Updates

So I moved the MHL stuff from geocities, which so has that scent of amateur about it, to jimmenick.com, which so has that scent of some other amateur about it. Scott NoBumpForMe Brainard, after making PFC look more spiffy, has offered to do the same for me. I do have some (many?) areas I could use help on. Like I need to add Cribs, for instance. And a section of photos of O'C. Not to mention an archive of Cruzie Award winners.

I live such a busy life.

I'm in the process now of mailing out Mini-Bump invites, and alerting folks to the MHL website move. Newark has chimed in for the Montclair MHL tomorrow, so we should be able to pair small but workable divisions. I was up last night dreaming of novs debating JV, a frightening aspect on both sides of the aisle. Now we won't have to do it. Whew. But if I ever have to, I think I know how to measure success at the end in order to hand out trophies (but I'll keep it under my hat for the time being; it may be so dumb that it would be better just to do it than to suggest it).

HoraceMan, the superhero without any superpowers, sent me a message to the effect that he was assembling some sort of Junior Justice League or something down at his Institute of Expensive Learning. Obviously, in other words, here come the Horace Men. I read his message, marked it as unread, and put it back under my electronic pillow. Too much thought required. We are the Horace men, the Horace men, the Horace men.

My literary background is soooo wasted here.

I've heard from the Nostrumite, who is in a state of permanent depression over the comings and goings at Tennessee Williams High School. He's got about seven more months of impending parenthood, and the waiting is killing him. "I want to meet this kid," he tells me. The poor little thing. You wonder sometimes if we shouldn't make child conception a little more difficult so that the hoi and the polloi won't do so much of it. Not that Odelie is either h or p, mind you, but the Mite on the other hand... He says that while he's reading What to Expect While You're Expecting, the team is going to hell in the proverbial h.b., with limited internet access, his gapper feeding pomo to his Seven Samural LDers, and his new speechies already veering over to the school play (they're performing some new version of "Moby Dick"; how come Lloyd Webber never tried that one, I wonder. Or Sondheim. "Bring in the harpooneers; don't bother they're here." Na'ah. Doesn't make it.) In other words, he's finding out what life as a debate coach is all about.

And I know I should have mentioned this earlier, but the shock was too much. A week or two ago, Family Circus, which I doubt you consider the sine qua non of intellectual graphic publication, actually did a Stephen Sondheim reference. I was taken so far aback I had to be revived by trained professionals. Is nothing sacred?

Bring in the harpooneers.