I'll start with the good news, then move to the cool. Good news: got my job offer officially today. Woohoo! And our summer class was 6 for 6, which is awesome because we all get along and it would have been reeeeeeeally awkward otherwise.

Last night a group of us from work went to the Improv, where a friend of one of the summer associates was performing. He got us what would normally be great seats, except when there's an insult comic involved.

The headliner was Jeffrey Ross, who you know (if you know at all) as the king of the celebrity roast. He decided to do something that he proclaimed was unprecedented for him, which was to try out some of his material for the upcoming Comedy Central roast. In order to do so, he wanted to call someone up onto stage to play Shatner. In case you don't see where this is going yet, 90% of Shatner jokes are either fat jokes or bald jokes.

Yes, I got to be William Shatner for 10 minutes last night. And I (sort of) got roasted by the king. Let's just say, awesome. There may be more to the story, but I'll save it for now.

I don't know if any movie has ever won my affection quicker than Little Miss Sunshine. The reason? Attention to detail. The detail that won my heart was one that I can't remember ever seeing in a movie or on TV. We get a scene of domestic life from the main family, in their modest house, and if you pay attention you'll notice that the house is a mess. It's not unclean, but rather untidy. Stuff is piled all over the place--not because it's been a bad week and mom has temporarily lost track of the housekeeping, I think it's safe to say, but because that's how they live. Never before have I seen a dramatized version of what's basically a middle- or working-class family--not the elderly, crazy people, or the drugged-out poor--that just can't keep up with the house. I don't know how many people's experience that matches, but it certainly matched mine.

If not for that detail I would have enjoyed the movie and would recommend it heartily; because of that detail, I trusted it and came to love it.

Yep yep - Sesame Street Martians

I've really got to find an mp3 of these guys to download to my phone.

So we did all sorts of the standard touristy stuff in NOLA--wander down Bourbon Street, get beignets at Cafe Beignet, get beignets at Cafe Dumond, get begniets at the airport on the way out of town, threaten to shoot the next asshole who offers you beignets, etc.

The work was hard, the fun stuff was fun, and the devastation was devastating. The first time I was ever shocked to see something in America was the massive number of soldiers carrying machine guns around the streets in the days after 9/11. The second was seeing entire, normal-looking, working-class suburbs simply abandoned en masse with debris piled up in yards, cars in trees, and utilities out for an entire year. The mint juleps at Emeril's, however, rocked.

And yes, the story currently circulating basically happened as reported.

Good morning, America, how are you? In a few hours our firm's summer associates will be descending on New Orleans like the mosquitos that will subsequently be descending on us. (What happens in New Orleans has a 5-10% chance of giving you yellow fever; New Orleans: come for the jambalaya, stay because you've been hospitalized with something exotic.) We're doing Habitat for Humanity, which I was delighted to find out does not mean that we're rebuilding partners' houses. We're also hitting Emeril's and the House of Blues. The downside is that we're representing the firm so we basically have to behave; the upside is that if we induce others to misbehave, we can chalk it up to client development.

For the first time in along time, this weekend was not about the firm at all. No events. So I can actually talk about some of what happened.

I went with a group to Fogo de Chao last night. It's one of those Brazilian barbeque places I'd heard so much about, where they just keep bringing meat to your table until you say uncle, and then maybe they bring just a little bit more. The meat varied in quality, but the variance was from pretty damn good on up. It was easily the most expensive meal I've ever paid for myself, but it was worth it.

Today was all about two things: completely lacking in any hunger at all, and avoiding the heat. L.A. has been on the high end of average temperatures for this time of year, but it's been combined with very unusual high humidity levels. It's been pretty miserable for about a week and a half. Yesterday was all about air-conditioning; today was about getting out to Malibu to hang out at/in the ocean. Nice way to beat the heat, I must say.

Last night I was in pretty early after dinner, but unwisely I stayed up pretty late playing online, and then made an unfortunate discovery. The good news is that if a water main breaks, L.A. will send out a crew to fix it at any hour day and night. The bad news is that if that involves jackhammering through a residential street between 3 and 5 a.m., so be it. I might have slept through it if I'd already been asleep, but there was no way I was getting to sleep with jackhammers going off 300 feet away. So today has been a groggy day, on insufficient and weirdly timed sleep, which I should get back to.

I attended large portions of the Game Show Congress this weekend. I mean the following comment with all due respect and love for both groups: amazingly, game show fanatics may be even a slight bit dweebier than quiz-bowlers. I say this because they're basically the same people, but quiz-bowlers have the mitigating factor of being young and naive. Most of this weekend's attendees were old enough to know better. But still, good times.

I sort of knew this already, but the trivia world is freakishly small sometimes. As far as I could tell, about 100-150 people attended this thing. There were two I knew who I knew would be there. Then there were a couple of other quiz-bowl types I knew who I didn't know would be there. Then it turned out that one of the guys I've played pub trivia with or against this summer was The Other Guy in the finals of the Jeopardy Ultimate Tournament of Champions, along with Ken Jennings and That Dude Who Won. Then, it turns out another guy I've been playing pub trivia with and against has been on Jeopardy a number of times and has written a well-reviewed forthcoming book about the experience--and he gave an excellent reading yesterday.

I had a lot of fun with the Congress, but I also had to get from the Westside to Burbank three straight days, to a Malibu firm corporate department-sponsored brunch today, to a firm litigation department-sponsored bowling event Wednesday night (which had the misfortune of being counter-programmed at Hollywood & Highland against the filming of the ESPYs), a
firm labor and employment department-sponsored CLE event on Tuesday night, etc. etc. etc. Let's just say I have very little desire to get off of the couch all month evening.

The most interesting magazine article I've happened across in quite a while: just what is the Muzak company up to these days?

As I lie in bed typing this, I'm reminded how ambivalent I am about the Fourth of July as a holiday. I'm not complaining about the whole "Happy Birthday, America" thing which seems reasonable enough--although Lexington & Concord, Yorktown, and the Treaty of Paris are all equally plausible dates for celebrating that. No, it's just that I've always been kind of skittish about loud noises, and so I really do not enjoy fireworks. At all. Particularly the "let's set these off in the street by ourselves rather than watching the professional display" kind, which are currently threatening my sanity, my getting to sleep when I want to (i.e.: pretty much now), and (if they're really errant) my car.

So here's the thing: Interesting things tend to happen at work, but in the names of general propriety and specific confidentiality requirements, they're best not shared here. Some interesting things happen away from work, but generally those preclude me from having time to blog about them. So we're stagnating a bit right now--but every time I feel the need to point that out, things seem to pick up, so hopefully that will be true again.

Except I'm going to DC for the next 4 days and not taking my laptop, so probably not quite so soon.