Stupid Lawyer Tricks: ADA Defense Stupidity

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An animated response to all the invective-filled, garment-rending articles about lawsuits against businesses that violate the ADA.  As with my earlier attempt, I think I succeeded only in cracking myself up.   Call it Animation Therapy.   Try it:  http://www.xtranormal.com

Couple of notes.  I love how the animated gestures are almost as awkward as the gestures I generate naturally.  On the other hand, I’m very disappointed that I could not make the automated voice render the word “law-nerd.”  This is a significant gap in the Xtranormal program.  And because I can overthink anything, I feel a tiny bit odd that my alter ego is African-American.  (Of COURSE she’s my alter-ego.  What did you think?)  Felt odd as in “in a post about civil rights what right do I have to speak from an African-American perspective?”  Truth is, of the characters available from Xtranormal in this set, I identified strongly with the obviously coffee-related superpower and did not think a minor difference in skin color should stop me.  In addition, my Caucasian choices were rather limited.  This one was not alter enough of an alter-ego:

This one perhaps TOO alter:

We’ve previously established that I’m no superhero in the kitchen.

And I basically didn’t know wtf this was:

So Super Coffee Woman it is!   Superpowers include:  high caffeine tolerance; overthinking; snark; wasting time she should be working playing with online animation programs.

Cooking with the FoxRobs … or A Christmas Miracle

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I can’t cook.  No really.  I’m not being modest:  it’s a fact.  Whenever I say this, my friends — because they are sweet, polite, and largely full of shit — say “Oh no!  No.  No, um, really, you’ve prepared many fine dish . . . . . . . . .es”  (struggling with the plural as they abandon the last thread of honesty).   I love them for this, but they are wrong:  I can’t cook.

There are a number of reasons I’m a bad cook:

Impatience (“It says bake for 15 minutes, but what do those last 5 minutes really DO, chemically speaking?”).

Disorganization-induced substitutions (“Shit, I forgot to put mint on the shopping list.  Well, lettuce, in small enough pieces, looks sort of like mint.”).

Bizarre spousal ingredient negotiations (“I’m OK if you want to double the curry powder if I can double the olive oil”).

And most often, plain cluelessness.   For example, we decided to make a leg of lamb for our Christmas dinner.  The recipe* and other knowledgeable kibitzers recommended we use a meat thermometer.  And the meat thermometer packaging** recommended that we “calibrate it to our oven” or something like that.  Unfortunately, no one provided instructions for this crucial step.  I first tried to put the thermometer directly onto the oven shelf.  After several tries, it became clear that it was too top heavy and would not stay on the grill, so I had to find something to put the thermometer IN to then put in the oven.  And that something of course should be oven safe, right?  So I grabbed a pan from the drawer under the oven, put the thermometer in it, and put it in the oven.

A, um, metal pan:

Very Dali-esque, don’t you think?  Perhaps I should pretend I intended it as art — as sort of comment on the arbitrariness of the experience of temperature, which in our house is indeed very arbitrary, but that’s a whole nother post.

I’m still not sure how one calibrates a meat thermometer, but this isn’t it.  Luckily the good folks at Safeway kept their store open on Christmas, so I biked up and bought a new meat thermometer.  That I did this while wearing a pair of reindeer antlers shows that I am, slowly and proudly, becoming my father.  The rolled up pants legs exposing thermal socks underscored this progression.

Anyway, the rest of the story is all good.  Because Tim was in charge of the actual cooking — with me supplying only a functional pair of arms — it was smooth sailing through the rub, the roasting and the finished product.

We actually did a little touchdown dance when the roast came out of the oven, not really able to believe that we had accomplished this.  We paired it with a recipe that Tim invented and that turned out to be wonderful. It was a sort of spousal-negotiation recipe, involving potatoes, which Tim loves, and a handful of Mediterraneany things (fresh basil, olives, red peppers), that I love, all coated in olive oil (I win!) and stir-fried.  It was AWESOME.  Add raita and a salad and just start grinning!

We had reached a pact with our guests — my in-laws — not to serve dessert, but our talented weekend assistant showed up with something she called pumpkin spice bread (sounds healthy, right?), which turned out to be at least half cream cheese.  But there it was, sitting alluringly on the counter in its GladWare container.  What could we do?  Paired with either black coffee (me, Nora) or scotch (Tim) it was incredible.

All in all, a wonderful Christmas.  But not complete without a gratuitous dog photo.  Chinook, enjoying his present:

Happy Boxing Day!
**********************
* Yes, I found the recipe in Esquire.  One of my favorite airplane reads.

** Yes, I’ve reached the age of 50 without learning to use a meat thermometer.  It’s not much help with frozen pasta, though, so the need really hasn’t arisen.

Vegas Diary

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Arrive at the Vegas airport with no power in the power chair.  Parking guy happy to help because he loves God.  No luck; battery is dead; charger is kaput; not really God’s fault.  Carrie IMs suggestion: buy a car battery charger at Walmart.

Of course Vegas has a 24-hour Walmart.   And of course Carrie has solved the problem.*

Breakfast Saturday morning the girl at the next table has a head full of pink rollers.

Tim heads off to play poker; I find quiet corner of a lounge to read.**  Overhear a guy explaining the relationship of free will to Christianity.

On the way to manicure, learn the reason for pink hair rollers and over-decorated 8-year-olds: MGM is hosting a cheerleading competition.  Also, said 8-year-olds look like they could kick my ass.

Get a manicure.  Nail polish is called Mrs. O’Leary’s BBQ.  Love the color but love the name more.

Join Tim at poker where he is playing Texas Hold Em at a table with Orel Hershiser.  First time I’ve seen a World Series ring in person.

Out to  dinner wearing 4 inch heels.***

Christmas carols in the casino are a weird combination with the slot machine sounds.  Also just weird.  Perhaps for the first time in my half[assed] Jewish life, I find myself asking WWJD.

Sunday Tim plays Hold Em with Hershiser for another six hours.  He takes off the World Series ring to let me get a closer look.  It’s incredibly cool and diamondy.  Hershiser is funny and a mensch, offering to help Tim with cards.

We decide it would be too weird to ask for a photo, so you’ll have to take our word for it.

An introvert strolls down the Strip:

Wow!  This is so cool!

Vegas is full of such diverse, interesting, weird people!

Spiderman!

A pirate!

A, um, little person dressed like Elvis.  Cool?  Exploitative?  He has every right to make as big an ass of himself as anyone else in Vegas, right?

Fat Michael Jackson impersonator.  Same questions?

Awesome people-watching!

Diversity!  Let your freak flag fly!

Why do people bring toddlers to Vegas?

Funny t-shirts!

Funny sexist t-shirts.  OK, well, it’s Vegas.

Disgusting sexist t-shirts.  Yuk. Sigh.

Skinny Santa alone with his Christmas tree.

Geez there are a lot of people on the Strip.

No, I don’t want Girls Girls Girls!

And wouldn’t the Girls Girls Girls proprietors have better luck if they gave their sales reps clean Girls Girls Girls t-shirts?

Screw diversity and freak flags — what is the fastest way back to the hotel??

This is actually an example of the Introvert Curve:

Rinse.  Repeat.  The social interaction can be anything, really, from strolling down the Strip in Vegas to attending a cocktail party****.   And what’s great is:  I also have some sort of Introvert Amnesia that makes me forget this curve as I ascend the left side, my need to Get Outta There coming as a surprise each time.

Anyway, we headed home Monday having accomplished perhaps the most important variation on the Vegas cliche:  What happened outside of Vegas stayed outside of Vegas.  We really needed a break from litigation, worrying about litigation, and litigating the case in our heads at 3 a.m. … and we got it.

Now back to reality.

*******************************

* She specializes in ass-kicking lawsuits on behalf of radically underserved groups and lifehacking.  Ask her to assemble your IKEA furniture; she’s really good at that too!

** What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

*** Sorry no footwear photos.  Images of age-inappropriate shoes worn in Vegas stay in Vegas.

****  This makes it sound like we attend sophisticated gatherings where people dress up and drink interesting mixed drinks.  Mostly, we play poker and order out for BBQ.

Extra-Dorky

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I have a bike in San Francisco.  After one especially stressful hearing, we were returning to the hotel room and passed another guest wheeling a cool-looking bicycle down the hall.

Me: Cool bike!

Woman with cool bike: Wanna buy it?

Me: Yes.

And so I came to own a bike in San Francisco.  I quickly learned several important things about my new bike.  The previous owner was a much taller woman than I am.  And the bike has 21 gears.  I have figured out the height adjustments — though I’m convinced I look something like this:

As for the gears, I pedal along happily in what appears to be gear 14, and am still waiting for someone to tell me what to do with the other 20.

The bike purchase was quickly followed by the bike helmet purchase, the bike lock purchase, and of course the bike rack purchase — as I had not, in my rash original purchase — thought about where the bike would fit in the van when we drive to and from SFO, along with the boxes of office supplies that live in the van, the suitcases we schlep each time, and our 6-foot-tall assistant, Dustin.   To this equipment were added a pair of old running shoes from home and a set of rubber bands from the office supply box, so that when I pedal around Emeryville, I look really truly Extra Dorky:

And this being one town over from Berkeley, all of us comrades get

whereas in capitalist Denver, we have to shell out 25 cents.   Ultimately, though, this whole post was just one big excuse to share these photos, taken about half a mile from our regular hotel in Emeryville, while Tim did the real work of preparing for the hearing that brought us here.

Additional dorkiness obvious in the shadow.

Happy and/or Merry

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I’m going try to do two possibly contradictory things in this post:  (1) urge everyone to wish each other merriness and/or happiness in a spirit of joy and celebration; and (2) unleash just a little bit of snark on the whole war-on-Christmas baloney.  Here goes.

New rule:  No one gets to be indignant when someone else expresses the wish that they be happy or merry.  Unless someone is wishing you something truly bizarre like Happy Dog Shit Day,* the proper response is “thanks!” and possibly, “you too!”  The following is an incorrect response:  “Dude, you just wished me to be happy and/or merry for the wrong reason.  You must have some sort of weird political agenda.  Let’s bail on this whole joy and celebration thing and really annoy each other!”

For the record, as a half[assed] Jew, I have no problem with being wished a Merry Christmas.  It’s not a holiday with religious meaning to me, so I feel the way I felt when my Chinese friends wished me Gong Xi Fa Cai on Chinese New Year.  And that feeling is:  Happy.  Instead of the human interactions that fill up my average day — bizarre italicized accusations from opposing counsel, middle fingers from other drivers,** depressing political commentary — someone is just telling me to be happy.  Or merry.  Or in the case of Gong Xi Fa Cai, congratulating me and wishing me to prosper.  This is all good.  All.  Good.  Did I mention good?

Let’s practice:

Jewish person:  Happy Chanukah!
Christian person:  Thanks!  That’s so nice of you!

Wasn’t that easy?  And fun!  How about this:

Christian person:  Merry Christmas!
Jewish person:  Thanks!  You too!

See!  Don’t you feel merrier and happier already?

Random person #1:  Happy Holidays!
Random person #2:  They’re not “holidays.”  There’s only one real holiday, that is, MY holiday.  Please don’t wish me happiness unless you’re doing it for the right reason.

ZZZZZT!  Wrong.  Remember the rule:  whatever merry or happy you are wished, the proper response is “Thanks!”  Seriously, try it.  My prediction is:  you might actually feel merry and/or happy.

But I do want to say a quick word about the “put the Christ back in Christmas”***/”Reason for the Season” crowd.  I’m perfectly fine with putting Christ back in Christmas if that means, on December 25, focusing on the religious meaning of the birth of Christ instead of acquisition of new and better electronic devices and fleece sweaters.  Indeed, I enjoy focusing on the Christian religious meaning of Christmas, and each year find myself learning and reflecting on important things from and with my Christian family and friends.  And, happily, acquiring cool electronics and fleeces.

But if “put the Christ back in Christmas” means the only merry or happy we all get to say starting after, say, Halloween or perhaps Labor Day is “Merry Christmas,” I’m afraid I have to (merrily and happily) dissent.  And because I’m a complete nerd, I have to point out that the “reason for the season” is not, in fact, the birth of Christ, but the need of early Christians to promote their new religion by attaching their observances to existing pagan solstice celebrations.****  So technically the reason for the season is the circuit of the earth around the sun, the beginning of the lengthening of days, and the need of people in the cold and dark to eat fun high-carb foods and drink enough to forget the cold and dark.

Still, snarkiness and nerdiness aside, I really think there should be more merries and happies rather than fewer, and that when someone wishes you a merry or happy that doesn’t line up with your particular views, just go with the merriness and happiness.  And feel free to wish others merriness and happiness for whatever reason strikes you.

Or if you want to try for more calendrical accuracy, here are some suggestions:*****

Dec. 1       Rosa Parks Day
Dec. 2       Chanukah
Dec. 3       International Day of People with Disabilities
Dec. 4       National Cookie Day
Dec. 5       First Sunday in Advent
Dec. 6       Finnish Independence Day
Dec. 7       Islamic New Year
Dec. 8       National Brownie Day
Dec. 9       Jeff’s Birthday
Dec. 10    Constitution Day
Dec. 11    International Mountain Day
Dec. 12    Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe
Dec. 13    National Cocoa Day
Dec. 14    National Bouillabaisse Day
Dec. 15    Bill of Rights Day
Dec. 16    South African Day of Reconciliation
Dec. 17    National Maple Syrup Day
Dec. 18    International Migrants Day
Dec. 19    National Oatmeal Muffin Day
Dec. 20    National Games Day
Dec. 21    Winter Solstice
Dec. 22    National Date Nut Bread Day
Dec. 23    Festivus
Dec. 24    Chinook’s Birthday
Dec. 25    Christmas
Dec. 26    Boxing Day; beginning of Kwanzaa
Dec. 27    St. Stephen’s Day
Dec. 28    Card Playing Day
Dec. 29    Pepper Pot Day
Dec. 30    Festival of Enormous Changes at the Last Minute******
Dec. 31     New Year’s Eve

* There have been circumstances in which that would have been an appropriate greeting in our house, but I’ll spare you the details.

** Unpleasant even when justified.

*** But do remember to “Keep the Han in Hanukkah.”  (h/t Laura R.)

**** There are a couple of other theories too.  http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp

***** Recipients of our 2006 holiday card will recognize that I’m recycling material here.  And yes, Mom, I corrected the typo.

****** Not a lot of documentation for this one, but I really liked it.

Laura Hershey

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On Thanksgiving, one of the things I was thankful for was writers who make me think.  All too quickly we’re mourning the passing of one of the people I had in mind when I wrote that.  Laura Hershey was, among so many other things, a poet, writer, activist, word nerd, Scrabble ass-kicker, disability-rights mentor, partner, mother, and friend.  She passed* the day after Thanksgiving.

Others will write about Laura’s long history in the disability rights and LGBT communities, of working with her as a writer, or protesting with her back in the day.  My perspective is as a relative newcomer to the disability rights world, a straight, non-disabled law nerd wielding the dry prose of the legal brief in lieu of poetry or protest.  I’ll miss Laura immensely as a friend, but I wanted to write about another role she played and will continue to play for me.

Laura is an important part of my Mental Greek Chorus.  Perhaps you have one of these?  My MGC consists of the people with whom I have the mental arguments that help hone my own views on things.  (BTW, if having an MGC is a sign of mental illness, all I can say is I highly recommend it.)  Membership in my MGC consists of really really smart people who I love and who call bullshit on my views.  As you might guess, my husband and my brother are charter members.  But so is Laura.  Even though we could both be found on the left side of the political spectrum, she often challenged the assumptions in many of my views.

We disagreed on the question of abortion.  But what, I asked, do you think of people deciding to have an abortion when they learn their child will be disabled?  Her response:  it’s wrong, but we can’t force people to make the same intimate decisions we would make.

She challenged my civil libertarian views of assisted suicide.  Sure, in theory, everyone should have the same right to take his or her own life, but theory isn’t all that helpful in a world with limited support systems for people with disabilities, and a popular culture that often sends messages of pity and dependency.

And then there was the question of modesty.  As you can see from her eloquent final blog post, Laura spoke frankly about sex.  I think this is terrific — in theory.  My own conversational approach is more, um, prudish.  I recall Laura’s amusement as she described — over dinner at Little Shanghai — an art exhibit the theme of which was “what I was wearing when I had my first orgasm.”  I suspect her ongoing amusement at her and Robin’s gift of a condom and a mint when my gift suggestion for Tim had been “exotic condiments” was motivated more by how long it took me to figure out the rebus than the actual blush value of it.

On these and so many other topics, I will always hear Laura’s voice adding nuance, intelligent commentary, and good humor to my dry legal analysis.  She will live on for me in my heart and in my Mental Greek Chorus, continuing to gently, lovingly, and eloquently call bullshit.

*  After my father passed in 1997, I noticed that his southern and African-American friends all said “passed” whereas non-southerners and non-African-Americans tended to say “passed away.”  I came to prefer “passed,” because so often it feels like he is not really that far “away.”  I’m thinking Laura would smile at taking the occasion of describing her death to nerd-out on word choice.

Here are some links by and about Laura:

www.laurahershey.com

www.cripcommentary.com

http://www.spinalcordinjury-paralysis.org/LifeSupport

This link has two of her poems:

http://jfactivist.typepad.com/jfactivist/2010/11/laura-hershey-poet-writer-and-activist-dies-.html

Here is her Denver Post obit:

http://www.denverpost.com/obituaries/ci_16726649

What I’m thankful for (an incomplete list):

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Family who do not measure love by the number of dishes cooked from scratch.

Sam Taylor’s Bar-B-Q, StoveTop stuffing, and Frances Lively, who happened to give us cranberry chutney last week.

My nerd family, where turkey is followed by pie which is followed by laptop time:

The people who make Hot Chillys long underwear, which made it possible to run off at least 42 of the 10,000 calories I consumed today.

The dogs, for making the clean up go so quickly.

All of the people willing to do the hard work so that the rest of us can be safe and free: servicemembers, peace officers, and lawyers who represent the unpopular and the condemned and take crap for it.

Speakers of truth to power.

Writers who make me think.

Co-counsel who laugh at the absurdities of law.

And always and most of all, Tim.

Polycom saves Thanksgiving from the TSA

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Here at Fox & Robertson World Headquarters, we’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how not to travel.  I could list all the reasons but let’s face it, travel sucks.  And travel sucks worse in a power wheelchair than just ordinary suckdom.  “I’m sorry sir, we left your wheelchair on the runway in San Francisco; it will be here on the next plane.”  etc etc.  I’m pretty sure Tim at least got some serious drink vouchers out of that one.

But the good news is:  the results of our extensive anti-travel research can save the world from the TSA gropers … and hours of family tedium too.  I present:  the video conference Thanksgiving!

This is how we do depositions now; why not family dinners?  Instead of schlepping through airports and spending money on hotels just to ask some clown a couple of questions under oath, we drive 10 minutes to Hunter & Geist where our buddy Dan sets us up in front of a video monitor with all sorts of fun remotes to play with.  In addition to not traveling, and being back home by dinner, this system offers a number of other advantages, like only having to dress up from the waist up.  (I do recommend *dressing* from the waist down, but you only need to wear a suit from the waist up.)

With this same technology, you can enjoy a happy Thanksgiving with your loved ones from around the country without anyone having to travel:

But wait!  There’s more!  When Thanksgiving dinner starts to sound like this:

That’s where the remote comes in.  For example:

One button that would be very important to me:
And what a time saver the picture-in-picture feature is!

But here’s my favorite feature:

It’s sort of like chatroulette:  you push the button, and you can completely bail on your family for a random different family.   For example, perhaps you prefer a more traditional family:

Or a happy family:

Or a cartoon family:

Or simply a family that gathers for Thanksgiving dinner in their underwear:

All of these things are possible — without [unwelcome] groping — through the miracle of videoconferencing.

Health Care Elites

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I love a good Cultural Elitism Contest as much as the next guy, but after poking fun of white people in green golf pants calling other people elite, I’d like to get serious and talk about Elitism with Real World Consequences, for example, Health Care Elitism.  As in, do you even know anyone on Medicaid?  Charles Murray:   I’m looking at you.

Murray recently had a column in the Washington Post asserting that there is a New Elite taking over America.  The Tea Party is warning us about this, and they’re right.  Seriously — all of what I just wrote is in his article; I’m not satirizing it.  Now put aside the general hilarity of a billionaire-funded astroturf movement warning us about any other elites than the one that took over their movement.  And the specific hilarity of the man who believes that white people are a genetic elite warning us about other elites.  The whole thing is just wrong.  As in incorrect.  It’s a bunch of lazy-ass cultural stereotypes repackaged as opinion commentary.

For example, Murray seems to think it’s elitist to identify Jimmie Johnson as an NFL coach rather than a NASCAR racer.  Because the NFL is only watched in the salons of the Upper West Side.  Or that it’s more elitist to go mountain biking than RVing, when the latter costs several hundred times more than the former.

Murray used these and other cultural stereotypes to announce that “[t]he members of the New Elite may love America, but, increasingly, they are not of it.”

As one commenter noted:

Time and again, this essay describes as “mainstream” or “quintessentially American” things that the vast majority of Americans don’t do: living in a small town (80% of Americans don’t), reading Harlequin romances (85% don’t), watching The Price Is Right or Oprah (more than 90% don’t), belonging to Rotary or Kiwanis (99+% belong to neither.) It isn’t just “elites” who don’t do these things; the average person doesn’t do them. (Nor follow NASCAR.) They’re not even majority behaviors among the groups where they’re more prevalent: the rural-and-small-town, the poorly educated, the old. So Murray’s quarrel is actually with the REAL mainstream America, is it not?

In fact, the elites who are trying to take over the country — including the ones who just poured hundreds of millions into the last election — are the ones with no real experience relevant to many of their fellow Americans. The don’t know about, don’t care about, and largely disdain the experience of being African-American or gay, of risking everything to come to this country to find work and raise a family (can there BE a more quintessential American experience?), or of struggling with employment, health care, and other family crises that require a government safety net.

Herewith a set of questions to match Murray’s.  Test to see if you are a Health Care Elitist.

  • Do you know what DME is?
  • Have you ever had to choose between paying a doctor or paying for some other household essential?
  • Have you ever made a career choice based on the availability of health insurance?
  • Are you on Medicaid?
  • Do you know anyone on Medicaid?
  • Have you ever had to forgo paid employment to ensure that you don’t lose the benefits you need to function in the world?
  • Have you ever had to forgo marriage and shack up with your sweetie because your combined incomes would kick you both off benefits?
  • Have you ever had to hold a fundraiser to cover a loved one’s health care costs?
  • Have you ever gone to the emergency room with an illness that could have been addressed by a family doctor because you don’t have a family doctor because you can’t afford a family doctor?
  • Have you ever had to fight with an insurance company to get medical treatment you need?
  • Have you ever read the very common headlines about state budget cuts knowing that would directly affect your ability to get out of bed in the morning?  Perhaps to survive?

I would argue that if you don’t have any of these experiences or know anyone who does, you are too distant from the experience of Real America to be permitted to opine on health care policy.

Finally, just for laughs, my Murray Elitism Quotient revealed.  I’ll let you decide if I’m fit to try to take over America:

Do you know who replaced Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right?” Yes but only because I read People magazine every time I have to fly somewhere.

Have you watched an Oprah show from beginning to end? No.  I’d prefer to kill brain cells with alcohol.

Can you hold forth animatedly about mountain biking or skiing?  Mountain biking sounds dangerous and exhausting.  Love to ski — gravity does most of the work.  I generally prefer my sports spectator.

Does the acronym MMA mean nothing to you? Yeah – it’s that show where buff men in shiny underpants grapple with each other.  Tim claims it’s a sport.

Have you ever read a “Left Behind” novel or Harlequin romance? No – but only because my browsing is limited to the “Not Crap” section of the bookstore.

Would you be caught dead in an RV?   Tim and I talk all the time about seeing the country in an RV… if they made one that was accessible.

Would you be caught dead on a cruise ship?  No, but not because I’m elitist, because I hate being around other people.