Maddie and I arrived at the CBS lot in Studio City at 5:30am for the 6 a.m. picket…and we were the only ones there, if you don’t count the news crew from KABC. The newsbabe asked me if I wanted to be interviewed for her live report and I declined. I figured I could only get myself in trouble.
Other writers started showing up around 6 and picket signs were delivered at about 6:15. We walked for three hours straight, back-and-forth in fr0nt of the CBS studio gates. I chatted with a few folks for a bit, but mostly Maddie and I just walked in circles and talked amongst ourselves. She thought the writers we were way too polite to people coming and going to the studio and that we should have been causing more of a ruckus. There was one actor who joined the picket line — Julie Bowen from BOSTON LEGAL (that’s her in the striped shirt holding the SAG in Solidarity sign behind my daughter) but that was it for celebrity sightings. 
We left around 9:30 and headed straight to Subway for an unhealthy breakfast. I must have walked several miles today. My feet and back are killing me, but I figure that picketing is going to be a great way for me to lose some weight and help my fellow writers at the same time.
I’ll be back on the line tomorrow.
UPDATE: You can see Maddie and I picketing on KABC.
Lee, your daughter has the right idea. Writers are way too polite to management in this strike. Go get some unionized longshoremen or coal miners to train you in the black art of labor unrest.
Seriously, at four cents per CD, you can’t even afford to buy bricks to toss at the boss’s limousine as he eats your lunch on the way to the bank.
Patrick Goldstein gets it right in today’s L.A. Times. Here’s his lead:
As the strike enters its second week with the two sides as far apart as ever, it’s hard not to take the writers’ side. I’m not sure I’d go as far as Paul Haggis, who called the dispute “another example of massive corporate greed.” But he’s on the right track. When Tom Freston was fired from Viacom in 2006 he received $60 million in severance pay, more than all of the DVD residuals paid to WGA members that year.