Push Yourself Too Hard and It Might Get Hot

Please read the entire article here, but one part of the NY Times' article on student protests at various University of California campuses in response to a recent Board of Regents' vote passing a 32% tuition increase for next year is just too good to leave alone:

Indeed, many of the long-term demands are far beyond the reach of the Santa Cruz administrators, including the impeachment of Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California system; the elimination of the Regents’ positions, and an end to all student fees and student debts.

As someone who has recently passed through those joyous years that are American higher-education, I certainly empathize with students who are staring at a 32% tuition increase, but people, people, people, an end to all student fees and student debts? Let's get a hold of ourselves here, ladies and gentlemen.

Sure, it would be fantastic if we could all live in a world where college educations were dispensed like Werther's candy, but this is the real world, and unless the UC system has just made a colossal breakthrough on that whole "money tree" research they were doing out there at U.C. Santa Barbara, I think you're going to have to accumulate a bit of debt in exchange for a diploma.

Come to think of it, though, a lot of professors do wear cardigans like the grandpa in the Werther's commercials. Maybe there's something to that comparison, but I digress.

What Have You Told Us At All?

Unless you've been living under a rock or quietly humming the "Marseillaise" to yourself all day, you've surely heard of the newest reason to hate our Gallic friends, which is depicted below:

For those of you who have even worse vision than I do, that is a picture of French striker Thierry Henry blatantly palming the ball with his left-hand before passing to an on-rushing William Gallas, who placed the ball in the back of the Irish net to tie yesterday's World Cup qualifying match at 1.

Coupled with the fact that the French won 1-0 in Dublin in the first leg of the qualifier, Gallas's now-infamous goal sent the French to the World Cup and left the Irish to sit around and ponder what June 2010 will be like leading tourists on tours of Blarney Castle instead of taking on the world's best soccer playing nations in South Africa. I thought it would be more appropriate to give Irish players the job of leading tours at Blarney Castle rather than chasing down that pesky leprechaun from the Lucky Charms box, drinking themselves into oblivion, or surviving antoher potato famine, but I digress.

Because we all know that Henry's hand-ball was only possible due to the fact that the good men and women of the U.S. Military (with assistance from other nations) liberated France not once, but twice, in the 20th century, I feel that it is within my unwritten rights as a citizen of the United States of America to bring to light other instances where the French have unjustly been rewarded:

Today's Example--

• 1879: A Hungarian named Laszlo Goulash invents what the world now knows as "french fries." Of course, we only know them as "french fries" because a Frenchman named Phillippe Depardieu made a deal with Goulash whereby Goulash would agree to lend his name to Depardieu's new dish if Goulash would also agree to allow Depardieu to name the new potato creation after Depardieu's home nation. That Goulash guy got ripped off.

Please feel free to share any other instances that you are aware of where the French have taken something that is not rightly theirs.

In an Open Car or Wherever You Are

Congratulations to Mr. Kalum Tuggle for correctly naming "I'm Coming Home" by Robert Earl Keen as the Song of the Day for both Thursday and Friday.



I'm pretty upset that my Dad kept this secret from me for so long, but it's good to see that he's opened up a law office in Beaumont.

Current Reading

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

Ain't Nothin' Better Than Your Own Backyard

Current Reading

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Packed My Suitcase and I Racked My Brain

When I found out last Thursday that I passed the bar exam, I thought of Dr. Richard Kimble.
Well, that's not exactly true.

First, I thought, "Thank you, sweet Lord. Now I will not have to clean out my office with a great deal of shame for being the first person at this firm to fail the bar exam."

After that harrowing thought, though, my mind turned to a bearded Harrison Ford. There's a scene at the beginning of The Fugitive where Ford's character is being transported to the Illinois maximum security prison where he will be executed by lethal injection after being wrongly convicted of his wife's murder.

Some of Ford's fellow passengers decide that spending a few years in the slammer waiting for an injection is not exactly an appealing 5-year plan and attempt to escape. Seeing as though these folks already managed to fall into the clutches of the Illinois criminal justice system, they are not necessarily the sharpest pencils in the box and proceed to knock their bus into the path of an oncoming train. They really do put train tracks in the darndest places, but hey, movies are about the willing suspension of disbelief, right?

(Note: This really should have been a plot twist in Speed. Jan De Bont, if you want to start up production for Speed 3, call me.)

Since The Fugitive doesn't end after a mere 15 minutes, you obviously know that Harrison Ford will somehow escape from the menace of the onrushing train, but when he does escape you don't feel much relief for his character. Sure, he's managed to avoid being turned into a human penny on the railroad tracks, but he also stranded in the middle of the woods on a cold Illinois night, and oh, by the way, he has a first-degree murder conviction next to his name in the state records.

Not to be too much of a downer, but that's what passing the bar exam feels like. I've managed to avoid immediate death by passing the darn thing, but now I'm left out here in the wilderness trying to figure out how this whole "being a lawyer" thing actually works. Tommy Lee Jones hasn't shown up yet, but I'm sure he's off reminscing about his time at Harvard with Al Gore. He'll show up eventually.

Does that mean I'm not excited about the prospect of learning and developing as an attorney?

Certainly not.

If anything, it's a new adventure to start learning to do something that takes years and years to perfect, if perfection ever actually does happen.

I think that's why they call it "practicing" law.

We're Tiny White Specks on a Bright Blue Planet

Congratulations to Mr. John Middleton for correctly naming "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin as the Monday Song of the Day.

I'm back in Space City after a quick weekend trip to visit the lady friend in Nashville. We thoroughly enjoyed our time on Saturday night at a soggy Neyland Stadium along with 96,000 of our orange-clad friends.

My favorite part of the entire visit to Knoxville happened during the "Vol Walk."

What's the "Vol Walk" you might ask?

Head Coach Johnny Majors came up with the idea for the Vol Walk after a 1988 game at Auburn when he saw the historic Tiger Walk take place. Prior to each home game, the Vols will file out of Stokely Athletic Center, down past the Tennessee Volunteers Wall of Fame, and make their way down Peyton Manning Pass and onto Phillip Fulmer Way. Thousands of fans line the street to shake the players' hands as they walk into Neyland Stadium. Through rain, snow, sleet, or shine, the Vol faithful are always out in full force to root on the Vols as they prepare for battle. The fans are pumped up with Rocky Top played by The Pride of the Southland Band.

Thanks, Wikipedia!

Back to our story...as the Vol Walk was beginning, and the players and coaches were approaching the entrance to Neyland Stadium where our group was standing, the excitement grew as we clapped in time to "Rocky Top." Suddenly, I had the sense that a very large person was standing just behind me. For those of you who are thinking ahead, no, it was not Manute Bol. Instead, it was a very large man wearing bib overalls and a Tennessee orange jacket. As Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin walked by us, the aforementioned mountain of a man proceeded to yell "The LANE TRAIN" over and over again for a solid 2 minutes.

Was this guy the first person to recognize the rhyming properties of the words "Lane" and "train"? Almost certainly not.

Was this guy the only one who was fired up at the sight of his favorite team entering their coliseum to do battle against the foe from South Carolina? No again.

Did this guy contribute to my enjoyment of the "Vol Walk" and thus my enjoyment of the trip as a whole? UNDOUTEDLY.

Thanks, Overall-clad, Name-Rhyming Guy. You made our trip to Knoxville/Neyland Stadium a very memorable one.

Current Reading

The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy by Bill Simmons