Jury Duty

First, I get robbed; then I get popped for jury duty. There's some sort of Kafkaesque irony in there somewhere, but I am accepting my fate with a fair degree of equanimity. For one thing, it gets me out of at least three agonizingly long meetings-for-the-sake-of-meetings tomorrow, all of which will surely be able to be summed up with a few sentences and a shrug from my colleagues. For another, I've never actually served jury duty before — always been let off the hook in the past by the automated voice system — so I'm morbidly curious to see the system up close. For a third, it's out in Indio (due to my owning a home in the Coachella Valley), which means I can at least have a swim in the morning before heading down to ye olde courthouse.

"What?!? No lawyer's going to want YOU on their jury," our company's CEO laughed this afternoon, when I told her what I was up to. And it's true; independent-minded journalists with voluminous sideburns who recently "bro'ed down" with Cheech & Chong aren't high on most lawyers' list of "ideal jurors". On the other hand, I do speak fluent English — which makes me a bit of a valuable rarity in the Riverside County jury pool — and with a name like Epstein, it would be pretty hard for me to pretend otherwise. So we'll see. I just hope this isn't one of those newsworthy days down at the courthouse where the crazed estranged husband shows up and starts shooting; that would suck considerable wangage.

Comments

[Greg Barbera]

take notes.

i'm sure it'll be nothing like an episode of Law & Order.

during a recent trip to court here in NC, i witnessed a woman who got busted for DWI - TWICE - in 18 hours. Seems impossible doesn't it?

also a girl who got her face smashed by her husband for drinking at someone else's tralier...

ah, North Carolina.

[Stu]

I got summoned too, for Sept. 3. And I too have always escaped. Crossing fingers for you.

[Chris Perry]

Dude, jury duty sucks. I have been unfortunate to get popped for it 3 times since I have lived in LA. Sadly, I look far more "conventional" than you and I always end up serving on a jury over the most mundane crap imaginable. Good luck and I hope that you find the "experience" entertaining at least.

[rich]

Did i ever tell you my jury duty story? Since i didn't get jury duty pay at my crappy Hollywood job in the 80's, i showed up unwashed, unshaved, with prescription sunglasses, my hair down to the middle of my back, probably with leftover makeup from some gig, skintight black jeans, wearing an Embryonics t-shirt that said "Sicker than God" and a vest for my friends the Black Pampers that said "eat shit" on it. I had to go down several days in a row and i wore the same thing each day.

I didn't get picked...