Monday Morning (Nuggets, Vol. I) - March 9, 2008

I promised some outtakes from the book, and here are the first of them. These aren't complete stories, but akin to the extra or "demo" tracks one would get with a deluxe edition of an album, with titles to provide background.

...Years blur by in the law business, thousands of billed hours swirled into a haze of strange nights and nauseous mornings spent piecing together missing chunks of the previous evening, struggling to remember where you started and ended and how you got a half inch deep gash in your shin or the empty baggie in your pocket. It flies by in fast forward, punctuated with occasional lucidity, a momentary consideration of "Why?" You wake up one day and find yourself on the train, on a Monday morning, staring at the skyline of Philadelphia over the top of the Wall Street Journal, shaking off the last tremors of the weekend. The cell phone beeps a message, your Blackberry hums, you straighten your cuffs, brush lint from the knee of your suit and slide the paper into your bag. As the train sinks into the tunnel under 20th Street you look at your reflection in the window. You're what the fat women on the subway would describe as "prosprus." Smooth, cagey, conniving, one step ahead of the game. A shark.

Coming out of the train station, your first impression of the city, the only impression you can really take, is that it's been designed by a drunk. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it. No plan or common thread in the arrangement of its structures. The 50 story Mellon Bank Building, a towering cluster of columns slathered in surplus aluminum sheeting, is framed by concrete parking garages, red brick 80s office complexes and a stubby grey shoebox building that appears to be the aborted start of a skyscraper. The corner of Sixteenth and Market Street is dominated by Liberty One, a faux Chrysler Building pimped out in iridescent blue glass, next to which someone shoved the PNC Building, a 40 story version of Kubrick's monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Looking East, the rest of Market Street is a pastiche of stuccoed 70s era office towers and parking garages. Looking West it fades into blocks of porn theatres and empty lots. Up and down Market, consecutive one way streets follow each other, three at a time going in the same direction. A few blocks North, the Ben Franklin Parkway, a patchwork of boulevards zig-zagging across each other randomly at multiple intersections - seemingly designed to create car accidents and traffic jams - runs to the Art Museum on the other side of town.

Even the sculptures strewn about the City are confused. "Love Park," a collection of concrete steps, walkways and handrails evoking an old Soviet War Memorial, ostensibly a nod to the city's "brotherly love" PR ethic, sits across from a hulking bronze statue of Frank Rizzo, a mayor notorious for playing vicious race politics in the '70s. At the corner of 15th Street and Broad stands a 20 foot brown clothespin, the sole purpose of which seems to be providing shade to groups of militant street preachers and union slugs picketing on the corner. And above it all, bolted to a pedestal over the yellowed windows and ivy of scaffolding climbing the sides of City Hall stands William Penn, the open palm of his right hand giving the City "The Heisman."

Striding past it all, I reach my office tower, take the elevator to the 16th floor and slide through the hall, passing co-workers with the usual auto-pilot exchanges: "Hello," "excellent," "relaxing," "too short." My secretary berates me. "Michael Carson called and I put him in your voice mail." "Did you get those papers that were faxed to you on Friday afternoon?" I throw my bag on the desk, slide into my chair and turn on the computer. The screen fills with a calendar of deadlines. A stack of angry faxes from opposing counsel wait in my in box. Two emails from opponents and two from my boss and it's barely 8:45. The phone crackles with my assistant's voice - somebody's calling to demand a pile of documents I was supposed to turn over two weeks ago.

"Take a message."

CLICK. The calendar's closed.

CLICK. The email's closed.

CLICK. The phone's on "Do Not Disturb."

After an hour or so reading news online and watching great white sharks eat seals off the California Coast on Youtube, I scan my private email and flip to a folder of shots of Lisa naked on the beach. Get the blood moving, remember those vacations, which cost money, which reminds me why I'm trading away my hours in the goddamn office. The digital photo sharing program prompts me for a password.

P-I-C-S-7-7-7-7

"The password entered is incorrect. Please try again."

Fuck. L-I-S-A-7-7-7-7

"The password entered is incorrect. Please try again."

Motherfucker. L-I-S-A-P-I-C-S

"The password entered is incorrect. Please try again."

Damnit. What are the last four digits to my social security number?

My secretary appears in the door. "I really need you to take a call. It's on an important new case."

"This is bullshit. I'm really busy here."

Trading off "The Grid"

...At least one of the people you saw in Starbucks this morning has sold illegal drugs in his or her life and two have bought them, probably in the past month. South Americans and black kids in ghettos don't control the trade. Your broker, cardiologist, lawyer, real estate agent... The bank V.P. next door, your kid's history teacher and the architect who designed the addition you're putting on the back of the house... These people make up the fat middle of the retail drug market. Hell, if you've not been in the presence of an illicit substance sale at some point you're in a very small minority. This "black market" is a hundred times wider and deeper than anyone admits, and black's a terrible adjective for it. It's flooded with Bush voters, Little League coaches and people who belong to country clubs and sit in the front pews on Sunday.

The middle and upper middle class dope market operates like those "peer to peer" computer programs people use to trade illegally downloaded music - the ones that connect users directly and keep no central repository of files. If Consumer A wants a quarter ounce of marijuana, he can call one of a half dozen connections. One's either holding enough to sell some to him or buying from someone else soon. That person, Consumer B, might get it from a delivery service or he might be meeting another friend with a better product source. And that person, Consumer C, might just happen to have a pile of extra sitting around, or be meeting someone else, Consumer D, to make a purchase. The braches on the supply chain multiply exponentially. And like I said, this is just one of Consumer A's six possible supply chains.

The individual inventories of any connection fluctuate wildly, and the chain of purchases is always changing, impossible to identify and never big enough to investigate. Nobody's in it for money. Doctors, lawyers and brokers don't need dope profits, so none of the sources have any reason to grow. The idea is just to keep as many small ones open as possible, to ensure against a lapse in the product stream. It's a friendly handshake system, and when the network's flush, a consumer can have a bag of what he wants faster than he can get a pair of driving moccasins from J. Crew.

Wrapping your head around the notion a dope runner going to jail was paying for bad business decisions was one thing. Swallowing the fiction he was evil, or that there was any battle between "Right" or "Wrong" in that realm is another. Educated consumers are utterly ambivalent to the right or wrong of the thing, which probably accrues from the dull qualities of the product. For a thinking person it's near impossible to build any moral totems out of a baggie of vegetable mass, powder or pills. And it might also be that purchasing something in a true, unfettered market, where Uncle Sam, City Hall and all the other fingers that rip off pieces of everything we buy and sell aren't getting any action feels "American" in a much more real sense than most of the things we spray with that adjective.

It's easy to see how the business could be addictive... An instant return on risk - what drives millions of day traders and real estate flippers all over the country. Only faster, cleaner and pure - just the seller and marketplace. No tax issue to vet, permits to procure or shysters and accountants to be hired to guide you through a Byzantine maze of paperwork to be notarized and filed with the proper clerks. The revenue's immediate and real, cash in hand. Hedge funds aren't opening faster than Starbucks out of the blue. The dope runner's world might just be the last outpost on a continuum of people who simply don't have any more time or patience for the Grid's reindeer games.

Posted by PhilaLawyer at 7:30 PM

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Comments

Can't wait for the book... in regards to the second part, have you seen Breaking Bad? It seems that your sentiment re: drugs is growing in popularity, or perhaps just coming to the forefront.

Posted by: Pauly W at March 9, 2008 08:02 PM

Book looks great already from these previews. Any word on a estimated release date?

(sorry if ive missed it already)

PL: See the WFB piece.

Posted by: Neil NZ at March 9, 2008 10:05 PM

I hope you can get some pleasure from the fact that when i get your updates via RSS, all the menial tasks I'm engaged in are brushed aside until I've read it twice.
Really looking forward to the book, will it be released under a pseudonym?
Keep it up.

PL: Very much so. On the pseudonym thing, I'm working through the cover right now, but haven't touched that issue.

Posted by: M R at March 10, 2008 10:03 AM

I love your style.

PL: Thanks. That's the highest compliment imaginable.

Posted by: evan at March 10, 2008 02:45 PM

so when is the book coming out?

I have been reading since your philalawyer.blogspot.com days in 2003.

sometimes I think you're more verbose with your editing, trying too hard and too much, and you should take my advice about the "first or second take" much like how page did the heartbreaker solos. looking forward to the book though; I just hope it isn't edited to hell... whenever you pulled down a story and put it back up on the .com site they were not as good.

will it be on amazon?

PL: I gave always appreciated your criticisms, and truth be told, you're right. The rants are what makes my writing. It's the lyricism that grabs people. That's what I care about more than anything, and clearly you do as well.

And I'm glad of that. But you and me, we're not the whole of the audience. Jimmy Page was only able to be Jimmy Page because he wrote those killer riffs that allowed him to stop the music and spin off a wild indulgent solo in the middle. He also existed in a different time and place, where life was playing at 33 instead of 78 rpm. Heartbreaker wouldn't be much in our current music scene.

It'll be out is September. I don't know when it hits Amazon. I just write the damn thing.

Posted by: long time reader at March 10, 2008 02:55 PM

If these are the outtakes, then I'm all the more excited for the book itself.

Posted by: Unreal at March 10, 2008 03:09 PM

I'm so fucking excited for this book that I'm bordering on a fanboy. Like MR said up above, a new entry on the RSS feed makes me clear my schedule -- though, usually I'll wait until lunch and print it off and take it with me.

I honestly believe you are destined for great things. First, you have a literary voice that is developed, comfortable, genuine and distinct. You could stick 10 pieces of writing in front of me, and I would pick out Phila's.

The other sense I get is that you appear to WANT to be a writer. Your blogs have been consistent both in timeliness and quality up until the book came about. Now, with the book's pending release, it appears that you've given it your all and it's ready to launch somewhat on schedule (and since I work in publishing, I define "on schedule" as within a decade of intended pub. date). I hope this book is the first of many.

In my opinion the greatest writers are those that are able to capture a slice of a generation. Your writing is almost photographic of the post-millennium legal professional world.

Can't fucking wait.

PL: Christ, you're scaring me. I feel like I have to put out Led Zeppelin IV.

Just kidding on that... Thank you. Very kind. Too kind.

Posted by: Gris at March 10, 2008 04:28 PM

Your material is addictive because it shifts my perspective for the day. I'm pre-ordering as soon as it's available.

Posted by: Lyman at March 11, 2008 01:29 AM

You've got to love Market St. A Trader Joes across from a Salvation Army, I can't think of a better juxtaposition to describe Philly.

Planning to pull a Raoul Duke on your book or come straight out with it?

Posted by: Greg at March 11, 2008 07:22 PM

there's nothing like when you get a great deal from one friend and immediately turn around on another friend and make a nice profit on it. the feeling is analogous to cocaine itself. unfortunately, i can buy cocaine, i can't quite buy power itself yet.

Posted by: dugle at March 11, 2008 11:42 PM

Awesome to finally see something other than "Odyssey of Idiocy" when I keep checking the site for a new post. Great entry as always and I'm fired up for the book.

Posted by: Tim at March 13, 2008 08:31 PM

Like others have said, I cannot wait to get my hands on the book. Your "voice" is one of a kind.

On another note, what ever happened to the story "speakerphone" (that's what I think it was called) with Aiden and the boss' wife? That was my favorite story in the archives.

Posted by: E at March 23, 2008 11:11 PM

Your writing has helped to get me through 3 long years of law school, surrounded primarily by people I wouldn't consider fit for social integration with the rest of the world. Glad to see there are some more people out there who don't jump at the chance to eat the bullshit with a silver spoon. I can't wait for the book!

Posted by: JKeller at March 29, 2008 09:46 AM

I've been reading your blog since I started law school after stumbling upon it from a much lesser blog. Your views on law firm practice mirror mine exactly, which is why I'm taking your advice (and following my intuition) and forgoing all that bullshit. Now I am about to graduate and make my way on my own without relying on my law school to place me in a highly-paid yet miserable and grueling job. I think I'll default on my student loans and move to Africa.

I'm being hyperbolic, but you get the point. You're a great writer, you give me and a few of my fellow disillusioned friends something highly entertaining to read between exams, and I really look forward to the book.

PL: Thanks. But if I might give you some advice, since you've already spent three years on the endeavor, don't quit before you even start.

It's not the job so much as the defective people it attracts and creates. Some decent people can actually be happy in the law. You just have to keep it in perspective in relation to the many more important aspects of your life. You also have to do what you like. If you like an area of law, then do that. Don't settle for any other area of practice.

Generally, however, to avoid assholes, it is best to avoid litigation. It is the true douchebag magnet of the field, attracting the greatest percentage of small people with outsized egos and something to prove, or the sorts who like to argue about everything and view every discussion as an opportunity to show everybody else how smart they are.

Always remember you can walk away. Life is long, and getting caught up in the system - thinking there's nothing outside the career - is an illusion. A silly one.

You're going to die someday. The question at the front of your brain, above all else, should always be, "Am I spending my days doing what I want to do?"

Posted by: Kevin at April 22, 2008 03:55 PM