Fisher Times-Post-Dispatch-Courier

Less than 24 hours to go.

Today is a travel day.  I leave soon.  Won’t be back until Friday.

To keep you entertained in the meantime:

Lesson to be learned: see Duke Lacrosse Players Scandal; Disbarment of Prosecutor Mike Nifong; Press Eats Crow

Lesson not learned: see Michael Vick prosecution news coverage.  "But with this much evidence?"  Oh, sure, the prosecutors have never been wrong.  Vick must be guilty if the government says so.  The government doesn’t lie to us.  They wouldn’t make stuff up.  And the beauty of it all is that the press doesn’t see its own hypocrisy.  Oh, and there’s no way that race plays an issue.  Of course not.

CNN: your "news" coverage on your website is horrific.  Terrible.  Awful.  Yet better than most.  That says sooo much about the current state of the press - not to say that it’s ever been much better.  Clue: a woman president is definitely political news.  A woman president on a television show is NOT political news.  Clue: multimedia presentation of the news is fantastic.  Limiting news items to video only is stupid.  

Lesson to be learned: kids playing baseball in organized leagues are required to wear helmets when standing in the coach’s boxes and while running the bases.

Lesson not learned: see professional baseball coaches; Tulsa Driller’s coach Mike Coolbaugh who is now dead after being hit in the head by a line drive while standing in the coach’s box.

Lesson to be learned: drivers hate construction; see California Highway 138, shut completely down after commuters submitted highway workers to excessive abuse, including death threats, while the highway undergoes major renovations.

Lesson learned: see St. Louis shutting down all of Interstate 64 while renovating it.

5 Days to Go.

And I got wet again. 

11 days to go.

Apparently I’m supposed to stay home and study, because the fates keep grounding me.  Two flat tires in one week!  On Monday, I was studying in the Park, where I can focus and work very efficiently.  But when I went to go home…no air.  4 mile walk home.  I repair and go on.  But today, I’m on my way to the Park to exercise, and the same wheel suddenly goes.  Flat in about 10 seconds.  3 mile walk home.

Oh, I guess I should mention that these are bicycle tire flats.  And they’re infuriating, because there are no foreign objects in the wheel well, the tire, or on the tube.  After much research today, I think what it is is that the strip covering the spoke heads is no longer good.  See, the spokes attach to the rim and poke through inside the well, and to keep them from puncturing the delicate tube, there’s a strip of rubber covering them.  I’ve put enough miles on the bicycle that the rubber is worn thin, and the spoke heads (I think) are tearing half-inch long gashes in my inner tubes.

So for the time being, I’m grounded.  And infuriated.

First of three major "sighs-of-relief" related to the bar exam:

Received my admission ticket in the mail today, which means I’m at least eligible to sit and write the exam.  Not that this was a big source of stress, but it at least means that I really did graduate and the law school administration didn’t "forget" to send off the certification of graduation, and that I didn’t make any mistakes with the stack of paperwork I had to do (such as getting fingerprinted, sending driver’s record from Virginia, spelling my name right, etc.)  Also, much good news: snacks, drinks, and watches are OK (but no iPods or pillowcases [would I make this up?] or bar prep materials).  This means I won’t pass out in the middle of the exam from low blood sugar (though high stress is still on the table).

So now I’ve just got to take the exam and pass it (the next "sigh-of-relief".)  And get certified as fit to practice (as in, no major defects of character or morals…that the bar committee knows about [that was a joke, bar committee!]).  One down…

In other news, I finally convinced the registrar’s office to complete my diploma.  Went to the University Registrar’s office as instructed by the Law Registrar - and they told me they had no idea what to do, because the Law registrar does the "rubbings."  So I went to the Law Registrar’s office, and they told me they had no idea because we were supposed to send things to the University Registrar.  Fed up, I left the diploma with the University Registrar for a week (a week!) in hopes that someone might figure things out.  So today I went to pick it up, and the folks at the University Registrar’s office finally figured out that I wasn’t going away, so, after five minutes of "well, let me call…let me check…let me see…" a great lady over there said, "forget this, I’ll do it myself."  So she did.  Finally.  (Thanks, Kathleen). 

Ugh.  The worst part of the baseball season has arrived.  Two days without any baseball surrounding a day with a meaningless game given artificial significance with players selected mostly for name-recognition.

The All-Star Game disgusts me.  On the one hand, I have no problem with letting fans select which players they want to see in this game.  On the other, I have no problem giving the game significance by having home-field-advantage in the World Series turn on which league wins the ASG.  Putting the two together is rather less than intelligent, and ruins my ability to enjoy the game. 

If the game is so unimportant that fans select the players, then make it a fun atmosphere, make the game insignificant, surround it with silly and inane things, let the players have wide latitude, give the fans high access.  Basically, I’m thinking Rock ‘n’ Jock.  Utterly watchable, fun for all,  and inconsequential.

If the game has importance in the grand scheme, such as possibly having a determinative impact on who wins the World Series, then selection of the players should be entirely based on who gives the team the best chance to win, NOT based on fan popularity.  The game should be treated as a serious game, the best players should play the majority of the game, and the hoopla surrounding the event should be minimized.

Put the two together, and you get what is essentially a silly event to showcase popular players having a determinative impact on the season.  It’s just awful.  So tune off that Home-run Derby, ignore the ASG, and demonstrate to Mr. Selig that this particular renovation of the game is unworkable. 

Until yesterday, I’d never been to a movie where the audience cheered during the movie and applauded at the end.  Transformers, despite certain hiccups, was certainly worth that treatment.  The major reasons: incredible special-effects, really good story line, and adherence to the traditional story-telling rules regarding building of tension, a strong climax, and short but necessary anti-climax.  There were no epic battle scenes - only a handful of robots per side made each individual conflict matter to the story, and it certainly didn’t hurt to have the original voice of Optimus Prime return to the role.  It had its downfalls - cliches abound and the humor is, at times, very adult (watch out, theater jam-packed with kids…)  The acting is usually just fine, but certain aspects (Jon Voight, I’m looking at you) was rough, flat, or just not good. 

I’m also sick of the handsome-teen-actor-being-portrayed-as-total-loser-but-getting-with-the-uncomfortably-attractive-actress-who’s-obviously-in-her-mid-20s schtick.  Word to the not-so-wise directors of the world: you obviously can get away with casting not-supermodel men with good acting abilities, and whether you want to believe it or not, movies would be more enjoyable if you didn’t feel the need to populate your entire fictional worlds with men that run the whole gamut (skinny, fat, attractive, not-so-attractive, etc.), yet all the women look like they’ve just come from a Victoria’s Secret catalogue.  This leads to a serious interruption of the suspension of disbelief.  Find an occasional normal lady (heck, I think I’ll just settle for run-of-the-mill attractive.  It’d be a step in the right direction).

But all this comes after long reflection, because for the first hour after you walk out of the theater, you’ll be stumbling around going, WOW.  It’s not perfect, and it’s not for everyone, but it is definitely worth the six bucks. 

Mmmm.  An exciting day indeed.

First, early rise, plenty of studying.  8 hours worth, in fact.  Roughly.

Then off to downtown for a baseball game.  Of course, early afternoon was awful weather.  We had severe thunderstorm warnings all afternoon and on into the evening.  But after I got to the park, it only threatened, and missed us to the north, and except for the occasional glance into the gloomy dark sky, the weather couldn’t have been better for a baseball game.  And, finally, the home team came through with a quality game.

Big Brad Thompson got the start and pitched well, except for giving up a home run to the opposing pitcher.  The offense was on the verge of breaking through all game long, but left several men stranded on base until late in the game when a couple of home runs and a 2-run rally in the bottom of the eighth set up the one-run win.  Fun!

Then I battled the crowds (I’ll bet at least half of the 43,000+ there went my way) to the Arch Riverfront, where Fair St. Louis was going on.  Just in time, it turned out, as I managed to get down the stairs just as Cyndi Lauper was finishing up her set with Time After Time and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - the only two Cyndi Lauper songs I would recognize.  Frankly, I didn’t realize she was still alive, much less still dying her hair purple and performing.  But that was fun, too.  And I didn’t have to suffer through any of her recent stuff or anything that I didn’t know.  Missed the Goo Goo Dolls last night, though.

Oh, and she is sooooo Brooklyn, every time she spoke I was waiting for an "oye!"

And then fireworks, which were astounding.  Awesome.  And fun!

Then I realized that I was standing at the riverfront.  There were a few thousand people on the Arch steps, and several thousand more on the grassy park under the Arch beyond that.  Tens of thousands of people between me and my car.  And only two entrances, twenty feet wide.   Climb up the stairs, fighting the crowd, across the grassy park, fighting the crowd, up the hill, fighting the crowd, down the hill, fighting the crowd, through the bottleneck, fighting the crowd, then 10 blocks of walking with the crowd.  Then home!

Fun.