6.17.2008

Have You Been Injured In A Car Wreck? You Need A Check.

"The [Review-Journal] thinks I’m a huckster. They’ll take any shots they can at me. I think I’ve done something that no other attorney has done: I’ve transcended being an attorney and am some quasi-celebrity, and that’s made me a target. When you’re part of Vegas culture and I am … Look, in all humility, I’m not even looked at as an attorney anymore. I’m like the white tiger that bit Roy to some people."

Glen Lerner, AKA "The Heavy Hitter", who will be familiar with anyone who has ever watched any sort of television in the daytime in Vegas. The quote is taken from an interview with the Las Vegas Weekly wherein he talks about his recent scandals (like failing to show up to defend his former pool guy for murder. Oops!) and his conversion to Christianity. (Check out his humongous cross - his Jewish mom has got to love that thing - and sweet blue blazer over on his site. He looks like some deranged Christian stand-up comic circa 1987. Or a Las Vegas personal injury lawyer circa 2008. Either way.)

It's always hard to explain to people who aren't from Vegas why it's such a surreal town. It's seriously like growing up in a fun house mirror version of Disneyland. The incongruous architecture, the minor local celebrities - Lerner, Fred from GMF Motors, Lonnie Hammargren, Ed Bernstein, Count Cool Rider and Fletcher "Adopt A Pet"/Fletcher Jr. (who seemed like a total sleazeball)/future mayor (!) Jan Laverty-Jones - wandering around (I remember I once saw Nate Tannenbaum in Waldenbooks in the Boulevard Mall and I totally flipped out. Ditto for the time I saw Gary Waddell in his sweats in a Wal-Mart. Or crooked-nosed Kevin Jamison at a dry cleaner with his kid. Why was it so weird to see these people who basically read the newspaper to you on television in real life? Can anyone explain this?), the omnipresent aura of sleaze, the bright bright bright sun, the total lack of history or culture. It's like some sort of bad science fiction dystopia. It's glorious and repugnant simultaneously.

Some days I flirt with the idea that I would like to live there again someday, in Vegas. Then I think about being stuck in traffic on I-15, my back all sweaty and sticky and shirt soaked through while the taxicab in front of me with the Crazy Girls advertisement on the top (the one with the bunch of butts on it) leers at me as the guy in the big construction truck cuts me off. Mmmyeah. Maybe not.

Anyway, it's a Glen Lerner interview. And it's fairly intelligible. I know, shocking, right? I'd argue his point about being the only attorney to transcend to semi-celebrity, though. Has he really never seen the Edward M. Bernstein Show on some random Sunday morning/afternoon? And if he hasn't, why hasn't he? That junk is required viewing.

And can somebody tell me why there aren't more Heavy Hitter commercials on YouTube? It's pathetic. I mean, this is what the Internet is for, people?

4 comments:

Jason Quinones said...

he looks more like a pimp than a lawyer!

"we accept cash,credit cards or crack/cocaine!"

i see he has many leather bound books. (that means he's smart!) i bet his office smells of rich mahogany.

R.I.P. Polaroid

Jason Quinones said...

or he looks like a cross between christopher meloni (from law and order:svu) and that baldwin brother from the usual suspects who suddenly found religion when his career went into the crapper.

Emilio Z. said...

the crossbars on the e and on the a are all aligned to the one on the r, but you just helped me notice that although they are grid aligned the a crossbar is not visually aligned, thanks!

barlows said...

Do you know his follow up line, "One call; That's all" is also on a billboard in Utah for some other lawyer? Yeah, I guess there's more than one uber-creative lawyer in the world.