An Improved August and the Late July Suicide Film Festival

[captainsblog]

I try to make a clean break of it when I leave the office on Fridays. I copy my most recent timekeeping software and Outlook entries onto a flash drive, usually turn off the incoming email to my phone and sometimes turn the calls off, and shut the laptop lid with a distinct Thud of Done.  Because it's not unusual for calls and emails to come in after 4, even after 5, on Fridays which turn the weekend into a festival of dread anticipation.

This time, though, I made my copies but left things on, because I had two things pending. One was a guy I've been chasing for over a year over a substantial judgment, who needs endless poking and prodding. I'd worked out a way to get the matter resolved over the past eight months, but then COVID hit and that went by the wayside.  I finally got word of a significant resolution last week, which was supposed to happen this week. When it didn't, I sent my usual daily nags and finally got word that the arrangement we agreed on has been signed and notarized and should be funded by Tuesday. I told him to work it out with me on Wednesday. Either he's being honest about this and it really will happen, or he's just playing with his food and I'm the food; I will also remember before he swallows that he did that.

The other was the annual cluster over renewing my malpractice insurance. Two years ago, a major source of client business required me to significantly up the coverage on my own firm. It's not easy for solo practitioners to get coverage compared to the bigger shops, but I sucked it up in 2018, and endured an increase last year but kept it within tolerance. This year, I was looking at them jacking it up again, despite my 35th year in a row with no claims or disciplinary actions against me. They actually cited COVID as justification for the increase, which seems strange given that everyones' work is down, with no courts to file many things in and statutes of limitations (the biggest source of such claims) being indefinitely extended.

It renews this month, so I've been back and forth with the guy from Company X about whether he can do any better on the renewal price. Meanwhile, I shopped it to a different Company Y, which had me submit a copy of my renewal application to Company X and a few supplemental disclosures.  I kept bugging them all through this week. Finally, when I checked email about the Company X renewal after 5 yesterday, I saw that Company Y had finally responded right before 4:30, and was ready to write the policy for barely a quarter of the price I'm paying now.  This would put a major dent in some backlogs we've been working on- but I had to submit the formal Company Y application, which is just different enough from Company X's to be annoying.  So I've been in the office on a Saturday morning to get that done; on Monday, I should have confirmation of that potential saving- and by Wednesday, the other thing should be a go.

If August is going to keep up like this, my hopes for the rest of 2020 will go up substantially.

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It seemed fitting to end July, with its assortments of sturm und drang, with two movies prominently featuring the attempted suicides of their major characters. Both turned out a lot lighter and sweeter than the subject matter might make you think.

The first was a Swedish film from 2016 we got from Netflix called A Man Called Ove. Said Man is old and grumpy, even more so after the recent death of his wife Sonja (which we learn of early on but don't hear how it came about until nearly the end). He vows to join her in the afterlife, and the film is interspersed with futilely failed attempts by Ove to do himself in- all foiled by random events and people who are not even trying to stop him. In the end, he comes round to a much kinder view of the world he now lives in without him, with the help of a mixed-ethnic family living nearby, an old friend who he reconciles with, and perhaps the largest cat we've ever seen.

Then, a friend recommended the far more obvious suicidal spin on Amazon Prime titled Wristcutters: A Love Story.  This film's universe consists of suicide victims all being sent to a dreary, barely-worse-than-what-they-left place, with no stars in the sky and an abundance of pay phones.  The subjects of the love story travel with Eugene, one of a family of four Russian-Americans who all offed themselves in different ways at different times and wound up in the same dull flat together again. Eugene is partly based on Eugene Hutz, the lead singer of Gogol Bordello and star of the somewhat similar film Everything is Illuminated.

Nick Offerman is probably the most famous actor in it, though he probably wasn't in 2007 when it came out. Tom Waits sings the opening song and plays a mystical man running a bizarre campground. Everyone is quirky, and funny, and mostly dead.  We'll probably go with something more uplifting next time out- especially if August continues on this rather nice course:)