I am sitting here on a Sunday morning looking out the window by the computer desk and watching the rain drip off the trees. It has been dark and gray the past couple of days here which is a drastic change from the 70 degree weather we had on Friday. The thing that most impresses me is that spring is truly on the way. This is one of my happy thoughts since the winter was so brutal this year. I have a couple other happy thouhgts. My wife is the most amazing person I have ever met. she gets me through the day. Some days when things are really brutal in the courtroom, I will flip open my phone and look at the picture of her which pops up. It makes any situation easier to handle.





lately I have been obessessing over three things: Thelonius Monk, Lil Wayne, and learning how to make a good gumbo.



Thelonius Monk was one of the great jazz pianists of all time. Sure, he was a little unstable, like so many great artists, but I just really connect with his sound. I have recently begun to really explore jazz which is a art form I have never really taken time to try and understand. I played in some jazz bands in high school but I never really listened to it outside of rehearsal time. I was too obsessed with death metal and the like to give it a chance.

I think my current interest started when I picked up a John Coltrane cd, "A Love Supreme", on a whim at the public library. I loved it and decided to check out some other stuff. The interesting thing is that I have yet to look into any jazz guitarists which for anyone who knows me is surprising given the fact that guitar was my life for many years.

Perhaps it is the "different-ness" of it that intrigues me... which is also probably why I obsess over Lil Wayne. I have only listened to a couple of his songs, usually edited versions since he is particularly fond of several euphemisms which I have been stubbornly trying to eradicate from my vocabulary. He is just fascinating to me. I will watch some of his videos at the gym when I am on the treadmill and I think that he is more of a rockstar than most working in that genre today.... and Lil wayne is from New Orleans and I have for some reason been missing New Orleans alot lately.....*sigh* New orleans is one of the few remaining places in America which is truly unique. It has a culture and atmosphere all of its own. I encourage anyone reading this to go and visit it once in their lifetime. It is not all Mardi Gras and drunken coeds lifting their tops. There is an amazing art scene and the food is awesome and you can avoid the seedier elements if you want. Check out a little place called the Gumbo Shop, 630 St. Peter Street, just a block away from the cathedral. When I lived there I took everyone who came to visit me there. I just found out seconds ago while I was researching the address that the place has a new owner who plans to turn it into a franchise which is a terrible terrible idea but desperate times call for desperate measures, i suppose.

Ladies that rock

I was looking through my music collection several months ago and I noticed a troubling trend. I had almost no female artists in my collection. I decided to do something about it and focus on trying to discover some good female artists in an attempt to rectify the disparity. Here some artists I found that I really dig now:

Sinead O'Conner- Okay, she is a little weird but I love her voice

Ani DiFranco- That girl can play some mean guitar and is a true independent spirit

Adele- so young and with such talent

Duffy- not the Amy winehouse clone some claim she is, i love the production on her album
PJ Harvey- dark, disturbing, and very cool

Rodrigo y Gabriela- I know one member is a guy but the true hero here is Gabriela
Ella Fitzgerald- old school but such a great voice
Nina Simone- She had me with her first note

Dido- so chill and a great songwriter

Shakira- her new English stuff is not that great, but her earlier Spanish stuf is awesome

The Pipettes- love the harmonies

Interesting that most of these are either singer-songwriter or jazz singers. I didn't find any metal or rock acts that were mostly female that I liked. Still looking....

New Year, New Promises, New Me

I have made a couple of resolutions so far and the thing I find most interesting and even a little sad is that they are all repeats from last year. I always seem to have the same goals: play more guitar, start painting again, finish my novel, get back into running and yoga. It is also sad-interesting that these are all things I used to do, things I used to love doing and now are only memories. The question becomes: are these still things that I want in my life? or is the reason I no longer do them is because I have changed? If I have changed, then am I a better person? Or am I merely trying to recapture something I lost?

Okay, that was several questions but it really does boil down to why I stopped doing these things that I used to love. Something to think about.

huh?

It has been almost a month to the day since my last post. I passed the bar which was a huge relief and I got a job which is also cool. I am really tired and this is all I will write but I am trying to figure out how to post pictures and videos.

Why blog?

I wonder why I have such a hard time in writing these posts? It has been almost a month since I last sat down and tried to type something. I suppose it is that I am still worried about someone actually reading these little screeds and thinking, "Man, what an idiot!" This, I think is the topic of most of the blogs I have ever read. They usually focus on the most recent thing that has irritated the blogger or has made him laugh. These seem to be the two emotions which run the blog culture right now. Well, those and posting pictures of your kids being unbearably cute.

That may be why I have not written anything lately because I am too tired or lazy to get angry about pretty much anything and I don't have any kids, just three cats. Though we did have an adventure this weekend with dogsitting. A failed attempt to see if we were ready for the responsibilities of being doggy parents. Because if Animal Planet has taught me anything, it is that taking care of a dog is a lot of work, work which my wife and I were willing to undertake but circumstances (small apartment, two full time jobs and most importantly three cats) do not permit that leap just yet.

I wonder if it is like having kids. No one is really ready for kids, they just adapt and figure it out as they go along. I find that as I get older I have become far more forgiving of my father's failings during my childhood. Maybe because time has softened the pain of those less than stellar moments or it is the realization that he was trying as hard to figure it out as I was.

But back to my point which I believe was that I have not been irritated by anything enough to write a post. I did try to write a post a few weeks ago about an especially egregious case my boss told me about where, as a state's attorney, he was not permitted to prosecute a prostitute who overdosed on cocaine because she was trying to kill the baby growing inside her belly. But I kept tripping over myself, trying to make great pronouncements of my indignation . When I really just came off sounding judgmental and arrogant. I mean it is easy to judge this woman because what she was doing seems so fundamentally wrong and the laws that prevented her prosecution seemed even more so, but rather than sounding "right" I sounded like just like every other blogger writing a "what pissed me off today"-style screed which is the last thing I want to do because the internet has plenty of those already.

Perhaps it would have gone better if I had asked the more important question which was how does someone get to the point to where the poisoning of your own child while within you seems the best option. But that question does not allow me to write long sarastic self important posts that tell the universe why I am better than this woman because I would never let this happen. The sad thing is that you and I already did and no amount of blogging will change that. So it brings me to the great question which seems to be the real theme of this post, why blog?

I suppose we can each ask this question of everything we do. Why create art? Why read books? Why make love? Why do anything when in the end it seems not to have any effect on anything? This, of course, is a very cynical and negative attitude, one which leads nowhere and sucks the enjoyment out of pretty much anything you can attempt to do with your life. So why do anything at all?

One word. Hope. I have come to believe that the most important thing in this world is hope. Why blog? why paint? why serve your fellow woman and man? Hope. Hope that this activity will not only affect the world around you but that it will have some impact on your own soul. I believe that hope will eventually lead you to God. Unfortunately atheism, hedonism,cynicism, and most other-isms lead only to hopelessness. This is because these -isms separate you from the rest of the world while hope brings the world to you.

So I guess that is where is post is going. I write when I have hope. I think I should look for it more often and maybe I would write more. I'll have to ponder that until next time.

You've got mail....

Sitting in my email box at this very moment is an email that can change my life. It is not a get rci qucik scheme or a message for a contest I never entered but won nevertheless. No, this email is far more ominous. The subject line reads "your mpre score is ready."

For those who do not know, there are two exams a potential lawyer has to take in order to be accepted as a member of the bar. The first is the "bar exam", the traditional two or three day test which consisted of essay questions and the most difficult muliple choice exam you can imagine. This is the test that most people talk about when they say they survived the bar.

In most states, there is a second test which you have to take which is called the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam or MPRE. It is another multiple choice exam but focuses exclusively on the ethical dilemmas of the profession. Now why a test on ethics is a multiple choice exam instead of an essay is debateable but the important thing is that in Illinois, you have to score an 80 in order to be allowed to practice.

I took it a year ago and I got a 72. I am terrified of this email because if I do not score an 80, it does not matter how well I did the "real" bar. I will have to take it again and that means I have to wait until May to get sworn in. it also may mean I will lose my current job. My stomach is a mess and my nerves are a mess.

You would think that I would be confident as I took a special course and took a ton of practice tests yet there is still a little voice that whispers, "it is not enough"........

VMA 2008

i am currently watching the VMAs on MTV.....*sigh* Here are a couple of thoughts:

Why does the host keep making fun of the Jonas Brothers because they choose to abstain from sex until marriage? It is not "that" funny, I am actually impressed and wish them the best.

Kudos to Jordin Sparks for giving a shout-out to promise rings!

Is it weird that Lil Wayne is more of a rock star than any of the rock acts on the show? Oh wait....there are none performing. But nevertheless, he was everything rock has been missing for years.

So having a baby did not tame Christina Aguilera...An artist with her talent should be above this.

Why does music suck in 2008? Because we allow it to do so. MTV didn't kill, though it may have hastened its demise. The people who vote with our dollars and time.

So Tokio Hotel won the best new artist? At least they play instruments.

I actually liked the Jonas Brothers' performance. It is a silly love song but it seemed more sincere and fun than anything else I saw tonight besides Lil Wayne

DJ Adam and Travis won my heart by starting the show with some pretty cool remixes of Oasis. OASIS on the VMAs in 2008?!?!?! That almost saves the broadcast fo rme.


I am not ashamed to admit that I am glad that Brintey Spears seems to be getting her life together. I have made no secret of my aversion to her music but I do not find any pleasure in her downspiral over the last few years even if some of the damage is due to bad choices by her. The triumph of anyone over their past is something to celebrate.

I am still amazed of the audacity of Kid Rock. He takes the riffs fo great rock songs and mixes them like a DJ but he is using a live band instead of samples. i am not sure if I should hate his music or like it......and why do I find Lil Wayne so intriguing?