A Wisconsin Yankee in Walt Disney's Court

I only won 2 out of the final 5 games on Sunday, overall not bad against such a tough field but it could’ve gone so much better. In addition to the challenges I blew Saturday, I lost a game by 1 point Sunday because I ran out of time and suffered the 10-point penalty. The easy 9-4 would’ve been fabulous. I gained a few ratings points anyway, and head off for a small 1-day breast cancer benefit tournament in 2 weeks to redeem my self.
I never seem to get unusual or high-point words down in tournaments; about the oddest thing I played was FEIJOA, just to get rid of a junky rack and end up losing when I never saw another E the rest of the game. At the club Monday, when it didn’t count, words like PIROGIES and FRONTES rolled off the rack. Oh well.
One of the locals told me my Scrabble invention had more of a buzz going around than I’d realized, giving me a little more impetus to get production moving on that. Yet another U.S. company turned down manufacturing them (or ignored me, actually) so I’m still stuck with Hong Kong, but we’re looking for alternatives…

It’s a Scrabble tournament weekend again, this time the 2-day affair that I did a logo for. Because of a low turnout, I’m lumped in a group that spans ratings near mine to some about 500 points higher. I’m “expected to win,” according to the system, about 5 games of 13, which is fine if I do (I’ve won 4 of 8 so far) but a little disheartening. I could fairly easily be at 6-8 right now, though, even after playing opponents all rated above me, if I had a little more courage to challenge words that sound like nonsense. Two close losses would’ve been easy wins if I didn’t chicken out, but between semi-word words that are allowable (haulier? viewy?) and being burned in the past, I rarely challenge unless it’s a last-ditch effort or I’m pretty certain it’s a phony.
The only challenges I did make today were FAM (I’ve got all the 3-letter-words down pretty solidly now) and NOONISH (I only know it’s no good because I got away with it in a club game a few weeks back). I never play phonies for the same reasons– you can’t fool these people anymore. Nobody blinks when you lay down ANESTRI or ETESIAN, common words to Scrabble sharps. I’ve just got to bone up on what’s plausible and what isn’t.
Tomorrow: I may win a cookie, or something.

Last we spoke of Gimme Gimme Octopus, rumors abounded over the too-violent-for-DVD “lost” episode, supposedly involving ol’ Kure Kure being beaten so badly by the other puppets that he suffers debilitating injuries. It turns out to be not so bad, and not nearly as weird as the baby episode. Takora and his squash-shaped buddy do get pummeled by the rest of the cast, but they only turn up with cartoon lumps and bandages at the end.

But check out this one– the baby is back, taking more abuse than in the last one! Again, there’s the question of whether it’s a baby or some kind of representation of Kure Kure. When the others hit it it seems to affect him, but is it from empathy, or is it a voodoo doll? Is it alive? The girl hugs it and carries it off at the end, as if it were as alive as any of the rest of them. It’s pure, vintage Japanese gold any way you look at it.

Feast your orbs on this tentacled horror, the kind of thing Lovecraft would’ve described only as “indescribably terrifying,” causing all who gazed upon it’s tendrils to pass into a catatonic unconsciousness from fright. And the less said about the flowers the better, thanks to Georgia O’Keefe. Yet there I was, seated at the winter meeting of some Floridian orchid society, brought in as a ringer to secure extra chances at door prizes and draw the ire of bitter old women away from family members who actually care about these things.

The irony was lost on the crowd that their club is dedicated to a flower that’s not even suitable for a table centerpiece; about the only thing, it seems to me, flowers are useful for. Their precious plants stood alone in a corner while furry pythons of green astroturf graced the tables as garland. Fears of spilling Swedish meatball-gravy on a sensitive air-root would have made them all too nervous to enjoy the potluck dinner, I suppose.

As these potluck things go, it was pretty typical– one woman brings a casserole big enough to feed the whole congregation, the next brings in a bag of store-brand cheesy puffs and throws it on the table. And everything in-between. There was also fried chicken, brought in from someones brother-in-law’s take out place. There’d been some controversy in the past where they switched to someone else’s cousin’s fried chicken for major events but an emergency referendum put things back in order.

Then there was the passing out of the orchids, which triggered more drooling than old Myrtle’s carrot cake. You could feel the tension as the (mostly) old folks waited for their turn, and I braced for a claw of artificial nails in the back when I went to grab mine and heard the murmured speculation over why I was entitled to a plant. I asked my wife, “What, are these things worth hundreds of dollars, or what?” But no, they go for $15 maybe, and all these people have hundreds of them at home. Living through the depression and rationing rubber during WWII makes people do strange things.

The big news of the meeting was that the society had a website now, which with this crowd did just about as much good as saying they’d put a greenhouse on the moon for them to visit. Bizarre cries of “Is that on computers now?” and “Don’t Google it! Don’t Google it!” went around the room. I’m sure the folks who do figure out how to access it will have a great time gathering more addresses for their forward-this-prayer and Obama-is-a-Muslim mass emailings, though.

There was a raffle at the end, and my ticket was called first so I passed it off to someone and thus ended my duties for the evening. No fisticuffs or even cane beatings ensued over the prize distribution so it was considered a successful meeting by all.

I drove to Port Richey, near Tampa, with one of the local club members for a 3-day Scrabble tournament over the first weekend of the year. I was first in my group and got second in “best performance” over my seeding for the whole tournament. Because it was an open-format tourney, where you play all ratings levels, my rating should jump up a pretty good amount. Which probably means the end of winning much at these things anymore, but I’m getting better and still have a lot to learn, even basic stuff. Knowing all the 4-letter words would be incredibly handy, but getting them all to stick has been futile.

I had samples of my Scrabble bag there and they seemed to go over well, except to little old ladies who are desperately clinging to their “free” Crown Royal bags. One guy had a bag with holes in it and just made up rules for what to do about tiles falling out. There’s a need for my invention, which I’ll be able to tell more about in a few weeks.

It was quite a group of characters at this one, maybe because they grouped all the rankings together so I saw more of the higher-level nutballs. I didn’t put my finger on it until later after the tournament, but this one guy looked like a going-on-middle-age Buddy Bradley (left), with a big mop of hair over his eyes and an extreme stoop, coupled with his belly sticking out the bottom of a plaid shirt that made his spine appear to curve like a Pete Bagge drawing. He would mainly mumble like the guy in the basement in Office Space, but he’d go outside and smoke those horrible little cigar-things they sell at gas stations and come back in reeking, and then during the otherwise-silent games clear his throat with a loud, piercing, rattling, gurgling roar. I heard that the things he spit up outside were abominable. Good times.