I'm So Not Bitter! - BlogHer 08 Post Mortem

I went to BlogHer o8 and I’m not bitter.

This was my first BlogHer, but during previous years I had read accounts of BlogHer Bitterness Syndrome and I was prepared to attend therapy/take pills/drunk dial strangers and ask them to hold me and/or burn off my fingerprints and relocate if the event did not go well for my Ego/Id/Superego or Supereggo.

But no interventions were needed. BlogHer was splendid. Except for one MINOR resentment, me and BlogHer are fresh!

Really. Even if you grilled me about the typical bitter issues, I would answer with a genuine happiness glitter in my eyes.

(Let's pretend you decide to grill me. Really interrogate. Waterboard. Whiskeyboard. Don't let me eat any of my Sesame Street Licorice. Really torture me.)

1. Deb, come on. Aren’t you bitter about the parties you weren’t invited to?

Nope, not at all. I could not have been more drunk, better fed, more hedonistic happy person than I was at the parties and gatherings I attended, and I found stream after stream of hot, witty, kick-ass comrades to stomp around with throughout the entire weekend whenever I wanted. The parties I did NOT attend, as I mentioned, were boring, ended early, and lacked that certain joie de vivre. Namely, me. So what is there to be bitter about?

2. But the cliques. Weren’t they so high school? I mean, didn’t you feel snubbed and excluded all of the time? Again, no. Again, I find cliques that don't include me to be tedious and terminally uncool. I wished I had more time to visit with the people I met—it was over too soon!-- and I certainly longed to meet some other bloggers who weren't there or I couldn't find. People may have been snubbing me and I didn't notice. Or there may have been a good explanation, like at one point outside of Macy's someone passed by my butt in order to give LeLo a spanking, but I can't blame the spanker--LeLo was cocktail party dress hot. And any blogger or business who snubbed me or didn’t invite me to a party ended up with a hefty bill from Michael Mina’s Overpriced Bistro signed to their room, so it’s all good. I believe in sensible and immediate consequences for bad behavior, just like Super Nanny--no need to hold bitterness!

3. BlogHer is pretty hetero-mommified. Didn’t that drive you batty? Nah, as one of my new friends fivestar pointed out, many of those blogging mommies love their girl crushes as much as your average queer girls, and they pushed the line on typical hetero standards and can hang just fine.

Now that I think about it, the K-Y giveaway lady was a little tight-lipped in defense of her products' new tag line : He wears cold lube, she wears hot lube, together, they mess up the good sheets with oily, oily lube commercial, but firecracker Kathryn Martini and I set her straight about how queer folk set the sex trends so K-Y better not keep messing up with their major lube demographic, not to mention (though we did) that the Queer mafia holds a grudge. We also stuck it to her on the pseudo-chemistry behind their cool lube for men + hot lube for women = good sex formula until she admitted that there is nothing scientific or gender specific about the hot/cold product assignments. Girls can wear hot or cold, their partners of either gender can wear hot or cold, and you could have a hot-hot-cold, or a cold-cold-cold, or a hot-cold-hot or whatever kind of threesome you wanted with any configuration of gender benders and lube blenders. It’s just lube. The K-Y lady kept giving me thumb drives in her nervousness, so I scored a handful before the chipotle vodka tray passed by and I got distracted and left to chase it down. So, again, it’s all good.

4. So just admit it. You had to have at least one bitter thought. Cough it up. Okay, I do, and so I will confess because you are such a good interrogator.

Here is it is: NO ONE, not one single person there, acknowledged that I am like a mythical hobbit. That kind of irks me.

I mean, I know I’m not better than Jesus or Santa, only Dooce is better than Jesus or Santa, but I think someone could have been nice and said I’m at least on my way to being a semi-mystical hobbit, but no one said so. I don’t blame The Bloggess, not at all. Jenny’s hilarious and kind and told me that I’m awesome while we were drinking at the hotel bar, so that means it’s true. And other people were nice and said cool things, but the thing is, no one actually said I was like a "mythical hobbit." Using the words "mythical" or "hobbit." So, yeah, that stings a little.

Maybe by next year, at BlogHer ’09, I’ll be in that cool club. But other than not being included in the Mythical Hobbit Club, I adored everything about Blogher 08. I’ll stop talking about it, but I adored it and I’m not bitter at all.

Though I do reserve the right to be bitter at a future date. You never know.