Page 6-Sunday, November 20, 1977-The Michigan Daily
The Michigan Daily-Sunday, NovI
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D/sandi cooper
Quashing law sch00 Ir
(and other fun things)
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A S COULD be expected on a holi-
day, it was quiet in the train
station and I had successfully avoid-
ed the rush by travelling a day late.
My Thanksgiving feast was going to
consist of a dry turkey sandwich on
sponge-white bread in a stuffy second
class car between Buffalo and Al-
take me before the dinner- was
actually served. The first and the
easiest of the problems was that I'd
just begun to shop in Danish; a far
greater problem was that NO ONE
knew what a turkey was. No wonder I
couldn't find the word in my diction-
ary - it wasn't there. There seemed
By Stephen Selbst
Let's talk turkey
N
bany. If I was lucky, at least the
sandwich would be washed down by a
cold beer.
I didn't feel badly spending this
Thanksgiving in such a fashion, for
the dressing and the cranberries
were all there in the memories of
wonderful Thanksgivings spent in
some unusual places over the years.
Dreaming of those occasions would
leave me as full as if I had just eaten.
Fifteen years ago, we found our-
selves living an hour. north of
Copenhagen when November rolled
around. "Well, I'll make a traditional
Thanksgiving dinner for our new
Danish friends," I thought. Little did
I know to what lengths this would
to be no turkeys in all of Denmark..
After much grimacing and pidgeon
Danish and embarrassed gobblings,
a butcher in the city finally recom-
mended I call the American embas-
sy. A good suggestion, I thought, but.
one could hardly get a cheeseburger
in the commissary without a PX
pass, let alone a turkey. But, try I
did. Passing from one bureaucratic
office to another, I was finally told of
a vildthandler (poultry farmer) from
whom I could order a turkey in
advance. "Two days drive away," he.
explained, but he'd be able to delivei
my turkey at 10 p.m. the night before
Thanksgiving. It had been well worth
See TURKEY, Page 8
*
. -,
Hutchins Hall one steamy
Monday morning last
August to begin what the
admission letter had pompously de
scribedas "legal education at the Uni-
sity of Michigan Law School," I was un-
certain what to expect.
I had applied to law school blithely
unaware of what it was like; I had
never sampled a class or even spoken to
a law student about it, unless you count
the former law student who is my
mother.
So when I entered Hutchins Hall and
began to push through the knot of
nearly three hundred people who were
drinking coffee, dunking doughnuts and
scanning the lists on the wall to deter-
mine their orientation group, a list of
questions ran through my mind First
and foremost was "What am I doing
here?"
That anxiety intensified when I heard
a voice say with obvious disdain and an
accent that boasted Ivy League
education: "What a diverse class; we
even have somebody from Kansas."
Fresh from a stint as a newspaper
reporter in Kansas, my heart sank. I
was afraid law school would be what
my friends had warned me about: three
years of forced association with a
collection of refugees from east of the
Appalachians who had been rejected by
A former Daily editor, Stephen
Selbst swears under penalty of per-
jury that the above storyis true
Harvard and Yale and who were
determined to vent their frustration by
making everyone else miserable.
I'm relieved to say it's not that grim.
The first year of law school is hard
work for most intelligent people, and at
times it can be dispiriting and disen-
chanting, but it's not totally like The
Paper Chase, and it need not be un-
bearable.
But that's just me. Not everyone in
my class has lasted this long, long
enough to say with a sigh of relief that
the first semester is almost over. My
first roommate in my triple suite at the
Law Quad, for instance, enrolled, spent
three days attending classes, went
home for the Labor Day vacation, and
decided not to return. Law school cer-
tainly isn't for everybody.
But I can see how people might get
the idea that Michigan is not wholly
dissimilar from Harvard, as the
following anecdotes illustrate.
TORY NO. 1: It is Criminal
Law, still fairly early in the
S semester. The professor is
rumored to be one of the surlier
members of the faculty, and the class
is still mordantly expecting the first
demonstration of his reputed
toughness. This professor has warned
the class that he will go up and down the
seating chart, calling on people in or-
der, and that we should be prepared to
speak in class the day we're called
upon.
The professor asks a member of the
Doily
THREE JUDGES on the Supreme Court; That's the wa
High Court where Roger Steison (foreground) present
judges (from I. to r.) Law School profs. Lee Bollinger
James White.
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IJILI/christopher potter
Rating the flicks: Frenzy, Peiham
class known to be heavily involved in
intramural athletics which section of
the Michigan Penal Code deals with
negligent homicide. The student con-
fesses ignorance. In an arch voice the
professor suggests the student should
"take your copy of the codes with you
on Saturday to the football games. It's
only Band Day and at half time maybe
you can find some time to study the
codes." The class takes the hint:
everyone begins to read the provisions
of the various criminal codes we have
been assigned to study in addition to the
normal load of cases.
Being put on the spot in class could be
pretty tough if everybody was in a state
of constant tension. But the school
works hard to engender feelings of
togetherness among the classes, and it
------------
-----------------
Second in a Three Part Series
fZJTere is part 11 of a list stating my
r candidates jor the most overrated and
underrated films of the 1970s-a list intended
to inspire appropriate cheers or teeth-
gnashings as one's aesthetic predilections dic-
tate. Alternate lists are welcomed (although
probably not printed).
OVERRATED FILMS (Cont.):
6. Frenzy (1972)-Critics hailed this
film as Alfred Hitchcock's.
"comeback." Comeback to what? To
the Mickey Spillane School for Cruelty?
Frenzy was the first Hitchcock work
released in the era of the movies' new
permissiveness, and the cinematic
result was a brutal, formalistic mon-
ster shocking enough to make one con-
sider a moral re-evaulation of the direc-
tor's entire career. Was this overtly
people-loathing Hitchcock actually
hiding there all along, deceptively
cloaked in a censor-enfored urbanity?
Frenzy fairly reeks with contempt
for human beings' very humanness.
Hitchcock provides his traditional plot of
an innocent man wrongly accused of
murder, then garishly mutates his
Frenzy was . . .
shocking enough
to consider a
moral re-evalua-
tion of Alfred
Hitchcock's en-
tire career.
theme into a litany of venom. The film
contains not a moment-not a single
moment-that radiates any real com-
passion or tenderness between in-
dividuals. Frenzy's characters are
chillingly self-absorbed, from the hero
(especially the hero) on down.
Only the murderer displays a
measure of engaging joviality charac-
teristic of Hitchcock's villains, and
even his tepid charm is neutralized by
an untypically overbearing sadism that
culminates in one of the more noxiously
graphic rape-murders of even this
violent film era. (Remember the close-
up photo of the strangled victim, her-
tongue hanging out, which prominades
itself on signboards and lamposts
whenever Frenzy plays here?)
I think this is the most disturbing film
to appear thus far in the 1970s. Not
because it is suspenseful (it contains
precious little of that.: commodity), but
because Frenzy's venerabledcreator
would seem to stand revealed for the
first time not as the Master of Fright,
not as the Magician of Terrors but,
plainly and simply, as a thug.
7. Between the Lines (1977)-"Wow,
an honest-to-God movie about a
newspaper," bellowed the mostly-
raving critics over the appearance of
this current small-budget film. It,.in-
deed seemed an unusual event-the
day-to-day operation of a journalistic
sheet.has been virtually verboten as a
cinematic subject other than as a
byproduct (All The President's Men) or
as a burlesque (The Front Page). The
only film I can recall dealing with the
theme head-on was an unfortunate opus
by Jack Webb called -30-, which just
may have been the most boring movie
ever made. I figured this new effort,
however inaccurate or distorted, just
had to be a significant improvement
over its predecessor.
W ELL, IT'S NOT. Director Joan
Micklin Silver has fudged her
subject badly-Between the Lines is as
much about a newspaper as Black Sun-
day was about blimp manufacturing.
Silver zeroes in on a Boston-based coun-
ter-culture weekly for Lines' focal
structure, then proceeds the rest of the
film to utilize every visual and verbal
variation she can think up to avoid
focusing on her initial subject. She
provides only the vaguest cursory
notion of what kind of material is run in
the Back Bay Mainliner, follows but one
continuing investigative story which is
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A year ago Sandi Cooper and Janine Meadows brought to Ann Arbor a new concept in retailing . . . A
cookware shop where lessons on the art of fine cooking were available almost everyday of the week.
Now a year later, they ore proud to announce the opening of the PANTRY at Complete Cuisine, featuring
gorgeous foods from their own kitchen and from the talented kitchen of Yvonne's Cuisine in Birmingham.
Stop by and select a French bread, some pate, a hot croissant on Soturday or splurge on the finest
truffles or some fresh caviar.
Open Mon. thru Sat. til 5:30, Fri. nights til 9
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Just for the
health of it,
Get moving, America!
March 1-7. 1977 is
National Physical Education and Sport Week
Physical Education Public Information
American Alliance for I-ea2th.
-Phsicl EucaionandReCreatron
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