Law School Romantic Advice

PAHOKEE, FL -- Some guy posted a question about romantic involvement and law school on the Princeton Review website. What a fucking sissy. Below is what this loser wrote, and directly after it is my reply:

His Posting

Date: May 02, 1998 03:44 AM
Author: me (shadik@sfsu.edu)
Subject: love

Ok here's my situation. I am "seeing" this girl at my undergraduate school in San Francisco at the moment. Everytime I see her, I fall more in love with her. It's way too late just to blow it off now. I told myself not to get "attached" to anyone immidiately prior to law school, but it just happened.

So what am I to do? I got dinged at Hastings and waitlisted at USF. Should I just go to NYLS and forget about her? If we had an official relationship going on then things might bedifferetn. We could always say that we will pull a long distance relationship. But at the moment, we are at this kind of "akward" stage you know? I just don't want to blow it,\ because this isthe girl of my dreams!
---------------
My Reply

Date: May 02, 1998 05:41 PM
Author: Enrico Giamondi
Subject: are you out of your goddamn mind?

First thing. Waitlisted at USF and going to NYLS? Here's my non-romantic advice: Not to insult you (well, ok to insult you, you dumbass), but if you're going to a law school with nonexistent name-pull, fire off an application to Saint Thomas School of Law (Miami, FL). Your loans are going to be up your ass forever anyhow, so go to school somewhere nice, where you'll enjoy yourself. Surf, sun, and babes abound just 5 miles down the Palmetto Expressway from the #168 law school in the nation.

Now to your real question. Stick around for honey, or follow your own path?

Are you on crack? You're going to do something like let a chick determine where you go to law school? Lemme tell you something, kid, you're looking at her right now, she just got off the plane, and slung over her cute little shoulder is a teeny carry-on tote. Wait till you get down to the claim area and check out ALL her baggage till you make decisions like that.

Does she take antidepressants? Does she hate her father? Those are two questions I ask before dating ANYONE.

Law school is three long years. You make a decision like this, to pull a long distance relationship, and during finals your first year when she hasn't seen you in weeks and when she does see you, you're all stressed out, she's going to freak the hell out. Forget it, while you're studying, she's out at the bar getting banged in the bathroom, coming home to you without even taking a shower.

Or maybe you'll try and do the long distance thing. While you're gone, she'll start working in a strip-club just after you propose to her, because she doesn't think she's getting enough attention from you, and hell, YOU left HER, right? She'll lie to you about where she's been all night when you're calling till 6 in the morning, but you'll figure it out eventually and do miserably that semester. Of course after that you'll be a callous bitter rebounding alcoholic prick, but at least you'll get laid a lot. You graduate, you get a great job, and marry some dumb, shallow, 19-year-old and live the rest of your life in a pathetic perpetual adolescence.

Ok, lets say that doesn't happen. It all holds together through law school. With her undying support, you graduate #1 in the class from school and you move in together in San Francisco. You actually got a job back in San Francisco. Your office is actually 1 block from the park where you two first met. Sometimes, at least when you first move there, she meets you there with a picnic basket for lunch. You're starting at about $100,000 per year. You work 90 hours a week to get it, but its all for her and that nice little family you want to start. You know why? Because you're just that great of a guy.

Seven years from then you make partner. You take the day off to go get drunk and celebrate. Celebrate, partner, celebrate! Wanna go out with your friends? No way! You're a great guy! Its time to go home and tell the sweetheart that your time has come! You can relax a little. Maybe you two can start having picnics in the park again.

You go home to your gorgeous palace you've bought out in some bourgeois suburb. Ooops, the wife isn't expecting you. You open the door and there she is, passed out on the floor with a bottle of gin in her hand. The pool-boy is pulling on his pants and jumping over the fence in the back yard. Your daughter, all full of "father issues" and wacked out on happy pills because daddy wasn't ever around, pulls up the circular driveway on the back of her coke-head boyfriend's motorcycle. She'll wait to tell you she's pregnant, because she sees you glaring at your son in the back of a police cruiser being followed by a tow truck, with your 911 Targa busted in half. It's his 5th DWI and he's only had his license for a year. He hates you. This is how he shows it. At least that's what that jackass psychologist told you when the court forced you to go to a counseling session with the spoiled little bastard. You told that drunk slut wife of yours that the kid needed to get a job, and she shouldn't keep spoiling him. Well, she doesn't give a shit what you say, because she calls you "Mr. I-have-a-meeting."

You're still a good guy, but 20 years of this crap has finally beaten you down. This is the fifth pool-boy you've caught her with, and you'd rather pop all your daughter and slut wife's happy pills and off yourself with a shotgun before you spend another life in this damn house the bitch made you buy. You leave the slut wife and the slut daughter and the jackass son.

But of course the wife and the pool-boy don't want to eat out of garbage cans... you get a call from some N.O.W.-avenger divorce lawyer who is all pissed off that she didn't get asked to the prom back in 1986 and after some damn regressive-life-hypno-whatever bull-crap that the ballbreaker divorce lawyer pays for, the wife claims you beat her.

Sure, you get off on that rap, because honestly, you're a sweet guy. You would never do a thing like that and you honestly didn't. You think guys who don't treat their wives well are real assholes. Isn't that funny, all this abuse and you're still a noble guy. Wow, that's cool. You're a great guy. Know what? The jury at your criminal trial is wise enough to see that.

Of course, thundernuts the divorce lawyer was behind it all and this was all just to soften you up for the divorce trial. And now the divorce proceedings begin.

You're semi-suicidal now, because hell, you're a great guy. Always did everything for your family, and it all started when you forsook your chance at the big apple (or Miami if you would have followed my advice) to stay in San Francisco, freezing your ass off all summer and getting harassed by frigging mimes on the way home from the office every day. God, don't you wish that you had, just once, bashed one of those annoying little miming pricks to death with a monkey-wrench? Yeah, you really do, huh? Now what did a mime ever do to you? Boy, you're starting to become a real asshole.

Now you know what's going to happen to you, right? Of course you do, you took "property" your first year. Yeah, look back to your notes on "marital property." Sure the slut wife gets half of everything. Of course, this is California, and by then there is some state law that the man is ALWAYS wrong and they cane your ass in front of her as she drinks martinis with the pool boy. The kids factor in and cost you half of what's left. They hate you anyhow and are happy to be bought off, and go live with mom and pool-boy #6. The pool-boy is a lot more generous with your money than you were. He doesn't give a damn if they learn the value of money or responsibility. He just wants to bang your wife and spend your money. If it costs him a few C-notes a week to keep your kids out of the house while he throws parties around your passed-out wife, what the hell?

Oh yeah, since sweetheart supported you during law school, and served as your loving housewife during your career -- she owns half of that Juris Doctor degree and gets half your future earnings for, oh hmmm lets say THE REST OF YOUR MISERABLE GODDAMN SCUM-SUCKING LIFE.
Every paycheck, after taxes, slashed in half, oh yeah, don't forget the child support, oh and alimony. Pretty soon the guys in the mailroom are bringing you unwanted clothing and canned goods. You know why? Even they feel bad for you, because you really didn't deserve all this. You were always a nice guy. You just started to become a prick a few months ago.

You return to the office one day, stinking of gin. You realize that you're burned out, and you hate your life. You try and commit suicide, but your half-assed attempt just causes you to shit in your pants for about a week.

You fire your secretary for bringing you laxatives instead of hydrocodone. You asshole, she always took care of your shit and you fire her because she essentially saved you from committing suicide. You're a real goddamn prick. First the mimes, and now this. Well, she can't really do much, can she? Yeah, she'll file a sexual harassment suit against you. You didn't do it, because you would never have done that. You're a great guy. However, not many people can remember the old you. You draw the same judge as you got at the divorce proceedings. Your secretary's husband comes and beats the shit out of you because he believes her story. So does the firm. So does the court. You lose the suit, and your shirt, and your job.

As you sit down on the street, sucking a bottle of "Old Sneaker Gin," a chipmunk takes a shit on your shoulder and mimes are sitting all around you, making fun of you for tourists' cameras. Fucking mimes. Should have killed one when you could lift a monkey wrench.

Some 10-year-old kid, in town with his sister and mother (dad had to work, but usually he comes with them since he made partner) to visit his aunt points at you and tells his 7-year-old sister -- "See, THAT's your REAL dad." He does that to her every time they pass one of the homeless. The story will make the whole family laugh years later because they always were and always will be really close, but right now the little girl shrieks and asks her gorgeous mother if it's true. The bodacious, healthy, non-drinking, non-smoking, young mother tells her, "of course not, honey", and makes the little boy apologize and tell her its not true -- You aren't her real father.

The really spooky fact is though, you might have been. Had you gone with your instincts, and gone to New York without the bitch in tow -- or listened to me and gone to Miami -- you would have met her one day while at a party out in the Hamptons (or maybe while she was on vacation on South Beach with her sister) instead of their father, and YOU would be picking them up at the airport tomorrow, instead of that bastard who used the brief moment you waffled over that slut with the pool-boy, your house, your cars, and all your money, to jump ahead of you in fate's twisted, twisted line.

Have a nice life, sucker. You were warned.

The Mambo Lounge

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- I live in Bachelor Hell. Ok, its not exactly Hell. In fact, I find it kind of pleasant, well, no, bachelor pads arent pleasant – that’s the point. Cozy? Nah, not cozy. Cozy and pleasant sound like what your girlfriend turns your bachelor pad into after she moves in. That is hell. Throw pillows are hell. No throw pillows here.

This is a piece of paradise. But of course, paradise would be a stupid name for a bachelor pad, at least for a heterosexual bachelor. I call my place “Chief Enrico’s Mambo Lounge.” It makes girls laugh. It makes girls want to see it. It does the trick. The women who are already in my life cringe when they see it or hear about it -- especially my mother and sister. “Grow up, you’re breathing down 30, you can’t live in Enrico’s little paradise forever you know.” Yes I can, I say as I drop the needle on a Bobby Darin album.

I remind them paradise is a dumb word for a bachelor pad. Although I do try and invoke images of what paradise will be like if I ever get there. Tiki Lamps, Pictures of Frank Sinatra, Plastic Polynesian masks, and 3,000 of those little umbrellas that go in drinks when you are in Hawaii. In the kitchen is the first thing I bought when I rented my basement Mambo Lounge – a bar cart. Every bachelor pad needs a bar cart. The great thing about it is that a bar cart serves to give the Mambo Lounge just the right touch wen you’re serving up a Mai Tai and telling stories. Even better though is when someone comes to the Mambo Lounge for Swordfish at 4:30 AM after a night of nightclubbing and chatting up its wonders – it functions as a kitchen island. My excellent culinary skills-- learned at age 14 because I knew that one day I would be cooking swordfish in my Mambo Lounge and if I did it well, it would impress chicks -- are more impressive when executed on a kitchen island than a mere countertop. Countertop cooking is tacky, uninspired, lame, not the kind of cooking we do at the Mambo Lounge.

All around the house are various bits of immortal adolescence. My kitchen clock exclaims, no matter what time it is, “It’s MARTINI time!” The bathroom is filthy, I covered some of the nasty parts of it with piles of seashells I brought home from Florida. I thought “sand is better than grime.” The fridge and cabinets are filled with the trappings of bachelorhood, well at least my bachelorhood: caviar, diet coke, 4 different kinds of gourmet olive oil, a 10 lb bag of peanut M&Ms, a bag of frozen scallops, 5 different bottles of wine, a Mango, a Kiwi, a rotten bag of red-leaf lettuce I’ve been meaning to get rid of, ½ a bottle of gin, six huge jars of special Jamaican curry powder you can only get at one little store in North Miami, ½ lb of sun-dried tomatoes, and a 3 lb can of chopped clams for a chowder I’m going to make in a few weeks. That’s it. Friends come over and shake their heads that I have caviar, but no ramen or pop-tarts. I hate both. Ramen sucks. I’ll eat my own hand before I get hungry enough to eat ramen. I had beer. A shelf of my fridge was devoted to cans of Schlitz. My ex-roomate came over and drank it all though. That’s why I buy Schlitz.

The living room is the heart of the Mambo Lounge. It’s the closest to a tiki-bar you can have in a basement on Capitol Hill. Plastic Polynesian masks, bought for $2 each in Miami and brought back as carry-on luggage. As much bamboo furniture as I could afford (one chair), pictures of the rat-pack, and the cast of Goodfellas, Japanese paper lanterns (with obligatory red lightbulb) and a string of skeleton lights – each skeleton holding a paper umbrella from a previously consumed drink.

Clothes litter the floors of all the rooms. When I have an important piece of crumpled up paper in my pocket, more often than not a shady phone number, I tack it to the wall – wherever I want. I don’t have a T.V., because I don’t need one. The Mambo Lounge is a show in itself. I go out when I want, and when someone comes over, it isn’t to watch T.V. If I want to watch T.V., I go to Tunnicliff’s Tavern. They put on whatever I want, if I ask. Why not go out to watch T.V.?

The bedroom is the best part. As the only room without a window, it is perfectly adapted to its purpose. If I’m up all night and I sleep until 3:00 p.m., no nasty light disturbs me. The only sound that penetrates this room is the sound of the neighbor’s dog barking. I plan to murder the dog, so this is only a temporary problem. No problems are forever in the Mambo Lounge.

So, if you’re ever on Capitol Hill, listen carefully. Follow the sound of the dog barking, as you approach, you’ll hear the sound of Martinis being shaken, Bing Crosby on the stereo, and you’ll maybe smell a nice Tuna Steak with Mango Kiwi Chutney being cooked. Peek inside, it’s the place with the red Japanese lantern. If you look through bamboo curtains and see a couple of guys and gals – all dressed like its Miami beach 1963, joyfully draining their Mai Tais, you’ve found the right place. Come on in, kick back on the bamboo rocking chair, have a bite, a drink, and relax. This isn’t bachelor hell, and it isn’t paradise. This is Chief Enrico’s Mambo Lounge, and you’re all welcome.

Charley & Frances & America's Wang

Charley & Frances & America’s Wang - September 7, 2004
By: Enrico Giamondi
WINTER PARK, FL

Given the latest round of natural disasters to hit America's Wang (See Homer Simpson, Kill The Alligator & Run, Simpsons Episode 245, April 30, 2000), I thought that this might be a good opportunity to let those of you who were wondering know that I was still alive…and let those of you who hadn't really wondered know that even a pair of hurricanes can't kill me.

That being said, a true ass-kicking has been administered to your humble narrator.

Charley, the little bastard, ripped through Florida, tossing mobile homes aside as, well, as they ought to be. Mullet-laden victims screamed for help through their four brown teeth. A guy stepped outside of his house to smoke a cigarette, and a tree fell on him and killed him. See, told you those things would kill you. A few hours later, Charley the egalitarian came sweeping in to Orlando's poshest zip code and kicked the living bejesus out of Winter Park. In the process, he threw a 150 year old oak tree at my house, tearing off a portion of the roof and knocking out power for 8 days.

8 days.

8 days in the sweltering August heat without air conditioning (or water, batteries, etc.)

See, I am ever the optimist, never the planner, and cynical as all hell…so when the news reports started forecasting the swath of destruction that Charley was predicted to wreak, what did I do? I told everyone who would listen that the Newscasters were just whooping this shit up for higher ratings, that nothing would happen, and anyone who joined in on the mad-rush at the grocery stores for water and batteries was a sucker.

Oops. Lets file THAT prediction along with my 1994 prediction that the internet would go the way of the CB Radio within 3 years, and that buying stock in Microsoft was stupid, but buying Imaging Diagnostic Systems stock at $8 per share was a great idea because they were developing a new breast scanning machine. Tits…they wreck your judgment every time.

So, with no supplies except a durian in my powerless refrigerator, I struggled on. You don't ever want to smell rotten durian and a house full of unwashed clothes, and rain soaked carpet. We couldn't drink our tap water, and the gas stations all ran out of gasoline – which I discovered as I drove around for hours looking for a tankful. I started to think things might go a bit "Road Warrior," but I made the best of it and pushed my car to my office and it sat there for 5 days.

For those 5 days, I rode my bicycle to work and at the end of each day, loaded up my back pack with bottles of water from the water cooler. What a pain in the ass – I felt like some frigging shepherd from Kenya riding my bike 9 miles to get drinking water. Oh, except that I couldn't sleep because my neighbors had all bought generators and it sounded like I was trying to sleep in the middle of a motocross track.

The power-outage caused by Charley did provide me with the candlelit surroundings leading to the "hurricane score." Yes, Charley was a rat-fucker, but he actually pulled through as a wingman.

Let's face it, had I invited a girl into my house with the lights all out and just a single candle lit under any other circumstances, I probably would have been in the position of being seen as the pig that I am often slanderously accused of being. The natural disaster provided the perfect cover – and hid the filth that surrounded the couch too. So…blackouts are helpful when an air raid is happening, and when you are trying to make your move in a crumbled shell of a house.

Did I mention the vermin invasion? Every nasty shitty creature that evolution pissed on swam to the surface of the mud surrounding my house, and seeking high ground, or just seeking to piss me off, decided to couch surf at my wrecked house. One night I walked in, shined my flashlight, and it looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie.

The daily rains the week after Charley saturated the inside of my roof, so the house began to leak and smell like a nasty stinky carrion-filled cave. A nasty stinky carrion-filled cave full of vermin, and of course, my incessantly bitching companion, Vinny the Cat. Fortunately, I was in the process of buying a new house, so my nightmare looked like it was over as the contract was signed, the financing approved, my boss brought me 5 gallons of gasoline, and the power came on. Sigh of relief…

Oh, it couldn't be that fucking simple though….

The day before I was supposed to close on my new home, Charley's bitchy fat girlfriend (Frances) came to town. My lender would not close on my house pending the hurricane - which is to be expected.

Accordingly, I rode out Frances in my Charley-damaged house. Frances filled the holes that Charley made with a billion gallons of water, which completely collapsed the roof in one room. My bedroom suffered a nasty crack and subsequent massive water penetration (heh heh, I said "penetration.") I thought that it could not get any worse until I saw a segment of my roof - tethered to my house by only a power line that ran through the eaves - flying like a kite and bashing into the house all night long. I have had no power for four days.

To add some additional comedy - I went to stay at this girl's place in Jacksonville last night. Upon arrival, I parked my car, and then had to wade through (no kidding) three feet of water to get to her apartment building. For this place look any more like the third world, there would have to be water buffalo walking through the streets, amputee beggars dragging themselves across the sidewalks, toilets that are just holes in the ground, and everyone wiping their ass with their hands. Fortunately, it hasn't come to that yet.

Upon entering her apartment, I sat on the couch, turned on the TV and the emergency broadcast system took over the airwaves to broadcast a tornado warning. What the fuck.

Tornadoes, Floods, Hurricanes?

This certainly would have been a lot more fun if I wasn't an atheist.

Maybe the loch ness motherfucking monster can come out of the sewer and eat my balls to complete the trading card set of ass-chapping Nostradamus-predicted chaos that has become Enrico's World.

At this point, aside from the tourette's syndrome I have come down with, I am suffering no ill effects. I feel entitled to scream "FUCK" any goddamn time I feel like it. And, yes, I did nearly engage in an act of brutal violence in a gasoline line, but generally I have refrained from adding to the victims of these bastard hurricanes. I have not slept properly for three weeks, and I am VERY pissy. This must be what a man-period feels like.

Is it over now? Oh FUCK NO! How the FUCK could it be over. Because HERE FUCKING COMES MOTHERFUCKING IVAN!!!!!!!

Ok, the last predicted track of Ivan shows it smacking Jamaica, Cuba, maybe Naples, and the Mississippi-Alabama coastline. If I ever gave no shit at all about Mississippi and Alabama, if I ever hated those places before, you can't imagine how much I am wishing Ivan upon them now.

If Ivan continues on its present course, we should avoid any negative consequences of that storm, but it could come at us. As long as the insurance company agrees that Ivan is not a threat, I should be able to close on my house this week, move out of the squalid yurt that I currently live in, and get back to my life. Of course, if there is a delay, FEMA has built a trailer park where disaster victims can live for free. I dunno…it would really add to the fucked up comedy of the situation if I lived in a trailer park for a little while.

So…the housewarming party is at some point over the next two weeks. Well, provided we don't have a hail of unleavened bread, or some other bible-inspired destruction.

-E.G.

Rene Vietto

DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. -- For all of our American bravado, we will NEVER, not as an entire nation, ever have the class that the French had in one single sportsman. So get off their asses.

In the 1934 Tour de France, Antonin Magne, the 1931 Tour winner was trying for his second ride down the Champs D' Elysées in a yellow jersey. One of his domestiques was a 20 year old cyclist named Rene Vietto.

For you slack-jawed idiots who don't understand cycling - it is a team sport. Lance Armstrong may be a six time Tour De France victor, but he could never have done it without his team - a fact he reminds the press of every time he wins, but the American media just don't seem to understand a sport that isn't dominated by trash-talking, woman-beating, materialistic fucks. So...Lance, here's a salute. It is a shame you had to be an American, and an even bigger shame that Texas gets to claim you. You've got the class of a Vermonter. But I digress.

The seven other guys on the team are called Domestiques. "Servants." They are there to help the team captain win. They could win themselves, but that doesn't happen often - if ever. Do your own frigging research if you want to know if it ever happened.

Rene Vietto was one of Magne's domestiques in 1934. Magne was wearing the Yellow jersey (meaning in first place) in stage 15 when he crashed, trashing his wheel and making his bike unrideable. Vietto, riding in his first Tour gave his wheel to Magne and waited for the team car to bring him a replacement.

The next day, Vietto exploded ahead of the peloton. A motorcyclist rode up beside him and congratulated him on the fact that he was now the favorite to win the Tour. Magne had crashed again, his bike was destroyed, and he was so far behind Vietto that Vietto would become the new Tour leader.

In the greatest expression of loyalty and class ever engaged in during any team sporting competition, Vietto did the something remarkable. Vietto turned around and rode back to find Magne, and gave him his bike. Had Vietto kept riding, which nobody could fault him for doing, he would have been the 1934 Tour De France champion. Domestiques don't have to turn around to help the team leader - and there were six others behind him who could have helped. Instead Vietto did what was best for his team, forgetting himself completely, and gave up his bike in order to help his team captain. Magne held on to his lead and won the 1934 tour.

Despite these misfortunes, Vietto still won the King of the Mountains in 1934, and came in third overall. He rode in later Tours, but 1934 was his year, and he never wore the Yellow Jersey on the Tour's final day. During what should have been his prime cycling years, the Tour was cancelled due to World War II (another reason that Hitler was a dick). Vietto's only real crack at the title came in 1934.

In cycling, you're the king when you display the courage and honor to be a king. This sure isn't the fucking NBA. Vietto's grave is on the side of the road on the Col de Braus, near Cannes. His tombstone says "Maillot Jaune de Tour de France." Yellow Jersey of the Tour de France. And...he is considered a beloved national hero in France, and is still referred to as "King Rene."

Now before you get all weepy, which that story could make you get....Vietto's final Tour was in 1947, and in that one he was a total asshole. Vietto actually punched other riders in the face as they tried to break away from the pack. So, while he's one of my heroes, lets remember that even the Buddha was an asshole sometimes.