the finest lawyer to ever put on a ski cap in court

died today of an apparent brain tumor.

johnny cochrane was sixty eight years old and not nearly respected as he should have been for his defense of oj simpson.

some claimed that it was the jury, or the bungling by the defense, but in this age of CourtTV rarely a trial goes by where there arent big mistakes made on both sides, but even with so many cooks in the kitchen can one find much fault with Cochrane’s defense of the Juice.

so to give the best tribute i can, i give you something i posted here last summer

top ten reasons why oj is not guilty

number ten: the columbian necktie.

it was no secret that over the last 6-8 months of her life, Nicole Brown Simpson spent more time with friends like Faye Resnick and others who were involved in the typical LA nightlife scene.

Some of those “friends” included drug dealers and hookers. Those associations, OJ claims was what led to the final 911 calls. He says he faught with Nicole because he didn’t want those type of people around his children.

Most of the stab wounds on both nicole brown and ron goldman were in and around the neck.

“Ms. Simpson’s head then was pulled back, perhaps by her blond hair, as the attacker slashed her throat from left to right. The neck position at the point of the cut can be determined by the fact that no blood flowed into her windpipe.

“The cut was vicious. The knife sliced through both carotid arteries – which provide blood to the brain – nearly cut through one jugular vein and left the second jugular vein dangling by a thread.

The cut was clean.” (USA Today, 10/18/96)

This is very similar to what the defense brought up to being the trademark fatal stab wound that is found on some victims of drug-related crimes. Specifically those where the victim owed money to a drug dealer.

The idea of the Columbian Necktie or Columbian Necklace came up several times in the OJ trial.

Mark Furhman was asked by F. Lee Bailey if he had ever heard of the Columbian Necktie

Q: NO. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF A COLOMBIAN NECKLACE?

A: NO.

Q: YOU ARE HEARING THAT WORD FOR THE FIRST TIME TODAY?

A: NO. I KNOW WHAT A COLOMBIAN NECKTIE IS.

Q: COLOMBIAN NECKTIE. WHAT IS A COLOMBIAN NECKTIE, DETECTIVE FUHRMAN?

A: CUTTING SOMEBODY’S THROAT.

Q: DID YOU EVER HEAR IT CALLED A NECKLACE?

A: NO.

Q: THAT INCLUDES CUTTING THE THROAT SO SEVERELY THAT BOTH THE CAROTID ARTERIES ARE SEVERED, CORRECT?

A: I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THAT, BUT I JUST HEARD THE TERM.

Q: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY ARE SEVERED? DO YOU KNOW FROM YOUR TRAINING?

A: WELL, THE PERSON WILL BLEED PROFUSELY AND DIE.

Q: THE BLOOD PRESSURE DROPS TO ZERO AND DEATH OCCURS ALMOST IMMEDIATELY; ISN’T THAT SO?

A: I WOULD ASSUME SO.

Q: IF YOUR THROAT IS CUT THAT SEVERELY WHILE YOU ARE STANDING AND SOMEBODY IS HOLDING YOUR HEAD, YOU WOULD BE DEAD BEFORE YOU HIT THE GROUND, WOULDN’T YOU?

A: (NO AUDIBLE RESPONSE.)

Q: IF YOU KNOW?

A: I WOULD HAVE TO SPECULATE. I COULDN’T TELL YOU THAT, SIR.

read the rest here

my living will

heres how you know when you can shut down my feeding tube: when i can no longer blog.

ive been blogging in one way or another since i was a lad. we just didnt know that it was blogging, but it was.

when i got into school i would rarely pay attention.

i would write little stories for the ladies in the house to read and tell me how clever i was.

i would draw pictures next to my stories.

i would integrate current events into the fiction,

and of course it would end in a perfectly iambic couplet.

all the girlies said ho

ho ho

and now nothings any different except i dont have to draw crazy pictures and i dont have to fold my stories into little squares and pass them along.

so if the day ever comes when im hooked up to some crazy machinery and i cant type or i cant tell little tall tales then accidentally trip over my juice.

dont listen to the born-agains. if anything remind them that good Christians go to the promised land. the better place. the world of milk and honey (even though im not all that crazy about honey).

if they try to cockblock you remind them that i hated most born agains for being phony and for trying to use their faith as power when it should only be a reminder that we’re Loved and there is hope for us.

period.

believing in a higher being doesnt mean that you Know more than the next person, or that you are better than anyone, all it should mean is that you’re buying this stuff about the man upstairs.

and if the man upstairs looks down on this big blue marble and doesnt see tony pierce writing little procrastination pieces for the lovelies then something is definately wrong in denmark.

and thats when my brief candle should be blown out out

and bury my dirty bones in isla vista
so that i may hear the rattle of skateboards
and smell the smoke of burnt couches
and so i can hear frustrated students
slam down their beers and yell
fuck iambic couplets

does every canadian girl rule completely?

only got three hours of sleep last night.

which isnt all that rare. and the other night i got like ten hours of sleep so youd think itd even up, but it didnt.

usually i can totally rally and pull it off but this three hours was fuct cuz it should have been four hours but this week ive got the xbi cell phone which means if there are any disturbances in the area i get my ass woken up and even though its warm right now last night was super windy and it was nice to set my electric blanket at 3:30a as i was brushing my teeth and as i was saying my prayers i could hear the thermostat click meaning it was toasty. and it twas.

not as toasty as if there were twin runaway catholic girl runaways in my queen sized waterbed, but it was toasty nevertheless and all of the comforter was as mick jagger sang mine all mine.

the downside is the cell phone was mine all mine this morning. it rang three times before the cock crowed. and within a half hour i had the shit handled but then it was too late. a man cant just lay in bed for a half hour switching from npr to howard stern and not be extremely pissed off.

i remembered the good old days where if this had happened and i was entertaining, the young lady would do things to me that i would never dare repeat in this blog. and when she was done she would ask me if i felt better and i would say something witty and offer to make her some coffee.

but these arent the good old days these are the last days of the awkward middle period. the reason i was up all night is the same reason i went to sleep early on sunday. im in the midst of the begining of writing a book. an adult book. an xxx novel, of which ive been commissioned. easiest thing ever, no? no.

the demons are holding a convention in my head. its the craziest thing ever. man do they go off in there telling me things like,

you know theyre just gonna turn this into a porno, or several pornos, you know youre going to burn in hell for this, you know this isnt the reason that the Lord gave you whatever weirdo talents that you have. you realize that noone is going to treat this novel as anything more than pulp for old men and kids to yank off to, you know this isnt going to lead anywhere, you know you’ll get thrown right out of grad school if you get into grad school and they find out about this.

you know sonny i. lavista is the worst pen name of all.

they tag each other when they run out of bullshit to say and another demon takes over.

you know everyone knows your style. your fake ee bukowski holden caufield gobbley goop.

you know you’ll never get laid again if every woman thinks that she might just get written into your next xxx novel.

you know you cant write a novel, youve got ADD, you can barely write a blog post without being distracted in six different ways.

tag

you know that not even bukowksi wrote a xxx novel, he only wrote xxx stories and those he destroyed when he became famous.

which is a lie

the novel is set in southern illinios right around the civil war. an escaped slave thinks hes made it to canada but he got lost and has been running around in circles and finds a nice young woman whose father and brother have been fighting for the north. she gives the slave shelter and assures him that he is not in canada but he doesnt believe her because hes been lied by The Man his whole life.

she explains that she is not the man and from the sillohutte of the candlelight behind him she sees that it is he who is the man. oh yes. it is he.

he doesnt understand so they switch places in the log cabin and stands where he was standing and there he can see that thanks to the candle and her thin night gown that he can see that indeed she is very much a woman. and then realizes that she could see that he … well…

and then theres much loving. much forbidden loving. until theres a knock at the door. its the pizza man. the slave has never seen pizza before and assumes that it is the native dish of canada and as he eats the pie, the pizza boy accepts his tip from the young woman, who

you call yourself a writer? the demons yell.

its a bad deal. yes its a bad novel. nothing good will come of it. except for the money. the barrels of money. so instead of writing it i click around the web and see what everyone else is up to. but so few are up to anything, so i look at my stats, i play blogshares, i play fantasy hoops which im in the playoffs in all but one of my eight leagues, i make trades in my fantasy baseball, i answer some very nice emails and some very suggestive emails and i thank my lucky stars

and last night i did that so late at night that if i had written one page per hour i would have had a chapter done. but instead i had watched the bachelor and accomplished very little.

and now im groggy and hungry and hankering for a slice of extra cheese.

im going to the post office later today, if you want to order How To Blog, it’s $18 + $5 s/h, just email me and i will send you an invoice

lori + is you is + r&r nigga + 10:51am