[MR] Comments contest

[Lisa and Ken Theriot]

Andras wrote:

[Sponsor a "most offensive or rude judging comment" contest and be the
judge of it.]

You'd actually need several categories, "outright rudeness" ("stupid"
and "has no place in the SCA" is going to be hard to beat), "most
demoralizing", "most incomprehensible", etc.  My husband is one of those
people who eschew contests in large part because of commentary received
in previous tries; these two came from East Kingdom judges:

Most demoralizing: on trying to enter an original song, he was told,
"That falls into 'communicative arts', so it will be judged with the
research papers, and since you can't possibly compete with the
documentation points the research papers usually get, you might as well
not bother to enter."

Most incomprehensible: on entering a cooking contest with a version of
"Pears in wine", which were carefully arranged in a glass bowl and
meticulously decorated with pomegranate seeds, receiving the comment,
"Next time work a little harder on presentation."  (Short of dusting
them with gold or teaching them to stand up and whistle "Dixie", he was
somewhat at a loss as to what else he could have done!)

Laughing at them sure beats crying over them!


Adelaide