Lawful? Awful!
Courting injustice in Jersey City.
Sitting at a cubicle in Room 400 of the Hudson Superior Court annex in Jersey City (JC) Monday morning along with five dozen other prospective jurors, trying to remember when I was last here. It might’ve been pre-pandemic. Was I still at SiriusXM? I have a dim recollection of being dismissed by the judge during voir dire (French for “Speak the truth,” it’s the jury selection process). He asked about potential hardship if assigned to a trial; I mentioned a vacation we’d paid for and the money we’d be out if we couldn’t go. He let me walk. I was a bit disappointed. In my entire adult life I’ve been summoned for jury duty a half dozen times but never served. Somehow, I always get let go. One time I made it to jury selection for a criminal trial but there was a peremptory voir dire challenge by the defense attorney and I was dismissed without being told why. It may happen again. Truth is, my week is open. There isn’t anything I can’t reschedule. If I’m still here Friday I won’t be using my Groupon to attend the New York Auto Show with Jim, like we did last year. Maybe he can find someone else to go with.
For being a dirty, rundown, soulless, beige floor-wide holding pen that hasn’t changed one iota since my previous visit, this is not such a bad place to pass some time. The sun is out, there are tall windows on three sides and to the west is bustling Journal Square (or, as my friend Bill dubbed it, “Urinal Square”), and far beyond I can see traffic speeding along the NJ Turnpike. Just to the south are older single and two-family homes and pre-war apartment houses being encroached upon by shiny new residential and office towers, some still under construction with huge cranes atop. There’s been no building boom like the JC building boom. Unrecognizable from the mid-‘90s when I considered decamping from my grubby ground floor $575 Hoboken railroad apartment after WFMU landed on Montgomery Street (I couldn’t justify $100/$200 in additional rent just to be walking distance to the radio station), JC has what George Orwell dubbed “the money stink” on it. Exchange Place (where FMU sits) and most of JC is now crammed with luxury (is there any other kind?) condo buildings featuring million-dollar and up residences. Which explains why the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail runs all the way down to Bayonne: so the regular people who work in this courthouse complex can afford something within striking distance. And even Bayonne has gotten a glow-up.
Next stop, Staten Island?
From where I now sit I can walk to Ellis Island, invoked just now by Judge DeLillo, who arrived in robes, browline glasses and with thick salt-and-pepper hair to deliver a funny ten minute Don’t try to get out of jury service unless you want to be part of the problem excoriation from one of those podium PAs. A self-described “ham” with a thick Joisey accent, he pointed south and said “I grew up right over dere, the grandson of a janitor who raised seven kids. Can you imagine that now?!” He told us his entire family was in construction and he’s still the only one to go into law, first as a hot-shot personal injury attorney who thought he’d be like John Travolta in A Civil Action, making big money and “getting girls.” But like the lawyer Travolta portrays, Judge DeLillo had the scales fall from his eyes after representing a Polish worker (“From da mountains of Poland. Imagine a tall mountain in Poland and add five hundred feet ta DAT.”) whose right arm was torn off after he opened a hatch on a holding tank (don’t ask me what it held).
“He was also hit from here (indicates chin) all the way down to here (indicates balls) and as a result was no longer man of da house, if ya know what I mean.”
Jesus. Did I think I’d hear about a Polish worker who “…didn’t speak much English” getting castrated in an industrial accident when I woke up this morning? I did not. But Judge DeLillo had a point: after the trial, which he lost, the worker’s wife came to him and begged to speak to the jury. “You don’t understand. The trial is over. We lost. We have to move on.” he said. The couple’s son replied, “No, YOU don’t understand. She wants to THANK them.” She tells DeLillo it’s the first time she was treated like an actual person, due respect from her peers. Which wouldn’t have happened, apparently, in Poland back then and was the reason the couple repeatedly begged DeLillo to drop the case over the years it took to get into a courthouse. The message? We are lucky to live in a country with a trial-by-jury system and if you come to me with some B.S. excuse why you can’t serve, you are the white noise and the crap everyone complains about.
Okay.
Unfortunately, Judge DeLillo has a bench trial today, so none of us will be showing up in his courtroom. Too bad. I would’ve loved to see him work.
After the judge, Tiana came out from the small office along the back wall to give us the lowdown on how this will go today.
“There are only two trials today, so we’re lucky. Sometimes, there are fifteen, twenty.”
I found it difficult to concentrate while wondering how her eyelids could support the weight of her enormous false lashes. When done, Tiana swore us in, then called eighteen names. Eighteen fellow citizens said “Here!” and then filed out to head to the huge classical Brennan courthouse next door for a civil trial (here they hold criminal trials). It’s approaching Noon and I’m about to extract my sandwich from my messenger bag so I can eat prior to the lunch hour at 12:30 pm, when I’ll need to make some phone calls. I’ll return in a moment to tie all this jury talk together with the ostensible subject of this newsletter, the Nihilistics (no, I haven’t forgotten).
But, first, a word about the ubiquitousness of godawful HGTV while waiting, whether at the foot doctor or Hudson County Superior Court. My old podiatrist, Dr. Thomas Azzolini (RIP) tuned his waiting room TV to HGTV and I grew to despise the unctuous house-flippers and fixer-uppers who somehow got famous for slapping fresh paint on a dump to a crappy instrumental rock and/or roll soundtrack,. In the years since I last unwittingly viewed HGTV, they’ve tweaked the formula. All the shows I’ve been subjected to today feature do-gooder contractors volunteering their time and materials to refurbish homes for the disabled and disadvantaged. Somehow, it makes the whole thing worse. Or maybe I’m getting triggered thinking of all the work that needs to be done on our house.
Time to get outside and away from this for a bit.
I’m back. Went to the Peanut Cafe across the street and had a small cup of coffee. There’s a chill wind blowing, so I made my way back to the courthouse to go through the metal detector before the returning rush. This time they noticed the Leatherman Squirt Micra PS4 on my keychain. The PS4, now discontinued, is my favorite everyday carry keychain multi-tool and this one even has “Chris T.” on it, custom engraved by Leatherman for a small fee. The PS4 features a mini pair of pliers, a pair of scissors (they no longer have their springiness but still work), a few screwdrivers and a short blade. That’s what got me in trouble with the Jersey City police officers working the metal detector. The female officer said, “We can take it and put it in a lockbox or you can put it in your car.”
“I didn’t drive. If you put it in a lockbox can I get it back when I leave?”I asked.
“No.” she offered, with no further explanation.
I squinted, not quite sure why I couldn’t just retrieve it on the way out. It has my name on it, after all. It’s not going to get confused with someone else’s Leatherman Micra Squirt PS4, is it? Then an older, bearded, disheveled cigarette-reeking man behind me on line leaned over and croaked “You can hide it outside somewhere.” as if he’d done so many times. So I exited, found a good spot in the dirt near a huge column, dug down a bit and buried my Micra. Hopefully, the disheveled cigarette-lover won’t go and dig it up himself.
Back in room 400 I found myself thinking once more of justice and the Nihilistics. Since finding out weeks ago about our track on the new Cherry Red Records CBGB box set and having yet another contentious conversation with lead singer Ron about my rights vis-a-vis the band, I’ve been exploring my options. I’ve reached out to Cherry Red and Jib Machine Records (the record label that released the Nihilistics EP and LP in 2024 and licensed the track to Cherry Red, along with Ron in the guise of Visionary Total Media) and got exactly nowhere. They don’t want to get into the middle of a dispute between band members. They certainly don’t want to share info on any agreements they signed. As far as they’re concerned, they were dealing with the band member – Ron - who has control of the material and the right to license or sell any of it. It’s up to Ron to then deal with me, Troy (the drummer) and Mike Nicolosi’s (RIP) children. Maybe I’m the only one getting fucked in all this. Who knows? It’s all so murky, complicated and tiring and I get the feeling that’s by design. I’m supposed to just go away and allow Ron to do whatever he wants with anything involving the Nihilistics and our original line-up releases. I’m supposed to accept at face value what Ron says: that he’s never made a cent from the band and has paid out far more than he’s ever earned. Who knows if that’s true? But let’s say it is. It doesn’t absolve him of his responsibility to honor my rights. Which he only does sporadically, for reasons that escape me.
If I was on my shrink’s couch right now she might ask why this bothers me so much. And it certainly isn’t the money. It’s about someone thinking they’re getting one over on me. That they can write me out of the band’s history and screw me out of any attribution or proceeds. I’ve been talking with experts and lawyers who know all about this scummy aspect of the music business and weighing my options. I’ve yet to decide a path forward but it likely won’t be doing nothing. I’ll keep you in the loop.
Meanwhile, I sit here staring out on to Jersey City, AirPods jammed in my ears against the HGTV blathering, typing away on my iPad and hoping to get the fuck out of this place soon.
UPDATE: Around 3:30 pm, Tania stepped to the podium and let us all know we had satisfied our civic duty, were free to go and good for another three years. I gathered up my stuff in a flash and was the first one out the door.
