In which we plan a coup

Music (audit division): I have no idea why I was listening to the Charlatans' first album, but there it was. I found the music interesting, with a lot of influences making the end result hard to pin down, which can be quite a good thing. Nothing jumped out at me, but I enjoyed it, and queued it up for another listen in the near future. Apparently they're a popular British band that's been around for four decades, but they're new to me. We'll see. This was followed by "Gypsy Cowboy," the second album from New Riders of the Purple Sage. Despite my Deadhead leanings, I've never been the greatest fan of the Riders, which had its roots in the Grateful Dead. A lot of their stuff is of the long and moan-y persuasion—and so is a lot of Dead stuff, TBH—but every now and then they pick up the pace and get off a good one. So I'll listen for the good ones, and occasionally pop one over to my main playlist. 

Debate: For years now the Lakeland tournament, officially known as the Westchester SomethingOrOther, has been in decline. It has TOC bids in Public Forum and Policy, which makes it appealing as a late qualifier, but merely limps along in Lincoln-Douglas. It also offers some MS stuff, to which I have paid little attention, aside from noting, back when we were live and in person, that MS kids are very, very, very young. And little. And as a rule, in my opinion, should not be physically mixed in with HS kids. (The whole subject of Middle School debate is an interesting one for another time.) Anyhow, lately the tournament is entirely virtual, and it seems to have been orphaned from its Lakeland roots, as well as, lately, some interim roots. So my inspiration this morning was that the Online Debate League should take it over. We would keep the tournament structure, but normalize it on the back end with the NYCFL infrastructure. This would insure the continuance of the tournament, and could perhaps even beef it up a bit. In reality, NYCFL and Lexington have been doing the heavy lifting on most of it for years now. And Lakeland, the tournament's origin, is a school in the NYCFL district. I mean, what's the downside? I proposed this to the others in the ODL this morning. We'll see where it goes. 

Games: I looked at the new NY Times game, Crossplay. As far as I can tell from playing it for about five minutes, it's Words With Friends, a fad which was, at its roots, Scrabble. Maybe it's something for a boring stretch during a tournament, but I don't see myself getting too involved with it. In other gamey news, today was Wordle 3 / Connections 4 / Genius with 1 pangram. It took me a while to figure out the Crossword gimmick, so a way above average 20 minutes on that one.