CELEBRITIES
KENNY LOGINS: In 2004 Kenny's fortunes were at low ebb. Divorce & depression plagued him.
One of Laura's fund raisers was the Celebrity Ski Races and Kenny, his son & manager were our guests. I contrived to have Allan Harris obtain a guitar & lure Kenny up on stage:
He performed a half dozen songs & the crowd went wild.
Laura convinced him that he was denying his public his great gifts, so we got
him to appear at JAS the following year:
AT THE JAS FESTIVAL
LW/SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR/LAURA
INTRODUCING THE 4 Xs WORLD CHAMPION:
Contessa of Camelot, a.k.a., Tessa
The Queen spent two years searching for the perfect dog and came home with Tessa. She is shown here in Aspen, Colorado. I invented a method of keeping her in shape. She weighs approximately 10 pounds.
Laura announced that she was going to take Tessa to Ohio to compete in the Lure Coursing Championships and I promptly told her that she had lost her mind. I discovered that Tessa would compete against 15 to 18 pound, mostly male, dogs and I was not interested in spending the time or the money for the adventure.
To my utter amazement the girls came in first place. The following year I was asked to participate in Texas and I told Laura that Ohio had been an aberration and would not be repeated.
Boy, was I wrong. So, the third and fourth years I traveled with the girls to Atlanta, Georgia and San Francisco, California where Tessa repeated her remarkable performances. She is the only Italian Greyhound in history to have competed only four times and retired undefeated.
LAURA/TESSA/DOG WHISPERER
LAURA & CESAR MILLAN
Here Are Some Celebrity Ski Racers:
SHLOMO/LW/DEAN CAIN
MY TEAM
N.B. WHAT A MAN!!!! Whenever I looked around the tent I would see Evander at a table surrounded by our kids.
When I suggested that the kids would really be excited if he raced and he replied that he had just now put on his first skis. I talked him into going up the hill with Ivan Petkov, ex World Cup racer, and snow plow the NASTAR course.
He not only did as I requested, but he ran the race, finished the course and the kids went absolutely wild. What celebrity would put his ass on the line like that??????????????????
LW/DEBORAH & JUDGE JOE BROWN
LINEMAN/LW/DAN MARINO
KARL MECKLENBURG/LW/EVANDER HOLYFIELD
BILLY KIDD/LW
AND NOW SOME JAS CELEBRITIES:
CHRIS CAIN/LAURA/MATT DILLON
[Incidentally, Dean Cain's father]
[Scott is my neighbor at Weatherby Lake]
TONY BENNETT/LW
LAURA/EMERIL LAGASSE/LW
LAURA/LEE ANN RIMES
(Two ex-professional Gospel Gals)
LW/JIM MESSINA
LW/SHERIFF BOB BRAUDIS
N.B. Bob was the anchor in my local Aspen Poker Group consisting of:
Jerry Greewald (CEO of Chrysler/Untd. Airlines)
Jim Fifield (CEO of North Face/EMI Records)
(Parenthetically, Jim's wife Betsy, after a ride in Excalibur)
And filling out the table were Dru Handy [my painter] and Billy Belfy [a local notorious cab driver].
LAURA/HERBIE HANCOCK
BARBI BENTON/LW
ARON RALSTON/LW "127 HOURS" MOVIE
Aron has worked with us through the years with Aspen Youth Experience.
LW & DAVID DREMAN (The Contrarian)
ALASKAN FUR MODELS
LW/ANGELA
L.W. & DAVID BASSE
LW & FRED PRYOR
RON HANDS LAURA A VERY POISONOUS SNAKE
Johnnie & Dale Cochran in Montespertoli
At an Inner Circle meeting Johnnie asked me to lunch to pick my brain about Eagle & Pitkin counties since a friend of his was defending Kobe Bryant in a criminal matter.
Before he started I asked, "Well big shot, how many cases are you getting to try after all that publicity?" To which he responded, "None as I'm sure you well know."
I assured him that I knew he did not seek all the O.J. publicity. He told me that the good news was that he had opened a half dozen satellite offices and business was booming.
HOW I PERSONALLY AVOIDED THIS PROBLEM:
I kept the following saying taped to my phone:
"Success has ruined many a man." Benjamin Franklin
When I received a phone call wanting a personal interview about my career, someone wanting to do a book about me, or a number of movie feelers I would first puff up with pride and then look at the quote and say to the caller: "Give me your name & phone number and I will get back to you on that." Of course I never did.
You see, once you become a Celebrity Lawyer the juror looks at you with arms folded across chest and thinks, "What load of bullshit are you going to try to sell to me?"
That is why I always went to trial in my navy blue suit, subdued tie and no jewelry because I wanted the focus to be on the client, not the lawyer.
TO TRIAL LAWYERS FROM THE U.S.A.
The law is an instrument for attaining
Justice and lasting peace for humanity
On Friday 22 September, the Holy Father addressed a group of trial lawyers from the United States at his summer residence. The text of the Pope's address was as follows.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to have this opportunity to meet with you, the distinguished members of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and to welcome you and your spouses to Castelgandolfo. As trial lawyers, you are committed to the resolution of conflicts and the pursuit of justice through legal and rational means. This work is indispensable for the construction of a truly humane and harmonious social order, as the centuries-old juridical experience of the West bears eloquent witness.
The Church has always recognized in the law an essential aspect of human social and political life. Her concern for a legal order imbued with the spirit and values of the Gospel led not only to the formation of an immense and technically refined body of ecclesiastical law, the Corpus luris Canconici, but also to the elaboration of legal and canonical theories which combined profound human wisdom with a vision of man and society drawn from Christian faith. At the heart of this process was a profound conviction, born of faith, that an ordered and just society is a requirement of human nature itself, and consists in the pursuit of the common good through the cooperation of each of its members, under legitimate authority.
Today, as in the past, this conviction must be defended against those forces within our world which would deny and undermine the authentic human values upon which the rule of law and the pursuit of the common good are founded. More than ever, men and women are called upon to commit themselves to the belief that the law is an irreplaceable and morally worthy instrument for attaining a human society marked by justice and lasting peace. World events constantly remind us that the desire to build a society based on mutual respect, freedom and equity under the law is one, which is inscribed within the human heart itself, and is fundamental to the progress of civilization.
As men and women engaged in the practice of law, may your service of others always be inspired by a deep faith n man and in the goal of a just and genuinely human society. Conscious of the importance of your work I invoke upon each of you the blessings of Almighty God, the author of peace and the source of all justice."
