Arts What I Remember about the Genius Awards
posted by on October 23 at 10:59 AM
There were a lot of people. At the invitation-only portion of the evening, when the Stella Artois flowed freely, the main room was packed, but in the blur that is my memory I see less than a dozen people: Hugo House’s executive director Lyall Bush in a leather jacket; nightclub entrepresario Linda Derschang in a black t-shirt; the poets Shannon Borg and Anna Maria Hong, looking radiant; artist/blogger/podcaster/robot-builder Bre Pettis in the argyle sweater seen here; Sarah Rudinoff in a gold jacket; Scott Lawrimore in pinstripes; and… well, that’s about it. At 9 pm, the doors opened to the public, and 1,500 people filed in. Har Mar Superstar got people to dance while stripping down to his underwear, and his set was followed by Aqueduct.
I don’t remember a single conversation the entire evening—I get nervous being on stage—except, at the start of the night, talking to Jonathan Raban’s daughter about why we each love Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. And about what it’s like to have a dad who writes about you in his books. (She’s in Passage to Juneau and one of the essays in My Holy War.) The one quiet moment I got with Jonathan, we were in the Henry Art Gallery’s giant elevator, doing an interview that’s being edited and turned into a video file as I write this. Interviews with all of this year’s geniuses will be online later today.
Later, Raban gave an acceptance speech that was the talk of the night, and if I tell you what he said you’ll accuse me of tooting The Stranger’s horn or some such. As is your right. But in case you weren’t there: He talked about The Stranger’s coverage of the Kyle Huff shooting—he singled out the reporting of Eli Sanders and Megan Seling—and about the cover of The Stranger that week (a close-up of the blue siding of the house where the shooting happened), and about what the Slog has done to change local journalism, and about his surprise that a “young” and “cool” and “hip” paper would give this award to an “old,” “not cool,” and “not hip” guy like him. It was gracious and unexpected and the whole room shut up to hear him say it, which is more than they did for anyone else’s speeches.
That is all I remember.
Rudinoff's jacket was silver. Very shiny, sexy silver.
You know, it's an unsolicited aside on my part, but I hated Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Like Cold Mountain, and like most of Eggers' literary clique, the author clearly tried way too hard to write something great, and it just came off as this grandstanding egofest. And it read way too much like a poor man's Douglas Coupland novel.
The fact that Eggers heavily embellished details of his family relationships to make himself look better also left a bad taste in my mouth.
Ah, Gomez. That's too bad. That's too bad you're one of those people.
LOL. We all have our preferences.
LOL. We all have our preferences. I must add that I loved a similar styled book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
@gomez-"The fact that Eggers heavily embellished details of his family relationships to make himself look better also left a bad taste in my mouth."
Yeah, I'm just about all for Eggers' altruism, but the book came out at the same time as Party of Five, remember that show? The one with that star from 'Lost.'
Party of Five had a similar premise of older orphaned children struggling to make it. The idea seemed to be the zeitgeist.
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