The Write Stuff: Paragraph

Tue 13 Sep 200507:43 PM

I, Jury

Mon 25 Jul 200511:15 PM

So I’m sitting there in New York Superior Court this morning, patiently waiting to serve out my jury duty — yeah, I got a summons for jury duty — and I keep thinking back to the last time I was called up for it. That was about ten years ago, when I lived in Washington, D.C., and I’ve never forgotten how I basically punted on my civic responsibility at the time — giving answers to the judge and lawyers that, while not untruthful, probably ensured my dismissal. To this day, I remain pretty ashamed of my behavior then — I can᾿t even remember the rationale behind my need to skip out on jury duty at the time, but it was certainly an insufficient justification.

Now’s my chance to make it right. I found myself feeling not a little bored and uncomfortable on the cold benches of the court room, also actively hoping I’d get chosen this time. The process of selecting jurors from the pool to question is random, but each time they pulled a name out of the hat, I was basically praying it would be mine. Much to my chagrin, it didn’t happen. That᾿s not to say I’m looking to get assigned to an epic, Jacko-style case, but I wouldn’t mind a week or two of court room action. Getting a trial of any greater length than three days, under recently revised state laws, would also have the added benefit of exempting me from further jury service for six years; that’s what you call a great deal. But more than that, I think I just feel compelled to perform this civic duty now. I’m not the irresponsible kid I was at twenty-three, when I was ostensibly civic-minded but more greatly preoccupied with my personal calendar. Basically, I’m an adult now.

Dog Day Afternoon

Fri 24 Jun 200507:36 PM

Do the Locomotive

Thu 19 May 200501:47 AM

This guy one row behind me is on his mobile phone and he won’t shut up, but overall, I’m pretty happy to be traveling for my current business trip — this time very briefly to Washington, D.C. — by train. Amtrak, for all its faults, is a far, far better experience than hauling myself out to the airport and suffering through the perfunctory and arbitrary TSA screening processes before getting on an overcrowded airplane. Between New York and Washington, you just can’t beat the train for how easy and how pleasant it is.

That’s Entertainment (For Kids)

Fri 6 May 200511:35 PM

Talk about a change of pace: this morning my girlfriend and I flew out to the quintessentially suburban and exceedingly pleasant town of Lafayette, California to help my mother watch my nephew for roughly four days (his mom is on a short holiday). On the slate for this weekend: a science fair, my nephew’s Little League game, a trip to San Francisco to see the Giants play the Washington Nationals, and lots of Nintendo GameCube. We stopped by Hollywood Video this afternoon to rent a DVD, and I was reminded how few movies are really appropriate for watching with a seven-year old and how just about any seven-year old in 2005 will have already seen every one of them. In spite of having my own child-at-heart preoccupations, it’s very different keeping an actual young kid entertained.

That’s Entertainment (For Kids)

Fri 6 May 200511:35 PM

Programming Skills Wanted

Mon 11 Apr 200510:17 PM

Day in Court

Wed 9 Mar 200509:53 PM

I had to appear in criminal court today to answer a summons given to me by a NYPD officer in Central Park back in January. It was early on a Saturday, and I was walking Mister President off-leash, which is permitted before 9:00a. But I had unwittingly wandered into The Rambles, a section of the park that technically qualifies as a nature preserve, meaning dogs are never allowed off-leash there. How I was supposed to know that isn’t particularly clear to me, either.

The judge was kind enough to dismiss the charges contingent on six-months of me “staying out of trouble,” and no fine was levied. In spite of my worries that the process would consume the better part of a day, I was done in about ninety minutes. So all told, I have little to complain about.

But I did notice a few things: First, the whole court house was a dilapidated mess, an embarrassment to the idea of justice, and bore only faint resemblance to any courtroom you’ve seen on television. It was clearly underfunded and overworked, and it was depressing just to be there. And second, when I looked around me at all the other people who, like myself, were waiting to stand trial for relatively minor offenses, almost all of them were males of African American or Hispanic descent. It was a stark illustration of who is targeted most often in criminal proceedings, and in what kind of building society feels like those people deserve to be tried.

Tape Worm

Sun 6 Mar 200507:42 PM

There’s not enough time in a month for me to watch twenty dollars’ worth of Netflix movies, so I can’t bring myself to subscribe to that service. Economically speaking, I still prefer the old school method of putting on my shoes and heading down to the local video shop when I happen to have a free evening that might be nicely consumed watching a movie. Two Boots Video is only about four blocks away, so I haven’t got much to complain about… except when there’s no DVD copies of the movies I want.

The past few times we’ve gone, my girlfriend and I have resigned ourselves to choices in — hold yourself — videotape format. These are older movies that the store clearly has little immediate intention of upgrading to DVD format. In some cases, like Eric Rohmer’s perversely mannered “Marquise of O,” I’m even a little surprised that someone bought them in VHS format to begin with. But in other cases, it’s a disappointment to me that the store is still resigned to providing them only on crappy videotape. I’m about three episodes into Ken Burns’ beautiful, nine-part “Baseball” documentary, and it’s a shame to watch it on such an inferior medium.