I haven’t posted in a long time. I’ve been busy blah blah blah. These things happen, folks.

Pittsburgh 33, Arizona 17.

In other news, I passed the bar.

Thoughts:

• Leonardo DiCaprio is rapidly gaining on Christian Slater for best permanent Jack Nicholson impression.
• Tom Cruise is still creepy. I guess that will never go away.
• Borat is still funny. I guess that will never go away.
• Harrison Ford is better than Shia LeBoeuf will ever be, but that freaking earring is ridiculous!
• And yeah, vote on Tuesday. Even though, statistically, most of your votes really are worthless.

Instead of being funny, let’s just skip the jokes and pack the first 15 minutes with celebrity cameos! EVERYONE WILL THINK WE’RE GREAT.

PS: Remember G.E. Smith? He was awesome.

So, remember that earthquake I mentioned? It looks like there are some legal aftershocks–the California Bar might give all of the affected takers bonus hugs or something:

Grading of the examination will be conducted in accordance with the Committee of Bar Examiners (Committee) standard procedures. During the grading process, however, the Committee’s psychometric consultant has been asked to perform a psychometric study on whether the earthquake impacted applicants’ performance on the first session of the examination and to report his findings to the Committee prior to the release of results from the examination.

The Committee will consider its consultant’s findings and determine what action, if any, should be taken to ensure that all applicants are treated as fairly as possible. Any actions the Committee might take will be discussed in the information made available at the time results from the examination are released to the applicants, which is scheduled for November 21, 2008.

It’s not really clear what this means, but it looks like if scores are lower than average for that session, the Bar Examiners are going to apply an Act of God curve to even things out. I guess I’ll take it.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

I took the California bar exam in Ontario, which is near Los Angeles. Also, it’s about 10 miles away from the epicenter of the 5.4 earthquake that hit towards the end of the first morning. So that was nice. But aside from that, things seemed to go fine. I mean, I have massive doubts and regrets, but I think that’s normal and not really indicative of how I did. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I won’t get my results until November, so there’s not really much use in stressing out about them until then.

After the bar, I had a celebratory meal at Benihana (their Mai Tais are fantastic, even if you don’t drink out of a ceramic buddha), then went to sleep at a reasonable hour. I’m pathetic. The next day I flew up to San Francisco for the weekend. I stayed with a friend from college and had a very good time. Featured were:

• Dinner at some hipster joint that actually serves very good food.
• Drinks at The Orbit Room, a fantastic lounge with bespoke cocktails and a clever vintage aeronautic theme.
• Watching karaoke at The Mint. The performance quality was a letdown after my last visit there, but the entertainment value was quite high nonetheless. The highlight of the evening for me was getting verbally ambushed by a truly drunk astrology aficionado whose buddy Reuben wouldn’t return her calls. After a series of sarcastic remarks that she understood to be sincere, she asked for my phone number, but I gave her a fake number! OMG YOU GUYS, I’M A PLAYER! So that was fun.
• Playing softball on Treasure Island. For the record, as best I can recall I went 4 of 6 with 3 infield singles, and had a pretty unimpressive fielding day at third base. But I had one solid putout, which is probably the first time in my entire life I’ve successfully thrown a runner out at first base. Baseball: not my best sport.
• Potpourri: Playing a bunch of card games, spilling at least one glass of wine, spending a lot of time on Muni/BART, having eggs benedict in Rockridge, helping my friends pick out a hookah at a smokeshop staffed by a cliché.

Next, I flew up to Vancouver, where I stayed at this hostel. This is a pretty fun place to stay, but I think I may be too old for it. Everyone seems to be approximately 17 years old (and to have been travelling the world for at least a decade). But it’s cheap, central to downtown Vancouver (and in very close proximity to any number of sex shops and vagrants), and has free wifi. Here are things I’ve been up to in Vancouver:

• Meeting up with my internet friend Tim. Tim is real life friends with some other internet friends who I have met before and overall, I don’t totally hate him. So that’s a plus. Anyway, he and I hung out a fair amount, which was good, since I don’t know anyone else in Vancouver.
• We played Pitch ‘n’ Putt in Stanley Park. It’s 18 holes of between 50 and 100 yards each, using a pitching wedge and a putter. It was surprisingly similar to real golf. I kicked Tim’s ass, but he had the only birdie of the group, so I guess it’s a wash.
• Saw Batman again. I feel the same way: very good, not perfect, occasionally too implausible/stupid, but overall very well done and enjoyable.
• Had sushi and gelato. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
• Walked all over the place. Like, 6 miles on Monday, 13.5 miles on Tuesday, 10 miles on Wednesday, and, er, .2 miles so far today. The weather has been a little warm, but not too bad (no rain so far!). I’ve got a hilarious raccoon tan from wearing my sunglasses all the time.
• Spent a ridiculous amount of time dealing with technology. Charging my iPod, phone, laptop, trying to find wifi all over the city, having all access to ATMs cut off, going to FUTURESHOP (Canadian Best Buy) to replace the camera Tim managed to lose during a nap… but on the plus side, I’ve had a lot of luck getting free wifi on this trip, which has been a huge help. I don’t know what people did before cell phones and ubiquitous internet access–I don’t think I could get around without it.

Now I have a few more hours to kill before I head off to the airport for the short trip to Seattle (I should have taken the ferry, but I’m an idiot), where I will spend the weekend doing fun things. Then I spend a week with the fam before going back to Boston to pack up my life and head down to DC.

One more thought I have been deeply yearning to share:

• Brett Favre: sucks. He retired, and then double retired when the team asked if he was sure about it. The team moved on. He reneged. The team refused to drop his contract, to prevent him from signing on with one of their division rivals. He whined on national television. They couldn’t get any decent trades for him, because his whining made it clear that they would be desperate to get rid of him (and thus had no leverage). Yet somehow this guy is a victim? Bah, humbug.

Okay guys. Tomorrow morning I head off to California to take a test. It’ll be over on Thursday, after which I will be on vacation for a while.

I’ll be in San Francisco from the 1st to the 4th, then in Vancouver from the 4th to the 7th, then in Seattle from the 7th to the 10th. It’s not a lot of time in any of those places, but I’m hoping to be able to meet up with anybody who’s around. Leave me a comment here or email me (calamityjake at gmail dot com) if you want to make that happen–although I may not be able to get back to you til after the exam is over.

Good luck to everyone else who’s taking the bar–I’ll be back on the internet, hopefully with something more interesting to say, in August.

Game-ism’s most recent post is about Nike’s designs for this summer’s Olympics, and there’s a lot of really cool stuff there, including the Ippeas–a riding boot designed by Nike, drawing from motocross, track & field, and other sports’ designs. It’s pretty fascinating how Nike applied contemporary design to a very traditional sport: