• by Kelly Samardak , March 5, 2010

The 2nd Annual Shorty Awards, The TimesCenter, New York
March 3, 2010

I'm not meant to cover The Shorty Awards. I'm either assaulted verbally by others, or I assault myself with my own feet.

The reason this is late is because my laptop took a nosedive into molasses HELL and I lost it for three days.  During that time, I asked my Twitter followers for some verbs to use in this post and they killed it.  I've included your new vocabulary at the end.   Let's go!

The VIP cocktail party was hot.  Africa hot.  I felt bad for poor @FrugalDougal, a finalist in Non Profit who eventually lost out to my bathroom buddy, @twloha (To Write Love on Her Arms ), in his full-body furry suit, as well as many other dapper gents in their brown corduroy jackets, zippy sweaters, and hoodies.

Servers tried heartily to plot a course through the tightly packed room, compounded by video cameras and photogs like myself and Nick McGlynn, who gesticulated with tiny pockets of Makers Mark-fueled guests.  You could always tell where the food was because guests clocked to them like Wooly Willy to a wand.  I lanced through the boiling crowd and met David Pogue and his wife.  I got to out my dude as a big Pogue fan (and an avid DVR-er of "CBS Sunday Morning," but I'll keep that a secret.  Whooops!)

If you didn't already know, The Shorty Awards found themselves at a new location -- which flummoxed more than a few veterans of the first show, held at the dark and artsy-fartsy Galapagos.  "The floor was slippery, it was so sweaty.  I love that!" was Toby Daniels' review of the old spot. 

Obviously, The Shortys were trying to represent with credibility.  But the seriousness in eviscerating the bowels (non-VIP) from the bovine (the VIPS) seemed against the core nature of Twitter itself.  Isn't Twitter the big playing-field leveler?   Exposure, oversharing, narcissism, publicly talking to ourselves, connecting, engaging, or just plain pontificating into our own hot air -- well, it's all supposed to be equal.  So the separation just seemed weird. Also weird was the fact that CNN's Rick Sanchez had three reserved seats.  He's either really reserved, very very VIP, or he wanted to be 100% he wouldn't be ejected for any Kevin Smith sized reasons.

Weirder still was the middle-school girl-boy-party silence of the basement cocktail viewing area.   I popped in expecting to find the rogue crew tossing back free beverages, heckling the Twitter screen, possessing that raw energy that comes from being a rabble rousing castaway.  Not so! It was somber, as if Mom had just come down and yelled at everyone to be quiet because Dad's goiter was acting up.  "There's a lady with a clipboard trying to get people upstairs," one guest said with amusement and mock shock, "you can't bring your drinks up there!"  Masticate on THAT, VIPs!

Because I wanted to dip into both ponds, I ran back up to the auditorium to check out the live awards.  As Gregory Galant, founder of Sawhorse Media and The Shorty Awards, took the podium, I popped up from my seat at the top and teetered down the stairs towards the front, trying not to be distracting.  And then my heel caught on the stairs and I fell face first, landing on my camera, twisting my ankle, and crushing my big toe.  I disappeared inside myself, a sweaty red pool of mortification, as Gregory stopped mid-intro to ask me ,"Are you OK?"  I brushed myself off, gave the ole country thumbs-up, grabbed my bag, and got the hell out of there.   I briefly hit the basement party one more time before lurching home to masticate on some leftover triangle -shaped cheese and pepperoni cuisine.

My early departure is regrettable, as I missed "Inebriated Ginger" who apparently felt he had been hornswoggled out of the "Humor" category by... a llama.

You can find the full list of winners over here:  http://shortyawards.com/

My photos from the night are on Flickr!

And HERE is your vocab list, thank you to all contributors:

@nmallin for gesticulate: to make or use gestures, esp. in an animated or excited manner with or instead of speech

Brian O'Neill, Developer, for eviscerate: to remove the entrails from; disembowel

@filthyfowl for compound: to put together into a whole; combine: AND plot: to plan or scheme secretly; form a plot; conspire

@waugaman for pontificate: to speak in a pompous or dogmatic manner

@austinbryan for hornswoggle: to swindle, cheat, hoodwink, or hoax

MediaPost writer Nina Lentini for boil: you know this one.

Ms. Moss for flummox: to bewilder; confound; confuse.

@theredheadsaid for masticate: to chew