In which we work on the nitty and the gritty

I think I should put more pictures in here. It perks things up, don’t you think?

I’m in that limbo with Rather On The Large Side Bronx, where I’m not really running things, but I send out all kinds of messages so people think I’m running things. Which raises the question of what, if anything, I do run. I godfather Penn, the Tiggers and the Gem, I’m halfway between godfather and uncle at the Pups because I start working with them early but MV takes over when there’s issues, and everywhere else, I’m just some schlub in the tab room. ROTLS Bronx is an unusual situation this year, with the old-timers brought in to provide normalcy during a rough transition for the school. I find myself giving advice more than normal to a high school tournament. I don’t have to give advice to JV, for instance; he knows how to run a tournament, and while he might solicit opinions from his experienced friends, he’s absolutely in charge. I don’t even attempt to give advice to CP about Lexington, because he sets it up his way and that is a joy to work through because he knows where all the bodies are buried and does things, theoretically, perfectly vis-à-vis tabroom. Which doesn’t mean I necessarily go forth afterwards and do exactly what he did, but I’m close, and I can learn the odd new trick, but I don’t bother changing when the old trick still works perfectly well. In any case, I certainly never get involved in anything other than the tabbing at these venues, whereas at ROTLS Bronx, where for many people I am the one constant—I’ve been tabbing there since Kirby and company were there last—I am the person they ask questions of. So people send me questions about invoices and I pass them along, or they ask to bend the rules and I pass it along, or they ask silly questions about self-evident items that I calmly and nicely answer myself (while making fun of them on Fb or Twitter).  In other words, limbo.

The TBAs disappear tonight. CP has always maintained that this simply tortures the good citizens, who are forced to enter bogus names, but even if that is partially true, it does clear out the riffraff. One thing that is problematic at a big tournament like Bronx is, when people drop their teams, they don’t necessarily delete their entry, which often leaves vestigial judges. Which we always find out about somewhere in the middle of Round 2, with lots of attendant banging of our foreheads with our closed fists. At a small tournament, it’s easy to keep track of who’s coming. At a big tournament, it’s practically impossible, short of doing the boring grunt work of looking at all the entries. There is a way to find totally empty schools, but I don’t think that data dump works on schools empty of entrants but not empty of judges. I’ll find out in a day or so, when I start grunting through it.

Fun.

[Later that day: There is a report of numbers per school that shows both judges and debaters. So there is indeed a place to find the loose cannons. So it won't be quite as grunty as I thought. Whew!]