Tournament of Everything Round 3: Cleveland Region

At Jacobs Field

9 Procrastination vs. 5 Rushmore

I think I would have appreciated Rushmore as much as I do at almost any time in my life. I am forever falling for women who I'm I can never be with, and I've almost always feel that I'm simultaneously ahead of and behind the curve. It should be obvious enough by now that I enjoy focusing on the little extras, rather than the heart of the matter; founding and running several clubs while getting crappy grades at a top school is just the kind of stupid shit I'd do.
Rushmore also provided me with two great fantasy baseball names, although the Rushmore Beekeepers and Max Fisher Players never quite lived up to the high standards set by their founder.

But The Tournament of Everything is not just about personal preferences. Rushmore also is the best movie Wes Anderson has made. It paved the way for Bill Murray to take on funny, yet unwacky, roles, (albeit with varying success, although Lost in Translation more than offsets the utter nothingness of Broken Flowers). It also manages to make unrequited love funny and kind of sad and sweet all at the same time, as sometimes it actually can be. And in the end, the guy doesn't get the girl (I'm not giving anything away, honest), and that's perfectly OK.

Heady stuff for Procrastination to deal with, but somehow, this bully can manage.
I really don't know anyone who is a better procrastinator than I am. My "ability" borders on pathological. But sometimes, it's kind of fun. You can get blog reading done. You can join your hallmates on an impromptu trip to Meijer that suddenly ends up having five people in the car. You can get a text message to go see the Elephants march down 34th Street. But Procrastination is a sneaky bastard. It demands that you pay attention to it, feed it and finally, that you vanquish it.

Yes, I said vanquish it. Procrastination is about putting off, not about abstaining. Eventually, shit gets done. And Rushmore is happy to take out the trash. Rushmore 88, Procrastination 83.

6 Kari Byron vs. 10 Prague

If you were to ask me, based on all the evidence available, I'd say that Kari Byron is probably from that small subset of women so incredible you can scarcely believe that they exist. She's smart, capable, quirky, game for almost anything, confident and both sexy and cute. She also got her current job by serving as a butt model. Also, when she's not sculpting, she makes a living by disabusing people of erroneous notions and faulty received wisdom. Few people on TV don't contribute to the dumbing down of America _ she's actually ensmartening us. Prague, of course, is unbelievable in its own way. Twisting, medieval streets wend their way between buildings spanning six of seven centuries. The beer is indeed cheap, plentiful, sweet and cold, like water from the well on a hot day. The women can be drop-dead stunning. There's a giant modern-art pendulum ticking away across the Vltava River from the old town, meant to remind people that all regimes must come to an end. It was inspired, of course, by the Velvet Revolution.

Prague has already bounced one incredible woman from the tournament, but Kari Byron's job as myth-buster kept her in this one for longer. Did we mention that she fences and throws knives? Yeah, well, in Prague they throw people -- out windows. Prague 114, Kari Byron 111, 3OT.