photo by marksobba [flickr]

While war is still waging in the Blarch Badness Final it might be unethical of me to pimp one of the competing blogs — but I’m going to regardless. If you have a problem with that, watch out for a trident to the heart.

Lookout Landing’s Jeff Sullivan is the [way less nerdy] John Clayton of Mariners baseball. With spring training in full swing and Opening Day just a few weeks away, it’s definitely time for even the most casual of baseball fans to prepare for a long, dark, horribly depressing M’s season (thank you, Bill Bavasi!). In that spirit, I highly recommend listening to a very informative and insightful interview Jeff recently gave to Big League Baseball Report [blbr]. In it he recaps the wretched Mariners off-season (where art thee, Doyle!?) and their prospects for success in 2007. I’ll offer this hint: A certain member of Venezuela’s royal family needs to have a great year for the M’s to stand a chance.

Confidential to Jeff: Contrary to what you think, you absolutely did not sound like a douchebag [LL].

So dpolls died, taking our balloting system with us. Who knew the “d” stood for Diebold?

I’ve replaced two of the polls — Ballard and U District — with new ones. In the other two, I’m going to go ahead and declare winners, since I knew the margins were already wide and I don’t think Chris Pirillo was about to loose his minions upon the poll… unless that’s what brought it down….

Please congratulate West Seattle Regional champion Seattle Daily Photo and Capitol Hill Regional champion Lookout Landing. On Friday they will face off for the a berth in the Championship Round. The Ballard and U District champions will also face off on that day in the other semifinal. Maybe if one of you is nice you can make some nice “regional winner” graphics, because I sure can’t.

Technology sucks.

The last regional final starts now. Not Martha is not not done. Horse’s Ass becomes the last political blog to exit. So now….

U DISTRICT REGIONAL
Regional Finals
February 23
#4 USS Mariner vs #6 izzlepfaff
USS Mariner continues to move on. There could be two baseball blogs in the finals — and we thought support for the Mariners was dead. Meanwhile, izzlepfaff keeps right on going, further than three of the #1 seeds.

UPDATE: dpolls croaked. Switching providers. Hopefully, this will hold out. Keep in mind that with this new system you can vote as many times as you want, but PLEASE DO NOT ABUSE THIS. If you do, I’ll stop the contest and we’ll settle it with a coin flip. Please only vote three times. Be a good ballot box stuffer and know when to say when.

Take Our Poll from PollDaddy.com

And, of course, the perfunctory reminder of the other three regional finals: West Seattle, Capitol Hill, and Ballard.

We close out Round Two with the U District Regional, which goes on Friday, the day of the week I’m most tired. So I end up writing pithier comments. Given my penchant for Faulkneresque 100 word monster sentences, this is probably the day to ask me to write something for you that’s under 500 words and over 4 sentences.

U DISTRICT REGIONAL
Regional Semifinals
February 16
#1 Not Martha vs #4 USS Mariner
Someone paged Megan earlier this week, and her readers showed up. She had more votes than the entire Capitol Hill regional. And now, she has USS Mariner — and its vast collection of Mariner fans and scalliwags — in her sights. But knowing Derek, he probably doesn’t give a rat patootie about this contest. Unless, of course, I mention his new book, The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball, which you should pre-order a copy of today.

#2 Horse’s Ass vs #6 izzlepfaff
Capitol Hill Seattle played with fire. And they got burned. Bad. And hoisted on their own petard. And let’s assume there’s another military cliche here, because I’ve run out of them. Now it’s Goldie vs. Skot. Liberals vs. humorists. But aren’t most humorists liberals?

And here are links to the other three regionals: West Seattle, Capitol Hill, Ballard.

Next week, the Regional Finals. We’re getting closer to wherever the fictional finals site would be. The Space Needle? Elephant Super Wash? Dick’s?

And finally, we close the first round with the U District Regional. I should make jokes about teriyaki and smack-addled homeless kids, but I had too much beer at the meetup.

U DISTRICT REGIONAL
Opening Round
Feb 9
#1 Not Martha vs #8 Monkey Disaster
And away we go. Not Martha, of course, is our sole Bloggies nominee, which should be worth 40% alone. John Moe pulled away in the prelims. I really have nothing more to say.

#4 USS Mariner vs #5 Ted Leung
I mean, why is it that two pints leave me completely floored nowadays? Anyway… I know Derek and Dave, and they tolerate me. Don’t ask me why. But they’re some of the smartest baseball people I know. Ted Leung might be the ultimate Seattle blogger — coder and photographer — only he lives on Bainbridge.

#2 Horse’s Ass vs #7 Capitol Hill Seattle
Look, for the millionth time, the brackets are just NAMES. At the same time, in keeping with NCAA rules, I’m shipping Capitol Hill Seattle out of the Capitol Hill bracket so they don’t have a home-court advantage. And they don’t, because a bracket is location-neutral. But look, next year I’ll call the brackets “Salmon,” “Latte,” “Ferry,” and “Elephant Super Wash.” That said, this is where Capitol Hill Seattle will bow into the tourney, against the flagship of the liberal blogs out here, lovingly named for everyone’s favorite political gadfly.

#3 Rain City Guide vs #6 izzlepfaff
And finally, real estate vs. humor. And with that, the opening 16 matchups are complete.

And that’s the first round. Keep voting; the second round starts Tuesday.

An exciting opening to the Badness so far, no?

No?

Well, I’m happy. Only minor hiccups so far. I was afraid that I was going to misconfigure a poll and the Montlake Bridge would have been stuck up all day long. Because I tend to break things.

But hey, let’s move into what you came for — the opening round of the West Seattle Regional. Remember, these are just names. We didn’t call the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce and ask them to build us a $300M arena with free WiMax. That’s the Sonics’ job.

Remember, look at their blogs, and vote with your gut. Or your random number generator. Same thing.

Voting closes Monday night. Yes, that means this is a one week poll, not a one day poll. Plenty of time for everyone to round up their posses.

WEST SEATTLE REGIONAL
Opening Round
February 6
#1 Chris Pirillo vs #8 Glenn Fleishman
Here we have a battle between techies — Chris Pirillo, onetime star of TechTV and creator of the mighty ubertechie convention Gnomedex, and Glenn Fleishman, tech writer for the Times, KUOW, and Wi-Fi Network News. And this is the only matchup so far between people with their own Wikipedia entries. Can you feel the geek tonight?

#2 Seattlest vs #7 Anita Rowland
Seattlest is just like us; it’s just that they’re paid and have Dan Savage fawning over them, while we do this for free and get labelled Enemies of the Slog. (Are we bitter?) Against them is one of the longest-running, most respected bloggers in Seattle (I call her the Den Mother Of Seattle Webloggers, personally) that just happens to be battling cancer. We all love Anita and hope she gets better soon.

#4 Postman on Politics vs #5 KEXP Blog
And here we have the only Seattle Times blog in the competition. That’s P-I 3 blogs, Times 1. And while Dave Postman has put himself at the fore of political bloggers in this state (in my opinion, ahead of the two political blogs seeded ahead of him), he’s up against the KEXP Blog, loaded with all your favorite KEXP DJs. KEXP’s main demographic is 18-35. Our demographic is 18-35. Hmm.

#3 Seattle Daily Photo vs #6 Michael Hanscom
And finally, a battle of photographers — Kim’s daily shots of Seattle vs. the most famous camera store employee to ever be fired by Microsoft.

Tomorrow, Gays! Moms! Politics! Foodies! Sports! Buzz! Let’s head for Capitol Hill!

We took your input. We haggled over who should be in or out. And now, it’s time to announce the brackets for Blarch Badness. Who has the Best Blog In Seattle? Let’s find out.

Originally, it was going to be 32 blogs, but after some talking we decided to add three “play-in” rounds, bumping the total number of blogs to 38. We’ve grouped the extras into certain classes you’ll see in a moment.

And an apology to the 30 or so we also considered that didn’t make it, in addition to the thousands around the area we just didn’t know about. We’ll do better next year.

So, without further ado, let’s warm up Billy Packer, cue the theme music, and unveil the brackets!
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