what's down in hollywood at 7am.
There's an old joke: always settle out of court; if you go to court, you're going to have a jury of 12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty.
I guess I'm just wacky or something, but when I get a jury summons my first thought is not "How do I get out of jury duty?" I know it's a hassle, and I do harbor the secret hope that I won't get chosen, but if I'm chosen, I'll serve. You know, the whole doing-my-part-for-democracy thing. Considering the fringe benefits, I can put up with doing jury duty once every 8 years or so.
I've done jury duty once before--it was a short, terrible, heart-breaking case. What I remember even more strongly than the facts of the case was the woman sitting beside me during jury selection, who was clearly prepared to say anything to get out of jury duty. She did, and she was excused.
Don't be that guy.
I postponed my jury summons to today from mid-September. I could have postponed it further, but I'd rather get it over with and go back to enjoying the good parts of democracy, like 600 channels on satellite TV.
I was expected at the Hollywood Municipal Courthouse at 8:15am. Great--I hadn't gone with commute traffic for over a year now and I'd forgotten what it was like. Mistake Number One: I took Laurel Canyon over the hill to Hollywood. Not only is the Hollywood Municipal Courthouse right off of 101 at Hollywood Blvd., but Laurel Canyon is a nightmare.
For example, at one point, a blue BMW sedan--what is it with people who drive BMWs?--drove up the center median to get as far as possible into traffic before having to merge.
Then, at the top of Laurel Canyon, the two lanes of traffic merge into one. It's not pretty and it's why traffic slows down so much toward the top. But it's a simple enough process: car from lane 1, then car from lane 2, then car from lane 1, and so on.
The BMW stuck on my tail like glue. No merging for him!
Don't be that guy, either.
I finally got to the Courthouse and parked in the giant lot behind it and entered the front door at just about 8:15am. You have to go through a metal detector at the front door. This is not like the metal detector at the airport; this metal detector picks up everything. Two or three coins in my pocket. My sunglasses. I didn't test, "Thinking about metal," but I bet it would have picked that up too.
I went into the Jury Room, which has tables and chairs and long rows of couches. Much more comfortable than the Sunnyvale Courthouse, where you sat in a courtroom and couldn't even read the newspaper. We sat around until 9:30am and Beatrice, the Jury Clerk, came out to give us the 411.
Beatrice has been at this for 22 years; she has her shtick down. She had us all laughing with the various instructions. For example, Don't talk to the media. "I don't want to look out the window and see you running across the parking lot to talk to the media. 'Cause then someone will see you on the TV and I'll get a call. 'Beatrice, didn't you tell your jurors no talking to the media?' 'Yes, I did.' But I'll still get in trouble 'cause you didn't listen."
She told us that Hollywood primarily handles low-key stuff--it's Hollywood, you can guess what most of their cases have to deal with; their most famous case so far had to do with "Mr. Hugh Grant." She kept calling him that, which cracked us all up. She never mentioned anything about a grand jury, even though that's what my summons said. She said we won't be sequestered; all the big-time juries happen downtown. Trials usually don't take longer than a week, so we shouldn't be too inconvenienced.
(I, of course, immediately foresaw that I would be assigned to a high-profile, media-intensive case that dragged on for weeks.)
After Beatrice ended her spiel, we watched a short video on, basically, the joys of jury duty, and then we were left to sit around, or visit the lunch truck when that arrived, or leave for lunch time (12-1:30), or whatever combination thereof. After lunch the TV was turned on and most of the assembly spent the next few hours watching sitcoms--people were laughing uproariously at the innuendoes on The Nanny; there is no hope for civilization--and the news.
I spent most of the next several hours reading Titan: The life of John D. Rockefeller, by Ron Chernow, which is really, really good. I'm learning all sorts of things I didn't know. Did you know that the oil industry started in Pennsylvania? Or that oil as a business was considered little more than a fad at its start? (One of the reasons for Rockefeller's incredible success was his adherence to the long view and willingness to give up short-term profits to achieve long-term dominance.) Or that John D. Rockefeller was an intensely principled and religious man who didn't believe money was evil but who was determined to give away as much of it as he could? That Rockefeller didn't take credit everywhere he could, which is why the University of Chicago isn't Rockefeller University?
(Of course, there are all the parallels between the Oil Trust and a certain Software Trust these days, although the differences between Rockefeller and Gates couldn't be wider. Mind you, Chernow doesn't draw the parallels; he might not even know them. But I keep seeing them.)
My Dad sent me Titan because we'd both read The Warburgs, by the same author, which is also a really large tome but excellent--it tells the story of the Warburg family, how they rose to prominence in European and American banking, and how they were destroyed by Nazi Germany.
At 3pm Beatrice came into the Jury Room and starting listing off members of Group 1, of which I was one, and then said we were free to go, but now we're On-Call Jurors: we have to check in twice a day to see if we're needed--after 5pm the day before, and after 11:30pm the day of.
Brent stopped by, which was good, because it gave Darin the impetus to finally get showered and dressed.
We headed to dinner at JoJo's, down on Ventura, but they were closed. So we went next door to La Fondue Bourgignonne. Which was good but too much food.
Basically, I knew this was going to happen--Darin and I are eating out all the time now. Whenever we eat in it's because I went and bought something; it's not planned.
I'm doing okay not eating a whole bunch when we go out, but it's tough.
I called tonight; as of 9pm I'm not needed tomorrow. Whee.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com