I'm Back

This will be long because I got a lot on my mind, but it'll be worth reading every last damn sentence, except this next one. You wasted your time by reading this sentence.

Well, I mananged to survive the bar exam, and I can honestly say I'm almost positive that I either passed or failed it, and I'm 80% sure that it will be one or the other. Here are some of the highlights of my bar examination experience:

• When I got up Tuesday (the first day) at 6:15, I flipped on the tele while I was eating breakfast. Luckily Saved By The Bell is on that early, and you can take one guess as to what the 6:30am episode was. I'm not even kidding when I tell you that it was the Hot Sundae episode. Look it up. 7:30am EST/6:30am CST on Tuesday on TBS. I would have laughed, but I didn't want to puke. But it was definitely the kick I needed to get my mind to it and go for it.
• While walking around the building before the exam, I ran into a fraternity brother of mine who is a couple years older than me (and who graduated law school from IU the year before me). He informed me that he was on attempt number three at the Illinois bar exam.
  
  It seems that God has a sense of humor. You see, back in aught-three when I took the Ohio bar exam, the first person I talked to while waiting outside the exam building was some schmuck who went to that bastion of legal knowledge Cleveland-Marshall College of Law (the school who, I shit you not, had a tailgate before the bar exam -- I pray that there was no booze, although that might explain the school's passage rate). Anyway, this guy looked a bit out of sorts, and he asked me for a light. So we chewed the fat for a couple minutes while we enjoyed a cigarette. It was at that point that he felt like divulging that he was on his third try. That wasn't the confidence booster I was looking for, although I did pass the Ohio bar. I do, however, attribute much of my success on that exam to the fact that a bird shit on me the night before while I was outside my hotel smoking. Apparently that's good luck. I was not shit on before this exam, at least not by a bird.
  
  So anyway, my fraternity brother and I are talking, while smoking a cigarette, and with the hopeless misery exuding from him, he might as well have been fat mail-order bride that can't seem to find her way out of Siberia no matter how many of those creepy mail-order cruises she goes on with rich American pederasts. I could sense that he wasn't happy with his station in life, and it seemed like he was a man on the verge of doing something irrationally self-destructive. My fears were confirmed when he told me that if he didn't like how the morning session went, he was just "going to walk." "I'm only out $150," he said, referring to the fee charged to retake the Illinois bar exam. It was depressing. Thanks again God.
• One thing that was made abundantly clear during the long instructions before both sessions of the exam (as well as in the rules sent to every exam taker, as well as in BarBri) was that cell phones and other electronic devices were absolutely prohibited inside the testing rooms and that having one of these devices would result in your getting kicked out of the exam. I was talking to my neighbor (who also took the exam), and she told me that one of her friends taking the exam in a different building told her that, as the proctors were collecting the exams from the afternoon session (read: less than two minutes before you're done for the day), some guy's cell phone fell from his pocket to the ground. I bet the sound of the phone smacking the ground was a one that guy will not soon forget, as it was the sound of him failing the bar exam. That's right. He was booted. Failed.
  
  Can you imagine having to tell your family that you failed the bar exam because you couldn't follow the most unambiguous, most basic, and most repeated instruction given during the exam? Or your employer? That kind of incompetence is simply not tolerable. That kid better have one hell of a support system. Just remember, you go faster when the cuts go up the veins.

Anyway, I'm obviously glad to be done with the exam. I find out the results sometime in the first 2 weeks of October.

There has also been a paltry amount of non-bar-exam-related news floating around the world, about which I cannot help but comment:

• I signed up for what will hopefully be the first of many comedy writing classes at Second City. Should be a good time. Expect to see my name in the SNL credits sometime within the next four to six months.
• So, former 'N Sync heartthrob and aspiring astronaut Lance Bass came out of the closest. There's a shocker. Now for the other four . . .
• Pretentious, underachieving also-ran "rock" group Steely Dan is apparently pissed off at Owen Wilson for playing the role of Dupree in the recently released movie "You, Me, and Dupree." Steely Dan's musically untalented leaders, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, claim that someone patterned the movie after their song "Cousin Dupree," which is about "a hormonal houseguest." So they posted a letter on their website addressed to Luke Wilson (who had no part in the production of the movie), asking Owen (but not the movie's writer) to appear at a July 19 Steely Dan concert in Irvine, California to apologize to the fans. Becker and Fagen actually made not-so-clever threats on the Wilsons' lives, but did offer a handsome reward if Owen showed up at the concert.
  
  "Wilson, in return, would get Steely Dan merchandise and a chance to party with the group." Are you kidding me? Wow, Steely Dan merchandise! Maybe now I can look like an asshole too! AND a chance to party with the band. Party with Steely Dan? Does it get any better than that? Who the fuck would want to drink wine and not have sex with groupies while listening to members of Steely Dan brag to each other about how good they think they are and how they should have won like 30 Grammies? (If you don't recall, in 2001, Steely Dan won their first Grammy ever -- despite the fact that they've been making shitty music for over 30 years -- and the first thing they said was not "thanks," but rather, "It's about time." Wankers.)
  
  Luke and Owen should have gone the concert and explained to the 12 people in the audience -- who were no doubt washing down their Brie with some sort of vintage Pinot Grigio -- to go home because said audience members made the worst fucking decision in their lives. That is, of course, if the audience could hear Luke and Owen over Steely Dan's unsubstantiated self-righteous blabbering about how they're better than every other band ever.
  
  And then the article says that Steely Dan is touring with Michael McDonald. I almost puked all over the keyboard after I read that. Talk about one of the worst concerts in the history of the world. I wonder if they get as many elevator company execs as they expect. Holy shit, I'd rather receive 1,000 unexpected wallops in the cock with a rubber mallet at the most inappropriate times for the rest of my life than be subjected to the combination of Steely Dan's brand of pretentious shit rock and Michael McDonald's butchering of every Motown hit he can conjure up. That bearded Doobie-Brother-ruining fucker deserves to be castrated with a dull, rusty train spike. By the way, thanks to Greg "Also a Steely Dan Hater" Bohmann for sending me the link and working me up into a frenzy. I'm actually frothing at the mouth right now.
• Greg Weeser* sent me a terribly depressing article about why baseball cards have fallen out of favor and are not worth nearly as much as we all thought they would be. I hate you Greg. And my Dan Marino rookie card.
• Someone with far too much time on their hands made a pretty sweet video of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" with only clips of President Bush speaking. It's quite good. Thanks to Greg Weeser* for sending me the link. I love you Greg. And your Carlton Fisk rookie card.
• And thanks to Tron for sending me the link for a video of a dachshund DJ scrathing some record. It would have been event better if I couldn't see the human's hand behind the dog.
• Apparently the Emily of "I'm Divorcing You Steven" billboard fame has her own blog. There's some pretty hate-filled shit on there. You go girl! Embrace the Dark Side.(Although posting a picture of you spray painting graffiti on your husband's car is not advised. It turns out that "he's a cheater" is not a valid defense to criminal vandalism).
• So a jury in Texas (of all places) found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity for the murders of her five children. Here's what apparently did it for the jury (from the article I linked):
  

  Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick testified that Yates believed in her heart and mind that killing her children was the right thing to do. Yates, according to defense expert Resnick, believed that Satan had taken over her body and soul and was eyeing her children's souls next. Yates told Resnick and others who evaluated her in the weeks after her arrest that she believed that if she killed her children while they were still innocent, they would be sent to heaven, and she would have defeated Satan.
  
  Yates turned herself in immediately after the drowning deaths, Resnick said, because she thought her own death would fulfill a Biblical prophecy: If she were executed, Satan would be executed.

  Well, I guess she didn't get what she wanted. It's too bad, too, because I don't believe for a fucking second that she didn't know that what she was doing was wrong. Remind me to hire this Resnick guy if I ever decide to stalk my kids like prey and ritualistically drown them one by one. Opps! Musta been possessed! Oh well! Sorry! Fuck that. I'm calling shenanigans on this one. That psycho should be spending the rest of her life in jail, not some state psych ward where there is less of a chance she will be shanked at lunch by a chick named Bubba.
• Expect Mr. 15,000's long-overdue biography to be appearing on a blog near you (probably this one) sometime soon.