John Scalzi is a Smart Man

I know that on this blog I don’t talk about politics or law but since I blogged about the budget deficit, what the heck I’ll blog about contracts.  But this is NOT legal advice, this is just my reaction to an ongoing series of posts at John Scalzi’s blog Whatever. 

Let’s let him set the stage:

Recently New York magazine published a story, in which Columbia University’s graduate writing program invited James Frey to come chat with its students on the subject of “Can Truth Be Told?” during which Frey mentioned a book packaging scheme that he had cooked up. The contractual terms of that book packaging scheme are now famously known to be egregious — it’s the sort of contract, in fact, that you would sign only if you were as ignorant as a chicken, and with about as much common sense — and yet it seems that Frey did not have any problem getting people to sign on, most, it appears, students of MFA programs. Frey is clearly selecting for his scheme writers who should know better, but don’t — and there’s apparently a high correlation between being ignorant that his contract is horrible and being an MFA writing student.

I think I’m going to steal the phrase “it’s the sort of contract, in fact, that you would sign only if you were as ignorant as a chicken, and with about as much common sense” and I’m going to use it at work.   I don’t count it as plagiarism if I blurt it out in a conference room in a sidebar with a client.  Maybe I’ll sheepishly say “John Scalzi said that” after the client looks at me incredulously.  As a general rule one shouldn’t insult paying clients but sometimes it is necessary to get their attention. 

I’m really torn on this whole issue.  I think these MFA students were taken for a ride.  On the other hand I have no patience with suckers. 

These are people who want to write for a living.  They want to string together nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs into sentences.  And get paid for it.  They want to string together sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into chapters and chapters into novels.  And get paid for it.

And yet when someone puts a piece of paper in front of them full of nouns and verbs and a few adjectives and adverbs, they can’t figure out by simply reading it that there is a very good likelihood that they are being taken for a ride?

These are people who will pay $50,000 for an MFA program in writing (!!!) and won’t pay a lawyer to look at the first contract they are offered for their writing? 

Ok.  I know I’m being harsh.  I am not suggesting that they should understand all the contractual terms written in legalese or the terms of art for the industry.  But they should be able to smell a rat when the sentences written in plain English have terms that are unconscionable.

In fact, Elise Blackwell, the director of the MFA program at the University of South Carolina, responded by saying exactly this:

… it requires little training to identify Frey’s contracts as absurd. (Does anyone really think $250 is fair market value for a commercially viable novel or that letting someone else use your name as they please is smart?) The writers who signed those contracts weren’t acting out of ignorance but from some combination of desperation, hope, and a sense of exceptionalism that writers need to get out of bed. (“I know James Joyce died in poverty, Kafka worked a desk job, and Dan Brown can’t coax a sentence out of a bag, but I can be brilliant and rich.”) Some of them were just taking a flyer.

Yep.  They were living the dream and they didn’t want to wake up and face the contract in front of them.

Scalzi responds to Blackwell:

The issue with that awful, awful contract isn’t what’s obvious, but what’s not. Sure, anyone with a brain could see that $250 for a novel is terrible, but what those damnably ignorant MFA students were looking at wasn’t the $250; they were looking at the alleged 40% of backend, which includes (cue Klieg lights and orchestra) sweet, rich, movie option money!!!!!!!! And what they don’t know, or undervalue because reading contracts is difficult when you’ve not done it before and no one’s explained them to you, is that it’s not really 40% of everything, it’s 40% of whatever Frey decides to give you after he’s trimmed off his share, and, oh yeah, you have to take his word for it because you’re not allowed an audit. So yes, the $250 (or $500) for a book is awful and obvious. But it’s everything else about that contract which is truly rapacious, as it appears to promise so much more, and it all seems perfectly reasonable when you don’t have the experience to know what a horror it is.

Well, yeah.  But the fact that the plain English sections were so egregious should have been a clue that the other parts that were harder to understand had problems too.  Again, these people want to  write sentences in English for a living, so they can read.  And presumably they can use the Google.

And once you have Google you aren’t living in a vacuum.  If they really want a movie contract someday they probably read news stories like, oh I don’t know, how Peter Jackson had a big lawsuit over what he was actually owed by the studio for Lord of the Rings and how Hollywood manipulates percentages.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that contracts that have anything to do with movies are known for screwing the writer.  All it takes is someone who can read and knows how to Google.   In this day and age, anyone who can’t figure out how to use Google to get a basic knowledge of industry standards is just plain stupid.

But that’s not the problem.  It isn’t really about stupidity.  It’s about the dream.  The fact is, these people didn’t want to know the contract was bad.  Most of these students probably never even read the contract before they signed it.  That’s right, they never read it.  At most they skimmed it.   

Here’s the thing.  People sign stupid contracts all the time.  And when I ask them why they signed the stupid contract, most people tell me that they didn’t know it was stupid because they never bothered to read it. 

I used to be surprised by that.  A long time ago.  When I was young and innocent.

But now I just expect it.  As do most lawyers I know.  So, rather than than berate clients after the fact, we try to take affirmative action before the fact.  We give seminars and invite clients and potential clients.  We tell them all the bad things that can be in contracts.  We try to scare them to death.  Sure, we do it to drum up business but we also do it because we love our clients and we don’t want them to sign stupid contracts without reading and understanding them. 

And that’s why Scalzi makes the very, very smart suggestion that MFA programs offer their students some training.

So, MFA writing programs, allow me to make a suggestion. Sometime before you hand over that sheepskin with the words “Master of Fine Arts” on it, for which your students may have just paid tens of thousands of dollars (or more), offer them a class on the business of the publishing industry, including an intensive look at contracts. Why? Because, Holy God, they will need it.

A very practical suggestion.  Not because it will make these students experts on contracts (god no), but because it will, hopefully, scare the shit out of them for their own good.  Because it will ruin the dream before the bad contract is ever put in front of them.  And, hopefully, the nagging little voice in their head will say, “I really should get someone to look at this.”

Here’s my non-legal advise.  If your MFA program offers a business class, take it. Whether it does or does not, when you take out your loans to cover the the $50,000 for the MFA program and the extra to cover some living expenses, decide to live on more Ramen noodles than you’d like and put some of the funds aside.  Call it your business fund.  And use it to pay a lawyer to look at your first contract. Do a little research and pick a lawyer who specializes in these kinds of contracts.  I know they can be expensive, but this is your livelihood you are screwing with.   If you are lucky, your local Bar Association may have a Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts program that can get you a discounted rate. 

And read the contract before you go to the lawyer to discuss it.

How I Balance the Budget

I know, I know.  I don’t blog about politics.  But the NYTimes has this nifty little gadget that lets you balance the federal budget.   So I did it.

First, let me say that I agree with Felix Salmon’s analysis of the budget tool -  that it makes it both too easy and too hard.  But it was hard to resist playing with it.

I also agree with Kevin Drum’s analysis of most deficit reduction plans -  that no proposal for balancing the budget can be serious if it doesn’t deal with the rising costs of Medicare over the long haul.  As Salmon and Drum point out, these costs will go up no matter what because ALL the baby boomers will be retired (and not paying in), they will ALL be aging and, thus needing more health care (thus taking out) and the cost of end of life care will continue to increase.   As Salmon points out, that effectively means that the NYTimes’ budget selection for controlling Medicare costs (a cap) will not, in the end, work.  Why?  Because when the rationing starts and all the Old People Who Vote In Great Numbers complain – well, you can guess what will happen.  And in fact, the amount budgeted might not be a realistic number based on those rising costs.

But, leaving aside that I think this is a pointless exercise, it was fun.  The goal is to close the budget gap in 2015 and in 2030 with a combination of increases to revenue and decreases in expenses. The 2015 budget shortfall is $418 billion and the projected 2030 budget shortfall is $1,355 billion.

On the expense side, I wanted to be sure to do the least harm to individual people whose lives aren’t as good as mine.  I’ve seen a number of people want to increase, for instance, the age at which SS and or medicare is received.  That’s probably fine for people like me who have a desk job but it isn’t ok for people who are in jobs that are hard on the body.  And people who weren’t as lucky as me to have healthcare their whole life may end up with big health problems earlier due to lack of care.  And finally, this economy sucks and the people being laid off who are over 60 aren’t going to get good jobs with healthcare again, no matter how hard they try.

On the other hand,  I think we spend way to much on our military industrial complex and we could be just as safe for less money. So those are cuts I want to make even without a budget crisis.

So, with that in mind I eliminated earmarks ($14 billion), reduced the nuclear arsenal and space spending ($38 billion), cut our US military presence in Europe and Asia and the size of our standing army ($49 billion) and reduced the number of troops in Iraq/Afghanistan to 30,000 by 2013 ($169 billion).  I decided I could enact malpractice reform ($13 billion) mostly to make conservatives happy but also so that the lawyers could wail with the doctors who make less money when I cap Medicare growth starting in 2013 ($562 billion). 

I like that series of cuts and most of them I would make anyway even if the budget was in balance.  My cuts would reduce our supply of nuclear warheads to 1,050, from 1,968, which seems to me quite enough to blow up the whole earth. My theory is that we only need enough missiles and military r&d to figure out how to protect ourselves and we can stop being the policeman for the world. And the cuts to the military personnel would only take it back to where it was pre-Iraq/Afghanistan. If it were up to me, I ‘d make it even smaller but that wasn’t an option.  Finally the sooner we get out of Iraq/Afghanistan the happier I’ll be. 

Of course the elimination of military personnel and the cuts in military spending mean that a lot of people are going to have to get non-military jobs.  So the economy had better pick up  which is why I didn’t want a lot of the additional taxes that are proposed – at least not right now.  I realize that most of those possible taxes wouldn’t affect most businesses, but it’s easier to pass MORE taxes when people are doing better.  I mostly want to go back to the Clinton era on estate taxes ($104 billion) and investment taxes ($46 billion)  and also on personal income taxes except that I’d keep the Bush level taxes for people making less than $250,000 ($115 billion).  I’d subject some income over $106,000 to the payroll taxes ($106 billion).   The big tax bonus is the $315 billion I get from from eliminating loopholes without lowering taxes.

Again, there were options I’d take that weren’t given.  If it were up to me, I’d eliminate the cap on the payroll tax entirely for individuals but cap the employer’s half.  That would probably allow for lower rates which would be better for the economy because it would put more cash in the pockets of people with lower income – and they would spend it. But they didn’t give me that option. 

So I solved the budget problem.   I balanced the budget using a 49% increase in revenue (i.e. taxes) and a 51% decrease in expenses (i.e. budget cuts). And other than raising the bar on the the payroll tax, I didn’t take anybody’s taxes up higher than they would have been in the 1990’s.   I think that makes me pretty moderate. 

Of course, I have my doubts.  I’ve never been sure how earmarks are a problem since they aren’t new budget items but rather the direction that already budgeted items are sent.  I believe that for every loophole closed another one will open.  And as I said above, I don’t think a cap on Medicare will work.  But these were my options so I took them and that’s why I thought I should budget for a surplus – in case the projections are wrong. 

Yes, I created a surplus.  It gives me some flexibility.  As I said, it might turn out that the projections are wrong – and if so we’ll still be in pretty good shape. Of course, I didn’t have to budget for a surplus.   I could take back all my reductions of military spending EXCEPT the reduction of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and still have a balanced budget. And if I put that spending back in and I went with President Obama’s more moderate estate tax plan plan  instead of President Clinton’s I would STILL solve the deficit. 

But I would rather cut unnecessary military spending and go back to the Clinton era on taxes and try to have a bigger surplus.  Why not give the kids a hopeful future?  That’s where I thought we were in 2000, before the era of  BIG spending and lower taxes kicked in and put us in this predicament.   Again. 

Now, who is going to make me King for a Day so I can do these things?   Here’s the link to my plan.

Squirrels …

 

Saw this on The Village Voice blog.  It made me think of my Grandma.  She used to like to watch the squirrels make fools of themselves:

The Long Song by Andrea Levy

The Long Song by Andrea Levy  may be my favorite novel of all that I’ve read this year and that is very unexpected.  It is the story of Miss July, who lived in Jamaica in the 1800s first as a slave and then as a free black.  I mostly think of slave novels as “difficult” because of the subject matter.  I also tend to think novels about the West Indian slaves tend to go overboard on the “voodoo” aspects.   I admit that I’m also sometimes suspicious that they are going to be preachy.  So I tend to not pick them up as a first choice.  Then I kick myself when they turn out to be wonderful as, for instance, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is wonderful.

This novel is funny.  Really. 

Levy writes Miss July as having a wonderful sense of humor and lets it come through in the most unexpected circumstances.  She doesn’t shy away from the horrors of slavery.  Miss July is the result of the casual rape of her mother by the overseer of Amity Plantation in Jamaica.  Miss July is casually taken away from her mother by the sister of the plantation owner, almost as a pet would be taken.  Miss July witnesses murder and other horrors.  She has children she must give up willingly and unwillingly.  And yet she is a survivor and her sense of humor is part of her survival instinct.

I really liked the structure of this novel.  The story is told from three points of view, although two points of view are from the same person and yet are different.  First, there is Miss July’s son, Thomas Kinsman, who is a publisher and who encourages his mother to write her story.  He provides the Introduction and also jumps in with a few editorial comments.  Then Miss July tells the story, writing in the third person.  But she also jumps in with first person interpolation, addressing us as “reader” and explaining the arguments she is having with her son.  It all works.

Another reason it works is that Miss July treats all of the people in her story, black or white, irreverently while, at the same time, taking her story very seriously.  By walking the fine line of caricature with all of her characters, Levy solves the problem of trying to explain the motivations of a large and diverse cast of characters.  They do what they do because they are who they are – it is as simple as that.

The one thing that is abundantly clear, though, is the corrupting influence of slavery.   There are no good characters because no one can be good in this environment.  Good men are corrupted.  Even Miss July is appalled and indignant to find that her “worth” is not more than the worth of the kitchen maid.

It might sound odd to say that a novel about the harshness of slavery is funny and that it works.  But over the past few years I’ve read a number of non-fiction books about life on the English Sugar Islands of the West Indies during the 18th and 19th century.  None of them captured the absurdity of the situation for all involved as well as this novel did.

Next Fall

According to the program notes, The Rep’s Studio Theatre production of Next Fall is only the second production of Geoffrey Nauffts’ play.  It opened off-Broadway in 2009 in a production put on by a group who wanted to “create theatre ‘for a generation that wanted to break out of convention and scream.’”   The production eventually moved to Broadway where it ran for half a year.  

If you can get there to see it, you should.  It is running at the Grandel Theatre in Grand Centre through November 14. 

The play, directed by Seth Green, opens in a nondescript room that might be a living room or a waiting room, where Holly and Brandon are sitting in chairs.  It isn’t clear at first how well Holly and Brandon know each other, or how they know Arlene the older woman with an almost Arkansas accent who joins them, bringing Holly coffee.  Eventually we figure out that the scene is set in a hospital and the thing the three people have in common is someone named “Luke” who has been involved in a terrible accident and is hanging onto life.  Luke is Arlene’s son and the friend of Holly and Brandon (who appear to know each other but not be close).  Eventually Butch, Luke’s dad who has the same twang as Arlene, shows up.  We figure out that he and Arlene are no longer married.  Finally, Adam arrives from the airport.  Greeted by Holly as “sweetie” and looking visibly nervous around Luke’s parents, it isn’t clear who Adam is.  

Through a series of flashbacks we learn about Luke and his relationship with Holly and Brandon and, especially, Adam.  Luke and Adam, it turns out, are in a long term relationship but Luke has never told his parents that he is gay.  

On simply that basis, this might be an interesting play.  The idea that Luke is dying but Adam isn’t even allowed in to see him because only “family” is allowed in raises all kinds of questions.   The same is true for heterosexual couples who aren’t married but, of course, they at least have the choice to marry.  Of course, they ALL have the choice of legal documents in anticipation of this type of situation and the lawyer in me wanted to scream “See?  You should have planned for this.”  But I digress.

If this was simply a play about the idea that you never know when life will throw you a curve ball and you should be sure to tell the people you love that you love them before it is too late, it would be a good premise for a play.

But this play is even more interesting.   The program notes say this about the playwright:

Geoffrey Nauffts grew up in a household with no religion or spirituality.  he was always fascinated by people who practiced religion, but more to the point, he was fascinated by people who had faith in a creator. The idea that there is a larger entity, a creator, a protector, who is omniscient, who guides us, perhaps punishes us, and hears our prayers is not a belief that he shares … [He] has chosen to write a play that explores the dynamic between a believer and a non-believer … [and] has chosen to make the main characters a gay couple.  All this allows him to investigate the nature of faith and generosity of spirit from a number of different interesting and dramatic perspectives.”

Boy did he. In the flashbacks we meet Luke, who is just a wonderful person.  He dropped out of law school to be an actor and he is a generous, open hearted person who knows the moment he meets Adam that it is love.  Adam is a funny, insecure hypochondriac who falls hard for Luke.  They eventually move in together. 

If the definition of a good relationship is one in which each party can disagree with each other with respect, this is a great relationship.  Sure, there are moments when each crosses the line and angers the other one but they are able to get past those moments by true contrition – which doesn’t mean changing their mind about their own position.

And what do they disagree about the most?  God and faith.  Adam is an agnostic or even perhaps an atheist.  A good person who lives a good life but has no real need for faith.  It would not be true to say that he has no patience with faith because he does show infinite patience with Luke who has abundant faith. 

Luke is a Christian.   But Nauffts didn’t make him just a generalized Christian, he made him an ultra-conservative type of Christian.  Luke doesn’t just pray quietly before every meal, he truly and deeply believes in heaven, hell, sin and the rapture.  He is also a true Christian in the sense that he doesn’t judge those who aren’t like him.  He is also not particularly evangelical.  He wishes that Adam would accept Jesus Christ because then Adam would go to heaven when he dies but he understands that he can’t force Adam to any kind of belief.  It is, in fact, Adam who usually brings up the”religion issue” and argues with Luke in a very patient rational way. 

Adam’s arguments make complete rational sense.  He lays out for all to see the absurdities of some of Luke’s beliefs.  But it never matters.  Luke truly believes and he never stops believing.  And we the audience believe that he will never stop believing. 

And so at the end when Adam can tell Luke’s obnoxious right wing racist homophobic “Christian” dad, who is having a hard time dealing with pulling the plug on Luke, that Luke firmly believed that he was going to a better place, we know Adam is telling a truth even if it isn’t the truth that Adam believes. 

All of this sounds intense and sad and full of argument and rage.  But this is a funny play.  There are laugh out loud moments.  Each of the characters seem very real.  Butch may be the closest to a stereotype but we are left in no doubt that he loved his son.  Arlene may be more forgiving than Butch but she is still tied into the same religious belief system.  Holly believes as Adam does but she never wants to rock the boat.  And Brandon?  Brandon is the most enigmatic of characters.  Like Luke he is a gay Christian but his quiet exterior hides a great deal more self hate than Luke.  In one scene it becomes clear that Brandon (who is only attracted to black men and, hence, not to Luke) has fallen out with Luke not because Luke hooked up with Adam but because Luke fell in love with Adam.  Brandon understands the occasional “sinful act” but he cannot condone the wrong kind of love.  

And yet even Brandon seems a bit redeemed by the end . 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the wonderful cast.  Each and every one was perfect in their role.  Susan Greenhill, as Arlene, and Colin Hanlin, as Luke, were outstanding.  It’s rare that I completely forget that a stage actor is an actor, but throughout the whole play I totally believed they were their characters.

But mostly I liked the play itself.  The contrast between the writing of this play, which is tight and directed and focused with deeply drawn characters, and the writing of High which seemed to be all over the place, was extreme.  I can see why this play moved to Broadway and had a nice run there.  It is playing in The Studio Rep because … well, probably because scenes of homosexual men showing affection for each other are still considered too much for the mainstage at the Rep.  It’s a shame, because this play is 100 times better than High. 

We’re Still Fighting the Civil War Here in Missouri

The New York Times (subs. req.) is blogging the Civil War and it’s pretty cool.  Lincoln was just elected yesterday. Today they put up a time line for 1861 that ends with the imposition of martial law in the City of St. Louis. There is a link to a Times article on the actual Order of General Halleck.  It is hard to imagine this city living under martial law, but it was. 

We’re still living with the effects of events that led up to the imposition of martial law.  In March 1861, the Missouri legislature passed the so-called “St. Louis Police Bill”,  a bill to take the police force of the City of St. Louis away from the City and give control of it to the State.  They’ve never given it back.   That’s right, after all these years, 149 years,  they still haven’t given it back.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize that St. Louis was generally a pro-Union city in the midst of a state that was Southern in its sympathies,” says Robert Archibald, president of the Missouri History Museum. “The St. Louis police department constituted the largest quasi-military organization in the state, and [the police bill] was a Civil War measure passed by people who wanted to control it as part of the Civil War.”

Yes, that’s right.  Even back then the City of St. Louis was more progressive than the rest of the state.  And even back then the rest of the state punished us for that.

Here’s what one of St. Louis’ representatives said at the time:

“It was one of the most infamous pieces of legislation ever attempted to be inflicted. Our revolutionary fathers threw off the yoke of Great Britain on the very grounds now pursued by this legislature toward St. Louis, which attempts to deprive the people of their right to representation—to appoint foreign officers to preside over them—to take away from them their rights to franchise, to pension hirelings as officers upon them, and to impose taxes to support them without that consent. This Legislature [will] yet see whether the spirit of American freemen has yet died out in the breasts of the citizens of St. Louis.”

His tirade did no good.   But taking away our police drove a wedge between St. Louis and the rest of the state that still is there.

“There continues to be a split between St. Louis and the rest of the state, and in historical terms, I suspect it has its roots in the Civil War,” Archibald says. “I think the lack of a close relationship stems more from the war than from the typical urban-rural split that you see in other states.”

You bet there is a wedge.  Bill McClellan, columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has even called for St. Louis to secede from Missouri and join Illinois, becoming “West East St. Louis”.  Tongue in cheek that might be, but still tempting.   

I bet Illinois would let us have our own police.

Music is Music

I’ve been reading Listen to This, the new book by Alex Ross, classical music critic for The New Yorker.  He describes getting his first iPod and loading all of his CDs onto it and then putting it on shuffle. 

The little machine went crashing through barriers of style in ways that changed how I listened.  One day it jumped from the furious crescendo of “Dance of the Earth,” ending Part I of The Rite of Spring, into the hot jam of Louis Armstrong‘s “West End Blues".  The first became a gigantic upbeat to the second.  On the iPod, music is freed from all fatuous self-definitions and delusions of significance.  There are no record jackets depicting bombastic Alpine scenes or celebrity conductors with a  family resemblance to Rudolf Hess.  Instead, as Berg once remarked to Gershwin, music is music.

I resisted putting very much classical music on my iPod for a long time but I eventually did it and I also often let the iPod shuffle from Grieg to Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen to Benny Goodman.  Music is music.