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Danny Grammer was indicted by the grand jury in 2005 for multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault and indecency with a child. He pled guilty the next year and was placed on ten years’ deferred adjudication. One of the conditions of the deferred probation was that he had to serve 180 days in the county jail. He served that time day-for-day and was eventually released. He immediately secured a job at the jail upon the sheriff’s invitation. Another term of his probation required him to pay court costs of $250 within four months after being placed on probation, in addition to a $60 monthly probation fee. In other words, he was to begin making immediate payments on court costs and probation fees, even though he was sitting in jail and unable to work. At the time of his release from the county jail in July of 2006, he was already in the hold to the tune of $670.

While incarcerated, Grammer became involved with another inmate, Kristi Turner. After his release from jail, Grammer obtained the permission of his probation officer to date Turner. Grammer was not fully informed about Turner’s probationary status. He believed in good faith, as it turned out, that she had been jailed for “some hot checks” and had “done her time.” By August, Grammer and Turner were living together. They were eventually visited by Grammer’s probation officer who recognized Turner as being on felony probation. That put Grammer in technical violation of his probation. The day after the probation officer had recognized Turner and informed Grammer of her felony probation status, Grammer visited with the probation officer and explained his situation. He asked the officer to postpone reporting the technical violation and give him both time and permission to marry Turner. The probation officer agreed to defer making a report of probation violation and gave him two months to marry Turner. Grammer needed this time since he was in the process of obtaining a divorce from his present wife. Nevertheless, the probation officer turned right around and reported Turner’s technical violation of “associating” with a known felony probationer. Grammer and Turner eventually married. (more…)

As you get deeper into the football season, gambling with both fists through your local bookie (yes, I would remind my professional peers that gambling through bookies is still illegal in Texas and if convicted, constitutes a crime involving moral terpitude - that spells trouble with the Commission For Lawyer Discipline) or spending untold hours in front of the flat screen, just remember that the evidence is piling up which shows that the men who bring you this entertainment are dying by doing so.  

The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy has announced that a fifth deceased N.F.L. player, fomer Houston Oilers linebacker John Grimsley, was found to have brain damage commonly associated with boxers.  Grimsley died in February at the age of 45 after he shot himself in the chest in what police ruled an accident.  Post-mortem analysis of his brain tissue confirmed the presence of neurofibrillary tangles, a condition brought on by repeated trauma and concussion to the brain.  It affects behavior and memory.  Of the six former N.F.L. players’ brains that have been examined in this manner, Grimsley’s was the fifth to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.).  His case joins that of Andre Waters (Philadelphia Eagles) and Mike Webster (Pittsburg Steelers), two high-profile players who exhibited behaviors toward the end of their premature deaths consistent with what is commonly referred to as boxer’s dementia.  The condition can be confirmed only by post-mortem tissue analysis as X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging tests cannot detect it.  Because all five players died so young (36-50), their brains provided an opportunity to examine brain abnormalities that are very, very rare in individuals of that age without a history of repetitive brain injury. (more…)

There’s that final scene in “The Long Hot Summer” where patriarch Will Varner, played by Orson Welles, looks up at the horizon and observes that he has a thriving business, a happy family, a soon-to-be dynamic son-in-law (Ben Quick, played by Paul Newman) coming into the fold and a “good, healthy woman,” (Angela Lansbury).  What more could a man want?  Varner, smug with satisfaction, then quips as the camera begins to pan back for the culminating shot, “I might just live forever,” putting a slight emphasis on the last word.  Forever.  And that’s how I feel about Paul Newman and how I felt about Newman, especially when I read a few months ago about his cancer and pending death.  I didn’t want to think about it because he’s been with me my entire life. 

This won’t be a lengthy tribute to the man.  Rather, I’ll just talk briefly about the single film that defines how I always felt about him.  It’s the show that opens this post, “The Long Hot Summer.”  It pretty much defines my life in East Texas because when I think back on growing up in Marshall, that’s what comes to mind - those sultry summer days and nights, walking in from the langerous heat and dampness into the ice-cold houses, be it my parents’ or friends’.  It just wasn’t a long hot summer in East Texas.  It was long and hot from April to the end of October, most of the time. 

The first time I watched the movie was on late-night TV from KTBS-TV out of Shreveport.  Back in ’61 or ‘62, KTBS would always show late-night movies on the weekend.  Friday night was usually reserved for horror and monster movies, Saturday night with mainstream cinema.  I watched it all, both weeknights.  I would commandeer the TV in the living room while my parents would migrate to the TV in their bedroom.  And it was on old Channel 3 that I first watched “The Long Hot Summmer.”  The film, directed by one of the great underrated directors of all time, Martin Ritt, was shot down in southwestern Louisiana, really not far from Marshall.  Everything looks like East Texas, right down to the general store, the roads, the pine trees and speech.  Based on an amalgamation of William Faulkner stories, it crackles with intensity.  Rather than go into a synopsis, let’s just say it’s classic Southern tragedy.  But Newman is perfect as the laconic, dangerous Ben Quick, known as a “barn burner.”  In the south around the turn of the century and into post WWII years, was there anything worse than that, except the caustic, hateful label “nigger lover?”  Everyone else in the cast was good, very good.  Welles, Lansbury, Tony Franciosa, Lee Remick.  And the folks at KTBS-TV must have known they were on to a good thing because the station would show the movie just about every summer.  I was always there, in front of the screen, savoring Newman and the muggy atmosphere of the film.

I shall miss him and the other great films that come to mind.  You know the ones.  “The Hustler” (it still holds up - every scene, every line of dialog, every performance - a perfect film); “Hud” (also directed by Ritt and of course, as everyone here in the Big A knows was shot here and in Claude, Texas); “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Sting.”  I’m leaving out so many good ones, I know.  As far the underrated movies, what about “Slap Shot” as one where Newman took hold of his aging looks and that air of vulnerability and used it for maximum effect?  Or, for that matter, “Nobody’s Fool.”  Now there was an understated performance, worthy of Oscar consideration. 

Paul Newman, gone at the age of 83.  I’m up in Taos as I write this.  As I drive down through the mountains toward Albuquerque today, I’m going to think about him.  He was a man who was so comfortable in his own skin or so it seemed to me.  He knew what he was about and he put so much of the dough he made to very good use.  I know his wife will miss him terribly as will his five daughters, grandchildren, close friends and the millions of folks who feel exactly as I do.  He was supposed to live forever.  But at least we have him on film forever. 

Clarence Robinson was convicted of possession of crack cocaine back in 1994.  He was responsible for possessing approximately 206 grams of cocaine base.  After factoring in his criminal history, his guideline range was 168 to 210 months.  He was sentenced to 180 months - 15 years.  Had he been convicted of merely possessing power cocaine, his sentence would have been between 4 and 5 years. 

In March of this year, Robinson sought to take advantage of the retroactive crack amendment which effectively gives those convicted of crack cocaine cases a chance to request the trial court reconsider its original sentence, based on the 100:1 ratio which fueled sentencing guideline calculations.  He filed his own motion, attaching to it documents which showed his good behavior while in prison, listing the numerous classes he had attended and that his work as a baker is “greatly appreciated by the inmate population.”  The reports he attached also included information that he had been written up for three relatively minor disciplinary infractions and that two years after he began serving his cocaine sentence, he was convicted of perjury, although no details of the perjury conviction were provided.  He also requested a lawyer to assist him in petitioning the trial court to make his case for mitigation of sentence.

The Government responded to Robinson’s pro se, form-like motion by filing a 25-page sentencing memorandum making a bevy of arguments. (more…)

Charles Murray is a respected intellectual, author and theoretician who is employed at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank and home to many a right-wing policy wonk.  Murray need not worry about any downturn in the economy or when and if he receives a regular paycheck but we’ll get to that later.  He recently was interviewed by Deborah Solomon of the The New York Times for her regular column.  He is currently promoting his latest book, Real Education, which suggests that too many young adults are heading to four-year institutes of higher learning where they will waste their time.  They should be pursuing a career of skill labor and by that, Murray means labor that pays anywhere from $30 to $40 an hour.

Murray insists that 80 percent of those who go on to college do not have the brains or ability to understand assigned reading in the typical college textbook.  Rather than concerning themselves with theories of economics or politics (as Murray has spent his life doing), he urges these young men and women to enter “the world of work out there!”  Yes, he put the exclamation point on what he said.  It seems that whatever Mr. Murray has to say, he ends with the exclamation point.  

Granted, I think that Murray makes an excellent point even though I have questions about where he came up with his 20/80 figure for those who don’t have the capacity to read and comprehend.  But he is right when he observes that anyone can open a phone book and find a qualified surgeon but try to locate a skilled electrician or plumber.  That’s a different matter.  Now remember that Murray is the author of The Bell Curve which was caused an uproar back in 1994, the year of its publication.  There, Murray persuasively argued that ability among children varies for a number of reasons - be it genetics, environment, circumstance - and that there are many, many children laboring in public schools that simply do not have the equipment to make it in the demanding economic system in place in this country. 

Of course, this argument flew in the face of a cherished American belief: that this country is a place where we are supposed to define ourselves through acts of will; that you can be anything you set your mind on being.   This is Murray’s response to this accepted axiom: “I wonder if there is a single, solitary, real-life public school teacher who agrees with the proposition that it’s all a matter of will.”  And what is his response to your mother’s exhortation that you can do anything you set your mind to? “You’re out of touch with reality in that regard.  You have not hung around with kids who are well in the lower half of the ability distribution.” (more…)

We all know that thinking makes you miserable but what about fat?  A small study conducted in Canada has concluded that people eat more after an intellectual exercise as opposed to just sitting around quiety for the same amount of time and doing nothing, say, like watching Oprah or Law and Order. 

Researchers had fourteen female students engage in three 45-minute sessions before being asked to eat as much as they wanted at a buffet.  For one session, they rested in a sitting position.  In the next, they read a publication and then were asked to write a summary of the article.  In the third, they all participated in computer-based tests.  Even though the same amount of energy was expended in all three sessions, the women consumed, on average, more than 25 percent more calories after the intellectual exercises than after just sitting quietly.  The study controlled for habitual diet, weight, anxiety levels and other related factors. 

The explanation may be physiological.  Blood samples drawn periodically during the study showed increased levels of a stress hormone called cortisol.  There were increased fluctuations in plasma glucose and insulinelevels duirng and after mental workouts.  Cortisol, related to glucacorticoids, are essential to the formation of memory and in particular, long-term memory.  They play a central role in those kind of memories that one keeps for the rest of one’s life.  A good example of this is the ability of someone to call up the exact time, place and circumstances existing when they heard of President Kennedy’s assassination or the Challenger explosion.  These neurotransmitters help create the permanent “snapshot” in the brain and allow us to retrieve those vivid memories at a moment’s notice. 

Had the opportunity last night to watch an episode of “Weeds” on Showtime and was left wondering what is the deal with this series.  I mean, given its popularity, my question is why?  You have an amoral woman, steeped in the drug trade and who is responsible for the deaths of at least two people at the hands of ruthless drug cartels.  Then you have the woman’s two children, one who has just turned 18 but who is fully enmeshed in his mother’s drug dealings and who hopes to buy a bit of land down in Mexico so he can just “take it easy and grow some pot - and only sell to friends and associates.”  The other child, who looks to be about 14 or so, has just figured out that if you can’t get away from your druggie mother and brother, then you might as well join ‘em.  Last night’s episode ended with his handing out small baggies of the green stuff to his buds at school.  He looked to be very popular with the girls. 

I grant you the first year of the series was fairly interesting as the series developed the backdrop to its theme - a young suburban mom left exposed to the vagaries of life with two minor children after the untimely death of her husband, having to turn to the marijuana business as a means to keep her family together, not to mention having to stay current on the house mortgage.  But her descent into a life of crime without a trace of misgiving, and, in particular, her direct responsibility for the death of a DEA agent who had the bad luck to fall in love with her (all the while shielding her nefarious activities from his own people) left me empty.  I realize this is all show biz but aren’t viewers the least bit disturbed by the main character’s indifference to the death she contributed to?  Even with truly despicable characters in fiction as well as film, it’s impossible to connect, much less want to understand, unless that individual has the slightest trace of vulnerability about them.  That’s what made Tony Soprano so damn compelling.  But this.  The sooner our hockey mom gets carted off to prison, the better.  And put the kids on probation.

For anyone who has visited my office, you will notice the early 60’s Royal typewriter sitting on a side table to the left of my desk.  Although I rarely pound on a single key these days (usually just to fill out the occasional tab for a file folder), there is no doubt that it will stay exactly where it is.  It’s still in excellent condition and looks great.  I learned how to touch type on a contraption that looked eerily like the one to my left as I type this.  Back in those days, you had to strike those keys with a moderate degree of force.  There was really no other way to learn how to touch type or to pass the tests.  I remember it well: I took the typing course in the summer of 1966.  It’s one of the very few things that I can do competently with my hands.  My old typing instructor, Mr. Stimson, would be proud of me because I can still roll along at about 90-100 words a minute.  But it’s nothing compared to my daughter’s generation who came out the chute pecking at a keyboard.  Shoot, they don’t even call it typing anymore - “keyboarding” is more like it.  And she’s at around 120 words a minute.  But to the main point. 

Mr. Stimson, if he is still alive, might be proud of me as a former student, but he would have loved to have spent time with Martin Tytell, otherwise known as “Mr. Typewriter, New York.”  His unmatched knowledge of typewriters was a gift to various spies who served in World War II.  His expertise was also called upon by the lawyers who represented Alger Hiss, charged with perjury and spying for the Communists as well as helping out tens of thousands of old-fashioned typists who refused to succomb fully to the demands of the computer age.  Among the famous that he helped with their Royals, Underwoods and Olivettis were writer Dorothy Parker, novelist Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate), newsman David Brinkley, journalist Harrison Salisbury and Dwight Eisenhower.  Sadly, I read about his death yesterday in the Bronx.  He was 94 years of age.

When Mr. Tytell retired in 2000, he left behind 70 years of expertise and practice on manual typewriters.  For most of that time, he rented, repaired, reconfigured and restored typewriters in a second-floor shop in Lower Manhattan where his sign dangled outside and read: “Psychoanalysis for Your Typewriter.”  His firm, the Tytell Typewriter Company, catered to all kinds of customers, famous and pedestrian.  He labored seven days a week, dressed in a white lab coat.  He worked on typewriters that could reproduce dozens of different alphabets for as many as 145 different languages and dialects.  And that included Farsi, Serbo-Croation, Thai, Korean, Coptic, Sanskrit (Sanskrit for God’s sake!), ancient and modern Greek.  He kept 2 million typefaces in stock.  He was so well known at his obscure craft that letters simply addressed to “Mr. Typewriter, New York” were delivered directly to his office. (more…)

Herman Wouk, 93, the author of The Caine Mutiny (1951), The Winds of War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978), is to be honored with the first lifetime achievement award for fiction writing from the Library of Congress.  Among those who will help honor Wouk are Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, New York Times columnist William Safire and musician Jimmy Buffet.  Participants, including Wouk himself, will read excerpts from his works on Wednesday at the Library of Congress, a source from which Wouk drew much of his materials for his wartime fiction. 

Wouk’s best known work, The Caine Mutiny, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, has one of the best courtroom sequences ever penned.  That portion of the book was later adapted for the stage, titled “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” which was first produced and performed at the Plymouth Theatre in New York City on January 20, 1954.  The defense lawyer, Lt. Barney Greenwald, assigned to defend the “mutineer” Lt. Stephen Maryk, was portrayed by none other than Henry Fonda.  The next year, when the book was made into a major motion picture, Humphrey Bogart played Lt. Com. Philip Francis Queeg with Jose Ferrer as defense lawyer Greenwald.  The court-martial sequence in the film is stellar.  Of minor note from the Broadway play: among the seven officers who made up the members of the court during the court-martial (all non-speaking roles) was a young man from Norman, Oklahoma by the name of Jim Bumgarner.  He later went on to fame and fortune in Hollywood as James Garner.  His work on the play cast was his first fling in show business.

And even at 93, Wouk isn’t quite yet finished.  He completed his latest novel just a mere three years ago.  Titled “A Hole in Texas,” it was inspired by the aborted Texas Superconducting Super Collider project south of Dallas-Ft. Worth. 

The Los Angeles Times ran an article last Wednesday, September 3 (fitting that it was on my birthday) about the top 25 L.A. movies in the past 25 years.  I culled out of the bunch those movies listed which I thought were superior.  Here were the survivors. 

1.  To Live and Die in L.A. (some say the L.A. movie) (1985)

2.  Less Than Zero (Robert Downey’s first major film) (1987)

3.  L.A. Story (a very funny Steve Martin film) (1991)

4.  The Player (like Sunset Blvd., a great film about film) (1992)

5.  Boogie Nights (it gets better the 2nd and 3rd time) (1997)

6.  Jackie Brown (Robert Forster was never better) (1997)

I’ll think on these and if there’s anymore to add (which I’m sure there are), I’ll append them and explain why.  You can understand my fascination with Los Angeles if you’ve spent any time there at all.