A Brief Holiday

By the by, I am in Mexico right now, enjoying doing little but eating, and lying out in the sun reading all day. This blog should resume normal business hours in the New Year, provided, of course, that immigration authorities allow me a safe and speedy returns to the American Land.

Happy Christmas, Merry Hanukkah, or Enjoyable Non-denominational-holiday-festivity-of-your-choosing.

The Phour Horsemen

Last night, I had a nightmare that Cliff Lee signed with the Phillies. And he and Oswalt and Hamels and Halladay turned into manbearpigs and chased me down and then my shotgun jammed and they stood there laughing and dismembering me and when I woke up I wiped my hand across my forehead and thanked God it was only a dream.

And then I turned on the internets. And my top stopped spinning.

So there you have it. The Philadelphia Phillies have assembled what they like to call the Phantastic Phour, but should more properly be referred to as the Phour Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Next year, the Braves get to face them through the course of 19 head-to-head matchups. Yes, of course on occasion we'll draw whatever piece of flotsam they toss in to complete the rotation, but even the 2 or 3 games we have against this fifth Beatle will not be enough to counteract the absolute maelstrom that will be battling through their pitching staff.

On paper this team looks like it has a chance to win 120 games. Heck, the Phillies could throw out an outfield of Francouer, Melky, and the present-day Canseco and they'd still win the division by at least 15 games.

But let's not anoint them as champs just yet. The '97 Braves fielded a rotation where Denny Neagle had the worst ERA+ that year, which should be expected, but it was 144, which should not. The '98 Braves had 5 members of their rotation with at least 15 wins each. If you're keeping count, that's all of them. That rotation averaged a 144 ERA+. These are absurd, historical numbers. And, sadly, they weren't enough to win the Series.

That was three hall-of-famers in their absolute prime. The Phillies' starters are terrific, yes. But half of them aren't in their prime and the other half are not hall-of-famers.

Also, this is baseball. Sometimes you run into blind men like Eric Gregg, who misread the rules and thought the strike zone covered the plate and both batters' boxes. Or you run into a lightning-in-a-bottle team like the Giants. You just never know.

Don't get me wrong. The Phillies had an outstanding rotation yesterday. And then they went and signed the best free agent pitcher in the game. Without understating the metaphor in the slightest bit, imagine that Hitler had somehow gotten his hands on a nuclear weapon. This is exactly like that. It's really bad news for everybody else in baseball.

But this is baseball. That's why we play the games. And we shall never surrender.

(Storms the beach at Penn's Landing).

Bad News Bears

Long before Stephen Colbert took up the cause on his show, I have maintained that bears are the biggest threat mankind has ever faced. For years I have been running around America, shaking people and screaming in their face until they listen to my warnings. I hate to be quite so pushy about the whole thing, but unless we stop the bears now, it will be too late.

Make no mistakes, bears are vile, evil creatures who will stop at nothing until they have eaten both you and your family alive. Bears, as a group, would like nothing more than to dine on each and every single one of us. Black bears, grizzly bears, brown bears, care bears, it doesn't matter what kind of bear. They want to see us burn. On a spit. And then served with a delicate but tasty garnish.

Sure, they may seem cute and cuddly. To that end, they have co-opted our popular culture and masquerade as children's guardians. Smokey the Bear, the Berenstain Bears, Winnie the Pooh and that asshole Teddy Ruxpin will smile and pretend to be cute and cuddly and then in the sark of night would generously season those children with salt and pepper and then toss them in the oven.

Their plan is the utter destruction of the human race, and for that they should all be destroyed.

If we are lucky and quick of mind, however, we may be able to trick them into destroying themselves. Witness the following clip, which I affectionally call "The Assassination of Yogi Bear by the Coward Booboo Bear."

I cannot wait for this movie to come out. Maybe then the endless commercials will stop. But if nothing else, it was all worth it for the cut scene right before the credits roll in the above clip. That's just priceless.

Meanwhile, stay safe, keep vigilant, and remember, Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.

Now, if you'll excuse, I must return to my screenplay for the Snakes on a Plane sequel. It's called Bears on a Boat, and it will scare the living crap out of you.

Random Video of the Day LXXXII

For those of you who go around singing "Let it Snow" and "White Christmas" and otherwise subscribe to the notion that snow is an essential part of any winter wonderland and upon seeing that first snowflake of the season immediately run outside and jump up and down and start making snow angles, I present Exhibit A in the case of Charlie v. Snow.



SNOW KILLED THE METRODOME.

To see that video and continue to deny that snow is an evil substance that should be shunned, reviled, and abhorred is irrational. It flies in the face of logic, reason, and the powers of human observation. Snow is bad. It is more that bad. Snow is the worst.

Somehow, it hasn't snowed in Boston yet. But rest assured, dear reader, that upon the first snowfall of the season, I will be out there, with a hair dryer and a portable generator, doing my best to destroy the snow before the snow destroys us.

Awesome like Ron Swanson

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Ron Swanson Pyramid of Greatness.

It's refreshing to know that Ron F---ing Swanson and I share many of the same values. "Body Grooming: Only women shave below the neck." "Stillness: Don't waste energy moving unless it's absolutely necessary." And, of course, "Rage: One rage every three months is permitted. Try not to hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it."

Out to Lunch

You know what we haven't seen lately? Law students wildly overreacting. Let's try and find one; it shouldn't be difficult.

Bingo!

A note appeared at a BU Law bulletin board setting forth the following terms (sic):

"To the asshole who stole my food this Friday ... Go to hell! ... You will die soon! ... When you eating food you will get choked and die immediately! When you sleeping, you will get burned and die immediately!"

Because it is law school, it seems that stealing someone's food is grounds for homicide. This is, of course, an excellent example of an overreaction.

Perhaps it is fitting that this occurred at the school that gave us the textbook definition of overreaction, where a student government election led to the bloodiest comment war Facebook has ever seen, the defriending of dozens, and a self-imposed exile.

So it should be no surprise that this has happened here.

The note shows a marginal command of the English language, a poor grasp of syntax, and an inexplicable aversion to complete sentences. This, of course, means the author is an LLM. So we shouldn't be surprised that he doesn't realize that the fridges get cleaned out on Fridays. On the other hand, we should really commend him for assimilating that part of U.S. Culture that thinks that all problems should be solved via the leaving of anonymous notes.

But to be fair, I can understand this guy's pain. His lunch got taken. This means he now has to go to the abominable GSU, fight his way through the hordes of freshman who just stay in one place and spin around in slow circles, and wait twenty minutes so the only place that's open will give him the wrong sandwich. If I'm already stuck in the law tower, which is awful, and have to go to the GSU, which is worse, because of a thief, I'd be pretty upset too.

And look, I shouldn't really be the one to talk. If you try to steal one of my fries, I will pin your hand to the table using my fork. I'm trying to picture what I would do if you tried to steal my whole lunch, but all I can see is a red haze.

So I understand. Unless it is funny, violence is not cool. But you mess with a man's food, you deal with the consequences. To paraphrase the immortal words of Chris Rock, I'm not saying he should have left the note, but I understand.

Bonfire of the Legalties

Today I returned my Barbri books to the hell from whence they came.

If you'll remember, I had a brief existential crisis about whether I should return the books to regain a significant deposit or if I should instead burn them all in one wonderful moment of catharsis.

Sadly, the part of me that enjoys going "let's throw this hatchet into that tree" lost out to the part of me that went to law school and is now blind to every consideration that isn't money.

So the books went back and, for once, I have more money in my wallet now than I had before the weekend. Because my hoard of Scotch is dwindling (I'm down to only two bottles) I'm confident that this was the right choice.

And I am also heartened by the following. Check this out:

Those are my notes from the summer. An entire goddamned box of notecards and outlines and sadness.

Those I can't return.

But they sure look flammable to me.

So if you, like me, have procrastinated and find yourself with a collection of those fun, fun papers we spent all summer poring over, maybe you'd like to join me. I'll get the lighter fluid. You bring the beer. We bring the noise. And we laugh and laugh and laugh.

and laugh.

And yes, I am entirely serious.

Sunday Links

Just a bit of light, Sunday night reading.

First off, the Boston Globe today had a terrific piece on the pending lawsuits between The Upper Crust and the illegal immigrants who claim to have been exploited by the chain. It is an excellent piece of investigative reporting, detailed and thorough. I wish it also gave us a clearer picture of the pizzeria's side of the story -- but that task is impossible, given a defendant's understandable desire to keep the record quiet in face of impending litigation. Regardless, this piece raises many significant questions, if only for the detail that an entire Brazilian town was conscripted to work at a single restaurant chain.

I know I make a lot of fun of the New York Times on this blog, particularly for their "lifestyle" pieces where they try to create a trend where there isn't one. But every once in a while, they come through with something like the following piece on Laptopistan, exposing the subculture of people who spend all day in a coffee shop working alone. These people always struck me as a bit of a paradox, and the article does a great job explaining how they are wired. It's very nicely written ("Throughout the week I will see only a handful of PCs, each looking sadly out of place, like they have arrived at a black-tie affair in a corduroy blazer."), and certainly worth a read.

Lastly, the excellent Chuck Klosterman piece from the NYT on zombies. I love it when an author I enjoy writes about stuff I enjoy. That in itself is a decent enough hook, but the piece is also great. The premise? "A lot of modern life is exactly like slaughtering zombies." His point, largely, is that in our everyday lives we encounter dozens of "wars of attrition," where, no matter what we do, the hits just keep on coming. Think of the never-ending battle to keep a clean inbox. Zombies, he argues, are just like that. "As long we keep deleting whatever’s directly in front of us, we survive. We live to eliminate the zombies of tomorrow. We are able to remain human, at least for the time being. Our enemy is relentless and colossal, but also uncreative and stupid. Battling zombies is like battling anything ... or everything."

Random Video of the Day LXXXI

Watch this. Trust me. And then we'll discuss.



Have you watched it? Good.

In modern times, it seems the sixth circle of Hell is populated by the likes of Carlton, Costanza, and the Hulk. Along with a vaguely recognizable cast of thousands of members of the F-list, they lip synch (poorly) to "Let it Be." And why? To appear on a Norweigan television show.

I wish I was making it up. But there you have it. Heck, they even convinced the surviving member of Milli Vanilli to lip synch. Milli Vanilli! Remember how that ended up? Yeesh.

God bless the internets.

Joga Corropto

For those of you keeping track, the next few World Cups will be held in a rainforest, the tundra, and a desert.

In fact, a friend of mine came up with a fairly accurate visual representation of this phenomenon.

I was unaware that FIFA was tasked with assisting NASA in the search of places that can plausibly support life. Since we now know that there are organic entities that can subsist on arsenic, it's worth exploring whether exposure to high heat will allow for the survival of creatures subsisting of petro-dollar kickbacks and benzene.

For the record, the temperature in Qatar in July averages 115 degrees.

Also for the record, if you picked up the bustling hamlet of Elmira, New York thousands of miles east (or west, because at that distance it doesn't really matter) and set it down outside Doha, it would immediately become the third largest city in Qatar.

Look, I'm all for FIFA spreading the love and trying to jam its product into every unoccupied cranny of the world. I get it. Diversify and expand and whatnot.

But that's like saying, Hey, we've been drinking in the East Village way too long. Let's have our next bar crawl up in Spanish Harlem. It's dangerous, inconvenient, far away, and God knows if there are bars up there, but what the hell! Wild Card, bitches! Yee-hawwww!

That would never happen. Except here, Qatar -- playing above by Spanish Harlem -- has billions of dollars and enough know-how to misdirect the Corruption Police. Or, as he otherwise does business, the notary public of Zurich.

The good news is, in 2022, we'll all probably be dead. And if we're not, then I'll be pushing 40 and married with children, so I'll only be dead inside.

Lots of stuff to look forward to!

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

In light of the most recent editorial by The Cornell Daily Sun, it seems like this push to establish a pub on Cornell's campus is actually a legitimate movement, and not just some crazy person's delusions at an assembly meeting.

For years, I have been that crazy person. Seeing others take up the cause is enabling encouraging indeed.

My idea for a campus pub was born on an icy, snowy day in late April of 2006. For reasons unknown, campus maintenance constantly declined to salt Ho Plaza, otherwise known as the busiest pedestrian area on campus. Thus, every trip from the libraries to points South -- which included the food in Willard Straight and the drinks in Collegetown -- became an exercise in becoming involuntarily airborne en route to eating it.

As I was sitting on the ice that day, rubbing my bruised ass, I thought to myself, "Boy, I need a drink." And then, as it happened every time, I heard the siren call of Rulloff's, beckoning with its $2.50 XX and $5 pitchers of Rock specials.

So I would look South, to Collegetown, and resolve to get up and go get a drink forthwith. Unfortunately, this meant walking in Ithaca. And between me and the sweet release of alcohol lay hundreds of feet of treacherous icy tundra.

For a moment, I contemplated the idea of a flask. I quickly dismissed that notion, as having constant access to whiskey would be act of final submission to alcoholism.

And then it hit me, like a ton of pumpkins dropped from the clocktower.

A campus pub!

Why on Earth did I have to walk to Collegetown to get a drink? I should be able to get a drink right here! After all, this is America, where I can always get what I want!

Campus options were meager. Sure, there was the Statler Hotel, but that was expensive. And the two cheaper options -- Helen Newman and the Big Red Barn -- were fraught with the two creatures upperclassmen dread the most: freshmen and graduate students.

And so was born this vision. A pub, on campus, entirely for us, the greeks and near-greeks that frequented Olin and Uris libraries. Something of a cross between Rulloff's and Olin cafe, located within easy shouting distance of the Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches at the Ivy Room.

(Don Draper voice)

Picture this, if you will.

Two students are sitting at a library, studying, poring over dozens of notecards and page after page of handwritten notes. The boy sighs. He has had it. That's enough. He slams his book shut, and looks up at the girl. She returns his gaze and nods. They get up and throw on their coats and walk towards the door. When they walk outside, they walk slowly, savoring the crisp air. But then you see them, ever so subtly, speed up. And they start walking faster. And then they reach Willard Straight and walk down a hall and then down a flight of stairs and they throw the door open. And that's where we stop following them. We see them walk into a pub. The two advance towards the bar, stopping every few feet to greet a friend and shake their hand. And then, just before the door closes on us, leaving us in darkness, someone shouts something indistinct, general laughter fills the room, and the last thing we hear is the clinking of glass on glass.

It's perfect. It's simple. It's timeless. And it's on campus.

On that day, I swore to myself that I would not rest until my dream of an actual campus pub became a reality. I told myself that, when I finally win the lottery and become a millionaire, my first substantial bequest to Cornell will not be earmarked towards financial aid or cancer research or any such other useful endeavor.

No, my gift will go towards a more noble effort. A pub on campus, open every day, ladies free from 7-9. A pub where, when you order 6 shots, you get 1 free, so you can make a new friend. A pub where the kitchen staff occasionally surprises a table with a tray of appetizers, because why not. A pub where the 100th person to walk in every night after 9 gets a bracelet, and they get to drink on the house all night.

A place where any person can find libation in their break from study.

A wonderful place.

A magical place.

A campus pub.

Are You Smarter Than an Eighth Grader?

Before law school beat the living snot out of me, I considered myself a pretty excellent student. My report cards throughout K-12 were almost exclusively populated by A's. The random B occasionally made an appearance. And once, during a sunny February in the 9th grade, I got a once-in-a-lifetime C. This was because -- and, yes, really, I am not kidding -- I made the worst pinata in the class.

Somehow, I always grasped enough arithmetic, spelling, history, biology, and whathaveyou to sail through tests. I remembered the facts, wrote them down on a piece of paper, and happily reaped an avalanche of A's and a reputation as a know-it-all.

Of course, 90 percent of that knowledge now lies forgotten somewhere deep in the caverns of my memory. I once knew what ribosomes were supposed to do in a cell. Or how alkanes and alkenes were different from each other. Or how to solve a equations both quadratic and with three or more variables. But now, those facts only ring the faintest of bells -- those reserved for things you used to know but now you don't.

But then my world came crashing down.

I recently saw this reprint of an exam given to eighth graders in 1895. It is one of the most difficult things I have ever seen. If I got this exam today I would just stare at it, turn in an mostly blank page, and then go out and sit on the stairs and cry.

Two mitigating factors exist. Kind of.

1. While I am aware that I have mostly forgotten a lot of this information, I can't help but feel that I have never even heard of half the things they ask. It is never good when a word makes its debut in your vocabulary during a test. And it is especially bad when the question is something like, define a Trigraph.

2. Back in 1895, only the best and brightest made it to the 8th grade. Making it there was like receiving a Rhodes Scholarship today. Every other kid in America was either prepping the fields for harvest or functioning as a canary in a coal mine.

So those make me feel a little bit better. Not a lot. But enough that I don't want to cry and run to the teacher for an extra credit assignment. Still, look at this. Let me show you some of the questions in case you didn't click through to the full test. The questions are in bold letters, my answers in italics, and my thinking in non-bold, non-italic font.

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.

Proper Nouns. That's one. Beginning of a sentence. Two. Acronyms. That's three, right there. Names of Movies. Four. Initials. That's five! I might make it! If you're German, to begin every Noun. Six. EMPHASIS. Seven! Pretending you're YELLING at someone in an email. Eight! Letter Grades. And nine! That last one was an easy one, all I had to do was picture the F I'm going to get.

2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?

Wait. What? A bushel of wheat is a standard unit of measurement? Surely not. This must be a trick question.

One bushel of wheat that is the size of that box.

(Smiles Proudly).

4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?

I understood about half the words in that sentence. It was also my understanding that there would be no math. If you, however, would like me to tell you how many years passed between the end of Chevy Chase's run on Saturday Night Live and the beginning of Tracy Morgan's, I can do that kind of arithmetic. Maybe.

10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

This is a bar exam question. As such, I refuse to answer it until such time when I actually want to become a barrister. Thank you for understanding.

5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.

All I know about Kansas is that, when I play that game where I'm supposed to name all 50 states, I only get to 49, and Kansas doesn't come to me until the middle of the night three days after that.

Dorothy wants to go to there.

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.

(Stares in horror. Considers faking a seizure. Considers writing a desperate apology. Consider making an excuse like, "I was home sick with the plague," in order to explain away why I've never even seen these words before. Considers running away and joining the circus. Slowly lowers head to arms and weeps.)

9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

OK. Here's my shot. If I use all of those words in just one super-mega-awesome sentence, maybe I can get extra credit. Here goes:

As the rays of the west sped out of sight behind me, in a sunset dash of color that bled out like an emptying vein, it was in vain that I considered whether to feign razing the weather vane, right after Jebediah, citing the old prophesy, had raised it on the site where the old fane used to be, asking us all, "What in tarnation does 'fain' mean?"

WHODAMAN! Maybe I can pull this off! If I can get the next one, I'm golden!

7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.

Crap!

Good Lord. What a spectacular failure. Thank God the Bar Exam was easier than this. Otherwise, I'd be stuck making pinatas.

Wiki Leakage

Now that everybody in the U.S. State Department is screaming and turning cartwheels over the Wikileaks, I'd like to come in with my 26-years of wisdom and knowledge to offer some perspective.

(Adjusts tie)

Look. We all understand why you're upset. Nobody likes to have their skidmarked underwear flapping proudly in the breeze. And while the unmasking of sources and diplomats in a way that endangers them is a legitimate concern, let's remember the following: If there's anyone in the world who loves to listen to others who think they're speaking privately, it's the U.S. government.

Also, the feds would do well to heed its own aphorism, which I believe was that, "If you've done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about." And then they put on the plastic gloves, but we'll ignore that.

Here's the thing. I've gone through a lot of these leaked documents (yay, underemployment) and there's nothing blindingly awful in them. If they unearthed a memo about how to bomb Canada (and we know that there's a memo like that somewhere), we might have legitimate cause for concern.

But most of these are badly kept secrets. Trading Guantanamo prisoners for Obama visits? Saying that Israel and Iran have considered bombing the crap out of each other? That those super advanced bombs aren't actually from Yemen? That things in North Korea are really, really odd and we have no idea who's head rooster up there? That Sarkozy is thin-skinned? That Berlusconi is vain? That the two are, obviously, boys?

All old news. If these leaks did anything is that they exposed the undiplomatic side of diplomats. They showed how things get done in the international arena. They confirmed what we all already knew -- that international politics functions in much the same way as a high school cafeteria.

And this is a cafeteria where the slam book just got distributed to all the slamees. If you read the leaked memos, they're mostly gossip. It's what US Weekly would look like if they suddenly refocused their efforts on scoping out obscure African dignitaries. (And I know others came up with this analogy first, but I swear I came up with this incredibly obvious analogy independently).

Reading these is almost like what it would be like if you became privy to all the gchats and emails that were sent during 1L year, where everybody is talking about who is hot and who is crazy and who is hot and crazy and who they would and would not sleep with and who slept with who and who would never sleep with who and who should sleep with who and who should never sleep with who because, honestly, that would be an absolute disaster.

And to the extent where the wikileaks discuss policy and strategy, it is also mentioned on such a broad and general level as to defeat any concerns.

To go back to the 1L classroom gchat analogy, it's basically like reading the following IM:

yo, im going to go to the bathroom and when i do im going to walk past Regina and when i do im going to pretend to trip and on my way down im going to grab her boobs to catch myself lolz

Bad? Yes. The opposite of classy? Of course. Absolutely transparent? No doubt.

Like the bouncer said, it is what it is. This is what happens and everyone who pretends otherwise is living in a fantasy world of unicorns and rainbow cake. It's embarrassing to have everything out there, to be sure. But, please, everybody, drop the self-righteous outrage and stop calling the leaked gossip "worse than a military attack" by "a foreign terrorist organization."

Sooner or later, Medvedev will get over the fact that someone called him the Robin to Putin's Batman and will go back to drafting nuclear treaties that our Congress will conveniently ignore. And everyone will follow suit.

Like the wise man who will be missed said:

"The truth hurts. Maybe not as much as jumping on a bicycle with a seat missing, but it hurts."

Elbows Off the President

I don't know about you, but if I made the President of the United States bleed his own blood, I'd be absolutely terrified.

Obama took an elbow to the face this weekend during a "friendly" basketball game. This provoked massive bleeding, and required no less than a dozen stitches to fix.

While I am a firm advocate of the "No blood, no foul," rule, I have to admit it has its limits. And one of those limits should absolutely be when you're playing the leader of the free world.

For one, now our enemies know that Obama can bleed. Ergo, he is human. While the sight of his blood must no doubt disappoint those in the religious right who were sure he was the Antichrist --from whose wounds only a dark ichor can flow -- what this means for national security is a disaster. If Brobama can bleed, then we can fall. A massive vulnerability has been exposed.

Second, I'd be terrified because I'd be forever marked as the man who made the president bleed. Remember in elementary school, when the guy who took down the bully instantly became the top dog? And then others would circle the wagons, eager to take him down and assume the position of King Kong of Badass Mountain?

Well, this guy took down a president. Because of the unassailable logic of the transitive property, taking down the man who took down the president has become the most coveted act of the holiday season. Now everywhere he goes, anyone with a working elbow and delusions of grandeur will stalk him, eager for the opportunity to strike hard to the face and watch him fall.

And we all know what will happen next. That person will become marked, and the tango will begin again. And someone will take him down, and then someone else will take that person down, and so on and so on ad infinitum until every alpha male in America has enjoyed their fleeting reign as the Deadliest Elbow this side of the Potomac.

So now we face dual threats, both from outside and within our borders. It is the beginning of the end, and all because someone refused to be the Washington Generals to the Executive Globetrotters.

Random Video of the Day LXXX

My brother made this commercial, coming soon to a television near you. The best part of it is the kid, who looks like Jonathan Lipnicki on crack.

Your Test is Wrong

A buddy of mine will be taking the GREs in the near future. As part of his training, he has to endure practice questions during his study. While doing so, he came across the following gem, which he kindly passed on:

4. LAWYER : COURTROOM ::

a. participant : team
b. commuter : train
c. gladiator : arena
d. senator : caucus
e. patient : ward

Of course, my first instinct was to go with E. Remember that ward is just a nice way of saying loony bin. If there is anything in the world that accurately describes our legal system, it is the image of crazy people flapping their arms and squawking endlessly inside a nuthouse.

Unfortunately, I would have been wrong. The correct answer, I was informed, is actually C. This means that the makers of the GRE, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that there is a more sound logical leap from lawyer to gladiator than there is from lawyer to schizo.

To even group someone like me in the same category as someone who killed tigers with a spiked mace is to spit in the face of reason, logic, and the power of human observation. My analogizing of the end of college to a dead girlfriend was infinitely less tortured than what the testmakers are asking you to do here.

If I came across this question in the GRE and was told that Lionel Hutz has more in common with Maximus than he does with Charlie Kelly, I would immediately leap from my chair and raise hell until someone at the GRE Board was relieved of their duties.

Some would say that I picked the right profession. I would say that I have just proved my point.

The Oprahcalypse

At the gym, we have a limited selection of channels -- basically the networks and PBS.

So I was at the gym this afternoon and Family Feud ended, which is fine, because that show lost all its dignity and gravitas upon the departure of J. Peterman.

And then another show came on. And I swear that, when I saw what was happening on the screen (there is no sound, just closed captioning), I thought that it was a news report about how a joint convention of spastics and epileptics was crashed by a supervillain who forced them to watch Japanese anime until they all collapsed in a twitching, screaming heap.

Of course that couldn't be it. And then I saw her and it all made sense.

Oprah's favorite things show.

Dear Sweet Lord in Heaven. All these women were crying and shrieking and fainting and waving their hands and jumping up and down and generally carrying on like ... well ... nothing I've ever seen before.

In fact, let me present a list that I like to call "Groups of people who can handle their shit better than the Oprah audience." Presented in descending order of keeping it together-ness.

1. Nerds when they see George Lucas

2. Followers of Steve Jobs.

3. Twi-hards and Gleeks and whatever the followers of Bieber call themselves.

4. Children when Barney walks into a party.

5. Children whose $250M-net worth dad dies on a non-estate tax year.

6. Baseball bloggers when a 13-12 pitcher deservedly wins the Cy Young.

7. Beatle-mania.

8. Drunks when the pizza guy shows up.

9. People at a bachelor party when the stripper shows up.

10. Drunks at a bachelor party when the stripper shows up with pizza.

And yes, I know Oprah's favorite things overreaction spectacular has been spoofed before, but it's difficult to make a parody when you're underselling the original.

Update: Holy crap, someone made a tumblr. This is going to replace the whale in my nightmares.

Furious Birds

It is kind of disconcerting that what is, by far, the most popular and addicting game for the iPhone involves shooting what are, in essence, suicide bombers at buildings in order to make them collapse so that everyone in them is killed.

I'm talking, of course, about Angry Birds, a simple game where you launch birds from slingshots in order to defeat the evil pigs who have stolen the birds' eggs.

It is that stupid and frighteningly addicting -- I have recently "unlocked" the Angry Birds Addict "achievement," on account of having played this game for more than 15 hours. The fact that I have played this game for that amount of time is more than a little sad. I mean, even watching TV is more productive. Unless, of course, you're watching Glee.

But, in that time, I have managed to get three stars in every level, which requires a modicum of dexterity and dedication to a single cause. I am strangely proud of this achievement even though I recognize that my bragging rights are commensurate with those of someone who is pretty good at tic-tac-toe.

Of course, I am most bewildered by the random feelings that crop up when I'm playing the game. I can spend hours (yes, hours) trying to get that damned third star in a particularly frustrating level. And when I finally get it, I pump my fist and yell and would absolutely chest bump someone if I didn't live alone. And, frankly, this reaction kind of makes sense. Now that there's no one to play beer pong with, Angry Birds has become the only outlet for competitive achievement in the field of "sports."

That might be the saddest thing ever written on this blog.

Except it might be topped by this one -- when I fail to kill all the pigs, and they break into their hideous, smirking, leering smiles, I feel a level of rage and revulsion that used to be reserved only for the Urkels and Napoleon Dynamites of the world. I find myself wishing to visit an inordinate and irrational amount of violence on what are, at heart, nothing more than pixels in a video game made for cellular phones. I feel angrier than the actual angry birds. The fact that I can feel this much hate concerns me. Maybe I need to go for a run or something.

Now that I've managed to make you all concerned for my mental well-being, I finally get to the point of this post, which is to post this video. It's called "Angry Birds Peace Treaty," and it is terrific.

Say what?

Random Video of the Day LXXIX

I often want to set Jimmy Fallon on fire. However, on his show yesterday, "Neil Young" and 70's Bruce Springsteen covered "Whip my Hair." And that's all kinds of awesome.

Steve Jobs Truffle

I'll never forget where I was the day I could finally, finally, listen to The Beatles on my computer.

Perhaps the best part of this is I can finally stop using my Discman, which was, until today, the only way to have "A Day in the Life" be a portable song that goes where I go. And it's about time too -- those spongy black things around the earbuds on the headphones were really starting to chafe.

Best of all, now that I don't have to use my old cassette tapes, I can easily skip "Revolution #9" without wearing myself out on the Fast Forward button.

And it's a real nice "screw you" to lawyers and their 30-year lawsuits. Lawyers, as always, ruin everything.

So thank you, thank you, thank you, Steve Jobs, for making it possible for me to finally hear "Hey Jude," the way it was meant to be heard -- coming out of my computer speakers.

Na na nara na naaaa.

Yawn of a New Age

Ten years ago, I was in high school. Being in high school often involves sitting for long periods of time and pretending to listen to somebody tell you things that you really don't care about. Remember the Golgi Apparatus? Or Cosines? Alkenes? No? Exactly.

Couple this with 7 a.m. start times, and it is no wonder half of us spent half our time trying to not fall asleep. The other half was spent asleep. Or at least, trying to stay asleep.

See, there was one kid in the class who enjoyed to mess with other people. He'd sit there and not bother anyone. But then he'd see someone start to fall asleep. As soon as he saw someone start nodding off, he'd mark them. They'd have his undivided attention. And he'd wait, like a velociraptor stalking his prey. And the person would keep nodding off, until, finally, he actually went to sleep. As soon as that happened -- and I mean, immediately -- the kid would be up in a flash and quietly walk up to the sleeper. And then he would grab the guy by the shoulders, shake him violently, and scream in his face, "WATCH OUT, YOU'RE FALLING ASLEEP!"

It was very entertaining.

The teachers, of course, condoned and even encouraged his behavior. It's understandable. Have you ever put someone to sleep? It's a sad realization when you think, Boy, I love what I'm talking about but I just bored the ever-sleeping crap out of him.

On the other hand, these are teachers. I feel like the first thing they teach you in Teacher School is that, no matter how fascinating you find mitochondria, students will be bored and yawn and fall asleep. It's science.

Of course, some professors handle this science better than others. Witness this epic meltdown in Cornell's Hotel School:

"YAWN OUTSIDE!"

Yeah, it's a little rude, but come on. Lock it up, brother. You're a grown man. Comport yourself accordingly.

Of course, if this had been Dr. Maas's class, he would have used the student as an example and centered his lecture around him. And then he would have propositioned his T.A.'s. But that's a story for another day.

Captain Jetes and the Unholy Uproar

I have been asked to comment on the Derek Jeter winning a Gold Glove fiasco of yesterday. Of course, it is an atrocious choice. I have not been this fake outraged about something since Shakespeare in Love somehow beat out Saving Private Ryan for the Best Picture Oscar in 1998.

Look, the Gold Gloves are as legitimate as the Grammy Awards. If Homer Simpson can win a Grammy, then so can you. Anyone who follows baseball knows that Jeter is not an adequate shortstop -- he only had six errors because he could only get to about six ground balls -- and our minds won't change no matter how many Gold Gloves they throw at him.

The choice of Derek Jeter is indefensible. When I heard about it, I thought people were messing with me. Enough so that I had to check Baseball Reference, which published the full list with no additional comment except for an addendum right after Jeter's name stating (we can't believe it either). As someone else mentioned, there'd be less of an uproar if Jeter had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I think Ken Tremendous, as usual, nailed it when he tweeted, "Oh, he shouldn’t be paid $25 million a year to play shortstop? Tell that to the GOLD GLOVE HE JUST WON!” Of course he's just being facetious, but that's how some people argue. Fortunately, those people have just gotten fired from ESPN. Eventually, they'll all be extinct, and we can all stop angrily tweeting about them.

The final word should, as usual, go to Joe Posnanski, who wrote his usual thoughtful and original comment about The Jeter Question. If you were a Yankee, would you trade Jeter for Hanley Ramirez? Read through the whole article. The end will blow your mind, guaranteed. It won't blow your mind as much as Jeter winning the Gold Glove, but close.

Fired Joe Morgan

Ring them bells!

Yesterday, the powers that be finally fired Joe Morgan and by doing so finally stopped his constant assault on progress and reason. This was tremendous news for baseball fans who like to watch baseball on Sunday nights without being subject to statements like, "I'd rather him have hit a double there, rather than a home run, because home runs kill rallies." Or this absolute abortion of an argument:

People are saying (Felix) Hernandez should win (the Cy Young award). I'm not saying he shouldn't. But how are you going to judge what he would have done if he was on the Yankees. It's tougher to pitch for the Yankees and win or the Twins than it is Seattle. All individual awards are team awards. My MVP awards were won because my team helped me. … I think the problem I have, though, with some statistics is we start to individualize the players. I don't want that. It's still a team game. ... When you start to individualize things like that, it takes away the team concept from the game.

Mr. Morgan, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. (Emphasis mine).

Now, with Morgan gone and Dibble -- Oh my God, Rob Dibble -- banished, I hope the fine folks over at FJM reconvene to rid the world of the third Cerberus head, in a new incarnation of their blog named "Fire TimMcCarver."

Although, I have to say, I will miss Jon Miller and this, the greatest call of the worst play ever.

It was a Pleasure to Burn

I had a grand vision. Imagine, if you will, a newly harvested wheatfield. Only a handful of scattered grains remain, tossed about by the November wind. In the middle of this field, like an altar in the heart of the world, there is a circle of stones. All around it, dozens of people drink and dance, occasionally spitting mouthfuls of alcohol in the circle. At some predetermined point, everyone stops what they're doing. They reach into their pocket and each produces a matchbook. They light one match the conventional way. Then they take the match and use it to set the rest of the matchbook on fire. And then, at the same time, everyone softly tosses the incandescent torch into the circle. All of them land on the alcohol-soaked pile of papers, which instantly erupts into flames. And everyone, young and old alike, cheers and applauds and thrusts their fist in the air, as the "BarBri" logo on the green covers of those papers slowly disappears into the onslaught.

For months I had this vision. It sustained me on sunny June days, when the world was at play, ignoring me and my classmates as we sank under notecards and waited for the guy on the video screen to finish his awful joke so we could fill in the damn blanks.

In a way, my study arrangement was rather poetic. I kept my BarBri books on my windowsill, where they did a rather admirable job of serving as sandbags and pillories, shielding me from the world outside. When I sighed and looked out my window, there they were, thousands of pages strong, dozens of books deep, blocking my view, reminding me that I had to get through them if I ever wanted to join the people frolicking on the part outside.

So these books became the symbol of impotence and frustration. They represented the worst of that bleakest of summers. And what got me through the day was that initial vision. The image of that world to come when, after receiving our results and confirmation that we would indeed never have cause to use those books again, we would all congregate on a field and set them all on the fire that would return them to the hell from whence they came.

Given these unrestrained and borderline crazy romantic notions, by now you imagine that I would be back, missing hair on my knuckles and smelling like a bonfire, towing along happiness and a citation from the city of Boston for setting things on fire without a permit.

However, someone informed me that, in this summer's itemized list of the thousands of dollars of expenses that are required in order to turn children into lawyers, one of them is actually a deposit. Although the money we spent on classes and filing fees is gone forever, we can actually get some of it back. Provided, of course, that we return to BarBri the only tangible objects from that summer -- the books.

And it is here that we find ourselves. On the one hand, the soothing balm of catharsis via fire. On the other, money. Only one can remain.

But which one?

Sometimes You Eat the Bar

Chaos on the East Coast today, as the New York Board of Bar Examiners first released, then retracted, then re-released with a retraction, the results for the New York Bar exam of July 2010.

The internet first erupted sometime in the early afternoon, as anxiety-riddled, recent law graduates first caught the hint of something in the wind. That something was the work of a presumably now discharged person in charge of the NY Bar Exam website, who accidentally published to a live internet the results of the July examination.

Since the internet is where things go to become immortal, this was all it took. Despite unpublishing the list within the hour, people took screenshots of the lists and posted them to legal blogs, which promptly crashed under the weight of the collective neuroses of over 3,000 people.

Of course, no one would certify that this was the list. GChat exploded as thousands of confused and frightened neurotics asked each other the pertinent question: Is this the pass list? Is this the list of all the people who took the test? Or, worst of all, IS THIS THE FAIL LIST?

Analysis of the list quickly proved fruitless. Although it had been drilled to law students that virtually everyone passed the bar exam (with 2 or 3 exceptions in a class of 300), lawyers lead the league in worrying about shit they don't need to worry about, and most everybody was still worried sick. Seeing everyone they knew on the list should have confirmed what everyone, deep down, knew but could not grow to accept: Of course we all passed the goddamned bar exam.

And how would we know if someone was not on the list? Asking that question would be like stepping into a school bus and saying, raise your hand if you're not here. And then saying, alright, everybody is here. Let's go.

And then, of course, like a screener that is leaked to the internet before the movie is scheduled to premiere, the Bar Examiners decided to hell with it and released the official list. And a mighty sigh trembled across the land, as newly-minted lawyers raced to update their Facebook statuses in order to hoard well wishes and congratulations.

I myself was part of the chaos, and was glad to be able to break the happy news to a couple of people. I almost felt like I was calling them to inform them that they had just won the Nobel Prize, except instead of a million dollars and applause from the King of Sweden, you get condemned to a lifetime of ulcers and agita.

All cynicism aside, I, like many of you, was a ghost for the entire summer and am more than happy to see the fruit of my efforts rewarded. Although my elbow still occasionally clicks from writing all those notecards, I have finally arrived at the culmination of 20 years of formal education. We are now, and will always be, attorneys-at-law.

. . .

"Blessing or Curse" for $300, Alex.

Random Video of the Day LXXVIII

Say 'what' again. Say 'what' again, I dare you, I double dare you, motherfucker, say 'what' one more goddamn time!

Someone please do a mashup of these.

The Little Giants

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the San Francisco Giants the least objectionable team in three years to win the World Series. I would also like to express my gratitude to both the Giants and the Rangers for knocking out both the Phillies and the Yankees, thus freeing me from the burden of praying for a meteor.

The Giants are a likable team, and I feel happy for their fans. If I have any regrets, it's that the Red Sox didn't make the Series to play against them. This would have undoubtedly fed the machine that is Red Sox Nation more hubris than anyone ever thought possible, let alone advisable. However, this would have been worth it, if only for the image of Tim Lincecum leaving a Fenway Park start and being ambushed by Ben Affleck and his town buddies on his way to the clubhouse. Then this would have happened.

Missed opportunities.

The Zombie Menace

On occasion, I have the following imaginary conversation with God:

Me: Hey, God. What up?
God: Hey, I have a proposition for you.
Me: Yeah?
God: Yeah. Here's the deal. 99.6% of the world's population -- including your friends and family -- will be dead.
Me: Oh. That kind of sucks.
God: Well, maybe dead is the wrong word. Dead-ish. In short, it'll be a zombie apocalypse.
Me: Oh, AWESOME.
God: I knew you'd like that. Here's your Ruger.
Me: Cooooool.

I have to admit that I wouldn't be too bummed out if the unthinkable happened and some Arrowhead Project created a virus that caused a zombie apocalypse. To escape the drudgery of cardio workouts, I usually picture myself on a motorcycle with a shotgun strung across my back, weaving in and out of ruined American roads on my way to the North Carolina coast, where I hear some of their islands have become safe havens for survivors.

I then ignore the voice (which some call reason) that says, "Bro, you don't know how to ride a motorcycle, you'd probably shoot yourself in the foot, and if zombies can swim -- because, let's face it, why couldn't they? -- you and all your friends on those islands are effed."

So I ignore that voice, as is my wont, and continue to imagine myself scavenging for food in an abandoned roadside diner. As I find pancake mix that my sense of smell tells me is still OK, I try to remember how the heck you make pancakes. Then I hear a noise. I think it's a zombie, but when I try to shoot, I find that the safety is on. Cursing, I switch it off, but then I see that it is not a zombie, but a hot chick who kind of looks like Blake Lively. She was here scavenging first, but hid because she heard me coming and doesn't have a gun. I say something to the effect of, I'm glad I didn't shoot you because I don't know how to make pancakes. And then she laughs and says something like, good, because I do. And then she holds up a bag of chocolate chips. Score.

Hey, laugh at the huge nerd all you want, but if given the choice between that and 40 years of reviewing purchase and sales agreements, everyone would choose the zombies. And Blake Lively. And the chocolate chip pancakes.

Sigh.

But that, as they say, is why we have fiction. There's the excellent Dawn of the Dead remake, Shaun of the Dead, and Danny Boyle's gorgeous 28 Days Later, where the zombies can actually sprint. Max Brooks' World War Z remains the best zombie novel ever. It is also the only good zombie novel ever, but it is incredibly enjoyable, and what happens to North Korea still haunts me to this day. Heck, even Community did an awesome zombie episode, with the great line by Troy: "OK, I been bit, I been bit y'all. Stop. Congratulations, you did what zombies do." And, of course, Zombieland, with what is perhaps the best cameo of all time.

Even with all of that, I cannot understate how good last night's outstanding premiere episode of AMC's The Walking Dead was. Sure, there's all sorts of awesome zombie action, but nearly every scene in the episode was spot on (mild spoilers), from the very opening scene in the gas station to Lennie James going upstairs to try and take care of something to that lush, beautiful scene in the park to the part where Rick Grimes rides into Atlanta on a deserted inbound lane next to abandoned cars leaving the city and all you can hear is the clip-clopping of the horse's hooves. The production values are incredible, and it gets extra double excellent points for incorporating Frank "I made The Shawshank Redemption" Darabont as the show-runner. I know zombies ain't for everybody, but there's so much more going on here. Trust me and give it a try.

The Sun Office

On last week's episode of The Office, we learned that Andy Bernard was an opinion columnist at The Cornell Daily Sun. This was at Cornell.



I was also an opinion columnist for The Sun when I was in college. Additionally, for a few short months I was put in charge of the opinion section, even though I could barely read and write. Part of my job as an editor was to occasionally stop drinking so that I could hire columnists and assign them to a schedule.

I must admit that a column titled "Bernard's Regards" would earn strong consideration based solely on its outstanding command of the virtually compulsory "Use Your Name as a Pun" rule for choosing your college newspaper column's moniker.

However, assigning a daily column to anyone -- especially a freshman -- would be out of the question. This would be a colossal mistake, on par with past mistakes such as hammer fights near the new computers and installing a basketball hoop that overlooked the parking lot where cars with windshields were supposed to park.

As to the Nard Dog's decision to squander an opportunity at a Sun editorship in favor of a spot on an all-male a capella group, I can only say the following: Yes, a capella singers probably got laid more. But they are a direct cause of the inexplicable popularity of the awful show Glee, and that is an unmitigated evil that cannot be overlooked, much less forgiven. May God have mercy on your soul.

Charlie from Ohio, Esq.

I'd like to inform all concerned parties that I can now officially represent myself in court.

If you need a lawyer, feel free to give me a call. Chances are I'll refer you to a more adequate and competent lawyer. But if you could tell that lawyer to hire me, I would be very grateful.

Now that I have passed the Massachusetts bar exam, I can now append "Esquire" to my name. Reports that this was the only reason that I became a lawyer are exaggerated. I also get to begin sentences with the words, "As your attorney," which is all kinds of awesome. Turn-ons also include being called "counselor." As in, "You better take off those pants, counselor."

This is decidedly good news, but they also come with a bit of trepidation. I feel like I was just told, "Congrats! Come in!" And I'm walking into the party, and I'm adjusting my cuffs as I take a look around. And what I see sends me straight to the bar, where I order a double. No. A triple. You know what? How much for the bottle? OK, give me two.

Terrific news. I'm going to go have a scotch, right after I put on a shirt.

When a Man Loves a Wingwoman

As I stumbled through the internets today, I came across this:

http://www.hireabostonwingwoman.com/

Yes, that's a thing.

On the surface, it seems like a good idea. I have long advocated for the use of women as wingmen, notably in this post, which I excerpt now:

Once the presence of a woman who -- in the target's eyes -- finds the male attractive has validated the target's own notions of whether the male is attractive or not, the target's natural competitive instinct will kick in. The target will then proceed to actively (and, God willing, literally) fight the female wingman for the male. The male, would of course prefer to remind everyone that Sharing is Caring. Unfortunately, this is not Cinemax.

Anyone who doesn't believe women are ultracompetitive about men would do well by watching the ceremonial tossing of the bouquet at any wedding where the ratio of single women to women in a serious relationships exceeds 1:1. This is adjusted depending on the bride's age -- you subtract the single women's side of the equation by 0.1 for every year the bride is over 25. This is what is known as the "Always a Bridesmaid Rule." It is science.

So it seems that some entrepreneur has decided to take the wingwoman idea and monetize it. How does it work? Exactly as you would expect:

Our WingWomen are attractive, confident, relaxed, and sociable. When you are out in a public area with one of these women, you convey the message that this is the company you keep. Through your interaction with the WingWoman and her interaction with a lady of your interest, the social boundaries break down and this makes a smooth transition to meeting someone.

Exactly. Exactly right. You know, this isn't a terrible idea. And how much does this cost?

Our services are offered on an hourly basis at $65/hour, with a 2 hour minimum, and $30 every 1/2 hour thereafter. After providing the following information, you will be lead to a payment section, where you can specify the intended length of time you would like.

Holy crap! The more I look at this, the more this looks like your regular, run-of-the-mill "rent-a-friend" service. At this point in our culture, about the only acceptable services with hourly rates are Zipcars and dog-walkers. Maybe spas. Probably not spas.

And why would they say "length of time" in the payment section, as opposed to "amount of time?" My this-is-a-euphemism-for-something-but-I'm-not-sure-what meter is buzzing off the charts on this one.

I wonder what would happen if the night turned out to be bust. Would they offer your money back, or would they guarantee your satisfaction? And what happens if you try to pull an Al Gore with the masseuse play?

At that point, prudence might dictate that you're better off with the company of a hooker, who would naturally give you more bang for your buck.

What's my Age Again?

I walked into the Sun office last night. Besides dating myself with comments like, "We didn't have Twitter or iPhones when I was in college," nothing made me feel older than the following conversation.

Me: Do you guys still get like, a thousand CDs to review that no one wants?
Them: What?
Me: For the Arts section, don't you get free CDs sent here to review and they suck and no one wants any of them?
Them: . . . No . . .
Me: Oh.
Them: What's a CD?

Hammer Time

Usually, I enjoy procrastinating, and Halloween is no exception. Come the 31t of October, you can usually find me standing in my closet after dinner, scanning my clothes and figuring out which combination thereof would serve as an adequate costume.

Of course, I could go out and be creative and buy things and make things and fashion a good costume. But that involves a lot of work. And I don't mean to be lazy, but it's too much work to not be lazy.

And then I learned that the first Halloween would be this weekend. As in tonight, a full 9 days before the actual date. This cut my procrastinating time significantly. It was quite the pickle.

So I sat down, rubbed my chin pensively, and commenced to think. What would be a good costume?

The first idea was to go as Don Draper. This would be a terrific costume, except the materials involved in its making are already ones that I use on an everyday basis. I'm already the guy in the suit with a glass of Scotch in his hand when I go out to bars. This would only be a costume if hanging out around other people in costumes were considered a costume. I suppose I could take up smoking, except people would say, "you didn't dress up for my Halloween party and now you're smoking in my house?" Also, I'd rather not get cancer.

Similar concerns nixed Barney Stinson, costume idea number two.

Other costumes seemed played out. Everyone and their mother will dress up as Chilean miners. This is the first Halloween where the Jersey Shore has existed, so expect a lot of that. What about Lady Gaga, or someone from Glee? Please. I'd rather stay sober during Halloween.

And then it struck me. I had a difficult time thinking of someone who is awesome but does not wear a suit. A main character in an old but awesome, Emmy-award winning, terrifying musical blog.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Captain Hammer, of the excellent Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.



Superficial, in love with himself, and boasting a self-esteem that outkicks its coverage? I'm not even going to have to act. In fact, I'm going to have trouble refraining from speaking in a superhero voice for a couple of weeks, so fair warning.

It's perfect, it's easy, and I have assembled a costume that looks like it was stolen from the show. I've already recruited a Dr. Horrible, and, with a little luck, a Moist.

So fear no more, America. Captain Hammer is here.

Random Video of the Day LXXVII

I don't know if Tracy Morgan singing Scarborough Fair is the stuff of nightmares. Ask me tomorrow morning.

Hulu Confidential

Incidentally, Hulu just made available, for our pleasure, the entire run of Kitchen Confidential on its website.

This is a show that premiered five years ago and made only thirteen episodes. Of those thirteen, only four were ever broadcast.

Yet it is excellent, and remains a charter member of the great-but-canceled club. It is loosely based on Anthony Bourdain's book of the same name and stars Bradley Cooper in his pre-Hangover days, but already in full asshole-at-the-party mode. You also need to overlook the fact that the show is set in a NYC kitchen that is staffed with maybe 10 percent Mexicans. Anyone who has ever eaten in a NYC restaurant will know that the number needs to be at least 99 percent.

Regardless, I heartily recommend it.

Visitation Rights

I live roughly 3,500 miles away from my parents.

While I of course miss them, the vast distance is largely accidental. I am a big fan of the Northeast, and if you want to blame anyone for how far away that is from Central Mexico, I would point the finger at tectonic plates.

That said, the amount of time it takes to travel between Boston and Queretaro is not without its strategic advantages.

Take, as an example, my little brother. He is a resident of the state of Texas, which sits a mere 1,200 miles from our hometown. Occasionally, he will receive a phone call from my Dad's cell phone, who would him that they were out for a Sunday drive, decided why not, and now found themselves at the border, on their way to visit him, and would be arriving in a couple of hours.

Panic would naturally ensue.

Because I live so far away, I believed myself exempt from these surprise visits from the parental regime. Such a long trip would require time and planning. My parents would have no choice but to give me plenty of notice -- I imagined this would, at the very least, be a week.

Conveniently, Operation: Obliterate All Signs of Being a Twenty-Something Living in a 21st Century American City has a timetable of one week, carefully calculated by the best engineers and scientists America has to offer. It is fool-proof. A week is just enough time to mop, vacuum, dust, scrub, clean, and get rid of the bodies. Just enough.

Except when my parents call me and tell me they'll be here in a couple of days.

I received their call on Sunday. They should be here juuuuuust about any minute now.

I did what I could under the new time frame. I believe the Operation, although hastily executed, has been largely successful. Now I know that I really should have gotten rid of the bodies first, because I had to do all the other things again. I would love to double-check but I don't have time.

Unfortunately, nothing could be done about what's in the closet, behind the suits. I pray they never go in there.

If they do, avenge me.

Blogging Duty

It's no secret that computers make everything better. This is especially true if that thing is boring, like law school.

Another truism is that bloggers love to blog about boring things. In fact, the more boring the thing, the more bloggers love to blog about it in their blog. As evidence, I present every post that has preceded this one.

And what happens when you put both of the above premises together?

You got it!

Bloggers blogging about jury duty!

Can you feel the electricity in the air?

At first blush, it seems like a terrific idea. After all, the juror is more likely to pay attention in order to harvest blog fodder. If he doesn't remember a detail, looking at his blog might refresh his memory. And by not using names, specifics, or any other identifying characteristics, everyone's privacy is preserved, nobody talks about the case, and the integrity of the system is preserved, correct? All that and not being bored to tears while the state psychologist goes on and on about her post-graduate degrees and record of publications? Why, that's as terrific as sliced bread!

What could possibly go wrong?

To Professor Clark, Mr. Slutsky’s blog posts clearly “crossed the line.” Jurors are not allowed to talk to one another about the case, “much less go on the World Wide Web and discuss it with everybody,” he said.

OK. That's a fair point. We don't want to open up a message board where people fight about who goes first and whether or not the assault victim got "Pwned!" But if you actually think that jurors don't talk to one another about the case, you are only lying to yourself, you liar.

(Also, yes, that's actually the guy's name. Let's just get this over with. (Giggles for ten minutes))

However, if you actually read the posts involved in this story, you'll find that they only barely touch on the case at hand, mention no specifics, and refer almost exclusively to how boring being on a jury is. Which is absolutely true, despite what John Grisham would have you believe. So what irked off the professor?

Professor Clark pointed to one entry in particular that he said went too far. On Oct. 6, his ninth day of jury duty, Mr. Slutsky wrote about the plaintiff’s taking the stand for the second day. “It was really annoying when the witness got the same question over and over,” he wrote. “This is very annoying.” He added that much of the evidence “is not relevant to the jury’s ultimate decision of liability.”

This entry could have been especially problematic had the lawyers discovered the blog and tracked it, Professor Clark said. “If you’re an attorney and you’re reading this, you may go try to recover from that,” he said. “You may try to go back the next day to try to clear up something.”

Of course the lawyer would read a post about how annoying repetitive questioning was to everyone who hears it and would immediately make a motion to recall the witness, wait for him to come back, put him on the stand again, and ask him more questions. Because if they teach you anything in trial advocacy, it's that the more you ask the witness the same questions, the clearer his answers will be.

In judging the evidence, Mr. Slutsky may have been breaking the judge’s instructions to keep an open mind, Professor Clark said. “He’s actually kind of telling what he’s thinking, and the jury hasn’t even begun deliberating yet,” he said.

Oh, come on. Really? What do you think jurors are? Blank slates who only absorb information during the actual trial, collecting it in their subconscious, and hold off on flipping the mental switch to "Analyze" after the judge sequesters them for deliberation? You don't think they are prejudiced from the start based mostly on first impressions the instant the plaintiff and defendant show up with their body language and choice of clothes? You really think jurors don't judge every single thing during every moment of the trial where they actually pay attention? Are you actually a law professor?

“Maybe the law needs to be amended to accommodate blogs,” Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor, wrote in an e-mail. “No doubt this sort of thing happened and happens a lot on a smaller scale (juror to friend, relative over dinner), and no one learns of it.” The instructions say not to discuss the case, but do not mention writing about the case.

Of course it happens on a smaller scale. Jurors talk about the case they're on all the time. Always have, always will. Everybody knows about it, but nobody cares because 99 percent of those conversations are exactly like this:

Mike: Yeah, so I had jury duty today.
Ike: Ugh.
Mike: I know.
Ike: That sucks
Mike: I know.
Ike: At least you got to skip work.
Mike: Yeah, that was nice.
Ike: Yup.
Mike: Yup.

And of course we end on the oldest lawyer trick in the book. "The instructions only said discuss. They never said anything about writing. Duh." Hey, I know copying on the test is forbidden, but I was just making sure we both had the same answers, Ms. Krabapple! What am I, on trial here?

Transcending Transition

As I sat in my cave today, contemplating how I'm going to take over the world, I happened to glance at my Google Reader and noticed that my name was on someone else's blog post.

I stared at it for a little bit. Then I rubbed my eyes, not believing them. Then I stared at it again for a bit. Then I took out my English-Spanish dictionary and consulted it.

Yep, there it was. My name and story on someone else's blog post.

Somewhere in the distance, I could almost hear a clock start ticking on my 15 minutes of fame.

This is the aforementioned piece. Metaezra, a Cornell alumni blog, has developed this feature wherein they interview recent graduates about how they transitioned from college to the real world. And they asked me a few questions about my own transition experience.

Why me? I don't really know. While I am, in my own mind if nowhere else, devastatingly handsome, charming, and witty, they are really stretching the definitions of "recent" graduate and "real world" by picking a guy who graduated over three years ago to do something as far removed from reality as law school.

I suppose that my transition experience -- a phrase which, in a rather hideously apt way, recalls the final church scene from Lost -- is fairly interesting. You'll recall that three friends and I took a jaunt across America following college. This is, of course, the celebrated Three Jews and a Mexican Road Trip of '07, which has been extensively chronicled here.

The trip has since begot a sequel, Three Jews and a Mexican II: Three Jews and One Hundred Million Mexicans. A final chapter in the trilogy is in the works, although I am still discussing with the other producers about whether renaming it Three Lawyers and an Engineer would take the franchise in an exciting an litigious new direction.

And now, our humble little trip is the subject of an interview about cool things kids can do after completing college forces them to leave it. I could not be prouder.

Now that I'm more famous than a Chilean miner, I should warn you: Expect erratic behavior, a dalliance with Lindsay Lohan, a reality show, and a brief stay at the Betty Ford Center, not necessarily in that order. It's a Hollywood thing.

And if you need to get in touch with me, have your people call my people. Oh, and paparazzi, I'll be at Spago. I'll make sure to get a table on the patio with minimal sight line obstructions.

...

What do you mean I'm not on the list?

The Calls of the Century

Today, Joe Posnanski, perhaps the best baseball writer working today, unveiled a list of the 32 Greatest Broadcast Calls in Sports History.

It's a terrific list, extremely fun to go through, and hard to quibble with.

If you'll allow me one indulgence, however, I'm going to say that Skip Caray's call of the 7th game of the NLCS is missing. While I won't contend that it deserves to make the list over any of the other inclusions, I will say that it is hands down my favorite call.

Of course I'm biased. Even Fox News isn't this shameless.

But look at the situation. 7th and deciding game of the NLCS. Bottom of the ninth. Braves are down 2-1, but they have runners on 2nd and 3rd. However, they also have two outs and the man they're sending to the plate is Francisco Cabrera, who totaled 12 plate appearances that season on his way to a career batting average of .254. And then this happened.



For you non-Braves fans, you can also see a pre-steroids Barry Bonds fail to throw out Sid "Wheels" Bream and his fantastic mustache. There's just something for everyone there.

Statler State of Mind

Of the 161 Things to do at Cornell, I'd say that "making fun of hotelies" is a rather large oversight on the list. I'd venture a guess that people are more likely to make fun of hotelies than, say, "milk a cow."

But nothing could be more removed from reality.

With the benefit of hindsight and maturity, I'd say that hotelies had the best go of it at Cornell, bar none.

This is true especially if you subscribe to the notion that the most important part of college are the academics.

Sure, architecture is pretty essential and engineering is something nice to know if you're going to rescue 33 trapped miners. But let's leave the actually practical and useful majors and schools out of this, since they are inconvenient to my analysis.

I'd be lying if those classes at the hotel school don't sound awesome. In order to be able to take the spirits class, you had to take the beers class. And in order to take beers, you had to go through wines.

Then they have the new viticulture and enology major. Or "Introduction to Casino Operations." Or the meat class, where the final exam is in the slaughterhouse and involves butchering a newly dead cow, followed by a cook-out where you can grill the Prime Rib that you just harvested with your own, bloody hands.

These are useful classes. And they're fun. And they're complemented by less fun but probably more useful classes like Corporate Finance and Business Law.

Meanwhile, I was an English major, sitting in a dark classroom listening to Victor drone on about how Lady Mary Wroth's poems are more representative of the Elizabethan tropes of phallocentrism and temporal displacement than John Donne's sonnets. Then we'd adjourn and go to Stella's, where the women would wear turtlenecks and the men would cross their legs at the knees and everybody would make fun of Hemingway. Later, we'd go home and work on our 20-page papers about how gendering and post-capitalistic hegemony neuterized the Bronte sisters.

And I had the gall to mock hotelies.

Look, I love the liberal arts. I'm not going to sit here and say that my college education wasn't useful.

But I will sit here and say that classes like "Super Smash Brothers Melee Theory and Practice" are really, really, really useless. That's an actual class at Oberlin. If you click through to that link, you'll find equally useless classes at similar liberal arts colleges. "Philosophy and Star Trek," anyone?

The trick is blending practical education with a liberal arts education in a balanced way. Spectacular insight, right? You think it would be easy. Why can't we combine the two in a way that gives you a basic humanistic foundation upon which you can build a practical, tangible skill set?

Cornell, show me what you got.

"How about HADM 5590: Derrida and the Philosophy of Hospitality?"

Sigh.