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March 23, 2005

Bar None

Here's one to keep the kids up at night: I'm a lawyer. No more disclaimer on the email, no more hedging with "I work at a law firm" when asked what I do. I am a lawyer, an attorney, a counselor, a member of the bar. Esquire, thy name is Blue Shoe. And on some level, I'm not surprised or bothered by this. I passed hurdles, both objective (the bar exam) and subjective (the "interview" where they review your application and then patronize you with the need to do pro bono that they never do), and ludicrous (law school, the LSAT, the pain of the bar exam). But on the other hand, though this is the result of years of study and ambition, there is this part of me that is terrified of messing it up, terrified (still worse) of messing someone else up, and just about terrified that this too suggests I might be too old for sight gags and coarse comedy.

This was Law , and it appeared on March 23, 2005 1:18 AM. | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Sleeping Duty

In high school, back when I thought I could get away with sleeping only 6 hours a day on weeknights--and in reality was making most of it up by sleeping until 1, which to this day has my grandfather asking me if he woke me up on Sunday mornings at 11--I had a pretty good routine. I would get up, do the morning evacuation/ablution ritual, have breakfast with the funnies and my dad, and with a good 10 minutes before car pool/I would leave for school, I'd climb right back into bed. These days, when I need that nap more than ever, and it's only on the basis of the egregious number of snoozes I inflict on my alarm clock that I don't get to take it, I sit back and marvel at the amazing ability I had to sleep and the inability I had up until earlier today to realize that I wasn't really getting by on 6 hours of sleep at all. Suffice to say, when all I can think about these days is sleep, life is probably not all that much better, except for the income and the lack of curfew.

This was Perspective , and it appeared on March 23, 2005 1:05 AM. | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 19, 2005

Where to Begin?

Yes, yes, I know how long it's been. And it definitely isn't that I've had nothing to say or no way to say it. I've just had no time. Where the first few months of being a "lawyer" had moments of long hours and punishing schedules, the digital turn from 2004 to 2005 was as though I suddenly was wearing a neon sign marked "Gun for Hire", and hired I was. Put simply, I worked enough in the first two months of the year to take the next one off, and as long as I kept a lesser pace later on, I would have still made target billables and earned what I now recognize to be a very deserved bonus. Of course, this late in March, you can guess that I did not take the month off, and am--with roughly 2 weeks left to go--about to hit target once again. That said, this is an apology for being gone (lame though acknowledging it apparently is), and the one theme that has echoed through my brain of late: Music I got addicted to in the last year. * Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism. That album which started me into an addiction of Death Cab albums, it's got both the pop and the angst and the rockin' all in one little package. You expect geeky indie rock, and you get it, but it's not that hipper-than-thou Strokes garbage. It's quirky, and it's painful, but you want to sing along anyway. * John Butler Trio - Sunrise Over Sea. It just came out in the US on Tuesday, but I got my hands on this about a year ago, and it was one of the most infectious albums I've ever heard. You feel the rhythm automatically, having never heard songs before, and the blues-rock thing, which seems so old is suddenly new again. * Anything by Jeff Buckley - I don't know what happened, but suddenly I couldn't not have everything the man made. Always interesting, and now of course, I wish I'd seen him live before he died. Of course, at that time, I wasn't allowed to go to concerts. * The Postal Service - Give Up. Okay, this is sort of a Death Cab side project, what with the singer being Ben Gibbard, but this just doesn't go away and doesn't get old, no matter how many dozens of times in a row you play it. * Ani DiFranco - Knuckle Down. She went a little weird on us, but this new album of hers, which came out in January is perhaps the most consistently listenable of the last five years, and it's definitely more consistently listenable than most music out there these days. Good good stuff. And lastly, a quick question--what is it with all of the musicians I've loved for years suddenly coming out with Best Ofs? Suddenly, it's as though Pearl Jam, Live, Better Than Ezra, Counting Crows, and others are suddenly old enough to have Greatest Hits albums. Does this mean I got old? Or did they just all lose/fulfill their contracts as I was getting old enough to understand that?

This was Housekeeping and Law and Musical Musing , and it appeared on March 19, 2005 2:52 PM. | Comments (2) | TrackBack