The Chronicles Of Jessica

Paul and I are moving out of our apartment exactly two weeks from today. We haven't packed a thing yet, but I have collected a grand total of FIVE boxes, which should just about cover half of one bookshelf. Reading is such an overrated habit, people. Take up business card collecting or staring into space instead; the real estate required is much more minimal.

Obviously we're thrilled to be leaving because this has been, as I believe I've stated on several occasions, the worst apartment in the history of the universe. In fact, once we're done with this nutjob and we never have to go back to the building again and we have our deposit back and all that, I'm going to change the title of the post to the address, so that anyone searching for it on Google will be brought straight to this entry and they will know to run far far away as fast as their little legs will take them. Ryan K. says we can't get sued for libel if it's true, and he is not a lawyer, nor did he go to law school, so I'm just going to believe him.

I've been pretty detailed in these blog entries about our various woes with this apartment, so I'll just recap them briefly here. Zombie fly infestation. Mice. Smell of rotting garbage from downstairs neighbor. Constant cigarette smoke smell in the bathroom from downstairs neighbor. Windows that were installed somewhere around the turn of the century (not the aughts, I mean the other one.) No outlet in the bathroom. Electricity that goes out if you try to make toast and coffee at the same time (or make toast and do ANYthing else at the same time). Washers and dryers constantly breaking and/or leaving soap crust on all your clothes. Pathetic heating and air conditioning that never reaches to the bedroom so you're either roasting or freezing. You get the gist.

But the landlady is really the key to the whole thing. If she was a sweet little old lady who loved us and made us baked goods and treated us like one of the family, it would be different. The place would just seem quirky, instead of like the seventh circle of hell. But she's terrible. The only facet of being a landlord that she's competent at is cashing the checks (and she can't even be bothered to do that half the time until a couple of months have gone by.) For instance, she promised to replace the rotted out windows before winter came (both of the last two winters) and she never did. When we approached her about it she came up with the helpful suggestion of stuffing plastic grocery bags into the cracks and crevices to keep the windows from rattling in the frames and to cut down on the drafts blowing through. Classy! And thrifty, no? I thought for sure that she's have the work done before she tried to move new people in - but oh no. She's trying to get someone in for the day after we vacate. And as a consequence, our lives are being inconvenienced to an alarming degree.

Apparently in DC there is no law governing the amount of notice that a landlord must give before they can enter your dwelling (in a non-emergency situation.) They can come in any time they want. In other (normal, actual) states, it's a minimum of 24 hours or in some cases 48. In any case, you would think that a courtesy call or post-it note saying, "Hey I plan to show your apartment today" would be benificent to both parties. We know she's coming and we can tidy up, put away our adult props and that sort of thing. (I kid!) But no. It's more convenient for her to just come in, whenever and however the urge strikes her. The first time she did this, Paul was home but the bed was unmade and the laundry was divided into color groups on the floor, where I had sorted it the night before. We had planned to actually wash the clothes after sorting them, but then we got our dvd of The Wire from Netflix, and you'd be surprised how much energy it takes to make 3 - 5 trips up and down four flights of stairs to wash ones clothes on any given night.

Anyway, she poo-pooed his apologies and said it made the place look "lived-in", so who were we to argue? The second time it happened, I had been at a yoga class and came home to find her yappy dog in my front hallway, yapping at me while the LL ran around our apartment like some crack-addicted home organization show hostess. Apparently she had shown the apartment (again without telling us), found it lacking, and decided all on her own to just...fix it! She stuffed clothes under a desk, she shoved books and magazines under beds and into closets, she scooped jewelry and picture frames into drawers and cubboards. She stashed the dishes from breakfast under the sink (with the bleach and ant spray - well done!) and tossed clean silverware into the junk drawer where we keep the super glue and saran wrap. She even took our garbage, which wasn't half full. By the time I came in she had pretty much concluded the spree and even though I was fairly shocked and horrified by our personal belongings having been manhandled by a lunatic, I barely had the presence of mind to say anything to her. In hindsight of course, all sorts of things come to mind. "Stop touching my things, you lunatic", for instance. "Why are you so effing crazy?", for another. "Have you ever heard of Prozac?" You always think up the retorts on the way home though, right?

A word about the dog: I love dogs. I've had two dachshunds in my life, which in some circles are the yappiest of yappy dogs, and I love them and I think they're great. I would never hurt an animal and I think there's a special place in hell for people who would. But this dog? I literally want to take my foot and punt it out the window in a hilarious display of cartoon violence. It's not the dog's fault. She's only had it about five months and in all that time it hasn't been taught anything. It's never even been on a leash, she just chases it down when it runs into the street. She lets it run around the building and in and out of people's apartments and she lets it up on everyone's furniture (you know, while she's making empty promises about fixing things). It's really rude and it drives me up a wall. If she actually deigned to ask, "Hey do you mind the dog being in here?" of course I'm going to say no. But that would presume so much, concepts like normalcy, manners and common sense. Cripes.

In any case, last week I wasn't feeling well and went home from work a little early one day to lie down. I'd been asleep about an hour when all of a sudden I woke up with this stupid dog on me. Apparently she had let herself in to show the unit and because I was sleeping soundly I didn't realize anyone was in the apartment with me until the devil hound hopped on my bed. Well I screamed bloody murder, which I'm sure impressed the hell out of the prospective tenants (curiously, they decided not to take the place). I heard her spluttering around in the living room and then she left and she didn't come back. After that incident I literally begged her to please PLEASE just call us when she was going to be coming in there, and that seems to be working so far. Since then she's marched through with about three different couples, none of whom have ESP, because I have been sending them really strong, really urgent brain messages to run, run for their lives and not one seems to have picked up a thing.

But in exactly fourteen days we'll be free. And this will all be one of those hilarious anecdotes that middle-aged people tell at parties about their newlywed salad years. That's what I'm aiming for, anyway. If anything else happens I'd have to go to jail for murder, which I guess would dampen the hilarity.

You can catch up on Part II here

After they dismissed the alternates and had given us all the instructions it was finally time to start deliberations. Only problem was, by this time it was 3 pm. I was pretty sure there was no way we were going to be able to arrive at a decision in two hours or less. I had no idea at this point where the other jurors stood because we weren't supposed to discuss the case at all until deliberations officially began, and we all had to be in the room any time deliberations were going on. The first thing we did was elect a foreman; ironically he was the quietest guy in the group and the youngest. I think he was 25. He ended up doing a good job. I think quiet people command more respect because people always assume they're thinking deep important thoughts all the time instead of chattering on inanely the way, for instance, I do. I always try to remember to keep this in mind when meeting new people yet I never seem to be able to and I wind up running off at the mouth about old Seinfeld episodes and stuff like that.

We basically decided at the outset that the key witness was the drug dealer and we had to deal with the believability of his testimony in order to arrive at a decision. The first thing we did was go around the table and give a brief idea of our general impressions of the case and what we had seen. This is really where you get an idea of who in the group hasn't had a captive audience to share their thoughts with in a really, really long time. Myself, I have had many chances over the years to blather on in front of people, both personally and professionally, so it's not such a lure for me. Snacky Joe and Crazy Old Lady were the two who seemed, unsurprisingly, particularly keen to hear themselves talk. Snacky Joe is one of those people who is completely oblivious to the social cues that come out in the course of normal conversation. He would just talk until he didn't feel like talking anymore, and no amount of polite gesturing or gentle admonitions to let the next person have their say would derail him from his musings. I don't know if anything would have, but we should have tried lobbing Fig Newtons at him to see if maybe we could distract him long enough for someone else to get a word in edgewise.

Crazy Old Lady had nothing to offer but complete non sequiturs. It was kind of amazing:

"Well, I didn't find the defense witness credible as far as her testimony went."

"Beach ball. Thumbprint. Publisher raisin peanut fabric softener sheets. Mmmm hmmm."

We had to break for the weekend after the two hours were up and we were back at it Monday morning. By this time I was truly ready to kill myself. I had seen pictures of dead bodies, bullet wounds, blood stained clothing (not a photo, but right there in the courtroom). I had listened to testimony on bullets ripping through lungs, dead bodies frozen to pavement, not to mention hookers, drug dealers and guns. I was so sick of these other jurors I wanted to push them all out of a window and if I thought this had to go on for one more day, I would have thrown myself out a window.

Luckily, it turned out to be pretty cut and dried. We all agreed in the end that the drug dealer's testimony was too vague and had changed too much since the grand jury for him to be a credible witness. And in the complete absence of any other evidence at all, we just couldn't send two guys to jail for murder on the basis of that little nugget of testimony. We couldn't even really come to a consensus on whether we thought the guy was even there. After going around for another ninety minutes or so, we took a vote and unanimously found not guilty.

We had to wait around for a while and then we filed back into the courtroom. The judge had to read out the charges against each defendant and our foreman read out "not guilty" after each one. (The one count we did find them guilty on was a charge of bail-jumping, which basically was the fact that they failed to show up for their arraignment and had to be picked up by the police.) As the foreman started calling out "not guilty" the two guys literally started crying. One of them crossed himself, which surprised me, because he didn't immediately strike me as a staunch Catholic. (Maybe the teardrop tattoo doesn't mean what I think it means?)

All I could think was, if you guys got away with this, or you got away with anything, or even if you didn't, I just hope you take this chance to change your lives. You're young guys, and life is long, and there's a lot that's good that you can go out there and have in the world and a lot of good you can do, so Get. It. Together.

That was that. Just to put a nice cherry on top of the shit sundae of the whole experience, a woman approached me outside the courtroom after we had been dismissed. I had seen her in the audience a couple of times but there were always different people watching and you never knew who they were. Well, I guess she was a relative of the victim or knew him somehow, because she was crying when she came up to me and wanted to know if she could talk with me about the verdict. I was very polite but I got away from her as fast as I could. What could I say to her that would make her feel better? Her friend was still gone, and even if she knew something I didn't there was no way to go back into the courtroom and do things differently. It was just over.

Well, life is made up of experiences, some good and some bad. I know a little more about myself now, and that's never a bad thing. Turns out I was right not to pursue a career as a medical examiner, evidence technician, lawyer, judge, court reporter, court clerk, or bailiff. And even though the last time I moved I had the misfortune to pick one of the worst apartments in the history of the universe, I didn't rent a place in the neighborhood where all this went down, so I can feel good about that.

I know all this heavy duty subject matter isn't exactly my forte, but I would like to leave you with this: There's a whole big piece of our population that most of us don't see or think about on a daily basis. They're poor and they're addicts, in a lot of cases, and drugs and crime are the foundation of the economies of their communities. They don't know anything else, and they're never taught to expect anything else. And as a society, we seem pretty content to let them stay in their ghettos and do what they're going to do as long as they only commit violence on each other and not on "us". And I think we can do better. And I hope we will.

Read Part I here

Our judge handled some things differently than other judges do, according to the other jurors who had served before. For instance, he allowed the jurors to submit questions to each witness, written on slips of paper that he would then review and choose whether or not to pose the questions to each witness, after consulting with counsel. If something was unclear or you needed clarification you could submit a question about it and as long as it was in line with the testimony or whatever, the judge would allow it. Not all the questions did get asked, in fact most of them didn't, I don't think, unless maybe a lot of us asked questions that were kind of the same. Of course it was anonymous so we have no idea who asked what. Then this one guy, juror number 8, got really really weird about it. I think he took it personally that the judge never asked any of his questions, because by about the 7th witness he actually stood up when turning in his slip and said loudly and sternly, "I expect to have these questions answered!"

What is the matter with people? I mean, seriously? To stand up in a court of law and, like, demand something from the judge like that? Was the man on something? I couldn't believe it. This guy was really really strange anyway; I kept hoping he would have a real freak out and get dismissed. When we weren't in the actual courtroom he was always either eating or sleeping. He had these padded envelopes with all this food in them, like ham sandwiches and convenience store fruit pies and stuff, and he would just munch away all the time. So it stands to reason that his questions were probably totally bizarre and irrelevant. He probably wrote stuff like, "Ask him where he got that jacket" and "Is the witness allergic to wheat?" "I will have answers!!!!"

The judge took it in stride. He said mildly, "Sir...?" and that was pretty much it. It's amazing how much economy judges can get out of so few words. All he said was "sir" but the implied meaning was, "Don't be a dipshit. There are 5 guys in here with tazers who work for me and can drop your troublemaking snack ass at the snap of my fingers. Sit yourself down so I can dispense some 'effin justice."

Anyway. Finally the government presented their star witness: A convicted PCP dealer! Ta daaaa! He is in fact still in custody; they had to bring him in from prison for the day to do his testimony. So this guy claimed that he witnessed the shooting (and recognized the gun) from a decent distance, late at night, after he had slipped behind a row of houses to retrieve his stash of pcp. Like you do! But it was all pretty...muddled. Like, in the grand jury he said he saw the victim go down to the ground, then in the courtroom he said he didn't. (The victim was actually found a few yards from where the dealer would have been able to see him, and according to the medical examiner, it would have taken a few minutes for him to expire, leaving him time enough to stagger a few yards away.) And of course, the defense made much of the fact that the dealer had been questioned about this murder on two other occasions and claimed not to know anything about it both times. It was only after he was brought in for parole violations ("I don't know, I guess I was just doing wrong") that he offered up the information, hoping for some leniency from the parole board, presumably.

I couldn't decide if I believed him or not, really. It seemed just as likely that he might have heard the information somewhere and then repeated it, as opposed to actually having been there. He couldn't actually give any specifics on what anyone was wearing, what size guy the victim was (he was pretty tall), or much of anything else. I kept waiting for them to introduce some other evidence but they apparently just didn't have any. They never found a gun, they had no shell casings, no fingerprints, no nothing. One weird thing was that they found some hair braids, like extensions, in the area, and they introduced those into evidence and went to all this trouble to have them there, then later on they stipulated that the braids had belonged to a woman and no dna evidence was found that connected the braids to the defendants. I didn't get that at all. "We found this and it has nothing to do with anything but we're showing it to you anyway." It's a murder trial, not show and tell! Are you going to be bringing in gum wrappers and stray kittens next? Focus, focus!

In case it's not obvious at this point, my whole impression of the government's case was that it was pretty weak. In a way I was surprised they even had enough to bring it to trial. On Law and Order (yes I know it's the fifth time I mentioned it but it's my only frame of reference!) the DA is always telling them the case is too weak to stick and they can't bring it to trial if they don't have enough evidence. These guys were basically trying the whole case on the testimony of this one eyewitness, and he was no Wally Cleaver, let me assure you. If you didn't believe him then you had nothing else to really go on.

Well, finally they wrapped up all the testimony. The defendants didn't testify on their own behalf, but we were instructed at the beginning not to hold that against them. Personally, if I was accused of a murder I didn't commit, I would insist on testifying, but this is what's sort of interesting - the defense didn't really put forth the idea that their guys didn't do it. Their defense was more - well, it was dark, this guy couldn't really see, there's no other evidence, it was three years ago, etc. etc. They didn't present an alibi or any character witnesses at all. I guess all they have to do technically is refute the evidence that's put out there; they don't really have to go any further than that, as long as they can create reasonable doubt. But it certainly didn't give you the strong impression that these fellows had been wrongly accused and they were actually reading to the blind after the completion of their weekly Meals-On-Wheels route at the time the murder took place.

Having said that, the defense attorneys did their best with what they had. Defendant # 2's attorney was actually really spirited; he sort of woke up the whole courtroom every time it was his turn. He was an older guy with a white beard, he reminded me a little of Santa. If Santa had like a younger brother with a slightly faster metabolism who went to law school. (At one point during his closing statement he actually got so carried away that he kind of did this little jump into the air. I think it was when he was impugning the credibility of the drug dealer as a witness, actually. "A criminal, ladies and gentleman! (hop) A common criminal!!!!!")

The next day was some kind of DC city government holiday, so court wasn't in session. The next day was Friday, when we were supposed to hear the closings and then start deliberations. I really thought that would be the end of the whole shebang. Oh, no nononono. There was SOOOO much to it. First the government gives their closing. Then the two defense attorneys give their closings. Then the government gets to rebut the defense's closing. Then the judge has to give instructions. He has to read out all the different charges, and what's part of all the charges, and what they mean, then he has to explain how the deliberations work and all about the reasonable doubt and the burden of proof, and blah blah blah. This part really was so boring. I think the reason there are twelve of you is in case 50% of the jurors fall asleep then there are six other people who can report what actually was said.

At this point there were still 14 of us though, because both of the alternates had yet to be dismissed. Turns out it was the guy to my right and a lady who sat behind me. Their numbers had been drawn out of a hat or whatever back before the trial started, so they were alternates the whole time, they just didn't know it. I was of a mixed mind about this alternate business. Initially I was sort of peeved because here was a second opportunity to actually get back to my life that I was totally missing. On the other hand, I'd seen this thing through all the way to the end and I'd feel kinda gypped if I didn't get to weigh in with the deliberations. (Since I had no choice I decided to try to go with that group of feelings.) Unfortunately, the two people who were dismissed were two of the most rational, level-headed of the group. They should have let US decide who they were going to send home, like on Biggest Loser. I would have sent Snacky Joe packing first thing. He scared me.

I'm in a post lunch coma so there'll just have to be a Part III. Hey, this trial sucked up 2 weeks of my life, if I can't get three blog entries out of it I'm just not trying hard enough.

None of us was really all that angry.

I was supposed to show up on the first day of jury duty at ten am. There were fourteen of us at first, which included two alternates, but we didn't know who the alternates were until the end. My seat was one away from the witness stand in the first row, between two guys, a young-ish doctor and an older retired government fellow. They gave us these steno notebooks to take down our observations and they told us that no one would look at them, which wasn't really true, because I found out later they scan the pages of the notebooks into some database which was the reason we were only ever given black pens. If I'd known that I might have used better penmanship and doodled less.

The prosecution (the government) gave the first opening statement. This was the first surprise of the process, to me. They laid out, like, the entire case in the opening statement. They told about exactly what happened to the victim, every witness they were going to have and what they were going to testify to, the whole shebang. Obviously these people have never been in the theatre. You're not supposed to bury the entire plot in the prologue! So each side had two lawyers, only one was a woman (she was for the government). The two defendants each had their own public defender, so they each got to make an opening statement too. The one public defender actually went through his whole spiel and at the end he goes:

"Ladies and gentlemen I am confident that at the conclusion of the evidence you will have no choice but to find my client guilty. Thank you."

I almost cracked up. I didn't, because I think it's frowned upon. The judge called all the lawyers up for a pow-wow, and he pressed the magic button, and then that same attorney came back in front of the jury and had to tell us that he had meant to say "not guilty". How embarrassing. I felt really bad for him and I wanted to lean over and whisper, "You're doing good, dude, don't even worry about it", but again, frowned upon. I nodded reassuringly though. I think he felt supported.

So, here was the deal (I'm not going to use real names because I don't want anyone googling the case to wind up here, even though I'm allowed to blog about it, according to the judge): According to the prosecution's theory of the case, Victim Guy had gone up to Defendants 1 and 2 late at night in the middle of February to try to sell them a gun and instead of buying the gun they took it from him and killed him. Victim guy was probably early forties and D1 and D2 were in their early twenties, more or less. This all happened three years ago; I didn't even live in DC when it happened, as a matter of fact. It took them about a year to even make an arrest and then I guess nearly two years to actually bring the case to trial.

Anyway, the whole premise seemed fishy. The victim wasn't known to carry guns or sell guns. He was known to sell cd's, dvd's and cameras around the neighborhood, but that was about it. And he was supposed to be like kind of a good-time jokester type that was always cracking wise and that type of thing, thus earning him the nickname "Bozo". They referred to him by his nickname almost exlusively throughout the trial. In fact, nicknames were a big part of the trial; pretty much everyone who testified or was testified about had a nickname. Most of them were not all that endearing, either. Let this be a warning for you - if you have an unflattering nickname you should do your best to dissuade it now because it could actually outlive you and you'll be known for all eternity as "One-Ball" or "The Tongue".

Also, the victim was out riding around with his nephew in his car, late at night, when he got out to "relieve himself" behind a dumpster, and that was when he sort of disappeared and wound up dead like a half a mile away. Late at night. In February! And the nephew never went to look for him where he had gone to "relieve himself". He just sort of waited around a while and then left. Now that seems strange. If I was driving my drunk uncle around and he disappeared behind a dumpster, the first place I would think to look for him is behind the dumpster. (Incidentally, a more implausible scenario I really cannot envision. To my knowledge all my uncles prefer indoor plumbing.)

They presented a bunch of witnesses who had seen the defendants together over the course of the evening, (they were brothers so it's not like that's something out of the ordinary), and they presented some different police personnel who showed some various things. And they presented maps. Dear lord, did they present maps. I could draw the 6 block radius where this crime took place by heart at this point. They had photos, they had diagrams, they had like five different aerial views of this neighborhood that they pulled out over and over and over again. They made the witness draw marker lines with arrows to show where they lived and where they walked and where they had their pcp stash on the night of the murder (more on that later).

I was really surprised by how some people conducted themselves in court, especially the way they dressed. One of the jurors wore an honest-to-God sweatsuit every day. Sweatpants and a sweatshirt. They were the same color, so that lent a certain dignity to the ensemble, I suppose, but I was just always under the impression that you dress up to go to court. Some people wore jeans, sneakers, t shirts. I kept waiting for one of us to be held in contempt of dress code or something, but no one ever said anything! Feh, they were probably just glad we showed up and were sober.

The same was true for a lot of the witnesses, at least the ones that weren't Metropolitan police. I don't think one person bothered to take their coats off while they testified. One girl actually had a raggedy scarf tied over her hair, as though she was in the middle of doing a deep conditioning treatment when she was suddenly and inconveniently called into a courtroom to testify. Another one sat down before she took the oath to tell the truth (you know, the whole truth and nothing but?) and when the clerk asked her to stand she gave this huge put-upon sigh like she was being asked to push a station wagon up a hill to a filling station or something. My mother would have died.

Stay tuned for Part II!

In which: The government calls its star witness (a convicted drug dealer)
Juror # 8 has some sort of personal breakdown
And defense attorney number 2 overcaffeinates!

It was nothing like this.

Three weeks ago I was called for jury duty here in Washington. I got called once for jury duty in NYC, right before I was headed down to Shenandoah Shakespeare for my first contract there, so I had to show up and explain that I was headed out of town for work for nine months, and by the time they called me again I didn't live in NYC anymore. So that worked out. This time I was fairly certain I wouldn't get picked because, well, who gets picked? It seems like no one I know ever gets picked. I think I can sort of see that - why would you want an actor on a jury anyway? You know they're just going to be making Law and Order and John Grisham movie comparisons inside their heads the whole time.

The whole thing reminded me of like a compulsory day-long audition for a play that's going to be produced at the DMV. You don't have anything better going on but you really don't want this part. First I got on the wrong train to the courthouse and wound up at the Pentagon at 8 o'clock in the morning. I loooove when that happens. You're reading your little commuter paper and looking at cute pictures of the Obama's dog and suddenly you realize you're going above ground and entering Virginia, at which point there's nothing you can do because you're over a body of water. I don't know which one. The bay, maybe, or it could be a river. This isn't a geography lesson, people, it's a jury duty anecdote.

It took 15 minutes for another train to come in the opposite direction by which time I was late. I thought this would be a big deal and it wasn't at all, because even after it took another 15 minutes to pass through the metal detector, I joined the ass end of a line that had at least 150 people in it. I found this strangely comforting. "No way am I going to be one out of 12 with alllll these people here," I thought. So I waited for a very very very long time and then they gave me a badge of some kind and sent me to another area to wait for a very very very long time. It was a big conference type room with rows and rows of chairs and two big screen tv's. After they showed a brief video about the justice system and what a privilege it is to serve, blah blah blah, they put on a movie. It was "We Are Marshall", which is a football movie. I don't know anything about football, but it seemed like it wasn't a bad movie. Some guys died on a plane, then they had to put together a brand new football team out of the like 5 guys who didn't die on the plane, and they hired Matthew McConaughey to be the football coach and Jack from LOST to be the assistant football coach, I think. I didn't get to see how it ended, but I'm sure it was poignant and triumphant.

So they called a bunch of numbers (I was 826) and then they took those people into a hallway and lined us up, and then someone else came out and put us in different lines, and then finally we were herded into the courtroom with the judge. The courtroom was a big disappointment. Judge Judy has a more austere courtroom than this. It was all beige and faux wood panelling and the judge didn't even have a gavel.Boooo-ring! How are you supposed to call people to order if you have no gavel? Just ask them? Pffft.

We all had to go individually in front of the judge and the attorneys and defendants in this separate room while they questioned us. There were two defendants and the charge was armed robbery and murder in the first degree. You know, light fare! There were probably sixty of us in the courtroom and I was about halfway down the list. Every now and then someone would come out of the separate room and grab their coat and bag and just leave the courtroom, but most people came out and sat back down in their seat. What did the people who got to leave say? I wish I knew. So, we sat there for a million years, then they sent us to lunch, we sat there for a million more years, and then finally I went in to see the judge. He asked me some pretty vague questions but he didn't give me any openings to say anything incendiary like, "I don't care 'bout no laws but God's laws!" or "The goverment are imperialist pigs!" That might have worked to get me sent home. But you can't just start yelling "f*&% the police!" without a cue of some kind.

Finally everyone came back out and then they started dismissing people and conferring at the bench and dismissing more people. The people they wanted they were sticking in the actual jury box area. And when they would confer they would press a little button that created this white noise over some speakers so you couldn't hear anything they were saying to each other. A brilliant invention! I wish I had one of those in real life. I could be out to dinner with Paul and a bunch of people:

"Excuse us a moment.. (presses button) Is it me or has Jeff's ass gotten huuuuge?"

"I know, and his neck looks like a ham, huh?"

"It really does. He must be depressed. (presses button) Yeah, let's get another calamari!"

It was like watching a game show where you feel really really sorry for the winners. Eventually they had 14 jurors in the box, after they had done their mixing and matching, and there was this one woman in seat number two who had been there the whole time. I thought she was toast. And then, at the absolute last minute (it was going on 5:45 at this point) they dismissed her and said, "Juror number 826 please take seat number two." And just like that, I was on a jury for a murder trial.

What happened next is a whole separate entry. But two things are clear: A.) I was right not to pursue a career in law, and B.) I must have a metal plate somewhere in my body that I don't know about, because I set that detector off every damn day for the next two weeks.

Nancy don't play that, either.

Remember how Damon Wayans as Homey the Clown used to swing a sock full of change upside people's heads and say, "Homey don't play that." Well, today the United States congress has delivered the equivalent of a sock full of change to the heads of the AIG execs.

Via the Associate Press:

WASHINGTON – Acting with lightning speed, the Democratic-led House has approved a bill to slap punishing taxes on big employee bonuses from firms bailed out by taxpayers. The vote was 328-93. Said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "We want our money back and we want our money back now for the taxpayers."

Oh, no they di-int!

Love it. Love everything about it. These dudes did all sorts of really shady, really stupid things, that contributed at least in part to the whole financial crapcake we now find ourselves eating. And now they want cash bonuses? For real? After they helped blow up the global economy? Do you realize that we as Americans can no longer look British people in the eye, even if we wanted to!??! No. Now is the time for us to channel Tony Soprano and go in there and take it. (Stopping short, of course, of having them whacked.) Who cares if it's constitutionally questionable, Mike Pence, R - Ind.? Don't be a hater! After all, they asked some of them to give the money back and only half of them did. And that half probably only did it because they're tired of waking up to bags of flaming poop on their porches. Who cares? Get the money back.

I wish all injustices could be publicized to this extent. I love public outcries. I want more of them. There would be a lot less adultery, check bouncing and b.o. if people were afraid of getting their names splashed all over the evening news. And fewer smelly check-bouncing cheaters is change we can all believe in.

Where's my Mr. Furley?

Paul and I have to move to a new apartment in June. (See any previous entries for examples of why the apartment we live in now is the worst place in the history of renting and why our loathing of it could consume the fire of a thousand burning suns.) Everyone is saying that now is the time to buy real estate, not rent, as there are apparently a lot of good deals out there these days, not to mention a hefty tax write-off in the new stimulus package. But we don't have any real money to put a down payment on a place. (Apparently that used to not be a problem. Our life is an adventure in irony - we could have bought a place easily when we couldn't really afford it and now that the actual homes are more affordable we're mortgage poison.) Doesn't matter; we're happy to stay renters for now. After all when you rent, the leaky faucets, ancient windows and insect infestations are someone else's problem! (Except when they're not. See any previous entries for examples of why the apartment we live in now is a horror that is worse than even the Amityville house and each day brings a fresh piece of hell upon us.)

It's still a little bit early to be looking, but I'm starting to poke around online to see what's available. For the most part I'm pretty encouraged; seems like there's a fair amount of stuff in our price range in neighborhoods with a low stabbing probability. Then last night I saw a listing that I knew was too good to be true. It was a Pennsylvania Avenue condo for rent, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, laundry, dishwasher, blah di blah di blah. The listing had these gorgeous photos of this beautiful space with these cherry wood floors, marble counters, brand new appliances, the works. At $1200 a month. Okay, $1200 a month is less than we're paying now for one bedroom. $1200 a month wouldn't get you a spacious gutter around here, unless you're willing to share it with a homeless lady and a few feral cats. I said to myself, "This has got to be a joke. But! I will email just to see."

Hello,

Thanks for taking the time to look at my property.My name is Dorothy Parker,I'm 48 years old,I'm a construction engineer and I'm the owner of this condo(2 bedrooms,2 bathrooms,1100 square footage) .I lived in this beautiful condo for over 5 years and loved every day of it.It's located at 2401 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20037 .Situated just down the avenue from the White House and with all of the city’s cultural and historic elements just steps away, 2401 Pennsylvania Avenue is truly the crown jewel of residential properties in Washington, DC. The condo is fully furnished with all necessary amenities(exactly like in the pics),Brazilian cherry floors; Luxurious kitchen with Viking appliances, large kitchen island and Poggen Pohl cabinets; master bedroom/master bath includes an oversized marble soaking tub and separate shower; California Closets walk-in closet in master bedroom; Second bedroom/den with second full bath.The unit is equipped with recessed lighting, central air and heat, the condo come with two parking spots,a storage unit where you can deposit my furniture (if you don't like it and you want use your furniture),there is also a linen closet, and most importantly, a new front loading stacked washer and drier.Pets allowed.I've moved to United Kingdom with my job (i am a construction engineer) and decided to
rent it because the rent is very expensive here.The price is so low because I'm here and is very hard to find a tenant.I can rent you the condo for min. 1 month and max. 6 years(or more).I really want to find a good and responsible tenant for it, and I hope that you can send me some personal information about yourself.The rent of the condo for 1 month is $1200 including all utilities(water,electricity, Internet,cable, parking,air conditioning, fireplace, dishwasher, garbage) and I want to receive the money monthly in my bank account.You can move in the condo in the same day when you receive the keys. The only problem is that I`m the only person who has the keys and I have nobody in United States that could show you the condo.In order to check it,see if you like it(I'm sure that you'll love it),you need to receive the keys and the contract. Obviously we need a way to complete this deal in a safe and fast way for both.The solution is provided by National Association of Realtors (www.realtor.com) which will handle the payment and delivery of the Keys . A friend of mine moved here from California and used the company to resolve the same problem . This procedure allow you to pay the rent only after you will receive the keys,after you will see it, decide if you will stay in the condo or not( I will receive the payment after you'll check the condo).
Please click on the link bellow to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) website to see how we can complete the deal in a safe way, directly from the website of the company where the procedure is explained:
http://www.realtor.com/Basics/AllAbout/Bookshelf/Escrow.asp
If you want to know more about how this deal can work please get back to me ASAP and I will send you the details step by step.

Regards,
Dorothy Parker

First of all, Dorothy Parker, (if that is in fact your real name - and I have my doubts), everyone pretends to be living in England when they're trying to scam someone. Secondly, there is this newfangled invention called Google. When one types in an address, one can search all sorts of information about that address, such as the going rental rates for the building. A two bedroom apartment at 2401 Pennsylvania Avenue starts at $4400 a month and goes up to $6500. (I have no idea why one two bedroom apartment would cost more than $2,000 more than another two bedroom apartment in the same building but this is a little beyond my purview. I would not spend between $4400 and $6500 a month on rent, not even if it included daily massage and a pantsless Matt Damon to cook our meals for us (and at those prices, it had better). But that is not the point. The point is that I suspect that you, Ms. Parker, are trying to pull a fast one. You are taking me for an idiot and I do not appreciate that one bit. Most people wait months after meeting me to decide that I'm an idiot and that is a consideration that I would insist on in a landlord, even a celebrated wit, Algonquin Round Table poet, short story authoress (and now, apparently, construction engineer?) such as yourself.

Good day, Ms. Parker.

I said good day!

He may seem harmless, but this bear? Raping the environment.

From today's New York Times:

Although brands differ, 25 percent to 50 percent of the pulp used to make toilet paper in this country comes from tree farms in South America and the United States. The rest, environmental groups say, comes mostly from old, second-growth forests that serve as important absorbers of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming.

Great. Now I can't even make a poo without having to feel guilty about destroying the ozone layer. Every day it's something. I cannot take this daily onslaught of guilt! I feel bad on the way to work for not giving the schizophrenic with the hand-crayoned sign some of my money. Then I feel bad because every day I notice that his sign says, "Please help - homely" instead of homeless, and I've never pointed this out for him. Then I feel bad because maybe he didn't put 'homely' by accident and he really is panhandling because of low self-esteem about his personal appearance. I'd like to be able to cheer him up about his appearance but truthfully he's no Hugh Jackman. Maybe it's the teeth. (He needs more of them.)

I feel guilty if I don't hit the button in time for the elevator straggler to make it on before the doors close. I feel guilty if I take too long fishing my key card out of my bag and the receptionist has to buzz me in. Then I feel guilty if I happen to be the person to take the last mini-moo creamer at the coffee station because everyone else will have to settle for powdered coffeemate. (I also have guilt over my secret mini-moo creamer stash in my top desk drawer but not enough to disclose it, lest I would have to share.)

Then I hate myself for not recycling enough. Like today, I had to throw away a ball-point pen. Was I supposed to recycle that pen? Maybe only parts of it are recyclable. Should I have gone online and researched whether it was recyclable and then taken it apart to make sure it got reused properly? Which bin would it go in? And what happens to the bits that aren't recyclable? They wind up in a landfill for all eternity and my unborn children's children's children will wind up drowning in garbage, cursing their ancestors' laziness and wasteful ways.

As I head off to lunch I feel guilty for saying, "I'm starved!" when clearly I'm not. Lots of people are starving but I'm not one of them. In fact I had a decent sized breakfast just three hours ago with a healthy mix of carbs and protein; there's no real reason for me to be this hungry but I am. Of course then I have to feel guilty over my sandwich about the poor chicken that died a horrible grisly death after living a horrible all-too-short life where he probably didn't even get to walk around much or make any chicken friends. It's no good just taking the chicken off though, because the lettuce was probably picked by some underpaid migrant workers who have to sleep in some mosquito infested tent at night after toiling all day long, afraid to talk too loudly to one another for fear that El Jefe has been hitting the bottle again and might come out in a drunken rage like he did that time back around Christmas when he threw up all over a whole row of tomato bushels which all had to be thrown out and then he docked their pay in an unprecedented example of white Anglo-Saxon greed, self-interest and pomposity.

And now it's the toilet paper. Is there not one place in this world where I can feel good about myself and my purposes? The bathroom is the one place that ought to at least be neutral - I don't need more shame, especially not in a bowel-related scenario. I may need cushier ply than my European counterparts and for that I will not apologize. I work hard, and I do a lot, and my toilet paper should provide comfort and satisfaction. I may be a greedy, overly-pampered, consumptionist land-raping American but I say this to you, New York Times: I have the decency to feel bad about it.

Paulie and I went to see Toad the Wet Sprocket last night (a band, for those of you who didn't listen to the radio in the 90's) at the Birchmere and we had a great time. We love the Birchmere because you can sit and watch the band at a table while eating food and drinking beer, as opposed to having to stand and sway rhythmically while you watch the band and drink beer. We're too old for that. We don't enjoy entertainment unless we can sit down or even better, lie down. If they had santized couches with tv trays at the Birchmere that would be the penultimate band-viewing experience.

Anyway, I started thinking about something that has bothered me for a while, and that is the ridiculousness of the concept of the encore . I took a cursory look around on the intertubes and could not find any history on the encore or how it got started. But I don't really need to know; I can easily guess how the practice got started. It started with some egotistic performer somewhere who was so intoxicated with the audience's applause that they just had to get back out onstage so they could sop up a little more love for their already extra-inflated ego. (Hey, I've been in po' biz since I was 12 - I know from egos. Surely you don't think I became an actor because I like wearing clothes that smell like mothballs and making $250 a week?) I do remember reading somewhere that back in the day theatre actors used to do encores too, which is just hilarious. The star actor would just come back out and reprise the big scene or monologue for everybody, even though they'd just seen it and the play was over. (Now that I think about it I can't believe Fallon and Rene never did this in Othello. It would have been awesome. They're alive again! Now they're dead. Oops, they're back! Wheeee!)

We've seen a lot of concerts in the past couple of years and every single I time I realize that the encore is just so silly, because EVERYONE does it EVERY single time. They all plan on doing it; you can tell because they don't discuss what songs they're going to do for the encore when they come back out. There's nothing organic about it, like, "Hey the audience really was into us, they're not gonna stop applauding any time soon! We better go back out and give 'em what they're asking for!" It's become like a social obligation - the band exits the stage, they wait the requisite five minutes, the audience claps dutifully the entire time, the band comes back out and does three more songs. If the band didn't do it, the audience would become confused and frightened. If the audience didn't do it, the band would probably come back out after the five minutes to find everyone putting on their coats and then they'd be hurt and insulted. Can't you just tack the three songs onto the end of the set and get us all out to the parking lot faster? It's a weeknight, dude. Seriously.

In my experience, the curtain call is an awkward thing that you have to get through as quickly as possible and I would not want to prolong it by engaging in this little encore ritual. At least if you're a musician you have stuff to do though; you can fiddle with your instrument or take the guitar strap off, or adjust your leather jacket or your studded collar, or something. As an actor all you can do is stand there while people clap at you. Sometimes you get to gesture to someone else (like, "I know I was brilliant but what about that guy! Did he blow your mind or what!?!"), which is good, but most of the time you come out and bow and then you have to stand there while all the other actors come out and bow (and if it's a big cast this could go on for a while), all the time with an expression on your face that says, "Thanks for being here. I know you could have been home watching The Bachelor and I really, really appreciate it. I am humble. I am thankful and humbled. Thankful and humbled and smiley. I'm smiling. Oh, and look, you're smiling! We're all smiling. Now you're standing up. That really is nice. Wow. This was something, wasn't it?" Or even worse, you wind up performing for an audience that acts like they are home watching The Bachelor; they take no note whatsoever of the fact that there are real live performers on stage and they clap all half-heartedly like they're trying to get some stray flour or dirt off their hands and then they're finished up with that before you can even get backstage. I guess there's no perfect solution. Maybe the audience could get a little sheaf of happy face stickers and on their way out they could put a sticker on the face of the headshot of the actors they liked the best. Then at the end of the run whoever has the most stickers gets a t shirt that says, "My parents paid good money for a liberal arts education and all I got was this lousy t shirt."

(If any Chronicles readers own a screen printing shop, I really want that t shirt, I just decided.)

If I thought it was Bubbles, I wouldn't mind so much.**

Our street has had a ton of car breakins over the last couple of months, basically ever since the economy started going from pretty bad to as-crappy-as-anything-could-possibly-be. It's to the point where I'm checking the car from the upstairs windows several times a day when I'm home (conveniently I can usually see it from the bathroom window - I am nothing if not a multitasker.) The other night we had nine robberies within one block and yet somehow ours still has not been hit. I'm pretty obsessive about taking every single thing out of it after we go anywhere; there's not even a used tissue to be seen in our car. But I'm wondering if I should take further steps. Perhaps a big sign in the windshield saying, "There is nothing in this car but lint - shuffle along, cracky!" Of course I can't be sure that the thieves are crack addicts, but there are few other subgroups who're willing to smash a window at four in the morning just to get at some fuzzy change and a dried out packet of Armor-All wipes.

I've also considered just leaving the car doors open so people can rummage through and see for themselves that there's nothing there to take. This presents several problematic possibilities, not the least of which is having someone take up residence in the backseat. On the other hand, maybe we could claim them as a dependent and reduce our income tax burden for next year. There's good and bad with everything.

Apparently the police, whose precinct office is less than three blocks away, are being less than helpful. I'd be up for making a citizen's arrest if I actually caught someone in the act, but I don't have a gun or a nightstick or any handcuffs, which I think you need. Would someone acquiesce to a citizen's arrest if you just asked them nicely? How to keep them there while I waited for the police to come? Maybe I could sit on them. This might work for your leaner, petite type of criminal but if he was over 5"5 or so I'm not sure I'd be equal to the task. Maybe if I'd had a big lunch. But I can't prepare for every eventuality, so the clear solution is just to have Paul start sleeping in the car. It's probably warmer in there than in our bedroom anyway. Our landflaky promised to replace the windows in our apartment before the cold weather set in this year but that didn't happen, so you can pretty much see your breath in there these days. We'll be moving in June (which will not be soon enough for me) but in the meantime, we have to protect our assets.

I'll let him take the good pillows and the afghan from Grandma Fidalgo. He barely sleeps anyway. This'll work.

** Bubbles is a character from 'The Wire', on HBO. I would probably break into a car if it had Wire dvd's in it; that's how awesome this show is. I'm only in Season Three so do not tell me if something awful happens to Bubbles (and I know it will, because what else can happen to the homeless heroin junkie with the heart of gold?) because I don't know about it yet. Thank you.