captainsblog | Morning Joe, Evening Gene and 11:30 Suited Ray

I feel we're more than halfway into this week, although I basically punched out at 2 this afternoon after returning to an Actual Courtroom in an Actual Suit for the first time in going on five months. I'll get to that. Meanwhile, back at the ranch house, is how our week began.

Yesterday morning, our new lawn sign just got its first spoken reaction- and it wasn't one I was expecting.

Around the corner is an older gentleman who sits out on his porch in the mornings. He will always offer Pepper "a cookie" if we pass by. He also walks around the neighborhood by himself, and as I was unplugging Eleanor's car yesterday morning, he came up the driveway and said something about the sign.

I would have expected an "All Lives Matter" comment or somesuch from someone of that age, but he likes it. Probably because when he moved here as a kid- he was born in Sicily in the 30s- his family briefly lived on a street in the village near us. He faced daily W-bombs and G-bombs and D-bombs. (I'm still on probation, so fill them in yourself.)

I told him I had just been thinking of Nino Marini, the lawyer I mentioned here the other day, and who was born in Italy in that same era. I had just found his obituary from 1994; when Nino moved to Captiva Island off of Fort Myers, Florida, every home had a sign with the house's name on it. His was "There Goes The Neighborhood." I think Nino would've liked our sign, too:)

Later that morning, I took Pepper around past his house, and of course the cookie came out. I introduced myself, and told him he probably knows Eleanor from the store, too. He told me his name is Joe- and stuck his hand out, like we used to do. I shook it. Gawd I hope I don't wind up infecting the man.

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I spent the rest of Monday in similar morbid venues, doing wills in Rochester for a single and couple before heading home. Once back, I picked up a copy of a DVD from the library that, until the weekend, I did not know to exist: neonvincent repeated a joke about Eugene Ionesco's play Rhinoceros, which I remember first reading in my 12th grade AP English class and probably have a copy of somewhere. Eleanor also remembers reading it- in the French- in college. Anyway, through the reference I discovered that the Broadway director of Hair had adapted it into a film in 1974 with Karen Black as the female lead and pairing Zero Mostel and... Gene Wilder?!? for the first and last time since their turn in the original of The Producers.

The film didn't get much attention or many good reviews, but we found it about as absurd as you'd expect. Gene's performance is mostly low-key until the final scenes, and you can see hints of what he brought to Mel Brooks's two films later that year. Also on the set: this-

I didn't recognize the quote, but wasn't surprised to see whose it was. (Answer at the end.)

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I didn't sleep well last night- maybe because of the anticipation of my first return to suitability since mid-March:

Everybody thought I looked spiffy. The judge didn't care.

I was trying to defend a landlord's deduction of money from a security deposit, and to get the tenant to pay back a month's rent they skipped out on. Problem was, the landlord emailed the tenant and sorta kinda went along with them skipping out, even though the tenant was pretty unreasonable when the landlord offered to split the difference of a month. Then some 2019 law changes did the rest to make my clients' position untenable (see what I did there?), and the whole thing went down the tubes.

I don't feel good about it- but then,....