One might not realize this because of my infrequency of posting, but I spend a lot of my day reading the Internet. I can’t help it really, it calls to me like that extra slice of pizza peaking out from under the box lid. Oh yes, my RSS reader is heavy with the weight of 500 pieces of saucy pie.

And so it was, this morning, whilst I was perusing the “comics” section of my reader when I read in the FLOG about a new blog.

“Hmm,” I thought and Clicky Click Click there I was at the latest Seattle-based blog.

Hulk #208 was different. I like the idea of Hulk becoming Bruce Banner again and living like a normal person. It’s a nice change from all of that violence with different villains coming and attacking Hulk.
That was the extent of my first letter published in a “real” comic book, real meaning Marvel, sometimes DC. Anything else was fairly contemptible to the thirteen year-old connoisseur of the form I considered myself to be, back in those halcyon days of the mid 1970s. I was a “true believer”, a pocket money-offering pilgrim to the mighty Marvel Comics Group, a division of Cadence Industries Corporation.

Go. Read the whole thing. Then tell me if these three posts he’s written are any indication that this guy could claim WSB’s Blarch Badness crown in 2009.

The Winners! Thanks to Mona @ kirida for sharing your picture.

So yeah, it’s been a good week and a half since we hosted the blarch badness awards ceremony at the Skylark Cafe. We’ve been meaning to get the final results up since then, but our esteemed tournament organizer has been caught up in work. I guess we’ll have to give him a pass…this time!

Before I announce the winners of the 2008 Seattle Metblogs Blarch Badness Tournament of Blogs, I’d like to again thank our sponsors for the fabulous prizes. Hotel Max donated a night’s stay at their property, Sub Pop threw in a bunch of cds (including the Flight of the Conchords ep that I am so coveting right now), Neumo’s gave away two tickets to a show of the winner’s choice and accoutremonts, and Northwest Film Forum ponied up tickets for a show at their establishment. Oh and thanks to Wesa for finding the super-sweet trophy as well. All in all, quite a bag of goodies for our winners.

This year might have had a tiny bit of controversy, but I think the ultimate winners were inevitable (and well deserved!). And so, without further ado, the winning blog of this year’s crazy tournament: West Seattle Blog! Who, in a fitting touch, live blogged the party. Congratulations, WSB!

Thanks also to the bloggers who attended the ceremony, all the bloggers who participated in the tournament, as well as the fine folks from Skylark who took care of us and fed us (among other things) pie and ice cream. (Pam @ Nerd’s Eye View has a great shot and recap of the ceremony at her blog.) I hope everyone had a good time. I’m already looking forward to next year!

As Dylan mentioned, we are having the Blarch Badness Awards Ceremony this Friday, March 14th.

We’re sorry for the short notice, but we had some technical difficulties. (Which of course translates to me being lazy. Sorry!) In any case, we really hope you’ll come. Not only will the winner be announced, but they will be showered with fantastic prizes. Oh yes, prizes*!

For the non-champions, there will be snacks! And Dylan to abuse! And I owe several people beers (maybe you’re one of them)! And really, it’s 6:30-8:30, so it’s before you were going to go out anyway (and/or before your bedtime). So no excuses!

Skylark Cafe (all-ages)
Friday, Mar 14, 2008 ~ 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
3803 Delridge Way, Seattle
RSVP

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* Thanks to our very generous sponsors: The Hotel Max, Sub Pop, Neumo’s, and the Northwest Film Forum.

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Image above is entitled, “Mob Games,” and is Docutorial?’s winning NYE photo-contest entry. Will our party be as cool? Maybe not, but you won’t know unless you’re there.

I give up. There’s just so much gaming and governing and finger-pointing that I don’t have a choice, regardless of whether Seattle Bubble already withdrew.

I said if anyone was cheating, I’d throw everyone out. So, everyone in that side is hereby disqualified. The other semifinal on the Coyote side continues, at least for the moment.

Honestly, I don’t feel much like continuing this tournament. This was supposed to be fun, and it’s far from fun now. I can’t deal with the melodrama, or chronological adults acting like a bunch of spoiled kids.

The antics of Lookout Landing have left me embarrassed to say I’m a Mariners fan. And considering the sort of crap the M’s have pulled the last 13 years, it’s awfully hard to get me embarrassed about being an M’s fan.

And the other semifinal is a rematch of last year’s consolation matchup. Will Seattle Daily Photo prevail again over West Seattle Blog?

UPDATE: The new system is stripping all sorts of code, including the code that links to the polls. So, if you want to vote in this, GO HERE.

Wednesday night at 9 PST, we’re done.

Meanwhile, the other semifinals — and the mudslinging fun that has broken out around it — continues.

Home stretch, folks. It’s almost over.

Well, well, well. What a mess we have here. A bunch of folks who just have to muck things up for everyone. Vote spamming. Ballot box stuffing. Ballots that slip in after the buzzer.

So, I’ll tell you what. Lookout Landing, Huskies Fan, Seattle Bubble, you’re all in the semi-finals.

But here’s my first and final warning. If I even get a whiff that anything funny is going on, you’re all out of the tournament. Capiche? If one cheats, then I’ll assume that everyone is cheating.

With that said, vote early and vote often.

UPDATE: OK, what part of the above did you all not understand? I’m pulling the plug. You don’t know how disappointed I am with all of you.

And as a reminder, the other two quarterfinals are still running — West Seattle Blog vs. Kirida closes up tomorrow night, Seattle Daily Photo vs. Glitter Pissing on Wednesday night.

One of the points of Blarch Badness is to get small good local bloggers more exposure in an increasingly noisy Seattle blogging world. Kirida, which is on a surprising run into the Final Eight, fits right into that model. Mona is a 25 year old native of Saipan who blogs about life as a sailor-mouthed mother in West Seattle. The folks over at West Seattle Blog nominated her for the tourney, saying that she’s the funniest blogger on the Westside. I would have to disagree — she’s one of the funniest this city has to offer, and it’s time she stopped being a West Seattle secret. Of course, now West Seattle Blog has to face the very blog they nominated. How ironic.

I pried an interview out of her while she was changing her husband’s adult diaper.
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Last of the quarterfinals now. Seattle Daily Photo held off a late challenge by Blogging Georgetown, while Glitter Pissing continues its Cinderella run.

Did Cinderella piss glitter? Or was that Snow White?

Hurry, sale ends Wednesday night at 9pm.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
Seattle Bubble/Accidental Hedonist (closes Sunday night)
Lookout Landing/Huskies Fan (closes Monday night)
West Seattle Blog/Kirida (closes Tuesday night)

The original bracket post

And that’s the quarterfinals. Just two rounds to go, starting with the first semifinal on Tuesday. I really need to shorten the time periods up next year.

Defective Yeti was one of the four sites picked to receive an automatic bid during our Blarch Badness author caucus and for good reason: Matthew Baldwin, the man behind the Yeti, is quite possibly the best humorist writing in Seattle. (So much so that I can even forgive him for getting that damn Thank you for being a friend song stuck in my head for a week.) After threatening to debase myself further with pathetic begging, he kindly agreed to answer a couple of questions about his site and the Badness.

With the fact that we didn’t formally inform people last year that they had been entered into our little tournament, did you even know you were in it?

Oh my goodness, of course. I’m as obsessive about my referral logs as the next self-absorbed blogger, so as soon as the first person clicked over from your joint I was all over it like hollandaise sauce on Eggs Benedict. Disgusting, disgusting hollandaise sauce.

But, you know, I was nominated for a few Bloggies there back in Ye Olde Olden Dayes of blogging and was soundly beaten by a newcomer with name recognition in his corner, a pivotal moment in my life that engendered in me both a healthy wariness of Internet-related awards and a lifelong vendetta against Wil Wheaton.

You put up a pretty good showing considering your competition, West Seattle Blog, is - in my opinion - the Mafia. How do you deal with your popularity?

Ignore it, when possible.

In the wake of losing the aforementioned Bloggie, I resolved to make my site as popular as possible, and spent the following year trying to write memetic posts rather than writing about the things I cared about. Twelve months of that was quite enough, thank you.

Since then I’ve done pretty well at not giving a rat’s ass about readership (as is probably evident in my rather desultory posting schedule of late)(where “of late” = “since 2003″). At this point I’m not even sure if I still have one, though dozens of people still comment on each and every one of my posts to point out my copious grammatical errors.
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Mid Beacon Hill tried to concede gracefully when the Hood polls were taken over by Diebold. But would we let her? Noooo. Instead we forced her to stay in the race AND submit to an interview by me - drunk and obnoxious spice metroblogger. Why? Because we like her and because we think she’s doing good work. Since J is also extremely nice, she complied with only the slightest hint of arm twisting. Let’s jump right in, shall we…

How many minds are behind Mid Beacon Hill?

Just me.

Are you completely anonymous?

At this point, I’m only nominally anonymous.

When and what got you started in this tawdry blogging business?

A year ago I was doing a lot of gardening and wine drinking and neighborhood picture taking, and I happened to come across a blog by this guy in San Francisco who was doing the same. I loved how his drunken little photo essays captured his love of, and his ambivalence about, the neighborhood where he’d settled down. First I became an obsessive commenter on his blog, and then I decided I had to totally rip it off.
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