We had a dress rehearsal for the Parody show tonight. (The show opens on Tuesday.) In the room next to our makeup room, there were a whole bunch of people standing up, and a dude with a purple robe at the front doing some stuff. I figured it was a cult meeting of some sort, but someone said it was just Catholic mass. I realized I've actually never been to any sort of mass or anything. I've been inside churches, and been to a couple of weddings where there was some kind of church service-ish, but I don't think I've actually been to any sort of church service. I've been to synagogue. I always just assumed it was the same thing. But rabbis don't wear purple robes, so I guess not.

But, besides thinking we were rehearsing next door to a cult meeting, the dress rehearsal went well. There's a post on Class Maledictorian about the Parody. Class Maledictorian is written by Amber, a classmate of mine. We've never actually met, but she's in my Legal Profession class this semester, and we have name cards in the class, so I know who she is, and she knows who I am, and so I guess we sort of know each other, I guess, but not really. I was called on in that class last week and gave an answer I knew was wrong, sort of. Not a really great story, but what the heck. I had an outline that's in the school's outline bank, up on my screen, in the right place. But, for some bizarre reason, when I was called on, I had this pang of guilt just reading the answer off the outline. I wasn't really paying good enough attention that I would have given a good answer without the outline. And so I made the split-second decision to say something that I knew -- because the outline was right there on my screen -- was wrong. I'm not entirely sure why. It actually wasn't any sort of big deal at all -- my answer wasn't unreasonable, and I explained myself out of it, and I'm certain the whole thing didn't stand out in any way at all and was a complete non-event. Wow, that's a lot of self-indulgent words about nothing. Sorry. Anyway, her post:

I now have a ticket for the law school parody. I was ambivalent about attending this year because last year's parody was a) not funny and b) personally offensive. However, I am informed that the end-of-show routine with a clown wandering the audience spotlighting individual people and insulting them has been eliminated and thus my main objection to the show has disappeared.

The whole ticket acquisition process is especially amusing to me because I am going with my friend and former roommate, who spent hours ranting this summer (with my partial agreement) about the pernicious effect of the parody on law school civility.

I think Amber will like this year's show a lot better than last year's show. But she can post about it after she sees it and verify whether that's right or not. I'll probably have more to say about the Parody after the performances, but don't really have a ton to say at this point except that I'm excited to see what the audience reaction is, and feel like regardless, I've gotten to know a bunch of cool people through the process so it's been worth it even if the audience doesn't laugh. But it will be better if the audience laughs.