Hidden Mickey, Warm Noah, Bombarded Termite, Driving Tiger, UDL + MHL, Musical Pot Pourri

O’C apparently thinks he sounds like Minnie Mouse, and that simply isn’t true. He totally sounds like Mickey Mouse. Definitely. Then again, there’s always the Faux’C interview, where he sounds like a crazed leprechaun. What more does this guy want?

Noah G joined us last night. I’ve been working on a generic form for argumentation, and he added a nice helpful piece to the top, and I’ll pass that along here when I fix it up, probably tonight. He also pointed out that, since global warming really won’t destroy the planet until after I’m dead, I should simply sit back and enjoy the nice weather. Always the pragmatist! Meanwhile Robbie seems to be signed up for all sorts of bunches of tournaments, with Noah covering the judging, so the two of them at least are sorted out for the foreseeable. All I have to sort out is the rest of the team.

I’m starting to focus in on sheer speaking skills at the moment. Some people naturally take to bloviating on their feet, while others ease into it more painfully. Plus, there’s that need to crystallize your case in your mind before arguing it, that boiling down to essentials before going into the details. There’s a classic exercise of simply arguing your core thesis, and we did a bit of that last night and we’ll do some more next week. Which will be, entirely, a novice session, concentrating on case-writing and such. I like novice sessions: they don’t allow me to throw golf balls at Termite, as last night’s meeting did, but they are not without their pleasures.

Okay, here's the details: I am not prejudiced in favor of single-contention cases, for a variety of reasons. Chief among these is the difficulty in pulling them off successfully. Good varsity debaters can do so, but this approach is a walking landmine for less experienced folk. And the example of good varsity debaters being what it is, less experienced folk think, Ah, I should be running a one-contention case because So-And-So is really good and runs one-contention cases. No. In golf, there are the white tees and the black tees. The black tees are where the professionals hit their drives. Fifty yards or so closer to the hole, the white tees are where the pikers like me dub their drives. My desire to play golf like Tiger Woods does not delude me into thinking that I can, in fact, play golf like Tiger Woods simply by hitting off the black tee. Or, if he were a debater, running his cases. In my mind, once a debater is successful, anything that works is right, but to switch metaphors, until you can play scales, stop with the ad libbing. Which means, since I know you wanted an explanation, that I get to throw golf balls at Termite. The particular point be illustrated is the ease with which one can defend against one missile vs defending against two.

I haven’t said anything about the trip down to Brooklyn Saturday. Kurt Shelton, who completes the MHL triumvirate of Menick and Cruz, works closely with the NJ UDL, and thus is connected with the NY UDL, so he arranged this communion of the two. We had a good talk with Will Baker, the NY UDL honcho. It’s easy to see the complications of UDLness when you’re actually there in the thick of it, to wit, kids coming from all over the city to compete. Lots of kids. Try to imagine collecting their many dozens and sorting them out and transporting them to an invitational. Very complicated. What we’d like to do is coordinate enough insofar as to at least meet once in the year together, perhaps at the Bronx, which is no more difficult for the city folk to get to than anywhere else, and is a little easier for some of our further-fetched upstaters, but then again, at least for the Sailors, the EBT venue was a piece of cake. This would be simply a blending of the MHL and UDL policy teams, providing some much needed local competition for schools like Lakeland and NFA. Additionally, it would be great for the UDL to sort of pick an invitational, say Monticello, as the one to go to, as they did this year. I was always sort of confused about why UDL would sometimes come to Bump and other times not come, but once you understand the complexity of the beast, the fact that they get to go anywhere outside of the city is pretty impressive. Anyhow, we’ll push for better communication in the future. Everybody will benefit from it.

Of course, the big MHL issue in the tab room remains the vast quantity of Bronx Scientologists. Tabbing an MHL is becoming about as complicated as [insert humorous metaphor here for some very complicated enterprise]. I look forward to Lexington this coming weekend, where the numbers are large enough to just click a button and have the program do all the work while you sit there with the other tabfolk trying to agree whether to listen to Mozart, Oklahoma, Talking Heads or Frank Sinatra. Over the course of a weekend, usually it will be all of the above, and then some. Ahhhh, peace.