News broke yesterday that the world had lost one of its most beloved, cross-generational stars with the passing of country singer Dolly Parton at the age of 80. Ironically, Dolly was scheduled to be part of the site’s Best Things Ever Tournament. She wasn’t slated for today, but Friday. I thought about changing the bracket, given the news, but what the heck. Why not? In memory of her passing, we’re going to bump that post up to today.
For those who don’t know, our Best Things Ever tournament is 64
random cool (or at least important) things stacked up against each other to determine what will be the Best Thing Ever in 2026. You simply vote each day for the Best Thing in each matchup and the winners go onward until only one is left! It’s our way to pass time during the slow days of the NBA season.
In any case, this post matches Dolly Parton against Google.
Dolly was a 70’s country icon, known for her sweet singing voice and certain other assets. (Hair, people! Hair!) She outgrew that image as her popularity swelled. She gave us an early look at late-stage capitalism with her workaday anthem “9 to 5”. She sang sweet ballads with Kenny Rogers, including “Islands in the Stream”. She build an entire amusement park for family fun in Tennessee and insisted admission remain reasonable in a world wracked by inflation. Most of all, she became known from Boomers to Gen Z as a person of humble dignity, kindness and normality, in a world where even the smallest influencers are scrambling to be anything but.
That said, we wouldn’t even know half of these things if it weren’t for the Granddaddy of all search engines, Google. It’s a huge corporation, riotously successful, and most of us use the product nearly every day. Everything from NBA player histories to college term papers depends on it. Anyone who remembers encyclopedias and card catalogs will probably be grateful for the evolution.
So what will it be today, the late, great Dolly Parton or the behemoth Google? Vote in the comments section for your Best Thing Ever in this post!
