Tag Archives: Brooklyn

I Was The Life Of The Party Of The First Part

24 Oct

October 24, 2014

I’ve rarely demonstrated any respect for the legal profession. And really, what have they done to earn my respect? Let’s take today as an example.

I had to give a deposition in a lawsuit today. Almost three years ago I was involved in a car accident and I had to go to downtown to meet my lawyer, who was assigned by the insurance company, to discuss what was going to happen. Yes, the accident was almost three years ago. “Wheels of justice grind slow but grind fine,” said Sun Tzu. We’ll see.

It was nasty out, cold and rainy, and the one and only other time I had to give a deposition it was nasty out, cold and rainy, but that time I was taking the Staten Island ferry to Manhattan, this time I was taking the subway to downtown Brooklyn, a nearly better situation.

I was on time and no one else was. First to arrive (15 minutes late) was my lawyer, who looked, talked, and acted like Willie Degel, from the Food Network’s Restaurant Stakeout.

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Next to arrive (30 minutes late) was the opposing lawyer. During the course of my disposition, he asked me my address, I told him, and then we had an off the record sidebar about whether or not he once had an office in my building. He was adamant that he did. I was adamant that he did not, on the grounds that he claimed that my building was two stories when it in reality six stories. Good lawyer that he is (though probably not) he challenged not his own faulty memory but mine, until I showed him my ID with the floor of my apartment on it. Of this I am sure: my building has more than two floors, otherwise I am somehow hovering many feet in the air when I come home.

Yes, he challenged me on if I was lying under oath about how many floors my building has. Luckily, that was as contentious as the session got.

While we were waiting for the stenographer, there was plenty of time for small talk. First, my lawyer showed me a picture of his neighbor’s house, all decorated for Halloween. I still have no idea how this came up. One moment he was talking about how his office had a faulty vent, the next minute he was showing us his neighbor’s house the way other people show their newborn’s pictures. Then he talked about his house out in the woods. Then he asked the other lawyer about his iPad and suddenly the light bulb went on over my head. That explained how he afforded the house.

I know the stereotype is that lawyers are all rich, but I also know that isn’t true. These guys made good money I am sure (one of them talked about how he was buying a second house) but the secret of their wealth?

They are ridiculously cheap.

My lawyer talked about how he didn’t buy an iPad until he had gotten enough gift cards as presents to cover it. The other lawyer said he bought his iPad refurbished from Apple. My lawyer chimed in with the fact that he bought a refurbished coffee maker. The conversation then steered to discount batteries before the stenographer finally arrived (45 minutes late).

Everything went normally from there until we realized the stenographer was a loon. First, she couldn’t begin until she had two glasses of water. Oh, sorry, I need to be accurate- she needed one and half glasses of water, sitting at the ready beside her. And it had to be one and a half because she made a point of spilling out half a glass.

Then, she would not stop blabbering about her dog.

“My dog hates this weather.” “My dog hates when I leave him.” “My dog yada yada yada….”

It all went well until about 20 minutes into my deposition when, interrupting a lawyer, she yelled “do you hear that noise? WHAT IS THAT NOISE????” The lawyers heard nothing but I, sitting closest to her, thought I heard the sound of people from below the window. But nope, that wasn’t it. She was hearing “cartoon characters” from “under the table.” She got under the table to find them too. (Unsuccessfully.)

The whole thing wrapped up in an hour and if it goes to trial, it won’t be for at least a year. Too bad, because I’m looking forward to finding more about those discount batteries.

 

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I Predicted This: How Hollywood Russell Predated The New Stonehenge Discovery

29 Sep

September 29, 2014

Did you see this headline last week? This story made news around the world.

henge

Turns out the Stonehenge is really huge, much bigger than we thought. Basically, researchers had been walking around, over, on top of, all kinds of crazy structures and objects, and not all of them were buried. A lot of the hills and mounds turned out to be hiding structures right in plain sight. Scientists were basically having picnics on top of those pretty hills and never realized what was going on right below.

This is why I should have been a Stonehenge researcher, because I would have discovered those mounds and buried objects ages ago. You see, I already had that theory 30 years back.

It was the late 80’s/early 90’s, somewhere in that area, and my friend and I were hanging out at Kings Plaza, Brooklyn’s version of a shopping center, working on various ideas for stories that we’d never write. Both of us were interested in Old Time Radio and most of our ideas tended to fit in the horror or detective genre. Sometimes both.

We had an idea for a show called The Corpse. It would be about a crime-solving corpse. (We put the emphasis on solving to differentiate it from all the other crime-committing corpses.) Basically, a bunch of Scooby Gang types would ride around with a dead man in the back of their car and they’d communicate with it by Ouija board.

JOE: Quick corpse, tell me, who’s behind the big bank robbery?
PETE: I’m getting something now. “B-I-G-B-R-U-C-E-F-R-E-E-D-K-I-N.” It’s Big Bruce Freedkin!
JOE: There’s something else coming through!
PETE: “D-U-C-K.” Duck? What’s that mean?
(SOUND OF A SHOTGUN BLAST)
JOE: They’re shooting at us! That’s what it means! Duck!

We also had an idea for a show called The Adventures of Seamus O’Reilly. Seamus was a sheep and his owner, Mother O’Reilly, was knitting him a sweater because he looked cold. She was knitting him a sweater out of his own wool. See why it never got made?

There was also someone called Stoop Nagle, but for the life of me I can’t remember if he did anything more than sit on a stoop.

All this brings me back to Stonehenge and the unlikely first adventure of Hollywood Russell.

In Hollywood’s first adventure, the plan was that he’d been tracking either smugglers or Nazi spies (or both) who were using a small plane to fly in and out of Coney Island unseen. Eventually the bad guys, fearing that Hollywood was getting too close, buried the plane under the Coney Island beach sand. From ground level you couldn’t see anything but some large dunes. Families would climb on them, kids would play on them, and no one could tell there was a plane below. Only when Hollywood went to the top of the parachute jump and got an aerial view could he see the outline of the plane buried below, kind of like the famous Nazca lines down in South America.

For some reason we found that idea farfetched (wonder what those Stonehenge guys would think?) and changed the story so that the plane was buried under the parachute jump during its construction. But that was even more ridiculous, especially considering that the boardwalk was between the beach and the attraction. Then things got worse from there.

And there you have seven degrees separation between Stonehenge and Hollywood Russell.

 

 

 

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