A semi-legendary account of the 2008 Tri-Cities talk-off season, particularly following Jordan Jericho of the Acme Advancement Academy in her chase for a Perfect Year.
Though changes to some actual events have been made in order to best fit readership, this account has been painstakingly put together through countless research and numerous interviews with nearly all involved parties. Its veracity is, therefore, virtually assured, and a reader can feel comfortable in thinking that he or she is reading the definitive guide to competitive talking in 2008.
Part I follows the 2008 season through its first two Majors, the Lingan and Summ Fest Opens. For Part II, which sees the season out to its end, see HERE.
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Excerpts
“I believe in America. We both do, in fact, so don’t get us wrong.”
The speaker was a tall, thin man, and beside him was his wife. The couple was seated, and in his left hand was her right. Across from the husband and wife, there sat a wizened man of descent obviously Asian, and a large oak desk split the two sides.
“It’s just that,” the husband continued, “we don’t know. We’re not sure about things, so we just don’t know. It’s so hard to say. Do you know what I mean? We just don’t know.”
The man at the desk’s other side sighed. Though involuntary, the act was seen by the couple as a type of throat clearing, and each, therefore, eagerly awaited what they were certain would be sound advice.
“Mister and Missus Belichick,” the man in question said, his accent heavy, “I understand completely.”
Relief spread across the faces of the couple, and each grinned widely, as well.
“We’re so glad to hear that,” Mrs. Belichick replied.
“Thank you,” her husband then continued. “Like I said, we just don’t know. We want to—really, we do—but we don’t know how. It’s all so hard to figure out. We’re trying, though, which is why we’re here.”
As Mr. Belichick spoke, the eyes of the man opposite him drifted about the room. The space in question was the wizened man’s office, and the place was small to the point of being intimate; further, in only a few places were the walls bare, which contributed to the sense of size. The eyes of Mr. Belichick followed those of his elder, and when the guiding pupils seemed to pause, there would the younger man scrutinize.
“We’ve heard so much about your Academy, Mr. Deku,” Mrs. Belichick said. “All of it good, of course.”
-opening to Chapter 1
Despite last season’s poor showing, Jordan was considered to be one of the top talkers going into the 2008 season, and Mr. Deku could well understand why his pupil was projected so favorably; for she did, after all, possess all the measurables that any talk-off talent scout could want. There remained, however, the young woman’s tragic flaw, which was, as Mr. Deku termed it, the fact that she was too smart for her own good. Jordan was, after all, a voracious reader, which was a character trait that did not necessarily lend itself to talk-off success, and she was deeply committed to such scholasticism, as well; accordingly, the young woman had little patience for those of the postmodern persuasion, who, citing a lack of time, never plant their noses in books. In the eyes of her instructor, Jordan had, in short, come to learn too much, and what was to her development had, he worried, the effect of overdevelopment.
For proof of his star pupil’s problem, Mr. Deku had only to consider a little further back into the 2007 season, to last year’s Dr. Pepper Open, which was the third of talk-off season’s four Majors. The event had opened as nearly all pundits had predicted, and Jordan performed so well during the two Saturday rounds that there were many who said that she could have stayed home for Sunday’s final round and still won. The young woman had, of course, shown up for the final day, but the result proved to have been worse than if she had not; for she finished in tenth place out of the ten who made the final round.
The reason behind Jordan’s flop on the Sunday of the 2007 Dr. Pepper Open was not difficult for Mr. Deku to discern; in fact, he found that he could heap the entirety of the failure upon a single word, which was democracy. Jordan bore a deep-seated grudge toward that word, and she liked to joke that she had never, in all her years, been able to elicit its meaning; for whenever the term was used, she would, without fail, demand its definition, and the ensuing appeal to conventional usage would merely signal to her a meaningless spiral into the spittoon of senselessness. The vastness of the young woman’s reading told her that the word was one of those that could not simply be reduced to its series of letters, and though there were, of course, a number of other words that she regarded in the same manner, the bandying about of democracy, due to its frequency, bothered her the most.
As the matter had unfolded, Jordan had been undone by democracy due a fellow competitor’s strategy, which had, to Jordan, the effect of a trap. This fellow competitor happened to have been a pupil of the AAA Academy, which was the rival in all, even name, of the Acme Academy, and his name was Lane Schuman. Like Jordan, Lane was a student at Roosevelt High School, but he, like Jordan, had been a member of his Academy as far back as sixth grade, so there had never been much camaraderie between he and Jordan, even considering their same school; further, Lane was a year older than Jordan, and this gap further contributed to the distance between the two. The situation did, however, result in a certain amount of familiarity between the pair, and it was this knowledge that Lane, during the 2007 season’s third Major, exploited.
-from Chapter 2
Of all Jordan’s 2008 Lingan Open performance, the majority account is most firm in the course that her final words took in this final push toward victory; in fact, so inarguably impactful were the words in question that a few direct quotes can, with reasonable assurance, be included.
What we are told is that, before continuing, Jordan allowed to pass a long, pregnant pause, and in that space of time, she appeared to evaluate her surroundings and find them adequate; accordingly, she began her actual argument, which was that mass extremism, in all its forms, is unamerican. The country, she stressed, has no room for those who would push others out, and neither is there room for those who desire to drag others along; further, this prohibition applies to those who would do their pushing or dragging for what they term good ends, even democratic ones. Extremists, the Acme Academy superstar argued, no matter their kind, are a bad type, and all of what they both point out and point toward should be held apart from oneself and evaluated with a skeptical eye.
“Death to extremism,” Jordan famously uttered, and we are assured that her words were as impactful as they seem. “No word is saving, be it democracy or salvation itself, and to love any assemblage of letters, such as d-e-m-o-c-r-a-c-y, is just as bad as to hate it. There exists no password to liberty, no secret for security, and let us, in our focus, not forget the genius-Founder’s haunting reminder against giving up the former in order to secure the latter.”
Jordan continued with the argument that extremism, by its very nature, leads to massing, which itself, of course, inevitably leads to huddling, and a huddled mass is thus, by degrees, able to be formed out of a group of individuals. To huddle in mass before the idol of democracy is still, she pointed out, to huddle in mass, and a democratically minded mob is still a mob.
Finally, having so spoken against the extremes of democracy, Jordan ended with a slight rebuke of her own extremism against extremism, which did much, of course, to mollify the rebuked. Despite extremism’s many faults, she argued, an extreme anti-extremism merely doubles those errors; for such is, after all, a form of extremism, and it may be that all things, even the most extreme, have their value that a seasoned moderation might bring out. Regarding democracy, Jordan said, remember the prophet-chaplain of Washington, and do not forget that he, with all his powers of foresight, declared himself to be a democrat, though he both well knew and experienced the fact that there is, in practice, nothing more anti-democratic than democratic extremism. The great error, she argued, is in carrying anything too far, be it anything, and thus death, indeed, to extremism, though let it be a slow, drawn-out death that allows any worth in the creed to be extracted.
-from Chapter 3
Now, of course, with a win to start the 2008 season, talk of Jordan once again changed, and she was back to being she of whom so much was both enjoyed and expected. Having prior experience in this position, the young woman was now being presented with the unique perspective of undergoing adulation’s penetrating waves of praise for a second time, and this second series, by its very nature, was teaching her much that she had missed in the first.
“I didn’t think it would all happen so fast,” Shane said, ending a contemplative silence that had been shared with the talk-off superstar beside him. “Both rounds, I mean—the whole thing. The five minutes obviously went by fast, but it felt like the speech happened before I even knew what I was saying. I thought I’d be more prepared.”
“It’ll always feel that way,” Jordan replied. “Fifteen minutes sounds like a lot until it’s actually happening. If you want to become a successful talker, though, you have to be able to slow things down in your mind, and you can’t let yourself get lost in the moment. Otherwise, everything will just move on without you, and you’ll have to wait until next time, if there is one. Take in the moment, stay in the moment, then dominate the moment. That’s what Mr. Deku used to tell me.”
Down below the giver and receiver of advice, past the rows of tiered chairs, a talker was entering the final minutes of a speech; in fact, the event’s clock had just ticked beneath the three-minute mark. The words in question were to be the final of the weekend’s second round, and the 2008 Acme Invitational was, therefore, as far as days, nearly halfway over.
Though not, of course, a Major, the Acme Invitational was a talk-off that went back to 1988, which had been the first year that Mr. Deku deemed his Academy large enough to attract a full field of entrants. Since then, the event held a regular position on the season schedule, occupying the space between the season’s first Major, the Lingan Open, and the second, Summ Fest.
Though she was, of course, both present at the event and a member of the Acme Academy, Jordan was not competing in the 2008 Acme Invitational; for she was, after all, both an upperclassman and among the greatest of active talkers, so the spirit of competition demanded her self-denial. Thus, as might be expected, Jordan had declined an invitation to compete in both this and last season’s events.
-from Chapter 4
“Universities,” she said.
“Indeed,” Mr. Deku answered. “The very idea of universities was created during the Thirteenth Century, and then its people went about establishing so many of them. This was probably their greatest contribution to all time, and there will be a lot that we have to say about it here in a minute. What’s next?”
Two hands went up, and Mr. Deku called on a soon-to-be freshman named Bret Hackett.
“The churches,” he ventured.
“What about them?” Mr. Deku quickly asked.
“How impressive they are.”
“Most times have buildings that are pretty in their own way.”
“Yeah, but they did it all themselves—the people of each town, I mean.”
Before continuing, Mr. Deku took a moment to smile with pleasure.
“That,” he said with emphasis, “is the aspect that goes on our list. The Gothic cathedral that each community erected was designed, constructed, and beautified by each community. Civic pride was then in its most pure state, and each community brought about, not just bought, its own work of art. There were no traveling architects or engineers for hire. Instead, the Thirteenth Century created works of art at both the local and enduring levels, which is itself an accomplishment that we could search nearly all other times for in vain. What else?”
-from Chapter 5
The very moment that Jordan’s name was announced, Shane broke from his parents, and prior to the opening words of the Acme Academy superstar, the young man had thrown himself into the stage’s mosh pit, which had fully reformed since the break following the speech of the previous talker, though this newest version, due to the new speaker, was, of course, much larger. By the time that Jordan did speak, Shane had forced his way past the mass’ middle; however, her first words stopped him, and there, he stayed throughout them.
To open her speech, Jordan spoke so simply that one was meant to assume that she would be addressing the Tri-Cities, its future in a direct, predictable manner, and she spoke a few words regarding the way in which visions of the future tend to be various, sometimes even seeming to fill the entire spectrum of possibility. So many, she said, saw matters so differently, and often, all routes of any issue were found to profess the same roads, though their unfailingly separate destinations were proof otherwise.
Here, Jordan entered upon what was regarded as speaking against the prompt; for she chose not to speak to the future of the Tri-Cities, nor even to a specific futurity, but rather regarding futuristics. The future, she argued, was that which could be called the most common thought of the most advanced minds; for all those past who are regarded as great, by one determination or another, were concerned with it, and even lesser minds, however one decides to determine them, seem to show a dogged interest in the time to come. The future, in short, Jordan stressed, was the nearest thought of the greatest minds, and so many of them had, in fact, so much thought of the topic that a sheer catalogue of their ideas would present far too much material for a single lifetime to grasp.
Next, Jordan spoke to these futuristic visions, and she declared the feebleness of them all, from the most lenient lawgiver to the most literate libertarian. After all, impressive as the product of any particular mind might be, which was, she asked, as impressive as that which actually unfolded? Whose vision of the future, she clarified, foresaw even a fraction of what the future turned out to be, and what great mind, even those given great power, could have so much as comprehended our ensuing greatness?
To cap these questions, Jordan asked a final one, and then from it, her conclusion followed.
