2008 Woodie Awards
St. Louis lawyers ham it up in show
By: Lanz Christian Bañes Contributing Writer
Issue date: 4/7/05 Section: Culture
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"I can feel the drugs, Fernando!" she sang during a pause in the music, in reference to another ABBA song, "Fernando," as the giant play needle full of imaginary Botox "pierced" her skin, erasing away the offending wrinkles.
The skit, "Botox Queen," was performed by the five female singing members of the Courthouse Steps: Julie Fix, Robin Higgins, Anne Geraghty-Rathert, Leslie Brown and Lee Anna Good. The male members are Bob Will, Steve Meyerkord, Peter Dunne, Bob Raleigh and Ray Fournie.
The Courthouse Steps is a group of singing St. Louis lawyers. Webster faculty members Fix, Higgins, Geraghty-Rathert and Dunne, are all part of the group that performed a benefit concert for the Family Justice Center at the Main Stage of the Loretto-Hilton Center. There was a suggested donation of $10.
The group takes current political and social issues and does parodies and satires of them, said Fix, the manager of the Courthouse Steps.
"We try to see what's big in the news, what's an issue to society," Fix said. "We decide as a group what is funny and timely."
Monday night's show was full of memorable and varied musical numbers, beginning with Fournie's definition of the word "politics."
"The first part is 'poli,' which is Greek, meaning 'many.' The second part is from the Anglo word 'ticks,' meaning "blood-sucking parasites," he said.
In one number, the Courthouse Steps criticized the Bush administration's use of a color-coded terrorist threat alert system, singing; "We all live in a yellow code alert" to the classic Beatles song "Yellow Submarine." The lawyers even lampooned the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) penchant to sue for any perceived threat to ACLU using the Village People's "YMCA" ("it's time to call up the A-C-L-U!").
Tom Schlafly, of Schlafly Beer fame, is the group's main lyricist who, along with director Fournie and musical director Diane Hanisch, creates most of the group's witty performances. Hanisch was the pianist during the concert, while Barb Blood was the sound editor.
The concert is part of a campaign to raise funds, which will help open the Family Justice Center, a domestic violence crisis center in the city of St. Louis, Geraghty-Rathert said. Geraghty-Rathert, a legal studies professor, organized the event.
The center is a one-stop center, meaning much of the necessary medical, counseling and legal services for victims of domestic violence will be located within a single center. This will keep victims from the burden of finding the different services across the city.
The crisis center is being sponsored by Legal Advocates for Abused Women, the Catholic Legal Assistance Ministry, the Washington University Law Clinic and the Webster Legal Studies Program.
"We are all glad to help out with such a worthy cause," said Dunne, an adjunct faculty member in the behavioral and social sciences department. "That's why we all became lawyers."