What the fuck is going on with the weather out West? First it snows six inches in Antelope Valley (just north of Los Angeles) this morning, then I see this:

That’s the big fake Pharoah at the Luxor. In fucking LAS VEGAS. Yes, that’s right, folks, Las Vegas got six inches of snow today, too.

I first heard about this when Joel told me his trip had been cancelled because his co-workers got stranded in a snowstorm in Vegas. The Vegas airport owns neither a snowplow nor a de-icer, so they called him at O’Hare to say, “Yeah, don’t get on the plane.”

Seriously, this is just ridiculous. I’ve had one big shoot that keeps getting cancelled because of weather, and at the rate things are going with both that shoot and the overall weather, the next cancellation is going to be because it’s raining blood.

A day that was supposed to be a sixth day became a lazy day yesterday, and by doing so I actually managed to get shit done today.

By being a complete useless lump all day Saturday, I saved up the energy to do laundry, go grocery shopping, swim 3km in damn good time, dye my hair, and even remake the bed.

Well, technically not remake the bed yet, since Chaplin keeps sitting on the covers and getting all bitey as I try to make it, rendering any attempts to do so both useless and slightly perilous. God help me if I ever get a girlfriend who’s not a complete slob likes me and insists I make the bed every day rather than whenever I damn well feel like it.

Anyway, I see the finish line at work – Maybe spilling over into a couple of shoot-free office days on Christmas week, but lord, we’re close.

Christmas won’t be quite the hibernation week in Connecticut I was expecting because of some family medical fun I won’t get into here, but it won’t be work. And at this point I need a simple break from work more than I need the hibernation I traditionally take this time of year.

Alllllllmost there.

In an update to my earlier post, now that I’ve tried it out….I am DEFINITELY never leaving the house again.

As someone working in scripted TV production…holy shit, this is bad news: NBC is replacing its entire 10pm hour with a nightly prime-time hour of Jay Leno.

If you look purely at the numbers, it absolutely makes sense for fourth-place NBC, whose ratings have completely tanked this year due to the fact that they put on some atrocious, atrocious television shows this fall, and who just completely gutted the ranks of their execs:

Though Mr. Leno will command an enormous salary, probably more than $30 million a year, the cost of his show will be a fraction of what a network pays for dramas at 10 p.m. Those average about $3 million an episode. That adds up to $15 million a week to fill the 10 p.m. hour. Mr. Leno’s show is expected to cost less than $2 million a week.

So let’s run some math here. Leno does about 46 weeks worth of shows, and at $2 mil a week that’s about $92 mil a year. Scripted shows do 22 episodes each, at 5 per week and $3 mil apiece that’s $330 mil a year. This change stands to save NBC Universal $238 million annually.

Let me repeat that: Paying Jay Leno $30 million a year will save NBC Universal almost a quarter billion dollars a year.

And for those of us on the scripted side of things, where network work has already been getting squeezed out by cheaper reality shows, this is a HUGE blow. Work has already been slowing because of the recession and the impending SAG strike.

For NBC to summarily declare they’re going to give up 5 hours a week is a brutal addition to the litany of problems facing everyone who works in scripted television. There are already too many people and not enough work to go around, and this is just going to make it infinitely worse.

I’m hopeful that cable’s going to continue to pick up the slack, but cable shows are, unfortunately, usually quite a bit less stable employment than network. Cable shows do 13-15 episodes in a normal season, or about 5-7 months worth of work. Networks shoot 22-24, or about 9-10 months worth of work.

Being on a good show on a network is almost like having a real job: If you’re in the office, you work almost year-round. If you’re in cable, you tend to bounce more from show to show, and it’s harder to form a team because everyone’s getting rotated into different schedules.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens. The common thread I’m finding in most commentary is that it’s a plan born of desperation on the part of NBC, but it brings to mind one of my favorite quotes from my favorite movie of all time, The Great Escape:

Now why didn’t anyone think of that before? It’s so stupid, it’s positively brilliant!

Many people assume that because I have a relative facility with technology, it does not randomly decide to hate on me the way it seems to with everyone else. To that, I counter with the events of this evening:

I fought with a writer’s crapware laden-computer for half an hour at the end of the night, ultimately forcing it to abandon its efforts to spit out all kinds of random pop-ups but not without going through several attempts at removal.

Massive problems with my phone (which randomly refuses to switch off roam, draning the battery pretty much immediately when it gets into that mode, thanks, Sprint!) have given way to coming home to no internets tonight.

Drove me crazy trying to figure out what it was, particularly after getting disconnected THRICE from Time Warner Cable’s lovely automated system which decided there were either “technical difficulties” or that my “call could not be completed at this time” at every turn.

However, I seem to have narrowed it down to a DNS issue – For the nerds in the house, I was pulling an IP address just fine but I couldn’t connect to squat, so I put in the OpenDNS.org DNS servers and it’s been smooth sailing from there.

Anyway, I have managed to fix (I think) two out of the three issues, but just because I usually have a half-wit idea on how to fix it doesn’t mean this shit doesn’t break on me.

Laz brought the extent of this situation to my attention, and the mind-boggling stupidity of it really floored me.

Sean Avery is a hockey player, something of a ladies’ man, and kind of a charming jackass, if that’s not a complete contradiction in terms. He said the following to some reporters before a game against Calgary:

I am really happy to be back in Calgary, I love Canada. I just want to comment on how it’s become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds. I don’t know what that’s about. Enjoy the game tonight.

The “sloppy seconds” bit was a knock on either of a couple of actresses that Avery has dated (most suspicion is falling on Elisha Cuthbert of 24 fame, who’s currently dating a member of the Calgary Flames).

Now just reading that, you’d think the guy was being a bit of a smartass, trying to rile up his opponents. The NHL has reacted as if this were Victorian England and Avery had just impugned the chastity of the wives of the entire front office.

Avery actually got suspended for this comment. And what’s even worse, certain news outlets are bleeping or blanking out the phrase “sloppy seconds,” to my mind for no other purpose than to make his comment look way more offensive than it actually was.

When I heard about the suspension, I hadn’t seen his actual comments, so I thought he’d called her a cunt. Which is a significantly more offensive term to most women than “sloppy seconds.”

He’s not going to be winning himself any prizes other than Douche of the Week for publicly referring to his ex as “sloppy seconds.” I certainly wouldn’t like to be referred to as such, since I find the term obnoxious.

But to call it so offensive as to warrant a suspension is such a ridiculous stretch that I seriously can’t believe the NHL even considered it, let alone actually suspended the dumb guy.

I know there are a few other ovaried persons out there reading this, so I’ll throw it open to the comments: Do you find “sloppy seconds” to be offensive, obnoxious, both, or somewhere in between?