Ok, I thought I'd try to make an effort to share for the second round. So here it is:

Chris Rayola vs Marius Mollenhauer
= Marius Mollenhauer
He's the only guy I know at all of the two. And he does have some trust issues about other players. But he's always been good to provide vids himself. Besides, Holy Moly.....that's funny.
 
Eric Habrich vs Stefan Baczynsky
= Stefan Baczynsky
They're both quite good at there respective games.  But the coin has spoken.

lars.. he's ok i suppose  

Royola is great at many games thats why alot vote for him


no one from MKDD,SMK,SMSC

can compare to MJ or HAB!

Sleep seemed way more important yesterday, so another 2 for 1 vote sharing day...

Lars Nouwen vs. Martin Morissette
Voted for Nouwen. Martin got the vote from me last round, but unfortunately for him, he's now matched up against a guy I know. That alone was mostly enough to take my vote in this round. Like first round, I've got nothing bad to say about Lars, so he had nothing working against him. As for what is good about him, if nothing else, Lars' screen name made for a good trivia question in IRC. Plus, if I would've voted for Martin, Barber would've snapped over me not voting for Snap. Oh snap!

David Grard vs. Armin Huber
Voted for Grard. This was almost a coin flip, and I ended up basing my vote on the bios since I don't know the guys. Grard's mentioned helping out the community by releasing videos, so I went with that. Armin got screwed here, but I feel better knowing that my vote wasn't the deciding one. Still, sorry Armin.

Nathan Stinson vs. Travis Nelson
Voted for Stinson. I voted for both of these guys last round, but Travis only got the squeaker vote for being someone I knew of. Stinson, however, has been a pretty nice guy in chats with me for a couple years now, and is a staffer, so that seemed like more than enough.

Michael Jongerius vs. Peter Elsaesser
Voted for Jong. Another group of two that I voted for last round. Michael was a pretty easy pick. He seems like a decent guy whenever I've seen him talk in AIM, he has some vids that are nice, some dex ghosts which are also nice (and faster than hell), and he has actually been accessable in his time as World Champ, something I can't say for Elsaesser.

4/4 that day, though they were all over seeds.

Jamie White vs. Stefan van Dijke
Voted for White. Stefan got kind of screwed in my voting. I've heard he's a nice guy, but he got matched against Hines first round (one of my favorite 3 seeds), and now he's against Jamie, who I don't know well, but I know he has been a great addition to SMK. Still waiting to pull the home schooled vote swing on him...get ready for 3rd round, Jamie.

Paul Tanney vs. Francois Chu
Voted for Tanney. Paul cheaps out another vote here almost exclusively for his help in creating this contest. Not quite sure how Paul's matches have more draw than almost everyone else...

Alex Penev vs. Ian Morley
Voted for Penev. Alex is one of the guys I talk to most online, primarily because of IRC now, but I've known him for years and have little to say against him. I'd like him more if he wasn't so good at Kart 64, but what can you do?

Bart Savelkouls vs. Steven Gutierrez
Voted for Steven. Maybe I'm underestimating how well liked Bart is/was, but I think Steven got some pretty easy seeding for rounds 1 and 2. Still, he takes the vote for being so willing to help other people out with videos and strategies, and toning down his MB antics.

Another 4/4...I'm 11/12 for this round now (11 streak going)...un-freakin'-believable.

From now on, I think I'm only gonna comment matches where I actualy have things to say, or add only small comments....

Lars Nouwen vs Martin Morissette
-My vote: Martin Morissette
My vote went for the home boy here.

David Grard vs Armin Huber
-My vote: Armin Huber

Nathan Stinson vs Travis Nelson
-My vote: Nathan Stinson
I really like what Travis did in the SMK world, but that was long ago. Nathan is still around, and a great guy. He's even helping me with the new YV sc strat as I type this

Michael Jongerius vs Peter Elsaesser
-My vote: Micheal Jongerius
Again, I gotta give my vote to the "newer" guy. I definitely know him better than Peter. Jongerius seems quite dominant so far in this contest, so that's kinda scary for things to come.

Jamie White vs Stefan van Dijke
-My vote: Jamie White
I pretty much voted for Jamie for the same reasons I did in round 1. I just know him more than Stefan.

Paul Tanney vs Francois Chu
-My vote: Paul Tanney

Alex Penev vs Ian Morley
-My vote: Alex Penev
Alex is great.

Bart Savelkouls vs Steven Gutierrez
-My vote: Steven Gutierrez
Steven is way too lucky with his oponents. This guy should not have recieved my vote in round 2, but concidering Bart is a total stranger to me, it would have been unfair to vote against Steven. I chatted with him many hours, and as annoying as he can be, there still were a few worthwhile chats. So that was the deciding factor.


There you have it...

LpS

Lars Nouwen vs. Martin Morissette
Martin. Lars would've gotten my vote against most other people and probably will in the next round, but I was really rooting for Martin here.

David Grard vs. Armin Huber
Armin. Armin has freestyle rapped with me and he's German. Come on!

Michael Jongerius vs. Peter Elsaesser
Michael..know him much better and he's a nice guy.

Paul Tanney vs. Francois Chu
Voted Paul, know him better.

Alex Penev vs. Ian Morley
Penev...just know he's well known in mk64

Bart Savelkouls vs. Steven Gutierrez
Voted Steven here.

Well, since Louis is weaseling his way out talking about many of the matchups, I figure I'll have to do double duty and ramble on for hours...be prepared...

William Lacey vs. Michael Fried
Voted for Lacey. This is maybe the best matchup of round 2 so far. Not because I had a difficult time deciding my vote, or because it was hotly contested, but because the personalities of these two are so...unique. I think I'm gonna have to make this one into multiple paragraphs...

Lacey first...I haven't talked to him much, only started maybe a week ago in IRC, but from what I see, he seems to be a really cool guy. Admittedly, when I saw his first cross-dressing pic, I thought it was a bit odd, but the Susan nickname was quite humorous, and I guess whatever he wants to do is his business. The 2nd pic took it to another level of "whoa," though still, just like Bobby Brown's right to sing horrible songs, it's his prerogative. He has, however, been a great sport about it, being able to laugh at himself, which I think is a great quality. Plus, he may be in women's clothing, but I think it probably takes some mammoth balls to release something like that in this type of community, where people may readily judge you based on something like that.

Annnnnyway, after talking about his clothing selection for that long, I probably should mention that he's also great a Kart. However, no one knows about his horrible childhood. He never wanted to play Kart, it was all due to the pressure of his maniacal parents. Truly a sad story, but he has persevered, climbed his way out of the underworld lake, and moved on to the 3rd round of a contest of questionable importance. Bravo Lacey!

Now, for Fried...he also has been in IRC lately, so I've had some time to be introduced properly. I guess I kind of lost interest in voting for him when he tried to get me banned from Kart 64...yeah, that was probably the moment. I don't know what it is, but something about people accusing me of cheating just makes my opinion of them waver. Especially when it was mostly unfounded accusations, and they even continued after Louis and Booth vouched for me.  

If that wasn't enough, the vote begging didn't help. I think it's nice that he put the juggling video online - stuff like that is always welcome - and I can see making some jokes about "I'll release better if you vote for me," but this was to the extreme. Maybe I just don't know when this guy is serious or joking, but after I hear something 30 times, I tend to believe that's the person's stance.

The Kart = Chicks stuff, though still thoroughly beaten into the ground and a stolen joke, has been toned down slightly, so I guess that kind of speaks for him. I also haven't heard an anagram in a couple weeks, which is fantastic. Overall though, I think we learned 3 important lessons...

1) Lacey is more attactive that you.
2) Whalls is unbannable.
3) "Fries" is a common typo.

Important lessons indeed.

Mark Jones vs. Prashant Bhoja
Voted for Jones. As I said in the first round, Mark is one of the group of 3 regulars from my fake chats (Jones, Sabbagh, Booth), and I don't give those roles out to just anyone. Definitely one of my favorite guys to talk to online. And have you seen his vid? He's like the Tiger Woods of golf! Unbelievable!

Thomas Grandjean vs. Cooper Lovera
Voted for Grandjean. This was a tough match for me to decide. On the one hand, Grandjean is great at the game I play most, and even was a staffer there for a while, which as I've said time and again gets mega bonus points. However, Cooper seems considerably more active on the MB, and even mentioned that he "didn't want to kill the humor," which I thought was great. Had a hard time voting against that...sorry Coop.

Jon Prentice vs. Andy Launspach
Voted for Prentice. Louis said that I should vote Andy, and I understand where he was coming from with it. Andy did a lot for the community back in 1997, and he has been fine in his 2004 time around. Still, what it boils down to is that I don't think I know Andy any more than I know Jon here, despite talking to Andy multiple times. However, justly or unjustly, I do have some negative feelings about Andy still (stemming from 2000 primarily), and I do not have those for Jon, who, from what I've read seems like a nice guy.

Another 4/4 - the streak continues! Some pretty interesting matches today, and the future ones look like they will be good as well. Looks like this contest is picking up steam.

Louis  

LOL Fried.  I honestly thought you were joking about those accusations for whalls.  Well ok, he's had a few, but I have his tape with me, and it had pretty much all his best stuff.  He has validated himself, so that's out of the way.

Yes, he continued to joke about cheating in further IRC conversations, since you were overreacting to it and all, which of course, maikes the joke even funnier.  Or else he'd have ended it there.  He'lll drag out the joke as long as it's still funny, and apparetly it was.

Oh yes, ask Jones about unbannable.  he has a thing called IP Ban if it ever got to that.   He did submit A 1'27 time but not a 1'27"00 like people that didn't know the event would think he submitted, until they check the timesviewer.  

Lastly, he was being sarcastic about Extrapolating, whatever that means

But ya, you can't believe everything you hear.  Afterall, Da Metriod said you cheated too, but you don't see me hopping on that bandwagon................. yet

You're a real sleuth, Fried.

Now, here's the $64,000 question...

Why the hell would I openly try to cheat in a chat room that had 7 or so people in it, any of them potentially logging the chat, some of them, like you, who I've no prior relationship with, when I had 3 obviously superior cheating methods at my fingertips?

Wouldn't it have been a slightly more logical approach to...you know...directly IM Louis on one of the two chat programs (IRC or AIM) that I had open at the time?  And if direct IM seemed seemed a little too easy, why wouldn't I have sent an e-mail?  

Okay, onto another bit of puzzling questioning. If I really were cheating, why would I make an e-mail subject "My Real Yoshi Valley NonSC Time...This Isn't Fake"... ??? Most people don't feel the need to reinforce that their times are real in their subject line. Well, except for Matt Green, my mentor and inspiration.

I thought for sure that would be enough to clue you in to the fact that you were being wholly f'-ed with, but I guess anything short of a direct explanation was a fair amount too complicated, eh? I would say I went out of my way to be suspicious, but that would be a lie. It wasn't suspicious. It was blatantly obvious what I was doing, and you were the only one that didn't get the joke. You really believe that I am the worst liar in history? And did you not see that nobody else in the chat was supporting your case? I barely even know Arto Järvelä (Player1), but even he seemed in on the joke.

Well, I suppose there's the chance that I have every other kart member paid off to accept my cheating because, you know, that's practical.  

You also kind of shot yourself in the foot when you failed to realize that the time I submitted was not what I was joking with Louis about but that's really neither here nor there.

To tell you the truth, I couldn't tell if you were serious or just playing along for quite some time. Louis seemed to agree that it seemed unbelievable that anyone would actually buy that as a legitimate cheating attempt. The seemingly empty MB threats, questioning Booth (who is a known friend), asking Jones to ban me (another known friend, and someone who cannot act alone in the Kart 64 banning process)...it didn't seem to add up. Looking back on it now though, I really regret not trying to sell you some land in Antarctica.

Hey, while you're CPing e-mails, can you post Booth's response to you too? I thought that was pretty funny. The fact that he openly explained how I had proven my times to him after that e-mail, and you still insisted on my cheating in conversations afterward was reason enough for me to continue with my line of joking/sarcasm.

Or...(wait for it)...or...maybe I'm just so confident in my cheating ability (and my related unbannability) that I feel I can get away with openly cheating.

Oh my, what a quandary.

Righty, i'm gonna join in here (even tho i forgot to vote 4 the last one )

William Lacey (shadow) vs. Michael Fried  
= William Lacey

I also thought this was a pretty cool battle but Lacy was always gonna win no matter how many basketballs fried could juggle  I...being a mkdd karter have limited knowledge on the "history of kartin" etc but Lacey seems like a nice guy on MB & havin a WR by over a sec after 7years is damn impressive...
 
Mark Jones vs. Prashant Bhoja (BHOJ)  
= Mark Jones

Didn't really like this one cause Prashant seems a cool guy but Jones is the man in charge & even tho he thinks i'm stupid  i'll let him off

Thomas Grandjean vs. Cooper Lovera (Coopster)
= Tomas Grandjean

Well i only see whats on this MB & both seem friendly & even tho Coopster posts more & is more active on the board, Tomas however is in top10 nonSC so how could i not pick him....

Jon Prentice (Kart Recluse) vs. Andy Launspach
= Jon Prentice

Well.....i've no intention of caring myself bout what happened with Andy back in 2000 or whatever cause i just wasn't around (& i don't particularly care )& it's a popularity contest so......Jon is funny (unintentionally ) with his mad attempts at various tracks & plus i feel sorry for him now that Steel pasted him om BP after all his effort

Dave

Unfortunately (maybe), nobody from this group of guys has accused me of lying, so the entertainment value of this following vote sharing might not match yesterday...

Martin Cesar vs. Brian Gallo
Voted for Cesar. I gave Gallo the vote in the first round based on the conversations I had with him in AIM, of which the majority were good. However, since he's getting deeper into the tournament, I've decided to start thinking about the whole picture. Gallo is one of the few people to ever get demoted based on lack of proof. He also spent years doing little other than generating suspicions. If only he could've sent a tape early instead of being a giant pain in the ass, I would've really liked Gallo. However, he made those decisions and now he pays for them. That's right...the ultimate punishment of all...the Whalls vote swing. And you thought the demotion was as bad as it gets!

Michael Liem vs. Matt Batastini
Voted for Liem. Matt always seemed like a pretty nice guy to me, so it's kind of shocking that he didn't even get a vote (where were you Pobre?). However, regardless of how nice Batman was, or how great his KTB times were, Liem is one of the most important members this community has. In the time it takes me to write this post, he has probably already created 3 databases for upcoming Kart games, updated the top 100s, demoted Booth to "Assistant CEO" and danced on the graves of his Popularity Contest opponents...

...you die when you lose this, right?

Myles Bukrim vs. Tim Everett
Voted for Bukrim. I'm not sure how Tim did it, but he got one of the worst 1-2 draws imaginable. Ihnatenko and then Bukrim...unbelievable...it's a good thing he established himself as a great NonSC racer and not SC or this would been even worse for him. Anyway, I wanted to vote Tim to the third round, but I can't base everything off of the Team Michigan connections. Myles has simply done too much for Kart and given me too much joke material. Plus, for a long time a while back (2000-ish), Myles was one of the people I talked to most, even on the phone once. It's a bummer that Tim got this draw though...I hate to see him out this early.

Sami Cetin vs. Matthew McCarthey
Voted for Sami. Matthew didn't make any videos showing how skilled he is with his tongue, so it must that be that impressive. Sami, however, owns the SMK page, kicks ass at Kart, and never failed to remind me to "Keep on Karting!"  

4/4...the streak continues...

Well thanks guys for your support.  I knew that me vs. Myles was going to be a hard one, and to be honest....it's a lose-lose situation for me.  If I win, then one of my favs Myles has to lose, and if he wins I'm out of the contest.
Gotta look at the credentials- I've been around for just under 2 years and active for just over 1, and I've indexed the MTs, as well as finding a few minor strats that were rarely tried out, and also finding the super rocket blast that cuts an unexplainable and free 0.01 from your time
Myles has been around since, like 1999, discovered SCs, been in I htink the top 5, so on and so forth, both old school and new school, and, above all, possibly the nicest guy in the kart community.  He deserved this one.  But given our histories, getting 12-19 against Myles is, to me, a story for the ages!

Sometimes I share my votes, sometimes not.  Might as wel today.

CESAR vs. Gallo
It's mostly about Gallo's proof stuff- he's alright on AIM but didnt' seem to connect with me so well.
LIEM vs. Batastini
It's almost a runaway, but not quite.  Batastini is a cool guy to talk with, as well as, of course, the good 'ol KTB super WR.  He'd get my vote against most people, but Liem has more- big time staff member (how does he do it?!) nice, even-tempered, rational, intelligent, and of course stlil a good karter.  Getting 33-0 would go against anyone except the future quarter-finalists, where it'd jump to like 23-10 or so.
Bukrim vs. Everett
Look up.
ÇETIN vs. McCarthey
I don't know Monkey Kong too much, although definitely like the nickname.  But in this case, the chance that McCarthey, if you got to know him was cooler than Sami......basically not going to happen.  You got almost a single-handed hold on the SMK page, and at some point SMK, MK64, MKSC champ, and aside that he still has time to do other stuff.  And other small things on the side I strongly agree with (i.e. no smoking)