When you leap out of bed at the crack of noon on a Monday morning and spend a peaceful few hours composing your blog, beneath a sky so resplendently blue you could almost believe the entire astral canopy is an inverted Wedgwood bowl, life can seem pretty good.
...Then you read TV Guide.
Once a year, that erudite publication distributes a list of shame, detailing just how much your favorite celeb collects for doing less work in a week than you probably do before lunch.
First [where else??] on the list we find she whose initials perfectly mirror the effect on any intelligent being of encountering her hideous chat show - "OW!" She endures the unimaginable penury of living on only $385 million a year. That alumni of Wall St - and some less memorable movies - Charlie Sheen, scrapes along on $825k a week for his role on 2.5 Men....a show whose breadth of popularity among the un-medicated I have never understood.
Meanwhile, Mr. Simon Cowell gathers $50-million a year for gleefully eviscerating the hopes and dreams of people half his age who are moderately good at something he's never tried. And Mariska Hargitay holds the banner high for the female glitterati, collecting a respectable $400k for her weekly saunter through Dick Wolf's latest crime-busting soap.
You may think these amounts are excessive, considering the minuscule effort involved in learning a few lines and hitting your marks when the cameras are rolling? Sadly, such egocentric avarice is far from a new sport: The "stars" of Friends relieved NBC of more than $1m each per episode for their risible performances, and Jerry Seinfeld and Kelsey Grammer took home even more. And let's not forget the residuals!
At the same time, all across this great land, thousands of Actors whose passion and talent are at least on a par with any Hollywood 'name' struggle to survive on minimum wage, while battling a fog of anonymity that is as seemingly impenetrable as it is undeserved.
That, boys and girls, is why I do what I do !
...Then you read TV Guide.
Once a year, that erudite publication distributes a list of shame, detailing just how much your favorite celeb collects for doing less work in a week than you probably do before lunch.
First [where else??] on the list we find she whose initials perfectly mirror the effect on any intelligent being of encountering her hideous chat show - "OW!" She endures the unimaginable penury of living on only $385 million a year. That alumni of Wall St - and some less memorable movies - Charlie Sheen, scrapes along on $825k a week for his role on 2.5 Men....a show whose breadth of popularity among the un-medicated I have never understood.
Meanwhile, Mr. Simon Cowell gathers $50-million a year for gleefully eviscerating the hopes and dreams of people half his age who are moderately good at something he's never tried. And Mariska Hargitay holds the banner high for the female glitterati, collecting a respectable $400k for her weekly saunter through Dick Wolf's latest crime-busting soap.
You may think these amounts are excessive, considering the minuscule effort involved in learning a few lines and hitting your marks when the cameras are rolling? Sadly, such egocentric avarice is far from a new sport: The "stars" of Friends relieved NBC of more than $1m each per episode for their risible performances, and Jerry Seinfeld and Kelsey Grammer took home even more. And let's not forget the residuals!
At the same time, all across this great land, thousands of Actors whose passion and talent are at least on a par with any Hollywood 'name' struggle to survive on minimum wage, while battling a fog of anonymity that is as seemingly impenetrable as it is undeserved.
That, boys and girls, is why I do what I do !
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