It's Insurrection Week on the 4:30 Movie!
Also, Busy Work Week, Overblown Prediction of a Snowstorm Week, and Ray Being Generally Stupid Week!
Let's start with the Recent Unpleasantness, which marked its first Klan-iversary on Thursday January 6th. Until a year ago, that date on the calendar had two relatively unimportant tabs on it. One, it was my father's birthday, so yes, this year he would have turned 106 on 1/06. I didn't play any lotto numbers despite that. More historically, it is the supposed day of the Epiphany, when the Christ Child was worshiped by three mysterious visitors from the east. Seers, sages, soothsayers!
No, not him.
Ultimately, though, supporters of The Former Guy chose this relatively minor religious holiday to mount the biggest attack on our nation since 9/11. I finally got the connection:
Both featured visits by strange men sent by insane paranoid kings.
But not before I had, um, an Ephipany of mine own and put the modern events to the tune of the old 12th Day Carol:
♫We, three Insurrectionists are,
Leading traitors come from afar
Filled with malice, they’ll burn the ballots
That toppled their orange star….
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence!
Poison Joe with frankincense!”
A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding-
And we deny our Capitol offense!
“Gym Rat” Jordan wasn’t alone
Had Dear Leader there on the phone
“Fight like hell!” he cried and did tell him
The votes must be overthrown
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence!
Poison Joe with frankincense!”
A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding-
And we deny our Capitol offense!
Lauren Boebert is so dumb
She can’t be safe without her gun
Leading tours of Shamans and boors,
They knew just when and where to come
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence!
Poison Joe with frankincense!”
A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding-
And we deny our Capitol offense!
MTG has a story to tell:
Lasers sent from Israel!
No support from any court
So she said, “Storm the Capitol!”
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence!
Poison Joe with frankincense!”
A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding-
And we deny our Capitol offense! ♫
----
I whipped that up on Wednesday morning, in the midst of a very intense first full workweek of the year. Both new bankruptcy cases churned along with significant progress, the newer-to-me becoming officially mine on Tuesday and the initial bumps ironed out of it. The other had its first formal court hearing at 1 on Thursday, by phone from the Rochester office. Getting there was part of the weather fun I will report on below, but I did without issue and it went reasonably well. The week also brought at least the scheduling of a half dozen other court proceedings via phone or Teams, and while most were brief, postponed or in one case mis-scheduled by both me and the other lawyer, it added to the stress. Also, new referrals picked up noticeably, and while I passed on a couple of them, 2022 is looking to be keeping me from sitting around the office eating Bon-bons.
(That's partially untrue. Somebody actually brought us a box of them for Christmas. I tried eating one but it stuck to the package and exploded cherry juice all over the counter. That'll teach those lazy housewives;)
----
As mentioned, Thursday was the designated travel day, made multiply more stressful by them droning on all week about the long-awaited OMG WINTER STORMAGEDDON we haven't had all winter. Our December snow was minimal, and our electric bill was its summertime minimum, which means the solar panels covered all of our usage even in the darkest month of the year. (It's when snow covers the panels that they don't produce anything.)
By Wednesday night, the French Toast Alerts were reaching Bostonian Code Red proportions: STAY AT HOME TO SAVE YOUR LIVES! GONNA SNOW ALL NIGHT, ALL DAY AND INTO JULY! I made backup plans to call into my bankruptcy hearing from a different phone than the client, and to have Rochester coworkers meet and witness clients who I'd done wills for. Because Rochester, all along, was reported to be out of the path of this lake effect event.
That's when I Got Smart:
No, not that one. (Would you believe we'll get to him in a moment, though?)
I may need my law degree for my career, but it sometimes helps to have a passing interest in meteorology and geography. It finally occurred to me: Rochester is actually northeast of here, and although the 90 goes right through the storm's projected snow band, Niagara County to the north was completely out of it. And so I decided to take a little detour “up the Transit” to my appointments that way.
Once I got about two miles north of our house, I stopped seeing anything resembling a flake. All of the rest of my drive there along 31 and 104 was sunny and snow-free. And going that way allowed me to go right past a Barnes and Noble that had the only store copy within 86 miles of the book I wanted to get with my Christmas book bux from my sister:
Mel's a mere 95 compared to Betty White's almost century of just-ended life, but he might now have the title of the oldest funniest human alive. I immediately gravitated to the chapter on his Get Smart co-creation (with Buck Henry, who we lost a few years back and whose acrimony over the show with Mel does not make it out of the Cone of Silence and into this book). It reveals that the initial order for the comedy came from none other than David Susskind, far better known for his erudite intellectualism than for goofy Borscht Belt jokes and sight gags. That led to this exchange after I got home from my voyage through the Not So Polar Express:
Eleanor: That's surprising, that an intellectual like Susskind would have pitched that show. Although we're intellectual and like that kind of show. Maybe we're not as intellectual as Susskind....
Me: Well, I'd say our IQs are higher than his is now....
(Sure enough, Susskind went to that great green room in the sky in 1987, a year after my father did.)
I remember Get Smart as Mel at his televised best, though he had some other dabbles and guest appearances, from Carson to the Muppets in my lifetime. But his career launched well before my memory, joining the legendary writers room of Sid Caesar and finding his fame growing from there. After the curtain heavy doors fell on Get Smart, he wrote, directed and performed in some of the greatest comedies of all time, from The Producers to Spaceballs and back to The Producers again.
So now I get to sit down with his tales of these. Plus the library called and another memoir I put on hold, from Ron and Clint Howard finally came in for me to read, so I'll be busy at home, as well.
Which I did, indeed, make it back home to. Despite getting a call, moments after picking up the book, that my will clients were canceling due to a COVID exposure in their kid's school. That meant I'd made the whole drive for something I could've done by phone. But hey, I was there, I had my book in hand, and I just had to avoid the last traces of the French Toast alert on the way home. It was still snowing pretty heavily on the 90 around Batavia, so I again took the northern bypass, cut down to join the Thruway at Pembroke, and made perfect time until the final two miles on the 290 that were stop-and-go and stupid. I took it nice and easy and was settled in, our sidewalk shoveled, and Succession on the telly at our usual binge time for that.
----
Speaking of stupid, though:
I just had more than my usual number of moments this week. Yesterday, a fairly routine court filing took me about five drafts, as each time right before electronic filing I noticed SOMETHING wrong: a filing fee went up by seven bucks, I used the wrong word in a paragraph and then managed to delete it. Finally got the whole thing right, and decided to come home before any more stupid broke out.
Yet that didn't break my stupid record for the week. That was on the day of the calm before the "storm." A client was due in at 3 p.m. About 20 minutes before that, they came in to say my client was there. Fine, early; I grabbed the paperwork and ushered him in. About two pages of routine questions into it, he started giving weird answers. No, he wouldn't be able to file bankruptcy with that much equity in a car. No, his bank account wasn't at Five Star. Finally, we figured it out: he wasn't my 3:00 client. He was somebody else who just had to sign two notarized documents. I'd actually never met him in person before, and hadn't seen the actual 3:00 client since the summer. Plus, masks. So he wasn't especially fazed by it, but I was just glad I didn't get as far as having him sign and file the thing with the wrong name.
Not as bad as an Insurrection, mind you, but.... This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1682103.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
Let's start with the Recent Unpleasantness, which marked its first Klan-iversary on Thursday January 6th. Until a year ago, that date on the calendar had two relatively unimportant tabs on it. One, it was my father's birthday, so yes, this year he would have turned 106 on 1/06. I didn't play any lotto numbers despite that. More historically, it is the supposed day of the Epiphany, when the Christ Child was worshiped by three mysterious visitors from the east. Seers, sages, soothsayers!
No, not him.
Ultimately, though, supporters of The Former Guy chose this relatively minor religious holiday to mount the biggest attack on our nation since 9/11. I finally got the connection:
Both featured visits by strange men sent by insane paranoid kings.
But not before I had, um, an Ephipany of mine own and put the modern events to the tune of the old 12th Day Carol:
♫We, three Insurrectionists are,
Leading traitors come from afar
Filled with malice, they’ll burn the ballots
That toppled their orange star….
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence!
Poison Joe with frankincense!”
A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding-
And we deny our Capitol offense!
“Gym Rat” Jordan wasn’t alone
Had Dear Leader there on the phone
“Fight like hell!” he cried and did tell him
The votes must be overthrown
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence!
Poison Joe with frankincense!”
A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding-
And we deny our Capitol offense!
Lauren Boebert is so dumb
She can’t be safe without her gun
Leading tours of Shamans and boors,
They knew just when and where to come
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence!
Poison Joe with frankincense!”
A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding-
And we deny our Capitol offense!
MTG has a story to tell:
Lasers sent from Israel!
No support from any court
So she said, “Storm the Capitol!”
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence!
Poison Joe with frankincense!”
A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding-
And we deny our Capitol offense! ♫
----
I whipped that up on Wednesday morning, in the midst of a very intense first full workweek of the year. Both new bankruptcy cases churned along with significant progress, the newer-to-me becoming officially mine on Tuesday and the initial bumps ironed out of it. The other had its first formal court hearing at 1 on Thursday, by phone from the Rochester office. Getting there was part of the weather fun I will report on below, but I did without issue and it went reasonably well. The week also brought at least the scheduling of a half dozen other court proceedings via phone or Teams, and while most were brief, postponed or in one case mis-scheduled by both me and the other lawyer, it added to the stress. Also, new referrals picked up noticeably, and while I passed on a couple of them, 2022 is looking to be keeping me from sitting around the office eating Bon-bons.
(That's partially untrue. Somebody actually brought us a box of them for Christmas. I tried eating one but it stuck to the package and exploded cherry juice all over the counter. That'll teach those lazy housewives;)
----
As mentioned, Thursday was the designated travel day, made multiply more stressful by them droning on all week about the long-awaited OMG WINTER STORMAGEDDON we haven't had all winter. Our December snow was minimal, and our electric bill was its summertime minimum, which means the solar panels covered all of our usage even in the darkest month of the year. (It's when snow covers the panels that they don't produce anything.)
By Wednesday night, the French Toast Alerts were reaching Bostonian Code Red proportions: STAY AT HOME TO SAVE YOUR LIVES! GONNA SNOW ALL NIGHT, ALL DAY AND INTO JULY! I made backup plans to call into my bankruptcy hearing from a different phone than the client, and to have Rochester coworkers meet and witness clients who I'd done wills for. Because Rochester, all along, was reported to be out of the path of this lake effect event.
That's when I Got Smart:
No, not that one. (Would you believe we'll get to him in a moment, though?)
I may need my law degree for my career, but it sometimes helps to have a passing interest in meteorology and geography. It finally occurred to me: Rochester is actually northeast of here, and although the 90 goes right through the storm's projected snow band, Niagara County to the north was completely out of it. And so I decided to take a little detour “up the Transit” to my appointments that way.
Once I got about two miles north of our house, I stopped seeing anything resembling a flake. All of the rest of my drive there along 31 and 104 was sunny and snow-free. And going that way allowed me to go right past a Barnes and Noble that had the only store copy within 86 miles of the book I wanted to get with my Christmas book bux from my sister:
Mel's a mere 95 compared to Betty White's almost century of just-ended life, but he might now have the title of the oldest funniest human alive. I immediately gravitated to the chapter on his Get Smart co-creation (with Buck Henry, who we lost a few years back and whose acrimony over the show with Mel does not make it out of the Cone of Silence and into this book). It reveals that the initial order for the comedy came from none other than David Susskind, far better known for his erudite intellectualism than for goofy Borscht Belt jokes and sight gags. That led to this exchange after I got home from my voyage through the Not So Polar Express:
Eleanor: That's surprising, that an intellectual like Susskind would have pitched that show. Although we're intellectual and like that kind of show. Maybe we're not as intellectual as Susskind....
Me: Well, I'd say our IQs are higher than his is now....
(Sure enough, Susskind went to that great green room in the sky in 1987, a year after my father did.)
I remember Get Smart as Mel at his televised best, though he had some other dabbles and guest appearances, from Carson to the Muppets in my lifetime. But his career launched well before my memory, joining the legendary writers room of Sid Caesar and finding his fame growing from there. After the curtain heavy doors fell on Get Smart, he wrote, directed and performed in some of the greatest comedies of all time, from The Producers to Spaceballs and back to The Producers again.
So now I get to sit down with his tales of these. Plus the library called and another memoir I put on hold, from Ron and Clint Howard finally came in for me to read, so I'll be busy at home, as well.
Which I did, indeed, make it back home to. Despite getting a call, moments after picking up the book, that my will clients were canceling due to a COVID exposure in their kid's school. That meant I'd made the whole drive for something I could've done by phone. But hey, I was there, I had my book in hand, and I just had to avoid the last traces of the French Toast alert on the way home. It was still snowing pretty heavily on the 90 around Batavia, so I again took the northern bypass, cut down to join the Thruway at Pembroke, and made perfect time until the final two miles on the 290 that were stop-and-go and stupid. I took it nice and easy and was settled in, our sidewalk shoveled, and Succession on the telly at our usual binge time for that.
----
Speaking of stupid, though:
I just had more than my usual number of moments this week. Yesterday, a fairly routine court filing took me about five drafts, as each time right before electronic filing I noticed SOMETHING wrong: a filing fee went up by seven bucks, I used the wrong word in a paragraph and then managed to delete it. Finally got the whole thing right, and decided to come home before any more stupid broke out.
Yet that didn't break my stupid record for the week. That was on the day of the calm before the "storm." A client was due in at 3 p.m. About 20 minutes before that, they came in to say my client was there. Fine, early; I grabbed the paperwork and ushered him in. About two pages of routine questions into it, he started giving weird answers. No, he wouldn't be able to file bankruptcy with that much equity in a car. No, his bank account wasn't at Five Star. Finally, we figured it out: he wasn't my 3:00 client. He was somebody else who just had to sign two notarized documents. I'd actually never met him in person before, and hadn't seen the actual 3:00 client since the summer. Plus, masks. So he wasn't especially fazed by it, but I was just glad I didn't get as far as having him sign and file the thing with the wrong name.
Not as bad as an Insurrection, mind you, but.... This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1682103.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.