According to Alan, I won something the other night: Buffalo Spree Magazine‘s survey of Best Blogs, or something of that nature. I think it was one of those surveys city publications do to see what their readership thinks are the “best” of whatever in that city, whether it’s restaurants, arts venues, sports teams, or websites devoted to sporadically-updated thoughts of persons of varying degrees of geekitude.
In truth, I wasn’t even aware in any real sense of being in the running. It’s kind of like a recurring funny fantasy I have, in which we’re at the Oscars, and they’re announcing Best Actor: after reading the five nominees, the envelope is opened and the name therein turns out to be some completely-unexpected sixth actor. Camera then cuts to that actor, who’s in his kitchen, eating a sandwich, and we freeze-frame his reaction as a piece of pastrami hangs from his mouth and a dab of mayo oozes down his chin. “The nominees are Sean Connery, Denzel Washington, Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Ralph Fiennes — but the Oscar goes to Bob McGaskill! Congratulations, Bob!” And Bob says, “Gwhaaa?”
Anyway, apparently this blog won. I’m frankly amazed, because I’m in no way one of the cadre of “citizen journalists” who constitute the larger portion of the Buffalo Prefecture of Blogistan; my Buffalo-blogging tends to consist of the occasional thing about the Sabres (not terribly often because I don’t know much about hockey), the more frequent stuff about the Bills (especially during the season), and once-in-a-while takes on urbanism. I don’t do reportage here, and the vast majority of the content I produce could as easily come from Peoria. That I, a guy who’s content to blog about the obscure SF books I read and movies and food and women who look good in workwear and whatever other obscure topics leap to mind, should come in first in such a survey is somewhat amazing. This blog isn’t any kind of organized set of thoughts; it’s rather my own personal mix-tape for the world.
So, thanks to those who voted. The full roster of winners can be found here. I should really start paying attention to stuff like this, I suppose. I could delude myself into thinking that they could do a big profile thingie on me, like they did for Jennifer a while back, but — well, I suspect that a big picture of me in that magazine wouldn’t be the best thing in the world. I still cringe when I see the way I looked in the Buffalo News for my short-story thing.
CONGRATS!!! WELL DESERVED. Brava! Brava! 🙂
Oh, and all you have to do is show the hot bald photographer your DD’s to get in Spree. Except, well, I didn’t really do that, but I would have. (That was before Mark. 😉
Congrats, Kelly! 🙂
Pastrami and mayo? Say nay.
Congratulations! The paragraph they wrote about you was right on the mark. 🙂
Rebecca
Fantastic! I’m glad your hard-work was finally rewarded.
Although honestly, I could do without Buffalo Spree’s backhanded insult to every other Buffalo Blog in the process of giving you a well-deserved compliment.
Heartfelt congratulations! It’s about time!
Congrats!
Kelly, we did email you about this, but never heard back.
Give me a shout if you’d like to make arrangements to get your plaque. The plaques are very nice.
Elizabeth: I remember that e-mail, but I stupidly interpreted the clause “You may win an award!” to refer to something along the lines of, well, door-prizes, and not to actually mean that I was seriously up for an award, you know? What can I say, sometimes my astonishing powers of reading comprehension let me down. 🙂
Anyhow, I’d literally forgotten about the event until I saw Alan’s post, at which point I instantly thought, “Oh crap, that’s what they meant by ‘you may win something’.”
And there’s a plaque? Wow! If you’ll e-mail me, I’ll reply with my postal address, unless there’s an upcoming BloggerCon that I don’t know about, at which you could just hand the thing to me. (Heck, you can drop by The Store — I’m there M-F, 7:30 am to 3:00 pm.)