Ibuprofen, snacks and nasty encounters on the picket lines

A woman in a Mercedes followed him a few minutes later by rolling down her window and screaming, "My husband is out of work because of you . . . !"

It was raining. The traffic at a crawl on Abbot Kinney. We didn't have umbrellas. We were marching in front of the new Smart Car dealership in a slow, monotonous circle, trying to get passing cars to honk. My first location picket.

Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon were reportedly inside shooting a scene with Sissy Spacek for next year's holiday release "Four Christmases."

I didn't think it would be so hard to stir up a little support for our cause in Venice, my adopted bohemian hometown. I thought of Jim Morrison and the Doors. Strange days have found us. If this sidewalk could talk, it would howl. What would Allen Ginsberg and all the beat poets and hipsters who hung out here in the '60s think?

"You should be glad you're not picketing Bendix in South Bend in the 1930s," my father, a staunch conservative, told me over Christmas dinner. "When I was a boy, they shot and stabbed the scabs when they'd cross the picket lines."

Times change. Don't get me wrong. We believe in our cause. We are just as dedicated and committed to a fair deal as the Bendix workers were, but we form our picket lines armed with Clif Bars, sunscreen and bottles of Advil Liqui-Gels. (The ibuprofen helps dull the lower back pain after walking a three-hour shift.)

Guns and knives? No. The worst violence I'd witnessed was the day Jason Segel crossed our picket line at Sony's Madison Gate and we flung barbed modifiers at him. He shouldered our barrage in his oversized trench coat, letting our heckling slide off his tall frame. He seemed mellow and unconcerned as he strolled by us with that laid-back slacker slouch he perfected as Nick Andopolis on "Freaks and Geeks." When he emerged an hour later, however, he bent down, picked up a sign and picketed with us for hours. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America too. "Sorry we hassled you," I told him. "I didn't want to go in," he admitted. "But they sent a letter threatening to sue me if I didn't."

The one person I didn't expect to take up our cause was my father. A retired bank president, Dad embodied The Man for thousands of people over the course of his career. When I'd visit him at the bank after school, he'd let me spread out my homework on his boardroom table, then send me down to the employee break room for pop.