State (as O'C insists on calling it)

We got off to a rollicking start for last weekend when Meh announced that she was coming down with the yaws, or something, and couldn’t debate. With Zip out of commission because of the break, there was nothing for it but to drop the single Sailor entry at State.

Sigh.

That didn’t stop me personally, of course. I’m on the board, for one thing, and I’m expected to tab, for another thing, and it’s actually what I wanted to do this weekend, for a final thing. I don’t do this because I hate it, in other words. Without the burden of all those pesky students (well, 2 pesky students), I was free to come and go as I pleased. Big deal. The only difference this meant was that I didn’t have to find Meh’s house again, even though her family has obligingly kept the Christmas decorations up for me.

There were mostly the usual trials and tribulations over the weekend. We played around with the pair-on-screen function, but ended up preferring cards. Still, I finally did get the hang of it. Maybe next year. We screwed one poor kid by misreporting who broke, so we’ll never do it that way again (i.e., scribbling it vs. pulling a pdf). However, said screwee was scheduled to debate the one other kid who didn’t show for his own reasons, meaning he both got screwed and managed to advance to quarters. There’s worse ways to go.

Our biggest problem was disappearing judges. One school changed virtually all their preffed judges on arrival, which is about as unprofessional as a team can get. This was matched by the disappearing judges who didn’t fulfill their obligations. Do they really think we don’t remember? My list of schools not welcome, when I have the opportunity to pick and choose, grows and changes. One school that had been on that list performed admirably, staying till when they should have and checking with us to make sure. Good for them, and so noted. One judge who’s been on my radar as never being around to pick up a ballot, ever, proved herself again by disappearing completely. Sorry, but you’re on that list now. We call them invitationals because we’re inviting people. But we’re not inviting you…

Mostly, of course, it was a fine event. We did some single-flighting and got out at reasonable times on both days, which is always nice. It continues to grow, and that’s a good thing. And the best news is, we found a new tab room for Big Jake. O’C, who claims that this was all my fault, has been holding out on us, falling back on my declaration back when he was a pup that we needed a central tab room. That was when we had 200 runners, all of them running at the same time, in all directions, willy-nilly. Once the operation got organized, what we needed was a tab room with couches, space and a microwave. Such a room has been found.

If O’C doesn’t deliver next season, there will be hell to pay.

As March goes out like a cotelette d'agneau

There may be no more nautical debating, but there are a few Speecho-American Sailors on the loose, heading for the state tournament the end of April. We’ll have a workshop or two at the chez for them. This is where we have them perform but take them apart practically word for word. Since I haven’t seen them in a while, and a couple of pieces not at all, it’s a good opportunity for them to get a last shot at seeing what’s working and what isn’t. The first of these sessions is next Monday, during our school’s break.

Running the NYSDCA tournament this weekend should be interesting. It’s small, and I want to try pairing using TRPC’s pairing-on-screen function, which I’ve never used before. I’ve certainly asked CP to incorporate something like that into his new software, so this will be a fun test. It’s also supposed to be sort of a crappy weekend weatherwise, so I don’t feel as if I’ll be missing anything I could be doing. The really warm weather is coming, and those strolls around Manhattan…

O’C and I recorded a TVFT Wednesday, but the sound quality is miserable. Not miserable enough not to release it (that distinction goes most recently to the “The Train Has Left the Station” episode with Pajamas W), but miserable enough to want to not repeat it. O’C says the problem is Time Warner, and if he’s ever home to let the cable guy in, all will be fixed. Of course, if the cable guy sees all the Willow memorabilia, he may become too distracted to do the job he is paid for.

Grinwout’s continues apace. I’ve started a Facebook page for it, that I’ll promote next week after I play with it a little more. I realize that when I was doing this for the DJ I sort of became obsessed, and the obsession has stuck. My brain is a mess of lightly connected data informed by books and movies and culture in general, which is one of the reasons I’ve done okay as a book editor, where a certain dilettantism can be a plus if you do general stuff. In other words, I have a great interest in a lot of things mixed with a short attention span; this is the mix an editor needs, I guess. Unless you want to edit brain surgery texts, that is. You want those folks to keep their eyes on the ball, so to speak. You’re in there disconnecting the cerebellum from the carburetor or whatever, and the last thing you need is to be distracted by a really good tap dancing video.

The Art of the State

We did it.

This weekend, after years of frustration with our state organization (about which the VCA has been informed ad nauseum), the debate coaches from almost all the policy schools and a seriously strong representation of the LD schools in the state got together and threw their own shindig in the style of the rest of the tournaments we attend throughout the year. (We also had PF, but that’s already still so small around here that it’s hard to claim much traction one way or the other.) It was a hit. Everybody had a good time, the rounds went off neatly, the judging was super, and anyone who didn’t collapse of heart failure going up and down the six flights of stairs went away well satisfied.

This first venture was down at Brooklyn Tech, where we had an MHL last year. I liked the building a lot then, which was why I was glad we had it for this event, although I don’t think it registered on me how many stairs there were. Coming in early Saturday morning and mounting to the heights carrying all my gear is going in the book as my physical achievement of the year, and I’m in fairly decent shape for a fossil. By the end of the day it probably looked like Mt. Everest, with a string of abandoned gear surrounding the climbers who whispered to their colleagues, “Just go on without me.” At one point I was heading up and an unaccompanied policy tub was heading down, and there were people in hysterics (positive or negative I couldn’t tell you) at the top. For most of the participants it was the last debate of the season, so how much could they miss this year’s folders?

Needless to say, putting O’C in charge of the trophies meant that we had not trophies but Trophies. ‘Nuff said.

I can’t speak to the food at the event, because Friday the Sailors and I met up with JV for some nice Italian near our hotel (we got out fairly early), and Saturday JV and I went to this great burger place for lunch, and between the two, the job was done (not to mention a pile of bacon at the hotel buffet that even Kaz would have been satisfied with). JV and I were tabbing PF and LD, while Kaz and Lakeland’s SB were handling all the policy divisions (including what Kaz described as a middle school group as cute as the dickens).

As for the competition and judging, they speak for themselves. The Sailors acquitted themselves admirably, with the PC making it all the way to semis, and Liana making non-advancing octos (we wanted to acknowledge the top 12, but had to be out of the building by 8:00 Saturday night). Both also picked up speaker awards, so it has been a good year for the team in general, especially when you add in our Speecho-American folks (who go to the other State tournament this coming weekend). The PC even finally got his plaque from O’C acknowledging him as, well, the PC. Pretty cool, especially since it doesn’t say People’s Champion of what. Could be anything. That’s a plaque he can hang in any room he’s in for the rest of his life.

So, a great start for a new organization and a new tournament. It was great to have all those UDL schools there, and the middle-schoolers. While a lot of us worked hard to make this happen, top credit goes to Jon Cruz (note use of whole name) who, as the head of the organization and tournament director, put it all together. Kudos.

Like a cicada, seventeen years later

I feel about one step away from being back in the middle of things. The Sailors start school tomorrow. Then, they have Thursday and Friday off. Not like when I was a kid. Then again, I went to Catholic schools, few of which observed the Jewish holidays. It was shortsighted on their part, granted, but not unexpected. These kids nowadays, however—bah! Get off my lawn!

Although many schools have been in operation for weeks now, the northeast is only just emerging. But I am not alone in my feeling that things are about to settle in. I’ve gotten emails from CP showing that he’s back at the helm of tabroom.com, keeping an eye on things. O’C has his finger on the trigger of some NYSDCA stuff, and I too want to dig in a little more there after an abortive early start on the website with WordPress, which did not play nicely with me. Catholic Charlie has scheduled the annual NYCFL directors’ meeting for this Saturday. I’ve sent out a tentative curriculum for the MHL workshop to the usual suspects, and we should finalize it over the next week or so, filling in the names of instructors. Where new coaches are starting, connections have been made, but there’s always a surprise or two that pops up early in the season. The Panivore’s already been to a tournament, the Vassar Babycakes RR, which ran much earlier than usual this year because, for some reason, O’C did not appreciate my idea that he run it on Yom Kippur and call it the Non-Jewish Vassar Babycakes RR. (The guy has no creativity!)

I updated some of our signup sheets, and while the Panivore and the People’s Champion seem to be gallivanting across the country for the next six months nonstop, already registered for just about everything up through graduation, the rest of the schedule seemed rather light. But putting in the MHL events filled in the gaps. And, after the meeting with the NYCFL folks this Saturday, adding in the local CFL events as well will seal the deal, eliminating any free weekend between now and kingdom come.

Tonight I meet with the Speecho-Americans again. Last time all I did was yak at them about various pieces/authors/ideas floating around in my own mind; tonight they perform their Pups pieces for me for the first time. So different from LD, sitting there watching someone not speak entirely in acronyms… Speaking of the Pups, they’re booked up the wazoo, a very large tournament, although I’m still waiting for them to add in the VLD judges, which of course need to be entered by the same deadline as the participants. I always fret about colleges and their judges. It’s just the way I am. Shockingly enough, the Tigers have already reached out to ensure that JV and I are on hand to do our usual in December. Of course, we responded. We’ve already got our meals all planned out! I suffer at Princeton from the proximity of Starbucks, where I start buying a series of triple-shot lattes one after the other with seemingly no effect other than the diminishing of my wallet. Go figure.

As I write this, the plan is tonight to start TVFT up again for the new season. Right after the speech meeting, to be precise. I’m looking forward to it. We had a lot of fun last year, and I think this year we’ll be adding a lot more independent voices to the mix. Skype makes it pretty easy for anyone to chime in; let us know if you wish to be among them. Anyhow, as I’ve mentioned before, the topic will be case disclosure here on the eve of Greenhill. And on the other podcast front, Jules has sent me an email saying that he wants to get started going again, but the Nostrumite is sort of busy with the opening of school so it may be another week or two. Whatever. It’s not as if I need something to do to fill the empty hours.

Time to start Christmas shopping yet?

I have now done a couple of things that put me semi-squarely back into the debate world.

First of all, I’ve been working on the MHL. I sent out an update to the members discussing this and that, reminding them of the schedule and the first event, which is the free workshop, same as last year. And more importantly, I either reminded them or advised them (I don’t recall having mentioned it before, but maybe I did) that we would be starting a novice division of PF at the MHL events. This strikes me as rather seismic in our thinking of PF around here, which seems to sadly lag behind the thinking everywhere else in the forensics universe. But if you can have novice policy and novice LD, I’m hard-pressed to know why you can’t have novice PF. We’ll even be introducing it at invitationals, including Bump. As always, a novice has to be a—duh—novice, and not some ringer who’s annually done every debate event under the sun other than the one in question, but that’s a given, right? Anyhow, the season seems closer and closer. Must be all the heat.

Secondly, I’ve begun been playing with some of my web pages, which is something I do every summer. Not the designs, which are Model T caliber in their complexity and will remain that way, but the content. I’m beginning to sharpen up a few pages O’C and I have been talking about, thinking about the NYSDCA, and punching up my own pages with this and that (things do change from year to year). Very soon I’ll also have to address this year’s Bump invite. O’C’s already been working on Big Jake, with among other things a new sked he’s run by me and Kaz, but then again, he begins working on the next year sometime during the third or fourth award ceremony of the current year. I tend to be less tinkery, since I don’t have that much to hone. But working in the novice PF division will require a bit of juggling on my part, no question.

CP has asked me and Catholic Charlie to do a little support work on tabroom.com, which I’ve just begun. Helping other people set up tournaments, essentially. He’s got this whole back end that is really either tech-ishly elegant or gruellingly overkilling, I’m not quite sure which. But as the system gets more use, no question that he really can’t support it all himself. Given that the last time he took a vacation, Jimmy Carter was in the White House, he does need to back off a little bit. So I’m learning the ins and outs of that, for what it’s worth. At some point I’ll want to take a peek at Yale, while I’m about it, to see that LD is set up the way we’ve talked about it, with MJP and death-to-shenanigan types and totally separate JV and V judge pools and so forth. Meanwhile I’ve got Sailors signed up hither and yon, ready to head up to the Pup in pretty decent numbers, so I’ve got to sort out rooms and transportation and so forth on the local level.

And yes, the Touch now works. With a total system reinstall, the extra software patch, dislocating unnecessary location services and running in the airplane mode, the battery is now back to its old reliable self. Whew. What a pain.

NYSDCA organization

I’m not quite sure what to call last Friday’s meeting of the New York State Debate Coaches’ Association. O’C and Stefan have been beating the bushes for folks to help design an organization that would do the things that we feel need to be done in the region, and some of the usual suspects and some new suspects turned up to join in the brainstorming. It was fun and productive.

Some things came out immediately. First, we’ll create a novice division of PF in the MHL and at other venues (I’ve already written this into the MHL site). Why should this activity be treated differently from the others? We’ll try to post a good calendar for the region, which we’ve come close to lately but haven’t hit spot on yet. We talked about some issues like membership and the board and whatnot, the predictable things one discusses at such an event. Even when we disagreed, we had remarkably good discussion that led to results everyone was happy with. The point of the exercise is openness and inclusion, which is the way debate is moving these days, which is as it should be. Any activity built on a dialectic ought to move towards a perceived better place through the combining of the best ideas at any time, always trying to improve. An organization charged with moderating such an activity ought to do the same.

It was a hot Friday, meanwhile, and I got into Manhattan early and roamed all over the city, camera in hand, visiting places I don’t ordinarily visit, like St. Patrick’s and Trump Tower, and poking my nose into parts of Central Park I don’t ordinarily stroll. After the meeting O’C and Kaz and I repaired to a Brazilian restaurant (feijoada all around!) to discuss the ins and outs of the Disney Debate Adventure, which is of much more enduring importance than the NYSDCA. A very good day, in other words.

One thing was interesting. Every single person at the NYSDCA meeting had a Mac (or, in my and O’C’s case, an iPad), except Kaz, who brought a pencil and paper (whatever they are).

New York State Debate Coaches' Assocciation

If you're a NY debate coach, you should join the NYSDCA. Write Cruz for details (I'm offline for a while.)