h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is it more difficult to define the worst, as being the extreme opposite of the best? The best band could be defined as someone's favourite, the richest, sells most CDs, concerts, associated hallucinogenics related to events and bootlegged music, or who by some miracle, everyone agrees is really good over some time period longer than one month (?) etc.

But the worst - what could that be? The trouts have provided a source of entertainment - by being so bad, I guess. Like the fictious Spinal Tap. Is it the most annoying band that ever entered the Eurovision song contest? Is it the most revolting grunge/punk destructive stage act thing? Is it the next handful of teenagers band?

Or is it me, rendering my own interpretation of Queens' Bohemian Rhapsody using my left armpit accompanied by an out of balance washing machine, on stage.I can but dream of fame and fortune - I suppose it doesn't count unless you are actually a band.

Worst can be used in many ways. Like in the current American elections the choice is between the guy with the worst comb-over in politics and the worst mass killer Texas has ever known.

Here's another way of using worse. Very much; a great deal: wanted to be elected in the worst way - This is the usage in the Trout's yarn - they wanted to be known as the worst band and by all accounts they succeded, worst luck.

Or I could be totally wrong - sometimes I'm my own worst enemy.

In Germany the worst (Wurst) is just a sausage - Like Bratwurst. Goes well with a beer or five.

Worst is also like "bad", or "baddest" (old English teacher I had as kid turns over in grave). "He's the baddest dude" - ie. really cool. "The baddest band". If your grammar is really bad this works, if it is correct then it is not so good - or just bad, or asymptotically approaching the worst - at an "incredible rate of speed" (I just wanted to get a stab at crappy English I see in the newspapers all the time - provoking English teachers to turn in their graves - if the perpetrators were ever exposed to people with that profession).

The wurst band might do well in Bavaria. The wurst in US politics has already been done to death.

At the Munich Olympics in 1972 - and the beer festival that followed two weeks later - and the beer festival in 1973 - I ate the best wurst ever. The worst singers in Munich were the Kiwis and Aussies at the Hofbrauhouse beer hall. (spelling?)

I think it is "Hofbrauhaus".

I think the best wurst I have had has been in Germany accompanied by beer. The worst wurst is probably some hotdog-like creations made in New York in some factory that I picked up at the supermarket. When I am really hungry I can eat them toasted up on the BBQ. I am hungry now - I might try to finish them off to tide me over before cooking dinner.

I also remember some not-so-good wurst (next to worst wurst, or extremely mediocre wurst) at a trade show in Stuttgart. In the US, no one is allowed or goes anywhere near beer (it is very naughty stuff), and eats hamburgers and chips washed down with Coca-Cola or something sugary and commercial at similar events - I just came back from one there, trying to flush my digestive track of over-processed "food product". In the rest of the world it is mostly different. In Germany Brat/Knackwurst with Pils is the thing. Standing around at some trade show though, it is a welcome break to have a beer and an almost-worst wurst for a break.