After my very first class, which was Consumer Protection, had ended, my professor approached me and said, “Where do I know you from?”
I’d never seen the man before in my life.
“Do we know each other?” I asked.
“I’m pretty sure,” he said. “You know what? I think my cousin Barry knows your dad. Ask your dad if he knows Barry Lewis.”
I asked my dad if he knew Barry Lewis, and he said, “The name sounds familiar.”
Well, of course it sounds familiar! My parents live in West Bloomfield, a predominant Jewish community. There’s gotta be a dozen people named Barry Lewis there, just as there are a dozen Amy Rosenbergs and a dozen John Goldsteins.
So now I’m wondering what I should tell my professor tomorrow. I don’t want to lie, but I do like the idea of having an “outside connection” to him. He seemed pretty excited about it…
(Astute LawSchoolBlogger.com readers will note the historical significance of this post: it’s the first with no pictures. Tell me I didn’t let you down.)
Books for 3 of my 5 classes cost me $350.00. I remember that first year, my books cost about $1,000 each semester.
(That’s a picture of my first-year books…JUST my first-year books)
Law school is so damn expensive. Do you think this is to keep people from entering the field?
The rest of my New York trip, by the way, was great. I met with my editor Dave, who took me to a fancy lunch at Eleven Madison Park, courtesy of St. Martin’s Press.
We talked about how we’re going to promote Lawyer Boy and how much work it’s going to be. A lot. I’ve got to write more letters to attorneys, writers, and celebrities to get more blurbs, publicize this blog (Tell your friends!), and get some magazine stories published. Did I mention that classes start tomorrow?
Also in New York, I saw Barack Obama at the Daily Show with my friends Elliott and Jen.
Obama and Stewart are pros. I couldn’t get a picture with either of them…but here’s a picture of me with Nate the Intern.
What do they sell there? Women’s beauty products, wigs, and sex toys. I walked through the store with my friend Elliott. We were the only guys there.
Then Elliott and I walked to Times Square.
We had lunch in a small Italian restaurant on Eighth Avenue called Caffe Cielo. (The owner asked me to mention the restaurant name in my blog). I had a goat cheese pizza. This thing came right out of the oven…burned my mouth. But once I let it cool down for five minutes, it was delicious. The cheese and tomatoes melted away in my mouth.
Also at the restaurant: Paul Shaffer. I’m a big Letterman fan, so I went over to say hi. We ended up talking for twenty-five minutes. He told me about his musician/friend Etan G. and said that he wanted to help Etan make a youtube-ready novelty video.
Shaffer asked me a lot technical questions about video editing that went right over my head…so I told him that the people he really needed to be talking to are the guys in the band Tally Hall, who have had a lot of success with Internet videos. He gave me his assistant’s contact info and then said he was running late for rehearsal.
I did some reading at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square…
…walked through St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and then ended the night by seeing a terrible magic show with Elliott, who is a fellow magician.
Damn, my life is odd. Well, it is when I hang out with my friends in the band Tally Hall. Today they had me working as an assistant at a Detroit Law Firm…
…for a giant chicken.
Thanks all I can say about that for now; their project is TOP SECRET.
Here’s something I can share with you. When I go home, back to West Bloomfield, Michigan, I always do work (writing) at the Barnes & Noble on Orchard Lake road. When I was a high school student, the café was filled with other high school students. These days, though, the store is filled with Jewish Grandmothers playing bridge and mahjong.
They’re all very, very nice to me…mostly because they all want to set me up with their granddaughters.
Also, they’re very, very loud. I really need to find a new Michigan bookstore to get some work done.
I spent last week in Ann Arbor, Michigan. From 2001-2004, I lived in Ann Arbor and studied Political Science at the University of Michigan. I applied to the U-of-M law school and got waitlisted…and then rejected. So I’m bitter, but it’s hard to be bitter about such a beautiful school.
The entire city is beautiful. Even the graffiti and chewed gum covered cement walls are gorgeous.
As are the hand-blown “tobacco” pipes.
That photo comes from a “head shop” called 42 Degrees. When I lived in Ann Arbor, I stayed kitty corner to a head shop called Shiva Moon, which was a few stores down from 42 Degrees, which was a few stores down from Stairway to Heaven, a second-story head shop.
(A quick note to potential legal employers: I got through my undergrad experience without so much as a contact high. I may have enjoyed a drink or two, though…)
Last night my friend Steve completed the final image for my upcoming book, LAWYERBOY.
Today I helped my friend Rob from the band Tally Hall…
…create a Rube Goldbergesque machine.
Rube Goldberg, by the way, was a cartoonist who also designed complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect and convoluted ways.
This afternoon, I had a phone interview with a trial consultant firm. It went well, but the place might not be right for me; sounds like they wouldn’t be able to put my legal skills/knowledge to work…and wouldn’t be able to pay me much. Which is too bad because I’ve been to the place before and it’s beautiful and everybody is so smart and nice there…
Last night myspace.com “featured” one of my videos. It’s had 60,000 hits in the past day. Shame those hits can’t all be brought over to this blog… Thanks for watching the videos, though. You can see more in the VIDEOS section of the blog. I plan to release about 20 more videos over the course of the next year.
My externship with the Cook County State’s Attorney office is officially over. Here are some lessons I learned:
1) Best not to talk politics at the office until you know where everybody stands.
2) Cook County Assistant State Attorneys get paid less than Cook County Public Defenders.
3) Most Judges don’t mind when your cell phone goes off in court; they do mind when you interrupt them. (I learned that by watching other attorneys in court, not by having my cell go off/interrupting judges.)
4) People usually don’t notice when you do your job right, but they always notice when you do a job wrong.
I plan to spend the rest of the summer reading, helping my friends’ band Tally Hall film a movie, going to New York (where I have tickets to The Daily Show), and sleeping.
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