Youth in Revolt

So someone who’s opinion I trust, recently recommended I read the book Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne.  The book has now been made into a movie starring Michael Cera, an actor I loved on Arrested Development somewhat enjoyed in Juno and hated in all other movies. I’ve been up since 5 am this morning doing nothing so I hopped on Amazon to check the book out and I see this cover staring back at me.

And that’s when it hit me.  Michael Cera is kinda bad-looking.  Like weasel-y and smug and just…not so great looking.  He’s pushed this hipster look too far, it’s not working anymore.  I fully realize this is an asshole thing to say/write.  I get that.  In my defense though, the dude has his millions of dollars to comfort him so he’ll probably live through this bout of anonymous internet criticism.

Seriously though, I hate when books that become adapted into movies put the movie poster on the book cover.  It’s just so fucking lazy.  Movie posters make me never ever want to see any movies.  Whenever I go to see a movie I wrinkle my nose at every one hanging in the lobby, conversely book covers make me wish I had a million dollars to spend on nothing but books.  So, dear world, please stop replacing book cover art with the boring movie poster.  I mean, can we all agree that is is a much better book cover?

Yoga

So I have recently discovered that I really enjoy yoga.  I spent some time surfing around the web looking for good books about yoga. Not books about yoga poses, per se, but rather books that discuss the history of yoga and some of the philosophy behind it.  I started with very good intentions, I promise! I was trying to be deep and philosophical. But then….well then I found these books

I am, literally, bouncing up and down with excitement.  I hope they turn out to be halfway decent mysteries.  I once bought a book based on it’s tea drinking theme and I was sorely disapointed. I’ll restrain myself and buy the first book only. For now.

What Was and What Might Be

This Year

My cat died

People were sick

I moved in with PQM

I gained some weight

I stopped being as stressed about gaining a few pounds

I still would like to lose some weight in the new year

I became more confident in my own voice

I got closer to some people and drifted a little away from others

I felt like an adult, sometimes

Next Year

Be more healthy

Walk more

Deal with my law school debt

Don’t let laundry pile up

Be more organized

Write on this blog more!

This year has been a weird one.  I definitely feel like I have a better appreciation for life in general, who I am and what I am ok with about myself and what I am not.  I’m not going to say I feel optimistic about the coming year because just typing that feels like tempting fate. Let me just say that it’s fairly calm inside my own head right now and I hope it stays that way for a while.

Sometimes I Fall in Love

I wish it happened more often.  Sometimes I meet a beautiful soul mate on the pages of a book and when it happens I am entranced.  I remember when I first met Izzy Spellman…

It was this summer.  I had had a trying morning and was killing time in a Barnes & Noble looking for a book to read over a solitary lunch.  Something fun and distracting.  I went to the Mystery section first, but that went nowhere fast.  Then Literature, nada.  I even scanned the Romance section, I was desperate! Finally I hit the bargain books and that’s when I came across Curse of the Spellmans.  I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t jazzed, it just seemed so-so and it was the second book in a series, but did I mention I was desperate?

Needless to say I really liked the book, it was different and fun.  Light but clever, and really funny.  However, I loved the character of Izzy Spellman, a 30 year old P.I. living in San Francisco and working in her parents P.I. firm.  Izzy is paranoid and a fuck up, smart and a smart-ass.  She hates to dress up and she loves her family but is at times (ok most of the time) driven insane by them.  A former pot smoker and current regular at a local dive bar.  Her best friend is her 80 something lawyer.  She’s Liz Lemon without the glamorous job,  annoying tendency towards neediness or body image hang ups.  In other words, perfect.

Smitten, I moved on (or backwards) to the first book in the series.

Another good book and good mystery.  In this book I fell deeper into Izzy fandom, when I read about her attempted romance with Daniel Castillo D.D.S.  You see, when she first meets him she lies about her profession and pretends to be a school teacher, a split second decision she commits to whole heartedly and hilariously.  I swooned! You see I have also pretended to be a school teacher when I’ve been pulled over for speeding! It totally works. Men love woman teachers. It satisfies all their old comfy stereotypes and makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I paced myself.  There are only three books in the series, and I wanted to save the next book for a necessary occasion.  This weekend I went to a funeral for a long time neighbor and hit up the local Barnes & Noble on the way home where I picked up the next book.

So far so good! Court ordered therapy is involved. Do I need to say any more?

Siiiigh. Love.

Sometimes People Say Ridiculous Things to Me

Today a Petitioner told a room consisting of myself and my co-workers, “you people are all so unbelievably crooked.”  My first impulse was to give a schoolmarmish, “there’s no need to be personally insulting, no one here has insulted you, now have they?” admonition but another co-worker jumped in and made nice until we could get the guy out of the room.  Sometimes I’m just left breathless by peoples capacity to be bitter and rude to strangers.  It got me wondering how some of my favorite authors would reply to a statement like that.

———————————————————————————————–

Agatha Christie:  Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

This is why I’m constantly trying to hide my bank deposit slip from curious eyes when I’m filling it out. True, my bank account is just about the least tempting target for any potential thief’s out there and said curious eyes probably exist in my own head, but I still stay vigilant.

Doris Lessing: In university they don’t tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

I have nothing to add here…

Ellen Gilchrist:   Maybe you ought to get a job for the ‘Ladies Home Journal.’ They like simplistic shit like that.

I just love her. Actually I think I’m going to start inserting this quote into as many daily conversations as possible.

hipster

Nathanial Hawthorne:  What we call real estate–the solid ground to build a house on–is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

He hasn’t even seen guilt until he’s seen a 6500 square foot house for two people to live in.  Mother Earth wept.

Joan Didion:  I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

Ok. This one doesn’t apply to my situational rudeness today, I just really like it.

New Post

Why did I stop updating this blog? Sheer laziness definitely plays a role but also busyness. I’m busy, I swear to god! Now for a list of things that have been keeping me busy:

WORK

I wish I had a better, more colorful picture to use to illustrate the court I do the most practicing out of, but sadly their website is no frills. Come on State of Michigan, would it kill you to hire a fun web designer?

FOOTBALL

I usually like to watch as much football as possible during the fall.  Unfortunately I went to Purdue and live in Michigan so I can only watch Purdue games if Purdue is having an amazing year and is covered nationally. Which…they are not. But they’re still having a decent year! Better than U of M at least (suck it Wolverines) we beat tOSU!! Overall, pretty decent season for the Boilers.  I predict great things to come with our new coach Danny Hope.  I mean (1) awesome name and (2) look how totally badass he is!

right? We’ll be in the National Championship bowl in no time.

Sadly, I must now confess to being a Lions fan. Sigh. Accident of birth, I promise you.  This involves a lot of impotent anger and silent weeping. Well…at least we’ve won two games?

MOVING

I moved! Specifically I moved into PQMs house. Although the actual physical moving process took about a half a day, the metaphysical moving process took months and months and I haven’t even mentioned the remodeling.  List of improvements made to premises before I moved in:

•  Living room/dining room/hallway: repainted, new moldings, recessed lighting installed, new couch, new light fixtures, new tv console, new chairs, new area rug, new front door.

•  Additional closet space added, ie hall linen closet became two tiered hanging closet.

• Complete bathroom redo, everything but a new toilet. But don’t try your luck old toilet! I will toss you like that.  / snaps fingers

• Bedroom: new paint job, night tables, blinds, and converting the bedroom closet into a dresser inside a closet.  The bedroom is ridiculously small and any dresser that would fit in the space is insufficient to handle my clothes storage needs, let alone handle mine and PQMs.  This is by far my most inspired idea to date.  The bedroom is so much more livable.

Basically I have been perusing apartmenttherapy.com for months as PQMs place is on the small side and I needed plenty of inspiration.  Perhaps I will devote a future post to this subject because I think I have made pretty good use of the limited space if I do say so myself.

IN CONCLUSION

Busy, busy, busy + lazy + existential moving (and other) stress = dead blog.

However I will be updating much more regularly. Promise! Come back (one lone person reading this) soon!

Please

If I see one more person wearing a shirt (or the like) that reads “SAVE THE TA-TA’S,” I’m going to snap and lose it. I’ll go berserk on society like Godzilla rampaging through town.  For the unfamiliar, the above slogan is an allegedly “cute” and “funny”  way to show your support for breast cancer awareness.  You see today was the annual Race for the Cure in downtown Detroit and although I didn’t participate you can see these men and women all around town proudly proclaiming their support for “ta-ta” saving.  Shouldn’t the point of breast cancer awareness be about, oh I don’t know, saving human lives? If I had breast cancer, quite frankly, I’d be a bit more concerned with saving myself and not my boobs.  Here’s a well kept secret, you don’t need boobs to live! I know! I’m as surprised as you are.  Call me crazy but if a loved one died of breast cancer I don’t think the first thought that would cross my mind as she laid in state would be, “thank heavens they saved her breasts! she would’ve looked so wrong in death without them.”

Why Do I Ever Leave My House?

So. Last Saturday PQM and I went on a double date with my roommate and her boyfriend.  Yes, I said “double date,” jealous?Anyway we ordered in dinner and then went to see Star Trek. This is not a review of Star Trek, although somewhat surprisingly, I really enjoyed it.  The four of us arrive at the theatre about 20 minutes before the movie started, anticipating heavy crowds.  We get good seats and everything is going smoothly until! they walked in.  Let me break this down:

• 5 minutes prior to movie launch, two seeming aged hippies shuffle into the row in front of us.  I will refer to them as MH (Male Hippie) and FH (Female Hippie)
• MH, sits directly in front/between PQM and I and leans waaaaaaaay back in his chair so he is practically resting his head in our lap.  I don’t know how he manages it but he turns the movie chair into a lazy boy recliner.
• MH’s head!  MH has long blond hair and a bushy beard.  Said hair is greasy as a dirty dish towel and he is almost totally bald on top.  I immediately feel the need for a shower as I eye that head, dangerously close to touching my legs.
• MH & FH begin eating a huge bag of popcorn and drinking a huge soda.  MH alternates between shoveling fistfulls of popcorn in his mouth and TOSSING HIS HEAD BACK AND THROWING POPCORN INTO HIS OPEN GAPING MAW.  (a-hem, please keep in mind that with every popcorn toss his head moves further into our laps)
• Suddenly MH reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a mysterious plastic bag filled with powder, while FH holds the bag of popcorn MH pours 75% of the contents of the plastic bag onto the popcorn.
• The mysterious substance smells sort of like powdered cheese, but maybe powdered blue cheese. It is potent and vile.
• At this point we contemplate moving seats but decide it isn’t ultimately worth it, we will come to regret this decision
• After they have doctored up the popcorn and just as the lights are about to go down MH & FH lean over and make-out with each other for approximately 20 seconds.  My mouth is literally hanging open and roommate begins to laugh uncontrollably.  It is a gruesome mixture of beard, popcorn, mysterious powder substance and old-person lips.
• Ok. So movie begins. Beside the fact that his head is still dangerously close to touching me MH settles in a bit.  Then he reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a bag of candy.  He now alternates shoveling popcorn in his mouth and holding the bag of candy to his open mouth and pouring it in.
• Somewhat later MH runs out of both soda and popcorn. I shit you not, he turns to FH and says this, “If you loved me you’d run out and get me another popcorn and soda.”  GAAAAAHHH!!! BLOOD.PRESSURE.RISING.
• Within 10 minutes FH gets up and gets MH more popcorn and soda.  However MH appears to be full and doesn’t begin to eat the popcorn right away.
• So begins an interlude where MH does not eat but commences to scratching his scalp like he has a severe case of lice or other body louse issue. He also reaches under his shirt and scratches his shoulders and chest.
• Oh look he’s ready to eat again.  Out comes the mysterious plastic bag of the horrible smell.  For some reason the smell is more potent now.
• The next 30 or so minutes go like this: scratch scratch scratch — handful of popcorn; scratch scratch scratch — handful of popcorn; repeat about 40 times.
• I think he also picked his nose twice.

There you have it. I seriously think I might have just encountered the most slovenly man on the planet. This is why I prefer Netflix.

Supreme Considerations

The House That Judicial Review Built

Oh did you hear? There is an opening on the Supreme Court.  It seems as if President Obama is planning to replace Justice Souter with a woman, or as I like to think of it, spiritually replacing Justice O’Conner.  So far there have been a lot of names tossed around, and with the exception of Elena Kagan, the most prominent names belong to women currently sitting on the appellate bench.  Elena Kagan has spent the majority of her carreer in academia. Where is the variety?  Where are the nominations for the attorneys who have actually practiced law in private practice?  If the President nominates one of these women every current member of the Court will have come from the appellate bench.  With the exception of Justice Stevens and perhaps Justice Kennedy, for a majority of the Justices private practice is a mere blip on their, certainly impressive, resumes.  You know what?  I have a problem with that.  Yes, being a judge or a scholar is certainly impressive and carries many positives.  However, being in private practice, actually working cases and meeting with clients and winning and losing and being OUT THERE in the trenches brings a valuable point of view in and of itself.  I fear that point of view is sadly lacking on our Supreme Court these days and that is to the detriment of everyone.  Of course this is leading up to…

My Recommendation!

You knew I was going to tie this all back in with the   theme of this blog, right? Claire Matturro is a long time practicing attorney and author of several excellent mystery novels! Ok, this is somewhat tongue in cheek, but also serious. Why not? She has had an accomplished career and she seems to have carved her own path.  Her novels all center on the adventures of a young Floridian attorney, Lilly Cleary.   They’re funny and different as well as meticulously well-researched.  Ok, full disclosure, I am a law talking person, and I might be a little more entertained by the attorney jokes then others, but I really don’t think so.  Matturro makes the law sound quite accessible and practicing…gulp…fun, of a sort.

The inspiration struck  just as I was finishing up her most recent novel Sweetheart Deal, which I am enjoying. My favorite though, is still Skinny Dipping the debut novel in the series.  Matturro brings  a truly original voice to the ranks of books written about attorneys by attorneys.   Is it because she’s a woman? Perhaps although I certainly enjoy her books more, and find them much closer to real life, than those of Linda Fairstein or Lisa Scottoline.  Is it the focus on civil as well, if not more so, than criminal law? That could be it.  Her plots are lighter and quirkier, think more Elmore Leanard or Carl Hiaasen than John Grisham, yet still resonate.  From what I can glean from between the lines of her fiction she most likely is a supporter of progressive politics specifically environmental causes, an issue that I think is very important and will only become more dire as the years go on.   Claire Matturro…think about it President Obama.  I think she’d be a breath of fresh air.

My two cents.

Loss

 

 

My best guy died Monday morning. Probably an undetected heart condition. He was two years old. It was all very sudden and I miss him terribly.  He was my baby.  He loved to sleep with his head in my neck.  I will probably add more photos to this post later.