While we recognize that even though the above video is titled "Writers Strike Dance," it may not, in fact, be the work of a scribe who's using his free time during the work stoppage to pursue more kinetic creative endeavors, we nonetheless feel compelled to share it with you this morning. If nothing else, his unselfconscious gyrations can serve as an inspiration to othewise introverted writers walking the picket line to have the courage to spice up their already-stale sidewalk routines, bringing an energy level sure to intimidate any motorist with thoughts of adding a red-shirted hood ornament to his SUV.

As the WGA strike enters Day Two and the writers once again take their places at the entrances of the studio lots with rewritten picket signs and punched-up chants in hand, we embark upon a Tuesday morning round-up of the news:

· Weekend Update commentator Roger A. Trivanti offered some compelling rhetoric on behalf of his fellow producers, but none quite crystallized the dispute so much as his closing wishes that "all you writers get ass cancer and die."
· This seems fitting for the first day of the strike: Remember the Saddest Bear in Los Angeles, bike-chained to a chair outside a cookie store in the Glendale Galleria? Well, Metroblogging LA found his Sad Bear Soulmate in Hollywood. Sigh.
· We can only hope legions of idle writers don't pick up a nasty fermented-poo-huffing habit.
· But wait! All hope is not lost: The birth of an octobaby in India—possibly the living embodiment of Vishnu—has got to be a good sign, right?
· A palate cleanser: Extra employs cutting-edge aging software to add 25 years to Britney Spears's face. (We think the "after" picture is the one on the right.)

While Jay Leno's gift of Krispy Kremes (and his accompanying public declaration that "without them I'm not funny. I'm a dead man without them.") to the writers striking outside NBC's headquarters this morning probably seemed a warm expression of solidarity at the time, the bar for talk-show host generosity was quickly set a little bit higher by a beloved peer. Tomorrow, if Leno shows up with only another three boxes of the treats as a show of support, he may to endure the passive-aggressive grumbling of an underwhelmed picketer claiming, "I heard that Jon Stewart brought his writers donuts filled with hundred-dollar bills yesterday. Isn't he on basic cable? Any-way, these Boston Cremes are just as delicious. MMMMmm, yum!" [Franklin Ave]

At least one hard-to-please critic at Paramount feels let down by the WGA picketers' early attempts at creating some megaphone-enhanced excitement within the non-striking population at the Melrose lot: "The chanting has begun. It's already getting old. I love a good strike as much as the next person but you would think writers could come up with better chants than the standard "What do we want?... When do we want it?.." Lame."

We never expected the strike to yield its first casualty so quickly, but according to local news station KABC 7, a picketer was struck earlier this morning by a driver we'll have to assume wasn't particularly sympathetic to the Writers Guild cause. ("The guy basically said, 'Get the 'F' out of the way, and then hit the gas and just plowed into this guy," said an eyewitness to the incident.) The above footage from KABC's segment doesn't contain video of the incident, but does have a fairly unsettling image of the victim's sneaker lodged beneath the tire of the vehicular strike-breaking weapon. Beware, WGA members: it seems that not everyone is following the nonconfrontational approach to dealing with picketers urged by some of the Companies.

People showing up to work at the Fox lot this morning received this cheery memo from the Executive Vice President of Production, helpfully reminding employees that they should be making "appropriate arrangements" (i.e., plans for a career change, the selling of personal effects/internal organs for rent/mortgage money) in the event that the company decides to discontinue their employment during the strike: "The production you are working on may come to completion, or because your particular skills may no longer be needed, you may not be picked up for another week or day (whichever is applicable) under your deal memo (if applicable). Therefore your work on the production may come to an end. Although we are not required by law to provide this notice, we wanted to give you as much notice as possible so that you can make appropriate arrangements."

By the time you read these words, the striking members of the WGA will have already taken their positions at the entrances of every studio lot in the city, hoping that the inspiring sight of scores of red-shirted, spindly armed picketers (unless some Teamsters decided to join the first-day mix and add some muscle to the walkout) toting eye-catching signs will inspire at least a view of their peers to turn their cars around and head home in solidarity. We begin, as has been our custom, with a round-up of strikes news, leading off with the dueling™ WGA and AMPTP statements explaining why yesterday's last-minute talks ended in not-unexpected failure:

As expected, the WGA took the enthusiastic shouts of the 3,000 or so writers who showed up last night's meeting as a sign that now would be a pretty good time for a walkout, officially announcing moments ago that the picket-line-walking and slogan-singalong fun will begin Monday at the gates of every studio in town. The LAT has the e-mail that went out to the membership:

· In a badly timed announcement of blockbuster-derived profits, Viacom crows about the "phenomenal success" of "new global brand Transformers" that helped lift their net income by 80 percent, forgetting to transfer the revenues to a balance-sheet loss column and publicly lament that "there's no money to be made in this dying business of ours." [Variety]
· Knowing that TV is, like film, a financial dead end (see bullet point above), Oprah is launching her own channel on the YouTubes. If that venture proves as successful as the media mogul hopes, the purchase of the entire internet could quickly follow. [THR]

As nearly every article we've read to date on the possible impact of the writers strike has pointed out, the first victims of the walkout will be late-night talk shows; without the script lead-times enjoyed by sitcom and drama productions, their hosts will immediately be pushed in front of the cameras without material produced by their absentee writing staffs, forced to read from cue cards offering no more detailed commentary on the day's events than [NEXT THREE MINUTES: RIFF UNCOMFORTABLY ON HOW YOU HAVE NO ONE TO WRITE JOKES ABOUT WHATEVER IT WAS THAT BRITNEY SPEARS/GEORGE BUSH/HILLARY CLINTON DID TODAY.]

In the event that you had your television turned up too loud to hear the city-wide array of air-raid sirens sounded at the conclusion of last night's WGA meeting, the union's negotiating committee recommended that the Guild go on strike, a mass walkout that could begin on Monday. (Stayed tuned for the timing announcement that's sure to ruin your weekend—if not the next several months of your life—later today!) We begin our day, as we must, with a rundown of strike-related news:

There were no effigy burnings, nor pinata-beatings, but there will be a strike: "A few minutes into the gathering, there is no more uncertainty: There will be a strike, leaders tell the thousands of WGA members in attendance. Leaders will send out a press release tomorrow afternoon, telling members precisely when the strike will begin. The Screen Actors Guild president says the actors guild is in full support of the strike and will stand by the writers for as long as it takes." [LAT]

· On second thought, maybe a strike won't be that bad. Who wouldn't like to see the cast of Cavemen singing "Wooly Booly"?
· And speaking of cavemen, here are instructions on how to make your own insurance-hawking Neanderthal costume, just in time for the day after Halloween.
· Get ready for a world-rocking nerdgasm: The original cast of MST3K is reuniting for Cinematic Titanic, a new project that will involve the creative savaging of bad movies.
·RIP, NBC's DotComedy.
· Owen Wilson can't even pee with the stall door open anymore without his publicist having to make a statement.

We're only about 90 minutes from the beginning of tonight's big WGA General Assembly at the L.A. Convention Center (note to entrepreneurs: you'd better hurry up and get down there with your "I Walked Off The Job Today and All I Got Was This Lousy Red T-shirt" novelty garments), where, according to a story just posted to the LAT's website, the very thing that we'd hoped to distract ourselves from by briefly taking up the cause of the Zombie Guild is expected to occur: a strike recommendation by the writers' negotiating committee.

In the eerie quiet before the impending writer (and potential zombie) strike storm, few of us have truly allowed the implications of such a story-breaking and brain-eating stoppage to fully sink in. The Gays, however, have long been anticipating this day. Like stalwart, Cold War-era survivalists, they've lined the walls of their flawlessly appointed fallout shelters with enough canned Dean & DeLuca delicacies to sustain them through the long, Ugly Betty-free winter ahead. AfterElton.com sugarcoats nothing in detailing what they can expect:

Our panic-stricken city, already reeling from the possibility of a potentially disastrous writers strike that could arrive at virtually any moment, seems to be in even greater peril than we'd previously imagined: At a gathering in Silver Lake last night, a representative of the Zombies Guild threatened a parallel walkout that would surely finish off any sector of the local economy that managed to survive the entertainment industry's labor strife, accusing humans of not taking seriously their reasonable demands on issues crucial to the survival of undead workers trying to make an honest, brain-devouring living in a rapidly changing world. A flyer describing the ZGA's frustrations with a human negotiating team that refuses to bargain in good faith follows after the jump:

Faced with the possibility of months of lost commissions, Endeavor superagent/HuffPo superblogger Ari "Can't We All Just Get Along?" Emanuel makes a last-ditch plea for sanity during these tense, pre-strike moments: "I'm about to get myself in a lot of trouble. So be it... Listening to both sides in the looming writers' strike, it's clear to me that politics is about to trump sound economics. Neither the Writers Guild nor the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is looking at the issue properly. If you look at the amount of money that was at issue during the last writers' strike in 1988, I bet it was less than the amount the strike ended up costing all concerned. And I believe that will be the case this time around, too. [...] Going on strike to lose more than you gain is not smart negotiating." [HuffPo]

The pencil, it seems, has become the dominant image of the looming™ writers strike (mushroom clouds are so two weeks ago): previously, THR incorporated it in an evocative tug-of-war logo for its contract talks coverage; today, over a hundred WGA showrunners have placed their names (not pictured due to space constraints) below a trusty No. 2 in an ad appearing in both Variety and the Reporter, promising the Guild membership they'll plunge its dangerously sharp point into the jugular vein of any network executive who asks them to secretly break stories, write scripts, or perform any other strike-verboten duty while their brothers and sisters are out on the picket line, trying to dodge the rubber-bullet fire of overzealous studio security guards.

Yesterday afternoon, ICM announced to its entire staff that now that an industry-crippling strike could hit at any moment, it seems like as good a time as any to hang on to a week of everyone's pay, giving the agency the "financial flexibility" it needs to keep the lights on. Sure, this unexpected move might cause "short-term financial challenges" to those employees who might find it difficult to afford luxuries like "food" and "shelter," but they're confident that the angry mob of assistants on the verge of rioting will extinguish their torches and lay down their pitchforks once they realize that missing 50 percent of their paychecks isn't due to a "salary reduction," just some little payroll system changes they'd been planning for a long time. The e-mail announcing the paycheck reduction follows; sadly, the agency's partners made no official offer to allow any adversely affected staffers to crash on their couches if their next rent checks bounce: