There is a lot I don’t remember about Saturday night’s Genius Awards. Like precisely how many drinks I had. And what I said when I introduced the theater winner Jennifer Zeyl.

But, of what little I do remember, these are my favorites, in roughly chronological order.

5. Simultaneously interviewing James Longley and Lane Czaplinski in the elevator at the Henry (video forthcoming).

4. Taking a sip of champagne out of Jennifer Zeyl’s golden Genius goblet.

3. Jonathan Raban’s blush-inducing acceptance speech in which he said all kinds of nice things about The Stranger.

2. Talking with Professor Donald Zeyl (Google hits: 336), father of Jennifer Zeyl (Google hits: 390). Prof. Zeyl is a translator and scholar of classical philosophy, particularly Plato (Google hits: 27,500,000) and suggested I read Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher by Gregory Vlastos, who applied the methods of analytic philosophy to the Platonic dialogues, transforming the verbal arguments into symbol logic to see if they were valid. Most of them were. He also said a lot of other things that went right over my head.

1. And later, much later, after my tie was off and I’d gotten in a slapping contest with several unwilling (but tolerant) contenders, I tried (and failed) to shotgun a beer. On a lawn. With a dozen people watching.