Television Personalities

"to a defendant raising his hand to speak while plaintiff is speaking: You wanna lose, fast?"

"Why don't you SHUT UP and listen?!"

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory. If you lie, you're always tripping over your own tie. ("If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything" - Mark Twain)"

"to a defendant who called the plaintiff a "witch" after the judge ruled in the plaintiff's favor: You gotta learn to behave yourself, madam. I have a feeling you have a pretty hot temper - not as hot as mine. That's all - out!"

"You're irritating me. It's not a good thing to start off by irritating the person who's supposed to decide your case."

"DON'T SPEAK! See how fast I can get the smile off your face?"

"Judy: (to defendant, who took 17 purses and 21 belts from the plaintiff to sell on consignment, and was being sued because the plaintiff never got her money or the merchandise back) Where are they? [referring to merchandise] Defendant: I couldn't sell them, and... Judy: So what did you do with them? Defendant: I threw them away. Judy: Well then, you're the dumbest thing that I've seen all day! What do you mean, you threw 'em away? You think that I believe that? That's what you wrote in your answer. I said, "I have to see the person who says to me..." [audience laughs] "...that I couldn't sell them so I threw 'em away." You think that I believe that? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard! Defendant: I couldn't sell them--- Judy: Why would you want to tell ten million people - how stupid a response that you could make up in your head and expect somebody to believe!!!"

"This week, NBC told us five years in advance that Conan O'Brien will take over for Jay Leno, but the network still hasn't said who'll take over for Jimmy Fallon this weekend."

"When I got asked to sing "Silent Night" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon just before Christmas, I saw it as an honor and an opportunity. I loved that show, so being a guest on it was awesome. It was also the first time since way back in the beginning that I just sung without all the choreography. I'm always dancing or running around. But this time, it wasn't about the spectacle. It was all about my voice. And that sing is no joke, either. It felt like I was being recognized as a real singer. And that's really important to me. Music is my life, and in order to build a meaningful career, making the best-quality music I can is my priority."

"Actually, it's tough, because he's not really screwing up. He seems to be doing a good job, but we're there just in case — the first time he does anything."

"Honestly, it's the greatest show on television. It's live. It's topical. It makes you laugh. It's just a great vibe."

"Equally up to the task was baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis who's tortured characterization of Rigoletto was near flawless, strong and acted with intelligence and emotional depth. Mr. Juozapaitis has a full baritone that displays nice range and clarity, and coupled with the ease with which he commanded the stage, provided just the right measure of appeal that communicated to the audience the conflict and suppressed rage the character, no doubt, felt toward those who used and mocked him. Nicely done!"

"In the pivotal title role (Rigoletto - ed.), Vytautas Juozapaitis - fondly remembered for his marvelous performance of the title role in Mozart's "Don Giovanni" with the Lirico here in 2003 - sang with a dark, commanding, tragedy-tinged baritone that vividly conveyed the character's flawed humanity and despair. And he masterfully delivered the role's two big arias."

"Vytautas Juozapaitis' Don Giovanni filled the performance. The singer won the audience not only with his impeccable impersonation of the gallantly vicious philanderer, but also with his vocal rendition that didn't leave any of the listener's desires unfulfilled."

"Most noteworthy was Vytautas Juozapaitis in the title role. He nailed the role with his well projected baritone."

"The Mozart Festival Opera's production of Don Giovanni made the three hours fly. The miming between Stefano de Peppo and Vytautas Juozapaitis as Don Giovanni was great physical comedy that had the audience laughing out loud. Juozapaitis possessed the voice, swagger and stage presence to match and dominate Leporello, and his costumes are among the best I've seen. I think Mozart would have approved."

"Charismatic Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis was a spirited, energetic Don Giovanni who held the audience's rapt attention whenever he was on stage. He had an authoritative sound that could be romantically enticing in an attempt to seduce a lady, but could change instantly into a commanding tone when anyone attempted to thwart his will."

"Baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis was perfectly full of himself as Don Giovanni. His hilarious interactions with sidekick Leporello, played by the animated bass-baritone Stefano de Peppo were the highlights of the show."

"Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis, last year's devilish, dark-toned Don Giovanni, Teatro Lirico has a powerful singer with an impressive stage presence. Sparks flew because Vasileva and Juozapaitis created such emotional tension: she more nuanced than the usual submissive heroine, he more sympathetic than the stock villain."

"Last night's fierce-eyed Don Giovanni, sung by Vytautas Juozapaitis, was a lean and hungry predator (...) Mozart's dark comedy has been realised with grandeur."

"With Vytautas Juozapaitis as a perfectly evil Don Giovanni, the Teatro Lirico d'Europa seduced an audience of about 850 at the Garde Arts Center Monday night. Juozapaitis, a singer with the Lithuanian National Opera, stood out as the despicable title character of this most famous of Mozart operas. He took over the stage with both his supple and strong voice as well as a stage presence that seemed so natural it was hard to look at him without thinking he was Don Giovanni."

"Bad boys have long fascinated audiences as well as storytellers, whatever the medium. Such rebels, often without causes beyond self-gratification, have been at the center of much of contemporary popular culture. One of the paradigms for such dramatized morality tales is Mozart's magnificent "Don Giovanni," whose musical and theatrical turns evoked awe and laughter and terror from the more that 1,500 music fans who on Saturday night flocked to Lawrence's Lied Center for the Mozart Festival Opera production. The libertine is thoroughly disreputable. Nonetheless, we look on in fascination because of his devilish smile, dashing good looks, ready wit, and the audacity of his hyper-inflated ego. If you can imagine a young Jack Nicholson with mustache, cape and a flair for sword play, you've got it. Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis gave the Don appropriate swagger and voice. He also brought a comic twist that gave the roué a touch of the trickster. Stepping out of character for a second in the midst of a briskly paced recitative, he paused, turned, and looked up at the supertitled English translation as if to check his lines. It was a joke shared by all. The pleasure of performing, even in the opera's most dramatic moments, was evident."

"What can I write about Vytautas Juozapaitis? Months ago, a singer with this same name gave one of the most Mozartean accounts of Don Giovanni I've ever experienced: a lean, yet warm sound, exciting and a little on the dangerous side - utterly (and wonderfully) self-absorbed. The man singing Giorgio Germont could not possibly have been this same artist. This was Verdi singing of the highest order - as if to the manor born. A molten, rich expressivity and attention to Verdian line that in its size, detail and musicality recalled the greats: Gorin, Merrill... you get the idea. The name may not trip off American tongues with ease... yet, but in an era often thought bereft of Verdian voices Juozapaitis is the real deal. Every moment of his Germont was filled passion and, like all of the cast members, every word of the Italian was naturally produced and understandable. Mama mia this man's got it!"

"This accessible production [of Don Giovanni - ed.] concentrates on the comic delights of the piece and rests heavily on the roguish charms of Vytautas Juozapaitis in the title role. Indeed, he's so delightfully decadent, and so charismatic a performer, that the righteous indignation of those he has harmed makes them seem priggish in comparison."

"The slim and agile baritone, Vytas Juozapaitis, portrayed the Don as a self centered nobleman. He sang with a pleasant voice, and unlike most interpreters of the role, he had no trouble tossing off the 'Champagne Aria' at top speed."

"Tuesday's cast was first rate, led by the remarkable Lithuanian baritone, Vytas Juozapaitis, in the title role."

"From his entrance, in medias rape, Vytas Juozapaitis had a compelling presence as both seductive and dangerous Don Juan. He had a dash, swagger, a sense of humour, and a strong, lustrous voice. He's a good actor too. You believed both in the way he was driven by his carnality and in his self possession. In short, he embodied the music."

"The greatest credit for the evening's success must be given to the rich-voiced Juozapaitis as Giovanni, and bass-baritone Stefano de Peppo as… Leporello."

"Lithuanian baritone Vytas Juozapaitis brings presence and a warm, strong voice to the title role. When we first see him, hair flying in mid-rape, he looks like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean."

"Young Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis was well cast as the suave serial seducer with his aristocratic good looks and deep voice. Most women would find him charismatic if not irresistible. From the first moments it became evident that this company, with attractive sets and costumes, is miles ahead of most touring troupes. Theatrically and musically gratifying were the other cast members, all with international experience."

"Vytas Juozapaitis is simply terrific as the Don; lean, agile, and the possessor of a Zorro-like sexiness, he seemed part old fashioned matinee idol, yet firmly rooted in the here and now a la Johnny Depp. Like the singer, the voice is attractive, lean and powerful. His seduction of Zerlina, smooth as silk. He had the audience in the palm of his hand."

"The performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni Tuesday night at the University of NH, Johnson Theatre, was absolutely stunning. Lithuanian baritone, Vytautas Juozapaitis, (Don Giovanni) not only had the necessary voice, but he played the boastfully lecherous rake to great fanfare."

"This Don Giovanni had heat, passion and total commitment from everyone involved under dynamic, dramatic direction of conductor Metodi Matakiev. The Don was Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis, a highly physical, Douglas Fairbanks / Errol Flynn kind of Don. Tall, dark, quite handsome, a really sexy beast possessed of a bronze colored voice of power and some suavity, completely at ease on stage, and finally a Don who actually ENJOYS to the hilt the life of a promiscuous hedonist. He was close to irresistible."

"The Don's difficult role never seemed to tax Juozapaitis excellent dramatic voice. Throughout the opera listeners were charmed by his great expressive range as he moved with ease from comic exchanges with Leporello to tender love sings."

"It is the relentless onward march of the texters, the SMS (Short Message Service) vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago.They are destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped."

"Murrow taking on McCarthy was one of the great high points in broadcast journalism, along with Cronkite stepping out from behind his desk and talking about how Vietnam doesn't work were two moments in broadcast journalism that you could point directly to and say actually changed American policy... I don't know a reporter that doesn't want to break a big news story. It is constantly the battle between commerce and news, or keeping entertainment from pushing the news off the air... I was looking to open a debate, to have a discussion, to be able to talk about issues that I think are important. It's simply saying, as Murrow says in the film, we have to find a way to find a safe place between the protection of the individual and the protection of the state at the same time."

"I think being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause – but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it’s a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they’re not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they’re preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can’t be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism."

"In our country, third-party candidates throughout the years have said there is not a dime's worth of difference between the candidates from the major parties. Well, that is clearly a campaign canard. But it may appear to be true if the public's knowledge of the important differences between candidates is limited to what the public sees and hears on television. Putting it as strongly as I can, the failure to give free airtime for our political campaigns endangers our democracy."

"This is the essential importance of the Alliance for Better Campaigns' efforts backed by Common Cause. It is our campaign to give free time to all legitimate candidates. … What our campaign asks is that the television industry yield just a tiny percentage of that windfall, less than 1 percent, to fund free airtime."

"Even as with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the United Nations is led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience. They pander to and are supported by the Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing. Their leader, Pat Robertson, has written that we should have a world government but only when the messiah arrives. Any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil! This small but well-organized group, has intimidated both the Republican Party and the Clinton administration. It has attacked each of our Presidents since FDR for supporting the United Nations. Robertson explains that these Presidents were and are the unwitting agents of Lucifer. The only way we who believe in the vision of a democratic world federal government can effectively overcome this reactionary movement is to organize a strong educational counteroffensive stretching from the most publicly visible people in all fields to the humblest individuals in every community. That is the vision and the program of the World Federalist Association."

"Our country today is at a stage in our foreign policy similar to that crucial point in our nation's early history when our Constitution was produced in Philadelphia. Let us hear the peal of a new international liberty bell that calls us all to the creation of a system of enforceable world law in which the universal desire for peace can place its hope and prayers. As Carl Van Doren has written, "History is now choosing the founders of the World Federation. Any person who can be among that number and fails to do so has lost the noblest opportunity of a lifetime.""

"Ours will neither be a perfect world, nor a world without disagreement and occasional violence. But it will be a world where the overwhelming majority of national leaders will consistently abide by the rule of world law, and those who won't will be dealt with effectively and with due process by the structures of that same world law. We will never have a city without crime, but we would never want to live in a city that had no system of law to deal with the criminals who will always be with us."

"I suppose I'm preaching to the choir here. So let's not talk generalities but focus tonight on a few specifics of what the leadership of the World Federalist Movement believe must be done now to advance the rule of world law. For starters, we can draw on the wisdom of the framers of the US Constitution in 1787. The differences among the American states then were as bitter as differences among the nation-states in the world today. In their almost miraculous insight, the founders of our country invented "federalism," a concept that is rooted in the rights of the individual. Our federal system guarantees a maximum of freedom but provides it in a framework of law and justice. Our forefathers believed that the closer the laws are to the people, the better. Cities legislate on local matters; states make decisions on matters within their borders; and the national government deals with issues that transcend the states, such as interstate commerce and foreign relations. That is federalism. Today we must develop federal structures on a global level. We need a system of enforceable world law — a democratic federal world government — to deal with world problems."

"What Alexander Hamilton wrote about the need for law among the 13 states applies today to the approximately 200 sovereignties in our global village: "To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.""

"The battle for the airwaves cannot be limited to only those who have the bank accounts to pay for the battle and win it. Democracy is in danger. Seats in Congress, seats in the state legislature, that big seat in the White House itself, can be purchased by those who have the greatest campaign resources, who have the largest bank accounts or own riches. That, I submit to you, is no democracy. It is an oligarchy of the already powerful. It is no less than a conspiracy of the powerful to deny access to government to those who literally cannot afford to run for public office with any realistic hope of getting elected."

"We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait. Democracy, civilization itself, is at stake. Within the next few years we must change the basic structure of our global community from the present anarchic system of war and ever more destructive weaponry to a new system governed by a democratic UN federation."

"For many years, I did my best to report on the issues of the day in as objective a manner as possible. When I had my own strong opinions, as I often did, I tried not to communicate them to my audience. Now, however, my circumstances are different. I am in a position to speak my mind. And that is what I propose to do. Those of us who are living today can influence the future of civilization. We can influence whether our planet will drift into chaos and violence, or whether through a monumental educational and political effort we will achieve a world of peace under a system of law where individual violators of that law are brought to justice."

"For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized?" And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another. While we spend much of our time and a great deal of our treasure in preparing for war, we see no comparable effort to establish a lasting peace. Meanwhile, emphasizing the sloth in this regard, those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war."

"The first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world."

"All the European democracies have far higher election turnouts than ours, and all of them provide their candidates with extensive free airtime. In fact, of all the major nations worldwide that profess to have democracies, only seven — just seven — do not offer free time. These are Ecuador, Honduras, Malaysia, Taiwan, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States of America. Does it make us proud to be on such a list?"