Bangers IV is finished. Bangers V is a year away. It’s time for a different bracket.
Today, we begin the process of determining who the biggest weirdo is. This doesn’t mean who’s the worst, or who’s the best, or who we do or don’t like. This means: Who is the weirdest?
When I was 18 years old, I participated in a Crazy Hat competition. I wore the head of my chicken costume around all day. I lost. In talking with the judge, later, after my friend John (who’d worn a hat with all sorts of tentacles and bells sticking out of it) had beaten me, I was told something I’d never forget:
“Your hat was funny. His hat was CRAZY.”
It’s true.
So, as we begin this process, let us focus on one thing: Who is truly weird? We can love them, we can hate them, we can feel largely indifferent about them. But who is weird?
Three additional guidelines:
- We’re not taking political figures. They have too much of a built-in advantage. We’ll make exceptions if we judge said figure’s weirdness to transcend their political activity, like in the cases of Alex Jones and Marianne Williamson, but we aren’t going to put Ted Cruz or Rachel Maddow in this bracket. Yeah, they’re weirdos. But we’re trying to keep this fun.
- We will take a type of person, but they need to be extremely specifically defined. This is a workaround specifically built so we can include Full-Time Political Twitter Warriors, a category which includes those Krassenstein guys and that Catturd guy and the rest. Just seems fun to lump them all in as being the same person. Because they are.
- Historical weirdos are fine. I nominated John the Baptist. Did you hear about that guy’s diet?
Nominations are open from now until Noon EDT on Tuesday, May 2nd. You can nominate using this form. Once we have our nominees, we’ll do some preliminary voting to figure out who’s well-known enough to make this fun. Then? Well, you know the process from there.
We’ll see you soon, fans of The Barking Crow. But until then, as the saying goes:
Let’s Get Weird.
