In which we Bump things up

Bump is full. More than full. All shut down, moving along nicely. There are more tables being used for rounds in the library than I would normally like, but that’s what happens when PF is double the size of previous years. Of course, I’m seeing that at every tournament I do. PF is growing and thriving. LD certainly seems to be holding its own, however, at least for the time being. There is the issue of it being a lot easier to run a squad of single entries versus a squad of team entries, for one thing. On the other hand, I continue to read a lot of articles about LD on the various sites and blogs, and I progressively find that I understand less and less of it. I’m happy to ascribe some of this to my increasing mental decrepitude, but at the point where people are arguing with a straight face whether there is a need to address a resolution, ever, I wonder if all those kids on my lawn aren’t suffering from their own decrepitudes. Good grief!

The other events on the docket are also marching along. The Tiggers is overbooked, which means that the people who signed up yesterday are expressing surprise at being waitlisted. Really? Every day I see new tournaments come up on tabroom, and if they’re tournaments I like, I grab some slots. Alternately, I could wait a month and wake up one morning thinking, I wonder whatever happened to the such-and-such tournament that usually runs this weekend that I need hotels, airplane tickets and Secret Service clearance to attend, much less slots at the tournament. Other surprises, from the Bumpish universe: I need to cover all my entries with judging? Can’t you just make this one exception for little old me? This is a skep sheep trigger: i.e., I respond by explaining to them the Tragedy of the Commons. Why are you charging me for late changes if I almost made the deadline, kind of, except I really didn’t because I’m not quite used to having set the clocks back a couple of weeks ago? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So once more unto the breach this weekend, the annual low point of my night job. Just think. It will all be over on Sunday. Ahhhhh….

In which we discuss the Universal Right to Debate

There is, apparently, a perception by some of a universal Right to Debate at the high school level. This RTD is warranted thus: Debate is a very good thing, therefore all students are entitled to it. As far as I know, but I may be wrong about this, there are no other such rights in the high school community. In the normal course of events, students take advantage of whatever program a school has to offer, and only what a school has to offer. There is no perceived right to football, or fencing, or annual musical theater performances, or chess, or any other extracurricular activity that might be a good thing. Schools are not obligated to offer a complete menu of activities beyond basic education (which, in many cases, is hard enough). If a school does not have a particular program, no matter how good that program might have been if it existed, the fact that it doesn’t exist would seem to preclude participating in it.

Not so with debate. The RTD overrides all other concerns.

Needless to say, I wouldn’t do what I do if I didn’t believe in the benefits of forensics. Twenty years in, weekend after weekend, on my own dime, ought to demonstrate that. (Remember, I already have a day job.) The benefits of forensics are not in question here. What is in question is access to those benefits.

There are those who give time and money to working and developing programs. The Soros Group has, for instance. Certainly the NSDA is built around developing and maintaining programs in schools. Plenty of local organizations do likewise. Meanwhile, we have a broad network of camps for training debaters, after school or during summer breaks. We also have people who sell materials to debaters to enhance their performance, including the NSDA, which is not free and which offers expensive packages beyond basic membership. There is nothing wrong with this. Plenty of non-profits take money in to support their projects, and for-profit in general is also perfectly acceptable. Offer something that people want and sell it for a price they are willing to pay? Sure. Cap Good. No problem.

A lot of people love debate and its benefits. A lot of people have built careers around it. So far, so good.

Over the years, a broad network of competition has developed around the country. One way or another, this competition is open to various kinds of participation. NSDA and CFL (and MHL and NDCA and NYSDCA and NYSFL and presumably plenty of others) impose limits on who can be a member and therefore compete. None of these is entirely open to everyone. And I’ll throw in general invitationals here as well. For the most part, all of these competitions are open only to their members. In the case of some of them, membership is determined by various rules and some sort of dues payment. High school invitationals have a more common law sense of membership, a presumption that the participants are high school students; a corollary to this is that they represent the high schools they attend, and that they are not simply random students who happen to be attending high schools. Any high school debate tournament, with perhaps hundreds of students attending, needs to proceed on generally accepted criteria. That those hundreds of students are attending with the knowledge of—and as far as the tournament is concerned, recourse to—their official administrations has always been a given. The reason for this is because of the unfortunate possibility of something going wrong. It can be accidents, illness, whatever. I have seen serious instances of both over the years. Official entries from schools are equipped (as well as anyone can be equipped) to handle these situations. Adults are in place, medical forms are viable, etc. Additionally, tournaments can only run effectively when the participants understand the obligations of attending tournaments, knowing who has to be where, and when. The fiascos resulting from being a bad guest can equal the fiascos of being a bad host.

Until recently this has all been a given, an unspoken expectation. Today, however, we have RTD debaters who feel they are inherently entitled to debate.

There are two general universes of RTD debater. The first is the maverick, the lone wolf student from a school that doesn’t offer debate. Sometimes the school knows about this maverick, and supports the student’s endeavors. Sometimes not. The mavericks might arrive at a tournament alone, or with a college student who is not legally an adult, or with a parent who is acting merely as chaperone but who is often tossed into a judging pool with no understanding of the activity whatsoever (and, often, with little understanding of the English language). The only acceptable maverick, I would say, is the one traveling with the endorsement of the student’s school, in the company of an empowered adult. This adult can judge, or not, but only if the judge is up to the task (and as a former parent judge myself, I’m pretty liberal about this, and as a tab director, I’m usually happy to enable it by putting parent judges into PF rather than VLD). Unfortunately, the acceptable maverick is being outnumbered by those pulling shenanigans. False school names. False student names. The aforementioned English-as-a-non-existing-language parent in the VLD pool (getting no rounds, of course, and then asking me what to do about lodging for the night at 10 o’clock and I’m heading out to my own warm blanket). Nevertheless, the interwebs are bustling with pleas to let mavericks debate, regardless of (and sometimes in spite of) their shenanigans. After all, debate is good, and there is a universal RTD! Yes, it is, and no, there isn’t. If your school doesn’t offer a debate program, that is not the problem of the schools that do, nor the tournaments you wish to attend. If as much time and energy were spent within the school working with the administration to start teams, to provide debate—the good thing—to as many people as possible for the longest term possible, as is spent flying lone wolves from one circuit tournament to another, we’d have wall-to-wall novices every weekend.

The other general universe of the RTD debater is the club member. Until recently I think most folks have been accepting of club debaters, mostly because they hadn’t given them much thought. The club premise is simple: you pay them money, and they train you to debate. Straightforward enough on face. But because debate is a good thing, and there is a universal RTD, the clubs feel that they should be able to debate against high schools, representing the clubs. Which has led, in (my) recent memory to a series of shenanigans and mendacity and irresponsibility that has left no club untainted. Not paying registration fees? Oh, that must be some sort of miscommunication. Fines for not meeting obligations? Oh, you never send me that email (all five times). Club debaters from schools that actually have teams ending up facing each other in rounds, and going to tab to ask for new assignments? Or club debaters pretending to be representing a school only one of them attends? No adult responsible for the club at the tournament? Oh, I don’t know anything about that, even though I’m the only grownup here. One judge covering entries from multiple (most likely unofficial) schools and weaseling out of judge fees? You mean that’s unacceptable? How can that be? We’re wonderful people who really want as many people as possible to debate.

No, you’re not. You’re in the business of selling a service, and not doing a particularly good job of delivering that service, otherwise most tournaments I work at wouldn’t have banned you, for cause, from returning. The trail is clear. The reason clubs are being pushed out is not because we won’t “give them a chance” (as one article I saw put it), but because we have given them many chances and they’ve repeatedly screwed us over. Telling me that you’re really wonderful and things will be different this time isn’t going to hack it. The lack of responsibility on the other end seals it. If we have a problem with a school (and we have had such problems), we go to the administration of that school, which takes responsibility for it. If we have a problem with a club, we go to the administration of that club, and they disavow any knowledge of any wrongdoing, and tell us how wonderful they are and how much good they’re doing for debate, then they accuse us of discrimination, or being anti-education, or whatever else occurs to them to distract from their own shortcomings.

The clubs, as profit generators, can easily solve their problem by going to the schools of their clients and working toward official entry as those schools. As for the lone wolves, they can stop thinking about their own attendance at TOC and start thinking about how they can bring the benefits of debate—which they claim is a universal right—to others. You think these efforts won’t be rewarded? You think wrong. But you think ignoring making these efforts won’t be noticed? You think really wrong. Those of us who have given their souls to debate want nothing more than everyone possible debating, not because there’s a universal right to debate, but because there’s a universal value derived from debating. But the non-school community, clubs and independents, have brought down the wrath of the school community on themselves, making a hard thing—running tournaments—into something even harder, turning registration into an adversarial process, and making people like me get progressively more angry.

C’est tout.

In which we send a tournament into oblivion, among other things

We did it. We canceled the Montwegian MHL. As far as I can recall, this is the first time ever that this has happened. It’s as if a blanket of befuddlement fell on the debate community, disconnecting everyone from their normal pursuit and making them all forget how they spend their weekends. And meanwhile they’re breaking down the doors at Sailorville to get into Bump.

Weird craziness.

I sent out the 2 minute warning on Bump TBAs last night. I’ll drop them tomorrow, if any. I don’t think anyone really doesn’t know who they are bringing, so I’m more interested in getting them to get rid of who they’re not bringing. I’m still waiting for final room count from the grammar school, where the novices will be. I’m hoping to squeeze a little more blood from that particular turnip, but who knows? Part of the problem of modern life that prevents me from having the information I need to operate is the number of people I deal with who do not consider email an acceptable form of communication. I do realize that in the younger circles mail of any sort is an alien beast, but I also notice that at the DJ, if I want to communicate with someone, I use mail for mail-like things, IMs for instant-like things, and talking on the phone for talk-like things. A medium for everything and everything in its medium. All communication is not a text, in other words. A text implies immediacy. Read this immediately! Now! An email implies, read this when you can and act accordingly, and it will be in your inbox so you’ll be able to find it now and again later. It has always been among my goals to civilize the savages who venture onto my team. The ability to communicate like an adult is, I think, a part of that civilizing. The reward to them is participation on the team, which one presumes is of value to them. Then again, I wonder how they can avoid email so easily. They all have smart phones, all of which notify you when you get mail. Sharper than serpents’ teeth, these kids these days who are mucking up my lawn.

Of course, I’m also plagued by people who don’t use email because they’re, they claim, not computer savvy. In 2014? Jeesh. I got my first office computer in 1991. Where have these people been since the Papa Bush administration? Yeah, maybe you’re not proficient in Perl 5.20, but reading your mail?

[This is where I put down the computer, so to speak, stand up and bang my head against the wall. Again. That’s why I have no hair. The wall wore it off.]

In which we are earnest

For reasons that defy analysis, we are teetering on the brink of cancelling the Monti MHL In a word, no one is signing up. Granted, it’s always been a smallish event, but it is nevertheless always been a useful one. (Then again, I haven’t got any Sailors going to it, so who am I to complain? I think in our case it’s because people are taking this opportunity to pursue their other extracurricular activities. There are other extracurricular activities? Who knew?)

I was disappointed this morning to see that O’C will be doing Oscar Wilde for next Halloween, rather than my choice, which was Chester Bea Arthur, which would have allowed him to reuse most of this year’s costume. Then again, I am thinking of going with him next year, wearing boxing gloves. (True Wildeans will get that reference, which is pretty nasty. The rest of you can Google it. And I am a true Wildean. Always have been. There’s even a character called Bunbury in Nostrum. And to be honest, I’m probably a bigger fan of Wilde than I am of Bea Arthur, so there you are.) Anyhow, prepare for sunflowers. I do hope O’C brings along someone to portray the wife and kiddies. And Bosie. (And even more parens: the wag who coined “If you were smarter, I’d be funnier,” use to work with me at the DJ, where, he once claimed, when it comes to editing our books, “the love that dare not speak its name can take a number.”)

Meanwhile, I’m really threatening the Fates with Bump division sizes, which are way too big for the sites. I won’t say I’m rooting for Ebola to hit the region, but a little dengue fever wouldn’t be so bad. Or the yaws. Whatever. I’m just hoping there’s a sudden whoosh of registrants toward the exit when things close next Monday. I don’t think many of them will be replaced.

In which we drive through Scarsdale with our noses pressed up against the bus windows, watching all the well-to-do puttin' on the ritz

Walt Disney World has been trying to keep it hushed up, but apparently someone stole the audio animatronic Chester A. Arthur from the Hall of Presidents last week. Fortunately, there was a duplicate CAA being used as one of the cavemen in Spaceship Earth because, let’s face it, there aren’t that many people riding the attraction who look at the caveman and say, You know, that Neanderthal looks suspiciously like our nation’s 21st President, or vice versa. So the caveman is now in the Hall of Presidents in place of CAA; he’s the one wearing a bearskin. What role WDW suspects that O’C played in all of this has yet to be published.

While himself was giving out antique flags to people and telling them, “Chester A. Arthur, you spalpeen, not Rutherford B. Hayes”—and for those of you who have trouble with this, you can tell that Hayes preceded Arthur in office if you go by their middle initials but turn them around, a handy guide indeed—the rest of us were resting up for the Scarswegian CFL. As I walked into the building Saturday morning, JV promised me that we would get in a full four rounds because we could single flight, as he had more extra people on his team than he could shake the proverbial stick at, and sure enough, that’s what we did. Everything went swimmingly on the nuts and bolts side, except somewhere along the line the PF event description disappeared, and tabroom was unwilling to put it back. Likewise with another tournament Catholic Charlie was working on (we were together in tab). I told him to photograph it and send it to CP as proof that 1) there was a problem and 2) I wasn’t causing it. Normally I would do a screenshot rather than a tabroom selfie, but I have no idea how to do screenshots on a PC, and we were working on Scarswegian machines that were all of the Windows persuasion. We were also working in the lovely library, a space way more conducive to good tabbing than the usual spot JV gives us in the science wing surrounded by all sorts of, well, science. Not that I have anything against science, mind you—if it wasn’t for science, we wouldn’t have Velcro—but this was bright and airy with a soupcon of cell service. What more could you ask for? And they do have an invitational coming up...

Meanwhile, on other fronts, the DJ remains nutty, which is why I haven’t been posting much because my free time has gone elsewhere as a result. I expect this to keep up for a while, and I apologize to the VCA for it in advance. There are only so many hours in the day, but I understand that CP is working on that for the next release of tabroom. I’ll report back then, no doubt whining about it mercilessly.

In which we ponder the Newark MHL

We only got 3 rounds out at the First-Timers’ MHL. Why I continue to think every year that we’ll be able to get 4 out is the proverbial triumph of hope over experience. Oh, well. It’s always worth a try.

First of all, there was the team that ate the tournament for breakfast. We shall never see them or their director again. I got to enjoy watching O’C ream out said director. In the past we have ranked me as passive-aggressive, Kaz as educational-aggressive, and JV as aggressive-aggressive. We’ve never ranked O’C on this scale, because he is slow to explode. But when he does? Nuclear aggressive! No living thing could possibly survive it.

Kaboom…

Then there were all the usual problems with a borrowed building, like locked rooms. That can eat up half an hour without batting an eye.

And finally there were computer problems. First of all, we couldn’t log in, and worse, I didn’t get decent reception on my mifi. So there was that to contend with. And then we had what I can only refer to as latency problems. Some school networks simply don’t have the ability to manage what we do on tabroom. I talked to CP about this, and he claims it’s either latency and proxies or we’re doing something wrong and hitting a wrong button. But I don’t know what button to press that gives different results of the same data on different devices. That’s a server issue, somehow. And when I think about it, we hardly ever run on high school servers, and the two biggest meltdowns this year, at Yale and Newark, were on high school servers, and they both failed because of latency issues.

This problem can be solved. Don’t use unreliable servers. How do you know if a server is unreliable? For me, if it’s in a high school, which all sorts of controls of what can and can’t be accessed, it can’t be trusted. I have a mifi, and I’ve ordered a better one to come later in the fall. I’ll use that, or I’ll use Kaz’s phone if she’s around. If we’re on a college network, we’re pretty safe, I think. We had no problems at Princeton, Columbia or Penn. And if you must use an unreliable server, just have one station pairing rounds and printing/pushing. At least that way, what you get is what you get, as compared to what you get is one thing and what Joe gets is another thing and what Jon gets is another thing and when you send it to CP, he gets yet another thing.

The bind moggles.

In which we ramble

I’ve fallen behind in just about everything, or as we put it while we’re eating the haggis, it’s all ganged agley. I blame it on the DJ. I’ve essentially doubled my workload without doubling the hours in the day. Something’s got to give, and the extracurricular stuff in debate (albeit not the core stuff) suffers, things like updating my how-to docs and the like. Oh, well. The ship of Hud sails on, but the Menickean dinghies are not being launched with their usual rapidity.

CP copped to the finals problem at Jake. He was tinkering with something over here, and while he wasn’t looking something over there squeezed out of the tube. Or something like that. Good. Better him than me.

We had a practice round last night for our new novices. Always entertaining to see how people get started. Of course, that’s why we have events solely for starting novices. If stomachs are going to heave and brains implode as the adrenaline erupts, at least everyone else is in the same boat. But the plebes did quite well, and they don’t have to worry about embarrassing themselves this weekend.

This year at the first-timers MHL, because it is first timers, it made sense that they not debate the Oct topic on 10/25, which would mean exactly one shot for them at that topic and then a switch. Normally they’d get two shots at Sept-Oct, but this year the calendar didn’t like that. So they’re debating Nov's GMFs. Which means that at this tournament, f-t PF is Nov topic, non f-t pf is Sept-Oct topic, novice LD is modest novice, jv LD is Sept-Oct LD, and policy is the 1862 Abolish the Whig party topic. Can you say Yikes? I’ve been getting a steady stream of questions about this, but realistically, in terms of who’s debating what, it makes sense. In terms of running a tournament, it’s absolutely nuts. Oh, well. It will all be over on Sunday, and it won’t be the first time we’ve run a nutty tournament.

Not much movement on the Bump front, meanwhile. There’s been the tiniest bit of attrition, but not enough to matter. People are still potentially debating in the janitor’s closet, the water closet and the Great Pit of Carkoon, which is not so wonderful a situation. The tiny number of available judges for hire, which I broadcast today, may sweep out some of the hoi and the polloi. We’ll see. We still have three weeks. (Three weeks? Great googly moogly!)

In which we pretty much wrap up Jake

One does get to see all sorts of people one hasn’t seen for a while at Big Jake, which is a good thing for the most part. The truth be told, I’m more likely to be ducking bumping into locals rather than avoiding far-flungs, as the locals are more likely to have annoyed me recently while the far-flungs annoyed me long enough ago that I’ve probably forgotten about it. Then again, I’ve forgotten what I had for breakfast this morning, so maybe it’s a wash.

Throughout all of this, O’C is like a stereotypical Japanese tourist who has to have his picture taken in front of all the sights. He did it on the DisAd, and he did it at Jake. Check out his FB pix. O’C standing in front of this alum or that alum. O’C standing in front of this coach or that coach. O’C standing in front of the Foods of the World Unite. O’C standing in front of the trophies (which, given that some of them are as big as the Ritz, make him look teeny weeny indeed). O’C standing in front of the urinal. O’C standing in front of the Mr. Softee truck. Actually, that last one was with a purpose, as Mr. Softee has now been officially awarded a Bronx Achievement Award. Personally, given that Mr. S never has chocolate dipping sauce to make what I used to call a Brown Bonnet, I think the award was unearned. But you try to stop O’C from giving an award: I don’t have the stamina.

Then again, I can’t say I saw much of himself over the weekend. CP and I were ensconced in the principal’s conference room, a quite comfortable space that is small enough to discourage tab leeches. We had a good team of major and minor domos, and when we needed to find out why someone hadn’t pressed the right button a mile away, they went and got the button pressed. Then again, one of them kept slurping bubbles at the bottom of his empty iced tea glass. Hmmmmm. That’s a hanging offense. Unfortunately we had blocked internet access, so CP had to do some of his magic to connect us to Sporcle, but once he had done so, even bubble-slurping couldn’t bother us.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this there was an NDCA board meeting, which didn’t move the needle much. I couldn’t get my computer to Skype, presumably because of the blocks, so eventually I did it on my phone, which worked fine. But there were no revolutions, counterrevolutions, or even blips on the screen. Then again, I wasn’t expecting any, so there you are.

Since there were no major explosions of irate pitchfork-carrying coaches into LD tab, I have to believe that we did a pretty decent job. If I never see another mob of irate pitchfork-carrying coaches exploding into LD tab, I will die happy.

In which we debrief on the events of the previous weekend

Seriously, I don’t have much to say about Big Jake.

I guess the issue of electronic balloting is a big deal, but it went over so well that we barely noticed it in tab. We did have one judge without usable electronics, so for a few rounds we had to remember to print out the ballot and, later, to sort the ballot, but that was it. Of course, this was LD. I gather things were dicier in the PF universe, where many of the judges are unaware that electricity has been harnessed for the home, but Father M seemed to be functioning okay despite this. Policy, needless to say, had no issues with e-ballots, they all being old hands at it.

Speaking of electricity, we did have one yabbo who came by to claim that he couldn’t debate because he had no access to electricity in his room. As we were rolling on the floor in hysterics, he mumbled something about running a electrical socket critique and I think he thought that this threat would sober us up. I will point out that he did not accept our offer to print his cases for him, since he couldn’t read them off his dead computer. He sniffed at this unlikely scenario and was never heard from again. The only other interesting confrontation was when we were going to forfeit students who hadn’t shown up for their round, after, I might add, determining that there could have been no confusion about where to go. We were operating under the assumption that, if the judge is in the room and a runner comes in and the judge says there are no kids, and the runner goes down to tab and reports it and then goes back to the judge and then back to tab again, and the kids still haven’t shown up, the argument from the coach that the judge wasn’t there is, well, not very strong. We rescheduled the round because, well, we’re wonderful human beings that way, but people, here’s the thing. Go to your room. If something is amiss, and there are 1000 runners within Ebola contagion distance, tell one of them that something is amiss. Do not shrug and wander off, or sit down and read a book and discontinue paying attention to the situation that you thought was amiss. In other words, stay where you’re supposed to be and report the situation. This is not contradictory advice, since most debate rounds have at least 2 people involved in them and often more; one can report the problem while the other holds the fort. And don’t wait an hour before reporting the amiss-ness, especially if you are all alone. The thing is, if you are all alone, you are probably in the wrong place. The longer you remain there, the less likely we can set amisses aright. Too bad common sense is on the endangered species list.

It was fun to work with CP. I’m thinking this is the first time we’ve sat together using tabroom, and I have to admit, I learned a few things. There is something to be said for having the creator of the application in the chair next to you. At some point he was beavering away fixing a bug, but to be honest, I didn’t notice the bug at the time and for all I know it was in answer to an online problem submission, of which there are many throughout the day. A bit of advice: if you have a problem, be specific. Help requests along the lines of, say, “I find your program generally confusing,” don’t really suggest avenues of pursuit to solve the problem, although they do provide some welcome comic relief. Also, comments like, “My school doesn’t have a program and I want to create a phony school so my daughter can attend tournaments,” aren’t really advisable if I’m reading them (and I am). Then again, I got an email this morning from someone who wants to send their kid to the upcoming MHL in policy, and asked if we could provide a partner since the kid has none, and ended by asking what the topic is. That’ll work.

Anyhow, I learned some new tricks from CP, who promises to find a new host for the program, given that the present host is occasionally slower than some metaphorically really slow thing. There were only a couple of big tournaments running over the weekend (Jake and HOT), and combined they shouldn’t have been able to stop things quite so dead in their tracks as they did. The only problem we had, and I suspect it was (my) user error (although I can’t imagine why), was pairing the final round. Fortunately, in this particular final round there were only about 2 debaters, and we had plenty of judges to choose from. We all suspected that reentering data from the previous round or two would fix the problem; JV did exactly that, and yes, it did the job. In any case, it wasn’t particularly a disaster, just an annoyance. The trains continued to roll on time, which is all that anyone can ask.

In which we preview this year's BB Opening Award Ceremony

I read in the Times this morning that the Dutch Army—all of it—has checked into the tournament hotel, so they’ll be ready for the opening ceremony on Friday. They’ll be marching into the auditorium in full battle regalia, acting as an honor guard for this year’s winners of the Bronx Disillusion Awards, given annually to former debate people who have demonstrated a firm resolve to get as far away from the activity as possible until Jon Cruz set a trap for them in their backyards and hauled them in bodily, torturing them by repeated forced viewings of the Bea Arthur segment of the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Show until they finally capitulated and agreed to show up, just make it stop, just make it stop, JUST MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!

After the induction of the new honorees, there will be a musical interlude during which Stephen Sondheim ’47 (well, not really, he went to the George School in Pennsylvania, but he probably wishes he went to Bronx Science, so we’ll just fudge it) will conduct the Sumerian Philharmonic Orchestra in a rousing rendition of the Bronx Fight Song (“Pick up your pencils, put down your pencils, hand in your papers, try not to drop the ball this time you schmegeggie”) followed by the original cast of “Oh Calcutta” performing a medley of their hit from the show. It is unclear whether or not they will be wearing their costumes from the show.

Next up, Jon Cruz will descend from the rafters in a hot air balloon. Given the amount of hot air at the average Bronx opening ceremony, this is probably not going to be as impressive as it sounds. Once his feet hit the ground, followed presumably by the rest of him, Cruz will make the preliminary announcements, telling the assembled multitudes the amount of prep time for Declamation Debate, that the official name for Policy at the Bronx is Polic-I-Mean-Team Debate, that the bathrooms will be closed for the duration of the weekend in honor of preserving the oceans (this year’s Polic-I-Mean-Team Debate resolution), and that those people you saw at the entrance to the building in hazmat suits are purely coincidental and you shouldn’t pay the least bit of attention to them.

At around this time, as everyone in the auditorium is about ten minutes into streaming the latest episode of NCIS: Ripon and paying no attention whatsoever to what’s happening on the stage, the curtain will pull back to reveal the Bolshoi ballet performing the Ballbuster Nutcracker Suite accompanied by some guy with GarageBand hacked onto an Apple 2GS. Seven of the people in the auditorium will look up momentarily and then go back to their television show.

In the Grand Finale of the ceremony, following a brief demonstration of the Glorious Dancing Fountains Water Vaganza (all other vaganzas are, of course, extra), this year's travelling awards will travel on their own power from whoever had them last year down to the stage, where they will take pride of place among the 3,283,291 other awards already on the stage waiting to be presented. A fifteen minute firework display, a short prayer for the repose of the immobile and the release of 1500 pigeons of the world into the auditorium will mark the end of the event.

(NOTE: all participants at the award ceremony will be given an umbrella in advance of the pigeon release.)

(ALSO NOTE: the serving of squab internationale for lunch on Saturday as part of the Foods of the World Unite is entirely unrelated to the pigeon release. However, a bounty of a buck a pidge will be paid out immediately following the closing of the opening ceremony. How many other tournaments can you think of that offer you a chance to earn back your entry fee?)

In which, having nothing to say, we point somewhere else

http://www.masterworksbroadway.com/blog/happy-eighty-ninth-angela-lansbury

In which we return from the frigid north

Another Monticello Kaiser tournament goes into the record books.

This was one of our “Academy” tournaments, aimed at younger students who might get shut out from events like Big Bronx. So can someone explain to me why people aren’t breaking down the doors? An awful lot of schools didn’t sign up, and they are the schools who would seem to benefit most from such an event. Are they too hoity-toity for such things? “TOC bids only, please, before we wear out any of our precious shoe leather.” Whatever. A few schools blew off their entry and dropped after the fee deadline. This could be problematic for their entry at, say, Bump. Why do people forget that the handful of people in tab are the same people week after week? Do they just think that we’ll forget they stuck a school with extra food and extra trophies that proved unnecessary? Oh, well. There’s good debate citizenry and bad debate citizenry, and the usual suspects always seem to be the usual suspects, and what can you do? I support the good citizens as I become progressively less interested in the bad ones. Do what you want, folks. But don’t be surprised when I do what I want on my end.

We did have some tabbing problems. One of them, a soupcon of mis-flighting, CP says he was able to correct. The other one, the wrong people advancing, was entirely my fault, because of a bad setting that I put in. The problem is that when something like that happens, after about a minute of panic, one sets about moving the tournament along come hell or high water, which we did (I was working with Kaz), first by hand and then by recalling a workaround for this from past experience. We never did realize the root cause until CP pointed it out after the fact. As I told him, thank God it was user error. That I can learn from and fix. I just worry about people who aren’t us, using this program week after week. I’ve been wondering if it would make sense to put out a default set of tournaments that people can copy and work from, rather than always starting from scratch (or from what’s input from the last iteration of the tournament, which is moot if there was none in tabroom). Isn’t it better to adjust defaults than to have to always fill in everything? Anyhow, I’ve often said that most of tabroom success is based on setting things up right, because there’s so bloody much to set up. That has proven true once again.

Still, I got home for dinner, and on the bright side, our PFers managed to get a winning record and break to octos. Very nice. I’ve got to remember to put in their NSDA points. (There’s a new one for the Sailors!)

And finally, prefs opened today for Big Jake. Things seems to be working fine, aside from the fact that there were two Ryan Hamiltons listed as LD judges, and popular opinion is that one Ryan Hamilton is more than enough to do the job. I fixed that, and then I went in and conflicted The People’s Champion and my daughter, neither of which should probably judge Hen Hud. As for PF strikes and LD prefs, I’ve set it up so that the Sailors can handle that themselves, another nice feature of tabroom.

Meanwhile, O’C is floating on an uncharacteristic sea of calm for these last few days before the event. Obviously he’s in denial.

In which we leak the instructions to the PF judges

As we were able to discover the guidelines to the LD judges on speaker points at the upcoming NYC Invitational, we have also discovered an early version of the overall instructions to the PF judges that will be printed on the ballots. Whether these instructions will be final remains to be seen.

TOPIC: It is better for professional sports teams to play in stadiums than on the streets, but if we hear about just one more pro athlete behaving badly we should stop professional sports altogether and go back to reading Thoreau, which is almost as exciting as, say, the World Series or the Superbowl, provided you have a really low threshold for defining the concept of exciting.
• Judges should decide the round as it is debated, not based on their personal beliefs. In other words, the debaters are not here to change your mind, but to convince you as if you had no mind at all, which I assure you is what they will believe if you don't vote for them.
• Written ballots are important to the coaches to understand what happened in the round. This could require the judge to actually pay attention during the round, and we apologize in advance if this is an inconvenience.
• We understand that this may be the first time some of you have been exposed to spoken English, so when it comes time to write your ballot, don’t get carried away. “The Pro Teem Was Moor Serpuasive” is about as much as you need to say, especially if you think the Con won.
• We are hoping to have total adoption of electronic ballots. To enable this process, you can use either a computer, a tablet or a smart phone to access our wireless. If this last sentence was a total mystery to you, tab will be happy to provide you with paper ballots completely filled out, including the winners and losers and the RFD, “The Pro Teem Was Moor Serpuasive.”
• Debaters should advocate or reject the resolution in manner clear to a non-specialist citizen judge. That’s you. Clash of ideas is essential to debate. Clash of fists, on the other hand, is taking things a little too far. If fisticuffs do break out during a round you are adjudicating, the prudent course for you to take is to let them duke it out. Each debater should be assigned speaker points in the opposite order of hitting the canvas.
• Debaters should display logic and reasoning, advocate a position, use evidence, and communicate clear ideas using professional decorum. Like that’s gonna happen…
• Neither the pro nor con should offer a plan or counterplan, defined as a formalized, comprehensive proposal for implementation. Rather, they should offer reasoning to support a position of advocacy. Debaters may offer generalized, practical solutions. The funny thing is, despite the fact that all this doesn’t make much sense and there’s virtually no way to address most resolutions without evaluating implementation, we stick by it. Worse, half the time debaters in the round who are offering a plan or counterplan immediately cry foul when the opponents offer a plan or counterplan and demand an immediate victory for their side. Judges who can work their way through this conundrum are to be congratulated.
• Crossfire should be dedicated to questions and answers rather than reading evidence. Evidence may be referenced. There are probably other things we could say about crossfire, like for instance it may or may not be important, it may or may not be counted into your decision calculus, and it may or may not be clear who is asking whom what, but those are beside the point. The important thing for the judge is to somehow survive the Grande Crossfire, where all four debaters are talking at once and no one is making any sense. Meanwhile, you can thank your lucky stars that we are not using Venti Crossfire, where the judge also has to participate. If you have noise-cancelling headphones, Grande Crossfire is the time to use them.
• No new arguments may be introduced in the Final Focus; however, debaters may include new evidence to support prior arguments. The reason for this is, of course, that you can’t start something new to which your opponents will not be able to reply. However, once the round is over and the decision is announced, the losing debaters are encouraged to take on an attitude of high dudgeon and explain to the judge how idiotic this decision is and to attempt to convince the judge to change the decision. Judges are encouraged to entertain such suggestions, and run into the tab room and explain how they didn’t know what they were doing until these helpful debaters explained it more clearly. That way the tab room will have a good laugh while surreptitiously marking you as a C judge for the next round.
• Debaters must supply evidence on request to the judge or their opponents. Evidence is, surprisingly, not the sentence in their case where they said that 34% of all dentists recommend Viagra to their patients who chew gum. Evidence is a copy of the original article in Dental-Marital Arts Magazine where the dentists themselves said that 34% of all dentists recommend Viagra to their patients who chew gum. Don’t be fooled by substitutes.

In which we succumb to the annual October tempation

The following was leaked from this year’s Fairly Large Bronx tournament. I’m not sure if it represents what they’ll actually print on the LD ballots.

Judges: Please use the following guidelines for assigning speaker points.
30: avoid at all costs, unless you want Vaughan to come out of tab and hit you over the head with a frying pan
29: debater paid a boatload of money for private coaches
28: lone LDer on all-Speech squad hoping to last long enough to have to find private transportation home to avoid the singing of show tunes on the bus
27: may break to runoff round, but will then immediately be torn into limp Froot Loops by the top seed
26: unlikely to break to runoff round at this tournament, the next tournament, or for that matter any tournament ever, and should have joined the 43-man Squamish team when he had the chance
25: ran an RBI vs an SUV while misquoting the TMI card, creating a violation of the DMV for the IRS and not responding to repeated cries of “Hey, you, wake up!” (Or something like that. I mean, it's LD. Who knows what the hell anyone is talking about anymore?)
24 and below: use only for exceptionally poor fashion/grooming choices including rampant nose hair, Doctor Who bowties and VPBs (visible plumber's butts). Wearing Chester A. Arthur costume is unlikely to sway anyone but the tournament director, and who cares what he thinks?

We will be using tenths of points despite our belief that the likelihood of any judge objectively being able to assign a range of 50-60 different designations between 24 and 30 is about as likely as any judge being able to identify chemical elements from their atomic number. (Quick: What’s 105?) Keep in mind that when a round is 28.6 v 27.2, the tab room will inevitably fall on the floor laughing while the judge nevertheless maintains that he/she knows exactly what those points mean. [Snort!]

Because we are using a scale that defies everything we know about the human ability to choose between more than a handful of alternatives, no tied points will be allowed, as that would make things too easy. Untied points will also not be allowed.

Low point wins are acceptable, but meaningless if it’s only a tenth of a point. If you’re going to assign a LPW, make it a humdinger, like 29.9 v 21.2. Now that’s the kind of low point win you can take to the bank.

(Fans of this sort of thing are advised to check out http://coachean.blogspot.com/2011/10/big-bronx-schedule.html)

In which we marginally debrief on the MHL-W

Yesterday was this year’s iteration of the MHL Workshop. Quite a healthy turnout, given that it was a Sunday, and the day after Yom Kippur. The timing was nice because the PFers got to talk about GMOs, plus there were demo rounds in PF and LD, A couple of Sailors were in the PF demo, plus one of our novices came along for the ride. She didn’t run out of the car screaming when we got back to Hudville, which I guess is a good sign.

A question was asked during our new-coach meeting about whether debate is growing. Who knows, but it certainly feels that way, especially in PF. I mean, think about it. Very little starting friction, in that virtually any teacher with the time can try coaching it; minimal buy-in for students, as compared to Policy or LD, which now both have a special Sell-Your-Soul signup page on the NSDA site; plenty of tournaments within spitting distance (at least in the northeast, and at all levels). I don’t think it’s much of a leap to say that PF in 2014 is much like LD in 1994 in its growing popularity and its easy accessibility. I won’t offer thoughts on where it will be in 20 years, but it’s certainly thriving now. If it can maintain its accessibility, it will probably still be doing fine. If I suggest using MJP at a PF, please hit me over the head with a frying pan at the first opportunity.

Bump is filled up and then some. O’C claims he knows a way to make “rooms” appear out of thin air. I certainly hope so.

One thing O’C and I did yesterday was go over Lotsa Bronksa. (O'C and JV did likewise for Speech.) LD is now completely set up, and I gave Kaz a buzz to set up Polic—Team Debate (that’s the official name of the activity) likewise. Next up, I’ll talk to Fr M about setting up PF. Quelle fun! While there are plenty of functions that O’C is exciting about in tabroom.com, the ability to name each round individually ranks highest among these. It’s not just heterosexualdecimals anymore. Each round can be named after an individual. I also understand that the Republican Party has bought round 2 of Polic—Team Debate, in honor of O’C’s C.A. Arthur Halloween costume. Whatever. I’ve put a bid in to buy the naming rights to the bathroom break after round 5, but I’m still waiting to hear if I was outbid by McDonalds.

In which we talk about independent entries

There's been lots of bad craziness in certain quarters having nothing to do with forensics, so I won’t bother you with that. We'll just get down to our own craziness.

I have to admit that I’m amused by the so-called arguments in favor of independent entries. I mean, we’ve had independent entries for as long as I can remember, starting back usually with an eager LDer accompanied by a long-suffering parent. Some of our favorite judges (and people) were those parents, because they were usually pretty smart people who understood the activity and listened to the arguments and made relatively clear decisions based on easy to understand criteria. One wishes one could say that about all judges. Anyhow, as far as I know, no one is trying to eliminate such entries from the field. There are certain aspects of such entries, for instance, a presumed privilege set, given that it’s their own money, but they carry the benign agreement of their schools that they do what they’re doing. I’ve seen some arguments about liability and such with parents, but at the core I wonder if anyone is really worried about that. I guess when something horrible happens, that attitude will change, but at the moment, that’s all really beside the point.

The other independent entries I have experience of is paid-for programs that teach debate. Without exception, every one of these I have dealt with has caused unacceptable problems. They've lied, created bogus schools, flouted judge obligations, and turned all sorts of tricks wreaking amazing havoc in the tab room when their shenanigans are eventually uncovered. The idea that these folks are white knights fighting for a universal right to debate who deserve a chance runs counter to the experiences we’ve had in the time that we have given them the chance. They have uniformly behaved badly. To suggest that some of what they do is non-unique does not address the fact that, if a school does it, I have recourse to that school’s administration (recourse which we have taken) but when one of these programs does it, and you go to find the adult supervisor and there isn’t one, and when you fall back on email and the registrant was actually the student with a secondary email, well, you’ve gotten nowhere.

I’m certainly in favor of more debate for more people. I’m in favor of schools doing a lot of good things for more people. I also understand that education dollars are limited (which I feel is one of the great failings of our society). But let’s face it. Families are spending a lot of money to get their kids independent debate training. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if they want to participate in organized high school debate, they need to be part of the high school debate organization. They obviously have the money to put into that effort, and the paid-for programs have the incentive to funnel their protégés into organized programs, so let them do that. But meanwhile, I hate to say it, but years of unacceptable behavior are pretty hard to ignore, and are also not worth arguing about, which is why I haven’t gotten involved in any “forums” on the subject. All of these programs have given me good reasons not to have anything to do with them: a lot of talk about how wonderful they are is extremely unlikely to make me forget those bad experiences.

In which we open registration

Oh joy. Oh rapture. Bump registration is now open.

Feh.

I’ve sent out the Pretty Final agenda for the workshop Sunday. There’s an assumption of two groups each of PF and LD and one group of Policy. Someone sent me an email asking about why there’s no policy demo, the answer to which is, sure, let’s have one. Need debaters, though. It’s being worked on.

After that, we’re on to the Kaiser. Numbers so far are good, and I think there’s a couple of schools not signed up yet, so we’re on course. This tournament has been one I’ve worried about, for reasons I’ve often discussed, and I think we’ve succeeded in bringing it back from the brink. Unfortunately nowadays everybody on earth thinks they’re a TOC debater and only wants to be a part of the $ircuit, which is just silly. By me, the existence of an invitational tournament for mid-level students, like what the Kaiser has become, is a great thing. It spreads debate to way more people than limited access and bids and all that, not to mention the nature of this tournament is way more accessible to students who haven’t sold their souls to the debate satans. I mean, it’s high school debate, which ought to be available to many many people, including those who do not have TOC or anything like it on their radar. More debate for more people? Good. Very specialized debate for very specialized people? Good, but only for those people. You know where my commitment is.

Anyhow, now I’ve got to hire Bump judges. If you’re of that persuasion, get in touch.

In which we point out where the next 6 weeks are headed

I spent a very productive weekend working on the curriculum. There’s a big difference between doing LD for 3 months and switching to PF and just starting out doing PF. Before, for instance, we’d work on the parts of a round, and then just adjust from LD to PF, but now that we’re starting with PF, the parts of a round need a full and different explanation from what I was using. And prioritization of subjects is different. I’d ease into research a bit later for LD, where it’s an important concern, than I will for PF, where it’s a paramount concern. Remember, I was raised on an LD where you could get by entirely on case analytics, and research was something one dabbled in. This was predicated on resolutions that had no real-world connection. I’m not saying that LD today is concerned with the real world—although the resolutions are—whereas in PF, the real world is all there is. Anyhow, lots of rearranging and rewriting and rethinking, including the tossing overboard of the whole concept of value/criterion (which, I maintain, still needs to inform case thinking, albeit implicitly rather than explicitly). And we’ve got all of 4 meetings to get it into the plebe head in readiness for the first tournament. Oh, well. Starting one’s debate career is more about getting over the stomach butterflies and learning to eat debate ziti and to dress like a little lawyer than actually debating. That will come with experience. We don’t start theoretical life saver instruction by teaching swimming; we start by showing them what water is.

I also think I’ve got the MHL Workshop agenda polished up. I sent it out today to the instructors, and then it will go on to the assembled multitudes. O’C and I managed to weasel out of doing too much, but then again, I have a lot of things I want to go over with him on El Largo Bronco which is, after all, only a couple of weeks away, not to mention the RR. Oh, yeah, and at some point I need to post the First Timers’ on tabroom. We’re definitely back at Central High School. Last time I got lost 1) coming and 2) going, so I have a bit of past performance that needs improving on. I figure that this time I’ll have a bus and be able to spend my time navigating rather than avoiding being run down by Jersey drivers, who are like Boston drivers without the Red Sox bumper stickers.

I’ve also just filed the paperwork for getting the buildings for Bump. And next Monday is parent night, which among other things means locking the door and letting no one out until all the volunteer slots are filled. Jeesh. Bump already. I hope you’re ready for about 6 weeks of monotonous whining.

In which we put our feet up and relax for a while

I feel a lull in my life at the moment. The first big tournament of the year is over, the initial hump of new work at the DJ has been put behind me, I just finished an edit and am settling into some serious reading (the two of which are my job in a nutshell, if you throw in other nuts), and we’re probably going to start eating dinner in the dining room rather than on the sun porch. I even have a weekend with no debate coming up (the last until Thanksgiving). Life is quiet. I’ll try to take advantage of it.

I’m figuring on getting the smaller new iPhone. I like the idea of the bigger one, but I think I’d gravitate to it more if it were the only product I used. But since I’ll also have an iPad or a Mac nearby for almost everything I do, and when push comes to shove I just don’t use my phone that much, and I have no intentions of, say, paying attention to Facebook any more than I already do (and if anything, I’m paying less attention to it lately because it seems to, if this is possible, gotten more deathly dull than it was previously), and I know that as much as I like to think I play games, I really don’t (although I’ve been enjoying having the daily Times crossword electronically, but again, I’m more likely to play it on my iPad), my usage doesn’t justify the extra luggage, so to speak. Bigger good, way way bigger so you have to think about its bigness, not so good. I will go for the most memory, of course. I have learned that you can never have too much memory or speed, and that both will seem restrictive way before you upgrade whatever it is you have that requires memory and speed. I’ll wait until the machine is available at the Apple store next door to my office. I noticed that they’re available on Long Island, so they should creep up to Westchester in a week or so.

I’ve been listening to Flash Boys as my commute audiobook. Given our experience with latency issues at the Pups, listening to this book makes me wonder why CP has chosen to dedicate his skills to debate when instead he could be ripping off entire marketplaces and making billions of bucks. An unwise choice on his part. Speaking of which, I am now especially looking forward to working with him at Bronx. I want him to sit next to me with a pencil and write down how I use the system. His use of the system is predicated on his knowledge of the system: he knows where all the bodies are buried. It’s like the only time I ever indexed a book, the original Doubleday Cookbook back in the 70s. I then adopted that book as my go-to for basic recipes, because whenever I wanted to look something up in the index, I always found it right away because the index thought exactly the way I did (or vice versa). That’s why in the early days of tabroom we always liked to have O’C around: we claimed that he thought like CP, or more correctly, he knew what CP was thinking when he programmed a certain feature, so like CP, O’C could immediately put his finger on the right button. (If I’m not mistaken, when CP heard that O’C was able to read his mind, he went on a two-year sabbatical, trekking to various Nepalese monasteries until his mind was completely cleansed, with nothing left behind but “Keep Out! Cruz, This Means You!!!” signs.)

By the way, I went over the fines for the Pups, and saw virtually no real villains in the judges not showing up category. Well, I saw one, who will have a bit to answer for, but that’s it. Nice job on everyone else’s part. This was especially true on Sunday, when you need your top panels. Lose one person, and the 1-1, 1-1, 1-1 becomes a 1-1, 1-1, 3-5 at best, and there is murder in one’s eye. I don’t recall subbing more than one or two judges all day, and those were not because of no-shows but of bad info, and we always had a few 1-ish Pups available to fill in.

I should mention that our Student Advocate was indeed called on directly once, and indirectly more than that. Directly because of some shenanigans in a round that were apparently more bad manners than abuse, but still, that’s what she was there for. Indirectly, because I would solicit her opinion on various things that might come up, because she was closer to the debate experience than I, or at least the LD debate experience. When possible, I will want to continue having such a person around (and I will hope every time it is someone as good as the one we had at Yale).

In which we wish some of you a happy new year (in our own little way)

I get the impression that half the people at the Pups have come down with the Creeping Crud or some near cousin. The Sailors seemed to be in one piece when I saw them last night, and although my head was a little buzzy on Monday I’m fine now, but everyone on Facebook seems have suffered everything from night sweats to navel lint, so I guess we should consider ourselves lucky.

Last night, watching our Not George go over the parts of a round, I realized I pretty much have to spend a day or so working on creating teaching stuff for PF. As I said, I used to wiggle into it from LD, but now we’ll be launching directly into it, which is a totally different business. As a paying member of NSDA (which I doubt I’ve mentioned yet, and which I’ll explain eventually), I assume I have access to all sorts of stuff on their site, but I’m as happy making it up myself as using theirs. I do like the idea of getting to watch Fr Michael’s PF lectures, though. The only one I ever saw was just the top of his head and his first name was Brother rather than Father, so I’m hoping via the promotion that he now gets full skull treatment. I read the potential PF topics to the Sailors at last night’s meeting. A couple of people moaned about GMOs, but I ascribe that to ignorance. I think it’s a strong topic with plenty of strong opinions on both sides. As I read the other topic, I had to allow people a ten minute recess in the middle because I lost them somewhere between “is preferable” and Needles, California. As anyone who has even consulted the book of rez rules can tell you, the longer it is, the worse it is. If it fills up your entire constructive, you might want to vote for the other one. Oh, yeah, the content is pretty uninteresting too. Unless we’re talking about some sort of agriculture from hell that should be stopped at all costs, it’s pretty hard to prioritize having a nice lawn over feeding the hungry masses. Then again, the Sailors tell me that, in the heat of battle, Sept-Oct wasn’t that bad after all. They liked the Pro, in other words. Go figure. I never really hated the topic, although it didn’t grab me as having any great merit as an issue that must be discussed. GMOs and water rights certainly have more intrinsic value as topics. I did put in my vote, for what it’s worth. We’ll find out soon enough.

This is pretty much a verbatim quote from a plebe last night: “Moby-Dick. Bleech! It’s got all this whale stuff in it.” Comden and Green went at it a different way: “It’s about this whale…” Both lines are pretty memorable. Anyhow, next week the plebes will read to us from a “favorite” book, a regular feature of the novitiate. Favorite books earn those quotes because over the years we’ve heard from everything from Dr. Seuss to Alex Comfort. The point is for me to get a fix on poise and voice, with a soupcon of mental status; the Alex Comfort reader, for instance, turned out predictably, uh, inappropriate, in many, many ways.

O’C is heading out tonight to spend Rosh Hoshanah with the NSDA board, which I’m pretty sure isn’t exactly a family tradition with him. I think he said it was in Iowa. So near and yet shofar. He promised to look at the agenda for the MHL Workshop on the way out. I’d like to put that baby to bed by the end of the weekend. That and the PF curriculum.

I hope it rains all day Sunday. I’ll light a fire in the hearth and plug away.

("So near and yet shofar"—Are you really letting me get away with that?)

In which we use the phrase "old titular fart"

At some point last week, before I went to the Pups (which did nothing to change my mind), I decided that I would no longer start Sailor debaters in LD, but would instead go directly to PF. I’ve already explained at length why I prefer PF to LD. I was only using LD as a vestigial tool to train kids on arguments, and to avoid having to create team pairs right away, which ranges from dicey to inevitable when dealing with a small team. This year, I realized that if we had the first-timers’ event on the last week of October use the Nov PF topic, we could then get a whole lot of bang out of the novice PF buck. I guess I could have alternately extended the Sept-Oct topic into November, but I don’t like it much and don’t see it as a great starting place for newbies, given its con bias. Did I mention, by the way, that our local CFL and the MHL will now no longer use coin flips? As for the former, it’s in line with their finals tournament, and most of our local rules are in aid of following the rules there, while for the MHL, if we really want to educate new students, it makes sense to put them on both sides of a topic (which is really the motivation for our local CFL as well). Anyhow, for me dumping LD entirely means revising my curriculum a wee bit off the top, but I still think that students who understand rights and morality and justice are better off than students who don’t, so it’s not terribly difficult for me to make the switch.

Of course, the Pups confirmed this decision. As I’ve said a million times, if TOC didn’t exist, I wouldn’t invent it. The idea of a national circuit strikes me as progressively more bizarre as time goes by. What other high school activity sends students traveling around the country every other week or so? And let’s face it, it’s not that many students that do such traveling, although I suspect that the people on the $ircuit think the $ircuit is bigger than it is, and that everyone who isn’t a part of it wants to be, and that whatever it does is the way things should be done. I suspect that the reason the same schools repeat year after year at TOC is that it is pretty much just these schools that are in the running. LD is obviously going the way of policy in becoming a limited activity with a de facto no-entry policy for new programs. That is, former LDers train new LDers, and without former LDers, you don’t have LD. Everyone in the universe seems to have a coach or two (or eight) still in college, plus one old titular fart who’s been around forever who hasn’t judged since the Carter Administration who buys the plane tickets and checks in at the motel and that’s about it. Not to mention the fact that the trend has moved from debating often interesting resolutions to the dreadfully dull idea of evaluating debate per se. How many judges are deciding on the basis of violations, critiques, off-case analyses, etc., versus the idea that one debater defended a particular side of a resolution better than the other debater defended the opposite side? Certainly a lot of the tournaments I work at also have a traveling bunch of PFers, but so far they haven’t cut themselves off from the real world. Maybe they will at some point. I don’t know. I’ll be long gone by then. I’m sure a lot of people will be happy to see my back.

In which we stare at a blank screen

Here’s a shocker for you. If you do something people don’t like, they storm the barricades and give you a stern talking to. (Like that ever really works.) If you do something they do like, they do not storm the barricades thanking you profusely and telling you what a great job you’re doing. Which means that it’s a good idea to take as one’s personal philosophy the idea that virtue is its own reward.

The Pups was going swimmingly until we had server issues. Since tabroom is server-based, if you’re not connected for whatever reason, you get a blank screen, and there is literally nothing you can do. As people staring at the blank screen, our little team could only curse the gods and, of course, notify CP, who was apparently well aware of the problem, since it was affecting him too. I gather after the fact that he has fixed whatever the problem was, which is way above my pay grade.

As (presumably) a result of this glitch, we had some really interesting problems. As it turned out, I had an incorrect setting on where to focus prefs, which was clear enough after having to go in and manually reassign a bunch of judges. But standard operating procedure in any case is to go over a pairing and check all the judges and fix the assignments where the prefs don’t work, so the wrong setting, aside from making more work, caused no harm. But we did have to change a lot of judges. Whatever. There were three of us, and we had at it, and we ended up with a pairing where everyone had very nice 1s and 2s and, hither and yon, the odd 3. If I’m not mistaken, at the same time the ability of the program to distribute the rooms correctly was thrown off (although this might have been later). This meant a lot of checking and room reassigning, so that judges were not in two places at the same time.

We finally got everything right, with three people, as I said, beavering away at it. We released a pairing and took a breath. What happened next was pretty much impossible for us to understand. A coach came by and was disappointed that one of his down-2s got a 3-3 judge. I sort of naturally assumed that this meant there was nothing better, and dismissed it. But as the round was going on, I took a look to find out why this might have happened—maybe it was an error on our part rather than a lack of any better judges—and found a whole slew of 4s and 5s assigned to down-2s, on a pairing three of us had vetted to insure that there was not a single 4 or 5. That is, we had meticulously cleaned up the pairing, and somehow it had gotten all dirty again. We hypothesized on how this might have happened, and obviously it was related to the server problem, but of course all we could do was the blind guessing of the ignorant. It was hard to explain to CP, too, because since we had fixed it and then it wasn’t fixed anymore on our screens, he had nothing to work with. He does connect it to the server issue, and he has addressed that, so I have no lack of confidence in the system going forward (especially since he’ll be sitting next to me in a couple of weeks at Bronx).

Anyhow, I did feel that the tournament had promised the best judging for down-2s, and we had, for this round, not delivered on that important promise. So we double-byed those rounds. I could not in good faith eliminate folks from contention because we had failed to provide them with the judges they deserved in that situation. I think this was the right decision, and as far as I know, it was accepted as the right decision. Certainly no one was harmed by it, as compared to letting the decisions stand, which may or may not have caused harm. Who knows how a 1-1 would have judged the round compared to how the 5-5 judged it?

The system eventually got back to business, but it was still dinky for a while on the room side. One of the joys of tabroom has been its handling of rooms, compared to TRPC, and the thing is, when there’s even one assignment where a judge is in two places at once, you have no alternative but to check every assignment of room and judge, both ways, for hundreds of pairings. Time flies when you’re having fun.

Thanks to the outage, one way or the other we lost almost 2 hours. Which meant we had no choice but to single-flight the run-off round, which started around 9:00 rather than 7:00. We could, I guess, have put in a single judge rather than panels, but I don’t know how that would have been received. With the virtue of hindsight, it might have been received better than the tough panels that were created. Those tough panels did cause the aforementioned storming of the barricades. I certainly didn’t disagree that many of these panels were brutal, but I can’t say that I react well to being stormed. In any case, it was what it was, and there was nothing that was going to be done about it.

The system was fine after that. Sunday we delivered virtually nothing but 1-1-1 panels. Shockingly, not one of the usual suspect coaches came in to tell us they liked the assignments. We should have tossed a few 4-3s in there just to see if they were still breathing. My guess is that they will remember to their graves the run-off, and never even think anything of the doubles, octo (bid round), quarters or semis panels. (The final, while pretty damned good in my estimation, went off prefs for an all-Pup panel, which is the tradition.)

Here’s the thing. I’m obviously a big supporter of MJP. Anyone who has read my writing knows that. But I’m also a big supporter of things like coaching your students to handle any judges, as compared to using your coaching time to go into tab to complain every time you don’t like the assigned judges. Instead of trying to teach how to persuade a diverse audience, we teach that it is better to persuade tab to deliver a different audience. I doubt if most LD circuit debaters today are capable of winning over any more than a tiny segment of particularly predisosed adjudicators. We are, at best, teaching them to preach to the choir. So it goes, and the train has left the station on this (wow—two clichés in a row), but that doesn’t mean I like it. I’ll give you all the highest prefs I can whenever I tab, because that’s why I earn the nonexistent big bucks. However, if you solicit my opinion on all of this (and perhaps even if you don’t), I’ll be happy to provide it.

In which we don't say much

So today was the final setting up for the Pups. All the hired judges are in and their conflicts marked. I doublechecked the rooms and there seem to be enough of them. I’ve checked the weather and it looks great. I’ve sent out instructions on this and that to the soon-to-be-assembled multitudes, including how we’ll handle judge assignments. (I followed my thoughts from my analysis a while ago over at NDCA, i.e., mutual through 3-3 then whatevah, due to the tiny number of whatevahs that actually come up.)

I also sent out a message to the hordes of the MHL, telling them to join NDCA. Speaking of which, I cast my ballot today for the board openings. And sometime over the weekend I have to get my act together on the MHL Workshop.

Meanwhile, JV is reserving rooms for Princeton. And come to think of it, I’ve already touched based with them, Columbia and Penn about their tournaments. Good grief! The season’s practically over already.

In which we use a word for the first time

We seemed to have cut out all the nautical ribbon clerks early this year. Usually we drift down to the hard core in drips and drabs, but last night there were only a handful of plebes left. The good news is that 3 of them had already signed up, and the other 2 are seniors in it for a lark, which I always like, but I did think we’d pull a few more. I wasn’t that horrible on opening night, I don’t think. I told El Capitano to keep those announcements coming.

We had a practice round last night. I was a little perturbed over a seeming lack of accessible blocks. Maybe I never explained that to them? Jeesh. Given that a topic has a bunch of things that are probably going to be said, debaters should have a bunch of responses ready for those things. Of course, one can go too far, and have blocks locked and loaded but because the contention was more subtle, or really doesn’t fit that particular A/T, the block doesn’t work, but often the debater uses it anyhow. Then again, there’s always the debater who goes first, tells me what the opponent is going so say, and then refutes it before the opponent even opens the old mouth. This solo dance never fails to entertain when the opponent runs something else. Who would have expected that?

Oh, well. At the Pups I’m more worried that everyone show up when and where they’re supposed to than anything else, given that the ship of Hud will sail without me. Usually I drive up the debaters but there’s too many of them to fit in my car, and I have to get there early, yadda yadda yadda, so there’s a parent on the bus with both the debaters and the Speecho-Americans. Oh, well. I was that parent once. She’ll survive.

I’ll be sending out my last marching orders to the Pup field tonight or tomorrow morning. Lots of fun announcements about the student advocate, obligations, how we’ll handle MJP (and no, we won’t be handling it by calling it MPJ), etc. I will do my best to hold a civil tongue in my head, given that no one has done anything shenaniganian yet, and everyone should be preemptively upbraided for the sins of a few.

(You know, I can’t ever remember typing the word upbraided before. Who would have thought…)

In which we kvetch (which we've probably never done before)

We have met the enemy and he is us, as Pogo would say. In other words, Pup prefs have opened. Thousands cheer.

There are three things I can’t talk about. The first one is that X is going to Z. The second is that Y is going to Q. Those I promised to keep my mouth shut about, and you’ll hear for yourself shortly. The third is that, even though it is horrible and everyone involved should be banned for life, I will no say no more, forever. You may or may not agree on that last one, but in my opinion, well, so it goes.

There. I know you like the fact that I keep you up-to-date on everything.

I continue to be amazed at some of the shenanigans we’ve been seeing, with people creating schools or teams out of thin air. Here’s a tip, if that’s your cup of tea. Don’t register using the email of one of the teams. That’s a real beginner’s mistake. You think we’re not going to look there first? Don’t register using the email of someone we know doesn’t work at the place you’re registering. Don’t attempt to hire a hundred judges; we check every request, and if you’ve got lots of kids and no adults, we’ll probably scratch our heads a bit. Don’t register using a variant of your school’s name, and think we won’t notice. Don’t have one person register 20 different schools. The name will ring a bell, Pavlov. Don’t put in a bogus entry for one tournament and expect that we won’t remember when the next tournament comes up. For that matter, don’t pull anything unwise, period, if you want to register for other tournaments. For example, continually not showing up is an offense punishable by not being accepted in the first place. Seriously now, people. It’s the same personnel in every northeast tab room. You think we forget, or don’t talk to one another? Didn’t pay your registration to one tournament? Just try to get into another one. Judges skipped out on breaks? Farewell, my lovely.

It might come as a shock, but schools get a rep. We know who we can count on, and who we can’t count on. We know who will be pulling fast ones, because they pull fast ones every time. We know who will make ridiculous demands, and we know who will come by and offer help and extra judging and a kind word. We know who thinks we’re trying to screw them when we tab (even though, sorry, you’re not worth the effort, no matter how important you think you are), and we know who believes that we’re impartial because, well, we just don’t give a honk which team gets which judge. We know who’s new and comes asking questions and accepts the answers and learns and grows and becomes an old-time pro pretty quickly, and we know who’s arrogant and who knows way more than we do. And this is all universal. That little mafia of tabbers has been there and done that so many times, we’re inured to it. This is not to suggest that most people are asshats; this is far from true. The people I consider rapscallions and bad debate citizens are the ones who are always emailing or breaking down the door to tab. That's a relatively small number. The vast majority of good debate citizens are judging their rounds and organizing their troops and trusting us to do our best while we trust them to do their best. Win/win for those people.

I love that there’s a shenanigans function in tabroom. That is CP all over. I only wish he were able to identify even more shenanigans than he does.

Okay, I’ve got the bitter out. Now I’ll start getting ready to smile at everybody when the weekend rolls around. Oh. Good to see you. Have you lost weight? That tiara looks wonderful on you! Have you gotten a new psychotherapist? It shows, dahling.

In which we are collegiate (with no apologies to Fred Waring)

I went to the Collegiate Round Robin this weekend. Aside from a drop-off of a trophy last year, I haven’t been since it was the Vassar Round Robin. One thing I noticed right away was that it wasn’t in Poughkeepsie, which meant schlepping down by train rather than driving up by car. Honestly, I prefer the train. It’s much easier to sleep than while driving, for one thing. And my last visit to Vassar, for the MHL and Invitational last year, was sort of traumatic. The sight of all those hot dogs…

Anyhow, for those who have never been there, Collegiate, which is older than any school you can think of and apparently once had Socrates as a teacher until they sent him out once to make a coffee run and he never returned, is a real warren of a building, or actually a number of buildings. You are greeted in the cafeteria by a handwritten menu left over from Per Se down the road, offering a fine selection of entrees that don’t even come close to debate ziti, mystery meat or sloppy joes. Apparently the wine list is a bit light on Bordeaux, but you can’t have everything. Sometimes you just have to settle for a Californian cabernet. Sigh. From this one might get an idea that the place is just too too, until you read the sign on the ladies room door explaining what ladies are and why they get to use this bathroom and you don’t. Normally I don’t read the signs on the ladies room door, and I assure you I wasn’t considering availing myself of that particular facility, but sometimes you’ve got to stop and smell the roses.

I had helped Aracelis set things up on tabroom, and I was there pretty much just to hang out after that. RRs are pretty straightforward, after all. Judges were a tad tight, and tabroom couldn’t really assign them after the first couple of rounds, but it was easy enough to do manually, starting with the hardest to place and working outwards. We hit a wall at one point, but a reboot and a slice or patience seemed to do the trick. CP claimed that there was no system outage, so I guess there must have been a system outage. (Not that I don’t believe everything CP tells me…) He was out in Chicago introducing more suckers disciples to the glory that is his program. One new feature that didn’t work was a notification of when all the ballots were in, which is nifty for an all e-ballot situation, and he seemed to get that working by the end of the day. Nice. Of course, we won’t be doing e-ballots in the depths of Hell House this weekend at Yale. I was considering doing them on the campus on Friday, but going on and off and on again seemed like too much of a reach at this point in the life of tabroom. Maybe next time.

Anyhow, the tournament ended, as most do, and it was a Lake Highland closeout, so I got to take a nice walk from the upper west side down to GCT, and then a nice nap on the ride home, and a pleasant time was had by all. Aracelis managed to cop a couple of tons of leftover meat and potatoes from Saturday night, so look for barbecue sauce stains on her fingers for the next few weeks.

In which we gratuitously mention Big Bronx in passing in order to increase page views

Apple has discontinued the classic iPod. I personally have purchased about 2 CDs this year (although I will allow that one of them was a multidisc set). The idea of physically owning music media, which has been dying for a while as people migrate to mp3s, is virtually over, aside from a few diehards. I actually thought I was one of those diehards until I found that Spotify had more albums than I do. While arguments can be made against the sound quality of the average song file, my old-age hearing loss is beneficial as far as that’s concerned. Maybe there will always be people buying vinyl (I recently threw most of my old scratched-up unlistenable vinyl away—beware of needles!), there is also still a market for Edison-era cylinders. The times move, and we move with them.

Still, I’m not giving up my big ol’ iPod anytime soon, much to the dismay/comfort of my companions in tab rooms. I have gotten off the kick of going through those bazillion songs alphabetically—the loop of “Luck Be a Lady Tonight” at last year’s Big Bronx still haunts those of us who suffered through it—but I still like serendipity, so now I just go on random play of songs, and the devil take the hindmost. I’ve got some really good music on there. I’ve also got some real crap. And some stuff I can’t imagine how it got there. With luck, that little machine will last for quite a few more years. (Side note: I do have a playlist now of nothing but different versions of “Luck Be a Lady Tonight”: I call it my “Torture Palmer Till He Does Everything I Want in Tabroom” playlist and I’ve got it set for endless repeat. [Evil laugh here. Big Bronx is coming.])

I was able to scare up some slots in JVLD at the Pups, now that VLD has settled down. I feel good about that. There’s a couple of programs I’d still like to let in, but we’re getting close. The shutdown tomorrow could have an impact, although I’m not sure. Things have been so static. There’s still 99 people on the PF waitlist, for instance. Not much I can do there, due to limitations of space. Still, I wonder if a division ought to be bigger than 200. That’s a lot of people, and a lot of prospective craziness. Even if a division has the space to expand to accommodate everyone, is that a good idea? Tab management gets crazy (especially in PF, which is hard to tab no matter how you slice it, with its floating sides in every round). Division quality can’t possibly be that high throughout, which is only a problem insofar as, in a big division, if there’s not enough rounds, teams can break that ordinarily wouldn’t. (Witness CatNats.) And there’s absolutely no control of judging. I mean, random is fine, but at some point, even in PF, don’t we want judges we trust judging important rounds? Maybe not. I know there are some people still reeling from the very idea that all judges aren’t randomly assigned, much less the trend to MJP. Oh, well. It’s a complicated question.

Meanwhile, Saturday it’s on to Collegiate. I’ll pack my backpack tonight (I’m out tomorrow). I’ve already looked everywhere for my really nice debate pens, which seem to be nowhere to be found. Hmmm. It wasn’t that long ago that O’C stayed over and took all the Disney shampoo containers. I wonder if he’s been over again lately? Well, at least I'll be in the City. There's got to be pen stores around there somewhere.

In which we thank our lucky stars for our popularity during debate season

I think I do this because, when I don’t do it, I don’t get much mail. Nobody asks me questions that are answered in the invitation. No one yells at me for losing their ballots last year with a warning not to do it again, you spalpeen! Nobody wonders why they didn’t get any hired judges, even though they didn’t request any hired judges. Nobody complains how hard it is to change motel arrangements, even though I’ve had to change my own motel arrangements and all I had to do was send an email to the nice people at the Hampden Inn and they were most accommodating. Let’s face it; 50% of being a coach is being a travel agent. Speaking of which, I just made my Montwegian reservation today. Must have taken me whole minutes. Oh, the humanity.

Last night the plebes appeared, in rather goodly numbers, meaning that next week I’ll have half a goodly number which is, in this case, still a goodly number. I look for 4 or 5 to make it for the long haul. If we start with 10, that’s where we end up. That’s right for Sailordom. We didn’t pick up many Speecho-Americans, though. They’ll just have to keep on recruiting. We can’t set sail without any Sailors.

Anyhow, back to the Pups. The number of VLD has settled. What I’m looking for next is filling in some of the JVLD slots. I had switched the totals to accommodate more of the former, but now that we’re down to loose or extra entries, it’s time to see to the young ‘uns again. How many remains to be seen, since that division has barely moved a muscle since the beginning. The thing is, a lot of people look to Yale, with what is the last of the JV divisions, as an important event. But the number of rooms is the number of rooms, and it does make sense to prioritize VLD for the sake of the tournament. It’s tough, and people are going to get blocked out. Not much we can do about that.

I will be going down to Vassaregiate this weekend to provide moral support, if nothing else. I love the fact that tabroom never forgets coaches’ notes, which means that, among other things, a couple of our judges are unavailable on Friday for a tournament that starts on Saturday. As long as the notes are eternal, they are, essentially, useless. Apparently the problem is that in Massachusetts, notes are indeed eternal, and the mobs that dumped the tea into the bay would rise again and dump CP into the bay, or something, if the notes went away. As I’ve said to him about a million times, feh! Even if the reason for keeping the notes were a good one, the fact that the reason comes from Massachusetts would render it misguided. I mean, these are the people who elected Romney and Dukakis! Seriously now…

In which we mostly kick the season into gear

Things seem to be locking down at the Pups. The TBAs are gone, the judges are all sold, and there isn’t much movement except the tiniest trickle. I’m still expecting one last little splash when registrations are fixed on Friday, but the way things are going, it won’t make that much of a difference.

Saturday was the NYCFL meeting, which is like the beginning of the season without anything actually happening. It was at Iona, although Catholic Charlie has moved up to directing the entire national league, and toward the end of the meeting, when we had the annual elections, we put Tommy B in his place. This is a big change. No more Genesis. Sondheim 24/7. Wowza! Otherwise not too much to report. We did agree to remove the flip from all PF rounds, which is pretty big. This is in keeping with NCFL, of course, but honestly, as long as there’s big imbalances in resolutions, where the only advice I can give my students is to flip the side that will always win, it makes sense. We know of cases where people flip into winning trophies. We also know of cases where people never debate one of the two sides. Strategically I kind of like the flip, but it only works if all other things are equal, and I don’t think they ever will be. We’re going to institute it at the MHL, too, in aid of it being a better learning scenario.

There is lots of movement of people and programs. Kaz, of course, abandoning the Hudson River for the Mighty [there must be some river or something in Lexington]. Some speech people have moved on. There’s all sorts of calendar changes. You name it. Students of my Hen Hud calendar are advised to take a new look at it, especially for MHL/CFL stuff. We put JV into Kaz’s MHL advisory position, which makes sense. He needs something to do to fill up his empty hours, after all. Anyhow, I’ll send out a message to the MHL troops at some point soon, to provide an update.

Tomorrow night is the first meeting with the new recruits, if any. I trust the Sailors have been driving in the sheep, but one never knows until one gets there. Pray for plebes!

In which we wring our hands over bogus entries

The freebooters may be getting out of hand.

I do not feel a terribly great need to defend the idea that attendance at high school debate tournaments ought to be confined to official entries from actual high schools. This is about as radical as suggesting that attendance at high school tennis tournaments ought to be confined to official entries from actual high schools. Clubs like to claim that they’re doing all this great stuff for debate, and maybe they are and maybe they aren’t, but that’s not the point. Independent debaters like to claim that they are the stuff that dreams are made of, TOC-quality talent that the tournament needs to make it legit, but again, that’s not the point. Every event I attend is a high school event, with all the various sanctions and expectations in place, backed by and answerable to school administrations, for the benefit of the students in those schools. That’s the way that it is, and it doesn’t strike me as some horribly restrictive system that needs to be changed. Like many folks in the activity, I would like to see more debate in more places, but to me that means more debate in more schools, with recognition within those schools of the educational benefits of the activity. It does not mean more debate in unregulated and/or maverick situations outside of the basic educational context.

As I say, I feel no great need to defend this. Most people I know, from the administration of various national organizations to tournament directors to tab staff feel the same way, so this is hardly heretical. (And as for the latter, the tab staffs, given our experience with non-school entities, independent or otherwise, we have more than merely orthodoxy informing our opinions on this subject.)

I offer all this prelude to the fact that, regardless of the policies of most tournaments which restrict entry to official registrants from bona fide schools, we are now seeing what I would call a boomlet in bogus entries. People pretend to be their coach and sign up, even when their coach has specifically determined that their school will not be attending the tournament. People register under false names marginally similar to their own (in case they acquire a bid and want to claim it later). People simply register as their school slash independent, with no one at their school in fact endorsing their entry even as independents. People don’t even bother pretending to be a coach, but simply register as if they’re the school, creating a completely bogus account under the school name.

We’ve been weeding our way through these at the Pups, but they’re not alone in having this problem. I’m curious to what the warrant is for such deception/mendacity: since you’re not allowed at this tournament for one reason or another, it’s okay for you to lie your way in? This is the lesson of morality and ethics that we are teaching students today?

Jeesh.

In which we watch the season commence

Things start up pretty quickly, once they start up. All of a sudden I’m getting a million emails, about this, that and the other. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.

This morning I sent out the first of what will no doubt be regular Pups emails on this and that. The waitlist remains ridiculous, although there should be some falloff over the next week. Still, there’s no way everyone who wants to get in will. Not a good situation. Needless to say, sending an email saying there’s nothing you can do immediately brings responses from people demanding that you do something. Oh, well. We’ll clear the TBAs Friday, although honestly I don’t think it will help all that much. The whole process is more aimed at getting people to be realistic rather than a general purge. As CP says, you can always put in one name and then change it to another later. But that says that you’re really coming, as compared to thinking you might be marshaling your troops at some point. I mean, it’s in a little over two week’s time. People should have a handle on it by now.

This weekend there’s the NYCFL meeting, followed by a NYSDCA lunch. The former is the same old same old, where we argue about the rules for Congress and poke at the schedule and reelect one another and eat bagels. As for the latter, this is a good idea, an opportunity for coaches to get together without a tournament breathing down their necks to talk about whatever concerns them. The only problem is transportation from one to the other means that I’ll need to drive into Manhattan. I don’t mind that so much, but I’ve gotten used to taking the train and sleeping. You really can’t do that while you’re driving. Then again, I can make more progress on my endless audiobook pursuit of the Harry Potter titles. Ms. R does slow down a bit after the first four books.

Tonight is the last chez before moving back to the high school next week. We’ll gnaw a bit at the topics and talk about recruiting. And then the game will be afoot.

Can Bump be far behind?

In which we put DisAd14 to bed

I want to finish up this DisAd business and get back to the forensics universe.

There isn’t much to say about Animal Kingdom. We rode the rides, we saw the animals, we ate lunch in the shade. That night we stuck to the theme and went to Boma’s for dinner. Disappointingly, the cocktail lounge there no longer has its own drinks as it did last time; there had been some great ones there. Not that this stopped us, but when Disney cuts back on something unique, well, I can’t ever think that’s a good thing. Like there’s no more literal rope drop in MK, for instance, and no Mickey-hand waving on the way in. That’s small stuff, but the details are what make Disney Disney. Anyhow, as we were drinking away, Kaz returned, and our merry little band was whole again.

Friday was Hollywood Studios. Again, we did all there was to do, pretty much. O’C started out spending a lot of time going on Star Tours, which is new since our last visit, and which now mixes and matches possible experiences. He was wearing his Darth Mickey Ears, and by about the hundredth trip the ride operators were pretty much convinced that his guy was Nerd Numero Uno without a friend in the world. So when we all showed up with him later in the day, needless so say, we pretended we didn’t know him. (Not true, of course; in fact, even I stocked up on merch at Tatooine Traders.) In fact, because of the variations, the whole load of us rode ST twice, and it was indeed different. Another very nice upgrade. Another fun thing was watching the paduwan training. Little kids who could barely hold their little sabers in battle with Darth Vader. Highly entertaining and cute. Later in the day O’C got picked to be color in the Indy stunt show, which made his day on face, until he was there in the hot sun in a caftan for an hour waving his arms around; it always adds a pall to the day when they carry the extras out on a stretcher. After a longish day, Liz and I slipped out and met up with JV back at the hotel lounge. A nice glass of wine and a little salad instead of Fantasmic? Just this once, you betcha!

Saturday was our valediction, a bit of a sleep in and later start on Epcot. Liz and I tried the Behind the Seeds walking tour of The Land, a really interesting change of pace. OC and I agreed that next time (???) we’d do backstage at MK. Doing Seeds meant skipping Captain EO. Thank God! Then we did all the countries we hadn’t already done, snacking, eating, watching movies, shopping, etc., wrapping it all up with the now traditional (except next time I want to go somewhere else) dinner at Germany and, of course, Illuminations.

After the DiDeAd four years ago, it seemed as if the stars had come together just right, and that the fun would never happen again. That was not true. The stars were in whatever was the right conjunction, and the proverbial lightning did strike twice. 8 people, many but not all of them of the forensician persuasion, can come together for four days of peace and love and rock and roll—wait a minute. Wrong event. And it’s more like ten days of fun in the sun under Disney skies, provided a little planning to avoid lines and to secure good food is spent ahead of time.

In other words, as far as I could tell, a splendid time was had by all.