Geeky Chic

Disclaimer:  It’s 2:31 a.m. and I am slightly inebriated right now.  We all know this means that there will be more candor than usual in this post.  Crap!

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I’ve been in NYC for a little over than 24 hours right now.  I love this city.  I hate that I can’t admit how much I love this place; it’s the only place in the continental U.S. that can compete with Ess Eff for my affection.  One of my biggest regrets is not having had the balls to pick NYU over HLS for law school, for the New York bug would be out of my system by now.  But, I am resigned that I am past the age where I can move here, and either way, I cannnot work the law firm hours that this city requires.  So, I must submit to San Francisco’s beauty.

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Despite my love of this fair city, I know that my beloved Finch feels secure while I am apart from him.  Why?  Because he knows that I cannot get into any trouble eating $19!/plate Mac n’ Cheese with Banana Girl.  Because he knows that my host, the cleanest and frugalest Columbia graduate ever drags me to karaoke and gay bars with his fruity friends.  Because he knows that the charms of guys in private equity pale in comparison to him.  God, but this place has such great eye candy.

I think that it’s time for me to add a feature to my sidebar, a special page to catalog bad restaurant experiences. Anna’s cockroach experience at Matsuri this weekend ranks up there with the live worm that fell to my table from the mosaic ceiling at Farallon.

After Finch picked me up from the CalTrain station this evening, I was tired and hungry, so we headed to the neighborhood Hawaiian restaurant, Hukilai, for a quick bite. We had a case of the disappearing waitress even though the place wasn’t busy. After she took our order, she forgot to bring us our drinks. After we waited for a good 25 minutes for our food, Finch had to use the restroom and spotted our food sitting at the kitchen counter waiting to be picked up. After he returned, the waitress noticed that we were disgruntled, and said that the food would be coming shortly and disappeared for another 5 minutes. When she finally brought our plates over, she had the audacity to lie, “Sorry, the kitchen was a little backed up tonight.” We didn’t have the energy to complain about our entrees being cold, but the manager overheard us whispering about not leaving a tip, and comped our drinks.

Phase I of my summer is complete — I finished the Bar on Thursday, and since then, the question almost everyone that I see asks me is, “So, did you pass?”  I have no way of evaluating my performance, so all I can report is that I am relieved that it is over, at least for now.

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I clicked on this article by way of Arts & Letters Daily because I thought it was a standard critique of the N.Y. Times “Portraits of Grief.”  It starts off that way, but instead morphs into a discussion of crowd theory, privacy, the fine line between the public and private, and the selves that we present to the world (“personal branding”). He even uses a deft anecdote about HLS Professor Larry Tribe to illustrate that we live in an “Omnipticon,” where “many are watching the many, even though no one knows precisely who is watching or being watched at any given time.” It seems relevant to Anna’s comment about how our websites misportray us.

Day one of the Bar has passed, and I’m still standing.  Continue to burn those joss sticks though, for if the Bar doesn’t get me, I am in urban renewal central, Oakland, CA.

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Also, I listened to part of President Clinton’s speech on the ride over to the East Bay last night.  I was absolutely floored by his speech; I forgot how charismatic, funny, and self-deprecating he can be.  I nodded along, as Finch asked, “Why can’t he be president again?”  Damn, post-FDR Constitutional Amendments.  I find it amazing that my heart has changed so dramatically from it’s place my junior year of college.  I recall distinctly what disgust he used to inspire in me during Lewinsky-gate.  Amazing what a really bad president can do to change one’s opinions.

I’ve never studied this intensely, ever.  Not in grammar school, not in high school, definitely not in college, or law school.  The Bar is really starting to Hurt; my brain is pudding at the end of the day.  But I have allowed myself some minor indulgences, and a major indulgence this week.  The minor: canneles de bordeaux as my study snack.  The major: I took last night off to see the Magnetic Fields.  An intimate, acoustic, witty, ukelele-infused, mournful, self-indulgent, romantic (in the 19th century sense), snarky, bantering, anecdote-chocked, all-together awesome show.  They have been my soundtrack to Bar studying. 

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On a different note, Phil Greenspun passed along some interesting information from the Bell Curve about the IQ level of the American gene pool.  The book argues that our gene pool is literally becoming less intelligent each year because of how fertility is skewed towards people who have lower IQs.  For instance, the higher-IQ women put off kids for a career, and have one, or if they are lucky two, compared with someone who gets married at 18, and proceeds to pop up four or five youngins’.  He remarks that this isn’t a bad thing, because it would be incredibly difficult for the US to absorb a signicantly larger, well-educated workforce because they would push up prices for everyone else.  Could one imagine Manhattan real estate prices, if there were 2 or 3 times as many young professionals as there are now?

Although I don’t think that the artist had me in mind, I think that the current issue of the HLS Bulletin (which just so happens to be the TechLaw issue) has an illustration that resembles me. A Berkmanite with my old haircut, an iPod, thin limbs, pale-skin, and a top straight from my closet. C’est Geeky Chic!

For those of you who are curious about the polish-huffing cat:

“Gansta Gelsomina”

I am not one to blog about pets, but Finch’s cat acted strangely yesterday. She ate part of his granola bar, planted herself atop one of my bar books as a I tried to study from it, and cozied up to a one of his dirty rags. We couldn’t figure out why she hugged onto the rag, until Finch remembered that he used it to polish the boat. Hence, the cat spent the day high on boat polish fumes.

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I also signed myself up for a different form of torture this summer — swimming lessons. My instructor, an amiable Jack Black-type, led me out to the deep end for the first time yesterday. I spent a good 3-4 minutes clinging on to the wall, refusing to let go, for fear that I would sink. I get a good dosage of palpable fear each week. I still find the sound of the water, when I stick my ears beneath the water, as I back float, to be a complete novelty — a new mode of sensory experience.

What is one supposed to think, when two of today’s leading stories are: (1) 9-11 Committee Report Says the the CIA overstated the Iraqi threat; and (2) Al Qaeda Organizing for a US Attack ?  Does anyone trust our Intelligence anymore?

Courtesy of Toasty, here’s Spiderman, rendered in Legos.  I am a bit disappointed that this is actually an official Marvel Comics / Lego production.  At least it offers an explanation for why Lego Corp. sent this cease and desist letter, alleging trademark infringement to LegoDeath. (Side note as to the C&D, it bothers me that Lego Corp. attempts to instruct people not to use “Lego” as a noun, as to prevent generic use of the term, such that it becomes unprotected, like “Xerox” or “Q-tip.”)