I Want You to Want Me, I Need You to Need Me, I'd Love You to Love Me, I'm Beggin You to Beg Butt

AND WE’RE BACK!!!!!!! As I decided to dedicate myself to doing virtually nothing but debate work in the run-up to King’s I have obviously neglected to say anything here. I have, in all honesty, neglected virtually everything else trying to get us into condition to have some sort of argument on both sides of the resolution and, as expected, it turned out fine.

We didn’t clear any novice teams this weekend, which was unfortunate, but everyone won at least 2 debates, so I consider that victory. I know I don’t have the unmitigated love for debate that many people around me do, but those times when things start to click for novices are really pretty incredible. If we somehow figure out how to motivate these people to cut some cards we should have a pretty fantastic year. We lost a tough and controversial quarters debate in open and one we just didn’t adjust to correctly in JV, so it’s not our best elim performance. We’re gonna roll at Cornell though.

One of the most ridiculous experiences of my life occurred on the ride home, when we managed to sustain a single (though admittedly hilarious) joke for the entire drive. It started with a pretty basic pseudo-debate joke about substituting the word “vagina” for the word “counterplan,” but by the time we got off the thruway, we were just saying “vagina” and laughing. The fact that we didn’t scare off any of the novices who woke up somewhere during this three-hour stretch is pretty incredible, so mad props to their appreciation of humor.

Now that we appear to be in the full swing of the fall television season premieres, I would just like to comment on how fucking awesome Studio 60 is looking to be. Notably, they just moved The West Wing into a TV show. The graphics, the dialogue, the framing of the show—they are all pretty much identical. I was certain that I would enjoy pretty much any program written by Aaron Sorkin, any show starring Josh Lyman. But I admittedly was worried about the ability of a show about SNL to pack the dramatic or emotional punch that characterized Sorkin. That was a risk that was put to rest about 5 minutes into the show and has been repeatedly smacked in the face since. I actually feel kind of stupid for even having said suspicions, since Amanda Peet’s character is such classic West Wing-like material (think the congress-woman’s husband who takes over her seat or the origin of Will Bailey).

I never watched Friends regularly, probably only saw 5-10 episodes during the actual run of the program. But just from those few experiences, it was pretty clear that Matthew Perry constituted a strong majority of the funny. When he did show up on The West Wing to get rid of the VP, he was pretty awesome. So far, he is running roughshod over Monday nights and that’s no small accomplishment when you are paired with the inspiration for lemon-lyman.com.

Hippo, fresh off her first weekend alone, is excited to watch some Monday Night Football, which we tivoed earlier, so I will oblige her. She had some neighborhood felines over for this NFL Sunday to celebrate the Packers’ success. They cleaned up well, but she is excited to watch Michael Vick. Apparently, she informed me, he learned everything he knows about scrambling out of the pocket from watching kittens.

Peace,

MB-K