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Your Honor, I move for dismissal on the grounds that the movie sucked.

4 Nov

November 4, 2010

Coming up is a story that you’d expect came straight from the United States, where it is every citizen’s right to file ridiculous lawsuits and waste the court’s time with nonsense. In fact, it has been estimated that if all frivolous lawsuits were dismissed immediately, and no further frivolous lawsuits filed, the entire legal load of merited cases could be handled by Judge Judy in a single afternoon, leaving the Supreme Court free to do what it does best, which is age at an alarming rate.

Of course not every lawsuit is frivolous, just ask these fine folks who filed suit, as found in The Huffington Post:

  • In 1991 Richard Overton tried to sue Anheuser-Busch for $10,000 because upon drinking copious amounts of Bud Light, beautiful women didn’t come to life in a tropical setting, as shown in the commercials.
  • Allen Heckard had a unique problem: people constantly told him he looked like basketball star Michael Jordan. Except Heckard saw it a bit differently, Michael Jordan looked like him. Naturally, he decided to sue Jordan and Nike for $832 million for his “emotional pain and suffering.”
  • In 1995, Robert Lee Brock attempted to sue himself for $5 million claiming he violated his own civil rights by getting intoxicated and committing crimes. He was serving a 23 year prison sentence at the time and thought the state would have to pay because he was incarcerated.

So obviously the legal system is pretty busy these days.

This problem is not unique to America. This story comes from China, where if they saw what passes for Chinese food in this country they would have a good laugh:

A lawyer in Xian, China, filed a lawsuit in September against a movie house and film distributor for wasting her time — because she was exposed to 20 minutes of advertisements that began at the posted time for the actual movie to begin. Ms. Chen Xiaomei is requesting a refund (equivalent of about $5.20) plus damages of an equal amount, plus the equivalent of about 15 cents for “emotional” damages — plus an apology. [The Guardian (London), 9-8-10]

Are you as shocked as I am? Imagine- only $5.20 for a movie! OK, she sat through some commercials, big deal. I sat through Starship Troopers and I paid around $8 for that. Other lousy films I paid to see were Batman and Robin and Any Given Sunday. Trust me, if anyone deserves to be sued it is Oliver Stone for that cinematic piece of crap. And Starship Troopers? If you voluntarily rent this film knowing that it is near the pinnacle of Casper Van Dien’s craft you deserve what you get. But this when he was only a new bad actor, not an established bad actor. I was young, I was naive, I was disgusted that the film wanted me to root for the Nazis.

But I digress.

I actually think that Ms. Chen Xiaomei should consider herself lucky. Not only would that film have cost around $12 in America ($145.50 in NYC, $195.50 for 3D) but while waiting for the commercials to end she would have likely consumed here entire 7.50 bucket of popcorn and 7.50 large soda. (Of course, she could have easily saved some cash by purchasing one of the theater’s combos, where the soda and popcorn would have only cost her $15.)  That amounts to $27 even before the coming attractions, and of course doesn’t take into account a date, which this female attorney didn’t seem to have.

I hope she wins the $10.55 she is suing for.

All this brings me (nearly) full circle from lawsuits to movies to lawyers. Can you imagine that this lawyer values her time so little that she is filing suit and spending time arguing a case for $10.55? (Ironically, the case is about wasting time.) She is either a very poor attorney or has very low self-esteem, either of which would also explain why she was alone at the movies in the middle of the day.

At any rate, and perhaps more importantly, she is also suing for an apology. Yes, an apology. She wants an “I’m sorry” from the theater, which makes me wonder if this case was filed in Ms. Wagner’s third grade class. I wonder if the judge will sentence them to shake hands and make nice? Or perhaps to kiss and make up, which may work out well for Chen Xiaomei if she can parlay that kiss into a date.

However, I may be minimizing the importance of the apology. No less an esteemed legal mind that Judge Marilyn Milian of The People’s Court says that small claims court is usually not about money, it is about the principle. She must be right. How else to explain the case, from the crotchety old Judge Wapner era, where one man sued another for 65 cents, the cost of a can of soda?

Frivolous lawsuits and bad movies will always be with us. True as that is, it is hard to believe that there are not many movies about frivolous lawsuits. Even if they were, however, they would not be prosecutable. If so, I’d have sued Jennifer Lopez for Gigli years ago, and put an injunction on Ban Affleck in the process. That man must be stopped before he acts again!

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In Search of… The Winchester Mystery House

25 Oct

October 24, 2010

Of all the paranormal creatures studied thus far, the Winchester Mystery House has been by far the easiest to locate and prove the existence of. It’s a house. It hasn’t moved in over a hundred years. Check for yourself, South Winchester Blvd, CA, 95128. MapQuest and there it is. Case closed, investigation over.

Well no, not really, because it isn’t the house we are in search of, but what is inside the house that we are in search of. Ghosts. Lots and lots of ghosts. You see, the woman who built this house was sure that ghosts were out to get her. Obviously, this blog needs a better title.

No, not right.

No, not right either.

Sheesh. Oh that hurts. That is so bad it hurts.

The house was built by Sarah Winchester, the great grandmother of Charles Emerson Winchester III. Her father, Charles Emerson Winchester Volume I, was the inventor the Winchester rifle. The Winchester rifle was the most popular weapon of the West and she herself owned 50% of the Winchester Company. The other 50% had been bought by George Soros and sold to the Chinese.

Charles and Grandma Sarah. Which is the face of mental health?

After her husband’s death, Sarah believed that she was haunted by all the people who had been killed by Winchester rifles. She was sure that the vengeful ghosts would one day take revenge on her. And indeed, Sarah began to see spirits of American Indians haunting her house. Winchesters were the rifle of choice back in the Old West, and most of the victims were Indians, hunted down and brought to the brink of extinction by Darth Vader. That sounds right to me. After all, I am a product of the NYC school system.

In her later years, Sarah had many regrets about the Winchester rifle, but even more regrets that she left poor Joe Remington at the altar.

Of course, many investigators believe that there is a perfectly logical explanation. They scoff at the idea of ghosts and put forward their own theory, that Sarah was still troubled by a childhood trauma that continued to affect her for the rest of her life and left her susceptible to suggestion.

Sarah believed that the only way to avoid the ghosts was to sleep in a different room every night. Had she been a poorer woman she might have become the biggest slut in San Jose, but she was quite rich and used her money to build her mansion into the huge monstrosity we know today. It was her belief that the ghosts needed a place to stay, and if she ever stopped working she would die. Of course, the law of opposites applies too, so that if she ever died the work would stop, and that is just what happened many years after. Sorry ghosts. Work continued around the clock daily and even after the great San Francisco earthquake damaged the house, she still kept at it. In fact, she left the damaged front part as was and just built new rooms in the back. Those ghosts were vicious taskmasters. Sarah claimed that it was they, not her, who often directed the workmen, a fact disputed by the lack of wigwams on the estate.

 

To escape the ghosts she built winding stairways that led to blank walls, doors that opened on sheer drops, rooms with ceilings only a few feet high, slanted walls, windows in the middle of rooms peering into other rooms, windows that look open onto brick walls, rooms with miniature furniture, upside down columns, trapdoors, and even rooms decorated with nothing but paintings of Richard Nixon. Though he was born in 1913 and only nine years old when construction ended, the spirits knew.

There also dozens of non-working bathrooms, which may not have bothered the ghosts but pissed off the workmen to no end. So to speak.

This door eventually led to The Batman Craze of 1966, in which everything had a label.

Obviously, the legends of Indians being excellent trackers must be overrated as, for 38 years, she managed to avoid the ghosts in her own home. Or, as critics say, just perhaps, maybe, possibly, there were no ghosts.

Sarah consulted the best psychics and mediums of her time, many of whom directed the construction. The building went on everyday for decades, and at the time of her death was still unfinished. The biggest loss was that, just days after her death, construction was due to begin on the beef jerky room, and thousands of cattle had to be sent back to the ranch.

Today the house has became a major tourist attraction, though construction long ago stopped, putting scores of Doozers out of work.

However, the Winchester Mystery House is still supposedly haunted and is still a favorite target of psychics and paranormal investigators.

What is up with the sponge on that guy's head?

Was Sarah Winchester haunted by ghosts who demanded she build and build and build? I dunno, but as the official Winchester Mystery House website asks:

It is easy to imagine how the combined grief of losing both a child and a spouse could be very crippling. But if you had $20,000,000 and all the time in the world to help you cope, can you imagine what you would do?

Yes. Yes I can. And building a crazy mansion is not on the list.

For more paranormal investigations, clik the tab at the top of this page.

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