What you won't hear on the Lexington podcast; Gem of Harlem update; how to make it feel like it's "daily" again

So I managed to record what appears to be an endless report of Lexington Tab ’08 last night, and uploaded it this morning, so it should soon appear in iTunes, and of course I did add it to my own podcast page. I realized as I was driving to the Day Job that I left out a couple of things. So I’ll supplement it here.

First, there was the Black Cloud Over Monticello. Sunday night I got back to my hotel room at a pretty reasonable hour. During the day various and sundry kept disappearing to watch some football game or other, and I didn’t give it much thought, and when I tucked myself in at my hotel I caught up on the Sunday Times (thank God for Starbucks, suppliers of caffeine, beans for trivia and real newspapers). Since it was unlikely that on this particular evening I’d have another series of conversations with the mother of my lost judge from the night before, I flipped on the TV when I was done, and remarkably enough, some football game or other was still happening. It was overtime. There was an incomplete pass, and then some guy kicked this really long field goal, and it was over. In other words, in about forty seconds I watched the Giants defeat Green Bay. Whatever. Of course, it wasn’t until next morning that the realization dawned, and I asked Sabrina about it. For those of you who have managed to live clean lives, I will tell you that Monticello’s Rose J-T is, to put it mildly, a Green Bay fan. Bart Favre is God. Every RJT tab room is plugged into the internet to get the latest scores; sometimes we have to settle for the Badgers, which I gather are like Green Bay only underground. Green Bay this, Green Bay that. For someone with my fine-tuned interest in football, this has been like attending a Star Wars convention where everyone knows all the names of all the soldiers in the clone army and you’re lucky if you can remember if Yoda is a Jedi or some kind of sushi. Anyhow, what I asked Sabrina was how this would affect the Monticello student body this week, given that RJT would no doubt be bringing a serious Black Cloud over the place. Sabrina’s reply was a nail-biting, “It’s midterm week, which means that instead of taking it out on the students, she’ll be taking it out on the teachers.” I think Sabrina was planning to take the rest of the year off. I do know for a fact that I will be hearing all about this in October when I return to Monti for the Kaiser. At least I’ll know how to find the place. The Black Cloud will still be hovering over the building.

Secondly, I left out the Miracle of the Burrito. This is a simpler tale. For no reason I could discern, a burrito magically appeared in my car after the tournament was over. My assumption was that everyone was given a burrito by the tournament as a sort of welcome gift, and I had simply not been paying attention. Nice touch. Maybe I’ll try something like it next year at Bump. And no, I did not eat the burrito.

Columbia is tomorrow, and so far all I can say is that the judging pool is seriously and ridiculously impressive. I can’t wait to get my hands on them. I only hope that the JV side is as dynamic as the varsity side. This can definitely be fun. According to CP, on the other hand, Pfffft has gotten so big that they will be moving off to the side somewhere, and I won’t get to tab that. Sigh. I like doing a lot of things at the same time. Still, I can’t complain. Two solid divisions are plenty. Plus there’s Scrabble, and polishing up Districts on Joy, and Link, and CP wants me to teach some Massachusetts schmegeggie the E-TRPC software, and a few other things to keep me out of mischief. I could even go out and coach my team—Wait a minute! Let’s not get carried away here.

WTF fans will have noticed that, contrary to my original expectations, they at least managed to publish an O’C Cogitates picture as big as the Ritz. I guess this means that my next Chump picture will similarly have to Alice in Wonderland itself up in size. Anyhow, if you still think the site ought to be a blog, as I do, rather than a mashup of NFL and Orbitz, go here: http://victorybriefsdaily.com/archives/complete-archive/ At least with this you can pretend it’s the good old days, while saving lots of wear and tear on your mouse.