In which we step down from the altar

I told Catholic Charlie that I’m pulling out of working CatNats. I have nothing against the organization—I told him I’d be happy to do the virtual Middle School tournament again—or against the actual Grand Tournament, of which I was a fan going back to my earliest coaching days. In fact, some of my favorite horror stories are tales of lost CatNat debate venues beyond the end of beyond, without food, water, sanitation facilities, or breathable atmosphere, where the restaurants closed before the last round, if they ever opened in the first place, and everyone judged all six times on the first day, even though there were only five rounds. Things were much better later on, even before I migrated into the tab room; they got their act together and things now are as smooth as the proverbial goat. That Nationals Saturday remains a tough one for judges, but at least the venues have become safe for human habitation. The last few years, in big hotels in Chicago and DC, has been about as good as it can get. Catholic C says that the upcoming event in Lafayette, Louisiana, will be the best digs ever. I believe him, except for the fact that Lafayette, Louisiana, is, the last time I looked, in Lafayette, Louisiana. You can’t get there from here. 

And that, circumspectly, is the reason I’m pulling out. The old bones just don’t have that kind of abuse left in them. Hard travel for endless hours—e.g., from chez moi to chez CatNat last weekend comprised two trains, a subway, and a half hour hike in 90 degree plus heat and/or rain—and way too much rich and expensive restaurant food, the alternative to which would be way too much poor and cheap inedible fast food which, nowadays, is not dreamt in my philosophy, and nary enough sleep to get even a splash of REM going. And yes, I was physically ill from some or all of this by the time I got home on Monday. Weekends in Minneapolis or Lafayette promise only more of the same. (I wouldn’t mind Orlando but I know the closest I would come to that one is Uganda.) Travel tournaments are a younger person’s game. Or maybe it’s just me. When I first started coaching I would go to all the expected venues, by air, land, or sea, and to be honest, I tired of it really quickly. It was fun when it was new, but back then I was living a life of a regular Day Job and a regular Weekend Job and about three minutes a week left over for everything else. I quickly devolved to a menu of basically local tournaments. Nowadays, tabbing, I go as far as Lexington a couple of times a year because I have a special friend relationship with Sheryl, and that’s about it. I’m planning on pulling out of Princeton as soon as I can get Kaz in my place as main advisor in a couple of years. After that, I’ve still got more than enough local gigs between NYCFL in-persons and ODLs to fill up anyone’s dance card. I do this because I want to serve the debate community, a cause I strongly support, not because I want to kill myself. And I know that it’s probably best to put oneself out to pasture before the knackers come along and do it for you. My biggest job is to find my replacement running the local tournaments. Somewhere in the NYCFL universe there’s someone who can do this every week and keep everyone happy, but they have yet to raise their head. And Lord knows I’ve asked for tab recruits. Granted it takes a particular mentality not only to tab, which isn’t terribly complicated, but to actually enjoy tabbing, which is something else altogether. All of us in the Northeast Traveling Tab Room share both the facility for it and the ability to derive pleasure from it, while at the same time quite enjoying one another’s company. All that is rare, and if one of us were to pull out because they’re older than Methuselah, finding a replacement isn’t, as I am learning, easy. 

Oh, well. I’m not pulling out of anything else in the foreseeable future. And replacing me in PF tab won’t be hard. Janet knows how to do everything that needs to be done and merely needs a second pair of hands to make it happen, and Charlie and I already have a good idea of who that could be. After all, every diocese has to provide tournament workers, so there’s no lack of helping hands. It’s the local business that I worry most about. There is time, given that although my hearing isn’t exactly what it used to be the rest of me seems to be percolating along well enough. Advancing years have not made me any more demented than I ever was. Sooner or later someone who would like to tab will come along, and I can retire to my rocking chair and watch the bees buzzing about in my garden. If you think you might be that person, please let me know.

In which we get back to listening some music

I traveled a bit last week, and sort of hated it. I was working a two-day tournament in DC, and I ate too much rich food, slept too little rich sleep, got battered by A) 90 degree heat followed by B) endless rain, and managed to catch the creeping crud (or, more likely, a mild cold) from being held captive in too many small rooms and too many train cars. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll do it again. However, I am back listening to music in the mornings, primarily going through my audit playlist, the one with albums I’ve mostly never heard before. Thank you, Spotify. 

The latest update:

• “Moving Targets,” Flo and Eddie — The surviving Turtles who became a doubles act (and also at some point, radio DJs) do a decent enough job of keeping the old sound alive, but the songs just aren’t there for them. 
• “Love So Strong,” Sugar Pie DeSanto — I’ve come to think of DeSanto as my own personal discovery. I have now listened to everything she recorded and loved all of it, and I can’t imagine why I had never heard of her. Peylia Marsema Balinton was a tiny dynamo, a buddy and collaborator with Etta James, a wild dancer who could do standing backflips, and a 2024 inductee to the Blues Hall of Fame. Do yourself a favor and seek her out.
• Mhaol, “Attachment Styles” — I went to Wikipedia to learn more about this unlistenable record, and found nothing. That is as it should be.
• Duffy Power, “Innovations” — A Brit pop star who never made it big, but he’s good and he lasted forever. He transitioned from attempting basic rock into blues. Definitely worth listening to.
• “The Paramounts at Abbey Road” — Another group that never made it over to me from England. This is good, straight-ahead Brit rock of the 60s. Enjoyable, and I grabbed a couple for my main playlist. 
• The Cure, “Three Imaginary Boys” — I kinda like The Cure. God knows why.
• “The White Stripes Greatest Hits” — On the other hand, I need someone to explain to me the attraction of the White Stripes. Lots of people obviously love them. I, on the other hand, am not lots of people, and I find them to be purveyors of amateurish noise. So when you do explain the attraction to me, don’t even begin to cite their playing. My cat plays better than this. And my cat is dead. 
• Beatles “Anthology 4” — I’ve talked about this before. The first Anthology set had some revelatory tracks, and this one doesn’t. So it goes.
• Kes, “On in 5” — Spotify calls them one of Trinidad and Tobago’s most celebrated musical acts. Very enjoyable, lively stuff. 

In which we go the the Catholic Forensic League Grand National Tournament

And then there’s CatNats…

Seeing as the event was in D.C., I arrived a couple of days early to do some touristing. The temperature was in the 90s, which made schlepping around a bit more daunting than one would like, but I got to tour the Capitol, ponder the Gutenberg Bible in the Library of Congress, see a music performance of The Great Gatsby, say hello to not one, not two, but three Vermeers in the National Gallery (not to mention Madame Monet and her son, a Whistler woman in white and a Rembrandt or two), and roam around the History Museum paying homage the wigs of both Harpo and Chico perched beside Groucho’s suit, Judy’s red shoes, the Babe’s signature with the rest of the team on aged baseball, and a whole bunch of other goodies from the Arts and Leisure past. And, oh yeah, I discovered I had forgotten to bring a mouse—I’m an 80s computist and can’t live without one—so I wandered into the nearby Apple Store and plunked down a hundred bucks for the wee, sleekit, cowrie, tim’rous beastie. Granted the Apple mouse is pretty great, but a not-so-great generic mouse off of Amazon is maybe fifteen bucks and does the job almost as well (and without a charger under its butt). I also gave the Neo a shot while I was in the store, and watched it slowly load its icons into the Finder and thought to myself, This slow, in an Apple Store? I think not.

Then it started to rain and it was time for CatNatting.

Friday is prep day. Not that there’s all that much to prep, but there is the issue of breaking out the folks we can for late rounds so that we don’t get caught with 5 white middle-aged men from Regis in the final. I have nothing against middle-aged men from Regis as a general rule, considering that half the tournaments I run are lousy with them, but CatNats runs on no-repeat-judging and no same-region-judging, and if you don’t play your cards right, you can end up in trouble. The diocesan directors allot judges in advance for all the break rounds, so you have to work with what you’ve got. If you plan ahead, you’re fine, which we learned early on in the process. Friday is for planning ahead.

The tournament itself isn’t particularly difficult. You have a lot of teams and a lot of judges, and the tabroom software runs best when the numbers are large. The work is chasing down the handful of no-shows and tech issues, like the poor woman who took an Uber to the wrong Westin (there’s at least 3 of them—Westins, that is, not poor women in Ubers). Mostly everybody is there to do the job, and they do. We provided ample warning in advance that they might judge all 5 prelims, and many did, and they didn’t come in whining how they can’t be expected to work all day under these conditions as they have in the past. Come to think of it, no matter how many rounds judges are assigned, and how fairly the burden is split, just about every invitational sooner or later has those poor harried neurasthenic judges storming tab demanding with their last breaths to be set free. But as I say, blissfully not this time. 

There are various rules and regs that are peculiar to CatNats, some of which I understand, some of which I don’t. Whatever. That’s probably true of every tournament everywhere. In situations where one finds the Rs and Rs unacceptable, one then votes with one’s feet. I’ve been doing CatNats for a few years now, so obviously my feet have voted for the incumbents. I am finding the weekend a bit difficult in some respects, though, mostly because I’m the oldest person there (until Grandma Julia shows up). Traveling to wherever it is can be wearing. At least Chicago and DC offered rewards beyond the tournament; some of the venues, like the upcoming Lafayette, Louisiana, are, well, Lafayette, Louisiana. You can’t get there from here, and when you do get there, there you are. And then there’s the food. My stomach is not exactly delicate, but I probably ate three times as much as I would if I were at home, and not necessarily as healthfully. And what is this “sleep” of which I have heard tell? Okay, I’ll admit it: I’ seriously thinking that this may have been my last CatNats. I mean, I did start going in 1996, back when I had skin in the game, and barely missed a one in my coaching years. I’ve now tabbed maybe half a dozen one way or the other. I even helped out with the virtual Middle School tournament. At some point…

We’ll see. 

In which we watch a little television, or more to the point, a little bit of a very big television, this being 2026 and all

One does watch TV…

• First of all, “The Forsytes,” because this requires special attention. When all was said and done I gave this one a Meh rating. The key problem was that it tried to pack too much into too short a time. Every scene seemed to last about eleven seconds and then we would rush to the next scene, and the next, and the next, never getting any traction anywhere. The only sparks between characters were in the final episode for the eleven seconds between Bossiney and Irene. The actors were for the most part perfectly fine and although occasionally miscast, quite up to the job, but the job wasn't there for them. Forty years ago I listened to The Forsyte Saga as a Books-on-Tape project and remembered enjoying it, so I figured I’d give it a read now. The volumes in my home library had type the size of [metaphor for some really small thing] so I downloaded it to the Kindle, and started reading. At this point, I have discovered that the TV show created the matriarch Ann practically whole cloth out of an invalid sister of James and old Jolyon (no doubt to grab the Dame Maggie Smith / Christine Baranski market), subtracted about 30 years and 8 siblings from said James and old Jolyon, replaced a governess with a dressmaker and given her secret children, focused on young Jolyon’s wife who is in fact dead as a doornail for six years long years at the start of the books, made June young Jolyon’s stepdaughter rather than actual daughter, created a completely non-existent Forsyte family business, moved the two remaining siblings into houses next door to one another, etc., etc., etc. These are, in other words, not the Forsytes. They are Forsytian stand-ins at best. Cryptoforsytes? Which raises the question, Why? Here you have a Nobel Prize winning set of novels that, in the past, provided numerous dramatizations fairly successfully, as I understand it. Why take those novels and change practically everything? If you don’t like what Galsworthy did in the first place, why bother with him? Why not just bite your thumb at him and steal all you want and change everything to your heart’s content and then call if something like "The Joneses" or "The Fink-Nottles?" It’s not as if in 2026 The Forsyte Saga is such an extraordinary hook upon which to pull in one’s viewing fish. Find me someone who has read these books who is under the age of 80 and, well, there’s me (assuming I stick with it) and about 123 other English-speaking people in your potential TV audience. So, ultimately, this show is a go-figure enterprise from the get-go, and I can’t possibly recommend it to anyone other than that 123 Galsworthy-worthy types who might want to marvel at the mayhem.
• I loved "Shrinking," on the other hand. What a great batch of characters! The third season wrap-up made it look over and done, but the interwebs are promising yet more to come. Good.
• “We Call it Imagineering” on Disney+ is an import from YouTube. It goes a little deeper than the usual documentary. Disney has been learning that you don’t have to keep the magic secret; there’s a lot of people out there who think knowing how it’s done makes it even more magical. I’m with them. 
• “The Irregulars” on Netflix is a totally off-the-wall Sherlock pastiche that will set True Irregulars off into apoplexy. It makes "The Forsytes" look like canon. It’s not great, but the cast is amiable enough. I neither recommend it nor pan it; if you like oddball supernatural stories, well, why not?
• Because I loved the movie and never watched the TV show, which was on for a hundred years with a thousand spinoffs, I started watching "Stargate." I’ve only watched a handful so far but I am told that it does find its stride soon enough, and as I say, it was awfully popular. The jury hasn’t even entered the box yet on this one. 
• “Mr. Wonder” — What the hell was this about??? What a nutty damned show. The episode with Josh Gad stands out especially. Anyone who wants to accuse the Feige Marvelites of the same old same old need to watch this one. Thumbs up? Yeah, why not. 
• “DTF St Louis” is another oddball show, where there is a dead body at the beginning and then we peel the onion of all the characters to find out why. It is a weird show, but it’s compelling, with a lot of strange behaviors and black humor. The best character is the old detective totally out of his milieu in all the craziness.
• Have I mentioned that we've been watching "David Chang Live?" Totally fun, and it's not even foodie-observant. Chang grabs a couple of friends and cooks a meal for them, obviously live to begin with, but streaming now for three seasons. Light entertainment that actually entertains. Recommended.

And that's it for now.

In which we're back listening to music

It must be Queue Thursday...

• “Lullaby of Broadway” from Rod Stewart and Jools Holland — The ubiquitous Holland, who often gets off a good one, and the also-ubiquitous Stewart, who hasn’t gotten off a good one since he discovered and subsequently attempted to lay waste to the Great American Songbook, teamed up for this lively recording of big band hits, proving two things: a lot of people like what Stewart does nowadays, as this was Holland’s first number one UK hit, and the Stewart and Holland combination is not a hell of a lot better than Stewart without Holland. As with Stewart's other albums of standards, that it’s bad is not the problem. I mean, it isn’t bad, it’s just that it isn’t really good either. Search the word “meh” in Google, and no doubt the collected oeuvre of Stewart singing standards will be the first hit. I listened to this because I’ve been listening to Holland. I am happy to put it, and my mother's Rod Stewart—she literally had a couple of his albums, neither of which was "Gasoline Alley"—behind me.
• Randy Newman, “Born Again” — Newman is one of those artists I simply run through from the start, and when I get to the end, I start over. I always find new stuff that I like. No doubt there will be yet another Disney soundtrack from the upcoming Toy Story 487. When I saw him in concert a number of years ago, he mumbled something about Disney being very, very good to him. Among the songs he wrote for them is “When Somebody Loved Me,” one of my all-time favorites, so I’d say he’s also been very, very good to Disney. Meanwhile, “Born Again” is solid, with “It’s Money That I Love” as the lead number.
• “Live Dead” was, as I recall, their first live album. As a Deadhead before you were born I immediately bought it and proceeded to never much like it. I’ve never much liked any live Dead recordings. Which demonstrates no doubt that I was not really a Deadhead by any true measure. Nevertheless, "Workingman’s Dead" and "American Beauty," which are one album as far as I’m concerned (cf. "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver"), are in my GOATs collection. Again, I'm doing the Dead as a run-through from beginning to end, and no doubt over again after that. Maybe I am a Deadhead!
• Rick Derringer, “Derringer” — Why not? He’s fun enough. I'll try more.
• Bad Company, “Holy Water” — I’ve listened to a lot of Bad Company by now, and it’s all starting to sound the same. I think they ran out of creative steam before this album. It’s all fine, but we’ve been there before. Song-writing ain’t easy, Pumpkin, which is why the streets are not littered with George Gershwins or Paul Simonses.
• Chris Rea, “Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?” — Rea got onto the list by having his obituary appear in the Times. According to Wikipedia: “He was known for his distinctive gravelly voice, slide guitar playing and music style blending soft rock with blues.” There’s not much of that on this perfectly pleasant album, but we’ll see what happens as we continue through the works in order.
• “The Original Lost Elektra Sessions” of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band — Exactly what you expect.
• Olivia Dean, “Messy” — I can’t imagine who put this into my queue. 
• Al Jardine, “A Postcard from California” — An original unrelated-to-Brian Beach Boy, Jardine has put out exactly one solo album, this one, in 2010. I’ve listened to it a couple of times now. It’s got a couple of nice originals, plus some interesting retakes with friends, especially the version of “Help Me, Rhonda.” Cheerful stuff.
• Elvin Bishop, “Ace in the Hole” — Speaking of Paul Butterfield, I’ve been listening to the full Bishop, and enjoying him a lot. This one tends to have a bit more talking than I would prefer, as in talkin’ blues, but there’s worse things. I will continue on my journey, as this guy makes some great music.
• James Gang, “Jesse Come Home” — Their swan song, and it feels like a swan song, and it even has a “going off into the sunset” cover painting. They definitely had run out of gas by this point, but it wasn’t a terrible way to go out. 

In which we watch some movies and listen to some books

Movies: As noted previously, over the years my appetite for movies has lessened quite a bit. There was a time in my youth where I practically saw a movie a day—any movie, thanks to a membership at the Museum of Modern Art. Their daily 5:30 showing meshed perfectly with my 9-5 job in midtown. NYC in the 70s was movie theaters on every street corner, with all sorts of revivals and double features and foreign films: a cinema buff’s paradise. I was there for all of it. So what happened? Age, I guess. And not a lot of movies calling to me to leave home and go through the bother. And when I am at home, there’s plenty of reliable TV fare that as often as not is more engaging than the latest features. So it goes. 

That said, two movies got me to leave home recently. First, Project Hail Mary. Loved the book, enjoyed the movie. Not much more to say, except that I did recommend it for my nine-year-old granddaughter. Second, The Christophers. I saw this at the local arthouse, based on a critic’s choice review from the NY Times. It’s a Soderbergh film, and quite good, with two excellent core performances by Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. I did not know Coel prior to this, but she manages to stand up majestically to McKellen, which is no easy feat for any actor. Highly recommended.

And then, with a free night at home, I watched Sinners. I didn’t really know what to expect aside from vampires, which honestly is not that great a magnet for me; I’m not exactly a horror movie fan. All the accolades nevertheless convinced me to give it a try. And, well, if you’ve seen this movie, you know that it’s in no way a silly horror movie. The first half of the film, culminating in a magical/phenomenal musical sequence at the juke joint, is something you haven’t seen before and won’t forget. And the vampires, when it comes to it, have something more to say than just, “May I come in.” No wonder this movie received so many accolades. I loved it. 

I also watched the final Downton Abbey movie. I mean, why not? It's like the TV show, only longer, with Granny gone, and everyone retiring at the end. Downton was always one step down from the gold standard of Upstairs, Downstairs but it was nevertheless watchable. So are the movies. And, finally, there won't be any more of them and we can get on with our lives. 

Books: On paper—all right, Kindle—I got to the last of Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books. All of them are great, but I would definitely recommend reading them in order. After that, another of my favorite authors is Connie Willis, and I went for her first novel, Lincoln’s Dreams. This is an oddball book, genre-busting if you will. It’s not my favorite of hers—that distinction goes to the Oxford time travel series—but I certainly learned more about Robert E. Lee than I was expecting. If you’re new to her, the starting point would be The Doomsday Book. If you don’t like that one, you and I are done. 

And on the audio front, a woman who is swiftly joining the ranks of my favorites is H.G. Parry. I finished The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, and loved it. There’s something about a good away-at-school book that can really grab you. Who doesn’t mix in the narrative fiction with the narrative reality of one’s own school days, somehow wishing that the real had been more like the fictional, which in fact it somehow becomes? I was not a fan of her historical rights-of-magicians stories, The Shadow Histories, but there’s plenty more where that came from. She’s a New Zealander, by the way, and I would expect she has lots more books in her. 

Alan Moore's The Great When, on the other hand, was an almost impossible listen. The problem was that the style of the writing requires serious attention that is impossible to give to an audiobook. I gave up after a couple of hours of not really following it. I might try to read it on paper some day. It is not the first book that I've come across on my headphones that just doesn't work as an audio, including most indicatively Mrs. Dalloway and its stream of consciousness. Oh well... 

In which we honor Ted Turner Debate

Correct me if I’m wrong on any of this…

Once upon a time there was high school debate. (My HS time, for the sake of full disclosure.) A team of two debaters argued one another over government policies, citing facts to support their positions. Each team had a shoebox of index cards on which were hand-written the facts they were presenting, collected mostly from magazine articles, discovered through using a library reference book entitled The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature (which, BTW, still exists online). Over time, and thanks to Xerox machines, those index cards grew into giant files of 8x10 sheets of documentation; an elite team might wheel four giant Rubbermaid tubs of these files from tournament to tournament and from round to round. In order to use this vast collection of research, speakers had to talk fast. Eventually, at the so-called highest levels of debate, the speaking speed was virtually incomprehensible to anyone not trained in it. 

Phillips 66 is a petroleum refineries company that, as many major corporations do, sponsors community activities. For a number of years Phillips sponsored high school debate: let’s face it, it takes a bit of the thing Woody Guthrie called the do re mi to run a national tournament. One year around 1980, the story goes, Phillips execs visited the NFL (as NSDA was called then) national tournament to bask in the glow of all that beneficial do re mi. They made the mistake, apparently, of visiting a debate round, and found themselves in a tobacco auction. Can’t we have something our people can watch and actually make some sort of sense out of? 

Thus Lincoln-Douglas Debate was born, aimed to provide an alternative to the existing Cross-X or Policy debate. The goal was to create an event that wouldn’t have all year, including summer camps, to amass evidence, and for that matter, to debate on a more philosophical rather than practical/policy level. Maybe with these changes, perhaps the average civilian could drop into a round and not only understand it, but even adjudicate it. 

And it worked. For a couple of decades. But as computers and the pipes of the internet came into our lives, eventually, as with Policy, at the so-called highest levels of debate, the speaking speed was virtually incomprehensible to anyone not trained in it. The content wasn’t exactly orthodox either, as postmodernism and critical theory bubbled up from contemporary academia. (This infected policy as well, and probably first, for that matter.) LD was becoming a one-person analog to Policy. And once again only an expert adjudicator could make much sense of it. None of this is to support a claim that there is something wrong with an extremely parochial forensics event; I am simply reporting the reality. Personally I’m all in favor of all kinds of debate, as long as we keep them in perspective. I’ll defend that position elsewhere (and already have, often enough, come to think of it).

And now, around the turn of the millennium, enter Ted Turner. 

Turner was something of a controversial figure in his day; you can read his obituary to get the details. And he was a philanthropist, with plenty of the do re mi to philanthropize with. I do not know the details of how it happened, but one day the NFL/NSDA announced the creation of Ted Turner Debate. Loosely based on the CNN debate program Crossfire, the paradigm of this new debate event was who could make the most persuasive argument. Like the TV show, facts and/or reality were not as important as being convincing. The topics would change every month, so that teams couldn’t amass tubs (or at that point, portable hard drives) of evidence. Since extreme speed was anything but persuasive, that managed inherently to cancel that aspect out. And to put that in boldfaced underlined italics, the audience literally allowed to judge the event was, as much as possible, members of the community (for which read, parents). The people who were presumably responsible for the flaws of CX and LD—the non-teaching professional judges and whatnot, college kids I guess—were banned. Quickly enough Ted Turner Debate became Controversy debate became Crossfire debate, in some order or another. And finally it became Public Forum.

Public Forum has changed a bit over the years, and if you’re reading this, you probably know how. Some topics are monthly, some bi-monthly. There are no longer bans on judging, and parent judging is as often as not the main core of the pool. Which means that at a given tournament a team might face anything from an expert college debater to a local businessperson to a first-time parent in the back of the room, and must adjust accordingly. I think that’s one of the best things about the activity. Flipping for sides and precedence happens sometimes (the NSDA) and not other times (the NCFL). Loosey goosey evidence is still problematic enough, with most of the complaints coming against paraphrasing and bogus strategic challenges. And, say what you will, Public Forum is now the coin of the realm. At least around my region, it is the most popular event on the docket. I would ascribe this ultimately to its accessibility. Any good educator can coach it. Any determined student can master it. Any reasonably intelligent adult can adjudicate it. (Parent judges, as a bonus, do not need to be paid, and can also act as chaperones, a double whammy.) 

So Ted Turner, recently deceased, creator of CNN and TCM and God knows what-all, should be honored in our debate circles for being one of the reasons we have our most popular debate activity. 

Rest in peace.