Here is a song about the writers' strike. I wrote it with my friend -- and fellow Provocateur -- Michelle Lewis. I was trying to get serious union with it -- in the lower part of my vocal range and in E minor (the angriest of all keys). Also, I wore a kind of Trotsky-like hat. Here are the words:
We toil in the writers' rooms
The windowless and darkened gloom
We entertain the people of this land
We've forsaken our great novel
For the sitcom and the pilot
Our blood and sweat and punch lines for The Man.
We are the writers
We are the writers
And we are the wronged...
Just like our brothers in the coal mines
And the stagehands of the East
We will suffer with just donuts
Out on Melrose in the heat
The producers get the glory
And the actors get the fame
We Cyranos of the back lot
Left out of the game.
("New media" they're calling it)
We are the writers
We are the writers
And we are the wronged...
All we asking is our piece of the pie
Without another season of Mad Men, I'd surely die
My friend, do you know what will happen
If in the end they don't pay?
More of that Scot Baio show
And spin offs of Flava Flav ------ Flava Flav
So we'll strike, for our right
Just to write and get paid
Yes, we'll fight and we'll sing you this song...
We are the writers,
We are the writers
And we are the wronged
I do love the show Mad Men.
Read more about the strike on the Huffington Post's writers' strike page.
The writers went on strike, not because of
the pay, but because of the propaganda...
then, this guy was driving drunk down the
street, and he ran into a fire hydrant.
The hydrant ruptured, but because they
had to use all the water to put out the fires,
nothing leaked out. So began the Great Drought
of 2007, and the beginning of the end for
the City Of Angels, and Hollywierd...
That was 30 years ago. Today, the garbage
strewn streets where once the greats of the
silver screen were feted and immortalized
on the walk of fame are deserted, populated
only by the odd stray unemployed televangelist
and a couple of dogs...beer bottles roll in
the gutters next to old faded handbills for
shows that were cancelled way back then.
An empty wire trash can slowly and unevenly
wanders down the street, and bumps into
an abandoned car, the pro-street rims still
clinging to long-flattened tires...the
large circled-A spray-painted on the hood
declaring for one and all that this is NOT
a tow-away zone...anymore...
In the distance, the sun sets. The streetlights,
mostly broken, do not click on at dusk. In
fact, there does not seem to be any electricity
or other signs of life. Then, the howling
begins...(screen fades to black)
Power to the people! (If you could see me you'd see I have my fist in the air. Here, alone at my computer.)