Y'almost got me...

Not a good weekend for me. I admit, of all the NAQT people, I probably react the least well to criticism. I don't take praise well enough, and when we get criticized, either as a group, or when people decide to make a personal attack (even against someone else), I tend to take it personally on myself. So having seen the torture of a thousand cuts come down Friday and Saturday, I was feeling pretty low. (I was doing my best impression of "Chartreuse" from Ken Nordine's Colors). Especially given how personal the most vitriolic attacks were. They seemed geared towards denigrating the person, rather than confronting issues. (The latter I can accept as criticism, or a difference of opinion, the former I can't even be generous enough to call it spite. It was hate.) So I tuned everything out, and started watching TV, and ran across the Dennis Miller special on HBO.
Now Dennis Miller has lost a good bit of his fastball, he's got to throw shotgun blasts of humor out there a lot more, because the laser edge just isn't there. But he hit me with one. He was talking about how the U.S. was the target of all this crap in the world, criticism justified and otherwise. I'll misquote it here of course. "[The U.S.] is the most powerful, most hated, loved, feared, admired country in the world. You know what we are, we're Sinatra in Vegas."

Ordinarily, I would take that as the height of arrogance to apply that to NAQT, (most of all the "most powerful", we still aren't the largest provider out there,) but it was what I needed to push me out of my funk. I understand that unlike any other format, NAQT doesn't self-select. That is, we don't end up creating a divisive that people can polarize against and not compete (CBI has the cost issue, TRASH the distribution, ACF the difficulty and the distribution.) Conciously or unconciously, NAQT ended up building ourselves on the premise that we can be the place where everyone can get together and play. Sometimes you can see that work out very well, sometimes it doesn't. And for most people last weekend worked. But all that means is that we have to do it again next time, and better. Saturday, until I started thinking about Sinatra in Vegas, I didn't know if I could do it. Now... I know a picture I've got to take on my summer vacation.