Being There

Go. See. This. Now. You’ll even get a bonus! Trailer for the Watchmen, yeehaw.

Here are my top ten favorite moments from The Dark Knight and some thoughts on why people can’t handle how much it rules. Spoilers! DUH.

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Time for locked down bar study mode. I doubt I’ll be posting anything for a couple weeks. I do have a Batman ARG post in the works that may pop up. 

In the mean time, I command you to do two things. Go see The Dark Knight, and learn this dance.

Ciao!

Getting ready to land, originally uploaded by Medopine.

On Sunday I went skydiving. My friends got a group together so I said what the heck. I’m not cool with heights normally. It was pretty awesome though. So here I am getting ready to land the parachute. Well actually the tandem instructor is landing it. I’m just putting my legs up and out of the way so my toes don’t get snapped off.

So a few months ago I started doing Brazillian Jiu Jitsu. I didn’t know anything about martial arts or jiu jitsu in particular, but after some reading up it seemed like this was the art to start with. What is jiu jitsu, you ask? Well my standard answer is: It’s like wrestling, only more technical. Here’s a good fight between a couple of ladies that should give you an idea of what jits is all about:

I had a lot of reasons for wanting to get into martial arts.

• Get in shape
• Have fun and learn something new
• Self defense
• To be more like Crush

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So I don’t exactly have much time right now to blog but I thought I’d list a few things that I’m planning on writing about when I get around to it…

• Brazillian Jiu Jitsu
• The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on habeas corpus
• KBR/Haliburton in Iraq
• A photo essay of something or other local
• Restaurant review of the Brazil Grill in Portland
• A post on the ARG for The Dark Knight Returns (1 month left woo!)
• Making up a more complete blog link list

Tiye eyes, originally uploaded by Medopine.

This is my kitten, Tiye. That’s pronounced “Tie.” She’s named after an Egyptian queen. Such striking eyes!

Uploaded some other stuff to my flickr if you want to check it out.

Amazingly, the computer at Hollywood Video managed to make a great movie recommendation when it told me that The Orphanage (El Orfanato) belonged in the “overlooked but great” category. Upon watching this movie, I totally agreed with the “great,” and I’m hoping the “overlooked” only applies to the sort of people that mechanically rent the latest Will Ferrell/Bruce Willis vehicle and refuse to expand their movie-watching horizons.

But enough about that. Let’s talk about dead orphans.

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Well my original goal was to update this blog at least every other day with a post that didn’t just chronicle my daily life but instead discussed something more substantial. The only problem with this is that I’ve started my bar review course in preparation for taking the Oregon Bar in July, and all of my free time has suddenly disappeared! Well, not entirely, but spending my free time on things other than exercising, hanging out with my boyfriend, or playing with my cats makes me feel guilty. You’re lucky I decided to work through the pain and write up this post, reader(s)! Ha.

Anyway, I thought I’d share a little bit about just what it’s like to take one of these $2500 (that’s right) bar review courses. The company that runs the course, Bar/Bri, is very protective of their “monopoly” on the process of studying for the bar. It’s an unspoken rule of law school that you pretty much have to take a review course to pass, though some rebels try to go it on their own. And I put “monopoly” in quotes above because not only is Bar/Bri pretty much the only option, but the company is getting sued in court for antitrust violations. Unfortunately I didn’t sign up for the course in time to be part of that class action.

Other protective measures by Bar/Bri include requiring identification to enter the class each day, and requiring a hefty deposit for their books, which you can recover only by returning all the books to them at the end of the course. They say this is for recycling purposes, but obviously it’s so the materials don’t get out there on the free market very often. And the books are really the most valuable part of the course. Outlines of every subject you need to know, and loads of practice questions both essay and multiple choice, are really the key to memorizing and learning enough to actually pass the bar.

Another funny thing about bar review is that not all the classes (we have one every morning for about 3.5 hours) are taught by live professors. The past two days I’ve been taught criminal law and procedure by a guy named Professor Whitebread who spoke to me via a large projection screen. He liked to refer to us as “all you out there in tape-land.” And surprisingly, he was exceptionally entertaining for a lecturer on law. The tape seemed to perfectly capture his weird mannerisms and the funny way he growled out “burglary” or “plain view.” I’m hoping the rest of our taped lectures live up to Ol’ Whitebread (seriously, what kind of name is Whitebread? Is that weird or common?).

Bar/Bri not only gives us books and classes to attend, but they also give us a detailed study schedule to follow. The suggested study time is at least 8 to 12 hours a day (including class). Yikes! I’ve never studied that much in my life, and I’m not hitting that mark now, but hopefully I’ll be getting that much done around midway through the course. I’m picturing hitting some sort of comfortable yet intense studying stride somewhere around the beginning of June. But I’ve already learned to reschedule the homework around what I need to do to balance out the study in my life (play soccer! watch TV! go shopping!). And I think the real key to this whole “intense two months of studying for the most important exam of your life” is keeping things balanced and not freaking out! For this I’m thankful that I’m not a type-A perfectionist. Whitebread finished his lecture today by telling us that only a “glib understanding of the topic” is required to pass the bar, and I’m going to take that statement for all that it’s worth. 

Well that was particularly boring, but informative, perhaps? Anyway, I’ll try to keep the updates coming but don’t get used to any sort of pattern because who knows how much time I’ll have until after July 30th. :)

I have always had mixed feelings about watching movies about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. On one hand, it’s an important subject, something that shouldn’t be forgotten. There are so many human stories that cannot be ignored (both examples of human triumph and the depths of human behavior). On the other hand, I usually walk out of the theatre feeling guilty or depressed. How can I continue on in my comfortable, easy life, as if, by watching a movie, I could understand what any of those people went through?

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In the last two years of high school, I played goalkeeper for my school’s varsity soccer team. So I was intrigued to see an interesting story in the NYT this weekend covering the continuing story of goalkeeper Hope Solo, who is a member of the U.S. National team.

For those unfamiliar with the controversy I’m talking about: at the World Cup last year in China, Solo was benched in the semi-final match against Brazil, the U.S. coach opting to go with Briana Scurry instead. Scurry is a longtime member of the team and helped them win the Olympics in 2004; she let in four goals against Brazil and the U.S. lost 4-0, ending their World Cup run. Hope Solo had started every match before the loss and had recorded three straight shutouts leading up to the semi-final. The controversy came from her remarks after the game, where she openly criticized the decision to start Scurry and said, “There’s no doubt in my mind that I would have made those saves.”

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