Meeting Santa

There is a lawyer I see occasionally at the court house whose hair is quite white and his full beard matches.  I recently kidded him that he must be one of the few people in Columbus who enjoys January because kids are no longer coming up to him and telling him what they want for Christmas.  I was quite surprised when he handed me his business card.  In mid- to late December he actually has a part-time business making appearances as Santa.

O’Toole, Bruce and Wambaugh

I once saw the author/one-time LAPD detective, Joseph Wambaugh, give an interview in which he stated that his police career would have been a great deal different had he worn a badge in any other American city besides Los Angeles.  He told a story about, while a rookie cop in the early sixties, he and his partner having busted two men smoking marijuana in the car. (A pot bust was a much bigger deal back then than it is now.)  One of the men, who spoke with a considerable Irish accent, tearfully begged them not to ruin his career by taking him in.  When Wambaugh’s Sergeant arrived on the scene, he listened to what the young actor had said and tossed the marijuana down the sewer drain.  That young Irish actor, Wambaugh says, was none other than Peter O’Toole who went on to have quite a career.  His companion in the car that night was the comedian, Lenny Bruce.  Wambaugh says that maybe it was a coincidence, but after that night, he never again heard Bruce refer to police officers as pigs.

Rule of Thumb

Mark Twain said it very well, “It ain’t ignorance that’s dangerous; it’s people knowing things that just aren’t so.”  Over the years I have heard some feminist extremists (attention feminists: if the shoe fits, wear it) explain the “rule of thumb” to be old English common law that a man could beat his wife as long as he didn’t use a stick thicker than is thumb.  When I did my second year of law school in London, I did what I could to get to the bottom of that story.  After consulting with several medieval scholars, I am now prepared to announce that it is particularly nefarious urban legend. Parliament never authorized such a bill nor did the church ever sanction such action. However, that’s a story that some people want to believe to be true.

Churchill and Freud

Winston Churchill, II (the Prime Minister’s grandson) had a political career of his own and served several terms in Parliament. Clement Freud (Sigmund Freud’s grandson) also served several terms in Parliament.  Once both men went on a fact-finding junket to the People’s Republic of China and Mr. Freud discovered that Mr. Churchill had been assigned a much more spacious hotel suite than he had. When he protested to his Chinese hosts, he was informed that Mr. Churchill’s grandfather had been a very influential man.  When Freud replied that his grandfather replied that his grandfather had also been a very influential man, his hosts replied, "Yes, but not as influential as Mr. Churchill's." Mr. Freud shook his head and said, “This is the first time in my entire life that I have ever been out-grandfathered.”

One Adam 12 & Dirty Harry

It would be very difficult to imagine a more striking contrast in images of American law enforcement than Officer Malloy of “One Adam 12” and Clint Eastwood’s character of Dirty Harry Callahan.  Officer Malloy was LAPD’s version of Dudley Do Right.  Dirty Harry, on the other hand – well, consider the original ad for the first Dirty Harry film featured the line “Two stone cold killers. Harry’s the one with the Badge.”  

I recently learned that Martin Milner, officer Malloy’s real life alter ego, started acting when he was in the army at Fort Ord, California and he achieved considerable success in Route 66, The Swiss Family Robinson and a number of other films until finding his role in the Jack Web production.  Ironically enough, while he was still stationed at Fort Ord, Martin Milner got to be friends with a very tall, athletic guy named Clint Eastwood; who he encouraged to pursue an acting career and the rest is history.  No word whether Milner and Eastwood ever shared a squad car.

Erin Nicole’s Good Influence

Once many years ago back when Bush 41 was president I finished a transpacific voyage when the ship I’d been teaching on, the U.S.S. Cape Cod, pulled into San Diego and I had the chance to visit with some of my favorite people in the whole world: Mark and Barbara and their beyond adorable three children.  One of the high points of that trip was when Mark did the “take-the-family-to-work” thing.  He took me and the rest of his family on a tour of Marine Recruit Training Depot San Diego where he was serving as a Chief Drill Instructor. When we were all bundled up into the van, I heard a six-year old voice sounding from the far back seat, “Your seat belt’s not fastened, Daddy.”  After a pause, I heard that voice a whole lot more stridently, “Your seat belt’s not fastened, Daddy!”  I thought, “That has got to be one of the bravest and bossiest six-year olds I have ever heard in my entire life.”

I hope Erin Nicole will be pleased to know that, more than 20 years later, every time I drive downtown on the Columbus freeway I can hear her six-year old voice in my ear making the same observation.  Even after all this time, Erin Nicole is a good influence on me.

Zsa Zsa Gabor

Zsa Zsa Gabor is known today as a punch line — one of Hollywood’s few celebrities who does not do a good impersonation of herself.” A common gag amongst speakers about to give a lecture on a mundane topic is to say, “I feel a lot like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s 9^th husband:  I know what to do, but I’m not sure if I can make it interesting.” The thing that strikes me about Zsa Zsa Gabor is that when she was born in Budapest, back in 1917, she was the subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; all under the House of Hapsburg, a regime that had lasted 300 years, but only had another 22 months to run.  All of modern history is just one lengthy lifetime long.