I was lying in bed last night watching "Serendipity" which somehow misses being a good film, despite having a lot of my favorite actors in it. This gave me a lot of time to consider which tiny, or not so tiny, want or need from my ever-expanding list I might satisfy, using next month's extra stimulus money.Though the list was crowded, nothing really seemed like the One Thing. It was too bad, I thought to myself, that disabled people as a group were always so poor. Otherwise we could pool our money and maybe get a lobbyist that wasn't one of us with a touchingly handmade sign and a heart of gold. Though I believe in people power and that whole Margaret Mead small-group-of-committed-people-changing-the-world thing, and have some protest stories to prove it, some times it feels like taking a gun to a knife fight. Or maybe, it's just like America itself, and I have missed its best years. "But, Erika," I told myself. "You don't like lobbyists." And this is true. Who then, could get fair budgets for Disability Nation across the country, and then smile and get Ted Kennedy and Mitch McConnell to "hug it out"? None other than based-on-a-real-person Hollywood fictional superagent Ari Gold. As you can see, Ari is obnoxious. But he recognizes talent that transcends ability level when he represents "the one-armed Marlee Matlin" and he freaks out when his wife looks at him sideways, even though he pretends otherwise. This will help us contain him throughout negotiations. Also, he may be a shark, but I don't get the sense that he works for the highest bidder either. He does have to believe in the talent he associates himself with, probably because he considers himself to be on the job 24-7.And he's a jerk. This might not seem to be an advantage, but he is incredibly cocky and confident and doesn't share our socialized anxieties about wasting the legislators' valuable time.(I'm not sure in AriWorld if someone making $24,000 *has* valuable time, especially, but until he makes the deal he wants this is So Not His Problem.) Trust me, if one of us showed up in a meeting with Gold, nobody would be calling us brave for coming out or ruffling our hair, both of which happened on previous constituent visits.I think the disability-rights movement needs its own, hired-gun, asshole. Someone who's not too principled to get down in the dirt when we need somebody to. The disability community needs an agent, and Ari Gold should be that agent. maybe being fictional could be classified as an invisible disability...Ari can't live without a team of writers, producers, and actor Jeremy Piven.(And I thought coordinating *my* attendant schedule was hard. Not compared to that!)

[ Fri, 01 May 2009 15:39:58 -0700 ]

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