On the Town [for someyoungpup, because their friendship transcends time and space]

Alan owns one tie. His mother chose it—it’s the blue of a baby’s bedroom wall, a color that supposedly matches his eyes. He keeps it—sometimes folded, sometimes wound into a spiral—in his sock drawer, and it’s seen use as blindfold, snare trap, and almost kite tail.

He can tie it by himself. He does so now, solemn and careful, thinking of his father’s hands, replicating motions they’ve gone through hundreds of times. The knot he fashions doesn’t look right, looks cockeyed, but he tips his head back and pulls it tight.

Downstairs he scrambles into his winter clothes: coat, hat, boots, a mitten. He stuffs the mitten’s partner in his pocket, where it remains until he’s unlocked the door and stepped out into the frosty morning.

“I’m leaving!” he yells at the house. The cold air does something to his voice—it sounds sharper, carries farther, like a crisply folded paper airplane. “Goodbye and good riddance!”

His parents think he’s spending the night at Paul’s. Technically that’s not a lie. If everything goes according to plan (and why wouldn’t it?), he’ll be snug in a sleeping bag on Paul’s bedroom floor, diligently feigning sleep, by eight-thirty.

He tramps across town to the Dedham train station, taking to the road on the quieter streets and braving icy sidewalks when traffic demands it. He’d expected the platform to be deserted, but it isn’t—a couple of teenagers slouch on one of the benches, exchanging teenage secrets punctuated by the occasional cackle of laughter. They don’t wear hats and they look bored.

Alan sits down and attempts to adopt his own nonchalant pose—first resting his hands behind his head, then experimenting with various shoulder-slumping techniques. He tries to imagine himself as the kind of person for whom a trip to Boston is no great cause for excitement, the kind of person who eats his meals in restaurants at the tops of skyscrapers, who’s seen it all and found most of it unimpressive.

But when the bell starts to clang and the lights begin to flash, he’s on his feet before he knows it.

Current Mood: excited

1. Put your mp3 player on shuffle and take the first 25 songs it gives you.
2. Link to the Youtube videos.
3. Let your friends assign you a song and character(s) to write a drabble to.
4. Try not to flake out completely!

Song:
Preferred pairing or characters to include?:
Would you like me to include your muse?:

( ♫ )

Current Mood: hopeful

We had a deal. You were to run my foot over with a lawnmower.

Current Mood: annoyed

Go here, reload until you have five quotes that sum up your philosophy or outlook, then post them.

I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.
-Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forgo ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
-Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
-Tom Stoppard (1937 - ), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Treat the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe with. His mind was created for his own thoughts, not yours or mine.
-Henry S. Haskins

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.
-John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)

Current Mood: amused

There are 10 questions. They are to be answered with the following:
+a picture found in a flikr search
+a personal picture
+a word picture
+a lolcat
+one of your icons
+a song
+song lyrics
+a youtube video
+one word
+the answer

Any of the above options may be used for any of the questions, however, each may only be used ONCE.

Except if you're Bruce Wayne then you may do this however the hell you like because you're Bruce Wayne.

( I'm not Bruce Wayne. )

Current Mood: recumbent

So, tell us about your name. Do you have a middle name? Do you have several? Do you go by a pseudonym? A nickname? Why? What about your username? Give us a story. There’s got to be some reason you’re called what you are called.

( His first day of practice as a Boston Bruin... )

Current Mood: okay

Comment at your peril for a big block of text about how Mr. Alan Shore feels regarding your character(s).

Little!Alan's thoughts also available upon request.

Current Mood: mellow

[for dr_julianna_cox and backdated to last week]

He’d bought the Mercedes seven years ago with the better part of an extravagant and wholly deserved bonus, had borne the inevitable cracks about his midlife crisis bemusedly. It was by no means a flashy car—four doors, a top that wouldn’t budge, a coat of black paint designed not to turn any heads—but it handled well and, on those occasions when Alan pressed it for speed, complied readily enough. A study in the elegance of understatement, he might have (and probably did, at one point or another, to impress one girl or another) pronounced it.

All of which served to make the journey from Boston to New York City just short of intolerable.

He left the office early, thanking the deities or demons governing baseball scheduling that the Sox had been banished to Philadelphia for the weekend, and nevertheless managed to snarl himself in traffic almost immediately. Several hours of the very worst kind of driving ensued, Alan nudging the car forward with alternating taps to the gas and brake pedals, blasting the air conditioning and fussing with the radio. Traffic thinned once he’d left Boston behind, congealed again when he reached New York. There were, of course, no parking spots available in the vicinity of Julianna’s apartment.

(Well, no legal parking spots.)

Road-weary, tie slightly askew but expectant look in place, he rapped on the door.

Current Mood: tired

Two devilishly handsome men walk into a Stargate... [for stargatejackson]

“You can sit down,” the judge says, shooing the latest witness—an economist with an oily smile and (Alan is forced to concede) a rather slick-looking suit—from the stand with a dismissive sweep of her hand.

“Forgive me for asking the obvious question, but was it absolutely necessary to antagonize him?”

“It was that or succumb to sleep in the middle of my own cross, and I’ve a sneaking suspicion”—the gavel comes down; they’re vouchsafed two hours free from the mind-numbing intricacies of antitrust law, two hours in which the words “market power” will not be uttered—“that would have sent the right message to the jury.

“Besides,” Alan adds, gathering his notes and depositing them in his briefcase, “the man had it coming, and somebody involved in this case might as well get what he deserves. Shall we?”

“Oh. Jerry’s here—today—on another matter and I—“ At this conversational juncture, a polite person would have the grace to look contrite; Katie looks positively mortified.

“And you’d rather have lunch with him.”

“Well.” She smiles, likely in spite of herself.

“I’ll see you in two hours,” he says, feeling—for a fleeting instant—like a father setting curfew. It passes, as things do, and he makes his way to the door.

Current Mood: relieved

Comment to this post and I'll entrust you with five subjects I believe you uniquely qualified to discuss. Then post this in your LJ and tell me something I don't know about the subjects given.

From Peter:

( lawyer, generosity, Zippy, Boston, justice )

Current Mood: curious

Happy Valentine's Day.

( The things I do for you, Jean-Paul. )

Current Mood: okay

1 question...
1 chance... That's a touch hyperbolic. I've posted this once before, and one could always loosen my tongue with liquor.
1 honest answer...

That's all you get. Ask me one question. Any one question, anything, no matter how crazy. An honest answer. No catch.

Current Mood: curious

Five minutes in the life of your muse.

( The printer spits out sixty-five pages of court opinion—only the legal system could produce a sixty-five page 'no'—and Alan gathers the still-warm stack of paper in his hands and carries it to his office. )

All right, since I have a lazy Sunday ahead of me, we'll give this a try. Basically, it works just like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel: I write a little snippet that culminates in a cliffhanger and a series of options, and the first person to reply gets to select the option that most appeals to them. (I should probably warn you now that, in keeping with the spirit of the CYOA books--and, for that matter, Boston Legal--these options will tend toward the cracktastic.)

This continues until Alan discovers the treasure trove hidden in the boiler room of CP&S, meets his doom in a pit of writhing snakes, or I lose interest.

Anyone is welcome to comment. You don't need to have Alan friended!


The new regime took a dim view of tardiness—they’d conveyed as much in a meeting consisting largely of stern looks supplemented by the occasional PowerPoint slide—and accordingly Alan made a point, whenever possible, of arriving to work a few minutes late. It meant losing out on the choicest pastries and the freshest coffee, but adherence to principle demanded certain sacrifices.

Today he set down his briefcase at 9:23, took a seat behind his desk, and began what promised to be a long and arduous slog through a contract in need of invalidation. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before something stirred near the doorway.

Alan looked up to see…


A) Denny Crane!
B) Carol Danvers’ feral feline
C) His younger self
D) A partner intent on reprimanding him
E) Rahm Emanuel

Current Mood: venturesome

From Kara.

( Ancient history )

Current Mood: tired

Denny and I are now legally wed.

No gifts, please. Definitely no china.

So, as you may or may not know (and judging by the show's ratings, I'm gonna go with "may not"), tomorrow the very last episode of Boston Legal airs. Thus far, I've tried to play Alan as close to canon as humanly possible (with a few minor exceptions *cough*utterlypreposterousfearofwater*cough*), but it's possible that after the finale I'll need to tweak a few things.

Therefore, Alan will likely spend the next few days in a state of suspended animation as I try to work out how best to incorporate his final bit of canon into RP and cope with my grief. I definitely plan to continue writing him--Alan will be around to torment your muses for years to come--but he may vanish for a short while.

Of course, it's also possible that nothing of import will happen in the finale and things will proceed as usual.

Anyway, while we're at it, if you have any questions about Alan or how I write him, or would like to treat me to a nice old-fashioned spamming, go right ahead.

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to all those who saw fit to participate in Thursday’s festival of gluttony. Shirley Schmidt was kind enough to throw wide the doors to her home and welcome a—I’m not sure what the term of venery is for a group of lawyers, so I’ll appropriate that of our closest relative—shiver of attorneys to her table. I spent the better part of the day nibbling on succulent turkey and gorging myself on candied yams, and the worse part suffering the egregious violation of my bodily integrity by one Melvin Palmer.

I’m very glad to have done so.

My legal career has always been a follow-the-bouncing-ball sort of affair—or perhaps, more accurately, a follow-the-wrecking-ball sort of affair—and when I was hired at Crane, Poole & Schmidt, I didn’t expect to last a year, much less six. I certainly didn’t expect to find myself...I sometimes (all right, often) lose sight of how fortunate I am.

I’m thankful that I’m able to work with a number of passionate, intelligent, talented people, many of whom inexplicably permit me to call them “friend.” I’m thankful to work at—to be a part of—a place that, for all its shortcomings, does occasionally aspire to loftier goals than turning a buck. I’m thankful that place has a balcony.

I’m thankful to belong somewhere.

Even if that somewhere may not be around much longer.

Current Mood: pensive

After Disch and Levine, with apologies only to the former.

A is for Antics, of which I am fond;
B'd better be Bail or—barring that—Bond.
C is for Closings of prodigious length,
Because I refuse to abide by the notion that anything and everything can be distilled to a sound bite or encapsulated in a convenient metaphor. Complex issues ought to be treated as such, ought to be examined in depth and from more than one perspective, and if that takes seven minutes of your time, so be—
D for Debauchery, Debasement, Denny.
E is for Eloquence, which eludes many.
F is for Fishing at Nimmo Bay;
G is the Games that I am wont to play.
H is Hotel, rather than House,
I the Intent lacked when offing one's spouse.
J is for Jail. K is the Key
That locks you away or sets you free.
L is for Laughter held tightly in check;
M is the Moment it bursts forth to wreck
The pretense of Nonchalance (that would be N).
O is for Objections sustained often.
P is for Pink, preferrèd hue;
What could I choose but a Question for Q?
R is for Rules—bent, fractured, broken;
S has been censored with a stroke of my pen.
T is for Truth guaranteed by an oath;
U is for Utah and Undress, states both.
V is for Venturing hither and thither;
W's Wit, without which words wither.
X was a girlfriend whose name I expunged;
Y is for You, who I have adjudged
Worthy of reading this litany.

There are your constants—now solve for Z.

Current Mood: whimsical

Write page 57 of your 300-page autobiography.

Excerpt from As Yet Untitled by Alan Shore.

( 57 )

Current Mood: listless