Let’s face it. How many websites can you go to for tournament reviews? I mean, WTF contributors (i.e., students) tend to be unreliable because they have, or are, horses in the race. But here we speak with the wisdom of the ages, the authority of experience, and the disinterest of the narcoleptic. I should probably go more places just to counterbalance WTF reporting. At some point Saturday one of O’C’s myrmidons was photographing a schematic in the tab room. Anyone who actually cares about WTF’s photographs of schematics from tournaments they are not attending is in serious need of either a good book to read, a date, or Halo 3. Good grief!
In my experience, every tournament has something wrong with it. Jake, like some others, has building size/spread. If you’ve never been there, it’s slightly smaller than Boise, and runners are regularly being sucked up by UFOs for strange experiments and never being heard from again. For what seemed a good reason at the time, the ballot table and tab were not contiguous, but this proved confusing because the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. (FYI, Ryan H was the right hand, in all senses of the word.) The original solution to this was to issue walkie-talkies. This sounds good on paper, but walkie-talkies at a tournament are like glossolalia conventions without the glossolalia. They squawk and hiss and generally make manly men quiver in their chukka boots, and seldom deliver anything remotely resembling information. So at the beginning of the tournament, when everyone (other than me) had their stress volumes at 11, Gazzola handed me a walkie-talkie. Two minutes later I ran into O’C, whose mind was a million miles away. He had a walkie-talkie in his right hand; I put my walkie-talkie into his left hand. He didn’t seem to notice, and then I walked away. (Actions like that are how I keep my own stress level manageable, if you were wondering.) That was the last firsthand experience I had of the little machines until at night, when they were put to sleep in their little pods in the tabroom, much like the baby aliens that cause Ripley so much pother. Monticello is also a w-t tournament. At one point I was alone in tab (Robinson Crusoe had more company even before Friday arrived) and the thing was begging me, “Tab, tab, come in tab. Shane! ET! Phone home!” I gave in after a couple of hours, pressed the button and did what they wanted, but I wasn’t happy about it. The best thing to do is put tab here, and put the ballot table right next to it, then put the judges and the debaters in roughly the same neighborhood, and then have everyone go at it until it’s time to go home. That seems to work the best.
I started up on Bietz 2 this morning, but didn’t get very far. He was about to launch a tirade on Yale, and was saying something about college tournaments being in it for the money (note: it was this blog that was the first to publicly complain that TOC was outsourcing its bids to universities, and that we all have a responsibility first and foremost to support the high school community), so I’m looking forward to some details. Let him say one word about the tabbing, however (aside from a couple of things that won’t happen again, I promise), and I’ll give him a piece of my mind. I may even begin attacking VBD in this blog! Bietz, schmietz, I always say. (Although seriously, I strongly recommend his podcast. I’ve only listened to the first one so far, but anyone interested in intelligent conversation on a resolution, i.e., you, should be plugged in.)
I did get time over the weekend to polish my Justice unit, which I’ll do tomorrow night. I’ve also got it ready to add to the Hillary Duff. I’m not quite sure if the plebes are aware of that sucker yet, and while it does need some general updating (I need to shift some pomo people in from Caveman, for example), it’s still a good philosophical starting point for newbies. Feel free to grab it, if you want it. Anything on our Sailors’ site is free for the taking. I would much rather you knew what you were doing than the alternative.
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