He Must Be Stopped...

As if graduating from High School 2 years early and being an amazing musician is not enough for my son, he calls me today and tells me that he scored a "5" on the AP Calculus test. "5" as in, the top score you can get. This child is far too intelligent and continues to show up his old father. We must stop him before he conquers the world.

Actually, this is another sign that this child has a destiny far greater than his old father's. He told his mother "At the beginning of the year I knew I had to pass three tests to get where I wanted to go: The Driving test, the High School Proficiency, and the AP Calculus test. And I've passed all three now." I might add, he passed all three on the first try.

I think back, of course, to those unimaginative teachers he had in elementary school who kept telling me that the boy would never amount to anything unless I put him on the ADHD medication. We didn't. We worked with him to teach him how to control his ADHD and then to use it to his advantage--there are advantages to his form, such as hyperfocus. I'd say the lad has passed that particular test with distinction. I only wish I could go back to some of these fools and rub it in their collective faces.

As for myself, I envy the lad in having goals and achieving them. I'm struggling to keep myself involved in the practice--worrying every night whether there will be enough work and money to get through the month (there always seems to be so, and I have some money in reserve in case there's a bad month). I guess it's like the old joke about the man who jumped off the top of the Empire State Building and, as he passes each floor he looks in the window and says to the people staring, "I'm okay so far!"

I'm okay so far.

The good news is that my friend Mike McLaren, an excellent slide guitar player and well known local musician, asked me tonight to work with him for a few months on some of the gigs he's doing in Sept and Oct. He said we'd even do some of my songs. He likes my harmonica playing--the fact that I don't step on the singer or the solo guitar and then can throw a few little licks myself. "I'm not going to do all these gigs alone," he said. He's even offered to teach me to play a little banjo. Woo hoo. Another loud instrument to bother the neighbors with.

(Yes, a few nights ago I took my guitar and sat on the back porch playing a few tunes. After about 20 minutes the neighbor said, "Mark, it sounds good but we're tying to get some sleep because we have to get up in the morning." Not exactly a standing ovation.)

Listen, I was put on this earth to do something. I'm not sure it's lawyering, though when I help someone who otherwise would have had no help, I think otherwise. Who knows. I'm asking for a sign here, Lord. It doesn't have to be a burning bush. Just something that even someone as dense as me can understand.

A Nice Compliment

So I'm calling Department of Child Support Services today because we have a little hearing tomorrow morning and I subb'd the employment records of the other side, records the court received, said they were going to copy and give to me, and never have. So I have to continue the case until I get those records so I can look them over.

Anyway, the receptionist on the phone says, "Are you the Bruce who represented the rapist?" Which is a rather peculiar question, but the statutory rape case was in all the papers, so I figured she was just another curious member of the public.

"He didn't think of himself as a rapist," I said, "but yes, I did that trial."

"I was a juror on that case," she said, "and I have to tell you, I was very impressed by your questioning. It was very deep and intelligent."

The jury, by the way, found the young man guilty after three days of deliberation. But I didn't feel it important to point this out.

"Thanks for the compliment," I said, and then was connected to the lawyer I called.

Well, another fan.

You know, folks, there are days when I feel like I should just chuck it all, sell the Little Yellow House and live off my $2000 per month from the County of Orange. There are plenty of apartments around here for less than $1000, and if I got a part time job at, say, Starbuck's, I'd have a little left over at the end of the month, medical coverage and profit sharing, and I wouldn't have to worry at night about whether I'd filed this paper, or how was I going to cross examine that person. I could get up late, read books, write, and live a quiet, if somewhat limited life. There are days.

Other days--like when a former juror feels compelled to tell me what a wonderful job I did, even if she didn't find my guy innocent--well, other days I think I just might have what it takes to make it in this rough and tumble world.

Oh well, oh well. Saturday I went to the Oyster festival with a friend, and was treated to two beers and a host of oysters. I'm not usually a fan of the shellish beast, but these little creatures had been cooked with garlic, or pineapple, or barbecue, or some hot confection that was a step from orgasm. And it's been so long since I've been intimate with anyone, that the oyster orgasm was a welcome sensation.

Father's Day I was treated to a nice homemade chicken dinner by my son's mother, who appreciates the fact that I kept the promise made all those years ago that I'd be a major part of the boy's life. She and I are pretty good friends now, enough so that I keep encouraging her to find some nice young man to make her happy. It's hard to believe that she'll be 50 next year. I've always thought of her as much younger than me. I really do, BTW, hope she finds some man who can make her happy. Heaven knows, I never have. But I put the blame squarely where it sits--on the Heavens, who made us too much opposite persons to be able to live peacefully under the same roof.

As for the fruit of that brief union, he's in the other room right now pounding on the piano. He's excited because he's going to be playing drums for the College of the Redwoods big band next semester. He's been practicing quite a bit. The old man is pretty excited, too, to think that he's finally going to be returning to the drums after a three year hiatus. That boy was born to play the drum set. It's what will make God happy.

As for what I am born for, heaven knows. And if heaven does know, it's been pretty secretive about it. For now I'll just muddle on as a lawyer, hope for a few more opportunities to show my brilliance, and hope for the best. What the hell. It would be hard to sell the Little Yellow House anyway. And I'd miss it terribly. I'm just getting used to the stains Adam put in the carpet...

Half a Loaf, Half a Year, Half a Life...

Spent Memorial Day at home, for the most part. My son and I don't seem to have much imagination when it comes to holiday excursions. Oh, we went to Border's here to look at some stuff--I bought a fun little book on deadly plants, he decided not to get a book on college calculus. We had lunch at the Golden Harvest in Eureka. We went home and watched "Back to the Future" (which he'd never seen).

Watching BTTF was a revelation. For one, the movie itself stands up over the last 25 years. Michael J. Fox should have done more quality comedies like that but I guess there weren't any made while he was a young guy. At the end of the movie the crazy doctor comes back from 30years in the future with a car that flies. Adam laughed, commenting that 30 years from 1985 is only about 6 years from now and we're nowhere near the flying car. "Not that much has changed," he said.

Oh yeah? I asked. Tell me, then, how many personal computers you saw in the movie. How often did they refer to the internet or to their iPods? Their cell phones? Things change--just not necessarily the things that the movie gods thought of.

It's Tuesday now, and back to work. Already someone who made an appointment to talk about a criminal case has flaked on me, even though he asked me to do research on his predicament, which I did. He never called back for the answer. My guess is that he got another lawyer who was willing to talk to him on Memorial Day. My thought is: His loss. I do good work for my clients and I work with them and answer their calls and all that. I fight as hard as I can for them and sometimes I even get them a good deal. Many times, in fact.

And I notice that the Sonoma PD is looking, yet again, for an "experienced" attorney. I've gone down there twice, interviewed with their head guy twice, twice been told that they needed to look elsewhere. Do I dare apply a third time? If I do, at least this time the head guy will recognize me when I walk through the door. And I can say, "aren't you sorry you didn't hire me two years ago? You could have saved yourself all this angst."

But I'm not sure I'll apply. I made a choice, after all, to stay in Humboldt. You'd think for once I'd stick to that choice.

Okay, okay. Listen, speaking of choices, I got lots of work to do and a few days to do it in. Guess I'll just get back to it. I have another potential client coming in at 11 and I expect these folks to show. A family law case and they really need my help.

After all, that's what I'm here for, yes? To help people?

The Graduate

My son is too smart.
Way, way too smart. He makes me look like a slacker. This must stop.
His latest exploit? He decided that he was tired of the BS of high school. He didn't fit in with the other kids who talked about video games and the Jonas Brothers, when my kid is more interested in physics and jazz. So he took the California High School Proficiency Exam, or CHSPE. If he passes it, he can leave high school and start at a Junior College.
Of course he passed. Next week he starts an Astronomy course at the College of the Redwoods. In two years he intends to transfer from CR to Berekely, applying as a legacy admission because one of the few things his denser old man was able to accomplish was graduating from Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall).
I don't know about you, but the fact that my kid is finished with High School at the age of 16 is somewhat daunting. At 16 I was barely able to form coherent sentences and had a dim, dark view of life and love and all that. Okay, when I was 17 I was elected vice president of my high school, but that was mostly a fluke because everyone thought my election campaign--I called myself "the garbageman" and promised that I'd do the garbage work so that the president could concentrate on bigger things. But that was really the highlight of my school years.
My son, on the other hand, has dispensed with such foolishness and has his eyes on the prize. He wants to be a physicist, either a teacher or a professor doing experiments. This child is so driven that he's been accepted as a helper on a local physics professor's experiment at Humboldt State University. He tried to explain it to me but all I heard was a monkey clapping cymbals in my head.
What do you do when your child is smarter than you? Last week, mother's day, the boy's mom and I sat in a cafe listening to our child play double bass with a very good little jazz trio. Suddenly she burst into tears, saying it was all going too fast. I suppose we love our children so much it's hard to let go of them. Even when they continually show us up for the dolts that we are.
Sigh. Oh well. He starts college next week. Maybe that will slow him down.

Time to Show the Bastards...

I got a call tonight from one of the credit card companies. This company and I have a relationship going back to before my son was born--and he's 16. I've been using their product and making timely payments all this time. In fact, I've paid them off more than thrice. At present, I am $5000 below their credit line.

Yet they called me today and said, "We've been doing a periodic review and have decided to reduce your credit line." They "reduced" it to $100 above what I owe now on the card, which isn't much. They didn't really give me a reason for doing this. They are the all-powerful credit card company and they can do what they want.

Except. Except. I don't owe that much on this card. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pay them off and cancel the card. And I'll never use one of their products again.

And I might as well say, it's Capital One. What's in my wallet? Not one of their cards, that's for sure.

I know this has been happening all over the country. People like me who have been good about not abusing the card and making regular payments are suddenly bad credit risks. YOu know why I am? Because, with my personal credit and the credit line for my law practice combined, I'm over the limit they think I can handle. Never mind that for nearly 20 years I HAVE handled it--in fact this is the same company which several times has increased my credit line because, they said, they were impressed by how I've handled my finances. If they were to look at all of my finances, they'd see I was in pretty good shape--$30,000 in the savings, $14,000 in the business account, $25,000 in the retirement account, and right-side-up on my mortgage. (I estimate I have about $25,000 or more in equity left on the house because I put a sizeable downpayment on it three years ago.)

Here's what I say: For those of us who can, every time one of these damned banks reduces our credit line or increases our interest rate, we pay off the card and dump it. And vow NEVER to use a credit product from that bank ever again. I am personally on a one-year plan to pay off my whole credit enchilada and then I'm going to experiment with paying nothing but cash unless I absolutely have to--such as when I buy plane tickets or reserve hotel rooms. And at that I'm going to pay that off at the end of the month of purchase.

In a way, this is a very good thing for me. Getting pissed off is always a fine way to motivate oneself to improve one's finances.

So who's with me? Let's show these bastards that they can't screw with us like this. They need us, friends and neighbors. On the other hand, we can get along quite nicely without them.

Close But...

Yeah, I know that I've neglected this little blog terribly. It's because I've been in trial for the last 3 weeks on a pretty big case--at least, a case reported in the newspapers. I wanted to blog to you, my friend, I really did; but I didn't want to even get close to commenting on the trial while it was still going on, just in case. Regular readers of this little travail--and there are about 30 of you hardy souls out there--know that I've gotten in trouble before on this blog for saying what I thought were innocuous things, things which were darkly interpreted in other quarters.

In my final argument I traced the concept of reasonable doubt all the way back to the Magna Carta, using the picture here in my powerpoint. I think the powerpoint was pretty effective--at least the DA was impressed.

But the trial is over now. And I can't report a famous victory--the case was a statutory rape charge where the DA had DNA evidence on my client--but I can say that I kept the jury out for three days questioning the evidence and the witnesses. You can't ask more from a jury than that.

When it was over I talked to three of the twelve. These women told me they didn't really put much credence in what the "victim" said (I thought she was way too melodramatic on the stand, and many parts of her story did not make sense). They also said they felt rather protective of my client. So I guess I did a pretty good job in punching a hole or two in the evidence.

The important thing in this case was to show the DA that things aren't easy. I'm sure he believed that this was going to be a slam dunk--put the DNA stuff on, put on the victim, bang, you're done. But it wasn't that easy. And since this client has a much larger, much more serious case which could result in him spending the rest of his life in prison, perhaps it was good to go through this case to show all parties that the best thing now might be for a good plea bargain to clean everything up.

Not that I'm holding my breath. The client has already turned down a pretty decent offer in the past--twice. I'm not sure he's going to get much more sense now. But one can always hope.

Easter came rather quickly this year. Mary McCarthy and Adam and I all played the 9 a.m. mass at Christ the King and the place was packed. We had a very appreciative congregation and I think we did rather well. Several people came up afterward to tell us so, always a good sign.

After the ceremony Adam flew off to his weekly jazz gig at Muddy's and I went home, took a nap, and did a little newspaper reading. Later I went over to be with the boy and his mother at her house with some mutual friends. Leg of Lamb for Easter dinner. Very nice.

Now, of course, I'm back home and getting ready for a rather stressful week. I have to shed a client this week--the less said about that the better--and I have a ton of paperwork to do for other clients who are somewhat less recalcitrant. But at least I have work to do. Woo hoo.

Causing Trouble...

Yes, I'm in trial again on a serious felony case, one reported in the newspapers and the gossip of the courthouse. The DA himself is prosecuting--which means that he thinks this is both a slam dunk and a high profile case. If I were DA in a small county, I'd never take anything to trial unless I knew it was a lock.

Of course, I can't really talk about the case just in case some jurors stumble over this blog; also, I've already caused enough heartache for myself in this venue, no need to cause more. Still, leave us say that before the trial is over I intend to give the DA a little hearburn and a sleepless night or two. It's the least I could do--gotta keep the old man interested in his job.

(I referred to him today in voir dire as "my old friend Paul," which he thought was hilarious. I also referred to myself as a "big loud scary man," a characterization which seems to stick on me, so I might as well embrace it. The disconnect between these two images entertained the DA to no end. Nice I could provide some entertainment for him in this little felony.)

I am on a health kick again, friends. I've decided I'm going to hit the gym every morning at 6 a.m. I've actually done it three days in a row--whoo hoo--not that I've lost a damned pound but I can tell you that I'm feeling better in the mornings. Plus, now in the afternoons when I'm hungry I can eat instead of debating whether to have dinner or go to the gym. Dinner always won, which is why I would spend weeks away from the gym.

I'm hoping that I can turn this into a habit. I am useless in the morning anyway, even though I often wake at 5:50 or even earlier. If I can start training myself to get out of bed and down to excercise, maybe I can drop this roll of fat I seem to carry with me like an old friend. YOu know; exchange my kegger for a six pack.

Of course I'm full of plans to hit the gym every morning, and now I'm wondering how good I'll look in a month, in two months, in six, in a year. It will make me feel better. Already I'm down a belt loop.

I know it sounds narcissitic to talk of such things. Foolish and superficial and vaguely childish. But what the hell. I've had enough drama to last me a lifetime, folks. A little vain superficial attention to my fading 50+ year old body is somewhat timely--I don't want to try to get into shape in my 60s.

Anyway, since I'm in trial, I want to be alert, full of vibrancy, on my toes. Hard to sit on my toes but I'll figure it out.

Humboldt is cooperating by having a nice run of good weather days. Yesterday, for instance, was a multiple personality day: It hailed in the morning, big fat raindrops about 10 a.m. and then in the afternoon, a lovely blue sky as if there had never been a hint of rain. But the weatherman says that we're due for a few good days, so I'll do some walking and biking in the afternoon to stretch the legs after a long day in court.

And soon I'll be pretty again and everyone will love me.