Category: Announcement

Today’s Important Lesson in Agriculture

TIL that when you’re gardening in the Pacific Northwest, it’s very important to plant trees, shrubs, et al native to the region, which means that they can continue to exist – and thrive – regardless of the up and down extremes of local weather.

One of my neighbors (see the pic above) just learned that lesson the hard way. What did he do wrong? He thought the current hot spell would be a problem and – gulp – overwatered.

This has been a public service message by:

Laughing Eagle

The Once and Future TVWriter.Com™

by Larry Brody

As some of you know, I began this blog shortly after closing TVWriter.Com™. Without it to fuss with, I found myself much more bored than I ever expected and figured that having a more personal space to fill with, well, more personal feelings, thoughts, and that sort of thing would help me feel busy and helpful without stressing me out.

Guess what. That didn’t happen. The whole personal blog thing just didn’t click with me. I needed more (and no, although I’m on Facebook, that was far from more. The only advantage I found in writing about myself and my family on FB was that I was at least assured an audience. Not a big audience, but enough to justify the time I spent and still spend there).

Not being nearly as original a thinker as I’d thought I was for most of my life, instead of coming up with something new and exciting to do during my remaining retirement years I decided to re-open TVWriter™ so up and coming writers and such who had never gone to the site would be able to see and read the advice that the wonderful people I call Team TVWriter™ and I had shared over twenty-five-ish years on the web.

It took a little doing, but I finally located the saved TVW files and with the help of webmaster extraordinaire Chuck Fox and a gang of great friends and former Team TVWriter™ members I’ve been working to restructure the classic old site so it will be more relevant to current showbiz reality and, frankly, involve as little of my time and effort as possible.

Here’s what we’ve accomplished in the last few months:

    1. Worked like demons to remove all pages and posts with broken links. (NOTE: Most of the sites that are gone were small personal sites; YouTube videos by companies that no longer exist; Middle Eastern sites – especially those critical of just about any status quo at the time of writing; business sites that usually didn’t deal with showbiz happenings; psychology and self-help sites; etc.).
    2. Removed many but not all posts and pages about the TVWriter™ contests and online classes that no longer are available (because it would be embarrassing as hell if new – or old – visitors tried to pay for services no longer offered, plus I’m trying to actually take things easy, remember?)
    3. Kept the basic contest and class info (including the complete listing of all Winners, Finalists, and Semi-Finalists in The People’s Pilot and The Spec Scriptacular competitions because those terrific creators deserve to be known worldwide).
    4. Retained the continuously (and automatically) updating Writing & Showbiz News and Writing & Showbiz Tips sections because keeping track of what’s trending right now is in and of itself one of – if not the – most important things a site calling itself TVWriter.Com™ can do.

What all this blather means is that as of this writing, the (relatively) new TVWriter.Com™ is now open for Beta 3, and all of you reading this are invited to have a look around and then, I hope, tell me what we’ve done right, what we’ve done wrong and, probably most importantly, what we’ve totally screwed up.

If you were a member of the site back when or currently are Beta Testers, all you have to do is log-in HERE

If you need a new log-in name and password, give me a holler at lb@larrybrody.com, and if you check out as a real person and not a current or future spammer/stalker, I’ll send you what you need.

Thanks for reading this!

LYMI

LB

LB: My Favorite SAG-AFTRA Strike Parody

How low has this country’s level of intelligence fallen? Today the Washington Post brought us a humorous and in many ways deadly opinion column about what’s happening in the entertainment industry (and by extension, many other industries) right now, and to make sure it was properly received by readers actually gave it the following oh-so-informative URL:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/13/hollywood-actors-writers-strike-studio-parody/

Did the Post’s powers-that-be really believe this was necessary?

(image via MSNBC. Hmm…I wonder what the network intended by its caption. “Raging,” after all, is quite the loaded word.)

I’m fanatically for the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes and certainly agree with Fran Drescher’s quote about the disrespect shown by the spokespeople for what the New York Times calls the “old line studios.” I’m also addicted to a little thing called sarcasm and often find myself using it even when I don’t intend to. Which means that with no coaching needed I thoroughly enjoyed the following and believe you will (or should) too.

It’s fine. We don’t need human actors.
by

([Author’s] Disclosure: Every so often, I try to write a Hollywood thing and it goes nowhere, though sometimes it goes nowhere after someone has paid me an amount of money and we have signed a contract, so I have a dog in the writers strike fight, if not a dog who is my regular employer!)

My dear shareholders! Do not worry about the fact that all the screen actors and screenwriters are on strike.

If there is one thing I have figured out about the meaning of life and the meaning of art, it is that art is something that should be entirely the product of machines and robots while people march around with picket signs and complain that they cannot afford food and housing. Also, no one should ever be paid a residual, whatever that is. I just don’t like the sound of it.

Art, as we know, represents the fundamental human striving to wring profit for a large corporation from a concept that already exists in the culture. It might involve human beings coming together to tell stories with their minds, bodies and faces, but it doesn’t need to. In fact, I think it would be more efficient if it didn’t….

Read it all at the Washington Post

LYMI

    LB