For yesterday’s battle (Jim Thorpe vs. John Oliver), I’ll have to go with Thorpe. We got a couple arguments in Oliver’s favor—we’d get to hear him say “Whot?”, and he’s English—but for Thorpe we heard a lot more, including his uniqueness as greatest athlete of all time, and that we could save money on the helmet if that were required. We also got the following bad reason: “the chance to hear him say, ‘I’ve been asked to advise those of you who are following this talk on social media, whatever that means, to use “octothorpe talktothorpe.”‘” Even that bad reason ain’t so bad, also it’s got 3 levels of quotation nesting, which counts for something right there. What iced it for Thorpe was this comment from Tom: “Seeing as he could do everything better than everyone else, just by giving it a go, he would surely give an incredible seminar.”
And for our next contest, it’s the Bard of Newark vs. a man who’s only in this contest because it was hard for me to think of 8 people whose name ended in f, whose entire fame comes from the decades-old phrase, “Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff.” So whaddya want: riffs on Anne Frank and suburban rabbis, or some classic 80s beats? I dunno. I think Roth would be much more entertaining when question time comes along, but he can’t scratch.
Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?
The full bracket is here, and here are the rules:
We’re trying to pick ultimate seminar speaker. I’m not asking for the most popular speaker, or the most relevant, or the best speaker, or the deepest, or even the coolest, but rather some combination of the above. I’ll decide each day’s winner not based on a popular vote but based on the strength and amusingness of the arguments given by advocates on both sides. So give it your best!