My favorite bar in Chicago is called Fulton Lounge. It’s in the meatpacking district and it attracts both artsy and professional 20-35-year-olds. They’ve got lots of great drinks, like the Café Noche and Green Tea Passion. And then they have the Hot Sauce.

I can’t tell if the Hot Sauce is some sort of hypothetical meta joke (i.e., Wouldn’t it be funny if we actually put this drink on our menu?), but I suspect it isn’t.

What’s a Hot Sauce?

“Spicy and sassy is this potent blend of olive juice, Tabasco, worcestershire, tomato juice, Guinness and Absolut Peppar. Served in a lemon, salt, pepper, and celery salt rimmed glass and garnished with bleu cheese olives.”

I challenge you to find a more disgusting (real) cocktail.

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Hello gang.  Today we have another guest blog entry from Counselor Ryan.  Looks like he’s looking for some legal advice.  I told him that this blog is not an official forum for legal advice and that he should not directly rely on anything that people say in the reply section.  (I encourage all lawyer/law students replying to this post to uses similar disclaimers.)
 

SO…that said…here is Counselor Ryan’s legal dilemma:
 

Tuesday night I awoke to a loud crash that seemed to come from my roof. I looked outside and saw a gigantic tree branch laying between my house and my car which was parked in the driveway. I assumed that the branch had hit my roof and went back to sleep. The next morning, I went to drive to work and found that my car was, in fact, destroyed. The branch had landed squarely on the roof of my car and smashed it to bits, several of which were now on the ground.
 

I talked to the owner of my neighbor's house whose property the tree was on. I told him that the tree had clearly been in need of a trim, as the branch was completely dead. He told me to check with my auto insurance to see if it was covered. I did, and since I had recently taken off the comprehensive coverage, it wasn't.
 

I got an estimate for the damage. Conservative estimate: $6,000-7,000. Two of the repair shops said that if insurance was to cover it, they would probably total it.
 

The landlord's home-owner's insurance claims that because of Michigan's no-fault laws, they only cover up to $500. I'm pretty sure that he is liable for the damages caused to my car, but don't think it would be worth the cost to take him to court. What would be the best way to handle this while actually coming out with the money I need to fix my car?

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Tomorrow I’ll be performing a magic show with the head dean of my law school. How crazy is that?

If you haven’t been to a Lawyer Boy book reading yet, and if you’re not busy at 5:30, you should drop by. I assure you that a fun time will be had by all. The Lawyer Boy discussion will go on for 20-25 minutes, then the dean and I will probably each do two or three tricks.

Wed, Aug 27th at 5:30
Barnes & Noble on State and Jackson.

Hope to see you there!

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When I was in New York last week, I was walking around Times Square with this girl, and we wanted to get our characters drawn. The prices were all standard, here’s what they were:

Individual: $5
Couples: $15

It’s nonsense, of course. A $5 surcharge for putting a second person in the same image? Seems like it should be less than $10 for a couple—I mean, the artist saves two cents on paper, and the actual faces are smaller/less detailed because there are two on one sheet.

Maybe the thought is that if two people can afford to be together, they clearly have money to burn? Or guys are less likely to be stingy/question prices when they're with a date?

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Doctors and teachers get to help people all the time. This isn't the case with comedy writers. But today I got to really make a difference.

This homeless guy walked up to me on the Michigan Avenue bridge and said, "Got any money for my Jack Daniels research?"

Better than, "Got any change?" for sure. Miles ahead. I liked the line. It was 90% of the way there. And I just filled him in on the remaining 10%:

"Not tonight. Oh, and the line should be, 'Would you consider making a donation to the Jack Daniels Research Foundation?'"

"Foundation," I explained, is key.

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I’m in New York for the week. My friend Hanna is starring in a one woman show, “The Sound of One Hanna Clapping,” directed by Ana Gastyer.

Last night I went to see a psychic just north of Times Square. She assured me that my plumbing business would progress “little by little, step by step,” and assures me that my dead ex-girlfriend is with God right now and that God needed her more than I did. She probably told me these things because I specifically asked about my plumbing business—the one I don’t have—and my dead ex—that I don’t have either…but I only asked about these things because the very first thing she said in my reading was that I was “a very honest person.”

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If you’ve seen my apartment, you know that I read lots of books. 95% of them are nonfiction. Because I have no soul, I suppose. The point is I feel qualified to share the following list with you:

1) EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR YOU by STEVEN JOHNSON

I know “Steven Johnson” sounds like a made-up name, but it isn’t. The guy is a very real, very clever (and, unfairly, very young George Clooney-looking) neurologist who makes a COMPELLING case that videogames, movies, and TV shows make you smarter. Or is he just telling me what I want to hear, validating my childhood…

2) SURVIVAL OF THE PRETTIEST by NANCY ETCOFF

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder? No it’s not. Says who? Says science. All documented by Etcoff.

3) JOKES by TED COHEN

This book which comes in at 86 pages explains why jokes are funny. Philosophers have been trying to do this for centuries, and Cohen succeeds where many others have failed. Plus, there’s a lot of funny jokes in here.

4) ABDUCTED by SUSAN A. CLANCY

Abducted sets out to answer the question, Why do some people think they’ve been abducted by aliens. And it answers it. No question about it. Explains every possible reason. And it’s got a kick-ass cover.

5) FLOPHOUSE: LIFE ON THE BOWERY by DAVIS ISAY and STACY ABRAMSON

This photo journal features the stories of several dozen of the hundreds of men who now live in the twenty-dollar per night rooms in the New York Bowery flophouses. Their stories are heartbreaking, simple, and real. Too real, sometimes, whatever that means.

6) WAS THIS MAN A GENIUS? by JULIE HECHT

Everybody seems to have lots of questions about Andy Kaufman, and Hecht seems to be the only one with any answers.

7) A TRIAL BY JURY by D. GRAHAM BURNETT

Right after this guy graduated from Princeton he’s called for jury duty in a murder trial and elected foreman. The guy takes really good notes during the trial, and here they are.

8) WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? by THOMAS NAGEL

Best introduction to philosophy book ever. 101 pages. Easy reading. Bad cover, though.

9) THREE USES OF THE KNIFE by DAVID MAMET

This book is a bit too smart for me. So I keep reading it year after year, and every year I pick something new up. It’s about life, drama, and why artists create art.

10) ON POLITICS AND THE ART OF ACTING by ARTHUR MILLER

Few random quotes from this 85-page book: “No differtly than with actors, the single most important characteristic a politician needs to display is relaxed sincerity,” “What we want from leading men is quite the same thing that we demand of our leaders, the reassurance that we are in the hands of one who has mastered events and his own uncertainties,” “The most perfect model of both star and political leader is hat smiling and implicitly dangerous man who likes you.”

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Last week the majority of the band Tally Hall stayed at my apartment, which looked like this:

Today I bought a new short sleeve shirt and skinny tie combo, which looks like this:

I also bought this:

(1 Bonus point for the first blog reader to guess what it is.)

LASTLY, my apartment mates put this sign on their door, which is right across the hallway from mine:

The sign is clearly for my benefit. They clearly put it up to rub their happy marriage in my single face.(2 Bonus points to the blog reader who comes up with the funniest response sign I can put up on my own door.)

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I took the bar at Northwestern University’s Business school, which is in downtown Chicago. The building looked nice enough from the outside, but the actually classroom in which I took the bar was a mess. To paraphrase an obscure Monty Python sketch, The trouble with the classroom was that it lacked everything. Everything you’d want in a classroom, at least.

I was inches away from the test takers on either side of me. I bumped into them both several times during the course of the exam. The guy to my left (who was VERY, VERY serious [i.e., no casual chitchat, even during lunch break/after the exam]) was left-handed—I’m a righty—so our elbows collided about once every ten minutes.

The air conditioning was either not working, not turned on, or so ineffective that it seemed like there was no air conditioning. And there was no bathroom on the floor. So if you had to go during the exam—which I did—you had to go out two sets of doors, up a flight of stairs, down a long hallway, and around a corridor.

And the administration of the exam was FILLED with little annoyances, the main one being a twenty-minute long monologue of testing procedures that was repeated to us before each of the five exam sections, verbatim. And then the pens. We weren’t allowed to use our own pens on the bar; had to use those of the Illinois Bar Association. Least fluid pens ever. Had to push down REALLY hard on them. Middle finger was bright red after my 6th hour or writing.

And the exam. Was it hard? Of course it was hard. How do I think I did? Of course I think I failed. But everybody thinks this, and most are wrong. So we shall see.

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