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January 31, 2007
Beer me!
Brooklyn Lager is now available in Chicago!
When I got here, I was excited to try the wide variety of midwestern microbrews: Goose Island (too chemical), Bell's (too hoppy), Great Lakes (too tart) and so on. Sadly, they mostly suck, with Leinenkugel as the major exception. A couple of months after I moved here, I found myself pining for Brooklyn and Yuengling. It took a little while, but like sports success, good beer has followed me.
Here's where you can get this precious nectar:
Initially, River North [Sales & Service] will sell Brooklyn Lager, the company’s flagship brand, as well as Brooklyn Brown Ale and Brooklyn East India Pale Ale. All will be available in 12-ounce bottles and 5- and 15.5-gallon kegs. Consumers can find the brand at several retail outlets including Sam’s Liquor and select Whole Foods location, as well as restaurants including Hopleaf, Silver Cloud, Beer Bistro, Timothy O’Toole’s and Alive One.
Tomorrow, I'm going to Sam's.
Posted by rj3 at 10:49 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
How cold is it?
(a true story)
It's so cold that:
- One usually hardy, laugh-at-the-weather-wimps Minnesotan complained to me about the weather this morning.
- A 1L berated his friend for ordering iced coffee.
- There are places here at school where you can see your breath. Inside.
- The scalding-hot soup I got from the grocery arrived at school, two blocks away, tepid at best.
- A Sikh friend said it's slightly less cold today compared to yesterday based on the speed at which condensed water vapor from his breath grows into icicles on his beard.
Posted by rj3 at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 30, 2007
Governing under the influence
It looks like a day of links here at Thrown For a Loop. Ron Hart on how sobriety has falied our leaders:
So in summary, here are the leaders who do not drink: Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, all al-Qaida leaders, Hitler, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.By contrast, here are leaders known to drink: Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Jeb Bush and Jesus.
Perhaps the notion of voting for a president with whom you'd rather have a beer isn't such a bad idea after all, Reagan aside.
Posted by rj3 at 12:43 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
It's no subway series
More lame name games:
Never have two teams so geographically close competed for professional football’s ultimate prize. Culturally, they are Midwestern siblings. Physically, they are but 180 miles apart along Interstate 65. Around here, Sunday’s game has become better known as the “I-65 Super Bowl.”
Also, let's not forget that the Colts are a relatively new addition to the Midwest, having left Baltimore in the middle of the night in 1984.
Posted by rj3 at 10:42 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
What's my name?
Matthew Yglesias expounds on one of my pet peeves: Republicans using the phrase "the Democrat Party:
To call someone by something other than the name he wishes to be called by is rude. To make a mistake is forgivable, but to persist -- deliberately -- in declining to use your adversary's proper name is rude and insulting. It's not a big deal unless you take standing up for yourself to be a big deal. When Democrats go on TV and let a conservative get away with the phrase "Democrat Party" it's signaling that Democrats are weak. They're too weak to stand up for themselves. They're too weak to have a sense of group solidarity or party loyalty. They're inclined to let things slide. They don't want to make a scene. They don't like to have a fight. They're weak. Is a political party that can't even protect its own name really going to keep America safe?What's more, it establishes the conservative media as a truth-free zone. Presumably, if CNN cared about accuracy it would not employ people are regular commentators who can't correctly name America's older and larger political party. Nor would ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, C-SPAN, NPR or any other media outlet. Yes, yes it would initially seem petty and bizarre of all these outlets to insist that people either name the party correctly or else not appear. But the fact that this would seem petty and bizarre is the point: "Democratic" is the correct word and this isn't an obscure point.
My anger about this is strictly that of an observer, as nobody has ever said "the Democrat party" or "this Democrat bill" to my face. This is probably because the term is a slur, and people are wary of slurring someone to their face.
Why is it a slur? H. Hertzberg of The New Yorker has a history of the (incorrect) term.
The history of “Democrat Party” is hard to pin down with any precision, though etymologists have traced its use to as far back as the Harding Administration. According to William Safire, it got a boost in 1940 from Harold Stassen, the Republican Convention keynoter that year, who used it to signify disapproval of such less than fully democratic Democratic machine bosses as Frank Hague of Jersey City and Tom Pendergast of Kansas City. Senator Joseph McCarthy made it a regular part of his arsenal of insults, which served to dampen its popularity for a while. There was another spike in 1976, when grumpy, growly Bob Dole denounced “Democrat wars” (those were the days!) in his Vice-Presidential debate with Walter Mondale. Growth has been steady for the last couple of decades, and today we find ourselves in a golden age of anti-“ic”-ism.
There is no limit to how juvenile grown men can get.
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January 28, 2007
Curl up and dye
Gah!
The wind chill right now is 9, which is about enough to make leaving this coffee shop less appealing than reading 20 more pages of Antitrust. What's worse than the wind and cold is the color. The sky is pale, as is nearly everything else. A few lights snow hasn't created much accumulation of anything but rock salt, which covers every surface outside, and a few inside. Cars are all a pale salty gray, as is the asphalt. Chicago isn't a great place to be uplifted by your surroundings today.
A suggestion: color the salt. A few bucks worth of dye and any major thoroughfare could be a riot of color. Hunter green up and down Clark, Cubby blue on Addison; add it all up and this pallid midwestern burg could be as colorful as Rio during carnivale.
Without all of the exposed flesh, of course.
Posted by rj3 at 4:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 26, 2007
Meanwhile, back in Baltimore
Nobody is getting any smarter:
Northern Robbery // Three men pretending to be police officers stopped a 49-year-old man riding a moped in the 2800 block of Fox St. about 5 p.m. Wednesday and told him they had to test drive the bike before he could continue riding it. The moped was driven away and never returned.
That's the worst impersonation I've heard of since the time my torts professor did his Mrs. Palsgraf impression.
Posted by rj3 at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 24, 2007
Q: Must everything devolve into a drinking game?
A: Yes.
Note: "Terror!" as written here is in the form of a Westlaw search - it picks up "terrorist," "terrorism" and "terror."
Posted by rj3 at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 23, 2007
What's the best thing about the 2007 State of the Union?
The pathetic flailing of a lame duck? Nope.
Nancy Pelosi replacing the oafish Denny Hastert behind the President? Negatory.
The introduction of a weak health-care initiative that will surely crash in a ball of flames? Nicht-Nicht.
The best thing about the 2007 SOTU is the fact that this year, I will have a DVR and will thus be able to skip ten minutes of waiting, followed by five minutes of hand-shaking as Bush makes his way to the front of the room.
Posted by rj3 at 7:41 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
They're raising the minimum wage
...the minimum wage for first year biglaw associates, that is. Fresh from a bump to $145,000, Simpson Thatcher raised the starting salary to $160,000. That jump will get you a Honda Civic, two roundtrip business-class tickets to Japan or, more in line with the biglaw associate lifestyle, 3,658 venti quad iced lattes.
Posted by rj3 at 9:43 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
January 22, 2007
We will bury you... in junk
Has anyone else been inundated with Russian-language junk mail these last few weeks?
Posted by rj3 at 1:08 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 21, 2007
You never have to grow up
This NYT story about two Senators and two Representatives who live together in a D.C. townhouse is disturbingly reminiscent of how I live right now:
Their weapons are verbal, and often aimed at [Senator Chuck] Schumer, who admits to a serious dereliction of roommate duties, like grocery shopping. He is also prone to a blatant disregard for conserving a most precious household resource, cereal.“I love cereal,” Mr. Schumer said, digging into his second bowl of granola, going a long way toward depleting a box that Mr. Miller had just purchased.
No comment.
Posted by rj3 at 2:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 18, 2007
Activity Time!
Remember moot court? Remember how I was going to take advantage of my light courseload, job-in-pocket and completed journal submission to take on an activity that would make my law school experience more well-rounded?
That isn't happening anymore. My partner was only doing it because he promised me he would. I was doing it only because I thought everyone else was, which is far from true.
A few days into my lethargy, I'm enjoying the freedom. This weekend will be largely empty, save about 60 pages of reading. Without overcommittment at school, I can read books, watch movies, even take the occasional road trip. In fact, I think it'll make me healthier, and not just because I have more time to go to the gym. Here's my theory: when you know you will have free time, you can plan to do things, like travelling or going to a game (I still haven't seen a Bulls game). When your free time only comes in unexpected pockets, usually at night, the options are narrowed and usually involve 1) going out drinking; 2) renting a movie and drinking at home or 3) going to someone else's place to drink. Counterintuitively, I predict that more free time will result in less drinking.
Here are some options for my newfound freedom:
- Start DJing again;
- Finish The Power Broker, which I purchased in 2002;
- Form a band with my roomates, buy a beat-up old van and travel the country;
- Learn how to cook really, really well;
- Fullfill my lifelong dream of seeing Milwaukee.
We'll see how it turns out.
Posted by rj3 at 5:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 17, 2007
Pete Shelley is 51
...and anyone over 50 can join the AARP. That didn't stop me from nearly falling off of the couch when I heard one of his band's songs in an AARP ad:
Now approaching 50 itself, AARP is heading off a midlife crisis with a new TV ad that celebrates the aging process to the strains of the Buzzcocks' classic punk song "Everybody's Happy Nowadays."
Depending on the size of the ad buy, there exists the risk that "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" is going to become "that song from the AARP ad" in the same way that the Kinks' "Picture Book" has become "that song from the HP photo printers ad."
A message to my (possible) teenage readers: This just goes to prove that you should never get into any band (or fashion trend, for that matter) just because you want to be cool. Eventually, everything will become mainstream, commercialized and otherwise ruined for poseur purposes. Such is the way of the world.
Let's not end today's blogging with such a sad note. Here's some Buzzcocks, from back before I was born:
Posted by rj3 at 7:34 PM | Comments (344) | TrackBack
Who is the idiot?
In today's episode, we have two opponents who both have strong claims to idiocy:
In one corner is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has been wrong about nearly everything related to Iraq for almost four years running.
In the other corner, you have me, your humble blogger, who once had to call someone to ask, "how bad is it to pour hot oil down your drain if you have a garbage disposal?"*
Now, on to the battle.
Yesterday's Bloomberg article about student loans says this:
The U.S. House of Representatives, as part of a legislative package it has promised to enact in its ``first 100 hours'' after taking control this year from Republicans, plans to cut in half over five years the 6.8 percent rate on federally backed college loans.The plan also has drawn criticism from banks, which oppose provisions that would make them pay the estimated $6 billion cost of the lower rates, and congressional Republicans, who want more pressure on colleges to reduce costs.
[...]
Affected student lenders include SLM Corp., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo Bank. They aren't opposed to cutting the rate, since the federally backed loans provide a guaranteed return, though they have criticized Democrats for proposing that they bear the cost.
The size of the cuts proposed by Miller could force some banks out of the student lending business, said Moshe Orenbuch, a banking industry analyst at Credit Suisse AG in New York. Orenbuch, in a note last week to investors, predicted Bush wouldn't sign such a measure into law.
My understanding of this situation is that the government backs student loans, so the banks have no risk and earn almost pure profit (minus time costs and inflation) of the nearly 7 percent they charge. It's basically free money, which the Democrats are trying to cut down on, to the chagrin of the banks. Asking a business to do what it already does at a profit while insuring against all risk strikes me as a subsidy. My belief is bolstered by claims by banks that they are unhappy at the possibility of cutting short the free ride.
The WSJ has an opposite take:
Rather, lowering the rate will simply boost the federal subsidy for loan repayments after graduation. That's because the financial institutions that handle these loans are guaranteed a rate of return, regardless of the interest rate. Halving the rate that lenders can charge borrowers means larger government (read: taxpayer) subsidies for the banks.
But...but...but... if the interest rate (but not the attendant risk) goes to the bank, wouldn't cutting that rate while maintaining the risk protection cut the subsidy to the bank and increase the subsidy to the student? Halving the rate lenders can charge (and pocket) means larger subsidies for the people who pay the interest, not the people who collect it.
In the end, I'm confused. Is this some form of reverse-psychology by which the Bushie dead-enders convince me to keep subsidizing banks at the expense of pansy grad student poets by creating the mistaken impression that the proposed rate cut does just the opposite? Am I just an idiot? You decide.
* After being told that pouring hot oil down the drain was a bad idea, I said "thank you," hung up the phone and called another friend, who I didn't know was standing next to the first, to ask what one does after having poured hot oil down the drain. My feeble attempt to mask this stupid move failed, and they both had a laugh at my expense. I never attempted to make samosas at home again.
Posted by rj3 at 2:15 PM | Comments (340) | TrackBack
Sic Semper Tiradeus
via Josh Marshall, we learn of yet another Virginia politician who would have been better off keeping his yap shut.
Some delegates believe an apology is unnecessary and a sign of too much political correctness.“The present commonwealth has nothing to do with slavery,” said Del. Frank D. Hargrove, R-Glen Allen, whose ancestors were French Huguenots who came to America in search of religious freedom.
How far do these calls for apologies go, wondered Hargrove, a member of the House Rules Committee that could take up McEachin’s resolution as early as Wednesday.
“Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?” Hargrove wondered. “Nobody living today had anything to do with it. It would be far more appropriate in my view to apologize to the Upper Mattaponi and the Pamunkey” Indians for the loss of their lands in eastern Virginia, he said.
Now that Mississippi is making an effort to improve its reputation, Virginia seems to be more than willing to dive headlong into the role of "Most Backward Ex-Confederate State."
Posted by rj3 at 1:28 PM | Comments (654) | TrackBack
January 16, 2007
Is our children learning what our priorities are?
For someone who made such an effort to turn himself from an Ivy League Connecticut patrician to just a good ol' boy, President Bush sure isn't doing good work for the mass of regular folks to which he claims to belong:
Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration rejected a Democratic plan to cut interest rates on federally backed student loans, saying it instead preferred that Congress concentrate on funding direct-aid programs.Oh horray! Just when I collect on what the federales have fronted me, I find that I'm going to be paying a higher interest than Argentina. Unlike them,I didn't even default on billions of dollars worth of debt just a half-decade ago.
But wait, here's an excuse:
``Student debt loads have soared in recent years, and it is not clear that encouraging more loans is a wise course,'' the White House's Office of Management and Budget said in a written statement.
If interest keeps piling up on your debt, it's harder to pay it off. Therefore, the higher the interest rate, the higher the debt load, individually and across the population.
But wait, here's a misleading alternative solution:
The administration instead favors increasing grant aid to low-income students, the OMB said.
Well, that sure sounds super-duper. I wonder how far down in this article I'll have to read before I find out what the problem is. Oh, here it is:
Bush and the Republican-led Congress had six years to increase Pell Grants, the main federal grant program for low- income students, if they wanted to do it, said Timmons, whose group represents about 1,800 colleges and educational organizations.The only increase in the program during that period, however, was due to gains in the number of participating students, Timmons said.
You see, they can't lower interest rates because they would rather increase grants instead. But when given the chance, they didn't increase the grants. Presumably, they were waiting for a decrease in the interest rate.
Which they couldn't do because they wanted more grants.
Which they couldn't do because they were waiting on that danged interest rate.
Which they weren't going to touch because they wanted to increase the grants, which.....
Cleanup in Aisle 7...
Posted by rj3 at 5:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 14, 2007
Superfans
No, I was not the only person "watching" Da Bears game on Yahoo Gamecast at the library this afternoon.
Posted by rj3 at 4:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 12, 2007
Promising a little too much?
I don't even need to be alive for my local hospital to help me!
Posted by rj3 at 12:45 PM | Comments (435) | TrackBack
January 11, 2007
I'm on ur trackbackz, givin' my regardz
Happy birthday, Catherine!
Posted by rj3 at 1:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 10, 2007
Code Gray
Around this time of year, I find myself brought down by the overcast pall cast over the city, making a clear noontime in January look like a rainy 8 p.m. in July. Some days, it's just too much to take the fact that the soupy mess overhead is the brightest it's going to be all day.
I've found a solution: schedule your day in such a way as to never make it outside until the sun has set. Works wonders.
FYI, the smokestack is part of the Baltimore Resco trash-to-energy plant, home to the world's largest trash can. I suppose that's where you put the world's largest Coke can when you're done.
FYI on the FYI, don't try to photograph out of the window of your car while you're merging on to a busy interstate, as I've done in the above photo. It's not safe.
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January 9, 2007
Not bad for #12
Above The Law says this is the best term ever for Northwestern at the Supreme Court, with three alums clerking for three different judges: Kennedy, Stevens and Alito. This list is unofficial and should be taken with a grain of salt, but I think it's safe to be excited by this, given the small size of our school compared to the size of competitors with a similar number of placements.
Meanwhile, back in Charm City, the JHU poohbahs have climbed down from this crazy punishment for the so-called "ghetto" party invitation:
[Frat boy Justin] Park had been appealing a Student Conduct Board decision that suspended him from the university until January 2008, during which time he couldn't come onto campus. The punishment also required him to complete 300 hours of community service, read 12 books and write a paper on each, and attend a workshop on diversity.
Given that the offensive bits were statements about Baltimore's high HIV infection rates, exhortations to wear "ice grills" and "hoochie hoops" and an illustration of a skeleton on a noose around Haloween, it's hard to say unequivocally whether the content of the party invite was offensive or just dumb. Given that the school's reputation with the city is so awful, administrators felt pressure to bring the hammer on this guy, especially since the Black Student Union (small as it is, scandalously) showed Park no mercy. That being said, pressure isn't a good enough reason to ruin a guy's academic career for being a little less than completely tasteful.
On a side note, if Hopkins wants to improve community relations, they ought to stop tearing down affordable rowhouses to put up condos for DC commuters.
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January 8, 2007
Mooty Call
It's always something.
First year was about the sheer terror of first year and not knowing quite what the professors wanted. Last semester, it was interviews, callbacks and the Trial Advocacy monster. I thought that this semester, larded for me as it is with colloquia and travel-for-credit, wasn't going to have that something. Sure, a lot of people were doing moot court, but I missed the meeting and never looked for a partner as a result, not knowing that they were all gone until after I bothered to ask. The winter break came and went with a blissful attitude toward the coming semseter.
This morning, I read the email announcing that the mock trial packets were ready. I felt a twinge of guilt, as I had whenever I passed up a good undergrad class because it met before 10 am. Nobody looks back on their education experience wishing that they had slept more or spent more time on the couch watching Dog The Bounty Hunter. So I rustled up a partner and am now gallloping headlong into another massive headache.
Posted by rj3 at 3:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 5, 2007
The Greedy Bastard Gets His Freebie
A month ago, I complained about the fact that my firm, unlike most others of a similar caliber, didn't send me any candy, cookies or other treats. It was selfish and greedy of me, but then again so is putting my J.D. to work for the haves instead of the have-nots who sue them.
I should have been a little more patient - upon my return to Chicago, I found in my mail a brand new 2007 Zagat's Guide.
All is forgiven.
Posted by rj3 at 12:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
"But New Yorkers are so mean!"
Oh, get over yourself, middle America! Just because we don't have time to stand behind you as you walk five-across down Fifth Avenue at the pace of five minutes per block doesn't mean that New Yorkers are cold-hearted. Just to prove what I've always known, two national stories show why the Greatest City in the World has the best strangers in the world. First, there's Wesley Autrey, the 50-year-old construction worker who dove down to the subway tracks to rescue a man who was suffering a seizure, risking his own life as a multi-ton train roared inches above his head. Today, we learn about two regular guys in the Bronx who caught a baby falling from a window.
Of course, these are the stories with lives at stake. Many times, I have seen regular people push strangers' cars out of snow drifts, offer to take photos of families so they can all be in the frame together and help blind people cross the street. It isn't even surprising after a while.
Some people spend their whole lives with a self-selected community, seeing everyone else through car windows. Most New Yorkers don't have that luxury, which may account for some of what we've been reading about.
Posted by rj3 at 12:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 4, 2007
You can never go back again
Every college has its urban ledgends about the campus and the neighborhoods surrounding it. From ghosts to hidden tunnels to the rumor that the convenience store guy was once an Electrical Engineering professor who was fired for sleeping with a student, insular communities with short memories end up developing these stories through mangling of the truth and just plain storytelling. One of the stories we had regarded the IHOP on York Road. Every IHOP in the nation is open 24 hours, save this one, so the story goes. Too many people were getting shot there. Honestly, I have no idea whether other IHOPs are all open 24 hours or whether the shortened hours were due to violence, but the legend grew strong enough that it made it into our newspaper:
IHOP should be open 24- hours, as this is part of the practical charm of these types of restaurants.The IHOP on York Rd. is tragically not open 24- hours, perhaps because people started dying in quantity. Not in the restaurant itself, but in the parking lot, so they say.
Despite this major letdown, IHOP still remains the premier restaurant within a five-mile radius of Hopkins. You can still go there for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, or for all three. It is a nice place to go after you see a movie at the Senator, or before. It is also a nice place to go after church on Sunday mornings, or, if you are not Christian, during church. In fact, atheists, Communists and others are welcome at IHOP. They will not spill coffee on your lap, no matter what you talk about.
I liked the story for several reasons, but mostly because it encapsulated a lot about the mind of the Hopkins student, under seige by an army of gun-toting, HIV-infected heroin addicts roaming around looking for a 19-year-old Jersey girl to shoot to bloody pulp. Even if we weren't as highly ranked as Penn, we certainly out-did them in the crime stories department.
Sadly, when I came back to Baltimore for a few hours last week, I saw that the York Road IHOP had turned into an Enterprise Rent-A-Car, ending this particular legend for good. I'll miss it.
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