Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2012

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I got a text message from a friend this afternoon: "front page ny post your sopranos neighbor dwi and coke."  A couple of months ago, an actor from The Sopranos moved into an apartment on the floor below me.  I don't get HBO, so I actually haven't seen any episodes of The Sopranos, so this wasn't a big deal to me.  Anyway, he's on the front page of the Post today.  I've passed him on the stairs a few times.  Seems like a nice enough guy.  Nothing notable or anything.  Anyway...

Delmon Young

Tampa Bay Devil Rays top prospect Delmon Young threw a bat at a minor league umpire yesterday, and he's been suspended indefinitely.  Reminiscent of the Roger Clemens-Mike Piazza bat stuff from a few years ago, when Clemens threw a bat in Piazza's direction.  I recall thinking that year that dressing up as Roger Clemens for Halloween -- broken bat in hand, basically -- would be fun, although I didn't follow through on it.

In other news, Kaavya Viswanathan's book was recalled from stores today, Rosie O'Donnell was named Meredith Vieira's replacement on "The View," and I've been reading too many Yahoo News stories.

Fantasy Baseball Recap

Players I have on multiple fantasy baseball teams, not that anyone cares:

Catcher: Josh Willingham and Brian McCann
First Base: Adam Dunn and Brad Wilkerson
Second Base: Placido Polanco (I don't know why)
Third Base: David Wright and Edwin Encarnacion
Shortstop: Ian Kinsler
Outfield: Carlos Beltran, Jeremy Hermida, JD Drew, and, sadly, Barry Bonds
Starting Pitchers: Jake Peavy, Jason Vargas, Anthony Reyes, Francisco Liriano, and Ryan Madson
Relief Pitchers: Mike Gonzalez, Joe Nathan, and Scot Shields

Wall Street Journal

I've been told that the Anonymous Lawyer blog is mentioned in a column in Friday's Wall Street Journal.  Wondering if anyone happens to have a copy and wouldn't mind throwing it in the mail (I'll PayPal you the postage if you want).  Alternatively, I'm not averse to someone throwing a Wall Street Journal username/password my way, but I'm guessing that's a tougher request.  Anyway, shoot me an e-mail if you've got the article and wouldn't mind parting with it...

UPDATE: Oops.  It's actually available free on the WSJ site, over here. 

The line about me: "Mr. Blachman wrote screeds in the voice of a fictional law firm partner that effectively made him unemployable by any major firm, then unveiled himself to the Times. His novel will be published this summer by Henry Holt."

Hmmm.  I'm not terribly concerned if it's true that I'm "unemployable by any major firm," but I guess maybe that's true, I suppose.  I'd certainly understand if a firm was reluctant to hire me, worried I'd just be using it as material for "Anonymous Lawyer: Return of the Jedi," but if I signed some sort of non-disclosure "I won't write about you, even fictionally" agreement, and was genuinely willing to do the work and be a good associate, am I really so dangerous?  I'd like to think there are bigger threats out there (see, e.g., Cravath associate having sex with teenage girls).  All I'm doing is writing some harmless satire.  Eh, whatever.

The author of the WSJ piece, Cameron Stracher, has a book about law firm life called "Double Billing."  I read it a few years ago, and I liked it.

Any Requests?

Stealing Sherry's concept, anyone have anything they want me to write a post about?  Leave it in the comments or send an e-mail.

Incidentally, I was up in Boston on Saturday and Sunday, to see the HLS Parody show, which had a bunch of my friends involved and about a dozen alums came back to see it, and to hang out with some friends up there.  It was interesting being back at law school.  It doesn't feel like it's been almost a whole year since I graduated.  I thought the Parody show was really quite excellent.  If there'd been any more performances after the one I saw on Saturday, I would've put up a quick post recommending people up there see it.  It was also admitted students weekend.  As I saw a group of pre-1Ls walking around the campus, with their red folders and nametags, I felt sort of tempted to try and blend in and fake it, just to see what they were telling people on the tour, and whether there'd be any material there.  :)  But I resisted the urge.  They've renovated the gym, quite dramatically.  They also did a great job of improving the weather since last March.

Simmons and Gladwell

Bill Simmons interview with Malcolm Gladwell.  Part one.  Part two.  Worth a read.

A Few Quick Links

A cool post about grocery shopping in Paris on an awesome food blog with lots of pretty pictures.

A Baseball Prospectus chat with Sam Walker, author of Fantasyland, a book about fantasy baseball I can't wait to read.

An article about the governor of Illinois doing an interview with The Daily Show and not realizing it was not a real news program.

An interesting Times piece about what Apple did for the kid who bought the billionth song off iTunes.

Padres

I just read a press release on the San Diego Padres website announcing that their stadium will be entirely smoke-free in 2006.  Neat.  One thing in the press release caught my eye.  "Fans can purchase tickets... at the Padres Team Store in Tijuana."  I guess San Diego is near Mexico... I'm just surprised the Padres team store is there.  I know so little about the border patrol, and border crossings... can Mexico residents swing up to San Diego for a baseball game?  Can Americans swing down to Tijuana to buy Padres tickets... because that's what people do when they go to Tijuana, right?  They buy Padres tickets?  I think that's what the MTV Spring Break Tijuana shows would all be about, right?  Padres tickets?  Seeing Mike Piazza try to recapture his youth?  Right?

Cheney

There's a Washington Times article that interviews hunters, who place the blame for the shooting on Cheney (as opposed to the man he shot).  Notable (sort of) because the Washington Times is super-conservative.

Also, thanks to Evan for linking to my post yesterday about my book.  He's also got a link from last week to a Coloring Book for Lawyers that's funnier than most mass e-mail forwards are.

Journalists in Iraq

An interesting piece by the daughter of ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz, about her fears about her mother going to Iraq, as related to the Bob Woodruff stuff.  It's a good read.

Just a Link or Two

Terrific article about Stephen Colbert in this week's Newsweek.

And a Times piece about some of the Saturday Night Live cast.

I don't read real news.  Oops.

Subway Ride

Here's a good way for the conductor to freak people out on the subway:

Come into the subway car, gesture to a bag no one had really noticed, and say, "We realize there's an unattended bag in this car. Don't worry. We know about it, and we'll be stopping at Jay Street to investigate and figure out what it is."

Uh, thanks.

That caused my roommate and I to switch cars at the next stop. And then, at Jay Street, as the conductor announced, "We'll be stopped in this station pending an investigation. We should be moving shortly," we got out and walked to another stop, since we figured it might be a while.

Obviously I'm sure it was nothing. Makes the subway ride more interesting though.

James Frey, cont'd

Nice.  I mean, I'm sure Oprah's reversal on her support of Frey was based on the public's reaction, but, still, good for her.

More here.  Of course, it's probably going to end up selling more books for him, which kind of sucks.

Curt Schilling

Bill Simmons interviews Curt Schilling.  This is a fantastic read.  Schilling talking about all sorts of things Red Sox, in great detail.  Most interviews with ballplayers are three lines long and just platitudes that anyone can make up.  This is not like that.  Great stuff.  Whether or not you care about Curt Schilling at all.  This piece kinda makes me want to interview famous people for a living, at least for a few days or something, until it got boring.

Hiccups

In the improv comedy class I'm in, someone said last night that the way to get rid of hiccups is to touch your throat and say the word "pineapple."  I think that's what he said.  It didn't make that much sense when he said it, and it doesn't make any more sense this morning, but what do I know?

My computer's doing fine since its little hiccup on Tuesday.  I expect it's probably a fan issue.  I expect I'll do nothing about it until it happens again.  I expect I will come to regret that.

On the recommendation of a friend, I'm about to go buy something called Airborne to see if it'll knock out this cold I felt come on last night.  I've gotten about 30 hours of sleep over the last three nights, so that's clearly not my problem... nevertheless...

No one cares, but Mets Geek has an interesting post about the upcoming season.

Also, if anyone wants to throw something in the comments on this topic... I feel like when I go eat sushi -- and I mean relatively inexpensive sushi, like a $7 lunch special somewhere -- I'm missing out on a world of interesting things I just wouldn't think of ordering because I don't know about them.  Fish or not fish, raw or not raw, no matter.  And my only limits to adventure are things with eyes (I once accidentally ate a fried shrimp head.  Oops.) or things that'll kill me (I read a blog post about Fugu somewhere a few weeks ago).  Tried sea urchin once (when someone else was paying).  Liked it well enough, but not so much that I want to pay 4 bucks for a bite of it.  Chirashi lunch specials seem to be good value, from my limited experience -- a bunch of fish, some rice, it's generally good stuff and nice variety.  But I feel like there might be an even bigger world out there that I'm missing.  Any ideas?