Americans love nothing more than comparing things to other things.  One of our society's oldest sayings involves the proper and improper form of comparing things (apples/oranges).  Most of the time, though, this involves two like things: which is better, Kid A or OK Computer?  Mayonnaise or mustard?  Today, however, I propose to compare two things that have little to do with each other.  I suppose this sounds similar to games like "Would You Rather," and I suppose that it is, to a certain extent.  However, with my matchups there are no major life decisions in play, only man's greatest achievements.

What are my qualifications?  I've long been an arbiter of such debates.  Once, some friends of mine called me at when they were driving from New Orleans to Houston with a question: who would win in a fight between a panda and a horse?  After weighing the merits of each and asking some key questions (where are they fighting?  A: a bullfighting ring), I correctly ruled in favor of the horse.  Since it was a bullfighting ring, the horse has more room to run around and escape the panda, as well as maximize its speed advantage.

This will probably become an occasional feature, and I'll post a new matchup whenever I can think of a good one.  I have several categories I consider, which I'll explain as we go to prevent this post from becoming Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle.  We have a doozy to start off with, so onward!

First Impressions - what do I think of when I hear the thing mentioned?

Cake - it's enticing, it's delicious, who doesn't love cake?

Darryl Dawkins - the Sun Ra of the NBA; probably a little crazy, but also hilarious and great.

Advantage: Darryl Dawkins

Variety - how much can it be different?

Cake - pretty much any kind of cake you can dream up either already exists or is currently being invented by highly trained cake scientists.  Mix and match your cake types with your frostings, and you've got it made in the shade.

Darryl Dawkins - while there was only one Chocolate Thunder, but he could throw several dunks at you, all with awesome names: the Earthquaker Shaker, the Dunk You Very Much, the Turbo Sexophonic Delight.

Advantage: Cake

Fantasticalness/Delightment - how much awesome is this thing, anyway?

Cake - Pretty awesome.  As I said earlier, who doesn't love cake?

Darryl Dawkins - Again, pretty awesome.  The guy claimed he was from outer space, specifically from the planet Lovetron, where he practiced "interplanetary funkmanship."  That's awesome.

Advantage: Darryl Dawkins

Stay-on-top-ability - how relevant is it today?

Cake - very, very high.  In fact, cake is damn near omnipresent these days.  There's always demand for cake, with a supply to match.

Darryl Dawkins - Sadly not as much as he could be.  He's coached a few USBL and ABA teams, an written an autobiography, but people don't talk about him nearly enough, and you have to be near a computer to get your Double D fix.  Here's a head-to-head example: if I'm on vacation at the beach, and I say to myself, "you know what would go well with a day of sun and sand?  Darryl Dawkins," chances are I'm out of luck.  But I can call upon a local greengrocer and find cake inviting, nay begging, me to savor it.

Big advantage: Cake

Negatives - self-explanatory

Cake - it can be too sweet, too dry, too whipped cream-y, have weird stuff in it, etc. etc.  In essence, it's easy to mess up.  Plus, if you eat too much of it at once, you get a headache and your teeth hurt when you chew.

Darryl Dawkins - As mentioned above, you pretty much need to be near a computer to enjoy this guy.  He also fouled a lot, only averaged six rebounds for his career, and his comparables are people like Benoit Benjamin and Steve Johnson, not exactly titans of the NBA.

Advantage: Darryl Dawkins. For all his faults, on his worst day Chocolate Thunder is still better than dry cake.

Summary

That SOTA category is just too hard to ignore.  So while my heart says Darryl Dawkins, my head says Cake.  In fact, I'd put cake up against just about anything, and it would win every time.