• A Year Without Holidays

    When I was looking back at 2012, I noticed I didn’t celebrate many holidays last year. It made me realize that holidays serve as anchors and when you don’t celebrate them, it’s harder to notice the passage of time. Instead, the weeks just blend together.

    In school, our lives were filled with anchors – the start of the semester, due dates for papers, exams, mid-semester break, between semester breaks, internships, and the holidays acknowledged by the school (Martin Luther King Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, etc.). These somewhat continue to influence your life when you have kids. When you work for a traditional company where you work in an office, the days the company is closed for holidays are the anchors (Martin Luther King Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans’ Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s).

    I work for myself so I declare the holidays the company celebrates with a day off. In my first year of business, the main weekday I didn’t work was my birthday. That is a tradition I intend to continue. When I did a summer internship with the Army JAG, the commanding officer in the office required his people to take off their birthday if they were single or their anniversary if they were married. I thought that was a great rule.

    Captain Kirk Birth StoneI recently realized that most holidays aren’t important to me, and thus, I don’t celebrate them. I don’t drink, so the traditional drinking holidays do nothing for me (New Year’s, St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo). I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day because I don’t need Hallmark to tell me when to tell someone I love them. I’m not religious so celebrating Easter seems sacrilegious. I enjoy my friends and family so I’ll use Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day to hang out with them – but even then I prefer low-key celebrations. I do send Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards to my parents and call them on these Hallmark holidays. I’ve never been into Halloween so I tend to ignore it unless I’m attending a costume-required event. My family Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations are awesome, but even then I like that they’re mellow occasions. If I’m surrounded by too much fanfare, that’s not really fun for me.

    I like my smaller dorky celebrations – like visiting an outer space themed restaurant on the Future Birthdate of Captain Kirk and getting together with people to eat pie on Pi Day. The other big events on my calendar are things like Ignite Phoenix and flash mobs with Improv AZ. These aren’t really anchors because their dates aren’t fixed, but those are probably the closest things to anchors I have.

    Sometimes I wonder if not celebrating holidays makes me a scrooge, but I think it makes me an introvert who doesn’t need Hallmark, calendars, or societal pressure to know what days are important to me. I don’t mind if you celebrate holidays; they’re just not for me.

  • Is That Legal – Itsy Bitsy Spider Prank

    Spider by vtsr from Flickr

    Today, my friend Heather posted a link to the video of Sketch Empire’s Itsy Bitsy Spider Prank on Improv AZ’s Facebook wall. I laughed so hard. It was a great way to start the day.

    It looks like this prank took place in a mall. One prankster on an upper floor would lower a big spider on a string down in front of an unsuspecting person below and another prankster would film them freaking out. It’s simple, but funny when you get over-the-top reactions.

    One unsuspecting mall patron didn’t think it was funny. After being scared by the spider, he immediately spotted the cameraman across the way and demanded that he delete the footage of him.  He threatened to call the police to make the pranksters delete it.

    Is it Illegal to Scare People with Giant Fake Spiders?
    I think it’s unlikely that someone would be arrested or cited for a simple practical joke, especially one that lasts only a matter of seconds. When the motive is to be funny, not malicious, I have trouble finding criminal fault.

    I could see a situation, however, where someone gets scared by the spider and falls backwards in fright and breaks their wrist when they fall. In that situation, the pranksters are the direct cause of the fall and should be financially liable for the person’s injuries.

    Could it Ever be a Crime?
    Yes. The law generally criminalizes offensive touching of another person or putting a person in fear of offensive touching. If the pranksters touch someone with the spider or put a reasonable person in fear of being touched by the spider, they could be charged with assault and/or battery depending on the applicable state law.

    Did the Guy’s Argument that the Pranksters Invaded his Personal Space have Merit?
    Probably not. In general, a person does not have an expectation of privacy in their whereabouts in public. Our movements are videotaped all the time by security cameras. A person with a smartphone or flip is just one of many cameras on us any time we’re in public.

    If the mall had a policy against videotaping on the premises, the patron might have had a legitimate expectation of privacy while he was there, but I don’t know of any mall that doesn’t have security cameras.

    You do have a privacy right related to the commercialization of your image. If the pranksters are making money off that video, the guy might have an argument that the video interfered with that right, but still couldn’t prohibit the shooting of the video itself.

    Could the Pranksters get in Trouble with the Mall?
    It depends. Malls are private property and the mall cops have the responsibility to keep the peace. If they caught the pranksters scaring people with a giant spider, they would have the authority to tell them stop.

    Some malls have rules that prohibit patrons from taking pictures or shooting videos inside the mall. If that’s the rule at this mall, the pranksters could be told to stop filming or told to leave.

    I think the Itsy Bitsy Spider Prank is hilarious and pretty harmless. I think their biggest issue will be not getting caught by the mall cops if they continue to do it. Improv AZ learned the hard way that even when you think you’re taking all the proper precautions and are willing to leave upon request, the mall cops can still freak out and call the real cops, which isn’t fun at the time but makes for great YouTube footage.

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  • The best thing I did in law school was the 2009 No Pants Light Rail Ride in Phoenix, Arizona. The people I met there opened the doors to the opportunities that made me the lawyer and the person I am today.

    Photo by Jamey Peachy

    Improv Everywhere has been doing the No Pants Subway Ride since 2002. In preparation for the 2009 ride, they invited everyone to organize No Pants Rides on the same day in cities all over the world. Jeff Moriarty conspired with a small group of his friends to do a ride on the newly opened light rail in Phoenix. I was a first-year law student and really a nobody in my school and the greater legal community. I didn’t know Jeff back then, but I saw the event on Facebook and signed up to do it with some of my friends.

    On the day of the ride, all of my friends who were supposed to do the No Pants Ride with me chickened out. I wasn’t surprised. I said, “You guys all suck. I’m going without you” and I headed out to Tempe to meet my fellow pantsless riders. I figured Jeff had to be a cool guy for organizing the ride, so I purposely stood next to him on the ride and chatted all the way to our final destination.

    The rest is history. I can show you, in 7 connections or less, how participating in the 2009 No Pants Ride led to some of my best professional opportunities and experiences.

    No Pants Ride >>> Establishing Myself as a Legal Expert

    • Many of the people at the 2009 No Pants Ride are involved in blogging. This inspired me to have a blog.
    • Jeff Moriarty helped me create UndeniableRuth.com in January 2010.
    • I wrote, and still write, weekly posts about legal issues.
    • My posts demonstrated that I have a unique voice and competence in certain areas of law.
    • I parlayed my expertise into opportunities to write dozens of guest blog posts; provide quotes for news articles and blogs; participate in TV, radio, and podcast interviews; and give presentations at conferences.

    No Pants Ride >>> Sponsor A Law Kid  

    • I met Jeff at the 2009 No Pants Ride.
    • Jeff is the creator of Ignite Phoenix. He encouraged me to apply to be an Ignite presenter.
    • I was selected for Ignite Phoenix #5 to present Frosting the Law.
    • Kade Dworkin was one of my fellow presenters at Ignite Phoenix #5.
    • Kade had a podcast in 2010 called Meet My Followers where he interviewed his Twitter followers.
    • One of Kade’s guests was Jason Sadler, founder of I Wear Your Shirt.
    • I Wear Your Shirt inspired me to create Sponsor A Law Kid, that funded part of my final semester of law school in 2011.

    No Pants Ride >>> Paid Blogger for Attorney at Work

    • A group of us from the 2009 No Pants Ride founded Improv AZ to continue to do flash mobs and pranks in Phoenix.
    • Planning events with Improv AZ sparked my interest in flash mob law.
    • I asked Ari Kaplan whether this might be a viable niche.
    • Ari used my interest in an article for Law Practice Magazine in the fall of 2009.
    • The editor of the magazine, Mark Feldman, loved it. He continued to follow me and blog.
    • When Mark created Attorney at Work with Joan Feldman and Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, they invited me to be one of their professional bloggers in 2011.

    And that’s the tip of the iceberg. I can show how the No Pants Ride led to making some of my best professional connections, writing my first book, developing an interest in podcasting, and meeting some of the most wonderful people in my life.

    The 2012 Global No Pants Ride is this Sunday, January 8th in at least 56 cities. If there’s a ride near you, you should go. You never know what will come out of it.

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