The "in" accessory item for your Spring 2004 wardrobe

For those of you fellas that want to make a smooth first impression with the ladies, this is definitely for you. Or if you were the guy that jumped on the Pabst Blue Ribbon bandwagon so blatantly late in the game that everyone knew you were a tool, this is your perfect comeback item. And for those of you that just need that perfect something to wear with that tight fitting pair of dark blue jeans, you too can benefit from my advice.

I caution you, though, that once you make a leap into high fashion like this, there is no turning back.

And the new status symbol for 2004 is.... a HUGE Genesee Cream Ale belt buckle with bright gold lettering on a metallic green background!

I am dead serious. This item truly exists. I seen it with my own eyes. Riding home on the bus on Friday afternoon, this guy sitting across from me had the thing "aimed" in my direction. Long mullet, some sort of NASCAR-related shirt, and dark blue jeans pimpin the giant Genny belt buckle. Generally I do try to avoid staring at strangers' crotches, but this was like witnessing two trains collide. No matter how much you want to look away, your eyes are inevitably pulled back to the awesome spectacle. Everytime I tried to look out the window or something, the buckle would catch a ray of sunlight, reflect it right at me, and draw me back in.

I did a quick Google search and even checked the online store at www.highfalls.com/genesee, but I could not find this marvel of fashion anywhere. So for all of you that are already fretting over what kind of kickass/creative gift to get for my quickly approaching (August) birthday, start your (search) engines!

a nice end to a tough week

Damn this week was tough. stress. school. work. lack of sleep. the usual suspects. Then this evening while eating dinner with my family at "Bubby's," my sister asked if I had seen the Weekend section of today's newspaper. I had not, so she pulled it out for me. Here's the restaurant review she was specifically referring to.

Seeing this article gave me one of those turn-arounds where the entire crappy week just melted away. I am so fucking pumped for Kevin -- the executive chef receiving the high praise in the story -- getting a write-up like this. We were really good friends in high school. He ran into some trouble towards the end and was never really all that excited about the college thing anyway (though he's a brilliant guy), so he never went to college. We have stayed kind of tight through the years since, though we don't see that much of each other these days.

Anyway, my belabored point here is that Kevin is kicking ass and I'm really happy for him because he is just an all-around good guy.

My hypothetical discussion with a supporter of the Pittsburgh Penguins

Me: Did you hear the Pens won tonight for the first time in 19 games?

Person: Huh??? Are you just shitting me? When you say "won," do you mean that when the game ended, the Pens had actually scored more goals than the other team?

Me: Yes, they really won a game.

Person: YEAH PENS!

Me: YEAH PENS!

[I decided to delete my previous blog entry ("My hypothetical discussion with a supporter of the Constitutional amendment positively banning gay marriage") because I'm basically sick of thinking about the subject and would even get furious just seeing my own blog entry about it. I'd rather focus on the miracle of a Pens win]

Injury Update

So I heard yesterday that "Puck Nuts" is still sore but is doing okay.

As for me, I am having a horrible winter. A few weeks back, I took a knee straight on my neck during a big collision at a winter league game. Of course, the real pain from something like that only appears later, so I failed to take the hint and foolishly continued playing. Less than twenty minutes later, I hyperextended my throwing arm/elbow as I chased down a huck, collided with another player doing the same thing, and we both hit the turf. Both injuries are still causing me pain and sleep issues. And the elbow thing has generally transformed some of my throws into garbage over the past couple weeks.

Flashforward to this weekend. I started out with a nasty calf spasm and strain at a Friday night winter league game. And finally, at Sunday practice, I took the follow-through of a defender's hand and/or arm to the face as he swatted at a floaty pass that we had both gone up for. I wound up lying on the sideline gushing blood everywhere.

I am getting so sick of this BS. I really take the time to warm up and stretch before playing -- and usually stretch after playing. But it doesn't seem to matter. I'll only be 27 this year, but is it possible that I'm getting too old for this shit? Basically, I don't think I will ever learn how to tone it down or change my game to avoid the abuse. Thus, the "R" word has crept into the back of my mind. Retirement. Maybe I'll hang up my cleats after this fall series while I still have my knees and ankles mostly intact??

[end whine]

A copy of my desperate letter to President Bush requesting immediate assistance

Dear Mr. President,

Please save us from the homosexual horror!! All these gay marriages in San Francisco are destroying the very fabric of my future relationship with my lovely 100% heterosexual partner! The sanctity of our future marriage needs to be protected! And by "protected," I mean for you to take hateful and drastic measures which have absolutely nothing to do with my bride-to-be or myself.

If any more gay people in some state 3,000 miles away get married, its going to seriously lessen the quality of our upcoming marriage. The mere knowledge that there might be homosexuals out there living happily and monogamously as married couples will completely sour my wedding day. If God meant for these gay people to lead happy lives, he would have made them straight instead of punishing them with their gay-ness.

Please do something as soon as you can. And thank you in advance for saving my marriage from certain ruin by the hands of gay America.

Sincerely,
-Sam Stein

Some perspective on injuries

I got home last night from ultimate and was feeling a little bitchy about my nagging elbow injury that has been bothering me for the past few weeks. When I got out of my car, my friend/neighbor across the street was outside getting some things out of his roommate's car. He said "what's up?" and I was tempted to actually whine about my elbow rather than just return the casual "what's up?" I bit my lip, though, and just said hi. And then what he told me next made my elbow pain disappear like magic.

He said, "I've got a kind of strange question for you. My roommate just got back from hockey and he took a slapshot in the nuts [apparently without any protection]. Its been a while now, and he's still in so much pain that he can barely move. Do you think we should take him down to the emergency room?"

Suddenly, that bum elbow of mine felt like dynamite. In fact, at that moment, I don't think I would have noticed if a car had buzzed by and ran over my foot. A slapshot in the nuts. Holy effing shit. I had no idea what to say. Typically when someone asks you for advice about an injury, the first thing you ask is "so what does it look like?" but what do you say about something like this?

So I suggested that the ER might be a good idea and I went up to my apartment thanking my lucky stars that the boys downstairs were A-Okay.

Misbehaving in Yoga class

My mom and I went to our first ever yoga class together. We set up our mats next to each other, facing the mirrored wall. After everyone introduced themselves, we went right into our first exercise, a simple breathing technique. I was watching my mom in the mirror which made me giggle. As the exercise went on, people were exhaling so loudly I couldn't believe it. How am I supposed to meditate when everyone sounds like they are sighing in relief from taking a big-ass dump? Between the sighs and my mom’s faces, I had to do all I could to control my laughter. It was the kind of church laugh where you are trying so hard not to make a sound, but everyone knows you are laughing b/c your shoulders keep jerking up and down, and then a couple of peeps squeeze out beyond your will. My mom saw me snickering, and naturally she started to laugh. It was one of those things where you just keep feeding off the other person's laughter. I turned to the side so that my back was facing my mom and I could not see her in the mirror. The instructor walked over to me, with a microphone on, and said, "Mary, face the front." I looked at her so helplessly, trying to hold in my laugh, and replied, "I can't," only to start my laughing fit again. A minute later, she said in her microphone, "Mother and daughter cannot stand next to each other." And then the inevitable happened: she separated us. I had to wait 26 years to be separated from someone in class, only this was yoga class, and that someone was my mother.

A bit of advise for folks in the restaurant business

This is pretty simple: If the name of your restaurant actually includes a type of food served on your menu, that is the one item that you CANNOT fuck up. Especially if you are just getting started.

Earlier this evening, my parents took my sister, Mary, and I to some recently-opened Italian place for dinner. All I remember of the name was that it included the word "ravioli." Of our party of five, Mary and I each ordered a type of ravioli while the others ordered other standard Italian fare. After waiting (in a mostly empty restaurant) for at least 40 minutes, they managed to misprepare our two ravioli dishes by covering them with the wrong sauces.

nice job "ravioli house"

I am so proud of my law school today

Last night, at our annual auction to raise money for public interest law endeavors, we did some awesome drinking. A crowd of no more than 200 or so drinkers tore through SEVEN kegs in three hours. No sippers here. We started the night out with four kegs, and after 90 minutes of non-stop consumption, we suddenly realized we needed to reload bigtime. (BTW- the auction bidding definitely reflected the auction drinking. someone put up $75 for a pair of Penguins tickets with a street value of around 50 cents)

I must also note Pitt Law's increasingly popular lunchtime activity. Someone recently discovered that Spike TV has been showing MacGyver reruns on weekdays at noon... there is nothing like walking into the student lounge after your 11:00 class and kicking back just in time to catch that MacGyver intro and theme music.

Yeah, reputation, faculty, and tuition are all important considerations when judging a law school's quality. However, today I am most proud of our remarkable weeknight drinking prowess and our daytime channel surfing intelligence.

Excuse Me, I Was Totally Wrong

The White House has now produced more overwhelming documents regarding the President's National Guard service. It appears that in addition to collecting a paycheck, he went to the dentist. And we all know that if someone collects a paycheck AND gets a free dental exam, they are obviously also fulfilling their duties to the National Guard.

I still assume this story will never amount to much and may not be true, but the fact that the White House is trying to address it with documentary evidence seems strange considering the weakness of the documents produced thus far. Has the media caught the scent of actual "blood in the water?" If there are still records of such mundane things as paychecks and a dental visit, how can the White House explain the lack of logs detailing Bush's operation of multi-million dollar aircraft (or whatever he was supposed to be doing)?

My point is that the White House has done a poor job of refuting the AWOL charges. Considering the apparent lack of hard evidence pointing in either direction, they could have just flatly denied everything. Instead, they are blundering the whole thing by voluntarily opening the door for evidence to become an issue. They tossed some lame documentation to a press corps who might not be satiated by dental records. There is only one thing worse than the possibility of their man being AWOL back in '72 - the image they might have created of their man getting paid with dental benefits while AWOL.

On the other hand, I'll guess its 50/50 that the media will decide the story isn't gaining traction and will just go to sleep on this one.

Getting Paid = Proof of Actually Doing Your Work? The White House says yes

Okay. I haven't followed the ins and outs of this national guard service story with much interest, but this latest "evidence" from the White House of all things being kosher just strains the definition of the word "evidence." We're talking about the same Federal government apparatus that the Washington Post recently revealed was paying folks at NIH six figures to essentially make coffee and copies.

As an example from my life, I'm sure I could dig up pay stubs from the three years that I worked for the University of Maryland's Residential Facilities outfit during my undergrad years. Does that prove I actually did any work there? Hell no. The only thing pay records like that prove is that I was collecting pay! If someone in the future tried to accuse me of taking naps in the storage room while I was on the clock (not that I would ever do something so heinous!), I wouldn't expect those pay stubs to be some sort of defense.

Sure we're talking about a Vietnam era where everyone was doing what they could do avoid service. On the other hand, we're talking about someone who pulled quite a sickening "look at me, I'm a badass" aircraft carrier stunt just last year. So if our fearless leader takes heat on this issue, I'm not going to feel too bad for him.

New College Basketball Venues - Pitt's vs. Maryland's

A recent Post-Gazette column referred in passing to Pitt's new Petersen Events Center as the PNC Park of on-campus arenas. For those that are not in the know, that is the equivalent of saying Pitt's new basketball arena is the finest in the country. Granted, its not too shabby, but I think it has a few glaring flaws which the Pittsburghers have been too nice in overlooking.

First and foremost, there is the horrifying seating arrangement. One whole side of the court (and even worse, the side that the TV cameras face) consists of luxury boxes with court-side patios. It looks pretty lame in person or on-camera when you see an empty patio, with a lone suit on his cell phone, with his back to the court during play. This arrangement would fit right in with the NBA crowd, but this is a college game!

Second, the enormous electronic advertising panels that run along the middle deck on each side of the court are placed/designed in a way so that they transmit way-too-obvious reflections onto the surface of the court. You see this in a lot of basketball arenas, but at Petersen, its actually bright enough to be a significant annoyance/distraction from many angles or vantage points.

Finally, if I recall correctly, the video screen hanging above the court actually blocks some upper deck patrons from viewing the wall-hung scoreboards opposite from them (the video screen is not a full scoreboard, so those patrons lose the benefit of all the collateral game data displayed on the scoreboards).

By comparison, the University of Maryland's new Comcast Center is "the real deal." The place is a bit less intimate with seating for about 5,500 more people, however I would go so far as to call it the finest Division I or professional basketball venue I've seen. And I've seen about 10 configured for basketball plus at least another 10 which were set up for concerts at the time of my visit.

Most importantly, the student section at Comcast surrounds the entire court with at least ?eight? rows on each side. There are no advertising-to-court light reflection issues. And the central video screen includes all the other scoreboard info as well. Plus it has an insanely steep vertical wall of student seating right behind one basket that really adds some character/intimidation factor to the place.

Pittsburgh needs to get over its new sports venues. Okay, sure PNC is a great place for baseball, but on the other hand, Heinz "we have an open end that ALMOST faces the skyline" Field and the Petersen Events Center really aren't so hot.

We've got one salty city right now

I've been reading lately about the area's big salt shortage.

This has led me to wonder where all the salt goes after a city constantly dumps it on streets. I need some chemistry major on this topic. Does it evaporate or something? If not, can it be reclaimed through the sewage system? Or more to the point, if it isn't somehow reclaimed, does that mean the three rivers turn salty in the winter due to the meltwater runoff???

I just think its kind of strange to hear all about a city littering its roadways with corrosive chemicals to the point of exhausting supplies... without ever considering where all that shit ends up.

I did a brief search thinking I could get some brilliant answer by investing 60 seconds of my time into a Google visit. Instead, I found my way to the almost-a-little-bit-kind-of interesting homepage of the Salt Institute. So perhaps instead of figuring out an answer for the city's salt crisis, I'll just get back to my original task of not failing any law school classes.

The Presidential primary season: less useful than mosquitoes

So here we are on a big seven state Tuesday. More wasteful campaigning. More strategic insanity. Until now, the candidates have blown sickeningly large wads of money on convincing 67 Iowans and a couple dozen New Hampshireites -- and the comparatively huge population of journalists and TV people in Media Land -- that they are the one.

And now today? Finally, we get some monster contests to really get revved up about. Can you believe this? The all-important Delaware and North Dakota primaries on the same day??? I can't handle all the excitement. Okay, in all seriousness, I guess there are a couple contests (Missouri, Arizona) today in moderate sized states..

But back to my point - all this attention given to a few podunk states by the candidates will not amount to squat in November when the eventual winner goes up against the incumbent. Meanwhile big swing states like Pennsylvania and Florida who have later meaningless primaries will never get any serious attention from Democratic candidates until this summer/fall. So why not shuffle the schedule each election year to place at least a couple big swing states at the beginning of the primary calendar? Finding out who the Democrats of these states prefer would seem to be a better use of resources.

But this is politics. And in the world of politics, flushing millions of dollars down the proverbial   toilet in Iowa and New Hampshire makes sense because if you end up going on to win the fall election, you'll be a part of the wonderful bureaucracy that blows $2,000 per actual   toilet in its purchase orders. Might as well learn the ropes early on.

On a related note - there's been a lot of legislative and legal hoopla surrounding campaign finance reform lately... which makes me wonder why parties have not voluntarily placed primary campaign limits on their own members for the greater good of the party. First, what if the best or most electable candidate from the party has the least money? Why risk losing your party's best shot at the White House to a lack of funds? Second, I think it would be nice for the eventual candidate of the non-incumbent party to actually have some money to throw around once the self-bloodletting of the primary season is over. Why risk selecting an awesome candidate who has no money left to defeat the incumbent party in the fall election?

Oh wait, I forgot. Kerry and Bush don't care. They're rich. And of course, we all know that only fabulously wealthy white men are really qualified to be 21st century Presidents.