The Conversation

He hadn't been out with that group in a number of months.  She was on the opposite side of the long table, at the other end.  Everyone was talking and it was loud, so when he made eye contact with her, he nodded, half-smiled (nearly a smirk), and lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave.  She did much the same.  It wasn't til the end of the evening, when everyone had gotten up and was saying their goodbyes that she came over to him.  Nobody else paid any attention to them.

She (S): Where've you been? 

He (H): You know how life gets, just been busy.

S: Really? I was starting to think you've been avoiding me.

H: Um...I mean, not to make things awkward, but kinda.

Crazy Woman

I am taking my chunky butt to the gym (first time in my life I've joined one) because I got FAT this fall. 

 

Picture the moment: 

 

I'm groggy. I'm walking from my warm car, through a bitter, biting wind in 39 degree darkness with a hint of damp, to what I consider to be a glorified self-torture chamber.  My bed-head hair is all over the place because it's 5:30am and whothehellcaresorisgonnanotice. 

 

And as I get near the door, a blonde woman bursts outside and accosts me.  I don't know what's happening. I nearly reach for my wallet, thinking I'm being mugged.  The mental fog clears and I realize it's my cousin's wife, Laura.  She's perky and PUMPED about being at the gym.  We walk in together as I mumble responses to her enthusiasm.  She teases me for working out in dress shoes. Then she runs off back to the treadmill.  Dammit. I left my gym shoes in the car.  I trudge back out.

 

Thirty minutes later, I'm huffing and puffing, attempting a meager, nay pathetic, amount of sit-ups.  I open my eyes and Laura's standing over me. PUMPED.  "COME TO SPIN CLASS!!!!! C'MON!" No way, I explain.  "C'MON!!!" Uh-uh.  "YOU'RE COMING TO ONE NEXT TIME. YOU CAN BE IN THE BACK AND DO YOUR OWN THING!" The best I can give her is a blank stare. No one, let alone a mother of infants, should be this excited before 6am.   She runs off to spin class. I resolve to be a gym ninja, unseen and in the shadows, from that point forward.  

 

You will not motivate me, woman! You hear me! You will NOT!

The Great Split: Women's and Men's Holidays

On Christmas and Thanksgiving, for each one, there are two holidays happening at the same time, because men and women do very different things.  In women's minds,  family and specifically the kids are the focus. Women holidays are about expressing love and kindness and pleasure in your family's company. There's awful, sentimental music and sappy-ass movies. And everyone's supposed to be polite and comment on how much they enjoy each side dish.
 
And then next to that, we have to shoehorn in the men holidays, where where we get to set things on fire, feast on a dead animal in no conversation other than grunting and roars, and there's excessive drinking and wanting to murder people at the table. 

But we're starting to split them up.  

I used to think that moving Black Friday to Thanksgiving was awful.  But now I think it's brilliant.  It separates the man and woman holidays. Everyone wins.   We gets to get away from the extended family and it's a tailgate, basically.  If we're at the walmart parking lot in the middle of the night with a grill, a flat-screen and satellite dish, and a case of beer, how is that not a) a tailgate, and b) awesome? 

I mean, there are trade-offs because the man has to shop, but really, it's perfect. The women and kids get to stay home and be lame together and the men get to be misanthropic.  If you teach men that shopping is a full-contact-sport, they will totally do it.  That's why people die at these things now.  "Outta my way, @#$!!!! that vacuum cleaner is MINE!"  I mean, get in, get out, win, and then celebrate our victory at the tailgate. "Hell, no, I'm not coming home. The games are on and I got everything I need here.  Well, not everything. I need to buy a portajohn.  Thank god I'm at the walmart already."

We just have to figure out a reason to be at walmart on christmas to make this complete, but I'm sure they're figuring that out as we speak.

Inequality Exists. Pick a Good Example, Not an Eye-Catching Bad One

Soooo..... there's been the Sony hacking story. And while the prominent angle is about the ramifications of "The Interview" and there's been some talk about racist joking between industry insiders, another aspect of the story is about how gender pay gaps are alive and well and thriving in Hollywood.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/17/stop-denying-the-gender-pay-gap-exists-even-jennifer-lawrence-was-shortchanged/

As the friend of mine who posted that link on Facebook wrote above it:  "Srsly y'all. If JLaw with staff still doesn't get equal pay, what shot do the rest of us have?"

With all due respect...for %$#!'s sake!

I think there are absolutely cases where women get shorted for same work.  But so too do I think that the pay scales of American Hustle are flat-out wrong examples of unfairness in pay towards women.

Oh, I mean, if you just looked at the bottom line, sure.  But you'd be a mouth-breather who gets their news from buzzfeed....or in this case THE WASHINGTON POST(!!!) (Where the hell is the editor?)  Because Sweet Christ.  But, hey, I'll give you the mouth-breather version, and then I'll give you the real world version that is more complicated (as well it should be).

The mouth-breather version: "Men and women were in the same film, but the women got less than the men! And, OMG, like, Jennifer Lawrence, who is like, totally, the biggest star in the world right now, got the least!  Gross old Christian Bale got a deal of 9% of the back end profits on the movie. So did weird-eye Bradley Cooper.  And so did ugh(!) Jeremy Renner!  But then Amy Adams, who's been nominated for like, a billion oscars, only got 7% and JLaw (JLAW!!!) only got 5%!  I mean, JLaw's later got raised to 7%, but Men are assholes, executives are chauvinist bastards, and women get screwed over yet again, like they have for all of history!!!!"

Screen Time
Per Fandor.com,

Lead Actor Christian Bale was onscreen for 60 minutes (46% of total screening time).
(http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/oscar-2014-video-evidence-lead-actor)

Lead Actress Amy Adams was onscreen for 46 minutes (35% of total screening time). (http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/oscar-2014-video-evidence-lead-actress)

Supporting Actor Bradley Cooper was onscreen for 41 minutes (32% of total screening time). (http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/oscar-2014-video-evidence-supporting-actor)

Supporting Actress Jennifer Lawrence was onscreen for 20 minutes (15% of total screening time). (http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/oscars-2014-video-evidence-best-supporting-actress)

Supporting Jeremy Renner was on for an unknown amount of time but less than Cooper or Adams and (probably) more than Jennifer Lawrence. He didn't get nominated and I haven't found where someone was bored enough to time his screen time. For this it doesn't really matter.  Let's guess and say 30 minutes.

Per boxofficemojo.com, the budget was $40 million dollars (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=davido2013.htm)

There's no way the five actors took up the whole budget so you can't simply say they all should have been paid 8 million each.  I'd actually bet that they didn't make up half of the budget (because, holy crap, movies are expensive, and it's not like prima-donna director David O. Russell was going to make it for free), but for the sake of this we will say that they did.  20 million dollars for all five actors and actresses.  Well, there are leads and supportings, so off the bat, there's no paying them the same because THAT'S NOT FAIR. IT'S UNFAIR TO PAY PEOPLE THE SAME PAY FOR DIFFERING AMOUNTS OF WORK.  So far as I know, there's no knowledge of what their front-end, up-front salaries were.

But we can talk about those back-end numbers.  The movie made $150.1 million domestic and another $101 million international for a total of $251 million dollars.  However, it's not so simple as subtracting the $40 million budget from $251 million because we don't know what the post-production and marketing costs were.  Regardless, for ease and to make my point, let's just say that (improbably) the profits for the film were a cool $100 million.  Easy peasy.

Bale gets 9 million, Cooper gets 9 million, and Renner gets 9 million.  Adams gets 7 million and Lawrence was only supposed to get 5 million, but they bumped it up to 7 million [that's important to note, because usually when contracts are signed, they stay as negotiated. But in this case she ends up with a (40%!!!!!!) raise because they recognized her star-power even though they didn't have to do so! The chauvinist bastards!].

Per minute then (rounded to nearest thousand),

Bale: $150k
Cooper: $220k
Renner: $300k (again, that's going off a pure guess of his being in the movie 30 minutes)
Adams: $152k
Lawrence: $350k

So, the guy on screen most (per-minute-wise) got the LEAST back-end money and the woman on screen least got (per-minute-wise) MOST.  The other actress also got more money per-minute-wise than the guy on screen most.  PAY INEQUALITY EXISTS, PEOPLE!!! Seriously, this is the sorta thing that makes me wanna punch people in the face.

But let's continue, shall we.

Prior History
Per boxofficemojo.com,

Christian Bale's lifetime gross at the box office prior to Hustle was $2.1 billion over the course of 33 movies ($64 million average gross).  However, he was also, coincidentally, the lead in a little movie series called, um, you know, BATMAN, which very recently had made, approximately a kajillion dollars.  He also was recently in a big-budget Terminator movie and he won an Academy Award recently for The Fighter.  His worldwide grosses are 4.1 billion, btw.

Bradley Cooper's lifetime gross prior to Hustle was also $1.8 billion over the course of 19 movies ($93 million average gross).  However, his main successes, the Hangover series, were ensemble movies so his biggest lead movie was Silver Linings Playbook which made $132 million.  He had been nominated for an Academy Award for that movie.  His worldwide grosses are 3.4 billion.

Jeremy Renner's lifetime gross prior to Hustle was $1.4 billion over the course of 18 movies ($87.5 million average gross).  However, he was the lead in the Bourne series franchise reboot and was being groomed to take over the Mission Impossible series from Tom Cruise.  Additionally, he's an Avenger.  He has some critical acclaim, but his big draw is that he's in massive money making franchises.  So far, his grosses worldwide are $3.5 billion.

Amy Adams' lifetime gross prior to Hustle was $1.6 billion over 23 movies ($74 million average gross).  Her largest solo lead to that point was Enchanted at $128 million.  Enchanted was a 2007 movie.  Since then, she's played the lead actress in much smaller movies or been in ensemble casts.  She has gotten numerous Academy Award nominations, but not big money franchises. Her worldwide grosses are $3.1 billion.

Jennifer Lawrence's lifetime gross prior to Hustle was $1.3 billion over the course of 11 movies ($120 million average gross), but it's not quite fair to look at it that way because $424 million of that came from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire which had only come out three weeks prior.  It certainly looked to be a behemoth since the first one did over $400 million, but the takeaway point was that she certainly had the smallest track record (though very impressive since she had a franchise and an Academy Award from the previous year).  Her worldwide grosses were $2.2 billion.

Negotiation
Principle photography started on March 8, 2013, so contracts were most likely negotiated before then.  As these are contracts for employment and not standard salaries, you can't simply say "every one gets the same."  For people who follow sports, this is more than easy to understand.  Each performer's contract has to be understood in the context in which it was negotiated.  The best young player in baseball, universally, is Mike Trout.  He just won a MVP award. He just signed a long extension for $144 million.  However, a (slightly) older player, Giancarlo Stanton, just signed a contract for over $300 million.  He has never won a MVP award. One had significant leverage in negotiations, the other less so.  Barry Zito got a $120 million dollar contract and Jay Cutler is the highest paid offensive player in the NFL right now.  The non-sports fan has no idea who those two are. The market has fluctuations and people get paid what their circumstances dictate.  To not understand that is to be a bit of a fool. 

Also, I mean, this is not like getting a job at Burger King where they tell you what they're going to pay you and you just take it.  These performers have agents.  The agents have other clients.  Agents do not simply let their clients get shafted on pay because, you know, vaginas.  That hurts their bottom lines since they get percentages of their clients' deals.  Since the agents who represent the stars tend to represent multiple stars, they have a good idea of the right amounts and percentages to fight for. That's the whole reason those agencies get high-profile clients.

In light of that, it's easier to see how Bale got 9% ("He's Batman!") and Renner got 9% ("He's trying to be in everything!").  Cooper presents a bit of a question mark for his 9%, but perhaps there was some sort of reward happening for his prior work in Silver Linings Playbook or the role was written for him and if he backed out, others couldn't play it as well.  He might have taken pennies up front.  Dunno. Admittedly, he's the weak link on contract reasoning.

Adams is a great actress but not one that puts butts in seats.  This is a business.  She's never been in anything as large as Batman, The Hangover, The Avengers, or Mission Impossible.   She did end up being in Man of Steel, but that movie came out after she would have negotiated her contract, and while she's a lead, you don't think of her when you think of that movie.
  If anything, JLaw did very well for herself.  She hit the perfect storm of landing a mega-franchise and then the sequel blowing the doors off 2013 right as Silver Linings Playbook was coming out.  I bet the reason they upped her deal to 7% when they didn't have to was to get her to do promotion and marketing for the film because they realized she puts butts in the seats.  It is a business after all. 

And it worked!

American Hustle ended up being David O. Russell's largest grossing movie.

Conclusion
While I'm sure that the gender gap exists in regards to men and women's pay, please pick a better example, because this one is flat-out wrong.  Shame on the Washington Post for legitimizing mouth-breathing by publishing such inane drivel.  Spend some time investigating and presenting an actual gender pay-gap disparity, which surely exists.  All that happens when you put forth pablum like this is that you get disregarded as a legitimate news source and appropriately ignored.

My Issue With Immigration Reform Isn't With Immigrants...

...it's with us.

And to be perfectly clear up front, I mean Latin American immigrants.  Which is its own can of worms because it's really jacked up they're the only immigrants that come to mind for most people, but I'll briefly touch on that in a bit.

Anyway, regarding Latin American immigrants, I'm not angry at them or consider them lawbreakers who need to go back to their own damn country.  I've met a good number of them and seen a good deal more all across the country.  Mostly they're poor people trying to work hard to have something in life.  I'd be a major ass-hat to be pissed about that or angry with them.

No, the issue really, for me, is...why is it okay for us to have a servant class of foreign brown people? 

Because that's really what we're saying when we say "they do the jobs Americans don't want to do or simply won't do." 

They work construction or migrant farming jobs for the most part, right?  They're manual labor at a minimum.  And so what we're saying is, well, we know we need this stuff done and they'll do it.

But why won't Americans do these jobs?  Because they don't pay well at all and require backbreaking labor.

Sharecropping wasn't a whole lot different.

But we need those services!

Then shouldn't we pay for them? 

And, if we do, then doesn't that negate the need for the Latin American immigrants?

Or, if we grant amnesty or give them a path to being citizens or getting legal immigrant status, aren't we then required to make sure they get paid a minimum wage (and paid overtime) and have labor laws apply then? 

But that'll make our stuff cost more. And we can't have that.

I mean, there's a story that the workers in China who were putting together iPhones were committing suicide by jumping off the top of the factory.  They were committing suicide to protest unfair work conditions.  How was this handled? Did the Chinese government force the Chinese manufacturer or Apple to improve the conditions?  Nope. Of course not.  The manufacturer installed nets to catch people so they couldn't commit suicide (that way).

I don't know if that story's true.  And it doesn't need to be.  It goes back to the same thing.  We can't have our stuff costing more.  That iPhone or iPad better not double in price.

But to get back to the Latin American immigrants.  I hate that they're having to uproot and come to a foreign country to do crappy labor for crap pay.  But I don't see how getting them legalized solves a problem, because then the people who hired them when they were cheap(er) and illegal don't have the incentive to hire them anymore.  My immigration reform would involve hammering the people that hire illegal immigrants and enforcing labor laws (minimum wage and overtime, etc). 

And guess what?  If the enticement of minimum wage and overtime didn't get Americans to do those jobs, those jobs would have to offer more than minimum wage and minimum benefits until Americans would do them.

But that would cost more money. And we can't have that.

Now, there's a whole other aspect of why we're getting Latin American immigrants, that being that their countries are wildly dangerous and corrupt, and so they're coming to America for safety.  I'm not going to address that because this would spiral out of control, but, I do need to bring up a side issue regardless...

How on earth is it fair to all other prospective immigrants, you know, the rest of the world who doesn't have the ability to run across the border, who are oceans away, that they're blocked and we allow others to get in willy-nilly (well, not quite, but you get what I mean)?  Nope, sorry Zimbabwean(?), Kazakh, Estonian, etc.  You have to go through the official channels and the official channels are bureaucratic nightmares that last forever.  We require/filter for other immigrants because of course we do. 

So it's fair we do that for the rest of the world's immigrants but not Latin American immigrants? 

Anyway, my issue isn't with the immigrants, be they Latin American or from the rest of the world.  It's with us.  We need to pony up for the goods and services that the poorest of them are doing for us.  We need to open up more for the best and brilliant of the rest so they can come here and contribute.

But that would cost more money.  And we can't have that.

An Ode to Rosamund Pike (or, Why I Love When Bitches Be Crazy)

My Love! I'm not delusional,
Despite what some may say.
I know you are an actress, not
The characters you play.

Be it a back-stabbing Bond Girl
Or fright'ning Amy Dunne,
There's a pattern to your choices
That makes you so much fun.

But though I know you're not them,
It's too plain not to see
That deep within there's a mayhem
That helps them come to be.

I'm scared of you, nay, petrified;
Fear strikes me to the core.
But that terror also excites,
I know you are no bore.

Nice, normal girls are fine, I guess.
Except, they have no fire.
For, really, in both heart and dreams,
It's whackos I desire.

Sure, looks and brains, there have to be;
They're not so hard to find.
But where's the joy or novelty,
if they don't screw your mind?

Time and again, I have been burned,
And so I ran away,
But now it's time to face the facts,
I simply love cray-cray.

It's not that I enjoy the pain,
Or having to compete.
Not knowing what they're going to do,
For me, that can't be beat.

So now that brings me back to you,
and to light refracting.
I know that glimmer in your eye;
I know you're not acting.

Whether it's wielding a sword
Or faking your own death
When you have crazy in your eyes,
It takes away my breath.

Burn down my boat or wreck my car.
Shave my head as I sleep.
All I know is I'm in your thrall.
I cannot go too deep.

Your children and your current man,
Are problems to be sure.
You know you must leave them for me.
They're for you to abjure.

So come, My Love, it's time we dance;
We'll make our own madhouse,
Where you can be the stalking cat
And I your willing mouse.

I Choose to Believe

that what is
is what must
so I bear
because
I can