Yesterday morning, I got ready for work, walked out to my car, got in, turned the key and . . . it started normally. But, as I was backing out of my spot, it seemed that the car was being extremely sluggish. That's when I realized that, although the car had started fine, it had, at some point, stopped running. The radio was still on, so it wasn't immediately clear to me that anything was wrong--I couldn't hear the lack of engine noise or whatever. After my ham-fisted attempts to diagnose and correct the problem failed, I had the thing towed to the Car Care Clinic, the only mechanic in town I trust.

About an hour later, they called me back with the diagnosis. Apparently, my timing belt had crapped out. This was, in itself, an expensive problem because, apparently, when you build a Nissan Xterra, you start with a timing belt and then build a car around it. But my mechanic had much more dire news than that: on cars with engines like mine, it's sometimes the case that a blown timing belt results in serious damage to the engine itself. The mechanic told me that he'd be unable to tell if this had happened on my car until after he replaced the belt. I told him to go ahead and replace the belt, but I knew what had happened: the seXterra had driven its last mile. If my engine was fucked, it simply wouldn't be worth fixing it. I started the mourning process.

The seXterra and I have been together for seven years. I got it after test driving only a few other cars, all of them Xterras. I was excited and, in that excitement, I made a rash decision on a very large purchase. Sometimes love makes you do stupid things.

The vast majority of the times that two people get married in Vegas after spending just one drunken night together, they regret every second of it and can't get the thing annulled fast enough. But it seems to me that out of all those stupid people making all those stupid decisions, there have to be at least a few couples that actually make it. And that's what it was like for the seXterra and I: the chances of buying a wonderful car by accident is probably very small. But I committed the seXterra, and he's never let me down. Or, at the very least, he's let me down a nearly negligible number of times in the years we've been together. He never cheated on me, it's just that he broke a promise here and there. It happens. Sometimes your fuel pump dies. Sometimes your battery dies. It doesn't mean you're a bad car.

The fact remains that the vast majority of the times that I've sat in the seXterra's driver's seat and turned the key, he responded by starting right up and driving as far and as fast as I asked him to. He carried me and my friends across the country while towing all my possessions behind him. He took Mr. Vice, Mr. Utah, and RPM safely to Florida and back--fifty hours spent driving in two nonstop chunks. He's picked people up and helped people move and provided a place to sit and talk. He's played all my favorite music, and he didn't complain when I drove him through cinder pits or bumpy mountain trails. He looks extremely badass with all four wheels off the ground. In my imagination, he's even been an offensive lineman for the Badgers.

And all of this in spite of--not because of--his maintenance record.

I thought about all of this as I sat there thinking about what car I could possibly get to replace the seXterra. I'd always figured that I'd get another car some day, but I figured that I'd get an additional car, not a replacement. I wanted a car to drive during the summer so that the seXterra could rest. I didn't want to replace him. But that's what I had to start thinking about doing. I even considered buying his exact clone. But I knew that none of it could bring back my reliable, dependable, extremely badass car.

I waited nervously for the call from the mechanic, the call I knew would mean the true end of the best car I've ever owned. And when it came, i was baffled: the seXterra lived! The engine was fine! The belt replacement was all it needed! That and a little power-steering fluid!

I went to the place, paid my bill, and got in the car. Everything was right where it used to be. He had developed this issue where almost every turn made a wookiee sound, but that was gone. Sitting behind his steering wheel was like being home again. Only now home was new and improved.

The seXterra died. But he came back and he was better. So now he's not the seXterra, he's seXterra the White.

Except that he's still red.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Life Sucks Sometimes , Reviews , The Lord of the Rings

I'm having a hard time understanding the attitude that most people seem to be taking towards the whole Roman Polanski thing. I just want to make sure I understand this: the guy admitted that he had nonconsensual sex with a thirteen-year-old girl, right? The guy raped a little girl, yeah? And it's not even like he just raped a little girl--which is bad enough. No! The guy admits that he did it, and then he decides that he doesn't want to live with the consequences of his actions, so he exploits his wealth and runs off to a different country where, for thirty years, he makes a mockery of the American justice system. Then, when someone finally arrests the sleazebag, people get all upset about it? What the fuck? Let's consider the possible grounds on which people might suggest that Mr. Polanksi deserves some sort of leniency.

He's a Holocaust survivor
No one's going to deny that having personally experienced the Holocaust was probably a terrible, terrible ordeal for Mr. Polanski and his family. I'm honestly sorry that anyone had to go through that, and it turns my stomach to even think about it. But there are any number of survivors that didn't go on to commit fairly heinous sex crimes, so I don't see how the fact that he went through a horrible thing absolves him of guilt for a horrible thing he did later. Holocaust survivors, in general, deserve the respect they get and more, but having survived even that atrocity doesn't give anyone the right to do what Mr. Polanski admitted to doing.

His wife was murdered
Again, Mr. Polanski had a terrible thing happen to him. But, again, the fact that something bad happened to him doesn't mean he can do bad things to others.

He's made a bunch of movies
Is the idea here that if you've done enough entertaining stuff, you're good to go? By this logic, could Bono shoot a guy and get away with it? I've never seen any of Roman Polanski's films, and they all sound like stuff I wouldn't enjoy, but even if he were the guy behind Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Superman, Back to the Future, rainbows, bacon, and sunshine, I don't see how any of that would excuse him drugging up a little girl and then having sex with her.

He's had to live with what he's done for thirty years
That's just bullshit. For the past thirty years--and even before that, really--the guy's been hugely wealthy. I don't understand how people could seriously contend that, because the guy's been traipsing around Europe for the past three decades like some sort of free-spirited twenty-something, he deserves a pass. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, the fact that he's been a fugitive for thirty years counts against him: the guy has had over a quarter of a century to realize that the right thing to do is pay his debt, but he's refused to do so.

At the end of the day, I understand that people change. As the victim in the case herself said, it doesn't seem like Mr. Polanski's done this again. Maybe this really was a one-time thing fueled by drugs and an inflated sense of entitlement. And, yeah, I'm sure that the Roman Polankski that was arrested in Switzerland isn't the same man as the Roman Polankski that had sex with a little girl in Jack Nicholson's house. But those are all things that a judge should consider at sentencing. The fact remains that this is a man who committed an incredibly serious crime, admitted it, and then ran off before justice could be done.

Roman Polanski isn't the typical criminal. He's old, he's rich, he's white. But none of that means that he's any less guilty, and none of it should mean that he's any less subject to the demands of justice.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Legal Rants , Philosophical Rants , Rants on the News

For the second time since I've been here, Built to Spill came to the Barrymore Theatre. And for the second time since I've been here, Built to Spill put on one of the most best shows I've ever seen.

The set list was a very good mix of older stuff and stuff I've never heard, presumably because it's on their new album. While they failed--again!--to play "Car," they did play my two other favorite BtS songs: "Virginia Reel Around the Fountain" and "Else." Both versions were spectacular.

Doug Martsch is an amazing guitarist. He might not be the most technically proficient guy out there, but he's so good at stringing together riffs and chords and different parts. Each of the songs has a natural, interesting progression. And the whole band just brings an amazing amount of energy to the material in the live setting. At the same time, though, the band gave off a very mature sort of vibe. There weren't any attention-grabbing histrionics. In fact, the band barely talked to the audience at all during the set. But they were clearly enjoying what they were doing, and I think that enthusiasm rubbed off on the audience. It certainly did on me, anyway.

Owing to the fact that we got there super-early, we ended up leaning on the stage for the whole show. This was my view:

Here's one of the other guitarists:

That guy was actually sort of interesting. His pedal board consisted of a really beat-up piece of OSB with a bunch of pedals zip-tied to it. His guitar was a very strange looking Fender that was completely finish-free; it was just a big block of wood with beautiful grain running throughout. But the oddest part of his whole setup was his amp, which literally looked like a couple of speakers mounted into some 2x4s that had been nailed together. All of that, combined with his general mountain-man appearance, made me think that the guy was a hermit who had only recently rejoined civilization or something. here's an admittedly unclear picture of the guy's homemade amp:

Right after the band finished playing their last song, literally right after the last chord had faded away, they started tearing down their own equipment. And then something really cool happened: they started talking to the people who were still there. First, people started thanking the mountain-man guitarist (I can't figure out what his name is) for putting on such a great show. I joined right in on that. Then he started shaking people's hands. Then I approached Doug Martsch, who had seemed kind of aloof. He was so far from aloof, it was awesome. We talked briefly about his pedals, and I thanked him for playing "Virginia Reel Around the Fountain." He thanked me for coming out to the show. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy.

Then the mountain-man guy started signing stuff, so I gave him the only piece of paper I had: my ticket stub. Then Doug also signed it, and he was again really nice. Then, feeling I should press my luck, I went over to the third guitarist and asked hiim to sign it. He did, and we had a quick conversation about his guitar, which had seemed really strange throughout the show because it seemed to have the body of a Telecaster, the neck and headstock of a Stratocaster, and the electronics of a Les Paul. Turns out it's a specially modified Tele Deluxe. Anyway, here's a picture of my ticket stub autographed by all three BtS guitarists:

The show was aweosme. My ears are still ringing, but it was totally worth it. I can't wait until they come back to Madison again, especially since a law-school connection has promised to get us backstage passes next time.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Fun Shit I've Done , Music Reviews , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To

I thought this story--about Justice Sotomayor getting lost on the way to Washington--was sort of interesting. What I like about it is that it gives us this strange sort of glimpse into the mundane details of the daily lives of one of the most powerful lawyers in America. In her career on the Supreme Court, Justice Sotomayor--like all of her colleagues--is likely to make a good amount of history and will influence the interpretation of our most important documents for decades to come. But here we're presented with a moment where she's clearly just "one of us": she's a person trying to get somewhere she hasn't driven to frequently on a dark and stormy night. And then you compare that image, which we've all been a part of, and contrast it with the other anecdote in the story--the one about Sotomayor picking up the phone and hearing the President of the United States on the other end--and the whole thing seems even stranger.

I've always thought that the contrast between the extremely powerful positions some people hold and the people themselves is interesting. For example, should anyone so much as threaten President Obama, he'd have twenty of the world's best-trained security guards at his side, ready to take a bullet. But what happens if he's giving a huge speech to the UN and he realizes that he probably shouldn't have drank that much water beforehand because now he's really, really got to pee?

A British person I went to law school with once told us a story that someone he met in a bar told him. I have no idea if it's true, but it's still one of my favorites. I forget exactly what the premise for the whole thing was, but basically the storyteller produced a small box. Inside that box was a short gray hair. Everyone asked why the guy carried a gray hair around, and he explained that he used to work at some place in England. One day, the Queen came to the area and, as luck would have it, she had to use the bathroom at the place that the storyteller worked. For some reason, it fell to him to clean up the bathroom directly after the Queen was done. And there, on the toilet seat, he found one of the Queen's pubic hairs. I swear that when my classmate told the story, there were sufficient details to make the whole thing sound much less made up.

But the point is that the Queen has pubic hair and that there's probably been a moment when the President would really rather have been sitting on the toilet than meeting some head of state, and that's such a strange thing to think about.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Funny Shit

First off, happy birthday to my grandma. She turned ninety-five today. Can you imagine that? She's been around for the vast majority of one of the most exciting--in my opinion--centuries ever. So much has happened since 1914, it blows my mind. But what really blows my mind is how spry my grandma still is. She has some slight lapses now and then, but for the most part, she's lucid and coherent. And still witty and funny. So happy birthday to her!

Secondly, I've officially moved. Chelsadilla and I spent pretty much all of yesterday packing up the majority of my old place; we didn't do the whole bathroom or kitchen, figuring wecould do all of that in one trip using just the seXterra. Nonetheless, we spent the night at her place owing to the fact that my bed's parts were resting on their sides against a wall and the rest of my apartment was boxed up and stacked in the middle of my living room. It's a strange feeling to see a stack of furniture and boxes and realize that this is really all you own. I don't know if I felt unencumbered or impoverished. A little of both, I guess.

I had asked the numerous friends who had agreed to help me move to show up at 10am. By about 9:30, I was getting phone calls from people expecting us to have fallen behind schedule. But getting the trailer and driving back to my old place went smoothly, so we were on schedule. By 11am, everything from the old place was in the U-Haul, and by about 11:45 am, everything was unloaded at the new place. By just about 1pm, we were having pizza and I was settling in. It was, by far, the smoothest move I've ever been involved with, and it was all thanks to chelsadilla and all of my friends that helped. So thanks to all of you.

Chelsadilla spent the rest of the day helping me unpack my stuff. My kitchen is all set up, and it rocks. There's about four-thousand times more counter space, meaning that I can set up all my appliances and still have plenty of room to chop and mix and whatever else; a pantry, meaning there's a super convenient place to put pretty much everything; a pass-through to the living room, meaning that I won't feel like I'm in a different time zone if I'm cooking while there're people over; and a dishwasher, which I don't have much use for but chelsadilla seems to be really excited about. I'm extremely excited about cooking in there.

The living room, which we spent about two weeks painting, is a great room. When people walked in, I heard at least one or two of them say "Oooooh," and that made all the effort worthwhile. There's still some stuff I need to get for this room (an additional couch or love seat so that more people can sit comfortably, a TV), but it's clearly going to be a great place to hang out, both for myself and others. Between the kitchen, the living room, and the guest bathroom, I'm really looking forward to hosting gatherings here. Maybe by the Super Bowl I'll have a decent home-entertainment thing going with, you know, a TV.

The master bedroom and master bath are completely ready to go. The one downside to this apartment is that the master bathroom is really fairly small, but I think I'll manage. It hasn't bothered me too much yet, and the fact that there are two bathrooms more than makes up for it. Right now, I've still got the old bed in there, but I'm going to be getting a new, king-size bed in the near future. I can't wait for that.

The only room that still needs a lot of work is the office-slash-guitar-slash-guest room. The desk is where it's going to be and the guitars are hung, but that's pretty much it. We still need to bring in the twin bed that chelsadilla is going to lend me. Oh, and we need to unpack the thousands of boxes that are still in there.

I'll take some pictures of everything once it's a little bit more organized.

All in all, this was about as close to a perfect moving experience as you could reasonably ask for. There's still a lot of work to do, but the worst of it is behind us. As I sat down to write this, I only had one lingering concern: that the cats would be so freaked out by the new place that they wouldn't use the new covered litter box I got them. But I know that Smash used it at some point, and I just saw Lily go in there.

The moral of the story? Change can sometimes be very, very good.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , General Awesomeness

After careful reflection, it turns out that painting every single wall in my new apartment would have resulted in both terminal exhaustion and an unappealing apartment. That what I'm telling myself, anyway. The fact of the matter is that I would have liked to paint some of the walls in my bedroom, but I'm going to have to make do with a fully painted and awesome living room and dining room, and a half-painted but also awesome second-bedroom office.

This second bedroom, by the way, is fucking great. I finally have a black wall, and what I had planned on doing with it worked out even better than I had hoped. I'll post pictures soon.

For now, the emphasis has to be on getting my old place packed up. It's been a really long time since I've moved, so things are pretty well settled here, so it's going to take a while. It also doesn't help that, while I don't have too much big stuff--just a desk, a table, a couch, a bookcase, and a bed, really--I have a hell of a lot of completely unorganized tiny shit. Chelsadilla and I spent about two hours the other day just going through the drawers in my desk. The rest of the apartment could get ugly.

I'm really excited about the new place, though, and I'm sure that it'll be worth it. Thank god that my next few days at work are relatively light, or I might die of exhaustion before I actually move on Sunday.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Existential Nonsense

I've officially spent more time, effort, and money trying to make my new apartment look nice than I've spent on every other place I've ever lived combined. Mostly, this means that chelsadilla and I have been painting. A lot. We had thought that we'd be done by Sunday, but that didn't work out. Then I thought that Wednesday would definitely be the last day of painting, but now I'm not so sure that'll work out. Still, we'll be done sometime this week. We have to be since everyone's agreed to help me move on Sunday (thanks, people!) and I have significantly more packing to do, even though I did get some done this weekend. Take all of that and add in the fact that cool social things are going on, and plans and schedules start to get hectic. Today was a perfect example.

When I woke up, I thought that I'd be able to leave the office rather early. The plan was to paint, run, cook a not-entirely-unhealthy stir fry for dinner, then do some packing. But as the day wore on, I realized that there wasn't going to be nearly enough time in the evening to do all of that. So I suggested that maybe we put off running for the week since I've got so much moving-related crap to do. We agreed, but I felt guilty since the running is going fairly well but we've been slacking lately. Then, I got stuck in the office and didn't make it back to Madison until just before six, and I still had to stop at the bank. Suddenly, all of our fancy plans seemed questionable.

We started painting and, next thing you know, it's 8:30 and we're only through half of what we had to do tonight. Then we looked up and realized that one of the colors we had chosen for some problematic walls essentially ruined an entire room, so we decided that we had to redo them, even though we had just done the second coat of the offending color. That was a low point.

By the time the painting was all done, it was 10 o'clock. In order to cook dinner, we'd still have to go to the grocery store and buy the raw ingredients. So instead of a not-entirely-unhealthy stir fry, we had pizza. Sure, the pizza was free, but I don't think the fact that you didn't have to pay for something means that it contains fewer calories.

So, all in all, things did not go as planned today. But I'm confident that our revised itinerary will work. And, yeah, the next few days are going to suck, but it's all going to be worth it when I'm settled in my badass new place.

That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Life Sucks Sometimes , Rants

One of the important yet tedious things that many lawyers have to do is keep track of their time. For many attorneys, life is measured by the tenth of an hour.

There are many ways to keep track of one's billable time, from fancy computer programs to just making it all up. My method isn't technologically advanced, but I think it's fairly accurate: every day, I take a blank page in a legal pad and write the date at the top. I note the client's name, the time I started working, the time I stopped working, and what I was doing. On Monday morning, I input the previous week's totals into whatever document or database they have to go into.

Today, I wrote the date at the top of my blank page, and I still felt a quick rush of sadness, anger, and loss.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Life Sucks Sometimes , The Law Firm

I remember the first time I heard this no-talent assclown's music. It was a video for one of his songs and he was going out of his way to be all "look at me, I'm happy and care-free but also a tooled-out hippy." The music itself was inoffensive enough, I guess, but it was completely disposable and uninspired. So, of course, the guy's fucking huge now.

I've had his song "I'm Yours" stuck in my head for fucking hours, and I'm about ready to smash my new guitar with my face. That song is infuriating both for its banal lyrics and it's maddeningly simplistic music. What the fuck does "it's our god-forsaken right to be loved, loved, loved" mean? Seriously, what intelligible concept do those words, spoken in that order, convey? Then, as if tacitly acknowledging that there's exactly no reason to even sing words, he goes into what has to be the most embarrassing scat singing I've ever heard. He's no Tenacious D, that's for sure (fast forward to 3:27 for some awesome scatting).

The point is that this guy is a blight on the musical landscape. Not that I should be surprised--this is the same industry that's made John Mayer rich and famous and that's now peddling that new Green Day song.

The point is this: Jason Mraz sucks, and, while I love The Decemberists, something wacky's going on when the best album of the year tells the story of a woman who falls in love with a man-deer only to be separated by an infanticidal pervert and a forest deity.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Music Reviews , Rants About Things That Make Me Irrationally Angry

Chelsadilla and I were over at the new place tonight, and I'm officially extremely excited about moving. Even though there's still no furniture in the new place, it's already starting to feel a little bit more like it's mine. Now I have to deal with the daunting realization that I'm actually going to have to get all of my stuff over there somehow. Fortunately, many of my friends have volunteered to help. Unfortunately, I still have to pack up everything myself. I mean, I guess I could just have all my friends come over and discover that I've done no packing at all and make them all do it, but that would be sort of, well, wrong. I'm sure I'm thinking it'll be more work than it really will be, but I'm pretty sure that it won't be any fun at all.

There was a huge Craigslist win today. I realized that I needed boxes, so I went on Craigslist and searched for moving boxes. I found a guy who had posted that he had a bunch of free moving boxes forty minutes earlier. I called him up, and with half an hour, the back of my car was full of free cardboard boxes. Win!

Anyway, given that I'll probably be in my new place for at least a few years and that white walls are boring, I've decided to paint at least some of them. This will be an interesting project because the last time I took up a paintbrush was when my mom painted the walls in our old house. I was maybe twelve and I think I was more of a hindrance than an asset.

Still, I think chelsadilla--who has volunteered to help--and I are up to the task. We went and bought a bunch of paint today, and pH and Mr. Vice let us borrow a bunch of their painting equipment. I think we're going to start doing some prep work tomorrow, and then start painting Saturday. We'll have to get started pretty early, though, since we're planning on heading out to Taste of Madison in the afternoon and then watching the Wisinconsin Bager completely fail against a creampuff team.

It's gonna be a good weekend.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)| Filed under Existential Nonsense

Yes, I'm finally moving. Soon, I'll be far away from all the shenanigans at my current place. All indications are that my new place is mostly drug-dealer free. Yay!

The lease at my new place actually started today. The lease on my old place ends on the last day of this month. This--together with the fact that I got a month's free rent at the new place--means that I get to take a whole month to move. This works out great because I really want to try at my new place.

By "try," I don't just mean that I want to keep my place relatively presentable all the time, but I also mean that I want it to be actively nice. I'm painting, for example, and spending entirely too much time thinking about a color scheme. And, thought I'll have to do it piece by piece, I'm going to start replacing all of my crappy, "I'm a student" furniture. And, while this has nothing to do with keeping the place presentable to the general public, I'm buying a king-size bed.

I went over to the new place today and walked around, trying to visualize where I'm going to put things and whatever else. It's really strange because I have to keys to the place and I've signed the lease, but it doesn't even vaguely feel like home yet. I don't know where all the switches are or even what they all do yet. I've lived in my current place for five years, so I'm extremely familiar with it and all of its quirks (read: flaws).

Still, the new place is better in every way. It's bigger (it's got two bedrooms and two baths), the kitchen's more open and it's got more counterspace, there's more closet space, and there's a dishwasher and a washer and dryer right in the apartment. No more hording quarters! It's like I'm an adult or some shit.

I'll post pictures of the place once it starts to come together. But if any of you have some free time on September 20th, I could totally use some help moving.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)| Filed under Existential Nonsense