What About Paris? ™

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July 11, 2009

...and on Bastille Day.

And the moral of the story is never lean on the weird. Or they will chop your head off. Take my word for it, Bubba. I am an expert on these things. I have been there.

--HST, 1994

How the Marquis de Sade was finally forced into politics. Bastille Day is Tuesday, July 14, the French day of independence, which occurred 220 years ago. During the workweek, of course, we are not likely to write about Revolution. Or The Marquis. WAC? has big ones--but we have a decent respect for those who are straight-laced, clean-living and just trying to avoid the next nightmare. They are our people. We come from that; we lived among them for many years.

Besides, no matter what the mainstream press tells you, there's a "riot goin' on" (i.e., the late-2008 Recession). No use in further aggravating our well-educated readers, many with serious resources to conserve and protect. Yet it is Saturday. This is What About Paris? Bear with us.

According to Dr. Thompson in "Better Than Sex" (a 1994 book about U.S. politics), and some other sources, the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), the Parisian artist and French nobleman, played a role in this opening drama of the French Revolution. It is true that the Marquis, a serious artist, was out-front different, wild, and independent; he didn't care what people thought or said about him.

Ever.

Thompson writes that on occasion The Marquis would run amok on booze and laudanum in the streets of Paris, just to blow off steam. The mainstream French aristocracy, and clergy, were never happy with the Marquis. They "not only hated his art, they hated him".

The Bastille

By 1788, the Paris police routinely harassed him, and jailed him a few times. The Bastille itself, and later an insane asylum, were his homes in the days leading up to July 14.

In turn, Thompson continues, the Marquis began to hate cops--and the government. Well, by the summer of 1789, Paris, in its oppressive July heat, was about to explode, anyway, and according to Thompson:

The mood of the city was so ugly that even the Marquis de Sade became a hero of the people. On July 14, 1789, he led a mob of crazed rabble in overrunning a battalion of doomed military police defending the infamous Bastille Prison, and they swarmed in to "free all political prisoners"....

It was the beginning of the French Revolution, and de Sade himself was said to have stabbed five or six soldiers to death as his mob stormed the prison and seized the keys to the Arsenal. The mob found only eight "political prisoners" to free, and four of those were killed by nightfall in the savage melee over looting rights for the guns and ammunition.

Posted by Rob Bodine at 01:59 AM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2009

Jordan Furlong at Law21: Everything will change. Get used to it.

A slow-moving but relentless development that in time will have vast economic, social and political consequences.

--The Economist, June 26, 2009

No, you won't need to sell the condo in Marco Island. But yes, in the Americas or Europe, everything--especially if you are a corporate lawyer--is about to change. Inspired by a piece two weeks ago in The Economist on the demographics of aging in the West, Canada's Jordan Furlong at Law 21 just gave us "Time Bomb".

Law21--launched 18 months ago and subtitled "Dispatches From a Legal Profession on the Brink"--has already been right about many things. Furlong's article discusses the end of retirement. Unfunded pension rights. The waning of big incomes, and of many law schools. Sobering. And everyone will work longer in multi-generational places and modes of work? This blog? We would settle for just starting to work again--and without apology to fashionable consultants. We can get finally off our knees.

And finally one very bright spot. It's the passing reminder in Furlong's piece that Gen Y is done hatching--as if all those gooey little pods in the "Alien" movies were blown up and scattered into Deep Space. We will now meet "Gen Z". So pleased to meet y'all. Really mean that. But ah, Gen Y: The Millennials. We will perhaps miss that aggressive and cheerful Reverse-Moxie.

To their credit, since the early 1600s in the Americas, no generation--in the twenty that started out in Virginia and Massachusetts--has been able to do what they have done. Who else has had the gumption and foresight to grab Mediocrity and Work-Life Balance by the lapels, shove it all up against the wall, look it straight in the eye--and then call it "excellent" without laughing?

Jordan Furlong

Posted by JD Hull at 12:38 PM | Comments (1)

July 09, 2009

Stamford Connecticut girl makes good (again).

Our friend Ellen Bry, a nighttime drama television mainstay (St. Elsewhere, Dexter, Boston Legal, Monk, The Closer) for decades--and known in the LA-NYC underground as WAC?'s in-house photographer--has the lead role as Ester Hobbes, a Chicago socialite who suddenly loses everything, in The Lost & Found Family, a new Sony Pictures release.

In the film, we meet a strong and spiritual woman who is surprised to learn that she has inherited just one thing from her dead businessman husband: a run-down old house in Georgia, and the turbulent foster family living in it.

Taken from the story Mrs. Hobbes' House, The Lost & Found Family is a poignant, uplifting, instructive and remarkably powerful family film set in the American South. It was filmed in Jackson, Georgia, a town between Atlanta and Macon, with a population of about 4000, in Butts County.

It is a movie for rural people who go to church, sing, watch lots of TV, listen to Bocephus, have at least two cousins in the Meth trade, eat a lot, and are afraid of virtually everyone, and of everything, all of the time. It is bound for fame as a cult classic: a comfort to millions of rustics stuck in the vast grayness and troubled reverie that is American Fly-Over Country.

Hey, just joshing you. Early in 2008, I saw a rough cut of The Lost and Found Family--then still entitled Mrs. Hobbes' House--before Sony Pictures acquired it. Do see the new Sony clip below, which includes what I saw. Like me, you may recognize the people portrayed:

Many Americans, including my own family, have roots that reach deeply into, say, southwestern Virginia, east Tennessee, and southern Missouri (where I've visited family my entire life), going back well over two centuries. Later generations are still there: always hard-working and proud, sometimes devout, seldom well-to-do, and worlds away from the country club life Ester Hobbes led when her husband was alive. They often struggle to make the best life they can.

So you need not be Southern, rural or devoted to any form of organized religion to be moved by Ester Hobbes' story. This film will touch every viewer with simple but forgotten verities that bind us to one another.

There are artful, and moving, performances by Ellen and her younger cast members, who include teen heartthrob Lucas Till (Walk The Line, Hannah Montana: The Movie), and Jessica Luza, a film and television actress (The Sullivan Sisters, Boston Legal) and MTV fashion host.

Ellen Bry's movie credits include Mission Impossible 3, Deep Impact, and Bye, Bye Love. Stage work has included The Sixties, The Cafe Plays, Tribute and Seduced. A graduate of Tufts and Columbia universities, she is former stunt woman, a Mom, and a well-known national advocate for autism issues. She is also reputed to make a mean Peppered Shrimp Alfredo.

--from JDH 6/24/09 post

Posted by Rob Bodine at 11:44 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2009

Tea, sympathy, and a grooming tip for "Club Ned" members.

Honey, just wear a black turtleneck. Even Ned Beatty looks good in a black turtleneck.

--Overheard last year in Brentwood

Ned in repose, planning Georgia fishing trip with buddies.

Just like a hog, eh? We are receiving many strong if not terribly classy "anonymous comments"--not to be published until we receive court records, affidavits and confidential photos--in nameless response to our strong but classy anti-anonymity piece earlier this week: "Play Time" on the Internet is Over. Wanted: A Few Good Rules". Apparently, there are way more people, presumably male lawyers, and many fire-breathing Above The Law regulars, than we had thought who unfortunately once received Ned's brutal and unsavory treatment in the woods that is the key prerequisite for Club Ned status. We think only about .05% of the population qualify. But that could still be a lot of victims.

The legacy of a bad weekend in Aintry. Our sympathies. Having to think about that kind of personal violation--or something similar--must make for a very damn tough train or car commute every day from New Canaan or Chevy Chase to work. The partners can't know. Your staff can't know. Your friends can't know. It's lonely, we are sure, even though we don't feel your pain. So we will be offering survival tips for you guys, as anonymity on The Net becomes a narrow and pitied exception to fair participation--and you painfully gather all those unspeakable files and send them to us so we can certify your CN membership.

Here's one. Club Ned of course is based on "Bobby" played by the great character actor Ned Beatty in Deliverance. If you are in Club Ned, you are by definition a victim of something horrible. And frankly you also may be a little hard on the eyes, anyway, at least by this point, if you catch our meaning, and get our drift. Sure, CN members are often physically unattractive. So here's a grooming tip, and two words: black turtleneck. It hides more of the bruises, too.

Posted by Rob Bodine at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2009

Indiana Ivy-Leaguer goes national, makes good: Above The Law Editor on "The Law School Indicator".

One well-done, smart and useful interview by one tough guy. Bravo, ATL Editor Elie Mystal. Publisher Lat: Give this man a raise already.

Posted by Rob Bodine at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

London law students: scholars, critics, lovers.

We send you the complete text of this circa-1595 comedy by Shakespeare, here, and on one page. The play was first performed before Queen Elizabeth, at her Court in 1597.

"Loues Labors Loſt"--note the obsolete spelling of 'love', showing the strong hangover of the French language in England--was also likely written for early performances before culturally-literate law students and barristers-in-training at the Inns of Court in Legal London. The idea was that the students would appreciate its sophistication and wit. Law students apparently were once like that in the West.

Do read Love's Labour's Lost when it's quiet. Maybe next weekend after the weenie roast, or when Uncle Seamus from Albany sleeps it off in the room with the happy bunny rabbits-motif wallpaper and curtains you never took down. Interestingly, and not to embarrass you about Uncle Seamus again, the play itself begins with a vow by several men to forswear pleasures of the flesh and the company of fast women during a three-year period of study and reflection.

And to "train our intellects to vain delight".

(From a 9/1/08 Dan Hull post written at Bayswater, West London)

Posted by Rob Bodine at 12:58 AM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2009

Real lawyers practice law. (Blogging comes second.)

We got a profession for you right here. See Scott Greenfield's April 22 piece "Waiting For The Checks To Roll In", commenting on a WSJ Mark Penn column declaring that "blogging is the newest profession". Greenfield excerpt:

They [pro bloggers] work long hours? Again, I'm not quite impressed. Working 50 to 60 hours might seem like a great burden to some, but most lawyers consider that half time. We work as long as we need to work, and then we work a little more to make sure our work is done right.

Note: Greenfield is a trial lawyer who simply hasn't yet heard that hard and careful work has gone out of style.

(From a WAC? 4/22/09 post.)

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

"Play Time" on the Internet is Over. WANTED: A Few Good Rules.

Are you really in Club Ned? Certainly, if he were real, Ned Beatty's character Bobby in the movie adaptation of the James Dickey novel Deliverance would be permitted to write in the blogosphere using a pseudonym. "Chattooga River Cutie", maybe. Those not in Club Ned? Real name, please. (Photo: Warner Bros.)

Life and Work are both supposed to be Fun and Meaningful. We can still get both. And if everyone wants to be a "junior journalist" on the World Wide Web, that's fine, too. But you need a few rules.

You need a few good, and intuitive, Internet rules for lawyers, non-lawyers, business people, academics, middle managers, CEOs, bloggers, commenters, students, sales people, Pulitzer winners, Fulbright scholars, store clerks, your Mom, Gen-this/Gen-that, your demented Uncle Seamus, and the 70-year-old guy across the street with strong views about Sarah Palin, Wall Street and the Cubs.

You can't, of course, legislate rules, and enforce them, for the Internet.

You can, however, demand of yourself and others--in your own spheres and "virtual communities"--a bit of fair play, credibility and stepping-up:

1. Tell people who you are. Your real identity. Demand that others do the same. Virtual sandboxes are fun for everyone. Make them a separate zone(s), maybe. But anonymity should not be the norm. Exceptions, e.g.: CIA undercover operatives; Cuban, Iranian, Chinese dissidents; abused housewives; serious risk-takers, productive radicals and genuinely-deserving victims.*

2. Be accurate. You just gave us your name. Try to get it right. Work at your content. Don't waste our time.

3. Be willing to take a hit. Again, you just gave us your name. You're without armor--we are proud of you. Now step up and take the pain, if you are challenged, criticized or even called a worthless cretin. That's the freight you pay. Respond if you want. But you have nothing to be ashamed of.

And, finally, our suggestion on anonymous "challengers". Ignore them. They are rarely worth your time or respect.

That's about all the rules you need.

*E.g., Not okay: Law students, associates or practicing senior lawyers with delusions that they were Federalist Papers authors in a previous life. Okay: Foul-mouthed but respected and mega-talented members of Lincoln's Inn with radical free-speech agendas; the people in Utah who just started up a hopelessly outrageous and funny Anti-PC site called "Dwarf-Tossing 101"; and certain men from Georgia or Tennessee writing about fishing, hunting or camping trips with their buds on the ill-fated weekends that have gone awry.

Anonymity: Reserve it for special cases. For people who need it. Keep The Club small.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (5)

Palin: Still a Robo-Babe.

Way cute when she's mad.

And still a great political property. Don't write her off. Now you've all done it. She's really mad. And outside the cabin. See Joan Walsh's "Sarah Palin Resigning as Alaska Governor" at Salon.com. This is a fine-looking, energetic and feisty American woman. And in the Yank outlaw mold. We need a Sarah. Especially since--as Holden Oliver noted back in February--the French started getting all the good Anchorettes. Palin still married to that former First Dude guy?

Posted by Rob Bodine at 06:41 AM | Comments (2)