It was a shellacking. A runaway, a landslide if you will. It was a beating. It was a bombing. It was a goddamn slaughter. Yes ladies and germs, for the first time in Battle Royale history, we have ourselves a definite winner and a definite loser. No more of these close races and photo finishes. No more squeak victories or out and out ties. This was an old fashioned thumping baby. Much like when Ronald Reagan trounced poor Walter Mondale in the 1984 election, or when readers voted Jason Todd off the proverbial island of Gotham, the Brothers' Marx kicked the Three Stooges collective asses right down Hollywood Blvd. and right up Mulholland Dr.. Battered and bruised, even by typical Stooge standards (it's usually Moe, not someone from outside the family, that does the battering and the bruising) this Battle Royale, our eighth such rodeo, was downright brutal.
To make my rant official, here are the numbers. The Marx Brothers won, hands down, with a margin of thirty-one votes - and there were only forty-five votes cast. With a victory of 38 to 7, or, for the more statistically-minded among us, 84% to 16%, Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and even Gummo, who was not in any of the movies but who are we to exclude him, are the victors of the eighth Battle Royale. Meanwhile, Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, Joe and Curly-Joe, are left weeping in the aisles. I figured this was going to be a Marxist victory from minute one, but I never saw such a shocking disparity coming. I mean, that was even worse than the thumping Obama gave to that crazy rich white guy last month. A real old school throwdown. My one friend, a standing member of the Three Stooges fan club (guess who he voted for), said that cinephiles will always vote Marx over Stooge. I suppose he was right - in spades.
What really gets my goat though (that's still a saying, right?) is the low overall voter turnout. With just 45 votes cast in all, this was not one of the better turnouts (66 votes cast in the Kelly/Astaire Hollywood Hoofer bout stands as the record) - and with this rather low voter turnout, my hopes of this becoming some sort of big deal, maybe even getting into triple digits someday, are violently dashed upon the shores of....oh forget it. You know what I mean, let's get out there and vote vote vote people. And tell all your friends and enemies to vote vote vote as well. And when will you get that chance to vote vote vote again, you ask? Well, I'll tell ya. In just a few days as Battle Royale #9 is announced right here at this very Bat Channel. The opponents, you ask? Well, you'll just have to wait and see on that one. I can tell this though - it will include some silent cinema royalty for sure.
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