In which YOU get to decide

 

Hey, kids! Now you can play our game at home, starting with that old favorite: WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Early in the day I had eyes on a student judge who I could tell was, to be gentle about it, ill-prepared for her inaugural adventures at the back of the room. Sure enough, she didn’t acknowledge her ballot for round one—the most important thing I tell people they have to do when I conduct an opening judge meeting, which some people actually hear and pay attention to—but I had just seen her in the tab room and then heading up toward the debate room, so I knew things were at least going to happen, if not exactly according to Hoyle. Since it was a tight tournament, she got another ballot for round 2. Lo and B, she didn’t acknowledge that ballot either. And this time she didn’t show up. Before long one of the teams she should have been judging, and their coach, came into tab to set things aright. I got the message and told the team to go back up to the room and wait for me to find a solution. Then I went out into the hall where I know there was an available judge lounging about, and sent him up to the room to take over. And then, back in tab I slotted him in and removed the prodigal missing judge. 

Keep in mind that some time had passed. Up went the substitute judge to the third floor, and shortly thereafter down came the substitute judge from the third floor. Not only had the prodigal missing first judge finally showed up, despite no longer being listed as the judge, but the other team—not the ones who were in tab with me and their coach—was asserting that the first team needed to forfeit because they had showed up late for the round. (One never did find out where the other team was through all of this before now.) The prodigal judge, happy, I guess, to be relieved of duty, accepted this and sent the teams on their way. What, the substitute judge asked, happens now? We were more than a half hour away from start time, and both teams had dispersed into the ether, thinking that the round was a forfeit. 

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Well, here’s what I did. First, I swallowed my inclination to find and throttle the delinquent judge—I simply removed her from the pool for the rest of the day—and then subsequently I swallowed my inclination to find and throttle the other team that had unacceptably asserted that a forfeit was demanded. For the record, we tell the judges that only tab can declare a forfeit. But a team declaring one? Jeesh. For one reason or another by now it was too late to simply hold the round, even if I could find the missing teams in the labyrinth that is Bronx Science. 

There was no question that the first team was not late for the round, because they were in tab telling me about their missing judge, who I then replaced, so you might say they had a really good excuse for their so-called tardiness, if you wish to call it that. But on the other hand, say what you will, the other team was right in that the first team had been AWOL way after forfeit time. 

What I did was a double bye. If the coach of the other team had been at the tournament, we would have had a congenial little discussion (I don’t mean that sarcastically) to enlighten his students about rules and protocols, as they had veered parlously close to unacceptable arrogance in the situation. But, sadly, that team was in the hands of mere chaperones. If I had not been literally alone in the tab room at the time, maybe something else would have been decided. But it just happened that I was all on my lonesome for that particular piece of time, and perhaps running 8 divisions by oneself with all sorts of judge balancing does stifle one’s creativity a bit. 

What would you have done?

In which we stop to smell the non-roses

Saw a preview of the New York Botanical Garden's 2026 Orchid Show last night. I would say it's the best one ever, designed by someone called Mister Flower Fantastic. (There's an article about him in today's NY Times.) I can't recommend it highly enough. It goes away some time in April. If you can, catch it at night. Great lighting in the dark.

Books: Embassytown by China Mieville. Finished this one yesterday. Mieville is concerned here with the meaning of language, which might hold some interest for the odd structuralist debater out there. Along the way, his world-creating is way above average. Another one I'd definitely recommend. 

Debate: The Bronx Winter Local registration closed yesterday. Today it's all the setting up behind the scenes. One of the key things to do is to isolate the high school graduate judges in the JV/Novice pools and pull them in to judge the Varsity kids. In judging, variety is the spice of life. And just because a coach has only a couple of novices in the game tomorrow doesn't mean they shouldn't handle a varsity round or two. It's all in the pooling. When folks register their judges they're asked to identify them as either students or HS grads. With that info in hand, I can then do a bit of scraping around. I mean, there's more to tabbing a tournament than hitting the Make It So button and watching everyone immediately rush to their rounds. (Come to think of it, hardly anyone ever does immediately rush to their rounds. There are some judges especially who like to play hard to get. Which is why at tournaments I wear both good walking shoes and a grim expression. It's the perfect combination.)

In which we cast our ballot and it stays cast

Debate: It ain't over till it's over, as the saying goes. In debate, on the other hand, once it's over, it's over.

The case in point: Saturday, after an elimination round ended with the judges voting 2-1, some time passed, and one of the judges on the winning side came in to change her vote. She had decided that she had voted the wrong way. At this point, anyone involved with the teams in the debate left the room, and the rest of us were tasked with deciding what to do. 

It was not a hard decision. As one person put it, in the olden paper-ballot days, once a ballot crossed the threshold, it was etched in stone. Submitting an online ballot comprises a similar petrifaction. This has long been the rule of thumb, and short of accidentally hitting the wrong button and coming running into tab immediately thereafter, waving your offending button-hitting hand in front of you and mea culpa-ing up and down the room including from the ceiling, which I have seen happen, once it's over the line, it's over. In the case in question, the original ballot stood. There was absolutely no disagreement among us. 

And here's the thing that happened, as we learned later, which underlines the correctness of this decision. In the round, after the ballots were cast, the one voter on the losing side, the squirrel as we say, gave their reasons first. Which means that after the round was over, an experienced judge laid out why they thought the losing side should have won. The person who came into tab was an inexperienced judge, and she had heard not only the round, but all these good reasons for voting the other way. After some thought after leaving the debate room, she decided that she really should have voted the other way, and came to us to try to effect that change. 

The issue was not the rightness or wrongness of the ballot. The tabroom is not responsible for insuring that every decision is correct. If for nothing else, the reason we have three-person panels in elimination rounds is that there is often reasonable disagreement on how a round went, and subjective analysis is, well, subjective. (There are also rounds where there is no question of who won, so there are both plenty of 3-0 decisions, as well as plenty of 2-1 decisions.) There may be no such thing as a "correct" ballot. But after a round, a judge sits there and decides, by whatever criteria, how to vote. They then cast their vote on that criteria. The ballots are collected, and that is the end of it. Anything could happen after a vote is cast: a judge goes online to research something in the round, a student who was observing talks to the judge and tells them why they're wrong (my students were always disagreeing with me), or as in the situation we're discussing, another judge's analysis of the arguments in the round changes their mind. 

If this were archery, whoever hits the target closest to the center would win. But this is not archery. Some of it is objective, some of it is subjective. Because of the subjective parts, we declare a moment beyond which a decision is set and irreversible. 

Case closed. 

(By the way, if we could recast our ballots after an election, wouldn't Harris now be President?)

TV: First of all, a little Eugene Levy goes a long way. On his show on Apple, "The Reluctant Traveler," he indeed goes a long way. I tired of it long before I ran out of episodes. Alternative travelers, if such a show type appeals to you, are Conan O'Brien ("Conan Must Go") and Richard Ayoade ("Travel Man"). And for the cosiest of cosy travelers, "Great Canal Journeys" with Timothy West and Prunella Scales. Three great series.

Digging back into the 90s archives (thank you, Amazon) there's "The Thin Blue Line" starring Rowan Atkinson. Need I say more? Sadly only two seasons, but I'll take what I can get.

And finally, we just finished watching "Dept. Q" on Netflix. It's one of those shows where you immediately are taken by the detecting team or, I guess, you're not. I was. And now we eagerly await season 2 in God knows how many years from now. 

In which we go bananeras

Debate: Normally I let the resolutions wash over me, since I don’t have to work with anyone on them anymore. And normally I don’t find them particularly problematic. However, with March-April LD, I’m glad I’m not in it.

Resolved: The United States military ought to abide by the principle of non-intervention.

There is certainly an accepted principle of non-interventionism, which goes into all sorts of areas like sovereignty and R2P—Responsibility to Protect—and the like. The Enlightenment philosopher in me likes all that. I even like arguing isolationism…maybe. What I wonder about is how this resolution will actually play out in the front of the room. If one simply thinks only or intervention and realpolitik in 2026 in the USA, one might prefer to do Model UN instead for these two months. And if one were thinking historically, one might look up military intervention on Wikipedia to be met with the opening warning “Not to be confused with United States military deployments or United States involvement in regime changes," followed by a list of about seventeen and a half gazillion examples of military intervention going back to the Mayflower. My personal favorite is the so-called Banana Wars, which has its own ring to it, but which sounds even better in Spanish, Guerras bananeras. I could go around saying Guerras bananeras until the cows come home. 

Obviously the point of this resolution was its theoretical side. But in today’s LD, and in today’s America, good luck with that. I mean, I would go so far as to worry that although non-intervention is a recognized term of art that implies the word foreign, in these ICE-y times… Fortunately there isn’t much debate at this point in the year, at least around here, aside from the odd qualifier. Oh, yeah, and also our State Finals. Note to LDers at NY States: there’s a lot of lay judges sitting in the back of the room. If you don’t debate for them, your Sunday in the Bronx is going to be very, very peaceful, without the interruption of elimination rounds to disturb your solace. 

Listening (audit division): I am not big on cover versions of songs that do little more than imitate the original. If I want the original, I'll go listen to it. A cover version needs to be in some way a reimagining. Which isn't always easy.

Reimagining certain artists is especially difficult. In the age of artists who compose and perform the songs and are knee-deep in their arranging and production, the end result, as much as is humanly possible, is exactly what they wanted. This is very much true of the Beatles, who were, with their guru George Martin, pioneers in the recording studio (see "The Beatles Anthology" on Disney+). Recorded Beatles music was the apotheosis of Beatle music. What more could be said? So good covers of Beatles music is rare. After Joe Cocker, name two. So it becomes interesting to hear versions of Beatle songs that are reinterpretations or reimaginings or deconstructions or whatever that successfully break from the original recordings stuck in one's brain, and that challenge the canon. Different rhythms, different harmonies, radically different voicings—yes, please. I'll listen to that, out of curiosity if nothing else, but normally I would expect to be disappointed. Which brings us to the subject at hand, the album "This Bird Has Flown," from Reimagine Music in 2005. (Reimagine Music was the brainchild of a man named Jim Sampas. Jack Kerouac was his uncle. I'm sure we'll be dealing more with Sampas in the future.) this album is all of the US version of "Rubber Soul" by different artists in different ways, and I really like it. One or two of the songs I'm not a fan of, but most of it is not only  enjoyable but revelatory. The takes on the music are different from the originals, thus bringing out highly different aspects of the originals that you might not have thought of previously. At the same time, you hear how amazingly good these songs are simply as songs to begin with. I mean, yeah, sure, "Rubber Soul" is on my GOAT list, but at some point one may only be listening and not hearing. Now on this album I'm hearing these songs again fresh, both in the new interpretations and the recollection of the originals that inform them. As it turns out, most of the artists on this album are new to me, and I've captured them on the queue for the future, so we'll deal with them separately when the time comes. In the meanwhile, you can do worse than checking this particular album out now.

By the way, there's apparently at least a 50th or 60th anniversary tribute album as well. Much more to look forward to!

(I was going to write something very long and tedious about this one, but after much thought, I decided against it. It was either too obvious, or too complicated. And hell, it's long and tedious enough as it is!)

In which I don't know's on third

Last weekend was the Pennsbury tournament, officially known as the Pennsbury Falcon Invitational. This is a major hoop-de-do in the shadow of the Sesame Place theme park with well over a thousand entrants in every forensic event known to humankind. I was there helping out in the LD/PF tabroom. Pennsylvania Jeff, a graduate of Pennsbury and the coach at Strath Haven, is the chief cowboy at this rodeo, and he does an excellent job. This event is relatively overlooked east of the Hudson, which would be a shame if the PFI wasn’t already bursting at the scenes. 

Our venue, Pennsbury High School, comprises two major buildings, East and West, about a fifteen minute walk apart. This separation does not, apparently, mean that students stay in their building for classes during the school day. It’s minus ten degrees and the sleet is ripping the chrome off the Tin Lizzies? Get out there and walk over to your World Geography surprise quiz. Lexington in Massachusetts similarly sends its students into the rain and heat and gloom of night, but at least at that one it’s a quick pop out and pop back in. Fortunately the PFI debate tab staff was not subjected to any of this, with PF/LD running at East and CX running at West. In fact, the LD/PF tabroom even had a couple of comfy reclining chairs. Those Pennsylvanians know how to live, aside from subjecting their offspring to the rain and dark and gloom of night. 

Of course, as at any tournament, stuff happens. One of the biggest entrants, so big they required two buses, had one of their buses break down first thing Saturday morning. This meant that LD and PF got off to an hour-late start. Various ideas were kicked around for handling this situation, until finally Pennsylvania J figured a way to adjust the flighting of the first elimination round with augmented judging from a different division. It worked. That night we still finished up at the original scheduled time with the originally scheduled round. The best thing about this was that nobody panicked. We just went about our business, explored every imaginable possibility (none of the other cowpokes in tab was exactly at their first rodeo), and made it work. The nice thing about tabroom.com is that it makes it so that almost anyone can run a tournament. The nice thing about an experienced tab staff is that they can handle every contingency that would send any inexperienced tab staff out the window. A number of the tournaments in our region are run by virtually the same staffs that run the major end-of-the-year national tournaments. This group knows what it’s doing, even when the tournament doesn't.

A few things happened that are grist for further, lengthy discussion, and we’ll get to them eventually. Meanwhile, is there any way you can’t enjoy when you have to assign a substitute judge, and the name that pops to the top of the possibilities is named Hu? “Who is going into that round?” “Yes.” “I mean, who is judging?” “Yes.” This didn’t go on for long, but it does show that Abbott and Costello will never go away. 

In which drumsticks do not come into play

I am resolved to the idea that I am not exactly au courant. If I look at, say, the red carpet at a major cultural event, I can identify virtually none of the celebrities. It's not that I don't recognize A-listers anymore, but that even their names don't come close to ringing a bell. I do not find this particularly bothersome. I still know a lot of other stuff. It's not that I'm losing my mind to the ravages of age, but that my mind does not travel the realms of, say, contemporary pop singers, influencers, sports stars other than golfers (who are seldom on red carpets), etc. These are generational issues. I'll stick to my times, you are more than welcome to yours. 

It turns out, sadly, that there seem to be similar generational eras of language. I wanted to make a point about a debate issue this weekend at Pennsbury, so I turned to my young colleague and said that we needed to talk turkey.* She looked at me with that glazed expression that says to one and all, what do turkeys have to do with it? Later some minor issue arose, which I referred to as small potatoes. I would have thought that this one was common enough, but aside from her wondering if I planned to catalogue an entire Thanksgiving dinner, I did not get much of a response from her. When later I remarked, when I knew she had heard me perfectly well, that I don't chew my cabbage twice, we decided to call it quits on the idea that we were speaking a shared language. Later Kaz reported to me that someone she had been speaking to gave her that glazed expression when she used the word milquetoast. Given that the program I am writing this in accepts the word milquetoast without offering any absurd alternatives, I am left with no absurd alternative myself but to offer that theoretical glazed expression in return now. 

We are not talking about slang here. Slang comprises words that come and go with the speed of how long it takes from its invention by young people to its utterance by old people, at which point young people are no longer using it. We are not talking neologisms versus paleogisms (ironically, a neologism). We are talking about idioms, figures of speech if you will, or maybe tropes. The expression "talking turkey" can be traced back to the 1840s. We are talking the aspects of language that make it different from mathematics. And we are talking well-educated people here, teachers entrusted with the minds of impressionable adolescents. And these teachers simply do not understand English as she is spoken anymore. 

We are doomed. 

Debate: When my colleague and I were, I had hoped, about to talk turkey about debate, I referred her to the very long essay I had recently written that was, ultimately, a defense of parent judging. Immediately upon seeing the article on the screen she gasped a TL;DR** and scrolled down to the comments. There she read from some yabbo that I should be talking more about debate as I used to do in this blog and less about all this other crap. Since I almost never read the comments, I would have otherwise missed this insightful response to what I'm doing here. The thing is, as I no longer coach, I don't theoretically have any skin in the game. But I am what you might call a debate entrepreneur, or maybe a debate proselytizer, and even though I am no long working with debate students, I am still working with debate in general. I am very much a part of the debate ethos, so to speak. So, my fine feathered yabbo, I agree with you, and I will, going forward, get back to talking more about debate per se. 

* When I was in trade publishing, I had an author who spoke a brand of English that some say arose from the suburbs of Philadelphia. Maybe the Jersey Shore was more like it. He once brought a serious issue to me, saying that we needed to sit down and discuss turkey. Language, obviously, both evolves and devolves. 

** If this article had a halfway decent copyeditor, they would have flagged this and commented that you can't gasp a TL;DR.

In which we take in a show

We hit the road yesterday to see the National Theatre Live performance of Mrs. Warren's Profession. These filmed performances are very well put together. The last one we saw was The Importance of Being Earnest with Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon. (The team that filmed Merrily We Roll Along could learn a thing or two from the NTL.) There is no question that watching these are very much like being at a play rather than a movie. This one shone brightly because of Imelda Staunton in the title roll. Her work in the third act as the embittered mother is absolutely thrilling. You get chills watching her. How often does that happen watching anything? On the surface, of course, the play is about prostitution—it was banned all over the place in its early days—but with Shaw, one sees hints of his complicated political thinking throughout, reading into it what one will. I haven't seen a play like that in a while. It makes me wish that NYC theater was more available (I find the costs ridiculous), and it makes me reconfirm my desire to see more plays when we visit London (where the costs are reasonable). 

The first play I ever saw was on Broadway was Peter Pan with Mary Martin, so I do go back a long way theaterwise, seeing all sorts of original casts over the years. The best of it was when we lived in Manhattan in the 70s. Chorus Line, Chicago, Sweeney Todd... Obviously my bent was for musicals, but there were straight plays too, including bunches of Stoppard. The only difference is that with the straight plays you don't take home the original cast recording and play it for the next five decades. Nowadays, aside from family trips to London—last time there we introduced my granddaughter to the spectacle of The Lion King—our theater these days is mostly limited to the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, which we support as patrons because of their education program. 

We live in a historical moment where the arts are being hit hard. Supporting the arts, sure, but also just bathing oneself in the arts is highly recommended. See Stoppard's Rock and Roll, for instance, for further elucidation. 

Listening (audit division): "Paradise and Lunch" by Ry Cooder. I'm rather happy that I didn't find out about Ry Cooder when I was younger; I don't think I could have financially afforded to keep up with his amazing output. I would have had to give up theatergoing! A brief bio: Cooder has played with [everybody] [ever] in addition to his own albums. Cooder discovered [most everybody else] [ever]. This album at hand is great. If nothing else, I'm a sucker for slide guitar. (And pedal steel guitar, while we're at it, which is probably somewhere in the Cooder resume). I've got a boatload more albums to queue up that are him, and then there's the "appears on," and then there's the ones he's merely associated with, e.g., "Let it Bleed." We'll be seeing more of Mr. Cooder in the future.