Tourney journals: NSC 2004 NOLA Color
Contributed by flamingjune on Friday, August 13 @ 11:01:17 EDT
Topic: Miscellaneous
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Part one of Flamingjune's color report for the NSC 2004
...and wear the dress I like so well
and meet me at the old saloon
make sure that there's a Dixie moon
New Orleans, I'll be there
And deal the cards roll the dice
if it ain't that old Chuck E. Weiss
and Claiborne Avenue, me and you
Sam Jones and all
And I wish I was in New Orleans
I can see it in my dreams
arm-in-arm down Burgundy
a bottle and my friends and me
New Orleans, I'll be there
----Tom Waits
I was there. The moon was there. I had a bottle (or two). Friends. I didn't see Chuck E. Weiss. Though I have seen him. When I lived in L.A. he
played in a band called Chuck E. Weiss and the God Damned Liars and we used
to go to this divey bar down on the Strip on Tuesday nights and listen to
him. That was back in the olden days. Another life. I waited on tables at
night and went to cattle-call auditions by day and when I wasn't doing those
two things I was probably hanging out in a bar somewhere, or on my way to a
bar, or sitting in my bohemian digs in Pasadena with one of my several
roommates planning on how to get to a bar. Usually the bar had live music.
Sometimes just a pool table.
There was one other thing I did a lot back then as well. One of my
roommates taught me how to play a board game one day. I had played Scrabble
before. But when I played against Vallen a slow, but most permanent
transformation began in this unsuspecting 23 year old. Vallen had played
against a tournament player she knew in San Francisco. She knew most of the
two letter words, and lots of threes. The first couple of games I was just
pissed, "AA? What the fuck is that?" She would shrug and hand me the
dictionary. I also remember being angry at how many points she would score
for parallel plays. After getting my ass kicked three games in a row I was
hooked (you should have seen some of the guys I dated back then). Once or
twice a week when Vallen and I had days off together we would walk over to
Trader Joe's, pick up a few bottles of $1.99 wine, stock up on cigarettes
and break out the Scrabble board. We would sit in the living room with its
green shag carpet and garage sale furniture and chain smoke and drink wine
and play game after game of Scrabble. Our other roommate, Robin, would pass
through, on her way to a bar, "We're going over to the John Bull, you guys
want to come?" We would take slow drags off our cigarettes and shuffle our
tiles, "We're good, thanks."
Back then I never looked into tournament play or thought about taking it to
any other level, after all, there were many bars to visit, and my games with
Vallen with our Trader Joes' wine and Parliaments were completely satisfying
to me.
I miss that. You know? Just playing the game for fun. The week before
Nationals I tried to get as many live games in as possible and would invite
the few club mates I know who don't work during the day to meet me over at
the pool. One day Anne Loring and I were sitting at the picnic tables under
the pine trees playing a game while the kids swam and ordered lots of sugar
from the shack. A French woman whom I know from my four year old's
preschool came over to say hello. We chatted for a while and then she
looked down at our game, "When I get back (she was on her way back to France
for a year) I would love to play Scrabble with you Stephanie. You know I
love to play Scrabble." I told her of course and wished her bon voyage.
When she walked away I shuffled my tiles and stared at the board, "Isn't
that cute when people say that?" Anne looked up from tracking, "What?"
When they say 'I love to play Scrabble,'" and Anne laughs out loud.
Unlike Mr. Gibson, or hundreds of other smart and well organized Scrabble
players who joined me in New Orleans, I did not prepare myself very well for
the 'big game'. I have been doing my drills over at Jumbletime and staring
absentmindedly at flashcards on occasion. I'd put the flashcards away and
then pull them out in a week and it was like I had never seen them before,
"Oh good, a new set!" I'm not convinced JT is my best mode of study, since I
did challenge perfectly good fours and fives at this tourney, though,
perhaps, it is handy for honing anagramming skills. I mean, after all, I
can't expect the site to single-handedly endow me with superior gray matter
(but as a side note, could you maybe ask your son about that David?).
So I didn't get as much study time in as I would have liked, and technically
I'm playing up, but I did not go into this tournament with a bad attitude.
I was relaxed and ready to play on day one, and while I was prepared to
finish in a mediocre spot, I was not prepared for the onslaught of
disastrous games and my, seemingly, permanent spot at the very last table
out of 169 players.
The good news is that we were playing in a city where you are encouraged to
walk the streets with paper cups full of alcohol. Thank God for that.
I also had my friends at this tourney. And that moon. And a beautiful city
I had never seen before.
It's 4:30 in the morning, dear reader. Beginnings are always so difficult,
and I believe this one is under way, so that is something. More tomorrow.
steph.
After one of my particularly bad days (there were many to choose from) I was
heading up to my room and shared the elevator with two women I didn't know,
but they had their NSC name tags hanging around their necks. They were in my
division. Elvis could have been in my division and I would not have bumped
into him. Ann mentioned in her quick post how she was sad she missed seeing
so many of her online friends. There were loads of people I wanted to seek
out and say hello too as well, but with that many games to play and so many
people you get caught in a tide of motion that seems completely out of your
control.
I asked the two women how they were doing and they shrugged and said okay.
When she asked me I laughed, "This is bad. I actually broke down today
after the second game. I don't know if I can take much more." The one
woman shook her head and said, "Oh, no, don't do that. Don't let this game
define who you are." She was so sincere. "That's not good, don't do that,
you're more than how you're playing down there." I told her I knew that,
but that it was sort of what we were here for, to fight this battle and I
was losing it, miserably. "I work at it some, you know? It's hard to do
that and then have nothing to show for it after so many games."
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I wasn't feeling sorry for myself, too
much any way. Obviously I did not study enough. I wrote to a friend
yesterday that I know it is more than just drawing badly. There was a
woman who was stuck down at table 83 with the rest of us losers who could
not stop whining about her bad luck. I wanted to tell her we were all on
the same little loser boat together, that there probably wasn't one person
down here who had been drawing really well and was just throwing games out
of sheer stupidity. Well. I maybe did that once, but still.
There were some really nice, terrific players down in the abyss, I must say.
That was one of the worst things about sitting across from some of these
folks. You know they are having as bad a time of it as you are, otherwise
you wouldn't be playing each other. You also know that none of them suck.
There wasn't one person down there who was just in it for 'fun'. No
non-tracking yackers who think a stem is something you find on a flower.
Though I remember waiting for my op one afternoon and looking over while a
woman counted out her VAUNTIES* bingo. I never got to play her. But after
looking over my notes and reading some of the other reports from the tourney
it seems like there were a whole lotta phoneys flying through division 3.
I had some doozies stay on myself, so I'm not really pointing any fingers
there. People have mentioned how the level of play has gotten better over
the last few years with the game becoming more popular and study tools more
available, and looking at the games in 3 I'd have to agree.
So when all the losers are grouped together with just a day left at the
biggest dance of the year, the tension gets tweaked up a notch in these
games. Everybody tries to be polite but we're all sort of chewing on the
corner of our mouths and running our fingers through our hair a lot. We're
desperate for that win and we both know when we shake hands before the game
that somebody will not get it. Somebody has to lose yet another game.
I told my friend it was like the Bad Games Vortex and I could find no way to
break out of it. On Friday night Sue and I were in a Voodoo shop and I
picked up some 'power rings' and all night would aim my fists at
unsuspecting people, confident that I was zapping them with POWER. What
type of power I had no idea. Susan and I were on our way up the escalator
later that night and I told her, "That woman sitting in the bar down there
just gave me the evil eye." She did, she sort of glared at me for no reason
Sue stared over my shoulder, "She obviously doesn't realize you are
wearing your power rings." I looked down at my hands and nodded my head,
"Damn straight."
Oh yes, Friday night was a happy night. The tournament had not yet begun,
Susan and I had a wonderful dinner at the hotel once we checked in, and then
walked out into the steamy N'awlins' dusk and headed for Bourbon Street,
which is, after all is said and done, like Disneyland for drunks and
letches. It's kind of sad. You could see how 30 years ago it was the real
deal, but over time beads and boas have replaced some of the flesh and blood, and
when you strip away Bourbon Street's cheap jewelry, she's looking pretty
worn and empty. Key West is like that now too. But there is more to the
French Quarter than just Bourbon street, namely FOOD. We could have stayed
there a month and eaten at a different place for all meals and still not hit
all the places with good eats.
On Saturday Ira Freehof, Sue Rhea and I cruised the quarter looking for more
good mojo to kick off the tournament properly. We ended up in the Gem Store
and Lapidary in the French Quarter after one practitioner of voodoo
instructed us to pick up some amethyst. So on Sunday morning I not only had
my power rings but a purple, amethyst heart. I was also wearing a blue
shirt, which we were told was the color of HIGHER REASONING. But something
was amiss. I kept losing games. Not only that but I lost a pair of
earrings I had bought on Saturday. I also lost a box of Nag Champa incense.
I thought back to our little buzzy stroll through the Quarter. At one
point I was gesticulating wildly and one of the 'good luck' dolls I had
bought for the kids went flying out of the bag and smashed on the concrete.
The head and hands were made out of porcelain and one of the hands broke. I
made jokes about it being a disabled good luck doll now, "Yea, actually it
was on a swift boat in the Me Kong Delta under heavy sniper fire...." But
clearly it is not very auspicious to break a good luck doll and then make
alcohol inspired jokes about it after. And what about that woman in the
lobby who gave me the evil eye on Friday night anyway? I mean what was up
with THAT? Where are my earrings and my incense? Where did my first 16
games go?????
Ira kept suggesting that I needed to tweak my charms somehow, "Where are
those beads...you have to wear the BEADS," and very sweetly, never once said
anything like "When I was memorizing the top ten 1,000 sevens what were you
doing with your day, biatch?"
Monday night Susan and I went to go see Fahrenheit 911. I'm a fan of Moore's
work and I also felt like I was pretty informed with all the stuff he was
going to cover in the movie. So I was a little surprised to find myself
swiping at tears every other scene. I had grabbed one tiny little, wispy
napkin when I bought my popcorn and kept blowing my nose on it until it was
this soggy little patch of mush. Maybe I really needed to let off some
pressure from the last two awful days at the tourney, and maybe the stuff he
was showing was just sad and heartbreaking, but after we walked out of there
Sue and I were so depressed neither one of us felt like going up to our room
right away. I see Gaspard in the lobby the next morning and ask him if he
cried when he saw it. Gaspard is like my sentimentality gauge. Joe and I
share a love for the cynical view and disdain for anything overwrought. The
day Paul Wellstone was killed we bumped into each other over at ISC and sat
there crying and typing little bits back and forth about how much it hurt
and sucked and how we couldn't believe it, which, was completely appropriate. But then when Spaulding Gray's body washes ashore I show up at club that
night and when Joe and I are alone say, "Isn't that awful about Spaulding
Gray?," and he shrugs and says, "Eh." When I smack him on the arm, he
laughs and shrugs again, "Well I was sad two months ago when the story first
broke." "I know, but now it's really final." and Joe says in his deadpan
way, "Well it seemed pretty final back then too." I shake my head, "But
now it's real. You don't understand, this is the stuff that keeps me awake
all night long." And it's true. Images of Spaulding Gray jumping off the
front of a ferry into a freezing, unforgiving river haunted me for weeks.
Susan and I go up to fetch our board so we can play a game down in the bar,
which was a large open area situated in the middle of the enormous lobby,
with comfortable chairs and several square tables plenty big for games. It
was preferable to the smokers and the drinkers but also to people who didn't
feel like being cramped in the tiny room with the huge, round tables that
the hotel had set up for after hours games. The last day of the tournament
the Marriott staff had finally caught on that the Scrabble crowd was not
exactly going to be ringing up the big tabs and they, wisely, kicked us out
of the bar, and, kindly, provided a huge dining area separate from the main
restaurant in the lobby which was ideal for everybody involved. If only
they had done this from day one. But on Monday night we were still fighting
for space in the bar with the normal drinking guests. It was crowded, but
Sue and I manage to find a spot next to two other Scrabblers we didn't know.
We have just started our game when Jim Kramer walks over to say hello.
Susan is struggling with a bingo-prone rack and finally flips it toward Jim,
"I know there's something here." Jim looks quickly and nods his head slowly
"Oh yea. You'll find something there." Sue goes back at it and Jim and I
chat about our day. After a bit Sue gives up and playes NAE for five points
playing off an N and an E. Jim smiles his wry smile and tells Susan, "You
went for five points when you should have gone for nineteen." Sue turns her
rack out so we can both see it, and sure enough, the bingo she missed,
through an open E on the board, was NINETEEN.
Then it is my turn and I have
lots of vowels and a blank and a V and ask Jim, "Trade?" And he looks at it
and pulls up and chair and gently moves some of the tiles around on my rack,
"Well this leave is worth about 8, so if you can play VOE somewhere for more
than 8 points then that would be a better play maybe." I play VOE for
20something, "There you go, you are way up now than if you had traded. That
s actually one of the biggest mistakes people in lower divisions make I
think, trading too soon." The tutorial is off. Sue and I finish the rest
of the game showing our racks to each other and Jim does not tell us what to
do, instead he talks about what we need to think about for each turn, the
different circumstances involved, the strategy behind each turn. He
congratulates us enthusiastically when we demonstrate good board vision and
shrugs and tells us matter-of-factly not to worry about missing the stuff we
don't know yet. It was one of the most educational Scrabble encounters I've
had to date and when it was over I found myself wishing we could do
something like it more often.
I went up to bed after and took my power rings off and took off my blue
shirt and took off my beads. Tomorrow I would not mess with any of the
charms. Hey, I broke a good luck doll, accidents happen. Tomorrow I was
going to go into that first game with the wisdom of Jim Kramer infusing my
aura. I would take my time, look for bingos, be deliberate, take it a rack
at a time, use all of my clock for the endgame. We don't need no stinkin'
mojo....I have Kramer on my side.
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