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Foreign Music Friday

This is the first installment of "Foreign Music Friday." I would say that most Americans are pretty ignorant when it comes to music made outside of the US. I know I was prior to my two year sojourn in Central America.

Usually when someone says "Hey, you should check out band X" you never end up doing it. Why? Well, if you are like me than you feel like you don't have enough time to listen to the bands that you do like, let alone new bands that you probably won't like. I've decided now that when someone says "check out this band" I will definitely do it. My brother wanted me to check out the new Silverchair album for some reason and I actually did it (even though I didn't really like it that much).

My first entry comes from England. The song is "Gangsters" by the Specials. As you can see from the comments, the video is from 1979. This is two-tone ska at its best.

What?

I was just going through my stack of things to work on, and these are the instructions the attorney gave me for one of my projects:

"Also do a deed + to the ltd partnership for the irrevocable trust dog deed to the trustee of the trust."

I don't know what that means, other than I'm going to work on something else until he can explain what he wrote to me.

Message received at...

Whenever I am "chatting" with someone online, I always wonder what it looks like where they are sitting. I've also heard that you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their workspace. So I decided to take a picture of my desk and share with you this so you can see where I spend Mondays through Fridays from 8:30 to 5:00. I've numbered random things, and although they numbers are a bit hard to see, I'll explain each one.

1. This is our incredible fax machine. The best part about this treasured office machine is that the automatic feeder doesn't really work, so when the boss (who may or not be my dad) decides that he needs to send a 15 page fax, guess who gets to sit there and feed each page separately into the machine? Yours truly. Both the secretary (who may or may not be my mom) and I have asked for a new fax machine, but the boss is holding out for some reason. I think he takes some sick pleasure in the fact that the fax machine doesn't work very well.

2. Number 2 is my lovely computer, which I purchased right before I began law school. It's a Dell Inspiron 700m and the reason I purchased it is because it was the smallest one they had at the time (12.1 inches). On my desktop is a picture of my baseball hero, Sandy Koufax. In my home I have five other pictures of Sandy Koufax, including one that's autographed. Anyway, my computer has held up pretty well, but the "s" button is starting to flame out on me. I wonder if there is a way to make this key more sensitive so I don't have to hit it so hard everytime I touch it.

3. What would a nice workspace be without a Far Side calendar? I complained to the secretary about her choice of calendar (it had to do with "special sayings for women." No joke.) so she went out and bought me the Far Side one sometime in February. Since it was so late, it was only a buck. What a great deal.

4. Here's the keyboard to the desktop which I try to use as little as possible because I don't really fit under it. The desk is only about 3 1/2 or 4 ft tall, and the keyboard hangs under it so when I type there, I don't even try and put my legs under the desk.

5. My phone and my keys. I actually just got a new phone because my razr kicked the bucket. The battery stopped working literally two weeks after the warrant had run out on it. I bought another batter and that one didn't work, so it was time for a new phone. Usually I'm pretty excited, but this time there wasn't anything that I was really interested in. I ended up getting a krazr (sp?). It's ok. I'm just praying that when it breaks (because I know it will) that it does so within a year from now.

6. These are my time sheets. Everytime I stop work or switch clients, I have to start filling out the time sheet and write in exactly what I'm working on. It is a huge hassle. I look back fondly on my days working at the "retirement community" where I swiped a card when I showed up and swiped a card when I left.

7. Typical file folder. I was working on a set of special interrogatories at the time. Here is my favorite paragraphed that I typed:

13.  The terms "RELATE TO" and "RELATING TO" shall
mean regarding, concerning, referring to,
constituting, memorializing, depicting, mentioning,
specifying, listing, summarizing, reviewing,
identifying, establishing, evidencing, supporting,
describing, recording, embodying, studying, analyzing
or discussing.

If there is one thing I love about the legal profession, it's the insane amount of wordiness, which I'm pretty sure isn't a word, but it's the best word that I could come up with right now.

8. This is a Charlie Brown Christmas snow globe. I'm not sure why it's still up, but we put it there before Christmas 2006 and never took it down. It's also nice to have when my oldest boy comes to the office and needs something to play with.

9. Another file that I was using as a reference.

10. A picture of my sister and her oldest kid when she was a newborn. I'm not sure why it's taped to the base of the monitor, but I guess that is where the secretary wanted it.

Anyway, there's a brief tour of my workspace for you. Besides the lack of space on the desk, it's really not so bad sitting there all day. If only we could get a new fax machine...

Famous

Yesterday I went down to Hollywood with my brother and his wife to act like tourists and check out the walk of fame and people watch. I realized a few things while I was down there:

1. I really do enjoy doing tourist-y things.
2. Pink's has delicious hot dogs (I got the spicy Chicago sausage AND the bacon and chili dog). I'm overweight going on obese.
3. I would like to live in Los Angeles.
4. I've met a few "celebrities" in my day.

The reason I started thinking about celebrities was because of the weird look-a-like people that hang out around the Chinese theater and take pictures with Japanese tourists. You know, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Pinhead, Freddy Krueger, Spiderman, etc etc. Anyway, I mentally compiled a list of celebrities that I've met (and by "met" I mean, I came within 5-10 feet of that person, and this list doesn't include athletes or musicians), and here's my list of who and where:

1. Richard Dreyfuss (Border's in Montclair. I was pretty excited because I loved his character in "American Graffitti.")
2. The blind kid from Dumb and Dumber (Lindsey's house. He was playing Nintendo with her brother I think)
3. Scott Bakula (Filming Quantum Leap in Claremont)
4. Drew Carey (Also at Border's in Montclair. He was doing a book signing)
5. Marshall from Alias (Dodger game)
6. Coolio (SLC airport)
7. Guy with the long hair from Guatemalan super-group Contacto

Not a bad compilation of D-list celebrities, right? There might be more, but I can't think of them right now. However, there is one celebrity that I just recently met that I am more excited about than the rest of the others combined. Not only did I meet this celebrity, but I also rubbed his tummy and felt his furry head. Here he is:



No, I didn't meet Weird Al, I met the dog on the cover of this album. Turns out he is the pet of a guy I go to school with. Let's just say this was the friendliest/scariest-looking dog I have ever met, and the first celebrity that I have ever scratched behind the ear.

On a different subject, I went and saw "Transformers" this weekend and it was the first movie I've seen this summer that didn't disappoint. In fact, it was way better than I imagined it would be. The last time I was ever really blown away by the special effects in a movie was in Jurassic Park. Well, maybe it was in the second X-Men movie where Nightcrawler is about to attack the president at the opening of the movie. Either way, I thought the special effects in Transformers were absolutely incredible. Not only that, but the movie was hilarious. Shia LeBouf is a great actor. I hadn't seen him in a movie since "Holes" (which was also a great movie), but I look forward to seeing whatever movie he makes next. Actually, I think his next movie is the new Indiana Jones film. Should be good.

Anyway, I need to get back to the Dodgers game. I'll try and update more frequently.