Greetings from Your New Lefty-in-Residence!

First off, let me thank Tung, my good friend, for kindly inviting me to share his blog. I'll do my best to be as consistently entertaining and thought-provoking as he is. As he noted in his post, I think he and I will complement each other well: our politics are different, though with enough overlap to make a conversation worthwhile; he's a baseball junkie, whereas I'm more into the NBA; he likes reality television, while I (though working in it until recently; more on that below) think it's silly; he has a lovely wife and child, and I don't even own a pet.

A bit about me. I'm currently a brand-spanking-new professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, located in the lovely college town of Athens. I'll be teaching evidence, property, and international criminal law this year, the latter being my primary academic interest. The professorship represents a return to law for me; I've spent the past four years writing and producing television in Los Angeles, from the Sally Field drama THE COURT to BOOMTOWN to the god-awful and utterly reactionary THREAT MATRIX. Most recently, I've been writing and producing THE APPRENTICE, my only foray -- and probably my last; see above -- into reality television. Before being in "the Industry," I was a criminal-defense attorney in Los Angeles for a couple of years, and before that I attended Stanford Law School and clerked for Judge William Canby on the 9th Circuit.

Anyway, enough about me. On with the blogging...

Comments

[tom]

Wow! Boomtown! You wrote for Boomtown? I am in the presence of greatness. Boomtown was the best TV show since Homicide, the only show I made sure I was home to watch. Great cast, great stories, excellent writing (although I did think the Roshomon angle was a little gimmicky at times, and the reporter character didn't do it for me--I was glad she got the ax after the first season). I was encouraged that NBC brought it back for another season, but then giving it only two weeks? Why bother. I hope Fox gives Arrested Development more time in its second season than NBC gave Boomtown.

[Jeff Findel]

Wow Kevin welcome!
While I can't say that you'd be my first choice to read as co-blogger of this site, (my preferences would go: 1) Professor Yin's wife, 2) Baby Yin, and 3) Saddam Hussein (but you would certainly round out a fourth place tie with everyone else in creative existence)), I can say that I will honour and respect you with the same high level afforded to the great and interesting Mr. Yin (but slightly less so than the threatening Mr Hussein).

Welcome!

[Tung Yin]

Prof. Yin's wife has been offered the keys to the blog and has declined the opportunity, preferring to comment occasionally and otherwise to be entertained by the witty comments of regular readers such as Jeffindel.

Baby Yin's contributions would be far more endearing if I were to set up an audioblog for him. Otherwise, a series of "aaaaaannnnnhhhh" posts won't really convey how adorable he is.

Finally, as for His Excellency the Saddameister, we should be grateful that he deigns to allow us to comment on his blog.

[Prof. Yin's Wife]

Welcome Kevin! I must say, though, that I'm a bit bummed that the political entries on this blog will no longer be "fair and balanced." :)

[Bob]

still not sure quite how I got here, probably something to do with Nicks.... or at least my keyboard still functions... just happy to hang around and say, whattup!?

Seven years ago, my #1 son looked all mercurial like that, funny, still does...

Welp, see ya all for now... laters!

[steve]

We used to ask around election time, “What if that candidate was working for me? Is he/she doing a good job? Should I give her/him a raise… or what?” What if we asked that question today?

You have a (really big) company. Your most prominent employee is up for a performance evaluation. You shuffle the papers and look at his records. In his first nine months of employment, he took three months of vacation. Just in the past couple of years, he spent over 100 billion dollars trying to create a business partnership in the Middle East. Somehow, even though your company is in deep debt, that partnership has made his friends filthy rich. He can’t explain where your money went, or how his friends got so rich; he doesn’t even say he’s sorry about the thousands of deaths among your employees. Although he broke every promise made during his hiring interview and blames his poor performance on others, he insists he’s doing a good job. Is he interested in improving his performance? Nope, he even goes so far as to say that if he had it to do all over again he would do exactly the same thing.

Hmmm… Let’s see. Should we keep this employee around, or give someone else a try?

[kathy]

Hi Kevin. I am a 1L who fears that I've made a huge mistake by deciding to attend law school. So I was wondering... did you initially leave the law because you too felt you made a mistake, or were you just looking for a change of pace when you wrote and produced for television?