Michigan, M*A*S*H Again

So, I've got Michigan on the brain. Partly because I happened to be pondering it after a silly little survey I did on MySpace yesterday (and for those of you who STILL aren't on MySpace -- nor Netflix -- I just don't know what to say to you). I was thinking about how many people in my life are from Michigan. It's actually a little strange. Or is it? Do you think we could be drawn to people from certain states? And do our preferences change over time? I may be on the verge of a new major life hypothesis here?

Or is it simply that I've been moving around the country so much that I'm bound to meet more people from Michigan. But why the high concentration from that state? I mean, just on MySpace, seven of my friends (and nine of my "friends") are either in or from Michigan. I have 61 MySpace Friends. That's more than 10%! That outnumbers my Arizona MySpacers! OK, forget MySpace. Just in general, what's up with Michigan's ever-increasing presence in my life?

I mean, I've got nothing against Michigan. The University of Michigan was on my short short list of law schools forever until I decided to go for the less loans/more scholarship approach. One of my all-time favorite pieces of trivia is about Michigan. When I was a journalism major and practitioner, Michigan was on my radar a lot because the Detroit Free Press is a well-regarded paper. I remember one of my esteemed USC journalism professors saying Detroit was like the best city in the world to cut your journalist teeth, because it had it all: a major news making industry, a high crime rate, a nearby international border, lots of corruption, and even crappy weather.

I've been to Michigan twice, although I haven't spent a lot of time there. It's not my least visited of the lower 48, though. Those are Montana and Kansas. And I believe the Kansas thing has to be remedied this summer. I feel a Capote-induced Holcomb/Garden City literary pilgrimage coming on. But I digress. Anyway, I even remember the first moment of my life I ever gave any thought to Michigan. I was really little, and my dad went on a business trip to Michigan. Correct me if I'm wrong, any family member who's reading this, but didn't he go to Grand Rapids? I've still never been to Grand Rapids--home of Gerald Ford--and I, one of the few, the proud, the U.S. citizens born under the ever-so-brief Ford regime. But I digress again. So, yeah, I remember Dad coming back from Michigan with t-shirts for my sister and me. I remember standing on my grandparents' driveway in Sun City. What did the t-shirts say? Mom? Anyone?

OK, well, when I'm not procrastinating writing my 30-page appellate brief on this blog or on MySpace, now that Oscar season is over I have resumed using Netflix to watch every episode of M*A*S*H, all the seasons in order, which project I launched upon returning from Korea because I have always loved M*A*S*H but I look at it differently now after doing my time over there. Last night on Season 3 Disc 2 I watched the episode "Alcoholics Unanimous." It made me laugh and laugh. First of all, because it's always funny when Hot Lips gets drunk. Not to mention Father Mulcahy and Klinger. Secondly, though, because that whole conversation where Frank Burns interrogates Hawkeye and Trapper about why they drink and challenges them and GIVES THEM THE QUIZ about being alcoholics--seriously, I think Melissa, Sara, Mieka and I had that EXACT conversation, quiz and all, one dark Daegu night. Or several dark Daegu nights. I remember one of the girls posing the philosophical question, did we drink because we were in Korea? Or were we in Korea because we drank?

Endlessly fascinated as I am by both M*A*S*H and, newly, Michigan, I must now go to Apellate Advocacy class and pretend I've spent the last half hour researching cases online as I actually came to the library to do, instead of a mere five minutes before I started rambling about wolverines and great lakes and such.