elegy

so, if you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that i started a new job. so far, so good! but today was my first day and i think i'm predisposed to not sleep the day before the first day of anything, so, y'know, unreliable narrator and whatnot.

i'm going to get so emotional, baby.

i feel an enormous sense of loss. i suppose that is a cliche, and i probably should explain in greater detail. despite all of the problems at my old job, i wholeheartedly feel it was the first time pretty much ever i enjoyed being a lawyer. and that includes all three years of law school. i worked 12, 14, 17 hour days (consecutively!) completely voluntarily. sure, i was tired, but it was nothing in comparison to how empty i felt whilst working at the firm. i always thought people who told you to do what you love were privileged assholes spewing their trust-funded bullshit. but you know what? those people, whatever their station in life, are 100millionpercent right. if you are ever so lucky to find something you enjoy doing AND it pays a living wage?! by god, i hope you can hold onto it.

this does not mean that i'm not excited about what's ahead. emotions aren't mutually exclusive. it's perfectly logical for me to simultaneously feel bereft over the past and hopeful about the future. if you don't think so, perhaps that's a limitation of your emotional range. and the american obsession with everything sunny all the time always. nonetheless, i would say the lowest depth of misery is to have something you love taken away from you through no fault of your own.

i was feeling rather self-conscious about just how deep this shit was, then someone pointed out that if you're supposed to be passionate about what you're doing, then it's impossible for you to not feel equally passionate upon its sudden departure.

so there you go--i have no answers. i'm tremendously grateful that i got to experience that period of belonging. and here is to hoping that i can regain that, and that you can experience it, too.

olds

c4ts helpfully reminded me that i'm old. the first time i really recognized that milestones were passing me by was when i turned 18 and realized that could never be drafted into the NHL. yeah, i know, i'm also female and have never played ice hockey in my life, but i was at least of age. the second milestone that passed me by was when i could no longer be a contestant on the real world. then life kind of hummed along, until i realized that i no longer qualified for the world bank's young professionals program. someone helpfully pointed out to me today that i'm 5 years too old to be a navy SEAL.

indeedily doodily--i'm old.

being so old is a bummer, no secret. i dunno, maybe others march into their 30s, completely at ease and eager. i loathe birthdays. before you become concerned, let me try to explain: it's not like i had some amazing life goal / bucket list and i'm sad that i didn't meet my own standards. no, this is just some overriding...unease. i think i'm mostly just bummed about the passage of time because there is something so inherently optimistic about youth. granted, i've always been cynical and kind of over it, but even my proto-daria self knew that opportunities abound for the young. you may be wondering, do i even feel like i missed out on anything in particular? not really! i know. this whole navel-gazing makes no sense.

i guess this is just an extension of my being sad over age-ing out of the NHL. i am more affected by the irrelevant.

uh what? back to our regularly scheduled programming.

R.I.P. This Blog (2007-2010)

Kidding. This blog, like vampires and Betty White, can never die. But if my extended absence really were just a prelude to retirement, thereby killing 50% of the blog, I would post the above video as my final farewell. E-mancrush Gabe over at Videogum suggests this video "taken in the dining hall of a cruise ship during rough seas...is a VISUAL METAPHOR FOR LIFE!" But it's also a metaphor for blogging in the age of parenthood and a wicked content blocker at work. Rough motherfucking seas, people.

art vs. commerce, etc.

i found out that pavement will be appearing on jimmy fallon. and they're holding a contest to see who can jam with pavement. you can enter here, guitar hero.

so how do you feel? yeah yeah, if you care for pavement, i know, c4ts.

1. yay, pavement on a mainstream tv program!

2. jesus, pavement on jimmy fallon?

this, combined with the fact that i corresponded with a 2L today who was born in 1987, i need to up my fibre intake. or something.

how you doin'

hot? tired? me too. must be a case of the olds.

here is a surprisingly informative interview with stephen malkmus. i guess he's over his post-adolescent nihilistic phase. oh such earnest and relatively comprehensive answers about pavement's history!

and yes, that photo is my bi-annual eric foner update: on anderson cooper 360 talking about the 14th amendment! does he have a book to shill? what's happening?!

sports break

in honor of baseball hothead lou piniella's retirement, i wanted to post his infamous fight with rob dibble. alas, you really cannot find that video online! believe me, i tried. for at least 5 minutes. yeah, i know that page says "watch this video." well, guess what, you can't. you'll get a weather report instead.

anyway, hope that tiny photo suffices. so long, lou!

ps. here is a good description, if you care:

The Occasion: Bullnecked psycho Rob Dibble didn't care for being taken out of a 1992 game for another pitcher, especially since he thought manager Lou Piniella had been badmouthing him to the media. So he decided to squawk about it in the locker room.

The Meltdown: Unfortunately for Dibble, Piniella has never been a cerebral Joe Maddon type of manager. Instead, he waded in for a fight that degenerated into a wrestling match.

The Fallout: While the incident quickly blew over, Piniella's crack of "I'd treat you like a man, but you don't want to be treated like a man!" helped ensure a lifetime of embarrassment for everyone involved.

superfluous and belated movie review of the month: hot tub time machine

do you know this is our 666th post?!

hot tub time machine - surprisingly enjoyable! ok ok, so it blatantly rips off back to the future. the plot is barely, extremely minimally constructed. craig robinson speaks at a near-whisper the entire time for some reason. 80s neon clothes are kind of a cheap gag. i feel like john cusack agreed to be in this movie solely so that he can make out with lizzy caplan. (party down, RIP).

blahblahblah, anyway. there is no plot to give away, really. the movie begins in kind of morbid fashion: the three 40s-ish main characters are living rather dreary lives, all working in semi-dead end jobs and in terrible/nonexistent relationships. one of them attempts suicide, which brings the three together. they decide to relive their glory (?) days and cheer up the suicidal one at a ski resort they used to frequent in the 80s. one obvious plot twist later, they end up in the 80s, able to retrace their steps and see exactly where and how their lives and youthful dreams went astray. butterfly effect aside, will the main characters be able to resist the temptation to plot their lives differently? oh the suspense!

we are all getting old

aside from not being able to sleep off a hangover anymore and scoffing at people who dress inappropriately for the weather (e.g., tight jeans when it's 90 degrees outside--yikes!) and/or wear non-sensible footwear, i think age is making me sappy.

case 1. i feel really, really sorry for the japanese world cup team. i know, dude. i keep reminding myself, hello, the occupation of korea? comfort women? for manufacturing a shite car just after my parents broke their decades-long embargo on japanese products and purchased a toyota? APOLO OHNO????

nonetheless, to go out on PKs after defying all expectations is rough. i wish soccer had sudden death.

case 2. i got all choked up over party down's season (perhaps series?) finale. i love this show because it's kind of a relentless downer, which, let's face it, life can be sometimes. you can hope against all evidence and common sense that you're going to make it out of the wilderness, but sometimes you're just going to get kicked in the ass. repeatedly. i'll divulge nothing here except to say that there was an ambiguous glimmer of semi-hope at the end of this episode.

and you know what? that shit really got to me.

finally, and most treacly, case 3. i was on the subway yesterday, standing next to this large-ish black dude wearing a do-rag, a thriller t-shirt, heavy gold jewelry and giant gold sunglasses. i normally don't talk to anyone on the subway because, y'know, i'm not a crazy person, but it would never occur to me to talk to this guy. i'll say it: he was intimidating looking and did not seem like he wanted to casually converse. yeah, that's right, even though he was seated next to a stroller with his daughter inside.

a very pregnant white woman got on the next stop with two equally white little boys. the younger one, about 4 years-old, ran up to the black man and guilelessly exclaimed, "hello!" then he proceeded to show this man and his daughter a little toy he was holding in his hand. it wasn't even anything that exciting, a mere roll of measuring tape. the man removed his earphones and spoke briefly to the boy and his daughter, who attempted to snatch the tape away. whenever the train shook, the little boy held onto the man's trunk-like legs.

i tried to think of a lot of unsavory things to steel myself against the man-in-the-mirror-ness of it all, to no avail. this shit was seriously touching.

ugh, i gotta go now. matlock is on.

zoubekia!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!

(the all-white visual approximation is to protect your baby's anonymity)

john hughes, RIP

agh, will the celebrity deaths please stop? john hughes died of a heart attack today at the age of 59. shit, yo.

so...what have you been up to?

i made a tribute to 30 rock. in the dark.



i cloned myself and made the worst video ever. because i hate myself.



then i tried to determine whether this video was cute, clever or just pointless.

i'm so glad we're giving these guys our money

the journal had a curious article about a not-so-secret society of wall street luminaries that meets only once a year, called kappa beta phi. GET IT?? so clever, those financiers. dick fuld, stanley o'neal and bridge aficionado jim cayne were no-shows, as were former wall street power brokers john corzine and mike bloomberg. nonetheless, the dudes (and they were mostly dudes) still managed to have a good time.

now, i know this is meant to be tongue and cheek, and the members seem to be somewhat aware of their own ridiculousness, but they just couldn't fully stop themselves from appearing like total jerks. shouldn't these guys at least pretend to endear themselves to the public? how out of touch and offensive can they be? let's hear the highlights:

"I feel like the mayor of New Orleans after Katrina," quipped Alfred E. Smith IV, the group's leader, or "Grand Swipe," at the opening of its annual black-tie dinner last week.

zing!

Phi Beta Kappa's key includes a hand pointing at three stars that symbolize the society's principles: morality, friendship and learning. Kappa Beta Phi's key has images of a hand, a beer stein, champagne tumbler and five stars. The stars represent Hennessy cognac and the hand is there to hold a glass.

zany!

The group's humor is anything but politically correct. One crude joke took aim at Rep. Barney Frank's treatment of the U.S. taxpayer, with a reference to Mr. Frank's sexual orientation. Mr. Frank is the first openly gay member of Congress.

typical!

the article also mentions how the society inducted new members who dressed in drag to perform musical ditties, including the following, set to american pie:

A long, long time ago...

I can still remember

How the Dow Jones used to make me smile.

And I learned my trade and had my chance

The music played I did my dance

And I made seven figures for a while.

I can't remember if I cried when they pulled the plug on Countrywide...

It sucks that Iceland is out of ice....Bye, Bye to my piece of the pie...Now I travel coach whenever I fly...Maybe this will be the day that I die.

i hope so!

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.

yesterday's news

so i'm embarking on my third decade of, uh, living and i feel rather conflicted. one side of me recognizes that aging is an inevitable process and that trying to fight it is pointless. not to mention, it'll probably give me unsightly wrinkles. of course, the other more existential crisis-prone side of me is a little bit weirded out by the fact that the anticipatory phase of my life appears to be over. this is when i should just be living: i'm not waiting to get into that great college, i'm not trying to figure out whether grad school is the right choice for me. essentially, i'm not living in a 9x12 room facing a building shaft in the east village waiting for the next thing. indeed, my salad days are over.

(btw - i totally didn't even know what "salad days" meant, and that it originated from shakespeare, but i'm seeing that term everywhere. what's the deal?).

besides, it's been like 6 years since i overheard one dude say to another at a concert, "hey, what time is your mom picking us up?" which made me think, shit, just how old am i?

anyway, whilst thinking about my own age i read this article. poor knut! he was so adorable before, but now people are just passing him by. no more haribo candies named after him! just cast aside by the cruel, fickle public. look at this devastating quote:

Andre Schüle, a veterinarian at the Berlin Zoo, dismissed concerns about Knut’s health, physical or mental. “I am very, very pleased about his development,” said Mr. Schüle. Knut is a healthy polar bear, but as a natural result of aging, “the cuteness factor is falling,” Mr. Schüle said.

don't be sad! you're still very cute!

update: thanks for all of your suggestions on the bridesmaid dresses. she picked this one, which was actually my choice as well. i was pretty happy at how everything turned out, until i saw this.

I like this picture, not just because of all the cuteness, but mainly because an elephant took it.