Dear Debate Coach:
On behalf of the Brigadoon Debate Association, its heirs and
assignees (if any), we invite some of you and your teams to the inaugural
running of the Brigadoon College High School Inaugural Annual Invitational Speech
and Debate Tournament sometime this coming season, as soon as we find a weekend
where someone has quit in a huff, leaving an opening for an up-and-coming
college like ours to move in, settle down, and start raking in the shekels. The
tournament will consist of competition in Varsity Policy, Lincoln Douglas,
Public Forum, a couple of random Speech events, and if we can find a couple of
rooms where it’s far enough away that we don’t have to think about it,
Congress. There is a slight possibility that we will also offer Third Grade
Parliamentary Debate, if the local grammar schools can get their act together
in time, but I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.
Although we are a new tournament, we have managed to ask
some of the best tab staff in the country to help us run things. We’re still
holding out some hope that at least one of them will respond
affirmatively. We are offering them
unlimited bagels and proximity to the rest rooms, which usually does the trick.
Also, if they don’t tab, they’ll have to judge, and we all know how they feel
about that.
Depending on our month of operation, we will be using all
the applicable NFL (or NSA or NSDA or whatever the hell they call themselves
this week) resolutions. As there is a good chance that we will be running in
the dead of winter, and that a blizzard could erupt at a moment’s notice, we
will be using the Harvard system, going directly from registration to
semifinals in all divisions.
While we at Brigadoon encourage vigorous intellectual
dialogue, we are also a nationally designated “nice” college, where professors
are banned from discussing anything even remotely disturbing or controversial.
This may be why we only offer courses in lawn care and advanced pedicure, but
that is beside the point. As a “nice” college, we feel that we need to have
“nice” debates. Therefore we will be disallowing any discussion in or out of
rounds of race, gender, religion, nationality, science, morality, geography,
geology, animal rights, the dialectic in any way, shape or form, Celine Dion, carminatives,
mousetraps, the moon, memory or muchness or any other manner of thing beginning
with M, etc. Additionally, all evidence, real or imaginary, legitimate or
falsified, clipped or hirsute, will be subject to preapproval by our Evidence
Preapproval Board, under the supervision of Professor Emeritus Milo Plotz, late
of our chair-making department. (Or is it the late Professor Plotz, chair of
our emeritus-making department? It’s hard to tell sometimes.)
We are requiring that all students bring a truckload of judges,
as we wouldn’t know a good judge if we happened to run one down with a
Conestoga wagon. Judges must meet the following strict requirements:
·
English as at least a second language
·
Mouth-breathing
·
A first name other than Mr., Ms., Mrs., Sra.,
Srta, Mme, Herr, Frau, etc.
·
An active account on tabroom.com and the ability
to program in Perl in case things go kablooey with the system.
·
Blood alcohol content under .04
·
No visible prison tattoos
·
A sweet and pleasing mien, and a lack of
interest in bothering the tab room about, well, anything
We will be using Mutually Preferred Judging, or Mutual Judge
Preferences, or Preferred Mutual Judges, or something like that, as in, some
combination of the letters M, J and P, take your pick. Teams can rank the
judges from 1 to 17 (1 being a debate god whose feet you wish to kiss until you
die, and 17 being a parent). The tab room will assign judges in such a way as
to keep the usual suspects who are always complaining that they got another 3
out of the tab room. Break rounds will be set so that no one gets a combined
score of higher than 29, within a range of pi and/or phi calculated to the
length of the blackboard.
In rounds, the decision of the judges is final. Those who
wish to challenge the decisions of the judges will be sent to their rooms
without any supper.
Speaking of supper, Brigadoon is proud to announce that we
have acquired a brand new oil tanker from a nearby used oil tanker supplier
(well, at least they told us it was brand new). We will be filling the tanker
with a full load of debate ziti and parking the truck right in front of the
General Assembly building (the Warren G. Harding Teapot Athletic Dome, just
south of the Aaron Burr Presidential Library). We will be keeping multiple
troughs filled with debate ziti throughout the weekend, 24/7 !!! (Do bring a
spoon. And a napkin. Oh, and maybe a plate, if you’re into the whole dainty
eating thing.)
Brigadoon does not offer any TOC bids. We tried consulting
the TOC about getting bids for our inaugural event, but it turns out that last
year’s tournament is still going on, so they couldn’t be reached for comment.
Our tournament is open to all students anywhere, any grade,
as follows. Students must attend a real high school with a gym and lockers and
cafeteria mystery meat, and be eligible to get a real high school diploma from
said school. Said school must have some vague idea that the student is at our
tournament and not on a trout-fishing expedition with a Girl Guides troop.
Debate camps, drama camps, weight-loss camps, military bivouacs, Campe the
she-dragon, baseball spring training camps, etc., are &#*@% out of luck.
However, they can register under bogus school names, as none of us here have
the time to check them out anyhow, although calling your bogus school something
like Academy of the Wholly Unwarranted Assumption might raise a few eyebrows.
Our tournament hotel is The Enchanted Hunters, which is just
down the road a piece. They are offering suites for $29; approximately 30 students
can fit comfortably into each suite, although it might be hard to find a place
to put their luggage. Complimentary breakfast is served from 6:00-6:15 every
morning, after which there is a per head charge of $24.95 whether you come to
the breakfast room or not. If The Enchanted Hunters is sold out (they’ve
promised to set aside 11 rooms for the tournament), further down the road
another couple of pieces is the Hunted Enchanters motel. Ask for Diana.
For our inaugural year we will be offering pay-what-you-think-it’s-worth
registration fees. Our only upfront expense is that truckload of debate ziti,
so once we cover the nut, it’s all gravy, so to speak. I mean, we’re not
serving gravy with the debate ziti, if that’s what you’re thinking. We were speaking metaphorically. Jeesh! Anyhow, if
there’s enough money at the end of registration, we’ll run out and get a
reasonable number of trophies, or medals, or pins, or maybe we’ll just buy a
box of nice paper and print up something. Whatever. In any case, win or lose,
we promise you’ll never forget the first annual Brigadoon Invitational, no
matter how hard you try.
Sincerely,
Rott Weiler, President, Brigadoon Debate Association
Sunshine Lipschitz, Vice President, Brigadoon Debate
Association
Tugg Boats, Treasurer, Brigadoon Debate Association, in
absentia (presently serving 2-5 years at Minnesota State Penitentiary for
aggravated assault)
Yo-Yo Ma, Nothing to Do with the Brigadoon Debate
Association, but he seems to be ubiquitous these days, so we figured we’d
better toss him in for the hell of it
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