Blawger Bowl III, Weeks 4 & 5
The past two updates for this year's Blawger Bowl had to be delayed in order to facilitate moving. You see, you can't play on the computer all day and claim that you're "packing."
It's sort of like blawging at work. I.e., it doesn't end well.
Regardless of the fact that I'm currently living amongst boxes and packing peanuts, I present week 4 and week 5 of the Blawger Bowl update for your perusal. All three of you.
Week 4 - Unbillable Hours v. Anonymous Lawyer/Jeremy Blachman
Week 4 put me up against Jeremy Blachman's "Completely Guessing." Blachman is a sort of blogging celebrity, in that he has a novel published and has written for the New York Times. Unfortunately, that didn't help his game. Unbillable Hours won, 110 to 71.
Blachman, a Harvard grad, takes notice on his blog of 02138, the smarmy alumni magazine for Harvard (there, now google can associate you shitbirds with being smarmy). I had noticed the magazine myself, as, for reasons I don't understand, an issue ended up in my office mailbox. I didn't go to Harvard, but I did go to a law school which views itself with equally self-important eyes. Wrongly, in my opinion, as I still maintain that I learned nothing about the practice of law while there. Nonetheless, I look at my law school's alumni mag ("bourgeoise ipsa loquitor," a.k.a., "the yuppies speak for themselves") and 02138 as part of the greater trend of lifestyle magazines designed to make the upper class and upper middle class feel special about themselves.
I'll give another example. In the somewhat affluent region in which I live (the Jersey shore), someone came up with the idea for a lifestyle magazine called "MAR." Much like Harvard's self-referencing "02138" (the main campus zip code), MAR refers to the area in which it serves: an area it refers to as the "Mid-Atlantic Riviera."
Now, aside from the fact that I've never lived a lifestyle that approximates the Riviera, my readthrough of the magazine made me pray it was either parody or completely oblivious. Executive helecopter charters competed with the solicitations of personal shoppers and Ferrari/Maserati of Central New Jersey. Consultants provided advice about both feng shui and surgery to remove signs of aging.
I wondered if the magazine would find its way to low income towns like Asbury Park or Neptune, just to rub in the insult.
The magazines seem to be designed - like the society pages of old - to reassure a certain class of people. "Yes, you're noteworthy," the photos of shiny-faced, suit wearing partiers seem to say. "You deserve no less than this," the jewelry and custom kitchen cabinets (starting at a reasonable $40k) ads advise the privileged.
In the grand scheme of things, I can't decide if the magazine is a signifier to me (time to get out; the area has changed and you're not interested in changing with it) or a hysterically out-of-touch statement, the "let them eat cake" of the Hummer crowd.
Week 5, Unbillable Hours v. ????
This past week, my team took on one of the two teams ... about whom I know nothing (as indicated in my first blawger bowl post). This is frustrating, since I have no way of doing a write-up about the blawger. However, considering the bastards beat my team 96-72, signalling what may be a slow, ugly decline, I don't mind not having to do a write-up about them.
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