Here comes the weekend (not)

We had another speech workshop last night. This is where we go in-depth with people, commenting on just about everything. It was a mixed bag. A plebe introduced a new DI piece that is, well, too good for this year. Better she should work at it long and hard to have it as a winner for the next full season. It’s great material, but it needs a very special voice to put it across, and it’s going to take a while to find that character. That’s exciting. Then we had an old salt breaking in a new DI for the rest of this season for his double entries. The issue here is bringing to life unique surroundings, to make the audience see what he sees. And finally Panivore Junior (yes, the whole family lives on bread alone) worked on some fine tuning of his DI, which I first saw I think over the summer. It’s great fun to watch someone develop a piece from scratch up through solid competitiveness.

I like this speech stuff. In another life…

Anyhow, they’re all heading down to Long Island tomorrow to Chaminade, and I’ve heard from our bus folk that the wheels will roll, so at least somebody will get some forensics in this weekend.

So what else is new? I think I mentioned that the Mark Twain autobiography weighs about two hundred pounds, while the type is so small I have to use binoculars. I haven’t read enough to offer any criticism, other than that I can pretty much read any Mark Twain any time, and that earlier (and according to this volume, scurrilous) versions of the autobio were always on my top MT list. As is Life on the Mississippi, for what it’s worth. If you’re looking for something to do because you too didn’t go to Byram, you could do worse.

My brain is fried a little from creating the new questions for Lexwegian RR Bean Trivia. Some categories are easier than others. I may have to retire a couple, like Distorted Disney and Movie Quotes, but I’ve put in a couple of new ones (e.g. the revived B&W movies category) to cover. I still need to populate science/tech, war and wizards, but they shouldn’t be too hard. Favorite category these days? Royalty, because lots of the answers are of the chicken a la king persuasion. Anyhow, I do a handful a day, and I still have another week. We’re getting there. Of course, with both CP and O’C on hand, the rules will need to change, but who wants to play a game where the rules are static. Maybe I won’t even tell people what the rules are! And then we can change the name of the game to Lincoln-Douglas…

Speaking of which, I think I now understand the removal-of-punishment idea. I think it’s inane, but there’s a certain logic to it. Whatever. You’d think by now that I’d be used to not debating the resolution. The last time a debater debated the resolution was at NatNats in 1953, and he had to get an executive order from Eisenhower to be able to proceed unchallenged. Those were the days.