*Please, Before you read anything I have written in this Post, read and learn, and Educate yourself here:
@3:41 is where I sing: "Woe is me!"
And it feels damn good!
A commenter recently said that my blog is not relevant to Law School Scamblogging, since I had graduated in 1996, (before the "Great Recession") and should have been able to pass the Bar Exam and then orient myself in the Legal Job Market and get established.
Perhaps the commenter is right. Perhaps not.
If the commenter is right, and I prove to indeed be a great big humbug, so be it.
But if I am not a humbug, and remain somehow still worthy of Nando's Blog List, maybe I am to blame for the impression in, perhaps, many a reader's mind, that I am one (a humbug), since, after all, I have spent a lot of time posting things that are too off-topic and unfocused, and too expressive maybe. Things that are too vague and cryptic. Things that are too full of angst and plain nuts at times.
If I was very erudite, which I am not, I would have called it all esoteric. However, I really am not that well-read, and so I would say that my efforts at being esoteric are more those of a crank, or at least tending towards that.
I have also been fortunate enough to have had some e-mails with some good feedback from a couple of readers, who have reminded me, perhaps indirectly, that the clarity of my writing has fallen off a bit.
So I will try to return to clearer writing, and at the same time try to legitimize myself and return to the main premise of my being on the blog lists of NANDO and AEM, BIDER, and others, and try to express, in plain language, what my Legal work experience had been after Law School between 1997 and 2000.
I think a lot of people-especially legal types- will find what I did quite interesting.
I also think that a lot of people in general will find it very interesting, because my work involved an industry that not many laypeople understand, let alone lawyers. That industry was and still is: The Motor Vehicle Extended Warranty business. You know, that extended coverage the car dealership tries very hard to sell you in the heat of moment in that hot closing booth the new or used car salesman calls a home? A place where even the slickest lawyer is weak kneed, and at the mercy of the fast talking car salesman, who knows his trade all too well?
Well, old Johnny has some stories to tell, and old Johnny, as a sort of business manager/paralegal, got to know a lot of car salesmen. And it has been 10 years since JD Painterguy worked in that field, so I don't think anything I will talk about will have any legal ramifications, given the statute of limitations and all.
And besides, I won't be naming any names.
It may take a while for me to write all this down, since I will be a sort of house guest in an unoccupied house owned by a relative over this summer, and away from my computer much of the time. I will have Shane with me, and helping out with the restorations etc in the evenings. So I will be pretty busy.
In any event, and during the slack time this summer, I hope that people will go through my past posts and read my little tales-especially the media people I have tried to contact and reach out to recently. A lot of my stories are not complete, but are complete in my head, and it is just a matter of my writing them down.
Youse can start with last October, and go month by month maybe. I realize that it is a pain in the neck to go through older posts, but that is the best I can do.
But as for this Post, this chronicle of my legal work experience, will, I think, at least help to provide a clearer understanding of JD Painterguy and his predicament in the legal and non-legal job market, and provide a backdrop for the student loan debt increase over the period between 1996 and the present, and maybe even shed some light on my problematic efforts in trying to pass the NY Bar Exam.
Anway, I Gotta go walk Shane now. I will get going on this autobiographical tale-factually all true- either tonight or over the weekend. And I will write clearly. Promise. No more cute flirtations, and no more mention of pretty girls or women or political commenters, etc. etc. At least not until after I finish this topic.
But for now, here is a good, fanciful analogy for Law School in General (With Nando's Icon in Mind). Call it Law School in 5 seconds. Poor Lennie! The blundering fool! What was that old Sonny and Cher song? I got you "Babe?"
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Anyway, to the story:
Summer, 1997 : The Cold Call
Added June 26-early AM
There I was, one year after my law school graduation, and without any kind of stable employment.
During the previous year, (1996) I had found work with a painting contractor through a classified job posting in the Long Island Newsday.
It wasn't hard to get that job in 1996, for it was April, and painting contractors always did most of their hiring in the Spring as they became inundated with outdoor painting work.
I was living in Roslyn, New York at the time, along with my parents, in a small, rented house.
There was really nothing very memorable about that small rented house, or what took place in it while I was living there. But I do recall that the previous winter had brought with it much snow. Tons and tons and tons of deep snow, and it seemed that I was always shoveling, which kept me in pretty good shape, and doing it was rather meditative, at all hours of the night as the snow fell quietly and softly with a sort of low, gentle hiss, muffling the sounds of the slow moving traffic from the nearby Long Island Expressway.
When Spring arrived, I picked up the newspaper, as I say, and called in reply to a classified ad for the job as a painter, which read something like:
Painters Wanted, 5 years Exp. Own Tools. Transportation.
Must speak English. Neat appearance. Call: (631) 123-4567.
The interview was simple enough. I met the contractor in the front of a Benjamin Moore paint store in Commack, Long Island. He sat behind the steering wheel of his large box truck, and I stood in the parking lot, and we talked. Luckily, the contractor was friendly, and seemed like a nice guy, and seemed to like my appearance and what I had to say about my experience, and so I was hired provisionally for one-hundred and twenty five dollars a day, or, more colloquially: "A Buck Twenty-Five."
The contractor paired me up with another painter who was working for him already, named "Rich". Rich had long, curly hair and giggled a lot, and seemed to stare at me once in a while in a sort of odd, lingering way. Rich had bad teeth as well, and when I noticed that my mind started to assemble and disassemble and then reassemble thoughts of calcium, and milk, and calcium tablets and chalk, and dentures and dental laminates until my thoughts all came to a head and I made a sentence in my mind that went something like: "There must be a way to "fix" that smile.
So off we went, Me and Rich, or rather, Rich and I, to paint a house somewhere. In Commack maybe. Or maybe it was one of those condo or co-op units off route 110 that we went to, or behind the wall that hid the view and the noise of the expressway from the windows of "The Unit", in the next town further east of Commack.
Rich had a beat up old car. It was a black car, with sagging suspension, and a bent radio antenna. It was unkempt and unwashed, and had dents, and rust. I viewed the car with dismay as I followed behind in my car, which was an almost new 1995 Toyota Corolla, leased for $212.72 a month for a 3 year term.
As I drove and followed, I continued to think uncharitable thoughts about the car of Rich, and I could see the eyes of Rich occasionally peering back at me in the reflection of his rear view mirror.
"It's a stupid car" I thought. "A foolish car, and with a foolish and stupid man driving it. It's a bum's car."And that was where my relections concluded. With the word: "Bum."
Except there was one more thing I noticed, and which I found somewhat disconcerting. It was this: The car, the car that I was viewing with genuine feelings of contempt by now, belonging to Rich, the painter that giggled and had bad teeth and a bad smile; a car that I was following in my own leased car, had an odd bumper sticker. It was a chipped an sun faded bumper sticker with faded letters that read:
"I GO FROM ZERO TO BITCH IN 5 SECONDS"
4:38AM Gotta sleep a little.
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*4:07AM June 24--This is where I will start the story. One year after graduating from Law School, and the way I got my first job (the one with the Warranty Co) by doing a mass mailing of my hard copy resume. Actually, it was only about 200 resumes, sent cold, and to all sorts of companies.
I'll mull it all over in my head today as I work.
Generally, I find that if I have the story all mapped out and rehearsed in my head, it almost writes itself when it is time to set it down.
But I gotta get some sleep. I'm getting lots of views for this post, so I'll try and make it a good tale for y'allin.
I'm starting to really look forward to this summer! Even though (Sigh) Ann Coulter broke my heart.
So send in the clowns..........
It is uncanny. As if Babs knows my very soul and understands me all too well.
The way she sighs @ 18 seconds here is exactly the way I sigh whenever I think about Ann Coulter. (Sigh)
But I said I would stop with all the AC stuff, so this is it. Really, really it.
June 24, 6:46AM- No sleep. I think my blood pressure is way up and that is why.
I gotta go paint, but I thought I would leave this little jingle I have made up, just so that youse can all can get the general drift of how my story about the Extended Warranty Business is going to go.
I'm sure everyone has seen National Lampoon's old movie: "Vacation" , with Chevy Chase as the hapless Clark Griswold. (I'm referring to the first or original movie. You know, with the family truckster and all?)
Well, picture Clark and Family all inside the Family Truckster, which has broken down somewhere in the middle of bum fuck nowhere USA, and with a completely blown engine that needs to be completely rebuilt at a cost of around four thousand dollars.
As they wait for a tow truck to arrive, and to help pass the time, an elated Clark, with Extended Warranty, retrieved from the glove compartment, in hand, leads the entire Griswold family in a laughing song:
They'll be fixing our blown engine when we come!
They'll be fixing our blown engine when we come!
They'll be fixing our blown engine
Cause we've got an Extended Warranty!
Clark: (And it's certified and bona fide and guaranteed!)
They'll be fixing our blown engine when we come!
But.................later that day................
CLAIM DENIED
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June 24- 7:18PM - Too friggin tired to do anything but crash tonight. Be back tomorrow night. Promise.
June 25, 8:25AM-Gotta go paint. I will be in Manhasset all summer. If Virginia is for Lovers, Manhasset is the land of fair weather friends and lovers. Fer sure.
In the meantime, if we can't do anything about our debt, we can at least work on our damned, indebted souls. So here is DEE again. I find DEE especially poignant after having finished the unabridged audio book: "All The King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren, read by professional actor Michael Emerson,who did an outstanding job and brought me to tears a few times as he read some of the passages.
So here is the Preacher, David Eugene Edwards, and I'll be back tonight.
Prepare your soul. For the Chairman of the Board, with a million sins, scrawled by the hand of the devil himself, across the filthy and degraded parchment that bears the record of his soul, has retired, from life, with Sin as his equity, and Damnation his just, recompense.
Every Man is Evil, and Every man a Liar.
And that is just politics in the USA, plain and simple.
And that is just politics in the USA, plain and simple.
June 25, 6:12PM
Too tired tonight. Was at Long Beach today. Very pleasant and near the Ocean, which affects the mood of all within the vicinity I think. Ocean-minded Humanity maybe, and Herman Melville would surely have approved.
But here is a pic of old Johnny from around 1997, in his paralegal Service Contract Warranty days, and looking very Hungarian, I think. I remember that I had had this pic taken in the Roosevelt Field Mall, while on lunch break, and upset about an argument I had had with a guy in the Office, or maybe it was after dealing with questionable legal stuff on the job.
So I guess it showed on my face. I was 32 years old. A photo ID card. A Funny face pic. Right PK? And short hair too.
The crooked nose is from a fist fight from when I was 15. Basically, I flipped the bird to a car full of bigger, Manhasset kids for one reason or another.
The driver of the car stopped the car, and all 4 or 5 jumped out. I guess they were juniors around 17 or 18 years old.
One guy beat the crap out of me, and broke my nose. I said "I give up" after he got me in a wrestling head-lock and said to me: "I'll break your neck".
And my neck was on the verge of snapping. I could feel that.
Anyway, the driver of the car had a father with a seat on the NY stock exchange, or at least that was the rumor I had always heard.
Years later, maybe 20 years later, the guy that broke my nose, that had had me in a wrestling headlock which made me feel as if my neck was about to snap, said, at a Manhasset High School reunion, to my older brother, that he was sorry about the way he beat me up.
I think he was Irish.....
But I was surprised that the guy, maybe Irish, even gave it all a second thought, let alone carried thoughts of the event around for all of 20 or so years; and moreover feel remorse along with those thoughts.
But still, we were all just kids, and kids do what kids do. And the wealthy community of Manhasset has always produced some very tough kids, in the very toughest sense, in that they are the offspring of many of the the parents who are hard aggressive Wall street Financial personality types. I have met some men, over the years that worked as stock traders, and those men were much tougher, and cruder, and more aggressive than any of the painters that I have yammered about in this here little blog.
And when these tough, mean financial types produce offspring, they often produce perfect little monsters. (HA HA. Maybe that is all exaggerated a little, but then again, I wouldn't dismiss all of it as completely untrue either :)
Anyway, a neighbor that happened to be driving by stopped the fight, and helped me to retrieve my bicycle, which had been thrown over a somewhat tall chainlink fence and into a hedge by one of the other bigger kids that had jumped out of the car.
When I arrived home, my face was battered and bruised, and my father was upset about it, and called the police. But the local cop, who arrived a while later, was reluctant to pursue the matter.
Years later, I wondered it the local cop's reluctance had anything to do with the fact that the kid driving the car had a father who was rumored to have a seat on the NY stock exchange.
June 26, 2:47AM- Making coffee. Will try to add to the story in red font. If anyone checks in once in a while to see if I have added to this story, look for the newer writing in red font.
In the meantime, try going here and listening to this:
