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August 31, 2007
Growin' Up
Is it possible that I'm now too old for Bar Review? Last night, I saw about two dozen familiar faces surrounded by about 200 1Ls, transfers and LLMs who I could only tell apart from the rest of the Wrigleyville bar scene by their lack of Cubs paraphernalia. Last year, I saw only a few die-hard 3Ls on normal Bar Review nights, In addition, the best-attended events tied in with legal writing deadlines. After a summer of living high on the hog, crowding into a huge bar with bad, loud music for $2 drafts and the remote chance of drunken "fun" (of any sort) isn't that appealing anymore. Part of me is proud to be over such an immature ritual, but part of me wants to be the sort of person who won't ever grow out of it. It's like I'm in a Judd Apatow movie without the love interest.
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August 30, 2007
NYC Affirmations
When my Chicago friends hear about how much I paid for a small walk-up apartment on the Upper East Side, many gasp. Since associate pay is the same in New York and Chicago and that salary will get you more than a hovel out here, why on Earth would I ever go back? Over the summer, during quiet weekend moments, I made a list.
1. Square-cut thin pizza. Cutting a round pizza into little squares is unthinkable for practical, aesthetic and traditional reasons.
2. Central Park. From the lawn to the Ramble, the musicians to the disco rollerskate circle, it's a three-season outdoor experience.
3. I like to think that I'm too cool to be excited at the sight of a celebrity, but I'm not.
4. Proximity. Nowhere else in American can you overhear so many fascinating and bizarre conversations without really trying.
5. No parking. Driving around and looking for parking after a long trip must be some special hellish form of Karmic punishment. No car = no parking mess = one less step between you and home.
6. Entertainment is everywhere. Yesterday, I was on a downtown A train when four boys, none looking older than 17, did a breakdancing routine. As they did their individual routines, I was unimpressed, but we were on a semi-crowded moving train, after all. Then, all four did a finale that blew my mind. Two of the kinds picked up the third by the lands and legs and swung him around and around like a jumprope. Then the fourth kid did a backflip over the human jumprope, followed by a handspring in the reverse direction, then a backflip again. All I was expecting was a trip downtown.
7. Catching the fleeting sound of a baseball game on AM radio as you walk down the street, usually attributable to an old man in a sleeveless shirt on a folding chair.
(not applicable on the Upper East Side)
8. For a place with so many velvet ropes, it's surprising how easy it is to step uninvited into someone else's world. I'm reminded of the summer after my senior year in high school, when a solo amble through Central Park on a particularly hot Sunday afternoon was interrupted by a thumping bassline. I followed it to a free rave organized by Body & Soul, a weekly event downtown. By myself in a crowd of thousands, I danced for two hours. Would I have ever thought of going to the club where Body & Soul was a weekly event? Absolutely not. But there I was, surrounded by adults with pacifiers, teenagers with strap-on wings and other '90s raver ephemera.
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August 29, 2007
I'm not dead yet
...Although a weekend in Vegas brought me pretty close. Posting will resume later today, I promise!
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August 24, 2007
Yr City's a Sucker
Girl: So, where are you from?
Me: New York City.
Girl: Oh, I hate New York!
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August 22, 2007
While I'm still at the computer lab, here's some more Rudy bashing
Libertarian Megan McArdle:
Almost no one who has lived in New York wants Rudy anywhere near the nuclear football, nor would we like to see his strongly authoritarian instincts (however much they arguably may have done for New York's policing) unleashed on the federal justice system. Rudy is craaaaaaaaazy, albeit not in a way that made him a particularly bad mayor.
In response, fellow NYC private school brat Matthew Yglesias:
The crux of the matter is that the mayor of a city has way, way, way less power than the president. When Giuliani cooked up his nutty scheme to use 9/11 as a pretext to cancel an election, suspend the rule of law, and extend his term in office, all that happened was . . . none of that happened, since he was just the mayor. By contrast, as we've been learning lately, it's really hard to stop the President of the United States from ordering that people be indefinitely detained and tortured in secret on the basis of God-only-knows what evidence. The damage that these aspects to Giuliani's approach could do as mayor were rather limited, but as a potential president it's a whole different can of worms.
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Eat your vegetables and backup regularly
My computer is in the shop, so posting will continue to be light until it comes back. On a related note, my car is also in the shop, albeit not at the same shop as my computer. Luckily, my coffee machine, my air conditioner and my kidneys are still functioning.
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August 17, 2007
IOU
I learned a little something about how "The City That Works" really works.
I went down to City Hall yesterday to get a residential parking permit. For reasons unknown either to I or to the Department of Revenue clerk, my block was scrubbed from the parking rolls. One block north was there, as was one block south. I explained that the street stretched across the gap and that it hadn't fallen into Lake Michigan as of when I left my apartment that morning. I didn't want to get into a fight, but parking in my neighborhood without a permit is more or less impossible, especially overnight. Luckily, she had a solution: go upstairs, talk to my alderman's secretary and get a letter attesting to my residence in his district. This solution seemed a little off to my inner technocrat: wouldn't the fairest solution be to look up my block on a map of the parking zone?
There was no reason to complain. In two minutes, the secretary (who worked for the Council, not just my Alderman) looked at my ID and gas bill (the same documents inspected by the clerk) and filled out a form letter explaining to the clerk that I was a resident in good standing of my parking zone. Two minutes later, I walked out of the Revenue office with a parking permit.
Why was the trip up to my Alderman treated in such a routine manner, form letters and all? Shouldn't seeking help from a politician for a personal issue is usually restricted to big things, like zoning or asylum. Blame my bourgeois values for not appreciating a traditional ward heeler.
In Chicago of all places, I shouldn't be surprised to see this lazy version of 19th-century urban politicking survive. The secretary didn't check my name against an enemies list. The Alderman didn't come out to shake my hand and make a show of signing the letter. All that he gets out of the whole exercise is that now I know his name and I have the vague feeling that he helped me out. Which is exactly the point.
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August 16, 2007
Service notice
After a very, very long drive, I'm back in Chicago. Regular blogging will resume shortly.
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August 9, 2007
Waiting on an offer
Final evals are today. It seems like every other summer has been reviewed except for me, so predictably, I can't get any work done. Instead, I plan my next kareoke masterpiece. I'd like to do The Jackson's "Can You Feel It" if the opening monologue from the video is included:
This may be the most overwrought video for a pop song ever made. It's like Tron, 2001, Blade Runner and Flight of the Navigator wrapped into one.
UPDATE: Got it! Phew.
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Actually, I'm Narnian by birth
The Washington Times shows that geography isn't part of the Moonie indoctrination program:
Islamic extremists embedded in the United States — posing as Hispanic nationals — are partnering with violent Mexican drug gangs to finance terror networks in the Middle East, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report.
"Hispanic nationals"? Hispania is not a country. Neither is Hispaguay, Hispanistan or the Hispan Republic.
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August 8, 2007
Phrases used at lunch today to describe Berger Cookies: A McSweeney's list entry
- Like eating sunshine
- Like making out with God
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August 7, 2007
Feed me, Seymour!
This is probably happening to most summer associates this week: With only a few days left in the summer season, associates are rushing to take summers out to lunch. I've already had invitations from attorneys I don't even know to eat at fancy restaurants later this week. In fact, I could have had one meal at noon tomorrow and then waddled back to our lobby for another at 2:30, but I turned down the earlier option due to severe risk of gout due to overindulgence.
Why the rush? It isn't to woo us, it's to get the generous meal allowance for the low, low price of eating with a couple of summers. There's a rumor out there that once the summers go, attorneys don't eat at fancy restaurants twice a week.
But they couldn't lie to us like that...
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"I can't believe I'm telling everyone that I know"
It's crazy up there
The summer isn't quite over yet, but I'm calling it early: last night's I'm From Barcelona show at Southpaw was the best show I've seen all summer. Better than New Pornographers at Battery Park, better than M.I.A. at the Siren Festival, better than anything I will see for the rest of the summer.
Essentially, IFB is a lead singer, a guitarist, a keyboard player, a drummer and about 15 kareoke singers, all of whom have different stage styles. There's the fat guy in a tight t-shirt who tries to get the audience into it, there's the tall skinny girl who tries to hide behind her microphone, the one who hams it up but is careful to stand behind someone else, etc... The end result is the blending of the audience and the band that is downright magical. Don't even get me started on the baloons, confetti and various other things flying overhead during the entire show. I'm not one for bands with a "positive message" and I found some of the songs on the album a little trite, but I get it now.
Unfortunately, they only played Lollapalooza, McCarren Pool and Southpaw, so my American readers who didn't get to any of those shows will not see them any time soon. Sorry - you snooze, you lose.
Photo brazenly stolen from Flickr user minicloud.
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August 5, 2007
You have 24
New candidate for best celebrity sighting of the summer: Kiefer Southerland, drinking outside at the Brass Monkey in the meatpacking district. I don't watch 24 and didn't go up to him, but if I did, I would have asked him to pose for a cameraphone picture of him pretending to waterboard me.
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August 2, 2007
Open season starts early this year
Competition for the 2008 summer class is heating up, and the big question is whether law students are fighting for positions, or firms are fighting for associates. At the higher-ranked law schools, it seems like the latter. When I was preparing for OCI, I didn't think of it that way and spent the week before interviews fretting over whether my ties were too bold and whether my DJ experience belonged on a resume (tip: everyone is fascinated by it).
Next week, the rising 2Ls at my law school will be nervously noshing on mints outside tiny interview rooms. Do I have any advice? Glad you asked.
- Remember the name of the firm you're interviewing with. It's hard when you have five interviews in a day, but it's a must. Say it under your breath 20 times before you walk in the door.
- Make eye contact, but don't forget to blink.
- If you know more than 15 ways to kill a man with your bare hands, let the interviewer know.
- If the interviewer asks you if you have any questions, ask about the office coffee. I've worked at offices with bad coffee, and it casts a pall over the whole workday.
- Long gap in your resume? I never advise anyone to lie, but nobody will actually check whether you were actually in a coma or just smoking weed in your parent's basement from 2003 to 2005.
- Where do you want to be in five years? On the 2012 Olympic rhythmic gymnastics team. Yeah, the ones with the streamers. No rhythmic gymnastics experience? You have five years.
- If you interview with Proskauer Rose and they're giving out those fat maroon ballpoint pens, get one for me. Those are the best pens you'll come across at OCI. The bendy pens from Holland & Knight? They look cool, but they have about five paragraphs worth of ink in 'em.
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August 1, 2007
Does Hillary Clinton have Stockholm Syndrome?
Coming from two years in Chicago, I'm surprised how many New Yorkers support Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Granted, Hillary is their Senator (and was once mine as well, I voted for in 2000 when I was a New York resident) and she has arguably done a good job on their behalf, except for the war. But I don't understand the enthusiasm for her as a national candidate. They see her as a component campaigner and able to stand up to the right-wing smear machine, but I think that's only because she's survived it before. The reason that Kerry and Gore buckled under was because they failed to fight back for fear of seeming angry (like Howard Dean), getting off-message or losing votes by attacking whatever sainted individual or interest group Karl Rove had sent to attack them.
Just because Hillary got through eight years as an unelected First Lady and won two statewide elections against incompetent chumps doesn't mean she has ever really taken on her opponents head on with any success. Remember the "vast right wing conspiracy" line? Because she failed to back it up (others have since done so for her) she was laughed at.
Andrew Sullivan has a good argument against Hillary on the grounds that she's been beaten into submission by the angry right to the point that she doesn't see any other way but to capitulate, at least rhetorically. He writes:
Clinton has internalized to her bones the 1990s sense that conservatism is ascendant, that what she really believes is unpopular, that the Republicans have structural, latent power of having a majority of Americans on their side. Hence the fact that she reeks of fear, of calculation, of focus groups, of triangulation. She might once have had ideals keenly felt; she might once have actually relished fighting for them and arguing in their defense.
Just because there is a lot of noise coming from certain quarters doesn't mean that there is any depth of support to back it up. Take Terry Schiavo. Every day, the news covered fevered protesters screaming and waving signs outside Schiavo's hospice. Republicans in Congress diagnosed her via videotape and took extraordinary measures to get her case reopened in the courts. Yet despite all the noise, a vast majority of the public opposed the political interference in her last days. On every major issue, from Iraq to health care to tax policy, the Democratic position wins by a comfortable margin. Especially among the young:
Young people react with hostility to the Republicans on almost every measure and Republicans and younger voters disagree on almost every major issue of the day. The range of the issue disagreements range from the most prominent issues of the day (Iraq, immigration) to burning social issues (gay marriage, abortion) to fundamental ideological disagreements over the size and scope of government.
So why equivocate? Why pretend to be a GOP tough-talker? Taking the side of the majority of voters on important issues should be a no-brainer. It's a shame that Hillary has been bludgeoned for so long that she doesn't even see when she is free to say what she really believes.
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