We all have our own reasons for returning to Chez Nous each year. To enjoy nature and time with family. To reconnect with the ghosts of the past. To recharge and plan our goals for the future. Whatever our priorities, bookkeeping and administrivia aren’t often aren’t high on the list.
That said, I had a chance to return to the Archivces of the Golden Mallet after they lay fallow for several years. The scribblings and scores of games played had accumulated in the pages, but, remained uncrystalized into wins or losses for those Schroedinger’s-Cats-Among-Us who have waited with bated breath for names to appear in golden letters on the immortal scoreboard.
“There were some irregularities”, is something that nobody (on either side of an audit!) likes to hear. That may have been the case this year.
Specifically, this archivist was initially working under the assumption that a player needed only three games to win the GM, but as the rules clearly state, this is only true for players over the age of seventy-five. Therefore, the 2013 assertion that KJB won the Golden Mallet is under review and will be calculated accordingly (since he fulfills “Rule #5″, aka “the Geezer Rule”).
In addition, the absent scoring pages for the 2015 season were found (in a lowly stack of papers and bills no less! among sheets of non-acid-free paper!) by this archivist only after the scoring had been completed.
Therefore, the 2013 and 2015 seasons (in which no winners were declared) are under review and the record will be corrected either this fall (AD 2016) or at the start of the 2017 season.
Pursuant to this entry, please see the email exchange below.
– DJB
From DJB, 5:35 European Standard Time 8/1/2016
Well, twelfth street /can/ be a bit sketchy! I certainly will review the record if I’m able to make it up this fall…otherwise next summer.
There were some surprising results when I went through and finally did “the maths” for the past half decade or so. I was working under the assumption that one needed to have played five games to be contention. So we saw some terrible defeats, like [RXP] in ’14 (or was it ’15?), but he just didn’t have enough games. Do leave explanatory post it notes on any years in question and I’ll ask [PBS] to repaint in the summer of ’17. Also I located the score page for ’15 only after we’d painted the sign so I do know that year had to be updated.
From TCB, 11:45 Eastern Daylight Time 7/31/2016
I know nothing of this as the “grand tradition” has lost its luster over the years.
And neither of us lives on 12th street: that thinly veiled threat is off by two streets to the south of Dan.
From KJB, 5:10 Eastern Daylight Time 7/31/2016
” ’15 No Award”??!!! I truly admire, yet am sickened by, the extremes to which you seem willing take the traditions of Golden Mallet behavior.
I am an old man, in the twilight of my years, and I suppose you think I am not capable of a suitably painful retaliation. Be wary of those darkened doorways on 12th street![sic] Brooklyn can be a dangerous place…