Voire dire
Quote of the Day (well, really, Quote of the Day Yesterday):
Stacy — who is a lawyer, and has been taking a writing class to engage her deeply creative side because being a lawyer doesn't exactly do that for her — said this while talking about why she has temporarily set aside a story she started working on ... about a lawyer:
"I need to be in the head of someone who's tortured on a completely different level."
Amen to that. If I sat down this afternoon and wrote a story about a copy editor at an entertainment magazine, it would probably be insane, maybe something like this:
A question mark. The editor had added a question mark to the headline. It had been "Britney: Better Bald" and now it was "Britney: Better Bald?" What were they trying to say? Were they afraid of such a definitive statement, that recognizing that a woman who was very obviously suffering a nervous breakdown might have inadvertently shown the world how strong her features really are? Were the editors afraid of condoning the launch of a new fad, Rehab Chic? Is the question mark a safe haven from the all-knowing eyes of the fact-checkers?
She read the next sentence: "It's a different kind of RAZR! Two-year-long wait lists reflect the high demand for the new pink Norelco Britney shaver." RAZR. All caps. She pushed her keyboard away and glanced at her Chicago Manual of Style. How hard is it, she thought, for people to follow the rules of upper and lower case letters? Their products will sell even without the SCREAMING CAPS! She sighed, went back to the document, replaced a hyphen with an en-dash, and sent it off. The offending question mark was in someone else's hands now. Whatever would become of it, she did not know. Just as nobody knew what would become of Britney.
It's gripping, isn't it?
In any case, it's always hardest to write about the one thing in which you are completely entrenched. Not that I'm entrenched in Britney. You know, never mind. You know what I mean.
Stacy and I talked about jury duty, which I had last week. My favorite part of jury duty was when the guy at the front of the assembly room went through the general questions that serve to weed out the larger pool: Who doesn't speak English, who doesn't live in Brooklyn, who has a medical condition, etc. When he asked who had been convicted of a felony, these two enormous men sitting right next to me stood and exited through the Special Door. I decided that their crimes were ones of fashion. Seriously, you can't be that big and that menacing and wear matching patchwork parkas.
I managed to get out of serving. The night before I had to go through voire dire, Josh and I were running through all possible scenarios to be found in civil court cases and how I could finagle my way out of them: will disputes, fender benders, landlord-tenant issues. Josh reminded me of the time he tried to take his landlord to housing court because there was a ginormous, gaping hole in the ceiling of his shower that his landlord refused to fix. I got to court the next day, and lo and behold, my case concerned a woman with a ginormous, gaping hole in her bathroom ceiling. Excused.
Oh, Oscars tonight! Holy night of observance! Don't call me until it's over!
Stacy — who is a lawyer, and has been taking a writing class to engage her deeply creative side because being a lawyer doesn't exactly do that for her — said this while talking about why she has temporarily set aside a story she started working on ... about a lawyer:
"I need to be in the head of someone who's tortured on a completely different level."
Amen to that. If I sat down this afternoon and wrote a story about a copy editor at an entertainment magazine, it would probably be insane, maybe something like this:
A question mark. The editor had added a question mark to the headline. It had been "Britney: Better Bald" and now it was "Britney: Better Bald?" What were they trying to say? Were they afraid of such a definitive statement, that recognizing that a woman who was very obviously suffering a nervous breakdown might have inadvertently shown the world how strong her features really are? Were the editors afraid of condoning the launch of a new fad, Rehab Chic? Is the question mark a safe haven from the all-knowing eyes of the fact-checkers?
She read the next sentence: "It's a different kind of RAZR! Two-year-long wait lists reflect the high demand for the new pink Norelco Britney shaver." RAZR. All caps. She pushed her keyboard away and glanced at her Chicago Manual of Style. How hard is it, she thought, for people to follow the rules of upper and lower case letters? Their products will sell even without the SCREAMING CAPS! She sighed, went back to the document, replaced a hyphen with an en-dash, and sent it off. The offending question mark was in someone else's hands now. Whatever would become of it, she did not know. Just as nobody knew what would become of Britney.
It's gripping, isn't it?
In any case, it's always hardest to write about the one thing in which you are completely entrenched. Not that I'm entrenched in Britney. You know, never mind. You know what I mean.
Stacy and I talked about jury duty, which I had last week. My favorite part of jury duty was when the guy at the front of the assembly room went through the general questions that serve to weed out the larger pool: Who doesn't speak English, who doesn't live in Brooklyn, who has a medical condition, etc. When he asked who had been convicted of a felony, these two enormous men sitting right next to me stood and exited through the Special Door. I decided that their crimes were ones of fashion. Seriously, you can't be that big and that menacing and wear matching patchwork parkas.
I managed to get out of serving. The night before I had to go through voire dire, Josh and I were running through all possible scenarios to be found in civil court cases and how I could finagle my way out of them: will disputes, fender benders, landlord-tenant issues. Josh reminded me of the time he tried to take his landlord to housing court because there was a ginormous, gaping hole in the ceiling of his shower that his landlord refused to fix. I got to court the next day, and lo and behold, my case concerned a woman with a ginormous, gaping hole in her bathroom ceiling. Excused.
Oh, Oscars tonight! Holy night of observance! Don't call me until it's over!
Labels: friends, grammar, New York, pop culture, the hubs
posted by Marla at 1:02 PM
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