One thought and one offensive video

Mostly just to demonstrate that I'm still alive. By the way, in the last week I've driven from Charlottesville to Chicago, flown from Chicago to Charlottesville, graduated from UVA Law School, and flown back to Chicago. But back to that one thought:

If it wasn't for the NBA, no one outside of southern/central Texas would have any idea that there was a city called San Antonio. I mean, sure, the Alamo is there, but historical significance isn't really all it's cracked up to be in terms of national attention (visited St. Augistine. FL, or, for you non-UVA people, Jamestown, VA lately?).

And isn't that the NBA's biggest problem? The two best teams of the past five-to-eight years (okay, so I don't pay nearly enough attention to the NBA to justify writing this post) do their bidness in San Antonio, which is a non-entity on the national scene, and Detroit, which is frankly an ugly, boring city to the rest of the country (though it has a great airport, which I've visited twice in the past week). Moreover, those teams are defense-oriented, which to the non-basketball-obsessed public is dull, dull, dull. The second most exciting player plays in Cleveland, home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Drew Carey Show and (as far as America is concerned) nothing else. And while the most exciting player plays in L.A., he's surrounded by, well, stiffs.

So the Pacific Northwest is about to become the epicenter of professional basketball. The Portland Trailblazers got the first pick in this year's NBA Draft, with which they'll take Greg Oden. Oden is no Shaq, but he's an incredible defensive player who, teamed with Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy, will immediately make the Blazers a force in the Western Conference.

It should be noted that while I'm not really such an NBA fan these days (though with the sustained absence of player-to-fan violence, I've become determined to pay more attention to it as of tonight--we'll see if that holds until next season), my two favorite teams are the Timberwolves and the Sonics. So more interesting, to me, is that the Seattle Sonics improbably managed to nab the second pick, with which they'll take Kevin Durant. Now, even if Oden ends up being the more efficient player (which is likely), Durant is the kind of exciting player that fans love a lot more than they love defensive-minded centers, and Durant plus Sonics mainstay Ray Allen equals an exciting, fast-moving, high-scoring kind of team. So between the Sonics and the three-hours-south Blazers, the Northwest looks like it'll be the place to be for exciting basketball for the next couple years. So that's fun.

Speaking of fun, here's a scene that involves Will Ferrell acting with a toddler who is made to say some things that toddlers should really never say. I can't stop watching it or laughing at it. You've probably seen it, but it's worth watching again. (And again, and again, and again.) Can I have four beers?



Let's see if that works. And let's see if I can manage sitting through a 3 1/2 hour bar review class, which happens every weekday starting tomorrow. If not, this summer is going to be...really fun. And then I'll get a job at Starbucks or something.

What a day.

So that whole law school thing? Yeah. That's over. Had my last final today--knocked it out of the park. And by "knocked it out of the park," I mean "wrote words, more or less in response to each question, which may or may not have formed sentences." Significantly, I turned it in, and I'm fairly certain I'll pass.

We're going to Europe in August, and have racked up huge credit card bills in the planning process. Using my impressive grasp of economics, I ascertained that the credit card company would be charging us significantly more in interest over the next few months than the bank would be paying us in interest on my savings account, so I paid the bill in full. Only, using my less-than-impressive grasp of computers and my own motor skills, I inadvertently paid the bill out of our checking account rather than our savings account.

Several days ago. And in the meantime, our bank has happily gone along accepting our checks and debit card charges, charging us overdraft fees, and not saying a thing. When my debit card was finally rejected during my pre-exam water, energy drink and donettes trip to 7-11 this morning, I logged in to find our balance at something like -$4209. A transfer from the savings account stopped the bleeding, and I then spent a good chunk of my afternoon on the phone with the bank's "customer" "service" staff. And let me tell you, nothing takes the edge off after a 3 1/2 hour exam like a solid hour on the phone with a pleasant but woefully incompetent phone-answerer. Anyway, I've got most of the charges refunded, still working on the rest.

I was lucky enough to win a kind of pointless little contest on Seth's popular Minnesota Twins-themed blog, and my prize was a boxed DVD set containing all seven full games from the 1987 World Series put together by A&E. So after I was done with all the bank silliness for the day, I got up on the treadmill in front of Game One. I was at Game One, as an awestruck eight-and-a-half year-old, and I remember Frankie V pitching well and a grand slam and a win, and a subsequent celebration where some loud lady spilled beer all over me (though that might actually have been Game Two), but not much else.

It's really an incredible experience to go back and see through adult eyes how it actually went, and to see players like The Wizard of Oz and the late, great Kirby in the context of a full-length ballgame again. I actually found myself yelling at the TV at times, usually at the umpire for a questionable call (which, as silly as it is in any situation, is at least doubly so when you're trying to yell not only across hundreds of miles of space but across twenty years of time). It was great fun, except for all the running in place and sweating. (Boy, if you've been skimming, that's gonna be a really hard one to decipher!)

Got a call cutting the nostalgia short--had to stop, actually, just after the grand slam--saying someone was coming to look at the house between 5:30 and 6:30. So I go downstairs, and I'm climbing out of the shower at about ten to 5 when I hear our cute little dog barking her cute little head off; there's a car parked in our driveway that isn't mine. I was sure I'd heard them wrong, that really they were coming at 5 instead of 5:30 (in which case they're still early), and I'm standing there in my towel. So I throw my clothes on, having to put on the jeans twice because the zipper stuck in the first pair, and pulling my t-shirt on over my not-nearly-dry upper half, and run outside to discover a very nice realtor and client who were not the people I was expecting, and who couldn't be bothered to make an appointment.

After that I met my wife for dinner and had generally a very pleasant evening. But I was out of breath for like an hour. Really far too stressful for a day when I'd planned to do nothing but enjoy all the done-with-law-school-ness.

***SUDDEN SUBJECT CHANGE!***

I tend to talk about baseball a lot, and yet to totally ignore the issues in baseball that most people talk about when they talk about baseball. For instance, I'm utterly bored by the steroid issue. If it were coherent to say that I was militantly, almost violently apathetic, that's what I would be about steroids (and HGH and what-have-you) in baseball. Similarly (though less violently), I have almost no interest in what Curt Schilling has to say or the job security of various non-player Yankee personnel.

But lately, the tragic yet (or rather, because) utterly avoidable death of Josh Hancock has a lot of people both inside baseball and out talking about the alcohol policy in most clubhouses (namely, that they provide it, and a lot of it). Now, I've read Ball Four, as everyone should. I know that baseball players, for the most part, are thoughtless, sociopathic losers. But I had no idea that teams encouraged this behavior on a nightly basis. This is ridiculous. Now, the firm I'll be going to has a Friday afternoon happy hour, and some people (present company included, once or twice, last summer) get a little silly. But then they (we) walk home or to the train station. Baseball players own big expensive cars, many of which are made to travel very, very fast. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist, or even a smarmy used car salesman, to realize that this is a problematic policy. I mean, come on. As Seth Myers and Amy Poehler might say, "Really, Bud Selig? Really?"

Sissyness and Linkyness

One exam to go. Ever. Pretending at anonymity for a moment (hey, it's been weeks since my facebook badge was up), the exam I took this morning was for a class taught by my favorite professor at the law school. It's the third class I've taken from him, and I spent my first summer working for him. He's quirky and funny and brilliant. The following, lest they be swallowed by the ceaseless current of time (I find the back page of the Law Weekly just doesn't have the permanence and timelessness you'd expect from a free weekly non-journalism-graduate-school tabloid-style newspaper), are among the numerous gems he unleashed upon my small-section 1L torts class:

“When you go home for Thanksgiving…you will have dazzling conversation at the dinner table and expose the general sloppy and illogical thinking of the lay world and just to cap it off you will brandish this book.”

and

"Walls are not for drawing, paper is not for eating."

and

“If you don’t know the law, give them the policy. If you don’t know the policy, give them the law. If you don’t know the policy or the law, just look good.”

and

"You guys are either playing exceptionally dumb or you are exceptionally dumb."

Amen.

Seriously, do you know how lucky I am? I'm getting sappy and sentimental and stupid about law school. And in the middle of finals. This is an amazing thing. This is not a thing that happens to most folks foolish or unfortunate enough to go to law school. I'm very lucky. We--to you UVA folks--are very lucky. That's not exactly an inspirational speech of Old Ball Coach proportions, but, you know. It's good to remember. And oh, if you haven't seen the linked-to video or the 2006 Libel Show (especially if you go to UVA, but regardless), so do. Now.

Back? Okay. Well, I've loved law school. Charlottesville is a great place--there's no place in the world I'd rather be serving three thousand hours of community service. I'm going to miss taking classes from that one professor I didn't mention. And John Harrison, and Lillian BeVier, and even from most of the mere mortals from whom I've taken classes as well. I'll miss Barrister's and PILA and Libel Show rehearsals and Bar Review and the Thursday keg in the garden; I imagine that things will get bad enough that there are times that I even miss my work on my journal. And that's...a little depressing. Moving on.

I apologize to whomever I stole that picture from (to from whomever I stole that picture?). Copyright infringement threats will be responded to swiftly and in the manner of a paranoid and spineless coward.

There's never much else going on in a world that includes final exams, but with the incomparable Derek Leach apparently moving on to bigger and better things this must never be forgotten. Also, the guy color-commentating the Warriors-Mavericks massacre just said "I think a lot of it is psychology," only he pronounced it "psychoLOJy." If you can even imagine that. And finally, to underscore the point I may or may not have bothered making at some point about blogging being an inherently narcissistic exercise no matter what else I or anyone else may say about it, see this.

...and a song.

On the heels of my petty whining about professional responsibility, the song (slightly paraphrased due to my poor memory) that was the one thing I got to do in my 1L-year Libel Show:
(to the tune of "Coney Island Baby." Sing along!)
Professional Responsi-bi-li-ty,
What I like to call P.R. (P.R. for lawyers);
Give me some Model Rules to fo-ol-low,
Like not soliciting and (never can solicit any)
Priv'lege and confidenti-a-li-ty,
What is the diff'rence 'tween the two? (The two)
So don't steal,
Don't cheat,
Don't like a scandal; (do doo)
So Professional (do doo)
I can be ethical (do doo)
Ethical professional too-oo!

Amen.

Finals Fun

So we went to that Nationals game on Saturday, and it was a blast. I was hoping to have pictures to show you, but a) we forgot the camera and b) I can't figure out how to email myself pictures from my phone. You'll have to be content with this:

Clearly a ripoff of Milwaukee's inimitable Sausage Race, but kind of entertaining nonetheless. I bring it up only because of an exchange I witnessed while waiting in line for ice cream. While I was standing there, Honest Abe and Teddy walked by (I have a close-up picture of the latter on my phone...too bad you can't see it). A boy and girl, probably in fourth or fifth grade, were standing in front of me in line, and briefly got quite excited as the characters walked by and waved at them. The kids waved back and stared and uttered a few little exclamations, and after the giant-headed presidents had passed, the boy asked, "were those the Guinness guys?"

It was apparently a rhetorical question (of course those were the Guinness guys), and immediately they were on to something else. But I found it sad and entertaining.

The game was entertaining, too--we were in the first row, right behind the dugout, and could hear the Mets players yell at one another. The Nationals eventually lost, 6-2, having come within one strike of winning it in the 9th and then falling to pieces in the 12th. I also got my first-ever game used baseball (there were no kids around to give it away to that didn't already have one--that's how close to the action we were) and kind of an embarrassing picture of Omar Minaya that I wish I could share. Anyway, it was tremendous fun, and well worth the six hours in the car.

I took my first final of the semester, and third-to-last ever, this morning. It was Professional Responsibility, which is a worthless class the few moderately useful parts of which are entirely redundant with the MPRE (which I passed by, I'm sure, a much better margin than I'll have passed this exam). Utterly, soul-crushingly dull, and terrible to study for. Nothing against the professor or anyone else involved; it's just not a law school class, except that the ABA requires that it be one.

My last two finals, which I haven't started preparing for, should, well, not be that. And that's something.