Alan Moore

I mentioned The Watchmen in my blog about “Dark Knight”.  I’m not a big comic book fan, but I make an exception for Alan Moore – somehow his work is compelling, even if it is, sometimes, pretentious.  He’s done tons of stuff, but by far his most popular – and the only stuff I’m familiar with (!) – is listed below.

 The Watchmen (artwork: Dave Gibbons).  Of course, we have the plot by now, but for those of you who neither saw the movie nor read the graphic novel, which supposedly started this whole thing:  Dr Manhattan, the big blue naked guy, is virtually omnipotent, but he’s so intelligent that sometimes he’s a little clueless.  He’s so far above us all that he has trouble relating to us or talking to us as equals.  Thanks to his work in Indochina, the US won the Vietnam War, and Nixon was able to weasel 5 terms, so he’s still President in 1985, which is when the story takes place.  Another superhero, the arch-cynical Comedian, is killed, and his comrade Rorschach takes it upon himself to find out what’s really going on.  Ultimately they uncover a huge plot by Ozymandias – sort of Batman’s Bruce Wayne without the Batman part, and without Wayne’s high moral standards  – to solve the Cold War at the cost of several million lives and framing Dr. Manhattan.  Along the way, Silk Spectre – the token super hot superheroine, and daughter of the original Silk Spectre from WWII – and Nite Owl, himself a 2^nd generation Nite Owl – the nerdy but wealthy Batman type – hook up and help out Rorschach. This is one story where you’re unsure to be amazed and impressed with its complexity or disgusted by its sheer cynicism and weight.  It’s certainly different.

 V for Vendetta (artwork: David Lloyd).  Also turned into a movie, with Hugo Weaving (Elrond from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, and the computer nemesis from the Matrix movies) behind the Guy Fawkes mask and Natalie Portman as the girl.  This takes place in the distant future, where England is now a totalitarian dictatorship, very reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984.  One lone rebel, known only as V, and perpetually wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, takes on the hapless regime, with a surprising amount of success.  We don’t know who he is (or even if it is a “he”) but have some clue that this person survived torture and other atrocities at one of the regime’s concentration camps.  In some ways it actually seems like a sequel to 1984 – what if, instead of the hapless Winston, we actually had someone who had the guts and the intelligence to pull off an underground war, by himself, against the state.  Certainly Jon Hurt didn’t seem like that guy.

 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (artwork: Kevin O’Neill).  Yes, turned into a movie, with Sean Connery as Allan Quartermain (H. Rider Haggard).  Moore basically picks famous, notable fictional characters from popular American and English literature, slams them together as superheroes, then sets them off on various sophisticated adventures.  The other heroes are The invisible Man (H.G. Wells), Dr. Jeckyll/Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson), Captain Nemo (Jules Verne), and Wilhelmina Murray (Bram Stoker).  The villains were first Professor Moriarty (Arthur Conan Doyle’s nemesis to Sherlock Holmes, who himself is absent) then H.G. Wells’ Martians from War of the Worlds.    

 Lost Girls (artwork: Melinda Gebbie).  I’m still waiting for the movie of this one, which is probably not going to happen.  Alice in Wonderland, Wendy (from Peter Pan), and Dorothy (from Wizard of Oz) find themselves together in a hotel somewhere in Europe (Austria?) in the spring of 1914, just before WWI is about to explode.  Alice, by this time, is an older, mature woman, Wendy is older but unhappily married (frustrated, as we can imagine), and Dorothy is still young and single, but has a boyfriend.  There is LOTS of sex here: 50% lesbian, 40% heterosexual (though some of that is incestuous) and 10% gay.  The artwork, as done by Gebbie, is meant to imitate a children’s book of the turn of the century, though clearly the content is well beyond any children’s book.  This was borderline erotic vs. interesting.

 Of course, Alan Moore, who is a big Simpsons fan, appeared as himself in a 2007 episode.  Funny, though – none of his stuff has been made into an animated film, it’s all been live action.  Perhaps Lost Girls can fill this role.

Bootlegs

“I bought a Deep Purple bootleg in Germany and it cost me a fiver, so they’re making money out of me.”  Roger Glover.

 I saw the Grateful Dead at the Verizon Center in DC on April 14, 2009.  Their website indicates that the band will be recording the show to be made available as a download thereafter, making taping a Dead show, formerly ubiquitous, now obsolete.  Of course with the Dead, “bootleg” is almost redundant.  The amount of live material out there in various forms far exceeds the official studio recordings.  Since so much of the music they play live is improvised and not to be found on any studio album – including many covers – really the studio albums are just the tip of the iceberg.

 Let’s face it: for the die hard fans (the “1%-ers” as the Blue Cheer crowd calls themselves), the unattainable ideal is that literally every single concert the band has ever done, from university campuses, outdoor festivals, arenas, clubs, Woodstock, Altamont, etc. should be recorded, no matter how poorly the band was playing, or how bad the acoustics, or how Jerry was feeling that night, etc.  The mark of a die hard fan is to be able to identify “off nights” vs. “great shows” – but I always got the impression that Garcia was much harder on himself and his bandmates (e.g. his story of throwing Phil Lesh down the stairs for a performance which ended up on Anthem of the Sun) than the fans.  I came into the Dead far too late to consider myself any sort of expert on this, or even a Deadhead.  Ok, drifting here.  In theory you’d want to get all the shows, particularly for this band which plays so much which is not on albums.

 The quality of bootlegs varies considerably.  In fact, for a long time I resisted them for that reason.  I had several Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin bootlegs I ignored because the sound quality was so atrocious.  I eventually listened to them, and found that after a few minutes my brain filters out the noise and leaves me listening to the music, but it takes some time to get used to.

 King Crimson decided to co-opt the bootleg industry by releasing as many live recordings as they could lay their hands on, through their “King Crimson Collector Club” series, which is now up to 40 releases.  The sound quality varies, as it always does on bootlegs, but you hear many songs as works-in-progress, played before the albums they were released on as studio tracks – or a track may be listed under another name. 

 No matter how many live albums a band puts out, they will never put out enough to satisfy the fans.  So what draws us to bootlegs?

 1.  Songs which aren’t on any studio album.  The Grateful Dead and King Crimson are notorious for this.

 2.  Covers which don’t show up on studio albums.  I’m always intrigued to hear a famous band – with more than enough material of their own - play covers and put their own mark on the song.  Again, early on, King Crimson would play Holst’s “Mars”, but it’s never shown up on any studio album they’ve done.  Likewise “Sucking My Love”, my favorite Diamond Head song, only appears in Metallica format in a bootleg of the same name. 

 3.  Rare songs that the band almost never plays live.  “Trapped Under Ice” (Metallica) and “Into the Fire” (Deep Purple) only show up on bootlegs; and “Wheels of Confusion” (Black Sabbath) only shows up on the Hollywood Bowl bootleg. In some cases the bootleg may be of the ONLY show at which a song was ever played live.  For the Grateful Dead, the so-called “DeadBase” is the manual to determine which song was played when and where, if ever.

 4.  Guest stars.  At the Verizon Center, Tipper Gore was playing drums with the Dead.  I have a bootleg of the Beach Boys playing with the Dead, which includes “I Get Around” and “Good Vibrations” (Fillmore East 4/27/71). 

 5.  Weird stuff.  On a King Crimson bootleg, the band goes off on a brief tribute to Monty Python (mimicking the inarticulate grunting lowlives who periodically show up in “Flying Circus” episodes).  In another one, Robert Fripp apologizes to “those of you whose conversations we’re interrupting.” 

 Maybe deliberate attempts at humor don’t qualify as “weird stuff”, but certainly they add some charm and value to the bootlegs, and further explain the attraction fans have for this part of music. 

 Sources.  In the old days, it was trading tapes.  Sometimes we went into Greenwich Village in New York City, where we could find bootlegs on tape and CD – including “Rockin’ in the Parlour”/”Can I Sit Next To You Girl”, the AC/DC single with Dave Evans – the singer before Bon Scott - on vocals.  Eventually the Internet came along, which dramatically improved the ability to trade MP3s, through LimeWire, Bearshare, and of course, Napster.  [Nowadays, 2021, it’s eBay where I find them.]  Eventually bands themselves (e.g. King Crimson and Pearl Jam) jumped on the bandwagon, so to speak, and began selling music directly to the fans.

More Lawyers....

By now I’ve been to court dozens of times and seen dozens of lawyers.

 Standard Issue.  Myself and 95% of the other lawyers: we wear the “uniform” of a conservative suit – not too old or worn, not too fancy – with a standard tie and standard shoes.  Black, dark blue, dark grey, brown, grey, light grey, or camel.  We’re indistinguishable from each other – perhaps we should wear names and numbers like athletes.

 Slob.  Every now and then you see this type, more often than not overweight.  His tie is loose, he may be wearing sneakers with his suit, or just a blazer and Dockers.  He has an arrogant casualness, but that doesn’t mean he necessarily knows what he’s doing.  Most of us have a healthy concern for messing with things we don’t understand: we don’t pull our carburetor apart, we don’t try our hand at surgery, and we don’t try to fix the sink – in each case we call the professional.  But even some of these professionals aren’t necessarily experts in their field, they’re simply people who lack this idea of only doing things we know how to do.  This is why you find cab drivers from God-knows-where, who barely speak English and know the roads less than you do, who somehow decided that this was an appropriate job and simply had the shameless moxie to get behind the wheel of a cab and go at it.  There are clueless mechanics who are the same (and are also often from the Middle East).  And unfortunately there are lawyers who fit this description.  Usually, but not always, their disheveled appearance is a warning that they are as careless and sloppy as lawyers as they are when it comes to dressing themselves before going out in public – and into a courtroom.

 CSA/General Lee.  This type is probably less common in New York and L.A. than he is in Virginia and other southern states.  He affects either seersucker suits, bow ties, or string ties and cowboy boots.  He may have a beard/goatee and try to emulate Nathaniel Bedford Forrest (the KKK founder and namesake of Forrest Gump) – had Forrest himself been a lawyer and not a Confederate cavalry general.  His office motif is Civil War prints.  I’ve also noticed that 2/3 of “Civil War” buffs tend to be of the Confederate persuasion.  Given that, even in Virginia, blacks are well represented not only among the bar, but also on the bench, the CSA theme is not particularly calculated to win the hearts and minds of these other lawyers and judges.

 L.A. Law.  I haven’t practiced law in L.A., so I can’t say for certain how lawyers there dress, aside from having watched that show.  Every now and then you see lawyers here who affect the egregiously expensive suits and GQ style.  They’re thin on the ground, mostly because there is a perception here in Virginia that both the judges and the juries are turned off by ostentatious displays of wealth by attorneys and that any such appearance will doom the client’s case: plaintiffs with such attorneys will be deemed “already have more than enough, if he can afford Mr. Cochran here,” and defendants will be deemed to have “deep pockets” and subject to a higher plaintiff’s award than if they simply had a less fancy attorney. 

 Female Lawyers.  Funny, I could have sworn that half the students at George Mason law school when I went back in ’90-93 were female, yet when I go to court it seems that only 25-33% of the attorneys are female.  That number only jumps to 50% if we’re talking about domestic or juvenile cases – though I’ve seen wives represented by male attorneys opposed by their husbands with female attorneys, so the sex of the client has no bearing on the sex of the lawyer representing him/her.

 Since we have no reason to believe that female attorneys have substantially less inclination than their non-lawyer sisters to marry and have families, and the stay-at-home parent is usually (though not always) the mother, a likely explanation for the under-representation of female lawyers among the active trial bar is this very phenomenon.  I know at least two of my GMUSL alumni who stopped practicing law in order to stay at home with the kids, so it’s probably more common than I see. 

 I have found, though, that female attorneys tend to be well-dressed and are never slobs – nor do any of them affect the Scarlett O’Hara look (no CSA equivalent for women).  They can probably get away with overdressing – unlike the male “L.A.” type attorneys mentioned above – as we naturally expect women to pay more attention to fashion and appearance, so it doesn’t count against them the way it would for male attorneys.  For the most part they’re just as competent and skillful as male attorneys.  I haven’t met any who appear to be intimidated by the environment, and I have found a few who are even more arrogant and aggressive than most male attorneys, myself included.

 Judges.  Justice-o-Tron 2000.  Fortunately this type of judge is rare: the one who believes that a rigid adherence to legal principles, beyond all compassion and logic, is the most important standard a judge can have.  I can’t recall encountering any judge who appeared to not take the job seriously, although some judges are more laid back and casual than others – Maryland judges seem to be far more casual than Virginia judges, and Federal judges tend to be more serious than state judges.   Generally, the lower court traffic docket, where most of the defendants are pro se (not represented by attorneys) tend to be the most casual – guilty, minimum sentence, move on – NEXT!  Again, I find that most judges are capable of “seeing the forest for the trees” and recognizing the spirit, rather than simply the letter of the law, and acting accordingly.  I can’t say I always agree with their decisions, but I can respect their reasoning.

 Hurry Up And Wait.  One thing you’ll never see in “Boston Legal”, “L.A. Law”, or any other lawyer show or movie is what 80% of lawyering seems to be: waiting.  Even more so than legal research – which I do for briefs and the rare appeal – waiting is that unglamorous, boring, but ubiquitous part of being a lawyer.  You hurry up to make it to court on time, only to wait while the docket is called – because if your case is first, damn well that will be the day you get there late.  You wait for your client to be processed into the jail so you can see him – or to be processed out when you get him released.  You wait for the prosecutor to talk to the cop, then wait to talk to the prosecutor, to plead bargain on a traffic or criminal case.  You wait for the judge’s law clerks to approve your divorce decrees, and for judges to sign them in publication cases.  Immigration cases are the worst, with such a huge backlog the INS has a bulletin which tells you how far behind they are.

 Paper pushing.  Real estate lawyers, who do closings and settlements, practically never see a courtroom.  Government attorneys are more likely to draft memos and advise bureaucrats than spend time in court.  Junior associates at major law firms are more likely to be stuffed in law libraries than off to court – except for status hearings and collections return dates, the most basic, routine, and uncontested matters.  Even personal injury lawyers, who are supposedly the most visible of trial lawyers – and I should know, because I am one – spend far more time settling cases on the phone with insurance companies, without ever leaving the office, than in court.  And many court appearances are routine: return dates on Warrants in Debt, scheduling conferences, Master Calendar hearings for immigration attorneys, term dates, etc. where all you’re really doing is setting a trial date or informing the court of the current status of a case.  Hardly anything dramatic or exciting which would lend itself to TV or movies.

 Even trials can be quite dull.  We have to put on evidence, certify exhibits and witnesses, make arcane and obtuse objections on minor points of law, and methodically extract testimony from various witnesses which may be dull and repetitive – but necessary.  As dull as it gets sometimes, you have to stay awake and alert, object when necessary, take notes for cross examination or to rehabilitate your own witnesses on redirect, and know when to shut up, because asking the wrong question can sometimes be more harmful than simply saying nothing at all.  On the other hand, witnesses can be difficult, forgetful, argumentative, evasive, arrogant, sarcastic, emotional, long-winded, angry, burst out in tears, contradict earlier testimony, blurt out amazingly harmful, surprising, or idiotic statements, shoot themselves in the foot, or come up with something brilliant on their own.  You never know what’s going to happen. 

 On the other hand, it always feels good to win a case, even if all you did is what I call “judicial discretion management” – avoiding mistakes and guiding the judge to a favorable decision.  Of course the jackpot is winning a case which was almost unwinnable, but that is rare.  Usually you win the cases you should win, lose the cases where you really didn’t have a chance, and break even. 

Exercise

Exercise.  I started exercising in high school and have been doing so ever since.  The form has varied over the years, and I’ve tweaked it from time to time.

 High School.  I went to the American School of Paris from from 1982-86.  I played rugby, which was our school’s equivalent of football.  And for all but senior year I had to take P.E. (Physical Education).  Somehow, I have no idea how, I managed to survive the school-wide cross-country marathon.  I preferred soccer, but played whatever sports were inflicted upon us in gym class, with rugby being the only official team sport I was involved with.  I really hated running or jogging.

            This was also the time I started some form of strength training.  The US Embassy in Paris had a small gym in the basement, near the printing shop.  I figured out some sort of routine and kept to it when I was working various summer jobs, but I don’t recall ever going to the Embassy expressly to use the gym.

 College.  My buddy Jean (John) was working for IBM on a summer job, and they had a gym there.   His trainer gave him a workout routine which he passed along to me.  I used that as a framework.  University of Maryland, College Park, had various gym facilities, the largest of which was the North Gym (which I called the Norse Gym).  I recall going there with my suitemate Chris a few times.

            I also started jogging.  I’d jog 10 laps around the concourse of the Cole Field House, where the Terps basketball team plays.  It’s roughly a quarter mile around, for a mile for 4 laps, I started out doing 4 laps, then up to 5, then two sets of 5 laps with a cooldown walking lap in between.

            Unfortunately, college was also a time at which I paid zero attention to nutrition and ate whatever I wanted.  Roy Rogers, McDonald’s, and lots of Domino’s Pizza, plus a constant supply of beer.  I look at pictures of myself from college and cringe at how fat I look.

 Post-College.  As soon as I graduated from college, and started going to law school (fall ’90 to spring ’93) I moved to Virginia and lived at a co-op complex in Rosslyn, River Place.  It had an “entertainment” center complex with broken-down hot tubs, ping pong table, sauna, and a gym.  There were two (2!) treadmills, of which one was almost always broken, meaning we had to sign up on a sheet to use the one remaining functioning treadmill.  Sometimes I’d get fed up and jog down by Key Bridge and along the GW Parkway, but when it snowed or was icy, that was OUT, so I couldn’t do that consistently.   As for the weight machines, at any given point about 1/3 of them were broken, and it took them forever to fix anything.  Since we had to pay for the gym with our condo fees, I get the impression that the gym management assumed it had no competition and little incentive to do anything right.  

            My parents lived in Gaithersburg, in Montgomery Village near Lake Whetstone.  Sometimes I would go there and jog from the house to the entrance of the subdivision and back, or – more scenically – simply jog around the lake.  This is certainly more interesting than a treadmill.

 Gold’s.  In fall 1999 I started dating Leila, who was a member of Gold’s.  I was also fed up with the River Place gym and decided to join.  The Rosslyn branch was 3 blocks away from where I lived.  They had 20 something treadmills and I never had to wait.  The exercise equipment was state of the art and almost never broken.  Morover, I could use any Gold’s, and was no longer limited to simply one gym location.  Leila lived in Fairlington Village, so we’d both go to the Bailey’s Crossroads Gold’s, which is now my main branch.

 Diet and Supplements.  Sometime after law school (’90-93) I finally decided to start eating right.  Unfortunately I found that dieting – usually during Lent – really didn’t have much of an impact.  I started taking Chroma-Slim, which worked fantastically – at first.  I went from 195 down to 160 over a course of two months.  Eventually, however, the supplement stopped working, and I went back up in weight.  I found ephedra-based supplements, such as Stacker, were effective, but they also made me very nervous, irritable, overly emotional, and it felt like my heart was going to explode.  Not good.  They eventually took the ephedra out, but none of the natural replacements have been effective.  As of this date, I know of no supplement which works, and that includes Ripped Fuel, Hydroxycut, Xenadrine, or any of the others at GNC.

            As for “diet”, that usually consists of abstaining from fast food (McDonald’s, pizza, Chipotle, etc.), beer, non-diet soft drinks, etc. and focusing on salads, cold cuts, etc.  I’ve started eating low-gluten pasta and low-sodium pasta sauce, replacing sodas with green tea, and eliminating sugar from the diet.  I can’t survive without some form of enjoyable food, but I scale it back in direct proportion to its toxicity: pizza once a week, at most, and Cinnabons once a year.  Quite apart from Lent, I dramatically scaled back my beer/cider consumption in 2009.  We’ll see how that works.

 Back Pain.  From ’96 to ’99 (I can’t remember the exact years) I took aikido classes, eventually earning a black belt.  Before every class we would stretch.  When I joined Gold’s in fall ‘99, I gave up the aikido classes – and gave up stretching.  In 1999 and 2000 I started having nasty back pain.  Eventually I went to a chiropractor (after I was working as a personal injury attorney) and he figured the back pain was probably because I wasn’t stretching before workouts.  I don’t know for certain, but I do know this: after I started stretching, I haven’t had back pain since. 

            By the way, the chiropractor was 100x better at fixing the back pain than the doctor.  The doctor simply diagnosed, “muscle spasm”, and prescribed Darvocet (pain-killer – almost completely ineffective except to take some edge off), Naproxen (anti-inflammatory), Flexeril (muscle relaxant), and Valium.  Of these, only Valium was any use – it removes 100% of your worries without making you loopy, i.e. you have 100% of your mental faculties intact.  This is why it is so addictive and popular.  The other three medications imply induce a “space cadet glow” without doing anything to get rid of the pain.  You simply no longer care.  The chiropractor cannot prescribe drugs – all he can do is various muscle stimulations and spine adjustments, but these are incredible; I sit up from the table with NO pain, and can think straight.  He gets my vote.

 Weightlifting.  I’m lifting far more now than I did when I was in college.  I’m usually focusing on the pectorals, deltoids, triceps and biceps.  I don’t do any workout, e.g. barbells, which require any partner to spot for me.  I haven’t had a workout partner since my law school buddy Bloss, who also lived at River Place.  Back at River Place my bench press with dumbbells was 50 lb., by now it’s up to 85 lb.  Other exercises have either been added or increased substantially in weight. 

 Abs.  I’ve added this in a few years ago, though omitting beer from the diet is probably far more effective than any ab exercise.  Imagine an "Abs of Steel" video where the instructor appears briefly, looks at the audience, tells them, "STOP DRINKING BEER!" and then leaves abruptly - thats it! A 5 second workout!  The secret to "six pack abs" is - no more six packs!

 Treadmill.  This is the main deal, 30 minutes on this horrible machine, at somewhere between 6.0 and 7.0 mph, depending on what shape I’m in.  More than anything else, this extended workout really breaks out a sweat.  Sometimes my kidneys hurt, sometimes my legs, but whatever it is, I just keep on going.

 Frequency.  I used to go 3 times a week – Monday, Wednesday, Friday, doing the full workout.  Then I staggered it to treadmill one day, strength the next, followed by a day off, repeat again.  Then I went back to the full workout each time, but every 3 days, but this didnt make much of a difference, so I had to increase it up to 3 times a week, which is now beginning to show more promise.  Even when I was unemployed, I was never going every day.  First off I wanted to give my body time off to recuperate.  Second, I didn’t want to “live” at the gym or become overdeveloped.  But third, I didn’t expect to be unemployed indefinitely, so I wasn’t going to establish a routine I couldn’t continue when I got a job. 

 Gold’s in Rio.  Yes, there is one – but it’s not part of the chain.  The owner started the gym in Copacabana (there is only one location) some time in the 70s, stealing the name.  The real Gold’s had no interest in expanding to Brazil and expressed no concern over this.  It is NOT air conditioned, which is a major issue in December and January (summer there).  I’ve noticed that Rio has two tiers of “academias” (athletic clubs) – the lower tier like Gold’s, sweaty (windows open, no A/C), grimy, antiquated machines and 20 year old treadmills (but they do work!) and an upper tier more like the Gold’s in the US, air-conditioned with aerobics classes, etc.  Brazilian women pay attention to their bodies, especially in Rio de Janeiro, where the beaches and bikinis are a major attraction.  Though I did see a fair amount of women who do not meet the standard, the standard IS very high, and the city does live up to its reputation.  The most tangible results can be seen during Carnival, when the dancers parade down the Sambodromo in almost nothing. 

 Results.  I’m still accused of having a gut, by some women.  Others focus on my derriere, with much appreciation.  I don’t know anyone who can’t tell that I exercise.  I will never be skinny, no matter how I try.  The best I can do is try to amplify my muscles and minimize my flab.  Inevitably there will be some difference of opinion as to how effective that is.