Cupid Shuffle

Saturday Ryan and Jess got married! Ryan is a husband, it's crazy. Congratulations to them. Mazel tov. The wedding was lots of fun. The couple was happy, the guests were happy, and the father/daughter dance inspired some tears. The ceremony was at a church in DC. It was a little more religious than I was expecting, though I don't know why since it was in a church after all. I think it's the first mass I've ever sat through, so that was neat. The reception was at the officer's club of an army base in Virginia. "But they don't allow drinking on army bases!" someone protested. "Oh yeah? Watch me," was my response. Turns out they didn't have any booze, just Shirley Temples.
I am kidding. They had an open bar which was nicely stocked (and some people did have "dirty Shirleys.") The bartender, however, was half deaf and repeatedly gave people a drink they had not ordered. Kerry asked for whiskey and received a cranberry vodka. Her theory was that the bartender figured that she's a chick and that's what chicks drink.
Another great facet of the wedding was the Bad Grammer love. It was great to see Erica, Celia, Dumps, Talya, and Josh. (It was also nice to see other people, but I was at the BG table so I'm focusing on them. And they are more important than most other people so...deal with it.) It is sincerely heartwarming that we are so much like family that we garner an entire table at the wedding reception.

Not to worry, the DJ played the "Cupid Shuffle." I know you were worried about it, but it happened. We also did the "Electric Slide." It was so long since I last did the Electric Slide that I nearly forgot how to do it. Luckily, it ain't exactly the most complicated dance in the world. It's at least one step below the "Single Ladies" music video.
Ryan stepped onto the dance floor with about fifteen seconds left in "Call Me Maybe." Upon hearing he had missed the song, he goes, "That's it. I really gotta quite smoking." Great motivation right there.

Every time I listen to the Black Eyed Peas I dislike them a little bit more. Their songs really are not good.
I'm really going with the music comments tonight. The background in Rihanna's "Hopeless Place" is basically just the "Macarena." Listen to it. Tell me I'm wrong.

Ryan's bachelor party was on Thursday, and was a great time as well. The highlight was going to the Columbia Room. The bartender's version of the rickey (the official drink of DC), called the shandy rickey, was one of the best cocktails I've ever had. And Ryan's drink, the Ghost Dance, was amazing as well. It involved burning some herbs with a brulee torch and putting the glass over it to get the glass smokey. It took pretentious craft cocktails to a whole new level. And I loved it.

Blah blah blah studying for the bar is a pain, barbri sucks, and so on. You know the drill. Don't let my briskness detract from my candor on this, however.

No More Pencils

Today was the last day of classes of 2L. Goodnight 2L, goodnight Crim Pro, goodnight cow jumping over the tax code. Of course there are still finals between me and the summer. Three finals, to be exact. And I do not feel good about how far I am studying for them. I have one and a half outlines done out of three. Time to buckle down. I will be out of commission for the next couple of weeks, but I will emerge (hopefully victorious) on Friday the 22nd.

This past weekend I was in Boston for improv. The alumni show itself was a lot of fun, and although I was only in one game, it was a little nerve-wracking because I have not performed in front of that many people for a long time. But the group was quite good, and the alumni also pulled out some laughs. Overall, a very triumphant return, though I did feel weird and old being back at college.
After the show is the after party.
It was quite enjoyable to be back at a college party with tons of people I love and miss. There was peer pressure, dancing, yelling, petting a cat, and "meaningful" conversations. It was pretty fantastic. Great to see (in no particular order) Matt, Erica, Celia, Ethan, Ben, Ben, Leah, Zac, Sheryl, and all of the current group. (I am super excited to hear that Ryan will be coming to DC for law school next year!) Shout out to Erica and Talya for saving me. Also, to whoever stole my whiskey and possibly my undershirt, you receive a shake of my fist. Those are the good times I miss.

The next day I went around Boston with Shaked, Ron, and Matt. We went to Ron's brother's coworker's fundraiser at the Kinsale. If you think that sounds like an attenuated connection, you would be correct. I bought a Pepsi (the establishment does not sell Diet Coke), ate an appetizer or two, and then we all left. I may have used the restroom in there. The rest of the time was less awkward - walking around the Common and going to Mike's Pastry. The line was more impressive than the cannoli! Ok, fine, I didn't get a pastry. A park ranger (?) on the Common refused to take our picture. We asked politely and he was like "No time! I have to stop these hooligans from throwing around a football." Also, there was a guy walking around in a Flash costume that was falling apart. You don't see that every day.
Later that evening, Matt got in trouble at Grendel's Den for bringing in a bubble tea. He eventually won over the waitress with a huge tip, but who is the real winner in that situation?

My steak of hearing Train's "Hey Soul Sister" in the car with Shaked remains unbroken after this trip.
Congratulations to Matt for deciding to stay in Chicago and being a beast in Ph.D. applications generally. I hope he remembers the little people when he wins a Nobel. I've always wanted to go to Switzerland. Just saying, Matt.

Outrage Alert!
"Sen. Jon Kyl's claim that abortion is "well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does.

When the actual figure turned out to be 3%, his office released a statement clarifying that Kyl's figure was "not intended to be a factual statement."

This is basically why I cannot stand Republicans. It is clear instance of getting caught in a lie and then saying something absurd to get out of it. You cannot make declarative statements on the Senate floor and then defend yourself by saying that the seemingly factual statement was not meant to be a fact. That completely undermines the manner in which we typically communicate while simultaneously defying logic. It is about as typical a "sleezy politician" thing as you can get. And I am constantly amazed at the ability of politicians (largely Republicans) to completely ignore rationality, truth, and decency.

Many thanks to Stephen Colbert for posting similar "facts" about Senator Kyl on Twitter with the hashtag (that's a thing apparently) #notafactualstatement.

Jon Kyl developed his own line of hair care products just so he could test them on bunnies.

Jon Kyl can, and will, deny that you're a jolly good fellow.

For the past ten years, Jon Kyl has been two children in a very convincing Jon Kyl suit.

Jon Kyl calls the underside of his Senate seat: "The Booger Graveyard."

Take that!

Go Down Moses

Had a nice little 6 person seder tonight with some friends from school. It was very informal, for example the photocopied haggadah mentioned the parting of the "Reed" Sea, and I'm not sure it mentioned the burning bush at all. Was Moses ever named? I can't remember. But it was still nice for the ritual and tradition of it, particularly since I was a little bummed that I couldn't go home for the regular seder at my mom's house, full of Veuve Clicquot.

Two people in the elevator think I'm a drug addict. They were discussing what people do when they get old. I am assuming they were talking about a grandmother or some relative. The girl said "go to exercise class twice a day." The elevator door opened and I said "Heroin. That's what they do." Then walked out. I'd call that a good first impression.

I need to get to sleep earlier. It's my new goal. That and winning at the game of life. But that second one is more of a long-term thing. A marathon, rather than a sprint. Sprint sucks, I'm glad I have AT&T. Now I'm free associating; time to sleep for real.

John Denver did some things.

Also, before I forget (and this is actually sincere), I want to thank everyone I've improv-ed with and improv itself. Improv has helped me so much in law school, particularly getting on ADR Board and (more saliently) Moot Court Board. The competitions, and many aspects of school, are heavily reliant on thinking on your feet, giving snappy responses, and going with the flow of an unpredictable situation - all skills that improv helps immensely in developing. Who knew something so fun would be so useful? I totally lucked out in this regard.

Procrastination Face

It's been a pretty busy week. Between doing work and procrastinating that's filled up a lot of my time. Tonight my time will be filled up by an open bar for Halloween, sponsored by school. How could you say no to that? Tomorrow will hopefully be filled up by actually getting work done. What's that? Oh yeah, every day I don't write more on my memo is a day closer to it being due. Which means that soon I'll have to, you know, do it.

Yesterday I spent my time not doing work by doing improv with a group called Jesus Cat. I miss improv a lot. It was great to just be humorous for a couple of hours and not have to deal with the stresses of 'school' and 'homework' and 'the real world' and 'money,' etc. I'd much rather pretend to be the first dinosaur to walk on the moon than to read about some idiot who drove drunk and what kind of homicide he can be prosecuted for. Plus it's good to get away from current and future lawyers who, I've noticed, have an unnatural propensity for inducing stress. Hooray doing comedy! Hopefully there is more comedy to come.

My feelings on my Torts professor have to soften, I have no options. While today he dissed Oliver Wendell Holmes again, he did mention in class that his ten year old daughter is taking up fencing. That's a classic dilemma for me. I appealed to my better side and went up to him after class, told him that I fenced for a while and recommended a club in the area. He said he was thankful for the recommendation and that if he had any further questions about the sport he'd come to me. I told him no problem. So maybe he doesn't hate me? Life lesson: even stupid conservatives have feelings, and he loves his daughter...awww. I can get behind that. I think I may have actually convinced him into making his daughter fence though. He told me he watched her and she was really into it and aggressive. I told him that aggressiveness is the most desirable quality in female fencers because most of them just don't have it. He said something to the extent of "Well, I think we may have found the right sport for her." If she likes it then great, but I retain my mixed feelings about fencing. It had its good times and it was good for me, but it also had awful moments. I hope I didn't just inadvertently set this little girl onto a miserable life path. It's not likely, but hey it could happen. Maybe she ends up selling coke on the street to raise enough money to rewire her epee. You don't know, it could happen. Probably not though since her father is a lawyer and presumably has a decent amount of money. Oh yeah.

About 15 people in the entire school wore Halloween costumes today. I was not among them, though I was sitting there feeling pretty awkward for them. Best costume award goes to a guy and girl who dressed up as Kanye West and Taylor Swift, respectively. It was hard to get at first because I don't really know who Taylor Swift is and the guy being Kanye was white, but they had a picture with them which helped the understanding process a good deal.

My boss from the summer (the one that I hated) got fired this week, I was just informed. That's what you get for tip-splitting as a salaried employee. Not only is it illegal and immoral, but it also opens up the people you work for to a lot of lawsuits. Good call firing him. Also, he sucked, so that's another good reason.

Why Michael? So you can fly away from your feelings?

Matt came to visit this weekend! It was quite exciting. We did a lot of things. Friday afternoon we went the the National Portrait Gallery. It's a crazy place. We saw, amongst other things, the presidential portraits. One of these things is not like the others can you guess which one it is? It's the portrait of George W. Bush. He is the only president whose official portrait does not have him looking at all dignified. George H.W. Bush, Clinton, etc. are all in suits, looking presidential. George W. Bush is sittin' on a sofa in a Western-style light blue shirt looking like he is about to tell hunting stories. He looks more like your Uncle Al than the 43rd President of the United States. I guess that's part of his "folksy" charm. How is he folksy? He went to Yale and Harvard, he's the son of a President and had everything in his life handed to him on a silver platter. I don't understand how that connects him with the common, hard-working American. Matt and I also managed to set off two alarms at the Portrait Gallery. Matt did it first. We were just walking down a hallway and there was a sculpture of an Indian (wah-wah) lying there. The Indian is holding a tomahawk which kind of juts out. Of course Matt walked next to the statue, a little too close to the tomahawk, and set off a loud alarm and jumped about 3 feet in the air. In addition he almost got scalped. The second alarm was my bad. I was looking at some modern "art" (in fairness I think it was a Rauschenberg). It was modern "art" so I clearly didn't understand it, and felt the need to take a closer peek at the little blurb about it. Turns out the security sensor didn't like that one either and it set an alarm off. Matt and I casually strolled away while a security guard (unarmed, no worries) checked out the situation. Things were fine.

That night we watched Arrested ("Here he comes. Here comes John Wayne...") and went to a party in Columbia Heights. It's a little bit of a sketchier area then the one I live in, but it went alright. I only thought we might get mugged once, so all things considered it wasn't a bad walk to the house from the Metro. The party contained an inverse ratio of awkwardness to beer drinking, which resulted in a pretty decent night. Then Saturday morning we went to the zoo. The best part about this zoo visit was the Bird House. One part of the Bird House is this fairly large, enclosed gazebo where a bunch of different birds roam (fly) free. We were looking at some low-energy birds when we heard an odd bird call. It was kind of a warbling sound that ended in a loud honk. And every time I heard the honk I couldn't help but laugh. It sounded like a clown nose or something. Matt and I went towards the noise, with me perpetually bursting into laughter, only to discover that this was not, in fact, all a bird call, rather the first part was a middle-aged woman warbling at a bird, provoking it to make this ridiculous honking sound. This woman was staring straight at the bird practically screaming at it. I'm laughing because of the ridiculous noise, and this woman's daughter (maybe thirty years old?) sees me and gets wicked embarrassed. I would too. Her mom is standing in the National Zoo provoking a honking peacock. She quickly dragged her mother away, but the peacock continued honking for a while and I continued laughing at it. The other animal that sent me into fits of hysterics was the iguana (still in the Bird House, oddly enough). It was just lying there smiling and opening its mouth. And it looked ridiculous. I couldn't get over it. But Matt can't say anything disparaging, the very first animal we saw he fell in love with-the sloth bear. Admittedly it was pretty awesome. He looked like a small bear (small for a bear that is) with an enormous head. Like a mascot costume-sized head. And he was sleeping, but he looked like he could have been dozing off in class. He was sitting upright doing that little nod thing you do before snapping your head up to make it look like you weren't asleep. Matt was in love. And of course people at the zoo were completely retarded again. This time "Look at the bear!!" They were looking at a tamarin monkey, which looks nothing like a bear. Seriously, google image search lion tamarin right now. Does that look like a bear to you? No. Why? Because you aren't a moron. Also, overheard at the lion cage: "There he is!!" (Said while looking at a lion without a mane, therefore clearly not a he.)

Later that day we saw a movie, "In the Loop," which was funny. Particularly if you enjoy watching angry British politicians push the bounds of curse words and insults to new levels. I know I enjoy that. We dined at a fancy Italian restaurant that did not necessarily live up to its fanciness. For one thing my gnocchi was bland and for another the waiter unsuccessfully tried to push dessert on us for twelve minutes. I'm generally not too snobbish-if it's food I'll eat it (unless it's mushrooms)-but this was not a class act.

Speaking of food, I want Friendly's.

Saturday night Matt and I went to Ballston (tee-hee) to watch an improv show. We were greeted by an energetic intern at the theater who insisted on using an terrible British accent the entire time. Even Matt wanted to punch him in the face. This is the guy who, in his improv classes, busts in with the "Agent Michael Scarn! Hands up!" type of shtick. Aside from him, the show was surprisingly good. The troupe was incredibly good at the gibberish guessing game they played. As per usual an audience member thought the funniest suggestion ever was dildo and almost fell off her chair laughing about it. Ha. Ha. Die in a fire. That night we were pretty tired and turned in early. Except that I was woken up at 4:30 in the goddamn morning by the loudest screaming fight I have ever heard in my life taking place right outside my window. I initially thought it was a dream. The only reason that I'm convinced it was not is because my roommate also woke up and we talked about it a few minutes before 5 am. Boy, it's times like that I am glad to be alive. Or not. But I think I was dreaming about Contracts, and I thought this fight was just a contract dispute. I don't actually know what it was about, but I do know that I probably should have called the police. I was actively trying not to listen, so that I could get back to sleep, but I think I heard "You hit me with your stiletto!" Bitches be crazy. Eventually the screaming stopped and I went back to sleep, only to be awoken later (I can't remember if it was 5 or 7 am) by someone's goddamn car stereo playing salsa music INCREDIBLY LOUDLY while at a red light. At least I'm assuming that's what this was, because if it was a traffic light then it was the red light of eternity. Seriously, I think I heard the same stupid song three times before the music died out. I was less than pleased, and that was less than the best night of sleep I have ever had.

Today Matt and I walked to the White House. Boy, it would be cool to work there. Maybe Deputy Chief of Staff? I'd do it. Fantasy world aside, on the Ellipse there were a few hundred Chinese people celebrating something. I have absolutely no idea what though. All I know is there were a lot of people in red shirts with Chinese lettering running around, singing songs, and raising both the Chinese flag and the American flag. I asked Matt, but apparently I was way off in thinking it was Chinese New Year. Like to the point where my ignorance in asking that question may have been slightly offensive. Oh well. So happy Chinese-America Day everyone. Because that's all I could surmise from the celebration. Then, after some pasta lunch, Matt took off to go back home. I miss him, but he's in a better place now. Chicago. After that it's just been work and television for me. I probably forgot some things about the weekend which will pop up later. Oh well. And now off to another week of law school. Whoop-dee-do-da.