Happy Boxing Day to any Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, Canucks, various other Commonwealth subjects and/or citizens (not quite sure how that works) and Anglophiles out there.
Spent the day playing some football with my son (getting him ready for the grown-up opposition in the big "reunion" game scheduled for Prospect Park, Brooklyn, this coming Saturday morning), playing with the Wii (which I admit is a lot of fun) and EATING.
My sister-in-law marinated a slew of ribeye steaks and they were all delicious. I'm the one who started the tradition of marinated steaks in the family, though I inherited it from my mom. We always use flank steak to make Romanian steak -- which to my mind is one of the finest meals on the planet.
I remember one time, my wife called the office and my writing-producing partner answered the phone and she asked for him to put the call through to me and he did but I learned later he did so with great trepidation, because the sound of my wife's voice led him to believe that something tragic had befallen our family -- like a parent dropping dead or a child disappearing or something like that.
I spoke with my wife and I guess I looked really depressed and my partner asked me what had happened... and I told him my wife had looked in the oven and suddenly realized I had left the Romanian steaks -- which I had grilled outside on the BBQ the night before for dinner but then transferred to the oven so they wouldn't get cold before we served them for dinner -- that I had somehow forgotten to take what was left out of the oven and just left them in there all night. At the time we had a stove-top with natural gas pilot lights that never went out and the heat radiating down from them had turned what remained of my perfectly-seasoned and delectably medium-rare slabs of beef into charcoal.
He couldn't believe we were so broken up over the loss of our future left-overs. But we were. Well, I was -- I think for my wife it was more about her sympathy for my loss.
I forgot to mention the other day that another DGA member dad stopped by my house, to pick up his son who is a very good buddy and former classmate of my son. He couldn't help ribbing me about having "fallen into line" with a bunch of "Radicals." He knows me and he knows my (relatively conservative) politics and I think he was just trying to push buttons, which he succeeded at. I told him there was nothing radical about asking for a fair share of profits generated via New Media. He said something about how the "more rational" Directors Guild would end up making a lot more progress on that front than the "crazy writers."
I responded that if the DGA does indeed make progress on that front it will only be because the entire membership of the WGA has been out on strike and picketing in force for close to two months.
Truth is, if the DGA manages to gain a deal good enough for the WGA and SAG to sign onto on all fronts, well... then I will buy him a drink or a lunch, we will all go back to work and I will chalk it up to the one-two punch of WGA/SAG fervent dedication on the one hand and DGA quiet determination on the other.
Now I'm going to really put myself out on a limb, because it takes at least 2 days of marinating to really work... but in the interests of book-ending structure I must proceed: if that happens, I will invite the handful of DGA-member directors, ADs (assistant directors), line producers and PMs (production managers) who are good friends of mine over and cook Romanian Steak for them all!
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