Last weekend was the first Byram Hills invitational, which seemed to go well from my perspective. The fields were large enough that we weren’t breaking brackets left and right, and although the judge pool was small, it had some strong people in it. Putting a new event on the calendar is always difficult for a variety of reasons. Chief among these is simply finding an empty date. Even as we were doing Byram we were discussing where Scranton might be able to put something (around the beginning of November). And everyone knows by now that UPenn is going to stake its own unique claim on Presidents’ Weekend, on the assumption that plenty of people don’t go to Harvard and might like a more low-keyed event that weekend. In all of this I realize that my own participation will have to be pared down a bit next year, although I’m not sure quite yet where, exactly. I simply don’t have every weekend available because the DJ is getting progressively more difficult to excuse myself from so regularly. So, just because I tabbed you last year doesn’t mean I’ll tab you next year. Assume nothing. Ask early. Once I run out of days off, I’ve run out of days off.
Anyhow, not much of reportable consequence happened in the hills of Byram. The usual attempts by the usual suspects to get out of drop fees by not reporting drops at the table and letting the tab room discover them after round 2 has been paired hardly bears mentioning. One school didn’t show up entirely, but then again, no one had seen them all year so maybe they’re just imaginary. I know a lot of debaters whom I wish were imaginary, so that could be a blessing in disguise. We did have an irate judge who broke through our high level of security and attacked tab with a combination of scathing wit, litotes and vague allusion, but I responded to this uncharacteristic challenge by telling him to go suck an egg, so it didn’t amount to much. O’C and I were accused of sitting around doing nothing, to which we responded by heading out for lunch, so I guess you can see where we stand on that issue. (We were subsequently accused by the restaurant of—wait a minute. Why am I telling you all this here? I feel a great debate adventure coming on. BTW, I’ve been accused of doing O’C’s Irish accent as a Scottish accent. Jeesh. You want Mel Blanc, you go exhume him. Meanwhile, settle for what you get.)
I remain wedded to my Wii, having added relatives bumping into each other while boxing (virtually) to my repertoire that hitherto only included Lego Star Wars. This is all much more fun than debate, although last night we did have a practice round (first of the year in our regular meeting time slot) which was pretty entertaining too. I don’t know how the People’s Champion is able to read his case given that he has more hair than Cousin Itt, and I could barely recognize him since he wasn’t wearing his Ben Whiteguy sweater vest. (Catsmacker says that every time her team takes a road trip they have to stop at every mall so that Whiteguy can add to his collection. Quite the fashion-setter. Haven’t seen anything like this since Wedro’s matching Mafia shirts and ties back in the 90s.) For some reason the Sailors don’t have half as many practice rounds as they had oughta, and I don’t know why as they’re very useful. Reading and hearing cases are two different things. Oh, well. For some reason last night SuperSquirrel palmed off a counterplan on the PC’s opponent. Nasty. Given the rules about CPs, one has to wonder about them. As I put it, a third of your LD judges will drop you for it cold, a third will simply ignore it, which leaves a third who may or may not buy it. Those odds just don’t work for me. If you want to run a CP, go do Policy. LDers doing Policy (and Policians doing LD, for that matter) is all the rage around here these days. Speak French in France, in other words. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. In LD, do LD. Can’t hurt.
Northeast Chumps is coming up. I’m definitely looking forward to the last major Sailor road trip of the year. Maybe I’ll buy a sweater vest.
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