Tuesday, February 21, 2006

JURY DUTY H-E-L-L...

Today was my first day of carrying out my patriotic duty by serving JURY DUTY. Now part of me couldn't help but to get excited about the prospect of serving on an actual jury. I could hear sounds of "LAW and ORDER" playing in the back of my mind as I made my journey to 111 Centre Street. However, as I got closer to my destination, the sad reality that this was going to be more mundane than I thought was starting to set in.

The first clue that indicated what was in store for me happened when I entered the Juror Waiting Room. It was a rather large room with what seemed to be hundreds of drab-looking blue chairs. I was one of the first to arrive, so I made it a point to sit myself strategically across from the main doors. This was so that I could check out the chicks as they came in, without looking obvious in doing so (hey I gotta entertain myself somehow).

What takes place next was a lesson in pure torture. Let me run down my day for you:

8:45AM: The room fills up with prospective jurors like myself and a Court Officer named WALTER begins to walk us through the process. A real wisenheimer, he kept our attention by peppering us with witty banter in-between the explanation of rules. Exciting stuff.

9:04AM: WALTER then puts in a video about the history of the jury system in the United States. Did you know that in the old days back in Europe, whenever someone was accused of a crime, the accused went through what they called "Trial by Ordeal", where the accused would have to endure various tasks to prove his innocence. For example, the accused would have his hands and feet bound tightly and thrown into a river. If after a certain amount of time, he floated up to the surface, he was considered innocent (or was it guilty?). In any case, we've come a long way since the "Trial by Ordeal" days. Apparently the justice system takes the duties of the jury pretty seriously.

9:25AM: WALTER takes roll call and collects everyone's summons. Now the waiting begins.

9:26AM: I make one of many trips to the bathroom as my coffee starts to kick in.

10:05AM: A court officer comes in and announces that a case is ready to go to trial. WALTER begins to randomly select what seems to be a thousand names. Nearly 3/4 of the room is called. I am not one of them. I settle back into my chair and continue to read THE NEW YORK POST.

10:47AM: I take a few minutes to surf the internet. There is a room with a few laptops available for the jurors to surf the web, check emails, etc. Thank god for that. However, it's set up so that you can only spend maybe 20 minutes on the net before it shuts off. Pain in the ass. I did get a really nice email from MRS. DON (the wife of the DON); She shared with me some good stuff about our friend (and her cousin), who recently passed away (I spoke about it last week). It was very touching and I found myself getting a bit misty on the inside (that's the second time she did this to me in less than a month - damn you woman!).

11:10AM: Still no cases, I go into the TV room to watch some Olympic action. Now there is a special room for the jurors to relax and watch TV. However, there are only four channels to choose from: NY1, MSNBC, CNN and FOX NEWS CHANNEL. Luckily for me, the Olympics were being televised on MSNBC. What sucked though was the fact that the channel feeds came from a special satellite which carried the images via MPEG format. So I'm trying to watch some hockey and while the sounds came in clearly, the images were very choppy; the equivalent of trying to watch a music video on your computer using a 56k phone line. AAAAAARRRRGH!

11:45AM: I found myself snoring in the TV room, having driven everyone else out by my loud buzzsaw. I woke up for a moment, looked around, shrugged my shoulders and went back to sleep.

12:30PM: WALTER releases us for lunch. I have until 2PM to enjoy freedom. A visit to QUIZNOS, some sight-seeing and another coffee break and I find myself rushing back to the JURY ROOM to make a deposit, if you know what I mean.

2:00PM: Back to the JURY ROOM, I take my place again in the TV room, to watch some more pixelated hockey. Now I am hoping to get called, just to break the monotony. It doesn't happen.

4:00PM: WALTER returns and says that there won't be anymore cases called today. Go home and we get to do this again tomorrow. Yippee.

I'm not sure if I am going to last another day. God help me.

GUESS WHAT???

Our own AMERICAN PSYCHO will be guest bartending this Friday night, starting at 6:30pm. To make sure that each of you will be there to catch his groove thang, he submitted this photo to get you in the spirit of the "thang":



So make sure you stop by to show him some support!

Next Tuesday is PHAT TUESDAY, which means MARDI GRAS time, Third and Long style! Look for various events taking place leading up to the big bash next Tuesday. It's always a great time!

That's it for now. I have some catching up to do before getting ready for another day in JURY DUTY HELL.

NUFF SAID