Havel Heaven

One would think Havel Heaven would be in the Czech Republic, but, in fact, it's right here in NYC, at the Ohio Theater and Brick Theater, in SoHo and Williamsburg, respectively.

Even Kathleen Turner's doing a performance for the fest. I have no idea what it is or if it's good, but she's famous, ergo, it's awesome.

In some seriousness, I was at the opening of Largo Desolato last night, and it is wicked clever and every second has been invested with meaning. The play was written by Havel after an imprisonment and long bout of writer's block. When the dam burst, Largo came bursting forth. The translation is from Tom Stoppard, arguably the greatest living English-language playwright. Havel and Stoppard are a great match, and big ideas vie for control of the stage with patent absurdity.

I swear I would be this geeked about it even if I weren't part of the creative team. But I am and I am damned proud of this one. If you are in the area, you should come see it. If you are not in the area, well, I suppose you'll have to make do as best you can.

Largo Desolato at Untitled Theater Co. #61's Havel Festival.

Suck on that Noam.

Bottomlessness, endlessness.

The things that most frighten me are also things I badly want. No choice is ever the final choice.

Time Out

I have become that dreaded person who leaves his blog fallow for month-long stretches. It feels like it hasn't been too long since last I posted, but I'm sure it has.

Update: legal writing is a real ass-kicker. Take everything you've ever learned about writing and forget it. Pretend you're writing again for the first time. Accept the rigidity and simplification. 1-2-3, a-b-c. That's all. Too much byzantine thought and language flops onto the page when I write, so it's a real struggle. 'Salright; I 'm starting to get it right, and I think I'll end up ahead of the curve in the class. (Gotta keep that scholarship!)

Then there are the rest of my classes. Hard to believe that so much time has passed already. Similarly hard to believe there's still so much time left in this semester, year, school.

Football fans may be excited that they can watch football now. Yankee fans should likewise be excited about being able to watch football.

Being the natural athletes that we all are, my classmates and I have started a running football game every friday, after that maze of subject matter jurisdiction, the erie doctrine and permissive cross-claims that is called civil procedure. Thank God it's only 1 semester. The class, not the games. We're actually improving as players, managing to execute some plays successfully. In week 2 I had 2 TD catches and last week I had 1. Sweet. Still waiting on my first INT, but I'll try to report on it here ASAP. After the first two games, I was sore for days afterwards, but after game 3, I barely felt it the next day. So my muscles must be adjusting.

Rutgers football is undefeated, BTW, ranked 19th in the nation. WTF?

Oh, yeah, and I'm taking karate w/ the school's karate club. It just happens to fit my sked. Kyah!

smarter, but

this law school gig is making me smarter, fo sho, but it's also making me a whole lot more tense. and tired. i am consistently punchy. as in, i am very tired and not thinking as clearly as i would like, and i also want to punch things.

this post is a prime example: you can attribute my failure to capitalize any letters two ways. 1. holding down the shift key is just too much effort. 2. it is an act of passive aggression; i suspect most people get slightly annoyed when they read text that is completely capsless. or maybe that's just me. and that leads to a third possibility: that it is an act of sado masochism.

i would venture all three have some validity.

elder rage

Whence this anti-elderly aggression? Today, an elderly man pulls up beside me, zooming up behind the stopped car next to me, then jamming on his brakes. He powers down his window, and waits eagerly as I fiddle for the controls. I don't know what he's going to say, but I know I won't like it.

He tells me: "Turn on your lights. It's raining." He is a bit agitated. I roll my eyes and turn the lights on. He says: "It's the law!" I say "okay. Then, as he's rolling up his window, I blurt "Thanks, you old coot." His window is almost all the way up, and he waves me off, as if to say "No need to thank me. I'm just doing my job."

If he heard me, he pretended he didn't. At least part of me had hoped to provoke him further.

Good Fences Make What Again?

That defender of our nation's values, the House of Representatives, voted overwhelmingly today to construct a wall between the US and Mexico. They call it a fence. That should stop the terrorists from coming to America. I mean, that's how the 9/11 plotters got into the country, right? Maybe the "fence" will look something like the above. Maybe, in a hundred years, people will marvel at it, like other great and successful walls, like the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China.

Great God...

..Great Adventure is expensive. You can get discount tix online, and I got a kid in who was slightly over the max height allowed for a junior ticket, but it still ain't cheap. They jack you for ten dollars for parking (you can get premium parking for $20!), the food is expensive (though cheaper than at a ballgame), and every game costs a minimum of 3 dollars.

...Great Adventure is aggravating. The lines are brutal. For two of the crappiest coasters I rode yesterday, the lines were an hour and a half each. I spent most of the day waiting endlessly for thirty seconds that left me slightly queasy. (Then there is the food itself.)

...Great Adventure is trashy.

...Great Adventure is mercenary. They have a new speed-pass thing. You pay $50 for a little device, then $35 or so for every person who will use it. $85 for 2 people on top of the ticket price. The device allows its bearers to walk up to a ride, swipe their devices, and get a reservation time to return to the ride. This allows people to scoot right to the front, and wait for multiple rides at the same time. Meanwhile, the poor shmucks who have been waiting in line for two hours have to watch as their seats are usurped by saucy intruders. So us poor shmucks begin to think that maybe the $85 extra is worth it.

...that place is silly.

...El Toro, the new wooden roller coaster at GA is excellent. Hands down the best coaster I've ever been on. Terrifying, gut-wrenching, blindingly fast. You're delirious when you get off it. Your eyes shake, your legs tremble, and your adrenal gland is about ready to explode. There is nothing like a wooden coaster, and this coaster was like nothing I'd ever been on. Up to that point, I'd thought Nitro was the best I'd ever had, but El Toro made me a believer. Yes, it's a near-religious experience. The speed whipping around the corner just emptied my head, so that the only thing happening, in a sort of slow-motion, was Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Pluto? Never Heard of It.

Actually, I think I might have heard about an asteroid by that name. Or was it Kupier Object 1342 I was thinking of?

Either way, it can't be anything of consequence. What's the difference between one object which isn't able with its own gravitational force to be pulled into a hydrostatic equilibreum, and hasn't cleared the space around its orbit, and another?

It's all just space junk.

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/kb.html

Hazing

There's a mystique about law school. It's well known that a student's 1L is supposed to be one of the hardest years of his or her life. One would think that this would be a result solely of the rigor of legal thinking and the imposition of coming to grips with a vast body of law. And that aspect is present.

However, I also feel like I've joined a cult. There is a sort of collective brainwashing as to the majesty of the law and the sacredness of authority. In the case of a school, of course, the present authority is the faculty. They are held out as demi-gods to the bewildered student. Law schools reinforce the feeling that, despite any backgroung in logic, reasoning, or even the law, one is in a strange and mystical world, by using the Socratic method. This method amounts to not telling students what they need to know, but instead forcing them to figure it out for themselves. So there is a double adjustment: immersion in a new subject matter, and the need to figure out exactly what one is supposed to be learning.

It's an incredibly inneficient way of teaching, but it's a great way to preserve the priesthood of lawyers. There is a ritualistic aspect to it. A hazing and a following of form for form's sake, in the somewhat blind belief that this form will instill in students the ability to "think like a lawyer."

There is little hope that law school pedagogy will ever return to earth. For one, once students pass through the fire, there is an enjoyment in seeing others pass through it. Two, students who are intitiate in the mysterious ways of the law would naturally be loathe to demystify it. It increases their prestige to be part of the priesthood.

There is much more to say on the subject and many have said similar and better things before me, so let me leave off with an example:

There is a student in my section who got called on the first day of classes. When you're on call, the prof sticks with you the whole class, needling you for more information, demanding specific answers If you don't know the answer, you are expected to figure it out on the spot. Well, for the next several days every professor called on this same student: put him on call and stayed with him. The laughs of fellow students grew louder each time, and each time, the profs have protested coincidence. In 4 classses of 90 people it is not coincidence that he has been singled out. It is undoubtedly planned. The reasons for it seem twofold: 1. I am sure the professors get a kick out of it. 2. It puts all students on warning. Never relax. You can be on call at any monent. The lesson of preparedness and attentiveness is important, no doubt, but it could be imparted with less deception.

It sounds like I'm having an awful time, but I actually love the subjects and and most of my profs are great. There are just these entrenched stupidities of the process that plead to be commented on.

Let me add, I am very tired.

Day One

Okay, so it was really just orientation BS. Speeches. A prayer! A panel discussion on ethics. The most interesting info I got was that one of our panel participants, a justice on the NY State Supreme Court, started her career as an opera singer.

Day 2, tomorrow, is when the work actually starts.

I'll also finally get back to the gym. Whew.

Puerto Rico was awesome. New Hampshire was also awesome, despite my contracting both a sunburn and scaley rash there.

More TK, I hope. If this blog falls fallow for the next year, forgive me.