Here Comes The Judge
I haven't judged a speech meet in a couple of years, and I'm really looking forward it. It's remarkable to me that speech hasn't changed all that much since I was in school. The students all look the same as they ever did, at least to me.

The speeches are always a little familiar -- which is good, because then as a judge I can focus on the performance and not the content.

The coaches are still nervous, and the judges still hope they don't have to judge the final round-- it's the difference between a four-hour day and an six-hour one. The folks who compile the statistics in the Tab Room (short for 'tabulation') act like they all had just quit smoking a day previously.

The kids all still gather in the lunch room of the school and wait for the announcements of the final round, which always come out on large pieces of paper that are about three feet by two feet -- and the ones called to finals are written in marker. Everyone waits for someone to come out of the tab room and tape the paper to the wall. Then the screaming starts -- kids yelling and happy either for themselves of their friends who made into the final round.

Some of the rules of have changed -- there is a lot more "acting out" of speeches and less "interpreting" of them. It was a fine line back in my day, and the line is completely gone today. Believe it or not, it makes the judge's job a lot easier.

One harder aspect of judging is scoring. There are perhaps 15 categories -- different types of speeches. Poetry may have so many contestants that there are five sections of performers -- one judge and 5-8 speakers per section.

You rate each performer in two ways: with a rank and a percentile. The expectation is that the person you rank first should get a 100% as well. The speaker's standings are based on the percentile. Most judges like to keep things nice and orderly, so they just give the 100% to their first-ranked speaker.

But I've never done that. There are lots of times that I gave someone a first rank and then a 98 or 97. For me, the 100% goes to a performance that is pretty much flawless -- especially late in the season, when the speakers have been to several meets.

My reluctance to give a 100% has ruffled a few feathers.

In fact, I once ran into someone who said that I ruined a meet for him because he didn't win the first place medal. In every round (including mine), he took first. But I only gave him a 98%, and that cost him the meet.

A judge has to keep a "critique sheet" on every performer -- notes on the judge's impression of the speech, the speaker and the performance. The speaker gets this back at the end of each round, so they can see if they need to adjust their performance at all before the next round. This guy taped my critique sheet to his bedroom wall and left it there for several years.

He was good at speaking. But in my round, in that performance, he didn't perform at 100%. He was the best speaker in the room, but I didn't think he deserved that 100%.

When I was working at a local radio station, he was on staff there as well. And while I didn't remember him in the least, he still had a mad-on for me. This was a full six years after the speech meet in question. He was livid that I didn't automatically award him a 100% even after all that time. He had gone on to judge meets himself, and he always; gave the first-rank speaker a 100%. He yelled at me: "That's just what you do!"

Of course, he was equally mad that I didn't remember him. After all, I ruined his life. Never mind that he eventually went to the state tournament and did well. Never mind that he steamrolled over everyone in his conference. My 98% was a blemish on him, and he waited for years to tell me just how much my stingy percentile damaged him.

He was a spooky guy. The last I heard, he was bouncing around the AM radio dial in Minnesota. Hopefully, he's forgotten all about me, but I dread the thought that he'll be at Tuesday's meet, waiting to pounce. "There he is! There's the judge who doesn't always give 100%! He kept me from speech glory back in high school!"

Maybe I should rent a Kevlar vest or something.

Live Music
Last night, the family and I attended a concert featuring a local Celtic music group called Ring Of Kerry.

I've seen these guys a few times in the past few years, and they always deliver a great performance.

Who would have think that a bunch of Minnesota guys could do justice to Celtic music? But they do a great job. They all play multiple instruments and most of them sing rather well.

One man in particular has a wonderful Irish tenor -- even though his Minnesota accent comes through at times. Every so often I hear someone sing and I want to run up to them and beg them to teach me. That's the way it is with this guy.

Most Patient Wife and I had a great time, and it seemed like MercurialGirl didn't hate it. So that's a win, in my book.

Little Victories
I've been job hunting a lot lately. I like my job at the group home just fine, but I need a second job. My freelancing gig at the local paper is still in play, but I'm on such a dry spell that it is not even funny. I have to find my own subjects for interviews, and for the past few weeks, I have had no takers.

So I applied for a job with a newspaper in a town not very far from here. It's a small town, and the paper is small too. But they've been around for 120 years or so, and it's a pretty good paper. I could definitely see myself working there and liking it.

I went in for an interview today. I think it went well, but we'll see. Hey, just the fact that they liked my writing enough to give me an interview is a victory.

Another victory for today: I figured out how to use my iPod. I loaded it up with music and listened to it for about an hour.

What's on the pod, you ask? Well, it's sort of spring 'round these parts and in the spring, I'm all about Van Morrison. So that's what I've been listening to. I went to the library and checked out all the Van Morrison CDs I could find and I put all of them on the iPod.

I won't burn any of the music onto CD's though. I'm just borrowing the music, not stealing it. In a couple of weeks, when I'm through this Van Morrisoon phase, I'll just delete the songs on the pod and delete them from my puter.

But until then, I'm listening to one of my favorite singers in the whole world -- and I have about five hours of his music to choose from.

That doesn't suck.

Someday, I'm going to own the discography of Van Morrison -- every song he's ever recorded. But first, someone will have to compile it al.l.

Cows In The News
I can't make stuff like this up. A police car was set upon by a flying cow in San Antonio:

Flying Cow Leaves Two Police Cars In Flames

For the record, I just have to say that I'm totally against the concept of a flying cow.

Okay, Now This Is Funny
From Yahoo News:

Hells Angels sue Disney over movie plans

Hells Angels has sued Walt Disney Co., claiming that a planned movie about a group of motorcycle riders called "Wild Hogs" infringes on its trademark name and skull logo.

A Disney spokesman said the suit was without merit.

"Wild Hogs," which has not yet begun filming, is a story about "a group of middle-aged wannabe bikers look(ing) for adventure out on the open road, where they encounter a chapter of the Hells Angels," according to the tag line on Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com).

In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of California on Wednesday, the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corp. said the characters in the movie are identified as members of the club and wear trademark logos, although in the suit the club said Disney had not given it a copy of the script.

The Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation was formed in 1948 in California's San Bernardino area and describes itself as a group of motorcycle enthusiasts.

I would love to see the lawyer for the Hell's Angels. This is a wacky comedy just waiting to be made by some cable channel!

New Stuff
Most Patient Wife and I have retired our old computer, named Limpy by my spouse. The name is apropos: it seized up all the time, and needed to be rebooted a couple of times an hour. Programs and features would work or not work as Limpy's mood dictated.

So we got a nice mid-range HP Pavilion with a 200 MB hard drive, and enough RAM to get the job done. So far, we haven't given the thing a name, but it's only a matter of time.

The new machine flies through the internets just fine, and I have rediscovered the joy of having sound. Limpy's sound card blew out a long time ago, and the system is so outdated that there are no compatible replacement.

We also got a bigger monitor. It's not gigantic, but a 17 inch flat screen makes everything look so clear and crisp. I had no trouble with Limpy's monitor, but the new one is a leap forward.

So this is good. MPW might say that she didn't know that the new HP came with a surgical attachment for husbands, but it seems that is the case. I have spent a lot of time setting up the system and just playing with the new toy.

It's so nice to have something that actually works!

Stuff
I haven't felt like writing for a while, mainly cuz I've been a bit crabby. I read a lot of blogs and journals, and when people whine and moan, I usually skip that day.

I think it's better to post when I'm in a decent mood rather than subject my few readers to my bad attitude.

That said, I may just be a little crabby today. So watch out.

What's wrong, you ask? The typical rant I have when I'm like the this: it's a bad case of the I Don't Know What I Want But I Know I Ain't Got It Blues.

I've typed the next paragraph and deleted it about a dozen times. I was going to make a list of all the crappy things I'm mad about, but ... that's useless. It's a waste of energy.

So. I'm done here.

A Very Important Question
Why is it that cats hate it when you catch them in the litter box, but they have no problem visiting you in the bathroom?

Happy March!
It's been a couple of quiet weeks at Casa de Sawin. I've been reading a lot. In fact, I just finished a wonderful book called The Year Of Yes. It's about a young woman who makes a momentous decision: for one year, she will go out on a date with anyone who asks her. Instead of saying no to life, she decides to say yes.

It's not just about dating; the woman opens herself up to all kinds of new things on the journey. It's sweet sometimes, sad at others, and ultimately triumphant. I highly recommend this book!

This will probably be made into a movie. Maria Dahvana Headley (the author) and her husband are both playwrights and both write screenplays. But I would read it first.

I also read We Are Still Married by Garrison Keillor. I love listening to A Prairie Home Companion, and I've read all of his other books and found them all delightful. But this book (I think it was his first) wasn't very good. I didn't like it one bit.

I've been working my way through Ellen Hart's series of books featuring Jane Lawless, a restauranteur and amateur sleuth who lives in Minneapolis. I've liked all of the books in this series. I haven't read them in order, and the last one I finished was Hunting The Witch.

I liked The Iron Girl, the latest in the series a whole lot, too. I also recommend picking this up if you like cozies with fun characters. The mysteries are okay too, but for me the strength of these books lies in Lawless' ability to face the toughest situation and come through on the other side through fierce determination, intelligence -- and sometimes with a little help from her friends.

William Bernhardt's lawyer Ben Kincaid returns in a satisfying thriller in Capital Murder. Bernhardt writes a pretty good legal thriller, and the characters of the series are fun to read about. So Thumbs Up on the Kincaid series -- especially Capital Murder and Hate Crime.

Bernhardt's writing has really matured over his past few books, and if you're looking for a mystery/thriller/courtroom drama to read, he really delivers.

The book I'm struggling through right now is called Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes . It's about the trouble our society is in because have all bought into the popularized version of B.F. Skinner's philosophy of behaviorism.

Basically, we reward everyone in order to get them to do things but when we take away the reward the behavior we encourage ceases. Thus, we spend a lot of our lives coming up with different-flavored carrots to dangle in front of people to get them to do what we want. This means that we have a whole bunch of people who behave a certain way only because they anticipate reward or punishment and not because it's the "right" thing to do.

It's a very interesting subject, and I will finish the book someday. But Alfie Kohn is such a dry writer that I can't handle more than a page or two at a time. I would love to have been the editor on this book! In the right format, Kohn's ideas could influence a lot of people who work in human services. As it is, I like the book, but I find it unreadable! Maybe if it was a pop-up book with lots of pictures and smaller words, I would be able to read it faster.

I Know This Makes Me Sound Crabby, But ...


I'm just not a fan of the Olympics. In fact, I don't like them at all. Last night, Most Patient Wife and I were watching TV and the Olympics was on and I remembered that it was Thursday night.

I reminded her that Survivor was on. Most of the time, I don't care to watch Survivor. But compared to the Olympics, well...

See, I don't like the Olympics because it just looks to me like it's so fake. We kidnap children, press them into a sport or event from age four and make them perform. When they hit their twenties, it's all over.

Sure, they look nice doing it, butI don't see the fun of this stuff. Not in the least.

"I want to be the best" is the refrain that I hear most often when someone interviews the athletes. I understand that, but this just feels to me like we have artificial, engineered people out there performing for the masses.

I'm sorry, but it just feels yucky.

But I'll watch any of the three Law and Order shows 15 times a week, and I can't wait for Tuesday nights when I get to watch Vic Mackey smack around people who deserve it on The Shield.

So it's all subjective. But for some reason, I just can't bring myself to care about most of the the athletes who compete at the Olympic level. And if I don't care about the people, I don't care what they are doing...

I just won't enjoy watching it.