Far Above Cayuga's Douches

When I got the new issue of GQ in the mail and saw that they had a feature called "America's 25 Douchiest Colleges," (It's actually characterized as "America's Most Obnoxious Colleges" on the cover) I absolutely knew that Cornell would make the list. I knew it the way a sailor will know when a squall is approaching -- with certainty and conviction in the face of sure doom.

After all, few colleges can boast the Douche trifecta -- the fact that Keith Olbermann, Ann Coulter and Bill Maher are at their most relevant notorious today, and have each attained such a Platonic ideal of douchiness, and all hail from the same college, is almost too good to be true. It is a perfect storm, and few endeavors in human history can boast such a serendipitous and motley crew and have the misfortune of producing such luminaries that so tirelessly excel in the quest for never-ending douchiness. They are the Holy Trinity of douchedom, and Cornell is their Nazareth.

Add to that number Andy Bernard '90, with his rage problems and unfortunate proclivity for a capella, and I couldn't help but know that Cornell was a top three school, for once in its existence.

But then, as I flipped the pages, nary a mention was found. Virginia, Vassar, even the University of Phoenix which tries to recruit freshmen amongst people with graduate degrees. But Cornell? Not there.

VICTORY!

It is actually difficult to argue with the top four. Princeton and Harvard make so much sense, it's like naming the top ten apostles and leaving out Luke and Peter. The upset, I guess, is that Duke is not number one, and has vacated its pre-season ranking in favor of Brown. Brown wins because it does not have grades, which is a good reason. But spend ten minutes in a bar with a Duke undergrad and then tell me this list is an accurate representation.

In the end, perhaps it's for the best that Cornell failed to make this list. Now I can stop popping my collar and saying, "I guess you went to Corn-not!" while smirking and dismissively waving my hand. Now I can wear my class ring because it helps in fighting, not because it aids in boasting. I can stop hating Cornell College for their usurpation. Liberated of expectations, I am at long last free.

Who's going to the wine tasting tonight, by the way?

The First Shall be Last

Outside, it looks like Paris the day after the Nazis invaded. If, of course, the Panzer tanks were replaced by Penske trucks and the German army had enlisted only confused and frightened freshmen and their overbearing parents.

This, of course, marks a milestone:

Today is my last first day of class.

While this is not an original thought -- in fact, it is extremely cliched -- it does encapsulate the terror of its implication in one tidy hackneyed package of fear.

I've been doing the school thing for 20 of my 25 years, and the five where I wasn't are years that I don't remember. The last five, fittingly, are also years that I barely remember, but for different reasons.

But not everything has come full circle. In elementary school, the first day of classes was an EVENT, a day marked on the calendar with the same fear and apprehension that civilizations of old use to have when they signaled the coming of the flood season. We'd trek out to stores and get books, binders, pencils, pencils of other colors, protractors, pencil sharpeners, erasers, white-out, and every other instrument of torture that W.B. Mason could think of.

And now? Yesterday, I realized, "crap, I have class tomorrow." Then I went to bed. Today, I threw my laptop in my bag and walked to class. I carried no books (since I have no clue what classes I'm keeping), no materials other than a pen that might still have ink in it, and only brought with me the hope that I walk into the right classroom.

Perhaps this means I have come full circle and am ready, at long last, to be released into the wild. There will be no first days again, but at this point they have become so rote and tedious, that it is time for everyone to move on.

God help us all.

In the Cards

So my parents are visiting right now. And I wanted to go out drinking, and they wanted to go out dancing.

So we went to different bars. And they went out to Tequila Rain, and when they got there, they went in. And the bouncer walked up to my Mom to ask for ID, and held out his hand to card her.

She had no idea this was what he wanted. So she, very nicely, reached out and shook his hand.

Meanwhile, at the other bar, I did not get carded.

So it goes.

It Was the Worst of Times

Hey, everybody! It's time to play our favorite game:

Let's Terrify the Law Students!

NYT, your turn! Remember, the game ends when you either run away screaming in terror or collapse in tears!

And go!

With the system’s frailties exposed by the recession, said Mr. Ellin from Skadden, Arps, the time could be ripe for “massive overhaul.

Oh snap!

How bad is it? Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the juggernaut of New York, has slashed its hiring by more than half. For the first time in 136 years, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, a respected Philadelphia firm, has canceled its recruiting entirely. Global firms like DLA Piper and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe have postponed recruiting for several months to see if the market improves.

Keep going!

New York University, Georgetown, Northwestern and other top universities confirm that interviews are down by a third to a half compared with a year ago, while lower-ranked schools are suffering more.

Almost there!

This fall, law students are competing for half as many openings at big firms as they were last year in what is shaping up to be the most wrenching job search season in over 50 years.

(Runs away screaming)

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

We’re running out of Kennedys.

I was hoping that sometime in October or November, when it came to count votes on the Senate floor, the chamber doors would swing open. In would limp Teddy Kennedy, who nobody imagined would be there but somehow expected he would. There, he would cast the final affirmative vote to ensure universal care for Americans.

High theater perhaps, but health care was his cause, and who doesn’t like to see a good story in the paper? Alas, such storybook endings were not meant to be. Teddy Kennedy died last night, and Obama called him “the greatest senator of our times.” I’m not one to make such judgments, but no one can deny the impact he had on everything from public service to helping the downtrodden to redefining the impact one man can have amongst one hundred politicians.

A flawed man, certainly, not without his faults. In that, however, Kennedy gives hope to others who similarly liked to have perhaps a bit too much fun when they were younger that someday they may rise above and transcend that. He was oft parodied – most of Mayor Quimby on The Simpsons is based on him, but to this I say, who doesn’t love Mayor Quimby?

As the Times wrote:

He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.

The NYT and Globe have terrific and expansive obits certainly worth reading. I’m sure there will be many more things written in the coming days. Unfortunately, Kennedy didn’t see his lifelong cause come to fruition, and with some luck, universal coverage will come into existence soon. Maybe his death will galvanize the movement. That would be a fitting tribute indeed.

I Once Was Lost

Imagine, for a second, that all your friends are addicted to cocaine. All of them. They spend all day talking about, how awesome it is, when they’re going to do it next, and generally treating it as the manifestation of the second coming. They’ve been doing this for years.

You, meanwhile, have been avoiding it. You let them talk about it and feel equal parts admiration for their zeal and pity for their dependency. You have seen them get addicted, and for that reason, and that reason alone, you have abstained.

Now imagine that one day you came home and a huge pile of cocaine had spontaneously generated on your table. Somehow, inexplicably, all this cocaine was available to you. Maybe it was God’s providence, maybe it was fate, maybe the flying spaghetti monster’s noodly appendage is a cornucopia of awesome that has yielded its bounty. Here is this pile of cocaine, free of charge. And it’s right there on your table. How much more convenient can that be?

Naturally, you’re curious. You start thinking, why not? If everybody is doing it, then surely it can’t be that bad, right? You don’t want to miss the zeitgeist.

Then again, you know that as soon as you touch it, you’ll be addicted. It will consume your life and demand sacrifices no man should make.

Then you look up from your tortured contemplation and see that it’s right there. And because flesh is weak and you weren’t much for resisting indulgence, you jump into it face first and embrace the sweet chords of oblivion.

A few days ago, Hulu put the first four seasons of Lost online. I ran through Season 1 in about five days. By my calculations, it will take me another 4,320 minutes to get through the rest of the seasons, or roughly 72 hours of continuous, uninterrupted watching.

In sum, I will probably not see anyone or leave my apartment for the foreseeable future. And if you see me walking around with white powder grafted to my nose, I’m, uh, just really committed to this metaphor, I swear.

Bury My Heart on Marilyn

As some of you know, I’m kind of terrified of commitment, much in the same way Joe McCarthy was terrified of communism. (Is it a coincidence that the two words sound similar?) The idea that you have to stick with one person for the rest of your life is blood-curling. You wake up? She’s there. Go to bed? She’s there. Want to use the bathroom? She’s there. Watch TV? She’s there. Walk naked to the fridge and take a swig straight from the carton while scratching yourself? She’s there, shaking her head at you in disgust. And probably not for long.

In any case, that’s just the “’til death do us part” part. There’s also the “eternity” part – those lucky enough to find their soulmates believe that they will be together forever. And they feel good about that. But have they stopped to think about what that means? Forever’s a damn long time. Eventually you have to run out of things to say to each other, if only because words are finite and time is not. It’s enough to make a grown man freak out and run to the nearest cougar bar.

That said, there is probably an argument for bidding on this. It’s the crypt above Marilyn Monroe, which at press time is fetching a bid of $4,600,000. You can buy it and assure yourself, in a way, of being put to rest forever on top of Marilyn Monroe, if you conveniently disregard the various concrete slabs between each other.

The current tenant of said crypt requested to be buried face down, so he could spend eternity on top of Kennedy’s broad in the missionary position. Yes, really. We’ll also ignore for a second that Hugh Hefner, when he finally dies on top of his two sets of twins, will be buried right next to you, perhaps looking over your shoulder, hopefully not doing much more than that.

No word on whether Joe DiMaggio will beat you up once you get to heaven, but, even if he does, you have a fun story to tell to Jack Kennedy over scotch at Heaven’s Vineyard.

So, um, does anyone have $4.7 million I can borrow? If you don’t I can proceed with my original burial plan. It consists of wrapping up my corpse in dynamite and then have it thrown from an airplane into an active volcano so that everything goes boom and the volcano erupts and scatters my ashes around the globe, allowing everyone to absorb tiny atoms of my awesomeness.

That is my gift to the world. Should I get the money, then I’d just share my gift with Marilyn Monroe.

In light of this, perhaps it is best to recast my appeal for money into a threat, since the two options make it sound like one.

Roommate Without a Cause

It’s that time of year again, so is anyone out there looking for a roommate? If so, I’ve found the perfect guy. He’s a little quirky, perhaps even eccentric, but with some patience and understanding, he could be a swell Joey to your Chandler.

These aren’t unreasonable requests, are they?

I do not appreciate unannounced house-guests. I need to know at least two days in advance that company is coming - I need to know the duration of the stay, and the nature of the visit. But, I am open to any and all visitors, I just need to know the specifics involved.

No newspapers or magazines. The ink gets everywhere and the gloss irritates my eyes. Sorry! You are free to read them on the front porch, but they must be stored outside of the house (perhaps in your car?)

This is not to sound discriminating, but, if you speak either French, Urdu, or Afrikaans, I kindly request that you not speak them in my vicinity as the cadences used in these languages are grating to the ears and nerves, for me.

And, of course:

You must be ok with my upholstery hobby. On every third Tuesday of the month I request that you vacate the house between the hours of 4 pm - 11:45pm while I upholster various pieces of antique furniture. I am a perfectionist and require complete silence in the house. I've tried this with housemates who've promised to stay in their rooms, but this proved impossible as bathroom habits demand a regular schedule that interrupts my artisan work. That said, I will give you a small stipend on these days if it will assist you in finding something to do with that block of time.

I'm aware that this is an old listing, but I have no doubt that this guy must be looking for roommates every two or three weeks.

I'm tempted to call just to get to talk to this guy, who will "have a handbook which I will provide for your perusal during our interview (yes, there will be an interview for final-stage candidates) that outlines all of my more particular requests." This handbook may be the funniest thing ever published.

And may God help you if you don't completely screw in the toothpaste cap.

The Smoking Pipe

Just in time for orientation, a frat house at Cornell had a broken water pipe. So they called the fire department, which promptly made the following discovery:

"[F]irefighters found [marijuana] plants in a tin-foil lined closet, surrounded on all sides and angles by several high-intensity lights."

So they found pot in a frat house. Call me next week when they find the meth lab in a certain unnamed fraternity's basement on University Avenue.

Things certainly escalated quickly here, mainly in a natural progression. You call the plumber, and he calls the fire department. They, in turn, call the police. The police then probably called the kids' parents. This trip through the escalating chain of authority does not bode well for the incipient school year.

Apparently, the national chapter will sanction either the frat guy, the local chapter, or both, depending on the outcome of the investigation. Given that an indoor greenhouse like the one described by the article can usually be kept secret by one frat boy, the local chapter is likely to remain off the hook.

Perhaps the biggest oversight in the news story is the lack of mention of a plumber. I myself imagine that the plumber went into the pipes looking for mushrooms, and, having found none, promptly left the scene to look for them. After all, Cornell is renowned for its mushroom collection.

If the picture in that last link is not the most effective deterrent to drug use ever, I don't know what is.

Hiding on the Backstreets

Last night I went to my my 4th Springsteen concert in the last 20 months. Your first inclination would be to call me a groupie (roadie would be a nicer appellation), but you'd probably want to wait until November to do that. By then, I'll have attended an additional two shows -- one at Giants Stadium and one at Madison Square Garden. By that point, I might as well quit my life of crime and carry the band's guitars to the stage.

In any case, the show last night in Mansfield might be the best Springsteen concert I've ever been to. This is mostly a result of the crowd, fired up to no avail, shrugging off the oppressive pre-hurricane heat to demand -- and get -- two encores. Although the published setlists show that it was just one encore, the band did do the whole come-out-and-take-a-bow thing three times, only one of which was for good.

So the crowd was tremendous, but the setlist was spectacular. Calling audibles like Peyton Manning on crack, Springsteen at one point pulled up one of the most unusual request signs anyone has ever seen. It was an inflatable doll, kind of life-sized, and wearing a huge red wig. We all thought it was a request for "Red-headed Woman," but closer examination showed that the doll had devil horns and a blue dress on. Hence, the "Detroit Medley" triple-punch.

That's not all. The setlist was as deep as any I've ever see, with "Trapped," "For You," and the actually-and-somewhat-surprisingly-rarely-played "Born in the U.S.A." "Outlaw Pete" is still phenomenal live, and "Rosalita" actually came out pre-encore.

The best moment of the show, however, was "Backstreets," which I'd never seen live, and is just about as epic as you can imagine. The piano here is just phenomenal:

All Laws are created Equal

Plaxico will go to prison for 2 years because he accidentally shot himself in the leg. Meanwhile, Donte Stallworth drove drunk and killed someone and got 26 days in jail for his troubles.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your American legal system!

How To Contrive a Hangover

I'm all for taking the wolf pack to Vegas, but this is ridiculous.

Caesar's Palace, which I famously crowned as the best hotel in Las Vegas, is awesome. The movie The Hangover is also awesome. Now, Caesar's is offering the Hangover package, which includes a forum suite and pool and food credits, but you'll have to supply the tiger yourself.

Surprisingly, this is a case where two awesomes don't make a super-awesome. This is a case where two awesomes somehow make a lame. The folks at Caesar's tried to make surf-n-turf and came up with coconut shrimp.

Mixing pop culture with vacation packages rarely turns out to be a good idea. Just ask the people who went for the Swingers package in Vegas. Or the folks who boarded the real Love Boat up in Minnesota. One day I'm going to go to the airport and see Oceanic flight 815 and I'll just give up.

That said, I will admit that the next time I'm in Vegas I'll be sure to find a way to break into (on to?) a hotel roof. I will, however, avoid Carrot Top and his candy.

Mike Tyson could not be reached for comment.

El Sports Guy

Bill Simmons went to Mexico and managed to survive the experience. I know. I'm as surprised as the rest of you.

He was there to watch the U.S.-Mexico game, in order to write a column about it for ESPN.

In the column, he makes Mexico sound like a prematurely demilitarized zone. Unfortunately, it's kind of an accurate description. If Mexico had indeed lost the soccer match, then we could have upgraded Mexico City to an outright "war zone," a descriptor as apt for Mexico as "chaotic hellhole" is to Iran.

The column is worth a read, just for Simmons' explaining the differences between Mexican soccer fans and civilized people other sports fans. "Michael Vick could crash a PETA rally and get a friendlier reception than the Americans did at Azteca," is how he describes it. After the victory:

I will remember the reaction afterward: Complete and utter delirium. Everyone just threw whatever drink they had as far as they could. It was like watching a new Pixar movie called "A Snowstorm of Drinks" crossed with a full-fledged prison riot. Then and only then did we realize exactly how much that game meant to the Mexicans. As Hopper said right after the final whistle (Mexico 2, USA 1), "I guess the upside is that we're going to live."

He might be exaggerating just a tad. That said, I remember going to a soccer game when I was a kid where the referee blew a call and awarded a non-existent penalty kick. After the game, a couple dozen people found the official parking lot, literally tore a hole through the chain-link fence, found the referee's car, stripped it, and then torched the carcass. In the mob's defense, your honor, it was a really, really terrible call.

I must confess I also fall into hooligan mode whenever I watch one of these games. I cut out of work early on Wednesday to go watch the game. They scheduled the game at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday, officially so the Americans would suffer in the smog, haze, and oppressiveness of high-altitude Mexico. The real reason, I suspect, is because there's an easy answer to the question of who's more likely to skip work to see this game. Regardless, even if all the Mexicans in Boston get together, there's only like, one of them, and that poor schmuck, still in his suit and tie, has to sit at a bar by himself amidst a sea of Americans and try not to scream too much at the TV when no one else was screaming.

But I digress. Everyone went apeshit when Shane Victorino (I don't want to say deservedly, but damn that man and his ubiquitous glove) got himself doused with a beer at Wrigley Field last week. In Mexico City, in what should be considered par for the course, Landon Donovan was baptized to the point of drowning with beer, soda, and piss and vinegar. Literally. And I don't want to say deservedly, but it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

See, I hate Landon Donovan. He's a little bitch. Everyone in Mexico hates Landon Donovan because he's a little bitch. If I had been at the stadium, even I would have had a hard time answering the question, should I drink the rest of this beer or should I throw it at Donovan? I guess it would have depended on how warm the beer was.

Don't look at me that way. Everyone has an athlete they loathe. And I'm not talking A-Rod hate. I'm talking actual hate. If I saw A-Rod on the street, I'd probably just point and laugh. If I saw Donovan on the street, I'd follow him down the street calling him "little bitch" until he agreed to fight me. That is the difference between hate and hate.

I realize this post -- all of my sports-related posts, actually -- makes me sound like a lunatic, and that perhaps isn't far off the mark. Thank God we won that game or both Mexico and I would have exploded in a cluster bomb of drug wars, swine flu, and lawlessness.

The Hot Zone

How hot is it here in Boston?

I was playing racquetball today and sweating my ass off when the alarm went off. No, it wasn't a fire. Not yet. What happened was the thermostat had surpassed 100 degrees in the main area of the gym, which meant the courts were probably 10-15 degrees hotter, which meant that the powers that be at Boston College shut down the gym because it was too hot for people to exercise without dying.

So yeah, pretty much everywhere, it's gonna be hot.

The Drink Cart

I’ve been reflecting for most of the morning. Although thinking things through is not one of my strong suits, I believe I have come up with a terrific idea sure to take the working world by storm.

Thus, I have a business proposal. I’m throwing this out there because this could be an exciting opportunity for many investors and entrepreneurs.

My pitch?

The drink cart.

Imagine that it’s a Monday morning and you’ve just been chewed out by your boss. You’re sitting at your cubicle, dejected, contemplating the fact that the workweek just started and how a life of crime is starting to sound good right about now.

Then, suddenly, you hear a little bit of music. It kind of sounds like an ice cream truck, but that song … is it? It can’t be. It is!

It’s the tequila song!

And then, marching happily over the rise over yonder in accounting, comes the drink cart, bearing its bounty of gifts. Highball glasses clink merrily with the row of wine glasses and sangria carafes. Bottles glisten under the fluorescent lights, filled to the brim with the sweet nectar of oblivion. Everyone chats happily as they leave their desks and mingle, debating whether today is Mojito or Margarita Monday.

Once they have been served by the smiling drink cart man, the employees will return to their seats, happy, relaxed, and mollified.

And what happens then? You look over and see that Bob got an old fashioned. And you think, damn, that looks really good. You then resolve to get another one, if not in two hours when the Drink Cart comes around again, then surely tomorrow.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are sitting on a gold mine. We will literally make trillions, and, as an added bonus, we’ll know that we have increased the happiness of the average American worker tenfold. Enabling this is more than a moral imperative. It is a religious calling.

Do not hesitate to contact me. First come, first served.

Random Video of the Day LXVIII

Thanks to Shane, who sent over this video of something called the "Beer Shooter." It's old but I wanted to share it, since it's just about the greatest invention since the Pill. Anyone who gets me one of these for my birthday (the beer shooter, not the pill) will be remembered fondly when the revolution comes.

The Wrong Advices

Today, I have been commissioned to give advice to impressionable incoming freshmen at a Cornell event out in Newton.

Basically, these kids -- teenagers, in fact -- will come to this event. There, they will be looking for advice and reassurances before they head off for college next week.

Instead, they will be confronted with a brash, loud Mexican constructed from 200 pounds of beer and red meat. His body, in the thankless and futile task of cleaning out his system, will sweat copiously, producing a liquid that is suspiciously reminiscent of full-grain whiskey.

There, this creature will hold court and tell these kids to break up with their girlfriends at home, 'cause, you know, you're going to be in college now so let's be real. He'll tell them to focus on extracurriculars, that it's OK to skip class every once in a while, and that at some point you become immune to hangovers -- all it takes is practice, practice, practice.

Meanwhile, the parents who brought their kids to this event will be busy finding torches and pitchforks to destroy this creature before it can corrupt again.

This is liable to end badly. I have made efforts to tone it down, and have promised to keep my advice and answers family-friendly and calm. I have pledged to do the utmost not to scare the kids and their parents.

As if I wasn't apprehensive enough about this whole arrangement, today I realized that the kids with whom I'll be speaking are incoming freshmen. This means that they were born in 1991. This means that they are somehow, incredibly, members of the Class 0f 2013.

So now one terrified group will meet an equally terrified monster.

Pray for me. More importantly, pray for these kids. They'll definitely need it.

The Unbearable Lightness of Hipsters

For those who need yet another reason to hate hipsters, today's NYT helpfully supplies an expose on how discrete guts -- a "Ralph Kramden," as per the preferred nomenclature -- are all the rage in Brooklyn these days.

Apparently, the Ralph Kramden is an entity carried around one's waist that is larger than a potbelly but not quite substantial enough to be called a beer belly or old enough to be a paunch.

The article seems to suggest that these potbellies are a reaction to Obama. Using an astounding grasp of logic, the editor of Details concludes that because the president goes to the gym and hipsters are contrarian by nature, all hipsters simultaneously decided to gain 10 pounds solely in their frontal abdomen.

This revelation should be enough to convince all interested parties to cancel their subscription to Details magazine.

Of all the stupid trends that the NYT Styles sections deems fit to print, this has to rank in the upper annals.

I think I have a Ralph Kramden. I also know that I'm not a hipster, and consider them to be just a notch below emos and nerds in the list of groups of people who I'd like to set on fire.

I have no clue if hipsters considers beer guts to be fashionable, and I don't really care to find out. That said, I'd be shocked if a gut was indeed a fashion statement, as the writer of the article claims.

Why? Because guts are not fashionable. As convenient as a beer gut is for resting your beer can while lying down and as musical as a paunch may be when treated as a percussive instrument, it just ain't attractive. That's why I torture myself in the gym every morning and have cut down on my hamburger intake by seventy percent. (Shut up, Time Magazine. You have betrayed me for the last time).

The result of these activities is a marked decline in my beer gut over the course of this summer. There's still some garbage there, but it's dwindling.

Of course, if the current size and shape of my stomach somehow results in my being confused for a hipster, I see no choice but to return to my prior state of buoyancy. I will gorge myself on steak and milkshakes and soylent green, which I trust is made out of hipsters.

Wouldn't that be a wonderful solution to everyone's problems?

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm off to the bakery gym.

You Run This Place Unlike a F$%*ing Prison

You know that old joke that every inmate makes whenever someone asks them how prison is treating them? “It ain’t the Ritz,” they say, and then go back to mentally counting how many cigarettes it’s going to take to keep Bogs off their asses.

In Mexico, however, prison kind of is like the Ritz, if you’re an incarcerated drug dealer. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not speaking from experience. Rather, this NYT article illuminates just how many amenities a federal criminal can enjoy.

It isn’t that prisons in Mexico are club meds for federal criminals. Rather, the affluence of the drug dealers who are incarcerated can be employed in various ways, and can be used towards the purchase of sundry items that can make you feel more at home. As the article says:

Some well-heeled prisoners pay to have keys to their cells. When life inside, with its pizza deliveries, prostitutes and binges on drugs and alcohol, becomes too confining, prisoners sometimes pay off the guards for a furlough or an outright jailbreak.

That’s right! Door privileges are but a few of the amenities a druglord can obtain in prison. Its convenience, however, cannot be overlooked. Why, just a couple of months ago, a few dozen prisoners were able to literally walk out of the penitentiary. The guards, I guess, were too figuring out where their new plasma HDTVs would be going to notice that most of their inmates were casually strolling through freedom.

The Shawshank Redemption it ain’t. Boy, if Brooks had been in a Mexican prison, he wouldn’t have lasted two weeks on the outside before institutionalizing himself. I mean, how can you return to the world outside when the prison has its own house band?

The situation there is so bad, according to a local lawyer, Uriel Márquez Valerio, that inmates managed to invite a musical group into the prison in 2005 to celebrate the birthday of a drug trafficker, who several weeks later found a way to escape.

That’s it. Hookers, blow, whiskey, pizza, and a band? Sign me up, warden. Prison sounds like the best time ever. At the very least, it has to be better than work.

In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank Prison. Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't even begin to imagine, or maybe I don’t want to.

Now we don’t even need to imagine. Who knew that walking out the front door would be a dirtier enterprise than crawling through a sewer pipe?

Most Likely To Represent Himself in Court

This weekend we got an email from the law school dean. The subject?

"Come to a Program on How to Start your own Law Firm!"

So it has come to this.

I cannot think of a more terrifying email subject, other than "Urgent Message from Planned Parenthood!"

Because I am kind of frozen with fear and cannot think of another alternative, let's break the email down, FJM style.

Dear 3Ls:
I hope you are having a good summer!

... because I'm about to terrify the living crap out of you!

I am writing to invite you to a program (no charge) on Monday, August 17, 1-4 pm at the Law School in Barristers Hall on "The Keys To Starting and Building A Successful Law Practice."

The event is free much like Scientology brochures are free.

In this changing legal market, more BU Law grads and other attorneys are starting their own practices, either soon after graduation or, increasingly, a few years after graduation.

Translation: Imagine a pit of hell wherein demons stab you with flaming pitchforks, and you tear all those who surround you to pieces just so you can be pierced by the red-hot tines instead of the white-hot tines. The current job market is worse than that. It would terrify Virgil.

Indeed, at our alumni reunions last year, several recent graduates had started their own firms or were thinking about doing that.

Translation: Unfortunately, our reunions have turned into impromptu job fairs where everyone waves a resume with nary a booth in sight. Recent graduates, most of whom no longer have jobs, have been forced to these desperate measures. What they call "starting a new law firm" is them giving pro bono advice to their friend Zach, who called them at three in the morning because he's pretty sure the blood on his shirt is not his.

Many we have spoken with like the flexibility this brings.

Have you ever walked past a restaurant, and it sits empty, except for the forlorn owner/chef who sits at a desk and stares desperately at the door while gulping a bottle of wine? He has ample flexibility as to which bottle of wine he chooses on any given night. This is the kind of flexibility you will enjoy! Except you won't be able to afford wine bottles. Perhaps not even wine boxes.

We've put together a great panel of experts who will discuss the keys to starting a firm;

The experts may or may not discuss how the key to starting a firm is knowing what on earth you're doing. Pretty much everyone I have talked to had no clue what on Earth they were doing when they began their work this summer. We were more clueless than Americans on Japanese game shows, just smiling and hoping nobody would ask a tough question, always aware that a giant foam hammer was about to hit you in the face.

critical technologies to buy on a budget;

If we told you how much Westlaw searches cost, you would burst into tears.

current and affordable marketing techniques;

The number of people who would want to be represented by kids just out of law school is a number no greater than zero. Therefore, they will teach you how to convince your friends that you can definitely handle their manslaughter trial. Yep, no problem. Easiest thing in the world.

effective time management;

Things you can do while waiting for the phone to ring, like checking your email, playing chess by mail, and conducting a heavily researched study of how many times you can bend a binder clip before it wears thin and finally snaps in half.

and how to handle some stresses that come with being your own boss.

Boy, my inner worker sure is going to hate it when he finds out my inner boss can't pay him this week. Talk about your internal conflict!

**If you can attend please email me by August 10, 2009.** We'll have light refreshments. We hope you can take advantage of this program!

We also hope you got through this email without throwing up from fear! The light refreshments are because this is probably the last time you will ever eat.

The title of this post is the superlative I earned in college. I always thought it was a joke and now it turns out that it was a prophecy.

May God have mercy on us all.

I'm on a Boat!

This weekend found our hero in New Seabury on Cape Cod for a beach weekend.

There, I was introduced to a wonderful game called dodgebeer, started several fires, and upended an entire bottle of BBQ sauce over a friend's white shirt. I ate and drank my body weight in beer, hamburgers and chips. We found out how many times you can say "I'm on a boat!" whilst lounging on a boat before it gets old (It never does). I also found out the difference between alcoholics and stoners by witnessing the reactions of each group after nearly dying on the boat -- whereas we alkies came ashore and endured a mild freak-out with the wonderful earnestness common to those three sheets to the wind, the stoners got off the boat and walked to their towels and lay down and fell asleep.

And, in a moment that made me go, of course, the police showed up because of a noise complaint. This follows me around everywhere I go. I am convinced that in a prior life I ran a factory that manufactured screams and loud noises, and karma has now forced me to endure the authorities whenever we start having too much fun.

In the weekend's shocking twist, however, the policeman was actually affable and joked with us. After he realized that we weren't making that much noise, he waved off our offer to go back inside and told us to enjoy the evening. When this information got through my head and I realized that a cop ordered us to stay outside and drink, I became convinced that heaven was real, and it was located on Cape Cod.

To cap the weekend off, we returned to Boston on Sunday evening and kept driving, heading all the way up to Gloucester, where we boarded a free booze cruise courtesy of Cornell. Whenever you're on two different boats on two different days, you know life has been kind.

Now I am more tired than I have ever been in my life and want to crawl under my desk and die quietly.

It was worth it.

Quote of the Day LIII

This story has more holes than a $30 hooker with a piercing fetish, a heroin habit, a tracheotomy, and three anuses.

-- Jon Stewart

The Suprema

And so it came to pass that the Senate confirmed Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice in Supreme History. We will conveniently disregard Justice Cardozo and his Portuguese and undefined ancestry since it raises difficult questions and inconveniently encroaches on the media's obvious angle.

This, of course, is bittersweet news for me. I had hoped to become the first Hispanic justice of the Supreme Court. This would, of course, follow my terms as the first foreign-born president of this country, successfuly taking advantage of the constitutional amendment that the Governator managed to pass but failed to utlize, mostly because the voters were reluctant to elect a Presidentor. Naturally, this would have made me the second Justice to serve on the Supreme Court following a Presidential term, joining Taft. Hopefully, I would also have been the second-heaviest person to do the same.

If any gas would be left in the tank, then I would, of course, become Emperor.

But to get back to Sotomayor, this is indeed an important moment, and she and other Hispanics should be proud.

Liberals on the Court, of course, are expected to maintain their minority. While Sotomayor will not alter the balance of the Court, she will be an outspoken replacement to the reticient Souter. Whereas Souter would barely register a firecracker going off under his chair, liberals are hoping that Sotomayor will not only scream Bloody Murder, but also manage to trace the setting off of the firecracker to Scalia, who she'd then proceed to beat into Fetuccini Bolognese.

Of course, this overstates the case. Much has been made of Sotomayor's demeanor on the bench, who is excoriated for asking tough questions while simultaneously being woman. That said, her opinions -- albeit with a tendency to skew slightly to the left -- are the model of judicial restraint, and are about as exciting as a three hour class on administrative oversight.

Many observers claim that what the left on the Court really needs is a firebrand who will go after Scalia. They imagine that by imitating Scalia and making jokes and taking cheap shots at her colleagues, the Court can stop its rightward tilt and chart a more moderate course.

This is hogwash. While I appreciate a candid and entertaining opinion as much as the next guy, the notion that Scalia is any more effective by skewering those who disagree with him is ludicrous. If anything, it serves to alienate his colleagues and makes it that much harder to forge coalitions and get votes.

Who the Court really belongs to is the centrists, those cut from the O'Connor mode. Kennedy, who agrees with most observers when they say that he is the most powerful person in the judicial world, is O'Connor's heir in the middle and ultimately the law means whatever Anthony Kennedy thinks it means.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter if Sotomayor screams at the attorneys or coddles them. It also doesn't matter if she writes the dryest opinions or the most acerbic. As much of a milestone as this is for Latinos, her position on the Court is unlikly to make much of a difference, at least for the foreseeable future.

When might she make a difference? We're going to have to wait until one of the conservative justices retires. Or, even better, Kennedy. When that happens, I guarantee you right now that the Supreme Court will be a three ring circus. The implications of that vacancy will be enormous, and Roberts, Sotomayor, and probably whoever the new nominee will be are going to throw their hats in there in an effort to become the ringleader of a Court that is suddenly up for grabs.

And that, my friends, will be television.

Random Video of the Day LXVII

Yesterday, Conan O'Brien shot Tom Cruise and the Fonz out of a cannon. Or rather, he shot their wax figures out of a cannon. They were supposed to land on bean bag chairs. It did not go well.



As Andy said: "Did you see Fonzie's head? He broke his fall with his face!"

Clinton! Meet Bill Clinton!

The most charming man in history!

And yet this might be one of the most awkward pictures I have ever seen.

Bill Clinton looks like he just ran into the husband of a woman he's sleeping with. And Kim Jong Il looks, well, like that cuckolded husband.

At least Clinton didn't put his arm around the dictator in a "Hey, buddy, let's go fishing!" pose. That would not have gone over well.

Apocalypse How

According to Slate, I am a “bloodthirsty misanthrope” who thinks mankind is stupid and will destroy itself in a sputtering miasma of nuclear explosions, asteroids, and unmanageable climate catastrophes.

Slate has a new feature up on its website wherein you can “Choose your own Apocalypse.” It is exactly what it sounds like, and does actually resemble the series of books we all used to love as kids. Except, instead of escaping the evil carnival, we try to escape the end of the world as we know it. Unlike the books, no possible chain of choices leads to safety. In this game, it is always The End.

The impetus for the feature lies in this article that attempts to describe how America will end and separate into a handful of countries that includes Pacifica, New Columbia, the Gulf and Southern Federation and the People's Kingdom of Hawaii, among others. Of course, America is a strong country, and can survive single blows like drought, the collapse of Mexico, or an alien invasion. However, odds are that these and other “blows” – cataclysmic events, really – will all strike in rapid succession, pummeling America until it disintegrates and ceases to exist.

Here’s an example of a series of events that could shatter America as provided by an expert:

“[R]ising sea levels, a collapse of entitlement programs, an attack by a foreign power on American soil, a pandemic 10 times worse than the 1918 flu, global domination by a space-faring nation that uses geo-engineering to "turn off" climate change, and the emergence of a transnational class of biologically enhanced supermen and women ("They're all about 6-2—and that's the girls," Schwartz says) who identify more with one another than with any particular nation.”

For apocalypse-enthusiasts, this is a gold mine, especially if it involves Death by Snoo-Snoo. Further reading includes a “Long Crisis” scenario written by the Institute for the Future's Ten-Year Forecast Program.” Despite a name that would make Huxley cringe, it is a frighteningly plausible projection.

The real fun, however, lies in its “Choose Your Own Apocalypse” generator. Here, you can choose up to five events from a list of 144, and then see if the confluence of your catastrophes is enough to render mankind extinct.

The list of 144 includes:

Russia hits the button (The explanation charitably calls the launch “a mistake”)
Decadence
The Rapture
2012
Alien Invasion
New Madrid Earthquake (This is in America)
The Matrix
Voluntary Human Extinction
Neo-Humans
The “Bubba” Effect (“Bubbas,” led by Glenn Beck, revolt)
Bottled Water
Theocracy
Corporate Takeover
Rods from God (mini-weapons sent from space)

And the best one:

Gray Goo (Nanorobots that uncontrollably self-replicate until they cover the entire Earth)

The way I see it, a loose nuclear weapon will be detonated in Southern Asia. India and Pakistan will overreact and destroy each other with nuclear weapons, sending up clouds of dust and nuclear waste into the sky. This cloud of waste will prevent us from noticing the incoming asteroid, which will destroy 90 percent of life on Earth. The remaining humans will break up into mercenary armies, which will proceed to kill each other off until only a handful of poor bastards are left. Unfortunately, these poor bastards will be hunted for sport by the robot overlords that now rule the Earth, until none are left, except for me and Heidi Klum.

You know what? There are worse ways to go. Now who has a loose nuke?

Dueling Advice

Yesterday, my mom straight up asked me when I'm going to meet a nice girl and settle down a little. Not for good, but just for a little bit. Still.

And then this morning I get an email from my dad outlining hangover cures.

I'm not sure whether these are mixed signals or not.

This could be interpreted as my dad telling me to cling to my youth and my mom hoping that at some point I'll grow up.

However, if I try to fuse their advice into one cohesive message, it could also be interpreted as them telling me, "Get over that hangover, stop being an asshole, and call that girl back."

Or, as Lisa said, maybe this is all code for "Once you start dating a girl, you'll be drinking more and will have to be able to get rid of the hangover."

I really like her intepretation. Sorry, Mom.

It Takes Two

As of today, I am no longer working a full-time job. Instead, I am working two part-time jobs. One of these part-time jobs is my old full time-job, which has undergone a change not unlike that of a surfer who gets half-eaten by a shark. The other part-time job is a wholly new job, researching health care issues for a professor up at the law school.

Neither of these two jobs really knows about the existence of the other, which puts me in the difficult situation of having to lead a double life. This is not like taking two dates to the same restaurant, where you have to lie to each of them and pretend to take phone calls from “work” and give yourself an incontinence problem.

No, this is like having another family somewhere and having to juggle two sets of wives, kids, and pets. So whenever I’m telling people that I’m “going to Chicago” on business, it means I’m getting into a town car, switching my lawyer briefcase for my academic briefcase, and pretending the house I walk into is the fountain of my happiness and my one and only source of joy.

Eventually, circumstances will conspire to destroy my happy existence and my disparate families will happen to meet each other, perhaps at a supermarket or country club. At this point, my whole charade will come crashing down like the flimsy house of cards it actually is. The two wives will bond over their common hatred and poison my scotch, splitting my estate down the middle and improbably becoming lifelong friends.

Alternately, my only hope is the two wives like each other enough to smile and consider one of those polygamous arrangements that are all the rage amongst kids these days.

Exhausted from juggling two wives, I will fall over dead on the sidewalk one august afternoon with a newfound respect for Mormons.

In either case, this will not end well.