ONE FROM COLUMN DOG, ONE FROM COLUMN ROOSTER

Last Saturday marked the first day of Chinese New Year. That's always a big deal here in New York, as it's marked by the usual traditions of parades, fireworks, and the rounding up of dissidents. 

You're probably at least vaguely familiar with the tradition of animals representing certain years in the Chinese calendar. These animals are supposed to symbolize your personality. I was born in the year of the monkey, which, if you know me, is frighteningly on target.

This can't be Trump, because he pays
Russian hookers to do this to each other.

Donald Trump was born in 1946, making him a Fire Dog. This is not to be confused with Sparky the Fire Dog, the official mascot of fire departments and pyromaniacs everywhere. As one site devoted to Chinese astrology explains:

Along with possessing drive and energy, the Fire Dog also has vast reserves of courage. He/she is the last to back away from a situation just because it is strange or the odds are stacked against him/her. As it is the Dog is a sign that is inherently fearless in nature but whereas in other signs there may be degree of circumspection, the Fire Dog is only too eager to take up a challenge, no matter how impossible it may seem.

Putting aside his previous toe-in-the-water announcements to maybe, possibly run for president in 2008 and 2012, Trump certainly can't be accused of backing away from a situation, even when he should, which is almost always. And the only personal trait he has less of than circumspection is the ability to know a bad hair style when he sees it.

The site goes on to say that the Fire Dog is "impulsive in nature", making him "prone to taking risks." You don't say! "Such is their capacity for hard work that they can often make good whatever losses they might suffer." Otherwise known as bankruptcy. "Since the Dog is so idealistic him/herself, he/she expects others to follow the same code of ethics." Just imagine -- an entire administration with the ethics of Donald Trump. 

Remember when they had a
similar headline about Calvin
Coolidge?

And how does the Fire Dog analysis wind up? "In personal relationships the Fire Dog turns out to be very attractive to members of the opposite sex."  Especially when there's stacks of Benjamins in the dog house. "The Fire element lends him/her a high degree of personal magnetism and sex appeal which is why they can make very passionate lovers." As the New York Post could tell you. 

It probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that Bill Clinton was also born in 1946. And you thought he was just a Horn Dog!

Now let's go to the other side of the barnyard. 2017 is the Year of the Rooster. If you want to know what that means, my wife's copy of The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes will set you straight. In the book's very first sentence we learn that "the Rooster tends to be overconfident and is prone to come up with nonsensical plans." Hey, that didn't take long to learn!  

It goes on to say, "The rooster likes to flaunt his authority and a lot of trouble can come from his domineering attitude. [...] Everything will be precariously balanced in the Rooster's year, as his dramatic personality can set off all kinds of petty disputes." That's just what I want in a president in these perilous times.

Pathe News would've felt right at home
in 2017.

Need more proof that this astrological stuff isn't just a bunch of hooey? "Politics will adhere to hard-line policies. The diplomatic scene will be dominated by philosophical orators who rave a lot about nothing." Just turn on the news any time of day or night. 

Don't give up hope quite yet, though. "Governments will be found flexing their muscles at each other, but just for show. There will be no real confrontations. It is just that everyone will be too occupied with himself to hear or care what the other person is saying."  Ahh! Just like the good ol' days of the Cold War! 

There's actually good news ahead. "This will be a buoyant year in spite of the Rooster's knack for making simple things complicated." Actually, Trump was elected for doing the opposite, but never mind. "One thing is for sure: he seldom comes up empty-handed. This is the year of one very self-sufficient bird that will never go hungry." How's your IRA looking since Election Day? Not bad, eh?

The Handbook's prediction of the year winds up thusly: "We should all get by without too much hardship. Our pockets will not be empty although our nerves may be a bit frayed." It's better than the opposite. "Just keep your eyes open and your mouth shut and check facts and figures before making unprecedented moves." Tell that to Steve Bannon.

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THE HUB OF HUBRIS

The only time Sinatra deigned to light a
cigarette for someone who didn't
break legs for a living.

Ever since Frank Sinatra helped throw the 1960 Presidential election toward JFK's boudoir, show folk have believed that they have the duty not only to tell people who to vote for, but that everyone cares enough about them that they'll stop whatever they're doing to listen.

(Now, this sarcasm doesn't include my friends in L.A., Leo, Betsy, and Jim. There's always a chair waiting for them at the Casa Fish-Eye dining room table anytime they tire of 75-degree sunny skies for 32-degree, 70% chance of snow.)

President Trump's decision to temporarily stop immigration from Muslim countries was ripe as a Georgia peach for a topic at last night Screen Actor's Guild Awards. 

You know the SAG Awards, right? They have the only award -- the Actor -- named after themselves. Because being an actor is the greatest thing possible. And who better to start the revolution in his opening remarks than the noted prince of perspicacity, that baron of brilliance, Ashton Kutcher?

“Good evening, fellow SAG-AFTRA members and everyone at home – and everyone in airports that belong in my America!", he bellowed in his best I'm-really-more-mature-than-I-look voice. "You are a part of the fabric of who we are and we love you and we welcome you!” 

The Ghandi of
Beverly Hills.

By the way, Ashton, maybe it's because you fly in private jets and, thus, never have to actually stand in NSA security lines or wait for all passengers to board before taking off to whatever gated tropical home you're vacationing in, but airport TVs are tuned to CNN, not TBS. The only exception to the CNN rule I've ever encountered was during a layover at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, which was devoted elusively to Fox News. (The West Coast isn't the only place that plays into stereotypes.)

Or does he think that refugees from war and theocratic nations, having been suddenly rejected from the promised land, are saying to each other, Hey, let's watch the SAG awards on our $800 iPhones before we go back to our certain beheadings! 

As for the "fabric of who we are" -- well, that fabric doesn't exactly fit the people who run Hollywood's TV and movie studios in the 21st century, which is still proudly white, male, and American-born. Refugees are welcomed to Beverly Hills, alright -- to trim lawns, wash dishes, and wipe baby's asses.

Show biz's yearning for exclusiveness, in fact, was rather muted when anyone who was anti-abortion was barred from joining the recent Million Women March in Washington. Those women were forced into a segregated march of their own.

It was kind of like when black women at NASA weren't allowed to dine with their white colleagues in the cafeteria -- just as was portrayed in Hidden Figures, which won the SAG award for Best Ensemble in a Motion Picture.  

I'm not one of the "shut up and sing" people who are unable to separate politics from the person. As far as I'm concerned, show folk can keep yakking until the grass-fed cows come home. But if they embraced irony in their work as much as they did in real life, every movie would be The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Just not as good.

                                             *********************

Personal notes to my Hollywood friends: 

Betsy: Keep fighting the good fight regarding the SAG-AFTRA voiceover strike. Don't cave like the writers did in 2008.

Leo: You were robbed at the ACE Awards. (I don't know if you were nominated, but you should have been.)

Jim: I'm still available for freelance work!

TODAY'S MULTITASK

Every time I turn around, there's a new "study" from a university that I've never heard of, that "proves" either something you've always known or really isn't true to begin with, but sounds good because it plays into the Ah, I thought so! section of your brain. 

The effects of thinking too hard.

The latest comes from the Spinal Cord Injury Center at University Hospital Balgrist in Zurich. The scientists, presumably between servings of Toberlone and Gruyere, decided that women are better than men at multitasking.  Because scientists at a spinal cord injury center have nothing better to do all day.

The results came from a test where men were asked to carry out complex thinking while using a treadmill. The proof of their inability to do this? Many of the men stopped swinging their arms while walking. OK, Nils, make room for that Nobel Prize!

As "proof" goes, this doesn't quite rank with the polio vaccine or the correlation between smoking and heart disease. It doesn't even equal that whole "Iraq has WMDs" debacle. Because men are better at multitasking by the simple fact that they can about sex while doing anything. 

Changing a tire. Delivering the quarterly report. Painting a house. Attending a funeral. Examine the brain patterns of any man involved in these activities, and you can be sure that all of them have made plenty of room for sex. And still their jobs get done! 

Not to be taken literally.

Now, if you want to see a guy who can really multitask, I suggest you take a look at my friend and former writing partner Kevin Thomsen. Not only is this guy an award-winning producer and director of audio books, he's set up  something called the Red Trunk Project.

Quite rightly realizing that adults have made a pig's lunch of the world, Kevin decided that it was up to children to straighten things out. To quote from his site:

The Red Trunk Project cultural initiative will prepare our children better understand and empathize with their fellow citizens from around the globe. [...] The Red Trunk Project team travels around the globe,identifies and connects with local schools, and interviews the children about their unique cultural experience.  The team records their stories with video and photographs, and collects examples of tangible, cultural artifacts.This material is brought back, cataloged, edited, and compiled, and goes into a Red Trunk. That trunk is then duplicated a hundred times, translated into different languages, and shipped all over the world so kids can explore the trunk's contents and learn about a new culture.

So, dig: Unlike celebrities who use their names and spare time to promote  booze, fashion, or their nebulous "brand," Kevin is actually trying to help the world in a cool, novel way, while still working at his (admittedly Grammy-winning) day job. That's multitasking to the nth degree. 

Go to the Red Trunk Project site and discover more about what  Kevin's doing. And if you think this is all just a free plug for a friend... Well, if you read his bio, you'll see that he's described as having "been fortunate to work with some of the greatest writers" of his time. And I think we all know who he's talking about, right? 

See, I can even backscratch while thinking about sex. 

                                                       ********************

BREAKING NEWS: 1/25/2017

Gwyneth Paltrow told InStyle magazine that ex-husband Chris Martin would "take a bullet for me."

When asked to comment, Martin explained that, like many people, he would be glad to take a bullet and put it in Paltrow's head.

A military airplane and two huge helicopters doing loops over Midtown recently were conducting an “emergency relocation” planning mission in case they needed to extract President-elect Donald Trump during an emergency or attack.

Upon learning the explanation, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that if it were to really happen, they were to be immediately shot down.

After a public backlash for admitting he delayed taking his 10 year-old son with a broken arm to an ER because of "a cost difference," Michigan Rep. Bill Huizenga apologized for using "a poor choice of words."

"What I meant to say was, I'm a goddamn idiot who shouldn't be allowed within five miles of a government job, or, for that matter, human beings in general."

Democratic insiders say there is a 50/50 chance that Hillary Clinton will run for Mayor of New York this year.

In related news, local dating sites noticed an uptick in new accounts under the nickname "Ex-Prez Bill."

John Lennon's one-time mistress May Pang says that the former Beatle believed in extraterrestrials, having been abducted in a UFO when he was a child.

Asked for proof, John told her, "Have you ever heard Yoko Ono sing?"

                                                       ******************

LOWER END OF THE SPECTRUM

From bad...

Some months back, New York TV stations were suddenly inundated with commercials advising us that our cable service, Time-Warner, would soon become something called Spectrum. We were assured that this wasn't just a name change, but an honest-to-gosh upgrade in home entertainment.

Usually in this kind of change, the only thing that's upgraded is the price. But the friendly Spectrum spokesman assured us that we would see tremendous improvement in our television, internet, and telephone service. Excuse me, I mean voice service, the word "telephone" apparently sounding a little 19th-century for their taste.

I'm not sure what they meant by improvement. Our hi def was still hi; the internet still provided us (well, me) all the information I needed on old B-movies; and the phone -- voice -- still provided an outlet for scammers to call us at all hours of the day. What more was there to do?

... to worse.

Well, for one thing, Spectrum could fix those audio drop-outs that happened under the Time-Warner regime. And maybe they could provide us with a la carte TV choices, rather than forcing us to have entire channels in languages that I've never even heard of, let alone pronounce, just so we can watch TCM (for me) and HGTV (for the missus). And while we're on the subject, I have no interest in ESPN, MTV, or anything else that usually airs in bars or dorm rooms. Give us two dozen channels that we like, and we'll be customers for life. 

We woke up one day to find that Spectrum had finally taken over, much like the way Paris did when the Nazis invaded. The first change I noticed was that the cable app on my tablet was now a little sleeker. It also now had a habit of telling me that it was unable to program a DVR recording after it actually did. Such modesty!

As for the audio -- well, there was no change there. I still keep the remote handy to pause the live digital broadcast for a second or two, then resume it to bring the sound back. 

But here's the real "upgrade". Between 6:45 and 7:00 in the evening, it takes at least 15 seconds the change the channel with the remote. 

Hey, slow down, buddy! Can't you
see it's 7:00?

You can set your watch by it. You're on channel 44. Press 14... and go into the kitchen, pop open a beer, throw out the bottle cap, take a swig, wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. Walk back into the living room, and the channel will change just as you sit down.

Where was it mentioned in those commercials that Spectrum was going to perform an anti-upgrade at that time, night after night? Is it possible that every Spectrum customer in New York is flipping the channel simultaneously, thus gumming up the works? 

Online customer reviews for Spectrum (and Time-Warner) are almost entirely negative. But as I've scrolled through them, I haven't found anyone else complaining about the mystery of the 7:00 channel change. We must be taking one for the team, I guess, just so we can have our fill of film noirs, home-fixit programs, and the morning weather report. 

I'd like to continue talking to you, but there's a call coming over the voice service telling me I owe $3,000 to the IRS. Anybody know how to put that kind of dough on a debit card like they're telling me to do?

                                                  ************************

STRICTLY ON BACKGROUND, PT. 4: "ELEMENTARY"

After several gigs that involved taking 6:30 A.M. vans to such far flung places as White Plains, Queens College, and JFK Airport, it was a relief to book a job that was a subway ride away (137th near City College) at the more reasonable time of 9:45. 

Despite shooting in early December, it was a warm sunny morning -- a good sign for what was going to be an exterior scene. But by the time they were ready for us, the temperature would drop precipitously as a strong wind blew in a thick cloud cover, turning the blue sky to a dark, threatening grey, fit for a Sherlock Homes mystery.


It was appropriate, then, the series I was working on that day was Elementary, which re-imagines Holmes and Dr. Watson working in modern day New York. And if you think the stars bear little resemblance to Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, you win a trunkful of back issues of True Detective magazine and a polyester deerstalker cap.

Before dining at The Edge, make sure it isn't
overrun with extras.

Other than the call time, something else that promised to be different about this shoot was the holding area. Instead of being lodged in a church basement as is often the case, we were ensconced at The Edge, a restaurant with an American/Caribbean/Jamaican cuisine, a gastronomic hat trick that got me hungry before I even checked in. 

Unfortunately, The Edge was merely the host, not the server. Perhaps it's just as well. Once I start eating that kind of grub, you can't get me off my chair until I pass out, which wouldn't do my reputation any good.

The group I was working with waited about three hours before going to the set -- the set being Edgecomb Avenue and 140th Street, where we crossed the street several times while a scene was shot several yards away. As I said before, the weather wasn't what you'd call clement, but at least we were dressed for winter when it was cold. I once had a "winter" shoot where I wore a sweater, scarf, and leather jacket on a sunny, 70-degree afternoon for a couple of hours. If nothing else, working up that kind of sweat is a great way to lose weight.

After 10 or 15 minutes of the back-and-forth, we were then assigned to walk east on 140th as they shot another scene. I was partnered with another guy, and we were told to go about half-way down the block. The p.a. would give us the OK when to start walking toward the featured actors. 

Our job was to look like we were friends, despite us looking completely differently -- he, a well-dressed businessman a decade or so my junior with salt & pepper hair; me in my tan overcoat, brown lamb's wool cap, and backpack. Diversity!

After the first couple of takes, we got the word that we were getting in camera range a little too early. We were then told to start near the end of the block, and, when getting our cue, to walk slowly toward the actors. That's the kind of thing that I really need to concentrate on to accomplish, so it would take some serious acting on my part. 

I think it took just two more takes to get it in the can. While the featured actors were in a two-shot, my co-extra and I were in a wide shot near the end of the scene as the camera crane pulled back. 

When I took a photo of the scene as it aired, I angled on us rather than the entire shot, just so you could tell it's me. You can tell, right?

This is exactly the way I walk against the wind on a December day: head kind of down with hands in pockets. I'm a natural at this extra stuff. Except for walking slowly. Then I need direction.

The Elementary shoot also provided valuable perspective on my job. This being a public area, non-actors were restricted from walking on the street until the shoot was finished. A bunch of teenage school kids, who were quite agreeable in waiting for the all clear, started chatting with us; none appeared starstruck. One of them turned to me.

HIM: You on this show?
ME: Yeah.
HIM: You a TV star?
ME: In my head, yes.
HIM: So you're crazy?
ME: (pause) Yeah, you could say that.


No danger of my ego running unchecked with that kind of interaction.

                                             ****************************

LOOKING GOOD IN GREEN

It also helped that, as a young man, he resembled
John Lennon.

Well, it looks like it's time to stop making fun of Donald Trump's appearance. Not because we have to show respect for the incoming president. The last president who was respected by the nation at large was George Washington -- which was also the last time the name "Washington" received respect as well.

Nor is it because Trump will suddenly become overwhelmed by the gravity of his new job, learn to think before he speaks, and stops dressing like someone who finds the  Men's Wearhouse too sophisticated for his taste.

The diaper would be a
good start.

Yes, the man who last year replaced Erich von Stroheim as "the man you love to hate" is, in 2017, someone you want to spend the night with (unless the alleged Russian dossier is true, in which case you're going to need to stock up on industrial strength versions of detergent and self-respect). And, as usual, science can back it up in one simple headline:

Right-wing people are better looking than those on the left, study claims

Science? you ask incredulously. Science is explaining why we get hot and bothered when we can leave that up to our own eyes?

Oh yeah, this is science, alright, as The Journal of Public Economics proves beyond a doubt:

We denote the average distance between the ideal points of uninformed voters voting for party R and party L's ideological position by d−−RL and the average distance between the ideal points of uninformed voters voting for party R and party R's ideological position by d R/R.

The average distances are given by

equation(13)

d−−RR=∫1i=i∼f(i)|iR−i|1−F(i∼)di=∫iRi=i∼f(i)(iR−i)di1−F(i∼)+∫1i=iRf(i)(i−iR)diF(i∼)

equation(14)

d−−RL=∫1i=i∼f(i)(i−iL)1−F(i∼)di                       Now don't you wish you paid attention during 10th grade algebra? 
If you find the above pig's dinner of a formula eye-watering (to use a favorite colloquialism of the Daily Mail), it can be boiled downto this: Attractive people make more money. As they make more money,they tend to become more conservative. 
This formula doesn't explain Ted Cruz, who resmebles Pat Buttram's idiot brother, and George Clooney, who looks the way your significantother wishes you did. 
Yet movie stars tend to be photogenic (which is why Nathan Lane is a Broadway star) but have the reputation for being politically liberal.Mel Gibson, being anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic, would seem to be the exception. And you'd think those traits would rightfully make him a pariah in the industry. But he isn't.

You see, his most recent release, Hacksaw Ridge, has made $138-million worldwide  on a $40-million budget. His personal wealth is estimated at $425-million.

Get the picture? With that kind of dough, the movie industry finds the odious Gibson attractive as all get-out (which is what he tells Jews and gays who wander onto his movie set). 

Contrast that with Michael Richards, who's hardly worked since his infamous performance art-wannabe racist rant at an L.A. comedy club almost 11 years ago. He's worth only $45-million. Hollywood will never forgive a pittance like that.

Yeah, better to be Mel Gibson. But remember, Hollywood loved him even more when he was worth $850-million. That was before he had to give half of it to his ex-wife in a divorce settlement. Boy, is she attractive.

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