So last weekend I went to College Park, Maryland (nice campus, sketchy town, really sketchy "Fundome" which appeared to be neither fun nor a dome) to TRASHionals, which is the national championship of popular culture quizbowl. Despite a slow personal start, I came on later in the event, and I had the good fortune of attaching myself to one of the best established teams out there. The bottom line is that after 17 years of organized quizbowl on the high school, collegiate, and open levels, I finally found myself on a national championship team. W00t!! How great is that--Ray Bourque, Jerome Bettis, and yours truly. OK that's ridiculous, but still.

In other news, we're in the middle of finals period right now. Tax was Wednesday and I'm in the middle of my Bankruptcy takehome. That should be over by the end of the weekend at the latest, and that will leave Copyright. Next Saturday is graduation. It's a busy time.

And yet somehow in the midst of all that, I've been concentrating more on the NFL draft than anything else. Seriously, I think I need help. I've been reading everything I can find on it for weeks. Thank God the thing is over by the end of the weekend or else I might never get anything done again.

My draft thoughts? The Steelers draft at #15, and the guys I would really like to see fall to that spot are Patrick Willis and Alan Branch. Because I don't think that's going to happen, I assume like the rest of the world that the pick is a CB, an OLB, or a trade down. But with a new coach (although the personnel department hasn't changed), I have much less of a feel for what the Steelers might do than in any other recent year. Of course, I had no idea we'd get Santonio Holmes last year, so who knows. I do know that I'd love to see Brian Leonard come in and be a Mike Alstott type--playing some FB, some TB especially at the goal line, and being a threat to catch the ball out of the backfield. Every mock draft I've seen has him going to Philly--usually in the second round, but occasionally in the first. So my one actual draft prediction is that Brian Leonard will not be an Eagle next year.

As for other teams, I'm most fascinated with the Lions, who should have a real sunk costs problem on their hands. Do you take the best prospect in the draft, Calvin Johnson, despite spending 3 of 4 first-rounders on WRs, or do they avoid it? I say they should do it unless they can extract as king's ransom for it, which is a possibility. If they can trade down with Tampa or Atlanta and pick up two additional second-rounders, they should be able to fill a lot of holes in a hurry. Since this is what logic dictates, I'm curious to see how Matt Millen screws it up. The Redskins, Broncos, Ravens, Colts, Bills, and Patriots should also be fun to watch, because they are teams that draft either particularly well or particularly interestingly. The one thing I do know is that I'll be planted tomorrow, way more interested than anyone should be.

Some extremely brief reviews of the Netflix I have watched relatively recently:

This Film Is Not Yet Rated: Snarky documentary, a bit full of itself, but makes a good point about censorship and the movies.
Boyz N The Hood: Don't quote me boy, I ain't said shit. Long overdue viewing.
The Weather Underground: Shadowy film, hard to get ahold of, just like its subject. Watch it only if you're particularly interested in the subject. I was.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: Most entertaining movie I've watched in a long time. Kilmer's best work, and possibly Downey's too, and that's saying something.
Control Room: al-Jazeera documentary. Probably one too many documentaries in a short time, but I was bored.
Thank You For Smoking: Very funny, and treated the lead character with more humanity than I expected.
Shaun of the Dead: Closest competitor to Kiss Bang squared. Can't wait to see their new movie.
Mean Streets: Exactly what you'd expect from early Scorcese/Keitel/DeNiro, except maybe 10% less fun. Still solid.
Black Sunday: The Super Bowl X footage was probably the most entertaining part. But I'm a Steeler fan.
Bottle Rocket: My favorite Wes Anderson film, which is to say 2.5 stars out of 5.
Beyond the Sea: Before this movie I didn't know much about Bobby Darin; now I know way more than I needed to.
Ray: I'll take the Johnny Cash movie of the two, but that's probably more of a musical preference since they're almost exactly the same movie.
Wake Up Ron Burgundy: They had about 1.5 funny movies worth of material when they made Anchorman; still, if you like those characters and that humor, you could do way worse.
Avalanche: I'm clearly out of good '70s disaster movies and am scraping the bottom of the barrel. If they get any worse, I quit. Note: If you ever make a disaster movie, establish the physical space and where everything is, or people won't understand what's happening when the disaster hits.
The Fall of Fujimori: Really interesting and even-handed documentary about a country (Peru) and a leader I didn't know much about; also notable is that it's the first movie I've watched Netflix's new streaming "Watch It Now" feature, which is particularly good for documentaries, comedy concerts, and anything where the appeal is not particularly visual, since you're watching on a computer screen.
Reality Bites: Irony (n.): a movie soaked in pop culture retro kitsch becoming retro and kitsch itself; doesn't hold up particularly well; Winona still chooses the wrong guy.

So it goes.

I had been thinking I'd write something about what I'd been reading lately (short answer: not much), but instead I find myself writing about something I read a long time ago.

I was in 10th grade when I picked up Cat's Cradle. I had read a lot as a kid, but it was mostly young children's books, sports books, Stephen King, and a little bit of Robert Heinlein. Vonnegut was one of the first "serious authors" I ever picked up just for fun.

You know how the things you experience at a young age will always stay with you in a way that things you experience as an adult tend to come and go without leaving quite as deep a mark, because you're already in some sense fully-formed? Because of that feeling, I know that no book will ever be as influential in my life as Cat's Cradle has been.

I can't adequately summarize the reasons why that's true, but I know that it has something to do with cynicism, absurdity, and learning (as the bumper stickers tell us) to "question authority". By reading about Bokononism, ice-nine, and all of the wampeters and granfalloons and foma out there, I learned how ugly and ridiculous the world could be--but also how full and rich and complex the world could be if you started looking behind the happy bullshit. I still think about granfalloons every time someone talks about patriotism and loving one's country, and I constantly go back and forth about whether foma are harmful, useful, or both.

I have re-read Cat's Cradle more than any other novel, and I expect to continue re-reading it every few years for the rest of my life. I've read many of Vonnegut's other novels, and they have all mattered to me to some extent (except, strangely, Slaughterhouse-Five, about which I never understood all the fuss), but those first 150 pages that I read will be the ones that stick with me always.

Also, the line "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut," from Back to School kills me every time, even if it's totally ripped off from the Marshall MacLuhan bit in Annie Hall.

When I was growing up, Easter was a major day on the family calendar. Along with Christmas Eve, it was the day we knew there was no wrangling out of church. Plus there was candy. In fact, there was candy well beyond the time when it was age-appropriate, because Mom has always been a sucker for holiday traditions. At some point, though, Easter became that random Sunday in April or occasionally March where everything is closed and it takes me way to long to remember why. The past few years I've been much more aware of Passover observers around me than I have of Easter.

While that's still true (prepare for groaner), I still had a really good Friday. I woke up with the idea that there were 5 or 6 discrete tasks that I had to accomplish, and I set out to do them and got them done with plenty of day to spare. That was remarkably satisfying, putting together a mental list and checking them off one by one. I even had time left over to read for one of my classes and to watch two of the three Netflix that had been laying around for a couple of weeks without turnover. It's funny how some of your best days are the ones where nothing earth-shattering happens, but you just mow through tasks that had been accumulating for a while.

I sometimes wonder if the people who named Red Delicious Apples were delusional or if they were just being ironic. But in neither case was it total, because they are definitely red and they are totally apples.

You know that great quote from one of the Godfather movies about how every time he thinks he's out they pull him right back in? Ann Arbor is the exact opposite of that. I was riding my bike around all last week and then again on Monday and thinking, "hey, this place isn't so bad." Upon hearing me think that, the weather gods decided that what we really needed over the following 72 hours was severe thunderstorms, a 60-degree temperature drop in 36 hours, snow, hail, and winds in excess of 50 miles per hour. Tomorrow's forecast calls for a 70% chance of frogs, with intermittent locusts and death of firstborns toward evening.

I drove home again last weekend. Still no change with Dad, which is amazing in and of itself. One moment left me wondering whether to laugh or cry, though. The nurse had brought in lunch and then left, and Dad just stared at it for a couple of minutes without moving. He does that a lot nowadays, blankly vacantly staring off into space until something gets his attention. I asked him if I could give him a hand with anything, and he instantly shot back, "Suicide." That could have simply been quick wry gallows humor; at least I hope it was.

I went for an even longer bike ride today, even though it was a little chilly. I rode out to the Huron Parkway, then turned south. I "parked" my bike at Whole Foods in an effort to live up to my New Year's resolution to be more cliche. I went inside and undid all the good I was doing with one of their big-ass brownie cookies. For a place known for healthy stuff, Whole Foods has some of the best junk food you'll ever eat in your life if you check out the bakery section.

I also discovered that my helmet has some great warning labels, including one that pretty much says that in even a very low-speed crash you will probably die even if you're wearing it.

I did two glorious things today.

The glory of the first one can only be understood by a graduate or professional student: I turned in a seminar paper to complete a year-old imcomplete. The paper is not great and probably not even good, but it's done. From my USC days I knew that an incomplete seminar paper is like a terrible Sword of Damocles hanging over your head (that ain't no crime). The only prospect more horrifying than having it continue to weigh you down is the prospect of actually finishing the damn thing. On the other hand, finishing one and turning it in is an amazing high like few I've ever felt.

The second thing I did was to buy my first adult bicycle and to ride it around town for almost an hour. I've been on a bike about a half-dozen times in the last decade, and I've always had a blast. So I had decided that I might as well get one at the end of last summer, but the weather quickly turned inhospitable and I put it off. Yesterday the weather was great, so I went to a bike shop here in town and put down a deposit. I went back today, and after a bunch of rigamarole with helmets, reflectors, license, pants clips, etc., I walked out after 50 minutes with a brand-new Schwinn Frontier. I'll probably be pissed off when it's inevitably stole in 10 days, but right now I love it.

The most surprising thing about Dayton was that tucked into a little residential neighborhood on the east side of town was probably the best Vietnamese food I've ever had. Everything else about Dayton was pretty much what you'd expect.

Yes, five of us trekked three hours southward last night for that most inexplicable of March Madness rituals, the play-in Opening Round game. It was a fun trip that left us with a greater appreciation for the Steak 'n' Shake side-by-side--especially if you find yourself in Findlay, Ohio at midnight on a Tuesday with another hour to drive--and a strong sense that Kansas is going to beat the shit out of the play-in winner, yooooooour Niagara Purple Eagles.

Other high-and-low-lights:

• I had been told I should cheer for FAMU due to their famous band and certain personal proclivities that I may or may not concede are true. Unfortunately, FAMU did not bring a band, cheerleaders, or any noticeable cheering section. So much for that.
• Your "that's why they're playing off for the #64 spot" sequence of the night: FAMU gets fouled, misses both free throws, gets the rebound, gets fouled, misses the front end of the one-and-one, gets the rebound, gets fouled in the act of shooting, makes one free throw, misses the second, gets the rebound, gets fouled for the double bonus, misses the first free throw, and makes the second so that possession finally changes. If you're counting, that's 2 of 6 from the charity stripe and three horrendous box-outs. Niagara may not get a single rebound on Friday.
• Erin Andrews in person. Believe the hype.
• I went back and forth for two days on whether I could, in good conscience, complete one of my goals of the trip: buying Wright State University T-shirts for myself and some family members. I had a WSU T-shirt I loved for years that finally got too worn out to keep, and I was hoping to replace it. Then this gets announced. I was completely torn on whether I could follow through, or whether it would be a horrible jinx to do so. Luckily I didn't have to make the decision, as we didn't have time to stop anywhere, and none were available at U. of Dayton's arena.
• Niagara's band kept playing Our Director, which you probably don't know better as the fight song of Beth-Center High School. Hadn't heard that one in a long, long time.
  

Speaking of that, here's my take: I think Pitt is properly seeded and is getting a bad rap nationally. They went 27-7, including 12-4 in the Big East, and six of their losses were to tournament teams seeded #8 or higher. The seventh was to an Oklahoma State team that looked like gangbusters at the time but fell apart later, and that game was on a "neutral court" in Oklahoma City. Yes, they did not do quite as well late, but only had two ugly losses all year--at Wisconsin and the G-Town debacle in the Big East tourney--and they didn't lose to anyone in conference who they didn't also beat, Hoyas included.

This team is better primed for tournament success than previous Pitt teams in a couple of ways. One is that Levance Fields is a better pure point than Carl Krauser, especially in assist-turnover ratio. Another is that they have a much more fluid offense--they can pound down to Aaron Gray, go inside-out, penetrate from the wings (Cook and Young), and hit open threes. They only get in trouble when Gray starts missing a lot of chippies, which he will do at times, but he will dominate against much smaller opposition and go straight to the basket without having to worry about whether he's hitting lay-ups and jump hooks.

The weakness compared to previous Pitt squads is that there's no guard who will just take a game over when he has to, as Brandon Knight and Krauser could do at times (but never seemed to in the NCAAs). But they do have guys who can carry the scoring for stretches--Cook, Ramon, Graves, and occasionally Fields. The other big weakness is the one consistent bugaboo of the entire Howland/Dixon era--mediocre free-throw shooting. I hope they get an assistant who can help out in that regard one of these decades.

What do I see happening? I see another run to the Sweet Sixteen but not beyond. UCLA is a tough draw in the regional semi, and I can't see anyone knocking them off early. I think Pitt is well-built to stave off Wright State, VCU and even Duke, but my hunch is that UCLA is just like Pitt but 10% better in every way. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that the student can outduel his teacher, but it's not usually the way to bet.

One of law school's stranger rituals is the MPRE. The Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam is required by almost every state in order to be admitted to the Bar. This may hearten those of you who are cynical about lawyers and ethics until you understand the methodology and scaling of the test. The test consists of 60 multiple-choice questions, 10 of which are experimental and ungraded, as is common on standardized tests. The score is scaled from 50-150, kind of like the 200-800 of the SAT verbal or math, the 120-180 LSAT, etc. Note that the key feature of this kind of test is that your score doesn't represent a particular number right and wrong, but rather a test-taker's place on a real or hypothetical bell curve. The middle of the range (e.g.: 500 SAT section) in theory represents the median test-taker, and on a well-calibrated test it in fact measures the median test-taker. So, of course, the median score on the MPRE is 100, the midpoint of the 50-150 range. The median MPRE examinee gets a 100.

What score, then, is required for admission to the Bar? Well, it varies from state to state, but this year the highest score required is 86, and the lowest is 75. Yes, in a number of states, the amount of ethics you need to be admitted is akin to the amount of verbal knowledge you need to get a 350 on the SAT. No state requires more ethics than the equivalent of a 420.

If that's not disheartening enough, consider that most MPRE questions are designed with a scenario and four answer choices asking whether or not the scenario is ethical. Two answers will begin "yes, because..." and two will being "no, because..." Almost inevitably, one yes and one no will be patently wrong, but the remaining two choices will be very difficult to choose between. So for most questions on the test, the test-taker can't even be really sure about whether or not something is ethical, let alone why.

So yesterday I had to show up at 9 a.m. at Concordia University--a local school that doesn't take any federal funds so that it can legally discriminate--to take the only ethics exam I will ever be required to take in order be a lawyer. I was picking up a few people, so I got down to my car at about 8:05.

As it has been for a few weeks, my parking lot was a sheet of ice over an inch thick. The melting and unmelting over the last month combined with horrible drainage has led to this joyous condition. I have figured out that if I can't get my car to reverse because I can't get any traction, I can usually put it into drive, go forward a foot or so, and then back out. Unfortunately, even this trick didn't work, and I was stuck.

This was where a wave of the type of inspiration that is so narrowly brilliant and so fundamentally flawed in retrospect came over me. Obviously, the solution was simple: I should put my car into reverse, push it back a couple of feet out of the spot where it was spinning its wheels, and then try again. A problem occurred to me--can I actually push hard enough to move the car? But I decided the only way to find out was to give it a try.

It worked! For a glorious instant, I was extremely proud of myself.

Then I realized that the car was not stopping. I tried to run after it, but that was a losing proposition. I was powerless to stop it. The Toyota parallel parked on our street, however, was not powerless to stop it. Not even a little bit.

Our parking lot has a narrow entry and then widens out, so by the time you get over to where I park, you are not lined up with the driveway opening, but with the curb and with a big tree. The tree is way off to the side, right up against a fence. Then you've got the curb, and cars can parallel park. The road itself is a small, one-lane, one-way street, and on the other side are other houses and other parking lots.

I'm still not entirely sure how the car missed the tree. I really don't know how the open driver's door missed the tree, but I'm really thankful about that part. I'm also really glad the Toyota was there, because otherwise my unoccupied car would have gone right out into the street where it could have hit anything--a car driving down the street, the interminable parade of athletes and band members who use our street as a short-cut to the athletic fields at the bottom of the hill, poorly constructed student housing across the street, etc.

I can't imagine that the Toyota's owner will share my perspective that hitting his or her car was the best that could have been hoped for in the situation; we'll find that out when he or she eventually finds and responds to the note under the windshield wiper.

It's also worth noting that the Toyota is a bit of a junker that had a lot of dings and dents already (the new one, it's true, being the granddaddy of them all), so I didn't destroy some pristine vehicle. In fact it was beat up enough that I had brief thoughts of playing dumb, that maybe they wouldn't notice the new damage amidst all the old, or that even if they did they would have no idea how they got there. Then I realized two things: (1) that you'd be hard-pressed not to figure out where damage came from when it happened while you were parallel parked next to a parking lot, especially when you saw the Honda with rear body damage parked there later on, and (2) I was on the way to an ethics and professional responsibility exam. I left the note.

It's worth mentioning that the Toyota owner would be making the incorrect assumption that the rear body damage on my Civic came from hitting their car--actually my car was unscathed except maybe slightly exacerbating the existing body damage. Not that that's relevant, but it was kind of cool.

It was somewhere in all of that thinking that I moved my car forward away from the accident, realized that my car was fine, hopped out with a combination of anger and relief, and promptly forgot about the inch of ice and fell on my ass, hard. I've been hobbling ever since, but my curling adventure a few weeks ago taught me that this will probably go away in another day or so.

I did make it to the MPRE with plenty of time to spare. Even though every 10 questions or so I drifted off into thinking about the accident and my hip and cursing my landlord and all ice everywhere, I finished with 45 minutes to spare and will be moderately surprised if I get below a 120. California requires a 79. They also don't have icy driveways there.

The offers have been pouring in, so I should report that an older, used, but working plenty well enough laptop is on the way to Dad as we speak. You guys rule. A lot.