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The Daily Dose/Novemeber 14, 2007
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
   
Notes from around the human experience, and get your passports out - making sure you have an Arabic translation - because today The Daily Dose takes you to Pakistan, Hollywood, Mars, Las Vegas, Libya and London. Plus On This Date goes around the world with Nellie Bly and wonders if gas prices in 1972 were really as cheap as they seem. Plus, the popular, inevitable Column Four Foto: Emma Samms!
HOME SWEET HOME: Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is back under house arrest, for having the nerve to plan a rally protesting President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of marital law earlier this month, though martial law seems to have been replaced nowadays by 'emergency rule' much like 'ethnic cleansing' has replaced 'genocide'.
Thank God For The Land Line: Bhutto's house is locked and surrounded by troops and barbed wire, but, via telephone, she was able to call for Musharraf's resignation and announced she was working to partner with Nawaz Sharif, who was deposed as prime minister by Musharraf in a 1999 coup. Pakistani authorities have announced that Bhutto can look forward to remaining under house arrest through Thursday.
GOOD NEWS: The strike by the Writers Guild of America against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is into its second week.
Is This So Bad?: Are we really missing anything? I mean, all that's really happening is those not-very-funny late night tee vee shows are in reruns, and production has halted on most prime time shows with only portions of their seasons produced. Official Writer's Shack policy states that anything - anything, strike, flood, pestilence - that prevents a network prime time show from being produced is basically good, and should be heralded.
OTOH: Soap operas have scripts stockpiled through January, 2008.
More Bad News: Reality shows, and crap like American Idol, plus some game shows, since they are unscripted, do not have writers and are unaffected.
What They're Whining About: At issue are DVD residuals, which producers are refusing to even discuss, plus 21st century stuff that hasn't been covered by a contract yet, like Internet downloads, straight to Internet content and video on demand. What they should be demanding are quality shows to write, not the lowest-common-denominator crap America currently puts up with.
Batten Down The Hatches: Nobody is expecting a quick resolution. The previous two writer's strikes, in 1960 and 1988 each lasted 22 weeks. This isn't long enough. The Writer's Shack would like to take this opportunity to call for a permanent writer's strike.
ON THIS DATE: In 1889, writer Nellie Bly (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran) departed on a trip to travel around the world in 80 days, an idea inspired by the 1873 novel Around The World In Eighty Days by Jules Verne. Bly, reporting for the New York World, made the trip in 72 days, traveling 24,899 miles. Earlier, Bly had earned renown by pretending to be insane and exposing inhumane conditions in a New York City mental hospital.
In 1971: Mariner 9 reached Mars and became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. Thirty-six years later we still haven't put a man on Mars. Though Mariner 9 was turned off in October, 1972, it remains in Martian orbit and is expected to enter the Martian atmosphere in 2022.
The Good Old Days: In 1972 the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 1,000 (1003.16) for the first time. Yesterday it closed at 13,307.09.
Flashback: In 1972 gas was 36 cents a gallon, which comes out to about $1.36 in today's currency. Some really smart people at the Cato Institute figured out that if you further adjusted that $1.36 to account for how much more disposable income we Americans now have, gas today would have to cost $2.66 to have the same impact on the old pocketbook that 36 cents a gallon (which Dad thought was highway robbery) had in 1972. We're not experts here at the Writer's Shack, but we interpret that to mean that, according to these figures at least, we're not taking it in the shorts at the gas pump as much as we might think.
The Hell We Aren't: All right, I will admit I have significantly more disposable income now than I did in 1972, when all income, disposable or otherwise, consisted of a 50 cent per week allowance. Still though, $3 a gallon has all of us grabbing our ankles and whistling Dixie.
ALL OJ, ALL THE TIME: America's Defendant OJ Simpson was back in a Las Vegas courtroom Tuesday for his preliminary hearing on armed robbery and kidnapping charges. Without boring you too much, two more witnesses said OJ did, in fact, ask for guns to be brought to the festivities at the off-strip hotel, where OJ had planned to rescue memorabilia of his from an evil collector. The hearing is expected to conclude Wednesday.
NEWS YOU CAN MORE OR LESS USE: Libya this week started declining entry to tourists who didn't have an Arabic translation of their passport, even if they held a valid visa.
???????: We found this interesting because here at the Writer's Shack we were wondering why the hell anyone would want to go to Libya in the first place, but both Swiss and French airline passengers were denied entry Tuesday, so evidently someone wants to go. Evidently this is the best time of year to visit, too, though tourists - and everyone for that matter - would do well to avoid the border areas with Chad, Niger and the Sudan because of banditry.
STADIUM WATCH: The blokes running the London 2012 Olympics recently unveiled the design of their main Olympic Stadium. It is a round, two level affair, that will seat 77,000. What is surprising is that only 25,000 of those seats will be permanent! The entire second level, 52,000 seats, will be removed after the game, leaving a 25,000 seat venue for exciting track meets, second-division soccer and Bad Company reunion tours.
What The Hell's Going On Here?: Doesn't anybody build anything to last anymore? A temporary Olympic stadium? Gee whiz, an Olympic Stadium should live down the ages. Not only that, Chicago has one on the drawing boards should they be awarded the 2016 Games, which they probably will since they were awarded the 1904 Games, but had them taken away and given to St. Louis because St. Louis was hosting the World's Fair in 1904.
There was a time when Olympic Stadiums were built to last. Athens' 1896 stadium still stands, as do the stadiums that hosted the 1900 and 1904 Games in Paris and St. Louis.
There is precedent for scaling back an Olympic Stadium after the Games have ended, however, and it predates Atlanta's complete remodeling of their Olympic Stadium into a baseball stadium. After the 1912 Games, Stockholm removed the second deck from their stadium and neither of London's previous two Olympic Stadiums, White City Stadium and the original Wembley Stadium, are still standing.
A Final Thought: We're not experts in the matter, but why would anybody build a temporary Olympic Stadium? An Olympic Stadium should be built to last, a monument for generations to come.
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