A timely message from our correspondent at WTF

Dear Mr Menick:
I am fine, and I hope you are too. We have been extremely busy here at WTF HQ, as you can well imagine, what with holidays and and upcoming tournament and a general lack of harassment from the debate community at large. (Has Smilin’ J gone on sabbatical?) Nevertheless, we have found the time to create a new feature which I’m sure will appeal to you. I’m attaching a copy to this message.
Thank you.
Your friend and colleague and general well fellow hale met,
Herman Melville
Quartermaster, WTF

Stump the Chump

NEW YORK, N.Y. — I’m excited to introduce a new feature on WTF in which I will seek but seldom find answers to perplexing questions of debate trivia sent to me by members of the debate community or else made up by me and masquerading as having been sent in by members of the debate community. I mean, let’s face it, who else actually gives a flying fig? Anyhow, I’ll start with a set of questions that I wish, indeed, I had been frequently asked.

You can post queries right here on WTF when you run out of incoherent shout-outs to your teammates and reasons why we’re going to hell in a handbasket, and I’ll select a few to answer in my next installment. Alternatively, you can come to my house and plunk yourself in my living room and just start blathering.

Has a debater ever won the Tournament of Champions?
Yes. I was mistaken about this for some time—after all, who would believe it—but My Man Gus gave me the heads up, and R.J. Reynolds supplied the evidence in an unmarked brown wrapper sent directly via Parcel Post along with some racy French postcards we’ll discuss in a future column. Actually, for the sake of full disclosure, the evidence was supplied many months ago, and I should have double-checked, but it’s very hard to get past all those racy French postcards. R.J. reminded me of this via e-mail. (Ooh-la-la!)

1992 featured the only actual debater final round in the history of the TOC. (I am confident of this now that I’ve done a little double-checking.) Leif Ericsson of Mexico’s Hasta La Vista High School defeated Vesuvius Hills High School’s Smilin’ J in finals. Smilin’ made the only repeat final round appearance in the TOC’s history and stole the trophy as a senior while everyone else was at the breakfast trying to figure out what the grits were. All the other TOCs were won by bricklayers, proctologists, carny trash and Trappist monks.

The evidence with which R.J. provided me was a microfiche stolen by the CIA from the 1992 New York City Invitational (AKA Big Brooklyn); the tournament is held in October, and both Leif and Smilin’ were in the field. (Neither won Big Brooklyn that year, by the way. The title went to Lana Miami of North Israel Beach High School.)

So, for those looking for history this season, it’s happened already. But history is always happening, except when you look for it, and then it’s already happened and you’re too late. Deal with it.

Who was Malcolm A. B. Ump, the namesake of the annual tournament at Hendrick Hudson?
Malcolm A. B. Ump was an earthy debate coach at Hen Hud — considerably predating his various unearthly successors — and was, with Richard B. (“Hum a Few Bars and I’ll Fake it”) Sodikow at Bronx Convent for Lapsed Scientologists, a co-founder of the Dim Hudson League.

Did Petey-Pete get married? What is the deal with the “Petey-Pete-Pate-Cake-Mmllddrr” moniker?
You won’t believe how many times I’ve been asked this! No, Debate’s Most Eligible Bachelor has not wed. (Petey’s mother, who was my Spanish teacher in high school, asked me to call him that. Actually, she didn’t, but I needed to figure out a way to work in the fact that his mom was my Spanish teacher, since I tend to work that into conversations with great frequency.)

[The above paragraph was found to be unimprovable from the original. Sometimes even the greatest among us are stunned into silence.]

“Pate-Cake-Mmllddrr” has always been Petey-Pete’s last name. The Tawny Port school district, of which Scribbler High School is a part, has a computer system that won’t accept either alphanumerical or non-alphanumerical symbols, so he was lucky to be called anything. Go figure.

Has any team ever fallen asleep during finals at Nationals in Lincoln-Douglas debate?
Despite what the tournament handbook presented each year by the NFL would have you believe, yes, many teams have not only fallen asleep, but some have gone into long term comas. In 1986, John Warthog and Renee Hammond Eggs — both of St. Michael’s New School in High Mexico — advanced to the final round of Nationals while sleepwalking. The two — former policy partners as well as boyfriend and girlfriend, mother and son, and brother and sister — were made to regain consciousness for the national title. Prior to the round, John handed Renee a rose on stage, while Renee attempted to stab John with a well hidden dirk. Apparently, at the awards ceremony and after much serious drinking among the national committee, the wrong victor was announced (hey, they had a fifty percent chance of getting it right), though this was later clarified when Renee was whacked by a band of hired extemp assassins. Currently, only John is listed in the list of champions presented annually at the tournament, although his whereabouts remain unknown.

What were the early TOC-qualifying tournaments in Lincoln-Douglas debate? Is it true that one could qualify to the TOC by merely showing up at one’s state tournament?
This isn’t a list from the first year — 1386 — but it’s an early one, from 1591. (I have the list from an old Nostrum, which included an advertisement for the TOC, with JW Patterson kicking sand into Charles Atlas’s face.) I know that the University of Pennsylvania Liberty Bell Repair Kit was a TOC-qualifying tournament prior to 1891.

OCTAFINALS BIDS: The Barking Forum for Top Dogs, the Beverly Hillbilly Invitational, the Harvard Beet-Packers Convention, the New York City Invitational (Brooklyn Science), the Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness Invitational, and the Wake Up and Smell the Early Bird.

QUARTERFINALS BIDS: The Homeboy Classic, Crayola Marmot, the Malcolm A. B. Ump Memorial Tournament, Pince Nez Invitational, the University of Massachusetts Uninvitational, the University of Oregon Woodchopper’s Ball, and the Village of the Damned Tournament.

SEMIFINALS BIDS: Apple Pan Dowdy East, the De Gustibus Invitational, Bishop Heal Thyself Invitational, Calhoun, the Meadow Dell Dale Lea Glen Creek Ril Pond Rapids River Brook South West East North Invitational, the Iowa Couscous, Isidora Duncan Classic, the Roger Rabbit Washington Classic, the Valley of Mid-America’s Cup O’ Noodles, the Vesuvius Over the Hill Classic, the Johnstown Speech & Debate Flood, and the Wes Crusher Classic.

FINALS BIDS: The Skitch Henderson Invitational, the Crestfallen, the Florida Blue Ridge Mountains, Specific Lutherans, the Ratrace Invitational, or any tournament with more than fifty entries from three or more states, or more than three entries from fifty or more states. Qualifying to Nationals or to the NCFL also earned a debater one bid, as did placing first or second at one’s state tournament, provided the state was a bona fide member of the Union. Debaters could not use two finals bids to qualify to the TOC, but could trade them in for a latte at their local Starbucks.

I am actually in the final stages of conducting a lengthy interview with J.W. Patterson, owner and chief franchiser of the TOC, so we’ll have more on this in a bit.
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If anyone cared about the National High School Tournament of Debate Trivia Champions, it would be Jon Cruz.