It's coming on Christmas.

While I noted in my last post that the soundtrack of A Charlie Brown Christmas is probably my favorite, I like some other songs as well. Here are a few -- I hope at least one is new to you. Enjoy.

1. Dar Williams, The Christians and the Pagans. Amusing little number from my favorite chick-with-a-guitar-singer-songwriter. I can just picture the poor, put-upon suburbanite uncle answering the phone at the beginning of the song, sighing at the prospect of explaining to his wife why his gay niece and her lesbian lov-ah are showing up at their McMansion on Christmas Eve. Still, all's well that ends well, and the song is all about the meaning of the season for both Pagans and Christians.




2. The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl, Fairytale of New York. Sweet, sad, and haunting. "I could have been someone," indeed. Shane and Kirsty sing of love, regret, nostalgia, hate, and all emotions in between as if they really were two old lovers at the end of their drink-addled lives. The fact that Shane has outlived Kirsty is one of the truest proofs that The Universe has an odd sense of humor.




3. Robert Earl Keen's Merry Christmas From The Family. The modern American family, warts and all. How can you not love a song that includes AA, xenophobia converted by song, and feminine hygenie products?

But you don't care that much for music, do you?

As I have mentioned here before, I am a big Peanuts fan. And tonight, ABC is showing my favorite bit of holiday tradition -- not Rudolph, Frosty, or even the Who's Roast Beast. No, my friends, I speak of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." It could never be made today -- too anti-commercial, too sad, too (gasp!) religious.*

And even if it could be made today, it couldn't use the same music -- it's too sophisticated, too adult, too Not Saccharine. Listening to "Christmastime is Here" is a somewhat heartache-inducing experience for me -- it really captures the bittersweet tang of the holiday (here's the instrumental version). The entire Vince Guaraldi soundtrack is in endless rotation in my car starting the day after Thanksgiving. Who doesn't love a little "Linus and Lucy"?

*When I was a wee lad in The Ancestral Homeland, my CCD (a/k/a Sunday school for Catholic kids who went to public school) class did a stage version of it one year for the Christmas program at Our Lady of Perpetual Motion. I played Snoopy, which was cool because it meant I had no lines to memorize.

You said you'd stand by me, in the middle of Chapter Three.

Apparently I now have two Great American Novels in my head. The Muse paid me a visit the other night and I now have a second fully formed opus floating around. Now, if I could just get it on paper (as Jimmy Buffett sang), I will be rich and famous. Right?

Anyhoo, I did get the beginning done, and here it is. Please give me your thoughts/comments/suggestions/rotten tomatoes/etc. If you prefer not to hurt my feelings in public, email me. I'll probably delete it after a few days, so if you come by next week and only see a blank post, and are interested in reading it, let me know.

Enjoy. Or, uh, whatever.

EDITED/UPDATED 12/15/08: And the snippet is down. Thanks to the New Diarist for his kind words in the comments and to those who responded via email. If you missed it, and really want to read it, shoot me an email

I still believe in my friends.

I am a bit behind on this, but a close imaginary friend of mine was injured -- pretty seriously -- on Election Night. I want to thank my imaginary little sister for looking for her (she was originally admitted to the hospital as a "Jane Doe"), and then for helping her and her family once she was found, and also for keeping me and her other imaginary friends up to date on how she is doing.

The internet is a funny thing, isn't it? I've never actually met G (the injured person), but I have known her for a long time. And I feel closer to her than I do to many people I know in the Not Imaginary world.

Anyway, nja, thanks for all you have done and continue to do. And, G, I miss you and can't wait to talk to you again.

When love walks in the room, everybody stand up!

"IT WAS INEVITABLE: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love..."

And thus begins Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez's masterpiece of unrequited love (and young love, and old love, and eros, and platonic love, and . . . well, you get the picture). One of my imaginary friends recommended it to me after I mentioned reading One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Reading it, naturally, reminded me of my own unrequited love for The Inappropriate Crush Girl. An unrequited love that still bubbles along after a decade or so. Oh, sure, it's usually at a low and manageable level, but the point is that she is still present in Jackson's mind.

So, do I read the story of Florentino's certainty and patience and faith that his love will eventually win out as a tale of hope or a tale of caution? Do I bide my time until the moment that I show up at the funeral of the ICG's husband in 40 years to state my case?

I keed, I keed, as Triumph the Comic Insult Dog likes to say. No, Dear Reader, that will not happen. I made my intentions known to her once, and, frankly, that was one time too many as far as I am concerned. So, unlike Florentino, I will hum along with life as it comes, knowing that she is Not Mine. And if this love ever does decide to become unrequited, I know that it will happen at the most inconvenient of times. Because the Universe, after all, has a somewhat cruel sense of humor.

Richard Nixon back again.

I am in electoral mode today, as you can see. Misty water colored memories are seeping up, and I thought that I'd share a few.

The first election that I remember was 1972 -- Nixon versus McGovern. (By the way, the finest book on that election -- and my personal favorite book by Hunter S. Thompson -- is "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72". Thompson's Rolling Stone colleague Timothy Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus" is also quite good -- his book covers the boys (and they were all boys then) who covered the campaign. Good stuff. But I digress.)

1972 was the year that Richard Nixon, filled with rage and paranoia and the blackest bile and resentment-filled gut that Washington has ever known (yes, even worse than Dick Cheney) laid the seeds of his own destruction. Watergate, baby. But all that came out later.

Anyway, 1972. The Democrats, torn apart by the war in Vietnam and social issues, have a long drawn out primary campaign. Over the course of it, Senators Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, and George McGovern rip each other and the party to shreds. Muskie started the campaign as the presumptive nominee, but faltered early. Alabama Governor George Wallace killed Muskies chances when he won the Florida primary. In fact, Wallace could well have won the nomination with a combination of racial resentment and blue-collar angst (he also did well in Northern states), but he was put into a wheelchair in an assassination attempt. Humphrey tried to muscle his way into the nomination with support of the party's old guard and big labor, but was outfought by McGovern in several states -- most fatally in the huge winner take all state of California. McGovern and the liberal insurgents had seized the reins of the party, and McGovern became the nominee.

Then, after everyone from Ted Kennedy to Abe Ribbicoff turned him down, McGovern picked for his vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton, an unvetted alcoholic who had been in mental institutions for electro-shock therapy. When the news of Eagleton's mental issues came out, McGovern said that he supported him "1000%." At least until he didn't, and replaced him with Kennedy's brother in law Sargent Shriver. And the minuscule shot he had to beat Nixon was gone just like that.

But I didn't know any of that. My experience of the election that year was of GOP swag. For some reason, I was driving with my dad one Saturday in the fall, and we must have been talking about the election. (I do remember that at some point he explained to me that Sargent Shriver was not in the Army -- he just had a funny first name.) So, dad impulsively pulled his Galaxie 500 into the parking lot of the county Democratic Party office, and we discovered that the place was closed. (On a Saturday in October. In The Ancestral Homeland. Looking back, this makes it obvious that McGovern was so toast.) So, we went around the corner to the GOP county office and picked up all sorts of buttons and posters and bumper stickers. I have to admit that CREEP was pretty good at their design:


My father and my uncles were all union guys who hated Richard Nixon, but couldn't believe that the good old US of A was losing a war to a bunch of god-damned pinko gooks in pajamas. And who didn't understand why no one seemed to want to get a god-damned haircut anymore, or why their kids laughed at Glenn Miller. So when the Democrats put up a guy who was for "Acid Amnesty and Abortion," and who after seizing the nomination, seemed like he was stumbling around from mistake (the Eagleton pick and dump) to mistake (the guaranteed income pledge) like a drunk at closing time, they probably held their nose and voted for Dick.

But I never learned nothing from playing it safe; I say fate should not tempt me.

Alex Balk is not as pessimistic as I am. A snipppet:

What’s been astounding about the Republicans during this whole campaign is the ludicrous sense of entitlement they have toward the office of the presidency. It’s like they were born on third base and forgot that the Supreme Court waved them home. And I’m not just talking about the low and ugly tactics they brought to this race. I’m leaving out the astonishing nerviness it took for them to try and make a major issue of a few meaningless bogus registration forms while attempting to systematically purge the voter rolls of anyone who might vote for the other party. (I’m leaving it out, but think about it again: They’ve been bitching and moaning about Mickey Mouse, who I’m fairly sure will not actually show up, while deliberately attempting to prevent American citizens from exercising their Constitutional privilege to elect their representatives.) I’m not going to mention the disgusting attempts to preemptively delegitimize the next president (Barack Obama). No, what’s most offensive about the whole thing is the insistence that they deserve a third term. Look at the absolute disaster the last eight years of Republican rule—six of which, do not forget, have come with that party in control of all three branches of government; the next time I
hear some Republican talking head warn against the “lack of checks and balances” if the Democrats control both Congress and the presidency, I swear I’m going to throw my shoe at the screen. Are these people willfully stupid or deliberately duplicitous?—has been for this country. The fact that any Republican anywhere can show up with a straight face and argue for another four years at the helm is a tribute to the forgiving nature of our nation; they should all be walking around with paper bags on their heads, shoulders slumped in shame, carrying placards that read “Sorry for repeatedly raping you in the ass since 2000, America. This time we promise to use lube.” The Republican party’s only hope in the last three months has been that American voters might prove more racist than they are greedy. Thankfully, they will not.

Go read his cock's take (I forget why, but "Balk's Cock" occasionally posted on Gawker when Alex was a Gawker writer) on Obama from this dialog between man and member in July 2007:

BALK BTW: Hmmmm... I don't know, politics? Who do you like for president.

COCK BTW: Oh, I'm Obama all the way.

BALK BTW: Really? You don't worry about his lack of experience?

COCK BTW: He has as much experience as the current guy.

BALK BTW: Um, that's a terrible example. Also, Bush was governor of Texas for five years.

COCK BTW: GOVERNOR OF TEXAS? BFD. The job was DESIGNED so that an idiot could do it. All the power resides with the lieutenant governor. The governor is basically the schmuck in the hat who shows up to cut the ribbon at a hospital opening in Amarillo. My Taint could be governor of Texas.

BALK BTW: How do you know about Texas politics?

COCK BTW: Most of the southern states have weak governor systems. It's a legacy of reconstruction. Don't you fucking read?

BALK BTW: Mainly "Vanity Fair."

COCK BTW: Well, sometimes that's important. The Hollywood issue in particular. Good bonding time for us.

BALK BTW: Uh... yeah. Anyway, Obama. You really don't worry about how little executive experience he's had?

COCK BTW: No. Look, my feeling is that anyone's gonna be better than the dude we've got now. Plus, Obama is a transformative politician. I have never, in our lifetimes, seen someone who inspires so many different people from such a broad spectrum of the electorate. And beyond that: What's it going to say to the rest of the world when we're willing to elect a guy named Barack Obama who's half black, is familiar with both the Christian and Muslim faiths, and has the hottest First Lady since Rosalynn Carter?

BALK BTW: Again with Rosalynn Carter.

COCK BTW: Oh, please, like you haven't stroked me to a little "Rosalynn in tight sweater" fantasy.

BALK BTW: MOVING ON. What about Hillary? Are you unwilling to vote for Hillary because she's a woman? And you're a cock?

COCK BTW: Nah, it's got nothing to do with that. Any other year, sure. I mean, she's a tough, controlling bitch who's unable to admit any mistakes she's made and she's got a penchant for secrecy and paranoia that makes Nixon look stable, but whatever. There are plenty of women I'd vote for: Kathleen Sebelius, Napolitano,
heck, even Jodi Rell if I had to vote Republican. Also, that hottie from Michigan.

BALK BTW: Granholm.

COCK BTW: Yeah. Too bad she was born in Canada, I'd pull the lever for her in a second. You know, like YOU HAVE.

BALK BTW: I, uh, think we're done here.

COCK BTW: Good. Meet me in the bathroom in five. And bring the new Maxim that just came into the office.

Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying.

Wow. Hard to believe that election day is finally here. The missus and I went to the local polling place about 20 minutes before it opened and our timing was just about perfect. We weren't the first in line, but we were close enough that it took just a few moments to sign in and get into the booth once they opened. It seemed like everyone else arrived 5 minutes after us -- I took a brief stroll just before they opened the doors, and there must have been a hundred people waiting in line behind us.

This is the first election since 1992 where I was genuinely enthused about my choice -- I voted for That One -- and I am filled with hope and optimism about what will happen over the next four years if he wins. And, needless to say, I will be seriously disappointed if he loses.

I'm realistic, though. I know that (to paraphrase Hilary Clinton's memorable remarks during the primaries) if Obama wins, we won't have celestial choirs singing, telling everyone will that we should all do the right thing. And the VRWC has made it known that they plan to pick up right where they left off in January 2001, so any progress won't be made without battles on every front. But I think that we are a very different country now than we were in the late 1990s, and that voters will have less patience for smears. I think that the country will welcome legitimate policy debates over some of his plans (Joe the Plumber's original discussion with Obama before the debate, for example), but I don't think that we'll see much tolerance for things like an Obama Death List. (He said hopefully.)

In short, I am cautiously optimistic. But I don't want to jinx anything. Fingers crossed!

I grew up believing God keeps His eye on us all.

I just got back from a too-brief visit to The Ancestral Homeland, a place that always makes me nostalgic for a past that never was. As I have surely said before, had my mother not dragged me away against my will at age 11 kicking and screaming, I almost certainly would have fled the place at age 18.

TAH is one of those places that makes you think of the song where Dar Williams sings "bet that crumbling mill town/was a booming mill town in its day." Massive factories built in the 1800s sit boarded up and economic redevelopment has been tried and failed probably a couple of dozen times since Amalgamated Industries and Acme Manufacturing started slowing production down in the 1960s. Amalgamated's building and logo still looms over downtown, with probably 5% of the workforce it had 30 years ago, and I think that the only reason the place is still running at all is that it's cheaper than paying to close it for good.

Like a lot of medium sized industrial towns, a 15 minute drive takes you into the sticks. The rolling hills outside of town were filled with the autumnal gold and scarlet of maple trees in sunlight. The weather was simply amazing -- clear and blue and comfortably cool. I drank some fresh cider and, like Proust and his cookie, was taken back to the past. In my case, it was to an apple-picking outing with my parents a few years before my dad got sick. Just before we left in the wood-paneled Country Squire, we stopped to watch them press the dropped apples to make cider, and then each drank some right from the press.

Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar.
The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.*

*(This and all italics courtesy of Mr. Jennifer Lopez, as written by Joseph Fiennes)

Who will shed a tear for the death of Merrill Lynch?

It is true that it died at the hand of The Market, its old friend, because of the foolishness of its recent leaders. Some now say that the specific Brutus in this tale may be Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan, and the dagger used was a $10 billion collateral call, but -- like Big Jules -- Merrill was the one who put itself in position to go down.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

Ah, but mighty Merrill wasn't always such a Wall Street player. It gained its size, its power, and its once-unimaginable buckets of money by retail brokerage. It was derisively referred to as "We The People" or "the thundering herd" because of its large number of branch offices in places like Omaha and Memphis and St. Louis. It created solid relationships with several generations of customers, and in essence rebuilt the country's capital markets (after the crippling blow of the Great Depression) by popularizing investments in stock with people who weren't children or grandchildren of Robber Barons. Upper middle class customers across the country poured money into the stock market for the first time through Merrill, and other firms followed the Bull from Wall Street to Main Street.

Merrill seemed to set the standard -- its training programs, its marketing, its approach were all emulated by its competitors. And for the most part, its offices were at the top of the pecking order in most towns. (For example, the chamber of commerce in my town always had the local Merrill branch manager on the executive committee. Partly because of longevity -- he had been around forever, while the Dean Witter/Smith Barney/PaineWebber guys seemed to shuffle in and out of town too quickly, and they got stuck on hospitality or running the golf tournament.)

Merrill changed, like we all do. And who knows how accurate the argument is that Stan O'Neal gutted the culture of Merrill, and that this cultural change is what is to blame for the death of Merrill by creating the short-term outlook that put the toxic sludge on its books. But it seems clear that O'Neal's regime did change Merrill by hiring leadership that had not grown up with Merrill, and firing or early retiring those who "bled Merrill blue." Hiring number-crunchers from other firms. Changing the retail brokers' relationships with their clients by such things as imposing dollar minimums for accounts and closing branches.

But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?

Indeed. Tonight I shall have a Bushmills or three in mourning for the Merrill Lynch of Charlie Merrill, of Win Smith, and even of Don Regan. Up the Republic!

Everything it seems I like's a little bit stronger, a little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me.

Like Rufus, I have a hankering for short-term pleasure bought at the expense of long-term risk. At least the desire for that short-term pleasure, anyway.

Anyway, without spoiling the most recent Mad Men, I hope that the clues dropped (the Menken's shopping bad, Don's use of Rachel's husband's name at the club) mean that the Complicated Brunette in Don Draper's life is returning. I can so identify with Don's fall for her. A no-brainer, really: she's smart, hot, and amusing. What's not to like?

I met God this afternoon, riding on an uptown train.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the financial markets -- what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Wall Street to be born?

Jesus. I should know better than to read Yeats these days. Especially after having a cocktail or two. I blame my high school humanities teacher, who carved that poem into my psyche.

At any rate, my mood is dark because I spent most of this week in a conference room trying to hammer out an amicable resolution to a spat over a buy-out -- my gal sold her stake in a business, and her former partners stopped making the payments she is owed. The main guy on the other side is convinced that my gal is behind some big client pulling their account. (She assures me that she isn't, but also isn't hiding the fact that she is pleased by this.)

Anyway, back to the markets. I suspect that the economic turmoil will actually be a financial plus to me -- litigation is one of the things that increases when the markets decline. People sue more -- to force people to comply with deals, to get out of deals, to make their advisors pay for putting them in bad deals, etc. But the bigger picture concerns me. Since the debate appears to be back on (at least as I type this), it will be interesting to hear what the candidates will have to say about it. I suspect that lots of us will be watching tonight.

Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline.

I sit here on this beautiful autumn day, and simply cannot believe how difficult a time I am having in getting through my work day. I am suffering a rather severe bout of paralysis by analysis.

I just now forced myself to call opposing counsel on a case – I mean, I literally screamed at myself (uh, silently, natch) to pick up the FUCKING PHONE and call the guy NOW, AND I MEAN *RIGHT NOW* GODDAMMIT!

So I did. And got his voice mail. Doh.

Dark humor of the situation aside, it is just so frustrating. I have plenty to do. In fact, I am behind on doing some of the things that I need to do. It’s like for some reason I just need to play that degree of difficulty thing. Drives me crazy.

Update as I spell-checked -- dude called me back. So one thing accomplished today -- woo-hoo!

The minor fall, the major lift.

Ye gods, the world is truly spinning weirdly lately, no? I will (at a later time) sing the song -- a dirge, sadly -- of the once-mighty Merrill Lynch a/k/a "We, The People," the firm of Charlie Merrill, the man who saw 1929 coming; the firm of Irish Catholics -- Fordham boys and Marine Corps veterans, eager to show the WASPs on the Street a thing or two; the firm who epitomized the term "wire house" and brought capitalism from Wall Street to Main Street by opening branches in towns big and small; the firm of Don Regan and his "fuck you" money; the firm of Win Smith and Don Komansky and the culture of "Mother Merrill"; and, finally and sadly, the firm of Stan O'Neal and the quarterly profit numbers. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Uh, where was I? Ah, yes, weirdly spinning world. The biggest financial crisis in a long time. The political season, with the rise and fall and rise again of poll numbers -- like a high-scoring college football game, it seems like the candidate with the ball at the end will win in a squeaker. My case load, with the fierce urgency interspersed with slackness. My imaginary friend Philalawyer, and his book (Happy Hour is for Amateurs: A Lost Decade in the World's Worst Profession, coming soon to used bookstores and garage sales near you) coming closer and closer to actual release. (That fucker has a book deal? It is a weirdly spinning world, indeed.)

And, so, on this Friday afternoon, I plan to skip out a bit early, and slow things down a bit. Try to restore a bit of balance to the gyrations, and find some inner calm and sense. I think that some Bushmills is called for, maybe sipped in a comfortably quiet bar filled with dark woods and polished brass. The kind of place with the Easter Proclamation on the wall and old photographs, and a friendly yet reticent bartender who will pour it neat (without waiting to be told) into a heavy rocks glass.

Who's that girl?

So, I went to go see Woody Allen's latest -- Vicky Christina Barcelona -- the other day. Now, sure, I was expecting to see a little eye candy (hello, Scarlett; hello Penelope). But I was totally not expecting to fall for the other woman. Wow. Rebecca Hall was simply amazing -- she stole the film as the endearingly confused Vicky (seen here with Javier Bardem, who was also amazing -- especially if you saw him play a very different character in No Country for Old Men).




Anyway, check it out.

I used to rule my world from a pay phone.

Now I deal with conference calls ruling my world. Here I sit, trying to coordinate common ground with a bunch of other lawyers who all are sorta on the same side. But lawyers all like to hear themselves talk, and so everyone has to put their two cents in, and I am pulling my hair out in frustration.

That's another thing that the popular vision of the lawyer (thanks, Perry and Ally and Denny!) doesn't seem to address. We don't have a trial every day; no, we sit at our desks, sipping coffee while disembodied voices argue over the speakerphone. Surfing the web, updating our blogs. Interjecting reluctantly (at least one lawyer) and only when absolutely necessary (because we don't want the damn call to last any longer than absolutely necessary).

Another coffee? I think I need it, thanks.

I chanced to discover an old memory.

As I have mentioned here before, I like to read. And I love browsing the shelves of used bookstores -- I have found many gems at bargain prices, like complete hardcover set of Winston Churchill's history of the Second World War for $10.

One bonus is that sometimes -- especially with older hardcovers -- one comes across all sorts of interesting bits of paper stuck in between the pages. I have yet to find a blank cashiers check or cash or a bearer bond, but I have found things like an old computer punch card bill from an oil company (Esso, if I recall correctly), inspirational and sad and cryptic inscriptions from fathers to sons, wives to husbands, or from one friend to another, marking some gift-giving occasion or life moment.

Anyway, as I was coming back from lunch today, I saw that the local library was having a book sale, and so I stopped in. No great discoveries, but I picked up a few books that looked interesting. About 10 pages into one of them (I love Stanley Bing's "Esquire" and "Fortune" columns), I saw the original receipt from the bookstore in Austin where it was originally purchased in February 1999. In addition to Bing, our buyer bought a $4.00 newspaper (I know!) and "52 Invitations to Grrrrrreat Sex."

Setting aside Tony the Tiger allusions, I note that our buyer paid cash. Hmmm. Perhaps because this was just after the Clinton broo-ha-ha in which Ken Starr subpoenaed two bookstores to see what books Monica Lewinsky bought (reportedly because they thought that she gave Bill a copy of "Vox," a book about phone sex)? Perhaps.

Anyway, seeing the receipt amused me. Carry on.

A taste of honey's worse than none at all.

Oh, Mister Mathew Weiner -- you must have seen my recent cri de coeur re the lovely Ms. Rachel Menken, and what do you do? You give me mere seconds of her on the screen tonight. A tease! You bastard. Bring her back.

Ah well. I console myself with the fact that I appear to be falling for Pete Campbell's wife, the delightful Trudy, who he so does not deserve (they really need a beter picture of her on the AMC website):

Everybody's in it for their own gain, you can't please them all.

Trying to juggle a group of people with shared yet slightly competing interests in putting together a deal is one of the joys of the lawyerly life.

Fact: These people need to settle this case. Fact: These people know that they need to settle this case. Fact: These people want those people to pay slightly more into the pot of money to go to the other side. Fact: Those people want these people to pay slightly more money into the pot. Fact: I'm losing track of the point I am trying to make. Fact: I am out of sweet vermouth, and so had some Bushmills neat instead of a Knob Creek Manhattan while watching the Mets game tonight.

Drinking Irish whiskey tends to put me into a contemplative and wistful mood. I thought about my Uncle Mike, who taught me that Irish whiskey is made for sipping while pondering life. So I sipped and I pondered life. I sipped some more. Sadly, nothing came to mind as to how to get the knuckleheads in the case to agree to a reasonable number. So, like David Geffen when he was straight and dating Joni Mitchell, if I had my way I'd just walk through these doors and wander down the Champs-Élysées. (Fact: I need to go to Paris.)

I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.

Christ, Marino looks like such a tool. I almost want to smack the smirk off of his 1984 face by telling him that he will never ever even come close to making it back to the Super Bowl.

And Bernie, ah Bernie. Doug Flute awaits you, my friend.

Laying low at L'Ermitage, of course.

Like the late Mr. Zevon, I, too, sometimes feel like an imposter has been living my life for me. But I've just been a little busy with family visits and weddings, and filing four answers that were due on four consecutive days.

Anyhow, since I am not blogging to share my pearls of wisdom on affirmative defenses (ok, fine --here's one: waiver, ratification, and estoppel always go well together), you surely do not care about that. So, what has been going on that you might care about? Here are a few tidbits from my life the last couple of weeks:

1. Otherwise intelligent people (like opposing counsel on a mediation) really -- no, I am being deadly serious -- think that Barack Obama is an Al Qaeda plant. This gives me pause.

2. If you aren't watching Mad Men, you should be. Although I do miss Don Draper's Jewish mistress from last season -- lose the Beatnik chick, fine, sure, but please, Mister Weiner, bring back Rachel Menken!

3. Ahem. The owner of Menken's Department Store deserves two items on this list. (Complicated brunettes, remember?)

4. It is a true pleasure to be driving in the summer on a warm day when a Not Overplayed Jimmy Buffett song unexpectedly comes on the radio. Your pickup's washed and you just got paid, indeed. It's like Proust catching a whiff of that cookie.

5. The Mets are still in it.

Anyway, more to follow. Happy Friday!

Please don’t say Mañana if you don’t mean it.

Hello, my name is Not Jackson, and I am a procrastinator.

[hi, Not Jackson!]

Friends, Romans, countrymen -- lend me your ears. I put shit off. I mean, everything. If I can do it tomorrow instead of today, I will. Hey, can I call you back next week? Would you mind giving me an extension on the discovery responses? Could you tell McGillicuddy that I'll call her back later?

It is my cross to bear. Why do I do it? Because, sadly, sometimes if you put stuff off, Fortuna intervenes, and you don't have to do the thing at all. Unfortunately, one falls into that habit easily, and boom. One finds oneself updating one's blog instead of doing something productive. Uh, not like now, though.

She really worked me over good, she was a credit to her gender.

I bumped into a friend today at the courthouse -- someone I haven't seen in a while. We did the usual catch-up as we waited in the hallway for our respective hearings. It was really good to see him.

And yet it also wasn't. Why, I hear you ask? Well, we used to work at the same firm, and as he went through the people that we used to work with together, he very carefully (to my mind, anyway), and studiously avoided any mention of our mutual friend The Inappropriate Crush Girl. Maybe I am reading too much into this, but she was a very good friend of his, and to have him ask me about Lars the copy service guy, and tell me about Skippy the real estate paralegal from the Sheboygen office without mentioning her just seems a bit off.

Which leads me to a couple of dark thoughts:

(1) Dude, I am so fucked up. How did this chick implant herself so deeply into my soul?

(2) They were such good friends that she told him about my blurting out to her of my crush on her, and so he avoided mentioning her out of delicacy.

(3) I am reading way too much into a brief conversation.

Anyway, as you all know, it doesn't take much for me to plunge back into the dark beauty of the ICG. So I am wallowing a bit in memories and thoughts of her today.

Friday night and the lights are low.

So, everyone's favorite Raoul Duke wannabe, my imaginary pal Philalawyer, has confessed to a love for Abba. And that made me realize that we all have a band or song that we like, or even a genre of music, that we don't necessarily advertise to the world. PL, who loves to drone on and on about the Stones or (God help him) the Dead, gets a secret thrill when he hears even the Muzak version of "Fernando." It's cool.

My secret musical vice? Well, I do love me the chick singer-songwriters -- preferably the ones with predominantly lesbian fan bases. But that's not really a secret, now that I think about it. So, I'd have to admit that I love pop music from the 1970s. Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy." "Popcorn." "Billy, Don't Be A Hero." "Run, Joey, Run." "The Night Chicago Died." This secret musical vice is one of the reasons why I enjoy the new CBS series "Swingtown." (Well, that and Grant Show's mustache, of course.)

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's getting close to midnight at the oasis, and I've got to sing my camel to sleep.

And from out of the shadows came a young girl's voice, saying "Johnny don't cry."

Well, I'm not sure that this means that I am back to thinking Really Deep Thoughts and looking at the big picture, but I learned today that I got a good result in a recent trial, so I am pleased. Of course, this may simply be negative positive reinforcement in that it encourages me to continue in this "looking at the trees and not the forest" thing that I seem to be stuck in. (Can I fit any more cliches in here?)

But enough about that for now. The point is that I am pleased (although had the result been Not Good, I would have serious questions about my skilz as an advocate). This feeling is what made me think that litigation was for me, and as I noted previously, it doesn't come often enough. Of course, that also means the downs of a loss are that much rarer, too. (Goddamn, I still think about those losses.)

Oh, and one of my former colleagues just got an appointment. Whether she'll get confirmed before the current dude heads off into the sunset is a different story, but still. Good for her.

Gotta get away from this day to day running around.

One of the things that I miss about the days when I was a twit is the way I thought about the big picture. I was convinced that I was destined for Great Things, and so I looked at life accordingly. I did not worry about the day to day running around -- I knew that my path was the Path of Progress, and the trivial details of the day (a test, a game, homework, whatever) were merely put there to give me an amusing story to tell at some point down the road to appreciative audiences during my prime time speeches.

At some point, alas, I lost my sense of certainty about the destiny of Great Things. Maybe this sense was part and parcel of my twitishness, and if it was, well, so be it. But I have become one of those people who spends their life putting out fires. As a lawyer, we clean up the messes of others (as Michael Clayton noted, we are janitors), and it is easy to fall into a reactive mindset. I feel like a boxer who has lost his jab and who only knows how to counter punch.

So, I'm going to try to get back into the mindset I had in those halcyon days of youth. I've started by watching some episodes of "Hogan's Heroes" tonight. And I didn't drink Manhattans back then, but fuck it -- I ain't going back to grape Kool-Aid or Yoo-hoos at this point.

No one respects the flame quite like the fool who's badly burned.

I was watching "The Tao of Steve" last night when it hit me. The two lead characters were having a discussion about Kierkegaard and the opera Don Giovanni (apparently, Soren was a big fan of it), when one of them said something about the need to make a leap of faith in romantic matters, and wondered why people like the other character (and Don Giovanni and Soren) were afraid to do so.

Immediately I thought of this line from Prufrock (not that I have the poem memorized, but some of it does bounce around inside my head):


And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

Uh, living through that "what if?" is, as I am now convinced good old J. Alfred knew, very much Not Fun. (As an aside, when I first read that poem in high school, I was convinced that Prufrock was simply a coward, afraid of life, one who never stepped out of his routine of days measured by coffee spoons, etc. Now, upon reflection, a few years, and a bit more experience, I think that Al had been wounded before, and was thinking that he wasn't going to take that particular chance again.

Happy times! Fuck you, Donal Logue.

I like cream in my coffee.

Back up for air. It's been a little bit hectic in the life of this jet-set trahhhhhhl lawyer in the last week or so. Yelled at by a federal judge? Check. Yelled at a client? Check. It's all good, baby. My pal PhilaLawyer (whose book should be on the remainder table of your local bookstore with a bright red "Only $0.99!!" sticker on it in time for your Generic Winter Gift Giving Holiday shopping) might suggest that I pour myself a nice refreshing glass of Sun Country Wine Cooler and listen to some godawful Grateful Dead bootleg ("dude, this version of "Truckin" from the Shreveport Convention Center show in 1982 will *change your life* -- I swear to you!"), but instead I decided to update my blog.

But what to say? I looked around for inspiration. Thankfully, my Imaginary Little Sister (the lovely and talented Miss Not Jennifer Anderson [ed. note: Ack! I meant Not Jennifer Aniston!) had a meme up, and so here you go -- 7 Things About Me You'd Not Likely Guess.

1. Well, as the re line suggests, I like cream in my coffee. (And to sleep late on Sunday. And Lyle Lovett.) Those of you familiar with my love of that other song about coffee might be surprised that I don't like my coffee black. (But for the girl in this, I would give up my dair . . . oh, nevermind).

2. I was an insufferable little twit until age 13 or so. I was the youngest of five, and I know that my brothers pretty much despised me (my sister is the oldest, and she was out of the house pretty much from the time I was 6 or so). I was a know-it-all and would not shut up -- I had an opinion on anything and everything, and everyone around needed to hear it. I still cringe when I think back. I apparently learned to hide this delightful quality around the time I hit 8th grade. Otherwise I would be single and a virgin, playing Second Life with a Pamela Anderson-ish avatar (nttawwt).

3. I flunked algebra. Twice -- once in high school and once in college. (Ok, I became a lawyer, so maybe this one isn't such a surprise.) Math, as Barbie once memorably and accurately put it, is hard.

4. As a drunken undergraduate, I came up with the brilliant idea of painting the words "Mister Happy" on the side of a replica of the Washington Monument and delivering it to the front yard of a sorority house after the homecoming parade. My co-conspirators included the 15 year old younger brother of a friend, and a fellow freshman who was pre-med, and whose contribution to the endeavor was a continuous stream of "I should be studying" mutters from the front seat of the Country Squire station wagon we stole from yet another friend.

Sadly, this did not get me a date with the [sorority name redacted] girl I was trying to impress.

5. I have a cat. I have been told that I seem more like the dog type. I like dogs, but they require too much effort. Cats are much easier.

6. I facilitated the signing of a professional hockey player from Eastern Europe who was a number one draft pick. I'm sure that it would have happened anyway, but don't burst my bubble. The details need to remain vague -- let's just say that a duffel bag of cash, a red-headed Hooters waitress, and a signed copy of Paul Newman's "Slapshot" accompanied me on a flight to Minsk, and . . . (I keeed, I keeeed. I just put some people in touch with each other. And like I say, it probably would have happened anyway.) The dude is still playing in the NHL, though not for the same team.

7. I cry at the end of "Shane," when the little kid runs after Alan Ladd. And at sad movies generally.

I'm back.

Sorry about the delay -- I had a trial last week, which means that I was slammed the week before getting ready, and slammed this week cleaning up all of the messes that my other cases turned into while I was busy doing my best Clarence Darrow impersonation.

Trials are a funny thing for lawyers. Contrary to the impression you might have from a lifetime of watching Perry Mason or Alan Shore, most of us law job guys and gals tend to have more than one case at a time. On any given day, you might learn that favorite client (they don't argue about your bills and they pay within 30 days) Finklestein Industries has just been served with a lawsuit, and you start preparing a motion to dismiss. But you have to stop work on the motion at 3 o'clock because you have a hearing over in Beaucoup Egypt on a discovery dispute in the Acme Manufacturing/Coyote Consulting litigation. And meanwhile, that cute court reporter is on the phone wondering if you want to buy the transcript from the MacGillicuddy deposition, and you are hoping that she left in all of the "uh's" and "um's" and incomprehensible mumbles of the idiot questioner who wasted five hours of your life eliciting approximately 15 minutes of useful testimony, and you know you need the transcript, but the client is going to whine about paying $600 for it. And so you walk into the kitchen and stick your head in the microwave to end it all.

Anyway, real life is nothing like your trial practice class in law school, where the climax of the semester was that one, single, solitary trial -- all about how to get those bastards at Mismo Fire Insurance to pay the Flinders Aluminum claim. That rocked. You were on fire (hah!) to try that case, and you lived breathed ate drank fucked that case, and everything was a complete rush. You owned the courtroom, and all of the witnesses sang the song you taught them. And you beat that insurance company (always so happy to cash the premium checks, yet so reluctant to pay claims) like a red-headed stepchild.* And you knew that this trial thing rocked.

But, alas, here in the real world, we have many more than one case to worry about. Which explains, in part, why so many so-called trial lawyers don't try cases. They can't afford to be out of the office for weeks in trial on a single case at the expense of neglecting all of their others. And so we settle cases -- probably 90% of them.

It's weird, really. Litigators like to think of themselves as surgeons -- they come in, fix the problem, and then go. Transactional lawyers, we sniff, are the internists of the legal world -- dealing with the day to day stuff like contracts and real estate and reporting and all of that other stuff.

Except surgeons, on the day that you are scheduled to have that tumor removed, don't come into your hospital room and say things like "listen, Ted, I just got off the phone with the tumor, and he's agreed that he won't spread into your lungs if you let him take the bones. I think that that's a reasonable offer -- we could go in to take him out, and you could die on the table. Plus, there's always the risk of infection. The tumor pointed out that this hospital had a real problem with staph a few years ago. What's that? Yes, I do remember telling you that I had completed several successful surgeries against this type of tumor, But that was before I found out that you concealed a 50 year history of smoking. When that came out, well, it changed things. Yes, I think that we can make a counter -- maybe tell him that we don't agree to him taking the bones, and if he's stubborn about it, we can just threaten to zap him with some radiation . . . "

*Apologies to red-heads. I am a huge fan of Nicole Kidman in "Moulin Rouge." And apologies to step-children. I was a step-child, twice. I was going to use ". . . like a rented mule," but I was afraid of the inevitable PETA protest. Those fuckers are mean.

Mother, should I run for president.

Yesterday was my mother's birthday. She would have been 74 -- she died a few years ago, very quickly (like less than a month and a half) after her diagnosis. By the time they saw it, the cancer had spread from her lungs to her bones and to her brain. (She went to the hospital with a back-ache -- it was the cancer in her bones.) Oddly, she had had pneumonia about a year earlier, and nothing showed up on any of the gazillion lung x-rays.

I was thinking about her last night when I couldn't get to sleep (cause or effect?). I still get mad thinking about some of the things she did/failed to do. For example, I still wish that she hadn't moved from The Ancestral Homeland when my father died, but I understand why she made that decision.

She had a great relationship with my daughter. And with my wife -- although they are two *very* different people. She lived with my grandmother for most of the time after my grandfather died -- and took care of her for a long time after my grandmother's mind started to go.

And she opened her home to those in need -- her pregnant 17 year old niece, her alcoholic nephew, countless friends who were in between jobs or homes or spouses.

Life was not terribly fair to her. Her husband died when she was the age I am now, leaving her with 5 kids. 5 bratty kids (well, at least one bratty kid). She survived breast cancer in her fifties. She watched her mother slowly descend into Alzheimer's, taking care of her at home until the last possible moment -- and then, one month after the trauma of putting her mother into a home, in a nice little "fuck you" from the universe, she was hit with her final cancer diagnosis.

Despite this, she dealt. She never whined, and she at least had her family around her when she passed away at home under Hospice care.

And, since I am half watching Olberman and Russert, I should note that she was born a New Deal Democrat into a machine family, and stuck with the donkey through thick and thin. She wasn't a huge fan of Hillary's, so she probably would be pleased that Obama has (apparently) won the nomination.

Anyway, happy belated birthday, Mom.

Some things are still a mystery to me, while others are much too clear.

Apropos of nothing, "Hogan's Heroes" has more of a racially diverse cast than "Sex and the City." Even extras, too -- watch the intros to both shows. How can New York circa 1999 be whiter than a prisoner of war camp circa 1943 (when the U.S. military was still officially segregated)?

Hogan's Heroes

Sex and the City

I deal in dreamers and telephone screamers.

Anyway, I am out of town, sitting in the lobby of a chain hotel (perhaps one owned by followers of Joseph Smith, perhaps not) working the free wireless while waiting to meet with a client. I am listening to a consultant of some sort, working his mobile phone a couch or two away from me, his spiel already growing tiresome to me. I wonder how he does it -- how does he make pitch after pitch to apparently Not Receptive people without at some point snapping in rage, flinging his Samsung at the iron-framed mirror across from him?

I can't quite see him, but I can hear the voice -- the smoothly persuasive tones, the polite chuckle, the candid admission that he could make some concessions on pricing the warrants, and that maybe he could find some room on the margins of the cost centers.

I shake my head at the falseness, and I feel all smug and superior -- until I remember that he probably makes several multiples of my paycheck. And then I want to throw my BlackBerry at the wall.

Google alerts

I have been visited by a celebrity, I think. Of the G or H list variety, to be sure, but still. At least I assume he was the one who left the anonymous comment to my post about the effects of bourbon on my prose shortly after I added his blog.

I refer, of course, to my imaginary friend PhilaLawyer. For those who didn't know, his book is coming out in a few months, and is available for pre-order on Amazon. Interesingly, his work appears to be quite popular with Nixon buffs. Go figure.

Suggestions?

As I have some free time today, I have been tinkering with the look and layout and whatnot of the blahhhhg. So far, I have added links to the blogs of a couple of my imaginary friends -- if you have suggestions for other blogs to add, whether they belong to you or not, let me know. There are some other places that I will add -- some of you have already suggested some cool places, and I appreciate it.

The happy days are here again.

The case that I was whining about the other day settled. It was a very good result for the client, and I am relieved that I don't have to try it. (Short version -- it was a business dispute and my client had a decent liability claim, but it would have been difficult to quantify damages at trial.)

I am, per the re line, quite pleased by this. And I will try to avoid too many more of these lawyer type insider baseball-ish posts. Onward and upward!

Misty, water-colored memories.

The funk eased a bit as the week progressed. I am reasonably Not Funky today, although none of the underlying causes of Monday's blahs have been resolved. Perhaps, to paraphrase the late Senator Moynihan, I am simply defining funkishness down. Whatever.

At any rate, I was watching the Mets game on TV the other day, and had a little semi-Proustian moment of remembrance. As anyone who watches a televised baseball game knows, much of the action is shown from a camera behind home plate, which points towards center field. At Shea Stadium, the center field wall is 410 feet from home plate, and ever since I can remember, the 410 painted on the wall has looked the same. And I have been a Mets fan ever since I could remember.

So, for whatever reason, seeing this "410" the other day triggered a memory of a young me watching a Mets game with my father. Or, rather, a memory of me watching the game with him either dozing or watching or reading or doing all three, with a beer and a cigarette, of course, while sitting on his green easy chair in our living room in The Ancestral Homeland. (Dad died when I was 10 or so, and we moved shortly afterwards, and so the decidely Not Magical hometown has had this sort of special hold on me ever since, but I digress.)

And his beer was not Bud or Schaefer or Rhinegold -- no, Dad was a fan of Hedrick's. He used to get it at the wholesaler by the case, until we bought a new fridge, which he converted into a refridgerated tap, and installed it in the garage, at which point he switched to buying Hedrick's by the keg from the wholesaler. Hedrick's was bought by Schlitz, I think, sometime after Dad died and we moved, and I never really thought too much about it after that.

At some point much later, a friend loaned me Ironweed by William Kennedy because he found something amusing about the main character. (Well, it's a long story.) I enjoyed it, but enjoyed Kennedy's Legs (a fictionalized story about gangster Legs Diamond) much more, and found myself wrapped up in Kennedy's works, which were all set in the same milieu.

As some of you may know, the political boss in Kennedy's fiction owned a brewery, and "Stanwix Beer" was therefore sold in every bar that wanted to avoid problems with the police despite its poor quality (according to some). I found out not too long ago that "Stanwix" was Kennedy's code for "Hedrick's." I wonder how my father ended up drinking the stuff. Acquired the taste as a lad, since that was what was available?

Hanging around, nothing to do but frown.

So, my Monday is almost over, and I am in a funk.

Why, you ask? Well, I have a case that I lack enthusiasm for that I am trying to get settled. I made no progress in making said settlement, and trial is rapidly approaching. It's set for mediation next week in a far away land, which should cheer me up, but actually depresses me for a variety of reasons.

In an effort to distract myself, as soon as I return to Not Manor, I am going to jump into a Manhattan and continue reading the truly delightful essays in the Sloane Crosley book I mentioned the other day.

But the funk, I fear, will be waiting for me when the booze and the glow of someone else's amusing life wear off.

(Happy! Surely, my dear boy, the case will settle, the pre-bills will become bills which will become fee receipts which will become new pencils, and all will be right in the world. The glass is half full!)

Show me the way to the next whiskey bar.

Does Knob Creek mix with crisp prose? Apparently not. I hope that the original version of the previous post was Not Read, and if anyone did read it pre-edit, I apologize. For those who didn't read it, I can assure you that it made even less sense than the edited version. With even more typos.

Carry on.

Politics in the new century?

I have been pondering Hillary Clinton lately. Is she the wave of the future in primary contests? Or is her continued campaign a quirk? Unlike past primary campaigns, where people in her position dropped out or were marginalized/ignored/disregarded (hello, Jerry Brown and Jesse Jackson!), she continues on and, at least for now, is treated as a serious rival.

So, will the future reward candidates with the will and resources to gut it out? Or is she sui generis (as we lawyers like to say)? That is, is this year, because of some admixture of the zeitgeist, somehow unique? Whether it's the historical nature of her role as the first woman with a serious shot at the presidency, the Clinton brand name, her smarts, etc., why is she able to survive where Gary Hart or Al Gore or Paul Tsongas did not? Is she the wave of the future, and from now on -- at least on the Democratic side, with no winner-take-all states, and proportional allocation of delegates -- we will see these sorts of wars of attrition in the future?

It is an axiom that generals want to fight the last war. I think that that was what damaged Team Clinton this year. She and her campaign decided to go for a knock-out blow, just like the way that Kerry crushed Dean early, and Gore squashed Bradley even earlier. The Germans in the early 1900s recalled how their rapid thrust into France in 1870, and their overwhelming victory over MacMahon at Sedan, knocked poor Napoleon III off of his throne and ended the Franco-Prussian War tout suite. Their plan for war in 1914 was a reflection of the 1870 experience, and called for an end-run through Belgium and a turn towards Paris, with the idea of knocking the French out of the war quickly. They came close, but General Gamelin's Paris taxicabs saved the day, and four years of trench warfare followed. Then the Germans lost, and in another 20 years or so we had another example of generals fightling the last war.

Uh, where was I? Ah yes -- fighting the last war. Anyway, it seems that the Clinton campaign thought that she would be the crowned nominee in March, and were unprepared for any primaries following Super Tuesday. Their lack of knowledge regarding the system for awarding delegates in the Texas primary/caucus hybrid was sort of the symptom of the problem with this approach. And recent reports that chief campaign strategist Mark "You Owe Me Big Bucks" Penn reportedly said that Senator Clinton would clinch the nomination when she won California, apparently forgetting that it was not a winner take all state, reinforces this perception of, well, idiocy on the part of people running her campaign.

At any rate, it seems that she was effectively out of the race months ago -- at least by the standards of earlier years -- and yet she shouldered on. And, despite the delegate numbers, she was (and is, still) regarded as having a shot at the nomination. I just wonder, again, whether this is an anomaly or a harbinger of the future.

What I'm reading.

I just picked up I Was Told There'd Be Cake, and I must say, so far, so good. Like much of my cultural awareness, I learned about this book and author Sloane Crosley* from Gawker.

Her essay on her first real job, and the difficulties she had with her Jekyll/Hyde boss, reminded me of my own first job out of law school. The desire to get everything right and the mysterious way that things ended up going, well, Not Right, and the paralyzing fear -- I had a case of that. A much more mild case than poor Sloane's, but I can vividly recall that feeling of disappearing competence.

*Should I leave out the "bon-bons from her belly button" comment? Probably.

A scene from the imaginary Great American Novel.

Well, here goes. I should note that Maureen is actually the older sister of the lad who is intended to be the main character/protagonist/hero/whatever (my imaginary book is *not* about lawyers). But I like her, so I don't mind starting out here with her.

Have at it.

**********************

snippet now down. Thanks for the comments!

You said you'd stand by me in the middle of chapter three, but you were up to your old tricks in chapters four, five, and six.

So, one of the reasons I decided to try to regularly blahhhhhg is to dust off the cobwebs from my Not Work writing. Like approximately 97.8% of the population, I am convinced that I have the Great American Novel "up here" [imagine me tapping my forehead]. In my case, I have multiple scenes imagined, a general plot outline thought out, some characters and descriptions, and a beginning section of four or five pages written on college-ruled notebook paper when Bill Clinton was president.


Given my desire to rub shoulders at exclusive literary cocktail parties with prestigious authors like Sidney Sheldon and J.D. Salinger, and to eat bon-bons from the belly-button of Jhumpa Lahiri,* this is an intolerable situation. And no matter how many old lamps I rub, my wish of having a neatly-typed manuscript of my mentally-stored novel appearing on my desk remains unfulfilled.

Accordingly, I have decided that, on occasion, I will actually type a scene, and will post it for public scorn, ridicule, or praise. And, by telling my readers (all three of you) about this plan, I will force myself (maybe) to actually follow through on this. At any rate, I have been thinking about one scene in particular lately because I saw a woman on the subway the other day who looks like my mental image of one of the characters. Let's see what happens.

*No, I haven't read her new book, but from her picture, she looks like someone from whose navel I would like to nibble. I know, I know -- I'm a looksist.

Lawyers dwell on small details.

So, I spent much of yesterday at the courthouse waiting, Estragon-ishly, for a hearing that was to take place. For the armchair antropologist, the courthouse is a truly fascinating place to observe lawyers. One will see, if one is there for any significant period of time, lawyers from every alleged caste that you have read about in the American Lawyer or a John Grisham novel -- there's the storefront law office solo, over there is the polyester-jacketed government drone. The TV advertising gal with her practiced air of empathy is arguing over there with the preening peacock from the silk-stocking firm and his practiced air of superiority.

At any rate, since I have delusions that I am an informed observer of such things, and since there were a lot of lawyers milling about the Bench of Waiting I occupied, the time went by without too much trouble. And the clerks working this particular docket were pleasant and helpful. All in all, it wasn't horrible. And I picked up a few tips as well -- for example, a proposed order needs to go to Vern on the 4th floor before the docket clerk can file it. Make a note.

Don't tell anybody the secrets I told you.

"Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" by Lucinda Williams is an amazing album, filled with songs that move and touch and inspire and provoke. But I think that one song stands above the others -- "Metal Firecracker." See and listen via YouTube

There's just something raw and striking about her plea in the lyrics, as she recounts how she has gone from from being in her lover's blood, from being the object of obsession, to being, well, nothing -- she doesn't ask to have him come back to her, or for him to reconsider, or for the keys to her house, or for the gifts she's given. Nope. She just wants her secrets to remain, well, secret.

Who could argue with that? We all have those secrets, those bits of our intimate self that we share with others. Lucinda's singing about secrets shared with a lover (and, oh, what imagery she uses in her lyrics to describe the relationship -- who here hasn't driven fast with a lovah in the passenger seat while "La Grange" was blasting?), but we do the same thing with friends, too. And there is something about the supposed anonymity of the internet that leads us into sharing maybe even more with our Imaginary Friends than we share with our real life friends, or our spouses/significant others.

(Translation -- please, Imaginary Friend, don't reveal that I cried at the end of "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle." Thanks.)

Kissing Jessica Stein

Well, I have not exactly been keeping up with the blogging. I am sure that my one commenter, who apparently no longer exists on Blogger, has been quite disappointed in the lack of posts.

Anyway, Kissing Jessica Stein.

I watched most of it last night after seeing the Mets give up a bunch of runs. I have seen it a couple of times, and I really like it.

Why? Well, I find Jennifer Westfeldt, who plays Jessica and who co-wrote the movie with Heather Juergensen, who plays the person who actually, for much of the movie, is kissing Jessica Stein, to be utterly endearing in it. Her voice (and her verbal mannerisms, too, sorta) reminds me of Dar Williams. Maybe that is part of it. Anyway, there is something about seeing an intelligent, somewhat neurotic but self-aware about the somewhat neurotic part, witty, well-read woman that is just so damn appealing.

The content of her character

I was feeling a bit sorry for myself today. Not because I had to work on a national holiday (it's the nature of the gig -- client needs aren't necessarily put on hold to fit the calendar). In fact, I'm not sure why I am gloomy. Seasonal affective disorder, perhaps? Anyway, a it was a blue Monday for Jackson.

Whatever. That is not the point -- the point is, while I was on hold waiting for a client, I decided to google the names of various people. (Yeah, I know. Again, whatever.) For some reason, I decided to google the name of a high school classmate. I didn't know her all that well, and, no, I did not have the hots for her. (Not that she was unattractive; it's just that there were others at the time that I lusted after instead.) I recall reading in the paper a few years ago that she was an artist, and was in the process of recovering from this horrible thing that had happened to her. She was getting back into art and had also started a charity to help children -- a very uplifting story. (I am trying to keep the details relatively vague.)

I learned today that while she was recovering from Horrible Event One, Horrible Event Two happened to her. She slowly recovered from this, too. She rebuilt herself, physically and mentally, and her current art is simply amazing. She has taken these awful events -- events that had either of them happened to me, would have been proof that The Universe hated me -- and has instead incorporated them into her life and her art.

To me, this is literally awe-inspiring. In high school, I considered her a typical princess. I probably would have thought that, having been born on third base, she would have crumbled at the first sign that Bad Things can happen. I'd like to think that I have handled the curveballs that Life has thrown at me in a reasonably good fashion. But the grace shown by my high school classmate -- in dealing with two blows that almost killed her -- is something on a far different level. I hope that I never have to find out, but I like to think that my character is capable of such grace.

I try to shut my eyes, but I can't get her out of my sight.

As I delve deeper into this whole blog thing (apropos of nothing, I am already behind the curve, since Tumblr is reportedly now the place to be), I will share more of what gives rise to my own little screams and strangled cries.

Today's item On The List Of Things That Show How Fucked Up Jackson Is? Ah, The Inappropriate Crush Girl. (Cue John Lennon: "A girl . . . [inward sigh]")

I had a dream about her recently, which sort of triggered this post. She was standing on the corner near my apartment wearing a floral, very spring-ish dress. (Which didn't strike me as odd in the dream, but would in real life -- she's not really a floral, spring-ish dress kinda chick. But I digress.) She was standing with her back to me, and turned her head as I walked up. I don't remember the details of the conversation (dammit, dammit, dammit!), but she smiled at the end, and gave me the friendly hug/cheek kiss.

I call her the ICG because, well, I have an IC on her (I am, after all, married to someone other than her) and have had one on her since, oh 1998 or so. Short version -- she was a new-ish lawyer at my then firm, and we worked together on a couple of cases and some charitable projects that the firm was invovled in. She was and is, to my eye, utterly beautiful -- in looks and personality. I swear to God, the first time I really noticed her, a line of a poem I hadn't thought of since high school lept into my mind (thanks, Lord Byron):

And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes.

Anyway, one day early on, she makes some comment to me about my birthplace listed in the Martindale Hubbell directory, and how she went to high school in the Ancestral Homeland (her father's job took the family to all sorts of fun places for 3-4 years at a time). We exchanged emails, hung out in the same group, shared books, etc. I fell. Badly.

She, apparently, did not fall. I made the mistake of making my feelings known after 2 years, and she was horrified. We eventually got to the point where we were friends again, but it was obviously never the same. I left that firm a little while later, and she did, too. Then I moved a year or so ago.

It used to be so hard not to email her when I saw or heard things that reminded me of her. A mention in the press of the company with the unusual product that was the subject of a trade secrets case we handled for them a few years ago. The results of the Harvard/Yale game (she is an Ivy League grad). Who am I kidding? It is still difficult.

Anyway, I try not to obssess about her too much, but (duh) am not always successful. (As hard as it is to believe, though, I am much better at it now.) And every so often, I will see someone who reminds me of her -- a event, for better or worse, which is more common in the new place than the old -- and I will wallow in the memories.

Reading is fundamental

I like to read. In fact, one could say that I like to read too much -- I use books as an escape from real life and responsibilities, and find myself much more wrapped up in the problems of fictional people (or dead people -- I like history and biography) than is probably healthy for a non-trust fund baby with a taste for upper middle class comforts.

Anyway, what has Jackson been reading lately? Currently, it's Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography.

I have been a huge fan of Peanuts my entire life. I can't remember not reading it, and I used to spend my allowance on paperback collections. One of my favorite presents as a lad was a hard-cover collection, and I read and re-read it constantly.

Why? Who knows? I think that Charlie Brown spoke to me in a way. Filled with self-doubt about some things, with optimism about others, a fan of the underdog (who can forget his favorite baseball player, Joe Shlabotnik?), usually kind -- we could all do worse than modeling ourselves on the round-headed kid.

General Francisco Franco is still dead.

So, in the nearly six months since my last post, there have been many changes in Your Author's life. And many non-changes. Rather than boring you with everything that has happened, I will mention one -- I passed the bar exam that I took in July.

And I will start a-fresh with this whole blogging thingy. I make no promises, but I will try to post more than twice a year. So, on with it, then.