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In honor of March, the bracket-iest month of the year, The Wire decided to go all out and create a tournament for everything. Every weekday for the rest of the month, we're presenting a different tournament to determine the very best (or worst) thing in a given field. And we're doing it the way that God intended: Bracket showdowns.
Bracket Madness. A new bracket, every weekday of March.
We picked the field, but you vote for the winner. Fill out our interactive bracket, round-by-round, to determine the people's champion, then read through our choices to find out who we think is be the best of the best. Each day is a new champion!
Ha ha oh my God, guys, we finally did it, we finally got to the end of the month, it's like a dream come true.
So as the italicized text above says, we've spent March offering up a new "bracket" every single day for your entertainment. This is one of those things where you're sitting in a conference room in late February yakking and you're like, yeah that would be cool, let's try it and then three weeks later two of your coworkers are in intensive care because a brutal fistfight broke out over where Tangled should be seeded in the "Best Disney Movie" bracket. There has been a surge in particularly brutal colds among Wire staffers (this is true); doctors assume that it is due in part to the psychological stress of having to come up with at-least-somewhat-entertaining brackets every day for a month (this is not true, probably). You have been warned.
But here we are on the sunny side of the storm. Tomorrow is a horrible day for its own reasons, but here at El Wire we are excited for the fact that the brackets are over. And what better way to go out than to offer you the chance to vote for the best of the best. So that's today's bracket: Which of the winners of the other brackets is the best thing ever?
What we've done is seeded the top 16 vote-getters among all of our other brackets and thrown them into the voting bracket below. But since in many cases you, the voting public, differed in your picks than we did in ours (you idiots), we are pitting every winner in round one against the pick we made. (In cases where they were the same — hooray! — it's essentially a first-round bye.
Anyway. Let's get this over with.
The contenders
From "Best City": Chicago. Chicago, man. We have to give credit to the fine people of Chicago for voting heavily in this bracket, putting its vote total in third overall. Please make any Obama jokes that come to mind in the comments.
Our pick: New York.
From "Best College": William & Mary. Speaking of vote-rigging! The good students of William & Mary spent part of their spring break voting the hell out of their school in the best college bracket. It not only got the most votes of any college, it got more votes than any other winner. It got more votes than the next five winners combined. Try and cheat again, losers!
Our pick: Michigan State.
From "Best Chicken": Fried. I don't eat chicken, so whatever. Good pick I guess? People seem to like fried chicken, I have observed.
Our pick: Fried.
From "Best Zodiac Sign": Leo. TRUE FACT: All zodiac signs are made up nonsense and picking any one over any other is the same as trying to differentiate which of two oxygen atoms would be better to inhale. #science
Our pick: Gemini.
From "Best Dinosaur": Triceratops. People had pretty strong opinions about which of various dinosaur pairings was preferable! It's hard not to think that in the mid-'80s, T-Rex would have won, and that 10 years ago it would have been the Velociraptor. It's a popularity contest is my point.
Our pick: Triceratops.
From "Best Fast Food": Chipotle. I was with the popular opinion here! Chipotle is good, and free burrito coupons can be sent to The Wire using this contact tool.
Our pick: Bojangles.
From "Best Fictional President": West Wing. Here's a bit of trivia: all of the characters on West Wing actually shared a single quip-dependent personality that would manifest itself slightly differently when in different rooms or wearing different outfits. That personality blob later went on to live in Stars Hollow.
Our pick: Air Force One.
From "Best Temperature": 73°. We called 73 degrees the Applebee's of temperatures and you, America, ate it up. Should have seen that coming.
Our pick: 82°.
From "Best Twitter": The Stalwart. Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal summoned his Twitter minions to vote for him. Will he do the same today? Does he dare? (Please do, Joe.)
Our pick: chanelpuke.
From "Best Drink": Whiskey. Whiskey won this poll in part because it was held on St. Patrick's Day. Which I mention not to be offensive! But because that's why.
Our pick: Gin and tonic, which is the best drink.
From "Best Year": 1969. 1969 brought us the moon landing and the internet. It's hard to argue with that. You know what is not the best year? 2014. That's what.
Our pick: 1969.
From "Best Sports Ball": Tennis. What is that smell when you open a can of tennis balls? Is it rubber? Tires don't smell like that. Is it the fuzz? Also, do tennis balls really need to be pressurized? Like I get that rich fancy-pants play tennis more and, like golf, idiots pay lots of money for fancy rackets and so on. But pressurized balls by default just seems over-the-top.
Our pick: Bowling.
From "Best TV Family": The Bluths. I have never seen Arrested Development! Can you believe it? Yet, thanks to "popular culture," I know the shorthand of every single goddamn joke that ever appeared on it. "I blue myself" hahahaha good stuff.
Our pick: The Huxtables.
From "Best Family Member": Mother. I love my mother. Hi, mom!
Our pick: Grandma.
From "Best Disney Movie": Beauty and the Beast. In The Wire's office chat room, where we talk about the posts we're writing, etc., I made the bad prediction that Beauty and the Beast would do badly in the bracket. But that is because I am not a millennial, and millennials are inscrutable.
Our pick: Beauty and the Beast.
From "Best Butt": Beyoncé. I came in 17th. :(
Our pick: Chris Evans.
Your vote: Some college
Please note. If you want to win elections, you have to do turn-out.
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