Hey folks!

The Best Album of 1988 machinery is starting to move! Slow and creaky, but moving. I’m going to rev it up slowly but surely this week, and maybe by the end of it, we’ll be fully in our 1988 era. Let’s see what happens!

In case you’re just tuning in, before each tournament I invite voters to fill out a prediction bracket form. During the tournament, getting the Round 1 matches correct is 1 point, then 2 points in Round 2, 4 points in Round 3, and so on. The bracket with the most points at the end is the winner. This is generally for fun, but there is a prize at the end of the tournament rainbow: the privilege to choose any qualifying album to place in the next tournament, in this case, 1988. (Audience: Oooohhhhh)

Also, because I’m me, every week during the tournament, I take the current results and turn them into a Billboard-style Top 20 countdown, which I post in the newsletter. Generally, this is a snapshot of an ever-evolving thing, and has no real bearing on the tournament — I just like Top 20 charts.

However, again because I’m me, I do another thing where I track each week’s chart by points as well. Every week, each bracket in the Top 20 gets points based on position — 20 points for being #1, 19 points for being #2, 18 for #3, and so on. I do this to reward longevity, those who picked the most winning matches. After all, you can get every match correct, but if you don’t get the last one, you don’t win. And that, to me, is a little rough. Take it from someone who loses the contest in a big way every year — getting a lot of matches right is impressive, and should be rewarded!

So with that in mind, here are the initial, “pure” versions of the Top 5, by predictions and by chart points.

TOP 5 BY PREDICTIONS
1. Dead Leaves and a Dirty Bracket (417 points, 116 correct out of 127)
2. Whiskey Tango Hotel November? (397 points, 111/127)
3. I Am Trying to Bake Your Tart (396 points, 104/127)
4. Alpha Delta Kilo (386 points, 112/127)
5. PSYCHOBRACKETOLOGY (381 points, 101/127)

TOP 5 BY TOP 20 CHART POINTS
1. ALL RESEARCH AND SUCCESSFUL DRUG POLICY SHOWS THAT TREATMENT SHOULD BE INCREASED AND LAW ENFORCEMENT DECREASED WHILE ABOLISHING MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES (237 points)
2. Dead Leaves and a Dirty Bracket (227 points)
3. Party Hard (197 points)
4. The Revenge Of Flimsy Steve (176 points)
5. Alpha Delta Kilo (164 points)

However, since Best Album by-laws state that a person cannot win two prizes in the same prediction bracket — meaning Dead Leaves and a Dirty Bracket can’t win twice, despite placing twice — then these Top Fives need to be revised to reflect that, with a bracket keeping its highest position in whichever list, and getting booted from the other one. The revised list looks like this, with the added caveat that I pretty much never award prizes past third place, and often not even then.

TOP 3 POTENTIAL PRIZE WINNERS - PREDICTIONS
1. Dead Leaves and a Dirty Bracket (417 points, 116/127)
2. Whiskey Tango Hotel November? (397 points, 111/127)
3. I Am Trying to Bake Your Tart (396 points, 104/127)

TOP 3 POTENTIAL PRIZE WINNERS - TOP 20 CHART POINTS
1. ALL RESEARCH AND SUCCESSFUL DRUG POLICY SHOWS THAT TREATMENT SHOULD BE INCREASED AND LAW ENFORCEMENT DECREASED WHILE ABOLISHING MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES (237 points)
2. Party Hard (197 points)
3. The Revenge of Flimsy Steve (176 points)

Now, you may have noticed I changed the title of the lists. The question is: will there be enough open slots to actually award prizes? (Frankly, that’s always the question that haunts these tournaments.) We won’t know until we a) open up Best Album of 1988 nominations; b) get a whole bunch of nominations over the course of a couple weeks or so; c) count each nomination as a vote, add them up, and put all the nominated albums in a list, from most noms to least; d) see how many slots there are left open after doing that. It all depends on where the list gets cut off. (Usually what happens is that if I cut the list off at, say, 14 nominations, then there’s like 118 qualifying albums with ten open slots, but if I extend it to 15 nominations, now there’s 146 qualifying albums and no open slots. I wish it was a reliable number every time, but it can vary anywhere from 20 to 2.)

That said, while I like to have a bunch of slots open to give away (or keep for myself), the very first two slots are always saved for the two #1 winners, in this case, Dead Leaves and a Dirty Bracket and ALL RESEARCH AND SUCCESSFUL DRUG POLICY SHOWS THAT TREATMENT SHOULD BE INCREASED AND LAW ENFORCEMENT DECREASED WHILE ABOLISHING MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES. If for some reason there’s only one slot (*crosses self*), then only the Prediction Winner (Dead Leaves) will get a prize.

So, those are the Prediction Bracket winners! I know who most of them are, but a few I don’t, so hopefully everyone in the Top 5 will identify themselves on Bluesky and will be ready to select an album for 1988 when the time comes.

All for now, look for another newsletter tomorrow as the machinery continues to grind forward.

Thanks!

Kent