and Reality TV
 

Oh, for Love and Money was bloated. It looked, felt and sounded like The Bachelor/Bachelorette/JoeMillionaire. The same approach to the nice house by limo; the same slumber party of girls; the same tall, good-looking, quasi-successful dude in a tux; the same elimination ceremony; the same lame-o dork explaining the obvious to the dude and the ladies. The editing looked the same. The music sounded the same. Yet, for 2 full hours of it, we only saw him actually talk to the girls for maybe 15 minutes and that consisted of "It was really nice to meet you. I'd like to get to know you better" over and over again.

That said, I will probably watch it again because the best part about these shows is the bitchy, catty, drunk, drooling, behavior that happens in the middle and it looks like it starts next week. The beginning (last night) sucks and the end (i.e. will Aaron's family like Helene?) sucks. Also, this is probably the best looking group of women they have accumulated for one of these shows. I realize now that I should have watched with the sound off last night.

Booze
 

Don't know what to tell you. It was explained to me by someone who works for AB that the icing process increases the alcohol content in a way that I didn't understand enough to explain it -- something about the fact that water gets removed or something. He told me that it was 7.5%. I also know that there is a difference between percentage by weight and percentage by volume (I think the latter being higher) and that could be the confusion.

Booze
 

Well, budweiser's in big-time trouble what with the false advertising. Miller I could understand, what with being owned by Philip Morris.

Percentage by volume is higher, since alcohol is lighter than water. The 3.2% beer in utah is 3.2% by weight, which translates to about 4.0%.

I think you just need to go out and get youself a 40 of F'd Up malt liquor.

BTW, anyone been on the AB "brewery" tour? Best part is certainly not the tasting room. To me it was learning that "beechwood aged" means that they chuck a bunch of wood strips (beechwood strips, mind you), into the ginormous steel tanks that the beer "ages" in for 118 minutes (or whatever).

Mmmm . . . brewery fresh.

Booze
 

Actually, the best part is sneaking into Busch Gardens without paying.

Not that I sanction stealing, which is what that would be ...

What do you drink?
 

I am late to this, but, where I live, you can get pretty decent beer for $.75 a bottle or so if you buy it at the warehouse store. How much is Bud Ice? Seriously, if you drink that much beer, why not drink some better stuff? If price is that big of a deal, you should brew your own. It is really easy, really cheap, and you can make a great-tasting American pilsner with low calories for fractions of the price of Bud Ice.

mmm

yesterday's article
 

As a former journalist I find this incredibly childish and wrong of AmLaw. It is one thing to write a trash piece; its quite another to then engage in a discussion defending it with the people you've trashed, even when they attempt to establish the dialog. The correct answer is simply, "We're sorry you were unhappy about our coverage. We would be happy to publish a letter to the editor so long as it meets the printed criteria for such letters" [which may include requiring signatures or no profanity, etc., I haven't looked at AmLaw's rules in particular]. And that's it.

If Ms. Smith is upset because she feels she was improperly maligned because of the editor's edits, that's an internal matter and/or she needs to grow up. If they are concerned about the fact they've now irritated a community of lawyers who will be reluctant to give quotes and information in the future, perhaps they should have thought about that earlier.

I for one, in the unlikely event I am ever contacted by Ms. Smith (or anyone else at AmLaw) will be reluctant to share any information, on or off the record.

yesterday's article
 

So, he was essentially he felt free to ignore alternative sides of the story or the direct statements of the persons involved because it was an opinion piece?
It is your opinion that he told you it was just an opinion piece?

At least we know why journalists are the least trusted profession in the US (down there with politicians and car salesmen, and well below lawyers).

FWIW, I communicated, pseudonomynously, via e-mail with Smith, the substance of which wasn't reflected, which doesn't annoy me or surprise me and frankly rather relieved me because I don't trust journalists, though I feel an odd obligation to try to help them do their jobs when they are inquiring into a subject of legitimate interest. But, in the interests of disclosure, like others, I did tell her (of my opinion) that (i) FL indicated to us, to the extent it deigned to discuss it at all, that the primary problem wasn't cursing per se but personal attacks on and abuse of named individuals, including partners, which abuse often involved cursing and (ii) the concern of GAs wasn't really about cursing but substantive content censorship, which concern wasn't addressed by FL. To quote direct: "So, various people set up alternative boards where they felt there would be less concern about censorship, which is a very touchy subject for Greedy Associates since the entire premise of the community is the free exchange of information that bigwigs in the legal industry don't necessarily want us to have."

To their credit, however, they did post the correct address of this site, which is more than they have done in the past when they quoted Infirm posts but linked to greedyassociates.com.

Booze
 

Interesting that Bud Ice is higher than Bud (5.5 vs. 5.0) but Bud Ice Light is lower than Bud Light (4.1 vs. 4.2). I had no idea before this discussion began that Ice beer was even sold any longer. And here I thought that was sooo 1997.

Booze
 

Zima's still sold, too. So November 1992.

Mmmmmm, beer
 

With all this discussion about beer, I think it's time for a Law Talkers field trip to . . . .

DUFF GARDENS.

I'm looking forward to hanging out with the Seven Duffs and visiting the Beer Hall of Presidents. Let's meet up at the "Little land of Duff" ride. If you forget your Beer Goggles, you can buy them at the souvenir stand.

str(Surly looks out for one thing: Surly)8

Shock the monkey, or I'm shocked to find gambling going on at this casino.
 

The biggest shock I can cause is telling people I'm a transactional attorney. People are shocked or flat-out don't believe me. This applies to everyone. Rich, poor, black, white, young, old. Although, based on experience, I can spot a Biglaw lawyer from 50 feet (and can identify one from earshot as easy as pie), I fail to understand what it is about lawyers that make regular people think they all look the same. Hell, there are more lawyers, than rats (may be hard to tell the two apart, but I digress), why wouldn't people think we come in all shapes, colors, sizes and personality types?

TM

Booze
 

Holy crap. They're not still inexplicably using that Balky-esque dork in white to try to sell that swill, are they?

PJ

What do you drink?
 

I used to brew my own beer. A friend and I used to get together and brew and cook every couple of weeks. It got really fun when we had a couple of batches bottled and could enjoy the fruits of our labors as we labored on another batch. The wort smelled so good as it bubbled away on the stove. Mmmmm, zymurgy.

Booze
 

Yeah, in Woostah. Were you wearing your faux ripped acid washed jeans with the comb in the back pocket, authentic Patriots varsity jacket and black reeboks when you drank Zima, you wicked cool guy?

Shock the monkey, or I'm shocked to find gambling going on at this casino.
 

I've gotten "you're too nice to be a lawyer" on more than one occasion.