Thanks

Today I floated down a strange river somewhere in Wisconsin with my fellow unemployeds/unstudying for the bar-ers. Iliana, Sophy and I drank Miller Chill and laughed and got muddy and sunburned. Then we ate burgers at Culvers, went home for a rest and reconvened for Pho... pretty awesome day. And tomorrow I have the settlement conference for my client. My client. You know, the person I am getting paid to advise and advocate for as an attorney? Then I head to Michigan for some beach, dad and grandma time (and coverletter writing time, naturally.)
Basically, this is all to say that I am feeling better. I am relieved because I feel like I can sink very fast, emotionally, but also that I still seem to have the coping mechanisms not to stay down there for too long. Of course, this is speaking to the audience that isn't my patient boyfriend who has to console me when I'm down, it's late... and I've had a pitcher of beer. I also have great friends and have heard some really nice things from a lot of people. Alijo reminded me that when I get a job, I'll have it all, "a career, a loving partner, an unparalleled instinct for finding a bargain, and an utterly devoted beagle." It's also nice to remember that even right now, I have three out of four. Not to mention good people who are good friends to me all over the place. And the bargain hunting? NO ONE can take that away from me.


PS. I'm back on Facebook, obvi. When you leave Facebook, they show this screent that says, "Are you sure you want to deactivate your account? Your 506 friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you." And then shows 4 pictures of your with randomly selected friends, "Kristina will miss you," "Charlie will miss you," "Drew will miss you." Like everything facebook does, it's brilliant and creepy.

Summer Blockbusters!

I've seen a lot of movies lately. For me, at least. We've been going to Sundance 608 for Tuesday night 2-for-1 student tickets the past few weeks. Plus I have gotten serious about Netflix again. So, here we go, the movies and my mini-review:

27 Dresses. You know you want to see it. Katherine Heigl, like a non-annoying Anne Hathaway.

He's Just Not That Into You. Weirdly the opposite lesson as the book. Their Bennifer (Aniston and Affleck) is something I've been talking about a lot when drinking lately.

Man on Fire. We didn't finish it yet. Charlie mentioned the best part of the second half is going to be that Dakota Fanning isn't in it. Because, you know, she's been kidnapped.

Inside Man. Really good in the Denzel caper genre. A Spike Lee Joint, so had a 50% chance of being good. Delivered!

UP. Supercute. In 3D. Balloons most impressive?

The Hangover. Funny. I liked, but I think I already said that.

Rudo Y Cursi. Sweet and cute and I love Gael. Not predictable either, really.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Like Spike, Woody has about a 50% success rate. Not sure I'd put this with the winners. Gosh, ScarJo is pretty and grating. Also, "Vicky" and "Cristina" are two different characters, not Penelope Cruz's name... this is apparently a common misconception. At least at our house.

For You Law Nerds Out There

In an interview with the public defender of a state that shall remain nameless, but is sometimes thought of (by me) as Vermont's evil twin (although less so now that they're apparently going blue):

Interviewer: What's your favorite Supreme Court case?

Me: Um... Is the right answer Gideon? Because that's the case that means we have jobs?

Interviewer: YES! Yes, Gideon is the answer-- and I've been waiting three days for someone to say it!

Other highlights include making up potential responses to the rumored Philly question, "do black people make you uncomfortable?" So far, we have:

a) Do white people make you uncomfortable?

b) No, no, I've spent a lot of time in prison.

Or, my contribution:

c) Um, everyone makes me uncomfortable.

Last Weekend

And two very New Orleans Events:

1. Friday Night: Chicken Drop at Outer Banks Bar. You can ask me questions about what this means, but the pictures and video should pretty much explain it all. Yes, this is a bar game here. And yes, if you're poor in New Orleans, these are your lawyers...

And then, Saturday, White Linen Night... where bourgeois New Orleanians dress all in white and walk around looking at art.

Next weekend? Abita Brewery Tour and tubing on the Bogachitta river, in Bogachitta, MS. Stay tuned.

Press

This has been a great series of articles about some of the issues the office runs up against.

Take your pick:

Stings Targeting the Homeless

Silly Pot Busts

Crime Against Nature

Our Sworn Duty

“We, as criminal defense lawyers, are forced to deal with some of the lowest people on earth, people who have no sense of right and wrong, people who will lie in court to get what they want, people who do not care who gets hurt in the process. It is our job – our sworn duty – as criminal defense lawyers, to protect our clients from those people.”

Strange Day

Some time in jail, a hostile client, one with the most amazing name which for confidentiality sake I can't divulge... and one of the other law clerks here died this morning. Which makes for a strange feeling day. I am going to sleep a lot tonight.

Vacay!

I am in the airport, about to take a mini-break. A long weekend away from the Orleans Parish Sheriffs and crazy judges and miserable clients and all of that hotness and absurdity and inhumanity. My boyfriend and I are meeting my wife and her husband and our communal son (godson, kindnessson, real son, potayto, potahto) and family and friends for a weekend at the lake. I am excited and ready to be very happy.

Some thing else that recently made me very happy is this:

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

What the Eff?

I was at work for 13 hours yesterday, about 8 of those in magistrate court. One of the PD lawyers was held in contempt after she was appointed to someone on the spot and ordered to hold the trial right then. I left at 9pm, went directly to drink an enormous fruity fishbowl called a "mambo," went home and discovered I have On Demand. You win some, you lose some.

The Rope

Today I went to magistrate court, like usual. I talked to some parents of two cousins, a boy and a girl, who are both in college. And were arrested yesterday on three counts of armed robbery each. The girl is 6 months pregnant. She got house arrest. The boy has $100,000 bond on each count. These kids fucked up big time... but I had a hard time not being able to make it better to their parents. Another client was about to be extradited on an out of state warrant, he didn't understand why or really what was happening to him. At one point, he mouthed to me, "help me." Maybe it's just that Fridays are tougher. Or maybe the days are equal, I am just out of steam by Friday. I left a little early, realizing I had already been there for 8 hours and would get more done by taking the work home and spending an hour on it over the weekend than continue to sit there and stare at it. A friend from work lives with 3 Tulane undergrads, I went with them to a restaurant here that has 7-cent mojitos until 7 on Fridays. We had 20. Well, 21 since the waitress spilled some on me and brought me a new one. The bill was $1.54. Then we went and ate the "best burgers in the city" at Port of Call. The work friend told me how much of a relief it is to hang out with these girls, because they are easy and fun and not in this crazy world we spend all day in. But they are also 21 and mostly affluent and sheltered and say thing like, "well, if we got arrested, they wouldn't bring us to that jail, would they?" And then she went on and on about how difficult the Katrina semester was for her, because she was at American and didn't even enjoy shopping. All she could think about was the clothes Tulane had boxed up from her dorm, waiting for her back in New Orleans. "Yeah," I said, "that's a real story of Katrina hardship." On the way home, we passed the tent city under the I-10 overpass downtown. One girl remarked how she had never seen it before... despite the years both it and she had been in the city. The one who Katrina took from the desire to shop said that some people choose to live that way. And all they do is sit there all day. And I snapped. No, noone prefers to live in a tent under the highway than in a home. And, actually, most of those people work. She is one of those people that don't seem to notice when you snap and when you are stewing in the front seat thinking they are at best ignorant and a waste of time and at worst a
bad person. Anyway, I don't find that relaxing or a relief at all. I find it frustrating and stressful.
I had been doing this weird immersion thing. Like I literally come home from work all day and watch Law & Order reruns on cable. I have started reading this book, Down in New Orleans by Billy Sothern. Sothern is a NYU law grad in his late 20s/early 30s now who moved down here a couple of years before the storm to do death penalty work. He is still here doing that, I know people who work for and with him. It's very readable, even if not really a break from real life. Some of the commenters on amazon.com talk about the book like it's unnecessary, like it's all been said before and like he lays it on too thick. If the New Orleans temporary residents I was with tonight are any indication, this isn't true at all. Plus, a local book by a death penalty lawyer my age has lots of good bar and restaurant ideas...

Cable Thoughts

In this weird new temporary life, I have some things I don't have in real life. Like a pool and cable. Here are some things about the cable:

-Cox cable apparently has a monopoly here (I got a pedicure today after first appearances and the ladies in the chairs next to me were complaining about it. At first appearances I met a man who lost a leg in a construction accident. He told me supports himself by doing surveys on the internet. Me: Wow, that's amazing. Him: Yeah, well... it's a lot of of surveys. What did I say about every thing that happens being bizarre and interesting...?) and they play an ad where there is someone checking out at the grocery. The clerk scans bread, $1.50. Milk, $1.60. Coffee, $4.69, etc. And then the clerk says, "ok, that'll be $23.50." And the customer just walks away. So the clerk turns to the next person and says, "ok, that will be $23.50 extra." The point is supposed to be that if one person steals cable, everyone else's bill goes up. I guess we are supposed to start reporting our neighbors or something. Since I am not paying for my cable (not stolen, just comes with the place) all I do is marvel at how cheap all the food is. I paid almost $4 for a loaf of bread today!

-The Real World: Hollywood is now 4 women and 3 men. More interestingly, there are three white people and three black people. This seems unprecedented in RW history. There's nothing really more to that, but it's interesting.

-Why do they play 3 Law and Orders at a time all week and barely any on the weekend? Seriously, what am I supposed to watch. Apparently the answer to that is "Just Friends."

Sorry

I am a bad blogger, a bad phone caller, a bad emailer lately. So many things happen every day, it's really very tiring. I could probably just blog each day's events and it would be interesting to read about. Today was a day that peoples' situations really got to me. I was driving home, thinking about the situations people are in, what happens to them (ok, not even people in general, but my clients in this system) and realized that my heart gets broken, like, 16 times per day. I feel well-prepared and the legal part is fine, the human suffering part really overwhelmed me today. I feel a little like a medic in a war zone, seeing terrible things constantly and people on the worst day of their lives. It's dramatic, but also true. For some reason one of our newer clients, who offered a police officer oral sex for $20, really got to me. I mean, the state of this woman's life that she needs that $20 so badly... that was the #13 heartbreak today.
Anyway, in typical legal and New Orleans fashion, I dealt with this all by getting drunk. I went to a fantastic and scary bar near the office where every beer is $1 and then out and about... including walking around the french quarter and the marigny drinking a six pack of miller lite out of plastic cups. And watching a scene from a new Carmen Electra movie be shot. It is ingeniously entitled "Mardi Gras."

The dialogue I saw went like this:
An ugly white guy and a pretty black girl standing in a "mardi gras" crowd full of families. A brass band is passing playing "when the saints go marching in."

Him: When are we going to get back to Mardi Gras?
Her: This IS Mardi Gras! Mardi Gras isn't just Girls Gone Wild. It's more than tits and beads, it's a celebrate of our city, of our people. That man right there (the grand marshall) has been doing this for over 40 years! C'mon, show me what you've got!

And then he fat-guy comedically dances off scene, following the grand marshall.

Needless to say, I felt nauseated and it looks like a hit.

Day 4

Is over. There are so many things that are disturbing about the way that things work down here, it would be hard to list them comprehensively. So I'll start randomly. No lawyers or law clerks have been allowed to see their clients at the House of Detention for the past two days because they are filming a Jim Carrey movie inside it. I saw 51 people get their "first appearance" this morning (where the judge determines whether there is probable cause to hold them and what their bond will be) in about an hour and half. That's three minutes per person... except the judge was on his cell phone much of the time.

The state has 45 days to decide whether to charge a misdemeanor and 60 days for a felony. In Louisiana, a felony is anything punishable by 6 months or more. In federal criminal law, and I believe every other state, a felony is one year or longer. They are charging second possession of marijuanas as felonies. This means the second time someone is caught with a joint, they can be held for two months before charges are even filed. This also means that getting arrested, even if charges aren't eventually brought, causes many people to lose their jobs, house, visitation with children. One man I talked to today was most concerned that his cat locked in his apartment and his girlfriend was in Las Vegas.

Of the 51 people this morning, 50 were black and one was Latino. It's really bizarre and not any less shocking than anyone would expect. More shocking because I am working with some amazing attorneys who are smart and dedicated and in completely over their heads, trying to do right in a system with so many wrongs.

Things from Today that Indicate We Are Not in Wisconsin Anymore

1. You must be indicted by a grand jury if your offense is punishable by life in prison or DEATH.

2. The jury must agree 10/12 to acquit or convict if your sentence can include HARD LABOR.

3.