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- I’ve been called for jury duty about a dozen times since I
returned to California in 2005, and I had never
actually had to come in, but this summer my number came up.
Initially this didn’t seem like it would be much of a hardship,
since I could always schedule my tutoring appointments for weekends and
evenings, but then the opportunity arose to teach a long SAT course for
240% of my normal classroom rate… but
only if I could free up my weekday afternoons.
I didn’t think it’d be hard to get out of the case I was
assigned to: at issue was the amount to be handed down for punitive
damages against Johnson & Johnson, which had just been found
liable for the terminal illness of a woman in Alameda who had used the
company’s baby powder, which is apparently a carcinogen.
In the jury questionnaire I stated, truthfully, that it would be hard
for me to be impartial in this case because (a) I believe
corporations are inherently sociopathic and I would be delighted to be
able to punish one for sociopathic behavior, and (b) I have used
Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder myself… as an
insecticide.
I assumed that I would be told I was free to go within the first few
minutes.
Instead, I was stuck in the jury box, answering questions alongside
fourteen of my fellow East Bay residents, for two days.
The plaintiff’s voir dire guy was frantically trying to
keep me in:
“Maybe I’m a charlatan! I could put on a totally specious
case! If I did, you’d find against my side, right?”
“Well, sure, if it were obviously specious—”
“So then it sounds like you agree that you’re very clearly the
sort of fair‐minded individual our community needs on this jury,
yes?”
I started to get worried, especially since nearly everyone else in the
box was trying to get off the case just as much as I was, and I got the
impression that peremptory challenges were strictly limited and that the
judge wanted to wrap up voir dire as soon as possible, meaning that
the likelihood of a dismissal was slim.
Yet when the first round of voir dire finally did wrap up, three
jurors were dismissed, and I was one of them.
I had tried to pepper my answers with loaded phrases like “corporate
malfeasance” and “predatory capitalism”, and I had
noticed that as soon as I used one of these, they’d start popping up
in all the other jurors’ answers as well.
That may have been a red flag for the defense.
In any event, I made it to the office in time to start my course and
thereby secure the bulk of my summer income.
- One thing I found very striking was how educated everyone in the jury
box was.
Of the fifteen of us, only two had not earned at least a
master’s: we had one M.D., one Ph.D., eleven M.A.s, one
B.A., and one A.A.
If a jury is supposed to consist of a representative sample of the local
community, it seems that something went a little flooey.
Alameda County may have an unusually high level of educational attainment,
but it’s hard to believe that 87% of the
voting population is walking around with advanced degrees.
- I was also struck by the gender politics on display in the personae
the various lawyers put on in addressing us.
We had a lot of lawyers talk to us over the course of my two days in the
jury box, sometimes about personal matters (such as whether any of our
loved ones had died of cancer).
All of the female lawyers attempted to project that they were smart, warm,
compassionate, and fundamentally serious.
The male lawyers, by contrast, made lots of jokes and were
self‐deprecating to the point that it became annoying.
- In August I flew to Utah for an AP Literature workshop.
My hotel was in West Valley City.
Top Yelp suggestion for dinner?
Curry pizza.
This is not the same Utah I visited in the 20th
century.
- My rental car had satellite radio.
Knowing my predilections,
you might assume that I would gravitate toward “Lithium”,
billed as “’90s
Alternative/Grunge”, but in fact I wound up listening primarily to
“1st Wave”, which played
’80s music, but obscure
’80s music.
Or at least obscure to me: apparently it’s the stuff that KROQ was
playing ever so slightly before my time.
I didn’t hear any songs I wanted to add to my collection, but I will
probably start playing it online as I’m cleaning up my apartment or
grading a stack of papers.
- I didn’t listen to the contemporary alternative station
on the satellite radio, but when I went to Seattle a week later and had
to settle for regular old FM, I did listen to the station that was my top
preset back when I lived up there: 107.7,
The End.
This was the first time I’d listened to contemporary music for
extended stretches in years, and gadzooks.
It was all pretty samey.
I noted the weirdly affected vocals and the repetitive percussion loops
(heavy on the handclaps), but the main thing that struck me was how much
echo had been applied to almost every song.
It was as if every band wanted to sound like it was playing in a distant
corner of a parking garage.
And it wasn’t just my EQ settings, because whenever a
’90s song came on, it sounded fine.
- The very fact that ’90s songs did come
on is kind of strange.
It’s late 2019, and looking at the
playlists for The End and KROQ and
Live 105, it is apparent that these
stations make a practice of cutting from the likes of Billie Eilish to
bands like Nirvana—which in Nirvana’s heyday would
have been the equivalent of cutting from “Smells Like Teen
Spirit” to “Love Me Do”.
Which, uh, didn’t happen.
What gives?
Is the idea that even the new alternative acts have an audience of
fortysomethings because their actual peers are all listening to the
hippity hop?
- The rental car I was assigned in Seattle was very silly: it was a
Toyota C‑HR, which I know because every time I unlocked it, it
projected the words “Toyota C‑HR” onto the pavement.
- Seen at the airport: a guy with a gigantic photographic tattoo of
Pee‑Wee Herman on his leg.
- School started at the end of the month; I now have my own classroom
and am teaching three sections of World Literature to sophomores and two
sections of AP Literature to seniors.
Last year I was always concerned that I would run out of material, but
it was never an issue—on the contrary, often the bell would
ring while I was only 1/3 of the way through my
lesson plan.
I thought I’d learned a valuable lesson of my own: the limiting
factor is not content, but time.
Except, uh, at least this first week that rule of thumb has not
held.
I’ve had to cannibalize future days’ lessons in order to have
enough stuff to make it to the bell.
Meaning I really should stop this minutiae article here so I can spend
the rest of the weekend developing material for week two.
Seeya!
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