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October 31, 2007
At the Party Pit
I saw the Federale/Art Brut/Hold Steady show at Metro last night. My ears are still ringing, but it was worth it.
First, Art Brut. They had a PowerPoint slide show running behind them, which lead singer Eddie Argos admitted destroyed "any illusion of spontaneity." Speaking with him at Smart Bar after the show (aren't I cool?) he said that his show is the same every night, whereas The Hold Steady play completely different sets. One note about the slides: the white-on-blue text looked exactly like a Jeopardy category. "What is... Art Brut?"
Nearly everyone comes out of a Hold Steady show raving about what an experience it is, and this show was no different. Perhaps the most striking thing about the band is how they look nothing like you'd think they do, given the subject matter they cover. The entire band is middle-aged and a little nerdy. Lead singer Craig Finn looks like an awkward, out-of-shape D&D enthusiast. He flails around like an excited child, prancing up and down the stage while he sings his sweeping Springsteen-esque opuses about the Twin Cities' nowehere-fast teens. One wonders if he was ever one of them, or if he watched them smoke pot behind the school as he set up projectors for the AV club.
Yet somehow it works beautifully. Finn is almost childlike in his enthusiasm, which rubs off on the audience, nearly all of whom knew most of the lyrics, even to songs off 2004's Almost Killed Me, including "The Swish" and "Positive Jam." Most of the audience jumped up and down in a fevered burst of energy during "Massive Nights."
Even though The Hold Steady does it every night, I still felt as if I walked out of there having witnessed something special. I guess I did.
Posted by rj3 at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 30, 2007
Baby Boomers + Internet = Funny
Last week, I told my dad I was going to New Zealand for spring break. Thinking he was being helpful, he sent me a link to www.newzealand.com. It's like when my mom discovered the "email this article" feature of the New York Times and she proceeded to email me a series of articles, despite the fact that she knows I read the paper every day. Maybe when I go home for Thanksgiving, I'll teach them about Digg and del.icio.us. Including Wikipedia could be too much too fast.
Posted by rj3 at 11:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 26, 2007
Football. No, the other kind
I'm mildly intrigued by the fact that Sunday's Giants-Dolphins game will be taking place in London, the first regular season game to be played outside North America (although it can be argued that the Giants and Jets playing at the Polo Grounds and Shea Stadium involved games on islands near of the coast of North America). More intrigued is Brian Tennent, head of the Dolphin's UK fan club. Londonist has an interview:
What first attracted you to the NFL in general and supporting the Dolphins in particular?When it was first regularly broadcast on Channel 4, it looked more exciting and glamorous than UK sports. The games, with their bright colours, sunshine (in Miami at least), cheerleaders, etc. brought a ray of sunshine into the middle of a dark British winter. The presenters explained the game well and taught us how to follow the game, what to watch, and how to appreciate the standout plays of the day. Soon I came to appreciate the athleticism of the players, the way that they are specialists at their own position, and therefore the very best there is at that task.
Yes, nobody puts on a show like the NFL. One wonders if the British would like college football, with its marching bands and far more rabid fans. If you can believe it, I used to watch the World League (Go NY/NJ Knights!). With a few exceptions, Americans just like different sports than the rest of the world, and I doubt that any publicity stunts will change that.
Posted by rj3 at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 24, 2007
Happy Borkaversary
Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns and Money reminds us just how bad a Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork was. Say what you will about Sam Alito (and I'm certainly no fan), at least he's coming from a somewhat recognizable place and has a worldview that isn't completely frightening.
Posted by rj3 at 1:09 PM | Comments (359) | TrackBack
October 23, 2007
My shame
I'm 26 years old, a published journalist about to graduate from a top law school, yet I can't spell the word "Halloween" without the help of a spell checker. Right back there, where I used the word in question, I had to spellcheck it. It's some sort of mental block.
Posted by rj3 at 2:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 22, 2007
Poppin' the trey
Northwestern has the #3 law school in the country, according to former TFAL employer Princeton Review and TaxProfBlog (whom I have never worked for). Why does NUSL do so well in these rankings while remaining #12? This new survey includes data on how interesting and accessible professors are while not including "prestige" surveys from lawyers and professors at other law schools
Does it matter? To quote Ricky Bobby's father, "if you're not first, you're last."
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October 18, 2007
An interesting thought
I have never purchased a Nalgene bottle in my life, yet I own five of them.
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October 16, 2007
I hope I was never this bad
There are two 1Ls talking about 50 feet away from me right now. According to what I know about the 1L schedule, they're cutting Contracts. One of them is particularly loud, musing about classes, study strategies and future plans as if he's the only first year who really knows the score. He talks about his study strategy "I don't really go, but I do my reading for the most part" and women, "my last girlfriend was really hot." The guy seems to believe he has mastered law school in a month and a half and he hasn't even mastered the "inside voice" yet. Perhaps that was the wedge that drove him apart from his hot ex.
I just overheard him saying, "I'm going to take Civ Pro II. It's trial strategy. It's directly applicable to what I'm going to do." Yes, Mr. High Powered Litigator of 2011, you're totally right. What you learn in Civ Pro II (assuming you go to class, unlike Contracts) will allow you to strut right into any federal courtroom and have run of the place. The big law firm you're going to work for after graduation will recognize those skills and thrust you in front of a judge on day 1 because you took Civ Pro Flippin' II.
What you don't know could fill a book, kid. And not a Civ Pro II book, either.
UPDATE: He's now talking about a party he's throwing. He said, "I didn't know who the cool people were, so I just invited everyone over Facebook. It's about 200 people." Someone will have a lot of booze all to himself...
Posted by rj3 at 9:33 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 15, 2007
Keep on keepin' on
Timeless words of wisdom, courtesy of Overheard in New York.
Posted by rj3 at 5:31 PM | Comments (330) | TrackBack
October 13, 2007
Adventure food
Dig in, suckers.
Not long ago, I found myself in a filthy diner at Irving Park and Ashland at 3 a.m.. The sign at the end of the counter says, “SLINGER, $7.50, Don’t ask, just eat.” Below the text is clip art of a boy on the toilet and a man crying.
Why would anyone order this thing? Peer pressure. Works every time
A slinger starts with a large pile of hash browns drowned in oil (the cook used a full pint of oil on our three slingers). Next, two hamburger patties with cheese and two fried eggs. Up to this point, it’s edible – like something you might get at Waffle House, except twice as large. Then, the cook slings a heaping portion of drippy chili, at once meaty and viscous. Without the chili, it’s filling but bad for you. With the chili, eating it is nothing more than a way to punish yourself for ordering the thing.
At first, you try to pick out the identifiable bits, like the hamburger patties and the few bits of hash brown that aren’t covered in chili juice. But as soon as you tuck into a slinger with your fork, the illusion that it’s a layered dish falls away. The egg yolks bleed, the chili saturates everything and the oil from the hash browns pools with all the other detritus at the bottom, permeating most of the hash browns and making them too dense with grease to eat more than a few strings per bite. The bottom line is that it doesn’t taste very good at all and has the texture similar to how I imagine that of vomit.
Unlike the Fat Darrell, the Garbage Plate or other greasy mash-ups, there is no pretense that it's going to be good. I should have known when I was talked into going by being told repeatedly that "you've just gotta try it." But there's still something endearing about the lowly slinger. One eating companion remarked that the whole situation was emblematic of America: a bizarre but creative concoction served in an unassuming diner serving a diverse group of night shifters and drunks. The waiter, wiping down the counter in front of us, heard what she was saying and said, "Yes, yes, America. Chevy!"
The slinger isn’t drunk food. It isn’t some sort of hangover cure either, since you’ll probably walk away from a slinger feeling worse than when you walked in. It’s more of an adventure food: an impossible dare completed not because it accomplishes anything or provides any satisfaction other than the achievement of eating such a thing.
Posted by rj3 at 5:38 PM | Comments (27) | TrackBack
October 11, 2007
Stupid Toyota Tricks
The shuffle feature of my iTunes reminded me this morning of a game I used to play with myself driving from Washington to Baltimore in college called "Fell in Love With a Girl," named after the White Stripes song of the same name. When I had an internship in D.C., I did the trip at least twice a week, plus one or two more runs for concerts and such.
Here's how it works: Around the intersection of northbound I-95 and the Baltimore Beltway (I-695), there's a sign marking 2 1/2 miles to the 395 interchange for Downtown/MLK Boulevard. One fine day in late 2001, the song in question came on the radio exactly as I passed the sign. Driving like the maniac I was at the time, I made it to the 395 exit just as the song ended, braking furiously as I rounded the overpass (the exit is right after the above sign). From then on, I kept White Blood Cells in my glove compartment and queued it up around BWI, assuming that there wasn't much traffic. Assuming no troopers by the 2 1/2 mile sign, I usually made it by passing, bobbing, weaving and otherwise doing things with a 16-year-old Japanese station wagon that it was not designed to do.
It wasn't until today that I calculated how fast I was going. Assuming the distance on the sign was correct, to get there in the 1:50 playing time of the song, I would have to average 83.3 miles per hour. That doesn't seem like much on an interstate, but it sure felt fast when every piece of metal and plastic on the car rattled like they wanted to break free of the bolts that bound them together so many years before in some pristine factory in Yokohama.
I've also clocked a 15-minute run between the D.C. and Baltimore Beltways after a bad date, which, given the 23-mile distance meant I was averaging 92 miles per hour. During the two years between the time I got it from my Dad and the day it got hauled off to the Kidney Foundation after failing a state inspection, I maxed it out at 110 (once again on Interstate 95). It was if the darn thing was invisible to radar and I was impervious to reason. Years have passed and I have a much nicer car that is capable of far greater feats of juvenile derring-do, but I now never drive more than 10 over the speed limit. Maybe I'm grown up. Maybe the traffic in Chicago is worse. But still, I wouldn't mind playing "Fell in Love With a Girl" one more time.
Posted by rj3 at 10:20 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 9, 2007
I guess this means I should be studying
Yankees lose and are out of the playoffs.
The temperature in Chicago drops 20 degrees.
I'll finally give in - fall has arrived.
Posted by rj3 at 9:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 8, 2007
Let's make it an even 100
The Cubs won't be breaking the curse of the billy goat until next year, solidifying the Northsiders as losers for the ages. Most non-expansion MLB teams with histories of not being very good (the Phillies and Tigers come to mind) have won a championship during the lifetime of the average fan, but the Cubs have now gone an entire century without taking home the trophy. This makes all the whining about the Mets even more silly:
The reverse mojo enjoyed and suffered by Cubs and (til recently) Red and White Sox fans is historic. But Mets fans never needed a history of suffering. We were inoculated and immunized against the usual side-effects of futility by their awful first season -- hence their ironic early cognomen, the Amazin' Mets. Like potholes and crime, suffering is part of the Mets' DNA.[...]
The other day I saw some newspaper columnist giving us grief for not giving Glavine a gentler sendoff. Fuck him and fuck you. We are not like other fans, however long or short their period of suffering. We are the children of '62: born to lose, contemptuous of quit. We are impervious to dynastic bullshit and will cheer lustily for the Tribe to extend the Bronx goons' endlessly edifying ringless streak. And come April, from every section we'll let you hear how we feel, long and hard. We are not impressed by the new Shittyfield you offer us. We want blood. We want a manager who will bestir himself to get thrown out every once in a while. We want players who will dive for a grounder. We want a team worthy of our exquisite suffering. We want a Miracle.
Get over yourself, Roy. The Mets have won two World Series in less than half a century of existence and got to the big dance twice more. As a Yankees fan, this imagined history of Mets suffering is pathetic and annoying. They had a very bad first season. They have a history of choking late in the season. These things I'll agree with. But to claim the Mets have a claim to suffering in some special way (this year aside) displays the sort of self-centeredness and entitlement that makes people hate New York.
Posted by rj3 at 9:28 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 4, 2007
DIY
As a child, I loved inventions and inventors. Thomas Edison was my hero and I devoured books like The Way Things Work. In recent years, I haven't been as interested in gadgetry and invention as I used to be. Perhaps it's because most of today's innovations are ephemeral (like software) or too complicated to understand the mechanics of (like biotech). Are we just too materially comfortable for the mother of invention to do her work?
In Africa, she certainly isn't, which is why I love reading AfriGadget. Without the money to buy the pre-fab necessities we don't even think about in the developed world, enterprising types across Africa are doing it themselves with ingenious results. Check out this payphone-on-a-bike or this homemade welding machine. For decades, generating economic growth in Africa focused on building huge dams, factories and mines - nearly all of which fell prey to corruption, mismanagement and lack of support services like a reliable energy grid. If farmers and fisherman can call into the market to see commodity prices, they can make more sensible decisions about where and how much to sell, boosting income. If regular people can start up small repair shops, they can generate more income and provide useful services. The people you read about on AfriGadget may just be the new Thomas Edisons.
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