- The Screen Actors Guild might go on strike…..if it can ever get its membership on the same page and away from one another’s throats. The SAG announced this week that it will delay its strike authorization vote by two weeks as the organization's leadership tries to address growing dissent within the union. Before now, the plan had been to send out ballots Jan. 2 and count the votes by Jan. 23. Those dates will now be pushed back indefinitely until some point in time after an emergency meeting to be held Jan. 12 and 13, according SAG national executive director Doug Allen. Allen and SAG president Alan Rosenberg agreed to delay the vote to "address the unfortunate division and restore consensus." Good call, guys. Hard to vote on a strike when a large chunk of your membership isn’t down with the idea - not when you need 75 percent of your union’s members who cast ballots to vote in favor of authorization for that strike. According to Allen, at this point
100 high-profile members and 2,524 total members have endorsed the strike authorization vote, but more than 100 high profile actors and 1,373 others have lent their names to the opposition campaign. All told, the SAG has about 110,000 members, so they need 82,500 to approve the strike vote before it can go down. However, having big names like George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Russell Crowe, Sally Field, Robert Redford, Julianne Moore and Susan Sarandon urging other members to vote no isn’t helping the cause, it’s hurting it. But if you listen to what these dissenting voices are saying - that a strike in the midst of a recession would be ill-timed - it’s hard to disagree. How bad is it going to look when actors, some of whom make a multi-million dollar living and with others making incomes markedly more than the rest of struggling, recession-strapped America, go on strike for a few extra bucks? Yes, there are actors struggling as well and not all of them make a million dollars a year, but you can bet that the bulk of Americans aren’t going to take the time to sort that out if and when they hear about a strike by the SAG. As such, I’d advise those actors supporting strike authorization - people like Martin Sheen, Mel Gibson, Hal Holbrook, Holly Hunter, Rob Schneider, Alicia Witt, and former SAG president Ed Asner - to reconsider their stance and listen to Clooney and his posse. Oh, and I don’t think the TV-watching public is going to be down with another strike taking out their favorite shows like Lost, 24, Heroes, etc. after the writer’s strike did that last year. So while the SAG continues to insist that the latest offer from the American Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) is insufficient in terms of new-media jurisdiction and residuals, a strike is not a good answer. Quite a few actors must agree, beyond the 1,373 known to be in Clooney’s corner at present, otherwise SAG's New York division would not have announced Dec. 12 that they opposed the strike authorization vote and called for an emergency board meeting to replace the negotiating committee. Those members went on to accuse Rosenberg and Allen of botching negotiations at an emergency meeting several days later. Again, I realize that an overwhelming portion of the SAG’s members don’t earn a lot of money from their acting gigs, but a strike isn’t going to do any good for anyone involved, so just don’t go down that road….
- The lesson to be learned here: don’t cut anyone’s hair while they aren’t awake, lest you incite a domestic throwdown. This tale comes to us, disturbingly enough, from a place I once called home: Springfield Township, Ohio. It’s there we find Jaycee and Angela Houston, a couple for whom a few dozen hours of martial counseling would probably be helpful - very helpful. Seems that Sunday night around 8 p.m., Jacyee Houston was getting a little nap action in when Angela Houston decided that it would be a good time to give her husband’s lettuce a bit of a trim. She broke out the scissors, lopped off some of her husband’s mane and when he woke up shortly thereafter, he noticed that he was missing a chunk of the hair he had gone to sleep with and for some reason he wasn’t down with that. Not that this justifies his reaction, but who in their right mind cuts someone’s hair when they are asleep? This sounds like a case of a wife trying to get back at her husband by putting one over on him while he sleeps, but it backfired. Whether it was a prank or done purposefully to punish or penalize Jaycee Houston, that didn’t appear to matter to him. When he woke up and noticed some of his hair was gone, my man came out swinging. He sparked a nice domestic brawl that prompted neighbors to call police, who showed up and arrested both husband and wife. Now, both are facing a domestic violence charge and are scheduled to appear in court Monday, although I don’t know that this is the type of husband-wife activity that therapists would generally recommend to bring a trouble couple closer. Matching handcuffs and assault charges aren’t what I like to call a bonding experience, but maybe this time will be different…..
- Not sure whether to be revolted, inspired or offended by the (alleged) actions of Beverly Hills surgeon Dr. Craig Alan Bittner. As you might expect from a plastic surgeon in Beverley Hills, Dr. Bitter apparently did a lot of liposuction, as the rich, spoiled, pampered, superficial, arrogant a-holes and skanks living there wouldn’t dare drive the Mercedes or Jag to the beach and get out in their absurdly overpriced swimwear looking anything but fabulous. Fortunately, the good (good being a relative term) doctor isn’t accused of botching surgeries and scarring patients for life with his negligence. No, he’s accused of taking the body fat he sucked from the bodies of his patients and converting their fat into fuel for his two SUVs. According to financial publication Forbes, Bittner turned the fat into biodiesel, which is more commonly made from vegetable oils. “The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel -- and I have more fat than I can use," Bittner wrote on his Web site. However, that site is not currently functional, so me thinks the doc may have thought better of broadcasting his fat-to-fuel practice publicly. Well, the fact that he also closed his practice and moved to South America pushes me in that direction as well. But according to Forbes, this is the message that Bittner’s site was pushing before he shut it down, er, it stopped functioning properly: "Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly but they get to take part in saving the Earth," a message on the site read. That doesn’t appear to be the position espoused by the state of California, as in the state of California it is illegal in to use medical waste to power vehicles - uh oh. That might explain why Bittner is being investigated by the state's public health department after his unorthodox fueling operation was discovered by authorities following up on complaints by patients about Bittner's medical abilities. Enjoy South America, Dr B., I don’t think there’s anything good waiting for you back in L.A. But hey, there should be plenty of fat to fuel your SUVs down in South America, so no worries…..
- Thank you, Mike Tomlin, for doing what we should all do if put in the unenviable position you found yourself in yesterday. Tomlin, head coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers, was holding his weekly news conference and trying to get done what he needed to do when Bill DiFabio, a sports announcer from Washington, Pa., crashed the news conference dressed as Santa. DiFabio traditionally dresses up as Santa for the pre-Christmas press gathering and spends a few months cracking jokes at the expense of the current Steelers’ coach and players. Tomlin’s predecessor Bill Cowher usually played along with the gag, as did Tomlin - for a couple of minutes. He even asked the faux St. Nick, "What have you got for me, Santa?" and invited DiFabio to join him at his desk in front of the room. However, Tomlin ran out of patience after DiFabio hijacked the news conference for more than five minutes, passing out gifts and cracking jokes about fellow sportscasters, the Browns and Cowboys and nose tackle Casey Hampton's weight. It was at that point that Tomlin -- who audibly sighed several times throughout the skit -- grudgingly agreed to toss a football to the fake Santa. "If that will get you out of here," he barked. Weirdly enough, later in the day the Steelers said there would be no future appearances from Santa at any of their news conferences. Good, because that’s a tradition that is not now, has never been and will never be funny. Grown men throwing on Santa suits for anything other than to give out gifts to sick or underprivileged kids in hospitals and downtrodden neighborhoods is a bad, bad idea. DiFabio/Santa should be thankful that a few coarse words is all he got from Tomlin. If I had been the coach, I would have had Casey Hampton come in and use his “excessive girth” to sit right on DiFabio’s chest until he agreed to never dress as Santa ever again. Let this be a lesson to everyone out there: throw away the Santa costume, don’t sit on Santa’s lap - basically, don’t have anything to do with anyone dressed as Santa after you pass the age of eight…..
- Thank God, it has been too long since we had a good beauty-queen-gone-bad story. Enter Laura Zuniga, Mexican beauty queen who was taken into custody late Monday along with seven men were after being found in vehicles containing weapons and cash in central Mexico. Zuniga is from Culiacan in the state of Sinaloa and in July, she won the title Nuestra Belleza Sinaloa. That earned her the chance to compete two months later in the national Nuestra Belleza Mexico in Monterrey, where she won "The Election of the Queens," one of five special recognitions, and came in third overall. Capping off a big year on the pageant circuit, in October, she won the title "Hispanoamerican Queen 2008" in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Hearing all of that, it would sound like she has a real future and is going places, right? After all, she is set to represent Mexico in next year's Miss International contest. She’s not like American beauty pageant skanks (i.e. Tara Conner) getting busted for being alcoholics, having scandalous pictures of them making out with other chicks and smoking week popping up on websites….or is she? Well, Zuniga may not involved in those sorts of shenanigans, but what she does do is roll with seven dudes and two vehicles containing AR-15 assault rifles, handguns, cartridges and $50,000 in cash. The eight of them were stopped in Zapopan, outside Guadalajara, and now they will face arms charges and an investigation by a federal organized crime team. They were done in by the infamous anonymous tipster, who informed police that at a group of armed men were in a home, after which police "detected" the vehicles as they were traveling to investigate the call. Showing that she has great taste in men, Zuniga was busted alongside Angel Orlando Garcia Urquiza, who is Zuniga's boyfriend and the brother of "one of the greatest capos of narcotraffic.” Nothing like dating a dude whose brother is a high-ranking member of the Juarez cartel, that won't drag you down at all. It was funny to see the eight members of this group file before the news media Tuesday and have Zuniga, a beauty queen who normally loves posing and being snapped by the cameras, raise her handcuffed wrists to cover her face. Oh, so now you’re shy? Maybe should have thought of that before you got into an SUV with your drug-and-weapons dealer boyfriend and tried to transport an arsenal of guns and stash of cash. That being said, thanks for bringing back some much-needed disrepute to the world of beauty pageants…..
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