The best purchase I've made all year was the video iPod, hands-down. OK, the iPod--I haven't actually used the video functionality, and mostly went with it for the larger storage capacity. But still, it's been great.

I use it primarily in two places, the gym and the car. For some reason the gyms here have no music and no TV; wearing the iPod has thus improved the gym (especially cardio machine) experience tenfold. It's great in the car as well because my CD player is still the original one that came with the (1998) car, and it's seen better days. It works ok but only grudgingly on burned CDs, and sees scratches the way Haley Joel Osment sees dead people--or maybe the way he sees oncoming cars after a few too many beers, which is to say 3 for every 1 that's actually there. Also, Ann Arbor is just far enough away from both Detroit and Toledo to make reception of their radio stations a frustrating experience filled with fades in and out every couple hundred yards.

Being a Pod person now does create its moments of strangeness as well. Today on the treadmill I realized that most of the other exercisers (read: undergrads) wouldn't even understand most of the reference points as I listened to Frank Zappa's "Be In My Video." A few songs later I decided with great certainty, in succession that I was (a) undoubtedly the only person in the building at that moment listening to Jan & Dean's "Anaheim, Azusa & Cucamonga Sewing Circle, Book Review & Timing Association"; (b) probably the only person in the gym with that particular song loaded onto his/her iPod; and (c) quite possibly the only person in the world currently listening to that song on an iPod, and maybe at all.

Just in the last couple of days I've taken the podcast plunge at the gym, and I think I like it. So I beg of you, dear readers, to suggest some podcasts that I might want to consider downloading or even subscribing to. My preference would be to stick to audio, but by all means go ahead and make the case for a particularly compelling video podcast if one exists; I have the technology, after all. Beyond that, I'm open to any and all suggestions--with the other caveat being that I need things that will not make me fall off a cardio machine with laughter, anger, or any other potentially hazardous emotion.

Oh, and for the 99.99% of people unfamiliar with the aforementioned unique song, if you haven't already guessed by now which one of Jan & Dean's own songs they were trying to replicate the success of, it may be a strong hint to tell you that the line repeated ad nauseum at the end of the song is "Go, grannies, go grannies, go grannies go." See what they did there? It's the power of the plural.

From the "blog about someone's specific job that creates weird interactions with the public" file comes The Blank Top Chronicles, a blog containing purported conversations of a taxi dispatcher. Anyone who has had a law school property class will particularly enjoy declining-property-values woman, who has clearly spent some time in Ladue, Missouri. (Link courtesy of long-time reader/commenter, first-time mentioned mony.)

Quick hits (some of which aren't even football related):

• A 48-hour turnaround time on an 11-hour roundtrip is a pain in the ass, but was worthwhile. Got to see the fam, including my dad's sister from New York. Also got to see the most important Steeler game of the night in person--and the less said about that the better.
• Except for this: Heinz Field after a loss is not a fun place.
• And this: the best jersey spotted was a #16 block-number Mark Malone. Nice.
• Counting points is a little less painful than counting calories. A little. So far.
• There are a zillion fun websites out there for killing time, but if you want to learn about interesting stuff in the process, it's hard to beat Arts and Letters Daily, a collection of literary, artistic, scientific, and political links from all over (though a bit Brit-centric at times). Just today I read articles about Dubai, the origin of Trader Vic's, the American last slave ship and Bob Newhart. Imagine what I could've gotten through if I had one more class!
• Oh yes, classes. I'm calling this my semester of obligation. I'm taking Transnational Law (required), Ethics (basically required), Jurisdiction and Choice of Law (fundamental, especially given my switch to litigation, which I see I haven't mentioned; I'm going into the litigation department, not corporate transactions as I thought going into the summer), and Federal Indian Law (something different).
  
• I'm only committing to one new show so far this fall, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I've always liked Matthew Perry, and SNL, and I've been looking for a semi-dramatic show I could follow from the get-go. People seem to like the Sorkin shows, although I haven't really seen much of his post-A Few Good Men work.
  
• So far so good on the house front. I'm in a 5-bedroom, 5-person house this year, and I'm very happy not to be in a dorm or a sublet.
• This is fun, let's do this more often...
  

A couple of people have asked me about the recent lack of posting. Part of it has been busyness and part has been spotty Internet access, but the biggest thing has been that the longer I've gone without posting, the more I've felt like I should have a big omnibus post summarizing everything that's happened since the beginning of time, or at least September 1. Since that would be kind of a pain in the ass, I'm just going to throw this up here so that we can move on.

Also, I officially joined Weight Watchers today. I've actually been losing a little bit of weight already, now that I'm still exercising regularly but am not eating in a dorm or like a summer associate. So we'll see how that goes.

Also, I haven't been reading any blogs lately either, so if you're on my blogroll and there's something you think you've "told" everyone by posting it, you might want to let me know separately.

Back in Ann Arbor; semi moved in; Internet will be turned on September 8, TV September 12; I'll try to survive the interim, but posting may be spotty[ier].

You can traverse the entirety of Wyoming and Nebraska, west to east, in a day on I-80.

I just wouldn't recommend it.

And don't just take my regular word for it--I'm staying in a Holiday Inn Express tonight!

Last day in L.A.! Tim and I embark tonight on San Fran where we'll be spending two nights and one day with our former USC roommate Dana. Then it's a whole lot of I-80: San Francisco to Toledo! Arriving in Ann Arbor Friday night, dropping stuff off, and down to Pittsburgh Saturday or Sunday. Back to Ann Arbor for good on Wednesday the 30th.

When I get a chance to breathe, perhaps I'll do a summer roundup post, since this was surely one of the more eventful and important summers of my life. Mostly for the good.

UDS - Deeper shade of soul

In case anyone out there has never gotten the joke...

My friend and former TRASH colleague Rebecca has recently been published in the London Times, and for me it's a very personal story about trying to go from being an outsized human being to a more "normal" sized one, without losing your identity in the process. Good stuff.

This whole not-working thing clearly agrees with me. I've seen three movies in the last two days, probably doubling my total for the summer. My critical faculties have been dulled through lack of use, but I enjoyed all three: Wordplay, Talladega Nights, and Miami Vice. The championship caliber puzzle solvers in Wordplay reminded me a lot of top-level quiz-bowl folks, and that was fun to see. Talladega Nights was a decent movie in addition to being a funny comedy--five or six fleshed out supporting characters who you actually have some interest in, and not just background props for the star. Miami Vice was not great and had some silly moments, but Michael Mann really knows how to film cities and action, and I appreciate that the gratuitous violence was very graphic, because it wasn't comic-book movie violence where people get shot but we don't really see the consequences of the violence.

If you see just one movie this summer, I'd still go with Little Miss Sunshine, but if you see a bunch then I'd add any or all of these three to the list.

The rest of the story alluded to in my last entry was that for being such a good sport as "William Shatner", Jeff Ross offered to try to get me tickets to the roast. I gave him my email address and figured I'd never hear from him again, but the next morning he wrote to get my full name and to confirm my interest, and then he wrote back on Friday saying that I was in, along with a guest. I figured the only decent thing to do was to offer the plus one to the guy who got us the seats at the Improv, and so we went last night to the taping.

Being at a taping like that is cool, but not so much as you might think, for the running into people factor: Hey, that's that guy from Reno 911! Hey that's that other guy from Reno 911! Hey are there any actual famous people here?!

I feel like it would be wrong to spoil too many jokes, so here's a quick rundown of what to look out for when it airs next Sunday on Comedy Central, and then about 175,000 subsequent times since it's Comedy Central:

• a strong set from Greg Giraldo to lead off
• an OK performance from Jeff Ross, but not his best work (although, to be fair, I was hearing most of it a second time)
• good videos from Leonard Nimoy, Ben Stiller, and Jimrah Kimverman (i.e.: Sammy Silmel).
• a nice try by Nichelle Nichols
• a million billion gay George Takei jokes
• many of them in Takei's own set, which killed
• assorted weirdness from Andy Dick that will hopefully be cut down in post-production
• since Richard Belzer didn't show up for once, Andy Dick showed up looking exactly like Richard Belzer to a creepy degree
• solid work from Patton Oswalt, including the history geek line of the night
• good stuff from Betty White, both giving and receiving
• some Artie guy from Howard Stern who didn't interest me
• some long boring stories from Kevin Pollack that will hopefully be cut down in post-production
• Lisa Lampenelli just absolutely killing, and I've never liked her before
• Shatner taking it like a man, and dishing it out pretty well in the end.
  

All in all it was worth it, although I was reminded again about the adage about loving sausage and the law and seeing them made. The first rule of taping: four hours without a bathroom break sucked. I was actually thankful we were in the bleachers and not at a table getting wine.