okay, so this is why I gave up on "Mad Men" two episodes into the second season:

1) It seems to focus more on "lifestyle study" than it does on plotting. Nothing terribly significant ever happens plot-wise. The characters are all in more or less the same place at the end of season one as they were at the beginning; have they really evolved at all? Don is still mysterious, cranky, and adulterous. Pete Campbell is still frustrated and adulterous. Roger Sterling is still snarky and adulterous. Joan Holloway is still catty and adulterous. The only really significant character development comes when Harry moves from being happily married to being regretfully adulterous.

I'm not saying I want "Boston Public"-style grotesque plot whammies in every episode. It'd just be nice if SOMETHING happened. And character study is only interesting if the characters evolve.

2) Just a liiiiittle too much self-congratulatory backpattery about all the stupid things people did in the 1960s, and aren't we smart for not doing them today. When we had the scene where the smoking pregnant woman yells at her kid with the plastic bag over her head that the clothes from that bag better not be on the floor, in the same episode that the other mother drives her young children around not in a car seat, and oh by the way smoking being unhealthy, what a joke amirite... at a certain point, I get it. They did silly things in the 1960s.

3) I don't really care what happens to any of these people, because they're pretty much all cocks. Hard to get emotionally invested in that.

"The West Wing" is still the only drama I've ever gotten into.

Congratulations! You have been selected for a follow-up appointment at an upcoming Jeopardy! contestant search for the Kansas City area, exclusively for those who successfully passed the online test. This is the next step in becoming a Jeopardy! contestant. We have reserved the following appointment for you:

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Due to overwhelming demand we can only hold your spot for two business days. If you respond after that period of time, and if we still have space, we will be happy to provide you with an appointment.

Your appointment is non-transferable, and only those who receive this invitation directly from Jeopardy! may RSVP to book an appointment. Each RSVP will be matched against an invite list and forwarded invitations will not be honored.

The auditions will last about 2 – 2 1/2 hours.

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Am I going to do as well on the written exam or a practice round as some chump factory who sits alone at home reading Proust every night? No, probably not. But with any luck, at least some of the decision will come down to likeability, and, well, no, I don't have any of that either.

Well, dang.

Well, that was a total catastrophe. I would dub Butler's poor performance "Rex Grossman-esque" if only to permit me to use the "Rex Grossman" and "liberal use of the 'Rex Grossman' tag" tags.

In other news, I got an interesting email today. Someone representing a group of environmental lawyers in Texas sent me an email that basically said, "hey, we heard you did really well in Environmental Law last semester, so we're going to give you a thousand dollars!" Yes, this actually happened. Not quite so eloquently as I just put it, but yeah. Pretty nice of them, I guess!

"Someone wants to give you a thousand dollars for getting an A in a class."
"FINALLY"

It makes me really sad when people I really like are mean about other people I really like.

I suppose I don't have anything to add, I guess, other than to confirm that I am currently sad for a not entirely unrelated reason.

I don't know if anyone still uses LJ, but if you do and you're an undergraduate, I have an excellent time-saving tip for you. If you take a psychology class as an undergraduate, you may find that one of the class requirements is to "volunteer" for one or more psychology experiments being conducted by the graduate students in that discipline.

Here's the tip: whatever they say they're testing is never what they're actually testing. Therefore, regardless of what they tell you the test is about, after five minutes you should just say "fuck you!", stand up, and walk out. That is probably what they were actually testing.

This past weekend Assault & Flattery put on my third and final incarnation of the law school musical. This year's theme was "Motion's Eleven" - directed by me, and written almost entirely by myself and my good friend Lauren. It was immensely gratifying to see the show come together after so much work; months and months of scriptwriting, months of administrative junk, months of occasional drama, months of recruiting/casting/rehearsing.

After our last cast party after the final performance on Sunday, I sent an only-slightly-drunk but entirely-self-indulgent email to the cast to let them all know how much I loved and appreciated them and their hard work, and implicitly stating that I would be very sad if any current 1L or 2L fails to continue on with the organization. It's a tall order, particularly since it's a tough job market and devoting a ton of time to the law school musical is arguably pretty superfluous to the law school experience. But it was the single best thing I did in law school and I did my best to get that across.

This past week, though, has been a little bit jarring. It's pretty dramatic to go from spending eight-ten hours a day by default with a group of awesome people to suddenly barely seeing them at all. I'm a total nerd, I suspect, in that I'm probably the only person associated with A&F this year who was like "so! the show's over. You guys want to hang out tonight again anyway?" But of course everybody pretty much needs a break from, well, me. I'll probably also be the nerd sending out Facebook invites to a "we miss A&F!" party after spring break is over. But nerding it up is hardly an unfamiliar role for me.

You just build up pretty good bonds with people when you're doing something as simultaneously enjoyable/stressful as putting on a show - and it's just sad that right as we're enjoying it the most we have to be like "okay, time to hang out with the other friends I've been neglecting!" Which is fair, because I really missed my non-A&F friends (not to mention my lovely wife) when I was spending all my spare time at rehearsals. I just like my A&F friends a whole lot and it is easy to fall into a place where it's like "ugh I just spent like SIX WEEKS hanging out with you ALL THE TIME, maybe let's take a break" and then all of a sudden you don't see A&F friends for like eight months. Hopefully it won't be weird to call people up after spring break and be like, "so, uh, wanna be best friends still?"

I don't know what I would have done in law school without getting a chance to do this stuff!

ten years ago today, made my first post on the internets. it was complaining about how people in high school perceived me as much smarter than i actually was/am.

not much has changed, people! (other than people don't think i'm that smart anymore.)

Apple iTunes analyzes my music library every week or so to create what it calls “Genius Mixes” – basically it classifies my music into genres and creates playlists of ‘em. I have decided to rank mine from worst to best (based solely on iTunes’s explanation for who the stations are based on) because I have other work to do that’s more important than this.

#12 – Pop Mix – “Kelly Clarkson, Pink, the Divinyls, and others.” This actually has a lot of not-terrible music (Kelly Clarkson, hello, people) but frankly I just don’t need someone making a radio station for me sitting down at a meeting and being all “Okay, let’s start off with ‘I Touch Myself’ and just build the station up from there.” Recipe for disaster. Sexy disaster, but disaster.

#11 – Singer/Songwriter Mix – “The Grass Roots, KT Tunstall, David Gray, and others.” Apparently being a singer/songwriter basically means that your music is going to be the harmless background music for Wheat Thins purchasers everywhere. I just pushed the button and the first song was a Billy Joel tune. So yeah.

#10 – Dance Pop Mix – “Len, Lady GaGa, Tatu, and others.” On reflection, I don’t know how this didn’t come in 12th, but frankly deleting everything I’ve written so far just sounds like a big ol’ hassle. This station popped up after I got a bunch of Robyn’s music, which basically completely rules, but for some reason iTunes thinks Tatu is the big reason why I want a dancin’ station. Also I just tried it again and it’s playing “The Wind, the Rain, and Other Things”. That is not a dancing song, iTunes. For shame.

#9 – Doo Wop Mix – “Buddy Holly, Bobby Darin, the Del-Vikings, and others.” Didn’t see that one coming, did you, fucker? Well, that’s right. I love my 1950s magic changes as much as the next 70-something dude does, and you’re not going to take them away from me.

#8 – Alternative/Pop-Rock Mix - “Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, Smashing Pumpkins, and others.” Basically the playlist of Q101 in Chicago (i.e., radio-friendly/corporate rock that doesn’t sound COMPLETELY ridiculous when you play it really loud and thus qualifies as rebellion), if that station even still exists anymore, which it probably doesn’t, which frankly is fine.

#7 – Classic Rock Mix – “Aerosmith, Dire Straits, the Rolling Stones, and others.” Meh. These bands are fine (except Aerosmith), but it’s not like we haven’t all heard “Satisfaction” eleven hundred times already. This is why the Super Bowl halftime show is always so boring, at least when the Black Eyed Peas aren’t taking a massive dump on our collective dignity.

#6 – New Wave Mix – “Talking Heads, Fine Young Cannibals, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, and others.” I wouldn’t rank this even this high if I didn’t like the Talking Heads so much. I don’t know why it doesn’t say this station is based on the Cars, that’s basically half of what the station plays. Basically what I am saying is that I will defend this station to the death even though 2 of the 3 bands are just awful one-hit wonders?

#5 - Adult Alternative Pop Mix – “Scouting for Girls, Badly Drawn Boy, Barenaked Ladies, and others”. I don’t really know what “Adult Alternative Pop” is, but I suppose if I had to name three bands that would fit the category, this’d be it. Old people like them? Sure. Poppy without being exclusively about banging every dude or lady in dude- or lady-dom? Yep. Sounds about right.

#4 – Hip-hop Mix – “Kanye West, the Knux, Jay-Z, and others.” I will freely admit that this is actually probably the station I am least likely to listen to (I have to be in a pretty specific mood to want to listen to hip-hop. I don’t know what that mood is, but since it often involves shouting the word “SHOTS” fifteen times in a row, let’s just say I’m not in that mood at 10:41 on Sunday night.) But those three artists are all pretty awesome, so I’m going to give iTunes some credit here.

#3 – Indie Rock & Lo-Fi Mix – “Spoon, Band of Horses, Modest Mouse, and others.” Sheesh. Way to embarrass me in front of LiveJournal, iTunes. (Also, I hate the way I just capitalized those two trademarks in precisely the way that their owners would want me to do it.) Anyway, I don’t think any three “indie” artists could more clearly say “this person basically has only a cursory interest in indie rock” but you know what? UP YOURS, EVERYONE. That’s what.

#2 – Classic R&B Mix – “Sam Cooke, Jackson 5, Otis Redding, and others.” This station used to have a counterpart “British Invasion Mix” which was based on like Herman’s Hermits and friends, and basically it was funny to have a sort of “White Oldies Mix” and “African-American Oldies Mix” options to choose from depending on which set of older relatives came over. Anyway, iTunes in its infinite wisdom decided that I didn’t need the British Invasion Mix anymore and I mean WHATEVER I guess I will just have to listen to Herman’s Hermits on my own time and not at Apple-proscribed moments. Well, the winner of the oldies derby then is this station, which is fair, because it rules. I will start it right now and I guarantee that whatever it plays will be awesome: Sam Cooke, “Wonderful World”. Rocktastic.

#1 – Power Pop Mix – “Fountains of Wayne, the New Pornographers, Brendan Benson, and others.” This station is so hellasweet that I can’t stop speaking in broneologisms right now. (A broneologism, of course, being a neologism used by bros.) Almost this entire entry was inspired by the fact that I somehow only JUST discovered the New Pornographers this weekend and they are already a top-10 band of mine. They are that great and everyone who disagrees has badwrong opinions.

Anyway, genius mixes: “MIXED” results? Eh? Eh?

Just for the record, it's still a few weeks away, but February 2001 is when I started writing in this dang ol' journal. Well over a third of my life is (intermittently, especially in recent years) recorded online. I've been searching old entries to consider the ways in which I've grown from my 17-year-old self... and if I find any, well, you'll be the first to hear about it.

Why should I, as the average man-about-town, ever use the Celsius scale? The only even semi-logical reason I've heard for why Celsius is supposedly "better" is that 0 and 100 are more logical spots for the freezing and boiling point of water than are 32 and 212. But who gives a damn what the freezing and boiling points of water are? How does that even remotely matter to the average person? The world would be a more sensible place if 0 and 100 marked about the lowest and the highest temperature that a person can typically expect to encounter in day-to-day life: what do you know, we have a place like that, and it is called Fahrenheit Towne.