I was completely mesmerized by the insane events in New York today, with the plane that ditched in the Hudson after BOTH ENGINES got knocked out by bird strikes and somehow managed to get every last person out alive.

I’ve been reading and reading and reading coverage, and I think I found one guy whose reaction is probably about what mine would have been in this situation (although I’d like to think I’m more aware of my surroundings than this guy admits he is) [emphasis mine]:

Beck, the marketing executive, said he had flown all over the world on business but never bothered to read the seat-pocket emergency cards. “I wasn’t sure what to do” as the plane fell from the air, he said later. “I tried a few different positions. I ended up putting my arms on the chair in front of me and covering my head and face. All I could think about was that movie ‘Airplane’ where they say, ‘Assume crash positions,’ and everybody lays on the ground.”

I would have been thinking of the exact same thing. Either that or “FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”

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!

Last night was like the end of a marathon. The elation and ecstatic reaction after Obama finally won the Presidency was surreal, like crossing the finish line first when you barely thought you had a chance.

And then, watching Prop 8 pass was like having someone walk up to that same theoretical marathoner and punching them in the face.

Really, California? One of the most liberal states in America can have idiot right-wingers get you so pants-pissingly scared that Teh Gayz r after ur Childrens! that we fucking passed a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT to ban gay marriage?

I am still very, very happy about Obama. What I told people at work last night when 8 was looking iffy still stands: We had one chance, and one chance only, to elect Obama, and in terms of the good of the overall nation, that was more important.

It keeps the Supreme Court from going completely to the batshit crazies, it makes the world hate us less, and it gives people some fucking hope that for once, they have voted for a candidate who’s not simply the lesser of two evils.

That 8 passed sucks, there’s no dobut. But we, and by we I mean the Gays and everyone who thinks people deserve equal rights, are going re-fight this discriminatory horseshit at every fucking turn until it is OUT of the CA constitution.

Until then, I’m going to the gym to go take out my anger on an elliptical machine instead of the drywall in my apartment which I sorely, sorely want to put my fist through.

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.

If you thought the incidents where various American companies lost laptops with 300,000 or 400,000 people’s financial information were bad, then be very thankful you don’t live in Britain.

I will worship whatever god or gods I need to, I will even sacrifice a goat on the tarmac if need be, but I really hope that what’s been happening in Indonesia over the last few days doesn’t happen in L.A. while I’m still alive to have it scare the shit out of me.

Reading the list of Ricther scale measurements is like looking at a gymnastics score: 8.4, 7.8, 8.1, 6.2… TEN aftershocks between 5 and 6 on top of all that.

Seriously, yikes.

Usually it’s somewhat reassuring to see behaviors of yours replicated in various studies, so you know you’re not alone.

In this case, however, it’s a bit depressing.

No need for anyone to send me this story about what I can only imagine is Chaplin’s long-lost brother.

The detail that it was a black and white cat was not lost on me.

I love my mom, but one of her odder habits is that she hums Christmas carols. Like, 365 days a year. And not even the whole tune, but one phrase, over and over and over again (specifically the title phrase of “Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland”).

I’m not even sure she’s aware she’s doing it, and this is where my troubles come in.

I’m up to my eyeballs in Christmas crap for work (*cough* back at 9pm tuesdays after baseball! *cough*) right now, and it is seeping into every corner of my brain.

While finally cleaning out my overflowing inbox, I started singing to myself. And it was only when I got an entire verse in, I realized what I was singing.

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know
Where those treetops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow…

And then I put my head down on my desk and said softly, “Oh dear god, it’s starting.”

I had to create a spreadsheet, with the aid of the Futon Critic’s schedule, to figure out which TiVo to use to record which show for the upcoming fall season.

While doing that, I determined that, if I permanently add every show I’m trying out, I will be recording 25.5 hours of television a WEEK.

That figure is only in primetime and does not count the 4 hours a week of Daily Show and Colbert Report I always watch. Oddly, there is not one show I will be recording on either Friday or Saturday.

Thankfully, I will probably not watch entire seasons of at least some of the shows that I’m trying out, either because they get cancelled or I determine they suck.

For the curious, here’s the list of new shows I’m giving at least one shot to, in the rough order of day/time they’re airing:

- Heroes
- Vanished
- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
- Friday Night Lights
- Knights of Prosperity
- Standoff
- Smith
- 20 Good Years
- 30 Rock
- Justice
- The Nine
- Ugly Betty
- Six Degrees
- Brothers and Sisters

I’m also probably going to track down Shark, but I’ve already assigned both TiVos when it airs, so I might have to use slightly more nefarious methods.

Having mapped all this out, I now understand why, precisely, I have no life.