I could have worked for a company that used Axium for its payroll services, since they just declared Chapter 7, leaving many creditors (including the IRS) with questions about where all the money went.

Defamer has been covering the whole mess pretty well (with “Rhymes With Shmembezzelment” being one of my favorite tags they’ve ever used), but the story’s barely made a ripple with most of the local media.

Pseudonymous blogger Peggy Archer, who’s a lighting tech and way better at explaining this stuff to non-entertainment-industry people than I am, explains both what payroll companies are in Hollywood:

For tax and unemployment insurance purposes, when we work, we are technically employees of the payroll company instead of the production company. This is not a bad thing – it cuts down on the tax-season paperwork (16 W 2 forms instead of 138) and reduces instances of in-house rubber checkitis (back in the bad old days of tiny shows run by fly-by-night production companies, one would pick up one’s check at the office and then drive like a bat out of hell to the production company’s bank to cash it while there were hopefully still funds in the account. When everyone started using payroll companies, the checks, when they eventually arrived, were usually good).

…and the worst case scenario:

…although the taxes were deducted from my checks, as of right now there’s no way to know if I fall into the happy group who had the deducted monies actually paid to the gub’mint. Since I doubt the IRS cares that I had the money deducted, they’ll probably make me pay twice.

‘Cause that’s how the IRS rolls.

As fucked as I am being unemployed, I’d be super-duper fucked if I had to somehow magically come up with my taxes twice because some douchebag embezzled all the money from the payroll company that was supposed to KEEP me from getting fucked.

My deepest sympathy goes out to Peggy (or whatever her real name is) and everyone else in this town who’s about to have a real pleasant tax season because of these schmucks.

As part of my Continued Adventures in Killing Time, my friend Lisa and I went for a little hike in Griffith Park (a moderate one was about all my ankle could take), and I decided to use the opportunity to practice taking some decent pictures.

More on my Flickr site, but here are some of my favorites (click to go to each picture’s Flickr page):

In case the fact that the national news keeps harping on it has so far escaped your attention, it’s a little rainy here.

How rainy, you ask? As of about an hour ago, Los Angeles has reached phase, “Animals fleeing, two-by-two.”

Phase, “Hey, look, there’s an Ark floating down Pico!” should come sometime Monday.

Seriously, I fear what four straight days of rain will do to this town that freaks out when the relative humidity rises above 70%.

‘Twas the night before Strike-mas, and through Hollywood
Every crew member thought, “Oy, this can’t be good.”

The pink slips had been rolling on in for weeks
And news only came out in rumors and leaks.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds
While parents sought Advil to quiet their heads

I was sitting inside, bundled in winter gear
Having turned down the heat to try remain austere

When out in the alley honked a very loud horn;
‘Twas a Teamster in his five-ton, looking forlorn

I opened my window and shouted “Hey, yo!
It’s after midnight, don’t you have somewhere to go?”

He replied, “It’s all from the Christmas episode,
Fake trees and ornaments, an entire truckload.

Our vendors were shut down, our office laid off;
Every light in town seems to be turned off.”

I asked, “Can’t you take the truck to the studio?”
He said, “Their lot’s so full, it’s got no place to go.”

I said, “Let’s take it to Les Moonves’s house!
He ought to have room, that $30-mil-a-year louse.”

“Or Chernin or Grey,” he said, “Or Barry Meyer,
Maybe Zucker or Sloan, or Lynton or Iger.

They all make good money, even Patric Verrone,
And some guy I saw on TV named Gavin Polone.”

So I pulled on my jeans and I pulled on my boots,
The Teamster and I were now in cahoots.

We charted a course towards Beverly Hills
Ready to get in a last few cheap thrills.

With some inside tipsters and Google Maps Mobile
We took on a task…perhaps somewhat ignoble.

I will leave out the name of the victim selected
But do rest assured, he was quite well connected

We were dressed all in black from our heads to our feet,
To flummox security guards we might meet.

But our worries were baseless, ’twas no one nearby
As the shadow of the five-ton darkened the sky

We pulled up to the gates and claimed a delivery
Our friend didn’t know it was heavy artillery.

We hung a huge banner urging negotiations
And left the truck there, despite protestations.

A silly and juvenile prank, to be sure,
But since when have crew kids ever been mature?

We fled the scene and I whipped out my crackberry
And called us a taxi to someplace more merry:

To the party of one friend who still had a job
And hadn’t turned into an unemployed slob.

We drank to our family and friends and moreover
To the hope this will end before hell freezes over.

—

Now I end with a plea for a wee bit of reason
Though it sometimes seems such a thing’s out of season

Please stop the name-calling through press releases
And try to begin to pick up the pieces.

For Peace is the one thing we B.T.L.’s seek
And the return of our 70-hour workweek.

Though I’ve fled from L.A. for a Christmas that’s white,
Merry Strike-mas to all, and to all a good night.

Many thanks to the providers of the Online Rhyming Dictionary, without which this would have been even sillier.

Two items today that together are a real great way to kick off the week:

First, last night there were some serious Santa Ana winds blowing, and my power (and the power to the rest of my block) went out. To SoCal Edison’s credit, it was back on within the hour.

However, one key item in my apartment building seems to have been permanently injured by the flickering of the power before it finally died: The hot water heater.

That’s right, my apartment building has NO hot water. I lived with having cold water for laundry, figuring the soap was fine for most dirt, and the heat from the dryer would kill just about everything else.

The real problem occurred when I first discovered the lack of hot water…when I jumped in the shower after I came home from the gym, and thought I was about to freeze solid.

I shower at home when I go to the gym because the showers at my gym are horror-movie level disgusting. After freezing my ass off, waiting in vain for the water to warm up, I briefly reconsidered going back to the gym. Then I decided it was better to freeze.

After considering options (although forgetting a few: I thought of a couple people I could have called later to beg for the use of their unfrozen showers), I decided to run a bath, and then boil a bunch of water in the hopes of at least making things livably lukewarm.

That worked decently, except for the fact that my bathtub doesn’t really seal off too well, so there was a slow draining that caused a minor race against the clock in terms of completing my ablutions.

I still had to gut out a minute of rinsing in the ice-cold shower water, but all in all, it could have been a lot worse.

Secondly, this story went up (and continues to go up in pieces), which makes me rather pessimistic about the strike. Nikki Finke, who runs Deadline Hollywood, can be rather full of herself, but she’s also usually right on the money in terms of predicting what’s going to happen.

The gist of that story for those who don’t feel like reading the inside-baseball account is that a large number of the moguls are willing to let the writers walk, losses at the box office and the ratings be damned.

The whole thing is shaping up to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions, although I can’t imagine that either the Governator or Mayor Villaraigosa won’t step in and try to smack some sense into these people, given how fiscally disastrous a strike would be for the L.A. economy.

The last big Hollywood strike, a 22 week writers’ strike in ’88, cost the studios alone over $500 million, and the ripple effect into the local economy was well over a billion.

I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to say between inflation and the significantly larger entertainment business, this strike could cost L.A. a billion dollars a month.

As for me, I’m stocking up on Ramen and canned goods and cat food, and battening down the hatches.

I’m lucky enough that I think my bosses will have enough for me to do (and enough reserve funds) to keep me at least partially employed through the end of the year. But if the strike drags on for four or five months, I don’t know how long they can continue to justify paying me.

The sad thing is, I’m far better off than most. If the writers walk November 1st, most of my friends will be out of work by Thanksgiving. And accepted wisdom is if they walk then, there’s no way they’re back before the first of the year.

There will be some feature production, as anything that’s already got a script is going to get made, but it’s not going to be nearly enough to make up for the huge number of TV people who suddenly become unemployed.

I keep hearing the argument that I shouldn’t stress about it because there’s nothing I can do about it. While it’s true that I have no control over this mess, that just makes me stress about it even more.

I tend to get more worried about things I can’t control because I can’t do anything about them. If I can do something, then I get up and do it and it’s done. All I can do now is sit on the sidelines and hope these guys don’t wind up driving this whole industry over a cliff.

Sadly, the consensus seems to be that both sides are so pissed off at each other that they don’t realize they’re about to do just that.

Ah, fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

As the potential armageddon draws closer and on a day when I’m not as tired, I’ll go into more detail about exactly what a strike would mean, both to the industry in general and to me in particular.

Suffice to say for now, I’m becoming very, very glad that I’m going to be in Chicago this weekend, away from the HOLLYWOOD STRIKEWATCH! madness seizing this town.

I felt my first earthquake last night.

I will say, I didn’t really realize it was a quake at the time. There was a big jolt and then a little residual shaking, and I figured someone had just dropped something heavy on the stairs.

This is partly because the last time I felt my bed shaking in the middle of the night and thought it was a quake, I looked up I saw Chaplin vigorously licking his own ass on the other end of the bed. So I figured this was some similarly silly explanation.

There was also very little knocked over. The only thing that I recall being out of place this morning was a shower squeegee that fell from its perch into the shower.

But when I came in, everyone was talking about how they felt the quake in the middle of the night (member of the accounting team: “I thought, ah hell, am I going to have to get out of bed?”).

I’m just glad the first quake I felt wasn’t some huge Northridge-level quake, but a relatively lame one. Although I’m sure I’ll now be shouting “QUAKE!” and sprinting to the nearest doorframe every time a big truck drives by for the next couple of weeks.

God DAMN it.

I stopped by Best Buy tonight to continue my ongoing research into rigging a GPS into my car by actually looking at one in person. I wasn’t planning on buying anything (for reasons I will elaborate on later in the post), but then I saw two things:

1. Martin Starr, who played Haverchuck on Freaks and Geeks, among many other hilarious roles

2. Holding a Wii.

I have wanted a Wii for several months now. I’d resolved to buy one at Best Buy, as I have about $100 worth of gift cards, bringing the price down to just under $200 (including tax and a second Wiimote). And really, what else does Best Buy sell that am I not going to find cheaper online?

Unfortunately, Best Buy is always sold out of Wiis when I go, and they generally sell out any shipment they get within a couple of hours. Seeing Starr holding a Wii was the first time I’d actually seen one in a customer’s hands. I had to know if there were more.

So dispensing with my “do not approach people whose work you enjoy” policy, I went up to him and said, “excuse me, where did you get that Wii?” And he pointed out the stack around the corner. I thanked him and fled.

Oh, that stack taunted me, I tell you. But alas, there were two problems with buying a Wii an hour ago, both of which Joel reminded me of when I called and begged him to talk some sense into me:

Problem the first: I just got stuck with a big old pile of medical bills for my foot surgery, plus my physical therapy bill is swiftly approaching $500, and it appears it will not stop there. $25 a visit adds up distressingly fast.

Problem the second: I am leaning towards moving downstairs over Labor Day Weekend, and I’m estimating the one-time expenses for that (cleaning fee, moving supplies, movers because everyone I know is out of town that weekend, etc.) at about $600.

So basically, I am broke as a joke, and even the modest sum a Wii commands with gift cards factored in is currently out of my reach. Still, I was damn tempted.

It took every ounce of restraint I have to walk away from that pile of Wiis. It is a decision I am sure I will regret in a couple months when my finances loosen up and I still can’t find a damn Wii in a Best Buy.

I saw three movies in various theaters this weekend, the first movies I’d seen in theaters since Christmas. I quickly remembered why I generally wait for things to hit Netflix or HBO. The movies were:

Movie #1: Knocked Up, at the Zanuck Theater on the Fox Lot. Free.
Movie #2: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, at the Mann Criterion in Santa Monica. $10.75 + $3 to park.
Movie #3: Ratatouille, at the AMC in Marina del Rey. $9.75, since their matinee prices stop at 4pm.

The differences were instructive. #1, as it was shown at the studio, was great: No previews, no commercials, started exactly on time, had a polite audience (of entertainment professionals, so that might be biased) and had no technical issues.

But it was basically like going over to a friend’s house, if that friend had a ridiculously huge home theater and refused to pause the movie when you had to go to the bathroom.

#2 was, theater-wise, the worst experience. Half an hour of intrusive commercials before the 8+ previews for Harry Potter ripoffs, which I would have resented if I was trying to carry on a conversation with someone. Which I wasn’t because I’m a doofus and went alone because everyone else I knew who wanted to see it saw it Wednesday.

People constantly running up and down the stairs for more overpriced food, desperately searching for their friends in the dark when they returned. A crying baby at a show that was scheduled to get out after 11pm. For the love of god, get a sitter.

However, I will note that the picture was incredible. That was the first time I’ve seen something digitally projected, and it does live up to the hype. The sound was loud enough to stun a rhino, but that’s pretty standard at this point.

#3 was at least better than #2, but another argument for just staying at home. The price was under $10 for a non-matinee, but that’s only because the theater hasn’t been renovated in years. It’s like an early-90′s time capsule, with falling-apart seats that bear the imprints of a thousand asses.

There were focus issues on a couple reels, and one reel had a bunch of hairs caught in the film for a few very distracting minutes. And of course, since it was an afternoon show of a kids’ movie, there were several small crying and/or very loud and excited children.

I try not to be annoyed with that (as I was with the bawling baby at an 8:30pm show of a PG-13 movie), since it’s part of what you learn to expect at a screening like that, but it reminded me why I prefer to watch movies in the comfort of my own home.

That, and how goddamn much it costs. Seriously, two movies for $21.50? That’s more than I pay for a MONTH of Netflix’s 3-at-a-time plan. It would have been over $30 had I seen Knocked Up in a real theater instead of through work.

Movie theater owners wonder why movie attendance is way down. It’s pretty fucking simple: You pay way more than it costs to watch at home for an infinitely less pleasant experience. This is not rocket science.

It is a moment many a pet owner has had, and it’s never good. You look at your pet, and you think you see something moving.

And you move some fur and you look closer and you realize: It’s a flea. Your pet has fleas. Oh god, there are FLEAS IN THIS HOUSE! AAAAAAAAAAAH!

That was me this morning right after I woke up. I leaned over to pet Chaplin, and when I ran my hand up the back of his head, out crawled a big, nasty flea.

I’d seen something on him yesterday but couldn’t conclusively identify it, and decided to ignore it out of wishful thinking. However, having looked at pictures online, I knew this second one would be the start of a very long day.

I have to say this: God bless L.A. and its mobile everything. By 9:30, the groomers had picked up Chaplin and whisked him away for a flea bath.

Certainly not the cheapest solution, but money well spent in my opinion, since it allowed me to keep my blood on the inside of my body. I don’t think that would have been possible had I tried to give him a bath.

But the real pain in the ass was the washing. When you find fleas, you have to wash…everything! Every blanket, every pillow, every single thing that might possibly harbor eggs that you can cram in a washing machine, you cram.

The problem with this is that the washer is downstairs. I’m still on the pegleg, so going down stairs is a painful hassle, involving taking stairs one at a time while clinging to the railing with whatever free hands I can muster.

I can’t carry anything heavy while trying this and it’s hard enough to carry anything unwieldy with two good legs, so it was damn near impossible with one. I did five loads of laundry and I thought my shin was going to disintigrate.

But I got it done, and I vacuumed the couch and the mattress and his carpeted scratching post to get any last little whatevers out of there. I also went online and ordered up some Frontline.

Chaplin came back from the groomers smelling like Mountain Fresh Tide, and substantially whiter in the white portions of his fur than he did when he left. I’m still not sure they didn’t actually bathe him in detergent instead of flea-bath.

So now I’m left, in a substantially cleaner yet still somehow dirtier-feeling house, paranoiacally looking at every wee movement I catch out of the corner of my eye, praying it’s not another flea.

Because I am not washing all this shit again, I can tell you that much.