exile on broad street

well, i'm back. back in the city, back to law school, back on the blog. thanks to everyone back home for making the trip more than worth my while. despite my claim of no expectations for my journey home, there were some that inevitably persisted, none of which were frustrated. however, i can't resist the opportunity to complain nonetheless: it all made it shittier to leave again. sure, i like this place, but is not home, and it would take a long time for it to be that way. i got rained on the whole walk from the train station to the apartment, which was not an encouraging sign. it has been nice to see everyone here again, but the unavoidable lack of history along with a host of other things makes it different. i was so bored my first night back. yes, there may be more to do here, but fewer people to do whatever with, and not enough money to do it anyway.
today marked the resumption of my personal hellish trip down the demented oregon trail known as law school. i was not excited. i had somehow quickly forgotten while away exactly how much i despise the whole ordeal. i had all these plans to come back with a good attitude and be a go-getter this semester, but that is already beginning to seem highly unlikely. i expect more of the same ups and downs for the most part, and that was pretty much what today was. started with the legal writing class (continued from last semester) with the same prof and the same pile of bullshit to work on, but with a great speech about how we were all going to get shitty grades when they finally arrive next week or whenever. the prof advised us to go talk to our profs to find out what exactly we were doing wrong (or, heaven forbid, right). the thing is, almost everyone submitted their exams electronically and grading was anonymous. i'd be kind of surprised if profs kept graded exams lying around and i don't think they hand them back to you, but i guess i could be wrong. either way, this is not something i am personally likely to follow through on. law profs seemed to be convinced that everyone's problem is that they do not "get it" (they could be right about this) as opposed to they get it, but they did a bad job for any other number of reasons. if people out there really don't understand how to logically write a fucking exam response, the curve should treat me well. unfortunately i doubt this is the case. so after this entirely uninspiring start to the day, i at least had a new class with a new prof and i am a sucker for the first day of class when everything seems exciting and the theory of how the class will run has not been savaged by the realities of the classroom experience. the prof is a total academic badass and i am into the sort of work he publishes on, so that is cool. in this moment of optimism i am actually contemplating trying to get to know a prof as a one-of-seventy student. that shit still throws me off a little i think; i certainly don't run my mouth like i did at undergrad. maybe i've just changed. probably some of both. which is oddly enough one of the major writing tricks i picked up in undergrad: lay out a few possible answers, synthesize, repeat. it makes you look smart. homework tonight followed a similar pattern. i started with reading the constitution, and i swear that shit got longer than when i had to do that last time. maybe things just being inside a law text makes them more laborious to read. that damn book is somewhere in the neighborhood of four inches thick, and not cool. the other reading contained the phrase "Giggle Bunny evidence," and that sort of thing always makes my night. enough school.
the cats are being weird and that always disconcerts me. straw has spent most of his time sleeping in his hiding place, but when he was up and about he kept squatting over things like he was going to pee on them, but not actually doing so. this is stressful. jackie has been scampering all over the place, making strange loud noises and generally tearing up whatever he can. gatos muy loco. hopefully they shape up and act right.
in an effort to revitalize my good feelings toward the city, i went out and about the other day on a mission to some record store a friend was checking out because they were going out of business and everything was half off. sounded like a pretty good idea to look into, so we did. unfortunately in the early stages of execution the plan was delayed by a cat knocking a whole coffee into my open bag, still full of everything i could fit into it to take here from home. bummer. anyway, we are looking around for the place and i see the sign out front, but the windows are displaying sundry electronics and clothing and a large sign proclaiming that they are purchasers of gold. hmmm. so i guess the building had two businesses of the same name which were separate. either way, the music portion was indeed closing, but if the business were unrelated the appropriateness of the record selection for people who would be shopping downstairs was surprising. there was a great depth of music, but not so much the breadth. i just don't know that much about hip-hop/rap. i know some, but a very white boy some. just the big names and the ones white people listen to who seem to enjoy all-around credibility, i.e. talib kwali. which is not to say they didn't have some cool stuff. the whole place was odd, located basically in center city, so a good mix of people in there, enough to where i wasn't the geekiest looking white guy. the dude i went with loved it though, so that was cool for him. he had some solid scores, including the newest sage francis album, which i probably would have gotten if i had found it. he also found that kriss kross album, which could not be passed up at half off (the fuckers wanted like 17 bucks or something regularly - and it was used!), and a bunch of other stuff he liked, and one he bought for the cover, which i had admittedly studied. odd takeoff on that really ugly 80s baltimore orioles logo. one guy who i presume was an employee spent most of his time in this deejay booth type thing in one corner, spinning absolute shit. but in this pile of crap, he played one song that really stuck out and made the whole experience that much more confusing. it is difficult to convey music in writing, especially poorly done rap, but the basic idea was an entire track all about doing heroin and how awesome it is. while this is not an entirely novel idea to music, it is usually approached through veiled reference and not outright endorsed. while i don't think they ever said heroin, it was pretty straightforward: the hook went something like "first i hit the weed, then i popped the pills, sniffed the cocaine but now i got the real deal oh boy, that boy, my boy, oh boy, that boy, oh boy, he ride with me in the chevy cause he's my motherfuckin boy, oh boy, that boy". the verses detailed the pleasures and differing effects of brown boy and white boy, and overall i would say perhaps a full third of all words were "boy". never got why that was the slang, but i guess that's how slang works. overall, just bizarre in my view. on the other hand, people rapped favorably about crack twenty-odd years ago.
while the journey to this record store didn't provide me with a wealth of new music, i did manage to scare up some stuff while i was back home. mostly i've been grooving on this reconstruction show. they were only around for like 8 months in 79, but damn are they good. mostly they are a jazzier iteration of the jerry garcia band, but i feel like john kahn and merl saunders got more of a say in this one, plus they've got a saxophone and a trombone. it pisses me off how people shut down when they hear "garcia" like it is automatically going to be some dumb hippie bullshit. the man was a great musician who played with lots of talented people and was a master of multiple idioms blessed and cursed by his part in the dead. but whatever, i am not going to rant about him here and now. i played a wilco show tonight that really hit the spot. the synth on "i'm always in love" is superb, heavier in the mix than it usually is, and that is my favorite aspect of one of the few songs that almost always cheers me up. i hate to skip songs when i'm listening to a whole show, but i think i will always skip "i'm the man who loves you". i fucking hate that song. everything about it. the progression is annoying and the lyrics are some of the most vacuous jeff has ever written. oh, and they always play it. yeah, i'll always skip it.
man, i've got to get it together. i don't even feel like this was a worthwhile post and i'm not going to prolong it. i feel like i just should have written "Giggle Bunny evidence" and left it at that. maybe i'm just rusty. i'll try again some time soon.