So, the selection committee has met for the last few days trying to decide who is in and who is out of the tournament. There was the usual yelling, fighting, chair-throwing, and occasional moments of harmony. But finally, late last night, the committee emerged from their pizza-and-beer-induced stupor to put in my hands the lineup for this year’s Blarch Badness.
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With something like 20,000 seconds left on the shot clock, Blarch Badness enters its final inning. Which Mariners weblog — USS Mariner or Lookout Landing — will win take home the cup and win Seattle’s Bestest Weblog of 2007, as determined by your votes, a few free polling systems, merciless campaigning, and Dylan’s amazing bracket-style competition of the seattle-tagged heroes of technorati?

You’ve voted against highways along the waterfront and are probably feeding an addiction to actual basketball bracket watching. Why not vote a few more times before this season of polling comes to an end?

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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].

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Two baseball blogs. One photo blog. And a dark horse neighborhood blog that survived a round only Richard Daley would have liked. But we’re almost done. We’ve reached the Final Four.

SEMIFINALS
March 2
#1:
Seattle Daily Photo vs Lookout Landing

I’m running out of things to say, again. But we could be looking at an all-baseball final. Or not. SDP is the highest seeded blog left.

Take Our Poll from PollDaddy.com

#2:
West Seattle Blog vs USS Mariner

Don’t ask me how West Seattle Blog survived the two restarts of the Ballard final and scraped their way into the semifinal. They have a lot of moxie.

Take Our Poll from PollDaddy.com

One week to vote. The finals will happen on March 9, live from SXSW Interactive in Austin (rather, live from my hotel room there).

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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.

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And it’s official — this bracket is busted beyond all recognition. West Seattle keeps bringing the upsets, short-circuiting Electrolicious, while the usr/bin/girl robots stuff a sock in BlatherWatch. And now, the thrilling conclusion.

BALLARD REGIONAL
Regional Finals
February 22
#7 #!/usr/bin/girl vs #8 West Seattle Blog
And what’s remarkable is that for all the bellyaching about the “Ballard Regional” the West Seattleites are now just one vote away from the Final Four. But now, can the flannel-wearing, Admiral movie watching, Spud eating insurgency prevail over an anime army? The suspense is… no, that’s not a “killing me” feeling. I think that’s a kidney stone.

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UPDATE:
Dpolls apparently has given up the ghost. I’m not exactly sure who was leading at the time the poll stopped worked. In fact, WSB thinks /usr/bin/girl was winning and vice versa. So, at least this is easy.

Here’s a new poll. Cross your fingers that PollDaddy isn’t floating in the virtual fishtank tomorrow. Two things:

1. I’m extending the deadline one day — to Thursday. It will now close at the same time the U District closes. Hopefully.

2. To maintain the “vote once-per-day” attitude I elected to NOT cookie-lock the poll. That means you can vote as many times as you like. HOWEVER… since this will run three more days I ask you to please keep it to three votes per person. In fact, if I see clear evidence that someone’s been flooding the poll, I’ll kill it and we’ll draw a name from a hat. Got it? Be polite in your ballot box stuffing, please.

UPDATE #2:
What did I say up there? That if you start flooding it I’ll be pissy? Well, someone did. So, I blew away the results, and it’s now cookie-locked. Please act like grownups, OK? It’s just a stupid poll.

Take Our Poll from PollDaddy.com

Voting is still open in the second round of theU District regional, and also in the West Seattle and Capitol Hill regional finals. Tomorrow, on to the U District for the last of the regionals.

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The Slog has been routed. Football season is over. And now, two remain, capturing two of Seattle’s undying passions — whining about traffic and whining about transit! Kidding.

CAPITOL HILL REGIONAL
Regional Finals
February 21
#4 Seattle Bon Vivant vs #7 Lookout Landing
That’s right, it’s food vs. baseball! Viv rode our readership’s anti-Slog sentiments into the regional finals, while Lookout Landing is doing better than the M’s have the last few years. Both find themselves on the doorstep of the final four. So, baseball, or hot dogs and apple pie? (Sorry, we’re not Chevy people.)

Voting is still open in the second round of other regionals: U District and Ballard, and also in the West Seattle Final. Tomorrow, one more time across the Ship Canal — the Ballard finals.

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A quick Sunday afternoon whip-around of how things are going with Round 1 of Blarch Badness:

WEST SEATTLE
On the whole, this bracket has featured no surprises, unless you want to say Anita Rowland leading Seattlest is an upset. Which it’s not, as Seattlest effectively conceded last week.

Oh, and Dave Postman looks like he’s moving on. The P-I’s blogs are on course for an 0-3 finish in the tournament, while the Times’ singular blog in this pageant looks to be moving on. And the Times has been much slower on the uptake with blogs compared to the P-I. Go figure.

CAPITOL HILL
Hard to say what the bigger story is — the Slog trying to hang on to a slim lead over jameth, or the absolute shellacking Sound Politics is receiving from Lookout Landing. But let’s talk about this rout. Sharkansky and others have this large reader base, right? So why can’t they show up on here and vote? At this point, they’re down 212-19. That margin is wider than the total number of votes in the Slog-Jameth battle. Yearrgh. Stick a fork in ‘em. They’re done. Just like they were last November. A baseball-football showdown looms in Round 2.

BALLARD
It’s pretty clear now that West Seattle Blog has a posse. But is the Yeti just lying in wait, getting ready to unleash his tens of thousands of readers upon the ballot box? Or is he just ignoring us in the name of The Stranger Hates Us?

Meanwhile, the rest of the bracket is effectively busted, with only Electrolicious winning as a high seed. The path may be clear for West Seattle to get to the final, taking their annoying “Why are we in Ballard I know it’s been explained a thousand times by you and on WSB but I don’t know how to read so why why why” readership with them.

U DISTRICT
And over in The Bracket No One Is Voting In, it’s really quiet. Well, except for Capitol Hill Seattle reaping what it sowed. Good job, guys. And our lone Bloggie nominee Not Martha is looking like toast against John Moe. Not good, Not Martha.

Again, voting in Round One ends on different days in different brackets.
West Seattle: Monday night
Capitol Hill: Tuesday night
Ballard: Wednesday night
U District: Thursday night

And to make life easier for you, all sixteen polls are after the cut. And feel free to use the comments to say whatever you want about the tournament so far.
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• There are probably plenty of other things to keep you entertained tonight, but none of them quite as fascinating as the authors of this site sitting around a table talking about random topics. And you can be a part of the fun. Join Metroblogging Seattle’s finest tonight at the Elysian (Capitol Hill) at 6 pm. Gossip about the thrilling ongoing “Blarch Badness” tournament, who you think will win, who should lose, and if we might have come up with a better title. Maybe we’ll buy you a frosty beverage. [6 pm; 1221 E. Pike Street]

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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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