I Got a Haircut

I told the barber to make me look like I was a detective in the 50's, but at the same time to make sure I didn't look ridiculous in the present.  I couldn't take any decent pictures of it, so I'm not going to post a picture.  Really, I tend to like my hair a bit longer.  It works for the show, that's the important thing.

I got my very very slight October cold this week.  It hasn't been bad at all, but since I rarely get sick whenever I even have a little sniffle I feel the need to drown myself in Nyquil and Sudafed.  I feel much better now, though the last few weeks of any musical production always start to really wear me out in general.  Of course, the last few weeks of rehearsal are also the most fun, because that's when you get to be really active and creative.  It's a balancing act.  Opening night is two weeks from today! (I should really finish memorizing my lines....)

Everything else has been going pretty great.  Classes have been hitting some high points lately as we've been getting to some more advanced beginner stuff.

To close this brief update, I just wanted to add that I'm glad I've been able to keep in pretty good touch with all of my non-DC/law school friends since I've been here.  You have the ability to turn a good day into a great day with a well-timed text or instant message.  Special thanks to Kay, Brian, and Absi for some especially good ones this week.

There, out in the darkness...

This weekend was excellent.  I won't talk much about Thursday and Friday, beyond saying that on Thursday I was mistaken for a Latino (... really?) and on Friday I had Innocence Project training and went to the best GGSS party so far.  The guy whose house we went to used to be a bartender or something, and he had all of the most professional-looking ingredients that you could possibly have.  It was more like chemical engineering than drink mixing, and it was awe inspiring.  In general, I've found it amazing how accomplished everyone is at everything here.  If someone pulls out a guitar, they actually know how to play it REALLY well.  If someone sits down at a piano, it's a safe bet that you can start a three-hour singalong.  If someone mentions offhand that they used to do pageants, it'll turn out that they were legitimately in the Miss America pageant representing an entire state.  

You were a physics major in undergrad?  Oh, you worked for Fermilab.  Of course you did.  

Also on Friday our director surprised us with beer and cupcakes before rehearsal.  

Aren't we a fun cast?  We're a fun cast.  

The perspective of the shot also makes it looks like I have an enormous hand.

On Saturday morning, like on most Saturday mornings, I had no plans for Saturday evening besides doing homework.  This quickly changed due to Mike's Three Laws of Law School:

1.  Mike will do all his law school homework but will never use it as an excuse not to do something else.

2.  Mike will accept all fun-sounding social invitations, except where such invitations would make the application of the First Law absolutely impossible.

3.  Mike will protect his sleep schedule, as long as such sleep does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.  

So while building something in set crew, one of the girls in the cast asked if anyone would like to go see Les Mis with her and some other people because she had an extra ticket.  For free.  At the Kennedy Center.  I raised my hand and offered to fight anyone who wanted to go more than I did. 

Two minutes later I got a text from Wallace Hornady saying he'd be in DC all afternoon.  I went home, took a shower, put on some theater clothes, and booked it to Chinatown where I met Hornady and Chris L. for dinner before heading over to the show.  

I've wanted to see Les Mis since I first heard the soundtrack sometime during Freshman year of college.  I sang the Stars for my audition for Curtains.  My expectations were extremely high, and I was not disappointed at all.  The set was amazing, the cast was great, they did things with integrated scenic projection that I didn't think were remotely possible (internal monologue: "What's Javert doing on that ledge?  There's no trap door... he's not wearing a harness... NO WAY! WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?").  

After the requisite post-show drink and discussion, I made it back to the apartment around two and got right to sleep in order to start building sets again this morning.  And now it is time for that homework I've been planning on doing... yay learning.    

But before I go, I'm just going to leave this right here....

"Even a Gorilla can Learn Torts!"

Well this week has been pretty darn easy.  Having turned in the memo on Monday evening, I then had one class on Tuesday, one class on Wednesday, and I just finished my two classes today.  Thank you, Columbus Day.

In the evenings of each of the past few days, of course, I've done nothing but homework for the next day.  Usually I get most of it done over the weekend, but there was that memo, so....

I realize that I haven't posted any pictures from class.  This is obviously because it would be odd to take a picture in class.  There was one exception from today.

This is in Torts.  One of the guys had said a few weeks ago that he ran the Philadelphia marathon in a gorilla suit.  The professor told him to wear it to class one day.  He did, and so he got to deliver the procedural history of the case today.  

Also, I know I've mentioned this before, but I love that simply being in law school immediately gives me some sort of legal clout with all of my acquaintances.  I got a text message today from someone asking for help on a breach of contract issue.  I immediately told him that nothing I said could in any way be construed as legal advice but that I would look at it anyway because I enjoy running through hypotheticals.     

Well, one more minor piece of work to do for the week and then it's officially the weekend (which means time to do homework for next week and work on sets!).  I'm going to kick it off by going over to Ben L's before rehearsal since he made bread the other day and I have beer.  Seemed like a good combinations.  

Potluck (And Steaklunch for Dinner)

Friday night we had a "stumble-through" of Act 1, off book.  Did I have my lines learned?  Yes, yes I did.  How did I do it?  I invited Ben L., who is also in the play and makes wonderful homemade bread, over to run lines with me four hours before rehearsal.  Then we drank a lot of beer while running lines.  Apparently, beer is great for memorization.  I was the only lead who never had to call for a line.

Afterwards we had our standard crazy lawyer/theater-people party and then I went and hung out with Tyler Brown and Palmer, who was up visiting from Miami and told wonderful stories about being a real lawyer.

Saturday and Sunday mornings I spent most of my time in the parking garage at GGSS's designated set building area.  In the twelve hours total that I was there over the weekend, I build four eight by four by 18" towers, two four by three by 18" tower-toppers, and one window.  It has now been explained to me that my ability to identify powertools and hold them correctly means that I will most likely be forced into the position of master carpenter for the rest of my three years here.  Yay.  I quit being a tech director just so I could come to law school and be a tech director.

Saturday evening I went shopping and helped prepare for a potluck on Sunday evening being hosted by some other section five folks.  I chopped many herbs into very small pieces.  Then I chopped many raisins into very small pieces.  Then I chopped many carrots into less small but still very manageable pieces.  This was all put into a pie filling and used to create the most delicious Moroccan pie.  Also present at the potluck was the Korean equivalent to cheeseburgers:

If cheeseburgers were made of noodles and were super-spicy.  Everyone started out with hot apple cider to drink, and one by one the weak among us got up to get glasses of ice water. (I was among 

Asparagus with balsamic dressing and fresh-grated parmesan cheese. 

Because we're hipsters.

And pumpkin cupcakes.  Yum.

 And that's the Moroccan pie I helped with in the foreground.

Mmmm.... spicy food I don't understand.

After the potluck, Liadan and I introduced Firefly to Justin.  The show, not the drink.  Though both are good.

Today I spent all day working on a memo.  1600 word limit.  1600 words exactly after seven hours of sitting at my computer and citing a bunch of cases.  Since we're starting on Tuesday and ending on Thursday, this week should be pretty easy...

Steaklunch

I forgot everything else that I may have posted today, because Ben and I just finished up our first Steaklunch, and it was glorious.  We've been looking forward to this for... like, four days now.

This morning I woke up at seven AM and went on a six mile run, because you have to EARN Steaklunch.

After my run I pulled the steak out of the fridge and put it into a bag full of beer.  Because Steaklunch takes patience and forethought.  

Immediately after class Ben and I took a jaunty walk back to our room to turn the skillet to 11 and toss on the steak.  

While the steak was in the oven (after being seared) Ben showed me a new way to lightly char pita bread, which we then had with some hummus as a side dish.  Side dishes are very important in Steaklunch.

And here comes the steak!

Ben is so excited to start Steaklunch.  Note that we have beers.  For lunch.  The very beer with which we marinated the steak.  We would not normally have beer for lunch, but this, after all, is Steaklunch. Steaklunch is what exceptions were invented for.

And after a good Steaklunch, we had some frozen grapes.  Because that's how we do it.

Also I learned some law today.  But that was WAY less important.

Edit- I received a voicemail from Josh L. shortly after posting this.  I greatly appreciated his sentiments and he said I could transcribe it here:

"Hey Mike, I just wanted to call and congratulate you on your Steaklunch.  As a man, I feel like it's important every once in a while to reward yourself with the warm flesh of a cow.  And the way you prepared it and enjoyed your beers at lunch... I just felt like it deserved a personal congratulations.  I hope you proceed in all areas of your life in as manly a way as you have today."

Also, I just got out of Torts, where I won a copy of a book for being the most useful in class today.  I was voted most useful by the rest of the class through unanimous assent after one girl said "Mike wrote on the board today...." and then trailed off.  The only other nominee was Steve Jobs. 

"It's been a long Monday." "It's Tuesday." "Right."

So to preface, I just wanted to say that my thoughts are with all those who I care about who are having a crappy week.  There are multiple groups of people who that applies to, because apparently the start of this week was just not good for anyone.  Here's hoping next week will be better.

This guy is also having a bad week.  The car was parked on 395 right outside my window and just started burning for no particular reason.  No one was in the car.  Exciting and unexpected things happen on campus daily, it would seem.

Things have been relatively good up here in DC.  Ben and I got a shipment of food delivered from the grocery store today, and that is always like Christmas.  As a special treat we bought ourselves a big steak which we plan on having for lunch on Thursday, because steak is even better at times when you know for certain no one else is eating steak.

I've been trying to figure out some way to occupy myself in classes when people are asking questions that I don't care about.  I finally came up with a great game that should help with my case distillation process as well.  What I do is take the case and then figure out what the opening of CSI Miami might look like if the show were about that specific case....  Not that I've ever watched CSI Miami, but it has a classic formula which is easily adopted in this situation.  If you have never seen an opening one-liner for CSI Miami, go watch one and then come back.

Example: Leonard v. PepsiCo- a famous case in which a kid in 1996, upon seeing a "Pepsi Stuff" commercial featuring a Harrier Jet offered at "7,000,000 points" embarked on a quest to get 7 million points and hence the Harrier Jet.  When he actually did (he sort of cheated, but you'd have to) send in the points, Pepsi did not send him a Harrier Jet so Leonard took Pepsi to court alleging that the advertisement on TV clearly offered a Harrier Jet at 7,000,000 points.  The judge wrote a hilarious opinion in which she slowly explained, point by point, exactly why the commercial was not an offer and why no reasonable person could possibly take it seriously.  Here's how I boiled down the salient points, CSI style:

I'm going to pretend that this is going to help me study later.  The concept has already gotten some very favorable reviews from other people in class who want to take shots at writing their own for a study-guide compendium of CSI analyses of famous cases.  At least when I'm not paying attention in class I'm still doing something law related...

Went to a public interest dinner tonight and it was great- the panel was obviously very passionate about public interest and had lots of helpful things to say about how to go about it.  Also there was free food. I'm never going to turn down free food.

"I Laugh at Mike All Day"

The title of the post comes from another great zinger from my director.  I was telling a joke or something, and so someone was laughing.  The director just walks up and says "yeah, I laugh at Mike all day."  Love him.

The past couple of days have been very exciting.  Right after I posted my last blogpost, I found out that I had been accepted to work on a Case Team for the Innocence Project.  These are competitive spots, so I'm really lucky to have the opportunity to work on an actual case.  In addition, my case team is (as far as I know) the ONLY case team which has a brand NEW case this semester.  This means I don't have to deal with someone who already knows everything about the case and it also means I don't have to play catch-up.  I have no idea what I'll be doing with this, but I'm really excited and I'll have more info about it once it gets started in mid-October.

Also, I signed up to be a tour guide (after the show is over) because....  I'm incapable of saying no to things I am even marginally interested in, so why fight it?

Today was very exciting.  I was studying with my torts group when campus police started running around frantically telling everyone to get inside.  Already inside, we calmly walked to a stairwell- because if there's a reason to be inside, it probably doesn't hurt to get even more inside.  The text message emergency alerts started lighting up our phones:  "Armed person on campus, stay inside."  "Black mail (sic) armed with a firearm has been spotted on campus." We went up to the ninth floor study lounge to see if there was actually anything going on outside.  There was not.   Later, after receiving the "all clear," we got another e-mail explaining the following: "There was never a man armed with a rifle spotted on campus."  Well good, because I'm not sure why we would have ever thought that... aside from the multiple texts and e-mails.  Apparently there was a man spotted a few blocks away, so that was enough to put the campus on red alert.  I'm glad that our campus security is as efficient as it is, but I feel the incident was best summed up in a friend's facebook update: "There's a man who may or may not be black and who may or may not have a gun somewhere in Washington, DC.... SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING."

After that excitement, I got to attend my first moot court.  This, again, is where an advocate about to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court gets to argue the case in front of a mock panel of judges in a room that we built to replicate the Supreme Court almost exactly.  I sort of signed a confidentiality agreement so I'm not allowed to talk about anything that was actually said, but it was a solid two hours of mind-blowing intellectual gladiatorial combat.  Just when I think I'm starting to get some of this "law" stuff, I go to an event like this and remember that I have a long long way to go.

This evening was another good excuse for Ben and me to wrangle some people together and go out for happy hour sushi at our favorite (only) happy hour sushi place.  As always, a delicious decision.

Were you suddenly expecting good pictures?  That's not going to happen.

Afterwards I met Maria and some of her friends at another happy hour place, and then I went to rehearsal and then to the weekly cast party.  Tomorrow I have to get up a bit early and do some tech work.  Perhaps with power tools.  I thought I had given up that life, but it seems to follow me....

Really excellent week, overall.  No complaints.