Recalling AI-XXI

Tuesday, April 18 - Orlando, FL.

The day dawned on AI-Monday and one by one the rumpled participants emerged from their various bedrooms looking like the first animals to emerge from the oceans:  pale, unsteady on their feet and gasping for air.  As everyone returns to normal routines, let's look back on the weekend before it is swept out into the oceans of our memories (note the continued metaphor doubling as non sequitur).

Sunday, the culmination of the intense competition, preparation and ennui of any AI weekend.  As you will recall, the golf portion of the AI was as tight as everyone's pants after four nights of AI eating and drinking.  The multi-tasking Kathi, BD and co-champ of AI-XX, led Gordon by 1, Rich by 6 and the Director by 9.  Once again rotating partners every 6 holes while simultaneously trying to keep the landscape from rotating, the final round began with the AI-XX co-champs taking on Gordon/Rich to determine who would bask in the glow of AI flop sweat.  Feeling the pressure of having slept on the lead, or more likely, having slept with Mitch, Kathi got off to a slow start, but Burke rebounded a bit from his abysmal first round performance and the pair posted an opening 19 points.  The Gordon/Rich partnership staggered out of the gate to card three 7's and four 6's between them over the opening third and record a mediocre 16 points, increasing Kathi's lead to 4 points with 12 holes to play.

The second third of the second round of the third day of golf on the fourth day of AI-XXI reunited the Round 1 juggernaut of Kathi/Gordon.  They came out of the blocks in high gear on their first hole with a blistering 8 points on #7, featuring a birdie 2/net 1 by Gordon and a par 3/net 2 for Kathi.  They would cool off a bit, but their 23 points was second on the weekend only to the 25 they combined for in Round 1.  The contorted couple Heimsch & Burke were playing something resembling golf until they notched a combined goose egg on #11 and finished the second hexad with 18 points.  So, with only 6 holes to play, Kathi maintained her 4 point lead over Gordon while Heimsch & Burke receded into the Easter/Passover afternoon sun, although no one knew precisely where they stood as playing golf was proving difficult enough without the additional burden of  addition.

The players came down the home stretch with Kathi hoping against hope that Heimsch would awaken from his golfing torpor and help her get to the finish ahead of Gordon who was leaning on Burke, which was quite painful for Burke, to do the same for him.  There is no pressure like AI pressure though.  Gordon opened the final stretch with a par & a bogey and when Heimsch & Kathi totaled a zero on 13, it looked as though the pendulum had swung Gordon's way, as fortunately The AI Pendulum Committee had remembered to bring one.  Burke made only 1 par over the final 6, but his unlikely bogey 5 on 15 after hitting his first tee shot OB saved 2 points for the team when Gordon's tee shot bounced off a roof and sailed into AI oblivion.  Sagging under the intense competition, Kathi/Rich opened with a net zero on 13 & added only a single point on each of 15 &16.  Kathi lurched to life on 17 and added 3 points with a net birdie as her teammate flailed in the sand.  A two-point finishing hole gave Kathi/Rich a meager 12 points, the lowest team total of the weekend.  Gordon roared home with three 7's and three 4's, while Burke notched five 5's and a 4 over the final 6 holes for a team total of 16 points.

Well then.  Who won?   The AI Scoring Committee convened at AI-HQ immediately after the round and after a careful analysis of the numbers the results were in.  Kathi, Gordon & Burke were in with 104 points while Heimsch rolled in with 100.  What?  How the hell did Burke get in the mix?  And why was he dumb enough to make the putts on 15 & 18 that dropped his wife into a tie with the feckless Gordon?  More importantly where was AI Mathematician Bob Paze?  

In Paze's absence, The Scoring Committee devised a playoff format for the 3 players eliminating the 4th place finisher from the total points.  So, just Kathi/Burke; Kathi/Gordon and Gordon/Burke.  When those numbers were tallied, the results were clear:  Burke had 68 points, Gordon had 80 and the AI had a repeat champion in Kathi with 84 points.   Hurrah!  

And so, it was on to The Banquet.  But first, there would be 4 or 5 bottles of Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, a couple of beers a handful of Manhattans for Gordon, Reef & Burke and some AI Shuffleboard on the newly minted court.  The mood was set.

And what a Banquet it was. The Banquet Director had turned over much of the prep to the Banquet Department:  Nora, Sean, Kate & Emma, because she was busy kicking ass in the golf tournament. The group put together a menu featuring (and spilling half of) a corn-goat cheese soup with shrimp & brown butter mushrooms, followed by spring heritage pork roast, potatoes au gratin, asparagus, salad,  tarte satin with vanilla ice cream and 8, maybe 9, bottles of various varietals of red wine, it was a spectacular success.  How would everyone get to sleep with all the adrenaline and excitement of AI Sunday?  How?  Videos from AI Productions, of course!  We watched a few AI-XX compilations that were received as if they'd never been seen, which gave the AI Productions staff the idea that perhaps it wasn't necessary to produce new material every year.  Regardless, it was on to a couple of new efforts:  "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes" a moving documentary that explored the deepest reaches of the inevitable, followed by the debut of "Stanhattan", a sweeping tour de farce destined to be studied for years as scholars examine the AI as part of a longitudinal study of the causes of early onset brain damage.

Next?  The annual Awards Ceremony, again emceed by the inexplicably esteemed and extemporaneously gifted Reef.  He presented awards destined for storage containers to the 4-Ball Champions, Kathi & Heimsch, the Bowling For Sotweeds Champions, Edie and himself, the Lack of Skills winner, Burke, and of course, as detailed in agonizing detail above, the 

Champion of AI-XXI, Kathi.  And it was time for bed. Perchance to sleep.

Postscript:   if you've managed to remain conscious while reading this, you might be wondering how the hell Burke came from 9 points behind to finish in a 3-way tie?  The Scoring Committee awoke this morning with an urge to check its arithmetic.  Morning math.  Where was someone who could add?  Paze?  Paze?  Bueller? As The Committee feared and any 2nd grader can plainly see, of Kathi's scores of 60-54, Gordon's 59-55 and Burke's 51-53, only one actually totals 104. The Committee brought in an outside auditor, just back from the Academy Awards, to confirm the math, and there was obviously only a 2-way tie for the championship: Kathi and Gordon at 114.  The Committee then went to the scorecards for a scorecard playoff, and despite the scorecards initial refusal to participate, here's what happened:   18th hole, Round 2, total net:  Kathi/Heimsch: 2; Gordon/Burke: 2.  On to 17.  Kathi's 4 for 2 was good for 3 points, while Gordon's 4 for 3 was only good for 2 and, if we look at each player's individual points, it's Kathi with 60 and Gordon with 54, so........thank the stars up above, we do not need to reassemble for a reprise of the Awards Ceremony.    

Kathi IS the Champion of AI-XXI!!

And, now we just gave Cleo 6 or 7 pounds of leftovers and it's time for a nap.  Until we meet again.....

It Was A Couple of Days

They came. They drank. They lip synced.  They also played golf, bowled and played shuffleboard.  Gordon & Mitch were throttled by Kathi & Rich in the 4-Ball competition, dealing the former  their first loss in this event in AI history and raising the question of what Title IX has done to the comfortable male hegemony in the AI and what can be done to make The AI great again.

Friday night's bowling similarly brought with it a controversy in that Reef, the erstwhile  and self satisfied technophobe, claimed that the bowling computer made an error and failed to record his spare in the first frame of game 1.  When he ended up on the short end of a 1 pin difference with AI tyro Tom Korpolinski, he brought this protest before the BFS Committee.  After due diligence & interviews with other players in this Lexi Thompson-esque (Ernie) imbroglio , The Committee has ruled in Reef's favor, turning his 1 pin deficit into an 8 pin victory, his 9th title.  There was similar drama on the women's side of the lanes as perennial champion Edie was tied by another newcomer, Christina Korpolinski, who was sporting her very own bowling shoes because in her words "I bowled once."  Edie and Christina's 210 was 2 pins clear of 3rd place finisher Kathi and insured that Edie's undefeated streak remained intact.

Round 1 of The AI Golf Championship was played, to use the term loosely, at Bay Hill under somewhat blustery conditions and with something less than skill.  The rotating partners format provided each player an opportunity to not only torpedo their own chances but to sabotage those of their partner(s) as well.  The opening pair of Kathi/Gordon raced out in 25 points leaving Rich/Mitch 7 points behind after the first 6 holes, a deficit from which they would not recover.  The second pairings saw Kathi add 18 points to her total with her partner Rich, while Mitch dragged Gordon down to a mere 16 points.  The final pairings seemed to favor the formidable husband/wife duo, winner of several titles at Bay Hill, but no, Mitch again dragged his partner down, this time to 17 points, including hole #16 where the duo recorded zero (0) points.  Rich was reasonably steady, at least in the context of the group, and Gordon played the final 6 in 7 over par (gross) which, for this group, was tantamount to scaling Everest on the back of a yak with a television strapped to one's back.  And so, Round 1 ended with Kathi on top with 60 points, followed closely by Gordon with 59, Rich 6 back at 54 and Mitch muddling in the basement with 51.

Yet another formidable feast of Italian specialties was proffered by The Banquet Director along with several gallons of wine, some of which ended up on the right shoulder of The Director who temporarily forgot he was holding a glass of wine in his right hand when saluting the group as they sat down to eat.

Dinner was followed by the hotly anticipated 4th iteration of the AI Lip Sync Challenge.  This year's maelstrom began with Mitch's rendition of the 60's maudlin "Tell Laura I Love Her."  This tale of death and destruction set a mood of gaiety that would inform the rest of the proceedings and was followed, in no particular order, by Edie channeling Odetta, Reef's wistful rendition of Two Tons of Steel's "Not That Lucky", Heimsch's self examination, "People Are Strange", Kathi's barn burning evocation of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now", Emma reaching across generations with Otis Redding's "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay", Nora and her Pips taking "The Midnight Train to Georgia" (woo woo), Gordon again trying to infuse this bacchanal with a hint of culture performing "Imaginary Landscape 4" by John Cage, a piece for 12 radios, 24 performers and director.  We settled for Gordon and a boombox. And Sean, with help from Alexander Hamilton (Kate G) delivering an emotive performance of "Satisfied" from an obscure eponymous Broadway show.  The program concluded with a solo version of the classic duet "Closer to Fine" by our own Indigo Girl, Kate G.

It's Easter Sunday at AI-XXI and, on cue, everyone is risen.  Some staring blankly at English Premier League football on the telly while others are staring blankly at the Sunday NYT.  Round 2 awaits.

It's Only A Day Away

A Tradition Like No Other

This past weekend many of us were again glued to our DVR's for the riveting drama that can only be provided by white men grappling with the vicissitudes of the human condition.  Yes, it was Shields & Brooks killing time before their Friday Martinis on the PBS NewsHour.  How do you get that job anyway?  But then it was on to that other, annual, bastion of pretension and privilege:  The Masters.  Friends, it was a weekend like every other.   Despite the fact that 98.7% of the members at Augusta National believe that global warming IS a plot by the Chinese, the azaleas bloomed 3 weeks ago, leaving only the canned bird chirping and the most men you'll see in green jackets outside of a leprechaun costume party to remind us of what we were watching.  Oh, and Jim Nantz.  The Sultan of Smarm.  

There was some drama as Sergio Garcia finally won a major. Not because it had taken him so long, but because it wasn't clear if the local ICE agents know that not everyone who speaks Spanish is Mexican and might deport him before he could don the second most coveted jacket in golf.

It is with this in mind that we remember the welcome from the AI Chairman to AI-XV:

The Time is Nigh

Apparently "nigh" is an actual word as auto-correct has left it unchanged rather than change it to, say, "neigh" or "sigh" or "night" or "nitwit".  But, we digress.

There has been some apprehension expressed among the AI cognoscenti regarding the relative paucity of communications emanating from AI HQ considering how nigh AI-XXI is.  Fact is, the AI Director of Publicity, having recently retired from his long-standing job moonlighting at a local sign and awards store, no longer has all that time at work to waste doing other things that were done in an effort to avoid working.  The Director's time is currently consumed almost exclusively with things that the Director wants to do, leaving precious little time for the exhaustingly critical preparation that must be done each year.  Instead, the Director has frittered away his time reading, playing golf & eating/drinking.  The new holy trinity.

But, as whomever ghost wrote Macbeth said "Let every Stan be master of his time until 7 at night".  After that, it's time for TV.

And now, without further ado,  AI Productions presents "AI-XXI:  Coming Soon"  Really soon; like a week from tomorrow soon.  Guess we better get the 100 wine bottles off of the bed in the guest room.