I don’t remember if I saw Joe’s performance, though I remain certain I was there, despite having reached the age where one’s own history begins fermenting into a strange brew of half-remembered facts, stuff other people did and wishful thinking, later to be quibbled about by old farts on park benches, one alta cocker to another. Which makes it a perfect time for folks who can’t leave well enough alone to print tickets to a reunion concert.

Reunions are tricky, because nostalgia usually promises more than it delivers. Like the thirtieth-anniversary Woodstock concert, which was such a disaster that this year’s event will occur hundreds or thousands of miles away from Yasgur’s farm. Lucky me, to have been there the first time and grown up nearby, where everyone knew about Woodstock, fabled home to artists, beatniks, folkies, girls with no bras, even Dylan and the Band. There was no doubt we’d be there when Richie Havens sawed through his strings.

I’d just finished my first year in college, largely spent chasing the latest sound up and down the East Coast. Like Sly and the Family Stone, who I shlepped to Philly in the snow to see, joyously inventing funk. Or Steppenwolf opening for Quicksilver opening for the Electric Flag at the Fillmore, all on their first national tour (I still have the ticket stub somewhere). I’m not saying that concert is the reason why Chuck Steinberg’s obsessive-compulsive navigator in Landmark Status always had to play the Flag’s version of Killing Floor before a black-ops mission over Laos. Okay, maybe I am.

That summer, I was home from freshman year at “yes, his first name really was Johns” Hopkins, a grad school that maintained a men’s college so it could call itself a university. That’s changed for the better over the last forty years, but all the wild green spaces are gone, replaced with buildings holding quadrangles hostage. At the time, a woodsy campus with a woody (not tinny) name, Homewood could have been in the country. It wasn’t, as I later learned living along nearby Druid Lake, a couple blocks north of Whitelock Street, where I discovered Happy Boy margarine and other brands unknown to suburban Giant Food stores, and nearly got shot over two packs of gum.

The flames of urban riots had lit up Whitelock Street after Dr. King was gunned down the previous spring, but the campus culture wars hadn’t yet reached the Hop when I arrived. Steeped in Mid-Atlantically ambivalent Southern gentility, the place offered hoary fratboy rituals and straw boaters for (almost) every hatrack. Whenever possible, we fled, desperately bumming rides with anyone who had a car, to any school where they had girls. With a pint of Madera Port in my pocket, I’d throw out my thumb at northbound traffic when no ride was in the offing, standing under a billboard that identified the brand as “the boom-boom wines” and asked, “can you handle it?”

The big concert on campus that year had been a stroll down someone else’s memory lane with Sha Na Na, on a rainy night in a gym so damp we opened and closed our umbrellas over our heads during the show to get a breeze going. One should not be surprised that the climax came when they sang “Let’s Go to the Hop” (ahem), no doubt the reason they’d been booked in the first place.

Nonetheless, Hopkins’ soul had been psychedelicized by my freshman class. Apart from killing off half the fraternities (which have since come back with a vengeance), while pioneering the locally late-arriving, hippie/slacker approach to college, we’d all gotten maced and tear-gassed when the local cops raided the freshman dorms to arrest some of my classmates for selling marijuana. They could have arrested a hundred more. A rather well-mannered riot ensued, with students trying to prevent the cops from hauling away their prey (one of whom went on to become a world-famous graphic designer, uploading hallucinations onto television screens around the world).

And when it was all over, I came home to the only political patronage job I’ve ever had, finagled through my family’s good standing with the Rockefeller Republicans who ran my home town. I worked on the Newburgh-Beacon bridge that summer, “Rocky’s Catwalk” as it was called, a mile long, two-lane cantilever that hoisted a slender strip of pavement high above the Hudson.

No amount of hazard pay could get me to walk the steel with the painters, and I did my best to avoid my turns taking tolls. I wheedled my way onto the maintenance crew most weeks, drag racing the riding lawnmowers down the driveway behind the garage, poking holes in the jeep’s soft top trying to put the door back on, and conniving to drive the tractors and dump trucks whenever possible. The next year, when my brother did his turn on the bridge, none of the summer kids were allowed to drive anything, and he got the familiar lecture about how he wasn’t going to get away with any of that stuff his brother did (I have apologized for this many times).

A month before my calendar’s heavily circled mid-August weekend, I started lobbying the bosses for three days off, allegedly to attend a cousin’s wedding in Toronto. They bought it, and we sent a scouting party up to Bethel two weeks before the festival. We had no clue that a half-million bodies would obliterate the landmarks, that we’d have to hike in and out the last five miles, or that our destination would become known as the Hog Farm, after the first commune to arrive, evidently a few minutes after our scouting party left.

Two weeks later, the divine racket on the Love City stage provided a shimmering soundtrack to my wobbly mental movie, whose main theme was getting lost and found. It started with stumbling around in the rain on Friday, trying to remember which missing piece of fence had marked our rendezvous. Somehow, I found our advance party and we spent the night sharing odd visions with strangers waiting for the rain to stop and Jerry Garcia to bring the matches, so they could keep the chalice lit.

In the morning, we opened the tent flap on a disappearing front yard full of muddy new neighbors. Following our ears toward the music, we kept getting separated, and I soon learned the best way to get found was to stop moving and look around when I realized I was lost. I remember giving up trying to find my people while The Who were on stage, then looking down to see they were sitting at my feet. By the afternoon, everyone had turned up, including my brother and his crew, my college roommate, and friends who’d come in from every direction. In the swirling chaos, I still don’t know how that happened. A humble achievement, it seemed remarkable at the time.

The music was epic, and the peace and love was real, if fleeting. But by Sunday morning, we’d had enough of the muck, and decided to get the hell out of there. After slogging back to the cars, we rode off in style, top down in a friend’s father’s Chrysler 300 Convertible, that is, unless it was another friend’s father’s Deuce and a Quarter. How they talked their way into those cars, I still don’t know. Even daddy don’t drive in that Eldorado no more. Nobody does.

When we got home, I surprised the bosses by volunteering to take tolls in an extra booth opened to deal with the exodus from Sullivan County. I kept my beaded bear-scare on my wrist, so the drivers would know I was one of them. Stuff like that was a big deal back then, a small symbol of the boisterous counterculture the man was keeping down (before co-opting it). Like Joe’s tie-dyed t-shirt. I guess it’s okay that he’s put away the air guitar and favors dark suits these days. After all, he’ll soon be an alta Cocker, and so will I, toasting, boasting and arguing about foggy memories of the mother of all rock festivals, one long-ago weekend in August.

*  *  *

Alan H. Rolnick has practiced law in Miami for twenty years, appearing in high-profile civil and not so civil cases, after putting himself through a music career by working at the New York Times. His first novel, Landmark Status, has received ecstatic reviews without resort to the scandalous pictures in his publicist’s safe. He provides trenchant social commentary without warning, and is Executive Producer of the independent film Canvas. To learn more, visit his website or email alan@alanrolnick.com.

People sometimes change the way their names are pronounced, usually for personal reasons that may not be apparent. Like when Tony Dorsett announced that henceforth he would be called Dor-sett. Occasionally, the reason is obvious, like when Joe Theisman went from “Theez-man” to something that rhymed with Heisman (it didn’t work. He didn’t win)

I’m Jewish, and it always bugs me when other Jews do this, because they invariably pick a pronunciation that sounds “less Jewish,” which I’ve always taken as a sign of going uptown, selling out and trying to “pass” (when you’re white, a name adjustment may be all it takes). Like my friend Larry Levin, who became Lawrence Le-Vin. Accenting the last syllable made his name sound vaguely French, more sophisticated, upscale, and . . . less Jewish. In fairness, I suppose it was less of a sell-out than picking a new name entirely, like Lawrence Ou-est-la-bibliotheque.

There’s no upside to altering the way my name is pronounced, and tempted though I’ve been to change it altogether, I’ve always left it alone, even though it sounds odd (I always spell it out to customer service), and means something like “peasant who follows plow” in various Eastern European languages .

All in all, I’m not surprised that Bernie Madoff wants you to pronounce his name “Made-off,” quite apart from the exquisite irony in the fact that he “made off” with more investor money than any Ponzi schemer in history. It wouldn’t matter if he inherited the pronunciation (along with a proclivity for pushing the envelope with securities regulators). Selling investments was the family business. Having a less Jewish-sounding name would have been useful fifty years ago. Even today it could help, especially if you’re running a scam aimed at attracting dynastic wealth and earning the respect of those who rule the world.

Nor is it surprising that the scheme’s center of gravity was in South Florida. It’s hardly news that the Sunshine State offers unusually fertile ground for investment fraud, or that the Gold Coast is a subtropical nuthouse full of grifters and marks. Con men have been following the snowbirds south ever since Henry Flagler built his railroad and Carl Fisher used elephant power to dredge up Biscayne Bay onto Miami Beach. By now, it’s a tradition. Floridians are accustomed to picking up the paper and reading about the latest local Ponzi scheme, whether it involves phony bullion contracts, viaticated life insurance policies, subprime auto loans, grocery diverting, consumer electronics, air charter, home jewelry or in-store cosmetics businesses, to name a few well-known examples. Even scams from elsewhere seem to trickle down, or crash land, in Florida. A new one was reported just days ago.

Put simply, in Florida, Ponzi schemes are a way of life. Hell, there are three different ones going on in my novel, Landmark Status, where rival crews vie for the right to raze a seedy Miami bar and raise a fabulous condo on its grave. One developer is selling shares in a kit airplane business headquartered in a hanger that just might be stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of empty. There’s a state-chartered bank whose balance sheet might be terminally unbalanced. And there’s the Great Florida Ponzi Scheme itself, the sale and resale of the same dirt, cut into ever-smaller slices of paradise, to the next wave of newcomers. It was and still is the principal business of South Florida, the place to which fools bring their money for safekeeping and are soon parted from it.

At bottom, all Ponzi schemes work the same way. Swindlers are generally allergic to using their own dough, so the promoter typically gets seed money from friends and family — staggering their prized entree to the inner circle, so he has later investor money to actually pay a few initial investors the promised returns on time. Then he waits for the inner circle to bring him the next wave of suckers, who will bring them the next wave. A few early payouts and some actual transactions in the purported business, plus accounting and legal documents from respected firms, are enough to keep investors “rolling over” their stakes until they need money (like in a great depression). The trick is keeping the victims happy with paper profits, because a run of cash-outs will bring the scheme down overnight.

As a securities lawyer, I represented defrauded investors in some of South Florida’s best-known Ponzi schemes, including one of the slickest ever. That scam was known as Premium Sales, and took in almost 500 million dollars in the early ’90s under cover of a business that promised huge returns from the arbitrage of regional discounts on non-perishable grocery items, by “diverting” them to other markets. It didn’t matter that real diverters work on razor-thin margins, or that bank financing ought to be available at far less cost to such a profitable business. All that mattered was the new car in the neighbors’ driveway and the fantastic paper profits they were racking up. Like most such frauds, it was sold by word of mouth to affinity groups. It swept through Miami’s Jewish community, laying waste to many families’ life savings.

Running a massive Ponzi scheme requires a special kind of crook, one who does it for the thrill, not just the money. He must possess the moxie, wits and guile to ride the rails without getting electrocuted. The Premium Sales mastermind, Ken Thenen, was said to have asked a young woman on a New York to Miami flight about a pastry box she’d brought onboard and was carefully minding at her seat, on her lap. She told him it was a cake she’d baked for her fiancé and was guarding with her life to make sure he received it intact. Thenen bet his traveling companion he could get the woman to give him a slice of her prized cake before they landed. He won the bet.

What makes Madoff’s scam special is not only its staggering size, the use of moderate returns to lengthen its lifespan, and a victim list of the rich and famous. What’s really unique is that Madoff appears not to have made a single securities trade and didn’t rely on outside lawyers or accountants to prepare any papers for the investors. His account statements showed trades at impossible prices for a trading strategy that couldn’t have produced the reported returns, even if the CBOE could have handled the necessary trading volume (it couldn’t have). Most Ponzi schemes acquire a patina of respectability from conducting a few legitimate transactions and getting accountants and lawyers to vouch for the company with fake financials and impressive looking subscription agreements. Madoff’s reputation in the securities industry apparently made all of this unnecessary. Now, that takes the cake.

In the Premium Sales case, after years of litigation, we recovered a majority of losses suffered by the investors, much of it from the grocery companies, accountants and lawyers who either knew or recklessly disregarded the fact they were involved in a huge fraud. But that was before the “Greed is Good” gang and their servants on K Street and the Supreme Court killed secondary liability and all but killed class actions for securities fraud. Observers should not be dripping with confidence that Madoff’s marks will recover more than pennies on the dollar (which are what usually remain in the coffers of a Ponzi schemer’s company).

We’ll explore how to name a Ponzi scheme in a follow-up piece. Meanwhile, if your friends start hocking you ein chinek about an investment opportunity that sounds too good to be true, it probably is, especially if they’re telling you the promoter doesn’t need your money and is doing you a favor because he’s really picky about whom he lets in. It wouldn’t hurt to watch out for fancy-sounding names, either.

BTW, back in 1981, a friend said Tony picked Dor-sett because that’s how they pronounced it in France.

*  *  *

Alan H. Rolnick has practiced law in Miami for twenty years, appearing in high-profile civil and not so civil cases, after putting himself through a music career by working at the New York Times. His first novel, Landmark Status, has received ecstatic reviews without resort to the scandalous pictures in his publicist’s safe. He provides trenchant social commentary without warning, and is Executive Producer of the independent film Canvas. To learn more, visit his website or email alan@alanrolnick.com.

As posted on January 23, 2009, at Smirking Chimp

]]> https://alanrolnick.com/?feed=rss2&p=55 0 https://alanrolnick.com/?p=57 https://alanrolnick.com/?p=57#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:50:21 +0000 admin http://alanrolnick.com/?p=57 Podcast with Juanita Watson – Listen here

Now, I’d sworn off television news over five years ago, shortly after President Codpiece got hisself all butched up in a flight suit and pranced around on the deck of a carrier docked near San Diego for his “Mission Accomplished” photo op. I wasn’t putting up with any more psy-ops from the Friedman-Strauss Gang’s amen chorus of press-release readers posing as reporters. And I sure as hell wasn’t sitting still for full-blown homages to Leni Riefenstahl. As the man said, “what a waste it is to lose one’s mind.” There was no way these soul-suckers were getting any more chances to help me lose mine.

So, like millions of others, I’d circled the wagons and tended to my family, vowing to outlast the Forty-Third Reich, getting my news on the internets and my commentary right here. But there I was, listening to the House Organ of Evil, wondering what to make of all this “bi-partisan” (read: right-wing) happy talk.

Obama’s so-called “team of rivals” approach may turn out well, or not. Historians strongly disagree as to whether it worked for Abraham Lincoln. It’s far from clear that Obama can neutralize his opponents by deputizing them, much less force them to become invested in his administration’s success and work toward a transformative outcome. All of which begs the question whether the desired outcome is transformative at all.

While we’ve been breathing a month-long sigh of relief, one can’t help but notice that Obama gets a lot more love from the right-wing punditocracy than from progressives, who keep hoping for the best, with little evidence to support that hope. Obama’s done little and said nothing to dispute the “center-right” meme that the MSM dutifully drills daily into its audience’s skulls. His cabinet picks may indeed indicate an uncanny ability to disarm opponents by putting them to work for him. But what exactly is that work?

Is Obama going to do anything to limit the monumental thievery of Paulson and the investment bankers? Will he lift a finger to prevent the destruction of the UAW? Is he taking any steps to limit the power of the Money Party in their war on the middle class? Can we really expect him to turn on the army of Rubins that gave the okay for us to put him into office? And what about that withdrawal from Iraq? Is there any real chance the powers that be will look back on Obama the way Ike did Earl Warren, as the biggest damn fool mistake they ever made? Right now, that doesn’t appear likely. So far, Obama’s work looks like a huge PR campaign. Meet the new boss, same as, well you know.

I’m not just spitting up sour grapes because I filled out the “expression of interest” form the day after the election and never got an email enclosing my very own anal probe disguised as a job application. I wouldn’t have submitted to the indignity and they wouldn’t have hired me if I had. But I did expect to have the option. BTW, did it occur to you that the only material difference between BHO’s database of intimate private facts and Admiral Poindexter’s infamous “total information awareness” program is that Obama has convinced people to volunteer their secrets?

So far, Obama appears to be the anti-Bush, offering lots of press conferences and openness to discussing almost anything, but not doing much. The world is still crashing and burning, and the masters of the universe are still partying hearty on our tab.

And Obama keeps on spamming us, asking for still more money, apparently for his permanent campaign, for what? He sure as hell didn’t spend enough of the billion he already took in to win the Georgia Senate runoff and destroy that Replican “firewall” to a transformative administation. Wasn’t that a crucial goal of this election?

I don’t want an Obama holiday fleece. I don’t want a commemorative t-shirt or a limited edition coffee mug. I want a world turned right side up, okay? As far as I can tell, Obama is not the star of a basketball team, rock band or religious cult, but the non-stop begging for money and selling of logo-laden crap sure make it look that way.

Combined with a studious aversion to actually laying hands on any political hot potatoes until he has to, Obama’s chess-like triangulations of issues and concerted efforts to surround, co-opt and absorb the opposition appear less the work of a transcendent unifier than the Borg.

I, for one, will not be assimilated.

*  *  *

Alan H. Rolnick has practiced law in Miami for twenty years, appearing in high-profile civil and not so civil cases, after putting himself through a music career by working at the New York Times. His first novel, Landmark Status, received ecstatic reviews without resort to the scandalous pictures in his publicist’s safe. He provides trenchant social commentary without warning, and is Executive Producer of the independent film Canvas. To learn more, visit his website or email alan@alanrolnick.com.

As posted on December 5, 2008, at Smirking Chimp

]]> https://alanrolnick.com/?feed=rss2&p=59 0 https://alanrolnick.com/?p=56 https://alanrolnick.com/?p=56#comments Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:13:17 +0000 admin http://alanrolnick.com/?p=56 Podcast with Simon Barrett – Listen here

After all, one must expect to pay for water and protection in the New World Order. Those of you useless eaters who can’t afford the buy-in, please go die, so the world’s natural resource problems can be solved, m’kay?

It isn’t surprising that John McCain, whose handlers haven’t yet been visited by the ghost of Lee Atwater, keeps on lying about how “That One” wants to raise your taxes, my friends. Nor is it surprising that McCain offers tax cuts for the ultra-rich and a three-card monte game on healthcare. “Here’s your $5000 credit against a $12,000 health insurance policy, paid for by cuts in Medicare,” he says. “You can’t compare it to the $10 billion a month we spend on killing Iraqis for the oil pimps, because we don’t pay for that at all. Your grandchildren do. Remember that little tax-rebate bribe you got for acquiescence in the Iraq war, my friends? Didn’t that work out swell?”

The second debate of ought-eight again showed that the Replicans (mere replicas of those they admire), still (and probably always will) rely on accusing Democrats of profligacy as “tax and spend” liberals. Many Americans don’t remember that this tactic was in use when the top marginal tax rate was 91% under Eisenhower, three times what it is now. Sadly, many don’t remember a time when it was thought patriotic to pay taxes in furtherance of the common good, in an era when greed was not glorified, but regarded as one of the seven deadly sins.

Wait a minute, you say. People know the “tax and spend” kabuki dance is as pointless as it is perennial. After Clinton, they understand that Democrats can balance the budget, and they’ve figured out that “tax and spend” is better than “borrow and spend.” After all, the theory that cutting taxes for the rich caused any prosperous period of the last forty years is not beyond dispute, especially as a new feudal era comes into view as a result of protecting inherited wealth.

(Note to myself: Ask somebody really smart why conservatives’ conviction about man’s fundamentally evil nature doesn’t alone undermine their faith in an idealized capitalist paradise. It’s indisputable that unregulation of financial markets stimulates fraud. It’s clear that corrupt, crony capitalism led us to this ruin. In their dotage, the Friedman-Strauss Gang will no doubt argue that market fundamentalism wasn’t a crackpot religion, and that everything would have worked out fine if only we’d gotten to a doctrinally purer system before the whole damned thing blew up. Isn’t that what Marxists used to say about Soviet Communism?)

Okay, then. If the rules really have changed and the paradigm really has shifted, why didn’t Obama just come out and say something like: “Look around you. Look at the people near you, wherever you’re watching this debate. You probably won’t see anyone from the 400 families that made 670 billion dollars over the last eight years. You probably won’t see any of the very few who benefited from this massive transfer of wealth, this fire sale of our national treasure, this perversion of our very soul in service of myths that greed is good, government is bad, and wealth trickles down, not up.”

Why are people like Bernie Sanders or Dennis Kucinich the only high office-holders who can cut this thing down to the bone? Why is it that Replicans can practice class warfare but most Democrats are afraid to even talk about it?

I’m not naive. I graduated from high school weeks after they shot RFK and Dr. King. I’ve been waiting on the world to change for a long time, and I know Obama has to get elected before he can do any good. I also know he’s regarded as a safe choice by the powers that be, including some who’ve been waging war on the New Deal since 1933. Otherwise, his candidacy would have been drowned in the bathtub (like Edwards’ and Kucinich’s were). But I’m not scraping off my “Got Hope?” bumper sticker just yet. Here’s why.

Maybe, just maybe, after saying enough of the right (not left) things, Barack Obama will become our forty-fourth President (a pretty famous number, BTW, worn by the likes of Reggie Jackson and Jerry West). If his margin of victory is big enough (possible) and our situation is dire enough (certain), and he has courage enough (one hopes), maybe Obama will embrace the progressive policies that he’s smart enough to know are necessary. In so doing, he would undoubtedly disappoint our shadowy puppet masters. Now, wouldn’t that be something?

It’s not without precedent. At no time or place in American history were individual liberties taken more seriously than in Chief Justice Earl Warren’s Supreme Court. When Eisenhower appointed the Republican Governor of California in 1953, he had no idea that a Warren Court would desegregate the schools and aggressively protect individual rights. Years later, Eisenhower famously declared that Warren’s appointment was “the biggest damn fool mistake I ever made.” He similarly regretted his appointment of Justice Brennan, for which the people, if not the power elite, remain grateful.

As this race turns for home, the Replicans will do anything to keep voters too dazed and afraid to put two and two together. They’re gonna bury us with a blizzard of agit-prop so thick we’ll wonder where the sky went. They’re gonna push all our buttons at once, so we’re filled with more fear than an old Iron Butterfly song title. We’ve got to hold on. No matter what. And vote. No matter what. Someday, maybe those who thought they owned Obama will reminisce about how he double-crossed them, over chai lattes and steamed milk from green-powered espresso machines, in a nation more peaceful, lawful and just.

 *  *  *

Alan H. Rolnick has practiced law in Miami for twenty years, appearing in high-profile civil and not so civil cases, after putting himself through a music career by working at the New York Times. His first novel, Landmark Status, received ecstatic reviews without resort to the scandalous pictures in his publicist’s safe. He provides trenchant social commentary without warning, and is Executive Producer of the independent film Canvas. To learn more, visit his website or email alan@alanrolnick.com.

As posted on October 9, 2008, at Smirking Chimp

But it’s undeniable that belief in the predictive power of omens and portents is on the wane in the civilized world. Except in the U.S. of A, that is (are we still civilized?). Hereabouts, the “reality-based” community has been whipped, bullied and cowed into submission by nihilists who believe in nothing, save their own godlike power to manufacture any reality useful to them, one that keeps the people too poor, stupid and afraid to question the New World Order’s secret first principle, reprinted here for the first time:

The Rules Are For (You) Suckers

In my country, millions of people remain unmoved by facts in plain sight. This is not surprising, since they’ve been told for decades that facts are merely opinions. Here, every day, my people’s spirits are borne aloft by the wonder-working power of myths, fables and bubbe meissehs. They clap hands at fairy tales told by telegenic opinion-makers in moments stolen from shifts two and three, wondering how they’ll pay for grandpa’s medicine if they get sick themselves, but standing ready to sacrifice sons and daughters in the oil pimps’ holy wars to save the last pools of black gold from the godless fur’ners who happen to live on top of them.

So, late in the evening, when smarter folks are asleep, after shouting myself hoarse and turning blue with rage, I wonder just what will it take to open my fellow Americans’ eyes, so they finally see that their children’s futures have been highjacked and the Republic has been all but destroyed, hollowed out, rendered impotent by crooks posing as self-reliant, rugged individualists, most of whom couldn’t succeed at anything that wasn’t paid for with your tax money.

Reading instructive pieces on the great stick-up of 2008 and the sociopathic free-marketeers behind it, I wonder if the people will wake up in time to take back the Republic and get it off life support, or if it’s already dead. Why don’t Americans realize they’ve been electing their executioners for decades? What needs to happen? What will it take? I wonder.

With that question in mind, let me interrupt our pending return to cave-dwelling with a hopeful fantasy. Imagine, if you will, a hurricane, churning through the Gulf of Mexico after pasting Florida (where we have empathy for anyone else who gets hit, including the recent victims of Fay, Gustav, Hannah and Ike).

Our fantasy storm is a big one, and it’s aiming for Texas, bearing down on coastal cities that all have been evacuated. A well-founded fear grips the region as the storm approaches the coast, a fear fanned into near-panic by breathless, round-the-clock ads for plywood, water and batteries, disguised as news coverage.

Then something incredible happens. Approaching Galveston, the hurricane jumps up into the thermosphere, leapfrogging Houston, failing to make the predicted northeast turn toward Shreveport, tracking northwest toward Abilene, then passing miles-high over Bryan and Waco, where it suddenly descends over a little town called Crawford.

Miraculously, the storm shrinks to the size of a miniature tornado and plunges straight down, landing on a ranch where nobody’s home. It’s owned by President Caligula, who’s been hidden away by the Wizard Cheney until after Election Day.

The ranch is instantly vaporized, swept up into the heavens by winds so powerful they dig a hundred-foot crater in the earth where the ranch used to be. Thousands of people watch and report as the storm spins itself out, rotating in place for two days. No living being is injured.

Would that be enough? Would that get it done?

***

Alan H. Rolnick has practiced law in Miami for twenty years and has appeared in numerous high-profile civil and not so civil cases. His first novel, Landmark Status, received such ecstatic reviews he wondered if his publicist had scandalous pictures in her safe. Alan consults on legal matters for the entertainment industry, provides trenchant social commentary without warning, and is Executive Producer of the independent film Canvas. To learn more, visit his web site or email alan@alanrolnick.com

“Wearing a white form-fitting shirt with pale blue and orange Gulf-Porsche crest, Mr. Kim stood behind the counter under a white plastic sign with neat red lettering that said SoBe Supercar Rents Number One Top Big Shot Luxury Lifestyle To Go. He asked if Benjy was sure he wanted a Mustang, because there were far better cars on the lot.”

It’s rare that I rent a car in Miami, and tonight I had no reason to expect a heavenly experience. We’d lost ninety minutes to a loose panel in the 767 they’d rolled out of an LAX hangar for this “premium” flight. My expertise with duct tape was politely refused while we milled around like Kremlinologists outside the Politburo, analyzing the body language of anyone emerging from the jetway.

Holding a coveted upgrade, I’d then spent hours in flight trying to take a nap, which required mastering mystifying controls to a seat from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. By now its well after midnight, and my fellow travelers are so tired they twitch from ear pain at the buzzer blast signaling the start of the luggage-go-round (unlike Fort Lauderdale, which offers a light show and canned music that sounds like the Macarena). Finally, the laws of FOLO (first on, last off), bring my suitcase rolling lazily around the bend (I swear it’s putting out a cigarette, basking in the afterglow of a mile-high tryst with the Gucci makeup case behind it).

Time to get the car, and unlike Benjy, I’m in the airport, not some rich guy’s playpen. Holding a reservation for a Pontiac G6 (or equivalent), a decent ride with good road feel and some cojones (if you luck out and get a V-6), I’m fully expecting I’ll end up in a (not so equivalent) Hundwoo Marmot LSMFT.

The manager greets me as one Miamian to another, with a sullen, “Can I help you?” which barely conceals her fond hope that the answer is “no.” I ask if they have a G6. She says nothing. Now I know I’m home. Then she points to an ATM and tells me to do it myself. When I fumble trying to reject the optional insurance, child-seat and bucket of buffalo wings, she assures me this gizmo is more efficient than the old system, which it plainly isn’t when there’s only one customer.

And then, something miraculous happens. Papers printed, initialed and signed, the manager points outside and says, “Over there. Pick any car you want.” She merely nods with a tired smirk when I ask, “Really?” as I walk backward through the surly gates of rental car heaven.

It’s my car lot now, with new V-6 Chevy Malibus the reviewers raved about, and V-6 Pontiacs as well (I know this engine, based on the block that powered my screaming Citation X-11 twenty-five years ago, a car feared by all who drove in or near it).

Striding past some Toyota Bore-olas, I spy a Dodge Avenger (an SXT, with go-fast bits and an iPod jack). If I want to go green instead of fast, they’ve got Prius sedans, and, can it be? One of them is blocking a gun-metal grey G6 coupe with GT badges.

Jackpot! The top engine, suspension and tire combo, with black leather, sunroof and big audio. It’s a close call, but the Avenger’s out when I see the Pontiac’s got an iPod jack, too. The only problem is moving the Prius. I’m not risking anybody telling me I can’t have what I want, so I move it myself. With its weird controls, wiggly joystick and push-button starter, I’m hoping it doesn’t blow up while I wait for its systems to respond to my commands, so I can get it the hell out of the way.

At last, I’m in, and soon, I’m out, before anyone’s the wiser, enjoying that “number one top big shot luxury lifestyle to go,” blasting up the corkscrew to State Road 112, wondering if I’m driving a car they don’t really rent, just take home themselves. But there’s one thing I’m sure about. If there’s a rental car heaven, it has to look like Miami. This I know. I’ve seen it.

***

Alan H. Rolnick has practiced law in Miami for twenty years and has appeared in numerous high-profile civil cases. His first novel, Landmark Status, received such ecstatic reviews he wondered if his publicist had scandalous pictures of the reviewers in her safe. Alan consults on legal matters for the entertainment industry, provides trenchant social commentary in any medium, and is Executive Producer of the independent film Canvas. To learn more about Landmark Status or Alan’s law practice, consulting and commentary services, visit his web site at http://www.alanrolnick.com

“For you or someone else?” asked the mom.

“In fencing, they say it’s a killer advantage.”

“So baseball is like fencing?”

“Not really,” admitted the dad, putting down the knife.

“But batting from the opposite side does favor the batter,” he said. “Not only does the batter get a better look at the ball, but it doesn’t leave the pitcher’s hand on a line with the batter’s head, which can be very influential if the batter is you.”

“But wouldn’t you want right-handed pitchers if most people bat right-handed?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “And that’s why there’s a premium on left-handed batters, to get the opposite-side batting advantage against those right-handed pitchers. A left-handed batter is also a couple of steps closer to first base.”

“What’s that got to do with left-handed pitching?”

“Well,” he said between bites, “If you need left-handed batters, then you need left-handed pitchers to throw to those guys, which is why if you’re left-handed you will pitch at some point in your career, even though you won’t have the same-sided pitcher’s advantage until the less talented get winnowed out at higher levels of the sport, where the conventional wisdom expects more winnowing of righties than lefties.”

“How do you know that happens?”

“I don’t. It’s conventional wisdom. It doesn’t have to be correct, just conventional.”

“Go on,” she invited.

“There’s even some left-brain, right-brain research suggesting lefties have a natural reaction-time advantage. All of which,” he proclaimed, “supports the conventional wisdom that it’s easier for lefties than righties to get ahead in baseball.”

“Then what’s your excuse?”

“Premature winnowing?”

“I heard you can take something for that.”

“Nah,” he said. “I’m like the guy in Landmark Status, whose basketball career was cut short by his height.”

“Except less funny,” she said, bringing dessert. “Why don’t you check the percentage of left-handers in the big leagues against the population at large? Then you’ll know if your conventional wisdom is just a myth.”

“Hmmm,” he said, sounding thoughtful, but enjoying his work-free weekend, and his myth. “I guess there’s another reason for making lefties pitchers,” he offered. “They can only play first base or outfield otherwise.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll bite. Why’s that?”

“Because they can’t play on the left side of the infield.”

“Where’s that?” she asked, sipping her coffee.

“Third base, shortstop and second base.”

“Why not?”

“Because they have to either spin or step back to make the throw to first base, while a right-hander is already pointed that way when he fields the ball.”

“What about catcher?” she asked. “Catcher isn’t on the left side of the infield. It’s in the middle, right behind the plate.”

“Hmmm,” he said, mulling it over. “Well, you do want to have your throwing arm on the opposite side from the batter.”

“I know,” she said, clearing the dishes. “And most batters are righties, except where they’re not.”

“Exactly,” he said, triumphantly pushing back from the table and pitching in.

“But once you’ve got all those left-handed batters,” she asked, “Wouldn’t you also want left-handed catchers?”

“Hmmm,” he said, buying time. “The right-hander’s still in a better position to make the throw to, um, maybe first, not sure about second, but third for sure, I think.” He checked his watch. “Hey, the game’s on!” he exclaimed, and switched on the television.

* * *

Alan H. Rolnick has practiced law in Miami for twenty years and has appeared in numerous high-profile civil and not so civil cases. His first novel, Landmark Status, received such ecstatic reviews he wondered if his publicist had scandalous pictures in her safe. Alan consults on legal matters for the entertainment industry, provides trenchant social commentary without warning, and is Executive Producer of the independent film Canvas. To learn more, visit his web site at www.alanrolnick.com or send him an e-mail at alan@alanrolnick.com.

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Old rock songs only seem ancient. The writ of habeas corpus really is, dating back to at least 1215, when English nobles forced King John to sign a little thing called the Magna Carta, the bedrock of modern constitutional democracy. The “Great Writ” allows one who’s imprisoned to demand a public hearing where the state must present grounds for holding him and charges against him. It may not be suspended except “in cases of rebellion or invasion,” when “public safety may require it.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2. I’d always taken it for granted, until the dark night of America’s soul descended on us in 2000, when our new rulers decided they were above the law and everyone else was beneath it.

For years, I’d been ranting about how the Republic was on life support, and that America, the world’s last, best hope, was mutating into something so dangerous we might well take down the rest of the world with us. Most folks were polite, but acted like I was their crazy uncle, while they willfully blinded themselves with inane reality shows and distracto-news about scandals, fad diets and the latest celebrity crack-up.

In my darkest hours, I’d realized our last line of defense would be the conservative judges who dominated our appellate courts, like the Eleventh Circuit judges who’d resisted being used as political pawns in cases involving stolen elections and feeding tubes. I’d prayed there’d be enough judicial conservatives to save us when push really came to shove. And now, wonder of wonders, the only one left on the high court responsible for installing this ruthless gang in office–through a lawless decision that will be forever ridiculed in Con Law classes everywhere–had written an opinion that said, “this far and no further.”

That uplifting thought reminded me to get back to the radio to hear more about this landmark decision, one that likely won’t ever be ridiculed in any Con Law class. I tuned back in as they came out of commercial, and the news reader said:

“Just in time for Fathers Day, there’s a new poll out, and it’s about men’s underwear. Ladies, you might want to know that out of five hundred American men surveyed, 26% have drawers in the drawer that are more than four years old. Eleven percent admit they wear underwear that’s more than ten years old. And 77% say they wear boxers or briefs that are ‘tattered, discolored or stained!’ No follow-up on what those stains are, but let that be a warning to you, eh ladies? Now, let’s go to Sasha Driver with your sky-cam traffic report.”

I was undistracted, but glad this day to be one of the brotherhood of tattered boxers. Rejoicing that the Republic might cautiously be taken off the ventilator, I pulled out from the curb and switched back to the iPod, just in time to hear ancient drummer Tim Davis sing, “Rise up with the new dawn’s early morning. Feel the sunshine warm upon your face. Tomorrow’s come a long, long way to help you. Yes, it’s your saving grace.”

* * *

Alan H. Rolnick has practiced law in Miami for twenty years and has appeared in numerous high-profile cases. His first novel, Landmark Status, received such ecstatic reviews he wondered if his publicist had scandalous pictures of the reviewers in her safe. Alan consults on legal matters for the entertainment industry, provides trenchant social commentary in any medium, and is Executive Producer of the independent film Canvas. To learn more, visit www.alanrolnick.com or e-mail alan@alanrolnick.com.