The first thing I’ll say is wow, what a contest! I’m blown away by the enthusiasm of the participants and their fans. We’ve spent the afternoon counting votes for the two leading families, #38 and #29 and quite simply, it’s close, very close. Each family got nearly 1000 votes!

Given our two-hour dose of comment chaos on Thursday night and the close number of votes, I decided to approach Casa Cornacchi today …