My dwindling bank account has coerced me into a new low at the supermarket. But first, a little history.



I always think of this exchange in the Simpsons episode where Homer becomes a food critic:

Homer: Marge, your cooking only has two moves: shake and bake.
Marge: You like shake n' bake! You used to put it in your coffee.

Back in the day, my mom would make shake n' bake chicken. Its very simple and very tasty. But I think the Simpsons quote illustrates the problem very well - most people like it (or would like it), but its seen as not very sophisticated and thus not something you want to admit to eating with any regularity.

Well, a couple months ago, I bought my first box of shake n'bake. For those of you who have never bought one, the contents are quite simple. It comes with two plastic bags (for the shaking) and two packages of seasoned coating (fancy bread crumbs). Thats it. You throw the seasoned coating in the bag along with a piece of chicken, shake it, repeat a few times and then chuck them all in the oven. Not surprisingly, the chicken turned out spectacularly.

The first box of shake n' bake I bought was on sale. The next time I went to the supermarket, it was not. And there are only two things I will buy when they are not on sale:

*Milk
*Bananas

So I looked next to the box of shake n' bake and there was the generic Kroger brand of shake n' bake. It was called shake it up (or something, I forget). I figured, how much different could it be? I bought the box of the Kroger brand (on sale), tried it out, and it worked out just fine. I doubt I could tell the difference if given a blind taste test.

So I wandered into Kroger this past Saturday, in the mood for shake n' bake, and found neither the name brand or generic on sale. But right next to those two boxes was a third box. It was called "Baking Magic." And it appeared to be a similar product. The box was a little bit smaller, so I picked it up and examined this one dollar box of goodness. It was a bit heavier and more solid than the shake n' bake boxes. I found out why.

It was simply a box of coating. No bags. And when I mean no bags, I mean no bags. The coating was not even in a bag. It was just there in the box. How do I get it out? Well you may have seen some boxes that have a metal spout that pops out from the side. This one didn't have a metal one, it had a hole that you punched in the side.

I bought it anyway. Instead of using a nasty supermarket bag to shake the chicken, I just poured the coating into a plate and rolled the chicken pieces through it. It worked not really well, and ended with me just pouring a lot of the coating onto the chicken. I threw it into the oven and hoped for the best, and luckily it turned out okay. It wasn't the normal color, but it was certainly edible and even tasty at some points. And I might be able to get more uses out of the Baking Magic.

Still, I think I'm going to keep an eye out for Kroger brand shake n' bake.

Last night was the PILA auction, a UVA law event where everyone gets dressed up and goes to this nearby hotel, where they auction off all these donated things to help raise money for PILA, which is the public interest law thing. Some things are small, like two tickets to see Conan O'Brien along with two round-trip tickets to Laguardia, while other things are big, like one week in a house in Hawaii.

We started pregaming at 5:30 PM. Well, more specifically, I started pregaming with the girl who had the preparty, as I have lost the ability to show up fashionably late. I just show up and start drinking. So 40 minutes later someone else showed up, and then it was on. I recall only a few things really:

*Standing in line for two drinks for a long ass time. And then an older woman telling me I had to get more assertive, to which I replied that I'm in no real rush. Then when I finally got the drinks, I couldn't find the person who I was getting one for. So I think I just gave it to a random person.

*Living on a Prayer was the last song, and man all of us in a big circle, arms around each other, screaming our heads off, was great.

*I recall eating at some point, but I cannot for the life of me recall what I was in fact eating.

*At the very end of the night, I chugged a carafe of cranberry juice, spilling a fair amount on my shirt, jacket, and tie. Hopefully it didn't stain (I haven't looked at my suit yet today). It did help prevent a crippling hangover.

Alright, back to the stupid 25 page memo.

Its hard to pinpoint exactly when I really "became" a law school student.

I bring this up because the past two weekends when I was at home, I found myself talking to my mom about contracts, and how if I were to write a note to my sister stating that I would give her $10,000, it would probably be unenforcable. And then I went on to talk about the insurance contracts in Louisiana and how Louisiana is one of only two states who do not adopt the Uniform Commercial Code's definition of unconscionability, and how that might relate to people being able to get money for flood damage even though it was specifically excluded in their contracts.

So I began to think of when my transformation into a law school student occurred. Is it the fact that I'm now the kind of person who chuckles when they read a dissenting opinion on a rape case (the opinion actually stated something to the effect of, "What did she think they were going to do in his apartment? Play Scrabble?") or when someone gets killed in a particularly humorous manner.

But normal people can see the humor in those things. After all, there are the Darwin awards, awards for people who die in particularly dumb ways. My transformation into a fully fledged law student must occur when I find something funny that only a law student would laugh at.

And then, on my plane into Philadelphia last weekend, it happened. First, some background.

I've read an enormous amount of cases involving railroads. For instance, just in today's reading:

*A railroad fails to let a passenger out at her designated stop. The railroad puts her up in a hotel, escorted by the railroad's conductor. At the hotel, there is a kerosene lamp, which explodes and sets fire to some fabric near her bed, which causes her to become badly burned. Railroad held not liable.

*A railroad fails to let a passenger out at her designated stop. The train stops a mile past the stop, and she is forced to walk back to the stop through some unsettled areas. During her walk she is raped twice, once by a hobo and once by a soldier. Railroad held liable.

So last weekend, I was looking at my horn book (sort of like Cliff's notes) for torts, and I noticed the picture on the front cover. It was of a railroad track. And I just started laughing to myself.

Yup, I'm now officially a law student.

I finally was able to do it.

I ate an entire box of Velveeta shells and cheese (with bacon bits) for dinner.

The stats on the box:

Servings per container: 2.5

Amount per serving:
Calories 360
Calories from fat 120
Total fat 22%
Saturated fat 18%
Cholesterol 7%
Sodium 46%
Total Carbohydrate 15%
Dietary Fiber 8%
Protein 18%
Vitamin A 2%
Calcium 15%
Iron 10%

You know, I thought it would have been much worse for me. As it is, its not really that bad of a meal. And considering that the only other food I had today was a Dannon Frusion Smoothie and two bags of pretzels on my flight back to CVille, and it looks like I didn't get nearly enough fat or saturated fats today! Better go take care of that now...

News and Notes from the White Sox v. Astros Game 2

*After the Jermaine Dye "Hit by Pitch" that preceded the Konerko grand slam, the umpiring really seems suspicious. For those of you who missed the play, Dye took like a half swing at an inside pitch, and the ball hit the handle of the bat near his hands. It did not hit his hands, but close to it, and he winced a little bit as it stings if it hits close to your hands. Dye turns to the home plate ump, obviously expecting the ump to call a foul ball, but instead the ump points and tells him to go to first. Dye happily trots to first, and Konerko happy follows with the game changing grand slam.

Its gotten so bad that I was expecting Pyrzinski to convince the umpire in the top of the ninth that he actually tug Burke out. I was waiting for the umpire to signal safe, Pyrzinski to stare down the ump and then run off the field celebrating as if he just made the final out of the game, and then the umpire start to rethink his call and change it to "out."

*And when the reporters invariably ask the White Sox players about these mysterious calls going in their favor, the responses are so evasive. Konerko was asked about the Dye HBP and he replied, "Well, there's a lot of noise going on, it might have been a half and half... its tough on the umpire... I don't know what the replay showed... a heck of an at bat by him!"

*An absolute great exchange occurred between the two Fox announcers right before the Podsednik walk off homer.

Announcer 1: What do you think of the thought that Lidge should have pitched in game six of the NLCS in order to get the bad taste out of his mouth from the Pujols homer?
Announcer 2: (smugly) I don't think he has a bad taste in his mouth at all!

The next pitch was crushed for a home run. Just hilarious.

I was wondering how laptop touchpads work - my pencil won't move the pointer around, but my finger does. Why?

Ahh, thank you wikipedia.

I've been on my fall break, if you've been wondering why there have been no blog entries this week.

But now the break is over, and let me tell you: there's nothing like a couple hours of work that need to get done right after you've driven 5.5 hours to get back to school.

I also had to book a plane ticket back to NJ for this Saturday. Why, when I was just there? Because one of Kim's coworkers is getting married this Saturday, and he was not considerate enough to schedule it for my fall break. So I have to go back up there, and there is no damn way I'm driving back up to NJ for only two days.

A couple notes on this wedding:

1) Its an Indian wedding. I've never been to one, so should be interesting.
2) Its vegetarian. For those of you who know me, you'll recall that I can't stand vegetables and love steak. Or chicken. Or ground beef.
3) The bar is only open for one hour.

...

One hour?

Initially it was a cash bar, which made it even worse. Apparently getting stupid drunk is frowned upon at Indian weddings (or not... I really have no idea). But I've been told that it has been changed to an open bar for the hour, which helps the ol wallet a little bit, but doesn't help the lack of alcohol for the other hours. So I'm going to bring the ol standby that we used every now and then in high school - the flask.

I'm not sure why we used flasks in high school. I vaguely recall Landis bringing one or two along on a band trip or something. And I think we all gave flasks to each other for Christmas our senior year, but my memories of the flasks overall are a bit fuzzy. My high school flask is long gone, but luckily Jenny bought me a flask for Christmas last two years ago, and rest assured, I'm going to put it to good use this weekend. The only question is... Southern Comfort or Bacardi O?

*For anyone interested in reading someone else's adventures as a 1L at UVA Law, surf on over here.

*It took around 4.5 hours to get home from Charlottesville today. No traffic. That will be my new time to beat... I suppose I could get an EZ Pass to shave off a couple minutes, but I am inclined to think that today was as good as it gets. I left at 8:36 AM and arrived at approximately 12:50 PM. Good deal. No midday nap though, and after a beer at dinner I'm kind of sleepy.

*Cinnaminson appreciation day is tomorrow. Are town appreciation days a South Jersey thing? Today was Moorestown appreciation day (My mom took my niece and nephew), and last week was Mt. Laurel appreciation day. Guess it must be the appreciation day season.

*USC down by 3 right now to Notre Dame, 5:29 to go. They're driving though. Gotta think USC going to score a TD here, and Notre Dame comes up short on their winning TD attempt. Ah well, root for the underdog anyway.

I'm slowly getting more comfortable being called on in class.

Of course, on a scale of 1-100, I would say I've moved up from a 3 to a 12. Still not very comfortable, but slowly getting more comfortable with it.

In our torts class (torts are civil cases where you're trying to get money out of someone for their screw up), our instructor will call on someone and then the person next to him, and stay on them for half of the class.

So pretty early in yesterday's class the guy next to me (Mr. Klass) got called on. Meaning I was in the line of fire.

Instructor: Mr. Lee! Let me give you a hypothetical. Yada yada yada. Can he recover?
Evan: Well, ummmmm, under Herskovitz v. Group Health...
Instructor: You don't need Herskovitz. Imagine that we're before Herskovitz. Can he recover?
Evan: Hmmm.

It got a little bit better after that.

Instructor: Now imagine that the patient's cancer makes him more suceptible to the drug overdose and thus more likely to die. Does that matter?
Evan: (confidently, for once) No.
Instructor: Why?
Evan: Because you take your victim as you find them.
Instructor: What case was that?
Evan: (feeling good about himself) Vosburg / Putney.
Instructor: Easy. Good.

So as I stated earlier, our instructor will leave the two people alone after grilling them for half the class, and then pick two new victims. In the middle of yesterday's class, she told us to take 4 minutes to figure out the main difference in the majority opinion and the concurring opinion.

Mr. Klass: Well not relevant to us... we're home free.
Evan: I dunno. She could come right back to us.

(3 minutes later, we have no clue what the difference is.)

Evan: Man we're fucked if she comes right back to us.
Mr. Klass: The last two times I've looked up, she's been staring right at us.

(another minute of Mr. Klass/Evan confusion passes)

Instructor: Okay Mr. Klass. What is the difference?

So annoyingly enough, she just stayed on us the entire class. And then this morning in contracts, when I was badly hung over, I got called on to go over the very first 3 cases that we talked about back in August in the context of some new material we've read. Horrific. But at least I'm home free from being called on for the next 3 weeks or so.

And by then maybe I'll be up to a 15 or 20.

So if you're on Friendster, one of the things you've been able to do is see the number of times your profile has been viewed in the last month. Its a good gauge to see just how popular you are (or how popular the thumbnail pic of you is... I imagine the more skin the better).

So now I've been told that there is a new feature called "Who's Viewed Me".

Bad idea.

The only analogy I can use is for the small amount of people who, through an AIM add-on program, are able to show who has viewed their profile. This discourages people from viewing the actual profile, as now your stalkerish tendencies are out in the open. Anonymity is one of the great features of AIM and websites like Friendster. Why on earth would you try to eliminate it?

And is it just me, or does it take freakin forever for Friendster to actually load up into your browser?

I get three HBO channels with my cable package down here in Charlottesville. Its not the five I get at home in Cinnaminson, but its certainly better than the zero I had in Highland Park.

The problem is that it feels like I only have one HBO channel. Why?

Because three shows are, without fail, showing on 2 of the 3 channels at all times.

Rome - I remember seeing how heaviliy publicized this series was a couple months ago. It seemed like a sort of neat idea - we're in the past and going to see what goes in in this ancient city. And I tried watching. I really did. But for whatever reason, I just could not get into it. I had no idea who the characters were; in fact, I couldn't even tell the characters apart from one scene to another. Perhaps its just their drab clothing, or perhaps its that I've come to expect lots of killing in movies set in ancient times. Either way, I'm not a fan of the show, and I'm most certainly not a fan of the million times its shown on the HBOs. And I'm REALLY not a fan of all the behind the scenes stuff they show when they're not showing an episode.

Real Time with Bill Maher - He just looks annoying. Can't watch him.

The Sex Inspectors - And finally, there is this show which takes a british couple that is having trouble in bed, and these two sex experts try to cure the couple of their bedroom woes. They give them tips and techniques, and also install like these heat sensor cameras to see what they're doing in the bedroom. The heat sensor thing appears to be a bad idea - you just see two red blobs kind of moving on each other... but then you see the actual people, and man, its a good idea! You would think that they would find some very attractive people, but nope. I mean, its TV! TV is supposed to have attractive people in its shows! And now you're showing two people who are not attractive, trying out new sexual positions? Man, you can't change the channel fast enough.

From my Criminal Law casebook:

The defendant in Boro telephoned a woman, repsented that he was a doctor, and told her that "she had contracted a dangerous, highly infectious and perhaps fatal disease." He further advised her that, happily, there were two available cures: the first was a painful form of surgery, which cost $9,000, and the second was sexual intercourse with "an anonymous donor" who had been injected with a special serum, which cost only $4,500. The woman chose the second alternative, met the defendant at a hotel, and had intercourse with him. The court in Boro issued a writ of prohibition, restraining prosecution of the defendant on charges of rape.

Questions going through Evan's head:

1) How freakin stupid is this woman?
2) Thats about it.

I have a midterm this Tuesday in Contracts, work that needs to get done for Torts and Criminal Law on Monday, and I can't sit still. I can't concentrate on schoolwork.

It all started last night.

I was playing poker at a cash table on PokerStars and was doing fairly well, but wanted to play a tournament style game. I guess I wanted to play something with a little less pressure. When you sit at a cash table with $40, one bad play and you've lost the $40. But if you play a tournament that you bought in for $3, one bad play and... well you've lost $3. Nothing too bad.

So I joined a $3 w/ Rebuy tournament. A rebuy means that if you lose all your chips, you can (during the first hour only) buy back into the tournament for an additional $3. After the first hour, you can buy a one time "add-on" of 2000 chips for another $3, but after that you can't buy any more chips.

This was actually a satellite tournament, meaning that you play this tourney in the hopes of trying to get into another tourney that has a much larger buy in. The bigger tourney that this satellite was linked to is a tournament that is today, 5 PM, with a buy in of a whopping $650.

So the tourney started with over 200 people, and most people just rebuy if they go out, so nobody really goes out in the first hour. I got no cards, but didn't have to rebuy at all, so at the break I took the add on and had 3100 chips, which was well below the average stack.

Long story short, I got insanely lucky twice in the tournament, and made it to the final table. The tournament was set up so the top 3 people got entries into the $650 tournament, and people 4-9 got $33 back. Thats not normal; most tournaments just give successively higher payouts for a higher place, but satellite tournaments work a bit differently.

I was pretty happy with the $33, but now was getting greedy. $650 was waiting if I could just find my way up from 7th place out of 9 to one of the top 3. And after two insanely lucky hands, I became the first place guy. So all I had to do was hold on. And hold on I did, eventually winning the tournament, and my entry into the $650 tournament that starts on Saturday at 5 PM (in 2.5 hours).

This $650 tournament is also a satellite. To what you ask? To the World Poker Tour's event in the Bahamas, which runs from January 4th to 11th. That is during my winter break, and oddly enough, starts on my birthday. For every $12,000 in this tournament, one entry to the WPT event in the Bahamas will be awarded. Currently there are around 145 people registered in the tourney, so that means 7 or 8 lucky players will get an all expenses paid trip to the Bahamas come January.

I've never played in an online tournament that cost more than $20 before. I'm nervous, excited, and cannot for the life of me look at my damn contracts notes.

Do I drink merlot like I did last night? Do I watch TV while I'm playing? Music? 1812 Overture?

I realize that its still rather unlikely that I end up getting one of these packages - but its a whole lot more likely than it was last night. Just outlast 140 other people (who either are very good players, have a lot of disposable income, or both), and I'll have a trip of a lifetime waiting for me.

Update at 4:21 PM - now there are freakin 205 people signed up. Oh well, now there's 10 spots!

Update at 6:45 PM - at one point in the tournament I was 14/200 or so, after doubling up with pocket aces. Now I am out, as I went all in with pocket kings, and called by Ace/King offsuit, and he killed me with a river ace. Stomach punch. FUCK!

Oh yeah, last Saturday we crushed our way to the 1L softball championship.

Thanks to Nick Scalise for this productivity crippler.



Is sexually attracted to fire.

I don't have my 9 AM Criminal Law class all this week - its like senior year in undergrad. One class on Monday, two classes on Tuesday, two classes today... I feel like I am doing nothing at all. It makes me wonder what I actually did senior year at Duke. I guess I just drank a lot.

In any event, with my lightened schedule this week, I had the rare opportunity to do some laundry and watch some TV last night. I kicked the night off with The Biggest Loser.



For those of you not in the know, The Biggest Loser pits one team of very overweight women against one team of very overweight men and sees who can lose the most weight. There are various survivor type challenges, and at the end of each episode the losing team (the team that lost the lesser percentage of their body weight) must vote off one of their team members.

I found it to be extremely interesting. Each team gets a trainer who works them out during the week, and in that week the teams are given various temptations. In the episode I watched last night, they were given the chance to pick a random card from a deck that had some amount of money written on it, from $1 to $5,000. If they wanted to try this game of chance, the person would have to give up the use of their trainer for the week.

This created an interesting situation. If you wanted the money, not only would you have to train in a less than optimal way, but you also could incur the wrath of your teammates who want to win the competition. And for the 3 women (out of the 6) who chose to take the money, that is exactly what happened. The women started bitching at each other and not surprisingly, they ended up losing and having to vote someone off.

All in all, I think it is a great reality show. I recommend it.



I didn't catch much of My Name is Earl. The commercials for it have been less than awe-inspiring. Okay... some bully guy is trying to make the world right. It just seems kind of stupid, and the last 10 minutes of the show that I caught last night did nothing to dispel the notion.



I was really looking forward to The Office, as I really liked the few episodes of the American version (not a fan of the British version, if you recall) that I had seen. This one was... ehhhh. Nothing really spectacular. It had some funny moments, but the lack of actual interactions between Steve Carell and the rest of the office kind of screwed up the show.



I finished off the evening with a little Law and Order SVU. This show comes in a close second to CSI in the category of "Shows I'll watch no matter what as long as I haven't seen the episode before." And lo and behold, it was one I hadn't seen before. It focused a little bit too much on Mariska Hargitay (above, right), which isn't a terrible thing because she is cute in a weird kind of way, but I like to see a more even mix of things. And the little girl's annoying voice in last night's episode made you kind of hope that she either wasn't real or that they weren't going to reach her in time. I know... cold.

Movie Review: A History of Violence



If you've seen a trailer for A History of Violence, it seems really intriguing. Here is a guy who seems like he is very good at killing people, yet he appears to have no background whatsoever in self defense or any of that jazz. He's just a normal guy in a small town who owns a diner.

Three guys in suits think differently.

It has all the makings of a perfect drama/thriller type movie right? I mean, thats what Yahoo Movies has it classified as. And its what I was expecting...

But there are a lot of scenes where the movie tries to be a comedy.

I've never seen a drama/thriller/comedy before. This is not to say that it cannot be done well, but I find it hard to believe that the two genres are really compatable. If you think of a drama/thriller movie that you've seen before and enjoyed (think The Devil's Advocate), and thought what would happen if there were some comedic elements forced in, you might be a little unhappy at that edit.

If you were to try to force the two genres together, you would want it to be smooth. You would have jokes and humor spliced throughout the drama (or drama spliced throughout the humor). But the director here chooses a different route - separating all dramatic and humor elements, so it goes something like

dramatic scene
humor scene
pointless scene
dramatic scene with lots of killing
humor scene with even more killing
dramatic dinner scene

And truthfully, it doesn't work at all.

[spoilers involved here]

The killing scenes are what threw me off the most. In one scene Mortensen kills two of the guys in the suits, gets shot in the shoulder by the third leader guy, and then when he's about to be finished off, his son blows a hole in the leader guy with a shotgun. Its very intense and what you would expect to be the climax of most movies.

And then, after a scene where his wife inexplicably covers for Mortensen, he is off to Philadelphia to meet up with some angry organized crime people led by his also angry brother (William Hurt). More killing ensues, but throughout this scene of death (including an instadeath neck breaking), Hurt is throwing up his hands in disbelief and spouting humorous lines. Hurt then gets locked out of the house while Mortensen is killing his henchmen. We hear the killing going on inside the house, and Hurt starts reaching in his pockets for his keys. Of course, Mortensen opens the door and blows him away.

Every scene here just seems so far out of right field that you have no clue what the characters are even going to do. Why does his wife, when physically fighting with Mortensen, decide to have a little sex with him instead? Why does the very shy son have the ability to go buck wild and whoop two bullies in school?

Not that I'm complaining, but why, after the sex scene, decide to show a full frontal nudity shot of the wife walking out of the bathroom?

The movie lacks a coherent theme. It wasn't a horrible movie, but it could have been done so much better that it makes me a bit sick. And the fact that I constantly was asking myself "what?" makes me wonder why in the world all the critics decided to give it As and A minuses.