Reform School Confidential; You Know Less and Less Jack; CatPffft

O’C pointed out to me that I’ve been referenced over at the Pffft website. The heart beats faster at the thought. Oh, joy. Oh, rapture. The Rev B.A., who is the head trustie at some reform school down in the Shallow South, is one of my favorite debate people. And I love his team. They do what he tells them to do, although I gather that if they don’t do what he tells them to do, he simply adds more years to their sentence. The Rev, you may remember, held court at Big Jake, doing PF tab. He had a central desk in the middle of the library like the pilot on Farscape, and seemed to be having a high time of it. Then again, who doesn’t have a high time at Big Jake, aside from O’C, who’s so busy saving all the schematics so that he can sell them on eBay and running up and checking the computer to make sure I haven’t sabotaged the event by calling it the Bronx School of High Scientology or something that he never takes a breath, except if his mother shows up, at which point he disappears over to Jerome Avenue for a couple of latkes, a short beer and a shoeshine before calming down and saying, It’s just a tournament, It’s just a tournament, It’s just a tournament.

I mentioned a while ago one of the down sides of the modern age without elaborating on it, and something that just happened brought it to mind again. I had been visiting Kate and Marc in Brooklyn and I reported that “we lamented over having the internet.” What I was referring to was the ease with which we can now answer life’s little questions. The question that grew treelike in Brooklyn was, What, exactly, is a crown prince? We sorta knew, but we weren’t exactly sure. And as we talked we realized that with one click of the keyboard, we could find the answer. The joy of aimless conversation about subjects on which you are mis- or ill-informed is suddenly eliminated when you can just go instantly look it up. You could even, perhaps, allow the muscle that is exercised by knowing such items to atrophy, thus placing yourself at an ever greater disadvantage when you try to play me in YDKJ (which is back on line at an eponymous dot com, Huzzah!), but the real issue is the draining of the energy from certain fun pursuits, like conversation and research, when you know you can just find out in a second. What started me thinking about this was that I had forgotten the name Farscape; all I could think of was Firefly. Two clicks later I can tell you who played all the parts, when, how much they got paid, where they were born, and why. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the art?

No, not figs. Raisins…

This weekend is the last little tournament, a CFL hoo-ha down at Iona, the home base of Catholic Charlie. It’s actually a little bigger than one would expect, as we’re folding in a state tournament qualifier as well. In essence, there’s one tournament with two sets of results, one normal with the taking of tin, the other paranormal (?) with the taking of state quals. Somehow I’ll have to balance the two from the one tab engine. Should make things interesting. Originally I had hoped they might offer Pffft to allow my Pfffters some practice, but alas, no one signed up. Pffft is funny that way. It’s growing, it’s out there, but it still hasn’t gotten traction locally beyond a handful of the truly dedicated. Each invitational fields about 20 or 30 of the little buggers, but with few exceptions, no one really seems to identify themselves as either a PF tournament or a PF school. Pffft is still an addendum. Which is too bad, because some of the topics are great fun, and the format offers a solid experience for the participants (it’s fast, it’s team-based, it focuses on persuasive speech). Someday, I guess, but not just yet. Next week is the CFL qualifier, by the way, which does indeed mean some serious Pffft, if one considers the spin the Catholics have put on Pffft to be serious. I don’t get it: it’s as if they’re taking the pagan idea of a saturnalia and transforming it into Miracle on 34th Street. The NFL created an activity that has its various merits, and instead of either accepting or rejecting that activity, the Cats had to change it, apparently because the clerics in tab had trouble entering the data correctly. Well, there’s a reason to change the substance of the event. So I guess what we end up with is Secular Pffft and Religious Pffft. The mind, such as it is, boggles.