Fight the law, and nobody wins

I am thisclose to being ready to unveil my Top 12 movies of 2007. But first I must tell you about today. Today I went to a public interest career fair held at NYU Law School. Obedient young lemmings come from all the law schools around to do a day of marathon interviewing, scheduled in twenty minute chunks, kind of like speed dating. Only with even more dubious chances of getting a fulfilling relationship out of the whole thing.

Even the process of signing up sucked -- submitting your resume on-line for the organizations to browse through, ranking your preferences. It was basically like rushing for a sorority. Anyway, Hofstra's career service office basically acts like this career fair is the be-all and end-all for those of us who seek to work in public interest law. (= as opposed to making copious amounts of money in a law firm) So I dutifully signed up and went and honestly, within five minutes of getting there I was roundly disgusted by the lapdog/preening/jackassical behaviors on display, and I was bored out of my mind.

Let me explain about boredom. Interestingly, just today on the subway on the way to that very event I was reading a piece in The New Yorker by Nancy Franklin about the new HBO show In Treatment that contained the following wisdom:

Being bored doesn't mean that "there's nothing to do," as children imprecisely complain to their parents on a rainy day, dragging their feet on the rug and kicking the sofa. It means that something big -- whether it's rain, other people, or our own hot-to-the-touch fears -- is keeping us from doing what we want to do, from playing outside, from expressing ourselves, from moving forward.

Thus are my feelings about law school neatly summarized.

There was another fantastic piece in this issue of The New Yorker. It's about Jonny Greenwood and his compositions, particularly the music in There Will Be Blood. Which, you may recall, was my favorite film score of the year from what may well be my favorite movie of 2007. "There may be no scarcer commodity in modern Hollywood than a distinctive and original film score," Alex Ross begins. Oh, it's a magnificent article, and you should go read it. You should also see that film of course, if for some reason you have thus far ignored my admonition to do so.

And coming up next, my Dozen Best of '07 will be revealed, complete with a handy guide to my personal system of rating them.