullet in him.  Cowboy up if you have a problem with that.  Live by the sword, die by the sword.  Bin Laden didn't get anything better or worse than what he deserved.

Biggest props of all go to the Navy Seals who selflessly and gladly put their lives on the line for this operation while the rest of us (especially our entitled, coddled politicians) were safe in our bubble at home.   Best of all there were no American casualties in the take down operation.  Score one for the good guys.

I also really hope this can give some comfort to the friends and loved ones of those who were needlessly slaughtered on 9/11 at the hands of Bin Laden and his fellow nutjobs. 

Of course Tinseltown has to get into the act.  It hasn't even been 24 hours, but is Hollywood suddenly jumping on the pro-America bandwagon?  Via Big Hollywood: Hunt for Bin Laden projects could be fast-tracked and Hollywood Reporter: Upcoming book on Navy Seals suddenly hot (bidding war for screen rights commences in 5...4...3...).

Deadlines!

The Disney/ABC Writing Program is currently accepting submissions and applications.  The submission period is May 1 through June 1.

The Warner Bros. Writers' Workshop is accepting submissions beginning tomorrow through June 1.

The Screenwriting Expo Screenwriting Competition is currently open to entries.  Final deadline is July 10.  They have categories for feature, teleplay and short.  The Screenwriting Expo itself will take place September 15-18 at the Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel.

An inconvenient truth: Even tree hugging hippies have a price.

For the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, that price is a cool million in cash and "services".

The state planning agency that oversees open space in the Santa Monica Mountains will drop its opposition to a controversial bid by U2 guitarist The Edge to build a compound of homes above Malibu in exchange for more than $1 million in funding, consulting services and trail easements from the musician and his partners.

The Edge would like to build a compound of five mansions on the 156 acre chunk of land.  I'm sure it would fit right in.  Oh, wait...

But the project has been stymied by widespread opposition from conservation groups and the California Coastal Commission, who say it would scar an undeveloped ridgeline visible from much of the Malibu coastline and disturb geological features and sensitive habitat.

In 2009 the conservancy wrote a letter to the coastal commission strongly opposing the project, saying it was inconsistent with the state Coastal Act and would be impossible to build without “unavoidable significant adverse visual and ecological impacts.”

Gotta say, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy sold out waaaay to cheap.  One million has to be chump change to this guy.  Seriously, he'll probably dig it out from between the cushions of his sofa.

Maybe it's because I'm not celeb-obsessed, but he looks like the kind of tool who would build a huge compound in the Santa Monica Mountains. 

And from our friends at The Department of Stating the Obvious:

Critics characterized the deal as Evans buying the agency’s silence.

You don't say?

Let's just hope the California Coastal Commission and The Sierra Club (both mentioned in the article as still opposing the development) can withstand the siren call of The Edge's filthy lucre.


Pic snicked from L.A. Times article linked above.