geel jas

say it with me now. geel jas. sounds like hail yass, a bizarre approximation (today is a day of approximation: pi day) of hell yes. but it really means yellow jacket in dutch. it took me an alarming amount of time to notify my sister of this fact, given her yellow jacket. the original popularity of the phrase (in my life, at least) draws from the wolf's striking garment of the same type. the wolf called me the other day from california, where he is apparently changing light bulbs in target stores for the next several months. right now he is in l.a., which is a tough geographic/municipal concept for me. it is one of those places that is so big that it sort of includes things that have other names, but i am unclear as to what extent places nominally separate from los angeles are somehow integrated with it. anyway, the wolf was enthusiastic about acquiring a ralph's card and looking forward to perhaps visiting some lebowski landmarks, especially the bowling alley.
it occurred to me that i knew nothing about the bowling alley they used, so i did a little digging. unsurprisingly, the imdb trivia page for the movie had my answer (along with some other pretty decent trivia that would have stumped me - bunny's license plate!?). if you don't want to sort through it all, let me just say they TORE IT DOWN and there is now an elementary school on that piece of land. most people, including myself, are loathe to disparage new schools for kids, but this situation is surely a shame. on the other hand, one day some of those kids will grow up and get into the movie (i believe it will transcend generations) and be like hey, see that bowling alley? i went to elementary school there. well, not at the alley, but on that land. and hopefully whoever they are telling will be suitably impressed. i still kind of can't believe it is not there though, but i guess its nonexistence is also somehow appropriate. i didn't find out until after i was done talking to the wolf, and i am afraid he will be quite disappointed. i wanted to leave him a message and tell him that we had received some terrible news and i was in seclusion in the west wing, but his voice mail has been full so that no one can leave a message for about one month less than he has owned that phone. it will be more difficult to break the news in person, but i guess i can still use that line.
i would much rather be changing light bulbs in california, i think. not that things have been particularly bad here, it is spring break after all. more on that later. but even while i'm on break, it is always on my mind. this is a major difference between going to school and having a bullshit job: relatively minor hourly waged jobs are easy to forget about when you're not there. law school makes me feel bad about not doing much for it while i'm supposed to be on vacation from it. seems to be no getting away from it, but i guess a lot of people i go to school with have a good forty years of never getting away from thinking about the law for a sustained period of time to look forward to.
i've been thinking the most (but not doing too much, don't worry) about the one specific thing a prof instructed us not to think about over the break. i finished writing the brief last week and i think it went alright. dude's brief got a little dinged up by staples. i had to go through three staplers to find one that worked just right; the prof already mentioned she was going to be anal about stapling. three down the left side, not so short that their hold is questionable (most traditional staplers) or so long that sharp parts stick up (most big-stack staplers). i did my best, and that was the very last thing i had to do, so i was ready to have it over with regardless.
anyway, so the brief is done but i have to do oral arguments for it, which was the one thing i was not supposed to think about. it is on a sunday, which is weak, and with a vague but possibly grade-influencing dressing requirement. that is about as frustrating as any of the rest of the class i guess, so it is appropriate. i was talking about suits last night, and how i actually really like to wear them, but i just want to wear one depending on whether or not i feel like it at the time. i dislike their ubiquitous presence in some contexts. i fee like this is one of those times where it will not technically be required but absolutely every male will have one. except maybe me. i didn't bring one with me, which was kind of stupid, and i have turned down offers from my parents to get me a new one before. i do, however, live near a pretty good-sized second-hand store that might have something i dig. we shall see.
i am arguing against someone i do not know, which came as a surprise to me. i only found out a couple of weeks ago by accident that there was another legal writing section doing the same basic assignment. i haven't exactly gone to a whole lot of trouble to learn people's names, especially full names, and so when i glanced at the schedule and recognized a couple of pairings, i assumed i was arguing against someone who i recognized but whose last name i did not know. turns out most people are arguing against people from the other class, but ours is bigger and so a couple people who actually know each other have to argue against one another. i think i might be a little more comfortable with that, but it is hard to say. i do know there are plenty of people in my class i am sure i don't want to argue with, and since i don't know the girl i'm facing i don't have to worry about necessarily dealing with her anytime soon in another context.
like i said i've been thinking about it a lot, and today i was considering actually replacing 'brief' with 'hot pants' during argumentation, especially when answering the judges' questions. performative (marked! fuck you, spell check!) critical legal studies in the most appropriate forum. i have not encountered any direct reference to cls in law school, and i am disappointed but not really surprised. high school debate taught me about a couple sort of obscure things. cls had its time, but it was kind of a while ago and limited by some not entirely unfounded criticisms. however, talking about hot pants instead of briefs is about as good as trashing gets in my opinion. i talked about cls for a presentation back in the day for my philosophy of law class. it was either that or something else that cls led me to, but the prof had not heard of it. mostly because it is not all that reputable. the point is, it is as good and probably better than any defense of the status quo. hot pants exposes the indeterminacy of both language in and about the law, along with opening supposedly at-best arbitrary structures for examination to reveal inherent power dynamics. go hot pants. the sinister part in all this is that i will probably not actually show up and say hot pants (it would be difficult to remember to always do it) because i am successfully disciplined to some degree by grades due to the relationship between them and attracting potential employment. also, law school is such an anti-academic environment that i think it would fail to generate meaningful conversation. most people would just kind of think it was weird and be happy that i would probably wind up wolding down the low left end of the curve for that class.
now i'm definitely thinking about it too much. it is a beautiful day here. i already went for a small walk for drum and cold cuts, and i wished i hadn't worn more than a t-shirt and jeans. maybe even the crocs. unfortunately, my left achilles is sore. probably screwed it up having a good time at some point over the past week of brief finishing/spring break. otherwise i probably would have walked further because it is so fantastic. the good news is that i am not so injured that i am prevented from walking up the street to enjoy a good beer on a great porch on a fantastic afternoon, so i am going to go do that. but i can't post yet because the internet is not working, so i'll just take a break.
well it clouded up and got cold about half an hour after i sat down on the porch, but it was still pretty excellent while it lasted. it was still nice enough to walk up to the distributor and pick up a case. splitting a rack of sly fox pale ale cans. i remember having it pretty early on in the festival and being suitably impressed. hopefully the context didn't overshadow the beer, but i am confident it will be quite good. i am thoroughly taken in by the pro-can propaganda (portability, freshness, etc.); and it seems more appropriate to me for things like pales and pilsners. plenty of styles where it wouldn't be appropriate as the mild aging from bottles has a pleasing effect on the brew, but i hope to see more microbreweries make use of canning. more on this beer after it sits in the fridge for a few. cans, you know, chill quicker. i expected them to be a little cheaper, but this place's prices aren't that great on some things. still a pretty good deal because i got to split the case, so i got to commit to less and i still get good cheap beer that'll last a week or so. i never appreciated the utility of being able to purchase beer conveniently and at a generally reasonable price in six-pack or twelve-pack form. i can still get those things, but not at a reasonable price, and only easily by happenstance.
in the meantime, let's go back to pi day for a second. it is a pretty excellent concept when you think about it. pi, that is, not necessarily the day approximating it. one of those things that shows up an awful lot of places and seems a little more credible and uncanny than the golden ratio. also, this poem to remember twenty digits of the approximation amuses me:
Sir, I send a rhyme excelling
In sacred truth and rigid spelling
Numerical sprites elucidate
For me the lexicon's full weight
each word's letters are the number, see. 3.14159, etc. thanks, someone from england commenting on the bbc news piece. i don't feel bad about not specifically citing someone who is using a screen name to post something they were probably taught in high school or whatever the equivalent is. probably the best thing i have seen come out of having pi day is this. just cracks me up. also makes me look forward to july.
the sly fox is pretty excellent. i could have left it to get a little colder, but i am not disappointed about opening it. comes across the palate kind of viscous for a pale, full on american with the hops though, my kind of a pale. poured it into a glass and i almost regret it. oh well, i've got a few more, i will be glad to compare the experience soon. nothing too crazy going on here, and i don't think there has to be for a good solid pale like this. well-balanced, right up there with yards and founders. with the added bonus of the can. i can dig it. hehe. i am ready for something straightforward like this after the magic hat variety pack.
i didn't do a whole lot in terms of beer week events, but it has certainly been a beer-y enough week for me. chuck visited, and so we hit a couple of the real good spots, made it to both monk's and eulogy. eulogy had bell's hopslam on tap, which is fantastic. i liked it a lot better than i remembered. i don't know if they've changed something about it or if it is really that much better on tap or what, but whatever the reason, it really hit the spot. the best aroma of all time. like if there was such a thing as a hops jolly rancher, it would smell kinda like this beer. also had bear republic's red rocket, which is a scotch ale. i found it passable but unremarkable, wholly unworthy of its reputation as a wild and crazy beer. i was willing to give bear republic another go, though, and my first pick at monk's was a racer 5, their ipa. pretty incredible, enough to make me a believer in the columbus hop i had written off as a bastardized bittering agent. another perfectly balanced beer, which is becoming more and more of a well-practiced science as more and more brewers just keep getting more and more experience. real keeper. next beer was called hop it or something, from a dutch brewer i was unfamiliar with and whose name i cannot recall. supposedly inspired by the brewer's experience with american double ipas, it was a decidedly lowlands interpretation. sort of worked out to be a relatively hoppy but otherwise extremely proper belgian witbier, although the closest approximation i can think of might be the one that unibrou makes. interesting, but didn't have the hops or body i hoped for, but expectations aside, a pretty good beer. certainly unique. i was really wowed by the close-out, cantillon geuze. oh man. they were possibly out when my sister ordered one before me, but no, there was one more, and even enough for me to get one of my own. perhaps my favorite geuze so far. so funky. only george clinton himself could have turned up the funk more. totally delicious.
came at the right time, too, after dinner. my meal was bar none the hottest wings i have ever encountered. if i am going to get wings, i will always go for whatever is supposed to be the hottest. sometimes i am let down, sometimes i am impressed, but never have i come so close to questioning my ability to handle the heat. they were so damn hot. the nice thing was that they were four actual real chicken wings, not just pieces of wings sold as "wings". but they were so hot. it wasn't like they were even in a sauce, more like smeared with some paste made out of a little water and mostly crushed chilies. i don't know what kind, just that they were so fuckin hot. i am almost starting to flush and sweat just remembering the intensity. totally worth it though. i'm still probably going to get mussels when i go back next time. but they were good, and i feel like my search for the hottest wings anywhere has ended, and this will forever be the measure all future spicy foods are compared to in my mind.
oh yeah, i also had a lot of fun doing things with my brother other than indulging my palette. he helped us win a few bucks at quizzo, which featured an allegedly impossible bonus round question my sister and i yelled out the answer to at the same time. after the regular game, the dude running things asks questions and people just yell out the answer to win dollar store prizes. he was all, no one can get this one, in the netherlands, who is santa claus' helper or something along those lines, and before he was even finished we both yelled zwarte piet! and the dude was like huh? and so we yelled it again, and he was still confused, but my sister figured he wanted black piet, and she was right. pretty funny though, good family moment. chuck and i went to see the sixers, and that was a lot mroe fun than i thought it would be, discounting the annoying chick from boston sitting next to me. the game went by really quick, but it was fun. we saw the flyers, and that was even better. sports events are almost universally better to see live, and that doesn't get a lot of argument. but even if it is more fun to be there and more enjoyable over all, something shouldn't be harder to follow on tv. this was my first live nhl game, and damned if it isn't twice as easy to follow the play in person. they run way too many cameras for that shit. we went to the art museum, and chuck ran up the stairs all rocky style. that was pretty money to see. we did the mutter museum of medical oddities as well, which was still fun, but not as rewarding on the return trip as the art museum predictably was. part of the appeal the mutter has though is that you haven't seen these things before, i think, whereas the art museum deals with things that are a little more timeless in some ways. in fact, i liked some of the stuff i had already seen so much that i still went again even though there are a couple parts i still have to go to. all the more reason to go back. my favorite things are the complete rooms, where the whole thing is designed in a specific style or, in the best cases, actually is a literal room from whatever time and place. big fan of all the stuff from india, and the temple room is by far the coolest, although the abbey courtyard is also a big draw for me. so much good stuff, and the effect of a whole room is really helpful. i am hard pressed to think of something bad to say about the art museum. i guess i was a little underwhelmed with the one video installation. it was a guy from the shoulders or lower down do the ground while he walked around and dragged a drumstick along railings and tapped various metal things he passed. it hung together well enough and they timed it up to do some nifty things, but its best effect was really merely being heard throughout other parts of the wing. the footage itself wasn't anything to speak of, and i'm sure it wasn't the focus, but whatever. i was actually kind of hoping for something a little stranger i guess. i like contemporary art because it makes me think about all sorts of things whenever i see it. certainly a different experience from looking at some sweet northern renaissance engravings, which i enjoy just as much but in an entirely different way. people can stereotype and deride a lot of contemporary art and artists for plenty of reasons i can understand, but it just seems like the wrong way to approach it. let's face it, plenty of people involved with art have probably always kind of been dicks about it, this is nothing new. it is also certainly not new for art to be totally noisome to society writ large. sorry about all that, my siblings were willing to give that branch a pass this time around more or less so i had to go on about it for a minute in some way.
i have just discovered that i have to be waiting in front of a building about a dozen blocks away at nine tomorrow morning. i have some serious mixed feelings about that. i am going to lancaster, and i always like to go someplace new, wherever it might be. but i have to catch a ride, which beats the train for price, but has its own drawbacks. i will be observing, so i had better find my notebook and hope it isn't too damaged from the festival the other week where i was certainly participating as opposed to just observing. good thing my beer notations will never possibly play a role in anyone else's trial. i don't anticipate having a whole lot to do tomorrow, but you never know. i'll find out all too soon.