What I'm Watching and Reading -- Damages and John Adams

With the Bar Exam behind me, and with moving into my new place pretty much complete, I've settled into a nice pattern of doing nothing as I try to recharge and get ready to start work and the real world in April. I wake up, watch Morning Joe that I DVR, eat lunch, read books and watch my DirecTV and newly growing collection of Blu Ray DVDs, I watch Hardball, and well, life is good.

So what have I been watching and reading (aside, of course, from MSNBC political coverage)? Mainly one set of DVDs and one biography, at least for now. First with the DVDs, I've started watching Damages, the FX show about a cut-throat (literally as well as figuratively) law firm run by Glen Close. Close's firm is running a hundred-million dollar class action lawsuit against a crooked CEO played by Ted Danson, and the show is told from the perspective of the firm's newest associate, who may have only been hired because of her connection to a key witness in the case. The show flashes back and forth from the present time to the past (where the bulk of the story takes place) as the viewer tries to piece together why things did not turn out so well for the young associate (being arrested for murdering your fiancée is never a good ending). The cast is great (and has anybody ever realized that Tate Donovan, who plays Close's confidant, looks like a twin brother of former DNC Chairman and current Hillary Clinton campaign chair Terry Mcauliffe?) and the show is very addicting. I've been hooked on the episodes and I may finish blowing through them this weekend (there are only 13). Great show, well worth checking out. Sort of like The Firm on steroids.

Damages has been so addicting, I've fallen behind in reading, and getting through a fair number of books this month was a key goal of mine. Instead of continuing and trying to finish one of the numerous books I'm in the middle of (I read through half of Bill Clinton's My Life before law school started and never finished it, and there are numerous sports books, including Mark Frost's The Greatest Game Ever Played I'm partway through) I started reading David McCullough's biography of our second, and mostly overlooked President, John Adams. While Washington and Jefferson get most of the headlines in the history books, Adams was no less important, and HBO, next week, will begin airing a multi-part mini-series) based on McCullough's book starting Paul Giamatti as Adams and the great Laura Linney as his wife Abagail. I'm about 100 pages in right now, and as to be expected from a McCullough biography, it's a great read. I was hoping to have the 400-page-plus tome finished by the premiere on March 16, but that's looking less and less likely by the day, but I'm going to try.