Ready for some football.

It's been eight days since the last NFL action when we learned what the matchup of Super Bowl XXXIX would be. So for the first time since early September, we have gone mroe than a full week without an NFL game that counts for anything. Lucky for us, there's enough mass hysteria and coverage of the Super Bowl that no American citizen has to go more than about 45 seconds before finding some new tidbit of information about the big game.

On ESPN.com I found this article debating whether or not the current iteration of the Patriots should be considered a dynasty. The author debates the subject by comparing the team to what he calls the greatest dynasty of all time: the Ming Dynasty. Interesting strategy.

He consults an art curator from the Smithsonian (side note: I went to the museum of American History today with Scott, who was in town from NC. I didn't have a "D.C. moment" but it was a pretty incredible museum) to compare the two. Her quote: "Every dynasty has to have some product for public consumption, so I guess football is what the Patriots will leave behind."

This brings up a few thoughts: first, every football team leaves behind football, not just dynasties. The Patriots certainly play a successful type of football, but I don't see any lasting legacies from the team. As of now, they have appeared in the playoffs in three of the past four years, and have advanced to the Super Bowl in each of those years. It is certainly a good start, but they certainly have to sustain that success for several more years before leaving behind any type of lasting legacy, which would help their "dynasty" status. (by the way... Go Jets!)

The other point I thought of is how ridiculous it is for a reporter to compare a football team to a ruling order that controlled China for 276 years and built the Great Wall of China, one of the few human-built structures visible from space. I'm sorry, but Gillette Stadium doesn't quite compare to that. I am a huge sports fan and will be glued to the TV set on Sunday, but how much do we elevate sports in our culture today that a reporter would even consider writing an article like this? It's somewhat disturbing. I hope people don't take this idea too seriously. The accomplishments of a professional team cannot come close to that of a society and that team should not represent much more than the sport it plays.

Progress: it's a bitch

A fellow Mac dork sent me this link a little while ago showing Steve Jobs and the original debut of the Mac in 1984. A few things struck me from it.

1. Steve Jobs in a tuxedo?? WTF?
2. Bad video quality. That alone could give away its age.
3. Everything looks so outdated!

I know the third one especially is relatively obvious, but I guess that's what 20 years of progress does. In the time we live in where computers are outdated in six months and obselete in three years, 20 years is an eternity. While I am glad that we are taking advantages of the progress we have made, it's pretty amazing to see where we came from. In retrospect, that original Mac is big, clunky, slow, and monochrome, yet at the time, it it was so amazingly advanced than most other personal computers. In terms of both design and functionality, it blew away the IBM and IBM compatible machines of the time.

The moral of the story: go Mac!

I hate job/school fairs

WCL had its annual externship fair today. For those of you who don't know, externship is basically the same thing as an internship. I have no idea why law schools use the different name, probably to make themselves feel special or something. Anyway, most 1Ls go for externshps for their first summer in law school because you can't get an associateship until your second summer (that's where you get paid bank, work for a firm, and hopefully get a job offer for after law school).

As an undergrad and beyond, I have been to multiple fairs: job fairs, internship fairs, law school fairs, career fairs... you name it, they have a fair for it. They're relatively typical: everyone gets dressed up, lookin' pretty, printed resumes on fancy paper to try to make a good impression on each company/school's rep. they go up, try to start a conversation, kiss a lot of ass, and go off on their merry way to the next potential employer/school. Meanwhile, after their 30 seconds of talking to that rep is up, the next person goes and does the exact same thing to try to make a positive impression.

To be quite frank, I see little to no point in these. The last one I went to was last November. It was a law school fair in LA because I missed the one ASU held. Unfortunately, they were identical. Besides getting to hang out in California for a weekend, it was basically a waste of a trip. I didn't learn a damn thing. And it's difficult to make any type of impression when 5000 other blood-sucking potential law students have the same goal. The biggest thing I gained from that particular fair was each school's guidebook, which I could have requested over the internet. I didn't make any great connections and it surely didn't help me get into tons of law schools.

So when today came around, everyone in school dressed up in their suits and jackets and skirts. I came to school in jeans with no intention of going and even trying. I went, picked up the list of employers, and left. It's not worth my time to try and BS with these people who won't remember me in five minutes. I won't remember their name and I'm not talking to dozens of other students. Why would they remember mine, and in the end, how much say would the on-campus recruiter actually say in any hiring decisions (Debi, if you ever read this, an answer would be wonderful!)?

It took a lot less time and I got everything I could have out of it in about three minutes. Now, I look through it, contact any agency that sounds appealing, and go from there, while avoiding the bum rush on each of these poor, helpless recruiters dealing with an onslaught of the hundreds of other law students.

I miss flip flops.

Current weather conditions:
Washington, DC: 27 degrees, feels like 18. Severe weather advisory (snow).

Phoenix, AZ: 68 degrees, feels like 68.

Bah, humbug.

Inauguration Day

I'm in Washington and could have attended the Presidential Inauguration festivities. Think I went? Yea right... I slept in. It was nice having a second day in one week with school closed! (MLK Day was Monday) The inauguration itself: blah. It's amazing how the entire city shut down for the event. I can see why the magnitude of the event was so large, between security concerns and the sheer number of people that attended, but still, it didn't affect me one bit. My excitement of the afternoon was surely not watching President Bush taking his second oath of office... no, it was going to Ikea. I know he won the election. I've come to accept that (sort of), but he has already begun to try to pull a blindfold over the eyes of the American people once again with his attempts to privatize Social Security and it just infuriates me. Emergency? Please.

The real fun of the day was going to George Washington University's Inaugural Ball. Alli's friend Vanessa got us tickets for it (thank you, Vanessa!) and it was a pretty nice affair. We got all dressed up and went to the Omni Shoreham Hotel, a pretty sweet hotel near Woodley Park. Food all night, a live band... it felt like a big Bar Mitzvah. A very good night to cap a relatively depressing day.

Weekend Update

Hey all, it's been a while. School. Vacation. Snow. The crazy things that can come in the way of posting on my blog. I guess I need to set my priorities straight! Anyway, this post comes at the expense of my Legal Rhetoric writing assignment that's due on Tuesday. I'll give a brief overview of the things I've been meaning to write about for the past week and a half...

Last Thursday, 1/13: I had two "Washington moments:" A Washington moment is tough to explain. There's no rhyme or reason as to when or why I have them, but in the course of my daily activities, I take a second and realize "wow, I'm in Washington, DC, and I'm in law school." I know you're thinking "Alex, how much money are you paying in tuition for you to take five months to realize that?" but it's more of this overwhelming feeling that just overtakes me. I really am lucky to be where I am and so happy the way things worked out and my excitement just kind of surfaces from time to time. Anyway, the two Washington moments:

The day before, I went to a workshop on alternative dispute resolution with Debra at the Department of Interior. It was just kinda cool and it was the first time I ventured downtown in a while.

Then on Thursday, two Supreme Court Justices came and held a debate at WCL. There's a link to the Washington Post article about it here. Unfortunately, I had to work on Thursday because I would not be able to work over the weekend due to travel plans. The event was broadcast live on C-SPAN and they also had a live webcast of it, so I was able to watch most of it. It was very cool having to Justices visit our campus (once again... only in Washington does something like that happen) but it was amazing listen to them speak and debate. Reading a decision is important and interesting because it gives you insight into each Justice's philosophies. I had a good idea what each Justice would say about the particular subject of debate, which was the relevance of foreign jurisprudence in U.S. Constitutional decisions. But listening to them interact and engage in dialogue and debate was just unreal. It was the words of their decisions coming alive. It was legal debate at its highest level, and perhaps it was a glimpse as to how the Justices actually deliberate on decisions. Of course, there are only nine people in the world who know how they actually know what that process is like, but it's interesting to wonder.

My favorite part was when Scalia talked about Breyer referencing Zimbabwe in a decision. It reminded me of the old Saturday Night Live skit where Dana Carvey played Tom Brokaw giving the reports of Gerald Ford's death. One of them was if the U.S. was invaded by Zimbabwe. Comedy at its best!

Friday, 1/14-Monday, 1/17: Alli's birthday was on Monday and I surprised her with a trip to New York for the weekend. I had the idea in October of having a surprise party for her in New York, and it actually came to fruition! I told her about an hour before we left that we were going away for the weekend and not to forget her ice skates. She knew exactly where we were going. On Saturday afternoon, we saw a matinee of Chicago. Saturday night was the surprise party itself. Eric and Debi picked a restaurant in the East village. Alli thought it would only be Eric, Debi, she, and I... but she was more than a little shocked when her friend Dana from VA showed up at the restaurant and even more shocked when Beth from AZ showed up with her boyfriend, Sky. We went to a bar near NYU after dinnerand just had a good time. The surprise was complete and I have never been so gratified to plan something like that in my life!

Sunday afternoon we went ice skating in Central Park and Monday we came back to DC. Then, off to an abbreviated week...

Wednesday, 1/19: On the day before the inauguration, I had to go downtown to observe a court in action, which turned out to be very cool, with the presiding Judge being a WCL alum. The coolest part, however, was the snowstorm I walked through to get to court. For those of you keeping tabs, this was the first snowstorm I had ever been in. 23 years is a pretty good streak! Too bad it had to be broken. So far, I am one of the few odd people who likes snow. The quiet that blanketed the city along with the snow was pretty amazing and not what I expected. I doubt I'll "like" snow very much longer, but for right now, it's still novel.

No, I didn't forget about it yet

It borders on sad that it's been a day since I posted on here last and I feel like it's been too long. I promise I won't post anything on here if I don't have anything to say. This time, I do! I promise. Only problem was I couldn't post. I tried logging in using a typical username, but it didn't have this blog listed to edit it. Luckily, Nick was around and led me to the page where I would go if I forgot my username. So I typed in my email address... lo and behold, I used a different name. It turned out abenezra was already taken. I think I registered it last year to post on Matt Schuh's blog. Oh well, I got it working again and that's the important thing.

And speaking of Mr. Schuh... I gotta give him credit. Meant to do it yesterday, but not being able to log in made that goal mildly problematic. Matt's the guy who put the idea in my head to start a blog while I was studying for exams last December. He said it's a good stress reliever. So far, you're right on! So thank you very much for putting the thought in my head to start this.

Oh, and if the blog starts to suck, blame him. Have a nice day!

Let's Get Physical

After about a year of perpetually sitting on my ass, I finally got the impetus to get out and go to the gym again. Now I know what you're thinking... "wow, way to go Alex! That's the way to take the initiative on that!" Well, if you were thinking that, I appreciate your kind thoughts, but that's not quite how it happened. I'll give you a brief history (if you really don't care about why I went to the gym, you can seriously skip the next paragraph. It's kind of like a soap opera: if you miss an episode, you can hop right back in just like you didn't miss a thing.):

In July, my doctor retired. I had gotten a blood test done, and my grandparents decided to take my results to my Grandpa's cardiologist in Phoenix. Soon after, I got word that I got accepted to law school and moved here. Well, after Dr. Pearlstein saw my results (and my brother's also), he said he wanted to see us both. Now, put yourself in my shoes for a second: I would be a patient of a cardiologist... the same one my 74-year old grandpa sees. How's that for an exciting though? So, I made an appointment and saw him over winter break (FYI: my brother and I were the youngest people in the waiting room by a good 40 years). The results of my blood test from December were significantly better (cholesterol went from nearly 300 to 218) than the one I had done in July. But he told me I should be working out every day for 45 minutes. Which brings me to today...

So I had my first class of the spring semester (Criminal Law with Professor Kittrie... I have little doubt I'll post on him as the semester progresses) and Alli started grad school at AU on the main campus. I met her over on the main campus after our classes let out and we headed to the Jacobs Fitness Center. Coming from ASU with its huge Student Recreation Complex, I expected it to be quite a bit different. ASU's SRC can be a pretty intimidating place to go for both male and female students, as it is heavily populated by both meatheads and eye candy. The weight room... well, it pretty much sucks if you don't look like you're Barry Bonds' roid buddy. And if you don't know what you're doing, forget about it! Anyway, AU's rec center was a refreshing change, although it was pretty packed. I didn't feel completely out of place. Even though I didn't go to the weight room, I would have no second thoughts about heading in that direction.

Welcome!

My name's Alex B. and this is my blog.

Howya doin today? You found my blog and this is the big, huge, momentous first post. A red-letter day, I know. Well anyway, thanks for finding it and reading it. I've never really done this before, and I never kept a journal growing up, so we'll see how it goes. I don't plan on doing a whole lot more than commenting on things I see in my everyday life in Washington or things I hear about or read. Hopefully it will range from the mundane to the life-changing because without one or the other, life would become relatively boring. So basically, I hope you enjoy my commentary on it and I hope you will find something to distinguish this blog from others and make it worth reading.