Four Hour Celebrity Countdown

Chatting with my mother (via cellphone) while driving home from work today (hands-free headpiece), she informs me that my horoscope was interesting today. ("Really? You read my horoscope?" Apparently, she does -- when the horoscopes are on the same page as the crossword.)

And, according to her local paper, today I am to have "an impact on the life of a celebrity."

My first thought was that I'd better drive extra carefully, because I imagine the most likely way I'll impact the life of a celebrity is doing 70 mph down the 210.

Well, I made it home with the A-List intact, leaving me with less than four hours to have an impact on a celebrity's life.

What was kinda funny about it is that my mother and I each had completely different takes on how what I do affects the lives of the rich and famous. I immediately thought "my day job," while she immediately thought "my evening job."

Yes, yes, I'm an A-student by day and a hooker by nig--

No, wait, that's not it. Lawyer by day; theatre critic by night. (Less, er, glamorous, I know.)

Now, as a theatre critic, I do, on occasion, review the work of famous people -- although, since when celebrities do stage work, they generally do it someplace other than an under 99-seat theatre in L.A., my reviews (which are written for a website, as opposed to one of the major newspapers) are not what they stay up late on opening night to read. Don't get me wrong, I'm quite pleased with my place in the L.A. theatrical community. (And, on occasion, I'll get some feedback indicating a show was improved by something I said, which generally makes me soar for about a week.) But one of my reviews impact the life of a celebrity? Not Bloody Likely.

As a lawyer, though -- I rarely blog about my work. In fact, I pretty much never blog about my work. I'm a happy little cog in the California wheels of justice (I would be a happier cog if we didn't have mandatory furloughs). But I'm also an anonymous cog; no documents ever leave the office with my signature on them (and I'm totally cool with that). I'm a part of the process of creating judicial opinions which interpret the law. Sometimes the cases that I work on impact only the specific parties to the case; at other times, the cases set forth general principles of law that are applicable statewide (or until a higher court says differently). So, could something I've worked on impact the life of a celebrity? Sure, it could.

Of course, I'll never know if it does. And they'll never know I was involved.