Katie Couric's first broadcast

Growing up, my dad always watched the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. So given the fanfare behind his replacement, I decided to watch Katie Couric's first broadcast. For those of you who missed it, I'm sure it can be found somewhere on the Internet, if not on CBS's own website.

I sat through most of the broadcast, and for someone who had millions of people watching her first day on the job, she performed just fine. She spoke like she was trying to get the whole broadcast out in a single breath though, so that was kind of odd, but I would chalk that up to first day jitters. Relax Katie, the ratings will come out the same regardless. I'm sure it will take, as my roommate said, a couple weeks for her to settle in and begin to put some of her personality into the broadcast.

I guess today was a pretty slow newsday as her broadcast began with coverage of the conflict in Afghanistan. Maybe I'm just ignorant when it comes to these things, but if the press interviews the Taliban "less than 10 miles from an American base," is there any obligation to inform someone about this contemporaneously with the interview? Or is this the type of thing that tends to blacken the foreign press correspondents and lead to kidnapping/beheadings? I don't really know the answer, and I'm sure there is a shield argument in there somewhere, but if we're in a war, shouldn't there be less redaction in these situations that won't necessarily cross a source line but at the same time help protect those trying to defend the very ideas that give the press carte blanche to report in the first place?

The only other memorable thing in the broadcast was seeing Morgan Spurlock, who created the documentary on Supersize Me (the movie about the guy who ate nothing but McDonalds for 30 days and as a result gained weight, increased his potential for heart disease and postulated that eating fast food is not a healthy way to live). His probably 60-90 second segment was part of CBS's new "free speech" segment, which can be read about more in depth on their website. On the assumption that the news is supposed to be unbiased, why would CBS/Katie Couric choose to have such a liberal speak his mind on this "new public discourse?" Doesn't Spurlock already have a forum on FX for this type of discussion and generally as a filmmaker? You may as well have brought in Michael Moore. It almost reminds me of an episode from Arrested Development, but not quite.

Nevertheless, I think it's an innovative idea to increase the public discourse, and maybe we need such discourse pushed to the forefront of broadcasts like Katie Couric's. I would hope the future segments have the entire range and entire spectrum of the population, from children in a rich prep school in Connecticut to teenagers returning to their public district in Mississippi or Louisiana to farmers to doctors to lawyers to teachers to mothers to fathers to bums, etc. And garbagemen - they are probably the most underappreciated out of the whole lot. Obviously there are compelling stories to be reported (see, e.g., the Jason McElwain basketball autism story from a few months ago). I just don't see the draw in putting a moderately recognizable face who one commentator has called an "intellectual jackass." On the other hand and to his credit, Spurlock at least is trying to create a forum for viewers generally to realize that not everyone is upper middle class and maybe he cashed in a favor to be the first free press bit. See '30 Days' of Supersized Guilt. Cf. Ain't No Makin' It, a book mandatory in my sociology 101 course, but nevertheless a similar examination of inner city youths (black and white) trying to break out of the class system they have been born into (my apologies for my review of this in-depth evaulation and otherwise excellent portrayal of the low-to-middle class struggle since it's been almost 10 years since I've read it.)

So, kudos to CBS for trying something that youtube hasn't come up with yet, and kudos to Katie Couric on getting me to watch the broadcast news (almost in full) for the first time in several months.

Tags: katie couric, spurlock

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Online dating review and Match.com

This is a rather long post, but hopefully it provides some use to someone looking for a graduate student's take on online dating.

Background:
I have tried my hand at this online dating world in an effort to meet someone who has something interesting to speak about besides Scalia, Stevens, Kennedy, and how smart lawyers must be to debate such asanine things ad nauseum. I have tried three different services (Yahoo, Match, and E-Harmony) and will offer my unbiased and lay opinion to each.

On each site, I provided my relevant information, and signed up for one month. I typically left the job field blank, although any careful reader would detect I was a student, which is probably the biggest turnoff to the non-student women I was attempting to meet. I put 4 or 5 pictures online, which is pretty much a precursor for success, and with some assistance from a couple of my friends, wrote my so-called “sales pitch” which is read by anyone who clicks on the picture. Obviously my goals for these sites were multi-leveled; however, I had thought that the online world had matured past its shadiness and figured it was better than a loud, smoky bar. My suggestions and conclusions are strewn throughout this review.

The Evaluations:
Worst Site: Yahoo Personals: 4 emails, 2 "meet up for drinks dates," no second dates. I also have vowed never to use yahoo messenger again to avoid a couple of weirdos. Yikes.

In a nutshell, Yahoo Personals is the easiest to use and simultaneously, the least effective dating service of the three I tested. I only signed up for a month ($30) but the functionality is just too limited for an accurate singles site. You probably would have more luck creating a MySpace page or Craigslist account and searching for people that way. By signing up for Yahoo messenger and linking it to your account (it may do this for you, I can't remember exactly), you can effectively communicate without actually paying, but then you have the weirdo factor so I don't recommend that strategy. It reminds me of how AIM used to be searchable (and maybe it still is) and I would get these weird "asl" i-ms from random people, most of which are still blocked from my account.

More to the point, Yahoo's personals site seemingly has a lot of people on it, and their free method of “icebreakers,” while potentially useful as a back and forth dialog, really has no practicality other than a free way of saying “what’s up, I saw your profile and think you look okay.” There are several icebreaker options, but when you look at them, you can see how doofy all but the most simplest of them are (see match.com analysis below for comparison). Regardless of paying, you have no way of telling who has looked at you unless they contact you first, and the only way to contact someone via email is by signing up. My impression is that most people who have listings you see are free users who are just testing the waters. While I did have limited success with this service, I would not recommend it and in fact, did not do so to two of my friends who eventually went online (although one did set up an yahoo account with similar results).

Ok for some people, not okay for me: E-Harmony: 3 matches which went to the “last step” of e-harmony’s matching process but nothing lasting.

I can't say the e-harmony commercials help their case and thank god they aren't on during the superbowl, but they do have a personality test that is moderately accurate (if you've done a myers-briggs personality test, you get the idea). Honestly, I think e-harmony is probably the best dating site of them all, but I suspect that its because its target market is the 30 and over/professional market that is much more serious about this whole online dating process. As a result, they are much better able to focus their services. You can’t search eharmony’s profiles though; they send who they feel is compatible to you. Curiously, you get a lot more profiles after you pay.

It’s also the most expensive of the three ($50 for one month), but one of my theories is that you get what you pay for, and this site certainly seems to be more geared to actually finding a compatible relationship. Whether it actually works or not, I don't know - the only woman I felt I matched up with well reached the email stage, but when she asked for my picture (which she had already seen on the site, so it was kind of an odd request), she said she was no longer interested. Fortunately for me, that was on the day or two before my account expired, so no biggie. Unfortunately for me, I never got her picture, so I must assume it would not have worked out. Oh well.

There was some overlap between the profiles I was sent on eharmony and those that were on Yahoo and Match (and obviously some where on two or all three). You can post a profile for free which gets you some limited access but to do anything beyond the bare minimum, you have to pay. Most of the more compatible matches they sent to me were professionals at least my age or older, and seemingly all were paying subscribers since I would get emails from those I matched up with and proceeded to the next step. Being a student, however, didn’t quite have the intended effect I desired in this process, but I do give e-Harmony props for as at least approaching the undersaturated online personals market with some focus. For the under-30 crowd, though, I think your success will be limited. I have recommended e-Harmony to my various non-student professional friends who are in the dating market. Nevertheless, I have yet to hear of any success stories from them.

Best of the worst (a reserved recommendation): Match.com – 200+ views, 10 or so winks, 10 or so emails, 3 scam emails, a few drink dates.

Out of the three, this is the only one which produced the best results (for me anyway), and despite my unsuccessful attempts at finding a "nice girl" here, I still push for this site (although I hope I am clearly presenting all of the asterisks that go along with this qualified recommendation).

For lack of a better phrase, Match.com probably gives you the most for your buck, so to speak. I just don’t think their marketing department quite has it right though. You can list your profile for free and search all profiles, and their equavalent of Yahoo's “icebreaker” is called a “wink.” Essentially this wink is the same as the first yahoo icebreaker option; you can “wink” at someone who is interested and it sends them an email with your profile attached that you winked at them. They can then “wink back" at them or say “no thanks" or do nothing and leave them hanging. If they wink back, or say "no thanks" you will get an email; however, you are essentially at a stalemate unless one of you is a paying customer.

For $30 a month (or $50 for 3 months, which is comparable to Yahoo’s discount pricing), you can send unlimited emails and see the profiles of people who clicked on your profile. The real incentive to shell out this $30 (other than the fact that it's cheaper than one dinner date with a movie, you cheapskates) is if you get an email from someone. If this occurs, you get an email that “someone” has emailed you, and in order to read the email, which is some anonymous@match.com email available through your account, you have to pay. I’m sure this has some intrinsic marketing pull, but one of my friends tells me that he got this "anonymous email," went to the site, accessed it, emailed her back a day later, and never got a response. Kind of fishy...Supposedly this is the type of scam that has gotten a lot of paying users up in arms because these emails may have been sent on behalf of Match. They have received bad press about this already so no need to dwell on how poor this business practice actually is (more on that below). Nevertheless, I will operate on the assumption that they have a less deceitful marketing department and the person that emailed my friend was just goofy in the head or simply changed her mind for no apparent reason.

I suspect that more people pay for match’s services than those who do not, but that being said, there are a large core of people who do not. The lack of responses (or profile views) of people who I thought were hot (and more importantly, seemed to have a head on their shoulders as well), and winked at or emailed was pretty disappointing. I will say that I got at least a couple “no thanks” responses, so that was nice to at least have some type of closure.

This was also the only site which I received rather strange emails that were written on a third grade level. In tracing their ip information from their offsite emails, I was able to trace one to Amsterdam and another to the Ukraine. I suspect these scammers are attempting to bilk some poor lad hoping to find so-called “true love” (also known as “lust at first sight”) out of his (or her) hard earned money. Apparently the scam has been reported on here: Net scam comes from Russia with love. See also Scamoram.com for a more humorous and informative look at the scams I am talking about.

These scam accounts are actually pretty easy to spot out; and I'm guessing because of the high percentage of scam emails I received in such a short amount of time that Match’s unspoken practice must be that if they are getting paid, they will look the other way, which all in all is a pretty poor practice. Of the three scam accounts I reported, all were taken down eventually, but if I found three, I must question how many more fraudulent scam accounts are there and why isn't Match doing anything about it? Anyway, the accounts are written in such a way that it should be clear that English is not their first language, and the only field filled out is the “About me and what I’m looking for” field. If they do email you back, they will include a yahoo or hotmail account they want you to contact them offsite with and the email usually is written in broken English. In one case, the email had a very strange tale about how their dad was a drug dealer who “makes lot of money and we live in a happy home.” Then she got into modeling and was flying to Nigeria overnight to visit her sick grandmother. Another worked as a “seller of ice cream” and “periodically go in for sports for maintenance of a body.” I can only speculate how many poor souls have been bilked by these scam artists, which is why I feel compelled to point out how easy it is to spot for anyone who stumbles across one on this site.

The key to not getting frauded or have your valuable time wasted on Match is to do a fairly broad search. When you find someone who you think is compatible with you, read carefully their posted information and be suspicious of broken English or those profiles which fill out the bare minimum. Chances are that the profilers are either not taking it seriously or are scammers. You can also tell who is legitimate by whether they click on you or not, as the scammers typically lie in wait for you to contact them and do not click on your profile after they do. Of course, if they actually do click on you, that doesn’t mean anything either until one or the other makes the first move. From there, you’re on your own, and if you have to read this blog for dating advice also, you need to do a different google search.

Scammers aside, there are a ton of people who are signed up on Match, and its search functionality is pretty comprehensive. There are more than a few throwaway questions that really have no bearing on helping you find a match though (although I recall that one of the scam accounts had checked the box that she liked fleas, which was another tell-tale sign). For ladies who are looking to meet new people, online is better than a bar since more guys probably pay, and from this bank of guys, you can have your pick among the litter. On the other hand, an ungodly amount of profiles begin with "I'm a nice girl looking for a nice guy" or "I this" and "I that" - if it doesn't work in a bar people, why do you think it would work online? I'll let you in on a secret - everybody is a nice person. Given that, you may want to give them the straight dope (and I don't mean drugs, since apparently there are a lot of people looking to score drugs online also).

Anyway, the email system for paying users on Match is pretty comprehensive enough, and after a month of trying it out, I would (and have) recommended it to my 30-and-under friends. At the very least, it’s a good ego boost to see how many girls (or guys in the case of female users) check you out. A quick review of the internet though (fairly older reviews nowadays) suggests that my evaluation of the Match.com service is nothing unique:
Reader review of Match.com rates it 2 out of 10.
Nigerian 419 Scams now on Match.com.

I am left to conclude that online personals today probably are no better off than they were when the internet was still “shady,” but they are getting better so they are worth a shot. For $30, as I said, it's as cheap as a first date, and if you find a rose among the thorns, then wouldn't you say it was worth the measly $30? That being said, the only real success stories I have actually heard about are from puffery-ads on television. I must confess, however, that my neighbor (who went to high school with me) did meet her husband on the internet in 1999, so it’s not like it can’t happen now or even then when the internet truly was shadier. I also saw some other students/people I knew on Match, so you shouldn't feel like you are the only one doing it. There were actually a lot of students and young professionals (supposedly) out there doing the same thing. Theoretically, it should work, and the bars should be therefore deathly afraid they will be put out of business.

Conclusions:
If you were to use any of the three sites, I would recommend e-Harmony if you are a professional and looking for someone who is probably in your shoes and doing the same thing, and it may work out. If you are in that key 18-22 demographic, stick to mySpace, you aren’t taking dating seriously anyway, and you probably will have a bunch of sicko (and psycho) 40+ year olds hitting on you. But if you’re into that, hey, good for you. If you’re in that post-college/getting to old for the bar scene but younger than the old person/townie bar scene, I would recommend Match, but bear in mind that you will have a 5-10% success rate for every email/wink sent, so it’s really more of a numbers game until you believe you have made a legitimate connection with someone who you can only hope is a real person. At that point, it's no different than being fixed up with one of your friend's friends.

As far as my recommendations as to what makes for a better profile, you will want to put 5 or 6 pictures of yourself on there, and honesty is the best policy. Most people aren’t that photogenic (and don't have very good non-drinking pictures of themselves); you will see exactly what I mean when you start searching through these profiles. Also, you must deactivate your account while it is still active if you don't wish to continue past your first payment, otherwise they will charge your credit card for another billable cycle. I deactivated mine with a week left and haven't had any problems. It's common sense really: If you cancel in advance, they can't do anything but let you continue to use the service you prepaid for until the time you have paid for runs out. Thus, don't fall into their recurring charge trap, which I'm sure is another deceptive way they are making money.

Free business idea: I believe the personals market is desperate for a site that falls somewhere in between Match and e-Harmony and has a much higher success rate. Because I have no interest in developing that business/marketing plan, I will simply offer this advice to a more websavvy/business-minded individual(s): if you do what I did for a month, you could easily develop a unique pay-for-access site with more search/match functionality and incentive to pay. They key is paying users (obviously), but with a little mySpace savvy, I'm sure you can figure it out. Obviously you can't have any way of contacting users prior to paying to do so, and there are easy word searches you can preprogram that can block such attempts out. I suspect this business is a minimum quarter-million to 1.5 million dollar a year business after four years, and I’m sure the profit margin would be through the roof since the overhead probably isn’t too dramatic.

Good luck.

Tags: match.com, online dating, yahoo personals, eharmony, match, scam, scamorama

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The crocodile hunter is dead? crikey!

This morning's headline jumped out at me: Stingray kills 'Crocodile Hunter' Irwin. I'm sure more people recognize Steve Irwin than say, the prime minister of England (or perhaps the vice president), but distressing for environmentalists nonetheless. I wonder how much the the Corleones of the stingray world charged the various families of crocodiles. In all seriousness, he was very entertaining and obviously served well as the my space generation's Crocodile Dundee. On a side note, I'm pleasantly surprised at how fast wikipedia updated his lifespan. Take that paper encyclopedias.

And for those slower readers, Steve Irwin did not play Crocodile Dundee.

Tags: steve irwin

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Ernesto, Labor Day, and Rachael Ray

Although what's left of Hurricane Ernesto still managed to thwart my Friday afternoon golf plans, I wound up going to visit one of my college friends who, after having the government pay for his medical school, is now on the verge of beginning to repay this debt by being sent as a flight surgeon across the world. His fiance plans to join him in a few months, and I'm sure they will have plenty of stories when they get back. He said that they get tv shows only a week later than they air here on the east coast, so at least it's not like he's going to some desert island or something like that.

I wound up watching some of the Phillies' Ryan Howard's great 3 HR game, and if he breaks 62, then I would think that he would be the first untainted player since Maris to break 60 in one season. Good for him.

All in all, this was a nice relaxing weekend. As a result, I decided to open up the Rachael Ray book that my grandmother had given me for Christmas and cooked a chicken recipe right out of it. Law school, to some degree, has made me a regular Chef Boyardee, and for tonight's exquisite meal, I only set off the fire alarm once, and that was because I forgot to turn the oven fan on. Our new sprinkler system didn't go off, so whether it actually works or not still remains to be seen.

Side note: Unfortunately for law school, there is nothing like the Armed Forces HPSP program, which should be considered by anyone who is about to face the quarter million dollar road that leads to the M.D. and appropriately discussed with your health professions advisor (either undergraduate or post-baccalaureate).

Tags: ryan howard, maris, homerun record, rachael ray

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Bad dates, cell phones in the bathroom, and Inside Man

Yesterday morning, I stopped in the library bathroom for a moment and heard some clown jabbering away on his cell phone as he was taking a dump. I'm sure this has happened to other people as well. Frankly, unless you're a doctor on a real emergency call, I don't see a need for anyone to be using the cell phone in the bathroom. First, you have that echo. Second, if I hear someone on the cell phone, I try and flush a bunch of toilets and make other noises to let whoever the person on the listening end know that this person has absolutely no respect for the conversation you are in. The same goes to the kids in the movie theaters who must be 15 or 16 answering their phone (and talking on it) during the movie, and letting the other person know they are watching a movie. They aren't Doogie Howsers, and I'm sure whatever adult they are with (if any) doesn't consider it any different than when they pick up the phone in the middle of dinner to tell their friend they are eating dinner. Ultimately, something really embarrassing will happen to you, such as when you are working for a cable news network and on a break, you hop in the stall and chit-chat away to one of your friends, unbeknownst to you both that your mic is still on and your conversation has been broadcast, recorded, and will be replayed ad infinitum to the Internet world: CNN Kyra Phillips snafu.

Prior to law school, I would go out like 3 or 4 nights a week (probably 4 on average). Between two jobs, my work day was about 12-14 hours on average, 5-7 each Saturday and Sunday, and I often burned the candle on both ends, but it was okay. Obviously in law school, you don't have the social luxury to do that, or at least, not for very long once things really start rolling. Anyway, I had plans to go out last night and from the start, my plans finished in the exact opposite way I figured. The highlight of the night was that I finally saw the movie Inside Man, which I thought was good. It's one of those movies you will probably only watch once, as was surreptitiously (slightly) ruined for me in advance. Personally, I think Denzel Washington's a solid actor and Spike Lee is a great director, and the story keeps you interested the whole time, which is difficult to do nowadays. I would recommend this movie as the best movie I have seen in 2006, and among bank heist dramas that aren't comedies like Ocean's 11, as good (or better in some ways) than Heat. Read more!

Fantasy Football draft

I see the nut who claimed he killed JonBenet Ramsey turned out to be a liar, thanks to good old deoxyribonucleic acid. Big surprise. If some good comes out of it, it may be that it got him off the street and away from being able to do any possible damage to whatever employer had hired him. I rank the news coverage of this guy right up with the recent deplanetization of Pluto. Speaking of which (and I can't find where this is linked, but I know I saw this anonymously posted in a response to an article on Yahoo a couple of weeks ago), someone suggested that in declassifying Pluto, "they should rename Venus to Penus and move it next to Uranus." I will be laughing at that for years. Just like I will do with Stern's dirty turban prank call.

In other equally irrelevant news that is sure to hit the AP wire, my friends have a fantasy football league. Although I know nothing of football, in a continuing effort to postpone doing all school-related work, I figured, what the heck. I had the first pick and since LT was already taken, I went with Shaun Alexander. My roommate, upon hearing this, said that both of us were foolish not to take Larry Johnson, who went third. Most of my football knowledge comes from Tecmo Bowl & Tecmo Super Bowl, Rudy, and PTI, so I'm not expecting to fare too well, but it should make the games more interesting anyway.

QB: Matt Hasselbeck, Jake Delhomme
RB: Shaun Alexander, Julius Jones, Deuce McAllister, Dominic Rhoades
WR: Steve Smith, Joey Galloway, Eddie Kennison, Keyshawn Johnson
TE: Jeremy Shockey, Heath Miller
K: Mike Vanderjagt
Defense: Colts, Jaguars Read more!

Delaware's a slave state? Well, yes and no...

There was a link off the Drudge Report that caught my eye: "Sen. Biden: 'My State Was a Slave State'....." Since nobody has written any intelligent commentary about this yet, and I'm sure it was placed online in a continuing effort to thwart Senator Biden's presidential campaign, I will offer my two cents, mainly because I vaguely remember the class report on Delaware when I was in elementary school (all of the kids in our class had to do reports on different states). Although I am sure the senator will catch his fair share of slack from the republican and democrat machinery, it turns out that even taken out of the context, Senator Biden's comments are correct (technically).

Delaware has three counties, with the population being concentrated in the northern most county. According to Wikipedia, Delaware (like Kentucky) was a slave state that voted not to secede from the union. So, despite the "spin" that will be put on this quote (such as his Dunkin Donuts comment from a few months back), he was right. Now why this makes the news is beyond me. If anything, it further indicates that the Democratic party continues to splinter and pale in comparison to the uniformity of the Republican machine. And when such splintering occurs, most people tend to look at and/or blame management.

In case my two cents worth of commentary does get picked up by the mainstream media, I would like to perpetuate a little known fact about the First State: The three counties I mentioned earlier were part of Pennsylvania and were known as "The Lower Three Counties." William Penn (owner of Penn's Woods, or as you know it now, "Pennsylvania") and Lord De La Warr and a couple of other early colonial masterminds were up late one night playing poker. De La Warr was ahead and because Penn believed he had an unbeatable hand, he bet the lower three counties that he would win. Needless to say, he was incorrect. While the exact hand that won has been lost over time, the end result and rumor is that Delaware was won from Pennsylvania in a poker game. Remember, if it's on the Internet, it must be true. In fact, you'd be stupid not to believe it.

Back on point: Rather than risk its status as a state during the Civil War, and because the population of the state favored the Union, Delaware remained a northern state and somewhere in the mix came the quote (roughly) "We were the first to join and we'll be the last to leave." I'm not sure who said it, and apparently neither did this website, but I'm sure it was the governor or a duPont. So, Senator Biden's comments are based in fact and again, why this got picked up by the mainstream internet media is beyond me. [YOUR AD COULD GO HERE].

Additional note: The full story (finally) hit the AP wire about an hour after Drudge linked it and I wrote my commentary on it. It's a good thing news on the Internet has a shelf life of 36 hours nowadays. (This last link is Noam Cohen's July 17, 2006 NY Times article "News Online Seems to Have Long Shelf Life.")

Tags: biden, delaware, slave state

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Beerfest: if you like bad movies, this one is for you

Today is August 27. Last light I watched the movie Beerfest . As you might expect, this movie creates an overwhelming desire to drink beer. Unfortunately the bars were closed by the time the movie was over. It is not as funny as Super Troopers and obviously better than Club Dread. Pretty much the cast of Super Troopers comes back, so there are definitely some funny lines. I can’t remember any of them though, although I’m sure they will show up on the internet after awhile. The only one I vaguely remember is “5 boots, are you crazy?” but you have to see it in context to find this funny. Overall though, I thought it was pretty bad. If you liked Wet Hot American Summer, though, you will probably like this movie. In the list of recent movies I have seen, it ranks below Talledega Nights, which ranked below Lady in the Water, which ranked even with Pirates 2 for different reasons which will be explained in another entry for another day.

There was a preview for some Jack Nicolson movie, which reminded me that they are making a sequel to Batman Begins. Generally, I have grown leary of sequels or prequels, with the exception of Terminator 2, the Back to the Future movies, and the Indiana Jones movies. After suffering through two or three summers of waiting through the rumors, I believe that Indiana Jones 4 is coming out in Summer 2007, although now it looks like they have pushed back release until 2008. Supposedly it is going to take place about 15 or 20 years (or however long it has been since the last one came out) so I’m not sure if he’s going to be fighting the Nazis in South America or the Communists. Who cares, it’s going to be great (note the high expectations I have for this movie).

Anyway, Batman: The first one with Michael Keaton is the best one. The next one was pretty good and then it just went downhill from there. But, I give Batman Begins the credit it deserves since it tried to expand on the story from the flashback scene in the first movie. Of course, to completely distinguish Batman Begins from the old movies, they changed how Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed (which from what I have read is different from the comics anyway), so that’s not a big deal. Good for them. But why would you remake the Joker story? I see it as a slap in the face to Jack Nicolson and Tim Burton and if I were them, I would be irked (I used irked because Jack Nicholson – he won’t really be pissed). They cast Heath Ledger as the Joker. At first I thought this was some sort of joke, since I remember him from the Revolutionary War movie and some high school movie he was in and I don’t see him fitting the part. If only Marvel and DC could temporarily unite and make some sort of cross-over movie, people would go see that. Think of it like the old Grudgematches from a few years ago or Celebrity Deathmatch.

Anyway, I predict that the next Batman movie will fare well the first week or two and then drop off, and this is without knowing anything but that it’s another sequel and a modified version of the first Batman movie, which is good enough. The first Pirates of the Caribbean aside, has Hollywood lost all originality? At least give us a completely new villain – maybe one the comic book industry can then capitalize on.

Tags: beerfest

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Snakes on a Plane

Today is Monday, August 21. In a rather exciting turn of events yesterday, I got a call from Samuel L. Jackson who told me to stop wasting my time studying and go watch the movie Snakes on a Plane. While this call was great, and presuming they were/are not pilfering the phone numbers for some sort of free advertising/telemarketing scheme, I must have sent this to five or six of my friends who I thought would get a kick out of it. You probably have heard about it, but the link is here: Snakes on a Plane Cell Call. The only way the call could have been better is if he quoted a couple lines from Pulp Fiction.

In law related news, today was the first day of classes. Unfortunately for me, Samuel L. and Snakes on a Plane will have to wait for another day. For your edification, allow me to provide a brief insight into the differences between the 1L and 3L first day of classes.

As a 1L, you aspire to read meticulously every detail of every case. You probably type or write what become meaningless facts and procedural postures into your notes, highlight everything in four or five different colors and pray you aren’t the first person in your class to be called on, not because you can't answer the questions, but because you are afraid of how the rest of the class will respond in the case you are totally wrong. That generally holds true for your third year, assuming you change the first sentence in this paragraph by dropping the word “meticulously”, replacing “every” with “any” and “aspire” to “probably will not.” You still write or type your notes, although by now you know where you can sit in the classroom so that you can pick up the wireless internet the best. The number of highlighters in your bag dwindles to two, one, or none. You may or may not want to be called on, but not because you care what your classmates think, but because you are in the middle of fighting Piston Honda on your computer or messing with your fantasy team. Read more!

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Missing Toilet Paper

Today is August 17. I wasn’t going to bother writing about this trivial event but one of my friends who is two courses away from getting his MBA at a different east coast school told me that this was a “bloggable offense” so why not. He also wants credit for "bloggable offense" if that ever becomes a household phrase.

I moved some of my stuff out of storage yesterday back to my apartment. Before we left, my roommates and I were told that we could leave stuff in “at our own risk.” Obviously to an aspiring lawyer, I took those words literally and we opted to move most of our stuff into storage. After hours of packing everything up, however, certain things, such as dishes and pots and pans were moved from their shelves to lower shelves in the hopes that they would simply be left alone. And when we returned yesterday, that was certainly the case.

Except for one set of things, everything we left behind was exactly where we left it. It is the missing stuff that is temporarily driving me crazy and since I have now returned from the store with replacement items, I feel compelled to write about it. For those of you who live in an apartment, or who lived in dorms, you can appreciate the pains of having to move in and move out on a regular basis at the whim of campus housing. The apartment complex we live in isn’t really campus housing, but in all intent and effect acts as such, so there are many parallels. Because they were bringing our apartment complex into line with the 1980s fire code, we were required to temporarily (that is, for the summer), move our stuff out into storage, with the condition that anything we left behind was left “at our own risk.” Thank goodness this problem will not exist next summer when the bar prep courses start. Hopefully.

Anyway, everything was left right were we left it except for our cleaning supplies. A brief laundry list of items so you get the point: 10 or 15 rolls of toilet paper, soap, a shower scrub brush and replacement sponge, trashbags, kitchen sponges, wet naps, dishwashing detergent, dishwasher detergent, maybe some hand and dish towels, and miscellaneous other cleaning supplies. Our bathroom trashcan was also missing, but this is unconfirmed as I am away from my apartment until tomorrow and it may be sitting in one of the dozens of boxes and trashbags adorning our living room. Anyway, who leaves dishes and pots and pans but not cleaning supplies. I expected “leave at your own risk” to cover playstations, plasma televisions, jewelry, and the like, not toilet paper. Is our university so desperate for brand name cleaning supplies that they have resorted to borrowing those of students who left them behind at their own risk? In the end, I can’t really complain because we were warned that everything could have been thrown away, so on the bright side, our dishes and pots and pans didn’t have to be replaced. Honestly though, why would someone want to take my bathroom scrub brush. That’s what really irks me. A scrub brush. Give me a break. That’s almost as bad as having to run to the library to use the bathroom since our toilet paper was missing.

On a side note, the stock of the company I bought all of my cleaning supplies from today (as of now) is up 1.04%, which I obviously directly relate to the purchase of my replacement supplies. I would state what company this is, but they get enough advertising as it is and they can certainly afford to pay me to advertise. Let’s just say this company tried to trademark THE smiley face. (Or a happy face, I can never remember). Read more!