Oklahomeless

A few weeks ago I commented on the fact that The Breeders just released a new album. Like every band Kim Deal was a part of (Pixies, Amps), the Breeders were part of the soundtrack to my college years (’91-’95). The reason I haven’t acquired the new album is because (1) no one in Lawton, OK will sell it to me, and (2) I know I have a big box of blank CD/RWs somewhere, but I can’t seem put my hands on them right now. Since I’m typing this missive from OKC, maybe I can diddybop down to Guestroom Records’ new shop on Western, except that I’m too sleepy right now to do much diddybopping.

Now I’ve learned that trip-hop heroes Portishead just released a new album too. Portishead! Seems like only 14 years ago that the icy, noir perfection of “Dummy” transformed my college campus into a foreboding galaxy. Save for A-bomb in Wardour Street / Down in the Tube Station at Midnight from “The Jam’s” “All Mod Cons,” I don’t know that there’s a better one-two end-of-album punch than the one found on Dummy. Here’s Biscuit, about the best example of a chopped and screwed track you’ll ever hear:

followed by the astonishing Glory Box:

I’m sorry these youtube videos suck, but it was the best I could do (the video for Glory Box is available, but they won’t allow you to embed it). Anyway, enjoy.

Just a thought: maybe millennial music sucks so hard that we need to unearth more Gen-X heroes from their pop-culture graves. I’m sitting here at The Red Cup in OKC, a coffee shop with free wifi. A pretty, chatty young girl sitting at the next table was just talking about how someone in her circle remarked that he found her “existential bullshit total ennui.”

I had define for her and her friends the word “ennui.”

I don’t know if someone who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “ennui” can even have existential bullshit. Oh, Millennials! So simple and blank like a happy puppy.

So far my four-year legal career has consisted mostly of drafting and reviewing contracts for a public company that trades at a fraction of a cent, allowing the teeming millions to burden me with the universe’s most intractible problems at legal assistance, rappelling out of helicopters, and, generally, attempting to be something more than a middling Soldier. 

I conducted my first trial yesterday.  I won.

While everything that took place is matter of public record, it’s best if I’m circumspect with the details.  I will say this, however: cosa nostra isn’t going to be a problem anymore. 

Law students do a bad job of envisioning themselves as lawyers.  Said no less than Learned Hand:

“Law has always been a kind of slop box for boys who don’t know what else they want to do anyway ….  So I found myself in the law school.  And there were a lot of men I knew who had gone in for the same reason — they didn’t know what else to do.”

When you do envision yourself as a lawyer, you don’t picture yourself huddled over a contract, proofreading it for the dozenth time.  Certainly you don’t want to think of yourself as a discovery drone who spends month after dreadful month sitting in a converted warehouse, pouring over boxes of documents, knowing that the only thing that fills the void in your dismal, stagnant, useless life is the promise of an absurdly high per diem.  No.  You want to think of yourself in the thick of trial drama, articulating and pontificating and strategizing.

And even if the stakes weren’t very high, and even if I had lost, I finally got a chance to do just that.

While I may have been good enough, I was far from perfect.  Because I deal with many small cases rather than a few large ones, it’s easy to overlook details that really oughtn’t be overlooked.  In the future, I need to create a timeline of events.  I need also to refresh myself on the Federal Rules of Evidence, especially the part about relevancy.  Because there’s no overestimating the relevancy of relevancy.

Fort Sill, home of the Field Artillery, is also home of the U.S. Field Artillery Museum, which is far bigger and far more impressive than its circa 1995 website would suggest.  The ancient part of post is comprised mostly of nineteenth century structures, between which sit literally scores of artillery pieces restored to their former glory.

A few weeks ago I noticed some cold war-era guided missiles sitting in a parking lot located to the side of the actual museum.  All recently had been taken out of mothballs and all were still unrestored and rusty.  I don’t know a thing about any of them are except that they’re why no one reading this post is harvesting beets in a borscht-making collective.  Oh my god, this stuff is incredible!  I enjoy machinery in its natural state far more than when it’s been restored because the patina of authenticity is so thrilling and can never be duplicated.  But this is different than rooting around a car boneyard: these bits were meant to deal death in the event ideological sniping was ratcheted up a click.  In any event, comrade, our capacity to mass produce large, flying, pointy, deadly things in the name of justice is why America is better than your country.

Judging from the 40s-era markings, I’d say this winged bomb drone thing was pointed squarely at Josef Stalin’s posterior:

Sergeant Major here is a little newer:

Jumpin’ Jack Flash:

Another Kaiser-based launcher with payload:

Other stuff more deadly than Nikita Khrushchev’s shoe:

At about 8:00 pm I looked out of my window and noticed that Oklahoma is now yellow.  I went outside and snapped the following photos, which, though cropped, are not in any way altered in terms of color or contrast: 

I know it’s hard to believe, but I really do rent an apartment that looks out onto this magnificent courtyard.  In any event, the weather patterns here are nothing short of completely bizzare: soon after the experiment with sepia tones, Oklahoma returned to its normal pallor as though nothing had happened.  Still, for about 15 minutes this evening, Oklahoma looked like a grainy 1970s film (think “Vanishing Point” or “Big Bad Mama” or “Willie Dynamite“).

Mad props to tha tru skillz.

There hasn’t been anything too interesting at the Lemon Lot for some time now — mostly gas guzzling SUVs that new realities have made obsolete.  Still, a few oddball things have turned up today.

This 91,000 mile 1972 Opel GT is available for $2,000.  Recent tires, headliner, and carpet (though passenger seat needs installation).  The owner, who was showing the car to a prospective buyer, is selling it because he purchased (also at the Lemon Lot) the Porsche 944 automatic lurking in the background.  I love Opel GTs and this one was pretty solid, but $2,000 is a bit optimistic for an automagic [:-/] GT needing bodywork (even if it is roadworthy).  I should have offered five bucks for the front tag.

This ho-hum 1974 VW Beetle is being offered for $5,000 (down from$5,500).  Sign in window says the engine was recently rebuilt.  Floors were pretty solid; I didn’t scrutinize the body long enough to form an opinion.

Because, when it comes right down to it, you really can polish a turd, this 1987 Cadillac Cimarron embodies the spirit of the Lemon Lot like no other car ever built.  A Cimarron!  Yes, a thoroughly awful Cadillac, but a damn fine Cavalier.  Just when you thought every Cimarron rusted to bits on the showroom floor, up pops one in unbelievably fine condition.   

I kind of want it.  No, really.  I’m thinking I could flip it, although then I risk that it’ll begin to grow on me and then I’ll want to keep it.

More Cimarron history here.

Having absolutely nothing to do last night, I ambled over to the local Outback Steakhouse intending to read a book and enjoy a cold, frosty macrobrew.  Happily, I ran into a colleague so few words were read.  I was also advised that there might be a wet t-shirt contest at one of Lawton’s many seedy, charmless, windowless, cinderblock drinking establishments.  Since I’d never before seen a wet t-shirt contest, and since life is all about experiencing things you’ve never experienced, all I could do was go (even if I had to go alone).

I wish I hadn’t.  One thing it’s hard not to notice about the women of Lawton is how old and used up many are by the age of 20.  I’m only being half snarky — it’s a really sad thing.  Entrants — and there were maybe about seven — ranged from skinny white girls to fat white girls to fat Native American girls.  Lots of tattoos and stretchmarks.  Maybe the only one with any dignity was the Korean proprietor, and she was the one doing the water-pouring. 

Finally, I got to fulfil my fantasy of watching girls in clingy wife-beaters step into a kiddie pool and writhe arrhythmically to “I’m Bringing Sexy Back.”  Now I can die. 

(God, that’s your cue.)

I have no idea who won.  The ordeal was more tedious than sexy so I pushed my way though the bikers and joes and Natives and left early.  Since I had no cash, and since the bartender told me upon payment that plastic requires a $10 minimum purchase, I wound up paying $10 for what I hope was the world’s best tasting Bud Lite.

Maybe next weekend I’ll take in the Lawton opera.

(For the record, I did snap a couple of photos on da cellie.  I’d share, but I need some sort of power cable to get them from the phone onto my laptop.)

UPDATE (6/3/08): Even after getting the images from my phone onto my laptop, I could not upload them because WordPress’s back-end client is on the fritz.  However, thanks to my pushy tenant, I learned how to FTP them. 

My latest contribution to Western Civilization:

Update — maybe we should keep this family friendly.

Many (if not most) law firms are like Petri dishes for the cultivation of abnormal personalities. Certainly popular culture has reinforced the image of the cruel, unfeeling lawyer who treats his staff with anything ranging from roguish charm to unvarnished contempt.

For years I’ve wondered if law school attracts people who are like this already, or if the nature of the profession transforms those already sucked in. It’s a mixture, I think. A lot of troglodytes say they want to become lawyers because they “love to argue.”  For this reason alone, a good many people with defective personalites enter the profession – never mind that an effective attorney knows that he’s more likely to succeed when he can avoid confrontation.

Popular culture’s image of the lawyer as oratory gladiator definitely influences the career choices of those already possessing anti-social tendencies. Though they’d be loath to admit to it, today’s 1Ls are probably swayed more by Boston Legal than Gideon’s Trumpet (maybe a few freaks cite “Secretary?”).  For those already manifesting aggressive personality traits, the drama and myriad opportunities for self-aggrandizement are nothing short of seductive.  I’d be lying if I said that I stand above the fray: the same year I read Gideon’s Trumpet, I was obsessed with L.A. Law.  Guess which one had more pull on an eighth grader dangerously open to suggestion?  (Ironically, Gideon’s own court-appointed attorney, despite his brilliance, was just another Washington lawyer with an out-of-control ego and a penchant for expensive, shiny baubles.)

So yes, law school attracts defective people.  However, the nature of the practice of law can indeed transform otherwise well-adjusted people into seemingly defective people (while defective people transmogrify into something else entirely).  Let’s face it: this is a high-pressure industry.  Clients have to be soothed and deadlines must be met.  While lawyers sometimes are expected to use smoke and mirrors, more often a lawyer is expected to think and act as a technician — e.g., when drafting a contract or, really, any legal document.  Precision, therefore, is paramount.  However, a penchant for precision tends to drive non-lawyers nuts, which in turn feeds the prevailing notion that lawyers are horrible, defective people.  I would argue that an attorney with a strong sense of decency and justice is nothing if he doesn’t at least strive for precision when writing or arguing.  Justice coupled with slipshod execution may be good enough for a high school civics position paper, but it doesn’t quite cut it when an individual’s life is about to be impacted or when an argument hinges on conflicting precedent.  On a more superficial level, those in a position to decide (i.e., judges and juries) are going to put more stock in an argument made by someone who can deftly explain the seemingly picayune, and who, generally, has his shit together.

While the tediousness of legal practice can put a decent person on edge, being detail-oriented is a positive trait.  In itself, caring about detail does not make an attorney defective; rather, craftmanship must always be a chief priority.  And while some attorneys might be born defective, and still others become that way, I will posit that simple dedication to craft does not necessarily mean that an attorney is a social misfit.

Margaret Thatcher, Sandra Day O’Connor, Jean Kirkpatrick, Sally Ride, Golda Meir, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Shirley Muldowney, my Pushy Tenant, and Kim Deal.  Kim Deal, you rock and I think you’re totally rad.  It just so happens that the latest iteration of The Breeders released a new album last month.

Here’s The Breeders doing “Safari” — I can’t believe this recording is eighteen years old.  

I like that Kelley Deal and Tanya Donnelly are dressed for a job interview.