March 25, 2008

My Life, EatFoo

I'm now blogging quite regularly on EatFoo. I may still post links here, or maybe even rants, or life updates from time to time, but don't expect anything much. Cooking is my primary hobby, superseding all others at the moment, and so a lot more of my efforts are going into EatFoo. I spend most of my free time in the kitchen, and I'm extremely passionate about it, so I suggest you add EatFoo to your feed reader if you'd like to follow what I'm doing on a regular basis. If you don't use a feed reader, you're wrong.

But here's an update for now. I have two months left until I graduate and leave for San Francisco. Jeanette and I will be heading out there and living in the same apartment in which we lived last summer (which is amazing), and we'll be starting our bar exam prep classes in late May. The bar exam is at the end of July, and after that, we'll be taking an extended vacation somewhere internationally. At the moment, I'm leaning toward Southeast Asia (Thailand, Bali), Jeanette is leaning toward Mediterranean (Italy, Greece), mostly because she fears the monsoon. Having grown up in Florida, with its summer showers, I think I could manage it. After that, at the beginning of October, we start our new jobs.

I'm working for a upper-middle sized, awesome law firm called Fenwick & West, which reps technology companies. I'm in litigation, so I'll be doing lots of grunt work at first, but at least it'll be for cool innovators like Apple, Google, and many more that I haven't heard of but which are, upon investigation, also cool. I'm looking forward to starting work, even as I am realizing more and more that I really just want to be a chef. Nevertheless, this is the path I've chosen, and I plan to stick it out for long enough to build up some serious savings (five years?). And I really like the people at my firm, so that makes working there a lot more exciting prospect. Jeanette is working in litigation for a different law firm that is much bigger and less cool (in my opinion, at least--we have an ongoing rivalry, but whenever we pitch our firms to other people, mine wins).

I'm going to miss my DC roommates when I leave, as well as my Georgetown friends, and the few Vandy friends that I've somehow stayed physically close to, and close friends. There's a lot to like about DC, but but that still only makes it about one ninetieth as awesome as San Francisco. And besides, white people like San Francisco, so I have to go there (nearly everything on that website applies to me, by the way--goddamn yuppie!).

So, that's what's happening with me. If you and I are friends and haven't spoken in a while, leave a comment or drop me an email letting me know how you're doing. I'm not great at tending friendships, even though I do care about them. So let's chat. But don't expect such chatter to happen on this blog very often for the time being. Read EatFoo. Post bunches of comments. Email me about food or about life. See ya.

Posted by Barzelay at 5:48 PM | Comments (3)

February 25, 2008

Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me

I just ordered a book called Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me on the strength of an excerpt published here. The book contains vignettes from a bunch of famous people about what they've learned from women who have dumped them. It's edited by The Onion's Ben Karlin, and contains bits from Stephen Colbert, David Wain, Dan Savage (who may have been dumped by a man, not a woman, but that is inconsequential), etc.

<Emo>

This part of the excerpt, though not one of the humorous parts, was particularly poignant in its application to the last long relationship I was in before my present one. I think she'd agree.

"[T]hough the heady days of falling and falling and falling in love were shrinking in a rearview mirror, there was still hope. That niggling itch that if you keep at it, persevere, it will come back. Maybe not permanently, but in waves big enough and frequent enough to make everything else worth it. I wasn’t ready to give up. And what came of it?"

</Emo>

Posted by Barzelay at 3:22 PM | Comments (0)

December 6, 2007

The Post Office

Yesterday I did the thing which makes me feel more productive than anything else I ever do in my life: I went to the Post Office. It may seem simple, but it's something I put off for weeks, with letters and packages haunting the top of my desk, dangling by my workspace like so many MacBeth allusions, staring at me as if to say, "You're a failure, David. At mailing me on time, you're a failure."

But yesterday I went to the Post Office and mailed things to Asia, Brooklyn, Chicago, and other less exotic locales. And now I feel like a man who gets things done.

Posted by Barzelay at 1:05 PM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2007

I Must Have Done Something Right

On each of the past three days, I've received a large package by post. They were all unrelated, except for one thing: they were all free.

The first was a nice (and desperately needed) 7-piece set of All-Clad stainless steel pots and a pan (a $200 value). I got it for free using Westlaw reward points that I've accumulated over my tenure in law school. And unlike most Rewards programs where one only accumulates points by spending money, we get Westlaw subscriptions free! Now I can throw out the old pots that my parents bought me when I went off to college (approximately $40 for a 12-piece set or so), which by now are so warped that none of the lids fit and the bottoms only make contact with the heating surface sporadically--not that they were any good when they were new--and not that I knew any better at the time.

Day two of Septembermas brought a badass iPod Amplifier so now I can rock my music at parties and while cooking and such. I kind of lied above, because this one wasn't really free, but I am getting it for a very huge discount thanks to one of my good friends who works for Griffin. And anyway, I haven't paid for it yet.

And then today, I thought the holidays were over, but the boxes just keep coming. This one was marked "PERISHABLE!" in bold stamps on each side. When I opened it there was something wrapped in ice packs! Digging deeper I found an entire wheel of cheese from Ile De France. They're a huge cheese company that distributes to pretty much every grocer in America, and they contacted me several months ago about giving me free samples (because of my food blog). They were hoping I'd post about their cheese. So now I have an entire wheel of goat brie in my refrigerator. No, no, roommates, don't thank me. I didn't pay for it.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? A care package from my family? Bank error in my favor? Kitchen-Aid decides I need a free food processor and stand mixer (Professional series rather than Artisan, please, any color will do)?

Posted by Barzelay at 1:33 AM | Comments (1)

August 4, 2007

Stupid Brain!

I lost a parking garage ticket tonight and had to pay the maximum rate for the garage. It would have been $2.75 with validation, but it was $15 without a ticket. It's not that surprising, really. On the contrary, it's exactly the sort of thing I would do. I'm pretty good at remembering information, trivia, legal rules, etc., but I'm horrible at remembering to do things.

Apparently, most people have some mechanism in their brains that kicks in and notifies them when they need to do something. It apparently goes something like this: "Pardon me, self, but I just wanted to remind you that you were supposed to turn in an essay tomorrow, so you should probably write it tonight;" or "Hey! Me again. Listen, earlier, you said I should tell you not to leave your jacket under the seat. Well, it's still there," or "Wait! I know that at the moment, it just seems like a random piece of jetsam from your pocket, but you're going to need that funny little salmon-colored piece of card stock to get your car out of the garage, so you probably shouldn't throw it in the bathroom trashcan."

I know that other people have that mechanism, because mine occasionally kicks in, albeit more quietly, and less lucidly: "Hey, um... there was something you were going to do... let me see... something... um... it had to do with paperwork, I think?" But even that is rare. Normally it's just "La la la" while I'm missing deadlines, losing things, forgetting to make plans, and paying five times too much for parking.

I am just very poor at that sort of self-reminding-memory. And I have no idea what to call it! There's a clear difference between our "What is the capital of Spain" memory, and our "Remember to put the rent check on the foyer table" memory, but I don't know what each of them are called. And the older I get, the more I realize that while I have great confidence in my "Who played 'Chunk' in The Goonies" memory, I have a pretty terrible "Remember to get gas before driving anywhere tomorrow" memory.

Posted by Barzelay at 3:09 AM | Comments (5)

July 19, 2007

Celebrity Sightings

In order to get back to D.C. at the end of the summer, Jeanette and I are taking a route that is, shall we say, rather out of the way. There are scenic routes, and then there's this. This involves taking nearly three weeks to go to through L.A., Austin, New Orleans, and Atlanta on our way back to D.C. The straight shot takes only four days.

A lesser man might be satisfied with such a four-day trip. But I always have to pack my drives chock full of stuff to see. Things like National Parks, the World's Only Corn Palace, literally Plague-Ridden areas, giant crosses that would inspire even baby Hey Zeus, giant statues of former Presidents, Democrat-only casinos, and the other Beverly Hills (the one in Nevada). And so it is that we shall come to pass through the City of Angels.

We started talking last night about what we'd like to do while we're there. I was thinking we'd go to the beach, shop at ridiculous stores, maybe go to Disneyland. What does Jeanette want to do? She "want[s] to a see a celebrity."

A celebrity, eh? Okay, I guess that's not so unlikely. I ask her what she would do if she saw a celebrity? "I don't know. Depends on who it is. If it was someone nice and down to earth, I might go tell them I liked their movies. Like Tom Hanks."

Yeah, I'm sure that would make him very happy. No, wait. Tom Hanks needs another fan to accost him like he needs a tattoo of a midget on his face. I asked Jeanette who else she'd like to see. By now she's clearly detecting the condescension in my voice. "I don't know. It might be funny. Like if we saw Pauly Shore, that would be funny, right?"

Well... I guess he qualifies as a celebrity. And yeah, I guess that would be pretty funny.

"It would be really funny if we were walking down the street and then just, 'Hey, there's Pauly Shore!' That would be funny." Then she continued. "Oh, and Paris Hilton. That would be a good sighting because she'd probably have her nipple out, or her underwear showing or something."

Then I laughed. And hence we eventually boiled this topic down to the essence of celebrity culture. We can respect them for their accomplishments, or laugh at their comedy. But in the end, all we really care about are the nipple slips.

Posted by Barzelay at 6:27 AM | Comments (5)

May 9, 2007

Wherein I Begin To Look Like My Father

UPDATE: Shaved.

Georgetown University Law Center's second annual spring finals Moustache Contest!

Posted by Barzelay at 2:05 AM | Comments (4)

April 17, 2007

I Win! Me: 3, HP: 1

I am writing this post from class, on my amazing and free new laptop. It is so very brand-spanking, and is light of weight, swift of computation, large of capacity, and free of cost. It has lots of whiz-bang new features, like flat "quickplay" buttons at the top of the keyboard (now with less tactile feedback, but more blinky lights!), multiple headphone jacks (both located inconveniently), a shiny exterior paintjob (that constantly has fingerprints all over it, and requires wiping with an HP-supplied cloth like the one people use on their glasses), dual-core, blazing-fast processor (no complaints there), and the number of gigs of RAM is plural! And all I had to do for it was to give up $14 and two months of my life!

The moral of the story is that if you sue a computer company, and your claim is not facially ridiculous, they will give you a new computer with extreme haste. It costs them more to send a lawyer to court than it does to send a computer to you.

It so happens that my claim was totally valid, but I suspect that they don't do too much checking. It isn't worth the time it takes their employees to find out whether they can build a defense to your claim. And the District Of Columbia, unlike many jurisdictions, requires corporations to be represented by a real attorney, so they can't send some peon to argue incompetently against you.

They eventually called me up and told me to go to their website and pick out any new laptop I wanted, with any upgrades I wanted, and let them know and they'd get it to me for free, with three years' extended warranty with accidental damage protection. I did so, and told them I wanted this one, with pretty much every upgrade, and that I also wanted them to throw in a printer/scanner/copier just for the hell of it.

The best thing about this whole deal is that the computer this new one is replacing was itself a free replacement for a previous HP laptop! I paid under $1000 two years ago, and have gotten three laptops (totaling around $4000), and five years of warranty service, plus a printer/scanner/copier. I can't say the downtime was worth it, but I do feel adequately compensated. So the current score? I paid for one laptop, HP gave me three; I am winning 3-1.

And so far I've been involved in two legal cases. This one, and EFF's law suit against Barney. Both settled out of court, with the parties I represented (Frankel, and me) receiving a net total of $7000 in cash and goods. So I'm 2-0 in court. Great success! Thank you, D.C. Small Claims Court.

Posted by Barzelay at 4:06 PM | Comments (5)

March 31, 2007

I'm A Plaintiff

I'm currently suing HP. I sent my laptop in for a simple repair. A month and a half ago. And I still haven't gotten it back.

First they told me it was out of warranty. It was not. They estimated that I'd get it back by March 1st. I did not. A couple weeks after sending it in, and well past the 1st, I'd heard nothing from them, and asked, and they told me it had already been shipped back. It had not been. Then they told me that the motherboards were on backorder, and that I would get it on the 21st. I did not. Then they told me that it would be shipped the next day. It was not. Then they told me I'd already received it. I had not. And throughout this process, my case was continually getting "escalated" to their case managers, who were each supposed to call me within 3-6 hours. I never got a single call. Finally, I asked HP to just send me my laptop back. They said they could not.

So I sued them in D.C. Small Claims Court. The filing fee was $10, and service of process cost an extra $4. Now they're compelled to send a licensed attorney to a mediation hearing on April 13, followed immediately by trial if mediation does not resolve our dispute. I sued them for fraud and misrepresentation, negligence, breach of contract, breach of warranty, and--my favorite--conversion.

I did finally get a call from a case manager--while in line at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, paperwork all filled out, filing fee in hand. At that time, I was told that the repair would be finished by the 28th, and I'd get it back then. After I told them where I was, and what I was doing, the case manager told me that if it wasn't repaired by the 28th, he'd get me a new laptop. I thanked him, but told him I was still filing the suit unless he was willing to send me a new laptop immediately. He was not. I filed. The 28th came and went. He never called back.

Earlier today, I got on their online chat support, and told them I needed my case manager to call me. They said I'd get a call shortly. I did not.

The last month has been the least productive of my entire life. I get nothing done, not even things that I did for fun. I usually blogged during class, as well as doing most of the reading of random internet sites that constitutes the prerequisite to my getting any real work done. So now I never blog, and never do any work. It's a pitiful state of affairs. I await trial.

Posted by Barzelay at 10:50 PM | Comments (13)

February 21, 2007

Ash Wednesday

My parents were never all that strict. I was allowed to stay out late, sleep over at people's houses, they never watched very closely over how I spent my money, etc. But in one respect, I was a very sheltered kid. I was religiously sheltered.

First of all, I'm Jewish--or my father is Jewish, so I'm at least pseudo-Jewish, or maybe full Jew depending on how reformed one is. Anyway, I consider myself Jewish. But I was never told about my being Jewish until I was eighteen years old! I don't know why I had never pieced it together before, but in my defense, neither had my little brother. I was on my way to my freshman year of college at Vanderbilt, stopping to visit my neurotic, passive-aggressive little grandmother. Over her usual breakfast of bagels and blintzes, she was talking about her childhood in Belgium, before World War II when her family came to America. So Grandma Barzelay was chatting away about being a little kid in Antwerp, when she mentioned going to synagogue.

"Synagogue?" I asked.

"Yes, of course. We went to synagogue. Sometimes. We weren't that good about it."

"Wait... What? We're... Jewish?"

At this point, Grandma Barzelay paused and looked at me with a puzzled expression, the way she might look at me if I walked out of the house with my underwear on my head. "Are you kidding?"

I paused to reconsider my question, not wanting to seem like the kind of idiot that would wear his underwear on his head. "No."

"But I've told you about how my family fled Europe to escape the Nazis!"

"Yeah, but... during the war it was... dangerous for everyone. There was... bombs. And stuff."

"Oy gevalt! I didn't schlep my tuckus all across the Atlantic just to have my schmuck grandkid thinking he's a goy! Now be a mensch and pass your grandmother the lox. I haven't had a nosh all morning."

Okay, so she didn't really say that last quote. But in retrospect, I'm pretty sure everyone who meets her knows within the first twenty seconds of talking with her that she's Jewish. But that fact was certainly well-hidden from us, her grandkids.

I was religiously sheltered. Not only did I not know I was Jewish, but I was raised completely ignorant of everything outside Protestantism. My mother was Baptist, and I grew up in Baptist churches, so I knew the Protestant Bible fairly well. But when it came to any apocryphal books, or Catholic traditions or dogma, I was about as knowledgeable as Martin Luther's pet goldfish. And so I was entirely oblivious to the Ash Wednesday tradition until my freshman year of college (it was a year of great spiritual growth).

I walked out of my dorm one afternoon, on my way to class. There was the usual mix of fratty George Dubyas in pastel polos, and skinny white girls in sorority shirts. Just before I got to the student center, I noticed one of those attractive girls, looking all put together in her pleated mini-skirt and button-down shirt, her cable-knit sweater tied around her shoulders. She was walking my way, meticulous curls bouncing along with the swing of her hips. And as she approached, I noticed that something wasn't quite right about her confident look. There was something, I didn't know what, but something on her forehead.

As she got closer, I realized that she had some giant, dirty smudge, right there in the middle of her forehead. "How can she not have seen that?" I thought. "Wow, she's going to be so embarrassed the next time she looks in the mirror." I thought about helping her out, and letting her know about the dirt on her forehead, but I didn't know her, so I decided not to. But I laughed to myself, thinking that it was hilarious that that girl, with everything else just so, was walking around with a huge dirty mark on her forehead.

She passed me, and I kept walking. And then another two girls approached. Much to my surprise, it turned out that they both had dirty foreheads, too. I was shocked, and my mind immediately leapt to all the possible explanations for this. Perhaps something interesting had been happening outside a window, and everyone had pressed their heads up against the window to get a good look. Maybe they'd all been reading newspapers, and then wiped their foreheads. It could have been some new rap song, "Wipe that dirt/On your head." Or maybe the steel was starting to wear through their synthetic skin, and their robotic insides were showing through. None of those seemed plausible. So when they got up next to me, I asked them, "What's that stuff on your foreheads?"

They looked at me as if I had my underwear on my head. And as if the underwear on my head had Lambda Chi letters. One of them shook her head at me. The other just said, under her breath, "Asshole."

But I wasn't making fun of her. I'm just religiously sheltered.

Posted by Barzelay at 11:23 PM | Comments (7)

February 2, 2007

My Petunias

I've had a rather inconstant stance on tattoos during my life. I was vehemently opposed to my little brother getting his first one (he did it anyway), and I have never considered them to be attractive on others. And yet, I've always thought that if I found the right idea, the right design, I might be willing to go under the gun. I am not interested in searching for those perfect tattoo ideas, either. I don't want a tattoo like I don't want a ham sandwich. I'd rather have something else for lunch, but if a ham sandwich falls in my lap, I'll eat it.

Because of my hypothetical willingness permanently to alter my skin, I've been keenly aware of which tattoos are pointless, which are ugly, which body locations are best, etc. But I've also always been on the casual lookout for those perfect tattoos. And I've come across a few things in my life that I'd be willing to tattoo on my body. The reason I'm writing this is because I just found another. So here's the list:

  1. I "Heart" Mom - Biker style heart with "Mom" on it, or something like that. I think these are so cool because they consciously undermine the impenetrable badass air of the usual subjects. Also, I love my Mom.
  2. The Slant logo. This was the satirical newspaper that I ran for a couple years in college. I put tons of time and sweat into it, and I'm very proud of many of our accomplishments. Eventually it got me on CNN, many local news stations, the NYT, and the Tennessean, as well as in Wikipedia, though I don't have my own article. At one point, a bunch of us Slant staffers were talking about it, and we all thought Slant tattoos would be awesome. Just the meatball (our name for our logo) on some body part. We never followed up on it, but I think everyone would have seen it through. Or at least Meredith, Andrew Banecker and I.
  3. McGill. My college dorm for three years. Probably the most formative and memorable aspect of my life since puberty. I love McGill so much, and I wouldn't mind a McGill tattoo. It would obviously have to be a tattoo of a polar bear [that link will only make any sense at all to McGillites]. Maybe a flaming picnic table. Or maybe just Fahad's testicles.
  4. And now, the new one. It shouldn't be much of a surprise, given my current passions. I'd love to have something culinary. Something like this pig. Which would pretty much be the worst violation of Jewish law ever. Or like the ones from this NYT culinary tattoo slideshow.

Also, ten points if you recognize the reference in the title of this post.

Posted by Barzelay at 11:58 PM | Comments (6)

January 23, 2007

I'm Sorry, Sir... This Toilet Is For Members Only

A couple nights ago I was in a hurry to get out the door, but I still had to brush my teeth. I was going to take with me a change of clothes and two of my textbooks, so I stacked all that up with my jacket on top. I put the pile on the counter, to the side of the sink, so that I could just grab it and go when I was done brushing. And it perched there. Precariously.

At some point in the middle of brushing, my elbow bumped the stack. The whole thing fell off the counter, and went straight into the toilet. This caused me suddenly to lunge to try to save it all. The lunging also included my toothpastey hand letting go of the toothbrush in my mouth and shooting toward the falling stuff. So in the process of jumping with toothpastey hands outstretched, as my clothes and books were plummeting into my toilet, I ended up flinging a mix of toothpaste and saliva all over the bathroom in a wide arc. The arc of saliva and toothpaste managed to splatter on pretty much everything in the bathroom, including the jeans I had on, all the items that fell into the toilet, and pretty much everything else, too.

Not wanting to cause any further toothpaste damage, I frantically wiped the toothpaste off my hands and lunged back toward the toilet to retrieve my sad pile of flotsam before too much damage occurred.

As I pulled all of it out the toilet, I realized that my jacket had insulated the textbooks! Thank you, Members Only! I also realized gleefully that Kyle had remembered to flush that day, so there was nothing in the toilet but water!

So I wiped a bit of water off the book covers, wiped the toothpaste off of my arms, pants, shoes, the floor, the shower curtain, the mirror, and the counter, grabbed a different change of clothes and a different jacket, threw the toilet clothes into the laundry basket, and I was on my way. No permanent harm done.

Posted by Barzelay at 2:59 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2007

My Flower Girl

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, wrote on his blog about how he is baffled by romance.

"I was surprised to learn that doing household chores qualifies as romantic for most of you. That’s exactly why you should never hire a butler if you strike it rich – the minute that Jeeves starts unloading the dishwasher without being asked, your wife is going to start humping his leg."

"Hypothetically, if you were to give your spouse a love note and flowers once a week for a year, all it would do is raise the baseline requirement. It wouldn’t be romantic anymore. Indeed, it would appear too easy. So in a sense, the thing that makes flowers and love notes romantic in the first place is… and wait for this pearl of wisdom… all the times that you DON’T give love notes and flowers."

"Romance, I’m told, is the delta between your selfish asshole baseline and the occasional deviations from that baseline. That’s why Donald Trump, for example, can’t stay married. As soon as you buy your wife a helicopter, a ski resort, and a staff of servants, you’ve set her up for certain disappointment."

I've never given a girl flowers. Never. Well, actually, once I surreptitiously took a single daisy and taped it to a girl's door when she was gone, but it didn't have the desired effect. It apparently confirmed her suspicions that someone was stalking her. She was like, "Ahhh! David, there's some weirdo who keeps leaving messages on my door and today I came home and there was a flower taped on it and then someone called my phone and then hung up! Twice! Ahhhh!" I was not responsible for the messages or the calls. And as for the flower, it doesn't count as "giving a girl flowers" because, A) I didn't obtain it for her, I just happened to have it when I was near her door, and B) she didn't know I gave it to her until after she freaked out about being stalked. The only other game that smooth is the olympic luge.

So, having never given a girl flowers, and having been quite vocal about said fact whenever an appropriate holiday comes up (Valentine's Day, anniversaries, girls' birthdays, graduations, etc.), I am just trying to make it really special for some girl when I finally do give someone flowers. My best pal Zeeshan even gave my girlfriend a bouquet of flowers on the night of one of her performances in a musical, and I did not. Sure, it was sweet of him. Sweet like a knife in the back. He was just making me look bad, that jerk! As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to suggest that anyone who gives a woman flowers is just trying to make me look bad.

But I tell you what: I'll break my tradition now. Yes, it's a special time in my life. A time of great love and happiness. And it's finally a worthy time for me for me to let go of that cheap old policy: so, to invoke a terrible mid-90's chat room meme (and it's always a good idea to invoke a terrible mid-90's chat room meme, BTW), here's a rose for all the ladies:

@-->-----

Don't be alarmed; that strange feeling is just your heart melting. Again, it takes a lot of elbow grease to polish one's game this smooth.

Posted by Barzelay at 11:00 PM | Comments (9)

January 1, 2007

The Shape Of Things

No new site design yet, because I forgot that I don't have access to a scanner while at my parent's house. But, I will be posting my Top Albums Of 2006 list today. Last year's list was epic, this year's is epic-er. The Top Movies list will come, as usual, in a month or so once I've had a chance to watch all the movies that only get released to select festivals and audiences during the calendar year of their award eligibility. Moving on...

2007 is a nicer number than 2006. Have you ever thought about the numerology of joke and storytelling? With some jokes, I find myself having to cite a number. For instance, not that this will incite so much as a giggle, but if I were to say, "I spent about two hundred and seventy three million, one hundred and forty-six hours over the last two weeks writing a legal research paper," that would be a joke dependent on the number I used. In many of those jokes, the humor is dependent on the number chosen. If I were to say, instead, "I spent about a million hours..." it would change the entire character of the joke. I'm never very deliberate about this practice when telling jokes verbally, but I'm extremely deliberate about which numbers I choose when writing jokes. When I worked on The Slant, for instance, we'd sometimes spend twenty or thirty minutes debating whether we should jokingly claim that our annual budget is seven dollars or nine. Anyway, 2007 is a much more exciting number than 2006.

Best things I did in 2006

  1. While at EFF this summer, I sued Barney the Purple Dinosaur. The suit was on behalf of a guy who had posted a parody of Barney on the web, and Barney's lawyers kept sending him threatening letters. So we sued seeking a declaratory judgment of noninfringement of copyright and trademark. It was my case, and I did all the research, interacted with the client, and wrote the draft of the complaint that ended up, with minimal changes, being filed. Barney's owners settled the case with a covenant not to sue our client and a $5000 cash settlement. So my legal record is currently 1-0. Woo-hoo!

  2. I just finished a monster legal research paper that I spent more time on than any other school assignment I've ever done. I could have turned it into a thesis-length paper without doing any additional research. I'm actually damn proud of how it turned out. The paper was titled, "Suspicionless Border Searches Of Computer Files: An Unjustified Intrusion," but carried the alternate title, "Feds Are In Ur Laptop, Searching Ur P0rnz." If you want to know anything about border searches of computer files, just let me know. At this point, I'm probably one of the nation's foremost authorities on the subject.

  3. I got a summer associateship. It may not seem to you like getting a summer job is all that great of an accomplishment. If that's the case, you're probably not a law student. The amount of effort that went into the interviewing proccess was immense.

  4. I found a great house in which to live for my last two years of law school. This semester has been good there.

  5. I saw a whole lot of America. I visited six National Parks and several National Monuments. I also lived in San Francisco for three months.

  6. I improved my culinary knowledge and skills. I love cooking.


Worst things I did in 2006:

  1. I failed to complete a draft of an amicus brief that I had really wanted to write. I let down a few EFF staffers this summer by spending a week or so on it and not managing to generate anything worth keeping.

  2. You know that monster paper I just finished? Well, it was due several days before I turned it in.

  3. I sent a stupid email to a mailing list. But the list was much larger than I thought it was. It turned out to have hundreds of people on it, both students and professionals. As usual when I make mistakes, I was trying to make a joke, and it ended up making a pretty poor impression on a lot of people.

  4. I posted something making fun of someone else, who now apparently hates me. At the time of the posting, I thought it was completely justified. After a while, I realized that it was not, and I took it down.

  5. I drank too much at one particular happy hour. It resulted in a lot of mean-spirited derision, reminding me of the value of temperance.

  6. I utterly failed to maintain contact with any college friends unless they did all the work. Totally inexcusable. I didn't even visit some of my best friends who live in Philadelphia (only a couple hours' drive away--and I have a car).

  7. The frequency of my blogging dropped dramatically after the end of Spring semester. I hope to remedy that this year, starting with this post.

  8. Decided to teach a Kaplan LSAT Prep course. Horrible decision. It took so much time to prep that stuff every week, and I made less from teaching that whole course than I'll make in three days this summer.

Posted by Barzelay at 7:43 AM | Comments (5)

December 7, 2006

Eighth Grade Sovereignty and Micronational Pride

UPDATE: It turns out that Sleepy Brain has been posting about this book quite often, and asked me to link to their contest to give away a copy of the book.

Lonely Planet has released its Travel Guide To Micronations. Yes, micronations, those lovable little slices of supposed sovereignty where crackpots and geeks can become the tyrants and philosopher kings of their pre-teen dreams. Micronations, most famously the Principality Of Sealand, exist where some individual or group claim, but are denied, sovereignty over some (usually quite small) bit of land.

From the Wikipedia article, Micronations generally have a number of common features:

  1. They often assert that they wish to be widely recognised as sovereign states, but are not.
  2. They are small; those that claim to control physical territories are mostly of very limited extent - however the majority exist exclusively in the online world. While several micronations claim hundreds or even thousands of members, the vast majority have no more than one or two active participants.
  3. Some issue government instruments such as passports, stamps, and currency, and confer titles and awards; these are rarely recognized outside of their own communities of interest.

When I heard about this book--a legitimate travel guide to micronations--and read this interview with one of its creators, pangs of nostalgia were awakened, and I was brought back all the way to eighth grade, circa 1997, when I was part of my very own micronation. For a few brief months, my friends and I literally were masters of our domain. And our domain was a thirty-yard circle around the large oak tree next to the Southern wing of Burnett Middle School.

We declared our independence under the sovereign name "Mexico II," and set about constructing our government. It was modeled after the United States government, but most of us didn't know much about Civics at that time. We had picked up snippets, for instance, we knew the order of succession should something happen to the President. And "President" is a very important title, so being Speaker Of The House--second in line for the Presidency--seemed like a pretty sweet position. I'm not positive but I think that Eric Robinson and Jordan Carpenter were President and Vice, though I don't remember which was which. Jon Cooper was Secretary Of Defense, and someone else was Speaker Of The House. All very important positions, right? Until one considers the power grab with which they let me get away; I was the entire House (Speaker excluded), the entire Senate, and the entire Supreme Court. But those positions seemed meaningless because they didn't include the word "President," nor even the prospect of ascending to that title should the President get beat up on the playground.

And so Mexico II was born. We came up with a rudimentary set of prescriptive laws regulating behavior in Mexico II. We wrote out an official Constitution--never ratified--that spelled out exactly what powers each of us had. We even had a flag, though it is long since lost.

Our coup turned out to be bloodless, and so there was unity all across the land. But little did we know, those happy times were not to last. Though we fancied ourselves free men under self-rule, in truth our little nation lived under the oppressive influence of the teachers' cruel and expansive empire. They possessed advanced weaponry in the form of referrals and grade reports, and our ragtag militia (no offense to Secretary Cooper) was no match for their indiscriminate orthodoxy. We had no choice but to pay tribute in the form of homework, and readily abandoning our home in Mexico II at a moment's notice to get to class before the bell rang. They were ruled by a cruel dictator, Principal Heard, who imposed order within all of her hinterlands through her own brand of justice.

The following year (when we were no longer at Burnett), I began dating Principal Heard's daughter, Laney, a savvy political match that cemented diplomatic relations between Mexico II and the Burnett Empire.

But that eighth-grade year at Burnett, as we constructed and regularly inhabited our very own nation, we experienced the pleasure of creation. A country is the ultimate DIY project, the ultimate hobby. And like most DIY projects, ours was eventually abandoned, our hard-won borders reclaimed by our old adversary. But Mexico II was our own little slice of supposed sovereignty, an escape every morning from what must have seemed, at the time, the horrible oppression of adolescence. In Mexico II we were free, and in control of our own destinies. At least until the morning bell rang.

I'm proud of our little experiment, and I'm excited that so many others maintain their little fantasy countries. They may not be recognized by the larger governments of the world, but they're literally holding down the forts despite them. Micronationalists are the true libertarians. And though I don't think the release of this travel guide is likely to elevate the tourism industry to the tops of micronational economies, it's nice to see them at least catalogued. It's a fitting reminder that even this nation, the United States, is an experiment in democracy and peaceful rule, and like Mexico II and all experiments, its principles are rather prone to abandonment.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:56 AM | Comments (6)

November 25, 2006

My Father, The Redneck

My father is from Boston, and his parents are both Jewish. His mother left Belgium with her family in order to escape the Holocaust, and his father was of Sephardic descent. In fact, "Barzelay" is a very common name in Israel. His father, my grandather, was a die-hard Red Sox fan. Eventually, their family moved down to Daytona Beach, Florida, and my Dad really grew up there. Then my Dad went to Florida State University, and majored in Marketing and Business Administration. He ended up becoming an insurance salesman. So to review, he's a reasonably educated, white collar Northern Jew who grew up in a resort town (albeit, a cheap one). With that background, one wouldn't expect him to have all the habits of a redneck, but one would be wrong.

For starters, he loves fishing. We're not talking sport fishing in the sea for tarpon, or going on fly-fishing vacations to the Northwest. We're talking about bass fishing, worms as bait, on little lakes with Indian names like Istokpoga, Okeechobee (not a little lake), and Thonotosassa. So every weekend or two, he slathers the sunscreen all over himself at 3:00am, puts on a shirt with the collar ripped out, some silly hat with a mesh back, and makes sure he doesn't forget his pocket knife. Often he manages to drag my mother along with him. He gets the boat ready--the boat is named "Judy's Too," a joke on the fact that it is my mother's as well--and then he drives to some lake, hours away, to launch the boat as the sun rises. Morning is prime fishing time. And he fishes all day, then comes home.

Many weekend days while growing up, we'd all go out and greet my Dad after he came back from a long day in the sun, fishing in some tournament. He'd make my brother and I give him big hugs even though he was a pungent mix of sweaty body odor, sunscreen, and fish guts. Then he'd toss a couple bass in the sink and we'd watch while he cut open the stomach to show us what the fish had been eating, and then he'd cut off the head, and filet the fish for dinner. Then he'd shower while my mother cooked.

But fishing isn't his only redneck hobby. He also loves auto racing. And my father didn't get into NASCAR in the recent wave of popularity. He's been into it all my life. And he isn't interested in the personalities of the drivers, or anything like that. He's into the racing, and into the cars. He's interested in how they squeeze an extra few horsepower out of the cars by drilling holes in the carburetor, or how a driver uses the air currents and low pressure zone created by the car ahead of him to pull him along and save a gallon of gas over fifty laps. And he isn't just into NASCAR. He's into drag racing, and Formula-1, Busch Series and whatever Winston Cup is called. He even watches swamp buggy races.

If he's watching television, he's watching SPEED Network. My brother and I wanted digital cable for years, but it cost extra, so we didn't get it. Then SPEED Network came out, and it was only available on digital cable. My father ordered it immediately.

He actually raced cars when he was younger. He started the auto racing club at FSU, and the extra space in our garage is filled with trophies. Smattered around are plaques etched with checkered flags, tires, and sports cars, trophies with leaping bass or an angler rendered in faux gold, and other proud mementos of redneck success; a rusty old lawnmower that he keeps running, a box full of metal scraps or random sections of various tubings or hacked up pieces of plywood and two-by-fours (all just in case they're needed). And sure enough, if something breaks, he goes out to the garage, and we hear the metallic clink of hammering, and the grating whir of power tools. Eventually he comes back inside and it's fixed.

His fishing buddies have managed even to alter his speech. My father who used to correct me every time I said "Me and my friends," or "I'm doing good," now has the vocabulary and grammar of a yokel. He still doesn't have a Southern accent.

And so my father has turned out, against all odds, to be a redneck. Even despite all the other evidence, fishing and tons of yard work literally have given him a red neck. And every night when he's out in the garage painting his custom lures, oiling his reels, and tweaking his boat's propeller, it just makes me wonder how the hell it happened. In the ultimate illustration of his paradox, he even scouts out fishing reports for the lakes online. He's a thoroughly modern, intelligent, and yet hopelessly redneck man.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:21 AM | Comments (5)

November 22, 2006

Belated Cross-Country Trip Photos (2 of 2)

As promised, this is the remainder of the photos from my giant cross-country National Parks tour extravaganza. These are even cooler than the previous sets. Arches National Park, especially, was just amazing. It was the highlight of the trip, so at least check those out (though Bryce was no slouch). As usual, I took a zillion photos. I can't wait until this summer, when a good chunk of one of my firm checks will go to something like this, and then you'll have to wait even longer for my photos to load. Anyway, check these out.

  • Bryce Canyon National Park: The main features of this park are its natural formations of rock called "hoodoos." They look like strange spires, and they rise up out of the canyon with lots of color. Hiking down into the canyon, one sees a very different side. "Wall street" is a very oft-photographed location where two giant rock walls rise up on both sides of a very narrow path. Very cool stuff.
  • Photos while driving through Utah: Just some nice views.
  • Arches National Park: Insane. Just amazing. This park features a ton of impossibly huge rock formations standing out against a giant sky. There are the eponymous arches, including one that is the subject of Utah's license plate (which was a mile hike to get to, so I contented myself with the view from a distance, hence there are no pictures of the famous Delicate Arch). But besides the actual arches, there are about two thousand other wonderful views, many of which outclass the arches. You should go here before you die.
  • Photos while driving through Colorado: Things that caught my eye while driving through Colorado.
  • St. Louis Arch: It was my first time seeing the St. Louis Arch, but I didn't feel like stopping, so I took these photos while driving.

Posted by Barzelay at 1:47 AM | Comments (1)

October 18, 2006

Belated Cross-Country Trip Photos (1 of 2)

I am finally getting around to posting photos from my giant cross-country National Parks tour extravaganza (and a few from before it). Rather than post them all now, I went ahead and posted about each location in its own post, and backdated each post roughly to the time my visit to the location occurred. Following the links to the individual posts will reward you with pretty pictures, and maybe even a little text, in some cases. This is the first roundup of two. The second one will better because the locations were better, but enjoy these first.

Still to come: Bryce Canyon, Arches, and various vistas in Utah, Colorado, and more!

Posted by Barzelay at 2:30 AM | Comments (1)

August 19, 2006

St. Louis Arch

My first time seeing the St. Louis arch. All photos were taken while driving.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:00 AM | Comments (3)

August 18, 2006

Photos While Driving Through Colorado

Random views while traveling through Colorado.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:00 PM | Comments (1)

Arches National Park

What an amazing place! Go here before you die.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2006

Photos While Driving Through Utah

Random views while driving through Utah.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

Bryce Canyon National Park

Very cool views, but extremely crowded. The scenery wasn't mind-blowing, but it got really cool when I snuck down into the area called "Wall Street" (you've seen a zillion pictures of it before without knowing it), which has been closed for a while due to a rock fall. Down there it got pretty amazing, with huge, red rock faces and an impossibly long and narrow pathway between them. If you go, take the trails. Don't bother with the million different overlooks unless you have to kill a day.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2006

Death Valley National Park

In Death Valley, I watched my car's information center as the temperature climbed. Had I been driving through later in the day, it would have gotten much hotter, but rest assured that it was still quite toasty.

The funniest thing I saw was in the lowest, hottest, nastiest part of Death Valley, I saw a man standing outside, a cigarette in one hand and a coffee in the other. At that point, it was 114 degrees out, and he was purposely standing out in the sun, rather than under the shade of the awning right next to him. Ridiculous.

Posted by Barzelay at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

Devil's Postpile National Monument

Posted by Barzelay at 7:00 AM | Comments (0)

Cedar Breaks National Monument

Posted by Barzelay at 6:00 AM | Comments (1)

Kolob Canyon at Zion National Park

Posted by Barzelay at 3:00 AM | Comments (3)

August 15, 2006

Yosemite National Park

Posted by Barzelay at 4:00 PM | Comments (0)

Flat Tire In San Francisco

Before leaving San Francisco on my huge trip, I had the astoundingly bad fortune of getting a flat tire just as I was about to leave the city. I was forced to pull over in the middle of downtown, on a hill. My car was completely full of everything I own, which made the tire changing tools inaccessible (they are in a panel under the floor of the cargo area. I had to move everything from inside my car out onto the sidewalk (again, in the middle of downtown) just to get to the tools. Then I had to change my tire (again, on a hill). And then I had to figure out where to get a new tire. Ugh. Terrible experience.

Posted by Barzelay at 9:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2006

EFF Bike Ride at Moss Beach

Posted by Barzelay at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2006

The Anxiety Of A Non-Professional Haircut

Getting one's hair cut is almost always an anxiety-ridden process, full of doubt, questioning, and moments of panic. But I am completely out of money and yet was desperately in need of a less voluminous coiffure. I had no choice--I had to just let the roommate have a go at it. And I found that all the fears of the barber's chair are oddly lessened when one has accepted such a suicide mission.

It's like when I went skydiving several years ago. To make oneself jump out of a plane with nothing but a little piece of silk on one's back doesn't require courage at all. What it requires is submission, saying, "Fuck it. If I die, I die," and just jumping.

So once one has reached the point where one is willing to let one's roommate grab the nearest scissors and start chopping, one pretty much has to have said, "Fuck it. Hair is just hair," and be totally resigned to the likelihood that one will end up accidentally looking like a hipster. At that point, any uncertainty or "Oops"es on the part of one's roommate just kind of roll off. One prepares for the worst and calculates the number of weeks until firm interviews, and then just looks forward, tells him to leave the sideburns, and chills.

Even if one isn't all that vain or particular about one's hair, even if one doesn't use product, spend time styling, or take great pride in one's do, the specter of a disastrous sneeze or an errant scissor-stroke is still enough normally to have one wincing every minute or so during a haircut. Not me. Not this time. If it gets messed up, then I've prepared for the result, and if it doesn't then I'll be pleasantly surprised.

And to make matters worse, there are always interim moments in a haircut in which one stares forward into the mirror, positive that one's barber has cut the hair too short, only to realize after the passage of several minutes that it was actually the perfect length. Haircuts are kind of like certain foods: it's best not to witness the process. Better just to see the final outcome. But when one's roommate is manning the shears, every snip is a step closer to a disaster that is inevitable, so why should one worry about it? "Fuck it, I don't have to see anyone I know for two weeks anyway."

It turns out that Scott did a fine job on the sides and back, and then I decided to do the top myself. I think it came out well. I'd have tipped for it in a salon. Anyway, I don't fuss over my hair, and I leave it all messy anyway, so the unevenness that must be there doesn't show. I'm almost disappointed. I could've been so scene if I'd only gotten a terrible haircut. And then lost thirty pounds. "Fuck it. If I'm a hipster, then I'm a hipster."

Posted by Barzelay at 4:45 AM | Comments (3)

August 7, 2006

Oakland A's Game

I went to an A's game.

»» Continue reading "Oakland A's Game"

Posted by Barzelay at 3:13 AM | Comments (7)

Muir Woods National Monument

I saw some huge redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument.

»» Continue reading "Muir Woods National Monument"

Posted by Barzelay at 3:12 AM | Comments (0)

Alcatraz

I went to Alcatraz.

»» Continue reading "Alcatraz"

Posted by Barzelay at 3:11 AM | Comments (2)

August 4, 2006

National Parks Circuit

Some other numbers to ponder:
3150 miles, plus driving within National Parks. About 50 hours driving, without park time. Approximate cost of gas: $550. Number of inches oceans will rise as a result of emissions from my SUV: 3.

I'll be seeing Yosemite National Park, Devil's Postpile National Monument, Death Valley National Park (and National Monument), Cedar Breaks National Monument, Bryce Canyon National Park, and Arches National Park.

The current plan has me spending a day in Yosemite, and a day between Bryce Canyon and Arches. I don't really see any reason to stop in Death Valley. Unless I'm, you know, dead. Any thoughts on this plan? What should I do with my time in those parks? I'm particularly curious about Yosemite. I'll have about eight or nine hours in Yosemite. What should I do? And let me be clear that although I'd like to see as much as possible, I certainly don't plan on these being my only visits to these parks. Hopefully I'll come back and backpack all of them some day.

Posted by Barzelay at 3:56 AM | Comments (1)

August 3, 2006

"Earthquake!!! No--Worse! LAWNMOWER!"

I experienced my first earthquake yesterday evening. It was quite minor--only a 4.4, and its epicenter was well North of San Francisco. But I felt it! It went something like this:

I was in the kitchen, just about to start eating my dinner (fried shrimp). My housemate Scott says, from his room, "Hey... is that an earthquake?"

I paused but didn't feel much.

Scott asked, "Are you guys shaking anything in there?"

We said we were not.

Scott said, "Yeah. It's definitely an earthquake."

And then after a few seconds of staying still, I could feel it. It was just a deep rumbling, kind of like when you feel a building swaying slightly. I looked around and could see some kitchen items shaking a bit. The pans rattled slightly on the rack. The worst thing that happened? A half-roll of paper towels standing on its end almost toppled over! SO DANGEROUS!

Posted by Barzelay at 7:30 PM | Comments (5)

July 31, 2006

Found A House!

I found a house. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that a house found me. My summer housemates in San Fran told me that they always check the Room Wanted postings on Craigslist before they ever post anything, in case they find cool people. Before that, it had never occurred to me to post in the Room Wanted listings. But I did. And it worked spectacularly. I got about twelve responses a day since posting. Not all the responses were reasonable. Many were all the way out in Alexandria or--gasp!--Clarendon, or asking for rent of, for instance $1300, despite my ad clearly saying that I wanted to live closer to the city and that my total price had to be under $1000. But there were many gems. This one stuck out.

The house is gigantic. It's like a museum, like it would be the summer home of a B-list celebrity, or an A-list politician. It's a five-minute (okay, fine, eight minute) walk from the Cleveland Park metro stop. My roommates so far are two twenty-five year old girls from Tulane. There will be two more roommates as well. Let me know if you're interested. The house is in the woods just down Porter from Connecticut, on Klingle.

My room is tiny, which is part of why I could afford it. The other reason is that the house is owned by the mother of a friend of my roommates. She intended to sell it, but the housing market apparently just crashed, so she couldn't get the asking price ($1.8 million, but don't tell anyone I said that). She isn't trying to profit from the renting, just recoup her taxes and all. The other two available rooms are $1200 and $1300, which are amazing deals (they're approximately sixty thousand times the size of my room). My Alice In Wonderlandish nook of a room is $750, but I have plenty of private space in my wing of the house in which to store things. And my room will fit a bed and desk, which is all I really need in my room. But the room is seriously small, as you can see in the first two pictures below. That's okay, because the rest of the house is friggin' huge.

Perhaps best of all, I have an enormous kitchen in which to cook delicious meals, and a huge deck, dining room, breakfast nook, and den in which to entertain guests who will eat my delicious meals. In fact, I'm planning on throwing (weekly? bi-weekly? monthly?) dinner parties. And the house is perfect for giant party parties as well. So get ready.

My ideal location would not have been Cleveland Park. It would have been U-Street, Dupont, or Adams-Morgan. But this is a unique opportunity, and it wouldn't exist in those locations. And even if it did, it would be unlikely that it would have some tiny little servant's room that I could afford. But I'm happy with Cleveland Park. It's an alright area. Maybe I can join the Cleveland Park Men's Club now!