By Reid Palmiera
Even if you’re not a fan of science fiction you’ve got some familiarity with Star Trek I was watching some old reruns the other day and I came to realize that Star Trek is basically any modern business. Kirk is your CEO and the upper management usually has some disagreement. At some point Dr. McCoy says something like “Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor not a magician” which is basically your VP of Sales telling the CEO to go fuck himself. You’ve got your legal department in Spock, the goofy guy that really needs to take the stick out of his ass but everybody puts up with because he’s ridiculously smart and likes to complicate shit so nobody else can’t understand it. And there’s a clear hierarchy of middle management. You never hear from anybody else in Engineering, just Scotty because got forbid upper management has to talk directly to the people fixing shit. And if you’re a real Star Trek fan, you’re familiar with the “red shirts”, the guys who go down to the planet with the team and wind up dead in the next scene. Those are basically your Customer Service people.

But there’s one huge difference between Star Trek and the real world, and it’s one you might not expect. For all the fancy ass technology, the ability to teleport shit around, fire phasers and blow things up, travel faster than the speed of light, for all that fancy shit, we still can’t get past the telephone. Granted, it’s called a “communicator” now, but it’s still just a phone. Take a close look at the communicator that Kirk whips out when he calls the Enterprise to beam him up. That’s basically our cell phone. The only real difference is that my cell phone has ring tones and takes pictures. You know Sulu’s communicator would have been playing something by the Village People if he could set his own ring tone. And you never saw Captain Kirk get interrupted in the middle of an important speech by Beethoven’s Fifth because some asshat forgot to switch it to vibrate. Chekov didn’t get distracted from firing on a Klingon battle cruise to take a call from the wife reminding him to bring home eggs and ice cream.

And I suppose that’s what really kind of disturbed me. What was missing from Star Trek is some really life changing communication technology. I mean a communicator is basically a phone. But people have been talking since everyone was named Ug or Thok. Even things like the Internet and email are really just drawing and writing. Humans have been drawing and writing since the days of cave paintings and papyrus. What Star Trek should really have had is some kind of psychic communication device. I think it and it pops into someone’s head. That would be truly new form of communication. It would avoid all the confusion you get in bullshit staff meetings where nobody listens or poorly worded emails. It would really revolutionize communication. No more dropped signals when I’m in the middle of a call just because I need to get in the elevator. The only real downside would be that when I walk around people might know what I’m thinking. So standing around in an elevator you suddenly get thoughts of pussy…..iPhone……pussy…..scotch….pussy…..pussy. But still, wouldn’t that be awesome? You think it and it just magically pops into the brain of whoever you’re thinking it to. I would call it the Mentalmunicator. Or maybe just Microsoft Windows Vista. I think “SHIT!” and poof! That’s what I have in front of me.

Don’t get me wrong. I think communication is important. I guess the real problem with being so connected in today’s world is that it means you talk even more with people that you hate. Let me give you an example. A few years ago I was working in a role that forced me to support a sales team. There was one sales guy in particular whose favorite phrase was “you can’t beat that with a stick.” By which he meant the offer was so great that it couldn’t get any better. So every time I went out on a sales call with this guy it would somehow come up that the services we were selling were so great, and at such a great price, why you couldn’t beat it with a stick. Nevermind that most of these services were web-based and were so horrendously slow that after using us for a month or two of using our services you actually wanted to take a fucking baseball bat to your computer, he would throw the phrase out there. He’d walk into an office and say, “You know Jim, we have such faith in our services that if you aren’t 100% satisfied in the first month you can cancel at no charge and that my friend is a deal that’s so great you can’t beat it with a stick.” By the end of my term as a cubicle monkey, I swear this is true, I wrote two resignation letters. One to my boss that said, “Ken. I’m tired, this just isn’t working, screw you guys. I’m going home.” And one to the sales guy, much longer, which ended with, “and Bob, I should let you in on a little secret, those great ideas you have that I just can’t beat with a stick, I can very easily beat them with a stick by putting a two by four across your forehead. Better yet, I can save myself a lot of misery and just beat myself over the head with a stick.

Let’s be clear folks, communication is good if the people can actually communicate but being available 24×7 to people you can barely stand to be around for the morning meeting is just wholly unacceptable and makes me wish for the day I can just push a button in the middle of a staff meeting and have Scotty beam me to a different planet; a planet full of pussy…..or scotch……or pussy……

Okay, now I do understand the fact that most actors do not make the vast sums commanded by A-List stars that we all read about in the entertainment blurbs set to titillate our fancies (and trust me, if there’s anyone who likes having his fancies titillated, it’s me). I do get it that the “middle class” actor is reliant on residuals to survive. I really do. As a former member of the WGA, I’ve happily received my residual checks and thanked the heavens for them when times were lean. So I am not without sympathy for those artists who make due in between commercials and bit parts by waiting for their royalty checks to come in.

But really, isn’t that what waiting tables is for?

How many other professions can you name where you get paid over and over again for one job? I’ll wait…

Yeah, that’s what I thought. So yes, actors and writers you have it made with your residuals where grips, costume designers and the like who work and struggle just as hard to find work aren’t so lucky. But that’s not what boils my nads.

I’m annoyed as fuck at SAG because in an economy this fragile, they think it’s okay to go on strike.

Now, it wasn’t too long ago that the WGA had its day on the picket lines and cost the city of Los Angeles over $2 Billion dollars in lost revenue. I’m talking not just in lost writer wages but all of the other businesses in town that rely on the entertainment industry for their living. People who supply flowers or dry cleaning or catering and the like to tv shows and movies. When productions get shut down these people get hurt. And it’s not like the florist can sit and wait for a residual check to tide them over.

A lot of businesses had to lay off workers and even fold entirely during the WGA strike. A lot of people suffered financially and in the end, the writers came back with their tails between their legs and accepted a deal that in no way justified the price that was paid by their membership and the city of L.A.

IMHO, actors as a bunch live in their own fantasy world… which I understand because in my personal experience it takes a certain type of (sociopathic) personality to successfully subvert your own self and believably assume the guise of another.. aka “acting”. I get it. But really, SAG, given the financial debacle that was the WGA strike and the current economic crisis going on here and across the rest of the country, is a strike really going to be anything more than just a desperate cry for attention?

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