These are from a book called “Disorder in the American Courts,” and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes .
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
__________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He’s twenty, much like your IQ.
____________________________ _______________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
________________________________________
ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honour, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
__________________________________ _________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the circus was in town, I’m going with male.
_____ _______________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
________________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WIT NESS : The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: I believe so. If not, he was by the time I finished.
___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
_____________________________________

And the best for last:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

So, like a complete idiot, I didn’t snap any shots from the stage when I played the first round of the Best Acoustic Showcase for the Orange County Music Awards, however, luckily, some people with professional camera equipment did.  So through the magic of my blog, I thought I would share a couple of shots from January 26th at The Gypsy Den in Santa Ana.  I can honestly say that every musician killed that night and it was an absolute pleasure sharing the stage with my friends Kurt Hunter, Brittany Bontempo, and Marc B. It was also awesome to make new friends The Vacuum Bell, I hate you just kidding, and some of the members of Canvas.

For more coverage of this year’s Orange County Music Awards, you can visit the following links:

http://www.ocmusicawards.com/
http://www.ocmusicawards.com/blog/

Thank you to everyone that came out—I think the OCMA’s estimated that there was around 225 people that came out to support that night!  I hope you all had fun.

Can you find yourself in some of the crowd shots? It’s like “Where’s Waldo,” but without the stripped shirt.

- Mike

ALSO

Welcome to my first installment of bedroomCLASSICS: This is a brand new song called “Latchkey Kid” and it is going to be on my next album which I am currently in the process of writing. I debuted it at The 2010 Orange County Music Awards Showcase a week or so ago—I wish I could adequately describe the pleasure, gratification, and magic of having 200 people sing along to a song. Perhaps we all have a bit of Latchkey Kid inside of us—or perhaps not. Either way, I hope you like it: I’ve included the words below the video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q36EimurQs

Latchkey Kid

Words and Music: Mike Vitale

Coloring books when I was nine
Anything that I could do to pass the time
Finished up my homework after I go home from school
Built a blanket fort in my living room

Set the oven to 400 degrees myself
Perched up on the countertop to reach a kitchen shelf
It’s dinner time, and my parents are nowhere to be seen
So corn dogs and fish sticks are my routine

I’m a Latchkey Kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in
I’m a Latchkey Kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in

Waiting by the phone for my parents to call
Staring at our family portrait hanging on the wall
My daddy says no TV if stay up too late
Too bad he aint here to regulate

I’m a Latchkey Kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in
I’m a Latchkey Kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in

Sometimes my father would come home late
And my mother would be drunk by then, smell perfume, and throw a dinner plate
No one to read me story when I tuck myself into bed
So I dream of love
I dream of love
and then start my day again

I’m a latchkey kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in
I’m a latchkey kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in
I’m a latchkey kid
I’m a latchkey kid
I’m a latchkey kid

Latchkey Kid
Words and Music:  Mike Vitale

Coloring books when I was nine
Anything that I could do to pass the time
Finished up my homework after I go home from school
Built a blanket fort in my living room

Set the oven to 400 degrees myself
Perched up on the countertop to reach a kitchen shelf
It’s dinner time, and my parents are nowhere to be seen
So corn dogs and fish sticks are my routine

I’m a Latchkey Kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in

Waiting by the phone for my parents to call
Staring at our family portrait hanging on the wall
My daddy says, “no TV” if stay up too late
Too bad he aint here to regulate

I’m a Latchkey Kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in
I’m a Latchkey Kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in

Sometimes my father would come home late
And my mother would be drunk by then, smell perfume, and throw a dinner plate
No one to read me story when I tuck myself into bed
So I dream of love
I dream of love
and then start my day again

I’m a latchkey kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in
I’m a latchkey kid, and nobody cares about the trouble that I’m gettin’ in
I’m a latchkey kid
I’m a latchkey kid
I’m a latchkey kid

Now, at this point in my tale, it’s important to point out that I had just gotten paid from my job as a shipping/receiving specialist at the local sports store (I’m not sure what was so special about the shipping and receiving there), so this situation found me with a large fold of money in my pocket.  As I gingerly thumbed through the half-folded earnings (from my days spent counting the contents of boxes full of blank t-shirts) it later occurred to me that maybe that maneuver of mine was not so smart, mind you, in the present company of our new homeless friend; this realization (especially) became increasingly apparent in the company of a starved glare fixated on the contents of my hand.  Having traversed through a cornucopia of twenty-dollar bills in order to arrive, at last, at several smaller dead presidents, my fingers finally settled slowly on three or four one dollar bills; I hand him my small Sally Struthers’ Donation to his self-serving humanitarian effort with a smile that would have illuminated a candle-lit-rural home during the turn of the 20th century with the electricity of my contribution; and I suppose I wished he would have felt something like that farmer turning on his porch light for the first time, illuminating that slow and cold early morning jaunt between his house and the dairy stall to milk Bertha.  No such luck though. As it turns out, I was Bertha, and he could care less how either of us had arrived at that milking stall.  What I received instead was a slow pause, a long look at the new shade of green in his right hand, and then a strong and cold stare back with the expression of someone who was just handed a Ziploc bag full of diarrhea.  He sort of mumbles something under his breath and then exclaims with the passion of a true professional panhandler: “Is that it?”

There’s nothing quite like someone looking a gift horse in the mouth.  I then handed him a ten-dollar bill before he said one of the most alarming things in the history of my existence on this, sometimes, cold and dark planet, “You better pray that I don’t see you again tonight.”  The words rolled off of his mouth with the grim expression of someone who felt the world had turned a cold shoulder on him a long time ago, and he was out to get what wasn’t coming to him willingly.  His intentions with that phrase were veiled in a Wizard of Oz-type mystery and I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant with such a cryptic response to what I thought was a kind gesture.  Did he mean that he would beat me down and rob me blind if he saw me again OR was it a joke to express the fact that he thought I was a pushover?  Either way, it wasn’t meant to be flattering and I felt the sting of an open hand across my face, as I had been bitch slapped by his parting words.

This experience tarnished my outlook on contributing to the community for a long time.  Now, it’s not to say that I haven’t given money to someone on the street in the meanwhile: quite the opposite.  I just find myself exercising a lot more scrutiny (if you can’t already tell by the tone of my story) and I’m ashamed that this is the case.  Yet, exclusive of the circumstances described above, I had an experience yesterday that reminded me of how beautiful giving can be.

I was outside of Ralph’s, in the parking lot (on my way to use the Coin Star machine inside the store) when I saw a woman, her adolescent child, and small puppy sitting in the back of a Chevy Trailblazer hatchback.  The mother was holding a sign that said, “Stranded without gas, food or money.  I just want to get home to Texas.  Please help.”  I saw that her car had Texas license plates, so I handed her a few dollars shyly and started to walk away; she tried to thank me as I headed towards the entrance of Ralph’s, but like a complete jerk, I kept walking (I wish that I had a do-over for that moment).  The Coin Star machine inside the store faced towards the parking lot and as I was cashing in my change, I noticed that her dire situation changed dramatically within the short amount of time I was inside the store.  She had several people walk up to her and hand her money.  I thought more on what I had done (walking away like that when she was trying to thank me) and decided to strike up a conversation with her and find out her story before I went to grab something to eat.  In our conversation, I introduced myself and found out that she and her daughter were planning on moving to California (as I could see from their car full of possessions), but that it didn’t work out and she “just wanted make her way back home to Texas.”  She explained to me how this was her third day sitting outside of Ralph’s asking for help.  She said that the last two days of asking for assistance had brought her nothing but empty stares, or worse yet, not even a glance from the people who passed her by, but that her luck had changed just a moment ago when I handed her a few dollars.  She told me that a complete stranger came up after me and handed her a $100 bill shortly after I walked into the store.  She had a fist full of money that she was clutching at with a swimming desperation and started to sob, not from pain, but from joy.  She thanked me a told me that God was with me.  Just as she did so, another woman stopped in her Lexus and handed me $20 to give to her.

Perhaps the world isn’t such a cold place after all, and that the people who need help, still get it.  This goes out to Matilda and her family.  I wish her a safe trip home.

- Mike