Trick or treat... can I have both?

Law school is fun. Really. Sure, there is a lot of work. Naturally there are times when you just want to bang your head on the wall of your carrel in the depths of the library. But overall, law school is right enjoyable. I present to you two pieces of evidence for my argument, the weekend of October 20-22 (henceforth referred to as Exhibit A) and the weekend of October 27-29 (henceforth referred to as Exhibit B).

Exhibit A was marked by two key functions: 1) Homecoming Weekend at the Law School and 2) Tailgreat Part Deux before the Vandy/USC game. With all the alumni in town, I was working through Ambassadors to coordinate all the student volunteers for the class reunion parties on Friday night and the dinner dance on Saturday night. Needless to say, old Vandy Law School alumni are accomplished, rich and drunk. They kept us youngsters thoroughly entertained both evenings. My favorite line of the weekend from the old guys was from a fella from the class of 1961. I was explaining Bar Review to him and his response was, "My only question is, why is it only on Thursday nights? What's wrong with Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday?"

As Exhibit A continued on Saturday morning, I headed towards the tailgate, sponsored by the two and only Maggie Johnson and Ben Schrader. I knew it would be a good day when out of nowhere, a golf cart filled with Chick-Fil-A pulled up. CFA was giving out free chicken sandwiches. And brownies. And sweet tea. Free. Don't pay nuthin'. Glorious. The rest of the day involved two-hand touch in the parking lot wearing cowboy boots, ice cold beer, sneaking into the stadium without tickets, wearing women's sunglasses, and ice cold Sprite. It was good. Oh yeah. And after the day was done, the red-headed stepchild himself, Cullen Newton and I had a tiki torch fight. The torches may or may not have been lit.

Exhibit B can be best summed up with two words: pong and Halloween. Friday night marked a revolutionary moment in my life wherein I was introduced to a glorious game of grit and stamina known only as Pong. I credit Cullen and Kelley "Pong Princess" Conolly for this development. For those that haven't played, the game is half ping-pong skills, half teamwork and half insanity. I'm not good at math. It is not to be confused with Beer Pong, a less involved and more tame cousin of Pong. You see, Pong is the Madonna of drinking games. It only needs one name and that name holds more meaning than any four letters ever should. Come to Nashville, we'll play. It might change your life.

Exhibit B roared on towards the culmination of the fall semester social life in law school: The Halloween Party. Dressed as William Marbury from the landmark Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison, I donned by colonial gear, accompanied by my good friend Jimmy Madison (a.k.a. Andy Veit) and hit the party scene. Not much substance to report about the party... just a top-notch fete. I mean glorious. Costumes were out of control. Look, there's Kim Jong Il! Hey, is that The Crocodile Hunter and a huge stingray? Good heavens, it's a box of Franzia. Yeah, it was nutso. And the Falcons won on Sunday. And I played music with friends on Sunday night. And I have no class today. My life is good, kids.

Happy Halloween, y'all.

Long time no see

It's been weeks since I've blogged. If you're still reading this stuff I have two things to say to you: 1) Sorry for the delay 2) Wow, you're committed.

So in the past four weeks or so I've been doing some pretty exciting stuff like making a return trip to the casinos in Tunica and winning money this time, tailgating in The Grove at Ole Miss for the first time ever and understanding what the fuss is all about, going back to Athens for Homecoming and pretending that there was no football game played and having old friends from college come into town and see why Nashville is so dang cool. I've also done some duller stuff like studying but who really cares about that.

So to get you faithful blog readers back in the swing of things, I figure a story from class today will be appropriate. In Torts, we're less than 30 seconds into class and I hear the professor wind up for the first question of the day while I'm getting my computer and books set up. He wraps up the question and finishes it with "umm... Mr. Gibson?" I freeze. I can't think. He asks me a very basic question and I have no clue. And I'm honest with him. "Uh, umm, sorry professor, I was in the zone and my brain just totally shut off. I've got nothing." I'm stumbling all over the place. "Give me just a second." I'm turning pages in my book frantically and I can't even read the words. "I'm so sorry, can you ask someone else?" Ouch. Choked. My heart was pounding, my mind racing and my adrenaline rush was totally useless. I spent the rest of class raising my hand, trying to claw my way back up to even. Embarrassing.

After class I go up to my professor and say, "I just wanted to apologize for sucking in class today." He cracked up. Told me not to worry about it. He knows I participate and I come to class prepared. Don't even think about it. I like my professors at Vanderbilt.

More stories to come. Thanks for tuning in, folks.