David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. "Somewhere there's a war and sometimes there's art" *
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The spokespresidents for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Writers Guild of America – Nick Counter and Patric Verrone, respectively – have agreed today to settle their differences in a winner-take-all duel with pistols.
The event will take place at high noon on Jan. 1, 2008 on the trolley tracks by the fountain at the Grove, at Third and Fairfax. As per the agreement, the surviving executive will then announce that all of his side’s requests have been summarily accepted by the other, newly leaderless bargaining party.
Both sides issued statements late this afternoon announcing the arrangement.
AMPTP’s release read, “The child-abducting crackheads of the Writers Guild of America have agreed, once and for all, to settle its differences with the God-fearing patriots of AMPTP in a winner-takes-all grudge match involving dueling pistols which will be selected by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and held at a neutral site guarded by the private protection agency Wackenhut. Once the desiccated, abhorrent corpse of Mr. Verrone is removed by CDC officials in Hazmat suits and Mr. Counter performs the victory lap so obviously due him, writers will return to work, where they will be chained to their laptops until they manage to produce something that will prove worthy of the generous earnings the AMPTP has always granted them.”
WGA countered (so to speak), “Eight-time Olympic biathlon gold medalist Patric Verrone will engage in mortal combat with Nick Counter, a portly, short-of-breath windbag with an eye-dominance problem, for the good of all mankind. After Verrone’s inevitable triumph, the shackles will fall from the extremities of writers and creators of uplifting and inspirational content everywhere; producers will rend their garments and curse the day they became obscenely wealthy and all right-thinking people will once again turn on their televisions and queue up at the multiplexes, secure in the knowledge that they are being treated to the finest scripted entertainment the world has to offer.”
Together, AMPTP and the WGA issued a joint statement: “We anticipate moving forward to reach an agreement in a spirit of gritted-teeth unity and tense and awkward silence.”
The duel will be available on Pay-Per-View; proceeds will be evenly divided between the Les Moonves/Ronald McDonald Home for Impoverished Producers and The WGA Private Gym and Healthy Food Fund for Emaciated Writers.
* -- Wilco