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March Madness begins, as the “First Four” play in Dayton to see who will advance into the first round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament.Now, it’s no secret that sports fans are geeks.  (Arcane knowledge, fannish clothing, cosplay, fan gatherings, undying loyalty even when stuff sucks, hatred of stuff that’s just a little bit different, fantasy battles, questionable hygiene,  dining etiquette…)

Of course, there is that subtle Venn diagram overlap of “wonks” and “sports statisticians” which comes to the fore during March Madness, as millions seek to find the perfect bracket to win the adulation of millions (or at least your office mates).

I admit… I follow the trivia… and I like the underdogs, or, this year, the anteaters.  (Sadly, the Banana Slugs of UC Santa Cruz are Division III.]

But what about other brackets?  Why should sports fans have all the fun?

For your enjoyment, we offer the following Geek brackets:

Star Wars

Two different brackets, one of which is official.

Who will join Obi-Wan and Yoda as champion?  StarWars.com has the official bracket!

Meanwhile, there’s a Jedi tournament going on, with each side to meet in the final!    Jedi vs Sith!

The annual Geek Madness Championship, for gamers:

Nothing But Comics hosts an Image-specific tourney:

TheNBC! staff has taken the top 64 Image books hitting the stands in March and broken them up into four divisions:“The Horror” – Marlon Brando Division, Whimsy Sci-Fi Division, Nihilist Sci-Fi Division and The Kitchen Sink Division.

While USA Today plays “Heroes and Villains“:

To settle that last question, we need your help. We’ve set up a 32-character bracket, as part of Bracket Madness month, and each day you can vote for your favorite character to advance to the next round. Votes will be tallied at midnight eastern time, and the winning character will advance to the next round.

…and Cosmic Comix & Toys in Cantonsville, Maryland, offers “Cosmic Madness 2015“!

Muppet Madness gets some major corporate sponsorship from a casino:

[WHAT?!  Big Bird v. Snuffie?]

The Disney Nerds Podcast hosts: MOVIE MADNESS 2015

Movie Qualifications:  Only full length first run features released by Walt Disney Studios or Pixar qualify.  No Direct to DVD or releases by other Disney owned studios.  Ranking was determined by a Disney Nerds Podcast Team.  This is YOUR personal favorite list, we are not asking for the most popular, the most artistic, the most awards, this is about the movie that you are most fond off for what ever reason it may be.  What is YOUR favorite Disney animated feature!!

The WDW Radio Blog is sponsoring a tournament to select the best attraction at WDW’s Magic Kingdom!

Want to pit various fandoms against each other?   Epic Nerd hosts a multi-franchise-fandom bracket!

Top seeds: Batman, Super Mario, Lord of the Rings, Star]Trek.   [Hmmm…anyone want to fanfic that team-up?]

A nine-member selection committee of the biggest nerds and geeks I could gather (myself included) examined franchises from the genres of fantasy & adventure, science-fiction, video games, and comics.

After evaluating them using four criteria: modern popularity, commercial success, historic importance, and artistic value, each franchise was ranked and seeded.

…and in a similar vein, which property should be rebooted?  (Or exhumed, in some cases.)

Go to UnderScoopFire and vote!

In another tourney, the finals!  What is the Greatest Geek Moment in History?  FastCompany spends less than a week running the tourney!

Star Wars, The Internet, Ada Lovelace, DNA?

Okay…  You probably need a break to get some refreshments…

Need to get into the spirit?  Perhaps some Kentucky rye to go with the Wildcats?  It’s MASH MADNESS!

Or maybe some brewskis?

How about hues instead of brews?

Or maybe some rhythms to go with those hues?

The Victory Formation hosts the Final 68: The Worst Things in Sports.  Media, Fans, Athletes, and Etcetera are the regionals.

Tired of basketball?  Playing out a 2015 March Madness Bracket of All 30 MLB Teams

Insider Higher Ed takes the NCAA bracket, and determines winners based on brains, not brawn!

It’s time once again to fill out those March Madness brackets, and what better way to predict the winner of this year’s National Collegiate Athletic Association men’s basketball tournament than to compare how the teams succeed in the classroom?

Here’s how Inside Higher Ed‘s bracket works: to determine the winners, we first look to the Academic Progress Rate, the N.C.A.A.’s multiyear measure of a team’s classroom performance. When two teams tie, we turn to the N.C.A.A.’s Graduation Success Rate, which measures the proportion of athletes on track to graduate within six years. In the event of a G.S.R. tie, we then turn to the Federal Graduation Rate, a slightly different formula that the government uses to track graduation rates.

This tournament’s championship round was a nail-biter, going into double overtime, with the teams tying on both the A.P.R. and the G.S.R.

…and then there are the Big Brains at Critical Theory who ponder the great question of our age: Of philosophy’s many personalities, which is most likely to ruin a sporting event?

Is it Diogenes, who rushes the field, rambling “I’m looking for an honest man!” while violently shaking Bill Belichick? Can that compare to the $8 hot dog ruined by Jacques Lacan who reminds you “the phallus is in the bun,” or Karl Marx’s multiple aborted attempts to retake the means to produce “the wave” for proletariat revolution?

Comics Should Be Good returns for their seventh annual 2015 DC/Marvel Comic Character Tournament!  This time, it’s cinematic characters, and actors!

Or maybe your prefer SUPER ANIMALS!

South Park has their “Bro Down”.

What’s the MOST 90s band?  (Not the best, but the one which best represents the 90s in music.)

Girls in Capes has their Sisterhood tournament.  Final Four!

io9 has their tournament.

For sports widows….  Leading men of romance novels:

Got a favorite program on National Public Radio?  KPCC offers a tournament!

ComicMix once again highlights webcomics!

TV Couples

Which TV should come back on the air?  Pushing Daisies, or Firefly?

Best TV Theme  [This is really disorganized.  “Scooby-Doo”?  Which one?!  Should have been better researched.]

Best Scripted Shows

…and my favorite bracket:

Lionsgate has released a new clip from The Hunger Games movie featuring the first meeting between Katniss Everdeen and her fashion stylist Cinna (played by musician Lenny Kravitz). The clip is embedded above–what do you think?

Hunger Games book fans will note that this bit of dialogue is not featured in the actual first novel. Fans initially protested the choice, but the clip has drawn 7,000 “likes” on Facebook as of this writing. Entertainment Weekly deemed Kravitz to be “the most intriguing casting choice.”

According to contactmusic.com, Fandango executive VP of ticket sales Rick Butler saw the “biggest first day advance ticket sales in our company’s nearly 12-year history” for The Hunger Games.

continued…

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By Mark Peters

With the arrival of the new Muppet movie, Kermit, Miss Piggy, Beaker, and our other felt friends are everywhere. There’s no escaping Jim Henson’s creations, and few of us would want to (unless the movie happens to suck, which is doubtful, given the stewardship of Jason Segel, who showed major Muppet mojo in the heartbreaking and spit-taking Forgetting Sarah Marshall). It’s a good time to look at the history of the word Muppet, which has some meanings that would make the Swedish Chef bork with outrage.

Thanks to interviews with Muppet creator Jim Henson, we know Muppet is not a blend of marionette and puppet, though that theory has been appearing since 1959, just four years after Henson invented the crew, who appeared in pre-Sesame Street and Muppet Show fare such as commercials for Wilkins coffee. I love this part of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of Muppet: “Any of a number of humorously grotesque glove puppets.” That phrasing seems humorously grotesque itself, but if it helps a Martian understand a Muppet, I guess it’s worthwhile.

In the eighties, the word took on several meanings. Since 1983, a muppet has been “A lure made to resemble a young squid.” I don’t want to give my enemies (arch or mortal) any ideas, but since calamari is squid, I’m pretty sure this kind of muppet could lure me anywhere. In British prison slang, a muppet is “A prisoner with psychiatric problems; a vulnerable inmate liable to be bullied or harassed by others.” As this 1998 use shows, Muppets aren’t the only Henson creation to carry this meaning: “Their favourite targets are the fraggles, the nonces and the muppets. But anyone showing tell-tale signs of fear is a target for Britain’s jail bullies.”

A muppet can also be an idiot, though I have no idea why, since the Muppets are among the least idiotic members of the puppet community (Elmo excluded). However, this part of the OED’s definition sort of rings true: “someone enthusiastic but inept; a person prone to mishaps through naivety.” With the exception of curmudgeons (RIP Andy Rooney) such as Oscar, Statler, and Waldorf, the Muppets are brimming with optimism from their pieholes to their puppetholes. Green’s Dictionary of Slang also has examples of muppet meaning a child or a cop.

These Muppet meanderings are similar to the meanings smurf has taken on over the years. While most know Smurfs as blue elves with a disturbingly low female population, other smurfs or smurfers make smurf dope: blue crystal meth. A smurf is also “an inexperienced or short prison officer,” as Green’s puts it, and a gay man who’s youngish and blonde. Plus, smurf is one of the most awesome euphemisms for the f-word in the known universe, as seen in words like clustersmurf, mothersmurfer, ratsmurf, and fan-smurfing-tastic. If I didn’t know better, I’d think smurf has an acronymic origin, like fubar and milf. Despite the PG origin, something about smurf feels blue in the naughty sense.

When a word is as fun to say as Smurf or Muppet, there’s no stopping how people will use it. Now that the Muppets are back, who knows what this mega-appealing word will soon describe? I have no idea, but let me suggest a meaning, Urban Dictionary-style, that I’ve used and suspect others use: “A harmless, lovable person.” I used this sense when I called my friend Neil a Muppet a few years ago, as Neil was stuck giving a presentation that typically made students reach for pitchforks and torches. This pernicious presentation made presenters long for a force field, or at least student-proof chicken wire. In calling Neil a Muppet, I

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I was talking to KB about sesame street and we started listing our favorite muppets. I seem to love the ones who don't speak english (well): Beaker, Swedish Chef, Animal & the aliens who go "yepyepyepyep uh huh uh huh." All time favorite though, ever since I was a lil kiddie, is Ernie. I just love his optimism, his laugh and in my opinion, he had the best songs: "Put Down the Duckie," "Rubber Duckie," "Dance Myself to Sleep" and my all time favorite "I'd Like to Visit the Moon." This song definitely goes on my travel mix.

Whenever the song came on Sesame Street, I stopped whatever I was doing to give it my full attention, and after rewatching the video, I see where I get my sitting on the moon sketches :)