When we were little, my sister, Shannon, told me that she knew Santa was real. She had seen Rudolph in real life, so it stood to reason that if Rudolph was real then Santa was, too. I believed her, of course. I was only about five, which would make her about ten. That meant she was the authority on everything in life. Our parents could tell us one thing, but if Shannon contradicted it, I went with her version, no question.

She hadn’t seen Rudolph at our house. The chance encounter occurred at our Aunt Bari and Uncle John’s house, the relatives who hosted our extended family’s annual Christmas Eve celebration. She swore one year she saw the glowing red light of Rudolph’s nose down the hall. There was no way it was an electronic device or the reflection of Christmas lights in a mirror or anything. It was Rudolph, plain and simple. And if Rudolph was there, you know Santa was somewhere nearby.

Since it was Christmas Eve, it was believable that Santa would have made an appearance, though I never questioned why he showed up mid-celebration when everyone was awake and the chips and dip hadn’t yet been depleted.

Or maybe that’s exactly why he showed up. If you’re used to creeping in late at night after everyone is asleep and only ever getting dessert, maybe once in a while you’d like to join the festivities and show up in time for appetizers.

Based on this secondhand experience, I was sure Santa was real. That belief persisted up until I was around ten or eleven when I was forced to confront the logistics of traveling around the world and making all those stops all in one night and at so many houses, especially ones like ours that didn’t even have a chimney. Still, our mom warned us if we didn’t believe in Santa, he would stop coming. This was a fun way to bribe us into keeping up the Christmas spirit, and I loved it.

Now, grown and nearing the years where I’ll play Santa to kids of my own some day, I have been forced to accept that Santa isn’t real. Or at least, I use to accept that. Then I met him. In real life. The real Santa. This week. At a mall.

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn I met Santa at a mall. That is where he is most often spotted, probably even more often than on rooftops. It happened at an outdoor mall in Garland, Texas called Firewheel. I had plans to meet my sister for dinner at 6:30, but I arrived fifteen minutes early, like I do for most every event in my life.

I browsed a jewelry store before spotting a sparsely decorated storefront with its doors open across the way. A sign sat on the sidewalk out front, beckoning me: COME MEET SANTA.

Inside, there were two sets of stanchions, one for the incoming line leading you to meet Santa and the other meant to herd you back toward the register and out the door. On this Wednesday evening in early December, there was no need for line management or crowd control. There were no lines. There was no crowd.

Behind the counter at the front was a man in his late thirties. He had a close cropped red beard and wore a fitted Titleist baseball cap, topping off his sporty polo shirt. He looked like he would rather be playing a round or two of golf instead of guarding the King of Elves, but here he was.

“Can I meet Santa?” I asked. I skipped asking whether Santa was busy because I could see he was not. I maybe should have asked if he was conscious as he was slumped over on his jolly throne, not quite comatose, about fifteen feet behind the counter.

Santa’s Gatekeeper was on the defensive.

“We don’t do singles or cell phones,” he said. “Packages only.”

I had no idea the world of mall Santas was chock full of such jargon. Based on the various sizes of sample photos printed and mounted beside the register, I took this to mean I was about to be on the hook for some serious cash.

“That’s fine,” I said. “I’m happy to pay. I just want to meet Santa.”

The gatekeeper seemed irritated.

“It’s FORTY dollars,” he said then paused, waiting for me to slink away.

I was more resolute than before. It offended me that he thought a mere price gouge would keep me out.

“That’s fine.” I said. He turned on his heel and began walking toward Santa. I took my cue and followed him. Santa seemed to power on at the sight of us.

I received neither a HO HO HO nor a MERRY CHRISTMAS. Instead, I was greeted only with questions.

“Just you?” Santa asked. “No kids?”

In this moment, I had an opportunity. I could lie and tell Santa I did have kids. That I was taking this photo for them. That I had to leave them at home for some heart wrenching reason. Then Santa would be at ease thinking I had a rational reason for being there.

But then I looked at him, and I knew he would know if I lied. Plus, there was something delicious about freaking out Santa and his golf buddy.

“Nope. Just me,” I said, advancing on him.

Santa began shifting to one side of his green velvet throne.

“Beside me or on the knee?” he asked. I couldn’t help but think if I were a kid he may have kept up the pretenses a little more.

“I would say knee, but I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” Santa said as he repositioned himself back in the center of the seat and patted his knee.

The interaction had taken on a bizarre tone. To be fair, it started with a bizarre tone but here we were. Grown woman in jeans and business-casual top, wearing nice leather shoes, a deranged smile on her face. A grown man in a velvet suit that had been worn more than a few years in a row, sitting on a throne, surrounded by tinsel and candy canes, maintaining character.

What were we doing?

I sat on his knee and planted my feet, one on each side of his leg.

“No, no,” said Santa. “Swing them over. Put both legs on one side.”

I tried complying with his commands, but the position caused me to lose balance. No matter. Santa, unfazed, wrapped his white gloves around my waist.

I turned toward the camera and smiled. Santa’s helper snapped the photo.

“How does it look?” I asked.

The helper hesitated.

“You can come over here and look for yourself,” he said. I hopped off Santa’s knee.

“Looks awesome. I can’t wait to show my fiancé,” I said, still looking at the screen.

“Oh,” Santa said. “Am I supposed to be making your fiancé jealous?”

“No, I think he’ll laugh,” I said. Santa’s face fell.

The gatekeeper and I walked back over to the register, leaving Santa to slump back over in his chair. I heard the whir of the printer as it shot out my photos. The gatekeeper and I stood in silence.

Santa got up and started toward us. He had forgotten to ask whether I had been good or bad and what I wanted this year. Surely he was headed back to right this wrong.

Wrong.

Santa made a beeline, not toward me, but to an enormous styrofoam cup from Sonic, America’s Drive-In. He reached out his gloved hand and drew the straw up to his mouth.

I knew if I didn’t ask, I would regret it forever.

“Hey, Santa — what is your go-to Sonic drink?”

The jolly old elf didn’t hesitate. “Diet cherry limeade.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“Got hooked on these about fifteen years ago,” he continued as he walked past the counter toward the front door. “I don’t get them so much anymore.”

“Did you get tired of them?” I asked.

“No, there’s just no Sonic near my house.”

“I guess Sonic needs to add a North Pole location,” I said with a grin.

Santa grunted and walked out the open door.

The printer finally stopped. It had spit out the four photos I had committed purchasing to as part of my $40 package. But there was also a fifth photo. A much larger one. An 8x10.

“This is part of the upgrade package,” Santa’s helper said.

I knew this grift. We did it when I worked at the tourist boat company and when I worked at the theme restaurant. Printing the photos costs pennies, and if it’s already there, people are more likely to buy it. Maybe this worked on sucker parents and their snot-nosed kids, but not me. Throw my photo in the trash. I don’t care, I thought.

“I’m good,” I said. Rather than the trash, I noticed he slipped the photo under the countertop, down where the paperwork was stacked up.

Hey, that’s not the trash.

I paid for my photos and headed out the door where Santa stood motionless, staring into the night sky.

“Bye, Santa,” I said. “Thank you.”

Santa broke his gaze, coming back to the present.

“Yes, yes. Merry Christmas,” he said.

Walking toward the restaurant, I caught up with my sister who was heading over from her car.

“Guess who I just met,” I said.

“Who?” she asked, looking at the envelope in my hand. I told her I had just met Santa.

“Was it the good Santa?” she asked. Having never met any other Santas up there, I had no frame of reference. Still, I knew the answer.

“No.”

I pulled out the photo.

“Oh,” she said, recognizing the face. “That’s the one we call Sloppy Santa.”

“The word ‘bedraggled’ came to mind, but ‘sloppy’ has more of a pop to it.”

Once we were both so sure she had seen the real thing. Now we were faced with the reality that there are many Santas, and they come in varying qualities.

We walked in the restaurant and enjoyed dinner, but the whole night, there was one thought I couldn’t shake.

What if — and stick with me on this — but what if this so-called Sloppy Santa was actually the real deal?

You have to admit the clues all add up.

EXHIBIT A: Wouldn’t the real Santa be sick of North Pole jokes (no matter how clever they were)?

EXHIBIT B: Far away from Mrs. Claus left back at home, wouldn’t the real Santa be thrilled at the opportunity to make a fiancé jealous?

EXHIBIT C: After centuries on the job, working 24 hours a day during his busiest season, wouldn’t he look a little “sloppy” especially if he was just sitting around in a mall in Garland, Texas?

When I got home from dinner that night, I showed Paris the photos. He was not at all jealous and did indeed laugh.

“I think it was the real Santa,” I told him.

“I’m sure it was, babe,” he said.

That’s all it takes. Just a little bit of faith.

***

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It was the first weekend in December 2021, and for the second time in a calendar year, Paris and I were walking through the parking lot of Medieval Times on our way to a matinee show.

“We were just here,” I said, but he reminded me it had been months earlier. But was “months earlier” in Medieval Times time actually that long ago?

“You think there are people who come here a lot?” I asked. “Like frequent flyers?”

“I’m sure,” he said. “The staff probably recognizes them.”

“I bet you can’t miss them,” I said. “You’d notice repeat offenders. This place is more of a once-a-year kind of deal.”

“Unless you’re us,” he said.

Medieval Times: Dinner and Tournament isn’t normally the type of place you’d go to more than once, at least not this close together. It’s a place for birthdays, field trips, company outings, and, yes, anniversaries.

We came in July for our friend’s 35th birthday. The vibe of our group that day fell somewhere between nostalgic and snarky. We came to enjoy the camp, though a bit ironically, and to revel in the nostalgia.

This second trip, my attitude had veered beyond nostalgia and fell directly into snarky disdain. I was not there to get into the show. I was there neither to hoot nor holler. Looking around that clear Sunday afternoon in December as we walked past the putrid green pond stocked full of listless orange fish, flanked on all sides by happy families snapping selfies with the castle, I realized we were in the minority. By a lot. They were all there to hoot, to holler, and to journey back to a simpler era where forks didn’t exist (except they did…)

My mom had requested the trip so she could share the experience with her only grandchild, my four-year-old niece, Sydney. Mom was firmly in the nostalgia camp, though in our family, it is impossible to experience anything without at least a pinch of snark involved.

Back in the mid-1990s when we first traveled to the castle on the interstate, our intentions were pure — much like the crowds we found ourselves surrounded by this day. Back then, we bought the schtick whole hog. We wore our crowns and scarfed our chicken by hand without comments, paying no mind to the others in the crowds around us.

Now, navigating a crowded lobby on a Sunday afternoon in our thirties, forties, and sixties, respectively, the people around us were almost all we noticed. Though there was a posted mask mandate, nobody around us wore masks.

“There’s nothing more on brand than spreading a plague,” I told Paris.

We waited for the show to begin beside an armory, a glass and wood countertop lined with red velvet where a wench was selling swords.

“Who buys a sword or full suit of armor?” my mom asked. “How do you get it home?”

“Did you see the guy in the Stetson with the crown on top of his cowboy hat?” my brother-in-law, Aaron, asked.

“Dedication,” I said.

“Shhhh,” Sydney said, commanding us to pay attention as the announcer took his spot on the balcony.

She was staring up at a man in black velvet robes accented with gold piping. He stood poised against the railing, ready to address the crowd below him. His red hair parted down the middle did little to hide the headset microphone through which he spoke. His British-ish accent boomed across the crowd and drew our attention.

“Lords and Ladies,” he began then asked if we were ready for the dinner AND tournament. The crowd gave a half-hearted “woo.” He doubled down.

“Are you ready?” he boomed, pausing for effect between each word. The crowd stood at attention and gave him a more satisfactory “woo.”

“Before we begin, I have a few announcements,” he said then began the near-impossible task of directing a crowd, in a British accent, while making sense, and also maintaining character.

The need for crowd control stemmed from our assigned seats. Customers are supposed to sit in sections separated by color. The announcer clarified that there was a red section, a yellow section, and a red AND yellow section, but that we shouldn’t confuse the three. Just like with the fork thing, I guess they only had five colors back then so they had to mix and match. We followed the arrows and signs around the arena to our place in the solid red section.

With the lights up, we could take stock of who else filled the seats that day. The Venn diagram of the type of folks that come to Medieval Times is a solid circle with those who slurp signature cocktails from the souvenir cups at a Margaritaville on vacation. Nearly every table I glanced at, it was easy to mentally replace whatever they were wearing with T-shirts that read HARD ROCK CAFE — BRANSON, MISSOURI.

Row after row was filled with rhinestone-encrusted jeans and leather cowboy boots. I even saw one man in a pair of dirty jean overalls who was a piece of straw in his mouth away from being a living cartoon character.

Don’t these people have horses at home? I thought.

Soon, fog filled the arena and our red-headed announcer was back. He galloped to the center of the sandy floor on his horse and explained that we would see a tournament the purpose of which was to find a champion to become protector of the realm. The queen emerged and addressed the crowd, flanked on one side by a “councilor” called Cedric, who we joked was a total simp for her.

One by one, the knights rode out on their mighty steeds. And one by one my family had comments to make. The black and white knight was deemed to look “Beetlejuice as hell.” The yellow knight looked like a soccer dad. The blue knight, with his slick ponytail, had clearly been born for this. Our red knight, my brother-in-law noticed, looked like the gigolo from the film Deuce Bigalow.

With the announcement of each knight, the audience members waved their souvenir flags and screamed for their guy. What happened down in that sand pit really seemed to matter to these people. The ponytailed stranger on a horse was not just a person but became their person, just by virtue of the color of his cloaks.

The queen, Doña Maria Isabella, was an elegant woman in her early thirties, with long, dark curls. She addressed the crowd using an English accent that sounded like it made a pit stop in Prohibition New York on its way to the castle that day. I looked at the signs above each section. The names were all of areas in Spain, not England (or the five boroughs either). None of it added up.

I snarked on the actors’ accents to Paris and commented on their stiff-sounding script and corny jokes, which hadn’t changed since July. I got pretty good at doing an impression of the queen. Soon, our serf came to bring us ye olde Pepsi and piña coladas.

“The classic drink of the era,” I said, lifting the souvenir plastic cup to my lips.

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the pageantry and drama that began the show. Early on, during some of the horse dancing, I got up to use the restroom. When I got back in the arena and began heading down toward my seat, I heard a warning from the announcer, “Do not distract her and please stay in your seats.”

I looked down toward the sand pit and saw a woman with a falcon on her arm. She swung a treat up in the air, and the bird took flight.

“I repeat — remain seated for your own safety,” the announcer said. “This is a bird of prey.”

I had to decide whether I wanted to run down toward my seat and risk a falcon to the head, or stand where I was and risk a falcon to the head.

I hurried down the stairs, at once afraid of the bird and also aware of my movement in opposition to the clear instruction we’d all just been given. I caught eyes with Cedric the queen’s simp. I saw through his accent and corny jokes and felt the pity of a man who dresses in velvet robes for a living.

The hell are you doing? his eyes seemed to say.

I gave a small shrug and ducked down as I made it back to my seat in time for the bird to return to its trainer’s arm.

I leaned forward to look past my sister and fixed my eyes on my niece. She was sitting on the edge of her seat, her chin propped on the table, eyes glued to the bird.

Once the tournament began, she was even more entranced. The spotlights turned down low, the strobe lights in full force, she shoved rotisserie chicken into her mouth and barely blinked as the men jousted, tussled, and jumped from their galloping horses. With each event, I watched her cheer and gasp and laugh.

Watching her watch the show, I got wrapped up in it, too. I cheered and booed and waved my flag. With each passing event, it became very important to me that the red knight win.

Come on, Gigolo, I thought to myself as he sped head long into another knight. Win it for us.

Safe in the dark of the arena, I knew no one could see me cheering. No one could judge. In that moment, the arena thick with artificial fog and scored by a booming soundtrack, we were all united in a singular purpose. It was printed right there on the paper napkins: dinner AND tournament.

After the jousting, the knights engaged in hand-to-hand combat. At one point, the action stopped, and the announcer asked the crowd whether the knights should fight to the death. The crowd roared, but the queen stopped us. She spoke of honor, of valor, of bravery. She told us only she could determine whether knights could fight to the death. And then she told them to go for it. We all screamed.

Our own red knight faced off against Beetlejuice — the black and white knight. As they exchanged blows, I called out.

“Go for the throat!”

“Don’t say that,” Sydney told me, worried for both men’s safety.

Nonetheless, our knight heeded my advice. He went for the throat and emerged victorious. Our section went wild.

After the show, I waited in a mile-long line for the ladies room. A woman behind me couldn’t stop talking about the show. She was in her mid-sixties. Her voice was husky, and her thick accent placed her home somewhere far outside the city limits.

“Don’t matter who the winner was,” she said. “There wasn’t nobody better than the green knight. I bet he’ll be walking on air for days.” She was speaking to her mother, an even more shrunken woman in her eighties.

“What a job,” the mother said.

“Going to work for an ego boost,” the husky voiced woman said with a laugh. “Can you imagine?” Then she said it again, “Yep, don’t matter who they said won. The green knight — he was the best.”

She was wrong though. It did matter who they said won. That’s the point of a tournament. There was someone better than the green knight. It was the red knight. Our knight. The one who won.

I secured my red paper crown on my head and patted the red flag sticking out of my purse. I navigated past her on the way to the sink.

“Excuse me,” I said. Then finished the sentence silently, Winner coming through.

***

Thanks for reading! If you loved it, please consider sharing it with others or subscribing. Don’t forget to listen to Sinisterhood, check out our shop, and support us on Patreon. Learn more about me here.

Every week in my newsletter, I answer a legal question from readers.

This week’s question comes from Christie via our upcoming minisode on the Murdaugh Murders (Part 2). Christie asked:

Can you ask for a transfer of venue out of state?

In an upcoming Sinisterhood minisode on the Murdaugh Murders update — part 2, Christie asked whether Alex Murdaugh could ask for a change of venue outside the state if the jury pool of South Carolina was so tainted by their personal connections to the case and all the media coverage.

At the time I said, “I don’t think so,” but then I started second-guessing myself. I love when I am not sure about something because it means I get to wrap my brain around another state’s laws and refresh my memory on old concepts, deeply buried in the recesses of my skull. This was a great question, so I decided to dig into it here.

BACKGROUND

Some backstory — Alex Murdaugh is the once-prominent South Carolina lawyer who, it turns out, has been scamming his clients, stealing funds, and trying to commit insurance fraud by hiring someone murder him on the side of the road.

That is only about 1/10th of the story. His wife and son were murdered under suspicious circumstances. The family has also been tied to the murder of a young man in the community named Stephen Smith. Alex’s murdered son, Paul, also recklessly drove a boat and killed a young woman named Mallory Beach . The list of controversies associated with the family is endless. We covered his story in several parts, located here, here, here, and in an update here. The second part of the update is coming soon.

Alex is currently in jail for financial crimes and is facing millions of dollars in lawsuits for the damage he’s done. His attorney has made reference to a tainted jury pool with regards to the civil suits. Since so many families and the community at large has been negatively impacted by all of his actions, the question has become — could he really get a fair trial in South Carolina or has the jury pool been tainted?

WHAT IS VENUE?

Venue is a place where a lawsuit is filed. In the earlier days of the legal system, lawsuits for things like theft, injury, or wrongful death (called “torts”) could be “brought wherever the wrongdoer [could] be found and legally served with process.” Eventually, to keep things more organized, states passed laws mandating where lawsuits could be filed and heard by a judge.

WHERE DO YOU SUE SOMEBODY?

South Carolina Code section 15–7–30 mandates that a lawsuit like the ones Alex is facing, “must be brought and tried in the county” (1) where the defendant (Alex) resides at the time of the lawsuit, OR (2) where the most substantial part of the bad act occurred.

SO CAN YOU CHANGE YOUR VENUE?

You can ask for a new venue, just not outside the state. I’ll address South Carolina law in this answer, but note that laws vary across states and with the federal lawsuits as well.

South Carolina Code Annotated § 22–3–920 provides that either party in a civil case (the person suing or being sued) or the prosecutor or the accused in a criminal case, may apply for a change of venue. So it never hurts to ask.

The person requesting the change of venue has to give the judge a sworn statement explaining why he does not believe he can receive a fair trial in the current venue. The sworn statement has to include details and facts supporting the person’s belief. The code states that if the sworn statement “sets forth grounds for a belief that the party cannot obtain a fair trial” then the judge must grant the change of venue. You can only move once, though. In that scenario, the case would be moved to another county to proceed with trial there.

You can’t move the case out of the state because other states don’t have jurisdiction over controversies or crimes that happened in South Carolina. In some civil cases, if each party is from a different state and other factors apply, the plaintiff could possibly sue in federal court. We don’t have the time or space to get into that here. It takes up a whole semester in first year Civil Procedure in law school and doesn’t apply here anyway.

But if the shit goes down in South Carolina, the trial will, too.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO MOVE?

Because the generosity of juries vary, sometimes a person filing a lawsuit may try to file in a place that is more friendly to someone who has suffered in the same way they have. Let’s look at a hypothetical. Say there’s a guy name Bob, and he works for the railroad company. If Bob was in a railroad accident, it would serve him well to file his lawsuit in a county where juries have proven to be generous to railroad accident victims in the past and who may be willing to punish railroad companies who injure people.

When you file in a place friendly to you, that is sometimes referred to as “forum shopping.” Ironically, the county where Alex Murdaugh practiced — Hampton, South Carolina — was a famously plaintiff-friendly county. Called a “judicial hellhole” by the defense-friendly American Tort Reform Foundation, Hampton was known for its liberal and generous jury verdicts, especially against railroad companies.

Due to South Carolina’s previously lax venue laws, Bob may have been injured by the railroad in a county across the state far away from Hampton, but if the tracks passed through Hampton, his attorneys could file his lawsuit in the judicial hellhole, hoping for a juicy, high-dollar verdict. This exact scenario is how the Murdaugh family accumulated its wealth over the decades. (Except for Alex — he was stealing.)

** Side Note: Tort reform is a controversial topic. Especially after the McDonald’s coffee verdict, there was a push by insurance companies and large businesses to reduce the amount of damages injured people could recover when they were injured. The narrative that “lawsuits are out of control” was pushed in the media, despite the fact that the Wall Street Journal reported “Americans… are filing far fewer lawsuits. Fewer than two in 1,000 people [0.002] — the alleged victims of inattentive motorists, medical malpractice, faulty products and other civil wrongs — filed tort lawsuits in 2015 ….” For a super interesting documentary on tort reform, check out the documentary Hot Coffee. **

WILL ALEX GET TO MOVE ANY OF THE MANY LAWSUITS FILED AGAINST HIM?

His lawyers can certainly try. Alex’s attorneys filed a motion against opposing counsel, Eric Bland, accusing Bland of tainting the jury pool with his media appearances. This argument is pretty cute considering Alex’s own attorneys have been giving interviews freely, and saying some pretty ridiculous stuff on camera. Plus, the media coverage has been national and international, so there is no way they can find a venue where someone hasn’t heard of the case. The motion is pending.

So if they can’t leave the state, how will he get a fair trial? The jury selection process will likely be extensive to ensure that only unbiased jurors are seated on the jury. If they bring in one or two hundred people to interview, surely they can find twelve who haven’t watched any documentaries or listened to any podcasts on the case.

In short, nope. He can’t move out of state. This goes for the criminal charges as well.

Thanks for the question, Christie! And thanks to y’all for sticking with me on this long trek through the fascinating world of South Carolina civil procedure.

Got a question? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don’t send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.

Until next week, that’s the tea, and if you get sued in a biased state — sorry, you can’t leave.

***

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Bouncing balls. Jumping children. Painted faces. Squeals. Screams. Laughter.

Last weekend, Paris and I found ourselves the only childless couple at a four-year-old’s birthday party in a mini gymnasium. Kids flew around the foam-covered floors and walls, flipping and jumping, and sometimes landing upright.

One particularly runty kid, the younger sibling of a party attendee, flipped off the trampoline and onto the floor. Her mom was elsewhere, mingling with other grownups. Paris and I were the closest adults in range. She locked eyes with me and began to cry. We stood, staring back at her. It’s a particularly sticky situation being a random adult at a kid’s birthday party. On the one hand, you’re an extra chaperone. On the other, you shouldn’t go around snatching up kids that don’t belong to you.

The kid’s mom’s MomRadar™ kicked in, and she ran over to scoop the girl off the ground in seconds flat. But still, in that moment when she looked at us, she believed that because we were taller, we had the answers. She believed we could help, that we must know how the world works.

Sorry, little kid. That just ain’t true.

Being a kid involves a ton of inherent trust. It’s an innocent viewpoint, one that I held dear throughout my earliest years. That belief was completely shattered one summer day in 1992: the day I realized adults have no idea what they’re doing, even if they tell you otherwise.

I am the youngest grandchild in my family by five years and five months. As such, my role has often been that of gullible guinea pig. Early on, my mom trained me to follow her without question by calling things “adventures” rather than “chores” or “errands.” She would ask if I “wanted to go on adventure.” These adventures could mean throwing phone books with her best friend, Lillian. It could mean going to a movie set with Lillian’s husband, Dan. Just as likely, it could mean going to the grocery store or taking cans to the recycling plant.

It could also mean going to the dentist and having five teeth removed.

This scam worked every time. A gambler by nature, I risked the dentist “adventures” and endured the grocery store “adventures” to get to the movie set adventures. If adventure was on the menu, I would always order it.

This fateful day in the late fall, my mom asked me if I’d like to go on an adventure to my Aunt Bari’s house. I said yes. I had hope. Bari’s house was where we spent all our Christmas Eves throughout the years. An adventure to her place was bound to involve a gift or at least some fun. I was wrong.

Honestly, I should have known. Just a few months before, I had heard my mom, my Aunt Bari, and her sister, my Aunt Vicki, all circled around my sister, Shannon, in our dining room. Shannon was crying. My mom was comforting her. Aunt Vicki, who we were told had “beautician training,” was applying some goop from a container to my weeping sister’s head as the three of them told her, “You must suffer to be beautiful.”

This oft-repeated phrase was how they got Shannon to endure hours with noxious perm chemicals singing her scalp, its fumes permeating the walls and upholstery. The result of her suffering was not beauty. Instead, Shannon ended up sporting a blond Jheri curl when the process was done. The combined result of their laughter, the reckless abandon, the results of their attempt started the erosion of my trust in adults.

Maybe, just maybe, I thought, they don’t really know what the hell they’re doing.

Still, it was my mom. They were my aunts. They were grown. They drove us around. They fed us. They gave us a place to live. They kept us safe from strangers. Being vested with that much responsibility, I relaxed back into the notion that they had to know what they were doing. They had to.

As I eyeballed the situation that day at Bari’s house, I was relieved that there were no chemicals around. They had stacked three phone books on a wooden dining chair and asked me to climb on up. Suspicious at the three of them together, especially after the number they had done on Shannon, I hesitated.

At the first sight of uncertainty, they started convincing me: “Come on,” they said. “It’ll be fun. It’s an adventure!”

I settled up onto the phone books and turned to face the fireplace. I noticed how the mantle looked emptier without the family’s Christmas stockings. Christmas would be here before we knew it. I started making a list in my head of all the things I would ask Santa to bring me that year.

I was wretched from my thoughts by Aunt Vicki pulling a comb through my hair, yanking my head back every few strokes.

It was shocking, but I was ready for this. It wasn’t long before that day when we had been visiting family in Tennessee. A strong-handed cousin had gone wild on my head with a fine-toothed comb. She had tried yanking my hair into a thick braid on our cross-country visit.

“One day, I’m gonna be a hairdresser,” she assured me, as if her future plans somehow qualified her to perform the current task. Like telling someone, “Lie back, I’m going to be a doctor some day,” as you make the first cut of the at-home tracheotomy.

My Tennessee cousin’s amateur cosmetology had prepared me for that day, I thought. It was a tough comb job, but I was tougher.

Then I saw Bari affixing an attachment to her vacuum cleaner. My mom held an instructional booklet in her hand, flipping through the pages and reading out loud.

“Affix the hose — yeah, yeah, yeah. Be sure to attach the safety — blah, blah, blah.”

She flipped the booklet shut and tossed it on the dining table without finishing. Bari snapped the attachment into place. The box on the ground read in large block letters — FLOWBEE.

I cannot fault Bari for purchasing this contraption. The advertisement featured, as most infomercials do, smiling people using the product. These actors made using the Flowbee look effortless, even fun.

In retrospect, the infomercial footage is iconic. A middle-aged man with feathered hair drags the machine over the crest of his skull, sucking chestnut hairs conveniently into the vacuum bag below. A small boy, even younger than I was, smiles as a disembodied hand runs the business end of the vacuum across his scalp with ease.

One guy who looks like an off-duty soccer coach stands cutting the hair of someone I have to assume is also on the coaching staff. In another scene, a man suctions the hair off a woman while a third guy watches. The woman on the receiving end of the hose monitors the Flowbee’s efficacy with a hand mirror, her eyes narrowed.

Hey, this footage tells the audience, Even extremely discerning women let their friends cut their hair with a vacuum cleaner hose.

A professional hand model in pleated slacks and a pastel button-down tucked neatly into his pants demonstrates all the parts, showing off how simple it all is to assemble, use, then disassemble.

The voiceover really sells it: “Tens of thousands of satisfied customers! Save time and money! Have fun!”

The Flowbee, like almost every other product ever marketed to the masses, promised to fulfill your dreams, solve your problems, and answer your prayers.

“Who has time to get a haircut?!” the announcer asks. “Don’t you hate spending time sweeping up all that hair?”

No one bothered to ask why you wouldn’t just use the vacuum to suck up the hair from the floor, rather than sucking hairs still attached to your head into a relentless machine.

Trusting the grownups around her, little Heather sat on the phone books, a vulnerable target for the waiting Flowbee. My mom had disregarded the instructions. Bari had eyeballed the assembly. Vicki had been eager to grip the hose. Though I started to question the whole idea, I had no chance of escape. We had driven all the way to Bari’s house, and it wasn’t even Christmas. No chance we were leaving without completing the adventure.

Though the written instructions had been tossed aside, the Flowbee came with an instructional video on VHS tape. We popped it in the VCR and watched it play. Two hosts came on screen. For some reason, they kept trying to sell the Flowbee rather than explain how to use it. My dudes, we already plunked down the money. Just give us the instructions. But, nope, Gary and his sidekick continued to extoll the Flowbee’s virtues.

“A lot of kids like trendier haircuts,” Gary’s partner said. “With kids these days, we are talking about any kind of haircut imaginable.”

Gary agreed, “That’s one of the great things about the Flowbee. You can create. You can experiment.”

Great, just what I wanted to be. An experiment.

Then, finally, instructions, though scant: “Bounce it up and down. Make sure you bounce it up and down.” Everyone in the instructional video gave the same imperative: Bounce. It. Up. And. Down.

The video rolled to a close. My mom and two aunts descended on me. Bari fired up the vacuum. Vicki grabbed the hose and held it over my head.

“Just start at the back,” my mom told her. Vicki pressed the Flowbee down toward my scalp. In direct disregard of Gary’s imperative, she did not bounce it up and down.

Neither the Flowbee nor I was prepared for what happened next.

As an adult, I have been told by haircare professionals that I have densely placed follicles. My hair is like a forest you cannot walk through without first thrashing a machete out in front of you. Using the Flowbee on my hair was like trying to drive a school bus through that dense forest. Everything gets ruined, and all you hear is the sound of children screaming.

The vacuum’s engine whirred on, but the Flowbee’s “state of the art” blades ground to a halt. The searing pain was worse than anything my inept cousin from Tennessee could have ever done. I’m not sure if it was the lack of bouncing up and down or my hair or a combination of the two, but there was no way I was walking out with any of the trendy haircuts Gary had mentioned.

My hair and the Flowbee were at an impasse. It wasn’t until Bari unplugged the vacuum that I could hear their laughter over my screams. They snipped my hair free and caught their breath. I was traumatized and sobbing, but they could not help themselves. The infomercial, the instructional booklet, the VHS tape, Gary — nothing prepared any of us for this.

When you start out as a kid, you think that grown ups have all the answers. They know what to do, know how stuff works, know how to run the show. The day comes for us all when we learn that is not true. Not at all. When you actually are a grown up, you realize you don’t know what to do. You can just do your best to appear authoritative. You master pretending to know all that stuff so the kids around you don’t freak out and you don’t either.

Once you’ve pretended long enough, the grift has worked on you as well the kids around you. You become fully convinced of your authority. That’s when you pull out your credit card. That’s when you pay your four easy payments. That’s when you drive your youngest child to another town to be a test subject. That’s when you throw caution to the wind, fire up the vacuum, and let nature take its course.

***

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Every week in my newsletter, I answer a legal question from readers.

This week’s question is from Julissa on Instagram. Julissa asks:

So I’m seeing with all the apps you can use to swap your face with a celebrity’s face there are now TikToks of people just using the app and doing funny videos while pretending to be a celebrity like @deeptomcruise for example. My question is what kind legal protections exist to protect your likeness and how it can and can’t be used? Thank you!!!

Thanks for asking, Julissa!

As a lawyer fighting scams, I think Deep Fakes are the next biggest threat to scam victims, especially seniors. One way I tell seniors to try and avoid romance scams or celebrity scams is to ask to video chat with the person reaching out to them. Now, if scammers can put a celebrity’s face onto their own and pretend to be someone they’re not, how can we keep ourselves safe?

As a person who has seen Face/Off, I am equally as concerned about facial transplant surgery. But this question is about deepfakes, so let’s go with that.

What are Deep Fakes?

In case you are not familiar, the term “deepfake” can refer to manipulated media, either photo, video, or audio, that creates a false piece of new media. Scientists (or scammers) can use a special type of computing system to analyze photos, videos, or audio of a person to determine how to recreate them in the new media. For instance, when creating a deepfake video, the program may track what mouth shapes are linked to various sounds in order to mimic them.

These algorithms work best where there is tons of footage of a person — Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Tom Holland. Also other famous people not named Tom like Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Hilary Clinton.

It’s funny to watch a person who appears to be Tom Cruise fall down in an upscale store. Believe me, I’ve laughed at it. But it is scary how much cheaper and easier it is becoming to create more and more credible deepfakes. There are even apps now that allow you to perform a deepfake live during a video chat, making my advice to always ask for a video chat pretty useless.

Just compare the 2018 Barack Obama deepfake linked above with the 2020–2021 Tom Cruise deepfakes from TikTok. The Obama video is fun to watch, especially knowing it’s Jordan Peele behind the fake, but you can tell there’s something just beneath the surface that’s not quite real. On the other hand, the Tom Cruise videos are so spot on that the creator made a breakdown video just to show how it was done and calm people’s fears.

There is also this incredibly realistic and funny, but wildly inappropriate, video created by the South Park guys featuring our most recent former president and a handful of other celebs including Julie Andrews and Michael Caine. The voices are clearly silly exaggerations, but to my untrained eye, the videos seem flawless.

What kind legal protections exist to protect your likeness and how it can and can’t be used?

The good news is we don’t need to rush to make a bunch of new laws to keep up with this new technology. Good old fashioned common law can serve to protect you from being victimized by deepfakes in most cases. There are a couple of torts (tort = a reason for suing someone) you could use to recover after being the victim of one of these videos.

One such tort is called “false light.” False light is recognized in some states, though not Texas. According to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, when you sue someone for false light, you have to prove:

1. The defendant/deepfaker published the information widely (i.e., not to just a single person, as in defamation);
2. the publication identifies the plaintiff/you;
3. it places the plaintiff/you in a “false light” that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person; and
4. the defendant/deepfaker was at fault in publishing the information.

False light claims can be similar to defamation claims, which is actually why Texas doesn’t recognize false light as a cause of action. Texas courts have said that behaviors that other states would recognize as “false light” are covered under Texas defamation laws. Any expansion, the courts said, would have an impermissible chilling effect on free speech and run afoul of the First Amendment. So in Texas, someone may try to sue a deepfaker for defamation.

When bringing a claim for something like defamation, the law distinguishes a private figure from a public one. Private figures are ordinary, non-famous citizens. If a citizen who has no public persona sues for defamation, they would only need to claim that the bad actor was negligent regarding the truth or falsity of the defamatory statement at issue. On the other hand, public figures would have to prove that the bad actor knew the statement was false, or recklessly disregarded whether it was false.

This makes it particularly hard for politicians, who are generally considered to be public figures, to recover under defamation suits. However, if a deepfake is “fake” by its very nature, would it be so difficult to prove that the bad actor knew it was false? They created the falsity themselves.

New laws may also help politician-victims of deepfakes. In Texas, we now have our very own anti-deepfake law. In 2019, Texas became the first state to outlaw political deepfakes by statute, making it a crime to create videos “with intent to injure a candidate or influence the result of an election” that are “published and distributed within 30 days of an election.” California passed its own version of the bill in 2019 as well.

Some have warned that these laws are unconstitutional, but because the laws are new they have not yet been challenged.

It’s not just political videos to worry about. A 2018 study cited by the MIT Technology Review found that 90% and 95% of deepfake videos are not whimsical Tom Cruise gaffs or political videos but are, instead, nonconsensual pornography. Then, about 90% of those videos are nonconsensual porn featuring women, both famous and non-famous. Current revenge porn laws don’t cover deepfake pornography made without the subject’s consent.

Even so, other laws may be effective in stopping nonconsensual deepfake porn. Creators of these harmful videos could find themselves subject to criminal penalties like harassment, cyberbullying, or even extortion for making and distributing these videos without the subjects’ consent.

Can celebrities sue for deepfakes?

Not easily. Jay-Z found himself the subject of vocal deepfakes. The iconic rapper has such a unique way of rapping/speaking that a YouTube channel called Vocal Synthesis was able to upload videos of him supposedly rapping the “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet and the lyrics to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (shout out Billy Joel!) Both videos were vocal deepfakes.

Hova’s legal team issued Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take down notices to YouTube to remove the videos for violating copyright, but their requests failed. Why? You can’t copyright someone’s manner of speaking.

Both Jay-Z’s Shakespearean monologue and the Billy Joel bit would fall under Fair Use parody anyway, as would things like the Tom Cruise deepfakes showing a mad cap Cruise tripping and falling. Things change when someone tries to make money off the sound-alikes, though.

It doesn’t have to be a fake video posted online, either. In the late 1980s, McDonald’s introduced the Mac Tonight, moon-headed crooner who played piano and invited customers to enjoy late night meals. His singing style was a little too close to the then-deceased singer Bobby Darin whose estate sued McDonald’s for trademark infringement, causing McD’s to nix the commercials.

In a completely unrelated turn, Mac Tonight has since become an alt-right white supremacist meme because we apparently can’t have nice things. You’re welcome for that bizarre rabbit hole.

Along those lines, Texas and other states recognize the Right of Publicity — that is, the right of a person to make money off their name and likeness. It is actually considered a property right under statute. This law would protect someone from having a deepfake of them used for commercial purposes.

Under Texas common law, an individual could also make a similar claim for “misappropriation” which courts have broken down into three elements:

1. that the defendant/deepfaker appropriated the plaintiff’s name or likeness for the value associated with it, and not in an incidental manner or for a newsworthy purpose;
2. that the plaintiff can be identified from the publication; and
3. that there was some advantage or benefit to the defendant.

So if (1) a deepfaker appropriated your name/likeness for the value — that is, to make money, (2) the fake media is identifiably you, and (3) the deepfaker is advantaged or benefitted by the deepfake, you could possibly prevail on a claim of misappropriation.

What can we do to stop deepfakes?

To sum it up, civil causes of action like defamation, false light, right of publicity, and misappropriation should work to protect most deepfake victims from having their faces used for inappropriate or commercial purposes. However, things like Fair Use/parody and high bars of recovery for defamation of public figures may make that difficult in some cases.

Criminal laws prohibiting harassment, cyberbullying, and extortion may also be used to help victims of deepfakes. However, the most common use for deepfakes — nonconsensual porn — isn’t explicitly covered by current revenge porn laws, not yet at least. States like Texas and California have passed deepfake laws to try and prevent meddling in elections by criminalizing deepfakes, but those laws may be on the constitutional chopping block by courts if ever challenged.

Of course, we don’t want to criminalize parody videos or restrict speech. Watching Tom Cruise slip and fall in a fancy store is hilarious. WE MUST PROTECT IT AT ALL COSTS!

But should there be some protection for the public from these tricky videos, photos, and audio? Probably, considering a company lost $243,000 when scammers used a deepfake voice to mimic a CEO’s voice and demand the hefty funds transfer. With the increasing accessibility of the technology and the unceasing motivation of scammers to steal money by any means possible, this is only the beginning.

Next time you watch a video, ask yourself, like Shakespeare would: “doth mine eyes deceive me?” Is that Shakespeare or was it the bard Shawn Carter? 🤔 Either way, we can’t trust photos/video/audio we see on the internet. We can ONLY trust what we see in person. If we see someone in person, we know it’s them and not an imposter, right? RIGHT!?!?

Oh no.

Thanks for the question, Julissa!

Got a question? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don’t send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.

—

Thanks for reading! If you loved it, please consider sharing it with others and subscribing. Don’t forget to listen to Sinisterhood, check out our shop, and support us on Patreon. Learn more about me here.

The opinions, language, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of my employer or anyone else who may be affiliated with me. Don’t blame them. This is all on me.

People have been sending me frog pictures recently. Well, not just me. They send them to the show, post them on our Facebook group, and tag us in posts containing frogs on Instagram. We’ve seen cartoon frogs, real frogs, and frogs with macromutations resulting in eyeballs in their mouths. Most recently, we got a picture of a nude frog, though aren’t they all? This one was standing on its hind legs, its little froggy bottom on full display.

These photos started pouring in after we did an episode on The Loveland Frog Man. After the episode aired, two things happened. First, we were informed that we incorrectly pronounced the town’s name, saying “LOVE-land” throughout the episode. Native Lovelanders apparently say “luv-l’nd.” I issued an official statement on the next episode explaining that I say LOVE-Land because (1) I’m from Texas and that’s just how I talk, and (2) saying “luv-l’nd” before “Frog Man” misses the opportunity for a really great rhyme, and that is marketing 101.

Second, we started getting these frog pics, including the one of the little nudie frog booty. Confused comments on the tushy photo indicated to me that most folks were unaware that frogs had butts. I’m sure, of course, they knew that frogs had something back there. After all, every living creature has a built-in exit route. But people seemed amused and surprised at his little cheeks all popped out at the top of his skinny legs beneath his bulbous figure.

I, on the other hand, was not surprised at all. I learned about frog butts as a child. It happened when I stumbled onto a bootleg audio cassette that belonged to my Mam-maw, my grandmother on my mom’s side. My dad’s mom, Granny, sent religious literature and admonished us for never going to church. Mam-maw slipped me swigs of her piña coladas and gave me fun stuff like this stand-up comedy cassette.

I have no clue where she got the tape. The handwriting on the label was decidedly mannish and didn’t match the curly cues of her cursive style. A widow of nearly 20 years at the time and never having dated or remarried after my grandfather’s death, it likely came from a handyman or neighbor or person she met at the grocery store.

Mam-maw never met a stranger. She made every person she met feel heard and loved immediately. This created a swath of people who considered her to be their grandma, too, even though biologically she was nothing of the sort. My selfish little heart thought love was a limited quantity item, and so I believed if she had these hangers-on, she would necessarily have to love me less. This meant I had to hate them. Mam-maw taught me the opposite was true. She had an ever-expanding heart, and no new arrivals were going to bump me out. Her capacity to love went hand-in-hand with her generosity. She was generous with everything — her affection, her attention, her ear, her limited funds, and just about any item in her house.

“It’s only stuff,” she once said to quell my protests as she was forking over her wedding band to a ne’er-do-well cousin who once came knocking.

Given her generosity, it is no surprise I ended up with her bootleg comedy tape. I confess, I can’t remember much about how I got it. Maybe I asked for it, thinking it was a music cassette like my beloved Simpsons Sing the Blues album. What I do remember is taking it home and putting it in the enormous silver stereo that sat on a wooden entertainment center in our living room. I put my head next to the speaker and pressed play.

The tape began with an announcer’s voice.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jeff Foxworthy.”

A crowd screamed and a twanged voice thanked them very much. The tape was Jeff Foxworthy’s 1993 album You Might Be A Redneck If… recorded live at the Majestic Theater in Dallas. Foxworthy, then in his 30s, waxed poetic about how good it was to be in Texas and how crazy Southerners talked. He hails from Georgia, but his opening bit about words like yunto, as in “We goin’ tomorrow. Yunto?” and jeetyet as in, “You hungry? Jeetyet?” absolutely killed with the Dallas crowd. It was jokes about my people told in front of a crowd of my people.

He then launched into his signature “You might be a redneck” bit before he covered the difference in single life and married life, and the roles of men and women in relationships and society. You know, all the things a girl in grade school really related to.

I wasn’t a total comedy beginner. I was raised on The Dick Van Dyke Show and Seinfeld. I understood that comedy writing was a job, a real career people really did. I understood that stand-up comedy existed. I just thought it existed only in the state of New York and only in 2-to-5-minute increments before a sitcom began. Listening to Jeff Foxworthy’s voice for the duration of a full cassette tape — both sides! — recorded in my hometown, talking like my family and my neighbors, describing what our life was like, gave me hope.

It wasn’t all about my family. He also talked about fishing and belt buckles and boots, things that were a little more country than we were. In so doing, he let me feel a comfortable distance from the butts of his jokes. Still, he wasn’t necessarily mocking any of his subjects. His bits were an exaggerated celebration, and based on the audience’s cheers, a relatable and enjoyable celebration at that.

It wasn’t unusual for me to sit and listen to a voice coming through the stereo speaker. Throughout my childhood, we spent every school day morning listening to Kidd Kraddick in the Morning, a local drive-time DJ who eventually became nationally syndicated. From Kidd, Kellie, and Big Al, I learned you can be funny with your friends behind a microphone as your job. That part I understood.

The only thing missing from the radio show was an audience. My family and I may have been laughing while eating Eggos in the comfort of our living room or in our mini-van in the drop-off line at school, but the DJs never heard us. Listening to the Foxworthy tape, my tiny ear pressed against the black fabric of the speakers, I heard the immediate whoops and hollers resulting from Foxworthy’s jokes. I heard the subtle laughs that bubbled up after a particularly clever line. I heard crowdwork.

I had no idea what it looked like inside the Majestic Theater the night he performed this set. Like the radio shows, it was just a voice emanating from a void, except with an audience behind him. I think I just imagined him performing in a black void of nothingness, unable to conceptualize what a full-blown theatrical stand-up show should look like. I kept that mental picture of him in the void inside my head for years, until I finally caught one of his specials on TV.

Soon, I sought out other stand-up shows. That’s when I first watched Lewis Black and Dave Chappelle and Adam Ferrara. It’s why I later bought and memorized Shut Up, You Fucking Baby, David Cross’s 2001 album, and why I, along with almost everyone else I knew from high school, bought Dane Cook’s 2005 album Retaliation.

I studied the differences in their voices. The rhythm of their jokes. I learned timing and setups, though I didn’t know I was learning. I was enamored with the act of standing up with a microphone and making audiences laugh, but none of them made me feel like I could do something similar as much as Jeff Foxworthy did.

To this day, my family — namely my mom — quotes several of his jokes, including the one about frog butts. The same joke that popped into my head when I saw those little green cheeks and made me turn his comedy on. The bit actually appears on 1998’s Totally Committed, a spin-off of sorts from Foxworthy’s previous redneck-heavy material. The redneck talk is still there. It’s just phrased in a different way.

Listening back now, the material in both specials holds up. More esoteric minds than mine may consider it a bit hack, but I’d challenge them to come up with a more memorable metaphor for what childbirth looks like than “a wet Saint Bernard trying to come in through the cat door.”

I’ll concede the path of marriage jokes and “men versus women” is well trodden. It’s also still true, and relatable as hell. Though they seem like we’ve always known the phrase, when he first debuted “You might be a redneck, it was revolutionary. He built an entire career, an empire even, on these observations. They resonated so much because they were largely true. Believe me, I know. I’ve lived some of them. He also provided the shoulders on which my current favorite comic, Nate Bargatze, stands. A much more evolved form of the schtick for sure, Bargatze makes me actually cry-laugh with his specials no matter how many times I’ve watched them. But he is undoubtedly inspired by Foxworthy. I’m sure others are, too.

Whatever anyone feels about Jeff Foxworthy, I can say this much: he made me laugh back then and managed to do it again today when I revisit his material. Today’s laugh came out a little different. It wasn’t based in the wonderment I held for him back when I was a kid. It was the type of laugh rooted in nostalgic recognition. Like jokes you heard from your schoolteacher. So clever and exciting at first, then by the tenth or twentieth time they’re delivered, you see them coming and slide into them like slippers.

Listening back now, I almost have the Redneck album memorized. I can finish the lines, not because the jokes are predictable, but because I was so changed by them. Could a setup like “If you’ve ever had to haul a can of paint to the top of a water tower to defend your sister’s honor…” ever be so easily forgotten?

For me, these jokes were transformative. I will always hold a spot in my comedy heart for them. Jeff Foxworthy was one of my earliest teachers, delivering lectures through those wood paneled speakers in my parents’ living room from each side of that tape. Lifelong lessons that made me who I am — like how to speak in your own voice, how to pull comedy stories from your own life, and just exactly what a frog’s butt looks like.

***

Thanks for reading! If you loved it, please consider sharing it with others or subscribing. Don’t forget to listen to Sinisterhood, check out our shop, and support us on Patreon. Learn more about me here.

I started this newsletter after I stopped going to my regular breakfast spot every Sunday because of the pandemic. I used to sit in the same spot at the same bar at the same restaurant and order the same thing from the same bartender every single Sunday. It was fantastic. I am a creature of habit and doing this was one of the best parts of my week.

Now, finding myself lucky enough to be vaccinated and finding my favorite spot unusually empty for a weekend morning, I decided to head back up there. I took up residence back in my old spot at the bar. Only, my bartender wasn’t there. Another of the many unfortunate side effects of the pandemic — turnover in restaurant staff.

The new bartender was different from the previous one in many ways. For one, she’s a woman and he was a man. She’s a good deal shorter than he was and moves with a frenetic energy and purpose that indicated to me that they were busier than their empty tables implied. He would get things done back behind the bar, sure, but pulled it off with a cool effortlessness. It made me feel like I was at his house, and he was doing me a quick favor making me my favorite Earl Grey tea latte with almond milk.

When he was there, I never had to order. This new bartender asked me, as I’m sure she does everyone else, what I wanted. I stopped myself before ordering the usual and seized the opportunity to be someone else. The double-edged sword of being a regular at a place is that, yes, your drink is made for you before you even ask. But what if you weren’t feeling that particular drink that morning? Your food order is placed before you even ask, but what if those eggs weren’t what you had in mind when walking in?

Heather, you say to me. In that case, you simply tell them that it is not what you wanted.

Wow, thank you for that salient advice. But here is the problem — I am a people pleaser. To a fault. It hurts. It’s destructive. I live in deep fear of disappointing anyone, even my bartender, by telling him that I didn’t want that order he so thoughtfully made for me.

But, this week, it was not him behind the bar. Though I was sad at first, I was also a bit relieved. The woman had no expectations of me. No preconceived notions, except maybe “Oh this lady really likes Dallas a lot” based on my Cowboys ball cap and SMU t-shirt.

I ordered an almond milk latte, rather than Earl Gray, and a veggie breakfast bowl in place of my former-usual order of bacon, eggs, and a biscuit. She nodded, took my order, and put it in like normal. Like I was just another customer. Like I was just anybody.

It was a relief.

I got my breakfast, and as I sat listening to an audio book, I turned to my left and saw my bartender. He was back, only he was on the front side of the bar working as a server/food runner. It felt odd that I could see the bottom half of his body. Though he had a mask on, I recognized it was him.

I looked down at my plate, realizing I had gone totally off the rails with my order. He would see it. He would know I am some faker, some imposter, that I wasn’t the person he thought he knew. Then I remembered — we’re all the star of our own sitcoms. To him, I’m just some guest-star that stopped appearing after last season.

My surprise cameo role this week was nothing more than that of a Featured Extra. The props in front of me were of no consequence to him. He probably hadn’t thought of me more than once or twice after I’d stopped coming around all those months ago.

We exchanged brief pleasantries, catching up on what had happened over the last few months. He told me he switched to part time at this place so he could work in food service for a worthy cause. I told him I got engaged and how the podcast was really thriving. He pulled out his phone to subscribe and promised to listen. (If you’re reading this — Hi! Hello! You are awesome!)

The dumb but awesome thing about self-imposed expectations is that they are self-imposed. You are at once your own captor and your own rescuer. There’s a great line in a song by The Eagles that I love. It came on the radio while I was driving this week. It goes:

So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key

Putting guardrails on yourself or your personality is a tricky thing to quit doing because how dare you? But the sooner you do it, the better off you are.

I got a new therapist this week on BetterHelp (Don’t forget to visit BetterHelp.com/sinister for 10% off your first month! /shameless plug/). My last therapist moved on to a different job where she will be caring for people on hospice, so I can’t really be too upset with her for leaving. After we said our goodbyes, I was able to look through some choices and get matched with a new person. This therapist is in her mid-60s, has been sober for 30 years, and has seen some shit. After just our first session, I am incredibly grateful I matched with her.

Our conversation flowed, and I told her about myself. I explained that I am a lawyer, but that I still dream about pursuing podcasting and writing and comedy full-time. I told her how guilty I feel that I went to law school and get to help individuals who desperately need it every day but how I still have this dream rattling around in my brain. I told her how I worry that if I ever decide to stop practicing law some day in the future, that everyone will judge me and think I am a bad and selfish person.

“You’ve got to serve your highest purpose,” she said. She didn’t say I had to do what everyone expected me to do or what I felt like I was obligated to do. She said the words “serve” and “purpose.” Inherent in that command is serve — to perform duties or services — and purpose — the reason for which something exists.

I have to perform the services for which I exist. We all do.

I get a lot of really nice DMs and emails asking me for advice. Every once in a while, it does me good to give a little advice to myself. Stop setting unrealistic expectations for yourself. Stop pretending that anybody gives a shit about what you do. Stop thinking you’re some life-altering character in the life-sitcoms of people you barely know. Write your own show. Direct it. Produce it. Be proud of it.

Yes, the metaphor I use for my life is a sitcom because I was raised on The Dick Van Dyke Show and Seinfeld. That’s just how my brain cranks.

Being in the café this week, back at my spot at the bar for the first time in a long time, daring to order something different, gave me a lot of anxiety at first. You’re an Earl Grey tea latte person, I told myself. It’s true — some days I am. But I can also be an almond milk latte person. I can be a bacon/eggs/biscuit person sometimes, and a veggie breakfast bowl person other times.

We all contain multitudes. I’m giving myself that grace now, the grace to say to the bartender or to the universe or to myself, “Sorry, I appreciate this, but I actually wanted something else instead.” I am giving myself permission to say that and not feel like I’m a bad person or a disappointment or like I am ruining anything. The truth is, for both of the bartenders — and pretty much every other person for that matter — I am nothing but a background character in their own sitcoms starring themselves. I’ve just got to make my own show, to serve my highest purpose, the best way I know how.

***

Thanks for reading! If you loved it, please consider sharing it with others or subscribing. Don’t forget to listen to Sinisterhood, check out our shop, and support us on Patreon. Learn more about me here.

Every week in my newsletter, I answer a legal question from readers.

This week’s question is from Ryan H. who asks:

Two-part question!

1. How do death bed confessions work? As people approach death in general, cognitive abilities tend to deteriorate as well. If there is evidence of decreased cognitive function, are statements taken more or less seriously? Are the things they admit to used for evidence or put into the public record for unsolved crimes? What if they were a person of interest?

2. Second part, what if the dying person discloses classified information? For example, let’s say Grandpa J Allen Hynek gushes out all of this info about UFOs to his family/nurses before passing away. Are they now legally bound to keep that information to themselves, or can they disclose this whenever because they did not take an oath/sign papers agreeing to keep the UFO information confidential? (I assume the medical staff would need to maintain confidentiality regardless due to HIPPA). Thanks a bunch!

Great questions, Ryan! Let’s break them down.

How Do Death Bed Confessions Work?

First, the concept of a deathbed confession is not really a legal one. Though people can confess to crimes as they’re dying, they can just as easily confess the location of a hidden family treasure, or that they never really liked their third child, or that they were secretly in love with someone besides their spouse all along.

Death Bed Confessions in Court

In the legal sense, death bed confessions can be used in court as an exception to the hearsay rule, but only in limited circumstances. The confusing and convoluted legal definition of hearsay is generally accepted as “an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted.” In normal human speak, it is he-said, she-said offered as evidence at trial to prove that a fact is true.

For instance, if you saw me do a crime, you could testify to that fact, right? But what if you told your mom that you saw me do a crime, then the prosecutors wanted your mom to testify? That wouldn’t fly under the prohibition on hearsay. Your mom is testifying about something you said to her; not something she saw.

This is important because we all have a Sixth Amendment right to be confronted with the witnesses against us. This means having a meaningful opportunity to cross-examine someone who testifies against you. If your mom wants to testify that you told her that I did a crime, that violates my constitutional right because I wouldn’t have an opportunity to ask you — the witness to my actions — any questions.

Exceptions to Hearsay

But what if you weren’t available to testify that I did the crime, and all the prosecutor had to go on was your mom’s testimony? Under the Federal Rules of Evidence (“FRE”), which many states’ rules of evidence mirror, there are certain exceptions to hearsay when the declarant — in this case, you — are unavailable. One of these is a dying declaration. The FRE call it a “Statement Under the Belief of Imminent Death”.

In a prosecution for homicide, a statement from the victim who believes that they are imminently dying, is admissible if the statement is about the cause or circumstances of the victim’s death.

This means if the crime that you saw me do was attacking you so hard you thought you were going to immediately die (sorry about that!!), then a statement you make to your mom about how you ended up wounded would be admissible.

If there is evidence of decreased cognitive function, are statements taken more or less seriously?

The whole theory behind dying declarations are that a dying person has no reason to lie. A 1789 case in England called The King v. Woodcock allowed testimony of a dying woman about the cause of her death (beating by her husband, sadly). The court reasoned that “when the party is at the point of death, and when every hope of this world is gone: when every motive to falsehood is silenced, and the mind is induced by the most powerful considerations to speak the truth.”

The idea of allowing dying declarations is also related to religion, with courts reasoning that a person on their deathbed is less likely to lie, given they’re quickly on their way to meet the great judge in the sky.

Arguments by legal scholars against dying declarations are in line with your question. Dying declarations are perhaps not as reliable as courts have believed for centuries. Like you asked — what if someone has mentally declined, either before their death or in connection with their imminent death? What if someone has a grudge, are not as religious as courts would hope, and they use their last dying breath to lie about someone else or clear their own name?

Those are the reasons that some legal scholars think dying declarations aren’t trustworthy enough to be automatically considered exceptions to hearsay. Nevertheless, courts still allow them regularly so long as they fit the requirements of the rule.

Are the things they admit used for evidence or put into the public record for unsolved crimes?

Sometimes, yes, information from deathbed confessions can been used to solve unsolved crimes.

This actually happened in New Hampshire in the late 1980s. A 61-year-old man named Clifton Chambers confessed to his daughter, Melissa, that he helped his son, Robert, bury the body of a man Robert killed in a fight. Clifton instructed Melissa to tell the police his story once he was dead. The next day, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died.

Melissa fulfilled her father’s wishes, telling police that the now-dead man confessed to her that he helped bury the body of the man his own son (and her brother) killed. Police obtained a search warrant, dug up the son’s front yard, and 25 feet in the ground found the body of the victim, Russell Bean, who had been buried for a decade.

Though the daughter’s report led to the search warrant and the discovery of the body, a grand jury failed to indict Robert Chambers because of lack of admissible evidence.

In that case, the police acted on the death bed confession of the elder Chambers, but the court was not able to admit it as evidence since it was hearsay that did not fall into an exception. It was not made imminently, as Papa Chambers didn’t die until a day after saying it. It was also not regarding the circumstances of his death.

Though he was not indicted, the younger Mr. Chambers was later sentenced to 25 years in jail for sexual assault, totally unrelated to the murder he allegedly committed decades earlier.

In this case, the confession “solved” the case in a sense, although it did not lead to a conviction.

What if the death bed confessor was a person of interest?

This actually happened in the JonBenét Ramsey case. Glenn Meyer lived in the basement of the house across the street from the Ramseys and was, according to his ex-wife, “obsessed” with JonBenét. An attendee at the party the Ramseys threw the night of JonBenét’s murder confessed on her death bed that she saw Meyer approaching the Ramsey house the night of the party. John Ramsey also remembers Meyer approaching the house that night, but didn’t recall why.

Once Meyer died, his ex-wife Charlotte Hey told the National Enquirer that her ex-husband confessed to killing JonBenét. (Warning: link contains graphic photos).

For some, this answered the question of who killed JonBenét Ramsey. Others think it was fabricated by the ex-wife for revenge. Still yet, even if Meyer did confess, the National Enquirer reported he was suffering from dementia and had developed an obsession with JonBenet in his later years.

You can see the issue with a death bed confession in this case. It doesn’t really “solve” anything. Even if Meyer was telling the truth, he is dead and can never be convicted.

Now to your second question…

What if the dying person discloses classified information?

The espionage statute makes intentionally disclosing classified information without authorization a federal crime. Conviction can result in a jail sentence of up to ten years in prison, a fine, or could treason charges.

If, however, you’re dying, I don’t suppose it much matters. Spill all the classified beans you want. The federal government has no jurisdiction in the afterlife.

FOR EXAMPLE: let’s say Grandpa J Allen Hynek gushes out all of this info about UFOs to his family/nurses before passing away. Are they now legally bound to keep that information to themselves, or can they disclose this whenever because they did not take an oath/sign papers agreeing to keep the UFO information confidential?

In this example, let’s assume Grandpa Hynek has security clearance and breached it in revealing the information to his family/nurses. His family would then be in possession of government secrets. Under the espionage statute at 18 USC Section 793, the federal government contends that it can prosecute both government officials and private citizens for releasing certain types of classified information.

Section 793(e) covers folks with “unauthorized possession” of information, and makes it a crime to willfully communicate, deliver, or transmit information relating to the national defense that the person has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States to “any person not entitled to receive it.” That’s a pretty broad law. Some commentators believe it is overly broad, so much so that it violates the First Amendment.

This means that, even though the family members didn’t sign an oath or anything, the broad federal statute covering classified information may make them criminally liable should they disclose it to “any person not entitled to receive it.”

Somebody better tell the Hynek family to keep those alien secrets to themselves!

Thanks for the questions, Ryan!

Got a question? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don’t send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.

—

Thanks for reading! If you loved it, please consider sharing it with others and subscribing. Don’t forget to listen to Sinisterhood, check out our shop, and support us on Patreon. Learn more about me here.

The opinions, language, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of my employer or anyone else who may be affiliated with me. Don’t blame them. This is all on me.

In the moments after announcing that Paris and I were engaged on social media, we were delighted by so many lovely comments and texts. “So happy for you guys!” “Congrats!” “Love this!”

On the group chat for one of the comedy troupes I belong to, Watermelon, the messages were much the same. “I screamed!” “Congrats!” But my dear comedy pal, Austin, added “2nd time’s the charm” which made me laugh so hard and caused me to immediately show Paris.

It’s no secret that I’ve been engaged before. Details aside, it didn’t work out. I never want to try and hide this fact because I don’t want folks to feel like ending something that doesn’t serve you is something to be ashamed of. It is not. If something does not serve you or make you feel like the best version of yourself, there’s no shame in making choices to move in the direction of happiness and freedom, should that be an option.

I understand that is easier said than done. For the longest time, I was frozen in fear. I felt like I was on an unstoppable trajectory toward something inevitable.

Because the universe provides, I met Austin in the very first improv class I took at the now-shuttered Dallas Comedy House back in 2016. He and his best friend, Adam, were some of the youngest of our classmates, who ranged in age from mid-twenties to upper forties. Initially the pair kept to themselves, but one night, they invited me to a diner nearby to grab a bite before class.

After that, we were all three cast in a troupe together and started a Thursday night writing meetup. During and after rehearsals and at these writing meetups, Austin would listen to me lament about my job and my relationship. I spoke as a miserable person but one who seemed unable (or at the very least, unwilling) to make any changes.

One day at a midday lunch, I sat across from him, all long curls, freckles, and skate shoes. He’s only five years younger than me, but for a while there, I felt ancient. I don’t know that I overtly said it, but I definitely had the sinking feeling of things being “too late” for me. This was it. This misery was my fate, and I was bound to it for eternity.

As he attacked a plate of noodles before him, he looked up at me and said, “Why don’t you just quit? Why don’t you just break up? Blow up your life, dude.”

It was just that simple, but also that hard. I didn’t have it in me to head home that night and change everything. But what he said was simple and brave. Don’t get me wrong. It was more than just that sentence. He followed it up with a lot of encouragement. He reminded me I was strong. That I was a lawyer who couldn’t be bullied. That I deserved to be happy. These were all things I had known before, but by then had let sink deep down where they sat dusty and forgotten. My hopelessness deluded me into thinking any resistance to my predetermined fate was futile.

There was power in that simple phrase he gave me. It started as a little tickle in my brain. Blow up your life. Then it grew. I began to psyche myself up.

Though I was engaged, I had not actually engaged in any real wedding planning. My mom drug me to one bridal show. Rather than throw on a “I’M THE BRIDE!” sash and a white mini-dress, my best friend, LeeAnn, and I arrived with Chick-fil-A cups filled with cider and made jokes at all the booths.

At the fine china booth, they asked which of us was the bride. I pointed to LeeAnn and said, “This is my beloved fiancée. Please give her all the fineries she requires. Do you sell the pattern from the plates on the Titanic?”

Despite lugging home a sack full of brochures, I had no interest in pursuing anything further. No date was set. No colors were chosen. I never once tried on a wedding dress. A planned trip to David’s Bridal sent me into a tailspin as all that white fabric promised to swallow me whole and end me once and for all.

I was miserable. I was scared. And, finally, I blew up my life. Quit my job. Ended my engagement.

In the fallout, I rebuilt. Through a series of fortunate events, and a lot of healing, I ended up here. Engaged. Again.

This time I feel different. Just two weeks after we got engaged, Paris and I chose a venue. We’ve already hired a wedding planner. And just twenty days after being engaged, I accidentally found my dress.

My mom — the seamstress, tailor, and costume designer — was understandably focused on the dress. She’s an expert in the field and knows the jargon. She also loves a bargain. A local dress shop was having a trunk show, which she seemed excited about, though I am still not sure what that means. I was in the store. I saw no trunks! When I hear trunk sale I expect women crawling over one another to pull dresses out of dusty pirates’ chests amongst pearls and doubloons

But I agreed to go along and see what they had.

By then, I had read about a dozen local bridal magazines. In my wedding planner notebook, I made a list of eight dress boutiques, not including the trunk show place or any chains, that I planned to visit over the next couple of weeks.

Accompanying my mom and me on this first exploratory mission was Shannon, my sister and matron of honor, and LeeAnn, my maid of honor and forever wife.

We started at the trunk show place. I slipped in and out of a few numbers, but only found one I kind of liked. I didn’t love it. You know on all those TV shows, the stupid blushing bride stands up going, “This is my dress! I don’t want to take it off!” I was hoping for that level of enthusiasm. I thought the dress was ok, but I had some notes. Other dresses, I hated entirely, so at least this was something.

When I didn’t find “the one” at the trunk sale, we moved along to a major bridal chain up the street. The consultant buzzed around me, insisting that I was sure to find “the one” right away. I slipped on dress after dress in good faith, but each time found myself forced to add them to the discard pile. One had a slit that exposed my whole bathing suit area. Another was so thin, my entire Abraham Lincoln tattoo was visible, surely a treat for all our guests.

Finally, we headed to a boutique in the Design District of Dallas. I had chosen a few dresses from their site and emailed my preferences to them in advance of the appointment. It turns out my online taste is full garbage. While the dresses were breathtaking, I felt like I was wearing costumes. None fit right. They itched. They were too flashy. They weren’t me.

Since my choices were a bust, the consultant, Daniela, asked if she could grab some contenders she thought I would like. The first one was a no-go, too tight with off-the-shoulder sleeves that kept my arms down at my side like a penguin. As my time slot was coming to a close, I began mentally planning the visits to the other eight boutiques on my list in the coming weeks.

There was still one remaining dress on the hanger. I don’t want to describe it here too much because my faithful fiancé reads this lovely letter each week (hi babe!). But when I put it on, I heard bells ring.

Daniela pulled back the curtain of the COVID-reduced waiting room, and all three of my maximum-allowable guests gasped. It was perfect. I even said, “This is my dress! I don’t want to take it off!” just like all those idiots on TV.

With my dress on, I paraded around the empty show room, toting with me a fake bouquet until finally it became obvious it was time for us to buy. We put in the order right then and there. The dress should arrive sometime around the end of September (COVID-pending).

I had left my house that morning with no expectation of buying a dress. I fully expected to get a feel, make a list, and head out again over the next few months. I was apparently the only one with that thought.

“I knew it,” my sister said. “I knew you would find something today. That’s why I came. I know your personality.” She was right. She always is.

Before leaving the boutique, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Paris.

“I proposed 20 days ago, and today you’re wedding dress shopping… you want to marry me so bad.”

He’s right. I do want to marry him so bad. I’m lucky he wants to marry me so bad right back and tells me as much every day.

So Austin’s message of congratulations was right. Second time is the charm. When I stepped into each of the bridal salons last week, the chipper women at the front desk would ask who the bride was. Each time I announced without hesitation it was me. When they asked how I met my fiancé, I told them we matched on Bumble. It sounds a lot better than saying, “We met after I blew up my life.”

***

Thanks for reading! If you loved it, please consider sharing it with others. Don’t forget to listen to Sinisterhood, check out our shop, and support us on Patreon. Learn more about me here.

Shockingly, Monty Burns doesn’t seem to honor his agreements

Every week in my newsletter, I answer a legal question from readers.

This week’s question comes from Paris via asking me on the couch and me responding, “If you really want to know, you should fill out the form on the website.” Paris asks:

“Is the Tontine agreement made in The Simpsons Season 7, Episode 22 legal? Abe Simpson and Monty Burns enter into a contract where the last surviving participant becomes the sole inheritor of valuables. Is that legally possible?”

Great question, Paris! Spoilers ahead for those of you who missed this episode when it aired 25 years ago this week.

In case you haven’t seen The Simpsons episode in question, it involves a pact made between nine of Springfield’s men who served together in World War II in Germany as part of a crew called The Flying Hellfish. In the present day (1996), Grandpa Simpson checks his mail and receives notice that someone named Asa Phelps has died. Grandpa yells, “The seventh Hellfish has died!” Then remarks how he is one step closer to “the treasure.”

Grandpa meets Monty Burns in the cemetery for Asa’s sad and poorly attended funeral, where the men each put keys into a monument. A door opens to reveal a box. Inside is a list of nine names, six of which are crossed off, including Sheldon Skinner, Arnie Gumble, Iggy Wiggum, Milton “OX” Haas, Etell Westgrin, and Braff McDonald. Grandpa Simpson crosses off Asa Phelps, leaving only Mr. Burns and himself on the list.

Burns tells him, “Seven gone. As soon as you’re in your press-board coffin, I’ll be the sole survivor, and the treasure will be mine.” Mr. Burns refers to their “gentlemen’s agreement” saying that the crew swore on their lives to uphold it. The two men keep referring to the treasure as the “Hellfish Bonanza.”

That “Bonanza” was made up of priceless paintings by what looks like a Rembrandt with mentions of Monet and Botecelli, that they had taken from a German castle. When the group of men found the paintings during the war, they figured that immediately selling the stolen loot would get them busted. To lay low, the group agrees to hold the paintings in a “tontine” suggested by Mr. Burns.

Ox, one of the soldiers, explains the scheme as, “Essentially we all enter into a contract whereby the last surviving participant becomes the sole possessor of all them purty pictures.”

Fast forward back to 1996 where Grandpa and Bart retrieve the paintings from under the waters of Lake Springfield. No sooner have they come up for air, the paintings are stolen by Mr. Burns. Grandpa Simpson catches up to Burnsy and “discharges” him from the Hellfish. Grandpa says this ouster also kicks Mr. Burns out of the Tontine, so Grandpa declares himself entitled to keep the paintings. His victory doesn’t last long. Soon U.S. government agents show up to return the paintings to the descendants of their rightful owner.

WHAT IS A TONTINE?

A tontine is, not surprisingly, a real thing. Writers for The Simpsons are always bringing in real historical and cultural references. Invented in the 1600s, tontines were ways for people to obtain payouts based on their own mortality. They were also used as investment plans often run by the government in order to fund large scale projects, similar to how municipal bonds are used today.

In a tontine, the government/organizer sets up the structure and maintains the money. People called “subscribers” put money into the scheme. The subscribers receive payments of interest while the pot of money grows. Then as each person dies, the share of the pie and payouts become bigger based on the fewer number of remaining participants. Finally, the last person to survive would be entitled to the payout of the remainder once the rest of the participants died.

The setup is not quite the same as what the Flying Hellfish used it for, but it is similar. This investment structure was invented by and named for a banker and politician from Naples, Lorenzo de Tonti. Though he later had to seek political asylum for participating in a revolt, his name remains tied to the financial setup he created so many centuries ago.

Tontines were popular throughout the years and eventually made their way to the United States. However, in 1905, tontines had devolved into something more similar to a Ponzi scheme. An investigation by the state of New York put restrictions on tontines after an executive of a life insurance company was misusing money from the tontine accounts to fund his lavish lifestyle. This misuse made tontines appear risky, so they became subject to heightened regulation.

COULD THE FLYING HELLFISH USE THIS SET UP FOR THEIR PAINTINGS?

Not likely. Tontines don’t normally hold property. They hold money and pay out dividend-like payments. Instead, what the men may have created was more like a trust. Under the law, a trust is an arrangement whereby a person (a trustee) holds property as its owner in name only for the benefit of one or more beneficiaries.

Under Oregon law, a trust need not be evidenced by a trust instrument. That means that a trust can be created by speaking the trust into words. The initial “trust” may have been created back in Germany, but the men acted in accordance with the trust for years in Springfield. Arguably, it would be governed by Oregon law. Yeah, the Simpsons live in Oregon.

Whether it was a “tontine” in the strict sense of the word or a trust, the Flying Hellfish “tontine” is still an oral contract to which all nine of the Flying Hellfish agreed. The major problem with this oral agreement is a law called the Statute of Frauds.

The Statute of Frauds requires that certain agreements must be in writing to be enforceable. For instance, if an agreement cannot be performed within one year, it must be in writing to be enforceable. Since the agreement was contingent on the deaths of members several years apart, the contract would likely be void under Oregon’s Statute of Frauds law. This means that if the agreement was not in writing, it would not be a real agreement.

The biggest issue with determining legal title to the Hellfish Bonanza is the court’s abhorrence of illegal contracts. Even if it were in writing, it’s based on the underlying illegal act of stealing paintings.

Oregon courts have held that, “If the consideration for the contract or its agreed purpose is illegal or against public policy on its face, it will not be enforced.”

Because the underlying consideration for the Hellfish contract was stolen paintings, the contract is based on illegal consideration and “against public policy.” Contracts are usually considered “against public policy” if they are harmful to society or citizens. Awarding ownership of stolen paintings to one of two thieves would be both illegal and against public policy.

If Mr. Burns or Grandpa Simpson wanted to argue in court that either of them was entitled to the paintings, they would not likely be successful. They are fighting over stolen property, based on an oral contract that does not satisfy the Statute of Frauds. The court wouldn’t likely award the paintings to either man.

Even though Mr. Burns and Grandpa Simpson’s tontine was probably not enforceable, real life tontines are trying to make a comeback. According to the Washington Post, there is a growing set of lawyers and economists that think tontines are the future of retirement savings plans in America. They’re overwhelmingly more popular than annuities, which require participants to bet on their own lives. Tontines allow people to bet against the lives of others, which people seem more enthusiastic about.

In countries throughout Africa, a version of tontines that work like “peer-to-peer savings circles” are an important source of capital for small businesses that would not otherwise have easy access to capital to scale up in size. So while they would not be a good way to hold stolen paintings in trust for the benefit of stubborn old men unwilling to die, tontines are real and are still used to this day.

Thanks for the question, Paris! If you have any other questions, I expect you to submit them through the form and not ask me directly. (Kiddddding!)

Got a question? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don’t send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.

—

Thanks for reading! If you loved it, please consider sharing it with others. Don’t forget to listen to Sinisterhood, check out our shop, and support us on Patreon. Learn more about me here.

The opinions, language, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of my employer or anyone else who may be affiliated with me. Don’t blame them. This is all on me.