This, That, and What Was That Other Thing...?

I saw that Rick Perry gaffe from last night’s Republican Party presidential candidates debate, too. The one where he set himself up by saying there were three governmental agencies he would eliminate if elected, then proceeded to name two and amazingly forget what the third one was.

Never mind the agencies. Probably eliminated himself there, yes?

Public speaking ain’t as easy as it looks, of course. I’ve had a lot of experience with it, but primarily in situations where the group is small and more or less attentive and engaged (e.g., a class of students), and where I have a reasonable command of the subject matter.

But I can sympathize. In fact, I’m sure somewhere along the way I have probably run into that same rhetorical trap myself of promising “three” items and somewhere in the middle of the second one realizing I might not have three after all.

There’s a good way to avoid that trap, actually. Don’t promise three.

Am a little behind today and so without too much time for scribblin’. Have probably written way over my usual number of words this week, anyhow, thanks to those “Almost Live” blog posts from Sunday and Tuesday.

And if those posts aren’t enough, I have written up some further thoughts about the big ESPN show this week, that comprehensive coverage of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event final table (a.k.a. the “November Nine”), for the Epic Poker League blog.

My response as published over on the EPL blog comes in two parts. The first part gives an initial impression while going back to discuss how much televised coverage of the WSOP has changed over the decades. The second part then talks in more detail about this week’s shows and speculates a little about the future of the WSOP on television.

As I have been suggesting here all week, I very much enjoyed the shows and find all of the extra attention being given to the WSOP finale a nice, positive development coming here in the midst of what has been an especially bad year for poker, generally speaking. Meanwhile, I am especially curious to see what the ratings were for the two days’ worth of shows, totaling more than 15 hours, I believe. That more than anything is probably going to affect whether or not we will see such start-to-finish final table coverage and/or the November Nine again in 2012, I would imagine.

Could’ve said more about all of it than I do in those EPL posts. But I think I ended up sharing most of the impressions I had there.

Hey, at least I didn’t start the first part saying there’d be three.