Monday, December 31, 2007

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Deadline Hollywood on Letterman Deal

The link.

Hopefully, the fallout will be to pressure NBC into making the same deal.

On the one hand, this is the first side deal cut by the WGA with a producer since the strike began on November 3rd as part of its new and articulated "divide and conquer" strategy. "Worldwide Pants has accepted the very same proposals that the Guild was prepared to present to the media conglomerates when they walked out of negotiations on December 7," the WGA said in its annoumcement today.


But I'm told the WGA leadership was particularly worried how Leno's writers would react since it gives Letterman's show a real leg up on late night competition for guests like celebrities and politicians (i.e. Democratic presidential contenders who don't want to cross picket lines). "I don't think they wanted to upset Jay or those writers because they've all been incredibly supportive of the WGA during this strike," an insider explained to me. "But it's not Jay's writers' fault that Dave's lawyers made a deal for him to own his show and Jay's lawyers made a deal for him to be an NBC employee."

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Christmas Day

Tommy came over on Christmas. When Jameson woke up from his nap, we opened the last of the Christmas presents. Jameson thinks Christmas lasts two weeks, with a never ending stream of family and venues. I wanted to post the video of Desiree opening her present from me, but it's a bit too long for Youtube to upload, and editing it down would require more software and time than I was up for at the moment.

Jingle Bells



This Christmas Eve, we had dinner at Birgitta's. She made a bunch of traditional Swedish dishes, like Johnson's Temptation, and pickled herring with potatoes and sour cream. Desiree brought some green bean casserole and sweet potato casserole. Good stuff. We also had Christmas toasts with glogg (hot mulled wine). We had some carols from Jameson too.

Jameson sits on Santa's lap

Every year, Dez's employer, Chevron Phillips, has a Christmas breakfast for the workers' families. Dez gets to show off Jameson (and me) to her work buddies, but the main point is for parents to get pictures of the kids sitting on Santa's lap. Santa is the husband of Dez's co-worker Rhonda. He shows up on a firetruck with all of the lights going, and most of the kids love it. Some of the younger ones, like Jameson, are not so sure.