Friday Spies: Show Your Work Edition

More fun from the guys at BTQ!

1. What is the best thing about the city in which you live? What is the worst?

The city in which I live (for the next two weeks) is Cambridge. It is cold for eight months of the year, hands out parking tickets like candy, my local branch library is closed, it has tons of homeless people, and it's stuffed to the gills with Harvard undergraduates. All those things are pretty wretched, but the weather is probably the worst. I laid in bed this morning and the sun came through the window for the first time in a week. I got so excited. Then I realized how pathetic that is.

The best thing about Cambridge is you don't have to stay here very long. And it has good hamburgers.

2. Describe an idea or invention of yours that you would like to see turned into reality.

Years ago I wanted to make stained glass reproductions of famous abstract paintings. It would be easy to do, probably lucrative (people will pay tons of money for copies of their favorite art, as any museum gift shop will demonstrate), and rather satisfying. Stupid intellectual property laws.

3. Name an overrated author, musician, and movie. Name an underrated author, musician, and movie.

Overrated: Hemingway, Richard Cohen, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Underrated: Connie Willis, Dar Williams, and Nate & Hayes.

4. If your life were a sitcom slated to air in the fall, what would the show be called? Who would you cast in the starring role? And for extra credit, give us a brief treatment of the show.

My life up to this point or my future life? A sitcom about law school would probably be more entertaining than a sitcom about clerking. "Legal Eaglets" sounds suitably cheesy. It would be nice to get Maggie Gyllenhaal, but she's not in television. I'm sure Will would watch if Alexis Bledel was playing me, though. It would document the frenzy and foibles of a new law student plopped down in the midst of snooty northeasterners, mean and/or lofty law professors, and snow. There would be romantic plotlines. There would be courtroom scenes (mock trial and clinicals). And I would have a talking robot friend.

5. When is the fun supposed to start?

Uh, I never saw that movie. But the fun better start soon.