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August 05, 2023
The 7 Habits of Highly Clueless Lawyers
Return of EFGB and the Seven Habits. Lawyers who won't take a stand is a time-honored tradition. Ernie from Glen Burnie, a life-long friend of mine, is not such a creature. It's just his nature. He'll stand up for people who pay him--and people he just met on the subway. You can read Ernie's story. It's about an old parchment he claims was discovered in Alexandria, Virginia, around the same time we both began practicing law in the District. Do see "The Seven Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers". This is a true story, mostly. So listen up.
Stand-Up Guys: Ernie, a dead-ringer for 1950s icon Neal Cassady, and the author, during their pre-lawyer years in Washington, D.C.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:30 AM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2023
Racehorse Haynes
I would have won them all if my clients hadn’t kept reloading and firing.
~ Richard Racehorse Haynes, 2009
Below: Haynes in 1979. War hero, Texan, trial legend, risk-taker and wit, Haynes died in 2017 at the age of 90.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2023
To Barbie or not?
Should I go to see Barbie or not? Be reminded that I’m way sensitive and trigger easily like my great-great grandad Virginian Wm. Beard Hull (1837-1929) pictured below. I’m also distantly related to Hoosier legend Bobby Knight.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)
Hell's Kitchen, NYC
The photograph above was taken in 1890 by Jacob Riis. This is Bandits' Roost, an alley in Hell's Kitchen, then in its second century. It was taken long before the midtown Manhattan neighborhood got cute and trendy again. The work, images and outcry of Riis were famous at the time. So was this photograph.
But Hell's Kitchen actually started out cute and even pastoral. Three hundred years ago there were farms. Then came suburbs, and it was not really a "bad" neighborhood until around the time of the Civil War. Movies and novels maybe over-covered that second 150 years. Hell's Kitchen kept changing but stayed famous: from Irish and German immigrant sub-city to gangland neighborhood to actors' quarter to, these days, more of a yuppie heaven.
People feared the second round of "cute"--the gentrification of recent years--would destroy it. It didn't. It's still authentic in pulse and atmosphere. A few (not many) old families could afford to stay. Real estate brokers years ago came up with the new labels of Clinton and "Midtown West"--but those did not work. They could never replace the real name, the one that no one can even trace.
Sure, older neighborhoods, like older people, have personalities.
Personally, I think of the area as smaller and more compact than most descriptions. For me, it does not start until just north of the Lincoln Tunnel at 40th and then goes up to 57th Street. Its width, of course: West of 8th all the way to the Hudson. Yet it always seems worlds away from Times Square, right next door, and Midtown East.
If you are in Manhattan some weekend, stroll around there on a Sunday morning early, when it groans, complains and even growls like its old self. You will not head east. You won't even think about leaving Hell's Kitchen for a while. Too seductive. The uneasy mixes of Irish, German, Italian, and Everyone Else that dominated it--especially in the last 150 years--left certain imprints and energies. You can still feel and hear them in the stone of the buildings and street.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
August 02, 2023
Ms. Ross
You may have dramatic cheekbones, pouty lips, Chiclet-white teeth, the neck of a gazelle, four feet of legs, a French manicure, and a serious rack of mamm. But if your insides aren't pretty, your outsides don't really mean that much...and there's no time like the present to go in for soul surgery.
--Andrew Creighton Stone, Editor-in-Chief, Los Angeles Confidential
Katharine Ross
Posted by JD Hull at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2023
Sisters 1925
Posted by JD Hull at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)
It's summer. You can leave your hat on.
They don't know what love is.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)
July 31, 2023
Let's Rethink It: Ordeal By Water
Posted by JD Hull at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2023
Bring Back Real Women.
Ms. Parker Posey
Posted by JD Hull at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
Hitler: The Bunny Years
Posted by JD Hull at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)