The MySpace login page looks like the seedy color pages of the phone book if the phone book could blink. Every bad HTML habit, from automatic background music to moving backgrounds to dark-text-on-dark-background, live on in MySpace profiles. The whole site is like a museum of bad design, an example of what naysayers thought the entire internet would become.

I'm seriously thinking about deleting my MySpace page after about five years of on-and-off (mostly off) usage. MySpace now belongs exclusively to the tramp stamped and hair gelled and teenaged. They can have it.

At the time, the newest song on my computer was "Barracuda" by Heart, which I downloaded because it was the last song I heard on the radio before taking the LSATs. I must have thought it was good luck.

The last case I read for law school: Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000). It's the famous case in which a gay troop leader lost a challenge to the Boy Scouts' anti-gay policy (although Justice Stevens makes the persuasive argument that there was no such policy until Dale started becoming active in gay organizations at his college). My notes on this case fall a few lines short of half a page but has far more analysis and far fewer facts and sections than that first torts case.

The song I downloaded right before my last final of law school was the Dead Kennedys' cover of "Viva Las Vegas." By last week, I wasn't all that interested in good luck charms.

I think I'll make this a meme. It's your turn, Kat, Cella and K.D..

I woke up early, made some eggs (it used to be hard-boiled, but now I'm willing to go through the trouble of doing them scrambled because I like them better that way). I usually re-read my outline on the bus or before the test starts, but considering that I finished writing it eight hours prior, I went straight to the part where I set out everything on the table.

Even though I've never once used it during a final, I always bring my textbook. Assuming everything else completely fails, I suppose I could just start at the beginning and hope to find the answers toward the beginning.

I went to get my exam and plugged away. It seemed straightforward enough and I had just enough time to notice I had slightly misread one theory question and fix it. As per usual, I don't remember most of what I wrote and I can't tell if it's a sure-thing A or a thanks-for-playing B. I reminded myself of what Cella says: "Bs get degrees."

If this were a movie, I'd stop and reflect upon handing in the Last Exam Of My Academic Career Ever Unless I Decide To Get An MBA For No Reason. But I had somewhere to be soon and I split.

But let's roll with the movie thing. The reflection would dissolve into a flashback to Oak Street Beach, August 2005. I sat on a beach towel. A couple of other pre-1Ls sit nearby discussing how bad it could possibly to swim in Lake Michigan. I was reading Law School Confidential, which is only good for thoughtfully giving to people you know would be awful in law school but can't be convinced that they shouldn't apply.

There I was, sunscreen on, sitting on a beach between a highway and a lake that looked like an ocean, reading a book telling me to block16-hour days into little pieces, including nice little slivers for relaxation and exercise.

"This is how they run prisons," it would have been poignant of me to have said just then.

I tabbed off the page explaining how to use six highlighters when reading cases. First of all, highlighters usually come in packs of 5, which means you have to hope the missing color is sold individually, which they usually aren't. Second of all, using six highlighters and taking copious notes in the margins are two reasons why a 15 minute assignment for a 3L takes an hour and a half for a 1L and they both end up with the same grade. The marginal benefit of any of these self-aware study habits is next to nothing.

Later that day, we went out, drank and perhaps ate wings. About a dozen of us with nothing to do and few other friends in town spent the two weeks before orientation tearing up the town like sailors about to spend months at sea, bonding like we would be too harried and to ever make any other friends and generally treating the situation like we were all Queen Latifah in Last Holiday, although that film had not yet been released. People expressed a little worry, but mostly excitement for the next three years. They surely knew about the highlighters, but it wasn't on anyone's mind.

I didn't know any of this and I doubt hearing a 3L tell me that there's nothing that special about law school. If you have good reading comprehension, it's just about learning what you need to read for, something no number of highlighters can help you with. Math always struck me as far less intuitive.

It makes sense that my last exam came and went almost exactly like every other and merited little sentimentality once it was done. I've come to realize that you don't succeed in law school by treating it like basic training. I tried it for a month, didn't like it and managed to do quite well, thankyouverymuch.

The trite end to this story would be to prattle on about "work-life balance" like every single BigLaw recruiter out there. Truth is, sometimes you have to fall out of balance. For three straight weeks this January and February, I spent night after night and most of the weekends working on a clinic assignment I couldn't figure out, throwing out reams of Westlaw printouts as I went down one blind alley after another. I showed up at the library before it opened to work on my casenote as a 2L. I've also driven out to Ames, Iowa on a Wednesday to watch a basketball game and drink quarter beers with townies. Before the library opened one Saturday last fall, I was drinking gin and tonic from a Nalgene on my way to watch a football game. You don't want to know what a party at my apartment is like.

When you're really, really busy, life gets utterly miserable, no matter how well you plan. Don't "reward yourself," since rewards just encourage more of the behavior that led up to them. When I was at the absolute end of my fraying rope, I like to know that I occasionally took my life back from the law school and that I could do it again if I wanted to.

Let's put it this way: if you want to do something really dumb, really juvenile or just really random, go and do it. Having a paper due the next day is an excuse; having "a lot of reading" is not. Check your email now and then, bring along a book to make yourself feel better and you'll be fine.

But something strange has come over me. I want to take it to the limit, one more time.

I don't have to - given that I have a job (and the finals-time gift basket that comes with it) and absolutely no ambition to clerk, my law school GPA matters about as much as my SAT score. On the other hand, this is my last final ever and a little voice in the back of my head says it would be unsatisfying to half-ass my way out the door. A little pride would do me good. I'll be giving it a shot, but we'll see how far it gets.

UPDATE: Study fail. But after a couple of hours of work this morning, I'm confident enough that I'll land in the B range.

* Right then, I spell checked it.

My morning routine of MSNBC and coffee imported from Iowa is getting less and less tenable. Either it's a Hillary shill promoting some crazy math theory that puts her ahead (it won't be long until her campaign tries to bring back the 3/5 clause) or some conservative harping about Rev. Wright.

Today it was Wright himself making headlines by trying to explain his relationship to Louis Farrakhan at the National Press Club. Last week, he was on Bill Moyers making non-apology apologies and generally making sure he's still in the headlines. It's almost as if he wants to prove that an African-American can't be president by tearing down the one guy who could make it happen.

Perhaps this is all part of a brilliant plan to neutralize Rev. Wright. It's probably just another case of Democrats being unable to keep anyone on message, but what if the goal were to saturate coverage on Rev. Wright early enough in the year to be old by November but late enough in the primary process so as to not imperil Obama's nomination. The convention is still months away. By then, he's picked a VP nominee, given an acceptance speech that will be analyzed to death and spent weeks "bringing the party back together" as per the standard media narrative.

After the conventions, Republicans will try to bring back Wright, but by then, it'll be old news, just like Bill Clinton's philandering was when the Lewinsky scandal broke. After what seems like endless rehashing of the story, people will simply tire of it. Yes, yes, the average TV viewer says, we know that Obama had a nutty preacher back in Chicago.

If Wright is old, what's new? Anything about McCain, who has been tooling around the country in a series of mostly-ignored media events. Later on, when it really matters, people will start to hear about McCain's Bushite tax plan, his plans for endless occupation of Iraq, excused because he assumes (based on implausible comparisons to Germany and Japan) that there won't be any casualties for most of it and a general narrative that he's not the "maverick" we've seen him as after years of favorable media coverage.

Is this a brilliant grand scheme on the part of the Obama campaign? Probably not. But if it was, it's a ballsy bet that could either pay off big or fail miserably.

So what on earth could a sequel do to add on to the understated brilliance of the original? Not too much.

That isn't to say that the new H&K isn't hilarious - I was laughing from beginning to end. Neil Patrick Harris, reprising his role as some sort of magical party shaman, is the biggest standout. Yet there was something missing, namely the finely-calibrated dynamics between the various stereotypes that gelled so well in the first movie.

Since H&KEFGB goes far beyond New Jersey, there is inevitably a wider view, but that view somehow ends up being smaller. White people are all racist buffoons who don't understand that minorities think and act a lot like they do. Every other group (including white rednecks, for some reason) looks stereotypical at first blush, but they all end up being upstanding upper middle-class-normative taxpayers with small quirks.

The first movie created a world of supporting characters who were both unusual, stereotypical and endearing. Goldstein and Rosenberg, perverts who smoked pot out of a shofar, were perfect examples of how the first movie turned appalling stereotypes into harmless quirks. They come back, reduced to a cameo that adds nothing to the plot without making room for the riffing that made them hilarious. In their stead, a cast of unmemorable supporting characters move the plot forward, but have no larger contribution to make.

That being said, go watch the movie. You will be entertained. You will spit out your soda in laughter, or you'll come close. But ten years from now, you'll be watching the first H&K, not the second.

My first order of business upon taking the bar will be to sell that car after years of loyal service and many great memories, most of which involve going somewhere silly for the sake of taking a road trip. I won't have to worry about gas, but that doesn't mean that I won't still have money woes, even on the $160k I can't believe the suckers who run my future firm will pay me. Food is getting more and more expensive. Another MTA fare increase is inevitable. The weak dollar means imports of every variety will be getting more expensive.

Add to this the inevitable instinct of people (OK, me) who find themselves catapulted into a much higher tax bracket to spend as if they have no spending constraints at all - just ask anyone who won the lottery and ended up getting their dream house and Ferrari repossessed by the bank. I'm not proud to say that I walked away from my summer job with significantly less savings than I'd hoped for.

If I'm worried about rising prices at my pay-scale, I can only imagine how bad this is going to be for your average public defender who makes a third of what I will and has to drive to work every day.

So how does the up-and-coming young urban professional scale back?

1. Housing: The first order of business is finding an apartment. On the one hand, I could live cheaply on the assumption that I will hardly ever be home. On the other hand, doing so was sheer misery last summer and a good location will save me a fortune on taxis.

Then there's the unspoken expectation that a successful New York lawyer lives a certain lifestyle. That means big screen TV, leather sofa and no futon in the middle of the living room. If I want to date, assuming I have any time, the after-dinner coffee is going to crash and burn if I live in a shoebox for the sake of fiscal responsibility. I probably can't get anything acceptable much lower than $2500/month.

2. Clothes. Dress for the job you want. Clothes make the man. Unlike many species of birds, I can't display my colorful plumage without having to spend a small fortune. Nearly all fabric and finished clothing is imported, so as the dollar drops, clothing gets more expensive. Even when stores run sales, the prices are still higher than regular retail prices at the same stores three or four years ago.

My office is business casual, which means no need for new fancy suits, but nevertheless demands an ever-vigilant lookout against letting things get schlubby. Next, there's going-out wear. Fashions change, and the t-shirt and jeans one wears to McGees in Lincoln Park won't cut it anywhere I'd want to go. If I avoid changing after work on weekdays, I can get by with a few outfits for weekends.

The money-saving strategy? Sample sales, higher-end designer resale, planning on exactly what I'm going to get before hitting the stores.

3. Dry cleaning. The silent killer. Last summer, I spent $30 some weeks on dry cleaning. I've recently tried ironing, but it really shows when you show up at work without the crispest, starchiest shirt possible. There's no point in getting a nice shirt if you don't keep it looking nice. I suppose I could cut back on dry cleaning the sweaters during the winter by trying to get out stains myself.

4. Taxis. This is the worst, especially if you're going out in another borough. A $25 fare each way to Brooklyn could mean that getting to the bar or show costs more than the drinks.

The solution. Never take a cab to where I'm going. There's no excuse to not take the subway before 10. After that, I'm not so much worried about safety as for the long waits, which only get longer if a transfer is necessary. One can split the difference: do the longest bit of the trip on a train, then take a cab crosstown if it's too much of a hike to get back from the station. Over time, it will add up.

5. Food. A trip to the local made-to-order salad joint by my office can set you back $15. Yet eating $5 Rafiqi's halal chicken every day will leave you sweating grease all afternoon. Cooking at home on Sunday for the week works sometimes, but eating the same curried chicken salad for three days seems like a good idea until that third day of having the same thing for lunch. So what's the plan? There is always some catered meeting or event, so I could mooch off the buffet spread like I've been doing throughout law school, but that requires a bit more work than I can afford doing when I have actual work to do. At this point, instituting a no-delivery rule at home seems like the best way to limit the cost of feeding myself.

6. Coffee. I've been fairly good with making coffee at home, but with summer comes the inevitable temptation to get a $5 iced drink every morning, which adds up. Preparing iced lattes at home is a little time consuming for the morning scramble to make it out of the apartment, but expensive coffee seems like too much of a luxury and too much of an expense to ignore. Perhaps the best solution would be to but one of these and make cold-pressed iced coffee at home.

The world has changed and being a biglaw associate isn't the ticket to financial security it used to be.

That's why I'm so surprised to see Bears QB Kyle Orton emceeing an Earth Day festival today at the Lincoln Park Zoo featuring such halftime show favorites as Me'shell Ndegeocello and The Chicago Afrobeat Project.

Have I been underestimating the wide breadth of interests of professional jocks? How come we can't have gametime PSAs featuring uniformed players in drum circles, or instructing inner-city kids on how to maintain an efficient compost heap?

Still Tuesday: The theme is "Music I'm going to want to listen to in August 2008." That's some high-concept stuff. My August looks like the tail end of a bar trip, moving in (somewhere) and buying lots of business casual clothes. There are a lot of directions I could go here.

Friday: I really have to finish this paper. I think I'll start on that mixtape.

10:20 a.m., Saturday: There's a great audio clip from a movie that I want to kick off my mix, but it's about 2:30, which is just going to kill the excitement of putting on a new CD. I'll edit down to one minute. This should take about minutes.

10:57 a.m., Fifty-eight seconds! Who's the mixtape master? It's me, that's who!

12:07 p.m.: I've downloaded the font I need for the cover art and the photoshopping wasn't all that complicated. It's time to leave the house.

3:12 p.m.: Back home. Do you think I can wedge in some Hold Steady somewhere?

3:15 p.m.: No.

3:48 p.m.: I feel like I'm progressing. I had a New Young Pony Club song in the middle, right as the tempo rises, but although I've spun them to the discerning denizens of the Black Cat, I was never all that in to them and I don't think it really goes anywhere. My other options for this slot are way too long and too hard to chop down in iTunes. Still, it's looking better.

4:12 p.m.: Am I overthinking this? I think not. I don't know the particular tastes of many members of our 15-person mixtape circle and I have no idea of what's generally popular
(when did everybody buy the first LCD Soundsystem album?) so I have no idea what I can include and what I can't. Since so many people will hear it, I have to please a broad audience while being "original." All this stressing over impressions... this really ls like high school.

4:19 p.m.: NYPC is gone and nothing will replace it. If I don't get over myself and put this puppy to bed, I'll never move on.

And by now, the YouTube wars have gone negative. Do you remember "Yes We Can", that treacly video from the dreadlocked guy in Black Eyed Peas? If you watch it again, you have to wonder how on earth it brought people to tears back in January.

Now it's time to get excited again. My candidate (and you should know who that is by now) has one thing Hillary doesn't: the ability to inspire. Here's a short video based on the 1979 classic The Warriors that should buck you up:

UPDATE: The law school is still standing. I'm surprisingly OK with this.

Yes, it's newsworthy that the leader of a major world religion is visiting. A quarter of the U.S. population is Catholic. Bottom line, the guy packs stadiums wherever he goes and people rightfully pay attention when he has something to say.

But why can't the other three-quarters of the population get a little love from the cable news nets? It's the same picture on CNN, FNC and MSNBC; it isn't as if we're getting something from the flood-the-zone coverage. If one network had a little guts, there would be an option for people who want... news (and no, a centuries-old ceremony isn't news, it's a current event), but all three want a piece of the papal pie, even if it means chopping up that pie.

I'll just watch this until The Price is Right comes on. I hope they won't be going over-under on the retail price of indulgences.