There’s a certain tribal atmosphere at the national debate events for those who have been around for a while. For $ircuit people, this may not be quite the case, as they travel around a lot all the time, and they see each other regularly. But for those of us who mostly stay in their home region, it’s good to get out of the house on occasion and touch base with one’s more far-flung colleagues. Unfortunately I didn’t get to do much of this on Saturday at the PF venue, because, to be honest, I get the feeling that when it comes to divvying up the judge resources, the Pffffters get the shortest shrift. I mean, I saw some of the shriftiest judges I’ve seen in a long time. Definitely not a lot of coaches or former debaters in the pool. I have nothing against parent judges, of course, and I love having PF as a place to put them where they feel comfortable and can perform admirably, but when there’s pretty much nothing but, it gets a little lonely. If I was lucky I’d touch base with the Panivore and the People’s Champion and compare notes on how yet some other yabbos didn’t know beans about the s.c., or maybe I’d run into Monti’s Dan and Matt who were spending their Saturday tabulating the number of ways people could mispronounce the name Michel Foucault, but that was the extent of it. (Speaking of the French, there are times when I feel that the pronunciation “Gene Jack Russo” is good enough for a loss in both the debate round and language lab. Normally I’d point it out on a ballot, but nobody cares about such niceties at a national event.) So I did feel a little shortchanged on the social side of things over the weekend.
Still, there were plenty of people to visit with. Most of them, admittedly, were my usual suspects, but we won’t be seeing each other again until next season, so it was good to schmooze one last time or two. And we did have a chance to discuss a few issues that will be facing us next season, and it’s much easier to do it face-to-face than long distance. It was especially good to see La Coin again, working as a stringer for Ridge, although her debate hiatus has allowed her to form an addiction to Korean soap operas, which cannot be a good thing. She was mildly surprised that, as far as the tournament was concerned, I was not Jim Menick but Joe Vaughan. I was sort of surprised by that myself, and never did quite figure it out. JV was helping CP in tab, and he was assigned to judge PF whereas I was, theoretically, assigned to sit around with my finger up my nose. So I went in as him, and kept picking up ballots with his name on them, and kept making sure the ballot said VAUGHAN in big letters, which I guess meant that I could say any dumb thing I wanted and I wouldn’t get blamed for it. When you get your ballots, folks, and it says JV on them, if the decision was a good one, that was me. If the decision was a stinker, that was JV.
So what are the issues going forward? You know most of them. ModNov (which I’ll be addressing again real soon now), DebateCoaches.org for LD issues, NYSDCA, next year’s TNC, and MHLw/i all loom large. There’s some scheduling wrinkles that don’t look iron-out-able, and there’s a chance that I’ll have to pull back a bit from tabbing every weekend (but I have committed to a bunch of venues already, and I won’t be pulling back from those particular commitments). I will, of course, report on all of this as there’s something to report. Which means that those members of the VCA who thought they’d get the summer off are forced to remain connected just in case I actually say something important. Sorry about that. I just don’t want you to get fat and lazy when no one is looking.
And speaking of getting fat—No. I won’t go there.
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