Geeky Chic

Here’s something nifty (Thanks, Toasty!).  This is the artist that I tried.

**
And my wallet and disposition are now less green.  I located the Y-3 coat in extra-small.

All I want is:

• A spring break. 
  Last year, I had two spring breaks; I took the one that corresponded
  with Vanderbilt’s Medical School’s calendar, and spent foggy days in
  London town.  Then, during the HLS spring break, I came back here
  and just loafed for a week.  So, now everyone who is currently on
  break, can we switch places for a week?
• The red Y-3 trench coat with
  black Adidas stripes running only on the left side.  It
  simply rocks.  I can’t even find a downloadable photo of it online
  to show it to you (there’s a black one that’s less cool on the Y-3
  website, but the site  has stupid-o Macromedia flash.)  They
  only made 50 of them, and Harput’s
  in Ess Eff was one of the lucky retailers that received exactly 3. The
  last one disappeared off the rack when I was there this weekend. 
  At least the purchaser did the coat justice; she was a stunning,
  statuesque blond who also picked up these sexy and complicated white
  patent leather Y-3 boots that had velco straps running up to the
  knee.  Needless to say, I left the store with my mouth agape
  partially over the much-wanted (price is no object) trench and
  partially over the towering blond who got it.

My mom just woke me up because I promised to judge a Lion’s Club speech
contest on her behalf.  My eyes are plastered shut and I don’t have my voice right now (“Throat, ow…),
and I’ve got 20 minutes now to leave the apartment to make it on
time.  I’m going to be somnambulant throughout the event.  But
this isn’t the thing that has me thinking right now….

10 years ago, I came in second
in this same speech contest to this kid from the local Jesuit high
school.  He was definitely more eloquent, so it was a fair
loss.  He was in my BarBri class last summer, and also ended up
devoting his crunch time days to studying at the UCSF library. 
Each time he went out of a smoke break though, I couldn’t help
remembering that loss, and thought that coming back here meant that my life
(and my career) was (were) an extension of high school.  Now, he’s a
prosecutor over in one of the suburban Bay Area counties, which means
in 20 or so years, he’ll likely be a judge, which again, will make me
slightly envious.  Oh, well, this is how you make big firm SF lawyers envious.

And just to prove that the regression to high school is complete, this is what my Rowerr teachers are up to now (yes, this what my alumni donations are funding.).

Doesn’t this sound like a dream combination, Spike Jonze is directing Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are,
based on Dave Eggers’s adaptation?  (As I type this, Finch says,
“Sounds like a crap combination, actually.”)  So, it’s either going
to be really good, or suck royally.

I’m primarily familiar with Thomas De Zengotita from his contributions to Harper’s Magazine.  Salon conducted an interview with him about his new book,  Mediated,
which I will likely pick up in a few weeks (I think that his central
argument is that we live in a world where everything we do is
performative; every act is full of self-consciousness).  I found
this particular question and answer interesting:

Well, you decide.
That’s your demographic. But of course “deciding” is the problem
itself! Pretty soon, you’ll come to a point and say, “I can’t take this
any more,” living like a piece of flotsam, floating around in a sea of
options, and you’ll get married, or make some other commitment. Even
though it feels arbitrary, you’ll get scared enough to do it. Because
you’ll realize that nothing’s going to happen to do it for you or to
you. No puberty, no ritual moment when all the elders of the tribe
gather around you and slice your penis up the middle or something like
that to convince you that you’ve grown up. You just have to do it
yourself. Grow up, I mean.

But I’m convinced that these Gucci Ice Trays take consumer wh0red0m to next level.

BTW, here’s the limited edition 2005 LV Haircube that’s more expensive than most pairs of designer shoes.

And stop your infringing, “Happy Birthday” singing ways.

There has been a vast cultural (and personal) overuse of the cliche
“Blank is the new blank,” lately, and the one that my friends
are abusing the most is, “The fifty is the new twenty,” in reference to
yuppie food stamps.   This joke has been confirmed, as the
Times remarks on how the six-figure salary has lost its cache and $200K is the new $100K.  Though I don’t take the Styles section
very seriously, this article contains a lot of truth; one of the
debates that I constantly engage in at home concerns how $200K/year is
the
bare minimum that a family in SF needs to eek out a decent life.

Addendum: AG has moved this discussion to his site.

Perhaps the cameraman that Joaquin Phoenix portrays in Hotel Rwanda is correct; when the Western Media brings us these images,
the collective response is to pause, and say, “How horrible,” but then
we go on with our mundane day-to-day tasks.  What is the point of
building Holocaust museums, if we just let this stuff happen?  Do
they exist primarily as a space to bus schoolkids to for field trips?

Now back to my regularly scheduled apathy.

I wonder how long Westlaw technical support will keep me on hold (it’s
not letting me into my account).  I’m in the middle of the most
confusing research project ever (the legal librarians here shook their
heads at the question, and this afternoon, the Westlaw legal research phone assistant,
said “Wow, there are a lot of issues there, I don’t know where to
start.”)

I’m on the verge of cancelling on tonight’s birthday dinner, but I
can’t be that much of a bastard because I am the one in possession of
the gingerbread cake.  Argh.  If I’m still on hold in 10
minutes, I’m leaving.

And if any of you out there are conflict/choice of laws experts, you can become my new best friend.

Edit: 6:35 Westlaw tech support just hung up on me.