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.

So, it hasn’t exactly been a rosy ending to what was a promising start and what can only be called a mid-level debacle. But we have to finish the damn thing, don’t we? (According to the other Metblog authors waving sharpened sticks at me, yes, we do.)

To deal with the blown brackets and broken sites, I’ll just put the last three blogs that appear to be standing in the final:

Accidental Hedonist (the only blog left from the Squirrel Bracket)
Seattle Daily Photo (which got caught up in the site shutdown mess)
West Seattle Blog (who has the most votes of the non-cheating blogs)

And the site still won’t let me embed stuff (good job on the design, Head Office), so you’ll just have to go elsewhere to vote:

VOTE IN THE GRAND FINAL

VOTING CLOSES 5PM ON FRIDAY.

And then at 6:30pm on Friday… The Trophy Presentation at the Skylark Cafe, 3803 Delridge Way in beautiful West Seattle. Come meet bloggers and their spawn. Heckle me! And drink our beer (if we have any).

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.

Blogging Georgetown is not my idea of a typical blog. Why? Because it is useful. John P. consistently delivers passionate, yet thoughtful and well-written advocacy that not just informs his neighborhood, but the surrounding city as well. I may have only been to Georgetown once, but I still read Blogging Georgetown frequently and was more than pleased to be able to interview its author for this tournament.

It was just about this time last year that you were making the switch from P-I Reader blog: Georgetown Stew to Blogging Georgetown. Did the transition and (I imagine) resulting freedom affect your writing as you expected?

Writing for the PI blog was tough for me, because I feel my legitimacy as an independent writer was undermined by the fact that Hearst more or less was getting a freebie, and I was giving it to them. I believe it made it tougher for the community to see my writing as advocacy. In moving on, I could experiment with different topics without fear that I was wandering too far off of the blog’s mission; to escape a sort of self-censorship I felt when I wrote for the PI blog. The end result was–I believe–me being more effective in what I originally set out to do.

Are you still the only contributor?

Yes.

You’re anonymous, right? How does that affect your ability to report things in the neighborhood?

I’m semi-anonymous. A cross-search could easily reveal who I am, where I live, and what I do for a living. But people in the neighborhood know who I am. I dabble in various local projects and I feel that those personal connections help keep me accountable for what I write.
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