Not Quite Blogworthy, Part Two

I was too big of a pussy to have a rebellious streak. The one thing I can remember doing was lighting a fire in a metal trashcan in my basement as a fourteen year old. It quickly set off the fire alarm upstairs and the last thing I remember about it was crying to my parents.

I was burning pages out of an old Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Weeks earlier I had cut out all the pages with models on them and thrown the rest of the magazine away. One day I came home and decided I couldn't bear the risk of embarrassment if someone found the pictures so I decided to burn them.

I didn't want to do it outside for fear of torching the whole neighborhood like my brother almost did with some fireworks a few years earlier. Eventually I decided the Donald Duck wastebasket in my bedroom was safe enough because it was metal, but I also brought a bucket of water down from the garage just in case. Then I lit a match.

So anyway I'm on the white couch upstairs with my mom and my stepdad and I'm crying. But the thing is I didn't actually want to cry; the whole thing was kind of a charade. After the alarm went off and I knew I'd be in trouble, I calculated that crying would make my parents think something Serious or Important had just happened and I'd be better off in the long run if I were shown some compassion instead of being punished for almost burning down their fucking house.

And I guess it worked. I'm sure I got some nominal punishment, but I don't remember it. What I do remember was Mom asking if I was burning something important and that she would show me how to use the shredder in her office if I needed to get rid of anything sensitive. But I just lied and said I wasn't burning anything in particular, that I just wanted to see what it looked like.

Apparently I was more afraid of being exposed as a masturbator than I was of my parents thinking I was one of those dead-eyed pale kids who light shit on fire for no reason.

Simpleton Fails Yet Again To Think Before He Acts

My law firm sometimes serves free breakfast on Fridays, from 8 to 10:00 am. These meals generate more enthusiasm than you might expect. It's usually just orange juice and doughy bagels and single servings of Kellogg's cereal, but free shit is free shit, and by 10:00 the cafeteria is pretty well cleaned out.

One Friday I got to work late and got in the elevator around 9:55. On the way to my floor, the elevator stopped at the cafeteria and picked up a woman carrying a plate of food.

We smiled and said hello to each other. Then, gesturing towards her plate, I said: "Is there anything left down there?"

What I'd meant to ask was whether it was worth it to go downstairs and get some breakfast or if everything was already gone. But for SOME reason this poor woman thought I was calling her out for taking too much food. A quick glance at her face confirmed that she totally mortified.

She got off at the next floor, and I awkwardly stepped into the doorway of the elevator to hold it open. "I'm sorry," I stammered. She turned and looked at me impatiently. "I just meant...is there, you know, am I too late to go down and get some breakfast?" I tried laughing a little. "I didn't mean to suggest, you know, that you were umm. I mean..."

This wasn't helping. I stepped backwards into the elevator. "I really didn't mean it like that!" I yelped, desperately, as the doors drew shut.

All fucking day

My bottle of Olay face lotion says, right there on the front, "all day moisture lotion SPF 15".

Great. But this morning I read the back for the first time: "Directions: For all day SPF 15 protection, apply liberally on face and neck as often as necessary." Kind of changes the tenor of the claim on the front, eh? Why not just call it lifetime moisture lotion?

It reminded me of one time in college when I tried to buy a bottle of Pert Plus. I was looking for "Normal", but apparently they'd abandoned that label in favor of "Classically Clean". It was right there next to "Oily" and "Dry and Damaged". I remember thinking, "what the fuck kind of a way to promote a product is that? This hair cleaning product is meant for people with hair that's...already clean?"

I also remember coming back to the apartment that day and finding my roommate with this girl he'd been trying to date. I thought a good idea would be to sit down and explain to them why I thought labeling a shampoo bottle "Classically Clean" was a stupid fucking idea. I wanted the girl to think his roommates were funny and interesting, but maybe I was trying too hard.

Live and learn, I guess.

Things in my apartment that got ashed on last weekend (partial list):

(1) brand new ottoman
(2) my only plant (deceased)
(3) two full beers
(4) Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
(5) the floor

Man it's a trip how the world keeps turnin'

If someone would have told me ten years ago-- as a high school senior-- that I'd be making well over a hundred thousand dollars a year as a 26 year old, I'd have been a little dubious.

And if someone would have told me one year ago-- as a Manhattan lawyer-- that I'd spend the lion's share of 2007 living in a shopping mall in Charlotte, North Carolina (and driving a Chevy Impala), I'd have been outright incredulous.

But if someone would have told me one week ago-- as a self-respecting human being-- that I'd spend the night before Thanksgiving backstage at an Evanescence concert?


Shit.

How to Be a Lawyer, Part Three: Getting the Damn Thing Over With

(Part One)

(Part Two)

STEP NINE, I THINK: Summer internships are so easy a caveman could do it. Them. In fact there's only one thing you need to know: the word "right". Because you come from a prestigious law school (assuming you followed my advice), your supervisors will expect you to know something about the law. Fortunately for you, a properly inflected "right" coupled with a terse nod of the head will convince every partner you understand what they're talking about.

"All this is is a pretty simple amendment to the credit facilities. You probably saw there's a first and second lien, but they're both pretty straightforward."
"Right."
"Anyway the hard part is gonna be obtaining the two-thirds consent needed to adjust the debt coverage ratios in order for the company to avoid a default."
"Right."
"Because obviously the lenders are gonna make them pay through the nose for this."
"Right."

I swear to God, somehow this works. I don't think I said anything besides "right", "thanks", and "Glenlivet" for the first three weeks of my internship.

Nine weeks later, the law firm will offer you a job.

STEP TEN: One smart thing to do after you get a job is to set about alienating every person you've ever been close to. This is a little harder than it sounds, but now that you're gainfully employed, law school isn't exactly taxing; you should have plenty of time to focus. One way to start is to hardly pay attention when your best friend starts dating someone who will eventually become his fianceé. If you're dating someone yourself, now is a good time to start disregarding his/her feelings and doing whatever you please all day long. By all means: ramp up the drinking. And it's not a bad idea to remind everyone you know that you'll soon make more money in one year than all of their lowly ancestors' lifetime earnings put together. It's pretty fun once you get into it.

STEP ELEVEN: By now, you're so close to being a blowhard corporate lawyer you can taste it. All you've got to do is pass the Bar. Unfortunately, the Bar presents an interesting challenge to a slacker like yourself: try as you might, there's pretty much no way to pass this thing without actually studying for it all summer. So if you want to bumble your way through this, you're going to have to be creative. Here are a few quick and easy tips:

(a) When your law school's records department says they mailed all your relevant information to the NY Bar Association, it's a good idea to believe them and not-- under any circumstances-- check with the Bar to make sure they received everything.

(b) Start a blog.

(c) When you run into a classmate sitting by himself at the bar at your local Outback steakhouse and you tell him nervously that you haven't booked a hotel in Albany yet and he laughs and says you're probably already fucked but he'll make some calls on your behalf RIGHT NOW, RIGHT FUCKIN NOW AT THE BAR AT OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE while you sit down and eat your stupid vegetarian pasta primavera alfredo bullshit, it's not a bad idea to believe him. Go ahead and nurture this incredibly insane delusion until a week before the Bar, without ever once bothering to ask him if he actually booked you a room or if he was just blowing smoke.

(d) When it's exactly one week before the Bar and you all of a sudden realize in a panic that you haven't received a seating assignment for the exam because the Bar never got your law school information, and finally come around to the idea that your drunken acquaintance at Outback probably didn't actually book you a hotel room because it occurs to you he doesn't even know your last name, and then also try booting up your computer to search for a last-minute hotel and find your computer is deader than a god damned doornail and all of a sudden it hits you flush that you can't access your notes and outlines for the Bar exam and hell apparently you're not even signed up for the fucking Bar anyway and even if you were you still don't have a place to stay; when this happens and you can honestly say you've treated the most important test of your entire life with the same crippling-fear-disguised-as-nonchalance that's confounded everyone you ever used to be close to since that time in kindergarten when your teacher had to tell your parents to stop letting you do your homework in fucking crayon, and when you look this realization square in the eye (so to speak) and tell it honestly "yes, this is the way i've chosen to live my life", now's when you know you're ready to pick up and move to a huge city 400 miles away from anyone who ever loved you and start working a 70 hour a week job that you can make a pretty strong case you're ghastlily unqualified for.

By comparison, the Bar exam is a trip to the zoo.

STEP TWELVE: Congratulations. You're a corporate lawyer. Everything you've ever dreamed of is now yours for the taking.

But just in case you wake up alone one morning in your sparsely-appointed efficiency and realize you've never had especially vivid or creative dreams, or if one day you're sitting in an airport playing BrickBreaker on your BlackBerry and decide all at once that putzing your way through college and law school is one thing but faking your way through the next 50 years is a whole other kettle of fish, just in case this ever happens to you, probably the best thing to do right then is to close your eyes and take one deep breath.

After that, you're on your own.

How To Be A Lawyer, Part Two: Navigating Law School And Interviewing

STEP SIX: If you want to survive law school, you've got to treat it like a job. So go ahead and cut out early on your first day to see Radiohead in Maryland. Someone will cover for you.

STEP SEVEN: Law school can be pretty hard. You'll need a network of smart friends willing to share their notes, give you their outlines, and explain all the shit you're too dumb to figure out by yourself. The good news is, this isn't med school: as long as you bring something to the table, most people are willing to help you out.

STILL SEVEN: What do you bring to the table? It sure as hell isn't keen analytical insight, a yeomanlike work ethic, or oral hygiene. I recommend a steadfast commitment to always being the drunkest guy in the room. If you're always the drunkest guy in the room, then everyone else will feel free to let their hair down and drink as much as they want, knowing they'll never do anything as embarrassing as the guy wearing a black pom-pom on his head like a Jheri-curl. Your fellow law students will appreciate the social freedom your antics guarantee, and they'll reward you with six semesters of law review-caliber outlines. Trust me.

STEP EIGHT: Before you know it, it's time to start looking for a job. The secret to a successful interview is to remember that law is the absolute dead-on boringest subject known to man, and no one in their right mind would ever ever ever ever ever choose to talk about it of their own free will. Find something more interesting to discuss and you'll have a job in no time. For example, if your favorite baseball team recently staged an historic comeback from a three-games-to-none deficit against its arch rival to win the pennant then swept the St. Louis Cardinals to win its first world championship in 86 years, you could talk about that.

But honestly, even Harry Potter is more interesting than the résumé blather your interviewer has been listening to all day. Don't fuck this up.
___________________________________________

Be on the lookout for Part Three, sometime between tomorrow and mid-July.

How To Be A Lawyer, Part One: How to Get into Law School

Last week I traveled to Albany to be sworn in as a member of the NY Bar. Sitting in the bureaucratic light of the Empire State Plaza Convention Center, I reflected on my experiences over the last 5 years and realized I could put together one hell of a how-to pamphlet. Here's part one:

STEP ONE: Major in philosophy. I can't emphasize this one enough. Majoring in this worthless piece of shit subject ensures exactly one thing: if you ever want to own a TV, have sex with a girl, or eat a meal, you HAVE to go to law school. Nothing motivates like desperation.

STEP TWO: Eventually it comes time to take the LSAT. The key thing here is to become heavily dependent on anti-depressants during college, then slowly wean yourself off them when your undergrad health insurance expires. By the time you take the LSAT in October, you'll be used to the cold sweats and stratospheric heart rate, while your fellow test-takers will be dealing with them for the first time.

STEP THREE: The morning of the LSAT, it will occur to you that you need a #2 pencil to take the test. It will also occur to you that you haven't owned a fucking pencil since you took the SAT five years ago. But don't worry. On your way to the test, casually pull into a convenience store and swipe a handful of golf pencils from the lotto desk. Nothing motivates you to get things right the first time like not having an eraser.

STEP FOUR: Now that you've taken the LSAT, it's time to get serious about applying to law schools. Choosing the right one can be an arduous task, but only if you're a dipshit. The important thing to remember is that the US News & World Report rankings are infallible. Let them be your only guide.

STEP FIVE: Once you decide on your schools, it's imperative to forget their respective application deadlines. That way, when you're forced to fill out the applications and write all your essays in 3 days, they won't come across as "too polished" or "proofread for spelling errors". Law schools are like women: the harder you try, the less they like you.

ALSO PART OF STEP FIVE: Don't be shy about asking a professor you haven't spoken to in years to write you a recommendation over his winter vacation and mail it to you the very same day. If they didn't like doing this shit, they shouldn't have gone into academia in the first place.
_________________________________

Stay tuned for Part II: Surviving Law School and Getting a Job

my oldest pair of underwear

A friend of mine-- let's call him SW-- recently came to visit me in a city we'll call NY. I had visited him about a year ago in Chicago, which weekend was punctuated by an unfortunate incident involving SW, alcohol, and puking all over my clothes. Normally I'm happy to sacrifice a few clothes to a good time, but the particular clothes he puked on were a favorite t-shirt and my only pair of cargo shorts.

Indignant, hungover, and leaving that morning for Argentina, I instructed SW to wash my goddamned clothes and mail them to me when I returned. But I left for South America assuming I'd never see my clothes-- and hoping I'd never see SW-- again.

So anyway, good old SW arrives in NY last week and begins unpacking his stupid suitcase. A few minutes later he's standing next to me, extending a bundle of clothes. I recognize the blue Brooklyn Superhero Supply shirt and faded khaki shorts, but another item catches me off guard.

"Holy shit!" I say. "Those are my boxers! I don't remember you puking on those."

"I didn't." SW says. "You haven't seen these boxers in forever. You left them at my apartment years ago and I've been carrying them around with me ever since."

It turns out I had left them at his apartment when he was in college. The intervening years had seen him move from Blacksburg, VA to Las Vegas to Chicago. The boxers accompanied him the entire way, from stupid suitcase to stupid suitcase, through four time zones.

And now, some four years later in New York City, my boxers and I were reunited. I barely recognized them-- they were threadbare, and their light tan had been washed almost white. The boxers were a Christmas gift in 1995, part of a three pack whose other constituents-- grey and blue-- were lost years ago.

Then, in the bizarre nostalgia of fondling a 10 year old pair of my own underwear, a memory flooded back to me. I checked the boxers' fly. Sure enough, there was a curious brown stain running along the underside of the open flap.

I imagined SW had noticed this stain at least once over the years. I had some explaining to do.
__________

This fateful three pack was a building block in my effort to switch from briefs to boxers during my sophomore year of high school. I had recently become aware that I was the palest, spindliest pussy in the history of the universe, a fact which bode poorly for my chances of surviving 10th grade gym class unridiculed. Anything that might provide locker room cover for my pasty white thighs was a necessity.

The boxers worked great, but I quickly discovered a problem. Briefs, for their myriad faults, are at least designed to protect the penis from unwanted exposure. My boxers, however, did not share this feat of engineering. Right in the crotch was a gaping fly, all the better for taking a leak, but all the worse for having your stupid 15 year old pecker fall out of your boxers in the locker room in front of a bunch of people who don't like you anyway.

So, long story long, one night I grabbed a bottle of glue and headed down to my room for repairs. I laid out all my boxers and carefully drew a thick line of glue down the interior flap of each fly, pressing the flaps against each other when I was done.

The glue was a good enough solution, if a tad indelicate. Not only did it hold the line long enough for me to survive my last semester of gym, but it gave me a great story to tell in the spring of 2007.

Las Vegas 2007: Mistakes Were Made

Dave and I found each other in the airport and sized each other up. It was past 11:00 on the west coast, Sunday night. We were the last two players remaining in a dangerous four-day game of basketball watching and beer drinking. Secretly, we were proud of each other.

"Well Dave," I said, "Here we are. We made some mistakes, no doubt, but I had a pretty good time."

"Oh yes," he replied. "Mistakes WERE made..." It looked like he was ready to say something else but then he thought better of it. Those three words said enough:

Mistake #1 The Imperial Palace

My friends did most of the organizing. They had heard rumors of a sweet sounding deal at the Imperial Palace, a second-rate casino across from Caesar's Palace. Two conference rooms would be converted into a basketball fan's paradise: Multiple high definition TVs, showing every game live. $1 hot dogs. $1 beers. Right across from the sports book, where we would bet on all of the 48 games.

The reality? There were multiple TVs showing every game, but they were decidedly low definition, and inconveniently located 20 feet apart, such that no one could watch more than 2 games at the same time. Every sports book, every sports bar-- hell, every sports fan with multiple TVs-- knows every TV needs to be visible at all times. But not the Imperial Palace. The beers? $4 domestic, $5 imported. The sports book? Down the hall. Wait in line half an hour to place your bets. Put $500 on the games and in return the cashier gives you coupons for 2 free drinks. DOMESTIC only drinks. Corona and Heineken not available. And by the way, the Imperial Palace is a $10 cab ride (or 3 stops on the monorail, for you bargain hunters!) from our perfectly acceptable hotel and casino.

Did I mention other casinos have cocktail waitresses who serve free drinks to gamblers?

Mistake #2 Not Speaking Up

I stayed at the Imperial Palace a couple of years ago. It sucked then, too. Its blackjack pit offers a gimmick called, I shit you not, The Dealertainers. The dealers would dress up like music stars-- Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, Louis Armstrong, Alice Cooper-- and in return for this horrific service, they pay you 6 to 5 on blackjack instead of 3 to 2. When I was there, the IP offered a buffet that featured all-you-can-drink champagne. At the end of the buffet, there was a tap-- a tap!-- where each customer could pull himself a nice frothy glass of draft champagne.

Mercifully, this buffet has been replaced. Mercilessly, they added a seafood restaurant called, I shit you not, The Cockeyed Clam.

I should have spoken up.

Mistake #3 Going Back To The Imperial Palace On Friday

Groupthink at its best.

Mistake #4 Eating One Meal A Day

The desire to watch every single minute of basketball is understandable. Not waking up early enough to sneak in a meal beforehand is unacceptable.

Mistake #5 Time Zones

Drinking beer during every game is all part of the deal. But when the games start at 9:00 a.m., things get a little rough. Thursday is fun. Friday is tough, but peer pressure gets you through it. Saturday is horrible. By Sunday you've given up drinking forever.

Mistake #6 Passing out before your large mushroom pizza and 40 hot chicken wings arrive at your hotel room. I can't think of a title for this one, but god dammit was it ever a mistake. (Not A Mistake At All: Telling the operator you'll pay with cash.)

Mistake #7 Waiting Until You're Too Drunk To Learn How To Play Craps To Learn How To Play Craps.

It doesn't matter that I made $240 in half an hour. What matters is that I still don't know how to play craps.

Mistake #8 The Sunday Night Red Eye

I swore last July I would never fly a Sunday night Vegas red eye again. I was wrong.

Mistake #9 Waiting 26 Years Before Going To Vegas For March Madness

Mistakes were made.