Famous impressions
Did you miss me? OK, so you probably didn't know I was out of town. I just spent several days at a conference of journalists, lawyers and judges involved in high-profile cases. I have a lot of things (i.e., e-mail and news and a recording of "Desperate Housewives") to catch up on, so here's a stream-of-consciousness excerpt of my impressions about a few of the attendees.Linda Deutsch, naturally, was the coolest person there. Yes, I'm biased because she's my cousin and because she got me into the invitation-only conference. But I'm not so very biased, because when she introduced me to people as her cousin, word began to spread. Before long, people knew who I was just because they'd heard of the family connection between us. And then when she went on an eloquent tirade directed at Thomas Mesereau during a panel they were both on, it was fantastic.
Speaking of Mesereau, the guy who represented Michael Jackson was more down-to-earth than one might expect. Mark Geragos (Scott Peterson's defense attorney), however, was exactly what I'd expected, though he didn't stay long enough for me to see much more of him. Peterson's prosecutors, Rick Distaso (now a judge) and Birgit Fladager (who's running for District Attorney) were genuinely nice and friendly.
Actually, just about everyone was very nice and friendly, with a healthy sense of humor thrown in. The judge in Robert Blake's criminal case was a sweet lady, the guy who prosecuted the Washington D.C. sniper made me want to adopt him as another grandfather, and Gerald Schwartzbach (Robert Blake's attorney, who's called Gerry outside of the professional stuff) had some hilarious one-liners and poked fun at himself. I think the hilarity award, however, would have to go to Judge Hiller Zobel, whose bow ties and age belied the endless jokes that kept coming -- even while he retained every word spoken and had some very intelligent insights.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Linda wasn't the only well-known journalist there, and there were also a number of other people in high-up jobs dealing with high-profile cases I'm sure you've heard of (Jeffrey Dahmer, the Green River Killer, NBA star Jayson Williams, Zacarias Moussaoui).
Anyway, it was a good conference, and I came out of it feeling inspired. And I came away with more perspective.
Posted by Layla at 8:03 PM, October 11, 2005
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