LOS ANGELES, July 22 (UPI) — Entertainer Rita Moreno is to be presented with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in Los Angeles this winter, the union announced. …read more
Screen Actors Guild to honor Rita Moreno
Tag Archives: Screen Actors Guild
The 5 Worst Jobs in America
By Alex Planes, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Few decisions will have as lasting an impact on your life as your choice of profession. You can pour your life into a career, only to see it taken away as technology and business attitudes render your specialty obsolete. On the other hand, if you discover that you happen to be great at a job that looks to be in high demand for decades to come, you can practically write your own meal ticket.
CareerCast.com, a targeted career site, recently put together its list of the best and worst jobs in America, which it ranks using a proprietary formula based on the general categories inherent to every job: environment, income, outlook, and stress level. The worst jobs in America combine an unpleasant physical and mental environment with high stress, low (or negative) growth, and weak earning potential to create a job that leaves you overworked, underpaid, and just plain burned out. The five jobs you’re about to see offer the worst overall combinations of these four general factors, which makes them the worst jobs in America (ranked from fifth-worst to the very worst), according to CareerCast.
5: Oil rig worker
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook.
- Median pay: $37,640 per year
- Entry-level education: Less than high school
- Number of jobs: 134,800
- Expected new jobs by 2020: 11,200 (8% growth)
Forget about what you hear of the Bakken boom or the huge paydays offered to men (nearly all of the oil industry’s front-line work is done by men) willing to leave family and friends behind to work on the oily frontier. This is hard, tiring, dangerous work. Despite the perception of high pay, many rig employees don’t actually make all that much. The risk of death, though remote, is very real — just think back to the 11 dead men who went down with the Deepwater Horizon. While the payoff can be great in the near term, there isn’t often a lot of long-term job security working on rigs. If you don’t get burned out from the grinding schedule and the job’s physicality, you might find yourself unemployed when the well’s production drops to a trickle.
4: Actor
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook.
- Median pay: $17.44 per hour (regular schedules are nearly impossible to find)
- Entry-level education: Some college, no degree
- Number of jobs: 66,500
- Expected new jobs by 2020: 2,600 (4% growth)
If you can make it to the top of the acting profession, you can command fantastic paydays and gain worldwide renown. However, very few actors will ever make it that far, and competition is absolutely brutal in this entertainment profession that has long drawn starry-eyed dreamers from around the world. The Bureau of Labor Statistics may not count the number of people who work as actors on a part-time basis, as the Screen Actors Guild has more than 160,000 members. A number of actors wind up working other low-paying, stressful jobs to supplement their income. The intense competition, low pay, and
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Judge's fight to keep comedy career reaches New Jersey Supreme Court
A judge in New Jersey is asking the state’s highest court to have a sense of humor.
Attorneys for Vince A. Sicari plan to argue in front of the New Jersey Supreme Court on Tuesday that the part-time municipal court judge should be allowed to keep his other paying gig as a comedian.
Sicari is appealing a 2008 state ethics committee ruling that he can’t continue working as a paid entertainer while on the bench.
Sicari, who performs under the name Vince August, said in court filings he has always kept his identity as a South Hackensack municipal court judge separate, and “there is never mention in either profession of the other.”
He insists in court papers that he never even makes lawyer jokes or anything that could tarnish the profession. He claims much of his comedy is derived from non-work related personal observations, such as his upbringing as an Italian Catholic.
The Committee on Extra-Judicial Activities in 2010 reaffirmed its decision that he could not continue as a paid performer/entertainer.
Committee members said they were concerned that the “content of his comedy routine could give rise to an appearance of bias, partiality or impropriety or otherwise negatively affect the dignity of the judiciary,” according to court papers.
Sicari countered that he should be able to supplement his $13,000 a year income as a part-time judge “while actively engaged in an entertainment career which provides me a substantial portion of my income.”
He says he’s made hundreds of stand-up comedy appearances a year, including at a New York City comedy club where he has performed since 1997, on network television, as a warm-up for Comedy Central audiences and in film. He’s a member of the Screen Actors Guild and other professional performers unions.
The committee cites rules that judges may hold outside positions including gigs as musicians, as long as they don’t get paid, or play at casinos, political events or in scenarios that could present a conflict of interest. They also cite a prior ruling that determined “a municipal court judge may not appear in a TV commercial for Shredded Wheat.”
Sicari argues in his appeal that he takes both his entertainment and his legal job seriously.
“This issue is about a person who affects lives in many ways in two distinct identities,” he said in a court filing.
Argo Now Best Picture Frontrunner
In the ever-tightening race to see which of the 9 nominees for Best Picture will take home the Oscar, the odds are definitely in Argo’s favor after this weekend.
Yesterday, the Ben Affleck-directed thriller won top honors, the Darryl F. Zanuck Award, from the Producers Guild of America. Argo then won the award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at tonight’s Screen Actors Guild awards. So with both the actors and producers’ blocs voting to honor Argo with their top prizes, the sure money for the Oscar is now on Argo. (Argo also won the prize for best drama film at the Golden Globes.)
That doesn’t mean Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is out of the running. After all, it did earn the most Academy Award nominations, and Spielberg got a Best Director nomination while Affleck didn’t, which would certainly indicate there were enough Oscar voters who opted not to cast their ballots for Affleck and his movie.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at IGN Movies