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| I grew up in Columbus, playing soccer. When I was injured, and couldn't play for a season, I became an obsessive fan of the Columbus Crew. I went to every home game. I loved Major League Soccer, and it brought so much happiness to my life during those difficult high school years. I still follow MLS and go to games whenever I can.
I didn't know who owned most of the sports teams I followed. But I knew Lamar Hunt. He was so personally involved in the founding of MLS and in the development of the Crew. When times were tough in Columbus and the Crew had nowhere to play, rather than move them to another city, Lamar Hunt built them a stadium at his own expense. Explaining to writer Steve Sirk why he wanted to keep the team in Columbus, Hunt said:
"Well, let me explain it like this," he finally said, in his gentle Texas drawl. "In the time the Crew has been in Columbus, there are many people who have bought tickets, come to games, and have become attached to this club. They are a part of the Columbus Crew. I owe it to those people to do everything I can to keep the club here."
Lamar Hunt, more than any other individual, was responsible for the existence and success of the league I loved. He was a visionary and could see the future of American soccer:
"I have no doubts that it will be a major sport in the United States," Hunt said. "I'm probably not going to live to see that day because Americans are a little afraid of getting interested in something at which they're not very good. So it depends on how quickly the U.S. can become good. Well, we've made huge strides since the 1990 World Cup, USA '94, and obviously since '98. Unfortunately, those strides only register with the public once every four years. But I have no question that we're going to see the sport become a major success in the United States, with high attendance at club games.''
Lamar Hunt passed away yesterday. Someday, the US will win the World Cup, and I hope Lamar Hunt is watching the game up in heaven. All American soccer fans owe him a debt of gratitude. I hope that when he was alive, he knew how we appreciated him. | | |
| I am not much of an environmentalist. I hate recycling, I take long showers, but I signed up for the Slate Green Challenge. Slate, which I read obsessively, is sponsoring a really interesting contest/challenge to help individuals reduce their green house gasses. Everyone should sign up and do what they can do slow down or stop global warming. To start, I bought 9500 lbs of reduced carbon emissions to offset my emissions from flying places. I couldn't really reduce my transportation much more. I don't own a car. I already walk to work every day. Hard to do better than that.
Check out the challenge at http://www.slate.com/id/2151739/
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| I don't usually write about what I've been up to but this is worth sharing.
For my bar trip, I took a long overdue trip to the west coast to see Grayden in Salt Lake and my girlfriends from college in LA. I went to California once when I was 3 years old but other than that, I've never been west of Texas.
It was well worth the trip.
Salt Lake City is gorgeous. I highly recommend a visit if you haven't been there. Gray took me to the ski resorts which are actually really fun in the summer. The mountains are beautiful and covered in wild flowers in the summer.
Then I headed out to LA where I was seduced by the beaches of Santa Monica and the glamour of Hollywood. I've been half convinced that I am going to work in the legal department of Fox studios. My friend has the hookup and got us tickets to the hottest post-emmy party, the HBO bash at the Pacific Design Center. It would take me all day to list all the stars I saw. It was like being on Entourage. In fact, it was like being on Entourage while hanging out with the guys from Entourage. And if we had any doubt that we were at the hottest party, Paris Hilton showed up. (Nicky Hilton is dating Kevin Conolly. Her dress was not flattering).
Here's some stories written about the party:
E! Online's Party Girl
CBS news
LA Times
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| It is 11 PM here in Washington, DC and it is 89 degrees outside. Can you believe this? According to weather.com, it feels like 99. Global warming sucks. | | |
| Bar Exam:
Good luck to everyone who is taking the bar exam this week. I had the most awful nightmares about taking the exam. I dreamed there was some special program where people got to take the NY day of the exam in DC and I didn't actually qualify for the program but just decided I would take it here. Well, they didn't have an exam for me so I spent a lot of my test taking time just photocopying the damn exam. I was relieved to wake up and realize I am going to NY and that is where I am supposed to take the test. Shout out of thanks to Mike Spratt who made a cameo in the dream as a NY bar exam taker who let me borrow his exam to make a copy of.
Happy Stuff:
Before I leave, I really like a new ad running on MTV. It features a young man who shares an obsession with me.
Less Happy Stuff:
I am a huge supporter of free speech and generally of the ACLU. I am a longtime (well, longtime for someone in her twenties) dues-paying member of the organization. I really respect them for standing up for the free speech rights of even the most loathsome people. But I like that they represent these people because of the issue at stake, in spite of the loathsomeness of the person. I hope that they don't seek out these horrible creatures to help.
But in their current lawsuit, representing Fred Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church, I have to seriously question whether they chose this suit solely because everyone hates this person. Fred takes his church followers to funerals of gay people and soldiers and protests, saying that people are dying because of America's support of gay people. I think Fred first made a big name for himself protesting at Mathew Sheppard's funeral.
Since this church began protesting at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, some states have passed laws prohibiting protesting within 300 feet of a funeral for 1 hour before and 1 hour after the funeral. While the law may have been passed with Fred in mind, the law itself seems clearly content neutral and would be just as valuable for preventing funeral protests by other horrible people with other points of view. It seems to be a narrowly tailored law that is merely a time, place, and manner restriction rather than a complete ban on Westboro Baptist. In short, I think this law sounds perfectly constitutional and reasonable; I'm not sure why the ACLU feels the need to get involved.
I would wholeheartedly support helping Westboro Baptist challenge a bad law, for example, a ban on all protests of recently killed soldiers or a law preventing Westboro from protesting ever. But I have serious questions about whether this suit is really going to advance freedom or whether it will just sully the reputation of the ACLU. Just some thoughts.
My thoughts on this case are not completely solid so I would love to hear the opinions of anyone who has one.
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