My Kind of Town, Chicago

And not just because it is known as the 'city of big shoulders' or 'hog butcher to the world.' Though there is that.

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen the painted women under your gas lamps,
luring the farm boys.

A train is really the best way to get there, unless you like comfort, speed, efficiency and seats that aren't feculent. I kid because I love. The grittiness is actually part of the appeal. The best part of taking the Amtrak is that all sides of the track are the wrong sides of the track. Like taking a way-back machine to the land that the 1950 Interstate Highway Act left behind.

I guess I hadn't realized how industrialized our Midwest is. Or was, at least. Big, beautiful industrial buildings, with exposed viscera of wires and turbines, sinewy tangles of pipes and ducts look like monsters from the Jurassic. I would stare at one for a while and half expect it to roar like a Tyranosaurus.

Once in Chicago I had several hours to kill before my interview. And even after that it would be several more before I rendezvous'ed with Priya since she would be taking the GRE after work.

One of the first things I do when I get into a city is to deliberately get lost, then find my way back. Often you don't know what interesting things you are looking for until you find them. But getting lost was sort of hard when you are bound in on one side by Lake Michigan and the city has a pretty rational grid layout. And when you've grown up in the Midwest and Chicago was treated like an ersatz Paris, or New York, even.

So I just used bus maps to reconnoiter the location of my interview and then bought Priya's oxox--mas present. I had it wrapped by some guys from a charity that does male cheerleading to raise money to care for cancer victims. I wasn't sure how that worked. Maybe the mere threat of male cheerleaders is enough to extort money from people who are terrified of such things. Like me.

I was just one block from my interview--the Northwestern Law building in sight--when a large Nissan Murano turned against the signal and just about hit me in the crosswalk. Instead of doing the sane thing, the instinctive thing, of say running away from the car, I planted my feet. I stuck my arm out, pointing my finger at the incandescent little 'walk' guy in the signal, while looking for, then locking onto the driver's eyes. He skidded to a stop and gave me a look so sheepish I was embarrassed for myself. Things about ourselves are revealed in these seconds spent on the seared edge of life. Turns out I am some sort of asshole pedant. Rather than save myself from possible injury I--quite literally--took a stand for a minor principle, my rights as a pedestrian.

With all my senses widely dialated, I wondered if that itself was the law school interview. Some admissions officer would try to run down candidates, and those who make it into the law school, are, well, in the law school.

The sit-down interview went well. Maybe I was a little deprived of social contact because I couldn't stop haming it up with the interviewer. Actually, had the interview turned combative or adversarial, I had in my folder lots of dirt and less than glowing press on the Law School that I would load, like depleted uranium, into my questions. But that didn't happen.

I was impressed with the school and interview, which may have disarmed me. But I still have real concerns. For instance, NWern makes a big fuss about importing sort of a 'business school' model into its law program. Hence the interview. I tend to think of B-school as a little shallow though. Business bestsellers read like self-help books and pop-psychology, and qualities that are encouraged in business, like trading on connections or contacts, would be unethical in law. Think of Roy Cohn cutting a deal with the judge in the Rosenberg trial.

Moreover, Dean van Zandt has said that "risk averse students" are the ones that should be "kept out" of the law school, that such students could not understand their business clients needs. That quote really got to me. Lawyers--and our whole society in general--would do well with a healthy booster-shot of risk aversion. We live on risk; and to an unsustainable extent. The major scandals of the last ten years--Enron, Worldcom, etc.--happened because the lawyers advising these companies were not risk averse enough, they were enablers. In the Iraq war and Abu Graib scandal, lawyers have brushed aside voices of dissent and caution, making arrogant desicions that have put this country more at risk: Not appreciating the predictable effects of the law of unintended consequences in Iraq, brushing aside the UN as 'irrelevant' and the Geneva conventions as 'quaint.' Lets not even get started on the budget and trade deficits, or our national savings rate which is less than a penny on the dollar. Risk-aversion I think is appropriate in this increasingly Hobbesian world, one created by risky actions in the first place.

Sorry, but this is easier for me than doing Hatha yoga or something.

The above rant notwithstanding, I left the interview buoyant. I still had some time until 'Ya got through with her GRE. So I headed for Milennium Park and took in Frank Gehry's impressive bandshell, as well as the sculpture Cloud Gate. It is a giant losenge shaped thing with a highly reflective surface and it turns the Chicago skyline into an epileptic fit of lights.

Oh, and walking along Wacker Drive, I saw Tim Curry. Sans his Rocky Horror corset, alas. There is only one appropriate thing to do when you see Tim Curry, and that is to call your friend Alissa. I told her that I'd call her back if I saw Susan Sarandon, or if everybody on Michigan Ave. broke out into 'Let's Do the Time Warp Again!'