The New York Times is a little short on May Day news, surprise, surprise.
Other than one piece about the French, who remain pissed off about having their retirement-age goalposts shifted two years (To age 64! Zut alors!), I found exactly one labor story on the website.
It concerned the struggles of — wait for it! — screenwriters.
Screenwriters?
Now, I don’t mean to make light of screenwriters’ issues. They remind me very much of the issues Your Humble Narrator faced as a free-range rumormonger. So, up the rebels, etc.
Nevertheless, it seemed appropriate to make today’s singing of “The Internationale” the version from the 1981 Warren Beatty-Diane Keaton vehicle “Reds,” which I have liberated in the name of the people from YouTube, which is owned by Google.
The writers credited for the flick are Beatty and Trevor Griffiths, according to IMDB, which is owned by Amazon.
And you’d better hope Apple TV flogged Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, Bill Lawrence, Jason Sudeikis and the rest of the writers room into cramming a shit-ton of “Ted Lasso” episodes into the can. According to Mother Times:
Absent an unlikely last-minute resolution with studios, more than 11,000 unionized screenwriters could head to picket lines in Los Angeles and New York as soon as Tuesday, an action that, depending on its duration, would bring Hollywood’s creative assembly lines to a gradual halt. Writers Guild of America leaders have called this an “existential” moment, contending that compensation has stagnated despite the proliferation of content in the streaming era — to the degree that even writers with substantial experience are having a hard time getting ahead and, sometimes, paying their bills.
“Even writers with substantial experience are having a hard time getting ahead and, sometimes, paying their bills.” Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Tags: Amazon, Google, IMDB, May Day, Reds, The New York Times, YouTube
Mad Blog Media 
May 1, 2023 at 7:16 am |
Billy Bragg
May 1, 2023 at 7:16 am |
We can’t pay you more, says the CEO. Our allegiance is to the stock holders. Makes one wonder how deep private equity funds are into the entertainment world.
May 1, 2023 at 7:31 am |
And, the folks in France are at it again banging those pots and pans.
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20230501-🔴-live-france-faces-major-labour-day-protests-over-macron-s-pension-reform
May 1, 2023 at 7:48 am |
Another personal fave:
May 1, 2023 at 8:01 am |
Ok, can’t forget this one.
May 1, 2023 at 1:09 pm |
Back story. During the Vietnam War, my shortwave radio (remember those?) was often tuned to the English language broadcasts by Radio Moscow, Hanoi, or Peking.
May 1, 2023 at 9:27 pm |
Sad news in the Times. Gordon Lightfoot heads west.
May 2, 2023 at 6:46 am |
Sad news indeed. He was definitely part of the soundtrack Back in the Day®. “Rainy Day People” and “If You Could Read My Mind” may be my faves.
May 2, 2023 at 7:41 am |
He did the Freshman Week concert at the U of Rochester my freshman year, 1972. First week of college and I was feeling like I had landed from some primitive planet. I had listened to a lot of Lightfoot in high school as my best friend’s family was an import from Montreal. Seeing Lightfoot, alone on stage, with an acoustic guitar, was awesome.
May 3, 2023 at 9:02 am |
Last night we watched the documentary “Gordon Lightfoot – If You Could Read My Mind.” If you are interested in his career or songwriting, I heartily recommend it. We rented it from iTunes. Also, there’s this on youtube.
May 2, 2023 at 7:42 am |
Meanwhile back in the Mitten State it’s a Fitzgerald day alright with up to a foot of snow possible and gale winds in Lake Superior region. If you planned your canoe trip today it would be wise to stay around camp. Nurse a pint or two and listen to a little Lightfoot.
May 2, 2023 at 8:24 am |
I grew up in and around Buffalo, on the east end of Lake Erie. Recall after one big storm a Great Lakes freighter was run aground south of Buffalo near Hamburg, where my mom’s parents lived. I think it stayed there for a decade or more.
My old man used to love to be out on the water, even when it was “choppy” (Lake Erie, being shallow, had very short wavelength and tall waves) on a 12 foot cartop outboard motor boat. Of course that meant me, too, but we did catch some great smallmouth bass in those days. But there were days I said the rosary on that boat. And that was in the summer.
May 2, 2023 at 9:31 am |
Aye…still waters run deep but Erie can be Sid Vicious with winds running as little as 10 knots. I’ve been out in a 17 foot sea kayak and had more than I could handle but a 12 foot skiff would be far worse. But now Khal the algae blooms will git ya before any other nautical dangers. We are still battling like hell with fossil fuel weasels and farmers trying like hell to keep the Great Lakes from becoming what many waters in this country have become.
May 2, 2023 at 9:58 am |
Back in the day when I made an honest living (well, compared to working on the Dark Side), I got a lot of my grant money from NOAA/Sea Grant. In our case, Eric DeCarlo were working on stuff in the Hawaiian archipelago, but I do recall seeing the studies of how the NE and Midwest was working like hell to pump farming and urban sourced nutrients into the Great Lakes, especially Erie, and turning it from a lake into a eutrophied swamp. I had hoped things would change, but….people are stupid.
May 3, 2023 at 4:39 pm |
I’ve never lived near the water, unless you count Lake Pueblo, when I worked at The Pueblo Chieftain. My hovel was next to City Park, and Lake Pueblo was a short spin by bicycle. Never boated there, just biked.
You guys would probably think that “lake” was a frog pond.
Almost scored a gig near the Pacific when I tried out on the copy desk of the Ventura Star-Free Press Back in the Day®. Alas, they declined to hire Your Humble Narrator; that grim task fell to The New Mexican some months later.
The Ventura people contacted me shortly after I joined The New Mex’ and said they’d reconsidered. Thanks but no thanks, I replied. Dave Mitchell and his crew hired me just as my unemployment insurance was running out, and I wasn’t inclined to trade that generosity for a view of the beach, which I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford anyway.
So my boating has been confined to an outboard junker on Green Lake near Ottawa, a slightly more upscale rig at Canyon Lake outside San Antone, and a canoe on the Iowa River. Admiral Halsey would not be impressed.
May 3, 2023 at 7:36 pm |
I did my sailing on Lake Michigan. Just centerboard boats day sailing except one day crewing on a 42 foot yawl, “The Foam.” I was just a teenager hanging around the yacht club and they needed ballast that could move. Only did it two years before becoming a gun and camping nut. If I had sense I would have accepted the offer to try riding a track bike at the Kenosha outdoor velodrome. If I coulda, shoulda, woulda….
May 4, 2023 at 2:57 pm |
I volunteered as ballast on my M.S. advisor’s Force 5 on Long Island Sound. Was fun, but not entirely my cup of tea. In retrospect, it was one of the more wholesome things I could have stayed with rather than guns, booze, and motorcycles. Not simultaneously.