Mock Trial Regionals...

I guess this is shameless self promotion, but I just wanted to mention that this weekend was the Notre Dame Mock Trial Regional Competition. There were over 21 teams from 11 universities present. Notre Dame, as a program, took the top three spots in the tournament, including the two bids for the national tournament to be held the weekend before Easter in Iowa. My team (Team 924, nicknamed "Ramrod") finished in first place as the only team with a perfect record. Two of our attorneys, one other witness, and myself (for my role as a witness) won awards for our "Outstanding Individual Performance" (the other three on my team were seniors). All told 10 of the 22 individual awards went to ND students on our three teams. Generally, the top 10 witnesses and top 10 attorneys are honored in this fashion, but there were 12 honored for each at our regional because of ties in the voting. All told, it was quite a dominate showing for ND, one we will hopefully continue in April at Nationals.


And now I need to catch up on the sleep I didn't get this weekend.

-JB

Here's the post that I was thinking of not posting after Ben's post.

In my hall there is a really terrible painting of a guitar/guitarist. Actually, I didn't think it was as terrible as my other hallmates were making it out to be, but then again, I didn't even know it was a painting of a person playing the guitar til recently. I just thought the squiggly lines behind it were for decoration. Anyway, Jon (the guy in the 5th picture) wanted to paint another mural to put that one to shame. We couldn't just paint over the old one because there's some sort of policy that requires it to be left alone for a certain number of years in case the person who painted it suddenly felt sentimental and wanted to come back to see it. Lame. So with the help of Barney chalk, 'Nsync plates and advice from various hallmates, we painted our mural next to it (the crappy mural is on the left side of the door). Jon might add "Fender" to the head of the guitar but it's about done. You have to see this mural in person, the pictures don't do it justice. And no, it's not of any particualr guitarist, it's just based off of a photo Jon found on the internet. I suggested that we paint a Harry Potter mural next.













And here's the mural we put to shame:

Firewall

Let's get one thing straight here...it's FIREWALL. It's not high art. It's not even really good suspense and definitely not good action. But y'know...it's FIREWALL. And while this will doubtlessly not help the cause in the current (read: monthly) war between male and female intellect, I did enjoy it quite a bit.

Why? Because Harrison Ford kicks ass. He just does. I don't care how old he is. He'll kick more ass when he's dead than [insert current overcast prettyboy "action star" here] could ever dream of. The fact that he can make the line "I'm going to go find my dog" sound badass is pretty impressive itself. And Paul Bettany makes a pretty good British bad guy (for all the times people complain about prejudice in movies, no one ever bothers to point out that action movies always makes British people look like the most evil bastards since the Nazis). And Virginia Madsen (fresh off Oscar-nominated SIDEWAYS) turns in some decent work as well.

But come now...Harrison Ford's last five movies were HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE, K-19, WHAT LIES BENEATH, RANDOM HEARTS, and SIX DAYS, SEVEN NIGHTS. It's been almost 10 years since Harrison was kicking ass, telling people to get off Air Force One.

Does it make sense that the head of bank security could totally take ANYONE in a fight, or stunt-drive his way all over town? No. But Harrison Ford can. And if that's what's wrong with Hollywood movies, then that's just fine by me.

Girls are dumb

It's a pun, see, because we haven't had a post from Team Estrogen for over a month. Yeah, I've still got it.

Keep Away From Children's Reach

So I was just walking to the cove, not 2 minutes ago, when I pass by two sets of parents each with a child about 5 years old or so. and they are just stopped in the middle of the sidwalk like they were walking and then just suddenly stopped. There was one little girl who was about five and they were all staring at her. I didn't think anything of it until the little girl said, "Christopher was watching the porn too." WHAT! Oh my Gawd i almost fell over laughing. then the lady who was (i assume) her mother, said, "Who turned it on?" and thats the only part of the conversation that i heard. But wow, that was interesting.

So the moral here...lock up your porn.