Better late than never with the linky love, right?

The Irish Blog Awards was a gala event and reason for celebration. You can listen to a podcast version of it here if you weren't fortunate enough to attend. It was like the prom I never attended back in the day.

Many, many drinks were taken that weekend and I was tickled to meet all the fascinating and witty bloggers that I read everyday.
How can it be that they felt like old friends when I had never actually met them?

Here are some of the fabulous bloggers we met last week:

Gimme went above and beyond the call of blogger friend duties by extending his time and resources to us, even by getting out of bed at the crack of ass to lend Mr. M one of his bikes and setting him up on a 50K group ride in a northwestern loop out of Dublin. That was way cool. One afternoon he met us with the Bridge Crew, carrying Data on his shoulders and Riker at his side. They are gorgeous girls. Gimme's the right man to raise daughters because he really likes women as human beings. A stand up guy all around.

Manuel was instantly attending to my needs as soon as we met by offering mints, cigarettes and tea. His drunken alter-ego never surfaced during the awards hooch-fest, either. I put one of his Well Done Fillet badges on every coat lapel. We met up for lunch in his city of Belfast and had a riot screaming about "The Wire" over oysters. I'll do a seperate post on our lunch. And as I already said, he comforted me after being molested by a so-called friend. A friend, indeed.

Congrats to Twenty on his victories winning the Best Humorous Post and Best Blog Awards of the evening. He graciously signed a copy of his new novel for me which Mr. M later stole from my bag and read in two sittings. Mr. M's review is short and spoiler-free:
"Imagine the kids from South Park grown up and mix that with Charles Bukowski and 'Chopper.'"
You can have that for the cover of the second edition, Twenty.
My review will be coming soon.

Sam is even nicer than her blogging persona suggests. She praised everyone's work effusively and was far too modest concerning her own brilliant writing. She's also what my mother would call a "boney maroney" and is a beautiful slip of a woman.

Fat MammyCat is what in red carpet speak is known as a "glamazon." Tall and glamorous yet also brimming with charm and personality, FMC is one smart and classy woman. Her win for Best Blog Post elicited a great rush of cheers from the audience. Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Sinead and I had a wonderful talk about gender politics in the blogosphere over lunch. She gave me insight into what women who write about music have to confront from men who are all High Fidelity wannabees. It takes backbone to assume a position of authority in a male-dominated genre. Hats off to you, Sinead. And huzzah for your award for Best Arts and Culture Blog.

I peeped through a phalanx of friday afterwork drinkers in Mulligan's to find Conan's welcoming smile invite us to the table. He has a glorious head of hair which lends him the air of a contemplative poet.

Eolai does indeed resemble a young Fidel Castro in a handcrafted jumper. His enthusiasm for the blogging community and the awards was sincerely demonstrated. He had a kind word for everyone involved.

Bock is not nearly as old and irascible as his blog posts would leave you to believe. He has also righteously vowed to fight the patriarchy as he now realizes that feminists don't actually have horns and a tail. *wink*

Devin was so warm and friendly that I felt as though we had already met. She's no-nonsense and funny as hell.

I didn't get to meet K8 until she was leaving, but I 'm so glad she recognized my lemon shoes and said hello. It was a pleasure to meet her and the Accidental Terrorist. I wish we could have had a chance to have a real conversation. Another time, K8.

I briefly got to meet Sweary at the end of the evening. She's fabulously talented. I hope she has her second novel published by the time she's 30.