the write-on

i'm back! sort of...

2008-07-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

The Write-On has served me well these past 4ish years. But it's time for a reboot...

Now I'm HERE.

voyage of the yawn treader

2008-05-19T18:59:00.000-07:00

I managed to get out and see Prince Caspian this weekend. I enjoyed it.

After spending nearly four hours at a very strange memorial service/funeral type thing, which took place outside in the respectable heat of Modjeska Canyon, replete with hot rods and coolers that runneth over with Bud Light, it was very nice to sit in a dark and air-conditioned structure for another almost four hours and turn my brain off.

And I thought highly of it. Until the next afternoon - which is about how long it took for my brain to turn back on.

I will say this: It is an enjoyable movie. And I might even venture to say that it was worth the price of a couple gallons of gas or so. But I do not expect it will appease the ravenous critical faculties of the average reader of The Write-On.

I haven't read The Chronicles in roughly twenty-or-so years, so I can't speak as to its adherence to the source material. Much has been said of the "kissing scene" that was, apparently, added in. I am not sure this awkward peck exchange and even more awkward hug-thing qualfies as a "kissing scene". Honestly, there was more sexual tension in Finding Nemo.

But here is what I found the most puzzling: Peter and Caspian spend the first half of the movie hacking and slashing their way through hordes of armored extras. Then, after Peter bests King Pointybeard in one-on-one swordness, both Peter and Caspian suddenly find themselves too moral and ethical to kill the guy. Oh no. We are not like that. We don't just kill people. No No. We are unreproachable king-type people. So, after opting not to kill this one guy, the battles resume, and what-do-you-know? Peter and Caspian are back at it - killin' dudes and amassing a body count that would warrant an approving nod from Gimli himself.

And I don't remember The Chronicles being little more than a kid-friendly version of Lord of The Rings, but this seems to be the fate to which it has been reduced by the magick of Hollywood - a Return of the King for the Hannah Montana crowd.

That being said, I guess I recommend it. Assuming, of course, that you've already seen Iron Man.

i used to like al gore...

2008-05-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

As of today, I'm pretty sure he's either a loon or a shamelessly self-promoting idiot.

(But I'm still proud to say that I didn't vote for the other guy.)

i'm kinda like w.e.b. du bois, meets heavy d and the boyz

2008-05-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting experience in court a couple of weeks ago. While sitting in the gallery waiting for my case to be called, my mind was wandering to and fro amongst a variety of important topics. Particularly, I was trying to remember the name of that giant Transformer that turned into a planet, and I kept thinking that his name was Mogo - but no - that's the Green Lantern that's a living planet - oh wait, it's Unicron. Yes, Unicron. He was in the original Transformers movie - the cartoon - and he was voiced by none other than film legend Orson Wells.

That's pretty sad, really. The guy starts out his career by creating what is widely regarded to be the finest film of all time, and concludes his career by voicing an ill-tempered, planet-devouring robot that transforms into, oddly enough, a planet.

Anyway, that's the sort of thing that was occupying my mind as I waited my turn to go up in front of a Superior Court judge and smarmily represent my client. And then it occurred to me: This particular courtroom looks familiar... the judge looks familiar...

Oh snap! This is the exact courtroom and the exact judge wherein/before whom I had my first ever court appearance almost two years ago! I was struck by the contrast in my demeanor. Lo those two years ago, I was frantically nervous. Sweating, stuttering, flushed - we actually got called into chambers and I thought that I might actually pass out 'n die - - after having been sworn-in for roughly a week. It didn't go what I would call well, and I wrote about it here.

And now, only two years later, I'm slouched in my chair in the gallery, engaging in a spirited inner-monologue on the nature of fictional living planets. Wholly unphased by the prospect of going in front of the judge. Oh yes. How great I art. Maybe the smoothest, ballerest lawyer who has ever lived.

But alas, pride goeth, and all of that.

My next court appearance, I find myself in front of the judge, part of a cadre of lawyers making an appearance at a status conference for a case with a whole buncha parties. The judge has decided to set a date for a mandatory court-supervised mediation. He lists a series of dates, and goes down the line of attorneys, asking us if we will be able to attend on any of those dates.

"Any of those dates will be fine, Your Honor." "We can attend any of those dates." "Any of those dates will work for us."

And it gets to me. And my brain is thinking something to the effect of "All of those dates are good for my clients, Your Honor." But that is not what came out of my mouth. So what did come out of this mouth - a mouth trained by three years of law school, one year of bar studying, and two years of practice? Sigh...

"It's all good."

The other attorneys snap their necks to look over at me. The judge was stunned - mouth agape, peering over his glasses in much the same manner as my bespectacled father when someone says something really brainless.

"It's all... good, counsel?"

"Ahhh, by that I, ahhh... those dates are all good. For my client. Your Honor."

"It's all good. Hmm... I like that."

In case you aren't privy to such things, let me be the first to tell you that a court of law is not really the best place for outmoded urban slang. It is not the place for phrases like word or 'sup or twenty inch blades on the Impala, and certainly not it's all good.

I think this might be the second-most embarrassing thing to ever happen to me in court. Ranking in at Number 1 would have to be Ol' Judge Hatehoov, telling me to go the back of the courtroom, like an irate mother, sending a child to its room.

"Just... go. Go to the back. Sit down. We'll deal with you later."

Which was completely uncalled for, seeing as how I hadn't even quoted any M.C. Hammer lyrics. Clearly, I had not prayed just to make it that day.

an observation

2008-04-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

For every song about the excitement and wonder of moving to the Big City, there's a song about someone equally excited to be moving out of it.

because you can only post about law and batman so many times...

2008-04-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

After months of cajoling, I have finally convinced Hawkgirl to contribute a guest post. As a Language Arts teacher at an inner-city middle-school, she has no shortage of outlandish adolescent anecdotes. But unlike me, she doesn't desperately crave the attention of strangers. But when I heard that she was having her students write children's stories... well, that's blogging gold right there. And thus, the first ever 3F/Write-On guest post was born...

"Once upon time there was a lady named Ashley. she got pregnant wit a kid she named it kaeyden. Of course it was a boy."

Thus begins a heart-warming fairytale (aptly titled, "The Pregnant Lady") by one of my sixth graders. It's our end-of-year project, and I’ve gotta tell you that I'm a little bit worried at the end of our first workday.

I'm not sure where I went wrong; it all seemed fairly straightforward to me. Each student is to write a five-page children's story. It must include basic plot elements, dialogue and characterization. Then, during the last week of school, we will be walking to a neighboring elementary school to read to first-graders.

This will be my third year doing this project, and I optimistically believed that I had finally worked out all the kinks. So we painstakingly reviewed the rubric, which details my expectations for their end product. The additional creative limitations are few, and as follows:

a) No cussing. No, not even if you use asterisks for the middle letters. Yes, BS counts as a cussword.

b) No sex, no drugs. OK, seriously? Should I have to clarify this? It's a CHILDREN'S story. Inevitably there is also whispering about the fact that I just said "sex".

c) Do not use the names of your classmates in the story. Especially if you hate them, especially if that character dies at the end. Which brings me to my final rule;

d) No violence. At which point lots of hands always go up. "Does gang violence count?" "What about horror stories?" and "Can my story be about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, if I leave out the bad parts?"

And so on, and so forth. Finally I remind them that there will BE no field trip if they do not get their books done. I try not to let on that this prospect cheers me. So let the writing begin. Laptops are distributed with no major fiascos. About fifteen minutes later I approach Kevin (not his real name—see rule c). Kevin jumps as I lean in and speak:

"I'm pulling for the Spurs." I point to his ESPN brackets. Then I give him my most ferocious teacher look. "I couldn't find Microsoft Word," he says. He seems to think this is a viable excuse for being on the internet, but I disagree.

"I have writer's block?" He tries again, hopefully. I suggest that he get to work, lest I show him writer's block. He takes this as a threat, and asks if I will put him in touch with Hoov, Esq. so that they can sue me.

"Hey, there you go—a story plot." And on I go, to encourage and inspire the next young author.

Many kids just need help with spelling. Because sometimes spell-check just doesn't cut it, like when you spell "turtle" t-i-r-t-l-e. As in, "Mr. Atum the Tirtle."

"How do you spell 'samurai'?" one girl asks.

"How do you spell onomatopoeia Mesopotamia?" another counters. And a game begins in my Honors class. A game called Who Can Think of The Biggest Word that I Would Never Use in My Story?

"How do you spell," (pause... wait for it...) "antidisestablishmentarianism?"

"Isn't your story about leprechauns?" I ask.

"No. Now it's about these rappers who have a dance-off." I peer over his shoulder and glimpse the title. Soulja Boy v. The Get Krunk Sisters.

So, that was the first day. There were also lots of really great work samples and evidence of student growth, but that's way less entertaining. Surely, SURELY, they are learning SOMETHING from this.

And that's what gets me up in the morning, really. Knowing that I'm making a difference in the lives of children, and that if I don't show up the world may never find out what happened to the Pregnant Lady and her boy named kaeyden.

mk v. dc = awsm

2008-04-19T19:00:00.000-07:00

I've always strongly believed that Batman could take Robin Hood, but Sub-Zero? Quite the conundrum for my inner 14-year old.

Addendum: After extensive rumination and analysis, I believe that I can effectively evaluate the outcome of an altercation between the Caped Crusader and Frosty the Ninjaman. As with any true scientific analysis, I would like to submit this exposition to peer review. Mr. Horn, a foremost MK expert, I hope will inspect my findings as regards Sub-Zero. Mr. Taylor whose knowledge of things DC trumps my own (I'm something of a Marvel guy) will hopefully approve of my Batman approach.

The neophyte may be tempted towards an over-simplistic approach: Sub-Zero has super powers whereas Batman does not. Let us not be so hasty. I am not inclined to qualify Sub-Zero as "super-human". His signature ice blast maneuver I believe qualifies him as a "metahuman" (in DC parlance), but I believe nothing more. Batman routinely dispatches of metahumans, as well as super-humans, and anyone who can claim a few rounds over Supes deserves a fair shake in any hypothetical duel.

The primary obstacle to this analysis is the stark variations in the narrative arch of their respective combat patterns. By this I mean thus: Subway deals with his opponents in the span of 15-40 seconds, whereas Batsy might enjoy a more contemplative 4-6 issues. In fighting games such as MK, you've either definitively won or lost after best 2 out of 3 rounds. In comic books, there is a rigorous convention dictating against this sort of thing. The hero commonly goes up against the bad guy, loses, retreats to figure out Plan B, and then triumphs. This is nothing against Batman's combative abilities; it is merely the stricture of his media. So I will account for this as best I can.

I would have to say Round 1 to Sub-Zero. Batman is an expert hand-to-hand fighter, but let's face it - it's not his bread and butter. He's a detective. He's at his best thinking his way out of problems, not slugging them out. However, on a 1 to 10 scale of hand-to-hand combat, Bats is probably a 7.5. However, Sub-Zero is at least 8.5 - maybe 9. So he may get the jump on Batman.

You may be tempted to say that Sub-Zero would certainly get the best of him because of his ice blasts. Batman would be ill-equipped to deal with this, you might say. But, you would be forgetting one of Batman's long-time canonical villain... Mr. Freeze. Ice-based attacks and their ilk are nothing new to Batman. I would venture to argue that he can deal. I don't think he would win the fight, but I'm sure he would escape to fight another day - in the classic comic book style.

So how would he follow up? I believe he would rely on the classic billionaire vigilante solution: rig up some manner of mechanized armor. Batman did it in The Dark Knight Returns (I think... or maybe that was in The Dark Knight Strikes Back... it's been awhile), and even more fabulously, Tony Stark did it in World War Hulk. Hulkbuster armor... 'nuf said. Anyway, Sub-Zero may be a crafty and cunning ninja metahuman, but Bats is freaky smart. He'll throw together some manner of cold-resistant mechanized enhancement, track Sub-Zizzle down using his peerless detective skills, and dispatch him with all due haste.

I doubt all of that will make it into the video game.

And don't even get me started on Yoda and Vader showing up in Soul Calibur IV...

exhibit 937

2008-04-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

One of the most frustrating things about practicing law is the industry's stubborn embrace of Windows. PC-only legal programs are legion, and I wish to Jobs that I were exaggerating when I say that they all kinda look like DOS Shell. I will conceded that they are powerful programs, but you don't get any credit for dropping a Ferrari engine into an Edsel.

Today, as I was hand-cranking my way through one of these programs, I stepped away from my desk. When I returned, I found that Windows had decided that it needed to install some updates, and then restart my computer. It decided this without any regard for what programs I might have open or what unsaved data I might be working with. I returned to find my data replaced by an empty desktop and a chipper little dialog box, explaining that updates had been installed.

And people sometimes think I'm ridiculous because maybe I want to use an operating system that doesn't do stuff like that.

green

2008-04-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

i wouldn't hold out much hope for the credence

2008-03-31T21:52:00.000-07:00

I am prepared to say that the internet ruined April Fool's. It used to be a respectably sublime holiday. During the era of my youth, Martha celebrated this sacred day by bounding into my bedchamber and proclaiming that school had been canceled - a snow day.

If you're familiar with my town of origin - a South Plains Krypton, if you will - then you will know this to not be completely out of the question. I recall that it snowed in late May my freshman year of college. So to propose a mid-Spring nor'easter to a bleary-eyed 1st-12th grader is... well, it's brilliant, really.

And I used to get into it with my blog. Back in the old blog days I would post stuff like this:

My new Dell laptop!
And that would be like, kinda funny, because all y'alls know my visceral hatred of all things PC. And of course, even you PC fans know that a new Dell laptop isn't nearly that sophisticated.

But that just seems played out the last couple of years, what with so many websites doing various trickeries and chicaneries. I mean, even internet demigod Ryan North sold out and pulled some kind of switcheroo. So instead of being able to read today's Dinosaur Comics, I have to read some other webcomic boasting all the nuanced humor of a Laffy Taffy wrapper.

Shame on you Ryan. I expected better from someone I'm stalking via Twitter. Seriously though, Twitter is rad... maybe. My primary defense of Twitter is thus: The guy who invented Twitter is the same guy that invented blogging/Blogger. Therefore, it simply must possess some sliver of latent magicks, glowing as a beacon from within its arguably pointless bosom.

And while I'm enjoying it - the magic bosom theory has yet to congeal. At this point, it's mostly R7 and me exchanging Big Lebowski references, Hawkgirl making the occasional retort to humor me, and Elise, who I think gave up already. But I think I will persevere for now, if for no other reason than I get to use Red Hulk as my profile picture.

So if you're on Twitter and you'd like to join our little internet commune of what-have-you, let me know and we'll give you further instructions. The royal we. You know, the editorial?

round we go

2008-03-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

It's the middle of the work day, and yet I find that I must stop the billable hour clock and sing unto you the song of my dismay.

Phase 1: "Hoovesq! Give us a list of cases that say [legalese] so that we may put it in our motion."

So I do the research and provide the requested list of cases that plainly say [legalese].

Phase 2: "Hoovesq! This is just a list of cases! We need a memo! With full citations and case briefings and analysis!"

Ugh. Ok. Research research. Typety typety. Here you go. A memo.

Phase 3: Hoovesq! This memo is good, but what we really need is a list of cases for our motion. Can you pull a list of cases from your memo?"

Please tell me you're joking. You're not joking, are you?

Sigh. Yeah, I'll get right on that. Would you like a memo while I'm at it?

exuberance related to the fulfillment of childhood wonder

2008-03-24T13:31:00.000-07:00

OMG! Snake Eyes from the new G.I. Joe movie! I had no desire to see it until this moment! He looks rad, no?!?

luck o' the texan

2008-03-17T23:29:00.000-07:00

We need to touch base on a few matters of importance

I have two things to confess. First of all, I think Gilmore Girls is completely obnoxious and utterly bereft of any entertainment value. It's like That's so Raven but longer and less creative. Secondly, I really cannot even pretend to know how to act like I even remotely care about St. Patrick's Day.

In part because I'm not all that Irish. At least no more or less so than every other generic white guy. And also in part because recreational binge drinking is not something that I endorse. Not out of sanctimony, but because of my ADHD - I can't bring myself to do anything that many times in a row.

Something rather anomalous happened today. There was a certain gentlemen who was suing a certain client of ours. I did my thing, filing the appropriate paperwork to explain to the court why this particular case = bogus. It worked, and the judge dismissed the case.

So this guy - this guy - calls me up, and says to me (this guy!) "now that the case has been dismissed, maybe we can talk about settlement".

Settlement? Settlement of what, exactly? You sued us, your case got thrown-out like a cheap lawyer from a Mexican restaurant, and now you want us to give you teh moneyz? Now you guys all know that I have a penchant for a good bit of extortion, but this was just amateur hour.

Ok, gotta go. Hawkgirl is in town. She won a trip to SoCal for being the most active commenter. It could have been you...

most hated by the haters

2008-03-13T15:14:00.000-07:00

I have often said that when it comes to being an attorney, I love 25% of it, hate 25% of it, and feel indifferent to the other 50%. I consider myself lucky, as I conjecture that many people cannot claim to not hate 75% of their job.

In one of my cases, the other side failed to respond to discovery. So I filed a Motion to Compel - a standard litigation procedure. Today, the opposing counsel got the mail service copy and called my office. He yelled, cursed at me, insulted my age and inexperience, accused me of extortion and perjury and told me that if I don't withdraw the motion, he'll seek sanctions. Then he wrote a letter to my supervising partner saying much the same.

I'm still trying to decide what percentage bracket all of this falls into.

in all fairness

2008-03-08T11:52:00.001-08:00

I received yet another email from Southwest Airlines this morning. It confirmed my suspicions. Some excerpts:

The FAA penalty is related to one of many routine inspections on our aircraft fleet involving an extremely small area in one of the many overlapping inspections. These inspections were designed to detect early signs of skin cracking.

Southwest Airlines discovered the missed inspection area, disclosed it to the FAA, and promptly reinspected all potentially affected aircraft in March 2007. The FAA approved our actions and considered the matter closed as of April 2007. (emphasis added)

Also of note:

The Boeing Company has stated its support of Southwest's aggressive compliance plan. Southwest acted responsibly and the safety of the fleet was not compromised, Boeing said.

Former National Transportation Safety Board Inspector-in-Charge Greg Feith said after a review of the available data and information that it’s apparent that there was no risk to the flying public in March 2007...

My guess? CNN was a year late to the dance on this, but smelled blood in the water nonetheless. From reading the CNN article, you'd think the planes were held together by duct tape and chewing gum. This is the kind of reactionary sensationalism I expect from Fox News. But it's nice to know that CNN is taking its cues from The Onion.

Read more about SWA's response.

it doesn't take a marketing degree

2008-03-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's headline on CNN.com:

"Southwest Airlines flew unsafe planes"
Email I got from Southwest Airlines this morning:

Am I the only one who thinks that the Southwest marketing department is either woefully under-informed or has a very sick sense of humor?

'cause when you get uptight it's such a drag

2008-03-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

It's like I once told Hawkgirl - I believe that a good writer can write about anything. I also believe this to be true of the writer of humor, who being abstractly "good enough", should be able to write about anything and somehow generate the yuks. I realize this is a theoretical theory that is more along the lines of banal pep-talk pseudowisdom of the kind usually found on inspirational day calendars and may not at all represent any empirical fact about the nature of writing.

Frinstance, I have not yet emptied my Kleenex-overflown trashcan since recovering from my particularly virulent Midwestern strain of the flu. That is gross and I could not write anything funny about that. Nor can I seem to formulate any humorous musings about getting thrown out of a restaurant such that I could wrap it all up nicely and say, "Haha hee ho, that's how I got kicked out of a restaurant now leave me a comment."

But I feel like I should recount these happenings if for nothing else than a public service announcement. Perhaps someday my beloved Chef BoyarFleeg will be running a restaurant and if he treats people like my posse was treated, I'll make him eat his chef's hat. And yeah, I'm pretty sure they actually wear those things - just like in cartoons.

The scene: Swanky new Mexican food restaurant in Newport Coast. Yeah, that's an actual town. Not many people outside of the OC seem to know about it. It's basically a nicer version of Newport Beach. The locals want the tourists and 909'ers to descend on Newport Beach thinking it's the cats pajamas while they sit around in Newport Coast luxury complimenting each other on how rich they are. You are so much richer than I am. No no - you're richer. This actually happens.

Now let me say that I am much like a sore thumb in the way that I stick out in these surroundings. The bus boys turn up their noses at me. I am but a simple man. I go to work, come back from work, talk to my girlfriend on the phone and go to bed. I don't hob knob, glad hand or shuck and jive. So whereas some people would get thrown out of a restaurant exclaiming, "you'll regret this!", they won't regret throwing me out. I am just a dude.

However, that cannot be said of my client's father, whose birthday we were attempting to celebrate. He is not just a dude. He like, owns airports. I didn't even know that airports were something that could be owned. I knew that you could own railroads and water companies - anybody worth their hotels on Baltic knows that. But airports? Does that include the planes? And for you A.R. fans, does it include the stair car?

Well, I guess I should say that I wasn't actually invited to the birthday thing. That's sorta where problems arose. My client, who works in the same building and is roughly my age, had a great idea. Birthday dinner was to be at 7pm at swanky new Mexican restaurant. But they don't take reservations and the place is crazy busy on Friday nights, usually sporting an hour-plus wait. I had a phone date at 7:30pm, so we would go after work, hang out, eat chips at the bar, wait for a table, and then when the Birthday entourage arrived at 7, I would split and head back up the coast for telephonic super-romancin'.

So we wait for about an hour, get a table at 6:15, and I decided that I'm going to proceed with ordering an entree so that I'm not passing out from hunger on my phone date. I finish my entree and pay so that the birthday tab doesn't include my seafood chimichanga. My client asks the server to bring some new place settings for the birthday entourage, who have just called to say they are on their way. And now we have problems:

"I'm sorry. You have to leave."

"Leave? Why?"

"You paid out. You're done. People are waiting."

"No - he paid out because he has to leave. We're here for a birthday dinner, and more people are on the way and they plan on eating."

"No. You have to leave. People are waiting."

"Yeah. We know. Because WE waited. For an hour. To get this table for a birthday dinner that hasn't happened yet."

"I'll get the manager."

Exit server. Enter "General Manager".

"You have to leave."

"I think there's a misunderstanding. We told the guy up front that we're here for a birthday dinner at 7, and that we were waiting for more people. They're almost here, so we'd like to stay and have that birthday dinner."

"You paid out. You have to leave."

"No. HE paid out. He is leaving. The birthday dinner - our expressed reason for being here - has not happened yet."

"You have to leave."

"...is this a joke? Are you actually trying to throw me out of the restaurant?"

"You need to leave. People are waiting."

At this point my client's father shows up. Turns out that he'd been there for ten minutes, but because he is who he is, he had to stop at every third table and shake hands with friends and colleagues. So imagine their surprise when 5 minutes later, he's walking back, only escorted by the largest waiters the "General Manager" could round up.

I could not believe it. Tossed out on our ears like common thugs. Like vagabonds and street urchins. Like IHOP drunks at 2am. This isn't Denny's... in Westminster. No, this is Javier's Cantina. Where I paid twenty dollars for a seafood chimichanga that tasted like a Taco Bell combo meal. I'm surprised they didn't bring me out a Pepsi in a giant plastic cup.

Notwithstanding their less-than-stellar customer service - the food was crappy. Bland and flavorless. I get better tasting Mexican food at the Super-Mex in Fountain Valley (the one in the shopping center next to T.J. Maxx).

Now look - I am no expert on restaurant management. And I understand that this so-called "General Manager" was put in a tricky position: People are out front wanting tables, and these guys have eaten and should move on. However, I am a litigator. Which means that while I may be clueless about everything else in life, I am nonetheless an expert on interpersonal conflict. People get in fights, so they come to a lawyer so that he can resolve their fights by fighting with other lawyers. And if you're me, you get to fight with judges too. So I fight all day long. And believe me - there's an art to it.

But I don't think it takes an expert in anything to recognize that maybe you shouldn't verbally pimp slap people who have just given you money and who express a desire to give you more money.

That's how I got kicked out of a restaurant now leave me a comment.

it's the ricola talking

2008-02-21T20:05:00.000-08:00

Greetings, my lovelies. I am currently fighting the flu, although for the moment in seems to be winning. I took yesterday off from work, and it looks as though I will be doing the same today. I spoke to one of my clients on the phone last night, and he expressed his concern for my well-being:

"You should stay home again tomorrow. Take care of yourself. Get better."

Awww...

"Because the last thing I need is for you to get all of my lawyers sick. I'd be out on the street."

Thanks. That's touching, really. But I guess the customer is always right. I also may have neglected to tell him that the work I had planned on doing was sending out discovery for one of his cases. But, lawyer heal thyself, as they say.

You'll also be happy to know that I've had a few run-ins with hostile judges as of late. Nothing on par with my struggle against the forces of Judge Hatehoov, a conflict so epic it is destined to be passed down the generations in epic verse, accompanied by lute and lyre. But enough to pass the time in the midst of voluminous document review.

By the way: Document Review. It is truly awful, oui? I'm trying to think how to analogize document review for other professions. If I were a doctor, and someone were to say unto me, "Dr. Hoov, we've got a few hundred dead bodies over in that closet, and we're going to need you to rummage through their intestines to determine how they died." That would be like document review.

So I will glady put aside my intestine-rummaging to get yelled at by a judge any ol' day of the week. This time around, the judge thinks I'm engaging in "delay tactics". Now, assuming that I have a few readers out there who are still human and not lawyers, let me explain "delay tactics".

The other side keeps filing deficient pleadings. So we object to them with the appropriate apparatus, be it a motion to strike or a demurrer or what have you. And the stuff they're doing wrong isn't just nit-picky technical stuff. It's um, kinda serious. Ok, not really. It's nit-picky. But still! I didn't write the laws saying how you have to do this stuff, and I didn't write the laws saying you can challenge pleadings when they don't do this stuff right, mmkay? I am but a man among men. I won't say I'm a hero, 'cause what's as hero? Maybe I'm just the man for my time and place.

Also, these guys are filing form complaints. Complaints. That are on a form. You open it up in Adobe Reader and you check the boxes and fill in the blanks. And these people can't properly file a form complaint. Should my client be prejudiced because Goofus, Esq. can't fill out a form?

So, they file their little "document", we look over it, do some legal CSI to figure out what's wrong with it, and then point it out to the court. This has happened 3 times. And somehow, the judge keeps reading me the riot act because of my "delay tactics" over "silly issues". Don't yell at me - this guy's been practicing law since the Magna Carta - you think he could fill out a form.

So that's been fun. And now I have the flu. Which Hawkgirl gave me.

"Happy Valentine's Day," I said. "I have flown 1300 miles to see you. And here is a present, which I crafted for you with my own two hands."

"And here is a virus." she said. "And a raspberry ganache!"

Actually, in retrospect, that does seem like a pretty decent trade. The ganache was ganawesome. I may have eaten about a third of it for breakfast one morning. I also may have attributed the sudden ganache diminution to her roommate. I can neither confirm nor deny.

Sadly, thanks to the magic of the internet, I am not spared my innards review merely because I am steeped in disease. I use a thoroughly mediocre program called Citrix to access the document database at the San Fran office. All of the PC'ified lawyers think this method is the bleeding edge of technology, as though by logging-in remotely to Windows NT we were skirting dangerously close to the The Singularity.

But I know better. Citrix is on par with Apple's Remote Desktop... from 8 years ago. This must be how Daniel felt.

since you were probably wondering...

2008-02-05T12:11:00.001-08:00

... I thought it was fantastic.

let there be light

2008-02-03T22:49:00.000-08:00

It seems that there are a lot of lawyers who read this blog - probably almost as many lawyers as humans. And as many of you could no doubt testify under penalty of perjury, strange things happen in a law office after working hours. Namely, work seems to get done.

I don't know what it is about the nature of the law office that normal business hours are the least conducive time to getting anything done. Is this true of other professions? What is the point of having an office? I have a place where I sit for 8 hours a day and don't get anything done. Every little boy's dream. I guess all the astronaut positions were taken. Actually, when I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be either a) a brain surgeon, or b) a Salvation Army Santa. I guess I thought this was something I could parlay into a full salaried position.

But, dreams die, and since telling my mother that I've shredded my Bar card and have taken up professional photography is not a call I would enjoy making any time soon, I press on and go to "work".

One night last week I stayed a bit later than usual. Well, actually to me, 8:40 pm is obscenely late. This is due to my deep-seeded laziness. But I don't want people to know that, so I just say it was "a bit later than usual". Don't tell anyone, mmkay? You're a pal.

I emerge from my office and walk down the hall towards one of the exits. And on the wall outside of the small conference room that we have appropriately named, "the small conference room", what horror doth befall my eyes:

No way. That's not a... Oh for the love of all that is holy it is...

It's a Kinkade.

I'm trying to accurately portray my reaction in cinematic terms. You remember when Luke finds out that Vader is his father? Or when Charlton Heston sees the Statue of Liberty? It was like that. Like a "no" sound - but drawn out. Like, Noooooooo... And then sobbing. But there was no Millennium Falcon waiting to rescue me. No robot to give me a new hand.

And no, the picture I posted is not the painting that mysterically appeared on our office walls after hours, but does it matter? There is a cottage, some rat-infested overgrowth, and smog. You know, Kinkade kinda stuff.

Let me just say that I am not here to comment on the artistic merit of Kinkade paintings. That would require there to be artistic merit to a Kinkade painting. Ok - that was a cheap shot. I'm sorry. Seriously though - I understand the inherently subjective nature of art. I recognize that a few art history and analysis courses in college does not qualify me to slam the work of a painter who just happens to be popular.

Personally, my theory is that if you can buy it at the mall, it's not art. But I also think that if it has a face - it's meat. Therefore fish is meat. But the Pope has yet to return my calls. And he won't add me as a friend on Facebook either.

Although I don't really understand why these things are popular. I blame the Christians. I mean, you don't have to watch CNN for too long to realize that everything else is our fault anyway. Somehow, back in time immemorial, these paintings gained a sort of quasi-Christian status. They were marketed to Christian bookstores, and since, as the axiom goes, a Protestant and his money are soon parted, they took off.

Revival ensued because middle-class white people all over America were getting closer to The Almighty through their paintings of cottages. Really, America? Really? It's a cottage.

But all that is beside the point. If you like Kinkades - go nuts! If Kinkades help you feel closer to God - um, great! But why is there one in my law office? Our decor is sparse. So sparse it makes minimalist look trashy. The walls are tastefully lined with black and white photographs taken by one of the partners. I know photography, and I find all of them to be pleasant, many of them to be good, and a few of them to be outstanding.

And then someone sneaks around after hours and mounts a Kinkade the size of a van mural.

Even one of our clients was upset by it and the fact that it occupied so much precious Southern California real estate. He mentioned it to one of the paralegals, with an ever-so-thinly veiled disgust. Her response? "My God... It's a Kinkade. The look on her face was like she'd just seen Haley's Comet fly into her house and fix itself a grilled cheese sandwich.

At that point, we knew we were defeated. Without the paralegals on our side, there was no hope. I think our only choice is to get some of those special glasses that you use for viewing eclipses. You know, because of the light! It's so real! For now I must defer my hope to the next great Renaissance - when everyone recognize the One True Art Form.

Pictures of flowers.

14 days...

2008-01-17T15:26:00.001-08:00

A rejected Wii Channel, from 2P Start.

a question for my esquire homies:

2008-01-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

Have you guys ever noticed how incompetent and/or shady lawyers always seem to use Courier font in their pleadings?

Seriously. It's gotten to the point where as soon as I see that Courier-ized Complaint/Answer land on my desk, my first thought is always: "Aw geez. This is going to be a circus."

attention california residents with whom I interact on a daily basis

2008-01-15T15:41:00.001-08:00

Yes, I am from Texas. And yes, I love Texas and all things Texan. But you keep asking me what I think about Tony Romo.

And I keep thinking, "the rib restaurant?"

I don't know anything about it, but it seems to have something to do with Jessica Simpson? Or something?

Jessica Simpson is every bit as irrelevant to me now as the day she first appeared on TRL. But I'm sure she's a nice girl and I wish her all the best. Whether it be making music that I do not listen to, having clear skin, or doing something that apparently relates to football.

Although I could seriously go for some ribs right now. But not from Tony Romo's.

oh come all ye faithful

2008-01-15T08:46:00.001-08:00

In accordance with the ancient calendar, Macworld 2008 starts today. If Steve descends from Mount Cupertino with sub-notebooks, as the prophets have foretold, I will be both joyful and triumphant.

let she who is without blog

2008-01-13T00:43:00.000-08:00

Non-bloggers are peculiar creatures, and my understanding of them is limited at best. No one knows this better than Elise, who recently ignited a firestorm by suggesting something to the effect of reproduction being largely overrated and those who have chosen to undertake the process might be so kind as to generally leave her alone. It would seem that people got mad about this. They got mad about it after they went out of the their way to find her blog, read one of longest posts I have ever seen in 5 years of blogging, and then call her to yell about it.

Who does that? Non-bloggers.

Hawkgirl is a non-blogger and has done a respectable job of taking things in stride. She proclaims fervent admiration for The Write-On, and if I should take an extended break between posts (of oh, say... 6 hours) she becomes manifestly disconcerted. I really do not understand this. As my girlfriend, she has the unenviable responsibility of maintaining a running dialogue with me through a variety of communicative media. And if you think this blog is full of nonsense - you just don't even know. This thing gets edited, people. The horrors of my unchecked ramblings are Legion, and she endures them daily.

So for some reason utterly beyond my comprehension, even after phone dates, text messages and email exchanges of oratories on David Lynch, the Green Lantern Corps, and why I will never again be buying light fixtures from Ikea because it took me twenty minutes and a screwdriver to change a friggin'. lightbulb. she checks my blog to see the same gibberish committed to the bosom of the internets.

Who does that? Non-bloggers.

And when the currents and tides of life catch me adrift into an unintended mini-hiatus, like the past week, she makes suggestions for possible posts topics. They were all good suggestions, but none of the really caught me, ya know? You bloggers do. I once got a great post about a free cheesecake. Such a minor thing, and yet it grabbed me somehow. It wrote itself - as good posts are wont to do. But one idea did emerge from the aether...

A post about my girlfriend's post suggestions:

Facebook. Actually a very good suggestion. The thesis was something to the effect of how we all openly mock the micro-societal conventions of Facebook, yet follow them religiously nonetheless. For example: There is this unwritten edict that you should not appear more than twice in a row on a person's wall. Three is pushing it, and is reserved for couple-type people and the closest of friends. Four in a row? Never shouldst thou.

That's a dumb rule. But yet this very evening, I checked out The Fleeg's wall to write something about Macworld and how I hope His Steveness brings forth sub-notebooks. But I had already posted three times in a row on his wall...

I checked myself lest I wreck myself. I then made the absurdly conscious decision to not post on the Facebook wall of a guy who's been one of my closest friends for 12 years. That sort of arbitrary and socially-reinforced behavior is doubleplus ungood.

And then there's the enigmatically deviant "poke" feature. You go to a friend's profile and click "poke". The next time that person gets on Facebook, some sort of thing will inform them that they have been "poked" by Whoever. "Poking" is reserved exclusively for flirting. One time a female friend of mine who happens to be engaged to marry a male other than myself signed up for Facebook. I got a notice that she had "poked" me.

My first thought? "Gasp! She's engaged!" Yeah, it was scandalous. Like a bad combination of Jane Austen and 8th grade study hall.

Guacamole. I was actually disturbed that she would suggest this. I tried to make guacamole for our New Year's Eve dinner with Carson Daly. I managed to stab myself in the hand. Hawkgirl seems to think this is something you would like to read about.

As an unrelated side note, should you ever have a chance to stab yourself in the hand with a knife you are currently using to chop serrano peppers, you should probably opt out.

Iceland. Umm... I want to go to Iceland?

Heima review. Umm... I want to go to Iceland?

The Nanny Diaries review. Yeah, so there's a nanny. And the guy from Fantastic Four. And her job is good... or bad... or something. And then there's a dog. And she yells at a teddy bear. Credits.

So I don't think that's exactly what Hawkgirl had in mind, but it was effective nonetheless. I just hope it doesn't get me in trouble. Sometimes people get offended when they're mentioned in blog posts. Usually non-bloggers. I happen to find it flattering when I get mentioned on a blog, even if the shout-out is snuggled warmly between a fitted sheet of sarcasm and a top sheet of tomfoolery.

I'm trying to coax her into doing a guest-post. Assuming of course that she doesn't leave me over this one.

syck

2008-01-06T18:54:00.001-08:00

In case you haven't heard, Microsoft has unveiled SYNC, an integrated vehicle computer system.

So I guess when your SYNC-equipped Ford vehicle stalls-out, you can just reboot it. Four or five times. Just to go to Walgreens.

my nine is easy to load

2008-01-04T22:19:00.000-08:00

In accordance with patterns and practice here at The Write-On, January 5th seems like the perfect time to generate the "my Christmas was fine how was yours?" post.

My travels took me on an intra-continental ellipse: West Coast to Gulf Coast to East Coast to Midwest and back again. I would also like to add that in the past 3.5 months, I have engaged in air travel no less than 8 times. It doesn't even phase me anymore, to the extent that I no longer require any sort of diversion or entertainment while I fly. I don't need a book, or my iPod, or a crossword puzzle. Sorta like C-3PO, I can sit in that horrid seat and zone out until the flight is over. Even on the long haul from Orange County to Houston, I just sit and stare off into the middle distance.

So it seems a pretty safe inference that all of this air travel is what inspired my dream.

In my dream, on I'm a large commercial airliner, packed full of people going hither and thither for the holidays. All of a sudden: Trouble! It seems that there is a tiny demon snowman terrorizing the aircraft. He is very small, and he is creeping to and fro amongst the carry-on baggage, spitting out little tiny snow fireballs. And it's up to me to find him!

But not just me. Me... and LL Cool J. And Ed Helms.

Unfortunately, LL Cool J was so upset by the demon snowman, that he wanted to open the emergency exit door and jump out. So before I could take care of the demon snowman, I had to convince LL Cool J that his life is worth living! and that he should stay on the plane and help Ed Helms and me find the demon snowman and throw him out of the emergency exit door instead.

Once Ladies Love Cool James pulled it together he was ready for action. Ed Helms, however, was useless. So Mr. Smith and I rifled through all the carry-on baggage until we found the demon snowman. He is very tiny. Like, 2 inches tall. And looka kinda like this:

But then the flight attendantess wouldn't let us open the emergency door, so we had to roll down a window to throw him out.

But here's the thing: I know that this is what would usually qualify as a quote-unquote weird dream. I get it, ok? I. Get it. Dreams should be all about falling and flying and make public speeches in the nude and walking into final exams you didn't study for. But sometimes dreams are weird, ok?

And every single person to whom I have recounted this dream has looked at me like I am a raving lunatic instead of just someone who tends to go overboard on italicizing things. I told Big Jer, I told Hawkgirl, I even told R7. And every last one of them responded with blank stares and some manner of bemused sidebar comment to no one in particular. Something like, "Ha. Hmm. That's a, uh, a dream."

Like I'm the first person in the history of upright, bipedal mammals to have a weird dream. I am not. One time I dreamed that I was a flamboyant Bavarian talk-show host being hunted by a local ice cream syndicate. People have that dream, ok? That is a normal dream. One time I dreamed that a He-Man action figure from my childhood was trying to find me so that he could steal my Magic Pants, and the only way to appease him would be to give him a mustard sandwich - but I don't like regular mustard and I didn't have any to give him! You know you've had that same dream, ok? You totally have.

I think it was Orko.

the haves and the have-nots

2008-01-03T16:12:00.000-08:00

From the wisdom of Gabe & Tycho, over at Penny Arcade.

2007-12-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

indigenousness may also be an issue

2007-12-22T06:50:00.000-08:00

"Baby Jesus likes a good Christmas tree."
- Randi, commenting on the anachronistic nature of the strange addition to our neighbor's three-quarter scale nativity scene.

three happy months, two plastic robots, and an unresolved childhood trauma in a pear tree

2007-12-21T11:12:00.000-08:00

At this very second, as I type, I am billing an obscene amount of money for waiting on hold. This is not the kind of thing that you need to attend 7 years of school in order to do. Rather, it is the kind of thing that you get to do after 7 years of school. I get paid to sit in a comfy chair and listen to music. Stay in school kids.

In what is a sadly anomalous occurrence in this situation, the musical is actually rather delightful. I believe it is Lisvt.

For this year's office Christmas party, it was decided by, well, I don't actually know who in the office decides these sorts of things, but the decision somehow emerged from the ether that in lieu of Secret Santa presents, we would each purchase a toy for Toys for Tots, a noble cause if ever there was one. What a spectacular sentence that was, no?

So I was resolved to purchase nothing less than a Transformer. Voyager Class. And I volunteered to pick up a second Transformer on behalf of my supervising partner. I did this because I once witnessed him re-gift a paper sack full of place mats. And I've been yearning for a reason to buy a Transformer ever since the glorious days of summer wherein my eyes first feasted upon the bastion of cinematic brilliance that is Transformers. And here I am with a reason to buy two of them. Voyager Class. Not the cheap stuff.

I brought them up to the office for the Christmas party, even though the drop-off box is in the lobby. I never really understood why the unseen powers and principalities of the office Christmas party dictated that we needed to bring the toys upstairs for a sort of herding of them. As though it would be great to pile them on the conference room table and gather everyone together for a communal toy-beholding. Nevertheless, I brought them up.

And then I forgot to take them toys back down to that there drop-off box.

Yesterday I noticed that the drop-off box is gone. I am stuck with two Transformers. Voyager Class. So I spent the entire day trying to act like this was not something that I was happy about.

I can no longer drop off these Voyager Class Transformers! I am an adult, and I spent forty of my hard-earned adult dollars on these child playthings - and now they are irreparably in my possession. What will I do with them? It's not like I can take them home and open them up and play with them and shoot their spring-load missile launchers at the dog and carefully arrange them in battle stances! I can't do that at all!

So I devoted a few billable hours to that internal conflict before I finally acquiesced and realized that I was nothing less than thrilled that I got to play with my Transformers instead of some other impoverished child. And since I'm sure you're dying to know: Thundercracker and Megatron.

I actually had Thundercracker when I was a wee lad. When it comes to the Decepticon Jets, most people are inclined towards Starscream. Starsceam is a punk. Thundercracker gets the job done while Starscream is off whining about whatever it is he's whining about today.

I did not ever have Megatron. And there is a story to that sad fact. I don't want to talk about it. But now I do have Megatron. Don't worry Mom, this one doesn't turn into a gun, so maybe you could not take it back maybe?

Sorry, I said wasn't going to talk about it. Voyager class.

a late christmas present

2007-12-19T11:38:00.000-08:00

Mark your calenders, fellow 815'ers. LOST returns January 31. Bask in the glory of the Season 4 trailer, which I have been gracious enough to provide you.

a friendly reminder

2007-12-18T13:41:00.000-08:00

You know how this time of year people start using that joke where they say, "see you next year!" because it's almost the new year and you won't be seeing each other for a couple of weeks but because New Year's Day falls in the midst of the short duration between meetings people think it is a clever joke like it's going to be an entire year (so funny!) when actually it's only a few days or something?

Please do not make that joke. That joke is of comparable lameness to jokes about dentists trying to make conversation with you when your mouth is open and how can you possibly answer their questions? (so funny!) because your mouth is open why do they do that? This joke is by no means seasonal but neither shouldst thou make it.

However, please be aware that "Don't call me Shirley" is still comedy gold.

the annual grinch post

2007-12-15T18:32:00.000-08:00

You know what the absolute worst thing about Christmas is? Actually, you do - it's Manheim Steamroller. Will sometime please clue me in as to what could possibly lead sane and rational people to believe that this synthesized tripe is actually entertaining music?

Manheim Steamroller's music sounds like it was created with Mario Paint. Their music sounds like the demo on the Casio keyboard I got for Christmas in 1989. Their music is what Christmas would sound like if we all got trapped in Tron.

And as bad as it is, it's still not as bad as the Neil Diamond Christmas album.

Humbug.

every single five seconds

2007-12-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

It's been a rocky week thus far. More travels over the weekend, youth shenanigans on Sunday, shopping for Chrismukah, court appearances in downtown L.A., all culminating in the onset of illness. I do not know what new mischief set itself upon my immune system, only that it was manifest by a contest between my skull and my innards to see which could explode first.

There were many noteworthy happenings during all of this, including my appearance in front of a few middle-school English classes to extol the virtues of being a lawyer. As I understand it, the assignment in question involved researching some esteemed profession, listening to me wax eloquently about being a lawyer, and then write a compare/contrast essay on the two.

For example: An essay comparing and contrasting a lawyer with a marine biologist. Marine biologists play with dolphins and ride on boats. Lawyers have substance abuse problems. The End.

Do you know how hard it is to make the practice of business litigation sound fascinating to a 13-year old? Hey kids! Who wants to go to school for 7 years so you can sit in an office all day and get yelled at by judges? I imagine it would be very hard to do - for a mere mortal. But Hoov, Esq. is internationally known for his gesticulation and hyperbole. I daresay they were rapt.

To maintain order, the format was thus: the children would write their questions on post-its and give them to the teacher, who would then post them up on the front white board. I was then free to make an election as to which questions to answer. Of course, there were standouts:

Have you ever committed a crime?

This seems like a good time to teach you all about the 5th Amendment.

Do you drink?

I dunno - you buyin'?

What's it like being a lawyer?

Pssh - it's a lot better than being a marine biologist, I can tell you that.

If someone breaks into my locker and steals my shoes, can I sew them?

Yes! And it's called conversion of chattels. Write that down.

Will you be my lawyer?

Why? Are you planning on doing something illegal? Or perhaps you need a living trust, to prevent your lunch money from being tangled up in probate.

Can I sue the teacher?

Yes. And you should. It will get you bonus points on this project.

So, I managed to survive seven classes of this. Until... The last question of the last class of the day...

Can you do 5 clap push-ups?

...can I whuhnow? Or course, my first reaction to this question was to chuckle and abashedly demurrer to the question. Like Jimmy Stewart in a Tech Law hoodie. The children would have none of this. Within seconds the room was ablaze with middle-schoolers demanding clap push-ups - nay! howling for clap push-ups like diminutive Lears, raging against the very sky for this perceived injustice.

"Lo, you are a man of stone! We must see the push-ups! Lest everything you have said to us thus far be for naught! Should you denyeth us in this petition, then begone from us! O cowardly man-of-law."

But I am a man of self-respect. No seriously, I am. So there was no way I was going to get on the ground and do 5 clap push-ups, just to appease this passel of whelps. I am above that.

I am not, however, above doing 17. I'm struggling to find the right word to best encapsulate how the teacher felt about this exposition. Despite my loganamnosis, words like bemused and nonplussed come to mind. Also, shamefaced.

And yet, with that Feat of Strength I cemented into their young minds that lawyer kung-fu is truly the mightiest kung-fu of all. And those marine biologists can go jump in a lake.

Ha! Did you see what I did there?

heads carolina, tails california

2007-11-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

This morning I received a Facebook invitation for a Christmas Sweater party. This concept in and of itself is pure woolen genius, but it was the tagline for the party that I found particularly brilliant:

The sweeter the sweater the better.

I found the cleverness of that pronouncement to be nothing short of overwhelming, and I thought that all y'alls should be apprised of it. It would certainly take a tremendous linguistic feat to coax me into attending a Christmas party held 70 miles away, but I dare say my would-be hosts have stumbled onto it.

This is the kind of person that I am. Last year I went to Disneyland, which purportedly is a place of happiness unmatched by any on the Earth. My general thoughts on the matter can best be encapsulated as: "Meh". But a pithy nugget about yuletide outerwear? It is a ray of California sun, piercing the hazy smog of my soul.

It was good to be back in Texas for Thanksgiving. And to experience this phenomena oft referred to as "weather". On Tuesday it was in the high 70's. By Thursday it was 23 degrees and snowing. That is not natural. And today in California, it is raining. So perhaps I carry around my own field of precipitation - like Grumpy Bear.

It was my distinct honor and privilege, whilst in Texas, to have dinner with the Fleeg. This is something that I recommend you to. It seems that His Fleegness, his culinary acumen having reached Boyardeean levels, has only to take a seat at any respectable eatery and food is brought unto him. I gather that in the restaurant biz, this practice is referred to as "bringing something out", which has an almost Mafia-esque ring to it.

I also partook in a brief yet infinitely enjoyable encounter with Mr. Hester, wherein the conversation quickly turned to video games and other somesuch nerdery, as any conversation between Hester and myself is wont to do. We were accompanied in this outing by my associate HG, who to my knowledge has never played a video game ever, and, although presumably cognizant that our conversation was still being held in English, regarded us as though watching two Klingons play Boggle.

Other than that the trip was delightfully uneventful. Except for when I hit myself in the face with a lead pipe while trying to be helpful. My nose still kinda clicks. I'm no doctor - well, technically I am a doctor, just not the kind that helps people - but I'm pretty sure that noses aren't supposed to click. Are there treatment programs available for nose-click syndrome (NCS)?

I hope the rest of you had similarly enjoyable Thanksgivings. Although, if you did, you've probably already forgotten about it since it's been over a week since Thanksgiving and I'm just now writing about it. Which is inexcusable, I know. It's like that dude that comes into your office on a Wednesday and says, "how was your weekend?"

And you're all like, dude. It's Wednesday.

bad news, baby i'm bad news

2007-11-19T14:44:00.000-08:00

Congratulations are in order for all my brothas and sistas in the struggle. I am referring of course to the formerly-would-be lawyers who found out on Friday night that they passed the California Bar Exam.

Amanda was kind enough to post a screen-shot of what the successful candidates see upon logging on to the State Bar website: "The name above appears on the pass list..." Conversely, if you fail, that screen would read: "The name above does not appear on the pass list..."

Now I certainly don't speak for every candidate, and perhaps Amanda could offer us her recitation of events, but both times I had to read that screen, I had to read it about seven times to understand what it was trying to tell me. I suppose that under the extreme stress of pending Bar Exam results, my brain was simply unable to interpret the words on the screen. "The name above does/does not appear" might as well have been in Cyrillic. What? What does that say? Did I pass or not?

I would propose to the State Bar that they simplify the process. By the evening of the results, the average Bar candidate is in a wretched state. Pale, sweating, shaking, and hyper-ventilating, this individual is in no condition to interpret the vague string of sans-serif word-things upon which hinge our vocational well-being and sense of personal worth.

Instead, I propose the following: A smiley face or a frowny face. It is both mercifully unequivocal and passingly empathetic.

I was also happy to learn that the general pass rate for the California Bar Exam was 56.1% - the highest in six years. Yeah, that's how brutal this thing is. Just slightly more than half of the people who took it passed, and that's considered high. Which is kinda sick if you think about it.

But what about the pass rates for my true expatriate compatriots - The repeat takers from out-of-state ABA accredited law schools? Well, we still got largely dominated at 21%, but as I recall, that number usually hovers around 16%, so I suppose it's an improvement nonetheless.

Although I must say, I do feel very sorry for the candidates sitting for the February and July 2008 exams. Because there is nothing, I dare say nothing that the State Bar of California hates more than people passing its own exam. I have every reasonably expectation that they will crank it up for the next few exams. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news for the recent bar-passers, but the State Bar exists almost exclusively for the purpose of cannibalizing its own membership.

For example: I have to pay hundreds of dollars in dues to sustain the existence of an organization that requires me to spend thousands of dollars to attend continuing education classes. Thank you, State Bar. Whatever would I do without you? I would probably blow my hard-earned money on food and shelter instead of on boring seminars about updates to federal e-discovery rules.

Anyway, this post seems to have derailed somewhere in Vocational-Jargon-Land, so I'll try to move things along.

I don't need to tell you that it's Thanksgiving week, and I'm taking some much-needed vacation time. Some vacation time wherein I have to work on an appeal, which admittedly is kinda lame. Although my baby gets into town Thursday night, and I'm looking forward to some quality cuddle-time. I am of course referring to The Fleeg. Maybe he'll make me some double-chocolate cookies...

got a few purple hearts myself

2007-11-12T10:39:00.000-08:00

After I awoke this morning, I exited my bedroom to find my 13 year-old quasi-sibling laying face down in the hallway, engaged in what can best be described in Biblical terms as raising a lament. As a point of background information, it should be noted that Randi goes to some kind of weird hybrid private school where she only attends classes two days a week.

The other three weekdays are presumably intended for the completion of assignments given during the two class days. I say "presumably" because it does not seem likely that the school intends for these days to be filled primarily with Hannah Montana reruns and trying sweaters on the dog - which is all that seems to happen. Fortunately for her, she inherited my frightening erudition, such that studying could be considered detrimental to a preternatural aquifer of information and intellectual acumen.

I suppose she didn't really inherit it, since we are not in any way related, and it therefore does not make any biological sense to suggest that she did. It is much more likely (and scientificly valid) to postulate that she gained it by osmosis. Across the aforementioned hallway, wherein she is now lamenting.

"What are you doing?"

"I am. SAD."

"Why?"

"Because it's a national holiday, and I have to do homework!"

"...it's Veteran's Day."

"So?"

"Soooo... are you a veteran?"

"Yes. I am a veteran of life. And none of my friends have to go to school today."

"But you never go to school on Monday. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday."

"Ugh! You don't get it. Just leave me be."

So on I went to the office - looking totally cute in my new shirt and tie, which I got from Goodwill and the J.Crew outlet, respectively. And even though I had just chided Randi for her mistaken assumption that the free world stops for Veteran's Day - the office is almost completely abandoned.

Which is nice. Because I can get lots of work done. Or write a blog post. About how utterly worn-out I am.

I was in Fort Worth Wednesday through yesterday. I got no sleep Saturday night and had to fly back Sunday morning in time to preach. I tend to black-out while speaking, and even more so yesterday, seeing as how I was running on no sleep. But thanks to five cups of bad coffee and two absolutely sublime double-chocolate cookies, I managed to pull myself together and it seemed to go over well.

Also, the double-chocolate cookie is certainly the King of the Cookies. I would dare say that there is no reason to waste the calories on anything less. Longingly my heart doth wait for a fair lass skilled in their creation. But who can find one such as this? A woman who by her very hands forges the Songs of Angels into cookie form? Nay! I have retreated too far into the realm of fantastical things. And my discontent with a life devoid of the double-chocolate cookie is crushing. A life lived as though in a mirror, dimly.

Have a great week!

2007-11-06T00:01:00.000-08:00

very low key on the profile

2007-10-29T15:44:00.000-07:00

My telephonic image capture device simply does not do justice to the mastery of my Mac O'Lantern. But I think the perfection of my pumpkin craftsmanship transcends the limitations of visual media.

The blazing emblem of my corporate devotion - it is perfectly proportioned, no? And as a finer point that you cannot easily discern from the digital rendering, the insides were meticulously scraped clean and smooth. The inside gleams with pearlescent smoothness much like a well-preserved iBook. No MacBooks for me - I am what the kids refer to as of the older school.

On to business. My travels have taken me away from you, my lovelies. And for that you have my deepest apologies. But I have been doing many an important thing. I've been flying hither and thither, and I've spent more time in coach than Craig T. Nelson.

I like traveling. Really I do. I just hate airports. And planes. It's not flying that I hate, but planes. Due to my morbid obesity and NBA stature, I find the seating to be rather cramped. Like being swaddled in a giant metal blanket. With strangers. And that's actually happened to me! So I'm not exaggerating. I would never do that on this blog.

So why all the traveling? One reason and one reason only.

Work stuff. CLE's and meetings. Lame.

Yeah, I know. Completely unbloggable. You want to hear about it almost as much as I want to relive it, which is to say, not very much. At one point I was stuck in a class all day, and then I had to go to this brutal meeting, and then I did some other stuff, and then I didn't have much else to do after all that except watch old episodes of The Office and eat ice cream.

And I'm sure you're all dying to know - Did I get Leopard? Of course I did. And as the kids were fond of saying in days past: Been there, done that, and...

Oh yeah. That's how we roll. Gangsta.

october 26

2007-10-16T14:53:00.001-07:00

"When I decide that I'm going to build something, I want to take out my tools and start building. I don't want to take out my tools and then start trying to fix my tools. That's why I use a Mac."
- Some guy I talked to once

all those french films about trains

2007-10-09T22:26:00.000-07:00

So. Here we are, advancing into October, and autumn is upon us. Season changes in Southern California are a curious thing to behold. For a former denizen of West Texas, where summer means 100+ and winters can dip into the negatives, the transitional time known as "autumn" is not so much a season as it is a geothermal temper-tantrum. The typical autumn forecast for Lubbock is: low of 38, high of 89, 36 mph winds and a 70% chance of flash-flooding and/or dust storms.

On the coast, the leaves change color and the high dips from 78 to 74. The Californians start wearing coats everywhere and using words like, "freezing" and "icy-death". Of course, this particular subject matter has been well paved by this blog, so we'll leave it at that for now.

And I'm sorry to have deprived you of my magniloquence for the last fortnight or so, but I've been trying to get this youth ministry thing underway. And yes, I do still have that other job, and my parents remind me of this unfailingly. I do not begrudge them this, as I feel they have more than appropriate standing to do so, given the extent to which they subsidized the endeavor.

During this time, I have often thought to myself, "Self, perhaps there is a reason why many institutions of higher learning offer actual degrees in youth ministry." The reason probably being that it's, well, hard.

So I ruminated on that for a few days, and on one occasion whence I brought the thought back up from the third stomach of my subconsciousness, it occurred to me that if a youth ministry degree is as helpful in doing actual youth minsitry as a law degree is to practicing law, then I can consider to no great loss to have skipped it altogether. I would have to assume that there are professions out there for which a college degree tailored to such profession is to some extent helpful. But that profession is certainly not law, and I suspect that neither is it youth ministry.

Frinstance - how does one go about obtaining authenticated and admissible evidence that a certain important document was not filed with the California Franchise Tax Board? Not surprisingly, this process was not covered in my Texas Trial & Appellate course (I am struggling to resist incorporating that old "Texas T&A" joke).

And similarly, what do I do when half of my youth group descends into doctrinal heresy by claiming that Robin Hood could take Batman in a fight? Yes, Robin Hood - the skinny little guy with a bow and arrow. Half of my kids think that he could take Batman. As in, the very same Batman that almost killed Superman. Twice. He's ostensibly going to get taken out by Robin Hood. I can't even type it with a straight face!

As a point of interest, this seems to fall exclusively along gender lines. The girls are in love with the Robin Hood from that new BBC television series, and they think that he could take Batman because he is, ahem, "soooo cute". Ok. Stop. Unless you are a Care Bear, cuteness is not a super-power and cannot be weaponized. But Robin Hood is so smart and clever, they say. Batman synthesized his own kryptonite. I think he gets credit for being a few notches above clever. But these dames are resolute and unwavering. Join me in praying for their eternal souls.

And, as if that weren't sufficiently discouraging, during one youth event held here at the pastors house (where I live, as point of review), we managed to break the indoor plumbing and the pastor's daughter. Randi like, broke her hand, or something. She was screaming and I was trying to play Guitar Hero and I told her that maybe Robin Hood could fix it with the healing power of his cuteness and could you please stop screaming because I'm trying to finish "Heart-Shaped Box" on Expert.

We're supposed to visit an orphanage in Mexico next month, and at this point, I'm wondering how many of them I can get away with leaving there. But for now, I leave you with this:

vs.

See what I go through, people?

phenomenal

2007-10-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

It almost grieves me to refer to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford as a "movie". Norbit is a "movie". The Fast and the Furious is a "movie". The Assassination of Jesse James is an opus of modern cinema. If it is not art, then art is poorer for it.

Brad Pitt is mesmerizing as Jesse James and Casey Affleck brings stunning pathos to the historically maligned Robert Ford. In the first act we see James, approaching the end of his career and life, portrayed in stark normalcy - a common and crass man. In the second act, James grows increasingly melancholy, as though finally confronting his own mythology. He has accepted that he is both man and myth, but is unsure where his personal identity falls along the spectrum. In the third act we see Ford, no longer a conniving traitor, but living a parallel to the final years of James - detached and listless, unable to discern how much of his own humanity was sacrificed in the process of becoming a legend.

The cinematography is precise and appropriate to the moment. At times it is bold and vivid, at other times the imagery is murky and blurred. The score, composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is haunting and seemless. There is no grand percussion or grandiose orchestral refrains - just understated piano medleys that compliment the cinematic perfection without once dreaming of overpowering it.

See this film. See in the theatre. If it is not showing in your town, get in your car and drive to the nearest town where it is showing.

geek out: 9/8c

2007-09-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

Heroes returns tonight. To get me through the cold winter nights until my true love returns in February.

we'll float on good news is on the way

2007-09-19T18:15:00.000-07:00

I'm not complaining. After all, 12 hours is by no means an uncommon amount of time for a young associate to spend in the office. It's probably only slightly above average. But as I'm creeping up on the 11.5 hour mark, I must lament that this is a painfully long session devoted to one project entirely.

Last week I spoke of summary judgment motions. They are perhaps the most cerebral of the various flora and fauna of trial level paperwork, and even when they are relatively straightforward they are still just freaking long. So I've been hacking away at this thing since 6:30 this morning. And it's starting to show in the work product. After that many hours, my writing starts to, well, suck. The last few paragraphs are mostly indistinguishable from my quasi-sibling's 5th-grade paper about tea parties.

So I must give my brain a rest and devote a few moments to blathering to you people. It's something that must be done to ensure the continued quality of my legal analysis. Now that I think about it, I should be billing for this post.

And also, there is entirely too much going on this week. To borrow a turn of phrase from R7, I am just not dealing. This sorry excuse for a summary judgment has to be finished by tomorrow afternoon so that it can be hand-served on Friday. Well, that's a tad disingenuous. It has to be done by tomorrow afternoon because I'd sooner be disbarred before I would miss seeing Damien Rice at the Greek Theatre in L.A.

And on Saturday, I'll be attending the USC game. For those of you who know me in real life, I will not be reimbursing you for any damage done to your computer equipment because you spit your beverage on it after reading the preceding sentence.

And then Sunday is the official launch of our new youth group what-have-you. So I'm on the hook for all of that as well. Last week I appointed a few of the kids to an ad hoc leadership team. And in light of the fact that ad hoc means "arranged for a particular purpose only", I should clarify by explaining that the "particular purpose" of my leadership team is to do stuff for me because I am deeply lazy.

Although, I did tell my team that if they so desired, they could come up with a clever name for the leadership/getting me coffee team. And what did they pick?

The Others. I kid you not. I wasn't too thrilled about the idea of being Ben, and they said I could be Jack. However, that would just not be canonical, and I am nothing if not canonical. Although I guess I could be Jacob... Or maybe that's too obscure...

Or maybe I should just get back to work.

words to oversleep by

2007-09-18T09:59:00.001-07:00

From Dinosaur Comics (lest I be accused of plagiarism).

touch me in the morning

2007-09-17T00:51:00.000-07:00

This is an attempt to post from my iPod Touch. So far it's super-dope. Except the part where I try to load music. iTunes keeps thinking that it's an iPhone and asks me to insert a SIM card. Go figure.

But it managed to sync up with some Damien Rice and a bit of Grace Potter and Rilo Kiley, so that should be enough to get to court in the morning. To get yelled at.

My fingers are way too fat for this.

Update: His Steveness brought forth an iTunes update. Everything is hunky-dory.

finish the fight

2007-09-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

I saw something yesterday that absolutely astounded me.

First, let me back up a scoach. As a point of review, I am a litigator. Yes, this is going to be one of those law posts... sorry. But this time we will descend together deep into the underground chasms wherein the trial lawyer dwelleth. You will even get to learn some fun legal terms to impress your friends and co-workers!

A litigator is a dude or a chick who manages to eek out a living through civil lawsuits. Going to court, in the trenches, getting yelled at by judges, scrappin' and mixin' it up.

I once heard a statistic that only 5% of lawyers go into court more than once a year. I suppose the rest of them sit in cushy chairs, shifting papers to and fro under the banners of bankruptcy, transactional, security, estate planning, or some manner of corporate what-have-you.

So it would seem that I am in the minority. It does not seem this way to me because I deal almost exclusively with other litigators. The frenetic and nomadic Paladins of the legal universe; we are mercenary rogues. We are, as one of the partners is keen on saying, "real lawyers".

Yesterday, I'm in court for what we call "Law & Motion". This is the process whereby the judge hears all of the various pretrial motions - summary judgments, demurrers, continuances, discovery disputes, etc. There are usually a dozen or so other matters on calendar, so you give the clerk your business card, and then you take a seat to observe the proceedings until your case is called.

I see a lot of lawyers otherwise engaged during this time. They're punching away at Treos and Blackberries, jotting on legal pads, or rummaging through file folders. No no. Always watch Law and Motion. Intently. Always. You can consider it part of your post-JD education: What Not to Do 101. During my short time as a practicing attorney, I have learned volumes by watching all nature of screw-ups during Law & Motion. I have learned almost as much as I suspect other attorneys have learned from watching me get yelled at.

For example: Don't refer to the judge as "ma'am". I still wake up in cold sweats from the aftermath of that faux pas. Did you know that it's actually illegal to refer to the judge as anything other than "your honor"? Well, I sure didn't. It was so bad, I think the downtown L.A. courthouse should put up a memorial plaque for me. Because I died a little that day.

But I digress. Most judges issue tentative rulings; "tentatives" for short. So when you walk up to the counsel tables and stand in front of the judge, you already know how he or she is inclined to rule. Sometimes, it is not in your favor. If this particular judge has "published" his or her "tenative", this means that the judge has given you a piece of paper memorializing all the reasons why you are wrong. Stinging defeat.

But wait! There is still a chance! If the tentative is against you, the judge will ask you if you would like to "submit on the tentative" (accept it and go home) or "be heard" (argue your points directly to a judge who has already done the research and made a decision).

The answer is always, "I would like to be heard, Your Honor". Always. Never submit. Never, ever, ever submit on the tentative.

Needless to say, this is not an ideal position to be in. While it is often the case that judges are wrong, you're asking a judge to admit that he or she was wrong and change his or her mind. And a judge is more likely to ride into court on a magic rainbow and give you a pony.

But having to argue against a tentative is a thrilling position to be in. It is legal advocacy in its purest distilled form. Just you and the judge, face to face, brain to brain, arguing the cases and the legal analysis. After all, you have a legal obligation to zealously represent your client.

So yesterday. The judge calls a summary judgment. A summary judgment is one of many species of pre-trial motions that basically proposes: The other guy has no case, here's why, and therefore I should win before we even get to trial.

Two attorneys proceed to the counsel tables and stand before the judge. The judge says:

"Plaintiff's counsel - you've seen the tentative and you're aware that I'm inclined to grant Defendant's motion for summary judgment. Do you submit on the tentative or do you wish to be heard?"

And this guy, this guy, says:

"Well, that's a good case you've cited here, Your Honor. So I guess you've got me on that one. I guess we'll submit."

I was utterly aghast. Dumbfounded. Nonplussed. Not only did this gentleman submit on the tentative - he basically complimented the judge for throwing out his case. Hey there, Mr. Hangman - that's some mighty fine rope you're using. I reckon it won't even chafe my sensitive skin.

Now, in all fairness I should say that it is all but inconceivable that this particular judge would have reversed his tentative. The judge even shot me down, and I was bringing a joint motion. As in, all of the parties - plaintiffs and defendants - jointly agreed that we should make this motion and we signed off on the paperwork together. And we lost! How do you lose something like that?

So yeah, this guy was going down - no doubt about it. But to go out like that? I guess he's the only male left on the planet that hasn't seen 300. Or maybe he doesn't understand that failure is just success rounded down.

Perhaps there is a lesson here for us all. Don't submit on the tentative. And pack a toothbrush, just in case.

you know what I hate the most about being a lawyer?

2007-09-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

Other lawyers.

Seriously. Some of you people just ruin it for the rest of us.

Case in point: One of our cases is currently scheduled to go to trial next month. The attorney who has handled the case, almost exclusively, is a pleasant (albeit slightly high-strung) woman approaching middle-age.

Several days ago, she passed out, was rushed to the emergency room, admitted to the hospital, and told that she would need open heart surgery immediately. She had the surgery, got herself a shiny new pacemaker, and spent several days in the hospital. She recently returned home, and is unable to do anything physically taxing or potentially stressful. And if you've never had to prepare for a trial, let me assure you that it is slightly less stressful than dismantling armed explosive devices.

So in the midst of all this, we call up opposing counsel to ask him if he will agree to push back the trial date so that the attorney will have time to rest and recuperate before the trial. His response?

No.

No? I'm sorry, I think you left your soul in your other suit pants. No? She had open heart surgery and you're going to oppose our motion to push back the trial?

I know this blog has a lot of readers who are either lawyers, law students, or bar examinees. Please, don't be this guy. Don't be a callous, obstructionist misanthrope. Don't be the guy that will have to go in front of a judge and explain why emergency open heart surgery is not grounds for an extension. Because according to California Rule of Court 3.1332(c)(3), it is.

Even if you don't have morals or principles, at least do your research.

...and there's nothing you can do about it

2007-09-05T14:29:00.000-07:00

Co-counsel has represented to me that she will assume the responsibility of blogging the festivities that were held pursuant to Nathan's birthday. I have nothing substantial to add to such a recounting, other than to merely confirm that a humble Italian restaurant was in fact converted into an impromptu discotheque, and that atrocious dancing did in fact take place.

It leaves me wondering whether every Italian restaurant springs to life after 11 pm in a similar fashion, replete with blaring Motown music and an odd assortment of after-hours straggling patrons unabashedly cutting the proverbial rug. I would conjecture that this is not the case, and I will go on record as saying this present state of affairs is nothing short of a trajesty.

Prior to that, my Labor Day holiday was 93% delightful. On Saturday I was resigned to utter reclusiveness. I watched a couple of movies and made several well-intentioned yet ill-fated attempts to polish off Bioshock. I would like to put Bioshock to bed so that I can partake in the latest Metroid offering.

Probably one of the greatest perks of my recent return to the daunting field of youth ministry is that it justifies renewing my interest in video games, a hobby which has lain mostly dormant since Bar passage. That may sound silly, but I'm actually quite serious. But I suppose The Write-On is not the best forum for expounding on my youth ministry theories. I will also be endeavoring to teach the kids all of the lyrics to "The Road Goes on Forever". This has no ministerial purpose whatsoever, but it seemed the next logical step after teaching them "You Never Even Call Me By My Name".

Of course, playing more video games means that I don't leave the house as much. But for me, house-leaving is an activity that inevitably leads to disaster, and thusly should be limited as much as is feasible.

On Sunday, I fled to the arms of my One True Love... Rosa. You see, there is one Rosa's outside of the great country of Texas. And it is located two hours away in Temecula, California. As the moons pass, she begins to call to me. I hear her voice from deep within my very being. On Sunday after church, I loaded up the iPod with new Music Store purchases, and embarked on the 91 freeway, ravenous for a taste of "Authentic".

Every time I go to this Rosa's, I struggle to suppress a full ear-to-ear Cheshire Cat grin, so boundless is my joy. It is a dead ringer for the 50th Street Rosa's in Lubbock. I ordered a #10, two #12's, and a #45, and ate all of it without any regard for basic human decorum or whether anyone in the premises could administer the Heimlich. It was an experience that can only be properly qualified as spiritual in nature.

On Monday, it was decided that a diaspora was in order to escape Huntington Beach. On a national holiday like Labor Day, there is a law, seemingly written before time itself, that every sentient being in all creation must descend voraciously into Southern California beach towns. So we gather our young, and with no more than the clothes on our backs we flee to higher ground. Specifically, Bellflower - where Rhonda's grandparents have a swimming pool. So we temporarily conceded our majestic shoreline in favor of chlorine and inflatable whales, and there was much mirth to be had by all.

I hope that all y'all had a reasonably enjoyable holiday. And for those of you still holding it down in the 806, think of me fondly when you call upon Rosa. And after properly addressing the bear, pour out a little honey for your homey.

link's awakening

2007-08-30T17:30:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to updating my links.

The legal theme, it is the clever, non? Oui!

tome tomb

2007-08-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

A fascinating article - for only the hardest of the hardcore A/V geeks.

My jovial pleonasm has ebbed as of late - I've been charged with the dreaded task of "getting up to speed" on a new case. This means reading deposition transcripts until I can't see. The partner in charge insists that this case is relatively straight-forward. I suppose the same could be said of the Pyramids, but I suspect that was little consolation to the Hebrew associates who actually had to build them.

But, as Martha would say: That's why they call it "work".

Reading "depos" (as we call them) really is quite simple. It's basically like reading a play. A really long, really boring, play. With two actors. Imagine Waiting for Godot - but five inches thick. And after Vladimir and Estragon run out of interesting things to discuss, they start talking about file numbering systems. And how records are kept in the ordinary course of business. For eight hours.

And sometimes I think, "Did I really suffer through three years of law school just to be able to read this stuff?" And then I realize, "No, you suffered through three years of law school so that you could actually charge people for reading this kind of stuff."

And then I realize that I probably shouldn't discourse with myself in the second person. Because that kind of thing would be crazy.

i've had some time to think about it

2007-08-26T22:44:00.000-07:00

"If there were someone else to do it - believe me, I'd let 'em. But there isn't anyone else. So we're doing it."
- John McClaine

We've gotten into a destructive pattern of post-Halo revelry. As the work day is winding to a close and everyone is trying to finish their respective projects, the adrenaline is high, and there is talk of socializing on the winds.

We should all get dinner after this, someone will say. Yes yes, we should! Dinner! And after that, perhaps the cinema, says another. Oh my, yes! The cinema! What a splendid idea! And so we depart the work site in high spirits, eagerly anticipating a change of clothes, followed by this dinner-and-a-movie group date of sorts.

But then there's the long ride home. And Saturday evening LA traffic that we have to scuttle through. A relaxing shower. More driving/picking-up to meet up with everyone. A densely-fattening and carbohydrate-saturated meal. And by the time we all get to the movies...

Zzzz...

Thanks to two no-shows, our crew was small, but reasonably productive. I hate having small crews, because it usually means that I have to work - instead of just meandering leisurely about the site with a cup of coffee and a legal pad, barking orders. And since I am a fundamentally lazy person, I am strongly adverse to this scenario. I am also completely ignorant as to how to do most of this stuff.

For example, I'm installing flooring in one of the restrooms with one of my high school guys. The pastor walks in carrying this yellow, boxy, saw, cage thing. I have no idea what this device is, or what it's used for.

"Hey Hoov, I picked up this [wippidtyjigger] for you while I was at Home Depot."

"...Ahh... yeah... that should be really... helpful."

"It should make installing the baseboards a lot easier."

"Baseboards. Mmm... yeah."

I didn't even know we were supposed to do the baseboards. It wasn't on the list. People don't appreciate the value of a good project list. Without it, I am Harry with no wand; Wolverine with no claws. Which is to say that, while I am still inherently awesome, I am without means to effectuate my awesomeness. Green Arrow with no bow. Wow, how underrated is Green Arrow? I love that guy.

Also from the Department of Optimism Maintenance - my case settled. Now, I would like to say that I am fully aware that it was a settlement, and in this sense it is wholly inaccurate to refer to anyone has having won or lost. That being said, we dominated.

So with that case off of my plate entirely, I am free to focus my vocational efforts on cases that are less emotionally taxing. This means that they are, in a word, boring. But it will be nice to feel like a respectable business litigator again, instead of Jerry Springer, Attorney at Law.

Also, if you're curious as to how Big Jer's surgery turned out - it went very well, and the doctors are recovering nicely.

a fellow of infinite jest

2007-08-26T14:12:00.000-07:00

Kind words from Mr. Pompili (whose first name I cannot use here) regarding this nonsense generator that I call a blog.

I especially appreciate one of his compliments, as I was heretofore only recognized as "the Burgess Meredith of our time". Enjoy Mr. Pompili's blog, and next time you're in the Hub City, you should have your face melted by his band, Mr. Tonight.

come with me if you want to live

2007-08-23T23:32:00.000-07:00

First off, I would like to thank everyone for your birthday well-wishes. Molly even went so far as to send me an actual birthday card, which apparently is what people used to do back in the olden days. She said I should be expecting it today, and when I got home from work I saw a giant box sitting by the front step. Of course, I instantly assumed that Molly had sent me something spectacular, like a PS3 or a unicycle.

But it was just a box of books that Thad had ordered. Yet Molly's gift was no less thoughtful, and even came packaged in an Austin newspaper with a half-page story on Icelandic travel tips. I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt that she did this on purpose.

As great as it was to see my Country of Destiny getting some media play, it is a bit discouraging in that now, when I finally get to go to Iceland, there will be like, other people there. And this will severely compromise my travel itinerary which consists almost exclusively of sitting around reading with the locals.

Did you know that Iceland has the highest per capita Coca-Cola consumption in the world? This is a true statement! Worthy of full acceptance!

Not much else to discuss though. Busy weekend afoot. My father is going in for surgery tomorrow. It's just a matter of routine maintenance on his robotic endoskeleton. I suspect that half-way through the surgery, he will get an email on his Motorola Q (Big Jer would not feign to use a mere Blackberry), he will then wake up, finish the surgery himself with a Dremel tool and a pocket knife, and then go back to the office.

The doctors will try to give Big Jer crutches. Big Jer will eat them. The crutches. And the doctors.

I also have an MSC (Mandatory Settlement Conference) tomorrow in my biggest and least favorite case (the one with all the dames). An MSC is a curious little process; unlike most settlement thingies, it actually takes place in front of a judge - in chambers. Usually it's not your trial judge, but sometimes it is. This makes things interesting. I've never been a part of an MSC that didn't settle, and the prospect of putting this case to bed makes me, I dare say it - giddy. I hop and clap and squeal.

And then it's off to another fabulous Halo trip, to do more repair work and renovations and other various and sundry tasks for which I am vastly under-skilled and under-qualified. But I do this in every other area of my life, so it's a seamless transition. It looks like we'll even have a couple of rookies on-board for this trip, which I always enjoy. Just because it's a ministry does not mean that I won't haze some people.

Anyway, with such shenanigans drawing nigh, that's all the absurdity I can muster for now. Oh, wait! I got something else...

"Don't tell your mother".

in which desserts are discussed further

2007-08-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

It would seem that you palateless misanthropes did not enjoy my ice cream cake post. Nonetheless, I must now discuss cupcakes.

In particular, the red velvet cupcakes that Martha is mailing me. I suppose that red-themed desserts, and my receipt thereof, were floating out there in the zeitgeist, which prompted me to dream about them thusly. Apparently, while this drama was unfolding deep in the recesses of my unconscious mind, Martha was preparing to send me cupcakes as a gesture of goodwill upon this, the twenty-and-seventh anniversary of my earthly genesis.

Of course, to call these creations cupcakes is to pay undue compliment to the fungal-shaped confections we have come to recognize under that monicker. Indeed, as those of you who have been on the business end of Martha's culinary kung-fu will concede, when Martha sets out to make a cupcake, it is no mere fling between Betty Crocker and a muffin tin. They are artisanal, weapons-grade cupcakes. My father bore witness to this process, and thinks them to be a very appropriate birthday gift, seeing as how it only took slightly more time and effort to bring these cupcakes into the world than it did me.

I have had occasion to consume one of those boutique cupcakes from an uber-trendy cupcakery, the likes of which have been leavened throughout metropolitan areas as of late. (e.g., Sprinkles, Magnolia Bakery). No doubt that these "cupcakes" will seem like briquettes of mediocrity when held against the splendor of my birthday cupcakes.

Also, I am old.

The peoples be askin' me: Hoov, how are you gonna party on your birthday? Like a rockstar, perhaps? No - like a folkstar! Which is to say, not really at all.

Because everyone ditched me on my birthday, and at this point, my crew is spread out between Montana and Cabo. The Kings are on a Mexican cruise right now, leaving me to celebrate my birthday with wild and raucous dog and bunny sitting. At first I consoled myself in this by insisting that the cruise was actually taken in honor of me, but I was unable to go, because tragicomic antiheroes such as myself do not go on cruises. Jack Bauer does not go on cruises.

But that didn't last too long, because you know what's really really awesome? Living in a house full of people about to go on a cruise, and you're not going! It's so rad. But, I did just get back from Hawaii. So as my thugged-out homeboy 4 life Seth would say: "Hey Hoov, you know what you should do? Stop being a wuss."

And Thad and Rhonda left me a thoroughly awesome birthday present - fat gift cards to Barnes & Noble and that coffee place that is usually attached thereto. I used it to buy this geeky gem. So cruise away guys, I'll be pouring over this book - because I've always wanted to know... what really happened in Baker v. Carr?

Alright, I'm off to my birthday weekly associate meeting, followed by a birthday eye doctor appointment. And you most assuredly cannot have any cupcakes.

to sleep perchance

2007-08-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

So I should probably tell you guys about my recurring dream.

It involves an ice cream cake. But not just any ice cream cake. A chocolate-raspberry ice cream cake. It has alternating layers of chocolate ice cream and chocolate cake, frosted in a raspberry glaze, and artfully garnished with raspberries.

Almost every night this week, I have dreamed about this chocolate-raspberry ice cream cake. Unfortunately, I cannot enjoy my ice cream cake because it is being held at the Baskin-Robbins across the street from my house. Like, directly across the street. In the middle of the neighborhood, between the houses, there is a Baskin-Robbins. And they have my cake.

I do not know by what chain of events I managed to acquire a vested interest in an ice cream cake that did not also include taking custody of said cake. Perhaps they had to special order it, or I was paying for it on lay-away, but regardless - they have my ice cream cake in their freezer.

So why can I not get my ice cream cake? Well, because I am only asleep at night, and Baskin-Robbins is not open at night. So by the time I go to bed and fall asleep, the Baskin-Robbins across the street from my house is closed. All I can do is stand in my driveway, lamenting the rare twist of dream practicality that prevents me from claiming my ice cream cake.

In this sense, it is perhaps not entirely accurate to say that this is a recurring dream, because it is not same dream over and over again. Rather, it is a serialized dream, as I somehow manage to recognize the previous nights of ice cream estoppel, and my frustration mounts in the wake of yet another night of being disallowed the ice cream cake that is rightfully mine.

Today was Sunday, and on Sunday I take a nap, if at all possible. So I swaddled myself in Serasoft and before too long, I was back in my dream. Except for this time, it was during the day. The Baskin-Robbins should be open, right?

No! Because this Baskin-Robbins is apparently not open on Sundays! So I still can't get my chocolate-raspberry ice cream cake. Not only that, but a psychopathic killer is on his way to kill me. I know this because my freshman-year Psychology professor emailed me and told me. In my dream. Before I got there. Or something.

So once again, I'm standing in my driveway, lamenting.

Out of nowhere, an elderly cowboy appears at my side, and our conversation progressed in such-and-such a manner:

"What seems to be the trouble, young man?"

"They have my chocolate-raspberry ice cream cake over there at the Baskin-Robbins, but every time I fall asleep to get it, they're closed."

"Well, then walk over there and get it."

"But I'd have to break in."

"So?"

"So, that's illegal and I'd get in trouble."

"Yeah, but isn't there a psychopathic killer coming to kill you anyway?"

"Well, yeah."

"Then what difference does it make?"

"I suppose so you're right."

So I walked across the street, broke into Baskin-Robbins, and rescued my ice cream cake. I then dedicated myself to eating the whole thing in one sitting. Why wouldn't I? There's a psychopathic killer coming to kill me, so I might as well, right?

The psychopathic killer shows up to kill me, and finds me powering through the last of my ice cream cake. He seemed nonplussed, and decided not to kill me, because all he really wanted to do was keep me away from my ice cream cake, and now that I had it, the issue of killing me seemed, to him, rather moot. I found this deduction to be both reasonable and agreeable, and after finishing my ice cream cake, I woke up.

And the weirdest thing about all of this? I'm really not a huge fan of ice cream cake. However, that being said, I now crave some manner of chocolate ice cream with raspberry topping. Starting tomorrow, the acquisition of this concoction shall become my sole purpose in life.

some pictures

2007-08-14T21:55:00.001-07:00

(click to enlarge)

that ain't the way to have fun, son

2007-08-10T20:56:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, the weekend. And after a week spent working exclusively on the most hated case of my (albeit brief) career, it is more welcome than usual. The short version: We represent a certain business that by the nature of said business employs almost all women. The lawsuit (a rather complicated Labor Code issue) stems from a bitter inter-personal conflict between two of these women. My job as of late has been to contact these ladies, and as many of their coworkers as possible, interview them, and try to figure out exactly what went down before the deposition subpoenas start flying.

Which means that I have spent all week long on the phone, listening to gossip. This one's a drunk. That one's crazy. She said this, she didn't say that. I can't believe her, who does she think she is. It's like watching a week-long marathon of Melrose Place without the benefit of attractive people and without the mercy of commercial breaks.

So I desperately need the company of rational and sane adults this weekend. Unfortunately, I'll have to settle for the company of the renowned blog siblings Elise and Nathan and their respective spouses. We will most assuredly Wii it up, which will probably involve Nathan mercy-ruling me in Wii Baseball. Again.

And it will get me out of the house. Which is great because we have two dogs staying with us. This makes for a total of three dogs. Get it? Three Dogs? The title of this post? It's a stretch, I know.

For one joyous week, we are blessed with the presence of two additional chihuahua dog-things. They are Raz's aunt and sister, who reside up in Diamond Bar with some friends of Thad's. Their names are Sophie and Roxy. But I can't ever remember which name applies to which dog. So I just made up nicknames for them. Sawyer style.

Sausage. A little white girl-dog who earned this monicker as a result of her cylindrical and generally bulbous physique. And what lady wouldn't want to have those very words used to describe her figure? I would suspect not many.

I'm not a big fan of this dog. I think because it always has this demeanor of profound self-pity. The dog-thing actually furrows its brow and shivers ever so slightly, as if you communicate to you, "I am abused." Even when you are feeding it the filet freaking mignon that is owners pre-cooked, pre-packaged, and sent with it, it looks up at you in abject misery, as though you were attempting to feed it vulture innards.

Fruit Bat. This dog I just flat out do not like. It is evil. It is black. Black as coal. Black as pitch. This dog is so black that it absorbs all wavelengths of light. Its ebony hide is physically incapable of reflecting photons back to your retinas. So when you look at it, you're not actually seeing a dog. You're seeing a little chihuahua silhouette. Lurking about the house. It is plotting against you. Oh, mark my words. It plots. And it waits.

And it doesn't bark. It stares at you and it emits noises. It makes a high-pitched squealing noise, but at the same time, it produces a low and ominous grumble. It sounds like an '84 Ford Granada is trying to pull into your driveway. But no - it is the Fruit Bat. Digesting something evil.

So perhaps a day-trip up to Valencia is just what the doctor (of jurisprudence) ordered. In other news, it has been proposed by the Pierpoint powers-that-be (a.k.a., my landlords) that I officially be in charge of all things youth-related. Heading up the youth program at our church would basically mean that I would keep doing all of the things I normally do, which consists solely of making the kids slave away their weekends on Halo sites, taking them to violent movies, and forcing them to listen to Damien Rice.

I have decided that my title should be "youth guy". This of course is not a real title, which is great, because if I had a real title, then I would have to grow a goatee like any self-respecting and competent youth worker.

But since I am a person who is burdened with neither self-respect nor competence, my scruff may remain unshaped.

Picture me rollin'...

we interrupt the usual nonsense to bring you this important announcement

2007-08-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

Pursuant to a quorum of 13 year-old girls - specifically a passel of my quasi-sibling's compatriots - it has been decided that I do not "look like" my first name.

It seems that I "look like" a Tim.

It hath furthermore been decreed that henceforth, my first name is Tim. Please adjust your address books accordingly.

all in the family

2007-08-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

To all of the Mac Faithful - Happy Product Announcement Day! Today, His Steveness bestowed upon us new iMacs. Personally, I've never been able to justify adopting an iMac, since I need a laptop for work and a full desktop tower for photography and such, but still... Isn't it beautiful?

not settling for vanilla

2007-08-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

Perhaps my previous post warrants a bit more detail. You see, of my many vices, there is none quite so fabulous as my proclivity towards retail therapy. I inherited this from my mother. It's quite simple, really. When life gets you down - go to the mall. And it just so happens that when I moved to Southern California, I moved within a few minutes drive to South Coast Plaza - the king of malls.

In the grand scheme of coping mechanisms, I think there is none better. The only real downside is that you're out a few bucks. Compare that to say, going on a bender. Alcohol certainly isn't free, and using it as therapeutic device is disfavored as it tends to be ferociously cyclical. Throwing back a few to escape your problems might be effective, but it carries with it an appreciable likelihood of creating more problems. Which requires more drinking and thus more problems and so on and so forth.

You start out the evening drinking away a bad day at the office, and when you wake up the next morning, a video of the drag queen contest into which you were coerced is making the rounds on YouTube (I'm talking to you, R7). This of course, requires more drinking, and since this strategy is clearly less than pragmatic, it is not for me.

Similarly, binge eating carries a similar quandary. Eating a giant burrito or an entire cookie cake will give you that rush of endorphins characteristic of a carbohydrate over-dose, but then what happens? You get fat. And being fat makes you even more sad, which leads to more burritos/cookie cakes, which leads to more fatness-sadness-burritos-fatness. So this strategy is also not for me.

Gambling is slightly more favored, because if you're going to throw away some money, it might as well at least be in the spirit of trying to win some more money. But it's likely that you will lose and have only enough money left to buy either alcohol or a burrito, and then you're back on one of the aforementioned downward spirals of cross-dressing and/or fatness.

So I'm left with retail therapy. This worked out very well for me, because I had budgeted to do some shopping whilst in Hawaii. And since you can only buy so many leis and things made from coconuts, I was still in the black. Actually, I did not have to purchase the obligatory lei, as I acquired a very respectable shell lei in an awkward moment with a hula dancer. No, seriously - I don't want to talk about it. Quit asking.

Also, it just so happened that I needed new shoes anyway, because my best black dress shoes (my so-called "court shoes") had worn my right foot down to a nub. Or at least a size 11. So I ventured over to Nordstrom's, armed with my vacation shopping budget, a little bit of folding green love from my father, and a Nordstrom's gift card from Christmas that hadn't quite been tapped-out. And it was then that I first laid eyes on the lover of my sole - Bruno Magli. I didn't really intend to buy them, but I thought it would be fun to try on such an infamous shoe.

The guy brings out a 13, and I slip them on. At this point, I heard my feet say, "Hello, old friends." And then I heard my mouth say, "I'll take them."

I realize that I probably sound like a girl, raving on and on about shoes in such an unrestrained manner - but these shoes! Right out of the box they felt like slippers. And to think that for years I had assumed that Bruno Maglis were only famous because of their popularity among legally-embattled professional athletes.

So now I have my Bruno Maglis. All I need now are some nice leather gloves and a white Bronco and I'm ready to... well, let's not go there.

And then - joy of joys! The South Coast Plaza J.Crew store has started selling men's clothes again! Forsooth, for the past year or so, they had completely abandoned all of the mens clothes - selling only clothes for chicks and little kids. And this week, while I was meandering through the mall, what do I see? Do my eyes deceive me? Ties! Blazers! Summer-weight wool suits! Indeed, the Department of Optimism Maintenance has been working overtime.

And what is the first thing I see amidst the freshly-stocked menswear? Hooded sweatshirts! You see, earlier this summer, I lost my favorite sweatshirt. It was a blue, fleece-lined Penguin. I left it in the back of my car, and after a trip to the beach, it was gone. Vagrants had absconded with it. I still have a maroon version of the same sweatshirt that they didn't pilfer, but since I am winter skin tone, it's just not as flattering.

But J.Crew had them in blue, lined with sherpa, which is like, super-fleece, or something. And so, even though it is patently ludicrous to buy a fleece-lined hooded sweatshirt in Southern California in August, retail therapy knows no seasons and waits for no sales. I also got a shirt, which is like, soooo cute. And a cardigan - for rockin' it Mr. Rogers style once autumn rolls around.

So let this be a lesson to you. When sorrows like sea billows roll - put down the Crown and the Chips Ahoy. When you've got the blues - go find an outfit to match.

Exeunt.

a haiku

2007-08-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

Retail therapy
Bruno Magli heals my soul
Feet so much in love.

my eight things - let me show you them

2007-08-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

Elise has informed me that I have been tagged for the so-called "Eight Things" meme. And yes, I do fully endorse the use of the word "meme". It's so much more concise than "discussion fodder for geeky bloggers". Apparently, the idea of this meme is for me to list eight facts about myself and/or habits that I have.

I would like to start by saying that I really don't understand this meme. It basically boils down to me saying eight things about myself. Talking about myself is pretty much what I do on this blog. That's not arrogance or narcissism - it's just, ya know, why you get a blog. It's pretty much the point of any blog. I don't really think I need a meme to grant me the editorial freedom to talk about myself.

I suppose the practical effect is that by the time this is over, you will have gotten eight tiny posts in one long post. I also have to post the official "rules". To call them "rules" strains the definition of the word "rules", so I use air-quotes, from which you should be able to intuit my contemptuous tone when referring to these "rules". Nonetheless:

Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

So those are the "rules" of the meme. Does it seem odd to anyone else that only one sentence of the "rules" pertains to what you actually write? The rest of the "rules" are solely concerned with transmitting to your fellow bloggers their misfortune at having been your friend, as they haven't so much been tagged with this meme as they've been yoked with it.

Anyway, here are eight things about me. Or something.

1. I would slap a nun for a donut right now. Oh, I'm quite serious. If Mother Theresa herself walked into this office right now, she would probably say: "Hoov! I have returned to bring you good tidings! And to encourage you with messages of God's love for all man!" And I would say: "That's fabulous. Did you bring me a donut?"

And she would say: "No, Hoov - I bring tidings and messages, like I said." And I would say: "Oh, Momma T, you're so funny! For a second there it sounded like you said you had not brought me a donut."

I don't want to slap you, Mother Theresa - really I don't. But I will if I have to.

2. I am obsessed with pizza. I am aware, on the conceptual level, that pizza is not the greatest thing in the world. I am aware that there are things out there that are more wonderful than pizza. I simply have not experienced them yet. And I conjecture that many, if not all, of these wonderful things could actually be improved with pizza. What's better than Iceland? Nothing. Unless you're in Iceland eating a pizza. Being freed from death row on DNA evidence? It's a miracle! We should celebrate with pizza!

I eat it with such absurd frequency, and in such awe-inspiring volumes, that I could very well be only slices away from turning into an actual Ninja Turtle.

3. If I go out to check the mail, and there's nothing fun or interesting in it, I won't bring it into the house. If it's just bills and junk mail and coupons, I will leave it in the mailbox and go inside. Even though I already walked all the way outside, and it would require no additional effort to bring the mail in, considering that I will have to, at some point, bring these items in anyway, I will leave it there and return to the domicile.

If it weren't for my subscriptions to Nintendo Power and Cat Fancy, I would never be able to pay my bills.

4. I cannot pronounce the term "chocolate syrup". It comes out "chocolate sheerup".

5. When I was a child, my mother made me a Superman cape. I don't think I ever took it off. I just wore it until it disintegrated, which was sometime in the late '90s. I was absolutely convinced that this cape contained the power of flight within its scarlet threads, and that all I had to do was jump off the couch enough times and I would figure out how it worked.

6. Also from my childhood: Apparently, one Christmas my mother bought me Megatron. The original Megatron - the one that transformed into gun. Not a plane, or whatever somesuch nonsense was in the movie. After buying it, my mother was beset by the ludicrous notion that this innocent child's plaything somehow encouraged violence. She took it back.

Years later, she confessed this to me. I still have not forgiven her. You may have seen us on Dr. Phil. The episode aired earlier this summer as a cross-promotion with the Transformers movie.

7. I am madly in love with Diane Lane. Yes, I know she is almost twice my age. My affections are, as of the date of this publication, still unrequited. But I am a patient man, and I figure if anyone is worth waiting for, it's Diane Lane.

8. I have the curious urge to jump into fountains. Like, the decorative water fountains that you see in malls, hotels, shopping centers, and in front of office buildings. Even to my cynical 26.9 year-old brain, these architectural treasures appear to me as miniature water parks, inviting all to come and frolic. Tragically, the draconian hate-shackles of decorum and social construct impede us from partaking in the tiny water wonderlands all around us.

It requires every fiber of self-restraint not to jump in and splash around, and some day, the urge might just overtake me. So, if you ever have the pleasure of joining my entourage, and you see me space-out and stare off in the general direction of a fountain, please be so kind as to gently nudge me and say, "Hoov... No."

Ugh. So that's eight things about me. A few of those would have made decent posts on their own. Of course, nothing worthy of the Coke machine story, the Kissing Santas, or the Manly Sandwich, but decent enough in their own right.

According to the "rules", I have to tag people now. I don't really know who to tag. Most of the other bloggers I know have either already been tagged (i.e., Kyle), or are too smug to soil themselves with such inconsequential subject matter as blog memes (i.e., The Fleeg). So I'll do the best I can with what I can.

I'll even do it Pokemon style: Lee and Tyler - I choose you!

someday

2007-08-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

Two kinds of people should watch this video.

1. Sigur Ros fans.
2. Anyone who has ever mocked my insatiable desire to journey to Iceland.

For those of you in the second category - I'll try not to gloat too much as you look for your passport.

orchid station?

2007-08-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

Heads up, fellow 815'ers. It looks like there is a new station in town, er, island. And I would like to add, although somewhat tentatively, that it looks like the nature of this station validates my most recent theories about the show.

If you're not caught up on Season 3, then you might not have a frame of reference for this, and you may have yet to formulate theories of your own. But no worries - the quiz isn't for another four months.

Those of you who are caught up - did you notice the subliminal Jacob messages? Spooky.

as the whole world sleeps, on gold and silver sheets

2007-07-31T01:16:00.000-07:00

Howdy. I have returned from Hawaii. I wish I could say that I was relaxed and tan, but I am in fact, neither.

Somehow, I had this dream of returning to the mainland with a tan such that I would be mistaken for a native Samoan. Or at the very least, mistaken for someone who has not taken up permanent residence in a meat locker. To no avail.

It seems that I don't really tan. I burn. And you would think that since a burn fades into a tan, my vanity could be rewarded thusly. But apparently, I burn very unevenly. Like, random patches of burn in various shapes and sizes. The visual effect is akin to an albino who has jumped out of moving boxcar. And that of course progressed into a full torso itch of a severity that I would equate with a biblical plague.

Also, I dedicated myself to saying "howdy" most of the week, just to be obnoxious. Hawaiians are convinced that people on their island[s] should only say "aloha". This word is unacceptable to me. Any word that fully encompasses two distinctly opposite concepts is patently ludicrous. It's like having a single word for dog and cat, earth and sea, Texas and Montana.

Hawaiians are also rude. They have a strange sort of snobbery for their state. Of course, many would say this about Texans, but I don't see it as quite the same thing. You see, Texans understand that our state is the best country on the planet. If you disagree, that's fine - we really don't mind if you're wrong, because we're agreeable like that. With Hawaiians, their sentiment does not so much arise from any perceived superiority of their state, it's just that it is their state, they don't want you there, and you should leave as soon as possible.

I went snorkeling. And, I might add that I was the only person on our snorkeling, um, tour or trip or whatever it was, who did not use a flotation device to assist in the process of partial submersion aquatic viewing. I am a hardcore snorkeler. One might say... an X-Treme Snorkeler. I suppose that mad snorkeling game is yet another benefit of my morbid obesity.

Let's see... what else did I do... Oh! I went on a submarine. That was cool. I felt very much like John Locke. Oh! And when we were in Oahu, I think I saw the place where Desmond killed Kelvin. Oh! And we went to a luau.

I have mixed feelings about the luau. The food was great and the show was great, but I dunno. Any activity that involves watching the gyrations of scantily-clad ladies, regardless of the cultural validity, is just not something you want to do with your parents. And Martha kept asking me to take pictures. Which is awkward. Now I have all these pictures of half-nekked lady-type people that were taken upon the insistence of my mother. It's just awkward all around and it can only end in tears.

All things considered, as much fun was had as could reasonably be expected, and I am very grateful to my parents for letting me tag along. They even let me have the master bedroom at the beach house we rented. This means that I got to sleep in a queen bed all week, and for someone who is 6'9", morbidly obese, and usually sleeps in a twin bed, this was sublime.

That's all I have for now. So... Howdy! See? Same word for hello and good-bye? It's dumb. Seriously, Hawaii. Just stop.

i smell an oscar

2007-07-05T00:46:00.000-07:00

For two hours today, I was transported back to 1986.

Sure, the movie was absurd, ridiculous, nonsensical, and borderline incoherent, but it was somehow magical. As though the battles of crashing plastic that played out in the frontlines of green leaf-print carpet and harvest gold in the house were I grew up were translated into CGI.

It was loud and long and honestly, it gave me a headache. I suspect that its awesomeness actually ruptured a smattering of blood-vessels in my brain. But it was a headache of joy. I will see it again.

I also suspect that it will sweep the Oscars. It will even win for Best Short Film, Best Documentary, and Best Foreign Film. Even if they were to make a category called "Best Movie That Is Not Transformers", the winner would still be Transformers.

it was all. that i could do. to keep from cryin'.

2007-07-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

Where have I been? In a word - Burbank.

Yes, Burbank. The town that was first introduced to the American consciousness by Laugh-In has been the home of this summer's obligatory self-perpetuating Halo project. On the whole, I prefer it to Compton, the home of last summer's Sisyphusian endeavor. There are three coffee shops within walking distance, and it's very liberating to be able to plan a work project without having to worry about getting shot at.

I also like Burbank because it seems to achieved something of an equilibrium between local independently-owned establishments and the usual fare of corporate ubiquity. You can opt for Starbucks or the insanely great For the Love of the Bean. The latter features live music and comfortable seats. Starbucks would sooner have live griffins in their stores than either of those.

But I digress. Onto the work which has so consumed me, along with any practical notion of down-time.

This particular church has on its property a certain parsonage - which if you are unawares of what that might be, it is a small house located next to a church wherein the pastor of said church may reside cheaply.

The previous pastor of this church lived there for 16 years. He and his wife collected things. He and his wife elected to not ever clean the parsonage. Now, take those two concepts and multiply them by the depths of infinity, and you will have tasted but a mere drop from the cold black ocean of what I will attempt to describe to you.

I find myself unable to accurately describe the condition of this house, for two reasons. The first is attributable entirely to fault of my own. I usually speak in exaggerations. I am known to speak of hamburgers as having changed my life, or having ripped a hole in my favorite sweater as making me wish that I were dead. Thusly, I find myself to be the boy who cried the wolf of rhetoric.

But secondly, the English language possesses neither adjective nor expletive up to the task of conveying what we found in this house. We will do this Dragnet-style. Just the facts. Ma'am.

Thousands of vinyl records in conditions ranging from arguably playable to Stachybotrys repository. Scores of stuffed animals - many of which had lost limbs to the jaws of their rodent cohabitants.

There was green mayonnaise and popcorn from 1995. There were newspapers stacked floor to ceiling. Thousands of VHS tapes, recording everything from Dark Shadows to Saturday morning cartoons.

Let us talk about the basement. It looked a crime scene from Se7en. The trash was piled chest-high. And that's my chest, which is a very high chest, because I am 6'9". In Texas that's a slightly above-average height.

As we began to clean out what can only be described as a sub-landfill, we found: A couch. Two recliners. And an organ. The instrument kind of organ. And if you think that I really didn't need to make that distinction, you clearly have not begun to grasp what I am describing to you.

Think about that for a bit... We found a couch, two recliners, and an organ. As in - when we started, we could not see them, and had to excavate them, like Pompeii, but infinitely more tragic. And if you were wondering - yes. It was a sleeper couch.

Ya know, I can't do it. It's too difficult. I've been blogging for 4 years and I am now without words. I'll just let the camera phone do the talking.

Master Bedroom: Before, After, More After.

Living Room: Ditto.
We also found a secret passageway. The basement had this little nook filled with junk. The kitchen had a random skinny closet filled with junk. As the kitchen team and the basement team progressed through their respective tasks - they met up. Imagine cleaning out a closet, and suddenly finding your friend, whose look of shock no doubt reciprocates your own.

Rod Serling's House
All that you see there we accomplished in three Saturdays. The rest of our time there has been spent landscaping, painting, stuccoing, et al. Normal work which I find to be generally less emotionally scarring.

Also, in a few weeks I will be going to Hawaii. I wanted to go to Iceland. Martha wanted to go to Hawaii. So we compromised, and we're going to Hawaii. But it's a free vacation, and I can use the time to stalk Juliette. Because our love transcends the bounds of fiction.

sometimes i get 'em free, sometimes i gotta pay

2007-05-25T08:21:00.000-07:00

I present to you a moral dilemma:

If you order coffee at a coffee establishment that gives free refills, and the nice lady does not charge you for said coffee because she was installing a debit card machine and you volunteered to be the guinea pig, is it acceptable to request a refill on your free coffee?

In other words - have you gratuitously received the individual receptacle of coffee, or have you gratuitously received the equivalent to what you would have otherwised paid for, which would be the individual receptacle of coffee, as well as a future interest (possibility of reverter) in a refill?

Also, if you choose to not pursue the refill, and you are left with an empty coffee receptacle, and you put a house in that coffee receptacle, is it still a coffee receptacle?

i'm talkin' bout what matters not figures

2007-05-14T22:49:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again: Bar Season.

Of course, I of all people should know that there are two Bar Seasons every year, and thusly, February will always have a special and yet sickening place in my heart. But everybody knowns that July is the big dance.

As with every Bar Season, my referral logs are blowin' up with people scouring the internet for Bar Exam wisdom. Civil Procedure outlines, Evidence practice essays, Con Law MBE subjects. They come to my blog looking for information, and they only find my self-deprecatory musings on two rounds with the Board of Bar Examiners

Of course, this is not just any Bar. This is the California Bar. The King of Bars. New York is open-book and in Texas they let you use a crayon to draw out little easement maps. The California Bar Exam is arbitrary, mercurial, inconsistent, and intentionally tricky. The California Bar always seemed like it would be a female Bar Exam, I can't imagine why...

So for you test-takers out there - this post is for you. Concrete advice on how to study for the California Bar Exam.

But Hoov, why should we listen to you? You have the most awe-inspiring blog ever, but how does that qualify you to render Bar Exam advice?

Easy. I passed the Bar on my second try. That means I did it wrong once, and I did it right once. So ignore my advice at your own peril.

1. Don't Believe the Hype

For the next 2.5 months, you're going to be surrounded by people in a perpetual state of freak-out. BarBri will freak you out. Your classmates will freak you out. You will see a complete stranger at Starbucks with a Conviser outline, and this will freak you out - I don't know why. It just does.

The most important thing for your Bar studying is to rise above the culture of fear. Freaking out does not get you points on the Bar. Frantic worrying will not cause your brain to suck in Products Liability elements by osmosis.

Think of it like this: You have a job to do. Learn information; Sit for a test. Nothing beyond that matters. Pressure from parents, expectations of significant others, the weight of uncertainty crushing your soul - none of that affects your score in the least. Forget what happens after the bar. Forget the jobs you might get or might lose or what your friends will think if you fail. None of it matters.

Learn the information. Sit for the test. The rest is hype, and it won't give you a single point on the Bar.

2. The Bread and Butter: Study Simple

Flashcards, going over missed questions, writing your own outlines, CD's, tapes, etc. Forget about it. The first Bar Exam - I did all that. The second Bar Exam - I didn't. What more needs to be said?

Keep it simple. Read the outlines and do practice MBE questions until you want to die, and then do 20 more. The importance of MBE practice questions cannot be overstated. I said it then, and I'll say it now: The MBE does not care if you know the law - the MBE only cares if you know the MBE.

Dozens of questions on the MBE will not depend on your knowledge of the law; they will depend on your ability to out-think the question. You think you pick up that skill by reading the outlines? Or doing flashcards and CD's? Trust me. You don't.

And don't stress too much about the BarBri practice essays. It's totally bogus. Go ahead and do them and time yourself, but the BarBri graders are morons. Once, as an experiment, I spent three hours writing one practice essay. I used all of the materials, and organized it perfectly, with headings and underlining and all of that. I even cheated and looked at the sample answer to make sure I got all of the points. It was of course, vastly beyond what any person could every hope to write in one hour at the actual Bar. I got a 55.

So do the practice essays, but ignore the answers you get. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't even turn them in. But I got some good posts out of it, at least.

3. Stay Loose

One of my most important study tips is to not study.

Seriously. There is an inversely proportionate relationship between your stress level and your ability to absorb information. So take time off.

And I don't mean take a half hour to walk the dog around the block. Or take off two hours to watch the Season Finale of LOST. Although you should do that.

What I mean is, take Sundays off. I did that during the second Bar. Did I mention that I passed that one? Take off two whole days and watch a season of a TV show on DVD. I'm totally serious. I did it during the second Bar. LOST Season 1. Are you starting to sense a pattern?

But Hoov! Then I would get behind on the BarBri Paced Program!

Oh, right. The hallowed Paced Program. That thing is lame. Almost as lame as BarBri's practice MBE questions (stick with PMBR for the most part). You know what subjects are on the Bar, and you know what you need to do to learn them. Do you need BarBri to tell you that? Of course not. You made it through three years of law school without anyone trying to be your study nanny and printing you out a fancy calendar. You can make it three more months.

Conclusion

You're not going to hear study advice like that anywhere else. And even if you don't like the particulars and you think I'm an idiot, at least try to walk away with this key concept: Avoid the group-think. Don't let your classmates suck you in to their nervous breakdowns. They will not be taking your test. Only you are. What your classmates do and how they study is completely irrelevant.

Learn information. Sit for a test. Nothing beyond that matters.

1337 no longer

2007-05-11T23:46:00.000-07:00

Crap.

I lost my first demurrer today. It's basically the same thing as a motion to dismiss, but in California we use the old common law term. Because California is known for being traditional.

Now I'm 3 and 1 for demurrers. I was very proud of my 3 and 0 record, because within the practice, demurrers are regarded as a long shot. And two of those I got in Judge Hatehoov's court. I was very proud of those because Judge Hatehoov hates me so much that I know she was very disinclined to grant them in my favor. So either my papers were that good, or she had a second helping of children for breakfast and didn't need my soul for dessert.

So not only did I lose today, but on Wednesday, I have to go to Judge Hatehoov's lair for trial, which I'm sure will be equally demoralizing. But in Hatehoov's court, as long I walk out of the courthouse wearing my gray suit instead of an orange one, I'll consider it a victory.

misunderestimated

2007-05-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

When a young attorney walks into the office late (around 10 or 10:30) wearing a suit, it is generally assumed that this individual is returning from a court appearance.

At this point, it is acceptable to say: "Did you go to court today?"

It is not acceptable to say: "Were you playing lawyer today?"

I would be offended if not for the fact that playing lawyer is pretty much what I do every day.

in defense of locke

2007-05-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

I got something to say to all you Locke-haters out there: You guys are a bunch of tailies. Yeah, you heard me. Tailies. Indeed, you are very much not unlike the tail-end survivors. Extraneous and peripheral characters with no real purpose except to be killed or kidnapped.

What's with all of you fair-weather Locke fans?

The first season, everybody thought Locke was the bee's knees. He was throwin' knives, hunting boar, building trebuchets, and trying to figure out how a plane crash managed to heal a spine that was 8 floors worth of broken.

Now it's the third season, and all my peeps is like, "yo - Locke's a busta!" Just because he blew up the Swan station, the Flame station, and a submarine (allegedly), killed a guy with a fence (allegedly), briefly joined the Others, and then coerced Sawyer into killing the guy from "the box".

Let me tell you why Locke is still awesome: He's the only character (or survivor at least) who still sees the big picture. They crash-landed on an island that heals broken spines, cancer, and infertility. People see vision of dead relatives and livestock. It's got Polar bears, pilot-devouring smoke monsters, and it's own magnetic field that's strong enough to bring down a commercial airliner. And John FREAKING Locke is the only one still wondering, "what the heck is up with this place?"

All of the other survivors are piddling around with their own nonsense problems like they crashed into General Hospital. Aaron's fussy, do I love Jack or Sawyer, who's my baby-daddy, my billionaire ex-girlfriend is coming to rescue me, stop joking about my weight, check out our ping-pong table, we don't like the new girl with the angelic visage and ample bosom...

If that's all the survivors are going to occupy their time with, I'm glad Locke ditched them to, as we say in 24 verbage, go rouge. Because ultimately, LOST is about The Island. It's not about the Others, or Dharma, or kidnapping pregnant womens. And ABC needs to move the whole Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliette thing over to Grey's Anatomy where it belongs.

The show is about The Island. And if Locke is the only character still trying to figure it out, then everyone else can get washed out to sea for all I care.

when life gives you lemons, you make grilled lemons

2007-04-24T13:42:00.000-07:00

Bad: Kitchen fire at the office, resulting in a respectable cloud of smoke lurking through the hallways and creeping into offices.

Worse: Support staff liberally applies air freshener. Much to the shock of support staff, air freshener fails to counteract smoke, due to its actually being a liquid and slowly descending onto the carpet, while the smoke, due its being a gas, maintains its position against the ceiling. Office now smells like a burning potpourri factory.

Awesome: Having allergies, and thus a justifiable reason to leave the office at 1:50 in the afternoon. Which in law office time might as well be mid-morning.

Troubling: Smoke alarm never went off.

*Update: The culprit was trying to microwave rice cakes. Double-you tea eph? Who microwaves rice cakes?

the softer side

2007-04-18T06:50:00.000-07:00

Sunday after church, several of us went to lunch. Before too long, the conversation turned to television shows, and favorites thereof. Of course I made the obligatory proclamations of my undying affection for LOST, as well as my second-tier affinity for 24 and The Office.

Jamie was in town, and since she is a fellow white-collar underling, we both raved about The Office and how it speaks to our very souls. I even recounted how the office where I "work" did until recently employ a socially awkward volunteer sheriff's officer who would openly discuss his collection of weapons and body armor. Yet one of our lunch-mates expressed a general disregard for The Office, alleging that it "isn't believable."

I queried as to whether he had ever actually worked in an office, and when he admitted that he had not, I informed him that if he had, he would find The Office not only believable, but disturbingly accurate. Then I shunned him.

That being said, I would now like to propose a plot-line for The Office - to suggest an as-of-yet unmined reality in the world of Oxfords and half-Windsors.

The pregnant coworker.

When a coworker is diagnosed with pregnancy, especially a female coworker, all other topics of conversation are immediately subject to a 9-month hiatus. No other conversation is allowed besides your coworker's uterine parasite. By implication, conversation about the prior pregnancies of the other female coworkers is allowed, but only as a means of dispensing advice to the current pregnantee and increasing the substance abuse rate among male coworkers.

Lord help you if you there is an office "party" scheduled during an office pregnancy. It doesn't matter what you and and your fellow employees are ostensibly celebrating - you're not allowed to talk about anything else besides babies, bellies, and the impending egress of the former from the latter.

Case in point: A few weeks ago, we were having a going-away party for a male employee. We were discussing outlandish things such as where he was going (oh yes, good for you) what he would be doing (mm-hmm, sounds interesting) and how he could always come back (ha ha! no, seriously - the new guy listens to his iPod so loud that I can hear the subliminal messages from across the hall).

Our resident pregnant person arrived and informed us that this would not be tolerated and it was now time to discuss designer diaper bags. Louis Vuitton makes a cute one, but the Burberry one is so much more practical what with all the little compartments. Oh yeah - pregnant rich folks.

Since I am a rookie, I made two mistakes at this point: I offered an opinion, and I was born a man. This combination will get you killed. I just did not see the merit in paying $5-honey for a diaper bag. Seriously - it's a diaper. Think for a moment: What is the exact purpose of a diaper? Is that the sort of device that needs to be swaddled in name-brand luxury? How about a Swarovki crystal toilet paper roll? Or a Monte Blanc plunger?

Anyway, so in my abject insolence, I chimed in:

"I'm pretty sure I could just use a backpack or a duffel bag."

I got a look. A look much like one might get from a NASA engineer, immediately after suggesting that you could get to the moon in a magic sailboat propelled by Unicorn giggles. Or a Jetta.

"Ugh. No. Those wouldn't have enough compartments."

Now the conversation turns to designer baby clothes. Specifically, designer labels that make matching adult and baby clothes. Blah blah Saks, blah blah Hugo Boss, blah blah Hermes. I got confused and delirious, and again I open my big dumb man-mouth:

"I got this sweater at Sears."

Dead silence. Sweet. Peaceful. Beloved. Silence. And blank stares.

"I got six of 'em."

...

"Different colors."

...

"After-Thanksgiving sale."

At this point they probably would have killed me. But I think that in their maternal mercy, they realized that reproduction was obviously not an issue with which I would ever be concerned, and that I could therefore take my duffel bag full of Craftsman sweaters and proceed unharmed until my eventual death, thereby ending my genetic lineage of idiocy, having never experienced the joy of caressing a newborn Burberry diaper bag.

It really was a hopeless situation for me. I can't even manage basic human interaction with some random girl at the mall - can you imagine if I were to take a wife and subsequently breed?

"Hoov, you should buy me this Gucci diaper bag."

"Naw, baby - Sport Chalet's got duffel bags on sale."

See? That would be the end of me anyway.

watch

2007-04-17T21:28:00.000-07:00

I highly recommend Drive. It's like LOST meets Cannonball Run. Although I'm worried, because it's a good show, and it's on Fox - the same network that canned Firefly and Arrested Development. Firefly spawned a fanatic cult following and a reasonably successful motion picture, even though it only aired for 3 episodes, and Arrested Development was canceled shortly before winning an Emmy.

So given Fox's Eisnerian gift of foresight, I'm not holding out much hope for a full season run, but I'll do my part. The first three episodes are up on iTunes and Fox's website.

shhh

2007-04-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

Tonight I shall be attending the Amiina concert at the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles. A unique group at a unique venue (apparently it's the only remaining silent movie theatre in the world). If you don't know who Amiinaa is, they tour with Sigur Ros and do most of the string work on their albums. And if you don't know who Sigur Ros is, you can just die.

For some reason, I was motivated to buy two tickets. Needless to say, there wasn't exactly a stampede of people trying to get dibs on my extra ticket to see an Icelandic string quartet. I have got to find some friends with better taste in music.

original doofus

2007-04-10T21:51:00.000-07:00

I know! A month!

And you would think I had been off doing interesting things. Fun things, profitable things, babe-related things... Not even! Things were very interesting and fun for awhile. But then Seth wussed-out and moved back to Texas. You know, because Navy Seals are so tough and all of that.

Oh well. Now I have returned to my sadistic personal Proust pilgrimage. I am slowly trudging my way through In Search of Lost Time, which incidentally is the longest novel ever written ever. Don't believe me? Better check yo self. Although apparently some crazy yankee janitor wrote one that was longer, but it wasn't published, so I don't think it counts. Actually, it kinda reminds me of that dude in Se7en.

And it's back to blogging. How best to reclaim the scattered remnants of my narrative preeminence than to revisit the genre that made me famous? Of course, I could be speaking only of:

Awkward interactions with females!

So one fine Southern California day, I had to go to Origins.

Yes, Origins. And I don't even want to hear about it from you. They make a clay mask that is nothing short of fabulous. It exfoliates without over-drying. I will beat up your dad. So shut it.

So I roll up into the Origins at South Coast Plaza at 10:30 a.m. on a weekday, looking ill-groomed and unemployed. I just want to pick up my clay mask, and maybe some foaming facial cleanser, and be on my way without incident. But, it's me, and I'm at the mall, so some manner of disaster is bound to ensue.

Enter the obligatory young blond attractive sales clerk. Did I mention that roughly 11 seconds before I stepped into Origins I had spilled most of my coffee on the front of my shirt? So I look mangy, sexually ambiguous, and unemployed, and I smell like a used coffee filter. Thus, I decided not to apply any maneuvers romantic to the young lady. As if I needed any reason beyond, you know, being really bad with the ladies, but it helps to have the list, specious though it may be.

I make my selections, and proceed to purchase my clay mask and foaming facial cleanser. At this point, the girl begins a familiar process. As you know, many retail establishments have questions that sales staff are required to ask all customers on penalty of death. The standard fare: do you have such-and-such rewards card, are you a member of this-or-that, have you tried our blank-blank, do you want to save 90% today by selling your soul for a Gap card - that sort of thing. It goes down like this:

"Have you tried our Modern Friction scrub? It's great for men and women."

"No thank you."

"Are you a member of our Insider Club?"

"Nope."

"Would you like to be?"

Stop right there. The first two questions come out in a distanced monotone - the product of rote memory and endless repetition. The usual. They ask it nine hundred times a day and eventually they stop caring what the answers are. I can dig it. But this post is about question 3.

"Would you like to be?" This question did not come out in a distanced monotone. It did not reek of apathy. It was said in a way that can only be described as patently sexual.

Her head crooked downward ever so slightly, counterbalanced by a single eyebrow, raised knowingly. Her voice dropped an octave. Her speech slowed and her mouth caressed the curve of each syllable with gentle firmness. There was a glimpse of her tongue, dark and red like Merlot as it formed the word "like". The word hung in the air slowly, dripping like candle wax from between between glossed red lips.

To which I squawked, "Nah."

It was a reflex! My feeble reptilian brain had not yet absorbed the manner in which the question was presented! No sooner had my oh-so eloquent, "Nah" flopped from my larynx than my brain chimed in:

"Wait... What? What did we just say 'nah' to? Something about being an 'insider'? Was that one word or two? Something about friction? And how it's great for men and women? What? Why were we just verbally molested?"

That's the royal "we". You know, the editorial? Anyway, I decided it was best to just take my package and leave.

But the questions plagued me. Through the Apple Store, Macy's Home, and out to my car. Why had she asked that last question in fluent Pornese? Was she trying to hit on me? Lord no! I looked like an asexual beat writer for Highlights. To propose that I was being propositioned for any bed-related activity beyond their nighttime antioxidant moisturizer is completely absurd.

But why?

Could it be a ploy to lure unsuspecting doofi (plural form of doofus) like me into paying for some membership that they're never going to use? I don't know. But I felt cheap and used. So, as I said, I had to go to the Apple Store, where I bask in my radiant superiority to the idiots that work there.

"Hey, dude! Have you tried out iPhoto?"

"Not since I stopped sucking at photography. Now get away from me."

don't believe the hype

2007-03-01T08:54:00.000-08:00

Five television promos that the networks haven't used... yet.

1. "If you miss this week's episode - not even your mother will return your calls. An all-new Grey's Anatomy."
2. "This time - Jack Bauer might not make it out alive. Ok, that's ridiculous - but this episode. Will. Change. Everything. An all-new 24."
3. "... And one them won't survive. An all-new Oprah."
4. "This is the episode that everyone will be talking about at your funeral - the funeral you'll be having because you missed this episode. An all-new Ghost Whisperer."
5. "The episode so mind-blowing - after it airs, television will cease to exist. An all-new LOST."

i am master chief's bleeding ulcer

2007-02-27T22:53:00.000-08:00

I'm doing my best not to get sick.

With the 7th grader across the hall battling some variety of heinous illness, it does not seem likely that I will succeed. Now don't get me wrong, I harbor no ill will towards my diminutive quasi-sibling, but the manner in which she coughs is completely absurd. The sound is not unlike Daffy Duck trying to convince Elmer Fudd that he's dying.

It is loud, pantomimic, exaggerated, and most assuredly catapulting microscopic vermin directly into my larynx.

She coughs like an 80-year old 2 pack-a-day smoker choking on a jellyfish. She coughs at the dinner table, she coughs in my room, she coughs on the mutant dog-thing that travels all about the house. She even coughed on my Wii remote. Now I can't play Wario Ware until I get around to buying some Clorox wipes. Actually, screw it. I'll just buy a new Wii remote.

She stayed home from school today, the very same day that I was stuck at home miring through the ~~1,200~~ 1,792 pictures that I took at that wedding. That's not as bad as it sounds, since roughly half of that number is one long series of some white folks trying to dance to Thriller. They didn't even do the zombie hand thing. Have you people even seen Thriller? From looking at the pictures, they apparently thought it was the hip-hop remix of Achy-Breaky Heart.

For the most part, I am pleased with the pictures. They have a certain action capture feel to them. More than just a collection of cheesy poses, you can progress through them and feel like you were actually there. Although the pictures of the dress pretty much suck.

Number 2 on the bride's list of things to photograph was "dress hanging up". Um... it's a dress. Just hanging there. How do you photograph that? Do you have to be a chick? Is a male capable of photographing a dress effectively? I guess I could take it out into the forest and hang it from a tree or something. That would be artsy.

And the deck was stacked against me in that the dress was hanging in the bridal dressing room. Upon entering the room, I noticed two major constituents: the obligatory menagerie of cosmetics, and an extraordinary quantity of snacks. It was as though a Drug Emporium had imploded. A room with terrible lighting, assorted lady-related paraphernalia strewn about in an unseemly fashion, and a half-dozen half-naked cranky dames running around giving me the hairy eyeball wanting to know why I'm all up in their dressing room taking pictures "because it's on the list, woman!" so just let me take my pictures and get out because I just stepped on a bra and I'm very uncomfortable right now! And the lighting was terrible!

So the pictures of the dress aren't that great.

And after a well-earned hiatus and a couple months of frustrating delays, Halo is back up, and causing me more stress and hair-loss than ever. This Saturday we'll be rolling out to Calvary Baptist in Hawthorne to do some stuccoing. Although I'm not sure "stucco" can be rightly used as a verb. I hate words that double as nouns and verbs. Like blog. Or party. Or photograph. A few weeks after that we're off to beautiful downtown Burbank, where we'll be painting. Yes, more painting. I hate painting. I'd rather put up ceiling frescoes.

But before that - we're going to Vegas. And we sure ain't gonna be fixin' churches.

what kind of a rap name is steve?

2007-02-22T07:50:00.000-08:00

I'm still a bit flummoxed by last night's LOST. I believe this is mostly attributable to the lingering effects of last week's PhD-level Desmond Darko episode. There was just so much going on in that episode. And this week, while entertaining, didn't have as much going on, yet I think my brain, newly calibrated for clue-scouring from the Desmond episode, was pan-sifting this Jack episode for clues and hints that simply were not there.

Although I did invent a LOST drinking game. But since heavy drinking really isn't how we roll, we played with Gatorade (Fierce!) and coffee mugs. But you may feel free to play with Strega or absinthe, as those seem very conducive to a LOST drinking game. Here are the parameters:

1 shot - Hurley says, "dude", Sawyer uses a nickname, Desmond says, "brother", Jack screams at someone, reference to The Numbers, someone gets a gun pointed at them, someone gets wet, Kate appears visibly conflicted between Jack and Sawyer.

2 shots - Cross-character references/appearances in flashbacks, death of a character, appearance of strange animal, plot twist (may depend on magnitude of twist - highly subjective).

3 shots - Hmm... I dunno... they get rescued, I guess. That would be worth 3 shots.

Of course, if you followed all of those, you'd probably die of alcohol poisoning by the first commercial break, so feel free to edit the parameters as you see fit. As for me, I have the alcohol tolerance of a prenatal koala, so I'll stick with the Gatorade. It is, after all, quite Fierce.

fun with strangers

2007-02-18T22:30:00.000-08:00

I am sitting on the patio. Listening to the patter of remnants from a winter rain and looking out into the orange-violet glow that is the closest thing to night we have in Southern California. And in between blankets of smoke from a well-aged Brazilian blend cigar, I am trying to find some part of me that doesn't hurt.

Nope, it pretty much all hurts.

You see, this weekend I found myself doing that which I had vowed I would never do again - wedding photography. I like taking pictures of flowers and mountains and rock formations and abandoned buildings and random abstracty things that people always ask, "what is that a picture of?" and I tell you that it doesn't matter what it's a picture of because it's abstract and open to interpretation but you keep asking me and finally I tell you it's a lamp and you don't believe me and then I show you the lamp and then you feel stupid because you thought it was a bowling ball.

This is great because no money changes hands and no one ever has to see them. If they suck they get stuffed into a drawer for all eternity and if they're good I post them on the blog and some people like them and some people insinuate that since I take pictures of flowers I must be gay and that's very rude because my mom reads this blog.

But wedding photography is a different beast. Significant amounts of money change hands. And you have to do more than show them to people, you have to give them to people. Which is hard, because my pictures are my childrens. And like my own childrens, even if they have to live in a drawer because they are ugly and deformed, I still love them.

And it is stressful and exhausting. My camera rig weighs about 12 pounds (a 1Ds Mark II, a 70-200/2.8 L IS, a 24-70/2.8 L and a 580EX). 12 pounds is not very heavy, you say. I say, this is true, until you take some 12 pound object, strap it around your neck and run around frantically with it for 10 hours. I don't care how much you work out - you're gonna feel that the next day.

And then I played some Wii Boxing today. That didn't help.

So this weekend marked the third time that Elise has managed to rope me into a paid photography gig for which I am grossly unqualified. She does this by means of what I think she perceives to be a preternatural gift of persuasion, but is actually just harassment. Even if I don't want to do it, at least if I do it, she'll shut up about it.

I didn't want to do it at all. So I figured out the politest way possible to decline her brother's vicarious pleas for a last-minute wedding photographer. I quoted a price that I thought would be reasonable - for hiring Annie Leibovitz or the reanimated corpse of Ansel Adams. But a bit steep to hire someone who isn't actually a photographer.

Needless to say, this did not work. So this weekend I hauled 4 bags of gear out to Rancho Palos Verdes and shot 1200 photos of people I don't know. And despite the stress and perpetual panic and my current desire to have my back amputated, it was good times.

I am now of the opinion that if you want to have good wedding photos, you have to provide liquor. This is especially true for the reception. All it takes is a complimentary house merlot, a cash bar, and an hour and half to turn a room full of strangers into a conga line. But the reception photos I took should be particularly interesting because I drank quite a bit of punch.

Was the punch spiked, Hoov?

Nuh-no. Worse It was red. The Hoov and red food coloring (especially Red #40) don't mix. Or maybe they mix a little too well. I had forgotten this, and I drank genovious amounts of red punch, because punch is delightful, is it not?

You see, I'm allergic to red food coloring. It makes me hyper. I haven't consumed red beverage in any appreciable quantity since that fateful night at 2515 in summer of '03. The Kim will attest to what happens when I shotgun two Big Reds. It's not pretty. I turn into Hammy from Over the Hedge. It may have involved back flips.

And it may have at the reception as well. I'm not really remembering much of it. All I know is, I woke up this morning feeling like I got trampled in a stampede of unicorns.

But leave it to Seth to put things in perspective for me:

"Hoov! Did you meet any chicks last night?"

"No. I was working. Although I vaguely recall one girl asking me to dance."

"You couldn't put down the camera for once dance?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure she was in high school. And they were playing Fergalicious. Nothing good can come from that."

"What's wrong with you? You turned down a girl for a dance?"

"She didn't really ask me to dance."

"What did she say?"

"She said, 'When are you going to stop taking pictures and dance?' ."

"Hoov - you know what you should do?"

"What?"

"Stop being a big wuss."

No. Never. Now if you don't mind, my spine and I would like to go back to taking pictures of flowers.

happii

2007-02-13T21:43:00.000-08:00

thus sayeth the hoov

2007-02-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I discovered an unsettling fact about preaching.

It is very difficult to focus on your sermon when there is a homeless guy in the back of the church taking off his shirt.

I'm up there talking about how Jesus loves the little children or how God told Noah there's gonna be a floody-floody or somesuch, and one of our, ahem - gentlemen of the street decides it's getting too warm in there. This caused my brain to do the pulpit equivalent of this:

Or, more accurately, since I am a devout Mac user:

I wonder if Rick Warren has this problem.

soulmaster reunion

2007-02-05T22:55:00.000-08:00

I suppose consolations are in order for the great state of Texas.

Yet another of the Lone Star's finest native sons has answered the call of manifest destiny and moved to Southern California. As of last week, Mr. Seth Hardage has cast his lot with the Pierpoint crew, trading in the Christian cabbage patch of West Texas for this desolate pagan wasteland. A land of state income tax, bland Mexican food and missed exits. But Vegas is only four hours away, so that alone rounds out the "pros" column.

Over the past two years, I have known about a dozen people who have said, "Hey Hoov, I'm going to move to California! Oh wait - no I'm not because I'm a big wuss!" But not Seth. He called and said, "Hey Hoov, I'm going to move to California!" And before I even shut my flip-phone, he was pulling up in his truck, motorcycle in tow.

The first thing that Seth did upon arrival was unilaterally assign himself as my work-out partner. He then proceeded to cripple me. Seth was formerly employed as a personal trainer, and before that he enjoyed a brief stint as a Navy SEAL. This has been quite an adjustment for me, as my work-out goals are, I dunno... don't get too fat. Whereas Seth's fitness goals seem to involve either world conquest or cage fighting.

In other news - I won a big case. Sadly, this makes for a completely uninteresting story, as I won it with the moving papers, i.e. - all of the boring stuff that transpires before the trial. It's hard to impress chicks with, "my general and specific demurrers to all causes of action were sustained without leave to amend". But that's ok - because nothing impresses the ladies like floral photography. And by "impress" I mean, "makes them think I'm gay."

wisecrack not necessary

2007-01-26T07:32:00.000-08:00

On the way home from work yesterday, I stopped by a *camera* store, to purchase a graduated density filter. After a quick scan and stroll about the premises did not reveal this device unto me, I inquired of the young lady behind the counter, "do y'all have lense filters here?" She says to me, and I kid you not:

"Yeah, those are in the camera department."

swiss family hobos

2007-01-24T20:45:00.000-08:00

Over the past few days, I have made a good faith attempt to tell anyone I talk to that there are homeless people living in trees. The conversation proceeds thusly:

"That's ridiculous. Who told you that?"

"A homeless person that lives in a tree."

I was in Palm Springs, of all places. I find that most people think of Palm Springs as a respectable resort town, and the prospect of the arboreal homeless is somewhat outlandish. But Palm Springs is a bit like Las Vegas, in that it's about 10% resort town, 20% normal/boring residential, and the other 70% is just shady people hanging around gas stations.

I was in Palm Springs on the way back from Joshua Tree National Park. I had never been to Joshua Tree. For those of you who have not experienced it, Joshua Tree is basically a few hundred of acres of desolate wasteland that the federal government roped-off and started charging people to hang out in. But somehow, I've fallen in love with it.

I spent about 14 hours hiking around, off-roading down old mining paths, and taking pictures. No, not with a scanner. With an actual camera. 3 actual cameras, um, actually.

Of course Claire was in attendance, she's my trusty Elan 7 (outfitted with a BP300). She likes to roll with a 100mm f/2.0 USM, a 50mm f/1.8, a 28-135 f/4 Macro, and of course, the Crowd Pleaser - the 15mm Fisheye. Then you have the new guys, as yet unnamed. A Bronica 645 on loan from one of my homies at the office, and a Mamiya RB67 Pro II TL. Imagine a camera the size of your dad's VHS camcorder - 18 pounds of medium format joy. Digital is for failures.

So after lugging around 40-someodd pounds of camera paraphenalia through the wilderness, I headed back to civilization. This required me to stop for fuel, in what was, unbeknownst to me, the inner city of Palm Springs.

This crazy homeless lady was hanging around the pumps. So of course, I do what most people do when approached by threatening and mentally unstable derelicts - I bought her some coffee and little chocolate donuts. Although, in hindsight, getting her hopped-up on sugar and java probaby wasn't the brightest course of action.

Anyway, in the middle of talking about her kids, telling me how she threw out her "old man" (many people would use this term to refer to a husband, but this chick was nuts, so it could have been her father, or maybe even an actual old man), and showing me her cat that acts like a dog (and by "showing me", I mean gesturing towards an area that was entirely cat-less), this crazy older man swaggers up to us.

After a friendly greeting to the lady, he addresses me:

"Hey, I see you got the leather one. That's a nice one. They're all made of kevlar now, ya know? It's just not the same, doesn't hold anything. Like the Chinese poet Loa Tzu once said - the eyes are the windows to the soul, ya know? So that's real cool."

Yeah... I'm holding a cup of coffee. No leather involved. And he swaggers off again, back behind the gas station.

"Good ol' Dale. He'll take care of you."

"I imagine so. Where's he going?"

"Who, Dale? Back to his tree, I guess."

"His... tree?"

"Yeah, he's got himself a good one now, been around awhile Dale has."

"You mean he like, lives in a tree?"

"No dummy, he doesn't live in a tree. More like, under it. Yep, there's a whole city of us over there. Anytime you're on the interstate and you see a big clump of trees, probably some of us livin' there."

"Oh... The city lets you do this?"

"Well hell no! But what are they gonna do - put us up at the Hilton? Although sometimes the damn sheriff comes around and burns them all down."

"What do you do then?"

"Not real bright, are you? We just go find some more trees. They can't burn 'em all down."

It was truly an enlightening experience. When I go back to Joshua Tree on Saturday, I'll be sure to stop off and holla at my girl. I know how she likes her chocolate donuts. And in case you were wondering, the pictures suck. Medium format photography is hard. There will be no contests associated with these pictures, or as I like to call them - coasters.

and the sultans played creole

2007-01-22T08:31:00.000-08:00

Hi! It's me, Hoov. From the internet? The past two weeks have been rather brutal. I've been going back and forth to the L.A. courts to get yelled at by Judge Hatehoov. And trial hasn't even started yet.

You guys have seen Star Wars: Episode 1, right? You know the character of Darth Maul? The red-eyed, black-robed, sociopathic killer? Did you know that Darth Maul was not originally supposed to be in the movie?

No! It is true! See, what happened was, they were in the middle of shooting a scene, when all of a sudden, Judge Hatehoov ran into the set and started killing people. Even though this was tragic for her victims, George Lucas thought it was great. He could just keep her in the movie! Because she already had a black robe and ghastly demonic facial features, he would save a fortune in costume and make-up.

Yes, the battle wages on with Judge Hatehoov. Like Ahab and Moby, Kurtz and Marlow, Valjean and Javert, Elmer and Bugs; she hath pursued me into the choking dark recesses of California pre-trial procedure. I feel like I'm in the principal's office every time I go in there.

At one point, she even said that I was "unseemly". What? I am the most seemly dude that I know! And I won't have The Dark Lord herself suggesting otherwise.

Over the past few weeks, I have discussed some of Hatehoov's rulings and behavior with many lawyers around the office. None of them have had any advice or guidance. These experienced practicioners of the law can do no more than shake their heads and mutter either, "bizarre", "absurd", "outlandish", or simply just "ouch".

Which leaves me feeling quite frustrated. You've been practicing law for 25 years and you can't give me any more jurisprudential insight than bizarre? Am I really that screwed?

Yes! I kept intending to write a post outlining the absurdities, but every day there's another one! I can't keep up! So since I was so stressed - I took some pictures of flowers! Exclamation points!

Anyone who can guess what I used to take those wins a free song from iTunes. No, really! I will "gift" you a song! So guess!

it ain't easy but it's necessary

2007-01-08T23:02:00.000-08:00

MacWorld starts today...

... so you better have Steve's money.

(dress up Steve for his Keynote).

o cem mluvite?

2007-01-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

Does anyone speak Czech?

There are some people talking about me on a Czech website. It is freaking me out. And Google Translate doesn't do Czech.

recreational literacy

2007-01-05T20:46:00.000-08:00

"Umm... were you aware that this movie has subtitles?"

That's what was spoken unto me by the young lady at the theater, to whom I had just handed my ticket to Pan's Labyrinth.

So this is what I said to her - verbatim: "Do you really think that I would be here, in the afternoon, by myself, on the opening day of a foreign film, for which I have just handed you an internet ticket, which I would have had to purchase in advance, if I didn't know enough about the movie in question to know that it has subtitles?"

Yes, that's exactly what I said. Word for word. I would never exaggerate that, or anything else on this blog. And yes, I did see it by myself. Which I am fully aware is unforgivably loserish, but it was either that or not see it. You might say, "Hoov, surely you could find someone to go to the movie with you". Yeah, I can just see that conversation panning out:

"Hey, you wanna go to a movie?"

"What are you going to see?"

"Pan's Labyrinth."

"I haven't heard of it - what's it about?"

"Well, this little girl has to complete three tasks assigned to her by a magic faun so that she can reclaim her birthright."

"..."

"Because she's, um. A princess."

"A princess?"

"Yeah."

"And there's a faun."

"Yeah."

"And he's... magic?"

"Well... yeah."

"So it's like, a kid's movie?"

"Well, no. It's actually rated R."

"Hmm... An R-rated movie about little girls and fauns..."

"Yeah... It's Spanish."

"It doesn't have subtitles does it?"

Anyway, it's a great film. Be sure to check it out if it comes your way.

"Donde esta David Bowie?"

merry - wait, no... happy new - wait, no... oh forget it

2007-01-04T23:34:00.000-08:00

I actually had several good posts cooked up. I had a Christmas post, a New Year's post, and a return-from-the-real-world-to-Southern-California post. But alas, they never came to fruition. More relics in the scattered post bone-yard known as "drafts".

Perhaps some day I will write a post consisting solely of snippets from unpublished (yet still lingering on Blogger) posts. A veritable mass grave of Hoovly ruminations that were judged too personal or honest or one of those other synonyms for boring.

I, very much like the Fleeg, who only saw fit to descend from his private bungalow in Romanceland to call me once to hang out, was in Lubbock for 12 days over the End-of-Year conglomeration of festivities. And I would have posted, but I was entirely too busy eating homemade almond joys and rum cake while watching reruns of Scrubs and recycling the same two sweatshirts over the course of my Lone Star fortnight.

Of course, as any self-respecting only child*, I raked it in. Have you experienced SeraSoft yet? I suggest that you go to your neighborhood Triple-B and just *touch* one of their fine products. I was but a hollow shell of a man before the day I felt its embrace.

I also got a Dell monitor. I don't even want to hear about it from you people. I've been using Apple since 2002, back when y'all were drooling over XP SP1. Apple's monitors are grossly overpriced and woefully under-featured. Yes, they're beautiful, but beauty alone is not worth the cost (this statement is also true of monitors). It just seemed silly to pay 3x as much for the same monitor, with only 1 input and no pivot support, just to get that purty aluminum finish.

I also got a new graphics card (ATI 9800 Pro). I would be so bold as to liken it unto the Hemi. It generates significant heat, and I suspect it to be no coincidence that shortly after my receipt of said graphics card, a large slab of polar ice broke off and melted. This will be a great asset to me in my work of, um, checking emails and writing documents in Word. Office is right up there with Doom 3.

I apologize for the nosedive into nerdery. As I implied, I am back in California, doin' my thang. I've only been back 2 days and I've already been vituperated by Judge Hatehoov. Considering that Judge Hatehoov does not seem to read the pleadings, review the case file, or listen to any argument advanced by counsel, I am at a loss as to what exactly she thinks she's judging. Maybe she's got one of those fancy 12-sided D&D dice. I dunno.

*Also, "only child" is not the preferred nomenclature. "Prime Child", please.

the third day of christmas

2006-12-27T11:08:00.000-08:00

Sorry my lovelies, I'm up against myriad deadlines for my trial coming up in a couple of weeks, against Judge Hatehoov as fate would have it. So needless to say, all of my filings must be magnificent. They must be Shekinah filings.

So here are some pictures I took of my hood. When I am there, I miss the barrenness of West Texas. This is a fact that is both absurd and true - at the same time!

True, they could use some Photoshopping. Knock yourselves out.

santa is in another castle

2006-12-20T07:41:00.000-08:00

I have Christmas gift for all you old school players:

A link to this wallpaper.

I've been debating the proper adjective to describe it. I have decided on superlative.

chillin' and coolin' just like a snowman

2006-12-16T12:31:00.000-08:00

It's probably a good thing that Christmas isn't actually Jesus' birthday. Because if it were, I would probably feel worse about being so ambivalent.

Yeah, I know: Bah, humbug.

I am not anti-Christmas. I am not harboring negative sentiment towards this Christian Homecoming game of a holiday. I'm just not feelin' Christmas. And even though it's that time of the year for Christians to make their obligatory rant about the commercialization of our sacred holiday - it's not even so much that.

Perhaps it's the weather. This is my second Christmas in Southern California, and I'm wondering how anyone can possibly get into the "Christmas Spirit" when it's a sunny 70 degrees every day. There is no Winter Wonderland, no Jack Frost nipping at my nose or any other exposed extremities, and ohhh the weather outside is far from frightful.

For my large demographic of Lubbock readers: Imagine you woke up one morning in early May to find people wearing red sweaters, drinking peppermint lattes, and arguing about which in-laws to visit. And that's how I've felt every day since Thanksgiving.

But perhaps it is this: When did Christmas gift-giving become nothing more than a resource exchange?

Growing up, I saw my parents pace the floors trying to think of the perfect gift to get each other. The thing that my Mom would never think of, or that my Dad would never buy for himself. Something special, unique and individual - and above all - thoughtful. I'm proud to say that the Hoovs are maintaining our gift-giving ethic.

But the rest of the world: Gift cards.

You give me a $50 Best Buy card. I give you a $50 Barnes & Noble card. What is the point? You don't know whether I want Season 1 of Twin Peaks or a Carpenter's Boxed Set. And you don't care. I don't know whether you want The Collected Essays of Ken Kesey or The DaVinci Code on tape. And I don't care.

We might as well have just kept our money and bought what we wanted. No sentiment has been expressed - just the mutual fulfillment of obligation.

But perhaps it's the cognitive dissonance our culture has towards Christmas. By that I mean this: it is completely acceptable for non-Christians to celebrate Christmas. Is that a bad thing? Well, no. I suppose not. But it is illogical. Why? What if I wanted to celebrate Chanukah?

I would be derided, mocked, and accused of Antisemitism.

So let me get this straight: Anyone can celebrate the most sacred of Christian holy days, but no one else gets to celebrate the second-most sacred of Jewish holy days?? That is illogical.

And as a holiday, Chanukah makes way more sense. First, it is celebrated at the same point in the calendar as the events by which the holiday was inspired. Christmas? Far from it. Second, the symbols associated with Chanukah actually have a connection to the hisorical basis of the holiday. Santas, Christmas trees, snowflakes, snowmen? Not so much.

The opposing counsel in one of my cases is Jewish, and quite orthodox. I envy him, because he gets to celebrate his holiday as sacred, as unique to his faith, as a representation of how his God protected his people. And his holiday can be mocked and diminished by the culture, but it will still be sacred to his faith and his faith alone.

But not Christmas. Here in a blue state, if you suggest that Christmas is a "Christian holiday", you would be promptly dismissed as a narrow-minded, fundamentalist Bible-thumper, and you should run along back to Jerry Falwell.

Joe Blow on the street can say, "I'm post-modern. I think that all truth is relative, existence is dualistic, and therefore an all-powerful and absolute deity is necessarily excluded. But I'm down with presents, and time off of work, and good will towards men and yada yada - all that stuff. So I have a right to celebrate Christmas. And no Christian is going to tell me I can't."

I feel like our holiday, and by proxy, our God, is getting used. And it ruins it for me.

Dear Christians,

We don't like your morals. We don't like your standards. We don't like you, and we don't like your "God" intruding into our social systems, trying to prescribe antiquated notions of "right" and "wrong". We are doing just fine on our own, thank you very much.

But we do love presents. You got the right idea on that.

So we've enclosed some Starbucks cards.

All the best,

Culture

Happy Holidays, everyone.

thought they knew, who was up in this

2006-12-15T14:23:00.000-08:00

More adventures with the firm's star-crossed matchmaker: the file room clerk:

"Sup, Hoooov?"

"Yo."

"Dang, fool - that hot new secretary was talking about you."

"... The blonde?"

"Yeah, fool! She was in here this morning - said she saw you in the elevator yesterday and she thought you were cute. She was askin' all about you, dawg!"

"... Yesterday?"

"Yeah, fool! You gonna get with* her or what?"

"... I wasn't um, here yesterday."

"Huh?"

"I took the day off. I was Christmas shopping."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Hmm..."

"Yep..."

"It's cool, dawg - she's not really that hot anyway."

I gotta file stuff less often.

Editor's note: Under no circumstances do I endorse use of the phrase "get with", since I am neither an 8th grader, nor a member of New Edition.

"the following takes place between 10pm and 11pm."

2006-12-12T22:22:00.000-08:00

Upon returning from a late evening of Christmas shopping, I found that everyone in the house had gone to bed, locking me out.

So I used a credit card to unlock the back door. Then I snuck in without waking the dog.

I've been watching way too much 24.

damien rice concert review: not so delicate

2006-12-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

Since I have already received a few unsolicited requests for my thoughts on the Damien Rice concert, I thought it best to post my review.

First of all, it would seem to me that a Damien Rice concert is no place for a passive Damien Rice fan. If you're the kind of "fan" that likes to listen to "Delicate" and "Blower's Daughter" on your iPod nano while sitting in the basement of the library studying for your Poli Sci final, then seeing Rice live is not for you. Perhaps you would be happier at an All-American Rejects concert. Or maybe Teddy Geiger.

It's like I told The Fleeg - you have to feel Damien Rice. If you feel every note of melancholy, anguish and bi-polarism, then you should feel right at home.

The first thing that struck me about the concert was the sound quality. Most concerts seem just slightly too loud to be comfortable, like when I saw Mute Math and the time I um, saw MC Hammer (circa 1991). Maybe it had more to do with the venue (Orpheum Theatre), but it was more like a Damien Rice symphony. Even the loud and screamy parts like in "I Remember" remained acoustically comfortable without sacrificing intensity, and the bass was full and devoid of any perceptible distortion. Sigur Ros could take a few lesson's from Rice's sound team for their live performance of "Glosoli".

The second thing that struck me was the intensity and energy put in the performance. I honestly expected a Damien Rice concert to be a low-key affair - just Damien, I dunno... sitting on a stool or something and strumming wistfully. Not so much. The performances of "Woman Like a Man" and "Me, My Yoke, and I" were nothing short of a full-blown rock concert. The encore of "I Remember" was even more dramatic, with Damien looping lines of distorted vocals in rounds while every member of the band took a bow and departed the stage separately - in the end leaving only Damien's voice looping over a dark and empty stage.

The third thing that struck me is that Damien Rice is a strange man.

Before "Woman Like a Man", he pulled out a birthday present given to him by Glen Hansard, frontman for The Frames and half of The Swell Season, a piano/guitar duo that opened for Rice. The present? A Mexican wrestler mask. Shiny red and yellow. He puts the thing on and starts playing. He plays the entire song. Wearing a Mexican wrestler mask. And the crazy thing is - the performance was so mind-blowing, I pretty much forgot he was wearing it.

It got a little stranger in the first verse of "The Animals Were Gone", when he just stopped playing, uttered a curse word, and stood there - head hanging silently...

And everyone in the audience is thinking the same thing: "Well, I'd like to hear the rest of the concert, but it would be cool to say I was at the show where Damien Rice finally lost it."

So he walks off stage. The cellist plays a strange song about a man standing in the middle of the highway. Cute. But weird. And made no less weird by the context.

Then Damien comes back out with a small mug, presumably of tea or coffee or something, and picks up his guitar

"I'm like a f*ing horse up here - about to fall asleep while standing up. So I drank some saki."

Ok, so maybe it's not tea. On with the show. And a fantastic show it was. I can't recall the exact setlist, but there was the obligatory "Blower's Daughter", "Cannonball", and "Volcano". There was also an impressive "Grey Room", a somewhat standard "Elephant", a haunting "Accidental Babies", and a toned-down piano-driven rendition of "Rootless Tree". Which was nice, but I really reeeaaally like that song in its expressive album form.

I was enraptured by the entire affair. Even the venue was fabulous - lavish, spacious and comfortable. I loved it even though of my three favorite Damien Rice songs, one was greatly compromised, and the other two ("Cold Water" and "Coconut Skins") were no-shows.

And here is something else I told The Fleeg, who was considering buying a ticket to a New York show off eBay: "It's worth that much just to see The Swell Season".

Yes, The Swell Season. In. Credible. I could write 8 posts about how much I loved The Swell Season. But I won't. It's available on iTunes.

ev'ry day i'm hustlin'

2006-12-05T07:02:00.000-08:00

Last night I met a guy who used to be in a gang. He got out, graduated from college, graduated from med school, got married, opened a mortgage broker business, was appointed Head Pastor for one of the most established churches in Orange County, and he's getting his M.Div. Oh yeah - and he's my age.

So what are you doing with your life?