Short Thoughts From Strike!: Day Two

Today, we walked. And walked. And walked. A friend wore a pedometer, and figured out that we logged about 12 miles in the five hours we were out there. Not a terrific pace, but it was steady.
Also, there was much more chanting. After starting at Warners Gate 4, we headed down to a location where they were trying to film a scene for Desperate Housewives. About 40-50 of us, walking back and forth and chanting slogans and marching songs at the tops of our collective lungs in order to disrupt as much as possible. Our song leader was a writer named Guy who'd been in the Marine Corps, so he really knew how to set a cadence.
Favorite Housewives-related chant: "We write the story-a for Eva Longoria!"

Favorite non-Housewives-related chat: "Exterior. Street. WGA just can't be beat." At some point, people started yelling out DAY after "street", presumably for production purposes.
Wanda Sykes came and walked with us for those first five hours today, as did Julia Louis Dreyfuss once again. Lee Pace from Pushing Daises was there with Bryan Fuller, as well as a number of other SAG actors who I vaguely recognized from various shows and films.
Eva Longoria, bless her four-foot two-inch heart, bought us pizza. Veggie, sausage, meatball, and cheese, if you must know.

Later, a nice girl from the neighborhood brought us homemade brownies. We had no way of knowing if they were spiked or not, but we didn't care.

Joe Pesci drove by into the Toluca Lake country club and gave us much horn-honking. He was chewing on an unlit stogie, window down, thumbs up.

The mood is still upbeat, and more energized than before. Every showrunner in town has agreed to stay away from A-H duties, which is a big coup, and has essentially shut down all sitcoms as of today.

A rumor was going around that there were fistfights at Sunset/Gower, home of yesterday's leg-running-over-incident. No one knows if it's true. If it is, that Sunset/Gower's a Deadwood-kinda place. Lawless. Mean. Exciting. I may have to check it out.
Another rumor was going around that someone self-immolated over at Universal, but it also turned out not to be true. This was not surprising to me, because I started the rumor.
Best T-shirt I saw today: An Oscar-nominated feature writer wearing a T bearing an LA times article from the weekend: Viacom Profits Up 80%. Of course, he didn't pay for usage of the article on the T-shirt, but he's got an excuse: there's no good business model.
I can't walk the line tomorrow because of a previous personal commitment, but I'll be back out there again on Thursday.

Anyone who wants the real skinny on the strike should go to either:

www.unitedhollywood.com which is the WGA sanctioned blog

or
www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com which is run by Nikki Finke, a journalist who's doing the only in-depth reporting on the strike. She's a bit over-the-top and regularly reports earlier than she probably should, but like Drudge was back during the Lewinski/Clinton thing, she's breaking news way before any conventional sources get a hold of it. Everyone on the line is refreshing and refreshing often when it comes to Nikki's site.
Union Power...
emg