I had come to the happy hour gathering of New York City bloggers Friday at Zanzibar to chat with 50 or so people about the best things about running a website: the semi-celebrity, the out-of-state superfans' desires to have sex with you and the wealth of porn links that people send your way. And I had come, most importantly, hoping to bring a woman back to my place.
Instead I got this:
Paul: So, what do you write about on your blog?
Dude I Just Met: Stuff.
Ah, stuff. Now I knew I was at a blogger party, as if the almost-all-white, mostly-male, pretty nerdy crowd didn't already give that away. If only he'd said "I run a site without a single word worth reading" I wouldn't have been so sure where I was. Then came this...
Dude I Just Met: How 'bout you? What's on your blog?
Me: Porn.
Sure sounded a lot more interesting than stuff. But only one of us laughed. I set my level of serious blogger alert to orange.
I traded hot-tub stories with amiable co-host GI Jane. I won, of course, because I pulled from my 11,000-word Hedonism II trip report. Another female webmaster, to whom I reiterated loudly that Playboy is dropping the ball when it comes to signing A-list celebs for layouts, disclosed a theater sex romp with a fan. And I had a good time laughing about beer and breasts with with Ken Goldstein, who said, "You're doing god's work."
Apart from that, my conversations weren't too lively. I asked one woman early in the evening if she'd ever gotten anything sent to her from a fan. I'm still not sure she understood the question. She looked at me like I'd just asked if she'd ever been with four men at once. Another one recognized my URL on my nametag and said, "Hey, you signed my guestbook," — and immediately walked away. I would've settled for a dopey smiley face emoticon instead.
The problem for me was that not only did I not know anyone, but I had not read anyone and had never even heard of anyone. (There was some buzzing that a couple of blogging heavy-hitters were in the room. I'm thinking, "You poll horny college kids and see who's a heavy hitter in this room." Some dude tried to introduce me to one of 'em. He says, "This is xxxx ... of yyyy ... formerly of ssss ... and uuuu." He looked for my acknowledgement at every name-drop, and I looked at him as blankly as most people did me.)
Awards:
NYC's Best-Looking Blog Basher: Kambri Crews, by far.
Most Disappointing No-Show: New York As I See It. Wanted to ask her about the time a friend's husband inappropriately stripped naked and erect while she fiddled with a digital camera. Finally, someone who knows what makes a good read. You would think the term blogging meant "to write about how strong your coffee was in the morning."
Drunkest: The Raving Atheist. For a nonreligious man, he sure looked like he was going to pray at the porcelain altar. Love his post on the inappropriate interjection of religion at public memorials.
I must say that i really thought a good story was going to come out of this bolger bash... mabye the real details will come out later..
Posted by nels at February 8, 2003 3:33 AM