spring break, last thursday night

San Francisco Bay Area

it started with a declined invitation to smack some balls at the driving range...

it continued with pre-game to the sounds of the Littl'ans album; too many drinks at the Clift; a random girl heartlessly, but without malice and quite inadvertently, told that her resume didn't measure up; the acquaintance-making of several interesting and vaguely twisted people; a surprisingly small bar tab at an inexplicably picky club

it ended with an angry bouncer banging on a bathroom stall door, a 90 MPH party in the back of an SUV on HWY 101,
and, thankfully, no arrests.

tags technorati : Partying Society

Wherein we plumb the depths of law-student psychosis

I went on a mid-week urban adventure. It was a bad idea; I had a meeting with a professor at 11:00 the next morning. Needless to say, nobody actually plans to go clubbing in San Francisco when they have perfectly good reasons to stay in Palo Alto and attend to very important, very erudite, conversations and tasks.

Anyhow, through an artifice, the details of which I omit to spare the innocent, I found myself in a bar/club in San Francisco accompanied by some very interesting girls with quite divergent personalities who I had never gone out with before. Throughout the evening the character in question remained quiet and subtle, usually signs of the socially competent and conscientious. However, after apparently failing to locate members of our cadre for not more than 15 minutes, she wandered outside in a huff. When we eventually found her, she proceeded to shriek and shove at her girlfriend in a manner very much in keeping with the child-like state in which she entered law school.

Draw whatever conclusions you will from the previous sentence.

As I fled up Castro Street with my friend of many years, desperate to escape the feminine sidewalk carnage in our wake, I wondered: how do people of such emotional fragility survive three years of the most severe mind-fucking devised by the legal academy? What skills could this person possibly have that would convince anyone to both put up with her attitude and pay her US $140,000 per year with virtually guaranteed yearly bonuses and raises? That amount is several times what the typically good-natured American can expect to earn at the apogee of his or her career. Perhaps the typically good-natured American is both pathetic and stupid but that's no excuse for rewarding borderline-psychotics who happen to stumble through a torts outline.

To address the afore-posed questions, perhaps this unfortunate soul, lacking social grace or ability to just suck it up and be an adult, is a victim of the law school. Perhaps the bankruptcy professor yells too much; or the Con-Law guy made too many mean-spirited quips; maybe her partner in negotiations was a hard-ass. Any of these things could explain such bizarre behaviour--and the fact that I find it necessary to write about this. But perhaps I've too much empathy re: the whole law school mind-fucking thing; it's more likely that there's just something fundamentally unreasonable (here I intend a strict legalese usage) about people who start fights with their friends in public and commit other social torts. I suppose that since I can't sue for my evening back, I'll just put it down to a lesson learned and (hopefully) karmic currency for better adventures to grace this space.

As for the ridiculous amount of money this person is going to make, I make no good-faith complaint and only mention it to arouse the gentle reader's outrage. Hell, I've probably got the same package.

Charlie and Rose

Wednesday and Thursday consisted of a pleasant evening of dinner, clubbing, some conversation, and huge quantities of alcohol followed closely by fearful flashes of a Hieronymus Bosch future alternating with unconsciousness and vaguely sexual sounds from my compatriots. So it wasn't surprising that sometime after a bracing drive back down the Peninsula, I suddenly found myself watching David Brooks and Charlie Rose try to finish one another's sentences.

David Brooks is probably not my favorite of the NYT columnists but I can't verify that because I'm too cheap to subscribe. At any rate, I was pleasantly surprised by his observations which only occasionally increased my annoyance with conservatives.

Of greatest interest were Brook's comments on the true intellectual attitudes of the Bush administration on foreign policy and specifically the Iraq situation. Since I can hardly suffer a fool who doesn't watch Charlie Rose, we'll briefly dispense with the details; suffice it to say, Bush & Co. are smart, serious and very engaged while Cheney & Co. are a bit "hard to read."

While this frustrates my party line spiel about how we're ruled by anti-intellectual lay-abouts, it also forces me to make a more cultural criticism, even less likely to carry water with those who appreciate that folksy charm. Bush's sense of relevant history roughly extends to about the year 2008, concerns only him and has no place for the past. He's not a conservative, neither is he stupid. If Brooks is correct, the GOP wasn't joking about Bush doing serious on-the-job training back in 2001. The result is that these gentlemen have taught themselves a great deal about the current political calculus in the relevant region. They know things are going badly, appreciate that fact and are willing to spare no expense to solve the problem while disabusing us of any notions about just going home. This obsession with "facts on the ground" is great for short term tactics in a cultural vacuum but terrible when everyone else uses the specter of a cultural assault as the primary motivator.

A professional, volunteer military whose members actually follow orders will never compete numerically with irregulars convinced that their way of life is under assault; the former will, at best, fight for their buddies. The point is that we're going to lose this war after winning every single battle (with the exception of a very unfortunate incident in lower Manhattan which caught me totally unawares). These people clearly are only interested in what other cultures have to offer us by way of exploitable markets and credible threats. There was never any abstract curiosity and as a result no useful information which might have yielded the perspective necessary to forming a strategy of apparent coherence lasting more than one year. Far be it from me to suggest government by academics, but we should have them around as they often make charming dinner companions, love wine and late night conversations and tend to understand the big picture. They also don't like people who pretend to be stupid; Clinton understood this. I'm sure Bush works very hard during the day, but he really should stay up later and learn to drink responsibly.

The other likeable moment from Brooks was where he praised Sam Alito as a modest fellow with great self-respect but no need for accolade, similar to Bush, but without a need to act dumb. (Even working stiffs from Jersey want their lawya*s sma*t.) While my parents were being counter-culture Jesus Freaks and not joining the army, these guys were quietly supporting The Man, learning his game and not joining the army. Now my parents make me borrow money for school while these guys work at odd jobs here and there. Those folks from the '60s protest culture who did make it to government (Biden and Kennedy, etc.) are intellectual show-offs, always hated by the folks from Sam Alito's old Jersey neighborhood and smart rich kids who appreciate their place in the world. Never mind that Democrats run all the good schools and want to give the neighborhood folks healthcare; I regretfully concede that this whole thing is about personality.

The very very best news from Brooks: demographics for evangelical Christians are flat while secularists are multiplying as if they actually enjoyed heterosexual intercourse. The secularist movement is rockin', vibrant and freshly organized. University v. Church, Whole Foods v. Wal-Mart, etc. We might out-earn and out-live them but we've got 20 years tops before they start setting off bombs and shooting our doctors. Oh, wait those were the '90s.

Wow, Charlie Rose sure has some great guests on his show; afterwards I watched an episode of Entourage and decided that a nose job is really quite reasonable.

In other news, someone determined that it's difficult to tell what something is/was after you blow it up.