Clarence and Alabama.

I've been wanting to get another tattoo for awhile. In True Romance, comic book shopkeeper Clarence marries Alabama, a hooker hired by his boss to keep him company on his birthday, within a day of meeting her. After getting their license at City Hall, Clarence and Alabama go to a tattoo parlor to get this:



I love the film. It featured Christian Slater at his peak (sounds funny to even write it, but yes, he was a good actor), and the Quentin Tarantino-penned script has most of what I liked about Tarantino's subsequent efforts, without the annoying hipster pop cultural references and the now-standard post-modern narrative. It was earnest, hopeful, and although ultra-violent, affectingly lyrical. Combine that with some very good cameos by Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, James Gandolfini, and Brad Pitt, and you have a fucking good movie. Oh, and there's a Sam Jackson monologue about the merit of eating pussy.

So I'm considering getting a mini-facsimile of Clarence and Alabama's tattoo, except with my name instead of Alabama's. Back in the day, Eddy dubbed Claire "Clarence," and although the nickname hasn't really stuck--mostly because drunken Eddy is now a fond and semi-distant memory--it still calls to mind 2002-2003, when Claire and I first started hanging out. The tattoo's a bit white-trashy, but shrinking it might fix that. Most importantly, I think it'd be amusing to have a man's name tattooed onto my arm. Thoughts?

What a fucking dipshit.

This dude is keeping cheap bastards like me down.

Taradise.

My brother is in Hong Kong and Claire is preparing for finals. I went out with Rahul last night, and I'm not in the mood to carouse. But when left to my own devices on a weekend night such as this, I invariably end up drinking by myself, listening to sad pop songs, and debating whether or not to call my ex-girlfriends. Glum nostalgia is fun. I was also planning on having some wine, taking a bath, and weeping while reading Brokeback Mountain. But Proulx's publisher decided to charge 10 bucks for her 60 page short story, so I ended up reading the damn thing last week at Borders, where crying would have been socially inappropriate.

My office party was last night. I met an associate who I can honestly say is borderline retarded. Either that, or she's got the finest Tara Reid impression I've ever seen. She's hot and was, uh, in a particularly accessible mood last night. This girl was working what Claire and I like to call the Pat Markey m.o.--throw everything you can on the wall, and see what sticks. She ended up falling down a couple times and getting kicked out of Lalo's. On an unrelated note, my work husband has run his number of firm conquests to three. This is mindblowing to me, because he has no game whatsoever.

An addendum to my last post. Despite my mild misgivings about her politics, Claire is one of the few people that I've met who doesn't fall into the "impoverished as a noble abstraction" complaint that I lodged against liberals. When she worked on her own piece of public interest litigation, she was her firm's interface with the class plaintiffs. I may well be romanticizing her, as boyfriends are apt to do, but I don't think she ever stopped viewing these women and their families as human beings, rather than some avatar of societal wrong, or the mere means to right that wrong. I love and admire her for this.

Waiting for Gatreaux?

I attended a fund-raising luncheon for a public interest organization today. One of the attorneys being feted was a litigator who has devoted four decades of his life to remedying racial segregation in public housing. He was spry for an octogenarian, and gave a good speech. But one thing that I’ve always found irritating about these events is that the audience for his comments—which generally castigated American society for the social injustice that comes attendant to being born black and poor—was uniformly white and privileged. This was a fundraiser, and I suppose socio-economic diversity is a small price to pay when you’re raking $100 for each seat at the table. But I’m put off when I see the upper crust of society—with their cuff links, fancy watches, and tailored suits—nodding solemnly along with the choir, as if they understood. I believe that far too often, progressives view blacks as an abstraction, and that any closer examination of who they are as individuals and the messy lives that they have led would unnecessarily complicate our foundational understandings of why we have to stick it to the Man. And I’m certain that this willful obtuseness runs counter to the gross generalizations that many liberals secretly harbor, but cannot admit. Would you still think the integrationist ideal makes good sense if 10% of Winnetka was vouchered out to low-income black families? I don’t think so. I suppose this beats the views that you might find at the opposite end of the political spectrum.

Your career, R.I.P.

I’ve resolved to take the California bar this summer. Three years ago, I was stunned to learn that I’d actually passed the Illinois bar, and with the certitude of hindsight, I can easily admit that my test prep sucked shit. The California examination is notoriously difficult, and I’ll have to juggle my job with bar review. In addition, I may have to scale back my contribution to the firm’s summer recruiting effort, which Claire should be thankful for. But because I think 80% of your life’s happiness can be secured by the consistent application of diminished expectations, I read something today that brought me some relief. Kathleen Sullivan—a cum laude graduate of HLS, former dean of Stanford Law School, and widely-respected authority on constitutional law—failed the California bar exam last summer. So be reassured, it happens to the best of us. Of course, for soon-to-be law firm associates without Professor Sullivan’s street credibility, failing one’s first attempt at the bar is a near-permanent badge of inferiority. Everyone at your firm will know, and very few of them will forget. So don’t fuck that shit up.