Lawyer Jokes

This blog is usually a pretty one-sided affair -- I rant about the most recent thought to cross my primitive mind, you chuckle sadly and comment on how impressive it is that I can occasionally complete sentence together a string -- but today we're mixing things up a bit. I have a question and I want to hear from you, dear readers. The question is this: do you know of any professions where the practitioners are driven to talk about their work constantly, any time two or more of them are occupying the same general space?

Yes, there is something that prompted this query, thank you for asking. I'm going to preface it by saying that the two people I'm about to describe are among the best, most principled, all-around nicest people you could ever hope to meet in your life, so this stems purely from amusement, not any kind of genuine complaint. With that out of the way...

My father-in-law is an attorney, by all accounts a very well-respected and successful one. My brother-in-law just graduated law school a little over a year ago. (First in his class, I might add... he went to night classes, beat out the #1 day classes guy by like .01% in their GPAs; somehow that guy ended up the class valedictorian anyway. It's all politics.) Immediately afterward he was hired by a very well-regarded law firm and has apparently met with success so far, probably because my brother-in-law is maybe the hardest-working man on the eastern seaboard. He's great and always makes time for his family, but anytime he comes down to my wife's parents' house for a visit, it's with the laptop and cellphone, and he's guaranteed to spend at least half of Saturday or Sunday holed up in the basement working on a case. Totally understandable given his job, he's always cool about making time for the family afterward, so no biggie. But what cracks me up is that anytime -- anytime -- he and my father-in-law are together for longer than 5 minutes, they will discuss law. Guaranteed. They're both pretty good at turning it off when the rest of us are around and clearly bored, but anytime it's just the two of them or the rest of us are engaged in another conversation: law. This will go on for hours if you let it. It surprised me because you would think, back when he was working full time, attending classes at night with a newborn baby at home, and desperately cramming for finals while maintaining the highest GPA in his class (did I mention that?), my brother-in-law would want to get away from law for a weekend. Certainly now that he's working 60 hours a week and is guaranteed to at least be on call one day a weekend, bare minimum, you'd think he'd want to escape "shop talk" on those rare weekends when he can get away. I know I would in his shoes. Again, I say this all with affection; it doesn't bother me, I just find it fascinating. They literally cannot stop discussing law. I wondered if it was just them, but my mother-in-law, who has been around lawyers pretty much her entire adult life, told me that in her experience anytime you get two lawyers together, talk will invariably turn to law. Apparently this is a profession-wide thing, rather than being unique to my relatives.

So I'm just curious... does anyone else know of other professions where this is the case? I don't mean standard shop talk -- sure, whenever you hang out with people from your office it's likely you'll spend at least some time talking about work. That's a given. I mean whenever you get anyone from that profession together, they're guaranteed to start talking about it and keep talking about it for hours until their spouses force them to stop, usually for dinner. Don't leave me hanging, I want to hear your thoughts.

Cabinet Opening FAIL

I usually don't post videos, but I'm making an exception this once because, hey- babies hurting themselves are always funny. Enjoy!





Don't worry... I'm 90% sure that if Molly were really injured, Ann wouldn't be laughing as hard.

Edited for your approval

Just a quick one today- I'm sure we're all familiar with the practice of network and family-friendly cable channels editing content out of the movies they show. We've all seen TBS's cut of The Breakfast Club (since it's the only movie they show), where Vernon leaves the room and suddenly the music cranks up really loudly for about a second, followed by Bender saying "-you!" I wonder what that first word was? Some of you may even be familiar with some of the more esoteric dubs, like the infamous "I have had it with these monkey-fightin' snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!", or "Yippee-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon." Ergo, while watching National Lampoon's Vacation tonight, I was not at all surprised that they cut out the part where Chevy Chase flirts with Christie Brinkley by miming, er, oral ministrations on his baloney sandwich. Frankly, no one needs to see that, including Chevy's wife.

What I was NOT expecting was an edit that occurred soon after, in the scene where Ellen's luggage falls off the back of the car and gets lost. Oh, I suspected they might take out the part where Chevy says, "And those bags didn't have anything else important... except your diaphragm." Well, they didn't... not exactly. Imagine my surprise when I instead heard the line, "And those bags didn't have anything else important... except your birth control pills." Now, I understand that many younger viewers may not remember what a diaphragm was; but that is the craziest dub I've ever heard, hands down. I want to have been in that meeting where the TBS censors determined that sandwich mouth party = no go, but we can keep the joke about contraception... ah, but we'd better update it for the times. Wouldn't want anyone to get confused.

Personally, I cannot wait until the day when all references to discontinued products in movies are replaced by their modern equivalents. If only because I would like to see the scene where Michael J. Fox goes into a 1955 diner and orders a Coke Zero, only to be told that if he wants a Coke, he'll have to pay a lot more than zero.

Behind the curve

Sorry again for the dry spell, everyone. The good news is, I am officially re-employed!, ergo I should have more time to update the blog. In an odd-but-welcome turn of events, my old company called me literally three weeks to the day from the date I'd been laid off, informed me that another person from the department had resigned, and asked if I would come back. My negative feelings about being laid off in the first place wrestled with my pride at being the #1 person they wanted to bring back, but ultimately it came down to one simple truth: Molly and Ann need to eat, and I'm fond of it on occasion myself. I started exactly one week later, meaning my one week vacation essentially became a five week vacation (if you call sitting on the couch searching want ads a vacation, I suppose), and so far so good. Thanks to everyone for your good thoughts and prayers on my behalf!

The second item on our agenda is my growing suspicion about Ann. As I think I've mentioned before, we've had numerous... let's call them discussions, both long before and after Molly was born, on the subject of athletics. Ann grew up with parents who didn't push her toward organized sports, which is good because she hated them. (The sports, not her parents.) She doesn't dislike sports on principle, but would much prefer that Molly remain at the casual, intramural level if she does them, and would be fine if she chooses not to. I grew up with extremely athletic parents who raised my sister and I to be athletic as well. I did organized sports from the time I was 6 until I graduated college, spent literally thousands upon thousands of hours in the pool training, and sacrificed partying, drinking, and much of the usual college bacchanalia to commit to swimming. (I say that neither with regret nor self-aggrandizement, just as a matter of fact. It's not for everyone.) Because of this, Ann has voiced the opinion numerous times that I won't know what to do with Molly if she doesn't like sports, and her concern that I won't be able to accept it and will push Molly into athletics against her will. I won't (she'll do something to stay in shape, but it doesn't strictly have to be organized sports), but that's Ann's fear.

So you can imagine my amusement the other day when Ann called me to complain about another girl in Molly's day care class. This little girl is three days younger than Molly, but is already able to grab onto people and pull herself up to a standing position, as well as to cruise around by grabbing onto couches, chairs, etc. Oh, and she has two teeth already, to Molly's none. Ann was irate about this kid -- I believe the term "freak of nature" was used more than once -- and I came home that night to find Molly having just learned to grab Ann's arms and pull herself up to stand. God knows how long they'd been practicing... I checked Molly's back for switch marks and didn't find any, but it's entirely possible she didn't get any formula until she learned how to do it. (I kid, Ann would never deprive our child of necessary meals as a learning incentive. Dessert maybe, but not a main course.) Now, I happen to find the whole thing amusing -- mostly because Molly's not actually behind the curve, this other kid just happens to be extremely far ahead of it -- but you can't tell me you don't see the irony of stage mom over here warning me off of overathleticizing our child while simultaneously losing her cool over the fact that Molly can't quite keep up with superbaby just yet. I tell you, moms are funny creatures.