The Hot Blogger Bracket: A Specter Rising

Do you know how hard we have been working on this bracket?   Do you know all the sacrifices we’ve all made to get this done as fast as we can?

Texas Gal has cut down to one bottle of Makers Mark a day.  SA has had to stop posting on SCRUBSR’FOREVER.ORG.  Metschick is only listening to WFAN 15 hours a day instead of her normal 19. Clare is has switched from calling Aaron Rowand “Bacon Pants” to “Bac-o-bits”.  Andie only has time for 24 boyfriends.  Holly can only email/txt/call/Facebook/MySpace her friends on odd hours.   GordonShumway can only answer half of her Red Sox fans letters.   I gave my boyfriend $300 to go to Crazy Girls  so I can get some peace and  snuggle up with my old copy of “HTML for Dummies”.

But look at what we had to contend with.  Bust out your slide rules and let’s take a look at the Hot Blogger Bracket by the numbers…

We received:

• 96 Total Respondents
• 8 Entries with the request ”be gentle” (seriously)
• 3 Entries with WWL credits
• 2 Entries Referencing the Blinding Radiance of Matt Ufford
• 1 Entry Declining Invitation to Bracked Based on Fear of Matt Ufford’s Beautiful Mug
• 1 Entry Titled, “Ufford Can’t Handle the Truth”
• 9 Entries with two links, despite explicit instructions to submit “one (1) link”.
• 5 Entries with three links, despite explicit instructions to submit “one (1) link”.
• 2 Entries with four links, despite explicit instructions to submit “one (1) link”.
• 1 Entry with eight (!!) links, despite explicit instructions to submit “one (1) link”.
• 1 Entry with no links, which…what?
• 6 Guys named Matt
• 4 Guys named Brian
• 5 Guys named Mike
• 18 Entries with two pictures, despite explicit instructions to submit “one (1) picture”.
• 2 Entries with three pictures, despite explicit instructions to submit “one (1) picture”.
• 2 Entries with four pictures, despite explicit instructions to submit “one (1) picture”.
• 1 Entry with FIVE pictures, pictures, despite explicit instructions to submit “one (1) picture”.
• 2 Pictures of guys giving a thumbs-up
• 3 Pictures of guys with hot women
• 4 Pictures of guys with their kids
• 3 shirtless pictures
• 1 Picture of a guy in eye black (rrrrrroowwwr)
• 1 Picture from a blogger who declined to enter but wanted us to have it anyway
• 1 Person declining to enter, but suggesting we could browse his MySpace page if we get lonely
• 2 Recordings of voice samples from contestants
• And a moderately alarming outpouring of affection for Jamie Mottram, Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Bracket:
  • “I wish I wasn’t lying, but I actually thought of this the other day. Only while flipping through my Jamie Mottram calendar. June is the best month……let’s just say jetski and ascot!”
  • “Would a small donation to Ladies… be enough to keep me out of Mottram’s bracket?”
  • “I have a man crush on Mottram like everyone else. But I actually work at the same company as him so I can go gaze at him dreamily every day if I so choose.”
  • “Mottram has been on TV multiple times. I have been in a small-town newspaper once, and they did not include my picture. Advantage: Mottram. There’s plenty of reasons for our healthy respect (and sneaky attempts to throw him under the bus once the competition is underway.”
  • “Mottram makes me swoon. And I’m a dude.”
  • “Hell, I’d probably at least grope Mottram. He’s shiny, like a skittle reflecting the sun.”

So what is left to do?  

Well, we finished the brackets and the seeding this week at the mini-Ladies summit.  (Have you ever tried to do math after several cocktails in the middle of Barney’s Beanery? At 1 am? Don’t get too mad at us when this looks crazy!)   Now’s the hard part – building the posts.  Since WordPress is a fucking bitch of a whore who hates polls, we have to host this monster bracket somewhere else, which is taking some time to create.

So we apologize that this is taking so long, but we really, really want to give this our best possible effort.  

Because if you don’t look good… we don’t look good.