Turns out I wasn’t so novel with my Paranoid Android hypothesis. But of course, it only makes sense. Somebody else has to have read the book and heard the song. I guess it’s both cool and not cool to know that I found something cool that many others have found.

I think I know where Radiohead got the title for their song Paranoid Android. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the book I’m reading, there is a human-like robot. It was given a personality by its manufacturer. The personality is a new feature and has yet to be perfected, so the robot does not know how to control its emotions. It is, in a sense, paranoid. The characters in the book ask whether or not they have to take the robot with them to a nearby planet. Specifically, the exchange is as follows:

“Are we taking this robot with us?”
“Oh, the Paranoid Android…Yeah, we’ll take him.”

Now beginning The Case for Israel by Alan Derschowitz. Here is a brief review of it and a similar novel by Yaacov Lozowick, Right to Exist.

Via nerygirl: “Blogger has some tips on how not to get fired because of your blog.” Good stuff, especially since paychecks should always trump your blog.

semaphoria must have a really cool job.

Is San Antonio weather on crack? I went to bed last night and it was like 60. When I woke up this morning it was 33 (and my nose was stuffy again). A friend from work told me how he went for a ride on his motorcycle out in the country and saw a line of dark clouds in the sky. A few minutes later, the temps dropped “a good 20 degrees” and the wind almost blew him off the bike. He hit the gas and raced the cold front back to his house, weaving in and out of it as the roads wound through the Texas hill country. When he got home, he saw it tumbling towards his neighborhood and WHOOSH the wind blew and the temps dropped. Cool stuff, weather.

It just occurred to me that Rid of Me by PJ Harvey is 11 years old (recorded winter ’92, released ’93). After that, Steve Albini recorded two more of my favorite albums: In Utero and Last Splash. Why are most of my favorites from the ’90-’95 era? I must be getting old. Pretty soon, I’ll be listening to a classic rock station playing Mudhoney. I rue the day.

This web site is on my referrer list under four different URLs. What gives? How did it find me? Strange.

On page 206 of Come As You Are:

(‘Macleod’ is Alex Macleod, Nirvana’s tour manager.)

Dave, who is not a “morning person,” began rooming with Mecleod [in hotels while on tour]. But as the tour went on, Macloed acted more and more annoyed at Dave. Finally, Dave couldn’t stand it anymore and confronted him.
“What’s your problem? What’s wrong?” Dave asked.
“Fuck you!” Macleod shot back.
Apparently, whenever Macleod would try to wake Dave up in the morning, Dave would yell in his sleep, “FUCK YOU! LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE! THIS IS BULLSHIT!” then settle peacefully back into his pillow. Later, he’d go down to breakfast and wonder why Macleod was scowling at him.

I finally finished Under Western Eyes. I don’t really know why it took me so long… no, wait, I do: too much quality time at the Flying Saucer and other similar establishments. Hey, at least I’m getting out more...

Overall, Under Western Eyes was a good read. The story dragged some in the middle but picked up considerably towards the end. The writing wasn’t particularly complex or overly simple; Conrad found a happy medium. The several extra English Lit courses I took in college have cursed me into a lifetime of overanalyzing everything I read, so with that, here follows some armchair analysis.

I almost wish I hadn’t read Crime and Punishment before reading UWE. The similarities between Raskolnikov (C&P main character) and Razumov (UWE m.c.) kind of impinged on my ability to let Razumov develop as a unique guy, but only because Raskolnikov was such a memorable (read: “whack”) character. The way Conrad painted Razumov helped the reader empathize with his lot in life – no family, no name, no support group, living in a foreign land, and yet, he is thrust into a difficult situation that would be easiest to get through with the help of a family. Though he does associate with a group of peers (Revolutionists), they can hardly be called a ‘support group.’ The reader wants to jump in and help Razumov when he stumbles but he inevitably voices some abhorrent and cocky opinion that turns the reader off. It’s a constant conflict between pity and contempt.

One recurring theme I noticed was Conrad’s use of the words verisimilitude and Mephistophelean. Perhaps it was intentional, perhaps it wasn’t; either way, they are very fitting. UWE is based on the covering up of a lie – or, several lies intertwined. Mephistopheles was “the devil in Faust’s legend to whom Faust sold his soul” (thank you dictionary.com). Verisimilitude, the quality of resembling truth, fits in well devils’ common literary role as antagonist. And if there was one battle that Razumov consistently endured throughout the novel, it was with his demons.

I’m sure finding where these words are used and noting their context would probably add to my point. Feel free to help me out below.

One more thing worth noting is the role of the Chateau Borel, the self-exiled Russian Revolutionists’ tactical and residential headquarters of Geneva. Everything about this supposed safe-haven reeks of death. People who live there are pale and ghost-like (Conrad actually uses the words ghost and ghoul). There is no heat. Time passes unnoticed. The fences, gates, and grounds are dilapidated and in need of maintenance. Concrete statues and steps at the entrance are unwelcoming at the least. What is supposed to be a home feels like a gloomy, deserted, and neglected shack. Leaving it after a pivotal interaction, our main character is washed clean by a thunderstorm. While the cleansing is kind of clichéd, it does work. Much like Raskolnikov in C&P, a man stumbles into inclement weather after a cathartic scene.

If you have an interest in translated Russian novels, you might want to consider giving yourself a ‘warm-up,’ as it were, with Under Western Eyes. It’s less of a time commitment but still provides a good taste of the Russian literary world. And if you’ve already covered the major Russian works, give Conrad a try for a different albeit refreshing point of view. Particularly enjoyable was Conrad’s narrative style, firmly rooted in the voice of an Englishman twice displaced: once for living in Geneva and twice for socializing in Russian circles (not that there’s anything wrong with that). If you’ve ever wanted to read a novel that ‘took’ you someplace but didn’t leave you standing when you arrived, try this book.

If you've gotten this far, I congratulate you. Please let me know if this review is helpful, total gibberish, or gives you the warm fuzzies.

It's midnight and I just got back from Austin. The one known as Tarflet and I saw Sonic Youth and they were great. A proper write-up is forthcoming.

I also finally finished Under Western Eyes. Commentary is in the works.

I won tickets to see Missy Elliot, Beyonce, and Alicia Keys tomorrow night so the one known as Tarflet will be in town for that. I'm sure some kind of write-up will follow.

I'm leaving to Arkansas to see my sister and co. on Thursday morning, so posts will be thin during the weekend.

All in all, there's lots going on but I gotta go to bed now. You'll hear more from me next week.

I’m about to meet a friend at a hip coffee house for some reading and conversation. This is very exciting for me as she is one of two people I know within the city limits that reads regularly. The other person is a homebody and never leaves the house.

Not really. He just leaves for beer. And food. And Austin.

I borrowed a friend’s copy of The Cognitive Style of Power Point by Edward Tufte many, many months ago (sorry man) and finally read it. Tufte rips apart the PowerPoint presentation from several different angles. His pamphlet-essay is basically a 23-page version of: “Hey folks, PowerPoint sucks because it only gets in the way and no one will understand what you need to tell them.” I think we all know that. I don’t think anyone I work with likes PowerPoint. I don’t think anyone I’ve ever met likes PowerPoint. That said, I guess this essay would be useful for people that do like PowerPoint, but anyone that likes PowerPoint isn’t going to seek out reasons to not like it. Ergo, I don’t know what good this essay could possibly do.

But the cover graphic is really cool.

I also like this picture. Bonus points for finding a Peugeot bike that’s still in use.

I finished Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air a few days ago. It didn’t read like a novel; it read like an account of a natural disaster. Tornado, hurricane, earthquake, failed Everest expedition – take your pick. The only difference here being that climbing Mt Everest isn’t exactly an act of nature. Krakauer noted that this was problematic for some readers. He received many letters chastising him for his behavior when circumstances near the summit forced him to abandon several climbers and retreat to his tent. If frostbite was nipping at my fingers and toes, I was suffering from altitude sickness, and I was dangerously low on oxygen, I wouldn’t venture out into a storm with hurricane speed winds in 70 below zero temps either. It’s plain stupid. But then again, so is climbing Mt Everest…

The writing, though not spectacular, does take the reader right onto the mountain with Krakauer and his team. It is a wild ride of office building-sized ice monoliths, several-thousand foot drops, and football field chasms. By the end of the book, Krakauer’s message came through clearly: the summit attempt was doomed from the start and is generally impossible unless conditions are absolutely perfect. One might as well be on the moon when at 25,000+ feet. Storm or no storm - it’s no place for life.

New books are posted on the right.

Something thing I failed to mention about my trip to Austin last weekend: I scored this sweet Aventinus glass. The fact that it’s also filled with a ½ liter of Aventinus is probably why I felt the way I did later that night.

I’ve been in San Antonio for well over a year and had yet to visit the Botanical Gardens, so I spent a good three hours yesterday baking in the sun and perusing the Garden’s exhibits. Check out the 37 photos here (you’ll need a snapfish account).

I just finished Ben Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House, I’m listening to Turn On The Bright Lights [courtesy of a friend from work], and the floaty guitar riff on track one has somehow brought me to the keyboard. I must write about these card-counting whiz kids.

Mezrich’s book tells the story of a dozen or so MIT students and dropouts that, under the guidance of an MIT professor and the financial backing of undisclosed investors, take Vegas for millions playing Blackjack. They crack the system and do it perfectly legally. It’s not cheating – it’s outsmarting.

The aspect of the book that struck a chord with me the most was in the time management skill these kids demonstrated. It seems all too easy to screw up something in between weekdays in Boston spent taking care of a full course load and weekends in Vegas spent trolling the strip – not to mention the inherent difficulty in keeping the double-life secret from family, friends, and significant others. While the winnings were enormous, there’s no telling what kind of damage to said relationships occurred as a result of the secret life. But in the end, there’s not much to say other than “they did it to themselves.”

And if things weren’t difficult enough, the team broke ranks when the dangers of unorthodox play got it into trouble. Friendships built on weekends in Vegas and Atlantic City crumbled as friends got their teeth knocked out by questionable characters in casino restrooms. To some, Blackjack was just a weekend hobby. But to others, it was how the rent got paid.

So how did they do it? It’s not so much about counting the cards as it is tracking them. If you can keep track of when most of the low cards have already been dealt, you can figure out when to bet $10 and when to bet $5000. This is obviously an oversimplification, but that’s the general idea. It also takes a significant amount of calculations that, as it turns out, require MIT whiz kid status to perform on the fly.

Totally unrelated but very informative: FAQ on recording industry basics [via sellout central.]

This whole ‘voluntary unemployment before law school’ thing is rocking. I spend my days reading, vegging at the pool, riding my bike, catching up on various bloggage, playing guitar, and generally loafing around the apartment. It’s fantastic. I’ve got a nice little book list off to the right that I want to work through by August 16th, my first day of law school, a day that will likely mark the end of my leisure reading habit for a good long while. And since it’s summer, well, I figured I ought to give Michael Chabon’s Summerland a shot, especially since I liked his last book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It’s definitely one of my top 10.

I’m about half-way through and I wanted to see what anyone else out there that might have read it thinks.

So, has anyone else out there in Internet-land read it?

Summerland feels quite different than Kavalier and Clay. It feels, for lack of a better term, like a children’s book. It’s kind of like The Hobbit, Harry Potter, and something else I haven’t read rolled into one. The premise [so far] finds a couple 11-year-old kids trying to save the world but, first, one of the dads, who has been taken hostage by the Bad Guy, needs to be rescued. Yes, it’s a story of Good vs. Evil set in a fairy tale land. With Kavalier and Clay in mind, I didn’t expect this kind of thing from Chabon.

What also hints towards the kids’ book theory is the size of the text and the amount of text on each page. Getting through 10 pages of Kavalier and Clay took much longer than 10 pages of Summerland. It seems well suited to pre-teens. Then again, it’s 500 pages. When I was 12, there was no way you could have gotten me to read a 500-page book.

I don’t imagine the book will change much in the remaining 180 pages, so I’ll just sum up my thoughts now and refer to them when I finish: the suspense of finding out what other kind of shenanigans the kids will have to work through to save Dad and the world is strong enough to make me want to finish it, but, the book is still pretty damn corny.

I should also mention that there is a chance some of the basic elements of the book could be allegorical or metaphorical to something very real and pressing in the world, but who knows. Right now, it’s just corny.

I’m still gathering all the pictures from the Portland trip so I can’t send a link to them yet, but I can post links to the short movies I took with my digicam. They’re all .avi. Sizes listed below.

Multnomah Falls - sideways (1436 KB)
Driving across Bridge of the Gods (4119 KB)
Japanese Gardens - Pond and Surroundings (2542 KB)
Japanese Gardens - Rock Garden (4595 KB)
Driving across Morrison Bridge (1755 KB)
Circular panorama of trees at Washington Park (3016 KB)
Bigass redwood (1748 KB)

You can read about the Portland trip here.
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Finished Prague by Arthur Phillips last night. I burned through the first half, slogged through the third quarter, and regained some interest at the ending.

The book lost steam after the halfway point because characters started abruptly disappearing [desertion, marriage, whatever] which, combined with a series of conflicts and goals apparently coming to resolution, made for a vacant second half of the story. The characters themselves were interesting enough to hold my attention, though. There were a few surprises but also a few gimmies.

One thing that bugged me was Phillips’ repeated use of the same observation. He mentions how a character, deep in thought at a cafe, swirls his beverage and stares at the film of liquid left on the mugs’ interior. While this is kind of a cool observation to mention, it’s only cool once.

Oh yeah, and don’t let the book’s title fool you. The story is set in Budapest. The characters only have this nagging feeling that life in Prague is better.

Overall, my favorite part of the book was the writing. The narrator and several of the characters have that wry and biting sense of humor that always puts a smile on my face.

Other reader reviews here and here.

Second installment of the “things that happen to you while” series; alternate title: “too many p’s: p-man in p-town”; written after a five-day excursion visiting four bloggers I had never met [in person] with three friends I met at my [now previous] employer.

Note: The links don't actually send you anywhere, they just pop up witty witticisms.

- - - - - -

On the way to Portland, you sit next to a woman speaking a language strangely familiar to you. It’s Russian. You talk with her for the duration of the flight about living in Russia, traveling in Europe, how your Jewish parents are basically the same, how writing code gets old, how lucky her kids are that they get to travel the world by age 10. You exchange information. You have now made a friend in Oakland, California.

After several bumbling mishaps, your friends meet you at the airport and whisk you away to a five-day vacation. Your friends say they’re in an orange car. When you see an orange car carrying your arms-flailing-hands-waving friends, your mind flips when you realize the orange car is a bright orange Mustang convertible. Your friends have rented a speeding ticket waiting to happen.

You and your friends drive like maniacs [safe maniacs]. No tickets happen.

You proceed directly to an establishment called the Kennedy School and wonder how long it’s been since you went anywhere with a name ending in “school.” You are oddly excited because this place apparently serves beer. What a great combination. You meet your blogger friends there and you discover their blogs are accurate representations of who they really are: interesting, cool, witty, fun, and just a little bit saucy. Or is it snarky? Both.

You, a couple of the bloggers, and a roommate continue the drinking at another bar. Upstairs, Sonic Youth is making a racket – a beautiful racket you would love to hear in a venue you would love to see. One of the bloggers happens to be a well-known bartender and musician in the Portland area and gets you and your friends in for free. Sonic Youth slowly gets louder as you climb the staircase and walk into a historical gem of a music venue. It’s a ballroom complete with chandelier, frescoes on the wall, and a spring-loaded wood floor. One of your friends says “Welcome to Portland!” as Kim and Co. do their thing onstage. You wonder why the hell you aren’t already living there.

An afternoon spent wandering the many trails of Washington Park reminds you why you like being outside and how much cube life sucks. You find a bench under a redwood and sit. For a long time.

Sushi Happy hour results in many beers and several rolls of rice, seafood, and vegetables. One of your blogger friends ingests an ungodly amount of wasabi. You laugh. He cries. You laugh more.

You spend the evening at one of Portland’s many brewpubs, Bridgeport. You take pictures of your friend’s simultaneously hideous and glorious parallel parking job. Imagine: right next to the pub’s patio sits a bright orange Mustang convertible with half of its nose sticking out into the street. The patrons gawk in amazement: “who the hell are these people?” You enjoy yet more delicious new beers.

Two of your friends leave the next morning, and with them, the ‘stang. You and the remaining member of the Texan crew rent a Taurus to explore the Gorge. Within thirty minutes of leaving Portland driving on a picturesque highway [only a little more picturesque than I-10 in San Antonio] you arrive at mountains and waterfalls. You ogle the waterfalls, want them to be thirty minutes from your door, wonder if you’d ever get used to them and stop visiting them if you lived in Portland. You pinch yourself and think, “stop daydreaming, asshole. there are waterfalls here that need your attention.” Your friend’s new motto for the trip is “that doesn’t suck.” You agree.

Over the next two days, you continue to consume refreshing beers and visit places like the Pittock Mansion, The Japanese Gardens, and The Chinese Gardens. During those two days, you end up at the Kennedy School once again and wander off the beaten tourist path to a pub called Bonfire.

You spend Monday morning wandering the many stacks of Powell’s Bookstore. At 1, your friend leaves for her flight back to Crap Antonio. You hug and realize this trip basically changed your lives. Now you’re on your own with one more night and no hotel room, you wander the streets of downtown in search for lunch and a good time. You invariably end up back at the bookstore.

Your friend's husband calls you and invites you to the park to see if there is any kickball to be played. Looking down at your feet clad in sandals, you wonder if that’s such a good idea. You say, “Fuck it, worse comes to worse, I can play barefoot.” You meet a lot of cool people and head over to the Portland version of a dive bar called the Triple Nickel for beers and music geek talk.

A show at Dante’s featuring the Short Bus Dub All Stars is waiting, so you head back to the house to change and pick up your friend’s wonderful wife, the one that let you crash on their couch. While the husband plays pool, you and the wife skank to the opening ska band and wait for Short Bus to come on. While the bands are loading/unloading from the stage, a high school-esque drum line entertains the audience with cool beats and crashing cymbals. The crowd starts to pogo; you pogo; everyone is getting into it. For a split second, you wish you were in marching band in high school. Then the next second arrives and you’re glad you weren’t. Jazz band was way cooler.

You end the night at a strip club down the street from your friends’ house that oddly has one dancer that isn’t stripping. It’s late on a Monday night and she’s hanging out and talking to the few patrons left. You aren’t the biggest fan of strip clubs but you like this one. You talk with your friend, the dancer, the bartender, and the patrons till late.

The next morning, you and your friend eat cheese and crackers and watch the best cartoons since Transformers. Imagine the old Hanna Barberra cartoons on crack. And a couple 40s. After a short drive to the airport, you pull up at the departure entrance and tell your friend he and everyone else are always welcome in Texas and to drop you a line if they ever go, but as soon as you say this you realize chances are better that you will end up in Portland before he or his Portland crew will end up in Texas. Lo and behold, he says just that. You agree. You say thanks again, shake hands, and hop out of the car.

On the flight home, you sit next to an elderly nun. There is an empty seat between you and her. You spend the entire flight engrossed in one of the many books you bought at Powell’s and gaze out the window at the black sky, a little fidgety in anticipation of getting home. The nun spends the whole flight motionless – she stares at the seat in front of her blinking for the duration of the flight. Doesn’t move. No book to read, no magazine, no music, no journal to write in. Just sits. You wonder what kind of thoughts she has that keep her entertained or if she needs anything at all to be entertained, or if, more simply, she needs to feel entertained at all. She just is. You wonder why the hell you can’t do that. You look at her and notice you’re staring. She turns her head and smiles. You smile back. You look at your hands and try to think of nothing.

And then all the badass people you met and all the badass things you did in Portland flood your brain. Hey, doesn’t Portland have a law school?

Richard Posner, pinch-hitting for Lessig, says in his last post:

The uncertainty concerning the proper scope of IP rights is magnified by the onrush of technology. As I said, repeating a Lessig point, law is relative to technology; technology can disrupt a balance carefully struck by law. But if we have no clear sense of where the balance should be struck, this makes it difficult to know what stance to take with relation to encryption technologies that enable IP owners to obtain greater protection from copiers than IP law would give them.

Any volunteers?

click the above link. it takes you to a recent exploding dog drawing called "i can't hear you." then tab back to this page.

see? i may be a huge dork, but this just might be what i need to establish my hip indie cred. and everyone knows one cannot operate a hip indie blog without hip indie cred.

in other music news, i've been listening to Gorillaz a lot lately. imagine Blur, but stoned, and with an array of sampling devices and other instrumentation. if you aren't familiar with Blur, imagine good music. and go buy this album.

--------------

i posted the other day about Summerland and i'm happy [? or not?] to report i was right. the book stays corny. rebecca, that doesn't mean you shouldn't finish it, though. it does pick up pace towards the end. i think you'll like it.

there is one last thing i want to mention: religious allusions. the book alludes to several religious ideals about the beginnings of the universe and whatnot. at one point, a character says: "Back when old [guy who created the world] was making the Worlds, separating out all the Something from Nothing..." [page 437]. this comes straight from the Old Testament - the concept of separating two groups of matter as part of the creation process. i don't know why Chabon felt it necessary to make such allusions. if you're writing a fairytale story, why borrow concepts from common religious thought?

One large step for independent musicians looking for a cheap way to get their music disseminated.

Following the lead of a lower-court decision last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles said on Thursday that peer-to-peer software developers were not liable for any copyright infringement committed by people using their products, as long as they had no direct ability to stop the acts.
...

The decision marks a substantial--if not entirely unexpected--setback for the big record labels and movie studios, which have tried hard to win legal rulings that would clamp down on anarchic peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa or eDonkey.

Of course, none of this is consistent with my whole “want to be a fair and just lawyer” thing. Where do we draw the line? Is it a big deal if a moderately successful artist is hurt or only a massively successful artist? Who are we to judge how successful an artist needs to be before they fall off the “we feel bad that you’re losing out on album sales” list? Who are we to meddle in the capitalist nature of our market? How is music different from other intellectual property products, e.g., literature and software? Software is easily transferable via the internet but printed literature is not. But what about technology that could scan a document and produce an electronic version? People would trade books like they do mp3s.

My worlds are colliding. Something obviously needs to be done about the structure of our intellectual property concepts and markets.

I haven’t slept well since school started. It takes me a while to fall asleep and I tend to wake up in the middle of the night. The gears in my head are still spinning trying to process all the new information – both scholastic and otherwise – that my brain is receiving. I’ve basically been running on overdrive for a month and I can’t do it anymore. So I’m making two conscious decisions:

1. I will resume two activities important to me that I quit when school started: reading and working out. [I know I mentioned the working out thing a while ago, but I mean it this time. Really.]
2. I’m going to slow down. I always feel like I need to be rushing off to somewhere. No more. The rushing stops here and now.

The book I started isn’t actually a book; it’s a play, and a damn funny one at that. It’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee. I started reading it this morning on the light rail on the way to school and I found myself chuckling out loud. The rubbing alcohol bit had me rolling. Seriously, you need to pick this play up. It’s a riot.

It’s hard to study for a mid-term that doesn’t count for a grade but is only intended to give you an estimation of how little you actually know. It’s really, really hard, especially when sitting in a wifi enabled library with windows looking out to clear blue skies on a toasty September day.

addendum, post-test: the mid-term went about as planned. but here's the kicker: the prof asked us not to put our names on the test booklets. rather, we were to pick a number between 1 and 1000 and write it on the front cover. smart asses galore probably picked 007, 666, 69, 427, so on and so forth, but i chose a much cooler number: 42. who else in law school would pick a number from a geeky sci-fi-meets-philosophy book? as I turned my test in to the teacher, i noticed the test booklet on top of the stack HAD THE SAME NUMBER. i'm not not nearly as cool as i thought i was.

Whatwith all the trendy new technologies out there these days (internet, e-mail, microwaveable Ramen), one sometimes forgets about the more archaic ‘technologies’ that were once marvels of human accomplishment. Like the mail. No no, not e-mail, but plain old, stamp-and-envelope, wait-a-few-days-for-it-to-get-to-you mail.

After at least two weeks of neglecting to check my mail due to various school-related distractions, I finally took a walk to the mailboxes and found my little rectangular piece of postal space filled with coupons, ads, and dreaded bills. How crappy is that? You’d think someone would realize “Hey, this poor bastard is in law school. Let’s hold off on sending him bills.” But no. They have no shame. So what did I do? Why, I tossed them on my couch, unopened, and left them there.

Just kidding. I like having electricity and internet access. I’m not completely irresponsible; the bills did get paid. They did sit on the couch for a couple days, though. That part wasn’t made up.

On the bright side, one pleasant surprise did greet me in the mailbox: my bestest friend in California sent me an early birthday present. Every year, we send each other books for our birthdays. Last year, she sent me Liar’s Poker, which I ingested in about 15 minutes. It was awesome. This year, she got me Crossing California, and it looks equally entertaining. So thanks, my bestest friend in California, it’s looking like another great birthday present. I had better start looking for something to get you for your birthday… got an interest in law-related books?

I had all kinds of great plans for my winter break. I’d catch up on some reading (see books on right), ride my bikes, hit the gym, go grocery shopping, and start applying for summer jobs. So far, I’ve only done two of those things, and they were half-assed efforts. I’ve only ridden my mountain bike once because it keeps raining and have yet to ride my road bike. I tried going to the gym last week, but ended up straining my neck and am only now starting to work out again. Overall, it’s been a rather lackadaisical winter break (I just really wanted to say lackadaisical).

On the other hand, I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with my sister, brother-in-law, and 18-month-old niece. Sister and her hubby took a two day vacation in Austin, leaving baby Maya with grandpa, grandma, and yours truly. The kid is absolutely terrified of me. I’m apparently a terrifying person. Everyone tells me it’s only because I’m new to her and that I’m taller than anyone else she knows. Thus, when I want to approach her, I must get down on my hands and knees and slowly crawl towards her, but not too close, else she freaks out. The idea is that maybe she’ll get used to me and let me hold her, but as of yet, no dice. She breaks out in a blood-curdling scream strong enough to make anyone feel like the most worthless human being on the face of the planet. Making a baby cry sucks. Making her laugh is the greatest thing in the world.

We almost had a breakthrough yesterday when she gave me one of her stuffed animals to hold. She likes giving people her toys, only to take them back and give them to someone else a second later. It’s an advanced barter system I have yet to decipher. When she gave me the stuffed animal, I looked at it, hugged it, smiled, and gave it back. And she smiled a beautiful smile. I almost melted.

This is just about when you, the reader, let out an exhaustive, “geez, please take me to a another website before I gag myself.”

But since you’ve gotten this far, you might as well keep reading to find out where Maya and I now stand. Whenever I’m around, she looks at me like a science project, like she’s trying to figure me out, like she doesn’t know where to classify me in her various classifications of people (mom, dad, someone I like, someone who looks funny, etc. I’d settle for ‘someone who looks funny’). But at least she doesn’t scream, so I’m happy with that. One day, her parents will tell her, “Maya, that’s your uncle. When you were a baby, you used to scream at him simply for being in the room, but now he’s the guy that’s going to babysit you while daddy and I go out to dinner for the first time in eons.”

I can live with that.

I’ve spent the past four weeks of my winter break compensating for the previous four months’ lack of partying, reading, bike-riding, and binge-eating. It’s been great, and I have seven more days of freedom left to party, read, bike, and eat. School resumes on Tuesday the 18th, and, oddly enough, I’m looking forward to it. As much of a cluster-fuck as the previous semester turned out to be, I’m ready for more. More pressure, more reading, more ridiculous papers. I guess I’m a little masochistic in that sense, but then again, I think all law students are to some degree. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be where we are.

So, tomorrow, I plan to start my readings for next week.

But right now, I’m meeting some classmates for margaritas. C’mon, have some faith in me. If I’m going to start reading ahead for school, I’m going to need a hangover of some sort. I try to keep things as close to real-semester conditions as possible.

Like most people, I maintain a spreadsheet containing a list of all the movies I’ve watched over the last 4 1/2 years. This is the first in (hopefully) several mass reviews where i draw upon my recent viewings and help you make the right decision about how to spend 90 minutes or so.

Led Zeppelin pman reviewed this before. i don't think he was effusive enough in his praise. it's an amazing document of a slice of history that just does not exist anymore. they're freaking powerful, i don't just mean that they're loud, i mean they friggin pwn. in addition to their own songs, they run through some badass blues standards and robert plant's hair has a 9 minute solo.

Veronica Guerin based on the story of a murdered irish journalist, this one is relatively accessible, but still harrowing. i first heard of this story on a 60 minutes profile. The acting is great, and even features a great cameo by colin farrell. the writing is predictably didactic but not preachy. moving up in the queue is a previous re-telling, When the Sky Falls, might make for an interesting double feature.

strangely enough, the movie really makes me want to visit ireland even more than i had before. it's so green.

A Dirty Shame john waters is back, baby. interesting exploration of fetish, sexuality, gentrification (or should i say, gayification), decency and head-trauma. it's over the top and has great, fun performances by tracey ullman, johnny knoxville (yes, that johnny knoxville), chris isaak (yes, that chris isaak), and selma blair (google her yourself). if you like john waters, rent/buy this one immediately to help remember why he was so friggin revolutionary (as that goes). if you don't like john waters, rent/buy this one immediately so you can remember what pissed you off so much, you uptight sob.

Double Dare neat documentary about a couple of stuntwomen whose career peaks are separated by 25 years. the stunt double for wonderwoman is paired with the stunt double for xena:warrior princess (not to mention the bride from kill bill). really interesting subject matter but the telling is kinda superficial and rushed. it doesn't do a great job of telling us what, if anything, the two women have in common besides their industry. the stunt footage is great as is the individual stories of the two women. even without the cool stunt footage, it's worth the price of admission for the footage from the xena convention. another version of trekkies, anyone?

Da Ali G Show: Season 1: Disc 2 what can i say about ali g that hasn't been said before? all i can say is i'll rent season 2 when it's available. i just hope they give borat and bruno more exposure.

Dogtown and Z-Boys awesome awesome awesome documentary about a slice of americana that was concurrent with my adolescence. yes, in the 70s i had a skateboard that i rode everyday. ask me and i'll show the scars (seriously, i still have scars from 20 year-old skateboard injuries). my professional skateboarding career ended tragically when the mailman ran over my skateboard after i left it in the gutter in front of my mailbox. to this day i don't trust the postal service. i still haven't told my mother that she was right to tell me not to leave my skateboard in the street.

interestingly enough they just made a feature based on the same story. nice work if you can get it.

Caddyshack thanks to my bosses' regular quoting of the dalai lama speech (click that link, especially you law schoolers) i was prompted to watch this one again. i think it's aged pretty well, rodney dangerfield and ted baxter steal every scene; chevy chase still seems like a total jerkoff. bill murray has come a long way from here.

there's a new sheriff in particlemantown.

goes by the name of skorloff. i'll be posting here until p-man gets over the kissing disease, or until he just feels like taking his blog back.

except for using curse words, i’ve been given no guidelines for posting. i probably wasn’t going to cuss anyway, but now i'm extra tempted.

• law? nope.
• bikes? nope.
• stuff? what does that even mean?
• music? sure, but not what p-man usually posts about, then again, maybe a little.
• books? prolly, although i don’t read a lot of inscrutable freshman lit-type stuff. in most cases, i'll likely substitute movies for books.
• beer? almost certainly, but i may use that category to discuss other alcohol-based vices.

so there you have it, alcohol, movies, music and whatever "stuff" means.

p.s. i think it would be wise and diplomatic of me to apologize, in advance, to p-man’s immediate family, ancestors and future kin. i’m incorrigible and p-man should have known better.

-s

Like most people, I maintain a spreadsheet containing a list of all the movies I’ve watched over the last 4 1/2 years. I'm going to draw from that list a bit to bring you the authoritative (for now) list of my five favorite comedies.

1. Bringing Up Baby
   a classic from 1938 starring katherine hepburn, cary grant, and a leopard. this is hepburn and grant's second time to team. howard hawks directed and his signature dialog method is what makes this film so frenetic. he directed his actors to start their lines when the other actor still had a word or two left in their lines, so that they over-lapped slightly. this has the effect of shortening the screenplay when filmed (his screenplays would typically be almost twice as long as a movie with the same running length), stepping up the pace of the movie and making the dialogue more natural; think about it, most conversations involve you formulating a response before the other person has stopped talking. then again maybe you're not as impatient as i am. ok, i'm a jerk who can't wait for you to stop talking. shhh, i have something to say.

   the performances are chock full of good physical comedy and sight gags. part of the comedy comes from a technique also exploited by hitchcock (to different effect): telling the audience something that the characters don't know and won't find out until it's funny. hint, it involves the leopard.

2. Flirting With Disaster
   little-known throwback to ensemble farces from the 70s (think MASH or American Graffiti). i mean, patricia arquette, ben stiller, téa leoni, mary tyler moore, george segal, alan alda, and lily tomlin? was jack nicholson unavailable? written and directed by david o. russell (yes, the three kings guy), it deftly combines identity issues, neuroticism, erotic frisson, and lsd.

   great writing, good physical comedy. and a friggin' funny joke involving the surname Schlichting.
   
   

3. Raising Arizona
   (maybe too) obvious choice from the coen brothers (directed and co-written by joel, co-written by ethan). featuring one of my favorite actors of all time, holly hunter, this gem has all the pacing of a howard hawks movie, physical comedy involving a bunch of babies and the signature camera work of barry sonnenfeld (yes, the director of men in black and that dreadful pos, wild wild west).

   son, you've got a panty on your head.

4. Planes, Trains and Automobiles
   over-the-top romp from the former master of modern melodrama, john hughes. classic mis-matched buddy comedy broadly in the style of abbott and costello or laurel and hardy. steve martin plays it straight and john candy plays it jolly. john hughes is most famous for teen comedies from the 80s (pretty in pink, anyone? side note: who reading this blog didn't identify with duckie, at least a little bit) but this one was more for adults (immature adults, like me). it plays on adult fears like "being trapped in an airport", "having to ride on a bus" and "living a life of poverty and loneliness". see, basic comedy material!

   possibly the funniest quote from a movie that you've felt like saying yourself.

5. Three-way tie (ok, i suck at top five lists) between:
   His Girl Friday - another howard hawks movie starring cary grant and rosalind russell. it's been remade a hundred times (in fact this is a remake, too); but this is my favorite version. it's a battle-of-the-sexes comedy, the dialogue crackles, and has some hilarious schtick involving the death penalty.

   The Producers - mel brooks in top form. yes, it's since been super-commercialized as a broadway play and roadshow but the original will make your gut hurt from laughing. i'm just waiting for the spin-off full-blown broadway production of "Springtime for Hitler". that i might go see. zero mostel and gene wilder do the mis-matched buddy thing.

   Annie Hall - the best picture winner from 1976. can you believe that woody allen is responsible for academy awards? i love his movies and i'm still shocked to find out that he used to be commercial enough to garner academy attention. his movies have spawned 44 nominations and 9 awards (including 2 for director, 2 for writer and 1 for best picture). this one is a key part of the 70s american film revival and one of the more personal films from that era to be widely lauded. it also has one of the single greatest on-screen jokes, involves marshall mcluhan and the sorrow and the pity.

so, looking back, funny to me involves good dialogue, physical comedy, and the exploitation of your inner-most fears.

I think I’m pretty much done with the Moscow posts (now that I haven’t posted about Moscow in six days nor posted at all in four). I hope you liked the posts. Russia was in a state of flux when I was there and appears to still be experiencing growing pains.

OK, I just really wanted to say the word flux. What of it.

In other news, Karl Rove is a weasel, Dubya nominated a Supreme Court justice I know almost nothing about, and it’s been raining in Houston for like eighteen days. Comments on any of the aforementioned issues are welcome.

I’ve also managed to read two books this summer that need to be written up and I’m in a third book now. I miss reading. I had forgotten how nice it is to read text without words like “aforementioned” and “foreseeable.”

Last thing – I went to jail today. But got to leave. Lesson learned? Don’t do bad things. Jail is a scary place.

well, after an uneventful blogging week (thanks EnormoCo!) it's time to announce the end of my pinch-blogging for pman.

make no mistake about it, blogging, like pimping, isn't as easy as it seems. at least good blogging isn't. i had no idea how time consuming it would be to draft a quality post with just the right amount of snark and just the right amount of funk. next time you see pman, ask him why he has so much free time to spend blogging and get back to me.

pman will be back soon regaling you with stories from his past present and future.

For those of you too lazy to click the comments, the answer to the riddle is:

Which road would your brother say is the right one?

If you ask the liar, he will lie and tell you the opposite of what his honest brother would say, so you do the opposite of what he says. If you ask the honest brother, he would tell you what his lying brother would say, so you do the opposite. With this setup, you always do the opposite of whatever answer you get from whichever brother. You don’t need to know which brother you’re asking.

I hope you liked the riddle. It’s basically my only riddle, so now I’m out and I have nothing else to talk about.

Of course not, I can always talk. I’m in law school, gimme a break. Today was my last day at the court. It was an amazing experience and I encourage every law student out there to work for a trial court for at least half of a summer. It is an invaluable experience. You get an understanding of what goes on behind the doors of the court. You learn what the clerks do, what the court coordinator does, and how the judge thinks. You get a bird’s eye view of a smattering of lawyers from all walks of life. Some are good, some are great, and some are well, lawyers. Now that I’ve worked for a trial court, I’d like to work for an appellate court to see what happens at the next level, but I don’t know if I’ll get a chance. I’d like to work at law firms next summer, but we’ll see how things turn out.

School starts Monday. This summer has gone by way too fast. But at least I got to do a lot of cool stuff. I went to Chicago, Austin, and Little Rock (to see my sister) with E. I got to spend time with old friends. I got to work for a law firm and a judge. I got to read a few books. I got a roommate and a cool apartment. I also got mono (damnit) and therefore did not get enough beers. And by not enough, I mean like two. Yeah, two, and then my sore throat came back a couple days later. Relation? Who knows. But now I’m not drinking again until Doctor says so. But as a result of the mono, I also got a pinch-blogger. The verdict is still out on how cool that was.

In short, it’s been a pretty badass summer. I just wish I could fast forward to December, post-finals. That would be nice.

Whatever parts of the hurricane we were to see have moved on. The storm we saw was no stronger than a serious summer thunderstorm. Winds topped out at 50 mph and there was no flooding. Lots of people lost power, but we got lucky. My parents’ house a few miles away did lose power. I rode my bike around the neighborhood and the extent of the damage is limited to tree limbs lying in the street. Not too bad.

This flashlight my dad Frankensteined together was thankfully not needed. He rewired a desk lamp of some sort to a UPS battery, which is usually used a backup power source for computers. It’s nice having an electrical engineer for a dad.

We also didn’t need this trashcan full of tap water, which took a long time to fill even by the bucketful.

Eastern Texas and western Louisiana got hit pretty hard though. My thoughts go out to those who got the brunt of the storm. Even at category three, it was nasty enough to tear buildings and homes apart and blow out windows. And this is certainly the last thing the people of Louisiana needed. Flooding will soon be an issue off of the Trinity River as one of the dams is under threat.

On the bright side, I discovered that there are some really cool and dependable people on my street. They introduced me to a local pub hidden away from the crowds of Rice Village. The husband has a library so extensive it’s doing damage to the foundation. Several thousand pounds of books can be problematic for a home built in the late 1930’s. I’m sure I’ll be browsing his bookshelves quite a bit in the future. School starts Wednesday, so I’ve got a couple days to get back into the swing of things. Until then, the name of the game is cleaning up around the house and drinking beer.

Google, omniscient creator of all things cool on the internet, has embarked on a nifty new project: making snippets from books available for searching on Google. For instance, if you search for “somnambulist pineapple” on Google, not only will you get only every webpage containing that term (one), but you would also get any book ever published that mentioned that term. Cool, eh? Also debatably legal. Or illegal, depending on your point view. Google has accordingly and predictably been sued. The plaintiff is the Authors Guild.

There are several arguments here.

1. Google is doing the same thing a library does, except online. No, libraries buy their copy, and thus have a right to reproduce it along fair use guidelines.

2. This would discourage people from buying books. Do libraries discourage people from buying books? Does the radio discourage people from buying music? Does the internet? We may not have an answer of the last one, but that’s the basic idea. Also, Google only displays a small snippet – one or two sentences – around the searched term. You’d theoretically have to piece together a book snippet by snippet.

3. Google isn’t selling the books, so there’s no problem. But they’re making money on advertisements that come from the authors’ content being displayed to the user. So yeah, they are making money.

4. Google is doing the same thing it does to web sites: indexing. Sort of. Websites are always offered for free… most of them, at least. Books are not offered for free.

So what should happen? Google should pay for each of the books it indexes. It would then have a right to fair use. That Google makes money from ads is an incidental byproduct. They make money on ads for every Google product, or service, or whatever we call the things Google creates. At most, consider it as compensation for directing web-searches to books. At least at that point, the user will discover a book they might have not discovered, and never bought.

Via Lessig.

Like most people, I maintain a spreadsheet containing a list of all the movies I’ve watched over the last 4 1/2 years. I'm drawing from recent months of that list to bring you two movies to avoid at all costs.

1. What the #$*! Do We Know!?
   particleman.org is the place to bring bold new ideas to the world. I'll go way out on a limb here and postulate that science and religion don't mix well. Especially when that religion is dressed up as quantum mechanics. imagine spending 2 1/2 hours at a dianetics convention that had mostly phrenologists and astrologists on the guest-list. then imagine poking yourself in the eye with a fork. that's pretty much what watching this movie is like.
2. The Stepford Wives
   about two minutes into this movie i found myself wondering if i was suffering from a case of amnesia. how had i arrived here? who were all these people? what was up with this tiny bit of throw-up in my mouth? seriously, why had i rented this pos?

   the only theory that made any sense was the inclusion of nicole kidman in the cast. apparently, at some point in the past she had been in a lot of movies that I really liked. this movie has made me forget what those movies might have been, but according to the internet, she was, indeed in some really good movies: To Die For, The Others, The Hours, Dead Calm.

   if i had studied her filmography a little closer, i would have noticed that her inclusion was no assurance of a quality movie: Practical Magic, Far and Away, Batman Forever, Days of Thunder. Let's face it, with her track record, it's a wonder she hasn't been in a Smokey and the Bandit sequel. I'll be a little more careful in the future.

as always, the comment board is open.

Like most people, I maintain a spreadsheet containing a list of all the movies I’ve watched over the last 4 1/2 years. i'm drawing from that list to bring you a list of ten movies that i've seen that have soundtrack albums that i really like.

1. Boogie Nights (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it. music: disco. 70s groove rock. 80s cheese. great party music. the deal: maybe i've lost perspective. maybe i like the movie too much. nevertheless, i love the soundtrack album (even though it happens to feature songs by both night ranger and rick springfield). both volumes. i've even bought extra tracks featured in the movie but not on the albums (i'm a compleatist, i needed "sunny" by boney m). even more, when i put all the tracks on the girl's ipod i reordered them to play in the same order as they appear in the movie. yes, i'm insane. bonus track: "feel the heat" as performed by dirk diggler and reed rothchild. the heat will rock you. also, don't forget, the heat will roll you.

2. City of God (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it. music: dreamy and often funky brazilian. has one of the saddest, simplest songs that i can't understand any of the words to. the deal: wicked raw movie shot on location in some of the poorest places in the world. music the soundtrack album really stands on its own. so much of the music as used in the film is textural. i had to watch it twice to notice my favorite song (mentioned above). it's not like it's one of those tracks in the background that happens to be playing on someone's radio; it's used as score. the scene just happens to be so intense that the music is like foley. bonus track: the soundtrack also has two volumes of remixes. each sold separately. each interesting in their own way.

3. The Royal Tenenbaums (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it. music: score by the guy from devo and mostly disaffected 70s new york and london rock
   the deal: wes anderson gets a lot less credit for his song selection than quentin tarantino does. i'm not sure why that is. sure, tarantino is more likely to use the theme from hong kong phooey and we all know that that would be friggin' hilarious. but wes anderson seems to actually get inside his characters heads for the music that he chooses. this record is rich. the score alone is worth the price of admission. bonus track: "look at me" by john lennon

4. Monsoon Wedding (movie | soundtrack)

   movie: loved it. music: all-over the map indian and pakistani music. from acoustic film music to indian techno
   the deal: the movie is pure sweetness and heartbreak and joy. the soundtrack album delivers the same. the album features the bridal shower song from the movie, "Mehndi/Madhorama Pencha". i have no idea what the lyrics mean or what the words are but i sing along every time i hear it.
   bonus track: "aaj mausam bada beiman hai (today the weather pla