Gadgetry, plus fond memories of the frigid Montwegian north

I managed to dig up from my discarded gadget box this little microphone you hook up to your iPod that I haven’t used since my abortive attempt to interview O’C lo these many years ago. (Charter members of the VCA know well what we call “The Irish Interview,” the thought of which always breaks me up, but then again, I’m easy to please, and while I never laugh at my own jokes when I tell them, if I’ve happened to record them, I roll on the floor laughing, so to speak, during playback, unless there’s a lot of cat vomit around or something. I also laugh at my written jokes, some of which are so subtle—like the tag on Monday’s poem—that probably nobody else even knows they’re there.) It seems to work on both the MegaPod and the Touch. I was thinking of doing something ad hoc with Kaz over the weekend (we’ll have a lot of time to kill) about case disclosure in policy. We talked about it a bit at Monti; very illuminating. And, of course, tonight we record Episode 3 of TVFT, also known as Menick, Cruz and the Chipmunk. With luck, last week’s snafu will not reoccur.

Speaking of Monti, while there were no highlights the equal of last year’s “Stop the Rounds!” moment, it was still an enjoyable experience. For those who don’t attend, the tab room is in the library on the 3rd floor, and the ballot table is by the cafeteria on the 1st floor. This distance can easily be covered in under an hour by all but the most lethargic runner, and I can attest to this fact because there was this one kid there who was, by any account, The. Most. Lethargic. Runner. Every time this particular Eeyore arrived with another couple of ballots he would flop down on a chair in sheer exhaustion and proceed to suck all the oxygen out of the room for the next half hour or so. The only thing that kept him going was his iPod. The bad news is that he was listening to Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder,” never exactly the most rousing music, if you know what I mean. (I know what you’re saying: Oh, crap, now I have to speak German to get the jokes? Jeesh!) To overcome this distance gap, there were the ever-amusing walkie-talkies, an annoyance I find perfectly acceptable in the hands of others, as long as those hands are attached to arms attached to bodies that are somewhere else. Squawk squawk, Come in Colonel Klink, etc., etc. Yeah, right. No wonder the ballot table, in the usual overenthusiastic fashion, occasionally felt the urge to assign judges to rounds without discussing it with me, because they’d ping tab and tab would stare at the squawk box and just sneer. Oh, well…

Anyhow, despite the lack of Tiny Thomas running around stopping rounds, there was the sight of RJT counting the money, which she starts doing two minutes after registration ends, and which keeps her busy all the way through semis. Lots of cackling from her direction, until she finds a problem, and then we’re ordering some poor schlub to come to tab at risk of immediate disintegration by ray gun, and then she dresses said schlub down for a while, then turns him upside down to shake the shekels from his pockets. It’s quite a thing to see, and it explains why nobody ever leaves the Kaiser owing them any money. That is, RJT makes sure that nobody ever leaves the Kaiser owing them any money. Ever. It’s as simple as that.

I did feel bad for Tiny Thomas, though, since he was quite dissatisfied with his name on the ballots, since he wishes to be identified clearly with Hasan Massey, who is his father. (This revelation, in episode five of Monti Wars: The Polician Strikes Back, is considered one of the best dramatic moments in the series.) Little Daddy just doesn’t work for me, but then again, Big Daddy never worked either. Screw You Thomas was quite satisfying on my end after reading a bunch of ballots that critiqued the tab room more than they critiqued the debaters, but I did promise that he’d be Little Daddy at Wee Sma’ Lex. Yeah, right. Wee Sma’ Daddy, maybe. Come to think of it, I never did see Tiny Thomas in the flesh, and he actually ran out early and I had to judge one of his rounds (much to the dismay, I’m sure, of the debaters). Screw You Thomas became ever more appropriate.

Other high points were the pairing of the Pfffter rounds with, if I remember correctly, 14 teams, 8 of them Regis. This must be done by hand, of course, and I explained to one and all that I would go precisely by bracket after, first, allowing all the non-Regis to hit only non-Regis in the presets. The amazing thing was that, doing this, I managed to find, in two different non-preset rounds, two different natural non-Regis pairings. To which I could, of course, assign a Regis judge. I always feel bad for any school that is so big in the field; it happens once in a while at MHLs. The thing was, the school that would have alleviated this problem dropped at the last minute. So it goes. Anyhow, aside from having to read the riot act once to a couple of teams from Clueless Academy, this went well enough. The shocking thing is, Regis closed out semis. Who would have guessed?

The food in the judges’ lounge was, as always, superb, while as far as I could tell no one died from the food served to the competitors, or at least died too much. JV and I managed to go out at one point and run smack dab into a Yankees game. We were held at bat-point and challenged, on entry, as to whether we were Yankee fans. JV made the correct answer (“That’s a baseball thing?”) and we were allowed entrance. I also got to visit RJT’s classroom, aka Green Bay East. I was shocked, shocked, to see football items decorating her walls. And her desk. And the floor, the ceiling, the board, and the two little gerbils (Brett and Favre) that she has as class mascots. Very disturbing.

Anyhow, that about sums up the Kaiser Roll. Starting tomorrow, Big Jake, beginning with the RR. Let the award ceremonies begin!