Outside Counsel

There is no question that Dylan has grown less prolific over the years: the question has really always been, what's he got in the can that we don't know about? The answer seems to be "live recordings". Four in the last ten years, plus a greatest hits collection. I went for "Live 1966", although I concur with those who objected to its being released as a two disk set-- I love the electric stuff, and may never play the accustic disk again. I went for "Live 1975" with no regrets-- I saw that tour and am pleased to own the document. I said when it was released that the only reason I'd want "Live 1964" was for the liner notes. I stand by that. In all, I have quite a bit more live Bob Dylan than anybody needs-- but I know what I want, and I want "Bob Dylan: Live at the Gaslight 1962". Cagey old Bob-- first a commercial for Victoria's Secret, now a Starbucks CD. Is there anything he won't sink to? Mick Jagger is gnashing his teeth wishing he'd thought of this stuff.

It'd be nice if the two CD soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's "No Direction Home" had something we haven't heard. How likely is that?

Electronic filing is essentially manditory in the federal district courts in New York, and a more cumbersome, kludg-y interface would be difficult to imagine. It is possible that there are ways to do some of the things I'd like to be able to do, but if I can't figure it out over an hour and a half of clicking around, then I feel very bad for anyone even vauguely technophobic. Tying the thing to a fee based system also impresses me as a poor idea.

What's particularly troubling is the fact that we will be saddled with this infrastructure for a long, long time. Good interfaces exist-- anybody can figure out how to navagate in amazon.com. "Secure" does not have to mean "ugly".

Because she reads this, I should probably be less effusive, but the fact is that our law clerk this year is terrific. We were talking about things to cook for picky guests on Friday, kicking around a few ideas. About ten minutes after she's left for the day the phone rang: "Bill, it's ___". How would you make a red pepper spread?" I suggested incorporating roasted red peppers into hummus, and made it myself for tonight. The other thing we talked about were Arancini. When we lived in Brooklyn sometimes you'd go into the deli and there'd be a pan of Arancini there, obviously homemade. They were great, I'm here to tell you, and talking about them made me want to have some-- a stupid thing to cook on a summer Sunday, but that's how it goes. I used this recipe, pretty much, and added a cup of cooked peas, because that's how I remember them.

Because I have declared Kathleen Edwards' "Back To Me" the Official Hit Single of Outside Counsel's Summer '05 I figured I ought to check out the CD. (I typed "album" just then, but you kids wouldn't have understood what I meant.) You know how, when you are listening to a Lucinda Williams side you sometimes think to yourself, "Gosh Lucinda, why don't you stop hanging around with such losers?". I am here to tell you that Kathleen Edwards friends make Lucinda's look like your grandmother's garden club. Since I don't see a tattoo on her neck, I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that Ms. Edwards is adopting a persona in some of these songs, but you could tell me otherwise, and I'd believe you. Chicks that say stuff like "Maybe twenty years in state will change your mind" are scary chicks. If you are in a bar and you overhear a conversation like that, you are in the wrong bar. Pay for your beer and get out-- the evening will only get uglier.

I only met Donna Fernandes once, briefly-- her time as president of the Buffalo Zoo came at the end of A's main involvement with the parks. I always wanted to spend a little more time with her, since we had in common out time in Brooklyn, and because she impressed me as an intelligent, committed person. Her departure from Buffalo has been in the wind for a while, and I can't say I blame her, but she leaves the Zoo a better place, and she leaves the community an example. Even as Frank Clark is huffing and puffing about why he is entitled to a county car, Ms. Fernandes took a pay cut, and declined performance bonuses that she was entitled to. This is what a class act does-- she never tried to put the bad news off on anybody else, and she never asked anybody to do something that she wasn't willing to do her self. No wonder she is leaving-- Buffalo must seem like another planet to someone like that. I wish Fresno wanted a District Attorney, or a County Legislature instead of a zoo director.

Here at Outside Counsel we are often pretty critical of the present Administration, and we have never been fond of its Justice Department, but when it does something right, they deserve to get credit for it. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has removed the drapes that concealed the "Spirit of Justice". We are also fans of breasts, and applaud this decision. We also note that this puts General Gonzales ahead of his predecessor, the loathsome and sanctimonious John Ashcroft: when the results are tallied at the end of the day General Gonzales will be able to assert that he did one thing right. I suppose it would be hoping for too much to wish that this could build into a streak. Actually, since General Gonzales is thought to be a contender for the next open seat on the Supreme Court, maybe he won't have time to do anything else good. We have to believe that in the wake of this decision Justice Thomas is totally psyched about having Gonzales on the bench with him. Justice Scalia is a good friend and all, but we don't get the sense that Thomas and Scalia have the same DVD collection, you know?

To LCA's Closing Demonstration last night, a lot more time in a grammar school auditorium than I prefer, and quite a bit more time around a lot of children than I ever care to spend, but still. The thing is that all of these kids work really hard at this demanding art, and their hard work shows. They are tremendously focused as they do this, and they all look blissful. I respect the discipline, and it makes me glad that LCA has discovered this early in life that hard work can be rewarded with happiness-- a lot of people never figure that out. 

EGA writes: "We have an induction stove in Hopkins, consisting of two raised black squares on the counter. It's very mysterious and I haven't yet used it. It works with some pots but not others; you put a pot on the burner and if it is the right kind of pot a little light comes on and you can turn the stove on. Darned if I know how it works. This morning at breakfast Susie said, "I just discovered the induction stove! That's so cool! And it's so nice to have two extra burners at mealtimes."
"Yes," I said. "It's very mysterious, though. Do you know how it works?"
"Not really," she said.
"I think it works by mathematical induction: you put the first pot on and it works, and then you prove that if it works for any arbitrary pot, it will work for the pot after that."
She's a math major, but she looked at me like I was crazy. "I don't think that's how it works."

Oh. Hm. Well, it was funny to me."

One of the summer jobs I had when I was in high school was Weekend Steward at the Bay Shore Yacht Club. I was, of course, spectacularly incompetent at this job, which really amounted to swabbing out the clubhouse in the morning, keeping the bathrooms clean, and running up the flags of the Commodore, the Vice Commodore or the Rear Commodore when these personages were on the premises. There are a lot of stories I could tell about the various ways I was incompetent at this gig-- which was a pretty soft billet, but I think I'll pass on those for now. My point in mentioning this at all is that this summer janitorial gig left me feeling vaguely nautical ever after-- maybe not Gene Kelly in a sailor suit, but kinda salty all the same. So if Scheherazade wants a link to the Portland Yacht Club's Racing Web Page, well, from one old salt to another, ahoy. Or avast. Or something.

Ginger tagged me with this:
1. Total number of records I own on CD (or vinyl or cassette): This is why I put this off so long-- I really, really didn't want to count. Finally I took out a tape measure-- on vinyl, eight and a half feet (a bit more, actually, and of course there are the sides that reside in the Antipodes. I don't have a copy of "This Is The Planet", though.) On CD about five and a half feet. There is comparatively little overlap-- the vinyl is mostly rock'n'roll, mostly from the late 60's, 70's and early 80's, dominated by punk, reggae and, I suppose you could call it "art rock". The CDs are mostly jazz, blues and whatever sort of rock'n'roll I listen to these days-- I'd estimate that the ratio is about three to one jazz to blues and rock. There is a sprinkling of cassettes, of which no more than a handful are pre-recorded-- Rod Stewart's first solo album (the one with "Handbags and Gladrags", Television's ROIR release, "The Blow Up", Todd Rundgren's "A Capella" (shut up), Stevie Wonder's "Talking Book"-- except for the Television, I'm not sure why I own these.

2. Total volume of music files on my computer: 13.67 GB. That was easy. This is mostly the stuff I have on CD-- I haven't spent $20 bucks on iTunes yet, and the stuff I downloaded with Limewire was several hard drives ago. Some of it survives, but not much.

3. The last record I bought:
Guinga: "Noturno Copacabana". Haven't really gotten into it yet, though.

4. The last record listened to / song playing now: "My Slow Descent into Alcholism", Tthe New Pornographers. It came up on shuffle as I was driving in. A good example of why it is nice to have a daughter who dj's at her college radio station. This band is a done deal among the young and hip, but in the ordinary course of things I'd have found out about them in about two years from now.

And while I'm on the subject, the song that is my personal hit single for the summer is Kathleen Edwards' "Back to Me". Funny, mean, with a great guitar hook-- I love when that happens.

5. Five records that I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me (either singles or albums):
"I've Got You Under My Skin", Frank Sinatra/Nelson Riddle
"Dear Old Stockholm", Arthur Taylor with Taylor's Wailers
"For You", Bruce Springsteen
"Shelter From the Storm", Bob Dylan
"Goodby Porkpie Hat", Charles Mingus

Of course this is off the top of my head-- we could break it down a number of different ways, and come up with lists of five that feature none of these. In fact, I think I want a do-over. I gotta have "Hong Kong Blues" for example....

6. Finally, tag five people to do this meme: Well, Greg, anyway. Erica. Anyone from KRAC who wants to weigh in.

In theory the Bills' red helmets make great sense-- they were intended to make the receivers more visible in traffic. Even so, the old school logo is so cool that reviving it for the team's throwback uniform is absolutely the way to go-- what took them so long? Via Uni Watch.) 

A. is away for the week, driving with her sister and her sister's brood, east from Arizona in a sort of "Thelma and Louise en famille" roadtrip. I had thought that she was going to be away for ten days, which would have given me a little more time to wear down CLA and LCA's resistance to the structural reforms I am planning on instituting in her absence-- a sort of Cultural Revolution against clutter, for openers-- but it turns out that she is due back in a week. Her parting words to her daughters: "Stay alive. I will find you." A bit harsh, I'd say, in view of the fact that cleaning the refrigerator is high on my punch list. She'll find fewer weeds upon her return, that's for sure. I hit the the lawn with Weed'n'Feed before the wheels were up on the plane.

100 Most Trusted Australians. Good to see that Wolverine is in the top 25. (Via Making Light.) Interesting too that our glamour profession seems to be somewhat better regarded in the Land of the Marsupials than it is closer to magnetic north.

Ginger points me to this article on how the Jackson jury reached its verdict. We were talking about it in the office, and it really was a tough case for the prosecution. Most prosecutors will tell you that the burden of proving their case "beyond a reasonable doubt" is not as tough as it sounds, if only because of the presumptions and prejudices that jurors come into the process with. For the most part prosecutors are prosecuting criminals, after all, and for a lot of people the mere fact of arrest is meaningful enough.

The equation changes once you start talking about a public figure. For one thing, the jury is aware that this is a big deal case. Everybody tells them so, for one thing. They are asked again and again if they can set aside the notoriety of the matter, and deal with the case just on the evidence, and they promise that they will do this. And then they do. The notion that the prosecution or the police have somehow targeted the defendant-- a hard sell when you are talking about some character selling crack out of his apartment-- becomes a somewhat easier proposition to accept.

The article quotes a juror as saying, ""My hope is that the world has confidence in us because we took this as seriously as anyone does anything in their life." I believe that. Jurors always want to do the right thing-- and they are mindful of the fact that they are engaged in a very big deal. The effect of that, in a case like this, is that the jurors become very analytical in their approach-- which can be death if the standard is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" and you have a complex, fact intensive case. I believe that the high profile cases out of California that we've seen come out this way have done so because the prosecution has over-tried the case: they have made it complicated, in an effort to make it air-tight. The effect of this, however, is to present the jury with more evidence which they can question-- like picking at a loose thread, suddenly the whole sleeve unravels.

I'd bet a nickel that the majority of that panel think that Michael Jackson is a pedophile. The prosecution just couldn't prove that he molested this particular kid.

Conversations With My Wife: Star Wars
Wife: How does Hans know what Chewybacca is saying?
Me: You mean Han and Chewbacca.
Wife: That's what I said.
Me: No, you said Hans and Chewybacca.
Wife: Whatever. This movie is so stupid.
(Via The Morning News.)

Cats and tattoos have this in common: if you have only one, it is understandable. An old girl friend's name on your bicep can be chalked off to a boozy night in Singapore; that calico just started hanging around, so you started feeding it. When you get your second tattoo, though, you are heavily tattooed, and the second cat means you are on the way to becoming a crazy cat lady. (There are probably crazy cat men, too, but I don't know any.) Thus it was with considerable distress that I greeted A's announcement last week that she had acquired a second cat for our household. If I wanted to live in a circus, I'd become heavily tattooed-- adopting a menagerie impresses me as an unnecessarily complicated way to go about things.

We live in a world full of signs and portents, and even I feel the compulsion to yield to these from time to time. I was in OTB to lay down my carefully researched bet when a longshot rolled over and showed me its belly. Thus it was that I found myself holding my scientifically handicapped trifecta ticket and a $2 Win ticket for Nolan's Cat. It'd be a better story if one of my bets paid off, but it's a disorderly universe, and I had to settle for watching the horse close to third place.

For those of you who are not KRAC Blog readers, and care, (Hi Mom!) here's my finish at the Buffalo Half Marathon. I look less like Kirk in this than I did at the Around the Bay, I think. 

The Fourth Department has weighed in on l'affair d'Cellino & Barnes. The whole thing is a big deal, but I'd say the big deal that was being made over it during the time it was pending was every bit as bad. Hilariously, the spin on the thing probably works out to something like, "If caring about your clients is something that can get us into trouble, well, we suppose that's just the kind of guys we are." For their sins Ross spends the next six months in a villa in Tuscany and Steve will just have to learn to live with the shame.

The only other observation I have on this episode is that their counsel obviously did an outstanding job. I'm sure it cost them, but it was worth every penny. Reading the decision you can see what top shelf advocacy buys you: every time it looks like they are heading for the rocks, they steer away. No doubt all of the money they have spent on scholarships and civic causes helped as well-- the eight charactor witnesses "respected members of the bench and bar" sound like the sort of solid citizens that one meets by sitting on boards and whatnot. Cindi Lauper got it right.

Six wines that go with salmon. (Via Saute Wednesday.) Actually, I've never had a problem matching wine to salmon-- it works with whites that have body, it works with reds.

"I'm got to change my way of livin', this life I'm livin' ain't no good.
I'm got to change my way of livin', this life I'm livin' ain't no good.
I leave home in the morning, don't come back 'til the break of dawn."

Happy Birthday, Howlin' Wolf (and thanks to wood s lot for the heads up)>

Timothy Noah provides a skeleton key to "You're the Top." I knew a fair number of the references, but hey, Vincent Youmans? A Brewster body?

I am obliged to attend a neighborhood meeting this evening. Stories about a man hanging around the local playground have been circulating. Apparently he has said that he is a child molester to someone. The son of a friend reported that late last Friday night around 11 o'clock he and some friends were walking home when a man started following them. They turned to see if he were gone, and the guy ran up behind them and grabbed one by the hand and pulled. The kids grabbed pulled her away and ran and the man called out "Don't go I want to have fun". They ran home and locked the doors. It would appear that there is a real nut job on the loose around our quiet, liberal minded city block-- a block that happens to be full of small children, that my daughters frequently babysit. I am not the sort of guy who jumps at shadows, and I am inclined to take a lot of these sorts of stories with a supplemental dose of skepticism, but this sounds real, and it is scary to think that this sort of scary craziness can have come onto Lancaster Avenue.

Even so, I'm not sure what the point of a neighborhood meeting might be. Because my twisted sense of humor takes me to places it shouldn't, I have the thought that we should show up carrying tiki touches and weedwackers, the 21st Century urban hipster equivalent of firebrands and pitchforks. Apart from being vigilant-- something that comes naturally in my neighborhood, which has as many busybodys as cranks, it is hard to know what else we might accomplish at a meeting. This is something for the cops to deal with, and if I know my neighbors, the cops have been getting an earful. This is the sort of event that A-- a former prosecutor after all-- would be much better at than I am likely to be. I like those neighbors best who I never see, next best those who wave and move along. Third place goes to the neighborhood cranks-- there are plenty of us, and I suppose we are the ones who will mostly be in attendance.

I am presently preparing for a trial in which we represent a kid who was bullied and harassed at school until the day that he was chased out into the street and hit by a car. The case makes me furious-- the kid's mom had gone to the teacher twice before the accident to complain, but the school never did anything about the bullying, and the kid-- who really seems like a good kid, lived every day in third grade not only in fear, but in the knowledge that his teacher and his parents were, apparently, powerless to prevent the things that were happening to him. I suppose at some point the realization that authority can't prevent evil dawns on most of us, but third grade is too soon to lose faith in the idea of an orderly universe (and too soon for adults in authority to concede the point as well). Because I believe that order should be imposed on the universe I spent several happy hours taking the school authorities apart in depositions-- they came out of the conference room with a little taste of what it was probably like for our client at the end of the school day, afraid and miserable, and for that I'm glad. I felt like I got some of the kid's own back, and like I'd used my powers for good instead of evil. Unfortunately my powers of cross-examination are not likely to be much good up against the pathetic creep that is apparently trolling my block, and going to a meeting won't do much to alleviate the frustration that comes from knowing that there isn't much we can do in this situation.

I was a little surprised that nobody mentioned Mel Brooks as surviving Anne Bancroft in the mentions of her death that I heard-- but I'm glad that David Edelstein does, and I'm pleased that he mentions her role in Brooks' remake of "To Be Or Not To Be"-- I agree that she was as sexy in that as she was playing the architypical "older woman" 15 years earlier. If Brooks' "To Be" has any reason to be I think it exists to make exactly that point-- isn't my wife funny and sexy? As an homage to Anne Bancroft the movie works better than any of the roles she will probably be remembered for.

HOW TO AVOID THE EXHAUSTING PLANNING AND PREPARATION THAT GOES INTO MAKING A SECOND DATE.

Dear 37 Year-Old Guy Sitting Next to Me at the Coffee Shop Right Now Who is Clearly on a Blind Date:

Forgive me for eavesdropping, but this is rather important. I am not the smoothest Steve McQueen on the planet, but my very basic inter-personal skills tell me that you are making a series of extremely obvious first date errors. If I may:

#1. You are at a coffee shop with a woman who, in a very objective sense, is better looking than you. No offense, but I am looking at you right now and thinking the probability of this happening is pretty good, and has probably played out that way many times in the past. Perhaps you could have offset the imbalance of your superficial beauty by, I don't know, not wearing blousy black cotton shorts. The contrast between their dark fabric and the cadaverous pale flesh of your legs is nearly as striking as your obviously poor judgment."

I would recomend finishing whatever you are drinking before reading the rest. (Via Kottke.)

The last time I sat down and read a book of poetry it was by Robert Creeley; the time before that it was either William Carlos Williams' "Patterson" or Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead"-- it was so long ago, that I don't remember. I do remember that there was a time when I was a big Lowell fan (although I think I like Williams more). Can't say that I'm all that familiar with Elizabeth Bishop-- Luciana Souza's jazz interpretations are probably all that I really know. Funny about poetry-- at some point I just stopped reading it seriously, and although I suppose I wish I missed it, I can't say that I do. I think something similar happens to most people, and I wonder why that is.

"Barriers to Entry" is a term of art in trade law-- such barriers can take the form of restrictive tariffs, but nowadays more often consist of regulations which make the costs of importation economically unfeasible. The classic example(which may be apocryphal), is the requirement of the Japanese Customs Department that all aluminum baseball bats must be individually tested and certified. I like to think about the customs inspectors, down on the docks, finishing their morning tea, then going out and hitting some fungos. It must be pleasant work. Perhaps there is an abandoned warehouse there, and they can try to knock out the windows, or maybe they just hit the balls off the piers, watching for the splash.

Other sorts of things can be barriers to entry, of course, and chief among these in everyday life is a lack of essential technical knowledge. I thought about getting a bicycle for two years before I finally did, and it was because I didn't know enough to even ask the right questions that I was frozen in a state of wanting a bike, but not having one. Now I find that I am in the same place with respect to possibly upgrading my ride.

At present I am on a Raleigh C40. It does everything I need, and is comfortable as well, but a flat tire yesterday left me spending a half hour at Campus Wheelworks looking over the sleek Italian greyhounds, and thinking about duathalons and triathalons. There are, however, barriers to entry. Price is one-- the better part of $2 grand is not something I could justify for a toy, and even dipping well under the five figure mark seems likely to get me a whole lot more bike than I'm ever going to need. I mean, $600 bucks is a lifestyle change, you know? What I'd like is a ride that is a little lighter, so I'm pushing a little less bike on my cross-training day. I don't think I'm ready for a whole new sports wardrobe, and I'm almost positive that the world isn't ready for me in bike shorts. I'm not even sure I'm ready for toe clips, let alone cleats.

I probably could have doubled today, run then gone for a ride, but all I wanted to do was take the bike out, so that's all that I got to. Downtown, out Exchange to Seneca, out Seneca to Bailey, then down to Cazenovia Park. Back out along Seneca to Ellicot, then home, about 18 miles, nice and easy. I'm not ready for a new bike.

Tricks of the Trade. "Bookkeeper. If you are adding two columns of numbers that you expect to be equal and they are not, calculate the difference between the two sums. If the difference is divisible by 9, chances are you have made a transposition error on your adding machine (e.g. 365 instead of 356) when you punched in one of the numbers." This site is full of stuff like this. "Photolab Technician. Disposable flash cameras usually contain two AA batteries which are used for the flash. When the camera's film is used up, the batteries are still pretty new. Since the film winds in to the spool in these cameras, it's safe to break open the camera, take just the film to the lab (it's just a normal roll of film) and use the batteries for your walkman or flashlight." "Math Student. Many exams will ask you to show that some problem can solved to provide a given answer. If you cannot answer the question fully, work forward from the initial problem till you get stuck, and then work backwards from the answer. The trick then lies in framing your answer such that the gap in logic lies at the turn of a page. Thus, to a skimreading test-marker, the turn of the page is hides the fact the you cannot completely answer the question."

I don't think Rochester is a patch on the Queen City of the Lakes when it comes to hip, but I gotta admit that there isn't a single night of the Rochester International Jazz Festival that I would want to miss-- and on a lot of nights, I'd have conflicts. Like how about June 10? Bill Frisell or Sonny Rollins? Or Sunday-- Ravi Coltrane or David Weiss? I'd be real interested in seeing Madeleine Peyroux, the Bad Plus were great the last time, Wallace Roney would be good to see....

Some line-up.

I've been able to catch Phil Schaap's Birdflight the last couple of times I've been downstate, and it has gotten under my skin. I can't imagine when I'd listen to it, but I still can't help wanting The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings. It is the sort of thing that record collectors just crave, I guess. I will content myself with my present holdings for the moment-- the good news about getting the Charley Parker itch is that scratching it requires concentration. It's just not music that can be played as wallpaper, and the concentraiton it commands is rewarded.

Some time back-- years ago, I guess, I told my kids that I wanted a sleigh pulled by cats. It just struck me as a funny idea: I'd say, "Away, my team of cats!" and they would sit there, and groom themselves, or just blink. Via Ernie the Attorney I now find that as crazy an idea as that was, there are ideas that approach, or even surpass it. Like this. 

"The most influential of all British groups is clearly the Beatles. Who comes second is more debatable: the Stones, the Who, the Pistols, the Clash ... But have any of them had wider repercussions than Roxy[Music]?" Tim de Lisle expounds. I'd have to say that this influence is mostly in the UK-- but it is an interesting hypothosis.

Good essay on record collecting by Francis Davis.

The two major forms the Deep Throat revelation shake out seems to be taking are (1) the Deep Throat sourcing created a culture of anonymous sourcing that has grown into a significant problem, particularly as regards governmental transparency and the credibility of the press; and (b) Mark Felt was/is a hero for doing what he did. As for the first point, I'd have to say that I agree-- sunlight is the best disinfectant, and I think it is true that the government interacts with the citizenry less well than it ought, in no small part because of its disfunctional relationship with the Fourth Estate. I'm not sure what to do about that, but I'm quite sure that this is not a problem that originated with Woodward and Bernstein's relationship with Mark Felt.

The hero thing, though, that's interesting. What exactly did Felt do that is consistent with either heroism or being one of the top law enforcement officials in the country? As I recall the story, he steered Woodward and Bernstein toward the right direction in their investigation in a dark parking garage version of the annoying children's game of "Hot and Cold". He didn't put his life or his career or his reputation on the line: he stayed in the shadows while reporters investigated a crime of constitutional proportion. He knew how big the whole thing was, but he didn't step forward-- he stood in the dusk, and he stayed there for thirty years. I'm with Timothy Noah on this-- nobody really comes out of this covered with glory.