(no subject)
Note: I am not in these pictures.
1. Last week was mad busy. On Sunday my mentors picked me up and took me to a country club in Bethesda for some rack of lamb. On Wednesday I ate dinner with a congressman who told me I was going places. The Wednesday night was the AEI ball (pictured above) where, if I cared, I could have hung out with Dick Cheney (as you can see my fellow interns did), Newt, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, or Irving Kristol. I also could have danced to a great jazz band they had there, but I don't dance. I also really wanted Ashley to be there since she always looks smoking hot in nice dresses, but alas, you can't have everything.
I realized that D.C. types whore themselves to politicians in the same manner that wannabe actresses whore themselves to actors/agents in Hollywood. Kinda lame. I'm getting jaded on D.C. There were a bunch of tourists holding up the Metro yesterday (note: stand only on the RIGHT side of the escalator) and I was pissed.
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2. Trip stuff:
I am going to NYC on Friday morning. Should be a great time as I'm going with Andy and Jamie. My DLS friends pretty much trump all others. We're going to the Pistons v. Knicks game at Madison Square Garden and to the MOMA and maybe a play -- who knows? We're taking the bus up as well, and I'm sure that'll be great fun.
Niagara Falls camping trip this summer has to happen, so we can go to wax museums, have romantic moments by the falls, play TMNT: The Arcade Game at the custard shop, and of course go to Martin's Fantasy Island to ride the coaster:
We're gonna have to also go to Chicago for the Pitchfork fest now that Yo La Tengo and Spoon are playing. You just really can't beat that deal -- no better excuse to spend a weekend in Chicago, all though I was a bit less-than-impressed by Intonation last year.
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3. Music stuff:
The new TV on the Radio is probably great. The first track is utterly mindblowing. Hopefully seeing Destroyer + Magnolia Electric Co. at the Black Cat at the end of the month. Got Sigur Ros tickets last week, main floor as usual. Mogwai May 18th -- I'll bring the earplugs.
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4. Books stuff:
My reading has been out of control lately. I polished off Freakonomics a few days ago; it was okay -- interesting at least. It has sort've an ego behind it that sort of pissed me off. It was kinda interesting learning that 4 of the 20 black girls' names are some spelling of "Jazmine."
A few days before that I slammed Gladwell's The Tipping Point and it was much much better than Freakonomics: it had a more coherent message, it had more utility. It oulines how "social epidemics" spread like viruses -- the whole "there will be less crime not if you arrest more people but if you get rid of grafitti and broken windows to create a 'less violent environment'" type argument, and it was actually quite interesting.
Gladwell has also written article for ESPN, one of the best I've read in a while, where he describes why Darko is irredeemable.
I finished off the last 60 pages of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce and I got the general James Joyce vibe: Dude's a genius, but I don't know how much I really even enjoyed reading this book or how much I'll take away from it. But, to reiterate, dude is genius, no doubt.
I finished off the last 45-50 pages of Wild at Heart by John Elderedge today. It's a Christian men's book that Ash bought me for Christmas and it was actually really enriching -- makes me want to mature better, become a more complete man, etc. Definetly not a cheesy Christian book.
Currently, I'm powering through Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class and Philip Roth's American Pastoral. The former is a pretty interesting look at the changing American career and workplace. The second is shaping up to the be one of the best books I've read in a while; it's about the idyllic man, the quintessential success story -- you know, the man that everyone knows because he is as gregarious as he is successful, every man wants to be because he's virtually flawless, and every woman wants to marry -- whose life is destroyed when his daughter commits an act of political terrorism and then goes in hiding during the Vietnam War. It was a Pulitizer Prize winner, and Time selected it as one of the top 100 novels ever, and for good reason: the storytelling is just unbelievable, and I hope to pound through another 50-100 pages after I'm done typing this bad boy up.
That's one week worth of reading. Envy me!
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5. It's been like 80 degrees and sunny here all weekend. I walked a lot.
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6. Great writing posted online.
I've come across some internet writings that have truly inspired me. If I could be guaranteed a job in my life where I could write such things and make six figures, I would give up my law endeavors. Just straight up brilliance:
The Surrealist Goes to the Store by Chris Morgan, orginally posted at McSweeney's. Amazing. The only good surrealist stuff is Kafka, anyway.
The Crappiest Invention of All Time: Why the Auto-Flushing Toilet Must Die by Nick Schulz at Slate.
America loves Jessica Simpson, not Religion by Ben Stein (yes, that Ben Stein.)
"Bueller? Bueller?"
The end.