Strike Day 86 (11 A.D.)

Wow, FOX was pretty crowded, at least from 9:00am until 12:00 Noon, when I was there.

Saw a lot of actors, some of whom I knew personally, others who I know only as a fan.

One of the actors from "Sleeper Cell" made it out, which was great. I also got a chance to picket alongside the only writer-producer from the first season of the show other than my partner and myself. She was actually working at FOX before the strike began, so she's used to marching up and down Pico and Avenue of the Starts on a regular basis.

She had an amazing strike tale. A couple of weeks back she was over at Warner Bros. with the rest of the Guild on the Monday everyone went there to protest the possibility of massive lay-offs by the studio. I ran into her that day. What I didn't know was that when she arrived back home on the West Side she discovered she had lost one of the DIAMOND EARRINGS she'd been wearing that day.

I suppose there is some humor to a story about the loss of luxury jewelry while marching on a picket line -- but as you can imagine she wasn't laughing.

When we picketed together that day she was kind of depressed about the possibility of losing her deal at FOX. She's married with two kids. But what she told me today was that marching around Warner Bros. with all the people who were out that day -- and there were hundreds of us at Warners that day and it was beautiful out -- somehow reinvigorated her spirit and led her to decide, after discovering the loss of her earring, that she was somehow going to get it back.

So the next day she drove back to Warner Bros., looked around where she had picketed, with no luck, then walked over to the table where they keep the sign-in sheets and the picket-signs, pointed to one of her ears and asked: "You haven't by any chance seen an earring that matches this one, have you...?"

And the person at the table narrowed their eyes at her ear, pointed to the table and said: "Yeah, right here. Some guy turned it in fifteen minutes ago."

So listen-up, AMPTP: no matter what else , the members of the Writers Guild of America have got each others backs -- even if it means turing in DIAMOND JEWELRY!

Gotta love that.

There were a lot more familiar faces on the picket line at FOX, including a really cool comedy-writer mom whose son graduated last year from the school all three of my kids attend.

She's a strike captain now.

We're all strike-somethings now.

How much longer shall we continue to fulfill those roles?

Who can say?

I'll tell you who can say: NO ONE.

Not yet.

So try not to obsess about it too much.

Good rumors, bad rumors, they've been flying like bullets at a firing range -- and they are capable of doing a lot of damage to our side in the current unpleasantness.

If you absolutely, positively have to get your hopes up... then I ask you to hope for the best -- and expect the worst.

Tomorrow it's back to the old stomping grounds for each of us, wherever that may be.

I encourage you to make your presence known at your corner of the WGA strike universe just as I shall make my presence known at mine.

I'm gonna get some sleep, get up and head back to the picket line at Warner Bros.

Hope to see you there!

Oh -- I went to a reading of a new play directed by a pretty close friend of mine tonight. Ran out on my my wife's dinner and the rest of my family to make it. The cast was uniformly excellent and the play itself was quite good -- until the ending, which, to be honest, really pissed me off.

One good thing about this strike: the ending is very unlikely to piss me off.