Preparation MR

My third year of law school (December 1981), I was part of the student comedy and variety show called the Yale Law Revue, officially described (on page 88) as "a collection of satirical songs, skits, and vignettes, written, staged, and performed by law students"). I had a great time, singing the praises of the closest pizza joint to the school to the tune of the theme from American Bandstand ("If a pizza or grinder you seek/Food Italian that's been made by a Greek"), and imitating Howard Cosell interviewing a student training for his interview with "Sullivan & Cromwell, the Cravath, Swaine & Moore of large New York law firms" ("Howard, I feel good, I feel loose, I feel articulate, I feel well-dressed").

Another skit parodied New Haven School of law, science, and policy, called "Preparation MR" (for Prof. W. Michael Reisman, whose international law course I was taking - and enjoyed tremendously), riffing on then-ubiquitous TV ads for Preparation H (that one features a very young Bryan Cranston!). I wrote out the script and taped it to a toothpaste tube box, and earnestly delivered the pitch for the product that could deliver World Public Order to your nether regions. It was one of the highlights of my law school years, and I can still (no surprise if you know me even slightly) quote many of the jokes from memory.

So imagine my delight when Rob James, YLS class of 1983, emailed me to ask permission to quote the Preparation MR skit on his blog, Attenuated Subtleties, discussing his late-career introduction to the New Haven School and its "highly inflected" language in a post called "Legal science or a cult of style?" Rob wanted permission to use my skit and parts of a line he remembered, "years of research yielding scholarly writing amounting to several thousand pages, many of them different."

Of course I was delighted to let him. When you write one of these skits, particularly one so full of inside jokes, you hope that people get the jokes at the time. But having someone get the joke 45 years later is even better - far, far better than having an appellate court cite your student note. At least for me.