I Need To Study

Yes indeed finals are staring me right in the face now. A short 9 days from now many of us will be sitting down to hammer out Simmons' Evidence exam. Once I start studying (which may not start until Thursday) then I will get through it all but right now it seems so daunting. At least there's only three finals to juggle again unlike last semester. More on this when they come up, but the last two evidence assignments have certainly helped me see a lot of topics in review. Speaking of the evidence paper, jumped in on a group this time because we can work in groups of up to 4. Makes for a lot less work, except for Wolfson who doesn't mind the "research" for our Star Wars fact pattern.

So TV. Tonight is House night, and we watched American Idol too. Since this is the first time I've kind of followed Idol, let's rank the contestants based on country night:
1. Melinda Doolittle - no doubt about it, best singer of the season
2. Jordin Sparks - Good song this week, big drop off from Melinda
3. Phil Stacey - Very mediocre singer but did OK tonight
4. Chris Richardson - Ugh it's Mr. Nasal Voice, reminds me of a poor J. Timberlake
5. LaKisha Jones - She was forcing her voice over a loud song, it was awful even though she sings OK
6. Blake Lewis - Just like LaKisha, country is a bad genre for this guy. Picked a mediocre Tim McGraw song and delivered it like a karaoke champ
7. Sanjaya Malakar - What hasn't been said? I have to give him credit, he's a good sport for everyone knowing he's terrible and the judges are brutal (rightfully so, how this guy made the top 40 is beyond me), and "Let's Give Them Something to Talk About" was a nice ironic choice.

So looking at those rankings and assuming Sanjaya will get his usual voting base (as long as there are more than 4 contestants he will make it through because his "fan" base is not divided week to week among the other 6 or more contestants)...I'd say the bottom three will definitely contain Blake and LaKisha, then either Chris or Phil. I think there's too much support for Blake still, so LaKisha goes home tomorrow. Of course I'm wrong, but I figure I might as well make a game of it.

House was incredible last week with the mental phenomenon of making yourself sick (to a ridiculous degree on an airplane). Nice dual story with Cuddy and House in the sky solving that problem and the young guns solving an old lady's poisoning on their own. This week's is on right now and seems interesting, but House is not something to spend too much time talking about. Lost, on the other hand, was absolutely awesome last week and it appears the season of "the others" will finally come to an exciting climax after spinning wheels for months. I really want to see if my favorite character John Locke turns his back on the flight survivors, as it might cost him his life. 24 this week was also pretty good, although it pains us all to watch that douche bag VP Noah run away with the presidency when Palmer was going to force him out. Of course it is kind of Palmer's fault for popping adrenaline shots like M&M's during the Fayed crisis resolution. Seems like the main story ended about 5 weeks early this year, as now I really wonder what they are going to do the rest of the season. It appears the Audrey exchange goes down next week, so I figure Jack and the Chinese guy who has it out for Jack will be the focus of the rest of the season. Brings us to the end (maybe) of a great storyline started in Season 4. We'll see, as the season has been OK thus far. Just wish for once there was a president on that show who knew how to pick an agreeable VP. Oh well.

Big news of the week: I got two out of my three JDR banquet predictions correct. Xavier will indeed be published and Larry did win staff member of the year, but Larry unfortunately will not be published.
Bigger news: I'M GETTING PUBLISHED! Woot. Makes all those long hours the week before drafts were due worth it. I'll give the note a fresh look once I'm in Cincinnati, as I only have until July 1 to make any significant changes or additions. Xavier and I will be in Issue 2 (my topic is increasing ADR in patent law, Xavier's has to do with non-traditional couples I think). Erik and Nate are the other two being published, Erik on Eminent Domain ADR and Nate on interest group mediation. So those are the three people I get to bug the crap out of for footnoting, and of course now I get to participate next year as a final backstop editor and an author. Should be an interesting year.

Shipman's class ended today, and all my 1L's have reached the height of cynicism. Most of them think they are screwed about App Ad because all the other kids have written a brief and they have not, and also in general because they got no real help or feedback on the journal competition type assignment (according to them). But many other people have made it out of Shipman's writing class and gotten onto journal and been successful, such as the other two TA's for our class Andy Johnson (main journal, executive editor next year) and Uzo (main journal, articles editor next year). They will be fine trying to get on journal and may have an advantage in that regard having done one of these assignments. Shipman is correct in telling them this is all learn by doing. My journal write-on paper was probably horrible, but I got it figured out at least decently for the note. Same with office memos and briefs. Speaking of briefs...

Is it possible for the Moot Court Governing Board of this school year to be any worse at their jobs? It doesn't seem too much to ask to do your job and do it competently, after all these people ran for the offices and were interviewed etc. I think Aaron is going to write an article series for the Hearsay jokingly telling next year's board how to do their job. Maybe the board should have given Keener a spot on the board for having the guts to tell them the truth to their faces about how terrible they are. Here's a short list of minor to major greivances I have with them.
1. The exact specifics of how Herman works and how teams are chosen for 3L year was not all that clear and the competition rules took multiple reads to figure out.
2. They faux pas'd on the selection round ranking email that told the top 5 2L's where they stood (at least Brian who was 4th and I who was 5th got emails asking for our preference of teams because the original email said we were ranked number 1). That I was pissed about but I was willing to give them a mulligan. just more angry about which team I got stuck on (topic, teammates, Kelley's birthday weekend...need I say more?).
3. They told the 5 of us on teams as 2L's this year to leave the Herman TWEN group and then did a poll on which teams they should keep next year because some had to be cut. Well they did it through TWEN and so did not ask any of the 5 of us who have PRIORITY CHOICE for next year's teams. So my voice was not heard and that among other things led to no IP team for next year.
4. They finally get everything done for this year and so all that's left is to process the team preference forms for next year. How hard can it be to plug those numbers. It's a really simple system...go to the top ranked person (Brodie), look at his sheet, slot him into the top team he wants that's still open. Continue for each person down the list. Seems simple right? Well it's taken them way too long and then finally today we get an email with moot court teams for next year. Problem is, 20 minutes later we get another email saying they double-checked the teams but still there were errors and they have to redo the teams. WTF?

GET IT TOGETHER MOOT COURT BOARD. It's not that much to ask that you do something easy and simple...and for heaven's sakes, get it right. We'll see if my team changes at all, but as it stands right now I'm on what I consider to be one of the 2 most solid moot court teams for next year. One ABA team is Aaron, Brodie, and Tiffany (all-stars) and my National team is Lee (one of the 2L's on a team this year), Tom (top 10 overall in Herman), and me. There are some other good looking teams as well, but of course it's all tenative so this discussion may be moot. Also of interest is Cheggs being on B-Smith's team, that sounds like a match made in heaven. But whatever. So maybe by the end of the semester we'll know what teams we'll be on. It does look like I'll be on a national team for sure, so that's cool. I'll be done with moot court in the fall too which is nice.

Bar fitness interview was this morning. That was about as exciting as watching women's golf on TV. I have a clean record (no speeding or traffic tickets even, but I'm lucky in that category) so we had NOTHING to talk about. They asked me if I had any questions. Hell I did not know I was supposed to come prepared, let alone what the interview was going to be like. So we chatted about the Virginia Tech slaughter and after 10 minutes of that the two attorneys signed off on my competency to be a lawyer and so that's the end of that. They let people with DUI's through this process without too much grilling (so these two said), so you have to do some bad stuff to raise eyebrows when trying to take the bar. One less thing to worry about.

Went to Cincy on Friday and looked at 8 apartments. Found some crazy landlords in the morning. First was the old lady who was half-senile and told lots of stories and had to show me her cats and the 3 baby raccoons she rescued from the city streets. Then was the lady who answered the door with a power drill in hand (working on the house). Then an uber-businessman who buys and sells and rents houses for a living, so he was a slick operator. Went to Joe's for lunch and then to WHE, my firm, to discuss final details with them. In the afternoon saw a couple more stinkers but 3 good apartments. One was like University Village in a big building, had a pool and gas grill and exercise rooms and game rooms for everyone to use...you rent one room in a 2-4 bedroom apartment and they would have matched me with another guy living there for the summer working at a different Cincy law firm. Tempting and all-inclusive with furnishings, but $549 a month is a decent price and not great. Second place was a one and a half room studio from a law student subletting, but she wanted around 500 with few furnishings. The one I chose was another law student sublet in a 3 bedroom apartment off the UC campus a ways. Nice short drive either through the ghetto (Over the ridge) or down an interstate to downtown every day, and the apartment is furnished and cheap for all-inclusive. So I have Cincinnati all worked out and I'm looking forward to getting down there in a couple weeks.

Oh one more note: we received our brief scores from Moot Court competition. We finished 12th out of 32. So the brief far from brought us down. Now Dustin and I really do not know how we got out of the top 16 after beating both of our opponents in oral argument. Probably the judges in the first round misattributing things from Brooklyn to us and vice versa. Gives me hope for next year though as it seems kind of a crapshoot in a way, but you can clearly succeed if your team cares to.

Time to get back to ignoring studies and the such. Have a good week.

The Run Is Over

Another week flies by, and this puts us 2 weeks and 3 days from final exams. Even though I only have three they seem a little daunting because they are coming quickly and all at once (Friday, Monday, Tuesday). I'm thinking that because I'm not starting work until the following week I may petition to get Tuesday moved back to Thursday...but I'm also thinking I may just suck it up and get them over quickly. Trademark shouldn't be too bad, just like copyright. Evidence I need to work on as I kind of let that class go here recently, and BA is a nightmare for everyone but we'll make it through (just like accounting for lawyers).

Watching 24 right now and the jaw-dropping twist from last week turns out to be lame and not really true as Presdient Palmer sends a fake nuke to get a message across to the terrorist loving arab country. Of course CTU is about as effective as a butterfly net at keeping Fayed in their control so no surprise they managed to let him go again this week. But with Jack on the attack (and just how do you hold onto the undercarraige of a trash truck for miles???) the threat is averted. What a brutal finish. But in rote 24 style, one crisis averted and another starts up as the Chinese are going to use Audrey to get to Jack. Go figure.

Lost was good last week too. It is funny how Sawyer gets a heart and a leadership role this week, just in time for Jack to come home and steal away leadership. At least Sawyer can be Sawyer again. I thought we were going to see a big battle between the others and the Lost, but perhaps this season is not like the first two (which stood alone as the "survivor mystery" season and "the hatch" season). Perhaps this is the grand final story ark at its peak since the others did appear in season 1 to ruin the raft plans of Michael, Sawyer, Jin, and Walt. I hear the Lost writers envisioned the series as reaching a logical ending after 4-5 seasons, so perhaps this series will not drag on into mediocrity. The beginning of this season was pretty poor though, but at least it has gotten better.

Ohio has been lovely this week ever since we came back from Newark. Freezing temps again and snow with little accumulation. It does make for a funny story though watching the Indians cancel an entire 4 game series because there is a FOOT OF SNOW on the field over the weekend. So they are playing this week's series in Milwaukee against the LA Angels. Now that's a hot ticket! Two way out of town teams playing in your stadium...enjoy that Brewers fans. The Reds started 4-2 winning both of their opening week series, so as usual let's get optimistic that I'll have something to watch in Cincinnati this summer (something other than Bengals players getting arrested for a rainbow of felonies).

Well the title of this blog entry refers to bowling (I know, shocker!). The semifinals proved why bowling playoffs are a great thing and a terrible thing at the same time. The great part is that any team can win and "binary elimination" makes for some exciting bowling. The terrible part is that there is little reward for doing well all season. We ran into kryptonite again in Bring Clovis Back and Bill Browne, but at least their team bowled regular average games this time...no 200 game beatings. Kelley was off her game and so was Brodie, but in typical MFR fashion Daniel had the best week of his career and I bowled well also. We lost by 2 pins in the series, winning game 2 by 30 but losing game 1 by 32. It was infuriating for 3 of us because Brodie and Kelley bowled poorly and were blaming themselves while I had a chance to put them away in the tenth frame of the second game (working on a double strike, I went 9-miss which is agonizing). Still, this season was better than all before and we had our chance to make the finals. Maybe in our 3L year we'll be lucky enough to get one more shot. The professors went down in flames to cinderella also, so that sets up a battle of titans:

(16) Bring Clovis Back vs. (14) Pinning the Blame

I'd have to guess PTB completes the cinderella run and bowls above average to slay another opponent. But Bill Browne would like one more title before law school is over :-) To put a wrap on our season, we were 24-9 this season and 22-2 against teams not names Bring Back Clovis (2-7 in three weeks against them). Pretty good. I noticed another statistical fluke that probably rarely happens in this many weeks of bowling. We never went 2-1! 3-0 seven times, 1-2 three times, and 0-3 one time the first week. I could see not going 3-0 or 0-3 in eleven weeks as sweeping is hard, but no 2-1's??? As I'm sure all my readers don't care so much about this statistical anomaly, we'll move on.

The week at school otherwise was pretty uneventful. Finished up Acc-Checking/Final Reading the third issue last week and sent to publisher, the bibliography issue this week. Which means we are almost finally done with Volume 22. JDR Banquet is this week and we'll find out who won staff member of the year (my pick would be Larry if I had one) and which 6 of us will be published next year as student notes. This also determines which 6 (or 5 if I'm published) of you JDR members will get to be bugged by me next year as authors instead of ME's or whatever job you will be doing. Fun fun fun. I am curious though to see if people who really tried hard and cared about note writing get what they deserve (yes Larry and Xavier and whoever else I missed in this category, you deserve to get published). Classes were kind of blah, but our second evidence paper was interesting. Binary elimination of hearsay exceptions, which is silly but March Madness was in season and it did help me and probably many others learn just what the hearsay exceptions were. The third and final writing assignment even more silly as we have to take a movie or book or TV show and use the plot to bring up how evidentiary issues would come up at trial. Not nearly as much educational value but we need a fun assignment right before finals or else people would go BAT-CRAZY (as if they don't already).

The weekend was good, very relaxing in Marietta. Spent all weekend at Kelley's grandparents' house, but did spend Friday night with Sarah and Kelley at Pastor Steve's place. He has this Burmese Mountain Dog who is the most adorable huge dog you've ever seen. Chip had a lot of fun bouncing around his legs and playing with the big guy. We chatted it up over pizza and quality beer (Steve is quite the conissour of dark beers) before playing the Wii that we brought over for the weekend. Steve is quite the character as he is a young divorced pastor who is not afraid to talk straight to you. I'm sure he would put off quite a few more traditional Lutherans with his ways, but the man is young and he has to live you know. He just wouldn't fit in the Missouri Synod (but then other than my Dad, who does?). Easter Sunday at church amuses me...300 people packed in at our church which is double normal. Communion took FOREVER but I finally took communion with my wife for the first time ever (she hardly ever takes it because she plays background music during communion usually and I am hardly ever at church anymore...so you can figure it out). The grandparents sent us home with our usual hefty helpings of leftovers from the Easter feast and another hefty plate of guilt trip (we hate to see you go etc...Kelley's more than used to it though). Another successful weekend of relaxation though.

And finally, let's get to the subject everybody seems so eager to talk about: Brian and the Newark trip. First, let me say that while I do not intend to ever work with Brian again on anything professional or not...I hold no ill will towards him. He has some problems (whatever they may be) that he needs to work out and I hope that someday he does get everything straight. I'm not patient enough (unlike some of my other friends) to deal with him, and I also feel like I'm in a unique position because very few if any of you will spend 3 straight constant days with him with no breaks. So perhaps my view is extreme because extreme things happen when you spend that kind of time in close quarters. If you have ever read the great existential novel No Exit (Huis Clos) by Jean Paul Sartre, you'll have an appreciation for why this kind of thing happens.

In response to some of the comments, I do have a few things to say. First this is my personal blog and I will air whatever I feel like here, you do not need to read it and I do not expect you to (unless you are stalking me in which case you need to find someone more interesting to stalk). That being said, I state the facts as I see them and I will not sugar coat things...but I also refuse to make truly petty and senseless attacks on colleagues. I vented for two and a half hours to create that last lengthy entry and I was perfectly OK with the world after that. You'll understand that I did not want to relive the weekend over and over to my many friends, so I told them to check the blog. Most of them did, and some told their friends. It's law school so word spreads. If you read this entry as offensive, you either (i) do not know Brian well enough, (ii) do not know me well enough, or (iii) don't understand what a vent on a blog is for. Simple as that. I've heard the gamut from "I was offensive and petty" to "I was nice" in my representation of how Brian can be. But that misses the point either way. This blog is a factual recollection of law school that I plan to look back on later. Making what I consider to be one of the worst weekends of my law school career (when it should have been one of the happiest) sound peachy keen is just plain wrong.

Thanks to all you friends and unknowns who support the common sense in the blog. Some of you did get petty and out of control with your comments and I have to say something about that. People think they are invincible and invisible when commenting anonymously on these blogs, so perhaps my only sin in the matter is opening up the door for all of you to make comments that degrade or attack Brian unfairly. But that's your perogative and the attacks on my "ethics" or "professionalism" for the blog entry itself should be directed at the real problem. That being the practice of people not having the balls to say what they truly feel and sign their name to it. I'm not ashamed of what I wrote because it is how I feel and Brian should know that. It is unfair to hide my true feelings from him and talk behind his back...but don't get me wrong I am just as guilty as many other Section 1-2 people from last year in talking about Brian and Pamela. Nevertheless I will tell these people how it is and like one anonymous poster who had a little class eventually after wrongfully personally attacking my wife (nice low move my friend) in a previous comment..."we agree to disagree." Better words could not have been spoken. I do not think Brian is commenting on here, but if he is more power to him.

Responding directly where it needs to be done:
1. "you should be ashamed of yourself." - And so should you for not signing your name to the comment.
2. "stating that a colleague has a mental illness on your diary might be a tantrum worthy of a 3-4 year old" - Number 1, there's a big difference (and you'd know that if you knew me) between having a screw loose and true mental illness. I do think he has problems to work out and I have a lack of words to adequately describe it, but I also in my rage of blogging that day made it clear I do not think mental illness is to be joked about. There's no joke when it comes to Brian. Just cold hard facts. If you find them funny, that's your perogative. Number 2, you need to back down the silly comments if you don't have the balls to sign it. I would actually respect you and would agree to disagree if you were not so cowardly.
3. "BAS and Dave can both seem pompous at times." - Well welcome to law school. Just be happy you did not meet high school Dave, who should've had a ego-trip blog back in the day.
4. "impressed with the implications of a psychology minor" - Hmmm. I almost shut down comments because you people were getting so petty and personal and stupid. It hurt to watch, and again you want to attack my wife...say it to my face or her face.
5. Of course I hold back some opinions I have of law school people and events. Some things should never see the light of day, while others such as last weekend deserve to be spoken. Not only is a moot court competition weekend a once (or twice) in a lifetime opportunity, I gave Brian my apology and he continued to make an issue of things. He pushed me too far so I wouldn't cry too hard for him. In a way he brought whatever I wrote on himself.
6. "rodney king" - nice. I hope you go on all kinds of blogs and make that same comment because I'm certain you will find crazy petty little fights on half the blogs out there today. And who doesn't like a little more Rodney King in their lives?
7. "I can assure you that none of the comments have been from Brian." - Care to share how you have this nugget of knowledge? Are you some god who can pierce the veil of the anonymous tag? If so, you are a god.
8. Furthermore, I am not surprised at the readership. It's law school. I don't know about any dismay other than those of you who don't have the guts to come face to face with me, someone who indeed has the balls to say how I truly feel. I do not care if you do not read my blog or comment on it, as really before this post only 10 of the probably 100 people who read it this week had read it before and only 5 people regularly. That's just fine with me.
9. I can barely respond to the rest of that comment, as it is just so spineless and senseless. Plus the next comment said more eloquently than I ever could how you are wrong about your high and mighty ethics. "I am not going to give you favorable treatment in our contacts beyond Moritz in the legal community." Who the f^%$ do you think you are? You will probably have no professional contact with me outside of this school because I am in such a narrow field that maybe 3% of our graduates will go into. I have no idea what you think your unfavorable views of me will do, but it certainly will not affect my legal career. But whatever. You want to act all high-and-mighty and pretend like you have a say in my life, go ahead.
10. And finally, yes rampant use of alcohol and illegal substances is bad. Now that we have that cleared up...

You may continue to comment on that old thread if you wish, but it is yesterday's news and nobody has the balls to come out against me in person because they know I was not attacking Brian and I really was in no way unethical or unprofessional. So that's that. Shut the book on Brian. I'm finished with that.

Have a good week, and don't GO CRAZY over outlines and upcoming exams for god's sakes! No reason to have an insanity outbreak.

One final note: our evidence professor has a lot of respect from me. He's buying a round of drinks (alcoholic or non-alcoholic, whatever your pleasure) for whomever wants to join him at the end of our evidence exam. No exam talk allowed. Now that's what I call a good idea, get the people rested up a little bit and get them to take a short break from the rigors of law school exams. Should be good for the mental health of all involved.

Bowling Semifinals and Gibbons Weekend

Well that was quite a week. Not one of my favorites, but certainly one of the most memorable. Part of that comes from STILL having that damn cough with no other cold symptoms. It is just irritating to have to medicate something like that. But that is the least of my worries.

This week in classes was short and not that notable. Doing some JDR final formats in the meantime and those are no fun...but now I can rip through them. We get to bowling a little late this week and got limited practice, but one of our opponents showed up late with no practice anyway. We are in a bracket style so we played against Bart and Avonte and Jen and who's that other person....oh that's right Christie! And she showed up this time (we beat them in a close 3-0 in the regular season and she did not show up). Kelley was on top of her game, getting a 168 I think game one with another opening turkey in a game. We bowled great the first game and good the second, but neither game was really close as Penal Servitude was not bowling well. Bart was in the 150's with a 175 AVG, Avonte was 30 pins off AVG...that just buried them. Here were the other results:

(16) Bring Clovis Back def. (9) Imwinklereids
(4) MFR Minus Judas def. (5) Penal Servitude
(14) Pinning The Blame def. (11) Jim & The Holograms
(2) Enlightening Strikes def. (10) Elvis Lives

So we have finally broken the string of losses in the Elite eight and will be battling in the Final 4 next Wednesday. Four very good teams remain. Our matchup with Clovis gives us a chance to avenge our two losses to them in the regular season (we are 23-7 in 10 weeks, but 1-5 against them. So 22-2 when not bowling this opponent). Clovis is the only 3L team lef tin the field and they won it last spring. Pinning The Blame is definitely a cinderella in this madness (2L's like us) and will be hard pressed to beat the always tough professor team. Nevertheless, any one of these teams could win it all. I'm personally still looking for my first good week since January, and now would be a great time to get my game back.

Please Bill Browne of Clovis, stop rolling 200 games against us. It really stings :-)

Then it was time for Gibbons, the Seton Hall moot court intramural competition in Newark NJ with Dustin (a 3L) and Brian (a 2L). Now I'll say this once and I'll say it loud and clear so you can understand my position: I was NOT HAPPY to be stuck on this team with a topic I don't care at all for and Brian on my team (hoping for 3L's) as well as having to be away from my wife on her birthday AND missing the Barrister's Ball on her birthday. What a whammy. So that's your background.

I'm also going to put this disclaimer at the top: if you are one of my teammates and you read my blog, I would recommend you stop reading this entry here. I am venting and I'm not going to be pleasant. So take whatever I say with a grain of salt if you must read on, and don't come complaining to me if you don't like what I say in MY PERSONAL BLOG.

Let's start before the competition even began. We probably doomed ourselves with our brief and none of us was too into writing it (Dustin spent 2 days on his part, I spent one long night, and I doubt Brian spent more than a few hours in his "busy schedule" that we all have). Dustin wrote what appears to be a straightforward 4th Amendment part, not going to win any awards but not bad either. My part was OK but I was calling for the Supreme Court to explicitly make a new 8th Amendment test (a bold move in this kind of competition) and our brief was very unique from all the other petitioner briefs thanks to this. But again, not the best written product I could come up with. Brian's part of the brief was a joke. I reformatted all I could and fixed as many typos as possible, but we were like every other team and had a bunch of typos. I don't think that made a difference, but it probably put us at a slight disadvantage since brief scores were half of the prelim round score.

So I get to the airport Thursday and the wife drops me off because she's sweet like that. I got held up at security because some dumbass old white guy needed hand-wanding after failing the metal detector and he was impatient and started screaming at the TSA agent to get him through security. Not a good idea. She screams for a supervisor and I thought they were going to take this guy down as dramatic as this was. But they finally got the line moving and this guy off to the side so the rest of us could get to our gates. This guy ended up on our small plane too, go figure. I do not take elderly white gentlemen with tempers as security threats, so no worries. Dustin just beat me to the gate and Brian showed up right before boarding. Dustin's the kind of guy who wears his suit on the plane so that he only carries a very small suitcase and briefcase. I on the other hand checked a big suitcase and had a backpack because I don't wear anything on the plane I don't want terribly wrinkled and sweat through (planes are a little warm with the close quarters, and yes I turn the air thing on myself the whole flight...one jetstram of air doesn't cut it but it does make it bearable). The school somehow managed to put us all in the same row both directions in a small jet (1 seat on one side, two on the other). I had the loner seat on the way to Newark which was nice because I'm large enough to make it uncomfortable if I have to sit next to a similar person but not uncomfortable if I'm by myself or next to a small person. The descent into Newark was 20 minutes of hell turbulence, and I'm betting more than half the people had their sick bags out whether or not they were using them. I've got the iron stomach but it bothered even me a little after a while. Took a taxi to the Hilton and got all checked in to the rooms. Dustin won the most important lucky battle of the weekend when the school put him in a single room while Brian and I had to put up with each other in a double. There were two big beds though, so that was a big plus. The Hilton was across the street from Seton Hall law and was attached to Newark Penn station, so we did not have to walk more than across the street to get anywhere we wanted to go in Newark.

We decided to walk around though and grab some lunch after we all got settled. Not very much around really but we did find a deli that would do the job. I got a good Italian type sandwich and some surprisingly good buffalo wings while the other gents got sandwiches of some sort and chips. Went back to the hotel where we decided to stay the remainder of the day Thursday. So let the long weekend with Brian begin. I watched some judge shows and ESPN, bought the internet on my computer which we decided to share, and worked on JDR final formatting and planning to schedule my classes for next year all through the afternoon and early evening while Brian took a 3 hour nap. Finally Dustin got hungry so we ordered in some New York style pizza and once it was delivered we decided to eat in Dustin's room and watch the NBA game that was on (Bulls-Pistons). Dustin went to MSU for undergrad and is a big Pistons fan, while Brian is a huge Cavaliers fan and the three teams are fighting closely for the top 2 seeds in the East. I'm a Knicks fan so I was just cynical but they were cheering for different interests. The side salads, garlic bread, and pizza were good but nothing amazing to shout home about. New York style cannot even compare in my opinion to Chicago deep dish anyways. So anyways after talking basketball and our different interests for a while, we somehow got into a discussion of CEO high salaries and labor unions and just generally business in America today. Brian is hard core labor union because his dad is a factory worker at Goodyear in a small town, Dustin is the son of a businessman and small company CEO and is pro business, I am moderate as usual because my family is very blue-collar like Brian but I will be a shareholder someday and will be on the other side. This debate or discussion lasted over 2 hours. I enjoy political or social debate and basically played the role of hard economics (showing why CEO's earning so much is not a huge deal and why labor unions are OK at the same time...shareholders and workers are always in an inevitable struggle over company profits and that will not change. Dustin and Brian just happen to be on opposite sides of the fence. Dustin tried to get to the heart of Brian's argument (which like everything else Brian says...is based completely on conjecture and anecdote instead of actual knowledge or expereince) and at one point Dustin noted that Brian's argument hinged on what their definition of a healthy economy is. Dustin thinks it is money changing hands and commerce and trade at a high level (nobody sitting on their money), while Brian thinks it is a zero unemployment rate. Dustin said that this part of Brian's argument was a lot like communism in that everybody should have a job for a healthy economy. Brian took all kinds of offense because he could not understand what dustin was saying. He bitched about this all weekend and pretty much barely talked to Dustin the reminder of the weekend, only when necessary. "Nobody ever called me a communist before!" Jeez. I heard him talking to his Mom on the phone that night and I'm OK probably just because my grandfather lost his pension to a corrupt factory and my parents are blue collar, but Dustin is just a "privileged never-worked in his life CEO's son." Ugh, if you want to have a for-fun intellectual discussion with Brian about anything but his expertise which is history, don't bother. He will have some biased view and take something you say completely wrong and degrade to personal attacks because he has to be right. He's naive and better than thou in these situations.

Brian self-depreciates A LOT and it really gets irritating. "Oh I am hogging the TV, you take the remote (when I'm clearly not paying attention to the TV and don't care)." "Oh I'm hogging the internet and your computer" (and to be fair he was checking his email for an hour and a half but we were splitting the internet...but don't say that and then keep checking your email for another half hour)." "I shouldn't have spent 3 hours in Dustin's room doing nothing when I haven't even written my argument yet, I just shouldn't have done that." This was getting on my nerves thursday night, but whatever. I talked to Tom on the phone fresh back from his honeymoon and we shared bitching stories to each other (Heather had a minor injury and incident on their way to the Caribbean but she's OK now while I was complaining about this weekend and the Philly trip). And then Kelley of course as well. I just sat out in the hall and avoided the room because I knew Brian would be working on his argument and I did not want to listen to him. I could not answer his questions or help him because I did not know the 4th amendment part of our case very well and that was his argument.

Let me take a sidebar here to complain some more about Brian. When you sign on to be on a moot court team, YOU SACRIFICE A LITTLE FOR THE TEAM. I'm not asking for a lot, but a good faith effort would be nice and we did not get that from him. When we wrote the brief Dustin and I said we will be done on Saturday so Brian could have a weekend to get the rest done and we could review it Monday through Wednesday and send it out because it was due on the Friday. Well Brian kept saying "i don't have time and I'm so busy when I know I'm more busy than him back then." I stayed up ALL NIGHT to meet my deadline so we could stay on schedule and he just put it off until THE DAY BEFORE IT WAS DUE. Then I had to frantically fix what I could because we did not have time for a good review and Brian still had to overnight it to Newark. Maybe our brief was late and that's why we lost, but maybe it wasn't. I e-filed it with the competition director and we had serious issues because Brian had to convert everything to his Wordperfect. SUCK IT UP AND USE MS WORD. You are welcome to use Wordperfect all you want but not when the competition directors tell you they seriously prefer MS Word. Then it's really hard to moot with our coach the week before or moot at all the day before when we had plenty of time to because YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR ARGUMENT PREPARED UNTIL 1 AM THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ACTUAL COMPETITION!!! What the f%^# do you have going on that is so important that you basically sabotage the team by making it impossible for us to ever practice? Honestly...if you are on Brian's team next year get on him early or else you will not be able to practice or fix your brief adequately or anything that is VITAL to succeeding in a moot court competition. Yeah I was not prepared until a week before the competition, but at least I was practicing with Dustin and Professor Berman on our 8th Amendment issue and at least I gave us the opportunity to be prepared as a team. So we went into competition with no idea how Brian would do.

Friday we did not have to rush because competition check in was not until 1:45 and the first round was at 3:15. Got some Subway with Brian then met Dustin and our coach and waited around in Seton Hall forever while every other team showed up and checked in. Nothing at this competition was run very quickly, but oh well. The first round we were against Brooklyn, a couple of tall guys in power suits. Dustin was a little nervous and you could tell but he gave a solid argument overall and dealt with questions well. I then went and I thought I did well (I was the only one of the four who didn't appear flustered or nervous in my opinion and the judges did not say anything to me about that afterwards). The Brooklyn guys both started very strongly and confidently and I originally thought we were getting beat badly. But then the court stopped asking questions to both of them halfway through and both got terribly flustered for the whole second half (not answering the few questions well and not seeming prepared to go into their argument points again). Our coach and the other team thought we blew them away, but the judge comments were a little rough on both teams. The irritating thing was the judges were mis-attributing things that happened to the wrong person (I accidentally "blew through the zero" which means when my time was up I did not ask the court for permission to go on until after they asked their next question, but the judges said Dustin did that...one guy on the other team left 2 minutes on the clock and that was an error attributed by a judge to me). So the judges screwed us a little but still my only real bad comment (other than blowing through the zero) was my demeanor because they did not think I should be smiling. That's how I keep a confident and colloquial tone with the court and I just smile up there. Sorry. We still think we beat Brooklyn regardless.

After another 2 hour wait, it was time for the second and final first round argument against Widener (in Harrisburg PA): Brian and Dustin against two ladies. We blew them away. The first girl got very angry and was practically shouting answers to the judges and both ladies made AWFUL concessions which in real life would have given the case away. The judges were rough this round though as far as questioning and really hit them super-hard though. Brian gave a pretty good argument for not being prepared and I only had 3 complaints. He said I/We a few times but I think everybody was guilty of this from time to time so minor point. He looked down a lot at the beginning but was not reading (clearly he knew what he was saying but just had to look down at his notes to be confident I guess), and this is a big moot no-no. He said he changed his plan when he saw how bad the first girl was but you probably should not stray from whatever plan you have in your first oral argument of the day. The biggest problem with his argument was that with 4 minutes left the court threw him the biggest "softball" (which is moot court lingo for a question that's so easy you just hammer it out of the park and it strengthens your argument) about one of the 2-3 key cases in our argument. Brian kept deflecting the question by going back to his argument instead of directly answering and the court kept asking which made me want to pull my hair out. Nevertheless it was still a pretty decent first argument of the day for him (and I felt like I could not really criticize him because he would self-depreciate so much it would make me sick and he wouldn't get better). Dustin then gave a pretty flawless argument to finish the day. The judges were complementary of both teams (too much so) but gave more credit to Dustin and our team which seemed appropriate considering we slaughtered them in our opinion. Our coach who has done some moot court before thought we were in the top 16 for sure and her husband (also a moot court veteran) agreed, saying our arguments were solid and clearly better than both our opponents.

So Friday night was a banquet at a place called Don Pepe's which was across the street from Seton Hall and the Hilton Hotel. They offered a banquet dinner of seafood dishes and a decent open bar with a DJ playing some music on the tiniest little dance floor (but a couple crazy students got down). Dustin tested the bar's ability to make drinks and I wanted sweet drinks so I drank some Black Russians (yum yum chocolate flavor) while Brian got ONE glass of wine. Remember he is uber-religious and not Lutheran, so this was heavy drinking to him even though we all had 2 full plates of seafood. We were sitting with the team from Wisconsin, so we had a good time talking basketball and Big Ten campuses. As I said, our coaches were guaranteeing we would make it...which of course led me to worry that our brief or something would bring us down. Well finally around 11 they announced the 16 teams moving on to Saturday and surprise...we're not in it. Neither is Brooklyn or Widener. Hmmm. Some of the judges were around and the ones from the second round were more than stunned that we did not make it because they say they watched 3 oral arguments and we were by far the best of the 6 teams they saw. Dustin got perfect scores from them!!! So what happened? Well it was either one of the worst briefs of all time or the judges graded us terribly in the first round. I just don't know and we could not compare to a team that made it since we did not compete against one. Disappointing, but we just said what the heck let's socialize. I actually convinced Brian to loosen up and have a second glass of wine (we would self-depreciate later of course) and go up to a couple of girls sitting off to a side table and talk to them. You don't get good at talking to girls without trying and failing first, so I was happy I got that going. One of the girls even gave him a number (and though it may be fake, it's something more than usual and a start). Dustin and I talked to a couple interesting people from Virginia Law School, a handful of judges, and quite a few students. We ended up hanging out with the Widener ladies and the Virginia guys most of the reminder of the banquet. Bunch of 3L's (Brian and I were two of maybe 4-5 2L's in the room) ready to graduate and get on with their interesting life plans. Nice people though and it was a pleasure.

It was kind of a win-win situation though because we may have gotten the better of the deal not having to wake up for a 9 AM octofinal argument, instead getting an all-expenses paid day to spend in New York City. Brian and I went into the city while Dustin spent all day with his family who lives in Hoboken NJ. I'd never spent any time in NY other than taxi-cabbing through Manhattan on the way to and from our honeymoon cruise, and Brian had never been in New Jersey let alone NY. We'll call Saturday Mr. Smith goes to New York. I was a little nervous because I did not really know what I was doing, but I had a map of Manhattan and the subway system with us and we figured out the NJ train system which got us into Manhattan quickly. We started by going down to battery park and saw the Statue of Liberty from Manhattan (which is far away but oh well). Then we walked up through financial district to Ground Zero which we walked all the way around. It's finally looking like they are done setting a foundation and will be building the Freedom Tower soon (supposed to be done in 4 years). Still it's just creepy with this gigantic hole in the city. Also saw the neat little church right by the site that somehow survived the WTC collapse despite being 250 years old and grabbed some actual NYC pizza (huge pieces of thin crust delight). Hopped the subway back up north to Central Park and spent a couple hours there walking, people watching, and viewing a lot of rollerblading and ice skating. Saw the infamous Trump building as well, and the man has some primo real estate right there at the corner of Central Park. Hiked back out of Central Park in the late afternoon and subway-ed down to Times Square then. Wow that place is ridiculous. I could spend days just shopping at all the good stores in the area, let alone do touristy type things. We went in Virgin Megastore and a couple sports apparel stores. Finally it was about 5:30 and we wanted to track down a sports bar to watch the OSU game. Dave and Busters was not too busy (just like Gameworks for you Columbus people) and we got a table right in front of a couple plasma TV's). Had a nice steak dinner because we had plenty of school compensation per diem to spend and a couple beers. The game was awesome as the Buckeyes always seemed pretty much in control despite Greg ODen hitting the bench with 2 fouls in the first 3 minutes of the game. Big ol Roy Hibbert just isn't that good and for some inexplicable reason Georgetown forgot about Jeff Green. Whatever. Lots of Georgetown people in the bar and they were loud and boisterous so we got little loud and boisterous to give equal time. Rushed back through subway and train to the hotel after our game and made it back in time to see about half of the first half of Florida-UCLA. Then we just crashed in front of the game and eventually went to bed. I turned down the TV when Brian went to bed and he was like "no no don't turn it down I like to hear a little TV in the background." Then 20 minutes later Sportscenter finally came on when I was getting ready to pack and so I upped the volume almost unnoticeably so I could hear over my packing because I had it down so low. "NO NO NO We cannot have that TV loud like that Dave, we're getting up in 6 and a half hours and we cannot sleep with that." WTF? I was making more noise packing anyways than the TV ever was and I made especially sure to make some noise packing the remainder of my stuff before going to bed. You want to be an ass, I can be an ass.

The two things other than the self depreciating which continued all day Saturday while he followed me... ("I really got ripped off on that disposable camera" when he paid 10 or 12 dollars for a camera in a tourist trap city...I thought it wasn't that bad a deal) ("I'm spending so much money I shouldn't on this trip" when he spent 70-80 dollars all day and 50 of that was on food he is getting reimbursed for entirely, the remainder being souvenirs and subway/train fare which could not have cost more than 25-30 dollars).

1. Copious amounts of bitching about NYC. "I would never be able to live here. Everything is overpriced. There's nothing green in this city. I hate putting my hands on anything or touching anyone, especially on the Subway because everything is just so dirty. That subway car smelled like someone died in it. People stand too close to you. Street Peddlers need to get out of your face. I don't understand why anyone would come to Times Square for New Year's or on a business day when it is too overcrowded. Etc. Etc. Etc." All damn day.

2. If the self-depreciation was not bad enough, Brian annoyed the shit out of me even more Saturday and Sunday by doing something that I think indicates he's got something a little off in the brain. I kept saying things that I knew about certain aspects of New York City or kep making observations and then 2-5 minutes later he would say it back to me like he was telling me something I did not already know. The first couple of times this happens I'm like whatever but it happened probably 15-20 times throughout the day Saturday. I'll give you a couple examples. We were watching ice skaters in Central Park and Brian does not know much about Zambonis and hockey (which I follow somewhat). So I told him how an outdoor ice rink stays frozen in the warmer days and that hockey is more interesting in person than on TV. 4 minutes later he says "you know Dave I bet hockey games are a lot more interesting in person" and then parroted back some other things I'd said about hockey. Another example is when we were in Times Square and I was looking for MTV because that's the only building I could not see right away. I told him let's walk up the street here and MTV should be somewhere up there where they tape TRL. We walk up half a block and run right into MTV basically at which point Brain says "Hey there's that MTV building. You know they tape that total request live show there?" One more for posterity: Brian kept bitching about spending money (when we did not spend much at all) and so on and I kept telling him every time he brought it up that all the food was covered so we did not spend that much. Sunday we are standing at the airport waiting on baggage to arrive and he turns to me and says "you know Dave I did not really spend that much because I'll be able to get 50 dollars back from the school for yesterday and subway/train fares and souvenirs were not that much."

I say this delicately because I do not think it is right to make fun of people with legitimate mental conditions (other than the stereotypical things comedians make fun of). I really cannot help but think there's some screw loose when you parrot back facts to me like you are telling me something profound or something you knew already when I'm the only person with you and I told you said facts a few minutes ago. I don't know what it is but it just does not seem right. If something truly is wrong I cannot say anything to him because he would probably think I was attacking him and nothing would come of it. I don't really care too much but man did it irritate the everloving shit out of me Saturday.

So now we come to Sunday, and Brian messed up the clock in the room somehow (it kept time just fine the previous 2 nights) and it was an hour early and so woke us up at 6:25 AM. So we go back to sleep because we have until 8 (or since Brian has to pack he was getting up earlier than 8). Around 8 my phone alarm goes off and I get up and turn the TV on loudly. Brian is not moving. So I yell at him to get up if we want to make the 8:30 shuttle and he gets going (grumpily) and somehow gets everything packed up frantically. He ends up forgetting a binder with competition info in it which he complains about Sunday despite only losing a $1 binder and a Hilton Hotels pen he wanted to keep. So whatever, should have packed carefully the night before. In the shuttle ride to the airport we get to talking about basketball a little bit and then career services...and then Brian just snaps. "Why do you two always have to be so disagreeable...I'm so sick of listening to you two put me down and disagree with everything that comes out of my mouth for 4 days." WHAT THE F%$#?!?!? The only disagreements I had with him were when Dustin and him had a big falling out over the stupid Thursday night labor/CEO chat (I took the common sense economics view that CEO's giving up a 10 million dollar salary is irrelevant to workers because if distributed to workers it would only net about $1000 a year (a dinky raise) for each worker. He just lumped me in with Dustin and snapped. The most recent disagreement (and the only other big one) was over career services because Dustin thinks OSU career services can help people sometimes because they did help him and he transferred from Capital where career services is even worse. Brian was randomly bitching about how OSU must hate their students because only 3 firms come to OSU for on campus interviewing in the spring and he had to do his job searching all by himself etc. I said I'm not happy the one callback out of 8 that I got an offer from was OCI instead of Loyola Patent Law Program (because I feel like it gives me a lot less right to complain about what I consider to be an inadequate career services office, especially with respect to IP people). So how exactly am I disagreeing with him? Because I don't think spring OCI matters because all these firms have all their people and they only want the top people anyways? Whatever.

So at the airport Brian bitches about another minor delay (handicapped person this time) when we got to the front of the security checkpoint line, then we got into the terminal with over an hour to spare. Brian kept saying "this airport better have some good places to eat, some real warm breakfast food." So we meet up with Dustin and Brian says this again, but Dustin points out that there was a grill place right beside our gate and nothing else in our small leg of the terminal. THEY HAD BREAKFAST SANDWICHES AND HASH BROWNS AND ORANGE JUICE etc at this cafe, although they were also starting to prep lunch Dustin said (Cheesesteaks and fries). Brian said "I don't want any damn cheesesteak" and storms off to another leg of the terminal. OK whatever, I went and got a Ceasar salad and some fries for myself and sat with Dustin chatting up the basketball some more and the competition and what we each did with our free day Saturday. So Brian comes back like a half hour later with a McDonald's bag and cup. As he's walking up I say "hey you found civilization" jokingly and Dustin says "what did you get from McD's?" Brian snaps back "a Big Mac, obviously because everyone gets those with ORANGE JUICE!" At this point I was so sick of them that I just mouthed off that "yeah of course we get Big Macs with OJ" and Dustin backed off, saying "man I cannot see through the bag and I did not see you had OJ." He ate his egg mcmuffin and hash browns and then stormed off again. Could've got what was probably a better version of the same thing 30 seconds away but whatever. I seriously considered going to the ticket counter and make them give me the $300 travel voucher to fly later in the day because they overbooked and this was their offer. As it turns out I really should have because I knew Brian and I were sitting next to each other.

On the plane Dustin and I just sat with Brian between us and we both put in headphones and listened to our MP3's. What made it so unbearable was that we sat in the plane seats for 40 minutes because the plane had engine trouble and they had to check it out before we left while we were trapped in our tiny plane. So it became an indetemrinably long 2.5 hours in that seat next to Brian. Then when the plane finally got to gate in Columbus Brian does that asshole thing where he jumps up out of the seat and rushes past 4-5 rows of people to get off the plane faster. Whatever. Dustin and I waited our turn and then he had to wait for his small bag planeside so I said my goodbyes to him there (it was easier without Brian anyways) and then went to baggage claim. Brian was giving me a ride home and so I don't know why he decided to rush to baggage claim without me but whatever. So we get to his car and we go to my place, which seemed to take forever because he bitched me out some more for being disagreeable. We made nice (which means I apologized for whatever offended him and then he bitched some more) and finally we got to my place. I thanked him for the ride, went inside my apartment, and screamed in frustration. How can someone be so narrow-minded and backwards yet claims to be offended because you disagree with him when he is wrong. I don't go out of my way to be mean and I have lots of friends at law school (he may be the only person who truly dislikes me nad it is just inexplicable because even if I don't see eye to eye with someone I am so easy going and laid back it usually does not matter). I just cannot explain it.

I'm so happy that we cannot be on the same team next year. Good riddance sir. you were a terrible teammate and a pretty terrible person all weekend and yet I was just going to let it go and not say much in my blog. But you snap at me like a psycho and I'm going to vent. That's how it goes.

So apparently moot court preference forms for next year's teams went out late last week I hear and I also hear the IP team got nixed. I'm going to fight my ass off to get it back because I'm certain there are many other competitions that do not have 2 people first picking it over national team and ABA (the prestigious teams). IP does. The coach Professor Lee wants to coach the team again and we want to do it, so I'm fighting for it. But even if that does not work out, next year will be SO MUCH BETTER than this year. An all expenses paid trip to spend 4 straight days and 3 nights in a hotel room with Brian...hoo-ray thanks for the kick in the nuts Moritz. It's my fault for giving the worst oral argument of my life selection round night in January, and I cannot believe I still made a team...but oh well. I've got a new friend in Dustin for sure.

Scheduling is this week. I've got contingencies and all that and guarantee I will have no Thursday and Friday classes all of next year. This should give me plenty of time to study for and pass the patent bar and the PMBR (professional responsibility exam we all have to pass) as well as follow my extracurricular pursuits such as bowling, JDR executive editor, and moot court. I love law school schedules...

Well I guess that was another book-length entry, but I needed to vent and you probably enjoy when I do. so have a good week and we'll see you sometime soon!