This is not a good house...

,,, they don't have any Wodehouse.

I can't remember where I picked up that piece of doggerel, but it's true, of course. Apparently MC has been brought over to the positive side of the force through exposure coming back from Harvard. I thought I was the only one listening, since no one commented. But Mac is apparently now joining the legion of people who recognize the name Gussie Fink-Nottle, which is much to his credit. The thing about Plum is that you can listen, and it's like being washed over with hilarious poetry in a language you marginally recognize, or you can do the work and read it yourself, and either way you're in for a treat. I figure every convert I collect is one more cow creamer on my path to heaven.

Keeping up with my personal rush to eclecticism, the new Zatoichi film is a pip. I watched it yesterday while I was dying of this cold my daughter brought back from Japan, which I guess was some sort of sympathetic magic approach. Anyhow, can you not love a blind samurai movie that ends with a big dance number? I was always a fan of the original Ichi, and didn't even know till recently that there was a whole series. I miss samurai films. We used to go to theatres that were showing them by the bucketful back in the 70s; I don't know if there's anything analogous today. We'd sit in the smoking section up in the balcony for what seemed like days on end. Ah, wasted youth. (Did I really smoke a pack and a half a day? Ah, wasted lungs.)

Does anyone watch movies by the bucketful anymore? Do people care about films much anymore aside from their value as something to do when hanging out requires some content?

Final recommendation: Get Bruce. You probably have to be a little show-bizzy to enjoy this one (you know you're a little show-bizzy when a credit at the opening of the film says "Music by Michael Feinstein" and perk up a little) but it's fun, and if you're interested in behind-the-scenes at the Oscars, for example, it's a film to see. Behind the scenes has to be more interesting that in front of them, if this year was any indication. I just don't care anymore. So why do I always watch anyhow?

Vrot Splinky, International Declamation Champ: The exclusive MVP interview!

MVP: [Smiles] So, champ, tell us about yourself.
VS: There’s not much to say.
MVP: [Snorts] How did you get into declamation?
VS: Well, it was easier than the other IEs because you didn’t have to cut a piece. I just stole mine from my coach’s cousin.
MVP: [Gasps] What pieces did you do?
VS: Just the one. “I’ll Murder Your Children if You Don’t Rank Me a One.”
MVP: [Chortles] You were pretty much a picket-fence performer from the get-go.
VS: Sure. If they wanted their children to live past the weekend.
MVP: [Trips on mop] Did you do anything other than declamation?
VS: Dec was my life, dude.
MVP: [Inadvertently logs off server, crashes, reboots and trims fingernails] You never wanted to expand into, say, JV interp?
VS: Are you calling me a wimp? Nobody calls me a wimp.
MVP: [Lifts eyebrows in classic fear reaction and ducks under table] You’re only able to do declamation for two years in the CFL. What happened after that?
VS: I dropped out of school. I mean, life was pretty much over. I got a job at IBM designing medical software.
MVP: [Scratching like baseball pitcher] That sounds awfully difficult.
VS: Not for a declaimer. Besides, the only other people applying for the job were women, and you know what that Harvard guy says about them.
MVP: [Mentally sorting Critical Feminist responses] Are you still at IBM?
VS: I’m on sabbatical until the lawsuit comes to court.
MVP: [Chewing cud] Can we see your crib?

(And no, I had nothing to do with this. Address your comments to the Nostrumite. Spend two hours with the guy and he wants to co-opt your blog! Then again, it's a slow debate week.)

Sixes and sevens

I'm sort of at loose ends this week, for one thing or another, none of them worth describing. I do have a couple of tight ends worth mentioning, though.

First, Matt J's judging paradigm on BVD is the cat's sleeping attire. I will be trying to figure out a good use for it. It's over the head of newbie adults, of course, but it might be a good handout to starting varsity kids when they begin to judge. And maybe also to parents after they've been on the bus for a while. Whatever. It's a document of great sense. Of course, I'd enjoy it more if it also showed his crib, his pimped ride and a couple of schematics from round three.

Jon O'C is going to interview himself? My mouse is at the starting gate... (What would I do without DVM to razz? I wouldn't bother if it didn't have enough good stuff—and the audience—to demonstrate the potential for so much more.)

"From Caveman to Frenchman" is now finally complete. I realize I've been dragging this out since October! But I think I needed it to come together in my mind before I could pretend to know what I was talking about. (Now that it HAS come together in my mind, pretending to know what I'm talking about will be a breeze.) The problem with critical theory and pomo and all that stuff is that there is no bright line. Everyone disagrees internally with his or her own writings, much less trying to find someone to put a coherent overview on it. And pomo has more spikes and offshoots than a Rasta on a bad-hair day. Not to mention the inherently bad writing. One of my problems was going back too far, I think; maybe I could have skipped the cavemen? We'll see. If it actually goes over well I'll write it up for the Hillary Duff.

Imaginary friends

Harvard was a big weekend for magic and mystery. Oh yeah, and shopping. I bought an Edith Wharton book illustrated by Maxwell Parrish for the spouse, a lifetime supply of red ink for my Dr. Grips, Fluxx, a Martin Greenberg anthology, chocolate pudding ice cream, and untold numbers of Brazilian CDs (Caetano forever!). I'll also admit to a Rosie (a Concord album I've never even seen before). In terms of torturing people with canned entertainment, in the car we listened to Jean Shepherd, Bertie Wooster, Elmore Leonard, Warren Zevon and The Rocky Horror Show. We'll sleep when we're dead!

The biggest mystery was the imaginary friend. Now, Lord knows, I go back with this woman for years now. I've known her longer than I've owned many of my socks. I've never known her to get "creative" in all that time (give or take the odd adolescent overenthusiasm). But I have fully come to believe that the new b.f. simply does not exist. How come he could only meet with us Sunday night? Did he know that the weather would be bad and we'd missing breaking by the breath of a speaker point and hence hit the road? Not to mention all those other times I've never seen him. At this point, I've come to accept that Clayton doesn't exist. Maybe it's Claeton, spelled to rhyme with the Rolls Royce. Or Claethon, as in Phaethon, and he's the son Helios never liked to talk about. Whichever. Clayton: if you're reading this, I know you don't exist, so you can stop right now.

As for magic, I did get to hang with the Nostrumite Saturday night during the 4th round while everyone else was debating or judging. We sat in some burger joint and waxed nosty on old times and alternately watched the BC/Syracuse game on ESPN and the crawl on CNN. The lad was sent into a state of permanent depression when we read that doctors had removed some baby's extra second head. Fortunately, the crawl said, this condition was "rare." We hadn't known this. We thought that two-headed babies were as common as Frenchpeople at a Dump Bush convention. Of course, this is the sort of thing that starts the Mite yapping for hours on end, decrying the poor usage of the English language and spewing forth on the over-reliance on synecdoche in critical animal rights theory and ultimately telling me in deepest confidence that he's heard that the PETA people are trying to ban the playing of "Fur Elise" on the local classical radio station. Don't even ask about his reaction to the women who refused to go wild for Koko the gorilla. There are nights like this one when I wish Jules weren't still in Dahomey or wherever he went. (Now I know it wasn't Dahomey, which really does sound like someone from Dahood, but that's just too easy.) Maldives? Whatever. The Mite says Julie should be back toward the end of spring or the beginning of summer. Good. The Nostrumite always needs someone to keep the lid on. Maybe he should get married again. He's about due. Come to think of it, there is no Claethon, so maybe there's a possibility there...

DLI

I’ll be getting together with the Nostrumite up at Cambridge this weekend, needless to say. In fact, checking in with the lad is one of the reasons I’m going to Harvard in the first place. Maybe the only reason, except perhaps for some residual insanity in the Menick DNA. The Mite, who is now coaching policy for Tennessee Williams HS, a small venue right outside of Boston, somehow expects that the two of us will spend the weekend pub crawling. The idea that we are both the responsible adults on this expedition seems so far to have eluded him. It will be sad to see the effect of the news when it dawns on him that our greatest kick might be an extra shot of espresso at Starbucks.

Anyhow, I was amused to learn that the Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over what he refers to as Defeat Longjohns Intermittently. He firmly believes that he can pin the magic date to within three hours when the chickens will come home to roost. “Don’t these people know that at three a.m. on the Wednesday of the third week of October during their junior year in college they will suddenly remember what they posted in their Cribs piece, and realize that they are scarred forever and that their lives will suddenly become a living hell of self-recrimination? That you never overcome the photo of the George Foreman grill where you cook all your tuna melts, or the image of the Freddie the Ferret doll you’ve been sleeping with since kindergarten, or your painting of Bietz Contemplating the Bust of Jon Cruz, or the picture of the room where your Uncle Ralph was sleeping when the local constabulary nabbed him for—well, we won’t talk about that one.” Why is it the Cribs that always brings out the worst in people? “If you ask me,” the lad continues, “DLI is missing some good opportunities.” And, of course, he proceeds to list them:

Pimp My Bus Ride: Pictures of the school buses the debaters arrive at tournaments in
Debate Makeover: Take some nerdy guy in a suit and tie and patent leather pumps and subject him to the real world. Throw away his jacket, pull out his shirt tail, get him into some $200 sneakers and put a backwards baseball cap on his head—Voila! The transformation is complete: an LDer turned into a Policy person.
Emory Poker Championships: That one is self-explanatory, perfect for both the Travel and Weather Channels.
Iron Chef Forensician: A look into the cafeterias at your favorite debate venues! Today’s ingredient? Ziti!
The Biggest Loser: Enough with all these good debaters. How about profiling a few real stinkers for a change, those people who show up week after week and go 0-6? The salt of the debate earth, so to speak.

The Nostrumite goes on and on with this, but I won’t bore you with the rest of them. If you see us in Cambridge, join up with us as we pretend to pub crawl. I’m sure he’ll be happy to regale you with another hundred or so.

Inside the trenches

Herewith, a self-explanatory note from a parent judge. This is what keeps this activity valuable beyond its own little borders. If you intrinsically can't pick up her ballot, you're not that good a debater, bub, and this activity has been worthless to you in the grand scheme of things.

***

On Being a Mommy Judge

When my son became a debater, I was told that I would have to get involved as a judge, especially if my son wanted to go to many tournaments. I decided that I would support my son in this activity. As an English-speaking mommy, I was only required to invest 1 hour in judge training. From then on, I received on-the-job training, starting as a novice and advancing to varsity.

When I agree to serve as a judge at a tournament, I accept full responsibility. I don’t leave unless I am “dismissed.” I check the schematics to make sure I get to where I am supposed to be when I am supposed to be there (I admit that one time the “judge squad” had to find me to tell me that I was supposed to be judging when I was sitting around gabbing with other mommies; I was embarrassed and I hope that never happens again). I make sure my ballots get to the tab room, even if I have to bring them there myself. I read my son’s cases so I have some knowledge and understanding of the resolution (sometimes he asks me to read his cases to make sure it can be understood by a mommy/daddy judge). I flow the debate and try to follow the contentions, subpoints, blocks, rebuttals, harms, values and warrants. I try to write something meaningful on the ballots. After a tournament, I read my son’s ballots to try to gain insight into other judges’ insights. I have been operating with two basic assumptions: 1) this is the way adults behave and 2) I need to be a role model for my children and other people’s children, not the other way around. Apparently, some mommy and daddy judges should be taking grown-up lessons from their children.

Last week I judged 5 varsity rounds and I found myself pushed to the limit of my debate judging skills. These debaters were moving so fast, that it was difficult for me to follow their arguments. Flowing became almost impossible. After they read their cases, I found it easier to spend more energy on listening instead of flowing. I tried to see the big picture instead of all the little pieces. I found it difficult to write something on the ballot that would support my decision. I gave it my best shot, and that’s good enough for me. When I found myself as one of three judges in the first break round, I had to disclose, and this was after the God-coach of debate gave his treatise on how and why he made his decision. That was a hard act to follow, and although I accept the basic premise that debate is an activity that can and should be judged by mommies and daddies, I was a bit intimidated. I had been exposed as a mommy judge.

So what’s the payback? Why do I make the effort and “volunteer” to serve as a judge? I get to sit around high school cafeterias eating not hot pizza, cross the Bear Mountain Bridge in a school bus, and watch the steam rise in a stifling hot classroom when it’s below freezing outside. I also get to see my son put on a suit and tie and engage in an activity that I know will serve him well today and in the future. I leave these debate tournaments with a renewed faith in American youth. The writing, thinking and speaking skills that are on display really blows me away.

I know that there are some mommies and daddies that are better judges than me (my husband for starters). Apparently, there are far too many that are worse, simply because they don’t make the effort. I have decided that I need to be the best judge that I am capable of being. My son is entitled to no less than that from any mommy or daddy judge.

Rochelle Mozlin Insler
February 15, 2005

Inside the bunker

This weekend's tab room at Lakeland was, perhaps, emblematic. It was also hotter than Baghdad. You should know what goes on in there.

First of all, the judges were, again, one step ahead of us. I thought that the fact that they often don't speak English and that they know every hiding place in every school was trouble enough, but they pulled a new one on us this time. They went home. One of them left a note at the ballot table Friday night informing us that he would not return on the morrow. Another simply didn't return, with no notice whatsoever. That both these judges left in the middle of the tournament, in one case abandoning a team completely, is beyond my understanding. I wanted to toss the teams out on their butts, but I was only running the computer, not the tournament. It gets harder and harder to like lay judges, but the real issue is the kids, not the judges. There is no question that the teams involved knew full well that their judges were blowing off their obligations, just like kids know full well that they haven't bothered to train their judges, but don't give a damn, because their bad judges will be out judging someone else. The notoriety of a handful of teams, and a handful of judges, because greater and greater. I guess the offenders simply hope that we'll stop scheduling their lousy judges and let them off the hook. Now THAT is sleazy. And deliberate. I'm tempted to start posting the names of the schools and judges to avoid. And I can't wait to write the judge section of next year's Bump invite. Don't even think of signing up if those notables are any of yours. You know who you are.

There were plenty of bright spots, though. While I alone was left to defend Moby Dick as a regular reread (the various coaches assembled were almost unanimously strong supporters of tossing Melville overboard completely), and also seemed to be the only person who liked Dickens AND Austen, we could at least all agree that The DaVinci Code is the only bestseller in recent memory that actually delivered on what a bestseller ought to deliver. In other words, it was only as philistines that the coaches could find unity. Then there was the Menick evidence against kritiks, or something along those lines. Let's put it this way. Some yabo quoted this blog in his case, against a Hen Hud debater, and WON! I don't know which is more embarrassing, that the yabo didn't have a clue to the credibility of his source, or that my guy lost to it. Heads should seriously be hanging in shame today. And then there was the usual schmoozing and gossiping about various and sundry. Mr X with his ego being the only thing bigger than his mouth was roundly savaged, and everyone hopes he will be going away at the end of the season. Ms Y, it turns out, was given the boot; I didn't even know her but I was glad to hear it. And the disconnect between what everyone says the TOC is doing and what the TOC is doing was remarked upon yet again; as a member of the LD advisory committee, I am ever astounded at the things people say we're up to!

And on the local front, a commitment was made to keep the MHL together in the face of Bill Barthelme's leaving Bergenfield. News of how we'll do things will be reported eventually, but expect at least as many tournaments as in the past, and an active website for signups and information.

And not that you really care at all, but Lakeland was yet another example of why you can't use the "new" TRPC software. Every version after 2002 has faults. The runover of divisions is well-known, but this time we got incompletely filled-in schematics, plus total inability to find extra judges that were clearly available in the data. If you plan to run a tournament and need the old software, let me know. It's on my flashdrive and it's yours for the asking. If you use the new software, you're on your own. The only good thing it does is print ballots, if that's your fancy. The only way to use it is if you have one and only one division of something (and even then you'll run into trouble, e.g., it forgets how to print a schematic). I use these programs week after week after week, and while the old version lacks a few bells and whistles, it's solid as a rock, and Rich Edwards is my god! As for the new version... I prefer index cards.

You know who you are

Yeah, you, You're the sort of debater who believes that all a negative has to do is say that the affirmative is wrong. As much as possible, you avoid a position of your own.

Here's how you'll do this in March-April.

Now, I grant you that this is a mushy topic, which is why no one voted for it (it only came in #2 out of 10—who are these people, for pete's sake). I know my team didn't vote for it (I save our ballot). The thing is, I can't imagine more nebulous constructs than community or national standards. (I won't even talk about where civil liberties comes in!) Even the Supreme Court has gone to great lengths to not define the two, but simply to leave cs in the hands of the sitting jury facing the evidence in hand. You're the community, folks: have at it.

So, in the event, the aff will have no choice but to define and defend community standards above national standards. The negative, even your negative, will have to concede that, if protecting cs "better protects" civil liberties, it has to actually be better than some other thing. The natural (preferable, and ultimately stronger) negative is that, no, ns better protects, and now let us compare the two. I say natural, because it demonstrates an intuitive understanding of the English language, that better implies a comparison of two items. Also, debating thus will provide the neg not only with reasons why cs is not good, but why something else is indeed better, which is a strategically strong position all negs should attempt to achieve in any resolution. Neg's advocacy should always be equal to aff's, if for no other reason than that this strategy forces aff to address strong arguments other than refutations of aff's own (putting aside kritiks, of course). You never listen to that, though.

Anyhow, here's what you're going to do. Rather than explaining why nat stds better serve civil liberties than com stds (which, of course, they seem to do, at least if you don't think about it too hard, which means that neg has an intuitively stronger case if neg grabs the topic by the tail and stares it straight in the eye), you are going to argue that:
1. It is difficult or impossible to differentiate between ns and cs
2. Because of 1, we can't know which is which
3. Because of 2, we can't choose between them
4. Therefore, the aff is not true because we can't tell which is better because we don't know the difference

Keep in mind, when you make this argument, that it is paradigmatic of bad debating. That won't stop you, but at least you'll know what you're doing.

According to my calendar, I probably will not be judging this topic. Lucky you.

Moving right along, Criticism #12.5

12 1/2. Discussion of CX on VB, thumbs up. All right, I admit to asking the team to create a VB in a barred circle graphic for me, but I do like discussions like this one. First of all, it demonstrates that most people take CX very seriously, plus it gives food for thought to debaters on what to do with it. But more to the point, I like a place where people can discuss debate theory, which a site like VB can do nicely. On the other hand, I really don't need to know what brand of toothpaste is used by the guy who made it to doubles at the Pago Pago Prep Chowder Society Invitational. But if you want wheat, I guess you have to sort through some chaff. (Has anyone posted the photos yet of the PPPCSI? I understand a lot of people where seen in classrooms wearing suits. I can't wait!)

The eleventh criticism (and a half)

I was wrong. I am big enough to admit it.

11. Carvel: thumbs up. Wally the Whale rules (or, as Elmer Fudd would say, Wally the Whale wules).

11 1/2. Claire. 'Nuff said.

Ten criticisms, during an off debate period

The young 'uns are doing midterms this week, which makes me wonder how many will turn up at tonight's meeting. So, if they wish to pass the time not studying and not meeting, they could pursue some of the following.

1. The Last Samurai, thumbs up. Lots of people refuse to see Tom Cruise movies on face, which is a mistake. They should only refuse to see some Tom Cruise movies on face. He's perfectly good in this one, which is a nice sequel to Pacific Overtures in my private little universe. I did not, however, watch the supplemental second disk of extras. Even I draw the line somewhere. My only complaint about the film is that it needed more Billy Connelly.

2. Coffee and Cigarettes, thumbs all over the place. Worth watching, I guess, especially if you're up late nights wondering about RZA and GZA and if your daughter is insane for liking the Ghost Dog soundtrack.

3. Legal Affairs magazine, serious thumbs up to keep the brain juiced. For instance, read this on Intellectual Property: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/November-December-2004/feature_hunter_novdec04.html

4. NPR online, thumbs way up. For instance, sample Johnny Carson: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4464083

5. The next Robert James Waller novel, thumbs down for anyone who doesn't think they're a cowboy. I just put this one down on my desk. This guy is a little undisciplined, a little interesting, a little terrible, a little cute.

6. The next Trevanian "novel" is nicely thumbs up. No one remembers this guy, who wrote Shibumi, one of my favorite silly thrillers. His autobiographical novel of his youth in Albany is a real wallow. Makes you glad you missed the 30s and the Depression, but if W gets his way economically, we may get to see similar times again soon. Oh dollar on the international market, we hardly knew ye.

7. Under the Tuscan Sun, thumbs way down. Of course, you get to look at the Tuscan scenery, but if you are thinking of suffering through a chickflick for the sake of balancing your Blade collection, look elsewhere.

8. Slow-cooked duck, thumbs up. 325 for 3 hours, 400 for 1/2 hour, thank you Nigella.

9. Red Ranger Came Calling by Berkeley Breathed, thumbs up. Nice kids children book that was sitting on my pile that I read over the snowy weekend.

10. "Men are smarter than women" sez Harvard honcho. Thumbs way up. This is getting more ink than Iraq, Social Security and Brad-Jen combined. I, for one, didn't know men's brains were (proportionately) 16% bigger than women's, as reported by the New York Times. No conversation with a Harvard girl (like Claire) is now complete without a nod toward Larry Summers. I don't think I convinced Claire to rethink her computer science career choice, but with that missing 16%... I don't know. Sounds like trouble to me. Fortunately she can always get her old job back scooping ice cream at Carvel.

Great moments in debate

The average weekend is full of them, if you know where to look. Being buried in the tab room often cuts you off from the ebb and the flow of things, but I did manage a couple of magical moments.

For instance, there was the judge who decided to riffle through the teacher's desk. While this is in itself an extraordinary event, in this particular case the teacher happened to be in the room! The judge made an attractive nuisance defense (the drawer was open and looked interesting), followed by a we-always-riffle-through-the-teacher's-desks-in-Texas defense (which is, I guess, a sort of Rehnquistian anti-federalist ploy), followed by the oh-shucks-what's-that-printed-on-the-ceiling defense. Some people are born with a silver foot in their mouth.

Then there was the moment when I went over to see if all the judges had turned up for the novice finals. As I entered the room, Robbie, rather than proceeding with his 1AC, interrupted the proceedings to take a call on his cell phone. Presumably it was his broker, or bookie, or bag man. Hard to tell. Harder too to turn your cell off, when you're expecting a call from your broker, or bookie, or bag man. Then again, maybe it was just Noah calling in with a turn off negative's second contention.

My only hope is that everyone was on the bus when I sent it home Saturday night. I still have a vague sense that someone was left behind. Has anyone seen NoShow lately?

My Keeper's Brother

It was suggested to Robbie last weekend that, in fact, Noah had written his cases.

If they only knew the truth.

I remember back to those so-called days of yore. Noah, as we all knew at the time, was incapable of holding two sequentially coherent thoughts in his head for more than three seconds at a time. He was completely dyslexic (in fact, his mother was very active in DAM, the Mothers Against Dyslexia). And if that wasn't enough, he had a tendency to overpack for short trips, bring every article of clothing he had ever owned even to tournaments where he wasn't staying overnight. I had warned the family that there was no way I could turn this frail wreck into a debater, and suggested that he think about the wrestling team as more suitable to his talents. At that point his mother took me aside and told me about Robbie. "He's only a first grader," she said, "but he really understands Lincoln-Douglas." She surreptitiously handed me some papers. When I read them later, I realized that they were cases, two sides of the current resolution, the best I had ever seen. An affirmative, and a negative, and both of them were true. And they had been written by Robbie, during recess, while the other kids were falling off the jungle gym.

In the following four years, it became progressively harder to hide the fact that Noah's success was based completely on running Robbie's cases. Fortunately no one ever noticed that Noah's knobby fingers were incapable of typing, much less knocking out case after case after case. Robbie used to prep Noah on a daily basis, giving him drills, trying to keep his attention pinned to the topic at hand. It wasn't easy. And there were a couple of times when Noah simply wasn't up to the task, and we substituted Robbie in his place. (This was especially difficult at Glenbrooks, where Robbie, in the third grade at the time, had a lot of difficulty adjusting to the time change, the cold showers at the tournament hotel, and the combination of the names of the coaches running the thing, viz, Whipple and Belch.)

Anyhow, Robbie can now finally come into his own, and no longer has to prop up his degenerate brother. And I for one say, it's about time.

(PS: Noah is now in Israel learning Hebrew so that he can study international law in Jerusalem. How Robbie is managing to both write cases and prop up his degenerate brother in Israel is beyond me, but my guess is, he's doing just that.)

Windows for Nostrumite, V.666

As I've been sorting out the next few weeks of judging and visiting Massachusetts, I touched base with the Nostrumite, who almost didn't make it to return my emails because he is in a state of permanent depression over his recent attempts to upgrade his computer. "I shoulda bought a Mac," he told me glumly. "A couple of weeks ago I got an error that my PC's hard disk was out of space, with marching orders to erase or die, and since then, every day a little death doesn't begin to describe it." You've got to hand it to him: even in the midst of core meltdown, he manages to toss in a Sondheim reference. That's my boy!

He began by eliminating some of the games he never plays anymore, he told me. He has a habit of buying a game, playing it for two hours until he reaches some particular difficulty that will take some clever offense, and then tossing it on the cybernetic ash heap. "I got rid of Age of Mythology, which I never liked, and Age of Empires, which I bought because they said it was just like Age of Mythology, which should have been a warning rather than siren call, but in any case, after that I blew away American McGee's Alice and a few unintellible zip files and a couple of copies of the TRPC software, and I was cooking with gas. Megabyte after megabyte fell like scales before my eyes." Unfortunately, by this point, the machine was slogging away at the speed of a Commodore 64 or Lionel Richie, whichever seems slower to you while sticking roughly to the same metaphor. "My virus definitions were older than a Commodore 64," the Mite said, "or older than Lionel Richie, so I downloaded and installed a new version of Norton. While I was at it, I scraped the bottom for spybots. I really felt as if I was cleaning up dramatically." But he had as yet gotten no increase in speed. Far from it. "So I went for the Big One, and loaded up good old Service Pack 2, which is the Godfather 3 of operating system upgrades." Which solved the problem? "Now it takes me ten minutes to start up, which means I'm afraid to ever turn the machine off." Any plus sides? "Well, once I got into the upgrading mode, I upgraded iTunes so that I could buy the Triplets of Belleville theme song"—that, I will add, was my recommendation to the lad, who fell in love with the tune at first byte—"but then I couldn't offload to the iPod which also needed new software, so I upgraded that, and lost about half my music, that is, anything I had put in with any software other than iTunes. At which point, I would have murdered Commodore Perry, or Sophie Coppola, or anyone else who got in my way."

But the machine was now back to fighting speed? I asked.

"I shoulda bought a Mac," he replied.

It ain't easy, being a Nostrumite.

Ten criticisms, following the Christmas break

1. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: Thumbs down. You read 800 pages waiting for the story to get started. The author has a creamy, readable style, but substance here is sadly lacking. If you're looking for Harry Potter for grownups, read Harry Potter.

2. Finding Neverland: Thumbs up, provided you attend with the requisite three hankies. Still waiting for the mythical bad Johnny Depp movie.

3. Triplets of Belleville: Thumbs up for the theme song alone, much less the curious animation style. No Spirited Away, but a winner.

4. Robert Caro: Thumbs up for anything. This man cannot write a bad word. I'm back in Robert Moses land again. What a bastid!

5. The new Pacific Overtures: TU, almost as good as the original (high praise indeed). But not as good, when all is said and done. Nevertheless, clever staging, and with that score...

6. Avenue Q: TU, although you never know whether to look at the puppets or the people.

7. The Terminal: TU. Which is more awesome, Hanks's talent or the built-for-this-movie set?

8. Bubba Ho-Tep: Reluctant thumbs down. Once you know that Elvis and JFK (who has been turned black) are living in a nursing home, you can write the script yourself. Too bad. Should have been a lot funnier.

9. Postmodernism: TD. The "lecture" continues apace, now that I've caught up a little with M. Foucault. My problem? I can't get past relativism. Anyone claiming that there is no objective reality needs to be hit over the head with a golf club.

10. Speaking of which, Golf: TD. I got worse this year. The team tried, getting me a great playing lesson. I played exactly one good round the whole season, the very last one, in October. At which point I grabbed the clubs out of the car and hid them in the basement. Unfortunately, I will no doubt remember where they are when April starts piercing at the old root.

So as you can see, my life is dull. Things seem to be jumping on the debate websites, though. They even had a Round Robin New Year's Eve. Can those forensicians celebrate or what?

Well, that was fun...

I just spent quite a bit of time not creating a new entry here, thanks to my new Mac, new operating system and new browser. I hate losing my cookies...

As we go softly into the half year mark—yes, it's the half year; for those of you who have been waiting for the season to start, Adios, amigos—I am struck by what has become the rather bizarre spectacle of LD as, well, bizarre spectacle. The last I heard, and I haven't seen much evidence to the contrary, forensics is an activity for a fairly, shall we say, select few. These select few are unique among their peers. They probably find few people in the old home room willing to take on the subject of why the name Etzione should never be uttered aloud, even if you occasionally agree with him. They do not now, nor have they ever, hung out in a mall. They own more dress suits than the average Supreme Court justice. They travel in the company of coaches who, in a word, are adults with nothing better to do both on Fridays and Saturdays than hang around with teenagers who shun Etzione, malls and casual clothes.

Having been once a debater and being presently a coach, I include myself in the above criticisms, so even if you do take it personally, welcome to the club.

So here's these select few, spending their weekends going from debate to debate, little verbal warriers on a quest for nothing more than better and better verbal wars. In the normal universe, they would travel in the dark, able to recognize each other in bus terminals and fast food outlets only by the twirling of a pen caught out of the corner of an eye. Their existence would be known only to their parents who wonder where they are this time, and each other (and it's dubious whether their parents, or each other, really ARE aware of their existence), but for one thing: The web site that dare not speak its name.

All right, I won't speak its name. You might, but I would stumble over the words. I, for one, remember when this little outfit was known entirely for writing terrifically bad case positions and selling them to unexpecting or lazy or unexpecting and lazy debaters who couldn't come up with their own material. Now, they provide real-time peeks into that fascinating world of debate, reporting online from, hot off the presses, drop everything and check this out Martha, places like (yes, yes, tell us!!) HENDRICK HUDSON. Can you imagine that? Live reporting from Montrose, New York. Wow. Montrose will never be the same. There's stars on this site, too. Famous people, with glimpses into their famous lives, their minds, their cribs (oh, the irony of that word in this context). Hell, I was one of those people, now forgotten in the continuing wave of newer famous people.

The fiction that the site supports is the one that there is a fraternity of national debaters worthy of immediate knowledge. Pictures of the little verbal warriers sitting around in cafeterias. Interviews with them. Minute-by-minute reports on how they're doing. And my personal favorite, photographs of schematics as they are released. Thank God for the Internet.

Of course, I don't blame the subjects of this site for the site's content. And to be honest, I don't find the site's content particularly bad, in the moral sense. I guess it boils down to everyone needing to be a member of something, that human urge to huddle. The groups we huddle in tend to be collectively identifiable as the groups that are just right for us as huddlers. The hundred or so people who comprise "the national circuit"—teams with enough money to go out of state to tournaments—stand in for the thousands of local forensicians who simply plod from local event to local event, that army of real world faceless gray debaters, if you will. This site presents a few real faces, removing the gray and showing them in living color. Oh, to be a celebrity. My only fear, and my warning, is that you don't take this stuff too seriously. Because, my friend, here's the dirty little secret behind the whole enterprise: it's only high school debating. It's an extracurricular activity with a great academic benefit (obviously, or people like me wouldn't bother with it), but, to put it bluntly, it is not important. Web sites like the one at hand make it seem way more important than it is. But it isn't. It's fun, and you should learn a few things (to paraphrase the wise Mr. JG, so recently interviewed therein), but that's about the end of it. Then you get senioritis (maybe) and then you graduate (probably) and then you forget you ever debated (if you're lucky, except when I need to hire you to judge, at which point you're only in it for the money).

So, as we enter this holiday season (some of us with Saturday's generously ecumenical prayer of Sister Raimonde still ringing through our brain), I ask merely that you remind yourself what we're fighting for. We are weird little warriers in a tiny universe, doing our best to sharpen our brains (an intrinsically good thing). And if we become the best weird little warrier there is, and it could happen, we will still be just a weird little warrier.

In other words, keep a sense of perspective.

English-speaking only!

Putting a tournament to bed is the best part of the adventure. You spend weeks organizing registrations and food and housing and whatnot, hoping it all comes together and the bottom doesn't fall out of everything. Our biggest kick this year was the lack of the dome. The poor assistant principal had a heart attack at the sight of 150 policy teams cum tubs and suitcases, plus 113 LDers sans tubs but with the rest of their baggage, plus assorted coaches, judges and sex criminals milling about the place. There just wasn't room for them in the building. So we got started early, sent everyone off in the right direction, and while it was a little discombobulating to me, no one else seemed to suffer. After that, it was duck soup. Which is nice. And so, back in the box until next year (assistant principals willing, that is).

But of course, there's a beef. It's not a new one. I am a strong supporter of so-called lay judges. At the point where LDers can't convince the average intelligent person of a position, LD loses any real point. Or at least much of its point. It becomes so parochial that only a handful really care, supporters and administrators think of it as gobbledy-gook, and we threaten ourselves with isolation. From an academic viewpoint, that's a big risk (and one, I think, that policy has long ago taken, not to its benefit). When the only people capable of understanding positions are those who judge weekly, positions become impossible to understand by anyone else. But keeping lay judges in the mix forces debaters to pick up ballots from folks who don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no fem Ks. That's a good thing. HOWEVER, a lay judge is not a total idiot straight from the cabbage patch without the slightest clue of what is expected from them. Three teams brought these cabbage patchers to my tournament and told me they were judges. One of them didn't even speak English.

Jeez.

Is it so much to ask that teams train their judges? I mean, the judges in question are usually a parent. Are they so hideous a reflection of humanity that their kids can't explain the activity to them for half an hour? What really burns me is that the teams that bring great judges are the ones who get judged by the cabbage patchers, while the teams who bring cabbage patchers get judged by the great judges. Nice trade-off. Fortunately we sorted them out in the tab room and dropped them from the pool, but that is no benefit to the tournament, merely less of a harm to the debaters.

Next year's Bump will ask for judge qualifications. It will insist that judges speak English. And I will post HH's judging instructions to the website. I do not believe that this will help (I won't detail the 3 schools who, rather than try to pull a fast one with bad judges, simply told me that they had judges that literally didn't exist, which is a much faster one, until the point I hunted them down and collected extra judge fees from them), but at least it will help me sort things out a little better.

I know who you people are. You are not going to do it again. At least not to me (or anyone else in whose tab room I may be lurking).

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Menick

There is that mania that comes over one as the major tournament draws near. Everybody wants more slots than everybody else, there's a waiting list of people who can't be bothered to follow the invitation, there's people who remind you that you promised them slots that you do sort of vaguely remember and so you add them to the list hoping that the shortage of flu vaccine this year might save your bacon at the eleventh hour, there's the usual suspects whom you haven't heard from and you've poked and prodded and nothing's happened and as a result you've made yet another enemy... No wonder one becomes something of a monster. And one does see the source of some of the so-called politics of the activity. It is, people need to remember, only a debate tournament. One of many. Yes, it does offer a large can of soup to the top LD speaker, but that's hardly a reason to make enemies-for-life over it. (If you signed up early, you'd be set, hint hint. But why would anyone do that? Do all debate teams run on fumes?) There are just so many rooms in the buildings, and so many families that will house, and so many slices of the dreaded vegan wedges. And to be honest, going over 120 in LD doesn't make a lot of sense if we break to doubles, because 5 rounds is a decent enough sorter for that number, but any higher and you'd really need 6 prelims, and God knows THAT isn't going to happen.

Good grief.

On the bright side, I've heard from the Nostrumite, who's doing his best to juggle his schedule to come back and judge for us again this year. Unfortunately he's in a state of permanent depression over the health of poor Pecksniff, the Nostrumian Applehead (and, as most people know, a littermate of Pip the Wondercat). Apparently the old Peckeroo has developed a case of feline diabetes, "which is just like human diabetes," the Mite reports, "only it's transient and you can't prick a cat's fingers to do a blood test." To cope with the situation, the Mite is giving Pecky a couple of shots of insulin a day, "which isn't as hard as you'd imagine," he says, plus giving him salve for his rheumy eyes ("which is like playing pin the tail on the eyeball") and forcing a snort of cherry-flavored antibiotics down his gullet once a day ("the fallout spray is like being anointed with holy water at an overeager Easter service"). But the hardest part, the Mite reports, is performing the regular urine test. "You have to understand that a cat just isn't going to pee in a jar," the lad says. "So what you have to do is follow him around all day, but secretly"—I have this vision of the Mite undercover in his trench coat and porkpie hat, dodging around the corners of his Cambridge apartment— "until you see him heading for the litter box, and then you sneak in underneath him with this cardboard strip that turns all shades of mud when he pees on it, and you've got to time it to the correct shade at the exact right moment, and then decide whether to increase or decrease his insulin dosage." Without Jules around to help out, this is driving Doctor Nostrumite a little batty. "At least the Nostrumutt is okay," he tells me. "You walk him a few times a day, he poops it, you scoops it, everyone's happy."

Presumably you can get further details from the lad himself next week when he once again descends on Bump.

Pre-Bump

Pre-Bump is pre-er than usual this year. We've already filled up policy, and LD is tracking over 100, and it's another week till the so-called deadline. Most of pre-Bump is spent worrying: is there enough housing/food/ballots/trophies/runners/handcuffs? It ought to be more relaxed every year because we've proven that we can do all of these things pretty effortlessly, but I challenge anyone to toss a shindig for over 400 people and not get a little wrapped up in it.

No one needs to identify the present wav file, since it identifies itself. I couldn't resist it.

So, if anyone cares (and I know YOU do, if no one else does), here's the thing about Nov-Dec. As it turns out, Aff has a fairly easy time proving that a gov has a moral obligation to folks outside its boundaries. What aff hardly ever does is show that it's an obligation to promo DI. The ob (which has nothing to do with democracy but with humanity) is simply to value other people, nothing more, and certainly nothing more specific. Sure, if there's a natural disaster, national boundaries are meaningless. The best example of that was the Iranian earthquakes, which killed something like 30,000 people. We were there in a blink, and the Iranis accepted our help with open arms. This was as it should be. A couple of weeks later, they were the axis of evil again. My point is, negs should look for a pretty solid explanation of what, exactly, the MO is and why it applies to DI. That's the core of the aff burden, and that's the hard part. On the other hand, negs have to be a little careful about sounding as if they're anti-democracy. The thing is, and from the start I've thought that this is the good neg position, the US promotion of DI comes with all the baggage of its being from the US. Is US democracy extricable from US capitalism? It's a question of cultural imperialism, which may be a hard concept either to understand or to sell. To wit: "culture" is a term that sums up all the values of a group. It is the combination of their religion and their politics and their food and their housing and their literature and their schools and their clothes—the full banana. It is the well from which individuals in the group draw the cores of their selves, i.e., their personalities, their identities. Individuals do not exist aside from their cultures; individuals are a part of slash a result of their cultures. If we value individuals, we must explicitly value this wellspring of their individuality as much as they do implicitly. What we have to do is look at what happens when two cultures "clash." We obviously see culture clash in today's world on a daily basis in all cultures: no one is immune from, say, the internet. Each culture does whatever it does to maintain itself in a positive way from what it might see as the negatives resulting from the clash. That's always been the way, since time began. Sometimes cultures take from other cultures, sometimes they don't. The Pennsylvania Amish don't drive Harleys; students at Penn State don't drive in horse-drawn carriages. The problem with the US culture vs other cultures is somewhat analogous to the situation of the US military vs other militaries: it's not a fair fight. Just as we can outshoot pretty much everybody with our guns, we can outculture them with our brand of capitalism. US culture works in other countries the way heroin works in the bloodstream, replacing the natural with the artificial. It can be seen as just as heinous. Why do you think it was such a big deal when Pepsi (not Coke) was the first to be sold in the Soviet Union? Or why is the Coke bottle among the universal icons on the planet? Does Mickey Mouse a mere cartoon, or is it a symbol of the cultural poison seeping through the veins of every potential consumer in every country on earth? God, even the French were worried about the effect of Euro-Disney (now called, by the way, Disneyland Paris). The phrase was, "a cultural Chernobyl." The US specifically promotes its democracy through its pervasive capitalism, and by so doing overwhelms the existing cultures. And the next thing you know, they're wearing Nike t-shirts in Afghanistan and the women are not wearing veils and the children don't listen to their parents anymore to honor the old ways... This is an extreme way of putting it, of course, but it does sort of sum it up.

Our story so far

For all practical purposes the debate season is now in full swing, so let's see where we are.

We've migrated many of the meetings to the chez, and I'm starting to push for more meetings at other chezes. It's a lot easier, as I've been saying, to talk among a handful of people than the entire 13th tribe of Israel, and more gets accomplished. On the down side, half the team (the rawer recruits) haven't figured things like, if they sign up for a meeting they should look on the signup sheet to find out when the meeting is, or that since all of the team business is conducted through emails, that it might be a good idea for them to read their emails once in a while. I still sense that brain-fog attrition is not yet concluded for this season, and that we still stand to lose one or two more. Considering that there is a tournament virtually every week, and no one seems to know this other than me, we're not in the greatest of shapes. Where are the hungry people? Well, I oversimplify, because there is at least one hungry novice (she knows who she is), and maybe more. On the plus side, I'm seeing more JV hunger. Not that I'm all that in favor of hunger per se, but total lack of same sort of baffles me. Back in the day, there was so much hunger it used to scare the pants off me. What I'd like to see is balanced hunger.

Bump is filling up frighteningly fast. At least other teams are hungry! I've sold out all my hired judging, and filled up most of the policy slots two weeks before the deadline. I do hope that we really DO get more rooms in the future. Although I like to blame everything on my hardware engineers (because I like the looks on their faces when I do), it's not their fault we don't have a basement. Maybe next year. Bump assignments will be made at next week's tutti meeting, when all the forensic fruttis are tossed in together. I have a feeling a lot of people won't be happy, but I can't just give jobs to people because they used to be a part of the team...

Judging all weekend at NFA was rather enjoyable, as it turns out. I'd forgotten that I like judging, although I do also like sleeping and eating, neither of which comes easily at Newburgh. Still, it's fun to get into the trenches for a while and see who's who and what's what, and it's also illuminating to hear a topic argued, especially early in its life. I think I did get some good stuff to pass along to people, although no one bothered to comment one way or the other when I did. Come to think of it, maybe they didn't give a raccoon's patella. You know, I didn't have to be there, you ungrateful louts! I could have been golfing! (Except for the snow and ice.)