and the Best Christmas Movie is...

We completed our Bracket Club Series voting just in time for Christmas (sadly I didn't update until now)... however the truly good ones you can watch all year right?

Our Final Four were "Elf", "Christmas Vacation", "Home Alone" and "Its A Wonderful Life"

After a passionate discussion, we ended up with "Its A Wonderful Life" as the overall victor.

Here's a bunch of little known facts about our winner. And of course a video to honor the second place film... (which I think should have won, but whatever, its over. I'm over it. Attaboy, Clarence, I guess.)

Here is a link to the field of 64 Christmas Movies or Specials, and how things played out.

Guess what, In February our tournament is "Break Up Songs"! So I'll ask you for some input - What are the top 10 best break-up songs? (any answer is taken into account for seeding) 

Now I don't want all of you just saying the obvious winner, I want some variety!

For inspiration, you can check out a great episode on This American Life about break-ups.

BCS: 90 Sitcoms

With everyone on the edge of their ergonomically correct work chair, I didn't want to wait any longer to post the results of the 90s Sitcom bracket.

These were our rules:

1. We go matchup by matchup until the round is over before moving into the next round

2. Everyone present gets a vote and majority wins

3. For any close calls (win by 2 or less), both sides will get an opportunity to make their case for the reason their choice is a better tv show.

                                                         a. This can be done verbal or through the use of media such as youtube clips (a laptop will be hooked up to the TV for  viewing)

                                  b. Once both sides have had a chance to make their argument we will re-vote

c. There is only one opportunity to revote per matchup

4. In the event of a tie (even after a revote) we will perform a phone a friend  (selected at random) to be the deciding vote, which is final

source

Some of our Biggest Arguments: Doogie Howser MD vs The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Married With Children vs Saved By The Bell, The Simpsons vs. Full House, Friends vs Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and the "blue collar battle" of Roseanne vs. Home Improvement

The Final Four were a predictable (yet respectable): Friends, Seinfeld, Fresh Prince, and Full House

The Overall Winner was: SEINFELD!!!  

To view the entire completed bracket go to this link.

Below I've added more stuff - mostly because I'm still hopped up on sugar from eating gushers and drinking spiked capri suns....

In honor of Seinfeld - here are some scenes we love: The Festivus and The Contest. And we can't be all that shocked it won, after this national survey.  I also happen to love this twitter site that presents plausible Seinfeld plot lines if the show were still on air today.

Despite our differences in voting, we found a uniting love in theme songs. They really don't make intros like they used to... in the 90s there was always an awesome song and a montage of exaggerated hijinx. I miss those days.

When Perfect Strangers was on the chopping block and someone said "who even knows the theme song?" About half of us burst out in unison "stand-ing TALL, on the wings or our dreams" And when Living Single made its exit, Sarah who had championed the show,  sang us a slow jam sad version of "In a 90s kind of world... I'm glad I've got my girls". Also I feel it was the theme song that got "Salute Your Shorts" the win over "Hey Dude."

In the end there can only be one winner, which leaves a lot of fallen soldiers and sad voters. But we had fun with clips and fights and Geno's Pizza Rolls. (speaking of clips... here's some classics from Friends, and Simpsons, and Saved By The Bell)

Finally, I give you Carlton, to dance this one out....

Do you have any grievances to air over our voting? (I'm still upset about a first round loss for Pete and Pete) 
Do you have any favorite moments from 90s shows? (sadly I tried to think of some for Full House and came up short - is that blaspheme?)

Bracket Club Series

This past weekend we took something that had been brewing between my cousin Ryan and Neil and I and we subjected it to our friends. Now I'm presenting it to the public...

See with all this down time as of late, we've gotten in the habit of choosing a topic and then discussing at length the "winners" and "losers" with in said topic (best Jay-Z song, best band front man, my career, etc). Soon we began organizing and seeding these things and before we knew it, we had full NCAA-esque brackets to determine an objective winner in subjective categories.

Not to seem like a small recluse group that does internet searches, and makes charts... we emailed our buddies, and before we knew it, a BRACKET CLUB SERIES was formed. We plan to meet almost monthly (or whatever) and kindly discuss (or fight about) any topic we feel like discussing. Really, its just a reason to gather and have fun!

First up was 90s Sitcoms... and even the term "sitcom" was up for debate (must it include a laugh track? can it be a cartoon? etc)

We collected everyone's top 10 votes plus honorable mentions, applied a point system to the votes, and used that point system to seed the bracket. We had the standard field of 64 (yes, there were 64 shows from the 90s that we used!) and we took on the hard work of whittling it down to just one (hey, someone had to do it).

Below, I've separated out each of the four regions, because I feel that's the easiest way to view things.
Also here's a link to the full bracket.

Since I know you're so very into this - I"m kidding (I'm not kidding) I'm going to add a level of suspense and not post the results just yet. Also, I need time to figure out which free online website will let me. Enjoy!