Raisin’ the sign at the Blog Awards 2008

Myself and the Chief caught a bus around lunchtime yesterday to make our way to Dublin for the Irish Blog Awards 2008.

It’s not very often that myself and Ken actually have two hours to sit and talk, and so the trip up was a serious session of planning, ideas, brainfarts and future plans. There’s going to be a lot of big developments in the coming months, once again taking our services at KKM up a notch and we’ll be working with some great bands and musicians. But for this weekend we had one main goal; to be the drunkest bloggers in Ireland.

We got off the bus and strolled through Dublin, found the hotel, checked in, found our room, checked to see if there was anything worth stealing, not that we steal stuff!? We were just checking and everything was crap anyway! We headed to the bar, got some food and that was when the drinking became, sometime around 4pm. From there it was back to the room to tuck into a bottle of jagermeister and get ready for the Blog Awards.

We got a taxi to the Alexander Hotel just after 6pm. Our taxi driver was a legend! A Nigerian guy with the most complicated name I’ve ever seen. He had a DVD player built into the dashboard of the taxi and treated us some reggae, we cruised through Dublin, music blasting out of the speakers and him singing along as we bobbed around the car. He gave me his phone number incase we needed a taxi later. I think I’ll ring him everytime I need a taxi!?

We registered, got our raffle tickets and goodie bags (which I lost within minutes), found our name tags and planted ourselves at the bar. It was only 6.30pm and people were only starting to arrive but we found ourselves immediately in conversations with Darren and Darragh (they’re commentors, not bloggers!?).

From there onwards the entire night was spent talking to people from all over the country, people interested in absolutely everything and anything from music to politics, from photography to ice-cream. It was great to be in a room packed with over 400 people and every one of them actually really interested in something and productively blogging or podcasting about it! It was also great fun to try get as many of them to drink tequila with me as possible!

The awards were given out, before each one there was hilarious video clips of George Bush re-dubbed to fit the specific categories, winners made their speeches and the drinking turned into rounds of everything and anything from tequila to sambucca and Jack Daniels, the list goes on. Congratulations to all the winners, but in particular Nialler9 for ‘Best Music Blog’ and Gingerpixel for ‘Best Photo Blog’.

As the night went on, we all got very drunk and I had some great conversations, finally putting faces to blogs. And of course getting to chat to people I had met at last years awards and PodCamp (in particular David and Phil, nice to see you again guys). Apparently I had even been giving the nickname “the ninja”, after my appearance last year where I didn’t really talk to anybody due to being new to the whole thing and not wanting to seem like an idiot. But thankfully Conor had taken my shyness and turned it into a nickname which gave me mystery, stealth and the ability to kill people with my bare hands!? I repaid him by posing for photos and teaching him to “raise the sign”.

With all the awards handed out, they cleared the chairs for a dancefloor and the drinking went to whole new levels. From here onwards the night is a complete blur, I’ve been trying to piece it together based on Ken’s photos and things he can remember me doing or saying. At some stage everyone was wearing fake moustaches!? For some reason I took my top off!? I’m in a ridiculous amount of photos I don’t remember being taken, with people I can’t remember talking to!? Apparently I was even dancing (I can’t dance!). I’m told that once the bar closed we went for food with David and Deborah, I must have been drunk if I ate in BurgerKing (god I hate BurgerKing). I really don’t remember!? But one thing I am certain of is that it was an awesome night and I met really cool people!

I awoke this morning sprawled across the bed, still in my clothes, one hand clutching a roll I must have bought in Centra at some stage last night!? The contents of my pockets included everything from two fake moustaches, a beer mat that say’s “I work until BEER o’clock”, a comb (not a moustache comb), and several things I don’t remember putting in my pockets!?

We checked out of our hotel (we didn’t even steal the towels!), although using Ken’s trusty pocketknife which includes a screwdriver, we could have removed the large mirror and paintings from the room, if we wanted!? But like I said, we don’t steal stuff, we just check to see if we could!?

We spent a couple of hours wandering around Dublin (god I hate Dublin), although there was some cool street performers about, included a girl who makes dogs out of sand!? Okay, that’s not really a performance but then again neither is painting yourself silver and standing really still!?

I slowly but surely dispensed any change I had to the ridiculous amounts of homeless people sitting on the streets. It wasn’t much and there are so many. When I had no change left we turned a corner to find a homeless girl sitting on the ground with a small baby! What the fuck is going on in this country!? (It can of course be pointed out that I spent a shit-load of money killing my braincells last night!?)

We made our way to Bus Aras (talking absolute shite the whole way) and were just in time to hop on a bus home (which was great considering how hungover we were and the fact that we couldn’t remember any bus times). The Chief fell asleep and I sat struggling to remember what the hell I did last night!? Whilst most of the night still remains a blur I think that I achieved my initial goal of being Ireland’s drunkest blogger (well one of them anyway)!?

The Blog Awards are over for another year, I’m already looking forward to next year, it was great to see how much it has grown already and it was great to finally actually talk to people. Hopefully we’ll see a few of them in Kilkenny for Creative Camp.

Cheers to Ken for snapping photos all night, I now have memories even if I don’t remember them!? I’d also like to say thanks to everyone who sent me messages on myspace and bebo, emails, text messages and phonecalls; all wishing us luck. Who needs an award when we’re doing something we love doing and people are encouraging and supportive towards it!?