You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2009.
Today concluded week nine of my ten-week summer internship. The summer has flown by. One of the best things about the whole experience has been the neat people I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Here are a couple of pics of those with whom I’ve worked the closest.
So I’m on the PCH just south of Malibu on my way home from work today when I witness an out-of-control car spinning in circles on its way across both sides of the highway. It crashes through a fence and slams up against the side of the mountain.
I’m thinking, Crap, I hope everyone is alright!
Traffic stops on my side of the highway, with me at the front of my lane. I look out my driver’s side window and see a man carrying a container of something running down the road and then diving/disappearing into the underbrush. I realize this man was in the crazy car just a few seconds prior.
I’m thinking, Crap, that guy’s a fugitive!
So I look back at the car and notice a woman driver get out, decide she ought to be running somewhere, too, only to encounter a police officer with a gun who screams at her to get down on her face. Well, she isn’t the quickest at complying. Actually, she wasn’t much into complying at all.
I’m thinking, Crap, he’s going to shoot her!
Well, he doesn’t shoot her. Instead, he yells in a voice that gets her to comply after all. Well, for a few seconds at least. Like an idiot, she decides to get up again and start walking toward the big, scary man with a loaded weapon. Instead of shooting her, he pulls out his billy club, holds it high above his head and starts to swing…
I’m thinking, Crap, I’m witnessing Rodney King revisited!
But she gets the drift and lies down again. He cuffs her and leaves her on the ground. Meanwhile, a couple of other police cars come screaming up the highway. I notice that a fellow spectator has gotten out of her van and has motioned the police officers to the place where the fleeing man had disappeared into the undergrowth. This is good news to me, because…
I’m now thinking, Crap, I’m hungry!
So hopefully I didn’t betray my civic duty by driving home for dinner instead of staying and filling out police reports. My justification was that this other lady spectator had seen everything I had seen and seemed awfully interested in doing the police reports. I thought I was being a nice guy by letting her have all the glory.
All in all, it was an interesting ride home.
1. Well, I took a chance and went to work today. Didn’t know how I’d make it with my recovering illness, but overall I made it okay. Will try Round Two tomorrow.
2. I’m glad I made it today in particular because Judge Harry Pregerson came to speak, and he was a hoot. He’s 86 years old, and the sharpest, funniest 86-year-old you’ll ever meet. Heck, he’s probably the sharpest, funniest any age guy you’ll ever meet! Judge Pregerson is one of those liberal, activist judges that Rush Limbaugh loves to hate. So I liked him right away. 
He has also been accused of doing more to help the homeless in Los Angeles than any other person.
3. I found out today that I was awarded a spot on Pepperdine’s Dispute Resolution Law Journal (DRLJ). The Law Review is the showcase journal at Pepperdine, but I had decided that my first choice was the DRLJ. So this news made me happy.
4. My friend, Kelsey, passed along a really neat article from NPR. Check it out HERE.
5. Here was the bad news from California yesterday, and not surprising to me, it involves the Governator (who has not been accused of doing more to help the homeless than any other person):
SACRAMENTO (AP) Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made additional cuts to child welfare programs, medical care for the poor and AIDS prevention efforts Tuesday as he signed an $85 billion compromise spending plan that he called “the good, the bad and the ugly.”
Schwarzenegger used his line-item veto authority to save an additional $656 million that will let the state restore a reserve fund he says is needed for tough times.
Schwarzenegger’s vetoes include $80 million from child welfare programs; $61 million in county funding to administer Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicare; $52 million from AIDS prevention; $50 million to Healthy Families, the low-cost health insurance program for poor children; and $6.2 million more from state parks.
“Those are ugly cuts and I’m the only one that is really responsible for those cuts because the Legislature left, they didn’t want to make those cuts,” he said.
The Republican governor called the budget package aimed at balancing the state’s budget through June 30, 2010, the toughest since he took office in 2003. Still, Schwarzenegger said the package included reforms he has long sought and forces government to live within its means.
6. For those out there who never knew me with hair (and/or, when I was actually young), here’s a old-timey picture from my friend, Lynn, thanks to the wonder that is Facebook. (Admittedly, not my most masculine pose of all-time.)
No, I’m not feeling better (well, maybe a little, but that’s beside the point) — much better news than that. In addition to the fact that my oldest daughter is finishing college this Friday, she found out today that she has a job!!! Talk about two good things in the same week!!!
She will be relocating from Southern Mississippi to the hills of Arkansas (Mountain Home, to be exact) where she will use her Child Development degree to work with preschool children in a daycare setting.
I am very proud of her AND for her!
I’ve been bragging all year about how Californians don’t have to bother with humidity or bugs, two things native Southerners would appreciate. Well, it’s still true, but my Malibu doctor told me today that I’m suffering from a bug of a different kind.
He said I would have picked up this bug before my trip to Arkansas last week, so there is no truth to the rumor that I am allergic to the South. I’m just an unlucky guy who is stuck with being sick for a while. Nothing that a little time, rest, fluids, ibuprofen, and Mucinex-DM won’t cure.
Being sick sucks plenty all by itself, but to me it’s exacerbated by having to miss work. I would have been supervising today, and I would be advocating tomorrow — but for now, I’m just hoping to make it back to join my team of law clerks by Wednesday.
Sometimes you think that your body finds a way to force you to rest when you don’t listen to it very well. If so, I’d appreciate a note or something instead of the combination of fever/headache/congestion/aches/cough. The latter just spoils the heck out of any rest.
Sorry to be MIA lately. I had a good trip to Arkansas, but things moved too fast for me to blog. Then, I flew back yesterday, and I’ve ended up sick. Feverish, achey, deep cough, congested, and a super-sized headache. So I’ll get back in the blogging business soon, but you’ll have to be patient with me.
It has been a year since we made the move to California, and since arriving, I haven’t left the state. But early tomorrow I’ll be on a jet plane for a super quick trip to Arkansas to officiate my niece’s wedding.
A year ago we spent two weeks in Arkansas, and to tell the truth, there was a pretty real feeling of not knowing when I’d get around to making it back. For one, it isn’t easy to make trips from California to Arkansas when you don’t have any money. For two, it isn’t easy to make time for trips from California to Arkansas when you are a 38-year-old law student. For three, on the rare trips we get to make back, a major goal of those trips would be to see our oldest daughter who may or may not be in Arkansas. For four, you just never know about the future in the first place.
Anyway, I made a point last year to drive around my hometown and take pictures of everything. Just for memories.
But I’ll get to see my hometown briefly on this crazy fast trip, and I suspect it will be an odd feeling. After a school year in swanky Malibu. And after a summer in congested downtown Los Angeles.
I know I won’t be complaining about the traffic there.
It will be good to see my mom again, and it will be good to see my two sisters whom I haven’t seen in a year. It will be good to see nephews and nieces and my niece-in-law (is that an actual status?) and some old friends who show up for the wedding. All sorts of good in store.
But I’d better pack. And I’d better sleep. LAX awaits awfully early tomorrow morning.
I started to say that yesterday’s budget deal was a really bad day for California, but I don’t guess it was technically worse than the many days that preceded it. The deal was just the bad news waiting to happen.
As should be expected, the poor got the short end of the stick. That’s almost comical to say out loud – if it weren’t so sad. CalWorks, the welfare program for families, suffered a 528 million dollar hit. Only to be surpassed by Medi-Cal, health insurance for the poor, which suffered a one billion dollar hit. Oh, and health insurance for children was cut by 124 million, too. Thankfully, since no one who actually has money had to suffer the horror of having his or her taxes raised, donations to organizations working with the poor will instantly increase by a couple billion dollars this year.
Everyone, I’d like you to meet sarcasm.
I am so glad that I’ve had the opportunity to work on behalf of the homeless in Los Angeles this summer. I had no idea the extent of the problem here. Did you realize that 1 of every 9 homeless people in the entire country live in Los Angeles? I had no idea. And how do you think cutting public assistance by a couple billion dollars will help that problem? Me, too.
Today was one of my better days because I heard Tom Mesereau speak. You may not recognize the name, but click on THIS LINK and see his picture (and read about him), and you’ll recognize the person.
Tom came to speak at Pepperdine this year on the topic of “Defending the Unpopular Client,” and I was disappointed that I was unable to attend. Thankfully, he came to Public Counsel today, and I was able to benefit from his wisdom. He exceeded my already high expectations.
It has been an adventure trying to find my way in this profession called “law,” and this summer has allowed me to finally discover a path. Now, I have every intention of becoming what is called a “plaintiff’s lawyer” – and a good one at that. The more accurate description is that I hope to be a civil litigator, but the best way to get the picture across to you is to get a picture in your mind of the cheesy commercials / backs of telephone books with car-salesman-looking guys saying, “If you’ve ever been in an accident…” You know, the ambulance chasers. The people who give lawyers a bad name. That’s where I’m headed.
And I get the negative connotations. But I’ll tell you, if you ever really ARE in an unfortunate situation and find yourself screwed over by insurance companies or other assorted large corporations, you’ll want me to be there. And you’ll want me to be good.
Tom Mesereau is a criminal defense attorney, and not a civil litigator. But we’re kindred spirits. And I’m not saying he’s Jesus or anything, but his reputation of being a friend of tax collectors and sinners is a lot more like the real Jesus’s than any church folk I’ve ever met.
Two bits of wisdom especially resonated with me today:
1. Tom has two goals: to exonerate innocent people, and to make sure the system isn’t abused by those with power. The latter is my kind of goal.
2. Tom said that the old saying that law school asks you to check your common sense at the door on the way in and then forgets to give it back on the way out is true. In the end, a trial lawyer must be able to connect with the common people. He’s speaking my language.
I have finally determined that I want to be a trial lawyer. And I want to be good at it. Now I’m lucky to be at Pepperdine because I want to be an excellent negotiator/mediator, too, and I hope in the future that I will negotiate many an appropriate settlement with wealthy corporations who should pay for damage they have caused to others. But if these big gorillas in the world jungle aren’t willing to bring about justice, I want to be able to connect with a jury of citizens in such a way that justice will be served.
I guess I’ve wondered what sixteen years of teaching and preaching were leading to next. I think I’m starting to see where.
Didn’t think it was possible, but today was at least as good as yesterday. After worshiping with the Logans this morning, we met Jeneen Metz at Malibu Country Mart for Sunday lunch. I enjoyed a sandwich from John’s Garden (I chose the Atlantic, a combo shrimp salad / egg salad sandwich, and an organic oatmeal-raisin cookie – yum, yum!). After a long outdoor visit on a beautiful afternoon, we headed to Hollywood. There, we stumbled on a movie premiere for the new Disney movie, G-Force.
They had already rolled out the red carpet for the arrivals, but we were able to see the stars coming out after the show. Jody was bummed that Nicolas Cage wasn’t there, and I wasn’t any happier that Penelope Cruz didn’t make it either. Still, we saw four pretty cool celebs. I can’t wait to see the Logans’ pictures when they are posted – I think their shots are better than mine (the pic at the top of this post is Gene checking them out when we ended our day with dinner at Johnny Rocket’s).
The first one is Gena Lee Nolin, former Baywatch star. We didn’t know who she was until we got home and worked a little Google magic. Jody said our friend, Todd Hayes, would have known who she was immediately.
Then we saw Brenda Song, who plays London Tipton on Disney Channel’s “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.” Anyone with kids would recognize her.
Then we recognized a rather significant star in Jon Voight, father of Angelina Jolie, and star in movies such as Midnight Cowboy and Deliverance. We (meaning, Jody) recognized him on the spot.
Finally, we saw a mega-star in producer, Jerry Bruckheimer. We didn’t recognize him until we made it home to play around with Google. But, huge Hollywood star. Too many television hits and movie blockbusters to start naming them – just check out the Wikipedia link HERE.
But in spite of all this fun, the picture of the day had nothing to do with the movie premiere. From our perch high above Hollywood Boulevard, we noticed a great sight among the costumed characters working for tips – here is the Son of God with a cold beverage chatting with KISS frontman, Gene Simmons.
