Jim Nelson
15 March 1997

"A couple of weeks later, I got an email from Web Magazine informing me that I'd been nominated for a Webby Award. I had no idea what that meant. The letter just said that the ceremony was to be held at Bimbo's (only in San Francisco would you name a bar Bimbo's) and that there would be some press there. That's it.

"So I check out their web site, and lo, I'm listed as a nominee ... in the 'Weird' category. Dubious honor, but hey, you take what you get in this life. But being a weird nominee is hardly a reason to start handing out cigars to strangers on the street.

"I tried to act nonchalant about the whole thing. It's an award ceremony for web pages for crissakes. It's not like the Academy awards or Grammy's or anything. When an actor can put 'Oscar©-award nominee' next to his name on the marquee, he makes more money. You think a blinking 'Webby©-award nominee' on my site is going to garner me big bucks? No way. The Internet just isn't that cool. Home pages. Webzines. Virtual galleries. It's just artsy multimedia crap imitating Gen-X attitude.

"Hey -- can you move a little to the left? Keep the sun off my face? Thanks.

"Even with all that said, I decided to go to the awards ceremony last night. I figure, what the hell, I'll take my girlfriend and some friends up to the city. The show should be good for drinks and a few laughs. I have to RSVP, so I list everyone as an 'Associate Editor' -- I figure if they're going to be stiff about whom I bring, I better make it look good.

"I drive up and let the valet take the car away. There's limos lined up on the street, a red carpet leading in, and a line going around the block. But no flashbulbs popping, no screaming paparazzi, no pre-show interviews with leechy journalists. Hollywood glitz frozen in liquid nitrogen.

"Anyways, we walk in and the place is crawling with nerds, yuppies, and managerial types. Everywhere else there's nose rings, tattoos, pink hair, and leather bellbottoms. Everyone was drinking martinis and smoking cigars. What kind of award show has an ad executive talking about Windows NT performance with someone who just stepped out of an Andy Warhol silkscreen? The pretentiousness was so thick I had to wade to the bartender.

"It was like a Microsoft press conference hit a SoHo art opening head-on and the medics were serving cocktails to keep everyone sedated. Basically, a bunch of business people pretending to be glamourous and a bunch of artists pretending to be important. Whoop dee shit -- a mutual admiration society where smoking jackets are de rigueur.

"What? You say HotWired wrote today that the show was all hype? They should know, they're the experts on hype. Whaddya expect from them anyways? A pat on their competition's back for a job well done? They're just sore they didn't think of it first.

"Get this -- to honor the Web's predilection towards Attention Deficit Syndrome, the emcee required each winner to say only five words at the podium. Whoever arranged the show thought they were clever by enforcing the Web's love of sound bite. But think about it. Most sites drone on and on about worthless crap. That's their credo and their purpose. They should have forced each winner to talk for fifteen minutes about their family, friends, sexual habits, and conspiracy theories. That would have been more web-like.

"Whoop dee shit -- a mutual admiration society where smoking jackets are de rigueur."

"With the five-word limit, it took less than half an hour to get to the 'Weird' category. I looked around as they announced the names. Everyone was fidgeting and squirming in their chairs. The emcee was rushing through the nominees' names to get the show over with. Maybe there is something to that ADS theory ...

"By this time, I'd put away five, maybe six cocktails. The booze didn't deaden my nerves, it heightened my fears. Cheap whiskey churned so hard in my stomach I could have puked malted butter. Everything moved quite fast, and before I knew it, the winner was announced -- Gallery of the Absurd.

"I just shrugged and headed for the bar. My friends were real supportive, trying to tell me that it was no big deal, but I didn't hear them. As I drank more and more that night I began to feel ... robbed. Gypped. I wanted that trophy. The voting was rigged, I told myself. The winners paid off the judges. The judges paid off the winners. Something like that.

"Bimbo's fisheyed. Lounge music transformed into Gregorian chant. I sat in the theater of my mind and became a passive audience to the whims of my sub-conscious. When the going gets weird, the weird turn vindictive.

"I swear I didn't know what I was doing. The best I recall, I walked straight up to one of the winners, not the Gallery of the Absurd guy but someone else. He was wearing a tattered bathrobe and smoking a pipe, like a Hugh Hefner down on his luck. I think he was with Bianca's Smut Shack. He was strutting around, puffing that pipe and cradling his award with a smug little grin on his face. I walked up, slugged him right in the gut, gently removed the trophy from his grasp as he keeled over, and made tracks for the entrance. I blasted through the oak doors, ran down the red carpet, and onto Columbus Avenue. I jogged for six blocks and ducked into a strip bar.

"Can I bum a smoke off of you? Sure, I'll smoke menthol. Got a light? Thanks.

"This place was seedy. I grabbed a chair in the corner and placed the Webby on the table. I sucked down more whiskey sours while I stared at my new prize. Disco lights and murky visions of naked silhouetted women filtered through the glass teardrop. It was like the beginning of a James Bond movie.

"Have you ever been in a strip bar when it closes down? Pretty damn unceremonious. The music just stops, the flourescents come on nice and bright, and this voice blares about three decibels too loud that everyone needs to get the hell out.

"So as I headed for the door the waitress stopped me. She said I owed her thirty bucks for the drinks. I only had six dollars and change. She got real pissed and called the door man over. Only it wasn't a man, it was a gorilla with a t-shirt on.

"I told him I was broke. He told me he would escort me to an ATM machine.

"I told him I left my wallet in my car and point to my Webby. I explained how I write this really cool ezine about stupid stuff on the Internet.

"He looked at the award and then back up at me. 'You got an award for sitting in front of a computer all day? They gave you an award for writing about how smart you are and how dumb everyone else is?'

"He hit me across the jaw, hard. I could barely feel it through the mask of whiskey I was wearing, but I knew it would hurt later. He hit me again, again, and again. The punishment didn't stop for fifteen minutes. It was the worst pasting I ever received. He took my award and my money and threw me out onto the street. I think he called me a geek, but my eardrums were full of blood, so maybe not.

"I crawled down Columbus to Market and passed out at that bus stop over there. The cops kicked me off, so I moved over here. You don't realize just how cold a sidewalk is until you sit and panhandle for a few hours.

"That's exactly how it happened, honest. Well, maybe it didn't exactly happen like that, but close enough. In one evening I went from a webified apogee to a dreg of society. Now ... now I don't care about HTML or JavaScript or client-server anymore. I'm just gonna sit here, watch people walk by, and reminisce my glory years. Okay, sorry, my glory evening. Don't rub it in, okay? How about giving me a buck so I can buy a latte'?"