* I know lawyers who get tired of fighting all the time at work and want to get into mediation instead. I see the law profession, like all professions, profoundly shaping personalities. People who fight all day at work as lawyers do often fight over little things during their off-hours as well and I feel like I’m a defendant in a law court when I deal with them. I’m curious how your profession has shaped your personality. For instance, by choosing the profession of writer, I spend a lot more time thinking about my feelings, memories and motivations than I would have if I had become an economics professor as I earlier intended.
* My mind is a steel trap when it comes to what people owe me, but it is a sieve when it comes to what I owe others.
* Wife to her husband (a friend of mine): “You don’t have any friends.”
Husband: “I have lots of friends.”
Wife: “They’re all men.”
Husband: “If I had a female friend, I’d be ****ing her.”
* I saw a friend from childhood Friday who told me to wait until the second date before I said, “Politicial opinions for 99% of women are just fashion statements.” He thought it was a demeaning statement about women. I thought it just meant that our brains are different. Men are more prone to abstract thought and are better at things like spatial thinking and parallel parking. Women are better at reality, raising kids, adapting…
* “Each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world–so ordained by some almighty force–would make not that individual but his group . . . the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles.” (Tom Wolfe) I grew up the son of a theologian and was taught that theology was the greatest thing in life. I became a marathoner and learned that running was the greatest thing in life. I moved on to journalism and learned that scoops were the greatest thing in life. I moved on to girls and learned that girls were the greatest thing in life. I converted to Judaism and learned that God’s law was the greatest thing in life. “Act so that if the maxim became a universal law for all rational beings, your group must be seen as best.”
* “The BA is the work of the devil. We have made this meaningless degree the badge of first-class citizenship.” (Charles Murray)
* A devastating book (The Commission: WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT 9/11) that opened my mind and angered me about President Bush’s incompetence. Richard Clarke was on the side of the angels and I didn’t see it at the time because I was such a partisan Republican. Then George W. Bush destroyed the Republican party and I had to rethink some things.
* As people become more religious, they tend to get more boring (if the religion focuses outside of this world). There’s this “Christian glaze” that many born agains get.
* A friend was telling me about going to a Jewish singles event hosted by a female Reform rabbi about 30 years ago in Malibu and Ron Jeremy shows up with some floozy (Traci Lords?) and word gets around and the rabbi tells him he has to leave. And Ron holds out this big cake he bought at Canters Deli and says, “But I brought a cake!” And the rabbi makes him leave.
I was on a date at Jerry’s Deli around 1 am Sunday morning in July of 2000 with the love of my life and as we’re walking out, I hear a voice yelling my name. It’s Ron Jeremy. My date waits to be introduced but I don’t introduce her so she goes to the bathroom and we meet up later outside and she asks why I didn’t introduce her and I said, ‘He’s kinda sleazy.” It was own shame over my life that I wanted to escape by blaming Ron.
I last saw Ron in 2011 at a premiere at Warner Brothers. He played Hava Nagila on his harmonica for me.
