If you haven’t been able to tell, I’ve lately been engrossed by the intersection of gay rights and the law. (Perhaps there’s a niche for me there?) It doesn’t help that it’s Supreme Court Drama season. I’m currently reading Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court, which traces how the high court has dealt with gays and lesbians since it took up its first gay-related case in the 1950s.

Stemming from all of this, I present some law links, not necessarily gay-related:

How Appealing is a blog that obsessively tracks appellate litigation. I can’t believe I never thought to look for something like this until now. Pretty comprehensive.

SCOTUSblog is a Supreme Court blog run by a law firm that does lots of litigation before the Supreme Court.

Lesbian/Gay Law Notes is a monthly publication that apparently tracks and summarizes any and all gay-related litigation or law review publication out there. Wow.

Finally, for no apparent reason, Queer Vampires. Not law-related — yet.

It’s Gay Legal Day here at The Tin Man.

I’ve come across a New Jersey Supreme Court case from 1967 that basically legalized gay bars in the state. Technically, the court said that the state could not suspend a bar’s liquor license merely because “apparent homosexuals were permitted to congregate” there. (The case is One Eleven Wines & Liquors, Inc. v. Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, 235 A.2d 12, for all you legal types.)

I’ve always loved the phrase “apparent homosexuals.”

What’s most entertaining, though, is the opinion of the concurring justice (there were no dissents). Here it is, in its entirety:

“PROCTOR, J. (concurring).

“Since the charges against the three taverns did not specify any particular offensive acts by the patrons, I concur with the majority opinion. However, I wish to emphasize that, although well-behaved homosexuals cannot be forbidden to patronize taverns, they may not engage in any conduct which would be offensive to public decency. In the record before us it appears that there was evidence of conduct (men kissing each other on the lips, etc.) which would form the basis for disciplinary action at least against One Eleven and Murphy’s had they properly been charged. A tavern should not provide an arena for the behavior disclosed by this record. I appreciate that the majority opinion does not say that such conduct will be tolerated, but nonetheless I am expressing my positive view that it should not be.”

Well-behaved homosexuals. Tee-hee.

Either next Monday or the following Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will issue its opinion in the gay sodomy case, Lawrence v. Texas. It will probably be the second Monday, June 23, because that’s the last day of the term, which is when the justices usually like to issue their most controversial opinions, because it means they can avoid all the backlash by jumping into their cars and screeching out of the Supreme Court parking lot and heading off to France. Or this year, maybe Britain.

June is when all the Supreme Court watchers salivate.

In anticipation of the Texas decision, I’ve been reading up on the case. This page links to all the briefs and lower court decisions in the case; other good sites are here and here.

I noticed that the Supreme Court brief supporting the gay plaintiffs, Lawrence and Garner, cites a particular Virginia case.

The case is called Bottoms v. Bottoms.

I don’t think they quite get the concept of sodomy.

The middle schooler in me is laughing hysterically.

The State of the Tin Man

Mr. Speaker. Distinguished members of the House and Senate, and also Congressman DeLay. Distinguished members of the Supreme Court, all four of you. President-in-exile Gore. Ms. Streisand.

My fellow websurfers.

It’s been about a week since I wrote about anything truly personal. Is there a correlation between personal anxiety and prolific prolixity? For that matter, is it even possible to be simultaneously prolific and prolix, or is that a paradox that collapses the universe? Mr. Speaker, I need a dictionary.

Okay. Upon pondering and perusing, I think prolific prolixity is possible, and not paradoxical. Pa-pow!

Anyway.

It’s not like I haven’t been writing, but my topics have been road trips and moon landings and the 2000 election and Katharine Graham and such. Really, nothing of major import has been going on in my life lately. But that’s okay. Life is made up of little things. So, let me give you a summary of where things stand.

My fellow websurfers:

The era of big government… is over.

Oops. I mean:

The state of the Tin Man… is strong.

Former President Clinton might say, “The state of the Tin Man is the strongest it has ever been.” But that would be hyperbole. Also, it would depend on what the meaning of the word “is” is.

Anyway. Where were we?

Social Life

I have a coffee date later in the week with someone who responded to my online personal ad. It had been months since anyone had responded. He’s Jewish and 5’7″ and seems intelligent. We’ll see how things go.

Cute Yale Boy seems to have fallen off the screen. I should give him a call.

And tonight, you might have heard, is the big Transatlantic Gay Blogmeet! A bunch of us New York bloggers will be getting together with these two tonight. Should be fun! I’ve never met a British blogger. I wonder if they’re like American bloggers. Or maybe it’s spelled blouggers. I’m not really sure.

Chat Rooms

My name is Tin Man, and it’s been twelve days since I’ve entered a chat room.

I’ve basically grown tired of it. I was wasting my time, and I’d just sit there at home staring at a computer screen, feeling pathetic, knowing that even if I could find something quick and fun, it wouldn’t really satisfy me. When I went to Fire Island I realized how much more fun it was to go somewhere and meet new people and do something different. So I decided to forswear chat rooms for the time being. I’ve been dealing with it day by day, telling myself, “I won’t go into a chat room today,” not making it a big thing, not worrying about all the other days, just telling myself I won’t do it today. It’s been almost two weeks now, and I’ve kicked the automatic impulse to log in every night. When I come home from wherever I’ve been that evening, I check my e-mail and read and go to bed. It’s much more satisfying.

Books

Last night I finally finished The Lord of the Rings for the second time. It took me seven weeks. The first time around I found the final chapters really anticlimactic and boring, but after rereading them, I can appreciate and enjoy them as an integral part of the story. And afterwards, I read through most of the appendices at the end of the third volume and found out lots of things I hadn’t known.

So this morning I figured it was finally time to begin reading The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s background material for The Lord of the Rings (my copy has an older, and prettier, cover). I’ve never read it, and now that I’ve begun, I feel like all the history is coming together.

What’s amazing is the difference in the tone of Tolkien’s writing among his Middle-Earth works. He can go from the very provincial — “In a hole in a ground there lived a hobbit” — to the deeply mystical and quasi-religious — “There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.”

When you first read Tolkien, you’re drawn into the ordinary, everyday domestic concerns of Bilbo Baggins, but by the end of his series of books you’re encountering the Universe and Creation itself. The hobbits are merely the hook by which Tolkien draws us into the vast mythology he’s created. I love how the hobbits are these little folks, far removed from the concerns of the greater world, who have never registered on anyone’s radar screens — as Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin, “You’re not on any of the old lists.” And yet they’re important enough that Tolkien writes an entire trilogy from their point of view. It’s the best way to teach; you start with something small and manageable, and you move on to greater concepts. Nothing is insignificant, and everything is; it all depends on your point of view.

It’s just like this.

Theater

On Friday night I saw the current revival of Craig Lucas’s play, “Blue Window.” Loved it; great structure, great staging, great acting, and incredibly realistic dialogue — scarily so. It’s closing this weekend, so you only have a few days left to see it. And the previous Friday night I saw “Proof,” which was probably the best play I’ve seen in ages.

Home

Lately I’ve been satisfied with living in Jersey City. To be honest, I don’t even know if I’m going to wind up moving to Manhattan just yet. It would increase my commute (assuming I continue to work in Newark), and it would decrease my living space and my funds. And I’ve been feeling like more of a Manhattanite lately, despite not living there. Why? Partly because of the theater.

Strangely, making this one little change in my life – becoming more involved in the Manhattan theater scene — has given me what I’ve been missing. For some reason this little change has made me feel more integrated into the life and culture of the city. I feel more with it, more in the know, more satisfied. And I’ve been able to do it without going through the hassle of moving across the river!

Somewhere deep down, I think I felt that I needed to live in Manhattan and become more sophisticated before I could really partake of the theater scene. It sounds stupid, but that’s how my brain was working. But instead of waiting to feel good enough to do what I wanted, I finally just went ahead and did what I wanted, and the good feeling followed.

It’s important to find out what it is that you’re really looking for, because sometimes you find that you don’t need to make as big a change as you thought you did. You decide to go after A, because you think it will bring you B. But why wait? Why not just go after B directly? Instead of waiting until you feel a certain way, do it. The feeling will follow.

Job

I’m still waiting to hear about this job I’m hoping to get. My boss knows the people there and remains optimistic, so I will, too. To be safe, I’d sent my resumé to a federal judge here in Newark who was apparently still looking for a law clerk to begin in September. I thought I was perfect for it. But it turns out he hired someone last Tuesday. I didn’t even get an interview. I think I sent my information too late.

Conclusion

Finally tonight, I’d like to thank someone who’s stood by me since the beginning. A fine American, someone who has served this great nation, and my personal needs, proudly over the last several months. That’s right. My fellow websurfers, please join me in thanking my spouse, Robert Sean Leonard.

Over two hundred years ago, our founding fathers gathered in Philadelphia to write a great document to serve as the foundation of our young nation. On the back of the speaker’s chair, an image of the sun was carved into the wood. Benjamin Franklin was asked by one of the representatives what kind of sun it was: was it a setting sun, or was it a rising sun? After a moment, Franklin responded, “It is an orange.”

He was old and senile at that point, and this might have been during his Zen period, so we’re not really sure what he was talking about.

May God bless you, may God bless Greymatter, and may God bless the United States of America.

You’re Unbelievable!

What I love about our country’s federal system of government is that there’s so much going on that you’ll never hear about. Yes, national politics has the highest profile, but there are also fifty smaller, distinct political spheres, each with its own cast of characters and soap-opera-ish sagas.

Today is the Republican primary for the New Jersey governorship. When I was a kid growing up in northern New Jersey, I didn’t know a thing about our state because everything was overshadowed by New York City. My parents grew up in Queens, I was born in Manhattan, and my parents were always very Manhattan-centric. I knew more about the mayor of New York City than I did about my own governor. But state politics has become interesting recently.

Politically, New Jersey is notoriously unpredictable. More than half of our voters are unaffiliated with any party, and most people don’t pay attention to political contests until the very end. This makes most polls unreliable. Still, the state has been trending left in recent years, and even its Republicans have usually been social moderates.

No offense to anyone, but lately I’ve wondered if I’m actually living in Louisiana.

Just five years ago, our U.S. senators — both Democrats — were well-respected statesmen: Bill Bradley and Frank Lautenberg. Today, we still have two Democrats, but they’re Jon Corzine, who bought himself a Senate seat last year, and Bob Torricelli, who’s currently under an ethics investigation. And then there’s Peter Verniero, who was appointed to the state Supreme Court last year and has been threatened with impeachment, because during his confirmation hearings, he lied about what he’d known about the extent of the state’s racial profiling practices when he was state attorney general. The state senate has wanted the state assembly to impeach him, but it hasn’t.

But the governor’s race is what’s interesting now. Two-term Republican governor Christie Whitman, a social moderate, resigned a year early to become Bush’s EPA director. Under a quirk of the New Jersey constitution, she was replaced by the president of the state senate, a Republican, Donald T. DiFrancesco, who became acting governor. But he wasn’t constitutionally required to resign his state senate seat, probably because the framers of our current constitution in 1941 didn’t contemplate a governor being unable to perform the job duties for more than a short time. So, as fully sanctioned by our state constitution, we currently have a blatant violation of the separation-of-powers doctrine: the head of the executive branch is also the head of the legislative branch.

DiFrancesco was going to run for the governorship on his own this year, but back in April he dropped out of the race because of questionable business dealings. Whoops! To replace him, the state Republican establishment chose Bob Franks, a moderate who nearly upset Jon Corzine in last year’s U.S. senate race. So, six months after he conceded defeat in a statewide race and was expecting to laze around for a while, Bob Franks — who was a nobody a year ago — is running in yet another statewide race. Great name recognition, right? And maybe he could resurrect his statewide campaign theme, “Franks on a Roll.” (Which he did.)

To give Franks time to campaign, the Republicans postponed their primary until today, three weeks later than originally scheduled. This turned out to be a bad move, because…

…all this time there was another candidate for the Republican nomination, an annoying and inconsequential gadfly who had no backing from the state Republican establishment: Bret Schundler, a social conservative, who has strong support from the abortion opponents and the gun owners. I bet you didn’t think we had those kinds of people in New Jersey, did you? Neither did I. And the weird thing is that Schundler also happens to be the mayor of heavily Democratic and minority-populated Jersey City, where I live. I’d refer to him as “my” mayor, but I feel no connection to Jersey City at all. (Still, there were a couple of campaign workers passing out Schundler literature at the PATH station this morning.)

Anyway, Schundler was at the bottom of the polls and Franks was sailing his way to the nomination, but in the last ten days the race has become an inexplicable dead heat — and in fact, in the final polls, Schundler actually had a slight lead over Franks. This is because he’s hush-hushed his social views in favor of his views on tax cuts. It’s also because conservative Republicans of all stripes are energized and excited that they can finally unite behind one candidate, and Franks is congenial but doesn’t excite anyone. (Sound familiar?) If there’s a low turnout, this favors Schundler.

The Republican establishment dreads the idea of the conservative Schundler winning the nomination, because if he does, they foresee a disaster at the polls in November. DiFrancesco has already said he won’t support Schundler if he gets the nomination. Actually, whoever wins the nomination, most people seem to think the Democratic candidate will win in November. He’s Jim McGreevey, the mayor of Woodbridge, who came thisclose to unseating Governor Whitman four years ago.

If Schundler wins the nomination, it’ll be interesting to see what happens to the state’s moderate Republican party, and it’ll be a heck of an interesting summer and fall… stay tuned.

Yeah, More Verbosity, I Know

Anyway, back to my life. It’s been a good week; since I came back from West Virginia I’ve felt pretty darn refreshed. Let me review the last seven sun-and-moon cycles. Friday and Saturday night, West Virginia. Sunday night, home. Monday night, hung out with Sparky. Tuesday night, stayed overnight at Bryan’s.

Spending as little time at my apartment as possible, and forcing myself to get across the river and spend time in the city, seemed to be doing me some good, so I decided to keep that up. Therefore, on Wednesday night I decided to go to the Lesbian and Gay Community Center to attend a meeting of the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats. I had wanted to try new things, find new social outlets, get more involved in the issues of the day, give something back to the community, a là some combination of Arthur Frommer, Barbra Streisand and Mother Theresa. So my friend Nick had suggested several weeks ago that I check out GLID, and lo and behold, when I scanned the Center’s meeting schedule on Wednesday, it turned out GLID was meeting that very night.

I got to the Center about half an hour too early, and this was even after killing time by walking up Hudson Street and along one of the side streets in the oft-forgotten land of the Meatpacking District (that name’s kind of arousing, isn’t it?) and then back along Greenwich Street. So I did what I sometimes do when I first get there, which is go up to the second floor and use the bathroom. I’ve never written about this here, but I have a pretty sensitive stomach. Sometimes after eating a meal at a restaurant — because they usually give you more food than you need, and because I love to eat and usually wind up cleaning the overloaded plate — well, sometimes bad stuff starts to happen, and not necessarily right away. This really wasn’t a case of restaurant-related bathroom panic, because I hadn’t been to a restaurant. But when you’re walking along the streets of Manhattan, it can be difficult to find a place that will let you use its bathroom. Bars are good, and so are hotels, but when none of those are around, there can be a problem. Some people have this fear that they’ll get an upset stomach while stuck in a traffic jam on the highway and have no place to go, in both senses of the word. Something similar sometimes happens to me when I’m walking along the streets of New York. I might start to feel queasy, and then sidewalk bathroom panic occurs.

I don’t really know why I wrote about that. I know I tend to be verbose here. Sorry about the verbal diarrhea. Ba-dum-pum.

After my ablutions I went back downstairs and sat on the benches in the lobby, skimming through the Village Voice, turning first as I always do to Savage Love, Dan Savage’s hilarious sex column, and doing some people-watching. I killed more time by going up to the library to see if some particular books were on the shelves; I was hoping to find this new one, but it wasn’t there.

Finally it was 8:00 and I went upstairs for the meeting. There was a handful of people milling around, all of whom seemed much older than me. I kind of stood there awkwardly, looking around, and so forth, and then someone announced, “If you’re a candidate, please sign in so we can determine the order in which you’ll speak.” It turned out this was going to be a night of listening to political candidates give speeches and then voting on endorsements in the upcoming primaries, and this seemed incredibly boring to me, so — well, I left.

After that I wandered around the streets for a while. Somehow it got to be 9:30 and I was walking down Sixth Avenue, on my way to the PATH station, when I ran into an old law school classmate whom I hadn’t seen in two years. She and I were in the same first-year law section (a section consists of 30 people and you take all your first-year classes together), and she’s now working in a New York firm and living by herself on the Upper West Side. We decided to get some ice cream and catch up. We got our chilled dairy products and walked a few blocks to a parkbench where we yammered about the last couple of years. I did lots of rubbernecking as nice-looking guys walked by, which elicited comments from her, as well as the news that she already knew I was gay, because apparently during our third year of law school a friend had mentioned to her that he’d run in to me with another guy at a restaurant on Valentine’s Day.

Eventually we wrote our phone numbers and e-mail addresses on little scraps of paper and parted ways. It wound up being a varied, enjoyable evening, something that wouldn’t have happened had I stayed at home. This was borne out by last night, when I did stay at home, and wound up getting online and ultimately meeting up with this nice, attractive guy for an hour of nakedness. Six feet tall, red hair and fair skin, a smooth gym body with the broadest, most chiseled and pornolicious pecs I’d ever seen, and a nice, intelligent guy to boot. Afterwards he suggested we explore Jersey City together some time. I agreed, but still, I wanted to kick myself when the night was over, because lately I’ve been trying to stay away from Internet-initiated sex. Part of what’s made this week so nice is that I’ve been too busy in the evenings to resort to sitting at home in front of a computer screen and feeling like a pathetic antisocial sex addict. I have no weekend plans and so I’m worried about what might happen.

Between August 15, 2000, and January 1, 2001, I had no sex at all. None. No sexual contact, not even a kiss, nothing. I was too busy getting used to my new job, and mooning over my friend Nick, and taking advantage of the novelty of living so close to Manhattan. No sex at all for four and half months, and barely any time spent in chat rooms, and it was terrific. And now I’m trying to be like that again. Not the monasticism — I probably wouldn’t turn down good sex. It’s just that I’d like to be too busy to look for it online.

(By the way, sorry if the comments aren’t working. I can’t seem to win. E-mail me!)

This afternoon I finished reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. An entertaining novel with some interesting ideas about the connections between computers and religion and the brain’s capacity for language, although the plot could have been better done. I thought the book ended pretty lamely. Still, Stephenson has a pretty creative imagination.

Sitting on my bookshelf for a while has been Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter. This is one of the most amazing, intellectually dense books ever written; it was sitting in my parents basement until I pilfered it over a year ago. I began reading it but put it down one day and never got back to it; I think my next reading project may be this one.

But my aunt recently sent me three books for my birthday (Amazon sent them several weeks late), which I also have to add to my list of things to read. I didn’t ask for them, but they look interesting: A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950, the first part of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s memoir; Robert Kennedy: His Life, by Evan Thomas; and I’d Hate Myself in the Morning, a memoir by Ring Lardner, Jr., who was a member of the Hollywood Ten who were jailed by the House Un-American Activities Committee and who was then blacklisted. I guess I’ll be delving into the twentieth century for a while…

My bookshelves also contain a bunch of other books that have bookmarks partway through, indications that I began reading them and at some forgot about them, including a biography of J.P. Morgan; a history of gay America in the twentieth century by John Laughery; Penguin’s History of the World; John Irving’s A Widow for One Year; Edmund White’s A Farewell Symphony; The Tube: The Invention of Television; William Least Heat Moon’s PrairyErth; and so on. Not to mention books that I got really cheaply but haven’t had a chance to read, such as Elizabeth Drew’s On the Edge; David Maraniss’s biography of Bill Clinton; a book on the Supreme Court called The Center Holds; James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, about the Civil War; Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon; and some others. (I could link all these books to their descriptions on Amazon, but that would take way too long.)

So, I’m a book collector. I also have a fickle mind. Things that seemed interesting at one time later lost their luster, and some reading projects that seemed riveting in theory turned out to seem less so when it got to actually reading the book. I still have a long biography of William Lloyd Garrison that I bought last summer but only got ten pages into. I do want to get back to that one, actually. So you’d think I’d have plenty of books to read now without going out and buying some new ones. But you’d be wrong.

Kind of like how I am with classical music CDs: I have a bunch of them that I’ve listened to only once, or less than once, or not at all.

My life has way too much detritus.

If Al Gore Were My Professor

Scene: Outside Professor Gore’s office.

Jeff knocks on the door. The sound of ruffling papers and the clearing of a throat.

Professor Gore: Yes?

Jeff: Professor Gore? May I come in?

Professor Gore: Please.

Jeff opens the door slowly and walks in. Professor Gore is wearing a beige tweed jacket over a maroon v-neck sweater. He smiles at Jeff brightly.

Professor Gore: How may I help you?

Jeff: Do you have a moment? I had a few questions after class but I couldn’t make my way to the front of the room because of all the journalists.

Professor Gore: Not a problem. They follow me all over the place. Though not as much as they used to. (He grimaces.)

Jeff: Yeah…

Professor Gore (muttering quietly): supreme court…

Jeff: Yeah… um, anyway, I didn’t quite understand something that you were saying in class today, and I was wondering if you could clarify it?

Professor Gore: Perhaps you’re referring to my discussion of the technology coefficient.

Jeff: Well, no —

Professor Gore: The news derivative?

Jeff: Not really, but —

Professor Gore: The news derivative was a theory that grew out of the Mathusian genoplasty movement in the eighteenth century. It relates in many ways to the Tofflerian concept of predetermined linguistic microphages. But you probably covered that in an introductory class.

Jeff: Well actually —

Professor Gore (laughing): I know, I know, I don’t want to insult your intelligence. I apologize.

Jeff: Thanks, but —

Professor Gore: As for the technology coefficient, if you read Capistrati on the emergence of Blue Fromage disease around the time of the French Revolution, as well as Kovislavski’s well-known dissertation on the early Luddite movement, there’s lots of great information in there. Why, Tipper and I —

Jeff: The thing is, sir, if I may —

Professor Gore: Now hold on a sec. As I was saying, why, Tipper and I were discussing the technology coefficient just the other night while she was putting on her sexy lace neglige before bed. I love my wife Tipper, you know. I kiss her a lot.

Jeff: Yes —

Professor Gore: I like sex. Really.

Jeff: Yes, I know, I saw the convention speech —

Professor Gore: Did you really? What did you think?

Jeff: Well, to be honest, I didn’t catch the whole thing.

Professor Gore: (sighs)

Jeff: I mean, I wanted to, I really did! It’s just that I was busy writing —

Professor Gore: (sighs loudly)

Jeff (quickly): I mean I watched the whole thing and I couldn’t keep my eyes off it and it was the best speech I’ve ever seen.

Professor Gore (smiling): Why thank you! I wrote it myself.

Jeff: Ah, yes, I seem to recall reading about that!

Professor Gore: Last August was a busy time for me, actually, because while I was working on my speech I was also writing the scripts for “Survivor.”

Jeff: Um, “Survivor” didn’t have scripts.

Professor Gore: I invented scripts, you know. In fact, William Shakespeare and I —

Jeff (confused): Professor?

Professor Gore: Anyway, in case you’re still confused about predetermined linguistic microphages, I’d be happy to elaborate.

He pulls out a large whiteboard and begins to draw a diagram.

Jeff: Really, that’s okay, I just had a quick question.

Professor Gore (drawing quickly): If you’ll see here, the early linguistic microphages weren’t predetermined — (he laughs and nods) — though, of course, there are some Scandinavian theorists who believe otherwise, such as Sven Hagegard. Now under Mr. Hagegard’s plan, linguistic microphages would have gone through an early primogenital phase. But under my plan —

Jeff: Actually, Professor? I really do have to run to my next class.

Professor Gore: Oh, not a problem! Well, I’m glad I was able to answer all your questions.

Jeff: Well, no.

Professor Gore: No?

(pause)

Jeff: I just wanted to know about the grading policy.

Professor Gore: Oh.

(There is a long pause. Professor Gore nervously pretends to be examining something on the ceiling. Jeff looks concerned.)

Jeff: Since grades are kind of important.

Professor Gore: Right.

(Another long pause. Professor Gore looks around and looks up at the ceiling again. Then he looks back at Jeff.)

Professor Gore: Under my plan —

Jeff: Professor? The grading system?

Professor Gore: Right. Sorry.

(pause)

Professor Gore: You know, I invented grades.

Jeff: (Sighs loudly.)

[Exeunt]