(A Special Report from SXSW Interactive)

When I got to the booth inside the Austin Convention Center, some young bureaucratic wannabe chick looked through the list and said, "No, I don't see Mike Jasper here."

Why don't you look up? I thought.

"Are you sure? I'm only registered for interactive, not film."

She took a close look at me -- cowboy boots, jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and a trench coat --and probably decided I was trying to sneak in by looking like a Texan extra for the movie The Matrix.

"Oh. You are here after all," she said. This is the kind of respect you get when you work for the Oak Hill Gazette.

She gave me the pass and a card that read, "You are cordially invited to a press conference this Tuesday at 3:15 with Janeane Garofalo."

Bonus.

I walked down to the Radisson Hotel where the Web Awards for the South-By-Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival were about to take place. I was covering local cartoonist Whitney Ayres for the Gazette and John Halcyon Styn for this column.

I had met Halcyon through the Tangerine Girl online about a year ago and we'd kept in contact sporadically through e-mail. Kind of a thin connection, but the best one I had after Whitney.

When I got to the Radisson, I flashed my badge and went upstairs to the ballroom. There weren't many people around, so I started asking everyone if they'd seen John.

"John?"

"Yeah, you know. Halcyon, the emcee."

"Nope, haven't seen him."

Time to get into the cheese dip and cocktails. I started out of the ballroom and spied Halcyon standing outside, a little flustered. I went up to him and stuck out my hand like a good conventioneer.

"Halcyon, it's Mike Jasper. Glad you made it, man."

"Good to see you, Jasper. I nearly missed my flight and barely made it here."

"Are they treating you all right? Did they set you up with a hotel?"

"Well, my company paid for the hotel," he said. (He works for Collegeclub.com, which sounds like a good gig to me if they picked up the room bill.)

"You mean it's just like the SXSW music festival, huh? They just pay you a hundred dollars and you're expected to get your own room?"

"They didn't pay me at all. They just asked me, you want to emcee? If so, come on down."

Man, I can't believe these cheap bastards. But then I can't believe he came for free.
"So, do you know what you're going to say yet?"

"No, not at all. I haven't had time. I need to sit down and make some notes. I'll catch up with you later, if that's all right."

I knew he was going to kick ass. There's nothing like the adrenaline rush from being unprepared to spark a stellar performance.

It was odd to see Halcyon in the flesh, kind of like meeting a celebrity (which I guess he is). In person, he's very thin, which surprised me since he comes off like a muscular Chippendale in his Web site photos. He also wore a two-foot long, braided pony tail and a stylish pastel powder blue coat. More on the coat later.

I left him and went for some free beer. Although they offered free food as well, I only occasionally snatched some cheese and carrot sticks from a lonely tray, because I hate the image of a journalist on a food line. I don't seem to have the same problem with the booze line, though.

And I'm the only one I know who can spend $20 at an event offering free food and booze. What can I say? I like bartenders.

I grabbed the beer and realized I was surrounded by 300 non-smokers. I quickly downed the beer and went downstairs for a smoke. "Where's the smoking section, three blocks from the front door?" I asked the SXSW official.

"Something like that," she said.

"It's not easy being an old-time reporter anymore, you know."

When I returned to the ballroom, I spotted Whitney and asked him when things were going to get underway. He had no clue, but he did introduce me to his wife Suvi, who later asked me, "Would you still read Crikey Kid Snoop if Corvette didn't have cleavage?" (Corvette is Crikey's sexy, animated, blond-bombshell babysitter and a major character in the cartoon strip.) I told her I probably would but added, "Remember. I'm the one who told him put more cleavage on Corvette in the first place. Sex sells you know."

Around 7:30, the awards presentation finally started. Halcyon, of course, kicked ass. He later told me, "I didn't have much prepared, but if something breaks I can usually fix it." His best line came during Whitney's category, Best Designed Web Site in Texas. Halcyon called it, "The category for Best Designed Web Site Nationally." When he was corrected, Halcyon said, "Well, if you're a Texan it's pretty much the same thing." The crowd went wild. Pretty well-informed comeback for a San Diego boy.

Although Halcyon performed well, I can't say the same about the audience. At one point he chided, "At least clap for your own Web site or I'll write my name in and keep the award myself." I then realized I was surrounded by a roomful of geeks who usually never leave the computer in time to see the sun. A live event to them was like surfing the Web with a huge monitor. So much for this being interactive.

I'm not really complaining though. Think how long the booze line would have been if there had there been normal people in the room.

I won't bore you with all of the details of the Web awards, but I will bore you with the highlights. Anacam.com won for best personal Web site and when she came up to get her award (I think her name's Ana, but I'm not sure) she said, "You have to understand, I'm a lot like Woody Allen." Really. What does that mean, you like to fuck young Asian chicks?

Another highlight, albeit somewhat surreal, was provided by the winner of the Best Pre-College Web Site, a tall Bill Gates-looking nerd with a dangerously low, Darth Vader voice. "You're my father, Gates, you're my father." Scary.

Yet another surreal moment came when they named the finalists for Best Satire/Humor Web Site. Web pages were projected on a screen and to look up and not see The Misanthropic Bitch, Halcyon, or anyone from The Net Wits seemed bizarre. Instead, the finalists included "The Late Show" Web site with David Letterman and Comedy Central. Now that's fresh, innovative and exciting. The other two contestants were Chickenhead.com and DazeOfOurLives.com. Chickenhead.com won the award.

You may be wondering... What is Chickenhead.com and DazeOfOurLives.com? I can't explain fully, but the short answer: not me or any of my friends.

Whitney's category came near the end of the ceremony. If he won, I would get to write an easy column for the Gazette, since I could just plop a tape recorder in front of him and do an interview. If he lost, I'd be able to ridicule him in this column. I wasn't sure if Whitney was going to win, but I knew I couldn't lose.

Whitney lost. Some geeky Web site called Humancode.com beat him out. And after the owners claimed their award, they offered it to Halcyon in exchange for his powder blue jacket.

"I asked them what they wanted it for and they said they wanted to hang it on their office wall," he said. "Like a pelt? What's that all about?"

Halcyon declined to give up the jacket.

Whitney wasn't out of the running yet, since the last category was for The People's Choice Award. But Anacam.com won that award as well. A perky blond with red beads in her hair (read: cloyingly cute), she thanked everyone who helped her win, especially Jenicam.com. Touching I guess, but I say if she's going to start thanking her predecessors, she should think it through and include Howard Stern and Larry Flynt on the list.

I went up to Halcyon and told him he did a kick-ass job and asked him a few more questions. I told him I'd likely contact him via e-mail to flesh out the story for the Gazette. He said nice meeting you and he hugged me. Hugged. Me. Fuckin' Californian.

I also approached Anacam.com for an interview.

"Well, I have to talk to some friends right now."

"Right, but you do realize I'm a reporter."

"Sure, but I have to talk to some friends right now."

I told her fine, I'd catch up with her later. I approached her 30 minutes later and she said, "I'm still talking to my friends right now."

Fuck Anacam, I thought. "Sure, I'll talk to you later."

Still, I managed to dig up some news. Before the awards ceremony, I interrupted a conversation between some guy who works for LucasArts , Adam Powell (CEO of Angrycoffee.com) and a third guy who sang the praises of Halcyon.

"His story about how he appeared on 'Studs' is one of the funniest things on the Web," he said.

About that time Eric Roach of the Fence Cutters, the second band scheduled to play at the event, came over and piped in, "Hey guys, did you know Jasper was on the Gong Show?"

Great. The Gong Show. My only claim to fame back when I was flavor of the month.

After Roach left, I talked a bit to Powell -- who is something of a legend at SXSW Interactive -- because last year he got into a Jerry Springer-like shouting match with the head of MP3.com during one of the panels. Powell told me that MP3.com, the site where musicians post MP3s for all the world to hear, will try to take fifty percent of anything posted at the site if the song makes money. Bummer.

[I need to warn you that I haven't checked Powell's claim at all, so the MP3.com scare is still in the rumor stage (tell Drudge). But I do plan to get my songs the fuck off MP3.com.]

After the awards, I spied Gregory Kallenberg, who writes technology articles for the Austin American Statesman. Kallenberg is one of the few guys I know who can work inside corporate journalism without getting his soul sucked away.

"Everyone keeps telling me I should talk to Anacam," Kallenberg said.

"Good luck. I've tried to interview her twice now and she's put me off both times."

"Doesn't sound like she's much worth the effort."

"She's the fuckin' flavor of the month and she doesn't realize her fifteen minutes are almost up." I would know.

A lot of people are just too naive to understand the media. If we can talk to you, we'll get a story out of it. If we can't talk to you, we might get an even better story out of it.

Case in point: I went downstairs for another smoke break and overheard SXSW Interactive coordinator Brian Davies talking to a couple of people about some dweeb who manually stuffed the ballot box for the People's Choice Awards.

"He didn't even use a script, he just voted 1,200 times, one vote at a time. Of course, we caught it right away. Then I got in an e-mail argument with him over it, but he kept insisting there was no rule about not voting more than once. He just couldn't see that voting 1,200 times was wrong."

I later asked Davies to give me the guy's name and e-mail address. I thought an interview with some moron with nothing more to do than stuff a ballot box 1,200 times might be insightful. But Davies refused. "I don't want to give this guy any publicity," he said.

Fair enough. But here's the kicker: Davies also said that he had lobbied the David Letterman site to advertise the contest on the TV show. He also lobbied them to do more publicity at the site for the contest, which they later did.

"If they had started a month earlier, they would have won for sure," Davies said. (By the way, it's funny how many people don't notice I have a tape recorder in my hand).

So here's the point: If you vote 1,200 times for a Web site -- even though there's no rule against it -- you're wrong. But if you're part of the SXSW Interactive bureaucracy and lobby a Web site to advertise on TV and more aggressively at its site, you're totally fucking ethical. Hmmm. I don't get it.

And I probably won't get next year's press pass, either.

I put out my cigarette in disgust and walked upstairs to the ballroom. Whitney came over and we had a drink. He introduced me to a friend of his, a lawyer who's primary gig is suing the shit out of people, so he'll remain unnamed. Then I took Whitney aside for one final interview.

"So, if you had won tonight I would have been able to write an easy column for the Oak Hill Gazette. Did you lose just to fuck with me?"

"No, but there's always an upside to everything."

"One other question. Have you ever fucked Corvette?"

"No, but as her creator I get to touch her a lot."

"Too bad," I said. "I did."

I looked around the room one last time. Anacam was still there schmoozing with her friends. I still had time to approach her one last time for an interview, but then I'd have to face rejection again.

Fuck it. I went to Lovejoy's ($2 pint specials, every night) and drank some Guinness.

* * *

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This column aims to be funny. If you can read anything else into it, you're on your own. Copyright 2000 by Mike Jasper.