Tuesday, April 14, 2015

In which we follow in Bugsy Siegel's footsteps


The northeast acquitted itself admirably at NDCA. A bunch of new PF folks from around here went, and dominated the speaker awards, and, well, Poly Prep won. Very nice.

I will admit to having gone in with mixed feelings about my own continuing participation in the group, but as we were having our board discussions I realized that much of what the organization does is directly filtered down to what I do with colleges. Participation rules (i.e., official school entries) and conflict designation are recent examples. A most interesting discussion on harassment will also, no doubt, flow down. I’ll talk about that separately. Anyhow, while I obviously have no horses in the race for the actual competition, I have a spiritual horse in the race for what the organization does and how it does it. There’s a lot of minutia that goes with board-ness, but a couple of important things as well. The important things outweigh in the end.

Meanwhile, there was Las Vegas itself. I arrived very late on Thursday and directly tucked myself in. On Friday I drove down to Hoover Dam, and met up with Palmer. We took the tour, but in a way that was unnecessary, albeit interesting enough. The real impact of the place is simply the place. The geography is amazing. You’ve got to love the mountains and the desert, at least insofar as they are places to see. You’ve got to love signs that warn about mountain goats. You’ve got to love a drive at about two miles an hour that scares the bejesus out of you as you feel as if you’re teetering on the brink of doom. And when you get there, you’ve got to love the human accomplishment of building such a marvel. The engineering prognosis is that it’s good for about the next 2000 years. 2000 years! The only other thing I can think of that seems to last for 2000 years is the Clintons and the Bushes. I’ll take the dam any day.

The tournament started on Saturday. There was a board meeting Friday night, and another Sunday afternoon. Other than that I mostly hung around, as board members are prohibited from tabbing. I marginally trained a few PF judges, as we had a herd of communications majors from UNLV enlisted for a round each. They were amazing. They really got into the thing and wrote up amazing ballots. There is minor controversy over whether they should be judging a championship, but it seems to me that solid PF teams ought to have no qualms about trying to pick up the ballot of a committed communications college student. The teams got to this point by winning a lot of ballots from parents, after all, who are a much dicier brand of adjudicator. This all seems to fit in with PF’s original brief about appealing to the interested community member at large. A good fit all around, I say.

We had a lot of conversation with Diane S about the Bronx tournament. In a word, they need to begin planning now. As I’ve said, I’ve also talked to Kirby, so we’re going in with six buns glazing. Continuity over a rough stretch is the goal, so that when they finally have their new team organization in place, they’ll be where they were when they left off. Hooking Diane into the old tabroom files gave her access to a lot of things she might otherwise have to guess at. I'd say she's on her way.

I have to admit that I had no trouble walking around in the nice desert 80 degree weather every day. No trouble at all. And Saturday night Kaz and CP and I went to a nice tapas place for dinner, so we got to see the strip in action on what I would assume is its busiest night. I could do that brand of people-watching till the cows come home. Monday morning before my flight home I did a full-on strip walk, camera in hand. I’m a student of the sort of cultural studies that encompasses Las Vegas, of course. And I always enjoy the architecture, the Venturi ducks and sheds. But this time out I was left with one big question: 

Why are there cup holders in the urinals at New York, New York?

Answer me that, boyo. My initial thought that it had something to do with urine tests and annual checkups is probably not correct.

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