DramatistDreamer

Lol, that sounds like collective amnesia on the part of the creative and production staff. Or total lack of research. They are just allergic to looking back in any meaningful way and taking stock.

This is why I just cannot get into the narrative that Iger and those of his ilk are trying to spin, whining about entitled writers and actors while they ride around in their chauffeured driven Bentleys. It’s unfortunate that our celebrity-obsessed culture tends to focus on the celebrities who are the exceptions to the rules. The majority of actors, the majority of writers are journeymen/women. Anyone who has ever gone on an audition (big cities like NYC and L.A. included) or submitted work for consideration knows that it is usually a tough grind, which is the reality for the majority of this craft. I realize that celebrity often draws attention to the cause but I can’t help but think it’s a mistake for these unions not to highlight the everyday members who draw average and below average wages. If the perception is that every WGA/WGAE member is Aaron Sorkin and ever SAG/AFTRA member is Jennifer Lawrence, that is a problem that colors the focus of what these unions are trying to achieve. And frankly these union heads need to fix it.

Melanie has such a delightful hearty laugh and it rings out as genuine. As someone who has had a tough year, I can appreciate her words about what it takes to come back from grief and loss and heartbreak. Hopefully she can talk about her book on bigger platforms to promote her book to a larger audience.

👀 https://apnews.com/article/larry-nassar-gymnastics-coach-stabbing-4ab34526e30c09194e33ee2bd59eb652

Eubanks was noticeably crestfallen at not being able to pull off the victory but when he’s had a few moments to recover and really think about what he’s accomplished this Wimbledon fortnight, I mean his first main draw tournament at Wimbledon to the Quarterfinals, that is quite an achievement, hopefully this spurs him onward.

I just read that the Wednesday deadline will not be extended again. It’s definitely going to be tough but I hope the writers don’t give in and not just as a matter of principle. They should also be engaging those in media who have expansive platforms and who are sympathetic to their cause, or at least those who claim to be.

I mean, even I got an invite in my mailbox to join the picket line for WGAE and I have only ever had an associate membership years ago, lol. Fran needs to hustle herself back to L.A. before Melissa Gilbert grabs the presidency back, lol.

Naomi Osaka has had a baby girl. I am not sure what exact date but understand this to be a recent event. Congratulations to her and Cordae.

Something that has been bothering me about how business stories are being written in recent years is that it seems all abstract, lacking in specific details and even visible representations of the actual products. I don’t care about Omega Sphere but it might actually seem like a real product had there been genuine product testing, focus groups and software people writing codes, dealing with bugs and fixes, maybe a malware crisis, here and there…all taking place onscreen. Instead, we hear babble about numbers down, numbers up and the games’ supposed popularity gain after sluggish downloads. Just as dry as can be. Ironically, this would have been a good story to have a character like Ravi who specialized in software and technology. Remember when businesses like Jabot spoke of actual products, showed someone (usually Ashley formulating products, meetings and discussions on specific products? They’d even discuss packaging and prototypes for how bottles would look? As much as viewers might have railed about Cricket’s onscreen time, at least as a model, viewers could see her holding products in her hands (up to her face) in photo shoots. Dru went bald from the effects of a poorly formulated (or was it sabotaged?) under-tested hair product that she had been highly excited about. Jill’s men’s line set off years of power struggles between her and her former step kids over ownership and the direction of the line of products. We saw the actual products in action, onscreen- something we don’t get to see now. It gives the impression that these companies don’t actually create anything besides concepts and abstract ideas. EDT: I wish the ability to edit were on a timer. Sometimes I catch something, (autocorrect gone awry) a second after I submit and have to wait until the error is published and then have to click the Edit option and get that “Edited just now by…” which annoys me. It just annoys me, lol.

Definitely!

Yes, that’s the role that she played that sticks with me the strongest. Thanks @slick jonesand @JAS0N47

No disrespect to Swiatek but Svitolina played Iga the way I had been thinking that the other WTA players should’ve been playing her, the way most players used to play the #1s, put her game under consistent pressure and see if it gives way, and in this case it did, to the point that Swiatek was making errors, seemingly out of nowhere at times. Serena used to proclaim that when players faced off against her, everyone brought their best game against her. I got the sense, at times that this wasn’t the case in some matches against Swiatek. I don’t know if this was Svitolina’s best (she also made some questionable shots but knew when to clean up her game) but she knew that in the era she started playing professionally, the pressure was usually on the higher ranked player and the challenger played that principle for all its worth.

This article is backing up my point that tennis, unlike other industries could use a bit more AI, especially the intelligence part as the lines judges at Wimbledon are not making good calls. I only saw parts of Venus’ first round match so I didn’t realize that a bad call essentially cost her the match, but this isn’t the first or even second time bad calls cost her a match at Wimbledon. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/sports/tennis/wimbledon-line-judges-hawkeye.html

Good points, but if only get drop ins rather than people consistently living under the same, it’s more likely that we get contrived conflicts, rather than organically brewed conflicts, the kind that occur when people become so familiar with each other and the proverbial gloves eventually come off (to use a phrase from one the genre’s nemeses “…when people stop being polite and start getting real…”). And Chance is really too much of a reasonable guy to initiate or sustain conflict. There would have to be some major rewriting of his character to make it seem as though it wouldn’t be a massive retroactive retcon. Jill has always been petty enough to initiate and sustain conflict of any kind but she would have to live in the house full-time, not just a visit imo to make it realistic. If it’s just a visit, Jill’s so busy, she doesn’t even need to see them at all. The house is basically empty, maybe except for Esther and unseen servants? It would have been better if Jill were already living at Chancellor mansion when Devon and Abby move in. Even better if Chance didn’t know his grandmother moved back in and Jill didn’t know that Chance gave Devon and Abby permission to move in. Now that would be the basis for immediate and perhaps extended conflict.

Maybe I am not remembering correctly but I could swear as a little girl, when Wimbledon aired on HBO, play began at 11 am. Why is play starting on Centre and the show courts at 1:30 pm? With all these hardcore baseliners batting back the ball, rallying endlessly, throw in rainy weather, with only a few courts with roofs and that’s just asking for trouble with scheduling.

My first thought when I saw that episode was that they needed a reason to use the Chancellor mansion, especially being that it’s the 50th anniversary and people have probably been complaining that many iconic sets are missing from the show. They are not capable of bringing back the original Newman ranch set, or the Colonnade room set, so some form of the Chancellor Mansion will do, despite that there would no longer be any biological Chancellors living there once Chance moves out. Chance as a single character with no real storyline attached to him doesn’t drive enough story to make use of the mansion set. Abby, and to a certain extent, Devon have some semblance of story to justify using the set. Ijust get the sense that it’s the 50th year and someone wants to use the set but one line character living there wouldn’t provide the cover they need to convince tptb to resurrect the set. My issue is, unless there is conflict taking place under that roof, what’s the point? I mentioned Devon and wife Hilary moving in because there would be immediate and consistent conflict, mainly between Jill and Hilary who are two strong-willed women, Devon who loves his wife would defend her against Jill, while possibly in private, urge Hilary to rise above Jill’s provocations. Now, if Jill were to move back into the mansion, there might be conflict there as Abby broke her grandson’s heart. If the writing is realistic, it would be one-sided as Jill would be totally justified in holding a grudge and even if Abby had a leg to stand on, I don’t see her having the backbone to take on Jill the way Hilary would. It really wouldn’t be a realistic fight and the conflict would be over before we knew it. There’s no story there. Even Nina, there would be no reason for Nina to stay in the house. She was never invested in staying there the way Jill was and without Chance living there, what reason would Nina have to spend any time there at all? Realistically, I don’t see much storyline coming from this, at least none that emerges organically—something would have to be contrived imo. Part of the reason why both Katherine and Jill were so insistent on being in that house was the connection it had to Phillip for them. Katherine wanted Phillip’s son to live there despite Jill being his mother, it was the one aspect both Kay and Jill agreed on, this was the Chancellor legacy. Both Jill and Chancellor believed that that were also part of that legacy, which they vehemently disagreed on (the other’s legitimate claim to the house). If there’s no Chance, no Jill, no Kay…what do we have? Devon is acting as a kind of stand in for Katherine but he and Jill get along reasonably well, so there’s no conflict there either. In my imagination, Hilary would have been key to a successful conflict. We already saw Jill and Hilary clash and it was great, I saw those scenes and immediately hoped for more but with an actual storyline or at least something grounded in an an organic situation that would give cause for genuine conflict and a domestic situation would have been an easy way to generate consistent conflict.

To be honest, I haven’t been watching enough of JG’s recent writing tenure on Y&R to gauge whether he’s succeeded in correcting his problem with raising the stakes and drawing stories to a conclusion. You have probably seen more of his work than I have at this point. Do you believe he is more capable this time around of craft more complicated and complete storylines? I have said this before and I will say it again. This storyline with Cameron bequeathing his company to Sharon is very reminiscent of a storyline that aired on As The World Turns with Frannie Hughes (Julianne Moore) and Douglas Cummings (John Wesley Shipp) where Douglass leaves Frannie his fortune and at first, a traumatized Frannie wants nothing to do with it before eventually deciding to use it to help children with mental health problems. I am not sure JG has that level of commitment to sustain a storyline and keep it consistent enough to make it a permanent part of the character’s trajectory and vocation. It would be nice to be proven wrong though.

I got the chance to watch a little bit of the Eubanks vs. Norrie match and Eubanks played well, very well.

It seems like they want to control the platforms. They want liberals there but only to “dunk on”, otherwise they realize that they are posting to an echo chamber and it becomes boring when they only have each other and their dull minds.

Don’t they have Truth Social? Why don’t they stay on that sh*tty app? Or they can just stay and go down with Twitter as it deteriorates. Wait…is Meta charging for check marks too?😂

From what I remember of Brett Haber’s voice, this man didn’t sound like him. Haber likes to sound very self-assured and as if he has an air of confidence, this man was just whining. Yes, they are. Geez, they could at least make an effort to hide it. Fritz has talent but it’s not like he’s Pete Sampras or anything.

I don’t know if this is true but I have heard that because IG and Threads are linked, you can’t terminate your Threads account without terminating your IG account. I would imagine that this would be unappealing even for people who already have FB, IG and WhatsApp accounts. Since I don’t nor will I be using anything Meta universe, it clearly doesn’t concern me but it does make me chuckle to see how Zuckerberg and Musk are insistent on playing out their Pete Becker fanboy fantasies.

Whoever was the American commentator for the Ymer match against Fritz had me chuckling. Right up to almost the end of the match when Ymer was serving for it, he kept insisting Fritz had been in control of the match. Peter Fleming, or whoever it was “Uh sir, Fritz was in control for half the match, at best”. Fleming or whoever that commentator was seemed so confused and deflated that Fritz lost. He seemed loathe to give Ymer the slightest modicum of credit. It tickled me that he was so deflated.

This is the 2nd attempt with Threads for Facebook/Meta, so they should be getting it right this time. https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/17/22787783/instagram-threads-shutting-down-meta-messaging

Can’t fail the doping tests if you never take the tests, I guess.🙃