BuffaloWings&Vodka

George Bush Hates Me

Or maybe it's just CBS that hates me. Because we live with a president who is so afraid of the press that his press conferences are a rare enough event to gain primetime network attention, when I came home tonight expecting to watch my DVR'd episode of Survivor, I got W instead. Talk about disappointment.

Come to think of it, I didn't get The O.C. recorded either. I just assumed that I'd messed up, but maybe that was W's fault, too?

Goddam it. I hate Freedom.

The Return (Sort Of) of Tab

Has anyone been drinking Tab lately? I have. I though that it was gone forever, banished to some Eighties netherworld where everyone wears tennis apparel and has good teeth. But it has consistently ended up in the journal refrigerator over the last six weeks, and I must say: Tab is pretty fantastic.

For starters, it's just about the closest thing to actual Coke without being actual Coke. In fact, it's what you would have expected Diet Coke to taste like. It sort of starts like Coke, and then finishes extra-fizzy. Not sure how to explain it.

But the best part is that it has both aspartame AND saccharin. You can actually feel the brain tumor growing as you drink it. And the can color is so appealing. It's an all-around winner.

Maybe it never went away. Maybe I'm the last one to jump on the Tab Train to Tastyville. But if I'm not, you should definitely give it a try. 

You're Not Studying Hard Enough

That being said, my GoogleAd revenues are getting closer to the $150 mark. When they reach it, I may just have to throw a party with the money. If you come to my party, consider it your reward for studying harder.

The only question: What sort of food & drink do your serve at a BuffaloWings & Vodka party? Hmmm...

Google is the Only Way

Legal Research Advice: Don't give up until you've Googled. At least three times a day I'll be incorporating somebody's work that will suggest that the answer was unfindable, and then after three minutes of manhandling Google a bit I'll have an answer. Just because it's not on Lexis or Westlaw doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Do be careful, though, because an increasing number of practical legal searches are bringing people here instead. Some from the last 36 hours:

1. cf. means compare.
2. monica b. naked.
3. korematsu plastic surgeon
4. contracts exam flowcharts
5. coping mechanisms
6. 12 stupid multiple choice
7. lewis and clark law school sucks
8. let's buy vodka?
9. maximum number of days after graduation WestlawRewards naked
10. bullshit extegrity defeat

Just Aight For Me

I had the following forwarded to me by Donna at Sunny Side Up. It seems to be spreading:

Behold, the Caesar’s Bath meme! List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), “Nice. Nice. Not thrilling . . . but nice.”

My Five:

1. DeathCab for Cutie. I like them just fine. And I like The Postal Service, too. But after awhile they start to sound like the soundtrack to one of those indy flicks that stars someone you once enjoyed in a supporting role, someone like Peter Sarsgaard or Chloë Sevigny, but you get to the end of it and look at your significant other and go “Did I like that? I’m not really sure.”

2. Justice Breyer. What’s the deal with women and Justice Breyer? It’s like every time I turn around, some chick is telling me about how they’d love to lick his shiny baldness or dress him up in doll clothes. I mean, the guy is gorgeous. But he’s not that gorgeous. I’d look hot, too, if I spent fifty hours a week in the gym.

3. Jenna Jameson. Look: I’m not complaining. I’ll watch a Jenna Jameson production before I’ll watch a lot of things. Videos of my friends’ babies, for example. But I don’t understand her total dominance of the adult video industry. I find her squeals a bit contrived, and her tattoo a bit distracting. I guess a little marketing savvy goes along way when you’re good at being naked.

4. Sushi. I’m not grossed out by sushi. In fact, the first three times I had it I thought it was the best food ever. But now any time I end up at a sushi restaurant, all I can think about is the fact that I’m not eating, like, meat.  It’s the same feeling I get when I get dragged to a vegan joint. There’s just a spot in my stomach that never gets filled at a sushi place, no matter how much fatty tuna I order. And that spot makes me cry.

5. Babies. Okay. I get it. You need to procreate. You need that feeling of immortality that comes with watching a smaller version of yourself puke on the couch. But why does it have to be my couch? When did they write that rule that says just because I’m married, it’s suddenly okay for people to bring little burping, crapping, vomiting creatures into my home? Why is it just assumed that once you have a baby, you get to bring it wherever you want? I know lots of people with sick grandparents, but they manage to leave them behind. And I know people who buy dogs. But those people don’t just assume that they can bring their dog into my house. Well, some of them do. But fuck those people. Look--it’s not that I hate babies. It’s just that I hate your babies.

That’s all I’ve got. But I will toss the meme pie to:

Jeremy, because it’s weird that nobody made him do this yet.
PG, because she’s single-handedly holding things together at De Novo and could use more to write about.
And Professor Leiter, because I’m failing his Jurisprudence exam in a few weeks, and forwarding gimmicky blog memes seems like the sort of thing you do to someone who is going to give you the first ever G+ in the history of law school.

UPDATE: You'll notice that while Jeremy and PG indulged me and endured this particular annoyance, Professor Leiter chose not to. He did, however, read this post and take the opportunity to scare the shit out of me again, this time in class, by suggesting that he was not at all opposed to the idea of handing out a G+. So, there that is.

Exam Goodies

Got a package in the mail from my law firm last week. Labeled "Exam Survival Kit," it was one of those soft coolers with the firm name on it, and it was packed with snacks and drinks and popcorn and everything else one might need for exams.  It was lovely. It was lifechanging.  The M&M's, the RedBull, the two bottles of Adderall, the fifth of Jack, and the advance copies of my Wills & Estates exam should go a long way toward making this a pain-free finals period.

But I could have done without the weird German cartoon animal porn.

Why They Shouldn't Let Me Talk to Prospective Students

“Hey, sure, come in and sit down. Sorry the office is such a mess. So…what schools are you deciding between?”

“It’s down to UT and Chicago. I just came from Chicago, so I’m down here checking things out.”

“Well, I can tell that our weather beats the crap out of theirs. I don’t know about you, but I’d come to Texas just to get away from the cold.”

“Oh, the cold isn’t really a problem for me. I lived in Siberia for a year.”

“Where? You mean, like, Montana or something?”

“No, I mean I actually lived in Siberia. Russia. Studying geology.”

“Oh, Wow. Well, I guess the cold wouldn’t be a problem then. But Texas is still the only place to be. You know, I was looking at Michigan for awhile, but I just couldn’t bear to go to a place with crappy Mexican food.”

“I hate Mexican food. I’m from Utah.”

“I see. Well, I guess someone has to be from there, right? Ha!”

“What else do you think UT has to recommend itself? I mean, up at Chicago they told me that I could have my pick of jobs, even if I graduate in the bottom quarter of the class, and that at UT I’d never have those kind of options.”

“Wow—Jack, is it?—I don’t really know what to say to that. I mean, though I’m sure it sounded nicer when they said it, they’re pretty much right. It’s a lot easier to be on the bottom at Chicagothan it is at Texas. But we have one thing they don’t have.”

“What’s that?”

“Thousands of hot Texas undergrads. I swear, Jack—“

“It’s Zack.”

“Uh-huh. You have no idea just how many of them they are. They all come out in the fall and think that they’re supposed to dress up and—“

“Actually, I’m married.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, which was another reason that Chicago appealed to me. Lots of married people.”

“Well, hey, I’m married, too, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate—“

“Is the Mormon church fairly big around here?”

“Sorry?”

"The Mormon church. I’m LDS. I’m looking for a strong Mormon community.”

“Oh! Oh sure, actually we have quite a few—FUCKING COCKKNOCKING FUCKERS!!!”

“I-I—Excuse me?”

“YOU FUCKING SONS OF BITCHES! WHO STOLE MY JOLLY RANCHERS?”

“Your—like…the candy?”

“Yes, the goddam candy! I used my own money and bought a five pound bag of Jolly Ranchers for my office, and put them in this jar.”

“I don’t—what’s the problem? It seems full to me.”

“Are you fucking blind, Johnny Utah? Everybody knows that I only like three flavors, so I picked those out and put them in this jar here. Then, out of the goodness of my heart, I put the Grape and Blue Raspberry back into the bag and put that bag out in the lounge so that everyone else could have them. But you’ll notice that, somehow, this jar now contains only Grape and Blue Raspberry. Some soulless jerkwad raped my Jolly Rancher Jar!”

“And you think they put the Cherry and Apple and Watermelon back in the bag and took it out into the lounge?”

“Well, probably—wait a minute. Wait a goddam minute. How could you know that the ones they stole were Cherry, Apple, and Watermelon?”

“It’s pretty obvious. There are only five flavors to begin with, and—“

“You couldn’t, that is, unless YOU were the one who STOLE THEM!”

“What? Me? This is ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous? You steal MY candy and call ME ridiculous? I’ll have your goddam head for this!”

“I think I’m going to leave now.”

“Go ahead! Leave, you thieving communist! Run to Chicago. You can’t hide from me! I WILL find you! Justice will be done!”

“I’m out of here. You’re insane.”

“I Will Have My Retribution! A Pox Upon YOU! BLOOD! BLOOD! I WILL HAVE IT! I WILL HAVE IT!!!!”

“…”

“Alrighty then. I'd say that went pretty well.”

Symposium Piece

Here's my piece on the Joys O' the Journal, over at De Novo.

Serious Exam Taking

Hadn't heard this before: Seems that one of my fellow students actually brings his own lamp to exams.

I've heard of people bringing back pillows, and I never take an exam without my foot massager, but a lamp, that was news to me.

Monday Morning

Things:

1. Over at De Novo, the "Why Law Review?" Symposium is under way. I should have something up over there by Wednesday.

2. Our write-on meeting is tomorrow at 4:30 in the Auditorium. If you're a 1L, I'll be coming to your section tommorrow, and may or may not be wearing something suggestive. I suggest you attend.

3. Everyone is making a big deal about this Scalia's wife thing. But I pulled the same stunt when I saw Justice Souter. He was talking about Lopez at the time, and he was downplaying the distinction between guns that have or haven't travelled in interstate commerce, and I was all "Does your wife travel in interstate commerce?"
And nobody made a big deal about that. I don't get it.

In Honor of My Corporations Class Being Finished, 10 Phrases that Would Be Better Than "Piercing the Corporate Veil" if Someone Were to Let Me Start Renaming Important Legal Terms.

1. Puncturing the Corporate Lung.
2. Lancing the Corporate Boil.
3. Skewering the Corporate Poodle.
4. Stabbing the Corporate P.E. Teacher in the Eye.
5. Poking the Corporate Badger With the Corporate Spoon.
6. Disregarding the Corporate Entity and Going Directly After Stockholders.
7. Punching the Corporate Clown in the Nuts.
8. Sleeping with your sister.
9. Pulling Back the Corporate Curtain, Only to Discover Your Girlfriend Making Out With Your Roommate.
10. Piercing the Corporate Whale. Eww.   

More FanMail

Dear Wings & Vodka,

That last post was kind of a stupid idea. It looks like you were fishing for compliments.

Also: Quit screwing around and go to class. .

Yours,

Wings & Vodka

FanMail

Dear Wings&Vodka,

You should probably  stop blogging for awhile. Maybe wait until you're in actual practice. Nobody wants to hear the EIC of the law review complain about how unfair law school is.

Sincerely,

Several Readers

Dear Several Readers,

Saying that the EIC of the law review can't complain about law school is like saying that a married guy can't complain about not getting chicks. But thanks for the advice.

Yours,

Mike

Free Drinks. Lots of them.

Show up at RedRum on Monday the 11th by 8 p.m., and I'll buy you all you can drink in ninety minutes.  My brother's band, Peyton Gin, is opening their first show, and the more bodies there the better the chance they'll get to play again. They're a metal band, but even if you're not into the metal scene, you'll watch them and go "Man...that drummer is badass. He must have a really hot brother."

So show up by  8 p.m., find me at the bar, do like a billion shots, and then after their show is over, we can all leave and drink elsewhere.  RedRum is conveniently located upstairs from Coyote Ugly, so maybe we can go down there and watch some semi-hot chicks dance on a bar. If not, we can go somewhere else and you can watch a semi-hot me dance on a bar.  It's really a no-lose situation.

But show up. For free drinks. Free. Drinks. And make sure you say loudly things like "I'm here just to see Peyton Gin" and "I'd come here a lot more if they had Peyton Gin on more."

Bonus For 1L's: Show up, drink on me for free, leave your e-mail address with me, and I'll give you outlines for every class you'd ever take ever. Ever.

I'd Rather be Blogging

But instead I'll be failing my Corporations final.  I'm considering an attempt at stealing the answer key. I swear I'd only use it to get myself a B. Okay maybe a B+.

Sigh. I'll just have to hide the answers in my head instead.

Whoah.

Tonight I was invited to the meeting of an informal study group for a class in which I have a final on Friday.  I hadn't yet had a chance to study for the class on my own, so I was a bit tentative about going, but I went anyway, unprepared as I was.

Frightening.

It was sort of like that scene in James Bond flicks where Q shows him all of the sweet gadgets and they're surrounded by agents engaged in top-secret training exercises.

There were guys handing out packets of classnotes, flowcharts, and sample exams.  People recreating key lectures on the whiteboard, and fielding questions from the audience. A few girls were even using homemade multiple-choice questions to run a Jeopardy!-style quiz game, complete with buzzers and theme music. Secretaries were running all over the place, refilling coffee and replenishing highlighter supplies; a team of paralegals sifted through boxes of law review articles searching for answers; C-SPAN was there; tech guys hired just for the occasion sat at a workstation, crunching data from old exams. And there I was, feeling like a guy who hadn't studied all semester, because I was, in fact, a guy who hadn't studied all semester.

So, I'm going to get to work on that. They promised me that if I can make a meaningful contribution tommorrow, they might let me have a DVD copy of the interactive group outline.

* * *

"I don't see why some of these guys couldn't be on the Court longer. Oliver Wendell Holmes was around until he was like two hundred."

"Yeah. And he was a tough old bastard. He'd been shot a bunch of times."

"Really?"

"Yeah. In the Civil War. He got shot like three times. Died with a bullet in him. He's totally the Tupac of the Supreme Court."

Back from the Conference

When I told people I was going to a conference of editors-in-chief of the top law reviews, most thought it would just be a bunch of people sitting around giggling about em-dashes.

But they were wrong.

It was a bunch of people sitting around giggling about italicized periods.

But it was a good time. We all got special tattoos and perfected a secret handshake that, though I cannot describe it in full, does involve a fairly complicated mime of pulling the 483 U.S. reporter off of the shelf only to find that you actually meant to pull the 482 U.S. reporter off of the shelf. To follow up on February's Joint Statement on Article Length , we drafted a Joint Statement on Non-Breaking Spaces as well as a Joint Statement on the Forthcoming Nine-Inch Nails Album, Which Should be Really Good.

All in all, it was an amazing educational experience, and I apologize for not liveblogging the whole thing. But I think you'll all be happy/astounded to know that even though roughly thirty of the highest-powered law nerds in the country were sitting around a table for twelve hours of discussion, not a single one of them had a laptop open. Incredible.

April Fools' Joke Suggestion for Professors

Spend a semester talking about all of the nuances and grey areas of the law, really digging deep into the issues and encouraging your students to think carefully about this stuff. Get them to be able to make cogent arguments from both sides, and to really defend their positions eloquently. Show them that the majesty of the law is in being able to advocate on paper, being able to use your talents as a thinker and writer to persuade your audience and explain your careful analysis.

Then give a 50-question multiple-choice exam.

It's not a defect. It's a feature.

As you might expect of someone who's been within three spots of making People's 50 Most Beautiful People list the last three years in a row, there is a considerable amount of mythology built up around Me. Yes, I dated Gwyneth Paltrow for three months  in 1998 without knowing who she was. Yes, I played most of the guitar tracks on Pavement's Wowee Zowee. And, yes, I was solely responsible for the invention of the Coca-Cola FridgePack. (You can thank me later.)

But, well-traveled and mind-bendingly talented as I am, I must admit that, contrary to popular belief, I have never, in my life, at any time, been an NCAA place kicker. Ever.

Allow me to explain:

At UT Law, there is a third-year student who WAS an NCAA place kicker, and did, to the best of my knowledge, also perform kicking duties for a semi-pro football team. He also plays quite a bit of basketball around campus, and, from what I hear, is an all-around accomplished athlete.

But, for whatever reason, I am frequently mistaken for him.  It happened twice just tonight. I'll be minding my own business, and people will say things like "Hey, I heard that you destroyed our basketball team the other night" or "How do you find the time to play football and keep up with all of your other extracurriculars?"

Now, I'll not plead total ignorance. We have in common a few striking features.  The rock-hard abs, for one. Winning smiles, for another.  But it is entirely unfair that his achievements on the athletic field have been, at least by some misinformed folks, attributed to me.  (Likewise, I'd hate to think that he gets stopped in the hall and yelled at for not posting to his blog enough, or for writing a musical that was entirely too long. )   It sounds as if in some cases, our impressive bios have even been merged, so that one superhuman individual is racking up these athletic accomplishments AND overextending himself into every other conceivable extracurricular actvity.

Don't get me wrong--I'm all about taking credit for other people's accomplishments. But this is a little too much. I need to set stuff straight before Barbara Walters comes knocking, only to find out that the story is a fake., because I don't think I could stand to see Barbara cry.

So, yeah. He's the placekicker. I'm the poet. Hope that clears stuff up.