Category: News

Sometimes you’ve got to get dirty before you can get clean. The soap world may be a daily part of millions of lives around the world, but behind the gripping plot lines and much loved characters, lies a secret world of off-screen politics, competitive courting, cliquey casts and cynical producers. Ahead of a new book dishing the dirt on this cutthroat world from one of soap’s biggest stars, Victoria Rowell, we thought we’d tease you with a few tasty secrets about the soap world. Be warned these secrets come straight from the inside and will shock and surprise in equal measure…

5) Sleeping with the Costume Designer

We’ve all heard tales of colleagues who slept with their bosses to get that promotion, and rightly or wrongly, we usually decide to dismiss them as hearsay. Well, it seems that in the soap world competitive courting is not only a reality, but goes as far as the costume designers on set.

Victoria Rowell assures us that on one show she worked on (which shall remain mysteriously unnamed) competitive courting of the costume designer, presumably to secure the best costumes on set, was actively engaged in by up to 30 cast members at a time. It may come as a surprise, but costume designers – responsible for the presentation of actors and actresses – are part of an off-screen crew that wields an enormous amount of power behind the scenes. Exact figures for how many successfully closed their advances are not known – but what is obvious is that the world of soap can be a seedy place, where doing the nasty with the right person is sometimes what it takes to clamber up that greasy pole.

4) African American Storylines Come Out in Summertime

There are various powerful and surprising forces at work behind the scenes of your favorite soaps, some of which might just make you double-take. One of the less well known secrets outside the industry is that storylines involving African American characters come to the fore, or get ‘pumped up’, during the summer months. Seems weird, so why is this?

To cut a long story short, it seems a few producers and scriptwriters appear to still be taking the tired and downright offensive notion that only African Americans are at home during the summer as true. Believing everyone except African Americans would have jetted off on holiday, or be out at their holiday home boating, these producers attempt to cynically target those who they feel will be their core viewers during this period. The whole idea is rubbish, of course, but it shows an uglier side of the ratings war and hints at some deep lying problems at the heart of the soap world.

3) Shhh… Don’t Tell Anyone: Soaps are Dying

Hush, hush… don’t tell anyone – especially your mom. Soaps are, apparently ‘dying’. Yes, you heard it here first, courtesy of Victoria Rowell. Well maybe not first, but it is a commonly accepted fact in the soap world, and a little known one outside it.

Once upon a time there was real life, and then there was ‘reel’ life. People who lived in real life liked watching people who lived on ‘reel’ life, because it seemed much more interesting and rewarding. They could live out their dreams vicariously, or experience their worst fears without bearing the consequences: essentially they could emotionally invest in soaps in a way they couldn’t in real life.

Today soaps are falling like flies and there are a variety of reasons. Writers have sacrificed the successful formula of a heightened version of real life, for endless headline grabbing plots of murder, incest, divorce and violence – effectively numbing their viewers into submission. As a result soaps have become more costly to make, with less viewers, making them an unattractive production. People have turned to other forms of pop entertainment: blogging and online gossip pages have stolen people’s attention, and in many ways, Facebook and Twitter have helped turn our own social lives into something closer to soap operas. The bottom line is: why watch soaps when your own life can be one?

2) Black Writers Are Held Back

The vast majority of the viewers for the ever-popular The Young and the Restless are African American, a fact that is only supported by the show’s massive popularity in the Caribbean. Many of its most prominent actors and actresses, as well as storylines, involve African Americans – yet there has, however, never been a black writer. Victoria Rowell feels this is indicative of a secret conspiracy that lies behind the soap world and the writers and producers who control it, something that mirrors the dark social reality at the heart of America.

Victoria Rowell was herself asked to write for the show briefly, but declined, turning down the chance to become the first ever African American writer for the show. She feels that whereas the soap establishment is happy to have black actors and run storylines around African American communities, the real power and controlling influence is held by whites behind the scenes, just like political reality in America. It seems that the secret heart of the soap world resembles real life in a darker, more disturbing way than we might ever have imagined.

1) Victoria Rowell is Blackballed

Victoria Rowell is one of the nation’s most loved stars, famed for playing the vivacious Drucilla Winters in The Young and the Restless, and Dr. Amanda Bentley in the cult TV show Diagnosis: Murder. But a little known secret is that she is being held back from garnering the applause she deserves by soap colleagues who resent her and constantly shut her out from the all important pre-nomination list for the Emmy awards.

Victoria says this is symptomatic of the cutthroat, boot-licking world that soap really is behind the scenes, and puts it down to the fact she doesn’t fraternize with the right people. Backstage politics, cliquey casts and a crew who hold an enormous amount of power – from costumes, to filming – all play a huge part in deciding exactly who gets put up for what nomination. And although it might shock and upset you to realize that all too often acting prowess and artistic ability take a backstage to off-screen politics, yet again we see how closely soap mirrors real life: both on-stage and off-screen, and in a way we might find highly uncomfortable.

For more tasty secrets from Victoria, check out her new book Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva.

Having a bit of chocolate when you’re down is something just about everyone has done at some point in their life. But a new study shows that those people who demonstrate signs of depression tend to eat 50% more chocolate than those who don’t.

The study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine looked at 931 men and women, none of whom were taking antidepressants. Researchers asked them how much chocolate they consumed on a regular basis and also measured their level of depression.

What they found was that the subjects who were diagnosed with depression were eating an average of 8.4 servings of chocolate each month, while those who were not depressed at only 5.4 servings per month. And those demonstrating the highest levels of depression consumed around 11.8 servings of chocolate per month.

The researchers also tested depressed subjects who were on antidepressants at the time and found that they ate the same amount as those who were not on medication.

In spite of the stereotype of the sad woman who craves chocolate, the study found that gender was not an issue.

Also, of the foods included in the study — fish, coffee, caffeine, fruits and vegetables — researchers only saw a difference between depressed and non-depressed subjects when it came to chocolate consumption.

Researchers say more study is needed to pinpoint the reason for the link between chocolate in depression, saying it could be anything from a form of self-medicating to an actual cause of depression.

One expert who wasn’t part of the study, Dr. Lorrin Loran of Stanford University, has this to say:

It is available, cheap, does not lose its pleasure-inducing quality with repeated use, does not require relating to other people and is culturally approved as a source of legitimate pleasure, he said.

‘I strongly doubt that chocolate either induces depression or interferes with recovery from depression,’ Koran said. ‘If either idea were true, this would long ago have become obvious given the ubiquitous use of the substance over the last 500 years.’

Chocolate a Sweet Pick-Me-Up for the Depressed [U.S. News & World Report]

Typically the closing of normal business hours in Europe is kind of bullish for the currency and for US stocks, as all the fears over Greece and the PIIGS are put to rest for the night.

But not tonight.

The euro, as you can see, is making brand new lows. Meanwhile the Dow — which had bounced off its lows — is down over 160.

From Finviz.com:

Join the conversation about this story »

by John Passacantando

There is a silver lining to the turmoil over the Senate climate bill.Photo: Pranav Singh via FlickrOver the weekend we got the news that three grim-faced men weren’t going to be able to help on global warming.  The only Republican supporter of the not-yet-unveiled-but-widely-described Senate climate bill, Lindsey Graham, had a new demand.  Not only did he insist that the bill subsidize the building of nuclear power plants and open up our coasts to oil drilling—conditions since met by the White House—he wanted the Democrats to hold off immigration reform so it wouldn’t hurt some Republicans running for Senate.  It’s rumored that he also wanted Caps tickets for the final game on Wednesday evening and a guarantee from the White House that they would beat the Canadiens.

Weird. But I felt happy.  Which is weirder still. I’ve worked for almost 20 years to stop global warming, and I feel joy when the Senate global warming bill begins to unravel.  How did we get here?

The bill that Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.)—aka KGL—keep threatening to introduce is reputed to be more of a polluters’ bill than an environmental bill. Massive new subsidies for the coal, oil, and gas industries, a new trading scheme for Wall Street (this time in derivatives of carbon pollution instead of mortgages), promised CO2 emissions reductions primarily from ungovernable “offsets” in the developing world, and preemption over state efforts to stop global warming or even the EPA’s recently Supreme Court–granted right to do the same.

There are smart people who say that we need a bill on global warming, any bill, and the rest of the world will start moving too.  But it seems to me that if we pass a fake bill, it won’t be a little first step but rather the last step.  And the Chinese, Indians, and Brazilians are unlikely to be so ignorant as to watch the Senate pass a fake bill and turn around and make real emissions reductions in their own economies.

But figuring this out isn’t my job. I didn’t join the environmental movement to try and become a master dealmaker. Let’s leave that to the politicians and their staffs. I’m more interested in the people building a powerful swell of public support that politicians eventually have to follow.  Democracy done right means politicians listen to the people, not the coal companies or the oil companies or Goldman Sachs.

I come from the American tradition that liberated itself from a corrupt king and that now has to liberate itself from corrupt corporate oligarchs.  To do that, we’ll have to organize in every corner of this fair land and peel the grip of the polluters off the levers of power.  But there is one thing we must do first.  The original role of the environmental community is to tell the truth.  Our role is not to design ever more complex legislative schemes that enrich the oligarchs and confuse the public.  The truth is that global warming is bearing down on us and we are not a step closer to solving it than we were 40 years ago.

And yet there is something that I find hopeful, an alternative bill, though the media pretends it isn’t there.

The media has been focused on the three men who have been talking about a bill for months while ignoring two women, Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), who have actually introduced a bill, the CLEAR Act (Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal Act). With simple, elegant architecture, it auctions the right to pollute to the importers, drillers, and miners of carbon-based fuels that come into the economy.  These costs get passed along to you and me, working like a tax and increasing the price of carbon-based energy so we use less. That’s a good thing. And then it takes most of that revenue and gives a cash payment, every year, to everyone with a Social Security number.

Top Republican pollster Glen Bolger from Public Opinion Strategies recently polled 1,000 likely voters in five politically moderate to conservative states about their views on climate legislation. According to Bolger, “The CLEAR Act from Cantwell and Collins has the best chance of getting more votes over party lines because people like the concept of less government involvement [and a] tax-cuts-style refund back to the people.” Maybe this bill is a better way to get Republican support than to start giving companies the right to drill off our beaches.

Related Links:

Senate Dem leader vows action on both climate and immigration

Can good climate legislation pass via reconciliation? [WITH TEACUP PIGS]

Kerry says climate bill is not dead

Filed under: Government/Legal, Safety, Motorcycle

In a preliminary report, the Governors Highway Safety Association recently indicated a 10% drop in motorcycle related fatalities around the U.S. in 2009. This decline marks the first such improvement in over a decade as deaths have been on the rise consistently from 1997 onward.

Are we really seeing improvement in motorcycle safety, equipment and riding ability? Likely not. As the old saying goes, numbers don’t lie, and the drop in fatal injury’s comes on the heels of the most extreme decline in motorcycle sales in recent history, which no doubt helped put the brakes on the awful upward trend.

The report goes on to attribute everything from the economy and aging baby boomers to increased training efforts from the Motorcycle Safety Foundation from coast-to-coast. Oh yeah, and we almost forgot the bad weather! Although it may seem that the GHSA can’t seem to pick a clear cut reason for the drop, we can only hope history will not repeat itself in this instance, allowing this positive trend to continue. To see the full report and suggestions for increased safety, hit the jump for the release.

[Source: Hell For Leather]

Continue reading First drop in motorcycle related deaths in a decade, are we really any safer?

First drop in motorcycle related deaths in a decade, are we really any safer? originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[JURIST] The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in Monsanto Company v. Geertson Seed Farms on what conditions must be met to obtain a nationwide injunction prohibiting the planting of genetically engineered crops. The case arose over an injunction against the planting of Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready alfalfa,” pending an environmental impact statement. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) plaintiffs are specially exempt from the requirement of showing a likelihood of irreparable harm to obtain an injunction, affirming the nationwide injunction. Counsel for the petitioners argued that the district court, “short-circuited the requisite inquiry into the likelihood of reparable – irreparable harm, because they reasoned that the agency was going to get into this anyway in the course of preparing its environmental impact statement.” Counsel for respondents argued:In our view Petitioners lack standing to bring this case to this Court. By failing to challenge the lawfulness of the deregulation vacatur either in the Ninth Circuit or in this Court, Petitioners have an insurmountable redressability problem. They cannot get the practical relief they seek even in the event that this Court vacates or narrows the injunction.The case is being closely followed by environmental and industry groups.

According to a report in Tuesday’s San Francisco Chronicle, Giants catching prospect Buster Posey(notes) could arrive a bit sooner than we’d originally anticipated, regardless of his arbitration clock. Here’s the scoop from Henry Schulman:

One team official said fans likely will not see Posey in San Francisco this weekend or even in Florida next week. However, the brass is keeping close tabs on Posey as the Giants’ offense regresses.

The 2008 first-round draft pick is catching and playing first base at Triple-A Fresno at a time when Giants catcher Bengie Molina(notes) and first baseman Aubrey Huff(notes) are not producing. One does not need binoculars to see the potential benefit of Posey as a backup at each position.

Molina is actually batting .308 at the moment, although he’s just 3-for-23 over his last seven games. Huff is hitting .239, which is almost dead-on his lifetime April average (.243). Neither player is doing anything unexpected.

Meanwhile, Posey is hitting .353/.438/.456 at Fresno. He only has four extra-base hits, though, so it’s not as if he’s playing home run derby in the PCL, a traditionally hitter-friendly league. As Schulman mentions, "reports on the ground say [Posey] is not driving the ball." Buster was a .325/.416/.531 hitter across two levels in 2009, however, and he hit 18 homers with 31 doubles in 497 plate appearances. 

I’d still rate Carlos Santana(notes) ahead of Posey for 2010 fantasy purposes, but it’s beginning to sound as if Buster will win the race to the big leagues.

His grown-up name, just for the record, is "Gerald Demp Posey III." Not quite as creepy as Larry Wayne Jones Jr., but close. 

Programming note: This week’s Closing Thoughts has been delayed, due to completely foreseeable circumstances that we nonetheless failed to adequately plan for. Here’s the incredibly short version: Kerry Wood(notes) is progressing, Chad Qualls(notes) is recovering, Brad Lidge(notes) is returning, Neftali Feliz(notes) is stumbling, Frank Francisco(notes) is improving, the O’s got nothin’, and Octavio Dotel(notes) has been awful (in keeping with team tradition).

—

Photo via AP Images 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will take his push to move financial reform legislation back to the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, after failing to get the numbers he needed during a vote late Monday. In the meantime, bi-partisan negotiations spearheaded by Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL) continue on Capitol Hill. Senator Shelby tells Fox News, “The next 36 to 48 hours are crucial.” As lawmakers work to hammer out a compromise, some conservatives are voicing concerns about proposed language they see as a threat to consumer privacy.

As it stands now, a provision in the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 calls for the creation of the Office of Financial Research (OFR). The agency – which will not answer to Congress, the President or the Treasury – will be authorized to collect financial data on a wide range of transactions. Critics worry that means trouble for consumer privacy. According to Karl Rove, “They are going to have the capacity to go through everybody’s brokerage account and checking account and everybody’s credit card and financial transactions and sweep that information and then analyze it.” Senator Shelby says the more the American people learn about the “intrusive” provisions, the more they will mobilize against it. “I think the American people are now thinking, ‘We just don’t have that level of trust in the government,’” James Gattuso of the Heritage Foundation says, adding, “We don’t want to give you that power to do something even though you promised that you won’t do it.”

Supporters of the legislation say the worries are overblown, partisan scare tactics. David Min, with the Center for American Progress, says the provision is more about keeping an eye on big business, not average American citizens. “[Regulators] would be looking at the firms themselves, the lenders – not the borrowers,” Min says. He notes that privacy advocates have no problem with the proposed language, and no one is planning to pry into your debit card activity. “If that was the case consumer folks and the ACLU would be all over this,” Min argues, adding, “Those guys are very sensitive to this stuff and the fact that they are on board with this to me suggests that there’s nowhere close to that type of intrusion.”

A 69-year-old woman in Frisco, Texas, now has a pile of rubble to call home after a bulldozer operator screwed up and leveled her house instead of the one across the street that was supposed to be demolished.

The house across the street had been slated for demo after repeated violations including high grass and weeds, outside storage, junked vehicles and failure to secure the structure. That homeowner had been notified in January of the need to repair or face demolition.

Last week, the demo company got the permit to raze that house and notified the utilities to cut service.

And then they flattened the wrong home.

“I don’t have the words to say,” explained the wronged homeowner, whose family had lived in the house for 47 years. “I just want this house put back together… I think I need a lawyer.”

She says that she has been made offers of $5,000 or a new home.

Like the house that was supposed to be demolished, this house had been given a warning about violations at a recent hearing. The homeowner promised to make repairs by July 15, but that might be a little difficult now.

Lucky for her, a City Council rep says the homeowner can file for an extension.

Home totaled in mix-up [WFAA.com]

Thanks to Kris for the tip!

We’ve got some bad news, guys. It seems the BioShock 2 DLC won’t be coming this week after all.

(This guest post comes courtesy of a pseudonymous natural gas trader)

The United States Gas Economy is simple: Supply-Demand=Storage.  Every day of the year.

The EIA releases an aggregated survey-based estimate of US natural gas storage weekly – produced from submissions of form EIA-912 by storage and pipeline operators.  This is an original data source from which our understanding of current US storage, and therefore the supply/demand balance, is predicated.  This is why this weekly number garners the attention that it does: it is, in large measure, the genesis of nearly any understanding of the US Natural Gas market.  Much has been made of the burgeoning “balancing item” in EIA data; a favorite of the “gas is in decline, damn it” crowd.  The “balancing item” is a plug figure enlisted by the EIA to balance their supply estimates with their demand estimates as they then both relate to…weekly storage data.  In other words, a popular argument is EIA 914 is materially overstating production because we would actually have significantly higher storage inventories if EIA 914 estimates were correct.

Storage data is not in question.  Is it free from errors?  Not a chance.  Are they huge?  Could be.  I am not warrantying them in any manner.  But, I am not aware of any current challenge to storage data and it is not in any way being questioned by Thursday’s release of revisions to EIA 914 data.  This is important.

If storage data is not in question, meaning, there is no challenge that current NG inventories sit at 1,829 Bcf, then whatever revisions are made to production data in EIA-914 will necessarily result in commensurate downward revisions to demand estimates.  It does not, in any way, alter our understanding of the supply/demand balance, it simply shifts the legs that constitute the balance.  Any shift we find on Thursday will be important.  If we see a decline in production, principal deductions will be that production was more sensitive to the largest abandonment of gas rigs in the history of mankind and that demand was more sensitive to the greatest liquidity-driven recession in the history of mankind.  This will not require an extended walk with reasoning should it be called upon.  Some would argue it makes for a more realistic script.

Back to the 1,829 Bcf and April 16, 2010.  This proves to be the highest level of NG inventories for this time of the year; it is higher than last year by roughly 95 Bcf.   This is interesting to some, as we did see a record draw for Dec 1 –  Feb 28 this past winter – largely driven (this is becoming better understood with each storage report this spring) by marvelous winter events (research the Arctic Oscillation: you’ll find grown scientists insisting upon a -4.5 sigma event this past winter).  DFW got a foot of snow in mid Feb.  Washington’s Dulles got 42 inches of snow, the entire accumulation from the previous 4 years, in 6 February days.  The 2.1 Tcf pull from storage Dec 1 – Feb 28 was the subject of considerable conversation as it became forecasted by mid Feb and realized into early March.  How much was due to not only the severity of the cold, but the location of the cold?  Shifts in demand are not uniform across the country for a given drop in temperature.  Answers not found through some healthy mixture of hard-nosed analysis and incantation would be found through time: spring would deliver some clarity.

March registered a net draw of 45 Bcf.  This is followed by a current estimate for a net build between 290 and 305 Bcf for April.  March is a record-low draw; April will prove to be a record-high build.  While temperatures were very mild (both March and April looking to be the 2nd warmest over the past 5 years), when adjusting for weather, given the storage result we have for the last 5 weeks it becomes difficult to husband the storage results from the winter (through Apr 16 – a build of 214 Bcf, the largest on record, beating last year’s record result for the same period (days 71 – 106 of the year) of a build of 79 Bcf).   Further, it strongly suggests that winter storage results were not driven by the material tightening of the supply/demand balance but rather the idiosyncratic matrix of temperature and place this past winter.

This is not a call on price.  There is healthy doubt swirling around the idea that shale gas has changed exploration and production into a manufacturing process.  But the key element that directly influences price – the supply/demand dynamic, a.k.a. storage – will not be under review on Thursday with the release of revisions to EIA 914.   We are likely to simply learn that production and demand were reasonably more responsive to the historical elements that have driven them since Jan 2009.  Given the fact that until last week we hadn’t seen a decline in gas rigs since Christmas, mounting the largest net add to gas rigs over a four-month period in Baker Hughes gas-rig-data history, the potential for a more responsive production data set to changes in rig counts doesn’t immediately wax bullishly.

Join the conversation about this story »

Shing-Tung Yau explains how he discovered the hidden dimensions of string theory.

Bravo is now casting for its next breakout reality series — and instead of well-to-do and temperamental Housewives, this time the cable network is on the hunt for aspiring songwriters.

Bravo’s Hitmakers is the branchild of a platinum-selling songwriting collective called The Writing Camp. Formed in 2007, the group is comprised of Evan “Kidd” Bogart, Erika Nuri, and David “DQ” Quiñones, who have penned hits for Beyonce (“Halo”) and Brandy (“Right Here (Departed),” and a bevy of other hits.

Open casting calls will be held in cities across the country beginning this weekend. Visit Hitmakers.com for more information…..

No premiere date has been set.

In Chicago on Tuesday, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel tells the Chicago press corps, ‘You guys gotta start drinking decaf,’ after reporters asked him about his admission last week that one day he want to be Chicago mayor. Below, my Sun-Times colleagues report on Emanuel at the Richard J. Daley Global Cities Forum at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

BY ABDON M. PALLASCH AND FRAN SPIELMAN
Chicago Sun-Times Staff Reporters
CHICAGO–President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel tried to tamp down talk about him running for Mayor of Chicago as he appeared Tuesday at the Richard J. Daley annual Global Cities Forum at UIC.

At the same time, Emanuel gave what might be construed as a window into how he would govern as mayor, advocating a regional approach, cooperating with suburbs to tackle problems. Emanuel shared the stage with mayors of Paris and Philadelphia.

“Emanuel has recently expressed an interest in being mayor of the city of Chicago AFTER Mayor Daley steps down,” moderator Judy Woodruff said. “But the consensus is that before that happens he’s going to have to get some real experience.”

As laughter broke out, Emanuel said, “I’m smiling.”

When reporters pressed him on the issue, Emanuel told them to calm down, implying it was their questions — not his statement of interest in running for mayor on Charlie Rose’ national talk show last week — driving the discussion.

“You know we have our home here,” Emanuel said, trying to beg off questions. “I can’t wait. At some point in the future… Don’t over-interpret anything. Don’t everybody get excited. At some point, when we come back, which is always our goal, which is why we rented the house. … You guys are way too excited. You guys gotta start drinking decaf.”

for the rest of the story…

Despite Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) recent withdrawal from the climate legislation process, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is telling reporters that the Environmental Protection Agency will soon begin analyzing the economic impact of the climate bill he and Graham helped craft.

“We are sending the bill to be modeled now with Lindsey Graham’s consent,” the Democratic senator told reporters. […]

The EPA analysis of their bill could take more than a month to complete and legislation could not be queued up for a full Senate debate until the results are disseminated.

That would put the climate bill on the Senate floor in June at the earliest, but more likely in July. But that assumes that political divisions, of which there are many in addition to Graham’s concerns, get resolved.

Leave it to the crunchy granola types in California to rain on the Happy Meal parade. County officials in Silicon Valley want to outlaw toys from the famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) McDonald’s kids meals. That way, children won’t want them as much, and they won’t be as fat. Or so the thinking goes. Santa Clara County is proposing a ban on toys in any restaurant meal with more than 485 calories, more than 600 milligrams of salt or high sugar or fat content, according to the Los Angeles Times. If the proposal passes, it won’t affect much—there are only about a dozen fast-food restaurants within the county’s jurisdiction. But its broader implications, and its first-of-a-kind status, have the California Restaurant Association and others in a tizzy about government interference in action-figure and mini-stuffed-animal distribution. For Hollywood studios, it would be disastrous if they couldn’t link their Ice Ages, Shreks and Alvin and the Chipmunks with the caloric, pint-sized meals. Even though Disney got out of that business when it didn’t renew its long-term McDonald’s deal, other movie makers rushed to fill the void, keeping the McD’s calendar packed with entertainment promotions. We’ll keep an eye on the situation, so check back for the vote.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley