Lifting My Head, Looking Around Inside

Congratulations to my fellow Houstonian, Mr. Kalum Tuggle, for correctly naming "Pancho and Lefty" by Townes Van Zandt as the Monday Song of the Day.

This will probably be my last regular post for the next two weeks until that joyous occasion known as the Texas Bar Exam finishes up on the 30th.

Over and out, and I'll see you on the other side.

Current Reading

Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich by Mark Kriegel

Living on the Road, My Friend, Is Gonna Keep You Free and Clean

I suppose you only learn these things once you are able to gain a certain amount of distance between yourself and your alma mater, but if there's one thing I can certainly say about Baylor Law in comparison to the University of Houston Law School, it is this: Even though Baylor Law felt like a prison at times during my three years there, it certainly did not look like a penal institution.

The U of H law library? Well, I'm sorry I can't say the same thing. I'm looking forward to working with a number of U of H law grads when I start in August, but among the things I won't be gathering from them are the finer points of educational architecture.

Current Reading

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

Sharp as a Knife, Facts Cut a Hole in Us

As I mentioned on Monday, my own personal putdown abilities have never really progressed past the level of competency demonstrated by Rufio and the Lost Boys, but last Saturday, July 4th, I was on the receiving end of one of the more interesting putdowns that I've heard in my time.

The lady friend and I were walking back into the apartment complex from the fireworks display downtown when I heard two male voices coming from a balcony on the second floor of the complex. I looked up, and one of the wise-guys, with adult beverage in hand, noticed the yellow polo shirt that I was wearing and admonished me that "yellow is a SPRING color, dude."

I turned to the lady friend and said,"I had no idea Tim Gunn lived in my apartment complex."

Um, not that I know anything about "Project Runway" or anything like that.

Let's just end this story right now.

There Was a Line, There Was a Formula

A quick hit tonight in honor of Michael Phelps, ladies and gentlemen.

I, along with noted U2 expert Andrew Tuegel, have joined the wild and woolly world of Twitter. Mr. Tuegel and I have formed a Twitter joint venture talking about "law, politics, pop culture, English soccer, baseball, and all things in between."

Follow us (or don't) at twitter.com/thepartylines.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled activities.

I'm Sick of All the Same Answers, Lost Chances, Cold Stones

Congratulations to Mr. Stephen Olson for correctly naming "U.S. Blues" by the Grateful Dead as the Tuesday Song of the Day.

I could have given you the performance of "U.S. Blues" from The Grateful Dead Movie, but I thought that with all of the Phish videos that I post here I've probably met my monthly quota for footage of stoned white people dancing.

Last month I wrote about how constant access to communications devices such as Blackberrys, iPhones, and other smart phones is threatening to turn us into a society that needs to be constantly entertained lest we lose interest and move on to the next thing that catches our eye, but another troubling consequence of our current age is the tendency to reduce someone's life, especially at the time of their death, to a soundbite, to a more manageable chunk.

I truly wish I could contribute to the shocking dearth of programming/content generation that has accompanied Michael Jackson's death, but due to this blog's commitment to its readers, I'm going in another direction.

Robert McNamara, the United States Secretary of Defense in both the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, died two days ago at the age of 93. If there's a reason why journalism and media still matter, it is this: When someone like McNamara, someone who for good or ill had an impact the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, dies, doesn't that person deserve to have their life examined in all of its complexities and not simply glossed over as a footnote in the wake of Michael Jackson's death?
Here's an op-ed from former UT/current Columbia law professor Phillip Bobbitt on the hidden qualities of McNamara.

Finally, here's the trailer to Errol Morris's superb documentary on "the life and times of Robert S. McNamara", The Fog of War.

If you're a fan at all of documentaries, this one's a treat.

Shine Your Shoes, Light Your Fuse

I just returned from a viewing of Public Enemies, and while I kept expecting to see this guy or this guy make an appearance as the aforementioned "public enemies", all we got for two hours and twenty minutes was a semi-mustachioed Johnny Depp and an intense, as always, Christian Bale.

I wanted the FBI to take down Carrot Top and Ronaldo, not Dillinger. Give me my money back, Michael Mann!!!

Alright, now that I got that out of the way, I should say that I enjoyed the movie, and if you like any of Mann's other work (including The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider, Ali, or Collateral), I think you'll appreciate Public Enemies.

Gimme Five, I'm Still Alive, Ain't No Luck, I Learned to Duck

The lady friend and I ventured down to Eleanor Tinsley Park in downtown Houston on Saturday night for some spectacular fireworks at the conclusion of the Freedom over Texas festival.

The fireworks were indeed spectacular, but I may have an actionable claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress against those who organized the soundtrack which accompanied the fireworks.

For the non-lawyer readers of the blog, the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress has four basic elements in most jurisdictions:

1. Defendant acted intentionally or recklessly;
2. Defendant’s conduct was extreme and outrageous;
   
3. Defendant’s act is the cause of the distress; and
4. Plaintiff suffers severe emotional distress as a result of defendant’s conduct.

Keep those elements in mind as I tell you that at one of the high points of the fireworks display the following song was re-introduced to my consciousness after I thought it had been banished all the way back in 2002.

Anyone know a good lawyer?

Wave That Flag, Wave it Wide and High

Despite the fact that the above scene graciously gave me enough putdowns and comebacks to last my entire childhood, I reference Hook for another reason this evening, my friends.

I always loved those montage scenes in the middle of movies where one of the characters is training for some great task, whether it be the Lost Boys re-training Peter for the greatwar with Captain Hook, Rocky running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art before his fight with Apollo Creed, or the punch-dancing scene in Hot Rod (which really didn't have a discernible purpose but was enjoyable nonetheless), and I fully intend to re-enact one of those montages in the next three weeks as the countdown to the July 2009 Texas Bar Exam has now begun in earnest.

Whose music is that I hear in the distance?

Ah yes.

It's you, Europe.

Take it away, my friends because this is the final countdown. This one's for you, G.O.B.

We Ride Tonight, Ghost Horses

On the list of things you don't want to read about an entity that holds a significant ownership stake in two of your favorite sports clubs, I think the following sentence ranks near the top:

"Club Officials Go Silent Over Chatter Major League Baseball Has Loaned Texas Rangers Money"

I'm Gonna Take Me That South-Bound All the Way to Georgia Now

Congratulations to Mr. John Middleton for correctly naming "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden as the Monday Song of the Day. I've never been a huge Soundgarden/Audioslave/Chris Cornell fan, but I suppose that the fact that I was forced to listen to an entire Audioslave album during a pledging "visit" in the Fall of 2003 reinforced some sort of reverence for Chris Cornell's vocal abilities deep in the recesses of my mind.

Usually when people talk about the fickle nature of praise from the public, they will throw around the cliche that we live in a world where people ask "what have you done for me lately?" It's true that the modern news cycle moves so quickly, and we lose interest so easily, that we need constant peak performance or otherwise we will move on to the next big thing, but as I was reading a story today regarding litigation between J.D. Salinger and a Swedish author named Fredrik Colting (which you can read here), I was dumbfounded by the following sentence:

Mr. Salinger, who has not published any new work since 1965...

Think about that for a second. J.D. Salinger was born on New Year's Day 1919. He writes Catcher in the Rye and has it published at age 32. That's 1951. He continues writing for the next 14 years and has a piece published in The New Yorker in 1965.

Since then?

Nothing.

It seems amazing to think that someone who has lived to be 90 years old, and wrote arguably one of the most well known works of fiction in the 20th century, would publish a piece at 46 years of age and then go the rest of his life without having another word published in any form whatsoever.