I had jury duty today. It is understandable that I, King of All Jewish Baseball, would be asked to judge the public and restore order to our society. But I don’t have time for this. I am in the throws of preparing for our trip to Jupiter. Thankfully, I was released at the end of the day and told I will not be asked to rule the land again in the form of jury duty for at least 8 years. But I will maintain, before moving on, after having spent so much time this summer in the holiest of holy governmental institutions– namely the DMV and the Kings County Courthouse – Where are the rich people?
Everyone at jury duty appeared to be poor, and not from America. Does Janet Jackson, as a citizen of the United States, dutifully serve on a jury of her peers every 8 years? Where, exactly, does Donald Trump go to renew his license?
Today, like at the DMV, it was like a poor-man’s (literally) United Nations. Granted, Brooklyn– New York City in general, is a diverse place– maybe the most diverse, but we the [poor and freshly arrived] people, always, not without irony, seem disproportionately represented at what can be society’s shittiest landmarks; hospitals, courts, the dreaded DMV.
We arrived at 8am and neatly and nervously shuffled through metal detectors into the jurors room on the 2nd floor, our holding pen, a cathedral to red tape, an ergonomically sound but unexciting wooden room the size of a high-school gym lined with rows of suprisingly comfortable leather seats and large TVs high on the walls. By mid-afternoon, just 6 hours later, what started out as a house of order, the very home of the well-oiled machinery of our justice system, looked more like a refugee camp, or the Springfield Bus Station. Exhausted with boredom, representatives from every nation on earth were sitting, laying, and propping themselves up against whatever they could find. A man slept on the floor under his seat using a copy the the New York Times as a pillow. A muslim woman sat against the wall staring at the ground probably wondering if she would ever get out of there and see her family again. A spontaneous black market had formed and Cheeze-Its from the 3rd floor vending machine were clandestinely being sold at 40 times their normal value. I was 107 pages into Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, when my will finally gave-out and I joined the meek and went vertical on the bench I had been until then sitting on and I fell asleep for a bit.
Minutes, maybe hours, later, suddenly, without explanation, at 4pm, after a grueling day of waiting, the few of us still living, the survivors, were dismissed. I will say this, lastly, before moving on to matters of baseball and radio broadcasts, after witnessing the daily operations first-hand of our judicial system, I have no better understanding of it than I did before. Also like at the DMV, it seems to be the singular intention of those in-the-know, the people who work there (god bless ’em – it could not be easy), to control you with confusion and give you as little information as possible. I do not know why I was dismissed. I am just happy that it is so.
And now, onto things more relevant to this blog than civic duty: Baseball.
It is Tuesday, Sept. 4th. We congregate in Florida in 5 days. What I normally convey to you with words and images, that is, what is going on with the team and with my life, I will today share with you in the form of noises. Specifically, the audio from my radio appearance on Israel Sports Radio last week. And also the audio of Youk’s interview the week before where he announces towards the end that he will play for Team Israel in the 2013 WBC if we can win the qualifier. And also of Coach Green’s and Ausmus’ interviews on the same show. All told, nearly 2 hours of all the Jewish Baseball talk you can handle. Big thanks to the guys at “Louis Live” on Israel Sports Radio for the MP3’s.
Nate Fish
http://soundcloud.com/king-of-jewish-baseball/nate-fish-israel-sports-radio
Kevin Youkilis
http://soundcloud.com/king-of-jewish-baseball/louis-live-with-kevin-youkills
Shawn Green
http://soundcloud.com/king-of-jewish-baseball/shawn-green-on-israel-sports
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