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October 31, 2022
My Halloween: Turn off the lights, lie on the floor.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Hull and O’Hara do American hate speech.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)
Karl Nickerson Llewellyn
Karl Nickerson Llewellyn
You expect me to tell you that you should be earnest about your work, and get your back into it for dear old Siwash, and that he who lets work slide will stumble by the way.
The above of course is from the opening chapter of the The Bramble Bush: On Our Law and Its Study (1931), which sprung from a series of introductory lectures Karl Llewellyn (1893–1962) gave to first-year law students during the 1929-30 academic year, when he was appointed the first Betts Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia. The book's title is from a poem "The Bramble Bush" by Robert Penn Warren, excerpted here:
There was a man in our town
and he was wondrous wise:
he jumped into a bramble bush
and scratched out both his eyes--and when he found that he was blind,
with all his might and maine,
He jumped into another one,
and scratched them in again.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2022
Job and His Friends, Vladimir Borovikovsky, 1810s.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)
October 29, 2022
Congrats DNC.
Kudos to my once-respected and once-beloved Democratic Party. You have abandoned 95% of the American people. You putzes.
—Partner Emeritus
Posted by JD Hull at 06:25 AM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2022
Buy and read Gene Dwyer’s She Walks on Gilded Splinters or I’ll come to your house on Halloween.
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A New Orleans Tale: Gene Dwyer's “She Walks On Gilded Splinters”
New Orleans-based lawyer Gene Dwyer is a gifted writer who deserves to be a household name. Buy and read this book. From Dwyer's website:
Marie Laveau of New Orleans is recognized as one of the most influential women of 19th Century North America. The life and legend of this Voodoo Priestess has been clouded in mystery. Her followers in the American South witnessed her supernatural powers of healing and casting spells prior to the Civil War and then during Reconstruction. Her legend, including her immortality, is even stronger and more complex. Thousands come to her New Orleans mausoleum every year to ask favors and pay homage.
"She Walks On Gilded Splinters" is the never before told story of the life and legend of Marie Laveau. Explore 16th Century Africa and New Orleans. with a riveting opening chapter in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965, a watershed day in the American Civil Rights movement. The novel is a unique, intricate murder mystery following retribution for the sins of past generations set against the history and consequences of the slave trade.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2022
Krudd Forever, IHHS 1970-71
Posted by JD Hull at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2022
Oaxaca, Mexico: Day of the Dead.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2022
October 22, 1974
Editor's Note: The following is a verbatim reproduction of an article appearing in The Chronicle, Duke University's student daily on October 23, 1974. Page Auditorium is on Duke's West campus.
Thompson, Audience Clash in Page Chaos
By Dan Hull
"Is there any coherence in this thing? I feel like I'm in a fucking slaughterhouse in Chicago early in the morning."
DURHAM, N.C.--In a pathetic attempt to slide something coherent through his staccato mumble, Gonzo journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was met last night at Page Auditorium with a bevy of jeers, curses, and a request by the Duke University Union to leave the stage.
According to Union spokespersons, it was expected that the slightly inebriated Thompson would drive away the audience if his talk turned out particularly monotonous.
Frustrated by the dialogue between the disjointed speaker and the belligerent audience, some did leave while others, many of whom were as well-oiled as Thompson, remained until the journalist was escorted off the stage.
Beer cans and joints
Beer cans and an occasional joint passed among the rows of the auditorium as Thompson, forty minutes late and looking more like a lanky tourist than a radical journalist, poked across the stage to the podium.
Slouching there, Thompson began: "I have no speech, nothing to say. I feel like a piece of meat," referring to his marketing by his lecture agency.
Having tossed aside the index cards on which were written questions from the audience, Thompson received few serious oral questions from the audience.
"What I'd really like to be in is an argument" he said.
When a baby cried Thompson mumbled, "That's the most coherent fucking thing I've heard all night."
In most cases, serious questions, and Thompson's responses to them were inaudible or incoherent.
Visibly put off by the belligerent Duke audience whom he repeatedly referred to as "beer hippies," Thompson was most relaxed and clear when talking about Richard Nixon.
Photos: The Chronicle.
"Nobody's beaten him as bad as he deserves," Thompson emphasized. "And nobody really comprehends how evil he is. The real horror of it all is that he reflects the rot in all of us."
"Hell, we elected him. The bastard won by the greatest majority since George Washington."
Thompson then suddenly urged the audience to "go out and vote." M
Maintaining that the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago "kicked off an era," Thompson recalled somewhat disjointedly that before going there he took along his motorcycle helmet left over from his Hell's Angels days. (In the sixties he rode with the Angels in order to research a book on the group).
"After I got there, I found out why I had brought it with me," he said.
During the forty minute encounter (he was asked to leave at about 9:30), Thompson commented briefly on other subjects. The 1976 Democratic Presidential candidate: "Mondale."
Terry Sanford's [former North Carolina governor and then Duke president] possibly candidacy: "I hope not."
Gary Hart, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Colorado: "He'll win, but he's a sell-out."
England: "A coal mine in the Atlantic. Next to a potato farm."
When asked a serious but largely inaudible question concerning the rise of consumer politics, Thompson yanked the shotgun-style microphone off the podium attempting to focus it in the direction of the questioner, a good 25 yards away.
"Violence is always sort of a self-satisfying thing," he added.
It was at this point, reportedly, that the Union people began to seriously considered pulling Thompson from the stage.
Asked by someone whether the Rockefeller family was encouraging "cannibalism in South America," an incredulous Thompson tossed up the remainder of his Wild Turkey onto the velvet curtain behind him, and scattered the rest of his unused index cards.
Amidst jeering and confusion, Union program advisor Linda Simmons escorted Thompson off stage.
Afterwards Thompson talked for an hour with about 100 students in the garden behind Page Auditorium.
Post mortems on Thompson's abbreviated Duke debut varied. One rather inebriated disciple was overheard saying, "I thought it was great, anyway. Just great."
"But another student remarked, "I'm totally embarrassed -- for everyone."
A third student commented, "This was fantastic — guerrilla theater, theater of the absurd — - all in one night. Good times at Duke."
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2022
Is the Junior League a ‘hate group’ yet? Anyone know?
Posted by JD Hull at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)
Famous long ago—with apologies to Ray Mungo
“Law Biz: What About Clients? Dan Hull is no pussy. If lawyers laid eggs and hatched their young, Randazza would have been in Hull’s nest. Highly educated and a spirited advocate for his clients, he sees, and has long seen, that the legal marketplace for attorneys old and new is driven by value and versatility, rather than pieces of paper from exclusive schools that don’t teach you anything about legal practice.”
MJR, Legal Satyricon, December 10, 2010
Posted by JD Hull at 05:27 AM | Comments (0)
October 17, 2022
Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano
Lowry's great romp about an alcoholic British consul in a small Mexican town was published in 1947. The story is set on All Souls' Day--or the Day of the Dead--on November 2, 1938 in Quauhnahuac, Mexico.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2022
Be advised.
Donate $ to Joe Biggs’s Legal Defense Fund or I’ll come to your house. I’m not kidding this time.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2022
The MC5: The Revolution as Serious Fun.
The MC5 truly believed in the power of rock & roll to change the world.
--Rolling Stone
Below is the MC5's Wayne Kramer singing "Ramblin' Rose" at Wayne State University in Detroit in July 1970, two months after the shootings own May 4, 1970 at Kent State. Note that Patti Smith's husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, now deceased, is the non-dancing guitarist in the dark cowboy shirt. One critic: "The MC5 brought out the animal in every audience."
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2022
Bring Back Real Women: Annabeth Gish.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2022
Fifteen Years of Grandiosity
Famous long ago. In the fall of 2007, a Carnegie Mellon study identified this blog (www.whataboutclients.com) as one of the one-hundred most informative blogs in the world. We ranked 60 out of 100. See, in Writers Write, this article: "Carnegie Mellon Study Ranks Most Informative Blogs" (October 24, 2007). We'd like to thank the little people.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)
Henry James: On Editors.
I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.
--Henry James (1843-1916), after a request by the Times Literary Supplement to cut 3 lines from a 5,000 word article.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:39 AM | Comments (0)
October 08, 2022
HST Storms Duke: Clash in Page Auditorium, drunkenness, bikers, 1A issues, more.
This month marks yet another anniversary of my youthful coverage of Dr. Hunter Thompson’s October 22, 1974 speech at Duke University as a student reporter for the Duke Chronicle.
Stay tune for more October memorial coverage.
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
~ HST (1937-2005)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:16 PM | Comments (0)
Some people.
Some people age better than others. Photo 7/2/2022. I don’t have the words. Hope she’ll agree to supervise at my funeral.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)
October 05, 2022
Winston's Sudden Deep Thinking: Orwell's 1984.
"One of these days, thought Winston with a sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.”
--Winston, thinking, in George Orwell's 1984.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2022
The New New Left
My Once Beloved Left. Group photo yesterday morning. October 3, 2022. 333 Constitution Avenue, Northwest. E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse. Washington, D.C. USA
Posted by JD Hull at 08:26 PM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2022
Day of the Dead
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1859, “The Day of the Dead”. Or Día de Muertos. This Mexican holiday spans November 1 and 2, the traditional dates for All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:49 PM | Comments (0)
John Faed, “Tam O’Shanter and the Witches,” 1872
John Faed, Tam O'Shanter and the Witches, 1872.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2022
Flaubert: On His Writing.
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
--Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)