Back to the Bronx; The Case of the Disappearing Debaters; TVFT vill be bock; Xatz!

271 teams for this week’s first MHL. 70 of them are policy, 30 PF, the rest LD (127 of these being novices). Yee-ha! Just when Bronx Science thought that it was going back into its box, we return the following weekend with one of the biggest tournaments in the northeast. Again. (Better them than me.)

As a general rule, the first MHL of the year, attended as it is by multitudes of raw recruits, is something of a jumble. There’s a lot of not knowing where to go and what to do, all of it come by honestly. Throw into this a bunch of parent judges that we’ll be training, not to mention that I’ll be training Go-go Joe on the back end on how to tab, and you’ve got quite the clambake. The confusion usually settles down by halfway into round 2, however. I hope.

This week’s Sailorfest was remarkably well unattended. (I went looking for a jokey tumbleweeds image to post here, and found this: http://www.thirstyrock.com/Tumbleweed.htm Check it out, and leave it on for a few seconds. Welcome to the 90s.) The plebes were there in newbie force, but the rest of the team was apparently abducted by aliens. Of course, I had planned for a 50/50, so the second 50 was all vamping, entirely calorie- and nutrition-free. Oy. Better planning in the future. In any case, two of the plebes are set for Saturday. As for the others, one looks to have cases ready by Easter, and the couple of others could be ready any time from right this second to that date on the Mayan calendar when Roland Emmerich comes out with a new movie. (I shudder at the thought. Of the movie, that is, not the cases.) We’ll see. One thing we did at the meeting was some ad hoc flowing instruction. Went well. I read a paragraph, and some of them caught a few words. Then, for comparison, I asked SuperSquirrel (who did show up) to flow a different paragraph, and, well, she missed maybe a few words. Very impressive display, if you ask me. If you learn nothing else from debate you will learn how to take supremely solid notes, a skill that will actually be worth something beyond high school. So at least we’re good for something.

TVFT was interesting last night. We mostly talked about placing judges in rounds, everything from random to MJP. The more you look at this stuff, the harder it gets to hold some hard-and-fast opinion that it ought to be one specific way (the story of my life). I’ll be working on the podcast after this gets posted, and it should be up before long. Keep an ear out. (And do comment over at the TVFT blog. We want to hear what people have to say.)

And I’ll explain what I meant about something a few days ago: Max Katz. The K sound is spelled both with an X and a K. The S sound is spelled with both an X and a Z. It should be, unquestionably, Maks Kats. Or, questionably, Max Xatx. I sort of like Max Xatx; it’s like an old D.C. superhero secret identity. Of course, my favorite wrong name of all time (aside from names like Beauchamps pronounced Beechum and Talifiero pronounce Tolliver and those other British jumbles) is Sean Bean. Is it pronounced Seen Been, long Es? Or Shawn Bawn? The correct pronunciation is, needless to say, totally ridiculous. (Sean, if you’re reading this blog, my apologies for dragging you into this discussion. Then again, if you’re reading this blog, your career is worse off than any of us could have imagined, and that’s something I do not feel a need to apologize about. You can’t blame me for that.)