The Blazer’s Edge Best Things Ever Bracket has reached its penultimate day of first-round matchups. Today and tomorrow will conclude the first round of our March Madness Style Tournament to determine the Best Thing Ever in 2026, choosing from pairs of randomly-matched cool things!
All you have to do each day is check out a pair of posts, each containing two different items. Vote for the item you want to advance! Rinse, lather, repeat until we get to the last matchup and determine a winner!
The matchup
in this post might be a tough one. It pits Lord of the Rings against Pizza.
Written through the 1930’s, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy set the road map for modern fantasy. Eschewing brave knights and invulnerable heroes, it put the fate of the world in the hands of small, barely-regarded hobbits, common and pastoral folk whose homely wisdom and stout courage brought down cosmic evil far beyond their understanding. Its thesis was simple: the closer you get to understanding power the more you’re enslaved by it, but love and goodness still conquer. The books set the world on fire in the 1960’s and onward, spawning a massive movie franchise at the turn of the millennium and several spin-offs since.
Pizza is theoretically of Italian origin. You can still find it there, though authentic pizza is closer to what we’d call flatbread today. The basics remain the same: your favorite kind of crust, a delicious sauce, whatever toppings float your boat, and probably cheese on top. Whether it’s a celebration of the Little League season, a first date, a family outing, or just you in front of a movie with a box on your lap, pizza is never the wrong answer!
So what will it be, folks? LOTR or Pizza? Vote and share your reasoning in the comments section below! Be sure to check out the other post today too!
