Er, Would You Mind Repeating That?

This morning I had my first Immigration Law class. This was the class I was most looking forward to, as it's the area of law I'm most interested in. Unfortunately, the class didn't go too well. The teacher torrented a frenzied blur of verbiage for two solid hours. I sat on the front row and felt like I was a dome-hatted jungle explorer wielding a machete, my comprehesion derived from hacking away at the words. Even worse, she frequently used, in speech, the textual designation "i.e.," when "e.g." would have been far more appropriate, making for the most annoying/distracting teacher quirk since my history professor at OU who would draw rectangles with his index fingers to emphasize salient points.

My note-taking was much hindered by this, as you can imagine. I got a new laptop over the summer, and I'm still getting used to navigating its keys with my stubby fingers. I stopped taking notes and just sat there listening. A glance around the classroom at the furrowed brows of several other students, also not taking notes, reassured me I was not alone in my dilemma.

So, I've decided to start taping classes, at least hers. Too much valuable info goes by for it not to be collected. However, I may have to be covert. In the middle of last year's fall semester, a scandal of sorts broke out at the law school. A professor lost his temper when a student had a beligerent response to the Socratic method. The professor kicked the student out of his class, and, still very angry, launched into a tirade that featured much swearing. Another student was taping class, and an mp3 made from his or her tape made the underground rounds of the law school. I have to say, it was about as entertaining as Orson Welles's famous frozen peas rant.

The professor wasn't really disciplined by the school. Though the way he expressed himself was, arguably, in poor taste, he didn't contravene any regulations. For a while, there was talk of finding the student taper who circulated the mp3, and filing some kind of charges (according to the rumor mill, the legal theory contemplated fell under federal wiretapping law). The whole thing eventually died down, but a host of syllabi in the Spring semester reflected new class taping policies, many of which severly limited, or outright banned, taping of class lectures.

I don't know whether taping is allowed in my Immigration Law class (it isn't not allowed; how's that for odious lawyer-think?) I'm of the mind, though, that if only a court stenographer could capture the lecture, taping is not unreasonable.

On a different note, I spoke with two 1Ls today. One is a student in the class for which I'm TA'ing (love making those verbs out of nouns), the other a guy I met in the library. The first one comes from lawyer stock, so she is already really on top of her game, having read Examples and Explanations books for every class she's taking. The other is like me. He came into law school cold, and I had to patiently explain what a class outline was. I encouraged him to get started early and tackle it in small doses, advice I wish I'd had. That's the nice thing - feeling you get a chance to redeem your mistakes by helping others prevent them; feels almost parental. It's funny though. I'm telling these "war stories" of things that happened less than a year ago, but in the telling sound like decades-old triumphs and defeats.

Oh, well. I was always good at inflating my self-importance.

OK, Dad. Time to Pat Yourself on the Back

End of the third day in law school. To answer Jill's question from an earlier post, law school is not like undergrad. They post the first day's reading assignment in advance so the first class of the semester starts off with a solid lecture. A weclome exception was my Law of Professional Sports class today. We met for only 50 min of 2 hr, and the entire time we spent going over the syllabus.

Those who know me will ask, "Law of Professional Sports?" And, yes, I'll admit I don't know (or care) much about sports. However, 1) I love the prof. (best 4-credit-hour grade I've had in law school thus far), and 2) there is no final, just a series of written assignments. The prof. said that we'll pretty much determine our grades by how hard we work, insinuating that you pretty much would have to royally screw up to get a bad grade. This is a nice change from 1L classes, where you can bust your ass and be rewarded with a C for your troubles.

I think I'm gonna like being a 2L.

In fact, in the last few days, I've gotten pretty good at spotting the 1Ls: the innocent, wide-eyed stares, occasionally supplanted by terrified wide-eyed panic. It feels like being a Senior in high school when the Freshman class arrives; hell, they seem shorter for some odd reason - a perceptual thing, I'm sure. However, I have no intention of "busting" on the 1Ls, or "cleaning them out" (F&G reference). No, I'm really nice. I'm going to tell them all the things I wished people had told me when I started.

Law school seems to be separated into mainly 1Ls and everyone else. The knowing conversations I've had with other students have been the same, regardless of whether the other student is months away from the bar, or years. An extraordinary number of people have lost their scholarships after first year; there was much commiserating. That's the nice thing about being in the middle - most of the people are in exactly the same spot as you. It doesn't feel as bad when lots of others were "this close" to keeping scholarships. I talked with a 3L who lost his scholarship after the first year, and was hoping to regain it. He said that one has to attain a 3.0 after the third semester to do this. So, this semester will have that riding on it. If I can pull it off, I might recapture some bucks. If not, oh well.

I met with my legal writing teacher today. My first assignment as a TA will be the grading of 55 student assignments tomorrow night (ouch!) She has 55 students this year, as opposed to 43 students last year, so she is going to have a "backup TA," in addition to me.

Also, as much as I was stressing over getting on the International Law Journal, but not getting accepted to Tulsa Law Review, it looks like it's really working out for the best. It's a more relaxed, low-key journal, for one. One of the main things we need to accomplish during our candidacy period is writing a forty-page paper of publishable quality. My first thought was to do something on immigration, copyright, or the effect of international law on the decisions of the Supreme Court - pretty broad topic. Then, I thought it might be good to do something on the Bahá'ís and their situation in Iran.

One of the things we have to do is run a "pre-emption" check, and make sure that no other law review articles had been written on the same topic. The Bahá'ís in Iran had several articles, as the revolutionary government's abuses of the Bahá'ís are some of the most egrigious in the world. The articles I pulled up were from the mid-nineties. However, I thought I might be able to revisit the topic as Iran has, unfortunately, picked up its persecution in recent years, going so far as to destroy several Bahá'í holy landmarks in broad daylight, to the protests and objections of several secular newspapers, whose objections were founded on the intrinsic historic and architectural value of the landmarks, not their importance to the Bahá'ís.

However, my Dad had an alternate spin. He suggested doing an article on religious rights in post-Saddam Iraq. This, ultimately, is the topic I'm going with. There is a tension over what the new Iraqi constitution's proclamation of Islam as the official government of Iraq, and "a fundamental source of legislation," will mean to the religious freedoms of its minorities. The Bahá'ís, a few years ago, formed their first National Spiritual Assembly in decades. I'll be able to discuss this, as well as other religious minorities and their experiences. My student candidate paper editor said the topic was "cutting edge" when I ran the suggestion by her. She said to just be sure that I had enough sources.

Today, the finalized topic was due. I felt like a goober, because all I did was type "The Rights of Religious Minorities in Post-Saddam Iraq," run my pre-emption check, and slide the results under the door of the ILJ office. However, I soon ran into other students who had typed one or two-paragraph blurbs on what their paper would cover. A friend of mine, Alisha, took great delight in my blunder, because it would make her look good by comparison! Fortunately, I had enough time to go back and correct my error before the five o'clock deadline.

One of the aforementioned nice things about ILJ is that the paper will be due on November 7th, a month before finals. This means I'll have ample study time.

On a separate, unrelated note: I got my first comment spam last night; a significant right of passage. What kind of a lame-o would even bother to spam a blog read by, at most, ten people? It was something to do with timber, or paper, or paper made from a special timber (I don't know).

When I started the blog, I thought it would be a nice way to stay in touch with friends and family and let them know what I'm up to. Now, sadly, I realize I'm just in it for the comments. So, to see an extra comment pop up, only for it to be spam, was a slap in the face.

Are You Doobie Keebler?

Forgive my fascination with changing font colors.

One of the presents I received for my 27th birthday Saturday was the boxset of seasons 1 & 2 of NewsRadio, one of my favorite shows ever. There are a lot of reasons why I like NewsRadio. I like that a lot of episodes were named after Led Zeppelin songs. I like that NewsRadio is all one word, frustrating my attempts to look it up on imdb by typing "News Radio." But, most of all, I like Stephen Root's character Jimmy James. I'm a card-carrying member of Jimmy James's Rockin' Rangers, and am so glad to own this show on DVD.

Stephen Root is a genius comedic actor. Along with Toby Huss ("Artie, the Strongest Man...in the World!"), he's one of those guys who I find incredible in every single thing he's in. Can you believe the blind radio station man in O Brother was the same guy as Milton in Office Space?

My Evidence teacher this summer, adjunct Steve Balman, looked and sounded almost exactly like Stephen Root, making Evidence class one of the best I've had in law school so far. I love the classes taught by lawyers with one foot in real-life practice, because they are, by far, more personable and less intimidating than those solely in the academic world.

Hey, Steve...Stephen? Weird!!!

To jarringly change topics, Toby Huss's greatest role was as Artie in The Adventures of Pete and Pete. (Another birthday DVD set - PIPE!!!) The line delivery from Pluto made the character of Artie. One of my favorites was the episode where li'l Pete was grounded from the 4th of July and planned to tunnel out. Don (Pete's dad) allows Artie to visit the grounded Pete after a frisking ("OOH, Don, you have soft hands...for a man!"), and presents Pete with a ant farm with the coded advice, "Hope you...dig it." Toby was also the guy one Seinfeld who was so beautiful he hypnotizied everyone. More recently, he's been on Reno 911.

Well, law school starts tomorrow, so I may not be posting much. Here's hoping it's a great year for everyone.

Click Track, Anyone?

For the past couple of days, my friend Justice has stayed over at my apartment and we've been attempting to record. I say "attempting," because if you've ever dabbled with recording, you'll know that, while the ultimate result is rewarding, the process to get there is very tedious.

We've been waiting about a year to get together, between mismatched schedules and not having the requisite equipment. The first day, all we did was set up the equipment. I pulled my long ago purchased, yet never-played, drum kit out of the closet. (Because the heads were removed, and the drums stacked inside each other like a Russian nesting doll, they fit into just two suprisingly compact boxes). We spent about two hours just setting up the drums and tuning. Unfortunately, my chops are shot to hell.

Justice was primarily interested in recording drums and vocals for a song I wrote back in April - "Hoodwinked." Justice is interested in creating a funk/soul band, so the material I've been working on lately is geared to this idiom. It feels very much like writing fiction in a genre, with all the little rules, and (hopefully) creative subversion of those rules.

The sad thing about recording is that it doesn't lie. I can sit on my couch and play a little guitar and sing, pausing to cough, stopping and starting again after dropping notes, yet pretend that I gave a complete, musical performance. Needless to say, when recording, no such illusions are allowed. Having not played drums in a long while, my timing is really off. Rather than play the drum parts (which I hear perfectly in my head) straight through, we spent far too long indulging my technique, which involves attempting to play a few bars to a click track to keep consistent time.

We used this technique in April of last year for a recording class we took. We recorded fragments of drum tracks at a friend's house and then I pieced the structure of the song out of the little fragments. This is a satisfying experience, in much the same way that putting together a jigsaw puzzle is. The drawback is that you're using the exact same drum part for the 3rd verse as you did for the 1st and 2nd. We tried to compensate for this by overdubbing the rest of the instruments playing straight through. I think it worked okay.

Back to the present. The recording interface we're using has four mic inputs, so we used 1 mic for the snare, 1 for bass, and 2 for a stereo overhead to pick up the rest. Of course, all the drums leak into all the mics, so separation is something of a joke. As much as I enjoy writing and playing music, I do not enjoy fretting over drum tuning and mic placing, and getting levels. You could easily imagine taking days going thump-thump-thump-thump, tap-tap-tap-tap. Next time you wonder why your favorite band is dragging ass in getting the next album out, this may be part of the problem.

At the end of two-and-a-half days, we have two scratch vocal tracks, and two separate, incomplete, attempts at playing the drum track.

The dream lives on.

In Defense of Adam West

You have to acknowledge it. In the depths of your I-just-saw-Batman-Begins-and-it-was-one-of-the-best-if-not-the-best-Batman-movies-ever-(-with-apologies-to-Tim-Burton-)-heart, you know it.

The idea of a guy dressing up as a BAT to fight crime is pretty ri-friggin-diculous.

It used to be that we had Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever and Batman & Robin to remind us how good Burton's movies were. But, Burton's movies themselves engendered some controversy at first. Namely, the casting of Michael Keaton. In the pre-Internet days, before Harry Knowles, et. al., movie news traveled, inter alia, by means of fan magazines, like Comics Scene (pre-Wizard), which had a section in the back devoted to the various comic movies and their rotations in the seven layers of development hell.

I'll never forget being 10 and hearing my 15-year-old cousin Chris's reaction to the news of casting which trickled down from Hollywood to the comics magazines to the weirdo comic shoppe owners, and, finally, to us.

His reaction was something like, "What? They're casting 'Mr. Mom' as Batman!?!" "Yeah," I agreed, wondering if I should tell Chris that I loved Mr. Mom.

At the same time, across the country, another fellow had similar objecti0ns, but for different reasons. Instead of mocking the until-then-mostly-comedic pedigree of Keaton, his objection was more founded on the simple fact that he'd actually played Batman before. They threw a bone to Adam West by offering him the part of Thomas Wayne, Bruce's slain father, in the flashback scenes, but Adam turned them down.

Bravo, Adam.

There are some shows from childhood that you feel bad for making your Mom sit through (Voltron anyone?), and there are other shows that are just as entertaining now as they were then. Among these are Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Robotech, and, of course, Batman. I was a pre-schooler when I first saw Batman, in between kids trying to throw ping pongs into Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets while keeping their toes behind the white line, on the Bozo the Clown show (R.I.P.). (Incidentally, years later at TV Guide, there was a Bozo Room, named in honor of the company's contract to distribute WGN on its satellites. After receiving several dressings down in said room, over my failure to perform the work of three people with absolute perfection, I knew that my childhood had finally died).

As a pre-schooler, when I wasn't spending entire days of my life dressed as Superman, I donned my Batman cowl. I carried Batman in my heart, always preferring him to Superman.

My Mom drove me from Maysville to Oklahoma City and took my cousins and I to the midnight screening of Batman on June 22nd, 1989 (Is she not the coolest Mom ever? Gotta give thanks to Dad, too, though. He was the one who bought me the Dick Tracy ticket T-shirt and took me to its premeire a year later.) One of the side effects of Batmanmania - really, it felt like Beatles Redux - was that, in addition to the slew of merchandise, they began showing Adam West's Batman again on TV. Hosanna! For Halloween that year, my Mom made me a Batman costume. Though Chris was able to score a rubber cowl in the style of the movie (all was forgiven Michael Keaton), my Mom and I decided to base mine on the Adam West/comics style costume, though with black in place of blue. Pre-schooler sister Sarah, with her pageboy bob, was Robin. The love seat in our den was the batmobile.

In a perfect world, the next Batman movie would be a courtroom drama. Batman, tired of vigilantism, would become Gotham's next District Attorney. But, he'd still be wearing his costume under a brown tweed three-piece suit, cowl poking of akwardly out of the collar, cape stuffed into pants, making it look like Batman had to be wearing the largest size of Depends available...and that he'd just had an accident. Lest you think this idea is influenced from my law school experiences, let me assure you that I had thought of it back in college, during my junior year. It just makes sense. Batman had the greatest inductive (or is it deductive?) logic of all time. I'll leave you with the following, courtesy of the 1966 Batman movie:

Commissioner Gordon: It could be any one of them... But which one? Which ones?

Batman: Pretty *fishy* what happened to me on that ladder...

Commissioner Gordon: You mean where there's a fish there could be a penguin?

Robin: But wait! It happened at sea... Sea. C for Catwoman!

Batman: Yet, an exploding shark *was* pulling my leg...

Commissioner Gordon: The Joker!

Chief O'Hara: All adds up to a sinister riddle... Riddle-R. Riddler!

Commissioner Gordon: A thought strikes me... So dreadful I scarcely dare give it utterance...

Batman: The four of them... Their forces combined...

Robin: Holy nightmare!

P.S. My favorite moment in this movie is when Batman, breathless and exasperated after various obstacles, including nuns, a brass band, and baby birds, thwart his efforts to save the denizens of Gotham pier, exclaims, "SOME DAYS YOU JUST CAN'T GET RID OF A BOMB!"

I Believe in Rock and Roll: Some Found Sound Adventures

By the way, I much prefer Rock and Roll to "Rock'n'Roll." Rock'n'Roll makes me think of all things cheese, drunken punters shouting all right now, Time Life boxsets being hocked on late-night TV. No, it's Rock and Roll.

As much as I enjoy just records and concerts and whatnot, for music's sake, some of the most profound joy I've ever experience came from the following events.

1) Spring 1994 - Mrs. Walker's English II class. I had just gotten into the idea of musique concrete, and enjoyed hearing music in whatever sounds I could find. I was also getting into avant garde and dadaism in a big way, all but abandoning "music" in any normal sense.

We were asked by Mrs. Walker to move our desks out of the way for something or other. The resulting sound of twenty-five or so squaky chairs being dragged across old linoleum combined to make an exquisite symphony. I was almost paralyzed by ecstasy. I never felt weirder or freakier in my life.

2) Spring 1996 - I was in the backyard of my friend Travis Bond's house, a few weeks away from graduation. It was one of those blissful days when the air seems alive and electric, the warm sunlight hits your face, and sounds and smells of innocent tranquility hang heavy in the air, the smell of pavement after a spring rain.

The marching band was playing in the distance at the practice field, preparing for their annual trip to Tri-State in Enid. This was to the east of Travis's house, about a block away. Simultaneously, to the west, the calliope strains of an ice cream truck began. This was more exquisite than any stereo recording ever committed to tape. Big sound, open sound, scary in its beauty, but feeling big, like the natural order of things deemed it to happen. A piece of cosmic music. My friends wondered why I stopped talking suddenly. "Listen to that!" was all I could reply.

3) April 2004 - Reynolds Center, TU - Ben Folds - as awesome as this concert was, my favorite moment was the gap in between G.Love's opening set (bleugh) and Ben's set. Someone piped "Bohemian Rhapsody" over the sound system, and, before the first verse was over, the entire crowd, thousands of people, were singing along. It's surely one thing you don't experience sitting alone in your music geek sound world, spinning your records in the privacy of your room. The immediacy. The connection. The communal experience. This music is truly our folk art. It's a gift. It can transcend differences and unite culture. It can change the world. I later located a copy of the concert, but, sadly, it didn't have the crowd singing along.

I Swear, The Disaster Ends Here!

This is your friendly neighborhood Austin blogging from the middle of the night, deep in the throes of his typical post-semester existential crisis.

Many of you who know (and love) me know that I am...a little sloppy. If "a little sloppy" means that you live in disorganized envirions that make the set of Sanford and Son look like the most cleanly, pristine environment, repeatedly, compulsively scoured by a meticulous germaphobe.

Just ask my good friend Danny.

He came to visit me this summer, and, like a "good host," I begged off him using the bed (like he had the last time), because it was covered with boxes, clean laundry and broken computers. Instead, I offered my new couch, deciding I would take the love seat. Danny assured me this was all right, but, inwardly, I felt like a cad, embarrassed because my life was so disorganized I couldn't find the time, or energy, to clear off the bed.

In the middle of a night of uncomfortable sleep, trying to fit my 6'1" frame on a love seat five feet long, I noticed a similarly-uncomfortable Danny had migrated to the floor. Oh man, I thought. I wondered what my company-conscious Mom would think, the woman who, in the 80s, chastized me for once spitting in the kitchen sink, admonishing, "Don't do that! Wouldn't you feel embarrassed if President Reagan came over for dinner and saw you do that?" (I swear I didn't make that up). With shame rising inside, I asked Danny, "Do you want me to go make the bed?" He said no, and I tried to go back to sleep, wondering if I should go make the bed anyway. A half-hour later, he asked me to go make the bed. I gladly obliged, and aplogized to him that I should've done it in the first place.

Danny got to witness the clutter firsthand, the first brave soul to venture in here in quite a while. It didn't help that I've become obsessive about recycling (good for me), but have been pathetically lax in hauling my recyclables to the deposit center. Two weeks ago, I finally collected what amounted to an entire carful of plastic bottles and containers (type 1 and 2), aluminum cans, steel cans, glass, and paper, and drove to the deposit center. I decided to count how many bottles I was heaving into the bin, and lost count somewhere in the 60s. It isn't good when you recognize a bottle of something you haven't purchased in over a year.

Removing the recyclables was a start, but not enough. I've embarked on a quest to the end the clutter. I'm tired of making friends uncomfortable when they come to visit, tired of my sisters not wanting to hang out and stay the night 'cause they're too grossed out. So, I've made it my primary goal of the two-week break I have to do some long overdue cleaning.

While moving bits of paper around tonight and finding even more recyclable paper (sigh), I ran across a booklet the law school had given out back in October of last year. I didn't read it at the time, but found it oddly prescient that it popped back into my life now. It's about surviving stresses in law school, and talks about the classic problem of over-achieving students facing the first serious competition in their lives, and being stressed out because they are no longer in the top of their class. There are money worries, and the problems of living up to other's expectations to contend with. The booklet, interestingly, attributed most of this to control issues and value systems. Law students, typically, wish to achieve things which are dependent on other people (like the "perfect job," good grades, etc.), but operate as though they can be achieved by working very hard; they become despondent when they can't work hard enough to control the outcome of a given situation. I've found myself in the same boat, of course. The booklet addresses the value system of our culture to want to get a high-paying job at a prestigious firm (a job where, the booklet suggested, you may be repeatedly called upon to compromise your ethics), instead of a lower-paying job that's merely "good." (But what about the student loans, I ask.) The booklet emphasized valuing things in life you can control, like doing your personal best, and placing satisfaction at living according to your code of ethics.

Heady thoughts. My summer semester ended at 10:13 PM Friday night, as the proctor called time on my four-hour Evidence final. Provided I passed *knock on wood* I will have 39 hours - out of the 88 I need to graduate - under my belt in less than a year. The final hour of my test was spent scratching my head over an esoteric policy question - did the common-law distinction between prior inconsistent statements offered to impeach, and prior inconsistent statements offered as substantive evidence, survive the passage of the federal rules of evidence in 1975. My first thought was, "What the hell is substantive evidence?" Something I should know by now (luckily, I guessed right. A post-exam trip to black's law dictionary defined it as evidence offered to prove a fact at issue). I tore into the rules of evidence, and tried to make a half-assed argument that it survived enactment of the federal rules of evidence.

I left the exam feeling numb. Law school has, strangely, been like high school. Instead of being one of tens of thousands of students shuffling in and out of a state university, I am one of just under 200 in my class, and the community is as gossipy and catty as in high school. I've greatly enjoyed that aspect of it.

When I don't do as well as I'd hoped on a test, or don't get asked to join the Tulsa Law Review as a write-on candidate, despite the fact that I'm going to be a TA to my writing teacher this fall, it makes me worry that I won't be a good lawyer, that I'll fail to serve my clients, that I've missed some elusive or illusory essence that it takes to succeed. Worse yet, after losing my scholarship, I worry that I'll be stuck with a mountain of debt that'll take a lifetime (or more) to pay off, limiting my options of where I want to go and who I want to be as a result.

I remember how old I felt when I turned 20 (my "golden birthday" as they call them). It was the start of my Junior year at OU. John Verbick and I both talked about how weird it was to no longer be teenagers. My man George - then 25 - had a knowing laugh at our conversation. I didn't understand what was so funny. A few years later, at 23, I panicked, thinking I'd "blown it" (whatever "it" is) and that I'd missed so many windows of opportunity to achieve the things I'd wanted by that age. (Wes Burrell and I often talked about how so many of our heroes got their start young). I got over it, though. Age seems meaningless to me now. And I know it can't hold me back. I don't want to be "young" again; don't wanna go back to high school.

I just wish I could get over this weird existential fog I'm in. 'Cause I've only told you the bad parts. I was asked to be a candidate at the International Law Journal, I'm going to be a teacher's aid, I've got a pretty good GPA (all things considered), and I'm in the top half of my class.

It all goes back to that weird thing of not being able to handle one iota of what I consider to be rejection. Many people were surprised that I went to law school (even though I'd considered it since I was an undergrad), since I held myself out as someone who wanted to make movies and music (still do, truth be told). But I decided not to go out on that limb just yet, afraid of anything less than a one-hundred percent glowingly positive review. I was hurt by people who didn't understand, or, worse, rejected, the pieces I wrote in college. So, as much as I enjoyed doing those things, they were also kinda...painful. And law, too, is like that. I enjoy it. I consider myself a mult-faceted individual who has talents in different areas.

So, now my chief interest lies in cultivating a mechanism to deal with this "rejection," to transcend it.

Please forgive this long post. But, if you can't indulge your narcissism on the Internet, then what the hell is a blog for?