Day: March 7, 2015

Adequate Compensation is in the Eye of the Beholder

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Pro99 - Vote No Nowuserpic=dramamasksOver the last few weeks, my attention has been caught up in a brewing battle here in Los Angeles: the battle between Equity Actors and their union, AEA. Now I’m not an actor, but I am an audience; as such, I have a stake in this battle (although we audience members are oft forgotten and taken for granted… this is grating on me and I’m starting to think about what I’m going to do on that. More in a subsequent post.) The battle is a nasty one — and one that outsiders won’t understand.

The world of creatives is not the real world. Nowhere is this made clearer than in this battle, where you have the union fighting management for higher wages, and the “employees” fighting the union for the right to earn no salary, just a small stipend. When I present the subject that way, you’re probably thinking the union is on the right side. But you would be wrong, primarily because the creative world is not the normal world.

Consider the life of an actor in Los Angeles. If you are lucky, you earn your living in the TV or movie industry. If you are really lucky, you are acting in front of the camera, likely doing completely unchallenging work such as commercials or sitcoms. If you are ordinarily lucky, you are working behind the camera in an unsung role. If you are typically, you are paying the bills with a non-creative job — working in a traditional job in a traditional workplace. The point is that you are not expecting to earn a living wage on the live theatre stage — there just isn’t the audience in LA to support it.

But there are loads of theatres in LA, you say. Yup, there are. The big ones tend to bring in outside talent, not local actors. The small ones often exist not to make money, but to provide a place for actors to hone and exercise the acting muscle — just like you exercise at the gym. With more use it gets better and stronger.  An interesting aspect to that analogy: you pay the gym to work out; the gym doesn’t pay you.

Actors in 99 seat theatre haven’t been compensated through salary. They have been compensated through the work, and through the connections they have made in the industry. Often those are more valuable than the $300 that might be earned.

Actors Equity (AEA) wants to change that. They want to mandate that most non-profit theatres pay minimum wage to actors, treat them as employees (with all the employee overhead), and have formal contracts with AEA that include compensation to the union for their services. This would increase that cost of theatres already operating on a slim margin, and put many out of business. Yes, a theatre may raise a lot of money. Much of that goes to rent, insurance, equipment rental, operating costs, and outreach to the community. It doesn’t go to salaries — no one is becoming rich on 99 seat theatre.

The actors want to change the current 99 seat plan, but not this way. They want to work with producers, other creatives, and equity to create a realistic plan that will work, and is likely tiered. A plan that will permit 99-seaters to grow and become equity houses; one that does not impose by fiat.

What’s troublesome is the union tactics. There is intense misreprentation going on. The union says a yes vote is one for a proposal that can be changed, but they have also said the yes is just on this proposal as written. Further, the union has indicated privately that if this passes, they intend to bring the minimum wage fight to New York. The actors are for change, but not this change, and are urging other actors to vote “no”.

Why do I care? I’m an audience member. I can’t vote. I don’t run a theater.

I do, however, buy tickets. I do, however, enjoy the wide variety of shows in Los Angeles. I do, however, enjoy the theatre on the edge that is created here. I do, however, enjoy being able to see both Equity and future Equity actors on stage. I do, however, enjoy being able to critique and provide constructive criticism to them to make them better. I might lose all of that if this passes.

If you are an audience member like me, let your actors know you support them. If they are AEA, educate them and encourage them to vote this proposal down. Write Equity and let them know you don’t approve of their tactics, and that if they continue their tactics, you will be perfectly willing to support, attend, and encourage non-Equity productions in Southern California. Let them know the only party that this action will hurt is AEA — they will lose public support, they will lose members, and people will learn that non-Equity actors can be just as talented as Equity actors. Let them know that Southern California audiences support those who make and act in our 99-seat houses.

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And a second helping of the same…

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Observation StewWe have so much news chum stew for you this week we couldn’t fit it all in a single bowl. So here’s a second tasty helping:

  • Subways in the Water. Those of you who know Los Angeles history probably remember the pictures of the Red Cars being dumped in the ocean. New York has done the same thing, but for good purpose. The subway cars are being transformed into a new coral reef. I often wonder what archeologists of future generations — possibly non-human — will make of things like this. What stories will they invent of civilizations living underwater that just left their subway cars. Then again, I wonder similar things about the archeogists who will find a collection of human bones at the bottom of the Indian Ocean together with the remains of MH370. What stories they will tell.
  • Giving It Away. I have a wife that is a crafter. Is there a support group for us? Here are two articles of interest to those whose spouses or loved ones are yarn crafters: they address seven charities, and then an additional nine charities, that are looking for the output from yarn crafters.
  • It’s Always Christmas Time for Visa. Recently, it was announced that Costco was terminating their relationship with Amex in 2016. They just announced the replacement: a new agreement with Citibank for a Costco-branded Citibank Visa. It looks like there will be similar perks, and that the Amex accounts will be transferred to the new card. It should be an interesting transition.
  • Microsoft Free for Students. If you’re a student, this article is of interest. Microsoft wants you to have a free subscription to Office 365 for as long as you are a student (after that, you pay). What is more interesting here is the model, not the product. We are moving away from the days when you bought your software product. We’re moving to the antivirus model, with an annual license fee. Much more lucrative, and much harder to get away from. Then again, one can always use the free LibreOffice or OpenOffice.
  • Music in the Cloud. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I’m an iPod Classic person. I’m coming up on 36,000 songs in my iPod. I’ve heard of a 40,000 song limit, but I’m more inclined to believe it is space-based, not song count. But in the cloud, there are song count limits. That’s one reason I’ve never used iTunes Match. They have a 25,000 song limit and no way to increase it. That’s useless for me — I’d want to be able to store more songs in the cloud than I can store on my device. So I was intrigued when I learned that Google Play has a 50,000 song limit. Of course, that would still involve uploading gigs of music to Google Play, and then having to deal with data use to stream it. I think I’ll stick with my iPod until I find a non-streaming solution.
  • Another One Bites the Dust. We’re going to Vegas in April — which will permit us with one last visit to the Riviera. Alas, the Riv is closing in May, and coming down by the summer to be replaced with an extension of the convention center. This doesn’t leave much of 1950’s Vegas on the strip — all that is left are the two-story wings at the Tropicana, and they aren’t going to be long for this world. Most of the original hotels are gone in both name and building; the only one that is left has none of the original buildings. We’ve still got a bit of 1960s Vegas around, from the Circus Circus tents to the core of the International (now Westgate), but the mob era is truly dead.
  • Will He Come Back? News reports surfaced this week that Ed Snowden was willing to come back to the US if he could have a fair and impartial trial. He thinks the espionage act is outdated. What he doesn’t realize is that he can’t avoid the fact that he broke the law, even if there was a positive benefit. Look at the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial” (remember “Inherit the Wind”). Gil Cates was found guilty, and rightfully so, of breaking the law of the time — even though he was speaking the truth. Snowden may have exposed abuses of the government, but that doesn’t absolve him of the fact that he broke the law by releasing classified information into the open, and that he endangered the lives of operatives and increased the risk to this country (even while alerting the country to other risks). This is an example of how you can be both wrong and right at the same time.
  • Boardgaming in Berkeley. A year or so back, I participated in the kickstarter that helped open Game Haus, a boardgaming cafe in Glendale. I don’t get over there as often as I like — primarily because their parking is horrible — but it is a great idea. So great, in fact, that a boardgaming cafe is opening in Berkeley. It should be open by late summer.
  • But Is It Better? For as long as I’ve been working in El Segundo, the 405 has been under construction. Here’s one last article, which posits that the 405 congestion relief project that just completed has been a bust. As someone who commutes the 405 daily, I’m of more of a mixed opinion — and I don’t think all the results are in yet. Note that I’m talking of perspectives of my commute window — about 6am in the morning, about 4pm in the evening. I think things are a little better in the evening, simply because I don’t see the 405 backing up as far as it did before. Before the project, the 405 was regularly backed up to LaTijera. Now it doesn’t start slowing down until National. What is worse, however, is congestion across the valley floor — which used to be wide open. I blame this more on the completion of the HOV lanes on the 5 and the construction around the 5/405 interchange. Southbound has gotten worse for some reason, and I haven’t figured that one out yet. Good thing I’m sleeping for that drive.

 

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A Heapin’ Pot of…

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Observation StewNo, I’m not talking about the proposal from AEA. Rather, over the last two weeks I’ve accumulated a lot of links, none of which I can coherently theme. So we’re going to do a “refrigerator soup” of links. Let’s dig in…

  • Doing Right in Alabama. Alabama has been in the news of late, both for the anniversary of what happened in Selma, and for the actions of the Supreme Court of Alabama with respect to Gay Marriage. Gay Marriage is one of the fronts of today’s civil rights battles, and yet again in Alabama a synagogue is leading the way. Here’s an interesting story about a Reform synagogue in Alabama that opened its doors to any gay marriage when the courthouses refused, and when the churches refused.
  • What is Blue? We’ve all heard about a certain dress that has been in the news. The debate has been about color, and color is an interesting thing. We talk about colors (and sounds) as if they are fixed things, when in reality they are just perceptions — there is no guarantee that what I think of as “green” is the same thing you think of as “green”. What is even more interesting is how language shapes color. Here’s an interesting article on that: We didn’t have “blue” until modern times. The notion is that we didn’t have a word for “blue” until recently, and without the word, it wasn’t perceived as a distinct color at all. Don’t believe me? What color is light in the UV range? Can you name the different shades of UV light? Does something exist if you can’t name it?
  • CSI:Cyber? Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down? A new show premiered last week: CSI:Cyber. I watched it, and I wasn’t that impressed. I never got into CSI:NY or CSI:Miami — they were overly focused on style, and lost the focus on story and substance. I felt the same way with CSI:Cyber — all style, and the substance was technically wrong. I prefer Scorpion if I want a technical non-realistic procedural. But who am I to talk? Here is what 10 other real cybersecurity experts think about CSI:Cyber.
  • What We Don’t Know, Gwyneth Paltrow. For all we think we know about the body, we really don’t know anything. We all know what we think of as bodily organs, without realizing that our skin is an organ, our blood is essentially an organ, and our vascular system is an organ. We worried about germs and tried to become sterile, and are the worse off for it because of our microbiomes (which probably have a greater role in obesity than we realized). Here’s an interesting article on another organ: the fascia. Gwyneth Paltrow brought this to our attention, and although she got the science wrong, she got the concept right — and this yet another organ we missed, and one that may be resposible for a lot of our chronic pains.
  • New Treatment for Migraines. I’m a migraine sufferer. When I’m dealing with a sequence of migraines, I’ll grab at anything. Last time I was in a sequence, I noticed this article about a new migraine treatment under study — image-guided, intranasal sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG) blocks. I’ve always thought there was a connection to the sinuses. Quite interesting, and potentially promising.
  • Printing Yiddish. My daughter is a Yiddish scholar; as a result, articles about Yiddish catch my eye. Here’s an interesting article about a dying breed: a yiddish printer who still uses hot lead. This printer rescues old Yiddish letterpresses and uses them to print Yiddish books. You’re probably thinking that printing is printing. But Yiddish printing is more complex: “For the Forverts, and other Yiddish printers, the challenge was to set up the type right to left from a machine designed to go the other way. They did this by tricking out the keyboards and producing fonts that had notches in the right side rather than the left, which was standard. This was effective, but meant that no normal linotype could use them. So, during the drastic linotype cull of the 1970s, Yiddish fonts were the first victims because they were unusable in almost any machine that remained alive.”
  • Saving the Skymall. One last pair of articles for this serving. We’ve talked about saving the printers for a dying language. How about a dying catalog. Here are two articles on Skymall. The first looks at the company that made all of those offbeat products that the catalog made famous. These are the folks that came up with the garden Yeti. Design Toscano releases 300 to 400 items a year, a huge portion of which are designed from scratch by the company’s creative director. One of their main outlets was the Skymall, which is going away. But is it? It looks like Skymall is coming back. ScottVest, a former SkyMall advertiser, has plans to resurrect the company, but with a different business model. “We’re going to include items in the magazine that people actually want to buy”. What a novel concept?!? Of course, we all know that wasn’t the reason Skymall really died.  It was obsolecence of the catalog model. Or was it corporate raiders. In any case, it doesn’t appear to be selling things people didn’t want to buy.

 

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