In which Nf3 (or N-KB3 for you dinosaurs)

The last few days of run-up to a big tournament is all busy work. Sorting out the latecomers nicely when you really want to boot them off permanently into the chess club, discovering that Rather Large Bronx has decided to rename and/or redesign half its rooms, explaining to people that the reason such-and-such doesn’t seem to be working is not because they’re a blooming idiot but because, I don’t know, sunspots.

I did have an interesting puzzlement. We managed to get paradigms from all the PF judges. Of course, lots of these aren’t much of anything, mainly words to the effect that they’re a relatively (or completely) inexperienced parent. The thing is, this should hardly be a surprise. If you want to be judged only by college students still seeking to get more TOC bids, PF is not the activity for you. And with luck, it never will be. I’ve gone into this in the past. What keeps PF so dominant is its entry level, both for debaters and judges. It has a wider appeal to students, and it is more manageable for schools because parents can be dragooned into handling much of the heavy lifting. The whining of some teams that they can’t get tiptop experienced judging is a bad miscalculation on their part. The spread of adjudication skills in PF is probably the greatest in forensics. A strong team adjusts to their adjudicators; an adolescent team whines when its adjudicators don’t adjust to them. We had a long history of this back in the earlier days of LD. There were plenty of judges who had strong antediluvian ideas about the activity, or just didn’t exactly grasp what was going on all the time. If you knew who these people were, and played to their personalities, you had a great chance of picking up their ballot. Judge adaptation was number one of our fifteen top ten requirements for being a good debater.

Allowing strikes and publishing prefs to assist in that striking is not a bad idea. But I think some people in PF misunderstand the whole point of prefs. Yes, they’re good at sorting out some true stinkers for sorting purposes—this is true in all the divisions—but they are more important as a guide, going into a round, of how to plan your strategy. So you get a judge who says they’ve just fallen off the cabbage truck? Debate accordingly, slow and clear and big picture. You get a judge who won TOC PF eleven years in a row? Haul out the big guns. The point is, adjust. Or, to but it more clearly, ADJUST. Use the paradigms to your advantage. If you can’t do that, as I say, the chess club is always looking for new recruits.

In which we publish our response to the fact that all the judges at Rather Large Bronx submitted paradigms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvVeJJ-TnK4

In which we take on a new title

I’m starting to feel like the Dean of Discipline. (We actually had one of those when I went to a Catholic boys’ high school. Now I think they just call them Assistant Principals. Same difference, but not as much panache.) I keep telling people that they need paradigms, and they keep not posting paradigms. Of course, I’ve been telling people with general emails. Next up this morning was specific emails to the Army of the Obdurate. The thing is, you simply can’t pref/strike without knowledge, or actually, you can, but not well. If 95% of the pool has paradigms, you’ll sort through those, and the last 5%, unless you know them personally, are strikes. And that is ridiculous.

The process is this:

1.     Lots of general emails.

2.     A specific email to you and your school

3.     Drop you as a judge after the deadline if there’s still no paradigm

4.     Send email to schools without judging that their goose is on the cooked side

5.     Get perplexed responses as most of the dropped finally write a paradigm and get in under the wire (there is two day’s grace—I’m not that disciplinary a dean, more’s the pity)

6.     Make ‘em pay through the nose if they don’t do their bit

I’m in the middle of it now. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Friday arts

There are those who would wonder, after reading Ready Player One, how they could ever successfully make a movie out of it. Well, some might suggest, if you threw all the money in the world at it and had Spielberg behind the camera, it would be your best chance. Alas, while the movie is entertaining enough as a big screen video game, it doesn't come close to the book. Let's face it. Your imagination is just so much better working on this sort of thing. So read the book first, and then you'll probably want to see the movie, and you'll be fine. But if you see the movie and haven't read the book, it's the wrong way to go about it.

On the television front, A Very English Scandal on Amazon is very entertaining. Ben Whishaw is fast becoming one of my favorite actors; he'll be Michael Banks in the new Mary Poppins. And Hugh Grant is perfect as, well, a pretty loathsome MP. The show is 3 episodes, and a nice way to pass a few nights.

On the music front, some new additions to the tab room playlist (https://open.spotify.com/user/jimmenick/playlist/1CzrLTz52lXBVAGs4GNG1p)

"Mr. Bass Man," Johnny Cymbal — There was a cover of this on Muppets: The Green Album, a bunch of cover songs that are sort of fun but not playlist worthy. But that led me back to the original, a novelty song from 1963. I have a fondness for these old numbers that were on the radio when I was growing up. Most people feel the same way about whatever they were listening to during those years. I make no apology.

"Crazy Woman," Monkey Grip, Bill Wyman — The great recent Bill Wyman Rhythm Kings collections sent me back to the solo recordings this particular Stone made after he stopped Rolling. I was rather taken by the album, despite only pulling one cut. I immediately put it back into rotation for another listen.

"Outrageous," Surprise, Paul Simon — Probably the least of the late albums, yielding only one track. This was the album Simon went electronic. Sparks did not fly. It's all listenable, though, just not remarkable. With Simon, remarkable is the expected default.

"The Sailor Song," Toy-Box, FanTastic — For a while, this was the theme song of my debate team, given that Hen Hud's teams were all Sailors. If watching this video didn't get you psyched for debating, you were on the wrong team. So grabbing this cut was simply a nostalgia moment.

"Never Been to Spain," Three Dog Night, Harmony — Three Dog Night was a pretty pop-ish operation, mostly just covers, but they sure had good taste in what it was they covered. When they went too far over the pop line, I wasn't interested ("Just an Old-Fashioned Love Song") but "Eli's Coming" and "One," etc.— not bad stuff. "Murder in My Heart for the Judge," on the other hand, is a cover too far. But then again, how many other Moby Grape songs ever got covered?

Quicksilver Messenger Service, Happy Trails — No cuts. I don't think anyone has listened to a QMS song in the last 20 years; there was dust on this as I streamed it. Pure noodling from one of SF's psychedelic city/house bands. I guess I'll eventually seek out "Fresh Air," but maybe not. Recommendation: buy a black light and stick to the posters.

Captain Beefheart, Clear Spot — Na'ah. Nothing special, and one gets a distinct impression that the cap'n was way over-impressed with himself. I probably listened to them once or twice back in the day, but nothing stuck then, and it didn't stick now.

Her Space Holiday, XOXO, Panda and the New Kid Revival — I have no idea why this came into my audit list. I am obviously too welcoming. And also obviously, no cuts.

In which we de-duplicate

I’ve seen this before and I don’t know why it happens. You run up a new tournament in tabroom, based on an old tournament, and there’s multiple iterations of the same judge group. I just saw it again on the Princeton setup. It’s easy enough to fix, but it must be rather perplexing for someone new to the game. In any case, fix it I did, and that was that. Registration for the Tiggers is now officially open. The Tigs created the tournament, so I’ll spend some time going over it in detail when I get an opportunity, but at the moment, people can sign up, so that’s all that matters. And I set the judging to be rounds obligated per team for both LD and PF. It will be fun to see how that plays out.

Rather Large Bronx is pretty much set numbers-wise. Bronx wanted to put in swing teams, which we tried to explain to them went out with Bennie Goodman, and they finally understood our point, but they did have some teams they wanted to throw in to get some experience, and why not. They can’t break, and they’ll get no benefits from tab, and they’ve got the space. Go for it. No blood will be shed as a result.

We still have a boatload of judges without paradigms. I don’t understand why. It’s not like it’s some fine-print line in a footnote on the invitation no one ever reads. I’ve made the first threat via email. What are they waiting for? Tomorrow there will be the second threat, which will be even more bloodthirsty, until the final threat on Monday, which will be fire and brimstone turned up to eleven, with emails only to the problem schools.

Meanwhile, the Regis CFL, Scarsdale and Little Lex have also popped up on the agenda. The season is in full swing.