Well, it’s now 2013.  How about that? We here at Abnormal Use are big fans of U2, so today always reminds us of the fabled track by that band, “New Year’s Day.” If you believe Wikipedia, this song – an anthem of many – was released as a single on January 1, 1983 – thirty years ago today – in conjunction with the band’s third album, War.

This got us thinking about songs of the New Year and the anniversaries of same.

“In The New Year,” from The Walkmen’s You & Me album, turns five this year.

“The New Year,” the lead track on Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism album, turns ten this year.

“New Year’s Prayer,” on the late, great Jeff Buckley’s posthumous Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk compilation album, turns 15 this year.

“New Year,” by the Breeders, and from their popular Last Splash LP, turns twenty this year.

Lastly, we direct you to The New Year, a band who in 2008, released a self titled album, which will soon celebrate its fifth anniversary.

Suddenly, we feel like making a mix tape. While we do that, we wish you a safe and merry New Year’s Day.

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas week. Above, you’ll find the cover of Marvel Holiday Special #1994, published way back in December of 1994. Those were the days, weren’t they? Ah, 1994. Let us pause to reflect upon the simpler times of that era. Maybe we’re just nostalgic for that era because we weren’t quite lawyers yet then. Oh, well.

Tweet of the week, from @TweetsOfOld, which takes old newspaper blurbs and republishes them as tweets: “The Seattle courts have ruled that a dog has a right to bite a man that steps on the dog’s tail. IL1911” We would love to track down that opinion. Surely there’s a way to track that down, no?

Check out this recent interview with Shauna Barnes, the general counsel of Delaware’s wonderful Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, conducted by Don Tartaglione of The Natonal Law Journal. Our reaction: How awesome must it be to serve as general counsel for a craft beer company? (Hat Tip: Beer Pulse). A somewhat relevant aside: Remember back in May of 2011, when we interviewed Adam Avery of the Avery Brewery, about his company’s Collaboration Not Litigation Ale? If not, see here.

Whoa! Our writer Rob Green was cited on The Volokh Conspiracy! See here! Whoa again!

Our friends at The Law and the Multiverse blog ask: “Can you get a restraining order against Santa Claus?” One of these days, we need to square off with those guys in a pop culture mock trial.

Don’t forget! You can follow Abnormal Use on Twitter here and on Facebook here! Drop us a line!

Santa Clause Conquers The Martians, a comic book adaptation of the 1964 film of the same name, may feature the best comic book cover we’ve ever seen.  We must confess that we had not heard of the film when we chanced across the comic book cover earlier this week. We could offer you some type of plot summary, but that would just spoil the fun, wouldn’t it?

On that note, we here at Abnormal Use and Gallivan, White, & Boyd, P.A. wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas. As we’ve said before, if you were you to send us a request to admit that Christmas is a splendid time of year full of fine sentiment and warm feelings, we could not in good faith deny it. But we would totally object to the request as irrelevant just to preserve our cynical shell.

So, please be safe, be warm, and be merry during this fine holiday season.

It’s Christmas Eve.  Since many of our readers are fellow lawyers, we must ask you: are you in the office today? On the one hand, it is the day before Christmas, but on the other hand, it is a Monday.  It’s not even a federal holiday. But it seems exhausting to trek to the office on a Monday when Tuesday is, in fact, one of the biggest holidays of the year.  Especially if you find yourself traveling to faraway places.

By the way, depicted above is the cover of Xmas Comics #2, published way, way back in December of 1942.  Look at all of the superheroes with Santa in his sleigh! But even with that on the cover, we have to think that 50 cents is pretty expensive for a comic in 1942.

Know this: We here at Abnormal Use are off today.  This post you are reading – these words you see right now – were written long ago, and this post was set to publish far in advance so that we could enjoy the day with our families.

But if you need us, you know where to find us.

Well, if you’re reading this, we may have actually survived the 2012 apocalypse.  That, or the end of the world is just a bit tardy.  To observe this unusual occasion, we direct your attention to the cover of Doomsday +1 #1, published way, way back in July of 1975. The noted website Comicvine describes the plot as follows: “After a nuclear holocaust wipes out humanity three astronauts return to Earth, team-up with a newly thawed-out caveman and have loads of exciting adventures.” (To learn more about the series, click here.).

As we previously mentioned, the ABA Journal named us to the Blawg 100, the list of their favorite legal blogs in the nation. As you read these words, the ABA Journal is asking its readers to vote for their favorites, as well. We’d greatly appreciate it if you could take a moment to vote for us! Today is the last day you can do so. To vote, please go here.

Since it’s the holiday season, we direct you to “12 Toys From the 1980s That Didn’t Take Off.” How many of them do you remember?

Now is the time that we, as consumers of media, are inundated with year end best-of lists. So, just as we did last year and the year before that, we here at Abnormal Use have collected our favorite posts of this past year – our third full year of existence. If you’ve followed us from the very beginning, you know that we’ve posted at least every business day these past three calendar years. That’s a lot! Looking back over our posts this year, it was difficult to choose our favorites. But, dear readers, the ones we enjoyed the most are linked for you below, along with their author and publication date. Fill yourself with nostalgia, just as we have, and revisit these entries from 2012.

Dealing with the Anxiety of Pfizer’s Birth Control Pill Recall: A Flowchart (Steve Buckingham, February 6, 2012)

Ten Years Ago Today: Dedman Graduates From Baylor Law School (Jim Dedman, February 9, 2012)

Gas Can Litigation = Big Business for Plaintiffs Firms (Frances Zacher, February 13, 2012)

20th Anniversary: “My Cousin Vinny” (1992) (Various Bloggers, March 12, 2012)

Lessons Learned from Vincent L. Gambini (Rob Green, March 12, 2012)

Remedies for Unreasonably Defective Law Schools (Frances Zacher, March 28, 2012)

American Bar Association Denies Provisional Accreditation To Miskatonic University School of Law (Jim Dedman, April 1, 2012)

Deposing Siri (Jim Dedman, April 2, 2012)

Johnny Cash’s “Cocaine Blues” Leaves Much To Be Desired (Legally, Anyway) (Nick Farr, June 12, 2012)

The Flaming Rat Case: A Revisionist Analysis (Steve Buckingham, June 27, 2012)

Critical Thoughts on Depositions of Asbestos Plaintiffs (Jim Dedman, July 12, 2012)

CPSC aims to eradicate Buckyballs, outstretch its boundaries (Nick Farr, July 31, 2012)

UIM Coverage Issue Goes Viral; Great Misunderstandings Ensue (Nick Farr, August 15, 2012)

The Most Important Unwritten Rule: Depositions Should Start at 10:00 AM (Jim Dedman, September 26, 2012)

First World Problems: Litigating A Really Sweet Pool Table (Steve Buckingham, October 15, 2012)

First Hot Coffee, Now Hot Tequila? (Rob Green, November 26, 2012)

As readers of this site are aware, we here at Abnormal Use occasionally publish interviews with law professors and practitioners on products liability and litigation. In 2012, we published a total of ten such interviews (including those with a number of film and television actors). Today, we list all of our 2012 interviews and provide links back to them:

John Hart, Author and Novelist (January 12, 2012)
Jonathan Lynn, Director of My Cousin Vinny (March 13, 2012)
Dale Launer, Writer/Producer of My Cousin Vinny (March 14, 2012)
Raynor Scheine, Actor from My Cousin Vinny (March 15, 2012)
Mitchell Whitfield, Actor from My Cousin Vinny (March 15, 2012)
James Rebhorn, Actor from My Cousin Vinny (March 15, 2012)
Rod Smolla, Lawyer and President of Furman University (April 3, 2012)
Rod Smolla, Lawyer and President of Furman University (April 4, 2012)
Myra Turley, The “Seinfeld” Finale Jury Foreperson (May 3, 2012)
Charles Brownstein, Executive Director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (June 25, 2012)
James Marshall, Actor from A Few Good Men (December 13, 2012)

As 2012 draws to a close, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank the individuals listed above for being kind enough to grant the interviews. We think our site is all the better for it. And, if you missed any of the interviews, take a look!

As you know, each Friday, we  share some links to other sites and articles of interest.  Keeping with this week’s theme – the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the release of A Few Good Men – we’ve collected some links related to the film.

Here’s an interesting piece from The New York Times, published last year, noting that at least four former military lawyers have claimed to be the lawyer upon which the A Few Good Men‘s protagonist is based. How about that? It wasn’t one of us, that’s for certain.

Did you know that in 2008 the ABA Journal named A Few Good Men Number 14 on its list of Top 25 Greatest Legal Movies?

In an article, also from 2008, M. J. Tocci explains that A Few Good Men teaches us that “jurors give their own meaning to the different ways that men and women express themselves.”

Here is the official blog of the U.S. Navy JAG Corps.

Twenty years ago tomorrow, on December 11, 1992, the popular legal drama A Few Good Men saw its release in theaters. Written by Aaron Sorkin (and based on his play), and directed by Rob Reiner, the film has become ingrained in our culture, spawning memorable lines (“You can’t handle the truth”) and scenes (“How did you know where the mess hall was if it’s not in this book?”).  Further, the film assembled a host of Hollywood megastars (Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore), all of whom were super popular at the time. As a courtroom film, it has a special place in the hearts and minds of lawyers. We here at Abnormal Use have always been fans of this movie, so we decided to commemorate its twentieth anniversary with a full week’s worth of coverage.  As you may recall, in March, we did something very similar with My Cousin Vinny to celebrate its twentieth anniversary.  So, for this film, we’ve also gone all out. This week, we’ll be posting  our own thoughts and memories of the film, an interview with one of the actors, and other related content.

We are excited about this project and offer the following preview of what to expect this week:

Tuesday, December 11

“Can You Handle The Truth?” – Our writer Rob Green analyzes the most famous scene in the film and wonders if Tom Cruise’s character actually employed good legal strategy.

Wednesday, December 12

“A Few Good Men: A Former JAG Officer’s Perspective” – A former JAG officer, Rob Green takes a look at the film to determine how accurately it depicted the military justice system.  Spoiler alert: He finds that the filmmakers got some things right, and some things wrong.

Thursday, December 13

“Abnormal Interviews: Actor James Marshall” – We were fortunate enough to score an interview with James Marshall, the actor who played Pfc. Louden Downey, one of the defendants on trial.  Marshall shares his memories of the filming experience and working with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and of course, Jack Nicholson.

Friday, December 14

“Friday Links: A Few Good Men Edition” – We’ve cobbled together some interesting links to commentary on the film and its place in history.

We hope you enjoy our anniversary celebration. As the days proceed, we will activate the links to this content above.

Whoa! “Law versus Crime!” Depicted above is the cover of Mr. District Attorney #1, published way, way back in 1948.  “When Gangland Ran Rampant,” the cover proudly exclaims. “The Five Days That Shook A City!”  Representing those five days, of course, is an actual calendar emblazoned across the background of the cover.   We guess Mr. District Attorney was not yet using Outlook.  Oh, well.

Our pal Max Kennerly, a Plaintiff’s lawyer and blogger at the Litigation & Trial law blog, writes us with the following tale:

When you have little kids, you don’t go out to see movies as much. Yesterday, buying a bunch of kids stuff at Walgreen’s, I saw a display rack for a new movie out on DVD: The Dark Knight Rises.

I apparently spent so time procrastinating on making time to see it that it came out on DVD without me even noticing it left theaters. I can’t tell if this is a win or a fail.

This is troubling news.  After all, we here at Abnormal Use saw The Dark Knight Rises on opening weekend. How could one not? We hope Max will find time next week to see The Hobbit; we have already calendared an appointment to do so here in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Finally, rest in peace, Dave Brubeck. Time Out, from 1958, is such a fine, fine record.