Day 5 -- The Big Rally

Today was the big rally for the WGA strike. It was held outside of Fox Studios, actually more accurately, outside of Fox Plaza which was the building called Nakatomi Plaza in the first Die Hard movie. 4,000 writers showed up. Most of them wearing the red strike t-shirts. With all these writers it seemed more like the parting of the red bad body sea. Wow, we are an ugly union. We should have hired some stand-ins to protest for us.

Sam and I took the bus up to Fox. It was the first bus ride I have ever taken in the 13 years I have lived in L.A. I liked it fine although waiting for the bus brought up some stress reminiscent of waiting for the bus for high school after I took the stand not to ride with my father. (Who dropped me off in the same spot as the bus anyway and the bus driver didn't light up a heater at 7:15 in the morning.)

Anyway the rally was sort of like a really fun high school reunion. Walking down the closed streets of Century City I saw people I haven't seen in years. Larry Jacobson was a writer I knew at Letterman. He was the first guy to "go west" to succeed. He worked on Married With Children for a few years, then had a development deal for a few more and has spent the last 11 years working on Leno. He went "west" to do the same thing he did 13 years ago. It was good to see him nonetheless.

Kelsey Grammar spent a few minutes walking beside the entire writing staff of The Game and Girlfriends -- both shows on which he is an Executive Producer -- he had no idea that millions of his dollars were striking beside him. When I told my boss Mara that I saw him she said that if I had introduced myself as a writer from The Game he would have said, "What's that?" His two "urban comedies" on the CW are basically money printing machines for him. He don't need to know the serial number of those machines.

Patrick Verrone, president of the WGA West looked alarming like Hitler minus the mustache. He told us we were winning this fight. I have to say it felt a little like Bush on the Aircraft Carrier pronouncing "Mission Accomplished!"

I ran into my old bosses from Veritas: The Quest, my first job writing when I had a partner. (Holla, Steph!) Patrick Masset and Jon Zinman are now on Friday Night Lights (and you all know how I feel about that show) which means I got to gush all over the writers from that staff. They had no women representing them besides Jon's hot wife Amy who only seemed to be tolerating these boys. I think they might need the lady touch on staff. Look no further, boys. Although I am sure that show will be a real casualty of this strike. It's doing so poorly in the rating I doubt it'll come back even if we do. Shouldn't keep you from watching it, though. I'm just saying.

Monday it's back to the picket lines. Everyone is ready to move around to different studios and walk around in circles for 4 hours with different people. I will be sure to do the same but I'm not going anywhere without Joe.

This is a picture I took of myself and Hale, one of my co-workers. He's dressed in all black cashmere. It was 80 degrees today. That's Sam over the man with the green sweat shirt's right shoulder. He has on a beige cap and is wearing a full beard. And that's a zit on my chin.