Music Video of the Day: Emerson, Catharsis, and Bitching, Bitching BMX Jumps

So, life is very self-reflective and self-indulgent these days, but not in a way that makes for good blog copy. I toil in the office whilst simultaneously mourning the fact that I'm no longer wearing this lawyering gig for shits and giggles. Now, don't get me wrong. It's not like the job has become who I am; I still resist. And by resistance I mean I continue to be constitutionally incapable of small-talking up my cases at lunch, or shaving on the regular, or doing good work, and God knows, I emphasize the casual in casual Friday. But still, today, despite my low-level resistance campaign--which, it should be noted, is just a concerted effort at retaining a semblance of Emersonian identity in a world of corporate personhood-- I inched just a bit closer to the corporatization of my own soul, or maybe I moved an inch closer to the door out of this place. I don't know.

I took out summer associates to lunch, and they were stiff and boring and fretted over ordering the right things, and I realized that I was sitting with people who saw me only as an agent of a firm they wanted to impress. We were not human beings sharing a meal. Even my desperate attempts at steering the conversation away from the relative merits of different practice groups to whether or not the new Indiana Jones is going to be awesome or really fucking awesome was met with stunted, calculated politeness. Like, if they didn't say the right thing about Indiana Jones maybe they won't make partner one day. Now, I can understand this behavior if you're sitting with somebody who's expressed even the slightest interest in maintaining the corporate charade--God knows I've been on those lunches--but I am not such a person, and I couldn't make it any clearer that I am not, and yet they just forged ahead.

The point is this: even though I do my best to separate myself--physically, mentally, emotionally--from this place, while at the same time cashing the checks it so graciously provides me, and, hopefully, doing well enough that I can to become a better lawyer in the process, those summer associates will only ever think of me as that associate who took us out for sea bass. Try as I might, try as I did, to them I will never be snarky guy with 80's fetish. I don't know why that bums me out more than say the actual work that law firms do, but it does.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying it's Memorial Day weekend, and the sun is smiling graciously on the Bay, and we can all, hopefully, unchain ourselves from our shackles--so let's celebrate by soaking in Cut Copy's pitch-perfect electro-retro track, "Far Away," set against the action-laced pivotal scene from 1986's definitive follow-your-dreams, BMX masterpiece, Rad. The only way this audio-visual experience could be any better is if it featured cameos by Soleil Moon Frye and/or Bea Arthur.

I may be associate who took us out to lunch to some, but you, my precious blog readers, will always know me as snarky guy with 80's fetish, and that's why I will never leave you.