Yes, yes, I saw Justice Scalia. Now who wants to touch me? I said, WHO WANTS TO FUCKING TOUCH ME?!?!?!?

What a fucking rush. And I’m not just talking about the blow that Big Tony (what the honorable Justice told me to call him) and I did off that 18-year-old stripper’s ass. No, I’m talking about just being in the man’s presence – I mean, he took out an entire fucking biker gang by himself, with nothing but a pool cue.

After the Federalist Society conference, the Dirty One, X, and I asked Scalia if we could buy him a beer. We never expected him to actually say yes (or “Fuckin’ A” for that matter). We were just sitting there at some dive bar in Milwaukee discussing the implications of Kelo and Supreme Court hazing rituals for new associate Justices. As it turns out, everybody gets hazed, not just Souter, and you wouldn’t believe some of the shit the Taney Court pulled – I’ve been sworn to secrecy on the details, but I can tell y’all it involved George Washington’s wooden teeth, a horse, and a broomstick.

But I digress. Anyway, we were all just sitting there shooting the shit, when this HUGE motherfucker with a bunch of fucking tattoos (including one that had “Earl Warren” inside a heart) walked up to our table, spit in Scalia’s mug, and said that textualism is for pussies. I thought this was going to be some serious shit, but this didn’t rattle Big Tony one bit. No, Big Tony just looked this asshole straight in the eye, said “This is what I think of your ‘living constitution’,” and drank the whole fucking thing, spit and all, and then started staring this crazy fucking biker down. What a fucking badass – Scalia makes Chuck Norris look like a 3-year-old girl with down syndrome and a bad case of hemrrhoids.

Now, I would have been impressed if that had been all, but it wasn’t – not by a long shot. Apparently, Scalia had not actually swallowed the spat-in beer, because he stood up and spit the whole fucking thing in this biker’s Substantive Due Process-loving face. Unfortunately, while the stare-down had been going on like stare decisis, the rest of this asshole’s gang started making their way over to our table, and these guys looked tough. One had a fucking nightstick sticking out of his back pocket, and another was fingering a length of chain – they both looked like they meant business.

But the Honorable Justice would have none of it. Just as these assholes looked like they were about to start wailing on him (and us) like they were complying with a legal duty to beat the shit out of us, Scalia – moving with a speed that belies his age and girth – jumped over the bikers like a fucking Olympic hurdler. He grabbed a fucking pool cue off the wall, snapped it in half over his knee, and started whipping the pieces around like he was Bruce fucking Lee. I mean, I knew he was a grandmaster with statutory text, but that’s fucking nothing next to what the man can do with a couple of pieces of wood – he had the bastards laid out cold in under ten seconds.

The best part was when, standing over their unconscious bodies, he turned to us and said:

"You like fundamental rights? How you like them fundamental rights?"

The man isn’t just a man – he’s a fucking legend, a warrior-poet. Now, I know what you’re thinking: B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T. And ok, maybe I exaggerated a little bit. Maybe Scalia didn’t “actually” tell us to call him “Big Tony.” And maybe he didn’t “actually” take out three hostile Warren Court-loving bikers with a pool cue. And maybe I didn’t “actually” do a line of coke off a stripper’s ass with one of the nation’s leading jurists. But I did shake his hand after he spoke at the Federalist Society conference. So fuck off – Congress isn’t regulating poetic license under its Commerce Clause powers. Yet.

Actually, the conference was fucking awesome. And I realize that this is incredibly nerdy, but I was just fucking starstruck by being in Scalia’s presence, along with like four U.S. Solicitor Generals. The highlight, of course, happened after Scalia spoke and was taking questions – X, after having been talking the talk, fucking stood up and walked the walk:

X: As a law student, I’d just like to thank you for writing all those great dissents. [audience laughs] Anyway, I have a two-part question. First, what do you think is the future of the Court’s Commerce Clause and Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence? And second, have you ever seen the show “Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law”?

Scalia: Harvey Birdman?

X: Yeah, they featured you on it. You were rapping with Donald Rumsfeld.

Scalia: Well, I don’t remember appearing on any show rapping. I hope they got someone good to play me.

X: It’s a cartoon. You should get one of your clerks to TiVo it.

Awesome.

I'm going to clerk for that man. He doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to clerk for him. Or alternatively, at least I'm going to head out to the bars. Fuck it.

Another Reason I Hate the Homeless

Flipping through my old photo album, I was reminded of a very shitty story. And by “shitty,” I mean involving feces – the feces of an insane, homeless man.

It was the summer after my senior year at Texas, and I was living in a giant, yellow house with eight of my friends. Several of the residents at the Yellow House, however, were new. You see, during the school year, I lived with seven of my frat brothers and my best friend from home. Most of these idiots graduated; I, however, decided to take an extra year to write my thesis and take fun classes like Roman History and Elvish (yes, I’m a big ole nerd).

Anyway, a lot of the guys left Austin shortly after graduation and, since our lease went through August, sublet their rooms. Two of the rooms were sublet to old friends of mine from El Paso, people I had known since elementary school, who I’ll call “Yel” and “Gerbil.” Yel is a peace, love, and flower power hippie; Gerbil is a Marxist, blame-everything-on-colonialism-and-hegemony, leftist. Despite our totally opposite politics, I’ve known them forever, so it was a good time. After the LSAT was over and done, I had nothing to do that summer but sit on the front porch, sip bourbon, smoke hookah, and read Kierkegaard. So I did precisely that.

Now, the Yellow House is located in the middle of West Campus, which is the big student residential area to the immediate west of the UT campus. It’s full of fraternity and sorority houses, run-down apartment complexes, and Bosnian war-zone style houses rented at Manhattan prices. It’s a wonderful drunken, college playground. Unfortunately, it has something of a bum problem. And they weren’t just any old bums – they were fucking nuts. I mean that literally – full-blown, unmedicated, delusional schizophrenics.

Usually, we’d just ignore the bums – we’d leave them to their dumpster-diving, and maybe shoo them away with a broom if they got too close to our house. Gerbil, who also spent a great deal of the summer sitting on the front porch, would occasionally give one of the bums a glass of bourbon. I objected because, as I predicted, he kept coming back for more booze. It’s the reason you don’t feed wild animals. But, despite my objections, Gerbil, not wanting to be “classist,” kept giving him booze.

Anyway, the crazy homeless guy began to take greater liberty with our house. For example, we would come home to find him sitting on our porch, uninvited. As if this wasn’t bad enough, one morning I caught him pissing on the side of our house.

Enough was enough.

I thought I could put an end to this unpleasantness by going outside and waving my sword at him. No, not the one in my pants – a katana that I picked up a while back. When I confronted him, the bum claimed that he had been given permission to pee there. I asked him who had given him permission and he told me that “the Visitors” said he could. Of course! The Visitors – why didn’t I realize that straight off the bat? However, when I asked him why the Visitors had not painted him green to show that he had permission to urinate on my property, he began to get suspicious, asking whether George Bush sent me. I told him that, yes, George Bush sent me to chop off his willy with my katana if he didn’t get the hell off my property.

Needless to say, he left. One of my housemates, Blackbelt, who was watching the spectacle from the kitchen thought that it would be funny to shoot him with one of his many BB guns as he left. I disagreed; I thought it would be hilarious. So Blackbelt, with sharpshooter-like aim, proceeded to nail this insane old bum several times in the butt as he ran down the street.

Anyway, that was the last of the bum I saw until a party we threw several weeks later. Now my house could throw some serious parties – our end of year bash, for example, went through several thousand jello shots within the first two hours and even had a moonbounce in the backyard. This party, however, was the first party we had thrown with my old friends from El Paso. The party dynamic was odd – Yel’s hippies invaded the house, passing around doobies like…well…doobies. Frat boys bonged beer outside and tried to hook up with sorority girls. As a host, I floated between these two very different worlds, both united by a common desire to get really fucked up.

Around midnight, I was outside talking to a hot little blonde girl, when Gerbil interrupted me. The goddamn hippies let the crazy old bum into our house, so I had to go kick him out. Great.

Kicking the dirty old bum out of the house was easy – and when I returned, I saw several people carrying a recliner out of the house. “What the fuck?!?!” I thought. When I inquired as to what the hell these people thought they were doing, I understood completely.

The bum had shat in the chair.

That’s right - this dirty, drunk, delusional, smelly transient had taken a dump in the armchair of my living room. Now do you understand why I harbor so much animosity towards the homeless?

POSTSCRIPT: We took the chair to the dumpster catty-corner from the house. The bum continued to live in the chair that he soiled. On July 4th, Blackbelt came home with a big ole bag of fireworks, so we decided to blow the chair up. God bless America.

Library Alarms

I was exiting the law library to work on my Legislation take-home exam over at Starbucks, free from the distractions of the internet. Everything was normal up until I walked through the gate. Suddenly, sirens blared and I was immediately surrounded by what must have been 50 agents from the FBI's special "Library Police Task Force." Protesting my innocence, I struggled valiantly, but they managed to subdue me through several tasers to my testicles and brought me to the law school's "interrogation room" at the point of an M-16. I didn't know the law school even had an interrogation room.

They demanded to know what rare and valuable books I was attempting to steal. Violating every international law against torture, they stretched me on the rack and forced me to listen to Christina Aguilera. But I wasn't going to break. I knew that I was innocent. I whipped out my official Junior Lawyer Badge, and insisted that I would file a § 1983 suit if they did not release me; eventually, they let me go.

Bullshit, you say? Well, maybe it's a bit of an exaggeration. So I wasn't actually "tortured." And yes, maybe no FBI agents actually "came." But I did set off the alarm. Apparently, the DVD's I rented from Blockbuster are incompatible with the law library's security system. Who knew?

Fuck it, back to my exam.

The Time I Hit on Jenna Bush

My last post put me in a nostalgic mood for my days of undergrad glory, so I've decided to share two stories about my encounters with the Bush clan. Both of these stories share a setting - The Iron Cactus in Austin, TX. It's resturaunt/bar on Austin's legedndary 6th Street, serving some of Austin's best fajitas; it's also one of the top tequila bars in the country, boasting over 80 different kinds, from the cheap stuff that tastes like a mixture of paint thinner and burning, to the $35 a shot Herradura Seleccion Suprema.

Anyway, one evening a few months after Dubya was elected, some buddies and I were hanging out on the upstairs patio, sipping top-shelf margaritas. Needless to say, I was a bit intoxicated - not sloppy drunk, but definitely past the point of having "inhibitions" - and in walked none other than the President of the United States. Accompanying him was Colin Powell and several people I didn't recognize, which I am assuming were Secret Service agents. Even though he had been governor throughout my time in Austin, I had never seen him in real life before. They were there to dine on the Cactus's delicious fajitas; apparently the leader of the free world needs to eat too.

Assisted by liquid courage, I walked over to their table and introduced myself. Bush was very friendly and down to earth. I asked him if he would do me the honor of taking a shot of Porfidio with me (my favorite tequila), one frat guy to another. He politely declined because he "doesn't drink anymore." Quitter. However, we chatted briefly and he said to me:

"Son, let me ask you a question - as an American. I'm thinkin' about invadin' Iraq. I'm fixin' to kill 100,000 Iraqis and one blonde with big tits."

"What?" I replied, horrified. "Why would you want to kill a blonde with big tits?!?!"

So he turned to Colin Powell and said, "See Colin, I told you no one would care about 100,000 Iraqis."

Buh-dum-dum.

No this didn't actually “happen.” It's actually a joke I heard, but it works so much better as a first-person story, and since I'm from Texas, it's plausible right up until the end. The next story, however, is actually true.

It was graduation weekend at UT and two of my frat brothers that I hadn't seen in a while (since I stayed an extra year) happened to be in town, so we decided to go down to 6th Street and get drunk. After hitting up a couple of other bars, we decided to check out the Iron Cactus. I ran into a girl I knew, a tall, slender blonde who was in Theta. While I was talking with her, one of my frat brothers, tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Holy shit - isn't that Jenna Bush?" pointing to a girl by the bar, guzzling beer like it was going out of style.

The girl I was talking to said that yeah, it was her - Jenna was one of her sorority sisters. Now Jenna is cute, don't get me wrong, but she definitely pales in comparison to most of the girls in her sorority, who are almost universally smoking hot. She was, however, the President's daughter, so I walked over to the bar and asked her if I could buy her a shot.

She said ok, and I ordered two shots of tequila - I don't remember what kind. However, before the bartender could pour them, a young-looking guy came over and said that they needed to leave. He was wearing normal bar-hopping clothes, but I noticed something strange in his ear - an earpiece.

I was getting cockblocked by that Secret Service. I'm hoping that either it was because she was too drunk and shouldn't be taking more shots, or that there was some matter of national security, and not that it was because I was me. But in any event, the result was the same.

My fucking tax dollars at work.

The Infamous Cowboy Hat Lawsuit

One Saturday night, a few weeks into the second semester of my 1L year, I called up a friend of mine to go out. She's a cute grad student and a fellow Texas Ex (the alumni association for UT) from El Paso. I don't remember where we started our little bar crawl, but we eventually made our way to Bullfeathers.

We had been there for a while, when all of a sudden some drunk, undergrad asshole grabbed the cowboy hat off my head. Now, I'm used to people taking my cowboy hat and putting it on - you don't see too many people wearing a Stetson in Madison. Normally, I don't really mind because it's usually an attractive*, often drunk, undergraduate girl attempting to flirt with me. This, however, was what the politically correct call a "Penised-American." But he didn’t just grab it – he actually started walking (or stumbling, rather) away with my hat.

I caught up with him a few feet later and asked him to return my hat. He refused. So, despite having had quite a few shots of Jager, the Wisconsin defense of property statute was running through my head:

A person is privileged to threaten or intentionally use force against another for the purpose of preventing or terminating what the person reasonably believes to be an unlawful interference with the person's property. Only such degree of force or threat thereof may intentionally be used as the actor reasonably believes is necessary to prevent or terminate the interference.... Wis. Stats. 939.49(1).

If I wanted to kick this guy's ass, I needed to make sure that I "reasonably believed" that force was necessary to "prevent or terminate the interference" with my hat. I asked for the hat again, a little more forcefully, and he started claiming that the hat was his. I tried to grab the hat out of his hands but, unfortunately, my motor skills were a bit off, and he jerked it away and started shoving me. Satisfied that force was reasonably necessary, I grabbed him by the throat and he did the same to me. We were maybe five seconds away from a brawl.

Now, this guy was about six or seven inches taller than me, but he was a skinny little motherfucker. What he thought he was doing by engaging me in combat I have no idea. Of course, the guy was drunk out of his mind, so that may have had something to do with it. I tensed my body and prepared to tackle him, when the bouncers interfered.

Luckily, I'm something of a regular at Bullfeathers, so the bouncers knew me. More importantly, they knew my hat. They humored the guy and asked whose hat it was and he claimed that it was his grandfather's hat, and that he had given it to him before he died. The fucking drunk actually conjured a note of genuine emotion in his voice. The bouncers, however, didn't buy it. However, as they tried to coax this sonofabitch into returning my hat, I was getting pissed. To make things worse, the asshole started crumpling up my Stetson while he was talking. I pointed this out to the bouncers and they took the hat out of his hands and gave it to me - a $90 Stetson, fucking deformed as all get-out.

I was livid. I asked the bouncers to detain him for a moment while I called the cops. Normally, I'm not a big fan of the police, but I was fucking glad to see them. Mainly, I just wanted a case number so I could get his name.

Watching this schmuck get arrested was pretty rewarding. He started crying like a little bitch when they cuffed him and threw him in the back of the squad car. I asked the officer what they were going to charge him with, and they said they wrote him a ticket for disorderly conduct. I was not satisfied. I told the officers that they should at least charge him with felony damage to property (Wis. Stats. 943.01). They disagreed.

Not to be dissuaded so easily, I stumbled home, whipped out my statute book and called the police station and proceeded to tell whoever answered the phone about everything that they could charge this hat-mangling jackass with. Whether or not they were amused, I couldn't tell. However, no felony charges were filed. The bastard got away with a civil forfeiture on a city ordinance. Fuck.

Anyway, I began to put together a lawsuit for civil battery and tresspass to chattel. Legally, I think I had a pretty good case, and there's some neat precedent in Wisconsin that would have allowed me to get some serious punitive damages (See Jacque v. Steenberg Homes, 209 Wis.2d 605). After all, this wasn't just about the hat. No - this went to the heart of property rights in general. The court needed to send a message to every drunk asshole who thinks that they can just take whatever they want, regardless of the consequences. This case would have gone to the essence of what makes America great - the right to exclusive control of your own property. Also, I really wanted some punitive damages.

I drafted a complaint and wrote a great closing argument. However, being the lazy guy that I am, though I talked about it a lot, I never filed it. Of course, I still have another year left under the statute of limitations....

POSTSCRIPT: I've tried to fix my hat and it's still wearable. It's damaged, but now it definitely has character and a story to go with it. And most importantly, girls still love it.

The law school rumor-mill got wind of the story and soon I heard a rumor that I was suing someone else in the law school. I dismissed it as ridiculous, and never really thought much about it. I mean, the guy was like 21. However, over the summer I ran into the law student who thought I was suing him. Apparently, he had taken my hat one evening outside of Qdoba, danced around in it, and thought that that was the basis of the suit. I don't even remember the incident. Eventually, we sorted the whole mess out when I asked him if he had been arrested.

Fuck it. I really need to do some actual "work."

* - Or, at least attractive at the time.

Never Meet Your Heroes

I met Tucker Max this weekend, and I have to admit, I was kind of dissapointed. When I first found out he was going to be doing a book signing here, I was fucking ecstatic. In all seriousness, I was looking forward to seeing him in person just as much as I was Scalia - I mean, if there was a Drinking and Womanizing Hall of Fame, he'd be the first one inducted. And unlike Scalia's brilliant opinion in Crawford v. Washington, I still laugh out loud at repeated readings of The Absinthe Donuts Story or Tucker Tries Buttsex.

Thing is, he just seemed tired and hungover. And, while I can sympathize, having been in that position a few times myself, I had expected someone larger than life. I expected belligerent drunkedness and general obnoxiousness. Instead, there was just this guy sitting there, looking like he was bored out of his mind.

Of course, you can't fault the guy for not living up to my inflated expectations - after all, he's the biggest propenent of the "this above all: to thine own self be true /tho' thine own self be an alcoholic a-raging" philsophy. You can't force the kind of things he has in his stories: getting drunk and doing stupid things have to happen of its own accord. If he was just "performing" to portray the "Tucker Max image" for his adoring fans, he would have been as much of a poser as the douches he mocks.

Even so, I wish I had had the opportunity to see the man at his A-game. Maybe someday.

Fuck it.