In which we discuss the sameness of things

I know. I haven’t been blogging, and it’s unlikely that many people are left popping in here to see what’s up. To be honest, there hasn’t been much up at all, aside from running tournaments every weekend. The fact that I’m doing it without leaving the home office makes them all fairly much alike. There’s a big difference in shuttling down to Philadelphia for a weekend and zipping up to Lexington for a different weekend, and not much difference at all in doing Penn and Lexington at my desk in the family room, except my level of responsibility. If you're in charge of the whole shooting match, you put together your team, you create the tabroom tournament, you get people to sign up who should sign up, you bar people from signing up who shouldn’t be signing up, and you make sure everyone gets all their judges lined up. After that, it's the same whether you're in charge or not: you pair the rounds, you tell people to hit start until you’re blue in the face, you go to the kitchen to get something to eat, you come back and pair the next round. In between, you spend a lot of time chatting with Catholic Charlie and She(ryl) Who Must Be Obeyed, and there you are. This year we’ve been lucky to have Dammit Janet with us most of the time; she invented the modern room check, and runs the risk of being nicer than She(ryl) Who Must Be Obeyed, despite all our efforts to bring her down to our level. Of course, that level of responsibility mentioned above is meaningful. I spent endless hours in advance working on Penn. I haven’t spent two minutes working on, say, Lakeland, and I won’t until a final run-through because if I don’t do it, it will be a true fustercluck. It’s hard enough to get tabroom straight when you at it ab ovo, but when someone else has been at it, unstraightness is virtually guaranteed. But it’s no big deal, and things will run fine when the time comes, within the confine of the parameters set by the tournament. I mean, if they want 27 double-flighted rounds a day, I can do it. It’ll suck, but I can do it. At those sorts of tournaments, I’m a simple functionary, following whatever orders are given. If nothing else, the lack of pressure is delightful. So is knowing that, if you had the chance and your hands on the controls, it would be a hundred times better. Don’t blame me: I’m only the messenger.

 

Anyhow, one thing I do have control over is the new 4n6 Funnies. I spent some time today on the page design, which is mostly barebones, but at least it’s barebones that I find comfortable. I’m figuring on maybe 3 new strips a week once I get going. A new one is up now, if you want to check it out. I’ve decided that the first frame linking to the strip is probably the best “ad” when I post that there’s an update. Judge for yourself…