What, Me Worry?

When I graduated from law school this summer, I was filled with happiness.

This was not because I got a law degree -- the feeling that accompanied that rather terrifying thought was not unlike the feeling you get when, after fiddling with the old lawnmower for hours, you finally get it to work and start to celebrate, only you then look up to see acres and acres of untamed lawns pockmarked with random sinkholes, dead trees, and live moles. And it's going to take you 40 years before you're done with it and can go back inside and have some lemonade and a nap.

No, the happiness came from the fact that leaving law school also meant never having to deal with all the awful things that came with the package: classholes, jammed elevators, the VPN, Quasimodo of the Tower's smell, and a perpetually rising urge to kill.

Perhaps chief among those horrible, awful things were the B.U. emergency texts.

Much like the aunt who keeps giving you Christmas sweaters every year, the powers that be at B.U. feet it is necessary to assault us with emails, texts, and phone calls every time something happens.

And when I say "something," I really mean "anything." I remember once getting the following 4 texts, which I present to you now in the order of their arrival:

B.U. Emergency Notification Alert System Message Alert 3 of 4: building.

B.U. Emergency Notification Alert System Message Alert 2 of 4: Ave is out. For the time being, no electric devices will work in the

B.U. Emergency Notification Alert System Message Alert 4 of 4: We will notify you of any change of status and post you with continuous updates as they become available.

B.U. Emergency Notification Alert System Message Alert 1 of 4: Please be advised that the electric power at 876 Commonwealth

And post us they did. For every actual emergency, such as someone on campus with a knife (this turned out to be the pub cook), we had ten "emergencies" which involved anything from a malfunctioning elevator in a freshman dorm to a 10-minute power outage at the business school.

And don't worry about missing anything. Within anywhere from one minute after the event began to five hours after the event was over, we would be bombarded with dozens of text messages, countless emails, and a handful of phone calls. If B.U. was a girlfriend, they would be a Stage 5 Clinger.

Look, I know they were trying to make sure we all knew about the emergency to promote safety and awareness so we would take the necessary precautions in the event something awful happened.

But goddamnit all to hell, it got to the point where I would have chosen not knowing about the fire at the law tower until the flames were licking my back as I jumped out the window than having to get yet another text from the university.

When I graduated, I thought I would never have to get these texts again. I thought they were in the past, never to be heard from again, like emails about potential Animal Law courses and LLMs asking what the Simpsons are.

But today my phone beeps. And I look at the text. And it's from a five-digit number.

Urge to kill . . . rising.

Hold on to Your Hats

Once upon a time, Fire Joe Morgan was one of the best websites on the internet. Its purpose was simple: to take a piece of atrocious sportswriting or broadcasting and rip it to pieces. In essence, they took an article or column and provided hilarious running commentary. It was part Mystery Science Theater 3000, part Daily Show, part complete genius.

Tragically, their site is no more. The creators went on to bigger and better things, such as writing for The Office, occasionally cameo-ing as Mose Schrute, and creating what was the best comedy on television last year, Parks & Recreation.

All these wonderful things have helped heal the hole in my heart. But yet, on cold, dark nights, when the wind is high and Joe Morgan's voice comes from my TV, I weep a little and curse Dunder-Mifflin.

Today, Deadspin will be once again taken over by the creative minds behind Fire Joe Morgan. In the world of internet sports, that makes today Christmas.

They took over the site last year and all of their posts are worth reading 30 times, but if you really want to experience the essence of FJM, "Jesus is the Derek Jeter of Christianity" is utter brilliance, and the funniest thing I might have in the past 12 months.

So I'm, as they say, stoked.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know I occasionally attempt to do something similar. My FJM's are nowhere near as good, and just a little too long, but they're fun to do and, hey, maybe you're really bored at work.

Thus, in honor of FJM's one-day returnation spectacular, I humbly present my own FJM'ing of the absurd NYT's expose about how New York criminals often ... wait, I won't spoil it. Try to see if you can crack the mystery, CSI'ers!

Two men and a woman broke into a locker at a Manhattan gym in February and stole credit cards, the first in a series of similar thefts.

Three months later, in May, a young man tried to rob a Chase bank in the Bronx armed with only a note, which he slipped to a teller. She read it and stepped away, and he fled empty-handed. Weeks later, in June, a gunman robbed a Family Dollar store in Queens.

Ooh, nice lede. Really grabs you, doesn't it? Without explicitly saying it, if you read between the lines, the writer tells you that THERE IS CRIME IN NEW YORK! People will do bad things to other people! And if you are a clerk in a bank, all you need to do is step away and the thief will just leave!

Also, dude, you're robbing a dollar store? Is this before or after you took a look at the name of the target and called off the Payless Shoe Source job?

Gym-locker heists, bank robberies, daylight holdups — these New York City crimes have only one thing in common, and it is not the culprits.

You mean there is more than one criminal in New York? Crikey! I knew we should have never released Steve Sax. Where is Chief Wiggum when you need him? Anyhow, I like this tease; it's very suspenseful. NCIS should absolutely hire this reporter as a writer.

So what do all these New York City crimes have in common?

It is the Yankees caps they wore.

Excuse me?

It is the Yankees caps they wore.

No, asshole, I heard you the first time. Your big point was that criminals in New York have a tendency to wear New York Yankee hats? That's what a paper bleeding money like a hemophiliac gave you funding to investigate? They're closing bureaus all over the world and prioritized your story over zillions of other things and all you could come up with is "New York criminals wear New York Yankees gear?" That's your point? That?

Damn it all.

What do you have to say for yourself?

A curious phenomenon has emerged at the intersection of fashion, sports and crime: dozens of men and women who have robbed, beaten, stabbed and shot at their fellow New Yorkers have done so while wearing Yankees caps or clothing.

Oh, don't try to disguise it with pretty words and and a sentence that sounds important. There is nothing curious about this. This has about as much to do with sports as noticing that a lot of people in the NYC subway also wear Yankee hats. And to say that fashion has anything to do with this would be like writing about what using ties instead of belts as tourniquets means for the men's clothing industry.

DON'T WRITE THAT DOWN, THAT WAS NOT AN IDEA.

One of the three suspects in the gym break-ins wore a blue Yankees cap. A security camera photographed the man who tried to rob the Bronx bank, and though his face was largely obscured, his Yankees hat was clearly visible. The Queens robbery suspect was last seen with a Yankees cap on his head.

When I was at Criminal University, I took this course called Getting Away With It 207: Hats and You. Professor Snake taught me that wearing a hat was important so that security cameras, which are often overhead, cannot film your face. That way, you remain a suspect, like the "largely obscured face" guy above, and stay away from Sing Sing.

In some ways, it is not surprising that Yankees attire is worn by both those who abide by the law and those who break it. The Yankees are one of the most famous franchises in sports, and their merchandise is widely available and hugely popular.

Professor Snake also gave us a quiz. The question was "What kind of hat should you wear?" The answers were a) beret, b) Top Hat, c) Trucker hat, or d) The most "widely available and hugely popular" hat in your particular city.

I went with C, but that was during my douchebag phase.

But Yankees caps and clothing have dominated the crime blotter for so long, in so many parts of the city and in so many types of offenses, that it defies an easy explanation. Criminologists, sports marketing analysts, consumer psychologists and Yankees fans have developed their own theories, with some attributing the trend to the popularity of the caps among gangsta rappers and others wondering whether criminals are identifying with the team’s aura of money, power and success.

Yes, the trend defied the easy "petty criminals wear the most popular piece of attire in NYC so that they will blend in with crowds" explanation. We must assemble a super team of super scientists to find a more complicated explanation for this trend. And don't forget to throw in Yankee fans into the brain trust here, if only to provide some balance, like when news program have to give equal time to this guy.

Also, don't immediately assume that the mystique of gangsta rappers is incompatible with the Yankee aura of money, power, and success. What would Bernie Williams think?

Since 2000, more than 100 people who have been suspects or persons of interest in connection with serious crimes in New York City wore Yankees apparel at the time of the crimes or at the time of their arrest or arraignment. The tally is based on a review of New York Police Department news releases, surveillance video and images of robberies and other crimes, as well as police sketches and newspaper articles that described suspects’ clothing. No other sports team comes close.

If you do the math, that's fewer than one Yankee-garbed criminal per month. But let's not allow facts to get in the way of our trends!

The Mets, forever in the shadow of their Bronx rivals, are perhaps grateful to be losing this one: only about a dozen people in the same review were found to be wearing Mets gear.

Yes, most Mets fans don't wear hats, preferring instead to don paper bags.

“It’s a shame,” said Chuck Frans, 57, the president of the 430-member Lehigh Valley Yankee Fan Club in Pennsylvania. “It makes us Yankees fans look like criminals, because of a few unfortunate people who probably don’t know the first thing about the Yankees.”

"It's a shame," said Paul Harrington, 48, the CEO of the $430 million Reebok Apparel Co., "It makes us Reebok executives look like criminals because of a few unfortunate people who probably don't know the first thing about Reebok shoes except that they're good for running away from the police."

The Yankees organization declined to comment for this article.

A-Rod would have said something but he was tackled by Jeter and Joba, then bound and gagged and carried away before he could open his mouth.

Antisocial behavior has no dress code; people wear what they please when they please, whether they are going to see a movie or going to rob a bank. And in New York City, that often means Yankees attire, regardless of the hour or the season.

What the hell does this even mean? Can Yankee hats not be worn after 6 p.m.? Are they verboten between Halloween and April Fool's day? And why in the blue hell is going to see a movie "antisocial behavior?" Seriously, man, don't you have an editor?

In April 2008, on the day after the Boston Red Sox defeated the Yankees in the Bronx, a man in a Yankees cap robbed a bank about a mile from Yankee Stadium. The woman who robbed a Manhattan bank on July 7 was diplomatic in her clothing choices: she wore an orange Mets cap and a gray Yankees T-shirt.

Didn't Hillary Clinton (New York Senate Edition) once say she rooted for both the Yankees and the Mets?

. . .

OHMYGOD.

Three gunmen burst into an apartment in Washington Heights on July 23, bound the hands and feet of the tenants and left with cash. A surveillance video released by the police and broadcast on television showed one of the suspects in a Yankees cap — one of the most iconic brands in sports represented, however briefly, by someone accused of helping tie up a 9-year-old girl.

Hey, thanks! I hadn't gotten my daily dose of unearned sanctimony of the day. Thanks, New York Post!

Oh, wait. This is the New York Times.

Look, man. I hate the Yankees as much as the next guy. But you're implying that a despicable bastard somehow represents the Yankees just because he chose to wear their hat on that particular day. You might as well say that all Ohio State fans are mouthbreathing, porn'stached weirdos who live with their parents just because they were caught doing unspeakable things at a library while wearing an OSU hoodie. Oh wait. You did.

One criminologist said the trend might be a result of what could be called the Jay-Z effect.

Oooh? Is this like the "50 Cent effect," which, of course, is a direct effect of the "Eminem effect," which is also the direct effect of the "Vanilla Ice effect?" Or is it more like the notorious "B.I.G. effect?"

As you can see, I clearly know nothing about rap. Maybe Dr. Criminologist can educate me.

The rapper Jay-Z has worn a Yankees cap for years — on his album covers and in his videos — and has helped turn the cap into a ubiquitous fashion accessory for urban youths (“I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can,” he boasts in one song).

I KNOW THIS SONG! I TOTALLY KNOW THIS SONG! Cooooooooncrete juuuuuuungle where dreeeeeams are maaaaaaaade, oh! I'm sorry, I got distracted. You were saying?

Criminals might be wearing Yankees merchandise not because they are fans of the team, but because they are fans of the cocked-hat look popularized by Jay-Z and other rappers, said the criminologist, Frankie Y. Bailey, an associate professor at the University at Albany, who is writing a book about the role of clothing and style in criminal cases.

“He wears it and makes it look cool,” Ms. Bailey said of Jay-Z and the cap. “It’s almost like the Yankees have acquired a kind of street rep, a coolness.”

The Yankees are about as cool as a 58-year old accountant named Mort who gives out fruitcakes to his friends at Christmas and occasionally enjoys a nip of Schnapps. That's like saying the Indianapolis Colts are cool. I've seen cooler people on the business class car of the Acela between D.C. and Wilmington.

It is but one of several theories. Sports marketing analysts say it is a matter of numbers: the Yankees sell more merchandise than any other baseball team. As of August, they hold a 25.13 percent market share of nationwide sales of merchandise licensed by Major League Baseball, with the Red Sox second at 7.96 percent and the Mets seventh at 5.32 percent, according to SportsOneSource, a firm that tracks the sporting goods industry.

Hey, you know how some people hear hooves and immediately think of zebras? This paragraph is the horses. And they just ran away and nobody even noticed.

For criminals outside New York, the team’s caps and clothing are nearly as popular.

The man who robbed a Chase branch in a Chicago suburb in May wore a Yankees cap. In July, a young man in a Yankees cap assaulted an 81-year-old woman in her home, about 2,800 miles from Yankee Stadium, in Seattle.

You mean to tell me that, in a concerted effort to turn a profit, apparel manufacturers ship their wares to other cities in the country to be purchased? What a novel idea! Get me J. Pierpont Morgan on the telephone device immediately and make it snappy, Mildred!

“Why people pick the Yankees over the Mariners, I don’t know,” said Detective Mark Jamieson, a Seattle police spokesman. “It just happened to be an article of clothing he was wearing on that particular day.”

Ooh, horses again!

And Yankees caps hold a distinguished place in the annals of crime: the man who robbed more banks than anyone else in American history wore one. Edwin Chambers Dodson, known as the Yankee Bandit because he wore a Yankees cap and sunglasses during most of his holdups, robbed 72 banks in Southern California in the early 1980s and the late 1990s.

Mr. Dodson, who died in 2003, was a fan of the team. “We did everything we could to get this guy,” said William J. Rehder, 69, a retired special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who was the longtime coordinator of bank robbery investigations in the Los Angeles area.

Mr. Rehder not only named the Yankee Bandit, but helped put him behind bars twice. “I couldn’t figure out why he was so lucky,” he said. “I didn’t attribute anything to the cap, but I’m sure he did.”

When reached in heaven, Mr. Dodson said, "That was the cap I owned, so that was the cap I wore. Now quit bugging me, I have a date with Marilyn Monroe."

Mr. Rehder, now a security consultant in Los Angeles, is a Dodgers fan. Nevertheless, he keeps an old, worn Yankees cap on a shelf in his office at home. Mr. Rehder never wears it. It belonged to the Yankee Bandit.

And that, children, is because Mr. Rehder is not a criminal, like all those other Yankees suspected of assault, obstruction of justice, possession of a controlled substance, trespassing, lewd behavior, and cruelty against animals.

Random Video of the Day LXXIII

I normally want to set all children on fire, but this baby is awesome.

Such Great Heights

When I go out, I sometimes tell girls that I am currently training to be an astronaut, and part of that lie is that I have just completed sub-orbital flight training in Arizona.

This particular part is, of course, the biggest part of the lie, mostly because heights are my worst fear. After bears, of course.

And then a couple of days ago, a video surfaced on the internet explaining the commute that radio tower repairmen face. This is that video:



Good Lord almighty. I cannot watch that video without cringing and putting my head down every few minutes because everything starts spinning. That's 1,700-odd feet, which looks like just about high enough to go high five God.

Of course, as terrifying as climbing one of those ladders was, that pales in comparison to this guy, who will jump from the actual stratosphere, where the sky is no longer blue but black. He will fall 23 miles and reach the speed of sound within a minute. If he overbalances, he will commence to spin in circles at such velocity that his brain stem might separate from his column.

But what if he doesn't spin out? What if a faint crack appears on his visor? Take it away, Nightmare Fuel:

If he does let the air escape through his mouth and nose, he will soon experience the novel sensation of the saliva on his tongue beginning to boil. He will be nearly sixty thousand feet above "Armstrong's Line," where water's boiling point drops to 98.6 degrees. Within moments, the water in his subcutaneous tissues will begin vaporizing as well. This, in combination with the expansion of any interior gases — unfarted methane in his guts, for example — will, in a process called ebullism, quickly cause Felix's own body to inflate, becoming as tumescent as a bodybuilder's. Useful consciousness, mercifully, will be gone within fifteen seconds, probably sooner, though he might remain alive, swelling, distorting, for five to eight minutes.

Catch that last part? It will actually take him more than 15 minutes to land. Remember, it's 23 miles. That's four times the height of Everest.

Oh God, here come the dry heaves. I need to go lie in bed, face-down.

I hereby solemnly swear never again to lie about the fact that I'm doing sub-orbital flight training, unless I am far enough in my cups to not think about the terrifying scope of such an act, and, unless, of course, the girl is very attractive and seems reasonably gullible.

The Bicentenario

There was a rather sizable celebration in Mexico last week, as the country celebrated the 200th year of its existence. At the same time, it also celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution.

The fact that one occurred in 1810 and the other in 1910 always struck me as pleasantly convenient. This brought great comfort to me and thousands of other children forced to memorize dates.

On the other hand, the precise hundred year gap also brought about a feeling of slight discomfort, not unlike that feeling you get when you are afraid that you have mistaken coincidence for fate. This is a feeling you laugh at in the daytime, but come night you lie awake in bed counting the days until the calendar turns the page on 2010. You know, just in case things come in hundreds.

It is no secret that the current situation in Mexico is precarious. I am not the first to note this symmetry. The media, as is its wont, has done its best to overblow the situation. Despite the fact that the Drug Wars are mostly localized in a very small section of the country, and that the victims of the violence are almost exclusively its perpetrators, Mexico is considered by many to be a country aflame, collapsing slowly under the weight of kilos and tons.

That said, the situation is bad, to understate the fact. The sad truth is that deaths in Mexico due to the drug war far outnumber the deaths in Iraq due to an actual war. Couple that with the medieval methods -- beheadings, mutilations, and intimidation of the "we kill you because we can" variety -- used by the cartels and it is plain to see why more and more Americans are reluctant to remain in or even visit Mexico. Add to that number the multitudes fleeing for the safety of American shores -- unconstitutional Arizona laws be damned -- and it is hard to deny that the current state of affairs in my home country is that of crisis.

Mexicans have never had an easy go of it. Over the past 200 years, Mexico has somehow made it through countless wars, the loss of half our country (how's Texas working out for you guys?), massive earthquakes, dictatorships, political instability (at one point, we managed to have 40 presidents in 30 years), and even a French (French!) takeover.

And yet, somehow we endure. Mexico has weathered all of that and more. It is sustained, as a country must, by its people. Good, hardworking people who toil in the sun all day for the privilege of sending their earnings back. In turn, they are sustained by their country, which beats in their chest and suffuses their every act and their every thought with the culture and the tradition and the patrimony that was forged in independence and galvanized in revolution. One holds up the other, which responds in kind.

Today, Mexico has emerged through the dust of 200 years bent but not broken, battered but not beaten, ready to defeat this drug war and stand at the hilltop to claim 200 more.

The Sun Always Rises

I would like to wish The Cornell Daily Sun a very happy birthday.


For 130 years, the Sun has been covering Cornell, training journalists, nurturing writers, annihilating GPAs, assaulting livers, angering the administration, holding countless budget meetings, color-coding markers, baptizing the Collegetown Creeper, fending off lawsuits, fending off countless more lawsuit threats, uncovering scandals, listing things all Cornellians must do, killing its sports editors with supplements, keeping a chronicle of its editors' sexual conquests, particularly when it was with each other, hosting hammer fights, printing Heroes & Villains every single Friday, even though every single editor hated writing it, interviewing presidents, interviewing athletes, interviewing scientists, interviewing actors, interviewing just about anybody, really, littering the street outside CTB, journeying to China for no apparent reason, serving as the paper of record for the university, eschewing the oxford comma, asking 10 questions, encouraging potlucks where everyone just brings wine, causing nervous breakdowns, bringing Mr. Gnu to the world, producing readable Friday papers even though its editors on Thursday were somewhere between tipsy and "If the question is how drunk am I, the answer is yes," manufacturing awful bumper stickers, priding itself on being a daily, not a weekly, rankling professors, receiving accolades, receiving criticism, receiving mixed signals, forcing everyone (even the columnists!) to go to the libel lecture, proselytizing Sunstyle, forcing you to write "nine and 10," just like that, even though it looks incredibly stupid, breaking the news, not making the news, chronicling the lives of students, reviewing everything, even pornography, getting hundreds of free CDs nobody wants, giving Schroeder a second bedroom, celebrating with epic bartabs, putting out a paper every day without fail (Saturdays and Sundays excepted), celebrating midnight edit meetings, annexing Shortstop as a staff cafeteria, providing crosswords for literally thousands of people and, most importantly, giving all Sunnies a place to call home.

Happy birthday, you magnificent bastard. And many, man, many happy returns.

Now let's drink.

With Emotion?

This is a true story.

So I'm running errands downtown today and when I was done running them I go into a bar, because why not. Geez, relax. It was after 5. Somewhere.

Anyway, I walk into this bar and I look for a place to sit and I see this woman and and she's sitting at the corner of the bar but facing the door, right? So all I can see is basically what's above the shoulders, but damn, I like it.

So, naturally, I go sit at that corner of the bar, around the corner from her, so to speak, so that we're perpendicular to each other.

And, unlike January Jones last time, this one seems to be in a good mood, so I start making small talk and she actually starts making small talk back.

I know!

Then we keep talking and I'm starting to like her and it seems to be going well. And then I notice the glass in front of her is empty.

So, emboldened, I offer to buy her a drink.

"Oh no, thank you, but I can't, I'm sorry."

"What?" I ask, "Why? Because it's before five?"

"No," she says, and swings her stool away from the door and stands up a little. "Because I'm pregnant."

And she is. She's like, really pregnant. And I couldn't see it because this humongous belly was hidden by the bar.

"Oh," I say, because that's as much as my mind can produce at that moment.

She sits back down and gestures at the glass. "I'm not drinking. That was water. I'm just waiting for a friend."

See, if this was a TV show, I would have thought of something clever to say, like "Well, I guess I'm drinking for two, then." Or else the friend she was waiting for would have swooped in at that precise minute and saved us all from the horrifying awkwardness.

But her friend was late and I'm known to be a little slow, so I just say, "Oh" again.

And then I turn around, pick up my beer, and chug half of it. The other half goes right onto my pants.

She just shakes her head (very slowly), takes her phone out of her purse and texts someone -- the friend, I assume, to tell her to hurry up before the poor bastard in front of her has a nervous breakdown.

Look, I'm not saying women should carry around a sign that says, PREGNANT. On a lot of occasions, any idiot could plainly see that. But on other occasions, we idiots need a little bit of help.

Return From Whence You Came

Contrary to popular belief, I am not entirely unemployed. I am currently doing research for a Professor over at the law school, working part time for what is, essentially, drinking money.

It gives me something to do, which is nice, although it is not as busy as I would like it to be -- I spend most of my day strolling aimlessly around my apartment, trying to remember which law firms I have not yet applied to, while waiting for my friends to return home from work so I can talk to a person again. I believe this is the clinical definition of underemployed.

Anyhow, I occasionally have to go to the law school in order to meet with my professor and/or print large quantities of documents. Which is somewhat awkward, given that I graduated last year.

So every time I go, I have to prepare myself for the inevitable conversations with those in subsequent classes who ask me if I graduated and, if so, what the hell am I still doing there. It goes a little something like this:

Them: Oh, hey! Didn't you graduate last year?
Me: Yeah.
Them: Then what the hell are you still doing here?
Me: I failed a class and got held back.
Them: Oh. Oh, I'm sorry.
(Awkwardness)
Me: I'm just kidding.
Them: Oh.
(Awkwardness)

I guess, though, that that is a better conversation to have than this one:

Them: Oh, hey! Didn't you graduate last year?
Me: Yeah.
Them: Then what the hell are you still doing here?
Me: I failed a class and got held back.
Them: I KNEW IT!
(Awkwardness)

So, no matter how you cut it, they're awkward conversations.

Now, I'm not going to be one of those guys who pretend that they have a job and put on a suit and go out in the morning and go hide somewhere in the library until 6 or 7 or sometimes even 8 when it's acceptable to go home. A job's a job, even if it's half a job, and if the people still at the law school look at me like I'm Vince Young -- who you sometimes see on the sidelines of Longhorn games and he has this look on his face like he'd chop off an arm to go back to being Texas's QB instead of Tennessee's -- so be it.

Plus, it's nice to get out of the house. This is a supremely dead-on rendering of the pros and cons of working at home. The part about the deteriorating social skills is frighteningly accurate (with the exception of urinating in public. I hope), so it is nice to get out there and see someone other than the guy in the mirror.

Plus, once you look past their general aura of terrified-ness, the girls in the new 1L class are really attractive.

Maybe I'll need to print out more stuff tomorrow.

Random Video of the Day LXXII

I can't decide if my favorite part is when he screws up his favorite quote or when he yells "WHO SAID THAT?" at some poor audience member. On the one hand, the quote was only six words long and he's so worked up he just runs right over it, but on the other hand, he gets so excited when someone completes his thought that for a second he looks like he is going to go over and headbutt him, so it's really difficult to choose my favorite moment. You know what? I'm going to just enjoy this again.

The Language Barrera

Just in time to meet this month's "Wow, That Came Out of Nowhere" quota, I actually sat down with a few lawyers in a law firm for an actual honest-to-God job interview on Thursday.

I believe the interview went well. That said, I also believe that waitresses are always hitting on me and that what I have with Candy down at Kuma's is unlike anything else she has with any of her other patrons.

But positive thoughts, people.

This is a big law firm that specializes in international law and routinely hires foreigners. The reason they like me, I gather, is that I speak four languages (It certainly was not the chest hair peeking out above the tie). And since these guys do a lot of business with Latin America, my ability to speak a little bit of Spanish was certainly a point in my favor.

I am kind of not kidding when I say "a little bit of Spanish."

See, I interviewed with a handful of people and almost all of them conducted their interview with me in Spanish, or -- as it is otherwise known -- my native tongue and the one I grew up using for 18 years.

I am not exaggerating when I say having an interview in Spanish was perhaps the most difficult thing I've ever done relating to legal employment. Good Lord, was that tough to do.

You would have thought that interviewing in my own native tongue would have been a piece of cake. I would have thought so too.

But it wasn't. Maybe it was the fact that I've been here for seven years. Maybe it's that I haven't visited home in 9 months. Maybe it's the lack of Mexicans in Boston. Maybe it's that I have never used Spanish in the legal context before.

Whatever it was, I stammered and stuttered my way through something that should have been second first nature. It went something like this:

Them: Hola!
Me: . . .
My Brain: OH SHIT! How do you say that in Spanish?
Me: . . .
Them: (Smiling)
Me: (Smiling)
My Brain: Ohshitohshitohshitohshit. What's the word for that?
Them: (Smiling but now also kind of frowning)
Me: TEQUILA!

And so on and so forth.

After the umpteenth time that I took an American idiom and translated it to Spanish in a literal way that rendered a phrase that does not exist and does not make sense, one of the interviewers actually asked me if I was thinking in English. "Of course!" I blurted.

It was the truth. I am not sure whether this is a good or bad thing. What I am sure of, however, is how happy I am that they did not ask me how you say "Defendant" or, worse, "Plaintiff" in Spanish. Someone asked me that today and I still could not tell you what those words translate to if my life depended on it.

Do you see now why it is imperative that I remain in America?

I like to think that my thinking in English was a point in my favor, showing command of a language that is not my own to the point where it has been wholly internalized and become part of my nature.

It's a nice thought to have.

Just don't ask me to say that again in Spanish.

You're Going to Need a New Transmission

At some point over the weekend, I turned 26 years old. This means that I am officially closer to 50 than I am to my birth.

Yikes.

That is old.

Absurd, you say. That is not old, you say. Why, I remember when I was a young whippersnapper like yourself, making shenanigans at the picture show, you say.

Well, Chevy, here's the thing. It is absolutely true that age is just a number, at least until you hit 30, when it becomes a countdown. At my age, I still have my whole life ahead of me and the world is my oyster and it is mine for the taking and my time is not yet over and I don't need to die bloody and I certainly don't need to pick where yet.

But I'm not sure that's entirely accurate.

You see, I believe more and more with every passing month that bodies are just like cars. And whether that car can still get you from A to B totally depends on how you have mistreated said car.

Me? I feel like I've driven through so many potholes that my suspension is teetering somewhere between broken and almost broken. I have failed to change the oil, I haven't used snow tires, I always drive on an empty tank of gas, I have never rotated the tires and I needed new ones at least ten years ago, I've played chicken and won, and I have never had an oil change. And, to top it off, it took me a couple of years before I realized that it was not an automatic, so now the engine makes weird noises and will often stop for no reason.

So that's where I stand. It's not that 26 is old, it's just that, when you have put this many miles on the odometer, 26 is so many.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to figure out how to get this thing in the shop without having bought any insurance.