And the winner is...

Remember a couple months back how I had a contest for free sneakers? Well, the celebrity judges have stopped procrastinating and named a winner!

James over at Aces is our winner! His essay was deemed the best by our panel of judges. Here is the winning entry:

I don't deserve the shoes. I have been a bad boy. I mistreated my old shoes by wearing them out in the rain, and then using one of them as a flyswatter. I should be punished, not given new shoes.

It got to the point that I was living dangerously with the shoes. I rented one of my shoes out to an old woman who had so many children she didn't know what to do. I should have been tipped off by the fact that she smelled like cheap whiskey. They trashed the place, and the security deposit didn't come close to covering all the damage. The laces were chewed up. They'd started some fires on the insole. You don't want to know what I found in the uppers. By the time I got them out, the place had a nasty case of athlete's foot. Didn't know what to do, my butt. She was giving them hard liquor every night, trying to get them to sleep. It was like one big frat party. What a mess.

Then the other shoe dropped. Literally. It was so depressed from my negligence that it threw itself off the Braga Bridge. Fortunately (depending on how you look at it) it landed on a fishing boat, in a bucket of chum. I've tried bleaching it, soaking it, and even psychotherapy. No dice--this shoe smells like fish guts.

Regardless, I deserve to go shoeless for my indiscretions. If anything, I deserve to have the shoes thrown at me.

Congratulations to James and thanks to all those who entered. His certificate for free New Balance shoes is winging its way to him as fast as the U.S. Postal service can manage. Due to my procrastination, he has only 1 month to redeem it. :)