Fug Madness: The Downloadable Bracket, The Rules, and the Play-In Winner

Now that we’ve revealed the seedings and opening-round matchups in the Bjork, Cher, Charo, and Madonna brackets, respectively, we can lay out the full Fug Madness schedule and give you a handy downloadable bracket that you can use to make your personal picks. Okay, so there’s no prize for being right, and you could totally cheat and pretend you were, but still: Isn’t it more fun to play for pride? … No? Shoot. Well, we obviously can’t condone gambling since it’s HIGHLY ILLEGAL in most states, but obviously if you choose to start your own Fug Madness mini-pool on your own time, with your circle of fug watchers, we can’t control that.

Here are the rules, the important upcoming matchup dates, and the official unveiling of your play-in teams.

1) After Tuesday‘s play-in game, the first round begins on Thursday with four matchups from each of the four brackets — the top halves of Cher and Charo, and the bottom halves of the Bjork and Madonna (which we mean in a bracketology sense, and not in some kind of creepy Island of Dr. Moreau cross-breeding way). The rest will take place on Friday – much like the glorious tournament on which it is based. Round Two will begin on Monday, March 23, and so on and so forth.

2) Here is a downloadable PDF of the full Fug Madness bracket, which has the dates of all the contests and which you can print and fill in as we go:

3) Polls for each contest will be open for roughly 24 hours (as close as we can make it) from the time the post is published. Vote early, and if your browser allows, vote often.

4) This is the big one: Comments WILL open again, only on Fug Madness posts. Our reluctance to put any comments on the site is well-documented, but last season’s experiment with opening comments during Fug Madness went swimmingly, thanks to all of our cool, smart readers who just wanted to have a good time. We sincerely hope you guys will all be just as awesome this time. But we are just as cranky, so any violations of our comment policy, and we WILL close them again. The rules (some of which I copied from last time) are generally based in people using basic common sense, and include:

• Please do NOT use this time to vent your spleen against the celebrity in question (that’s what therapy is for), against fame in general, the economy, or the site itself (that’s what e-mail is for, and Intern George has the typing blisters on his beautiful fingers to prove it).
• Keep it clean, keep it on-topic, keep it relevant. If all you want to do is say, “DIE, SLUTZ,” well, that’s not polite in English OR in German, so please don’t.
• We reserve the right to edit or delete comments if they’re not in the spirit of the contest, and/or are spoiling everyone else’s fun.
• We will TOTALLY close the comments again FOREVER if this blows up into something awful (i.e., we will totally turn this car around if you don’t stop poking your brother). We love what your intelligent, funny, sarcastic input does for the spirit of the contest; it’s part of what made it so special last season, so please take that to heart, and don’t abuse it.

5) And now for the identity of the two celebrities dueling TOMORROW for the right to take on top-seeded SWINTON in the Charo bracket.

Drum roll, please…

SPEIDI vs. LAUREN CONRAD

They hate each other anyway, so they might as well get to duke it out here: Will it be the publicity-hungry, soul-blackened plastics, or the wannabe fashion designer whose collections could’ve been designed by a four-year old? Is a fugly aura and occasional wardrobe tackyness enough to beat down someone who erroneously fancies herself a higher breed of fashionista, and occasionally wears skirts that are considerably too wee?

Time will tell, and tomorrow, so will your votes. Game on!