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?"

Dave Foley really does know funny, Libelous thoughts, other notes

I watched both premiere episodes of Thank God You're Here last night, which you can waste up to two hours watching at the link just provided. It's far too early to tell whether I should be embarrassed at having watched it. But I thought it was mildly entertaining--a really interesting premise that would be more interesting with better celebrities/comics involved (Joel McHale, Kevin Nealon and Jennifer Coolidge were great; Richard Kind and Mo'Nique, not so much).

Here's the thing, though; the show co-stars one of my heroes, or rather a shockingly old-looking, wild-gray-haired-and-goateed imitation of one of my heroes, and it's kind of sad. Dave Foley, probably the most talented and consistently funny member of the excellent--nay, legendary--Kids in the Hall comedy troupe, is the "judge" of the program, which means that David Alan Grier asks Dave what he thinks about each performer, and that at the end Dave gets to pick the "winner" (who wins a little plastic trophy). But, at least for the first two episodes, what Dave "thought" was essentially that the performer was absolutely fantastic--just really great--and he then picked the "winner" seemingly at random.

This is a sad waste of a brilliant comic talent, and a man who, despite appearances, clearly does understand what is funny. Observe (less than a minute, PG, really funny):



My hope is that he's trying to be nice to everybody to encourage bigger and better stars to come on the show in the future, and that he'll start being more realistic if the show gets picked up. But you never know. I just really love this video (especially the end: "requests?"). I wish I could find a version that's not captioned in a language I don't recognize.

Other notes:

• -In leaving a comment on my own blog this morning (does it get any more self-indulgent than that?), I noticed that it said that anonymous comments are not allowed. That seems silly. So they're now allowed. Just not as enthusiastically encouraged as the alternative.


• -The leadership (er, "junta") for the 2008 Libel Show was elected last night. A little sad, since it's the very last time I can even pretend to be involved with the Show. Also, I've decided after experiencing it three times that the election process is about as poor as we could possibly make it. People are nominated or nominate themselves for a position, and speak for a minute or less about their qualifications, and then leave the room while the rest of us discuss their high and low points for something more like ten minutes before the vote takes place. This is supposed to be a secret thing; what is said in the room stays with the people in the room and so forth. Of course, UVA being what it is, with the Honor Code and whatnot, everyone finds out precisely what was said about her while she was out as soon as the meeting ends. So it's like this: there's all sorts of opportunity for people to make unfounded, often ridiculous accusations against a candidate (and that certainly happened last night); the candidate has no opportunity to defend herself, relying on her friends to do it for her, which often makes it a really awkward pissing match; and then afterward, the candidate hears all about it and can do nothing but get angry and/or feel sorry for herself. So 1Ls and 2Ls? Fix that. I'm not sure what the best way to do it is, but you could scarcely do worse.
  
  
• -I took my facebook badge off of the sidebar, because I decided there was a difference between being open and personal on the one hand and actively inviting identity theft on the other. But I also changed my facebook profile picture today, to the headshot that was taken of me for the lobby during the Show, and now you don't get to see it. So here it is:
  
  Terrifying, no? I should probably change the adjective in this blog's title. Nonetheless, I like it. It's probably my favorite bad picture of myself ever. And there have been so many.


• -The Twins did indeed lose last night, and Mr. Ponson didn't quite give up 25 runs, but he was good for 8 over 6 innings (though one who watched it much closer than I said he wasn't actually all that bad). Nonetheless, Ponson remains roughly as worthy of a rotation spot as I am.


• -I left my cell phone in my car. Be right back.
  


• -Back! But it turns out I've nothing left to say.

Talkin' baseball...

Kluszewski, Campanella!

First, a breakdown of my readers thus far, as I understand them:

Me.
My wife, when I remind her.
Mike and Melissa.
Stephanie.
My mother-in-law.
My Advanced Legal Research professor.
My other Advanced Legal Research professor.

Good group. A small group, but a sociologically and geographically diverse one stretching (well, more like jumping) from one coast of this great nation to the other. And growing at a rate of approximately one U.Va. Advanced Legal Research professor per week (warning: due to sample size issues, data may not be a reliable predictor of future performance). If you're reading this for some (or more likely no) reason and don't appear on the above list, I hope you'll let me know somehow (like by using the "comments" link below). It's fun to hear.

Right. So, as one who is hopelessly addicted to the complex, often frustrating, and ultimately pointless world of Major League Baseball, and in particular to the very out-of-market Minnesota Twins, I'm now entering my third year of subscribing to MLB.TV, which allows me (subject to certain restrictions, which are the subject of this portion of the entry) to watch essentially every game through my dying laptop and the miracle of the internet. This year, I even shelled out the extra thirty bucks for their premium package: you get a much higher resolution picture, and access to a software program that allows you to watch and shift seamlessly among the audio streams for up to six games at once (and may even function someday soon).

All in all, I'm happy with it. The picture quality is very good, and streams much more smoothly than a few years ago. I don't have digital cable, so I can't get the Extra Innings TV package, but I don't think the difference is such that I'd be willing to pay the extra $50 per season.

But here's the problem: local and national blackouts. First, each team has a set of zip codes, viewers within which are banned from watching any of that team's games over the internet. The idea, I suppose, is that there's about a 50/50 chance that you'll end up watching the other team's broadcast, and thus miss out on all those critical local commercials. And I'm fine with that. The real problem is that the zip code 22901, wherein I reside, is on the banned list for both the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals, whereas both teams have contracts with the Mid-Atlantic Sports Networks (MASN) to carry their games locally, and Comcast Cable doesn't currently provide access to MASN in said zip code. So I can't get the games on TV or over the internet. What's worse, ESPN has contracts to black out its nationally televised, non-premium (i.e. any night but Sunday night) games when those games are also available locally, presumably covering the same overly expansive lists of zip codes. So while the Twins' opening-night game against the Orioles last Monday was theoretically available on local TV, national TV, and the internet, I had none of these sources available to me. The bottom line is that lawyers ruin everything.

In a similar vein, ESPN and Fox both have exclusivity contracts with MLB that provide that no other games will be made nationally available in competition with their national broadcasts (Saturday afternoon for Fox, Sunday night for ESPN). This makes sense and is completely above the board, etc., etc. The problem is that their definitions of both what qualifies as a national broadcast and the time range of what qualifies as being in competition are ridiculously broad. To take them in order: an internet "broadcast" of what is intended to be a local telecast, made available only to paying subscribers to a website, should not be subject to these blackouts. I'm sure that the language of the contracts explicitly states that they do qualify, but that is true only because, as mentioned, lawyers ruin everything.

Second, Fox has gone and moved the first pitch of its Saturday broadcasts from about 1:00 p.m. EST to about 4:00. This is great in that it allows Left Coast viewers a few more hours to sleep it off and gives pitchers the decided advantage of pitching through really awkward late afternoon shadows, but it's terrible for MLB.TV and Extra Innings subscribers. Games that start at the ordinary start time of 1:00 p.m. Eastern, of which there are several (especially in the colder-weather months), continue to be blacked out, despite very little (if any) overlap with the Fox broadcast. Of course, West Coast afternoon games will also be blacked out, as will games that start in the early evening (say 6:00 EST), which occasionally happen on Saturdays. When one considers that at least half of all local broadcasts are carried on a regional Fox Sports channel, and that Fox is effectively then keeping viewers from choosing not to watch its broadcasts in favor of watching...its broadcasts, these contracts start to seem senselessly restrictive. I'm pretty sure the whole point is to annoy me.

Speaking of annoying things and baseball, the Twins seem to have latched onto the idea that one sticks with what works. Which, in ordinary circumstances, is a fine idea. The problem is that what "worked" for them last year was starting the year with among the least talented lineups that could possibly have been formed of all the talent available to them: Tony Batista and Juan Castro manned third and short, while Jason Bartlett toiled in the minors; Francisco Liriano started in the bullpen. They recovered from this to win 96 games and the division. So, this year, why not give spots in the starting rotation to Ramon (or is it Russ?) Ortiz, Carlos Silva and Sidney Ponson instead of Matt Garza, Glen Perkins, Kevin Slowey and/or Scott Baker? The problem, of course, is what saved the Twins last year is that they recognized these mistakes, come about May, and rectified them. That might need to happen even earlier this year if they're going to have similar success.

The Twins play the Yankees at home tonight, on a nationally televised game that I will get to watch. For some reason, the completely useless Ponson will be starting despite the availability of the completely average Boof Bonser on six days' rest. These are the kinds of decisions that end up costing a team a very tight division, and the kind that lead a team to end up giving up 25 runs to the Yankees on national television. But then I guess Ponson giving up 25 runs, which is honestly well within the realm of possibility, might lead to Garza's recall coming faster, so maybe that's a good thing?