Over the weekend, I visited my little brother in Dallas, which I thought was in Texas but instead is seemingly located in the hottest circle of hell.
It was hot. Hot. I was melting all weekend. I felt like a character in a kid's show where the characters live in an oven. Which is inside another, hotter oven, suspended over an open oil fire. In hell.
The worst part?
This was a mild weekend in Dallas. Temperatures were "only" 99 degrees. Whereas temperatures of that sort trigger a weather emergency here in Boston -- where they open up cooling centers so that people don't literally die -- in Texas this qualifies as a gorgeous weekend. Not just a gorgeous weekend, but the very best weekend of the year.
Most of the weekend included conversations that went a little like this:
Guy in Elevator: Man, this is some nice weather we're having, isn't it? Me: (Dripping sweat from a 50-yard walk in the shade) I'm sorry? Him: It's just so nice. This is the kind of day you just spend outside. Me: (Staring at mirror and wondering at the pattern that is created on a shirt when you sweat from every available pore) Outside? Him: Yeah, man. I wish every day was like this. Me: Yeah, for sure. (Chugs gallon of water).
No wonder there are no sidewalks. More than two minutes outside and I could feel myself slowly roasting, enough so that at the steakhouse I asked, for the first time ever, for a baked potato without butter, just because I was so, so afraid of ending up like this.
Other than the weather, Dallas is actually pretty nice. And the girls, well, they're also pretty nice. My brother and I went for a walk through the SMU campus, which, if I understand correctly, is attended almost exclusively by rich daddy's girls. As we walked through the quad, my brother and I played a game. It was called, "Find an ugly girl." We both lost, which means everybody wins. Especially guys who go to SMU.
A visit to the site of the JFK assassination created the following two thoughts: 1) That's really not that tough a shot. And 2) I wonder if JFK was sweating as much as I did when he was in that car. Yes, it was November, but that means it was probably only 94 degrees then. Still, probably not. I tried to think more poignant thoughts, but it's tough to do when you can feel your brain cooking inside your skull.
Perhaps most striking was a visit to the Cowboys' new stadium. There was no game, but we were permitted to approach and go into the structure, including the field and locker room, where I did my best Tony Romo impression. In any case, the stadium looks like a spaceship that landed in the middle of Arlington, if the aliens who drove that spaceship liked oversized rims, 4-inch belt buckles, and diamond studs in their ears. It is impressive the way an H3 is impressive. I couldn't help but think of the Titanic and the lessons it taught us.
All in all, Texas was terrific, a nice break and wholly different experience from life up here in the Northeast.
In fact, if I could sum up Texas in one image -- if I can encapsulate all its glory in one blow -- I would leave you with this: My brother's girlfriend -- all 5'2'', 100 pounds of her -- drives the biggest friggin' pick-up truck you ever saw. The biggest. It is enormous. It is hilarious and kind of awesome. It is Texas.
Normally, being delayed for two-and-a-half hours would create a disturbance in the force and produce great vexation. But not today.
My flight to Dallas was delayed because the plane that was supposed to take me to Dallas was still in Miami when it should have been here in Boston. Whether American Airlines possesses even one extra plane in the event of this contingency remains inconclusive.
As I was gazing sadly at the waiting areas in front of the gate, trying to figure out what the least worst alternative was between sitting near the Desperate Housewives of Suburban Texas or sitting across from an exhausted mother carting somewhere between five and seven children (they were moving too fast for me to keep an accurate count), I noticed one of those airline lounges behind crystal doors.
And then I remembered I have an American Express credit card.
Holy Jebus. Would that work?
I walked in and presented my credit card to the receptionist. She took one look at it and asked if I was flying American. I said I was. And she said welcome, sir, and, like Homer Simpson before me, it was the first time someone called me "sir" without adding "you're making a scene."
And then it hit me.
OH MY GOD I'M IN.
Not only was I in, I was in the inner circle. The receptionist took one look at my ticket, saw that I was sitting in a middle row near the bathroom at the back of the plane, and immediately upgraded me at no cost to a more respectable aisle seat on an emergency exit row.
Still stunned by the good fortune of possessing a credit card that not only charges me hundreds of dollars each year for the benefit of a moderate APR, but that also grants me access to the most privileged areas of our nation's airports, I strolled into the Airline lounge.
Lo and behold. Free cookies. Free drinks. Comfortable sofas. Free cookies. Clean, public computers. Easily accessible power outlets. TVs tuned not to FoxNews, but to ESPN. Lounge chairs. A full bar. Free cookies.
And, best of all?
NO CHILDREN.
As far as the eye could see, the lounge was populated entirely with business travelers. No kids. No babies. No strollers. Nothing. Just business travelers who don't only look as if they have no children, but who look like they would never even entertain the option in the first place. I felt right at home.
I smiled, unslung my bag (which they checked. NO MORE SCHLEPPING), and heaved a sigh of relief. Then I walked to the bar. Beer before noon? Why the heck not?
Bliss was it in that afternoon to be alive, but to be in that airport lounge was very heaven.
It has been nearly a month since the bar exam. I am happy to report that, while my elbow still occasionally clicks, my fists have begun to unclench and I don't jump at loud noises anymore.
The results do not come in until sometime in November, which is fine. A stay of execution is always appreciated.
However, I do have to fill out the bar application for the State of New York, so that the Board of Bar Overseers becomes satisfied that I possess a good, upstanding, and moral character and deems me acceptable enough to be an attorney.
See, New York is smart about this. Massachusetts made us do the whole song and dance -- questionnaires, letters of recommendation, statements of disclosure, criminal records -- before we took the bar exam.
New York, however, holds off. They don't require you to document your life until after the exam. This is nice, because if for any reason you didn't take the exam, quit during the middle of BarBri, had a nervous breakdown, or ran screaming out of the exam room, at least you didn't have to bother the Ithaca Police Department to ask them to furnish you with copies of an old arrest report. Which can be awkward. Or so I hear.
In any event, I now also have to fill out the New York application, which means I have to get letters of recommendation stating that I am a good and decent person and would not set anyone on fire unless I really had to. I already did it once (got people to write a letter, not set someone on fire. The latter happened more than once), but I hate to have to ask people to lie twice.
Or maybe I don't need to. Somehow I feel like I should get new recommendations. What follows is an excerpt of a letter from a good friend to the Massachusetts bar:
Over [four years], he has become what you might call a "colleague in beverage consumption" to me. We have passed many a night seeking to foster relationships among certain demographic groups of interest (a.k.a. chasing tail), and occasionally succeeded in doing so. In this endeavor he has conducted himself with utmost professionalism and honesty. Except for that time he convinced a girl he was an astronaut. But other than that, total honesty. Even on the occasions that our tendency to imbibe without limit has caused him to become "naturally indisposed," he has maintained his composure - only very seldom lighting objects or people on fire, and never without good reason. And on the rare occasion that he threatens to throw someone off the roof of a building, he does so with the caveat that they are presumed innocent until proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be "killing the buzz." In his capacity as a lawyer, I would only say that were I to end up in a jail cell, I could imagine worse people to have for my legal defense. That is, assuming he was not also in said jail cell.
Accurate? Of course. The unvarnished truth? Mostly. What the bar needs to hear? Probably not.
So in the unlikely case that anyone out there has the opposite impression of me and would like to convey that opinion to the people who evaluate New York lawyers, I would be happy to hear from you.
Or if you have no compulsions about lying, misleading, obfuscating, or otherwise adjusting the truth, I'd love to hear from you too.
Last week I mentioned something called the Skittlebrau Principle and a handful of people have asked what in the world I was talking about.
Back in the Clinton '90s, a much-loved and now cancelled show called The Simpsons was taking the world by storm. The star of the show was Homer Simpson, generally considered less than smart, but often respected for his ability to create new food and drink items (See Moe, Flaming).
In one episode, he had this exchange:
Homer: I'm feelin' low, Apu. You got any of that beer that has candy floating in it? You know, Skittlebrau?" Apu: Such a product does not exist, sir! You must have dreamed it. Homer: Oh. Well then just gimme a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles.
Thus, the Skittlebrau Principle was born.
The technical definition is simple: Any food or drink that is not currently offered in the market but can nevertheless be created by combining or removing existing ingredients is therefore deemed to exist due to the Skittlebrau Principle.
e.g. Skittlebrau is not currently in production? Imitate Homer and pour a bag of skittles into a six-pack. Chug. The Skinwich is a hoax? Buy a bucket of fried chicken and a grilled chicken sandwich (because it is cheap). Then throw away the awful, bland grilled chicken breast, take the skin off all of the fried chicken, put the skin in the Sandwich, and voila! A tasty, horrifying Skinwich.
In time, food that once existed only because of the Skittlebrau Principle graduated to mass production. This is the principle that animates Fried Mars Bars, Fried Snickers, and Fried Moon Pies. It applies to anything that is wrapped in bacon, including sausages, corn dogs, and that kosher delight, bacon-wrapped shrimp. And where do you think ice cream cake came from?
It doesn't stop with food -- Skittle vodka, bacon-infused whiskey, and those crazy drinks with an egg in them all owe their existence to the Skittlebrau Principle.
Although it doesn't always work (the horror that is Baconnaise comes to mind) it really is a wonderful little theory.
Why? Because this Pizza Burger is fawesome (effing + awesome).
After annoying us for most of the week with coverage of the anti-Mosque aficionado league and Roger Clemens, the NYT decided to devote its coverage to something that is more annoying than the combined forces of the Kardashians, the Jersey Shore, and people who tweet pictures of their cats.
Ladies and gentlemen, the New York Times presents Foursquare!
Alexandra will never forget the first time she was anointed the "mayor” of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. It was an overcast Wednesday in April and she was driving to the city on her last day of an internship.
Remember the old days, when the only way to become the mayor of a bridge was by beating your fellow bum in a knife fight? Life was so simple back then.
Never mind that she had to drive 15 minutes out of her way from her apartment in Sewell, N.J., to her desk at the Philadelphia City Paper. Or that it involved having to pull out her iPhone while weaving through morning rush-hour traffic to “check in” to the Foursquare application.
Misfeasance? Check. Reckless driving? Check again. Completely disregarding common sense due to a rather terrifying lack of good judgment? Checkmate. If you should ever crash your car and the person you crashed into turned out to not have been looking because she was checking in on Foursquare, you should be legally allowed to set her on fire.
Once she tasted “mayorship,” she was hooked. “Being the mayor of a major bridge — how cool is that?”
It's not cool at all.
She was so excited by her “nerdy achievement” that she posted a Twitter message about it.
Good lord, she managed to make that even less cool.
While Foursquare has been talked about in corporate boardrooms as the next big thing in social media — it has some 2.5 million users — it has also spawned a more trivial pursuit: a petty and vicious battle over virtual pieces of turf.
How something that features daily messages informing everyone that "Cher Horowitz is at Starbucks" can spawn something that is even more trivial is astonishing. This would be like some lunatic becoming inspired by the Birthers to leading an impeachment charge because Obama has not proved that he is at least 35 years-old.
Strangers are locked in bitter rivalries. Workplaces have been carved up into virtual battlefields. College campuses have become factionalized. Even some homes have become social media minefields.
Even more baffling is why users have become so emotionally invested in being a mayor, as there are few, if any, tangible benefits. While some bars award free beer and some shops give small discounts as a marketing ploy, the majority do not.
If I owned a bar and some asshole walked in claiming to be the mayor of my bar and demanding free beer, I would immediately introduce him to Harry the Head, the 5-pound miniature bat I show to people when I want them to leave and never come back.
Rather, Foursquare fanatics can’t seem to get enough of the mayoral bragging rights (even if it seems debatable that being a virtual mayor is worth bragging about).
That's not debatable. Whether Iraq is ready to see U.S. troops leave is debatable. Whether you should brag about being the mayor of a bridge is not.
For those still using their cellphone just to make calls, Foursquare, which started in March 2009, is a social media platform that lets users “check in” at places like bars and restaurants, and “unlock” points and badges. To play, users need to download an app to a GPS-enabled smartphone, like an iPhone, and pull out their device whenever they want to check in. The player who checks into a particular place the most within a 60-day period becomes its mayor.
And, of course, the NYT does not explain what the hell it is talking about until halfway through the story. And how condescending is the first clause in this paragraph? I bet you the writer is mayor of Doucheville.
One of the most fought-over battlegrounds seems to be the workplace. It usually starts out innocently, with a handful of techie co-workers checking in to a location. Then two things may start to happen: more colleagues check in, and, before long, the Type A’s start competing to be mayor.
My favorite thing to do when I was at work last summer was get into pitched online battles with Nick Burns, the company's computer guy. I also like the implicit assertion in this paragraph that the techies are not Type A's and would never compete to be mayor. I guess they would just be content with being the guy the mayor calls when the porn viruses overwhelm his computer.
But it doesn’t always end there, as Ian, a 34-year-old digital strategist in Toronto, found out. At first, co-workers at OSL Marketing, a branding agency where he works, fought over the mayorship of the two-story building that houses the company. Then they started creating venues inside the 10,000-square-foot offices: the receptionist desk, parking spots, the kitchen. (Anyone on Foursquare can create a new venue.)
So it's like Risk, except dorkier. I wonder who the office bathroom's mayor is. I bet you he sweats when he eats.
Hey, you think whoever wanted to be mayor of Parking Spot #3 was crazy? That guy has nothing on these two lunatics:
After losing his mayorship at Atlas Cafe, a coffee shop in Williamsburg, Mr. Lopez turned his attention to a hidden passageway between the Manhattan Bridge anchorage and a bland Department of Transportation building. The alley doesn’t show up on maps and, more importantly, there seemed to be little competition for mayor. Plus, it had a cool, noir-sounding nickname, Stabber Alley.
“I just want a place to call my own,” Mr. Lopez, 31, said.
For a while, Mr. Lopez lorded over Stabber Alley by simply checking in once a day. Then an acquaintance, Barry, came out of nowhere and stole his title. What’s more, his new rival seemed to be bending the rules by checking in from a remote location. Although Foursquare uses GPS to pinpoint a player’s location, most smartphones are still relatively slow and inaccurate, so Foursquare lets users check into places as far as 300 meters (about 328 yards) away.
Just to be sure, Mr. Lopez staked out Stabber Alley to confirm that Mr. Barry was not actually there even though he checked in. Once, he said, he saw Mr. Barry checking in while walking across the street. Under the loosely defined etiquette rules of Foursquare, a “drive-by” check-in is not allowed.
(Mr. Barry did not deny the charge: “I did check in sometimes while in my office, which is a block away. Usually at lunch I would walk over to the alley and check in, and when I forgot, I would usually check in later while at my desk,” he said.)
Then Mr. Lopez’s geeky side got the better of him. A Web developer by training, he downloaded a computer programming interface, or A.P.I., from Foursquare’s Web site and programmed a script that automatically checked him into Stabber Alley every day at 1:23 p.m.
It worked, and he was reunited with his title. “It’s cheater versus cheater,” Mr. Lopez said.
Wow. Just wow. Before today, I would have been pretty sure that fighting over who would become mayor of a place called Stabber Alley would involve two bums who needed to be involuntarily committed for everyone's own good. Now I am absolutely sure of it.
But for some, breaking the rules is so offensive that they feel compelled to shame the culprit, usually by turning to other social media like Facebook and Twitter. Among the self-appointed hall monitors is Mike, 25, a Web designer in Philadelphia.
Wow, Foursquare has narcs. And I bet you they are every bit as popular as Martin Prince.
Last year, in his early days of using Foursquare, Mike noticed there was a nearby user named Elizabeth who was mayor of almost every venue near his home on Fifth Street in South Philadelphia. He figured that Elizabeth must have been cheating, possibly checking in from her car, so he took a screen shot of her Foursquare profile, which included a photo of her face, and posted it on Twitter, accusing her of deception.
He must have a lot of sex.
Since then, Mike has managed to eke out his own mayorships. He also happens to date Alexandra, the sometime-mayor of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
Oh, hey! He landed the mayor of the bridge! High five! No, you missed. Try again. . . Nope, missed again. . . Here, just hit the palm . . . I'm not even moving my hand anymore, how are you still missing? . . . OK. Whatever. Just bump the fist. . . Oh, you're blowing it up. Of course you are.
When two Foursquare power users are in a relationship, everything is up for grabs. Like their homes.
For two months, the couple were in a tug-of-war for mayorship over Alexandra’s two-bedroom town house, which she shares with her cousin. Eventually, Mike relented and let his girlfriend be the mayor of her own home. But he wants it to be known that he hasn’t given up completely.
“If I could catch up and steal the mayorship,” he warned, “I’ll do it without question.”
Guys, I think Maureen Dowd just found herself a new column! Heck, I don't even know why I'm even making fun of her for that. Anything to keep her from writing absolute travesties like this one.
He didn’t seem to be joking. Although Mike is currently mayor of 16 places, he is unhappy about their declining cachet. Instead of cool bars and leafy parks, he is now the mayor of places like a Taco Bell.
“My mayorships have been whittled away to meaningless 7-Elevens and gas stations,” Mike said.
"What happened to my Kingdom?" pondered Mayor Denethor, as he surveyed the smoldering ruins of his once-proud nation. He took a bite out of his Crunchwrap Supreme -- the last remaining jewel in his crown -- as a lone tear spilled down his cheek. Somewhere in the distance, a tiny violin played.
[I'm skipping a section where Mayor Denethor and his girlfriend, the Bridge Mayor, take a vacation to unlock Badges in Brooklyn by "prepar[ing] a Google spreadsheet to ensure efficiency." It is sadder than it sounds].
In fact, I'm skipping everything. I guess I'm old fashioned in that I did not need to know where you were unless I wanted to know. And if I wanted to know, I would follow text you. I know that sounds insane to kids today, but that's really how we used to do it.
And if you wanted to be mayor, you needed to either smoke crack or extend term limits right when your term is about to expire. And you kind of needed a city, town, or at the very least, a village. Heck, I'd even give you hamlet. But I won't give you Stabber Alley. That's too much.
Now, if you'll excuse, I'm off on patrol, because I'm the sheriff 'round these here parts.
In December of 2009, when the Three Jews visited me in Mexico, Weitz insisted on having Mezcal. "Our trip won't be complete," he said, "unless we have some mezcal before we go."
I tried to warn him that he probably wouldn't enjoy it. "Nonsense," he said, with the confident air of someone watching a bartender crack an egg into his drink. "We're in Mexico and we must drink mezcal. I'll even pay for them."
Wow. Pay for them?
"Yes."
All of them?
"Yes."
Oh wow. These were uncharted waters. Guessing he was serious, we all went to a bar and ordered one mezcal each.
The mezcal arrived at our table. We toasted something that was probably worth toasting and then each took a sip. Then we turned to Weitz to see his reaction.
He grimaced. Took another sip. Grimaced again. Sadness took seed in his eyes.
"It's not good," he said. "It's not good."
He put it down and ordered a beer. And so I had to finish his and I had to finish Josh's and now I have to give Adam props for being the sole gringo to stomach our death drink.
I bring this up because, according to the NYT, other gringos have begun to appreciate mezcal, which is the country mouse to tequila's city mouse. Given what we all know about tequila, this is a telling metaphor indeed.
The lede of the article itself can only have been written after drinking much mezcal:
"I feel almost as if I have to whisper my feelings about mezcal. It is so immersed in legend and colorful misrepresentation that it’s a shame to spoil it all with truth. And yet the truth can be so richly rewarding that I may as well shout it out."
Here's to writers and editors drinking on the job!
In any case, mezcal is not a bad drink. It is cheap and usually unrefined, and bad ones will make it seem like you just took a mouthful of liquid dirt.
But the good ones? The good ones are awesome. With the good ones, as the NYT writes, "You get a briny, vegetal burst, with Tabasco-like hints of vinegar, salt, oily smoke and earth, and an uncompromising purity."
So, yeah, that's not bad. When the three Jews were there, I tried to find the bar where I had previously had the rattlesnake-infused mezcal, which was served from a huge, 7-gallon jar that contained a 25-foot rattlesnake curled at its bottom. To just see the jar is unnerving enough -- but to actually drink mezcal that has been sitting in a jar with a dead snake for years, well, that's Mexico.
Alas, I couldn't find the bar, probably because the last time I was there I had consumed two glasses of rattlesnake-infused mezcal.
But no matter. Some day, and perhaps sooner than we think, some enterprising young American will decide that, if America can stomach the Skinwich (not actually on the menu yet, but easily fashioned due to the Skittlebrau Principle), America can stomach Mezcals aged in jars with dead animals.
And when that day comes, the first round is on me.
Reliable sources have informed me that many liquor stores are now featuring Sam Adams Octoberfest instead of Summer Ale.
This is, of course, devastating news. A glance at the thermometer on a day like today will reveal that the mercury still sits at upwards of 80 degrees.
Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that we are done with grilling season. Food cooked outdoors is scientifically proven to be better than food cooked indoors. Not to mention, my skills as a cook decrease exponentially (or whatever the opposite of exponentially is, if I have malapropped the math) once you put a roof over the cooking space.
If my estimates are correct, there are still at least a dozen opportunities to set meat on fire in a controlled setting over the next handful of weeks. The fact that we must now do this without the fuel provided by what, for all accounts and purposes, is the east coast's best outdoors beer saddens me.
Octoberfest, you are a good beer. But you are exactly like Last Call. Yes, you perform essential functions and, in the end, it's probably a good thing that we have you. It sucks to work at a bar in a place where there is no last call and the drunks just won't leave. And it's good to get them home, since, at times, it's time to go home. The bottom line is, you tend save everyone from themselves. That's your purpose.
But man, oh man, do we hate you. Do you hear the collective groan everywhere around you? It's because you just flicked the lights on and off to let us know the party is almost over. And, because of that, you will get our contempt.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go to the bar and commence the hoarding process before they shut this thing down.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
This weekend, the Lost auction will take place somewhere in California
Going through the catalogue is like taking a stroll down memory lane. Besides including basically every costume (some are helpfully labeled as "heavily distressed"), you can bid on pretty much every single thing you have ever seen on the show.
And I kind of want everything. So many things I want, and yet I can afford none of them. It's like being in a Zegna store.
For instance, you can buy the squirrel baby. THE SQUIRREL BABY. That's right. This means no more foraging for pelts, trying to find a way to make a homemade squirrel baby. That's at least an extra hour of sleep a night for me.
Some of these things also look like bargains. I mean, an estimated $600-$800 for a Rolex? Sold. And how about Virgin Mary statutes full of, um, "horse?" And even if you don't like "horse," you can turn around and sell the horse at a horse market, which is pretty easy to do. So I hear. In a magazine. That a friend read. Anyway, you can also buy the hatch, which is pretty awesome.
Or how about stuff to put in the apartment? Like Jeremy Bentham's coffin. At the very least, you have a hell of a conversation starter. True, any woman you have up for a drink is likely to immediately remember a morning meeting upon walking in and seeing a coffin in the living room, even after you explain that the dead bald guy is not in there anymore.
But what if she stays? What if she stays? Then you ask her if she wants some wine, and of course she'll say yes, and then you'll pull out Jacob's metaphoric wine bottle, and if you can't close with that, then maybe you shouldn't really be attempting to reproduce. And at that point you might as well go for broke and casually break out the handcuffs that chained together Kate and Juliet when they were wrestling in the mud and man, are you going to have a story for the guys tomorrow.
Remember last week, when I said I would resume posting on a regular schedule, and then took over ten days off? Yeah, what a liar. My apologies.
Anyhow, I'm back, and I do have an excuse -- a good one, I think -- for my inactivity.
Last week, you see, I traveled to Chicago for a bar trip with a handful of friends in order to attend Lollapalooza, drink in Grant Park in broad daylight, and try to remain sober enough so as not to forget the concerts we paid to see.
As the old hand said, two out of three ain't bad.
Some highlights:
Chicago. Everyone I speak to gushes about the Windy City and with good reason. I would tend to agree with them, based solely on my glimpses of the city (which is gorgeous) through dirty cab windows to and from our base camp near Wrigley and Grant Park. I look very much forward to returning to Chicago on a less eventful weekend where I will get to see the city, for all accounts and purposes, for the first time.
The Music. My musical tastes, as some of you may have gleaned from this blog, are devoted almost exclusively to artists who debuted either in the 60s or 70s. Exceptions are made once or twice a decade -- U2 in the 80s, Pearl Jam and Green Day in the 90s, and Gaslight Anthem and Arcade Fire in the 00s.
This show, I'm happy to say, featured two such exceptions. We saw Green Day on Saturday night, and they put on a show. They spent two-and-a-half hours rocking out, in a set that can only be described as Springsteen-esque. Those who know me are probably aware that this is not an adjective I throw around lightly. Green Day put on one of the best shows I have ever seen, trotting out "Longview," "When I Come Around," "21 Guns," a spectacular "Jesus of Suburbia," and briefly covered everything from "Iron Man" to "Shout" and "Hey Jude." Green Day aimed to please longtime fans with this show, trotting out almost every single hit they've ever had and going 20 minutes over their allotted time. I thought I remembered everything about this show, but from looking at the setlist it is painfully clear that I do not. Thank God for the Youtubes.
And then Sunday night featured Arcade Fire, who also put on an excellent show. Although not as long as Green Day's show, their set was still terrific. Their music is very well suited to the live stage -- crowds amplifying their 62-instrument, 35-man band make the songs sound amazing. Witness:
Their setlist was excellent -- as a young band, they run through about half their catalogue during a 90-minute show. But the songs they picked were great, from the tremendous "No Cars Go" to "Keep the Car Running" to "Intervention" to "Rebellion" to the aforementioned closer, "Wake Up." They essentially picked out every song I would picked if I got to choose what they would play in a concert, which was just terrific luck.
Other bands came and went, including The Strokes, MGMT, The National, Spoon, and some phenomenally strange Japanese death metal band performing in black leather and furs in the 3 p.m. sun. They were worse than they sound. Overall, however, the music was very, very good. Especially my first exception of the '10s, Mumford and Sons.
Base Camp. Someday, I'll imagine, we'll be too old to have weekends where we all crash at someone's house and fight each other like animals for a piece of deep carpet to collapse on, or, at best, a section of the couch. That a friend of a friend was generous enough to house five complete strangers who quartered themselves in his house for three days is astounding. Finding my way to the bathroom was like navigating through that scene in Gone With the Wind where the wounded are arranged as far as the eye can see wherever there is space to minister to them -- everyone sprawled haphazardly from wall to wall, reeking of whiskey, mud, sweat, and the smell acquired by osmosis from jumping up and down in a park with 90,000 strangers. I thanked God every night for the narcotizing effects of drinking Jim Beam in the sun all day. Like I said, someday we'll be too old for that s#%$, but that was pretty damn fun for now.
Strategery. Of course, the most pressing concern regarding the weekend was sneaking booze into the park so that we would be able to "hydrate" properly during the festival. This was much easier than expected, seeing as security, for the most part, was pretty disinterested in checking people's bags, even though that's kind of what they were there for. They would glance at the bag's insides, nod, and let you go in. It was pretty easy. Except for that one time where it was not. On Saturday, we were doing our usual move, hiding five huge flasks of whiskey below a rain jacket in a backpack, when the security guard, much to everyone's surprise, decided to check under the jacket. Of course he found the gallons of booze. And of course he turned us away. Our master plan had failed. What were we to do? After maybe two seconds' thought, we decided to just try again, but with another guard. And of course, this second security guard looked at the jacket for maybe half a second and let us in. Here's to trying the same thing and having it work the second time!
Finding People. It's a well known fact that AT&T's network is physically incapable of handling the surge in data that occurs when two or more iPhones are within one mile of each other. So of course, when you cram 95,000 people into Grant Park, everyone's iPhone is rendered useless. Since half the people in our party had iPhones, we had to stay together, or else we'd never find each other. Lollapalooza, in fact, was like a giant version of Where's Waldo -- incidentally, we actually did spot Waldo at the Deer Tick show -- where if you became separated, you would never see your friends again. In fact, the iPhone had a wholly useless "Find your Drunk Friends" app, which did not work. Thank God for meeting spots. If not for them, I might still be wandering around downtown Chicago looking for everyone after I took a bathroom break during the Green Day show. The fact that my friends, who were in a cab, spotted me randomly twenty minutes after the show and yelled at me to get in the cab is a small miracle in and of itself.
Getting out of the Show. As you might imagine, the exodus following the shows was massive. After the Arcade Fire show on Sunday, we walked towards the exit only to find that the crowd suddenly stopped moving. After noticing that the crowd showed no signs of moving again, we glanced to our right and saw that a small trickle of people was heading off to the right. Assuming they must have spotted an exit, we followed them. There was no exit, just a twelve foot tall fence standing between us and freedom. Now, you all know what I say when I am asked to climb a fence (NEVER AGAIN!), but I resigned myself and hitched up my pants, ready to do this. At that exact moment, a girl tumbled from the very top of the fence onto the ground in one of the worst falls I have ever seen. This fall was enough to actually stop a huge crowd of people hell-bent on getting outside dead in their tracks. In my experience, crowds of drunk people hell bent on doing something never stop for anything. Anyway, the girl turned out to be OK. And then we noticed that, not five yards away, there was a much smaller, five-foot fence. I briefly thought of pointing this out to the fallen girl, but she was being led away, hopefully to never climb anything ever again.
The Verdict. A solid, awesome weekend, precisely the thing to do after being locked in a room studying for two months. It's taken me a week to recover completely -- the hangover lasted something like three days, the sunburn is just beginning to fade, the gauge on my liver is slowly coming down from overload to load, and my voice is the only actual casualty, as it seems this rasp will never quite go away. But you know what? If sounding like Batman is the worst thing that happened to me after a weekend in Chicago, I'll happily take it.
Setting: a hotel bar in scenic Albany, New York.I get to the bar and the only seat available is between a man and a woman. I take it, nodding at both of them.
As I nod at the woman, I notice she looks exactly like January Jones. It's clearly not her -- what on Earth would January Jones be doing at a Holiday Inn near the Albany International Airport? -- but this could clearly be her younger sister. She is stunning. She also looks more nervous than a middle-aged woman who has never flown before and is waiting for her delayed flight.
Clearly, she's also taking the bar the next morning. This, of course, makes this the worst time in the world to approach her.
So I sit and I order my food and content myself with waiting for it whilst reciting the elements of crimes.
But then the bartender comes back and sets down her order. And she had an order. My God, that order was magnificent. It was beyond magnificent. It made me feel ashamed to order the chicken sandwich.
On her plate was a burger, measuring somewhere between four and five inches thick. I eyeballed the weight at an estimated three-quarters of a pound, and that was just the patty. We still had to account for the chef's generosity in dispensing toppings. On this burger was enough cheddar cheese to envelop the entire patty a drip on the plate. Over that, the chef had perched four strips of the good, peppered bacon, a ring of caramelized onions, a slice of beefsteak tomato, and a bun that looked like it had been born and bred in butter.
I said this burger was magnificent. That's selling it short. It was a f*#$ing masterpiece.
As you might expect, because of this burger, I instantly fell in love with this woman.
Any woman who would order and eat something like that was clearly the greatest woman on Earth. And when she also looked like Betty Draper? That's just irresistible. I had to at least give it a shot.
"But wait!" A tiny voice inside my head screamed. "Look at how stressed she is! Don't hit on her now! And at least wait until she is finished eating. And remember Rule #24: Don't ever hit on a woman while she's eating!"
Sound advice. Reasonable advice. Logical advice.
So of course I said to the tiny voice, "Shut up, tiny voice. Look at her. She is clearly my soulmate, based only on her looks and the way she eats when she's stressed. Plus we have to talk about that burger. Hell, she might even let me have some. And again, look at her."
So I talked to her. And, as you might expect, she shot me a look that would have killed even Rasputin himself. And after a couple of minutes to try and break in, I had to recognize I was beat. And when the bartender brought over my wimpy chicken sandwich and she glanced at it and shook her head, well, I might as well have joined a choir.
So I settled down to eat my sandwich. And, right on cue, from my other side, the guy who was sitting there said to me, "So you're taking the bar exam, huh?"
I look at him and he has a look that says, "She doesn't want to talk, but I'll talk." And I turn to her and she looks at me and her look says, "You are going to deserve every minute of this, pal."
And so I turn back to the guy and give him look that says "I wanted to talk, but only to her. I mean, duh. Now go away." And I say, "Yes."
"Yeah, me too," he says, excited. "Do you think they'll hit secured transactions? I kind of hope so."
I swear that the sound I heard coming from the woman was a snicker.
The guy was still talking about why he thought a secured transactions question was due on this exam as January Jones, Killer-Burger-Eating Edition, walked out the door.
Always, always, listen to the tiny voice. It speaks truth.
Perhaps the most baffling thing about the bar exam was what to do when we learned that, by order of the Warden Board of Bar Examiners, we were not allowed to bring in cell phones on the day of the test.
They were very clear about this. The code of regulations that was mailed to us contained little but reiterations of the same instruction. The first rule of bar exam: You do not bring a cell phone to the exam. The second rule of bar exam: You do not bring a cell phone to the exam.
OK. Fine. I get it. This, however, made me still try to find a way to do it, partly because you're telling me no and every time I hear "no" I take it to mean "try a little harder," and partly because I do not know what the blue heck to do without my cell phone.
I wanted to bring it in not to cheat, but to be able to find people after the exam got out. I am perplexed as to how people located each other before the advent of cellular telephones -- did they go to a bar and then just stay there? But what if the place sucked? What if they started playing techno music? What if, God forbid, a bunch of hipsters showed up? Now I've both scared and disgusted myself. But back to sneaking in the phone
So every moment not spent memorizing the hearsay exceptions was spent trying to figure out how to sneak in a phone.
Perhaps I could hide the phone in my shoe. It would be turned off, of course. And I could ask people to keep redialing me since a foot massage during the exam would have actually been pretty nice.
Or maybe I could sneak it inside a sandwich. This also had the added benefit of allowing me to have solid food in my belly before beginning to drink at a bar. On the other hand, after three hours I would just think, FOOD, and then proceed to inhale the sandwich before remembering my cell phone was in between the two different types of ham.
Or what if I smuggled it in, drug mule style? No, not the cocanus method, asshole. No, old school, strapped across my chest using tape. While the tape would be a bitch to rip off, especially now that I have a fair amount of chest hair, it would have been nice to see if I still retain the muscle memory. Plus, nostalgia and all that.
Ultimately, it was not worth the risk. Someone (who shall not be named) put it in my head that even when a phone is off, sometimes, somehow, it magically manages to turn itself back on of its own volition. And then I had this nightmare of voodoo electronic appliances coming to life during the exam, beeping and ringing even after I tried to turn them off, while the ancient proctors ambled slowly to my seat to have me removed, and then I would have to take the exam again in February and do the whole song and dance and OH THE HUMANITY.
No, it wasn't worth it, especially since enterprising minds set to the task of ascertaining a bar where we could all meet immediately following the exam. True, we couldn't leave, but why would we? We were on the Magic Church Bus to Heaven.
That and it was kind of nice that the only call I heard that night was Last Call.
(Goes home following the after-exam drinking. Picks up phone. Checks missed calls. Missed a booty call by four hours).
I imagine that those of you chancing upon this blog in the last couple of months may have noticed the lack of new content and wondered if some unfortunate fate had befallen me -- perhaps I had been imprisoned, killed, or worse, deported.
I'm afraid it was even more awful than that: The Bar Exam.
The Bar Exam, or Bar-pocalypse, as I like to refer to it, was the culmination of a full twenty years of occasionally useful education. Everything I ever worked for came down to one -- or rather, two -- tests.
The Massachusetts and New York Bar Exams were all that stood between me and a gainful future as an attorney, taking calls from friends and family at what I imagine will be dark hours of the night, where they will apologize for having lost touch, ask how I am doing, and then interrupt my response to tell me that there's blood everywhere, the screaming stopped 20 minutes ago, and then ask what they should do. And then I'll try to remember where I left that shovel.
But first, the bar exams. Actually, before that, the two months of solid studying where my fellow law students and I kind of fell from the face of the Earth, into a world of BarBri videos, endless multiple choice practice questions, and flash cards that littered our apartments like sand -- even now I find them in places they have no business being. So if I ignored you, your IMs, and your emails over the last few weeks, it's not because I was rude. It was because I was rude and busy.
Then came the time to take the actual bar exam. Three days. Two states. Nineteen total hours of testing. No survivors.
I exaggerate. Of course there were survivors, and we gathered at the bar like we made it out of some unmitigated disaster. I emerged blinking into the sunlight and never looked back. The mile-long walk between the bar exam site and the "reunion" bar took me all of 10 minutes to complete. I have never walked somewhere so quickly in my life.
But that first glass of Scotch was heaven. As was the first bottle. Eventually, most of my law school classmates made it to the bar, and I said to someone how this was like V-E Day. Everyone was shaking hands, patting backs, congratulating each other on somehow managing to make it through. That person (I wish I could give you due credit, whoever you were, but my brain was somewhere between mulch and mush) replied that it actually reminded him more of the ending of Lost where everyone was reuniting at the church and were finally able to leave purgatory and take the Magic Church Bus to Heaven.
That person hit it right on the head.
In any case, I'm happy to report that I survived the exam and also survived the celebration. I pray that I passed the exams if only because, while I think that I would survive another exam, I don't imagine I would survive another celebration.
I am also happy to say that this blog is back, and that I will now resume regular posting. As someone who is no longer a student and is now unemployed, I'm sure I'll have many exciting experiences to report. Try to contain yourselves.
More importantly, I am back. Hide your women and children, people. August is going to be awesome.
