Marvin Gaye//Can I Get a Witness?

I am currently blogging live from Jury Duty, at a courthouse on the corner of Fulton and Adams in Brooklyn, NY. Or at least, I am live at the time of me typing this. I can't actually post it live, because Blogger is blocked on this network. How they decided to block Blogger, but leave Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other questionable sites open, well, I have no idea. But, as a result, you are getting this post on a delay.

Jury Duty is not my favorite thing. You mostly just wait around in a gray institutional room with a bunch of other unhappy citizens. A few highlights so far:

-A video about Jury Duty (they had one of these in NJ too--equally hilarious and dated) which appears to have been put together by a low budget just-out-of-film-school kid. My favorite part was the "Trial by Ordeal" section (it was meta, since the video itself was a trial by ordeal). Some dudes in beards and rags threw a bound and gagged man into the water to see if he would float or sink. Judges of the olden times or angry Williamsburg hipsters?

-The guy running the orientation invited everyone up who couldn't speak English and then berated them, saying "if you can't speak English, how did you understand what I just said to you? You're not getting out of this!"

-The crappy one-step-below-gas-station-mart instant coffee machine.

Anyway, I thought I would bring you a song that is somewhat pertinent to the judicial system today. Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get a Witness?" is actually about wanting someone to witness a bad relationship and stand up for you, but hey, there are lots of trials that require witnesses, including criminal ones. Also, my friend Angelina used to yell this question a lot when she was drunk in the college era of our lives, so I feel good about it.



Can I Get a Witness?.mp3

So I'm gonna stick by her till the very end,
But she causes so much misery I forget how
Love is supposed to be.
Somebody, somewhere, tell her it ain't fair.
Can I get a witness?
I want a witness!