I know where mine is - it's out with the rich guys swimming around their yachts in Lake Michigan, not 100 yards from where I sit in front of a multiple choice practice section I've managed to bomb, despite feeling a little more confident due to some good scores yesterday. Have I peaked? Have I used up my brain's allocation of concentration for the month?
Time to chill on the hyperbole for a minute. I've been writing about multiple choice questions and essays a lot lately. Lemmie break the bar down for you underclassmen and non-law school types:
Multistate Performance Test (10%): This is a "closed universe" in which everything you need to know is presented to you and all that remains to be done is a cursory analysis in whatever form they ask you for (memo, client letter, brief, whatever). K thinks this part is a gimmie, and she's probably right.
New York Essays (40%): It turns out that New York is a little like Texas in that it occasionally sees itself as another country. We don't have a law against arson, the right to wear socks is enshrined in the state constitution and it's not considered hearsay if it came from Page Six.
I exaggerate. But it's not the best thing for one's sanity to memorize rules for nearly every corner of the law, then toss them out the next day for a new set of rules that is in many ways completely different. An example: on the portions of the exam that everyone in the country takes, assault and battery are separate crimes. In New York, what we call "assault" is "battery" everywhere else and your "assault" is our "attempted assault." Get it? Also, embezzlement is larceny and there are eight degrees of everything.
But the worst thing is that the sample essay answers give the impression that it's hit or miss as to what issues they actually want you to identify and answer. There are a thousand things that can go wrong with a contract, a will or a search and seizure, but you're somehow supposed to find the three that they actually want, based on nothing but a vague fact pattern. Oh, the time I've wasted explaining why a court has personal jurisdiction when all they want to know is if the divorce decree is valid. Oy.
Multistate Bar Exam (40%): These are the dreaded multiple choice questions. You're really only supposed to get about 60% of these right, and the harder question sets have stated targets in the mid-40s. People who just finished law school aren't used to being happy getting 60% on anything. The MBE is the main reason nearly all of America's best and brightest legal minds are convinced that they're going to fail.
Plus, there is nothing worse than grading some practice questions and finding that the answer you picked is "correct, but choice (B) is more correct." Go to hell.
New York Multiple Choice (10%): All I'll say about these is that I'm glad they only count for 1/10th of my score, because I'm taking more of a dive on these than the Mets in September. Ba-dum-bum.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
In which I out myself as an old man
Richard Cohen on tattoos:
From an aesthetic perspective, I think tattoos are ugly - like scars or giant birthmarks. That's a personal judgment about which reasonable people will differ. What really confuses me is people who have tattoos they can't cover up. If the ink spills down to your wrist or splashes across your neck, there isn't much chance you can look like a person worthy of a jumbo mortgage or a security clearance. That's all well and good if you want to be a barista or a musician, but wouldn't a sensible person at the very least reserve the right to go into a more lucrative line of work? I suppose it's one way to prevent yourself from selling out.
Perhaps a time will come where having the title of a Black Flag song scrawled across your right hand doesn't make people wonder if your heart is really in investment banking. That day hasn't arrived.
[t]he tattoos of today are not minor affairs or miniatures placed on the body where only an intimate or an internist would see them. Today's are gargantuan, inevitably tacky, gauche and ugly. They bear little relationship to the skin that they're on. They don't represent an indelible experience or membership in some sort of group but an assertion that today's whim will be tomorrow's joy. After all, a tattoo cannot be easily removed. It takes a laser -- and some cash.
From an aesthetic perspective, I think tattoos are ugly - like scars or giant birthmarks. That's a personal judgment about which reasonable people will differ. What really confuses me is people who have tattoos they can't cover up. If the ink spills down to your wrist or splashes across your neck, there isn't much chance you can look like a person worthy of a jumbo mortgage or a security clearance. That's all well and good if you want to be a barista or a musician, but wouldn't a sensible person at the very least reserve the right to go into a more lucrative line of work? I suppose it's one way to prevent yourself from selling out.
Perhaps a time will come where having the title of a Black Flag song scrawled across your right hand doesn't make people wonder if your heart is really in investment banking. That day hasn't arrived.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Diary of a Madman
Like the Gogol story of the same name, my days start out reasonably enough before the descent into incoherence. Early mornings fill me with the simple pride of a person who Does What Needs to be Done. I get up at around 7 to shower and shave and. Shaving while studying for the bar isn't strictly necessary, but it make me feel like a worker. While MSNBC yammers pleasantly in the background like so much white noise, I make coffee (patting myeslf on the back for saving $2 each time) and instant oatmeal. Drinking my coffee in front of the computer, I check the weather and read the Times.
Having never really feared selling out, this routine is very comforting compared with the horrible mornings that follow particularly "interesting" nights. In a way, it's a decent trade-off: lose the bars, the repetitive music they play and the trash that inhabit them and gain Erin Burnett's adorable slight Long Island lilt* on Morning Joe. Life is good. Self-esteem is high. The bus always pulls into the stop just as I too arrive.
I get to the school library five minutes after it opens and find half of the floor filled with LLMs. Note to LLMs: just because we can't understand what you're saying doesn't mean we can't hear you. Be quieter.
One question set: done. Two question sets: done. One essay: done. One re-read of a section of my notes: done. Friends filter in and I get the kick of beating them to the library, even if I'll inevitably leave before.
Lunch rolls around. Nothing too heavy, but still, now is not the time to deny myself one of the few pleasures still available to me. An unacknowledged fact: just because you eat at your desk doesn't mean that you'll be doing anything productive while you're eating. Go eat outside and soak up some Vitamin D and UV rays.
All of a sudden, it's 2 p.m. and I've been screwing around for an hour and a half. Back to work. One essay. Two essays. One problem set. Some more review.
Inevitably, there comes some discrete task you've set out for yourself where you realize that your skull is nothing more than an upside-down bowl full of cottage cheese. Yesterday, I read a multiple choice question and the only thing that came to mind was "jeez, this question is a lot of lines long." Not exaggerating, I couldn't even count the number of lines, let alone read it.
Sometimes, the wall arrives during an essay. Read the prompt, think about the subject, then plot out the answer. Can lawyers be beneficiaries in a will they wrote? Well, lawyers are people, and people can be beneficiaries in a will. But aren't they interested? If I was getting money from a will, I'd be interested. Answering an essay question once you've hit a wall is like asking for legal advice from your snarky stoner friend.
My clean-living days, after such promising starts, go in reverse. All throughout college and law school, the Sunday hangover required immediate ameliorative attention (read: eggs and coffee) but my brain never really got into gear until after sunset. I'd start out moving around like an arthritic patient and unable to form sentences but end working furiously in anticipation for Monday. Now, I start out with vim and vigor and end in a bar-imposed haze. Seems to me like Erin Burnett and the time to do an extra problem set or two isn't worth it.
Around 6, it's time to head home. I stagger down the street, watching the purposeful commuters in soft-focus as I zig-zag in the general direction of my apartment.
Once home, the malaise really starts. Like the terminal patient who longs for death, I count the hours until it's time for bed - if I conk out at 7, it'll most likely be a nap, so I need to hold out at least until 10. TV is all reruns, my roommates are nowhere to be found. Dinner comes from a frozen box (I don't have the motivation to go to the supermarket). Sans sex, television, booze, energy or company, what's left to do for those three or so hours?
Reruns, mostly.
As uplifted as I was in the morning, the evening sees me sinking to a hazy, lazy low. And what are we going to do tomorrow? The same thing we do every day, Pinky. Study for the bar.
* UPDATE: Erin Burnett is apparently from Maryland's Eastern Shore. Whoa.
Having never really feared selling out, this routine is very comforting compared with the horrible mornings that follow particularly "interesting" nights. In a way, it's a decent trade-off: lose the bars, the repetitive music they play and the trash that inhabit them and gain Erin Burnett's adorable slight Long Island lilt* on Morning Joe. Life is good. Self-esteem is high. The bus always pulls into the stop just as I too arrive.
I get to the school library five minutes after it opens and find half of the floor filled with LLMs. Note to LLMs: just because we can't understand what you're saying doesn't mean we can't hear you. Be quieter.
One question set: done. Two question sets: done. One essay: done. One re-read of a section of my notes: done. Friends filter in and I get the kick of beating them to the library, even if I'll inevitably leave before.
Lunch rolls around. Nothing too heavy, but still, now is not the time to deny myself one of the few pleasures still available to me. An unacknowledged fact: just because you eat at your desk doesn't mean that you'll be doing anything productive while you're eating. Go eat outside and soak up some Vitamin D and UV rays.
All of a sudden, it's 2 p.m. and I've been screwing around for an hour and a half. Back to work. One essay. Two essays. One problem set. Some more review.
Inevitably, there comes some discrete task you've set out for yourself where you realize that your skull is nothing more than an upside-down bowl full of cottage cheese. Yesterday, I read a multiple choice question and the only thing that came to mind was "jeez, this question is a lot of lines long." Not exaggerating, I couldn't even count the number of lines, let alone read it.
Sometimes, the wall arrives during an essay. Read the prompt, think about the subject, then plot out the answer. Can lawyers be beneficiaries in a will they wrote? Well, lawyers are people, and people can be beneficiaries in a will. But aren't they interested? If I was getting money from a will, I'd be interested. Answering an essay question once you've hit a wall is like asking for legal advice from your snarky stoner friend.
My clean-living days, after such promising starts, go in reverse. All throughout college and law school, the Sunday hangover required immediate ameliorative attention (read: eggs and coffee) but my brain never really got into gear until after sunset. I'd start out moving around like an arthritic patient and unable to form sentences but end working furiously in anticipation for Monday. Now, I start out with vim and vigor and end in a bar-imposed haze. Seems to me like Erin Burnett and the time to do an extra problem set or two isn't worth it.
Around 6, it's time to head home. I stagger down the street, watching the purposeful commuters in soft-focus as I zig-zag in the general direction of my apartment.
Once home, the malaise really starts. Like the terminal patient who longs for death, I count the hours until it's time for bed - if I conk out at 7, it'll most likely be a nap, so I need to hold out at least until 10. TV is all reruns, my roommates are nowhere to be found. Dinner comes from a frozen box (I don't have the motivation to go to the supermarket). Sans sex, television, booze, energy or company, what's left to do for those three or so hours?
Reruns, mostly.
As uplifted as I was in the morning, the evening sees me sinking to a hazy, lazy low. And what are we going to do tomorrow? The same thing we do every day, Pinky. Study for the bar.
* UPDATE: Erin Burnett is apparently from Maryland's Eastern Shore. Whoa.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
The Wackness
A case can be made that 1994 and New York was one of those magic time and place combinations that will go down with New York in 1977 or San Francisco in 1967.
It was the golden age of hip-hop. Two months prior, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), A Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders dropped on the same day and Nas' Illmatic came out in the spring. That fall, Notorious B.I.G. released Ready to Die. Illmatic, Ready to Die and Enter the Wu-Tang are pretty much the only three hip-hop albums everyone needs to own (there's s strong case for ATCQ's Low-end Theory as #4). Since then, very few hip-hop singles have reached the charts that don't convey the messages that (i) I have a lot of sex; (ii) I own a lot of expensive things; or (iii) I have a propensity toward violence without a hint of nuance or irony.
It was Rudy Giuliani's first year as mayor and a city weary from years of decay seemed happy to see the squeegee men rounded up. The Rangers won the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1940. The Knicks got to the NBA finals since 1973, only to be preempted by the O.J. chase. Revs and Cost posted up their inscrutable stickers on the back of every Walk/Don't Walk sign. The premier of Friends was supposed to mark the re-emergence of New York as a place twentysomethings would want to live.
CBGBs, Studio 54 and the Son of Sam it wasn't. But still, there was something afoot, even if Biggie was replaced by Puffy and "quality of life" morphed into "let's make New York look like all those other towns people fled to live here." After a strong start, the promise faltered like the Knicks' defense.
I was in Middle School at the time and like anyone else of that age, I was peripherally aware of what was going on all around me. O.J., hip-hop, Giuliani - the names were familiar but the consequences weren't. More than anything else, remember that June was a scorcher - that unique blend of hot, humid and grimy that makes you want to take a shower after you leave your air-conditioned room during halftime to dash to the boiling kitchen for a glass of orange juice. The kind of hot that makes that shower seem futile the second you get out.
In 1994, a few of my friends had older brothers who towered above us, smelled like something earthy and smoky and always had headphones around their necks. They listened to WFMU and complained about how Washington Square Park was becoming a "police state," whatever that meant.
Those guys probably knew a real-life equivalent of Luke Shapiro, the aimless Upper East Side pot dealer in The Wackness. In a way, it's a period piece for 1994 like The Wedding Singer was to the mid-80s: the soundtrack is carefully constructed, period slang is sprinkled in everywhere (remember when you could say "dope" unironically?) and every major current-events item gets a reference. But it isn't just VH1-style premature nostalgia.
Like the vastly underrated Summer of Sam, The Wackness uses the larger context to clarify its characters' motivations. Shapiro (Josh Peck) finds himself fresh out of high school, with all the promise it entails. It's summer, the music is good, business is booming and he has a love interest (Olivia Thirlby as Stephanie). Yet there's something lacking: a point. Luke wants to get laid, save his family and figure out why he's seemingly the only friendless drug dealer in the world.
To that end, he engages a shrink (Ben Kingsley) who represents a dying era of stubbornness, wanton drug use and endearing abrasiveness. Both have an inkling that their dreams are simultaneously doomed and as yet unformed.
If 1994 fails to go down in history as a turning-point year, it will be because the cultural ferment was aimless and the political trends were, in retrospect, inevitable. Just like the plot arc of this smart little film.
Nas said it best way back then:
A hassle indeed.
It was the golden age of hip-hop. Two months prior, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), A Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders dropped on the same day and Nas' Illmatic came out in the spring. That fall, Notorious B.I.G. released Ready to Die. Illmatic, Ready to Die and Enter the Wu-Tang are pretty much the only three hip-hop albums everyone needs to own (there's s strong case for ATCQ's Low-end Theory as #4). Since then, very few hip-hop singles have reached the charts that don't convey the messages that (i) I have a lot of sex; (ii) I own a lot of expensive things; or (iii) I have a propensity toward violence without a hint of nuance or irony.
It was Rudy Giuliani's first year as mayor and a city weary from years of decay seemed happy to see the squeegee men rounded up. The Rangers won the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1940. The Knicks got to the NBA finals since 1973, only to be preempted by the O.J. chase. Revs and Cost posted up their inscrutable stickers on the back of every Walk/Don't Walk sign. The premier of Friends was supposed to mark the re-emergence of New York as a place twentysomethings would want to live.
CBGBs, Studio 54 and the Son of Sam it wasn't. But still, there was something afoot, even if Biggie was replaced by Puffy and "quality of life" morphed into "let's make New York look like all those other towns people fled to live here." After a strong start, the promise faltered like the Knicks' defense.
I was in Middle School at the time and like anyone else of that age, I was peripherally aware of what was going on all around me. O.J., hip-hop, Giuliani - the names were familiar but the consequences weren't. More than anything else, remember that June was a scorcher - that unique blend of hot, humid and grimy that makes you want to take a shower after you leave your air-conditioned room during halftime to dash to the boiling kitchen for a glass of orange juice. The kind of hot that makes that shower seem futile the second you get out.
In 1994, a few of my friends had older brothers who towered above us, smelled like something earthy and smoky and always had headphones around their necks. They listened to WFMU and complained about how Washington Square Park was becoming a "police state," whatever that meant.
Those guys probably knew a real-life equivalent of Luke Shapiro, the aimless Upper East Side pot dealer in The Wackness. In a way, it's a period piece for 1994 like The Wedding Singer was to the mid-80s: the soundtrack is carefully constructed, period slang is sprinkled in everywhere (remember when you could say "dope" unironically?) and every major current-events item gets a reference. But it isn't just VH1-style premature nostalgia.
Like the vastly underrated Summer of Sam, The Wackness uses the larger context to clarify its characters' motivations. Shapiro (Josh Peck) finds himself fresh out of high school, with all the promise it entails. It's summer, the music is good, business is booming and he has a love interest (Olivia Thirlby as Stephanie). Yet there's something lacking: a point. Luke wants to get laid, save his family and figure out why he's seemingly the only friendless drug dealer in the world.
To that end, he engages a shrink (Ben Kingsley) who represents a dying era of stubbornness, wanton drug use and endearing abrasiveness. Both have an inkling that their dreams are simultaneously doomed and as yet unformed.
If 1994 fails to go down in history as a turning-point year, it will be because the cultural ferment was aimless and the political trends were, in retrospect, inevitable. Just like the plot arc of this smart little film.
Nas said it best way back then:
Yet I'm the mild, money gettin style, rollin foul
The versatile, honey stickin wild, golden child
Dwellin in the Rotten Apple, you get tackled
Or caught by the devil's lasso, shit is a hassle.
A hassle indeed.
Friday, July 18, 2008
I come not to praise Shea Stadium, but to bury it
Tacked on to the beginning of an article about a Billy Joel concert (which is just a rehash of the Chuck Klosterman he's-so-uncool-I'm-cool-because-I-like-him storyline), Dan Barry whips up some pre-nostalgia for Shea Stadium:
In fact, "nice try" is a pretty good description for Shea. It's a Robert Moses project and, like his other civic disasters (the Cross-Bronx Expressway and huge tracts of public housing high-rises come to mind) it was built in the high hopes that great public works from on high would prepare New York City for a new era of progress.
Fittingly, it shares a lot of problems with the other Robert Moses projects of the postwar era.
As the Cross-Bronx tore a gigantic trench through neighborhoods without the least bit of consideration to pedestrians and neighbors, Moses stuck Shea under a flight path near LaGuardia Airport without any consideration to the fans who would have to sit through endless jet engine drone to watch a game.
As housing projects rose from blighted but human-scale blocks to the goals of Le Corbusier's desire for order and sterile spacial proportions at the expense of the comfort of people actually living in them, Shea was built as a pleasingly regular circle at the expense of shade and views.
A lot of people have great memories from the times they spent at Shea - myself included. But the stadium itself should be preserved, or at least left standing, as an example of an entire era of crummy stadia. The Vet and the old Busch Stadium are gone and the Astrodome may not be saved by preservationists, but there should be at least one example of how wrong we went in the sixties.
But back to the Amazins:
Get over yourself, man. There are plenty of UES twits who like the Mets. Even more twits liked them in the late '80s-early '90s when the Yankees had Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield and a string of losing seasons. Every summer, big law firms load up million-dollar partners and Nobu-fed summer associates into black Town Cars bound for luxury boxes at Shea. Mets Nation is jealous, but they're by no means a particularly working-class bunch.
As for the losing thing, there are plenty of fans who wish their teams had it as good as the Mets. Since 1962, the Mets have won two World Series, one division title, two NL pennants and two wild card berths. Ask a fan of the Phillies, the Royals, Mariners, Indians, Tigers, Astros or Rangers if they wouldn't mind trading the records of the last 37 1/2 seasons with the Mets.
Yes, the inferiority complex started right off the bat in 1962, when the Mets came into this world as a piss-poor substitute for the Dodgers and Giants and proceeded to rack up the worst record in the history of the modern game.
Yes, they weren't favored in 1969.
No, that doesn't mean that the Kennedy-era hair shirt looks good on a fan of the team with the second-highest payroll in the league.
SOMEONE must sing a proper song of farewell for Shea Stadium, the nice try of a coliseum in Queens, as its dismantling draws near and a new ballpark rises just yards away. But that someone must be able to convey emotions specific to the place, emotions beyond the sadness of many lost Mets summers and the euphoria of two World Series championships. There is so much more.
In fact, "nice try" is a pretty good description for Shea. It's a Robert Moses project and, like his other civic disasters (the Cross-Bronx Expressway and huge tracts of public housing high-rises come to mind) it was built in the high hopes that great public works from on high would prepare New York City for a new era of progress.
Fittingly, it shares a lot of problems with the other Robert Moses projects of the postwar era.
As the Cross-Bronx tore a gigantic trench through neighborhoods without the least bit of consideration to pedestrians and neighbors, Moses stuck Shea under a flight path near LaGuardia Airport without any consideration to the fans who would have to sit through endless jet engine drone to watch a game.
As housing projects rose from blighted but human-scale blocks to the goals of Le Corbusier's desire for order and sterile spacial proportions at the expense of the comfort of people actually living in them, Shea was built as a pleasingly regular circle at the expense of shade and views.
A lot of people have great memories from the times they spent at Shea - myself included. But the stadium itself should be preserved, or at least left standing, as an example of an entire era of crummy stadia. The Vet and the old Busch Stadium are gone and the Astrodome may not be saved by preservationists, but there should be at least one example of how wrong we went in the sixties.
But back to the Amazins:
The romantic idealism and the yeah-right realism. The quickness to mock and to take offense. The need to prove oneself better than any Upper East Side twit and the guilt from having conceived such a hollow ambition. The restlessness, angst and ache of the striver. The Long Island of it all.
Get over yourself, man. There are plenty of UES twits who like the Mets. Even more twits liked them in the late '80s-early '90s when the Yankees had Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield and a string of losing seasons. Every summer, big law firms load up million-dollar partners and Nobu-fed summer associates into black Town Cars bound for luxury boxes at Shea. Mets Nation is jealous, but they're by no means a particularly working-class bunch.
As for the losing thing, there are plenty of fans who wish their teams had it as good as the Mets. Since 1962, the Mets have won two World Series, one division title, two NL pennants and two wild card berths. Ask a fan of the Phillies, the Royals, Mariners, Indians, Tigers, Astros or Rangers if they wouldn't mind trading the records of the last 37 1/2 seasons with the Mets.
Yes, the inferiority complex started right off the bat in 1962, when the Mets came into this world as a piss-poor substitute for the Dodgers and Giants and proceeded to rack up the worst record in the history of the modern game.
Yes, they weren't favored in 1969.
No, that doesn't mean that the Kennedy-era hair shirt looks good on a fan of the team with the second-highest payroll in the league.
A disquieting thought
There is probably some poor candidate for the bar out there who won't get to become a lawyer this year because he drew the wrong conclusion from a 20-word fact pattern and thought a certain behavior was reckless when it was in fact wanton.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
So, how's bar studying going?
An innocuous enough question from non-J.D.s, I suppose, but one that's likely to result in being on the receiving end of a long diatribe. In the name of efficiency and making more time to study subjects I never seem to improve in, I've boiled it down to a couple of sentences.
As for the long answer, I'm in hell and I can't find a way out. My final bar review substantive class was yesterday; the topic was Domestic Relations. I attempted an essay on Domestic Relations with a side of Commercial Paper this morning, only to find that not a single one of the issues in the essay was covered in our class or in the gigantic "mini" outline they gave us.
Q: How is bar studying going?
A: It's like trying to pile two gallons of jello into a one-gallon Tupperware container. You can balance a little cherry-flavored Evidence on the top, but the Choice of Law with the slice of pineapple in it just falls off the other side of the pile, so you go to pick that up and all your equal protection pudding slides off.
As for the long answer, I'm in hell and I can't find a way out. My final bar review substantive class was yesterday; the topic was Domestic Relations. I attempted an essay on Domestic Relations with a side of Commercial Paper this morning, only to find that not a single one of the issues in the essay was covered in our class or in the gigantic "mini" outline they gave us.
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