Hope springs eternal in the Menickean breast

I'll bet anything I've used that headline before. More than once. I am so much the eternal optimist! When a glass is filled to the brim I see a glass that isn't half empty. What can I say? I'm a Pollyanna.

[Translation: I upgraded to Mountain Lion overnight and haven't checked yet to see how everything is working. I'm writing this on a different machine.]

And did I mention that I have a couple of Sailors lined up to Pfffft at Yale? Of course, when you think about it, there's only one shot at one topic for Septembrists, which seems like a squandering of mental resources, but then there's literally something every weekend in October, given that these two are young 'uns who can debate at the MHL and CFL. So I'm really rooting for October to be a good topic. That's where the money is.

I keep getting bulletins from the front, i.e., Vegas, from O'C, who's never met a physical space he didn't immediately check into. I do not find it ironic in the least that he went to see a ventriloquist act in the middle of NFL, but that's just me. He's also eaten every few minutes, often with people I would have liked to be eating with myself. Ten to one, however, that someone else is now mayor of Japonica. Or let's put it this way, I'm hoping that someone else is now mayor of Japonica...

And I do admit some curiosity over what the NFL was up to. Their website is wonderfully informative, if you don't want any information. Your annual dues at work! Rumor has it that they're changing the name of the organization to "The People Who Talk A Lot About One Thing or Another in Front of Other People," or something similarly mellifluous, but I could be wrong about that. Maybe, seriously, they'll start understanding someday that they are not a national organization if they ignore the needs of areas like the northeast. But probably not. Greater minds than mine have made the case.

In which logic is touched upon, along with yellow rice and old rope

Sometimes I think I’m operating in a different dimension than everyone else at the DJ. Don’t ask.

Meanwhile, I’ll be taking a blogging break for a week, both here and at Grinwout’s, and will probably return with yet a new way of doing things after I meditate a bit on life, the universe and everything. Speaking of which, Martin Freeman narrates the audiobook of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and I really like Martin Freeman, and he was perfectly cast as Arthur Dent in the movie, but he’s no Stephen Fry. [Sigh!]

Much TVFTing occurred last night, although with a bunch of cyloning or whatever they call it when Skype eats what people are saying. We talked about CatNats and some other stuff, if you’re interested, clearing up the thing about people needing an Amex card to get into the judges’ lounge. It’s interesting how almost every tournament has a sticking point or two, and some people just hate the X tournament and refuse to go, for whatever reason. If I’m not mistaken, I don’t have any tournaments at the moment that I personally refuse to go to, not counting NatNats, which I can’t go to, so I never get so far as refusing to go to it. That is, I couldn’t go if I wanted to, the inverse of which is I could go if I didn’t want to, which isn’t true. The contrapositive—If I didn’t want to go, then I could go—is untestable, because I don’t know if I want to go or not, because since I couldn’t go if I wanted to, I don’t bother wanting to. If you get my drift.

We also talked (offline) about getting CP into the neighborhood for socializing. Last weekend a bunch of us suited up and chowed down at a Cuban restaurant, and a swell time was had by all. It’s nice to get together and not have to get back in time to put out round 6 or whatever. It was a nice day in Manhattan, and we strolled Soho and met up with O’C in WaSqPa where we were set on by one of the famous falcons, which pretty much stopped park traffic in its boots. Weird people strolling the park are a dime a dozen, but falcons? Then Kate joined us with very light-colored hair, and we sauntered over to the restaurant, where Kaz and Peter were already in progress, with JV close behind. We celebrated PC’s recent graduation (Yay!), we kept increasing the number of appetizers we were ordering, and at one point O’C consulted the council (?) about a potential solo trip to WDW (acceptable, provided there was no Foursquaring—who needs to know that he just had another Dole Whip?). After which, gelato. Ahhhhhh.

At which point, I feel that I should type YOLO, but having sworn an oath to kill the next person that types YOLO, I probably shouldn't.

Marginal valediction

The questions are finalized for Bean Trivia. The event is next Wednesday. The crappy prizes are ready.

The season is over…

Last night we TVFTed. It was me, O’C and CP, talking mostly about TOC. This may also be the end of the TVFT season. I mean, things are winding down, aside from CatNats and NatNats, both of which are the same as they’ve always been. (You will debate all day Saturday at CatNats and complain royally about it, you will have mixed feelings about Baltimore, you’ll think the award ceremony is never going to end, and you’ll be glad to get home. As for NatNats, never been, no longer a member, and got nothing more to say.)

It was good to hear that TOC is getting its act together a bit under its new leadership. People regard this tournament very highly, and it should measure up to that esteem. In slow, steady steps, it is getting there, and as we said in the podcast, only slow, steady steps will work. Witness what CP had to do with the various college tournaments, some of which made TOC, at its worst, look like the Emerald City. I still think the colleges walk a thin line, but we’re keeping an eye on them, or at least on the ones we’re affiliated with. We did pretty well this year. We did Yale without CP and were none the worse for wear. We kept Princeton spinning at its peak. We pared down Columbia and kind of pulled it out of the ashes. UPenn grew some more, as we had always hoped it would. Not bad, overall. Come to think of it, looking back at the year as a whole, I’m pretty satisfied, except for the Incredible Shrinking Boat of Sailors, over which I don’t have much control. Needless to say, we’re working on it. And it must be admitted that our Speecho-American side was thriving, so it’s not totally off the tracks.

What was learned this year? I think that the message of MJP needs to be clearer, but we’ve got it down pat as far as tabbing it. It needs to be recognized as a tool to protect different styles of debate rather than a tool for solely promoting circuit debate, which it de facto becomes if traditional schools don’t pref. PF continues to grow everywhere but in New York, but that won’t last long because the attraction of accessibility for students and judges will sooner or later be too strong to deny. New programs keep getting started, and around here, I don’t recall losing any old ones, so that’s good. On the negative side, O’C discovered Foursquare and has checked into hotels, motels, his subway stop, Bronx Science (multiple times), Japonica (enough times that they’re taking away his wasabi privileges), his podiatrist, Attica, Mos Eisley, Bette Midler’s dressing room and the locked gates of the Liberace Museum, to name a few. In other words, it’s been a pretty good year, mostly moving forward.

Excelsior! This would be the perfect time for me to announce my retirement, but once again I am going to disappoint those who are rooting for me to disappear and have done with it. Sorry, guys. You can't win 'em all.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

We recorded a TVFT last night. Started with me and CP and Ryan Miller, and shortly thereafter Pajamas Wexler showed up. It was very interesting. You would have loved it. I would have too, if I had actually recorded it. Alas, I screwed up. How doesn't matter; in the future CP will back me up. Can't hurt.

Anyhow, we talked about the topic cycle, and didn't necessarily come to any conclusions, aside from the fact that better resolutions is a good idea.

Here's something Ryan posted when we had our original discussion:

LD should have two resolutions a year, one released August fifteenth and the other December first. Resolutions should be drawn from a very long list which has five added to it every June by the topic committee. Advantages:

1. The list can grow very long (a hundred?), thus making current prep on the entire list infeasible for even very large teams, and lowering the edge provided by going to a summer camp which luckily picked an important topic (and the resentment from paying a lot of money to a camp which failed to do so). This also means that resolutions will tend to spend a long time on the list before being picked, allowing campaigns against those with poor or offensive wording.

I just love this idea, or something like it. As it stands now, the topic people (who, we all agreed, do a great job under the circumstances) come up with some topics in a couple of days, and then a list is posted, and then when most people aren't even really at school we vote, with no chance for input or real analysis, and there you are. This may make sense in the age of the buggy whip, but we have the interwebs nowadays. Why can't NFL come up with a system like Ryan's suggestion that allows the community an opportunity to really study and polish the resolutions? There is no rush to run LD topics, as they are inherently timeless, as compared to PF topics, so giving them a chance to get good, so to speak, far outweighs any needs of immediacy. I wouldn't suggest eliminating a dedicated committee, because someone digging in on this is a good idea. But why do they have to get it done at NatNats? Don't any of them have email?

Lots of things are done a certain way because that's the way they are done. LD topic selection need not be one of them.

And, lucky you, I've saved you over an hour of your life listening to CP curse like a sailor (and not a Henhuddian one, btw) and me try to find PJ on Skype; you can use your iPod for more satisfying pursuits, like finding all the Madonna songs you've acquired and feeding them to the crocodiles.

Meanwhile...

Before I forget, read about Nozick and libertarianism, if that's your cup of tea.

Not much happening, meanwhile, on the coachean front. I did get occasional messages from NatNats, what with the Panivore putting paid to her debating career and whatnot, and O'C having fun on the resolution committee, and all the powers that niffle wondering why I wasn't there because they missed me so much and wanted to touch the hem of the garments of the world's worst district chair. The tournament seemed to last as long as the entire rest of the season put together. And of course NY schools are still in session, although it was nice to see Diana made it to the final round. Some New Yorkers will go (and when they do, watch out!)

I gather that the TVFT crew will gather another time or two to go over all of that. I am starting to miss everyone and everything, but then again, not so much as it will cause any psychic damage. Things usually heat up around debatewise around the beginning of August, when I start regrooving for Yale and whatnot, and that's only a couple of months from now. It is nice, otherwise, to have a break. This weekend I actually golfed only slightly miserably, which means that I'm finally beginning to believe that summer is here. Weatherwise this was a crappy spring. A crappy winter, too, come to think of it. I blame George W. Bush for it, needless to say.

Anyhow, just checking it so you'll know I haven't gone over to the Dark Side (i.e., giving up my job to travel with Sarah Palin's bus tour). Summer will mean few entries, especially given the continuing busy-ness of the DJ and the Aged P. Come to think of it, I really am looking forward to debate season kicking in again. I could use the rest.

Culmination

The mononymous Dan posts in the comments: “So what would you push your LD'ers to attend as a culminating event? You've already expressed issues with the way the TOC is run, the NFL is too impractical for your school system, and the NCFL is something of a poorly run tournament. What becomes the championship the normal debater in your program strives for? NDCA? Though NDCA has it's own issues with size. It's kind of hard to see a tournament that only has about 40 kids and accepts anyone who applies until they get to 70 as a national championship either (though I really do like the way NDCA is run and it definitely has potential). But so what does the end of year culminating event become?”

That’s a good question.

I don’t categorically object to TOC. I simply question its relevance to more than just a small number of national debaters. The issue becomes, do I try to point my own Sailors toward that small number. I would say that this is more a question for them than for me; I have no particular resources to help them if that is their goal, and they will have to go beyond me to succeed. This was not necessarily true a decade ago, but I’ve changed in one direction and TOC has changed in another. I’m not in the back of the room much anymore, so I admittedly don’t have great skills at what is au courant. When I judge, people have to do a bit of adapting to me with speed, and that means some compromises. Anyhow, assuming that I don’t have anyone on the team willing to go beyond available resources, then what? As Dan says, NFL is impractical and CatNats, with its small number of rounds and random judges, is not a test of skill reflective of the events of the rest of the year.

Does that leave NDCA? I don’t know. I’m late to the game, and this was the first year I’ve attended. I had no particular expectations, and I admit to not knowing well the application process, which is something I want to learn more about. Obviously, if anyone can get in, it is far from a national championship. One question has to be, how can it distinguish itself from TOC (since it already distinguishes itself from NatNats and CatNats). I don’t know the answer to that, and maybe only time will tell. It will be on my mind though.

To answer the specific question of culminating event, as a general rule I like the idea of having a meaningful State finals. Meaningful here is defined as representative of the events of the rest of the year, but limited to the most successful debaters at that event. Staying within the state keeps expenses down, if nothing else. My school is strapped when it comes to money: if Sailors don’t have their own long green, they’re not on the $ircuit. At times I question the need for national events, or at least for 4 of them.

As I said in my original post, I’m torn on all of this. I don’t have great answers. The best I can do is what I have always tried to do, guide Sailors along on paths that make sense for them as individuals. Everyone doesn’t have to be trying to qualify for TOC. Everyone doesn’t have to go to expensive college tournaments. I can provide a very satisfactory, educational experience for a debater without ever going off our regional circuit. If they save a few shekels and can attend a college event during the year to enjoy the running around attendant to such an affair, better still. My biggest worry about TOC in that series of articles I wrote was how serious we all take it. I wonder if we’re forgetting that it’s just a high school extracurricular activity. I suggest that there’s all-consuming and then there’s mind-bogglingly all-consuming, and that we’ve jumped from the former to the latter, and that we may have had a shark under us when we did it.

So, no answers. Lots of questions, though. C’est la guerre.

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.

I admit I had to look it up, but I know O'C won't have to.

Things continue nuttily on the home and DJ fronts, the former being a little eased by the need to wait and evaluate, and the latter being heated up in nothing but good ways (projects I’ve wanted to do finally happening, that sort of thing). Since the debate season continues to rapidly wrap up, at least I’m not too conflicted. Lacking enough hours in the day, perhaps, but that is better than too many, in my experience.

Tying up the loose ends of the District tournament has not proven as boringly administrative as expected. Yes, they expect you to send them both copies of the Goy electronic data and the printouts from the data, for reasons only a systems analyst in pon farr can explain, not to mention that this goes here and that goes there for reasons that might actually make sense, but there has been a glitsch that keeps the congress speaker data from taking. (Oh, the horror of not immediately being rewarded with congress speaker points; if that doesn’t bring on pon farr, nothing will!) Whatever. At least they haven’t come to my house in the night and beaten me with sticks. Although I do gather that the executive committee had put that on the agenda.

Last night the Sailors heading for the State finals congregated at the chez. NoShow Junior explained in brilliant detail how he managed to miss Districts (he claimed to have screwed up, an excuse one could not argue with), and everyone explained why working on their cases would have brought on the vapors, and my internet winkled out, but I think it might have something to do with my cutting back on my cable service, because it only lasted a little while. As did the meeting. So as we await the blizzard of ’11 the Sailors are as ready as they ever are. Where did these forecasts of 5 to 10 inches come from? Sunday golf doesn’t look very likely, I’ll say that.

Cutting back cable service is the most modern thing I’ve done since eliminating my landline phone. I watch little TV as such, but I’ve been paying as if I’ve been glued to it. A light diet of old shows or the occasional movie on DVD and I’m full, plus a couple of times a year (or whenever it’s on, whichever comes first) I watch the Superbowl to try to figure out what a down is. Fortunately our cable provider has a dynamic website overflowing with options. If you drill down for a couple of months you will discover the option for reducing your service. The service rep was nice enough about it (he didn’t threaten to come to my house in the night and beat me with sticks), and the deed is now done. So don’t be coming over to the chez to watch any of them newfangled channel networks. Or much else, actually. I’ll be happy to play you a tune on the piano, though.

Speaking of technology, Amazon will now allow me to buy music and store it in the cloud. Whatever. I am a big Amazon buyer versus iTunes because they have more deals and freebies, but that may not last, especially if MobileMe goes both free and musical, since rumors are that you’ll be able to store all your music rather than just some purchases. I have to admit that neither is terribly compelling to me at the moment. At home I already have my music, and on the road I don’t necessarily have internet access (you try hanging around in high schools and see if your experience is any different), nor do I really need to only have my music. Sometimes I like to listen to music I don’t have. Hence Pandora & c. It’s interesting how this business keeps changing, though. It used to be if you wanted to hear a Mozart quartet, you became Mozart’s patron and had him move into the castle with three other musicians. Nowadays it’s a bit different. And I don’t think it’s anywhere near over yet.

And so we bid a fond farewell

If we had more schools, all our problems would go away…

Districts was Saturday, and to be honest, running it as a red light district had its benefits. For one thing, none of the events aside from LD went into extra innings because by round 3 we were at finals, and there you were. And we had plenty of judges, so everything was adjudicated at a great level. Yes, we didn’t get two people into every event but we did get one person. As Catholic Charlie said, that’s probably better than hitching a ride with another district. Seeing that we’ll never have the requisite number of active schools, this may just be the eternal future. So it shall be written, so it shall be done.

There were a couple of problems with the Goy. Kaz and CC know how to draw a bye like most people know how to breathe. And there’s a window in the program that shows who is or isn’t eligible, and it agreed with us. But when it came to actually assigning the byes, the software lost its way. We also had to call in on an issue with advancing the wrong people, but that only turned out to be a setting. One double-entered kid qualing in two places threw one whole division for a loop, but it’s clear from the data who the qualifier ought to be, even if the Goy kept it blank (both the qualifier and the alternate). I did have some problems entering Congress data online yesterday, but Rippin’ has told me all is fixed so I’ll try it again tonight. To tell you the truth, for the most part the Goy worked fine, although no better or worse than cards when you have pros like Kaz and Charlie. Whatever. I packed everything up and mailed it in today. And that’s that.

Given the cost and the rewards of NFL, I’ve pretty much decided that next year we will be withdrawing from the organization. We’re not getting enough for our money—which over the space of a year could support our attending an invitational—and given that most of this money has come out of my own pocket, ‘nuff said. I somehow doubt that Rippin’ will cry too much over the loss. I gather that the champagne was flowing back on the day I retired as the World’s Worst District Chair, and it was only through mischance that I ended up back in the position. Losing me completely, and the team, will no doubt send skyrockets up over Wisconsin. As the VCA knows, I have not gone into detail this time around about our woes. Enough is enough. Suffice it to say that it’s over, and there you are.

Onward.

Bonus question: What's the name of Space Mountain?

Rippin’ informs me that we only need 1 judge in the presets, not 3. Much better.

I am getting erratic about holding Sailor meetings in these last dwindling days of the season. First of all, I’m running around a bit now trying to get my aged p. settled, and second of all, we’ve sort of run out of steam. There’s not much more to say about anything, truth to tell. Last week it was just me and the P telling war stories (“Back when I used to judge, justice was your value and you stuck with it through thick and thin…”). In other words, it’s time to move on.

I had trouble posting results of the Grands to tabroom. I literally couldn’t see the posting platform. CP told me to look where it always is, but always, in my opinion, was now more like once in a while. He kept telling me it was there and I kept telling him I couldn’t see it, and then finally I could. This is my fault…how? Anyhow, the results went up last night, two days late. I blame CP, end of story.

I do have hotel rooms and the like set for all the upcoming qualifiers. I do like it when a hotel creates a website just for the tournament group. Of course, if it’s like TOC, it only works if you stay two extra days, but with some of them it’s an absolute charm, e.g. the CatNats hotel. Bing, bam, reservations done. Simple as cake. After Districts this week the future holds State, NDCA and TOC. After which, I’m done for the season. Somewhere along the line we need the Sailor’s final batch of bean trivia, but that’s something else altogether. It’s the one meeting everybody attends, for one thing. Texting Cruz as one of the game options isn’t what it used to be though, as lately he’s been having dinner with Obama or something silly like that that has taken preference. Oh, well. He doesn’t know the name of the flying elephant in the Magic Kingdom, so who would want to use him as a lifeline anyhow?

And don't ask how many bagels they consume in a week

Last Saturday was CFL Grands. Twas a lovely day.

First of all, if fewer than 20 teams are registered, we only have to use two judges per round. Right off the bat, JV and Kaz and I were dancing in the aisles of Stuyvesant. Nineteen—count ‘em, 19—LDers, so we made this by the skin of our teeth. Doing 3 is very hard, and can require double-flighting. Doing 2 just requires paying attention, especially when you can do the odd bit of juggling between PF and LD judges (a small number of the former were qualified as the latter, and a large number of the latter were qualified as the former), but it isn’t a nightmare. I remember back to some of our earlier shots at this, and some of the Grands I attended before I was tabbing it, when we’d be out of there no earlier than 8:00. This time we announced awards at 4:15, and I was standing around killing time waiting for everyone to show up. Nifty.

As far as qualifications of Sailors was concerned, Panivore Junior qualified in DI (or DP or DIP or DRIP or whatever they call it). The PJ is the younger brother of the P, and I might not have mentioned him before, but he’s a good actor and a lousy eater, making me seriously wonder if it’s just a matter of the family figuring that the only way to raise kids is to make them work hard and feed them bread and water. Of course, that’s an exaggeration. They eat more than bread and water. I’ve seen the official Hendrick Hudson Town Mac & Cheese truck delivering to their house: they have a coal shuttle into the basement into which the truck just pours a couple of tons of M&C a week to feed the panivorous young ‘uns. What can I say? While all this was going on, the P herself was down at Whitman doing quite well at that venue. Reports on the tournament were very positive. If only we could find them a weekend earlier in the year…

The topper of the day at CFL Grands for me was the announcement of the Rippon award, a scholarship given annually by the NYCFL primarily for representing the ideals of the league: leadership through forensics, personal growth, team and community spirit. I had nominated the People’s Champion, and lo and behold, he won it. (That’s Zack Struver for those who don’t follow the nicknames—he deserves a real name for this achievement.) I couldn’t have been prouder.

Next week is the NYS District tournament, and I spent a bunch of time yesterday boning up on the rules and setting up the software. [Sigh.] You need three rounds, minimum, and when there’s 8 or fewer entries, 3 judges. This means, for us, for all intents and purposes, 3 rounds with 3 judges from minute one. My head hurts already.

Get me Rewrite! Hold the Frenchie stuff!

I was writing up this thing about non-bid tournaments, and it really sucked, so I just erased it.

My point would have been that too many people don’t give enough attention to tournaments without bids. Pretty much every team has a bunch of people who need rounds but who are not bid-worthy, and a nicely run two-day tournament is probably the place they should be. I’m talking about your sophomores or lightly debated juniors who don’t have much of a chance at a serious bid event, but have a fighting chance elsewhere, for instance at Lakeland this week. In fact, there is about a tournament a month that has no bid, or at most a finals bid (which is a pretty exclusive bid out of the reach of most of the field), and I’m surprised that more people don’t break down the doors to get to these, especially those with large teams that aren’t getting rounds anywhere else. We did a lot of conscious removal of JV divisions around here at the colleges, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of virtual JV possibilities that I think are actually better. You need to think outside the box. All your debaters need rounds. You need to find those rounds for them, otherwise as coach you are not doing your job.

The paragraph above says, in one paragraph, what I was incapable of articulating in five paragraphs. Sometimes you do have to throw away stuff and start over.

I also did that with Rippin’. As I said yesterday, I had written out a whole song and dance, and then I ripped it up and made the video, which was much more to the point, I think. I do now sort of expect the Rips to break into my house at night and steal a cat or two to avenge their honor, but I’ve got to believe that my history as the World’s Worst District Chair precedes me, and that there is already no love lost between us on their side. As I said, old news. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose, eh? Anyhow, this is the first time I've summarily put something over on the greatest hits without a second thought. I don't know about you, but it just breaks me up. I do so amuse myself...

Petitioning Rippin'

I was going to write out this whole screed, but I changed my mind. Who needs it? I offer this instead.

The ragtop blues

I failed to mention that Chavez also managed to ruin my life completely by showing me the video of David Hasselhof singing “Hooked on a Feeling.” I’ll never be able think of the phrase ooga chaka ooga ooga ooga chaka in quite the same way again. Not that I ever did, but that’s neither here nor there.

This weekend is the final MHL, which we’re referring to as the Blowout. We have a lot of ideas for making it memorable, but we haven’t pinned any of them down yet. I’ll report after the fact. One team did question whether the competition would be up to their excruciatingly high standards, to which we responded with fart noises, so that answered that.

I have made live the NY State District Tournament website on the Goy. I know. You’re waiting sooooo patiently for me to comment on this. I will. I promise you, I will, but probably without too much vigor. I’m fairly out of interest on the subject by now, and have little to offer that hasn’t been offered in the past. But I understand the needs of the VCA to hear the latest invective, and far be if for me to ignore that demand.

Tonight is poker, for the first time in ages. I have a slight cold, but nothing short of the ague or St. Vitus dance would keep me away. (Although, come to think of it, I haven’t heard the phrase St. Vitus dance since I was a kid. My parents were always talking about it, so perhaps it was more popular back when they were young and hopping about. Or maybe they were referring to my dubious terpsichorean skills, which are, admittedly, minimal at best. Whatever.) I feel that this game is the first sign of spring, for some reason, although I almost killed myself on the residual ice on my driveway this morning, polished to an almost invisible fare-thee-well by a driving rain during the night. I want to be roaming the streets without a coat. I want to be a flaneur sipping absinthe on the boulevard. I want to feel the warmth of the sun and to put the top down on my car (not that it’s actually a convertible) and drive around listening to Beach Boys hits (like, for instance, “The Warmth of the Sun”). I want to scoot around the links in a golf cart, thinking to myself that if I can just get the next shot to within a mile of the pin I might, for once, not run the risk of being expelled from the course for sucking beyond the pale. I want to eat gelato in the West Village.

Soon. Soon. Soon.

Another Scarsdale slips into the mists of time

I slept about two minutes last night, and I feel like death eating a fig newton.

Anyhow, Scarsdale is in the can, so to speak. It’s a wrap. It’s history. Etc. This is where varsity get to judge the novices in their off rounds, but for some reason, a lot of them don’t opt in. It’s not just a question of covering their entries, but participating in the tournament in a different way. As I said last week, there’s lots of debaters who never judge, and I think they should. Maybe they’re afraid that it will affect their performance at the tournament, but a lot of the breakers were in both the front and back of the rooms over the weekend which belies that. Maybe they really do feel that it is only about covering their entries, although Scarsdale has enough good student judging from its own team to dig the Panama Canal. Go figure. They’re missing a good bet, in any case.

From the tabbing perspective, it’s relatively nonstop but not terribly difficult. It’s a single flight every hour of the alternating divisions. Which means that the next round is always ready when you need it. Pffft, on the other hand, was captive to the whims of its judges, and I wisely, albeit not maliciously, passed that over to CP and O’C while Kaz and I stuck with LD. In the Pffft world, the judges come and judges go, talking of Michelangelo, especially from schools that have no real coach (i.e., either no coach, or no one worthy of the designation). Tracking them down is tough, but then again, the food in the judges’ lounges is superior, and you can usually find the culprits there tossing samosas down their pieholes, if you can get them to own up to being Central HS Judge #3, which is how they’re entered into the system. More shenanigans in Pffft than in LD, in other words, and I wasn’t a part of it. Ah, the cleverness of me.

Yesterday I sent out the first info about the district tournament to the interested parties. What a great way to spend a Sunday; I had forgotten how much busy-work there is in a district event. There is, of course, much of a story here, and you’ll get it eventually, but at some point Saturday we were looking at our district and shaking our heads over our red light status because we seem to have gotten our numbers where they were supposed to be after previous negotiations with the Evil Rippin’ Empire. But that’s a long story, and we’re not ready for that yet. One subject, more or less, at a time…

If there were any theme to the Scarsdale weekend, it was contained in the words, No mango left behind. That, and Get off my lawn. No wonder I feel like death eating a fig newton.

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.)

Permission to come aboard again, etc.

New Plebes have come aboard? Seems as if. There were two of them last night, asking questions like, “What is the point of all this?” Their appearance follows an activity fair at the school, and the interesting issue will be folding them into things in our so-called middle. At least we’ve only begun talking about Nov-Dec, so they haven’t missed anything there. Meanwhile, the PC will try to explain it all to them today after school. If this works out, he’ll explain it all to me.

I know that I should be obsessing over Bump, but there’s not much to obsess about until we get nearer to registration close. At the moment we almost have as many unhoused as housed, and there’s nothing I can do about that, plus there’s waitlists, some of them fairly deep, in every division. Once it dawns on a few folks that the housing really isn’t going to happen, things might open up a bit. In any case, I’ve got plenty of alums coming to judge and eat at India House. Fortunately CLG can’t make it; the last time she and I had Indian food the restaurant burned down the next day.

This weekend is the first NYCFL debate event of the season. I’ve got one novice, four judges and those two plebes (I think). Not quite the normal distribution, but at least it’s plenty of people to carry the equipment.

Once again, as I alluded, last night we had at Nov-Dec again. I have trouble with this one. The neg is squishy at best, trying to have it every which way thanks to the “not” wording (where is “forced to choose” or “in conflict” when we need them?). The aff is stuck with the inherent double negative of “abuse” of “illegal”—both those prefixes indicate an opposite, and the two opposites together add up to total confusion. My assumption is that we go quickly to decriminalization on the aff, but trying to make that stick through the round is tough. At least it’s not US-based, so people can look to countries where drug use is decriminalized. Let’s hope there’s light at the end of the tunnel in Jan-Feb. This one is going to be painful.

Illegal, official and officious

There’s a round robin for Jake on Thursday. O’C is keeping the location under his hat, for some reason. I hope he tells me before Friday.

We recorded TVFT last night, concentrating on the Nov-Dec topic. One of the points that was made is how, 10 years ago, there would be a tacit agreement to interpret the topic a certain way, and we’d go from there. But no longer. When there’s a problematic word in the rez, instead of eliding it to get to the meat of the content, we theory it to death. Thus have we evolved, for better or worse. In Nov-Dec, the problematic word is illegal; listen to the podcast if you’re wondering why. One thing is clear, I think: the varsity rounds are going to be radically different from the noobie rounds. Thank God the noobs still tacitly agree to stuff, perhaps without even knowing it. Whatever. Tonight the Sailors begin to brainstorm this rez, unless the Panivore and the P.C. have some other plan for taking over the novice world that they haven’t told me about. Wouldn’t surprise me. They’ve taken over organizing the Plebes the way Hitler took over Czechoslovakia. Makes my life easier, I guess. I sort of miss coaching, though. Maybe next year.

We also talked a bit about the PF hoo-ha, but I can’t say I was that interested. The idea was floated that the NFL had abdicated authority to select topics because of sponsorship, but that was sort of tied into everyone otherwise always following the NFL topics in the first place. There’s a rich history of people doing whatever they want, using the “official” topics at their own discretion. It requires control of the region where your debates are happening, because you wouldn’t want one school to prep on one topic and another school to prep on a different topic, but after that, why not? In the olden days, Bronx always had its own topic, and I liked that. It kept things interesting. NY State finals also had its own topic, at the same time we would be learning about the CatNats topic, not to mention the NatNats topic (the presumably official one). People could easily be prepping LD cases for exactly one tournament and one rez, serially. Granted the topics were less specific and more philosophical, but they were still different enough. In the Northeast, of course, we have our own novice topic through November of the year. So in practice, one uses the NFL topic because everyone else uses it, unless there’s a good reason not to. It has been ever thus. The authority of the NFL resides not in its irreproachable ethics but in its lack of competition, at least as far as I’m concerned, being that their one tournament is not on my attend list, and I don’t get all that much else out of them. My organizations are the local ones that run tournaments regularly, like the MHL or the local CFL. If these didn’t exist, it’s not hard to imagine that, somehow, we’d do something under the loose auspices of the NFL, but they do, and we don’t, and as far as I know we never did, and there you are. It’s a northeast thing. We start school after Labor Day. Other people start school mid-August. They’re out in May. We’re out late June. Different universes. With different aliens. Not much you can do about that. So I don’t think much about the NFL, and they don’t think much about me, and nobody loses much sleep over it.

Meanwhile, coming up, not one, not two, not three but four days of Big Bronxiness. The mind boggles. If you’re there (and you probably are going to be there, given the size of the thing), drop by and say hello. My tab door is always open. We’re going to be in Room इल्.*

*deleted at the request of the owner of this blog

It's over, let's move on

I am something of a believer in the best of people. I believe that NFL made an honest mistake in their original PF topic, and that the substituted topic (which I am no fan of) is an honest attempt to move on. I have no reason to believe otherwise, and plenty of reason to believe so. God knows, I've said a lot of things against the NFL over the years, primarily because the organization by its structure does things that do not help my particular region. Is this problematic? Yes. Is it evil? Of course not. The NFL is an organization that is good and honorable by definition: they believe in forensics as a dynamic educational tool, and do their best to promote it. I too believe that forensics is a dynamic educational tool, and I too do my best to promote it. We don't agree sometimes? We don't agree. One of us is evil or even wrong when we don't agree? Hardly. We all understand the nature of debate too well to believe that one side must always be right. We'd never come up with a topic if that were the case.

Some questions arise. Should the NFL change an announced topic? As a rule, no. But if the topic inadvertently gives offense to the children we are attempting to educate? Of course. It did, and they changed it. What about the topics I just happen not to like? Well, anyone who listens to TVFT knows that my friends often think that those topics are the best ones. In my entire debate career I have never once written to NFL about a topic. This time I did. I would imagine that I never will again. I am pleased with the organization's swift response. It does not indicate shallowness on their part, or some inherent flaws with PF (which may or may not be inherently flawed; I don't know, because I don't know that much about it). It indicates realization that it was a good idea to change this topic. They did. 'Nuff said.

So, what about the topic itself? Why all the complaints? Well, I could post a long exegesis of the subject area proving its meretricious nature, but The New Yorker has done so already: look at recent back issues to find the (lead) article I'm referring to from about a month ago. I'd do it myself, but I throw the magazine away after I read it. Big mistake this time. In any case, I find the subject beyond loathing. Let me just say that I support the fact that a target of 9/11, the Pentagon, continues to offer Muslim prayer services on its premises. I may be wrong but I've always understood that the United States offered everyone freedom of religion. In my studies I have never come across a limitation of freedom of religion putting it at least X number of yards away from where it bothers somebody. Of course, that's not the real issue of the so-called controversy. The real issue is racism, with a liberal dose of stupidity. Disagree with me? I'm fine with that. I'm not here to argue this. Don't bother to try. This is my blog, not yours. I get to say what I want.

Anyhow, I had the great experience yesterday of helping run the Metro-Hudson League Workshop. It was our second year. Really big turnout. I forced The People's Champion to, with no planning, go into a session and teach forty new kids all about LD. I came in near the end: he did a great job. I was not surprised by his accomplishment. I was, however, mighty proud. I spelled him at some point, and took the kids through the next module on five big ideas of LD, including morality and justice. Let me tell you. It is extremely enjoyable to try to get a group of forty students to tell you what the source of their morality is. Where do you get your beliefs about what is right and wrong, I kept asking them. It took the longest time before anyone suggested it might be what they had been taught. I went on to explain how most people derive their beliefs about right and wrong from their religion.

This was, of course, the group from Al Noor, the Muslim school. All the girls covered except for their faces. All of them having a ball learning about debate and Enlightenment philosophy. And, yes, this late PF topic, if they were interested in forensics and rolled that way, would have asked them to conflate themselves with the attackers on 9/11. You could not make me do that at gunpoint. That isn't what the topic would have done? Get real. There's absolutely no other reason to claim the cultural center shouldn't be there.

Political discourse in this country today has sunk to its absolute lowest. Lots of people want nothing better than to tell me how to live my life, and will do anything they can to put themselves in a position to do so. There is no intelligent discussion of policies and proposals. Why don't we want government health care? Because Obama is a foreigner without a birth certificate. We say we don't want gay marriage because it destroys the institution of marriage, but what we really mean is that we hate gay people. We don't want a cultural center near where a horrible thing once happened because we don't care that the reason we were attacked is because we believe in the rights of all, because we believe in the rights of all cultures to exist wherever they want to exist, and this belief in freedom was found to be repellent to a dangerous, ignorant few. We were attacked because we believe in the rights of all, by people who hate us for that. At the point where we say, okay, screw the rights of all people, they won't have to hate us anymore...

By definition, the NFL exists to provide real discourse. They are the antidote to the false discourse in our country today. So are all of us who actively promote debate and discussion and the free flow of ideas. Let's stick to our guns. Which means let's feel free to make mistakes and learn from them, and then to shut up and move on. That's what I'll be doing.

Bump bumped, etc.

I’ve been trying to fill up the weekends with various entertainments as the summer draws to a close, being that, in not too many weeks, my weekends will be exclusively filled up with the entertainment of debate. This last was a pretty nice weekend weather-wise; it would have been a shame to waste it.

I did carve out a little time to set up this year’s Bump, though. Updated the invitation, which is mostly just deciding which jokes can stay and which ones have to go, and throwing in a few new ones for the regulars who come every year so that they won’t stop showing up because invitation isn’t funny anymore. I figured out the trophy order and got that ready for my trophy guy. I had already set things up for tabroom.com, but I’ll certainly be going over it with the proverbial f.t.c. before it goes live in October.

Although I’ve seen no official notification of it (the TOC website is half this year and half last year), I gather that Bump is now a semis qualifier in LD, down from quarters. The thing is, we really don’t have much of a national draw, as we used to in the old December slot, and therefore don’t really fit into the parameters of the quarters qualifier anymore, or at least that’s the official line. From my perspective, tabbing various tournaments at various levels, I sort of have to agree that, for whatever reason, we are not at that quarters level. I mean, witness Yale, with its national draw and almost 50% larger field. On pure math alone, we’re not there. To be honest, I’ve been expecting this change for a long time, and was neither surprised by it nor upset by it. At best we’re on the cusp, and our claim at a semis bid is pretty unshakeable given the quality of the enterprise, but I’d be hard-pressed to defend quarters. I feel bad for the hit that the region takes by losing these bids, which as far as I know have not gone elsewhere locally. Granted Bronx will have a newly coined octos bid, but it is not the equivalent of our lost bids, as that is far and away a national tournament with virtually no regional aspects, aside from the fact that it’s in the region. To call it a northeast tournament would be to call Emory a southern tournament. In other words, I’m not storming through the halls shouting, “Curse you, Jon Cruz!” (At least, not because of this.) Anyhow, I don’t think it will effect the tournament much, and we’ll probably have our same numbers, and maybe a little more with the addition of the novice PF event. To paraphrase Richard Sodikow, I don’t run my tournament as an entry for somebody else’s tournament. That is a good rule to live by, both as a tournament director and as a tournament goer. You are at the tournament you are at. That is the only one that matters.

And needless to say, I won’t be asking for case disclosure. This year.

Meanwhile, of course, the September/October topic has hit the streets. Oh, well. I have nothing against it, considering that it’s among the most important international issues that we face, although the wording is a little coarse (and there will be those seventeen really clever yabbos who run Arkansas vs Wyoming). I sympathize with those regions who don’t have the Modest Novice, who can now skip virtually all elementary LD and go straight to one very specific issue. ModNov is the best thing we ever did, period, but I’ll try to do my best not to break my arm patting myself on the back. Life is what you make it.