Things are still a little crazy at the DJ, and that spills over into everything else. First allegiance must be to the mother ship, after all. The DJ makes all the rest of it possible.
I’ve been thinking about that lately. At Ridge, for instance, I realized that “the rest of it” includes all sorts of sturm and drang (those elusive judges, for instance), the life and death (sorta) issues that arise at every tournament. Lots of action, in other words. Plus there was all kinds of backroom chatter about this and that, including a great idea from JV for next year to cover the Modest Novice vis-à-vis their short December fling with Nov-Dec. Why not extend Nov-Dec, just for the novices, for the first January tournament at Byram Hills? Why not indeed? It makes the work they put into those cases that much more rewarding. And given that nowadays even the novices, if they go on past February, are still debating Jan-Feb, it won’t harm them. I like that. We’ll float it as the 2011-12 season commences. There was also all kinds of socializing, as we faced the frigid Friday night and headed over to what can only be thought of as Holiday Inn, Center Street, Nowheresville, America. The guy at the piano singing “Feelings” has been replaced by an aging rock and roll band with less hair than I have and with an uncanny ability to almost be in pitch, the operative word there being almost. Rule number one for these people ought to be that their guitarist isn’t Carlos Santana and they should therefore simply steer clear of the comparison. Go for songs/groups without virtuosos. Stick to simple hooks that even your mother-in-law can handle in Guitar Hero. Still, in the midst of all the noise we got to sample these funky Belgian Christmas ales, and it was a lot of fun. Walking back to the motel I realized that if it wasn’t for “the rest of it,” I would have been home doing nothing. Although maybe not. Home doing nothing has its appeals, but only once in a while. I have to wonder what if, if not this, if you know what I mean. Hard to imagine.
Note to self: obscure Lou Reed is perhaps the best music on a cold ride through the darkest reaches of New Jersey. The more obscure, the better.
Ridge itself was, as always, run with amazing precision. I want the Ridgewegians to run my tournament. I would swear I never saw the same runner twice as this endless flow of young humanity came storming into the tab room bearing ballots. Never wanted for a ballot, either. They are organized the way Eisenhower organized the Allies on 6/6/44. Their housing was a little wacky, though, based on some combination of the first name of the kid living in the place they were going, divided by the square root of -1, but this was a small flaw in the overall proceedings. JV and I did manage to find the best milkshakes this side of the Mississippi, which forgives a multitude of sins. The inability to connect to Sporcle, however, does have to be chalked up on the debit side. And the lack of a Q key on La Coin’s computer (she was handling the PF duties) was rather disquieting (or just dis-q-ing) when she asked me to look at some bizarre thing that had come up. I mean, it’s not like one uses a lot of Qs in everyday tabbing, but still…
This weekend we end the calendar year with a big little event at Regis. Tonight we will TVFT the new topic. And the boys from Cambridge have sent me the latest episode, which I hope to get recorded tomorrow.
Provided, that is, the DJ doesn’t wear me out completely first.
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