In 2008, I ran a Final Four style tournament on the late, great RiffTrax Blog to determine which State Quarter was the most awesome. Since the blog it was published on is no longer updated, I was worried it might eventually get taken down, so here is the entire contest reprinted in one post.

2008 is already old news to many of you, but there are still many great things to look forward to this year. It’s a leap year for one. And the Olympics are always fun. (The universe may come to an end on May 20th, but who’s counting?)

But the truly exciting thing about 2008 is that it marks the final year of the US Mint’s State Quarters program, which has been the single greatest reason to get change since my senior year of high school. We’ve had a great run thru the various designs each state has picked to represent itself, and frankly, I’m sad to see it go. After this year, never again will you have the thrill of receiving a quarter back from the vending machine, glancing at it and remarking to yourself, “Huh…Remind me never to go there.”

After the final 5 designs were announced, I decided it was time to crown the true king of State Quarters. The only way to do this, obviously, is through a Final Four style bracket. Fifty coins enter, one emerges the victor and can claim the title of “Most Awesome State Quarter!”

Here’s how it works. I considered dividing up the entrants into regions based on themes. Animals (Kansas), People (Alabama), Boasting About Your State (North Carolina),and Miscellaneous (Wisconsin). But I decided that to do so would take a lot of the fun of unexpected matchups out of the picture. I decided to pick names out of a hat and fill in the first 50 seeds of a 64 seed bracket based on the order they were drawn. This might make for some lopsided first round matchups, but it could also result in some fun designs going head to head. Because of the uneven nature of 50, some quarters received first round byes. The criteria for victory will be decided soley upon which quarter I think is better, it has nothing to do with the quality of the state (rest easy New Jersey.) Nothing is decided ahead of time, anything can happen!

The bracket is presented below. Action in the first region will begin soon. I hope you’ll join me on: THE ROAD TO THE MOST AWESOME STATE QUARTER!

Click for a bigger look, or right click and save

The State Quarter page on wikipedia offers the easiest layout, best image quality and an obscene amount of random information about them (go figure)

Most Awesome State Quarter – Arnold Regional Round 1

Let’s get right to it. Our first matchup:

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Tennessee’s quarter has a lot going for it. Emphasizing musical heritage, rather than a historical event or a the natural beauty of a state landmark, shows a focus on the arts and the abstract that is lacking from many state quarters. Unfortunately, it is up against Wisconsin, which is the state quarter equivalent of Salvador Dali. It greets us with a “Godfather” style disembodied cow head, an ear of corn, and a giant, pac-man shaped wheel of cheese. The only explanation it offers is the banner with a single word: “Forward.” Yes, Wisconsin State Quarter, it appears that you would be hard pressed to find another direction to go.

Winner: Wisconsin - for the mind blowing abstractness of the whole thing

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Oregon’s quarter focuses on what appears to be approximately 1/1000th of the great Crater Lake. It’s a simple design, with much of it being taken up by the water of the lake. I’m sure the Crater Lake is a great sight (the entrance to it was closed when I drove by), but the quarter doesn’t convey it too well. Fortunately for Oregon, it is up against Virginia, the only state with a made-up word on their state quarter. The Jamestown “Quadricentennial” took place last year. Virginia decided to start hyping this event around the turn of the millenium, with custom license plates in addition to the state quarter. How far off could it have been for them to still put it on the quarter? 10 years? 20? Why not just invent a word for five hundred year anniversary and advertise the celebration in 2107?

Winner: Oregon - For maintaining composure against an unstable opponent

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Pennsylvania was just the second state quarter issued, so to their credit, it’s quite possible that nobody told them that they were allowed to make them interesting. It lists a few words, (which I believe are lifted directly from the Boy Scout Law), slaps the Columbia Pictures logo front and center and tosses in trademark keystone, all over a background of the outline of the state. *SNORE* Kentucky, on the other hand, has an ex-derby champ out to stud. The horse actually appears to be speaking “My Old Kentucky Home.” I feel like if they could have wedged another “Kentucky” mention somewhere on the picket fence, they would have. You can almost taste the mint julep.

Winner: Kentucky -Anthropomorphic animals always beat a state seal (unless the seal in question is anthropomorphic and balancing a ball on his nose)

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Both of these state quarters utilize the hodgepodge method, albeit a bit less surreally than Wisconsin. The thinking seemed to be this: Throw a bunch of stuff on the quarter, that way you don’t put all your eggs in one basket in case the rest of the country turns out to hate the one thing you choose. Florida goes with a space shuttle, an explorers ship and a beach. Louisiana picks a Pelican, a trumpet and the outline of the Louisiana purchase. On the surface, it seems like a toss up. But the trumpet is emitting musical notes – a cartoony touch. The massive area of the Louisiana purchase is accompanied by the descriptive text “Louisiana Purchase,” as if to reiterate “Yeah, that was us.” The Pelican is thinking it. Just look at him.

Winner: Louisiana - Florida’s has a bunch of stuff that other states could have. Louisiana has a bunch of awesome stuff that other states would love to have.

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Utah has an uncharacteristically suggestive state quarter. Rumor has it that originally the quarter was supposed to just say “Crossroads” and have a picture of three girls in a convertible singing Shania Twain. Illinois on the other hand, gives the people what they want. #16. Presented larger than life, he seems to be saying “Yeah Utah? You think that’s a big spike? Come on over here and Abe’ll show you how to split a rail.” The urban/agriculture contrast is a classy touch, and though the 21st state/century gimmick doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, Illinois knows they have a winner with Lincoln and cast their lot behind him.

Winner: Illinois - Utah, your two trains are butting heads. They’ll never make any progress that way. You need a strong presence to help sort out their differences and get things running smoothly again. Illinois, maybe you have someone who could help?

Some hard fought battles in round one of the Arnold Regional. Any travesties of justice in our opinion? Any round 2 matchups you look forward to? Will the states who had byes be up to the challege of their road tested opponents? How do you think the winners could have improved their state quarters? We shall see soon enough!

Most Awesome State Quarter – McConaughey Regional Round 1

We continue the Road to the Most Awesome state Quarter with Round 1 of the McConaughey Regional. Need to catch up? Click here

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Two contrasting state quarters from the beginning and the end of the project demonstrate the evolution of the state quarter. Georgia’s quarter, the fourth one released, looks very old school. The laurel wreath, the positive words, the outline of the state all show that the designers believed they were creating a state seal, which to the best of my knowledge, Georgia, as well as every other state, already has. The giant peach would be much better served if it was the only object on the quarter, was made 150% larger, and had little flattened specks of Aunties Sponge and Spiker on the bottom of it. Contrast the quarter to Wyomings, whose detail-less chrome cowboy appears to be the male counterpart to the infamousmudflap girl. Adorning Wyoming’s license plates with the same image gives the state an edge with branding, and also gives every bronco riding cowboy a chance to claim that they were the original model for the logo.

Winner: Wyoming - Sorry Georgia, we really love your peaches, but draw the line at shaking your tree.

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Two titans face off in a mega-first round battle. Both put in textured versions of their states along with one stand out object and a slogan. Texas’ Lone Star is placed very nicely on top of the instantly recognizable state outline, though I question the legislature’s decision to swap out the design of Ozzy Osbourne taking a leak on the Alamo at the last moment. That would have gotten the kids interested in coin collecting! New York’s quarter is also quite nice. The Statue of Liberty looks great, as always, and “Gateway to Freedom” emphasizes the feeling many people had upon seeing her for the first time. And you know what? I think that it’s great that New York City was issued its own quarter! I have a blast every time I go there. But it’s inappropriate to consider it for victory in a state quarter contest.

Winner: Texas - By emphasizing the state, it presents a more united front than the big dog from the east

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Nevada, which is evidently The Silver State, stumbles badly with their quarter design. When the first thing that springs to your mind upon viewing a state quarter is “Hey, that reminds me of the cover of that Poco album that there were always four copies of for 99 cents in the used vinyl section of the record store in college”, you have problems. It looks like a shirt that Napoleon Dynamite might wear. It’s quite possible that Nevada just took an old Lisa Frank trapper keeper design, erased the horns off of the unicorns, and slapped it on the quarter. It’s terrible. Fortunately for Nevada, it’s going up against Ohio. Evidently, someone called Ohio’s bluff on the “Birthplace of Aviation” claim they’ve been trotting out on license plates for years and they were forced to add the “pioneers” clarification to the quarter. This is because Kitty Hawk, North Carolina is the birthplace of aviation. Everyone knows this. That’s where the first flight took place. So Ohio’s quarter has the dubious distinction of being the only quarter to include spin on a false claim. Besides, any list of aviation pioneers that does not include Ham the Chimp is just plain incomplete.

Winner: Nevada - Let’s just move on before I start to get really angry

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Most people are used to seeing Hawaii enclosed in a square, on the bottom left corner of their map of the US. If you can get over the shock of seeing it in a circle, you are treated to one of the most unique state quarters. Words that you can’t understand, and a rendering of the islands that make them look downright tiny compared to the colussus towering over them. I’m not proud of the fact that as far as I know, that could be either the most important political figure in the history of Hawaii or just a beloved local eccentric who poses for pictures with tourists outside of the Club Med. But the mystery is alluring. Maine on the other hand is located up on the exact opposite corner of your US Map placemat. The quarter, though unremarkable, does present its state in a flattering light. It looks like if you wanted to get away from it all, get some reading or writing done, do some sailing, and get the definitive word on whether or not you can indeed get to there from here, Maine would be your place to do it.

Winner: Hawaii - The serene beauty of Maine is dwarfed by the colossus of Hawaii and his mysterious message

Most Awesome State Quarter – Keanu Regional Round 1

Guest written by Bill Corbett

Hey hey hey, fan(s?) of U.S. state quarters! Corbett here, ready to guest-judge the next bunch of jingly little contenders. NOTE: My decisions are final, and any questions or appeals will be met with immediate death by disembowelment for I AM CALIGULA OF THE BLOGS!

…Wow, I really do have trouble handling power. Give me a second, gotta breathe into this brown paper bag.

[pause.]

Ah! I’m back, full of healthy, delusion-shattering oxygen and ready to continue on this Road to the Most Awesome state Quarter. Today is Round 1 of the Keanu Regional. (Need to catch up? Click here.)

“Dude, Rifftrax totally named a quarter after me!…or something.”

And away we go…

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This one’s a cinch, because it falls under my first rule of state quarter judging: I will always vote for the state quarter with the large attacking animal on it. Alaska’s bear is already snacking on a 10-lb. salmon, but he wants to eat us, too. The only drawback is that he’s not trying to chomp on Sir Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin, which would make for a more realistic nature scene.

As for Maryland… it’s nice that you have a building. Somewhere. And “the Old Line State?” Could you at least be a three-dimensional geometric figure? It’s hard to be less committal than a “line,” except as it pertains to a unit of cocaine blowage, perhaps. But I don’t think that’s what your line refers to. I think it’s actually just a quick streak of # 2 pencil on looseleaf, isn’t it? That’s what you named your state after. Didn’t you?!

(Aw cripes, Maryland’s crying. Sorry.)

WINNER: Alaska. Seward’s revenge!!

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There’s an upsetting lack of large attacking mammals in both of these state quarters, so I’m tempted to penalize them both and just call this one a lose-lose. On closer inspection, though…

Arkansas is freaking me out, man. Is the giant floating diamond really there? IS it a giant diamond, or is it the crystalline mothership of a Razorbacks-loving alien race, hiding and hovering over Lake Sequoyah until today’s game against the Crimson Tide starts? Is it wrong that I keep singing to myself “Goosey in the Sky with Diamonds…”? Yes, of course it is, it’s a godawful *$%&#ing pun…But it feels so right…! Wheeeeeeee!

Erm…right. Hi, Mississippi. You have a lovely flower, there. And a lovely slogan, named after the (yawn) same lovely flower. But your whole brand isn’t challenging my sense of reality nearly enough, Mississippi. I don’t drink or do drugs anymore, so I need little mind-kicking pleasures like those offered by the Arkansas state quarter. Yes, Arkansas is freaking me out, man….but in a good way.

WINNER: Arkansas. For letting its freak flag fly.

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Pretty straightforward. We have “George Washington crossing the Delaware” for New Jersey vs. Iowa’s pathetic plea to be given some wood. Dear God, have they no decency? No trees, for that matter? Sack up, Iowa, get your own damned lumber, and design a quarter that’s does more than beg for building materials. I know you’re trying to tug at our heartstrings by showing the tiny building where most of you live, but –

O.K. My wife tells me that Iowa’s picture is actually a tribute to one of its native sons, artist Grant Wood, who painted “American Gothic” and other classics. I guess I owe Iowa an apology.

…But not a victory! N.J. edges ahead at the finish line because it depicts a truly historical event: the only time anyone risked their lives to get into New Jersey.

WINNER: New Jersey. For not depicting the birthplace of Bon Jovi.

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Both of these quarters could benefit from some of Alaska’s moxie, and include a charging beast of some sort… But I’ll try to let that go. (Sigh.)

These two coins force a humble, well-meaning judge to choose between different topographies more than anything else. And since I loved visiting the Grand Canyon — it was one of those rare things that surpass its hype — and I always pine for the ocean, across which my people in the Undying Lands (a.k.a. Brooklyn) wait for me… hell, I don’t know where to go with this. If only some smart denizen of Flagstaff, or some slick operator from Woonsocket, had found it in their hearts to bribe me yesterday…

WINNER: Um, Arizona. For reminding us that we revolve around the sun. Rhode Island’s wholesale denial that the sun exists is legendary, and shouldn’t be rewarded.

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Ah, that’s more like it! The gargantuan Peregrine Falcon is about to swallow Idaho, potatoes and all. It’s beautiful, it’s gritty, it’s honest and real, man… and it’s everything a state quarter should be. Even if the Peregrine Falcon had Sir Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin hanging out of its huge beak, half-eaten already, I don’t know if I could love it more. (Though that would be awesome.)

I have nothing but contempt for Michigan’s LIE of a quarter, acting as if the state could never be hunted down by a moon-sized raptor, seized up in its brobdingnagian talons, and rended to pieces within a matter of seconds. This state quarter says: “Giant falcons cannot harm us here in Michigan! I guarantee it.” That’s a damned careless attitude in this day and age, Wolverine State. It’s not bad enough that you’ve always pretended that the U.P. is safe and habitable for humans, now you want to go even further spreading your cloud-cuckoo LIES and assert invulnerability to colossal birds of prey. Shame on you, Michigan.

WINNER: Idaho. For telling the unflinching truth about impossibly big raptors.

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CONGRATULATIONS to Alaska, Arkansas, New Jersey, Arizona, and Idaho. You have bested your opponents, and now move on to fight mightier two-bit gladiators.

[NOTE: Conor will update later with cool-looking updated Keanu bracket. I'm emotionally exhausted from this competition, and need to soak my head in brine.]

Most Awsome State Quarter – Swayze Regional Round 1

Guest written by Kevin Murphy

Welcome coinfans, here we go with more tails-to-tails first-round competition on the road to the title of America’s Most Awesome State Quarter! You can catch up with all the action at Quarter Central, but the Swayze Region boasts such juggernauts of jing, I’ll go out on a limb and say that whoever survives this numismatic brawl will dominate from here on in! Here we go:

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California comes ready to play some coin with a three-pronged attack, and proves the adage that if you’re gonna boast about your state, first have something to boast about, and second have a backup. Boom! John Muir, the hoary misanthropic envirophile is hard to top, but then – Boom! we’ve got Half Dome, one of the crown jewels of Yosemite, daring coin-thumbers to climb, for a better view of – Boom! The California Condor, the Randy Johnson of state birds, ugly as a custard apple but unbeatable in straight-up competition. But now what does West Virginia bring? A bridge?! You have got to be kidding me! Every state in the union has a bridge – hell, Arizona has London Bridge but they’re not crazy enough to put it on their quarter! West Virginia, stumbling out of the gate with a weak boast, and a confusing one at that. What’s supposed to catch our eye, the gorge or the bridge? I hate to see a state stumble like this, but what are ya gonna do.

Winner: California, walking away.

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On to a classic New England matchup. Our fifth state, Connecticut, makes an unusual move – A Tree? But wait, this is no prissy Vermont Sugar Maple, my friends, this is the legendary Charter Oak, the only tree to take part in the founding of our nation, concealing as it did the precious Connecticut Charter from the clutches of the British. Don’t know about it? Jeeminee, crack a book, people! Now Massachusetts, State Number Six, brings it to it with the iconic Minuteman – Wow! You gotta be impressed! Not only do they hold back their star power – Your Paul Reveres, your Sam Adamses – but they lead with the icon, the legend, the first American foot soldier. Folks, this bench has depth, this is a quarter with confidence, and it’s the only quarter to carry a gun. Yeah, I’m going back, to Massachusetts!

Winner: Massachusetts, by a rifle-length.

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One of the most unlikely pairings you’ll see in this round, and not surprisingly, it’s a real letdown on both ends. New Hampshire pretty much blows it with its depiction of their traditional tourist trap The Old Man in the Mountain. It’s a natural formation that’s supposed to look like an old man – me, I say it looks like an old lady. I once bought a potato that looked like Walter Cronkite, but did I run to put it on a coin? NH wastes its strongest card, the undisputed Most Awesome State Motto: “Live Free or Die.” But just when you think it can’t get worse, along comes Oklahoma. Oklahoma’s a dream-team of images – the great displaced Indian nations, massive cattle drives, Conestoga wagons, the land run, and above all, America’s favorite beverage – oil! So does this big brawny state choose? A bird. But not an eagle or a hawk, it’s the Scissortail Flycathcher. And what bold motto do they bring in to save themselves? “1907.” It’s enough to want to send this quarter-back down to the dimes.

Winner: New Hampshire. Enjoy it, Old Man, it’s your last victory.

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Now here’s a match worth seeing! David and Goliath slug it out in a battle that pits boasting, natural beauty and actual accomplishment against one another. North Carolina, the Barbecue State, is one of the teams to beat in this entire competition, and they walk it like they talk it with the Wright Brothers’ first flight, a claim that no other state can step up to. First car? who cares? First balloon? that was in France. The first airplane speaks for itself, takes on all comers, steps up on the mountain and says “knock me down!” But young Montana’s no slouch, and this big lumbering state might move slow but it moves with grace and dignity – cattle skull hovering over the Bridger Mountains puts me to mind of beef and skiing, two of my favorite pastimes. It’s a strong showing, but is it enough? Montana’s youth and inexperience as a state pose a liability, and no matter what your resources in this competition, going up against the first airplane is gonna cause injuries early in the rounds. Montana shows dignity, rising above its Hannah’s and fast-food sandwich brand namesakes.

Winner: North Carolina, but a tip of the coin to Montana. Maybe next century, Big Fella.

Wow. Some true titans of coinage today, and the weak cheese has been blasted out of the arena. Watch your back, Indiana and Nebraska, best you come ready to play.

Most Awesome State Quarter – Arnold Region Round 2

After a thrilling first round that put the ho-hum super bowl to shame, there is nowhere to go for the Most Awesome State Quarter competition but up! Expect great things from round 2, which due to the odd number of states in our union (let’s get 14 more added before we run this again, guys), features a whole bunch of quarters we haven’t even seen yet.

For a breakdown of all the action so far, click here for the detailed breakdowns, region by region or here for the complete bracket after Round 1.

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Dark horse Wisconsin pairs off against Washington, who received a first round bye. Seriously, this Wisconsin quarter…If the Wisconsin chamber of commerce thinks that this thing would not sell slapped on just about anything that can be worn or used ironically, I beg them to think again. T-shirts, temporary tattoos, boxers, shot glasses, signs instructing you which way to proceed through a given area…Make ‘em all! Washington’s state quarter contains no irony, but the design clearly indicates the daily fear that Washingtonians live with that another eruption of Mount St. Helen’s will awake a huge, fearsome Godzilla-fish from the depths of the Puget Sound that will proceed to flop and gasp all over their great state. The Washington Chamber of Commerce in turn should sell little stickers of lasers or flames that you could stick coming out of the fishes eyes or mouth.

Winner: Washington - Few things are more awesome than a huge, fearsome Godzilla-fish

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Two entries that moved on from the first round despite their very apparent second tier status. Compared to other Pacific Northwest states that feature a body of water on their state quarter that we’ve seen *ahem* recently, Oregon’s seems positively boring. The Crater Lake is now seen for what it truly is – just another place for your hackey sack to get lost in. Kentucky’s quarter features a talking horse, (note the quotes.) A talking horse doesn’t make for a visually impressive quarter, but neither does a huge lake WITHOUT ANY GIANT MUTANT FISH LEAPING OUT OF IT.

Winner: Kentucky - It had been 35 years. America was ready for another talking horse.

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Louisiana and its “We’re pretty much the 1/3 of the country” quarter goes up for the first time against one of the states it lays claim to, Kansas. Kansas counters with the immovable object, the bison, or “Land Water Buffalo.” Bison have enjoyed quite a bit of resurgence in the public eye lately, mainly due to the fact that you can now purchase and eat them at many fine establishments, and in my mind, this only adds to their allure. The bison is a huge animal that used to roam in enormous herds over vast regions of our entire country. Then we nearly wiped them out, but they’ve climbed back to the point where you can easily obtain them in either patty or jerky form. That truly is an American success story.

Winner: Kansas - All kidding aside, during my move out to California, every time we saw a Bison was one of the highlights of the trip. They’re awesome.

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The Land of Lincoln vs the Land of Enchantment! Our 16th President doth bestride his narrow state like a colossus, and also he was in Bill and Ted. New Mexico has…a pattern! Bear with me for a second. Imagine that that pattern is removed from the New Mexico State Quarter. The quarter now bears a topographic outline of a mostly rectangular state next to the words “Land of Enchantment.” The enchantment is where exactly? When you add the pattern back in, does that represent enough enchantment on its own to atone for the lack of enchantment on the rest of the quarter? Don’t tell me you’re the Land of Enchantment and then offer up a bland quarter! (Note: Were the quarters available in color, New Mexico would be a huge favorite. They have my favorite state flag of all time, an exciting burst of color in a sea of blandness and uniformity. Here is a picture of me wearing it in a Las Vegas hotel room.)

Winner: Illinois - Lincoln wasn’t necessarily the most enchanting man himself, (especially up close), but wins out after New Mexico fails to deliver.

Most Awesome State Quarter – Swayze Regional Round 2

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The Brickyard meets the great outdoors in this round two matchup. Indiana boasts about the Indy 500. You are probably thinking, “The Indy 500? The crown jewel of a niche sport which has recently been completely regulated to minor league status by Nascar?” But hold on a second, because I have thoroughly researched the matter and it turns out that a long time ago, Indy Car racing actually used to be something that people did indeed care about! I know, go figure! The “Crossroads of America” claim doesn’t necessarily have a positive connotation, nor is it verifiable. The fact that Utah’s quarter is currently billing itself as “Crossroads of the West” means that an unintentionally hilarious “Ohio vs North Carolina” style feud on our hands, but in actuality it is more like “Ohio vs Ohio” wherein both states lose.

Winner - California, aka the “Destination in ‘Crossroads’”, towers over the Indy car

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In a completely unexpected maneuver, South Dakota sticks Mt. Rushmore on their quarter. Yes, Mt. Rushmore, the majestic monument to the 4th inning President Races at Washington Nationals games, (Go Teddy!), finally gets some much needed recognition. Unfortunately, the wheat and pheasant lobbies weasel in representation for their own interests (wheat and pheasants, respectively) and the monument looks smooshed when it should be taking up the whole quarter. It appears to be a classic example of design by committee, and the quarter suffers for it. South Dakota glorifys four men, three of which never came anywhere near the Black Hills, whereas Massachusetts features the anonymous Minuteman, who could be a hero, could be a nobody or could be the great great great grandfather of the guy who made your girlfriend cry because she had the nerve to wear a Yankees hat to the movies that one time.

Winner: Massachusetts - If you have a gun, you are the committee

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Cue up “Mississippi Queen”, we’ve got a Mountain vs Mountain showdown! New Hampshire pits the Old Man of the Mountain Pile of Rubble against the majesty of America’s Mountains, The Rockies. At least, that’s what I assume is on the Colorado quarter. If it didn’t tell me these were in Colorado, I might assume that they were, I dunno, Blue Ridge Mountains, or Great Smokey mountains or even *gasp* The Canadian Rockies! Unless there is a tiny baseball team going on a magical playoff run and then hitting a brick wall of failure during the World Series somewhere in the corner, it doesn’t seem uniquely Colorado. And let’s talk about your state mottoes. “Live Free or Die” speaks for itself, a relic of an era where that decision had to be made and enforced every day. “Colorful Colorado” sounds like something that a third grade class petitioned the legislature to adopt as a motto. Hey third graders! Tack a threat onto your motto next time! Or die!

Winner: New Hampshire - A shocking victory for the former man of the mountain, but Colorado had too much time off with the first round bye, and couldn’t play at the lower altitude

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With the entire country rallying behind them as the true Birthplace of Aviation, North Carolina seems like the team of destiny. But they didn’t count on Nebraska coming along and stirring up warm, nostalgic Apple II/GS memories. Yes, Nebraska’s state quarter is the only one to pander to the audience who grew up playing Oregon Trail on a classroom computer. The quarter scene is directly taken from one of the cut scenes in the game that you rapidly pressed the space bar to get past so you could go and hunt more animals. Bonus points because all that is missing from the cartoony sun is its two scoops of raisins. It’s distinct looking, as opposed to North Carolina’s by the numbers “early State Quarter” design. “North by Northwest” homage or not, it still isn’t very interesting to look at.

Winner: Nebraska - In an epic battle reminiscent of Villanova/Georgetown, Nebraska hits 15/16 of its second half shots to advance over a worthy foe from North Carolina

Most Awesome State Quarter – Keanu Regional Round 2

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Due to an error at the mint, Delaware’s State Quarter only has the first three words of its motto printed. It is supposed to read “The First State to make up a historical figure to put on our quarter.” “Caesar Rodney”? Really? I’ll come right out and say that I remember a good deal of elementary and middle school history classes, have read My Brother Sam is Dead and half of Johnny Tremain and have also driven through Delaware at 85 miles and hour at least four dozen times, and I had never heard of this Caesar character until this quarter came out in 1999. The fact that this was the first quarter people had seen since 1976 that did not feature a big Eagle on the back of it made it all the more jarring when it was initially released. We all acknowledge that American currency is among the most boring in the world, but few of us were willing to accept that the way to jazz it up was to slap fictional characters on it. Caesar Rodney sounds like the made up name of a Jobber in the WWE, and going up against the Huge Bear Juggernaut of Alaska is the equivalent of a Jobber vs Hulk Hogan matchup.

Winner: Alaska - In the most lopsided match-up to date

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The battle between Arkansas and Minnesota resembles the scene in that movie where the character is forced to fight a copy of himself…What was that movie…Well, I can’t remember what movie that was in, probably dozens of them. I know it happens in “The Legend of Zelda” all the time. The point is, the quarters are virtually identical. Waterfowl, water upon which to fowl, scenic trees surrounding the water, which presumably provide some sort of respite from the water when the fowl so desires it…To differentiate the two, Minnesota’s has your standard state outline/motto combo, as well as some fishermen enjoying 1/10,000 of Minnesotas bounty of lakes, and Arkansas has the previously mentioned giant floating diamond. Rumor has it that sales of Land o’ Lakes butter soared after the Minnesota quarter came out, but ironically, only in Arkansas.

Winner: Arkansas - The touch of Surreal Bling makes Arkansas stand out in an otherwise evenly matched (and boring) contest

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The glory of America’s natural resources go head to head with our tendency to kick some ass if necessary. New Jersey’s quarter is of course a representation of Emanuel Leutze’s painting of Washington crossing the Delaware into New Jersey, which is itself a tribute to this Gary Larson cartoon. Word is Washington had traveled into Delaware to try to track down Caesar Rodney, who owed him money, but he soon realized he was just some fake name that the Hessians made up, so he sailed back across the river to attack them. New Jersey unfortunately succumbs to the popular “Crossroads” meme that plagues 6% of all State Quarters, but it’s not as bad because A) they were the first ones to do it and B) it is much easier to pinpoint the crossroads of a revolution, aka the turning point, than it is “America” or “The West”. Arizona’s quarter pays tribute to an awe inspiring scene of natural beauty. But it looks like it could just be another tourist photo of the canyon, hurridly taken in a fit of rage while your kids refuse to stop playing Game Boy and get out of the car.

Winner: New Jersey - Sticking a Washington on both sides of a quarter is bold. Paying tribute to a major historical act and a work of art on the same quarter is classy. Bold + Classy = Winner.

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Idaho’s giant bird of prey faces off with the kings of the great plains, the bison. It’s a tough call. The deadening gaze of Idaho’s falcon is quite intimidating. But to me, there’s an undeniable appeal in creating a backstory for the North Dakota quarter:

[Ring Ring. Governor of North Dakota picks up phone.]

Aide: Mr. Governor Sir! Have you mailed those proofs for the state quarter off to the mint yet?
Governor: I was just about to sign them. What’s the matter?
Aide: I’m sending over an email sir. It’s Kansas…You better take a look at it.
Governor: Son of bitch…A buffalo!
Aide: Technically, it’s a bison sir.
Governor: Does the public know about this? How long has this been out?
Aide: It came out last year sir.
Governor: Well our design is worthless now. We can’t put out another quarter with a buffalo on it. If we have a copycat state quarter, people will mock our state and nobody will want to live here! And there’s not enough time to redesign it!
Aide: Sir, if you’ll indulge me for just a second, I have an idea how we might be able to save the quarter.
Governor: Dammit Aide! Tell me quickly!
Aide: Well sir, Kansas’ quarter has one bison…
Governor: Go on…
Aide: If we were to maybe put two bison on our quarter…It would be better than having just ONE bison
Governor: You magnificent bastard… You’ve saved North Dakota’s state quarter! And maybe one of the Buffalo could be holding up a sign that says “Screw Kansas!”
Aide: I would advise against that sir, it may be perceived as deeply offensive.
Governor: Very well. Nobody will be able to misinterpret this “Buffalo doubling” gesture anyways.
Aide: Bison sir.

Winner: North Dakota - The closest a state quarter has come to a declaration of war

Minnesota State Quarter Scandal

After a rather excessive amount of moaning concerning Minnesota’s loss to Arkansas yesterday I did some soul searching. Had I really underrated the serene beauty of the Minnesota quarter? Was I just swayed by the allure of the giant floating space bling on Arkansas? So I did a bit more research and discovered that the bird on the Minnesota quarter is a Loon. Specifically, it is THE Loon from the Canadian dollar, aka the Loonie. And not even the same bird posing in a different manner, say a classy “wings raised as it prepares to take off in majestic flight” No, it is the exact same image of the exact same loon. Either there’s a lack of originality that comes from a shared border, or a more sinister plot to get everyone confused and clog our toll booths and vending machines with Canadian dollars.

So, Minnesota’s State Quarter has a scandal on its hands. Its performance against Arkansas is stricken from the record, it is barred from all State Quarter tournaments for the remainder of the decade and loses all its scholarships. On the plus side, if it needs any advice for how to deal with the situation, it can just phone up the University of Minnesota basketball program.

Most Awesome State Quarter – McConaughey Regional Round 2

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It would be difficult to find two more contrasting quarters than South Carolina and Wyoming. South Carolina employs the “Throw everything at your quarter and see what sticks” method of design, whereas Wyoming didn’t even bother to fill in the outline of their cowboy. South Carolina’s quarter is heavy on the Palm Tree…Oh, I’m sorry, that’s the Palmetto tree, which as everyone knows, is completely different. I mean, just look at how different it looks there on the quarter! It was foolish of me to confuse their staking their entire quarter on a tree that in no way could be so easily confused with the palm trees that grow like weeds out here in California and also Florida and Arizona. They’ve also got some bird, and maybe that’s a flower growing above his head, I don’t know, I don’t have a microscope handy. You know what South Carolina? Sometimes less is more. As in less crap cluttering up your state quarter means more victories in the Most Awesome State Quarter Tournament.

Winner: Wyoming - If it were possible to design an animated gif of the Wyoming horse kicking the South Carolina quarter off of the page, I would

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On paper, the blind and deaf Helen Keller facing down the entire state of Texas seems to be, how to put this, a slightly unfair fight. Even if Texas were to elect a representative to face Ms. Keller, and that representative were deaf and blind as well, based on the Everything Being Bigger in Texas creed, one would be inclined to give the advantage to the Texan. But the Alabama State Quarter has a couple things going for it. One, it has Braille. Most of us only encounter Braille when our finger slips while pressing an elevator button. This classy tip of the hat to our blind citizens deserves kudos, as reading with your fingers is the type of thing that is never given enough credit as the amazing act that it is. The fact that the Braille spells out “Roll Tide” is questionable, but we’ll overlook it. Also, Alabama is one of the only states, if not the the only one, to feature a woman on their quarter. It’s quite possible that there are more bison depicted on state quarters than women, so it’s not a decision that goes unnoticed around these parts.

Winner: Alabama - A controversy breaks out when the tiebreaking vote is cast by Anne Sullivan’s great granddaughter, but the decision is upheld despite much firing of guns up in the air and yee-hawing from the Texan side of the court room

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I don’t appreciate Missouri using the tricky to pronounce word “Corps” on their Quarter when the jury is still out on how you actually pronounce the states name. I’m not familiar with the Corps of Discovery, but assume it has something to do with Louis and Clark, who appear to be navigating the river in a rubber dinghy. I’m also pretty sure that the St. Louis arch doesn’t actually span a river. (Note: while researching this, it turns out that several pilots have successfully flown planes through the arch, which gains the quarter tons of points for being one of the most foolhardy and pointless stunts I’ve ever heard of.) The Missouri Quarter also sets the record for Number of Dates included on one quarter, with four separate years getting mentioned, (not included: 2017, the year the Rams are expected to next make the playoffs.) Fortunately for Missouri, The Horses of “The Silver State” don’t look any more relevant or dignified than they did the previous round.

Winner: Missouri - Sometimes, being nice and symmetrical is all you need to do to win.

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Vermont lays it all on the line with this quarter: “Listen, our state just makes damn good syrup.” I am inclined to agree. Real maple syrup is not to be trifled with, and quite possibly edges out fresh squeezed orange juice as having the biggest difference in quality between the real thing and the normal everyday crap that people accept instead of the real thing. There’s also some ideals, regulated to the side, freedom, unity, who can be bothered really, but Syrup! Syrup people! But then we have Hawaii, with it’s looming presence. One day, we will uncover the true meaning of the secret language on the Hawaiian quarter, as well as the identity of the giant man who watches over the islands. Until then, the mysteries prove too intriguing to vote against.

Winner: Hawaii - Tiny islands, a giant man, and surprisingly low markups on quality imported syrup.

Arnold Regional Semi-Final

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Kentucky has made a decent run for a rather mundane quarter, based pretty much entirely on my enjoying the quirky quote marks around the phrase “My Old Kentucky Home.” Going up against the laws of perspective, however, their run is going to come to an end. We’ve all had the nightmare where The “Big Mouth Billy Bass” we were given as a gag gift eight years ago wrests free of it’s fake wood mount, grows larger than a mountain and performs a wriggling rendition of “Take me to the river” before smiting our entire state. But Washington took it upon themselves to act as the canary in the coal mine and warn everyone about the threat on their State Quarter. Even if it is just so once it happens, they can gloat and say “I told you so”, if even one person is prepared for the menace of giant singing, dancing fish, Washington’s quarter will have done its job.

Winner: Washington - You know the other song the Big Mouth Billy Bass sings? “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Think of me while you’re humming it to yourself later tonight.

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Winner: Illinois - Unless Kansas’ bison were to proclaim the superiority of San Dimas High School football, (in quote marks), he is no match for the recognizableness and impact of Lincoln, be it Hard Drinkin’ or not

Keanu Regional Semi-Final

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Arkansas is confident. They remain the last of the truly “Abstract” state quarters in the running for the title. But a quarter can only get so far on its weirdness alone. At some point in time, you’re going to have to put some substance behind it. I still don’t know the story behind the Arkansas quarter, and probably never will. It’s a quarter told by an idiot, full of bling and birdies, signifying nothing. I do know that out of all the State Quarters, Alaska’s is the one most capable of frightening small children, especially if you build a live recreation of it in their Little Tykes playhouse in the backyard. They might actually enjoy a recreation of the Arkansas quarter, and nobody wants that.

Winner: Alaska - Arkansas exits, pursued by a bear

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Bison, for all their glory, majesty, and embodiment of the American frontier, cannot be used to make bacon. This rendered them useless to George and his merry band of patriots on the New Jersey quarter. In theory though, the New Jersey quarter is still capable of eating the North Dakota quarter, however disgustingly bacon-free it may be. When one quarter can eat the contents of another quarter, it becomes easier to pick a victor. Though North Dakota won’t move on, it hasmade its “twice as good as Kansas” status known to the rest of the nation, and that’s really all it was hoping for during this contest.

Winner: New Jersey - Those patriots on the New Jersey quarter are minutes away from killing a bunch of guys. The fact that they’re bad guys is just icing on the cake. Awesome.

*UPDATE* New Jersey’s victory comes despite the fact that Joey Pants, the New Jersey State Quarter’s Ashley Judd-esque superfan, was unable to attend the contest due to a conflicting meet and greet with fans: 

He perked up after learning of the outcome via text message

McConaghey Regional Semi-Final

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The Equality State faces a state whose flag is patterned after the Confederate Flag. In a rather transparent effort to have us forget this fact, Alabama overcompensates with Helen Keller on its quarter, much like a disgraced politician who trots out his wife and kids on stage as he apologizes for his most recent arrest in a public restroom. If i had personally been tasked with picking an image based on two criteria, 1) The State of Alabama and 2) the motto “Spirit of Courage”, I probably would have gone with one of the several big names from the fifties & sixties that your average kindergartener/Outkast fan would be able to name, so Helen Keller feels like a hopelessly “safe” choice. But on the other hand, Wyoming’s quarter is a recycled logo and I know nothing of the history of their state. Is it really more equal than others? If it was, wouldn’t that make it more superior to the other 49 states in the capacity, thereby negating the claim and making it the Superior State?

Winner: Alabama - Both states have problems. But since we’re rating the quarter and not what it could have/should have been, Alabama’s is at least more unique.

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Two of our finest states whose names end with “I” enter the ring, only one will leave. There’s really not much more to be said regarding Hawaii’s, unless you actually want to start researching who the guy is and what the words mean. Since Hawaii is going to beat Missouri, I feel like that’s not necessary until next round. Until then, I still wonder about the mystery man. Missouri’s quarter, though a numerologists dream, is just pretty darn average. In fact I won’t even bring up the fact that if you look at it long enough, it starts to look vaguely O’Keefeian, because it’s just really averagely suggestive. Like many of the topics on our State Quarters, and dare I say history and life in general, Lewis and Clark are really best dealt with through the medium of Far Side cartoons.

Winner: Hawaii - The newest state and unfortunately, one of the only ones with a rough draft sketch of its quarter on the US Mint site, makes the leap into the elite eight.

Swayze Regional Semi-Final

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The Bay State vs. The State that Contains the Bay Area.  The Bay State rolls off the tongue much easier, but while we all know where the “Bay Area” is, many of us would not be able to identify The Bay State.  So the competition must come down to this:  how awesome is Massachusettses gun?  For while it is definitely sweet to but a really big gun on your state quarter, is that negated at all by the fact that it looks like the soldier holding it was modeled after a plastic army man?  I say yes.  I say that negates the awesomeness of the quarter immensely.

Winner: California - Though it may be possible to argue that the freaky, bearded John Muir may have greatly inspired Devendra Banhart, at least Mr. Muir and his scenic surroundings don’t melt into a pile of goo after 15 seconds in the microwave

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These two these quarters both depict rock formations that would easily qualify as grounds for divorce without visitation rights if a parent were to make them the destination for a summer vacation. They are two “attractions” from the “stand around looking at them for a while, then go home” school of attractions.  The Nebraska quarter, in fact, depicts the first family to ever have the kids refuse to get out of the backseat of the car to go look at a monument (I tried to do this at Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace and my dad nearly pulled me out of the car through the window.)  However, one can’t help but deduct immense amounts of points for the contrasting sentiment of New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die” slogan with the fact that it’s rock formation of choice now ceases to exist.

Winner: Nebraska - In the kind of victory that Charlie Brown’s baseball team would hope for every week, Chimney Rock wins by being the only one able to show up

Arnold Regional Final

Kevin designed some sweet commemorative medallions for the finals of the Most Awesome State Quarter contest.  Let’s tackle the hard fought Arnold Regional first.

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The giant fish of Washington faces the man behind the greatest monument in Washington for the Arnold Regional final.  Lincoln had a renowned appetite for fish, but this fish is pretty darn big.  It’s a drawn out battle, with many points worth enumerating for both candidates, and it’s important to note that…

Wait a second…

What’s this?

Is that? Yes! It is! It’s Wisconsin’s theme music! The Wisconsin state quarter is re-entering the arena! Washington eliminated it back in round 2, but here it is again and it looks like it’s got a folding chair with it!  Washington and Illinois are busy whaling on each other, I don’t think they see it, but the crowd sure does, it’s going nuts! Wisconsin has climbed into the ring with a folding chair and…IT JUST HIT ILLINOIS OVER THE HEAD WITH A CHAIR!!! THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!!! Washington has turned around, it’s begging Wisconsin for mercy! But Wisconsin’s got a crazed look in its eye! It keeps muttering “forward”! And IT HITS WASHINGTON WITH THE CHAIR TOO! THIS ONE IS ALL OVER! WISCONSIN COMES OUT OF NOWHERE IN A STUNNER!!!!

Wisconsin – Most Awesome State Quarter Arnold Regional Winner

Keanu Regional Final

Whoa!  The second of our four regional finals in the Most Awesome State Quarter contest is underway!

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According to the US Mint website, the unapproved alternatives for the Alaska State Quarter were: A picture of a Polar Bear with the inscription “Land of the Midnight Sun”, ”Dog Musher with Denali (Mt. McKinley),” featuring a dog musher, Denali, and the Big Dipper; and “Gold Panner with Denali,” depicting a (presumably) grizzled old prospector with Denali in the background.  The only better bench I’ve ever heard of would be the 1992 Dream Team, where you had Hall of Famers like John Stockton, Clyde Drexler and David Robinson backing up Jordan and Magic.  (Also, Christian Laettner, aka The Ohio State Quarter of the Dream Team was there.)  New Jersey, though iconic, heroic and Crossroads related, gets Timothy Treadwell-ed by the gigantic bear waiting for them on the other side of the Delaware.

Winner:  Alaska.  New Jersey gets in a good shot or two, but Alaska moves on

Alaska – Most Awesome State Quarter Keanu Regional Winner

McConaughey Regional Final!

Take off your shirt, and kill the old red Rooster, it’s time for the McConaughey region Final!  Follow all the action here.

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For the final round of this oft-misspelled region, I finally got around to looking up the history behind the Hawaii quarter.  The man shown here towering over the Hawaiian islands is King Kamehameha I, who was most famous for comically stammering his own name whenever he saw an attractive lady, a behavior still practiced to this day on the mainland.  Needless to say, he would have remained silent in the presence of Helen Keller.  The King’s landmark social policy was a piece of legislation which guaranteed citizens protection during times of war and was called…”The Law of the Splintered Paddle.”  I firmly believe that society would be in much better shape as a whole if the Law of the Splintered Paddle still ruled the land.  In fact, a whole series of Laws of the Splintered Paddle.  Or, maybe we could just always refer to “laws” as “Laws of the Splintered Paddle”.  “Sir, your blood alcohol level is point one four, you are in violation of Law of the Splintered Paddle #413-b.  Put your pants on and come with me.”

Hawaii – Most Awesome State Quarter McConaughey Regional Winner

 Three teams are placed in the final four, only one to go! View the complete bracket up til now right here.

Swayze Regional Final

Nobody puts state quarters in a corner!  Except for maybe the Ohio one…he was too stupid to have a good time…Anyways, it’s time for the Swayze Regional Final!  Follow all the state quarter action here!

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Compared to some of the other regions we’ve gone thru, the Swayze regional final ends in a David Byrne moment:  How did we get here?  Two quarters which are clearly above average, but does either deserve to move on to the final four?  We’re left with a 1999 Best Picture Oscar moment:  someone has to win.  And while the winner of this region must therefore feel the deep shame of being compared to American Beauty, (whose plastic bag in the wind scene I rewatched this weekend and believe it may be worse than anything from The Happening), it’s important to look back on 1999 as a year when the mediocre shrugged its way to the top.  American Beauty beat out The Green Mile and The Sixth Sense for the Best Picture of the year, much like California and Nebraska advancing this far over the OK-but-by-no-means-great tails sides of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

What is my point?  Mainly that I wanted to see peoples justifications for why the plastic bag scene, which I posted below, does not in their opinion, blow.  And to deem the more stylized and heavy on oxen Nebraska the winner.

Nebraska – Most Awesome State Quarter Swayze Regional Winner

State Quarters Final Four!

We have entered the Final Four of Quarterdom.  Who will take home the DiCaprio Prize?  Pry your oversized mother out of the bed and roll her over to the computer, because it’s time to crown a winner (of the semi-final round.)

All previous State Quarter action can be found here!

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Here we have a battle that ensapsulates a few of the eternal struggles that man has witnessed through history:

“Cow vs. King” exemplifies the farmer vs the ruler, rich vs poor, Potter vs Bailey, Landed Gentry vs Gentry that is just renting for another few months til the market really bottoms out.

We also have “Cheese vs. The Law of the Splintered Paddle” which actually rarely ever comes up in real life unless you’re on day 6 of a canoeing trip that was only supposed to take 3 days, you’re lost, your canoe is run aground and you and the other survivor are forced to choose between the only food left (cheese, somehow) and the only paddle, which though still intact, has begun to splinter.  If this situation ever arises, take the paddle.  It seems counterintuitive, until you realize that you can beat your companion to death with it, then take his cheese.  So, to reemphasize, take the splintered paddle.

Finally, we have “State Motto you can’t understand because it’s in a crazy language vs. State Motto you can’t understand because it only consists of one ambiguous word”.  This one is pretty much a toss-up, but I like to imagine the exhausted governor of Wisconsin closing up the office after hours, and as he’s locking the door of the building, he glances up at the state flag, sees the word “forward” and sighs because he just spent the day slashing three million dollars of essential programs out of the education budget.

Winner:  Wisconsin.  Plus, it’s the only state quarter that could potentially be worth hundreds of dollars if the ear of corn on it happens to have an extra leaf.

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This one is Alaska’s game to lose, and frankly, the only way that it could lose would be if the bear on the quarter turns out to be the bear from the movie “The Bear.”  That would suck.  But it’s not.  So, the family on the Nebraska quarter makes it as far as Chimney Rock before they are torn limb from limb, their oxen devoured, their wagon tongues and wheels strewn about the Oregon Trail like so many failed westward ventures before them.  Years later, their pioneering spirit and sacrifice will be mocked by ironic hipsters (or is that guy a nerd?  It’s getting too hard to tell.)

The worst part is that Werner Herzog gets the tape of the whole thing happening, listens to it and then tells the settlers next of kin to destroy the tape and it NEVER SURFACES ON THE INTERNET!  What the hell!?!

Winner:  Alaska.  It’s lust not satiated by salmon and Nebraska settlers, the Grizzly bear sets its eyes on America’s Dairyland

Who will emerge the victor and claim the DiCaprio prize in the Most Awesome State Quarter Contest?  We’ll find out before this year is over!

Most Awesome State Quarter Championship

Our journey began 11 months ago to the day. But the true State Quarter journey traces back in 1999, when each state took five finalists, whittled it down to to a selection of varying quality (god knows what Ohio’s four rejected ones looked like…), and released it upon the unsuspecting masses.  Though each quarter was designed by a talented person/committee, or in Minnesota’s case, plagiarized by a talented person/committee, once we began pairing them up here, it was quite obvious that some had what it takes to advance and some did not.

We started with fifty, and ended up with two.  Here’s where we are now:

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The final State Quarter battle really sums up the state of Awesomeness in 2008.  Which is truly more awesome?  The Alaska quarter, with it’s giant, murderous bear, really speaks to what you considered awesome as a child.  Big, scary and legitimately impressive.  It’s the quarter that Calvin & Hobbes would have designed.  Sixth-grade-me, who had notebooks with Ferrari’s on them and thought it didn’t get any cooler than gathering around a stereo with friends to listen to Axl Rose’s profanity laced rant on “Get in the Ring” quiet enough so your parents couldn’t hear it would have loved the Alaska quarter. But then you get a bit older, probably right around middle school, you spend some time on the internet and all of a sudden you realize:  Wait a second…Awesome things aren’t awesome…Things that suck are awesome!

The Wisconsin quarter embodies this cynical, ironic, internet-age definition of awesome.  The kind of awesome that means watching foul mouthed 12 year olds review movies on youtube, relishing in the Beverly Hills Chihuahua trailer, or even a guy playing ukelele/kazoo/keytar covers of The Final Countdown.  A big cow head, a wheel of cheese, and a banner with a single word that seemingly contradicts the presence of both of those items adds up to a great big stew of awesome.  As I’ve said before, Wisconsin is the only quarter that I would wear on a t-shirt.

So what is more awesome?  Something that is actually awesome, or something that sucks so much that it’s awesome?  The answer lies in “Get in the Ring”.  Listening to the song for the first time in years, I’m amazed that a song like this was ever released, let alone on a multimillion selling album by one of the most popular bands of all time.  It’s sprawling, vulgar, maniacal, unintentionally hilarious and impossible to take seriously – unless you’re a sixth grade boy.  And as I listened to it all the way through for the second time this afternoon with a big grin on my face, I decided that I didn’t like this because it sucks…I liked it because it ruled in sixth grade and it rules now!  So this time around, I’m going to embrace the trulyawesome. Go to hell, irony!!!

The winner of the Most Awesome State Quarter competition is Alaska. Nobody’s getting in the ring with that bear.  Not even Axl.

Most Awesome State Quarter – Alaska

And just in case you actually listened to “Get in the Ring” all the way through and need a palate cleanser/warm shower, click on Santa Schnappi for some holiday cheer:

Merry Christmas everyone!

Taxonomy order: King Phillip’s Class Ordered Family Genus Species

Planets: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nothing-as-she-is-pursuing-yet-another-advanced-degree

The numbers one through ten: Onomatopoeia, Tremors, Tremors 2: Aftershocks, Frankenstein, Frankenberry, Swype, Se7en, Elvish word for ‘Friend’, NWA, Tremors 4: The Legend Begins

Members of the original 1992 Men’s Olympic Basketball “Dream Team”: Richmond, Erving, Billups, Payton, James, Duncan, Mourning, Shaquille, Majerle, Bosh, Jabbar, Laettner (Robinson, Ewing, Bird, Pippen, Jordan, Drexler, Malone, Stockton, Mullin, Barkley, Johnson, Laettner)

Hosts of Jeopardy!:

Funkadelic Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu (Fleming, Trebek)

Every other person or thing Billy Joel mentions (first name and last) before the first musical break in “We Didn’t Start The Fire”: Habakkuk, Thessalonians, Revelation, Corinthians, Song of Solomon, Psalms, Jonah, Deuteronomy, Romans, Nehemiah, Timothy, Samuel, Kings (Harry Truman, Red China, South Pacific, Joe DiMaggio, Richard Nixon, Television, South Korea)

Flipping through it over the past eight months provided a great excuse to revisit one of the main influences on my sense of humor. I still remember the monthly calendar my dad had up in his office one year, which featured two cartoons which I found hilarious, even if in my young age I thought those spiders were literally referring to pulling the web off the slide for some reason. Much of the material had not been reproduced in book form until now, so it’s essentially like discovering hundreds of new Far Side cartoons. Your co-worker’s Midvale School for the Gifted coffee mug may not elicit much of a chuckle any more, but having a chance to see many of these cartoons for the first time served as a reminder to the comic’s brilliance.

Already unique as a single panel, The Far Side further differentiated itself in that it didn’t have any recurring characters. People looked the same from comic to comic, bulbous, big-nosed and beehived, but every day it would be new people dealing with aliens, or neighbor dogs, or disobedient cows.

But these people of course had names. And as I read through my collection, I wondered how Gary Larson had picked the names for them every day, and whether there was any sort of a pattern to it. Was there someone keeping tabs for him, telling him he had recently used Earl, maybe he should make the co-pilot Murray this time?

So I decided to go through the complete Far Side, all 14 years and over 1,100 comics of it, and find out which name Larson used the most often.

A few rules:

• You are not allowed to question why I did this
• First names only. Most of the characters only get assigned one name anyways.
• Real people (Einstein, Leona Helmsley) show up frequently in The Far Side. So do fictional characters like Paul Bunyan,  Tom Sawyer or Tarzan & Jane. As to not skew the results, neither of these types of people would be counted in the poll.  Only the named denizens who solely resided in the Far Side universe would be counted. So when Johnny Appleseed met Irving Ragweed, Johnny did not get counted, but Irving got a +1
• Names misspelled for the purpose of a joke, like the llama named Llarry, counted towards the name it was adapted from.
• Variations all counted individually. Bill and Billy get separate counts.
• Background names were included. If you could see through the window that the store was named “Al’s Hardware”, Al got a +1
• Cavemen, aliens, dogs and other miscellany would be included, as long as they were named. When impossible to tell, gender would be speculated at to the best of my ability
• The name just had to be mentioned. The character could be ‘offscreen’ so to speak.

Without further ado, here are the results:

The top male name for a Far Side character is…Bob! This was not even close. Bob appeared in 54 Far Side cartoons, blowing away the next closest name, Frank, with 38 appearances. Third place, Carl, started out strong, dominating the first year or so of the comic. But while the early years were full of Carl’s, it just did not have the staying power, and only appeared 23 times. Here is the full top ten list of male names and the number of comics they appeared in:

Bob 54
Frank 38
Carl 23
Billy 21
Ernie 21
Harold 18
Henry 17
Larry 17
Al 16
Sidney 16

Female names were interesting because there just weren’t as many of them. By my count there were 296 distinct male names in Far Side cartoons, but  only 104 female names, and the most common names, Barbara and Sylvia each appeared only nine times. Six names, Betty, Doreen, Doris, Harriett, Helen and Zelda, each appeared eight times. The top ten:

Barbara 9
Sylvia 9
Betty 8
Doreen 8
Doris 8
Harriet 8
Helen 8
Zelda 8
Edna 7
Lola 7

If you’re curious to how many times a specific name appeared, here is a link to a Google doc of my complete Far Side names spreadsheet.

Other stray observations:

• If you them all up, there are 1059 named males, 256 named females
• The name “Gary” only appears twice (once in the last comic) and was only used to refer to the artist
• Most of the times that “Al” shows up, it is on the side of a delivery truck. Al’s Meats, Al’s Scissors. Al had his hands in a lot of pots.
• Cavemen show up in a ton of Far Side cartoons, enough that “Thag” was a top fifteen name, appearing in 14 comics. Zog and Grog got 8 & 7 respectively
• Farmers proved tricky. In Larson’s universe, the term “Farmer ____” tended to alternate between using the farmer’s first and last name. Sometimes Farmer Bob, sometimes Farmer Macdonald. I used my discretion when it wasn’t clear.
• Jake was often used as a dog’s name, which I found surprising since many of the other dog names were ‘typical’ dog names like Fifi and Rex
• I left out Igor, because even though he turns up a lot, it is referring to a specific character from fiction. I don’t think an Igor ever showed up that wasn’t a hunchbacked, mad scientist’s assistant
• I don’t think anybody has been born with one of the top female names since the end of the 70s, and if you leave out Barbara, perhaps even earlier
• If you insist on wondering why I took the time to do this, I believe this image that Gary Larson once provided to his critics will suffice as my response:

That was how I met Karl Welzein.

Karl Welzein is a middle-aged man. He’s separated from his wife, resents his children, naps on the toilet during work hours and drinks to the point of soiling himself. He’s also a vocal proponent of the Bold Flavor lifestyle, an Original Bad Boy always on the lookout for the next big celebraish. He’s the most hilarious and original voice on the internet. Oh, and most importantly, continuing that conversation:

me: is it a real guy
Andrew: no, just a funny character

Karl doesn’t, technically, exist.

Somewhere in the Flint suburb of Grand Blanc, Michigan, Karl Welzein wakes up every morning in his best friend Dave’s house. That is, if he doesn’t wake up in his beloved Chrysler Sebring. Or next to a dumpster behind the Chili’s. Or on the deck, passed out in front of a grill with an entire package of burnt Johnsonville brats on it. Karl lives with Dave because his estranged wife Ann kicked him out. Karl is fine with this arrangement because Ann and the kids, especially his Harry Potter-loving son, get on his nerves. After he gets up, he’ll probably shamble in to work a few hours late, where he’ll do some pushups in the john after his hated supervisor gets on his case. Afterwards, he’ll head to local watering hole Paddy’s for some Top Shelf Margs, and potentially work up enough energy to show off his dance moves on the floor, working the babes up into a carnal frenzy. He’ll probably sing some Seger.

But forgive me, we were talking about how the man whose average day I just described in more detail than I could provide about any of my friends doesn’t exist…

Karl is completely fictional, the product of an as-yet unidentified creator who has been updating the account since April 14th, 2010. But read the 5.8 posts per day from his Twitter feed @DadBoner (yes, DadBoner, don’t Google Image Search it) for a while, and this is easy to forget. Karl arrived on Twitter fully formed: his first tweet was what has proved to be his most iconic and repeated catchphrase: “Really lookin’ forward to the weekend you guys”, which he’s gone on to repeat nearly every Thursday since he began tweeting. He’s since amassed over 42,000 followers, thanks in part to endorsements from comedy heavy hitters like Patton Oswalt. The list of other Twitter accounts Karl follows is carefully curated to reflect his persona (celebrities he’d want to hang with, babes, Detroit athletes and fast food brands), but he’s only rarely acknowledged that Twitter has the potential to be a two way conversation. And while he routinely addresses his followers with the collective “You guys” , the last time DadBoner responded directly to any of them was May 13th, 2010, when he replied to a Twitterer named WillDavidian. Users TheDaniStew, pricedout, sexcigarsbooze as well as righteous babes @KathyIreland, @JennyMcCarthy and @KimKardashian are the only Twitter users Karl has ever acknowledged.

But this doesn’t mean that Karl’s feed is simply an isolated reflection of his own thoughts. Far from it, the DadBoner Universe has established itself as dynamic a place to live as The Simpson’s Springfield, with colorful recurring characters popping up at every turn. Each one allows a bit more of Karl’s personality to be revealed, from the charmingly clueless racism brought out by black co-worker Vernon, or the hostile disdain for Ann’s friend Tina Carlson, whose thoroughly warranted, appalled reactions to Karl’s behavior get her branded an uptight sack of crap with a catcher’s mitt mug. Though everyone in town is presented to us through Karl’s filter, the reader is always aware what the other characters are actually thinking. Part of DadBoner’s brilliance is that it seamlessly mixes this narrative of ‘reality’ with Karl’s interpretation of it. As he relates to us how a character responded to his new earring or dance moves, we are instantly aware of their revulsion and disgust, while at the same time laughing as Karl puts his delusional, positive spin on it. The fact that the truth is so blatant makes his failure to comprehend it all the more hilarious.

This has lead to a stunning array of misadventures over the past year. Falling for a single mom who clearly just wanted to use Karl as a babysitter. Driving to a Tiger’s game, gin and tonic “roadies” in hand, to track down Guy Fieri and pitch him on his restaurant idea. Kicking the door to his family’s house down in a desperate attempt to retrieve Thanksgiving leftovers, then ignoring his terrified wife’s phone calls when she thinks there’s been a burglar. If Ignatius T. Reilly and the The Big Lebowski adopted a kid, by middle-age he’d likely resemble the Bold Bad Boy from Grand Blanc. And though none of us would want to actually live with the selfish, lying, toilet-clogging, drunk who keeps a fully stocked bar in his car’s trunk, and we definitely wouldn’t want to work with the yogurt-stealing, early-leaving, five beer lunch buffoon with no filter, readers still find themselves rooting for Karl. Why has a slovenly drunk with a mean streak inspired such devotion from so many people?

The Picture

When the DadBoner author set up the account, they found the perfect, real world representation of what Karl Welzein looks like. Fat and happy, a rascal with his shirt unbuttoned to show off a little chest hair to the ladies. He’s the kind of guy that could easily become the life of a really lame party, then get asked to leave by the uptight host after he breaks something or gropes somebody. The picture that served as his avatar for the longest time is actually of a man named Bruce Audley, who I can only guess was on the ninth page of Google Image results for “fat guy beard.” As the account grew more and more popular, it’s easy to imagine the author becoming concerned that the actual man depicted as the face of his potentially lucrative media property might not be pleased with his portrayal as a boozing, shitting lout. The avatar was switched to a crude portrait that bears little resemblance to the Audley picture. It looks a bit more sinister, less like a teddy bear and more like a guy you’d not want watching your kids Little League games. Seeing the old, jolly avatar pop up in my Twitter timeline always brought a smile to my face. With the new one, I’m still delighted, but it just seems a bit less personal.

Edit: Original detective work regarding the image’s origin done by Steve Spillman

The Name

The narrative of Karl’s life is full of wild twists and turns, bawdy hookups, and antics that skirt both societal acceptability and often the law. In other words, perfect comedic material. And yet I feel it would be about 70% less funny if it weren’t called “DadBoner”.

The meaning of the name is never really addressed in the Twitter feed, in fact Karl seems to even forget he has a family the majority of the time. But without the goofy yet shocking name showing up retweeted in people’s timelines, I’m confident the feed would not have spread nearly as fast. Ask yourself: would you rather follow @KarlWelzein or @DadBoner?

Bold flavors? Karl approves

We are Karl Welzein

More than anything, Karl is a reflection of our society. A great deal of his personality is derived from advertising. Bereft of any taste of his own, yet considering himself a connoisseur, he gleefully recites slogans he’s heard on TV as he indulges himself to excess in the crummy products they are advertising. He considers a Top Shelf Margarita and Mango-Habanero wings the pinnacle of taste, because that’s what he’s been told by Chili’s ads and Guy Fieri. Events of actual importance, such as the death of Osama Bin Laden or the 9/11 anniversary occasionally pop up on his radar, but he treats them as another excuse to get drunk and repeat more slogans. The presidential candidate Karl identified most with this year was Herman Cain, because Karl also dreams of opening up his own pizza restaurant. When modern elections can actually be decided by the “he seems like a good guy to have a beer with” mentality, Karl takes that notion to it’s logical extreme: he doesn’t mind the sexual harassment allegations about Cain because he admits he’d do the exact same thing if he found himself in a position of power. Karl Welzein has been told to stand by his principles by the very same media that tells him what those principles are. It’s a brilliant, terrifying read on how people come to believe the things they do.

On that note of people being influenced by the media, I will admit that the worst hangover I had in 2011 may have in part been inspired by the below tweet, one of Karl’s weekly odes to Friday. I guess I just found the energy contagious:

Bold flavors, chest beefers, corncobs, sick of this you guys, and many more

As Mike Myers will gladly attest, you can’t underestimate the value of a good catch phrase, and DadBoner delivers them by the pound. In a time when so much “humor” involves restating tired memes, captioning a familiar photo for the zillionth time, or just throwing your hands up and saying “Fuck it, put some zombies in Return of the Jedi, who cares”, Karl’s unique brand of dialogue is a breath of fresh air. To attempt to compile a comprehensive list would be futile, but it’s safe to say I haven’t had this much fun trying to shoehorn quotes and references into conversations since the glory days of The Simpsons. In September, I tried to convince a friend that his movie production company should find out whoever the hell writes DadBoner, and turn it into a movie. I told him that the last time I could remember phrases this catchy was the stretch of time that Chappelle’s Show debuted its Rick James/Lil’ Jon sketches that had every male between the ages of 15-35 shouting “HWHAT??” and wearing “I’m Rick James, Bitch” shirts in public.

Clearly, you feel somewhat revolted encountering those played out quotes again, and I apologize for bringing them up. As we’ve all survived the great Charlie Sheen blitz of early 2011, we’ve seen how quickly a catchphrase can go from “winning” to infuriating. Twelve years ago your dad may have still been able to get a laugh from his Austin Powers impression three months after the movie came out. Nowadays on the internet, you might miss your opportunity to use a catchphrase without a scathing reprisal if you just show up a few hours late.

What’s amazing then, is that DadBoner’s way of describing his life only seems to grow more endearing as he spins more tales. His entirely unique, entirely quotable way of talking is either the result of a truly creative mind, or an amalgam of several individuals the author has known during his life. I picture it being a combination of a black sheep uncle, the guy who would still buy your high school buddies beer even though he graduated three years earlier and the youth sports coach you’d think was cool because they swore, rolled into one unfiltered righteous renegade. The best ideas make you think “I wish I thought of that.” DadBoner and perhaps the Wu-Tang Clan are the only people that have ever made me think “I wish I talked like that.”

His Life Sucks

When you first start following Karl, your impression is that he’s a fat drunken buffoon. You are correct. But you shouldn’t confuse Karl with other fat drunken buffoons. Unlike Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin, Karl doesn’t just play situations like “having a job that makes you miserable” or “enduring in a failing marriage” for laughs: his life actually sucks. Homer and Peter are (obviously) cartoon characters on the surface, but they are also cartoons inside, moving from one gag to the next and forgetting the crushing blow that life just dealt them. (Note: It’s important to remember that Homer was not always this way. Way before Frank Grimes came by for dinner and marvelled at Homer’s palace of a house and the photos of his many remarkable accomplishments, Homer was justifiably miserable with his lot in life, and at one point in time actually stood on the edge of a bridge with a boulder tied around him, contemplating ending it all.)

Karl has a lot in common with these two: lousy career, family difficulties, a general lack of respect from society as a whole. But unlike Simpson, Griffin and any number of other doltish sitcom dads, it really, really gets to him. It’s therefore fitting that this added dimension makes me want to compare Karl not to a cartoon, but to a character portrayed by a real person. The character he frequently reminds me of is David Brent of the British The Office. On The Office, we had the advantage of not only seeing Dawn glance at the camera after a particularly bawdy joke by David misfired, but also of then seeing David speak to the camera about how well the same joke had gone after it was done. This personality trait is shared by Karl, who manages to pull off the same feat 140 characters at a time. When Karl describes a bitchin’ karaoke performance where he takes his shirt off to sing Bon Jovi, or how he shared some laughs over some grossly inappropriate “guy humor” with a co-worker, we realize what’s really happening even as Karl continues to offend.

But, just like David Brent, this self-delusion of popularity and success is never fully maintained. It would be unrealistic if it were. Despair and depression inch their way into both men’s lives, as co-workers refuse to “lighten up”, and lack of talent and charm manifest themselves in realistic ways. David Brent ended up friendless, reprimanded by his superiors and literally begging to keep his job (he got fired.) Karl’s self-loathing shines through ever time he utters “sick of this” and heads to Paddy’s. Though at times he relishes the freedom of his newfound bachelor lifestyle that allows him to get drunk on a Tuesday, the other side of that coin is dealing with the filthy house that the kind of guy who gets drunk on a Tuesday ends up keeping. He fancies himself a macho cruiser who doesn’t play by the rules at work, but then he’s issued a well deserved week-long suspension for crapping outside the office. He embraces the highs whole hog, but also gets dragged down by the lows, wallowing in self-hatred for days at a time. We know he’ll eventually pull out of it, but the escape provided by a Lions game or a round of two dollar beers is only temporary; squalor and misery are inevitable for someone with as few goals and talents as Karl. But he lives life the same way he likes his Mango Hab wings: bold. And that flavor designation applies to the bad moments as much as the good.

The mystery

Who the hell is doing this? How have they resisted the urge to reveal themselves to the public for over a year and a half? What do they think about the enthusiastic replies and retweets their account generates? What is their plan? The internet is in the business of providing us with much more information than we want or need about so many things, it’s refreshing and a bit strange to encounter a real mystery. Whether I want to know who is responsible for DadBoner is something I remain extremely conflicted on. Would I still be able to read it the same way if it was revealed that it wasn’t the product of some clever unknown guy, writing from his basement, overwhelmed that his creation had taken off? What if it actually turned out to be a viral marketing campaign, or worse, some gigantic douche?

There’s also mystery built into the story line. We don’t know where Karl works. We don’t know Nosey Lady’s name. The story functions perfectly fine without these bits of information, but their omission is clearly intentional, which intrigues us further. What could Karl possibly do for a living? How long has he been doing it? Reading back through his old tweets brings up other questions. Karl didn’t tweet for an entire month between 9/3 and 10/3, 2010. When he got back, he said he’d had a mild heart attack. Was this an early break from an account that wasn’t getting the attention he hoped, or did the author just go on vacation? (Clearly, as someone who’s decided to write 3,000 words about DadBoner, I have thought about questions like these too much, but I did want to make it clear that I have REALLY thought about it too much.)

I also wonder why more people aren’t paying attention? A natural comparison, @shitmydadsays seemingly had over 500,000 people following it, a book and a TV deal in its first year of tweeting, and it was just posting every couple of weeks. DadBoner has steadily increased its following but still languishes with 4,000 less followers than novelty account @common_squirrel (sample tweet: “blink blink blink”.) There are fewer media properties that so obviously lend themselves to merchandising opportunities, but we don’t have Karl’s friendly face or quips on tshirts or coffee mugs. DadBoner the Movie or webseries seems like the rare sort of inevitable seeming event that might actually not suck. Are talks about this happening behind the scenes?

Speaking of the potentially lucrative value of Karl’s twitter feed, where are the imitators? I won’t claim that DadBoner is the first example of the long form fictional character Twitter feed. But on the internet, it doesn’t seem to matter who does it first, but who does it well first, and there’s no doubt that anyone else who decides to launch their own Twitter character will be pegged as doing “a DadBoner type thing.” In the previously linked AV Club interview with Patton Oswalt, he mentions two other accounts that are often tossed around in the same conversations as DadBoner: PeanutFreeMom and teendad13. Both accounts have not yet found the audience that Karl has, and though I haven’t spent much time reading them, both left me cold. There’s even someone running an account for Karl’s Wife Ann, which the less said about the better. Will someone else be able to create a Twitter character as beloved and developed as Karl? Or is DadBoner the first and last word on the art form?

Sidebar: Months ago, I figured my best shot at finding out who was behind the account was buying DadBoner.com. I just set up a crappy site that publishes his tweets. On October 25th, this comment was left by someone named Chris Cook, who apparently works for a production company named Madhouse Entertainment: “E-mail me Karl. Would love to talk further.” So at least someone in Hollywood is aware. Oh, and if you run DadBoner and would like the domain, please email me, it’s yours, I’m not holding it for ransom or anything, I just wanted to make sure some corncob didn’t get ahold of it.

In conclusion

In conclusion, holy crap, I just wrote the longest thing I’ve written since college and it’s about DadBoner. That fact alone should be enough to at least get you to follow him on Twitter, if not read his entire saga from the start. Will I be as excited about Karl at the end of 2012? That’s hard to say. Did the bold daily flavor he provided help 2011 go down smooth? Undoubtedly. When all is said and done, I’ll remember 2011 as the year an imaginary middle-aged man from Grand Blanc won the internet over with his carnal moves and take no prisoners lifestyle. And that’s no small feat, you guys.

Update: Joshua Slone has created Kindle files of all of Dadboner’s exploits from 2010 and 2011. There is no better way to read them. Get them here, just copy the .prc files over to your Kindle

Monday, 11/28

• Link to Han Solo Carbonite ice cube trays posted on kottke.org
• Artist Adam Koford posted a Twitter link to his (very awesome) WootShirt derby entry 

 Tuesday, 11/29

• A comment left on the RiffTrax Facebook page said “My love of Rifftrax lead to my purchase of my own DVD copy of “Revenge of the Sith” over the weekend.”
• I mailed off a sketch for the [Citation Needed] podcast to Scott Beckett, who does the movie pitches. Though I had this part of it weeks ago, I was still forced to look at it today, a part that involves him comparing the opening lines of the “pitch” to the Star Wars “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

Wednesday, 11/30

• Sitting around a conference table in the office, Mike brought up former FCC chairman Newt Minow. Sean remarked that he was only the second ever Newt he’d ever heard of, besides Gingrich of course.  Without realizing what I was doing, I chimed in about the Star Wars character Nute Gunray. I wasn’t sure who this character was, I just knew a character by that name existed. We all assumed he was one of Luke’s X-Wing pilots from the first couple movies. Turns out he is a trade federation guy from The Phantom Menace. I’m pretty sure they never say his name. I still knew it.  What the hell…

 Thursday, 12/1

• The ice cube trays pop up again on twitter.
• A link called “A great disturbance in the force…” on the front page of reddit
• Star Wars Seven Deadly Sins popped up again
• Co-worker links to Transformers/Star Wars hybrid shirt

Friday, 12/2

• I posted a link to the Wu-Tang video I made on Buzzfeed. While I was there, I saw a link to Star Wars explained by a mean person

Saturday, 12/3

• I try to keep the queue for [Citation Needed] stocked for a couple weeks of posts, so I had no idea that this would be queued up to post today. Even when you’re actively trying not to add any more Star Wars to the dicussion, the universe conspires against you. Fortunately, it’s pretty funny.

Sunday, 12/4

• R2D2 Nutcracker

Monday, 12/5

• And even though the week is technically over, I woke up to a Google Alert for “RiffTrax” in my email, directing me to a blog entry about the Star Wars Holiday Special.

I decided to go through all five Wu-Tang Clan studio albums and make a supercut of every time they say either “Wu-Tang” or one of the nine member’s names. I’ll pause for you to question every decision I’ve ever made in my life.

First of all, yes, this took a few hours. But it was a pleasant journey, like spending time with old friends you never get to see any more. In my life I’ve seen The Wu in concert at Nation in DC, took the Staten Island Ferry to visit the Wu-Wear shop on Victory Blvd and argued with friends over which Wu-Tang member best represented which of our friends (this last one is absolutely quite embarassing, especially when you revisit some of the content of the songs. Did RZA’s hard line five-percenter ideology best define me, or perhaps Ghostface’s rampant, unprintable misogyny on “Wildflower”?)

A few things you learn when you listen to every Wu-Tang album to try to isolate “Wu-Tangs” and their names (note: this only covers the five studio albums: 36 Chambers, Wu-Tang Forever, The W, Iron Flag and 8 Diagrams.)

• They say Wu-Tang a lot. It peaks with 36 Chambers, still gets brought up a lot on Forever, and sort of trickles out by the last two. I guess they really wanted to establish who they were. Note that I tried not to include repeated hooks like on “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing to F With” or “High as Wu-Tang Get” just because they sounded repetitive, and their were still plenty without them
• I enjoy thinking about what it would be like if other bands did this, if Led Zeppelin I was just full of lyrics about Led Zeppelin, or if Please Please Me mentioned The  Beatles 48 times in its 33 minutes.
• No solo albums, though I imagine the early ones have just as much.
• They also say just plain “Wu” a lot, but this is too difficult to isolate in a listenable form.
• They introduce everybody every chance they get on the first album. By the second album, people knew who they were so they adopted the “refer to yourself by your nickname for your nickname” technique that is so rarely pulled off. Meth becomes Hot Nickels, Raekwon is Chef, RZA unfortunately becomes Bobby Digital.
• RZA has by far the most mentions. Maybe he had a clause where if they didn’t keep talking about him, he’d put out another Bobby Digital album
• Iron Flag and 8 Diagrams are not as forgettable as I had thought. By the time both came out, I wasn’t going to obsess over them the way I did the other two. But it sounds like there’s some solid cuts on them. It’s telling, though, that the absolute standout is this bonus track from 8 Diagrams that sounds like a demo from 36 Chambers.
• Conversely, Wu-Tang Forever is just as full of filler as I remember. I had not re- listened to the “Papa Wu” intro since the day the album came out, and it is just a bizarre way to launch your second album. A 7 minute sermon decrying everything they’re about to extoll the virtues of on the album. A big “emperors new clothes” moment for everyone who had just cut school to buy it and had to pretend to like it. There are just as many songs that don’t seem to go anywhere, the unfortunate Black Shampoo and a bizarre female vocal interpolation of “MacArthur Park” that doesn’t feature a single rapper. Good thing Reunited and Triumph were so sweet.

Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang!

Light the sky on fire, folks

I realize this probably wasn’t big news everywhere and probably indicates more about what I’m paying attention to online.  But I had seen a couple posts about it already this week and after it popped up more than once, I was curious how widespread it was. The first place I went to check was io9, and they had…well, nothing.  Damn, theory busted. But hey, as someone who has paid their bills in part by mocking Twilight, this article “Why The Twilight Hate Has Gotten Boring” sounds interesting, or at least designed to generate  a bit of traffic. I’ll take a look.

“Twilight at its heart is no different from any other fantasy franchise. It’s like Star Wars – except it’s set on Earth and the goal is to penetrate Bella’s womb with some guy’s flaming seed, rather than shooting it into the Death Star.”

And, thesis inadvertently proven!  My thesis that I have yet to reveal to you… but will do right now: I don’t think the internet can go a week without writing about Star Wars.

On the surface, it seems like this would be the easiest thing to do. The last Star Wars movie that anyone still talks about came out in 1983. Here’s a list of some of the programs that were among the top ten rated TV shows that year: Simon & Simon, Falcon Crest, Kate & Allie and Hotel. Think back on the last time you heard someone mention any of those shows (I have literally never heard of Falcon Crest or Hotel.) Now think back on when the last time you saw or heard someone reference Star Wars. Was it a few hours ago? Earlier this week?

Evidently, Falcon Crest starred DadBoner

Using an entirely collective “we”, we never seem to tire of Star Wars references, retellings and reimaginings. Already made all the Star Wars video games? Make ‘em again out of Legos!  Need something to rap about, or a beat to rap over? Star Wars has you covered. I was stunned after Community, Family Guy and Muppet Babies, among others, all did one, that “doing a  Star Wars episode” doesn’t have it’s own TVtropes page.

But it gets better! Never even seen Star Wars? Not a problem. Got a cute kid that’s seen it? Even better. A cute kid that’s never seen it? Have three million views! Render scenes from the movie in different mediums: ASCII, pumpkin or crochet, people will want to post about them.

Those are pretty sweet actually...

But why? Why the hell have we not gotten tired of this? What else is there left to unearth from these three movies, unless it turns out that if you take every fourth word a character whose name doesn’t start with a vowel says, you get a sweet jerk chicken recipe? It’s become part of our shared culture, yes, but it’s also become a crutch, rendering potentially promising creative endeavors instantly familiar and stagnant.

And so, I propose that we, the collective internet, try to go a week without referencing Star Wars. That means no linking to the new items those glorious bastards at ThinkGeek come up with. It means no quoting Obi-Wan in your blog post headline (Yoda too.) It means no video reenactments. It definitely means no Twitter hashtag games.

Should this be easy? Of course it should. Will it be easy? I don’t think it will. Once you start keeping an eye on Star Wars references, you’ll notice them pop up in odd places. ESPN. Finance blogs. The first sentence of articles about Jurassic Park Blu-Rays.

I will take the pledge myself. It will probably be difficult. After all, this Pez dispenser sits on my desk every day at work:

Yes, the PEZ come out on his tongue

At RiffTrax, I’d venture every commentary we release contains a Star Wars joke, and we often have to go back through and make sure we don’t have too many. The Wikipedia book I just co-authored contains at least two Star Wars entries. Not to mention the fact that I was eating one of these while writing this post.

Let’s do it the week after Thanksgiving. 11/28 thru 12/4. As far as I know, there aren’t any new Star Wars movies coming out. There shouldn’t be any pressing need to write, blog about, or reference anything Star Wars related during that time. Think of it as a chance to expand your horizons, or to perhaps just sacrifice valuable clickthrus and retweets in the name of proving a point for a stranger.

I think we can do this people! After all, as a wise man once said: “Mesa day startin pretty okee-day with a brisky morning munchy, then BOOM! Gettin very scared and grabbin that Jedi and POW!”

A Week Without Star Wars: 11/28 – 12/4