adios, amigos

good lord, would you look at the size of that melon!

before i begin, allow me to officially apologize to all twelve of the people i selected as "wonderful classmates." i never knew just how terrifying it was to open up a web page and see my own fat head staring back at me like that. turnabout is fair play, and i just turned it about onto my own ass. serves me right.

all right, there's no time to spare. let's do this thing.

***
the final menlovian (boo-yah!)

(now would be a good time to pour yourself a drink... maybe a nice white russian, a good sarsaparilla, or even two oat sodas. settle into a comfy chair. put your arm around the one you love. and if you can't be with the one you love, then just stick your hands down your pants. the point is, we're going to be here for a little while, so get comfy, and enjoy the ride.)

***

there's only one place to start:

(a) the birth of menlove

so this whole thing started back on september 11, 2004. like many new yorkers who had been present in the city on the day of the terrorist attacks, i was feeling a little bit nervous and forlorn. compounding my feelings on that day was the fact that my roommate (who was also my best friend) was in italy on a business trip. thus, the fact that i was home alone with no company aside from my friends sullivan & gunther weighed heavily on me that night.

in no mood to study, i was ready for pretty much any distraction, so on a whim i decided to do a bit of writing on my experiences throughout my first few weeks of law school. i knew about blogspot.com from some of my former students (i taught high school english for 3 years before BLS), and figured i'd give it a try. a few minutes later, menlovian was born.

well, not exactly.

menlovian's original title was "lawbowski." in fact, if you wish, you can still see the fossil record of lawbowski right here. (i could never figure out how to delete it.) though i never thought i'd find the motivation to do so, for the next week or two, i kept adding a little bit more to lawbowski every day. it was fun, and it was also somewhat therapeutic to have a place to vent all of the stress and frustration attendant to the 1L experience.

anyway, after a little while, i went back and read everything i'd done so far. it turned out that i was pretty happy with a lot of it.

i particularly remember re-reading the entry where i was bitching about BLS's ranking in the US News & World Report, and realizing that some of my friends would probably enjoy reading it as well. after all, what was the point of complaining about school if there was no one there to commiserate, or joking about school if there was no one there to laugh along with me?

but how to spread the word was, of course, a different matter altogether.

i didn't feel comfortable simply going up to my friends and saying, "hey dudes, check out my weblog!" i figured that people would think it crazy that there was some guy in the class who had enough free time to devote a half hour or more per day to something like this.

beyond that, even though i've always enjoyed doing all sorts of writing, it's always been a bit scary for me to put my work out in the open where others can see it. i guess i was simply worried that people wouldn't like it.

(as a side note, this year of writing menlovian has very much helped me to alleviate these fears, in that i've received all sorts of both positive and negative feedback, and have learned to take it all in stride. more on that later.)

and finally, it just seemed like the whole thing would be a lot cooler if it was anonymous. after all, whose radio show generated more buzz: david silver's, or hard harry's? one of the first comments anyone ever posted on menlovian was "keep it anonymous - wouldn't work otherwise." whoever wrote this was 100% correct, and i was lucky to realize this early on.

regardless, the point is that lawbowski started welling up inside of me like a giant fart. i had to find a way to let it out, but i had to do it in a way that i would escape detection. fortunately, i had a good deal of experience with these types of maneuvers, which brings us to part 2...

***

(b) spreading the good word

right away i decided a few things. i knew i had to be clever about how i went about publicizing menlovian, as my potential audience was a remarkably intelligent and perceptive lot.

one issue i faced was that the original lawbowski was completely based on my section 9(b) experience. that is, in addition to talking about what was up in all of our regular classes, i was also writing about the weekly goings-on in legal writing. the problem with this approach was that people would immediately be able to narrow the list down to just nine or ten guys. i wasn't sure if i could take that kind of heat right off the bat.

so i then considered doing all of my writing from a sort of section 8/9 hypbrid point of view. that way, i'd be one of forty or so candidates (i always took for granted that people would know that i was a dude), and could easily blend in with the herd.

the problem with taking this tack was that it effectively precluded me from writing about all the fun stuff that was happening in civil procedure class (you might even say that it precluded me like a brutish, unreflecting myrmidon), and i didn't want to let that happen. professor hunter and civ pro were just such fertile, blogable topics, that i figured it would be a shame to have to spend all semester writing about them from some sort of detached, generic perspective.

plus, civ pro was really where section 9's personality was able to flourish. (BLS does a lot of things right. one of them is their decision to give us one "seminar" class during first semester where it can be just the forty of us.) the point was that i knew i'd be severely limiting myself if i had to hide the fact that i was a section 9'er.

thus, in the end, or technically in the beginning, i concluded that my lawbowskian voice would be that of a loud and proud section 9'er, which was what i really was to begin with.

true, there were only twenty or so dudes in section 9, and a few of them were part-timers, and thus were not in torts with us, and others simply could not possibly be menlove (see e.g., tom hunter or jason eisenfeld). however, i figured that this would be an acceptable risk. i'd just be one of fifteen or so potential menloves. sure, i knew that at times the heat would be on me, but i also figured that more often than not, it would be on someone else. and this is pretty much how things panned out.

i quickly realized that the title of the blog itself, and the name under which i was posting, might also present problems for me in trying to maintain my anonymity. true, the semester was only a few weeks old, but already some of my friends had heard me spouting out quotes from the big lebowski in casual conversation.

(yes, i know that a few months ago i claimed that i'd only just recently seen the big lebowski, and that i'd been incorporating lebowski quotes that i'd found on the internet in order to further disguise my identity. that was total bullshit. the truth is that i've seen the movie countless times. obviously, this was not the first lie i had to tell to keep the hounds off my scent. more on that later...)

what was worse was that only a few days earlier, i'd been going to class sporting a walter sobchak screensaver on my desktop. the point is, "lawbowski" had to be buried, and fast.

fortunately, inspiration struck - as it so often did that semester - in torts class. professor sebok introduced us to the wacky, wonderful world of vaughn v. menlove, and began referring to any idiotic person or action as "menlovian." the timing could not have been more perfect.

ok, so that was settled. but still, there was a bigger issue facing me: how the hell was i supposed to let people "smelt" it without knowing who "dealt" it?

my initial idea was to write the URL for the site in giant letters on the blackboard in one of our classes. unfortunately, though i am a fairly brave individual, i did not quite have the testicular fortitude to pull off a stunt like that.

so then i figured i'd just write the web address on a piece of paper, and leave it in a copier or on a desk in the library. however, i rejected this idea as well, because i realized that a 2L or 3L might find it, and simply throw it out. i had to find a way to make sure that it would be discovered by a section 7-, 8-, or 9'er.

and then it hit me... why not just set up a fake hotmail account, and email it to the entire class? that way, i could reach just people in my section, and there would be virtually no way of being detected.

however, the more i thought about it, the lamer this idea seemed. an over-the-top self-promotion stunt like that just wouldn't cut it. i wanted menlovian to spread via word of mouth.

and then i came up with a pretty good idea, and this was the one i stuck with. i tore a blank page out of my torts textbook, and tore that page into smaller pieces until i was left with a dozen or so little paper squares. on each one, i wrote the URL for menlovian.

the bag i used to carry my laptop had these large pockets on the sides - the kind you use to hold cd-roms in their cases. i slipped the slips of paper into one of those pockets, and went to bed, my heart pounding at the prospect of actually going public with this thing.

after classes the next day, about the time when the library started getting pretty empty, i went down to the locker room, and pulled out a couple pieces of paper from the pocket on my computer bag. there was no one around at all to see me. i sort of rolled up one of the slips into a tube, and stuck it into the clasp of the lock on someone’s locker. then i did the same thing with a second one.

now, we’d only been in school a month or so, and i only had the vaguest ideas of who owned the lockers around me. my goal was to have at least one of the slips end up in the locker of a section 9'er; specifically, i thought i was putting them into the locks owned by keith baumann and mark antar, or at least in the general area of their lockers. still, to this day i’m not really certain whose lockers i hit.

(in fact, those of you who have been active on the message boards know that there have been several discussions about the beginnings of menlovian. i have also taken part in these types of conversations with groups of people at school. some people seemed to think it started via an email. someone else said they heard that i had left menlovian on a bunch of screens in the computer lab. however, jake snow was correct when he wrote that it started with a note he found sticking out of someone’s lock.

thanks for spreading the good word, jake! i guess that makes you my very first reader. i’d be curious to know who you told next, and also whose locker you actually found it in.)

anyway, i ran out of the locker room, and strangely enough, i passed by keith on my way out. i can’t imagine the guilty look i had on my face as i sped out of there. i thought for sure that he’d see the note in his locker, and realize that i’d just put it there.

the next morning when i got to school, i went straight to the locker room to see if my clues had been discovered. one of them had been tossed onto the floor. the other one was gone.

***

(c) interlude #1

you may remember me writing on menlovian that there have been two instances in class this year where my identity was nearly uncovered by one of our professors. allow me to tell you one now, and i’ll save the other for later.

the first near-miss was in torts, on the day after i placed the notes in the locker room. remember that computer bag with the big pockets i mentioned earlier? well, those pockets didn’t zip or velcro shut or anything. they were just loose flaps.

anyway, i was sitting in torts, listening to sebok do his thing. the computer bag was sitting next to me on the stairs on the far right side of the room. it was an exciting day in class – we were doing palsgraf, a case that i knew was supposed to be of some import in the world of torts.

anyway, class was going along smoothly enough at first, but things quickly began getting a bit weird. first, sebok called on jed (who sat right in front of me, also on the aisle), and jed said he’d have to pass. sebok then said that he couldn’t pass because he wasn’t being called on... but to stand up for a demonstration. at once, the whole class was atwitter.

i’m sure that if you were there, you remember this as it happened. it ended up being another of those great sebokian high-energy moments (like when he whipped out the Square-D switch) that none of us will forget for quite some time.

so jed stands up at sebok’s request. sebok tells jed that he’ll be playing the role of the passenger on the platform who was being pushed onto the train. sebok then instructs a woman on the other side of the room to stand up, to play the role of mrs. palsgraf.

then things got really scary for old menlove. sebok muttered something about “does anyone have a bag i can use,” and simultaneously started picking up jedbert’s bag. however, he realized that it was full of books and papers, so he looked at my computer bag instead.

now keep in mind that i was – like many of you – a pretty big sebok fanatic during first semester. while he was my favorite professor we had during the fall, i was pretty much in awe of the guy, and i was always terrified of the prospect of him calling on me in class. none of this should be news to you if you read menlovian during that time.

anyway, there he was, in the flesh, just a foot away from me, and bending down to pick up my computer bag.

now, i only had a split second before he had it in his hands, but that was all the time i needed to comprehend that: (1) i still had ten of the original twelve slips of paper in that bag; (2) if he looked in the pocket, he’d easily see them; and (3) an internet address with the word “menlovian” in it would surely be of interest to professor sebok.

in other words, i was terrified.

so he says to me, “is there anything in here?” i was nearly paralyzed in fear. my face must have been completely white. i wanted to give some sort of witty reply, like “just some fireworks,” or something similarly appropriate for the case, but instead all i could do was sit there like a moron for several seconds, before stammering out a pathetic little “no.”

so sebok took my bag full of menlovian notes. obviously, it was to serve as the major prop in the little palsgraf performance he was directing.

now i honestly can’t remember if sebok was holding my bag in his hands, or if he handed it to jed. i was too panicked to think straight at that point. in my mind, i could see how the events would surely unfold...

sebok would reach into the pocket and pull out a fistful of slips.

“menlovian.blogspot.com? what is this all about?” he’d say.

i’d be shocked into silence.

“hey!” keith or mark would surely call out, “i had one of those in my locker this morning.”

within seconds the entire class would undoubtedly be on my site, and i’d be outed in the most spectacularly humiliating way imaginable.

well, i’m sure you remember how this story ends. sebok never looked in the pocket, but before i had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief, he suddenly (in an amazingly powerful display of physical prowess) kung-fu’d the bag out of jed’s hands.

while the rest of you laughed in shock and surprise, i was slammed by a wave of nausea and panic (passive voice), my eyes frantically scanning the room for the ten pieces of incriminating confetti that fortunately never fell.

long story short, the man who helped to inspire menlovian, who gave it its name and provided endless fodder for my early entries, very nearly ended it before it even got off the ground.

immediately after class, i scurried out to the hallway, and furtively threw the remaining ten slips of paper into the garbage can. i decided that i'd never publicize menlovian in such a manner again. fortunately, i didn't have to.

***

(d) the word is out

that night, i logged onto menlovian, and saw that there was a comment after one my entries. it was probably about the ninth or tenth entry i'd written (i believe it was called "bonerb"), and the message was from someone who called herself "belladonna." it said:

"To the contrary, we are reading.

Perhaps you remember the part of the library research tour where things got dark and dank? Killer B-room.

A SHITTY idea for a Torts gift...18" surgical pad.

P.S. I DO omit the Rules' parenthesis in my notes. DON'T TELL ANYONE"

(how funny is it, in retrospect, that we did end up getting the laparotomy pad as a gift?)

in an instant, everything became very real to me: i had written the blog, i had shared the address, and now someone knew about it. there was no turning back anymore.

a day or two later, there were a good six or seven postings on the boards. it was for real. this was really happening.

i mean, imagine yourself in my shoes at that moment. what had started as a hobby, as a way to put off studying on a lonely september evening, had suddenly evolved into a fairly big project, and included with this new project were some new duties as well. right then i knew that i had the responsibility not only to keep coming up with new shit on a continual basis, but also to prevent people from realizing that i was the man behind the curtain.

anyway, the word started to spread.

some of you might be wondering how i “found out” about menlove. maybe three or four days after i put those notes in the locks, i was cc’d on an email from jed, which said, in part, "Also, have any of you seen the blog from someone in our section?" it then gave the link to menlovian. so that's how i originally learned about my own blog.

and the next morning in the locker room was the first time i heard anyone (aside from sebok) say the word “menlovian.” i was walking up to my locker, and from several feet away i could hear shane talking excitedly about something.

he and i were always friendly with each other, so i asked him what was up.

“there’s someone writing a blog about our classes!” he said as my stomach turned inside out. “he’s in our section. and it’s really good!”

well, he wasn't right about me being in section 8, and it was debatable whether the blog was any good; still, it was the first nice thing i’d ever heard anyone say about menlovian. even though it nearly made me vomit, it felt great to hear someone say that they liked it.

this is nine months overdue, but... thanks, shane!

anyway, menlovian sort of spread very quickly after that. i remember later that same day, i heard scott chait telling someone the URL during crim law class while i played dumb.

within a week or so, it seemed like everyone was reading it. i’d look around the room during class, and see my words on a dozen laptop screens at once. i’d see people in class whose names i didn’t even know posting comments on the message boards. and after school every day, it seemed there was a large group of people talking about menlovian.

it felt really good. it was exciting and sneaky, and altogether unlike anything else i’d ever done. plus, it was cool to have this secret that i kept from everyone in school. and yes, it was a secret that i kept to myself.

some of you have theorized that i must have had a female accomplice, or that i must have had friends who helped me write it. the truth is, i did not.

the point is that there is simply no way that two people would have been able to keep that secret for a whole year. before today, i never shared my identity with a single person at BLS. in fact, i’ve never shared my identity with anyone at all, except for...

***

(e) princess strawbery margarita

ah, yes. the good old princess. so who was she, anyway?

throughout the year, i heard a lot of theories on this one as well. some people insisted that PSM was a figment of my imagination. others said that she was carla cheung. still others maintained that she was a long distance relationship that i’d had since college. i even once heard someone say that the princess was a code name for my gay lover.

so who was PSM? the princess was none of these things. truth be told, the princess is not in section 7, 8, or 9. in fact, she’s not even a law student.

do you remember that roommate i mentioned earlier? the one who was in italy on business the night that menlovian was born? well, i’m married to her. princess strawberry margarita is none other than my wife, cheryl.

duh!

like everything else in the blog, PSM was partly fact and partly fiction. after menlovian had been fairly widely read for a few weeks, i realized that there was one major, gaping hole in the content of my entries.

i mean, think about it. i wrote about everything in those initial entries: professor hunter slicing lemon wedges, the blue book quiz, the smells in the library, the bell curves on sebok’s board, the elevators, the work load, the pressure, the cosby show, etc. however, i hardly wrote anything at all about the beautiful and intelligent women who make up the fairer half of the student body. really the only thing i ever said about them was that they didn’t talk enough in class.

it dawned on me that this might be a huge liability in terms of preserving my anonymity. i mean, have you ever talked to any of the guys at BLS? do you realize how often they talk about the ladies in class?

there was no way that i could write this blog all year without talking about the dating / romance aspect of law school. if i did, i knew that you all would quickly infer that menlovian was written by one of the guys in section nine who was either: (1) engaged (knox, tom hunter); (2) married (myself, tom vance); or (3) gay (henry talbot).

thus, i decided to work PSM into my menlovian narrative. you may have noticed that i hinted about having a crush at first, then started talking about wanting to ask someone out. after briefly (and vaguely) reporting to you about finally working up the courage to ask her out, i finally wrote about our wonderful “first date.”

conveniently, PSM insisted that our relationship be allowed to flourish in private; therefore, she granted me only one paragraph to write about our date. how convenient for me that in honoring her request, i’d relieve myself of the burden of having to continually make up stuff about my love life for the rest of the year... it was a silly ploy, but i think it worked fairly well.

all that stuff i wrote about our first date and about PSM in general was based on my first few dates with cheryl back in november and december of 1999. everything about that tapas joint was more or less true. ditto about the bar afterwards. and yes, there was a night there early in our relationship where she drank multiple margaritas to the point that she spent half the evening speaking in a british accent, declared herself “princess strawberry margarita,” and renamed me “count wooty wanka.” i’ll spare you the details of the back story on that nickname.

***

(f) interlude #2

so aside from sebok body slamming my computer bag, i actually almost got busted by professor schneider during second semester. it was late in the year, the end was in sight, and i was starting to feel fairly certain that i’d make it without being discovered by any of my classmates. people were really starting to clamor for my identity, and i had just written the “2-4-6-0-1” entry with the lyrics to “who am i” and a big picture of jean valjean.

once again, i was very nearly outed in dramatic fashion, though this story is a lot simpler.

it was one of those combined legal writing classes. in fact, i think that it was the day where we were in 504 or 604, and the moot court person came in to discuss strategy with us.

the night before, robyn had sent us an email with a link to a recording of some guy making an absolutely horrible opening statement before some appellate court. i was able to open it with iTunes, but for some reason, no one else was able to open it at all.

thus, robyn asked me if i would play it for the class, so i went ahead and opened the file up for all of you guys. you’ll probably remember that my laptop speakers were very quiet. fortunately, robyn quickly realized that by putting her microphone under my computer, she could amplify it through the room’s speaker system. and that’s exactly what she did.

so we all listened to it, and had a few laughs, as the guy really was unbelievably bad. as it was playing, i realized that i had iTunes set on shuffle mode, so that another song file would begin playing immediately at the end of the guy’s argument, unless i did something to stop it.

i figured what the hell, i’d just let it play. i guess i was feeling a bit salty that day (robyn had just called me “eek-ert”), and i thought that maybe something funny – perhaps something along the lines of wu-tang – would be the next song in the mix, and that we’d all get a good laugh over hearing method man piped over our classroom speakers.

of course, there was the possibility that something unbelievably lame would come on... i'll admit that i've got a few songs from "the sound of music" on there, as well as some of my wife's indigo girls or madonna albums, and so on. but i figured that my taste in music was pretty good, and that most of my song library would only serve to enhance our in-class listening enjoyment. i was going to take the chance.

now i have no idea if anyone realized this, but the song that came on was "a heart full of love" from les miserbles. in an instant i realized what song it was, and remembered that i had just written about jean valjean in my last entry. once again, i totally wigged out, and clumsily fumbled around trying to find the mute button on my computer.

not that i'm ashamed of the song per se - i mean, i friggin' love that song, and am almost always down to hear cosette and marius do their thing. however, i had made it so far without being discovered, and it scared the hell out of me to think that i might be outed because my computer chose that song to play.

fortunately, i stoped the music before the lyrics began. yet i wonder if anyone noticed that day just how freaked out i was when the song started, and i also wonder whether anyone else recognized the tune...

***

(g) upside / downside

in some ways, being menlove was really cool. in otherways, it totally sucked. here’s what i mean:

upside: hearing people say how much they liked reading my blog. i remember chait saying to me in torts class that menlovian was “just what he needed.” thanks, scott! basically, anytime i realized that my stupid blog had made someone’s day less crappy, i felt great.

upside: aimee telling me outside of school how great it was just being able to talk about menlovian, and how enjoyable it was to theorize about my identity. thanks, aimee!

downside: deleting comments from the message board. in real life, i’m pretty close to being a free speech absolutist. in retrospect, i think it was wise to stick to the “kind & gentle hayrick” philosophy, but enforcing it sure was a pain in the ass. i especially hated when i’d have to delete a long, well-argued posting that unfortunately included a single insulting line at the end. oh well.

downside: keeping my real-life and menlovian comments separate. by the end of the year, it had become very difficult remembering what i’d said online, and what i’d said to my friends. any overlap between the two could very easily have been my undoing.

therefore, i had to effectively eliminate from my day-to-day verbal repertoire any and every joke, sentiment or phrase that went online. and the more i wrote, the less i could allow myself to say.

there were so many jokes throughout the year that were on the tip of my tongue, that i had to withhold because i knew that at one time, several weeks or months earlier, i’d already used them on menlove. i can’t even tell you how many times i wanted to say “paging doctor freud,” or “turned on the ass faucet,” or even just “felch,” but couldn’t. and what fun is law school if you can’t mention felching from time to time?

upside: the menlovian doggy treats. i loved your comments, arguments, poems, praise, and even your complaints. i don’t know how you all felt when you logged on and saw that there were two dozen comments waiting to read, but it always made me happy.

downside: the rotten doggy treats. i’ll always remember this one; it was the first truly negative bit of feedback anyone ever posted for me online:

"Personally, I think your blog quality took a dive when you found out people were reading it. I also think you have a serious latent homosexual desire for Sebok."

fucking ouch! seriously, the criticisms never bothered me that much, and i know it was all in good fun. no harm, no foul.

downside: overhearing demian and knox whispering to each other, plotting a strategy to figure out my identity by tracking my “IP address.” though i have no idea what an IP address is, or whether this plan was actually put into action, the very thought of having that much brain power aimed at uncovering my identity certainly freaked me out.

upside: Africare! i mean, how fucking cool is it that we raised all that money for charity? i know that i’ll feel good about that for a long time. what’s really cool is that i know the identity of all the anonymous and pseudonymous donors, and it makes me really happy to know how many extremely generous individuals we’ve got hanging around 250 joralemon.

***

(h) you knew it was me...

although i’ve done a fairly good job of evading detection since september, there have been a handful of times throughout the year when various people came pretty friggin’ close to figuring out who i was.

or maybe they actually did realize that i was menlove, but couldn’t prove it, and their suspicions therefore eventually moved along to the next candidate.

anyhow, i want to acknowledge those of you who were on to me at one time or another. this list is by no means exhaustive; for all i know, others of you knew who i was at various times throughout the year. regardless, here are the people who nearly caught me, in roughly chronological order...

1. jason eisenfeld and adam ness: these guys were somehow on to me before anyone else. during a night of fairly heavy drinking, they perpetrated a ruse (of startling originality and brilliant simplicity) that came very close to unmasking me.

we were at some bar, and there was a big group of people sitting in a booth. everyone was discussing menlovian, and theories about my identity were flying across the table. i was bobbing and weaving as best i could, doing my best to keep any of those theories from smacking me in the face.

so out of nowhere, one of those guys looked at me and said, very matter-of-factly, that he thought that menlovian sucked, that it was just flat-out crappy writing, and not at all funny.

now what i didn’t realize at the time was that jason and adam were saying this just to gauge my reaction to the comment. however, i realized it several drinks later on that evening, as they let me in on their little ploy, informing me that the upset look on my face clearly belied my continued assertions that i had no idea as to menlove’s identity.

damn! that was scary. good job, jason and adam. i may have convinced you otherwise throughout the course of the year, but on that night, you totally got me.

2. jed friedman: as i mentioned earlier, one of the shittiest things about being menlove was trying to keep track of what i’d said in my real life, and what i’d written about on the blog. for the most part, i think that i did a pretty good job of keeping the two worlds separated.

however, there was one time where i fucked up in a really major way.

at some point toward the end of first semester’s exams, i wrote an entry that included the following two pieces of information about me, both of which were absolutely true:

(a) that i’d been checking the registrar’s website continually to see if any grades had been posted; and (b) that the night before the civ pro exam, i’d only had enough time left to study either issue & claim preclusion, or alternative dispute resolution. i went on to say that i’d chosen the preclusion issues, since we’d spent so much time on them in class. of course, all of question 4 was on ADR.

anyhow, a week later, i was in the library talking to jed and demian about the exams. out of totally nowhere, i let loose about how i’d been “checking my grades compulsively,” and how i’d mistakenly spent my last hours studying preclusion instead of ADR. pretty fucking stupid.

that night, i realized what i had done, and prayed that neither jed nor demian would notice anything. well, i didn’t literally pray, but you get the point.

anyway, no such luck. less than 24 hours later, scott chait told me that jed now suspected that i was menlove.

i did my best to try to convince jed otherwise, claiming that lots of people checked their grades compulsively, and that it was just chance that, like menlove, i had wasted precious hours going over preclusion for a second time.

did i ever really convince him? i have no idea.

3. henry talbot – henry knows me pretty well, and i think it’s fair to say that he is very much attuned to my twisted and depraved sense of humor. this led to him having some pretty solid suspicions about my alter-ego.

anyway, the morning after i wrote the rehnquist interview story, henry and i were in the locker room together. he turned to me and initiated the following dialogue:

“so i read that menlove story last night about rehnquist and the sour patch kids.”

“oh yeah,” i said, “i read that too. it was great.”

henry wasn’t buying my shit for a second. he replied with a smile, and said matter-of-factly, “i’m pretty sure you wrote it. as i read it, it was as if i could hear every word coming out of your mouth.”

you got me, dude.

4. mark antar: i think antar was on to me. i guess i got a little too comfy with all the lebowski quotes.

anyway, antar and i would sometimes like to accuse each other of being menlove. turns out that only one of us was correct. in particular, mark, on opening day at my apartment, after many beers, somewhere around the 7th inning, you looked at me and said, “whatever, dude, i know it’s you.” the tone was straight-up brandt’s “her life is in your hands, dude.” i’ll never forget it. and you were right.

5. bobby kim and joe nivin: somehow, you guys were always on to me. how’d you know?

***

(i) viewer mail

a few weeks back, i mentioned how i wanted everyone to get their money’s worth out of this final entry. to that end, i put out an open call for questions or issues that you wanted me to discuss before i signed off for good.

i believe that i’ve probably answered most of your questions throughout the course of the last several dozen paragraphs; however, there are a few random Q’s which i would be remiss were i to allow to go unanswered.

so here’s what you wanted to know:

Question #1: “Menlove, Here is my request for the final entry: Knowing everyone as well as you do now, if you could do the "wonderful people" entries over again, how many of the original 12 would you still consider to be wonderful?”

why oh why would anyone ask a question like that? oh well. i did say that i’d answer any question, so long as it was reasonable, and this one just barely passes the strict scrutiny level review for unreasonableness.

therefore: eleven.

but the twelfth person is still pretty darn good.

Question #2: “If you had to hook up with one guy in our class, who would it be?”

now this is a fine example of an unreasonable question. next!

Question #3: “M, I know you did not give many recommendations this year for fear of revealing your identity. However, the one you did give - Wonder Showzen - is now my favorite TV show. Since you have an interesting and off-beat sort of brain, here is my request for your final entry: What are your favorite books, movies, music, TV shows, artists, and so on? Thanks for a great year... Can't wait to find out who you are.”

well, i’m glad that you liked Wonder Showzen; it is an awesome show. while i lied a lot throughout this year in order to keep my identity a secret (see question #4, infra), i was completely honest about that point.

i’ll deem this question reasonable. however, i would imagine that most people could give two shits what’s on my bookshelf. so as not to waste any more space on this already-sprawling entry, i’ve created a separate post here as an answer to your question. and if anyone has similar tastes in books or movies or whatever, and has a recommendation for something you think i might like, i’d be much obliged if you’d send it my way.

Question #4: “Menlove, Here's what I want to know for the final entry: Are you really a Menlove? All year you’ve talked about getting C's and D's on everything from the BB exam, to the memo, to the actual class exams. What’s the dillyo?”

am i really a menlove? boy, that is a toughie. i mentioned a few weeks back that i’d be using this final blog to reveal all the lies and the subterfuge that i employed to maintain my anonymity. i guess this is a good time to do it.

in the very first menlovian entry, i wrote, “i’ll try to be honest with what i write here."

that was pretty much my first lie.

as most of you figured out early on, and as i’ve mentioned before, menlove was partly fact and partly fiction, and i think that the proportion of fact and fiction shifted as the weeks went by. sometimes it even shifted from one sentence to the next.

going in to law school, i felt pretty confident. i’d done pretty well in college and in grad school, and i had a few years of good work experience under my belt as well. i was pretty sure that with a little luck, i’d also be able to make it through law school.

however, there was part of my mind that was pretty freaked out about the whole thing. while i’m sure that a few of you are fortunate enough to be supremely and utterly confident at all times, i’d imagine that most of you, like me, found yourself wondering from time to time back in august or september or december or whenever, “what if i can’t make it? what if i can’t motivate myself to study every day? what if i spend all this money, and i don’t even like studying the law?” etc...

in fact, there were a few classes early on where i felt like everyone else knew what was going on but me. (usualy torts.) in a way, some of what i wrote about was true.

but for the most part, i am a pretty laid back guy, and i don’t get too uptight or upset about school work. and like most of you, while i was occasionally confused about what was going on, i usually had at least a basic idea of what the hell the professors were talking about.

still, it was a lot more fun to write from that menlovian perspective. and in a way, giving voice to that “what if?” part of my mind was a great way of getting it out of my system.

so i lied to you guys.

oh my god, did i ever lie:

• i don't have a kneecap on the back of my neck, and i am not a one-man three-legged race juggernaut.
• i never adopted a coke habit as a study aid.
• my father is not a roadie for foghat. he is a line cook at a hooters in terra haute.
• i'm not a smoker. (in fact, i just reached four years without a single puff! if any of you ever feel like quitting smoking, i used to do smoking cessation programs with my 9th and 10th grade students. the point is that i've got some pretty good strategies that might help you out, so let me know.)
• i have never been in any restroom on the 8th floor.
• while i do enjoy watching the cosby show from time to time, i'm not really that crazy about it. whenever i said that i was going to sign off so i could watch the cosby show, that usually meant that a yankees game was about to start.
• i did not get a D on the blue book exam, a C- on the torts exam, or a D+ on the memo. every bad grade i ever wrote about was a lie. of course, i never got any A+ either. truth be told, i'm just another dude in the great, undistinguished middle-of-the-pack, trying to claw his way a bit higher each semester.
• i did not have a female accomplice (or any accomplice, for that matter) who aided me in writing menlovian. i guess i'm just in touch with my feminine side. or if i had a feminine side, i would enjoy touching it. especially the backside.
• the robyn section 9a/9b email mistake was a red herring. i was sitting in the "den" with some friends, when henry opened up the email, and read it to me. i already knew about it because i was there when she told us about it in class. so i thought to myself, "self, this is almost too perfect." so i wrote menlovian that night as if i'd just learned about it from the 9a email. then, when no one noticed my mistake, i went on the message board and "busted" myself. pretty crafty, eh?

anyway, the point is that i lied all the time on menlovian in order to cover my tracks. telling the truth feels so much better!

***

so that's more or less the story of menlovian. all that's left to do is to hand out a bunch of thank you's, apologies, shout outs, acknowledgements, and so on, and then to take care of some closing buisness. this would probably be a good time to refill that caucasian.

on with the show...

***

(j) my bad

allow me a few words of apology...

1. to evan, sam, mark, andrew, and anyone else who was ever suspected / accused of being menlove: if having people theorize that you might be menlove was an annoyance in any way, i’m sorry. hopefully you didn’t mind. maybe it even made your year more interesting. what do i know.

2. to anyone who spoke to me at the bar that night after first semester exams ended: apparently, my brain had gone white-water rafting away on a river of jose cuervo sometime after midnight of that evening. the one thing i do remember was brina trying to start a chant in the back of the bar: “let’s go lexis... WESTLAW SUCKS!” beyond that, things are a little bit spinny. anyway, sorry to anyone who attempted to converse with me during my rafting trip.

3. to my readers in general: when you write over 80,000 words [see section (n), below], i suppose it’s inevitable that you’re going to rub a few people the wrong way. i’m sorry for my filthy mind, my filthy mouth, any and all blasphemes, misguided jokes, uncouthness, lasciviousness, inappropriateness, and plain old immaturity. i meant no harm, and i hope we can still be friends.

4. to the person or persons who may have seen me showing my friends a video clip on my laptop of what may have appeared to be puppet pornography during our ten minute property break: umm, my bad. it was actually a scene from team america: world police, which is a great movie made by the guys who did south park. anyway, i don’t want anyone to think that i’m the type of person who goes around with porn on his computer. because i’m not. well, maybe i am, but not puppet porn. at least not straight puppet porn.

5. to our professors: first of all, i hope very much that none of you are reading this right now. if you are, i hope that you’ve never been offended by anything my classmates or i wrote here. i know i spent a lot of time joking about our daily goings on in class, but i hope you know that while i may have been critical of your pedagogy, i never meant to derogate anyone personally. furthermore, i spent a lot of time reading every comment that people posted on the message boards, and i did my best to delete every one that was rude or inappropriate, as well as trying to establish a tone that was overall positive. anyway, i apologize for any offensive comments posted by my classmates or by me at any point this year.

6. finally, and this one is actually pretty serious... to my classmate who emailed me anonymously several months ago saying that you’d told a girl in class that you were menlove, and that she agreed that she’d bang you if you would write “i am menlove” on that night’s menlovian: a few weeks later, i overheard you telling some people about that email you’d sent me, and saying that i never replied. however, this was not the case. i replied to your email immediately, saying that i would gladly help you out in exchange for telling me who you were. unfortunately, you never replied. now that i know who you are, believe me when i say that i would gladly have written “i am menlove” on menlovian if it meant that you’d have gotten some trim. sorry we couldn’t make it happen.

***

(k) thanks & shouts

i met a shitload of extremely cool, intelligent, and kind people this year. i’d like to quickly send out some good words to some of the people who made BLS such a great place for me, people who went out of their way to make my life easier, people who were quick with a smile and an encouraging word, and people who made class that much more fun. here’s to all of you...

• a shout out to dori milner for being the first person who told me that she thought menlovian was not funny.
• much love to my buddy mark antar for being the first to tell me that he didn’t bother reading menlove anymore (although i think he went back to it eventually).
• a shout out to aimee for being the first person who told me that she stopped reading the blog because it was too tasteless.
• thanks go out to brina dinerman for sending me the funniest, most random IM’s imaginable in the last 30 seconds of class, or at 3 a.m.
• big ups to bobby kim who sat next to me in both semesters of civ pro. i could not imagine a more laid-back, funny seatmate.
• much love to lishani senaratne, whose sparkling personality made con law fun.
• another shout out goes out to dave knapp, a rock solid seatmate in torts class, who always had something interesting to tell me about the yankees.
• one last seatmate: thank you to sumana swamy, a great person to sit next to during five hours of contracts every week. i'd imagine you must have seen some interesting IM's on my screen.
• what’s up to woody leahey and rebecca blum, who always had me laughing in the back row of the room in the minutes before an exam started.
• thanks to paul reyes... i don’t think you read this, but it’s been nice having you as an ally at our internship this summer.
• a shout out to tom lane, who kept me on my toes during the trial ad tryout with a ferocious onslaught of creative and relentless objections to my opening statement.
• thank you to rob walther, my 2L “advisor” who helped me prepare for my interviews, as well as supplying me with a kick-ass con law outline. thanks also to two other upperclass students who went out of their way to help me out, toby werdyger and skye phillips.
• to jim murray and keith baumann, two other guys who were always great to be around.
• much love goes out to swati bose, britany hagans, and sarah lee, just about the nicest people imaginable. you all always made me smile!
• and let’s not forget caitlin duffy... not only are you a super-cool and generous person, but with our last names right next to each other’s, you were a great ally in the ongoing socratic lottery, helping me calculate how many days until poser or gora called our names. all the best to you.
• finally, to everyone else in sections 9 and 8, thanks for making this year a great one, and thank you also for reading and contributing to menlovian all year. it wouldn’t have worked without you.

oh yeah, and a few final words for our professors (and one dean):

• hellerstein – your stories brought constitutional law and history to life, and the debates you led in class made me understand why it all mattered. thank you.
• hunter – you were a great professor, and i always appreciated how much planning and thought you put into each lesson. thanks also for caring enough to give us a chance to practice taking exams on both the ungraded and graded midterms.
• gora – thanks for bringing so much energy (and your own subtle brand of humor) to an otherwise difficult and dry area of law.
• jones – some law school classes can be so boring because each class seems just like the one before it. not so with property. thank you for keeping us on our toes, and for teaching class with great creativity and energy.
• pitler – thank you professor for being a truly nice person, and one of the few BLS professors who genuinely cares about his students.
• poser – you were the best of the best, professor poser. i hope to sit in one of your classes again!
• schneider – one of the nicest and coolest professors around. thanks for all of your good advice and words of encouragement.
• sebok – thank you for bringing an unbelievable amount of energy, humor and intellect to class every day. good luck at princeton, and please come back.

***

(l) the seattle seven (that was me... and six other guys.)

obviously, i've got a lot of love and gratitude to spread around. however, i'd be remiss if i didn't thank one final group of people: i've listed these six other guys below because i want to give them a special thanks for making this year particularly great for me. not only are they an all-around great group of people, but - and you may not have known this - they were also the authors of the port huron statement (the original port huron statment... not the compromised second draft). thanks guys for making this year so memorable and fun.

demian ordway* (a.k.a. “D-Money”): mr. ordway is the one person at BLS i knew before law school started, as he and i used to be teachers together at the same high school. everyone in sections 8 & 9 quickly realized how smart and funny this guy is. sure, he’s good in class, but i’d argue that demian is at his best over a duvel and some mussels and fries at vol de nuit.

so not only did the luck of the draw put us together in section 9, but demian also ended up being my opponent during the oral argument. (oh, how i wish i could have written about that experience! oh, how brightly he shined against my weak star! oh, how his radiant knowledge cast shadows even on the sun itself!) seriously, the dude kicked ass. not only did the judges praise his encyclopedic knowledge of case law, but they went on to extol the virtues of his “operatic” voice, and inquired whether he had been classically trained. (he had.)

worthy fucking adversary, dude.

anyway, demian, think back to that night when we sat in a bar watching game 6 of the 2003 ALCS (the night before aaron boone did his thing), and realized that we were both planning on taking the LSAT. nearly a year later, we were pounding beers in yankee stadium on a hot august night, talking about the prospect of starting law school a week later. and now here we are, with a year already under our belts, headed back to yankee stadium for another game this weekend. it sort of has a nice symmetry to it. anyway dude, it’s been a great year for me, and you helped to make it that way, so thanks.


tom vance (a.k.a. TV, bagger vance, T-bagger): although if i had to come up with a nickname, i’d probably call the guy “emanuels”, because he flat-out knows his shit. in fact, even outside of the law, tom is one of the people who can speak from an informed & impassioned perspective on nearly any topic.

i’ve spent a lot of time talking with tom this year, and in all of those dozens or hundreds of conversations, there have been exactly three topics about which i knew more than he did: (1) the big lebowski; (2) the paris hilton sex tape; and (3) the adam sandler song “at a medium pace.”

tom is compassionate, funny, and he’s got his politics in the right place. thanks a ton, tom, for telling me about so much interesting shit, for always cracking me up between classes, and for imparting to me one of the most useful credos one could ever hope to learn: “i’m married, not dead.”

mark antar: one of the nicest and funniest guys you’ll ever meet. as i’ve written before, he’s the dude for his time and place. he fits right in there. mark knows the law, he knows sports, and most importantly, he knows how to have a good time.

mark is definitely one of those guys who makes any situation more fun. thanks, mark, for taking so much menlove suspicion off of me. thanks even more for helping to make this year a great one.

scott chait*: an infinitely likeable guy. scott has great energy, and is always yelling about something that’s got him excited or pissed off. if he is in any of your classes next year, i would strongly recommend that you sit next to him. i did so in a few classes this year, and trust me when i tell you that he makes class unbelievably fun.

(just be careful of going on instant messenger with this guy during class... scott dropped some IM bombs on me during class that were so funny that i’d have to bury my face in the blue book to keep from exploding with laughter.)

anyway, thank you scott for adding so much to my 1L experience.

jed friedman* (a.k.a. jedbert, jedi, bert, jeditalia): truly a one-in-a-million personality, jed is one of the funniest, most interesting, and most generous people i know. plus, he's dapper as a mofo. i often consider beating him up and stealing his clothing.

jed, i admire you because you value the things in life that really matter. you are a witty and smart character, truly unique, and thorougly indispensable. i'll never forget all the times you had to go running out of class so as not to explode in laughter. thanks for always cracking me up, and for keeping the mood light in the minutes before an exam.

i'm glad we're friends, but i guess you'd better go ahead and open up that can of whup-ass...

henry talbot* (a.k.a. hanky, H-bomber, assexor lube-a-lot, the colonel (self-anointed; not applicable), tall butt, spanky): i never thought that i’d end up being such good friends with a puppy-stomping conservative asshole hick who was half my age, but i am.

how did this happen? why did i spend so much time farting away the hours with you in the den? i demand some answers, dammit!

anyway, henry’s sense of humor is bent to the same degree of warpage as is mine, so i guess it just worked out somehow.

h-bomber, you were a great study partner and ally this year. and with your help, i believe that i reached new lows of inanity and depravity. here's to two more years of idiocy at BLS. thanks for everything, dude.

*attention ladies: available for LTR and/or casual sex

***

(m) one final thank you...

to PSM -

i have so much to thank you for...

thank you for supporting me and believing in me all year. none of my successes meant a thing until i could share them with you, and none of the bad times mattered at all at the end of the day, once i was back home with you.

thank you for encouraging me, for listening to me, and for giving me a good kick in the butt when i needed it the most. we've both been through so much in the last year, and it makes me so happy to see our love and friendship grow stronger every day.

thank you for listening to all my stories about school, for letting me practice my trial ad speech on you a hundred times, for encouraging me to keep up with my silly blog, for making sure my tie matched my shirt, for reminding me to eat something late at night, and for hundreds and hudreds of other things.

i love all the little and big things about you, and i could never imagine a greater love or friend or wife than the one i've found in you.

***

so that's about all the thank you's and special mentions i wanted to give out. now for a few closing matters...

***

(n) facts & figures

for some reason, blogger stopped keeping track of my stats around february 10th of this year. up until that point, i had written 70 posts, for a total of 40,004 words.

since feb. 10, i've written another 52 posts, and an additional 36,963 words.

and then there's this final menlovian entry, which should be approximately 12,000 words, give or take a few.

all in all, that's 133 entries, and 88,967 words! hot damn!

***

(o) on deck...

so what’s next for menlove? how will i spend all of those minutes and hours of free time next year when i'm not writing the blog?

more menlovian? it has been suggested that blogging is an addiction, and that i’ll surely be returning to write more menlovian in the months ahead. i doubt this very much. it was fun while it lasted, but enough is enough already.

a new blog? i would, however, consider the idea of participating in some sort of joint blog writing effort next year with other 2L’s (saucy intruder? lucy, lady duff gordon? the anonymous person who always wrote all those great poems on my message boards?). i like the idea of only having to post every week or two, and i’m sure there will be plenty of fun stuff to write about next year. saucy and i have actually emailed about this possibility, so anyone else who is interested should definitely let him know.

creative writing? as you’ve surely gathered, i very much enjoy writing ridiculous short stories. i’ve actually written a lot of stuff that is not BLS-related. anyway, i was thinking about using a blog as a place where people could publish their creative writing, either to share it or to get feedback from other readers and writers. if anyone is interested in helping me create some sort of BLS creative space, i’d love to hear from you.

BLSforGood? it would be cool if the philanthropic arm of the menlovian conglomerate was able to survive in some capacity. if anyone has any creative ideas, i would certainly consider partnering with school groups or individuals to raise more money for charity.

study more? that’s interesting, man... that’s fucking interesting.

***

(p) final order of business

by far the coolest thing about this whole year of menlovian is the fact that we managed to raise over $1500 for charity. i hope that all of you who donated feel very proud about what we’ve done together.

as promised, we will be donating a full $1500 to Africare on behalf of brooklyn law school. i’d like to believe that our generosity will make a significant impact on the lives of several deserving people.

also as promised, every cent we raised over the $1500 will be donated to yai/nipd. so far, we’ve raised an additional forty dollars. this money will also be given on behalf of the school.

i sincerely hope that all of you who donated feel like you’ve gotten your money’s worth in return for your kindness. however, either way, it’s time to pay up.

as i don’t exactly have 1500 dollars sitting around, i pretty much need all of you to get the money to me before i can make the donation. you can do so in one of two ways...

by mail: send your checks (only checks! please do not send cash.

also, make your checks out to ME. do not make them out to Africare or YAI or anything like that. no, i’m not going to scam you.)

anyway, send your checks to:

53 Boerum Pl. #11D
Brooklyn, NY 11201

in person: if you don’t have a checkbook, and would rather pay cash, or if you do have a checkbook, but want to save money on a stamp, you can give me your donation in person. i walk by BLS on the way to the 4/5 train every weekday morning around 8:55, give or take five minutes. if you’re standing outside the gates around that time, i’ll be happy to pick up your donation.

if for some reason neither of these options work, or if can’t remember how much you donated, or if you have any other issues, email me either on my BLS or menlove account, and we’ll figure something out.

it would be a great help if everyone could pay me within the next week or so. again, if you’ve got any concerns, let me know.

thanks once more to everyone who made this happen.

***

(q) adios, amigos

well, that about does her, wraps her all up. and it was a purty good story, dontcha think? made me laugh to beat the band. parts, anyway.

i hope that you enjoyed menlovian. it was nice having something to share with all of you. i feel fortunate to get to study and learn and be friends with such an amazing group of people. thank you all! all the best for a fantastic summer, and i'll see you again at 250 joralemon this fall.

thanks for reading...

-scott