Miscellaneous

The last time I was in New City

Posted on January 27, 2009
The last time I was in New City I listened to an interview with John Updike on part of the ride home. He was charmingly self-deprecating, but sincere about how seriously he tried to work at his craft. At one point he joked about the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy saying that American literature is "too isolated, too insular", and he talked about how he had tried to break out of that mold in some of his work...

George W. Bush iconography. Errol

Posted on January 27, 2009
George W. Bush iconography. Errol Morris talks with three photographers -- one each from Reuters, AP, and AFP-- about their ten favorite photographs from the Bush presidency. It is interesting that an administration that was so careful about controlling its message nevertheless had so much trouble controlling its image...

Ron Rosenbaum loses it over Billy

Posted on January 25, 2009
Ron Rosenbaum loses it over Billy Joel. More than a few rock snobs from Long Island have bemoaned the fact that New Jersey got Springsteen and the Island got Joel, but that's really not a particularly valid complaint. No doubt there are people in Passaic who are upset that the Garden State is Jon Bon Jovi's home, while Lou Reed is from Freeport...

Paterson's kung fu is pretty impressive.

Posted on January 24, 2009
Paterson's kung fu is pretty impressive. He got a woman, and upstater who'd made her political bones, and he managed to do it without sacrificing meaningful seniority in the House. And he managed to nudge aside a member of one of America's most powerful political families, without making a big power play...

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I've run into the situation presented

Posted on January 23, 2009
I've run into the situation presented in Mahoney v. Turner Construction more than a few times. In a multi-defendant action one or more co-defendants settle with the plaintiff on a confidential basis. For some reason it is always my client that is left in the case, wondering how much the plaintiff got...

It seems less vital to me now that

Posted on January 22, 2009
It seems less vital to me now that Christgau no longer writes it, and it has been a long, long time since I could be confident that I would be familiar with the majority of the sides listed, but I still enjoy the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop Poll

What I am excited about when I

Posted on January 21, 2009
What I am excited about when I think about the election, and the inauguration and the prospect of an Obama presidency has so little to do with race that I find it a little reductive to discuss that aspect. One of Obama's principle qualifications for the job, and the tasks before him (and us) is his temperament, of course, and his character was formed in no small part out of his negritude...

I for one am excited to read the

Posted on January 19, 2009
I for one am excited to read the list of pardons Bush is, I am sure, signing right now. Will Cheney be on it? Rummy? Condi? Scooter? The AP reports that he has commuted the sentences of two border control agents who shot a Mexican drug dealer, and that there are no more acts of executive clemency in the pipe, but I can't believe he'd disappoint us like that.

Nixon slunk away, and Ford pardoned

Posted on January 16, 2009
Nixon slunk away, and Ford pardoned him. At the time I think we all felt that the lesson was that the system worked. Crimes were committed, but a penalty was extracted, and there was no long-term damage. What we are looking at now, at the end of the Bush Administration, is something entirely different...

We make a point of telling clients

Posted on January 15, 2009
We make a point of telling clients that we will appear anywhere in New York, and that's been a good thing for us over the years, but some corners of the state are tougher itches to scratch than others. Rockland County (county seat: New City) is one of those...

I was pretty sure that Governor

Posted on January 14, 2009
I was pretty sure that Governor Patterson would have picked someone already on the Court of Appeals, if only to get another seat to fill. That would have made Judge Jones the likely favorite, a Democrat, and African-American. Instead we have Jonathan Lippman, who was said to be the candidate that Judge Kaye favored...

William Zantzinger, the villan

Posted on January 09, 2009
William Zantzinger, the villan of Bob Dylan's "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", died January 3, 2009. He was 69 years old. I'd known the song for years (it's on "The Times They Are A Changin") before I learned that it was about a contemporary event-- servants being beaten to death by canes just didn't sound like a 1963 sort of event...

Daisy Owl is my new favorite comic.

Posted on January 08, 2009
Daisy Owl is my new favorite comic. It approaches "Calvin and Hobbs".

Reading about this guy's lost vinyl

Posted on January 07, 2009
Reading about this guy's lost vinyl collection made me sad. My own holdings are nothing like as vast, although I was diligent in amassing my collection. Even so, I never even knew there was an M. Frog Labat album. Why was this kept from me? When it was released Rolling Stone reviewed it: M...

I was sorry to learn this morning

Posted on January 07, 2009
I was sorry to learn this morning that Judge John T. Elfvin died-- 91 is a good run, and he seemed like he probably enjoyed most of it. It was always an edgy pleasure to appear before him-- he didn't suffer fools particularly gladly, and expected counsel to be on their game, but that's what good judges ought to do...

Court of Appeals speculation.

Posted on January 06, 2009
Court of Appeals speculation. We'll know soon enough, and I expect there will be howls of upstate indignation if Judge Pigott isn't tapped. He picked the wrong year to be a Republican white guy, I'm afraid.

The New Year brings a new edition

Posted on January 05, 2009
The New Year brings a new edition of Professor Siegel's newsletter, always a bright spot in the morning mail. The lead decision under discussion in this month's edition deals with unconscionable fees. In Lawrence v. Graubard Miller the Court of Appeals finds that the question of whether a $40 million dollar fee for five months worth of work on an estate is "unconscionable"...

After a taxing holiday season our

Posted on January 04, 2009
After a taxing holiday season our dishwasher is acting fussy. It is getting up in years, and it gets rode hard, but I want more from it. We've discovered a product that seems to goose its performance-- it is a bottle of some sort of undoubtedly extremely caustic something-or-other that you put in the flatware basket...

I've said it here, and I've said

Posted on January 02, 2009
I've said it here, and I've said it in the pages of Spree: the best place to hear great music in Buffalo is in the vicinity of Bruce Eaton. Running down the Village Voice Jazz Poll I see that thanks to Bruce we saw Rudresh Mahanthappa (#2) and Vijay Iyer (#4-- same show, actually), as well as Lionel Loueke (#12)...

Running through my archives for

Posted on January 01, 2009
Running through my archives for 2008 I was struck by two things: I did less interesting travel than is usual for me, and I seem to have heard less live music. The standouts were the Hunt Real Estate Art of Jazz shows, Willie Nile at the Tap Room, TMBG, Kathleen Edwards and David Byrne...

I've just started using New York's

Posted on December 31, 2008
I've just started using New York's e-filing system, and I am pleased to report that many of the things that the federal courts' system gets horribly wrong are corrected here in the Empire State. Civil Procedure geeks (like me) are fond of e-filing because in theory it simplifies the experience...

The "what's on his/her iPod" test

Posted on December 30, 2008
The "what's on his/her iPod" test is not very meaningful-- the capacity of the device means that I have quite a bit on mine that is not very indicative of my taste and the fact that I mostly use the device when I'm either traveling or in the kitchen means that the music that I play on it is not necessarily what I generally listen to...

You never reach a place in our

Posted on December 23, 2008
You never reach a place in our glamor profession where you've seen it all, but after a few years you start to recognize people's fingerprints. When I saw that counsel for New York County Surrogate-elect Nora S. Anderson is arguing that she should still be sworn in even though the Manhattan district attorney is currently prosecuting her on felony charges of concealing improper political contributions during her campaign for the bench one name popped into my mind: Godosky! As it happens, In re Cornelius, 48 N...

I'm mostly okay with the idea of

Posted on December 20, 2008
I'm mostly okay with the idea of Caroline Kennedy being tapped to finish out HRC's senate term, even though the tiny little gene pool of New York politics troubles me. I figure Caroline would be pretty dependably on the side of the issues that I favor, and after racking my brain I haven't been able to come up with the name of another woman or member of a minority that I like better, other than just about any of my friends...

a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2207046/"Bruce

Posted on December 19, 2008
a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2207046/"Bruce Reed notes/a, "In the century since the 17th Amendment provided for direct election to the Senate, about 180 senators have been appointed to fill vacancies. When their appointed terms ran out, those senators met with three fates in equal measure...

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Posted on December 18, 2008
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I wanted to mail a pair of shoes

Posted on December 16, 2008
I wanted to mail a pair of shoes to the White House, but I was concerned that the Secret Service-- a bunch notably deficient in the sense of humor department-- might not cotton to the gesture. A donation to the George W. Bush Presidential Library is what's called for.

Rounding out my "Exile on Main

Posted on December 14, 2008
Rounding out my "Exile on Main Street" research I watched "Performance" last night-- the first time I've seen it. It's an interesting document, and a lot better done than I'd expected. Very 60's, but I don't mean to be reductive or dismissive by saying that-- it has the fingerprints of the French New Wave on it, and the fashions are Mod England, but these things still seem fresh...

The Paris Review "Writer's At Work"

Posted on December 13, 2008
The Paris Review "Writer's At Work" interview series is great stuff, and one of the things that the interviewer usually gets around to asking is about the actual physical process of putting words to paper. Hemingway wrote standing up, Truman Capote typed in bed, that sort of thing...

A note for our "Perils of an Elected

Posted on December 11, 2008
A note for our "Perils of an Elected Judiciary" file: Manhattan Surrogate-Elect Arrested on Campaign Finance Charges. Surrogate's Court-- New York's probate court, although it has slightly broader jurisdiction, is a system for spreading graft, so all that is really surprising about this is that Ms...

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