Dear Friends of Pavement: I want to thank everyone personally for their entries, but I don't have that kind of time. Please take this as a sincere response to your hard work. I enjoyed each and every entry uniquely — they warmed my heart these past few chilly summer nights. I hope we’ll have the chance to do it again sometime soon. A few thoughts I might share with you before we begin: It’s good to know people still make an effort to study in school. The lines are abound with literary references from Dante to Kipling, William Carlos Williams to Dr. Seuss. And while the majority of entries vary to a good extent, it’s interesting to note the similarities: lots of poems about Gary Young’s “problems”; many people asking Steven to come roast their parents and offering “enslavement” as a rhyme; dissatisfaction with CD Now and the whole CD-Rom fiasco; plenty of Korea / career; and the overwhelming majority of Canadian entries devoting their poems to persuading Pavement to play in the Great White North. We’ll take note and pass it along to the band. Something else I should mention: I suppose some of these poems might not make too much sense to those who don’t keep up with the band, their singles, and their penchant for Scrabble and horse racing. Please try to follow along. How were the winners chosen? It’s a tremendously complicated process, involving feeding the entries into Accutron 2000 and analyzing the resultant punch cards by hand. Tedious, really. For those who did not “win” per se, but eeked their way into the top 500, your CD-Roms will be mailed out early next week. If you don’t receive one within the next three weeks, it means you, sadly, are not going to get anything. The winners are listed in no particular order; I’m not a big fan of ranking by number. So, without any further editorializing, here are the 25 winners, followed by 20 honorable mentions. Make sure your boss isn’t looking, sit back, relax and enjoy the poems. (And by the way, the answer to the bonus question is “Fillmore Jive.” Thankfully, there were no ties).