Friday jukebox: Joni Mitchell

One of the Pennsylvania bar exam questions involved a piece of land called Paradise that a couple had bought and then later wanted to sell to the Big Yellow Taxi Co., who wanted to pave it and put up a parking lot. So this is for the young'uns who thought it was just a bunch of goofy, made-up fact pattern names:

Resolved: 1984 was the best year for American movies, ever

EW lists a bunch of movies from 1984 and includes a lot of embedded video clips, but they left out the awesomest:



Joe Morton and Fisher Stevens in The Brother from Another Planet, John Sayles. I was going to link to the trailer, but the trailer is really, really bad. This scene, though, I can watch over and over again.

You wanna see a card trick? Really, it's a story.

Is the card trick guy really going to just tell a story? Isn't he going to hustle him for money at some point? When are we going to pull back and see the card trick guy's reinforcers move in for the hustle? You know something bad is going to happen from the camera work, too: the light is muted and cold, but most of the rest of the film doesn't look like that.

Not this time, sucker; I got a straight flush.

This is New York City in 1984, in the pre-Giuliani subway, and it's not going to end badly? Look at the alarm and relief on the Brother's face when the story ends (2:35). He wasn't sure, either.

I have another magic trick for ya. Wanna see me make all the white people disappear?

Day 2

And so, the morning after a relaxing evening with friends, day 2 of the Pennsylvania bar exam.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: The bar examiners assigned me to section "F" in the testing hall today. Also: Special happy hour evening with the Philadelphia Lawyers' chapter of the American Constitution Society.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

"Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches."

The summary of what the New York Times published in error in its obituary for Walter Cronkite. Includes smiling video by Katie Couric, urging journalists to make sure that, when they say "'that's the way it is,' it really is."

Seen in Cumberland County

I went on a hiking/driving tour of Cumberland County, New Jersey, a few weekends ago. Though the little communities aren't even 50 miles from Philadelphia, the area is staggeringly rural: a lot of dirt farms, a lot of which look as though they're keeping in business by converting to organic practices, and preserved open spaces. Makes me want to chuck the idea of being a Philadelphia lawyer, sell everything, buy a truck and a plot of land, and go raise alpacas. Except they'd get awful hot in this climate. And who knows how much of Cumberland County will be left when the sea levels rise in 100 years? (Not that I'll be around to care.)

Late in the afternoon we ended up at a family-style seafood restaurant off the Cohansey River. On blocks in the marina's parking lot was a gutted, rotting Futuro House. I'm thinking I'd never seen one actually in person. Though it was weird to see it just sitting there, among a bunch of boats for sale on a tributary of the Delaware River, I guess it's the nature of Futuro Houses that there's so few of them left any more that it's only ever in a really weird, unexpected context when they turn up.

At another marina we stopped at, the home port of one of the boats in for repair was indicated as Phoenix, Arizona. Global warming may wipe out Cumberland County, but I somehow I don't think it'll make a navigable waterway from Phoenix to the Sea of Cortez.

Bar exam home stretch

About a week and a half ago I came to the conclusion that, if I really thought in my heart that I didn't have a good shot at passing the bar exam, I would have quit studying by now.

This afternoon I'll be heading out to a friend's garden party. Take that to mean what you will.

Friday jukebox: Mudhoney

For the life of me, I couldn't find a video version of "A Thousand Forms of Mind," so you'll have to do with "Touch Me, I'm Sick":

I love the smell of cognitive dissonance in the morning

A law student acquaintance of mine has found himself working in the D.A.'s office of one of the suburban southeastern Pennsylvania counties. The student has a concealed carry permit and uses it to carry, concealed, a firearm with him a lot of the time, including to and from work.

Following courthouse rules, the student checked his firearm with the security desk before going up to work. Then a supervisor took him aside and told him that his gun was not welcome, even though he has a permit, and offered to provide him a police escort to his transportation, if his goal here was to protect his personal safety to and from the building.

Convinced that he'd somehow been hornswoggled into working for some liberal Democrat D.A., the student rushed home, turned on his Internet access, and looked it up -- only to be floored to learn that his boss is an elected Republican. He lives across town from me, but I think I could hear his brain exploding that afternoon.

This was several weeks ago. I'm not sure how he's dealt with his cognitive dissonance, but I hear he's stayed at that office so far.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: Sunday potlucking. You know you want to. Talk to me tonight. Because otherwise I'll only be gibbering bizarre mnemonics for the bar exam next Tuesday & Wednesday.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

Sunday Potlucking Liberally?

Hey, local Drinking Liberally folks (and other local friends),

As many of you know, I spent the 1990s as a hippie. I even lived in an almost-commune for a few years. Now, if I liked living in an almost-commune, I'd've stayed there, or I'd've settled in Powelton Village when I came back to the East Coast. But one thing I actually have truly missed from those years is getting together with like-minded people and friends on a regular basis for shared meals.

At the commune, it was called "common meals" and we shared them in a large, commonly owned, dedicated building. Cooking duties rotated through the households, and if you weren't slated to cook or clean up, you paid your cash dues, ate heartily, put your plate away, and went home. Three times per week.

I don't want to do anything like that. I'm thinking of just an ordinary potluck: everybody brings a dish to serve about 4 people; if you can bring a bottle or a sixpack as well, please do; and the host provides dishes, flatware, and cleanup (though guests are welcome to help out). Especially among the local Drinking Liberally crowd and their family, friends, and loved ones, would anyone be interested?

One problem, though, is that my home is small -- I've crammed myself, my daughter, and too much stuff into a 2-bedroom apartment. I can host a potluck only if people don't mind eating on the sofa or an Ikea lounge chair or a gnarly 1970 Herculon club chair salvaged from my parents' basement. So I hesitate to say, "Hey, guys! Let's have a potluck," when I have to add, "But we have to have it at somebody else's house!"

As for logistics, I guess we can rotate homes every week. On each Friday, I can post here to let everyone know -- without posting addresses -- where we'll be meeting the next Sunday, or we could take that part to private e-mail. As for what day of the week, I think Sunday evening would be good. That way, you can start something in your Crock-Pot that morning and it'll be done by the afternoon, or you can get something prepared from the supermarket when you do your grocery shopping that day anyway, or (at least in the summer) you can hit a farmer's market and put together something fresh and local.

Takers?

On housework and dates

It's been so long since I had a date, sometimes when I do housework it feels like I'm preparing for a gentleman caller.

Even the ACS figures I'm going to fail the bar exam

From the mailbox:

To: Glomarization
From: events@acslaw.org
Subject: ACS PHILADELPHIA ANNOUNCEMENT: Happy Hour, presented by the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Constitution Society

The Philadelphia Chapter of the American Constitution Society and the
Center City Chapter of Drinking Liberally present a:

Happy Hour

Tuesday, July 28, 2009
6:00 p.m.
Triumph Brewing Company
117 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA

(Emphasis mine.) Tuesday 28 July is day 1 of the Pennsylvania bar exam.

Actually, to tell the truth, I'm making it a game-day decision whether I go to Driberally that night.

Morgan Lewis cutting back on hires

Morgan Lewis is canceling fall 2009 OCI and its 2010 summer associates program. This year's summer associates are being deferred to 2011.

Good luck, law school classes of 2010, 2011, 2012 . . .

An atheist should teach her child the Word

Brendan posted the other day about having to endure a bad theatrical musical based on some stories in Genesis. His comments included the following observation:

Also frustrating was the implicit assumption on the part of the playwright that the audience is familiar with Genesis. One thing I’ve learned as a writer is that the only assumption you should ever make is that your audience doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Without exposition, the characters were nothing more than a flat allegorical device. You never get to learn Eve’s motive for eating the Fruit of Knowledge, you never really understand why Cain slew Abel or why God curses all of Cain’s offspring, and you never really get to learn why God is so intolerant of and threatened by these powerless creatures she made in Her own image and claims to love, that she feels she has to destroy them. Imagine the plot-free “Starlight Express”, but churchy. The playwright clearly assumed the audience had some level of biblical knowledge, which may be an easy assumption if you’re putting on a production in a church. But [not for everybody in the audience.]

This comment got me thinking. I've been an atheist since age 4, raised Catholic. That is, when I was 4, I was sitting in a pew with my parents and my sister and suddenly I thought, "Why doesn't Daddy go up to get communion with Mommy?" And, more relevantly to this post, "What if the Bible is just a bunch of stories that people made up?" And nobody since then has been able to convince me otherwise; but I had my first communion and did all the C.C.D. classes anyway. (But I was never confirmed -- when I got to the usual age for confirmation, my family relationship had deteriorated enough that nobody was making anybody go to church any more.) So the end result for me at this stage in my life is a better-than-lay knowledge of the Bible and Catholic doctrine, a profound suspicion of the Vatican's motives in anything it does, a very healthy spidey sense against anyone trying to lay a guilt trip on me, and a fetish for the odor of frankincense.

My daughter doesn't have any of that, and I'm not sure exactly how to give it all to her. Lest you argue that I've begged the question that these things are good for her to have, I assert that they really are (excepting the frankincense thing).

While I guess I hope she ends up less deeply cynical and knee-jerk suspicious than I am, I do want to give her both a working knowledge of the Bible -- its stories, themes, and frequently referenced concepts and phrases -- and a firm grasp of critical thinking skills. Rejecting guilt trips immediately out of hand will be a helpful skill, too, but let's just say I learned that one the hard way and she's not growing up in the same environment that I was.

One thing that came to mind yesterday as I was doing some bar exam studying is the idea of a "Good Samaritan" law -- either the "duty to rescue" that requires 3d-party observers to intervene when they know someone is getting hurt or a crime is going down (not in the U.S. but in civil law countries), or the law that shelters medical personnel, absent gross negligence or recklessness, from personal-injury lawsuits when they administer medical aid in emergencies. My thought was, what of the poor law student who doesn't know who the Good Samaritan was? Then I thought, I hope that person was in my torts class, so that I got a better grade than them due to the forced curve.

Law school aside, and back to parenting, I think I can train my daughter's critical thinking skills by grabbing all the "teachable moments" I can as I'm raising her. As for the Bible larnin' . . . well, it's so important in a cultural literacy way, but I'm really, really not interested in starting up Sunday homeschool. On the other hand, she'll be seriously handicapped in a lot of academic areas (and socially, too) if she can't recognize biblical references or have a conversation about Bible topics with people as an adult. I wonder how I can do that outside of sending her to Bible camp some summer. 'Cause I don't want to risk her being converted: I have a scary memory from an attempted 4th grade conversion at a friend's sleepover party. Maybe I'll just try to dig up some Christian teaching texts or something. Like a science textbook from Alabama, maybe (rimshot!).

On a whim, during my last term at law school I attended a lunchtime "Come Learn about Christianity!" meeting run by the law school's Christian students' group. The lesson was run by a female student whom I'll call Jane. When question 'n' answer time came, I asked, "So, I honestly mean no offense here, but Jane -- isn't there a problem with you leading this meeting and teaching us doctrine? You follow the Bible, right, and believe that the text is the revealed truth? But the text in Paul is really clear about this, isn't it? Women should be silent and not teach. That's in the text. How do you square the text" -- that's law school talk -- "with what you're doing here?"

Jane turned a little red and avoided answering the question. I kind of caught her out, anyway, because Paul there (1 Cor 14:34) was talking about women speaking in churches, not necessarily to small groups of law students who clearly need enlightenment, and smartasses who have learned a few atheist talking points. And calling any Christian out when it comes to what Paul says is kinda unfair on any level.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: Your usual host is unavailable, so tonight we're stuck with the backup host -- but we have a new bartender! Yay for new bartenders!

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

Busy

Not posting because I'm busy.

Also, I'll be busy all weekend. Day trip downashore one day and a family thing in the outer 'burbs another day. In order to fit all that in, I'm having to front-load my bar prep study assignments this week.

Will try to post more later, and hopefully not just "after the bar exam" later.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: Tonight we're giving our bartender a hearty send-off as he leaves for a brief vacation before starting (gulp) law school in late August -- and a hearty welcome to the new kid as well.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

Robert McNamara, 1916-2009

Good riddance to war-mongering, conscience-comes-late rubbish.

Happy Independence Day!

Off to the 'burbs for the day.

I don't know what to wear.

What would Thomas More do?

Were you curious to know exactly why the dean of Villanova Law abruptly resigned this week?

Police investigating a prostitution ring in Chester County relied on two customers, including the dean of Villanova Law School, to provide information that culminated last week in a no-contest plea by the man promoting the business, documents show.

Mark A. Sargent, who was appointed dean in 1987, resigned suddenly Monday, citing personal and medical reasons.

According to a report by the Pennsylvania State Police, Sargent was a customer at a Kennett Township house suspected as a site for prostitution when police raided it Nov. 25. He was not charged.

Classy! He's married, he's Catholic, and he's a co-founder of a blog on Catholic legal thinking. Here's what the police caught the married, Catholic, legal scholar doing:

Sargent paid [one of the defendants] $170 for 35 minutes of sexual contact between noon and 1 p.m. on Nov. 25, according to the police report. Sargent said he saw an ad on Craigslist, "got curious," and responded to it, the report said.

Yeah, right, "got curious." He'd heard of the Craigslist on the Internet, and he was curious to know if those news stories about the sex ads were really for true. And then he just happened to decide to drive 30-odd miles from Villanova to somewhere in darkest Chester County for lunch a couple of days before Thanksgiving.

In any event, however implausible his "how'd that happen" defense, he's not going to be prosecuted. Apparently, in most prostitution cases like this one in Pennsylvania,

[c]ustomers are not charged or identified in prostitution busts. [Rather,] authorities use them to build their case and they often testify if the case goes to trial.

And in fact, Sargent was treated with kid gloves when he was arrested:

"If you watch the taped interview, the police are almost apologetic with this guy," [alleged pimp Stephen] Clark said of Sargent. "They told him, 'You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,' and they agreed to contact him at his office, not his home."

And as for the woman whom Sargent paid for a half-hour of sex, she pleaded guilty and got 8 to 23 months.

From Villanova Law's mission statement:

Villanova is rooted in the Catholic tradition that emphasizes the unique value of individual human lives and our endowment with free will. It inspires us to provide a professional education emphasizing honesty, integrity, and responsibility. This aspect of the tradition is embodied in St. Thomas More, whose figure graces the main entrance in Garey Hall, and whose principled resistance to corruption has been an exemplar of integrity for centuries.

What does this mission statement mean to Sargent? Well, a few years ago, when asked to justify Villanova's not providing fellowship money to law students doing pro-choice legal work, he declared, "[Villanova Law's] Catholic identity is not casual, sentimental, or merely historical."

I never did get around to reading Utopia. Maybe I'll put it on my reading list for August.

If I had an iPod I would be listening to this constantly

There's nothing to the video at all; just listen:

If I took the bar exam today, I wouldn't pass it

To tell the truth, about the only thing carrying me through bar exam prep at the moment is my personal acquaintance with at least one deeply stupid, socially dysfunctional knucklehead who passed the Pennsylvania bar successfully on the first try (recently, after they made the exam harder than it used to be).

Further details about Knucklehead, Esq., omitted, though I'm almost certain they don't read this blog.

I'm happy that I still have a month before the bar exam. I wish I had more than a month, even though I've been keeping up with the assignment schedule -- and the housework, surprisingly.

But enough whining. Time to head off again to the bar prep salt mines. I really, really don't want to have to take this lousy exam twice.