Bump 2011 Pt 3

All tournaments are more or less the same in that stuff happens, a lot like stuff that has happened before, and we muddle through it.

Fact: If judges can find a way to get out of judging, a surprising number of them will. Not all, of course. In fact, the majority are perfectly responsible, especially at a high school tournament in the middle of nowhere, where there’s nothing better to do. But there’s always more than you expect who will use any excuse to do that nothing better. Inevitably, they will blame you for their not showing up. Don’t bother to argue: you both know that you’re right and they’re lying, so why waste the breath?

Fact: If you don’t threaten student judges with death, dismemberment and dental surgery, and then don't keep an eye on them 24/7, they will do things they shouldn’t do in a classroom, like take the teacher’s stuff. Next year at Bump there will be one novice round fewer, and I’ll be patrolling the halls with the eye of the proverbial eagle. Considering that debaters tend, as a rule, to be fairly smart, one has to wonder where they get the stupid pills on tournament days.

Fact: A parent judge whose phone rings three times during a round will answer it on the fourth ring and leave the room in the middle of a speech. The good news is that this in no way impinges on that judge’s ability to make a decision, because the judge had no idea what she was going in the first place. Jeesh.

Fact: You are not going to get all of your ballots, no matter how careful we are. This is a debate tournament, and ballot-sorting is the dullest job in the place. The mind wanders. And you know, this isn’t the first time you didn’t get all your ballots, is it? Why do you looked so shocked? Do you really think we have a secret stash somewhere, and we're just hiding them on you out of spite?

Fact: In MJP, the judge most likely not to show up is the hardest to replace. How do they know?

Fact: In MJP, if you’re not judging every round, it’s because you are not mutually preferred, not because I want you in the judges’ lounge at all times.

Fact: Why do the makers of signs all agree that apostrophes are optional? Judges may lounge in the library, but the point is to have a judges’ lounge in the library. Of course, that’s still better than some schools where the sign has said Welcome Debators.

Fact: We are doomed.

Bump 2011 Pt 2

I made a big mistake, mostly because I hadn’t given it much thought. Registration was from 10:30 to 11:30, with the first round shortly thereafter. I had sort of assumed that people would grab something to eat in the interim from the various places around the school, but I had never articulated that they should, and there was nothing for sale from us, much less given away. This led to many hungry debaters, apparently, but if it’s any consolation, I didn’t get any lunch either. I ascribe this to the novelty of the whole Saturday-Sunday thing. If that ever happens again, I will be prepared.

I did kick off the event with a judge meeting in which my performance was comparable to Rick Perry debating Herman Cain about which cabinet department to abolish in Libya. I hadn’t prepared anything, and I kept losing the point of what I was saying in an attempt to say way too much. So much for that. Rule number one of public speaking: have something to say. Next time I’ll prepare my rambling remarks rather than extemping them without virtue of having picked a topic. In any case, the judges did go on and judge, so I guess I didn’t scare them too much. I’m sure half of them feared for my sanity, though. So did I. I still do, for that matter.

It was good to have worked Kaz into the proceedings, with her working down at the grammar school with O’C. Two people just makes more sense. They went on down first, and had an odd moment of two sorting out a couple of rooms with the custodians, but nothing horrible they couldn’t handle. And up at the high school, JV and CP attacked MJP and put out their rounds, and at both venues everything began pretty much as planned and on schedule.

One fly in the ointment was that the school refused to let us have the teachers’ lounge, so our judges’ lounge became two lounges, one the detention room with food and one the other the library with comfy chairs, with the judges asked not to meet the twain (i.e., don’t sleep in the food and don’t eat in the comfy chairs). Surprisingly enough, that worked out, especially once we remembered to bring up skems from the other school to chivvy out the novice judges who were stuffing their faces and/or snoozing. In fact, most judges hung out in the detention room, despite its understandable lack of comfy chairs (HHHS probably doesn’t want to encourage detentioneers by offering cozy accommodations). Judges want to eat more than sleep, apparently. Except in rounds, but that’s understandable, I guess.

By the way, we didn’t collect much in fines this year, at least at the registration table. That’s a good thing in many ways, but it means less money for charity. There was some, though, which is all we ask.

Bump 2011

You know your tournament is over when you get a notice on Foursquare that O’C has checked into Japonica…

It was weird not starting on Friday. I took that afternoon off to get the trophies and set up the data. The trophy guy just wanted to complain to me how he had to buy a generator when the electricity went out. I found this about as interesting as you think I found it, but since I want my trophies on time next year I figured I would hear him out. Then I packed up my car with the new ones, headed home, and added the leftover ones from last year. At this point there was an awful lot of tin in the chariot; we give out a lot of trophies at this shindig. Maybe not Jakian numbers, but enough.

After that, it was uploading the data and entering the rooms and whatnot. MJP closed late in the day, so I added that the next morning, but by the end of the afternoon I had TRPC ready to go in both novice and varsity land, plus I had a nap, a carful of trophies, and a fervent wish for it all to end.

Kt came up Friday, and CP stayed over, and we went to my favorite local restaurant where JV joined us, and a lot of duck confit was consumed by a grateful nation. Best Friday night at Bump ever, but, alas, Bump wasn’t half over yet. Still, it was nice to sleep in on Saturday, as much as anyone can when they’re running a tournament that day. Scared up a nice platter of pancakes and sausage and lattes and grapefruit and Beatle music in the background, which made this the best Saturday morning of Bump ever.

Then I went to the school. I mean, I had to go sooner or later...

On the verge of Bump

I keep thinking I should do this more often, and then I can’t find the time. Having that other blog just absorbs what went into this one. I will try to stop whining and figure out either a way to get this one back up to speed or else I’ll put it into hibernation or redefine it or something. I owe the VCA that.

Bump is this weekend, but I can’t say I’ve been agonizing about it much. Having the Saturday-Sunday thing has forced a few changes, but something changes every year anyhow, so more changes don’t matter terribly. The thing is, after you’ve done this for a while, it’s just not that big a deal. I don’t want to suggest that complacency has set in, because I’m doing some new things in the novice divisions (no breaks unless it looks like a demo round makes sense, which I won’t know until it happens), and we’re trying MJP in VLD, an interesting continuing experiment with a tournament this size. And there’s some new schools in the mix, so it’s not entirely the same old same old. It’s more that, honestly, after you’ve done it for over a decade, the machine works pretty well. Tabroom.com takes the registrations and handles housing (although nobody seems to be able to figure out how to change a name and keep housing, which is probably an interface issue), parents get the same food for the same meals, the housing list is the same folks over and over, we get the same classrooms, yadda yadda yadda. What else is there? Not to suggest that all of this isn’t a lot of work, but it’s work on well trodden paths. The way is clear.

Then again, last year we didn’t give the Jon Cruz Award, so one can screw up on the ground, but that is neither here nor there. (Actually, the truth about last year’s award, which people thought I had forgotten, was that we couldn’t find a worthy recipient. Which just goes to show that The Jon Cruz Award, “which is given to Jon Cruz every year for no particular reason whatsoever,” isn’t quite the no-brainer people thought it was.)

I’m happy to report that people at the DJ have been throwing away the most godawful DVDs, which I’ve managed to intercept on the way to the toxic waste dump, thus insuring that at least one tradition—crappy prizes—will stand. And presumably O’C will remember to bring the traveling (fruit) cup (if he has it, unless someone else has it, in which case you can kiss that sucker goodbye), and also to pack the new medals, moving in to replace the rather sad sack mugs that I still have a million of. And somewhere in the chez is the box of t-shirts that I have to figure out what to do with.

So, Bump goes on. Maybe I’ll see you there. Maybe you’ll even be this year’s winner of the Jon Cruz Award. It could happen.

The ship of Hud is scarcely manned

It’s hard to say if the number of plebes (and for that matter, Sailors as a whole) is ridiculously diminished in general or if we’re just going through fits and starts, including the Regiscopalypse storm that still had people cut off from the world through Tuesday’s meeting. Only my most reliable plebes showed up, plus Zip, and we did some work and about as much schmoozing, but three people doesn’t make for much momentum. It’s sort of disheartening, because momentum is what carries a team along. An individual can proceed on his or her own momentum, because an individual doesn't look to a team for support of any kind. But a team makes arrangements and argues different topic approaches and plays cards and does all sorts of things that, at the moment, the Sailors aren’t doing much of. My vision of encompassing both LD and PF suffers if I can barely find a one-person team to do LD.

Sigh.

We also didn’t TVFT last night. I admit being personally pooped lately (too much DJ, mostly, for extracurriculars beyond my normal extracurriculars), but I think part of it was that we couldn’t agree on a topic, and if we have nothing much to talk about, schmoozing publicly doesn’t make a lot of sense. The shows should at least attempt to be about something if we really want anyone to listen to them. We did commit to next week, sort of, in the way we have of committing to things. We’ll see what happens.

This weekend is the Monticello MHL. We’re going to try to squeeze a little workshop into that, with me on morality, O’C on PF and Kaz on policy, but at the moment, there isn’t much of a PF signup. Maybe that will change as we near the deadline.

Monticello was also going to host another two-day event, in the place of the suspended Scranton event, but apparently they couldn’t get the numbers high enough. It is hard to add a new tournament or switch gears too much in this business. Schools are not what we would call flexible, and making arrangements is hard enough without having to make rearrangements. Anyone who doubts that bureaucracy is alive and well has nothing to do with school administration…

And meanwhile, Bump cometh. It’s fully subscribed, and now we should get the last-week dropoff. And we’ve cleared off the top of the Princeton waitlists in debate, and sorted out the rooms, so we’re in good shape there. We made the fields a little bigger. People traveling from kingdom come are now all off the list; next up will be the locals. Unlikely anyone will get any extra slots, given the numbers. We’ll see.

The new season

So where are the Sailors this year?

Turnout at the first general meeting was spotty at best, although on the bright side most of the people there were potential debaters. Speecho-Americans, who operate on S-A time, started showing up at later meetings. Subsequently, after a little mix and match, we’ve got three debate plebes. This is about average for the course. One of them is already rebeling against his nickname, NPR, which is a hell of a lot better than some other nicknames I’ve come up with over the years. The other two have no nicknames. Come to think of it, the team is fairly free of this curse at the moment, although the Cannibal is arriving next Tuesday (I’m sure much to her chagrin, but as I always say, wipe that chagrin off your face!). Two of the three are on the listserver, the official measure of enlistment. NPR is on the fence. We’ll see. If he hits the road, I’ll give the nickname to someone else. I like the sound of it. It’s no Panivore or Wheat Germ or Termite, but it will do.

Last night we had the parent meeting, where first I tell everyone what we do, and second, I lock everyone in until I have the requisite number of volunteers to run Bump. By now I have my spiel down pretty well, including the timing of all the jokes, although I can never resist tossing in a few ad libs, and they worked pretty well. I mean, I’ve got some good material, people. I’m wasted on forensics. I always promise a half hour meeting, and it always comes in at exactly a half hour, and then maybe another half hour and some change. And we did get Bump parceled out. Food, housing, judges’ lounge. That’s their job.

My job is registration. This year we’ve about doubled PF, which really doesn’t surprise me. What surprises me is how long it’s been taking for PF to get any traction in the region. But maybe that’s ending. In any case, we’re roughly at waitlist in every division, and a hundred over in housing (so for most of those folks, it isn’t going to happen, although I’ve asked the parents to do their best, and last year they found 20 or so extra slots, to the thanks of a grateful debate nation). This is the point at which I keep an eye on it, looking for shenanigans (and in some cases, heading shenanigans off at the pass), worrying it as deadlines approach. The most important thing maybe be that I got Kathy S, the S-A coach, to promise to sell water this year in bottles bigger than one ounce. I mean, I like ripping off debate children as much as the next guy, but those bottles last year were ridiculous. On the other hand, Mrs. Panivore explained how, at housing, she gives kids bottles of water to bring with them to the school. Which, of course, undermines my ability to rip off debate children. We did have a talk about that. She’ll just hand them bagels in the future. Lord knows, the Panivore household has more bagels than it knows what to do with.

September Song

I’ve finally accomplished something useful: I’ve outscored O’C in Foursquare. No doubt this is temporary, since he checks in every time he thinks about eating sushi, but I will now retire victorious, leaving him the field. I did not pay all that money for an iPhone to dedicate it to checking in to the local beaneries. I don’t care about where most people are, unless I’m looking for them. Then again, if all the people I’m avoiding would start checking in, I’d know where not to go. For that, I’d be getting my money’s worth out of the iPhone.

Remarkably enough, the biggest event at the Pups, going by teams and not people (because otherwise it would be PF), is Congress. (Although thanks to what’s been going on in Washington lately, I gather the NFL wants people to call it by its more meaningful name, Nyahh Nyahh Nyahh Debate.) Where have all these legislators come from, and why are they convening on New Haven? Maybe it has ever been thus and this is the first time I noticed it, but I find it curious.

Tomorrow I’ll get the registration set up for the MHL workshop. This is where we offer a free day of instruction to anyone who wants it. It’ll be at Bronx again, on 10/2. It’s unfortunate to have to have it on a Sunday, but every other day was a Jewish holiday. The calendar this fall is brutal, either with dueling tournaments or dueling religions. The last weekend of October, for instance, has more tournaments than O’C has Foursquare check-ins. I will be in my usual devoir, tabbing the CFL, while everyone else will be everywhere else. So it goes. Although it’s not as if I want the place to myself. Still, a one-dayer has the virtue of one’s own bed, and I can’t argue with that. In fact, I get three one-dayers in a row, right before Bump, although I do sleep in my own bed for that one too, only not very well. Which reminds me that I also need to alert the Sailors., Retd., of the proceedings.

Ah, September. Nothing much happening, but everything in the pot ready to simmer. Enjoy it while you can.

The Pup Thickens

Flies are in the Puppish ointment, but that is to be expected. They lost the building we had last year for LD, so they’ve had to juggle some things. The biggest problem is attempting to share judges; JV and V will be in two different venues. This means we can’t be as generous with judge hires as we might have been otherwise. A bunch of folks who are still waiting for hires are going to be a little bummed, but so it goes. They can’t sell judges they don’t have, and quite honestly, they’ve got a good bunch, so no one can complain. I doubt if that will stop them, though. Our other problem is splitting up the tab staff. With Vaughan in Speecho-American land, other arrangements must be made. Oh, well.

At least the Sailor registration is intact. One thing about a small team is that you don’t have to move an entire army (or in our case, an entire navy). Three cars worth, altogether. Compared to some folks who have, maybe, 77 entries, including teams and excluding judges; they might as well hire a battleship for the weekend. The grass is always greener. I’m sure these battleship folks wish they had three cars worth, while I would love to have all that raw material to play with.

It occurred to me at some point yesterday that Bump registration will open in a couple of weeks. Jeesh. We had to postpone tonight’s inaugural until tomorrow; tonight is school open house. Why do I never check the calendar?

How To Stay on the Waitlist

There comes a time in the life of every tournament where everybody starts asking for favors. Usually this means taking them off the waitlist. CP’s philosophy about this (and he can correct me if I’m misrepresenting him) was that the more you bothered him, the less likely he was to grant your requests. The thing is, getting off the waitlist really isn’t a popularity contest. At a big event like the Pups, there are schools that may not get teams in at all. Obviously they must be serviced first, in the order in which they arrived. Short of performing some special service for the tournament (exclusive of showing up), there is no other warranted claim to spots.

At a big tournament, this is fairly easy to maintain. It’s a tougher attitude to stick to at a small tournament, where the temptation is to let in as many people as will fit. This means that big programs get big allotments of slots, which means that your brackets start falling apart and your judge pool is all butter pecan (or whatever other flavor the big program comes in). The smaller tournament may make its money, but it risks ruining its tournament. Obviously, with about 100 or so VLDers at Bump, I can keep things relatively balanced. It’s harder for me in, say, VPF, which has maybe a field of around 30 or so. I could probably get 10 more teams in if I removed the school limit, but instead of a nice balanced (albeit small) event, I would have a skewed not much bigger event. And more money in the Sailor coffers. And fewer people thinking VPF at Bump is worth attending. Running a tournament requires both a long and short term perspective. Luckily for me, I’ve run so many Bumps that I don’t have to give it much thought anymore, even though I do tinker with things all the time. And with the Pups and their big field, I have worked with them long enough to know that maintaining the integrity of the tournament is their priority.

Two more weeks and we kick into gear. Those of you heading to Texas will be kicking in that much sooner. 2011-12 already. Happy New Year!

Excelsior, You Meathead!

All right. This is how it is. One more Foursquare notice that O’C is standing on some subway platform somewhere and I’m cutting up his iPhone and serving it to him with wasabi, soy sauce and chopsticks dipped in motor oil. Jeesh!

Saturday I put in the order for the Bump trophies. They’ve moved the shop, and I drove awhile in the wilderness until I found it, and I thought that maybe this was some sort of sign, but no, there it was, finally. Meanwhile, O’C (if he lives) will be acquiring some medals for me, although he’s probably forgotten all about it in his Foursquare mania. Where’s the check-in at the trophy shop getting Bump medals, one might ask. He did come up for dinner last Friday along with Kt, and we did our best not to talk about 1) debate and 2) Disney for the entire evening. It wasn’t easy.

Mostly I’m thinking about other things than Bump at the moment. I met with the Sailors for the first time last night and tried to convince them that attending tournaments was sort of part and parcel of the debate experience. What do I know? We kicked a few animals around for a while. My feeling is that you need to prove that animals have rights, then that it is justice to give recognition to those rights. That is, start at the beginning. As for the neg, I’m not quite sure where one might jump on, that animals have no rights or that justice doesn’t warrant recognition of those rights or what. Here’s what I think. An aff needs a case that proves animal rights inclusive of (and independent of) carnivorous humanity; aff needs to prove that it’s okay to have a burger, in other words. That would indicate a case with a solid footing, even though, as I tried to explain to the Sailors, I would never actually run anything about vegetarianism (probably on either side). How they’ll take what I was saying remains to be seen. A lot depends on where their research takes them.

Meanwhile, there’s the Pups coming up, there’s Montiwegia, there’s the MHL workshop, and then there’s Jake. Mostly I’m concentrating on Pups at the moment—cleaning up judge requests while O’C acquires some more judges, monitoring the LD waitlists, that sort of thing. We just began organizing for the workshop. Once the season begins, it begins with a vengeance.

Lost weekend

Somehow this weekend went to hell in a hand basket. It was supposed to start with Friday in the city and dinner with Kt and O'C, and that didn't happen, and then Saturday I had to clean out the basement—oh joy, oh rapture—and then Sunday we canceled golf because of rain that didn't happen (although it was 135% humidity out there, so maybe that wasn't such a bad idea after all) which meant I got to update the Bump invite just about completely. I repeat: Oh joy, oh rapture.

I passed the invite along to O'C for his input. He had done the same to me with the Bronx invite, but by the time I got around to reading it (about five minutes after he asked me about it) he had already posted it. The man has the patience of a saint, so to speak. PJ has commented on the Yes Virginia round, and I appreciate his concerns, but the benefits of half an hour aren't that many, really, on a trip of four hours. If everyone is out by 5 they're home by 9, which is the goal, unless you're winning the damned thing, in which case you'll be happy to stay until we throw you out. O'C, of course, thinks eliminating the Yes Virginia round is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but he's a saint, and there you are.

Ryan Miller sent me a note that they are doing their York County August workshop, "August 18-21, with Sept/Oct case workup and modules on ballot theory & kritiks, economic reasoning, and the meaning of justice." Ryan is rmm4pi8@gmail.com if you're interested. When he tells you the meaning of justice, please email it to me. I've been waiting to hear...

It turns out that you can play iPad Scrabble with Facebook friends. I like that, except that O'C is wiping the floor with me. As soon as he uses a word that I've heard of, I'll have him, though. He credits his non-English-speaking students with his great success at the game. [Sigh...]

Bumpidian scheduling

The other big question this year for Bump is scheduling. Since we have access to the building all day Saturday, when should we start?

I have thought of possibly offering housing to the furthest schools on Friday and then starting at the crack of dawn on Saturday, but the c.o.d. realistically wouldn’t be all that dawnish, given the couple of hours it takes for unhoused folks to travel from what I would consider the unnether regions on Saturday morning. And given that we also have all day Sunday, in a manner of speaking, it would be more hassle than the reward would warrant. So, a later start on Saturday. I’m figuring four rounds.

8:00 PM
5:00 PM
2:30 PM
12:00 PM
Registration 11-12.

That’s Saturday, working backwards from housing at 10:00 PM.

Then Sunday, there’s two rounds (this is VLD only, of course, from this point on). I’m still contemplating the concept of these last two, rds 5 and 6, being bracketed at rd 5, i.e., lagging round 6. This is not to gain any time, but as we’ve discussed earlier, to even the burden of the aff/neg split in the last two rounds. If the presumption is that in any well-matched good-debater round, the neg has an advantage, then intuitively it makes sense that the same pool of well-matched good debaters debate one another on both sides at the end in the fight for the top spots. I know that some folks have pooh-poohed this because of the taint of bad tabbing that goes with lag pairing, but I’m keeping my options open.

In any case, we should get to breaks by 1:00. If I keep the Yes Virginia 7:30 round, which I might to ameliorate travel home for long distancers, make that 12:30. Lag it and it’s 12:00, but let’s stick to worst case because we could have a bunch of folks heading to 8:00 mass next door (requiring flight B placing in round 5). Breaks start at 1:00. 3:30 Octs if we have to flight doubles, 5:00 quarters, 6:00 semis. Not terrible, but even with the whole two days, it wouldn’t look promising for a potential final because it is, after all, Sunday night.

Sunday dinner at India House at 8:00. That’s not bad.

If anyone has comments about any of this, I’d appreciate them. None of it is etched in the proverbial stone.

MJP at Bump

For reasons that are not quite clear to me, when I was cleaning out my mother’s apartment I found a bar of soap labeled Bate’s Motel. Is there something going on with the Aged P that I’m not aware of?

Anyhow, the second big change at Bump will be MJP. Again, this is something we’ve discussed at length on TVFT one way or the other. It’s pretty much the norm at $ircuit tournaments, but if you’ll remember, the very first time I ran it was at Ridge a couple of years ago as an experiment. It worked fine with what I would call a normal pool of judges, meaning that the best judges (best as defined by the field of debaters) seemed to be where they belonged when they belonged there. Granted we could do that same in tab by just paying attention, but this puts power into the hands of the people, so to speak. Community rankings, which I’ve done for a few years, come close, but MJP is closer. I realize that there remain some coaches who are not in favor of it, but if a team doesn’t rank, they’ll just get somebody else’s high ranker, meaning that the judge in question will be one considered strong by at least one of the debaters. To presume that this means a bias against the other debater pushes things a bit. And anyhow, those non-rankers are the ones who always say you should be able to pick up any judge, so, well, pick up this one. I’m also recommending MJP for everyone else, including Monticello; I’ve just set it up for RJT on tabroom.

I’m writing a little bit of the invitation every day or two, when I get a chance. I’ll have to trophy up before the end of the summer, but I am thinking of getting some medals, no doubt enlisting O’C in aid of that. You know how Scrooge McDuck has a big pool of money he likes to dive into? O’C has a big pool of medals and trophies for his swimming enjoyment. What can I say?

I’ve got people signed up for Yale and Bronx, and I have to say, getting the Speecho-American Sailors organized was no easy task. Lots of begging them to tell me what activities they’re in, begging them to sign up for activities actually being offered, etc. They’re less than conversant with the team schedule, which always amazes me given that every other team around here knows about it by heart. Must be something Speecho-American about it. They just don’t think like debaters. That may not be a bad thing, mind you. I’m simply pointing it out.

Speaking of schedules, the plan is to publish BFs at 1:30 and blog posts at 7:30, until I run out of ideas for one or the other. Tally-ho!

Novice Bumping

I started working on the Bump invitation yesterday. The first big change is that there will be no break rounds in the two novice divisions.

Holy Elimination, Batman!

Here’s the thing, and we discussed this at length on TVFT. Bump is the first invitational any novice attends around here. It takes place the second weekend of November, and the likelihood is that all the novices have had, at most, 10 rounds, and more likely, 3 or 6 rounds at most under their young belts. They come to Bump and want to partake in all that Invitational Goodness, but the real point of the tournament ought to be to give them experience. With elims, about two thirds of the field get 5 rounds and then, what? They watch novice rounds? That’s not totally valueless, but still. As Kt said to me this weekend, at her first Invitational, NFA (which was on the Bump weekend, although once upon a time I used to say that Bump was on the NFA weekend), she made it to the break rounds, hit one of the top seeds and was out. Not much gained.

I’m not quite sure how many rounds we can get in, so I’ve left that vague on the invite, but I would imagine that if the LD field is, say, 80, we should be able to get 8 or 9 reasonable rounds in the allotted time. Trophies will go to the top 10 or so, medals to the next whatever, I haven’t quite decided yet, but it would be on a simple scale of wins/speaks, and not much different from the hardware of elims; in other words, we won’t be saving any money here. My guess is that before we get to the end rounds the placements will have mostly been determined, but I can see no great argument for not giving the most rounds to the most people when they’re just starting out.

Anyhow, that is a big change, probably the biggest for the tournament. Since O’C will be running the novice tab again, it will keep him from wandering off too much, so the benefits just keep on coming.

TPO

It is now August. The party is over.

I was away last week, which is why Bronx Funnies went offline for a couple of days. I had my iPad, on which I create the strips, but I haven’t figured out how to port them over from there directly to Blogger. I could post them to Facebook, but to that I say Bah! They belong on CL, if for no other reason than that they cover me when I’m too busy to blog. Can’t complain about that!

The biggest news is that we’ve postponed Bump a day. The Friday on which we would normally start is Veterans’ Day this year, and I hadn’t given it much thought, but last week I heard from the school and they explained that they felt that the school should remain closed—completely—to honor veterans, which is the whole point of its being closed in the first place. I can’t say I disagree with that. Too often we think of holidays not as celebrations or remembrances of those being honored, but simply as a day off. I mean, Presidents’ Day is usually an ad featuring George Washington saying, “I cannot tell a lie: Our prices are insane!” I sort of believe that GW is a little more important than for use as a shill. Or good old Abe, or any other president. Except maybe Nixon. (“Shop with us, because we are not a crook!”) Anyhow, veterans aren’t just these really old guys in wheelchairs that served in War of 1812 and they roll them out once a year. Veterans are, nowadays, former Sailors who became soldiers, young folks serving really far away in really tough situations, or even folks serving close to home but doing service to their country rather than service to themselves. Veterans are also folks my age, lots of whom got a bum deal from fighting a difficult and unpopular war. And people my parents’ age: I was going through my father’s papers as I was settling my mother this spring, and among them were all his old army stuff. He was over in New Guinea during WWII.

Postpone Bump a day to honor these people? Proud to do it.

There will be Bumpian changes, though, because of the date change and because of some other things that we’ve been talking about over the last year. I’ll give them their due in separate posts. Meanwhile I will begin updating the invitation so that it will be ready by the beginning the local school year. And by the time this is posted I will have registered folks for Yale and Jake. If that doesn’t mean the party is over, I don’t know what does.

(Wow. TPO. Now that brings me back...)

See you in the funny papers

There's an app for the iPad called Comic Life. I think they used to give it away with Macs back in the day, but now, as I said, there's an iPad version, and last week it was half-price, and, well, there you are. I spent this week giving it a road test. I am happy with it. I wish now to thank O'C for providing enough content to last until, oh, 2032, give or take a month or two. I won't post them every day, but when the spirit moves me, Bronx Funnies it will be.

Other than that, we're closing in on opening the first tournaments of the year, with both Bronx and Yale getting out of the gate on 8/1. O'C is going for the every-screen-in-the-cineplex-Harry-Potter approach, meaning that if you're not signed up by about twenty minutes after midnight, we'll see you in 2012. CP is going for the you-sign-up-for-the-waitlist approach, which I know others, including Bietz, have done. I'm agnostic on approach, to tell you the truth. One thing is certain, though, the rise of the electronic registration has taken a lot of the mystery out of things. Of course, while registrations may close the minute they open, forensicians themselves are not so efficient. Not yet, anyhow. The Sailor Speecho-Americans are all of the maybe-might persuasion, and few have committed to actual events. But they can't just sign up in general... [Sigh.]

Things at the DJ have heated up so much that I've boiled over, which is uncharacteristic for me, as the VCA well knows. I like to maintain a detached, mellow attitude, but lately I've been reduced to an attached stridency. I'll be taking some days off shortly, and that may help. If not, just try to stay out of my way. JUST TRY!

And on the home front, so to speak, I have finally gone to the movies this year. I think this is the first time, but I don't know anybody who's not running out to see HP7.2. What are we all afraid of that we have to see it practically the minute it comes out? Spoilers? Like we don't all know? The only surprise was that Kaiser Soze was actually Snape. To be honest, I couldn't remember all the details from the book or the last movie about what piece of YKW was where, and what that sword was all about, and the chalice or whatever it was at the bank. But it didn't matter, because as one watched the movie, there was stuff our heroes needed and they were trying to get, and that much was clear, and it didn't really matter why. It was nice to see every actor in England assembled for the finale except, as my daughter has pointed out, Alan Cumming, the only living British thespian who wasn't hired for the series.

Over the next week or two I've really got to get Bump organized. A couple of major changes need to be thought through; if you followed TVFT you may know what some of them are. If so, could you please remind me?

2011-12 is just around the corner. Then again, so's Eddie Krueger.

So CatNats is holy water under the bridge, but I didn’t get much from it. I saw that a lot of numbers had broken into elims, but having no idea whose number was which, I maintained a less than a dance-in-the-streets sense of enthusiasm. Go New York, says I, whoever you are. My personal investment just wasn’t there. After this, all that’s left is NatNats, where I do have the investment of the Panivore, so I will watch that avidly. Still, I’ve mostly started thinking about next year.

We’ve had a lot of discussion at TVFT of ways of improving tournaments. Some things have stuck in my mind. One is to establish the purpose of the tournament, which is usually to have the person debating the best at the tournament win it. Makes sense, at least with a varsity invitational. So you design the tournament to achieve that goal. But the goal of a novice event may not be the same. At Bump, for instance, it is the very first two-day tournament novices go to. It’s early November, and they are still wet behind the ears. What they need is a lot of rounds of debating. The idea of having five prelims and then having most of the field stop debating is, when you think about it, not quite the best thing for that division at that time. Having the most rounds for the most people is what you’re looking for with the young ’uns. So next year at Bump the novice divisions will have a lot of rounds and, probably, just acknowledge the top whatever. This is judge- and room-intensive, but it does make sense. Later in the season, it wouldn’t make sense anymore. At Bigle X, for instance, the novices have been debating for three or four months: they don’t just “need rounds.” They’re ready for the normal invitational/elimination process.

The key thing here is, the right setup for the people attending. If you’re running a $ircuit tournament, you run it a a $ircuit level. For instance, you hire 20 extra A+ judges. If you’re running a regional event for freshmen and sophomores and you hire 20 extra A+ judges, you need to have your head examined. And so forth and so on.

I do feel that MJP makes sense at most varsity venues, though, as I’ve been saying, since nothing better has come along. You probably can’t match straight up 1s every time unless you have a zillion judges and those 20 extra A+ hireds, but you can satisfy the customers with the best judging they can expect from the pool you have, without anyone arbitrarily imposing their opinion on what exactly defines “best.”

It’s going to be an interesting year.

Fines

If I never had to charge a fine at Bump, I'd be happy. This year we had more people not bringing judges, not showing up for rounds, and generally driving us crazy, than ever before. As a result, we collected $445 in cash on the spot in my little tin box. I've finally gotten my act together, and today I donated that money to Grameen Bank (no, I wasn't trying to live off the float, I'm just a little disorganized about things like this). Better still, the DJ matches the gift, so it comes out to $890 altogether. So there is, at least at Bump, a bright side to the whole miserable business.

I urge other tournament directors to treat fines the same way (once they've covered their expenses). First, it eases your way demanding that the fines get paid, because there's no personal gain, and second, it goes to a good cause (whatever cause you happen to choose, of course).

Hell's Bietzes, Cambridge awaits, whose pants are those, just a minute, man, and the resolutional reveal

I did a little bit of whining about Bump on TVFT last night, but mostly we talked about Brian Manuel’s ideas on a more regional approach to TOC. Bietz, having had his internet shut off at his office, called in for a while, but sounded like anyone would calling in from an L.A. freeway. At least he wasn’t on a motorcycle. I think I’ve solved my Darth Vader problem of heavy breathing, by the way, by lifting the microphone on the headset up above my nose, so none of my blowholes disrupt things. Seemed to work in the little bit I listened to.

The Cambridge Twins have sent me a new Nostrum to record; with luck I’ll get to that tonight. Depends on when I get home from dinner with my mother. (Yes, my mother. I do have one. Always have, for that matter.)

All the bills and receipts and checks for Bump are packed up and ready to be delivered, which I’ll do tomorrow on my way to Wee Sma Lex. The school tells me they have some Lost and Found crap to trade me for it. I’ll broadcast whatever they’ve found through tabroom.com. Probably ties, pants, Underoos, the usual sort of stuff left over at the proverbial end of the day. If it’s yours, you’re welcome to it. Over the years there has been a lot of L&F that no one has ever claimed, including a suitcase full of clothes that we couldn’t track down. You’d think the owner would have noticed. You’d think the people sitting next to the naked owner would have noticed. You’d think the parents would have asked, “And whatever happened to the suitcase we gave you?” But such never happens in the land of debate. What can I say? I eventually threw the suitcase into the Goodwill bins. There’s a homeless person out there who looks a lot like a debater…

Ah, WSL. I get to travel without all my crap like printers and masking tape for just once. Of course, at some point Saturday CP has to instruct me in the fine art of roomage, which I’m handling for Princeton. Fortunately last year’s stuff is around, so mostly I’ll just figure it out and transpose it. Other than that, I enjoy breathing the Lexwegian air. It’s a pretty little town, fun to roam around if you have a minute (and nicer to roam around now than at Bigle X, when it’s usually buried under twenty feet of ice).

And then, two weeks off! With the Jan-Feb rez coming in fast on the heels of the break. An interesting few weeks will be at hand. (If there’s any problem with the rez, I do have a substitute ready: “Resolved: Religions we don’t like ought to go back where they came from.” I’ll pay you five hundred bucks to debate this, if you want. I can’t imagine why you would want to debate it if I didn’t pay you.)

Moving on

I remembered this morning to enter the TOC bids, and that was the last of Bump in my brain, I think. I have flushed it all away. Time to move on, although I’ll probably revisit my pissing and moaning tonight on TVFT. It’s the least I can do.

Last night we chezzed it up because of parent-teacher meetings at the school. We managed a good forty minutes of non-business before settling down a bit, which is a pretty good ratio of about 50-50 overall. We extracted a few good ideas on Nov-Dec, which the Plebes will start running at Princeton. The PC explained the Panivore’s cases to her, which was met with gleeful enthusiasm on the part of all and sundry. (In a word, contractualism is one more step in the attempt to come up with a one-size-fits-all structure for ethical issues. If only ethical issues were easily resolved, the world would be a better place.) As a capper, SamrowLand’s Number One Citizen, having taken an antihistamine to combat cat dander, slept through most of it. At one point, Pip the Wondercat grunted his way downstairs just to watch him doze. It was quite a meeting.

This weekend we’re heading up to Wee Sma Lex. As the VCA knows, I like this tournament for a number of reasons. It’s our first travel experience for newbies, for one thing, so they learn housing in a painless way. It’s got different competition that their usual diet of Ls (to wit, MH and CF). It’s got Reins Deli on the way home, and that really good ice cream place on the corner of Waltham when I run down during a break in tabbing. And I’ll get to hang out with CP, and we can talk about building judge requirements into tabroom and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. A fun event.

Then, next week, aside from nudging the noobs on Nov-Dec (I’ll provide some research for them so that they, 1: Get the idea that you can’t make this stuff up, and 2: They won’t have any excuses for not writing cases in a timely manner), it’ll be a forensics-free week or so. Meaning Harry Potter, Mark Twain at the Morgan Library, TG at Kate’s, a Michael Feinstein concert and who knows what-all else. Oh, yeah. Princeton planning (I’m doing rooms). Oh well, no week is perfect.